By Patricia McCarthy
‘Shakespeare’s sister’ of Virginia Woolf’s essay, ‘A Room of one’s Own’ (1929), someone so erased by gender convention as to be nearly invisible – in this reidentified document, might finally be able to speak a little’.
Dr Matthew Steggle, (University of Bristol 2024) who identified the pamphlet found in the rafters of the Shakespeares’ home as belonging to Joan Shakespeare Hart, Shakespeare’s sister.
i
She might have preferred to remain anonymous
as she waddled along the main street
with other pregnant women for bread, eggs –
hiding in the shop under large flitches of bacon
hung from the ceiling. She probably refused
to wear, for advertisement, the hats made
by her husband to help them out of debt,
embarrassed to be pointed out as sister
of the great man who spent hours over books
in his study, a world of classical texts and Latin
foreign to her. Or did she creep in at times
when he was not there, and read at speed
as much as she could take in, sick of tying
her apron strings, most likely clever as him
while she tried to catch up with the intense study
he had had dawn to dusk every day of the year
at the King’s New School nearby. A shock
to find she managed to adapt a religious Italian text
into a passionate Catholic profession of Faith,
a secret Catholic avoiding torture and death
by hiding her pamphlet in the rafters of the house.
Why, then, do we picture her still mending hoops,
whirligigs, tops for her children to play on the cobbles,
juggling with hats for clowns, kings, dukes, drunks?
ii
Virginia – your ‘sister’ now is one of many
wanting to make a ‘career’ of poetry,
wine instead of water when she performs.
With titters from audiences at her asides,
she deletes poems saved for centuries
inside herself, writes new ones with aplomb.
She might meet you in a coffee house, pub –
always having to be the centre of attention,
sucking up to well-known writers like you,
advertising herself on Facebook, Twitter,
signing contracts to read in Festivals
all over the country. When with her brother,
she was probably a ‘poet’ who never wrote
a word, you said. Yet, now, perhaps,
she is not who you would want to ‘live in you’.
iii
My ‘sister’, her brother’s best critic,
read all his works by candlelight
in a back room. In the early hours
she penned comments on his drafts,
admiring most the power of his tragedies.
She helped him transpose the dry facts
from North’s English translation of Plutarch
with word inversions, fresh metaphors
into such musical poetry that Kleopatra
could sail on the ‘burnished throne’
of her barge down the Nile.This’ sister’
had to shelter in the storm scene in Lear,
from its verbal energy, onomatopoeia:
‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage!
blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout’…
sound effects she suggested – like repetition
with its looped patterning when Elizabeth I
pleads with Richard III to take the hand
of her daughter, persisting with ‘Harp
on it still shall I till heart strings break’.
Such a closet mentor… perhaps
silenced by him after an argument
about his romantic comedies she deemed
written too much to a formula, or about
his carelessness on occasions with plots.
Sister, sister, known by no one –
her loyalty preserved with her tight lips.
iv
The sister I know,
in the minority amongst us,
does not want to speak publicly.
She writes
what she thinks and feels,
when she has to.
She works out verses
in her head before committing them
to a laptop, pen, wanting
to communicate what cannot be said.
Then, as if automatic writing,
without thought, she lets her pen
or fingers flow – feather-light
the onrush of wings,
the ‘I’ in her words
only tinged with herself; the rest
someone other, anyone…
Her ghost audience
ingests her work slowly,
several times on the page –
no easy laughs, applause,
simply a silent silence.
She steers clear
of the limelight,
preferring shadows, loath
to sell herself and her wares.
Not interested in cashing in
as Shakespeare’s sister,
she nevertheless is influenced
by his plays, their sonnets,
rhyming couplets, blank and free verse –
and, rather than composing
single unrelated poems,
she prefers dramatic sequences
with a polyphony of voices.
In an unconscious metamorphosis,
she becomes the different personae
strung on the concerto effects
of chorusing, solos, alternating lines
echoing, overlapping, sharing.
With the baton of her heart,
she conducts them from afar.
v
Stay as you are, then, sister of Shakespeare –
or as you would like to be. You can be a million
sisters in one now, at any time, in any age,
can choose your nationality or gender. Dear
as your brother was to you, listen
to your own heart and what it dictates to a page.
Do not be afraid to go alone beyond fashions
and fads. Very well prepared, you will survive,
re-born like your adopted saint Winifred,
beheaded for rejecting a suitor, but mended
miraculously, her Well echoing with her passion
for healing, for finding a reason for being alive.
Follow the wild horses flying through your head,
birds singing at dawn every word you have said.
The Importance of Arts, Culture & The Creative Process
The arts are a vital component of a civilized society: poetry, music, visual arts, drama - they are what make us human and, at their best, inspire us to be higher selves, able to articulate what can't normally be said.
What was the inspiration for your creative work?
My submitted poem is part of a book-length sequence, 'A Break in the Talk' - A Sussex Sisterhood. I live quite near the South Downs, walk frequently over them, and visit Charleston, Firle and Rodmell. I have focused mainly on Virginia and Vanessa, the jealousy between them despite their love for each other. I have trired to show an unusual side: that they were not so privileged - outwardly yes, but they were hurt all their lives by abuse and bereavements. I bring in oother women t hey were associated with like Dorothy W ellesley, Katherine Mansfield, Laura Makepeace Thackeray (their hidden disabled half sister. Emily Bronte, Yeats and Shakespeare's Sister all teach her her craft. Place-names and places are important as well.
Tell us something about the natural world that you love and don’t wish to lose. What are your thoughts on the kind of world we are leaving for the next generation?
I love everything about the natural world. I live in the country and am part of nature's faithful cycle, year after year, with a corridor of wise oaks guarding us. I adore the swallows that come every year to nest in the stable rafters, the horses grazing nearby, and my mare. She makes me part of the land and is a soul mate. I love the sea too and the Downs.