at Combe's conduct,' it is plain that, in the spirit of his agreement with Combe's agent, he continued to lend Combe his countenance. Happily Combe's efforts failed, and the common lands remain unenclosed. At the beginning of 1616 Shakespeare's health was failing. He directed Francis Collins, a solicitor of Warwick, to draft his will, but, though it was prepared for signature on January 25, it was for the time laid aside. On February 10, 1616, Shakespeare's younger daughter, Judith, married, at Stratford parish church, Thomas Quiney, four years her junior, a son of an old friend of the poet. The ceremony took place apparently without public asking of the banns and before a license was procured. The irregularity led to the summons of the bride and bridegroom to the ecclesiastical court at Worcester and the imposition of a fine. According to the testimony of John Ward, the vicar, Shakespeare entertained at New Place his two friends, Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson, in this same spring of 1616, and 'had a The clumsy entry runs: 'Sept. Mr. Shakespeare tellyng J. Greene that I was not able to beare the encloseing of Welcombe.' J. Greene is to be distinguished from Thomas Greene, the writer of the diary. The entry therefore implies that Shakespeare told J. Greene that the writer of the diary, Thomas Greene, was not able to bear the enclosure. Those who represent Shakespeare as a champion of popular rights have to read the 'I' in 'I was not able' as 'he.' Were that the correct reading, Shakespeare would be rightly credited with telling J. Greene that he disliked the enclosure; but palæographers only recognise the reading 'I.' Cf. Shakespeare and the Enclosure of Common Fields at Welcombe, a facsimile of Greene's diary, now at the Birthplace, Stratford, with a transcript by Mr. E. J. L. Scott, edited by Dr. C. M. Ingleby, 1885. Death. merry meeting,' but 'itt seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour there contracted.' A popular local legend, which was not recorded till 1762,' credited Shakespeare with engaging at an earlier date in a prolonged and violent drinking bout at Bidford, a neighbouring village, but his achievements as a hard drinker may be dismissed as unproven. The cause of his death is undetermined, but probably his illness seemed likely to take a fatal turn in March, when he revised and signed the will that had been drafted in the previous January. On Tuesday, April 23, he died at the age of fifty-two.3 Burial. On Thursday, April 25 (O.S.), the poet was buried inside Stratford Church, near the northern wall of the chancel, in which, as part-owner of the tithes, and consequently one of the lay-rectors, he had a right of interment. Hard by was the charnelhouse, where bones dug up from the churchyard were deposited. Over the poet's grave were inscribed the lines: Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare To dig the dust enclosed heare; Bleste be the man that spares these stones, According to one William Hall, who described a 1 British Magazine, June 1762. 2 Cf. Malone, Shakespeare, 1821, ii. 500-2; Ireland, Confessions, 1805, p. 34; Green, Legend of the Crab Tree, 1857. The date is in the old style, and is equivalent to May 3 in the new; Cervantes, whose death is often described as simultaneous, died at Madrid ten days earlier-on April 13, in the old style, or April 23, 1616, in the new. THREE AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURES SEVERALLY WRITTEN BY SHAKESPEARE ON THE THREE SHEETS OF HIS WILL ON MARCH 25, 1616. Reproduced from the original document now at Somerset House, London visit to Stratford in 1694,' these verses were penned by Shakespeare to suit 'the capacity of clerks and sextons, for the most part a very ignorant set of people.' Had this curse not threatened them, Hall proceeds, the sexton would not have hesitated in course of time to remove Shakespeare's dust to 'the bone-house.' As it was, the grave was made seventeen feet deep, and was never opened, even to receive his wife, although she expressed a desire to be buried with her husband. Shakespeare's will, the first draft of which was drawn up before January 25, 1616, received many interlineations and erasures before it was The will. signed in the ensuing March. Francis Collins, the solicitor of Warwick, and Thomas Russell, 'esquier,' of Stratford, were the overseers; it was proved by John Hall, the poet's son-in-law and jointexecutor with Mrs. Hall, in London on June 22 following. The religious exordium is in conventional phraseology, and gives no clue to Shakespeare's personal religious opinions. What those opinions were, we have neither the means nor the warrant for discussing. But while it is possible to quote from the plays many contemptuous references to the puritans and their doctrines, we may dismiss as idle gossip Davies's irresponsible report that 'he dyed a papist.' The name of Shakespeare's wife was omitted from the original draft of the will, but by an interlineation in the final draft she received his second best bed Hall's letter was published as a quarto pamphlet at London in 1884, from the original, now in the Bodleian Library Oxford. T |