but it was the fashion of his day to be more open and plain spoken than we are.  And if we remember that, there is very little in Shakespeare that need hurt us even if there is a great deal which we cannot understand.  And when you come to read some of the writers of Shakespeare’s age and see that in them the laughter is often brutal, the horror of tragedy often coarse and crude, you will wonder more than ever how Shakespeare made his laughter so sweet and sunny, and how, instead of revolting us, he touches our hearts with his horror and pain.

About eleven years passed after Shakespeare left Stratford before he returned there again.  But once having returned, he often paid visits to his old home.  And he came now no more as a poor wild lad given to poaching.  He came as a man of wealth and fame.  He bought the best house in Stratford, called New Place, as well as a good deal of land.  So before John Shakespeare died he saw his family once more important in the town.

Then as the years went on Shakespeare gave up all connection with London and the theater and settled down to a quiet country life.  He planted trees, managed his estate, and showed that though he was the world’s master-poet he was a good business man too.  Everything prospered with him, his two daughters married well, and comfortably, and when not more than forty-three he held his first grandchild in his arms.  It may be he looked forward to many happy peaceful years when death took him.  He died of fever, brought on, no doubt, by the evil smells and bad air by which people lived surrounded in those days before they had learned to be clean in house and street.

Shakespeare was only fifty-two when he died.  It was in the springtime of 1616 that he died, breathing his last upon

    “The uncertain glory of an April day
    Which now shows all the beauty of the sun
    And by and by a cloud takes all away."*

    Two Gentlemen of Verona.

He was buried in Stratford Parish Church, and on his grave was placed a bust of the poet.  That bust and an engraving in the beginning of the first great edition of his works are the only two real portraits of Shakespeare.  Both were done after his death, and yet perhaps there is no face more well known to us than that of the greatest of all poets.

Beneath the bust are written these lines: 

    “Stay, passenger, why goest thou by so fast? 
    Read, if thou-canst, whom envious Death hath plast
    Within this monument; Shakespeare with whome
    Quick nature dide:  whose name doth deck ys tombe,
    Far more than cost, sith all yt he hath writt,
    Leaves living art but page to serve his witt.”

Upon a slab over the grave is carved: 

    “Good frend, for Jesus’ sake forbeare
    To digg the dust encloased heare;
    Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones,
    And curst be he yt moves my bones.”