1)--appears to have been peculiar to Italy:

"Then, as the manner of our country is,
In thy best robes uncover'd on the bier,
Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault
Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie."

In Coryat's "Crudities" (1776, vol. ii. p. 27) the practice is thus
described: "The burials are so strange, both in Venice and all other
cities, towns, and parishes of Italy, that they differ not only from
England, but from all other nations whatever in Christendom. For they
carry the corse to church with the face, hands, and feet all naked, and
wearing the same apparel that the person wore lately before he died, or
that which he craved to be buried in; which apparel is interred together
with the body."[741] Singer[742] says that Shakespeare no doubt had seen
this custom particularly described in the "Tragicall History of Romeus
and Juliet:"

"Another use there is, that, whosoever dies,
Borne to the church, with open face, upon the bier he lies,
In wonted weed attir'd, not wrapt in winding sheet."

[741] See Staunton's "Shakespeare," 1864, vol. i. p. 305.

[742] "Shakespeare," 1875, vol. ix. pp. 209, 210.

He alludes to it again in Ophelia's song, in "Hamlet" (iv. 5):

"They bore him barefac'd on the bier."

It was, in bygone times, customary to bury the Danish kings in their
armor; hence the remark of Hamlet (i. 4), when addressing the Ghost:

"What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel,
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous?"

Shakespeare was probably guilty of an anachronism in "Coriolanus" (v. 6)
when he makes one of the lords say:

"Bear from hence his body,
And mourn you for him: let him be regarded
As the most noble corse that ever herald
Did follow to his urn,"

the allusion being to the public funeral of English princes, at the
conclusion of which a herald proclaimed the style of the deceased.

We may compare what Queen Katharine says in "Henry VIII." (iv. 2):

"After my death I wish no other herald,
No other speaker of my living actions,
To keep my honour from corruption,
But such an honest chronicler as Griffith."

It seems to have been the fashion, as far back as the thirteenth
century, to ornament the tombs of eminent persons with figures and
inscriptions on plates of brass; hence, in "Love's Labour's Los