A month after his will was signed, on April 23, 1616, Shake speare died, and as a tithe-owner was buried in the chancel of the parish church. Some doggerel upon the stone that covers the grave has been assigned by local tradition to his own pen. A more elaborate monument, with a bust by the sculptor Gerard John son, was in due course set up on the chancel wall. Anne Shake speare followed her husband on Aug. 6, 1623. The family was never founded. Shakespeare's granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall, made two childless marriages, the first with Thomas Nash of Stratford, the second with John, afterwards Sir John, Barnard of Abington Manor, Northants. His daughter Judith Quiney had three sons, all of whom had died unmarried by 1639. There were, therefore, no direct descendants of Shakespeare in existence after Lady Barnard's death in 1670. Those of his sister, Joan Hart, could, however, still be traced in 1864. On Lady Barnard's death the Henley street houses passed to the Harts, in whose family they remained until 1806. They were then sold, and in 1847 were bought for the public. They are now held with Anne Hathaway's Cottage at Shottery as the Birthplace Trust. Lady Barnard had disposed of the Blackfriars house. The rest of the property was sold under the terms of her will, and New Place passed, first to the Cloptons, who rebuilt it ; then to the Rev. Francis Gastrell, who pulled it down in 1759. The site now forms a public recrea tion-ground, and hard by is a memorial building with a theatre (recently burnt, but to be replaced) in which performances of Shakespeare's plays are given annually in April. Both the Memo rial and the Birthplace contain museums, in which books, docu ments and portraits of Shakespearian interest, together with relics of greater or less authenticity, are stored.
No letter or other writing in Shakespeare's hand can be proved to exist, with the exception of three signatures upon his will, one upon a deposition (May II, 1612) in a lawsuit with which he was remotely concerned, and two upon deeds (March 1 o and 1 1, 1613) in connection with the purchase of his Blackfriars house. A copy of Florio's translation of Montaigne (1603) in the British Museum, a copy of the Aldine edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1502) in the Bodleian, and a copy of the 1612 edition of Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romaines in the Greenock Library, have all been put forward with more or less plausibility as bearing his auto graph name or initials, and, in the third case, a marginal note by him. Aubrey records that he was "a handsome, well-shap't man," and the lameness attributed to him by some writers has its origin only in a too literal interpretation of certain references to spiritual disabilities in the Sonnets.
The following list gives the date of the First Quarto of each such play, and also that of any later Quarto which differs mate rially from the First.
The Quarto Editions Titus Andronicus (1594). A Midsummer Night's Dream 2 Henry VI. (1594). (i600).
3 Henry VI. (1595). The Merchant of Venice (1600).
Richard II. (1597, 1608). Much Ado About Nothing (1600).
Richard III. (1597). The Merry Wives of Windsor Romeo and Juliet (1597, 1599). (1602).
Love's Labour's Lost (1598). Hamlet (1603, 1604).
I Henry IV. (1598). King Lear (i6o8).
2 Henry IV. (1600). Troilus and Cressida (1609).
Henry V. (1600). Othello (1622).
Entries in the Register of copyrights kept by the Company of Stationers indicate that editions of As You Like It and Antony and Cleopatra were contemplated but not published in 1600 and 1608 respectively.
The Quartos differ very much in character. Some of them con tain texts which are practically identical with those of the First Folio ; others show variations so material as to suggest that some alteration, generally by way of shortening for stage purposes, took place. A group of First Quartos, including Romeo and Juliet, Henry V., The Merry Wives of Windsor and Hamlet, are gener ally known as the "Bad" Quartos, and to these should possibly be added King Lear, and almost certainly 2, 3 Henry VI., entitled in this form The Contention betwixt the two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster. These are mostly shortened versions. They are also textually corrupt, and have probably a "surreptitious" origin in "reports" of playhouse performances, printed without the consent of the theatrical companies who owned the plays. Some scholars have supposed that the reporting was done by short hand, but in most cases a memorized reconstruction by an actor or prompter seems more likely. There are those who also believe that they represent "early versions" of the plays. A similar de sire to exploit the commercial value of Shakespeare's reputation probably led to the appearance of his name or initials upon the title-pages of Locrine (1595), Sir John Oldcastle (1600), Thomas Lord Cromwell (1602), The London Prodigal (1605), The Puri tan (1607), A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608) and Pericles (1609). It is not likely that, with the exception of the last three acts of Pericles, he wrote any part of these plays, some of which were not even produced by his company. They were not included in the First Folio of 1623, or in a reprint of it in 1632, known as the Second Folio ; but all seven were appended to the second issue (1664) of the Third Folio (1663) and to the Fourth Folio of 1685. Shakespeare is named as joint author with John Fletcher on the title-page of The Two Noble Kinsmen (1634), and with William. Rowley on that of The Birth of Merlin (1662); there is no rea son for rejecting the former ascription or for accepting the latter. Late entries in the Stationers' Register assign to him Cardenio (with Fletcher), Henry I. and Henry II. (both with Robert Davenport), King Stephen, Duke Humphrey and 1phis and Ianthe; but none of these plays is now extant. Modern conjec ture has attempted to trace his hand in other plays, of which Arden of Feversham (1592), Edward III. (1596), Mucedorus (1598) and The Merry Devil of Edmonton (16°8) are the most important ; it is quite possible that he may have had a share in Edward III. A play on Sir Thomas More, which has been handed down in manuscript, contains a number of passages interpolated in various handwritings ; and a theory that one of those is in that of Shakespeare, and gives indications of his orthography and methods of composition, has been the subject of much recent dis cussion. There is much to be said for it, but it can hardly be regarded as securely established.