Richard Garnett
London: J. Lane, 1905
A schoolteacher in Stratford, Shakespeare longs for London life and the stage. When he rather brusquely tells his wife that he is deserting her and the children, she turns him in to the local lord as a thief. An arrogant and clever Shakespeare provokes Lord Lucy, who suspects him of dalliance with his wife, into sentencing him to be flogged and then exiled for three years. But a deus ex machina in the form of the Earl of Leicester arrives in time to extricate Shakespeare’s genius from petty Stratford. —VH