GOOD FREND FOR JESUS SAKE FORBEARE TO
DIGG THE DUST ENCLOASED HEARE.
BLEST BE YE MAN YT SPARES THES STONES AND
CURST BE HE YT MOVES MY BONES
Shakespeare’s epitaph.
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.