Susanna Hall
Susanna Hall (née Shakespeare; baptised 26 May 1583 – 11 July 1649) was the oldest child of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway and the older sister of twins Judith and Hamnet Shakespeare. Susanna married John Hall, a local physician, in 1607. They had one daughter, Elizabeth, in 1608. Elizabeth married Thomas Nash, son of Anthony Nash on 22 April 1626 at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon.
Susanna Hall
c. 1583
11 July 1649 (aged 66)
English
Birth and early life[edit]
Susanna was baptised in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon on Trinity Sunday (a church feast day), 26 May 1583.[1](pp 93) [2](pp 93–94)
Shakespeare's wife Anne was already pregnant with Susanna when the couple were married. The name "Susanna" derives from the apocryphal story of Susanna and the elders in the Book of Daniel and suggests "purity and spotlessness",[2](pp 93–94) and had associations that appealed to the Puritans.[1](pp 93) It first appeared in Stratford parish registers in 1574, so the name was still rather novel, but it was shared by two other children born that spring. As such it may have been an assertion of virtue for a child born "perilously close to the wrong side of marriage" as the historian Peter Ackroyd put it.[2](pp 98)
She was raised in Stratford-upon-Avon along with her younger siblings, twins Hamnet and Judith. Stratford school records of the time do not exist, and since girls were not allowed at the Stratford King Edward VI School, any education she would have received would have been arranged by her family through tutors. Her signature exists in two separate documents, demonstrating that she was able to sign her name.[1](pp 286)
Suit for slander[edit]
In June 1613, a man named John Lane, Jr., 23, accused Susanna of adultery with Rafe Smith, a 35-year-old haberdasher, and claimed she had caught a venereal disease from Smith. As a notable Puritan of the community, Hall supported the Puritan vicar, Thomas Wilson, against whom Lane would later participate in a riot, and it is possible that Lane's charges had political motives in defaming Susanna.
On 15 July the Halls brought suit for slander against Lane in the Consistory court at Worcester. Robert Whatcott, who three years later witnessed Shakespeare's will, testified for the Halls, but Lane failed to appear. Lane was found guilty of slander and excommunicated.[3](pp 384–385) In 1619 Lane was found guilty of slander again, this time for attacks on the vicar and local aldermen. He was also named in court as a persistent drunkard.[4]
Inheritance[edit]
When Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, he left the bulk of his estate, in an elaborate fee tail, to Susanna and her male heirs, which included his main house, New Place, his two houses on Henley Street, and various lands in and around Stratford, and all his "goodes Chattels, Leases, plate, jewles and Household stuffe whatsoever after my dettes and Legasies paied and my funerall expences discharged" to her and her husband.
In the case of Susanna's death, the estate was bequeathed, in descending order of choice, "to the first sonne of her bodie lawfullie yssueing & to the heires Males of the bodie of the saied first Sonne lawfullie yssueing"; and in default of such issue, to her second son and his male heirs and to the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh sons and their male heirs. In case no sons were born or they died, the estate would then go to her daughter Elizabeth Hall and her male heirs; to Judith and her male heirs; or to whatever lawful heirs survived.[1](pp 304–305)
He also named the Halls as executors of the will, and John Hall proved the will in London 22 June 1616 at the archbishop's prerogative court at Canterbury.[1](pp 306)[5]