Shakespeare’s Marriage Shakespeare’s Marriage Author Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

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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.

The 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

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

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.

The 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.

However, 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.
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.