In 1582, William Shakespeare entered adulthood juggling a pregnant fiancée and a financially struggling family. Such an experience was surely more influential in his development as an artist and human being than whatever sect of Christianity he might have professed.
It was dark and pouring when William returned home, having walked the mile from Shottery where he said an unfond farewell to Bartholomew Hathaway’s mare. Saddle-sore and soaking, he made his way grumbling past the Shakespeare family dunghill, which was coursing with rivulets from the rain.
Back in Worcester, Sandells and Richardson had made William — the only one present who could write — forge the requisite permission documents for the wedding. Then they’d gone before the court and posted the surety. The clerk got Anne Hathaway’s name right the second time around.
William Shakespeare was now duly licensed to be married.
When William straggled into the house, Gilbert was at the table declining puella on a wax tablet and John was half asleep on the best bed by the fire, with Joan cuddled up next to him darning a pair of black hose. “William’s home!” she exclaimed, set aside her mending, and ran to embrace him. There came a soft shuffle of feet from upstairs, and Mary hid her relief behind a sardonic smile as she asked, “And where has the young master been these three nights past? Sowing the family seed?”
William stripped off his filthy, dripping clothes and stood warming himself by the fire in nothing but his undershirt as the family watched. “Mother, Father, I would speak with you in confidence.”
“Gilbert, Joan, go to bed,” said Mary gently.
“But Mother — ” Joan protested.
“Ah! To bed hie thee. Edmund is already asleep, and bears watching.”
“Ay, Mother,” said Gilbert, and taking up his candle and tablet, nudged Joan as he passed. “Come on.”
Joan trudged upstairs reluctantly after him, muttering, “Unto our resting place we go. To be stifled in the chamber, whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in, to sleep, to dream, perchance to die . . .” and trailed away into silence upstairs.
“What is it, William?” said John. “You look as if you’d seen a ghost.”
“That I have,” said William. “The shade, forsooth, of mine own future.”
Mary sat at the table, hands in her lap as William told the tale.
“Know you that I have been, of late, much free of my affections with the local maidenry.”
“As young men are wont to be,” said John from the corner, “and nothing wrong with that. Youth is like a sparrow, quick and ever-changing in its flight, and its beak in many flowers — ”
“John,” interrupted Mary, “let him speak.” She turned back to William. “Naught good ever came of unbridled dalliance.”
“You speak what I have learnt too late,” said William.
Mary waited patiently, and William continued.
“There is a maid of Shottery who lives but a mile without Stratford. As I passed her house one day upon a walk, a path I frequented much this summer past, she hailed me from her garden. A corner of the garden fence had buckled, and she, trying to lift it back in place, had caught her skirts upon it. I helped the maid out of need, and she thanked me, then burst into unprovoked tears and sat heavily upon the cottage stair.
“ ‘What cause,’ said I, ‘taps so deep a font of tears?’
“ ‘Begging your pardon. I thank you for your aid,’ said she. ‘By my troth, I am much in need of aid in these dark days. My father died two months past, and I am unwed. My brother is master here, but he is oft abroad about his business, and I am left alone to act as mistress and master to house, garden, and field. I am no frail flower, and am used to the labor of a farm, but it is much to bear when compounded by my grief.’
“She dabbed her tears, and thanked me again for my pains, and went inside. She is not an old maid, not yet, though the first bloom of her youth is touched by the first light frost of winter.
“Thereafter I made it a point, upon my journeys near Shottery, to knock at the maid’s door, and see that she were well, and enquire if there were posts to be lifted or holes to be patched. Upon my fourth such visit, I found her dressed as though for a fair, with flowers in her hair and a touch of paint upon her cheek, and she bade me enter for she had both a post to be lifted and a hole to be patched, she said.
“I was until that day chaste with the innocence of youth, but the maid, in her loneliness and her loss, sought comfort, and I gave it her. In return, she taught me much that day, and though I ne’er returned, from shame, I guess, or fear, a world of women, a feast of women, oped itself to mine eye.”
“If I may put it in brief,” said Mary, “you preyed upon the grief of her father’s passing to win an old maid and lose your virginity, and then abandoned her.”
William looked deeply into the fire for a long moment, then he spoke softly. “I know not who was the prey nor who the predator. Yet I have not abandoned her quite; for I left the most eternal part of me within her, and there it grows.”
There was a long silence as his words sank in. Then Mary put her head in a trembling hand upon the table.
“Oh, fie,” she whispered quietly to herself.
John stood up from his chair and his face flushed red. “What, you got a girl with CHILD!?! Od’s teeth!” he yelled. Vessels in his nose swelled and burst as he towered over the half-naked William. “See you not our circumstance, how our house is filled and o’erfilled, our shop empty, and now you who are to be the might and muscle of my old age are to be tied afore your time to apron strings and swaddling cloth! By Jesu, though your name contains a Will, your will contains not your willy — ”
“John,” Mary interrupted. “Pay him no mind, William, he plays his part too well. Who is the maid?”
“Anne Hathaway, daughter of — ”
“Daughter of Richard Hathaway,” said John. “I know him well, we’ve done business! Oh, I can hear his rumbling at the Guild Hall now — ”
“You don’t go to the Guild Hall,” said Mary.
“And you won’t be hearing Master Hathaway’s rumble anytime soon,” said William. “He shuffled off the mortal coil this past July — leaving Anne a dowry.”
John wheeled around. “How much, lad?”
“Six pounds, I am told.”
“Bah!” said John, waving his hand in front of his face as if chasing away a gnat. “A farmer’s dowry.”
Mary asked William, “Does the maid wish to marry?”
“For her part, I know not. Her brother and two largest neighbors wish it, that is certain. They escorted me to Worcester to gain a license. It required a surety, for which they stood, and your signatures, which I perforce provided.”
William fished the damp wedding certificate from his pouch and spread it out on the table. John turned away toward the fire; he couldn’t read. Mary looked it over quickly, silently. “Well,” Mary said, “it appears our oldest son is going to marry.” She set the paper down and looked at William. “Anne Shakespeare,” she said appraisingly. “You’re going to be with her for a very long time.” She shrugged then added, “I hope she was good.”
Mary rose and headed back upstairs, and William heard the hushed bumpings of Gilbert and Joan retreating from their eavesdropping spots. William was left alone with his thoughts for a moment. What, he wondered, would life — an entire life — with Anne Hathaway as his wife be like? She had been good in bed, to be sure, and gentle with his awkwardness; though there was, later on, also a desperation and ravenousness in her that had taken him aback. But then it was his first time, and he would have been taken aback in any case. In the months since, he had become a connoisseur of the experience. His encounter with Rosaline was surely the gem of his collection. He doubted he could find one more precious. Yet he was also devastated to think the collection complete, the pursuit over.
“William, there is still hope.” William started from his chair — he had forgotten his father was still in the room, and apparently reading his thoughts.
John continued in a low voice, “You need not be tied to the service of child rearing yet — ah, though it is a joy, son, a joy in your case,” he added unconvincingly. “Do you, in sooth, desire to be both married and a father, three years before you are even come of age?”
“Would any man of wit and ambition wish it so?” answered William.
“Then remember, what man has planted by God’s grace also may man uproot, and God provides the means to do so. If Anne Hathaway be of like mind, there be remedies. Speak to our apothecary good and true. See what hope Philip Rogers may offer; the cause which led the parties to this contract” — and here he held up the marriage certificate — “may yet be void.” John winked at his son, squeezed his shoulder, and lumbered upstairs to bed.