William Shakespeare’s Sister, Joan, Emerges in Long-Lost Writings
The Shakespeare “Spiritual Testament” has baffled historians for years. Now, it may shed new light on the famous playwright’s mysterious younger sister Joan.
In 1757, nearly 150 years after William Shakespeare’s death, a pamphlet was found in the rafters of his childhood home. Handwritten and signed by a ‘J. Shakespeare,’ the document was a passionate Catholic profession of faith. It was a promise to die a good Catholic death, understandably hidden in the rafters during a time when the Protestant Church of England was essentially at war with Catholicism. Discovery could’ve meant torture, or even death.
For years, scholars have considered this pamphlet to be the work of John Shakespeare, William’s father, and used it as evidence that the Shakespeare we all know and love was likely raised in a secretly, and perhaps fervently, Catholic household.
But new analysis of the booklet calls all of that into question. Archival research examining a 1790 copy of the document—as the original was, unfortunately, lost—in addition to other texts from Shakespeare’s time shows that it probably wasn’t written by John Shakespeare, as had always been assumed. Rather, it was the work of William’s younger sister, Joan.
