OF WHAT DID SHAKSPEARE DIE

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3064, 5 March 1892, Page 1 (Supplement)

OF WHAT DID SHAKSPEARE DIE

Americans are allentranced with our and their Sbakspeare.' They love the man and all that belongs to him ; and now they are discussing once again the queHtion—"Of what, did Shakspeare die ' " Following up this inquiry, a writer in the New York Record communicates the theory that the poet died of some respiratory lesion, and that summing up the testimony, » jury of the present day might reasonably, at a coroners' quest, return a verdict of " doath from pneumonia." The evidence on which this theory rests is very ably worked out, says the .Lancet. The age of the pout at death, 52, is connected with a period of life when th 9 mortality from pulmonary diseases is definitely increased in proportion to other causes His death occurred during th» month of Arril (23), which "in England is a month of treacherous changes of temperature and in weather." Some time prior to hie death, it is ursred, he passedan interval of excessive conviviality, and quite likely of deep intoxication in tho companionship of convivial friends. " That means that he placed himself in a situation from which reckless personal exposure would naturally arise. •' Here are three factors which favour the development of pneumonia, and the legend runs that at the last drinking bout he contracted a fever from which ho died." •' Fevers," says the writer, "do not come in this way ; pneumonia does." The wriler supplements his argument by referring to the casts from the mask of the face taken after death, from which the sculptor has copied the face of the great man. The mode of death leaves sometbine of the character of the fatal disease on the dead face. " Sudden, violent death arrests, the muscle* in their contraction. From the soldier's half parted lips the oath or battle ory seems just to have sped. Tho brakesman, gone to immediato death in a crush, bears upon his face the irajrint of his last thought-of duty, of home, or what ? The expression of lingering or wasting disease touches the physiognomy differently ; death stands bo near, so long that the body becomes accustomed to his presence, and he is not unwelcome. At the end Lie hand is often geutle, and the

features of the dead eiraply betoken placid rest." On the other hand, the cause of death in pneumonia " is laborious." " Towards the end the expre-siop of the face becomee like that of one who is toiling under a burden breathlessly and without rest. The close of life is the first pause of utter weariness and exhaustion," and " characteristic pneumonic expression remnina after death." On comparing the Shakspeare death mask -with the face of the dead of hie time of life from pnemuonia the identity, the author thinke, v can scarcely be mistaken. "That which Mr Carpenter has described aa a look of ineffable eadness is the true pneumonic physiognomy —the look of one who has been tired— painfnlly tired unto death."_ With thie interesting and graphic description of the cause the Lancet is much inclined to agree. The author has i.ot quite set forth precisely the only legend of Shakspeares'death —that, namely, written many long years afterwards by Ward, the once soldier in the Roya! army.and afterwards the vicar of Stratford-on-Avon, wich a strong liking for physics »ud a display of some learning of simples. The story told by Ward in his diary, still in the treasures of the library of the medical society of London, tells nothing about the poet's long conviviality, although the poet himPflif leaves much to be inferred in that line. But it does convey that just previously to his last natal day be joined some boon companions (Ben Jonson and Dayton the player) in convivial pursuits and that the results was his death from the surfeit. This shows a rapid death after a convivial outbre&k, and supports the suggestion that the cause of death was some respiratory misohief. Nothing is more probable than that the mischief wae what would be called in hie (Shakspeare's) day " a peri-pneumonia, an inflammation or irapoetum of the lungs, with a shortness of breath." The description of the pnenmonio cast of face after death is also true, and taken in combination with climatic 'condition* so faithfully noticed adds strong and, ae far as can be gathered from the facts coming down to us, all but conclusive evidence that the poet of England—some think of the word —died of that form of pueumonia diseese lately named " pueumoparesio," a form apt to strike suddenly and fatally those in whom the nervous energy has become reduced, and who exposing themselves to useless dangers, find out to their costwhat the poet himself, taught:—" Tie a cruelty to load a falling tiian."