The Power of Love and the Love of Power (Shakespeare: Part II)
William Shakespeare knew love, and also its complications. At the age of eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, a woman eight years his senior. Six months after the wedding, Anne gave birth to a child, which no doubt sparked local gossip. Later, he wrote love sonnets to a man—Was the playwright a closet homosexual?—and then composed 26 sonnets to a married woman known only as the Dark Lady. His plays give words to the stirrings that every romantic feels. In Love’s ...