Shakespeare: A Life (66 page)

except on the strict condition they did not remarry. In Stratford and
other parts of the Midlands, right of dower may well have been
withheld. 'Wills usually provide for the widow with extreme care', Ms
Spufford reports; a testator wishing to ensure customary rights for a
wife usually expressed her entitlement.
²⁷
(The will of the poet's own lawyer, Francis Collins, does just that.)
Shakespeare's 'second best bed', then, may possibly have an indirect
purpose, if by acknowledging Anne's existence with a named, specific
item, he is able to deny her dower right to one-third of his estate.
One purpose of his will, which seems urgent, is to deprive her of
power; and this casts no light, of any kind, on his affection for her,
or the possible lack of it. He knew the Halls would look after her,
but, again, he seems to wish to deny Anne
control
of any portion of his heritable estate.

He adds a few more bequests. His sister Joan Hart is given £20, along
with his wearing-apparel, and will be permitted to stay on at Henley
Street for 12
d.
a year, a nominal rent. Leaving £5 to each of her
three sons, he remembers the names of William and Michael Hart, but
forgets that of Thomas. He bequeaths £5 to the obliging Thomas
Russell, and £13. 6
s.
8
d.
to the attorney Francis Collins. Money for memorial rings, at 26
s.
8
d.
each, is left to his Stratford friends ' Hamlett' Sadler, William
Reynolds (the son of Catholic recusants), and the Nash brothers, John
and Anthony. Possibly because of recent criticism of his handling of
fire-relief funds, the name of 'mr. Richard Tyler the elder', the
butcher's son, is now deleted and replaced by that of Sadler. To his
7-year-old godson William Walker, Shakespeare leaves 20
s.
in gold. Not forgetting three actors whom he had known for many years, he stipulates: 'to my fellows
John Hemynges,
Richard Burbage
and
Henry Condell
xxvis. viiid. apiece to buy them rings'.

When the will was completed, he began to sign its third sheet with an
emphatic, 'By me William Shakspeare', when energy abruptly failed
him. (The first three words are vigorously made.) He signed the other
two sheets in a feebler, scrawling hand.

He appointed Thomas Russell and Francis Collins as the will's
overseers. His five legal witnesses were Collins, July Shaw, John
Robinson, Hamnet Sadler, and Robert Whatcott, but one doubts that all
of them crowded into the sick room, and it is probable that Collins,
or his

-397-

clerk, signed two or three of the signatures (which are remarkably
similar). Robinson was a labourer, and Whatcott had testified for
Susanna in her defamation case. It is said that these two were servants
of the Halls or Shakespeares. As an executor of the will, John Hall
later had the duty of taking the document to the appropriate church
court. Inasmuch as the testator's goods and chattels (
bona notabilia)
were not within one diocese, but in London as well as at Stratford,
the executor was obliged to take the will for probate to the
archbishop's Prerogative Court of Canterbury in London, where the will
was proved on 22 June 1616.
²⁸

Before returning to the topic of Shakespeare's illness in March, let us
look into the consequences of his will and briefly into times ahead.
Predictably, the chief legatees to benefit over the years were the
Halls. Later M
^r
Hall fought for an independent-minded vicar
against the Stratford council, and gave the church a new, well-carved
pulpit, 'which did duty until 1792', says Sir Sidney Lee.

Hall's sympathies hardly extended to irascible aldermen, but he
remained popular in the community. When his health deteriorated, he
observed his own symptoms with a cool eye. At the age of 60, John Hall
died at New Place on 25 November 1635. In the parish register he was
described as 'medicus peritissimus' (most expert physician) on the day
he was interred in the chancel. His arms, 'Three talbots' heads
erased', are impaled with Shakespeare's. Over a Latin epitaph which
praises his skill and his wife's strong loyalty, the inscription reads:

HEERE LYETH Y
^E
. BODY OF JOHN HALL GENT: HEE MARR: SUSANNA, Y
^E
. DAUGH & coheire TER, OF WILL: SHAKESPEARE, GENT. HEE DECEASED NOVE
^R
. 25. A
^o
. 1635, AGED 60.

In a curious incident during the Civil War, Susanna received at her
door Dr James Cooke of Warwick, Lord Brooke's surgeon, who asked to
see 'the books left by Mr. Hall'. In his preface to Hall
SelectObservations on English Bodies

-398-

Observations on English Bodies ( 1657), Dr Cooke describes how Mrs
Hall showed him those 'books' (unprinted casebooks, no doubt) and said
she had others, by a colleague of Hall's, to sell as well. 'She
brought them forth, amongst which there was this with another of the
author's, both intended for the press', reports Cooke. He was
embarrassed, since she did not seem to know Hall's writing. There was
tension: 'I being acquainted with Mr. Hall's hand, told her that one or
two of them were her husband's, and showed them her; she denied, I
affirmed, till I perceived she began to be offended. At last I returned
her the money'.
²⁹
Susanna possibly did fail to recognize her husband's hand, unless
Cooke confused somebody else's writing with John Hall's. Anyway, she
'began to be offended'. The word
offence
had been used twice,
long before, to describe Shakespeare's own reactions to verbal injury.
This and other allusions suggest that Susanna was not unlike her
father, at least in independence of mind, but she apparently lacked
his tact, ease, and worldliness.

She
did not, however, lack pluck. Her daughter Elizabeth (who for her
health had eaten 'Nutmegs often') in 1626 at the age of 18 married a
man almost twice her age, Thomas Nash, the son of Anthony Nash whom
the poet had remembered in his will with a ring.
³⁰
At Lincoln's Inn, Thomas had studied the law, but there is no sign he
ever practised it. Inheriting local land as well as the Bear inn, he
lived presumably for a time with Elizabeth in the building now called
Nash's House, adjacent to New Place. His own will, made on 20 August
1642, about five years before he died, caused much difficulty. It
disposed of M
^rs
Hall's property as if it were his own, and
left New Place itself to his cousin, Edward Nash. Taking legal steps,
Susanna was to defeat the worst claims of Nash's 'dead hand'.

She had less luck in another matter. Such books and papers as
Shakespeare had owned must have gone in the first instance to the Halls,
and it is very probable that some were forcibly taken from Susanna.
Baldwin Brooks, later to be bailiff, broke into her house in 1637 after
failing to collect a judgement against John Hall's estate. This time
Susanna's son-in-law was helpful: with Nash, she charged in Chancery
that Brooks, with 'men of meane estate', did 'breake open the Doores
and studdy of the said howse, and Rashlye [did] seise uppon and take

-399-

Divers bookes, boxes, Deskes, moneyes, bonds, bills, and other goods of greate value'.
³¹
Were these, one asks, ever fully restored to the owner? On that
point, the record is silent. 'Witty above her sexe' and 'wise to
salvation', reads the epitaph on M
^rs
Hall's gravestone, and
'Some of Shakespeare was in that.' Susanna died at the age of 66, on 11
July 164-9, and was buried beside her husband in Holy Trinity.

The poet's other daughter, Judith Quiney, eked out a fairly penurious
existence with her vintner husband, but she led a long life by
standards of the time. Somewhat more than a week after her
seventyseventh birthday, Judith was buried on 9 February 1662. 'Judith,
uxor Thomas Quiney, Gent.' evidently merited a grave in the
churchyard, not the chancel. The latter was getting crowded.

Thomas Nash died in 1647, at the age of 53. Two years later the
poet's granddaughter Elizabeth took as her second husband, John
Barnard (or Bernard), a widower and country squire of Abington Manor,
Northamptonshire who had had eight children by his first wife. The
wedding took place at Billesley, four miles west of Stratford, on 5
June 1649. Twelve years later in return for services in the Civil War,
King Charles II favoured Barnard with a baronetcy. As the Halls' and
the Shakespeares' inheritor, Elizabeth owned New Place and the
Birthplace, but the couple chose to live at Abington Manor. Still
childless and nearly 62, Lady Barnard died in 1670, and no monument,
headstone, or marker from the time survives for her.

The poet had left modest -- but not negligible -- bequests to his
sister Joan, whose husband William Hart, the impecunious hatter, was
buried on 17 April 1616. From her famous brother, Joan in all had £20,
a life-tenancy at Henley Street for a mere peppercorn rent, plus 'all
my wearing apparel', and £5 each for her three sons. Her sons were too
young to wear their uncle's clothes. There was also a provisional
bequest of £5o, depending on Judith Quiney's dying in three years. In
that event, Joan Hart would not get the principal, only the interest,
but 'after her decease the said £50 shall remain amongst the children
of my said sister'.

The lion's share
of the Birthplace was occupied by Lewis Hiccox, his busy and
quarrelsome wife, and other leaseholders (until 1670 when Lady Barnard
left the double house at last to the Harts). While

-400-

Joan Hart was alive, the renting innkeepers had ten rooms, as well as a
kitchen, cellar and brewhouse, whereas her own share was no more
than 'three rooms' (as Jeanne Jones's work has shown) though Joan may
have had extra space in outbuildings near the garden.
³²
The Maidenhead's lease at last passed from Lewis Hiccox's nephew
Henry, to John Rutter, perhaps around 1640. When Joan Hart died in
1646, her boys had settled into the crafts. Her son Thomas's third son,
George, who became a tailor, had a son named Shakspeare Hart, who in
due course took up plumbing. The Birthplace, meanwhile, was besieged
by the curious. The later Hart descendants were helped, not always
selflessly, by antiquarians such as William Oldys ( 1696-1761) as they
tried to preserve various beloved 'relics' of Shakespeare. On the
whole, they profited very little from their great connection. In recent
times, a copy of
Poems on Several Occasions
by Walter Harte
(possibly no relation) turned up at the Folger Library in Washington,
DC with this inked note on the verso of the last leaf:

A gift from My Dear
Father
Thomas Hart With manye other items of my Noble Ancestors [
sic]
Joan Shakespeare Had it not been for the great Spirit of kindness of M
^r
William Oldys I should not of [
sic]
had the joy of having in my safe keeping our great Poets Bible. in the little Chest with the keys

If genuine, that was probably written by John Hart ( 1753-1800), a
turner and chair-maker in the sixth generation of lineal descendants of
Shakespeare's sister.
³³
A tiny sketch of a box, or small chest, is drawn under the note. If
the box and Bible are ever 'found', they are likely to be hoaxes; and
the sad fact is that a lovingly made box, by an eighteenth-century
craftsman, could be thought more valuable in later times than an old
Bible. The only personal effects of a Tudor actor known to survive
today are Edward Alleyn's silver-gilt chalice,

-401-

seal, and ring. The ring, a gold hoop with a bezel of reddish sardonyx,
is two sizes larger than average for the time (equal to size 'P'
today); it is hard to believe that Alleyn wore it on his little finger
while acting in
Tamburlaine
. As for Shakespeare's relics, they
gradually disappeared, and his supposed chair was torn apart to
satisfy a souvenir-hunter.

But the
Harts, even in poverty, kept the Birthplace. Finally when they sold it
in 1806, debts in connection with the house exceeded the sale price
(£210), so they received nothing for a historic dwelling they had
preserved for nearly two centuries. In 1817, an interview with a
direct descendant of Shakespeare's sister was printed in the
Monthly Magazine
. Having sought out William Shakspeare Hart, who was a Tewkesbury chair-maker, the
Monthly
's
editor noted with concern the status of this family. 'In one room of
the ground-floor of a wretched hovel lived this man, his wife, and
five children', the editor wrote.

In a corner stood a stocking-frame, in which the mother said she worked
after her children were in bed. . . . In answer to enquiries about
the great bard, Hart said his father and grandfather often talked of
the subject, and buoyed themselves with hopes that the family might
sometime be remembered; but, for his part, the name had hitherto
proved of no other use to him than as furnishing jokes among his
companions, by whom he was often annoyed on this account. On the
writer presenting him with a guinea, he declared it was the first
benefit which had arisen from his being a Shakespeare.
³⁴

By coincidence, when the Birthplace was bought and vested in trustees
in 1847 before its restoration, the Hart family had begun to prosper,
and today descendants can be found all over the Englishspeaking world.

If Shakespeare's legal will fell short of its hopeful aims, he clearly
had not displeased his town. He was to be honoured notably with the
waist-length effigy or 'bust' in the parish church, which is carved in
soft, pale bluish limestone by Gheerart Janssen and set in the north
chancel wall. One assumes that the local council, if not the poet's
family, approved the effigy's workmanship. Mouth open, Shakespeare
stands with a quill in his right hand, a paper under his left, and rests
his hands on a cushion. The bust's colours, often retouched in the
damp chancel and then painted over with white in 1793, had in all
probabil-

-402-