Anne Hathaway (wife of Shakespeare) It is widely attributed to Charles Dibdin (1748–1814) and may have been written for the Stratford-upon-Avon Shakespeare Festival of 1769: Anne is depicted in fiction during the 19th century, when Shakespeare starts to become a figure in wider national and popular culture. Emma Severn's novel "Anne Hathaway, or, Shakespeare in Love" (1845) portrays an idealised romance and happy marriage in an idyllic rural Stratford. She also appears in William Black's 1884 novel "Judith Shakespeare" about her daughter, portrayed as a conventional dutiful wife and concerned parent with a wayward daughter. By the early 20th century a more negative image of
Anne Hathaway (wife of Shakespeare) Hathaway on the day of her husband's funeral. Avril Rowland's "Mrs Shakespeare" (2005) depicts Anne as a multi-tasking "superwoman" who runs the home efficiently while also writing her husband's plays in a businesslike partnership with him as her promoter/performer. The romantic comedy film "Shakespeare in Love" provides an example of the negative view, depicting the marriage as a cold and loveless bond that Shakespeare must escape to find love in London. The same situation occurs in the alternate-history novel "Ruled Britannia" (2002), in which Shakespeare is finally granted a divorce from Hathaway to marry his new girlfriend after he helps