Judith Quiney

Judith Quiney (baptised 2 February 1585 – 9 February 1662), née Shakespeare, was the younger daughter of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway and the fraternal twin of Shakespeare's only son Hamnet Shakespeare. She married Thomas Quiney, a vintner of Stratford-upon-Avon. The circumstances of the marriage, including Quiney's misconduct, may have prompted the rewriting of Shakespeare's will. Thomas was struck out, while Judith's inheritance was attached with provisions to safeguard it from her husband. The bulk of Shakespeare's estate was left, in an elaborate fee tail, to his elder daughter Susanna and her male heirs.

Judith and Thomas Quiney had three children. By the time of Judith Quiney's death, she had outlived her children by many years. She has been depicted in several works of fiction as part of an attempt to piece together unknown portions of her father's life.

Birth and early life

Judith Shakespeare was the daughter of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. She was the younger sister of Susanna and the twin sister of Hamnet. Hamnet, however, died at the age of eleven. Her baptism on 2 February 1585 was recorded by the vicar, Richard Barton of Coventry, in the parish register for Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon. The twins were named after a husband and wife, Hamnet and Judith Sadler, who were friends of the parents. Hamnet Sadler was a baker in Stratford.

Book of Judith

The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book, included in the Septuagint and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian Old Testament of the Bible, but excluded from Jewish texts and assigned by Protestants to the Apocrypha. The book contains numerous historical anachronisms, which is why many scholars now accept it as non-historical; it has been considered a parable or perhaps the first historical novel.

The name Judith (Hebrew: יְהוּדִית, Modern Yehudit, Tiberian Yəhûḏîṯ ; "Praised" or "Jewess") is the feminine form of Judah.

Historical context

Original language

It is not clear whether the Book of Judith was originally written in Hebrew or in Greek. The oldest extant version is the Septuagint and might either be a translation from Hebrew or composed in Greek. Details of vocabulary and phrasing point to a Greek text written in a language modeled on the Greek developed through translating the other books in the Septuagint. The extant Hebrew language versions, whether identical to the Greek, or in the shorter Hebrew version, are medieval. The Hebrew versions name important figures directly such as the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes, thus placing the events in the Hellenistic period when the Maccabees battled the Seleucid monarchs. The Greek version uses deliberately cryptic and anachronistic references such as "Nebuchadnezzar", a "King of Assyria," who "reigns in Nineveh," for the same king. The adoption of that name, though unhistorical, has been sometimes explained either as a copyist's addition, or an arbitrary name assigned to the ruler of Babylon.

Judith (1923 film)

Judith is a 1923 Dutch silent film directed by Theo Frenkel.

Cast

External links

Judith (given name)

Judith is a feminine given name derived from the Hebrew name יְהוּדִית or Yehudit, meaning "She will be praised" or "woman of Judea". Judith appeared in the Old Testament as the wife of Esau and in the Apocryphal Book of Judith.

The name was among the top 50 most popular given names for girls born in the United States between 1936 and 1956. Its popularity has since declined. It was the 893rd most popular name for baby girls born in the United States in 2012, down from 74th place in 1960.

Name variants

Alternative forms of the name Judith include: