Anne Shakespeare (In her own voice)
Anne Shakespeare (In her own voice) my fourth book and latest contribution to the ongoing debate over the true author of the plays, poems and Sonnets attributed to Anne’s husband, William coming soon through Amazon.
Over the course of my last three books setting out the evidence for why Anne is the real author I am continually confirmed in my own conviction as to having Anne as the real author. Anne’s Sonnets provide me with the conclusive evidence that she is indeed the real author. In this, my fourth book I take as its central argument that the Sonnets must be approached from an author-centred perspective. Why? Because where else would we assume that something has been written in an objective tense when Anne speaks of herself in the first-person tense of I, me, mine, my over 350 times in 154 sonnets. We would have to be totally insensitive to an author’s intent in any other circumstance if they spoke of themselves that many times during their writing. As I write of in the Preface (Summers, 2025, pp. 4-5) to the new book,
“What does it mean to say, “in her own voice”? In a recent book (Scheil, 20I8) “Imagining Shakespeare’s Wife (The Afterlife of Anne Hathaway)”, Katherine West Scheil presents an analysis of how Anne Hathaway has been portrayed by critics over the intervening 400 years since her death. As she states in her Preface (Scheil, 2018, p. xiv),
Because a full archive does not survive for Anne (or even a modest archive), is she fair game, to be manipulated and exploited in order to create a particular Shakespeare? Given that there is no way to retrieve an “original” or “real” Anne Hathaway, is there a responsibility to acknowledge the possible “Anne’s,” or is her only purpose to shed light on her famous husband?
However, I am arguing in this work that what we have in the Sonnets is an autobiographical account by Anne of her lived experience in her situation with William, her husband. That is, I am starting from the thesis that the true author of the poems, plays and Sonnets usually attributed to William is his wife, Anne Shakespeare (nee Hathaway) and that her Sonnets are an autobiographical account of her life (see Summers, 2021/2024; 2022; 2024). Validating this argument is the evidence presented by her through her 154 Sonnets. And if we wish to know who Anne is, who William is and who the dark lady is the evidence is to be found in her Sonnets. Here she presents a first-person account of her lived experience of her situation with William and the shift in love that occurs when William commences his infidelity with the dark lady. Indeed, rather than attempting to fit Anne into William’s biography, through the Sonnets we find what Anne can tell us about William; a reversal of the generally held view that, as Scheil (2018, p. xviii) puts it,
Anne’s position as a touchstone for readers and audiences to connect with Shakespeare has given her a crucial part in the “involvement and affection and fidelity,” as Deidre Shauna Lynch puts it, of literary love, particularly for Shakespeare.
As we will see the idea of William’s “fidelity” is sorely misplaced, especially when it comes to his affair(s?) with the dark lady (and possibly others (see sonnets, 35, 41 and 42, and in his own poem A Lover’s Complaint, for example).”
Not only in this fourth book do I take Anne as the author, but I also delve into what Anne tells us of the character of William and the lady he had an affair with, the dark lady of the Sonnets. In her Sonnets we have Anne speaking of herself and of William and the dark lady but excruciatingly, she details how William’s affair makes her feel emotionally as she rides the roller-coaster of uncertainty of his infidelity and the dawning realisation that she has been betrayed by him. This is a love story like no other: what is authentic versus inauthentic love? The answer to this question is complicated by the relationship that develops between Anne, William and the dark lady. There is no doubt that the dark lady comes between Anne and William but there is also the fact that William did not authentically love Anne, regrettably from the very beginning of their own affair. From the very first sonnet Anne is aware of William’s personality as she points out to William that he is ‘contracted to thine owne bright eyes,/ [and] Feed’st thy lights flame with selfe substaniall fewell’ (ll. 5-6) and then ‘Within thine owne bud buriest thy content, /And tender chorle makst wast in niggarding’ (ll. 11-12) (see Summers, 2025, pp. 98-99). That is, William exhibits many of the traits associated with narcissism as I detail in the book (Summers, 2025, pp. 99-100), such as,
· Having an unreasonably high sense of self-importance that requires constant, excessive admiration (praise)
· Feel that they deserve privileges and special treatment
· Expect to be recognized as superior even without achievements
· Make achievements and talents seem bigger than they are
· Be preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate
On top of that he treats Anne badly through flaunting his affair with the dark lady as Anne witnesses and William alludes to in his own poem tacked onto her Sonnets A Lover’s Complaint.
However, Anne must answer to her own actions and ultimately take responsibility for her decisions to stay with William knowing that he is unfaithful but more centrally, he does not love her.