Some later observers have suggested that this separation, and the couple’s relatively few children, were signs of a strained marriage, but we do not know that, either. In the years ahead, Anne and the children lived in Stratford while Shakespeare worked in London, although we don’t know when he moved there. In early 1585, the couple had twins, Judith and Hamnet, completing the family. After marrying, she spent the rest of her life in Stratford.
Anne grew up just outside Stratford in the village of Shottery. When they married, Anne was 26 and William was 18. She was already expecting their first-born child, Susanna, which was a fairly common situation at the time. Shakespeare most likely attended until about age 15.Ī few years after he left school, in late 1582, William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. Like all such schools, its curriculum consisted of an intense emphasis on the Latin classics, including memorization, writing, and acting classic Latin plays. Shakespeare, as the son of a leading Stratford citizen, almost certainly attended Stratford’s grammar school. Not long after that, however, John Shakespeare stepped back from public life we don’t know why. John rose through local offices in Stratford, becoming an alderman and eventually, when William was five, the town bailiff-much like a mayor. A prosperous businessman, he married Mary Arden, of the prominent Arden family. Their father, John Shakespeare, was a leatherworker who specialized in the soft white leather used for gloves and similar items.
Growing up as the big brother of the family, William had three younger brothers, Gilbert, Richard, and Edmund, and two younger sisters: Anne, who died at seven, and Joan. He was John and Mary Shakespeare’s oldest surviving child their first two children, both girls, did not live beyond infancy. William Shakespeare was probably born on about April 23, 1564, the date that is traditionally given for his birth.
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