Anne Hathaway was the wife of William Shakespeare. She married at
the age of 26.  This is really unusual for the time. Most people married
young, like at the age of 11 or 12.  Life was not as romantic as we may
picture it.  Here are some examples:

Anne Hathaway's home was a 3-bedroom house with a small parlor, which
was seldom used (only for company), a kitchen, and no bathroom.
Mother and Father shared a bedroom.  Anne had a queen-sized bed, but
did not sleep alone.  She also had 2 other sisters and they all shared
the bed  with 6 servant girls  (this is before she married). They didn't sleep like
we do, lengthwise, but lay on the bed crosswise.

At least they had a bed.  The other bedroom was shared by her 6
brothers and 30 field workers.  They didn't have a bed. Everyone just
wrapped up in their blanket and slept on the floor. They had no indoor
heating so all  the extra bodies kept them warm. They were small
people: the men only grew to be about 5'6" and the women were 4'8".

Most people got married in June.  Why?  They took their yearly
bath in May, so they were still smelling pretty good by June.  But,
they were starting to smell, so the brides would carry a bouquet of
flowers to hide their b.o., a "nose-gay".

When  they took their yearly bath in May,  it was just a big tub
that they would fill with hot water. The man of the house would
get the privilege of the nice clean water. Then all the other sons
and men, then the women and finally  the children. Last of all
the babies. By then the water was pretty thick. Thus, the saying,
"don't throw the baby out with the bath water," It was so dirty you
could actually lose someone in it.

I'll describe their houses a little.  You've heard of thatch roofs,
well that's all they were.  Thick straw, piled high, with no wood
underneath. They were the only place for the little animals to
get warm.  So all the pets; dogs, cats and other small animals,
mice, rats, bugs, all lived in the roof. When it rained it became
slippery so sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof.
 Thus the saying, "it's raining cats and dogs."

Since there was nothing to stop things from falling into the house,
 they would just try to clean up a lot.  But this posed a real problem
in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings from animals could
really mess up your  clean bed, so they found if they would make
beds with big posts and hang a sheet over the top it would prevent
that problem. That's where those big 4 poster beds with canopies
came from.

When you came into the house you would notice most times that the
floor was dirt.  Only the wealthy had something other than dirt,
so that's where the saying "dirt poor" came from. The wealthy
would have slate floors.  That was fine but in the winter they would get
slippery when they got wet.  So they started to spread thresh on
the floor to help keep their footing.  As the winter wore on they
would just keep adding it and adding it until when you opened the
door it would all start sliding outside.  So they put a  piece of
wood at the entry way, a "thresh hold".

In the kitchen they would cook over the fire. They had a fireplace
in the kitchen/parlor, that was seldom used and sometimes one in
the master bedroom. They had a big kettle that always hung over the fire
and every day they would light the fire and start adding things to the
pot. Mostly they ate vegetables; they didn't get much meat.  They would eat
the stew for dinner then leave the leftovers in the pot to get cold
overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew
would have food in it that had been in there for a month!  Thus the
rhyme: "peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot
nine days old."

Sometimes they could get a hold of some pork.  They really felt
special when that happened and when company came over
they even had a rack in the parlor where they would bring out some
bacon and hang it to show it off.  That was a sign of wealth and that
a man "could really bring home the bacon."  They would cut off a
little to share with guests and they would all sit around and "chew the
fat."

If you had money your plates were made out of pewter.  Sometimes
some of their food had a high acid content and some of the lead would
leach out into the food.  They really noticed it happened with tomatoes.
Thus they believed that tomatoes were poison and they  stopped eating
tomatoes... for 400 years.

Most people didn't have pewter plates though, they all had trenchers, a
piece of wood with the middle scooped  out like a bowl.  They never washed
their boards and a lot of times worms and bacteria  would get into the wood.
After eating off the dirty trencher they would get "trench mouth."

If you were going traveling and wanted to stay at an Inn they usually provided
the bed but not the board.  The bread was divided according to status.  The
workers would get the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family would get the middle
and guests would get the top,  or the "upper crust".

They also had lead cups and when they would drink their ale or whiskey,  the
combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. They would
be walking along the road and here would be someone knocked out.  They
thought they were dead. So they would pick them up and take them home and
get them ready to bury.  They realized if they were slow about it, the person might
wake up.   So they would lay them out on the kitchen table for a couple of days,
the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would
wake up.  That's where the custom of holding a "wake" came from.

Since England was so old and and land was at a premium, they started running
out of places to bury people.  So they started digging up coffins in order  to re-use
the grave.  Upon opening some coffins they found scratch marks on the inside.
They realized that, wake or not, they had still been burying people alive.  So they
thought they would tie a string on the wrist,  lead it through the coffin, up through
the ground and tie it to a bell.  Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all
night to listen for the bell.  Thus, the "graveyard shift" was made. If the bell would
ring they would know that someone was "saved by the bell" or he was a "dead ringer".