Cue for Treason

Peter, a boy from Cumberland, is forced to flee his home when he's spotted trying the hit the wicked local nobleman with a rock. This sets him up for all sorts of adventures, including joining up with a traveling theater troupe, befriending a girl-in-disguise who's also a fugitive from home, meeting and working for Marlowe and Shakespeare in Elizabeth's England, and finally becoming a spy in her majesty's service to help foil a treasonous plot against her, which takes him full circle and right back to his homeland.
There are stretches of time when I consider abandoning my goal of reading through the 1001 Children's Books list because I've found so many of them not to my taste, but then one comes along that restores my faith in the show more project by virtue of being such a wonderful read. This is one of those books. It's a fun and fast-paced romp from the beginning to the end, with great characters and a very enjoyable plot. I loved it. show less

Grade 9 English syllabus included this book. I quite adore conversations about Shakespeare and have obviously read a few Shakespeare biographies as well as novels where he's a character. Usually those are ridiculous, and I think this counts. This book includes the girl-pretending-to-be-a-boy-to-act plot, which is such a dead horse trope that somehow bothers me a lot. I dislike that its used as a short-cut in writing female characters in historical fiction in the hopes of making them "relatable" to modern young readers. I also generally dislike the way Shakespeare is portrayed in fictional media and for that reason cannot understand why I willingly consume it whenever available and considered writing a thesis about it.

I read this book for school.
Normally, reading a book because you have to is very different from reading a book because you want to, but I really enjoyed this.

It was very... refreshing to read a boy's adventure novel, after all of the coming-of-age I've been reading lately.
I also found the old style to be refreshing, and interesting, since it was written almost a hundred years ago and takes place in the fifteenth century.

It was nice to read an exciting adventure that was really, really exciting and enthralling but didn't involve any fantasy whatsoever, unlike what I've been reading lately.

So Cue for Treason was great for me, because it reminded me that there are more genres than girls coming-of-age and fantastical or post-apocalyptic show more girls coming-of-age. show less

Cue for Treason 978-0141325705 - I read this book well before my love affair with the bard began - so it may have been this book that lead to that love. Peter flees both an evil nobleman and the law and joins up with another young boy, Kit, and their adventures include fleeing across Elizabethan England, joining an acting troop and meeting up with a new playwright by the name of William Shakespeare. An exciting adventure filled with great characters and a page-turning plot.

Peter Brownrigg runs away from Cumberland School with a travelling theatre group, and with another mysterious and talented youth named Kit. in London, the two have the luck to be taken on as apprentices by William Shakespeare himself. But what were the curious writings on the stolen acting copy of the new play "Henry V"? Why is the sentence about "the devilish cannon" heavily marked?
This lively adventure tale includes a lot of Elizabethan history, and eventually readers learn how Peter enters the Secret Service under Sir Robert Cecil, how certain great houses in Cumberland are suspected of treachery, and at last the true name and story of young Kit is revealed.
Very enjoyable juvenile fiction, memorable.

My favourite book when I was 11. I still enjoy re-reading it all these years later. A great story stands the test of time.

I read this one in school and liked it so much i never gave it back. In general, just a good book to have in your library so your kids can read it one day.