The book appears to have been very well-researched and I appreciated the author’s notes at the end as it’s always helpful to have an idea of which parts of a novel are based on historical fact and which are completely fictional.
The story is played out against a backdrop of historical events: an outbreak of the plague, Christopher Marlowe’s death, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the funeral of Elizabeth I and the building of the Globe Theatre. As well as following the turbulent romance between Anne and Will (as he is referred to throughout the book) we also meet a host of other figures from the Elizabethan period including Queen Elizabeth I, Christopher Marlowe, Henry Wriothesley, John Dee, Richard Burbage, Sir Walter Raleigh and Lord Strange. The novel is narrated by Anne Whateley and divided into five ‘Acts’, like one of Shakespeare’s plays, and it really is a fascinating, entertaining story. Anne is portrayed as the woman Shakespeare truly loved while the other Anne, Anne Hathaway, is the one who is recognised as his legal wife. In Shakespeare’s Mistress Karen Harper takes this as a starting point to explore Anne Whateley’s life and the influence she may have had on Shakespeare’s work. Historians are divided over whether Shakespeare was actually involved with two separate women or whether the first entry in the parish register was a simple clerical error.
What fewer people know, however, is that just days earlier a marriage licence had been issued to William Shakespeare and Anne Whateley of the village of Temple Grafton. It’s a well-known fact that William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway in November 1582.
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