Anne Whateley

Anne Whateley
This portrait was claimed by W.J. Fraser Hutcheson to depict Anne Whateley, and to have been painted by Sofonisba Anguissola. It is usually identified as a probable image of the poet Girolamo Casio, painted by Giovanni Boltraffio.[1]
This portrait was claimed by W.J. Fraser Hutcheson to depict Anne Whateley, and to have been painted by Sofonisba Anguissola. It is usually identified as a probable image of the poet Girolamo Casio, painted by Giovanni Boltraffio.[1]
Bornsupposed to be 1561
Temple Grafton, Warwickshire, England
Diedsupposed to be 1600 (aged 39)
Warwickshire, England
Occupationalleged nun, poet, muse
Literary movementEnglish Renaissance

Anne Whateley is the name given to a woman who is sometimes supposed to have been the intended wife of William Shakespeare before he married Anne Hathaway. Most scholars believe that Whateley never existed, and that her name in a document concerning Shakespeare's marriage is merely a clerical error. However, several writers on Shakespeare have taken the view that she was a real rival to Hathaway for Shakespeare's hand. She has also appeared in imaginative literature on Shakespeare and in Shakespeare authorship speculations. Shakespeare's biographer Russell A. Fraser describes her as "a ghost", "haunting the edges of Shakespeare's story".[2] She has also been called "the first of the Shakespearean Dark Ladies".[3]

  1. ^ Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Treasures From Chatsworth, A British Noble House, 2004. Patricia Simons notes that its androgynous appearance has often led to its identification as a woman: Patricia Simons, "homosociality and erotics in Italian Renaissance portraiture" in Joanna Woodall, Portraiture: facing the subject, 1997, Manchester University Press, p.33.
  2. ^ Russell Fraser, Shakespeare: A Life in Art, Transaction Publishers, 2007, p.66.
  3. ^ Ivor Brown and George Fearon, Amazing monument : a short history of the Shakespeare industry, Heinemann, 1939, p.18