Shakespear died in the fifty-third year of his age, and was buried on the North side of the chancel in the great church at Stratford, where a monument is placed on the wall. The following is the inscription on his grave-stone.
Good friend, for Jesus sake forbear, To dig the dust inclosed here. Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curs'd be he that moves my bones. He had three daughters, of whom two lived to be married; Judith the elder to Mr. Thomas Quincy, by whom she had three sons, who all died without children, and Susannah, who was his favourite, to Dr. John Hall, a physician of good reputation in that county. She left one child, a daughter, who was married to Thomas Nash, Esq; and afterwards to Sir John Bernard, of Abington, but deceased likewise without issue.
His dramatic writings were first published together in folio 1623 by some of the actors of the different companies they had been acted in, and perhaps by other servants of the theatre into whose hands copies might have fallen, and since republished by Mr. Rowe, Mr. Pope, Mr. Theobald, Sir Thomas Hanmer, and Mr. Warburton.
Ben Johnson in his discoveries has made a sort of essay towards the character of Shakespear. I shall present it the reader in his own words,
'I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespear, that in writing he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted out a thousand! which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who chuse that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted; and to justify my own character (for I lov'd the man, and do honour to his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any). He was indeed honest, and of an open free nature, had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopp'd. His wit was in his own power: would the rule of it had been so. Many times he fell into those things which could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him, "Cæsar thou dost me wrong."
He replied, "Cæsar did never wrong, but with just cause;"
'And such like, which were ridiculous; but he redeemed his vices with his virtues; there was ever more in them to be praised, than to be pardoned.' Ben in his conversation with Mr. Drumond of Hawthornden, said, that Shakespear wanted art, and sometimes sense. The truth is, Ben was himself a better critic than poet, and though he was ready at discovering the faults of Shakespear, yet he was not master of such a genius, as to rise to his excellencies; and great as Johnson was, he appears not a little tinctured with envy. Notwithstanding the defects of Shakespear, he is justly elevated above all other dramatic writers. If ever any author deserved the name of original (says Pope) it was he: [1] 'His poetry was inspiration indeed; he is not so much an imitator, as instrument of nature; and it is not so just to say of him that he speaks from her, as that she speaks through him. His characters are so much nature herself, that it is a sort of injury to call them by so distant a name as copies of her. The power over our passions was likewise never possessed in so eminent a degree, or displayed in so many different instances, nor was he more a matter of the great, than of the ridiculous in human nature, nor only excelled in the passions, since he was full as admirable in the coolness of reflection and reasoning: His sentiments are not only in general the most pertinent and judicious upon every subject, but by a talent very peculiar, something between penetration and felicity, he hits upon that particular point, on which the bent of each argument, or the force of each motive depends.'
Our author's plays are to be distinguished only into Comedies and Tragedies. Those which are called Histories, and even some of his Comedies, are really Tragedies, with a mixture of Comedy amongst them. That way of Tragi-comedy was the common mistake of that age, and is indeed become so agreeable to the English taste, that though the severer critics among us cannot bear it, yet the generality of our audiences seem better pleased with it than an exact Tragedy. There is certainly a great deal of entertainment in his comic humours, and a pleasing and well distinguished variety in those characters he thought fit to exhibit with. His images are indeed every where so lively, that the thing he would represent stands full before you, and you possess every part of it; of which this instance is astonishing: it is an image of patience. Speaking of a maid in love, he says,
———She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i'th'bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: She pin'd in thought,
And sat like patience on a monument.
Smiling at grief.
But what is characteristically the talent of Shakespear, and which perhaps is the most excellent part of the drama, is the manners of his persons, in acting and in speaking what is proper for them, and fit to be shewn by the Poet, in making an apparent difference between his characters, and marking every one in the strongest manner.