Part 1

Transcribed from the 1883 Trübner & Co. edition by David Price, email [email protected]

[Picture: Book cover]

[Picture: Shakespeare on his death-bed]

SHAKESPEARE’S BONES

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_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.

[Picture: Decorative graphic]

_LONDON_: TRÜBNER & CO., 57 & 59, _Ludgate Hill_. 1883.

[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]

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“Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs.”

_Richard II_, a. iii, s. 2.

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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.

INDEX TO BIBLIOGRAPHY.

PAGE Anonymous Articles _Argosy_ 46 October, 1879. _Atlantic Monthly_ 45 June, 1878. _Birmingham Daily 43 August 23, 1876. Mail_ ,, ,, ,, ,, _Post_ 44 September 29, 1877. ,, ,, ,, ,, _Gazette_ 47 December 17, 1880. ,, ,, ,, _Town Crier_ 44 November, 1877. _Cincinnati 48 May 26, 1883. Commercial Gazette_ _Daily Telegraph_ 43 August 24, 1876. _New York Nation_ 45 May 21, 1878. Letter _Birmingham Daily 45 October 10, 1877. Post_ Gower, Lord Ronald _Antiquary_ 46 August, 1880. Halliwell-Phillipps, 46 1881. J. O. Hawthorne, Nathaniel _Atlantic Monthly_ 41 January, 1863. Ingleby, C. M. 48 June, 1883. Norris, J. Parker _N. Y. American 41 April, 1876, and Bibliopolist_ August 4, 1876. Schaafhausen, Hermann _Shakespeare 43 1874–5. Jahrbuch_ Timmins, Sam. _Letter to J. Parker 42 _Circa_ 1874 and Norris_ 1876.

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 Hôtel 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 Günther, who had kindly undertaken to see done what was necessary; whatever he might direct, she would approve of.’ With this message Schwabe hastened to Günther, and told him, his blood boiled at the thought that Schiller should be borne to the grave by hirelings. At first Günther 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 Hochwürde that in an hour or two he would bring him the list. On this his Hochwürde 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 Günther’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 _Kassengewölbe_, 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 Bürgermeister of Weimar. Now it was the custom of the _Landschaftscollegium_, or provincial board under whose jurisdiction this institution was placed, to _clear out_ the Kassengewölbe 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 ‘aufzuräumen,’ it was the usage to dig a hole in a corner of the churchyard—then to bring up _en masse_ the contents of the Kassengewölbe—coffins, whether entire or in fragments, bones, skulls, and tattered graveclothes—and finally to shovel the whole heap into the aforesaid pit. In the month of March Schwabe was dismayed at hearing that the Landschaftscollegium had decreed a speedy ‘clearing out’ of the Gewölbe. His old prompt way of acting had not left him; he went at once to his friend Weyland, the president of the Collegium. ‘Friend Weyland,’ he said, ‘let not the dust of Schiller be tossed up in the face of heaven and flung into that hideous hole! Let me at least have a permit to search the vault; if we find Schiller’s coffin, it shall be reinterred in a fitting manner in the New Cemetery.’ The president made no difficulty.

“Schwabe invited several persons who had known the poet, and amongst others one Rudolph, who had been Schiller’s servant at the time of his death. On March 13th, at four o’clock in the afternoon, the party met in the churchyard, the sexton and his assistants having received orders to be present with keys, ladders, &c. The vault was opened; but, before any one entered it, Rudolph and another stated that the coffin of the deceased Hofrath von Schiller must be one of the longest in the place. After this the secretary of the Landschaftscollegium was requested to read aloud from the records of the said board the names of such persons as had been interred shortly before and after the year 1805. This being done, the gravedigger Bielke remarked that the coffins no longer lay in the order in which they had originally been placed, but had been displaced at recent burials. The ladder was then adjusted, and Schwabe, Coudray the architect, and the gravedigger, were the first to descend. Some others were asked to draw near, that they might assist in recognising the coffin. The first glance brought their hopes very low. The tenants of the vault were found ‘over, under and alongside of each other.’ One coffin of unusual length having been descried underneath the rest, an attempt was made to reach it by lifting out of the way those that were above it; but the processes of the tomb were found to have made greater advances than met the eye. Hardly anything would bear removal, but fell to pieces at the first touch. Search was made for plates with inscriptions, but even the metal plates crumbled away on being fingered, and their inscriptions were utterly effaced. Two plates only were found with legible characters, and these were foreign to the purpose. Probably every one but the Bürgermeister looked on the matter as hopeless. They reascended the ladder and closed the vault.

“Meanwhile these strange proceedings in the Kassengewölbe began to be noised abroad. The churchyard was a thoroughfare, and many passengers had observed that something unusual was going on. There were persons living in Weimar whose near relatives lay in the Gewölbe; and, though neither they nor the public at large had any objection to offer to the general ‘clearing out,’ they did raise very strong objections to this mode of anticipating it. So many pungent things began to be said about violating the tomb, disturbing the repose of the departed, &c., that the Bürgermeister perceived the necessity of going more warily to work in future. He resolved to time his next visit at an hour when few persons would be likely to cross the churchyard at that season. Accordingly, two days later he returned to the Kassengewölbe at seven in the morning, accompanied only by Coudray and the churchyard officials.

“Their first task was to raise out of the vault altogether six coffins, which it was found would bear removal. By various tokens it was proved that none of these could be that of which they were in search. There were several others which could not be removed, but which held together so long as they were left where they lay. All the rest were in the direst confusion. Two hours and a half were spent in subjecting the ghastly heap to a thorough but fruitless search: not a trace of any kind rewarded their trouble. Only one conclusion stared Schwabe and Coudray in the face—their quest was in vain: the remains of Schiller must be left to oblivion. Again the Gewölbe was closed, and those who had disturbed its quiet returned disappointed to their homes. Yet, that very afternoon, Schwabe went back once more in company with the joiner who twenty years before had made the coffin: there was a chance that he might recognise one of those which they had not ventured to raise. But this glimmer of hope faded like all the rest. The man remembered very well what sort of coffin he had made for the Hofrath von Schiller, and he certainly saw nothing like it here. It had been of the plainest sort, he believed without even a plate; and in such damp as this it could have lasted but a few years.

“The fame of this second expedition got abroad like that of the first, and the comments of the public were louder than before. Invectives of no measured sort fell on the mayor in torrents. Not only did society in general take offence, but a variety of persons in authority, particularly ecclesiastical dignitaries, began to talk of interfering. Schwabe was haunted by the idea of the ‘clearing out,’ which was now close at hand. That dismal hole in the corner of the churchyard once closed and the turf laid down, the dust of Schiller would be lost for ever. He determined to proceed. His position of Bürgermeister put the means in his power, and this time he was resolved to keep his secret. To find the skull was now his utmost hope, but for that he would make a final struggle. The keys were still in the hands of Bielke the sexton, who, of course, was under his control. He sent for him, bound him over to silence, and ordered him to be at the churchyard at midnight on the 19th of March. In like manner, he summoned three day-labourers whom he pledged to secrecy, and engaged to meet him at the same place and at the same hour, but singly and without lanterns. Attention should not be attracted if he could help it.

“When the night came, he himself, with a trusty servant, proceeded to the entrance of the Kassengewölbe. The four men were already there. In darkness they all entered, raised the trap-door, adjusted the ladder, and descended to the abode of the dead. Not till then were lanterns lighted; it was just possible that some late wanderer might, even at that hour, cross the churchyard. Schwabe seated himself on a step of the ladder and directed the workmen. Fragments of broken coffins they piled up in one corner, and bones in another. Skulls as they were found were placed in a heap by themselves. The work went on from twelve o’clock till about three, for three successive nights, at the end of which time twenty-three skulls had been found. These the Bürgermeister caused to be put into a sack and carried to his house, where he himself took them out and placed them in rows on a table.

“It was hardly done ere he exclaimed, ‘_That_ must be Schiller’s!’ There was one skull that differed enormously from all the rest, both in size and in shape. It was remarkable, too, in another way: alone of all those on the table it retained an entire set of the finest teeth, and Schiller’s teeth had been noted for their beauty. But there were other means of identification at hand. Schwabe possessed the cast of Schiller’s head, taken after death by Klauer, and with this he undertook to make a careful comparison and measurement. The two seemed to him to correspond, and, of the twenty-two others, not one would bear juxtaposition with the cast. Unfortunately the lower jaw was wanting, to obtain which a fourth nocturnal expedition had to be undertaken. The skull was carried back to the Gewölbe, and many jaws were tried ere one was found which fitted, and for beauty of teeth corresponded with, the upper jaw. When brought home, on the other hand, it refused to fit any other cranium. One tooth alone was wanting, and this was said by an old servant of Schiller’s had been extracted at Jena in his presence.

“Having got thus far, Schwabe invited three of the chief medical authorities to inspect his discovery. After careful measurements, they declared that among the twenty-three skulls there was but one from which the cast could have been taken. He then invited every person in Weimar and its neighbourhood, who had been on terms of intimacy with Schiller, and admitted them to the room one by one. The result was surprising. Without an exception they pointed to the same skull as that which must have been the poet’s. The only remaining chance of mistake seemed to be the possibility of other skulls having eluded the search, and being yet in the vault. To put this to rest, Schwabe applied to the Landschaftscollegium, in whose records was kept a list of all persons buried in the Kassengewölbe. It was ascertained that since the last ‘clearing out’ there had been exactly twenty-three interments. At this stage the Bürgermeister saw himself in a position to inform the Grand Duke and Goethe of his search and its success. From both he received grateful acknowledgments. Goethe unhesitatingly recognised the head, and laid stress on the peculiar beauty and evenness of the teeth.

“The new cemetery lay on a gently rising ground on the south side of the town. Schwabe’s favourite plan was to deposit what he had found—all that he now ever dreamed of finding—of his beloved poet on the highest point of the slope, and to mark the spot by a simple monument, so that travellers at their first approach might know where the head of Schiller lay. One forenoon in early spring he led Frau von Wolzogen and the Chancellor von Müller to the spot. They approved his plan, and the remaining members of Schiller’s family—all of whom had left Weimar—signified their assent. They ‘did not desire,’ as one of themselves expressed it, ‘to strive against Nature’s appointment that man’s earthly remains should be reunited with herself;’ they would prefer that their father’s dust should rest in the ground rather than anywhere else. But the Grand Duke and Goethe decided otherwise.