Shakespeare: A Life (65 page)

poet perhaps saw Russell in London and met the latter's stepson,
Leonard Digges ( 1558-1635), who wrote two poems about Shakespeare,
including memorial verses for the great Folio.
¹⁴

Russell, like Thomas Combe, was a man of some leisure and considerable
affluence. Shakespeare enjoyed friends of that stripe, but he also
sought out attorneys such as the two Greenes, Thomas Lucas of Gray's
Inn, or Francis Collins of Clement's Inn. Lucas lived mainly at
Stratford. So did Collins, until (by around 1612) he wrapped up a long,
involved law-case for the town and moved out to Warwick.

One suspects Shakespeare's silhouette on horseback was known, at
least, at Alderminster. Whether or not his friends often kept him from
home in 1615, he had domestic news at the year's end. His daughter
Judith was to marry M
^rs
Bess Quincy's son Thomas. Even when
witnessing a deed for Bess, back in 1611, Judith may perhaps have been
betrothed to Thomas Quincy; certainly there are signs of it. The deed,
we know, was for the sale of a house in Wood Street which made
Quincy independent, and the proceeds seem to have enabled him to take a
lease on the Atwood tavern in High Street. It is hard to see why
Judith, a young woman in 1611, was called to sign a Quincy deed unless
she meant a little to them. At any rate, five years passed before a
wedding occurred. On the premises of the Atwood tavern, or nearby,
Quincy was to live with Judith after their marriage before taking her to
a large, prominent house called The Cage at the corner of High Street
and Bridge Street, where he became a vintner and tobacco-seller. He
later rose to a few civic offices and became a burgess, constable, and
then a town chamberlain who adorned his account (for 1622-3) with a
couplet in French from a sixteenthcentury romance by Saint-Gelais.
Typically, Quincy made a hash of the French verses, which conveyed a
pleasant maxim: 'Happy is he who, to become wise, serves his
apprenticeship from other men's troubles'.
¹⁵
However, Quincy was an apprentice to his own troubles. As a vintner
and town servant, he fell from civic grace. He was fined for swearing,
then for allowing 'tippell' at forbidden times.
¹⁶
Much worse, he and Judith were to have ill luck with their children.
Their first son Shakspeare or 'Shaksper' Quincy died in infancy on 8
May 1617, and two boys followed. Richard was christened on 9 February

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1618, and Thomas on 23 January 1620. Both sons were to die in 1639, at the ages respectively of 21 and 19.

The difficulties of Judith's life were hardly foreseeable in the winter
of 1615-16, yet Shakespeare cannot have been quite free of doubt
about his daughter's partner. The myth that he was stunned later by
Quiney's behaviour has no relation to the known facts, and it is most
unlikely that he was ignorant of the town's view of his future
son-inlaw. At all events, he was confronted by a situation he could not
alter. His daughter Judith was 31, and Quiney 27. They were to be
married. Wishing to leave her a marriage portion, Shakespeare called
in Francis Collins, his friend and attorney, and sketched out a draft
of his will in January 1616. Oddly, the will was not signed and
executed in that month.

If planned
earlier, the couple's wedding was slightly postponed. The bride and
groom both had birthdays in February, but did not choose the month
only for that reason. Quiney's problems were grave, and it seems he
made a match with Shakespeare's daughter while he could: he married
Judith in the parish church on 10 February 1616. Unfortunately, the
wedding fell in the Lenten season which began on 28 January
(Septuagesima Sunday) and ended on 7 April (the Sunday after Easter),
when a special licence was needed from the Bishop of Worcester. The
local vicar, John Rogers, claimed the right to issue licences by
himself because of the so-called ' Stratford peculiar', or the town's
peculiar jurisdictions affirmed by its corporate charter, but the
Bishop of Worcester disputed Rogers's right. Hence through no fault of
their own, the couple received a summons from the consistory court at
Worcester. The summoning official, Walter Nixon, however, was
concerned only with the husband. 'The man cited by Nixon did not
appear', reads a Latin entry, and either Quiney, or -- although this
is less likely -- he and Judith together, suffered excommunication. So
far as the court's main entry is concerned, the excommunication
applied only to Thomas.

Clerks, at
the time, wrote with bewildering Latin abbreviations, but a marginal
note, to the left of the main entry, shows that Judith was cited at
Worcester as the offender's wife:

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Stratford
officium domini contra
Thornam Quynie
et eius vxorem
excommunicatio
emanatur
¹⁷

That is, the clerk had noted: 'The lord's official against Thomas
Quynie and his wife, excommunication is issued'. This penalty was soon
lifted (the Quineys were able to baptize their first child), but the
incident very possibly affected the bride's father. Shakespeare in his
will left no money for the church, nor a penny for a memorial sermon;
and that coldness may suggest what he thought of clergy who had
struck at least indirectly at his daughter.

It is true, Shakespeare had worse news. Thomas Quincy had taken a
lover in Margaret Wheeler, who died in childbirth and was buried with
her infant on 15 March. Eleven days later, Quiney was called before
Stratford's church court and accused of fornicating or incontinence with
the woman who had died ('incontinentia cum quadam Margareta
Wheelar'). At first ordered to stand in a white sheet on three Sundays
at church, he was quickly allowed instead to give 5s. to the poor of
the parish, and told to acknowledge his fault in private, 'in his own
clothes', at the chapelry of Bishopton. 'Dimissus', jotted a clerk,
¹⁸
and Quincy, in principle, was scot-free.

The poet may not have dismissed the matter so easily, since Judith
was disgraced by Quincy's scandal. Shakespeare was perhaps angry or
distressed, but that need not have affected him mortally. This spring,
his life did not fall into a neat, unambiguous pattern beloved by
popular biographers. For example, he could have had wind of Quincy's
troubles as early as January 1616, when the drawing up of the will was
unaccountably suspended. ' Quincy's trial and disgrace', one reads in
a modern account, 'not only motivated the alterations in the will but
also constituted a shock that hastened Shakespeare's end.'
¹⁹
But the 'trial' (a heavy word, perhaps, for a young man's quickly
accepting a light reprimand at the vicar's court) in fact occurred
after
the dramatist changed his legal will, so it may not have 'motivated the alterations'.

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We know that, by around the third week of March, life had become
difficult for those at New Place on Chapel Street. The weather was
unseasonably warm, and Shakespeare had fallen ill. Evidence of his
illness will be postponed for a little, but it is sufficient to say that
he was not at his last gasp, or 'a dying man', by 25 March 1616. On
that day, he was capable. Amidst the troubles of the sick room, he was
perfectly aware that his legal will drawn up in January had not been
signed or executed. To execute the will, he now again called in
Francis Collins to whom he dictated so many changes that the attorney
had to rewrite the will's first page. ' Collins never got around to
having a fair copy of the will made', it has been supposed, 'probably
because of haste occasioned by the seriousness of the testator's
condition.'
²⁰
But fair copies of wills were then not required, and Collins left
other work in the same interlined, more or less scrawled-over state.
John Combe's will (made by the lawyer long before Combe died) is in
the same condition. E. K. Chambers writes sensibly of the minor
changes of 25 March that most of Shakespeare's will's 'interlineations
and cancellations are such as might naturally be made either in the
process of drafting or on reading over a draft will with a view to a
final settlement of its terms. They correct slips, make the legal
terminology more precise, or incorporate afterthoughts.'
²¹

Shakespeare's will begins with a declaration very similar to openings
found in some of the 134 wills, made by other theatre people, which
still exist from that time for comparison:

In the name of God Amen. I William Shackspeare of Stratford upon Avon
in the county of Warwickshire gent., in perfect health & memory
God be praised, do make & ordain this my last will & testament
in manner & form following. That is to say first, I commend my
Soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping & assuredly
believing through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour to be
made partaker of life everlasting. And my body to the earth whereof it
is made.
²²

A formulaic phrase, of course, is no sign of the testator's 'perfect
health'. Generally, the dramatist's will pictures his estate and a few
personal items. Shakespeare has only one sword. He has collected
bowls of very fine metals, or accumulated several, such as the 'broad
silver & gilt bowl' which he leaves to Judith, though his grand-

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daughter Elizabeth (whom he calls his 'niece') gets the rest of his
plate. He does not cite manuscripts or books, as if they did not greatly
matter; but they may have been listed in an inventory which has not
survived. In contrast as John Barnard of Leeds has shown, one Alexander
Cooke, who was also born in 1564, left a will devoted almost
exclusively to books. This Cooke, who attended Leeds Grammar School
and Brasenose College, Oxford, was a Puritan polemicist.
²³
But poets such as Samuel Daniel, John Marston, and James Shirley all fail to mention books or MSS in their wills.

As legatees emerge, Shakespeare reminds one of the Duke in
Measure for Measure
,
hoping to control a story that has got out of line. 'Item. I give and
bequeath unto my son-in-l[aw]' -- hearing those words or copying them
from the early draft, his lawyer stopped, and changed 'son-in-law' to
read 'daughter Judyth'. Quiney is humiliated by not being mentioned.
Other relatives by marriage, too, are ignored. One scholar thinks that
Bartholomew's people were then at Shottery, but, for example, Richard
Hathaway, a burgess and constable of his town ward in 1614 and a
churchwarden at the poet's death, was living at Fore Bridge Street,
not far from New Place.
²⁴
For the testator that man is offstage, or does not exist. Shakespeare
is fairly hard even on Judith to whom he leaves £150-far less than he
gives to her richer sister -- and conditions are attached even to
Judith's main sum. She is allowed £100 as a marriage portion, but the
remaining £50 will be hers only if she renounces a claim to a
'copyhold tenement', or the cottage on Chapel Lane. Judith is left a
further £150 if she, or any issue of her body, be living after three
years; the annual interest earned, not the principal, will then go to
her issue, or to Judith if she is still married. Any'such husbond'as
she then has will be able to claim the sum only on condition that he
settles on his wife lands worth £150.

In other wills, theatre men can be worried, mean, vindictive, or even
madly eccentric. What is unusual is the urgent extent to which
Shakespeare goes in order to guide his estate into the far future. He
grants land in tail male, to forestall a division of property in future
between daughters and wives, and the main legatee Susanna Hall is
left nearly everything. Here, he is as generous as Lear is at first with
Goneril--

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All my barns, stables, orchards, gardens, lands, tenements &
hereditaments whatsoever, situate, lying and being or to be had . . .
within the towns and hamlets, villages, fields & grounds of
Stratford upon Avon, Old Stratford, Bishopton & Welcombe . . .

All of that, including New Place, the Henley Street tenements and
London's Blackfriars gatehouse are to be Susanna's 'to have and to
hold'. But he is intent on enumerating her non-existing heirs, who are
seen as young males to be born from as yet unborn male bodies. After
Susanna enjoys his property for the rest of her natural life, all of it
is to go, for example,

to the first son of her body lawfully issuing, and to the heirs males
of the body of the said first son . . . [or] second son . . . and for
default of such heirs to the third son of the body of the said Susanna
lawfully issuing, and of the heirs males of the body of the said
third son lawfully issuing. And for default of such issue the same so
to be & remain to the fourth son, fifth, sixth, & seventh sons .
. .
²⁵

If these boys are not born, the whole estate is to go to Elizabeth Hall
and her theoretical sons, and in default of that to Judith and her
boysto-be. Shakespeare, in all this, apparently, feels that his wishes
will be challenged, and that Susanna at last can be thwarted. Before
listing her many bequests, he adds these words in March, 'for better
enabling of her to perform this my will & towards the performance
thereof'. For good measure, he makes John Hall her co-executor.

His famous provision has evoked much comment. 'Item. I give unto my
wife my second best bed with the furniture' (that is, valence, linens,
and hangings, etc.). One writer thinks this must be 'exceptional', but
parallels exist in non-theatrical wills. Another says of the bed of
marital love, 'And who would gainsay the conjugal affection informing
the bequest?'
²⁶
But Richard Wilson's and Margaret Spufford's research, nonetheless,
brings a special factor to bear, in that English common law did not
always guarantee a widow the dower right of one-third of her husband's
estate. A central question is this:
would
Anne, living at
Stratford in 1616, be able to get a dower right of one-third of her
husband's estate, if we take account of local conditions and
Shakespeare's will as we have it? After 1590 in the Vale of Oxford,
for example, widows were legally denied the dower right,

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