other early allusion to them, and perhaps in himself less of that spirit of toleration for every kind of opinion. which rendered him at home with all sorts and conditions of men,-as well as less of that freedom from inflexible preconceptions that might have affected the fidelity of his dramatic work. Many will hold that there was sufficient of those qualities to betray a general indifference to creeds and rituals, and, at all events, whatever there was of Catholicism in his faith did not exclude the maintenance of affectionate relations with his ultra-protestant son-in-law. There is nothing in the will, in the list of witnesses, in the monumental inscription, in selection of friends, in the history of his professional career, in the little that tells of his personal character,-there is nothing, in short, in a single one of the contemporary evidences to indicate that the he ever entered any of the circles of religious partisanship. Assuming, as we fairly may, that he had a leaning to the faith of his ancestors, we may yet be sure that the inclination was not of a nature that materially disturbed the easygoing acquiescence in the conditions of his surrounding world that added so much to the happiness of his later days. With perhaps one exception. It is surely within the bounds of possibility that he gave utterance to that inclination in the course of his last illness, and that he then declined, almost in the same breath in which he directed the kindly remembrances to his fellow-actors, the offices of a vicar who preached the abolition of the stage, and regarded the writers of plays as so many Anti-Christs. This hypothesis would fully explain the currency of the tradition recorded by Davies, and at the same time meet the other conditions of the problem. There was a funeral as well as a marriage in the family during the last days of Shakespeare. William Hart, who was carrying on the business of a hatter at the premises now known as the Birth-place, and who was the husband of the poet's sister Joan, was buried at Stratford-on-Avon on April 17, 1616. Before another week had elapsed, the spirit of the great dramatist himself had fled. Among the numerous popular errors of our ancestors was the belief that fevers often resulted from convivial indulgences. This was the current notion in England until a comparatively recent period, and its prevalence affected the traditional history of the poet's last illness. The facts were these. Late in the March of this calamitous year, or, accepting our computation, early in April, Shakespeare and his two frends, Drayton and Ben Jonson, were regaling themselves at an entertainment in one of the taverns at Stratford-on-Avon. It is recorded that the party was a jovial one, and according to a late but apparently genuine tradition, when the great dramatist was returning to New Place in the evening, he had taken more wine than was conducive to pedestrian accuracy. Shortly or immediately afterwards he was seized by the lamentable fever which terminated fatally on Tuesday, April 23, 1616, a day, which, according to our present mode of computation, would be May 3. The cause of the malady, then attributed to undue festivity, would now be readily discernible in the wretched sanitary conditions surrounding his residence. If truth, and not romance, is to be invoked, were there the woodbine and sweet honeysuckle within reach of the poet's death-bed, their fragrance would have been neutralized by their vicinity to middens, fetid watercourses, mud-walls and piggeries. The funeral was solemnized on the following Thursday, en April 25, when all that was mortal of the great dramatist was consigned to his final resting-place in the beautiful parish-church of his native town. His remains were deposited in the chancel, the selection of the locality for the interment being due to the circumstance of its then being the legal and customary burial-place of the owners of the tithes. The grave is situated near the northern wall of the chancel, within a few paces of the ancient charnel-house, the arch of the doorway that opened to the latter, with its antique corbels, still remaining. The sepulcher was covered with a slab that bore the following inscription, GOOD FREND, FOR IESVS SAKE FORBEARE TO DIGG THE DVST ENCLOASED HEARE; BLESTE BE THE MAN THAT SPARES THES STONES, lines which, according to an early tradition, were selected by the poet himself for his epitaph. There is another early but less probable statement that they were the poet's own composition; but, at all events, it may be safely gathered that they originated in some way from an aversion on his part to the idea of a disturbance of his remains. It should be remembered that the transfer of bones from graves to the charnel-house was then an ordinary practice at Stratford-on-Avon. There has long been a tradition that Shakespeare's feelings on this subject arose from a reflection on the ghastly appearance of that receptacle, which the elder Ireland, writing in the year 1795, describes as then containing "the largest assemblage of human bones" he had ever beheld. But whether this be the truth, or if it were merely the natural wish of a sensitive and thoughtful mind, it is a source of congratulation that the simple verses should have protected his ashes from sacrilege. The nearest approach to an excavation into the grave of Shakespeare was made in the summer of the year 1796, in digging a vault in the immediate locality, when an opening appeared which was presumed to indicate the commencement of the site of the bard's remains. The most scrupu lous care, however, was taken not to disturb the neighboring earth in the slightest degree, the clerk having been placed there, until the brickwork of the adjoining vault was completed, to prevent anyone making an examination. No relics whatever were visible through the small opening that thus presented itself, and as the poet was buried in the ground, not in a vault, the chancel earth, moreover, formerly absorbing a large degree of moisture, the great probability is that dust alone remains. This consideration may tend to discourage an irreverent opinion expressed by some, that it is due to the interests of science to unfold to the world the material abode which once held so great an intellect. It is not many years since a phalanx of troubletombs, lanterns and spades in hand, assembled in the chancel at dead of night, intent on disobeying the solemn injunction that the bones of Shakespeare were not to be disturbed. But the supplicatory lines prevailed. There were some among the number who, at the last moment, refused to incur the warning condemnation, and so the design was happily abandoned. |