City professor: 'Letter shows Shakespeare didn't abandon his wife'

WILLIAM Shakespeare may not have abandoned his wife, a Bristol academic has claimed, undermining a centuries-old consensus among scholars.

- Eric WILLIAMS

For more than 200 years, it has been assumed that the playwright had an unhappy relationship with his wife, Anne Hathaway, and that he left her in Stratford-upon-Avon to pursue a writing career in London. But new research by an expert at the University of Bristol has revealed that the true dynamics of the Bard's relationship may have been different.

Matthew Steggle, a professor of early modern English, analysed a fragment of a 17th century letter addressed to “good Mrs Shakespeare”, which appears to show the couple living together in London between 1600 and 1610.

The letter, which had been preserved by chance in a book binding in Hereford Cathedral library, is the first piece of evidence that has been found pointing to Anne living in London with her husband.