England’s greatest poet and playwright, William Shakespeare, was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. He was the eldest son and third child of John Shakespeare, a tradesman and alderman of Stratford. William was baptized on April 26, 1564, and likely received his education at Stratford Grammar School. Little is known about his life until he turned eighteen. He did not attend university, and his contemporary and fellow dramatist, Ben Johnson, later spoke disparagingly of his limited knowledge of Latin and Greek in the eulogy prefaced to the First Folio. However, the grammar school curriculum would have provided him with a formidable linguistic and literary education.
Although, in 1575, when he was eleven, there was a great plague in the country, and Queen Elizabeth journeyed out of London to avoid its consequences. She stayed for several days at Kenilworth Castle near Stratford, enjoying festivities arranged by her host, Lord Leicester. It is probable these events may have made a strong impact on the mind of young William. At the age of eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior. Five years later, he left for London. William worked at the Globe Theatre and appeared in many small parts. He first appeared in public as a poet in 1593 with his Venus and Adonis and the following year with The Rape of Lucrece.
He became joint proprietor of The Globe and also had an interest in the Blackfriars Theatre. The playwriting commenced in 1595 and of the 38 plays that comprise the Shakespeare Cannon, 36 were published in the 1st Folio of 1623, of which 18 had been published in his lifetime in what are termed the Quarto publications. Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Comedy of Errors appear to be among the earliest, being followed by The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Romeo and Juliet. Then followed Henry VI, Richard III, Richard II, Titus Andronicus, The Taming of the Shrew, King John, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, All’s Well that Ends Well, Henry IV, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry V, Much Ado about Nothing, As you like it, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, Measure for Measure, Macbeth, King Lear, Timon of Athens, Pericles, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, A Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. When he retired from writing in 1611, he returned to Stratford to live in a house which he had built for his family. His only son, Hamnet, died when still a child.
He also lost a daughter, Judith (twin to Hamnet). However, his third child, Susanna, married a Stratford doctor named John Hall. Their home, Hall’s Croft, is today preserved as one of the Shakespeare Properties and administered by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. In 1616, Shakespeare was buried in the Church of the Holy Trinity, the same church where he was baptized in 1564. Tradition has it that he died after an evening of drinking with some of his theater friends. His gravestone bears the words: Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear, to dig the dust enclosed here. Blest be the man that spares these stones, and curst be he that moves my bones.” In his will, Shakespeare left his wife, the former Anne Hathaway, his second-best bed.
We cannot be sure of the reason for this. It may have been the marital bed, the best bed being reserved for guests. It may suggest that they had a not altogether happy marriage which nevertheless produced three children: Susanna, born on May 26th, 1583, and twins Hamnet and Judith, born on February 2nd, 1585. These entries appear in the Holy Trinity Register.
There is no direct evidence of William Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway, although most historians accept that an entry in the Bishop’s Register at Worcester in November 1582, regarding the issue of a marriage license to William Shakespeare and Anne Whateley of Temple Grafton, does not refer to the famous bard. However, the following day, a guarantee of ?40 was undertaken in Stratford by two yeomen of the town against the prevention of the legal marriage of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway on only one reading of the banns. In 1582, ?40 was a considerable sum of money, and one cannot believe that the simple fact of Anne being three months pregnant would warrant it. No marriage of an Anne Whateley has ever been traced, neither has the marriage of Anne Hathaway, but lack of record does not mean that it did not happen.
