CLAIMS Shakespeare is not buried in his home town have been laughed off.
Alexander Waugh, the grandson of novelist Evelyn Waugh, says the Bard was laid to rest beneath Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey and not at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford.
Mr Waugh reached his conclusion after cracking a purported secret code found in Aspley’s edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets published in 1609.
Mr Waugh said scholars had always claimed the mysterious dedication page of the book must have been encrypted because it did not make sense.
He told national press: “It’s got those funny dots all over the place and there’s something very weird about it. I’ve finally cracked it.
“The title page and dedication page have encrypted in them the exact church, the exact part of that church and the exact spot … where Shakespeare is buried.
“It’s like an old-fashioned treasure island map. You overlay the title page on to a ground plan of Poet’s Corner and it points to exactly where he’s buried. It’s just phenomenal.”
But Dr Paul Edmondson, head of research at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, was far from convinced by Mr Waugh’s evidence.
He told The Observer: “If Shakespeare had died in London he would probably have been buried in Westminster Abbey. But he died in Stratford-upon-Avon, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church.
“Alexander Waugh is of course presenting a fantasy. He isn’t the grandson of the fiction writer and satirist Evelyn Waugh for nothing.”
Mr Waugh’s claim is the latest of many relating to Shakespeare’s life and work.
The chief debate surrounds the authorship question, with Sir Francis Bacon; Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford; Christopher Marlowe; and William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, all cited as the possible ‘true’ authors of the plays and sonnets.
