Anne Hathaway

CHAPTERS 2 AND 3 When I was a Sunday school scholar something more than sixty years ago, I became interested in Satan and wanted to find out all I could about him.

i began to ask questions but my class teacher mr barclay the stone mason was reluctant about answering them it seemed to me i was anxious to be praised for turning my thoughts to serious subjects when there wasn't another boy in the village who could be hired to do such a thing i was greatly interested in the incident of eve and the serpent and thought eve's calmness was perfectly noble i asked mr barclay if he had ever heard of another woman who being approached by a serpent would not excuse herself and break for the nearest timber he did not answer my question but rebuked me for inquiring into matters above my age and comprehension i will say for mr barclay that he was willing to tell me the facts of satan's history but he stopped there he wouldn't allow any discussion of them in the course of time we exhausted the facts there were only five or six of them you could set them all down on a visiting card i was disappointed i had been meditating a biography and was grieved to find that there were no materials i said as much with the tears running down mr barclay's sympathy and compassion were aroused for he was a most kind and gentle-spirited man and he patted me on the head and cheered me up by saying there was a whole vast ocean of materials i can still feel the happy thrill which these blessed words shot through me then he began to bail out that ocean's riches for my encouragement and joy like this it was conjectured though not established that satan was originally an angel in heaven that he fell that he rebelled and brought on a war that he was defeated and banished to perdition also we have reason to believe that later he did so-and-so that we are warranted in supposing that at a subsequent time he travelled extensively seeking whom he might devour that a couple of centuries afterward as tradition instructs us he took up the cruel trade of tempting people to their ruin with vast and fearful results that by and by as the probabilities seem to indicate he may have done certain things he might have done certain other things he must have done still other things and so on and so on we set down the five known facts by themselves on a piece of paper and numbered it page one then on fifteen hundred other pieces of paper we set down the conjectures and suppositions and maybes and perhapses and doubtlesses and rumors and guesses and probabilities and likelihoods and we are permitted to thinks and we are warranted in believings and might have beens and could have beens and must have beens and unquestionables and without a shadow of doubts and behold materials why we had enough to build a biography of shakespeare yet he made me put away my pen he would not let me write the history of satan why because as he said he had suspicions suspicions that my attitude in this matter was not reverent and that a person must be reverent when writing about the sacred characters he said any one who spoke flippantly of satan would be frowned upon by the religious world and also be brought to account i assured him in earnest and sincere words that he had wholly misconceived my attitude that i had the highest respect for satan and that my reverence for him equalled and possibly even exceeded that of any member of the church i said it wounded me deeply to perceive by his words that he thought i would make fun of satan and deride him laugh at him scoff at him whereas in truth i had never thought of such a thing but had only a warm desire to make fun of those others and laugh at them what others why the supposers the perhapsers the might have beeners the could have beeners the must have beeners the without a shadow of doubters the we are warranted in believingers and all that funny crop of solemn architects who have taken a good solid foundation of five indisputable and unimportant facts and built upon it a conjectural satan thirty miles high what did mr barclay do then was he disarmed was he silenced no he was shocked he was so shocked that he visibly shuddered he said the satanic traditioners and perhapsers and conjecturers were themselves sacred as sacred as their work so sacred that whoso ventured to mock them or make fun of their work could not afterward enter any respectable house even by the back door how true were his words and how wise how fortunate it would have been for me if i had heeded them but i was young i was but seven years of age and vain foolish and anxious to attract attention i wrote the biography and have never been in a respectable house since chapter three how curious and interesting is the parallel as far as poverty of biographical details is concerned between satan and shakespeare it is wonderful it is unique it stands quite alone there is nothing resembling it in history nothing resembling it in romance nothing approaching it even in tradition how sublime is their position and how overtopping how sky-reaching how supreme the two great unknowns the two illustrious conjecturabilities they are the best known unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet for the instruction of the ignorant i will make a list now of those details of shakespeare's history which are facts verified facts established facts undisputed facts facts he was born on the twenty third of april fifteen sixty four of good farmer class parents who could not read could not write could not sign their names at stratford a small back settlement which in that day was shabby and unclean and densely illiterate of the nineteen important men charged with the government of the town thirteen had to make their mark in attesting important documents because they could not write their names of the first eighteen years of his life nothing is known they are a blank on the twenty seventh of november fifteen eighty two william shakespeare took out a license to marry anne whately next day william shakespeare took out a license to marry anne hathaway she was eight years his senior william shakespeare married anne hathaway in a hurry by grace of a reluctantly granted dispensation there was but one publication of the banns within six months the first child was born about two years followed during which period nothing at all happened to shakespeare so far as anybody knows then came twins fifteen eighty five february two years follow then fifteen eighty seven he makes a ten-year visit to london leaving the family behind five years follow during this period nothing happened to him as far as anybody actually knows then fifteen ninety two there is mention of him as an actor next year fifteen ninety three his name appears in the official list of players next year fifteen ninety four he played before the queen a detail of no consequence other obscurities did it every year of the forty five of her reign and remained obscure three pretty full years follow full of play-acting then in fifteen ninety seven he bought new place stratford thirteen or fourteen busy years follow years in which he accumulated money and also reputation as actor and manager meantime his name liberally and variously spelt had become associated with a number of great plays and poems as ostensibly author of the same Some of these, in these years and later, were pirated, but he made no protest.

Then, 1610 to 1611, he returned to Stratford and settled down for good and all, and busied himself in lending money, trading in tithes, trading in land and houses, shirking a debt of 41 shillings, borrowed by his wife during his long desertion of his family, suing debtors for shillings and coppers being sued himself for shillings and coppers and acting as confederate to a neighbor who tried to rob the town of its rights in a certain common and did not succeed he lived five or six years till sixteen sixteen in the joy of these elevated pursuits then he made a will and signed each of its three pages with his name a thorough-going business man's will it named in minute detail every item of property he owned in the world houses lands sword silver gilt bowl and so on all the way down to his second-best bed and its furniture it carefully and calculatingly distributed his riches among the members of his family overlooking no individual of it not even his wife the wife he had been enabled to marry in a hurry by urgent grace of a special dispensation before he was nineteen the wife whom he had left husbandless so many years the wife who had had to borrow forty-one shillings in her need and which the lender was never able to collect of the prosperous husband but died at last with the money still lacking no even this wife was remembered in shakespeare's will he left her that second best bed and not another thing not even a penny to bless her lucky widowhood with it was eminently and conspicuously a business man's will not a poet's it mentioned not a single book books were much more precious than swords and silver gilt bowls and second-best beds in those days and when a departing person owned one he gave it a high place in his will the will mentioned not a play not a poem not an unfinished literary work not a scrap of manuscript of any kind many poets have died poor but this is the only one in history that has died this poor the others all left literary remains behind also a book maybe two if shakespeare had owned a dog but we need not go into that we know he would have mentioned it in his will if a good dog susanna would have got it if an inferior one his wife would have got a dour interest in it i wish he had had a dog just so we could see how painstakingly he would have divided that dog among the family in his careful business way he signed the will in three places in earlier years he signed two other official documents these five signatures still exist there are no other specimens of his penmanship in existence not a line was he prejudiced against the art his granddaughter whom he loved was eight years old when he died yet she had had no teaching he left no provision for her education although he was rich and in her mature womanhood she couldn't write and couldn't tell her husband's manuscript from anybody else's she thought it was shakespeare's when shakespeare died in stratford it was not an event it made no more stir in england than the death of any other forgotten theatre actor would have made nobody came down from london there were no lamenting poems no eulogies no national tears there was merely silence and nothing more a striking contrast with what happened when ben jonson and francis bacon and spenser and raleigh and the other distinguished literary folk of shakespeare's time passed from life no praiseful voice was lifted for the lost bard of avon even ben jonson waited seven years before he lifted his So far as anybody actually knows and can prove, Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life.

So far as anybody knows and can prove, he never wrote a letter to anybody in his life.

Well, I don't know everything about the Shakespearean life though, but it is possible that we don't even know the exact date of birth either.

On November 28, 1582, William Shakespeare got married to Anne Hathaway, and they remained married until William Shakespeare's death.

When they were first married, Anne was 26 and William was 18, which is pretty young for Will to get married.

William Shakespeare's first kid was Susanna, who was born on May 1583.

Agnes was in my mind.

So, yeah, when you found Agnes, when you kind of brought her forth from the shadowy figure of Anne Hathaway, will you talk a little bit about that process? Because she's such a vivid character in Hamnet.

Yeah, I mean, I have to say, I came to Agnes the character via being a reader, actually, because I...

I always conceived the novel Hamlet to be about fathers and sons initially, as of course the play is.

That's exactly-

Anne Shakespeare.

And you know what it was? It was Anne Shakespeare.

[laughs]

There you go.

At just 18 years old, William Shakespeare made a sudden entry into adult life.

He married Anne Hathaway.

Now this is a different Anne Hathaway, not the famous actress you may have heard of.

Anne Hathaway was a woman from a nearby village and she was...

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You have got, I've read the list because I want to get some of them right.

You've got Mrs. Rip Van Winkle, Anne Hathaway, obviously, Mrs. Freud, Elvis's twin sister, Queen Kong, and Mrs. Darwin.

And this is Mrs. Darwin's poem.

I went to the zoo.

His was a great highway, and dealers with every variety of merchandise resorted to its markets.

The eyes of the poet dramatist must always have been open for observation, but nothing is known positively of Shakespeare from his birth to his marriage to Anne Hathaway in 1582, and from that date nothing but the birth of three children until we find him an actor in London about 1589.

How long acting continued to be Shakespeare's sole profession we have no means of knowing, but it is in the highest degree probable that very soon after arriving in London he began that work of adaptation by which he is known to have begun his literary career.

To improve and alter older plays not up to the standard that was required at the time was a common practice even among the best dramatists of the day, and Shakespeare's abilities would speedily mark him out as eminently fitted for this kind of work.

There always has been rebellion in the blood of Will Shakespeare, and there is a slender, wayward, grown-up somebody at Shottery who understands.

Anne Hathaway has stayed often in Stratford with the Shakespeare household.

Mother loves Anne.

Father teases and twits her.

He whispered, his voice burned hot with a child's jealousy.

Tis said you are to wed Abraham Stripling, Anne, and that the foreign doctor who wants to wed you broke Abram's head with his pestle.

Anne Hathaway laughed.

Her eyes were mocking now.