Examines representations of Anne Hathaway from the eighteenth century to contemporary portrayals in theatre, biographies and novels.

Little is known about Ann Hathaway, the wife of England's greatest 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 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, 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 in its social context. With deep insight and intelligence, she offers daring and thoughtful new theories about the farmer's daughter who married England's greatest poet, painting a vivid portrait of a remarkable woman. A passionate and perceptive work of first-rate scholarship that reclaims this maligned figure from generations of scholarly neglect and misogyny, Shakespeare's Wife poses bold questions and opens new fields of investigation and research.

What has been the appeal of Anne Hathaway, both globally and temporally, over the past four hundred years? Why does she continue to be reinterpreted and reshaped? Imagining Shakespeare's Wife examines representations of Hathaway, from the earliest depictions and details in the eighteenth century, to contemporary portrayals in theatre, biographies and novels. Residing in the nexus between Shakespeare's life and works, Hathaway has been constructed to explain the women in the plays but also composed from the material in the plays. Presenting the very first cultural history of Hathaway, Katherine Scheil offers a richly original study that uncovers how the material circumstances of history affect the later reconstruction of lives.

Named One of Esquire's 50 Best Biographies of All Time The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, reissued with a new afterword for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. A young man from a small provincial town moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? Stephen Greenblatt brings us down to earth to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, could have become the world’s greatest playwright.

This work offers an analysis of constitutional law, examining Shakespeare's plays as legal texts. Professor Ward uses the plays as a starting point to investigate the development of constitutional ideas such as sovereignty, commonwealth, conscience and moral law, and the art of government. In the developing area of law and literature, this book examines how Shakespeare's work offers a rich source of textual material on legal subjects.

In this humorous and bawdy fictional memoir, Shakespeare's wife Anne Hathaway reminisces about her famous husband seven years after his death.

With elegance, sympathy, and nuance, Her Infinite Variety celebrates the women in William Shakespeare's world. These lyrical stories move from Elizabethan London, where Shakespeare is drawn to the plight of the young wife of a wealthy friend, to a wintry Denmark, where Ophelia struggles to understand her love for Hamlet, and to Shakespeare's Stratford home, where his daughter Judith deliberately enters into a shameful marriage. At the center of this remarkable book is Shakespeare's enduring love for Anne Hathaway, his beautiful, passionate, illiterate wife. Together, the masterfully interwoven stories of Her Infinite Variety bring to life a Shakespeare who was formed by the women he loved -- and who loved him.