At the age of 18, Shakespeare married the 26-【A1】________-old Anne Hathaway. The ceremony may have 【A2】 ________ arranged in some haste, and six months after the marriage Anne 【A3】 ________ birth to a daughter, Susanna【A4】________1583. Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later in 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes 【A5】 ________ the age of 11 in 1596. After the birth of the 【A6】________, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of 【A7】 ________ name in the ‘complaints bill’ of a law case before the Queen's Bench court 【A8】 ________ Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 【A9】 ________ 1589. Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 【A10】________ Shakespeare's “lost years”. Biographers attempting to account 【A11】________ this period have reported many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend 【A12】 ________ Shakespeare fled the town for London 【A13】 ________ escape prosecution for deer poaching in the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to 【A14】 ________ taken his revenge on Lucy by writing a scurrilous ballad 【A15】 ________ him. Another 18thcentury story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London. John Aubrey reported 【A16】 ________ Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster. Some 20th-century scholars have suggested that Shakespeare may have been employed 【A17】 ________ a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic landowner 【A18】 ________ named a certain “William Shakeshafte” in his will. Little evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected 【A19】 ________ his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name 【A20】 ________ the Lancashire area.

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