The Shakespeare funerary monument is a memorial to

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

located inside

Holy Trinity Church Holy Trinity Church may refer to: Albania * Holy Trinity Church (Berat), Berat County * Holy Trinity Church, Lavdar, Opar, Korçë County Armenia * Holy Trinity Church, Yerevan Australia * Garrison Church, Sydney, South Wales, also known as ''H ...

Stratford-upon-Avon Stratford-upon-Avon (), commonly known as just Stratford, is a market town and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon district, in the county of Warwickshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It is situated on the River Avon, north-we ...

Warwickshire Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon an ...

, the church in which Shakespeare was baptised and where he was buried in the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ove ...

two days after his death. The monument, carved in pale blue limestone,Honan, Park. ''Shakespeare: A Life''. Oxford University Press. 1998. p. 402 is mounted on the north wall of the chancel. It has traditionally been identified as the work of the sculptor Gerard Johnson, but this attribution is challenged by Lena Cowen Orlin, who argues that it was more likely modelled from life by Gerard's brother,

Nicholas Johnson Nicholas Johnson (born September 23, 1934) is an American academic and lawyer. He wrote ''How to Talk Back to Your Television Set'' and was a Federal Communications Commission commissioner from 1966 to 1973. He is retired from teaching at the Un ...

. The monument features a demi-figure of the poet holding a (real) quill pen in one hand and a piece of paper resting on a cushion in the other. The style, which was popular from the early- to the mid-17th century, was most commonly used to memorialize divines, academics, and those professions with pretensions of learning. The buttoned

doublet Doublet is a word derived from the Latin ''duplus'', "twofold, twice as much",, the limner from Bristol hired to do the restoration, painted a picture of the monument on

pasteboard Card stock, also called cover stock and pasteboard, is paper that is thicker and more durable than normal writing and printing paper, but thinner and more flexible than other forms of paperboard. Card stock is often used for business cards, p ...

before 1748. Greene also had a plaster cast of the head made before the restoration began. Shakespeare's pen has been repeatedly stolen and replaced since, and the paint has been renewed. In 1793 Edmond Malone, the noted Shakespeare scholar, persuaded the vicar to paint the monument white, in keeping with the Neoclassical taste of the time. The paint was removed in 1861 and the monument was repainted in the colours recovered from beneath the white layer.B. C. A. Windle, ''Shakespeare Country'', 1899, p. 35 In 1973 intruders removed the figure from its niche and tried to chip out the inscription. Local police took the view that they were looking for valuable Shakespeare manuscripts, which were rumoured to be hidden within the monument. According to

Sam Schoenbaum Samuel Schoenbaum (6 March 1927 – 27 March 1996) was a leading 20th-century Shakespearean biographer and scholar. Biography Born in New York, Schoenbaum taught at Northwestern University from 1953 to 1975, serving for the last four years o ...

, who examined it after the incident, the figure suffered only "very slight damage".

Interpretations

Gerard Johnson carving William Shakespeare (by Henry Wallis) (cropped)

In the 1850s, the scientist

Richard Owen Sir Richard Owen (20 July 1804 – 18 December 1892) was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and paleontologist. Owen is generally considered to have been an outstanding naturalist with a remarkable gift for interpreting fossils. Owe ...

argued that a

death mask A death mask is a likeness (typically in wax or plaster cast) of a person's face after their death, usually made by taking a cast or impression from the corpse. Death masks may be mementos of the dead, or be used for creation of portraits. It ...

discovered in Germany by Ludwig Becker in 1849, known as the Kesselstadt Death Mask, was probably used by Gerard Johnson to model the face of the effigy. The mask had been claimed to be of Shakespeare because of a similarity to an alleged Shakespeare portrait Becker had bought two years earlier. This was depicted by the painter

Henry Wallis Henry Wallis (21 February 1830 – 20 December 1916) was a British Pre-Raphaelite painter, writer and collector. Wallis was born in London on 21 February 1830, but his father's name and occupation are unknown. When in 1845 his mother, Mary ...

in his imaginary scene portraying

Ben Jonson Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...

showing the death mask to the sculptor. However, measurements of the mask and the monument figure did not correspond, most notably the bony structure of the forehead, and the idea was discredited. Though the Kesselstadt mask does not seem to fit,

Park Honan Leonard Hobart Park Honan (17 September 1928 – 27 September 2014) was an American academic and author who spent most of his career in the UK. He wrote widely on the lives of authors and poets and published important biographies of such writers as ...

asserts that the facial features of the monument do appear to have been modelled on a mask: "His eyes stare, the face is heavy and the nose is small and sharp. Because of the shrinkage of the muscles and possibly of the nostrils, the upper lip is elongated". Lena Cowen Orlin, however, proposes that the monument may have been commissioned by Shakespeare himself, during his lifetime, from Nicholas Johnson; and that the effigy was sculpted from the life. Critics have generally been unkind about the appearance of the sculpture.

Thomas Gainsborough Thomas Gainsborough (14 May 1727 (baptised) – 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of ...

wrote that "Shakespeare's bust is a silly smiling thing".

J. Dover Wilson John Dover Wilson CH (13 July 1881 – 15 January 1969) was a professor and scholar of Renaissance drama, focusing particularly on the work of William Shakespeare. Born at Mortlake (then in Surrey, now in Greater London), he attended Lancing ...

, a critic and biographer of Shakespeare, once remarked that the Bard's effigy makes him look like a "self-satisfied pork butcher." Sir

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...

pointed out that the

iconographical Iconology is a method of interpretation in cultural history and the history of the visual arts used by Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky and their followers that uncovers the cultural, social, and historical background of themes and subjects in the visu ...

type represented by the figure is that of a scholar or divine; his description of the effigy is "a self-satisfied schoolmaster". Schoenbaum, however, says the monument is a typical example of Jacobean Renaissance style, and Spielmann says the "stiff simplicity" of the figure was more suitable for a sepulchral sculpture in a church than a more life-like depiction.Spielmann, 12.

Gallery

File:Dugdale sketch 1634 Detail.jpg, Sketch by

William Dugdale Sir William Dugdale (12 September 1605 – 10 February 1686) was an English antiquary and herald. As a scholar he was influential in the development of medieval history as an academic subject. Life Dugdale was born at Shustoke, near Coleshi ...

, probably made in 1649, and afterwards used by

Wenceslaus Hollar Wenceslaus Hollar (23 July 1607 – 25 March 1677) was a prolific and accomplished Bohemian graphic artist of the 17th century, who spent much of his life in England. He is known to German speakers as ; and to Czech speakers as . He is particu ...

for his engraving in Dugdale's ''Antiquities of Warwickshire'' File:Wenceslas Hollar - Clopton and Shakespeare (monument).jpg, The first published illustration of the monument, in Dugdale's ''Antiquities of Warwickshire'' (1656), engraved by Hollar File:Antiquitiesofwar00dugd 0504.jpg, Hollar engraving in full context File:Antiquitiesofwar00dugd 0507.jpg, Later page in Dugdale identifying the above monument as that of "our late famous Poet ''Will. Shakespere''", who was born and was buried in Stratford-upon-Avon File:Rowe Shakespeare monument 1709.jpg,

Michael Van der Gucht Michael Vandergucht or Michiel van der Gucht (c. 1660 – 16 October 1725) was a Flemish engraver and painter who worked for most of his career in England.Nicholas Rowe's ''Works of Mr. William Shakespear'' (1709), made from a plate copied from Hollar, as the reversed shadowing indicates File:WS monument by Vertue.png, George Vertue's 1725 illustration for Pope's edition of Shakespeare's works, derived from his own drawing of the monument and the

Chandos portrait Chandos may refer to: Titles * Duke of Chandos, and Baron Chandos, three English titles, all extinct * Viscount Chandos, a modern title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom Businesses * Chandos Records * Chandos Publishing Other uses * Chandos ( ...

File:Vertue monument sketch001.jpg, Sketch made by George Vertue in 1737 File:Shakespeare's Monument painted by John Hall 1748.jpg, Painting of monument by limner John Hall made before its 1748–49 restoration File:Grignion Shakespeare monument 1786.jpg, Engraving of Shakespeare's monument by Charles Grignion, derived from Hollar's engraving, first published in John Bell's 1786 edition of Shakespeare File:Wheler monument 1806.jpg, Engraving by

Francis Eginton Francis Eginton (1737–1805), sometimes spelled Egginton, was an English glass painter. He painted windows for cathedrals, churches, chapels and stately homes, etc., around the country, leaving 50 large works altogether; his work was also expo ...

from a drawing by Robert Bell Wheler published in Wheler's ''History and Antiquities of Stratford-upon-Avon'' in 1806 Image:Stratford Holy Trinity Church3.jpg, The immediate context of the monument File:Stratford-upon-Avon - Church of the Holy Trinity - Shakespeare's funerary monument.jpg, The wider context of the memorial, above the graves of Shakespeare and his wife File:Shakespeare-holy-trinity-18.jpg, Close-up of features File:Shakespeare-holy-trinity-13.jpg, Close-up of hand and quill File:Shakespeare-holy-trinity-33.jpg, Profile from altar File:MLSR0828.jpg, View of chancel of Holy Trinity Church, monument on left wall

Notes and references

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Shakespeare's Funerary Monument Busts in the United Kingdom Monuments and memorials in Warwickshire Funerary monument, Shakespeare's Buildings and structures in Stratford-upon-Avon 1610s sculptures Memorials to William Shakespeare Skulls in art

Interpretations

Gallery

Notes and references

Further reading

External links