The head of Shakspere here presented, from the monumental bust in the chancel of the church at Stratford, like everything else relating to Shakspere, in life or in death, is shrouded in mystery. It is supposed to be the work of one Gerard Johnson, and to have been “cut from a death-mask” shortly after Shakspere’s funeral. The earliest allusion to it is to be found in a poem of Leonard Digges, written seven years later. It was certainly in existence during the lifetime of Anne Hathaway Shakspere, and of other members of his family, who would, perhaps, have objected or protested if the likeness had not been considered a good one. Sir Francis Chantrey believed it to have been worked from a cast of the living or the dead face. “There are in the original in the church,” he wrote, “marks of individuality which are not to be observed in the usual casts from it; for instance, the markings about the eyes, the wrinkles on the forehead, and the undercutting from the moustachios.” Wordsworth, among others, accepted its authenticity, and Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps did not hesitate to put himself on record, more than once, as having every faith in its superiority, in the matter of actual resemblance, to any of the alleged portraits. He ranked it, in point of authority, before the Droeshout print, endorsed by Ben Jonson as perfect; and he called attention to the general resemblance to be traced between them. It certainly differs in many respects from the famous plaster cast found in a curiosity-shop in Germany some years ago, and known as the Kesselstadt mask, a photograph of which is here reproduced. This mask is believed, by those who believe in it at all, to have been made from Shakspere’s dead face, to have been carried to Germany by a German envoy to England in the reign of James I., to have been cherished as an authentic and valuable relic for many generations, to have been sold for rubbish at the death of the last of the race, and to have been recovered in a most fortuitous way. It bears upon its back the date of Shakspere’s death, 1616, it has been the subject of more discussion than any piece of plaster of its size in the world, and even those who believe that it is not Shakspere have never asserted that it _is_ Bacon! According to Mr. G. Huntley Gordon, this cast from the Stratford bust was taken about 1845, stealthily and in the middle of the night, by a young Stratford plasterer, who was frightened by imaginary noises before he succeeded in getting a mould of the entire head. After the protest raised against Malone for whitewashing the bust in 1793, the authorities, naturally, had put an embargo upon any handling of the monument, and the operation was fraught with much risk to the aspiring youth who undertook it. A cast is known to have been taken for Malone, however, and since then other casts have been made by other artists, notably one by George Bullock, who made the death-mask of Scott.