To the outside world, Tom Pryne is an orphan traveling Elizabethan England with his uncle’s theater troupe. In actuality, Tom is Viola, in disguise because her parents’ Catholic sympathies have put them at odds with the law and forced them into hiding. When the actors arrive in the sleepy little town of Stratford-on-Avon, Viola’s uncle is arrested for murder, and she joins forces with Will Shakespeare, a local boy with a penchant for trouble and a smart turn of phrase, to uncover the real culprit.