'Shakespeare's Wife' by Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer

Harper: 406 pp., $26.95

SHAKESPEARE'S life story is full of holes, and his wife has fallen into one of them. We know that William Shakespeare and Ann Hathaway were married in 1582, and that she stayed behind in Stratford-upon-Avon while he pursued a career in London. Beyond that, though, Ann's life is almost a complete blank, with only a few church records showing when her children were baptized and when those children buried her. In "Shakespeare's Wife," Germaine Greer works to fill the "wife-shaped void in the biography of William Shakespeare." The result is learned, rousing, lively -- and often downright infuriating.

Greer is no scholarly dilettante. She wrote her Cambridge doctoral dissertation on Shakespeare, and she knows her way around an archive. She puts that learning to good use when she takes Shakespeareans to task for making foolish assumptions, often at the expense of women. She also writes engagingly; the book will be an exciting read even for nonspecialists. But it's ultimately unsatisfying because Greer tries to do four things at once and these are fundamentally incompatible.

The first project is the most successful: Greer gives a vivid and detailed account of Tudor women's lives. Original archival research makes "Shakespeare's Wife" an impressive work of social history, offering new insights into 16th century marriage, childbirth, folk medicine, cheese making and a thousand other subjects. Greer is sometimes too ready to use literature as evidence about real life, and occasionally she lets details pile up without a purpose. But her research is sound, and anyone interested in early modern women's lives will benefit from it.

Greer's second project is the most praiseworthy: She attacks the irresponsible speculation that has marred every life of Shakespeare for three centuries. Ignorance has never stopped biographers from presenting their guesses as facts, and Greer takes delight in whacking them for it. "Most scholars," she writes, "agree that Shakespeare returned from London for the funeral of his father in September 1601 . . . mainly because they think he should have. There's certainly no evidence that he did." Just so, and well said.