- Narrator: Nothing holds, and all things change, given time. Change does not often announce itself. It does not trumpet its arrival. No, change is emergent. By the time one realizes it has arrived, it has already set its teeth.
- Narrator: Toward the middle of the 17th century, there lived in the province of Hampshire, a widowed gentlemen. His name is of little account. I shall take the liberty of calling him Mr. Willoughby. A name, like his own, of a highly respectable sound. He'd being left a widower after some six years of marriage, and had devoted himself to the care of his progeny. Two daughters born at an interval of five years apart. The elder, Viola, the younger Perdita, in memory of a little girl born between them who had lived but a few weeks.
- Narrator: With their father in the ground, they faced a dire necessity for marriage. For both maidens, neither a male, stood to lose control over Mr. Willoughby's economic affairs. And of the manor in Bly, their lifelong home. Women in that time had nothing. No present, no future, without a tie to a man. So, they were as little girls once more. But now with nothing in the world but each other.