Sprucing up Shakespeare's grave
LONDON (AP) - April 28, 2008
The illustrious bard is believed by many to have personally
penned the threat on a stone marker above his grave: It promises to
bless anyone who spares the stones but curse any intruder who moves
his bones.
That's all well and good, but the stones above his grave are
starting to flake and fall apart. Clergymen have trod on the stones
for nearly four centuries, and the foot traffic is taking its
inevitable toll.
People who love the church and its place in British literary
history want to fix it - provided they can do so without digging up
Shakespeare's remains and facing the mysterious threat.
"We're avoiding the curse," said Jospehine Walker, a
spokeswoman for the Friends of Shakespeare's Church group. "We are
not lifting the stones, we are not looking underneath, and the
curse is for the bones underneath, so the curse is irrelevant for
this work."
The restoration work is delicate because the church northwest of
London is not only a functional house of worship where Shakespeare
was baptized in 1564 but also a treasure popular with visitors from
around the globe.
"We get 100,000 tourists a year, but they don't walk on the
stones," she said. "But the clergy have to when they give
communion, and the stones are flaking away, the surfaces are coming
off. We want to clean the surfaces and then very gradually ease in
some transparent grout and hold the surfaces together. Then we want
to move the altar rail so that when the clergy give communion they
don't have to walk over the stones."
The planned work on the gravesite, which has not yet been
approved by the various agencies that oversee historic sites, is
part of a much larger restoration of the church that began two
years ago, Walker said.
The group is trying to raise an additional $8 million for the
entire project, she said. One of the most urgent tasks is to repair
the main nave windows, which are in very poor shape.
"The metal work is eroding and disintegrating," she said.
"That's a really big, major job that has to be done, hopefully
next year."
At least they don't face a centuries-old curse if they repair
the windows. If they get the money and the approvals, they can do
the work without worrying about angering the Bard's ghost.
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On the Net:
www.stratford-upon-avon.org
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
