He sees the body of a young child and remembers the moment in 1596 when he learned of the illness of his son Hamnet while rehearsing a play in London.

Returning to Stratford-upon-Avon, he was subjected to abuse from his shrewish wife Anne for neglecting his family by living in the capital.

1597: Shakespeare receives a bag of money from Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, for writing the procreation sonnets, to encourage her son, the young William Herbert to marry.

Disturbed by his attraction to the youth, Shakespeare gets drunk in a brothel run by his friend George Wilkins.

They are keen to experience the seedier side of London life, so Shakespeare takes them to Wilkins' brothel.

There they enjoy the pleasures on offer but Herbert is shocked to see Wilkins help some men to beat up one of the women.

The BBC asked Boyd to dramatise the Sonnet's love triangle as a free adaptation of Shakespeare's life.

He views Boyd's choice of a British-Indian actress (Indira Varma), her portrayal as being "half Moorish, half French",[4] and her being costumed in a traditional Tuareg headdress (playing on the western world's post-9/11 fear of the Muslim world) as a deliberate othering, such that Shakespeare and Herbert's exploitation of her becomes a metaphor for the West's meddling in and exploitation of other cultures (a post-colonialist perspective).