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Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s bride—The hasty marriage—Shakespeare’s wild young days—He leaves for London—Grendon Underwood.

William Shakespeare was but eighteen and a half years of age when he married. Legally, he was an “infant.” His wife was by almost eight years his senior, but if we agree with Bacon’s saying, that a man finds himself ten years older the day after his marriage, the disparity became at once more than rectified. She was one Anne, or Agnes, Hathaway; her father, Richard, being a farmer of Shottery. The Hathaways were numerous in this district, there being at that time no fewer than three families of the name in Shottery and others in Stratford. Anne had no fewer than eight brothers and sisters, all of whom, except two, are mentioned in their father’s will. Richard, who describes himself in his will as “husbandman,” executed that document on September 1st, 1581, and died probably in the June following, for his will was proved in London on July 9th, 1582. Storms of rival theories have raged around the mystery surrounding this marriage, of which the register does not exist. It is claimed that Shakespeare was married at Temple Grafton, Luddington, Billesley, and elsewhere, but no shadow of evidence can be adduced for any of these places. All we know is that on November 28th, 1582, Fulke Sandells and John Richardson, farmers, of Stratford, who had been respectively one of the “supervisors” and one of the witnesses of Richard Hathaway’s will, went to Worcester and there entered into a “Bond in £40 against Impediments, to defend and save harmless the right reverend father in God, John, Lord Bushop of Worcester” from any complaint or process that might by any possibility arise out of his licensing the marriage with only once asking the banns. These two bondsmen declared that “William Shagspere, one thone partie and Anne Hathaway of Stratford” (Shottery was and is a hamlet in the parish of Stratford-on-Avon) “in the dioces of Worcester, maiden, may lawfully solemnize marriage together.” This document, discovered in the Worcester Registry in 1836, is sufficiently clear and explicit; but a complication is introduced by a license issued the day before by the Bishop for a marriage “inter Wm. Shaxpere et Anna Whateley de Temple Grafton.” It has been suggested that, as there were Whateleys living in the neighbourhood, and that as there were numerous Shakespeares also, with many Williams among them, this was quite another couple, while others contend that “Whateley” was a mistake of one of the clerks employed in the Bishop’s registry, and that the name of Temple Grafton as “place of residence” of the bride was a further mistake, that being the place intended for the ceremony. In any case, the point is of minor interest for the registers of Temple Grafton do not go back to that date, and the fabric of the church itself is quite new. We do not know, therefore, where Shakespeare was married, nor when; and can but assume that the wedding took place shortly after the bond was signed.

Six months later, Shakespeare’s eldest daughter was born, for we see in the register of baptisms in Holy Trinity church, Stratford, the entry:—

“1583, May 26th, Susanna, daughter to William Shakespere.”

The reason for the hurried visit of the two farmers to Worcester, to hasten on the marriage with but one “asking” in church now becomes evident. They were friends of the late Richard Hathaway, and were determined that young Shakespeare should not get out of marrying the girl he had—wronged, shall we say? Well, no. There have been many moralists excessively shocked at this pre-nuptial intimacy, and they assert that Shakespeare seduced Anne Hathaway.

But young men of just over eighteen years of age do not, I think, beguile young women nearly eight years older. Anne probably seduced him; for woman is more frequently the huntress and the chooser, and man is a very helpless creature before her wiles.

The extravagances of the Baconians may well be illustrated here, for although the subject of Shakespeare’s marriage has no bearing upon the famous cryptogram and the authorship of the plays, Donnelly spreads himself generously all over Shakespeare’s life, and lightheartedly settles for us the mystery of the bond re the marriage of Anne Hathaway and the license to marry Anne Whateley by suggesting that both names are correct and refer to the same persons. He says Anne Hathaway married a Whateley and that it was as a widow she married William Shakespeare, her maiden name being given in the bond by mistake! The sheer absurdity of this is obvious when we consider that if Mr. Donnelly is right, then the bondsmen made the yet grosser error of describing the widow as a “maiden.” She was actually at that time neither wife, maid nor widow.

Again, Richard Hathaway the father made his will in September 1581, leaving (inter alia) a bequest to Anne “to be paide unto her at the daie of her marriage.” She was a single young woman then, and yet according to the Donnellian view she was already, fifteen months later, a widow, again about to be married.

Apologists for this hasty marriage, jealous for the reputation of Shakespeare, are keen to find an excuse in the supposition that he was a Roman Catholic and that he was already married secretly, probably in the room in the roof of Shottery Manor House, which is supposed to have been used at this period as a place of secret worship. But there is no basis for forming any theory as to Shakespeare’s religious convictions. A yet more favourite assumption is that Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway went through the ceremony of “hand-fasting,” a formal betrothal which, although not a complete marriage and not carrying with it the privileges of marriage was a bar to either of the parties marrying another. Jack was thus made sure of his Jill; and, perhaps even more important, Jill was certain of her Jack. But if this ceremony had taken place, there would have been no necessity for that hasty journey of those two friends of the Hathaways to Worcester.

Nothing is known of the attitude of Shakespeare’s parents towards the marriage, nor has any one ever suggested how he supported himself, his wife and family in the years before he left Stratford for London. At the close of January 1585, his twin son and daughter, Hamnet and Judith were born, and they were baptized at Stratford church on February 2nd. Whether he assisted his father in his business of glover, or helped on his farm, or whether he became assistant master at the Grammar School, as sometimes suggested, is mere matter for speculation. John Aubrey, picking up gossip at Stratford, writes—

“Mr. William Shakespear was borne at Stratford upon Avon in the county of Warwick. His father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours, that when he was a boy he exercised his father’s trade, but when he kill’d a calfe he would doe it in a high style, and make a speech.”

That may or may not be true, but it looks as though William had, about this impressionable age, become stage-struck. He had had numerous opportunities of seeing the players, for his father had in his more prosperous days been a patron of the strolling companies, both as a private individual and as a member of the town council. In 1569 two such troupes, who called themselves the “Queen’s servants,” and “servants of the Earl of Warwick,” gave performances before the corporation and were paid out of the public monies; a forecast of the municipal theatre! And no doubt John Shakespeare, together with many other Stratford people, went over to Kenilworth during the magnificent pageants given there by Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in 1575, in honour of Queen Elizabeth; taking with him his little boy, then eleven years of age. Thus would the foundations of an ambition be laid.

At this time, 1585, John Shakespeare’s affairs, from whatever cause, were under a cloud. They had been declining since 1578, when he had been obliged to mortgage some of the property that had been his wife’s, and now he was deprived of his alderman’s gown. William about this time, whether in 1585 or 1587 is uncertain, left Stratford for London, whither some of his boyhood’s friends had already preceded him, among them Richard Field.

Stratford at this time was certainly no place for William, if he wished to emulate Dr. Samuel Smiles’ worthies and conform to the gospel of getting on in the world, the most popular gospel ever preached. In 1587, Nicholas Lane, one of his father’s creditors, sought to distrain upon John Shakespeare’s goods, but the sheriff’s officers returned the doleful tale of “no effects,” and so he had his trouble for nothing. It is, however, curious that even when reduced to his last straits, John Shakespeare never sold his property, the house in which he lived and carried on business, in Henley Street.

In addition to the discredit attaching to being thus one of the Shakespeares who had come down in the world, William, according to the very old, strong and persistent tradition, was at this time showing a very rackety disposition. He consorted with the wilder young men of the town and went on drinking bouts with them. Sometimes, with them, he raided the neighbouring parks and killed the deer and poached other game; and the old tradition hints that on these occasions the others made good their escape and Shakespeare was generally caught. Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, who was the chief sufferer from the exploits of these youths, is said to have had Shakespeare whipped, imprisoned and fined for his part in them.

To London, therefore, William Shakespeare made his way. With what credentials, if any, did he go? He had friends in London, among them Richard Field, a schoolfellow, who in 1579 had gone thither, to become apprentice to a printer, and in 1587, about this time when Shakespeare left home, had set up in business for himself and become a member of the Stationers’ Company. Shakespeare may quite reasonably have sought his help or advice; and certainly Field six years later published Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, the foremost literary and dramatic patron of the age, from whose friendship and powerful aid all intellectual aspirants hoped much.

It is quite likely that Shakespeare left Stratford with a company of travelling actors, and reaching town with them, gradually drifted into regular employment at one of the only two London theatres that then existed, “The Theatre” and the “Curtain” both in Shoreditch.

It is of some interest to speculate upon the manner in which Shakespeare journeyed to London, and the way he went. Was he obliged to walk it, in the traditional manner of the poor countryman seeking his fortune in the great metropolis? Or did he make the journey by the carrier’s cart? There are two principal roads by which he may have gone; by Newbold-on-Stour, Long Compton, Chapel House, and Woodstock to Oxford, Beaconsfield and through High Wycombe and Uxbridge, 95 miles; or he might have chosen to go by Ettington, Pillerton Priors, Sunrising Hill, Wroxton and Banbury, through Aynho, Bicester, Aylesbury, Tring and Watford to London, 92¾ miles. Such an one as he would probably first go to London by way of Oxford, for, like Thomas Hardy’s “Jude the Obscure,” he would doubtless think it “a city of light.” There are traditions at Oxford of Shakespeare’s staying at the “Crown” inn in the Cornmarket in after years. Sometimes he would doubtless go by the Banbury and Bicester route: and along it, at the village of Grendon Underwood, to the left of the road between Bicester and Aylesbury, as you journey towards London, there still linger very precise traditions of Shakespeare having stayed at what was formerly the “Old Ship” inn.

Grendon Underwood, or “under Bernwode” as it is styled in old records, appears in an old rhyme as—

“The dirtiest town that ever stood,”

but it was never a town, and, whatever may once have been its condition, it is no longer dirty.

It is not at first sight easily to be understood why Shakespeare, or any other traveller of that age journeying the long straight stretch of the old Roman road, the Akeman Street, between Bicester and Aylesbury, should want to go a mile and a quarter out of his way for the purpose of visiting this place, but that they did so is sufficiently proved by the comparative importance of the house that was until about a hundred and twelve years ago the “Old Ship” and is now known as “Shakespeare Farm.” It is clearly too large ever to have been built for an ordinary village inn, and is said to have formerly been even larger. If, however, we refer to old maps of the district, it will he found that, for some unexplained reason, the ancient forthright Roman road had gone out of use, and that instead of proceeding direct, along the Akeman Street, the wayfarers of old went a circuitous course, through Grendon Underwood. When this deviation took place does not appear; but it was obviously one of long standing. The first available map showing the roads of the district is that by Emanuel Bowen, 1756, in which the Akeman Street is not shown; the only road given being that which winds through Grendon. The next map to be issued—that by Thomas Jeffreys, 1788—gives the Akeman Street, running direct, between point and point, and avoiding Grendon, as it does now. That was the great era of turnpike-acts, providing for the repair and restoration of old roads, and the making of new; and this was one of the many highways then restored. The “Old Ship” inn, at Grendon Underwood, at which Shakespeare and many generations of travellers had halted, at once declined with the making of the direct road, and soon retired into private life.

The Shakespeare tradition comes down to us through John Aubrey, who, writing in 1680, says—

“The humour of the constable, in Midsomer-night’s Dreame, [21] he happened to take at Grendon, in Bucks—I thinke it was Midsomer night that he happened to lye there—which is the roade from London to Stratford, and there was living that constable about 1642, when I first came to Oxon.”