so that the opening clause is no more a declaration that he was a Protestant than is the bequest by his maternal grandfather, Robert Arden, of "my soul to Almighty God, and to our blessed Lady, Saint Mary, and to all the holy company of Heaven," a proof in itself that the last-named testator was a Catholic. Neither can it be determined that Shakespeare was one or the other from what is fancied to be the internal evidence on the subject afforded by his writings, for this has been the theme of innumerable essays with the result that the advocates for his Protestantism and those for his Catholicism are as nearly as may be on a level in respect to the validity of their inferences. Those who endeavor to ascertain a dramatist's own religious sentiments from the utterances of his characters, each of whom should be to himself religiously true at the due moments of religious expression, or from the variations in his mode of treating materials that had been dramatically fashioned by his predecessors, can only be successful amid the works of less impartial artists. With respect to allusions to facts that are dependent upon knowledge and become in that way a species of evidence, there is only one, the reference to evening-mass, which is of practical value in the enquiry; but this, assuming it to be as hopelessly incorrect as is generally represented, is either a casual oversight or due to the very little opportunity that the author could have had for becoming familiar with Catholic practice. And if the merciless rigor with which the Catholic ministrations were suppressed is fairly borne in mind, no heed will be given to arguments based on the resort of the Shakespeares to those of the governmental Church. The poet, moreover, was educated under the Protestant direction, or he would not have been educated at all. But there is no doubt that John Shakespeare nourished all the while a latent attachment to the old religion, and although, like most unconverted conformists of ordinary discretion who were exposed to the inquisitorial tactics of the authorities, he may have attempted to conceal his views even from the members of his own household; yet still, however determinately he may have refrained from giving them expression, it generally happens in such cases that a wave from the religious spirit of a parent will imperceptibly reach the hearts of his children and exercise more or less influence on their perceptions. And this last presumption is an important consideration in assessing the degree of credit to be given to the earliest notice that has come down to us respecting the character of Shakespeare's own belief,—the assertion of Davies that "he died a Papist." That this was the local tradition in the latter part of the seventeenth century does not admit of rational question. If the statement had emanated from a man like Prynne, addressing fanatics whose hatred of a stage player would if possible have been intensified by the knowledge that he was a Romanist, then indeed a legitimate suspicion might have been entertained of the narrator's integrity; but here we have the testimony of a sober clergyman, who could have had no conceivable motive for deception, in what is obviously the casual note of a provincial hearsay. An element of fact in this testimony must be accepted in a biography in which the best, in this instance the only, direct evidence takes precedence over theories that are based on mere credibilities. At the same time it is anything but necessary to conclude that the great dramatist had very strong or pronounced views on theological matters. If that were the case, it is almost certain that there would have been some other early allusion to them, and perhaps in himself less of that spirit of toleration for every kind of opinion which rendered him at home with all sorts and conditions of men, as well as less of that freedom from inflexible preconceptions that might have affected the fidelity of his dramatic work. Many will hold that there was sufficient of those qualities to betray a general indifference to creeds and rituals, and, at all events, whatever there was of Catholicism in his faith did not exclude the maintenance of affectionate relations with his ultra-protestant son-in-law. There is nothing in the will, in the list of witnesses, in the monumental inscription, in selection of friends, in the history of his professional career, in the little that tells of his personal character, there is nothing, in short, in a single one of the contemporary evidences to indicate that he ever entered any of the circles of religious partisanship. Assuming, as we fairly may, that he had a leaning to the faith of his ancestors, we may yet be sure that the inclination was not of a nature that materially disturbed the easygoing acquiescence in the conditions of his surrounding world that added so much to the happiness of his later days. With perhaps one exception. It is surely within the bounds of possibility that he gave utterance to that inclination in the course of his last illness, and that he then declined, almost in the same breath in which he directed the kindly remembrances to his fellow-actors, the offices of a vicar who preached the abolition of the stage, and regarded the writers of plays as so many Anti-Christs. This hypothesis would fully explain the currency of the tradition recorded by Davies, and at the same time meet the other conditions of the problem. There was a funeral as well as a marriage in the family during the last days of Shakespeare. William Hart, who was carrying on the business of a hatter at the premises now known as the Birth-place, and who was the husband of the poet's sister Joan, was buried at Stratford-on-Avon on April 17, 1616. Before another week had elapsed, the spirit of the great dramatist himself had fled. Among the numerous popular errors of our ancestors was the belief that fevers often resulted from convivial indulgences. This was the current notion in England until a comparatively recent period, and its prevalence affected the traditional history of the poet's last illness. The facts were these. Late in the March of this calamitous year, or, accepting our computation, early in April, Shakespeare and his two frends, Drayton and Ben Jonson, were regaling themselves at an entertainment in one of the taverns at Stratford-on-Avon. It is recorded that the party was a jovial one, and according to a late but apparently genuine tradition, when the great dramatist was returning to New Place in the evening, he had taken more wine than was conducive to pedestrian accuracy. Shortly or immediately afterwards he was seized by the lamentable fever which terminated fatally on Tuesday, April 23, 1616, a day, which, according to our present mode of computation, would be May 3. The cause of the malady, then attributed to undue festivity, would now be readily discernible in the wretched sanitary conditions surrounding his residence. If truth, and not romance, is to be invoked, were there the woodbine and sweet honeysuckle within reach of the poet's death-bed, their fragrance would have been neutralized by their vicinity to middens, fetid watercourses, mud-walls and piggeries. The funeral was solemnized on the following Thursday, April 25, when all that was mortal of the great dramatist was consigned to his final resting-place in the beautiful parish-church of his native town. His remains were deposited in the chancel, the selection of the locality for the interment being due to the circumstance of its then being the legal and customary burial-place of the owners of the tithes. The grave is situated near the northern wall of the chancel, within a few paces of the ancient charnel-house, the arch of the doorway that opened to the latter, with its antique corbels, still remaining. The sepulcher was covered with a slab that bore the following inscription, GOOD FREND, FOR IESVS SAKE FORBEARE TO DIGG THE DVST ENCLOASED HEARE; BLESTE BE THE MAN THAT SPARES THES STONES, -lines which, according to an early tradition, were selected by the poet himself for his epitaph. There is another early but less probable statement that they were the poet's own composition; but, at all events, it may be safely gathered that they originated in some way from an aver sion on his part to the idea of a disturbance of his remains. It should be remembered that the transfer of bones from graves to the charnel-house was then an ordinary practice at Stratford-on-Avon. There has long been a tradition that Shakespeare's feelings on this subject arose from a reflection on the ghastly appearance of that receptacle, which the elder Ireland, writing in the year 1795, describes as then containing "the largest assemblage of human bones" he had ever beheld. But whether this be the truth, or if it were merely the natural wish of a sensitive and thoughtful mind, it is a source of congratulation that the |