A 1916 silent film where a breakup over Shakespeare literally sends a woman back in time.
Unable to agree on the man responsible for the plays commonly attributed to William Shakespeare, Miss Gray, who favors Francis Bacon, and Lieutenant Stanton, who accepts Shakespeare as the author, break off their engagement. Stanton then arranges to be transferred to the Mexican border, and while fighting there is badly wounded. When she hears the news about Stanton's condition, Miss Gray faints, and then dreams that she has been transported to Elizabethan times. Then, after Bacon falls in love with her, she discovers his obsessive jealousy of Shakespeare, and learns that he has bribed a courtier to accuse him of stealing Bacon's plays. As a result, when Miss Gray wakes up, she realizes that she has championed the wrong poet, and so she immediately is reconciled with Stanton, who soon recovers from his wound.
Costume
Elizabethan garb on a 1916 budget—ambitious, chaotic, beautiful.
Acting
Florence La Badie's fainting technique is genuinely unmatched.
Director
Frederick Sullivan
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The Baconian theory peaked in the early 1900s, making this film peak 'authorship controversy' propaganda disguised as romance.
Florence La Badie was one of the biggest silent film stars of her era—tragically killed in a car accident just a year after this film's release.
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