25 March 1616
This chapter is a close reading of William Shakespeare’s last will of 25 March 1616. The three-page document, signed by Shakespeare on each page, comprises one page from an earlier will and two new pages. Thorough revision was required in consequence of the February marriage of Shakespeare’s daughter Judith to Thomas Quiney, the son of Richard and Elizabeth Quiney. Shakespeare ensured that Judith was provided for and protected in the eventuality of her husband’s death. His principal heir was his older daughter Susanna, who had married the physician John Hall. The chapter reviews many aspects of early modern inheritance, including the duties of executors, customs surrounding children’s ‘portions’, and dower rights for widows. While other biographers doubt that Anne Shakespeare would have been protected by dower law, in fact her dower rights in the family’s property holdings were assured. Shakespeare also bequeathed her his second-best bed, and the chapter reviews evidence from other wills of the period about best beds, second-best beds, third- and fourth-best beds, and worst beds; it concludes that these were identifying terms (how to tell one bed from another) and not expressions of approval or disapproval. Like all men of property, Shakespeare concentrated on the distribution of property, and he made very few direct chattel gifts. For this reason, the goods he gave may have had personal meaning, and the chapter speculates about what that significance may have been.