The Shakespeare Ladies Club by Christine & Jonathan Hainsworth: The women who made Shakespeare great

Shakespeare Women’s Club by Christine & Jonathan Hainsworth (Amberley £ 25, 288PP)

William Shakespeare had to wait 124 years before being considered worthy of a statue in the corner of the poets, the niche in Westminster Abbey, who is dedicated to England’s largest literary stars. During his death in 1616, the reputation of the playwright was free.

While the author Ben Jonson was called his old friend ‘Avon’s swan’, the ruthless truth was that most theater regular Shakespeare was a dusty residue. No London newspaper was mentioned about the 52 -year -old death of the playwright.

All this changed in 1736 thanks to four entrepreneurial upper women who made up the Shakespeare Women’s Club. The club was the brain of Susanna, the Council of Shaftesbury. He was sick because he showed the shredded versions of Shakespeare’s plays.

These injuries were a new cultural Puritism that insisted that Shakespeare’s plays were very obscene and bloody for the polite society. While Susanna and three literary friends hated that Macbeth turned into a very singing and dancing extravaganza, Romeo and Juliet were no longer a tragedy, because the lovers took sleep sketches rather than deadly poison.

Together with Susanna – Montagu Duchess Mary, Elizabeth Boyd, a brilliant writer, and the susceptibility feminist Mary, Baroness Walsingham – began to campaign to return to Shakespeare’s former glory. In particular, they wanted to restore their vitality and even their rudeness. In particular, he was angry that women’s strong, complex women became stupid babies.

Shakespeare Ladies Club has been for just a few years and did not leave. However, the authors Christine and Jonathan Hainsworth did a perfect job to monitor the evidence of their pioneering work.

They found the game costs referring to the games made by ‘the special desire of a few quality ladies’. The ladies filed a petition to the theaters to assemble the games lost from the repertoire of the twelfth night, the story of winter and everything.

Thanks to these efforts, until the end of the 1730s, about a quarter of the performances in London was in Shakespeare. A leading newspaper published a parody letter from Shakespeare to Ladies Club to revive Beyond’s ‘memory of Shakespear’ from Beyond.

Supporting Bard: Shakespeare Ladies Club collected money to place Shakespeare’s statue in the corner of the poets

The greatest victory of the ladies gathered donations for a souvenir sculpture of Shakespeare to stand in the corner of poets, as well as literary luminaires such as Geoffrey Chaucer and John Milton.

In Drury Lane and Covent Garden theaters, they organized two benefits of Julius Caeser and Hamlet, respectively. However, since it was not legal for women to campaign openly, they had to rely on men to highlight the job on behalf of men. The poster children’s elections were David Garrick, the leading actor and theater director of the country.

Garrick was a huge egoist who received the entire loan to put Shakespeare on the corner of the poets. By the Victorian era, William Shakespeare was thrown routine at Garrick’s gate – Garrick’s gate, called ‘Bardolatry’ by George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Bardolatry’.

How pleasing to find out that Hainsworths lobbying Westminster Monastery on behalf of women. The official record is now thanks to four feisty women that Shakespeare’s recovery from the cultural garbage box and returning to the right position of the British culture in the heart and soul.