Shakespeare carefully attended in the last months of his life to the disposition of his property, which consisted, apart from houses and lands, of £350 in money (nearly His will. £3000 in modern currency), and much valuable plate and other personalty. His wife and two daughters survived him. He left the bulk of his possessions to his elder daughter, Susanna, who was married to a medical practitioner at Stratford, John Hall. He bequeathed nothing to his wife except his second best bedstead, probably because she had smaller business capacity to deal with property than her daughter Susanna, to whose affectionate care she was entrusted. Shakespeare's younger daughter, Judith, was adequately provided for; and to his granddaughter, his elder daughter's daughter, Elizabeth, who was ultimately his last direct survivor, he left most of his plate. The legatees included three of the dramatist's fellow-actors, to each of whom he left a sum of 26s. 8d., wherewith to buy memorial rings. Such a bequest well confirms the reputation that he enjoyed among his professional colleagues for geniality and gentle sympathy. Other bequests show that he reckoned to the last his chief neighbours at Stratford among his intimate friends. Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the church of his native town, Stratford-on-Avon. On the slab of stone covering the grave on the chancel floor were inscribed the lines: His burial. 'Good frend for Jesus sake forbeare, A justification of this doggerel inscription is (if needed) not far to seek. According to one William Hall, who described a visit to Stratford in 1694, these crude verses were penned by Shakespeare to suit the capacity of clerks and sextons, for the most part a very ignorant set of people.' Had this curse not threatened them, Hall proceeds, the sexton would not have hesitated in course of time to remove Shakespeare's dust to 'the bone-house,' to which desecration Shakespeare had a rooted antipathy. As it was, the grave was made seventeen feet deep, and was never opened, even to receive his wife, although she expressed a desire to be buried in the same grave with her husband. ment. The But more important is it to remember that a monument was soon placed on the chancel wall near his grave. inscription upon Shakespeare's tomb in Stratford- His monuon-Avon Church attests that Shakespeare, the native of Stratford-on-Avon, who went to London a poor youth and returned in middle life a man of substance, was known in his native place as the greatest man of letters of his epoch. In these days when we hear doubts expressed of the fact that the writer of the great plays identified with Shakespeare's name was actually associated with Stratford-on-Avon at all, this epitaph should, in the interests of truth and good sense, be learned by heart in youth by every English-speaking person. The epitaph opens with a Latin distich, in which Shakespeare is likened, not perhaps very appositely, to three great heroes of classical antiquity-in judgment to Nestor, in genius to Socrates (certainly an inapt comparison), and in art or literary power to Virgil, the greatest of Latin poets. Earth is said to cover him, the people to mourn him, and Olympus to hold him. Then follows this English verse, not brilliant verse, but verse that leaves no reader in doubt as to its significance: 'Stay, passenger, why goest thou by so fast? Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plast Within this monument; Shakespeare, with whom 1 Quicke nature died: 1 whose name doth deck this tombe Far more than cost: sith all that he hath writ Leaves living art but page to serve his wit.' There follows the statement in Latin that he died on 23rd April 1616. 'All that he hath writ Leaves living art but page to serve his wit.' These words mean only one thing: at Stratford-on-Avon, his native place, Shakespeare was held to enjoy a universal reputation. Literature by all other living pens was at the date of his death only fit, in the eyes of his fellow-townsmen, to serve all that he had writ' as pageboy or menial. There he was the acknowledged master, and all other writers were his servants. The epitaph can be explained in no other sense. Until the tongue that Shakespeare spoke is dead, so long as the English language exists and is understood, it is futile to express doubt of the traditionally accepted facts of Shakespeare's career. IX The church at Stratford-on-Avon, which holds Shakespeare's bones, must always excite the liveliest sense of veneration among the English-speaking peoples. His elegists. It is there that is enshrined the final testimony to his ascent by force of genius from obscurity to glory. It is curious to note that Cardinal Pietro Bembo, one of the most cultivated writers of the Italian Renaissance, was author of the epitaph on the painter Raphael, which seems to adumbrate (doubtless accidentally) the words in Shakespeare's epitaph, 'with whom Quicke Nature died.' lines run: 'Hic ille est Raphael, metuit quo sospite vinci ('Here lies the famous Raphael, in whose lifetime Bembo's But great as is the importance of the inscription on his tomb to those who would understand the drift of Shakespeare's personal history, it was not the only testimony to the plain current of his life that found imperishable record in the epoch of his death. Biographers did not lie in wait for men of eminence on their deathbeds in Shakespeare's age, but the place of the modern memoir-writer was filled in those days by friendly poets, who were usually alert to pay fit homage in elegiac verse to a dead hero's achievements. In that regard Shakespeare's poetic friends showed at his death exceptional energy. During his lifetime men of letters had bestowed on his 'reigning wit,' on his kingly supremacy of genius, most generous stores of eulogy. When Shakespeare lay dead, in the spring of 1616, when, as one of his admirers technically phrased it, he had withdrawn from the stage of the world to the 'tiring-house' or dressing-room of the grave, the flood of panegyrical lamentation poured forth in a new flood. One of the earliest of the elegies was a sonnet by William Basse, who not only gave picturesque expression to the conviction that Shakespeare would enjoy for all time a unique reverence on the part of his countrymen, but brought into strong relief the fact that national obsequies were held by his contemporaries to be his due, and that the withholding of them was contrary to a widely disseminated wish. In the opening lines of his poem Basse apostrophised Chaucer, Spenser, and the dramatist, Francis Beaumont, the only three poets who had hitherto received the recognition of burial in Westminster Abbey. Beaumont, the youngest of the trio, had been buried in the Abbey only five weeks before Shakespeare died. To this honoured trio Basse made appeal to 'lie a thought more nigh' one to another so as to make room for the newly dead Shakespeare within their sacred sepulchre.' Then, in the second half of his sonnet, the poet justified the fact that Shakespeare was buried elsewhere by the reflection that he in right of his pre-eminence merited a tomb apart from all his fellows. With a glance at Shakespeare's distant grave in the chancel of Stratford-on-Avon church, the writer exclaimed: 'Under this carved marble of thine own Sleep, brave tragedian, Shakespeare, sleep alone.' This fine sentiment found many a splendid echo. It resounded in Ben Jonson's noble lines prefixed to the First Folio of 1623. To the memory of my beloved, the author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us.' 'My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by Milton qualified the conceit a few years later, in 1630, when he declared that Shakespeare sepulchred' in 'the monument' of his writings, 'in such pomp doth lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.' Never was a glorious immortality foretold for any man with more impressive confidence than it was foretold for Shakespeare at his death by his circle of adorers. Prophecy of immor- When Time, one elegist said, should dissolve his tality. 'Stratford monument,' the laurel about Shakespeare's brow would wear its greenest hue. Shakespeare's critical friend, Ben Jonson, was but one of a numerous band who imagined the 'sweet swan of Avon,' 'the star of poets,' shining for ever as a constellation in the firmament. Ben Jonson did not stand alone in anticipating that his fame |