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SHAKESPEARE’S BONES

THE PROPOSAL TO DISINTER THEM,
CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THEIRPOSSIBLE BEARING
ON HIS PORTRAITURE:
ILLUSTRATED BY INSTANCESOF
VISITS OF THE LIVING TO THE DEAD.

By C. M. Ingleby, LL.D., V.P.R.S.L.,
Honorary Member of theGerman Shakespeare Society,
and a Life-Trustee of Shakespeare’sBirthplace, Museum, and New Place,
at Stratford-upon-Avon.

“Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs.”
RichardII, a. iii, s. 2.

This Essay is respectfully inscribed to
The Major and Corporationof Stratford-upon-Avon,
and the Vicar
of the Church of theHoly Trinity there,
by their friend and colleague,
THE AUTHOR.

SHAKESPEARE’S BONES.

The sentiment which affects survivors in the disposition of theirdead, and which is, in one regard, a superstition, is, in another, acreditable outcome of our common humanity: namely, the desire to honourthe memory of departed worth, and to guard the “hallowed reliques”by the erection of a shrine, both as a visible mark of respect for thedead, and as a place of resort for those pilgrims who may come to payhim tribute.  It is this sentiment which dots our graveyards withmemorial tablets and more ambitious sculptures, and which still preservesso many of our closed churchyards from desecration, and our {1a}ancient tombs from the molestation of careless, curious, or mercenarypersons.

But there is another sentiment, not inconsistent with this, whichprompts us, on suitable occasions, to disinter the remains of greatmen, and remove them to a more fitting and more honourable resting-place. The Hôtel des Invalides at Paris, and the Basilica of San LorenzoFuori le Mura at Rome, {1b}are indebted to this sentiment for the possession of relics which makethose edifices the natural resort of pilgrims as of sight-seers. It were a work of superfluity to adduce further illustration of theposition that the mere exhumation and reinterment of a great man’sremains, is commonly held to be, in special cases, a justifiable proceeding,not a violation of that honourable sentiment of humanity, which protectsand consecrates the depositaries of the dead.  On a late occasionit was not the belief that such a proceeding is a violation of our moresacred instincts which hindered the removal to Pennsylvania of the remainsof William Penn; but simply the belief that they had already a moresuitable resting-place in his native land. {2}

There is still another sentiment, honourable in itself and not inconsistentwith those which I have specified, though still more conditional uponthe sufficiency of the reasons conducing to the act: namely, the desire,by exhumation, to set at rest a reasonable or important issue respectingthe person of the deceased while he was yet a living man.  Accordinglyit is held justifiable to exhume a body recently buried, in order todiscover the cause of death, or to settle a question of disputed identity:nor is it usually held unjustifiable to exhume a body long since deceased,in order to find such evidences as time may not have wholly destroyed,of his personal appearance, including the size and shape of his head,and the special characteristics of his living face.

It is too late for the most reverential and scrupulous to objectto this as an invasion of the sanctity of the grave, or a violationof the rights of the dead or of the feelings of his family.  Whena man has been long in the grave, there are probably no family feelingsto be wounded by such an act: and, as for his rights, if he can be saidto have any, we may surely reckon among them the right of not beingsupposed to possess such objectionable personal defects as may havebeen imputed to him by the malice of critics or by the incapacity ofsculptor or painter, and which his remains may be sufficiently unchangedto rebut: in a word we owe him something more than refraining from disturbinghis remains until they are undistinguishable from the earth in whichthey lie, a debt which no supposed inviolable sanctity of the graveought to prevent us from paying.

It is, I say, too late to raise such an objection, because exhumationhas been performed many times with a perfectly legitimate object, evenin the case of our most illustrious dead, without protest or objectionfrom the most sensitive person.  As the examples, more or lessanalogous to that of Shakespeare, which I am about to adduce, concerngreat men who were born and were buried within the limits of our island,I will preface them by giving the very extraordinary cases of Schillerand Raphael, which illustrate both classes: those in which the objectof the exhumation was to give the remains a more honourable sepulture,and those in which it was purely to resolve certain questions affectingthe skull of the deceased.  The following is abridged from Mr.Andrew Hamilton’s narrative, entitled “The Story of Schiller’sLife,” published in Macmillan’s Magazine for May,1863.

“At the time of his death Schiller left his widow and childrenalmost penniless, and almost friendless too.  The duke and duchesswere absent; Goethe lay ill; even Schiller’s brother-in-law Wolzogenwas away from home.  Frau von Wolzogen was with her sister, butseems to have been equally ill-fitted to bear her share of the loadthat had fallen so heavily upon them.  Heinrich Voss was the onlyfriend admitted to the sick-room; and when all was over it was he whowent to the joiner’s, and, knowing the need of economy, ordered‘a plain deal coffin.’  It cost ten shillings of ourmoney.

“In the early part of 1805, one Carl Leberecht Schwabe, anenthusiastic admirer of Schiller, left Weimar on business.  Returningon Saturday the 11th of May, between three and four in the afternoon,his first errand was to visit his betrothed, who lived in the houseadjoining that of the Schillers.  She met him in the passage, andtold him, Schiller was two days dead, and that night he was to be buried. On putting further questions, Schwabe stood aghast at what he learned. The funeral was to be private and to take place immediately after midnight,without any religious rite.  Bearers had been hired to carry theremains to the churchyard, and no one else was to attend.

“Schwabe felt that all this could not go on; but to prevent