Will

William Shakespeare is dying and his last will and testament needs urgent attention. It is March 1616. Will's lawyer, Francis Collins, is at the Stratford deathbed, and is privy to the great dramatist's final words. The will must be watertight if his client's son-in-law, the execrable Thomas Quiney, is not to benefit by his death, though Will has much to confess before he can explain this and other concerns. On his deathbed, Will unburdens himself. He was a poet for all time, but here he speaks of his time, his loves and his regrets. We hear of the dark ladies Jacqueline Vautrollier and Emilia Bassano, of the captivating Henry Wriothesley.We listen to his chilling eye-witness accounts of the Tyburn executions. We watch young Will roaming the midnight streets and lanes of Stratford and Shottery, sighing for Anne Hathaway; we watch the consummation and decay of that great love. We see him crossing the frozen Thames with the wooden beams that were to become the Globe theatre. We return with him to Stratford to that most heartbreaking of all journeys, the funeral of his only son, Hamnet. In his own final scene Will returns to the work he has written for the stage.

Lines from the plays rise to his lips as he recalls the occasions of their making, and we find his life in every one of those lines. Finally, like Prospero he surveys his island of art, and cannot decide whether his great gift has been a blessing or a curse. Irrepressible, shocking, bawdy, witty, extravagant and wise, Will speaks to us across 400 years.


Genre: Historical