Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this article:
- An archivist rediscovered a 17th-century will pertaining to the property of William Shakespeare, which had been missing for 150 years.
- The will belonged to Thomas Nash, husband of Shakespeare’s granddaughter Elizabeth, who bequeathed Shakespeare’s home of New Place to his cousin, Edward.
- The will sparked a legal dispute, as the home was not Nash’s to pass down. Its rightful owner, Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna, was still alive and living there at the time of Nash’s death.
This story is a collaboration with Popular Mechanics.
During his lifetime, William Shakespeare composed some of the greatest dramas to ever grace the stage, from Hamlet to Macbeth, from Henry IV to Henry VIII. But in death, he set the stage for a soap opera worthy of the Real Housewives of Stratford-Upon-Avon.
The story has resurfaced after a pivotal legal document was discovered at the U.K.’s National Archives, tucked away in an unlabeled box of 17th-century paperwork. Dan Gosling, the archives’ principal legal records specialist, uncovered a will that hadn’t been seen in more than a century.
“This is a really exciting discovery,” Gosling said in statement, “showing how the execution of Shakespeare’s will wasn’t entirely smooth sailing.”
But the document in question isn’t Shakespeare’s. The Bard’s will—from March 25, 1616, less than a month before his death—has been pored over for centuries by Shakespeare scholars and enthusiasts hoping to get a sense of the Shakespeare’s personal life, his religious inclinations, or what the deal is with that whole “second best bed” business.
In his will, Shakespeare left the majority of his properties, including his final home of New Place in Stratford-Upon-Avon, to his eldest daughter, Susanna. By that time, Susanna had already been married to a man named John Hall and had a daughter named Elizabeth, whom Shakespeare’s will accounts for.
However, it places Elizabeth eighth in a ranked list of who the Bard preferred to inherit New Place after Susanna’s death, coming in behind Susanna’s first through seventh sons and their male heirs. It should be noted that at the time Shakespeare composed his will, Susanna did not have a single son, let alone seven, and in fact would not have any children after Elizabeth for the rest of her life.
While the will discovered in the National Archives was not that of Shakespeare, it does pertain to the ownership of New Place.
On August 25, 1642, Elizabeth's husband Thomas Nash composed a will wherein he bequeathed New Place to his cousin Edward in the event of his death. Seeing as he and Elizabeth had no children of their own to inherit the home of the famous playwright, Nash likely considered this a solid way to keep the Shakespeare home “in the family.”
But his plan had one small wrinkle: the house was not his to bequeath to anyone. Susanna was, in fact, very much alive at the time Thomas Nash wrote his will, and still alive and living at New Place when Nash died five years later.
“It is possible Thomas Nash was making this will in the expectation that he would outlive Susanna and Elizabeth,” Gosling theorized.
So began a legal dispute, with Susanna and Elizabeth compelled to provide evidence of their legal ownership of the property in the face of a suit brought by Edward, who demanded his cousin’s will be honored.
“Elizabeth had to bring her husband’s will into court and explain why she hadn’t honored the terms of it,” Gosling said, explaining that the document eventually made its way to the unlabeled box within the National Archives.
As for New Place, upon Elizabeth’s death in 1670, her will “granted Edward the right to acquire the property,” but the home ultimately returned to the ownership of the family who owned it prior to Shakespeare, the Cloptons. It would later be demolished in 1702. Today, the site exists as a tourist attraction, managed by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, which also preserves the Bard’s birthplace and Anne Hathaway’s cottage.
Nash’s will, rediscovered after 150 years, has more value to Shakespearean scholarship than it might seem. With a lack of detailed accounts of the playwright outside the theatre, much of Shakespeare's life has been shrouded in mystery, which can lead to conspiratorial thinking.
Documents like this will help give some insight into Shakespeare's life and family dynamics.
Michale Natale is a News Editor for the Hearst Enthusiast Group. As a writer and researcher, he has produced written and audio-visual content for more than fifteen years, spanning historical periods from the dawn of early man to the Golden Age of Hollywood. His stories for the Enthusiast Group have involved coordinating with organizations like the National Parks Service and the Secret Service, and travelling to notable historical sites and archaeological digs, from excavations of America’ earliest colonies to the former homes of Edgar Allan Poe.
