

Transcribed from the 1883 Trübner & Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

                          [Picture: Book cover]

                 [Picture: Shakespeare on his death-bed]





                           SHAKESPEARE’S BONES


                                * * * * *

                     _THE PROPOSAL TO DISINTER THEM_,

             CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THEIR POSSIBLE BEARING
                           ON HIS PORTRAITURE:

                       ILLUSTRATED BY INSTANCES OF

                    VISITS OF THE LIVING TO THE DEAD.

                                    BY
                    C. M. INGLEBY, LL.D., V.P.R.S.L.,

            Honorary Member of the German Shakespeare Society,
  and a Life-Trustee of Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Museum, and New Place,
                         at Stratford-upon-Avon.

                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]

                                  _LONDON_:
                   TRÜBNER & CO., 57 & 59, _Ludgate Hill_.
                                    1883.

                            [ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]

                                * * * * *

               “Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs.”

                                               _Richard II_, a. iii, s. 2.

                                * * * * *

                                This Essay
                       IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED TO
            THE MAJOR AND CORPORATION OF STRATFORD-UPON-AVON,
                              AND THE VICAR
                 OF THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY THERE,

                      BY THEIR FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE,

                                                               THE AUTHOR.




INDEX TO BIBLIOGRAPHY.

                                                                  PAGE
Anonymous Articles      _Argosy_                46 October, 1879.
                        _Atlantic Monthly_      45 June, 1878.
                        _Birmingham Daily       43 August 23, 1876.
                        Mail_
                       ,,,,,,,, _Post_      44 September 29,
                                                1877.
                       ,,,,,,,, _Gazette_   47 December 17, 1880.
                       ,,,,,, _Town Crier_   44 November, 1877.
                        _Cincinnati             48 May 26, 1883.
                        Commercial Gazette_
                        _Daily Telegraph_       43 August 24, 1876.
                        _New York Nation_       45 May 21, 1878.
  Letter                _Birmingham Daily       45 October 10, 1877.
                        Post_
Gower, Lord Ronald      _Antiquary_             46 August, 1880.
Halliwell-Phillipps,                            46 1881.
J. O.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel    _Atlantic Monthly_      41 January, 1863.
Ingleby, C. M.                                  48 June, 1883.
Norris, J. Parker       _N. Y. American         41 April, 1876, and
                        Bibliopolist_           August 4, 1876.
Schaafhausen, Hermann   _Shakespeare            43 1874–5.
                        Jahrbuch_
Timmins, Sam.           _Letter to J. Parker    42 _Circa_ 1874 and
                        Norris_                 1876.




SHAKESPEARE’S BONES.


THE sentiment which affects survivors in the disposition of their dead,
and which is, in one regard, a superstition, is, in another, a creditable
outcome of our common humanity: namely, the desire to honour the memory
of departed worth, and to guard the “hallowed reliques” by the erection
of a shrine, both as a visible mark of respect for the dead, and as a
place of resort for those pilgrims who may come to pay him tribute.  It
is this sentiment which dots our graveyards with memorial tablets and
more ambitious sculptures, and which still preserves so many of our
closed churchyards from desecration, and our {1a} ancient tombs from the
molestation of careless, curious, or mercenary persons.

But there is another sentiment, not inconsistent with this, which prompts
us, on suitable occasions, to disinter the remains of great men, and
remove them to a more fitting and more honourable resting-place.  The
Hôtel des Invalides at Paris, and the Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le
Mura at Rome, {1b} are indebted to this sentiment for the possession of
relics which make those edifices the natural resort of pilgrims as of
sight-seers.  It were a work of superfluity to adduce further
illustration of the position that the mere exhumation and reinterment of
a great man’s remains, is commonly held to be, in special cases, a
justifiable proceeding, not a violation of that honourable sentiment of
humanity, which protects and consecrates the depositaries of the dead.
On a late occasion it was not the belief that such a proceeding is a
violation of our more sacred instincts which hindered the removal to
Pennsylvania of the remains of William Penn; but simply the belief that
they had already a more suitable resting-place in his native land. {2}

There is still another sentiment, honourable in itself and not
inconsistent with those which I have specified, though still more
conditional upon the sufficiency of the reasons conducing to the act:
namely, the desire, by exhumation, to set at rest a reasonable or
important issue respecting the person of the deceased while he was yet a
living man.  Accordingly it is held justifiable to exhume a body recently
buried, in order to discover the cause of death, or to settle a question
of disputed identity: nor is it usually held unjustifiable to exhume a
body long since deceased, in order to find such evidences as time may not
have wholly destroyed, of his personal appearance, including the size and
shape of his head, and the special characteristics of his living face.

It is too late for the most reverential and scrupulous to object to this
as an invasion of the sanctity of the grave, or a violation of the rights
of the dead or of the feelings of his family.  When a man has been long
in the grave, there are probably no family feelings to be wounded by such
an act: and, as for his rights, if he can be said to have any, we may
surely reckon among them the right of not being supposed to possess such
objectionable personal defects as may have been imputed to him by the
malice of critics or by the incapacity of sculptor or painter, and which
his remains may be sufficiently unchanged to rebut: in a word we owe him
something more than refraining from disturbing his remains until they are
undistinguishable from the earth in which they lie, a debt which no
supposed inviolable sanctity of the grave ought to prevent us from
paying.

It is, I say, too late to raise such an objection, because exhumation has
been performed many times with a perfectly legitimate object, even in the
case of our most illustrious dead, without protest or objection from the
most sensitive person.  As the examples, more or less analogous to that
of Shakespeare, which I am about to adduce, concern great men who were
born and were buried within the limits of our island, I will preface them
by giving the very extraordinary cases of Schiller and Raphael, which
illustrate both classes: those in which the object of the exhumation was
to give the remains a more honourable sepulture, and those in which it
was purely to resolve certain questions affecting the skull of the
deceased.  The following is abridged from Mr. Andrew Hamilton’s
narrative, entitled “The Story of Schiller’s Life,” published in
_Macmillan’s Magazine_ for May, 1863.

    “At the time of his death Schiller left his widow and children almost
    penniless, and almost friendless too.  The duke and duchess were
    absent; Goethe lay ill; even Schiller’s brother-in-law Wolzogen was
    away from home.  Frau von Wolzogen was with her sister, but seems to
    have been equally ill-fitted to bear her share of the load that had
    fallen so heavily upon them.  Heinrich Voss was the only friend
    admitted to the sick-room; and when all was over it was he who went
    to the joiner’s, and, knowing the need of economy, ordered ‘a plain
    deal coffin.’  It cost ten shillings of our money.

    “In the early part of 1805, one Carl Leberecht Schwabe, an
    enthusiastic admirer of Schiller, left Weimar on business.  Returning
    on Saturday the 11th of May, between three and four in the afternoon,
    his first errand was to visit his betrothed, who lived in the house
    adjoining that of the Schillers.  She met him in the passage, and
    told him, Schiller was two days dead, and that night he was to be
    buried.  On putting further questions, Schwabe stood aghast at what
    he learned.  The funeral was to be private and to take place
    immediately after midnight, without any religious rite.  Bearers had
    been hired to carry the remains to the churchyard, and no one else
    was to attend.

    “Schwabe felt that all this could not go on; but to prevent it was
    difficult.  There were but eight hours left; and the arrangements,
    such as they were, had already been made.  However, he went straight
    to the house of death, and requested an interview with