When young Will Shakespeare escapes to London--both to pay off his father's debt and to get away from the Hathaway sisters--he meets Mack, a street urchin and thief of a boy with a history full of stories he could easily turn into plays. Secretly, Mack is really a girl, Long Meg, a tavern maid who pretended to be Mack when she was younger to make ends meet. As "Mack" begins hanging out with Will, Meg begins to feel something more than friendship for the struggling playwright.