The Children of William Shakespeare

THE CHILDREN OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE & ANNE HATHAWAY

Just six months after their marriage Anne and William became the parents of their first daughter - Susanna Shakespeare

The baptism of Susanna Shakespeare was conducted on May 26, in Stratford Parish Church

Anne and William's twins, Hamnet and Judith, were born two years after Susanna

Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare were baptised on February 2nd 1585

Anne was 28 years old and William 21 years old

William Shakespeare moved to London and left Anne and the children living with the Shakespeare family in Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon

SUSANNA SHAKESPEARE

Susanna was raised in Stratford-upon-Avon

She was illiterate so she would not have attended school or received an education which customary for most girls in the Elizabethan era

The first we hear of Susanna is on May 5th 1606 when Susanna was named as a recusant for not attending an Easter Day Church service

Susanna Shakespeare was 24 years old when she announced her betrothal to Dr. John Hall who also lived in Stratford-upon-Avon

Susanna and John Hall were married on June 5th 1607

It was a good marriage - William shared some business ventures with Dr. Hall

Susanna gave birth to a baby girl eight months after her wedding to Dr. John Hall

Shakespeare's granddaughter, Elizabeth, was baptized on February 21st 1608 at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon

Shakespeare appointed John and Susanna executors of his will

Dr. Hall and Susanna inherited and moved into New Place after Shakespeare's death

HAMNET SHAKESPEARE

Hamnet Shakespeare, twin to Judith, was raised in in his grandfather's house in Stratford-upon-Avon Little is known about the life of Hamnet There are no records that show that Hamnet Shakespeare attended a school but it would have been customary for a boy of Hamnet's background to have received an education Hamnet sadly died at the age of just 11 years old. There were constant outbreaks of the Bubonic Plague, during Elizabethan times and in 1596 Hamnet caught and died of the deadly disease Hamnet Shakespeare was buried in Stratford on August 11th 1596

JUDITH SHAKESPEARE

Like her sister, Susanna, Judith was raised in Stratford-upon-Avon

Judith was also illiterate

The first we hear of Judith is when she is betrothed to Thomas Quiney, a vintner and tavern owner from Stratford-upon-Avon

William would have initially approved of the betrothal as Quiney came from a good family

Judith married Thomas Quiney on February 10th 1616. Judith was 31 years old and Thomas Quiney was 27 years of age

William Shakespeare's initial approval of the marriage would have quickly changed when he discovered the scandalous news that Thomas Quiney had made another girl pregnant, nether-the-less the marriage went ahead

But there were more problems! A special licence necessary for all weddings during Lent - Quiney did not get one!

The situation was so serious that on March 12th Judith and Thomas were excommunicated!

On March 26th Thomas Quiney was prosecuted for 'carnal copulation' with a woman called Margaret Wheeler. ( She had died in childbirth along with her baby by Quiney)

Thomas Quiney admitted his guilt and was sentenced to perform public penance. This penalty was , however, lessened to a small fine of five shillings and private penance

William modified his Will on March 25th 1616 to ensure that Judith would inherit a sum of money (£300) in her own name. Quiney was left out of the Will and Shakespeare left the bulk of his fortune to Susanna!

THE GRANDCHILDREN OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

• Susanna Shakespeare and John Hall had just one daughter, Elizabeth

Elizabeth was baptized on February 21st 1608

Elizabeth married Thomas Nashe in 1629 but he died just six years after the marriage

Elizabeth was married again to Sir John Bernard (1604 - 1674) thus receiving the title Lady Elizabeth Bernard Elizabeth had no children

• Judith Shakespeare and Thomas Quiney had three children:

Shakespeare Quiney was born in November 1616. Shakespeare Quiney died in infancy, aged 6 months old, in May 1617

Richard Quiney was born in October 1617. He died in January 1639 aged 21 years old (possibly of the plague)

Thomas Quiney was born in January 1619. He also died in Jan 1639, the same month as his brother, he was just 19 years of age

Anne Hathaway Bibliography

Anne Hathaway is believed to have grown up in Shottery, a small village just to the west of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. A cottage said to be the Hathaway family home is located at Shottery, and is a major tourist attraction for the village. Documentary evidence of the claim's authenticity is, however, lacking.

Hathaway married William Shakespeare in November 1582 while pregnant with his child. Hathaway was 26 years of age when she married, whereas Shakespeare was only 18. This age difference, and Hathaway's pregnancy, has been used by some historians as evidence that this was a "shotgun wedding" forced on a reluctant Shakespeare by Hathaway's family. There is, however, no documentary evidence for this inference. In fact, the age difference between William and Anne was typical of couples of their time.^] Women, such as the orphaned Anne, often stayed at home to care for younger siblings and married in their late 20s, and often to younger eligible men. Furthermore a "handfast" marriage and pregnancy were frequent precursors to legal marriage at the time. Certainly Shakespeare was bound to marry her having made her pregnant, but there is no reason to assume that had not always been his intention. It is likely the bride and groom's families had known one another.

Three children were born to Anne: Susanna in 1583, and the twins Hamnet and Judith in 1585.

It has often been inferred that Shakespeare came to dislike his wife, but there is no existing documentation or correspondence to support this supposition. For most of their married life, he lived in London, writing and performing his plays, while Hathaway stayed in Stratford. When Shakespeare retired from the theatre in 1613, he chose to live in Stratford, not London.

Much has been read into the bequest Shakespeare famously made in his will, leaving Anne only the "second-best bed." A few explanations have been offered for Shakespeare's bequest. Firstly, it has been claimed that according to law Hathaway was entitled to receive one third of her husband's estate regardless of his will. Second, it has been speculated that Hathaway would be supported by her children. More recently Germaine Greer has come up with a new explanation based on research into other wills and marriage settlements of the time and place. She disputes the claim that widows were automatically entitled to a third of the estate, and suggests that a condition of the marriage of Shakespeare's eldest daughter Susanna to a financially sound husband was probably that Susanna (and thus her husband) inherited the bulk of Shakespeare's estate. This would also explain other examples of Shakespeare's will being apparently ungenerous, such as the treatment of his younger daughter Judith. Greer also discusses some indications tending to support speculation that Anne may have been financially secure in her own right. The National Archives states that "beds and other pieces of household furniture were often the sole bequest to a wife," and that customarily the children would receive the best items, and the widow the second-best. In Shakespeare's time the beds of prosperous citizens were expensive affairs, sometimes to the value of a small house. The bequest was thus not as minor as it might seem to a modern person. Finally, in Elizabethan custom, the best bed in the house was reserved for guests. Therefore, the bed that Shakespeare bequeathed to Anne could have been their marital bed, and thus significant. The simple fact though is that Shakespeare, the last surviving of his brothers, was an old man for his times and Ann was eight years older than him. She may well have been feeble and dependant on her daughters. He would not have expected her to outlive him by any great length of time, and thus it made sense to leave the estate directly to her daughters.

Shakespeare's Bibliography

Born April 1564 (exact date unknown)
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England

Died 23 April 1616
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England

Occupation Playwright, poet, actor

William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest examples in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime, and in 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.

Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry". In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are consistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.