Elizabethan Literature

Jack and Annie are whisked back to Elizabethan England where they meet the Bard of Avon himself, William Shakespeare, and luckily for them, he is desperate for two small actors for his latest play! An exciting adventure and a wonderful introduction to Shakespeare.

The year is 1587. One of Queen Elizabeth's cousins is found murdered, her flesh marked with profane symbols. A plot to assassinate Sir Francis Drake, England's most famous sea warrior, is discovered. One man is charged with the desperate task of solving both cases: John Shakespeare.

The Life of the Author: William Shakespeare delivers a fresh and exciting new take on the life of William Shakespeare, offering listeners a biography that brings to the foreground his working life as a poet, playwright, and actor. It also explores the nature of his relationships with his friends, colleagues, and family and asks important questions about the stories we tell about Shakespeare based on the evidence we actually have about the man himself.

London in the time of Queen Elizabeth I is a bustling place, its streets crowded with vendors selling goods from all over the world. In the courtyard of St. Paul's Cathedral, Alice Wood competes with other booksellers, hawking pamphlets, plays, and the latest poetry from the continent. It is a lonely life for a hardworking young widow, and she will soon put it aside. When a black-clad stranger visits, speaking in riddles and asking questions about her long-vanished son, Alice will be drawn into an adventure straight out of one of her faerie stories.

In England in the Age of Shakespeare, Jeremy Black takes readers on a tour of life in the streets, homes, farms, churches, and palaces of the Bard’s era. Panning from play to audience and back again, Black shows how Shakespeare's plays would have been experienced and interpreted by those who paid to see them. From the dangers of travel to the indignities of everyday life in teeming London, Black explores the jokes, political and economic references, and small asides that Shakespeare’s audiences would have recognized.

These remarkable letters represent a wealth of as-yet-undiscovered knowledge about Shakespeare's relationships, personality, and career as he carved out his place in the chaotic world of 16th-century London. Whether you are a Shakespeare scholar, merely a fan, or even if you have never read any of his works, the stories of the The Lost Letters will enthrall you with their fascinating and true tale.

When Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster to the Tudor Queen Elizabeth, learns of a Jesuit assassin landing on England's shores, he's determined to go to any lengths to protect his Protestant Queen. His protege, Kit Scarlett, discovers a letter revealing the name of the assassin—Gregorio Luca. Together with Scottish agent, Iomhar Blackwood, Walsingham sends them on a mission to track Luca down. It is clear Luca is only coming with one task in mind—to kill. But is his target the English queen?

Nicholas Bracewell befriends a young beggar who is trying to eke out a living as a counterfeit crank, pretending to have spectacular epileptic fits in order to get money from gullible bystanders. When the beggar is murdered inside Bridewell, Nicholas has to pose as a beggar himself in order to get inside the notorious institution so that he can solve the crime. Counterfeiting of all kinds is exposed.

The day Rodney Hawkhurst rides onto her father's grand estate, Lizbeth Gillingham is a wild eighteen-year-old, with tangled red hair, dirt on her apron, and an archer's bow in her hand. A chance encounter leads to a clandestine kiss, leaving the tomboy Lizbeth wondering if the life of a sophisticated lady could be so bad if she was on the arm of Rodney Hawkhurst... But Rodney has not come to see Sir Gillingham about Lizbeth. He has come to borrow money for a daring sea voyage, and to ask for the hand of Phillida, Lizbeth's elegant sister.

As Stephen Long steps ashore in England one gray dawn in May 1581, he wonders how many more Catholics will have to die to make Queen Elizabeth feel secure. Involuntarily he trembles at the thought that soon he may be numbered among them.

To Each Their Own is a modern-writ comedy in the style of the Theatre of Elizabeth the First, written with a scholar's research and a modern Shakespearean actor's wit. It includes many of the elements we are used to seeing in Shakespeare (sassy servants, pompous Noblemen, love-at-first-sight, shipwrecks, magic, fights, sacrifice, and slapstick) and language that conveys much more than single emotions.