WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE : Beyond the Stage and Sonnet

"For women are as roses, whose fair flower Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour."

Duke Orsino, in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 4.

In Shottery, just one mile away from Stratford Upon Avon, the town where he grew up, William Shakespeare found his own fair flower--Anne Hathaway. As a result of his dalliance with Anne under the covers, Will faced fatherhood. William sought assistance from the Bishop of Worcester, who issued a Special Marriage License on the 27th of November. After only one reading of the marriage banns at Holy Trinity Church, William married Anne, eight years his senior, on November 28, 1582. William was only eighteen at the time.

Anthony Burgess, a Shakespeare biographer, may have made a clerical error in citing that the bride's name was originally entered as Anne Whateley of Temple Grafton in the Worcester court records. Burgess and some other biographers surmise that Shakespeare was originally planning to marry another Anne--at least, until Anne Hathaway of Shottery came to him with child. However, S. Schoenbaum, the foremost authority of the life of Shakespeare, denounces the possibility of this occurrence.

Just six months after their marriage, a child was born to William and Anne Shakespeare and baptised May 26, 1583 as Susanna Shakespeare. Shortly after Susanna came the twins--a boy, Hamnet and a girl, Judith (baptized February 2, 1585). In Shakespeare's day and age, so few children seemed proof of a less than ardent love affair.

Susanna, Hamnet and Judith were to be Shakespeare's only heirs, as by the latter part of the 1580s, he left Stratford Upon Avon and trotted off to the footlights of London, leaving his family behind a distance of over 100 miles. It appears the bard was bored with his marriage. Will and Anne, though well-matched in status, perhaps were no match in compatibility or emotion, and would lead separate lives for the rest of their years. Anne would reside in Victoria and Will, in London.

By the year 1592, the eloquent actor William Shakespeare had penned the plays HENRY VI (performed c. 1589 - 1592) and TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA (performed c. 1594). In the next 20 years, Shakespeare would add thirty-seven plays to his portfolio---timeless classics that included historic plays, comedies and tragedies (ex. RICHARD III, TAMING OF THE SHREW, THE COMEDY OF ERRORS, KING JOHN, ROMEO & JULIET, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, HENRY IV, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, HAMLET, TWELFTH NIGHT, OTHELLO, ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, KING LEAR, THE TEMPEST, to name a few) as well as his superb poetry. Many of these works were written at night by the candlelight of Elizabethan pubs, after a long day working as an Actor in London's Globe Theatre.

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