Summer Days in Shakespeare Land

ord-on-Avon (concluded)-The Shakespear

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

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 monum

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53, Die

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 k

e 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 colou

whom this Monu

Poet's curs

eal his barbarou

ombstone as he m

was scraped off and the original colour res

ed by its "painful stare, with goggle eyes and gaping mouth." But the measure of this disappointment is exactly in proportion to the perhaps exagger

ss. "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,

sty 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

ich the poet's curse has thus far kept inviolate, but the courage has been lacking t

e 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

e 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 sep

cquired the right, and although he had lived well into a time when puritanism had banished plays and players from Stratford, and although as a playwr

, and died August 6th, 1623, aged sixty-seven. An eight-line Latin verse, probably by her son-in-law, Dr. John

u gavest. For a

! I give the

angel blest re

issue like thy

ers; O Christ, c

other, shalt f

s yet within th

aviour in the

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 La

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akespeare was i

ith whom she's

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erased for the purpose of providing room for an inscription to one Richard Watts. Happily Dugdale, in

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

n 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, an

sts 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

ndred lies h

to ten his so

sk, Who lies

e Devil, 'tis m

erse is adapted from an epigra

tifully carved seats, little injured by time or violence. We do, in fact, frequently find the miserere carvings uninjured in cathedrals, abbeys and collegiate churches;

ymbols; 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 C

ides. Here the termagant pulls her husband's beard and tears his mouth open, while he retaliates by pulling her hair. The other scen

trict; a beggar's monkey, with chained tin pot, or drinking-vessel, and a variet

d 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 anima

e he was, and however fearless his imagination, was, clearly enough, no sportsman. It

her to be, caressing the confiding unicorn and apparently scratching him behind the ear,