In “A Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf imagined that Will Shakespeare had a sister named Judith, a young woman with all the same rich intellectual gifts Will Shakespeare had. Because of the time’s social restrictions on women, this sister’s life was very different from that of her famous brother. Shakespeare didn’t have that kind of sister, of course. He had a daughter named Judith. “Judith Shakespeare Has Her Say” is her play. Its frame rests upon Old Judith at age 77, as she watches and comments on her life, the feelings she had, and the decisions she made—as well as the choices others made for her.

Having lived longer than most people of her time, the real Judith did not leave much of an historical record. She was a private person, as were most women she knew. But this play weaves together the information we do have about her, the death of her twin brother at age eleven (disastrous for Judith, but also disastrous for Will as he was his only son), Judith’s rejection of the quiet decency that was expected of her, marrying under a cloud and facing subsequent scandal. This, in turn, led to the ultimate slap in the face she received from her father: disinheritance shortly before his death.

And so this play is free to imagine, what if Shakespeare had a daughter with all the same rich intellectual gifts her father had. How free would she have been to imagine and achieve a satisfying life for herself?
Even when she seeks excitement, adventure, and intellectual
awakening, the times thwart her. As an old woman, she knows the outcome of her choices, and watches her young self with fascination, amusement, and pity. And she sees her father with love, even as she sits in clear-eyed judgment on him.

“Judith Shakespeare Has Her Say,” is a play that can stand alone, but is also the second in a Shakespeare trilogy. “Shakespeare Rising,” the first play of the
trilogy, also works on its own. But, while the first play gives a loving and sympathetic rendition of Shakespeare, shown largely from his own point of view, “Judith” visits very different territory indeed.