wedding carried with it all the privileges of marriage. But neither
Shakespeare's detailed description of a betrothal {23} nor of the solemn
verbal contract that ordinarily preceded marriage lends the contention
much support. Moreover, the whole circumstances of the case render it
highly improbable that Shakespeare and his bride submitted to the formal
preliminaries of a betrothal. In that ceremony the parents of both
contracting parties invariably played foremost parts, but the wording of
the bond precludes the assumption that the bridegroom's parents were
actors in any scene of the hurriedly planned drama of his marriage.

A difficulty has been imported into the narration of the poet's
matrimonial affairs by the assumption of his identity with one 'William
Shakespeare,' to whom, according to an entry in the Bishop of Worcester's
register, a license was issued on November 27, 1582 (the day _before_ the
signing of the Hathaway bond), authorising his marriage with Anne
Whateley of Temple Grafton. The theory that the maiden name of
Shakespeare's wife was Whateley is quite untenable, and it is unsafe to
assume that the bishop's clerk, when making a note of the grant of the
license in his register, erred so extensively as to write Anne Whateley
of Temple Grafton' for 'Anne Hathaway of Shottery.' The husband of Anne
Whateley cannot reasonably be identified with the poet. He was doubtless
another of the numerous William Shakespeares who abounded in the diocese
of Worcester. Had a license for the poet's marriage been secured on
November 27, {24} it is unlikely that the Shottery husbandmen would have
entered next day into a bond 'against impediments,' the execution of
which might well have been demanded as a preliminary to the grant of a
license but was wholly supererogatory after the grant was made.

III--THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD

Anne Hathaway's greater burden of years and the likelihood that the poet
was forced into marrying her by her friends were not circumstances of
happy augury. Although it is dangerous to read into Shakespeare's
dramatic utterances allusions to his personal experience, the emphasis
with which he insists that a woman should take in marriage 'an elder than
herself,' {25a} and that prenuptial intimacy is productive of 'barren
hate, sour-eyed disdain, and discord,' suggest a personal interpretation.
{25b} To both these unpromising features was added, in the poet's case,
the absence of a