Anna Tellwright lives in the Pottery District in Staffordshire with her young stepsister Agnes & father Ephraim, who is a wealthy man, but a miser. Anna attends the Methodist Church, but their strict rules & her father's thumb on everything she & Agnes do creates a longing for freedom. At 21, she inherits her grandmother's estate & is a now a wealthy young woman.

In a touring Shakespearean theater group, a backstage hand - the dresser, is devoted to the brilliant but tyrannical head of the company. He struggles to support the deteriorating star as the company struggles to carry on during the London blitz. The pathos of his backstage efforts rival the pathos in the story of Lear and the Fool that is being presented on-stage, as the situation comes to a crisis.

Ben Packman leaves an old people's home to return to the Welsh mountains.