Shakespeare’s Marriage

Anne Hathaway’s cottage, Shottery near Warwick. Artwork from an unknown decade in the 1800s. Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library. Public Domain.

Records of Shakespeares Marriage

On 27 November 1582, a marriage license was granted by the Bishop of Worcestor to Wm Shaxpere et and Anne Whateley. Nothing more is known of Anne Whateley, who is listed as residing in Temple Grafton, a village about 6 miles west of Shakespeare’s home town. Scholars believe it may be a clerical error that led to her name being recorded, however some Whateleys did live in the Stratford-upon-Avon area.
Para2The following day, on 28 November 1582, a £40 pound bond was posted by two Warwickshire farmers for the legality of a marriage between “William Shagspere” and “Anne Hathwey”, who was the daughter of a prosperous farmer in Shottery, a village less than a mile from central Stratford-upon-Avon. The two men were close friends of Anne Hathaway’s recently deceased father. The payment of this bond and the presence of witnesses meant that the couple could get around the normal procedure of having the impending marriage announced in their local parish church on three consecutive Sundays, a process called reading the banns. This process allowed the local community to be informed about upcoming marriages, in part to make sure that couples were not too closely related and that neither had been betrothed to another person.

Explanation for Two Marriage Records

Para3 Scholar David Kathman notes that the apparent confusion of the two Annes (Whateley and Hathaway) is later cleared up in a bequest in the will of Thomas Whittington, the man who served as shepherd to the Hathaway family. When he died in 1601, Whittington left 40 shillings to the poor people of Stratford and asked that the money be payed by anne Shaxpere, wyf unto Mr. Wyllyam Shakspere. As the Shakespeare Documented project notes,
William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway late in November 1582. However, the marriage did not take place in the couple’s parish church at Stratford-upon-Avon and nor were the banns read there three times, as would normally have been required. Instead application was made to the bishop of Worcester, in whose diocese Stratford then lay, for a license for the marriage to take place elsewhere after a single reading of banns. The license itself, which would have been addressed to the minister of the church at which the ceremony was to take place, is not extant. However, no existing surviving parish register records the event; therefore, Shakespeare’s marriage may have taken place at any local church without a surviving register.(Bearman)
It seems likely that the couple wished to accelerate their marriage date because Anne Hathaway was certainly pregnant in late November 1582. The next public record indicates that six months later, on 26 May 1583, Shakespeare’s first daughter Susanna was christened.

Speculation About Shakespeare’s Marriage

Para4 While the discrepancies between the marriage license and the bond have raised questions, other unusual facts have led to speculation. Anne Hathaway was a woman eight years older than William; at the time of their marriage, she would have been 26 years old and he only 18. It was typical among the common people in early modern England to marry in the mid-20s, with the average age of marriage for men being 26 and for women, 24. Thus, Anne was slightly older than was typical, but William was considerably younger. He was also eight years younger than his bride, which was also atypical.
Para5The existence of two Annes in the legal records has also given rise to speculation about Shakespeare’s romantic life. Anne Whateley was probably the creation of a careless clerk transcribing records; but perhaps Shakespeare was caught in a lover’s triangle. Perhaps he was seeing two women and wished only to marry the one from Temple Grafton, but neighbors of the Anne from Shottery carried him off to the Bishop to honor his word and keep Anne Hathaway from the embarrassment bearing an illegitimate child. The birth of their first daughter only six months after the wedding could mean that Shakespeare was compelled to marry Anne Hathaway.
Para6However, it is also possible that the couple had previously been joined by pledge or in a handfast marriage, which was a legally binding contract between individuals in the period. Also called betrothal or troth plight, handfasting occurred when a couple vowed to marry and exchanged a kiss and a ring before witnesses. If followed by sexual intercourse, it formed a legal marriage. Any children born between this betrothal and solemnization of the marriage by the Church of England were considered legitimate. Shakespeare highlights some potential problems with handfasting in his play Measure for Measure, where the young Claudio claims that
[…] upon a true contract
I got possession of Julietta’s bed.
You know the lady, she is fast my wife,
Save that we do the denunciation lack
Of outward order
(1.2.148-152)
Claudio’s statement reveals the widespread belief that people could engage in a socially accepted form of marriage outside the bounds of ecclesiastical law.

Key Print Sources

Greer, Germaine. Shakespeare’s Wife. Bloomsbury Press, 2007.
Potter, Lois. The Life of William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Shakespeare, William. Mr William Shakespeares comedies, histories & tragedies: Published according to the true originall copies. London: William Jaggard, 1623. STC 22273. ESTC S111228. DEEP 5081.

Key Online Sources

Bearman, Robert. Parish Register Entry Recording Susanna Shakespeare’s Baptism. Shakespeare Documented. 22 May 2020. doi: doi.org/10.37078/514.
Bearman, Robert. The Shakespeare Marriage Bond. Shakespeare Documented. 25 January 2020. doi: doi.org/10.37078/679.
Best, Michael. Shakespeare in Love? Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria, 4 January 2011. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/youth/marriage.html.

Image Source

Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, Shottery Near Warwick. 19th century. Folger Digital Collections. Call number ART Box S898 no.3. https://digitalcollections.folger.edu/img35299.

Prosopography

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Bibliography

Shakespeare, William. Mr William Shakespeares comedies, histories & tragedies: Published according to the true originall copies. London: William Jaggard, 1623. STC 22273. ESTC S111228. DEEP 5081.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title Shakespeare’s Marriage
Type of text Critical
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Early Modern England Encyclopedia
Source
By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
Sponsor(s)

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
Encoding description Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status published
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship
Utah Valley University
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