Shakespeare's environment

by C. C. Stopes

FOOTNOTES:

[22] A William Shakespeare “paid 8/ to the Lay Subsidy, Walton super Olde ... Co. Leicester,” 36 Hen. VIII, 133/144.

[23] Since writing above I have found among “Early Indictments,” 650, the account of the death of William Shakespeare, shoemaker of Warwick, by slipping into the Avon. “Coroner’s Inquests.”

[24] I find that reports of the case at issue are to be found in Act Book No. 9, Consistory Court, on 22nd June 1614; 7th July 1614; 15th July 1614; 28th July; 9th September and 23rd September 1614. And in Act Book No. 10 the discussion is again resumed on 6th October 1614.

[25] Mentioned in the poet’s will and the overseer thereof.

[26] Some light is thrown on his position by the Sequestration books of Warwickshire, 1646, Add. M.S. 35098, f. 12. There it is ordered that “the rents payable out of the lands of Mʳ Betham, Mʳ Atwood, Mʳ Hunt; and William Shackspere in Rowington shall be payed since the same was sequestered.” On f. 38, 3rd March 1546-7, it was ordered that “William Shackspere of Rowington shall hould all his lands which is given in by ye oath of John Milburne to be £38 per annum ... for one yeare at £32.” But they were too late. Sequestered for loyalty, he had departed beyond their “orders” by that time.

XIII
THE TRUE STORY OF THE STRATFORD BUST

Our poverty in respect of authenticated likenesses of our great dramatist, makes us the more eager to learn all that we can concerning the only two that have been universally accepted, and even makes us patient in hearing what can be said in favour of others more or less doubtful in their pedigree. Therefore, it is all the more surprising that one authentic rendering, produced by a Warwickshire man, who was eleven years of age when the poet died, should have been entirely ignored by all the numerous writers on “Shakespeare’s Portraits,” especially as it has a most important bearing on the determination of the facial characteristics of the great dramatist. To understand this fully, due consideration must first be given to what are recognized as the “undoubted portraits.”

That which was publicly put forward as the poet’s likeness, and accepted as such by his contemporaries, was the inartistically designed, and coarsely executed engraving of Droeshout, appearing as frontispiece to the First Folio Edition of the Plays, brought out by his fellows, Heminge and Condell, in 1623.

There was no English art at the time worthy of the name, and probably for this reason the people found a double charm in theatrical representations. The actors supplied them with concrete images of the characters whose life-stories interested them, and became to them more closely identified than any historical portraits are to-day with their originals. Artistic taste and judgment were unknown amongst ordinary people, and even literary men, except such as had had special training, could not be held as art-critics of any importance. Hence, we may be justified in considering Ben Jonson’s fulsome praise of Droeshout, in his desire to help the editors, as only possible to him through his deficiency in artistic sense.

Bad art as Droeshout’s is, it nevertheless conveys to us the information that Shakespeare had a high forehead, prematurely bald, fine eyes, long straight nose, small moustache and beard, clean-shaven cheeks, oval face, and rather long hair. The dress is of rather less importance, as it might have been his own, or that of some character in which he had acted. The painting from which the engraving was taken has long been sought for. Some thought it had been found in the so-called Felton portrait. The right panel of this had been split off in the middle of the collar, and the foot shortened to make it fit a frame. It has some details similar to, but not identical with, those of the engraving, though it has a little more art in the workmanship, and a little more expression in the features. On the back is written, “Guil. Shakespeare 1597,” and two letters, “R.B.,” supposed to stand for Richard Burbage. Notwithstanding much that was unsatisfactory in its pedigree, Richardson restored the hair, collar, and dress after Droeshout, and published it, whence have arisen many reproductions.

A much more important rival has, comparatively lately, turned up. Though its pedigree also is hazy, the likeness to the Droeshout print is undoubted, and Mrs. Flower of Stratford-on-Avon purchased it, and presented it to the Memorial Picture Gallery in 1895. Mr. Lionel Cust, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, read a paper about it before the Society of Antiquaries, 12th December 1895, in which he accepted it as genuine. It is, of course, open to the questions whether the picture was painted for the engraving or from the engraving, and whether it had been painted before or after the poet’s death. The expression is better than that of the engraving.

The first reproduction of Droeshout, after the Second Folio, is that which appeared as frontispiece to “Shakespeare’s Poems” in 1640. The engraver, Marshall, turned the face the other way, increased the inanity of the expression, flung a cloak over one shoulder, and put a spray of laurel in the poet’s hand. “This shadow is renowned Shakespeare’s,” etc. William Faithorne introduced it into the frontispiece of “The Rape of Lucrece,” 1658. Very many varieties of these two engravings have appeared.

The chief rival of the Felton and Flower Portraits is the Chandos portrait, which has a long pedigree. If there is any weakness in the chain of evidence for the authenticity of this portrait, it is only in the first links. It was said to have been painted either by Burbage, or by Taylor, the player, to have remained in the possession of the latter until his death, and to have been left by him to Sir William Davenant. It is no objection to this likeness that it should have rings in the ear, because the custom of wearing a rose in the ear was so common among the jeunesse dorée of Elizabethan times, that it was quite natural that an actor should have his ears pierced. But one always feels a little in doubt of the good faith of Davenant, because of his known desire to be thought like Shakespeare. The picture passed from Davenant to Betterton. While in that actor’s possession, Kneller painted a portrait from it, which was presented to Dryden. This came afterwards into the possession of Earl Fitzwilliam. The original passed from Betterton to Mrs. Barry, Mr. Keck, Mr. Nicholls, whose daughter married the Marquis of Carnarvon, afterwards Duke of Chandos, and thence to his daughter, who married the Duke of Buckingham. The picture was bought by the Earl of Ellesmere in 1848, and presented to the nation on the founding of the National Portrait Gallery.

The first engraving taken from it was by Van der Gucht for Rowe’s “Shakespeare,” 1709.

Many other oil paintings and miniatures of unproven authenticity have been put forward as likenesses of the poet, but so diverse are they in their characteristics, that it is impossible that they can be all genuine.

Some fine conceptions based upon composite ideas, others avowedly works of imagination, have been evolved in stone, glass, and oil paintings through the centuries. There is dignity in the Kent and Scheemacher’s statue at Westminster, in the Roubiliac statue, genius in Lord Ronald Gower’s group, and there is pre-Raphaelite art in Ford Madox Brown’s rendering of 1849, but there is no space here to discuss these and other artistic productions. They teach us no facts.

The Stratford bust should possess a stronger claim to antiquity and authenticity even than the Droeshout engraving. It is referred to in the First Folio by Leonard Digges, as having been already set up by the time he wrote. It was designed under the supervision of Shakespeare’s widow, daughters, and sons-in-law, amidst his friends and kinsfolk, who knew him as a man, not as an actor, and they had it coloured, so that the likeness, if at all good, should have been much more striking than the work of the engraver. They, too, suffered from a plentiful lack of art in their sculptor, Gerard Johnson, and from their own deficiency in critical judgement. But there is every reason to believe that they did their best to represent him to the life. They loved him, and they were rich enough to pay for the best they could get.

Yet every one who approaches the Stratford bust is more disappointed in it, as a revelation of the poet, than even in the crude lines of Droeshout. There is an entire lack of the faintest suggestion of poetic or spiritual inspiration in its plump earthliness. The designer has put a pen and paper into the hands, after the manner of the school-boy, who wrote under the drawing of something-on-four-legs, “this is a horse.” The pen strives to write “this is a literary man,” but there is nothing to support the attribution. The intensely disappointing nature of this supposed simulacrum of the poet, made me, years ago, commence a careful study of all his known representations, whether founded on fact or based on imagination. A good deal has been written on the subject from the time of Boaden’s “Inquiry,” 1824. In 1827 Mr. Abraham Wivell brought out a book upon Shakespeare’s portraits, criticizing the opinions of Steevens, Malone, and Boaden, and since then many successive writers have more fully classified and illustrated the varieties, and brought our knowledge of them up to date. But none of them gave me what I wanted, an early representation of the Stratford original bust. I therefore commenced to search with a purpose, and in the very first book I opened I found what I sought, a representation of the tomb as it appeared little more than twenty years after its erection.

This was, of course, in Sir William Dugdale’s great “History of the Antiquities of Warwickshire.” He seems, judging from the notes in his diary, to have prepared his work in the neighbourhood of Stratford-on-Avon about 1636, though the publication was delayed by the civil wars for twenty years.

His representation of Shakespeare’s bust is therefore entitled to respect as the earliest known engraving, though it has never been calendared, compared, or criticized. The unsatisfactory, or rather, in some aspects, the satisfactory fact is, that it differs in all important details from the bust as it appears now. We have here also, doubtless, to grapple with the lack of art-perception in the draughtsman and of the engraver, but there are simple leading distinctions, that could not have been imagined, if there had not been something to suggest them. Far from resembling the self-contented fleshy man of to-day, the large and full dark eyes look out of cheeks hollow to emaciation. The moustache drops down softly and naturally instead of perking upwards, there is no mantle on the shoulders, no pen in the hand, no cushioned desk. The arms are bent awkwardly, the hands are laid stiffly, palms downward, on a large cushion, suspiciously resembling a woolsack. It is not unlike an older Droeshout, and the Death-mask might be considered anew beside it. The engraving is, of course, open to the interpretation that Dugdale, or his draughtsman, was careless and inexact in details. In order to compare his work in other examples, I asked a friend to take a photograph of Sir Thomas Lucy’s tomb, as pictured in Dugdale, and another from the original, which has been very little restored since it was sculptured in Shakespeare’s time. He took that from the book, but found that the tomb itself was in a very bad light for photography, and sent me instead a pencil outline. This supports Dugdale’s rendering of important details, though he failed somewhat, naturally, in catching the expression. It allows us to believe that he reproduced Shakespeare’s bust with some degree of fidelity. He was appreciative of his fellow countryman’s fame, and would not pass him by as a nobody. It is quite possible, indeed, that he had seen the poet in habit as he lived, and any divergence from the tomb would be more than likely to be in the direction of the reality.

I had reached this stage when I consulted Dr. Richard Garnett. He reminded me that the little red lions that held the railings on the outer front pavement of the British Museum had been wont to be considered great works of art, but modern critics could not praise them. On their being taken down a few years ago, however, in order to broaden the pavement, one of them was subjected to a severe cleansing process, which proved that it was nothing but the successive coats of paint, liberally applied every three years, which had obscured the art of the original conception. His question therefore was, had Shakespeare’s bust been repainted frequently enough to cause the plump unpoetic appearance it now has. I could not think so, because no amount of painting would alter the position of the arms, the shape of the hands, or throw a mantle over the figure.

I had therefore to have recourse again to engravings, and went through those in the Print-room of the British Museum. There I found a curious engraving in the Slade collection, signed “Grignion sculps,” which support’s Dugdale’s rendering. I then went through every illustrated copy of Shakespeare in the British Museum, a large order for the attendants. Rowe, in his first edition of Shakespeare’s works, 1709, has a very bad representation of the tomb, which conveys the idea of a certain amount of decay in the original. There is absolutely no expression in the face, which is not quite so thin as Dugdale’s, but the figure agrees with the early rendering in all points in which it differs from the modern one. Rowe’s edition of 1714 presents a bad copy of his first edition. In Pope’s edition of 1725, we find a remarkable variation. Vertue did not go to Stratford but to Rowe for his copy. Finding it so very inartistic, he improved the monument, making the little angels light-bearers rather than bearers of spade and hour-glass, and instead of the bust he gives a composition from the Chandos portrait, altering the arms and hands, and adding a cloak, pen, paper, and desk. It retains, however, the drooping moustache and slashed sleeves. In Sir Thomas Hanmer’s edition, 1744, Gravelot copies from Vertue the monument and the figure, while he alters the face into what seems to be the original of what is called The Birthplace Portrait.

Dr. Thomas in 1730 expanded Dugdale’s “Warwickshire” into two volumes, but used the original block of the tomb unaltered.

Before the middle of the eighteenth century we know that the tomb was “very much decayed.” Mr. John Ward, the grandfather of Mrs. Siddons, was in Stratford in 1746, and gave the whole proceeds of a representation of “Othello” in the Town Hall on 8th September towards the restoration of Shakespeare’s tomb. Orders were given “to beautify” as well as to repair it. We are left altogether in the dark as to the degree of decay and the amount of reconstruction, but that it was considerable seems evident. By 1749 the repairs were completed, and the colours repainted by Mr. John Hall, a limner of Stratford-on-Avon. Probably they worked with the new edition of Shakespeare before them as a guide, depending upon Gravelot and Hanmer of 1744. Alas for the result! We may apply Browning’s words, in another sense than he meant them, to the fate of this honoured memorial:

Wherever a fresco peels and drops,

Wherever an outline weakens and wanes,

Till the latest life in the painting stops,

Stands one whom each fainter pulse-tick pains;

One wishful each scrap should clutch its brick

Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster

—A lion who dies of an ass’s kick

The wronged great soul of an ancient master.

Whoever the sculptor was who so much improved the figure, it is more than likely he restored the face by the aid of some cement. It is curious that none of the other editions of the eighteenth century reproduce the tomb either as Vertue or Gravelot rendered it. None, indeed, reproduce it at all, until we come to the second edition of Bell’s “Shakespeare,” 1788, into which he introduces the “Life” from Rowe’s second edition of 1714, and in the “Life” the representation of the tombstone according to that edition. It was engraved by Reynold Grignion, and “printed for Bell’s ‘Shakespeare,’ 1st Dec. 1786.” This fact, printed on the plate itself, is important, as Grignion died in 1787, and the book came out in 1788. He rather improved on Rowe’s print, as Bell’s other engravers improved upon the Droeshout and the Marshall copies. Bad as it is, it represents the same figure as Dugdale did, falling into decay. This engraving is the same as that in the British Museum, “Grignion sculps,” so the latter may have been a proof copy.

All later renderings are of the modern type. Then commenced a new series of vicissitudes for the restored bust. Not so very long after the repairs it was taken down from its pedestal, so that Mr. Malone might take a cast from it. More than likely that was the time when some accident removed the tip of the restored nose, which has left the “long upper lip” a marvel to many since the days of Sir Walter Scott. William Henry Ireland, in his “Confessions,” 1805, states that he had been down taking drawings from various tombs in Stratford, and “greatly reprehended the folly of having coloured the face and dress of the bust of Shakespeare, which was intended to beautify it, whereas it would have been much more preferable to have left the stone of the proper colour.” He applied for leave to “take a plaster-cast from the bust as Mr. Malone had done,” but the necessary delay in petitioning the Corporation for permission made him give up the idea. In his drawing of the bust, he makes Shakespeare an eighteenth-century gentleman, moustache turned up, a pen in one hand, paper in the other, and the cushion like a desk. An engraving was made by Mr. William Ward, A.R.A., from a painting by Thomas Phillips, R.A., after a cast taken by Bullock from the bust, and published by Lake on 23rd April 1816, the second centenary after the poet’s decease. This has the cloak, the pen, and the paper.

We are, therefore, in the bust likeness confronted by greater difficulties than the mere obscuring of the truth by paint, such as occurred in the case of the British Museum lions. We have to consider the much more serious question, the degree to which the features and surroundings of the original, deliberately or unconsciously, have been tampered with. It would seem that the sculptor who collaborated with Hall in 1746 was the culprit who deprived us of the original outlines of a memorial so dear, either through ignorance, vanity, or culpable carelessness. He had Dugdale to consult had he so pleased, but he contented himself with Hanmer. The decay must have been serious, and the alteration fundamental, to have so obscured the design. Mr. John Hall, who was responsible for the colouring, was believed to have followed the tints of the original. Be that as it may, Mr. Malone, like Mr. Ireland, disapproved of them, and in order to suit his own taste, and the fashion of his age, he persuaded the Corporation to have it painted white in 1793. One contemporary, however, wrote in the album of Stratford-on-Avon Church the lines:

Stranger, to whom this monument is shewn,

Invoke the Poet’s curse upon Malone

Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste displays

And daubs his tomb-stone as he marred his plays.

The bust was repainted in 1861 after the original colouring by the artist who discovered what has been called The Stratford Portrait, still reverently preserved at the birthplace, though it has no claim to authenticity. Its strong resemblance to the bust is of itself suspicious.

We suffer now, therefore, from the combined action of the various improvers and restorers of Gerard Johnson’s clumsy workmanship. Though the crude colours of Hall shocked the sensibilities of Malone, he thought it no sacrilege to have the bust taken down, and submitted to the moulder’s mercenary hands. Several others have been allowed to sin in a similar way. Many have written discourses upon its physiognomy, and based arguments and fancies upon it, unwitting of all these facts.[27] It is comforting to be able to go back to the simple rendering of Dugdale from the original—not a picturesque or poetic rendering, of what was probably a poor representation. But in it there is something biographical, something suggestive; it shows us the tired creator of poems, exhausted from lack of sleep, “Nature’s sweet restorer,” weary of the bustling London life, who had returned, as soon as possible, to seek rest at home among his own people, and met an over-early death in the unhealthy spring-damps of 1616. A happy suggestion of the thoughtful poetic soul, of which the modern restored and adapted representation had deprived us, but only a suggestion. We sadly ask, where is the true likeness of our Shakespeare? and Leonard Digges speaks for us when he says that it is to be found in

Thy works, by which outlive

Thy tomb, thy name must, when that stone is rent

And Time dissolves thy Stratford Monument,

Here we alive shall view thee still, This booke

When brasse and marble fade, shall make thee looke

Fresh to all ages.

“Murray’s Monthly Review,” April 1904, and pamphlet reprinted from it, same date.

PS.—When I wrote the above paper I called it “An Uncalendared Presentment of Shakespeare,” as no one had placed the drawing in the lists of credited or discredited likenesses. Dr. Gollancz and Dr. Furnivall altered the title, and the Editor accepted it, though I always thought the new title too aggressive for my meaning. Since in it I first drew attention to the discrepancies between Dugdale’s representation and the present tomb, there have been many heated discussions about it. Sentimentalists did not like the notion that there had been any change in the precious memorial, critical sentimentalists, seeking for some support of their opinion, satisfied themselves that these discrepancies only proved the inexactitudes of Dugdale. Baconians accepted Dugdale eagerly, as they do accept everything that they think can be made to seem derogatory to Shakespeare in any way. Thereby they obscured the whole question, and ignored my work and statements. Good Shakespeareans thought they had demolished me in discrediting the value of Dugdale’s testimony. The two last articles published by Mr. Andrew Lang were on this subject, and it took a large place in the book published since his death, but I have not been allowed to reply to these. Mr. Robertson, who had ignored my “Bacon-Shakespeare Question” in his “Baconian Heresy,” also ignored my article on this subject, and says: “Incidentally by reproducing Dugdale’s version of the Carew Monument in Stratford, and confronting it with a photograph of the actual monument, he has exploded the small mystery built up by Mr. Greenwood, out of the difference between the actual Shakespeare Monument and Dugdale’s representation of it in 1656.” Mr. Greenwood had expressed strong faith in Dugdale’s general correctness, and had quoted Dr. Whitaker to the effect that “his scrupulous accuracy, united with his stubborn integrity, has elevated his ‘Antiquities of Warwickshire’ to the rank of legal evidence.” Mr. Lang in 1912 said: “Mrs. Stopes argues that the monument was entirely reconstructed....” “It is positively certain her opinion is erroneous.” Then he gives as his absolute proof, the Carew Monument in Stratford. (For the reversing of the position of the recumbent figures from north to south, we probably have to thank a printer’s accidental reversal of plate.) But Mr. Lang’s argument contains not one, but two logical fallacies. In the first place it claims to prove that because Dugdale was incorrect in one monument he must have been incorrect in all. There may have been special reasons for the carelessness; if any, Dr. Thomas has suggested them in his second edition. And the argument against is no stronger than the argument for Dugdale, in that the Lucy tomb is a fair representation of the present one, and therefore reasoning from it, he might be treated as correct. There were special reasons that Dugdale should have taken extra care with Shakespeare’s tomb, because he mentions the poet in his text as an honour to his native town, and Dugdale knew it well.

Mr. Lang’s second fallacy is more important. It is the old logical fallacy of accident, or, as some logicians put it, “of cooked meat.” I had definitely refused to accept as witness against Dugdale’s trustworthiness the evidence of any other tomb which had also been “repaired and beautified.” Now the Clopton tomb has been “repaired and beautified,” and therefore, without some stronger support, it has no convincing power at all. I fear that I made a little confusion by my use of the word “fundamental,” for Mr. Lang seems to have attached a wider meaning to it than I did. If I may take a woman’s simile, I may make it clear. When a woman sends an old dress to be “repaired and beautified,” it may be relined, turned, the worn pieces cut out and replaced, alterations made in design to make up for losses by wear, trimmings laid on to cover seams, and yet after all it would remain the same dress, and her male friends might notice no change in it. But the dressmaker would call it, as to her work, a fundamental change. I saw that it was by some such process that it was possible to harmonize the discrepancies. I did not start wishing to prove any particular point. I did not even want to prove myself right, for I have no prejudices about it, I only wanted to seek for, and to find the truth. None of my opponents have done any original work concerning this matter, and therefore the question stands exactly where it did, i.e. Dugdale’s representation is different from what the tomb is to-day. Why is it so? The two answers are, Dugdale’s representation was incorrect, or, the tomb has been modified.

Since I wrote the paper, I have done a good deal of further work on it. I found the contemporary letters of “the restorers,” 1746-9, published them in the “Pall Mall Gazette,” and have reprinted them now in my Note XIII. I have also gone through all the consecutive history of the Bust. Dugdale himself tells us his method of going through the country, by hundreds, and by rivers, beginning with the Avon. He says that he asked the nearest heirs of the famous individuals whose monuments he had inserted, to co-operate with him, to give him information, and, where possible, to pay the expenses of the plates. At the time he wished Shakespeare’s bust to be prepared, the poet’s daughters, granddaughter, and son-in-law, Thomas Quiney, were still alive, and would be more or less able to criticize. But Mrs. Susanna Hall died in 1649, and her only daughter had married John Barnard who evidently thought little of his father-in-law’s genius.

The tomb has generally been supposed to have been raised by Gerard Johnson, a tombmaker, entered among the lists of the Strangers in London in 1593. But I have lately found a lawsuit which proves that his wife was acting as his widow before 1616. Therefore, if the name be correct, it must have been not his, but that of his son, who succeeded him in his business. It is not quite so clear which of them built Combe’s Monument. John Combe made his will in January 1612-3, leaving £60 for “a convenient tomb.” He died on 10th July 1614. There are traditions that he had been “seeing to” the preparations for his tomb while he was yet alive. He might have fixed his sculptor, and he might have secured the elder Gerard Johnson. The tradition concerning the poet’s satirical suggested epitaph, is the only tradition about the poet which has a respectable antiquity, being referred to in a Diary of Travel in 1636, when a lieutenant and two friends, travelling through some of the county, saw that Shakespeare had a “neat monument” by that time (the first definite allusion to it).

The material of the monuments is worth nothing. I have seen a small piece of Combe’s Monument which has been accidentally broken off, and have been assured on the best of authority that Shakespeare’s is the same, as a little piece of the stone at the back has been left unpainted. It is a peculiarly soft and friable stone for the purpose, variously described as a “soft bluish grey stone,” a “loose freestone,” a “soft whitish grey limestone,” with pillars of marble and ornaments of alabaster.

Given a soft and friable stone, we have to consider probabilities and possibilities, as well as certainties, in duly estimating the story of its struggle for existence. Time works against it with greater odds in his favour than he has in reducing stronger materials.

It may not be quite irrelevant to note, that there was (“Wheler Misc.,” i, p. 124) a peculiar list of charges brought against the Vicar, the Reverend Thomas Wilson, for which “being notorious,” he was suspended for three months from 5th June 1635. Among these charges it was stated that he allowed his maids to dry linen in the chapel, his fowls to roost, his pigs and dogs to couch there, and his children to play at ball and other sports. He himself was said to have “walked about the church in the time of divine service.” In the vestry minutes it is recorded: “The minister’s study over the bone-house to be repaired.” Now, if the children also carried their sports and balls to the Church it might account for many accidents, and the very first items to fall victims to boys and balls would be the legs of the little alabaster angels above Shakespeare’s bust.

We have also to remember that every church ran risks during the civil wars, as they were so frequently used as barracks.

I have found in Add. MS. 28,565, a whole volume of Bills for Damages by the Parliamentary forces in Stratford 1645, from private people[28] which are only representative of many others.

In March 1691 the Chancel was repaired, the contributors being chiefly the descendants of those who had monuments of their ancestors there. The names of most of these are given, but there is no record of any descendants or friends of Shakespeare then, so that it may be supposed the tomb was left in a worse state of repair than the others. (“Wheler Misc.,” iv, p. 99.)

The very fact of the admiration of visitors was a source of danger. Foolishly enthusiastic adorers are known to have chipped pieces from other monuments elsewhere as personal remembrances, and it is quite possible they may have done so here. At any rate, from many combined causes, we have clear testimony from contemporary records, that by 1746 it was “in great ruin and decay.” It is idle to attempt to estimate the degree of ruin, but that it had shocked the sensibilities of the poet’s reverent adorers, is quite clear. The mere wearing off of paint could not have done so, that rather creates an impression of greater antiquity. The details of the events are given in the notes, and their results. One thing must be made clear, that everybody concerned was giving at that time according to his power. The Actors gave their performances, the Committee their time and trouble, the Schoolmaster was honorary secretary, and there were sundry donations. Therefore a close estimate of the purchasing power of money at that time cannot be justly made. It is nearly certain that Mr. John Hall, Limner, and his other unknown coadjutor, who was to prepare the greatly ruined monument to receive his painting, would be doing it at the lowest possible charges. So the amount of work put into the job would probably far exceed the ordinary cost price. Mr. Hall was told to “repair and beautify,” and to let it remain as like as possible to the original.

Any artist or sculptor could inferentially follow their proceedings. Suppose, for the time, that Dugdale had been fairly correct. The first things to have been broken off would be, as I have shown, the alabaster legs of the ridiculous little cherubs. Their trunks would probably be pushed farther back to keep them out of further danger, and would be “restored” in the safer position. By the natural wear and tear of such a soft and friable stone, the bust would have lost outline. This had to be made up somehow to hold the paint, either by skilfully inserted pieces of stone, or by some plastic material. We know that the tip of the nose, the index finger, and part of the thumb had been broken off, and probably many other projections. They had no pattern to go by, except one evolved from memory, judgment, and imagination. No one alive could remember back to the days of the unrepaired bust. They would do their best, they could do no more. Probably the outline of the moustache had been obliterated, and they moulded one after what they thought the best fashion. They would mend the nose, plump out the hollow cheeks, and fill up the eyes. When they reached the attire, they would not see the outline clearly, and, guided by the shoulder ridges, would bring the lines of the doublet straight down (it needed no farther change to make the cloak such as it is to-day). They would probably scrape down the cushion to a more normal level, and, believing that a pen should have been held between the broken finger and thumb, would put one there. Thus there would be a good many little repairs made, as in a lining to the coat of paint. But the result would necessarily be very different from the original.

Perhaps it may not be irrelevant here to refer to a paper among the “Wheler Miscellaneous Papers,” ii, f. 39.[29] It notes “The fixtures; the things left in Mr. Talbot’s house at Stratford-on-Avon, 26th September 1758”: “In ye Hall, Shakespeare’s Head.” “In the other rooms 6 Family Pictures,” “In ye Wildernesse a Stone-Dyal.”

Now, the family portraits might have been Cloptons or Shakespeares, but what was “Shakespeare’s Head”? was it the death mask, a cast of the old Bust, or a model for the new one, then ten years old? Or was it a Bust made in Shakespeare’s life, from which the original was designed? I cannot even suggest an idea about it. But it is significant that it is noted, that in the following year “doubts arose, perhaps not unworthy of notice, whether the original monumental bust had any resemblance to the poet” (see Wivell’s book).

In regard to later vicissitudes of the Bust more is known. It was only in 1793, forty-four years after the repairing, that Malone attacked it. It is said that he had it down to examine; it is certain that he covered up Hall’s painting, by instructing a common house painter to lay over it a thick coating of common white paint. John Britton, F.S.A., writes in 1849: “In Dec. 1814 I incited Mr. George Bullock to make a cast of the monumental bust” ... “through the influence of Dr. Bell Wheler, and the Vicar, Dr. Davenport, he was allowed to take a model”.... “He was much alarmed on taking down the Effigy to find it to be in a decayed and dangerous state, and declared that it would be risking its destruction to remove it again.” Early in the nineteenth century Abraham Wivell made a most careful examination of it, and gave his report in his small volume (published in 1827).

A most important step was taken at the Shakespearean Committee Room, Stratford-upon-Avon, 23rd April 1835, announced thus: “The Shakesperean Club of Stratford-upon-Avon have long beheld with regret, the disfigurement of the Bust and Monument of Shakespeare, and the neglected condition of the interior of the Chancel which contains that monument and his grave.”

Thereafter was “a new Society formed, for the Renovation and Restoration of Shakespeare’s Monument and Bust, and of the Chancel.” Mr. John Britton was Hon. Secretary, and sent out a prospectus. In it he states: “A small and comparatively trifling tomb was raised to the memory of Shakespeare, immediately after his death; but it failed to attract anything like critical or literary notice until the time of Malone,” of whom he gives his free opinion, and the anathematizing lines.

The chief ostensible object of the Society was to repair the monument, also, in order to preserve it, to repair the walls and roof of Chancel, to remove all whitewash, and to restore the colours. The subscriptions invited were limited to £1, but many sent more. The King subscribed £50, the Borough of Stratford the same. Many sent their subscriptions “only for the restoration and preservation of the Monument.” “Mr. Lucy, of Charlecote, for the Chancel £10.” One of the subscribers says that he had lately “purchased a very fine bust of Shakespeare at an auction.” Again comes the query—which one was this, was it Gastrell’s one?

“The cost of restoring Shakespeare’s Monument and the Chancel” was £1,210, 12s. on that occasion. A Bazaar was held for further repairs to the church in 1839; other subscriptions came in, and the whole amount expended amounted to £5,000. Yet they did not take off the white paint then. Mr. Britton says of the work: “Had the building been left a few years longer, it would have ranked among the Classical Monuments of Antiquity.” Mr. Britton wrote to Mr. Hunt that: “Your builder is dilatory, inefficient and embarrassing the progress and character of the Shakespeare works.” Many things can be learned from the correspondence with Mr. Hunt, now preserved in a separate volume in the Birthplace.

Again, in 1861, the bust was treated by Mr. Simon Collins, a picture restorer, “who with a bath of some detergent” removed the white paint. He found under it sufficient traces of the restoring colours of John Hall, to reproduce them again on the old lines. The only person whom I have known to have seen it in both conditions was Professor David Masson, and he said that “he had to confess he preferred it white.” Halliwell Phillipps said in his fourth edition, 1886, “that the 1793 painting was injudicious, but did not altogether obliterate the semblance of an intellectual human being, which is more than can be said of the miserable travesty which now distresses the eye of the pilgrim.” The only really fresh remarks that have been made on it were by Dr. Keith (see “Morning Post” and “Birmingham Post,” 10th April 1914), when he estimated by anthropometric calculation of the shape and size of the skull, from which branch of the human race the poet was likely to have descended.

This was all that I had been able to find before this postscript went to press. Some hard-working student in future may find more, and give us further reasons for making up our minds.

Fortunately, before I corrected proof, Mr. Dugdale of Merivale returned from abroad, and kindly allowed me to see the volume of Sir William Dugdale’s Diary which contained his own special drawings for the tombs in Warwickshire Churches. Among these are, as I expected, Shakespeare’s Tomb. It teaches us many things. Sir William Dugdale was not an artist, but an Antiquary. He did not attempt to carry over the expression of the human countenance, even as represented in Stowe, but he was very careful as to significant details. He works with slow and careful pen-and-ink touches. Many of the “proofs” of his untrustworthiness vanish in the study, and a new element in the question is introduced, the art of the engraver. One of the objections brought against his rendering was the spelling of “Judicyo” in the engraving. Dugdale himself, however, renders it “Judicio,” both in his drawing and in his copy of the epitaph by its side. The monument is important, the bust has some of the faults of the engraving. The hands are quite as clumsy, but the cushion on which they rest is not nearly so high or so woolly. The face is older even than that of the engraver, who really improved the expression, possibly after a personal visit. The moustache falls naturally down. The face, as Dugdale draws it, is not so far removed from Rowe’s rendering as might have been expected after “ruin and decay” had injured the outlines. And I was surprised to find that what had proved my own stumbling-block, the lines of the cloak, are drawn by Dugdale as they appear to-day, and the engraver must have carelessly altered the sartorial effect.

The greatest “proof” of Dugdale’s inexactitude, so triumphantly brought forward by my opponents, is utterly extinguished by this volume. The drawing of the Carew Clopton Monument does not appear in the Diary, which means, that the Clopton family, and not Dugdale, was responsible for its drawing and its inaccuracies. He only drew those which had not been sent on to him by the families whom he had invited to do so. He evidently thought Shakespeare’s Monument, though not sent on, specially important, and did it carefully himself. The present Mr. Dugdale thinks, from its position in the volume, and from some notes in the Diary, that it therefore was one of the latest of the drawings before the final publication in 1656. I have to thank him warmly for his help, which has satisfied somewhat my hunger for truth. These facts, with due attention to the contemporary letters about the restoration in 1746-9, given in Note XIII, conclude all I have to say concerning the Shakespeare Monument.