Shakespeare continues to fascinate scholars all over the world even after a little over four-and-a-half centuries since his birth. The ‘Shakespeare Quarterly’ alone logs about 4,000 new works on him every year. His birth-place, Stratford-Upon-Avon is said to attract close to 1,25,000 visitors annually.
One of the major attractions of Stratford is the beautiful cottage which belonged to his wife, Anna Hathaway. Though we know very little about Shakespeare or his wife, most Shakespearean scholars have been rather unkind to Anna Hathaway and portrayed her as a rather shrewish, unpleasant woman, simply because she was eight years older than the Bard, and because Shakespeare left her to go to London just a couple of years after marriage. They tend to see Anna behind most of the negative female characters created by Shakespeare.
