Shakespeares Bones

Shakespeare's Bones

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Title: Shakespeare's Bones
Author: C. M. Ingleby
Release Date: June, 2005 [EBook #8379] [This file was first posted on
July 5, 2003]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
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SHAKESPEARE'S BONES ***

Transcribed by David Price, email [email protected]

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