When Shakespeare retired to Stratford-upon-Avon in 1611, we can assume it was to bask in the sun in his garden at New Place, to have time to read what must have been his favorite books. Perhaps he wanted to be with his wife, Anne, his daughters, Judith (unwed at age twenty-five), and Susanna, who had married a Stratford doctor, John Hall, as well as his granddaughter Elizabeth. Yet, he could not stop what he had done all his life — write. With a young playwright, John Fletcher, and George Wilkins, he may have coauthored the following five plays: Cardenio (1613? termed the lost play), King Edward III (1596, but not attributed to Shakespeare until 1998), King Henry VIII (1613), Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1607), and The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613).

