Little is known about the wife of the world's most famous playwright, but much is said about her. Ann Hathaway has been mocked and vilified by scholars for centuries. The glaring omission of her name from Shakespeare's will has been gleefully used by many as evidence that she was nothing more than an ugly old wench whom William was shackled to after a thoughtless roll in the hay in his giddy youth. Yet Shakespeare went on to become the very poet of marriage, exploring the sacrament in all its aspects, spiritual, psychological, sexual and sociological. He is the creator of the most tenacious and intelligent heroines in English literature. Is it possible, therefore, that Ann was the inspiration? Until now, there has been no serious critical scholarship devoted to the much-wronged Ann Hathaway. Part-biography, part-history, "Shakespeare's Wife" is fascinating in its reconstruction of Ann's life, and the daily lives of Elizabethan women. Germaine Greer offers an illuminating portrait of their working routines, the rituals of their courtship, and the minutiae of married life.
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'The course of Shakespearean biography will never be the same again' Professor Stanley Wells (Chairman of the Shakespeare Centre)
About the Author
Germaine Greer gained her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1967 with a thesis on Shakespeare's early comedies and has taught Shakespeare at universities in Australia, Britain and the US. In 1986 she was invited to contribute the volume on Shakespeare to the prestigious Past Masters series. In 1989 she set up her own publishing imprint, Stump Cross Books, and went on to publish scholarly editions of Katherine Philips, Anne Wharton and Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea. She lives on three acres by a motorway exit in north-west Essex, with two dogs, thirteen geese and a fluctuating number of doves. Shakespeare's Wife has also been shortlisted for The Prime Minister's Literary Awards.
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33 of 37 people found the following review helpful
By Meerkat
VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback
I found this a very convincing portrait of a forgotten life and of an often unfairly villified woman. Before I read this book I hadn't realised I fell into the category of what Greer calls 'Bardolaters', people who assume that Shakespeare was such a genius and that his wife was an illiterate cunning woman who trapped a gullible boy into a marriage that he hated and couldn't wait to get away from. Throughout the book, Greer gives Ann her proper title - Ann Shakespeare. I have never seen her referred to as anything other than Ann Hathaway by other writers. This is a powerful statement that puts the author on Ann's side and enables the reader to re-evaluate what they think of Ann and her life and marriage.
Greer rightly praises Ann's achievements, unnoticed until now: she bore and brought up 3 children through plague and famine on her own, she lived in the same small town all her married life without a hint of scandal and she seems to have not only lived, but prospered, keeping herself and her family with no help from her husband.
Greer also points out that Ann cannot have felt abandoned by her husband as there was a legal process for claiming abandonment for wives in that situation and Ann did not initiate that proceeding.
Much of the book is taken up with accounts of women contemporary with Ann as a way of extrapolating what her life might have been like and this can become confusing and occasionally a bit tedious, which is why I've given the book 4 stars and not 5.
If you want a balanced and compassionate look at the life of a woman who has had a very bad press since the 17th Century, you won't find a better book than this. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in how ordinary people lived at that time and how this extraordinary woman might have lived as well.
Greer rightly praises Ann's achievements, unnoticed until now: she bore and brought up 3 children through plague and famine on her own, she lived in the same small town all her married life without a hint of scandal and she seems to have not only lived, but prospered, keeping herself and her family with no help from her husband.
Greer also points out that Ann cannot have felt abandoned by her husband as there was a legal process for claiming abandonment for wives in that situation and Ann did not initiate that proceeding.
Much of the book is taken up with accounts of women contemporary with Ann as a way of extrapolating what her life might have been like and this can become confusing and occasionally a bit tedious, which is why I've given the book 4 stars and not 5.
If you want a balanced and compassionate look at the life of a woman who has had a very bad press since the 17th Century, you won't find a better book than this. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in how ordinary people lived at that time and how this extraordinary woman might have lived as well.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Voyager
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Greer successfully demonstrates that many of the assumptions about Anne are scholarly prejudice. Unfortunately, this takes only a small proportion of the book, even allowing for her introducing prejudices of her own. For example, in her widowhood Anne preferred the jolly household of her younger daughter, Judith, to that of her sober elder daughter, Susanna. This is guesswork - there is no evidence Anne had any preference, that Judith was jolly, or Susanna was sober.
The rest of the book is padded out with undigested slabs of social history. In the Hathaway family background, we are given three pages on the earnings of a playwright who may have been the same person as someone who may have been related to Anne. No attempt is made to link this to what Will might have earned later in the book. At times I felt sections of the book were there because Greer knew the facts, rather than because they had any bearing on the subject.
This is an essay padded out to book length. Germaine Greer has written better books.
The rest of the book is padded out with undigested slabs of social history. In the Hathaway family background, we are given three pages on the earnings of a playwright who may have been the same person as someone who may have been related to Anne. No attempt is made to link this to what Will might have earned later in the book. At times I felt sections of the book were there because Greer knew the facts, rather than because they had any bearing on the subject.
This is an essay padded out to book length. Germaine Greer has written better books.
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Unusual style of writing to get the historical facts accross, but it worked read it from cover to cover over two nights, didn't really reveal very much about the genealogy of the family, but then that would be pushing it, but overall a good read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Where is Shakespeare's wife?
Boring and full of mights, shalls, woulds, mays and the like. No information, much speculation.
Published on 7 Nov 2010 by BuarqueIsGod
1.0 out of 5 stars
Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer
Found this book too bogged down in detail, and although interesting at times ewspecially with regard to how people lived in the Elizabethan era but it felt as if I was reading her... Read more
Published on 2 July 2009 by Mrs. S. Shearsmith
1.0 out of 5 stars
A con
Where here the blunt Aussie frankness that Germaine Greer has celebrated and been respected for all of her life? Read more
Published on 1 Nov 2008 by J.M.R.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Dire
Although interested in social history and women, this book was a great disappointment. As one reviewer has said (favourably! Read more
Published on 16 April 2008 by Anna
2.0 out of 5 stars
Jarring and fanciful
Sadly, a rather embarassing performance, this, in the long tradition of half-baked and almost entirely fanciful Shakespearean speculation (A.L. Rowse etc). Read more
Published on 18 Mar 2008 by Paul Callick
1.0 out of 5 stars
shoddy scholarshio
This is simply a flight of fancy on Ms Greer's part.She sneers dismissively at the work of other scholars, sometimes in quite an insulting tone, while putting forward her own... Read more
Published on 22 Jan 2008 by W. Mahon
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not sure how much I can add
A very good book. Yes, in parts it must be fancy, as little is known of the man himself never mind Mrs.S. But Greer puts the pieces together into a more than adequate whole. Read more
Published on 13 Dec 2007 by teacherspet
5.0 out of 5 stars
Germaine Greer's: Shakespeare's Wife
This is awesome. Something of the giddy pace and intensity of a dream bordering on nightmare seems to drive this restless inventory of inventories. Read more
Published on 24 Sep 2007 by Ian Caughlin
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