Anne Hathaway married William Shakespeare at 26, unusual for the time. Most people married at 11 or 12. Life was not as romantic as we may picture it.
Anne Hathaway's home was a 3 bedroom house with no bathroom, a kitchen and a small parlor used only for company. Mom and Dad shared a bedroom. Anne shared a queen sized bed with 2 sisters
and 6 servant girls, sleeping cross-wise on the bed. At least they had a bed. 6 brothers and 30 field workers shared the other bedroom, with no bed. They wrapped up in their blankets and slept on the floor. With no indoor heat the extra bodies kept them warm.
People were small. Men grew to 5'6", women to 4'8". 27 people lived in the house. Most people got married in June. Why? They took their yearly bath in May, so they still smelled good by June. They started to smell, so brides carried bouquets. Their yearly bath was a big tub of hot water. The man of the house got the nice clean water. Next were other sons and men, then women and finally children. Last were babies. By then the water was pretty thick. Throw the baby out with the bath water, it was so dirty you could lose someone in it.
Houses had thatched roofs. Thick straw piled high, no wood underneath, the only place for small animals to get warm. Dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs, all lived in the roof. When it rained it was slippery. Sometimes animals slipped and fell off the roof, "raining cats and dogs." Since nothing stopped things from falling into the house they tried to clean up a lot. Bugs and animal droppings messed up your nice clean bed. Big posts with sheets hung over the top prevented it. That's where 4 poster beds with canopies came from.
Most floors were dirt. That's where "dirt poor" came from. The wealthy had slate floors. In winter they were slippery when wet. People spread thresh on the floor to keep their footing. All winter they added and added it until when you opened the door it slipped out. They put a piece of wood at the entry way, a thresh hold.
People cooked over kitchen fires. They had a fireplace in the kitchen/parlor and sometimes in the master bedroom. A big kettle always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. Mostly they ate vegetables, they didn't get much meat. They ate the stew for dinner and left leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and start over the next day. Sometimes the stew would have food in it that had been there a month! Thus the rhyme: "peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot 9 days old." They felt special when they got pork. When company came they had a rack in the parlor where they hung bacon to show off. To bring home the bacon was a sign of wealth. They cut off a little to share with guests and they all sat around and chewed the fat.
If you had money your plates were pewter. Lead leached into food with high acid content, particularly tomatoes. People didn't eat tomatoes for 400 years. Most people used wooden trenchers, the middle scooped out like a bowl. They never washed them. Worms got into the wood. After eating off trenchers with worms they would get "trench mouth."
Inns provided bed but not board. Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle. Guests got the top, the "upper crust". Drinking ale or whiskey from lead cups sometimes knocked people out a couple days. Travelers finding people knocked out thought they were dead, picked them up, took them home and lay them on the kitchen table a couple days to get them ready to bury. If they were slow about it the person woke up, or maybe not. The family gathered around to eat and drink and wait and see if they woke up, thus holding a "wake."
England is so old and small they ran out of places to bury people. They dug up coffins, took the bones out and reused the grave. One out of 25 opened coffins had scratch marks inside. People realizing they had buried people alive tied a string on the wrist, through the coffin and up through the ground and tied it to a bell. Someone sat in the graveyard all night listening for the bell. That's how graveyard shift was made. If the bell rang they knew someone was "saved by the bell" or a "dead ringer."