Several years after returning to his hometown in about 1612 for semi-retirement, William Shakespeare apparently became ill, and he drafted his last will and testament in the spring of 1616. Scholars speculate that he may have been declining from a chronic illness. By March 25, he had re-drafted and altered his will, possibly signifying his impending death. Some scholars have suggested that the shaky signatures on the will indicate that he was already very unwell at that time. Shakespeare died a few weeks later, on April 23. His death was likely attended by his son-in-law and executor of his will, the physician John Hall.
Shakespeare’s burial is recorded in the Stratford Parish Register as occurring on 25 April, 1616, a normal interval between death and burial at the time. The burial was entered in the parish register in a list of deaths that month as Will Shakspere gent.
.
His tomb, which lies beneath the floor of the church, is inside the chancel rail adjacent to the monument. As befitting a prominent citizen of the town, it is covered by an inscribed stone, featuring this now-famous curse in poetry that does not sound much like Shakespeare’s:
The monument erected in his memory on the wall of the church sometime before 1623 is mentioned in a commendatory poem in the First Folio, listing his age as 53. Several scholars have analyzed the monument as it appears now in comparison to the sketch of it from Dugdale’s
Like the other citizens of Stratford who died that year, the cause of death is not listed. His brother-in-law had died the week before, so it is possible that an outbreak of typhoid or other minor epidemic affected the town at that time.
A story surfaced in the mid-17th century that Shakespeare died from fever after drinking with two other poets, Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson. John Ward, a physician and vicar in Stratford-upon-Avon, kept a notebook in 1662 with comments about Shakespeare, his family, and his reputation as a playwright. Ward notes that Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and it seems drank too hard for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted.
(Potter 407. Written so long after the actual time of Shakespeare’s death, the story cannot be substantiated. Scholar Paul Edmondson accepts Ward’s account as plausible and thinks may indicate that the men were celebrating Jonson’s new status as unofficial poet laureate of the nation, or perhaps the publication of his
Despite the rhyming curse over Shakespeare’s gravesite and the long-held belief in its sanctity, the tomb seems to have been opened sometime in the past 400 years. In 2016, scientists were given permission by the Church of England to explore the tomb with ground penetrating radar, although not to open it. The scans determined that the body under the inscription lies undisturbed about one meter below the stone, but that the area where the skull should be may have been disturbed. It is inconclusive whether the skull is in the tomb, or as rumor has long held, was removed from the grave in the late 18th century.
The monument to Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey’s Poets Corner was erected in 1741, after having been approved in 1726. Some idea to place Shakespeare near other famous British poets must have occurred not long after his death if we believe Ben Jonson’s words from
Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room: Thou art a monument without a tomb, And art alive still while thy book doth live And we have wits to read and praise to give.