Whatever the nature of his engagement and marriage to Anne Hathaway, in Shakespeare’s works weddings are, with few exceptions, symbols of unity, fruition, and abundance. Nearly every comedy ends with at least one; several end with two; A Midsummer Night’s Dream ends with three. The sanctity of the wedding ceremony and its ability to bridge the human and the divine (as when the god Hymen descends to perform the quadruple wedding that ends As You Like It) became a hallmark of Shakespeare’s drama.
The night before the wedding, John Shakespeare took William down to the Bear for a night out. He bought round after round of ale, and about the time his eyes were starting to glaze over, he gave his son his take on marriage.
“My son,” he said, his speech slurred and a comical wisp of hair listing off his head like a ship’s mast in a tempest, “when I wed your mother I did it for the ducats, I freely say that now. I had naught, and she had a dowry, and a family, and I thought someday to make us gentlemen, me and you and Gilbert, and all the Shakespeares ever after.”
He drained his mug. “And in that I failed. Yet Mary has ever been true, and tended me when I need tending, a blessed saint. Your wife comes with but little dowry, and yet it is not naught, for six pounds thirteen shillings fourpence is ten marks. And ten marks is ten marks.” He laughed at some inside joke.
“But the Hathaways are a good and respected family, and if naught else your bed will never be cold, and there’s a comfort. And if once you thought Anne fair and comely enough to bed, mayhap your bed will be warm indeed, and there’s a greater comfort. And if respect and ardor grow to love, well, there’s the greatest comfort of all.”
John stood on the table, nearly falling twice as he toasted William. “Come ye one and all to my son his wedding tomorrow, and see what comes to pass when a young Willy doth Shake his spear to a comely Anne who hath a way twixt the sheets!” And there was laughter and toasting all around.
Sunday, December 9, was an unusually clear day, and warm for Stratford in December, which is to say, not warm. The sun shone wanly in a clear sky, and the air was chill but not bitter. William and his family, along with his friends and neighbors, set out toward Temple Grafton in a caravan, stopping first at Anne’s house in Shottery on the way. A wagon decorated with flowers and ribbons waited outside her house, but Anne was not yet finished with her couture. As William had yet to have his interview with the priest who would perform the service, it was decided that William and John should ride ahead, and the remainder of the party would follow.
Father and son arrived at the small church atop the hill in shady Temple Grafton in the late morning, and John took William to the rectory to meet Father John Frith. John Shakespeare made a brief introduction and left William, holding the box of blessed wafers, sitting at the rectory desk. The room smelled of bird droppings and fresh wood shavings. There were birdcages tucked in every corner, and a constant cacophony of squawking, chirping, and trilling.
“If you will pardon, I must tend to my patients while we speak,” John Frith said. He picked up three small, soft leather bags of different colors. “I must fill up their cages with baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. Great, my son, is the powerful grace that lies in herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities!”
Father John Frith was old. He had a failing white beard, braided and stained at the sides of his mouth with unidentifiable yellow dribbles. He shuffled about the cluttered room, administering medicines from the three different bags. The contents of one he gave the birds as food; one contained an herb that he rubbed under their wings; one held a sort of paste that he applied to wounds as a salve.
As he made his rounds, he gave William a rote prenuptial speech that said in many more words the same thing his father had told him the night before. But then Frith turned to William, his eyes bright as he peered over wire-rimmed spectacles.
“I am told you are baptized and confirmed in the Old Faith, is this true?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Good,” he said, turning back to his birds. “I solemnize weddings in both faiths, times being what they are. But my heart is only with the old rites.”
William set the box of wafers down on the desk, and removed its cloth covering. “In respect of which,” William said, “I commend this to you. It comes from Rome, by way of John Cottom of Lancashire, and Thomas, his brother.”
Frith cocked his head at the box, and William handed him the key. Frith set down his medicines, took the key, and silently and deliberately unlocked the box. He read the note from Thomas Cottom, and crossed himself. Then he peeked under the cloth inside and smiled. He peered at William.
“Thank you, my son, for your pains in the delivery. I have no coin for your labors, but you shall receive spiritual recompense.” He held up a wafer. “With this wafer blessing your wedding Communion, you shall have a rite wherein God himself lights the aisle, and angels sing i’the choir.”
He replaced the wafer, closed the box, and picked up one of the many jars on the desk. “The sacrament of marriage,” he continued, ministering its contents to a turtledove in the corner who stood perched on one leg, its other wrapped in a bandage, “is to me the holiest of holies, for it is at once the most human and the most divine — as is Christ, both human and divine.”
He gestured up at a simple cross on the wall, which in the new style bore no ravaged body, but was a symbol only. “Those who practice the new rites forget this. They would make Him wholly divine. What of that? What means His suffering on the Cross, if His body be absent from it? What means His sacrifice, if Christ feel no human pain in the offering of it? When He was pricked, did He not bleed? If He were tickled, did He not laugh? I hope that you will feel in today’s sacrament the union of the human and divine, for the bond between man and woman is both. Neither one part nor the other is diminished by the sharing, but each truly, fully, and wholly one. Remember also: when you share this holy bread that by the greatest of all mysteries becomes the very body of our Lord, that it is truly His body; and that by taking it you share Communion not with Christ only, nor just with your wife only, but with all humanity, all Creation, past, present, and future.
“It is,” he concluded, tapping the box with a smile, “most powerful medicine.”
William suddenly felt the urge to bare his soul to the gentle old priest.
“I confess, Father, I have of late been melancholy in thinking on what our faith has wrought. How comes it that even those who commune with Christ so oft break His very precepts by killing in His name?”
“To be human is to sin,” the old priest shrugged. “ ’ Twas ever thus, and yet we do what we can. We thank sweet Jesus for dying for our sins; we pray; we confess; and we take Communion to remember why we do so. And in that, surely, there is no harm.”
He set down his bag of bird medicine. “There. I have given you all the little wisdom my great years have gathered.”
He came to stand over William. “Benedicite,” he said, and kissed William on the forehead. “Now go forth and be married.”
William walked out of the rectory and into the cool air. From down the lane leading to the church came the sound of a lute and drum. The bridal procession.
He hadn’t seen Anne Hathaway since he’d lost his virginity to her three months before. She was riding on the wagon, her brother Bartholomew driving. Bartholomew checked the old mare in front of the church, and helped Anne down. She wore a green gown, accented with purple and black, under a midnight blue cloak. She held a bouquet of muted fall flowers in her hand: Michaelmas daisies, primrose, and sweet rosemary. She looked handsome, William thought, in the smart but sober way he remembered her. The flowers and ribbons in her hair softened her a bit. And he knew that under the sobriety there was mischief, and softness of another order.
She kept her eyes downcast in modesty as the musicians played her down the aisle. And when she joined William at the altar, she gave him only the briefest searching look before she cast down her eyes again. In that moment, he felt a chill. He saw something eternal in her eyes. He had forgotten how blue they were: the deep blue of a lake at twilight.
And they were set off by her black hair . . . black, he thought, like the shining black of a raven.
For the second time in a week, William listened to the full Catholic Mass. There was again singing of psalms, prayers, and readings. The last of these John Frith had chosen from the Gospels:
“From the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”
William was thinking of this — of oneness — as he spoke his marriage vows, and heard Anne speak hers. As they exchanged rings, he wondered whether it was love or duty that would bring them together as one flesh. He didn’t really know what that meant, to be of one flesh with another, though he had felt something of it under the influence of the witch’s brew, in dreams, or at the moment of orgasm, perhaps —
He looked out upon the congregation, and caught sight of a silhouetted figure standing in the vestibule at the back of the church. This time he recognized her from a distance, just before she turned and walked out: Rosaline.
It was time for Communion. John Frith took out the box of wafers William had given him and mixed the wine and water. He took up the Eucharist. Anne and William knelt. The priest held out a wafer to Anne. She leaned forward slightly, and with her tongue, slipped it into her mouth.
And then, for the second time, William confronted the body of Christ.
This time, he took the dose.