Wallace also found documents showing that Shakespeare owned at the time of his death a one-seventh interest in the Blackfriars Theater and a one-fourteenth interest in the Globe. The hitherto unknown fact that he continued to hold to the end of his life these important interests, requiring such skilled supervision, makes more doubtful the former assumption that he spent the last years of his life entirely at Stratford.
Last Years and Death.—Shakespeare probably bought New Place in Stratford as a residence for his family and a retreat for himself out of the theatrical season, but he doubtless continued to live in London for the greater part of his time until a few years before his death in 1616. The Mountjoy testimony proves that he was in London in May, 1612.
We are positive, however, that he was living in Stratford at the time of his death. He may for several years have taken only occasional trips to London to look after his interests in his theaters. It is not improbable that his health forced him to retire to Stratford, for it is difficult to see how any one could have produced nearly two Shakespearean plays a year for almost twenty years without breaking down under the strain. He had in addition almost certainly helped to manage the production of the plays, and tradition says that he was also an actor. Some of the parts which he is said to have played are the ghost in Hamlet, Adam in As You Like It, and Old Knowell in Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humor.
[Illustration: STRATFORD-ON-AVON, SHOWING CHURCH WHERE SHAKESPEARE IS
BURIED.]
In 1616, at the age of fifty-two, this master-singer of the world, who, in De Quincey's phrase, was "a little lower than the angels," died and was buried in the parish church at Stratford. Shakespeare knew that in the course of time graves were often opened and the bones thrown into the charnel house. The world is thankful that he deliberately planned to have his resting place remain unmolested. His grave was dug seventeen feet deep and over it was placed the following inscription, intended to frighten those who might think of moving his bones:—
[Illustration: INSCRIPTION OVER SHAKESPEARE'S TOMB.]
Publication of his Plays.—It is probable that Shakespeare himself published only two early poems. Sixteen of his plays appeared in print during his lifetime; but the chances are that they were taken either from notes or from stage copies, more or less imperfect and surreptitiously obtained. The twentieth century has seen one of these careless reprints of a single play sell for more than three times as much as it cost to build a leading Elizabethan theater.[22] If Shakespeare himself had seen to the publication of his plays, succeeding generations would have been saved much trouble in puzzling over obscurities due to an imperfect text. We must remember, however, that publishing a play was thought to injure its success on the stage. One manager offered a printer a sum now equal to $100 not to publish a copy of a play that he had secured.
The First Folio edition of Shakespeare's works was published in 1623, seven years after his death, by two of his friends, John Heming and Henry Condell. In their dedication of the plays they say:—
"We have but collected them and done an office to the dead … without ambition either of self profit or fame, only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive, as was our Shakespeare, by humble offer of his plays."
If Shakespeare had not possessed the art of making friends, we might to-day be without such plays as Twelfth Night, As You Like It, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, The Tempest, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Macbeth. These were printed for the first time in the 1623 Folio.