The Hathaway Cottage, to which the flower-bordered path is an ancient “right of way,” through gardens and meadows that Shakespeare must often have traversed, is an exceptionally fine specimen of the timber-crossed, thatch-roofed dwelling of the Tudor period. It stands in a large garden, is shaded by tall trees, and is prettily clad with woodbine, ivy, wild roses, and maiden’s blush. In one of the upper chambers a large, antique, carved four-post bedstead is shown, as having been used by Anne Hathaway. It is possible that William and Anne lived in that cottage immediately after their marriage, which occurred in 1582. He was eighteen, she was twenty-six. The bond (a document required in those days to obtain authorization of wedlock) is preserved and may be inspected in the Edgar Tower at Worcester, where I saw it in 1889. The actual record of their marriage is supposed to have perished in a fire (before 1600) which, consuming the church of Ludington, a village near Shottery, destroyed the registers of that parish.
From an Old Drawing
THE HOUSE IN WHICH SHAKESPEARE WAS BORN
At Stratford-upon-Avon
From an Old Drawing
THE JUBILEE BOOTH
At Stratford-upon-Avon
