Second Best Bed
Product details
- ISBN 9780313288319
- Publication Date: 24 May 1993
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Joyce Rogers sheds new light upon Shakespeare's last public words through her study of medieval and Renaissance ecclesiastical and testamentary laws and custom. Professor Rogers provides extensive background material on English legal history and shows that the legal documents of the time do give legal answer to the doubts and speculations that have grown up around Shakespeare's will. She shows how the will is replete with elements of civil and common as well as ecclesiastical law and custom, making more understandable the disputed points of Shakespeare's will, and establishing that the will was as correct, incontestable, and conventional as possible.
The main thrust of the book, however, is not on the law as such. It is on how the law was used by Shakespeare to serve the best interests and needs of the women and children in his family as well as the friends named therein. As such, the book will be invaluable to students and scholars of Elizabethan society and to all Shakespearean scholars.
JOYCE ROGERS is Associate Professor, Religious Studies Program, University of New Mexico, and the author of Louis Martin: Father of a Saint and co-author of Thought to Essay.
