Shakespeare's Secret

Shakespeare’s Secret is a mystery novel for middle-grade readers written in 2005 by award-winning author Elise Broach. A loner at her new school, sixth-grader Hero Netherfield makes friends with her elderly next-door neighbor and embarks on a hunt for a missing diamond that may prove the real identity of William Shakespeare. As Hero overcomes challenges both in school and with her new friendships, she grows to be more like her Shakespearean namesake: “constant, brave, and true.” Broach intertwines Hero’s contemporary hunt for the diamond with the controversial historical theory that William Shakespeare did not author the plays for which he is so famous. Broach suggests that Shakespeare’s masterpieces were written by Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford.

Hero’s family is new to Maryland. Her father is starting a job as an archivist at the Maxwell Elizabethan Documents Collection in nearby Washington, D.C. Thanks to her Shakespeare-scholar father and the fact that her parents met in a college English lit class, Hero and her eighth-grade sister, Beatrice, are both named after characters from Shakespeare’s play, Much Ado About Nothing.

It’s not so bad for Beatrice, who has the more normal name and happens to be tall, pretty, and popular, but it is hard for shorter, worried-looking Hero. The first day at Ogden Elementary, a girl in Hero’s class announces that her dog is named Hero. Hero’s worst fears about her new school come true. The other students make fun of her: barking, whistling, and dog jokes follow Hero from then on. Hero works on becoming invisible. If it weren’t for grandmotherly Mrs. Roth, Hero would have no friends.



Mrs. Roth has short silver hair and blue eyes. She lives next-door to Hero in a little yellow cottage with a beautiful garden. Together, she and Hero work crossword puzzles and snack on cinnamon toast. Mrs. Roth tells Hero that she has moved into the famous Murphy diamond house. The previous owner, Mr. Murphy, allegedly hid a large, 17-carat, centuries-old diamond somewhere in the home. There was a huge scandal over the diamond: it was supposedly stolen during a break-in, but police believe that Mr. Murphy staged the burglary to collect insurance on the diamond to pay for his wife Eleanor’s cancer treatment. Police searched the home, but never found the diamond. Tragically, the insurance money came too late to help Eleanor, who died. Eleanor and Mrs. Roth were close friends.

Hero meets Danny Cordova, a blonde, popular boy whom Beatrice calls the “hottest guy in the eighth grade.” He has a bad-boy edge, with his skateboard and the fact that he has a past suspension for pushing a teacher who was bullying another student. Hero is surprised to find that Danny is good friends with Mrs. Roth, whom he calls by her first name, Miriam. Danny’s father is the local chief of police. His mother left the family to be an actress in L.A. when Danny was five. Hero tells Danny about the diamond.

Mrs. Roth tells Hero about a necklace that Mr. Murray gave her, which had been in Eleanor’s family for hundreds of years, and which originally held the diamond. Mrs. Roth reveals that Eleanor was related to Edward de Vere. They discover the necklace possibly belonged to Anne Boleyn, mother of Queen Elizabeth I. Mrs. Roth also has a clue: a quote from Dylan Thomas’s poem “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,” urging the reader to “rage against the dying of the light.”



Things are not going well at school for Hero. Kids tease her for hanging around Danny because no one believes he would be friends with her. Hero’s name is also graffitied on the boys’ bathroom wall. Danny and Hero discover that Mrs. Roth is Mr. Murphy’s ex-wife. Hero feels betrayed by Mrs. Roth, who didn’t tell her this information. She also wonders how Mrs. Roth could live next door to her ex-husband and his new wife. Hero angrily confronts Mrs. Roth, who shares that she and Mr. Murphy and Eleanor were good friends. She also reveals that she has an adopted daughter, Anna, who ran away. Hero’s father advises her that sometimes “the best way to defend one’s honor is simply to behave honorably.” Hero apologizes to Mrs. Roth. Danny stands up for Hero and breaks into the school, spray painting over the rude graffiti.

Mrs. Roth and Hero theorize that Queen Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare were the parents of Edward de Vere. They believe that Edward de Vere is the real author behind Shakespeare’s plays because de Vere was worldly and well-educated, a favorite of the Queen, and because his personal Bible was annotated with verses that correspond to Shakespeare’s works. The two friends think that the Queen may have given money to de Vere to deny authorship of his plays because, at the time, the profession of a playwright was considered lower-class. Hero and Danny search for the diamond, finding it in a light fixture.

Danny takes the diamond and sends it to his mother in L.A., thinking she needs the money to further her career. Mrs. Roth and Hero are surprised and disappointed by his action. Danny sees a photo of Anna in Mrs. Roth’s house and realizes she is his mother, which means Mrs. Roth is his grandmother. The two are overjoyed to find each other.



Hero makes a friend, Tory, at school. Anna returns the diamond in the mail, not wanting Danny to get in trouble. She also includes a photo and a note for him. Mrs. Roth, Hero, and Danny replace the diamond in its spot in the necklace. Hero offers to tell her dad the whole story, thinking maybe the Maxwell Collection can purchase the necklace and put it on display. Mrs. Roth muses that Shakespeare’s real secret may not have been his identity, but instead, “how he could understand so much about human nature. And write about it in a way that still rings true, all these years later.”