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with whom, at the end of three years, his daughter may be 
found united in wedlock. The clauses of the will (from which 
these facts are elicited) are fully discussed, and the memory 
of Shakspere rescued from the charge of ‘ favouritism” or 
unjust partiality. 
The charge respecting his supposed neglect of his wife is 
next examined. It rests upon three points: the omission of 
her name in the first draft of his will; the neglect of any 
ostensible provision for her support; and the interlineation 
which conveys to her his ‘‘second best bed.” Malone, fol- 
lowed by Drake and others, interprets these facts into proofs 
of the unhappiness of the marriage through life, and the un- 
friendly feeling with which it closed in death. The last 
point, in particular, Malone construes into ‘ cutting her off,” 
not with a shilling, but an old piece of furniture; and Moore 
translates it into ‘‘a bitter sarcasm.” 
With reference to the first, Mr. Halpin argues that the 
poet’s omission of his wife’s name in the first draft of the will, 
and the subsequent interlineation, no more imply the absence 
of conjugal love, than the similar omission and interlineation of 
his friends’ and fellows’ names (Burbage, Hemings, and Con- 
dell) intimate his want of friendship for them—an inference 
which, in their case, the biographers never thought of drawing. 
With reference to the second, Mr. H. concurs, to a certain 
extent, with Mr. Charles Knight’s solution of the point, 
namely, the provision already made by law,—the widow being 
entitled to dower, or the third of all her husband’s freehold 
property during her life; and further suggests, from other 
provisions of the will, the extreme probability that she and 
her children had been, previous to her marriage with the 
poet, provided for by a marriage settlement, and that she 
consequently had brought him a fortune. 
With respect to the third, the vindication which Stevens 
suggested is confirmed by reference to the testamentary habits 
of the times ; and the bequest is proved, by parallel with a 
