Summary

Little is known of 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 an unfortunate mistake from which Shakespeare did well to distance himself. In Shakespeare's Wife Germaine Greer combines literary-historical techniques with documentary evidence about life in Stratford, striving to re-embed the story of Shakespeare's marriage in its social context, and presents a new set of hypotheses about the life and career of the farmer's daughter who married our greatest poet. Shakespeare's Wife is a compelling, insightful book that already goes some way to right the wrongs done to Ann Shakespeare.