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Chapter 4 - Last Wills and Remembrance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2025

Douglas Clark
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

‘Last Wills and Remembrance’ builds on Chapter 3’s findings by examining the social authority and memorial value afforded to the last will. The dramatic potency of a last will centres on its ability to evoke the presence of an absent testator, imposing the latent will of the dead upon the living through the obligation of remembrance. This chapter focuses on Ben Jonson’s Volpone, and Thomas Middleton’s The Phoenix, and The London Prodigal (of an uncertain author) to show how consistently this memorial duty elicited a struggle between the will of the testator and their beneficiaries, and that such moments often centre on the manipulation of blank, invalid, or fake wills. I argue that the execution of last wills in these plays illuminates the pitfalls associated with the commemoration of human endeavours, the anxieties related to the endurance of familial dynasties, and the sociopolitical disparities caused by patrilineal succession. The last will, once again, acts as a means by which dramatists could scrutinize and deliberate upon the relative authority or vulnerability of the individual faculty of the will.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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  • Last Wills and Remembrance
  • Douglas Clark, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Will in English Renaissance Drama
  • Online publication: 04 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009390934.007
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  • Last Wills and Remembrance
  • Douglas Clark, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Will in English Renaissance Drama
  • Online publication: 04 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009390934.007
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Last Wills and Remembrance
  • Douglas Clark, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Will in English Renaissance Drama
  • Online publication: 04 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009390934.007
Available formats
×