The year is 1597. Elizabeth is queen. Shakespeare and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men are packing London’s Globe Theatre. And the severed heads of Catholic insurgents are impaled on the Tower’s gates. One 14-year-old boy should arouse no one’s interest. But within a week of his arrival, Richard Malory is robbed, beaten, and threatened at knifepoint. Someone wants him to leave London, and Richard is determined to find out why. There’s only one place he’ll be as an actor on the stage. As he begins to unravel the traitorous plot that has ensnared him, Richard must make a difficult decision. Will he play the part set out for him—or can he become the playmaker of his own life?

Intrigue abounds both on and off the stage in this rollicking mystery set within Shakespeare’s theater company. Kit Glover is London’s finest boy actor. Audiences flock to see him portray imperious queens and scheming noblewomen. But off the stage Kit’s manner is harder to make out. Now cool and disdainful, next fierce and angry, then madcap and bawdy–his personality changes so rapidly and so often that fellow actor Richard is unsure which is the real Kit, or if his true nature is something else again. But Richard is certain of one thing: Kit is involved with some nefarious companions– much like young Prince Hal in Shakespeare’s latest play, Henry IV. And Richard suspects that these low companions are behind a series of crimes that could cost the company its good standing and could cost Kit his head. And so, reluctantly, Richard allows himself to be drawn into the conspiracy to help his rival–this fascinating, infuriating, troubled prince of a boy, teetering on the brink of becoming either a king . . . or a criminal. From the Hardcover edition.