CHAPTER IX
The Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-on-Avon (continued)—The Shakespeare grave and monument.
We now pass beneath the arches of the central tower, under the organ and past the transepts, into the chancel. The chief interest is, quite frankly, the Shakespeare monument and the graves of his family; although even were it not for them, the building itself and the curious carvings of the miserere seats would attract many a visitor.
It is with feelings of something at last accomplished, some necessary pilgrimage made, that the cultured traveller stands before the monument on the north wall and looks upon it and on the row of ledger-stones on the floor. But the sentiments of Baconian mono-maniacs are not at all reverent and respectful. They come also, but with hostile criticism. I think they would like to tear down that monument, and I am quite sure they would desire nothing better than permission to open that grave and howk up whatever they found there. For to them Shakespeare is “the illiterate clown of Stratford”; a very disreputable person; an impostor who could neither write nor act, and yet assumed the authorship of works by the greatest genius of the age, Francis Bacon. Twenty-four years ago in his Great Cryptogram, Ignatius Donnelly exposed the fraud and unmasked Shakespeare. Some one at that time referred in conversation with one of Mr. Donnelly’s ingenious countrymen to “Shakespeare’s Bust.” “Yes, he is,” rejoined that free and enlightened citizen: “he is bust and you won’t mend him again.”
He referred to the alleged cryptogram said to be by Bacon, and purporting to be discovered in the First Folio edition of the play, Henry the Fourth. It is amusing reading, this deciphered cipher, and if we were to believe it and Bacon to be its author, we should have no need to revise the old estimate of Bacon, “The wisest, wittiest, meanest of mankind.” We should, however, find it necessary to emphasise “meanest,” because he is made to reveal himself as one who wrote treasonable plays, and, being afraid to admit their authorship, bribed Shakespeare in a heavy sum to take the risk and retire out of danger to Stratford-on-Avon. It is not a convincing tale; but it is printed with much elaboration; and Bacon is made to show an astonishingly intimate knowledge of Shakespeare’s family and affairs. He uses very ungentlemanly, not to say unphilosophical, language, and leaves Shakespeare without a shred of character. He shows how suddenly this misbegotten rogue, this whoreson knave, this gorbellied rascal with the wagging paunch and the many loathsome diseases which have made him old before his time leaves London, where he is in the midst of his fame as a dramatist, and retires to live upon his ill-gotten wealth as a country gentleman in his native town of Stratford-on-Avon. He was never an actor, and only succeeded in one part, that of Falstaff, for which he was peculiarly suited because of his great greasy stomach, at which, and not at the excellence of his acting, people came to laugh. Thus says Bacon; always according to Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, in the bi-literal cipher he persuaded himself he found. Here we see Bacon the philosopher, in very angry, unphilosophic mood, as abusive as any fish-fag or Sally Slapcabbage.
And then this cuckoo, this strutting jay, who sets up to be a gentleman with a brand-new coat of arms presently dies, untimely, at fifty-two years of age, just like your Shakespeares! He must have had some good reason of his own for it; probably the better to do Bacon out of his due fame with posterity. But Bacon was not to be outwitted. He heard early in 1616 that Shakespeare was in failing health, and sent down on that three days’ journey from London to Stratford-on-Avon two of Shakespeare’s friends, Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson, who were in the secret of the authorship. They were instructed to see that if Shakespeare really insisted upon dying, the secret should not be divulged at the time. And Shakespeare, like the ungrateful wretch he was, did die. The diary of the Rev. John Ward, vicar of Stratford-on-Avon, contains an entry in 1662, referring reminiscently to Shakespeare’s last days—
“Shakespeare, Drayton and Ben Jonson had a merrie meeting, and it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour there contracted.”
Donnelly suggests that Drayton and Jonson in Bacon’s interest duly saw Shakespeare buried, and so deeply that it would be for ever unlikely he should be exhumed, and Bacon’s secret revealed. He founds this upon a letter discovered in 1884 in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, written in 1694 by one William Hall, of Queen’s College, to a friend, Edward Thwaites; in which, in the course of describing a visit to Stratford-on-Avon, he states that Shakespeare was buried “full seventeen feet deep—deep enough to secure him!” This recalls at once the reply of one of Mr. Donnelly’s irreverent countrymen before the tomb of Nelson in St. Paul’s Cathedral. The verger had pointed out that the Admiral’s body was enclosed in a leaden coffin and a wooden outer covering, and then placed in a marble sarcophagus weighing 90 tons. “I guess you’ve got him!” exclaimed the contemplative stranger; “if ever he gets out of that, cable me, at my expense!” No doubt Ben Jonson and Drayton guessed they had got Shakespeare safe enough, but to make doubly sure (says Donnelly) they invented and had engraved the famous verse which appears on the gravestone, involving blessings upon the man who “spares these stones” and curses upon he who moves the poet’s bones. The world has always thought Shakespeare himself was the author of these lines. The reason for them is found in the horror felt by Shakespeare—and reflected in Hamlet—at the disturbance of the remains of the dead. In his time it was the custom to rifle the older graves, in order to provide room for fresh burials, and then to throw the bones from them into the vaulted charnel-house beneath the chancel. This revolting irreverence, which, as a long-established custom at that time, seemed a natural enough thing to the average person, was horrific to one of Shakespeare’s exceptional sensibilities; and he adopted not only this deep burial but also the curse upon the sacrilegious hand that should dare disturb his rest. There is not the least room for objection to this story; but the Baconians know better. “There must have been some reason,” objects Donnelly, in italics. There was; the reason already shown. But in dealing with a fellow like Shakespeare you—if you are a Baconian—have to go behind the obvious and the palpable and seek the absurd and improbable. It does not appear what Shakespeare’s widow, his daughters, his sons-in-law and his executors were doing while Drayton and Ben Jonson were thus having their own Baconian way with Shakespeare’s body. They, according to this theory, simply looked on; which we might think an absurd thing to suppose, except that nothing is too absurd for a Baconian, as we shall now see.
