Abbey recognises forgotten role of The Shakespeare Ladies Club

The Abbey has updated its website entry for the memorial to reflect that over time the women have been overlooked in favour of a committee of eminent men who liaised with the Abbey.

The change was recommended by the authors of a new book, The Shakespeare Ladies Club: The Forgotten Women Who Rescued the Bawdy Bard, by Christine and Jonathan Hainsworth, published by Amberley UK. They have written the first ever book devoted to The Shakespeare Ladies Club, a quartet of women who, outside pockets of academia, have been largely erased from popular culture.

The authors invited Professor Michael Dobson, Director of The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-on-Avon, and North American scholar Genevieve Kirk, each of whom had also written on the club, to join them in creating a submission to the Abbey to explain the importance of The Shakespeare Ladies Club and their indispensable contribution to Shakespeare historiography.

The Abbey’s website entry for the Shakespeare memorial will now read:

'In modern times it has been largely forgotten that the impetus for memorialising Shakespeare in the eighteenth century came from a group of well-connected women, informally known as ‘the Shakespeare Ladies Club’. The most prominent members were: Susanna Ashley-Cooper, Countess of Shaftesbury; Mary, Duchess of Montagu; Mary Cowper, Baroness Walsingham; and Elizabeth Boyd, one of the earliest women to earn a living from her writing. They encouraged revivals of Shakespeare’s plays on the London stage, including two benefit performances given at the Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres specifically to raise money for the Abbey memorial.

'The Ladies turned to four men to assist with obtaining permission for the statue and to arrange the necessary payments. They were Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington, Dr Richard Mead, the poet Alexander Pope and the writer Benjamin Martyn (not, as sometimes suggested, the antiquary Tom Martin). As time has passed these men have come to receive the sole credit for the erection of Shakespeare’s memorial and the eighteenth-century revival in the popularity of Shakespeare’s plays has been attributed almost entirely to the actor David Garrick, with the crucial role of the Shakespeare Ladies Club in both enterprises being unjustly overlooked.'

Further reading

Poets' Corner

Long read: The nation's memory