Happy B-Day to the Bard!

Not today, officially. But Shakespeare’s birthday, celebrated on 23 April (Wednesday this week) is a matter of conjecture. We can’t be sure when he came forth from the womb, but his baptism is recorded on 26 April 1564. And scholars tell us that back then, three days was an average interval between birth and baptism. Not to mention that Shakespeare conveniently died (at age 52) on 23 April, sparing all of us from memorizing too many dates.

One thing for sure. William Shakespeare understood popular fiction and what his audiences wanted: Passion. High stakes. Deep emotion. Laughter. Realism. Love and death, triumph and terror, anticipation and dread. The poetry and wisdom were icing on the richest literary cake in history.

But in real life, and he did have one, he was both a mystery and a perfectly normal man (who happens to have been a genius). At age 18, he got a woman of advanced age (26!) pregnant. We know her name, Anne Hathaway, and her cottage has been preserved. At the time, this would have been considered a substantial residence.

Theirs may have been a shotgun marriage, or they might have been truly in love. A daughter soon followed, and two years later, twins (boy and girl).

We hear nothing more about Will’s life until ten years later, when he is active in London’s theater scene. But he never lost ties with Stratford-upon-Avon, where he bought a fine house when success let him afford it. A few years before his death, he retired there, still married to Anne and, we want to assume, close to his daughters Susanna and Judith. His son died at an early age.

We romance writers often wonder about his relationship with his wife (especially after his affair with Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love!). Some men do stray when far from home.

In fact, it’s been presumed that Will fooled around a lot in London, and that his amours included both women and men. One bit of “evidence” relates to love sonnets that appear to be directed to another man. Could be. Then again, males back then were not hesitant to show affection and admiration for other males, no homosexuality involved. Especially when said men were rich noblemen and patrons of one’s poetry and theater company.

The key “evidence” of estrangement between Shakespeare and his (supposedly) long-in-the-tooth wife is the bequest to her in his will of his second-best bed. This has been read by some as a spiteful insult.

In fact, Anne would have received by law the normal inheritance of a wife, which required no specific mention. Was the reference to the second-best bed just a parting shot, or did it have special meaning between them?

Poet Carol Ann Duffy provides a remarkably erotic and satisfactory answer for the romantics among us:

Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed
(from Shakespeare's will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.




Whatever the truth of your life, Master Will, we hope you were happy.

And thanks for the poems and the plays!!