As such it may have been an assertion of virtue for a child born "perilously close to the wrong side of marriage" as the historian Peter Ackroyd put it.

[1](pp 286) Susanna married John Hall, a respected physician, on 5 June 1607 in Holy Trinity Church.

Some slight evidence indicates that Shakespeare settled a substantial dowry on Susanna of 105 acres of his land in Old Stratford he had bought in 1602, probably retaining a life interest in it.

Robert Whatcott, who three years later witnessed Shakespeare's will, testified for the Halls, but Lane failed to appear.

[4] When Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, he left the bulk of his estate, in an elaborate fee tail, to Susanna and her male heirs, which included his main house, New Place, his two houses on Henley Street, and various lands in and around Stratford, and all his "goodes Chattels, Leases, plate, jewles and Household stuffe whatsoever after my dettes and Legasies paied and my funerall expences discharged" to her and her husband.

Her tombstone epitaph reads:[6] Here lyeth the body of Susanna, wife of John Hall, gent., the daughter of William Shakespeare, gent.