William Shakespeare said ‘Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind’. He has penned so many shades of love that in today’s dramas or literature, we find some clue ! It could be ‘Comedy of Errors ‘ or ‘The Mid summer Night’s dream’.
‘King Lear’ , ‘Macbeth’ or ‘Hamlet’ they have given us so much !! His literature has influenced generations & the all time, age less saga lives on.
The editorial in the Indian Express expresses views about the letter addressed to the bard’s wife. Like any other Shakespearean revelation, it doesn’t come with thunder & lightening but in ink & parchment.
A crumbling letter has upended one of literary history’s long held assumption- that William Shakespeare abandoned his wife Anne Hathaway in Stratford upon Avon while he made his fortune in London.
Analyzed by professor Matthew Steggle of the University of Bristol , the fragment found in the binding of a book in Hereford Cathedral’s library & addressed to ‘Good Mrs Shakespaire’ suggests otherwise. Anne may have been present in his life more than the myth of the forsaken provincial wife allows.
It is an appeal to her by a London widow to repay the money entrusted to Shakespeare by her husband.
Biographers have cast her as a supportive wife bringing up their three children in the countryside while running the family brewery, a woman of weary estrangement, a harridan who forced Shakespeare into marriage because she was pregnant with their child.
But what if Shakespeare’s creative life & their marriage wasn’t at odds?? What if Anne was ‘Sonnet 137s ”fair truth”- not an absence in his story but it’s quiet anchor???
In his will, Shakespeare had bequeathed ”my second best bed with the furniture” to Anne….interpreted by later scholars as a snub. But in the Elizabethan world, the second best , often the marital bed , symbolized fidelity : the best was usually kept in the guestroom as a status symbol.
From Viola to Portia , to even Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s women were women of wit, agency & complexity. His domestic story may lack the sweep of legend, but it may have been something richer -a partnership sturdy enough to survive separation, sonnets , speculation.
It is tough to reach between the two individuals. A wise person should never enter there. A relationship is complex. What we see is never what is !!
We have our guesses, but we maybe wrong!
Asian Entertainment 