Shakespeare Dies: English Literature Loses Its Greatest Voice

William Shakespeare died in Stratford-upon-Avon around April 23, 1616, though the exact date is uncertain because he died during the period when England still used the Julian calendar while much of Europe had already adopted the Gregorian, and some historical sources record the date as May 3. He had been in retirement for three or four years, having returned from London to the substantial house called New Place that he had purchased with his theatrical earnings. He was fifty-two. His health in the final months is poorly documented, but a local vicar recorded decades later that Shakespeare had gone out drinking with Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton and developed a fever from which he did not recover. He left a carefully drafted will that distributed his considerable estate: the bulk, including New Place and his real estate holdings, went to his elder daughter Susanna and her husband John Hall. His younger daughter Judith received cash and a silver bowl. His wife Anne received the famously ambiguous bequest of the "second-best bed," which generations of scholars have interpreted as either an insult, a sentimental gesture toward the marital bed while the best bed was reserved for guests, or a legal irrelevance since Anne was entitled to a widow's portion of the estate regardless. He was buried inside Holy Trinity Church, the same church where he had been baptized fifty-two years earlier. The inscription on his gravestone, which he may have composed himself, reads: "Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare, to dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, and cursed be he that moves my bones." Nobody has moved them.