Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathaway

William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564 and died in 1616 on the same day in April as his birth.

He married Anne Hathaway in November of 1582. He was 18 and she was 26 and pregnant with their first child (Suzanna).  The average age of marriage for a woman was 26. William, being 18, was considered a minor and had to have Anne's father's consent to marry. Suzanna was born six months after the wedding. Three years later Anne gave birth to twins, Hamnet and Judith. Anne and William remained married  until his death.

His will of March 25, 1616, a month before he died, states that he left her the second-best bed (with its bedding and curtains).  This was not a slight. The second-best bed was the marriage bed, the best bed being reserved for guests. 

Here is Carol Anne Duffy's poem,"Anne Hathaway."

ANNE HATHAWAY

'Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed...'

        (from Shakespeare's will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning word

of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas

where he 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.

        by Carol Anne Duffy

        from The World's Wife (1999)

Carol Anne Duffy is former Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.