Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare)

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, this title does not give the home justice. It is, in fact, a spacious twelve-roomed farmhouse, with several bedrooms and many beautiful gardens. As in many houses from 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

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 of 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.

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. For most of their married life, he lived in London, writing and performing his plays, while Hathaway stayed in Stratford. Furthermore, in his will, Shakespeare famously left 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 apparent snub. Firstly, according to law, Hathaway was entitled to receive one third of her husband's estate regardless of his will.^[1] Second, it has been speculated that Hathaway would be supported by her children. 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. ^[2] 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. ^[3]

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".[1] 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, but its language and style are not typical of his verse. It's widely attributed to Charles Dibdin (1748-1814), and may have been written for the Stratford upon Avon Shakespeare Festival of 1769:

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, in both A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, in which Dedalus makes a number of references to Hathaway [2]. In Ulysses, he speculates that the gift of the infamous "second-best bed" was a punishment for her adultery [3], while in the earlier Portrait, Dedalus analyses Shakespeare's marriage with a pun: "[h]e chose badly? He was chosen, it seems to me. If others have their will Ann hath a way." [4]

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".

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 Hathaway on the day of her husband's funeral.

References

1. ^ http://ise.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/anne.html
2. ^ http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/museum/item.asp?item_id=21
3. ^ http://www.stratford.co.uk/shakespeare.asp

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