Aside from a tenuous alleged pun (hate away = Hathaway) in one sonnet and a cursory mention in his will, the only knowledge we have about the nature of the marriage of Anne and William is a single line in a harried clerk’s register. One can’t help but wonder: was the eighteen-year-old in love with the pregnant woman eight years his senior? It seems unlikely.
William’s back hurt, his shoulder hurt, his knees hurt, his cheek hurt where Rosaline had smacked him. And now his bottom hurt. His new friends Sandells and Richardson had escorted him directly to Worcester after only a brief stop in Stratford for William to pick up a bedroll.
Leaving his soon-to-be brother-in-law in Shottery, William had ridden Bartholomew’s swaybacked horse with its weather-hardened saddle. William didn’t ride much, and the fifty-mile round trip to Worcester was only slightly less torturous to him than Sir Thomas Lucy’s rack had been. He passed the time by reading the translation of “Romeus and Giulietta” in the book Richard Field had given him. It was dreadfully written, but featured a couple of characters not in the versions of the story he knew: a “prating nurse” and a best friend and confidant for Romeus. And yet the one character William always wondered about — the girl for whom lovelorn Romeus pines before he meets Juliet — was still left unnamed.
William wondered if he himself was enacting Romeus: pining for his lost Rosaline when his star-crossed doom was to marry someone he’d barely met and then die.
They reached Worcester at nightfall, slept under a tree outside of town, and on Monday morning walked into the cathedral at the heart of the city. William paused to admire the crypt of King John in the chancel, but was roughly nudged along by Richardson into the south aisle, where they waited in a short queue and finally appeared before a bleary, watery-eyed clerk who took down the information for the marriage license.
“Names?”
“William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway,” said Richardson.
“Parish?”
“Stratford,” said Richardson.
Sandells corrected him. “Nay, let it read Temple Grafton, for we are known to the priest there, and there was she baptized.”
The clerk looked up, lids heavy with suspicion, and gazed at each of them in turn. William said nothing; if he was to be compelled to marry, he was happy to do so as far away from Stratford as possible. He watched as the bored clerk noted in his ledger that the marriage was to be “inter Wm Shaxpere et Anna Whateley de Temple Grafton.” William was used to seeing Shakespeare spelled a dozen different ways: Shagspere, Shaxper, Shaksper, Shakespear, he’d seen ’em all. Some even insisted on making it Shakeshafte, or Shakestaff, which were more common names in those parts. When the clerk mistakenly entered Anne’s name as Whateley instead of Hathaway, William said nothing, hoping that this might somehow make the marriage invalid.
Having taken the other information, the clerk gave a rote speech about the further particulars, indicating that the wedding might take place at any time after the crying of the banns.
Sandells and Richardson looked at each other like people who might never have attended a church. “Crying?” asked Richardson.
The harried registrar explained, “The matrimony must be announced in the parish church of both parties on three consecutive Sundays.”
Sandells did a quick calculation on his fingers. “So the marriage may take place before Christmas — ”
“No, no, no,” the clerk interrupted. “No banns may be read from Advent Sunday, which this year falls on” — he consulted a calendar — “December second . . . until the thirteenth of January. The marriage may then take place in” — he counted the weeks — “February, at the earliest.”
Sandells and Richardson exchanged glances. “Begging your pardon, good sir, but the bride will be waxing toward full by then. Is there no course by which we might hasten the solemnizing of the already consummated union?”
The clerk smirked. Then he handed Sandells a sheet of paper. “The marriage may proceed with but one reading of the banns thusly,” he said. Richardson looked blankly at the piece of paper.
The clerk reached over, turned it right side up in Richardson’s hands, and continued. “It states these requirements: that there appear no impediment by reason of precontract, consanguinity, or affinity; that no suit has begun concerning such impediment; that the groom should not solemnize the marriage without the consent of the bride’s friends — clearly, already given in this case — and that the groom shall pay all costs if any legal action be brought against Bishop Whitgift and his officers for licensing the marriage. It requires a surety of forty pounds against such eventualities.”
Richardson and Sandells exchanged another glance, and turned away to mutter to each other.
“Forty pounds?” said Richardson.
“ ’ Tis more than the worth of my farm and yours put together.”
“Well, they can’t take what we don’t have.”
Sandells looked at William. “If this marriage come not afore God as pretty and true as a ministering angel, in sooth, young lad, we’ll cut your balls off and pay the surety with ’em, understood?”
William said nothing; he couldn’t help but wonder what the sudden local fascination with his testicles was all about.
“Ay, we’ll stand surety,” said Sandells to the clerk.
The clerk signed and stamped things. “You must needs appear in the administrative court tomorrow to stand for the surety. I will then issue the license, but we will also need a statement from the parents of both parties affirming their consent. There is also,” concluded the clerk with bureaucratic glee, “a small fee.”
Sandells and Richardson looked darkly at William, who still, as he thought best, said absolutely nothing.