The most obvious access to the theater companies for a talented young man was through apprenticeship. But Will’s marriage license places him securely in Stratford in November 1582, at the age of eighteen, and the baptismal records of his children—Susanna, christened on May 26, 1583, and the twins Hamnet and Judith, christened on February 2, 1585—strongly suggest that he still lived there or at the very least continued to make regular visits. Apprentices were usually taken on as adolescents and were not allowed to marry (let alone to father children in their late teens).
