When William Shakespeare was summoned to the halls of justice to answer the charge by Sir Francis Bacon that the famous actor from Stratford-upon-Avon had wrongfully claimed authorship of the play, "Twelfth Night," then playing at the Inns of Court, Shakespeare turned for help to the crafty solicitor, Harry Sylvester. The courtroom drama that followed, orchestrated by Sylvester's beautiful and brilliant daughter, is set in the background of the rich tapestry of Elizabethan England. The battle between Shakespeare and Bacon concludes in a moment of high emotion and surprise. Four hundred years later, in Washington, D.C., an alert scientist aided by his attorney-daughter, and an aspiring young Shakespearean scholar, uncover a clue to the possible existence of the four-century old records of that famous trial. This discovery leads them to an exciting search, a budding romance, a challenge by a renowned Shakespearean authority, and into a gripping finale, joining the two centuries and the characters in both.