She was pregnant with Susanna Shakespeare, who was baptized on 26 May 1583. The twins, Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare, were baptized on 2 February 1585. There were no further children from the union.
William Shakespeare had probably been working as an actor and writer on the professional stage in London for four or five years when the London theaters were closed by order of the Privy Council on 23 June 1592. The authorities were concerned about a severe outbreak of the plague and alarmed at the possibility of civil unrest (Privy Council minutes refer to "a great disorder and tumult" in Southwark). The initial order suspended playing until Michaelmas and was renewed several times. When the theaters reopened in June 1594, the theatrical companies had been reorganized, and Shakespeare's career was wholly committed to the troupe known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men until 1603, when they were reconstituted as the King's Men.
By 1592 Shakespeare already enjoyed sufficient prominence as an author of dramatic scripts to have been the subject of Robert Greene's attack on the "upstart crow" in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit. Such renown as he enjoyed, however, was as transitory as the dramatic form. Play scripts, and their authors, were accorded a lowly status in the literary system, and when scripts were published, their link to the theatrical company (rather than to the scriptwriter) was publicized.
