Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/239

 io" s. ii. SEPT. 3. 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

195

<jrreyfriars Churchyard many of the inscrip tions are fast becoming illegible.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

Valuable contributions on this subject appeared in 6 th S. ix. 86, 493 ; x. 34 ; and 8 l S. xii. 125. The second reference is of specia importance. N. 11. E.

See ' Gleanings from God's Acre,' by tha most courteous public official, Mr. J. Potter Briscoe, librarian of the Nottingham Free Libraries. T. CANN HUGHES, M.A., F.8.A.

Lancaster.

SHAKESPEARE'S GRAVE (10 th S. i. 288, 331 352, 416, 478). The fact that MR. I. H. PLATI has lived in Gloucestershire is of itself no argument. One has often to go away from home to learn news of home. I, of course, did not know that he was a former resident of that county. However, the points raised in this controversy seemed to me so im- portant that I determined to revisit St rat- lord and endeavour, if possible, to ascertain something definite. The result of my visit is fully explained in the following letter from my friend Mr. W. S. Brassington, F.S.A., the librarian of the Shakespearean Memorial there :

" You ask my opinion upon the note by MR. I. H- PLATT on ' Shakespeare's Grave.' Though I am a -constant reader of ' N. & Q.' it is not often that I contribute to its pages. This note, however, very specially appeals to me, so must be fully answered.

"1. The bust of Shakespeare now on his monu- ment in the chancel of the parish church of fitratford-upon-Avou undoubtedly is the original one placed there by the poet's family within seven .years of his death, and referred to in the lines by Leonard Digges in the folio of 1023.

" In 1746 John Ward had the bust repainted.

" 3. It was put in pickle by Malone, who, having thus removed Ward s paint, had the bust painted white. About the middle of the nineteenth century the bust was badly painted by Collins.

"4. Dugdale's drawing is obviously wrong, and it is well known that the sketches of tombs inserted in his 'Warwickshire' are badly drawn, and usually inaccurate, though the monuments are easily recognized from the poorly executed engrav- ings supplied by Dugdale. In this instance it is obvious that the monument never was, and could not have been, as engraved by Dugdale's artist.

"f>. Johnson, the tombmaker who made Shake- re's monument, is known to have produced many similar ones, e.f/., that of John Combe in the chancel of Stratford Church close to Shakespeare's monument. The monument is designed and executed in a manner characteristic of the early part of the seventeenth century, and Shakespeare's bust, except the painting, and a possible injury to the nose, appears as it was during the lifetime of his \vidou- and his children. I know of no monu- nient made in the eighteenth century resembling this in design or execution; it is of distinctly seventeenth-century type.

"6. In any representative collection of engraved portraits of Shakespeare it would be easy to find half a dozen fancy designs of Shakespeare's monu- ment, each differing from the original. The fact is that before the days of photography illustrators, with few exceptions, were not accurate ; indeed, it is impossible for a hasty draughtsman to be so, and the only wonder is that the old drawings so nearly resemble the monument. Much has been made of the position of the small decorative figures on each side of the poet's arms, Dugdale's artist, and others following him, representing these figures as poised at the extreme edge of the cornice in a quite impossible position, an obvious error in drawing, not in accordance with the design of the memorial.

"7. There are discrepancies between Dugdale s drawing of the Clopton monuments in Stratford Church and the originals, quite as startling as those between his drawing of Shakespeare s tomb and the actual object. In this case also the original monuments are still extant, and unaltered except that they have been cleaned and repainted.

As is well known, Mr. Brassington is a most painstaking and diligent Shakespearean student and author, and to his remarks in the above letter it is scarcely necessary to add anything. CHAS. F. FORSHAW, LL.D.

Baltimore House, Bradford.

BACON AND THE DRAMA OF HIS AGE (10 th S. ii. 129). Kuno Fischer clearly referred to the remarks of Bacon in later life on poetry and the theatre generally, for nowhere in Spedding or in any other records connected with the great Elizabethan do we find any disdainful remarks of his concerning the theatrical profession. He never satirized it, and he never vilified, or we may be sure we should have had it dinned in the public ear in the recent lives of Shakespeare such as Mr. Sidney Lee and others have put forth. The question of MR. KREBS is perhaps best answered by the short summary of Bacons views on the subject in * Is It Shakespeare ? John Murray) pp. 269, 270, and also at p. 339, where Bacon s words, revised in later lite 1623), are quoted in full.

NE QUID MMIS.

The reference presumably intended is given by the undersigned in 7 th S. v. 484, under the heading 'Bacon and Shakespeare. It is to De Augmentis Scientiarum,' lib. 11. c. xm. That work appeared in 1623, but is, in fact, an enlarged edition of an earlier one, On the ^roficience and Advancement of Learning, which was published in 1605.

W. T. LYNN.

Black heath.

MARTYRDOM OF ST. THOMAS (10 th S. i. W 8, 450; ii. 30). Seeing Mit. J. HOLDEN M.vMi, HAEI/S remark on St. Thomas of Hereford and his reference to the Antiquary,