Shakespeare's funerary monument
The Shakespeare funerary monument is a memorial to William
Shakespeare located inside Holy Trinity Church at Stratford-upon-
Avon in Warwickshire, the church in which Shakespeare was
baptised and where he was buried in the chancel two days after his
death.[1]
The monument, carved in pale blue limestone,[2] is mounted on the
north wall of the chancel. It has traditionally been identified as the
work of the sculptor Gerard Johnson, but this attribution is
challenged by Lena Cowen Orlin, who argues that it was more
likely modelled from life by Gerard's brother, Nicholas
Johnson.[3][4] The monument features a demi-figure of the poet
holding a (real) quill pen in one hand and a piece of paper resting
on a cushion in the other. The style, which was popular from the
early- to the mid-17th century, was most commonly used to
memorialize divines, academics, and those professions with
pretensions of learning.[5][6]
The buttoned doublet, with its ornamental slashes, was probably
originally painted scarlet, the loose subfusc gown black, the eyes
hazel, and the hair and beard auburn.[7] It has been retouched many Shakespeare's funerary monument,
Holy Trinity Church, Stratford
times, and was painted entirely white in 1793.[2] This demi-figure is
one of only two representations definitely accepted as accurately
portraying William Shakespeare's physical appearance. The monument is topped with strapwork rising to a
heraldic shield displaying Shakespeare's arms, on either side of which sits an allegorical figure: one,
representing Labour, holds a spade, the other, representing Rest, holds an inverted torch and a skull.[8]
The two columns that support the entablatures and coat-of-arms above the bust are of black polished
marble. The two putti and the skull are of sandstone, and the capitals and bases of the columns are of gilded
sandstone. The architraves, frieze and cornice were originally of red-veined white alabaster, but they were
replaced in 1749 with white marble.[9] The effigy and the cushion are carved of one piece of bluish
Cotswold limestone, and the inlaid panels are of black touchstone.[8]
The date the monument was erected is not known exactly, but it must have been before 1623; in that year,
the First Folio of Shakespeare's works was published, prefaced by a poem by Leonard Digges that
mentions "thy Stratford moniment" [sic]. John Weever transcribed the monument inscription and grave
epitaph, and H. R. Woudhuysen's analysis of the undated manuscript suggests that his visit to Stratford was
made not much later than 1617–18.[10] The monument was restored in 1748–49 and has been repainted
several times.
Inscriptions
Beneath the figure is engraved an epitaph in Latin and a poem in
English. The epitaph reads:
IVDICIO PYLIVM, GENIO SOCRATEM, ARTE
MARONEM,
TERRA TEGIT, POPVLVS MÆRET, OLYMPVS HABET
The memorial plaque on
Shakespeare's monument
The first line translates as "A Pylian in judgement, a Socrates in
genius, a Maro in art," comparing Shakespeare to Nestor the wise
King of Pylos, to the Greek philosopher Socrates, and to the Roman poet Virgil (whose last name, or
cognomen was Maro). The second reads "The earth buries him, the people mourn him, Olympus possesses
him," referring to Mount Olympus, the home of the Greek gods.
The English poem reads:
STAY PASSENGER, WHY GOEST THOV BY SO FAST,
READ IF THOV CANST, WHOM ENVIOVS D EATH HATH PLAST
WITH IN THIS MONVMENT SHAKSPEARE: WITH WHOME,
QVICK NATVRE DIDE: WHOSE NAME, DOTH DECK YS TOMBE,
FAR MORE, THEN COST: SIEH ALL, YT HE HATH WRITT,
LEAVES LIVING ART, BVT PAGE, TO SERVE HIS WITT.
As modernized by Katherine Duncan-Jones:[11]
Stay Passenger, why goest thou by so fast?
Read if thou canst, whom envious Death hath plast
Within this monument Shakspeare: with whom
Quick nature died: whose name doth deck this tomb
Far more than cost: sith [since] all that he hath writ
Leaves living art, but page to serve his wit.
Stanley Wells is one of the few biographers to comment on the poem, saying that it "somewhat cryptically
calls on the passer-by to pay tribute to his greatness as a writer", and admitting "the only sense I can make
out of the last bit is that his compositions relegate the sculptor's art to the rank of a mere page – with perhaps
a forced pun on the writer's 'pages' – offering service to his genius; or perhaps that all art subsequent to
Shakespeare's is a page – servant – to his." Wells also points out that "his name does not deck the tomb, and
it's not a tomb anyway", suggesting that it may have been originally designed to be part of a free-standing
tomb.[12]
Beneath the poem, in smaller lettering, an inscription gives the details of his death in abbreviated Latin: died
the year of the Lord 1616, in his 53rd year, on 23 April.[13]
OBIIT AŃO DOI 1616
ÆTATIS٠53 DIE 23 APR.
History
The monument was first illustrated and discussed in print in Sir
William Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656) [14] in which
Dugdale wrote that Stratford "gave birth and sepulture to our late
famous Poet Will. Shakespere, whose Monument I have inserted in my
discourse of the Church."[15] The engraving, almost certainly by
Wenceslaus Hollar, was done from an original rough sketch made by
Dugdale, probably in 1649,[16] likely under the patronage of
Shakespeare's granddaughter (and last living descendant), Elizabeth
Barnard.[16] Both depictions exhibit marked differences from the
monument as it appears today: the poet is not shown holding a quill or
paper, and the cushion appears to be tipped up against his body. The
art critic Marion Spielmann described it as giving the impression that
Shakespeare was pressing the cushion to his groin, "which, for no
reason, except perhaps abdominal pains, is hugged against what
dancing-masters euphemistically term the 'lower chest'".[17] The print
Painting of monument by limner
John Hall made before its 1748–
was copied by later engravers.[18]
49 restoration
In 1725, Alexander Pope's edition of Shakespeare's works included the
first engraving of the monument as it now looks, made by George
Vertue in 1723. A drawing of the monument in situ by Vertue also survives.[19] An account by John
Aubrey, written in the early 1670s (but possibly based on observations made a decade or two earlier),
describes Shakespeare as wearing "a Tawny satten doublet I thinke pinked and over that a black gowne like
an Under-gratuates at Oxford, scilicet the sleeves of the gowne doe not cover the armes, but hang loose
behind".[20]
The monument was restored in 1748–49. Parson Joseph Greene, master of Stratford grammar school,
organised the first known performance of a Shakespeare play in Stratford to fund the restoration.[21] John
Ward's company agreed to perform Othello in the Town Hall on 9 September 1746, with all receipts going
to help pay for the restoration.[22]
Writing soon after the restoration, Greene wrote that "the figure of the Bard" was removed to be "cleansed
of dust &c". He noted that the figure and cushion were carved from a single piece of limestone. He added
that "care was taken, as nearly as could be, not to add to or diminish what the work consisted of, and
appear'd to have been when first erected: And really, except changing the substance of the Architraves from
alabaster to Marble; nothing has been chang'd, nothing alter'd, except supplying with original material,
(sav'd for that purpose,) whatsoever was by accident broken off; reviving the Old Colouring, and renewing
the Gilding that was lost".[9] John Hall, the limner from Bristol hired to do the restoration, painted a picture
of the monument on pasteboard before 1748.[23] Greene also had a plaster cast of the head made before the
restoration began.[24]
Shakespeare's pen has been repeatedly stolen and replaced since, and the paint has been renewed. In 1793
Edmond Malone, the noted Shakespeare scholar, persuaded the vicar to paint the monument white, in
keeping with the Neoclassical taste of the time. The paint was removed in 1861 and the monument was
repainted in the colours recovered from beneath the white layer.[25]
In 1973 intruders removed the figure from its niche and tried to chip out the inscription. Local police took
the view that they were looking for valuable Shakespeare manuscripts, which were rumoured to be hidden
within the monument. According to Sam Schoenbaum, who examined it after the incident, the figure
suffered only "very slight damage".[26]
Interpretations
In the 1850s, the scientist Richard Owen argued that a death mask
discovered in Germany by Ludwig Becker in 1849, known as the
Kesselstadt Death Mask, was probably used by Gerard Johnson to
model the face of the effigy. The mask had been claimed to be of
Shakespeare because of a similarity to an alleged Shakespeare
portrait Becker had bought two years earlier.[27] This was depicted
by the painter Henry Wallis in his imaginary scene portraying Ben
Jonson showing the death mask to the sculptor.[28] However,
measurements of the mask and the monument figure did not
correspond, most notably the bony structure of the forehead, and
the idea was discredited.[29] Though the Kesselstadt mask does not
seem to fit, Park Honan asserts that the facial features of the
monument do appear to have been modelled on a mask: "His eyes
stare, the face is heavy and the nose is small and sharp. Because of A fanciful 1857 painting by Henry
Wallis depicting Gerard Johnson
the shrinkage of the muscles and possibly of the nostrils, the upper
carving the monument, while Ben
lip is elongated".[30] Jonson shows him Shakespeare's
death mask
Lena Cowen Orlin, however, proposes that the monument may
have been commissioned by Shakespeare himself, during his
lifetime, from Nicholas Johnson; and that the effigy was sculpted from the life.[3][4]
Critics have generally been unkind about the appearance of the sculpture. Thomas Gainsborough wrote that
"Shakespeare's bust is a silly smiling thing". J. Dover Wilson, a critic and biographer of Shakespeare, once
remarked that the Bard's effigy makes him look like a "self-satisfied pork butcher." [31] Sir Nikolaus Pevsner
pointed out that the iconographical type represented by the figure is that of a scholar or divine; his
description of the effigy is "a self-satisfied schoolmaster".[32]
Schoenbaum, however, says the monument is a typical example of Jacobean Renaissance style,[33] and
Spielmann says the "stiff simplicity" of the figure was more suitable for a sepulchral sculpture in a church
than a more life-like depiction.[34]
Gallery
Sketch by William The first published Hollar engraving in full Later page in Dugdale
Dugdale, probably illustration of the context identifying the above
made in 1649, and monument, in monument as that of
afterwards used by Dugdale's Antiquities "our late famous Poet
Wenceslaus Hollar for of Warwickshire Will. Shakespere",
his engraving in (1656), engraved by who was born and
Dugdale's Antiquities Hollar was buried in
of Warwickshire Stratford-upon-Avon
Michael Van der George Vertue's 1725 Sketch made by Painting of monument
Gucht's engraving for illustration for Pope's George Vertue in 1737 by limner John Hall
Nicholas Rowe's edition of made before its 1748–
Works of Mr. William Shakespeare's works, 49 restoration
Shakespear (1709), derived from his own
made from a plate drawing of the
copied from Hollar, as monument and the
the reversed Chandos portrait
shadowing indicates
Engraving of Engraving by Francis The immediate The wider context of
Shakespeare's Eginton from a context of the the memorial, above
monument by Charles drawing by Robert Bell monument the graves of
Grignion, derived from Wheler published in Shakespeare and his
Hollar's engraving, Wheler's History and wife
first published in John Antiquities of
Bell's 1786 edition of Stratford-upon-Avon in
Shakespeare 1806
Close-up of features Close-up of hand and Profile from altar View of chancel of
quill Holy Trinity Church,
monument on left wall
Notes and references
1. White, Adam (March 2010). "William Shakespeare's monument, Holy Trinity, Stratford upon
Avon Warwickshire" (http://churchmonumentssociety.org/Monument%20of%20the%20Mont
h%20Archive/2010_03.html). Church Monuments Society.
2. Honan, Park. Shakespeare: A Life. Oxford University Press. 1998. p. 402 ISBN 0-19-811792-
2
3. Alberge, Dalya (19 March 2021). " 'Self-satisfied pork butcher': Shakespeare grave effigy
believed to be definitive likeness" (https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/mar/19/shakes
peare-grave-effigy-believed-to-be-definitive-likeness). The Guardian. Retrieved 27 April
2021.
4. Orlin, Lena Cowen (2021). "25 April 1616: Shakespeare's Monument". The Private Life of
William Shakespeare. Oxford University Press. pp. 196–252.
doi:10.1093/oso/9780192846303.003.0006 (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Foso%2F978019284
6303.003.0006). ISBN 978-0-19-284630-3.
5. Kemp, Brian (1980). English Church Monuments. London: Batsford. p. 77.
ISBN 0713417358.
6. Sherlock, Peter (2008). Monuments and Memory in Early Modern England. Aldershot:
Ashgate. p. 150. ISBN 9780754660934.
7. Honan, Park. Shakespeare: A Life. Oxford University Press. 1998. pp. 402–03 ISBN 0-19-
811792-2
8. Schoenbaum, S. (1987). William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life, Oxford
University Press, p. 308.
9. Fox, Levi, ed. The Correspondence of the Reverend Joseph Greene, HMSO, 1965, p. 171.
10. Duncan-Jones, Katherine, and H. R. Woudhuysen, eds. (2007) Shakespeare's Poems
London: Arden Shakespeare, Thomson Learning. ISBN 978-1-90343-687-5, pp. 438, 462.
11. Duncan-Jones, Katherine (2001). Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes from His life, Arden
Shakespeare. p. 272.
12. Wells, Stanley (2002). Shakespeare For All Time, Oxford Shakespeare. p. 48.
13. Schoenbaum 1987, p. 311.
14. William Dugdale. The Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated (1656) London: Thomas
Warren, p. 520.
15. William Dugdale. The Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated (1656) London: Thomas
Warren, p. 523.
16. Reedy, Tom (2015). "William Dugdale on Shakespeare and his Monument". Shakespeare
Quarterly. 66 (2): 188–196. doi:10.1353/shq.2015.0026 (https://doi.org/10.1353%2Fshq.201
5.0026). S2CID 194022730 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:194022730).
17. Spielmann, M. H. The Title Page of the First Folio of Shakespeare's Plays (1924), 21.
18. Price, Diana. "Reconsidering Shakespeare's Monument". Review of English Studies 48
(May 1997), 175.
19. Price, 177
20. Bennett, Kate (2000). "Shakespeare's monument at Stratford: a new seventeenth-century
account". Notes and Queries. 245: 464.
21. Nicoll, Allardyce, and Kenneth Muir, Shakespeare Survey 19, Cambridge University Press,
2006, p. 145.
22. Fox 164.
23. Spielmann 24; Fox 15, 145–46.
24. Price 172
25. B. C. A. Windle, Shakespeare Country, 1899, p. 35
26. Schoenbaum 1987, 313.
27. Lee, Sidney. Shakespeare's Life and Work (1904), 160
28. Jane Martineau, Shakespeare in Art, Merrell, 2003, p. 214
29. Spielmann, 12–13.
30. Honan, Park. Shakespeare: A Life. Oxford University Press. 1998. p. 409 ISBN 0-19-811792-
2
31. Cultural Shakespeare: Essays in the Shakespeare Myth by Graham Holderness, Univ of
Hertfordshire Press, 2001, p. 152.
32. Pevsner, Nikolaus; Wedgwood, Alexandra (1966). Warwickshire. London: Penguin Books.
p. 413. ISBN 0-300-09679-8.
33. Schoenbaum, S. William Shakespeare: Records and Images (1981), 158.
34. Spielmann, 12.
Further reading
Corn, Alfred (2011). "Shakespeare's Epitaph" (https://hudsonreview.com/2013/03/shakespea
res-epitaph/). The Hudson Review. 64 (2): 295–303. JSTOR 41300664 (https://www.jstor.or
g/stable/41300664).
External links
Media related to Shakespeare's funerary monument, Holy Trinity Church, Stratford Upon
Avon at Wikimedia Commons
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