Stratford-upon-Avon Church is a chief ornament of the quiet rural nook in sylvan Warwickshire, which is hallowed by one of the holiest of England’s memories. Its appearance and architecture are thoroughly English. Its square tower and pointed windows, its mullions and tracery of the 14th century, its graceful spire tapering above the tall elms which surround it, and the avenue of limes arching overhead the graveyard path to the old porch, are all exactly in accordance with what an Englishman regards as the beau ideal of an old country church. It was formerly a collegiate, and is dedicated to the Holy Trinity. In the plain chancel rests the “poet of all time,” Shakspere. The Avon’s ripple, as the pilgrim to the poet’s tomb stands in the quiet chancel, may be heard murmuring the same placid music which it sang in Shakspere’s ear some two centuries ago. The place of sepulture is marked by a flat stone bearing the oft-repeated and quaint lines which the poet himself left for the purpose:—
“Good friend, for Jesus’ sake, forbeare
To digg the dust enclosed here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones!”
Turning to old Dugdale, we find the history of this church and of Stratford, from “above CCC years before the Norman Conquest,” but that we have no space for here. Few who go to the church regard the monuments of the good old families which it contains in common with most of our country churches. Shakspere, and Shakspere’s tomb, receive, as fitting they should do, all reverence. The wall above the tomb contains a bust-the antique marble, albeit lacking the “golden lustre of the eye,” displaying the fair and ample space of forehead, “seeming a palace framed for the habitation of all glorious thoughts.”
The church and graveyard are almost as Shakspere left them, except that many of the tombs are now half sinking into earth, as if approaching, from long kindred, the remains of those whose memories they were charged to rescue from oblivion.
The Illustrated London News, London, England, Week Ending October 22, 1842
