Shakespeare's Will (play)

Shakespeare's Will is a play by Canadian writer Vern Thiessen. It was commissioned by Geoffrey Brumlik, then Artistic Director of the River City Shakespeare Festival in Edmonton as a performance vehicle for Jan Alexandra Smith and premiered at the Citadel Theatre in February 2005. It has been regularly revived and was performed at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 2011.^[1] Shakespeare's Will was published in 2002 by Playwrights Canada Press.

The American premiere of Shakespeare's Will was produced at Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills, California. The production starred Jeanmarie Simpson, was produced by Leonard Nimoy and directed by Susan Bay. Nimoy said he agreed to produce the show because 'It's a very beautiful piece, very beautifully written, very moving, and funny."^[2] The production led to a long-term creative collaboration between Nimoy and Thiessen which later included a specially commissioned play.^[3]

Shakespeare's Will is a one-woman monodrama that focuses on Anne Hathaway on the day of her husband William Shakespeare's funeral. Its form has been described as a "poetic monologue that is fragmentary, and richly allusive."^[4] The audience shares details of her historically-unknown personal life, a mixture of general information about the lives of women in Elizabethan England, fictional dramatic twists, and twenty-first century interpretations.