anging with the
Bishop of Worcester's official to marry, but should be involving
themselves, whether on their own initiative or on that of their friends,
in more elaborate and expensive forms of procedure than were habitual to
the humbler ranks of contemporary society. But the Worcester diocese
covered a very wide area, and was honeycombed with Shakespeare families
of all degrees of gentility. The William Shakespeare whom Anne Whately
was licensed to marry may have been of a superior station, to which
marriage by license was deemed appropriate. On the unwarranted
assumption of the identity of the William Shakespeare of the marriage
bond with the William Shakespeare of the marriage license, a romantic
theory has been based to the effect that 'Anne Whateley of Temple
Grafton,' believing herself to have a just claim to the poet's hand,
secured the license on hearing of the proposed action of Anne Hathaway's
friends, and hoped, by moving in the matter a day before the Shottery
husbandmen, to insure Shakespeare's fidelity to his alleged pledges.

{25a} _Twelfth Night_, act ii. sc. iv. l. 29:

Let still the woman take
An elder than herself; so wears she to him,
So sways she level in her husband's heart.

{25b} Tempest, act iv. sc. i. ll. 15-22:

If thou dost break her virgin knot before
All sanctimonious ceremonies may
With full and holy rite be minister'd,
No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall
To make this contract grow; but barren hate,
Sour-ey'd disdain, and discord, shall bestrew
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly
That you shall hate it both.

{26} Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 11-13.

{27} Cf. Ellacombe, _Shakespeare as an Angler_, 1883; J. E. Harting,
_Ornithology of Shakespeare_, 1872. The best account of Shakespeare's
knowledge of sport is given by the Right Hon. D. H. Madden in his
entertaining and at the same time scholarly _Diary of Master William
Silence_: _a Study of Shakespeare and Elizabethan Sport_, 1897.

{28} Cf. C. Holte Bracebridge, _Shakespeare no Deerstealer_, 1862;
Lockhart, _Life of Scott_, vii. 123.

{30} Cf. W. J. Thoms, _Three Notelets on Shakespeare_, 1865, pp. 16 seq.

{31a} Cf. Hales, _Notes on Shakespeare_, 1884, pp. 1-24.

{31b} The common assumption that Richard Burbage, the chief actor with
whom Shakespeare was associated, was a native of Stratford is wholly
erroneous. Richard was born in Shoredi