Germaine Greer uses this fabulously argumentative book to challenge the male literary critics who have traditionally asserted that William Shakespeare was trapped in an unhappy marriage. Ann Hathaway, she asserts, has drawn particular venom, not least for being older than her husband  a fact which has led to accusations of everything from homeliness to sexual incontinence.
The book is hugely speculative and rangily discursive  animal husbandry, milkmaid fashions, midwifery and syphilis are all grist to Greer 's ferociously turning mill  but it is not her aim to unearth new or incontest able evidence. Instead, it's a serious attack on ossified assumptions and the often peculiar misogynist imaginings of writers lost in their own fevered bardolatry. Greer declares her book is "heresy, and probably neither truer nor less
true than the accepted prejudice"  academic smoke-and-mirrors, maybe, but she orchestrates the spectacle with suitably theatrical style.

Demi Moore's marriage to Ashton Kutcher has gone some way toward legitimising the older woman-younger man liaison. But long before Hollywood celebrities defied conjugal norms, cougars everywhere could claim Ann Hathaway as their trailblazer.

At 26, Ann (Germaine Greer spells her name throughout minus the customary 'e'), daughter of a Stratford farmer, married 18-year-old William Shakespeare. Patriarchal biographers of the playwright have sought to claim that the union was entrapment - Ann became pregnant before the wedding, as was quite common in Tudor times - and that Will's regard for his wife swiftly waned.

Greer deftly dispatches misogynistic interpretations both of Ann's character and her marriage. She repeatedly underscores the lack of evidence for many writers' assumptions - even for her own suggested 'heresy' that it was venereal disease, as much as Will's career, that estranged him from his spotless wife for most of their relationship.

Supplementing the scant facts with broader social history, biographical hypothesis and literary sleuthing, Greer explores the many possibilities of Ann's life. In her pursuit of truth rather than bardolatry, she easily skewers the 'frantic fantasising' of critics who infer from spousal discord in Shakespeare's plays that he must have found his own union unsatisfying.

There were many ways young William could have evaded marriage if Ann's pregnancy were the sole inducement, yet he chose not to avail himself of them. Ann raised three children mostly by herself (their only son, Hamnet, who may have suffered cerebral palsy, died aged 11), working to feed the family while her husband gained fame and favour in London. William returned to Stratford for good following a 30-year career in the city, and was probably nursed by 'rock-like' Ann before he died - and even, perhaps, promoted by her afterwards (Greer speculates that she helped publish his plays in the First Folio

Despite the myriad possibilities, Shakespeare's wife will always remain a mystery, as Greer herself concedes. The playwright's comment on the nature of theatre could apply equally to his spouse: 'The best in this kind are but shadows.'