A delightful adveture full of humor and heart set in Elizabethan England! Widge is an orphan with a rare talent for shorthand. His fearsome master has just one demand: steal Shakespeare's play "Hamlet"--or else. Widge has no choice but to follow orders, so he works his way into the heart of the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare's players perform. As full of twists and turns as a London alleyway, this entertaining novel is rich in period details, colorful characters, villainy, and drama. * "A fast-moving historical novel that introduces an important era with casual familiarity." --School Library Journal, starred review "Readers will find much to like in Widge, and plenty to enjoy in this gleeful romp through olde England" --Kirkus Reviews "Excels in the lively depictions of Elizabethan stagecraft and street life." --Publishers Weekly An ALA Notable Book

When an outbreak of the deadly Black Plague closes the Globe Theatre, William Shakespeare's acting troupe sets off on a tour of England. Widge, the orphan-turned-actor, knows that he'll be useful on the trip. Not only does he love the stage, but his knack for a unique shorthand has proven him one of the most valuable apprentices in the troupe. But then a mysterious man appears, claiming to know a secret from Widge's past-a secret that may forever force him from the theatre he loves. "An exciting, well-written tale that is sure to leave [readers] clamoring for more." (School Library Journal, starred review)

Intrigue, betrayal, and romance surround Widge as we find him back in London and at the center of things, as usual. Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare's patron, has died, but the new king and his queen love drama-on stage and off. Shakespeare has begun a new play about political intrigue, but real intrigue is close at hand. Someone is stealing from the company, and Shakespeare's scripts must be guarded at all costs-including the one he has given up on and turned over to Widge to finish. Widge finds the glory of being a playwright appealing, especially when there's a pretty girl to impress. But spying is even more exciting! Readers swept up in the first two adventures about Widge and Shakespeare's players will be enthralled yet again by this third tale with its dramatic twists and turns and an ending worthy of the Bard himself.

Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays.

A gift book to savour. Let the Bard into your lounge and have him whip up some sharp cocktails and soothing snacks for the comedy or tragedy in your life. From ‘Get Thee to a Winery: girls’ night out’ to ‘Exit, Pursued by a Beer: drowning your sorrows’, this stage-sensitive, merrily blended book brings a Shakespearean swirl to life’s everyday highs and lows. Readers who downed Tequila Mockingbird and felt the force of William Shakespeare’s Star Wars will thrill to its intoxicating mix of literary nerdery and cheeky wordplay. Caroline Bicks and Michelle Ephraim are eminent English professors and eminent merry punsters. While poking a little fond fun at the man who gave them their careers, they dish up a delightful high-low mash of food, drink, and drama. Shakespeare, Not Stirred pops all the corks. Remember, with Falstaff: ‘thin drink doth so over-cool their blood…’ PRAISE FOR CAROLINE BICKS AND MICHELLE EPHRAIM ‘The perfect present for lovers of liquor and literature.’ The Guardian ‘Witty and fun.’ The Sunday Age

Without William Shakespeare, we wouldn’t have literary masterpieces like Romeo and Juliet. But without Henry Condell and John Heminges, we would have lost half of Shakespeare’s plays forever! After the death of their friend and mentor, the two actors are determined to compile the First Folio and preserve the words that shaped their lives. They’ll just have to borrow, beg, and band together to get it done. Amidst the noise and color of Elizabethan London, THE BOOK OF WILL finds an unforgettable true story of love, loss, and laughter, and sheds new light on a man you may think you know.

Copyright is by no means the only device for asserting ownership of a work. Some writers, including playwrights in the early modern period, did not even view print copyright as the most important of their authorial rights. A rich vein of recent scholarship has examined the interaction between royal monopolies, which have been identified with later notions of intrinsic authorial ownership, and the internal copy registration practices of the English book trades. Yet this dialogue was but one part of a still more complicated conversation in early modern England, James J. Marino argues; other customs and other sets of professional demands were at least as important, most strikingly in the exercise of the performance rights of plays. In Owning William Shakespeare James Marino explores the actors' system of intellectual property as something fundamentally different from the property regimes exercised by the London printers or the royal monopolists. Focusing on Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, and other works, he demonstrates how Shakespeare's acting company asserted ownership of its plays through intense rewriting combined with progressively insistent attribution to Shakespeare. The familiar versions of these plays were created through ongoing revision in the theater, a process that did not necessarily begin with Shakespeare's original manuscript or end when he died. An ascription by the company of any play to "Shakespeare" did not imply that it was following a fixed, authorial text; rather, Marino writes, it indicates an attempt to maintain exclusive control over a set of open-ended, theatrically revised scripts. Combining theater history, textual studies, and literary theory, Owning William Shakespeare rethinks both the way Shakespeare's plays were created and the way they came to be known as his. It overturns a century of scholarship aimed at re-creating the playwright's lost manuscripts, focusing instead on the way the plays continued to live and grow onstage.