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thoritative evidence as to the date when the license was actually granted.

The appearance of the name "Anne Whateley" for "Anne Hathwey" presents a more serious difficulty, yet lends itself to explanation. It has been shown that the clerk, writing in Latin, often made errors in proper names; for example, "Baker" for "Barbar," "Darby" for "Bradley," "Edgcock" for "Elcock." In this particular case his error may have been the result of a simple lapsus mentis, for throughout 1582 and 1583 he was much occupied with the name "Whatley," and on November 27 the Consistory Court dealt with the suit of a William Whatley against Arnold Leight. The confusion in the clerk's mind might have been occasioned by the writing of the name "William" Shakespeare, subconsciously suggesting the name "William" Whateley; or the confusion may have come through the similarity in sound between "Whatley" and "Hathwey"; or it may have been caused by the resemblance between the two names as closely written, "Annam hathwey" readily appearing to the careless and hurried eye as "Anna whatley"3 through the similarity of "m h" and "wh." However the mistake originated, there can be little doubt that the register entry refers to the license issued to Shakespeare. There is no other record of the issuance of the license to William and Anne; there is no bond for a license to an Anne Whateley; and it is hardly probable that at the same time a second William Shakespeare applied to the same clerk for a license to marry a woman with the same name, Anne.

1 The records of which he was probably writing up at the same time he was recording the Shakespeare license.

2 If, as Gray suspects, the clerk transcribed the entry from a rough memorandum jotted down from a verbal statement of the names, the mistake is naturally explained.

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In the Worcester record the entry appears “Annā Whateley."

The third and last difficulty which scholars have found in the register entry is the mention of Temple Grafton, a small village four or five miles from Stratford. Yet this difficulty too finds a plausible explanation. As is wellknown, Shakespeare's marriage to Anne did not take place in the Stratford parish, the registers of which have been carefully preserved. Yet the canon law required that a marriage under the authority of a license should be celebrated "in the parish church or chapel where one of them dwelleth, and in no other place." In the great majority of the licenses granted at Worcester the ceremony was designated to take place in the parish in which the bride was living; and this was the proper procedure. John Johnson, in The Clergyman's Vade-Mecum (1709), writes: "Twas an ancient custom, and a very good one, that a marriage should be performed in no other church but that to which the woman belonged as a parishioner; and therefore to this day the Ecclesiastical Law allows a fee due to the curate of that church whether she be married there or not." And Gray has discovered from his exhaustive study of the Worcester records "that the terminal place-name in the list of marriage licenses was in all cases intended as the residence of the bride." Thus we can hardly escape the inference that Temple Grafton was then the residence of Anne, that the license was addressed to the curate of that church, and that the marriage ceremony was there performed.

We may suppose that after the death of her father, Anne, not caring to live with her stepmother (the phraseology of Richard Hathaway's will clearly suggests a coldness between the children of his first wife and their stepmother), went to reside with relatives or friends at Temple Grafton. This would explain why the clerk issued the license to the curate there, why the ceremony was not 1 Possibly Anne's mother had come from Temple Grafton.

performed in Stratford, and, since the marriage registers of the Temple Grafton church have been lost, why no record of the marriage has ever been discovered in the various other parishes of the diocese. It is true that Sandells and Richardson in their bond referred to Anne as of the parish of Stratford, but they would naturally think of Shottery as her home.

Presumably, therefore, on November 30-Saint Andrew's Day -the banns were proclaimed at the door of the Temple Grafton church, and immediately afterwards the ecclesiastical ceremony was performed.

Thus there is no reason to suppose that the marriage was not one of true love; nor are there any grounds for the theory, largely based on a misinterpretation of the marriage license, that Anne failed to make a good wife to her actor-husband under conditions not of the best.1 Contrary to the general belief, he seems to have had her with him in London until he was able to provide for her and himself a fine home in Stratford; and at an early date he withdrew from the pleasures of a brilliant career in the city to spend his time quietly with his family. Moreover, Mrs. Shakespeare seems to have been an affectionate mother, deeply loved by her children. The inscription placed by them over her body breathes the utmost tenderness. And if we may accept the adage of "like mother, like daughter," we find some evidence of her character in the epitaph inscribed to Susanna, whose rearing was almost wholly in her hands:

Then, passenger, ha'st ne're a tear

To weep with her that wept with all?
That wept, yet set herself to cheer
Them up with comfort's cordiall.

1 Any attempt to prove that Shakespeare's marriage was unhappy by quoting passages from his plays is exceedingly perilous; for, as Sir Philip Sidney warns us, "the poet nothing affirmeth."

Her love shall live, her mercy spread,

When thou hast ne're a tear to shed.

All the definite evidence we have, slight though it be, points to that harmony of married life so eloquently expressed by the poet in his Sonnets,1 and generally represented in his plays.

1 Note especially Sonnet 8.

CHAPTER VI

DEPARTURE FROM STRATFORD

AFTER his marriage to Anne Hathaway, William, then in his nineteenth year, brought his bride, who was twentysix, to the crowded little home in Henley Street. And there, six months later, in May, 1583, a daughter was born to them, who was baptized in the Stratford church with the name Susanna. A year and nine months later Mrs. Shakespeare presented her youthful husband with twins, a boy and a girl. Shakespeare took them to the Stratford church, and christened them Hamnet and Judith, after his friend Hamnet Sadler and Hamnet's wife Judith. Thus he had ceased to be what Bagehot characterizes as "an amateur in life," and was called upon to assume the vexing problems and responsibilities of the paterfamilias.

But how was he to provide for his wife and children? We may suppose that for a time he continued to work as an apprentice on small wages or none. Yet the pecuniary embarrassment of John Shakespeare could hardly have been helped by the coming of a second family to his home; nor could William expect to remain indefinitely in the crowded little Henley Street house, now taxed beyond its capacity by his father, his mother, his brothers, and his sister, besides himself, his wife, and his three children. The fact must have been painfully obvious to him as he approached his majority that, having given hostages to fortune, he was under the necessity of finding some employment which would enable him to support his present station in life. It is not strange, therefore, that when he was about twenty-one years of age he left the shelter of

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