That choice phrase from a 20th-century critic was about the effigy installed above Shakespeare’s grave in Stratford-upon-Avon. The general presumption had been that the painted limestone statue had been made after the writer’s death and was not necessarily modeled on the actual man. Now one scholar’s research indicates that the piece was done by a professional tomb-maker who almost certainly knew Shakespeare — who, more likely than not, commissioned and approved the memorial himself. – The Guardian