Anne Shakespeare
This is a draft of the Preface for my fourth book which should be released in 2025. The book’s title is “Anne Shakespeare (In her own voice)”. Enjoy! and please feel free to send me any comments to my email at shakespeareauthor@outlook.com. Look forward to hearing from you.
Preface
“The glory of Shakespeare, the crowning quality which distinguishes his [sic] genius, which separates him immeasurably from his contemporaries, is the estimate which he placed upon woman. No glance, before or since, has ever sunk so deep into the soul of womanhood. He was the first, we had almost said the last, to discern that it is through her will that woman is strong.” (Garrigues, 1887, p. 243)
What does it mean to say “in her own voice”? In a recent book (West Scheil, 20I8) “Imagining Shakespeare’s Wife (The Afterlife of Anne Hathaway)”, Katherine West Scheil presents an analysis of how Anne Hathaway has been portrayed by critics over the intervening 400 years since her death. As she states in her Preface (West Scheil, 2018, p. xiv),
Because a full archive does not survive for Anne (or even a modest archive), is she fair game, to be manipulated and exploited in order to create a particular Shakespeare? Given that there is no way to retrieve an “original” or “real” Anne Hathaway, is there a responsibility to acknowledge the possible “Anne’s,” or is her only purpose to shed light on her famous husband?
However, I am arguing in this work that what we have in the Sonnets is an autobiographical account by Anne of herself and her lived experience in her situation with William, her husband. That is, I am starting with the argument that the true author of the poems, plays and Sonnets usually attributed to William is his wife, Anne Shakespeare (nee Hathaway) and that her Sonnets are an autobiographical account of her life. Validating this argument is the evidence presented by her through her 154 Sonnets. And if we wish to know who Anne is, who is William and who the dark lady is the evidence is to be found in her Sonnets where she presents a first-person account of her lived experience of her situation with William and the shift in love that occurs when William commences his infidelity with the dark lady. Indeed, rather than attempting to fit Anne into William’s biography, through the Sonnets we find that it is what Anne can tell us about William; a reversal of the generally held view that, as West Scheil (2018, p. xviii) puts it,
Anne’s position as a touchstone for readers and audiences to connect with Shakespeare has given her a crucial part in the “involvement and affection and fidelity,” as Deidre Shauna Lynch puts it, of literary love, particularly for Shakespeare.
As we will see the idea of William’s “fidelity” is sorely misplaced, especially when it comes to his affair(s?) with the dark lady (and possibly others (see sonnets, 35, 41 and 42, for example). But as Anne explains it in sonnet 76 (to my mind, a pivotal sonnet), “O know sweet love I always write of you, /And you and love are still my argument:” (ll. 9-10). Where ‘love’ is equated with, firstly, William (‘sweet love’) and secondly, love as her Muse. Anne’s major focus is William and love; and as we will see throughout the sonnets Anne returns to William and the nature of love. In seeking who Anne Shakespeare is we must contend with the three major players in this relationship as depicted in Figure 1.
(unable to paste but the three main players are Anne, William and the dark lady)
Figure 1: Anne’s relationships
Anne Shakespeare is an enigma; there is virtually nothing known of her life outside of the usual platitudes regarding her birth, marriage, children and her death. What little is known is admirably sketched by Germaine Greer in her 2007 book, Shakespeare’s Wife and Katherine West Scheil in her 2018 book, Imagining Shakespeare’s Wife. But this does little other than to provide us with an evocative outline of who Anne is, but does confirm what Garrigues (above) notes, here we have a very strong woman who it turns out to be the author, Anne Shakespeare. Over the course of my last three books (Summers, 2021/2024; 2022; 2024) I have attempted to try and fill out some further details because I believe (and my research corroborates) the true author of the Shakespeare canon is this very woman, Anne Shakespeare (nee Hathaway), the wife of the (in)famous William Shakespeare. Anne has been invisible; the purpose behind my writing this book is to make her visible. In my first book (Summers, 2021/2024) I made the case for Anne as the true author of the Shakespeare canon through presenting evidence found in her Sonnets. In my second book, I dived deeper into her philosophy centred on love, nature, free will and humanism as she presented it through her Sonnets (Summers, 2022). In my third book, I completed the analysis of all her 154 Sonnets by delving into some of the conversations she had with herself, William and the dark lady (Summers, 2024). To complete my task of fleshing out who Anne is, I return to her Sonnets with the aim of using them not just as a testament to her lived experience and situation as the wife of the man she made famous through her plays and poems, but what they can tell us about Anne and William.
In taking the position that Anne is the true author of the Sonnets (and other poems and plays), then what we have in the Sonnets is Anne speaking in her own voice, detailing her lived experience of her situation from being Anne Hathaway to Mrs Anne Shakespeare. And in her Sonnets, she presents us with her thoughts, fears, joy, sadness across some twenty years of firstly wooing a young William into marriage and then as Anne Shakespeare, the wife to William and how this relationship evolves with William’s affair(s), and the emotions it raises for her. In doing so, Anne uses the conceits of love, time, death, desire, how the physical body reacts to events (such as the ‘eye’). But Anne also speaks of the death of her son Hamnet (see sonnets 33-34), her Muse (which is love) and Anne gives us a detailed characterisation of William (and the dark lady). If we want to know who William Shakespeare was, we need look no further than here in Anne’s sonnets as she describes William. In doing so, we also get a picture of who Anne is.
The Sonnets are Anne’s personal testimony to her lived experiences over a period of some twenty years (from 1582-1609. Nowhere else in the whole canonical works can we point to writing where the personal (as I, me, mine and my) occur over 330 times and her husband, William, is mentioned some 260 times (as Thee, Thou, Thine, and Thy) and these references to William include his infidelity with the dark lady (see Appendix One, Two, Three and Four). These references to herself and to William and the dark lady (including other references to her Muse of love and to their son, Hamnet as well as other miscellaneous references) swirl around the dominant theme of love and relationship; of connection and disconnection, of betrayal and a movement from happiness to sadness and grief, to her final sonnets of selflessness. Love is by far her dominant theme, occurring some 93 times (see Appendix One). That is, the Sonnets are not just a narrative “story”, they depict Anne’s lived experience of her situation, and this narrative has a beginning and an end; from her wooing of William (as Anne Hathaway) through their married life and William’s infidelity and ends with sonnets 153-154 as Anne’s final personal word on her and William’s relationship.
The major themes I wish to explore in this book are her views on love, descriptions of William’s character and her interactions with the dark lady. What I am doing in this book is to use Anne’s Sonnets as a way to understand her as a woman; a woman in a particular situation and how this situation influences her lived experience which she then expresses through her Sonnets. And it is through Anne’s views on love that the changes she experiences can be best understood as a reflection of her situation; love is not, for Anne, some static entity or emotion; love as Anne experiences it in her own situation is an ever changing swirl of emotional and sometime joyful and at other times a painful journey as she grapples with how her authentic love for William is challenged through his affair(s) and how she attempts to arrive at a position that is not one of bad faith. This poses a moral dilemma for Anne; a dilemma that I believe forces her to confront what an authentic love means and to come to terms with her relationship with William and the dark lady. Ultimately, Anne must exercise her free will to arrive at a position which she feels serves her the best, emotionally and personally. But in doing so, Anne comes to the realisation that in exercising one’s free will there is no clear cut, single answer of right and wrong; someone will always suffer some hurt from decisions made but the important principle in this decision making is that the person making the decision, having weighed up all of the possible solutions, takes moral responsibility for their own decisions. This is why, for Anne, her humanist position considers that each person must make their own decisions and choices which in turn means that there will be choices made, and decisions made that may have unequal consequences.
If I take her reflections on love in her lived experience and her situation with William, then there is discernible a definite change in what constitutes the nature of love; a shift from her early idealistic views on love to her becoming aware of and confronted by William’s infidelity and his affections and passion toward the dark lady. Love becomes a roller-coaster emotional ride of jealousy, shame, guilt, sadness, grief. In this state their beliefs in themselves and others, in terms of honour, justice, fidelity, chastity, and the power of love over one’s life with the potential to fall into a state of coercive control, and what one will do to keep love alive; what depths one will sink to, in abandoning their values, rules, beliefs, dignity just to keep a flicker of love alive. And when all else fails, how they must reconcile themselves to the heartache and grief of love lost, the emptiness and despair of having lost love.
Thus, we travel with Anne across that terrain of young ideal love to an awakening of William’s infidelity with (not just) the dark lady and having her eyes open as she depicts it in her later sonnets leading to her final compromise in sonnets 153-154 (see Summers, 2024). However, love is not this monolithic structure standing as a singular entity; love is entangled with time, nature, free will, death, desire, beauty and the physical effects of love. But this raises the question of whether the Sonnets are autobiographical, which in my view, points to this as being the only place within all of her works (plays and poems) where we have a definitive first person speaking (see Crosman, [1990, p. 473] who notes, “What distinguishes the sonnets from the plays is that they are first-person discourse, and thus invite the reader to interpret them as autobiographical.”); where we have access to what that “I” or me of the Sonnets is thinking, feeling and acting on (or being acted upon). And I believe, this “I”, this “me” is none other than Anne Shakespeare (nee Hathaway) chronicling her lived experience of her situation as it changes from a modest Anne Hathaway wooing a young William Shakespeare through to their married life and almost to the time that William returns to Stratford to live out his remaining days with Anne (see Summers, 2021/2024).
In closing this Preface I would add that in my first three books (see Summers, 2021/2024; 2022; 2024) I have provided an analysis of all 154 of Anne’s Sonnets. However, in this book I am revisiting quite a few of them to provide a further in-depth analysis to answer the thesis that the Sonnets provide us with an opportunity to “see” into Anne’s character as she explores her life with William, and in so doing provides us with a description of William’s character. To do this I am utilising the vehicle of how Anne’s views on love chart her changing situation and her character.
However, there may be instances where I contradict myself in adding to my original analyses a new interpretation or additional comments. But her Sonnets are of such complexity that they lend themselves to several interpretations. In doing so, my intent is to stay within the major focus of showing that most of her Sonnets have been written about her husband, William and his infidelity with the dark lady. For it seems to me that these sonnets can be approached from many different angles; from feminist, Marxist, New Historicism and so on but ultimately, what it is that drives an analysis is that we must place Anne at the centre of any interpretation; an author-centred approach. In my own case, I am most interested in uncovering and exploring who is Anne Shakespeare? What can she tell us about William and the dark lady? What is her lived experience of her unique situation that we find her depicting across her poems, plays and Sonnets? That is, do Anne’s Sonnets tell us a “story” or are they fictive accounts of a “life”? But just like life, I believe, that through their muddling meandering between topics, between events they do reflect how any real lived experience unfolds; messy, jumping from one event to another and in doing so Anne is making comment to try and make sense of the event (see Crosman, 1990, for instance).
Dr Chris Summers
Blantyre
2024