The Afterlife of Anne Hathaway: A Conversation with Prof Katherine Scheil

**Philip Rowe** (0:10)
Welcome to the History of European Theatre podcast and thanks for joining me on this journey through millennia of theatrical history. Episode 121 –The Afterlife of Anne Hathaway.
For this episode, I'm very pleased to welcome Katherine Sheil, Professor of English at the University of Minnesota, for the second part of our conversation about Anne Hathaway, based around her book Imagining Shakespeare's Wife –The Afterlife of Anne Hathaway.
In this part, we went on to talk about the different views of Anne in fiction and non-fiction through the centuries. The breadth of views is quite astounding, and we tried to unpick how some of those, at least, could have come about. Katherine is a leading expert on Anne Hathaway and her legacy to history, so following on from the recent episodes about Shakespeare's ancestry and early life in Stratford and London, this was a perfect opportunity to talk to Katherine. And if you've not done so already, you should probably listen to all the preceding season six episodes before returning here. We picked the conversation up with some of the less flattering portraits of Anne.

**Katherine Scheil** (1:15)
We've talked about the version of Anne in Stephen Greenblatt's Will and the World, so that we've already set up. Additional negative Anne's or kind of nightmare versions of Anne. I'll just give you a couple of highlights of those. So one example of Frank is Frank Harris's 1911 book, The Women of Shakespeare, which I was actually given this as a gift, and I think the giver had no idea what was inside.
Here's how Frank Harris describes Anne. Anne is the jealous, scolding, shrew wife who was eight years his senior, overshadowed all his early manhood and left her bitter mark on most of his youthful work. She was a jealous, railing woman who made such an impression on young Shakespeare that he cannot but paint her and make her live for us by reason of his very hatred. Then, at the end of his life, the passions of lust and jealousy and rage had at length worn out Shakespeare's strength, and he crept home to Stratford to die with his wife, who should be jettisoned to the lowest hell of jealousy, rage, and humiliation.
We need a palate cleanser after this one.

**Philip Rowe** (2:37)
We definitely do, don't we?

**Katherine Scheil** (2:40)
Let me give you one more and then we'll turn to some of the positive ones.
The second example, this is from Anthony Burgess's 1964 novel, Nothing Like the Sun, which is still in print. This is what Burgess says. Hatred rose in Shakespeare like black vomit, seeing that Anne had turned him into a manner of a whoremaster. Anne wrapped her aging treacherous bareness, bold as brass, into a nightgown, while Shakespeare felt the cuckold's unspeakable satisfaction, the satisfaction of confirmation, the great rage which justifies murder and the firing of cities, and makes a man rise into his whimpering strong citadel of self-pitying aloneness. Anne is a groaning old crone going about her housewifely tasks, busying herself with the making of sick man's broth, and who would sit scratching her spent loins through her curdle, mumbling her book.

**Philip Rowe** (3:48)
There's much to admire in Anthony Burgess, but not that, I don't think.

**Katherine Scheil** (3:54)
And again, I think these misogynist Anne's depend on ignoring that brass epitaph, ignoring the chancel burial, and ignoring the Anne that would have managed new place.

**Philip Rowe** (4:06)
And surely the fact that Shakespeare went back and spent his last days in Stratford, in his family home, with his wife, who he hadn't lived with on and off for many years, I would have thought that has to have some significance. He could have chosen to stay in London, however distraught he was at the burning of the globe and everything. He could have gone elsewhere, but he chooses to go to Stratford, where he runs businesses, as you said. He has other interests there. He owned land and houses, and you suggest Anne was running a business there.
So there are many reasons, but the main one surely is the family home.

**Katherine Scheil** (4:41)
Right, and if you're going for this disastrous mistake of a wife, you have to come up with an answer for why Shakespeare returned to Stratford and continue to invest in Stratford throughout his life.
So I've got a few for you. These are some of my favorites. Avril Rowlands' play Mrs. Shakespeare, The Poet's Wife from 2005
In this work, Anne is a full-time mother who's also writing the plays of Shakespeare on the side. She's only married to Shakespeare as a business partnership, so he's the front for her artistic creativity. So she's like the ultimate multitasking woman, raising her family and writing all of these great works of literature. And Amy Freed's play The Beard of Avon from 2001