1 88 Shakspeare 



So much, then, for the real Shakspeare as 

 revealed by the living language of his verse and 

 proclaimed by the very stream of his life and 

 the business which he helmed. He died at New- 

 Place, Stratford, on April 23rd, 1616, aged fifty- two 

 years, having made his last will and testament on 

 the 25th day of the previous March, the carefully 

 considered will of a thoroughly ban bourgeois. 

 The story was that Drayton, Ben jonson and he 

 had a merry meeting and drank too much, and 

 that he died of a fever contracted in consequence. 

 That he died of a fever is probable enough, but 

 it was more likely contracted from the bad drains 

 in which Stratford long abounded. Was it per- 

 chance with prophetic soul dimly divining the 

 advent of the modern body-snatcher who might 

 rifle his grave and carry off his bones to West- 

 minster Abbey, there to lay them among bones 

 not all worthy of such sepulchral honour, that 

 he wrote the well-known lines placed above his 

 tombstone." 



Good Friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare, 



To digg the dust enclosed here : 

 Blest be the man that spares these stones, 



And curst be he that moves my bones. 



The solemn deprecation has happily been effec- 

 tive, for there after life's fitful lever still lies all 



* Sir Godfrey Kneller is reported to have exclaimed on his 

 death-bed, "By God, I will not be buried in Westminster 

 Abbey." Asked the reason why, he replied, " They do bury 

 fools there." 



