Until now, there has been no serious critical scholarship devoted to the life and career of the farmer’s daughter who married England’s greatest poet. Part biography, part history, Shakespeare’s Wifeis a reconstruction of Ann’s 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.
“Ambitious, brilliant.... Greer exposes as wishful thinking a whole set of assumptions.... Greer’s main achievement: Ann Hathaway is no longer an invisible woman.... If 'Good Mrs. Shakespeare' was Ann Hathaway--and right now she seems the most plausible candidate--then she was indeed the independent, worldly, and literate woman Greer has worked so hard, and so effectively, to bring out of the shadows.” –London Review of Books
“Myth-busting...an invigorating read.... Germaine Greer’s defense of Ann Hathaway gives generations of bardolaters a richly deserved kicking.” –Daily Telegraph
