The Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-on-Avon (concluded)—The Shakespeare grave and monument—The Miserere Seats.

The Baconians are so extravagant that it becomes scarce worth while to refute their wild statements; but when they are carried to these extremities we may well note them, for the enjoyment of a laugh. But perhaps Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence gives us the better entertainment when he tells us that Bacon wrote the preface to the Authorised Version of the Bible, and was in fact the literary editor of that translation and responsible for its style!

The Chancel, Holy Trinity Church, with Shakespeare’s Monument

With an ineffable serenity the portrait-figure of Shakespeare (generally called a “bust,” but it is a half-length) in the monument looks down from the north wall of the spacious chancel upon the graves of himself and his family. The monument itself is thoroughly characteristic of the Renascence taste of the period: in the church of St. Andrew Undershaft, in the city of London, you may see a not dissimilar example to John Stow, the historian, who died eleven years before Shakespeare. He also, like Shakespeare’s effigy, holds a quill pen in his hand. The accompanying illustration renders description scarce necessary, and it is only to the portrait that we need especially direct attention. In common with everything relating to Shakespeare, it has been the subject of great controversy: not altogether warranted, for it is certain that it was executed before 1623, seven years after the poet’s death, when his widow, daughters and sons-in-law were yet living, and it seems beyond all reasonable argument to deny that a monument erected under their supervision should, and does, in fact, present as good a likeness of him as they could procure. The effigy was sculptured by one Gerard Johnson (or Janssen), son of a Dutch craftsman in this mortuary art, whose workshop being in Southwark near the “Globe” theatre, must have rendered Shakespeare’s personal appearance familiar to him, while the features are considered to be copied from a death-mask which was probably taken by Dr. John Hall, husband of Shakespeare’s elder daughter, Susanna.

The inscription runs—

“Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,
Terra tegit, popvlvs mÆret, Olympus habet.”

which is translated thus—

“He was in judgment a Nestor, in genius a Socrates, and in art a Virgil; the earth covers, the people mourn, and heaven holds him.”

There then follow the English lines—

“Stay, Passenger, why goest thov by so fast?
Read if thov canst, when enviovs Death hath plast
Within this monvment, Shakespeare, with whome
Qvick Natvre dide; whose name doth deck y^e Tombe
Far more then coste, sith all y^t He hath writt
Leaves living art but page to serve his witt,

“Obiit ano doi 1616,
Ætatis 53, Die 23 Ap.”

The author of Shakespeare’s epitaph is unknown. It would seem to have been some one who had not seen the monument, and knew nothing of its character; for he imagines his lines are to be inscribed upon a tomb within which the poet’s body is placed. But however little he knew of Shakespeare’s monument, he knew the worth of his plays and poems: “Shakespeare, with whom quick nature died.” It is the very summary, the quintessence, of Shakespearean appreciation.Like everything else associated with Shakespeare, the monument has had its vicissitudes. The effigy, originally painted to resemble life, showed the poet to have had auburn hair and light hazel eyes. In 1748 a well-meaning Mr. John Ward repaired the monument and retouched the effigy with colour, and in 1793 Malone persuaded the vicar to have it painted white; an outrage satirised by the lines written in the church visitors’-book in 1810—

“Stranger, to whom this Monument is shewn,
Invoke the Poet’s curse upon Malone
Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste betrays,
And smears his tombstone as he marr’d his plays.”

It was not until 1861 that the white paint was scraped off and the original colour restored, by the light of what traces remained.

Opinions have greatly varied as to the merits of the portrait, and many observers have been disappointed with it. Dr. Ingleby, for one, was distressed by its “painful stare, with goggle eyes and gaping mouth.” But the measure of this disappointment is exactly in proportion to the perhaps exaggerated expectations held. We must bear in mind that the sculptor worked from a death-mask, and that the expression was thus a conventional restoration.

Mark Twain, who, like the egregious Ignatius Donnelly, did not believe that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, founded a good deal of his disbelief on the unvexed serenity of this monumental bust. It troubled him greatly that it should be there, so serene and emotionless. “The bust, too, there in the Stratford church. The precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm bust with the dandy moustache and the putty face, unseamed of care—that face which has looked passionlessly down upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty years, and will still down look upon the awed pilgrim three hundred more, with the deep, deep, deep, subtle, subtle, subtle expression of a bladder.” What, then, did he expect? A tragic mask, a laughing face of comedy? But Mark Twain hardly counts as a Shakespeare critic.

It is forgotten by most people that the painting and scraping have wrought some changes, not for the better, in the expression of the face, tending towards making it what Halliwell-Phillipps too extravagantly calls a “miserable travesty of an intellectual human being.” However lifeless the expression, we see the features are those of a man of affairs. They are good and in no way abnormal. The brow is broad and lofty; the jaw and chin, while not massive, perhaps more than a thought heavier than usual. This was a man, one thinks, who would have succeeded in whatever walk of life he chose, and that is exactly the impression derived from the known facts and the traditions of Shakespeare’s life.

There have been numerous arguments in recent times in favour of digging that dust which the poet’s curse has thus far kept inviolate, but the courage has been lacking to it; whether in view of the curse or in fear of public opinion seems to be uncertain.

The late J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps wrote, about 1885: “It is not many years since a phalanx of trouble-tombs, 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 amongst the number who, at the last moment, refused to incur the warning condemnation and so the design was happily abandoned.”

Nor would it appear that the graves of his family have been disturbed. They lie in a row, with his own, before the altar, a position they occupy by right of Shakespeare having purchased the rectorial tithes, and thus becoming that curious anomaly, a “lay rector.” It matters little or nothing where one’s bones are laid, but the doing this, and thus acquiring the right of sepulture in the most honoured place in the church, seems to imply that Shakespeare expected to found a family, and to see that his name was honoured to future generations in his native town.

We are not to suppose that the clergy of that time welcomed Shakespeare’s burial in this honoured place, but they could not help themselves. He had acquired the right, and although he had lived well into a time when puritanism had banished plays and players from Stratford, and although as a playwright he must have been regarded by many as a lost soul—unless, indeed, he became a converted man in his last year or so—his rights had to be observed.

Immediately next the wall is the flat stone that marks the grave of Anne Shakespeare, who survived her husband, and died August 6th, 1623, aged sixty-seven. An eight-line Latin verse, probably by her son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, and couched in the most affectionate terms, is inscribed upon a small brass plate; it is thus rendered—

“Milk, life thou gavest. For a boon so great,
Mother, alas! I give thee but a stone;
O! might some angel blest remove its weight,
Thy form should issue like thy Saviour’s own.
But vain my prayers; O Christ, come quickly, come!
And thou, my Mother, shalt from hence arise,
Though closed as yet within this narrow tomb,
To meet thy Saviour in the starry skies.”

Next in order comes the slab covering the grave of Shakespeare himself, and following it that of Thomas Nash, husband of Elizabeth Hall, grand-daughter of the poet. He died in 1647, aged fifty-three, and is honoured in a four-line Latin verse. Fourthly comes the grave of Dr. Hall, who died in 1635, aged sixty, with a six-line Latin verse, and next is that of Susanna, Shakespeare’s elder daughter, wife of Dr. Hall. She died in 1649, aged sixty-six, and has this poetic appreciation for epitaph—

“Witty above her sexe, but that’s not all,
Wise to Salvation was good Mistris Hall,
Something of Shakespeare was in that, but this
Wholy of him with whom she’s now in blisse,
Then, Passenger, ha’st ne’re a teare
To weepe with her that wept with all?
That wept, yet set herselfe to chere
Them up with comforts cordiall.
Her Love shall live, her mercy spread,
When thou hast ne’re a teare to shed.”

This touching tribute was nearly lost in the gross outrage perpetrated in or about 1707, when it was erased for the purpose of providing room for an inscription to one Richard Watts. Happily Dugdale, in his monumental history of Warwickshire, had recorded it, and it was re-cut from that evidence in 1836.

It is gratifying to note that no monuments to self-advertising members of the theatrical profession, or others keen to obtain a reflected glory from association with Shakespeare, have been allowed here, although we have to thank an aroused public opinion, and not the clergy, the natural guardians of the spot, for that. It was proposed, a few years ago, to place a memorial to that entirely blameless actress, well versed in Shakespearean parts, Helen Faucit, Lady Martin, on the wall opposite Shakespeare’s monument, and it was nearly accomplished. The clergy blessed the project, the public were allowed to hear little or nothing about it, and the thing would have been done, except for protests raised at the eleventh hour. The monument eventually found its way to the Shakespeare Memorial, where it may now be found, but those responsible for the proposal were not wholly to be baulked, and the evidence of their persistence is to be seen in the nave, where a very elaborate dark-green marble pulpit, in memory of Helen Faucit, and given by her husband, Sir Theodore Martin, attracts attention.

There has been a good deal of praise and admiration of the modern stained glass in the noble windows of the chancel and the windows of the church in general, including those given by American admirers of Shakespeare, but the truth is that there is no stained glass in Stratford church above the commercial level of the ordinary ecclesiastical furnisher, and the sooner the fact is recognised, the better for all concerned. The guidebooks will tell you nothing of this, but we have to see things for ourselves, and use our own judgment.

The tomb of the rebuilder of the chancel, Thomas Balsall, is little noticed. It is seen under the east window, on the north side, and is a greatly mutilated, but still beautiful, altar-tomb. Above it, on the wall, is the monument with fine portrait-busts of Richard Combe and his intended wife, Judith, who died 1649. The altar-tomb, with effigy, of John Combe, 1614, of the College, and of Welcombe, a friend of Shakespeare, is against the east wall. Combe was a man of wealth, who did not disdain the part of money-lender. He had the reputation of an usurer, although ten per cent. was his moderate rate, and, according to the tradition, hearing it said that Shakespeare had an epitaph waiting for him, begged to hear it. This, then, was what he heard—

“Ten in a hundred lies here engraved,
’Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved.
If any man ask, Who lies in this tomb?
Ho! ho! says the Devil, ’tis my John-a-Combe.”

It is an idle story, and the verse is adapted from an epigram in the jest-books of the age.A prominent feature of a collegiate church was the stalls, with their miserere seats, for the priests, and we have here stalls for twenty-six, still retaining their beautifully carved seats, little injured by time or violence. We do, in fact, frequently find the miserere carvings uninjured in cathedrals, abbeys and collegiate churches; largely because they are always on the underside of the seats and thus apt to be overlooked. Those at Stratford are well up to the general level of interest and amusement.

Amusement? Yes. The very broadest fun, sometimes particularly coarse, lurks in these often unsuspected places; and the greatest artistry of the wood-carver too, who will turn at random from the loving rendering of flower or foliage, to sacred symbols; then to the representation of birds and beasts and extraordinary chimeras that never existed outside the frontiers of Nightmare Land; and to queer domestic or social scenes. Here we find prime examples of such things. Under one seat a Crown of Thorns and the I.H.S. occur, on either side of a scene showing a man and wife fighting. He has a long beard which she is pulling with one hand, while with the other she bastes him with a ladle. She employs her feet, too, in kicking him.

Under the next seat we see this domestic strife resumed, but it is shown in two scenes, over which a central woman-headed beast presides. Here the termagant pulls her husband’s beard and tears his mouth open, while he retaliates by pulling her hair. The other scene represents the taming of the shrew. A naked woman is being thrashed by a man, and a dog completes the retribution by biting her leg.

Among the other carvings we note the favourite Bear and Ragged Staff of this district; a beggar’s monkey, with chained tin pot, or drinking-vessel, and a variety of minor subjects. Among the most interesting is that example illustrated here.

A Stratford Miserere: The Legend of the Unicorn

The subject is that of the once-popular legend of the unicorn, which was, according to mediÆval story, an animal of the fiercest and most untamable kind, and only to be captured in one way. This way was to find a virgin, at once of great beauty and unquestioned virtue, and to conduct her to the unicorn’s haunts in the greenwood. Immediately the animal, tame only in the presence of a pure virgin, would come and lay its head gently and fearlessly in her lap; whereupon the hunter would steal forth and slay the confiding beast.

It is to be remarked here that the person who could invent such a story, whatever else he was, and however fearless his imagination, was, clearly enough, no sportsman. It is quite easy to imagine such an one shooting a sitting pheasant, or poisoning a fox.

Here, in the illustration, we perceive the maiden, not so beautiful as the carver intended her to be, caressing the confiding unicorn and apparently scratching him behind the ear, while an unsportsmanlike person digs him in the rump at leisure, with a spear-headed weapon.