Bedtrick

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Once a boy player in Shakespeare's company Sander Cooke is now a hired man playing female roles. When Frances Field reveals she is pregnant by Sander's brother Johnny a fellow actor and aspiring playwright Johnny makes it clear that marriage is not in his plans. But if Frances gives birth to a bastard she'll lose her shop on London Bridge and her position as one of Queen Elizabeth's silkwomen. Sander would like to come to Frances' rescue: only Sander has a secret kept both onstage and off-she is actually a woman. Even their friend Moll Frith who goes around blatantly as a man wouldn't marry a woman but she does find Sander and Frances a wayward short-sighted priest to solemnize the wedding. It is a marriage of convenience but can these two women make a true union of it? Winding around this unconventional marriage the London stage of the period comes alive alongside political anxieties and rebellion troubles in Ireland the plague and the aging Queen's failure to name a successor.</span></p>