He died at Stratford-upon-Avon on 23rd April 1616 and was buried it is assumed, two days later inside the church.
Strangely if these dates are correct, it is probable he died on the 52nd anniversary of his birth. He is entered in the register as " "Will Shakspere gent."
He may have been unwell for some time as both his will and amendment to it were written earlier in that year. The fact that his brother-in-law, William Hart, a hat manufacturer, died only a month before may suggest some common familial infection, not unusual at the time. (1)
Perhaps it is also worth noting that the death of Saint George, the Patron Saint of England and of other places, is celebrated on 23rd April, the traditionally accepted date of Saint George's death in 303 AD. So rather significantly England's most notable poet and playwright, appears to have died on England's most notable Saint's Day - the Saint that reputably slew the dragon! (2)
Very mysteriously the stone overlying his tomb is not inscribed with the usual information or elegy but a curse as follows:
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.”
But that is what looks distinctly likely. Recent investigations have confirmed that not only was this a very shallow grave not long enough to contain a body, but human remains appear to be lacking, perhaps confirming at least one story that his skull was removed by trophy hunters in the late 18th Century. (3)
Mystery appears to surround said "Will Shakspere" and many later day scholars of course, have questioned whether said person was in fact the author of all the 38 plays, 154 sublime sonnets and other works, or just a front for someone else - even Queen Elizabeth herself! - who either needed or chose to be anonymous. (4) Perhaps the questions will never be definitively answered.
What is clear is that without 'Shakespeare', the English language would be infinitely the poorer. His works are filled with sayings that have become standard aphorisms and unsurpassed insights into the human condition. One of the best known is the speech in the mouth of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, that begins, "To be or not to be, that is the question?"
"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.—Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d."
(A poignant rendition by David Tennant can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u8OlUS7BhU and an interview with Benedict Cumberbatch on playing the role here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0ky_tQxwgo)
Most would interpret the soliloquy as a debate within oneself between choosing to live or die; of assessing the 'pros' and the 'cons' - a balance sheet of the reasons for and against. All the "heart-ache(s) and natural shocks that flesh is heir to." In many respects he wishes to be free of them, to be at peace from the stresses and strains of human existence. Life is a struggle and death an obvious way out.
It takes courage and action to live; but so it does to die, not he concludes, because of the temporary and marginal discomfort, ("when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin" (or dagger)) but what may come after. This remember, was a time in which few questioned a Christian world-view that believed intrinsically in an after-life, as certain as the sentient one. And not only so but that the post-death destination turned on actions in this life.
It was a time of religious fervour and fiery puritan preachers who preached hell fire for the transgressor and unrepentant sinner, and there was plenty of sin to go round. (5) (In the year that Shakespeare died, Richard Baxter, a notable puritan preacher was born. (6)) Thus people not only had to contend with a multiplicity of human sufferings, it was in the context of everlasting torture if they didn't get things right. In large part it is why the wealthy paid for prayers to be said in perpetuity and alms were given the poor to which our churches, many now 'redundant', attest.
We now live in a different age, where charity if it is exercised, comes from a different direction and from a different rationale - not from a fear of after-life punishment, but duties consequent on a moral and ethical imperative to help one another in time of need. In general this is a humanitarian position rather than a religious one.
It is hard to over-estimate the impact of the scientific and philosophical developments in the western world over the last two or three hundred years. Our religious beliefs have become a tentative and delicate thing - almost a cultural flashback to former times without the conviction. Indeed we tend to be contemptuous of those that hold to the sort of beliefs portrayed in Hamlet's outburst. An unquestioning belief in spiritual forces engaged in eternal warfare over the adherence, thoughts and actions of men.
Islam appears to have retained much that Christianity has disposed of and is ridiculed for it by the 'sophisticated' westerner, uncritical of what has become an obsession with warfare and destruction of those that see things differently. Having dropped millions of tons of TNT, or its equivalent on itself and foreign territories, it has the audacity to label others as a 'death cult'. It would be laughable if it were not so serious.
However, there is a different interpretation to the famous dilemma. Was the author posing an even more fundamental question: How to BE?
Is it possible to live a whole life 'acting' rather than 'being'? How do we engage with our true human nature, instincts and purpose? Are these, as Christian theology then and now, suggests, something dangerous and 'sinful' to be avoided and controlled at all cost, or should they be recognised and encouraged as beneficial to one and all? From whence do evil acts spring - from natural tendencies or socially and politically conditioned responses? Basically is mankind essentially good or bad?
Should we be saved from ourselves or become ourselves? What in this 'brave new world' are we to be and what are we to be-lieve? Those are the ultimate questions.
(1) http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/parish-register-entry-recording-william-shakespeares-burial)
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_George_and_the_Dragon
(3) http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/secret-history-shakespeares-tomb
(4) with links: http://absoluteshakespeare.com/trivia/authorship/authorship.htm
(5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritans
(6) https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/richard-baxter-400-years-later-still-model-pastor
29.7.2024: I have just finished reading Bill Bryson's take on the man, William Shakespeare, probably the most famous Englishman who has ever lived, about whom we know virtually nothing!
Bryson reviews the other names put forward for the authorship of his works - Francis Bacon; Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford; Christopher Marlowe; Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke; William Stanley, sixth Earl of Derby; Sir Philip Sidney; Sir Walter Raleigh and others - and decides none fits the bill.
However, I still have my doubts that a provincial man and undoubted actor, who it would seem could hardly sign his name consistently - only six examples from 1612 to 1616 exist, three on one document - his Will - and all are different. ("Willm Shakp; Wm Shakspe; William Shakspere; Willm Shakspere; Byme William Shakspeare") could create such a volume of unsurpassed prose and verse.
We are all aware of how we try out different styles in our teens, but this uncertainty comes in his mature forty-eighth year onwards (he was born in 1564). Is this really credible? Surely by then he would have firmly established a uniform signature? Would a man who had difficulty correctly signing his name, have produced with ease thousands of pages of sublime text? No original manuscripts of his plays or poems survive.
However the famous and contemporary playwright and scholar Ben Jonson (1572 - 1637), was in no doubt. He wrote in a magisterial work entitled "Timber or Discoveries made upon men and matter":
To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare
By Ben Jonson
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor muse can praise too much;
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For seeliest ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin, where it seem'd to raise.
These are, as some infamous bawd or whore
Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them, and indeed,
Above th' ill fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin. Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room:
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses,
I mean with great, but disproportion'd Muses,
For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seek
For names; but call forth thund'ring Aeschylus,
Euripides and Sophocles to us;
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread,
And shake a stage; or, when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Tri'umph, my Britain, thou hast one to show
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm!
Nature herself was proud of his designs
And joy'd to wear the dressing of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please,
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give Nature all: thy art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion; and, that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same
(And himself with it) that he thinks to frame,
Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn;
For a good poet's made, as well as born;
And such wert thou. Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turned, and true-filed lines;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza and our James!
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanc'd, and made a constellation there!
Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage;
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.
31.7.2024: I recently added to a little article I did in 2016 on Shakespeare after reading Bill Bryson's entertaining book on the subject. (It's here should anyone care to take a look: https://veaterecosan.blogspot.com/search?q=Shakespeare ) Then today on reading last week's Times, I came across the obituary of Alexander Waugh who died recently, aged only sixty. He was the descendent of a long line of Waughs who trace their ancestors back to Scottish yeomen in the 16th C. "who ate their porridge with their fingers". Most recently Evelyn and Oberon, respectively the author of Brideshead Revisited etc. and a notable satirical contributor to Private Eye. They all lived at Combe Florey House - not a bad pile - a few miles NE of Taunton. His father Oberon was a great wine connoisseur, and chose to be paid "twenty four bottles per thousand words" and thus had created an enviable and extensive wine cellar. None of the Waugh children appear to have had a very good relationship with their fathers, but the inheritance could not be shaken off so easily. Two more generations follow him, probably more successfully but less notably, one feels. Given my reading of the Bryson book, it was interesting to read that Alexander had given considerable energy to the proposition that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author of Shakespeare's work that few historians support. Oh well good try Alexander and goodbye.
(Cornish Telegraph Thursday 16
1896: There is no mention of Boswarthen Chapel on the map issued at this date, the chapel in large letters is the Baptistry which is not the one in this article.
Images courtesy of: Peter Scrase
