Imagining Shakespeare's Wife

In this cultural biography of Anne Hathaway, West Scheil explores how Shakespeare's wife has been imagined: from grotesque and sexually-dominant hag preying on an innocent boy-Shakespeare, to modern working mother who secretly wrote the Shakespearean canon in between the housework.

Along the way we meet absent Annes replaced by other more alluring and urban mistresses for a libertine Shakespeare, to a bodice-ripping Anne who indulges in light erotica with not just Shakespeare but also Marlowe and a portly Ben Jonson! My particular favourite is the Victorian Anne who is an 'angel in the house' devoted wife and mother who takes her husband's dark secret to the grave: that Shakespeare secretly murdered his theatrical rivals and buried them under an elm in Stratford!

West Scheil takes her material from biographies and fiction (and makes the crucial point that many biographies of Shakespeare <i>are</i> fiction (she's looking at you, Stephen Greenblatt!) from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first. Some works are supposedly scholarly, others unashamedly not, and the last section includes receptions of receptions, as it were, as W-S draws on readers' comments and responses here on Goodreads to fictionalised 'confessions' of Anne Hathaway.

There are places where this feels somewhat unwieldy and too much like a PhD dissertation as W-S tells us something then tells us she's going to tell us more about it in the following chapter, and there is some irritating repetition. While this doesn't make theoretical interventions - the conclusion that Anne H or, indeed, any other cultural figure, is constantly re-imagined according to prevailing personal, historical, social, political and ideological agendas is hardly new - it's both entertaining and informative on the vast amount of material that makes use of Anne Hathaway both as a way of constructing an inner life for 'Shakespeare the man' and, increasingly, as an independent woman in her own right.

Disclaimer: ARC via Cambridge University Press and Netgalley. Read in exchange for a fair review.
I have some deal breakers when it comes to the books I read. I am not fond, sometimes even hate, books where the eldest sibling is by default the bad one. I am fond of wives being blamed for their husbands porking anything that moves. I judge Shakespeare biographies by how the writer treats Anne Hathaway.
No, you fool, not the actress.
Shakespeare’s wife.
A few years, Germaine Greer published Shakespeare’s Wife, a biography/study of Anne Hathaway. In large part, Greer’s book seemed to be a rebuttal to Stephen Greenblatt’s harsh attack on Hathaway in his Will in the World. Katherine West Scheil’s book, Imagining Shakespeare’s Wife, also takes Greenblatt to task, but Scheil’s purpose to look at how the image or reputation of Shakespeare’s wife reflects on the period in which a work is published.
While Scheil does seem partial to Anne, the beginning of the book, dealing with the known facts of Hathaway’s life is fair. Scheil remembers that there is no way we can do for sure what exactly happened between the Shakespeares. She presents the facts, she presents the debates, but she keeps her view out and lets the reader reach a decision, if the reader wants to. The rest of the book deals largely with how people at various times have viewed Anne Hathaway. As Scheil notes, many times writers have made their Anne Hathaway as opposed to writing about the real Hathaway.
This starts, in part, Scheil notes with the romance of the Anne Hathaway Cottage – which, to be frank, you can understand the romance part because it is absolutely beautiful. Scheil notes that the one time owner and tour guide of the house, Mary Baker, had connections to the Hathaways and was, in part, making sure of her family’s connection to the Bard of Avon. My guess is that Mary Baker was getting a bit pissed off about all the people standing on Anne Hathaway’s grave to get a better look at her husbands. Taking about wiping their feet on the woman.
ON the other hand, Scheil notes that the anti-Anne venom was set by Malone whose biography of Shakespeare was one of the earliest. She even ties Malone’s view of Anne to his proving the Ireland forgeries as fakes. We then tour other early biographies and fictional accounts, all of which even the non-fiction, seem to be proto-fanfiction if not outright fanfiction.
The analysis is best when looking at recent authors, though she doesn’t fully account Peter Ackroyd’s unwillingness to admit to certain sexual misconduct on the part of his heroes – she acknowledges Ackroyd’s seeming blindness of a sexual relationship between the Shakespeares before marriage as willful disregard of the time of their daughter’s birth, but Ackroyd also contorts himself in regards to Dickens extra-marital life as well. Scheil doesn’t pull punches, and if you, like me, were luke- warm to Greenblatt, Scheil aims and hits torpedoes at him.
Hence I love her.
It is a bit of surprise that Greer’s book doesn’t get more coverage. The response, in many cases unfair and overly harsh, is noted, but Scheil gives little speculation why – is it due to sexism or how someone suggest that Hathaway might have been worthy (or over worthy) of our Shakespeare? Additionally, she doesn’t ponders some of the more reaching claims of Greer, which also fall into the realm of this book. Greer’s book is a must read, but surely some of her conclusions were also influenced by feminist views. It seems strange not to discuss this year.
The most horrifying aspect of the back is the discussion of the modern historical romance novels and movies (such as Shakespeare in Love). This is not because of Scheil’s writing, but of some of the response of readers and movie viewers as well as the writers who have a tendency to either write Anne of as Shrew who deserves to have her husband cheat on her (common) to an Anne who embodies the traditional good wife that young female reader should aim to be (less common). There is some hope, though. Scheil covers more recent works that are fairer to Anne in terms of fiction. Her book about Hathaway will also add to your must read shelf, if you are a Shakespeare fan.
Considering the mutability of Shakespeare the man, it is hardly surprising that Anne Hathaway has become a channel on which writers sail their version of Shakespeare – family man, unhappy husband, child of nature. It is too Scheil’s credit that while she presents and discusses these myriad Annes, she always keeps the reader aware of the true Anne, the one who we cannot know, who is impossible to know, but who deserves to be acknowledged simply because she is human.
Highly recommended.

I am about halfway through Imagining Shakespeare's Wife and am electing to not finish it.

The research is amazing and the author covers every imaginable aspect of Anne Hathaway, from the scanty historical records to the many ways she has been portrayed over time.

This scholarly work will be of interest to serious researchers but is not for the general reader.

I sincerely thank the publisher for allowing me access to the book.

I have studied a bit of Shakespeare, dating back to college and even more recently as my reading of The Year of Lear with a look at the historical context of Shakespeare’s work in 1606. But I had not read much about Shakespeare’s family life, particularly his wife Anne Hathaway, and so this title - Imagining Shakespeare’s Wife - immediately caught my interest.

The text starts out by establishing a set of expectations which I quite appreciated. Too many histories overextend themselves or pretend to know more facts than there are facts to be had. This book does not make that mistake. We learn promptly in the Preface that very little is known of Anne Hathaway, and Scheil makes it clear what is fact and what is the result of imaginings by authors and historians over the centuries. Anne Hathaway is more than a wife; she is a myth and a legend built up researchers and artists desirous of answers: “the material circumstances of history...affect the later reconstruction of lives” (pg. xi).

Imagining Shakespeare’s Wife is a critique of nearly all prior attempts by contemporaries, historians, writers, tourists, and fans to personify a woman that we simply cannot know on a deeper level. Scheil does an excellent job presenting the facts we know about Anne Hathaway and then casting light on how she came to be characterized. There is careful intent to ensure the facts are kept separate from speculation with qualifiers such as “maybe,” “possibly,” “likely,” and “could have”. While this felt disruptive at first, the story Scheil pieces together quickly begins to merit this language.

Scheil makes it clear that Anne’s history has been used and revised by others to support their own Shakespearean agendas. This revisionist history is unsettling. Over the centuries, writers have reframed Anne’s life in a way to legitimize their own views. As the focus on Shakespeare changed with societies, cultures, and generations, the way writers sought to portray him changed as well. And with few available facts, Anne was conjured as a plot device: the more we “know” Anne, the more we can know William. Tales of their courtship were made up, right down to the furniture. In some cases, Anne is shown as a dedicated wife and mother demonstrating his ties to the region and his superior morality. In others, she is simply left out to support a view of Shakespeare as a womanizer and the ultimate romantic. None of this can be substantiated.

Scheil does an excellent job showing in depth, different versions of Anne, right down to investigations of forged items. This review of her various histories (and her sometimes intentional exclusion) was fascinating. That a real person can be misrepresented or omitted to fit the fancy of others is staggering. Anne has been quite sorely misused over time. Her own descendents used her as a means of income, notoriety, and tourism by presenting tours of her childhood home and telling elaborate tales about Anne and William’s courtship. While these stories and their props are largely falsified or speculative, tourists and researchers chose to go along with them in search of stories that support their beliefs in the Immortal Bard.

Scheil states: “The central argument of this book is that the afterlife of Anne Hathaway is connected more so with developments in literary criticism, in literary forms and in ideological aims over the last three centuries, rather than with the accumulation of newly discovered factual evidence that eventually coalesce into a fully-formed, definitive result.” (pg. xv, Preface). Scheil strongly proves this thesis throughout the text. She walks us through centuries of changing tides in European and American focus and culture, showing us how the Anne’s portrayals mirror changing tides. As women's suffrage movements took storm, Anne was seen as a strong person and cornerstone for Shakespeare’s success. In women's clubs, Anne and Will’s relationship is played up as a romance. Post WWII, domestic housewives take centerstage and Anne becomes a faithful wife, mother, and housekeeper while Shakespeare earns a living.

Numerous biographies written take liberties with Anne’s story (or what little we have of it). Many of these biographies break the code between reader and biographer. Readers place a level of trust in a biographer that the information presented is well-researched and factual. When a biographer includes impressions or fantasies as facts, they are breaking a code of conduct and are in a powerful position to mislead our understanding of topics. A direct target of Scheil’s is Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World in which he invents stories to form Shakespeare’s relationships and personality. Many of Greenblatt’s claims lack evidence; Scheil calls this his “problematic overuse of fiction”. Scheil is not the only critic for this text; many question the book’s lack of facts, its finite language (as opposed to open ended wording), and its inability to explore other possibilities. That this is a problem not unique to Greenblatt makes the question of Shakespeare scholarship quite troublesome to me.

Stylistically, the book reads a bit like a dissertation rather that a standard non-fiction text. Scheil often begins sections by stating what a chapter will present and ends sections with repetitive summaries. The style may be jarring to some; I found it familiar (I’ve written my share of research papers) but tedious at times.

I thought that this book was fantastic and recommend it as a valuable asset to any scholar as well as more general readers with some prior exposure or interest in Shakespeare’s life and works. What you will not find is a fictionalized account of a woman who, unfortunately, we will never truly be able to know. But we can certainly imagine her.

I am very interested in the period and found this book very enjoyable. Perhaps not for the casual reader as it’s pretty heavy going in places but very interesting none the less.
The author starts by outlining the very few facts know about Anne Hathaway, before in the rest of the book summarising and debating the various theories that abound about her. This brilliant book brings balance to the previously polarised debate surrounding Mrs Shakespeare between the rampant feminists (Greer) and other who have attempted to write Anne out of history. This clever and unbiased look at the evidence is very welcome and I enjoyed it very much.
I would highly recommend.

What I like most in biographies or history books is the degree of research involved. Imagining Shakespeare's Wife had plenty. The author distinguished between palpable facts and the (fascinating) fiction of Anne Hathaway. A must read for anyone interested in great books.