THE MARRIAGES OF BRUTUS AND HOTSPUR.

THE MARRIAGES OF BRUTUS AND HOTSPUR. Cynthia Crossen had a good review in the weekend Wall Street Journal of Germaine Greer’s new book SHAKESPEARE’S WIFE, which defends Ann Hathaway. She had the initiative to contact Stephen Greenblatt, who is a prominent critic of Shakespeare’s marriage. in an e mail, Greenblatt stood by his position, referring to “Plays that seem to imagine every conceivable relationship except a happy, intimate, long-term marriage.” I have argued previously against Greenblatt’s position that Shakespeare’s play about Elizabethan wives—entitled THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR—portrayed happy marriages. I would now add that Brutus and Portia and Hotspur and Kate represent happy marriages. Greenblatt in WILL IN THE WORLD argues that Hotspur and Kate’s marriage is one of “mutual isolation” and that Brutus and Portia demonstrate that husbands and wives can achieve very little intimacy—in each case because the husband does not tell his wife of his plans for either rebellion or assassination. I think that in each case the wife is startled by being excluded from any part of her husband’s life, which demonstrates the intimacy of the marrriages.