Helen's gift of heart's-ease

 I want some. - J. O'B.

Into the mixing-bowl from which they drank their wine

she slipped a drug, heart's ease, dissolving anger,

magic to make us all forget our pains...

No one who drank it deeply, mulled in wine, 

could let a tear roll down his cheeks that day,

not even if his mother should die, his father die,

not even if right before his eyes some enemy brought down

a brother or darling son with a sharp bronze blade.

                                             
                                              The Odyssey
                                              Book IV: The King and Queen of Sparta
                                             

Shakespeare and the possible life of his wife, Ann

Of course, all Shakespeare biography involves guessing and much speculation. I read it anyway, alert for what seems most plausible. In Shakespeare's Wife, Germaine Greer's 2007 rehabilitation of Ann Hathaway, Greer points out with sometimes devastating effect the occasionally implausible, over-imaginative, often overly confident speculations of some Bard biographers over the centuries. She ruined a couple of once-loved biographies for me in the process, even as she herself made a few rather gymnastic leaps. The book is not just a fascinating argument for Ann's possible life, but a broad examination of town life in Tudor England. Ultimately, though, it is a statement to writers of lives that when you take the kinds of liberties Shakespeare biographers must take, you ought constantly to be checking your own prejudices and those of your times. This paragraph comes at the end of the book:

The Shakespeare wallahs have succeeded in creating a Bard in their own likeness, that is to say, incapable of relating to women, and have then vilified the one woman who remained true to him all his life, in order to exonerate him. There can be no doubt that Shakespeare neglected his wife, embarrassed her and even humiliated her, but attempting to justify his behavior by vilifying her is puerile. The defenders of Ann Hathaway are usually derided as sentimental when they are trying simply to be fair. It is a more insidious variety of sentimentality that wants to believe that women who are ill treated must have brought it upon themselves. The creator of Hero, Desdemona, Imogen and Hermione, knew better.