Anne Hathaway and Shakespeare: What We Actually Know

2026-04-01

Records document almost nothing about Anne Hathaway beyond a handful of entries: a marriage bond, three baptism records, a will bequest, and a burial date. She left no letters, no diary, no account of her own life. Everything else is inference.

The Marriage

William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway married in November 1582. She was 26; he was 18. A marriage licence bond was filed on 28 November 1582 at the Worcester consistory court. The bond was required because the normal process of calling banns had been shortened, almost certainly because Anne was already pregnant.

Their daughter Susanna was baptised on 26 May 1583, approximately six months after the marriage. Premarital pregnancy was not scandalous by Elizabethan standards. It was common, particularly in rural communities, and the couple had been betrothed before the ceremony.

Anne's Family

Her father, Richard Hathaway, was a yeoman farmer in Shottery, a hamlet then separate from Stratford-upon-Avon. Richard died in September 1581, before the wedding. His will left Anne ten marks (approximately £6 13s 4d) to be paid on the day of her marriage.

The Hathaways had farmed in Shottery for generations. Their farmhouse, now known as Anne Hathaway's Cottage, stands in Shottery about a mile west of Stratford town centre. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust acquired it in 1892, and its timber frame dates to 1463.

The Children

Susanna was followed by twins Hamnet and Judith, baptised on 2 February 1585. Both were named after Shakespeare's close friends Hamnet Sadler and his wife Judith. Hamnet died in August 1596, aged eleven.

Judith later married Thomas Quiney in February 1616, two months before her father died. Susanna had married the physician John Hall in June 1607.

Anne and London

Shakespeare appears to have left for London at some point in the late 1580s. He left Anne and the three children in Stratford. She remained there for the rest of her life, first in the family home, and later at New Place, the large house Shakespeare bought in 1597.

Whether this separation was typical of the time or unusual is a question historians answer differently. Theatre companies did not travel with families. Many Elizabethan men worked in London while their wives remained in the country. The absence of any surviving correspondence between them tells us nothing either way.

The Second-Best Bed

Shakespeare's will, signed on 25 March 1616, gave Anne "my second best bed with the furniture," the word furniture meaning the curtains and bedding. He made no other specific bequest to her.

This has been read as a deliberate slight for four centuries. Infrared and X-ray analysis by a team from the National Archives showed the clause was a late insertion, apparently added shortly before his death. The second-best bed was typically the marital bed in an Elizabethan household; the best bed was kept for guests. Anne was also protected by dower law, which automatically entitled her to one-third of the income from Shakespeare's estates for life, an entitlement that did not need to be stated in the will to exist.

Her Death and Burial

Anne Hathaway died on 6 August 1623, seven years after Shakespeare. She was approximately 67 years old. She was buried at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford, beside her husband in the chancel.

Her gravestone carries the Latin epitaph "Ubera, tu mater, tu lac vitamque dedisti," meaning "Thou, mother, gavest me milk and life." The verse is thought to have been composed on behalf of her daughters.

What We Do Not Know

No portrait survives that has been securely identified as Anne Hathaway. We do not know whether she could read. We do not know what she thought of the plays, what she made of her husband's time in London, or how she spent the seven years she outlived him.

The second-best bed has generated more biographical interpretation than any other single fact about their relationship. The honest position is that it tells us almost nothing with certainty.