Historical February 1984 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Shakespeare Girl, by Mollie Hardwick, St. Martin’s Press, 1983.
This story will warm the cockles of your heart on these cold winter nights. Set in a small hamlet near Stratford-on-Avon, the principle character, Miranda, lives with strict, unloving grandparents. Forbidden to see plays, she sneaks off with a friend to see Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I and falls in love with the character, Hotspur.
There is an ugly scene when she arrives home in which Miranda is told that her parents were actors; therefore, they were rejected by the grandparents.
The First World War grows close and a flu epidemic is taking many lives and among them are Miranda’s grandparents.
She receives a legacy from them as well as the family Bible which indicates she might be a descendent of Shakespeare.
She hires a genealogist who concludes that she is, indeed, a descendent of Shakespeare. Newspapermen swarm around her in London, where she stays with friends, but one man in particular becomes her lover. Their love affair has many ups and downs and over a period of years the story comes to a satisfying conclusion. Among Hardwick’s other books are The Dutchess of Duke Street and Upstairs, Downstairs.
Originally published in The Paper, February 1984.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1984_02.pdf, printed page(s) 7; PDF page(s) 7.
