Beginning with the plague and its ravaging hold upon the city of London, the story follows the adventures of Catherine Constanza, beautiful, young, and suddenly bereft of all she knows. Catherine perseveres through her misfortune, and soon begins a star-crossed love affair with Shakespeare; the excitement and deceit at the Globe Theatre, the devastation and degradation of Newgate Prison, the glitter and intrigue in the court of King James I, and the harsh reality of the Jamestown Colony follow.Rich with Elizabethan flavoring, A Pageant of Shadows is a saga full of action while staying within the framework of its era in tone, in character, and in the beautiful flowing language of the time. Events, costumes, and locations vividly and accurately detail the life of England in the seventeenth century. And there has always been a hunger for people to transplant themselves into another world, another time, another love affair....