Year: 1875

A death mask of Shakespeare belong,
in itself to the most interesting of things


but this interest must be greatly increased
when we see the hitherto unknown death
mask suddenly found in the midst of Ger
many, while no one is able to say how il
came there.


The first idea is that it may be coun
terfeit, as there have been so many Shaks-
peare counterfeits, partly the work of ma.
liciOus people seeking amusement in the
wise commentaries of the learned, partly
of literary vanity, and partly of fraudu-
lent greed. A genuine death mask OF
Shakespeare would be invaluable, end our
death mask is genuine. At least such is
the opinion of Prof. Schaafhausen, OF
Bonn, who has devoted to it a very pro-
found essay, recently published in the
Tenth Year Book of the German Shaks-
peare Society. His most important rea-
sons are the following:


l. The mask was taken from dead
face, and is not the product of art. This
is proved by the expression of the skin,
by certain peculiar irregularities which
hardly any artist could invent, and by
the hairs of the mustache and beard
which remain sticking in the plaster, and
which according to the opinion of the
famous English anatomist, Richard
Owen, correspond in their peculiar struc-
ture to those features of the mask where
they are found. These hairs out of the
beard of Shakespeare also correspond in
their reddish brown with the color in
which the beard of the Stratford bust
was painted. The dirty yellow color of
the oil with which the mask is saturated
is such as might be expected in plaster
cast two centuries old.


2. Upon the back of the mask there is
upon the edge the inscription, GA. D..
1916" the year of Shakspeare's death.
According TO the opinion of experts,
the figures are such as were used at that
time. They have not sharp but round
edges, indicating that they were not cut
in afterward, but were written with a
stick in the plaster while it was yet soft.


3. Although Goethe was in error when
he praised the beauty of the formation
of RaphaePs skull and it afterward
proved to be that of Canon Adjutori,
Schaafhausen is confident that the alleged
death mask of Shakespeare must in any
event have been that of a man of very
great importance. He gives all its meas
urements, and especially dwells upon the
unusual breath of the forehead, which is
one hundred and forty-five millemetres.
The features of the mask are also those
of man of the age of fifty-twO, as Shak-
speare was when he died.


4. One would suppose that the resem-
blance of the mask would be the most
important point about it, but unfortu-
nately the pOrtaits of Shakespeare are so
perfectly dissimilar to each other that the
investigation of this subject is difficult.
The Stratford bust, however, which, to
judge from the eyes, must have been ex-
ecuted after death-mask, and whose
artist probably attempted to give life to
the sunken features of the corpse by an
exaggerated fullness of outline, has very
little resemblance to our mask, but it has,
like this, a beard on the chin, while the
most trustworthy portraits of the poet,
and the copper-plate of DOreshOut, which
is prefxed to his works and sung by Ben
johnson, does not accord with the bust at
all, but does accord with our death-mask
in very high degree, except that in the
copper-plate the poet is represented with
a full beard.


The mask was found in 1S49 by Louis
Becker, the painter, in the possession of
a bric-a-brac dealer in Mayence. From
lS49 to 1865 it was in the possession o.
Prof. Owen, in London, and, after tie
death of Louis Becker, was restored to
his family in Darmstadt, in whose hands
it now is. Professor Schaafhausen, who,
as we have said, has made the mosu zeal
GUS investigations and the most careful
inquiries on all sides, has also investigated
the history of the mask, but his essay
gives only the chief points in it, and is
not complete. He is, however, thor
oughly convinced of the genuineness of
the mask, and finally pleads with zeal
for comparison of the mask with the
skull of Shakespeare, which is still in
existence in the grave at Stratford.