Virtual Grub Street: “In this uncarued marble”: Shakespeare’s Tomb [Revised 11/1/21]

The Palace at Rycote.

In this series:

Desperately Seeking Bridget (de Vere)
“In this uncarued marble”: Shakespeare’s Tomb

Elizabeth Trentham, the dowager Countess of Oxford, signed her final Will and Testament on 25 November 1612.[1] Her husband, Edward, the deceased 17^th Earl of Oxford, was much on her mind.

I joyfullie committ my bodie to the earth from whence it was taken desiringe to be buried in the Church of Hackney within the Countie of Middlesex, as neare unto the bodie of my said late deare and noble lorde and husband as maye bee and that to be done as privately and with as little pompe and ceremonie as possible may be. Onlie I will that there bee in the said Church erected for us a tombe fittinge our degree and of such chardge as shall seem good to myne Executors hereafter named,…[2]

The Will was proved 15 Feb. 1612 [1613 N.S.]. The exact date of her death is not known but is believed to have been in December.

It is clear from the above quote that Edward de Vere had been interred, at that point, inside St. Augustine, the parish church of Hackney. He had been dead upwards of 8 years.

The Countess’s description is consistent with the first epitaph written upon William Shakespeare. John Donne himself must have been touched by the poem as a close version of it was discovered among his loose papers, after his death, and published as his own in the first edition of his complete poems[3].

Epitaph upon William Shakespeare

Renowned Spencer lye a thought more nye

To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumond lye

A little neerer Spenser, to make roome

For Shakespeare in your threefold, fowerfold Tombe.

To lodge all fowre in one bed make a shift

Vntill Doomesdaye, for hardly will a fift

Betwixt ye day and yis by Fate be slayne,

For whom your Curtaines may be drawn againe.

If your precedency in death doth barre

A fourth place in your sacred sepulcher,

In this uncarued marble of thine owne,

Sleepe, rare Tragoedian, Shakespeare, sleep alone;

Thy unmolested peace, vnshared Caue,

Possesse as Lord, not Tenant, of thy Graue,

That vnto us & others it may be

Honor hereafter to be layde by thee.

The epitaph has since been shown to be from the pen of William Basse. And it has been shown to be the first known memorial poem for Shakespeare because Ben Jonson felt it necessary to reply to it in his own memorials in the front matter of the 1623 First Folio.

We know that Basse lived much of his young adult life under the roof and patronage of Sir Richard, Lord Viscount Wenman, whose estate was located in the town of Thame.[4] That would at least have made him a near neighbor of Edward de Vere’s son-in-law Francis Norrys, the Baron Norris of Rycote, and Vere’s daughter the Baroness Bridget.[5] More in his middle age, Basse moved to the nearby village of Moreton and set up house for himself. This would seem to have been after the Baron’s death, though, if earlier, it would only have made the two some half-mile closer neighbors.

A very effusive elegy the young poet may have written to the Baron sometime between 1621, when Norris took the title by which he is addressed in the poem, and 1622, when Norris died by his own hand, indicates that he had hope of receiving a great deal from Norris as patron. At the very least, it was written before the fatal event of 1622. We have only space for the final surviving stanza.

In playne (my honour'd Lord) I was not borne.

Audacious vowes, or forraigne legs, to use;

Nature denyed my outside to adorne.

And I of art to learne outsides refuse.

Yet, haveing of them both enough to scorne

Silence & vulgar prayse, this humble Muse,

And her meane favourite, at yo^r comand

Chose, in this kinde, to kisse your noble hand.

Whether Basse knew the Baron from afar (Thame and Rycote Palace were less than 5 miles apart) or under the Baron’s roof is not certain. What is certain is that the two shared a milieu. By the rural measure of the day, they were neighbors.

The connection was sufficiently enduring that in 1649 or 1650, the baron's granddaughter received the poetry manuscript of 52 pages, in which the elegy to her grandfather first appeared, 'dedicated to her in her full panoply of titles: “To the Right Noble and vertuous Lady, the Lady Bridget, Countess of Lindsey, and Baroness of Eresbie and Ricot, in verse, with Verses to the Right Hon. Francis Lord Norreys, Earl of Berkshire (in his day).”'[6] It had taken thus long for the gentlemanly Basse to deign to publish.

St. Augustine, the Parish church of Hackney, was demolished in 1798. At the time of the revised 1735 edition of Stowe’s A survey of the cities of London and Westminster, borough of Southwark the church had still been intact and the editor Robert Seymour, or an assistant, recorded the tombs within the edifice. There they found

On the North Side of the Chancel, first an antient Table Monument, with a fair grey Marble Stone without Inscription, there were Coats of Arms on the Sides, but torn off. This Monument is concealed by the School-master’s Pew.[7]

This would arguably be the “uncarued marble” of Basse’s poem. G. E. Mitton did his own tour of the tombs that had been preserved as part of the new St. John’s Church for his 1908 survey of Hackney and Stoke-Newington. No mention is made of that particular tomb.

[1] “Last will and testament, dated 25 November 1612, of Oxford’s widow, Elizabeth (nee Trentham) de Vere, Countess of Oxford,…” The Oxford Authorship Site. http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Probate/PROB_11-121_ff_74-75.pdf.

[2] Ward, B.M. The Mystery of Mr. W. H., 99.

[3] Donne, John. Poems, by J. D. With elegies on the authors death. (1633).

[4] Basse, William. The poetical works of William Basse (1893). R. Warwick Bond, ed.

[5] See my “Desperately Seeking Bridget (de Vere)” Virtual Grub Street. 24 August 2014. for a complete rehearsal of these and many other facts regarding Edward de Vere’s daughter. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2014/08/desperately-seeking-bridget-de-vere.html

[6] Basse. 154. “To The Right Hon, Francis Lord Norreys, Earl of Berkshire (in his dayes).”

[7] Stowe, John. A survey of the cities of London and Westminster, borough of Southwark (1735). II.IV.782.