Shakespeare’s wife By Germaine Greer, Bloomsbury, Rs 795

Germaine Greer is cross. And well she might be. She evidently sees a tradition among predominantly male Shakespearian scholars to make of Shakespeare’s wife, Ann [sic], an illiterate shrew William the Bard was eager and happy to escape. And what makes her crossest is the incarnation of this tradition in Stephen Greenblatt, in his 2004 book, Will in the World: how Shakespeare became Shakespeare. In reply to his chapter, tellingly called “Wooing, wedding and repenting”, Greer produces her 350-page Shakespeare’s Wife, which could be subtitled (but isn’t) “Or how the author might have played the role”. Then the reader might have had a clue to the fact that he was picking up a learned book full of rich material about the geography, history, family trees and kinship patterns, the economics, politics, religious leanings, legal niceties, customs, will-writing practices, professions and cottage industries of Stratford during Shakespeare’s lifetime, within which a ‘nice’ Ann Shakespeare, faithful and industrious — and able to read — may or may not come to life, but Greer’s preferences would.

Greenblatt is quite provoking when he says of Shakespeare’s marriage that “he could not get out of it” and carries on in the same vein till the dying poet has remembered to bequeath his second-best bed to his wife. But he manages to confine this combination of locker-room sniggers, shameless speculation and insights into Shakespeare’s lines, all smartly cocktailed in his mischievously sparkling prose, within one chapter. But Greer is not feeling mischievous, she is cross; she is taking on not just Greenblatt but a whole army of scholars as well — “the likes of Anthony Holden”, or “Burgess and most of his ilk” or even, simply, those “bachelor dons”. Her anger spins out into a whole book, turning what could have passed for a touch of fancifulness in a shorter piece into an outpouring of politically correct counter-prejudice. The mixing of literary and historical evidence is persuasive enough to act as a super diversionary tactic. For example, once she has discussed, with extensive archival material, the possibility that Ann knew how to read, it takes a while for the reader to realize that Ann’s actions are thenceforth being premised on the understanding that she can read. The few disclaimers are overwhelmed by the more sympathetic picture. But possibility, persuasion and assumption together cannot stand for a scholarly reinterpretation of facts; the basic facts remain obstinately sparse and unyielding.

And Greer is frank in her admission. The most direct statement of that, though, comes in the last paragraph of the 21st chapter, in which the “intrepid author” makes the “absurd suggestion” that Ann could have been involved in the First Folio project, contributing not only papers but also money. “All this,” she says, “in common with most of this book, is heresy, and probably neither truer nor less true than the accepted prejudice.” But, by that time, the reader has really lost the thread. Ann cannot be “written out” of her husband’s life “if only because he himself was so aware of marriage as a challenging way of life, a ‘world-without-end bargain’”. Yet one sentence later, she says, bewilderingly, “There can be no doubt that Shakespeare neglected his wife, embarrassed her and even humiliated her.” It is amazing how much Greer can infer from nothing.

That has peculiar effects on Greer’s language. Any example would do, but here is a sentence about Judith, Ann and William’s daughter: “If Judith Shakespeare had entered the service of the Quiney family it was probably long before 1602 when Richard Quiney was killed.” The next few pages are devoted to the numerous possibilities developing from this double conditional, with a few timely Shakespearian lines about poor girls entering into service in rich men’s households thrown in, together with extracts from social histories of the time. Greer builds on uncertainty, and that results not in one narrative but many. Ann, according to Greer, looked after herself and her family very capably, managing her finances so well that it is possible — just that, possible — that Shakespeare was, or should have been, proud of her, and simultaneously, did not feel the need to visit her or send her money. There is a shepherd’s will, which says Ann owes the shepherd 40 shillings. This leads Greer to conclude that she was either a moneylender, a common occupation of women, especially widows (Ann was a grass widow), at the time, or maybe a banker, or a brewer, or a haberdasher, or a mercer, or a silk weaver (New Place had a mulberry tree), or something else. Each possibility is considered with historical evidence showing the existence of the profession at the time, and the suitable possibility picked up and used as a premise when the argument or narrative so demands.

The most charming narrative of possibilities is in the courting chapter, in which Greer shows that it is the 26-year-old Ann who is the advantageous match for the 18-year-old boy, and that he is the importunate suitor. As the story builds up, with delightful forays into poems about dairymaids and farming girls, we are unable to resist the vision of a precocious, good-looking boy teaching a sensible older girl to write (she already knows how to read). When Greer reminds the reader authoritatively of the “erotic dimensions of the teaching situation”, it is possible to wonder whether this is a gloss on the unforgettable cameo of the younger Catherine teaching Hareton to read in that most romantic of novels, Wuthering Heights. But there are other genres too. The horrific accounts of syphilis and gonorrhoea, as Shakespeare nears his end with no suggestion having reached posterity that he had either, could make up an early modern treatise on medicine.

The book on Shakespeare’s wife is a compendium of knowledge. For a woman who spoke not a word to history, it might be quite a weight.