Shakespeare's Wife (2 page)

It is hard to believe that this ambitious young dreamer [Shakespeare], already aware that there was a world elsewhere, way beyond rural Warwickshire, was so enamoured of a homely wench eight years his senior…as to want to marry her. Or did the local farmer's 26-year-old daughter, only a month after her father's
death, set out to catch herself a much younger husband by seducing him?
¹⁷

Stephen Greenblatt is not a novelist or a journalist but a renaissance scholar, yet even he follows the tradition of Guizot who believed that Shakespeare developed a positive aversion to his wife:
¹⁸

When he thought of the afterlife, the last thing he wanted was to be mingled with the woman he married. Perhaps he simply feared that his bones would be dug up and thrown in the nearby charnel house—he seems to have regarded that fate with horror—but he may have feared still more that one day his grave would be opened to let in the body of Anne Shakespeare.
¹⁹

Greenblatt labours the point, for which he has no better evidence than the doggerel quatrain on what purports to be Shakespeare's gravestone. Ann fares no better at the hands of women: according to Diana Price,…‘one might speculate that the Hathaways got wind of the Shagspere—Whateley licence, and Anne Hathaway's father escorted Mr. Shagspere by pitchfork to the altar'.
²⁰

One might, but one probably should not. The film
Shakespeare in Love
presents Shakespeare as psychologically damaged by his early marriage:

 

Dr Moth: You have a wife and children?

Will: Ay…I was a lad of eighteen, Anne Hathaway was a woman half as old again…

Dr Moth: And…your marriage bed?

Will: Four years and a hundred miles away in Stratford. A cold bed too since the twins were born. Banishment was a blessing.

Dr Moth: So now you are free to love.

Will: Yet cannot love nor write it.
²¹

 

In his discussion of the film in
Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis
(2001) Philip Armstrong continues the cod psychoanalysis:

…half a mother and half a wife, no longer a wife since a mother two times over, Anne Hathaway (never seen in the film) provides the figure whose union with and simultaneous distance from her husband/son embodies a version of that Oedipal drama diagnosed in Shakespeare, and identified as the source and theme of all his work, by Sigmund Freud, Otto Rank and Ernest Jones.
²²

The bewildered reader of the endless traducing of the invisible woman of Stratford might ask as Master Lusam does in
How to choose a good wife from a bad
:

 

But on what root grows this high branch of hate?

Is not she loyal, constant, loving, chaste,

Obedient, apt to please, loth to displease,

Careful to live, chary of her good name,

And jealous of your reputation?

Is not she virtuous, wise, religious?
²³

 

All biographies of Shakespeare are houses built of straw, but there is good straw and rotten straw, and some houses are better built than others. The evidence that is always construed to Ann Hathaway's disadvantage is capable of other, more fruitful interpretations, especially within the context of recent historiography.

There is one resounding exception to the rule that the wives of great men must all have been unworthy. It does not apply to the wives of protestant reformers. The housewife superstars of reformed religion were women like Anna Zwingli, Katherine Melancthon, Idelette Calvin, Anna Bullinger and the amazing Wibrandis Rosenblatt. Käthe Luther is as silent as Ann Shakespeare; though she wrote many letters, only one survives. The marriage of the dowerless ex-nun Katherine von Bora and the ex-monk Martin Luther was arranged; they were handfasted privately and publicly blessed and feasted two weeks later, a pattern that can be discerned in the Warwickshire marriages of Ann Shakespeare's contemporaries. Käthe then took over the vast ex-monastery the Elektor Friedrich had given her husband, filled it with orphans, teachers, students, refugees and guests, brewed the ale they drank, grew the
vegetables and fruit they ate, raised and slaughtered her own animals and made their butter and cheese—and bore six children, and nursed her demanding husband through his many ailments physical and mental.

Ann Hathaway had no gossip magazines to keep her posted on the day-to-day lives of such role models. She found her role model where Käthe Luther found it, in her Bible.

She girdeth her loins with strength and strengtheneth her arms.

She seeth that her merchandise is good; her candle is not put out by night.

She putteth her hands to the wheel, and her hands handle the spindle.

(Proverbs, xxxi: 17–19)

 

CHAPTER ONE

introducing the extensive and reputable family of Hathaway alias Gardner of Shottery together with the curious fact that one of their kinsmen was a successful playwright for the Admiral's Men

Shakespeare's wife was identified as long ago as 1709, when Nicholas Rowe informed the readers of his edition of the plays: ‘His wife was the daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford.'
¹
There were many Hathaways within a day's ride of Stratford.Hathaways farmed in Bishopton and Shottery in Warwickshire, and in Horton, Bledington, Kingscote and surrounding districts in neighbouring Gloucestershire. There were also tradesmen called Hathaway in London, Banbury and Oxford, and one or two claimed the rank of gentleman. The Hathaway horde was so numerous in fact that the Shottery family into which Ann was born used a distinguishing alias. They were known mostly as Hathaway alias Gardner, and sometimes as just plain Hathaway or just plain Gardner.

In the medieval period such aliases served to distinguish between people with the same surname by specifying the region or town they came from or the trade they followed. Perhaps an earlier Hathaway had indeed been a gardener. Sometimes, when there was no male heir, a female descendant's husband might inherit on condition that he assumed her family name as an alias. The point of aliases is still being disputed by genealogists; although during Ann Shakespeare's lifetime the use of aliases became less consistent, it was a generation or two before it faded out altogether. We know that Ann's grandfather John Hathaway was already using the alias, so it is not something we are likely ever to unravel. For years nobody realised that the ‘Jone Gardner of Shottery' who was buried in Holy Trinity churchyard in
1599 was the same person they had already identified as Ann Shakespeare's stepmother.
²
In 1590 a ‘Thomas Greene alias Shakespeare' was buried in Holy Trinity Church Stratford, sending historians off on a wild-goose chase for a woman called Greene giving birth to an illegitimate Shakespeare, or vice versa, for the alias was occasionally used for
de facto
wives and to denote descent on the wrong side of the blanket.

The Christian name of the woman who married William Shakespeare in 1582 is as unstable as her surname. The only evidence that Richard Hathaway alias Gardner of Shottery had a daughter called Ann is a reference in his will to a daughter called Agnes. Scholars have demonstrated convincingly that in this period Agnes and Ann were simply treated as versions of the same name, pointing out dozens of examples where Agnes, pronounced ‘Annis', gradually becomes ‘Ann'. Richard Hathaway left a sheep to a great-niece he calls Agnes, though according to the parish record she was actually christened Annys; in 1600 she was buried as Ann. Theatre manager Philip Henslowe called his wife Agnes in his will but she was buried as Ann. Ann's brother Bartholomew called a daughter Annys, but she was buried as Ann. The curate William Gilbert alias Higgs who wrote Hathaway's will married Agnes Lyncian, but she was buried as Ann Gilbert.
³
This is not simply serendipitous. Agnes was the name of a fourth-century virgin martyr of the kind whose lurid and preposterous adventures are the stuff of
The Golden Legend
, justly ridiculed by protestant reformers.
⁴
Ann (or Hannah) was the solid biblical name of the Redeemer's grandmother. It is only to be expected that as protestantism gained hearts and minds Agnes would be silently driven out by Ann. We may accept that the child born Agnes Hathaway grew up to be Ann Shakespeare.

The brass plate set in the stone over her grave next to William's in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church Stratford tells us that Ann Shakespeare ‘departed this life on the sixth day of August 1623 being of the age of 67 years'. We have no evidence to corroborate this information. If the funeral plate is correct she was born in 1556, eight years before her husband. Engravers do make mistakes; the figures 1 and 7 are easily confounded in the calligraphy of 1623, but as all Ann's family was baptised at Holy Trinity, where the registers began to be
kept in obedience to the royal edict of 1558, we must conclude that she was born before the register began to be kept, and not afterwards. So 1556 it is.

Our best evidence that Agnes Hathaway alias Gardner of Shottery is the woman who married Will Shakespeare in 1582 is the will made in 1601 by her father's shepherd Thomas Whittington. Whittington is identified in Richard Hathaway's will: ‘I owe unto Thomas Whittington my shepherd four pounds six shillings eight pence.' Twenty years on, when he made his will in 1601, Whittington identified Ann as Shakespeare's wife:

Item I give and bequeath unto the poor people of Stratford forty shillings that is in the hand of Ann Shakespeare wife unto Mr William Shakespeare and is due debt unto me being paid to mine executor by the said William Shakespeare or his assigns according to the true meaning of this my will.
⁵

The Hathaway family house is supposed to be the one that is now known as Ann Hathaway's Cottage, though indeed it was never hers. This twelve-roomed farmhouse, known to the Hathaway family, if not to the bardolatrous public, as Hewlands Farm, is built on stone foundations, of timber-framed wattle-and-daub. The oldest part of the dwelling, thought to date from the late fourteenth century, consists of a hall of two twelve-foot bays reaching to the timbered roof, constructed around two oaken crucks that are pinned together to form the peak of the roof. Before the Great Rebuilding of the 1560s, all the members of the household would have slept in the hall, around an open fireplace from which the smoke escaped through an opening in the thatch.
⁶

Ann's paternal grandfather, John Hathaway alias Gardner, acquired the copyhold of Hewlands Farm in 1543 and it was probably he who modernised the house by installing stone fireplaces in each of the two bays of the hall, one eight feet across and the other eleven. The stone hearths were also the supports for stout oak bressemers supporting an upper floor which was divided into separate connecting rooms. On the ground floor, next to the hall, there was a kitchen with a huge domed bread-oven. A dairy or buttery has also survived.An east wing
was added to the main building later, probably by Ann's brother, Bartholomew Hathaway.

Shottery, to the west of Stratford, was then a cluster of farms worked by tenants of the manor; in 1595, we find the more substantial of them growing wheat, barley and peas on arable holdings of as much as 200 acres, but in 1581 the average holding would have been rather smaller and the farming more mixed. Hewlands Farm, which then stood right on the edge of the Forest of Arden, was typical in that it consisted of pasturage for sheep as well as cultivated yardland. Yardland or virgate was the name given to bundles of strips of land suitable for cultivation; the area of a yardland could be anything from twenty to forty-six acres. In 1595 Joan Hathaway's half-yardland amounted to no more than fifteen acres, so we should probably assume that Richard Hathaway farmed thirty acres or so. He may have held other lands which he had devised to his son and heir before his death, but, even if he didn't, his holding can be described as substantial, though he was a rung below a yeoman or freeholder.

The family had been well established in the district for generations. A John Hathaway appears as an archer on the muster rolls (lists of citizens eligible for military service) in 1536. He also served at different times as beadle, constable and affeeror (assessor of sums owed) to the parish. He was one of the fifteen citizens from whom were selected the Twelve Men of Old Stratford (one of several manors that comprised the borough of Stratford) who presided twice a year at the Great Leet, when tenancies were arranged and transferred, debts paid and rents adjusted. In the subsidy of 1549 John Hathaway's annual income in goods was valued at £10, one of the highest valuations. In 1556, as well as Hewlands, he held another house and yardland described as ‘late in the tenure of Thomas Perkyns', and another toft and yardland known as Hewlyns. John Hathaway probably died before his son Richard took possession of Hewlands Farm. Richard is first named in the records as assessed on an annual income of £4 in goods in 1566–7. Following what seems to have been a Hathaway family custom of partible inheritance, with the greater share going to the younger son, John Hathaway's estate had probably been split between Richard and his elder brother George Hathaway alias Gardner who was also farming in Shottery.

At the time of his death in 1581, Ann's father had eight living children. The eldest son was Bartholomew, who, like Ann, was born before the parish registers began to be kept. A boy was christened Richard on 4 January 1562; by the time his father made his will this child had apparently perished. Next came Catherine, who was christened at Holy Trinity on 22 October 1563. It is usually assumed that the mother of these children then died, but no wife of a Richard Hathaway or Gardner appears in the Stratford burial register and no second marriage has turned up in the Stratford registers or anywhere else. The sole evidence for the supposition that Hathaway married twice is that the woman Hathaway was married to at the time of his death was called Joan, and the ‘filia Richardi Hathaway alias Gardner de Shotery' who was christened ‘Joan' on 9 May 1566 is assumed to be her first child. We don't know for certain how many wives Richard Hathaway had. If Ann, born in 1556, was his first child, and William, born in 1578, his last, we are presented with a child-bearing career of twenty-two years, which would not be unusual, let alone impossible, for one woman. Ann's friend Judith Sadler bore her first child in 1580 and her last in 1603.

 

For no very good reason then, Ann, her brother Bartholomew and Catherine are taken to be the children of the first wife, and Joan, Thomas, Margaret, John and William the children of the second. Thomas ‘the son of Richard Hathaway' was christened on 12 April 1569, Margaret ‘daughter to—Gardner of Shotrey' on 17 August 1572, John ‘son to Richard Hathaway' on 3 February 1575, and William ‘sonne to Richard Hathaway of Shottrey' on 30 November 1578. All the births in the Hathaway family are separated by three years, more or less, except for the births of Richard and Catherine, which are separated by only twenty-two months. The circumstances of Richard Hathaway's birth and putative death are a puzzle. There is no Richard Hathaway buried at Holy Trinity between January 1562 and September 1581; instead we have two Richard Hathaways each called ‘filius Richardi Hathaway alias Gardner', one buried on 29 March 1561 and the other three days later. These are usually taken to be twins, one of whom inherited the name from the other, but the repetition might as easily be a scribal error. If Hathaway's wife had
borne and buried premature twins in March 1561, she could have produced another child by January 1562, but neither it nor she is likely to have been strong or healthy. The likeliest time for both to have died is January 1562, which still gives Hathaway time to find a new wife and get her pregnant by the beginning of 1563. This reproductive scenario is grim, to be sure, but it is not at all unusual. In 1662 Ann and Bartholomew would have been too small to be taken to the fields or left alone in the house; with no one to do the woman's share of farm work, Hathaway had to find a new wife without delay. The riddle may one day be resolved, but at this stage we have no idea who Ann Shakespeare's mother was or when she died.

 

In the summer of 1581, Ann's father fell ill. On 1 September he called the curate William Gilbert and dictated his will. The preamble is conventional and protestant: ‘first I bequeath my soul unto almighty God, trusting to be saved by the merits of Christ's passion, And my body to be buried in the church or church yard of Stratford aforesaid…'
⁷
To each of his sons Thomas and John, Richard left a portion of £6 13s 4d to be paid to them at the age of twenty years.Thomas was twelve and a half, John six and a half. The youngest boy was to get more: ‘Item I give and bequeath unto William my son ten pounds to be paid unto him at the age of twenty years'.

Again we encounter what seems to be a local or familial variant of the custom of gavelkind, the ancient system by which all male children inherited some part of the estate and the youngest son more than the others. It is usually associated with Kent, but also with nearby Wales. As it happened, Thomas may not have lived to collect his portion, for the will is the last we hear of him.

Hathaway then turns to his daughters: ‘Item I give and bequeath unto Agnes my daughter six pounds thirteen shillings four pence to be paid unto her at the day of her marriage',with the like to Catherine. Edgar Fripp interprets these bequests as evidence that both girls were already betrothed.
⁸
Much as I would like to be able to prove that Will and Ann were already recognised as future spouses on 1 September 1581, more than a year before their marriage was solemnised, I'm afraid that Fripp gets it wrong. The leaving of marriage portions in wills is a promise of cash to be raised from the estate in the event of a
marriage. With £6 13s 4d or ten marks, Ann had exactly the same cash portion as Will's mother when she married John Shakespeare. Though Mary Arden's father too described himself as a mere husbandman, Mary inherited a landed estate as well as the cash. Ann too may have had lands settled on her by deed during her father's lifetime, and may have been a better catch than we know. If lands farmed by Richard had been left by Ann's mother's family to the heirs of her body they would have passed directly to her children at the time of her death and would not have been Richard's to dispose of.

If Catherine ever married it was not in Stratford.
⁹
As far as we can tell she was not buried in Stratford either, so we should probably conclude that she found work, and hopefully a life, elsewhere. As Joan is not mentioned in the will, we should infer that she is dead, but no record of her burial has ever been found, unless she is the ‘child of Goodman Hathaway's' who was buried on 5 September 1572. The youngest daughter Margaret was to receive her portion when she reached the age of seventeen rather than on her wedding day, which suggests that she was not likely to marry, perhaps because she suffered from some infirmity or deformity. Her father's will is the last we hear of her.Thus three of Richard Hathaway's daughters disappear from history, leaving us with only Ann. The combined legacies, amounting to more than £40, are a lot to raise from a husbandman's estate, especially as the crop from half the yardland was to be reserved for Hathaway's first-born son Bartholomew, who was already farming somewhere on his own account, possibly near Tysoe where he was living in 1583.