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Joan Shakespeare (1569–1646) was the sister of William Shakespeare and the mother of the actor William Hart.

Joan was Shakespeare's younger sister. She was named after her parents' deceased first-born child. She is known to have been illiterate, like most women of her social background. She married a hatter called William Hart with whom she had four children, of which two boys, William and Michael, survived to adulthood.^[1]

Joan's husband, William, died in April 1616, only a few days before her brother William. Her brother left her a legacy of £30, according to his will. He also granted her the right to live, for a nominal rent, in one of his two houses on Henley Street, Stratford. She continued to reside there for the remainder of her life, dying at the age of 77.^[1]

Though her son William never married, he may have fathered an illegitimate son, Charles Hart, who was also a leading actor. Joan's other descendants via Michael lived in Stratford until 1806.^[1]

In literature

In her essay A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf created a character, "Judith Shakespeare", supposed to be Shakespeare's sister. In fact Judith was his daughter. It is unknown whether this was a mistake or a deliberate conflation of the two women. In her story Shakespeare's sister is denied the education of her brother despite her obvious talent as a writer. When her father tries to marry her off, she runs away to join a theatre company but is ultimately rejected because of her sex. She becomes pregnant, is abandoned by her partner and commits suicide. Besides the similar names and setting, there is no other direct connection between either Joan or Judith and Woolf's creation.^[2]

References

External Links

• LIN VAN HEK of Difficult Women reads 'Shakespeare's Sister' in Audio section. [1]