(gentle inquisitive music) - [Narrator] Towards the end of William Shakespeare's life, he was alone in London, away from his family.

He was producing masterpiece after masterpiece.

In a single year: "Othello," "Macbeth," and "King Lear."

- The thing about Shakespeare, the plays are infected by his life.

There's a lot of stuff there, which is really about him.

"King Lear" is the older-man's play.

Shakespeare's suffering a great deal as he writes it.

Lear, he kind of makes these mistakes and he has to live with the mistakes, but they're also to do with the mistakes that Shakespeare has made.

It's very, very personal.

The great line is, "I've taken too little care of this."

And I think, "I taken too little care of this," actually, is about family.

I haven't attended to family, I haven't attended to my own children.

You know, he feels he screwed up.

And to a certain extent, he did.

And that's the greatness of the play is the fact that he admits that he's ...... it (chuckles) good and proper.

(grim music) (Londoners yammering) - [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 muck, sex and, you know, violence and it was charged.

- 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.

- [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.

- 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 had.

(soft dark music) - [Narrator] It's 1587.

Elizabeth I is on the throne.

Her reign has ignited an era of dramatic change.

The world is opening up.

Boats are arriving in London, bringing spices, money and immigrants from across the world.

The British Empire is about to begin, and for the first time in centuries, a man can change his social status.

It's a world of new opportunity where fortunes can be made.

(geese clucking) (dog barking faintly) William Shakespeare is 23 and living in Stratford-upon-Avon, a small rural town of 2000 people, 100 miles and three days travel from London.

- William and Anne and the children lived at Henley Street.

One room downstairs, one room upstairs.

He should have finished school and then gone to university, but he didn't finish school.

John, his dad, couldn't pay anymore because he was in debt and in trouble generally and just sort of like ducking and diving to make ends meet.

- [Narrator] Shakespeare had been to Stratford Grammar, one of the best schools in the country where he developed a passion for history and literature.

But his education had been cut short.

- He's young, he's got education, but not enough and no trade.

So he's mainly at the home getting frustrated.

- [Narrator] At the age of 18, he had fallen in love with Anne Hathaway who became pregnant and they quickly got married.

They have three children: Susanna, Judith, and Hamnet, but he decides to leave them to make a name for himself, to follow his dream and become a writer and reclaim his family's status.

(subdued music) - I think for him to write, it's everything.

Leaving his wife and his children must have been painful.

But God, I think he would've gone absolutely mad if he'd stayed where he was.

I think if you have that need in you, you know, whatever it is, kind of blind madness or passion or drive or curiosity, all those things are secondary.

You know, whatever was going on in his life, it was probably never enough for him.

I mean, he would've exploded.

(dramatic music) (Londoners chattering) - When William arrives in London, it must have been like walking into an explosion.

(harrying music) (chickens clucking) London at the time is a really burgeoning place.

It's about to become a world city.

It's growing exponentially.

The population is increasing and increasing and increasing.

So it's crowded, it must have stank.

There are all sorts of accents from all over the country and from other countries.

But the main thing, you know, it's really dangerous.

(drunkard retches) - [Narrator] London's population has doubled in the past 50 years.

There's overcrowding, disease, and violence.

Life expectancy is just 25 years old and the murder rate is 10 times what it is today.

- It has very little infrastructure.

There's no police force.

It's an unregulated world.

Everyone's carrying a dagger.

They need to be carrying a a dagger.

If you're posh, you've got a rapier, if not, you've got a knife.

And I think another thing is, it's a changing world.

The religion of England has been flip-flopping between Catholic and Protestant and more Protestant and Catholic again and then sort of Protestant.

So you don't know what the truth is.

You don't know who you are talking to.

You don't know who you can trust.

And among all this roguishness, debauchery, all the rest of it, was this very, very young institut.. - [Narrator] Shakespeare knows there's money to be made entertaining the city's booming population.

And he's arrived in London just a decade since the first permanent theatre was built.

Housed between taverns, brothels and bear-baiting pits, The Rose Theatre attracts an audience of 2,000 Londoners six days a week - [Tamburlaine] For Tamburlaine, the scourge of God, must die.

(dramatic music) - Theatre was the most punk expression possible.

It was just so full of muck and sex and you know, violence.

- [Narrator] On stage, theatre challenges religion and authority.

There are plays about gay kings, murderous tyrants, and men who sell their soul to the devil.

A world of creative opportunity unlike anything Shakespeare has ever seen.

- I think he feels a sort of illicit thrill.

You know, it's hard to imagine how exciting it is and how dangerous it is.

(impressive music) In a religious world where creation is a given thing, it's conferred by God.

Suddenly, you're seeing human beings getting up and making their own world and he must have thought, "There's something really amazing .. It's a transfer of power from God to the theatre, to the playwright, to the players.

They're presenting us with a world which transgresses boundaries.

Where boys can convincingly be girls.

Where vagabond players can convincingly be kings.

He finds himself thinking, "Actually, I could do this.

Here is where I can make my contribution."

(passersby chattering rowdily) - [Narrator] And so Shakespeare lands his first job in theatre starting, it's believed, at the very bottom as a stage hand.

(frantic music) (frantic music continues) - I mean Shakespeare, when he started out, it's a tough gig.

He had to graft.

You had to do.

It wasn't enough just to kind of think, you know?

'Cause you can think all, you know, we all dream, you've got to dream big, but then you have to make it a reality.

- [Narrator] Occasionally, Shakespeare is an extra on stage sometimes getting to speak the odd line.

- He had to work on a day-to-day basis as a hired man for a company.

Actors had to rehearse the part in the morning and perform it in the afternoon.

So Shakespeare hoped he would be hired by a particular company on a particular day and he could make a little bit more than a labourer doing that.

And those who would best understand it today are not literature professors, but gig workers.

(haughty music) - [Narrator] As he watches from the wings, Shakespeare begins to understand the mechanics of this new type of entertainment.

How it's cheaper to write murders that happen off-stage to save on cleaning costs, that sheep's blood is used for special effects, that a rolled cannonball can make the sound of thunder, that 21 actors can play up to 60 parts during a performance and it takes 27 lines of dialogue for an actor to exit stage, change costume, and get back on.

- You have to observe.

He was to stand at the side of the stage and watch actors every single night.

It's not easy, not easy at the best of times, but that's par for the course, really, because only that way can you learn.

- [Narrator] And Shakespeare meets Richard Burbage, the actor for whom, one day, he'll write many leading roles.

- Shakespeare watched and learned from everything and everyone.

Practicalities, who can play that part?

What's possible, what's not possible.

- So much is stored away, is absorbed at this time.

He's taking in works to get the skill sets he wants and that made all the difference.

(crowd applauding) (patrons chattering and laughing) (subdued music) - [Narrator] Shakespeare is learning his trade, but he's still broke.

To become a writer, Shakespeare must compete with the Elizabethan playwriting elite known as the University Wits.

The Wits dominate the theatre scene.

Playwrights Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene, and Thomas Nashe are top of the pile.

- William received a limited education.

He didn't go to university.

In a hierarchical society, it matters.

There's no necessary way forward for William and it's hard to imagine how crushing that might have been.

- [Narrator] At the centre of this group is England's most famous and controversial playwright, Christopher Marlowe.

- Christopher Marlowe was born in Canterbury the same year as William Shakespeare and he won a scholarship, actually, to go to Cambridge as, you know, all the best and brightest did.

His celebrity started when he was in his very early 20s.

That was bolstered by the fact that there were all these running rumours that he was one of the queen's spies.

(subdued music) At this time, William's sort of like a background actor so I wonder if Marlowe even noticed him at all.

I kind of doubt it.

- Marlowe, the writer of "Doctor Faustus" and "Tamburlaine," is an atheist, homosexual, and unsubtly controversial in every possible way.

- Marlowe has always had a sense of ever-present danger.

All of his plays are lined with blood and guts and I think that's what Marlowe gave an audience.

(patron laughing raucously) - [Narrator] Shakespeare knows he'll never be taken seriously as a writer on his own.

So he makes it his business to meet George Peele, a member of Marlowe's Circle.

(subdued music) - I think William Shakespeare is an opportunist.

He always was.

You know, Shakespeare's a really social animal and he's in there.

He was, at the beginning, absolutely willing to do whatever he needs to do to get his play on the stage.

- [Narrator] Shakespeare has an idea, he just needs the status of someone like Peele to get it off the ground.

- Here's a young man in London trying to make his way.

How's he gonna do it?

He's gonna cut through the noise, cut through people who have university educations.

It's rough and ready, it's crude, it's exploiting the market.

Let's put in loads of sex and violence and everybody'll come.

- [Narrator] Peele decides to give Shakespeare a chance.

Together, they write a play called "Titus Andronicus."

Set in ancient Rome, it's a blood-thirsty revenge story.

A Roman general's daughter is raped and mutilated by two brothers.

The general takes his revenge.

Performances of the play emphasise the brutality of Titus's words and action.

- "Titus," you know, it's kind of ludicrous in a way.

This is a young writer getting his rocks off.

You've gotta keep it absolutely intense throughout.

- You know, your mother- - [Narrator] Anthony Hopkins's Titu.. gave Shakespeare's words their full power and intensity in a terrifying portrayal of the vengeful father.

- I shall grind your bones to dust and with your blood and it, I'll make a paste, and of the paste a coffin I will rear and make two pastries of your shameful heads.

And bid that strumpet, your unhallowed dam, like to the earth, swallow her own increase.

(snarls) (Chiron whimpers) - "Titus Andronicus" is a kind of Tarantino moment, really.

It's full of brazen spectacle.

It's an experiment in brazenness and the accumulation of horrors.

And it's also been compared to "Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

- Anthony Hopkins' intense and violent portrayal of Titus's revenge in Julie Taymor's stark film heightens the horror of this disturbing scene.

- Lavinia, come.

(Demetrius whimpers) (Chiron grunts) (blood pattering) Receive the blood.

- He understands audiences.

You've gotta keep them on their toes, you've gotta keep surprising them.

And "Titus" is a wonderful example of the outrageousness that he just says, "Oh, I'm gonna go the whole hog.

I'm gonna go so ridiculous, people are not gonna believe it, what I'm gonna do."

But it's kind of deliberate 'cause he's challenging.

He said, "Okay, you want..." And that's the great thing about a young writer that's part of his youth, that part of that daring part.

The baking of the kids in a pie and feeding the pie to the mother at the end is the most outrageous thing ever.

(mellow classy music) - We are beholden to you, good Andronicus.

- If Your Highness knew my heart, you were.

- [Narrator] The brothers who mutilated his daughter are the sons of a queen.

The general now grinds up their bodies, puts them into a pie and takes great pleasure in tricking her into eating them.

A lavish scene that Hopkins plays with energy and glee.

- Will it please you eat?

Will it please Your Highness feed?

(light airy music) - [Narrator] "Titus" is a success, but Shakespeare is making his debut at a dangerous time for theatre.

Many of England's political elite are religious fanatics, puritanical, hard-line Protestants who hate theatre and want it strictly controlled.

- The authorities are in two minds.

On the one hand, you've got the queen and the nobility who are very fond of having dramatic performances, in their own homes, to their own friends and relations.

But on the other hand, you have a growing development of plays being performed publicly.

Large numbers of people gathering, enjoying themselves, drinking, smoking, doing all sorts of other possibly naughty things.

- [Narrator] And so in 1589, the mayor of London announces a new decree: to keep theatre away from London's rich up-market areas.

All performances are banned within the city walls and restricted to the poorer areas outside.

But William's company want to be where the money is so it's believed they ignore the ban and hold an illegal performance in a city tavern called the Cross Keys Inn.

- [Titus] Bring them in, for I'll go play the cook and see them ready against their mother.

(audience applauds) (frantic jazz music) - [Narrator] There was a well-known occasion when things got out of hand.

People were performing when they shouldn't have been performing and so they were closed down and hauled off.

- Of course, they would've been very aware of the rules, but not at the expense of actually getting the ....... show on.

He had bills to pay, like all these people did, you know?

- It appears that they were treated as vagabonds under a vagrancy act of 1572 and that meant that they could be punished in such ways as being whipped or burnt through the ear if they went around acting without a noble patron.

(dark gentle music) - [Narrator] Two of Shakespeare's fellow actors end up in prison.

It's a wake-up call.

In Elizabethan England, crossing the line can mean your severed head displayed on London Bridge.

- Shakespeare realises that he needs to write plays that appeal both to a mass audience, but also to those in power.

And he knows where to look for inspiration.

(canons booming) - This is a time where we're less just a little island on the fringes.

England is coming to be a great power.

People are much more curious about what Englishness is.

- [Narrator] With Queen Elizabeth's Royal Navy having recently defeated the Spanish Armada, a wave of patriotism is sweeping England.

And so Shakespeare decides to tell the triumphant story of how Elizabeth's family, the Tudors, came to power, saving England from a weak king and a civil war known as the Wars of the Roses.

He calls it "Henry VI."

(swords clanging faintly) - [Westmoreland] Farewell, faint-hearted and degenerate king.

Whose cold blood no spark of honour bides.

- [Narrator] No one else has written about such recent English history.

But what Shakespeare needs now is to get "Henry VI" staged.

(subdued music) The Rose Theatre's new season starts with a restaging of Marlowe's revenge play "The Jew of Malta."

(crowd murmuring angrily) It's a flop, taking just 10 shillings.

Shakespeare, sensing audiences want something new, persuades the theatre to stage "Henry VI" instead.

But will audiences really prefer his new play about English history to Marlowe's full-blooded revenge tragedies?

(gentle music) (coins clinking) - From Ireland, thus comes York to claim his right.

- It's obviously ambitious.

It's comparatively recent history when he's writing it.

So those characters and those people, are quite fresh in people's memories.

Their grandparents would've been very close to that.

So it's a very, very different play.

- [Narrator] But all that matters is that the play makes money.

Admission to the Rose Theatre is a penny to stand, two to sit, and an extra penny for a cushion.

The money is collected in specially-made clay boxes sealed to prevent theft - [Actor] By grace have mercy.

The grace of god.

- [Narrator] Once full, the boxes go to the counting room.

Still known today as the box office.

(boxes shatter) (audience applauding faintly) "Henry VI" takes 3 pounds, 16 shillings and 8 pence for the opening performance alone.

Eight times the amount of Marlowe's plays and the highest takings of the season.

- The box office is a material validation.

This is an endorsement which recognises that William has arrived.

- [Narrator] "Henry VI" is staged another 12 times in the coming months, more than any other play in London.

10,000 people from all levels of society flock to the theatre each week.

- At this point, at least, William feels it's all to play for, its game on.

(patrons laughing) - [Narrator] But some of Shakespeare's rival playwrights in Marlowe's circle are not impressed.

- Robert Greene, who is one of the University Wits, he's one of the literary men, takes it upon himself to write a put down lampooning and mocking William.

(subtle music) William is reading this and finds himself described as "An upstart crow, beautified with our feathers as a Johannes Factotum," That's the phrase Greene uses, meaning a jack of all trades, a man without vocation or talent.

You can hear the sneer.

- [Narrator] This is a class attack.

The word upstart has just been invented to belittle those who dare to try and change their social status.

Greene goes on to taunt Shakespeare's Midland accent and mock him for being tight with money.

- I imagine that William Shakespeare was like anybody else who creates anything, sensitive and upset when people were saying dreadful things.

We shouldn't imagine that he was immune to that.

- William must feel horror, exposure, shame.

Robert Greene even purloins a line from "Henry VI" and twists it round.

He says that he has a "Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde."

So he's an equivocator, he's a shapeshifter, an upstart.

He's transgressing social limits.

He threatens the order that Greene clings to.

William's on the cusp here, he's started to make an impact, thrillingly, and he's suddenly been shut down.

(bells tolling) (townsperson coughing) (dark music) (rats squeaking) (townsperson coughing) - In 1592, plague hit London and hit it hard.

No one really understood what caused it.

At first, they thought that dogs might be transmitting it.

So there were orders sent out, "Kill all the dogs."

And between 1592 and 1594, the theatres were closed for almost that entire time.

He must have been torn.

"Do I just go home?

London is dangerous."

One out of every seven people is dead.

Walking the streets of London, seeing the bodies, must have been one of the most depressing experiences in anyone's life and had a flea taken a left turn rather than a right turn down an alley in Southwark, at this time we might've been celebrating another playwright rather than William Shakespeare.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Back in Stratford, his wife Anne and his three young children are also at risk from the deadly plague.

- It must have been devastating.

Everybody was losing people.

I think the powerlessness of it must have been overwhelming.

She was 26 when she meets 18-year-old Shakespeare.

They met and she got pregnant and they married quite quickly.

I think it was a loving relationship.

They must have had a special bond.

I mean, she would've known that artistry takes you over and if you're someone like him, my God, who's driven, it becomes obsessive.

That kind of thing can put you at odds, definitely with family, but Anne understands this, even though to deal with it would be really hard, yeah.

- [Narrator] Shakespeare knows the dangers of plague only too well.

His younger sister died of it when he was just 14.

But despite everything, Shakespeare decides to stay in London.

- I'm sure he hated himself sometimes for wanting to really like not let go of something that he was really passionate about.

But that experience, you know, it's like you've found something in you which, you know, ultimately changes you.

Once you taste that there's kind of no going back.

- William clearly feels that he's got so much more to give, but at this point theatre is young.

It's still under suspicion in all kinds of ways.

You know, who knows whether they'll open again.

William could be just William forever.

(rats squeaking) - [Narrator] The plague years decimate London theatre.

Its leading lights, the University Wits are gone.

Robert Greene, the man who denounced Shakespeare as an upstart crow, is dead.

Another playwright, Thomas Kyd is in prison, tortured for heresy.

And Christopher Marlowe is under investigation for being a traitor and blasphemer.

- They reported that he had said things like, "Jesus was a bastard."

He also made a claim that John the Baptist and Jesus were lovers.

From there, there was no coming back.

(soft worrisome music) (Marlowe sniffles) (Marlowe and assailant grunting) According to the coroner's report, Christopher Marlowe was at a lodging house and after a dispute over the bill, there is a escalation that leads to one of the patrons stabbing Christopher Marlowe through the eye in self-defense.

The knife goes through his right eye and through his brain.

I just don't understand how one defends by stabbing someone through the eye in the brain.

So it feels very intentional.

It feels like a real kill shot to me.

Someone wanted to get rid of him.

- [Narrator] The theatre world consists of just 200 people.

The murder of its most-adored playwright is seismic.

(subdued music) - William must feel, you know, an extraordinary mixture of feelings.

Marlowe, of course, is another version of himself in the same game, on the same track.

An exact contemporary, exactly the same age.

So it's a warning, but, of course, pragmatically it's an opportunity.

His great rival is gone, the coast is clear.

Potentially, it's a good thing for his future.

(thunder rumbles) - [Narrator] The following year, with plague subsiding and most of his rivals dead, Shakespeare hears of a plan to resurrect London theatre put together by an aristocrat called Lord Hunsdon, also known as the Lord Chamberlain.

- Lord Hunsdon lives in Somerset House, which is a big palace on the Strand.

He's Elizabeth's cousin, or if you believe the gossip, her half-brother so Henry VIII could have been his father.

And he's very important at court.

And at this point he is probably the most important person for Shakespeare because he's the man who chooses what entertainment is put on for the queen.

- [Narrator] Hunsdon is dividing all London theatre into two new companies, one in the south called the Lord Admiral's Men and one in the north, the Lord Chamberlain's Men.

Shakespeare wants in but he needs to impress.

- For William, it's absolutely nerve wracking.

He's very imposing.

He wears feathers that cost 20 pounds a piece, which is more than Shakespeare earns in his writing in a year.

But Shakespeare was, I think, very good at seeing the real human beneath a sort of carapace of glory.

So I never get the feeling he's completely overwrought.

- [Narrator] William takes the opportunity to present the Lord Chamberlain with his own deal.

He wants a full-time position as a partner and sole in-house playwright.

In exchange, the Lord Chamberlain will have exclusive rights to all of his plays.

- He is in a strong position by this point, his rivals, most of them are dead, Marlowe and Greene.

So if Hunsdon wants a good playwright, Shakespeare's his man.

(lively regal music) - This was one of those moments where his career could have gone either way.

Now, Shakespeare was brought in as a shareholder.

He got a share of every day's take at the theatre and those pennies added up.

(box shatters) At this point, Williams' future, economic and creative, took its next great leap forward.

So he was now a member of a leading company and it also meant that they could, and did, play before Queen Elizabeth every year.

Shakespeare must have felt the pressure.

When they went out drinking and carousing Shakespeare probably had to go back to his quarters and, by candlelight, read and write late into the night trying to finish yet another play, which could take him two months or six weeks or or longer because he had to show his mettle with The Chamberlain's Men.

(stressed music) - [Narrator] Shakespeare now has to write plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth herself.

So he chooses a subject deliberately targeted to winning her favour.

The story of Richard III.

- [Richard] Now is the winter of our discontent.

Made glorious summer by this son of York.

- [Narrator] It's the story of the Tudor's arch enemy, the hunchback king who murders everyone in his way on his path to power.

Richard III is Shakespeare's most complex character yet and he tells the story from Richard's point of view, the audience on board with the villain.

- Since I cannot prove a lover, to entertain these fair well-spoken days, I'm determined to prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, by drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams, to set my brother Clarence and the king in deadly hate, the one against the other; and if King Edward be as true and just as I am subtle, false, and treacherous this day, should Clarence closely be mewed up.

- Richard III, the things that he says and does are like actually disgusting, you know?

I mean, to write down what happens in the play is horrific.

It's terrible.

But there is something very enjoyable about being complicit as an audience in something that is dastardly.

- [Narrator] Having murdered a rival for the crown, Richard, then seduces his widow.

(dark music) - I'll have her, but I will not keep her long.

(.. - You know, he's a villain, but he's not one-dimensional.

There's a lot more to him.

There's a lot other stuff going on other than twiddling a moustache.

Charisma is a huge thing.

- Here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword, Which if thou please to hide in this true bosom, I lay it naked to the deadly stroke and humbly beg the death upon my knee.

Nay, do not pause.

'Twas I that killed your husband but 'twas thy beauty that provoked me.

Nay, now dispatch.

'Twas I that killed King Henry but 'twas thy heavenly face that set me on.

(Anne sobs) - What is really a remarkable advance- - Take up the sword again.

- young William understands something about psychology at this point, which is, if Richard can seduce Anne, he can seduce us.

And after that, we're off to the races.

(tense music) - [Narrator] Shakespeare is called to Elizabeth's court to perform his play.

(dark music continues) (door clatters) - Royal favour is the element in which ambitious lives flourish.

And the queen's gaze is also the dangerous element in which those lives might wither and die so the stakes are very high, indeed.

It's hard to imagine (laughs) a more, you know, intense experience of performance anxiety than one might have had in performing before Elizabeth I.

(dark stressful music) (doors creak) (dark stressful music continues) - Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by the sun of York.

- A horse!

A horse!

My kingdom for a horse!

(Elizabeth applauds) (crowd applauds) - Elizabeth's favour is enormously important.

It's a massive endorsement.

It's like living in the light.

It's a wonderful gift and it's the basis, it offers a platform for his own agency.

- [Narrator] Just seven years after arriving in London, the son of a humble glover is now England's most successful playwright and the queen's favourite.

But although Shakespeare's position is secure, Elizabeth's other subjects are more desperate than ever.

The poor suffered the most during the plague.

That legacy is beginning to cause unrest in Elizabeth's London.

- In 1595, it was hard to ignore what was happening.

There's a lot of distress.

Food prices have been going up.

Nobody can afford anything.

Price of butter, price of fish.

People are hungry, people are poor, feuds.

London's just rioting.

And at the same time there's a sense that there's an intergenerational struggle.

- [Narrator] Thousands of young people are taking to the streets in protest.

They have the lowest wages in England's history.

The establishment responds by publicly torturing and executing five rebel leaders, all in their teens and early twenties, and imposes martial law.

- You know, Shakespeare didn't like it and he wants to show that.

(subdued music) - [Narrator] As a response to the injustice he's seeing, Shakespeare writes a play that will last forever.

In "Romeo and Juliet," his main characters are not warriors or kings, but two innocent teenagers who, despite coming from rival families in a violent world, fall madly in love.

Shakespeare's mastery of his craft expressing the first love at its purest and most uncynical is beautifully realised by Baz Luhrmann in his modern adaptation of the play.

- Dost thou love me?

I know thou wilt say "Ay" and I will take thy word.

Yet, if thou swear'st, thou mayst prove false.

O gentle Romeo, if thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully.

- Lady, by yonder blessed moon, I vow that tips with silver all these fruit tree top- - Oh swear not by the moon.

- She's like, "Whoa there, boy, chill out.

But also feed me.

I'm hungry, I'm starving."

The innocence and hope and desire and despair (laughs) and passion and the violence of all of that as well.

You know, the kind of fight for you to meet something in yourself that you don't know yet is what I think is the youth in that play.

- I have no joy of- - Luhrmann's interpretation of "Romeo and Juliette" puts his young lovers in a world to which a contemporary audience relate.

- Sweet, good night.

This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, may prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

Good night.

- Doesn't she say- - Good night.

- My bounty is as boundless as the sea.

My love is deep.

The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.

Crikey, you'd like somebody to say that to you, wouldn't you?

- The language, like the poetry and the abstractness and the expansiveness of every single word, for it also to have an almost like heartbeat behind it.

It is like music.

When you do it, it literally feels like there is a whole orchestra coming out your mouth.

(laughs) - [Narrator] Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes fully embrace the musicality of Shakespeare's words in the iconic scene where they first meet.

- Palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

- Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

- Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

- Well then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do.

They pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

- Saints do not move, though grant for prayer's sake.

- Then move not while my prayers effect I take.

- The moment they meet, they sum up exactly the most wonderful way to express the feeling of completely falling in love with somebody.

But you know that this is going to come to grief.

(brooding music) - Is she a Capulet?

- His name is Romeo and he's a Montague.

The the only son of your great enemy.

- What comes after absolutely goes straight to your heart.

- [Narrator] Up until now, romantic plays have been comedies.

But Shakespeare writes this as a tragedy.

- It should have been conventional.

You've got the Montagues and the Capulets and they hate each other.

And of course their children meet by chance and fall in love and live happily ever after.

But Shakespeare didn't do that.

We're gonna get other ideas.

He starts instead to say, "No.

Now we're gonna look at what I want to write about," which is very different.

- [Narrator] Having struggled against the forces keeping them apart, the young lovers meet a tragic end.

Baz Luhrmann creates a powerful and evocative buildup to the final scene where Romeo, overcome with grief and wrongly believing Juliet to be dead, enters her crypt before both take their own lives.

- Romeo.

(Romeo grunts) (Romeo panting) What's here?

Poison.

Drunk all, and left no friendly drop to help me after.

- By the time you get to that end point, Romeo and Juliet have made that journey to live and give every bit of themselves in the name of love (gentle music) and in the name of changing a story in their society where actually love wins over death and violence.

- [Jeanette] Of course, that's why we remember it.

It's these young people who didn't deserve to die and whose only crime was to love each other.

In the end of the play, there's a powerful message coming across when he does that, that waste, that loss.

It's like he's saying "The future's been destroyed."

- You know, there's power and importance in what he's saying.

Shakespeare recognises the spell that is cast in this world and he does everything he can to break it.

It isn't worth sacrificing yourself to a feud or to a violence that's in its society.

But at the end of the day, love is more powerful.

(dramatic music) - Shakespeare wanted to take risks and little pokes at people who were seen as the higher ups.

He had to be careful with the authorities.

If he pushed that too far, the punishment was very, very extreme.

- It's no coincidence that "Hamlet" is one of his greatest plays.

- And is he questioning ambition over fatherhood?

I think he is.

And wondering whether he's done the .. (dramatic music continues)