Shakespeare's Funerary Monument
The Shakespeare funerary monument is a memorial to William Shakespeare located inside Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, UK, the same church in which Shakespeare was baptised.
The monument, by Gerard Johnson, is mounted on the north wall of the chancel. It features a demi-figure of the poet, which holds a quill pen in one hand and holds down a piece of paper resting on a cushion with the other. The style was most commonly used for divines, academics, and those professions with pretensions of learning. The monument is topped with strapwork rising to a heraldic shield containing the Shakespeare family's coat of arms, on either side of which stands two allegorical figures: one, representing Labour, holds a spade, the other, representing Rest, holds a torch and a skull.
The date the monument was erected is not known exactly, but it must have been before 1623; in that year, the First Folio of Shakespeare's works was published, prefaced by a poem by Leonard Digges that mentions "thy Stratford moniment" . The monument was restored in 1748-9 and has been repainted several times.
Read more about Shakespeare's Funerary Monument: Inscriptions, History, Interpretations, Gallery
Famous quotes containing the words shakespeare and/or monument:
“I promise you, but for your company,
I would have been a-bed an hour ago.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It is remarkable that the dead lie everywhere under stones.... Why should the monument be so much more enduring than the fame which it is designed to perpetuate,—a stone to a bone? “Here lies,”M”Here lies”;Mwhy do they not sometimes write, There rises? Is it a monument to the body only that is intended?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)