The Suitcase Diaries: The Home of William Shakespeare & his wife Anne Hathaway

The Jester

When it comes to Stratford Upon Avon, I don't even know where to begin. It was one of my biggest dreams to be able to visit Shakespeare's birthplace one day and now I have walked in his very footsteps.

I felt so incredibly in awe of my surroundings and it was as if magic was happening all around me. Whether you like Shakespeare or not or even if some form of poetry is your thing or not, when you walk into Stratford Upon Avon, you fall in love with "words" and how they can provoke the most complex feelings, desires and senses.

Here in Stratford Upon Avon, you live, breath and just "be" everything Shakespeare.

William Shakespeare was baptised at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford Upon Avon, on 26 April 1564. The precise date of his birth is not known, but traditionally it is celebrated on 23 April as back then is was customary to baptise and infant three days after birth.

Infant mortality in the 16th century was high and locally only one in three children survived into adulthood. Mary and John Shakespeare already lost two baby girls. Bubonic plague struck Stratford Upon Avon shortly after William's birth, killing 15 percent of the towns population.

There are rumours that Mary took William to stay with her family in the comparative safety of rural Wilmcote, four miles away, until the threat of infection was over.

Shakespeare's home is just a short walk away from the towns grammar school, Kings New School (which still exists and runs as a school today) and the Guild Hall where his father attended meetings with other aldermen of the borough. The school was open to sons of members of the borough council, and it is likely that William enrolled here in 1571, when he was seven years old.

As a boy he may have enjoyed some of the best professional theatrical performances of his time as Lord Leicester's Men visited the town in 1573 and 1574 as well as 1576 and 1577. The company was the most celebrated in the land. They commanded a premium performance rate of 15 shillings when they visited Startford, whilst most companies were being paid a mere 4 or 5 shillings per performance.

Anne Hathaway was the daughter of Richard Hathaway, a well off yeoman farmer. When he died in 1581 he left Anne, then 25 years old, a dowry of 6 pounds, 13 shillings - a considerable sum.

The charms of the charismatic William Shakespeare from Stratford would have been attractive to any woman, but he captured Anne's heart and nine months after the harvest she gave birth to their first daughter, Susanna, following a rushed marriage in November.

Shakespeare was one of only three men who married before they were twenty and the only one of these whose bride was pregnant.

Shakespeare's original "courting chair" can actually be seen in one of the bed chambers. The chair was passed down from Shakespeare to his grand daughter, Lady Elizabeth Barnard, who then passed it on to the Hathaway family. Ireland bought it from the Hathaway's and took it back to London but in 2002 it resurfaced in a auction house and was bought by the Shakespeare trust to restore to its rightful place in Shakespeare's cottage.

During the late 1580's - early 1590's, Shakespeare left Stratford to seek his fortune in London, leaving his wife and then a few young children behind in Henley street.

In 1593 he obtained the patronage of a glamorous young patron, Henry Wriothesley, the third earl of Southampton, t whom he didicated his first published poem, Venus & Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece the following year.

The poems proofed to be a great hit among readers and were the most successful of Shakespeare's publications.

By 1592 Shakespeare had become and established player and playwright in London and author of at least seven plays. In 1594 he helped to found the Lord Chamberlains Men and held shares is the company.

Five years later he had amassed sufficient wealth to afford a new family home back in Stratford, the second largest house in town, know as "New Place", bought from William Underhill for about 120 pounds.

Even though he lived in London, Williams heart never left the countryside and Stratford. It is not known how much time he spent with his family at home, but it is likely that he moved back there frequently, especially when the London theatres were closed.

A year before moving to New Place, Shakespeare and Anne suffered the devastating death of their son Hamnet, Judith' twin brother, aged eleven. The register entry records Hamnets burial in Stratford on 11 August 1596. Shakespeare is thought to have been writing, or reworking, King John, at the time. He writes movingly about a mothers grief for her young son.

Shakespeare himself passed away in April 1616. New place and Shakespeare's other properties which had by this time grow substantially passed to ownership of his eldest daughter Susanna and her husband Dr. John Hall. The couple moved into the family home, but it is likely that Anne continued to live on in part of the house.