Nov 16, 2020
When William Shakespeare died, he left on his gravestone a formidable curse, warning anyone who dared steal his bones after death. You can see this curse today on his gravestone inside Holy Trinity Church and it reads
Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forebear
To dig the dust enclosed here
Blessed be the man who spares these stones
And cursed be he that moves my
bones.
Sinister,
and comical today when grave robbing seems like a far fetched idea,
for the 17th century when Shakespeare was buried, stealing
someone’s bones comes up alot! But how effective were these curses
at deterring the theft of the graves? To explore the history of
grave robbing,the rumors that someone could have stolen
Shakespeare’s skull, as well as to explain the tradition of
gravestone curses in Elizabethan England, we turn to Shakespeare
expert and professor of English at the University of Exeter, Philip
Schwyzer.