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Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 2.5 / 5.0
A con Where here the blunt Aussie frankness that Germaine Greer has celebrated and been respected for all of her life?
When writing history, it is sometimes almost acceptable to now and then fill in gaps by positing things to make sense of an action, but this disingenuous offering is the worst `history' book I have ever read in that it is 99% conjecture - positing - and 1% truism.
After 400 pages we know exactly nothing more about Shakespeare or his wife, than we did - than anybody did - before.... more info
Very convincing, compassionate and scholarly I found this a very convincing portrait of a forgotten life and of an often unfairly villified woman. Before I read this book I hadn't realised I fell into the category of what Greer calls 'Bardolaters', people who assume that Shakespeare was such a genius and that his wife was an illiterate cunning woman who trapped a gullible boy into a marriage that he hated and couldn't wait to get away from. Throughout the book, Greer gives Ann her proper title - Ann Shakespeare. I have never seen her referred to as... more info
Dire Although interested in social history and women, this book was a great disappointment. As one reviewer has said (favourably!), this book is just reams of anecdotal information that may, possibly, could be relevant interspersed with inflamatory judgements against other scholars. The book demonstrates no editorial control whatsoever and exists on a presumption that it will sell because of the author and a nice cover. As a broad reader who enjoys serious books based on facts and well constructed argument this... more info
Jarring and fanciful Sadly, a rather embarassing performance, this, in the long tradition of half-baked and almost entirely fanciful Shakespearean speculation (A.L. Rowse etc). Greer presents suppositions as fact, and her assertive tone is really jarring, hectoring and trying to compel, rather than drawing the reader in; and there's a nastily dismissive approach to fellow critics and historians (which she isn't). Greer's scholarly work on the seventeenth century writers is sure-footed and interesting. By contrast, this book... more info
