After the Globe Theatre burns down in 1613 during a performance of Shakespeare's play Henry VIII, William Shakespeare, aged 49, returns home to Stratford to rejoin his wife, Anne Hathaway. Shakespeare and Anne have a distant relationship, as he has spent most of their marriage working in London, and she is a down-to-earth country woman who cannot write. Their marriage has never recovered from the death of their son Hamnet, aged 11, in an outbreak of plague in Stratford while his father was in London. While they also have two daughters, Hamnet was Shakespeare’s favourite child, especially because of the poems which the child wrote. Shakespeare now devotes his time to tending to the family garden. In spite of his hard work he is not very successful.
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