Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway was born in 1556, sometimes called Agnes in her father's will. In 1582, pregnant and 26, she married William Shakespeare, then just 18 — young even by Elizabethan standards, though her age was typical for brides of the time. Beyond a handful of documentary mentions, almost nothing concrete survives about her personality or the nature of their marriage. Shakespeare died in 1616; she followed in 1623. What remains is an outline that historians and novelists have spent centuries trying to fill, projecting onto the silences what the documents refuse to say.