Customer Reviews

Shakespeare's Wife (P.S.)

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This book, ostensibly about Ann Hathaway Shakespeare (1556-1623), is packed with fascinating research, but a lot of it is not about Ann directly, and some of the connections are a bit tenuous. Because of this, I found it a difficult book to get into; but having finished it, I think it was worth the effort--it is important, provocative, and very informative, especially about the lives of Stratford women who were peers and contemporaries of Ann. It also sheds a little light on the mysterious woman who was Shakespeare's wife.

Greer aims to rescue Ann Hathaway from the traditional view that she coerced William Shakespeare into marrying her, that he consequently left her and the children to seek his fortune in London, and that he ultimately slighted her in his will. Greer examines the evidence (or lack thereof) for each of these points, and advances (sometimes many) alternative interpretations, often based on meticulous details about similar women.

Against the first point, Greer persuasively argues that Ann didn't entrap Shakespeare by pregnancy, but rather he wooed her, although Ann had "good reason to resist Will's advances: he was too young; he had been trained to no trade that we know of, and his family, having nursed pretensions beyond their means, had run into serious financial trouble." He probably stood to gain more from the match that she did: "Will was certainly young and witty, possibly handsome, but he had nothing else to offer the kind of girl, who, as a sober, industrious, patient, frugal wife, would help him repair his family's ruined fortunes." The young lovers probably weren't forced into marriage, but instead followed the tradition of handfasting (a family wedding ceremony), then consummating the union, and upon pregnancy going to church to solemnize the marriage. By the end of Elizabeth I's reign, the Anglican church would have (mostly) ended this practice, but handfasting was still common in 1582, as borne out by the examples and statistics that Greer musters.

After William went away to London, but before he became successful, Ann must have supported herself and her children, probably by brewing ale, curing bacon, and baking bread, with perhaps some haberdashery on the side. She may also have been instrumental in the brilliant match of their eldest, Susanna, to the physician John Hall. Greer suggests that a condition of the match may well have been making Susanna the sole heiress of William Shakespeare's estate. If so, then Will leaving Ann only the "second best bed" in his will would not be a slight, as it is usually interpreted. Aside from the bed (which was probably their marriage bed and quite valuable) and a possible dower right of one-third of the estate, Ann would have been able to choose things from their personal effects before his death. Some of Will's papers, revisions of the plays and so forth, were conceivably among those things; and Ann (probably literate, as Greer argues early in the book) could have been an important part of the First Folio project.

In the process of rehabilitating Ann, Greer sometimes goes too far, I think, in the other direction, disparaging Ann's husband (and some of his biographers, like Stephen Greenblatt). In addition to the often sarcastic references to "the Bard" and "the bardolators," she reverses the usual interpretation of his leaving Stratford as escaping his wife:
"Ann Shakespeare could have been confident of her ability to support herself and her children, but not if she had also to deal with a layabout husband good for nothing but spinning verses . . . When the chance arose to send him off to London in the train of some dignitary or filling in for someone in a group of players, she could well have jumped at it and sent him south with her blessing."

In spite of the shortcomings of her book, Germaine Greer should be applauded for this fascinating and important study about the woman who was Shakespeare's wife.

Greer is well known as a significant feminist writer (The Female Eunuch) and general social critic. She also holds a doctorate in English literature and enjoys a less generally known reputation as a competent literary scholar. She has a long-standing interest in Shakespeare and his works. Here she takes on a difficult task: Telling the story of Ann Hathaway's life and her marriage to Shakespeare.

Hard facts about Shakespeare himself are notoriously few, but there are far fewer about Hathaway. During their lifetimes few if any people kept personal journals or diaries, letters were few and seldom contained personal revelations (for one thing, paper was quite expensive and there was no public mail). So collections of private and personal papers of any kind are simply not available, making it practically impossible to gain insight into the inner world of even public figures of the time, let alone ordinary people such as Hathaway or that "common player" Shakespeare himself. This is a monumental problem facing all who seek to portray the life of anyone who lived before relatively recent times.

Authors are driven to public records of various kinds such as court and tax records, deeds, church records, wills, charters and the like which they then supplement with more or less informed inference and, very often, speculation. Biographers of Shakespeare have done this for years (indeed for centuries) and in the process have created a very unfavorable portrait of Hathaway. She is the older and unscrupulous man-hunter who traps young Will into marriage. She contributes nothing to his life, much less to his work, and he must abandon her to realize his creative destiny. There is no hard evidence for any of this and Greer sets out to challenge it.

Greer, of course, is also constrained by a lack of hard facts, even more so because Hathaway's life left fewer traces in the records. To build her picture of Hathaway, Greer examines the records of Stratford and other relevant environs to build a picture of the sorts of lives led by women like Hathaway (and by their men) in their contemporary social context. The effort is multi-layered, deeply informed and occasionally compelling as Greer creates a rich picture of the common life of the time.

Greer argues strongly that, except for Shakespeare's unusually young age, Hathaway's marriage was not unusual in its time, that Hathaway and her clan were probably a step up for the Shakespeares, that Hathaway was neither ugly nor a shrew, that she did not drive Shakespeare away and that there was probably love between Ann and Will, at least initially. In addition, Hathaway made a living for herself and children in Stratford while Shakespeare was in London or on the road and repaired and kept up the ramshackle house (New Place) that Shakespeare bought. She was also almost certainly literate. In fact, Greer argues, Shakespeare probably wrote one of the sonnets (No. 145) for her and possibly others as well. Hathaway may also have played the pivotal roll in the publication of the First Folio.

Greer's point, as I take it, is that a "good" Ann Hathaway is at least as readily inferred from the limited evidence as is the "bad" Ann Hathaway of tradition. This point she amply demonstrates, with some strictures on the biases and carelessness of traditional biographers along the way. Greer's arguments are strong and based on great knowledge of the time and its culture and (to me at least) are persuasive. In the end, however, Greer's position too is circumstantial. Given the state of the evidence, I doubt that more is possible.

A final word: This is a good and deeply learned book, unusually so for a book intended for the general reader. It is well and clearly written, with great attention to, and respect for, evidence. It is careful in its inferences. It is neither wild nor flashy and it does not "read like a novel." It requires time and attention but will repay them.

For centuries, admirers of the Bard have been wondering why he married Ann Hatheway only to leave her for most of the rest of his life. Historically, scholars have almost universally blamed Ann, primarily through the mechanism of applying passages from Shakespeare's works to his wife, particularly if they are critical in content. Germaine Greer justifiably found this practice unacceptable. Using documentary evidence, the genuine tools of credible biography, Greer has written the first comprehensive overview of Ann Shakespeare's life.

Regrettably, very little documentation exists. Greer studied that which she could uncover, and thoughtfully blended it with factual information about the lives of typical, plebian women of the Elizabethan eras. The result is a plausible hypothesis about how Ann might have managed her situation as a woman left on her own to care for herself and her young children. And plunking herself down on her in-laws, as her detractors surmise, was not the option she selected. Greer presents her reader with an independent, capable Ann Shakespeare, one who was probably an astute business woman who did more than simply manage.

Greer, a Shakespeare scholar in her student days, also reinterprets passages of his writing, more favorably with respect to women and marriage. Where she misses her mark is when she overindulges in speculation, as, for instance, when she theorizes that the lengthy separation of Will and Ann could have been due to his having contracted syphilis. This is not a new idea, but Greer went overboard in imagining his medical treatment and early death, in great detail. Similarly, Greer devoted too much space to elaborating on business deals and other minutia not directly impacting Ann herself.

Flaws notwithstanding, Greer has done a service to women's history by offering the world an Ann Shakespeare who was more than a discarded wife who made miserable the life of her husband.

Shakespeare's Wife is a fascinating "who-was-she?" ostensibly about the wife of the most famous personage of Jacobean times. Greer makes fantastic use of primary materials from Stratford to recreate, quite believably, the life of Ann Hathaway. She's probably wrong sometimes, and right other times, but that's the intellectual challenge of history, isn't it? And if that's not enough reason to pick up the book, here are two more: you can get a wealth of detail about the lives of middling women of the 17th century and become re-acquainted with the Bard's works. Admit it, you haven't really read Shakespeare since college, have you? (I hadn't, and enjoyed Ms. Greer's seminar thoroughly!)

The details of how women lived and took care of their own, how they participated in business and decisions about family, or what happened to those less capable, are fascinating. Greer's style is lively and easy to read, never dull, and she informs you very conscientiously when she's taking a leap of faith in applying her research to draw some conclusion about Ann's life..! But don't expect a "historical romance" or even a biography. This is a book for literature, sociology, and history lovers, and based on some very thorough research. And it will help if you like feminist authors:-)

Greer's biography on Ann Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife, is groundbreaking in many ways, mainly because Greer aims to expose the bias with which scholars have cast Hathaway--a cold, disapproving, illiterate, whiny wife--and provides a tome of historical evidence to the contrary. Why? "The Shakespeare wallahs have succeeded in creating a Bard in their own likeness, that is to say, incapable of relating to women, and have then vilified the one woman who remained true to him all his life, in order to exonerate him" (p. 356). Although I love that this book exists, I didn't love reading it. The evidence, though important, is minute and extraordinarily detailed, which doesn't make for the most scintillating reading. However, Greer's depth of scholarship is impeccable and hugely important for both women's studies and Shakespearean studies. Greer's own writing style also adds a unique dimension to the book; she's feisty and a touch irreverent, except when it comes to Ann: "The idea that [Ann] might be entitled to some of the credit for the preservation her husband's work is apparently too ridiculous to contemplate, which is why we shall now contemplate it" (p. 345-346). A much-needed, very welcome biography on the elusive Mrs. Shakespeare.

I am neither a misogynist nor a feminist. But I have always been bothered by the notion, widely accepted as fact, that Shakespeare was tricked into marrying a desperate, man-hungry Ann, 8 years his senior, who was illiterate, probably unattractive, and who bore him 3 children, and Will's dislike of Ann was the chief motivating force behind his leaving Stratford for 20 years to live in London.

Well, that's the story most of us have heard. It is repeated even at the Stratford-on-Avon, England Website (which of course is dedicated to keeping the name of William Shakespeare clean). Problem is there is absolutely no evidence to back that story/myth up. And much of it simply makes no sense.

Here is where Ms. Greer's book comes in. She of course takes the opposite position, positing that since there is so little we know about the relationship between Ann and Will, their courtship, marriage, where they lived, etc., that another, more generous interpretation is equally valid from what we do know. To support her theory, she often goes far afield, describing Stratford in Ann's time, the family's standing, societal mores, etc., much material that helps the reader see and judge other possible interpretations, e.g., that the Hathaways were in better financial shape than the Shakespeares and that Will might have been the beneficiary in the match, as Will's father was in financial trouble at the time.

This book is rich in details about the period. Ms. Greer allows her theoretical pendulum to swing a little too far in the opposite direction at times, but the informed reader will recognize these places. Ms. Greer often admits some of her conclusions are on shaky ground, but no shakier than the myths she is trying to displace.

Will returned to Stratford to retire and die. Ann and their children and grandchild were there by his side until he took his last breath. This does not make sense if he left Stratford mainly to get away from Ann. She might very well have taken care of him (at 60 years of age) during his last days on Earth.

If you are looking for certainty about anything, look elsewhere, cause you ain't gonna find it here...just plausible explanations of what we do know. These are alternative explanations, are labeled as such, and you can take them or leave them. I found the book extremely interesting and learned. But that is just my opinion.

Ms. Greer does not address the authorship question, if that is your passion.

The essential thesis of Ms. Greer's work is that Ann Hathaway has been a lady much maligned in near all of the speculative histories of William Shakespeare with little or no evidence. Ms. Greer is at her best when considering the literacy of the wife of the world's greatest poet, suggesting that literary experts might also have stated that she was probably blind; not because there's any evidence to suggest that she was blind, but there's no evidence to say that she wasn't. With that stirring assertion, Germaine Greer is able to strongly defend Ann's looks, her desirability, her intelligence and, to some extent, her moral fiber. This is clearly a scintillating 150-page read, ufortunately jammed into 356 pages. The other 200 pages? The sad fact is that we are often relegated to speculation on the part of the author that only marginally transcends the so-called experts that she is trying to debunk. Do we really need nearly a chapter devoted to Shakespeare's possible succumbing to the ravages of venereal disease? Of course, there is no evidence that he did, but, of course, none exists to officially state that he didn't. The reader is offered quick-hit biographies and legal antics from the town-folk of Elizabethan Stratford. It was a window that almost had this literary voyeur pulling the blind down as my eyes glazed and almost drooped. True, the research is formidable, but to what great end? Simply this: What emerges is a Ann Hathaway vastly more alive and appealing than ever before in literary history. Germaine Greer's assertions should be required lessons of every English teacher in the universe. It was only too bad that it all couldn't have been more appealingly condensed. One can almost hear the nagging voice of the agent or publisher saying, "But I've got to have 300 pages to make this thing marketable!" No you don't.

This book is full of much fascinating factual information that Greer deserves credit for compiling and organizing into book form. For example, I learned a lot about this period in English history (in small villages) through Greer's description of the village green and grazing rights. Also I learned about why, in those times, one twin usually survived and the other didn't. All of the details about houses and their interiors was informative, and I especially liked learning about the brewing and consumption of beer and lesser-beer (I forget what it was called) and how important lesser-beer was as part of the nutrition of poor people.

All of these details, however, did not convince me that Greer is right in any of her conclusions about the relationship between Ann Hathaway and William Shakespeare. Greer could be 100% correct in her conclusions, or she could be 50-50, or 0%. My point is that the information in the book does not prove her conclusions in any way. A more accurate title for this book would be "Surmises About Shakespeare's Wife." However, I don't regret having read this book, because I learned a lot.

The most popular Shakespeare biographies are mostly fiction. They rarely contribute any useful understanding of the plays and poems and I would not recommend any of them.
In contrast, the gold standard for honest reporting of the facts and gentle debunking of the myths is William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life (or the Compact Documentary Life). If you haven't read that, you can't be sure you know anything reliable about the Bard's meager facts. Schoenbaum may even innoculate you against the ravages of unbridled speculation you will encounter everywhere else.
After Schoenbaum's book, I might well recommend this one for the quality of the research and the alternative view it offers.
Although I found many of Greer's conjectures no more compelling than most Shakespeare biographers', some of them are quite convincing and her facts are a knockout.
Her uncovering of the history of New Place strongly supports her conjecture that it was a rundown mess that went for a song. Her study of malting and brewing in Stratford gives a lot of credence to her suggestion that Ann was running that business, especially since their 80 bushel year came at the presumed peak of Shakespeare's literary production. Her coverage of the Grevilles' and Combe's actions in the enclosure battles and the contrast in the respective reactions of Shakespeare and Richard Quiney is outstanding. Her analysis of 16th Century reports of the progress of syphilis symptoms and treatments of the time offers new insight into a common hypothesis for Shakespeare's abandonment of theater in his late 40's and for the darkness of his retirement to Stratford.
I would say the research here is top-notch, provocative and a perfect addition to Schoenbaum's sober classic. I think it is possible to disagree with many of Greer's conjectures and still be very grateful for the light her research throws on many of the accepted facts. If you next move on to Will Power: Essays on Shakespearean Authority, in three books you will have a better understanding of Shakespearean issues than many biographers appear to have.
The Kindle edition is very good.
I would give the book 4 1/2 stars. So I am rounding up, not because it is perfect, but because it stands head and shoulders above most of the field and is rare in its quality and readability.