In Measure for Measure Claudio’s offence is intimacy with the Lady Julia after the contract of betrothal and before the formality of marriage (cf. act i. sc. ii. l. 155, act iv. sc. i. l. 73).
[24] No marriage registers of the period are extant at Temple Grafton to inform us whether Anne Whately actually married her William Shakespeare or who precisely the parties were. A Whateley family resided in Stratford, but there is nothing to show that Anne of Temple Grafton was connected with it. The chief argument against the conclusion that the marriage license and the marriage bond concerned different couples lies in the apparent improbability that two persons, both named William Shakespeare, should on two successive days not only be arranging with the Bishop of Worcester’s official to marry, but should be involving themselves, whether on their own initiative or on that of their friends, in more elaborate and expensive forms of procedure than were habitual to the humbler ranks of contemporary society. But the Worcester diocese covered a very wide area, and was honeycombed with Shakespeare families of all degrees of gentility. The William Shakespeare whom Anne Whately was licensed to marry may have been of a superior station, to which marriage by license was deemed appropriate. On the unwarranted assumption of the identity of the William Shakespeare of the marriage bond with the William Shakespeare of the marriage license, a romantic theory has been based to the effect that ‘Anne Whateley of Temple Grafton,’ believing herself to have a just claim to the poet’s hand, secured the license on hearing of the proposed action of Anne Hathaway’s friends, and hoped, by moving in the matter a day before the Shottery husbandmen, to insure Shakespeare’s fidelity to his alleged pledges.
[25a] Twelfth Night, act ii. sc. iv. l. 29:
Let still the woman take
An elder than herself; so wears she to him,
So sways she level in her husband’s heart.
[25b] Tempest, act iv. sc. i. ll. 15-22:
If thou dost break her virgin knot before
All sanctimonious ceremonies may
With full and holy rite be minister’d,
No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall
To make this contract grow; but barren hate,
Sour-ey’d disdain, and discord, shall bestrew
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly
That you shall hate it both.
[26] Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 11-13.
[27] Cf. Ellacombe, Shakespeare as an Angler, 1883; J. E. Harting, Ornithology of Shakespeare, 1872. The best account of Shakespeare’s knowledge of sport is given by the Right Hon. D. H. Madden in his entertaining and at the same time scholarly Diary of Master William Silence: a Study of Shakespeare and Elizabethan Sport, 1897.
[28] Cf. C. Holte Bracebridge, Shakespeare no Deerstealer, 1862; Lockhart, Life of Scott, vii. 123.
[30] Cf. W. J. Thoms, Three Notelets on Shakespeare, 1865, pp. 16 seq.