The conclusion brings new credence to a long-discredited claim that the skull was stolen from the playwright's grave by trophy hunters in 1794. An archaeological survey of the playwright’s grave at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon appears to give new credence to theories that Shakespeare’s grave was looted in 1794—rumors of which have been debunked as myth until now. The claim that the skull was stolen was first published in a magazine in 1879. Archaeologist Kevin Colls of Staffordshire University led the investigation of Shakespeare’s grave for a new documentary on the U.K.’s Channel 4 to mark the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death in April. Colls' team was permitted to examine the grave at Stratford's Holy Trinity Church because ground-penetrating radar technology permitted them to do so without disturbing the remains of the famous playwright. A team of archaeologists has claimed that William Shakespeare's skull was "probably" stolen from its final resting place in his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, England. The televised investigation led Colls and his team to look into another legend: that Shakespeare’s skull was sealed in a crypt inside St. Leonard’s church in Worcestershire, some 15 miles away from his gravesite. The archaeologists have also determined that Shakespeare was not buried standing up, contrary to tradition, and that he was laid to rest wrapped in a shroud rather than in a coffin.
– It looks like Shakespeare's skull really is missing from his grave. That's what an archaeologist has concluded after researchers were allowed to use ground-penetrating radar to scan the Bard's final resting place, Reuters reports. "We have Shakespeare's burial with an odd disturbance at the head end and we have a story that suggests that at some point in history someone's come in and taken the skull of Shakespeare," says Staffordshire University archaeologist Kevin Colls, who says the findings are "very very convincing" that the long-standing rumors of a missing skull are true. He tells Fox News that analysis shows the "odd, strange" disturbance at the head end of the grave is a sign "of material being dug out and put back again." Per those rumors, grave-robbers took the skull from Shakespeare's grave at the Church of the Holy Trinity in England's Stratford-upon-Avon in 1794. At the time, trophy hunters believed a person's genius would be apparent in his skull. Rumors also claimed that Shakespeare's skull might be hidden in a sealed crypt at another church nearby, but Colls' team investigated and found the skull there was that of a woman in her 70s. The team also discovered that Shakespeare was buried in a simple shroud, not a coffin, and that he and his wife were buried in shallow graves, not a deeper family vault as had been believed, Newsweek adds. Researchers, who ignored a curse in Shakespeare's epitaph in order to do their non-intrusive analysis, present the findings in a documentary airing in Britain Saturday. (Click to see Shakespeare's entreaty for refugees, in his own hand.)