Anne Shakespeare: What IS All the Fuss About

Anne Shakespeare’s Sonnets has at the top of the title page a most interesting frieze. “In addition, within the frieze, we have a combination of the natural, human and divine worlds … Each of the ‘angels’ (William and the dark lady) are holding back two ‘beasts’ representing desire, lust and passion. It is this desire they have for each other and the one caught in the middle, preventing them from consummating their lust and desire is Anne.” (Summers, 2021, p. 70) And this just about sums up sonnet 144. Anne caught between the lust of William and the dark lady. Anne, the author of the Sonnets, feeling as if she is losing her one true love; the person she has devoted her whole life to. The one person she dedicated her life to ‘immortalise’ through her verse. And for seven years after William died (of dementia? see Summers, 2021, pp. 45-46) spent her time editing, ready for publication the plays she had written for William over a period of twenty years; plays (and other poems) that she knew would immortalise him as a great writer. And here we run into the same problem we found for William; where is the literary paper trail for Heminges and Condell who supposedly put together the First Folio? What happened to their copies, notes, editions, and paper trail for how they came to edit 36 plays ready for publication? And why wait until after Anne had died before they published the First Folio? (Summers, 2021, p. 27).

But there is a note of tragedy in all of this. Imagine, for Anne, as well as for William, living this deception. For William, who was being feted around London as a great writer, knowing full well that he didn’t write the plays and poems he was being lauded for. And for Anne, having spent her life ensuring it was William who was going to be remembered, and her fate was going to be going to her grave, unknown, unrecognised and unrewarded.

More to come.