The Greenwood Tree; a Portrait of William Shakespeare

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Godwin, Edward F. and Stephani Allfree Godwin. The Greenwood Tree; a Portrait of William Shakespeare. 1st Ed. New York: Dutton, 1950.

Image Source: University of Oregon Rare Books Collection

The Godwins’ fictional biography of Shakespeare incorporates numerous stories that circulated about Shakespeare’s life after his death, including that the young Shakespeare poached deer and got his start in the theater holding patrons’ horses during performances. Such stories are later inventions that offer appealing narratives about a beloved figure, here presented to children as if factual.

The novel opines about Shakespeare’s marriage, a happy one in the Godwins’ telling. It also presents much later guesses about Shakespeare’s feelings about dramatic theory in the guise of a similarly satisfying fictional tavern debate about literary ideals and achievement between Shakespeare and his peers, the playwrights Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. The pages from The Greenwood Tree  depicted below imagine Shakespeare’s personal life as tied up with his writing, in a scene of his courtship of Anne Hathaway; offer a fictional Queen Elizabeth’s perspective on his work; and present some literary theory of his work through an imaginary conversation. Like the author of Master Skylark , the Godwins enjoy depicting interactions among major figures of the period. All three scenes grant readers access to tantalizing perspectives and events that have long provoked curiosity and that real-world documents from Shakespeare’s life and times have not resolved.