By the mid-18th century, the Shakespeare monument had become “much impaired and decayed”.9-1 Rev. Joseph Greene, master of the Stratford grammar school and curate of Holy Trinity church, led a project to have the monument restored. John Ward’s acting company performed Othello in the Stratford town hall in September 1746, with receipts going to pay for the restoration, and further funds were raised in London. The restoration work was performed in 1749 by John Hall of Bristol.9-2 According to Greene, “except changing the substance of the Architraves from alabaster to Marble, nothing has been changed, nothing altered, except supplying with original material, (saved for that purpose) whatsoever was by accident broken off, reviving the Old Colouring, and renewing the Gilding that was lost”.9-3 Aside from the architrave, we must look to the monument to learn which parts “were by accident broken off”.

Figure 9-1. Painting by John Hall, 1748, oil on pasteboard, 19 x 13 inchesA15


Much of the monument is made from English alabaster. Alabaster is softer and weaker than marble, and, unlike marble, is water soluble. These properties make it highly vulnerable to settlement cracks and water damage. Mural monuments are often fixed to the wall with iron ties, set in masonry with lead. If water infiltrates to the ties, they can corrode, swell, and break the surrounding stone, rendering the attachment unstable.9-4 Cracks are visible in the alabaster of the Shakespeare monument, especially in the niche by the figure’s left shoulder. These appear to be settlement cracks and have been repaired with mortar. The replaced “architrave” (actually a cornice) is visible by its white marble. Greene described it as “much shatter’d”. The putto representing Rest has a large crack (now repaired) in the neck extending as far as is visible. It may even have been decapitated. The back of the head of the other putto is broken off, and has not been replaced. These sandstone figures, resting on the replaced cornice, are not subject to settlement cracks, nor is this explicable as water damage. It appears to be damage from impact. My conjecture is that the attachment of the cornice deteriorated through settlement or water damage, and eventually detached and fell to the floor, taking the putti with it, and shattered as described. Other parts of the monument could have been damaged by falling debris. A makeshift and unsatisfactory repair would have been made at the time, pending restoration.

Figure 9-2. Damaged puttiA16


John Hall of Bristol made a skillful painting of the monument before he executed the repairs.9-5 This painting clearly does not depict the condition of the monument in 1748. There are no broken or missing pieces as Greene described. The paint and gilding are complete and fresh. This painting appears to be a plan of restoration. It shows how the monument was going to look once restoration was complete. Greene and the other Stratford sponsors would have wanted to see and approve this plan before the work commenced. That such a painting was needed shows that the damage was not superficial. It was extensive enough that the original appearance was not obvious.

A detail in Hall’s painting that is not consistent with the present appearance are the pair of momento mori flanking the arms. Today’s monument has only one of these skulls, under the hand of the right putto. That space next to the left putto is empty. Considerations of symmetry and balance incline for this space to be filled with some symbolic element. Clearly Hall thought so. Perhaps there was some damage, preserved debris, or local memory to suggest it, though not specifically what it was. So he guessed at the skull, but three skulls in close proximity impart tedium to the design. It is more likely that a feature here would relate symbolically to an element on the other side. The spade, representing labor, and the upturned torch, representing rest, form a coherent funerary message: “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord…that they may rest from their labors” (Revelation 14:13). A missing element on the left should accord with the skull on the right. The skull, representing death, the common fate of mankind, is often paired with a symbol that expresses the brevity of life, commonly the hourglass. Vertue shows an hourglass in just this position. Dugdale’s sketch also has an hourglass, but it is transposed to the right side in a typical memory error. The hourglass would have been damaged in the accident that shattered the cornice and damaged the putti. In the end, Hall left this area vacant, presumably because he could not be sure what had been there.

The appearance of the left arm in Hall’s painting is particularly noteworthy. The elbow, forearm, and hand are shrouded in shadow. Surely Hall would have included the left hand in his painting had it been present and visible. No possible lighting could have obscured these features. Also, the gilt cording is continuous across the full width of the cushion, and is not partially covered by a sheet of paper as in the modern monument. An obvious explanation is that the hand and parts of the arm had been broken off, and their original appearance could not be deduced from the remnants, if any, that had been preserved. The town fathers who commissioned the work either did not know or could not agree on how the arm and hand should appear. Lacking clear guidance, John Hall simply fudged it in his painting. He evidently preferred not to venture a conclusion on this obscure or disputed point. Of course, the controversy was resolved, as it had to be if the work was to be completed, but authenticity of the left forearm, hand, and especially the paper is questionable. Dugdale’s original 1649 sketch of the monument also shows no paper. Dugdale had his deficiencies as a sketch artist, but John Hall was a capable, professional artist. If paper had been there in 1748, his painting would have shown it. Hall’s painting confirms the accuracy of Dugdale’s work, at least in respect to this detail.

If the Hall painting was connected to his commission to restore the monument, it would naturally come into the possession of Rev. Greene, as it did. But Joseph Greene tells a curious story of his acquisition of the painting in a letter to his brother in 1787.9-6 He says some 40 years earlier a man from Bristol “of the name Hall” visited a friend in Stratford, a Mr. West. West “employed him [Hall] to Copy” the monument. Apparently, seeing the monument in church every Sunday for his entire life had not staled its beauty for old Mr. West. In time, the painting “came to be disregarded by Mr. West”, and “the Old Gentleman…without [my] asking for it, gave it freely to me”. This letter discussed the restoration but does not mention Hall’s role in it. If we credit this tale, it does not necessarily change the interpretation of the painting. The painting was still produced prior to the restoration. The extra skull is still a conjecture. The absence of a left arm and paper in the painting still implies their absence in the monument as Hall observed it.


A close examination of the monument provides further evidence to cast doubt upon the originality of the paper. The portrait bust itself is the most technically difficult part of the ensemble, particularly the head and hands. The challenge of the head is to capture the subtleties of human features so that a recognizable portrait emerges. With hands, the sculptor must reproduce complex anatomy. Now compare the left and right hands. The left hand is elegantly posed and finely executed. One gets a sense of the articulation of each joint, and the bones beneath the skin are palpable. The right hand, in contrast, is rather blobby, with little anatomical detail. The writing hand is not well-observed, in contrast to the left. It looks as if the left and right hands were executed by two different artists. If so, all the evidence points to the left hand being carved by John Hall, or under his direction, as part of extensive repairs to the monument. So the paper, being integrated to the hand, would date from the 1749 restoration.

Figure 9-3. Monument detail, handsA1

Figure 9-4 shows the left hand carved in relief from the paper, formed from the same stone. The paper here is quite thick on the right side, with a distinct gap between the paper and the cushion. It appears that it could be a separate piece of stone from the cushion. The only way to accomplish this is to have a joint somewhere along the left arm, so that the paper and hand, and perhaps some part of the arm, could be a separate piece of stone from the rest of the figure. This construction would have been necessary to repair a heavily damaged left hand and arm.

Figure 9-4. Monument detail, handsA1

To return to the pen, the stone Shakespeare holds his pen in a nearly vertical position. When writing with a quill pen, the pen should be held at a shallow angle to control the flow of ink. Writers often use a sloped writing desk, as seen in the portrait of Sir Thomas Overbury.

Figure 9-5. Engraving of Thomas Overbury by Renold Elstracke, c. 1615-1616A18

The angled surface tips the pen back to a more horizontal position, preventing ink from flowing too fast and leaving a blot. The pen in the Stratford monument is at much too high an angle to be an accurate depiction of writing with a quill pen. The pen is not close to the paper, so perhaps the writer has paused in his work. The depiction of the pen is no more plausible on that interpretation. Compare this to the portraits of Pope (Figure 2-1) and Goldsmith.

Figure 9-6. Oliver GoldsmithA19

Notice that the wrists are cocked back in a somewhat awkward position. This gesture would have been habitual to a writer using a quill pen. If the pen is not held in this almost horizontal position, ink may drip off the end of the pen, or will just collect in a drop at the nib and create a blot when the pen next touches paper.

In Hall’s painting, all four fingers of the right hand are extended, as they are in Dugdale’s sketch, with the ring finger about the same length as the middle, and the pinkie just a bit shorter. The thumb is not visible in either depiction. In the monument, the visible length of the ring finger is about half that of the middle finger. Imagine that the right hand was originally shown resting on the cushion with the fingers extended in a relaxed, neutral position. This is the pose of the hand (leaving aside the pen) in Hall’s painting.

Figure 9-7. Comparison of right hand in Hall (l) and Dugdale sketch (r)A20

A pen could have been placed in the right hand starting sometime in the late 17th or early 18th century, consistent with Vertue’s sketch. This would conform to the expectations of visitors wanting to see mementoes of the famous playwright, and the practice may have continued until its origins were long forgotten. Still, the appearance would have been less than convincing, and Hall might have been asked to alter the hand, especially the 3rd and 4th fingers, to improve its appearance. Halliwell-Phillips reports9-7 that the tips of the thumb and forefinger had been broken off some time before the 1749 restoration, when they were repaired. If the pen was added prior to the restoration, this damage could have occurred when the hand was modified to receive the pen.9-8

Figure 9-8. Damaged fingersA24

References

9-1 Lewis, B. Roland. The Shakespeare Documents. Stanford University Press, 1940, vol. 2 pp. 545. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.62225/page/n279/mode/2up

9-2 Rev. Greene gives the date of the restoration variously as 1748 and early 1749. It may have begun in 1748 and been completed in 1749. See Lewis, vol. 2 pp. 545, 546.

9-3 Lewis, vol. 2 pp. 542-547.

9-4 Minerva Stone Conservation Ltd. “Church Monument Handbook – Tips for Identification, Care, and Repair”, http://www.minervaconservation.com/articles/monument_handbook.pdf

9-5 Spielmann, M. H. The Title Page of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s Plays. Oxford University Press, 1924, p. 24. Spielmann gives an inscription on the back of the Hall painting by J. O. Halliwell-Phillips (1820-1889) describing his acquisition of the painting from a descendant of Rev. Greene and attributing it to Hall. Irvin Matus reports that the painting is on canvas (based on communication with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, which has the painting on loan), not pasteboard as described by Rev. Joseph Greene and Tom Reedy (source for the photo of the painting on wikipedia). Matus concludes that it is a copy, and not the original Hall painting. See Matus, Irvin. Shakespeare, In Fact. Dover, 2012, p. 217-218. I wonder if this is not a confusion between the Hall painting 1748, on pasteboard, and the Hunt Portrait (also based on the monument) c. 1758, oil on canvas, also in the SBT collection.

9-6 Lewis, pp. 545-546.

9-7 Halliwell-Phillips, James Orchard. Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1883, pp. 255-256.  https://archive.org/details/outlinesoflifeof00hallrich/page/254

9-8 The fingers have been repaired at least three times. Halliwell-Phillips says the missing finger fragments were replaced again in 1790. A crude repair is visible in late 19th century photographs of the monument. Figure 9-8 indicates another repair.