For the heart is eye and ear, and all excellent understanding
abides there.) On Christmas Day, assuredly, Anne Hathaway was born.
In what year she was born I do not know nor care. I take it she
was not less than thirty-eight when she married Shakespeare. This,
however, is sheer conjecture, and in no way important-apt to our
inquiry. It is not the year, but the day of the year, that matters.
All we need bear in mind is that on Christmas Day that woman was born
into the world.
If there be any doubting Thomas among my readers, let him not
be afraid to utter himself. I am (with the possible exception of
Shakespeare) the gentlest man that ever breathed, and I do but bid him
study the Plays in the light I have given him. The first thing that
will strike him is that Shakespeare's thoughts turned constantly to
the birthdays of all his Fitton-heroines, as a lover's thoughts always
do turn to the moment at which the loved one first saw the light.
"There was a star danced, and under that" was born Beatrice. Juliet
was born "on Lammas Eve." Marina tells us she derived her name from
the chance of her having been "born at sea." And so on, throughout the
whole gamut of women in whom Mary Fitton was bodied forth to us. But
mark how carefully Shakespeare says never a word about the birthdays
of the various shrews and sluts in whom, again and again, he gave
us his wife.
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