Comrade Shakespeare – it doesn’t get any better

What do you actually know about the comrade Anne Hathaway? No no no. Of course I don’t talk about the canvas mimin and Oscar winner of this name, born overseas in 1982 and known for her performances in the entertainment genre à la “Suddenly Princess” or “The devil wears Prada”.

We are talking about Shakespeare’s dear woman. Seven years older than her husband, born in Stratford, mother of his three children. Hardly any Shakespeare biography does not require that the marriage of the two was deeply unhappy. William had escaped to London, where he made his contribution to the world theater; An abandoned woman remained.

A few weeks ago, I was able to find out the British daily newspaper “The Guardian”, which documented every minor movement in Shakespeare research, that a letter that was discovered almost 50 years ago, but only now really assigned, throws a new light on William and Anne.

The document is addressed to Mrs. Shakespeare in London, the city, which she never visited according to some literary historians. There she lived together with her husband and, as rumored, did not reserve for years in the home Stratford, while her husband reinvented herself in the metropolis. The content of the letter suggests that Anne not only benefited from her husband’s assets, but that she had her own money, which she had.

Genosse Shakespeare

As you like it: Every two weeks, Erik Zielke writes about great tragedies, political lubricating theater and the fools from the past and present. He finds inspiration from his comrade from Stratford-Upon-Avon.

You can find all columns here.

We don’t know too much about the life of William Shakespeare. A lot is vague, unsecured. But a lot has been enrolled in our picture of the great theater man and even serves as an interpretation aid to interpret his works. Some supporters of a speculative literary science believe signs of a broken marriage between the Verses of the Shakespeare Dramas. Well, wrong.

But there must have been any trace that the Shakespeare researchers and biographers led to this wrong track? There would actually be the graceful will of the comrade Shakespeare, which raises all kinds of questions. He gave closer and further relatives, but also friends with money and valuables for the time after his death. His daughter Susanna Hall in particular was richly given.

And what about Anne? According to Shakespeare, she should only get one thing: his “second best bed”. Passionate Shakespeare exegets broke the skull over it. Why, of all things, does she only get the second best bed? What about the best bed? Does the old one otherwise go out completely empty? And can you handle your wife like this? So a few schoolmasters imagine the end of a disastrous marriage.

However, since we probably don’t even live in the second best of all worlds, it is at least possible that Anne and William spent their happy love and married life in the same bed at times. The theater rarely is so harmonious. But the most interesting thing about Shakespeare may not be the biographical puzzle rates, but works that have been on stage again and again for well over 400 years.

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The time, the Danish prince Hamlet tells us, is out of joint. There has also been a lot of new “ND”: the newspaper is now more digital; The weekly edition will appear on Friday; And – this column has lost its traditional place. But that’s all just a question of the right dramaturgy! From now on, read as usual in the two -week cycle, in the printed edition on Tuesdays by the “Comrade Shakespeare”.