[SuperLuminal]

What is most interesting to me in this finding is that someone, his sister, lived to the age of 77...
At a time when the average life expectancy was probably the late 40s-early 50s...

[SunkenCiv]

I think one of Bill’s daughters lived quite a while as well, and she didn’t take that great care of herself. None of his four (known) grandchildren had children, but Joan’s line survives to the present, apparently.

[Wallace T.]

You have to remember that the Shakespeare family was well educated and what we call middle class in our time. William Shakespeare only lived to 52 but both his parents lived to about 70. What tends to drive down life expectancy statistics is the high rate of infant mortality. The parents of William and Joan Shakespeare had eight children, two of whom died in infancy and a third at age seven.

Interestingly as to the recusant Catholicism of the Shakespeare family, a third cousin of William and Joan Shakespeare was executed for being involved in a plot to kill Queen Elizabeth I.