What Hamlet’s Gravedigger Teaches Us.

Previously in this series on the Stratford-upon-Avon Shakespeare Monument:

1) Waugh-Bate Debate #2: the Facts of John Weever's Transcription.

2) What Hamlet’s Gravedigger Teaches Us.

3) Is John Shakespeare the Figure in the Stratford Monument?

4) Stratford Shakespeare’s Undersized Grave

In my previous post — “Waugh-Bate Debate #2: the Facts ofJohn Weever's Transcription” [link] — I address Jonathan Bate’s erroneous claim that “[the Stratford Shakespeare] monument was transcribed within a year of [Shaksper’s] death [in 1616].”  In this post, I begin a further exploration of the probable facts regarding the Monument.

“How long will a man lie i' the earth ere he rot?” Hamlet asks the gravedigger in the play Hamlet.  He receives an extended answer that is not only highly amusing but informative.  But how did this  gravedigger know so much about how bodies preserve in the grave?  Was he some kind of ghoul who surreptitiously went around exhuming bodies?

At a point he presents Hamlet with the skull of Yorrick the one time court jester.  But how, out of all skulls in England, did he know to whom that particular skull belonged?

Actually, he was just a much funnier than usual but otherwise normal practitioner of his craft.  In England land was at a premium.  Land to expand graveyards simply was not available. Gravedigger’s dug up as many bodies as they buried.  In this instance, the gravedigger was digging up Yorrick’s grave, as he conversed with Hamlet, in order for it to host a new occupant.

Graves were continually reused.  The less the family of the dead could donate, the shorter their loved one’s lease on his or her bit of ground.  For this reason, 19^th century accounts of the “God’s Acre” graveyard, beside ancient Holy Trinity Church, in Stratford-upon-Avon, recount no earlier date on any gravestone than 1672.  While reference was often made, in those days, to rising from one’s grave to meet one’s final judgment, for the vast majority of people it was a euphemism, a comforting myth.

Graves within the church building, however, were a different matter.  First of all, they cost a lot of money.  Even then, other factors must be met.  Shakespeare’s monument, for example, is said to have been permitted to him in lieu of having purchased church tithes for the last 10 or so years of his life.  While no documentary evidence of such a custom seems to be available, it has long been spoken of as an established fact even by Trinity historians.  Regardless, he had to have donated a lot of money, in addition, in order to be provided a grave within the church.  More still to have space assigned to host a monument.  Even then, it is quite possible that he would have been removed before now if he hadn’t become such a lucrative source of post-mortem income.

Historians have regularly observed, over the centuries, that Shakespeare’s monument was not at all the result of his having been The Bard but rather of his having purchased the tithes.  I’ve made my position clear, in my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof [link], that the monument existed for the memory of a wealthy man of the town who had sufficient funds to buy the space and material and to engage the sculptor.  That man put no touches on his monument to indicate that he had written so much as a single line of a single play or poem.  What he did compose as a swatch of doggerel for his grave that makes clear that he was barely literate.

The William Shakspere of the monument proudly presented a bag of grain to the world, the source, together with usury, real estate, and theater shares, of most of his considerable wealth and of his right to a grave within the chancel.  He had every right to  be proud.  Barely able to write, he had proved to be a highly energetic, industrious and wily investor.  He was a man constantly on the watch for opportunity and able to recognize it when he saw it.  In today’s money, at the end of his life he was a millionaire.

As for what followed, I quote from my  Edward de Vere was Shakespeare:

Prior to 1623, the playwright and poet Shake-speare had no flesh and blood.  Shakspere’s frauds [selling the playwright’s manuscripts as his own — one of his less savory revenue streams] were known only by a very few, among the general public, and probably believed by fewer still.  With the publication of a “collected plays,” questions were sure to be asked, and persisted in, about who this Shake-speare had been, why there was no record at all of the man behind the name.  For this reason, and several others, Pavier was effectively ordered to cease publication and the Herberts set about “doing the thing right”.

It was probably at this time, while checking out the actual fate of the player, since his exit from London, that the group became aware that he had a funerary monument and a crypt in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford.  A plaque was struck declaring him to have been the Immortal Bard and quietly appeared below the likeness.[1]

Mine is not the majority opinion as to the nature of the monument.  In the posts to follow, I will present the evidence of the matter.  I submit that the evidence will powerfully support my position and no other.

First I will examine the theory that the monument actually first belonged to William Shakspere’s father, John. [Next>>>]

---

[1] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley.  Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof. Richmond, VA.: The Virtual Vanaprastha, 2013. xxix & xxx.

• Waugh-Bate Debate #2: the Facts of John Weever's Transcription. June 24, 2018.  ‘“Let us begin with the facts,” Jonathan Bate quite rightly suggests as he launches the initial salvo of his argument for William Shaksper as the poet and playwright William Shakespeare.  His years of public speaking serve him well as he launches into his opening statement in the recent debate between himself and Alexander Waugh.  What could argue his case better, or more simply, than "the facts"?’
• The Great Waugh-Bate Debate #1: Steven Steinburg’s Rebuttal and Alexander Waugh’s Encrypted Polimanteia. February 01, 2018. “All of this said, I felt that Alexander Waugh started off slowly but continually grew stronger as the debate proceeded.  He did well.  Jonathan Bate, on the other hand, is a much more effective public speaker.  For all of his many errors, he probably appeared to the general public to be the more knowledgeable party.”
• Falstaff's Sack. August 7, 2017.  'The question Mr. Hart addresses is “Just what is sack?”.  This is not the first time the question has been addressed but his is a particularly thorough attempt at an answer.'
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

Click here to visit my "Edward de Vere, Shakespeare and Elizabethan Subjects Information Exchange" Facebook Group.  Join us!  It's fun!