Mrs. Shakespeare : the complete works : a novel /

The Late Mr. Shakespeare (1999), which told Shakespeare's life from the vantage of a former boy actor in the bard's troupe, was brilliant, a tour de force. Part Laurence Sterne, part Tom Stoppard, packed with jokes, puns, eccentric stories, and iconoclastic revelations, the novel delighted on every page. Mrs. Shakespeare, Nye's second act, so to speak, is amusing but less awe inspiring. It, too, recalls Tom Stoppard--the toned-down Stoppard responsible for Shakespeare in Love. In some ways, in fact, Mrs. Shakespeare is Shakespeare in Love as told by the slightly baffled, forgotten wife. For this time it is through the eyes of Anne Hathaway that we see the slow-paced, country home Shakespeare left behind in Stratford, the wild new world he joined when he went to London to find his fortune, and many aspects of his domestic life--his early marriage, his drunken father, his children. As for laughs, Anne's revelations that the greatest poet of the English language had feet of clay lead to most of the biggest. --Jack Helbig

English poet and novelist Nye's slim fiction is so charmingly written, one hardly minds that in the end the plot boils down to a literary dirty joke. Seven years after William Shakespeare's death, in an anachronistically feminist move for 1622, Susanna Shakespeare gives her widowed mother a vellum blank book, and in it Anne decides to write "My story. His story. Our story. The story of the poet, the wife, the best bed, and the bed called second-best." In doing so she solves several literary mysteries: what was the second-best bed, mentioned in Shakespeare's will? and who was the Dark Lady of the Sonnets? The first half of the book seems much ado about nothing as Anne rambles on about the difficulties of being married to a poet. As she writes, she sets the scene for her dramatic trip to visit William on his 30th birthday in London, where he has been living while she struggles to raise their children in Stratford. Anne loves her misguided romantic of a husband, although she can't understand what motivates him, commenting, "I have not read his works. I read my Bible." When Nye, author of the Hawthorndon Prize- and the Guardian Fiction Prize-winning Falstaff, finally reveals the dramatic secret of the bedDnamely who gave it to William, why and what actions have taken place in itDthe marital romp that ensues illustrates Nye's amusing theory that Shakespeare tested the plots of his plays in flagrante delicto. Nye's light tone and whimsical touches (Anne shares a couple of truly disgusting-sounding 16th-century recipes) buoy up this tartly ribald romantic comedy, a graceful literary fantasia. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

We remember Anne Hathaway as the wife of William Shakespeare, who in his will left her his "second-best bed," an anecdote that has sparked debate through the centuries. First published in England in 1993, Mrs. Shakespeare is a fictional memoir narrated by Anne Hathaway that cleverly exploits the dearth of biographical information about Shakespeare, allowing Nye to explore his thesisDthat madness lurked in the mind of the Western canon's central figureDwith the verve of a writer unburdened by scholarly accountability. Those who have been intimidated by Shakespeare's works will feel a wry sympathy for a woman ill used by her brilliant and elusive husband and may turn to the plays and sonnets with a fresh eye. On this level, the book is a great success; however, as a character, Anne is so embittered that it distracts from the meditation on art and truth that animates this novel. Recommended for large fiction collections and academic libraries.DPhilip Santo, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The dexterous Nye provides another wonderful Shakespearean “biography” (The Late Mr. Shakespeare, 1999), this time by giving Anne Hathaway her chance to tell all. And tell all she does, in short takes (“I don’t like long sentences”) and tiny chapters, filling up page by page the vellum-covered book that was a gift “last Christmas” from her daughter Susanna. With a penetrating and contradictory intelligence worthy of the Wife of Bath, she’ll let us know that her story is a “sad” one, or refer to herself as “the detested wife,” yet end chapters with yearning notes of love, as in “Dead Mr Shakespeare. My bad husband. The darling.” Digressive she is, too (“It has taken me 122 pages of my little vellum-bound book to get me and Mr Shakespeare from London Bridge to the door of his London lodgings”), though she digresses ever with a sly and deft genius that lets her bring past and present together and thereby bring character alive. She writes her story in 1623 (“seven years to this very day” after Shakespeare’s death), and her task of telling all means telling mainly of her only trip to London, in April of 1594, to visit Mr Shakespeare there—explaining thereby the real meaning of the “second-best bed” clause in Shakespeare’s will. The reader can gain this same knowledge only by following the feisty, intelligent, raven-haired Anne right into bed with Mr Shakespeare, something only those as open-minded as she is may wish to do—or learn as much from it as she does. Or, maybe, as Shakespeare does, too, since much of the fun of Nye’s marvelous book is discovering all those ways that the poesy-hating Anne was the real source of so much poesy (“ ‘What’s in a name?’ I always used to say,” and “I know a hawk from a handsaw”). From first word to last, brilliant, moving—and often ribald—intellectual entertainment.