SIBLINGS, CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a market town of around 1,500 residents about 160 kilometres northwest of London. Because John Shakespeare owned one house on Greenhill Street and two houses on Henley Street, the exact location of William's birth cannot be known for certain. The town was a centre for the slaughter, marketing, and distribution of sheep, as well as for hide tanning and wool trading. The date of his birth is unknown, but his baptismal record was dated April 26, 1564. This is the first official record of Shakespeare, as birth certificates were not issued at the time of Queen Elizabeth. Because baptisms were normally performed within a few days of birth it is highly likely that Shakespeare was born in April 1564, although the long-standing tradition that he was born on April 23 has no historical basis.
No doubt Shakespeare's true birthday will remain a mystery forever. But the assumption that the famous playwright was born on the same day of the month that he died lends an exciting esoteric highlight to the otherwise mundane details of Shakespeare's life.
William was indeed lucky to survive to adulthood in sixteenth-century England. Waves of the plague swept across the countryside, and pestilence ravaged Stratford during the hot summer months. Mary and John Shakespeare became parents for the first time in September of 1558, when their daughter Joan was born. Nothing is known of Joan Shakespeare except for the fact that she was baptized in Stratford on September 15, and succumbed to the plague shortly after.
Their second child, Margaret, was born in 1562 and was baptized on December 2. She died one year later. The Shakespeares' fourth child, Gilbert, was baptized on October 13, 1566, at Holy Trinity. Records show that Gilbert Shakespeare survived the plague and reached adulthood, becoming a haberdasher, working in London as of 1597, and spending much of his time back in Stratford. Gilbert Shakespeare seems to have had a long and successful career as a tradesman, and he died a bachelor in Stratford on February 3, 1612.
In 1569, John and Mary gave birth to another girl, and named her after her first born sister, Joan. Joan Shakespeare lived to be seventy-seven years old -- outliving William and all her other siblings by decades. Joan married William Hart the hatter and had four children but two of them died in childhood. Her son William Hart followed in his famous uncle's footsteps and became an actor, performing with the King's Men in the mid-1630s. His most noted role was that of Falstaff.
The Shakespeares' fourth daughter, Anne, was born in 1571, when William was seven years old. Unfortunately, tragedy befell the family yet again when Anne died at the age of eight. She was buried on April 4, 1579.
In 1574, Mary and John had another boy named Richard. Richard was baptized on March 11 of that year, and nothing else is known about him, except for the fact that he died, unmarried, and was buried on February 4, 1613 -- a year and a day after the death of Gilbert Shakespeare.
Mary gave birth to one more child in 1580. They christened him on May 3 and named him Edmund. Edmund was eager to follow William into the acting profession, and when he was old enough he joined William in London to embark on a career as a "player." Edmund did not make a great reputation for himself as an actor and died in 1607 -- not yet thirty years old. He was buried in St. Saviour's Church, in Southwark, on December 31 of that year. His funeral was costly and magnificent, with tolling bells heard across the Thames. It is most likely that William planned the funeral for his younger brother because he would have been the only Shakespeare wealthy enough to afford such an expensive tribute to Edmund.
Although no attendance records for the period survive, most historians agree that Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School in Stratford, a free school chartered in 1553, about a quarter-mile from his home. The grammar curriculum during the Elizabethan era, standardised by royal decree throughout England, provided an intensive education in Latin grammar based upon Latin classical authors.
Scholars, basing their argument on a rumour told more than a century after the fact, accept that Shakespeare was removed from school around age thirteen because of his father's financial and social difficulties, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that he had not acquired a firm grasp of both English and Latin and that he had continued his studies elsewhere.
MARRIAGE AND THE LOST YEARS
On 28 November 1582 at Temple Grafton near Stratford, the 18-year-old Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, who was 26. Two neighbours of Hathaway, Fulk Sandalls and John Richardson, posted bond ensuring that no legal impediments existed to the union.
However, and this is where the confusion began, Recordings in the Episcopal register at Worcester on the dates of both November 27 and 28, 1582, reveal that Shakespeare desired to marry a young girl named Anne. There are two different documents regarding this matter, and their contents have raised a debate over just whom Shakespeare first intended to wed. Were there two Anne’s? Was Shakespeare in love with one but in lust with the other? Was Shakespeare ready to join in matrimony with the Anne of his dreams only to have an attack of conscience and marry the Anne with whom he had carnal relations.
To discuss the controversy properly we should look at the documents in question. The first entry, translate from Latin, in the register is the following record of the issue of a marriage license to one William Shakespeare:
“April 1582 ... November 27 ... the day of the month. Also the same day the above arisen between the granting of permission for Anne Whateley of Temple Grafton and Shaxpere Wm.”
The next entry in the Episcopal register records the marriage bond granted to one William Shakespeare the day right after:
“… November 28…The condition of this obligation is such that if hereafter there shall not appear any lawful let or impediment by reason of any precontract, consanguinity, affinity or by any other lawful means whatsoever, but that William Shagspere on the one party and Anne Hathwey of Stratford in the diocese of Worcester, maiden, may lawfully solemnize matrimony together, and in the same afterwards remain and continue like man and wife according unto the laws in that behalf provided...”
Here we may note that, as mentioned previously, the name Shakespeare varied in spellings during the Elizabethan era and these two documents were no exception. Even so, the name mentioned in both texts is Shakespeare nonetheless.
So what is the meaning of these two documents? Well, there are three possible conclusions that can be drawn to explain this controversy.
The first conclusion is that the Anne Whateley in the first record and the Anne Hathwey in the second record is the same woman. Some scholars believe that the name Whateley was substituted accidentally for Hathwey into the register by the careless clerk. This problem is not impossible and in fact occurred very frequently in notes and documents from the 18th Century backwards.
The second possibility is that the Wm Shaxpere and the Annam Whateley who wished to marry in Temple Grafton were two different people entirely from the Wm Shagspere and Anne Hathwey who were married in Stratford. This argument relies on the assumption that there was a relative of Shakespeare's living in Temple Grafton, or a man unrelated but sharing Shakespeare's name and that there is no trace of this relative after the issue of his marriage license. However, this is extremely unlikely.
Lastly, there’s the conclusion that the woman Shakespeare loved and the woman Shakespeare finally married were two different Anne’s. In “Shakespeare”, Anthony Burgess constructs a vivid scenario to this effect:
“Sent on errands to Temple Grafton, William could have fallen for a comely daughter, sweet as May and shy as a fawn. He was eighteen and highly susceptible. Knowing something about girls, he would know that this was the real thing. Something, perhaps, quite different from what he felt about Mistress Hathaway of Shottery. But why, attempting to marry Anne Whateley, had he put himself in the position of having to marry the other Anne? I suggest that, to use the crude but convenient properties of the old women's-magazine morality-stories, he was exercised by love for the one and lust for the other. I find it convenient to imagine that he knew Anne Hathaway carnally, for the first time, in the spring of 1582...”
Whichever argument one chooses to accept, it is fact that Shakespeare, a minor at the time, was recorded legally and widely known to be married to Anne Hathaway, who was twenty-six and already several months pregnant. Anne was the eldest daughter, and one of the seven children of Richard Hathaway, a twice-married farmer in Shottery.
William and Anne’s first child was Susanna, christened on May 26th, 1583, and twins arrived in January, 1585. They were baptized on February 2 of that year and named after two very close friends of William -- the baker Hamnet Sadler and his wife, Judith. The Sadlers became the godparents of the twins and, in 1598, they, in turn, named their own son William. Not much information is known about the life of Anne and her children after this date, except for the tragic fact that Hamnet Shakespeare died of an unknown cause on August 11, 1596, at the age of eleven. By this time Shakespeare had long since moved to London to realize his dreams on the English stage and we do not know if he was present at Hamnet's funeral in Stratford. We can only imagine how deeply the loss of his only son touched the sensitive poet, but his sorrow is undeniably reflected in his later works.
After the birth of the twins, save for being party to a law suit to recover part of his mother's estate which had been mortgaged and lost by default, Shakespeare left no historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatrical scene. Indeed, the seven-year period between 1585 and 1592 is known as Shakespeare's "lost years" because no evidence has survived to show exactly where he was or why he left Stratford for London. Several theories have been put forth to account for his life during this time, and a number of stories are given by his earliest biographers, including that Shakespeare fled Stratford to avoid life sentence after he got in trouble for poaching deer from local squire Thomas Lucy. Although this surely is a fictitious incident, there exist a few verses of the humorous ballad mocking Lucy that have been connected to Shakespeare.
“Sir Thomas was so covetous
To covet so much deer
When horns enough upon his head
Most plainly did appear
Had not his worship one deer left?
What then? He had a wife
Took pains enough to find him horns
Should last him during life.”