King of Shadows

By Susan Cooper, John Clapp (Illustrator)

An actor wakes in 1599, performing with Shakespeare. Can he return home?

3.7/5 Goodreads · 3,787 ratings

186 pages· 48,002 words· Est. 6.5 hour read

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Bookroo's summary

Nat Field, a young actor, finds himself mysteriously transported to 1599, performing at the original Globe Theatre alongside William Shakespeare. As he navigates this thrilling yet perilous new world, Nat must uncover why he's been sent back in time and whether he can return to his own era. With the past echoing eerily around him, Nat's journey is filled with excitement and danger. Will his friendship with the legendary playwright help him find his way home, or is he destined to remain in Elizabethan London forever?

From the publisher

Nat Field’s short life has been shadowed by loss and horror. His one escape is his talent for acting, and he has been picked by a dazzling international director to perform at Shakespeare’s Globe, London’s amazing new copy of the theater for which William Shakespeare wrote his plays four hundred years ago. Brought from all over the U.S., the members of the American Company of Boys begin to rehearse at the Globe. But strange, eerie echoes of the past begin creeping in. Nat goes to bed mysteriously sick – is it the dreadful bubonic plague of the sixteenth century? He wakes up healthy, but he’s no longer in the present, he’s in 1599, acting at the original Globe. And his costar is Shakespeare: no longer a vague historical figure, but a quirky, warm-hearted writer/actor whose friendship changes Nat forever. Nat has a new life, blazing with excitement, edged with danger, but why is he here? Is he trapped in Elizabethan London? Will he ever go home? Playing deftly with Time and Destiny as she did in her classic fantasy sequence The Dark Is Rising, Susan Cooper tells a vivid, fascinating and ultimately very moving story of the painful business of growing up, against a background of the timeless, glowing magic of the theater