John Shakespeare William Shakespeare
Henley Street Oxford
Stratford-upon-Avon 3rd November 1582
Dear father,
You will have been surprised to wake up this morning to find me not at home. The fact is that I've decided to run away. I only pretended to be asleep last night and when all the candles were snuffed, and I could hear nothing but the sound of snoring, I let myself out into the cold and frosty night. Don't worry about me. The world will not let me perish. I’ve decided to join the navy and make my fortune as a privateer. I'm going to Portsmouth tomorrow to join Drake's fleet.
I suppose I should really tell you why I'm running away. Well, I have some other very important news to tell you. You are to become a grandfather. Around about May of next year, or so the prospective mother tells me.
Honestly, father, I would much rather stay and marry the woman. I love her madly. But the fact is she doesn't want me. I’ve pleaded and begged with her but she still refuses. She tells me she wants nothing to do with the son of a bankrupt glove maker who is only eighteen years old and who has no money, no job and no prospects. I told her she had wanted enough to do with me when we conceived the child, but she said that that was only for the pleasure of the moment and that she never had any intention of spending the rest of her life with me. I cannot tell you how shocked I was to hear her say that. For her to have just used me and then wanting to throw me away, like a scrap left on a dinner plate, like the peelings from the vegetables thrown out to feed the pigs, like driftwood cast high upon the beach after the tempest has passed. And, father, she is eight years older than me. I swear she was making use of my innocence. How was I to know it wasn't to be forever?
I asked her what she would say when the child was born. She told me that that wouldn't be a problem. She would go away now to a cousin she has in that hideous small village Birmingham and say there that her husband had died at sea. After the baby was born she would come back to Stratford and tell everyone that she had married in Birmingham and that her husband had gone off to be a soldier. After a decent while, she'll say her husband had died in some foreign land and she can carry on her life as a respectable widow.
It was when she talked of telling the good folk of Birmingham, if there be any good folk in that nauseous place, that she had married a sailor that the idea of running away to sea came to me. If I were to join Drake on one of his great adventures and come back rich as a Lord, then she would be bound to marry me. She would see that I would be able to provide her with a good house and servants and all that kind of thing and she wouldn't be able to resist me. It would be the fulfilment of all my dreams.
So, father, I am sorry that I won't be able to help you in your work today and that I won't be able to help you ever again. I can tell you now that I'm not sad at the prospect. You know that I always hated the work. I detest slicing through that greasy leather and all that sewing with those sharp little needles. How many times have I pricked my thumbs? And me a grammar school boy. What use have you ever made of that education you so expensively bought for me? So, I'm off to seek my fame and fortune and to come back to claim my love.
And if, father, you do love me a little, though the roughness of your tongue has sometimes led me to doubt it, then could you look after my fairest love; the woman who will be the mother of your grandchild. Make sure she comes to no harm while I'm away. Her name is Mistress Anne Hathaway.
Your always loving and obedient son.
William.
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