SHAKSPER 2005: Shakespeare's Will

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@shaksper.net)
Date: 08/25/05 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.1387  Thursday, 25 August 2005

From: 		Gerald E. Downs <JerryDowns@aol.com>
Date: 		Thursday, 25 Aug 2005 03:54:58 EDT
Subject: 16.1331 Shakespeare's Will
Comment: 	Re: SHK 16.1331 Shakespeare's Will

Ben Alexander's suggestion in respect of Shakespeare's will may be 
answered without touching forbidden subjects. Though the evidence leaves 
little room for doubt, the historians have consistently failed to report 
it clearly.

 >Having studied it, my view is that the bequest of £1 6s 8d to each
 >of the three London Actors to buy gold rings to remember him by
 >is a later addition i.e. the will was doctored . . .

Interlineations are always later additions. The questions are-how late, 
and how treated? The will was proved in the Prerogative Court of the 
Archbishop of Canterbury (in Doctors' Commons, London) on June 22, 1616 
(two months after Shakespeare's demise and three months after the will 
was signed), where PCC records show John and Susanna Hall to be sworn 
executors. The original will was copied for the occasion into the court 
register, where it remains in place.  The interlineations were 
incorporated into the body of this text and were therefore accepted by 
the executors when the will was proved.  It is probably safe to assume 
that the bequests were delivered.

The usual authorities to whom one might turn for this information are 
not very helpful. Dr. Tannenbaum, B R Lewis, E K Chambers, and 
Schoenbaum are either unaware of the PCC copy or fail to clarify their 
own knowledge. Even the most disinterested student is apt to be 
confused. Let me count the ways:

In _The Shakespeare Documents_, Lewis offers, amongst 36 large and 
detailed pages:

      Not until 1747 did it come to light . . . . the Reverend Joseph
      Greene found the document among the wills in the Doctors'
      Commons . . . . Since their discovery, the three sheets have
      been separated. (471)

As detailed in Levi Fox's "An Early Copy of Shakespeare's Will", SS 4, 
1951, Greene found and copied a copy of the PCC copy of the original. 
Apparently Greene saw the same Stratford copy as did Vertue in 1737, 
whose manuscript note says the original may be found in Doctors' 
Commons. I believe it is possible that Vertue actually meant by 
'original' the PCC copy.

The fact that the original will and the register copy repose in the same 
institution has caused much confusion that persists even today. A 
National Archive (formerly PRO) web site search of the PCC wills leads 
one to Shakespeare's original will, not the copy.  Yet the copy was the 
first transcribed into print. From the outset, scholars other than those 
actually doing the transcribing have not understood the derivation, 
which Theobald puts as "Extracted from the Registry . . . " He meant 
that he used the copy in the book called the registry. Notice how 
Schoenbaum, who cites Fox's article, nevertheless confuses original and 
copy in his _Documentary Life_:

    . . . others have supposed that the original will was first
    printed in Biographia Britannica in 1763 . . . but it appeared
    earlier, as 'Extracted . . . ' in the posthumous third edition of
    Lewis Theobald's _Works of Shakespeare (1752).

Yet both of these publications transcribe the PCC copy, not the 
original. In _Lives_, Schoenbaum adds:

    With interesting consequences, [the Biographia transcriber]
    misread Shakespeare's bequest, ". . . my second-best bed"
    . . . in BB it is "my brown best bed . . . ." Malone scornfully
    attributed the alterations to Theobald. . . . [Malone] fell into
    the same error himself when he first examined the will at
    Doctors' Commons. "in the Register of his Will which is in
    the office . . . they have made a mistake, and call it 'my
    second best bed' " (138)

Again Schoenbaum confuses the PCC Register copy with the original. 
Malone no doubt thought his reader would have understood he was speaking 
of a copy. Unfortunately, when Malone described the 'brown for second' 
error (in a book margin) he wrote down the wrong word himself.

Schoenbaum says of Johnson's 1765 transcription,

    That Johnson had not gone to the Archbishop of Canterbury's
    registry but had taken the easier course of following [BB] is
    suggested by his retention of the brown bed but also of other
    misreadings . . . (139)

Though it is in any case hard to believe that a scholar would take the 
easier course, repetition of the PCC errors was unavoidable if that was 
the copy-text. It would be hard to tell who took the 'easier course' and 
who didn't.

Malone was the first to correct the PCC misreadings retained in earlier 
transcripts. I would infer that he first read the original will. Had he 
seen the PCC copy he would not have accused Theobald of monkeying with 
the transcript. Malone's marginal comment about the PCC copy must have 
resulted from a later reading. I suppose he neglected to apologize to 
the fans of Theobald; scholarship means never having to say you're sorry.

Returning to B R Lewis, we find a strange chronology:

    In Lewis Theobald's The Works of Sh. (1733) a transcript
    follows the preface. . . The first printed transcript was . . .
    in . . . 1763.

Now how can a document that was printed in 1733 "come to light" in 1747? 
(The Reader's Encyclopedia gives 1847). And how might a will printed in 
1733 (Schoenbaum gives 1752) be "first printed" in 1763?

Much of Lewis's information was taken from Tannenbaum's _Problems  in 
Shakspere's Penmanship_, another good discussion complete with a 
beautiful facsimile. Lewis repeats an observation by T that earlier 
scholars are "strangely inaccurate" in their transcripts. Instead of 
assuming that other scholars copied each other, Tannenbaum makes a 
different mistaken assumption:

    How little qualified some of the eightennth century
    Shaksperians were in the realm of paleography is
    strikingly demonstrated by their misreadings of
    Shakspere's will. Theobald and the other editors after
    him read this famous bequest as "my brown best bed"
    . . . instead of "gilt bole," "gilt boxes," [etc]. (67)

Dr. T obviously had no idea that an early copy existed, but he should 
have considered the possibility that copying errors are more likely 
inherited than independently made.

The above observations are interesting to me as mysteries associated 
with the mysteries of the will. Puzzling them out passes the time as 
well as other puzzles, but the will must in my opinion remain something 
of a nonentity. About which I'll add some opinions.

First, the interlineations, given their 'proved' contemporary acceptance 
and their uniformity within the will, are genuine.  Second, I am in 
agreement with Tannenbaum that the will is a fair copy. The roughness is 
due to corrections and additions. Third, the gifts to the players was 
probably added not as an afterthought, but as a correction of omission 
made in copying.

Last, my guess is that the original will left probate with the Halls, as 
was commonly done in that day, and returned to the records after the 
resurgence of the poet's popularity. Malone may have been the first to 
report from it rather than the Register copy.

Gerald E. Downs

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