Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer attempts to rehabilitate Ann Hathaway/Shakespeare who has not been treated sympathetically by the bulk of Shakespearean commentators.Little is known of the life of Shakespeare and even less is known about his wife, but people are willing to speculate and fill in the vast gaps and Ann Shakespeare has not come well out of the speculation. Her advanced years at the time of their marriage (she was in her late 20s, he in his late teens) has led the commentators to assume Ann tricked her husband into marriage and that he later left her for many years to bring up their family alone in Stratford while he persued and acting and playwriting career in London not only for ambition's sake. His bequest in his will of the second best bed has been interpreted as evidence that William Shakespeare hated his wife.Germaine Greer, who gained a PhD from Cambridge University with a thesis on Shakespeare's early comedies, looks at the scant documentation regarding William and Ann Shakespeare and, with a good measure of social history to put their lives in a 16th Century and not 20th or 21st Century context, gives her opinion that William and Ann Shakespeare's marriage was not hate-filled and presents Ann Shakespeare as probably a shrewd housekeeper respected in her community, in her family and esteemed by her husband.
An interesting read although her detractors may argue that Greer vehemently defends Ann Shakespeare's reputation on as scant evidence as Ann's detractors do. Most of the book is fairly accessible, although I found myself skipping bits.
I do love the cover.