Shakespeare and his wife, **Anne Hathaway, (1555/6-1623) had three children: Susanna who was born in May 1583 and the twins, Judith and Hamnet who were born two years later in 1585. Unfortunately, Hamnet died aged eleven in 1596 and it is thought that the following lines from King John are the Bard's way of dealing with the loss of his only son.
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form:
Then have I reason to be fond of grief.
The death of Hamnet also meant that this was the end of the use of Shakespeare as a surname, although his two daughters did marry and continue the family line.
Susanna (1583-1649) married John Hall, (1575-1635) a local physician in June 1607. Apparently he earned a good reputation as 'his advice was solicited in every direction' and he was summoned to attend cases involving the Earl and Countess of Northampton as far away as Ludlow Castle. He left a medical notebook in Latin but he never mentioned his father-in-law, WS. John Hall was said to have had Puritan leanings and so would not have approved of much of the Bard's plays and poems.
Susanna is said to have been financially savvy but was also alleged to have been illiterate so that she couldn't have read her father's works. The Hall's lived in Hall's Croft in Stratford-upon-Avon, a Tudor-style house that still can be seen today.
Elizabeth Hall and John Nash
Elizabeth Hall
John and Susanna had one child, Elizabeth who was the only grandchild that WS knew. She was eight years old when he died. In 1626 Elizabeth married John Nash who died in 1647. She then married John Barnard in June 1649 who outlived her. Both of her husbands were known for their pro-Royalist tendencies during the English Civil War (1642-49). Elizabeth's death in 1670 signified the end of WS's direct descendants.
Susanna's sister, Judith (1585-1662) married Thomas Quiney, a local vintner in February 1616, two months before WS died. It seems that WS did not approve of his son-in-law as he did not mention him in his famous will. The reason for this was that not long before Judith and Thomas' marriage, Thomas had impregnated a local girl who died soon after in childbirth. He was publicly humiliated for his 'bawdy' behaviour and so WS deleted his son-in-law's name from his will and substituted his daughter's name instead. Another reason for this may be that simply WS preferred Susanna over Judith. We'll never know.
Judith died in February 1662, aged 77 and was buried in the graveyard of Trinity Church as opposed to her father and several other members of the family who were buried inside the church. Today we do not know exactly where she was interred.
The Quiney's had three children. The first-born, Shakespeare, was named after his grandfather who he never saw and died aged six months in 1616. His brothers, Richard and Thomas were born in 1618 and 1620 and both died in 1639 (due to plague?)
**Some literary historians doubt if WS's wife was really Anne Hathaway as the name mentioned on the marriage certificate was Anne Whately.
Comments: wsdavidyoung@gmail.com or Facebook
Next time: Halle & Holinshed, WS's historical sources
No comments:
Post a Comment