I suspect that few of my readers will have heard of the poet William Basse (1583-1653?), as indeed I hadn’t until I came across this pleasant if slightly macabre tribute to our national bard, in which he first imagines Shakespeare sharing the tomb with three other worthies before deciding that actually he probably merits a grave all to himself. The choice of the three worthies is interesting: Chaucer (fair enough), Spenser (OK, though probably more honoured than read these days) and Beaumont. This would be Francis Beaumont (1584-1616), best known for his collaborations with John Fletcher, and I suspect that while much esteemed in his own time as both poet and playwright his work is little known now except to specialists in the period.

I have modernized the Elizabethan spelling as being unnecessarily distracting to the modern reader, but have left ‘fift’ for ‘fifth’ for the sake of the rhyme.

Elegy on Shakespeare

Renownèd Spencer lie a thought more nigh
To learnèd Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie
A little nearer Spenser, to make room
For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold Tomb.
To lodge all four in one bed make a shift
Until Doomsday, for hardly will a fift
Betwixt this day and that by Fate be slain,
For whom your Curtains may be drawn again.
If your precedency in death doth bar
A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre,
Under this carved marble of thine own,
Sleep, rare Tragedian, Shakespeare, sleep alone;
Thy unmolested peace,  unsharèd cave,
Possess as Lord, not Tenant, of thy Grave,
That unto us and others it may be
Honour hereafter to be laid by thee.

William Basse

Postscript: I amused myself with the idea of adapting this poem for modern times, imagining an eminent poet recently deceased sharing the grave with two other deserving cases and a third whose star seems more likely to fade. Something on the lines of:

‘Renownèd Larkin lie a thought more nigh
To learnèd Hughes, and let Another lie
A little nearer Larkin, to make room
For Heaney in your threefold, fourfold Tomb.’

I will leave it to readers to contemplate possible candidates for the role of Another…