Anne Whateley is a beautiful girl who gets her looks from
her late Italian mother, Anna Rosalina de Verona, who was a
travelling tumbler and dancer before her marriage. Anne's
father is English, and although he is illiterate, operates
a growing pack train business that carries goods from
Stratford to London and back.
It is said that William Shakespeare's father "married up,"
the Arden family being both wealthy and educated, so this
match with Anne Whateley is not at all what the Shakespeare
family has in mind for their son. Friends from an early
age, Anne and William have a closeness that bonds their
very souls and over time grows into romantic love. They
travel to a church near their home and the priest registers
their license, but William and Anne decide to find the best
way to tell their families of their marriage at a later
date. But days later in that same church, William is forced
to marry Anne Hathaway, who is said to be carrying his
child.
Unable to deal with her anger and her grief, the first Anne
goes to London. The separation, however, is not permanent,
and William and Anne begin seeing each other again. Their
friendship and passion cannot be denied, and although the
life they now have together has huge limitations, it also
has great love, great adventure and comfort to each other
in times of great loss.
Told in first-person by Anne Whateley, this fictional
memoir is a touching perspective of the life of William
Shakespeare told by his soul mate and life-long love.
Expertly researched and woven with the pageantry of
Elizabethan and Jacobean history, this author has given us
a rare glimpse of real persons from history, turning their
lives into narratives that will entertain and delight the
most discriminating of readers.
A delicious and intriguing historical novel about the
woman who was William Shakespeare’s secret wife— by New
York Times–bestselling author, Karen
Harper.
In Mistress Shakespeare,
Elizabethan beauty Anne Whateley reveals intimate details
of her dangerous, daring life and her great love, William
Shakespeare. As historical records show, Anne Whateley of
Temple Grafton is betrothed to Will just days before he is
forced to wed the pregnant Anne Hathaway of Shottery. The
clandestine Whateley/Shakespeare match is a meeting of
hearts and heads that no one—not even Queen Elizabeth or
her spymasters—can destroy. From rural Stratford-upon-
Avon to teeming London, the passionate pair struggles to
stay solvent and remain safe from Elizabeth I’s campaign
to hunt down secret Catholics, of whom Shakespeare is
rumored to be a part. Often at odds, always in love, the
couple sells Will’s first plays and, as he climbs to
theatrical power in Elizabeth’s England, they fend off
fierce competition from rival London dramatists, ones as
treacherous as they are talented. Persecution and plague,
insurrection and inferno, friends and foes, even
executions of those they hold dear, bring Anne’s
heartrending story to life. Spanning half a century of
Elizabethan and Jacobean history and sweeping from the
lowest reaches of society to the royal court, this richly
textured novel tells the real story of Shakespeare in love.
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