16. He Married His Wife When He Was 18 And She Was Pregnant
Not a lot is known about Shakespeares wife Anne Hathaway. We know she outlived her husband, inherited his second-best bed, and has never been as good as she was in The Princess Diaries. We also know, thanks to legal documents, that she married Shakespeare in 1582, when she was 26 and he was just 18. And the reason that he married her at such a young age is that she was already pregnant. Evidence for this is pretty conclusive, given that the marriage was hastily arranged. And she gave birth six months later. Though some historians think it was a shotgun wedding, theres no evidence that it was anything other than a loving relationship hastened along by an unexpected pregnancy. Certainly its unlikely that Annes reputation would have been under question. Coming from a relatively poor family, and marrying a fairly wealthy, pregnant woman eight years his senior, its Shakespeare whose reputation would have suffered from this wedding.
