Mary Shakespeare Mary Shakespeare Mary Shakespeare, née Arden, (c. 1537–1608) was the mother of William Shakespeare. She was the daughter of Wilmcote gentleman farmer Robert Arden, a cadet of the Arden family prominent in Warwickshire since before the Norman Conquest. She was the youngest of eight daughters, and when her father died in 1556 she inherited land at Snitterfield and Wilmcote from her father as a dowry. The house was left to her stepmother Agnes Hill. Richard Shakespeare, the father of John Shakespeare, was a tenant farmer on land owned by her father in Snitterfield. As the daughter of Richard's landlord, she
Cecil Arden enterprises financially risky. Arden lived with her mother in New York City throughout the war years and later married a Signor Ardito Tivoli and moved to Rome, where she would reside for 15 years. After her husband's death in the late 1960s, she returned to America to live with friends in Wisconsin and later Seattle, Washington. Arden died on September 4, 1989, probably in Seattle. Cecil Arden Cecil Arden (December 15, 1894 – September 4, 1989) was an American mezzo-soprano and contralto opera singer active over the early decades of the twentieth century. Cecile Alexia Hart was born in New