According to some accounts, William Shakespeare caught a fever and died after a night of heavy drinking with fellow playwright Ben Jonson. Other historians dispute this fact, arguing that he must have had a long illness which gave him time to get his affairs in order as he made changes to his will a few months prior to his death. Still other argue that these changes were due to the wedding of his daughter Judith to Tomas Quiney. At any rate, Shakespeare is believed to have died on the twenty-third of April, 1616, the same day of the same month in which he is supposed to have been born. Two days later, he was buried in the Chancel of the Church of the Holy Trinity at Stratford where he had been baptised 52 years earlier. On his tomb are carved the now famous lines:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare

To dig the dust enclosed here;

Blest be the man that spares these stones,

And curst be he that moves my bones.