When William Shakespeare was eighteen years of age he was married to Anne Hathaway, while she was twenty-six years old. The first of their children, Susanna, was born six months after the marriage and was, therefore, conceived out of wedlock. In conjunction with the substantial age difference between Shakespeare and his mature bride, it is often suggested that the future playwright married Anne Hathaway because he had gotten her pregnant, that he was, in fact, forced into a marriage with this older woman. After Susanna's marriage, William and Anne had two more children, the twins Hamnet and Judith. Shakespeare spent a great deal of his time with his family in Stratford-on-Avon. But there was a tragedy in the marriage of William and Anne that their only son, Hamnet died suddenly at the age of eleven.
Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, his fifty-second birthday. He was buried three days later (exactly fifty-two years after his baptism). Shakespeare became ill after a bout of hard drinking with his fellow playwrights Ben Johnson and Michael Drayton, possibly as a result from having caught a chill. Shakespeare retired as a playwright in 1612 or 1613, two or three years before his death, and it may be that his failing health had a part in this. Shakespeare wrote his last will in January 1616, and that he rewrote it on 25 March of that year (less than a month before his death) to protect his family estate from one of his son-in-laws, his younger daughter Judith's rogue husband Thomas Quincy.
Shakespeare's grave is located in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in his birthplace, the English village of Stratford. It is located alongside the grave of his wife, Anne Hathaway (who outlived her husband by seven years despite being eight years his senior) and that of their older daughter, Susanna Hall. The grave is covered by a flat stone that bears an epitaph, which has traditionally been ascribed to Shakespeare himself. It reads:
Good friends for Jesus sake forebeare,
To dig the dust enclosed heare
Blest be y man y spare thes stones,
And curs't be he y moves my bones.
The purpose of the inscription was apparently to prevent the removal of Shakespeare's bones from the church to the charnel house, as was customary in Elizabethan England. We do not know whether the inscription was heeded, for Shakespeare's grave has never been opened. There is some speculation that the original stone was replaced in the eighteenth century as Shakespeare's reputation rose.
Picture of the slabstone over Shakespeare's tomb.
