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It is generally agreed by Shakespeare scholars nowadays that Doctor Chambers is a figment of the imagination of the Reverend C. L. Langston, Vicar of Beoley, in the latter part of the nineteenth century. He first appears in an article in the 'Argosy' magazine of October, 1879, on 'How Shakespeare's skull was stolen,' signed 'A Warwickshire Man,.' later identified as the Reverend C. L. Langston. After George Arbuthnot was instituted Vicar of Holy Trinity, Stratford in 1879, large restorations were proposed, including possible disturbance of Shakespeare's tomb. This prompted C. M. Ingleby to publish a survey entitled 'Shakespeare's Bones:the Proposal to disinter them' in 1883, in which he acknowledged 'The vraisemblance of the narrative is amazing But for the poverty of the concluding portion... one might almost accept this as a narrative of fact.' It also prompted Langston to re-issue his original tale, still anonymously, as a separate one shilling pamphlet entitled 'How Shakespeare's Skull was Stolen and Found', with an extra chapter on how the skull was found in the family vault of the Sheldons, obviously at Beoley, which was unnamed, and then being used by comers. The latest authority, S.Schoenbaum in his definitive 'Shakespeare Lives' (1970) calls it a lurid fiction.'
But having just re-read it, a niggling doubt remains; the details of names, of historical facts and geographical features are, as Ingleby wrote, absolutely amazing. Perhaps Frank Chambers was inspired by Charles Chambers, born in 1782, of the Spernall family, became a physician and first served in the Navy (his 'Journal' is in 'Navy Records Society,' (vol. 68, 1928) and later settled in Leamington in the 1820s and was Dr. Jephson's predecessor in establishing the fame of that spa, as recounted in Eric G. Baxter's 'Dr. Jephson of Leamington Spa' (Warwickshire Local History Society, 1980). Whether the astonishing and accurate detail is 'merely corrobative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude' to the narrative or not, it makes fascinating reading to anyone interested in Alcester history
As a final note, I was a boy in Stratford in the 1920s and oral tradition had it that during the 1880s restoration, a workman let down a candle on a piece of string into Shakespeare's tomb when the altar rails were brought forward to prevent tourists treading on the inscriptions, and all he could see was dust.
Previous Article on Dr. Chambers
Additional Information
Amazon.co.uk: A Glance: Shakespeare's Lives