hat adopted in all other known examples. {21} In the
latter it is invariably provided that the marriage shall not take place
without the consent of the parents or governors of both bride and
bridegroom. In the case of the marriage of an 'infant' bridegroom the
formal consent of his parents was absolutely essential to strictly
regular procedure, although clergymen might be found who were ready to
shut their eyes to the facts of the situation and to run the risk of
solemnising the marriage of an 'infant' without inquiry as to the
parents' consent. The clergyman who united Shakespeare in wedlock to
Anne Hathaway was obviously of this easy temper. Despite the
circumstance that Shakespeare's bride was of full age and he himself was
by nearly three years a minor, the Shakespeare bond stipulated merely for
the consent of the bride's 'friends,' and ignored the bridegroom's
parents altogether. Nor was this the only irregularity in the document.
In other pre-matrimonial covenants of the kind the name either of the
bridegroom himself or of the bridegroom's father figures as one of the
two sureties, and is mentioned first of the two. Had the usual form been
followed, Shakespeare's father would have been the chief party to the
transaction in behalf of his 'infant' son. But in the Shakespeare bond
the sole sureties, Sandells and Richardson, were farmers of Shottery, the
bride's native place. Sandells was a 'supervisor' of the will of the
bride's father, who there describes him as 'my trustie friende and
neighbour.'

Birth of a daughter.

The prominence of the Shottery husbandmen in the negotiations preceding
Shakespeare's marriage suggests the true position of affairs. Sandells
and Richardson, representing the lady's family, doubtless secured the
deed on their own initiative, so that Shakespeare might have small
opportunity of evading a step which his intimacy with their friend's
daughter had rendered essential to her reputation. The wedding probably
took place, without the consent of the bridegroom's parents--it may be
without their knowledge--soon after the signing of the deed. Within six
months--in May 1583--a daughter was born to the poet, and was baptised in
the name of Susanna at Stratford parish church on the 26th.

Formal betrothal probably dispensed with.

Shakespeare's apologists have endeavoured to show that the public
betrothal or formal 'troth-plight' which was at the time a common prelude
to a