Anne Shakespeare: WhAtS All ThE fuSS aBoUt?

Anne Shakespeare as author has created dissonance. We know what it is and why it happens. It is the same trying to unravel the web that has been spun around William Shakespeare as the author of the plays, poems and Sonnets attributed to him. We have become accustomed to believing that William is the author. All through school (remember Macbeth or Hamlet and how we struggled to understand what they were all about) and even then into University, William was held up as THE author and every bit of critical literary analysis we ploughed through was to be focussed on how did William (a male, at that) manage to write so prolifically? Not only that, but how was it he could understand women so well? especially coming from a predominantly patriarchal societal structure? And, in these post modern times where every literary theory known to us has had a turn at delving into the psyche of THE man known as William Shakespeare.

Thus was a dissonance set up to hold opposing views from all of literary theories. Which one is right? Or do they all add something to the literary debate? And here I am throwing another spanner in the works by proposing that William is not actually, the author, except for that strange 329 line poem titled ‘A Lover’s Complaint’. Let me state at the outset, the Sonnets are autobiographical; they tell the “story” of Anne Shakespeare and her relationship with her husband, William, beginning when she was known as Anne Hathaway. And those first 17 sonnets detail her wooing of a young and beautiful William before she became Mrs Anne Shakespeare. Who was Anne to devote her whole life to ensuring that it was going to be her husband who became famous. Reading the Sonnets though, one is struck by how much Anne had to endure to make it happen. Who was ‘the. only. begetter.’ of her Sonnets? Why, none other than William. Therefore the dedication to the Sonnets need to be rearranged to confirm that, and it should read (Summers, 2021, pp. 74- 79)

TO.THE.ONLIE.BEGETTER.OF.

THESE.INSUING.SONNETS.

ALL.HAPPINESSE.

AND.THAT.ETERNITIE.

PROMISED.

BY.

OUR.EVER-LIVING.POET (end section 1)

Mr. W.H.

WISHETH.

THE.WELL-WISHING.

ADVENTURER.IN.

SETTING.

FORTH. (end section 2)

More to come.