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There is too much reason to believe that with him marriage was a failure. Reference has been made already to the birth of his daughter Susanna, who became Mrs. Hall, and we know that in 1585 his wife bore twins, boy and girl, Hamnet and Judith, named after Hamnet and Judith Sadler, friends of John Shakespeare.
The seven years succeeding the birth of Hamnet and Judith are a blank in Shakespeare's biography. He disappeared even from the reach of rumor and tradition.
Hamnet has a fist, too, and has thrashed the butcher's son down by the Rother Market, though the butcher's son is nine. Here Hamnet nudges Will. What is this he is saying? About Gammer, his very own grandame? "Ben't no witches," mutters Hamnet to Will. "Schoolmaster says so. Says the like of Gammer's talk is naught but women's tales."
These children were baptized in February of the year 1585; so that Shakspeare's whole family of three children were born and baptized two months before he completed his majority. The twins were baptized by the names of Hamnet and Judith, those being the names of two amongst their sponsors, viz., Mr. Sadler and his wife. Sadler, a friend of Shakspeare's, about fourteen years older than himself.
The opening days of 1616 saw the marriage of Judith Shakespeare, the poet's daughter, born with little Hamnet who had died twenty years before. Two months later the poet entertained Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson at New Place.
He speaks the words to Burbage, the young player who stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth, calling him by a name: Hamlet, I am thy father's spirit, bidding him list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince, young Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who has died in Stratford that his namesake may live for ever.
She was nearly eight years his senior, but in 1582 at the age of eighteen he married her. There is a record that Shakespeare's twin children, Hamnet and Judith, were baptized in 1585. From this we know that before he was twenty-one Shakespeare had a wife and family to support. We have no positive information to tell us what he did for the next seven years after the birth of his twins.
By this act William Shakespeare assumed the paternity of a daughter born six months afterward, and baptized Susanna, May 26, 1583. The only other children born of the marriage were twins, Hamnet and Judith, christened February 2, 1585. The two daughters survived their father, but Hamnet died at the age of twelve.
Nor does he know why at this moment the laughter rises loud. For Hamnet cannot see what the others can the white nose of Clowder, the asthmatic old house-dog, coming inquiringly over his shoulder, her tail wagging inquiry as to the wherefore of the uproar. But somehow, little Will Shakespeare did not laugh. Instead his cheeks and his ears burned hot for Hamnet. Judith did not laugh either.
But Will that's my Will and Dick Burbage, brake from the keepers in Sir Thomas' very hall, and got off; and that's the last that has been heard of them; and here be I left a lone woman with these three children, and Be quiet, Hamnet! Would ye pour my supper ale upon the hat of the worshipful Master John a Combe?" "What! deer-stealing?" exclaimed John a Combe.
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