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and remembers with much particularity a large circle of friends among the knights, esquires, and gentlemen of his neighborhood.* This jest, turning upon ten in the hundred, (the usual interest at that time,) and a hundred to ten in favor of the Devil, was an old and a common one among our forefathers; and consequently it has been generally supposed that this epitaph is a fabrication. which was foisted upon Shakespeare. But I am inclined to think that he did crack this innocent joke upon his friend, using, as he would be likely to use, an old, wellknown jest, and giving it a new turn upon the moneylender's name. For Shakespeare was not always writing Hamlet. ""Tis my John a Combe" involves of course the sharp punning jest, 'tis my John ha' come.†

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A project for the enclosing of some common lands near Stratford brings Shakespeare forward in 1614 as a man of weight and consideration in his neighborhood.

* Mr. Halliwell discovered among the Ashmolean MSS. one "written," as he says, "not many years after the death of Shakespeare," in which this version of the above anecdote appears :

"On John Combe, a coveteous rich man, Mr. Wm. Shak-spear wright this att his request while hee was yett liveing for his epitaphe.

"Who lies in this tombe?

Hough, quoth the devil, tis my sone John a Combe

Finis.

"But being dead and making the poor his heires, hee after wrightes this for his

epitaph.

"Howere he lived judge not,

John Combe shall never be forgott

While poore hath memmorye, for he did gather

To make the poore his issue: he their father,

As record of his tilth and seedes,

Did crowne him in his later needes.

Finis. W. Shak."

† Mr. Hunter says that the verses are "allusive to the double sense of the word Combe, as the name of the person there interred, and also the name of a certain measure of corn;" and this explanation has been hitherto accepted. What point is there in likening John a Combe to a measure of corn?

:

It touched his interests in his own acres and in his said to one of the numerous "he was not able to bear the His kinsman Greene, the at

tithes so closely, that he Greenes of Stratford that enclosing of Welcombe."

torney, who was clerk of Stratford, records in his note book this almost the only speech of Shakespeare which has been authoritatively handed down to us. Shakespeare took all possible measures to secure his threatened interests; and there exists an agreement between him and William Replingham, who appears to have been one of the movers in the affair, by which the latter agrees to make good any damage which the former may receive by the proposed enclosure.* The corporation of Stratford were also opposed to this measure,

"Coppy of the articles with Mr. Shakspeare.

"Vicesimo octavo die Octobris, anno Domini 1614. Articles of agreement made [and] indented between William Shackespeare of Stretforde in the County of Warwick gent, on the one partye, and William Replingham of Great Harborow in the County of Warwick gent, on the other partie, the daye and yeare above said.

"Item, the said William Replingham for him, his heires, executors and assignes, doth covenaunte and agree to and with the saide William Shackspeare his heires and assignes, That he, the said William Replingham, his heires or assignes, shall uppon reasonable request, satisfie, content, and make recompense unto him the said William Shackespeare or his assignes, for all such losse, detriment, and hinderance as he the said William Shackespeare, his heirs and assignes, and one Thomas Greene gent. shall or maye be thought in 1 the viewe and judgement of foure indifferent persons, to be indifferentlie elected by the said William and William and their heires, and in default of the said William Replingham, by the said William Shackespeare or his heires onely, to survey and judge the same to sustayne or incurre for or in respecte of the increasinge of the yearlie value of the tythes they the said William Shackespeare and Thomas doe joyntlie or severallie hold and enjoy in the said fieldes or anie of them, by reason of anie inclosure or decaye of tyllage there ment and intended by the said William Replingham; and that the said William Replingham and his heirs shall procure such sufficient securitie unto the said William Shackespeare and his heires for the performance of theis covenauntes, as shall bee devised by learned counsell. In witnes whereof the parties abovsaid to theis presentes interchangeablie their handes and seales have put, the daye and yeare first above wrytten.

"Sealed and delivered in the presence of us,

THO. LUCAS,

Jo. ROGERS,
ANTHONIE NASSHE,
MICH. OLNEY."

alleging that it would press heavily upon the poorer classes, already distressed by a destructive fire which took place in that town in 1613, but which seems to have left Shakespeare's property untouched. In the autumn of 1614, Thomas Greene was in London about this business; and by one of his memorandums we know that Shakespeare arrived there on the 16th of November of that year, probably upon the same errand. Greene's memorandums show that he was in constant communication with his "cosen Shakespeare" upon this subject, and that the corporation counted much upon their distinguished townsman's influence in the matter.* He remained in London until after the 23d of December in that year we hear of him from the same authority in the negotiations of 1615, with regard to the same affair, which was not settled until 1618; and this is the last known contemporary record of the life of the great poet of all time.

His younger daughter, Judith, was married on the 11th of February, 161, to Thomas Quiney, a vintner of Stratford, and son of the Thomas Quiney who in 1598 had asked Shakespeare to lend him £30. On the 25th of the following March he executed his will, which an erased date shows that he had intended executing on the 25th of the preceding January; and on the 23d of April, 1616, William Shakespeare, of Stratford on Avon, in the county of Warwick, Gentleman, died.

1614. Jovis, 17 No. My cosen Shakspear comyng yesterdy to Town, I went to see him how he did. He told me that they assured him they ment to inclose no further than to Gospell Bush, and so upp straight (leavying out part of the Dyngles to the field) to the gate in Clopton hedg, and take in Salisburyes peece; and that they mean in Aprill to survey the land, and then to gyve satisfaccion, and not before; and he and Mr. Hall say they think ther will be nothyng done at all."

23. Dec. A hall. Lettres wrytten, one to Mr Manyring, another to Mr Shakspear, with almost all the company's hands to eyther. I also wrytte myself to my cosen Shakspear the coppyes of all our acts, and then also a not of the inconvenyences wold happen by the inclosure."

Of the cause of his death we only know what Vicar Ward aforesaid heard and noted down half a century after the event. His account is: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merrie meeting, and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour ther contracted." We shrink from the thought of such a close of Shakespeare's life. But looking back upon the manners of the time, and especially its convivial habits, and the inordinate quantities of wine and strong ale then drunk by all who could procure them, we must admit that to die of fever after festivity might have been the fate of any man. Men now living can remember when no person entered a house, at any time, the family of which were not very poor, without being of fered and expected to drink some spirituous liquor; cake and wine having been brought forward even to our mothers at morning calls. And Spence tells us in his Anecdotes, on the authority of Pope, that Cowley the poet died as Ward says Shakespeare died, but from potations in more reverend, though perhaps not more worshipful company. He and Dean Sprat, afterward Bishop of Rochester, "had been together," Spence says, "to see a neighbor of Cowley's, who (according to the fashion of those times) made them too welcome. They did not set out for their walk home until it was too late, and had drunk so deep that they lay out in the fields all night. This gave Cowley the fever that carried him off. The parish still talk of the drunken Dean." And in the Chamberlain's accounts of Stratford, among the frequent charges for sack and sugar, claret and beer, for such worshipful folk as Sir Fulke Greville and Sir Thomas Lucy, and even Lady Lucy, is one in 1614 for on quart of sack and on quart of clarett wine geven to a preacher at the New Place," Shakespeare's own house. These considerations make the alleged excess at such a

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merry meeting of poets as that Ward tells of, a venial sin, and the sad consequences, though uncertain, not improbable.

Shakespeare's remains were interred the second day after his death, the 25th of April, in Stratford church, just before the chancel rail. Above his grave, on the north wall of the church, a monument was erected, at what exact date we do not know; but it was before 1623, as it is mentioned by Leonard Digges in his verses prefixed to the first folio edition of Shakespeare's plays. The monument shows a bust of the poet in the act of writing. Upon a tablet below the bust is the following inscription:

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed]

The last line of this inscription, and a tradition unheard of until Oldys wrote his notes in Langbaine, have raised the question whether Shakespeare died on the same day of the month on which he is supposed to have been born. But what matter whether he lived a day more or less than fifty-two full years? He had lived long

*See Preliminary Matter in Vol. II.

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