YE YT YT are (very common) misspelling of þe (the) and þt (that). The rune Þ (thorn) was (along with eth, Ð and ð) used for the th-sound in english well into the 17th century.
The Þ was often stylized on signs and looked like a Y to many people who aren’t familiar with the rune, e.g. Þe olde tea shoppe is mistakenly read as ye olde tea shoppe...at no point has english used ‘ye’ as a definite article (’se’ was used in old english along with ‘the’), etc.
Even without looking at a pic of the engraving it is virtually certain that shakespeare’s epitath, if the original, has some form of thorn, not y, in those places.
You didn’t ask any of this, of course, but it is not well known and may be interesting to some readers. Even Lovecraft fell for the ‘ye’ article in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
That is interesting. I knew roughly what his epitaph was but decided to look it up. That was the way it showed so I just copied it.
Anyway it is clear Shakespeare didn’t want anyone to mess with his grave.
Thanks to you, I DID learn something new today.
Now if I can just remember it...
That is such a libel of Lovecraft. You make the unwarranted assumption that he didn't know better, just because his readers didn't.
Had he tried to educate them, rather than pander to their ignorance by conforming to the incorrect convention, it would have cost him enormously in terms of future sales.
OTOH, maybe he was ignorant of the real thorn, as opposed to the spurious Y.