Waves and Wills

Van Thiessen's Shakespeare's Will

Abstract

Canadian playwright Vern Theissen's Shakespeare's Will, a one-woman play, presents William Shakespeare through reminiscences of Anne Hathaway, his wife. Thiessen explores the union between the two as a complex, and not entirely fulfilling, relationship in which Shakespeare reneges on vows that he and Anne made privately to each other to accommodate desires that could not be contained within the terms of conventional marriage. The play makes a case for broadening the terms of marriage to accommodate a greater range of diverse desires or "wills." This broadening of perspective is consistent with the ethos of contemporary Canada, where, as the result of new human rights legislation, legal definitions of marriage have become more inclusive in the past twenty-five years. The essay thus argues for understanding the play within the larger context of a major shift in Canada's social and legal dynamics.