_Shakspeare's Skull_.--As your publication has been the medium of many
valuable comments upon Shakspeare, and interesting matter connected with
him, I am induced to solicit information, if you will allow me, on the
following subject. I have the _Works of Shakspeare_, which being in one
volume 8vo., I value as being more portable than any other edition. It was
published by Sherwood without any date affixed, but probably about 1825.
There is a memoir prefixed by Wm. Harvey, Esq., in which, p. xiii., it is
stated that while a vault was being made close to Shakspeare's, when Dr.
Davenport was rector, a young man perceiving the tomb of Shakspeare open,
introduced himself so far within the vault that he could have brought away
the skull, but he was deterred from doing so by the anathema inscribed on
the monument, of--
"Curs'd be he that moves my bones."
This is given upon the authority of Dr. Nathan Drake's work on Shakspeare,
in two vols. 4to. Now in this work much is given which is copied into the
memoir, but I do not there find this anecdote, and perhaps some reader of
"N. & Q." may supply this deficiency, and state where I may find it. I may
be allowed to state, that Pope's skull was similarly stolen and another
substituted.
I annex Wheler's remark that no violation of the grave had, up to the time
of his work, taken place.
"Through a lapse of nearly two hundred years have his ashes remained
undisturbed, and it is to be hoped no sacrilegious hand will ever be
found to violate the sacred repository."--_History of
Stratford-upon-Avon_, by R. B. Wheler (circa 1805?), 8vo.