PROGRAMME DETAILS FOR THE 187TH SEASON 2010/2011

TUESDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2011
MAIRI MACDONALD

Formerly Head of Local Collections at the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

Mairi Macdonald was formerly Head of Local Collections at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon, where she worked since 1975. She took an MA in Medieval History at the University of St Andrews with a dissertation on women in mediaeval urban society, followed by a postgraduate diploma in Archive Administration at University College London. In addition to teaching classes on local history sources and paleography at the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive, Mairi lectures extensively on local and social history topics. Her specialist topics include Mediaeval Women, Christmas Customs, Shakespeare’s Will and The Gunpowder Plot in the Midlands. She has contributed to Shakespeare Quarterly, the new Dictionary of National Biography and the new Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Her edition of The Register of the Guild of the Holy Cross, Stratford was published in 2007 by the Dugdale Society. Mairi is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and General Editor of the British Records Association series; Archives and the User.

Shakespeare's Will: the Facts and its Problems

A detailed consideration of the contents and context of one of the most intriguing documents in Shakespeare biography.

Lecture Notes

The 858th meeting of the Shakespeare Club, chaired by Dr Susan Brock, welcomed Mairi Macdonald, formerly head of Local Collections at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, who tackled the controversial topic of Shakespeare’s Will, warning members that she would deal with the facts and problems but would, almost certainly, not offer any conclusions.

Disappointingly Shakespeare’s will did not differ markedly in form and content from those of his contemporaries, but what gave cause for so much speculation was the existence of the original will with its many emendations. If only the register or fair copy had survived, none of these would have been apparent. Ms Macdonald covered the change in the date of the will, the lack of a monetary bequest to his wife, the omission of one of Shakespeare’s nephew’s Christian names, the cancellation of lines on the second page, the lack of charitable bequests to the poor of the London parishes where he had lived and the afterthought of bequests to his theatre colleagues (both of which may indicate how much the Stratford man Shakespeare was in his last years) as well as changes in the bequests to local friends and neighbours and family members. Shakespeare’s major pre-occupation in his will was the settlement of his estates as a single entity to his male heirs. In fact Shakespeare had no male heirs, his direct line dying out with his granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall in 1670.

Ms Macdonald addressed the vexed question of the second-best bed and Shakespeare’s relationship with his wife and warned against drawing conclusions from the absence of words and phrases. She conjectured that the writer of the will was local lawyer Francis Collins or his clerk, certainly not Shakespeare himself. The missing piece of the jigsaw might have been the inventory of New Place, destroyed in the Great Fire of London with many other London documents, which would have listed the contents of Shakespeare’s home, his books and personal possessions. Ms Macdonald finished with an admonition from West’s Symboleography, a legal handbook of Shakespeare’s time: ‘much better it is that wills be perspicuous of themselves then to be enlightened by the expositions and allowance of others’.

After many questions the meeting closed at 9pm and was followed by wine and mince pies.   

CLICK TO GO BACK TO MAIN PROGRAMME LIST