"What," demanded Mistress Cecily Leigh a trifle desperately, "are we to do with her?"

To impish, headstrong, redheaded, thirteen-year-old Valerie Leigh, there was no need to do anything with her. But if her family insisted on sending her to live with her stern Uncle Gilbert and Aunt Frances while her parents were abroad on a diplomatic mission for Queen Elizabeth, she would do something—she would have a tantrum. Instead, she cut her hair short, borrowed her brother's clothes, and ran away to join a troupe of traveling players and play the role of Princess. Girls were not allowed to act upon the stage, but Val's masquerade was so well done that no one guessed her secret. No one but Moll, who kept a motherly eye on the whole troupe—and she, too, had played the Princess when she was young.

A command performance at a manor house brought Val a chance to act with Shakespeare's company. Her joy was dampened when she found that the strolling players were only too glad to be rid of her. Once in London with the Company at the Globe theater, she made a valiant attempt to improve. It was not easy, and the other boys teased the "new boy" until they learned to beware of the quick temper. Slowly Val learned self-discipline and acting, and won as the final reward the right to play Juliet opposite Nick's Romeo, and to play it for Queen Elizabeth. 

A joyful story and a serious one of a girl's growin up in Elizabethan England, and a plot which devlops naturally from the life of the times.

From the dust jacket