The Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-on-Avon (_concluded_)—The
Shakespeare grave and monument—The Miserere Seats.
THE Baconians are so extravagant that it becomes scarce worth while to
refute their wild statements; but when they are carried to these
extremities we may well note them, for the enjoyment of a laugh. But
perhaps Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence gives us the better entertainment when
he tells us that Bacon wrote the preface to the Authorised Version of the
Bible, and was in fact the literary editor of that translation and
responsible for its style!
[Picture: The Chancel, Holy Trinity Church, with Shakespeare’s Monument]
With an ineffable serenity the portrait-figure of Shakespeare (generally
called a “bust,” but it is a half-length) in the monument looks down from
the north wall of the spacious chancel upon the graves of himself and his
family. The monument itself is thoroughly characteristic of the
Renascence taste of the period: in the church of St. Andrew Undershaft,
in the city of London, you may see a not dissimilar example to John Stow,
the historian, who died eleven years before Shakespeare. He also, like
Shakespeare’s effigy, holds a quill pen in his hand. The accompanying
illustration renders description scarce necessary, and it is only to the
portrait that we need especially direct attention. In common with
everything relating to Shakespeare, it has been the subject of great
controversy: not altogether warranted, for it is certain that it was
executed before 1623, seven years after the poet’s death, when his widow,
daughters and sons-in-law were yet living, and it seems beyond all
reasonable argument to deny that a monument erected under their
supervision should, and does, in fact, present as good a likeness of him
as they could procure. The effigy was sculptured by one Gerard Johnson
(or Janssen), son of a Dutch craftsman in this mortuary art, whose
workshop being in Southwark near the “Globe” theatre, must have rendered
Shakespeare’s personal appearance familiar to him, while the features are
considered to be copied from a death-mask which was probably taken by Dr.
John Hall, husband of Shakespeare’s elder daughter, Susanna.
The inscription runs—
“Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,
Terra tegit, popvlvs mæret, Olympus habet.”
which is translated thus—
“He was in judgment a Nestor, in genius a Socrates, and in art a
Virgil; the earth covers, the people mourn, and heaven holds him.”
There then follow the English lines—
“Stay, Passenger, why goest thov by so fast?
Read if thov canst, when enviovs Death hath plast
Within this monvment, Shakespeare, with whome
Qvick Natvre dide; whose name doth deck ye Tombe
Far more then coste, sith all yt He hath writt
Leaves living art but page to serve his witt,
“Obiit ano doi 1616,
Ætatis 53, Die 23 Ap.”
The author of Shakespeare’s epitaph is unknown. It would seem to have
been some one who had not seen the monument, and knew nothing of its
character; for he imagines his lines are to be inscribed upon a tomb
within which the poet’s body is placed. But however little he knew of
Shakespeare’s monument, he knew the worth of his plays and poems:
“Shakespeare, with whom quick nature died.” It is the very summary, the
quintessence, of Shakespearean appreciation.
Like everything else associated with Shakespeare, the monument has had
its vicissitudes. The effigy, originally painted to resemble life,
showed the poet to have had auburn hair and light hazel eyes. In 1748 a
well-meaning Mr. John Ward repaired the monument and retouched the effigy
with colour, and in 1793 Malone persuaded the vicar to have it painted
white; an outrage satirised by the lines written in the church
visitors’-book in 1810—
“Stranger, to whom this Monument is shewn,
Invoke the Poet’s curse upon Malone
Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste betrays,
And smears his tombstone as he marr’d his plays.”
It was not until 1861 that the white paint was scraped off and the
original colour restored, by the light of what traces remained.
Opinions have greatly varied as to the merits of the portrait, and many
observers have been disappointed with it. Dr. Ingleby, for one, was
distressed by its “painful stare, with goggle eyes and gaping mouth.”
But the measure of this disappointment is exactly in proportion to the
perhaps exaggerated expectations held. We must bear in mind that the
sculptor worked from a death-mask, and that the expression was thus a
conventional restoration.
Mark Twain, who, like the egregious Ignatius Donnelly, did not believe
that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, founded a good deal of his disbelief
on the unvexed serenity of this monumental bust. It troubled him greatly
that it should be there, so serene and emotionless. “The bust, too,
there in the Stratford church. The precious bust, the priceless bust,
the calm bust with the dandy moustache and the putty face, unseamed of
care—that face which has looked passionlessly down upon the awed pilgrim
for a hundred and fifty years, and will still down look upon the awed
pilgrim three hundred more, with the deep, deep, deep, subtle, subtle,
subtle expression of a bladder.” What, then, did he expect? A tragic
mask, a laughing face of comedy? But Mark Twain hardly counts as a
Shakespeare critic.
It is forgotten by most people that the painting and scraping have
wrought some changes, not for the better, in the expression of the face,
tending towards making it what Halliwell-Phillipps too extravagantly
calls a “miserable travesty of an intellectual human being.” However
lifeless the expression, we see the features are those of a man of
affairs. They are good and in no way abnormal. The brow is broad and
lofty; the jaw and chin, while not massive, perhaps more than a thought
heavier than usual. This was a man, one thinks, who would have succeeded
in whatever walk of life he chose, and that is exactly the impression
derived from the known facts and the traditions of Shakespeare’s life.
There have been numerous arguments in recent times in favour of digging
that dust which the poet’s curse has thus far kept inviolate, but the
courage has been lacking to it; whether in view of the curse or in fear
of public opinion seems to be uncertain.
The late J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps wrote, about 1885: “It is not many
years since a phalanx of trouble-tombs, lanterns and spades in hand,
assembled in the chancel at dead of night, intent on disobeying the
solemn injunction that the bones of Shakespeare were not to be disturbed.
But the supplicatory lines prevailed. There were some amongst the number
who, at the last moment, refused to incur the warning condemnation and so
the design was happily abandoned.”
Nor would it appear that the graves of his family have been disturbed.
They lie in a row, with his own, before the altar, a position they occupy
by right of Shakespeare having purchased the rectorial tithes, and thus
becoming that curious anomaly, a “lay rector.” It matters little or
nothing where one’s bones are laid, but the doing this, and thus
acquiring the right of sepulture in the most honoured place in the
church, seems to imply that Shakespeare expected to found a family, and
to see that his name was honoured to future generations in his native
town.
We are not to suppose that the clergy of that time welcomed Shakespeare’s
burial in this honoured place, but they could not help themselves. He
had acquired the right, and although he had lived well into a time when
puritanism had banished plays and players from Stratford, and although as
a playwright he must have been regarded by many as a lost soul—unless,
indeed, he became a converted man in his last year or so—his rights had
to be observed.
Immediately next the wall is the flat stone that marks the grave of Anne
Shakespeare, who survived her husband, and died August 6th, 1623, aged
sixty-seven. An eight-line Latin verse, probably by her son-in-law, Dr.
John Hall, and couched in the most affectionate terms, is inscribed upon
a small brass plate; it is thus rendered—
“Milk, life thou gavest. For a boon so great,
Mother, alas! I give thee but a stone;
O! might some angel blest remove its weight,
Thy form should issue like thy Saviour’s own.
But vain my prayers; O Christ, come quickly, come!
And thou, my Mother, shalt from hence arise,
Though closed as yet within this narrow tomb,
To meet thy Saviour in the starry skies.”
Next in order comes the slab covering the grave of Shakespeare himself,
and following it that of Thomas Nash, husband of Elizabeth Hall,
grand-daughter of the poet. He died in 1647, aged fifty-three, and is
honoured in a four-line Latin verse. Fourthly comes the grave of Dr.
Hall, who died in 1635, aged sixty, with a six-line Latin verse, and next
is that of Susanna, Shakespeare’s elder daughter, wife of Dr. Hall. She
died in 1649, aged sixty-six, and has this poetic appreciation for
epitaph—
“Witty above her sexe, but that’s not all,
Wise to Salvation was good Mistris Hall,
Something of Shakespeare was in that, but this
Wholy of him with whom she’s now in blisse,
Then, Passenger, ha’st ne’re a teare
To weepe with her that wept with all?
That wept, yet set herselfe to chere
Them up with comforts cordiall.
Her Love shall live, her mercy spread,
When thou hast ne’re a teare to shed.”
This touching tribute was nearly lost in the gross outrage perpetrated in
or about 1707, when it was erased for the purpose of providing room for
an inscription to one Richard Watts. Happily Dugdale, in his monumental
history of Warwickshire, had recorded it, and it was re-cut from that
evidence in 1836.
It is gratifying to note that no monuments to self-advertising members of
the theatrical profession, or others keen to obtain a reflected glory
from association with Shakespeare, have been allowed here, although we
have to thank an aroused public opinion, and not the clergy, the natural
guardians of the spot, for that. It was proposed, a few years ago, to
place a memorial to that entirely blameless actress, well versed in
Shakespearean parts, Helen Faucit, Lady Martin, on the wall opposite
Shakespeare’s monument, and it was nearly accomplished. The clergy
blessed the project, the public were allowed to hear little or nothing
about it, and the thing would have been done, except for protests raised
at the eleventh hour. The monument eventually found its way to the
Shakespeare Memorial, where it may now be found, but those responsible
for the proposal were not wholly to be baulked, and the evidence of their
persistence is to be seen in the nave, where a very elaborate dark-green
marble pulpit, in memory of Helen Faucit, and given by her husband, Sir
Theodore Martin, attracts attention.
There has been a good deal of praise and admiration of the modern stained
glass in the noble windows of the chancel and the windows of the church
in general, including those given by American admirers of Shakespeare,
but the truth is that there is no stained glass in Stratford church above
the commercial level of the ordinary ecclesiastical furnisher, and the
sooner the fact is recognised, the better for all concerned. The
guidebooks will tell you nothing of this, but we have to see things for
ourselves, and use our own judgment.
The tomb of the rebuilder of the chancel, Thomas Balsall, is little
noticed. It is seen under the east window, on the north side, and is a
greatly mutilated, but still beautiful, altar-tomb. Above it, on the
wall, is the monument with fine portrait-busts of Richard Combe and his
intended wife, Judith, who died 1649. The altar-tomb, with effigy, of
John Combe, 1614, of the College, and of Welcombe, a friend of
Shakespeare, is against the east wall. Combe was a man of wealth, who
did not disdain the part of money-lender. He had the reputation of an
usurer, although ten per cent. was his moderate rate, and, according to
the tradition, hearing it said that Shakespeare had an epitaph waiting
for him, begged to hear it. This, then, was what he heard—
“Ten in a hundred lies here engraved,
’Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved.
If any man ask, Who lies in this tomb?
Ho! ho! says the Devil, ’tis my John-a-Combe.”
It is an idle story, and the verse is adapted from an epigram in the
jest-books of the age.
A prominent feature of a collegiate church was the stalls, with their
miserere seats, for the priests, and we have here stalls for twenty-six,
still retaining their beautifully carved seats, little injured by time or
violence. We do, in fact, frequently find the miserere carvings
uninjured in cathedrals, abbeys and collegiate churches; largely because
they are always on the underside of the seats and thus apt to be
overlooked. Those at Stratford are well up to the general level of
interest and amusement.
Amusement? Yes. The very broadest fun, sometimes particularly coarse,
lurks in these often unsuspected places; and the greatest artistry of the
wood-carver too, who will turn at random from the loving rendering of
flower or foliage, to sacred symbols; then to the representation of birds
and beasts and extraordinary chimeras that never existed outside the
frontiers of Nightmare Land; and to queer domestic or social scenes.
Here we find prime examples of such things. Under one seat a Crown of
Thorns and the I.H.S. occur, on either side of a scene showing a man and
wife fighting. He has a long beard which she is pulling with one hand,
while with the other she bastes him with a ladle. She employs her feet,
too, in kicking him.
Under the next seat we see this domestic strife resumed, but it is shown
in two scenes, over which a central woman-headed beast presides. Here
the termagant pulls her husband’s beard and tears his mouth open, while
he retaliates by pulling her hair. The other scene represents the taming
of the shrew. A naked woman is being thrashed by a man, and a dog
completes the retribution by biting her leg.
Among the other carvings we note the favourite Bear and Ragged Staff of
this district; a beggar’s monkey, with chained tin pot, or
drinking-vessel, and a variety of minor subjects. Among the most
interesting is that example illustrated here.
[Picture: A Stratford Miserere: The Legend of the Unicorn]
The subject is that of the once-popular legend of the unicorn, which was,
according to mediæval story, an animal of the fiercest and most untamable
kind, and only to be captured in one way. This way was to find a virgin,
at once of great beauty and unquestioned virtue, and to conduct her to
the unicorn’s haunts in the greenwood. Immediately the animal, tame only
in the presence of a pure virgin, would come and lay its head gently and
fearlessly in her lap; whereupon the hunter would steal forth and slay
the confiding beast.
It is to be remarked here that the person who could invent such a story,
whatever else he was, and however fearless his imagination, was, clearly
enough, no sportsman. It is quite easy to imagine such an one shooting a
sitting pheasant, or poisoning a fox.
Here, in the illustration, we perceive the maiden, not so beautiful as
the carver intended her to be, caressing the confiding unicorn and
apparently scratching him behind the ear, while an unsportsmanlike person
digs him in the rump at leisure, with a spear-headed weapon.