My husband heard the excitement in my gasp as we rounded the corner in an antique mall in Norway, Michigan. Hanging on the wall of the booth ahead was a framed rubbing of a grave marker that read:
“Good friend for Jesus sake forebeare,
To dig the dust encloased heare.
Blese be the man that spares thes stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.”
I recognized it immediately. Years earlier, as a graduate student in English, I had roomed with a classmate whose father had been a WWII war correspondent, and a rubbing he had made of this same marker hung over our couch.
Still, I was glad to read the neat handwriting at the bottom:
“Rubbing of the inscription from Shakespeare’s Grave 1564-1616
The Parish Church, Stratford-upon-Avon July 12, 1944 G. Woodhouse, Parish Clerk”
I took a moment to imagine a soldier from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan carefully bringing home this literary souvenir of the war. And I rejoiced in the serendipity that led me to it. As a graduate student, I had seen it as symbol of the academic life we aspired to join. Now, years after the dissertation on modern dress productions of Shakespeare had been completed and accepted, I saw it as a treasure to be conserved, as a sign of the enduring appeal of a playwright whose grave had been sought out even in the midst of war.
Had that 1944 visit to the Parish Church of Stratford-upon-Avon brought a moment of respite?Consolation? Excitement?While I will never know the impact of that visit, I have been glad to have its tangible result.