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