ok after his interests in his theaters. It is not
improbable that his health forced him to retire to Stratford, for it
is difficult to see how any one could have produced nearly two
Shakespearean plays a year for almost twenty years without breaking
down under the strain. He had in addition almost certainly helped to
manage the production of the plays, and tradition says that he was
also an actor. Some of the parts which he is said to have played are
the ghost in _Hamlet_, Adam in _As You Like It_, and Old Knowell in
Ben Jonson's _Every Man in his Humor_.

[Illustration: STRATFORD-ON-AVON, SHOWING CHURCH WHERE SHAKESPEARE IS
BURIED.]

In 1616, at the age of fifty-two, this master-singer of the world,
who, in De Quincey's phrase, was "a little lower than the angels,"
died and was buried in the parish church at Stratford. Shakespeare
knew that in the course of time graves were often opened and the bones
thrown into the charnel house. The world is thankful that he
deliberately planned to have his resting place remain unmolested. His
grave was dug seventeen feet deep and over it was placed the following
inscription, intended to frighten those who might think of moving his
bones:--

[Illustration: INSCRIPTION OVER SHAKESPEARE'S TOMB.]

Publication of his Plays.--It is probable that Shakespeare himself
published only two early poems. Sixteen of his plays appeared in print
during his lifetime; but the chances are that they were taken either
from notes or from stage copies, more or less imperfect and
surreptitiously obtained. The twentieth century has seen one of these
careless reprints of a single play sell for more than three times as
much as it cost to build a leading Elizabethan theater.[22] If
Shakespeare himself had seen to the publication of his plays,
succeeding generations would have been saved much trouble in puzzling
over obscurities due to an imperfect text. We must remember, however,
that publishing a play was thought to injure its success on the stage.
One manager offered a printer a sum now equal to $100 not to publish a
copy of a play that he had secured.

The _First Folio_ edition of Shakespeare's works was published in
1623, seven years after his death, by two of his friends, John Heming
and Henry Condell. In their dedication of the plays they say:--

"We have but collected them and done an office to the dead ...
without ambition either of self profit or fame, only to keep the
memory of so worthy