Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway (1556 – August 6, 1623) was the wife of William Shakespeare. Little is known about her.

Anne Hathaway's Cottage

Anne Hathaway's childhood was spent in a house near Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. Although it is often called a cottage, it is, in fact, a spacious twelve-roomed farmhouse, with several bedrooms and many beautiful gardens. As in many houses of the period, it has multiple chimneys to spread the heat evenly throughout the house during winter. The largest chimney was used for cooking. It also has visible timber framing, a trademark of Tudor style architecture. It is now open to public visitors as a museum.

Life

The reputed Hathaway cottage near Stratford.

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 pregnancy and a "handfast" marriage 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. ^[1]

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.

Much has been read into the bequest Shakespeare famously made in his will, leaving Anne only the "second-best bed." However, when Shakespeare retired from the theatre in 1613, he chose to live in Stratford, not London. As for the will, 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.^[2]. 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,^[3] 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 Shakepeare's estate. This would also explain other examples of Shakespeare's will being apparently ungenerous, such as the treatment of his younger daughter Judith.^[4] 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.^[5] In Shakepeare'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 in to a modern. ^[6] 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. ^[7]

Anne in literature

Shakespeare's sonnets

One of Shakespeare's sonnets, number 145, has been claimed to make reference to Anne Hathaway; the words 'hate away' may be a pun (in Elizabethan pronunciation) on 'Hathaway'. It has also been suggested that the next words, "And saved my life", would have been indistinguishable in pronunciation from "Anne saved my life".^[8] The sonnet differs from all the others in the length of the lines. Its fairly simple language and syntax have led to suggestions that it was written much earlier than the other, more mature, sonnets.

Those lips that Love's own hand did make

Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate'

To me that languish'd for her sake;

But when she saw my woeful state

Straight in her heart did mercy come,

Chiding that tongue that ever sweet

Was used in giving gentle doom,

And taught it thus anew to greet:

'I hate' she alter'd with an end,

That follow'd it as gentle day

Doth follow night, who like a fiend

From heaven to hell is flown away;

'I hate' from hate away she threw,

And saved my life, saying 'not you.'

Other literature

The following poem about Anne has also been ascribed to Shakespeare,^[9] but its language and style are not typical of his verse.^{[citation needed]} It is widely attributed to Charles Dibdin (1748-1814) and may have been written for the Stratford upon Avon Shakespeare Festival of 1769:^[10]

But were it to my fancy given

To rate her charms, I'd call them heaven;

For though a mortal made of clay,

Angels must love Ann Hathaway;

She hath a way so to control,

To rapture the imprisoned soul,

And sweetest heaven on earth display,

That to be heaven Ann hath a way;

She hath a way,

Ann Hathaway,–

To be heaven's self Ann hath a way.

In literature after 1900

A trend in more recent literature on Hathaway is to imagine her as a sexually incontinent cradle-snatcher, or, alternatively, a frigid shrew.

An adulterous Anne is imagined by James Joyce's character Stephen Dedalus, who makes a number of references to Hathaway.^[11] In Ulysses, he speculates that the gift of the infamous "second-best bed" was a punishment for her adultery,^[12] and earlier in the same novel, Dedalus analyses Shakespeare's marriage with a pun: "He chose badly? He was chosen, it seems to me. If others have their will Ann hath a way."^[13]

The World's Wife, a collection of poems by Carol Ann Duffy, features a sonnet entitled Anne Hathaway, based on the passage from Shakespeare's will regarding his "second-best bed". Duffy chooses the view that this would be their marriage bed, and so a memento of their love, not a slight. Anne remembers their lovemaking as a form of "romance and drama", unlike the "prose" written on the best bed used by guests, "I hold him in the casket of my widow's head/ as he held me upon that next best bed".

Through her long-running solo show Mrs Shakespeare, Will's first and last love (1989) American actress-writer Yvonne Hudson may have the most constant and evolving relationship with both the historical and dramatic Anne Hathaway. She depicts Anne and Will as maintaining a friendship despite the challenges inherent to their long separations and tragedies. Mining early and recent scholarship and the complete works, Hudson concurs that evidence of the couple's mutual respect is indeed evident in the plays and sonnets, along with support for the writer's infatuations and possibly adulterous relationships. Hudson also chooses the positive view of the bed bequest, sharing that "it may have been only here that I possessed William." However, the historically-sound Mrs Shakespeare explores the realities of keeping house without a husband while applying some dramatic license. This allows Anne to have at least a country wife's understanding of her educated spouse's work as she quotes sonnets and soliloquies to convey her feelings.

The romantic comedy film Shakespeare in Love provides an example of the negative view, depicting the marriage as a cold and loveless bond that Shakespeare must escape to find love in London. A frosty relationship is also portrayed in Edward Bond's play Bingo, about Shakespeare's last days. The play Shakespeare's Will by Canadian playwright Vern Thiessen is a one-woman piece that focuses on Anne Hathaway on the day of her husband's funeral.

Sculpture Trail at Anne Hathaway's Cottage

History Play by Jane Lawrence	Titania and Bottom by Gemma Smith	King Lear by Eve Pomerantz	Falstaff, What is Honour by Niels Helvig Thorsen
Hamlet: What Wilt Thou Do For Her by Michele Firpo-Cappiello	Brutus by Isaac Graham

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Anne Hathaway's Cottage

• Anne Hathaway, wife of Shakespeare
• Hathway and Shakespeare's marriage license
• Some old Picture Postcards of Anne Hathaway's cottage in Shottery
• A TIME magazine review of Germaine Greer's new biography on Anne Hathaway

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