The man we encounter in Ferdinand Dugue's 1857 play is not the bland Shakespeare of history, about whose personal life we know so little. No, this is the playwright we would liked to have known: poet, romantic, hero . . . a larger-than-life figure cutting a swath through sixteenth-century England.

Building on the few known facts of Shakespeare's life -- his unhappy marriage, his friendship with Essex, his favor with Queen Elizabeth I -- Dugue has constructed a remarkably believable portrait of the man who might been been.

A first-rate historical drama translated for the very first...