Second Best Bed

This one has festered for a while.

I see the thought and accept it.  

For so so so so many years, the female voice was written, predominantly,  by the males.  

The ideas we conjure about who women were, what we wanted, what we thought, were contained in the pen to paper of men.  

Not only written by the males, but performed, given life, by the males.

So, we females were doubly removed from the process.

I'm sure that felt good.

And sometimes they (these males who could afford paper) got it brilliantly right.

Then there's this one.  One example in the sea of possibilities.

Not an affront.  Not getting huffy.

Just. This awareness.

It would be great to know what she thought.

This recipient of the Second Best Bed.

We are developed enough to realize that time, history, culture, advocacy, education are all bending through our thoughts and we have come so far.

This is simply one strain of thought about the woman who married Williams Shakespeare.

What we know (or what on line academics lead me to believe they know...)

She married him at 26.

She was pregnant with Susanna, their oldest daughter. It was not uncommon for these times, just like our times.

She didn't need his money, as her family was more well off than he.

She gave birth to twins.

Her son, Hamnet, died young.

She outlived her husband.

He wrote a will and mentioned her. 

It is arguable that she became more known for one line in this document than for anything she herself did or didn't do.

And this bed.

This Second Best Bed.

This is what I survey as possible.

They had a marriage like so many. Filled with compromise, disappointment, sex that was great, and then fair, sometimes OK, then, when you least expect it, great again.

That whatever anyone wants to label as sexual preference, No One Knows but the human themself.

But they had sex. 

Probably in the Second Best Bed.

This genius of the English language wrote and wrote and wrote. He wrote eloquently for his time and all time.  He lived the human condition and wrote women for the company of actors he had handy. 

And the women, including his wife, Anne Hathaway, watched the work. 

Watched the men play the women.

Anne probably had some thoughts.

Historically, you may know, the Best Bed was offered to visiting family and guests.  Quite often the married couple slept in the Second Best Bed.

Is this like Silver second to Gold?  

Cause.

Someone decided one was more valuable.

Maybe so.

Many love silver more.

A personal aside.  

The bed in my guest room is the best.  It was the original of my marriage, and dutifully followed us from the big city to the affordable (barely) not city with good schools.  It resides in the room that is not mine or my husbands as a beautiful reminder of our children's lives, our history, our family members visiting, a sick person recovering, a global pandemic quarantine sanctuary. With hardly an exception, everyone who sleeps there mentions how great their sleep was, how firm the mattress, how refreshed they feel. We have heard couples enjoy each other there, and we have loved there.

It is the Best Bed. And the first bed we bought. 

Many would presume the other bed, the bed in our primary bedroom to be the best. 

It's not.

It is better looking...

Beds. In Elizabethan times, very expensive.

So laden with symbolism. Certainly for Anne.

Oh, we Humans!

In our efforts to 'make ourselves known'.  To correct the record, address the fallacies, ensure our written and virtual legacy is accurate, we exert a lot, a lot, a lot of time, energy, and emotional currency on....

What do people think about me?

So.

I offer that You Know.

Who you are.

What you like.

Whom you love.

Which Bed is the Best.

And if you, one day, circle eternity with a phrase that comes to define you that you had No Hand In Choosing...

Know that the smartest minds, the most evolved humans, will Not Believe what others write and say and devise about you.  

All the stuff.  Will filter through a thought like:

No one really knows me but me.

So how can I presume to know/judge/shame/justify someone else?

Let's Be Those People.

And Ms. Hathaway. And all the women who have been known by the writings of men.

We've got you.