Her conversations with her friend Madge prove how clearly ordinary people can see the boundaries their society has drawn for them, and how easily and deliberately they sometimes ignore those boundaries. We watch Constance react to seductive people, and we cheer when she kicks an attempted rapist.

And we see the “poetic license” of a not-yet-famous playwright, the strategizing of a master spy, the quick, self-organized gathering of men and women when there’s a fire to be put out. Skillful and not-so-skillful bartering? Yes. In Queen Elizabeth’s London, Constance Shakespeare finds friendship, purpose, and love-though the paths she travels sometimes take her outside the conventions of Elizabethan society. She learns to judge and to appreciate the butchersĪnd bakers, the shopkeepers and boatmen, the pregnant women and antsy toddlers, and those who have power over them. She learns to cope with her brilliant (but stubborn and occasionally narrow-minded) brother, and to understand the qualities which give a play value. Once arrived, she learns to navigate a city whose characters range from aristocrats to common folk, from highly educated to illiterate, from plain honest to con artist.

Naturally confident, Constance relies on a strong sense of independence as she walks through muddy lowlands and shares a carriage with dour and charming men, two giggling girls and one judgmental matron. When the fictional eighteen-year-old named Constance Shakespeare joins her brother Will in London in 1592, she’s hoping for opportunities not easily available under her father’s roof in Stratford, especially not for young women.

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