SAT Conference 2016 - 10 - Alexander Waugh - Grave Problems

Alexander Waugh on the grave in Stratford-upon-Avon said to be Shakespeare's. Talk given at the Shakespearean Authorship Trust 2016 conference. Filming by Tim Pieraccini.

[onefeather]

Love to hear him talk he has a odd/great sense of humor😊

[heliotropezzz]

It seems to me that his less than literary surviving family probably chose the piece of verse for his grave. Perhaps they feared trophy hunters, grave robbers or corrupt people accepting money for interring new corpses in old graves. Perhaps they had experienced examples of this, or perhaps Shakespeare in his lifetime had said that was something he feared. There is a lot in his poetry and plays to suggest it was a fear. Didn't someone say that Shakespeare was originally buried near the door and was moved? Maybe they just didn't want any more moves. Maybe if he was moved his body was not laid out as it would be in life and that accounts for the bones being fit into a smaller space. The scan didn't find that there was nothing in the grave. That is not what the scientists said. They just said the head was missing, and there was evidence that there had been some disturbance of the grave.

[pbredder]

Has Waugh familiarized himself with David Roper's comments about "The Monumental Truth" and Roper's evidence that Ben Jonson encrypted a message in the monuments inscription? Ref:"Proving Shakespeare" 2011 updated paperback edition.

[zeerust]

It's easy to see faces in things that aren't actually faces. The human brain is actually hard wired to do just that.

[MandyJMaddison]

Dating the moustache.
Among those who wore a similar (or equally twee) moustache, brushed upward, were Edward de Vere, Henry Wriothesley, among others of the period. Note that thedid not all wear there moustache in that manner all their lives.
Shakespeare's moustache doesn't support a case for the monument having been substantially altered.

[Jeffhowardmeade]

There was a charnal house at Holy Trinity until the 18th century. Wherein the bones dug up to make room for fresher corpses were interred. How could Waugh not have known this that he is surprised by there being more than one name in the place where Susanna was buried.

I can't imagine that Waugh has never seen the sketch made in 1734 by George Vertue, which shows Shakespeare's grave being full size, with four lines of writing on it. So it's been cut down since then, most likely when the floor was shored up. What's the problem?

If one were to lift any stone on the floor of any church, one would find dust. Unless there is a vault buried underneath the floor, the stones are laid on top of soil. The GPR clearly discovered that there was no vault, and that Shakespeare was buried in dirt, most likely in a simple shroud. In spite of all of the names Waugh is pointing out, the GPR found no evidence of vaults or coffins under ANY of the stones. Again, what's the problem?

That the subsidence was the result of the skull being stolen isn't necessarily silly, but it is just a guess. A better one would probably be that tourists had been standing on Shakespeare's grave for a hundred years (as Vertue depicted himself doing) and THAT caused the need for the repairs.

As for the funerary monument. The mustache wasn't in fashion when Shakespeare died? Well what about this guy who died in 1624?


Or this one who died in 1600?


John Weever noted down both the inscription on the monument and the one on the gravestone in about 1618. Yeah, I know Waugh has tried to muddy the waters and say it's a forgery without any evidence, but that's just what he does, isn't it?

If the pillow is a wool sack, why does it look just like the pillow that's there today, complete with the tassles at the corner? It's not a wook sack, because those were 364 lbs. They look like this:


And that one is only 60 lbs.

Hemminges was only a bit actor? And yet Ben Jonson included him in the same cast lists as William Shake-speare (spelled thusly) in 1616. King James made a GROCER and bit actor a member of The King's Men?

The Dugdale sketch was of an APE? Did you seriously just say that? Ben Jonson designed a memorial bust to Shakespeare and made it look like an APE, and his family and the vicar of Holy Trinity let Jonson put that up.

Dude, your logic train just jumped the track as it was passing Bedlam. Why am I bothering to argue with someone who believes something that moronic?

[jeffmeade]

You get the difference between a grave and a tomb, don't you, Mr. Waugh? Shakespeare has a grave. Right next door, John Combs (appropriately for the etymology of his name) has a tomb. Poets from start to finish were saying that Shakespeare's works were his monument.Obviously the stone is smaller now than it was originally. The 1734 George Vertue sketch of the monument in situ shows the stone's original size, with four lines of text. John Weever's notebook shows that the inscription was there almost immediately, regardless of how you tried to muddy the waters by suggesting the note was a forgery.If the sexton in question opened the grave and found "dust", well that's just what you expect to find in a grave, unless you break out a shovel. Not only will GPR not find decomposed remains (as you pointed out, there are other names listed under Susana's supposed grave along with her own, and yet the GPR found nothing at all), it will surely not find a cloth shroud. Unless there is a vault built under the stones, a coffin would be a bad idea. As it rotted, the stone above it would be unsupported. I have speculated in the past that simple shroud burials might have been the preference of the Puritan clergy in command of the parish at the time, but I am beginning to rethink that. I question whether the hypothetical theft of the skull caused the subsidence, or just too many people marching over Shakespeare's grave, but the location of the support is precisely where the stone breaks, so I see no contradiction there.In the end, what does it matter? The monument and the grave stone with the inscriptions we see today were there by about 1618. No amount of theorized hijinks after the fact will change that.