KEY POINTS:
Did Shakespeare work as a Catholic spy during his "missing years" between 1586 and 1592? Or did he simply lie low and teach in a Welsh school for a little extra money? Perhaps, as one school of thought has it, he joined a troupe of travelling players or even enjoyed a prolonged holiday in Italy.
Each of these rival theories has been proposed by historians and academics during the past decade alongside another serious proposition: that Shakespeare spent the time working for the English embassy in Spain.
A new Spanish film has developed this solution to the biographical mystery and come up with a plotline that the producers say is entirely feasible and will also shed fresh light on the playwright's creative process. William and Miguel stars Will Kemp, as Shakespeare, and Juan Luis Galiardo as Cervantes.
The screenplay tells of the Bard's imagined encounter with Miguel de Cervantes, Spain's greatest literary hero and the creator of Don Quixote.
Cervantes and Shakespeare were contemporaries and are believed to have died on the same date, April 23, 1616, although the Spaniard was 16 years older. The film, written and directed by Ines Paris, suggests the writers met and influenced each other before Shakespeare returned to England to begin the most successful phase of his career.
"We did a lot of research during the screenwriting and there is strong evidence Shakespeare was well-versed in Cervantes' work," said producer Antonio Sauro.
Scholars have frequently noted the nautical references in Shakespeare's work with some saying they prove he made at least one sea voyage. "Going to Spain at that time was like going to New York or Shanghai now. It was the centre of things, so it would have made a lot of sense," said Sauro. "Our story is fiction based on facts but it could have happened."
William and Miguel concentrates on the late 1580s when the men had left their wives and brings an invented element of romance to the story in the form of actress Elena Anaya, who plays their shared lover, Leonor. It was her spirited intervention that brought the literary giants together and changed their writing styles, the film posits.
Sauro says that whatever happened in Spain, whether the two men ever met or not, something clearly did happen to their creativity.
Cervantes is shown to be suffering from writer's block when he meets first Leonor, then Shakespeare. "Cervantes was depressed prior to this period. He was living as a tax collector and yet, after this, he writes his epic work of black humour, Don Quixote," said Sauro. "For Shakespeare too, this time marks a change. He was writing mainly comedies but then began to write more tragedies."
Competing theories that Shakespeare spent the time working in schools in north-west England or Wales, or with a troupe of theatrical players, are based largely on a network of textual references. The truth of his missing years may never be known and, perhaps in this case, hard proof does not matter. As the tag line of William and Miguel has it, "In art and love everything is possible".
Miguel de Cervantes
Born: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in Alcala de Henares, Spain, in 1547.
Died: Madrid on April 23, 1616, aged 68.
Faith: Possibly studied with Jesuits in Cordoba or Seville.
Love: Married Catalina de Salazar y Palacios, the much younger daughter of a well-to-do peasant, in 1584 and left her in the late 1580s.
Derring-do: Fought at the Battle of Lepanto, was captured by Barbary pirates and spent five years as a slave in Algiers before being ransomed by his parents.
William Shakespeare
Born: Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564.
Died: In his home town on same date as Cervantes, aged 52 after retiring in 1613.
Faith: Dangerous Catholic sympathies inherited from his mother, Mary Arden.
Love: Married Anne Hathaway, 26, at the age of 18. She was three months pregnant. Left his family in the late 1580s.
Derring-do: Might have been a recusant Catholic spy or joined a troupe of travelling actors. Or both.
Nicknames: The Swan of Avon, or the Immortal Bard.
- Observer
