Till o'er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep.
With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep.
SCP- 9979
Level:II
Restricted
Containment Class:
Keter
Secondary Class:
Totec
Disruption Class:
Dark
Risk Class:
Caution
Item#: {$item-number}
Level2
Containment Class:
{$container-class}
Secondary Class:
{$secondary-class}
Disruption Class:
{$disruption-class}
Risk Class:
{$risk-class}
SCP-9979 and SCP-9979-1 instance (left).
SPECIAL CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES
SCP-9979 and SCP-9979-1 are currently interred within the Shakespeare funerary monument, located inside Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. The monument is to be monitored continuously via CCTV.
Historical records are to be altered as needed. Cognitohazardous glyphs are to be placed throughout the interior of Holy Trinity Church, for means of active memory manipulation for all unattuned individuals that may visit the location of the anomaly.
At no time should personnel attempt to interact with SCP-9979 or instances of SCP-9979-1.
DESCRIPTION
SCP-9979 is William Shakespeare, whose body is housed within the Shakespeare funerary monument. Contrary to historical accounts of a natural death in 1616 CE, SCP-9979 remains in a temporal stasis suggestive of functional immortality, though the specifics and limits of this effect remain unclear.
SCP-9979-1 is the collective designation for ten additional graves within the funerary monument which claim to also contain the remains of William Shakespeare. Unlike SCP-9979, instances of SCP-9979-1 have undergone proper decomposition. Despite this, the remains continue to diffuse notable quantities of Elan-Vital Energy (EVE).
Attempts to relocate or otherwise exhume SCP-9979 or SCP-9979-1 invariably fail. In addition, those involved in such attempts universally experience great misfortune. Ground-penetrating radar scans of the area have revealed a hollow space below the graves within Holy Trinity Church; its exact relevance, if such exists, has not been confirmed, as accessing this space would disturb soil under the detrimental anomalous effect.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Very little reliable record exists of SCP-9979's actions during his active lifetime. The earliest notable event traces to mid-autumn of 1586 CE. SCP-9979 recalls the incursion of a doppelgänger into his home in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Upon finding and accessing SCP-9979's private quarters, the invader then collected several quires of loose parchment containing multiple in-progress manuscripts, absconding into the forest beside their home shortly thereafter.
I keep worthy parchment close and closed, yet still they slip from my possession. If a man may be robbed by his own face, then what safety lies in any room?
Anne Hathaway, SCP-9979’s wife, became a critical figure during this period. Known controversially for her inherited interest in natural thaumaturgy and the occult, she allegedly supplied SCP-9979 with instructions for a rite to pass between worlds, as well as a map to a woodland locus where the domain wall between timelines is particularly thin.
A later entry, believed to describe Hathaway’s conditions and SCP-9979’s initial intent, reads:
Anne would have me put the matter by and let God keep account, yet she set her finger hard upon the table and said, "There is a way, but it shan't be taken lightly."
She drew forth a little book, worn smooth where a thumb hath worried it, and a map with a mark set in the green.
“Do not hunt glory,” quoth she, “but fetch thine own and return.”
What glory, if any, could be found there, she could not say.
Shortly thereafter, SCP-9979 vanished for several days. Upon his return, his writings depict an encounter with another timeline and the theft of a large corpus of works authored by other versions of himself.
Anne set her mark upon the map and bade me follow where the trees grow strange. I saw the road that is not a road, the light that is not a star. I stepped from one wood into another, and there awaited me my own life too made strange.
Hiding inside it were pages, both mine own and those unwrit by me, scrawled in a dozen hands yet bearing my name all the same.
In panic and in spite, I took them all, as a starving man takes bread. Though my mouth still tastes of ash.
In 1589 CE, SCP-9979 departed Stratford permanently, relocating to London. Anne remained behind with their three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. It is during the ensuing years, a period of commercial success and profliferation, that evidence of SCP-9979’s neurological deterioration first appears.
I do not know my own brother from the tailor, it seems.
Men pass and smile and call me friend, but their masks do not shift.
Worn thin, the ghosts of my past boil up and pursue me, even now.
Recovered journal fragments suggest onset of visual agnosia, specifically prosopagnosia (face blindness). Initially dismissed as exhaustion, these episodes grew more frequent, with SCP-9979 expressing increasing doubt toward the identities of those around him, including Anne.
I saw my wife at the threshold, hands folded as ever, but something in her eyes had fled.
She spoke my name, and I heard it as from a pit.
I kissed her cheek, and it was cold as the stone at my father’s grave.
I asked her where the children were and she laughed, in a voice not of her own.
Following the unexplained death of Hamnet in 1596 CE, SCP-9979's writing shifted further into themes of fate and betrayal. Having been absent at the time of his son’s passing, the associated feelings and opinions took on an exaggerated importance in his later writings, wherein he questions both the circumstances of the death and the authenticity of the mourners.
I saw a boy in the crowd with my son's walk.
The same joy, that same life, not forgone.
And when he turned, his face was only the mist of morning on a window.
None that stood by the bier wept rightly, neither kin nor kind.
In late 1598 CE, SCP-9979 reported being approached in a London tavern by another instance of SCP-9979. The entity accused SCP-9979 of murdering Hamnet in an alternate history. While this claim was immediately dismissed by SCP-9979 as impossible, it catalyzed his suspicions regarding his own absence during his son’s death.
He wore my grief like a crown, accusing me of some past where my hand struck my boy— his boy.
I denied it, but his silence mocked me.
He left me no name, only a mirrored look I cannot shake.
Returning to Stratford in secret, SCP-9979 questioned Anne, who appeared bewildered by his line of inquiry and denied knowledge of the events he described.
She said the boy took ill and died quiet.
Yet Judith swears he was seen hale that morning.
No bell tolled that day, though I sent coin for the sacristan.
It did not feel like enough.
Convinced that some deception or substitution had occurred, SCP-9979 forcibly accessed Anne’s hidden collection of ritual texts. Among them he discovered a spell for the extraction of Elan-Vital Energy through the consumption of a doppelgänger’s life force, intended as a vehicle for unnatural life extension.
A draught for taking of another’s fire.
A gift to the withering soul.
To seize the years, one may drink the light that is not thine.
This she kept behind three locks and a veil, as though it were not meant for me. Yet mine it now is.
From 1600 to 1612 CE, SCP-9979 is believed to have actively sought out and captured interloper instances of himself (SCP-9979-1) for use in said spell.
I met mine own like a man meets a knife. We spoke and yet I heard no truth in either voice. In the reflection of the glass, I knew neither face.
There was a woman called Agnes, who never smiled, and never had a son.
I looked upon my hands and they were mine and not mine.
The blood that soaked them was no different.
By 1613 CE, SCP-9979 had become entirely withdrawn from public life.
Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death, indeed.
I have shut myself within the terror of the tomb, stalked by endless mirrors of the manifold self.
A world defiled by false reflections; mine own dear ones, replaced by foul, treacherous shades.
Only through their demise may debts be paid, and shall the mortal frame yet withstand time’s cruel advance.
I discern that I am neither wholly one nor entirely naught; I am at war with my very soul.
Condemned to wander in perpetual solitude, I remain forever haunted by the visage of Betrayal.
Despite the claim, efforts to corroborate the behavioral deviations allegedly expressed by SCP-9979's immediate family and/or close friends have not been successful. However, historical record suggests an unaccounted instance of SCP-9979 was living in peace with Anne in his final years. This instance notably referred to his wife as “Agnes,” a detail consistent with select early parish records but inconsistent with most canonical accounts.
It is hypothesized that "Agnes" may refer to an alternate iteration of Anne Hathaway, one who is potentially complicit in manipulating the baseline SCP-9979 into entombing himself voluntarily. Considering the apparent post-burial cursing of the gravesite, which SCP-9979 could not perform alone, it is assumed that "Agnes" fulfilled this role.
NOTABLE EXCERPTS
While the exact mechanics of these measures are unknown, SCP-9979 occasionally alluded to their existence in his writings, along with expressing an unhealthy obsession with mortality through his many musings on death.
From A Midsummer Night's Dream — Act 3, Scene 2:
Till o'er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep
With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep.
Then crush this herb into Lysander’s eye,
Whose liquor hath this virtuous property
To take from thence all error with his might
And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight.
When they next wake, all this derision
Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision.
And back to Athens shall the lovers wend,
With league whose date till death shall never end.
As of 05/13/2028, SCP-9979 remains in an inactive state.
END OF FILE