Item, I gyve unto my wief my second best bed with the ...



Shakespeare’s Will, an historical note

By

Bruce McIver

Item, I gyve unto my wief my second best bed with the furniture

Shakespeare’s will was (of course) a handwritten document, probably drafted by his attorney Francis Collins in January of 1616, a few months before the bard of Avon’s death. Collins was asked to return two months later to make some revisions on March 25th. Among these interlinear revisions is the above captioned bequest, over which not a few scholars have spilled black ink. This little essay (from the French assai, to attempt) will shed a little more.

The only part of the will that is actually in Shakespeare’s hand is his signature, which appears at the bottom of each of the will’s three pages. The will was probably drafted in his attorney’s own hand or that of his scrivener. After the changes were made, Collins did not make a “fair” copy, which was the common practice, perhaps because of a sense of urgency. Instead, Shakespeare signed the “foul” copy, and promptly died a few weeks later, as it happens, on his birthday.

Such a will would very likely not be admitted to probate today; it is not in the author’s hand, and the interlinear changes are not initialed, as is customary today with holographic wills. Nevertheless, the one change that has inspired the most interest is the bequest to his wife of “my second best bed.”

Was this an afterthought? She is otherwise not mentioned in the will. And if it was an afterthought what, if anything, was the significance of the gift? Was it a demeaning, antifeminist remark indicating the low esteem in which he held his wife, Anne Hathaway? Or was it a gift of endearment, ensuring that she would have their wedding bed?

Beds and all their furnishings in Shakespeare’s time were significant items of personal property, as they certainly are today, although they seldom get mentioned in wills. One view holds that, in Shakespeare’s day, a second best bed was likely the one the husband and wife slept in, while the best bed was the one the honored guests slept in.

Second best beds were not infrequently mentioned in wills of the time, and in at least one such will in Shakespeare’s time, the second best bed was bequeathed to the surviving spouse with great affection. Best beds, on the other hand, customarily passed to one of the children.

Another view holds that the best bed was in fact the wedding bed and it customarily passed to the eldest child to ensure that, if the wife were to remarry, she would not sleep with her new husband in her old husband’s bed.

From this view, one might infer that Shakespeare’s bequest to Anne of his second best bed tacitly recognized the possibility that she might remarry, despite the fact that Anne was nearly sixty.

However, the better view of Shakespeare’s gift of his second best bed is, in my opinion, that it was an afterthought necessary to clarify what was already an accomplished fact, that the best bed had already gone to his elder daughter, Susanna, or perhaps even to his younger daughter, Judith, who was just about to get married.

But it was not an insult. Shakespeare did not need to mention Anne in the will at all. She would automatically receive a “dower’s portion” of her husband’s estate. This was normally a third of the real and, depending on local custom, a third of his personal property.

Both the second best and the best bed would certainly fall into the ambit of the dower’s portion. Shakespeare wanted to make sure his widow had a bed to sleep on, which is not a bad idea when you’re making a will.

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