“What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel,
Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous?”
Shakespeare was probably guilty of an anachronism in “Coriolanus” (v. 6) when he makes one of the lords say:
“Bear from hence his body,
And mourn you for him: let him be regarded
As the most noble corse that ever herald
Did follow to his urn,”
the allusion being to the public funeral of English princes, at the conclusion of which a herald proclaimed the style of the deceased.
We may compare what Queen Katharine says in “Henry VIII.” (iv. 2):
“After my death I wish no other herald,
No other speaker of my living actions,
To keep my honour from corruption,
But such an honest chronicler as Griffith.”
It seems to have been the fashion, as far back as the thirteenth century, to ornament the tombs of eminent persons with figures and inscriptions on plates of brass; hence, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (i. 1), the King says:
“Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
Live register’d upon our brazen tombs.”
In “Much Ado About Nothing” (v. 1), Leonato, speaking of his daughter’s death, says:
“Hang her an epitaph upon her tomb,
And sing it to her bones: sing it to-night.”