Shakespeare's funerary monument

[3][4] The monument features a demi-figure of the poet holding a real quill pen in one hand and a piece of paper resting on a cushion in the other.

[5][6] The buttoned doublet, with its ornamental slashes, was probably originally painted scarlet, the loose subfusc gown black, the eyes hazel, and the hair and beard auburn.

[8] The date the monument was erected is not known exactly, but it must have been before 1623; in that year, the First Folio of Shakespeare's works was published, prefaced by a poem by Leonard Digges that mentions "thy Stratford moniment" [sic].

John Weever transcribed the monument inscription and grave epitaph, and H. R. Woudhuysen's analysis of the undated manuscript suggests that his visit to Stratford was made not much later than 1617–18.

LEAVES LIVING ART, BVT PAGE, TO SERVE HIS WITT.As modernized by Katherine Duncan-Jones:[11] Stay Passenger, why goest thou by so fast?

"[15] The engraving, almost certainly by Wenceslaus Hollar, was done from an original rough sketch made by Dugdale, probably in 1649,[16] likely under the patronage of Shakespeare's granddaughter (and last living descendant), Elizabeth Barnard.

The art critic Marion Spielmann described it as giving the impression that Shakespeare was pressing the cushion to his groin, "which, for no reason, except perhaps abdominal pains, is hugged against what dancing-masters euphemistically term the 'lower chest'".

In 1793 Edmond Malone, the noted Shakespeare scholar, persuaded the vicar to paint the monument white, in keeping with the Neoclassical taste of the time.

[27] This was depicted by the painter Henry Wallis in his imaginary scene portraying Ben Jonson showing the death mask to the sculptor.

[30] Lena Cowen Orlin, however, proposes that the monument may have been commissioned by Shakespeare himself, during his lifetime, from Nicholas Johnson; and that the effigy was sculpted from the life.

"[31] Sir Nikolaus Pevsner pointed out that the iconographical type represented by the figure is that of a scholar or divine; his description of the effigy is "a self-satisfied schoolmaster".

[32] Schoenbaum, however, says the monument is a typical example of Jacobean Renaissance style,[33] and Spielmann says the "stiff simplicity" of the figure was more suitable for a sepulchral sculpture in a church than a more life-like depiction.