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Shakespeare's Wife
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A polemical, ground-breaking study of Elizabethan England that reclaims Ann Hathaway's rightful place in history.
Little is known about the wife of the world's most famous playwright; a great deal, none of it complimentary, has been assumed. The omission of her name from Shakespeare's will has been interpreted as evidence that she was nothing more than an unfortunate mista ...more
Little is known about the wife of the world's most famous playwright; a great deal, none of it complimentary, has been assumed. The omission of her name from Shakespeare's will has been interpreted as evidence that she was nothing more than an unfortunate mista ...more
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Oct 15, 2007
Naomi
rated it
really liked it
Recommends it for:
shakespeare enthusiasts and historical women's study buffs
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I am always surprised by Greer's actual writing. Her public persona is so contentious and brash. Previous to this book I had only read Greer's feminist writing (i.e. 'female eunich' and 'the whole woman'). Particularly in this book, she has a very measured and well supported style that weaves a cross stitch of fact and speculation into an enjoyable tale. She makes sure that the reader knows when she is fictionalising. Her main argument is that in the absence of documentary evidence why are Shake
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Such a disappointment.
There's admittedly little actually known about William Shakespeare, and even less is known about his wife, Ann Hathaway. (No. Not that Ann Hathaway.) Greer's intention was to shine light on the life of the woman, their marriage, and to rage against all the misogyny in other historical accounts of Shakespeare's life. But... but... because there's little known about these people, anything that gets put into historical accounts are pure supposition. Greer's evident disgust at ...more
There's admittedly little actually known about William Shakespeare, and even less is known about his wife, Ann Hathaway. (No. Not that Ann Hathaway.) Greer's intention was to shine light on the life of the woman, their marriage, and to rage against all the misogyny in other historical accounts of Shakespeare's life. But... but... because there's little known about these people, anything that gets put into historical accounts are pure supposition. Greer's evident disgust at ...more
When I was in college, I was fortunate to spend a semester abroad in London. On one of our trips around the U.K., we spent a weekend at Stratford. I remember being impressed by Shakespeare's birthplace and seeing Jonathan Pryce in Hamlet, but my favorite part of the trip was a visit to Ann Hathaway's cottage (which, Greer points out, was never hers). It was a sunny afternoon in fall, and after our tour, we got to roam around the grounds. I remember a lot of windfall apples lying about. I also re
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Jan 06, 2009
Cece
marked it as gave-up-life-is-too-short
I admit that I only lasted about 50 pages, but when it appears an author has taken every theory going,loaded them in a shaker, given them a good tumble then poured them out and published as they fell, I lose patience quickly. Too many "she might have beens" and "she probablys" all mixed together, along with finger-shaking at previous Shakepeare scholars for treating Anne (or Ann, or Agnes) so unfairly. I am aware that little real evidence exists. I know that Greer is known for impeccable researc
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I love the idea of this book. To give Ann Hathaway some credit instead of her being seen as the nagging wife back in Stratford whilst Shakespeare was being a genius in the theatre world and fleshpots of London.
Ann Hathaway was eight years older than William Shakespeare when they married. This has led her to be stereotyped as having trapped him into marriage and then to becoming old and unattractive and a burden to him. Germaine Greer writes very well of how the age difference was not so unusual ...more
Ann Hathaway was eight years older than William Shakespeare when they married. This has led her to be stereotyped as having trapped him into marriage and then to becoming old and unattractive and a burden to him. Germaine Greer writes very well of how the age difference was not so unusual ...more
Inevitably, like all Shakespearean biographies, this is one part general social history, one part misguided attempt to read the plays and poems as a roman a clef, and one part wild, baseless speculation, but I wouldn't have expected anything else, given how little hard evidence there is.
At least it's a counterbalance to much of the misogynist speculation that has become the received wisdom about Hathaway and there are some sensible suggestions in amongst the extended flights of fancy - in partic ...more
At least it's a counterbalance to much of the misogynist speculation that has become the received wisdom about Hathaway and there are some sensible suggestions in amongst the extended flights of fancy - in partic ...more
What a great read this was. I absolutely love Greer's vivid, sly, and fierce intelligence and her ways of making argument.
Greer takes the same sources that have engendered a vision of Ann Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife, as plain, old, mean, harsh etc. and reinterprets them to their opposite number. There is not much documentation about her, so when that fails Greer tells us, in copious detail, about people like her. For example, she details the ages people in Stratford got married, and to whom, ho ...more
Greer takes the same sources that have engendered a vision of Ann Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife, as plain, old, mean, harsh etc. and reinterprets them to their opposite number. There is not much documentation about her, so when that fails Greer tells us, in copious detail, about people like her. For example, she details the ages people in Stratford got married, and to whom, ho ...more
4☆ for the new interpretations of Anne Hathaway Shakespeare's and thus William Shakespeare's life. Greer starts by pointing out that traditionally women were not considered important in the least. If anyone asked what would become of a young family when the father died, the speaker of the question was considered "womanish." I'm thinking that is an adult version of being called a "girl" or a "sissy." Among the classes lower than the gentry, married women and children had no rights to their husban
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When I picked up this book, I thought that I had never really thought about Ann Hathaway before. As I got deeper into it, I realized that in actuality I had internalized all those ideas of Shakespeare scholars that she was an ugly shrew, that she tricked William Shakespeare into marrying her, that she drove him out of her home and into the arms of prostitutes, etc. etc. etc.
Those types of suppositions have little if any factual basis, and Greer does a good job of examining how and why they came ...more
Those types of suppositions have little if any factual basis, and Greer does a good job of examining how and why they came ...more
If you've read Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, I'd recommend reading this book next. I need to stress that in both books there is too much speculation for either one to be held as historical fact, but I really like the Germaine Greer's courage in going against the grain by using her skill for impeccable research. A lot of writers have written negative judgements about Ann's character, given her age when marrying 'The Bard', taking advantage that she ne
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Though at parts, I enjoyed Greer's style of disparaging previous historians who have assumed that Shakespeare hated Ann, I also find that Greer did much the same thing, just while being on the side of Ann. She's still assuming, but just in Ann's favour, and that began to rub me the wrong way. It was also very full of figures; I didn't particularly need to know how each widow divvied up her belongings, or how the commons were being encroached on. A brief mention, summary, of what was happening wo
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This is tough book to read. Very dense with many many footnotes and constant references to Shakespeare's and others' plays from the time. It is not for the average reader looking for an entertaining read. I was forced to skim a lot of it. Still very interesting to a history major and there's much to learn in it.
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Though best known for her feminism, Germaine Greer speaks astutely and with insight on her specialism and passion: the works of Shakespeare. Her writing on the topic, too, has been fresh and incisive (see her book on Shakespeare). Therefore as a fan it disappointed me to find her book Shakespeare's Wife somewhat dull and inconsequential.
Asserting Ann Shakespeare's role in the Bard's life and agency in his work, Greer's enterprise is a worthy one, dense and rigorously researched (two stars for t ...more
Asserting Ann Shakespeare's role in the Bard's life and agency in his work, Greer's enterprise is a worthy one, dense and rigorously researched (two stars for t ...more
Quite an interesting book in which Germaine Greer attempts to piece together the life of Anne Hathaway. She is rightly critical of the many scholars who have assumed, based on no evidence at all, that Shakespeare disliked his wife. The trouble is that there is h ardly any information available about Anne Hathaway, and almost anything said about her must be only conjecture. Greer for example takes it for granted that Shakespeare did not support his family during his years in London, pointing out
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Good read but slightly disappointed. Usually love Greer’s punchy commentaries but this one is a little frustrating.
Perhaps it is because she sheds no new light on Shakespeare’s history apart from discounting the biographies of her predecessors, the “bardalators” , who wrote about the life of Shakespeare and his family with unsupported hypotheses.
Loved the chapter on disease and 16th century medicine as she surmises on what actually killed Shakespeare. But which disease he really had is just spec ...more
Perhaps it is because she sheds no new light on Shakespeare’s history apart from discounting the biographies of her predecessors, the “bardalators” , who wrote about the life of Shakespeare and his family with unsupported hypotheses.
Loved the chapter on disease and 16th century medicine as she surmises on what actually killed Shakespeare. But which disease he really had is just spec ...more
A fascinating biography of Anne Hathaway that places her and her daughters within the context of the social history of Stratford-upon-Avon. Greer's conclusions are necessarily speculative because so little is known about Shakespeare's personal life and his relationship with his family. Nevertheless, her analysis is a welcome counterpoint to longstanding assumptions that Shakespeare was pressured into his marriage and left town as soon as possible. In addition to examining how Anne Hathaway's exp
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The title is misleading because, of course, nothing is known of Ann Hathaway Shakespeare's life; the book has to deal with what IS known of Stratford in that day. So, the title should have been Life in Stratford during Shakespeare's Life. The book is basically what her life could possibly have been like, but she plays a small role even in the book. There is so much research crammed into this book that reading gets very difficult. Every paragraph seems a tangent as the author weaves in other fami
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Shakespeare’s Wife
By Germaine Greer
I bought this book mistakenly thinking it was a work of historical fiction. Once I got it home and started looking it over, however, I realized it was a non-fiction work, an attempt to flesh out the mysterious wife of the Bard of Avon – Ann Hathaway.
Very little is known of the Bard himself. There is enough to let us know he really existed and is not the figment of someone’s imagination, but there are enough gaps in that knowledge that even some of the best-mean ...more
By Germaine Greer
I bought this book mistakenly thinking it was a work of historical fiction. Once I got it home and started looking it over, however, I realized it was a non-fiction work, an attempt to flesh out the mysterious wife of the Bard of Avon – Ann Hathaway.
Very little is known of the Bard himself. There is enough to let us know he really existed and is not the figment of someone’s imagination, but there are enough gaps in that knowledge that even some of the best-mean ...more
Having just finished Will in the World, I was glad that Greer directly calls out Stephen Greenblatt and others on their assumptions about women, families, childbearing, and litigation from ~1580 to 1625. Great scholarship, detailed without being dry or heavy (for the most part). It's not as narrative as some, though I'll take restraint and accuracy over through line in a literary biography like this, but Greer's writing is clear and evocative, and her occasional fancies are clearly labeled as su
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What a complicated but ultimately satisfying read! So little is known about Anne Hathaway, but that didn't stop Greer from poring through thousands of documents to create what Anne's life was probably like -- and help dispel some of the negative history she has been given.
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Pedantic to the nth degree & such a missed opportunity. Tear.
Good book. Could have been better. Greer does a great job of bringing Anne out of her husband's shadow. And makes the point that they may not have had an unhappy marriage as every other (male) Shakespeare biographer takes for granted. It was the Elizabethan age. Divorces were not allowed for commoners. But it was a litigous time in England's history. There are many instances of women prosecuting their husbands for abandonment. There is no record of Anne doing so. Husbands and wives did sometimes
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A spiritual if not actual response to Greenblatt’s Will in the World, and in many ways more insightful. I’m particularly relieved by the fresh dose of common sense and research applied to the subject of the Shakespeares’ marriage, the airy speculation by the scholarly fandom critics based on little more than sexist grouching and ahistorical or bad faith interpretations. Some inspired takes include the Blackfriars gatehouse acquisition and the complex arrangement of trustees Shakespeare set up (t
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A marvelous book on the wife of the greatest love poet in English which examines why Anne Hathaway has such a dreadful reputation in academia and amongst Shakespeare scholars. Anne supposedly was illiterate, tricked Willy into marriage, and was adulterous. Many know Greer as a contentious feminist whose early writings like " The Female Eunuch" rocked popular culture. She is primarily,however, a Shakespearean scholar, and has turned her eye toward the myths and misrepresentations surrounding the
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This is the first biography I've read of Ann Hathaway (the wife of William Shakespeare). I have never read a biography of Shakespeare, for that matter, though I did take and enjoy a college course on his writing.
I found this book to be very informative, not only regarding the Shakespeare and Hathaway families, but also of the place and time. The author, having written her Ph.D. dissertation on Shakespeare's comedies, clearly has a strong background in the time, place, and culture of her subject ...more
I found this book to be very informative, not only regarding the Shakespeare and Hathaway families, but also of the place and time. The author, having written her Ph.D. dissertation on Shakespeare's comedies, clearly has a strong background in the time, place, and culture of her subject ...more
May 21, 2020
Micebyliz
added it
More like a PhD dissertation than a book :) (or if you are a Muppets fan? it's more of a restaurant than a supper club:))
What a book. I feel so inadequate reading something like this because i find out how much i don't know. I'm so glad to learn about the connections between Shakespeare's life and what he wrote, from poetry to plays. Very close connections. Also the settings for many works being in the present for them or near present which we don't remember. The rules of passing on property, w ...more
What a book. I feel so inadequate reading something like this because i find out how much i don't know. I'm so glad to learn about the connections between Shakespeare's life and what he wrote, from poetry to plays. Very close connections. Also the settings for many works being in the present for them or near present which we don't remember. The rules of passing on property, w ...more
We seem to have frustratingly scarce hard evidence about the life of Ann Hathaway/Shakespeare, so much of what is written about her is speculative. This is true too of this book, but at least Germaine Greer is redressing the balance in terms of suggesting more positive possibilities about Ann's contribution to Shakespeare's life and work than are usually put forward. Greer backs up these possibilities with some references to Shakespeare's texts.
The strength of this book lies in the fascinating ...more
The strength of this book lies in the fascinating ...more
A 3.5 star book for me. Greer has done an incredible amount of research for this book. There are so few records about the Shakespeares but by close analysis of the lives of their contemporaries, Greer manages to imagine a life for Ann Hathaway and her children quite apart from what most Shakespeare scholars have sentenced them too. Greer's findings are often surprising and show up the prejudice of many "Bardolators". We may never be able to know the truth - unless somehow a treasure trove of doc
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This is scholarly nonfiction that is not to my taste.
I respect Greer’s effort to vivify Ann Hathaway, the wife of William Shakespeare.
I think she went overboard a bit.
Shakespeare’s Wife is longish, considering that lots of the details of Ann’s life aren’t well documented or remain obscure.
For my taste, too much of this work is carefully contingent or unselfconsciously speculative. The specification of what we don’t really know is perhaps more interesting to a scholar embracing esoterica than it ...more
I respect Greer’s effort to vivify Ann Hathaway, the wife of William Shakespeare.
I think she went overboard a bit.
Shakespeare’s Wife is longish, considering that lots of the details of Ann’s life aren’t well documented or remain obscure.
For my taste, too much of this work is carefully contingent or unselfconsciously speculative. The specification of what we don’t really know is perhaps more interesting to a scholar embracing esoterica than it ...more
I had hoped and expected to enjoy this book more than I did, but it was a good read nonetheless. This is an eye-opening exposition, but is tedious at times.
Greer's overall thesis in this book is that much of our Shakespeare scholarship is biased in a way that puts William in a positive light while assuming that Anne was a non-contributive and distant partner. She presents mountains of evidence that sheds light on how men and women in Elizabethan times cooperated in marital relationships and the ...more
Greer's overall thesis in this book is that much of our Shakespeare scholarship is biased in a way that puts William in a positive light while assuming that Anne was a non-contributive and distant partner. She presents mountains of evidence that sheds light on how men and women in Elizabethan times cooperated in marital relationships and the ...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Around the World ...: Discussion for Shakespeare's Wife | 2 | 13 | Jul 14, 2016 07:10AM | |
| The F-word: November NON-FICTION selection SHAKESPEARE'S WIFE | 7 | 24 | Dec 16, 2014 06:44PM |
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Germaine Greer is an Australian born writer, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century.
Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her ground-breaking The Female Eunuch became an international best-seller in 1970, turning her overnight into a household name and bringing her both adulatio ...more
Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her ground-breaking The Female Eunuch became an international best-seller in 1970, turning her overnight into a household name and bringing her both adulatio ...more
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“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 husband's 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.”
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“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.”
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