What makes a man a man and woman a woman? Late at night on the eve of her lover's execution, this is the question Queen Elizabeth descends to the stable lodgings of Shakespeare's players to wrestle with. Her unexpected arrival disturbs Shakespeare and his rag-tag troupe after their evening's performance and provokes the rapler-sharp, haughty indifference of Ned, Shakespeare's genius performer of women's roles. Aging, broken by syphilis, and suffering from lost love, Ned is every bit as caustic and imperious as the Queen, whose despair over Lord Essex's pending death is apparent to everyone but herself.