Wills are complicated. A will is just a document. It is also an essential part of being human. We speak of the will to survive. Where there’s a will there’s a way. The word speaks to motivation and endurance and determination.
As historical documents, wills are invaluable. They provide insight into the author’s world. The disposition of material belongings and the social and political culture in which the person operated. Professions of faith, discharging of debts, expressions of gratitude to acquaintances, patrons, and family. All underpinned with the hope of dying well.
Much has been made of William Shakespeare’s will. Academics twist themselves into knots trying to explain why the man from Stratford bequeathed his wife his ‘second best bed’. Is this a reflection of a second best relationship? Did he not like her enough to give her the first best bed? Or was the second best bed the one she likely slept in, presuming they still shared a domicile, and therefore a symbol of affection demonstrating knowledge of the woman’s preferences?
For literary historians and those of us interested in the authorship question the huge omission in Shakespeare’s will of any books seems important. It implies something about the man. Germaine Greer suggests that the author of the English renaissance did not need to own books because he would have been lurking about the print shops surrounding St. Paul’s reading pages, folios, hot off the presses - literally - as they dried. The argument being why would he waste money buying books when he could read them for free.
It's a neat idea, but I can't help thinking of my own overflowing bookshelves and wondering if the Bard really could have resisted the urge to own his favorites. It’s hard to imagine a writer not owning books. In Elizabethan England, some people used books as a savings account, a way to disguise wealth. Instead of hiding coin under a mattress or in the floorboards, they bought books comforted that most common thieves would be unlikely to steal something they did not understand. Low literacy rates as economic safeguards.
Still, you can tell a lot about a person by their will. If you can find it. When I was working on my doctorate, I met with a descendant of the family I was studying. He was very keen to know if I had found any new wills. I had not but still hope one might be discovered. (Berkeley Castle muniments is my best guess)
A will is an expression of willfulness. An expression of emotional perspective as one plans for death or as one nears death. In Elizabethan England, it was important to die a good death. One’s salvation depended on it.
Today, wills are often neglected. Many people avoid writing them to avoid contemplating their own mortality. In some families, wills are weaponized. ‘Do what I want or I’ll write you out of my will,’ has been thrown at me for decades. No matter how often I reject the premise of the statement, the speaker does not hear me.
The premise of the weaponization of a will is that potential beneficiaries care more about the distant potential of wealth than about the person. That the promise of some material things or wealth in the far distant future is stronger than living in the moment and stronger than any emotional attachment one might have to another human.
No matter how often disinheritance has been threatened, and recently executed in astonishing and rather ludicrous fashion, I’ve never found it to be an effective tool for changing behavior. I would much rather have the person alive and enjoy their company and their mind than concern myself with something that might happen in the distant future while grieving their loss.
Recently, the family matriarch rewrote her will and under the guidance of a very good lawyer had it appropriately witnessed and notarized. She did this without informing the heirs, her family, the beneficiaries for the previous several decades, that she was effectively disinheriting them. For months, whenever the subject came up the response was ‘I’ve provided for all of you equally in my will’.
Left unsaid was that we were all provided with the same $2,500 and the balance of the estate has been left to the housekeepers, the massage therapist, and a distant cousin in Norway. Her nearest, and formerly dearest, were removed as executors or substantial beneficiaries.
Given the new bequests, the estate will have to be liquidated and divided. There will be no generational wealth building. No one in the family will be able to use or profit from the house for example. It’s not that much wealth to begin with and those of us who have grown up with her and love her just hope there’s sufficient means to support her till her passing.
Perhaps the most irksome bequest is that all the books and remaining art are going to people with no connection to the intellectual and artistic life the matriarch has always challenged us to live. There is no evidence that William Shakespeare’s children were literate. They would be a poor choice to receive an author’s library of books. That is not the case in this family. Unlike the bard, she taught us to read, took us to museums, concerts, operas, art, dance, and music lessons, book readings. Through her we met authors, painters, sculptors, musicians, photographers, and journalists. As a result, everyone in the family is a published author. All hold multiple degrees.
For four decades, she called her granddaughter her intellectual heir. Now this granddaughter gets $2,500 and the housekeepers, who speak little English, will get the books on post-modernism and abstract expressionist art. The massage therapist will get the prints and photos from people we grew up with and knew, who we had dinner with and with whose children we played.
The intent to punish and coerce through a document of willfulness is so antithetical to the core ethical and spiritual values that we were raised with - by this same woman - that it makes me wonder if we were left on the matriarch’s doorsteps by gypsies. Perhaps we aren’t related. Like Shakespeare’s wife, we appear to have little emotional or sentimental connection to the will’s author.
This seems even more denigrating than a second best bed. No one is getting the second best art, or the second best books. What will historians say about the will of this will full person? One is left to ponder the true nature of legacy. Is it found in the material possessions we do or do not leave behind, or in the values and knowledge we transmit?
On the good news front, the matriarch is not the author of the most enduring literature of western civilization. So there’s that.
Love this Kristin as it does a great job showing how wills are more than just about money and belongings, they reflect a person’s values and relationships. I liked how you talked about legacy being more about the things we teach and share, not just what we leave behind.