Posted on 09/05/2025 11:32:15 AM PDT by Red Badger
A mysterious manuscript hidden for centuries in Shakespeare’s childhood home has just been reattributed—and it wasn’t written by who everyone thought.
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Portrait Of William Shakespeare. Credit: Britannica | The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel
A centuries-old manuscript once thought to be the work of William Shakespeare’s father has been reattributed to his sister, Joan Shakespeare Hart, in a new peer-reviewed study published in Shakespeare Quarterly. The findings challenge longstanding beliefs about the Shakespeare family’s religious affiliations and offer a rare glimpse into the intellectual life of a woman previously all but erased from history.
The research, led by Dr. Matthew Steggle from the University of Bristol, uses digital archive analysis and literary forensics to revisit a document discovered in the 18th century. Known as the “Spiritual Testament,” the manuscript had for generations been attributed to John Shakespeare, the playwright’s father, and used as evidence of his covert Catholic faith during Protestant rule.
Steggle’s close textual study, however, reveals that the source material for the manuscript—a little-known Italian devotional text—did not appear in England until after John Shakespeare’s death. This new dating excludes him as the author and points to a much more unexpected figure: William’s younger sister.
A Hidden Manuscript and a Fresh Line of Inquiry The document first came to light in 1757, when a man named Joseph Moseley reportedly discovered it during roof repairs at the Shakespeare family home in Stratford-upon-Avon. For decades, it circulated quietly in literary circles, then became the subject of historical and religious debate.
Its contents are unmistakably Catholic. Full of invocations to the Virgin Mary and references to Saint Winifred, it was long taken as a sign of Catholic persistence in an officially Protestant household. For biographers, it served as a link between John Shakespeare and the underground Catholic networks of late 16th-century England.
But Steggle’s research points to a crucial oversight: the manuscript borrows from Il Testamento dell’Anima, a text published in Italy in the 1600s and not known to have reached England before the early 17th century. John Shakespeare died in 1601—too early to have encountered the work in any form.
This timeline break is significant. It rules out the father and leaves one possible author inside the household during that period: Joan Shakespeare, who lived in the family home well into the 1640s.
Who Was Joan Shakespeare—And Why Has She Been Overlooked? Joan Shakespeare Hart was born in 1569 and, unlike her famous brother, remained in Stratford her entire life. She married a local hatter, raised four children, and lived in the family home until her death in 1646. Her existence is barely noted in the historical record; only seven official documents reference her.
And yet, if Steggle is correct, she may have authored what is now the earliest known piece of writing by a woman in the Shakespeare family. The Spiritual Testament, far from being a generic Catholic tract, is deeply personal—reflecting a life of private devotion and possibly resistance.
Joan’s reference to the Virgin Mary as the “principal executor” of her soul is not just a religious formulation. In a period when women had no legal standing to execute wills, such a phrase subtly subverts social norms. It asserts autonomy in the only realm available: spiritual authorship.
The manuscript’s feminine voice—combined with its theological depth—suggests Joan wasn’t merely copying out someone else’s text. She was adapting, personalizing, and preserving religious ideas that had little place in public life.
What This Means for Shakespeare Studies—And for Literary History The re-attribution of the manuscript has major implications for both Shakespeare scholarship and the broader understanding of women’s intellectual history in early modern England.
It alters how we view the Stratford household. Instead of seeing William as the lone genius in a quiet, devout family, we begin to glimpse a more complex network of religious reflection and intellectual life. The presence of a literate, spiritually engaged sister adds texture to the image of a household often reduced to the background of the bard’s career.
Just as significantly, it reminds us that historical silences often reflect not absence, but erasure. Women like Joan Shakespeare were not silent because they had nothing to say—but because there were few sanctioned places for them to speak. When they did write, it was often privately, in notebooks, letters, or hidden manuscripts like this one.
“Even as a modest devotional work, it challenges our assumptions about who was writing and why,” Steggle concludes in the Shakespeare Quarterly article. “It represents a form of authorship rarely visible in the archive.”
“ Joan Shakespeare Hart, was a closet Catholic who wrote secretly about it.“
If I recall, blabbing around your Catholicism in that time and place could get you in very large trouble.
All you need is an A.I. assistant to churn out the paper. Actual research can be invented out of thin air or by algorithm.
Slightly off-topic maybe, but where Will Shakespeare is concerned, I agree with Joseph Sobran.
This is the Revolution!
Well, I’ve never been to Spain..................
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