Judith Quiney
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Judith Shakespeare's "pigtail" signature. The surname was added by a scribe.

"Judith Shakespeare" redirects here. For Virginia Woolf's fictional Judith, see A Room of One's Own

Judith Quiney (née Shakespeare) (baptised February 2, 1585 – buried February 9, 1662) was the daughter of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. She married Thomas Quiney, a vintner of Stratford-upon-Avon. The circumstances of the marriage, including Quiney's misconduct, may have prompted the rewriting of Shakespeare's will. Thomas was struck out, while Judith's inheritance was attached with provisions to safeguard it from her husband. The bulk of Shakespeare's estate was left, in an elaborate fee tail, to his elder daughter Susanna and her male heirs.

Judith and Thomas Quiney had three children. By the time of Judith Quiney's death, she had outlived her children by many years. She has been depicted, in several works of fiction, as attempting to piece together her father's life.

Birth and early life

Judith Shakespeare was the daughter of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. She was the younger sister of Susanna and the twin sister of Hamnet.^[1][2] Her baptism on February 2, 1585 was recorded by the vicar, Richard Barton of Coventry, in the parish register for Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon.^[1][2] The twins were named after a husband and wife, Hamnet and Judith Sadler ^[1], who were friends of the parents. Hamnet Sadler was a baker in Stratford.

Judith Shakespeare was probably illiterate.^[3] In 1611 she was asked to witness a deed of sale for a house belonging to her sister-in-law, Elizabeth Quiney, and to Elizabeth's son Adrian. Judith signed twice with a mark instead of her name.^[4][5]

Marriage

Rough blueprint of Stratford's Holy Trinity Church, where Judith was married.

On February 10, 1616, Judith Shakespeare married Thomas Quiney, a vintner of Stratford, in Holy Trinity Church. The assistant vicar, Richard Watts, who later married Quiney's sister Mary, probably officiated.^[6] The wedding took place during the Lenten season, which was a prohibitive time for marriages. In 1616 Lent started on January 23, Septuagesima Sunday, and ended on April 7, the Sunday after Easter. Hence the marriage required a special license, issued by the Bishop of Worcester, which the couple had failed to obtain.^[6] Presumably they had posted the required banns in church, since Walter Wright of Stratford was cited for marrying without banns or license: but this was not considered sufficient.^[6] The infraction was a minor one, apparently caused by the minister, as three other couples were also wed that February. Quiney was nevertheless summoned by Walter Nixon to appear before the Consistory court in Worcester.^[7] (This same Walter Nixon was later involved in a Star Chamber case and was found guilty of forging signatures and taking bribes).^[7] Quiney failed to appear by the required date. The register recorded the judgement, which was excommunication, on or about March 12, 1616.^[7] It is unknown if Judith was also excommunicated, but in any case the punishment did not last long. In November of the same year they were back in church for the baptism of their firstborn child.^[7]

The marriage did not begin well: Quiney had recently impregnated another woman, Margaret Wheeler,^[8] who was to die in childbirth along with the child and was buried on March 15, 1616. On March 26, 1616, Quiney appeared before the Bawdy Court, which dealt, among other things, with "whoredom and uncleanliness."^[8] Confessing in open court to "carnal copulation" with Margaret Wheeler, he submitted himself for correction.^[8] He was sentenced to open penance "in a white sheet (according to custom)" before the Congregation on three Sundays. He also had to admit to his crime, this time wearing ordinary clothes, before the Minister of Bishopton in Warwickshire.^[8] The first part of the sentence was remitted, essentially letting him off with a five-shilling fine to be given to the parish's poor. Since Bishopton had no church, but only a chapel, he was spared any public humiliation.^[8]

Chapel Lane, Atwood's and The Cage

Where the Quineys lived after being married is unknown: but Judith owned her father's cottage on Chapel Lane, Stratford; while Thomas had held, since 1611, the lease on a tavern called "Atwood's" on High Street.^[9] The cottage later passed from Judith to her sister as part of the settlement in their father's will. In July 1616 Thomas swapped houses with his brother-in-law, William Chandler, moving his vintner's shop to the upper half of a house at the corner of High Street and Bridge Street.^[10] This house was known as "The Cage" and is the house traditionally associated with Judith Quiney.^[11] In the 20th century The Cage was for a time a Wimpy Bar before being turned into the Stratford Information Office.^[11]

The Cage provides further insight into why Shakespeare would not have trusted Judith's husband. Around 1630 Quiney tried to sell the lease on the house but was prevented by his kinsmen.^[12] In 1633, to protect the interests of Judith and the children, the lease was signed over to the trust of: John Hall, Susanna's husband; Thomas Nash, the husband of Judith's niece; and Richard Watts, vicar of nearby Harbury, who was Quiney's brother-in-law and who had officiated at Thomas and Judith's wedding.^[12] Eventually, in November 1652, the lease to The Cage ended up in the hands of Thomas' eldest brother, Richard Quiney, a grocer in London.^[12]

William Shakespeare's last will and testament

Nash's House, standing adjacent to the site of New Place

The inauspicious beginnings of Judith's marriage, in spite of her husband and his family being otherwise unexceptionable,^[6] has led to speculation that this was the cause for William Shakespeare's hastily altered last will and testament.^[13] He first summoned his lawyer, Francis Collins, in January 1616. On March 25 he made further alterations, probably because he was dying and because of his concerns about Quiney.^[13] In the first bequest of the will there had been a provision "vnto my sonne in L[aw]"; but "sonne in L[aw]" was then struck out, with Judith's name inserted in its stead.^[14] To this daughter he bequeathed £100 "in discharge of her marriage porcion"; another £50 if she were to relinquish the Chapel Lane cottage; and, if she or any of her children were still alive at the end of three years following the date of the will, a further £150, of which she was to receive the interest but not the principal.^[14] This money was explicitly denied to Thomas Quiney unless he were to bestow on Judith lands of equal value. In a separate bequest, Judith was given "my broad silver gilt bole."^[14]

Finally, for the bulk of his estate, which included his main house, "New Place," his two houses on Henley Street and various lands in and around Stratford, Shakespeare had set up an entail. His estate was bequeathed, in descending order of choice, to the following: 1) his daughter, Susanna Hall; 2) upon Susanna's death, "to the first sonne of her bodie lawfullie yssueing & to the heires Males of the bodie of the saied first Sonne lawfullie yssueing"; 3) to Susanna's second son and his male heirs; 4) to Susanna's third son and his male heirs; 5) to Susanna's "ffourth … ffyfth sixte & Seaventh sonnes" and their male heirs; 6) to Elizabeth Hall, Susanna and John Hall's firstborn, and her male heirs; 7) to Judith and her male heirs; or 8) to whatever heirs the law would normally recognise.^[14] This elaborate entail is usually taken to indicate that Thomas Quiney was not to be entrusted with Shakespeare's inheritance, although some have speculated that it may simply indicate that Susanna was the favoured child.^[14]

Children

Judith and Thomas Quiney had three children: Shakespeare (baptised November 23, 1616 — buried May 8, 1617); Richard (baptised February 9, 1618 — buried February 6, 1639); and Thomas (baptised January 23, 1620 — buried January 28, 1639).^[15] Shakespeare was named for his mother's father. Richard's name was common among the Quineys: his other grandfather and an uncle were named Richard.^[15]

Shakespeare Quiney died at six months of age.^[15] Richard and Thomas Quiney were buried within a month of each other; they were 19 and 21 years old.^[15] The deaths of all of Judith's children brought on new legal consequences. The entail on her father's inheritance led Susanna, along with her daughter and son-in-law, to make a settlement, by use of a rather elaborate legal device, for the inheritance of her own branch of the family.^[16] Legal wrangling continued for another thirteen years, until 1652.

Death

Judith Quiney was buried on February 9, 1662, having outlived her last remaining child by twenty-two years.^[17][18] She was buried on the grounds of Holy Trinity Church, but the exact location of her grave is unknown.^[18] Of her husband, the records show little of his later years. It has been speculated that he may have died in 1662 or 1663, when the parish burial records are incomplete, or that he may have left Stratford-upon-Avon.^[17][18] He is known to have had a nephew, living in London, who by this time was holding the lease to The Cage.

Literary references

Shakespeare's second daughter unwisely allows a young man to have a preliminary look at her father's manuscript of The Tempest, a scene from William Black's Judith Shakespeare, illustrated by Edwin Austin Abbey

Judith is the subject of the novel My Father Had a Daughter: Judith Shakespeare's Tale by Grace Tiffany.^[19] She is portrayed in William Black's Judith Shakespeare: Her Love Affairs and Other Adventures, published serially in Harper's Magazine in 1884. She also appears in one of the final stories in Neil Gaiman's graphic novel, The Sandman. Gaiman made comparisons between Judith and the character of Miranda in The Tempest.^[20]

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf created a character, "Judith Shakespeare," to make a point about the struggle that a female poet and playwright would have had in the Elizabethan age. Woolf speculated as to why there were so few talented women from that time. "What I find deplorable," she observed, "is that nothing is known about women before the eighteenth century." Woolf's Judith was created in an attempt to fill an historical gap. Hers is the story of William Shakespeare's sister, denied the education of her brother despite her obvious talent. When her father tries to marry her off, she runs away to join a theatre company but is ultimately rejected because of her sex. She becomes pregnant, is abandoned by her partner and commits suicide. Besides the similar names and setting, there is no other direct connection between Judith, Shakespeare's daughter, and Woolf's creation.^[21]

References

Bibliography

• Chambers, Edmund Kerchever (1930). William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems. Oxford: Clarendon Press. OCLC 353406. 
• Chambers, Edmund Kerchever (1970). Sources for a Biography of Shakespeare. Oxford: Clarendon Press. OCLC 59179182. 
• Halliwell-Phillipps, James Orchard (1882). Outlines of the life of Shakespeare. London: Longmans. OCLC 5190346. 
• Schoenbaum, Samuel (1991). Shakespeare's Lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198186185. 
• Schoenbaum, Samuel (1977). William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0195051610. 

External links

• Complete text of William Black's novel
• Edwin Austin Abbey's portrayal of Judith (created after her death)