Qualla: Shakespeare's Funerary Monument

Shakespeare's Funerary Monument: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sicinius, CC BY-SA 4.0. On the north wall of the chancel at Holy Trinity Church, a few feet from where William Shakespeare is buried, a coloured limestone bust looks out over the pews. The eyes are hazel, the hair and beard auburn, the doublet originally scarlet beneath a black scholar's gown. The quill in his right hand is a real feather, and over the centuries the quill has been stolen so many times that the parish stopped bothering to keep it secured. The bust was carved sometime between Shakespeare's burial in 1616 and 1623, when Ben Jonson referred to it in print. Whoever modelled it knew Shakespeare, or knew people who did. It is the closest thing the world has to a verified portrait of the man who reshaped the English language.

Image: Sicinius | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shakespeare's Funerary Monument: A Funerary Bust, Built to Endure

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit G-Man at English Wikipedia, Public domain. The figure is what art historians call a demi-figure -- a half-length effigy of the deceased, set into an architectural niche flanked by columns. This was a fashionable form for early-to-mid seventeenth-century memorials, used most often for clergy, academics, and others whose pr...

Image: G-Man at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Shakespeare's Funerary Monument: Who Carved It

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Henry Wallis, Public domain. Tradition attributes the monument to the sculptor Gerard Johnson, son of a Dutch immigrant stoneworker. His workshop, near the Globe Theatre in London, would have known Shakespeare in life. But the historian Lena Cowen Orlin has recently argued the work may actually be by Gerard'...

Image: Henry Wallis | Public domain

Shakespeare's Funerary Monument: The Restoration Wars

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mango salsa, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1748 the monument needed repair. The architraves had cracked. The paint had faded. The parish priest, Joseph Greene -- who also ran the local grammar school -- needed money. He hit on a startling idea: he persuaded the actor John Ward's travelling company to perform Othello in...

Image: Mango salsa | CC BY-SA 3.0

Shakespeare's Funerary Monument: Painted White, Then Painted Back

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sicinius, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1793 the Shakespeare scholar Edmond Malone visited Holy Trinity and was appalled. The bust was painted. Painted statuary, in the neoclassical taste of Malone's era, was vulgar -- the Romans, everyone now wrongly believed, had carved in pure white marble. Malone persuaded the v...

Image: Sicinius | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shakespeare's Funerary Monument: What the Inscription Says

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Jones, CC BY 2.0. Beneath the figure, an epitaph in Latin compares Shakespeare to three of the ancient world's greatest figures: Nestor the wise king, Socrates the philosopher, and Virgil the poet -- whose surname, Maro, completes the line. The second Latin line reads: 'Earth covers, people mourn,...

Image: David Jones | CC BY 2.0