For Ages
10 to 99

The Playmaker is a part of the Richard Malory collection.

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 safe: 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?

An Excerpt fromThe Playmaker

The City

Smithfield once blazed with burning martyrs.

An English boy of any education whatever knows that. During the days of Bloody Queen Mary, who hoped to restore a Catholic kingdom on our island, Protestants were burned by the dozens on stakes erected in Smithfield market, just outside the walls of London.

Of course, Mary had been dead these forty years and England was safely delivered from the Pope's clutches by our gracious Queen, Elizabeth. But Smithfield surprised me nonetheless. From childhood I had devoured Foxe's Book of Martyrs, with its bloody tales of the tortures inflicted on Protestants in this very place--I expected it to be grim or solemn. But when I topped the rise near the Red Bull tavern, a lively scene leapt into view--a clash of color and sound that appeared to jump up and down and wave like a flag under the clear April sky. It took my breath away. For a moment I stared, my heart pounding in my ears. Then I shifted my pack from one weary shoulder to the other and…