The gleanings of tradition apart, the first knowledge that has reached us of the Poet, after his baptism, has reference to his marriage.  Rowe tells us that “he thought fit to marry while he was very young,” and that “his wife was the daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford.”  These statements are borne out by later disclosures.  The marriage took place in the Fall of 1582, when the Poet was in his nineteenth year.  On the 28th of November, that year Fulk Sandels and John Richardson subscribed a bond whereby they became liable in the sum of L40, to be forfeited to the Bishop of Worcester in case there should be found any lawful impediment to the marriage of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, of Stratford; the object being to procure such a dispensation from the Bishop as would authorize the ceremony after once publishing the banns.  The original bond is preserved at Worcester, with the marks and seals of the two bondsmen affixed, and also bearing a seal with the initials R.H., as if to show that some legal representative of the bride’s father, Richard Hathaway, was present and consenting to the act.  There was nothing peculiar in the transaction; the bond is just the same as was usually given in such cases, and several others like it are to be seen at the office of the Worcester registry.

The parish books all about Stratford and Worcester have been ransacked, but no record of the marriage has been discovered.  The probability is, that the ceremony took place in some one of the neighbouring parishes where the registers of that period have not been preserved.

Anne Hathaway was of Shottery, a pleasant village situate within an easy walk of Stratford, and belonging to the same parish.  No record of her baptism has come to light, but the baptismal register of Stratford did not begin till 1558.  She died on the 6th of August, 1623, and the inscription on her monument gives her age as sixty-seven years.  Her birth, therefore, must have been in 1556, eight years before that of her husband.

From certain precepts, dated in 1566, and lately found among the papers of the Stratford Court of Record, it appears that the relations between John Shakespeare and Richard Hathaway were of a very friendly sort.  Hathaway’s will was made September 1, 1581, and proved July 19, 1582, which shows him to have died a few months before the marriage of his daughter Anne.  The will makes good what Rowe says of his being “a substantial yeoman.”  He appoints Fulk Sandels one of the supervisors of his will; and among the witnesses to it is the name of William Gilbert, then curate of Stratford.  One item of the will is:  “I owe unto Thomas Whittington, my shepherd, L4 6s. 8d.”  Whittington died in 1601; and in his will he gives and bequeaths “unto the poor people of Stratford 40s. that is in the hand of Anne Shakespeare, wife unto Mr. William Shakespeare.”  The careful old shepherd had doubtless placed the money in Anne Shakespeare’s hand for safe keeping, she being a person in whom he had confidence.