Shakespeare his chance for a farewell to the public. An English ship
disappeared, and all on board were given up for lost. A year later the
sailors returned home, and their arrival created intense excitement. They
had been wrecked on the unknown Bermudas, and had lived there for ten
months, terrified by mysterious noises which they thought came from spirits
and devils. Five different accounts of this fascinating shipwreck were
published, and the Bermudas became known as the "Ile of Divels."
Shakespeare took this story--which caused as much popular interest as that
later shipwreck which gave us _Robinson Crusoe_--and wove it into _The
Tempest_. In the same year (1611) he probably sold his interest in the
Globe and Blackfriars theaters, and his dramatic work was ended. A few
plays were probably left unfinished[153] and were turned over to Fletcher
and other dramatists.

That Shakespeare thought little of his success and had no idea that his
dramas were the greatest that the world ever produced seems evident from
the fact that he made no attempt to collect or publish his works, or even
to save his manuscripts, which were carelessly left to stage managers of
the theaters, and so found their way ultimately to the ragman. After a few
years of quiet life, of which we have less record than of hundreds of
simple country gentlemen of the time, Shakespeare died on the probable
anniversary of his birth, April 23, 1616. He was given a tomb in the
chancel of the parish church, not because of his preeminence in literature,
but because of his interest in the affairs of a country village. And in the
sad irony of fate, the broad stone that covered his tomb--now an object of
veneration to the thousands that yearly visit the little church--was
inscribed as follows:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare
To dig the dust enclosed heare;
Bleste be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.

This wretched doggerel, over the world's greatest poet, was intended, no
doubt, as a warning to some stupid sexton, lest he should empty the grave
and give the honored place to some amiable gentleman who had given more
tithes to the parish.

WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE. At the time of Shakespeare's death twenty-one plays
existed in manuscripts in the various theaters. A few others had already
been printed in quarto form, and the latter are the only publications that
could possibly have met with the poet's own approv