The Late Mr Shakespeare

Chapter Fifty-Three Shakespeare's other Anne

But what of William Shakespeare's other Anne?

In the episcopal register of the Bishop of Worcester, John Whitgift, under the date of 27th November, 1582, is the following record of a grant of a licence for marriage:

'Item eodem die similis emanavit licencia inter Willelmum Shaxpere et Annam Whateley de Temple Grafton.'

Yet one day later the same source lists 'William Shagspere and Anne Hathwey of Stratford' as being able, since sureties have been provided, to marry with only one reading of the banns instead of the usual three. Since these sureties amounted to the not inconsiderable sum of PS40, it is quite obvious that the couple were in very great haste to marry. Since they were provided by two farmers, John Richardson and Fulke Sandells, who had been friends of the bride's late father, it is equally obvious that the Hathaway clan was pressing for William to make an honest woman of the pregnant Anne.

But are Anne Whateley and Anne Hathaway the same woman? And if they are, and the bishop's clerk simply made a slip of the pen when he wrote down 'Whateley' for 'Hathaway', why did he say on one day that the bride resided at Temple Grafton, only to say on the next day that she came from Stratford like the groom?

My friend the player Weston believed in Anne Whateley. He said she was the true love of Shakespeare's life. She was a nun (said David), a sister of the Order of St Clare, beautiful, witty, and chaste. She lived at Temple Grafton, in seclusion, and young Will lost his heart to her when he came to do odd jobs in the convent garden. Sister Anne returned his love, but because of her vow of chastity had to deny him what Dr Donne (in his Jack Donne days) once called 'the right true end of love'. Shakespeare was thinking of this woman when he wrote that line in his poem A Lover's Complaint: My parts had pow'r to charm a sacred nun. He also celebrated their 'married chastity' in The Phoenix and the Turtle. But he was eighteen years old, in the full grip of the force that through the green fuse drives the flower, and when Anne Hathaway offered him what Anne Whateley withheld, why, Will went for it. Miss Hathaway's farmer friends then escorted him to the altar, at the double, as soon as the lass proved pregnant. But Will's heart belonged to Whateley.

This is romantic stuff. I cannot wear it.

Apart from that name and address in the register, there is not a shred of evidence that any Anne Whateley ever existed, let alone in the unlikely guise of a beautiful nun.

Yet nor can I believe in a mere slip of the pen on the part of an episcopal noverint.

I suggest that 'Anne Whateley' came just for an instant into this world, like that, in inverted commas. In short, that she was an alternative Anne, a sweet fiction conjured up by the young Shakespeare's imagination as he stood there, no doubt frantic with mixed feelings, giving details of his Intended to the clerk with the quill and the book. For a moment, in his fancy, it was not the Anne he had wronged that he would have to marry, but another Anne, an Idea or Ideal of Anne, the Anne of all Annes he would choose in a perfect world.

There is an old English word WHATE, meaning fortune, fate, or destiny. I think that in a desperate moment of inspiration, confused before the clerk, Shakespeare reached into his heart and came out with the name of that Anne who would have been his choice, his fate, his destiny. She was no more than a sweet breath of hawthorn across the early hedges, but he had glimpsed her, and seen the way other flowers sprang up whitely where she went. And because this uncreated woman was so real to him, so he blurted out a name for her, and she entered the bishop's records. The ghost Anne Whateley, Shakespeare's other Anne.

But why Temple Grafton? I confess I can find no reason - save that it's a very pretty village, with an abundance of hawthorn in May, some seven miles west of Stratford, on the north bank of the Avon, and that there's a green hill there where you can readily imagine the young Shakespeare standing, since it affords a magnificent prospect to the south out over the Cotswolds. On a clear day you can see as far as Cheltenham.

The day I climbed it I heard a voice singing. It was someone in the distance, whether a man or a woman I could not tell, but the words by some freak of the landskip came clearly upon me:

On yonder hill there stands a creature

Who she is I do not know

I'll go court her for her beauty

She must answer Yes or No

O No John, No John, No John No.

Last night I watched my whore-child sipping chocolate through a straw. This is the very latest beverage, which some call the Indian Nectar. It is made from the seeds of a tree that grows in Mexico. I know what was being consumed downstairs must have been this Mexican chocolatl. A man like Sir Walter Ralegh brought in my Anne a dish of it on a silver tray.

I watched her drink that chocolate. Then she brushed her long hair. She brushed it hard, till it glowed black as jet in the candlelight.

Then my little madam removed very carefully all the strands of her hair adhering to the comb, and held them out at arm's length with fickle fingers, dropping them one by one to flare up and blaze in the candleflame. She laughed the while, and sat licking her lips flecked with chocolate.

For some reason I cannot explain, this weird barber-work sent quicksilver running through my ancient veins. I had not thought I could be so enraptured.

I only put down my boot over the peep-hole when Sir Walter started removing his buckram breeches.

Then I read a page of Ovid and soon fell fast asleep. I don't think I have had a better night's sleep since Jane was killed.