CHAPTER 17
In As You Like It, the servant Adam suggests that “At seauenteene yeeres, many their fortunes seeke” (746). Shakespeare may have sought his fortune among the Lancastrian families of Hoghton Tower and Rufford Hall, but he had returned to his native town. If he then set to work in a lawyer’s office, he had at least one consolatory prospect. Anne Hathaway was already well known to him. Fourteen years previously John Shakespeare had paid off some of her father’s debts. The Hathaways were in any case long established in the region. They had been resident in the hamlet of Shottery, at Hewland Farm, since the end of the fifteenth century. Shottery was a mile outside Stratford itself, an area of scattered farms and homesteads on the edge of the Forest of Arden. Anne’s grandfather, John Hathaway, was classified as a yeoman and archer; he was esteemed highly enough to have become one of the “Twelve Men of Old Stratford” who presided at the Great Leet or criminal court. Anne’s father, Richard Hathaway, had inherited from him the farm and the property that in subsequent years became known as “Anne Hathaway’s Cottage.”
Richard Hathaway was also a farmer and substantial householder. By his first wife, who came from Temple Grafton, he had three children one of whom was Anne herself. He married again, and had further children. He was eventually “honestly buried” in the manner of the reformed faith, but he named a prominent recusant as an executor of his will; so the religious affiliations of the family, like those of so many other households in the neighbourhood, may have been mixed and ambiguous.
Anne Hathaway was the eldest daughter of the house and as such incurred a fair number of household duties, chief among them the care of her younger siblings. As the daughter of a farming family, too, she learned how to bake bread, to salt meat, to churn butter and to brew ale. In the yard outside the house were poultry and cows, pigs and horses to be fed and reared. Far from being a mésalliance or forced marriage, as some have suggested, the partnership of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway could have been an eminently sensible arrangement. He may even have exercised a good deal of caution, or common sense, in his choice of lifelong partner. This was thoroughly in keeping with his practical and business-like approach to all the affairs of the world.
She was eight years his senior—in the year of their marriage he was eighteen and she was twenty-six—but, in a period of shorter life expectancy, the disparity in age would have seemed greater then than now. It was an unusual arrangement, since in the sixteenth century it was customary for the man to marry a younger woman. The difference in age has of course aroused much speculation, primarily concerned with the wiles of an older female in coaxing an inexperienced young man into bed and eventual marriage. Yet it might, on the contrary, suggest sexual self-confidence on Shakespeare’s part. In any case the suspicion does less than justice to Shakespeare’s judgement and intelligence which, even at the age of eighteen, might have been acute. It is also an insult to Anne Hathaway who, like many of the silent wives of famous men, has endured much obloquy. Those biographers who enjoy dramatic speculation, for example, have noted that Shakespeare’s history plays harbour many manipulative older women, whose beauty seems mysteriously to wither on the vine. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream (138) Hermia cries out, “O spight! too olde to be ingag’d to young” and the Duke in Twelfth Night offers some advice—“Let still the woman take /An elder then her selfe”—and goes on to caution (1896-9):
Then let thy Loue be yonger then thy selfe,
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent;
For women are as Roses, whose faire flowre
Being once displaid, doth fall that verie howre.
But it is probably best to refrain from maladroit interpretation. In the Duke, Shakespeare has created a notorious sentimentalist. It could just as well be argued that, because the females in Shakespeare’s drama are literate, so must have been the women around him.
It is not known whether Anne Hathaway could read or write. There was no real opportunity which would have enabled her to learn how to do so and, in any case, 90 per cent of the female population of England were illiterate at that time. It has often been supposed that Shakespeare’s two daughters were also illiterate, and so we are faced with the irony of the greatest dramatist in the history of the world surrounded by women who could not read a word he wrote.
There is a sonnet placed as the 145th in Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence, which seems oddly situated and out of context. The last two lines suggest that it was in fact composed for Anne Hathaway and has some claim to being the first extant work of William Shakespeare—
“I hate” from “hate” away she threw,
And saued my life, saying “not you.”
Hate away is equal to Hathaway. The entire poem is a conventional and youthful paean to a kind and loving mistress, with “lips that Loues owne hand did make.” It is interesting as a token of Shakespeare’s early ambitions as a poet. He must have borrowed the sonnet form from a contemporary collection such as Tottel’s Miscellany, where the work of Wyatt and Surrey was to be found, or perhaps from the first published sonnet sequence in English, Thomas Watson’s Hekatompathia, which was published in the summer of 1582. It may have proved the spur to Shakespeare’s invention. He reached for the form naturally and instinctively; this early poem is fluent and forceful, a harbinger of his triumphant mastery of that genre.
It is to be hoped that “Loues owne hand” had something to do with the match, since Anne Hathaway was four months pregnant by the time of their marriage day. It was not unusual in this period for couples to cohabit before their wedding. Their Stratford neighbours, George Badger and Alice Court, Robert Young and Margery Field, had a similar arrangement. It was also customary for both parties to make a “troth-plight,” a verbal contract of marriage before witnesses which was also known as “hand-fasting” or “making sure.” So Alice Shaw of Warwickshire declared to William Holder, of the same county, that “I do confesse that I am your wief and have forsaken all my frendes for your sake and I hope you will use me well.”1 The man took the woman’s hand, and repeated the same pledge. Only after such a “troth-plight” could the woman give up her virginity. The marriage ceremony came later. It was a code of honour, marked out by both social and sexual discipline; there were of course different forms of “making sure,” varying from a private pledge to a ceremony with a prayer book. But its ubiquity can be measured in the fact that between 20 and 30 per cent of all brides bore children within the first eight months of marriage.
This informal contract remained firmly in Shakespeare’s consciousness. There are many allusions to it in his plays, ranging from Claudio’s plea in Measure for Measure that “she is fast my wife” to Olivia’s demand to Sebastian in Twelfth Night that he “Plight me the full assurance of your faith.” It would also have affected the Elizabethan understanding of dramatic action. When Troilus and Cressida plight themselves, Pandarus exclaims: “Go to a bargaine made, seale it, seale it ile bee the witnes here I hold your hand, here my Cozens” (1768-70). He is effectively sealing a “hand-fasting,” thus rendering Cressida’s subsequent unfaithfulness more execrable. When Orlando declares to Rosalind, in the guise of Ganymede, “I take thee Rosalind for wife” he is committing himself much further and more deeply than he supposes. It is a social custom, now long since discarded and forgotten, but it had profound implications for Shakespeare and for Shakespeare’s audience.
There was also a custom of exchanging rings during this informal ceremony (other pre-contract gifts included a bent sixpence and a pair of gloves), a charming ritual which anticipates a no less charming “find” in the early nineteenth century. In 1810 the wife of a Stratford labourer was working in a field, next to the churchyard, when she found a heavily encrusted ring. It was of gold and, when it was cleaned, it was discovered to bear the initials “W S” separated by a lover’s knot. The dating is that of the sixteenth century, and a local antiquarian believed that “no other Stratfordian of that period [was] so likely to own such a ring as Shakespeare.”2 There is one other intriguing connection. Shakespeare may have owned a seal-ring, but his will has no seal. The phrase “in witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal” has been altered; the word “seal” has been struck out, as if Shakespeare had lost his ring before signing the document.
The “cottage” in which William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway are popularly supposed to have courted was in fact a relatively large farmhouse constructed of timber and of wattle-and-daub (hazel twigs and dried mud can still be seen embedded within the walls) with rooms at different levels, low ceilings and uneven floors. Its timber construction means that it is a box of noise, so courtship would have been untenable as well as uncomfortable. From the upstairs bedchambers you can hear everything in the rooms below and, through the cracks in the floorboards, see everything as well. It was fortunate that there were meadows, and a forest, nearby. He may not have visited her there in the crucial period, in any case, since after the death of her father in 1581 she went to live with her mother’s family in the nearby village of Temple Grafton. She may have wished to remove herself from the company of her stepmother and four surviving children. The absence of paternal watchfulness, however, may have hastened the fruition of the match.
There is one odd incident concerning the wider family in this year of betrothal and marriage. In September 1582, John Shakespeare attended a council meeting in the guildhall in order to vote for his friend, John Sadler, as mayor of Stratford. Sadler declined to serve, on the grounds of ill-health (he died six months later), but John Shakespeare’s reappearance after an absence of almost six years is somewhat puzzling. It may have been a sudden decision, or a desire to be seen to support an old friend, but it may conceivably be connected with his other appearance in the public records at this time. Three months previously he had entered a petition against four men—Ralph Cawdrey the butcher among them—“for fear of death and mutilation of his limbs.” This was a ritual formula and need not be taken as token of a literal threat to John Shakespeare’s life, but the circumstances are obscure. It could not have been a partisan religious quarrel, since Cawdrey himself was a staunch Catholic. It is more likely to have been some kind of trade or financial dispute. One of the other men, against whom John Shakespeare complained, was a local dyer. By attending the council meeting John Shakespeare may have hoped to revive something of his old authority.
The first child of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway was probably conceived in the last two weeks of September, for at the end of November the young man or Anne Hathaway’s guardians hastened to Worcester in order to obtain a special marriage licence. Anne Hathaway had been left £6 13s 4d by her father, equivalent to a blacksmith’s or a butcher’s annual wage and enough for her dowry. The licence permitted marriage after a single publication of the banns, and did not specify any particular parish in which the ceremony must take place. The haste was necessary since the period of Advent was at hand, in which marriages were very largely restricted. Another period of prohibition began on 27 January and lasted until 7 April. It was possible, then, that their child might be born when its parents were not formally wedded. Anne’s interesting condition may have become evident, and neither she nor her guardians may have wished her child to be illegitimate.
So on 27 November 1582, William Shakespeare or Anne’s representatives rode to Worcester, and visited the consistory court at the western end of the south aisle of the cathedral there. The fee for this special licence, allowing for a marriage in haste or in privacy, varied from 5 to 7 shillings. Anne Hathaway’s home was given as Temple Grafton, but by some strange slip of the pen she was given the surname of Whateley. So the licence reads as “inter Willelmum Shaxpere et Annam whateley de Temple Grafton.” There has been some unnecessary speculation about an unknown young woman named Anne Whateley, but it is likely that the clerk had simply misheard or misread the name; there was a Whateley appearing at the court on the same day, so the official’s confusion is understandable. Since Shakespeare himself was under the age of twenty-one, he was obliged to swear that his father had given consent to the match. On the following day two of Anne Hathaway’s neighbours in Shottery, both farmers, Fulke Sandells and John Richardson, stood surety of £40 in the event of some “lawful impediment” being later discovered. It is not surprising that John Shakespeare did not sign this surety, since he was a known recusant intent upon concealing his wealth and property.
The banns were published on Friday 30 November, and the marriage took place on that or the following day. The most likely venue for the ceremony was Anne Hathaway’s parish church at Temple Grafton, some five miles west from Stratford. The absence of parish records makes it clear that it was not performed in Stratford, where the vicar was strongly attached to the reformed faith. Some scholars place it at Luddington, a village three miles from Temple Grafton where other relatives of Anne Hathaway lived. One old resident claimed to have seen the parish record of the marriage, but the curate’s housekeeper is supposed to have burnt that register subsequently on a cold day in order “to boil her kettle.”3 This does not, on the face of it, seem very likely. Others claim the site of the wedding to be St. Martin’s Church, in Worcester, where the pages of the parish register for the marriages of 1582 have been carefully cut out.
The church of Temple Grafton, however, was convenient in more ways than one. The priest here was a remnant of Mary’s Catholic reign, an old man who according to an official report was “unsound in religion” and who could “neither preach nor read well.” But he was well versed in the practice of hawking and could cure those birds “who were hurt or diseased: for which purpose many do usual repair to him.”4
It is not known whether an approximation to the Catholic marriage service took place in the ancient church of Temple Grafton. Given the affinities of the priest, however, this seems likely. If so, the ceremony was conducted in Latin and took place between the canonical hours of eight and twelve in the morning. The favoured day was Sunday. It began at the church porch, where the banns were recited three times. Anne Hathaway’s dower, of £6 13s 4d, was then displayed and exchanged. She was no doubt “given” by Fulke Sandells or John Richardson who had stood surety in Worcester. The woman stood on the left side of the groom, in token of Eve’s miraculous delivery from Adam’s left rib; they held hands as a symbol of their betrothal. In the church porch the priest blessed the ring with holy water; the bridegroom then took the ring and placed it in turn on the thumb and first three fingers of the bride’s left hand with the words “In nomine Patris, in nomine Filii, in nomine Spiritus Sancti, Amen.” He left it on this fourth finger, since the vein in that finger was supposed to run directly to the heart. The couple were then invited into the church, where they knelt together in order to partake in the nuptial Mass and blessing; they wore linen cloths or “care cloths” upon their heads to protect them from demons. It was also customary for the bride to carry a knife or dagger suspended from her girdle, the reasons for which are uncertain. (Juliet possesses a dagger, with which she stabs herself.) The bride’s hair was unbraided, hanging loose about her shoulders. After the Mass it was customary for a festive procession to return from the church to the house where a wedding feast, or “bride-ale,” was prepared. The newly joined couple might then receive gifts of silver, or money, or food. The guests were in turn often given presents of gloves—since Shakespeare’s father was a glove-maker, there was no great difficulty in procurement. So we leave them on this apparently auspicious day.