(sombre music) (birds chirping) (sheep bleats) (dog barking) - [Narrator] By the time William Shakespeare is 40 years old, he spent nearly two decades in London.

He rarely goes back to Stratford to see his wife Anne, and his now grown daughters.

(sombre music) Shakespeare is reaching the end of his career, but some of his greatest, darkest and most personal works are yet to come.

(sombre music) - Like any artist, the things that are personal are sometimes the scariest voids to touch in yourself, and you don't know whether you should touch them or whether you should go there.

(sombre music) Probably why his plays have transcended throughout time is that he did meet himself with the worlds that he was creating, and that's what you always hope as an artist, is that you're going to find a way to recognise something in yourself in a story that you haven't met yet.

But there must have been an element of what he was creating, which he must have thought, "Whoa."

Like, "How far is this gonna go?"

(sombre music) (dramatic music) (people shouting) (dramatic music) - [Narrator] The plays Shakespeare left us are not only works of genius, but they also provide a collection of clues as to who he was, the struggles he faced, and the forces that drove him.

- He was living in a time where everybody was just swimming in mock.. and, you know, violence, and it was charged.

(guns blasting) - That narrative of Shakespeare striding along, becoming the man he was always intended to be, could not be further from the truth.

The truth is, it was a blessing for Shakespeare simply surviving.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] Now, with the help of historians, experts, and actors, we're going to piece together the puzzle and tell the life story of William Shakespeare.

(dramatic music) - You cannot shrug your way through it.

It's too big.

- [Narrator] It's a story of ambition, showmanship, and tragedy, how a glover's son from Stratford-upon-Avon became the greatest writer who ever lived.

- He doesn't restrict himself talking about human frailty.

He's saying, "Look at yourself and look at the damage that is done."

- It's his understanding of everything, of love, of anger, of jealousy, of rage, melancholy.

Who did it better?

Who's ever done it better?

I wish I'd met him.

Oh, I wish I'd met him.

(sombre music) (pulley squeaking) - [Narrator] In 1603, Shakespeare is the Elizabethan equivalent of a millionaire.

He co-owns the Globe Theatre, and he's recently bought 100 acres of land in Stratford and one of the biggest houses in town for his family.

But as he's grown older and richer, his creativity has slowed.

- Shakespeare wrote on the average two plays a year.

Some years, like 1599, he was enormously productive, writing three plays and drafting another.

And other years, the productivity slowed down for all kinds of reasons.

In the immediate aftermath of "Hamlet," there's a lull in his productivity.

So whether it was exhaustion or patting himself on the back for a job well done the first year that the Globe was up in operation, or a loss of creative spark, is impossible to know (people chattering and shouting) - Shakespeare at this time is very comfortably off, but you get a sense of Shakespeare here, just sort of slightly clinging on, questioning his own artistry and where he wants to go with it, and potentially going much deeper, much darker.

(thoughtful music) - [Narrator] But Shakespeare's comfortable life is about to be thrown into turmoil, because now comes the news that after 44 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth I is dead.

(pensive music) (rain pattering) - We can't really overestimate the impact the death of Gloriana is, you know, it portends a kind of national eclipse.

She's provided a kind of much needed stability, and sort of held the nation together, and that's suddenly threatened.

(audience applauding) For Shakespeare, her reign has provided the conditions for his flourishing.

(fanfare music) You've been favoured by the previous monarch.

You might very well not be favoured by the new monarch.

(dramatic music) (ornament shattering) - [Narrator] And so Shakespeare needs to tread carefully.

In the wake of the queen's death, England's poets honour her by writing gushing eulogies.

But Shakespeare, the country's most famous playwright, does nothing.

(pensive music) - One of the things that distinguishes Shakespeare from his fellow playwrights is he wasn't inclined to write a celebratory poem honouring the death of the queen.

(grim music) You needed to have patronage in order to thrive.

- [Narrator] Shakespeare knows his close links with Elizabeth might hurt his chances with a new monarch, King James VI of Scotland, son of Elizabeth's sworn enemy, Mary Queen of Scots, whose death warrant Elizabeth once signed.

- We're familiar with Shakespeare's shrewdness as well as with his subversive impulses.

And perhaps here, he's hedging his bets.

(grim music) - [Narrator] But as King James arrives in London from Scotland to take the English crown, it becomes clear that England's new monarch is very different from the last.

(sombre music) - I think he was called the wisest fool in Christendom for two reasons.

One is he had an intellect.

So he wrote books, he wrote books on witchcraft, he wrote books in the divine rite of kings.

And of course, he commissioned the authorised transition of the Bible, but at the same time, his judgement was pretty poor, coming to London, bringing his retinue, people who were regarded as pretty uncouth actually at the time.

(sombre music) - He's very highly educated, yet his great pastimes are hunting and watching horse racing at Newcastle and spends a vast amount of his time with a very few close friends in those places, racing around chasing stags, and not really ruling the country.

You know, people don't quite know how to handle him.

The English nobles find him unbelievably difficult because he obviously has a very strong Scottish accent and they're constantly writing letters to each other, complaining about the fact they can't understand a word he's saying.

(grim music) - [Narrator] But more worryingly for Shakespeare, it seems King James doesn't share Queen Elizabeth's love of theatre.

- There are a few things we know about King James and theatre.

One is he often fell asleep at plays.

Imagine sitting in a tavern in spring of 1603 talking about this monarch coming down from Scotland.

"Played his court, did you?

Did you have a chance to get a sense of whether he's gonna s.. or shut us down completely?"

And you can imagine as they buy another round, thinking, "This is not gonna go well.

Our good run is over.

Time to think of other ways to make a living."

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] Shakespeare's worst fears are soon realised.

Once in power, James moves quickly to assert his authority, and one of the first things he does is ban theatrical performances on Sundays, the most lucrative day of the week for Shakespeare's company.

(tense music) (doors creaking) - When James bans playing on the Sabbath, it must have rung a few alarm bells because it's a sop to the puritan hard-liners who fundamentally opposed the theatre.

He's in a very uncertain place.

- [Narrator] On the 19th of May, a letter from James' Court arrives at the Globe Theatre.

(suspenseful music) - "James, by the grace of God, do licence and authorise, these our servants, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, and the rest of their associates, freely to use and exercise the art and faculty of playing for our solace and pleasure."

(fanfare music) (people chattering and rejoicing) - [Narrator] From nowhere, Shakespeare and his troop have been given the job of being King James' personal theatre company.

William Shakespeare will now be known as the king's man.

(fanfare music) - It's a mark of favour, it means .. and it looks set fair for us.

(fanfare music) (intense music) For Shakespeare to be able to wear the king's livery must have been a kind of head spinning thing really.

- He wasn't a posh boy.

He wasn't of noble birth or anything like that.

So finding himself in slightly more elevated circles would've, yeah, you definitely feel that, that I don't really belong here and I shouldn't really be here, or that I'm ........ or, you know, I'm gonna get found out.

- So there's no doubt Shakespeare's excited, but also cautious.

- [Narrator] But as the king's personal playwright, Shakespeare is now expected to write plays that support his regime.

- It wasn't about, "I love drama."

for King James.

It was, "I understand the value of this company to me."

- I think from James' point of view, this was propaganda.

We've gotta remember that theatre at that time was only one of two methods of mass communication.

You have newsprint and books, and you have theatre, and that's all there is.

The state has got an interest in, in making sure anybody who was performing was actually performing in a way that was suitable and convenient for the monarchy.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] But even as an employee of the king, Shakespeare is going to test the limits.

- He was constitutionally incapable of writing propaganda.

He steered clear of simple political allegiances.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] Instead, Shakespeare writes about what he's seein.. London is poor, dirty, and overcrowded.

Violence against foreigners is commonplace.

Immigrants from Europe, French, Dutch, and Flemish Protestants fleeing religious persecution.

(people shouting) Shakespeare works on a play about the Catholic martyr, Sir Thomas More, writing a speech in which More implores a xenophobic London mob to put themselves in the shoes of the immigrant.

(people shouting) - Shakespeare's really good at appealing for compassion.

What it tells us is his concern in the later part of his career about empathy, about other human beings, and certainly, it tells us something about his knowledge of migration, because he encounters people every day from different parts of the world in busy Southwark while he's making theatre.

"Would you be pleased to find a nation of such barbarous temper that, breaking out in hideous violence, would not afford you an abode on earth, whet their detested knives against your throats, spurn you like dogs?

What would you think to be used thus?

This is the strangers' case, and this your mountainish inhumanity."

What's really beautiful about this speech is Shakespeare is asking us to think about what it's like to be in someone else's skin, in someone else's shoes.

What would happen to you if you had lost everything and had to leave England?

Where would you go and who would welcome you?

What would it feel like?

It's one of the most beautiful speeches.

- [Narrator] And this speech is the only surviving example of a play written by Shakespeare's hand.

It shows rushed scrolls, crossings out, and a surprising lack of attention to grammar.

- I'm always fascinated by the lack of punctuation in it and that it's almost as if there is a certain amount of, almost stream of consciousness, but stream of consciousness with an argumentative inclination to it, to the speech.

Because it is incredibly passionate.

- [Narrator] It's edgy writing.

And before the new play can be staged, it must be read and approved by the master of the rebels, the king's censor, - The official censor says, "No way, you're not staging Thomas More quelling a race riot.

You're not doing it."

- The king's censor bans the play fearing Shakespeare's descriptions of riots in London will provoke real unrest in the streets.

- [Interviewee] It gives us that Shakespeare's both the kind of jobbing man of the theatre and a real subversive at this point.

- Well, what Shakespeare had to recognise was he was a servant of the state.

He was actually sponsored by the state.

His income came through the benevolence of the state.

He wasn't a free man and there was not freedom of speech in the way that we understand it today.

- [Narrator] And so Shakespeare looks for another way to write about the cultural difference he's seeing.

And he finds inspiration at the Royal Court.

Alienated from Catholic Europe, England had begun making alliances with North Africa and the Ottoman Empire.

At court, Shakespeare sees firsthand representatives from worlds very different to his own.

- It's not unlikely that Shakespeare was inspired by visitors and delegations to London, such as the Moroccan ambassador.

They were in London for a few days.

A lot of people talked about it and were sort of in awe of their difference, their very obvious difference, in the way in which they prayed and ate, and also how they dressed.

He's really interested in what happens in a world in which different cultures, different religions, different identities are kind of combined.

He's quite taken by a sense of feeling like an outsider even when you are inside.

(grim music) - [Narrator] And so Shakespeare writes a new play called "Othello."

(grim music) Radically for the time, it places a North African character as the main tragic hero.

- [Othello] No, no, now, forever farewell the tranquil mind!

Farewell content!

- [Narrator] Othello is a Moorish general in the Venetian army.

Oliver Parker's 1995 Hollywood adaptation begins with the wedding of Othello to a nobleman's daughter called Desdemona in a scene filled with hope and romance.

(gentle music) But their happiness isn't to last because next, Shakespeare introduces us to the most evil character he has ever created, Iago, here played with relish by Kenneth Branagh.

- You shall mark.

Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty but seeming so for my peculiar end.

I am not what I am.

- Playing Othello is hard.

Othello was on the receiving end of the incredibly manipulative Iago.

- [Narrator] Iago acts as Othello's closest confidant, but really he's set out to destroy him.

Kenneth Branagh's sinister Iago tries to convince Laurence Fishburne's disbelieving Othello that Desdemona has cheated on him.

- O, beware, my lord, of jealousy!

'Tis the green-eyed monster that doth mock the meat it feeds on.

- Why?

Why is this?

- In its simplest terms, the play is about the damage that jealousy can do.

Othello goes from loving Desdemona to this beside himself with love for her.

He goes from that to hating her so much it destroys him.

- [Narrator] Driven into a jealous rage, Othello murders Desdemona in her bed.

Irene Jacob's portrayal of the petrified Desdemona heightens the horror of this disturbing scene.

(tense music) (Desdemona gasping and crying) - Let me live tonight.

(Desdemona crying) - Nay!

(tense music) (Desdemona cries out) If you strive... (tense music) - [Narrator] Othello is Shakespeare's darkest work so far.

In the final scene, a broken Othello finally learns what Iago has done.

The actors' intense resolute performances emphasise the tension in this moment of confrontation.

- Will you, I pray, demand this demi-devil, why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body?

- Demand me nothing.

What you know, you know.

From this time forth... - I could say the genius of "Othello" is that Shakespeare was gonna show and not tell.

And in the showing, he was gonna leave open to his play goers the why.

And those both torture and tease us into returning to these plays.

- People often like to locate the racism of the play in Iago and that that's what motivates him.

I actually don't even know if Iago is racist.

And that's what is so scary about him is 'cause he's basically drawing on people's vulnerabilities.

- Othello isn't the person who feels the greatest amount of jealousy.. I think the genius of the play is that after 400 years, it's still uncomfortable to watch.

We're still dealing with those themes.

(tense music) (people clapping and cheering) - [Narrator] "Othello" is a success, becoming one of Shakespeare's most popular plays.

Unlike London's other playwrights, Shakespeare has avoided writing propaganda for King James, but he's about to have no choice.

(tense music) (dramatic music) (Guy panting) In November 1605, a Catholic called Guy Fawkes is arrested whilst planting enough gunpowder under the houses of Parliament to destroy one square mile of the city.

(dramatic music) It's a Catholic plot to assassinate the Protestant King James.

(people grunting and shouting) - Things would never be the same.

This was a large-scale terrorist attack meant to decapitate the political leadership of the realm.

These men decided they were going to change everything by wiping out king in court and restoring Catholicism.

(tense music) - [Narrator] James responds ruthlessly.

He forces his Catholic subjects to swear allegiance to him and deny the authority of the Pope.

And he makes church going compulsory.

- Catholics aren't allowed to move more than seven miles from their houses and they have to attend church.

And the parish authorities have to write lists of who doesn't attend church for whatever reason and they become stamped with the name recusant, and that is a very dangerous situation to be in.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] Guy Fawkes is executed and as fear sweeps the country, Shakespeare begins to realise that he and his family back home in Stratford are in danger.

- What's lesser known about this plot is much of it was plotted and planned in and around Stratford.

(tense music) - It's a very Catholic part of the world.

His neighbours, the blacksmith, cobbler, all known Catholics.

There are known to be at least 30 Catholic families and probably many more who are hiding their beliefs.

- [Narrator] It isn't known if Shakespeare was a Catholic, but his connections to the faith run deep.

Years earlier, two of his relations, known Catholics, were sentenced to death for plotting against Queen Elizabeth.

- But here, the rest of his life, I think he would've been haunted by the ghosts of these Catholic relatives who have been executed.

And he would've been careful all the time that the reputation of these relatives didn't come back to haunt him.

- Probably nobody in England was as proximate both to London and the Midlands Catholic plot as Shakespeare was.

This is deeply troubling.

(grim music) - [Narrator] And soon, Shakespeare receives bad news from Stratford.

His daughter, 22-year-old Susanna, has been named a recusant, someone who doesn't attend church and is under suspicion of having Catholic sympathies.

- This is a woman, like her father, who is very headstrong, knows her own mind and will not be pushed into conformity, but she is taking a really big risk.

If Susanna is found having these sympathies, there are dire consequences.

She's very vulnerable.

And, of course, this is a moment at which her father is not there.

- It's interesting to contemplate Susanna's choices at this time and the pressures she's getting from family, from community.

So I assure you that it was a crisis for everyone involved.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] And so Shakespeare begins to write a play with the aim of getting King James on his side.

The play, called "Macbeth," is about the killing of a king and its dark consequences.

Shakespeare fills the play with references to King James' interest in the supernatural.

- What James wrote about witchcraft, he was obsessed about it.

The witches were not just old women that were mouthing sort of uncouth statements.

The witches are to him a threat to the stability of the regime.

And of course, the reason why Shakespeare is writing about witchcraft is he's trying to flatter King James' interest in this subject.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] By the end of 1606, Shakespeare is ready to perform "Macbeth" to King James.

And in the first scenes, a coven of witches tell Macbeth of a prophecy that he is destined to be king.

- Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!

- All hail, Macbeth!

Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!

- All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!

- [Narrator] Macbeth is seduced by the witches prophecy, but he knows he has to kill the king to fulfil it.

As he wrestles with his conscience, Shakespeare takes us into the mind of a murderer.

- Is this a dagger which I see before me, a handle toward my hand?

Come, let me clutch thee.

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight, or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

I see thee yet, in form as palpable as this which now I draw.

Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going; and such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses.

- The thing with "Macbeth," for me, it's not so much ambition, but it's the guilt.

It's the guilt that makes it so almost unbearable to watch.

And, you know, God knows where the guilt comes from, from Shakespeare and into this, but it's the guilt, that's "Macbeth" for me.

- [Narrator] Goaded by his ambitious wife, Macbeth finally murders the king.

- My husband.

(gasps) - I have done the deed.

This is a sorry sight.

- A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.

Consider it not so deeply.

- But wherefore could not I pronounce amen?

I had most need of blessing, but amen stuck in my throat.

- These deeds must not be thought after these ways.

So it will make us mad.

Go get some water, and wash this filthy witness from your hands.

Why did you bring the daggers from the place?

They must lie there.

- Macbeth is, you know, I think it's important to say that Macbeth is very simply a player about murdering the king.

- My hands are of your colour.

- But I also think it's sort of about murdering God.

(Macbeth crying) - [Witch] Show.

- I think what you're seeing there is what it means to murder the king as the representative of God.

(Macbeth crying out) - [Witches] And grieve his heart.

- And after the murder, all sorts of weirdness.

So the horses eat each other and good men's lives are said to perish before the flowers in their hats.

So there's this weird, almost Salvador Dali kind of surreal, disordered, deranged world.

- [Narrator] Having murdered the king and assumed the throne, the Macbeths struggled to hold their grip on power and their sanity.

- Here's the smell of the blood.

Still.

- The consequences for them, after the murder.

Everything starts to break apart and break apart and break apart.

And then, you know, you get that great cry.

Shakespeare writes it as "Oh, oh, oh."

(Lady Macbeth crying) That intensity of the performance is not easy.

I think that's the breaking of her.

(Lady Macbeth continues crying) She completely goes to pieces and loses the plot.

- To bed.

To bed.

To bed.

- [Narrator] The tormented Lady Macbeth kills herself.

(soft music) - Wherefore was that cry?

- The queen, my lord, is dead.

- She should have died hereafter; there would have been a time for such a word.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.

Out, out, brief candle.

(grim music) - "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" is an amazing speech.

It's a speech which endlessly repeats the same thing actually.

And Shakespeare could do that and make that powerful.

You know, it repeats the same thing because it's reached a kind of a sense that life is totally emptied out.

It's evacuated.

At this point, Shakespeare seems to be brooding over unsavoury and terrible things, you know, there is a pervasive darkness.

- Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

- This is our greatest playwright, perhaps our greatest writer.

And speaking as if his achievement is nothing, as if the success is empty, that it's fruitless.

(grim music) - [Narrator] The story ends with b.. The natural order is restored as a rightful new king takes power.

(grim music) - So he's trying to say, if you start something that is the threat to the monarchy or the threat to the king of the day, just think of the consequences that could follow.

(bright music) - [Narrator] "Macbeth" secures Shakespeare's position at court and squashes any concerns about his loyalty.

(bright music) Around this time, Shakespeare's daughter's name disappears from the list of recusant.

Susanna is safe from further inquisition.

(people clapping) - Whether Shakespeare had any sway over her fate, we'll never know.

But no doubt, that was quite terrifying.

- [Narrator] Shakespeare had come close to losing a daughter and he wasn't with his family when they needed him.

(intense music) So now, after two decades, putting career first and with London once more in the grip of plague, Shakespeare, it's believed, finds himself drawn back home to Stratford.

(poignant music) - Anne must have felt such mixed feelings having William back home.

I think she's emotionally really hurt.

This must have been a very strange atmosphere for everyone, (poignant music) this life that they've had to lead apart from each other.

He finds his family has moved on.

So he's thinking about forgiveness and thinking about is forgiveness even possible if you have been so distant for a really long time?

- He did it by his own accord and went to London and established himself and abandoned his family to do so, and sacrificed possibly everything.

And you can imagine after 10 year, 15 year doing that, there is a time where ambition, if not stopped, are questioned, you know.

Was it worth it why I'm doing this?

And then you maybe see that in his later place.

- [Narrator] It's around this time that Shakespeare writes a play about ageing, fathers, family and forgiveness.

(dramatic music) He calls it "King Lear."

- So there's an interesting strain of self-hatred and shame at this point in his career.

And Shakespeare, of course, is the father of daughters.

And daughters start to come more and more into his drama at this time.

"King Lear's" themes are really varied and yet at the heart of it, it's about a father who has wronged his own daughter.

(poignant music) - Tell me, my daughters, which of you shall we say doth love us most?

- [Narrator] The play opens with King Lear demanding a declaration of love from his three daughters for a share of his kingdom.

When the youngest, Cordelia, refuses, he banishes her.

- Speak again.

- Actor Paul Scofield emphasises Lear's fury and disappointment.

- [Cordelia] I love your majesty according to my bond; no more nor less.

- But goes thy heart with this?

- Aye, my good lord.

- [Cordelia] So young, and so untender?

- So young, my lord, and true.

- [Lear] Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower.

- When you get into it, it's really, it's a very hard play because it is, I mean, it's about rejection.

On its deepest level, it's about rejection.

- The centre of it is a father-daughter relationship.

I mean, it's like any kind of father-daughter relationship.

But at some point, you know, your kids have gotta leave the nest and take with them what you've taught them, but also you learn from your child too.

- It's very, very personal, even though it's allegorical in terms of it's related to a kingdom, but it's actually related.

You know, a kingdom is a family and it's related to his inability to deal with his own family.

And he's got it wrong.

He's got it wrong big time.

And I think Shakespeare's also beating himself up in Lear.

He actually is beating himself up.

He's saying, "I've made such stupid errors."

- [Narrator] Lear's older daughters fail to live up to their grand shows of love and cast him out into a wild storm.

He descends into madness.

Peter Brook's stark film adaptation emphasises the bleakness of this scene.

(rain pattering) - This tempest in my mind doth from my senses take all feeling else.

In such a night, to shut me out!

- So he's lost.

- Shakespeare's lost.

It's like the artist and his life, they kind of (grunts) like that, they bash together in a sort of head on collision.

I don't think he expected it.

I think he was just getting on with his job, just being down in London, enjoying himself, working, and then the family back home and, you know, it's like the commuter, you know?

But, you know, he, he feels he screwed up.

To a certain extent he did.

Because he's been too ambitious, he's been too busy.

And I understand that.

I've done that in my time, you know, I've allowed my career to take precedent sometime over my personal relationships.

I have.

- [Narrator] Cordelia returns to rescue her father.

In Brook's film, Paul Scofield and Anne-Lise Gabold movingly portray the scene in which Lear and daughter are reunited.

- I know you do not love me for your sisters have, as I do remember, done me wrong.

You have some cause.

They have not.

- No cause.

No cause.

- You must bear with me.

Pray you now, forget and forgive.

I'm old.

I'm foolish.

- That intimate relationship is the thing that they both learned from each other in there.

And King Lear is awoken to an innocence and a way of looking at the world afresh in a way that he maybe wasn't able to.

- Shakespeare's asking for forgiveness and from his own family and saying, "It's possible.

You know, we can come together."

And you know, there's hope in that scene.

- [Narrator] But this is not where Shakespeare decides to end the play.

In the ensuing civil war between the sisters, Cordelia is defeated and ultimately executed.

- Shakespeare's punishing himself.

And part of the punishment is to lose that what you love most dear.

There's nothing more horrible than losing that what you love most dear, and Shakespeare says, "That's where I've gotta go."

(Lear howling) - [Narrator] Paul Scofield's Lear carries his dead daughter in his arms, heightening his pain by howling with grief.

- So, after all the raving, after all the self-assertion, you get that broken contrition and truthfulness and humility.

In the end, the home life, the life at home, maybe it taught him a lesson.

(poignant music) - [Narrator] But just as Shakespeare's thoughts turn to his family, his career in London once again pulls him away.

For years, Shakespeare has dreamed of building an indoor theatre within London city walls in upmarket Blackfriars.

Now he receives news that rules banning this have been eased.

Finally, Shakespeare has the chance to turn theatre into a respected art form.

- Whatever he intended in that moment, I can't presume to enter into his mind, but even after turning back to Stratford and to family life, his energy is such, his intelligence is such, his curiosity is such, his sense of the technical possibilities of whatever he turns his hand to is such that he feels he's still got more to give.

(drum sticks thudding) - [Narrator] And so Shakespeare returns to London to create his final works.

And at Blackfriars, he and the king's men open England's first ever indoor playhouse of its kind.

- I imagine for Shakespeare, the opening of Blackfriars is a real high point for him.

You can play around a lot more than you can when you need daylight and it's raining on you.

So you can have effects, you can have more scenery, you can make your place more complicated.

If you imagine this much more intimate space, you're very close to the actors.

There's candlelight, it's very mysterious.

In fact, they had longer intervals, so you needed to trim all the candles, otherwise the wax would drip on all your fine clothes.

So that was a very important thing to do.

So Blackfriars is really a wonderful opportunity for him to really push his writing, push the boundaries of what he's been able to do.

(audience applauding) - [Narrator] For his new theatre.

Shakespeare writes an ambitious new play called "The Tempest."

(actors shouting) (adventurous music) - I believe in "The Tempest" he's experimenting and running wild because he can, because now he was so technically on top of what he was doing that he could just do very weird improvisations.

(sea crashes) (people shouting) - [Narrator] The play centres around a sorcerer called Prospero, exiled to a desert island.

In Julie Taymor's Hollywood adaptation, Helen Mirren portrays Prospero's anger and need for vengeance, as she conjures a storm to shipwreck her enemies, leaving them at her mercy.

- He's so on top of his particular art, craft that he can push it anywhere he likes.

- [Narrator] In "The Tempest, Shakespeare experiments, not only with spectacle, but also with language.

(adventurous music) - You know, he's improvising within the strict confines of the iambic pentameter.

And some of them, the lines are so convoluted and so difficult to get the understanding of it out.

- Devil, born devil on whose nature nurture can never stick on whom my pains, humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost!

I will plague them all, even to roaring.

- But at the same time, some of those speeches in "The Tempest" are so unbelievably beautiful.

- [Narrator] But as Shakespeare writes about a magical, far away island, he describes a world filled with the nature and imagery of his Warwickshire home.

- He's been in London for a long time, and so much of it is Stratford.

It's so fantastical.

But at the same time, so incredibly local to his place of birth.

- Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves and ye that on the sands with printless foot do chase the ebbing Neptune and then do fly him when he comes back.

- Descriptions of that river and being by that river that was flowing, that Shakespeare knew very, very well, and the low lying mist.

(ethereal music) In "The Tempest," you almost feel him yearning for that environment.

The play very much has a sort of end of life feeling about it, end of creativity.

And the moment when Prospera, Prospero breaks his or her staff and throws it away and basically says, "I'm retiring, I'm going, you know, I'm not doing this anymore."

- [Narrator] Towards the end of the play, Prospero stops using his magic and announces that the performance is over.

- Our revels now are ended.

These, our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air and like the baseless fabric of this vision the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples the great globe itself, yea, and all which it inherit shall dissolve.

- I always found that incredibly sad moment.

You do feel, possibly it's Shakespeare saying, "I can't do this anymore."

It definitely has that feeling.

Definitely.

(poignant music) - [Narrator] And Shakespeare closes the play with the following lines, "As you from crimes would pardoned be, let your indulgence set me free.

(dog barking) (restless music) (people shouting) - [Man] Fire!

(dog barking) (fire crackling) (foreboding music) - {Woman] Fire!

(crowd clamouring and shouting) (foreboding music) - [Narrator] On the 29th of June 1613, a cannon fired during a performance at the Globe causes a fire.

(dramatic music) The theatre, made almost entirely of wood, is reduced to ashes in just an hour.

- The Globe in flames.

It's an extraordinary death, an extraordinary extinction of a, as it must seem, possibility itself.

(dramatic music) - His actors would've been heartbroken.

At that moment, the company had to decide what their futur.. - [Narrator] His company are determined to rebuild the Globe immediately, bigger and better than ever before.

But Shakespeare sees the fire differently.

(serene music) (hooves clopping) It is time to go home.

(serene music) (serene music continues) (serene music continues) - The family, I can only imagine, gosh, the pride and the awe and maybe an understanding of, "Oh, that's what he was doing," and he's long gone, but he still remains.

(serene music) - And thank God for them, 'cause without them we wouldn't have what we know as Bill Shakespea.. (serene music) His greatness is, he always tells the truth and in terms of love, who we love and why we love.

And I think he touches on all those subjects like nobody else.

In the same way Mozart does in his music, Shakespeare does it in language, and to me, there's no getting round him.

(serene music) - The magic of him is that he's so modern in his thinking.

And that makes me realise that the past isn't very long ago, really, the attitudes, the griefs, the pains, the experiences, and it might be in a slightly different context with horses and carts instead of cars, but the basic fundamentals of human experience are essentially the same.

And he really makes you feel it.

- Plays aren't abstracted from their own times, or from the life of the man who wrote them.

But there's something about that, the energy of that that has massive, you know, to date an exhaustible afterlife, it expresses something that continues to be true.

(serene music) - The fact is, we have the work.

It's intensely poetic at times, beautifully, powerfully, magnificently poetic, but at the same time, it's very accessible.

- Look for something that you're concerned about.

You'll find it in Shakespeare and you'll find a comment about it and you'll find it expressed in such a way that it might make a difference to you for the rest of your life.

Hope so.

(serene music) (serene music ending)