She’s an incredibly human character with faults, strengths, passions, and insecurities. She’s a beautiful and independent woman, but she is still amazingly insulted after reading a draft of Sonnet 130 (My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun Coral is far more red than her lips red), and she refuses to give Will the chance to explain or tell her about the rest of the poem. ![]() Anne is smart enough to run a business and to trade witty remarks with Will (often in rhyming couplets), but she is foolish enough to drink herself into a stupor and pass out in Kit Marlow’s bed. We see her grow from a naïve child who is foolish enough to enter a strange man’s tent during the Queen’s summer progress, to a caring young woman who lies to cover up her best friend’s suicide, to a successful and clever woman who can outwit some of Queen Elizabeth’s best advisors and spies. This is another reason why the story works: Anne Whateley is a strong, well-rounded character. Will has one night to complete the play and is only able to finish it because of Anne’s help. ![]() After several false starts, tears, and abject misery on both Anne and Will’s part, the couple renews their romantic relationship, bonding over a draft of Love’s Labour’s Lost. In London, Anne runs the family business, makes friends, sees plays, and again, in true Shakespearean fashion, seems fated to run into Will at incredibly convenient times. The next day Anne Whateley’s father dies, and Anne escapes to London, vowing never to forgive Will or forget his betrayal. Anne and Will are found out, and just as the history books contend, Will marries a pregnant Anne Hathaway. Anne and Will marry in true Romeo and Juliet fashion: in secret because his parents don’t approve. The story follows Anne’s life, moving quickly through her childhood, the death of her mother, and her friendship with Will. Shakespeare buffs needed something new to mull over, and Harper provides it. This premise is just so much more interesting than debating whether or not Shakespeare really wrote all the plays. I agree, relying as much on what seemed to be missing from Will’s relationship with Anne Hathaway as with the research on Will’s life on which I base this story. After performing extensive research into the marriage licenses, she came to the conclusion that “Other writers and historians, such as Ivor Brown and Anthony Burgess in his 1970 critical studies on Shakespeare, made a case for the second Anne. Harper’s query is rooted in reality, and she has the credentials and the research to back up her assertion she wrote her master’s thesis on All’s Well That Ends Well, visited London and Stratford-Upon-the-Avon numerous times, and has written a nine-book historical mystery series set in Queen Elizabeth’s court. What if, however, these scholars are wrong? What if Anne Whateley was a real person? What if Anne Whateley was William Shakespeare’s first wife? They suggest that both licenses were in fact issued to William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway and believe the “Whateley” and “Temple Grafton” are misspellings and/or clerical errors. Many scholars, as Harper notes, have passed this first entry off as a mistake. The first, however, shows William Shakespeare marrying Anne Whateley of Temple Grafton. The second, of course, documents his marriage to Anne Hathaway. To begin, there are two different marriage licenses bearing William Shakespeare’s name. As impossible or fictitious this may seem, Harper has some strong evidence to back up her claim that Anne Whateley was William Shakespeare’s first wife and that the two shared a life-long relationship. This book follows the life of Anne Whateley, who Harper believes was William Shakespeare’s first and perhaps true wife, and traces her relationship with Will, showing how they lived, wrote, and did amazingly average things like visiting friends and walking by the river. The last question is explored in Karen Harper’s novel, Mistress Shakespeare. What if William Shakespeare was really a bigamist? What if the earth isn’t really the center of the universe? What if leeching isn’t really a great medical treatment? What would the world be like if everyone just accepted the status quo and never asked, ‘What if’? Imagine for a moment if questions like these had never been asked:
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