The extravagances of the Baconians may well be illustrated here, for although the subject of Shakespeare’s marriage has no bearing upon the famous cryptogram and the authorship of the plays, Donnelly spreads himself generously all over Shakespeare’s life, and lightheartedly settles for us the mystery of the bond re the marriage of Anne Hathaway and the license to marry Anne Whateley by suggesting that both names are correct and refer to the same persons. He says Anne Hathaway married a Whateley and that it was as a widow she married William Shakespeare, her maiden name being given in the bond by mistake! The sheer absurdity of this is obvious when we consider that if Mr. Donnelly is right, then the bondsmen made the yet grosser error of describing the widow as a “maiden.” She was actually at that time neither wife, maid nor widow.
Again, Richard Hathaway the father made his will in September 1581, leaving (inter alia) a bequest to Anne “to be paide unto her at the daie of her marriage.” She was a single young woman then, and yet according to the Donnellian view she was already, fifteen months later, a widow, again about to be married.
Apologists for this hasty marriage, jealous for the reputation of Shakespeare, are keen to find an excuse in the supposition that he was a Roman Catholic and that he was already married secretly, probably in the room in the roof of Shottery Manor House, which is supposed to have been used at this period as a place of secret worship. But there is no basis for forming any theory as to Shakespeare’s religious convictions. A yet more favourite assumption is that Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway went through the ceremony of “hand-fasting,” a formal betrothal which, although not a complete marriage and not carrying with it the privileges of marriage was a bar to either of the parties marrying another. Jack was thus made sure of his Jill; and, perhaps even more important, Jill was certain of her Jack. But if this ceremony had taken place, there would have been no necessity for that hasty journey of those two friends of the Hathaways to Worcester.
Nothing is known of the attitude of Shakespeare’s parents towards the marriage, nor has any one ever suggested how he supported himself, his wife and family in the years before he left Stratford for London. At the close of January 1585, his twin son and daughter, Hamnet and Judith were born, and they were baptized at Stratford church on February 2nd. Whether he assisted his father in his business of glover, or helped on his farm, or whether he became assistant master at the Grammar School, as sometimes suggested, is mere matter for speculation. John Aubrey, picking up gossip at Stratford, writes—
“Mr. William Shakespear was borne at Stratford upon Avon in the county of Warwick. His father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours, that when he was a boy he exercised his father’s trade, but when he kill’d a calfe he would doe it in a high style, and make a speech.”
That may or may not be true, but it looks as though William had, about this impressionable age, become stage-struck. He had had numerous opportunities of seeing the players, for his father had in his more prosperous days been a patron of the strolling companies, both as a private individual and as a member of the town council. In 1569 two such troupes, who called themselves the “Queen’s servants,” and “servants of the Earl of Warwick,” gave performances before the corporation and were paid out of the public monies; a forecast of the municipal theatre! And no doubt John Shakespeare, together with many other Stratford people, went over to Kenilworth during the magnificent pageants given there by Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in 1575, in honour of Queen Elizabeth; taking with him his little boy, then eleven years of age. Thus would the foundations of an ambition be laid.
At this time, 1585, John Shakespeare’s affairs, from whatever cause, were under a cloud. They had been declining since 1578, when he had been obliged to mortgage some of the property that had been his wife’s, and now he was deprived of his alderman’s gown. William about this time, whether in 1585 or 1587 is uncertain, left Stratford for London, whither some of his boyhood’s friends had already preceded him, among them Richard Field.
Stratford at this time was certainly no place for William, if he wished to emulate Dr. Samuel Smiles’ worthies and conform to the gospel of getting on in the world, the most popular gospel ever preached. In 1587, Nicholas Lane, one of his father’s creditors, sought to distrain upon John Shakespeare’s goods, but the sheriff’s officers returned the doleful tale of “no effects,” and so he had his trouble for nothing. It is, however, curious that even when reduced to his last straits, John Shakespeare never sold his property, the house in which he lived and carried on business, in Henley Street.
In addition to the discredit attaching to being thus one of the Shakespeares who had come down in the world, William, according to the very old, strong and persistent tradition, was at this time showing a very rackety disposition. He consorted with the wilder young men of the town and went on drinking bouts with them. Sometimes, with them, he raided the neighbouring parks and killed the deer and poached other game; and the old tradition hints that on these occasions the others made good their escape and Shakespeare was generally caught. Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, who was the chief sufferer from the exploits of these youths, is said to have had Shakespeare whipped, imprisoned and fined for his part in them.
To London, therefore, William Shakespeare made his way. With what credentials, if any, did he go? He had friends in London, among them Richard Field, a schoolfellow, who in 1579 had gone thither, to become apprentice to a printer, and in 1587, about this time when Shakespeare left home, had set up in business for himself and become a member of the Stationers’ Company. Shakespeare may quite reasonably have sought his help or advice; and certainly Field six years later published Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, the foremost literary and dramatic patron of the age, from whose friendship and powerful aid all intellectual aspirants hoped much.