In the church in Stratford-upon-Avon where he is buried, the altar stone had been buried and hidden for safekeeping during the upheavals of the Reformation.

BBC: Shakespeare scholars try to see off the Bard's doubters

It was a pagan desire, she thought, and it was a pagan place: a dark garden of yews and straggling roses and, at its center, the stone church, with its altar and its font and, above it all, the bells, suspended in the chill air of the belfry, heavy and still, waiting to be brought to life.

NEWYORKER: The Bell Ringer