page_title: Shakespeare apocrypha
section_title: Epitaphs
hierarchical_section_title: Shakespeare apocrypha / Apocryphal poems / Epitaphs
caption_attribution_description: English: Tomb of John Combe in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon (next to Shakespeare's tomb)
context_page_description: The Shakespeare apocrypha is a group of plays and poems that have sometimes been attributed to William Shakespeare, but whose attribution is questionable for various reasons. The issue is separate from the debate on Shakespearean authorship, which addresses the authorship of the works traditionally attributed to Shakespeare.
context_section_description: Shakespeare has been identified as the author of two epitaphs to John Combe, a Stratford businessman, and one to Elias James, a brewer who lived in the Blackfriars area of London. Shakespeare certainly knew Combe and is likely to have known James. A joking epitaph is also supposed to have been created for Ben Jonson.
  The epitaph for James was on a memorial in the church of St. Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe. The memorial no longer exists but was recorded in the 1633 edition of John Stow's Survey of London. The text is also present in the same manuscript which preserves Shall I Die, where it is ascribed to Shakespeare. The epitaph is a conventional statement of James' godly life.
  The epitaphs for Combe are different. One is a satirical comment on Combe's money-lending at 10 per cent interest. The verse says that he lent money at one-in-ten, and it's ten-to-one he'll end up in hell. This is recorded in several variant forms in the 17th and 18th centuries, usually with the story that Shakespeare composed it extempore at a party with Combe present. Shakespeare is said to have written another, more flattering, epitaph after Combe died in 1614. It praises Combe for giving money in his will to the poor. This was said to be affixed to his tomb, which is close to Shakespeare's. However, there is no sign of it in the surviving tomb. The first epitaph, in variations, has also been attributed to other writers, addressed to other alleged usurers.
  An anecdote recorded in the mid-17th century has Jonson beginning an epitaph to himself with the conventional "Here lies Ben Jonson ...", and Shakespeare completing it with the words "... who while he lived was a slow thing / And now being dead is no thing."
caption: The tomb of John Combe in Holy Trinity church, Stratford-upon-Avon
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