Judi Dench credited as playing...
Anne Shakespeare
- Anne Shakespeare: Judith, if you can't forgive yourself, how do you expect God to forgive you?
- Judith Shakespeare: I don't.
- Anne Shakespeare: He'll write no more.
- William Shakespeare: No. And nor will I.
- Anne Shakespeare: It's not Hamnet you mourn. It's yourself.
- Anne Shakespeare: Husband! It's Sunday!
- William Shakespeare: Sunday?
- Anne Shakespeare: This isn't London. If you miss church here, they'll fine you.
- William Shakespeare: I never said an unkind word. I never gave her cause.
- Anne Shakespeare: You spent so long putting words into other people's mouths, you think it only matters what is said.
- William Shakespeare: John Hall has asked for my help to remove the vicar. I thought he knew me better.
- Anne Shakespeare: Well, he thinks you like him.
- William Shakespeare: I'm a good actor.
- Anne Shakespeare: Why did this man slander our Susanna?
- William Shakespeare: My guess is to damage her husband. John Hall is a Puritan, and he would make Holy Trinity and all the town likewise. John Lane, on the other hand, likes his cakes and ale.
- William Shakespeare: Anne, those sonnets were published illegally without my knowledge or my consent.
- Anne Shakespeare: But you wrote them, Will, and people read them. And after they'd read them, they kept asking, "Who are they? Who is this dark lady he's so in love with?"
- William Shakespeare: They were just poems.
- Anne Shakespeare: The handsome man?
- William Shakespeare: They were just poems.
- Anne Shakespeare: Don't answer. I don't want to know. I didn't want to know then, and I don't want to know now. But I know who some people said he was. Now it appears he's coming to my house a-calling. All these years, Will, worried about your reputation. Have you even once considered mine?
- Anne Shakespeare: Remember our wedding day? Me, older, pregnant, and you a strange, clever lad of 18. I know what people thought. I couldn't even sign the register. Just made a stupid mark. I felt so foolish. Then you went to London and became this great writer, with a wife at home who couldn't read a word. I often wondered if it bothered you. But why should it? You were hardly here.