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.