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TITLE: SHAKESPEARE'S BONES
AUTHOR: C. M. INGLEBY
EBOOK: E06906 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

SHAKESPEARE'S BONES

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

By C. M. Ingleby, LL.D., V.P.R.S.L.,
Honorary Member of the German Shakespeare Society,
and a Life-Trustee of Shakespeare's Birthplace, Museum, and New
Place,
at Stratford-upon-Avon.

"Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs."
Richard II, a. iii, s. 2.

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

SHAKESPEARE'S BONES.

The sentiment which affects survivors in the disposition of their
dead, and which is, in one regard, a superstition, is, in another, a
creditable outcome of our common humanity:  namely, the desire to
honour the memory of departed worth, and to guard the "hallowed
reliques" by the erection of a shrine, both as a visible mark of
respect for the dead, and as a place of resort for those pilgrims
who may come to pay him tribute.  It is this sentiment which dots
our graveyards with memorial tablets and more ambitious sculptures,
and which still preserves so many of our closed churchyards from
desecration, and our {1a} ancient tombs from the molestation of
careless, curious, or mercenary persons.

But there is another sentiment, not inconsistent with this, which
prompts us, on suitable occasions, to disinter the remains of great
men, and remove them to a more fitting and more honourable resting-
place.  The Hotel des Invalides at Paris, and the Basilica of San
Lorenzo Fuori le Mura at Rome, {1b} are indebted to this sentiment
for the possession of relics which make those edifices the natural
resort of pilgrims as of sight-seers.  It were a work of superfluity
to adduce further illustration of the position that the mere
exhumation and reinterment of a great man's remains, is commonly
held to be, in special cases, a justifiable proceeding, not a
violation of that honourable sentiment of humanity, which protects
and consecrates the depositaries of the dead.  On a late occasion it
was not the belief that such a proceeding is a violation of our more
sacred instincts which hindered the removal to Pennsylvania of the
remains of William Penn; but simply the belief that they had already
a more suitable resting-place in his native land. {2}

There is still another sentiment, honourable in itself and not
inconsistent with those which I have specified, though still more
conditional upon the sufficiency of the reasons conducing to the
act:  namely, the desire, by exhumation, to set at rest a reasonable
or important issue respecting the person of the deceased while he
was yet a living man.  Accordingly it is held justifiable to exhume
a body recently buried, in order to discover 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 object to
this as an invasion of the sanctity of the grave, or a violation of
the rights of the dead or of the feelings of his family.  When a man
has been long in the grave, there are probably no family feelings to
be wounded by such an act:  and, as for his rights, if he can be
said to have any, we may surely reckon among them the right of not
being supposed to possess such objectionable personal defects as may
have been imputed to him by the malice of critics or by the
incapacity of sculptor or painter, and which his remains may be
sufficiently unchanged to rebut:  in a word we owe him something
more than refraining from disturbing his remains until they are
undistinguishable from the earth in which they lie, a debt which no
supposed inviolable sanctity of the grave ought to prevent us from
paying.

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

"At the time of his death Schiller left his widow and children
almost penniless, and almost friendless too.  The duke and duchess
were absent; Goethe lay ill; even Schiller's brother-in-law Wolzogen
was away from home.  Frau von Wolzogen was with her sister, but
seems to have been equally ill-fitted to bear her share of the load
that had fallen so heavily upon them.  Heinrich Voss was the only
friend admitted to the sick-room; and when all was over it was he
who went to the joiner's, and, knowing the need of economy, ordered
'a plain deal coffin.'  It cost ten shillings of our money.

"In the early part of 1805, one Carl Leberecht Schwabe, an
enthusiastic admirer of Schiller, left Weimar on business.
Returning on Saturday the 11th of May, between three and four in the
afternoon, his first errand was to visit his betrothed, who lived in
the house adjoining that of the Schillers.  She met him in the
passage, and told 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 the remains to the churchyard, and
no one else was to attend.

"Schwabe felt that all this could not go on; but to prevent it was
difficult.  There were but eight hours left; and the arrangements,
such as they were, had already been made.  However, he went straight
to the house of death, and requested an interview with Frau von
Schiller.  She replied, through the servant, 'that she was too
greatly overwhelmed by her loss to be able to see or speak to any
one; as for the funeral of her blessed husband, Mr. Schwabe must
apply to the Reverend Oberconsistorialrath Gunther, who had kindly
undertaken to see done what was necessary; whatever he might direct,
she would approve of.'  With this message Schwabe hastened to
Gunther, and told him, his blood boiled at the thought that Schiller
should be borne to the grave by hirelings.  At first Gunther shook
his head and said, 'It was too late; everything was arranged; the
bearers were already ordered.'  Schwabe offered to become
responsible for the payment of the bearers, if they were dismissed.
At length the Oberconsistorialrath inquired who the gentlemen were
who had agreed to bear the coffin.  Schwabe was obliged to
acknowledge that he could not at that moment mention a single name;
but he was ready to guarantee his Hochwurde that in an hour or two
he would bring him the list.  On this his Hochwurde consented to
countermand the bearers.

"Schwabe now rushed from house to house, obtaining a ready assent
from all whom he found at home.  But as some were out, he sent round
a circular, begging those who would come to place a mark against
their names.  He requested them to meet at his lodgings 'at half-
past twelve o'clock that night; a light would be placed in the
window to guide those who were not acquainted with the house; they
would be kind enough to be dressed in black; but mourning-hats,
crapes and mantles he had already provided.'  Late in the evening he
placed the list in Gunther's hands.  Several appeared to whom he had
not applied; in all about twenty.

"Between midnight and one in the morning the little band proceeded
to Schiller's house.  The coffin was carried down stairs and placed
on the shoulders of the friends in waiting.  No one else was to be
seen before the house or in the streets.  It was a moonlight night
in May, but clouds were up.  The procession moved through the
sleeping city to the churchyard of St. James.  Having arrived there
they placed their burden on the ground at the door of the so-called
Kassengewolbe, where the gravedigger and his assistants took it up.
In this vault, which belonged to the province of Weimar, it was
usual to inter persons of the higher classes, who possessed no
burying-ground of their own, upon payment of a louis d'or.  As
Schiller had died without securing a resting-place for himself and
his family, there could have been no more natural arrangement than
to carry his remains to this vault.  It was a grim old building,
standing against the wall of the churchyard, with a steep narrow
roof, and no opening of any kind but the doorway which was filled up
with a grating.  The interior was a gloomy space of about fourteen
feet either way.  In the centre was a trap-door which gave access to
a hollow space beneath.

"As the gravediggers raised the coffin, the clouds suddenly parted,
and the moon shed her light on all that was earthly of Schiller.
They carried him in:  they opened the trap-door:  and let him down
by ropes into the darkness.  Then they closed the vault.  Nothing
was spoken or sung.  The mourners were dispersing, when their
attention was attracted by a tall figure in a mantle, at some
distance in the graveyard, sobbing loudly.  No one knew who it was;
and for many years the occurrence remained wrapped in mystery,
giving rise to strange conjectures.  But eventually it turned out to
have been Schiller's brother-in-law Wolzogen, who, having hurried
home on hearing of the death, had arrived after the procession was
already on its way to the churchyard.

"In the year 1826, Schwabe was Burgermeister of Weimar.  Now it was
the custom of the Landschaftscollegium, or provincial board under
whose jurisdiction this institution was placed, to CLEAR OUT the
Kassengewolbe from time to time--whenever it was found to be
inconveniently crowded--and by this means to make way for other
deceased persons and more louis d'or.  On such occasions--when the
Landschaftscollegium gave the order 'aufzuraumen,' it was the usage
to dig a hole in a corner of the churchyard--then to bring up en
masse the contents of the Kassengewolbe--coffins, whether entire or
in fragments, bones, skulls, and tattered graveclothes--and finally

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