Shakespeare's Wife

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR “Germaine Greer, feminist scholar and provocateur, has now come to Anne Hathaway’s rescue. . . . Where most scholars have sifted through the few pebbles of evidence and imagined one scenario, Ms. Greer has sifted through the same material and found a love story.” -Wall Street Journal “Fascinating. . . . Greer meticulously exposes the sexist biases underlying depictions of Anne Hathaway. . . and re-creates in lavish detail the material realities of women’s lives in 16th century England.” –Entertainment Weekly In Shakespeare's Wife, Germaine Greer boldly breaks new ground, combining literary-historical techniques with documentary evidence about life in Stratford, to reset the story of Shakespeare's marriage to Anne Hathaway. With deep insight and intelligence, Greer offers daring and thoughtful new theories about the farmer's daughter who married England's greatest playwright, painting a vivid portrait of a remarkable woman. Little is known about Ann Hathaway; 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 mistake from which Shakespeare did well to distance himself. While Shakespeare is above all the poet of marriage—repeatedly in his plays, constant wives redeem unjust and deluded husbands—scholars persist in positing the worst about the writer's own spouse. In Shakespeare’s Wife, Greer has written a passionate and perceptive work of first-rate scholarship that reclaims this maligned figure from generations of scholarly neglect and misogyny, and poses bold questions and opens new fields of investigation and research.