The funeral of "Will. Shakespeare, gent.," ac cording to the parish register, occurred on the 25th of April. remains were deposited in the chancel of the church, that being the legal place for the interment of the owners of the tithes. The grave is covered with a slab bearing this inscription: Good freed, for Jesus sake forbears To digg the dust eneloased heare: Bleste be the man that spares then stones. And curst be he that moves my bones.
According to a tradition that dates back only to 1693. the lines were composed by the poet himself "a little before his death:" but neither Dug,dale in 1656 .nor Rowe in 1709, when referring to the tomb, ascribes them to him. If lie desired that the verses, or something to the same effect, should be put on the stone, it was doubtless from fear that his bones might be re moved at some time to the ancient charnel house that adjoined the chancel wall near his grave. The monument to Shakespeare in the ehaneel was erected before 1623. when it was mentioned in the verses by Leonard Digges in the folio pub lished that year. It consists of an ornamental niche in which is a life-sized bust supposed to have been copied from a posthumous cast of the poet's face. It has no merit as a work of art, but as a portrait it must have been considered tolerable to be accepted by the surviving relatives. It was originally painted, the eyes being hazel and the hair and beard auburn: hut in 1793, at Malone's instigation, it was covered with a coat of white paint, which remained until ISM. when the former coloring was restored. The only other portrait of the poet the authen ticity of which is indisputable is the engraving by Martin Droeshont in the Folio of 1623: but though it has a general resemblance to the bust, it is equally poor in execution. A painted por trait in the Shakespeare Memorial Gallery at Stratford is believed by some experts to he the orignal of the Folio engraving, but it may have been copied from the latter. Shakespeare's widow survived him for more than seven .rears, the record of the burial being dated February 8, 1623. Tradition says that she earnestly desired to be buried in the same grave with her husband, and her tombstone is beside his.
The Folio of 1623, the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, was nominally edited by John Herring and Henry Condell, two of his friends and fellow-actors, and was brought out by a syndicate of five publishers and printers. It contained thirty-six of the thirty-seven plays commonly ascribed to the poet (Pericles being omitted), arranged as in ninny modern editions under the head of "Comedies." "Histories." and "Tragedies." Twenty plays appear in it for the first time. the other sixteen having been previous ly printed in quarto form.
The typographical execution of the volume demands particular attention on account of the confused and contradictory descriptions given by some editors and commentators and the use that the Baconian heretics have made of it Accord ing to the latter, the Folio was edited by Bacon, being a collection of his plays carefully revised, corrected, and put into the shape in which he de sired to hand them down to posterity. Shake spearean critics, on the other hand. assume that the Folio is just what it purports to be—a col lection of plays by William Shakespeare. made seven years after his death by persons who had no skill in editing, and who did little except to furnish the publisher with the best copies of the plays they could get; these being partly manu scripts used in the theatre, and partly the earlier quartos that had also been used by the actors in learning their parts. These critics believe that internal evidence shows, beyond a doubt, that the Folio could not have had editor or edit ing in any proper sense. That the 'copy' came from the theatre is proved by the fact that the names of actors are often found prefixed to speeches instead of the proper dramatis persona': as, for instance. "Kemp" nine times and "Kern." thrice before Dogberry's speeches, and "Cowley" twice and "Conley" once before those of Verges, in ibuch Ado (iv. 2). William Kemp and Richard Cowley were actors of the time in London. Sonic of the plays are divided through out into acts and scenes: some only into nets: some partly divided, or inconsistently divided; some not divided at all. Only seven plays have lists of dramatis persona'—in every instance at the end of the play. Words and phrases from foreign languages are wretchedly corrupted. Latin is printed with tolerable accuracy, though sometimes editors have been in doubt whether• a phrase was Latin or French; but French, Span ish, and Italian are almost invariably misprint ed. and often ridiculously so. In the ilrrry
Wires (i. 4), for instance, "Ma foi, it fait fort ehaud: je m'en l.ais a la cour—la grande af faire" (as corrected by Rowe) appears thus: "mai foy, it fait fort amid°, Jr man. voi a le Court la Grand affoires;" and ''un garcon" as "oon garsoon." Verse is often printed as prose, and prose as verse; stage directions are made • parts of the text, and vice versa. The punctua tion is careless throughout, and often absurd. In short, there is hardly a possible typographical blunder or perversion of which we do not find frequent examples. 'Fleming and Condon doubt less did the work as well as they could, but not as Shakespeare, if he had lived, would have done it, or as Bacon, if the book had been his, would have done it. The player-editors, indeed, seem to think that their task has been performed very creditably. In their preface. after referring to the quartos as "diverse stolne, and surrepti tious copies. maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors," they add: "even those are now offered to your view curd, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers [metre], as lie conceived thorn." It has nevertheless been shown by careful examination and computation that the number of 'readings' in the volume that are either clearly wrong or in the highest de gree suspicious is about twenty thousand, and the number of typographical errors of all kinds in those readings and elsewhere must be many times twenty thousand. The second folio (1632) was a reprint of the first, with few changes for the better except (as Professor• C. Alphonso Smith, of the Louisiana State University, has shown in the Leipzig L'nglise•he Studien for De cember. 1901) in syntactical corrections. The third folio, a reprint of the second, with few variations of any value or interest, was first pie fished in 1663. It was reissued the next yeThr with seven plays added: Pericles; The London. Prodigal; The History of Thomas Lord (Wm ; Sir John Oldeastle ; The Puritan Widow ; A Yorkshire Tragedy; and Locrine. The fourth folio (1685) was a reprint of that of 1664 (in cluding the seven plays just mentioned) with the spelling somewhat modernized, hut no other change. After the publication of the fourth folio, no collected edition of Shakespeare's works appeared until 1709, when Rowe's (6 vols., octavo) was brought out. It was based on the text of the fourth folio. The poems were not included until the second edition (9 vols.) was issued in 1714. Rowe made some corrections in the text, and modernized the spelling and point ing• besides inserting lists of dramatis Among other complete editions of the eight eenth century and the early part of the nine teenth that have any critical value, the follow ing may be mentioned: Pope's (6 vols., 1723-25; other editions appeared in 1728, 1735, and 1 768) : Lewis Theobald's (7 vols.. 1733; other eds. in 1740, 1752, etc.) ; Sir Thomas Hanmer's (6 vole., 1744) ; Bishop Warburton's (S vols., 1747) : Dr. Samuel Johnson's vols., 171151 ; Edward Ca pell's (10 vols., 1768) : George Steevens's revision of Johnson's ed. (10 vols.. 1773: 2d ed. 1778) Isaac Reed's revision of the preceding (10 vols.. 1785) ; Edmund Malone's (10 vols., 1790) : Steevens's, with Boydell's il lustrations (9 vols., 1802; in parts. 1791-1802) ; Reed's first ed. with his name (21 vols., 1803; 2d. ed. 1813) ; Alexander Chalmers's (10 vols., 1S05) the of 1821," edited by James Boswell, from a corrected proof left by Malone (21 vols.). Since 1821 editions have rapidly multiplied. and the hulk of Shakespearean liter ature has immensely increased. Fo• the bibliog raphy of the subject. consult: Lowndes, Library Manual (Bolm's ed.) ; Franz Thimm, Shake spearcana (1864 and 1871) , the Encyc/opwttia Britaimica (9th ed.), and the British Museum Catalogue, the Shakespearean: of which were lished separately in 1897. The Catalogue of the Barton Collection (Boston Public Library) is also valuable for reference. Consult: Dowden, 8haksperc: His Mind and Art ( 1S75) Corson, lotroduction to the i'qudy of Shakespeare (18S9) ; Hudson, Life, Art. and Characters of Shak, speare (1872); Ilalliwell-Phillipps, Life of Shakespeare (7th ed. 18S7) ; Lee, Life of William Shakespeare (1898) ; and the biographical and critical intro duction. by Furnivall, in the Leopold edition, and the commentary in Furness's New Variorum edition.