As should be apparent from the documentation of my case, my greatest debt is to everyone at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Record Office. While there can be no doubting their utter loyalty to the maintenance of the reputation of England’s greatest poet, they are also committed to the patient eliciting of the truth from the scattering of hard evidence that they so carefully preserve. Every year new biographies of Shakespeare rework the same set of assumptions and presumptions, their authors not having deigned to avail themselves of the services the staff at the SBTRO so generously offer, which include patient listening to misled hypotheses and gentle direction towards better information. I hope I have avoided mistaken certainty; if I have not it will not be the fault of Dr Robert Bearman or Mairi MacDonald or anyone at SBTRO.
This study could not have been contemplated if I had not had access to the Cambridge University Library, and if the library had not been as well-run as it is. The resources of the British Library are unparalleled, but they are unnecessarily difficult for out-of-town scholars to use, as no more than ten volumes may be ordered on any day, and usually fewer than those ten will actually be delivered. The author is grateful for the courtesy and helpfulness that the BL staff somehow manage to show to even the most bewildered and frustrated readers.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Whitefella Jump Up: The Shortest Way to Nationhood
Poems for Gardeners (editor)
The Boy
101 Poems by 101 Women (editor)
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, Writers and their Work (New Series)
The Whole Woman
The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton (edited with Susan Hastings)
Slip-Shod Sibyls: Recognition, Rejection and the Woman Poet
The Collected Works of Katherine Philips, the Matchless Orinda, Volume III,
The Translations (edited with Dr Ruth Little)
The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause
The Uncollected Verse of Aphra Behn (editor)
Daddy, We Hardly Knew You
Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth Century Women’s Verse
(edited with Susan Hastings, Jeslyn Medoff and Melinda Sansone)
Shakespeare, O.U.P. Past Masters series
The Madwoman’s Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings
Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility
The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work
The Female Eunuch
This edition published by McClelland & Stewart in 2008
Published simultaneously in the U.S.A. by HarperCollins Publishers in 2008
First published in the U.K. by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc in 2007
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Greer, Germaine, 1939-
Shakespeare’s wife / Germaine Greer.
eISBN: 978-1-55199-215-0
1. Hathaway, Anne, 1556?–1623—Marriage. 2. Hathaway, Anne, 1556?–1623—Influence. 3. Shakespeare, William—Marriage. I. Title.
PR2906.G74 2008 822.3’3 C2007-906296-2
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
75 Sherbourne Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2P9
www.mcclelland.com
v1.0