Are you lonesome tonight? Do you miss me tonight? Are you sorry we. Hi guys, Welcome to Significant Lovers. We're your hosts. My name is Mel. And I'm Kel. And I'm Caitlin and this is the podcast where each week we dive into the high profile relationships of yesterday and today, from antiquity to modern times, and figure out why they worked or why they didn't, and what that means for all the rest of us trying to navigate this crazy thing called love so.
True, and we're cousins. Yes, and Mel is leading the episode today. Yes, today we'll. Be covering Mel. Today we are talking about the famous writer William Shakespeare, playwright from the 16th century, 17th century. Well, a little bit of both, 16th and 17th. Yeah, he overlapped both. And his wife, Anne Hathaway, not Hathaway. Dad asked who we were covering, and I was like William Shakespeare. And he's like, oh, William Shakespeare and who? And I said Anne Hathaway.
And he thought I was like pulling a joke. He's like, what? What? What do you mean, Anne Hathaway? I remember learning that in 7th grade and never forgetting it. That her name was Annie. Yeah, Sam. So funny.
But you know, what's interesting is I don't know the actress Anne Hathaway. I forget her husband's name but the Internet like learned that she had the same name as William Shakespeare a couple years ago and then pulled up images of her husband and then compared it to portraits of William Shakespeare and been like Oh my God they're the same. This is so freaking. I've seen that too. But he does kind of look like William Shakespeare.
The only thing is, which is crazy, is all the images or paintings that we have of William Shakespeare today. A lot of them were actually painted after he died. And there are portraits of him from his lifetime that we believe are him. But we there is no evidence that he ever actually commissioned a painting. And so a lot of the portraits we have of him could have been just from people's imaginations or descriptions of him. So in a way, we don't really know what he looked like.
Oh, interesting, that's kind of crazy. I didn't realize that because I feel like if you see a statue of him or picture, maybe just for me at least, I'm like, oh, that's William Shakespeare. It's an iconic look to me and it's crazy to think that that might not even be him or what he even looked like. Wow all. Right, guys. So we're going to do our new
favorite segment. I guess it's not that new anymore, but I'm going to hit you with some, I think more easy questions than we've been doing in the past. So you guys should be able to get these pretty quickly. It'll be about speed then. They all fit the theme of today's episode, which is William Shakespeare. OK, I'm excited. First question, name the actress who we covered who was cheated on while starring in a Shakespeare play. Bonus points if you can name the
play. Oh, oh, it was, it was Sienna Miller and she was doing 12th night maybe. No. OK, but I know it's Sienna Miller 'cause it was supposed to be like her big thing. Yep, it was Sienna Miller. What was it? What story was it? Tempest. It's as you like it. Oh, yeah. It's a tough one. I know. I wouldn't either. OK, I thought Cena Miller, but it was too slow. OK, this one. Here we go. This one's a little harder.
Name the couple who got together while filming a movie loosely inspired by Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. Loosely inspired Oh oh, Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling. No Robert Penson and Kristen Stewart. Ding Ding, Ding, yeah. The movie is none other than the classic film. New movie, it's that really loosely inspired. Yes, they even talk about Romeo and Juliet. I know, but it but it's wasn't like it was her idea to do a loosely inspired version of Romeo and. Who's Stephanie Meyer?
Yes. Whatever. OK, OK. OK, every book is inspired by classic literature. But it was based on her dream. Yeah, but that was just one. Part. That was the first. 1 chapter was from her. OK, OK. Expanded it OK 11. We are tied. We actually have 4 questions.
Four good, never before done. So there are two individuals who we have covered in separate episodes on our podcast who both dated each other after starring in a romantic comedy inspired by William Shakespeare. Who are they and what is the movie? Wait, what? I'm confused. OK, there's two individuals who we covered on the podcast, but in separate relationships, not
together. We did not cover these two people together, but these two people dated after meeting on a film about William Shakespeare. OK, OK. Loosely about him. It's not historically accurate, but it's a film about William Shakespeare. Oh, what? Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck. Ding, Ding, Ding, that's correct. I knew it was Gwyneth Paltrow, Biden.
The other reason was. Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow dated off and on between 1997 and 2000 after meeting on the film Shakespeare in Love. Shakespeare covered. We covered them both on the show, Gwyneth Paltrow with Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck with Jennifer Lopez and Jennifer Gardner. OK, Kate. You sound so professional. Thank you.
OK, this is the final question and it I think it's pretty easy, but which three women who we have covered on our show are connected in a chain where one has portrayed another? Who has portrayed another? Who is the real life inspiration behind a Shakespeare play? Huh. Wait, portrayed. OK betrayed. Oh, portrayed So they're connected in a chain. One woman. One woman portrayed. Portrayed in film. Betrayed. Portrayed with AP. With.
APP as in pill P as in. OK, Pillsbury, I really don't like Betrayed. No, no, I thought. It was trade too, OK. P as in. Someone cheated with someone who cheated with somebody. OK, let me let me ask the question. OK, let and let me let me say. Clinchy Lohan has betrayed Elizabeth Taylor, who who betrayed Cleopatra. Correct, Correct, Caitlin. Yeah. I didn't understand the question. I'm sure it sounds totally fine on. I'm sure it sounds fine on the recording, but over the phone
sometimes you can't. Yeah, I thought she said betrayed too. So I it took me a while to figure it out. Also. I did. Think about Elizabeth Taylor, though. Just because I was like, oh, Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, like, that's a betrayal. But then that's what I was like. Good person. Yeah, I was like, how does it figure into the person who inspired William Shakespeare's? Like they weren't alive at the same time? I was like, what? Huh. I don't know. So.
OK, Caitlin wins. Now we need someone to play Lindsay Lohan in a film. And then we will. That's definitely going to happen. A chain of. Four different women. It could happen. It could happen. Oh, so I have a question for you guys, which we were talking about in our group message. What counts as a biopic? We were talking about this. Well, I don't think you saw it yet. I think I. Was just wondering like someone is a movie about or is a movie
about a real person a biopic? Like would Spencer be considered a biopic or does it have to be like about their life? Yeah, but I mean at the same time a. Real person. Yeah, like Shakespeare in Love is not a biopic, even though it's like about. It's a historical fiction fiction film, you know? Yeah. So it's kind of making it up. But if it was a realistic portrayal about Shakespeare,
that's a biopic. But I guess a lot of biopics are also making it up. Yeah, but if it's trying to be really historical, even if they're making it up like Napoleon by Ridley Scott, I would still say that's a biopic. OK, I wasn't sure. All right, before we get into the love story, we have some new patrons that we want to thank and shout out. So I want to say thanks to Alexis, Layla, Matthew, Diana, and that's it. Thanks for joining me, Patreon. Thank you. Thank you, Thank you. Thank.
You guys and everybody that signs up gets 2 full bonus episodes a month and they are long really pretty much never shorter than an hour. So you're getting hours more of significant lovers for five. Bucks. Yeah, you're getting your money's worth. So, Mel, if you were to describe William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway in three words, what 3 words would you? Use, I would say mysterious, private and I would say. Distant even back then they were private.
Like no comment. Believe it or not, yes, because William Shakespeare, to our knowledge, none of his work was autobiographical or there's no way for us to know that, and so he didn't really write about Anne Hathaway his wife at all, besides potentially 1 sonnet, which I will get to in the episode. But other than that, we don't really get much personal work from Mr. William Shakespeare.
Interesting. Yeah, I guess that is private then, 'cause some people are putting their personal life into all their writing and even their fiction, so. Yeah, and he he really leaves it up to us, to our own interpretations of the work. OK, now let's get into the episode. But I'm. Excited. Me too, I'm a huge William Shakespeare fan. You are. Yeah, I read most of his works. I took a class about in college. Cool. Yeah, and I got to perform him also. I'm like generally, I guess
because of school, same as you. Like, I took this class when I started abroad in London, I took this history of London class and it mostly focused on the 1600s. And so we were like talking about Shakespeare's world. And I saw the. They have like a reconstructed Globe theatre that I saw. And it's cool. I haven't read as much as you, Kate, but I am like interested in that time period. So I'm also excited. Yeah. I. Love that time period, Loki.
I did. I read a lot of Shakespeare in school, like I was a English major, just like Kelly. But I'm by no means a Shakespeare expert. And I felt a little intimidated by this episode because there's just so much material out there that, like I said, we don't know much about them. Their record keeping at that
time wasn't super great at all. So a lot of the evidence we have of their lives is like birth certificates or like legal documents, epitaphs on a grave, like very garse things to go off of. It would be like if someone centuries into the future right now is trying to personify you from like 5 documents from your whole entire life and then piece them together and to come up with who you were and what your story is. Obviously, we have Shakespeare's
work, and even with that, everyone tries to put that together to like come up with some theories about who he was as a person in his thoughts and feelings. But like I said, we don't even know that any of those were autobiographical at all. So historians and scholars throughout all of history have just been trying to kind of fill in their own gaps. And a lot of times that is a reflection of maybe their own biases or values that they're
bringing to his story. So with that, there's like not a lot to say, but then also a lot at the same time because there's just so many different theories about him and their marriage. So this is not going to be totally comprehensive. There's I'm sure a lot that I'm going to miss. There's you could have like a whole podcast just about Shakespeare in general, so. Oh, for. Sure. Yeah, that's OK. And I love that. I, I personally kind of like the
episodes. Well, OK, well, I love the episodes that are huge deep dives that are like 3 hours long. I do, but I kind of like it when there isn't that much because it is like really exciting every time you find anything and it is fun to like read too far into things. So no worries, yeah. OK, but who is William Shakespeare? His birthday is not known, but he was baptized in April 1564 in Stratford upon Avon, which was a market town of roughly 2000
people. His father was named John Shakespeare, who was a successful glove maker, and his mother, Mary, was the descendant of a prominent and wealthy family of land owners. Oh, what's funny is I think so my school that I went to my college, we had Shakespeare Day and I always thought it was his birthday that we held it on, but I think it was his baptismal day, the April 15th. So I didn't. I didn't even know that. We didn't even know his actual birthday.
Well, that's actually his baptism day is April 23rd. Oh, April 23rd, Sorry. And spoiler alert, that is also believed to be the day that he died. So he might have died on his birthday, but we don't know if he was really baptized on his actual birthday. He probably wasn't, but yeah. It could have been. Probably not, yeah. But he might have died on his baptism day, which is interesting. Wow, that. Reminds me of when John Adams died on July 4th. Yeah. Yeah, very cool. So did who?
Was it Thomas Jefferson, too? Yeah, they both. Did weird. Anyway I. Think it would be kind of cool to die on your birthday I. Kind of suck. It's a tough birthday. It's a tough birthday, but it feels very like, how would it be a tough birthday? It just feels very full circle, yeah. Yeah, it's OK. I. Always thought you're older. But what if you had like a plan for the day? Like you had a big party later, but then you died before you
got. To it, you know, obviously if you're like young that would suck and if you're like 99, it'd be cool to die like on your 100th. Birthday or something or? Even Yeah, your 99th birthday. Any of those. Yeah, there's always a chance it could happen. Knock on wood anyway. Sorry, Mount. So before he was born, his parents had two children named Joan and Margaret, but they sadly died when they were infants before before he was
born. And then they had five more children after William, This Shakespeare family, they were relatively well off. And John Williams, his father, his business was was thriving during Williams early childhood. And he also served as the high bailiff of the City Council for a term which in today's terms, is equivalent to being the mayor. It's believed that William attended grammar school and upper school in Stratford, where he could have been taught how to read and write in both English
and Latin at the time. However, it is so interesting. I know. Yeah. It is widely believed that when William was about 10 to 12 years old, his father financially fell upon hard times for being a little corrupt and a little shady. Oh no. He was accused of illegal unlicensed wool trading on the black market. I guess which was this was a business that was tightly regulated and reserved for only really the elite members of
society. And he also faced illegal issues, legal issues for allegedly buying and selling houses with excessively high interest rates. OK, I I can't believe wool was once on the black market. That's kind of hilarious. Yeah, so he ended up falling into debt and retiring from public life altogether. So the Shakespeare family was not doing too well when he was a teenager. But yeah, as I mentioned, there's not a lot known about William's life otherwise.
Surprisingly, we have no diary entries or personal letters from him, so we have to fill on our own gaps. And yeah, we only can imagine who he was, and I'm guessing he might have been a private person since he really doesn't reveal that much about himself in his writing to our knowledge. I'm guessing that his family's kind of fall from grace would humble him a little bit or? Yeah. He seems like he's an ambitious guy.
Yeah, a lot of his works are pastoral, about loving nature and the country, so that's probably the only thing I could glean from his works is he prefers the country to the city, but that's probably about it. Yeah. And I even was wondering, our perception of writers and artists is that they are driven by this creative force to create stuff and put it out into the world, not necessarily for
financial benefit. And William obviously was so talented and a genius in itself, and I'm sure was super passionate about his work. But part of me did wonder, like, how much of it also was just like a means of money making for him, if this is like something he was good at. So this was his career, you know, does that make sense? Like, he, he did it for the money and to make a living. So how do we even know if the stuff that he wrote even had anything to do with his own personal feelings?
Or rather what he thought might make him the most money? Like maybe he thought audiences were like this. Again, this class I took was many, many years ago, but the idea of him kind of writing for money's sake I think is correct or very much a seemingly likely interpretation because there it was a way to make money and a way to get recognition and a way to have a job and have writing. These plays were the only ways that basically he was able to make money.
And the more he turned out, the more he was paid. So I think it is probably accurate to say that maybe he was creative. But the amount of plays he wrote and maybe what he wrote was influenced by the crowd, by the people he was working for. I think we learned that like a lot of his comedies, especially how they're written, it might not be what Shakespeare himself thought was good, but what he thought that people would enjoy. Yeah, exactly.
Funny. And I feel like by modern, the modern equivalent to that could be someone like Nicholas Sparks, who writes a lot of these hit romance novels, which are then made into these big blockbuster movies. And some of them I think are really good. Some of them not so much, but they are very popular. Or even someone like Barry Jenkins or something who directed Moonlight. But then it's kind of like one for me, one for them type of thing.
Like, oh, now I have to direct Lion King Mufasa movie to make money, but I do wanna do these passion projects on the side. So yeah, I think that was kind of. The key for them. Yeah. Sorry for like another anecdote, but it reminds me of of Scott Fitzgerald as well. I think his novels were truly like his passion from his heart or whatever, but he wrote a ton.
I remember he wrote a ton of short stories and I think they were kind of just like what people wanted like about rich young people, like being silly in New York and stuff. And you know, it was just, I think it was purely to pay the bills, so. Yeah, I think. So like they all do a good job. Like, especially Shakespeare, like I think he put his best work forward probably.
But yeah, that's a good point. I think most of his comedies and romances were the ones that were paying his bills more than the other ones. Yeah, yeah, totally. But I guess, like, before we get into Anne, that leads me to a question that I asked our patrons is what critically underrated relics of modern pop culture, you know, books, movies, TV shows, do you think will gain greater recognition and scholarly attention hundreds of years into the future?
And I just want to read some responses because I really liked it. And this is because a lot of Shakespeare's plays at the time were really popular. But maybe not as critically well received, at least not in the beginning. But now we study them in school. They're some of the most notable pieces of literature of all time. Like Shakespeare in itself is synonymous with more than just his work.
Yes. Libby Jibby said, I think any storytelling centering minorities in the US, the content is also so few and far between compared to pop culture centering white people. Andrea said oh wait, this is so sweet. She said maybe your podcast. It is an in depth collection of 100 plus famous couples stories, getting to know them from start to finish.
To this day we've discussed all sorts of romantic stories such as Shakespeare, King Henry the 8th, his six wives, and the story of Eurydice and Orpheus. So your podcast is definitely in the running. That is so sweet. She also said she said also the before trilogy movies. We don't know if the future will like our stereotypical ROM coms so they may trash on them and and like uphold previous arts
that uphold more so their views. So maybe the before trilogy because to them it may portray something more realistic to everyday real life couples. I love those movies and they are super underrated. And that was a part of your question that I kind of forgot, Mel. Like I started thinking of some answers, but I was definitely thinking of things that are critically acclaimed so or at least like really popular so. I love dumped. And of course, I hope Twilight, you know, ages in this way.
Yeah, Lola said. One of the things I love the most about history is that we never know what is going to become important once it gets buried in time. This one guy, Ian Nasir, sells really bad copper in Mesopotamia almost 4000 years ago and the angry customer complaints for in in clay tablets are now in a museum. Could my frustrated emails to Vodafone because of the bad Internet one day elicit the same wonder?
Oh my gosh. Some of the first examples we've ever found of the written word in all of human history are just a grocery list and a recipe for beer, most probably written by women. 2IN Common was a very minor ruler of Egypt and quite forgotten during his time, which is why nobody bothered raiding his tomb, and that preservation made him legendary centuries later. What if in the 54th century everyone inexplicitly loves William McKinley and he inspires fashion collections? Who is William?
McKinley, that's so funny, That's so funny. Nobody bothered raiding his. Tomb. That's hilarious. OK, A fast food vendor for construction workers in Pompeii saw the lava coming come quickly, so he ditched his stall and ran. And today we know. We can now know they ate snails and sardines and sometimes giraffe because the food is still there. What if I'm giraffe?
I know. What if a meteor strikes and a random avocado toast Instagram picture is the only thing that survives from this civilization in 1000 years? And we don't know which one it will be. Hopefully it's a good photo. I know it's not like one for like 2016 with like Snapchat filters on it or something. They think like, oh. Those, those should be remembered. I think that should be remembered more than now, actually. That was like such a weird specific thing all those filters
have you. Seen those videos where someone is like I had a kid in 2016 and they show videos of them just filming their kids really. Yeah. So such a template of its time. I don't know what would be remembered today, because I think also today there's just so much compared to before, where there's very limited publishing, very limited what's shown on stage. There wasn't movies, there wasn't TV, there wasn't music. And today, well, there was music, but there wasn't like,
streaming or recorded music. Recorded music, yeah. But today, there's just so much that it's hard to say what could even be remembered or what's going to be stored or what's going to be, I know, preserved. I mean, I know we have. Freaks me out. The archive of movies, you know, they put it in a vault and stuff.
So there's those movies. I don't know how well protected that is. The US government keeps it contained, so I guess those movies will be remembered, but I don't know, preserving them, yeah. I know, I mean, they were just so bad at preserving stuff during Shakespeare's time. Oh yeah. It's so bad at it, I don't know why you think. Even the 1920s and 1930s, they weren't preserving things as well. Like all of the silent film.
Like most of the silent films weren't well preserved and we don't have any record of them anymore. So we do have plenty of hunting films that we can watch, but there was like thousands more that we'll never be able to see because they just weren't preserved well. It's almost like everybody was Type B or something. Like it's crazy that like nobody was like, wait, let's save all this stuff for the future. I know.
They they probably felt like they had just as much stuff as us and we thought some things were junk. I read that even video games from like the 80s are becoming lost to time. Like people haven't been preserving. And you might think like, oh, who cares? But I guess a lot of like old video games haven't been preserved and some of them like
you just cannot find any more. It's like really dependent on just like random individuals who still have them in their attic or whatever, but people just throw stuff away. Yeah. I mean, even like I was talking in the Whoopi Goldberg and Ted Danson episode, you can't find any episodes pretty much from the Arcino Hall TV show, from Whoopi's TV show, the Whoopi Goldberg show.
And yeah, maybe those aren't Congress caliber worthy of things preserved, but it's still nice that we have a record of all these things. I saw that some lady, like had just taken it upon herself. Yeah, tape all TVI forget what decade it was, like maybe the 80s. I know exactly what you're talking about it. Yes. They didn't have tape recorders in the 70s. Yeah, maybe the 90s. But thanks to her they actually have like all these recorded TV
like commercials and stuff. But a lot of that stuff's just been totally lost. I know. Yeah, even VHS tapes, which this is a warning to people, apparently they lose their quality every 10 to 25 years, about 10 to 20% of their quality. So they're in a way expiring if you have VHS. Type. Oh my God. VHS tapes, so it's very important for you to digitize them now before you lose that footage forever. Dang, we got to get up on our family videos and whatnot if we
haven't archived them yet. I know I've always worried, like I would worry about this when I was younger, that someday our plugs and the walls would change and then I wouldn't be able to like, ever plug in my, I don't know, Nintendo DS, which now I don't even care. But I used to worry about that. Like what if someday I can't, like, you know, turn on my computer? I know. I think I've thought about that too.
Even like my Nook, my wicked old Nook, I was like, all those books I have on it, Like, what if I lose that? And now I don't care about the books that I have on it. But it is still sad. Like, yeah, I, I don't even think I'm even able to access the network on it anymore 'cause I think Kuznook's pretty much dead in the water that Dang, it's hard to even. I tried to boot it up recently and it's just the. E.
Reader thing. But As for today, I mean, yeah, I would hope like The Hunger Games movies or Twilight could stand the test of time, but it's very hard to say. Yeah, that's the thing. You just don't know. But anyways that's that was. Yeah, long tangent. Yes, but OK, who is Anne Hathaway? She was born in 1556 in Shottery, England, though in her father's will she is listed as Agnes, leading some to wonder if Anne was even her real name or if those were just one and the
same. Oh weird, maybe Anne was a nickname or something. Yeah, some people might think that they were interchangeable names, kind of like Jack and John. She was the daughter of a farmer, and from an early age, her and her siblings would have likely scared away the crows on the farm.
And she would have learned to milk the animals, prepared the milk and looked after small animals such as chicken and geese and ducks, along with doing all the household chores that were expected of women women of that time.
It's believed that her mother died when she was around 10 years old and that her father most likely remarried and then he passed away when Anne was 25, leaving her with 6 lbs thirteen shillings and 4 pence, which is roughly today a little over $6000 to be used as her dowry on the day of her marriage.
Wow I can't believe inflation. I know 6 lbs into like 6. 1000 I know that's overwhelming that's something that I'm I hate about thinking about the future too it's like is it going to be normal to be like oh here's $1,000,000 to buy myself a pair of jeans you know can we. Just stop with the inflation? Or can we just move the decimal point? Yeah, I do think. Everyone just agrees it means the same thing, yeah. I think should like, let's move
it down. That might even help the economy because people will feel like things are cheaper than they are. Was Anne still living with her stepmother or like after her dad died? We don't know where she was living, people think. Sad though, she's an orphan at 20. Yeah, people think that. So Fast forward, I guess usually during this time, weddings would take place at the bride's home, but her and William didn't get married at her house, so it's possible that she had moved out at some point.
Yeah, or like lost the house or something. Yeah, it's crazy. But yeah, not much else is known about her upbringing. It's assumed that she most likely didn't attend school as girls didn't at that time period, and that she had around seven siblings and was presumably the oldest, but we don't know that for sure. Wow, OK. But how did William and Anne meet? We don't know. But they did grow up a few miles down the road in nearby towns, and it's assumed that their parents may have known each
other. But again, we don't know. But they officially got married on what is believed to be November 28th, 1582. At this time, William was just 18 years old and Anne was 26. Oh. My gosh. And there's there's a lot more to say about this. I think it seems unusual to us that she was older, but it does make sense considering that her mother died. Maybe she was taking care of her
siblings for a while. And it is interesting that she did get married a year after her father died when she did have that money for the dowry. So like what if her dad was like holding on to the money and didn't give it to her until she inherited it? Like, who knows? What was going on? But wow, 18 and I know people would say that's like problematic, but yeah, it's kind of cool. Well, you know what?
I. Know that she got with this young guy what so. On the day of their wedding, she was actually three months pregnant. With his baby. Yup. Do we know that? He's a teen dad. Oh my gosh. This leads historians to believe that the couple was pressured into marriage due to the social stigma of having a baby out of wedlock. Oh my God, probably low key. Oh my God. Been into each other though, yeah.
Well, I'll get some more of that in the IT later, but there are records from the day before their wedding that William Shakespeare is listed as marrying to be married to a woman named Anne Wheatley on a marriage license. And some people believe this means that maybe he was involved with two different aunts and almost married one one day until finding about that Anne Hathaway was pregnant. But I feel like that's a little far fetched.
I honestly think that it's more likely that they just accidentally wrote the wrong last name, or maybe that that maybe that was like her middle name or something. Maybe Wow, yeah, that would be that would be insane if he was like going to marry someone and then found out who's someone he
slept with was pregnant. I mean, I I could see that definitely being the case, but it just is wild that they're both named Anne. I mean, Anne was a really popular name, but yeah, that would be kind of crazy. Maybe if the first names were different but that would just be weird that like he's like oh wait sorry I'm going to marry
this different aunt instead. Or see Shelly had like 3 Harriet's. Yeah, it makes me think that, like, if they were forced into marriage because she was pregnant, that she must have had some male relative, obviously, like her dad's dead at this time, who would have been pressuring the marriage. Because if she was without any sort of relatives or relations, there would be less pressure for her to get married. She'd probably just be single
and alone. Yeah, she had a dowry, but there wouldn't be anybody to speak on her behalf to be like, hey, you have to marry her. You took her dignity and honor and whatnot, you know? That's so true, Caitlin. That is very true. Yeah, maybe it was an aunt or
uncle or a stepmom or something. Some people do speculate if Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream could be loosely based on his own life since it is one of his only plays that is totally original, meaning it was not based on any existing material or history. Of course, nothing can be totally original, probably comes from somewhere, even if it's just your own subconscious. But maybe that perhaps a young teenage Shakespeare found himself entangled in a love
triangle. But we really have no evidence of that. But yeah, six months after their wedding, their first child, Susanna Shakespeare, was born. A nice alliteration name. And it's believed that maybe during this time, William was working for his father's business or as a teacher. While the couple lived with William's parents on Henley St. in Stratford upon Ethan a year later and became pregnant with twins Judith and Hamnet, who were born in 19, not 19851585, that would have been a long
pregnancy. Hamnet is believed to be named after a man named Hamnet Stradler, a Baker who was friends with the couple, and Judith is named after his wife. The next seven years or so are a bit of a mystery in Shakespeare's life, often referred to as the Lost Years, with there being little to no historical records from his life during this time period, with the exception of a 1589 lawsuit in which Shakespeare is named in legal documents with his parents over a land dispute with a. Paper.
But do you know, like, what's up with him? Is he writing plays yet? He could have been, or he could have been writing poetry, but he's not in the theater scene yet at this time. OK, there are some theories which lack any substantial evidence passed down throughout years about why after this period. Shakespeare then leaves his family and moves to London.
According to the original Shakespeare biographer, Nicholas Rowe, in the 18th century, Shakespeare fled to London to escape prosecution for potentially deer poaching. We don't know that. Deer, deer, deer. Oh dear. Yeah. Another theory is that he went off to London to mind the horses for the theatre patrons to break into the theatre community. Other people suggest that maybe he was a schoolmaster, but again, we really don't know what he was up to. But we do know that he did move to London.
He left his wife and his kids London. Crazy. Was about a two to three day commute away from Stratford so he could go back and visit them and I think he did every now and then around this time. The theater was a major form of entertainment and business. And it's believed that William set off to 1st become an actor.
Oh wow. So then in 1592, the first known mention of Shakespeare being a part of the London theatre community was after the production of his play Henry the 6th, when a fellow playwright, Robert Greene, criticized Shakespeare as a playwright, calling him a shake scene, saying that he was overstepping his bounds in the community due to having no formal education in playwriting or acting.
And like I said, in general his work was very popular with audiences, but at this time was being criticized by his contemporaries for not being very sophisticated. It's so weird to think of a world where people don't think Shakespeare is sophisticated. I'm sure there's some people alive today who think that, but nowadays it's. It's. It's hard for people to read. It's like the most sophisticated thing ever.
You know, I know like even some stuff that I have to read in this episode, I'm like, I don't know what this means. I need to look up an analysis. I know this is bad, but when I did take my Shakespeare class I did have a lot of the time to have to do the translate version of it. Because it is. It is hard to read Shakespeare. I think everybody can agree with that. But. It's like a lot of colloquial things or like inside jokes that like we just wouldn't get to.
So you're kind of like, huh? Yeah. What is that like? Why is that funny? So it is kind of crazy to think that in the time people are like this stupid, this is, this is toilet writing, this is like. And now you can like Major. I know he's probably what did a commoner peasant write this? I know. So now it's just interesting, like I said, to think about how things will age from our time period. Like will people listen to this back and be like, why are they
talking so formally that? Scares me. Not talking in acronyms or something. Yeah. Like South Park be seen as high art. Yeah, so Well is spending a lot of time in London rubbing elbows with the elite actors and writers, trying to make a name for himself. But unfortunately, then the plague breaks out in London, which happens a couple times throughout his life, and this border forces all the theaters to close. We even know what this is like in our time period.
It sucks. So you have to turn to other means of making money. So in 1593 he published an erotic poem, Venus and Adonis, which is believed to be his first published work. Oh, I've heard of that. OK. An erotic poem. Smut. What's the spice rating on it? So he published that and basically I know he published Venus and Adonis in 1593 and then The Rape of Looseries in 1594. Both were long form poems and they were rape. Yes, sorry.
That's what I heard. Yeah. Sorry, sorry not to laugh but it was just dropped so casually. Cut out the. Laughing. We're just uncommon, really. We're shocked, Yeah. I know, unfortunately I haven't read it so I don't know. Like in what context, sorry. Trigger warning, But it's worth noting that these two poems were dedicated to a man named Henry Risley, the third Earl of Southampton. And the dedication reads, The love I dedicated to your lordship is without end dot dot dot.
What I have done is yours. What I have done to do is yours being part in all I have devoted yours. So. Right away, this language makes it seem like perhaps there is more than a friendship between these two and perhaps maybe William Shakespeare was gay and this has been debated throughout centuries since then. The 2018 film All Is True, All Is True even actually depicted Southampton and Shakespeare as being lovers because of this dedication. But what do you think?
Well, it is also believed that during this time period, it would have been socially expected for a dedication to excessively praise nobles for political and financial reasons, especially if they sponsored their work. At this time, publishing was a very small scale industry and written work wasn't really distributed the way it is now. So to make money off of it, you had to also get that sponsorship. Like you weren't just going to make money off of writing a poem in itself.
So you had to kind of suck up to what whoever was paying for it in order to maybe secure long term profit and like establish a relationship with that person to keep making money from writing poetry. And especially with the plagues going on, maybe Shakespeare was like just kind of really boosting this guy's ego because it was a paycheck for him.
That was my first thought too. Like from what I know of musicians and writers and such back then, it seems like nothing really got made unless it was sponsored by somebody. Even people like Beethoven and such would be sponsored by someone. And and it also seems like these Lords and aristocratic people would, you know, they're basically would order their entertainment from someone. Yeah. I want something to read like,
can you make something for me? Like, you know, so I mean, it's possible, I guess, that he had a relationship with someone, but I also thought it could be just that that's the guy that was paying for it too. So yeah, they literally were commissioning their own poetry for their personal pleasure. Could be like, make me a TV show because I want to watch something like. So I feel like whenever money is involved, you kind of have to look at it differently and like
question the motivation there. Maybe they did have a relationship, but this is so early in Shakespeare's career too, so I could see him wanting to kind of suck up to this guy in order to bolster his reputation. Yeah, it's something we'll never know, but there's definitely
multiple interpretations. I think both have ample evidence to maybe suggest either because they both seem so right depending on how you read it. But I think maybe you would learn more towards homosexuality in today's lens. But when you think of it in historical terms, the way he's just praising a Lord or someone of noble birth definitely seems like the more realistic interpretation like nowadays.
I couldn't see a screenwriter who is heterosexual writing something of this nature for like, the producer of their film, you know, it definitely has a lot of gay vibes to it, but that is our own lens. Yeah, 'cause today, like with movies and stuff, with financers, they just add their production company or their name to the head of it. And this would be, I guess, like the same thing, like a
dedication. But because of how it is with like nobles and it being really like a higher class, you would have to like, suck up to them more so than just like a rich person of today. The only other like homosexual thing I've heard before of him is like Sauna 18 and like the Shall I Compare thee to a summer's day is also dedicated
to a guy. But that could be like the same thing where somebody wanted a romance on it and he was like, OK, I'll write it for you and then dedicate it to so and so. Guess we'll never know, yeah? In 1594, Shakespeare became a founding member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company of actors referred to as a playing company back then. This became a stable platform for him to showcase his work, writing roughly one to two plays a year.
In 1595 five he debuted some of his most notable works, Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, which were quite popular with audiences. Romeo and Juliet. Me too. That's like his I would say. What would you guys say that's his most well known? I think it's his most popular but so many people dog on it but I love it. They're just being contrarian.
I mean literally. Romeo and Juliet is like synonymous, like Romeo just is synonymous almost with like Prince Charming like it's just is romance. Yeah. And it's influenced so many works that we know like what would be today without Room Mutual yet. Wow, we're so lucky that they survived. And I know the copies were made and it still exists. Yeah. At this time London had a population of around 200,000 people, of which 15,000 people would attend the local plays on
a weekly basis. So this was very popular and the Lord Chamberlain's Men grew to become one of the most popular companies. In 1599 they began playing at the outdoor Globe Theatre, which held 3000 people, sometimes playing six different plays a week, which I think got to be really hard on the actors. It was maybe not the best working conditions or work life balance for them.
I can see. That at this time Anne remained in Stratford with the kids actually living with her in laws, Shakespeare's parents, and it's believed that Shakespeare would travel home. But we don't know if Anne ever came to London to see any of the plays. Hope so. I know we don't have any letters between Anne and Shakespeare at this time, and many, many scholars infer that she was probably illiterate, as most
women were. If that's the if that's the case, William would have had to write letters to a neighbor or a trusted friend, which would then be read to Anne, and perhaps that person would then transcribe her response back to Shakespeare. Yeah, because not only was she. Sad. A woman, but she was She also grew up as a farmer, and they definitely weren't receiving the
education they should have. Well, actually this writer named Jermaine Greer who wrote a book called Shakespeare's Wife, she kind of tries to give Anne a little bit more dignity. And we don't know for sure, like I believe she probably couldn't read and write. But she claims that farmers at this time period would have actually been of higher status than glove makers like Williams family.
Even though his family was pretty well off, they did eventually have some financial hard times whereas farming was a more like consistent income for people and plus like they own land too so. I thought the dad was like the mayor. Oh, Shakespeare's dad was, but then he had all those scandals and. But he might have had to read and write. Oh yeah, yeah, he, he would have. But basically just saying that like maybe Anne's family did
have the means. Like especially as a farmer, there's like less to do in the winter. Like maybe she could have at least learned how to read the Bible. Yeah. But we don't know for sure. It'd be sad if she couldn't. Like, her husband is such a brilliant writer and I can't even imagine that his wife wouldn't be able to read. That's just, yeah, sad for me to consider. Well, yeah, it is awesome. Author Jermaine Greer even speculated maybe William taught her to read and write a little
bit, but that's just. Yeah, maybe in those seven lost years, yeah. Yeah, especially with the plague. You're inside all day, not doing much. What else is there to do, you know, I wonder. I'm just take care of the family. But I know you know. I'm trying to think back on those times when I used to be illiterate like before I was 5. And like I do remember looking at words and thinking they just looked like squiggles on a piece of paper and like not being able to make out what they were at
all. But I feel like, I mean I don't want to speak. I like even there's a lot of adults who don't know how to read and write to this day. But I feel like you might pick up on a little bit overtime just from seeing stuff, and someone might teach you how to at least write your name or something basically. For sure, maybe not for a woman, but eventually. I don't have any memories from being illiterate.
You don't? No, my first memory is reading my friends name off of a wall so I was able to read and that's the first memory I have and I, I cannot tell you how it was, do not know well. I I do remember, I remember pretending to write cursive in in like our playroom and I was just drawing like loops and loops and loops and loops, so. Yeah. Yeah I I'm the same as e-mail. Like I remember thinking it was just squiggles as well.
I remember like learning to be able to write my name, but it just, it was more just memorization. I didn't really know what the letters meant, but I feel like I could imagine, you know, she has like six siblings. She probably we have some brothers. It's the winter. It's there's not much to do on the farm. Like maybe the brother is like, let me teach you how to write this word or something. Like I don't know. Maybe she just knew minimal amount. Yeah, yeah, not enough to write
a letter, but. Or who knows, maybe she was super illiterate and she wrote thousands of letters and just none of them were preserved or something. And here we are. Hundreds of years later saying she was illiterate and then I had to read or write. She actually wrote Shakespeare. Yeah. I know there are some theories that Shakespeare didn't write his own place, but I don't know if any of them helped hold any
water. Well, I was going to bring this up later, but I didn't know if Mel was going to. I feel like I've heard people over the years say like Shakespeare maybe wasn't even a real person, but I feel like clearly from all this information you've shared, he was a real person. Yeah, we do know that for sure because there's at. Least A. Baptism, he has a will, he has a grave. We know where he's buried. So he was a definitely a real
person. But yeah, that would be so annoying if if you could read and write and then for years people are debating whether you could or not. But they do say that women who could read and write during that time period most likely would have been able to write phonetically just based off sounding it out. So maybe they had a understanding of the alphabet, but you know, the English language is also really hard.
It doesn't always make sense. Yeah, in that time period they also had more letters than we. Do now, yeah, so. Many historians in Shakespeare, biographers for centuries after his death would often assume that Shakespeare had a disdain for his wife and was perhaps forced or manipulated into matrimony because she was pregnant, which is why he left for London. This is just, again, like, kind of filling in the gaps from the little bit of information.
We know, like, we know she was pregnant when they got married. We know he went to London. And so then people are left to like put that together and come up with the narrative, but we don't know if it's true. But in 2000, author Anthony Holden wrote in his William Shakespeare biography titled William Shakespeare, His Life and Work.
He said it is hard to believe that the ambitious young dreamers Shakespeare, already aware that there was a world elsewhere way beyond royal Workshire, was so enamored of a homely wench 8 years his senior as to want to marry her. Or did the local farmer's 26 year old daughter, only a month after her father's death, out to catch herself a much younger husband by seducing him? Homely, I know that she.
Was homely. Yeah. So this is something that Jermaine Greer talks about in her book Shakespeare, His Wife, where she says that all of these assumptions about Anne, really, they don't lack any evidence, but they're rooted in misogyny. She talks about how commentators often describe her as being plain or homely because of the mere fact that she was older than her husband, which she says people automatically make that assume that that makes her unattractive. Do we?
Know what she looks like? Were there any photos or pictures? There is a obviously. There is a painting of her, yeah, and I think she looks fine. Yeah, I actually looked it up earlier. I can't remember now, but yeah, she looked fine. In our perspective, I think everybody kind of looks weird from that time period because they are posed very unnaturally and they have like the big, you know, dramatic collars and everything and just, it's not like our fashion. But we don't know what she
looked like in the flesh. I mean, compared to other portraits of what they thought was really attractive during that time period, I think she looks in line with it. Yeah, me too. I think she looks attractive for. That time period homely. Such a genius. I'm pretty sure in I'm not sure about England probably, but I think in Ireland at least that they use the word homely to mean like homey. That'd be awful if someone called you that without you
knowing the context. You're so homely, but to us at least, it means. Kind of unattractive. Attractive. Yeah. Yeah, like. Unfortunate. Yeah. Maybe they just mean she's very domestic. I don't know. No, they meant, and this was a that was a 2000, a 2000 author that wasn't from a long time ago. This power dynamic, though of a mature older woman of higher social status getting with a younger man is even something that Shakespeare himself has romanticized in his plays on occasion. Author.
I've mentioned this author already. Greer notes that in the play of the two gentlemen in Verona, the character of Sylvia is betrayed as being wiser and more mature than the male character Valentine, as she teaches them how to woo her. Which is also repeated in the play As You Like It, with the character Rosalyn teaching the
boy Orlando how to love her. And meanwhile, in 12th Night, the young character of Cesario is sent to seduce a virtuous, virtuous maid, the daughter of a count that died some 12 months earlier. Interesting. So all of that is to say is we have reason to believe that Shakespeare wouldn't have been totally disgusted by this age dynamic or resent getting and pregnant or think that he was manipulated. I mean, like, obviously he had to be like kind of into her to, you know, knock her up like.
Sleep with her. Yeah, it takes 2 to tango. I just, I just think that like throughout all of history, there have been guys who have been into older women that that's just, yeah. Or they romanticize it like they want to be with a more mature lady because she might be more experienced and might be able to like show him the ropes. Or I don't know, maybe she's just hot so. I mean, Aaron Taylor Johnson, we've covered him and that was
his thing, you know? It's crazy that she's 26 and she's being called this like old wench I know. She's a cougar at 26. I know this author actually also like really did her research and figured out that the average age for women getting married at this time is actually older than we think. Like we think of it as being in the early teens sometimes in this time period. And I think as time passed, it actually did become younger.
But during this time period in this specific town, it was closer for women to be like 24, even maybe sometimes 26. Like it wasn't uncommon for women to get married at 26, but it was uncommon for men to be 18 getting married. Yeah. So then it definitely seems like it was potentially the force of them having a baby on the way then? Yes I think. I think him getting her pregnant did probably force them into
marriage. Wedlock Wednesday? Yeah, be wedlock Wednesday. But on a Saturn note, in 1599 their 11 year old son Hamnet died under unknown circumstances. This was very common at this time in England. One out of three children were not expected to survive past 10 years old. Crazy. That's insane. It's a lot of people. So Shakespeare never outwardly wrote about any events or people in his life, as I talked, as I
mentioned earlier. But of course historians and scholars have tried to find connection, connections from the loss of his son to his work. The most obvious would be his play Hamlet as it sounds similar to the name Hamnet and there are themes of grief and loss in the play and Shakespeare also began writing the play the year that Hamnet died. Yeah, definitely. Connection probably. Yeah, there's a lot about, like, father and son and that play.
Writer Richard Wheeler also speculates that 12th Night might be inspired by Hamnet, and that it's about a girl who believes that her twin brother has died, only discovered that he hasn't. And we know that Hamnet was a twin with a twin sister. Sad. I know, and I know it's really sad because there's a good chance that maybe Shakespeare wasn't even home when his son died and that maybe Anne had to find someone to write a letter to him and then he had to travel. The two very sad.
And it's sad how common it was, too. Shakespeare in the 16 Hundreds is still working as an actor and a playwright in London, but throughout that whole decade, the theater is repeatedly closing due to the bubonic plague outbreak. Terrible. I was going to say I feel like it's weird belief that Hamnett died of the plague, but I don't think that's even confirmed. I think it's just some weird myth that's been perpetrated and people believe, but maybe it's not even accurate.
Yeah. I mean, I just think that kids died pretty often. I mean, even when you look back on your own childhood and you think of like all the times that you might have had strep throat or the chicken pox or whatnot, like without modern medicine, a lot of those illnesses can be pretty fatal. Yeah, I just read a book about the plague, actually. I just really.
Yeah, about the plague. And the second wind of it was called the children's plague because apparently it killed more children than it killed adults. So. So sad. You know, yeah. And plus, like, at that age in your life, you're more vulnerable, too. So with theater being kind of unstable in 16 O 9, Shakespeare at 45 published a collection of sonnets called the 154 Sonnets. And Sonnet 145 is one of the only bodies of work by him that people think references his wife Anne.
So I'm going to read it to you. Kind of crazy. I know. Seriously. What are all the other sonnets about? I know I'll get to that, I'll get to that in a minute. But this is OK. This is Sonnet 145. So those lips that loves own handed make breath forth the sound that said, I hate to me that languished for her sake.
But when she saw my woeful state, straight in her heart did mercy come chiding that tongue that ever sweet was used in giving gentle doom, And taught it thus a new to greet I hate she altered with an end that followed it, as gentle day doth follow night, who like a fiend from heaven to hell is flown away. I hate from hate away she threw and saved my life saying not you so beautiful. Basically I don't know what it means.
I know. So the poem is basically saying, like, he's looking at this lovely woman and she says, I hate you or I hate something, and he's sad because he thinks that she hates him. And she's like, oh, no, I was just teasing you. I don't hate you. It's like a very long way to say that. He's, like, hanging on every word she says and kind of yearning for her. And then when she realizes it, she lets her guard down and says OK, like I like you too.
People think that the phrase hate away in that second to last line, apparently in Elizabethan English, would have sounded like Hathaway, and that the phrase and saved my life perhaps would have sounded like Anne saved my life. Okay. Which if it is about her, it does further challenge this narrative that Anne might have seduced him because it sounds like he's, you know, pining for this person. And then when she realizes it, she's like, okay, I'll give in to you.
Yeah, and maybe he thinks she hates him for being away so often and just has fears about that. Yeah. But also are these sonnets from like his whole life? Like is it a collection? It is a. Collection of things he's written over a long time. Yes. And so this particular sonnet is very different from all the other sonnets that are in this collection. It has a much simpler syntax and I think the lines are a little
bit longer. So people think that maybe William had wrote it earlier in his life when he was younger. So it doesn't really change. I I guess people might think that maybe he loved her at a time but then moved to London once his feelings faded for her. I mean, and it is, I do think it could be likely that they didn't really have a romantic relationship because he did choose to spend most of his time away from her. So they didn't really spend that much time together. Sad I know, but OK.
So more on the sonnets. About 60% of the sonnets are addressed to and these are the like the 1st 2/3 of the sonnets are addressed to a male figure labeled the Fair youth who. These poems express a deep love for the Fair Youth and admiration and sometimes frustration, and it's debated whether this is a romantic or platonic love.
For example, in sonnet 17, the speaker urges the Fair Youth to settle down and get married and have kids in a way that sort of feels like a father advising his son, suggesting maybe a mentor or mentee relationship. However, sonnet 18 definitely seems more romantic. He says shall this is the famous poem like we all know this one. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou aren't more lovely and more
temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer's lease hath all too short a date. And then it goes on to say that basically, like you are more eternal than a summer's day because summer will pass, but you will live on forever in this poem. So who is this fair youth? And could it potentially mean that William had a relationship with a younger guy?
The manuscript of the sonnets includes a dedication to a Mr. WH who many think is interchangeable with the Fair Youth. There are several theories about who his identity is, including the possibility that the initials could just be a red herring meant to create speculation, but I'm going to walk through some of the theories for you guys. Yeah. One is potentially Shakespeare's nephew, which would support the theory that this is just a platonic relationship.
I know his name was William Hart and he was the son of Shakespeare's sister Joan. He was born four years after Hamnett died and would have been William's only male heir at this time. So it's theorized that perhaps he wrote those sonnets to offer father son wisdom or advice to the his nephew that he couldn't pass on to his son. But there is evidence that Shakespeare did begin writing these sonnets much earlier in his life, before his nephew was even born. Like Sonnet 1:45 for example.
So it probably, I don't know. He also might not have been that close to his nephew considering he lived in London, his nephew lived in Stratford. Like maybe he had a fondness for him and a love for him. But is it enough to write 126 on it? We don't know. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Another theory is the gentleman that we mentioned earlier, Henry Riseley, the third Earl of Southampton. His initials are HW, so they are reversed.
And the real only you know theory for that is because of the very excessively loving dedication earlier in Shakespeare's career, but also actually the Earl of Southampton. He seems to have very androgynous, ladylike features based off of paintings that we have of him, and that might connect to a description of the Fair Youth and Sonnet 20 which describes him as having a woman's face with nature's own hand painted. Hast thou the master Mistress of my passion?
Definitely could be plausible. Yeah. Kind of legitimate. It does one thing I was thinking about that could be an interpretation, which probably isn't right considering the one that you just said sounds way more legitimate. But what if he was just like writing to himself and referred to William H is like William Hathaway or something? I don't know, something cheeky like that. That would be. Very. But it's definitely, Yeah. He's like, I'm a fair youth. Like I'm writing to my younger
self or something. Like get married, have kids, I don't know. Yeah. Well, that actually connects to about Sonnet 20, that sonnet says a man in Hugh all Hughes in his control. And the word Hughes is italicized. And in combination with that and the fact that the word will throughout the sonnets is often capitalized to make it look like
it's a play on the name. Will LED 18th century writer Thomas Tyrwitt to theorize that perhaps there could have been a man named Will Hughes or Willie Hughes, who he guesses maybe was a musician at this time period because there are themes of music throughout the sonnets. Now, this is a huge stretch. Like, this is like where you are kind of pulling at straws and like, making our own fan theories. And also you had to keep in mind that William's name is Will.
So like, if he plays on the name Will, that doesn't necessarily mean that there is a will because that's his name. There's no evidence to support this theory, of course. Apparently there was a guy named Will Hughes who was a performer who performed for the Earl of Essex at this time period. But we don't know if he would have known William Shakespeare at all. But this?
Coincidence. I know, but this theory later inspired Oscar Wilde to write in 1889 a short story called The Portrait of Mr. WH, in which he depicts a Willie Hughes as being a seductive actor who works in Shakespeare's plays. Oh my gosh, I didn't know that. Me neither. Oh my gosh, I actually just read The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I know I kind of like the idea that like Oscar Wilde was intrigued by Shakespeare's love life and like, it was he gang, you know?
Well, in Who's writing Shakespeare fan pics? Literally. In Oscar Wilde, Well, not in Oscar Wilde. In Dorian Gray, he falls in love with an actress who performed Shakespeare. Yeah, so he must have been a big fan. Yeah, But about Sonnet 20, just, you know, going off of this, I came across a paper titled Was Shakespeare Gay? Sonnet 20 in the Politics of Pedagogy by the Professor Charles Casey, and he argues that at this time gay identity
did not exist in society. That's not to say that people weren't gay, but there wasn't language for it. It wasn't something that there wasn't a culture of it. Basically the only like word that was used to describe it would have been sodomy. But even that kind of encompassed more than just a homosexual sex.
But sodomy laws at this time, we're not often enforced, leaving us to question whether people just didn't really engage in homosexual relationships or behavior at all or if it was just actually more socially acceptable than we even realized about that time period. So it's just kind of interesting that, like, we really don't know what. Yeah, I don't know what it was like back then. Like from what I've heard out to the lab before, a lot of like, psychology was invented. Basically.
I feel like people saw sodomy is more like just something somebody did, but it wasn't. Yeah, people didn't really. I'm sure some people did maybe, but like, it wasn't really accepted idea that it was like who people were or like that it was out of their control or that their self. It was more like you're just choosing to do this disgraceful act or something and like cut it out.
But yeah, it was until later people started saying like this is just like who somebody is and they can't control it. Like they're they are just attracted to same sex or whatever. So. It could also be a case like I doubt no gay people lived during that time period or act on it or didn't act on it, no. So it could also be like there was a culture of it, it just wasn't preserved to this day. Exactly.
Record of it. It's impossible for for us to know what gay people at that time period, like what they identified as or what they thought of themselves as or like, even if they lacked the knowledge to say like I'm gay or I'm attracted to men or the language to say that like we can't step into their minds and like know for sure how much they like understood about their own feelings and attraction for
people. So. A lot of gay men at the time also and gay women went into the church, so then they're also maybe was less of a culture because of that. Yeah, we really have. No way. Maybe he wrote them. Maybe he wrote them for multiple lovely young men. Yeah, they're like all the theories are convincing. I. Know seriously? Yeah. Another theory was William Herbert, the third Earl of Pembroke.
He also had the same initials. He was also 16 years younger than Shakespeare. He also rejected marriage proposals up until he was 24, which 24 seems pretty young, but that kind of fits with, you know, the poem that he had. William wrote a sonnet, like advising the fair youth to get married and have kids and settle down, so maybe that was directed
to him. And he also, yeah, he also had an affair with a gentlewoman named Mary Faton, or Feet, in who some believe is the inspiration for another subject in the sonnets referred to as the Dark Lady, which William writes about in sonnets 127 through 152. So. Who had the affair? Shakespeare or that William Hubert. William. Herbert OK, I was like, we know nothing about Shaker Shakespeare, but we do know he had an affair with no like, whoa, what?
OK. So the dark lady, like I said, is a subject of kind of like the second-half or or the last third of the sonnets. She's described as having dark features and unconventional beauty with whom the speaker has a passionate but complex and somewhat toxic relationship with. In sonnets 133 and 152, she's depicted as being unfaithful, and in sonnet 147, he describes her as being tormented by a love, by the love he has for
her, comparing it to a disease. The way that he describes this love is a lot more dramatic than how love is described in sonnet 145, the one that we believe could be about Anne. Which is another reason why people think that that sonnet in particular is like an anomaly and that it was written much earlier. Because it's really not, doesn't fit with all those other ones, which are very like intense.
There's a lot of theories about who the Dark Lady is, and just for time's sake, I'm not going to go into all of them. That could be an episode in itself. But it does lead us to question, you know, whether Shakespeare was faithful in his relationship. Does seem like there is, you know, some suggestion that maybe he did have relationships with other people besides Anne.
But also, some could also argue that these aren't even real people he's writing about in his poems, and perhaps they are just figment of his imagination. I don't know what to think. I know. So in terms of him being unfaithful, the only kind of blind item about Shakespeare at this time period is a diary entry kept by a man named John Manningham, which references Shakespeare in a way that suggests maybe he was a bit of a ladies man.
He writes about someone who he knows, basically a friend or his roommate. I don't know, I forget who it is, but this guy who he knows was at a performance of Richard the 3rd and he overhears an actor named Richard Burbidge planning a romantic rendezvous after the show with a fan, so a woman. However, when Richard went to meet the woman, she was apparently already with Shakespeare, who later. Which is crazy because this like diary entry is from Shakespeare's lifetime, like it
was written when he was alive. And Shakespeare then sent a message to this guy named Richard, which I don't know if that was like a written message or a verbal one, but he said William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third. Basically like playing on their names, Like, oh, like, you snooze, you lose. Like William comes first. Oh my God. I can't believe it. Yeah, The only thing like it is someone wrote in their diary an account that their friend told him.
So it's like it is very gossipy. It's kind of cute that he like wrote this down and his but he heard it. Like why would that guy feel the need to lie or make the story up, you know? He could have exaggerated I guess, but. Yeah, maybe he made-up the William the Conqueror thing, but. Yeah, but also, like, we don't know, like, that could have just been a cheeky thing. Like, what if William was just, like, talking to the lady after the play?
Like, we don't know that he like, went to bed with her, you know? Went to bed. You went to bed with her. Love that thing. We. Should make that more of a saying on significant level back from like When Harry Met Sally. Take a drink every time someone goes to bed with another. Person, but OK. Yeah, in 16, either in 1613 or 1614, Shakespeare retired and moved back to Stratford full time. So he moved back with Anne and
his kids. He would return to visit London during this time, and he did collaborate with the playwright John Fletcher to write through place. But he retired completely after a misfired cannon during a rendition of Henry the Eighth caused the Globe Theatre to burn down. Nobody was hurt and it was rebuilt the following year. But that does a. Good time to retire when the place you're working at burns down. Shakespeare is like in his late 40s at that time period, actually early 50s.
And I do wonder if maybe his health was in decline, causing him to retire because he then died in 1616 on April 23rd at 52 years old, potentially on his birthday or his baptism day. Wow, what? The same year he retired. Two years after retiring. 02 years. OK wow. How long? How old were? Years in retirement. How old were his kids by the time he died? Oh, I might need to do some math. So this is 1616 daughter Susanna.
She's like in her 30s probably. Yeah, she's 33 and the other daughter would have been like 30 or 31. I wonder if they really knew their dad much. I think they kind of did because his younger daughter Judith ended up going on to have a son who she named Shakespeare. I mean, I guess that was her last name, but I thought maybe that was an homage to her father. So was the baby's name Shakespeare? And then whatever her new. Shakespeare. Last. Name was.
Unfortunately, he died at seven months old. Oh, no, actually he died at six months old, but he was born at seven months after Shakespeare died. So I thought that was probably like in tribute to your dad. OK, so maybe either just from the times he went to Stratford or maybe they exchanged letters and maybe they came to London. Yeah, we, yeah. We don't know how Shakespeare died, but a month prior he had signed his will, which would make you believe that maybe he knew he was sick.
Although in his will he did right that he was in perfect health, maybe in denial a little bit. He had left the majority of his estate to his oldest daughter Susanna, under the stipulation that it would be passed down to her first born son. However, she only had one daughter named Elizabeth who never got married or had children. And meanwhile Shakespeare's other daughter Judith married and had three sons.
One was named Shakespeare, who unfortunately died at six months old, and she also had two more sons named Richard and Thomas, but they but they died at ages 19 and 20, a month apart from each other in 1639, meaning that Elizabeth Williams granddaughter was the last living descendant of Shakespeare and Anne. So their lineage did not continue after Elizabeth OH. My God. Really. So there's like no living descendants of Shakespeare.
No, none at all. Wow. But there's like, people who are obviously related in some way, like through his siblings or yeah, apparently Meghan Markle is distantly related, related to William Shakespeare. Wow. Very distantly, obviously. That's crazy. Wow. Like. 18th grand uncle or something? But so his will is another reason why people really debate how close him and Anne were as a married couple.
In his will, he left, like I said, the majority of his estate to his daughter Susanna. And then he also left Anne. He said that she was entitled to the second best bed with the furniture. So people are like, yeah, that's. It. So we're like, what? The second best bed? What does that mean? I don't think she just got that. Apparently, and this is debated, a wife at that time by law was automatically entitled to 1/3 of the inheritance or the estate.
So she would have also gotten 1/3 of everything he left behind. But it is worth noting that he said the second best state like the second best bet. Like what does that even mean? To this day no one has any clue. Some people think it's a Dis. Like I would definitely think it's a Dis like second best for real and that maybe for real he meant it to symbolize that Anne was second best to a different
lover. Although he didn't he didn't specifically say that anyone else was entitled to the first best bed. So other people argue that at this time period, the second best bed would have been the marriage bed as the first bed would have been reserved for guests thinking that it's actually maybe a sweet and
significant declaration of love. Could maybe be also the National Archives stays that beds and other pieces of household furniture is for often the sole bequest to a wife and that customarily the children would receive the best items and the widow the second best. I don't know how we know that. And I've also read that at this time period, furniture was a significant asset. Like it wasn't just something that you picked up at, you know, IKEA, like a bed is almost like
a car or something. Like it's a pretty big thing to leave somebody. So even if it's the second best, like in the furniture, like that's a, that's a significant thing to give someone in your will. It's not nothing. Yeah, I mean, as long as the first best went to their kids. Yeah. It's not too crazy. I'm sure it's the best for their kids too. She probably would have just continued living at the house anyway, right?
Yeah, so like if she did already sleep in the first best bed, that would be so shitty if he kicked her out of her her bed. So it's interesting to specify like, oh, I'm leaving you this bed when presumably she probably would have continued sleeping in their bed anyway. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you could debate it for ever. Like we're never going to know what that meant. I wish she was more clear. Is time travel ever going to become? No, that'd be my first question
or first thing I do they. Say when time travel is invented, we will only be able to travel to time periods in which time travel already existed, which would explain why no one from the future has showed up so far to tell us that time travel exists. Dang it. But anyway. So on his grave was an epitaph to curse anyone who might consider digging up his body or removing his remains from the sight. He said, Good dear friend, for Jesus sake, for bear to dig the
dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, and cursed be that. Cursed be he that moves my bones. I want to put that on my graves. But people, pretty cool people speculate if perhaps this is a sign that he didn't want to be laid to rest with his wife Anne, by warning folks to not dig him up. Never. Which would mean that they can't be buried together like.
It wasn't like a family plot. Like usually a husband and wife might share the same grave in the burial site, but he's saying don't ever dig me back up. I want to be down here alone basically. So that wait. So like she wasn't then buried next to him or? She was buried next to him, but not in the same plot, and she had her own grave. Interesting. It's funny how over and over again people are speculating that he did not care for his wife. I mean, maybe it's just true, but.
Yeah. I mean, there are betrayals of them in media where they are like a lovely couple and it's romanticized. I even just recently saw the Broadway show and Juliet, which is completely, you know, made-up if they literally sing like pop songs and that. But they have the plays narrated by Anne Hathaway, actually. And she's retelling the story of Romeo and Juliet, but through a feminist lens. And William like, pops up and they kind of like tease each other, but they're like a loving
husband and wife. But yeah, we we have no idea what their relationship was like, but I would say the majority of interpretations sway more negatively seems to be. So then in 1623, Anne died for reasons also unknown to us. And like I said, she was buried next to her husband in a separate grave with an inscription on the grave that reads Here lieth the body of Anne, wife of William Shakespeare, who departed this life the 6th day of August 1623,
being the age of 67 years. Her son-in-law, John Hall, Susanna's husband, also wrote an inscription we believe. We don't know for sure he wrote it, but it's inferred that he wrote it on behalf of Susanna, their daughter, which reads Breast, O mother, milk and life, thou didst give. Woe is me, for how great a boon shall I give stones. How much rather would I pray that the good Angel should move the stone so that, like Christ's body, thine image might come forth? But my prayers are unveiling.
Come quickly, Christ, that my mother, though shut within this tomb, may rise again and reach the stars. Oh, cute. I know. Must have really loved her. I know. That's what I mean. Just the difference of these two graves, like on William's grave, it's a curse. Like don't dig me back up. It's very selfish. There's really, there's no sign of like love on that grave at
all. But on Anne's grave, like it's a true like, like it's grief from her daughter being like, I wish that you would rise again, like Jesus, like I wish that you were here. But like, it just shows up. How much? Ann must have been a really good mom. Yeah, Ann's daughter Susanna didn't write one for her dad. No cursed thee, he wrote one for himself. It had nothing to do with like the loving husband of and the father of so and so it was.
Just don't dig me back up. Imagine if someone else wrote the epitaph and it wasn't actually him and it was like, don't you dare open up this like expelled as hell on earth. Who was Shakespeare or something like the daughters, like don't touch him or anything like, I don't know, like was. He was he like, really famous at this time? Like, was there actually a fear that people were going to try to, like, dig up his body? Or was it just he didn't want to
be buried with his wife? He was pretty famous. It's like not I feel like fame today is different. Like, I don't know, people wouldn't really recognize him like walking down the street, obviously, but people knew his name and so maybe that could could have been a concern. Yeah. I mean, also, like graves are dug up all the time just because they're like moved to a different location so that they can put more graves in a cemetery or even build over the cemetery or something.
And a lot of people might see that as being disruptive to their rest, you know, final rest, so. Yeah. I could see if you picked out a spot where you want to be buried. You don't want that to eventually be moved. So yeah, well, I guess, I guess that's the end of them as a couple. Right it is. It is the end that is an Hathaway and William Shakespeare. Basically everything is left to our imagination when it comes to this couple.
Yeah, because, I mean, it could have been really romantic, but considering how many romances he wrote, I guess kind of like you said, like Nicholas Sparks or something, it is kind of a shock to hear that his relationship or love life wasn't as romantic it seemed. It could have been. We just don't know. But from, well, yeah. All accounts it seems like not. I mean, yeah, Nicholas Sparks also did get divorced, so he did.
But yeah, I mean, I will say that he did write that dedication to Mr. WH. He never wrote any dedication to his wife or his children. So we can infer that maybe they weren't super close. It is crazy because his some of his love stories have become like modern day tropes. They're almost like fables, just like the fabric of our culture in a way. And so he was so good at writing
them. But I guess sometimes being an artist or writer doesn't necessarily mean that you in real life are a good husband or lover. So that's life, I guess, yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, a lot of people then, like, really analyze his plays. I wonder, like, these female characters that he wrote about, like, are those characteristics that he desired in women things that maybe are similar to his wife or contrary to his wife because this is what he might prefer instead.
We really, you know, have no idea. I wish that there was like something left behind from them that could tell us more, but we don't have it. You never know, maybe five years from now or something, somewhere, they're going to be like we found William Shakespeare's diary or something, or Anne Hathaway's diary, and now we have all this information.
Yeah, and that would be awesome. Anne Hathaway's house, her childhood home, which I don't even know if she really grew up in this specific house, but the Hathaway family like relatives of Anne Hathaway several years after she passed away. I and I didn't write this down, so I'm really truly just speaking from memory of coming across this in my research. They realized that due to Shakespeare's legacy, there might be some financial benefit to turning her childhood home
into a museum. And so you can go to it to this day in Shottery, England, and visit her house. I don't even I don't even think we know that she for sure grew up in this house. Maybe she did. But it's a tourist attraction. And I guess like the museum even at times have kind of told the fabricated version of their love story, like, oh, they would have been here on the lawn and, you know, would have fallen in love in this spot. He might have professed his love here, whatever.
And that they even would sell like souvenirs that were like fake letters from when they were like their courtship or whatever. And just like romantic items. But it's just purely like a money making thing. It's not really like historically. Accurate or anything I kind of want to go. Though I know. Yeah, me too. I mean, at the very least it's a really old house. Yeah. Gosh, I kind of wish this was a
Patreon episode. I'm worried that, like Shakespeare experts are going to come across this and Fact Check me about a lot of stuff. No, I mean, if from what you say, there's not that much information about Shakespeare, what can they even Fact Check you about, you know? I guess I'm just worried that I got something wrong, but drop us a comment. If so, yeah, I thought this was so fascinating. Thank you. Mel, thank you guys for. Listening.
Thank you. Yeah, I didn't really know much about Shakespeare as a person beyond his works. Yeah, me neither. I mean, we really don't even know, so not. Very intellectually stimulating conversation. Yeah. Well, next week is going to be more modern. We are talking about a couple that is still together.
One person in this relationship we have covered on the podcast before in a prior relationship and the other person in this relationship is in a movie that is nominated for Best Picture this year in the year 2025. Hey, can you put it together, people? Let us know. Cool. Well, I'm pumped. Me too. Thanks again, Mel. Yes. All right, we'll get back together next week. Get back together next week. Here's your heartbeat with pain. Shall I come back again?