Helpful Score: 4
An interesting and enjoyable read. Having read Elizabeth I by Alison Weir, Mistress Shakespeare not only gave me some interesting insights into the possible two wives of William Shakespeare, but another perspective of life and times during part of Elizabeth's reign.
Helpful Score: 4
This novel is about the mysterious "dark lady" of the sonnets, Shakespeare's muse. Harper starts from the fact that the Stratford-on-Avon church records show that William Shakespeare got a license to marry an Anne Whateley a day before he married Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant with his child.
Half-Italian, dark-haired Anne Whateley tells the story of her long "marriage" to the Bard, living with him in London and helping him on the way to success and fame, even while he supported Anne Hathaway in style in Stratford and fathered other children on her.
Lots of detail about both the life of the theater and of politics in Elizabethan times, less about the years under James I.
Half-Italian, dark-haired Anne Whateley tells the story of her long "marriage" to the Bard, living with him in London and helping him on the way to success and fame, even while he supported Anne Hathaway in style in Stratford and fathered other children on her.
Lots of detail about both the life of the theater and of politics in Elizabethan times, less about the years under James I.
