William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to parents John Shakespeare, a Glover and Whittawer (leather-worker) and Mary Arden in Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warwickshire. Shakespeare had 4 siblings who survived to adulthood, but 4 who did not. It is thought that Shakespeare and, at least, his brothers would have gone to the town grammar school. Not much is known about Shakespeare growing up. The first hard evidence we have of him after his birth is his marriage to Anne Hathaway in 1582. Susanna (later Hall), who was the first child of William and Anne, was born 6 months after her parents wedding. This no doubt will have caused a scandal since she was born less than 9 months after – something strictly against Catholic laws and disapproved of within the Protestants. In January 1685, twins Hamnet and Judith (later Quiney) were born. They were named after Shakespeare’s friends Hamnet the baker and his wife. It is commonly thought that Susanna was William’s favourite child, partly because she married well, She married Dr John Hall, famed at the time for actually being able to cure people – he discovered a cure for scurvy a century before anyone else did. In any case Shakespeare made John and Susanna the executors of his will, as well as leaving them the majority within (excluding the third lawfully given to his widow). Despite this, it is more likely that Shakespeare’s son would have been favored since male heirs were desired and could do more. Devastatingly, Hamnet died aged just 11 possibly from the bubonic plague. Many of Shakespeare’s plays could be littered with Hamnet references: the play Hamlet, including the name; ‘Grief fills the room up of my absent child, lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, remembers me of all his gracious parts, stuffs out his vacant garments with his form’, a passage from King John; and many others besides. They could be a silent mourning for his lost son