A major discovery has shed a new light on the life of William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway.
Shakespeare (1564-1616) is widely considered to be Britain’s greatest writer. He married Anne Hathaway (1556-1623) in his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon in 1582. The popular image of his life has been that he largely lived in London, working as an actor and playwright, while Anne and their children stayed in Stratford. In his will he famously left Anne only “my second best bed with the furniture”, interpreted as a suggestion of distance in their marriage.
But Professor Matthew Steggle of the University of Bristol says that a fragment of a historic letter suggests that Anne spent time with William in London.
The fragments were discovered in the binding of a book in Hereford Cathedral Library in 1978. They come from a letter addressed to “Good Mrs Shakspaire”. It says money is owed to “one John Butte a poore fatherles Childe” who will soon “hath served his time” and appeals “I hope you will have a better consience the [sic] to paye your husbands debte”.
The letter suggests that “Mrs Shakspaire”’s husband was appointed a trustee of a legacy for John Butte, which he is due to pay him when he has finished his apprenticeship, but he is refusing to do so. It also mentions that the Shakspaires once “dwelt in trinitie lane”.
In 2016 the fragments were removed from the binding and more writing was discovered on the reverse. It is not clear if this is part of the same letter or a reply, although the handwriting is different. If it is a reply, it appears to be saying that the person who wrote the letter, not the recipient, is responsible for the money.
By searching records of London, which was home to more than 75% of urban apprenticeships in England at the time, Professor Steggle found a record of a John Butt, son of Thomas Butt, deceased, who in 1599 entered into an eight-year apprenticeship to Thomas Hughes, merchant tailor. This would mean that he completed the apprenticeship in 1607 and the letter was written near that date.
Spellings of surnames in records at that period are often inconsistent, so ‘Shakspaire’ could be a spelling of ‘Shakespeare’. Only three married couples called ‘Shakespeare’ or variations have been found in London in the 30 years leading up to 1607. One couple disappear from the records after 1583 and the other two frequently appear in the records of other parishes, suggesting they could not have lived in Trinity Lane. It is not likely that any of those couples were the recipients of the letter.
Furthermore, the book the fragments were found in was printed by Richard Field – a London printer who, like Shakespeare, was from Stratford-upon-Avon, and printed the first volumes of Shakespeare’s poems.
All this suggests that far from living separately from her husband, Anne lived with him at least for a time in Trinity Lane in London and was involved in his financial affairs.
Professor Steggle writes that this contradicts the idea of Anne as “a rather passive, helpless figure”. If the words on the back of the letter are a response written by Anne or someone on her behalf, “they would still be the nearest thing to her voice ever known to have been recorded… she sounds organized, businesslike, and rather sarcastic”.
