Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway in 1582, when he was 18 and she was 26. But after thirty-odd years of marriage, Shakespeare’s will listed only one item for Anne. What was it?
A) A pair of spectacles B) An Italian quill-pen C) The manuscript of his late sonnets D) The second-best bed ü
The bequest is specified in an enigmatic addition to the original will, which had not mentioned Anne at all: “I give unto my wife my second-best bed with the furniture.” Whether or not the bed and its furnishings (curtain, coverlets and so on) were valuable no one now knows. Either way, the belated inclusion of this single line in the three-page will has puzzled scholars for centuries. Some have suggested that Shakespeare had come to detest Anne, and bequeathed her this single item as a means of getting around the Elizabethan law that would have have awarded her one-third of his estate by default if he had not mentioned her at all. Others have tried to construe it as a sign of affection.
