Songfacts®:

• This non-album single by the British band The Smiths was released in March 1985. Guitarist Johnny Marr discussed the song in a 2011 interview with Mojo magazine: "The greatest thing is the work, which you should build on, have a sense of momentum. You understand that intellectually when older but emotionally when you're young. What's the alternative? For me, 'Shakespeare's Sister' was pulling an odd star out of the sky. I had imagined this strange song and strange sound. Morrissey encouraged me and then we captured it. It was a statement of solidarity between us four and I was extremely proud of that togetherness."
• The song runs just 2:09, which record label boss Geoff Travis deemed too short. Smiths drummer Mike Joyce recalled to Mojo magazine: "We didn't always choose the right singles. 'How Soon Is Now?' was originally a B-side remember. Geoff Travis was very sniffy about the length of 'Shakespeare's Sister' but the fact people said we were wrong only fired us up."
• The original single's sleeve featured actress Pat Phoenix, best-known for her long-running role in the UK TV soap series Coronation Street.
• The Shakespears Sister duo of Siobhan Fahey and Marcella Detroit (best known for their 1992 hit "Stay") took their name from this song, changing the spelling by dropping the last "e" and the apostrophe.
• This song peaked at a modest #26 on the UK chart. The Smiths put this sales dip down to a lack of support from their record label, Rough Trade. Frontman Morrissey was particularly disappointed with the chart positioning. He recalled to Record Mirror in 1985: "'Shakespeare's Sister' - regardless of what many people feel - was the song of my life. I put everything into that song and I wanted it more than anything else to be a huge success and - as it happens - it wasn't. We can talk about independents and majors till the end of the day - but ultimately, when you make a good record, you want it to be heard."
• This song is named after Judith Shakespeare, a character in Virginia Woolf's 1929 feminism essay A Room of One's Own. In the essay, Judith is Shakespeare's sister, envisioned as having similar talents but constrained by society because of her gender.
  
  The lyrics, "Young bones groan, and the rocks below say, 'Throw your white body down,'" are adapted from Elizabeth Smart's 1946 novel, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept.