Reflections on Shakespeare's body (May 1815)

And did Garrick snap off the Bard's finger?

William Shakespeare statue by Louis-François Roubiliac, photo by Matt Brown (Wikimedia Commons).

It’s amazing what comes up to distract you when you’re researching. I was searching The Gentleman’s Magazine of 1815 for a reference to the castellated water tower, supposed to have been built by Sir John Vanbrugh in Kensington Palace Green (some people think he didn’t build it so I wanted to check an early source). Anyway, I ended up stumbling across this letter to the magazine’s “Mr Urban” about Shakespeare’s tomb in Stratford-upon-Avon.

I don’t suppose it would occur to us to even worry about the Bard’s body having been disturbed - tomb-robbing is not much of a concern today - but this letter reassures us that it was definitely not tampered with in 1796 when a vault was dug near to the “sacred grave”. On the other hand, Shakespeare’s remains were not actually visible.

The Gentleman’s Magazine also informed me that someone accused the actor David Garrick of damaging Shakespeare’s bust by breaking off the finger with his walking cane. Which bust was this, I wonder, and why on earth would he do that? (Pointing at it like an 18th-century connoisseur, I suppose?) Garrick is known to have owned the statue of Shakespeare, by Louis-François Roubiliac, which is now in the British Library (above) but it can hardly be described as a “bust”. As so often is the case, the culprit seems to have been a “mischievous school-boy”.

There are some other gems below, including information about a chair in Shakespeare’s Birthplace, which was flogged to a Russian princess in 1790 despite the fact that everyone knew it was a “recent introduction”.