Aside from a will and some other legal papers, and some contemporary accounts of his life, Shakespeare as a human being is a mystery. We know even less about his wife, Anne Hathaway, who was left in Stratford-upon-Avon to raise their three children in complete obscurity. We know they married in haste, with her pregnant with their first child. We know she was older than Will, and that she out-lived him by seven years. In his will, he left her his “second best bed,” which has kept Shakespeare scholars busy for decades debating whether the bequeath was a slight or had a deeper meaning. Vern Thiessen’s play Shakespeare’s Will provides us with one fictionalized view of the woman behind the man.
The play begins after Anne buries William at the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, in 1616. Anne is about 60, and William 8 years younger. As she waits for the reading of the will, she recounts their lusty meeting, brief shared life together, and their children. She revels in the short time they had together before he sought his fortune as an actor in London, then tried his hand as a playwright and as an investor in theaters. She recounts the lonely life of a woman with an absentee husband, with mouths to feed in a small town, enjoying his brief, dutiful visits home before heading back to the big city where he was carving out a name for himself. They corresponded, with Anne sharing the news of their three children — Susanna, and the twins Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet died during one of the many outbreaks of the plague at about the age of 11 — in the play, it is suggested that Anne took the children and fled to the coast to escape the plague, only to see Hamnet accidentally drowned. Grieving and exhausted, she recounts the joyful child and regroups to return to the town. Bringing the story back to the present, Anne finds out she will only inherit Will’s second-best bed while her daughter Susanna gains the bulk of the estate and she rages and weeps that she has once again been made invisible.
Tracy Michelle Arnold makes the one-person play sing with a mastery of the stage, planting herself firmly in the narrative of the “forgotten woman.” She strips off the cloak of grief to reveal a lively and intelligent woman frustrated by the boundaries of a female during the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. She is sensual, hinting she has taken lovers briefly in Will’s long absences. She dreams of a freer and fuller life, to be seen as a woman. Directed by Brenda DeVita, she is a fully realized person — not the Dark Lady to be feared or the Shrew scholars have suggested she was — but Anne Hathaway.
Performed on the IRT’s Upperstage until April 16, Shakespeare’s Will is the perfect complement to Women’s History Month and the beginning of Poetry Month. For tickets, visit irtlive.com or call 317-635-5252.
