sh church, Thomas Quincy, four years her
junior, a son of an old friend of the poet. The ceremony took place
apparently without public asking of the banns and before a license was
procured. The irregularity led to the summons of the bride and
bridegroom to the ecclesiastical court at Worcester and the imposition of
a fine. According to the testimony of John Ward, the vicar, Shakespeare
entertained at New Place his two friends, Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson,
in this same spring of 1616, and 'had a merry meeting,' but 'itt seems
drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour there contracted.' A
popular local legend, which was not recorded till 1762, {272a} credited
Shakespeare with engaging at an earlier date in a prolonged and violent
drinking bout at Bidford, a neighbouring village, {272b} but his
achievements as a hard drinker may be dismissed as unproven. The cause
of his death is undetermined, but probably his illness seemed likely to
take a fatal turn in March, when he revised and signed the will that had
been drafted in the previous January. On Tuesday, April 23, he died at
the age of fifty-two. {272c} On Thursday, April 25 (O.S.), the poet was
buried inside Stratford Church, near the northern wall of the chancel, in
which, as part-owner of the tithes, and consequently one of the
lay-rectors, he had a right of interment. Hard by was the charnel-house,
where bones dug up from the churchyard were deposited. Over the poet's
grave were inscribed the lines:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare
To dig the dust enclosed heare;
Bleste be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.

According to one William Hall, who described a visit to Stratford in
1694, {273} these verses were penned by Shakespeare to suit 'the capacity
of clerks and sextons, for the most part a very ignorant set of people.'
Had this curse not threatened them, Hall proceeds, the sexton would not
have hesitated in course of time to remove Shakespeare's dust to 'the
bone-house.' As it was, the grave was made seventeen feet deep, and was
never opened, even to receive his wife, although she expressed a desire
to be buried with her husband.

[Picture: Signatures from each sheet of the will]

The will. Bequest to his wife.

Shakespeare's will, the first draft of which was drawn up before January
25, 1616, received many interlineations and erasures before it was signed
in the e