Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/80

 4S ARTISTS AND AUTHORS titioner of considerable repute. He left notes of important cases in which he of- ficiated, and their treatment. He would naturally have attended Shakespeare in his last illness, but he makes no mention of the case, nor of the cause of his death. Reverend John Ward, who was vicar of Stratford nearly fifty years after- ward, wrote in his diary " Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merie meeting and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour there con- tracted." The old sanctuary in which he was buried is a noble specimen of decorated gothic architecture, a cruciform structure of yellowish-gray stone, with low eaves and hroad sheltering roof, from the midst of which rises a square battle- mented tower with slender pointed spire. It is approached by a paved stone path bordered with limes, leading from the highway through the graveyard where, beneath a twilight of shade, many generation's of the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. Along the venerable aisles of the nave and in the transept, are effigies and memorial tablets disclosed in the dim religious light. The chancel is dispropor- tionately spacious and has high stained-glass windows at the sides and end. In front of the altar, beneath slabs of gray stone, are the graves of Shakespeare and his family. The widow, who survived him seven years, lies nearest the wall, and on the other side Susanna and her husband, Dr. Hall. The removal of the dust to Westminster Abbey has been prevented by the profane imprecation of the inexplicable epitaph by which the tenant of the tomb, as if in anticipation of the irreconcilable mysteries posterity would discover in his history, bequeathed an undying curse to him who should disturb his repose. Some distance away, and at a considerable height in the north wall of the chancel, upon a bracket between two windows, is a half-length bust of Shake- speare with a pedantic Latin inscription. It was placed in 1623 by Dr. Hall, and being so nearly contemporary, may be considered a portrait. A few years ago the church authorities permitted an American artist to erect a platform from which to study the work minutely. He found one cheek-bone higher than the other, and was of opinion, from the position of the lips and tongue, that it was modelled from a cast taken after death. It is a beefy, commonplace counte- nance, heavy, dull, and vacant, rendered trivial and conceited by foppish mus- taches curled up beneath the nostrils. It bears little resemblance to the familiar Droeshout portrait engraved for the first edition of the plays, and still less to the so-called Stratford portrait exhibited at the museum on Henley Street. This picture was discovered many years ago in the shop of a London antiquarian by an unknown person, who thought the upper part of the head resembled Shake- speare's. The face bore a heavy beard, which was supposed to have been added to save the work from destruction by the Puritans ! As the incidents are related there is no evidence of its genuineness or authenticity. One of the chief attrac- tions of the Memorial Museum in the lovely park near the church, on the banks of the Avon, is a series of photographs of a plaster cast purporting to be a death- mask of Shakespeare, now in the possession of some German potentate, which one of the most eminent English judges declares to be established by evidence sufficient to maintain any proposition in a court of law. It. should be genuine, if