The Shakespeare Ladies Club: The Forgotten Women Who Rescued the Bawdy Bard
Jonathan Hainsworth, Christine Hainsworth

London, 1736: The first secular ‘Book Club’ is formed by the young, progressive Susanna 4^th Countess of Shaftesbury and three enlightened friends. This was The Shakespeare Ladies Club. Precursors to modern day ‘Influencers’, what this tenacious quartet did next reverberates worldwide to this day.

Who made William Shakespeare famous?

In his own lifetime the Elizabethan playwright was one of many popular writers – certainly not the most popular nor a celebrity. Consider that in the century following his 1616 death,  plays were banned under Cromwell and by the time theatres re- opened for business under Charles II, Shakespeare’s plays were viewed as rather too rude and crude – too earthy – and needed to be ‘cleaned up’ for the rare occasions they were staged.

Simply put, Shakespeare had become unfashionable and risked becoming a relic of the past.

So what happened in the 1700’s to make Shakespeare a literary Parnassos whose works bestrode the world?

The usual answer is that the thespian superstar of the mid to late 18^th Century David Garrick, saved Shakespeare - and that’s how the actor’s considerable ego wanted it recorded for posterity.

In fact, before Garrick’s success and the 1740 debut of his realistic, dynamic style of acting – which he had borrowed from, accomplished female actresses – the first ever secular book reading club for women had paved the way.

The young, free-thinking Susanna, 4^th Countess of Shaftesbury, had formed The Shakespeare Ladies Club to read the original plays along with members, Mary (nee Churchill), Duchess of Montagu, Mary Cowper (later de Grey, Baroness Walsingham) and Elizabeth Boyd, a working writer.

All educated and enraptured by The Bard’s plays the SLC members were appalled that 120 years after Shakespeare’s death there was still no tribute to him in Westminster Abbey and feared his legacy was being forgotten. Worse, his plays were now considered to be in need of ‘moral improvement’. Far more popular was French-style Pantomime, in which men kicked each other in the posterior for laughs, whilst “Macbeth” had become a singing, dancing, special effects-driven, “cleaned-up” extravaganza.

Overcoming all obstacles, The Shakespeare Ladies Club successfully campaigned to have Will’s original plays revived and to raise a long overdue statue to him in the Abbey. The women also supported new writers including Henry Fielding, John Gay and their own Elizabeth Boyd as well as the composer George Frederic Handel – all while navigating their own private lives worthy of a dramatization by Shakespeare himself … or the sharp and bawdy Fielding.

Anonymously, it seems they also lobbied for a woman’s right to education, equality and safety in the home, by publishing two no-holds-barred, feminist tracts under the collective alias: “Sophia”.

A handful of men are still credited for the statue and one male actor (David Garrick) for saving Shakespeare. The SLC’s critical role has only been recently rediscovered by pockets of academia, yet for this first book ever written on the women, the authors unearthed a treasure trove of new material that has been either unknown or overlooked.

The desire of sections of today’s society to alter – if not cancel – Shakespeare’s plays has again come full circle. Susanna, Elizabeth and the two Marys knew that The Bard’s understanding of human nature - warts and all – is unparalleled and for all time, and that to dismiss his plays as inappropriate by the standards of any puritanical era is a social crime and by doing so diminishes our collective humanity.

In the early 21^st Century surely we need the insight and courage of the extraordinary women of The Shakespeare Ladies Club more than ever?

After nearly 300 years, their remarkable story is finally told.