Hidden Voices

Fitting in nicely (just as you’d expect!) with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s (SBT) multi-year Women Who Made Shakespeare theme, Hidden Voices focuses on the important females in the life of the bard, exploring their impact as mothers, wives, widows, businesswomen and managers of a busy household at New Place, the site of the grandest house in Jacobean Stratford-upon-Avon. 

The exhibition also seeks to dispel many of the myths which have persisted across the centuries: that William didn’t love wife Anne, because he left her the ‘second best bed’; that daughter Susanna was his favourite; that younger daughter Judith was illiterate; and that because Shakespeare’s mother Mary was a farmer’s daughter, she was less upwardly mobile. 

Numerous objects from SBT’s collection are featured in the exhibition, including artefacts from the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

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