Germaine Greer - Shakespeares Wife
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Shakespeares Wife: summary, description and annotation
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A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year
A polemical, ground-breaking study of Elizabethan England that reclaims Ann Hathaways rightful place in history.
Little is known about the wife of the worlds most famous playwright; a great deal, none of it complimentary, has been assumed. The omission of her name from Shakespeares will has been interpreted as evidence that she was nothing more than an unfortunate mistake from which Shakespeare did well to distance himself.
Yet Shakespeare is above all the poet of marriage. Before him, there were few comedies or tragedies about wooing or wedding. And yet he explored the sacrament in all its aspects, spiritual, psychological, sexual, sociological, and was the creator of some of the most tenacious and intelligent heroines in English literature. Is it possible, therefore, that Ann, who has been mocked and vilified by scholars for centuries, was the inspiration?
Until now, there has been no serious critical scholarship devoted to the life and career of the farmers daughter who married Englands greatest poet. Part biography, part history, Shakespeares Wife is a fascinating reconstruction of Anns life, and an illuminating look at the daily lives of Elizabethan women, from their working routines to the rituals of courtship and the minutiae of married life. In this thoroughly researched and controversial book, Greer steps off the well-trodden paths of orthodoxy, asks new questions, and begins to right the wrongs done to Ann Shakespeare.
A polemical, ground-breaking study of Elizabethan England that reclaims Ann Hathaways rightful place in history.
Little is known about the wife of the worlds most famous playwright; a great deal, none of it complimentary, has been assumed. The omission of her name from Shakespeares will has been interpreted as evidence that she was nothing more than an unfortunate mistake from which Shakespeare did well to distance himself.
Yet Shakespeare is above all the poet of marriage. Before him, there were few comedies or tragedies about wooing or wedding. And yet he explored the sacrament in all its aspects, spiritual, psychological, sexual, sociological, and was the creator of some of the most tenacious and intelligent heroines in English literature. Is it possible, therefore, that Ann, who has been mocked and vilified by scholars for centuries, was the inspiration?
Until now, there has been no serious critical scholarship devoted to the life and career of the farmers daughter who married Englands greatest poet. Part biography, part history, Shakespeares Wife is a fascinating reconstruction of Anns life, and an illuminating look at the daily lives of Elizabethan women, from their working routines to the rituals of courtship and the minutiae of married life. In this thoroughly researched and controversial book, Greer steps off the well-trodden paths of orthodoxy, asks new questions, and begins to right the wrongs done to Ann Shakespeare.
Germaine Greer: author's other books
Who wrote Shakespeares Wife? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer
Louis B. Wright
David Rhys Williams
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Shakespeare William
Shakespeare William
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Shakespeare William
G.B. Harrison
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To Professor Anne Barton
Whose every work
Came forth example and remains so, yet
Whose every work
Came forth example and remains so, yet
Contents
considering the poor reputation of wives generally, in particular the wives of literary men, and the traditional disparagement of the wife of the Man of the Millennium
introducing the extensive and reputable family of Hathaway alias Gardner of Shottery together with the curious fact that one of their kinsmen was a successful playwright for the Admirals Men
introducing the Shakespeare family, with particular attention to the Bards mother and her role in the oft-told story of the downfall of John Shakespeare
of Ann Hathaways looks and demeanour, of age at marriage in the 1580s, the courtship of older women by younger men and whether Shakespeares wife could read
of what is likely to happen when a town boy with nothing to his name beyond a way with words woos a serious young woman of good prospects
of the making of a match, of impediments to marriage and how to overcome them, of bonds and special licences and pregnancy as a way of forcing the issue, of bastards and bastardy, and the girl who got away
of handfasts, troth-plights and bundling, of rings, gauds and conceits, and what was likely to happen on the big day
considering how and where the Bard and his Bride set up house, of cottages and cottaging, and of how they understood their obligations to each other
of pregnancy, travail and childbirth, of christening and churching, and the society of women
pondering how and when it was that young Shakespeare quit Stratford, leaving wife and children to fend for themselves, and whether he dared risk his health and theirs by consorting with prostitutes
suggesting that, having sent her boy husband to seek his fortune, with three small children to look after, Ann Shakespeare found work she could do indoors, and with the help of her haberdasher brother-in-law might even have prospered
of how one Stratford boy became a leading printer, and another wrote a sexy poem that became a notorious best-seller, being literally read to pieces, and Ann buried her only son
treating of the curious circumstances of the grant of arms made to William Shakespeare, and the acquisition of a compromised title to a rambling and ruinous house in a town he spent little or no time in
of hunger and disorder, introducing the villain of the piece, Sir Edward Greville, who contrived the foul murder of the Bailiff of Stratford, and Anns friend and ally the young lawyer Thomas Greene
of Susanna and her match with a gentleman of London and a midsummer wedding at last
of Anns reading of the sonnets
of the poets younger daughter Judith and the Quiney family, of Ann as maltster and money-lender, and the deaths of Mary and Edmund Shakespeare
in which Shakespeare returns to the town some say he never left and lives the life of an Anglican gentleman while Ann continues to live the life of a puritan townswoman
of Shakespeares last illness and death and how Ann Shakespeare handled the situation
of Shakespeares lop-sided will and Anns optionsdower right, widow-bed or destitute dependency
of burials, and monuments, widows mites and widows work, and the quiet death of the quiet woman of Stratford
in which the intrepid author makes the absurd suggestion that Ann Shakespeare could have been involved in the First Folio project, that she might have contributed not only papers but also money to indemnify the publishers against loss and enable them to sell a book that was very expensive to produce at a price that young gentlemen could pay
considering the poor reputation of wives generally, in particular the wives of literary men, and the traditional disparagement of the wife of the Man of the Millennium
Anyone steeped in western literary culture must wonder why any woman of spirit would want to be a wife. At best a wife should be invisible, like the wives of nearly all the great authors schoolboys used to read at school. If Homer, Aesop, Plautus, Terence, Virgil, Horace and Juvenal had wives they have been obliterated from history. The wives who are remembered are those who are vilified, like Socrates Xanthippe and Aristotles Phyllis. Until our own time, history focussed on man the achiever; the higher the achiever the more likely it was that the woman who slept in his bed would be judged unworthy of his company. Her husbands fans recoiled from the notion that she might have made a significant contribution towards his achievement of greatness. The possibility that a wife might have been closer to their idol than they could ever be, understood him better than they ever could, could not be entertained.
If Xanthippe had never existed, bachelor dons would have had to invent her. Among the scant references to her is the story told in the Phaedo of how, when she came with Socrates three sons to visit him when Socrates had been sentenced to death for corrupting the youth of Athens and ordered to commit suicide by drinking hemlock, she so annoyed the great man with her lamentations that he sent her home again, so that his last hours could be spent in rational discussion with his disciples. No historian has ever shown the slightest interest in what became of Xanthippe and her three small children after Socrates suicide. Such mundane matters are beneath the consideration of great men and their biographers. To protest that Socrates chosen martyrdom brought catastrophe on the four innocent people who depended on him would be merely womanish.
As Lisa Jardine pointed out in 1983: Renaissance scholars from Richard Hooker to Francis Bacon are credited with scolding wives. Society seems to find it irresistible to characterise the unworldliness of the male intellectual and academic in terms of his failure to control the women in his life. Hooker and Bacon did rather well out of their wives, who were both wealthy. By 1588, when Richard Hooker married Jean Churchman, the protestant reformers had all but succeeded in eliminating the Pauline notion of wedded life as inferior to virginity. Even so, the woman who bore Richard Hooker six children, and brought him the financial security that made it possible for him to become the leading apologist of the Anglican Church, is known to us only as a scold.
Bacon was married in 1606, when he was forty-five, to a fourteen-year-old heiress called Alice Barnham, whom he had singled out for the purpose when she was only eleven years old. It was well known that Francis Bacon preferred boys to women, and kept a series of young male menials for his pleasure. In the circumstances, the young Viscountess St Albans could be thought to have had every right to behave badly. She seems to have endured her grotesque marriage without complaint until she became involved with John Underhill. A Mr Underhill is listed in 1617 as a Gentleman-in-Waiting at York House, where Viscount St Albans and his childless wife lived in state. In 1625, when Bacon was revising his will, in which he left the princely sum of 200 to a young Welsh servingman called Francis Edney, he added a codicil, revoking his legacies to Alice for just and great causes and leaving her to her right only. In a pointed gesture, a mere fortnight after Bacons death, Alice Bacon married John Underhill in a public ceremony at St Martins in the Fields.
Some such idea lies behind the almost unconscious certainty shared by all (male) observers that, if a man of genius is to realise his potential, he must put his wife away. Shakespeare could not have been great if he had not jettisoned his wife, but if he is to be great, she must be shown to have got her just deserts. Many English men of genius followed the example of the earliest-known Greek philosopher:
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