diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:19:07 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:19:07 -0700 |
| commit | 79bb474d6c258371ec6dd7f8218ec6a068987442 (patch) | |
| tree | 9a455b3ed75f81392a530ea238d108b9960b222b | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 2431-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 58313 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 2431-h/2431-h.htm | 2735 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 2431.txt | 2596 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 2431.zip | bin | 0 -> 56495 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/shkdd10.txt | 2675 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/shkdd10.zip | bin | 0 -> 55038 bytes |
9 files changed, 8022 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/2431-h.zip b/2431-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..54a7152 --- /dev/null +++ b/2431-h.zip diff --git a/2431-h/2431-h.htm b/2431-h/2431-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f6cc647 --- /dev/null +++ b/2431-h/2431-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2735 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Is Shakespeare Dead?</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.headingsummary { margin-left: 5%;} + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Is Shakespeare Dead?, by Mark Twain</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Is Shakespeare Dead?, by Mark Twain + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Is Shakespeare Dead? + from my Autobiography + + +Author: Mark Twain + + + +Release Date: July 7, 2008 [eBook #2431] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1909 Harper & Brothers edition by +David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Proofing by Alan Ross, +Ana Charlton and David.</p> +<h1>IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?</h1> +<p style="text-align: center">FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Mark +Twain</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">harper & +brothers publishers</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">new york and london</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">M C M I X</span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> +<p>Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished +manuscript which constitute this formidable Autobiography and +Diary of mine, certain chapters will in some distant future be +found which deal with “Claimants”—claimants +historically notorious: Satan, Claimant; the Golden Calf, +Claimant; the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, Claimant; Louis XVII., +Claimant; William Shakespeare, Claimant; Arthur Orton, Claimant; +Mary Baker G. Eddy, Claimant—and the rest of them. +Eminent Claimants, successful Claimants, defeated Claimants, +royal Claimants, pleb Claimants, showy Claimants, shabby +Claimants, revered Claimants, despised Claimants, twinkle +starlike here and there and yonder through the mists of history +and legend and tradition—and oh, all the darling tribe are +clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about them with deep +interest and discuss them with loving sympathy or with rancorous +resentment, according to which side we hitch ourselves to. +It has always been so with the human race. There was never +a Claimant that couldn’t get a hearing, nor one that +couldn’t accumulate a rapturous following, no matter how +flimsy and apparently unauthentic his claim might be. +Arthur Orton’s claim that he was the lost Tichborne baronet +come to life again was as flimsy as Mrs. Eddy’s that she +wrote <i>Science and Health</i> from the direct dictation of the +Deity; yet in England near forty years ago Orton had a huge army +of devotees and incorrigible adherents, many of whom remained +stubbornly unconvinced after their fat god had been proven an +impostor and jailed as a perjurer, and to-day Mrs. Eddy’s +following is not only immense, but is daily augmenting in numbers +and enthusiasm. Orton had many fine and educated minds +among his adherents, Mrs. Eddy has had the like among hers from +the beginning. Her church is as well equipped in those +particulars as is any other church. Claimants can always +count upon a following, it doesn’t matter who they are, nor +what they claim, nor whether they come with documents or +without. It was always so. Down out of the +long-vanished past, across the abyss of the ages, if you listen +you can still hear the believing multitudes shouting for Perkin +Warbeck and Lambert Simnel.</p> +<p>A friend has sent me a new book, from England—<i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>—well restated and closely +reasoned; and my fifty years’ interest in that +matter—asleep for the last three years—is excited +once more. It is an interest which was born of Delia +Bacon’s book—away back in that ancient +day—1857, or maybe 1856. About a year later my +pilot-master, Bixby, transferred me from his own steamboat to the +<i>Pennsylvania</i>, and placed me under the orders and +instructions of George Ealer—dead now, these many, many +years. I steered for him a good many months—as was +the humble duty of the pilot-apprentice: stood a daylight watch +and spun the wheel under the severe superintendence and +correction of the master. He was a prime chess player and +an idolater of Shakespeare. He would play chess with +anybody; even with me, and it cost his official dignity something +to do that. Also—quite uninvited—he would read +Shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when it +was his watch, and I was steering. He read well, but not +profitably for me, because he constantly injected commands into +the text. That broke it all up, mixed it all up, tangled it +all up—to that degree, in fact, that if we were in a risky +and difficult piece of river an ignorant person couldn’t +have told, sometimes, which observations were Shakespeare’s +and which were Ealer’s. For instance:</p> +<blockquote><p>What man dare, <i>I</i> dare!</p> +<p>Approach thou <i>what</i> are you laying in the leads for? +what a hell of an idea! like the rugged ease her off a little, +ease her off! rugged Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the +<i>there</i> she goes! meet her, meet her! didn’t you +<i>know</i> she’d smell the reef if you crowded it like +that? Hyrcan tiger; take any shape but that and my firm +nerves she’ll be in the <i>woods</i> the first you know! +stop the starboard! come ahead strong on the larboard! back the +starboard! . . . <i>Now</i> then, you’re all right; come +ahead on the starboard; straighten up and go ’long, never +tremble: or be alive again, and dare me to the desert damnation +can’t you keep away from that greasy water? pull her down! +snatch her! snatch her baldheaded! with thy sword; if trembling I +inhabit then, lay in the leads!—no, only the starboard one, +leave the other alone, protest me the baby of a girl. Hence +horrible shadow! eight bells—that watchman’s asleep +again, I reckon, go down and call Brown yourself, unreal mockery, +hence!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and +stormy and tragic, but it was a damage to me, because I have +never since been able to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane +way. I cannot rid it of his explosive interlardings, they +break in everywhere with their irrelevant “What in hell are +you up to <i>now</i>! pull her down! more! +<i>more</i>!—there now, steady as you go,” and the +other disorganizing interruptions that were always leaping from +his mouth. When I read Shakespeare now, I can hear them as +plainly as I did in that long-departed time—fifty-one years +ago. I never regarded Ealer’s readings as +educational. Indeed they were a detriment to me.</p> +<p>His contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring +that detail he was a good reader, I can say that much for +him. He did not use the book, and did not need to; he knew +his Shakespeare as well as Euclid ever knew his multiplication +table.</p> +<p>Did he have something to say—this Shakespeare-adoring +Mississippi pilot—anent Delia Bacon’s book? +Yes. And he said it; said it all the time, for +months—in the morning watch, the middle watch, the dog +watch; and probably kept it going in his sleep. He bought +the literature of the dispute as fast as it appeared, and we +discussed it all through thirteen hundred miles of river four +times traversed in every thirty-five days—the time required +by that swift boat to achieve two round trips. We +discussed, and discussed, and discussed, and disputed and +disputed and disputed; at any rate he did, and I got in a word +now and then when he slipped a cog and there was a vacancy. +He did his arguing with heat, with energy, with violence; and I +did mine with the reserve and moderation of a subordinate who +does not like to be flung out of a pilot-house that is perched +forty feet above the water. He was fiercely loyal to +Shakespeare and cordially scornful of Bacon and of all the +pretensions of the Baconians. So was I—at +first. And at first he was glad that that was my +attitude. There were even indications that he admired it; +indications dimmed, it is true, by the distance that lay between +the lofty boss-pilotical altitude and my lowly one, yet +perceptible to me; perceptible, and translatable into a +compliment—compliment coming down from above the snow-line +and not well thawed in the transit, and not likely to set +anything afire, not even a cub-pilot’s self-conceit; still +a detectable compliment, and precious.</p> +<p>Naturally it flattered me into being more loyal to +Shakespeare—if possible—than I was before, and more +prejudiced against Bacon—if possible than I was +before. And so we discussed and discussed, both on the same +side, and were happy. For a while. Only for a +while. Only for a very little while, a very, very, very +little while. Then the atmosphere began to change; began to +cool off.</p> +<p>A brighter person would have seen what the trouble was, +earlier than I did, perhaps, but I saw it early enough for all +practical purposes. You see, he was of an argumentative +disposition. Therefore it took him but a little time to get +tired of arguing with a person who agreed with everything he said +and consequently never furnished him a provocative to flare up +and show what he could do when it came to clear, cold, hard, +rose-cut, hundred-faceted, diamond-flashing reasoning. That +was his name for it. It has been applied since, with +complacency, as many as several times, in the Bacon-Shakespeare +scuffle. On the Shakespeare side.</p> +<p>Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons +than to me when principle and personal interest found themselves +in opposition to each other and a choice had to be made: I let +principle go, and went over to the other side. Not the +entire way, but far enough to answer the requirements of the +case. That is to say, I took this attitude, to wit: I only +<i>believed</i> Bacon wrote Shakespeare, whereas I <i>knew</i> +Shakespeare didn’t. Ealer was satisfied with that, +and the war broke loose. Study, practice, experience in +handling my end of the matter presently enabled me to take my new +position almost seriously; a little bit later, utterly seriously; +a little later still, lovingly, gratefully, devotedly; finally: +fiercely, rabidly, uncompromisingly. After that, I was +welded to my faith, I was theoretically ready to die for it, and +I looked down with compassion not unmixed with scorn, upon +everybody else’s faith that didn’t tally with +mine. That faith, imposed upon me by self-interest in that +ancient day, remains my faith to-day, and in it I find comfort, +solace, peace, and never-failing joy. You see how curiously +theological it is. The “rice Christian” of the +Orient goes through the very same steps, when he is after rice +and the missionary is after <i>him</i>; he goes for rice, and +remains to worship.</p> +<p>Ealer did a lot of our “reasoning”—not to +say substantially all of it. The slaves of his cult have a +passion for calling it by that large name. We others do not +call our inductions and deductions and reductions by any name at +all. They show for themselves, what they are, and we can +with tranquil confidence leave the world to ennoble them with a +title of its own choosing.</p> +<p>Now and then when Ealer had to stop to cough, I pulled my +induction-talents together and hove the controversial lead +myself: always getting eight feet, eight-and-a-half, often nine, +sometimes even quarter-less-twain—as <i>I</i> believed; but +always “no bottom,” as <i>he</i> said.</p> +<p>I got the best of him only once. I prepared +myself. I wrote out a passage from Shakespeare—it may +have been the very one I quoted a while ago, I don’t +remember—and riddled it with his wild steamboatful +interlardings. When an unrisky opportunity offered, one +lovely summer day, when we had sounded and buoyed a tangled patch +of crossings known as Hell’s Half Acre, and were aboard +again and he had sneaked the Pennsylvania triumphantly through it +without once scraping sand, and the <i>A. T. Lacey</i> had +followed in our wake and got stuck, and he was feeling good, I +showed it to him. It amused him. I asked him to fire +it off: read it; read it, I diplomatically added, as only he +could read dramatic poetry. The compliment touched him +where he lived. He did read it; read it with surpassing +fire and spirit; read it as it will never be read again; for +<i>he</i> knew how to put the right music into those thunderous +interlardings and make them seem a part of the text, make them +sound as if they were bursting from Shakespeare’s own soul, +each one of them a golden inspiration and not to be left out +without damage to the massed and magnificent whole.</p> +<p>I waited a week, to let the incident fade; waited longer; +waited until he brought up for reasonings and vituperation my pet +position, my pet argument, the one which I was fondest of, the +one which I prized far above all others in my ammunition-wagon, +to wit: that Shakespeare couldn’t have written +Shakespeare’s works, for the reason that the man who wrote +them was limitlessly familiar with the laws, and the law-courts, +and law-proceedings, and lawyer-talk, and lawyer-ways—and +if Shakespeare was possessed of the infinitely-divided star-dust +that constituted this vast wealth, how did he get it, and +<i>where</i>, and <i>when</i>?</p> +<p>“From books.”</p> +<p>From books! That was always the idea. I answered +as my readings of the champions of my side of the great +controversy had taught me to answer: that a man can’t +handle glibly and easily and comfortably and successfully the +<i>argot</i> of a trade at which he has not personally +served. He will make mistakes; he will not, and cannot, get +the trade-phrasings precisely and exactly right; and the moment +he departs, by even a shade, from a common trade-form, the reader +who has served that trade will know the writer +<i>hasn’t</i>. Ealer would not be convinced; he said +a man could learn how to correctly handle the subtleties and +mysteries and free-masonries of any trade by careful reading and +studying. But when I got him to read again the passage from +Shakespeare with the interlardings, he perceived, himself, that +books couldn’t teach a student a bewildering multitude of +pilot-phrases so thoroughly and perfectly that he could talk them +off in book and play or conversation and make no mistake that a +pilot would not immediately discover. It was a triumph for +me. He was silent awhile, and I knew what was happening: he +was losing his temper. And I knew he would presently close +the session with the same old argument that was always his stay +and his support in time of need; the same old argument, the one I +couldn’t answer—because I dasn’t: the argument +that I was an ass, and better shut up. He delivered it, and +I obeyed.</p> +<p>Oh, dear, how long ago it was—how pathetically long +ago! And here am I, old, forsaken, forlorn and alone, +arranging to get that argument out of somebody again.</p> +<p>When a man has a passion for Shakespeare, it goes without +saying that he keeps company with other standard authors. +Ealer always had several high-class books in the pilot-house, and +he read the same ones over and over again, and did not care to +change to newer and fresher ones. He played well on the +flute, and greatly enjoyed hearing himself play. So did +I. He had a notion that a flute would keep its health +better if you took it apart when it was not standing a watch; and +so, when it was not on duty it took its rest, disjointed, on the +compass-shelf under the breast-board. When the +<i>Pennsylvania</i> blew up and became a drifting rack-heap +freighted with wounded and dying poor souls (my young brother +Henry among them), pilot Brown had the watch below, and was +probably asleep and never knew what killed him; but Ealer escaped +unhurt. He and his pilot-house were shot up into the air; +then they fell, and Ealer sank through the ragged cavern where +the hurricane deck and the boiler deck had been, and landed in a +nest of ruins on the main deck, on top of one of the unexploded +boilers, where he lay prone in a fog of scalding and deadly +steam. But not for long. He did not lose his head: +long familiarity with danger had taught him to keep it, in any +and all emergencies. He held his coat-lappels to his nose +with one hand, to keep out the steam, and scrabbled around with +the other till he found the joints of his flute, then he is took +measures to save himself alive, and was successful. I was +not on board. I had been put ashore in New Orleans by +Captain Klinefelter. The reason—however, I have told +all about it in the book called <i>Old Times on the +Mississippi</i>, and it isn’t important anyway, it is so +long ago.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> +<p>When I was a Sunday-school scholar something more than sixty +years ago, I became interested in Satan, and wanted to find out +all I could about him. I began to ask questions, but my +class-teacher, Mr. Barclay the stone-mason, was reluctant about +answering them, it seemed to me. I was anxious to be +praised for turning my thoughts to serious subjects when there +wasn’t another boy in the village who could be hired to do +such a thing. I was greatly interested in the incident of +Eve and the serpent, and thought Eve’s calmness was +perfectly noble. I asked Mr. Barclay if he had ever heard +of another woman who, being approached by a serpent, would not +excuse herself and break for the nearest timber. He did not +answer my question, but rebuked me for inquiring into matters +above my age and comprehension. I will say for Mr. Barclay +that he was willing to tell me the facts of Satan’s +history, but he stopped there: he wouldn’t allow any +discussion of them.</p> +<p>In the course of time we exhausted the facts. There were +only five or six of them, you could set them all down on a +visiting-card. I was disappointed. I had been +meditating a biography, and was grieved to find that there were +no materials. I said as much, with the tears running +down. Mr. Barclay’s sympathy and compassion were +aroused, for he was a most kind and gentle-spirited man, and he +patted me on the head and cheered me up by saying there was a +whole vast ocean of materials! I can still feel the happy +thrill which these blessed words shot through me.</p> +<p>Then he began to bail out that ocean’s riches for my +encouragement and joy. Like this: it was +“conjectured”—though not established—that +Satan was originally an angel in heaven; that he fell; that he +rebelled, and brought on a war; that he was defeated, and +banished to perdition. Also, “we have reason to +believe” that later he did so-and-so; that “we are +warranted in supposing” that at a subsequent time he +travelled extensively, seeking whom he might devour; that a +couple of centuries afterward, “as tradition instructs +us,” he took up the cruel trade of tempting people to their +ruin, with vast and fearful results; that by-and-by, “as +the probabilities seem to indicate,” he may have done +certain things, he might have done certain other things, he must +have done still other things.</p> +<p>And so on and so on. We set down the five known facts by +themselves, on a piece of paper, and numbered it “page +1”; then on fifteen hundred other pieces of paper we set +down the “conjectures,” and +“suppositions,” and “maybes,” and +“perhapses,” and “doubtlesses,” and +“rumors,” and “guesses,” and +“probabilities,” and “likelihoods,” and +“we are permitted to thinks,” and “we are +warranted in believings,” and “might have +beens,” and “could have beens,” and “must +have beens,” and “unquestionablys,” and +“without a shadow of doubts”—and behold!</p> +<p><i>Materials</i>? Why, we had enough to build a +biography of Shakespeare!</p> +<p>Yet he made me put away my pen; he would not let me write the +history of Satan. Why? Because, as he said, he had +suspicions; suspicions that my attitude in this matter was not +reverent; and that a person must be reverent when writing about +the sacred characters. He said any one who spoke flippantly +of Satan would be frowned upon by the religious world and also be +brought to account.</p> +<p>I assured him, in earnest and sincere words, that he had +wholly misconceived my attitude; that I had the highest respect +for Satan, and that my reverence for him equalled, and possibly +even exceeded, that of any member of any church. I said it +wounded me deeply to perceive by his words that he thought I +would make fun of Satan, and deride him, laugh at him, scoff at +him: whereas in truth I had never thought of such a thing, but +had only a warm desire to make fun of those others and laugh at +<i>them</i>. “What others?” “Why, +the Supposers, the Perhapsers, the Might-Have-Beeners, the +Could-Have-Beeners, the Must-Have-Beeners, the +Without-a-Shadow-of-Doubters, the +We-are-Warranted-in-Believingers, and all that funny crop of +solemn architects who have taken a good solid foundation of five +indisputable and unimportant facts and built upon it a +Conjectural Satan thirty miles high.”</p> +<p>What did Mr. Barclay do then? Was he disarmed? Was +he silenced? No. He was shocked. He was so +shocked that he visibly shuddered. He said the Satanic +Traditioners and Perhapsers and Conjecturers were +<i>themselves</i> sacred! As sacred as their work. So +sacred that whoso ventured to mock them or make fun of their +work, could not afterward enter any respectable house, even by +the back door.</p> +<p>How true were his words, and how wise! How fortunate it +would have been for me if I had heeded them. But I was +young, I was but seven years of age, and vain, foolish, and +anxious to attract attention. I wrote the biography, and +have never been in a respectable house since.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> +<p>How curious and interesting is the parallel—as far as +poverty of biographical details is concerned—between Satan +and Shakespeare. It is wonderful, it is unique, it stands +quite alone, there is nothing resembling it in history, nothing +resembling it in romance, nothing approaching it even in +tradition. How sublime is their position, and how +over-topping, how sky-reaching, how supreme—the two Great +Unknowns, the two Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They are +the best-known unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon +the planet.</p> +<p>For the instruction of the ignorant I will make a list, now, +of those details of Shakespeare’s history which are +<i>facts</i>—verified facts, established facts, undisputed +facts.</p> +<h3>FACTS</h3> +<p>He was born on the 23d of April, 1564.</p> +<p>Of good farmer-class parents who could not read, could not +write, could not sign their names.</p> +<p>At Stratford, a small back settlement which in that day was +shabby and unclean, and densely illiterate. Of the nineteen +important men charged with the government of the town, thirteen +had to “make their mark” in attesting important +documents, because they could not write their names.</p> +<p>Of the first eighteen years of his life <i>nothing</i> is +known. They are a blank.</p> +<p>On the 27th of November (1582) William Shakespeare took out a +license to marry Anne Whateley.</p> +<p>Next day William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne +Hathaway. She was eight years his senior.</p> +<p>William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. In a +hurry. By grace of a reluctantly-granted dispensation there +was but one publication of the banns.</p> +<p>Within six months the first child was born.</p> +<p>About two (blank) years followed, during which period +<i>nothing at all happened to Shakespeare</i>, so far as anybody +knows.</p> +<p>Then came twins—1585. February.</p> +<p>Two blank years follow.</p> +<p>Then—1587—he makes a ten-year visit to London, +leaving the family behind.</p> +<p>Five blank years follow. During this period <i>nothing +happened to him</i>, as far as anybody actually knows.</p> +<p>Then—1592—there is mention of him as an actor.</p> +<p>Next year—1593—his name appears in the official +list of players.</p> +<p>Next year—1594—he played before the queen. A +detail of no consequence: other obscurities did it every year of +the forty-five of her reign. And remained obscure.</p> +<p>Three pretty full years follow. Full of +play-acting. Then</p> +<p>In 1597 he bought New Place, Stratford.</p> +<p>Thirteen or fourteen busy years follow; years in which he +accumulated money, and also reputation as actor and manager.</p> +<p>Meantime his name, liberally and variously spelt, had become +associated with a number of great plays and poems, as +(ostensibly) author of the same.</p> +<p>Some of these, in these years and later, were pirated, but he +made no protest. Then—1610-11—he returned to +Stratford and settled down for good and all, and busied himself +in lending money, trading in tithes, trading in land and houses; +shirking a debt of forty-one shillings, borrowed by his wife +during his long desertion of his family; suing debtors for +shillings and coppers; being sued himself for shillings and +coppers; and acting as confederate to a neighbor who tried to rob +the town of its rights in a certain common, and did not +succeed.</p> +<p>He lived five or six years—till 1616—in the joy of +these elevated pursuits. Then he made a will, and signed +each of its three pages with his name.</p> +<p>A thoroughgoing business man’s will. It named in +minute detail every item of property he owned in the +world—houses, lands, sword, silver-gilt bowl, and so +on—all the way down to his “second-best bed” +and its furniture.</p> +<p>It carefully and calculatingly distributed his riches among +the members of his family, overlooking no individual of it. +Not even his wife: the wife he had been enabled to marry in a +hurry by urgent grace of a special dispensation before he was +nineteen; the wife whom he had left husbandless so many years; +the wife who had had to borrow forty-one shillings in her need, +and which the lender was never able to collect of the prosperous +husband, but died at last with the money still lacking. No, +even this wife was remembered in Shakespeare’s will.</p> +<p>He left her that “second-best bed.”</p> +<p>And <i>not another thing</i>; not even a penny to bless her +lucky widowhood with.</p> +<p>It was eminently and conspicuously a business man’s +will, not a poet’s.</p> +<p>It mentioned <i>not a single book</i>.</p> +<p>Books were much more precious than swords and silver-gilt +bowls and second-best beds in those days, and when a departing +person owned one he gave it a high place in his will.</p> +<p>The will mentioned <i>not a play</i>,<i> not a poem</i>,<i> +not an unfinished literary work</i>, <i>not a scrap of manuscript +of any kind</i>.</p> +<p>Many poets have died poor, but this is the only one in history +that has died <i>this</i> poor; the others all left literary +remains behind. Also a book. Maybe two.</p> +<p>If Shakespeare had owned a dog—but we need not go into +that: we know he would have mentioned it in his will. If a +good dog, Susanna would have got it; if an inferior one his wife +would have got a dower interest in it. I wish he had had a +dog, just so we could see how painstakingly he would have divided +that dog among the family, in his careful business way.</p> +<p>He signed the will in three places.</p> +<p>In earlier years he signed two other official documents.</p> +<p>These five signatures still exist.</p> +<p>There are <i>no other specimens of his penmanship in +existence</i>. Not a line.</p> +<p>Was he prejudiced against the art? His granddaughter, +whom he loved, was eight years old when he died, yet she had had +no teaching, he left no provision for her education although he +was rich, and in her mature womanhood she couldn’t write +and couldn’t tell her husband’s manuscript from +anybody else’s—she thought it was +Shakespeare’s.</p> +<p>When Shakespeare died in Stratford <i>it was not an +event</i>. It made no more stir in England than the death +of any other forgotten theatre-actor would have made. +Nobody came down from London; there were no lamenting poems, no +eulogies, no national tears—there was merely silence, and +nothing more. A striking contrast with what happened when +Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon, and Spenser, and Raleigh and the +other distinguished literary folk of Shakespeare’s time +passed from life! No praiseful voice was lifted for the +lost Bard of Avon; even Ben Jonson waited seven years before he +lifted his.</p> +<p><i>So far as anybody actually knows and can prove</i>, +Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his +life.</p> +<p><i>So far as anybody knows and can prove</i>, he never wrote a +letter to anybody in his life.</p> +<p><i>So far as any one knows</i>, <i>he received only one letter +during his life</i>.</p> +<p>So far as any one <i>knows and can prove</i>, Shakespeare of +Stratford wrote only one poem during his life. This one is +authentic. He did write that one—a fact which stands +undisputed; he wrote the whole of it; he wrote the whole of it +out of his own head. He commanded that this work of art be +engraved upon his tomb, and he was obeyed. There it abides +to this day. This is it:</p> +<blockquote><p>Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare<br /> +To digg the dust encloased heare:<br /> +Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones<br /> +And curst be he yt moves my bones.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In the list as above set down, will be found <i>every +positively known</i> fact of Shakespeare’s life, lean and +meagre as the invoice is. Beyond these details we know +<i>not a thing</i> about him. All the rest of his vast +history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course +upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories, +conjectures—an Eiffel Tower of artificialities rising +sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation of +inconsequential facts.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IV—CONJECTURES</h2> +<p>The historians “suppose” that Shakespeare attended +the Free School in Stratford from the time he was seven years old +till he was thirteen. There is no <i>evidence</i> in +existence that he ever went to school at all.</p> +<p>The historians “infer” that he got his Latin in +that school—the school which they “suppose” he +attended.</p> +<p>They “suppose” his father’s declining +fortunes made it necessary for him to leave the school they +supposed he attended, and get to work and help support his +parents and their ten children. But there is no evidence +that he ever entered or retired from the school they suppose he +attended.</p> +<p>They “suppose” he assisted his father in the +butchering business; and that, being only a boy, he didn’t +have to do full-grown butchering, but only slaughtered +calves. Also, that whenever he killed a calf he made a +high-flown speech over it. This supposition rests upon the +testimony of a man who wasn’t there at the time; a man who +got it from a man who could have been there, but did not say +whether he was or not; and neither of them thought to mention it +for decades, and decades, and decades, and two more decades after +Shakespeare’s death (until old age and mental decay had +refreshed and vivified their memories). They hadn’t +two facts in stock about the long-dead distinguished citizen, but +only just the one: he slaughtered calves and broke into oratory +while he was at it. Curious. They had only one fact, +yet the distinguished citizen had spent twenty-six years in that +little town—just half his lifetime. However, rightly +viewed, it was the most important fact, indeed almost the only +important fact, of Shakespeare’s life in Stratford. +Rightly viewed. For experience is an author’s most +valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and +the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes. +Rightly viewed, calf-butchering accounts for <i>Titus +Andronicus</i>, the only play—ain’t it?—that +the Stratford Shakespeare ever wrote; and yet it is the only one +everybody tries to chouse him out of, the Baconians included.</p> +<p>The historians find themselves “justified in +believing” that the young Shakespeare poached upon Sir +Thomas Lucy’s deer preserves and got haled before that +magistrate for it. But there is no shred of respectworthy +evidence that anything of the kind happened.</p> +<p>The historians, having argued the thing that <i>might</i> have +happened into the thing that <i>did</i> happen, found no trouble +in turning Sir Thomas Lucy into Mr. Justice Shallow. They +have long ago convinced the world—on surmise and without +trustworthy evidence—that Shallow <i>is</i> Sir Thomas.</p> +<p>The next addition to the young Shakespeare’s Stratford +history comes easy. The historian builds it out of the +surmised deer-stealing, and the surmised trial before the +magistrate, and the surmised vengeance-prompted satire upon the +magistrate in the play: result, the young Shakespeare was a wild, +wild, wild, oh <i>such</i> a wild young scamp, and that +gratuitous slander is established for all time! It is the +very way Professor Osborn and I built the colossal skeleton +brontosaur that stands fifty-seven feet long and sixteen feet +high in the Natural History Museum, the awe and admiration of all +the world, the stateliest skeleton that exists on the +planet. We had nine bones, and we built the rest of him out +of plaster of paris. We ran short of plaster of paris, or +we’d have built a brontosaur that could sit down beside the +Stratford Shakespeare and none but an expert could tell which was +biggest or contained the most plaster.</p> +<p>Shakespeare pronounced <i>Venus and Adonis</i> “the +first heir of his invention,” apparently implying that it +was his first effort at literary composition. He should not +have said it. It has been an embarrassment to his +historians these many, many years. They have to make him +write that graceful and polished and flawless and beautiful poem +before he escaped from Stratford and his family—1586 or +’87—age, twenty-two, or along there; because within +the next five years he wrote five great plays, and could not have +found time to write another line.</p> +<p>It is sorely embarrassing. If he began to slaughter +calves, and poach deer, and rollick around, and learn English, at +the earliest likely moment—say at thirteen, when he was +supposably wrenched from that school where he was supposably +storing up Latin for future literary use—he had his +youthful hands full, and much more than full. He must have +had to put aside his Warwickshire dialect, which wouldn’t +be understood in London, and study English very hard. Very +hard indeed; incredibly hard, almost, if the result of that labor +was to be the smooth and rounded and flexible and letter-perfect +English of the <i>Venus and Adonis</i> in the space of ten years; +and at the same time learn great and fine and unsurpassable +literary form.</p> +<p>However, it is “conjectured” that he accomplished +all this and more, much more: learned law and its intricacies; +and the complex procedure of the law courts; and all about +soldiering, and sailoring, and the manners and customs and ways +of royal courts and aristocratic society; and likewise +accumulated in his one head every kind of knowledge the learned +then possessed, and every kind of humble knowledge possessed by +the lowly and the ignorant; and added thereto a wider and more +intimate knowledge of the world’s great literatures, +ancient and modern, than was possessed by any other man of his +time—for he was going to make brilliant and easy and +admiration-compelling use of these splendid treasures the moment +he got to London. And according to the surmisers, that is +what he did. Yes, although there was no one in Stratford +able to teach him these things, and no library in the little +village to dig them out of. His father could not read, and +even the surmisers surmise that he did not keep a library.</p> +<p>It is surmised by the biographers that the young Shakespeare +got his vast knowledge of the law and his familiar and accurate +acquaintance with the manners and customs and shop-talk of +lawyers through being for a time the <i>clerk of a Stratford +court</i>; just as a bright lad like me, reared in a village on +the banks of the Mississippi, might become perfect in knowledge +of the Behring Strait whale-fishery and the shop-talk of the +veteran exercisers of that adventure-bristling trade through +catching catfish with a “trot-line” Sundays. +But the surmise is damaged by the fact that there is no +evidence—and not even tradition—that the young +Shakespeare was ever clerk of a law court.</p> +<p>It is further surmised that the young Shakespeare accumulated +his law-treasures in the first years of his sojourn in London, +through “amusing himself” by learning book-law in his +garret and by picking up lawyer-talk and the rest of it through +loitering about the law-courts and listening. But it is +only surmise; there is no <i>evidence</i> that he ever did either +of those things. They are merely a couple of chunks of +plaster of paris.</p> +<p>There is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding +horses in front of the London theatres, mornings and +afternoons. Maybe he did. If he did, it seriously +shortened his law-study hours and his recreation-time in the +courts. In those very days he was writing great plays, and +needed all the time he could get. The horse-holding legend +ought to be strangled; it too formidably increases the +historian’s difficulty in accounting for the young +Shakespeare’s erudition—an erudition which he was +acquiring, hunk by hunk and chunk by chunk every day in those +strenuous times, and emptying each day’s catch into next +day’s imperishable drama.</p> +<p>He had to acquire a knowledge of war at the same time; and a +knowledge of soldier-people and sailor-people and their ways and +talk; also a knowledge of some foreign lands and their languages: +for he was daily emptying fluent streams of these various +knowledges, too, into his dramas. How did he acquire these +rich assets?</p> +<p>In the usual way: by surmise. It is <i>surmised</i> that +he travelled in Italy and Germany and around, and qualified +himself to put their scenic and social aspects upon paper; that +he perfected himself in French, Italian and Spanish on the road; +that he went in Leicester’s expedition to the Low +Countries, as soldier or sutler or something, for several months +or years—or whatever length of time a surmiser needs in his +business—and thus became familiar with soldiership and +soldier-ways and soldier-talk, and generalship and general-ways +and general-talk, and seamanship and sailor-ways and +sailor-talk.</p> +<p>Maybe he did all these things, but I would like to know who +held the horses in the meantime; and who studied the books in the +garret; and who frollicked in the law-courts for +recreation. Also, who did the call-boying and the +play-acting.</p> +<p>For he became a call-boy; and as early as ’93 he became +a “vagabond”—the law’s ungentle term for +an unlisted actor; and in ’94 a “regular” and +properly and officially listed member of that (in those days) +lightly-valued and not much respected profession.</p> +<p>Right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theatres, +and manager of them. Thenceforward he was a busy and +flourishing business man, and was raking in money with both hands +for twenty years. Then in a noble frenzy of poetic +inspiration he wrote his one poem—his only poem, his +darling—and laid him down and died:</p> +<blockquote><p>Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare<br /> +To digg the dust encloased heare:<br /> +Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones<br /> +And curst be he yt moves my bones.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He was probably dead when he wrote it. Still, this is +only conjecture. We have only circumstantial +evidence. Internal evidence.</p> +<p>Shall I set down the rest of the Conjectures which constitute +the giant Biography of William Shakespeare? It would strain +the Unabridged Dictionary to hold them. He is a Brontosaur: +nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster of paris.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER V—“We May Assume”</h2> +<p>In the Assuming trade three separate and independent cults are +transacting business. Two of these cults are known as the +Shakespearites and the Baconians, and I am the other +one—the Brontosaurian.</p> +<p>The Shakespearite knows that Shakespeare wrote +Shakespeare’s Works; the Baconian knows that Francis Bacon +wrote them; the Brontosaurian doesn’t really know which of +them did it, but is quite composedly and contentedly sure that +Shakespeare <i>didn’t</i>, and strongly suspects that Bacon +<i>did</i>. We all have to do a good deal of assuming, but +I am fairly certain that in every case I can call to mind the +Baconian assumers have come out ahead of the +Shakespearites. Both parties handle the same materials, but +the Baconians seem to me to get much more reasonable and rational +and persuasive results out of them than is the case with the +Shakespearites. The Shakespearite conducts his assuming +upon a definite principle, an unchanging and immutable +law—which is: 2 and 8 and 7 and 14, added together, make +165. I believe this to be an error. No matter, you +cannot get a habit-sodden Shakespearite to cipher-up his +materials upon any other basis. With the Baconian it is +different. If you place before him the above figures and +set him to adding them up, he will never in any case get more +than 45 out of them, and in nine cases out of ten he will get +just the proper 31.</p> +<p>Let me try to illustrate the two systems in a simple and +homely way calculated to bring the idea within the grasp of the +ignorant and unintelligent. We will suppose a case: take a +lap-bred, house-fed, uneducated, inexperienced kitten; take a +rugged old Tom that’s scarred from stem to rudder-post with +the memorials of strenuous experience, and is so cultured, so +educated, so limitlessly erudite that one may say of him +“all cat-knowledge is his province”; also, take a +mouse. Lock the three up in a holeless, crackless, exitless +prison-cell. Wait half an hour, then open the cell, +introduce a Shakespearite and a Baconian, and let them cipher and +assume. The mouse is missing: the question to be decided +is, where is it? You can guess both verdicts +beforehand. One verdict will say the kitten contains the +mouse; the other will as certainly say the mouse is in the +tomcat.</p> +<p>The Shakespearite will Reason like this—(that is not my +word, it is his). He will say the kitten <i>may have +been</i> attending school when nobody was noticing; therefore +<i>we are warranted in assuming</i> that it did so; also, it +<i>could have been</i> training in a court-clerk’s office +when no one was noticing; since that could have happened, <i>we +are justified in assuming</i> that it did happen; it <i>could +have studied catology in a garret</i> when no one was +noticing—therefore it <i>did</i>; it <i>could have</i> +attended cat-assizes on the shed-roof nights, for recreation, +when no one was noticing, and harvested a knowledge of cat +court-forms and cat lawyer-talk in that way: it <i>could</i> have +done it, therefore without a doubt it did; it could have gone +soldiering with a war-tribe when no one was noticing, and learned +soldier-wiles and soldier-ways, and what to do with a mouse when +opportunity offers; the plain inference, therefore is, that that +is what it <i>did</i>. Since all these manifold things +<i>could</i> have occurred, we have <i>every right to believe</i> +they did occur. These patiently and painstakingly +accumulated vast acquirements and competences needed but one +thing more—opportunity—to convert themselves into +triumphant action. The opportunity came, we have the +result; <i>beyond shadow of question</i> the mouse is in the +kitten.</p> +<p>It is proper to remark that when we of the three cults plant a +“<i>We think we may assume</i>,” we expect it, under +careful watering and fertilizing and tending, to grow up into a +strong and hardy and weather-defying “<i>there isn’t +a shadow of a doubt</i>” at last—and it usually +happens.</p> +<p>We know what the Baconian’s verdict would be: +“<i>There is not a rag of evidence that the kitten has had +any training</i>, <i>any education</i>, <i>any experience +qualifying it for the present occasion</i>, <i>or is indeed +equipped for any achievement above lifting such unclaimed milk as +comes its way</i>; <i>but there is abundant +evidence</i>—<i>unassailable proof</i>, <i>in +fact</i>—<i>that the other animal is equipped</i>, <i>to +the last detail</i>, <i>with every qualification necessary for +the event</i>. <i>Without shadow of doubt the tomcat +contains the mouse</i>.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<p>When Shakespeare died, in 1616, great literary productions +attributed to him as author had been before the London world and +in high favor for twenty-four years. Yet his death was not +an event. It made no stir, it attracted no attention. +Apparently his eminent literary contemporaries did not realize +that a celebrated poet had passed from their midst. Perhaps +they knew a play-actor of minor rank had disappeared, but did not +regard him as the author of his Works. “We are +justified in assuming” this.</p> +<p>His death was not even an event in the little town of +Stratford. Does this mean that in Stratford he was not +regarded as a celebrity of <i>any</i> kind?</p> +<p>“We are privileged to assume”—no, we are +indeed <i>obliged</i> to assume—that such was the +case. He had spent the first twenty-two or twenty-three +years of his life there, and of course knew everybody and was +known by everybody of that day in the town, including the dogs +and the cats and the horses. He had spent the last five or +six years of his life there, diligently trading in every big and +little thing that had money in it; so we are compelled to assume +that many of the folk there in those said latter days knew him +personally, and the rest by sight and hearsay. But not as a +<i>celebrity</i>? Apparently not. For everybody soon +forgot to remember any contact with him or any incident connected +with him. The dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had +known of him or known about him in the first twenty-three years +of his life were in the same unremembering condition: if they +knew of any incident connected with that period of his life they +didn’t tell about it. Would they if they had been +asked? It is most likely. Were they asked? It +is pretty apparent that they were not. Why weren’t +they? It is a very plausible guess that nobody there or +elsewhere was interested to know.</p> +<p>For seven years after Shakespeare’s death nobody seems +to have been interested in him. Then the quarto was +published, and Ben Jonson awoke out of his long indifference and +sang a song of praise and put it in the front of the book. +Then silence fell <i>again</i>.</p> +<p>For sixty years. Then inquiries into Shakespeare’s +Stratford life began to be made, of Stratfordians. Of +Stratfordians who had known Shakespeare or had seen him? +No. Then of Stratfordians who had seen people who had known +or seen people who had seen Shakespeare? No. +Apparently the inquiries were only made of Stratfordians who were +not Stratfordians of Shakespeare’s day, but later comers; +and what they had learned had come to them from persons who had +not seen Shakespeare; and what they had learned was not claimed +as <i>fact</i>, but only as legend—dim and fading and +indefinite legend; legend of the calf-slaughtering rank, and not +worth remembering either as history or fiction.</p> +<p>Has it ever happened before—or since—that a +celebrated person who had spent exactly half of a fairly long +life in the village where he was born and reared, was able to +slip out of this world and leave that village voiceless and +gossipless behind him—utterly voiceless, utterly +gossipless? And permanently so? I don’t believe +it has happened in any case except Shakespeare’s. And +couldn’t and wouldn’t have happened in his case if he +had been regarded as a celebrity at the time of his death.</p> +<p>When I examine my own case—but let us do that, and see +if it will not be recognizable as exhibiting a condition of +things quite likely to result, most likely to result, indeed +substantially <i>sure</i> to result in the case of a celebrated +person, a benefactor of the human race. Like me.</p> +<p>My parents brought me to the village of Hannibal, Missouri, on +the banks of the Mississippi, when I was two and a half years +old. I entered school at five years of age, and drifted +from one school to another in the village during nine and a half +years. Then my father died, leaving his family in +exceedingly straitened circumstances; wherefore my book-education +came to a standstill forever, and I became a printer’s +apprentice, on board and clothes, and when the clothes failed I +got a hymn-book in place of them. This for summer wear, +probably. I lived in Hannibal fifteen and a half years, +altogether, then ran away, according to the custom of persons who +are intending to become celebrated. I never lived there +afterward. Four years later I became a “cub” on +a Mississippi steamboat in the St. Louis and New Orleans trade, +and after a year and a half of hard study and hard work the U. S. +inspectors rigorously examined me through a couple of long +sittings and decided that I knew every inch of the +Mississippi—thirteen hundred miles—in the dark and in +the day—as well as a baby knows the way to its +mother’s paps day or night. So they licensed me as a +pilot—knighted me, so to speak—and I rose up clothed +with authority, a responsible servant of the United States +government.</p> +<p>Now then. Shakespeare died young—he was only +fifty-two. He had lived in his native village twenty-six +years, or about that. He died celebrated (if you believe +everything you read in the books). Yet when he died nobody +there or elsewhere took any notice of it; and for sixty years +afterward no townsman remembered to say anything about him or +about his life in Stratford. When the inquirer came at last +he got but one fact—no, <i>legend</i>—and got that +one at second hand, from a person who had only heard it as a +rumor, and didn’t claim copyright in it as a production of +his own. He couldn’t, very well, for its date +antedated his own birth-date. But necessarily a number of +persons were still alive in Stratford who, in the days of their +youth, had seen Shakespeare nearly every day in the last five +years of his life, and they would have been able to tell that +inquirer some first-hand things about him if he had in those last +days been a celebrity and therefore a person of interest to the +villagers. Why did not the inquirer hunt them up and +interview them? Wasn’t it worth while? +Wasn’t the matter of sufficient consequence? Had the +inquirer an engagement to see a dog-fight and couldn’t +spare the time?</p> +<p>It all seems to mean that he never had any literary celebrity, +there or elsewhere, and no considerable repute as actor and +manager.</p> +<p>Now then, I am away along in life—my seventy-third year +being already well behind me—yet <i>sixteen</i> of my +Hannibal schoolmates are still alive to-day, and can +tell—and do tell—inquirers dozens and dozens of +incidents of their young lives and mine together; things that +happened to us in the morning of life, in the blossom of our +youth, in the good days, the dear days, “the days when we +went gipsying, a long time ago.” Most of them +creditable to me, too. One child to whom I paid court when +she was five years old and I eight still lives in Hannibal, and +she visited me last summer, traversing the necessary ten or +twelve hundred miles of railroad without damage to her patience +or to her old-young vigor. Another little lassie to whom I +paid attention in Hannibal when she was nine years old and I the +same, is still alive—in London—and hale and hearty, +just as I am. And on the few surviving +steamboats—those lingering ghosts and remembrancers of +great fleets that plied the big river in the beginning of my +water-career—which is exactly as long ago as the whole +invoice of the life-years of Shakespeare number—there are +still findable two or three river-pilots who saw me do creditable +things in those ancient days; and several white-headed engineers; +and several roustabouts and mates; and several deck-hands who +used to heave the lead for me and send up on the still night air +the “six—feet—<i>scant</i>!” that made me +shudder, and the “<i>M-a-r-k—twain</i>!” that +took the shudder away, and presently the darling “By the +d-e-e-p—four!” that lifted me to heaven for joy. <a +name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1" +class="citation">[1]</a> They know about me, and can +tell. And so do printers, from St. Louis to New York; and +so do newspaper reporters, from Nevada to San Francisco. +And so do the police. If Shakespeare had really been +celebrated, like me, Stratford could have told things about him; +and if my experience goes for anything, they’d have done +it.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> +<p>If I had under my superintendence a controversy appointed to +decide whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare or not, I believe I +would place before the debaters only the one question, <i>Was +Shakespeare ever a practicing lawyer</i>? and leave everything +else out.</p> +<p>It is maintained that the man who wrote the plays was not +merely myriad-minded, but also myriad-accomplished: that he not +only knew some thousands of things about human life in all its +shades and grades, and about the hundred arts and trades and +crafts and professions which men busy themselves in, but that he +could <i>talk</i> about the men and their grades and trades +accurately, making no mistakes. Maybe it is so, but have +the experts spoken, or is it only Tom, Dick, and Harry? +Does the exhibit stand upon wide, and loose, and eloquent +generalizing—which is not evidence, and not proof—or +upon details, particulars, statistics, illustrations, +demonstrations?</p> +<p>Experts of unchallengeable authority have testified definitely +as to only one of Shakespeare’s multifarious +craft-equipments, so far as my recollections of Shakespeare-Bacon +talk abide with me—his law-equipment. I do not +remember that Wellington or Napoleon ever examined +Shakespeare’s battles and sieges and strategies, and then +decided and established for good and all, that they were +militarily flawless; I do not remember that any Nelson, or Drake +or Cook ever examined his seamanship and said it showed profound +and accurate familiarity with that art; I don’t remember +that any king or prince or duke has ever testified that +Shakespeare was letter-perfect in his handling of royal +court-manners and the talk and manners of aristocracies; I +don’t remember that any illustrious Latinist or Grecian or +Frenchman or Spaniard or Italian has proclaimed him a past-master +in those languages; I don’t remember—well, I +don’t remember that there is <i>testimony</i>—great +testimony—imposing testimony—unanswerable and +unattackable testimony as to any of Shakespeare’s hundred +specialties, except one—the law.</p> +<p>Other things change, with time, and the student cannot trace +back with certainty the changes that various trades and their +processes and technicalities have undergone in the long stretch +of a century or two and find out what their processes and +technicalities were in those early days, but with the law it is +different: it is mile-stoned and documented all the way back, and +the master of that wonderful trade, that complex and intricate +trade, that awe-compelling trade, has competent ways of knowing +whether Shakespeare-law is good law or not; and whether his +law-court procedure is correct or not, and whether his legal +shop-talk is the shop-talk of a veteran practitioner or only a +machine-made counterfeit of it gathered from books and from +occasional loiterings in Westminster.</p> +<p>Richard H. Dana served two years before the mast, and had +every experience that falls to the lot of the sailor before the +mast of our day. His sailor-talk flows from his pen with +the sure touch and the ease and confidence of a person who has +<i>lived</i> what he is talking about, not gathered it from books +and random listenings. Hear him:</p> +<blockquote><p>Having hove short, cast off the gaskets, and made +the bunt of each sail fast by the jigger, with a man on each +yard, at the word the whole canvas of the ship was loosed, and +with the greatest rapidity possible everything was sheeted home +and hoisted up, the anchor tripped and cat-headed, and the ship +under headway.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Again:</p> +<blockquote><p>The royal yards were all crossed at once, and +royals and sky-sails set, and, as we had the wind free, the booms +were run out, and all were aloft, active as cats, laying out on +the yards and booms, reeving the studding-sail gear; and sail +after sail the captain piled upon her, until she was covered with +canvas, her sails looking like a great white cloud resting upon a +black speck.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Once more. A race in the Pacific:</p> +<blockquote><p>Our antagonist was in her best trim. Being +clear of the point, the breeze became stiff, and the royal-masts +bent under our sails, but we would not take them in until we saw +three boys spring into the rigging of the <i>California</i>; then +they were all furled at once, but with orders to our boys to stay +aloft at the top-gallant mast-heads and loose them again at the +word. It was my duty to furl the fore-royal; and while +standing by to loose it again, I had a fine view of the +scene. From where I stood, the two vessels seemed nothing +but spars and sails, while their narrow decks, far below, +slanting over by the force of the wind aloft, appeared hardly +capable of supporting the great fabrics raised upon them. +The <i>California</i> was to windward of us, and had every +advantage; yet, while the breeze was stiff we held our own. +As soon as it began to slacken she ranged a little ahead, and the +order was given to loose the royals. In an instant the +gaskets were off and the bunt dropped. “Sheet home +the fore-royal!”—“Weather sheet’s +home!”—“Lee sheet’s +home!”—“Hoist away, sir!” is bawled from +aloft. “Overhaul your clewlines!” shouts the +mate. “Aye-aye, sir, all +clear!”—“Taut leech! belay! Well the lee +brace; haul taut to windward!” and the royals are set.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>What would the captain of any sailing-vessel of our time say +to that? He would say, “The man that wrote that +didn’t learn his trade out of a book, he has <i>been</i> +there!” But would this same captain be competent to +sit in judgment upon Shakespeare’s +seamanship—considering the changes in ships and ship-talk +that have necessarily taken place, unrecorded, unremembered, and +lost to history in the last three hundred years? It is my +conviction that Shakespeare’s sailor-talk would be Choctaw +to him. For instance—from <i>The Tempest</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Master</i>. Boatswain!</p> +<p><i>Boatswain</i>. Here, master; what cheer?</p> +<p><i>Master</i>. Good, speak to the mariners: fall +to’t, yarely, or we run ourselves to ground; bestir, +bestir!</p> +<p>(<i>Enter mariners</i>.)</p> +<p><i>Boatswain</i>. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my +hearts! yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the +master’s whistle . . . Down with the topmast! yare! lower, +lower! Bring her to try wi’ the main course . . . Lay +her a-hold, a-hold! Set her two courses. Off to sea +again; lay her off.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That will do, for the present; let us yare a little, now, for +a change.</p> +<p>If a man should write a book and in it make one of his +characters say, “Here, devil, empty the quoins into the +standing galley and the imposing stone into the hell-box; +assemble the comps around the frisket and let them jeff for takes +and be quick about it,” I should recognize a mistake or two +in the phrasing, and would know that the writer was only a +printer theoretically, not practically.</p> +<p>I have been a quartz miner in the silver regions—a +pretty hard life; I know all the palaver of that business: I know +all about discovery claims and the subordinate claims; I know all +about lodes, ledges, outcroppings, dips, spurs, angles, shafts, +drifts, inclines, levels, tunnels, air-shafts, +“horses,” clay casings, granite casings; quartz mills +and their batteries; arastras, and how to charge them with +quicksilver and sulphate of copper; and how to clean them up, and +how to reduce the resulting amalgam in the retorts, and how to +cast the bullion into pigs; and finally I know how to screen +tailings, and also how to hunt for something less robust to do, +and find it. I know the <i>argot</i> of the quartz-mining +and milling industry familiarly; and so whenever Bret Harte +introduces that industry into a story, the first time one of his +miners opens his mouth I recognize from his phrasing that Harte +got the phrasing by listening—like Shakespeare—I mean +the Stratford one—not by experience. No one can talk +the quartz dialect correctly without learning it with pick and +shovel and drill and fuse.</p> +<p>I have been a surface-miner—gold—and I know all +its mysteries, and the dialect that belongs with them; and +whenever Harte introduces that industry into a story I know by +the phrasing of his characters that neither he nor they have ever +served that trade.</p> +<p>I have been a “pocket” miner—a sort of gold +mining not findable in any but one little spot in the world, so +far as I know. I know how, with horn and water, to find the +trail of a pocket and trace it step by step and stage by stage up +the mountain to its source, and find the compact little nest of +yellow metal reposing in its secret home under the ground. +I know the language of that trade, that capricious trade, that +fascinating buried-treasure trade, and can catch any writer who +tries to use it without having learned it by the sweat of his +brow and the labor of his hands.</p> +<p>I know several other trades and the <i>argot</i> that goes +with them; and whenever a person tries to talk the talk peculiar +to any of them without having learned it at its source I can trap +him always before he gets far on his road.</p> +<p>And so, as I have already remarked, if I were required to +superintend a Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, I would narrow the +matter down to a single question—the only one, so far as +the previous controversies have informed me, concerning which +illustrious experts of unimpeachable competency have testified: +<i>Was the author of Shakespeare’s Works a +lawyer</i>?—a lawyer deeply read and of limitless +experience? I would put aside the guesses, and surmises, +and perhapses, and might-have-beens, and could-have beens, and +must-have-beens, and we-are justified-in-presumings, and the rest +of those vague spectres and shadows and indefinitenesses, and +stand or fall, win or lose, by the verdict rendered by the jury +upon that single question. If the verdict was Yes, I should +feel quite convinced that the Stratford Shakespeare, the actor, +manager, and trader who died so obscure, so forgotten, so +destitute of even village consequence that sixty years afterward +no fellow-citizen and friend of his later days remembered to tell +anything about him, did not write the Works.</p> +<p>Chapter XIII of <i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i> bears +the heading “Shakespeare as a Lawyer,” and comprises +some fifty pages of expert testimony, with comments thereon, and +I will copy the first nine, as being sufficient all by +themselves, as it seems to me, to settle the question which I +have conceived to be the master-key to the Shakespeare-Bacon +puzzle.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VIII—Shakespeare as a Lawyer <a +name="citation2"></a><a href="#footnote2" +class="citation">[2]</a></h2> +<p>The Plays and Poems of Shakespeare supply ample evidence that +their author not only had a very extensive and accurate knowledge +of law, but that he was well acquainted with the manners and +customs of members of the Inns of Court and with legal life +generally.</p> +<p>“While novelists and dramatists are constantly making +mistakes as to the laws of marriage, of wills, and inheritance, +to Shakespeare’s law, lavishly as he expounds it, there can +neither be demurrer, nor bill of exceptions, nor writ of +error.” Such was the testimony borne by one of the +most distinguished lawyers of the nineteenth century who was +raised to the high office of Lord Chief Justice in 1850, and +subsequently became Lord Chancellor. Its weight will, +doubtless, be more appreciated by lawyers than by laymen, for +only lawyers know how impossible it is for those who have not +served an apprenticeship to the law to avoid displaying their +ignorance if they venture to employ legal terms and to discuss +legal doctrines. “There is nothing so +dangerous,” wrote Lord Campbell, “as for one not of +the craft to tamper with our freemasonry.” A layman +is certain to betray himself by using some expression which a +lawyer would never employ. Mr. Sidney Lee himself supplies +us with an example of this. He writes (p. 164): “On +February 15, 1609, Shakespeare . . . obtained judgment from a +jury against Addenbroke for the payment of No. 6, and No. 1. +5<i>s.</i> 0<i>d.</i> costs.” Now a lawyer would +never have spoken of obtaining “judgment from a +jury,” for it is the function of a jury not to deliver +judgment (which is the prerogative of the court), but to find a +verdict on the facts. The error is, indeed, a venial one, +but it is just one of those little things which at once enable a +lawyer to know if the writer is a layman or “one of the +craft.”</p> +<p>But when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal +subjects, he is naturally apt to make an exhibition of his +incompetence. “Let a non-professional man, however +acute,” writes Lord Campbell again, “presume to talk +law, or to draw illustrations from legal science in discussing +other subjects, and he will speedily fall into laughable +absurdity.”</p> +<p>And what does the same high authority say about +Shakespeare? He had “a deep technical knowledge of +the law,” and an easy familiarity with “some of the +most abstruse proceedings in English jurisprudence.” +And again: “Whenever he indulges this propensity he +uniformly lays down good law.” Of <i>Henry IV.</i>, +Part 2, he says: “If Lord Eldon could be supposed to have +written the play, I do not see how he could be chargeable with +having forgotten any of his law while writing it.” +Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke speak of “the marvelous +intimacy which he displays with legal terms, his frequent +adoption of them in illustration, and his curiously technical +knowledge of their form and force.” Malone, himself a +lawyer, wrote: “His knowledge of legal terms is not merely +such as might be acquired by the casual observation of even his +all-comprehending mind; it has the appearance of technical +skill.” Another lawyer and well-known Shakespearean, +Richard Grant White, says: “No dramatist of the time, not +even Beaumont, who was the younger son of a judge of the Common +Pleas, and who after studying in the Inns of Court abandoned law +for the drama, used legal phrases with Shakespeare’s +readiness and exactness. And the significance of this fact +is heightened by another, that it is only to the language of the +law that he exhibits this inclination. The phrases peculiar +to other occupations serve him on rare occasions by way of +description, comparison or illustration, generally when something +in the scene suggests them, but legal phrases flow from his pen +as part of his vocabulary, and parcel of his thought. Take +the word ‘purchase’ for instance, which, in ordinary +use, means to acquire by giving value, but applies in law to all +legal modes of obtaining property except by inheritance or +descent, and in this peculiar sense the word occurs five times in +Shakespeare’s thirty-four plays, and only in one single +instance in the fifty-four plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. +It has been suggested that it was in attendance upon the courts +in London that he picked up his legal vocabulary. But this +supposition not only fails to account for Shakespeare’s +peculiar freedom and exactness in the use of that phraseology, it +does not even place him in the way of learning those terms his +use of which is most remarkable, which are not such as he would +have heard at ordinary proceedings at <i>nisi prius</i>, but such +as refer to the tenure or transfer of real property, ‘fine +and recovery,’ ‘statutes merchant,’ +‘purchase,’ ‘indenture,’ +‘tenure,’ ‘double voucher,’ ‘fee +simple,’ ‘fee farm,’ ‘remainder,’ +‘reversion,’ ‘forfeiture,’ etc. +This conveyancer’s jargon could not have been picked up by +hanging round the courts of law in London two hundred and fifty +years ago, when suits as to the title of real property were +comparatively rare. And beside, Shakespeare uses his law +just as freely in his first plays, written in his first London +years, as in those produced at a later period. Just as +exactly, too; for the correctness and propriety with which these +terms are introduced have compelled the admiration of a Chief +Justice and a Lord Chancellor.”</p> +<p>Senator Davis wrote: “We seem to have something more +than a sciolist’s temerity of indulgence in the terms of an +unfamiliar art. No legal solecisms will be found. The +abstrusest elements of the common law are impressed into a +disciplined service. Over and over again, where such +knowledge is unexampled in writers unlearned in the law, +Shakespeare appears in perfect possession of it. In the law +of real property, its rules of tenure and descents, its entails, +its fines and recoveries, their vouchers and double vouchers, in +the procedure of the Courts, the method of bringing writs and +arrests, the nature of actions, the rules of pleading, the law of +escapes and of contempt of court, in the principles of evidence, +both technical and philosophical, in the distinction between the +temporal and spiritual tribunals, in the law of attainder and +forfeiture, in the requisites of a valid marriage, in the +presumption of legitimacy, in the learning of the law of +prerogative, in the inalienable character of the Crown, this +mastership appears with surprising authority.”</p> +<p>To all this testimony (and there is much more which I have not +cited) may now be added that of a great lawyer of our own times, +<i>viz.</i>: Sir James Plaisted Wilde, Q.C. created a Baron of +the Exchequer in 1860, promoted to the post of Judge-Ordinary and +Judge of the Courts of Probate and Divorce in 1863, and better +known to the world as Lord Penzance, to which dignity he was +raised in 1869. Lord Penzance, as all lawyers know, and as +the late Mr. Inderwick, K.C., has testified, was one of the first +legal authorities of his day, famous for his “remarkable +grasp of legal principles,” and “endowed by nature +with a remarkable facility for marshalling facts, and for a clear +expression of his views.”</p> +<p>Lord Penzance speaks of Shakespeare’s “perfect +familiarity with not only the principles, axioms, and maxims, but +the technicalities of English law, a knowledge so perfect and +intimate that he was never incorrect and never at fault . . . The +mode in which this knowledge was pressed into service on all +occasions to express his meaning and illustrate his thoughts, was +quite unexampled. He seems to have had a special pleasure +in his complete and ready mastership of it in all its +branches. As manifested in the plays, this legal knowledge +and learning had therefore a special character which places it on +a wholly different footing from the rest of the multifarious +knowledge which is exhibited in page after page of the +plays. At every turn and point at which the author required +a metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned +<i>first</i> to the law. He seems almost to have +<i>thought</i> in legal phrases, the commonest of legal +expressions were ever at the end of his pen in description or +illustration. That he should have descanted in lawyer +language when he had a forensic subject in hand, such as +Shylock’s bond, was to be expected, but the knowledge of +law in ‘Shakespeare’ was exhibited in a far different +manner: it protruded itself on all occasions, appropriate or +inappropriate, and mingled itself with strains of thought widely +divergent from forensic subjects.” Again: “To +acquire a perfect familiarity with legal principles, and an +accurate and ready use of the technical terms and phrases not +only of the conveyancer’s office but of the pleader’s +chambers and the Courts at Westminster, nothing short of +employment in some career involving constant contact with legal +questions and general legal work would be requisite. But a +continuous employment involves the element of time, and time was +just what the manager of two theatres had not at his +disposal. In what portion of Shakespeare’s +(<i>i.e.</i> Shakspere’s) career would it be possible to +point out that time could be found for the interposition of a +legal employment in the chambers or offices of practising +lawyers?”</p> +<p>Stratfordians, as is well known, casting about for some +possible explanation of Shakespeare’s extraordinary +knowledge of law, have made the suggestion that Shakespeare +might, conceivably, have been a clerk in an attorney’s +office before he came to London. Mr. Collier wrote to Lord +Campbell to ask his opinion as to the probability of this being +true. His answer was as follows: “You require us to +believe implicitly a fact, of which, if true, positive and +irrefragable evidence in his own handwriting might have been +forthcoming to establish it. Not having been actually +enrolled as an attorney, neither the records of the local court +at Stratford nor of the superior Courts at Westminster would +present his name as being concerned in any suit as an attorney, +but it might reasonably have been expected that there would be +deeds or wills witnessed by him still extant, and after a very +diligent search none such can be discovered.”</p> +<p>Upon this Lord Penzance comments: “It cannot be doubted +that Lord Campbell was right in this. No young man could +have been at work in an attorney’s office without being +called upon continually to act as a witness, and in many other +ways leaving traces of his work and name.” There is +not a single fact or incident in all that is known of +Shakespeare, even by rumor or tradition, which supports this +notion of a clerkship. And after much argument and surmise +which has been indulged in on this subject, we may, I think, +safely put the notion on one side, for no less an authority than +Mr. Grant White says finally that the idea of his having been +clerk to an attorney has been “blown to pieces.”</p> +<p>It is altogether characteristic of Mr. Churton Collins that +he, nevertheless, adopts this exploded myth. “That +Shakespeare was in early life employed as a clerk in an +attorney’s office, may be correct. At Stratford there +was by royal charter a Court of Record sitting every fortnight, +with six attorneys, beside the town clerk, belonging to it, and +it is certainly not straining probability to suppose that the +young Shakespeare may have had employment in one of them. +There is, it is true, no tradition to this effect, but such +traditions as we have about Shakespeare’s occupation +between the time of leaving school and going to London are so +loose and baseless that no confidence can be placed in +them. It is, to say the least, more probable that he was in +an attorney’s office than that he was a butcher killing +calves ‘in a high style,’ and making speeches over +them.”</p> +<p>This is a charming specimen of Stratfordian argument. +There is, as we have seen, a very old tradition that Shakespeare +was a butcher’s apprentice. John Dowdall, who made a +tour in Warwickshire in 1693, testifies to it as coming from the +old clerk who showed him over the church, and it is +unhesitatingly accepted as true by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps. +(Vol I, p. 11, and see Vol. II, p. 71, 72.) Mr. Sidney Lee +sees nothing improbable in it, and it is supported by Aubrey, who +must have written his account some time before 1680, when his +manuscript was completed. Of the attorney’s clerk +hypothesis, on the other hand, there is not the faintest vestige +of a tradition. It has been evolved out of the fertile +imaginations of embarrassed Stratfordians, seeking for some +explanation of the Stratford rustic’s marvellous +acquaintance with law and legal terms and legal life. But +Mr. Churton Collins has not the least hesitation in throwing over +the tradition which has the warrant of antiquity and setting up +in its stead this ridiculous invention, for which not only is +there no shred of positive evidence, but which, as Lord Campbell +and Lord Penzance point out, is really put out of court by the +negative evidence, since “no young man could have been at +work in an attorney’s office without being called upon +continually to act as a witness, and in many other ways leaving +traces of his work and name.” And as Mr. Edwards +further points out, since the day when Lord Campbell’s book +was published (between forty and fifty years ago), “every +old deed or will, to say nothing of other legal papers, dated +during the period of William Shakespeare’s youth, has been +scrutinized over half a dozen shires, and not one signature of +the young man has been found.”</p> +<p>Moreover, if Shakespeare had served as clerk in an +attorney’s office it is clear that he must have so served +for a considerable period in order to have gained (if indeed it +is credible that he could have so gained) his remarkable +knowledge of law. Can we then for a moment believe that, if +this had been so, tradition would have been absolutely silent on +the matter? That Dowdall’s old clerk, over eighty +years of age, should have never heard of it (though he was sure +enough about the butcher’s apprentice), and that all the +other ancient witnesses should be in similar ignorance!</p> +<p>But such are the methods of Stratfordian controversy. +Tradition is to be scouted when it is found inconvenient, but +cited as irrefragable truth when it suits the case. +Shakespeare of Stratford was the author of the <i>Plays</i> and +<i>Poems</i>, but the author of the <i>Plays</i> and <i>Poems</i> +could not have been a butcher’s apprentice. Away, +therefore, with tradition. But the author of the +<i>Plays</i> and <i>Poems must</i> have had a very large and a +very accurate knowledge of the law. Therefore, Shakespeare +of Stratford must have been an attorney’s clerk! The +method is simplicity itself. By similar reasoning +Shakespeare has been made a country schoolmaster, a soldier, a +physician, a printer, and a good many other things beside, +according to the inclination and the exigencies of the +commentator. It would not be in the least surprising to +find that he was studying Latin as a schoolmaster and law in an +attorney’s office at the same time.</p> +<p>However, we must do Mr. Collins the justice of saying that he +has fully recognized, what is indeed tolerably obvious, that +Shakespeare must have had a sound legal training. “It +may, of course, be urged,” he writes, “that +Shakespeare’s knowledge of medicine, and particularly that +branch of it which related to morbid psychology, is equally +remarkable, and that no one has ever contended that he was a +physician. (Here Mr. Collins is wrong; that contention also +has been put forward.) It may be urged that his acquaintance with +the technicalities of other crafts and callings, notably of +marine and military affairs, was also extraordinary, and yet no +one has suspected him of being a sailor or a soldier. +(Wrong again. Why even Messrs. Garnett and Gosse +‘suspect’ that he was a soldier!) This may be +conceded, but the concession hardly furnishes an analogy. +To these and all other subjects he recurs occasionally, and in +season, but with reminiscences of the law his memory, as is +abundantly clear, was simply saturated. In season and out +of season now in manifest, now in recondite application, he +presses it into the service of expression and illustration. +At least a third of his myriad metaphors are derived from +it. It would indeed be difficult to find a single act in +any of his dramas, nay, in some of them, a single scene, the +diction and imagery of which is not colored by it. Much of +his law may have been acquired from three books easily accessible +to him, namely Tottell’s <i>Precedents</i> (1572), +Pulton’s <i>Statutes</i> (1578), and Fraunce’s +<i>Lawier’s Logike</i> (1588), works with which he +certainly seems to have been familiar; but much of it could only +have come from one who had an intimate acquaintance with legal +proceedings. We quite agree with Mr. Castle that +Shakespeare’s legal knowledge is not what could have been +picked up in an attorney’s office, but could only have been +learned by an actual attendance at the Courts, at a +Pleader’s Chambers, and on circuit, or by associating +intimately with members of the Bench and Bar.”</p> +<p>This is excellent. But what is Mr. Collins’ +explanation. “Perhaps the simplest solution of the +problem is to accept the hypothesis that in early life he was in +an attorney’s office (!), that he there contracted a love +for the law which never left him, that as a young man in London, +he continued to study or dabble in it for his amusement, to +stroll in leisure hours into the Courts, and to frequent the +society of lawyers. On no other supposition is it possible +to explain the attraction which the law evidently had for him, +and his minute and undeviating accuracy in a subject where no +layman who has indulged in such copious and ostentatious display +of legal technicalities has ever yet succeeded in keeping himself +from tripping.”</p> +<p>A lame conclusion. “No other supposition” +indeed! Yes, there is another, and a very obvious +supposition, namely, that Shakespeare was himself a lawyer, well +versed in his trade, versed in all the ways of the courts, and +living in close intimacy with judges and members of the Inns of +Court.</p> +<p>One is, of course, thankful that Mr. Collins has appreciated +the fact that Shakespeare must have had a sound legal training, +but I may be forgiven if I do not attach quite so much importance +to his pronouncements on this branch of the subject as to those +of Malone, Lord Campbell, Judge Holmes, Mr. Castle, K.C., Lord +Penzance, Mr. Grant White, and other lawyers, who have expressed +their opinion on the matter of Shakespeare’s legal +acquirements.</p> +<p>Here it may, perhaps, be worth while to quote again from Lord +Penzance’s book as to the suggestion that Shakespeare had +somehow or other managed “to acquire a perfect familiarity +with legal principles, and an accurate and ready use of the +technical terms and phrases, not only of the conveyancer’s +office, but of the pleader’s chambers and the courts at +Westminster.” This, as Lord Penzance points out, +“would require nothing short of employment in some career +involving <i>constant contact</i> with legal questions and +general legal work.” But “in what portion of +Shakespeare’s career would it be possible to point out that +time could be found for the interposition of a legal employment +in the chambers or offices of practising lawyers? . . . It is +beyond doubt that at an early period he was called upon to +abandon his attendance at school and assist his father, and was +soon after, at the age of sixteen, bound apprentice to a +trade. While under the obligation of this bond he could not +have pursued any other employment. Then he leaves Stratford +and comes to London. He has to provide himself with the +means of a livelihood, and this he did in some capacity at the +theatre. No one doubts that. The holding of horses is +scouted by many, and perhaps with justice, as being unlikely and +certainly unproved; but whatever the nature of his employment was +at the theatre, there is hardly room for the belief that it could +have been other than continuous, for his progress there was so +rapid. Ere long he had been taken into the company as an +actor, and was soon spoken of as a ‘Johannes +Factotum.’ His rapid accumulation of wealth speaks +volumes for the constancy and activity of his services. One +fails to see when there could be a break in the current of his +life at this period of it, giving room or opportunity for legal +or indeed any other employment. ‘In 1589,’ says +Knight, ‘we have undeniable evidence that he had not only a +casual engagement, was not only a salaried servant, as many +players were, but was a shareholder in the company of the +Queen’s players with other shareholders below him on the +list.’ This (1589) would be within two years after +his arrival in London, which is placed by White and +Halliwell-Phillipps about the year 1587. The difficulty in +supposing that, starting with a state of ignorance in 1587, when +he is supposed to have come to London, he was induced to enter +upon a course of most extended study and mental culture, is +almost insuperable. Still it was physically possible, +provided always that he could have had access to the needful +books. But this legal training seems to me to stand on a +different footing. It is not only unaccountable and +incredible, but it is actually negatived by the known facts of +his career.” Lord Penzance then refers to the fact +that “by 1592 (according to the best authority, Mr. Grant +White) several of the plays had been written. <i>The Comedy +of Errors</i> in 1589, <i>Love’s Labour’s Lost</i> in +1589, <i>Two Gentlemen of Verona</i> in 1589 or 1590, and so +forth,” and then asks, “with this catalogue of +dramatic work on hand . . . was it possible that he could have +taken a leading part in the management and conduct of two +theatres, and if Mr. Phillipps is to be relied upon, taken his +share in the performances of the provincial tours of his +company—and at the same time devoted himself to the study +of the law in all its branches so efficiently as to make himself +complete master of its principles and practice, and saturate his +mind with all its most technical terms?”</p> +<p>I have cited this passage from Lord Penzance’s book, +because it lay before me, and I had already quoted from it on the +matter of Shakespeare’s legal knowledge; but other writers +have still better set forth the insuperable difficulties, as they +seem to me, which beset the idea that Shakespeare might have +found time in some unknown period of early life, amid +multifarious other occupations, for the study of classics, +literature and law, to say nothing of languages and a few other +matters. Lord Penzance further asks his readers: “Did +you ever meet with or hear of an instance in which a young man in +this country gave himself up to legal studies and engaged in +legal employments, which is the only way of becoming familiar +with the technicalities of practice, unless with the view of +practicing in that profession? I do not believe that it +would be easy, or indeed possible, to produce an instance in +which the law has been seriously studied in all its branches, +except as a qualification for practice in the legal +profession.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>This testimony is so strong, so direct, so authoritative; and +so uncheapened, unwatered by guesses, and surmises, and +maybe-so’s, and might-have-beens, and could-have-beens, and +must-have-beens, and the rest of that ton of plaster of paris out +of which the biographers have built the colossal brontosaur which +goes by the Stratford actor’s name, that it quite convinces +me that the man who wrote Shakespeare’s Works knew all +about law and lawyers. Also, that that man could not have +been the Stratford Shakespeare—and <i>wasn’t</i>.</p> +<p>Who did write these Works, then?</p> +<p>I wish I knew.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> +<p>Did Francis Bacon write Shakespeare’s Works?</p> +<p>Nobody knows.</p> +<p>We cannot say we <i>know</i> a thing when that thing has not +been proved. <i>Know</i> is too strong a word to use when +the evidence is not final and absolutely conclusive. We can +infer, if we want to, like those slaves . . . No, I will not +write that word, it is not kind, it is not courteous. The +upholders of the Stratford-Shakespeare superstition call +<i>us</i> the hardest names they can think of, and they keep +doing it all the time; very well, if they like to descend to that +level, let them do it, but I will not so undignify myself as to +follow them. I cannot call them harsh names; the most I can +do is to indicate them by terms reflecting my disapproval; and +this without malice, without venom.</p> +<p>To resume. What I was about to say, was, those thugs +have built their entire superstition upon <i>inferences</i>, not +upon known and established facts. It is a weak method, and +poor, and I am glad to be able to say our side never resorts to +it while there is anything else to resort to.</p> +<p>But when we must, we must; and we have now arrived at a place +of that sort.</p> +<p>Since the Stratford Shakespeare couldn’t have written +the Works, we infer that somebody did. Who was it, +then? This requires some more inferring.</p> +<p>Ordinarily when an unsigned poem sweeps across the continent +like a tidal wave, whose roar and boom and thunder are made up of +admiration, delight and applause, a dozen obscure people rise up +and claim the authorship. Why a dozen, instead of only one +or two? One reason is, because there’s a dozen that +are recognizably competent to do that poem. Do you remember +“Beautiful Snow”? Do you remember “Rock +Me to Sleep, Mother, Rock Me to Sleep”? Do you +remember “Backward, turn backward, O Time, in thy +flight! Make me a child again just for +to-night”? I remember them very well. Their +authorship was claimed by most of the grown-up people who were +alive at the time, and every claimant had one plausible argument +in his favor, at least: to wit, he could have done the authoring; +he was competent.</p> +<p>Have the Works been claimed by a dozen? They +haven’t. There was good reason. The world knows +there was but one man on the planet at the time who was +competent—not a dozen, and not two. A long time ago +the dwellers in a far country used now and then to find a +procession of prodigious footprints stretching across the +plain—footprints that were three miles apart, each +footprint a third of a mile long and a furlong deep, and with +forests and villages mashed to mush in it. Was there any +doubt as to who had made that mighty trail? Were there a +dozen claimants? Were there two? No—the people +knew who it was that had been along there: there was only one +Hercules.</p> +<p>There has been only one Shakespeare. There +couldn’t be two; certainly there couldn’t be two at +the same time. It takes ages to bring forth a Shakespeare, +and some more ages to match him. This one was not matched +before his time; nor during his time; and hasn’t been +matched since. The prospect of matching him in our time is +not bright.</p> +<p>The Baconians claim that the Stratford Shakespeare was not +qualified to write the Works, and that Francis Bacon was. +They claim that Bacon possessed the stupendous +equipment—both natural and acquired—for the miracle; +and that no other Englishman of his day possessed the like; or, +indeed, anything closely approaching it.</p> +<p>Macaulay, in his Essay, has much to say about the splendor and +horizonless magnitude of that equipment. Also, he has +synopsized Bacon’s history: a thing which cannot be done +for the Stratford Shakespeare, for he hasn’t any history to +synopsize. Bacon’s history is open to the world, from +his boyhood to his death in old age—a history consisting of +known facts, displayed in minute and multitudinous detail; +<i>facts</i>, not guesses and conjectures and +might-have-beens.</p> +<p>Whereby it appears that he was born of a race of statesmen, +and had a Lord Chancellor for his father, and a mother who was +“distinguished both as a linguist and a theologian: she +corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewell, and translated his +<i>Apologia</i> from the Latin so correctly that neither he nor +Archbishop Parker could suggest a single alteration.” +It is the atmosphere we are reared in that determines how our +inclinations and aspirations shall tend. The atmosphere +furnished by the parents to the son in this present case was an +atmosphere saturated with learning; with thinkings and ponderings +upon deep subjects; and with polite culture. It had its +natural effect. Shakespeare of Stratford was reared in a +house which had no use for books, since its owners, his parents, +were without education. This may have had an effect upon +the son, but we do not know, because we have no history of him of +an informing sort. There were but few books anywhere, in +that day, and only the well-to-do and highly educated possessed +them, they being almost confined to the dead languages. +“All the valuable books then extant in all the vernacular +dialects of Europe would hardly have filled a single +shelf”—imagine it! The few existing books were +in the Latin tongue mainly. “A person who was +ignorant of it was shut out from all acquaintance—not +merely with Cicero and Virgil, but with the most interesting +memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of his own +time”—a literature necessary to the Stratford lad, +for his fictitious reputation’s sake, since the writer of +his Works would begin to use it wholesale and in a most masterly +way before the lad was hardly more than out of his teens and into +his twenties.</p> +<p>At fifteen Bacon was sent to the university, and he spent +three years there. Thence he went to Paris in the train of +the English Ambassador, and there he mingled daily with the wise, +the cultured, the great, and the aristocracy of fashion, during +another three years. A total of six years spent at the +sources of knowledge; knowledge both of books and of men. +The three spent at the university were coeval with the second and +last three spent by the little Stratford lad at Stratford school +supposedly, and perhapsedly, and maybe, and by +inference—with nothing to infer from. The second +three of the Baconian six were “presumably” spent by +the Stratford lad as apprentice to a butcher. That is, the +thugs presume it—on no evidence of any kind. Which is +their way, when they want a historical fact. Fact and +presumption are, for business purposes, all the same to +them. They know the difference, but they also know how to +blink it. They know, too, that while in history-building a +fact is better than a presumption, it doesn’t take a +presumption long to bloom into a fact when <i>they</i> have the +handling of it. They know by old experience that when they +get hold of a presumption-tadpole he is not going to <i>stay</i> +tadpole in their history-tank; no, they know how to develop him +into the giant four-legged bullfrog of <i>fact</i>, and make him +sit up on his hams, and puff out his chin, and look important and +insolent and come-to-stay; and assert his genuine simon-pure +authenticity with a thundering bellow that will convince +everybody because it is so loud. The thug is aware that +loudness convinces sixty persons where reasoning convinces but +one. I wouldn’t be a thug, not even if—but +never mind about that, it has nothing to do with the argument, +and it is not noble in spirit besides. If I am better than +a thug, is the merit mine? No, it is His. Then to Him +be the praise. That is the right spirit.</p> +<p>They “presume” the lad severed his +“presumed” connection with the Stratford school to +become apprentice to a butcher. They also +“presume” that the butcher was his father. They +don’t know. There is no written record of it, nor any +other actual evidence. If it would have helped their case +any, they would have apprenticed him to thirty butchers, to fifty +butchers, to a wilderness of butchers—all by their patented +method “presumption.” If it will help their +case they will do it yet; and if it will further help it, they +will “presume” that all those butchers were his +father. And the week after, they will <i>say</i> it. +Why, it is just like being the past tense of the compound +reflexive adverbial incandescent hypodermic irregular accusative +Noun of Multitude; which is father to the expression which the +grammarians call Verb. It is like a whole ancestry, with +only one posterity.</p> +<p>To resume. Next, the young Bacon took up the study of +law, and mastered that abstruse science. From that day to +the end of his life he was daily in close contact with lawyers +and judges; not as a casual onlooker in intervals between holding +horses in front of a theatre, but as a practicing lawyer—a +great and successful one, a renowned one, a Launcelot of the bar, +the most formidable lance in the high brotherhood of the legal +Table Round; he lived in the law’s atmosphere thenceforth, +all his years, and by sheer ability forced his way up its +difficult steeps to its supremest summit, the Lord +Chancellorship, leaving behind him no fellow craftsman qualified +to challenge his divine right to that majestic place.</p> +<p>When we read the praises bestowed by Lord Penzance and the +other illustrious experts upon the legal condition and legal +aptnesses, brilliances, profundities and felicities so prodigally +displayed in the Plays, and try to fit them to the history-less +Stratford stage-manager, they sound wild, strange, incredible, +ludicrous; but when we put them in the mouth of Bacon they do not +sound strange, they seem in their natural and rightful place, +they seem at home there. Please turn back and read them +again. Attributed to Shakespeare of Stratford they are +meaningless, they are inebriate extravagancies—intemperate +admirations of the dark side of the moon, so to speak; attributed +to Bacon, they are admirations of the golden glories of the +moon’s front side, the moon at the full—and not +intemperate, not overwrought, but sane and right, and +justified. “At every turn and point at which the +author required a metaphor, simile or illustration, his mind ever +turned <i>first</i> to the law; he seems almost to have +<i>thought</i> in legal phrases; the commonest legal phrases, the +commonest of legal expressions were ever at the end of his +pen.” That could happen to no one but a person whose +<i>trade</i> was the law; it could not happen to a dabbler in +it. Veteran mariners fill their conversation with +sailor-phrases and draw all their similes from the ship and the +sea and the storm, but no mere <i>passenger</i> ever does it, be +he of Stratford or elsewhere; or could do it with anything +resembling accuracy, if he were hardy enough to try. Please +read again what Lord Campbell and the other great authorities +have said about Bacon when they thought they were saying it about +Shakespeare of Stratford.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER X—The Rest of the Equipment</h2> +<p>The author of the Plays was equipped, beyond every other man +of his time, with wisdom, erudition, imagination, capaciousness +of mind, grace and majesty of expression. Every one has +said it, no one doubts it. Also, he had humor, humor in +rich abundance, and always wanting to break out. We have no +evidence of any kind that Shakespeare of Stratford possessed any +of these gifts or any of these acquirements. The only lines +he ever wrote, so far as we know, are substantially barren of +them—barren of all of them.</p> +<blockquote><p>Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare<br /> +To digg the dust encloased heare:<br /> +Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones<br /> +And curst be he yt moves my bones.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Ben Jonson says of Bacon, as orator:</p> +<blockquote><p>His language, <i>where he could spare and pass by +a jest</i>, was nobly censorious. No man ever spoke more +neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, +less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech +but consisted of his (its) own graces . . . The fear of every man +that heard him was lest he should make an end.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>From Macaulay:</p> +<blockquote><p>He continued to distinguish himself in Parliament, +particularly by his exertions in favor of one excellent measure +on which the King’s heart was set—the union of +England and Scotland. It was not difficult for such an +intellect to discover many irresistible arguments in favor of +such a scheme. He conducted the great case of the <i>Post +Nati</i> in the Exchequer Chamber; and the decision of the +judges—a decision the legality of which may be questioned, +but the beneficial effect of which must be acknowledged—was +in a great measure attributed to his dexterous management.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Again:</p> +<blockquote><p>While actively engaged in the House of Commons and +in the courts of law, he still found leisure for letters and +philosophy. The noble treatise on the <i>Advancement of +Learning</i>, which at a later period was expanded into the <i>De +Augmentis</i>, appeared in 1605.</p> +<p>The <i>Wisdom of the Ancients</i>, a work which if it had +proceeded from any other writer would have been considered as a +masterpiece of wit and learning, was printed in 1609.</p> +<p>In the meantime the <i>Novum Organum</i> was slowly +proceeding. Several distinguished men of learning had been +permitted to see portions of that extraordinary book, and they +spoke with the greatest admiration of his genius.</p> +<p>Even Sir Thomas Bodley, after perusing the <i>Cogitata et +Visa</i>, one of the most precious of those scattered leaves out +of which the great oracular volume was afterward made up, +acknowledged that “in all proposals and plots in that book, +Bacon showed himself a master workman”; and that “it +could not be gainsaid but all the treatise over did abound with +choice conceits of the present state of learning, and with worthy +contemplations of the means to procure it.”</p> +<p>In 1612 a new edition of the <i>Essays</i> appeared, with +additions surpassing the original collection both in bulk and +quality.</p> +<p>Nor did these pursuits distract Bacon’s attention from a +work the most arduous, the most glorious, and the most useful +that even his mighty powers could have achieved, “the +reducing and recompiling,” to use his own phrase, “of +the laws of England.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>To serve the exacting and laborious offices of Attorney +General and Solicitor General would have satisfied the appetite +of any other man for hard work, but Bacon had to add the vast +literary industries just described, to satisfy his. He was +a born worker.</p> +<blockquote><p>The service which he rendered to letters during +the last five years of his life, amid ten thousand distractions +and vexations, increase the regret with which we think on the +many years which he had wasted, to use the words of Sir Thomas +Bodley, “on such study as was not worthy such a +student.”</p> +<p>He commenced a digest of the laws of England, a History of +England under the Princes of the House of Tudor, a body of +National History, a Philosophical Romance. He made +extensive and valuable additions to his Essays. He +published the inestimable <i>Treatise De Argumentis +Scientiarum</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Did these labors of Hercules fill up his time to his +contentment, and quiet his appetite for work? Not +entirely:</p> +<blockquote><p>The trifles with which he amused himself in hours +of pain and languor bore the mark of his mind. <i>The best +jestbook in the world</i> is that which he dictated from memory, +without referring to any book, on a day on which illness had +rendered him incapable of serious study.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here are some scattered remarks (from Macaulay) which throw +light upon Bacon, and seem to indicate—and maybe +demonstrate—that he was competent to write the Plays and +Poems:</p> +<blockquote><p>With great minuteness of observation he had an +amplitude of comprehension such as has never yet been vouchsafed +to any other human being.</p> +<p>The “Essays” contain abundant proofs that no nice +feature of character, no peculiarity in the ordering of a house, +a garden or a court-masque, could escape the notice of one whose +mind was capable of taking in the whole world of knowledge.</p> +<p>His understanding resembled the tent which the fairy Paribanou +gave to Prince Ahmed: fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand +of a lady; spread it, and the armies of powerful Sultans might +repose beneath its shade.</p> +<p>The knowledge in which Bacon excelled all men was a knowledge +of the mutual relations of all departments of knowledge.</p> +<p>In a letter written when he was only thirty-one, to his uncle, +Lord Burleigh, he said, “I have taken all knowledge to be +my province.”</p> +<p>Though Bacon did not arm his philosophy with the weapons of +logic, he adorned her profusely with all the richest decorations +of rhetoric.</p> +<p>The practical faculty was powerful in Bacon; but not, like his +wit, so powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of his +reason, and to tyrannize over the whole man.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There are too many places in the Plays where this +happens. Poor old dying John of Gaunt volleying second-rate +puns at his own name, is a pathetic instance of it. +“We may assume” that it is Bacon’s fault, but +the Stratford Shakespeare has to bear the blame.</p> +<blockquote><p>No imagination was ever at once so strong and so +thoroughly subjugated. It stopped at the first check from +good sense.</p> +<p>In truth much of Bacon’s life was passed in a visionary +world—amid things as strange as any that are described in +the “Arabian Tales” . . . amid buildings more +sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin, fountains more wonderful +than the golden water of Parizade, conveyances more rapid than +the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more formidable than the lance +of Astolfo, remedies more efficacious than the balsam of +Fierabras. Yet in his magnificent day-dreams there was +nothing wild—nothing but what sober reason sanctioned.</p> +<p>Bacon’s greatest performance is the first book of the +<i>Novum Organum</i> . . . Every part of it blazes with wit, but +with wit which is employed only to illustrate and decorate +truth. No book ever made so great a revolution in the mode +of thinking, overthrew so many prejudices, introduced so many new +opinions.</p> +<p>But what we most admire is the vast capacity of that intellect +which, without effort, takes in at once all the domains of +science—all the past, the present and the future, all the +errors of two thousand years, all the encouraging signs of the +passing times, all the bright hopes of the coming age.</p> +<p>He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close and +rendering it portable.</p> +<p>His eloquence would alone have entitled him to a high rank in +literature.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is evident that he had each and every one of the mental +gifts and each and every one of the acquirements that are so +prodigally displayed in the Plays and Poems, and in much higher +and richer degree than any other man of his time or of any +previous time. He was a genius without a mate, a prodigy +not matable. There was only one of him; the planet could +not produce two of him at one birth, nor in one age. He +could have written anything that is in the Plays and Poems. +He could have written this:</p> +<blockquote><p>The cloud-cap’d towers, the gorgeous +palaces,<br /> +The solemn temples, the great globe itself,<br /> +Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,<br /> +And, like an insubstantial pageant faded,<br /> +Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff<br /> +As dreams are made on, and our little life<br /> +Is rounded with a sleep.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Also, he could have written this, but he refrained:</p> +<blockquote><p>Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare<br /> +To digg the dust encloased heare:<br /> +Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones<br /> +And curst be ye yt moves my bones.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>When a person reads the noble verses about the +cloud-cap’d towers, he ought not to follow it immediately +with Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare, because he will find +the transition from great poetry to poor prose too violent for +comfort. It will give him a shock. You never notice +how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is, until you bite into a +layer of it in a pie.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2> +<p>Am I trying to convince anybody that Shakespeare did not write +Shakespeare’s Works? Ah, now, what do you take me +for? Would I be so soft as that, after having known the +human race familiarly for nearly seventy-four years? It +would grieve me to know that any one could think so injuriously +of me, so uncomplimentarily, so unadmiringly of me. No-no, +I am aware that when even the brightest mind in our world has +been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it +will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine +sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or +any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the +validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it +myself. We always get at second hand our notions about +systems of government; and high-tariff and low-tariff; and +prohibition and anti-prohibition; and the holiness of peace and +the glories of war; and codes of honor and codes of morals; and +approval of the duel and disapproval of it; and our beliefs +concerning the nature of cats; and our ideas as to whether the +murder of helpless wild animals is base or is heroic; and our +preferences in the matter of religious and political parties; and +our acceptance or rejection of the Shakespeares and the Arthur +Ortons and the Mrs. Eddys. We get them all at second-hand, +we reason none of them out for ourselves. It is the way we +are made. It is the way we are all made, and we can’t +help it, we can’t change it. And whenever we have +been furnished a fetish, and have been taught to believe in it, +and love it and worship it, and refrain from examining it, there +is no evidence, howsoever clear and strong, that can persuade us +to withdraw from it our loyalty and our devotion. In +morals, conduct, and beliefs we take the color of our environment +and associations, and it is a color that can safely be warranted +to wash. Whenever we have been furnished with a tar baby +ostensibly stuffed with jewels, and warned that it will be +dishonorable and irreverent to disembowel it and test the jewels, +we keep our sacrilegious hands off it. We submit, not +reluctantly, but rather gladly, for we are privately afraid we +should find, upon examination, that the jewels are of the sort +that are manufactured at North Adams, Mass.</p> +<p>I haven’t any idea that Shakespeare will have to vacate +his pedestal this side of the year 2209. Disbelief in him +cannot come swiftly, disbelief in a healthy and deeply-loved tar +baby has never been known to disintegrate swiftly, it is a very +slow process. It took several thousand years to convince +our fine race—including every splendid intellect in +it—that there is no such thing as a witch; it has taken +several thousand years to convince that same fine +race—including every splendid intellect in it—that +there is no such person as Satan; it has taken several centuries +to remove perdition from the Protestant Church’s program of +postmortem entertainments; it has taken a weary long time to +persuade American Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and +try to bear it the best they can; and it looks as if their Scotch +brethren will still be burning babies in the everlasting fires +when Shakespeare comes down from his perch.</p> +<p>We are The Reasoning Race. We can’t prove it by +the above examples, and we can’t prove it by the miraculous +“histories” built by those Stratfordolaters out of a +hatful of rags and a barrel of sawdust, but there is a plenty of +other things we can prove it by, if I could think of them. +We are The Reasoning Race, and when we find a vague file of +chipmunk-tracks stringing through the dust of Stratford village, +we know by our reasoning powers that Hercules has been along +there. I feel that our fetish is safe for three centuries +yet. The bust, too—there in the Stratford +Church. The precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm +bust, the serene bust, the emotionless bust, with the dandy +moustache, and the putty face, unseamed of care—that face +which has looked passionlessly down upon the awed pilgrim for a +hundred and fifty years and will still look down upon the awed +pilgrim three hundred more, with the deep, deep, deep, subtle, +subtle, subtle, expression of a bladder.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XII—Irreverence</h2> +<p>One of the most trying defects which I find in +these—these—what shall I call them? for I will not +apply injurious epithets to them, the way they do to us, such +violations of courtesy being repugnant to my nature and my +dignity. The furthest I can go in that direction is to call +them by names of limited reverence—names merely +descriptive, never unkind, never offensive, never tainted by +harsh feeling. If <i>they</i> would do like this, they +would feel better in their hearts. Very well, then—to +proceed. One of the most trying defects which I find in +these Stratfordolaters, these Shakesperoids, these thugs, these +bangalores, these troglodytes, these herumfrodites, these +blatherskites, these buccaneers, these bandoleers, is their +spirit of irreverence. It is detectable in every utterance +of theirs when they are talking about us. I am thankful +that in me there is nothing of that spirit. When a thing is +sacred to me it is impossible for me to be irreverent toward +it. I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have +ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred +to other people. Am I in the right? I think so. +But I ask no one to take my unsupported word; no, look at the +dictionary; let the dictionary decide. Here is the +definition:</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Irreverence</i>. The quality or condition +of irreverence toward God and sacred things.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>What does the Hindu say? He says it is correct. He +says irreverence is lack of respect for Vishnu, and Brahma, and +Chrishna, and his other gods, and for his sacred cattle, and for +his temples and the things within them. He endorses the +definition, you see; and there are 300,000,000 Hindus or their +equivalents back of him.</p> +<p>The dictionary had the acute idea that by using the capital G +it could restrict irreverence to lack of reverence for <i>our</i> +Deity and our sacred things, but that ingenious and rather sly +idea miscarried: for by the simple process of spelling <i>his</i> +deities with capitals the Hindu confiscates the definition and +restricts it to his own sects, thus making it clearly compulsory +upon us to revere <i>his</i> gods and <i>his</i> sacred things, +and nobody’s else. We can’t say a word, for he +has our own dictionary at his back, and its decision is +final.</p> +<p>This law, reduced to its simplest terms, is this: 1. +Whatever is sacred to the Christian must be held in reverence by +everybody else; 2, whatever is sacred to the Hindu must be held +in reverence by everybody else; 3, therefore, by consequence, +logically, and indisputably, whatever is sacred to <i>me</i> must +be held in reverence by everybody else.</p> +<p>Now then, what aggravates me is, that these troglodytes and +muscovites and bandoleers and buccaneers are <i>also</i> trying +to crowd in and share the benefit of the law, and compel +everybody to revere their Shakespeare and hold him sacred. +We can’t have that: there’s enough of us +already. If you go on widening and spreading and inflating +the privilege, it will presently come to be conceded that each +man’s sacred things are the <i>only</i> ones, and the rest +of the human race will have to be humbly reverent toward them or +suffer for it. That can surely happen, and when it happens, +the word Irreverence will be regarded as the most meaningless, +and foolish, and self-conceited, and insolent, and impudent and +dictatorial word in the language. And people will say, +“Whose business is it, what gods I worship and what things +hold sacred? Who has the right to dictate to my conscience, +and where did he get that right?”</p> +<p>We cannot afford to let that calamity come upon us. We +must save the word from this destruction. There is but one +way to do it, and that is, to stop the spread of the privilege, +and strictly confine it to its present limits: that is, to all +the Christian sects, to all the Hindu sects, and me. We do +not need any more, the stock is watered enough, just as it +is.</p> +<p>It would be better if the privilege were limited to me +alone. I think so because I am the only sect that knows how +to employ it gently, kindly, charitably, dispassionately. +The other sects lack the quality of self-restraint. The +Catholic Church says the most irreverent things about matters +which are sacred to the Protestants, and the Protestant Church +retorts in kind about the confessional and other matters which +Catholics hold sacred; then both of these irreverencers turn upon +Thomas Paine and charge <i>him</i> with irreverence. This +is all unfortunate, because it makes it difficult for students +equipped with only a low grade of mentality to find out what +Irreverence really <i>is</i>.</p> +<p>It will surely be much better all around if the privilege of +regulating the irreverent and keeping them in order shall +eventually be withdrawn from all the sects but me. Then +there will be no more quarrelling, no more bandying of +disrespectful epithets, no more heart burnings.</p> +<p>There will then be nothing sacred involved in this +Bacon-Shakespeare controversy except what is sacred to me. +That will simplify the whole matter, and trouble will +cease. There will be irreverence no longer, because I will +not allow it. The first time those criminals charge me with +irreverence for calling their Stratford myth an +Arthur-Orton-Mary-Baker-Thompson-Eddy-Louis-the-Seventeenth-Veiled-Prophet-of-Khorassan +will be the last. Taught by the methods found effective in +extinguishing earlier offenders by the Inquisition, of holy +memory, I shall know how to quiet them.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2> +<p>Isn’t it odd, when you think of it: that you may list +all the celebrated Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen of modern +times, clear back to the first Tudors—a list containing +five hundred names, shall we say?—and you can go to the +histories, biographies and cyclopedias and learn the particulars +of the lives of every one of them. Every one of them except +one—the most famous, the most renowned—by far the +most illustrious of them all—Shakespeare! You can get +the details of the lives of all the celebrated ecclesiastics in +the list; all the celebrated tragedians, comedians, singers, +dancers, orators, judges, lawyers, poets, dramatists, historians, +biographers, editors, inventors, reformers, statesmen, generals, +admirals, discoverers, prize-fighters, murderers, pirates, +conspirators, horse-jockeys, bunco-steerers, misers, swindlers, +explorers, adventurers by land and sea, bankers, financiers, +astronomers, naturalists, Claimants, impostors, chemists, +biologists, geologists, philologists, college presidents and +professors, architects, engineers, painters, sculptors, +politicians, agitators, rebels, revolutionists, patriots, +demagogues, clowns, cooks, freaks, philosophers, burglars, +highwaymen, journalists, physicians, surgeons—you can get +the life-histories of all of them but <i>one</i>. Just +one—the most extraordinary and the most celebrated of them +all—Shakespeare!</p> +<p>You may add to the list the thousand celebrated persons +furnished by the rest of Christendom in the past four centuries, +and you can find out the life-histories of all those people, +too. You will then have listed 1500 celebrities, and you +can trace the authentic life-histories of the whole of +them. Save one—far and away the most colossal prodigy +of the entire accumulation—Shakespeare! About him you +can find out <i>nothing</i>. Nothing of even the slightest +importance. Nothing worth the trouble of stowing away in +your memory. Nothing that even remotely indicates that he +was ever anything more than a distinctly common-place +person—a manager, an actor of inferior grade, a small +trader in a small village that did not regard him as a person of +any consequence, and had forgotten all about him before he was +fairly cold in his grave. We can go to the records and find +out the life-history of every renowned <i>race-horse</i> of +modern times—but not Shakespeare’s! There are +many reasons why, and they have been furnished in cartloads (of +guess and conjecture) by those troglodytes; but there is one that +is worth all the rest of the reasons put together, and is +abundantly sufficient all by itself—<i>he hadn’t any +history to record</i>. There is no way of getting around +that deadly fact. And no sane way has yet been discovered +of getting around its formidable significance.</p> +<p>Its quite plain significance—to any but those thugs (I +do not use the term unkindly) is, that Shakespeare had no +prominence while he lived, and none until he had been dead two or +three generations. The Plays enjoyed high fame from the +beginning; and if he wrote them it seems a pity the world did not +find it out. He ought to have explained that he was the +author, and not merely a <i>nom de plume</i> for another man to +hide behind. If he had been less intemperately solicitous +about his bones, and more solicitous about his Works, it would +have been better for his good name, and a kindness to us. +The bones were not important. They will moulder away, they +will turn to dust, but the Works will endure until the last sun +goes down.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Mark +Twain</span>.</p> +<p>P.S. <i>March</i> 25. About two months ago I was +illuminating this Autobiography with some notions of mine +concerning the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, and I then took +occasion to air the opinion that the Stratford Shakespeare was a +person of no public consequence or celebrity during his lifetime, +but was utterly obscure and unimportant. And not only in +great London, but also in the little village where he was born, +where he lived a quarter of a century, and where he died and was +buried. I argued that if he had been a person of any note +at all, aged villagers would have had much to tell about him many +and many a year after his death, instead of being unable to +furnish inquirers a single fact connected with him. I +believed, and I still believe, that if he had been famous, his +notoriety would have lasted as long as mine has lasted in my +native village out in Missouri. It is a good argument, a +prodigiously strong one, and a most formidable one for even the +most gifted, and ingenious, and plausible Stratfordolater to get +around or explain away. To-day a Hannibal +<i>Courier-Post</i> of recent date has reached me, with an +article in it which reinforces my contention that a really +celebrated person cannot be forgotten in his village in the short +space of sixty years. I will make an extract from it:</p> +<blockquote><p>Hannibal, as a city, may have many sins to answer +for, but ingratitude is not one of them, or reverence for the +great men she has produced, and as the years go by her greatest +son Mark Twain, or S. L. Clemens as a few of the unlettered call +him, grows in the estimation and regard of the residents of the +town he made famous and the town that made him famous. His +name is associated with every old building that is torn down to +make way for the modern structures demanded by a rapidly growing +city, and with every hill or cave over or through which he might +by any possibility have roamed, while the many points of interest +which he wove into his stories, such as Holiday Hill, +Jackson’s Island, or Mark Twain Cave, are now monuments to +his genius. Hannibal is glad of any opportunity to do him +honor as he has honored her.</p> +<p>So it has happened that the “old timers” who went +to school with Mark or were with him on some of his usual +escapades have been honored with large audiences whenever they +were in a reminiscent mood and condescended to tell of their +intimacy with the ordinary boy who came to be a very +extraordinary humorist and whose every boyish act is now seen to +have been indicative of what was to come. Like Aunt Beckey +and Mrs. Clemens, they can now see that Mark was hardly +appreciated when he lived here and that the things he did as a +boy and was whipped for doing were not all bad after all. +So they have been in no hesitancy about drawing out the bad +things he did as well as the good in their efforts to get a +“Mark Twain story,” all incidents being viewed in the +light of his present fame, until the volume of +“Twainiana” is already considerable and growing in +proportion as the “old timers” drop away and the +stories are retold second and third hand by their +descendants. With some seventy-three years young and living +in a villa instead of a house he is a fair target, and let him +incorporate, copyright, or patent himself as he will, there are +some of his “works” that will go swooping up Hannibal +chimneys as long as gray-beards gather about the fires and begin +with “I’ve heard father tell” or possibly +“Once when I.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The Mrs. Clemens referred to is my mother—<i>was</i> my +mother.</p> +<p>And here is another extract from a Hannibal paper. Of +date twenty days ago:</p> +<blockquote><p>Miss Becca Blankenship died at the home of William +Dickason, 408 Rock Street, at 2.30 o’clock yesterday +afternoon, aged 72 years. The deceased was a sister of +“Huckleberry Finn,” one of the famous characters in +Mark Twain’s <i>Tom Sawyer</i>. She had been a member +of the Dickason family—the housekeeper—for nearly +forty-five years, and was a highly respected lady. For the +past eight years she had been an invalid, but was as well cared +for by Mr. Dickason and his family as if she had been a near +relative. She was a member of the Park Methodist Church and +a Christian woman.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I remember her well. I have a picture of her in my mind +which was graven there, clear and sharp and vivid, sixty-three +years ago. She was at that time nine years old, and I was +about eleven. I remember where she stood, and how she +looked; and I can still see her bare feet, her bare head, her +brown face, and her short tow-linen frock. She was +crying. What it was about, I have long ago forgotten. +But it was the tears that preserved the picture for me, no +doubt. She was a good child, I can say that for her. +She knew me nearly seventy years ago. Did she forget me, in +the course of time? I think not. If she had lived in +Stratford in Shakespeare’s time, would she have forgotten +him? Yes. For he was never famous during his +lifetime, he was utterly obscure in Stratford, and there +wouldn’t be any occasion to remember him after he had been +dead a week.</p> +<p>“Injun Joe,” “Jimmy Finn,” and +“General Gaines” were prominent and very intemperate +ne’er-do-weels in Hannibal two generations ago. +Plenty of gray-heads there remember them to this day, and can +tell you about them. Isn’t it curious that two +“town-drunkards” and one half-breed loafer should +leave behind them, in a remote Missourian village, a fame a +hundred times greater and several hundred times more +particularized in the matter of definite facts than Shakespeare +left behind him in the village where he had lived the half of his +lifetime?</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Mark +Twain</span>.</p> +<h2>Footnotes:</h2> +<p><a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1" +class="footnote">[1]</a> Four fathoms—twenty-four +feet.</p> +<p><a name="footnote2"></a><a href="#citation2" +class="footnote">[2]</a> From chapter XIII of “The +Shakespeare Problem Restated.”</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 2431-h.htm or 2431-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/3/2431 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://www.gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: +http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +</pre></body> +</html> diff --git a/2431.txt b/2431.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bedaf83 --- /dev/null +++ b/2431.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2596 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Is Shakespeare Dead?, by Mark Twain + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Is Shakespeare Dead? + from my Autobiography + + +Author: Mark Twain + + + +Release Date: July 7, 2008 [eBook #2431] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?*** + + +Transcribed from the 1909 Harper & Brothers edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org. Proofing by Alan Ross, Ana Charlton and David. + + + + + + IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD? + + + FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY + + MARK TWAIN + + HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS + NEW YORK AND LONDON + M C M I X + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished manuscript +which constitute this formidable Autobiography and Diary of mine, certain +chapters will in some distant future be found which deal with +"Claimants"--claimants historically notorious: Satan, Claimant; the +Golden Calf, Claimant; the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, Claimant; Louis +XVII., Claimant; William Shakespeare, Claimant; Arthur Orton, Claimant; +Mary Baker G. Eddy, Claimant--and the rest of them. Eminent Claimants, +successful Claimants, defeated Claimants, royal Claimants, pleb +Claimants, showy Claimants, shabby Claimants, revered Claimants, despised +Claimants, twinkle starlike here and there and yonder through the mists +of history and legend and tradition--and oh, all the darling tribe are +clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about them with deep interest +and discuss them with loving sympathy or with rancorous resentment, +according to which side we hitch ourselves to. It has always been so +with the human race. There was never a Claimant that couldn't get a +hearing, nor one that couldn't accumulate a rapturous following, no +matter how flimsy and apparently unauthentic his claim might be. Arthur +Orton's claim that he was the lost Tichborne baronet come to life again +was as flimsy as Mrs. Eddy's that she wrote _Science and Health_ from the +direct dictation of the Deity; yet in England near forty years ago Orton +had a huge army of devotees and incorrigible adherents, many of whom +remained stubbornly unconvinced after their fat god had been proven an +impostor and jailed as a perjurer, and to-day Mrs. Eddy's following is +not only immense, but is daily augmenting in numbers and enthusiasm. +Orton had many fine and educated minds among his adherents, Mrs. Eddy has +had the like among hers from the beginning. Her church is as well +equipped in those particulars as is any other church. Claimants can +always count upon a following, it doesn't matter who they are, nor what +they claim, nor whether they come with documents or without. It was +always so. Down out of the long-vanished past, across the abyss of the +ages, if you listen you can still hear the believing multitudes shouting +for Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel. + +A friend has sent me a new book, from England--_The Shakespeare Problem +Restated_--well restated and closely reasoned; and my fifty years' +interest in that matter--asleep for the last three years--is excited once +more. It is an interest which was born of Delia Bacon's book--away back +in that ancient day--1857, or maybe 1856. About a year later my +pilot-master, Bixby, transferred me from his own steamboat to the +_Pennsylvania_, and placed me under the orders and instructions of George +Ealer--dead now, these many, many years. I steered for him a good many +months--as was the humble duty of the pilot-apprentice: stood a daylight +watch and spun the wheel under the severe superintendence and correction +of the master. He was a prime chess player and an idolater of +Shakespeare. He would play chess with anybody; even with me, and it cost +his official dignity something to do that. Also--quite uninvited--he +would read Shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when it +was his watch, and I was steering. He read well, but not profitably for +me, because he constantly injected commands into the text. That broke it +all up, mixed it all up, tangled it all up--to that degree, in fact, that +if we were in a risky and difficult piece of river an ignorant person +couldn't have told, sometimes, which observations were Shakespeare's and +which were Ealer's. For instance: + + What man dare, _I_ dare! + + Approach thou _what_ are you laying in the leads for? what a hell of + an idea! like the rugged ease her off a little, ease her off! rugged + Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the _there_ she goes! meet her, + meet her! didn't you _know_ she'd smell the reef if you crowded it + like that? Hyrcan tiger; take any shape but that and my firm nerves + she'll be in the _woods_ the first you know! stop the starboard! come + ahead strong on the larboard! back the starboard! . . . _Now_ then, + you're all right; come ahead on the starboard; straighten up and go + 'long, never tremble: or be alive again, and dare me to the desert + damnation can't you keep away from that greasy water? pull her down! + snatch her! snatch her baldheaded! with thy sword; if trembling I + inhabit then, lay in the leads!--no, only the starboard one, leave + the other alone, protest me the baby of a girl. Hence horrible + shadow! eight bells--that watchman's asleep again, I reckon, go down + and call Brown yourself, unreal mockery, hence! + +He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy and +tragic, but it was a damage to me, because I have never since been able +to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way. I cannot rid it of his +explosive interlardings, they break in everywhere with their irrelevant +"What in hell are you up to _now_! pull her down! more! _more_!--there +now, steady as you go," and the other disorganizing interruptions that +were always leaping from his mouth. When I read Shakespeare now, I can +hear them as plainly as I did in that long-departed time--fifty-one years +ago. I never regarded Ealer's readings as educational. Indeed they were +a detriment to me. + +His contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring that detail +he was a good reader, I can say that much for him. He did not use the +book, and did not need to; he knew his Shakespeare as well as Euclid ever +knew his multiplication table. + +Did he have something to say--this Shakespeare-adoring Mississippi +pilot--anent Delia Bacon's book? Yes. And he said it; said it all the +time, for months--in the morning watch, the middle watch, the dog watch; +and probably kept it going in his sleep. He bought the literature of the +dispute as fast as it appeared, and we discussed it all through thirteen +hundred miles of river four times traversed in every thirty-five +days--the time required by that swift boat to achieve two round trips. +We discussed, and discussed, and discussed, and disputed and disputed and +disputed; at any rate he did, and I got in a word now and then when he +slipped a cog and there was a vacancy. He did his arguing with heat, +with energy, with violence; and I did mine with the reserve and +moderation of a subordinate who does not like to be flung out of a +pilot-house that is perched forty feet above the water. He was fiercely +loyal to Shakespeare and cordially scornful of Bacon and of all the +pretensions of the Baconians. So was I--at first. And at first he was +glad that that was my attitude. There were even indications that he +admired it; indications dimmed, it is true, by the distance that lay +between the lofty boss-pilotical altitude and my lowly one, yet +perceptible to me; perceptible, and translatable into a +compliment--compliment coming down from above the snow-line and not well +thawed in the transit, and not likely to set anything afire, not even a +cub-pilot's self-conceit; still a detectable compliment, and precious. + +Naturally it flattered me into being more loyal to Shakespeare--if +possible--than I was before, and more prejudiced against Bacon--if +possible than I was before. And so we discussed and discussed, both on +the same side, and were happy. For a while. Only for a while. Only for +a very little while, a very, very, very little while. Then the +atmosphere began to change; began to cool off. + +A brighter person would have seen what the trouble was, earlier than I +did, perhaps, but I saw it early enough for all practical purposes. You +see, he was of an argumentative disposition. Therefore it took him but a +little time to get tired of arguing with a person who agreed with +everything he said and consequently never furnished him a provocative to +flare up and show what he could do when it came to clear, cold, hard, +rose-cut, hundred-faceted, diamond-flashing reasoning. That was his name +for it. It has been applied since, with complacency, as many as several +times, in the Bacon-Shakespeare scuffle. On the Shakespeare side. + +Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to me +when principle and personal interest found themselves in opposition to +each other and a choice had to be made: I let principle go, and went over +to the other side. Not the entire way, but far enough to answer the +requirements of the case. That is to say, I took this attitude, to wit: +I only _believed_ Bacon wrote Shakespeare, whereas I _knew_ Shakespeare +didn't. Ealer was satisfied with that, and the war broke loose. Study, +practice, experience in handling my end of the matter presently enabled +me to take my new position almost seriously; a little bit later, utterly +seriously; a little later still, lovingly, gratefully, devotedly; +finally: fiercely, rabidly, uncompromisingly. After that, I was welded +to my faith, I was theoretically ready to die for it, and I looked down +with compassion not unmixed with scorn, upon everybody else's faith that +didn't tally with mine. That faith, imposed upon me by self-interest in +that ancient day, remains my faith to-day, and in it I find comfort, +solace, peace, and never-failing joy. You see how curiously theological +it is. The "rice Christian" of the Orient goes through the very same +steps, when he is after rice and the missionary is after _him_; he goes +for rice, and remains to worship. + +Ealer did a lot of our "reasoning"--not to say substantially all of it. +The slaves of his cult have a passion for calling it by that large name. +We others do not call our inductions and deductions and reductions by any +name at all. They show for themselves, what they are, and we can with +tranquil confidence leave the world to ennoble them with a title of its +own choosing. + +Now and then when Ealer had to stop to cough, I pulled my +induction-talents together and hove the controversial lead myself: always +getting eight feet, eight-and-a-half, often nine, sometimes even +quarter-less-twain--as _I_ believed; but always "no bottom," as _he_ +said. + +I got the best of him only once. I prepared myself. I wrote out a +passage from Shakespeare--it may have been the very one I quoted a while +ago, I don't remember--and riddled it with his wild steamboatful +interlardings. When an unrisky opportunity offered, one lovely summer +day, when we had sounded and buoyed a tangled patch of crossings known as +Hell's Half Acre, and were aboard again and he had sneaked the +Pennsylvania triumphantly through it without once scraping sand, and the +_A. T. Lacey_ had followed in our wake and got stuck, and he was feeling +good, I showed it to him. It amused him. I asked him to fire it off: +read it; read it, I diplomatically added, as only he could read dramatic +poetry. The compliment touched him where he lived. He did read it; read +it with surpassing fire and spirit; read it as it will never be read +again; for _he_ knew how to put the right music into those thunderous +interlardings and make them seem a part of the text, make them sound as +if they were bursting from Shakespeare's own soul, each one of them a +golden inspiration and not to be left out without damage to the massed +and magnificent whole. + +I waited a week, to let the incident fade; waited longer; waited until he +brought up for reasonings and vituperation my pet position, my pet +argument, the one which I was fondest of, the one which I prized far +above all others in my ammunition-wagon, to wit: that Shakespeare +couldn't have written Shakespeare's works, for the reason that the man +who wrote them was limitlessly familiar with the laws, and the +law-courts, and law-proceedings, and lawyer-talk, and lawyer-ways--and if +Shakespeare was possessed of the infinitely-divided star-dust that +constituted this vast wealth, how did he get it, and _where_, and _when_? + +"From books." + +From books! That was always the idea. I answered as my readings of the +champions of my side of the great controversy had taught me to answer: +that a man can't handle glibly and easily and comfortably and +successfully the _argot_ of a trade at which he has not personally +served. He will make mistakes; he will not, and cannot, get the +trade-phrasings precisely and exactly right; and the moment he departs, +by even a shade, from a common trade-form, the reader who has served that +trade will know the writer _hasn't_. Ealer would not be convinced; he +said a man could learn how to correctly handle the subtleties and +mysteries and free-masonries of any trade by careful reading and +studying. But when I got him to read again the passage from Shakespeare +with the interlardings, he perceived, himself, that books couldn't teach +a student a bewildering multitude of pilot-phrases so thoroughly and +perfectly that he could talk them off in book and play or conversation +and make no mistake that a pilot would not immediately discover. It was +a triumph for me. He was silent awhile, and I knew what was happening: +he was losing his temper. And I knew he would presently close the +session with the same old argument that was always his stay and his +support in time of need; the same old argument, the one I couldn't +answer--because I dasn't: the argument that I was an ass, and better shut +up. He delivered it, and I obeyed. + +Oh, dear, how long ago it was--how pathetically long ago! And here am I, +old, forsaken, forlorn and alone, arranging to get that argument out of +somebody again. + +When a man has a passion for Shakespeare, it goes without saying that he +keeps company with other standard authors. Ealer always had several +high-class books in the pilot-house, and he read the same ones over and +over again, and did not care to change to newer and fresher ones. He +played well on the flute, and greatly enjoyed hearing himself play. So +did I. He had a notion that a flute would keep its health better if you +took it apart when it was not standing a watch; and so, when it was not +on duty it took its rest, disjointed, on the compass-shelf under the +breast-board. When the _Pennsylvania_ blew up and became a drifting +rack-heap freighted with wounded and dying poor souls (my young brother +Henry among them), pilot Brown had the watch below, and was probably +asleep and never knew what killed him; but Ealer escaped unhurt. He and +his pilot-house were shot up into the air; then they fell, and Ealer sank +through the ragged cavern where the hurricane deck and the boiler deck +had been, and landed in a nest of ruins on the main deck, on top of one +of the unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog of scalding and +deadly steam. But not for long. He did not lose his head: long +familiarity with danger had taught him to keep it, in any and all +emergencies. He held his coat-lappels to his nose with one hand, to keep +out the steam, and scrabbled around with the other till he found the +joints of his flute, then he is took measures to save himself alive, and +was successful. I was not on board. I had been put ashore in New +Orleans by Captain Klinefelter. The reason--however, I have told all +about it in the book called _Old Times on the Mississippi_, and it isn't +important anyway, it is so long ago. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +When I was a Sunday-school scholar something more than sixty years ago, I +became interested in Satan, and wanted to find out all I could about him. +I began to ask questions, but my class-teacher, Mr. Barclay the +stone-mason, was reluctant about answering them, it seemed to me. I was +anxious to be praised for turning my thoughts to serious subjects when +there wasn't another boy in the village who could be hired to do such a +thing. I was greatly interested in the incident of Eve and the serpent, +and thought Eve's calmness was perfectly noble. I asked Mr. Barclay if +he had ever heard of another woman who, being approached by a serpent, +would not excuse herself and break for the nearest timber. He did not +answer my question, but rebuked me for inquiring into matters above my +age and comprehension. I will say for Mr. Barclay that he was willing to +tell me the facts of Satan's history, but he stopped there: he wouldn't +allow any discussion of them. + +In the course of time we exhausted the facts. There were only five or +six of them, you could set them all down on a visiting-card. I was +disappointed. I had been meditating a biography, and was grieved to find +that there were no materials. I said as much, with the tears running +down. Mr. Barclay's sympathy and compassion were aroused, for he was a +most kind and gentle-spirited man, and he patted me on the head and +cheered me up by saying there was a whole vast ocean of materials! I can +still feel the happy thrill which these blessed words shot through me. + +Then he began to bail out that ocean's riches for my encouragement and +joy. Like this: it was "conjectured"--though not established--that Satan +was originally an angel in heaven; that he fell; that he rebelled, and +brought on a war; that he was defeated, and banished to perdition. Also, +"we have reason to believe" that later he did so-and-so; that "we are +warranted in supposing" that at a subsequent time he travelled +extensively, seeking whom he might devour; that a couple of centuries +afterward, "as tradition instructs us," he took up the cruel trade of +tempting people to their ruin, with vast and fearful results; that +by-and-by, "as the probabilities seem to indicate," he may have done +certain things, he might have done certain other things, he must have +done still other things. + +And so on and so on. We set down the five known facts by themselves, on +a piece of paper, and numbered it "page 1"; then on fifteen hundred other +pieces of paper we set down the "conjectures," and "suppositions," and +"maybes," and "perhapses," and "doubtlesses," and "rumors," and +"guesses," and "probabilities," and "likelihoods," and "we are permitted +to thinks," and "we are warranted in believings," and "might have beens," +and "could have beens," and "must have beens," and "unquestionablys," and +"without a shadow of doubts"--and behold! + +_Materials_? Why, we had enough to build a biography of Shakespeare! + +Yet he made me put away my pen; he would not let me write the history of +Satan. Why? Because, as he said, he had suspicions; suspicions that my +attitude in this matter was not reverent; and that a person must be +reverent when writing about the sacred characters. He said any one who +spoke flippantly of Satan would be frowned upon by the religious world +and also be brought to account. + +I assured him, in earnest and sincere words, that he had wholly +misconceived my attitude; that I had the highest respect for Satan, and +that my reverence for him equalled, and possibly even exceeded, that of +any member of any church. I said it wounded me deeply to perceive by his +words that he thought I would make fun of Satan, and deride him, laugh at +him, scoff at him: whereas in truth I had never thought of such a thing, +but had only a warm desire to make fun of those others and laugh at +_them_. "What others?" "Why, the Supposers, the Perhapsers, the +Might-Have-Beeners, the Could-Have-Beeners, the Must-Have-Beeners, the +Without-a-Shadow-of-Doubters, the We-are-Warranted-in-Believingers, and +all that funny crop of solemn architects who have taken a good solid +foundation of five indisputable and unimportant facts and built upon it a +Conjectural Satan thirty miles high." + +What did Mr. Barclay do then? Was he disarmed? Was he silenced? No. +He was shocked. He was so shocked that he visibly shuddered. He said +the Satanic Traditioners and Perhapsers and Conjecturers were +_themselves_ sacred! As sacred as their work. So sacred that whoso +ventured to mock them or make fun of their work, could not afterward +enter any respectable house, even by the back door. + +How true were his words, and how wise! How fortunate it would have been +for me if I had heeded them. But I was young, I was but seven years of +age, and vain, foolish, and anxious to attract attention. I wrote the +biography, and have never been in a respectable house since. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +How curious and interesting is the parallel--as far as poverty of +biographical details is concerned--between Satan and Shakespeare. It is +wonderful, it is unique, it stands quite alone, there is nothing +resembling it in history, nothing resembling it in romance, nothing +approaching it even in tradition. How sublime is their position, and how +over-topping, how sky-reaching, how supreme--the two Great Unknowns, the +two Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They are the best-known unknown +persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet. + +For the instruction of the ignorant I will make a list, now, of those +details of Shakespeare's history which are _facts_--verified facts, +established facts, undisputed facts. + + + +FACTS + + +He was born on the 23d of April, 1564. + +Of good farmer-class parents who could not read, could not write, could +not sign their names. + +At Stratford, a small back settlement which in that day was shabby and +unclean, and densely illiterate. Of the nineteen important men charged +with the government of the town, thirteen had to "make their mark" in +attesting important documents, because they could not write their names. + +Of the first eighteen years of his life _nothing_ is known. They are a +blank. + +On the 27th of November (1582) William Shakespeare took out a license to +marry Anne Whateley. + +Next day William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Hathaway. +She was eight years his senior. + +William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. In a hurry. By grace of a +reluctantly-granted dispensation there was but one publication of the +banns. + +Within six months the first child was born. + +About two (blank) years followed, during which period _nothing at all +happened to Shakespeare_, so far as anybody knows. + +Then came twins--1585. February. + +Two blank years follow. + +Then--1587--he makes a ten-year visit to London, leaving the family +behind. + +Five blank years follow. During this period _nothing happened to him_, +as far as anybody actually knows. + +Then--1592--there is mention of him as an actor. + +Next year--1593--his name appears in the official list of players. + +Next year--1594--he played before the queen. A detail of no consequence: +other obscurities did it every year of the forty-five of her reign. And +remained obscure. + +Three pretty full years follow. Full of play-acting. Then + +In 1597 he bought New Place, Stratford. + +Thirteen or fourteen busy years follow; years in which he accumulated +money, and also reputation as actor and manager. + +Meantime his name, liberally and variously spelt, had become associated +with a number of great plays and poems, as (ostensibly) author of the +same. + +Some of these, in these years and later, were pirated, but he made no +protest. Then--1610-11--he returned to Stratford and settled down for +good and all, and busied himself in lending money, trading in tithes, +trading in land and houses; shirking a debt of forty-one shillings, +borrowed by his wife during his long desertion of his family; suing +debtors for shillings and coppers; being sued himself for shillings and +coppers; and acting as confederate to a neighbor who tried to rob the +town of its rights in a certain common, and did not succeed. + +He lived five or six years--till 1616--in the joy of these elevated +pursuits. Then he made a will, and signed each of its three pages with +his name. + +A thoroughgoing business man's will. It named in minute detail every +item of property he owned in the world--houses, lands, sword, silver-gilt +bowl, and so on--all the way down to his "second-best bed" and its +furniture. + +It carefully and calculatingly distributed his riches among the members +of his family, overlooking no individual of it. Not even his wife: the +wife he had been enabled to marry in a hurry by urgent grace of a special +dispensation before he was nineteen; the wife whom he had left +husbandless so many years; the wife who had had to borrow forty-one +shillings in her need, and which the lender was never able to collect of +the prosperous husband, but died at last with the money still lacking. +No, even this wife was remembered in Shakespeare's will. + +He left her that "second-best bed." + +And _not another thing_; not even a penny to bless her lucky widowhood +with. + +It was eminently and conspicuously a business man's will, not a poet's. + +It mentioned _not a single book_. + +Books were much more precious than swords and silver-gilt bowls and +second-best beds in those days, and when a departing person owned one he +gave it a high place in his will. + +The will mentioned _not a play_,_ not a poem_,_ not an unfinished +literary work_, _not a scrap of manuscript of any kind_. + +Many poets have died poor, but this is the only one in history that has +died _this_ poor; the others all left literary remains behind. Also a +book. Maybe two. + +If Shakespeare had owned a dog--but we need not go into that: we know he +would have mentioned it in his will. If a good dog, Susanna would have +got it; if an inferior one his wife would have got a dower interest in +it. I wish he had had a dog, just so we could see how painstakingly he +would have divided that dog among the family, in his careful business +way. + +He signed the will in three places. + +In earlier years he signed two other official documents. + +These five signatures still exist. + +There are _no other specimens of his penmanship in existence_. Not a +line. + +Was he prejudiced against the art? His granddaughter, whom he loved, was +eight years old when he died, yet she had had no teaching, he left no +provision for her education although he was rich, and in her mature +womanhood she couldn't write and couldn't tell her husband's manuscript +from anybody else's--she thought it was Shakespeare's. + +When Shakespeare died in Stratford _it was not an event_. It made no +more stir in England than the death of any other forgotten theatre-actor +would have made. Nobody came down from London; there were no lamenting +poems, no eulogies, no national tears--there was merely silence, and +nothing more. A striking contrast with what happened when Ben Jonson, +and Francis Bacon, and Spenser, and Raleigh and the other distinguished +literary folk of Shakespeare's time passed from life! No praiseful voice +was lifted for the lost Bard of Avon; even Ben Jonson waited seven years +before he lifted his. + +_So far as anybody actually knows and can prove_, Shakespeare of +Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life. + +_So far as anybody knows and can prove_, he never wrote a letter to +anybody in his life. + +_So far as any one knows_, _he received only one letter during his life_. + +So far as any one _knows and can prove_, Shakespeare of Stratford wrote +only one poem during his life. This one is authentic. He did write that +one--a fact which stands undisputed; he wrote the whole of it; he wrote +the whole of it out of his own head. He commanded that this work of art +be engraved upon his tomb, and he was obeyed. There it abides to this +day. This is it: + + Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare + To digg the dust encloased heare: + Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones + And curst be he yt moves my bones. + +In the list as above set down, will be found _every positively known_ +fact of Shakespeare's life, lean and meagre as the invoice is. Beyond +these details we know _not a thing_ about him. All the rest of his vast +history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon +course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures--an Eiffel Tower of +artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation +of inconsequential facts. + + + + +CHAPTER IV--CONJECTURES + + +The historians "suppose" that Shakespeare attended the Free School in +Stratford from the time he was seven years old till he was thirteen. +There is no _evidence_ in existence that he ever went to school at all. + +The historians "infer" that he got his Latin in that school--the school +which they "suppose" he attended. + +They "suppose" his father's declining fortunes made it necessary for him +to leave the school they supposed he attended, and get to work and help +support his parents and their ten children. But there is no evidence +that he ever entered or retired from the school they suppose he attended. + +They "suppose" he assisted his father in the butchering business; and +that, being only a boy, he didn't have to do full-grown butchering, but +only slaughtered calves. Also, that whenever he killed a calf he made a +high-flown speech over it. This supposition rests upon the testimony of +a man who wasn't there at the time; a man who got it from a man who could +have been there, but did not say whether he was or not; and neither of +them thought to mention it for decades, and decades, and decades, and two +more decades after Shakespeare's death (until old age and mental decay +had refreshed and vivified their memories). They hadn't two facts in +stock about the long-dead distinguished citizen, but only just the one: +he slaughtered calves and broke into oratory while he was at it. +Curious. They had only one fact, yet the distinguished citizen had spent +twenty-six years in that little town--just half his lifetime. However, +rightly viewed, it was the most important fact, indeed almost the only +important fact, of Shakespeare's life in Stratford. Rightly viewed. For +experience is an author's most valuable asset; experience is the thing +that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he +writes. Rightly viewed, calf-butchering accounts for _Titus Andronicus_, +the only play--ain't it?--that the Stratford Shakespeare ever wrote; and +yet it is the only one everybody tries to chouse him out of, the +Baconians included. + +The historians find themselves "justified in believing" that the young +Shakespeare poached upon Sir Thomas Lucy's deer preserves and got haled +before that magistrate for it. But there is no shred of respectworthy +evidence that anything of the kind happened. + +The historians, having argued the thing that _might_ have happened into +the thing that _did_ happen, found no trouble in turning Sir Thomas Lucy +into Mr. Justice Shallow. They have long ago convinced the world--on +surmise and without trustworthy evidence--that Shallow _is_ Sir Thomas. + +The next addition to the young Shakespeare's Stratford history comes +easy. The historian builds it out of the surmised deer-stealing, and the +surmised trial before the magistrate, and the surmised vengeance-prompted +satire upon the magistrate in the play: result, the young Shakespeare was +a wild, wild, wild, oh _such_ a wild young scamp, and that gratuitous +slander is established for all time! It is the very way Professor Osborn +and I built the colossal skeleton brontosaur that stands fifty-seven feet +long and sixteen feet high in the Natural History Museum, the awe and +admiration of all the world, the stateliest skeleton that exists on the +planet. We had nine bones, and we built the rest of him out of plaster +of paris. We ran short of plaster of paris, or we'd have built a +brontosaur that could sit down beside the Stratford Shakespeare and none +but an expert could tell which was biggest or contained the most plaster. + +Shakespeare pronounced _Venus and Adonis_ "the first heir of his +invention," apparently implying that it was his first effort at literary +composition. He should not have said it. It has been an embarrassment +to his historians these many, many years. They have to make him write +that graceful and polished and flawless and beautiful poem before he +escaped from Stratford and his family--1586 or '87--age, twenty-two, or +along there; because within the next five years he wrote five great +plays, and could not have found time to write another line. + +It is sorely embarrassing. If he began to slaughter calves, and poach +deer, and rollick around, and learn English, at the earliest likely +moment--say at thirteen, when he was supposably wrenched from that school +where he was supposably storing up Latin for future literary use--he had +his youthful hands full, and much more than full. He must have had to +put aside his Warwickshire dialect, which wouldn't be understood in +London, and study English very hard. Very hard indeed; incredibly hard, +almost, if the result of that labor was to be the smooth and rounded and +flexible and letter-perfect English of the _Venus and Adonis_ in the +space of ten years; and at the same time learn great and fine and +unsurpassable literary form. + +However, it is "conjectured" that he accomplished all this and more, much +more: learned law and its intricacies; and the complex procedure of the +law courts; and all about soldiering, and sailoring, and the manners and +customs and ways of royal courts and aristocratic society; and likewise +accumulated in his one head every kind of knowledge the learned then +possessed, and every kind of humble knowledge possessed by the lowly and +the ignorant; and added thereto a wider and more intimate knowledge of +the world's great literatures, ancient and modern, than was possessed by +any other man of his time--for he was going to make brilliant and easy +and admiration-compelling use of these splendid treasures the moment he +got to London. And according to the surmisers, that is what he did. +Yes, although there was no one in Stratford able to teach him these +things, and no library in the little village to dig them out of. His +father could not read, and even the surmisers surmise that he did not +keep a library. + +It is surmised by the biographers that the young Shakespeare got his vast +knowledge of the law and his familiar and accurate acquaintance with the +manners and customs and shop-talk of lawyers through being for a time the +_clerk of a Stratford court_; just as a bright lad like me, reared in a +village on the banks of the Mississippi, might become perfect in +knowledge of the Behring Strait whale-fishery and the shop-talk of the +veteran exercisers of that adventure-bristling trade through catching +catfish with a "trot-line" Sundays. But the surmise is damaged by the +fact that there is no evidence--and not even tradition--that the young +Shakespeare was ever clerk of a law court. + +It is further surmised that the young Shakespeare accumulated his +law-treasures in the first years of his sojourn in London, through +"amusing himself" by learning book-law in his garret and by picking up +lawyer-talk and the rest of it through loitering about the law-courts and +listening. But it is only surmise; there is no _evidence_ that he ever +did either of those things. They are merely a couple of chunks of +plaster of paris. + +There is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding horses in +front of the London theatres, mornings and afternoons. Maybe he did. If +he did, it seriously shortened his law-study hours and his +recreation-time in the courts. In those very days he was writing great +plays, and needed all the time he could get. The horse-holding legend +ought to be strangled; it too formidably increases the historian's +difficulty in accounting for the young Shakespeare's erudition--an +erudition which he was acquiring, hunk by hunk and chunk by chunk every +day in those strenuous times, and emptying each day's catch into next +day's imperishable drama. + +He had to acquire a knowledge of war at the same time; and a knowledge of +soldier-people and sailor-people and their ways and talk; also a +knowledge of some foreign lands and their languages: for he was daily +emptying fluent streams of these various knowledges, too, into his +dramas. How did he acquire these rich assets? + +In the usual way: by surmise. It is _surmised_ that he travelled in +Italy and Germany and around, and qualified himself to put their scenic +and social aspects upon paper; that he perfected himself in French, +Italian and Spanish on the road; that he went in Leicester's expedition +to the Low Countries, as soldier or sutler or something, for several +months or years--or whatever length of time a surmiser needs in his +business--and thus became familiar with soldiership and soldier-ways and +soldier-talk, and generalship and general-ways and general-talk, and +seamanship and sailor-ways and sailor-talk. + +Maybe he did all these things, but I would like to know who held the +horses in the meantime; and who studied the books in the garret; and who +frollicked in the law-courts for recreation. Also, who did the +call-boying and the play-acting. + +For he became a call-boy; and as early as '93 he became a "vagabond"--the +law's ungentle term for an unlisted actor; and in '94 a "regular" and +properly and officially listed member of that (in those days) +lightly-valued and not much respected profession. + +Right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theatres, and +manager of them. Thenceforward he was a busy and flourishing business +man, and was raking in money with both hands for twenty years. Then in a +noble frenzy of poetic inspiration he wrote his one poem--his only poem, +his darling--and laid him down and died: + + Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare + To digg the dust encloased heare: + Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones + And curst be he yt moves my bones. + +He was probably dead when he wrote it. Still, this is only conjecture. +We have only circumstantial evidence. Internal evidence. + +Shall I set down the rest of the Conjectures which constitute the giant +Biography of William Shakespeare? It would strain the Unabridged +Dictionary to hold them. He is a Brontosaur: nine bones and six hundred +barrels of plaster of paris. + + + + +CHAPTER V--"We May Assume" + + +In the Assuming trade three separate and independent cults are +transacting business. Two of these cults are known as the Shakespearites +and the Baconians, and I am the other one--the Brontosaurian. + +The Shakespearite knows that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's Works; the +Baconian knows that Francis Bacon wrote them; the Brontosaurian doesn't +really know which of them did it, but is quite composedly and contentedly +sure that Shakespeare _didn't_, and strongly suspects that Bacon _did_. +We all have to do a good deal of assuming, but I am fairly certain that +in every case I can call to mind the Baconian assumers have come out +ahead of the Shakespearites. Both parties handle the same materials, but +the Baconians seem to me to get much more reasonable and rational and +persuasive results out of them than is the case with the Shakespearites. +The Shakespearite conducts his assuming upon a definite principle, an +unchanging and immutable law--which is: 2 and 8 and 7 and 14, added +together, make 165. I believe this to be an error. No matter, you +cannot get a habit-sodden Shakespearite to cipher-up his materials upon +any other basis. With the Baconian it is different. If you place before +him the above figures and set him to adding them up, he will never in any +case get more than 45 out of them, and in nine cases out of ten he will +get just the proper 31. + +Let me try to illustrate the two systems in a simple and homely way +calculated to bring the idea within the grasp of the ignorant and +unintelligent. We will suppose a case: take a lap-bred, house-fed, +uneducated, inexperienced kitten; take a rugged old Tom that's scarred +from stem to rudder-post with the memorials of strenuous experience, and +is so cultured, so educated, so limitlessly erudite that one may say of +him "all cat-knowledge is his province"; also, take a mouse. Lock the +three up in a holeless, crackless, exitless prison-cell. Wait half an +hour, then open the cell, introduce a Shakespearite and a Baconian, and +let them cipher and assume. The mouse is missing: the question to be +decided is, where is it? You can guess both verdicts beforehand. One +verdict will say the kitten contains the mouse; the other will as +certainly say the mouse is in the tomcat. + +The Shakespearite will Reason like this--(that is not my word, it is +his). He will say the kitten _may have been_ attending school when +nobody was noticing; therefore _we are warranted in assuming_ that it did +so; also, it _could have been_ training in a court-clerk's office when no +one was noticing; since that could have happened, _we are justified in +assuming_ that it did happen; it _could have studied catology in a +garret_ when no one was noticing--therefore it _did_; it _could have_ +attended cat-assizes on the shed-roof nights, for recreation, when no one +was noticing, and harvested a knowledge of cat court-forms and cat +lawyer-talk in that way: it _could_ have done it, therefore without a +doubt it did; it could have gone soldiering with a war-tribe when no one +was noticing, and learned soldier-wiles and soldier-ways, and what to do +with a mouse when opportunity offers; the plain inference, therefore is, +that that is what it _did_. Since all these manifold things _could_ have +occurred, we have _every right to believe_ they did occur. These +patiently and painstakingly accumulated vast acquirements and competences +needed but one thing more--opportunity--to convert themselves into +triumphant action. The opportunity came, we have the result; _beyond +shadow of question_ the mouse is in the kitten. + +It is proper to remark that when we of the three cults plant a "_We think +we may assume_," we expect it, under careful watering and fertilizing and +tending, to grow up into a strong and hardy and weather-defying "_there +isn't a shadow of a doubt_" at last--and it usually happens. + +We know what the Baconian's verdict would be: "_There is not a rag of +evidence that the kitten has had any training_, _any education_, _any +experience qualifying it for the present occasion_, _or is indeed +equipped for any achievement above lifting such unclaimed milk as comes +its way_; _but there is abundant evidence_--_unassailable proof_, _in +fact_--_that the other animal is equipped_, _to the last detail_, _with +every qualification necessary for the event_. _Without shadow of doubt +the tomcat contains the mouse_." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +When Shakespeare died, in 1616, great literary productions attributed to +him as author had been before the London world and in high favor for +twenty-four years. Yet his death was not an event. It made no stir, it +attracted no attention. Apparently his eminent literary contemporaries +did not realize that a celebrated poet had passed from their midst. +Perhaps they knew a play-actor of minor rank had disappeared, but did not +regard him as the author of his Works. "We are justified in assuming" +this. + +His death was not even an event in the little town of Stratford. Does +this mean that in Stratford he was not regarded as a celebrity of _any_ +kind? + +"We are privileged to assume"--no, we are indeed _obliged_ to +assume--that such was the case. He had spent the first twenty-two or +twenty-three years of his life there, and of course knew everybody and +was known by everybody of that day in the town, including the dogs and +the cats and the horses. He had spent the last five or six years of his +life there, diligently trading in every big and little thing that had +money in it; so we are compelled to assume that many of the folk there in +those said latter days knew him personally, and the rest by sight and +hearsay. But not as a _celebrity_? Apparently not. For everybody soon +forgot to remember any contact with him or any incident connected with +him. The dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him or +known about him in the first twenty-three years of his life were in the +same unremembering condition: if they knew of any incident connected with +that period of his life they didn't tell about it. Would they if they +had been asked? It is most likely. Were they asked? It is pretty +apparent that they were not. Why weren't they? It is a very plausible +guess that nobody there or elsewhere was interested to know. + +For seven years after Shakespeare's death nobody seems to have been +interested in him. Then the quarto was published, and Ben Jonson awoke +out of his long indifference and sang a song of praise and put it in the +front of the book. Then silence fell _again_. + +For sixty years. Then inquiries into Shakespeare's Stratford life began +to be made, of Stratfordians. Of Stratfordians who had known Shakespeare +or had seen him? No. Then of Stratfordians who had seen people who had +known or seen people who had seen Shakespeare? No. Apparently the +inquiries were only made of Stratfordians who were not Stratfordians of +Shakespeare's day, but later comers; and what they had learned had come +to them from persons who had not seen Shakespeare; and what they had +learned was not claimed as _fact_, but only as legend--dim and fading and +indefinite legend; legend of the calf-slaughtering rank, and not worth +remembering either as history or fiction. + +Has it ever happened before--or since--that a celebrated person who had +spent exactly half of a fairly long life in the village where he was born +and reared, was able to slip out of this world and leave that village +voiceless and gossipless behind him--utterly voiceless, utterly +gossipless? And permanently so? I don't believe it has happened in any +case except Shakespeare's. And couldn't and wouldn't have happened in +his case if he had been regarded as a celebrity at the time of his death. + +When I examine my own case--but let us do that, and see if it will not be +recognizable as exhibiting a condition of things quite likely to result, +most likely to result, indeed substantially _sure_ to result in the case +of a celebrated person, a benefactor of the human race. Like me. + +My parents brought me to the village of Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks +of the Mississippi, when I was two and a half years old. I entered +school at five years of age, and drifted from one school to another in +the village during nine and a half years. Then my father died, leaving +his family in exceedingly straitened circumstances; wherefore my +book-education came to a standstill forever, and I became a printer's +apprentice, on board and clothes, and when the clothes failed I got a +hymn-book in place of them. This for summer wear, probably. I lived in +Hannibal fifteen and a half years, altogether, then ran away, according +to the custom of persons who are intending to become celebrated. I never +lived there afterward. Four years later I became a "cub" on a +Mississippi steamboat in the St. Louis and New Orleans trade, and after a +year and a half of hard study and hard work the U. S. inspectors +rigorously examined me through a couple of long sittings and decided that +I knew every inch of the Mississippi--thirteen hundred miles--in the dark +and in the day--as well as a baby knows the way to its mother's paps day +or night. So they licensed me as a pilot--knighted me, so to speak--and +I rose up clothed with authority, a responsible servant of the United +States government. + +Now then. Shakespeare died young--he was only fifty-two. He had lived +in his native village twenty-six years, or about that. He died +celebrated (if you believe everything you read in the books). Yet when +he died nobody there or elsewhere took any notice of it; and for sixty +years afterward no townsman remembered to say anything about him or about +his life in Stratford. When the inquirer came at last he got but one +fact--no, _legend_--and got that one at second hand, from a person who +had only heard it as a rumor, and didn't claim copyright in it as a +production of his own. He couldn't, very well, for its date antedated +his own birth-date. But necessarily a number of persons were still alive +in Stratford who, in the days of their youth, had seen Shakespeare nearly +every day in the last five years of his life, and they would have been +able to tell that inquirer some first-hand things about him if he had in +those last days been a celebrity and therefore a person of interest to +the villagers. Why did not the inquirer hunt them up and interview them? +Wasn't it worth while? Wasn't the matter of sufficient consequence? Had +the inquirer an engagement to see a dog-fight and couldn't spare the +time? + +It all seems to mean that he never had any literary celebrity, there or +elsewhere, and no considerable repute as actor and manager. + +Now then, I am away along in life--my seventy-third year being already +well behind me--yet _sixteen_ of my Hannibal schoolmates are still alive +to-day, and can tell--and do tell--inquirers dozens and dozens of +incidents of their young lives and mine together; things that happened to +us in the morning of life, in the blossom of our youth, in the good days, +the dear days, "the days when we went gipsying, a long time ago." Most +of them creditable to me, too. One child to whom I paid court when she +was five years old and I eight still lives in Hannibal, and she visited +me last summer, traversing the necessary ten or twelve hundred miles of +railroad without damage to her patience or to her old-young vigor. +Another little lassie to whom I paid attention in Hannibal when she was +nine years old and I the same, is still alive--in London--and hale and +hearty, just as I am. And on the few surviving steamboats--those +lingering ghosts and remembrancers of great fleets that plied the big +river in the beginning of my water-career--which is exactly as long ago +as the whole invoice of the life-years of Shakespeare number--there are +still findable two or three river-pilots who saw me do creditable things +in those ancient days; and several white-headed engineers; and several +roustabouts and mates; and several deck-hands who used to heave the lead +for me and send up on the still night air the "six--feet--_scant_!" that +made me shudder, and the "_M-a-r-k--twain_!" that took the shudder away, +and presently the darling "By the d-e-e-p--four!" that lifted me to +heaven for joy. {1} They know about me, and can tell. And so do +printers, from St. Louis to New York; and so do newspaper reporters, from +Nevada to San Francisco. And so do the police. If Shakespeare had +really been celebrated, like me, Stratford could have told things about +him; and if my experience goes for anything, they'd have done it. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +If I had under my superintendence a controversy appointed to decide +whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare or not, I believe I would place +before the debaters only the one question, _Was Shakespeare ever a +practicing lawyer_? and leave everything else out. + +It is maintained that the man who wrote the plays was not merely +myriad-minded, but also myriad-accomplished: that he not only knew some +thousands of things about human life in all its shades and grades, and +about the hundred arts and trades and crafts and professions which men +busy themselves in, but that he could _talk_ about the men and their +grades and trades accurately, making no mistakes. Maybe it is so, but +have the experts spoken, or is it only Tom, Dick, and Harry? Does the +exhibit stand upon wide, and loose, and eloquent generalizing--which is +not evidence, and not proof--or upon details, particulars, statistics, +illustrations, demonstrations? + +Experts of unchallengeable authority have testified definitely as to only +one of Shakespeare's multifarious craft-equipments, so far as my +recollections of Shakespeare-Bacon talk abide with me--his law-equipment. +I do not remember that Wellington or Napoleon ever examined Shakespeare's +battles and sieges and strategies, and then decided and established for +good and all, that they were militarily flawless; I do not remember that +any Nelson, or Drake or Cook ever examined his seamanship and said it +showed profound and accurate familiarity with that art; I don't remember +that any king or prince or duke has ever testified that Shakespeare was +letter-perfect in his handling of royal court-manners and the talk and +manners of aristocracies; I don't remember that any illustrious Latinist +or Grecian or Frenchman or Spaniard or Italian has proclaimed him a +past-master in those languages; I don't remember--well, I don't remember +that there is _testimony_--great testimony--imposing +testimony--unanswerable and unattackable testimony as to any of +Shakespeare's hundred specialties, except one--the law. + +Other things change, with time, and the student cannot trace back with +certainty the changes that various trades and their processes and +technicalities have undergone in the long stretch of a century or two and +find out what their processes and technicalities were in those early +days, but with the law it is different: it is mile-stoned and documented +all the way back, and the master of that wonderful trade, that complex +and intricate trade, that awe-compelling trade, has competent ways of +knowing whether Shakespeare-law is good law or not; and whether his +law-court procedure is correct or not, and whether his legal shop-talk is +the shop-talk of a veteran practitioner or only a machine-made +counterfeit of it gathered from books and from occasional loiterings in +Westminster. + +Richard H. Dana served two years before the mast, and had every +experience that falls to the lot of the sailor before the mast of our +day. His sailor-talk flows from his pen with the sure touch and the ease +and confidence of a person who has _lived_ what he is talking about, not +gathered it from books and random listenings. Hear him: + + Having hove short, cast off the gaskets, and made the bunt of each + sail fast by the jigger, with a man on each yard, at the word the + whole canvas of the ship was loosed, and with the greatest rapidity + possible everything was sheeted home and hoisted up, the anchor + tripped and cat-headed, and the ship under headway. + +Again: + + The royal yards were all crossed at once, and royals and sky-sails + set, and, as we had the wind free, the booms were run out, and all + were aloft, active as cats, laying out on the yards and booms, + reeving the studding-sail gear; and sail after sail the captain piled + upon her, until she was covered with canvas, her sails looking like a + great white cloud resting upon a black speck. + +Once more. A race in the Pacific: + + Our antagonist was in her best trim. Being clear of the point, the + breeze became stiff, and the royal-masts bent under our sails, but we + would not take them in until we saw three boys spring into the + rigging of the _California_; then they were all furled at once, but + with orders to our boys to stay aloft at the top-gallant mast-heads + and loose them again at the word. It was my duty to furl the + fore-royal; and while standing by to loose it again, I had a fine + view of the scene. From where I stood, the two vessels seemed + nothing but spars and sails, while their narrow decks, far below, + slanting over by the force of the wind aloft, appeared hardly capable + of supporting the great fabrics raised upon them. The _California_ + was to windward of us, and had every advantage; yet, while the breeze + was stiff we held our own. As soon as it began to slacken she ranged + a little ahead, and the order was given to loose the royals. In an + instant the gaskets were off and the bunt dropped. "Sheet home the + fore-royal!"--"Weather sheet's home!"--"Lee sheet's home!"--"Hoist + away, sir!" is bawled from aloft. "Overhaul your clewlines!" shouts + the mate. "Aye-aye, sir, all clear!"--"Taut leech! belay! Well the + lee brace; haul taut to windward!" and the royals are set. + +What would the captain of any sailing-vessel of our time say to that? He +would say, "The man that wrote that didn't learn his trade out of a book, +he has _been_ there!" But would this same captain be competent to sit in +judgment upon Shakespeare's seamanship--considering the changes in ships +and ship-talk that have necessarily taken place, unrecorded, +unremembered, and lost to history in the last three hundred years? It is +my conviction that Shakespeare's sailor-talk would be Choctaw to him. +For instance--from _The Tempest_: + + _Master_. Boatswain! + + _Boatswain_. Here, master; what cheer? + + _Master_. Good, speak to the mariners: fall to't, yarely, or we run + ourselves to ground; bestir, bestir! + + (_Enter mariners_.) + + _Boatswain_. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, + yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master's whistle . . . Down + with the topmast! yare! lower, lower! Bring her to try wi' the main + course . . . Lay her a-hold, a-hold! Set her two courses. Off to + sea again; lay her off. + +That will do, for the present; let us yare a little, now, for a change. + +If a man should write a book and in it make one of his characters say, +"Here, devil, empty the quoins into the standing galley and the imposing +stone into the hell-box; assemble the comps around the frisket and let +them jeff for takes and be quick about it," I should recognize a mistake +or two in the phrasing, and would know that the writer was only a printer +theoretically, not practically. + +I have been a quartz miner in the silver regions--a pretty hard life; I +know all the palaver of that business: I know all about discovery claims +and the subordinate claims; I know all about lodes, ledges, outcroppings, +dips, spurs, angles, shafts, drifts, inclines, levels, tunnels, +air-shafts, "horses," clay casings, granite casings; quartz mills and +their batteries; arastras, and how to charge them with quicksilver and +sulphate of copper; and how to clean them up, and how to reduce the +resulting amalgam in the retorts, and how to cast the bullion into pigs; +and finally I know how to screen tailings, and also how to hunt for +something less robust to do, and find it. I know the _argot_ of the +quartz-mining and milling industry familiarly; and so whenever Bret Harte +introduces that industry into a story, the first time one of his miners +opens his mouth I recognize from his phrasing that Harte got the phrasing +by listening--like Shakespeare--I mean the Stratford one--not by +experience. No one can talk the quartz dialect correctly without +learning it with pick and shovel and drill and fuse. + +I have been a surface-miner--gold--and I know all its mysteries, and the +dialect that belongs with them; and whenever Harte introduces that +industry into a story I know by the phrasing of his characters that +neither he nor they have ever served that trade. + +I have been a "pocket" miner--a sort of gold mining not findable in any +but one little spot in the world, so far as I know. I know how, with +horn and water, to find the trail of a pocket and trace it step by step +and stage by stage up the mountain to its source, and find the compact +little nest of yellow metal reposing in its secret home under the ground. +I know the language of that trade, that capricious trade, that +fascinating buried-treasure trade, and can catch any writer who tries to +use it without having learned it by the sweat of his brow and the labor +of his hands. + +I know several other trades and the _argot_ that goes with them; and +whenever a person tries to talk the talk peculiar to any of them without +having learned it at its source I can trap him always before he gets far +on his road. + +And so, as I have already remarked, if I were required to superintend a +Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, I would narrow the matter down to a single +question--the only one, so far as the previous controversies have +informed me, concerning which illustrious experts of unimpeachable +competency have testified: _Was the author of Shakespeare's Works a +lawyer_?--a lawyer deeply read and of limitless experience? I would put +aside the guesses, and surmises, and perhapses, and might-have-beens, and +could-have beens, and must-have-beens, and we-are +justified-in-presumings, and the rest of those vague spectres and shadows +and indefinitenesses, and stand or fall, win or lose, by the verdict +rendered by the jury upon that single question. If the verdict was Yes, +I should feel quite convinced that the Stratford Shakespeare, the actor, +manager, and trader who died so obscure, so forgotten, so destitute of +even village consequence that sixty years afterward no fellow-citizen and +friend of his later days remembered to tell anything about him, did not +write the Works. + +Chapter XIII of _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_ bears the heading +"Shakespeare as a Lawyer," and comprises some fifty pages of expert +testimony, with comments thereon, and I will copy the first nine, as +being sufficient all by themselves, as it seems to me, to settle the +question which I have conceived to be the master-key to the +Shakespeare-Bacon puzzle. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII--Shakespeare as a Lawyer {2} + + +The Plays and Poems of Shakespeare supply ample evidence that their +author not only had a very extensive and accurate knowledge of law, but +that he was well acquainted with the manners and customs of members of +the Inns of Court and with legal life generally. + +"While novelists and dramatists are constantly making mistakes as to the +laws of marriage, of wills, and inheritance, to Shakespeare's law, +lavishly as he expounds it, there can neither be demurrer, nor bill of +exceptions, nor writ of error." Such was the testimony borne by one of +the most distinguished lawyers of the nineteenth century who was raised +to the high office of Lord Chief Justice in 1850, and subsequently became +Lord Chancellor. Its weight will, doubtless, be more appreciated by +lawyers than by laymen, for only lawyers know how impossible it is for +those who have not served an apprenticeship to the law to avoid +displaying their ignorance if they venture to employ legal terms and to +discuss legal doctrines. "There is nothing so dangerous," wrote Lord +Campbell, "as for one not of the craft to tamper with our freemasonry." +A layman is certain to betray himself by using some expression which a +lawyer would never employ. Mr. Sidney Lee himself supplies us with an +example of this. He writes (p. 164): "On February 15, 1609, Shakespeare +. . . obtained judgment from a jury against Addenbroke for the payment of +No. 6, and No. 1. 5_s._ 0_d._ costs." Now a lawyer would never have +spoken of obtaining "judgment from a jury," for it is the function of a +jury not to deliver judgment (which is the prerogative of the court), but +to find a verdict on the facts. The error is, indeed, a venial one, but +it is just one of those little things which at once enable a lawyer to +know if the writer is a layman or "one of the craft." + +But when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal subjects, he is +naturally apt to make an exhibition of his incompetence. "Let a +non-professional man, however acute," writes Lord Campbell again, +"presume to talk law, or to draw illustrations from legal science in +discussing other subjects, and he will speedily fall into laughable +absurdity." + +And what does the same high authority say about Shakespeare? He had "a +deep technical knowledge of the law," and an easy familiarity with "some +of the most abstruse proceedings in English jurisprudence." And again: +"Whenever he indulges this propensity he uniformly lays down good law." +Of _Henry IV._, Part 2, he says: "If Lord Eldon could be supposed to have +written the play, I do not see how he could be chargeable with having +forgotten any of his law while writing it." Charles and Mary Cowden +Clarke speak of "the marvelous intimacy which he displays with legal +terms, his frequent adoption of them in illustration, and his curiously +technical knowledge of their form and force." Malone, himself a lawyer, +wrote: "His knowledge of legal terms is not merely such as might be +acquired by the casual observation of even his all-comprehending mind; it +has the appearance of technical skill." Another lawyer and well-known +Shakespearean, Richard Grant White, says: "No dramatist of the time, not +even Beaumont, who was the younger son of a judge of the Common Pleas, +and who after studying in the Inns of Court abandoned law for the drama, +used legal phrases with Shakespeare's readiness and exactness. And the +significance of this fact is heightened by another, that it is only to +the language of the law that he exhibits this inclination. The phrases +peculiar to other occupations serve him on rare occasions by way of +description, comparison or illustration, generally when something in the +scene suggests them, but legal phrases flow from his pen as part of his +vocabulary, and parcel of his thought. Take the word 'purchase' for +instance, which, in ordinary use, means to acquire by giving value, but +applies in law to all legal modes of obtaining property except by +inheritance or descent, and in this peculiar sense the word occurs five +times in Shakespeare's thirty-four plays, and only in one single instance +in the fifty-four plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. It has been suggested +that it was in attendance upon the courts in London that he picked up his +legal vocabulary. But this supposition not only fails to account for +Shakespeare's peculiar freedom and exactness in the use of that +phraseology, it does not even place him in the way of learning those +terms his use of which is most remarkable, which are not such as he would +have heard at ordinary proceedings at _nisi prius_, but such as refer to +the tenure or transfer of real property, 'fine and recovery,' 'statutes +merchant,' 'purchase,' 'indenture,' 'tenure,' 'double voucher,' 'fee +simple,' 'fee farm,' 'remainder,' 'reversion,' 'forfeiture,' etc. This +conveyancer's jargon could not have been picked up by hanging round the +courts of law in London two hundred and fifty years ago, when suits as to +the title of real property were comparatively rare. And beside, +Shakespeare uses his law just as freely in his first plays, written in +his first London years, as in those produced at a later period. Just as +exactly, too; for the correctness and propriety with which these terms +are introduced have compelled the admiration of a Chief Justice and a +Lord Chancellor." + +Senator Davis wrote: "We seem to have something more than a sciolist's +temerity of indulgence in the terms of an unfamiliar art. No legal +solecisms will be found. The abstrusest elements of the common law are +impressed into a disciplined service. Over and over again, where such +knowledge is unexampled in writers unlearned in the law, Shakespeare +appears in perfect possession of it. In the law of real property, its +rules of tenure and descents, its entails, its fines and recoveries, +their vouchers and double vouchers, in the procedure of the Courts, the +method of bringing writs and arrests, the nature of actions, the rules of +pleading, the law of escapes and of contempt of court, in the principles +of evidence, both technical and philosophical, in the distinction between +the temporal and spiritual tribunals, in the law of attainder and +forfeiture, in the requisites of a valid marriage, in the presumption of +legitimacy, in the learning of the law of prerogative, in the inalienable +character of the Crown, this mastership appears with surprising +authority." + +To all this testimony (and there is much more which I have not cited) may +now be added that of a great lawyer of our own times, _viz._: Sir James +Plaisted Wilde, Q.C. created a Baron of the Exchequer in 1860, promoted +to the post of Judge-Ordinary and Judge of the Courts of Probate and +Divorce in 1863, and better known to the world as Lord Penzance, to which +dignity he was raised in 1869. Lord Penzance, as all lawyers know, and +as the late Mr. Inderwick, K.C., has testified, was one of the first +legal authorities of his day, famous for his "remarkable grasp of legal +principles," and "endowed by nature with a remarkable facility for +marshalling facts, and for a clear expression of his views." + +Lord Penzance speaks of Shakespeare's "perfect familiarity with not only +the principles, axioms, and maxims, but the technicalities of English +law, a knowledge so perfect and intimate that he was never incorrect and +never at fault . . . The mode in which this knowledge was pressed into +service on all occasions to express his meaning and illustrate his +thoughts, was quite unexampled. He seems to have had a special pleasure +in his complete and ready mastership of it in all its branches. As +manifested in the plays, this legal knowledge and learning had therefore +a special character which places it on a wholly different footing from +the rest of the multifarious knowledge which is exhibited in page after +page of the plays. At every turn and point at which the author required +a metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned _first_ to the +law. He seems almost to have _thought_ in legal phrases, the commonest +of legal expressions were ever at the end of his pen in description or +illustration. That he should have descanted in lawyer language when he +had a forensic subject in hand, such as Shylock's bond, was to be +expected, but the knowledge of law in 'Shakespeare' was exhibited in a +far different manner: it protruded itself on all occasions, appropriate +or inappropriate, and mingled itself with strains of thought widely +divergent from forensic subjects." Again: "To acquire a perfect +familiarity with legal principles, and an accurate and ready use of the +technical terms and phrases not only of the conveyancer's office but of +the pleader's chambers and the Courts at Westminster, nothing short of +employment in some career involving constant contact with legal questions +and general legal work would be requisite. But a continuous employment +involves the element of time, and time was just what the manager of two +theatres had not at his disposal. In what portion of Shakespeare's +(_i.e._ Shakspere's) career would it be possible to point out that time +could be found for the interposition of a legal employment in the +chambers or offices of practising lawyers?" + +Stratfordians, as is well known, casting about for some possible +explanation of Shakespeare's extraordinary knowledge of law, have made +the suggestion that Shakespeare might, conceivably, have been a clerk in +an attorney's office before he came to London. Mr. Collier wrote to Lord +Campbell to ask his opinion as to the probability of this being true. +His answer was as follows: "You require us to believe implicitly a fact, +of which, if true, positive and irrefragable evidence in his own +handwriting might have been forthcoming to establish it. Not having been +actually enrolled as an attorney, neither the records of the local court +at Stratford nor of the superior Courts at Westminster would present his +name as being concerned in any suit as an attorney, but it might +reasonably have been expected that there would be deeds or wills +witnessed by him still extant, and after a very diligent search none such +can be discovered." + +Upon this Lord Penzance comments: "It cannot be doubted that Lord +Campbell was right in this. No young man could have been at work in an +attorney's office without being called upon continually to act as a +witness, and in many other ways leaving traces of his work and name." +There is not a single fact or incident in all that is known of +Shakespeare, even by rumor or tradition, which supports this notion of a +clerkship. And after much argument and surmise which has been indulged +in on this subject, we may, I think, safely put the notion on one side, +for no less an authority than Mr. Grant White says finally that the idea +of his having been clerk to an attorney has been "blown to pieces." + +It is altogether characteristic of Mr. Churton Collins that he, +nevertheless, adopts this exploded myth. "That Shakespeare was in early +life employed as a clerk in an attorney's office, may be correct. At +Stratford there was by royal charter a Court of Record sitting every +fortnight, with six attorneys, beside the town clerk, belonging to it, +and it is certainly not straining probability to suppose that the young +Shakespeare may have had employment in one of them. There is, it is +true, no tradition to this effect, but such traditions as we have about +Shakespeare's occupation between the time of leaving school and going to +London are so loose and baseless that no confidence can be placed in +them. It is, to say the least, more probable that he was in an +attorney's office than that he was a butcher killing calves 'in a high +style,' and making speeches over them." + +This is a charming specimen of Stratfordian argument. There is, as we +have seen, a very old tradition that Shakespeare was a butcher's +apprentice. John Dowdall, who made a tour in Warwickshire in 1693, +testifies to it as coming from the old clerk who showed him over the +church, and it is unhesitatingly accepted as true by Mr. +Halliwell-Phillipps. (Vol I, p. 11, and see Vol. II, p. 71, 72.) Mr. +Sidney Lee sees nothing improbable in it, and it is supported by Aubrey, +who must have written his account some time before 1680, when his +manuscript was completed. Of the attorney's clerk hypothesis, on the +other hand, there is not the faintest vestige of a tradition. It has +been evolved out of the fertile imaginations of embarrassed +Stratfordians, seeking for some explanation of the Stratford rustic's +marvellous acquaintance with law and legal terms and legal life. But Mr. +Churton Collins has not the least hesitation in throwing over the +tradition which has the warrant of antiquity and setting up in its stead +this ridiculous invention, for which not only is there no shred of +positive evidence, but which, as Lord Campbell and Lord Penzance point +out, is really put out of court by the negative evidence, since "no young +man could have been at work in an attorney's office without being called +upon continually to act as a witness, and in many other ways leaving +traces of his work and name." And as Mr. Edwards further points out, +since the day when Lord Campbell's book was published (between forty and +fifty years ago), "every old deed or will, to say nothing of other legal +papers, dated during the period of William Shakespeare's youth, has been +scrutinized over half a dozen shires, and not one signature of the young +man has been found." + +Moreover, if Shakespeare had served as clerk in an attorney's office it +is clear that he must have so served for a considerable period in order +to have gained (if indeed it is credible that he could have so gained) +his remarkable knowledge of law. Can we then for a moment believe that, +if this had been so, tradition would have been absolutely silent on the +matter? That Dowdall's old clerk, over eighty years of age, should have +never heard of it (though he was sure enough about the butcher's +apprentice), and that all the other ancient witnesses should be in +similar ignorance! + +But such are the methods of Stratfordian controversy. Tradition is to be +scouted when it is found inconvenient, but cited as irrefragable truth +when it suits the case. Shakespeare of Stratford was the author of the +_Plays_ and _Poems_, but the author of the _Plays_ and _Poems_ could not +have been a butcher's apprentice. Away, therefore, with tradition. But +the author of the _Plays_ and _Poems must_ have had a very large and a +very accurate knowledge of the law. Therefore, Shakespeare of Stratford +must have been an attorney's clerk! The method is simplicity itself. By +similar reasoning Shakespeare has been made a country schoolmaster, a +soldier, a physician, a printer, and a good many other things beside, +according to the inclination and the exigencies of the commentator. It +would not be in the least surprising to find that he was studying Latin +as a schoolmaster and law in an attorney's office at the same time. + +However, we must do Mr. Collins the justice of saying that he has fully +recognized, what is indeed tolerably obvious, that Shakespeare must have +had a sound legal training. "It may, of course, be urged," he writes, +"that Shakespeare's knowledge of medicine, and particularly that branch +of it which related to morbid psychology, is equally remarkable, and that +no one has ever contended that he was a physician. (Here Mr. Collins is +wrong; that contention also has been put forward.) It may be urged that +his acquaintance with the technicalities of other crafts and callings, +notably of marine and military affairs, was also extraordinary, and yet +no one has suspected him of being a sailor or a soldier. (Wrong again. +Why even Messrs. Garnett and Gosse 'suspect' that he was a soldier!) +This may be conceded, but the concession hardly furnishes an analogy. To +these and all other subjects he recurs occasionally, and in season, but +with reminiscences of the law his memory, as is abundantly clear, was +simply saturated. In season and out of season now in manifest, now in +recondite application, he presses it into the service of expression and +illustration. At least a third of his myriad metaphors are derived from +it. It would indeed be difficult to find a single act in any of his +dramas, nay, in some of them, a single scene, the diction and imagery of +which is not colored by it. Much of his law may have been acquired from +three books easily accessible to him, namely Tottell's _Precedents_ +(1572), Pulton's _Statutes_ (1578), and Fraunce's _Lawier's Logike_ +(1588), works with which he certainly seems to have been familiar; but +much of it could only have come from one who had an intimate acquaintance +with legal proceedings. We quite agree with Mr. Castle that +Shakespeare's legal knowledge is not what could have been picked up in an +attorney's office, but could only have been learned by an actual +attendance at the Courts, at a Pleader's Chambers, and on circuit, or by +associating intimately with members of the Bench and Bar." + +This is excellent. But what is Mr. Collins' explanation. "Perhaps the +simplest solution of the problem is to accept the hypothesis that in +early life he was in an attorney's office (!), that he there contracted a +love for the law which never left him, that as a young man in London, he +continued to study or dabble in it for his amusement, to stroll in +leisure hours into the Courts, and to frequent the society of lawyers. +On no other supposition is it possible to explain the attraction which +the law evidently had for him, and his minute and undeviating accuracy in +a subject where no layman who has indulged in such copious and +ostentatious display of legal technicalities has ever yet succeeded in +keeping himself from tripping." + +A lame conclusion. "No other supposition" indeed! Yes, there is +another, and a very obvious supposition, namely, that Shakespeare was +himself a lawyer, well versed in his trade, versed in all the ways of the +courts, and living in close intimacy with judges and members of the Inns +of Court. + +One is, of course, thankful that Mr. Collins has appreciated the fact +that Shakespeare must have had a sound legal training, but I may be +forgiven if I do not attach quite so much importance to his +pronouncements on this branch of the subject as to those of Malone, Lord +Campbell, Judge Holmes, Mr. Castle, K.C., Lord Penzance, Mr. Grant White, +and other lawyers, who have expressed their opinion on the matter of +Shakespeare's legal acquirements. + +Here it may, perhaps, be worth while to quote again from Lord Penzance's +book as to the suggestion that Shakespeare had somehow or other managed +"to acquire a perfect familiarity with legal principles, and an accurate +and ready use of the technical terms and phrases, not only of the +conveyancer's office, but of the pleader's chambers and the courts at +Westminster." This, as Lord Penzance points out, "would require nothing +short of employment in some career involving _constant contact_ with +legal questions and general legal work." But "in what portion of +Shakespeare's career would it be possible to point out that time could be +found for the interposition of a legal employment in the chambers or +offices of practising lawyers? . . . It is beyond doubt that at an early +period he was called upon to abandon his attendance at school and assist +his father, and was soon after, at the age of sixteen, bound apprentice +to a trade. While under the obligation of this bond he could not have +pursued any other employment. Then he leaves Stratford and comes to +London. He has to provide himself with the means of a livelihood, and +this he did in some capacity at the theatre. No one doubts that. The +holding of horses is scouted by many, and perhaps with justice, as being +unlikely and certainly unproved; but whatever the nature of his +employment was at the theatre, there is hardly room for the belief that +it could have been other than continuous, for his progress there was so +rapid. Ere long he had been taken into the company as an actor, and was +soon spoken of as a 'Johannes Factotum.' His rapid accumulation of +wealth speaks volumes for the constancy and activity of his services. +One fails to see when there could be a break in the current of his life +at this period of it, giving room or opportunity for legal or indeed any +other employment. 'In 1589,' says Knight, 'we have undeniable evidence +that he had not only a casual engagement, was not only a salaried +servant, as many players were, but was a shareholder in the company of +the Queen's players with other shareholders below him on the list.' This +(1589) would be within two years after his arrival in London, which is +placed by White and Halliwell-Phillipps about the year 1587. The +difficulty in supposing that, starting with a state of ignorance in 1587, +when he is supposed to have come to London, he was induced to enter upon +a course of most extended study and mental culture, is almost +insuperable. Still it was physically possible, provided always that he +could have had access to the needful books. But this legal training +seems to me to stand on a different footing. It is not only +unaccountable and incredible, but it is actually negatived by the known +facts of his career." Lord Penzance then refers to the fact that "by +1592 (according to the best authority, Mr. Grant White) several of the +plays had been written. _The Comedy of Errors_ in 1589, _Love's Labour's +Lost_ in 1589, _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ in 1589 or 1590, and so forth," +and then asks, "with this catalogue of dramatic work on hand . . . was it +possible that he could have taken a leading part in the management and +conduct of two theatres, and if Mr. Phillipps is to be relied upon, taken +his share in the performances of the provincial tours of his company--and +at the same time devoted himself to the study of the law in all its +branches so efficiently as to make himself complete master of its +principles and practice, and saturate his mind with all its most +technical terms?" + +I have cited this passage from Lord Penzance's book, because it lay +before me, and I had already quoted from it on the matter of +Shakespeare's legal knowledge; but other writers have still better set +forth the insuperable difficulties, as they seem to me, which beset the +idea that Shakespeare might have found time in some unknown period of +early life, amid multifarious other occupations, for the study of +classics, literature and law, to say nothing of languages and a few other +matters. Lord Penzance further asks his readers: "Did you ever meet with +or hear of an instance in which a young man in this country gave himself +up to legal studies and engaged in legal employments, which is the only +way of becoming familiar with the technicalities of practice, unless with +the view of practicing in that profession? I do not believe that it +would be easy, or indeed possible, to produce an instance in which the +law has been seriously studied in all its branches, except as a +qualification for practice in the legal profession." + + * * * * * + +This testimony is so strong, so direct, so authoritative; and so +uncheapened, unwatered by guesses, and surmises, and maybe-so's, and +might-have-beens, and could-have-beens, and must-have-beens, and the rest +of that ton of plaster of paris out of which the biographers have built +the colossal brontosaur which goes by the Stratford actor's name, that it +quite convinces me that the man who wrote Shakespeare's Works knew all +about law and lawyers. Also, that that man could not have been the +Stratford Shakespeare--and _wasn't_. + +Who did write these Works, then? + +I wish I knew. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +Did Francis Bacon write Shakespeare's Works? + +Nobody knows. + +We cannot say we _know_ a thing when that thing has not been proved. +_Know_ is too strong a word to use when the evidence is not final and +absolutely conclusive. We can infer, if we want to, like those slaves +. . . No, I will not write that word, it is not kind, it is not courteous. +The upholders of the Stratford-Shakespeare superstition call _us_ the +hardest names they can think of, and they keep doing it all the time; +very well, if they like to descend to that level, let them do it, but I +will not so undignify myself as to follow them. I cannot call them harsh +names; the most I can do is to indicate them by terms reflecting my +disapproval; and this without malice, without venom. + +To resume. What I was about to say, was, those thugs have built their +entire superstition upon _inferences_, not upon known and established +facts. It is a weak method, and poor, and I am glad to be able to say +our side never resorts to it while there is anything else to resort to. + +But when we must, we must; and we have now arrived at a place of that +sort. + +Since the Stratford Shakespeare couldn't have written the Works, we infer +that somebody did. Who was it, then? This requires some more inferring. + +Ordinarily when an unsigned poem sweeps across the continent like a tidal +wave, whose roar and boom and thunder are made up of admiration, delight +and applause, a dozen obscure people rise up and claim the authorship. +Why a dozen, instead of only one or two? One reason is, because there's +a dozen that are recognizably competent to do that poem. Do you remember +"Beautiful Snow"? Do you remember "Rock Me to Sleep, Mother, Rock Me to +Sleep"? Do you remember "Backward, turn backward, O Time, in thy flight! +Make me a child again just for to-night"? I remember them very well. +Their authorship was claimed by most of the grown-up people who were +alive at the time, and every claimant had one plausible argument in his +favor, at least: to wit, he could have done the authoring; he was +competent. + +Have the Works been claimed by a dozen? They haven't. There was good +reason. The world knows there was but one man on the planet at the time +who was competent--not a dozen, and not two. A long time ago the +dwellers in a far country used now and then to find a procession of +prodigious footprints stretching across the plain--footprints that were +three miles apart, each footprint a third of a mile long and a furlong +deep, and with forests and villages mashed to mush in it. Was there any +doubt as to who had made that mighty trail? Were there a dozen +claimants? Were there two? No--the people knew who it was that had been +along there: there was only one Hercules. + +There has been only one Shakespeare. There couldn't be two; certainly +there couldn't be two at the same time. It takes ages to bring forth a +Shakespeare, and some more ages to match him. This one was not matched +before his time; nor during his time; and hasn't been matched since. The +prospect of matching him in our time is not bright. + +The Baconians claim that the Stratford Shakespeare was not qualified to +write the Works, and that Francis Bacon was. They claim that Bacon +possessed the stupendous equipment--both natural and acquired--for the +miracle; and that no other Englishman of his day possessed the like; or, +indeed, anything closely approaching it. + +Macaulay, in his Essay, has much to say about the splendor and +horizonless magnitude of that equipment. Also, he has synopsized Bacon's +history: a thing which cannot be done for the Stratford Shakespeare, for +he hasn't any history to synopsize. Bacon's history is open to the +world, from his boyhood to his death in old age--a history consisting of +known facts, displayed in minute and multitudinous detail; _facts_, not +guesses and conjectures and might-have-beens. + +Whereby it appears that he was born of a race of statesmen, and had a +Lord Chancellor for his father, and a mother who was "distinguished both +as a linguist and a theologian: she corresponded in Greek with Bishop +Jewell, and translated his _Apologia_ from the Latin so correctly that +neither he nor Archbishop Parker could suggest a single alteration." It +is the atmosphere we are reared in that determines how our inclinations +and aspirations shall tend. The atmosphere furnished by the parents to +the son in this present case was an atmosphere saturated with learning; +with thinkings and ponderings upon deep subjects; and with polite +culture. It had its natural effect. Shakespeare of Stratford was reared +in a house which had no use for books, since its owners, his parents, +were without education. This may have had an effect upon the son, but we +do not know, because we have no history of him of an informing sort. +There were but few books anywhere, in that day, and only the well-to-do +and highly educated possessed them, they being almost confined to the +dead languages. "All the valuable books then extant in all the +vernacular dialects of Europe would hardly have filled a single +shelf"--imagine it! The few existing books were in the Latin tongue +mainly. "A person who was ignorant of it was shut out from all +acquaintance--not merely with Cicero and Virgil, but with the most +interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of his own time"--a +literature necessary to the Stratford lad, for his fictitious +reputation's sake, since the writer of his Works would begin to use it +wholesale and in a most masterly way before the lad was hardly more than +out of his teens and into his twenties. + +At fifteen Bacon was sent to the university, and he spent three years +there. Thence he went to Paris in the train of the English Ambassador, +and there he mingled daily with the wise, the cultured, the great, and +the aristocracy of fashion, during another three years. A total of six +years spent at the sources of knowledge; knowledge both of books and of +men. The three spent at the university were coeval with the second and +last three spent by the little Stratford lad at Stratford school +supposedly, and perhapsedly, and maybe, and by inference--with nothing to +infer from. The second three of the Baconian six were "presumably" spent +by the Stratford lad as apprentice to a butcher. That is, the thugs +presume it--on no evidence of any kind. Which is their way, when they +want a historical fact. Fact and presumption are, for business purposes, +all the same to them. They know the difference, but they also know how +to blink it. They know, too, that while in history-building a fact is +better than a presumption, it doesn't take a presumption long to bloom +into a fact when _they_ have the handling of it. They know by old +experience that when they get hold of a presumption-tadpole he is not +going to _stay_ tadpole in their history-tank; no, they know how to +develop him into the giant four-legged bullfrog of _fact_, and make him +sit up on his hams, and puff out his chin, and look important and +insolent and come-to-stay; and assert his genuine simon-pure authenticity +with a thundering bellow that will convince everybody because it is so +loud. The thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty persons where +reasoning convinces but one. I wouldn't be a thug, not even if--but +never mind about that, it has nothing to do with the argument, and it is +not noble in spirit besides. If I am better than a thug, is the merit +mine? No, it is His. Then to Him be the praise. That is the right +spirit. + +They "presume" the lad severed his "presumed" connection with the +Stratford school to become apprentice to a butcher. They also "presume" +that the butcher was his father. They don't know. There is no written +record of it, nor any other actual evidence. If it would have helped +their case any, they would have apprenticed him to thirty butchers, to +fifty butchers, to a wilderness of butchers--all by their patented method +"presumption." If it will help their case they will do it yet; and if it +will further help it, they will "presume" that all those butchers were +his father. And the week after, they will _say_ it. Why, it is just +like being the past tense of the compound reflexive adverbial +incandescent hypodermic irregular accusative Noun of Multitude; which is +father to the expression which the grammarians call Verb. It is like a +whole ancestry, with only one posterity. + +To resume. Next, the young Bacon took up the study of law, and mastered +that abstruse science. From that day to the end of his life he was daily +in close contact with lawyers and judges; not as a casual onlooker in +intervals between holding horses in front of a theatre, but as a +practicing lawyer--a great and successful one, a renowned one, a +Launcelot of the bar, the most formidable lance in the high brotherhood +of the legal Table Round; he lived in the law's atmosphere thenceforth, +all his years, and by sheer ability forced his way up its difficult +steeps to its supremest summit, the Lord Chancellorship, leaving behind +him no fellow craftsman qualified to challenge his divine right to that +majestic place. + +When we read the praises bestowed by Lord Penzance and the other +illustrious experts upon the legal condition and legal aptnesses, +brilliances, profundities and felicities so prodigally displayed in the +Plays, and try to fit them to the history-less Stratford stage-manager, +they sound wild, strange, incredible, ludicrous; but when we put them in +the mouth of Bacon they do not sound strange, they seem in their natural +and rightful place, they seem at home there. Please turn back and read +them again. Attributed to Shakespeare of Stratford they are meaningless, +they are inebriate extravagancies--intemperate admirations of the dark +side of the moon, so to speak; attributed to Bacon, they are admirations +of the golden glories of the moon's front side, the moon at the full--and +not intemperate, not overwrought, but sane and right, and justified. "At +every turn and point at which the author required a metaphor, simile or +illustration, his mind ever turned _first_ to the law; he seems almost to +have _thought_ in legal phrases; the commonest legal phrases, the +commonest of legal expressions were ever at the end of his pen." That +could happen to no one but a person whose _trade_ was the law; it could +not happen to a dabbler in it. Veteran mariners fill their conversation +with sailor-phrases and draw all their similes from the ship and the sea +and the storm, but no mere _passenger_ ever does it, be he of Stratford +or elsewhere; or could do it with anything resembling accuracy, if he +were hardy enough to try. Please read again what Lord Campbell and the +other great authorities have said about Bacon when they thought they were +saying it about Shakespeare of Stratford. + + + + +CHAPTER X--The Rest of the Equipment + + +The author of the Plays was equipped, beyond every other man of his time, +with wisdom, erudition, imagination, capaciousness of mind, grace and +majesty of expression. Every one has said it, no one doubts it. Also, +he had humor, humor in rich abundance, and always wanting to break out. +We have no evidence of any kind that Shakespeare of Stratford possessed +any of these gifts or any of these acquirements. The only lines he ever +wrote, so far as we know, are substantially barren of them--barren of all +of them. + + Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare + To digg the dust encloased heare: + Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones + And curst be he yt moves my bones. + +Ben Jonson says of Bacon, as orator: + + His language, _where he could spare and pass by a jest_, was nobly + censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more + weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he + uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his (its) own + graces . . . The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should + make an end. + +From Macaulay: + + He continued to distinguish himself in Parliament, particularly by + his exertions in favor of one excellent measure on which the King's + heart was set--the union of England and Scotland. It was not + difficult for such an intellect to discover many irresistible + arguments in favor of such a scheme. He conducted the great case of + the _Post Nati_ in the Exchequer Chamber; and the decision of the + judges--a decision the legality of which may be questioned, but the + beneficial effect of which must be acknowledged--was in a great + measure attributed to his dexterous management. + +Again: + + While actively engaged in the House of Commons and in the courts of + law, he still found leisure for letters and philosophy. The noble + treatise on the _Advancement of Learning_, which at a later period + was expanded into the _De Augmentis_, appeared in 1605. + + The _Wisdom of the Ancients_, a work which if it had proceeded from + any other writer would have been considered as a masterpiece of wit + and learning, was printed in 1609. + + In the meantime the _Novum Organum_ was slowly proceeding. Several + distinguished men of learning had been permitted to see portions of + that extraordinary book, and they spoke with the greatest admiration + of his genius. + + Even Sir Thomas Bodley, after perusing the _Cogitata et Visa_, one of + the most precious of those scattered leaves out of which the great + oracular volume was afterward made up, acknowledged that "in all + proposals and plots in that book, Bacon showed himself a master + workman"; and that "it could not be gainsaid but all the treatise + over did abound with choice conceits of the present state of + learning, and with worthy contemplations of the means to procure it." + + In 1612 a new edition of the _Essays_ appeared, with additions + surpassing the original collection both in bulk and quality. + + Nor did these pursuits distract Bacon's attention from a work the + most arduous, the most glorious, and the most useful that even his + mighty powers could have achieved, "the reducing and recompiling," to + use his own phrase, "of the laws of England." + +To serve the exacting and laborious offices of Attorney General and +Solicitor General would have satisfied the appetite of any other man for +hard work, but Bacon had to add the vast literary industries just +described, to satisfy his. He was a born worker. + + The service which he rendered to letters during the last five years + of his life, amid ten thousand distractions and vexations, increase + the regret with which we think on the many years which he had wasted, + to use the words of Sir Thomas Bodley, "on such study as was not + worthy such a student." + + He commenced a digest of the laws of England, a History of England + under the Princes of the House of Tudor, a body of National History, + a Philosophical Romance. He made extensive and valuable additions to + his Essays. He published the inestimable _Treatise De Argumentis + Scientiarum_. + +Did these labors of Hercules fill up his time to his contentment, and +quiet his appetite for work? Not entirely: + + The trifles with which he amused himself in hours of pain and languor + bore the mark of his mind. _The best jestbook in the world_ is that + which he dictated from memory, without referring to any book, on a + day on which illness had rendered him incapable of serious study. + +Here are some scattered remarks (from Macaulay) which throw light upon +Bacon, and seem to indicate--and maybe demonstrate--that he was competent +to write the Plays and Poems: + + With great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude of + comprehension such as has never yet been vouchsafed to any other + human being. + + The "Essays" contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of + character, no peculiarity in the ordering of a house, a garden or a + court-masque, could escape the notice of one whose mind was capable + of taking in the whole world of knowledge. + + His understanding resembled the tent which the fairy Paribanou gave + to Prince Ahmed: fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a lady; + spread it, and the armies of powerful Sultans might repose beneath + its shade. + + The knowledge in which Bacon excelled all men was a knowledge of the + mutual relations of all departments of knowledge. + + In a letter written when he was only thirty-one, to his uncle, Lord + Burleigh, he said, "I have taken all knowledge to be my province." + + Though Bacon did not arm his philosophy with the weapons of logic, he + adorned her profusely with all the richest decorations of rhetoric. + + The practical faculty was powerful in Bacon; but not, like his wit, + so powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of his reason, and to + tyrannize over the whole man. + +There are too many places in the Plays where this happens. Poor old +dying John of Gaunt volleying second-rate puns at his own name, is a +pathetic instance of it. "We may assume" that it is Bacon's fault, but +the Stratford Shakespeare has to bear the blame. + + No imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly + subjugated. It stopped at the first check from good sense. + + In truth much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world--amid + things as strange as any that are described in the "Arabian Tales" . + . . amid buildings more sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin, + fountains more wonderful than the golden water of Parizade, + conveyances more rapid than the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more + formidable than the lance of Astolfo, remedies more efficacious than + the balsam of Fierabras. Yet in his magnificent day-dreams there was + nothing wild--nothing but what sober reason sanctioned. + + Bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the _Novum Organum_ + . . . Every part of it blazes with wit, but with wit which is + employed only to illustrate and decorate truth. No book ever made so + great a revolution in the mode of thinking, overthrew so many + prejudices, introduced so many new opinions. + + But what we most admire is the vast capacity of that intellect which, + without effort, takes in at once all the domains of science--all the + past, the present and the future, all the errors of two thousand + years, all the encouraging signs of the passing times, all the bright + hopes of the coming age. + + He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close and rendering it + portable. + + His eloquence would alone have entitled him to a high rank in + literature. + +It is evident that he had each and every one of the mental gifts and each +and every one of the acquirements that are so prodigally displayed in the +Plays and Poems, and in much higher and richer degree than any other man +of his time or of any previous time. He was a genius without a mate, a +prodigy not matable. There was only one of him; the planet could not +produce two of him at one birth, nor in one age. He could have written +anything that is in the Plays and Poems. He could have written this: + + The cloud-cap'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, + The solemn temples, the great globe itself, + Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, + And, like an insubstantial pageant faded, + Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff + As dreams are made on, and our little life + Is rounded with a sleep. + +Also, he could have written this, but he refrained: + + Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare + To digg the dust encloased heare: + Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones + And curst be ye yt moves my bones. + +When a person reads the noble verses about the cloud-cap'd towers, he +ought not to follow it immediately with Good friend for Iesus sake +forbeare, because he will find the transition from great poetry to poor +prose too violent for comfort. It will give him a shock. You never +notice how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is, until you bite into a +layer of it in a pie. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +Am I trying to convince anybody that Shakespeare did not write +Shakespeare's Works? Ah, now, what do you take me for? Would I be so +soft as that, after having known the human race familiarly for nearly +seventy-four years? It would grieve me to know that any one could think +so injuriously of me, so uncomplimentarily, so unadmiringly of me. +No-no, I am aware that when even the brightest mind in our world has been +trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be +possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, +dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance +which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. +I doubt if I could do it myself. We always get at second hand our +notions about systems of government; and high-tariff and low-tariff; and +prohibition and anti-prohibition; and the holiness of peace and the +glories of war; and codes of honor and codes of morals; and approval of +the duel and disapproval of it; and our beliefs concerning the nature of +cats; and our ideas as to whether the murder of helpless wild animals is +base or is heroic; and our preferences in the matter of religious and +political parties; and our acceptance or rejection of the Shakespeares +and the Arthur Ortons and the Mrs. Eddys. We get them all at +second-hand, we reason none of them out for ourselves. It is the way we +are made. It is the way we are all made, and we can't help it, we can't +change it. And whenever we have been furnished a fetish, and have been +taught to believe in it, and love it and worship it, and refrain from +examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear and strong, that can +persuade us to withdraw from it our loyalty and our devotion. In morals, +conduct, and beliefs we take the color of our environment and +associations, and it is a color that can safely be warranted to wash. +Whenever we have been furnished with a tar baby ostensibly stuffed with +jewels, and warned that it will be dishonorable and irreverent to +disembowel it and test the jewels, we keep our sacrilegious hands off it. +We submit, not reluctantly, but rather gladly, for we are privately +afraid we should find, upon examination, that the jewels are of the sort +that are manufactured at North Adams, Mass. + +I haven't any idea that Shakespeare will have to vacate his pedestal this +side of the year 2209. Disbelief in him cannot come swiftly, disbelief +in a healthy and deeply-loved tar baby has never been known to +disintegrate swiftly, it is a very slow process. It took several +thousand years to convince our fine race--including every splendid +intellect in it--that there is no such thing as a witch; it has taken +several thousand years to convince that same fine race--including every +splendid intellect in it--that there is no such person as Satan; it has +taken several centuries to remove perdition from the Protestant Church's +program of postmortem entertainments; it has taken a weary long time to +persuade American Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to +bear it the best they can; and it looks as if their Scotch brethren will +still be burning babies in the everlasting fires when Shakespeare comes +down from his perch. + +We are The Reasoning Race. We can't prove it by the above examples, and +we can't prove it by the miraculous "histories" built by those +Stratfordolaters out of a hatful of rags and a barrel of sawdust, but +there is a plenty of other things we can prove it by, if I could think of +them. We are The Reasoning Race, and when we find a vague file of +chipmunk-tracks stringing through the dust of Stratford village, we know +by our reasoning powers that Hercules has been along there. I feel that +our fetish is safe for three centuries yet. The bust, too--there in the +Stratford Church. The precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm bust, +the serene bust, the emotionless bust, with the dandy moustache, and the +putty face, unseamed of care--that face which has looked passionlessly +down upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty years and will still +look down upon the awed pilgrim three hundred more, with the deep, deep, +deep, subtle, subtle, subtle, expression of a bladder. + + + + +CHAPTER XII--Irreverence + + +One of the most trying defects which I find in these--these--what shall I +call them? for I will not apply injurious epithets to them, the way they +do to us, such violations of courtesy being repugnant to my nature and my +dignity. The furthest I can go in that direction is to call them by +names of limited reverence--names merely descriptive, never unkind, never +offensive, never tainted by harsh feeling. If _they_ would do like this, +they would feel better in their hearts. Very well, then--to proceed. +One of the most trying defects which I find in these Stratfordolaters, +these Shakesperoids, these thugs, these bangalores, these troglodytes, +these herumfrodites, these blatherskites, these buccaneers, these +bandoleers, is their spirit of irreverence. It is detectable in every +utterance of theirs when they are talking about us. I am thankful that +in me there is nothing of that spirit. When a thing is sacred to me it +is impossible for me to be irreverent toward it. I cannot call to mind a +single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the +things which were sacred to other people. Am I in the right? I think +so. But I ask no one to take my unsupported word; no, look at the +dictionary; let the dictionary decide. Here is the definition: + + _Irreverence_. The quality or condition of irreverence toward God + and sacred things. + +What does the Hindu say? He says it is correct. He says irreverence is +lack of respect for Vishnu, and Brahma, and Chrishna, and his other gods, +and for his sacred cattle, and for his temples and the things within +them. He endorses the definition, you see; and there are 300,000,000 +Hindus or their equivalents back of him. + +The dictionary had the acute idea that by using the capital G it could +restrict irreverence to lack of reverence for _our_ Deity and our sacred +things, but that ingenious and rather sly idea miscarried: for by the +simple process of spelling _his_ deities with capitals the Hindu +confiscates the definition and restricts it to his own sects, thus making +it clearly compulsory upon us to revere _his_ gods and _his_ sacred +things, and nobody's else. We can't say a word, for he has our own +dictionary at his back, and its decision is final. + +This law, reduced to its simplest terms, is this: 1. Whatever is sacred +to the Christian must be held in reverence by everybody else; 2, whatever +is sacred to the Hindu must be held in reverence by everybody else; 3, +therefore, by consequence, logically, and indisputably, whatever is +sacred to _me_ must be held in reverence by everybody else. + +Now then, what aggravates me is, that these troglodytes and muscovites +and bandoleers and buccaneers are _also_ trying to crowd in and share the +benefit of the law, and compel everybody to revere their Shakespeare and +hold him sacred. We can't have that: there's enough of us already. If +you go on widening and spreading and inflating the privilege, it will +presently come to be conceded that each man's sacred things are the +_only_ ones, and the rest of the human race will have to be humbly +reverent toward them or suffer for it. That can surely happen, and when +it happens, the word Irreverence will be regarded as the most +meaningless, and foolish, and self-conceited, and insolent, and impudent +and dictatorial word in the language. And people will say, "Whose +business is it, what gods I worship and what things hold sacred? Who has +the right to dictate to my conscience, and where did he get that right?" + +We cannot afford to let that calamity come upon us. We must save the +word from this destruction. There is but one way to do it, and that is, +to stop the spread of the privilege, and strictly confine it to its +present limits: that is, to all the Christian sects, to all the Hindu +sects, and me. We do not need any more, the stock is watered enough, +just as it is. + +It would be better if the privilege were limited to me alone. I think so +because I am the only sect that knows how to employ it gently, kindly, +charitably, dispassionately. The other sects lack the quality of +self-restraint. The Catholic Church says the most irreverent things +about matters which are sacred to the Protestants, and the Protestant +Church retorts in kind about the confessional and other matters which +Catholics hold sacred; then both of these irreverencers turn upon Thomas +Paine and charge _him_ with irreverence. This is all unfortunate, +because it makes it difficult for students equipped with only a low grade +of mentality to find out what Irreverence really _is_. + +It will surely be much better all around if the privilege of regulating +the irreverent and keeping them in order shall eventually be withdrawn +from all the sects but me. Then there will be no more quarrelling, no +more bandying of disrespectful epithets, no more heart burnings. + +There will then be nothing sacred involved in this Bacon-Shakespeare +controversy except what is sacred to me. That will simplify the whole +matter, and trouble will cease. There will be irreverence no longer, +because I will not allow it. The first time those criminals charge me +with irreverence for calling their Stratford myth an +Arthur-Orton-Mary-Baker-Thompson-Eddy-Louis-the-Seventeenth-Veiled- +Prophet-of-Khorassan will be the last. Taught by the methods +found effective in extinguishing earlier offenders by the Inquisition, of +holy memory, I shall know how to quiet them. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Isn't it odd, when you think of it: that you may list all the celebrated +Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen of modern times, clear back to the +first Tudors--a list containing five hundred names, shall we say?--and +you can go to the histories, biographies and cyclopedias and learn the +particulars of the lives of every one of them. Every one of them except +one--the most famous, the most renowned--by far the most illustrious of +them all--Shakespeare! You can get the details of the lives of all the +celebrated ecclesiastics in the list; all the celebrated tragedians, +comedians, singers, dancers, orators, judges, lawyers, poets, dramatists, +historians, biographers, editors, inventors, reformers, statesmen, +generals, admirals, discoverers, prize-fighters, murderers, pirates, +conspirators, horse-jockeys, bunco-steerers, misers, swindlers, +explorers, adventurers by land and sea, bankers, financiers, astronomers, +naturalists, Claimants, impostors, chemists, biologists, geologists, +philologists, college presidents and professors, architects, engineers, +painters, sculptors, politicians, agitators, rebels, revolutionists, +patriots, demagogues, clowns, cooks, freaks, philosophers, burglars, +highwaymen, journalists, physicians, surgeons--you can get the +life-histories of all of them but _one_. Just one--the most +extraordinary and the most celebrated of them all--Shakespeare! + +You may add to the list the thousand celebrated persons furnished by the +rest of Christendom in the past four centuries, and you can find out the +life-histories of all those people, too. You will then have listed 1500 +celebrities, and you can trace the authentic life-histories of the whole +of them. Save one--far and away the most colossal prodigy of the entire +accumulation--Shakespeare! About him you can find out _nothing_. +Nothing of even the slightest importance. Nothing worth the trouble of +stowing away in your memory. Nothing that even remotely indicates that +he was ever anything more than a distinctly common-place person--a +manager, an actor of inferior grade, a small trader in a small village +that did not regard him as a person of any consequence, and had forgotten +all about him before he was fairly cold in his grave. We can go to the +records and find out the life-history of every renowned _race-horse_ of +modern times--but not Shakespeare's! There are many reasons why, and +they have been furnished in cartloads (of guess and conjecture) by those +troglodytes; but there is one that is worth all the rest of the reasons +put together, and is abundantly sufficient all by itself--_he hadn't any +history to record_. There is no way of getting around that deadly fact. +And no sane way has yet been discovered of getting around its formidable +significance. + +Its quite plain significance--to any but those thugs (I do not use the +term unkindly) is, that Shakespeare had no prominence while he lived, and +none until he had been dead two or three generations. The Plays enjoyed +high fame from the beginning; and if he wrote them it seems a pity the +world did not find it out. He ought to have explained that he was the +author, and not merely a _nom de plume_ for another man to hide behind. +If he had been less intemperately solicitous about his bones, and more +solicitous about his Works, it would have been better for his good name, +and a kindness to us. The bones were not important. They will moulder +away, they will turn to dust, but the Works will endure until the last +sun goes down. + + MARK TWAIN. + +P.S. _March_ 25. About two months ago I was illuminating this +Autobiography with some notions of mine concerning the Bacon-Shakespeare +controversy, and I then took occasion to air the opinion that the +Stratford Shakespeare was a person of no public consequence or celebrity +during his lifetime, but was utterly obscure and unimportant. And not +only in great London, but also in the little village where he was born, +where he lived a quarter of a century, and where he died and was buried. +I argued that if he had been a person of any note at all, aged villagers +would have had much to tell about him many and many a year after his +death, instead of being unable to furnish inquirers a single fact +connected with him. I believed, and I still believe, that if he had been +famous, his notoriety would have lasted as long as mine has lasted in my +native village out in Missouri. It is a good argument, a prodigiously +strong one, and a most formidable one for even the most gifted, and +ingenious, and plausible Stratfordolater to get around or explain away. +To-day a Hannibal _Courier-Post_ of recent date has reached me, with an +article in it which reinforces my contention that a really celebrated +person cannot be forgotten in his village in the short space of sixty +years. I will make an extract from it: + + Hannibal, as a city, may have many sins to answer for, but + ingratitude is not one of them, or reverence for the great men she + has produced, and as the years go by her greatest son Mark Twain, or + S. L. Clemens as a few of the unlettered call him, grows in the + estimation and regard of the residents of the town he made famous and + the town that made him famous. His name is associated with every old + building that is torn down to make way for the modern structures + demanded by a rapidly growing city, and with every hill or cave over + or through which he might by any possibility have roamed, while the + many points of interest which he wove into his stories, such as + Holiday Hill, Jackson's Island, or Mark Twain Cave, are now monuments + to his genius. Hannibal is glad of any opportunity to do him honor + as he has honored her. + + So it has happened that the "old timers" who went to school with Mark + or were with him on some of his usual escapades have been honored + with large audiences whenever they were in a reminiscent mood and + condescended to tell of their intimacy with the ordinary boy who came + to be a very extraordinary humorist and whose every boyish act is now + seen to have been indicative of what was to come. Like Aunt Beckey + and Mrs. Clemens, they can now see that Mark was hardly appreciated + when he lived here and that the things he did as a boy and was + whipped for doing were not all bad after all. So they have been in + no hesitancy about drawing out the bad things he did as well as the + good in their efforts to get a "Mark Twain story," all incidents + being viewed in the light of his present fame, until the volume of + "Twainiana" is already considerable and growing in proportion as the + "old timers" drop away and the stories are retold second and third + hand by their descendants. With some seventy-three years young and + living in a villa instead of a house he is a fair target, and let him + incorporate, copyright, or patent himself as he will, there are some + of his "works" that will go swooping up Hannibal chimneys as long as + gray-beards gather about the fires and begin with "I've heard father + tell" or possibly "Once when I." + +The Mrs. Clemens referred to is my mother--_was_ my mother. + +And here is another extract from a Hannibal paper. Of date twenty days +ago: + + Miss Becca Blankenship died at the home of William Dickason, 408 Rock + Street, at 2.30 o'clock yesterday afternoon, aged 72 years. The + deceased was a sister of "Huckleberry Finn," one of the famous + characters in Mark Twain's _Tom Sawyer_. She had been a member of + the Dickason family--the housekeeper--for nearly forty-five years, + and was a highly respected lady. For the past eight years she had + been an invalid, but was as well cared for by Mr. Dickason and his + family as if she had been a near relative. She was a member of the + Park Methodist Church and a Christian woman. + +I remember her well. I have a picture of her in my mind which was graven +there, clear and sharp and vivid, sixty-three years ago. She was at that +time nine years old, and I was about eleven. I remember where she stood, +and how she looked; and I can still see her bare feet, her bare head, her +brown face, and her short tow-linen frock. She was crying. What it was +about, I have long ago forgotten. But it was the tears that preserved +the picture for me, no doubt. She was a good child, I can say that for +her. She knew me nearly seventy years ago. Did she forget me, in the +course of time? I think not. If she had lived in Stratford in +Shakespeare's time, would she have forgotten him? Yes. For he was never +famous during his lifetime, he was utterly obscure in Stratford, and +there wouldn't be any occasion to remember him after he had been dead a +week. + +"Injun Joe," "Jimmy Finn," and "General Gaines" were prominent and very +intemperate ne'er-do-weels in Hannibal two generations ago. Plenty of +gray-heads there remember them to this day, and can tell you about them. +Isn't it curious that two "town-drunkards" and one half-breed loafer +should leave behind them, in a remote Missourian village, a fame a +hundred times greater and several hundred times more particularized in +the matter of definite facts than Shakespeare left behind him in the +village where he had lived the half of his lifetime? + + MARK TWAIN. + + + + +Footnotes: + + +{1} Four fathoms--twenty-four feet. + +{2} From chapter XIII of "The Shakespeare Problem Restated." + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?*** + + +******* This file should be named 2431.txt or 2431.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/3/2431 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://www.gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: +http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/2431.zip b/2431.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1287ff5 --- /dev/null +++ b/2431.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..20cc15a --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #2431 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2431) diff --git a/old/shkdd10.txt b/old/shkdd10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f365301 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/shkdd10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2675 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Is Shakespeare Dead? by Mark Twain +#16 in our series by Mark Twain + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. We need your donations. + + +Is Shakespeare Dead? + +by Mark Twain + +December, 2000 [Etext #2431] + + +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Is Shakespeare Dead? by Mark Twain +******This file should be named shkdd10.txt or shkdd10.zip****** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, shkdd11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, shkdd10a.txt + + +This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk +from the 1909 Harper & Brothers edition. Proofing by Alan Ross, Ana +Charlton and David. + +Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions, +all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a +copyright notice is included. Therefore, we do usually do NOT! keep +these books in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. + +Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an +up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes +in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has +a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a +look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a +new copy has at least one byte more or less. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text +files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+ +If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the +total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext +Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion] +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users. + +At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third +of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we +manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly +from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an +assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few +more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we +don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person. + +We need your donations more than ever! + + +All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are +tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = Carnegie- +Mellon University). + +For these and other matters, please mail to: + +Project Gutenberg +P. O. Box 2782 +Champaign, IL 61825 + +When all other email fails. . .try our Executive Director: +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> +hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org +if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if +it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . . + +We would prefer to send you this information by email. + +****** + +To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser +to view http://promo.net/pg. This site lists Etexts by +author and by title, and includes information about how +to get involved with Project Gutenberg. You could also +download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here. This +is one of our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com, +for a more complete list of our various sites. + +To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any +Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror +sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed +at http://promo.net/pg). + +Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better. + +Example FTP session: + +ftp sunsite.unc.edu +login: anonymous +password: your@login +cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg +cd etext90 through etext99 +dir [to see files] +get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files] +GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99] +GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books] + +*** + +**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor** + +(Three Pages) + + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG- +tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor +Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at +Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project"). Among other +things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext +under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this +etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors, +officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost +and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or +indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause: +[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification, +or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word pro- + cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the etext (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the + net profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon + University" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Carnegie-Mellon University". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + +IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD? +FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished +manuscript which constitute this formidable Autobiography and Diary +of mine, certain chapters will in some distant future be found +which deal with "Claimants"--claimants historically notorious: +Satan, Claimant; the Golden Calf, Claimant; the Veiled Prophet of +Khorassan, Claimant; Louis XVII., Claimant; William Shakespeare, +Claimant; Arthur Orton, Claimant; Mary Baker G. Eddy, Claimant--and +the rest of them. Eminent Claimants, successful Claimants, +defeated Claimants, royal Claimants, pleb Claimants, showy +Claimants, shabby Claimants, revered Claimants, despised Claimants, +twinkle starlike here and there and yonder through the mists of +history and legend and tradition--and oh, all the darling tribe are +clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about them with deep +interest and discuss them with loving sympathy or with rancorous +resentment, according to which side we hitch ourselves to. It has +always been so with the human race. There was never a Claimant +that couldn't get a hearing, nor one that couldn't accumulate a +rapturous following, no matter how flimsy and apparently +unauthentic his claim might be. Arthur Orton's claim that he was +the lost Tichborne baronet come to life again was as flimsy as Mrs. +Eddy's that she wrote Science and Health from the direct dictation +of the Deity; yet in England near forty years ago Orton had a huge +army of devotees and incorrigible adherents, many of whom remained +stubbornly unconvinced after their fat god had been proven an +impostor and jailed as a perjurer, and to-day Mrs. Eddy's following +is not only immense, but is daily augmenting in numbers and +enthusiasm. Orton had many fine and educated minds among his +adherents, Mrs. Eddy has had the like among hers from the +beginning. Her church is as well equipped in those particulars as +is any other church. Claimants can always count upon a following, +it doesn't matter who they are, nor what they claim, nor whether +they come with documents or without. It was always so. Down out +of the long-vanished past, across the abyss of the ages, if you +listen you can still hear the believing multitudes shouting for +Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel. + +A friend has sent me a new book, from England--The Shakespeare +Problem Restated--well restated and closely reasoned; and my fifty +years' interest in that matter--asleep for the last three years--is +excited once more. It is an interest which was born of Delia +Bacon's book--away back in that ancient day--1857, or maybe 1856. +About a year later my pilot-master, Bixby, transferred me from his +own steamboat to the Pennsylvania, and placed me under the orders +and instructions of George Ealer--dead now, these many, many years. +I steered for him a good many months--as was the humble duty of the +pilot-apprentice: stood a daylight watch and spun the wheel under +the severe superintendence and correction of the master. He was a +prime chess player and an idolater of Shakespeare. He would play +chess with anybody; even with me, and it cost his official dignity +something to do that. Also--quite uninvited--he would read +Shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when it was +his watch, and I was steering. He read well, but not profitably +for me, because he constantly injected commands into the text. +That broke it all up, mixed it all up, tangled it all up--to that +degree, in fact, that if we were in a risky and difficult piece of +river an ignorant person couldn't have told, sometimes, which +observations were Shakespeare's and which were Ealer's. For +instance: + + +What man dare, _I_ dare! + +Approach thou WHAT are you laying in the leads for? what a hell of +an idea! like the rugged ease her off a little, ease her off! +rugged Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the THERE she goes! +meet her, meet her! didn't you KNOW she'd smell the reef if you +crowded it like that? Hyrcan tiger; take any shape but that and my +firm nerves she'll be in the WOODS the first you know! stop the +starboard! come ahead strong on the larboard! back the starboard! . +. . NOW then, you're all right; come ahead on the starboard; +straighten up and go 'long, never tremble: or be alive again, and +dare me to the desert damnation can't you keep away from that +greasy water? pull her down! snatch her! snatch her baldheaded! +with thy sword; if trembling I inhabit then, lay in the leads!--no, +only the starboard one, leave the other alone, protest me the baby +of a girl. Hence horrible shadow! eight bells--that watchman's +asleep again, I reckon, go down and call Brown yourself, unreal +mockery, hence!" + + +He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy +and tragic, but it was a damage to me, because I have never since +been able to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way. I cannot rid +it of his explosive interlardings, they break in everywhere with +their irrelevant "What in hell are you up to NOW! pull her down! +more! MORE!--there now, steady as you go," and the other +disorganizing interruptions that were always leaping from his +mouth. When I read Shakespeare now, I can hear them as plainly as +I did in that long-departed time--fifty-one years ago. I never +regarded Ealer's readings as educational. Indeed they were a +detriment to me. + +His contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring that +detail he was a good reader, I can say that much for him. He did +not use the book, and did not need to; he knew his Shakespeare as +well as Euclid ever knew his multiplication table. + +Did he have something to say--this Shakespeare-adoring Mississippi +pilot--anent Delia Bacon's book? Yes. And he said it; said it all +the time, for months--in the morning watch, the middle watch, the +dog watch; and probably kept it going in his sleep. He bought the +literature of the dispute as fast as it appeared, and we discussed +it all through thirteen hundred miles of river four times traversed +in every thirty-five days--the time required by that swift boat to +achieve two round trips. We discussed, and discussed, and +discussed, and disputed and disputed and disputed; at any rate he +did, and I got in a word now and then when he slipped a cog and +there was a vacancy. He did his arguing with heat, with energy, +with violence; and I did mine with the reserve and moderation of a +subordinate who does not like to be flung out of a pilot-house that +is perched forty feet above the water. He was fiercely loyal to +Shakespeare and cordially scornful of Bacon and of all the +pretensions of the Baconians. So was I--at first. And at first he +was glad that that was my attitude. There were even indications +that he admired it; indications dimmed, it is true, by the distance +that lay between the lofty boss-pilotical altitude and my lowly +one, yet perceptible to me; perceptible, and translatable into a +compliment--compliment coming down from above the snow-line and not +well thawed in the transit, and not likely to set anything afire, +not even a cub-pilot's self-conceit; still a detectable compliment, +and precious. + +Naturally it flattered me into being more loyal to Shakespeare--if +possible--than I was before, and more prejudiced against Bacon--if +possible than I was before. And so we discussed and discussed, +both on the same side, and were happy. For a while. Only for a +while. Only for a very little while, a very, very, very little +while. Then the atmosphere began to change; began to cool off. + +A brighter person would have seen what the trouble was, earlier +than I did, perhaps, but I saw it early enough for all practical +purposes. You see, he was of an argumentative disposition. +Therefore it took him but a little time to get tired of arguing +with a person who agreed with everything he said and consequently +never furnished him a provocative to flare up and show what he +could do when it came to clear, cold, hard, rose-cut, hundred- +faceted, diamond-flashing reasoning. That was his name for it. It +has been applied since, with complacency, as many as several times, +in the Bacon-Shakespeare scuffle. On the Shakespeare side. + +Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to +me when principle and personal interest found themselves in +opposition to each other and a choice had to be made: I let +principle go, and went over to the other side. Not the entire way, +but far enough to answer the requirements of the case. That is to +say, I took this attitude, to wit: I only BELIEVED Bacon wrote +Shakespeare, whereas I KNEW Shakespeare didn't. Ealer was +satisfied with that, and the war broke loose. Study, practice, +experience in handling my end of the matter presently enabled me to +take my new position almost seriously; a little bit later, utterly +seriously; a little later still, lovingly, gratefully, devotedly; +finally: fiercely, rabidly, uncompromisingly. After that, I was +welded to my faith, I was theoretically ready to die for it, and I +looked down with compassion not unmixed with scorn, upon everybody +else's faith that didn't tally with mine. That faith, imposed upon +me by self-interest in that ancient day, remains my faith to-day, +and in it I find comfort, solace, peace, and never-failing joy. +You see how curiously theological it is. The "rice Christian" of +the Orient goes through the very same steps, when he is after rice +and the missionary is after HIM; he goes for rice, and remains to +worship. + +Ealer did a lot of our "reasoning"--not to say substantially all of +it. The slaves of his cult have a passion for calling it by that +large name. We others do not call our inductions and deductions +and reductions by any name at all. They show for themselves, what +they are, and we can with tranquil confidence leave the world to +ennoble them with a title of its own choosing. + +Now and then when Ealer had to stop to cough, I pulled my +induction-talents together and hove the controversial lead myself: +always getting eight feet, eight-and-a-half, often nine, sometimes +even quarter-less-twain--as _I_ believed; but always "no bottom," +as HE said. + +I got the best of him only once. I prepared myself. I wrote out a +passage from Shakespeare--it may have been the very one I quoted a +while ago, I don't remember--and riddled it with his wild +steamboatful interlardings. When an unrisky opportunity offered, +one lovely summer day, when we had sounded and buoyed a tangled +patch of crossings known as Hell's Half Acre, and were aboard again +and he had sneaked the Pennsylvania triumphantly through it without +once scraping sand, and the A. T. Lacey had followed in our wake +and got stuck, and he was feeling good, I showed it to him. It +amused him. I asked him to fire it off: read it; read it, I +diplomatically added, as only he could read dramatic poetry. The +compliment touched him where he lived. He did read it; read it +with surpassing fire and spirit; read it as it will never be read +again; for HE knew how to put the right music into those thunderous +interlardings and make them seem a part of the text, make them +sound as if they were bursting from Shakespeare's own soul, each +one of them a golden inspiration and not to be left out without +damage to the massed and magnificent whole. + +I waited a week, to let the incident fade; waited longer; waited +until he brought up for reasonings and vituperation my pet +position, my pet argument, the one which I was fondest of, the one +which I prized far above all others in my ammunition-wagon, to wit: +that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare's works, for the +reason that the man who wrote them was limitlessly familiar with +the laws, and the law-courts, and law-proceedings, and lawyer-talk, +and lawyer-ways--and if Shakespeare was possessed of the +infinitely-divided star-dust that constituted this vast wealth, how +did he get it, and WHERE, and WHEN? + +"From books." + +From books! That was always the idea. I answered as my readings +of the champions of my side of the great controversy had taught me +to answer: that a man can't handle glibly and easily and +comfortably and successfully the argot of a trade at which he has +not personally served. He will make mistakes; he will not, and +cannot, get the trade-phrasings precisely and exactly right; and +the moment he departs, by even a shade, from a common trade-form, +the reader who has served that trade will know the writer HASN'T. +Ealer would not be convinced; he said a man could learn how to +correctly handle the subtleties and mysteries and free-masonries of +any trade by careful reading and studying. But when I got him to +read again the passage from Shakespeare with the interlardings, he +perceived, himself, that books couldn't teach a student a +bewildering multitude of pilot-phrases so thoroughly and perfectly +that he could talk them off in book and play or conversation and +make no mistake that a pilot would not immediately discover. It +was a triumph for me. He was silent awhile, and I knew what was +happening: he was losing his temper. And I knew he would +presently close the session with the same old argument that was +always his stay and his support in time of need; the same old +argument, the one I couldn't answer--because I dasn't: the +argument that I was an ass, and better shut up. He delivered it, +and I obeyed. + +Oh, dear, how long ago it was--how pathetically long ago! And here +am I, old, forsaken, forlorn and alone, arranging to get that +argument out of somebody again. + +When a man has a passion for Shakespeare, it goes without saying +that he keeps company with other standard authors. Ealer always +had several high-class books in the pilot-house, and he read the +same ones over and over again, and did not care to change to newer +and fresher ones. He played well on the flute, and greatly enjoyed +hearing himself play. So did I. He had a notion that a flute +would keep its health better if you took it apart when it was not +standing a watch; and so, when it was not on duty it took its rest, +disjointed, on the compass-shelf under the breast-board. When the +Pennsylvania blew up and became a drifting rack-heap freighted with +wounded and dying poor souls (my young brother Henry among them), +pilot Brown had the watch below, and was probably asleep and never +knew what killed him; but Ealer escaped unhurt. He and his pilot- +house were shot up into the air; then they fell, and Ealer sank +through the ragged cavern where the hurricane deck and the boiler +deck had been, and landed in a nest of ruins on the main deck, on +top of one of the unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog +of scalding and deadly steam. But not for long. He did not lose +his head: long familiarity with danger had taught him to keep it, +in any and all emergencies. He held his coat-lappels to his nose +with one hand, to keep out the steam, and scrabbled around with the +other till he found the joints of his flute, then he is took +measures to save himself alive, and was successful. I was not on +board. I had been put ashore in New Orleans by Captain +Klinefelter. The reason--however, I have told all about it in the +book called Old Times on the Mississippi, and it isn't important +anyway, it is so long ago. + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +When I was a Sunday-school scholar something more than sixty years +ago, I became interested in Satan, and wanted to find out all I +could about him. I began to ask questions, but my class-teacher, +Mr. Barclay the stone-mason, was reluctant about answering them, it +seemed to me. I was anxious to be praised for turning my thoughts +to serious subjects when there wasn't another boy in the village +who could be hired to do such a thing. I was greatly interested in +the incident of Eve and the serpent, and thought Eve's calmness was +perfectly noble. I asked Mr. Barclay if he had ever heard of +another woman who, being approached by a serpent, would not excuse +herself and break for the nearest timber. He did not answer my +question, but rebuked me for inquiring into matters above my age +and comprehension. I will say for Mr. Barclay that he was willing +to tell me the facts of Satan's history, but he stopped there: he +wouldn't allow any discussion of them. + +In the course of time we exhausted the facts. There were only five +or six of them, you could set them all down on a visiting-card. I +was disappointed. I had been meditating a biography, and was +grieved to find that there were no materials. I said as much, with +the tears running down. Mr. Barclay's sympathy and compassion were +aroused, for he was a most kind and gentle-spirited man, and he +patted me on the head and cheered me up by saying there was a whole +vast ocean of materials! I can still feel the happy thrill which +these blessed words shot through me. + +Then he began to bail out that ocean's riches for my encouragement +and joy. Like this: it was "conjectured"--though not established- +-that Satan was originally an angel in heaven; that he fell; that +he rebelled, and brought on a war; that he was defeated, and +banished to perdition. Also, "we have reason to believe" that +later he did so-and-so; that "we are warranted in supposing" that +at a subsequent time he travelled extensively, seeking whom he +might devour; that a couple of centuries afterward, "as tradition +instructs us," he took up the cruel trade of tempting people to +their ruin, with vast and fearful results; that by-and-by, "as the +probabilities seem to indicate," he may have done certain things, +he might have done certain other things, he must have done still +other things. + +And so on and so on. We set down the five known facts by +themselves, on a piece of paper, and numbered it "page 1"; then on +fifteen hundred other pieces of paper we set down the +"conjectures," and "suppositions," and "maybes," and "perhapses," +and "doubtlesses," and "rumors," and "guesses," and +"probabilities," and "likelihoods," and "we are permitted to +thinks," and "we are warranted in believings," and "might have +beens," and "could have beens," and "must have beens," and +"unquestionablys," and "without a shadow of doubts"--and behold! + +MATERIALS? Why, we had enough to build a biography of Shakespeare! + +Yet he made me put away my pen; he would not let me write the +history of Satan. Why? Because, as he said, he had suspicions; +suspicions that my attitude in this matter was not reverent; and +that a person must be reverent when writing about the sacred +characters. He said any one who spoke flippantly of Satan would be +frowned upon by the religious world and also be brought to account. + +I assured him, in earnest and sincere words, that he had wholly +misconceived my attitude; that I had the highest respect for Satan, +and that my reverence for him equalled, and possibly even exceeded, +that of any member of any church. I said it wounded me deeply to +perceive by his words that he thought I would make fun of Satan, +and deride him, laugh at him, scoff at him: whereas in truth I had +never thought of such a thing, but had only a warm desire to make +fun of those others and laugh at THEM. "What others?" "Why, the +Supposers, the Perhapsers, the Might-Have-Beeners, the Could-Have- +Beeners, the Must-Have-Beeners, the Without-a-Shadow-of-Doubters, +the We-are-Warranted-in-Believingers, and all that funny crop of +solemn architects who have taken a good solid foundation of five +indisputable and unimportant facts and built upon it a Conjectural +Satan thirty miles high." + +What did Mr. Barclay do then? Was he disarmed? Was he silenced? +No. He was shocked. He was so shocked that he visibly shuddered. +He said the Satanic Traditioners and Perhapsers and Conjecturers +were THEMSELVES sacred! As sacred as their work. So sacred that +whoso ventured to mock them or make fun of their work, could not +afterward enter any respectable house, even by the back door. + +How true were his words, and how wise! How fortunate it would have +been for me if I had heeded them. But I was young, I was but seven +years of age, and vain, foolish, and anxious to attract attention. +I wrote the biography, and have never been in a respectable house +since. + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +How curious and interesting is the parallel--as far as poverty of +biographical details is concerned--between Satan and Shakespeare. +It is wonderful, it is unique, it stands quite alone, there is +nothing resembling it in history, nothing resembling it in romance, +nothing approaching it even in tradition. How sublime is their +position, and how over-topping, how sky-reaching, how supreme--the +two Great Unknowns, the two Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They +are the best-known unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon +the planet. + +For the instruction of the ignorant I will make a list, now, of +those details of Shakespeare's history which are FACTS--verified +facts, established facts, undisputed facts. + + +FACTS + + +He was born on the 23d of April, 1564. + +Of good farmer-class parents who could not read, could not write, +could not sign their names. + +At Stratford, a small back settlement which in that day was shabby +and unclean, and densely illiterate. Of the nineteen important men +charged with the government of the town, thirteen had to "make +their mark" in attesting important documents, because they could +not write their names. + +Of the first eighteen years of his life NOTHING is known. They are +a blank. + +On the 27th of November (1582) William Shakespeare took out a +license to marry Anne Whateley. + +Next day William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne +Hathaway. She was eight years his senior. + +William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. In a hurry. By grace +of a reluctantly-granted dispensation there was but one publication +of the banns. + +Within six months the first child was born. + +About two (blank) years followed, during which period NOTHING AT +ALL HAPPENED TO SHAKESPEARE, so far as anybody knows. + +Then came twins--1585. February. + +Two blank years follow. + +Then--1587--he makes a ten-year visit to London, leaving the family +behind. + +Five blank years follow. During this period NOTHING HAPPENED TO +HIM, as far as anybody actually knows. + +Then--1592--there is mention of him as an actor. + +Next year--1593--his name appears in the official list of players. + +Next year--1594--he played before the queen. A detail of no +consequence: other obscurities did it every year of the forty-five +of her reign. And remained obscure. + +Three pretty full years follow. Full of play-acting. Then + +In 1597 he bought New Place, Stratford. + +Thirteen or fourteen busy years follow; years in which he +accumulated money, and also reputation as actor and manager. + +Meantime his name, liberally and variously spelt, had become +associated with a number of great plays and poems, as (ostensibly) +author of the same. + +Some of these, in these years and later, were pirated, but he made +no protest. Then--1610-11--he returned to Stratford and settled +down for good and all, and busied himself in lending money, trading +in tithes, trading in land and houses; shirking a debt of forty-one +shillings, borrowed by his wife during his long desertion of his +family; suing debtors for shillings and coppers; being sued himself +for shillings and coppers; and acting as confederate to a neighbor +who tried to rob the town of its rights in a certain common, and +did not succeed. + +He lived five or six years--till 1616--in the joy of these elevated +pursuits. Then he made a will, and signed each of its three pages +with his name. + +A thoroughgoing business man's will. It named in minute detail +every item of property he owned in the world--houses, lands, sword, +silver-gilt bowl, and so on--all the way down to his "second-best +bed" and its furniture. + +It carefully and calculatingly distributed his riches among the +members of his family, overlooking no individual of it. Not even +his wife: the wife he had been enabled to marry in a hurry by +urgent grace of a special dispensation before he was nineteen; the +wife whom he had left husbandless so many years; the wife who had +had to borrow forty-one shillings in her need, and which the lender +was never able to collect of the prosperous husband, but died at +last with the money still lacking. No, even this wife was +remembered in Shakespeare's will. + +He left her that "second-best bed." + +And NOT ANOTHER THING; not even a penny to bless her lucky +widowhood with. + +It was eminently and conspicuously a business man's will, not a +poet's. + +It mentioned NOT A SINGLE BOOK. + +Books were much more precious than swords and silver-gilt bowls and +second-best beds in those days, and when a departing person owned +one he gave it a high place in his will. + +The will mentioned NOT A PLAY, NOT A POEM, NOT AN UNFINISHED +LITERARY WORK, NOT A SCRAP OF MANUSCRIPT OF ANY KIND. + +Many poets have died poor, but this is the only one in history that +has died THIS poor; the others all left literary remains behind. +Also a book. Maybe two. + +If Shakespeare had owned a dog--but we need not go into that: we +know he would have mentioned it in his will. If a good dog, +Susanna would have got it; if an inferior one his wife would have +got a dower interest in it. I wish he had had a dog, just so we +could see how painstakingly he would have divided that dog among +the family, in his careful business way. + +He signed the will in three places. + +In earlier years he signed two other official documents. + +These five signatures still exist. + +There are NO OTHER SPECIMENS OF HIS PENMANSHIP IN EXISTENCE. Not a +line. + +Was he prejudiced against the art? His granddaughter, whom he +loved, was eight years old when he died, yet she had had no +teaching, he left no provision for her education although he was +rich, and in her mature womanhood she couldn't write and couldn't +tell her husband's manuscript from anybody else's--she thought it +was Shakespeare's. + +When Shakespeare died in Stratford IT WAS NOT AN EVENT. It made no +more stir in England than the death of any other forgotten theatre- +actor would have made. Nobody came down from London; there were no +lamenting poems, no eulogies, no national tears--there was merely +silence, and nothing more. A striking contrast with what happened +when Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon, and Spenser, and Raleigh and +the other distinguished literary folk of Shakespeare's time passed +from life! No praiseful voice was lifted for the lost Bard of +Avon; even Ben Jonson waited seven years before he lifted his. + +SO FAR AS ANYBODY ACTUALLY KNOWS AND CAN PROVE, Shakespeare of +Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life. + +SO FAR AS ANYBODY KNOWS AND CAN PROVE, he never wrote a letter to +anybody in his life. + +SO FAR AS ANY ONE KNOWS, HE RECEIVED ONLY ONE LETTER DURING HIS +LIFE. + +So far as any one KNOWS AND CAN PROVE, Shakespeare of Stratford +wrote only one poem during his life. This one is authentic. He +did write that one--a fact which stands undisputed; he wrote the +whole of it; he wrote the whole of it out of his own head. He +commanded that this work of art be engraved upon his tomb, and he +was obeyed. There it abides to this day. This is it: + + +Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare +To digg the dust encloased heare: +Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones +And curst be he yt moves my bones. + + +In the list as above set down, will be found EVERY POSITIVELY KNOWN +fact of Shakespeare's life, lean and meagre as the invoice is. +Beyond these details we know NOT A THING about him. All the rest +of his vast history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, +course upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures-- +an Eiffel Tower of artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat +and very thin foundation of inconsequential facts. + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +CONJECTURES + + +The historians "suppose" that Shakespeare attended the Free School +in Stratford from the time he was seven years old till he was +thirteen. There is no EVIDENCE in existence that he ever went to +school at all. + +The historians "infer" that he got his Latin in that school--the +school which they "suppose" he attended. + +They "suppose" his father's declining fortunes made it necessary +for him to leave the school they supposed he attended, and get to +work and help support his parents and their ten children. But +there is no evidence that he ever entered or retired from the +school they suppose he attended. + +They "suppose" he assisted his father in the butchering business; +and that, being only a boy, he didn't have to do full-grown +butchering, but only slaughtered calves. Also, that whenever he +killed a calf he made a high-flown speech over it. This +supposition rests upon the testimony of a man who wasn't there at +the time; a man who got it from a man who could have been there, +but did not say whether he was or not; and neither of them thought +to mention it for decades, and decades, and decades, and two more +decades after Shakespeare's death (until old age and mental decay +had refreshed and vivified their memories). They hadn't two facts +in stock about the long-dead distinguished citizen, but only just +the one: he slaughtered calves and broke into oratory while he was +at it. Curious. They had only one fact, yet the distinguished +citizen had spent twenty-six years in that little town--just half +his lifetime. However, rightly viewed, it was the most important +fact, indeed almost the only important fact, of Shakespeare's life +in Stratford. Rightly viewed. For experience is an author's most +valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and +the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes. Rightly +viewed, calf-butchering accounts for Titus Andronicus, the only +play--ain't it?--that the Stratford Shakespeare ever wrote; and yet +it is the only one everybody tries to chouse him out of, the +Baconians included. + +The historians find themselves "justified in believing" that the +young Shakespeare poached upon Sir Thomas Lucy's deer preserves and +got haled before that magistrate for it. But there is no shred of +respectworthy evidence that anything of the kind happened. + +The historians, having argued the thing that MIGHT have happened +into the thing that DID happen, found no trouble in turning Sir +Thomas Lucy into Mr. Justice Shallow. They have long ago convinced +the world--on surmise and without trustworthy evidence--that +Shallow IS Sir Thomas. + +The next addition to the young Shakespeare's Stratford history +comes easy. The historian builds it out of the surmised deer- +stealing, and the surmised trial before the magistrate, and the +surmised vengeance-prompted satire upon the magistrate in the play: +result, the young Shakespeare was a wild, wild, wild, oh SUCH a +wild young scamp, and that gratuitous slander is established for +all time! It is the very way Professor Osborn and I built the +colossal skeleton brontosaur that stands fifty-seven feet long and +sixteen feet high in the Natural History Museum, the awe and +admiration of all the world, the stateliest skeleton that exists on +the planet. We had nine bones, and we built the rest of him out of +plaster of paris. We ran short of plaster of paris, or we'd have +built a brontosaur that could sit down beside the Stratford +Shakespeare and none but an expert could tell which was biggest or +contained the most plaster. + +Shakespeare pronounced Venus and Adonis "the first heir of his +invention," apparently implying that it was his first effort at +literary composition. He should not have said it. It has been an +embarrassment to his historians these many, many years. They have +to make him write that graceful and polished and flawless and +beautiful poem before he escaped from Stratford and his family-- +1586 or '87--age, twenty-two, or along there; because within the +next five years he wrote five great plays, and could not have found +time to write another line. + +It is sorely embarrassing. If he began to slaughter calves, and +poach deer, and rollick around, and learn English, at the earliest +likely moment--say at thirteen, when he was supposably wrenched +from that school where he was supposably storing up Latin for +future literary use--he had his youthful hands full, and much more +than full. He must have had to put aside his Warwickshire dialect, +which wouldn't be understood in London, and study English very +hard. Very hard indeed; incredibly hard, almost, if the result of +that labor was to be the smooth and rounded and flexible and +letter-perfect English of the Venus and Adonis in the space of ten +years; and at the same time learn great and fine and unsurpassable +literary form. + +However, it is "conjectured" that he accomplished all this and +more, much more: learned law and its intricacies; and the complex +procedure of the law courts; and all about soldiering, and +sailoring, and the manners and customs and ways of royal courts and +aristocratic society; and likewise accumulated in his one head +every kind of knowledge the learned then possessed, and every kind +of humble knowledge possessed by the lowly and the ignorant; and +added thereto a wider and more intimate knowledge of the world's +great literatures, ancient and modern, than was possessed by any +other man of his time--for he was going to make brilliant and easy +and admiration-compelling use of these splendid treasures the +moment he got to London. And according to the surmisers, that is +what he did. Yes, although there was no one in Stratford able to +teach him these things, and no library in the little village to dig +them out of. His father could not read, and even the surmisers +surmise that he did not keep a library. + +It is surmised by the biographers that the young Shakespeare got +his vast knowledge of the law and his familiar and accurate +acquaintance with the manners and customs and shop-talk of lawyers +through being for a time the CLERK OF A STRATFORD COURT; just as a +bright lad like me, reared in a village on the banks of the +Mississippi, might become perfect in knowledge of the Behring +Strait whale-fishery and the shop-talk of the veteran exercisers of +that adventure-bristling trade through catching catfish with a +"trot-line" Sundays. But the surmise is damaged by the fact that +there is no evidence--and not even tradition--that the young +Shakespeare was ever clerk of a law court. + +It is further surmised that the young Shakespeare accumulated his +law-treasures in the first years of his sojourn in London, through +"amusing himself" by learning book-law in his garret and by picking +up lawyer-talk and the rest of it through loitering about the law- +courts and listening. But it is only surmise; there is no EVIDENCE +that he ever did either of those things. They are merely a couple +of chunks of plaster of paris. + +There is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding +horses in front of the London theatres, mornings and afternoons. +Maybe he did. If he did, it seriously shortened his law-study +hours and his recreation-time in the courts. In those very days he +was writing great plays, and needed all the time he could get. The +horse-holding legend ought to be strangled; it too formidably +increases the historian's difficulty in accounting for the young +Shakespeare's erudition--an erudition which he was acquiring, hunk +by hunk and chunk by chunk every day in those strenuous times, and +emptying each day's catch into next day's imperishable drama. + +He had to acquire a knowledge of war at the same time; and a +knowledge of soldier-people and sailor-people and their ways and +talk; also a knowledge of some foreign lands and their languages: +for he was daily emptying fluent streams of these various +knowledges, too, into his dramas. How did he acquire these rich +assets? + +In the usual way: by surmise. It is SURMISED that he travelled in +Italy and Germany and around, and qualified himself to put their +scenic and social aspects upon paper; that he perfected himself in +French, Italian and Spanish on the road; that he went in +Leicester's expedition to the Low Countries, as soldier or sutler +or something, for several months or years--or whatever length of +time a surmiser needs in his business--and thus became familiar +with soldiership and soldier-ways and soldier-talk, and generalship +and general-ways and general-talk, and seamanship and sailor-ways +and sailor-talk. + +Maybe he did all these things, but I would like to know who held +the horses in the meantime; and who studied the books in the +garret; and who frollicked in the law-courts for recreation. Also, +who did the call-boying and the play-acting. + +For he became a call-boy; and as early as '93 he became a +"vagabond"--the law's ungentle term for an unlisted actor; and in +'94 a "regular" and properly and officially listed member of that +(in those days) lightly-valued and not much respected profession. + +Right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theatres, and +manager of them. Thenceforward he was a busy and flourishing +business man, and was raking in money with both hands for twenty +years. Then in a noble frenzy of poetic inspiration he wrote his +one poem--his only poem, his darling--and laid him down and died: + + +Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare +To digg the dust encloased heare: +Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones +And curst be he yt moves my bones. + + +He was probably dead when he wrote it. Still, this is only +conjecture. We have only circumstantial evidence. Internal +evidence. + +Shall I set down the rest of the Conjectures which constitute the +giant Biography of William Shakespeare? It would strain the +Unabridged Dictionary to hold them. He is a Brontosaur: nine +bones and six hundred barrels of plaster of paris. + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +"We May Assume" + +In the Assuming trade three separate and independent cults are +transacting business. Two of these cults are known as the +Shakespearites and the Baconians, and I am the other one--the +Brontosaurian. + +The Shakespearite knows that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's Works; +the Baconian knows that Francis Bacon wrote them; the Brontosaurian +doesn't really know which of them did it, but is quite composedly +and contentedly sure that Shakespeare DIDN'T, and strongly suspects +that Bacon DID. We all have to do a good deal of assuming, but I +am fairly certain that in every case I can call to mind the +Baconian assumers have come out ahead of the Shakespearites. Both +parties handle the same materials, but the Baconians seem to me to +get much more reasonable and rational and persuasive results out of +them than is the case with the Shakespearites. The Shakespearite +conducts his assuming upon a definite principle, an unchanging and +immutable law--which is: 2 and 8 and 7 and 14, added together, +make 165. I believe this to be an error. No matter, you cannot +get a habit-sodden Shakespearite to cipher-up his materials upon +any other basis. With the Baconian it is different. If you place +before him the above figures and set him to adding them up, he will +never in any case get more than 45 out of them, and in nine cases +out of ten he will get just the proper 31. + +Let me try to illustrate the two systems in a simple and homely way +calculated to bring the idea within the grasp of the ignorant and +unintelligent. We will suppose a case: take a lap-bred, house- +fed, uneducated, inexperienced kitten; take a rugged old Tom that's +scarred from stem to rudder-post with the memorials of strenuous +experience, and is so cultured, so educated, so limitlessly erudite +that one may say of him "all cat-knowledge is his province"; also, +take a mouse. Lock the three up in a holeless, crackless, exitless +prison-cell. Wait half an hour, then open the cell, introduce a +Shakespearite and a Baconian, and let them cipher and assume. The +mouse is missing: the question to be decided is, where is it? You +can guess both verdicts beforehand. One verdict will say the +kitten contains the mouse; the other will as certainly say the +mouse is in the tomcat. + +The Shakespearite will Reason like this--(that is not my word, it +is his). He will say the kitten MAY HAVE BEEN attending school +when nobody was noticing; therefore WE ARE WARRANTED IN ASSUMING +that it did so; also, it COULD HAVE BEEN training in a court- +clerk's office when no one was noticing; since that could have +happened, WE ARE JUSTIFIED IN ASSUMING that it did happen; it COULD +HAVE STUDIED CATOLOGY IN A GARRET when no one was noticing-- +therefore it DID; it COULD HAVE attended cat-assizes on the shed- +roof nights, for recreation, when no one was noticing, and +harvested a knowledge of cat court-forms and cat lawyer-talk in +that way: it COULD have done it, therefore without a doubt it did; +it could have gone soldiering with a war-tribe when no one was +noticing, and learned soldier-wiles and soldier-ways, and what to +do with a mouse when opportunity offers; the plain inference, +therefore is, that that is what it DID. Since all these manifold +things COULD have occurred, we have EVERY RIGHT TO BELIEVE they did +occur. These patiently and painstakingly accumulated vast +acquirements and competences needed but one thing more-- +opportunity--to convert themselves into triumphant action. The +opportunity came, we have the result; BEYOND SHADOW OF QUESTION the +mouse is in the kitten. + +It is proper to remark that when we of the three cults plant a "WE +THINK WE MAY ASSUME," we expect it, under careful watering and +fertilizing and tending, to grow up into a strong and hardy and +weather-defying "THERE ISN'T A SHADOW OF A DOUBT" at last--and it +usually happens. + +We know what the Baconian's verdict would be: "THERE IS NOT A RAG +OF EVIDENCE THAT THE KITTEN HAS HAD ANY TRAINING, ANY EDUCATION, +ANY EXPERIENCE QUALIFYING IT FOR THE PRESENT OCCASION, OR IS INDEED +EQUIPPED FOR ANY ACHIEVEMENT ABOVE LIFTING SUCH UNCLAIMED MILK AS +COMES ITS WAY; BUT THERE IS ABUNDANT EVIDENCE--UNASSAILABLE PROOF, +IN FACT--THAT THE OTHER ANIMAL IS EQUIPPED, TO THE LAST DETAIL, +WITH EVERY QUALIFICATION NECESSARY FOR THE EVENT. WITHOUT SHADOW +OF DOUBT THE TOMCAT CONTAINS THE MOUSE." + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +When Shakespeare died, in 1616, great literary productions +attributed to him as author had been before the London world and in +high favor for twenty-four years. Yet his death was not an event. +It made no stir, it attracted no attention. Apparently his eminent +literary contemporaries did not realize that a celebrated poet had +passed from their midst. Perhaps they knew a play-actor of minor +rank had disappeared, but did not regard him as the author of his +Works. "We are justified in assuming" this. + +His death was not even an event in the little town of Stratford. +Does this mean that in Stratford he was not regarded as a celebrity +of ANY kind? + +"We are privileged to assume"--no, we are indeed OBLIGED to assume- +-that such was the case. He had spent the first twenty-two or +twenty-three years of his life there, and of course knew everybody +and was known by everybody of that day in the town, including the +dogs and the cats and the horses. He had spent the last five or +six years of his life there, diligently trading in every big and +little thing that had money in it; so we are compelled to assume +that many of the folk there in those said latter days knew him +personally, and the rest by sight and hearsay. But not as a +CELEBRITY? Apparently not. For everybody soon forgot to remember +any contact with him or any incident connected with him. The +dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him or known +about him in the first twenty-three years of his life were in the +same unremembering condition: if they knew of any incident +connected with that period of his life they didn't tell about it. +Would they if they had been asked? It is most likely. Were they +asked? It is pretty apparent that they were not. Why weren't +they? It is a very plausible guess that nobody there or elsewhere +was interested to know. + +For seven years after Shakespeare's death nobody seems to have been +interested in him. Then the quarto was published, and Ben Jonson +awoke out of his long indifference and sang a song of praise and +put it in the front of the book. Then silence fell AGAIN. + +For sixty years. Then inquiries into Shakespeare's Stratford life +began to be made, of Stratfordians. Of Stratfordians who had known +Shakespeare or had seen him? No. Then of Stratfordians who had +seen people who had known or seen people who had seen Shakespeare? +No. Apparently the inquiries were only made of Stratfordians who +were not Stratfordians of Shakespeare's day, but later comers; and +what they had learned had come to them from persons who had not +seen Shakespeare; and what they had learned was not claimed as +FACT, but only as legend--dim and fading and indefinite legend; +legend of the calf-slaughtering rank, and not worth remembering +either as history or fiction. + +Has it ever happened before--or since--that a celebrated person who +had spent exactly half of a fairly long life in the village where +he was born and reared, was able to slip out of this world and +leave that village voiceless and gossipless behind him--utterly +voiceless, utterly gossipless? And permanently so? I don't +believe it has happened in any case except Shakespeare's. And +couldn't and wouldn't have happened in his case if he had been +regarded as a celebrity at the time of his death. + +When I examine my own case--but let us do that, and see if it will +not be recognizable as exhibiting a condition of things quite +likely to result, most likely to result, indeed substantially SURE +to result in the case of a celebrated person, a benefactor of the +human race. Like me. + +My parents brought me to the village of Hannibal, Missouri, on the +banks of the Mississippi, when I was two and a half years old. I +entered school at five years of age, and drifted from one school to +another in the village during nine and a half years. Then my +father died, leaving his family in exceedingly straitened +circumstances; wherefore my book-education came to a standstill +forever, and I became a printer's apprentice, on board and clothes, +and when the clothes failed I got a hymn-book in place of them. +This for summer wear, probably. I lived in Hannibal fifteen and a +half years, altogether, then ran away, according to the custom of +persons who are intending to become celebrated. I never lived +there afterward. Four years later I became a "cub" on a +Mississippi steamboat in the St. Louis and New Orleans trade, and +after a year and a half of hard study and hard work the U. S. +inspectors rigorously examined me through a couple of long sittings +and decided that I knew every inch of the Mississippi--thirteen +hundred miles--in the dark and in the day--as well as a baby knows +the way to its mother's paps day or night. So they licensed me as +a pilot--knighted me, so to speak--and I rose up clothed with +authority, a responsible servant of the United States government. + +Now then. Shakespeare died young--he was only fifty-two. He had +lived in his native village twenty-six years, or about that. He +died celebrated (if you believe everything you read in the books). +Yet when he died nobody there or elsewhere took any notice of it; +and for sixty years afterward no townsman remembered to say +anything about him or about his life in Stratford. When the +inquirer came at last he got but one fact--no, LEGEND--and got that +one at second hand, from a person who had only heard it as a rumor, +and didn't claim copyright in it as a production of his own. He +couldn't, very well, for its date antedated his own birth-date. +But necessarily a number of persons were still alive in Stratford +who, in the days of their youth, had seen Shakespeare nearly every +day in the last five years of his life, and they would have been +able to tell that inquirer some first-hand things about him if he +had in those last days been a celebrity and therefore a person of +interest to the villagers. Why did not the inquirer hunt them up +and interview them? Wasn't it worth while? Wasn't the matter of +sufficient consequence? Had the inquirer an engagement to see a +dog-fight and couldn't spare the time? + +It all seems to mean that he never had any literary celebrity, +there or elsewhere, and no considerable repute as actor and +manager. + +Now then, I am away along in life--my seventy-third year being +already well behind me--yet SIXTEEN of my Hannibal schoolmates are +still alive to-day, and can tell--and do tell--inquirers dozens and +dozens of incidents of their young lives and mine together; things +that happened to us in the morning of life, in the blossom of our +youth, in the good days, the dear days, "the days when we went +gipsying, a long time ago." Most of them creditable to me, too. +One child to whom I paid court when she was five years old and I +eight still lives in Hannibal, and she visited me last summer, +traversing the necessary ten or twelve hundred miles of railroad +without damage to her patience or to her old-young vigor. Another +little lassie to whom I paid attention in Hannibal when she was +nine years old and I the same, is still alive--in London--and hale +and hearty, just as I am. And on the few surviving steamboats-- +those lingering ghosts and remembrancers of great fleets that plied +the big river in the beginning of my water-career--which is exactly +as long ago as the whole invoice of the life-years of Shakespeare +number--there are still findable two or three river-pilots who saw +me do creditable things in those ancient days; and several white- +headed engineers; and several roustabouts and mates; and several +deck-hands who used to heave the lead for me and send up on the +still night air the "six--feet--SCANT!" that made me shudder, and +the "M-a-r-k--twain!" that took the shudder away, and presently the +darling "By the d-e-e-p--four!" that lifted me to heaven for joy. +{1} They know about me, and can tell. And so do printers, from +St. Louis to New York; and so do newspaper reporters, from Nevada +to San Francisco. And so do the police. If Shakespeare had really +been celebrated, like me, Stratford could have told things about +him; and if my experience goes for anything, they'd have done it. + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +If I had under my superintendence a controversy appointed to decide +whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare or not, I believe I would +place before the debaters only the one question, WAS SHAKESPEARE +EVER A PRACTICING LAWYER? and leave everything else out. + +It is maintained that the man who wrote the plays was not merely +myriad-minded, but also myriad-accomplished: that he not only knew +some thousands of things about human life in all its shades and +grades, and about the hundred arts and trades and crafts and +professions which men busy themselves in, but that he could TALK +about the men and their grades and trades accurately, making no +mistakes. Maybe it is so, but have the experts spoken, or is it +only Tom, Dick, and Harry? Does the exhibit stand upon wide, and +loose, and eloquent generalizing--which is not evidence, and not +proof--or upon details, particulars, statistics, illustrations, +demonstrations? + +Experts of unchallengeable authority have testified definitely as +to only one of Shakespeare's multifarious craft-equipments, so far +as my recollections of Shakespeare-Bacon talk abide with me--his +law-equipment. I do not remember that Wellington or Napoleon ever +examined Shakespeare's battles and sieges and strategies, and then +decided and established for good and all, that they were militarily +flawless; I do not remember that any Nelson, or Drake or Cook ever +examined his seamanship and said it showed profound and accurate +familiarity with that art; I don't remember that any king or prince +or duke has ever testified that Shakespeare was letter-perfect in +his handling of royal court-manners and the talk and manners of +aristocracies; I don't remember that any illustrious Latinist or +Grecian or Frenchman or Spaniard or Italian has proclaimed him a +past-master in those languages; I don't remember--well, I don't +remember that there is TESTIMONY--great testimony--imposing +testimony--unanswerable and unattackable testimony as to any of +Shakespeare's hundred specialties, except one--the law. + +Other things change, with time, and the student cannot trace back +with certainty the changes that various trades and their processes +and technicalities have undergone in the long stretch of a century +or two and find out what their processes and technicalities were in +those early days, but with the law it is different: it is mile- +stoned and documented all the way back, and the master of that +wonderful trade, that complex and intricate trade, that awe- +compelling trade, has competent ways of knowing whether +Shakespeare-law is good law or not; and whether his law-court +procedure is correct or not, and whether his legal shop-talk is the +shop-talk of a veteran practitioner or only a machine-made +counterfeit of it gathered from books and from occasional +loiterings in Westminster. + +Richard H. Dana served two years before the mast, and had every +experience that falls to the lot of the sailor before the mast of +our day. His sailor-talk flows from his pen with the sure touch +and the ease and confidence of a person who has LIVED what he is +talking about, not gathered it from books and random listenings. +Hear him: + + +Having hove short, cast off the gaskets, and made the bunt of each +sail fast by the jigger, with a man on each yard, at the word the +whole canvas of the ship was loosed, and with the greatest rapidity +possible everything was sheeted home and hoisted up, the anchor +tripped and cat-headed, and the ship under headway. + + +Again: + + +The royal yards were all crossed at once, and royals and sky-sails +set, and, as we had the wind free, the booms were run out, and all +were aloft, active as cats, laying out on the yards and booms, +reeving the studding-sail gear; and sail after sail the captain +piled upon her, until she was covered with canvas, her sails +looking like a great white cloud resting upon a black speck. + + +Once more. A race in the Pacific: + + +Our antagonist was in her best trim. Being clear of the point, the +breeze became stiff, and the royal-masts bent under our sails, but +we would not take them in until we saw three boys spring into the +rigging of the California; then they were all furled at once, but +with orders to our boys to stay aloft at the top-gallant mast-heads +and loose them again at the word. It was my duty to furl the fore- +royal; and while standing by to loose it again, I had a fine view +of the scene. From where I stood, the two vessels seemed nothing +but spars and sails, while their narrow decks, far below, slanting +over by the force of the wind aloft, appeared hardly capable of +supporting the great fabrics raised upon them. The California was +to windward of us, and had every advantage; yet, while the breeze +was stiff we held our own. As soon as it began to slacken she +ranged a little ahead, and the order was given to loose the royals. +In an instant the gaskets were off and the bunt dropped. "Sheet +home the fore-royal!"--"Weather sheet's home!"--"Lee sheet's +home!"--"Hoist away, sir!" is bawled from aloft. "Overhaul your +clewlines!" shouts the mate. "Aye-aye, sir, all clear!"--"Taut +leech! belay! Well the lee brace; haul taut to windward!" and the +royals are set. + + +What would the captain of any sailing-vessel of our time say to +that? He would say, "The man that wrote that didn't learn his +trade out of a book, he has BEEN there!" But would this same +captain be competent to sit in judgment upon Shakespeare's +seamanship--considering the changes in ships and ship-talk that +have necessarily taken place, unrecorded, unremembered, and lost to +history in the last three hundred years? It is my conviction that +Shakespeare's sailor-talk would be Choctaw to him. For instance-- +from The Tempest: + + +Master. Boatswain! + +Boatswain. Here, master; what cheer? + +Master. Good, speak to the mariners: fall to't, yarely, or we run +ourselves to ground; bestir, bestir! + +(Enter mariners.) + +Boatswain. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, +yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master's whistle . . . +Down with the topmast! yare! lower, lower! Bring her to try wi' +the main course . . . Lay her a-hold, a-hold! Set her two courses. +Off to sea again; lay her off. + + +That will do, for the present; let us yare a little, now, for a +change. + +If a man should write a book and in it make one of his characters +say, "Here, devil, empty the quoins into the standing galley and +the imposing stone into the hell-box; assemble the comps around the +frisket and let them jeff for takes and be quick about it," I +should recognize a mistake or two in the phrasing, and would know +that the writer was only a printer theoretically, not practically. + +I have been a quartz miner in the silver regions--a pretty hard +life; I know all the palaver of that business: I know all about +discovery claims and the subordinate claims; I know all about +lodes, ledges, outcroppings, dips, spurs, angles, shafts, drifts, +inclines, levels, tunnels, air-shafts, "horses," clay casings, +granite casings; quartz mills and their batteries; arastras, and +how to charge them with quicksilver and sulphate of copper; and how +to clean them up, and how to reduce the resulting amalgam in the +retorts, and how to cast the bullion into pigs; and finally I know +how to screen tailings, and also how to hunt for something less +robust to do, and find it. I know the argot of the quartz-mining +and milling industry familiarly; and so whenever Bret Harte +introduces that industry into a story, the first time one of his +miners opens his mouth I recognize from his phrasing that Harte got +the phrasing by listening--like Shakespeare--I mean the Stratford +one--not by experience. No one can talk the quartz dialect +correctly without learning it with pick and shovel and drill and +fuse. + +I have been a surface-miner--gold--and I know all its mysteries, +and the dialect that belongs with them; and whenever Harte +introduces that industry into a story I know by the phrasing of his +characters that neither he nor they have ever served that trade. + +I have been a "pocket" miner--a sort of gold mining not findable in +any but one little spot in the world, so far as I know. I know +how, with horn and water, to find the trail of a pocket and trace +it step by step and stage by stage up the mountain to its source, +and find the compact little nest of yellow metal reposing in its +secret home under the ground. I know the language of that trade, +that capricious trade, that fascinating buried-treasure trade, and +can catch any writer who tries to use it without having learned it +by the sweat of his brow and the labor of his hands. + +I know several other trades and the argot that goes with them; and +whenever a person tries to talk the talk peculiar to any of them +without having learned it at its source I can trap him always +before he gets far on his road. + +And so, as I have already remarked, if I were required to +superintend a Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, I would narrow the +matter down to a single question--the only one, so far as the +previous controversies have informed me, concerning which +illustrious experts of unimpeachable competency have testified: +WAS THE AUTHOR OF SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS A LAWYER?--a lawyer deeply +read and of limitless experience? I would put aside the guesses, +and surmises, and perhapses, and might-have-beens, and could-have +beens, and must-have-beens, and we-are justified-in-presumings, and +the rest of those vague spectres and shadows and indefinitenesses, +and stand or fall, win or lose, by the verdict rendered by the jury +upon that single question. If the verdict was Yes, I should feel +quite convinced that the Stratford Shakespeare, the actor, manager, +and trader who died so obscure, so forgotten, so destitute of even +village consequence that sixty years afterward no fellow-citizen +and friend of his later days remembered to tell anything about him, +did not write the Works. + +Chapter XIII of The Shakespeare Problem Restated bears the heading +"Shakespeare as a Lawyer," and comprises some fifty pages of expert +testimony, with comments thereon, and I will copy the first nine, +as being sufficient all by themselves, as it seems to me, to settle +the question which I have conceived to be the master-key to the +Shakespeare-Bacon puzzle. + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +Shakespeare as a Lawyer {2} + +The Plays and Poems of Shakespeare supply ample evidence that their +author not only had a very extensive and accurate knowledge of law, +but that he was well acquainted with the manners and customs of +members of the Inns of Court and with legal life generally. + +"While novelists and dramatists are constantly making mistakes as +to the laws of marriage, of wills, and inheritance, to +Shakespeare's law, lavishly as he expounds it, there can neither be +demurrer, nor bill of exceptions, nor writ of error." Such was the +testimony borne by one of the most distinguished lawyers of the +nineteenth century who was raised to the high office of Lord Chief +Justice in 1850, and subsequently became Lord Chancellor. Its +weight will, doubtless, be more appreciated by lawyers than by +laymen, for only lawyers know how impossible it is for those who +have not served an apprenticeship to the law to avoid displaying +their ignorance if they venture to employ legal terms and to +discuss legal doctrines. "There is nothing so dangerous," wrote +Lord Campbell, "as for one not of the craft to tamper with our +freemasonry." A layman is certain to betray himself by using some +expression which a lawyer would never employ. Mr. Sidney Lee +himself supplies us with an example of this. He writes (p. 164): +"On February 15, 1609, Shakespeare . . . obtained judgment from a +jury against Addenbroke for the payment of No. 6, and No. 1. 5s. +0d. costs." Now a lawyer would never have spoken of obtaining +"judgment from a jury," for it is the function of a jury not to +deliver judgment (which is the prerogative of the court), but to +find a verdict on the facts. The error is, indeed, a venial one, +but it is just one of those little things which at once enable a +lawyer to know if the writer is a layman or "one of the craft." + +But when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal subjects, he +is naturally apt to make an exhibition of his incompetence. "Let a +non-professional man, however acute," writes Lord Campbell again, +"presume to talk law, or to draw illustrations from legal science +in discussing other subjects, and he will speedily fall into +laughable absurdity." + +And what does the same high authority say about Shakespeare? He +had "a deep technical knowledge of the law," and an easy +familiarity with "some of the most abstruse proceedings in English +jurisprudence." And again: "Whenever he indulges this propensity +he uniformly lays down good law." Of Henry IV., Part 2, he says: +"If Lord Eldon could be supposed to have written the play, I do not +see how he could be chargeable with having forgotten any of his law +while writing it." Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke speak of "the +marvelous intimacy which he displays with legal terms, his frequent +adoption of them in illustration, and his curiously technical +knowledge of their form and force." Malone, himself a lawyer, +wrote: "His knowledge of legal terms is not merely such as might +be acquired by the casual observation of even his all-comprehending +mind; it has the appearance of technical skill." Another lawyer +and well-known Shakespearean, Richard Grant White, says: "No +dramatist of the time, not even Beaumont, who was the younger son +of a judge of the Common Pleas, and who after studying in the Inns +of Court abandoned law for the drama, used legal phrases with +Shakespeare's readiness and exactness. And the significance of +this fact is heightened by another, that it is only to the language +of the law that he exhibits this inclination. The phrases peculiar +to other occupations serve him on rare occasions by way of +description, comparison or illustration, generally when something +in the scene suggests them, but legal phrases flow from his pen as +part of his vocabulary, and parcel of his thought. Take the word +'purchase' for instance, which, in ordinary use, means to acquire +by giving value, but applies in law to all legal modes of obtaining +property except by inheritance or descent, and in this peculiar +sense the word occurs five times in Shakespeare's thirty-four +plays, and only in one single instance in the fifty-four plays of +Beaumont and Fletcher. It has been suggested that it was in +attendance upon the courts in London that he picked up his legal +vocabulary. But this supposition not only fails to account for +Shakespeare's peculiar freedom and exactness in the use of that +phraseology, it does not even place him in the way of learning +those terms his use of which is most remarkable, which are not such +as he would have heard at ordinary proceedings at nisi prius, but +such as refer to the tenure or transfer of real property, 'fine and +recovery,' 'statutes merchant,' 'purchase,' 'indenture,' 'tenure,' +'double voucher,' 'fee simple,' 'fee farm,' 'remainder,' +'reversion,' 'forfeiture,' etc. This conveyancer's jargon could +not have been picked up by hanging round the courts of law in +London two hundred and fifty years ago, when suits as to the title +of real property were comparatively rare. And beside, Shakespeare +uses his law just as freely in his first plays, written in his +first London years, as in those produced at a later period. Just +as exactly, too; for the correctness and propriety with which these +terms are introduced have compelled the admiration of a Chief +Justice and a Lord Chancellor." + +Senator Davis wrote: "We seem to have something more than a +sciolist's temerity of indulgence in the terms of an unfamiliar +art. No legal solecisms will be found. The abstrusest elements of +the common law are impressed into a disciplined service. Over and +over again, where such knowledge is unexampled in writers unlearned +in the law, Shakespeare appears in perfect possession of it. In +the law of real property, its rules of tenure and descents, its +entails, its fines and recoveries, their vouchers and double +vouchers, in the procedure of the Courts, the method of bringing +writs and arrests, the nature of actions, the rules of pleading, +the law of escapes and of contempt of court, in the principles of +evidence, both technical and philosophical, in the distinction +between the temporal and spiritual tribunals, in the law of +attainder and forfeiture, in the requisites of a valid marriage, in +the presumption of legitimacy, in the learning of the law of +prerogative, in the inalienable character of the Crown, this +mastership appears with surprising authority." + +To all this testimony (and there is much more which I have not +cited) may now be added that of a great lawyer of our own times, +viz.: Sir James Plaisted Wilde, Q.C. created a Baron of the +Exchequer in 1860, promoted to the post of Judge-Ordinary and Judge +of the Courts of Probate and Divorce in 1863, and better known to +the world as Lord Penzance, to which dignity he was raised in 1869. +Lord Penzance, as all lawyers know, and as the late Mr. Inderwick, +K.C., has testified, was one of the first legal authorities of his +day, famous for his "remarkable grasp of legal principles," and +"endowed by nature with a remarkable facility for marshalling +facts, and for a clear expression of his views." + +Lord Penzance speaks of Shakespeare's "perfect familiarity with not +only the principles, axioms, and maxims, but the technicalities of +English law, a knowledge so perfect and intimate that he was never +incorrect and never at fault . . . The mode in which this knowledge +was pressed into service on all occasions to express his meaning +and illustrate his thoughts, was quite unexampled. He seems to +have had a special pleasure in his complete and ready mastership of +it in all its branches. As manifested in the plays, this legal +knowledge and learning had therefore a special character which +places it on a wholly different footing from the rest of the +multifarious knowledge which is exhibited in page after page of the +plays. At every turn and point at which the author required a +metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned FIRST to +the law. He seems almost to have THOUGHT in legal phrases, the +commonest of legal expressions were ever at the end of his pen in +description or illustration. That he should have descanted in +lawyer language when he had a forensic subject in hand, such as +Shylock's bond, was to be expected, but the knowledge of law in +'Shakespeare' was exhibited in a far different manner: it +protruded itself on all occasions, appropriate or inappropriate, +and mingled itself with strains of thought widely divergent from +forensic subjects." Again: "To acquire a perfect familiarity with +legal principles, and an accurate and ready use of the technical +terms and phrases not only of the conveyancer's office but of the +pleader's chambers and the Courts at Westminster, nothing short of +employment in some career involving constant contact with legal +questions and general legal work would be requisite. But a +continuous employment involves the element of time, and time was +just what the manager of two theatres had not at his disposal. In +what portion of Shakespeare's (i.e. Shakspere's) career would it be +possible to point out that time could be found for the +interposition of a legal employment in the chambers or offices of +practising lawyers?" + +Stratfordians, as is well known, casting about for some possible +explanation of Shakespeare's extraordinary knowledge of law, have +made the suggestion that Shakespeare might, conceivably, have been +a clerk in an attorney's office before he came to London. Mr. +Collier wrote to Lord Campbell to ask his opinion as to the +probability of this being true. His answer was as follows: "You +require us to believe implicitly a fact, of which, if true, +positive and irrefragable evidence in his own handwriting might +have been forthcoming to establish it. Not having been actually +enrolled as an attorney, neither the records of the local court at +Stratford nor of the superior Courts at Westminster would present +his name as being concerned in any suit as an attorney, but it +might reasonably have been expected that there would be deeds or +wills witnessed by him still extant, and after a very diligent +search none such can be discovered." + +Upon this Lord Penzance comments: "It cannot be doubted that Lord +Campbell was right in this. No young man could have been at work +in an attorney's office without being called upon continually to +act as a witness, and in many other ways leaving traces of his work +and name." There is not a single fact or incident in all that is +known of Shakespeare, even by rumor or tradition, which supports +this notion of a clerkship. And after much argument and surmise +which has been indulged in on this subject, we may, I think, safely +put the notion on one side, for no less an authority than Mr. Grant +White says finally that the idea of his having been clerk to an +attorney has been "blown to pieces." + +It is altogether characteristic of Mr. Churton Collins that he, +nevertheless, adopts this exploded myth. "That Shakespeare was in +early life employed as a clerk in an attorney's office, may be +correct. At Stratford there was by royal charter a Court of Record +sitting every fortnight, with six attorneys, beside the town clerk, +belonging to it, and it is certainly not straining probability to +suppose that the young Shakespeare may have had employment in one +of them. There is, it is true, no tradition to this effect, but +such traditions as we have about Shakespeare's occupation between +the time of leaving school and going to London are so loose and +baseless that no confidence can be placed in them. It is, to say +the least, more probable that he was in an attorney's office than +that he was a butcher killing calves 'in a high style,' and making +speeches over them." + +This is a charming specimen of Stratfordian argument. There is, as +we have seen, a very old tradition that Shakespeare was a butcher's +apprentice. John Dowdall, who made a tour in Warwickshire in 1693, +testifies to it as coming from the old clerk who showed him over +the church, and it is unhesitatingly accepted as true by Mr. +Halliwell-Phillipps. (Vol I, p. 11, and see Vol. II, p. 71, 72.) +Mr. Sidney Lee sees nothing improbable in it, and it is supported +by Aubrey, who must have written his account some time before 1680, +when his manuscript was completed. Of the attorney's clerk +hypothesis, on the other hand, there is not the faintest vestige of +a tradition. It has been evolved out of the fertile imaginations +of embarrassed Stratfordians, seeking for some explanation of the +Stratford rustic's marvellous acquaintance with law and legal terms +and legal life. But Mr. Churton Collins has not the least +hesitation in throwing over the tradition which has the warrant of +antiquity and setting up in its stead this ridiculous invention, +for which not only is there no shred of positive evidence, but +which, as Lord Campbell and Lord Penzance point out, is really put +out of court by the negative evidence, since "no young man could +have been at work in an attorney's office without being called upon +continually to act as a witness, and in many other ways leaving +traces of his work and name." And as Mr. Edwards further points +out, since the day when Lord Campbell's book was published (between +forty and fifty years ago), "every old deed or will, to say nothing +of other legal papers, dated during the period of William +Shakespeare's youth, has been scrutinized over half a dozen shires, +and not one signature of the young man has been found." + +Moreover, if Shakespeare had served as clerk in an attorney's +office it is clear that he must have so served for a considerable +period in order to have gained (if indeed it is credible that he +could have so gained) his remarkable knowledge of law. Can we then +for a moment believe that, if this had been so, tradition would +have been absolutely silent on the matter? That Dowdall's old +clerk, over eighty years of age, should have never heard of it +(though he was sure enough about the butcher's apprentice), and +that all the other ancient witnesses should be in similar +ignorance! + +But such are the methods of Stratfordian controversy. Tradition is +to be scouted when it is found inconvenient, but cited as +irrefragable truth when it suits the case. Shakespeare of +Stratford was the author of the Plays and Poems, but the author of +the Plays and Poems could not have been a butcher's apprentice. +Away, therefore, with tradition. But the author of the Plays and +Poems must have had a very large and a very accurate knowledge of +the law. Therefore, Shakespeare of Stratford must have been an +attorney's clerk! The method is simplicity itself. By similar +reasoning Shakespeare has been made a country schoolmaster, a +soldier, a physician, a printer, and a good many other things +beside, according to the inclination and the exigencies of the +commentator. It would not be in the least surprising to find that +he was studying Latin as a schoolmaster and law in an attorney's +office at the same time. + +However, we must do Mr. Collins the justice of saying that he has +fully recognized, what is indeed tolerably obvious, that +Shakespeare must have had a sound legal training. "It may, of +course, be urged," he writes, "that Shakespeare's knowledge of +medicine, and particularly that branch of it which related to +morbid psychology, is equally remarkable, and that no one has ever +contended that he was a physician. (Here Mr. Collins is wrong; +that contention also has been put forward.) It may be urged that +his acquaintance with the technicalities of other crafts and +callings, notably of marine and military affairs, was also +extraordinary, and yet no one has suspected him of being a sailor +or a soldier. (Wrong again. Why even Messrs. Garnett and Gosse +'suspect' that he was a soldier!) This may be conceded, but the +concession hardly furnishes an analogy. To these and all other +subjects he recurs occasionally, and in season, but with +reminiscences of the law his memory, as is abundantly clear, was +simply saturated. In season and out of season now in manifest, now +in recondite application, he presses it into the service of +expression and illustration. At least a third of his myriad +metaphors are derived from it. It would indeed be difficult to +find a single act in any of his dramas, nay, in some of them, a +single scene, the diction and imagery of which is not colored by +it. Much of his law may have been acquired from three books easily +accessible to him, namely Tottell's Precedents (1572), Pulton's +Statutes (1578), and Fraunce's Lawier's Logike (1588), works with +which he certainly seems to have been familiar; but much of it +could only have come from one who had an intimate acquaintance with +legal proceedings. We quite agree with Mr. Castle that +Shakespeare's legal knowledge is not what could have been picked up +in an attorney's office, but could only have been learned by an +actual attendance at the Courts, at a Pleader's Chambers, and on +circuit, or by associating intimately with members of the Bench and +Bar." + +This is excellent. But what is Mr. Collins' explanation. "Perhaps +the simplest solution of the problem is to accept the hypothesis +that in early life he was in an attorney's office (!), that he +there contracted a love for the law which never left him, that as a +young man in London, he continued to study or dabble in it for his +amusement, to stroll in leisure hours into the Courts, and to +frequent the society of lawyers. On no other supposition is it +possible to explain the attraction which the law evidently had for +him, and his minute and undeviating accuracy in a subject where no +layman who has indulged in such copious and ostentatious display of +legal technicalities has ever yet succeeded in keeping himself from +tripping." + +A lame conclusion. "No other supposition" indeed! Yes, there is +another, and a very obvious supposition, namely, that Shakespeare +was himself a lawyer, well versed in his trade, versed in all the +ways of the courts, and living in close intimacy with judges and +members of the Inns of Court. + +One is, of course, thankful that Mr. Collins has appreciated the +fact that Shakespeare must have had a sound legal training, but I +may be forgiven if I do not attach quite so much importance to his +pronouncements on this branch of the subject as to those of Malone, +Lord Campbell, Judge Holmes, Mr. Castle, K.C., Lord Penzance, Mr. +Grant White, and other lawyers, who have expressed their opinion on +the matter of Shakespeare's legal acquirements. + +Here it may, perhaps, be worth while to quote again from Lord +Penzance's book as to the suggestion that Shakespeare had somehow +or other managed "to acquire a perfect familiarity with legal +principles, and an accurate and ready use of the technical terms +and phrases, not only of the conveyancer's office, but of the +pleader's chambers and the courts at Westminster." This, as Lord +Penzance points out, "would require nothing short of employment in +some career involving CONSTANT CONTACT with legal questions and +general legal work." But "in what portion of Shakespeare's career +would it be possible to point out that time could be found for the +interposition of a legal employment in the chambers or offices of +practising lawyers? . . . It is beyond doubt that at an early +period he was called upon to abandon his attendance at school and +assist his father, and was soon after, at the age of sixteen, bound +apprentice to a trade. While under the obligation of this bond he +could not have pursued any other employment. Then he leaves +Stratford and comes to London. He has to provide himself with the +means of a livelihood, and this he did in some capacity at the +theatre. No one doubts that. The holding of horses is scouted by +many, and perhaps with justice, as being unlikely and certainly +unproved; but whatever the nature of his employment was at the +theatre, there is hardly room for the belief that it could have +been other than continuous, for his progress there was so rapid. +Ere long he had been taken into the company as an actor, and was +soon spoken of as a 'Johannes Factotum.' His rapid accumulation of +wealth speaks volumes for the constancy and activity of his +services. One fails to see when there could be a break in the +current of his life at this period of it, giving room or +opportunity for legal or indeed any other employment. 'In 1589,' +says Knight, 'we have undeniable evidence that he had not only a +casual engagement, was not only a salaried servant, as many players +were, but was a shareholder in the company of the Queen's players +with other shareholders below him on the list.' This (1589) would +be within two years after his arrival in London, which is placed by +White and Halliwell-Phillipps about the year 1587. The difficulty +in supposing that, starting with a state of ignorance in 1587, when +he is supposed to have come to London, he was induced to enter upon +a course of most extended study and mental culture, is almost +insuperable. Still it was physically possible, provided always +that he could have had access to the needful books. But this legal +training seems to me to stand on a different footing. It is not +only unaccountable and incredible, but it is actually negatived by +the known facts of his career." Lord Penzance then refers to the +fact that "by 1592 (according to the best authority, Mr. Grant +White) several of the plays had been written. The Comedy of Errors +in 1589, Love's Labour's Lost in 1589, Two Gentlemen of Verona in +1589 or 1590, and so forth, and then asks, "with this catalogue of +dramatic work on hand . . . was it possible that he could have +taken a leading part in the management and conduct of two theatres, +and if Mr. Phillipps is to be relied upon, taken his share in the +performances of the provincial tours of his company--and at the +same time devoted himself to the study of the law in all its +branches so efficiently as to make himself complete master of its +principles and practice, and saturate his mind with all its most +technical terms?" + +I have cited this passage from Lord Penzance's book, because it lay +before me, and I had already quoted from it on the matter of +Shakespeare's legal knowledge; but other writers have still better +set forth the insuperable difficulties, as they seem to me, which +beset the idea that Shakespeare might have found time in some +unknown period of early life, amid multifarious other occupations, +for the study of classics, literature and law, to say nothing of +languages and a few other matters. Lord Penzance further asks his +readers: "Did you ever meet with or hear of an instance in which a +young man in this country gave himself up to legal studies and +engaged in legal employments, which is the only way of becoming +familiar with the technicalities of practice, unless with the view +of practicing in that profession? I do not believe that it would +be easy, or indeed possible, to produce an instance in which the +law has been seriously studied in all its branches, except as a +qualification for practice in the legal profession." + + +This testimony is so strong, so direct, so authoritative; and so +uncheapened, unwatered by guesses, and surmises, and maybe-so's, +and might-have-beens, and could-have-beens, and must-have-beens, +and the rest of that ton of plaster of paris out of which the +biographers have built the colossal brontosaur which goes by the +Stratford actor's name, that it quite convinces me that the man who +wrote Shakespeare's Works knew all about law and lawyers. Also, +that that man could not have been the Stratford Shakespeare--and +WASN'T. + +Who did write these Works, then? + +I wish I knew. + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +Did Francis Bacon write Shakespeare's Works? + +Nobody knows. + +We cannot say we KNOW a thing when that thing has not been proved. +KNOW is too strong a word to use when the evidence is not final and +absolutely conclusive. We can infer, if we want to, like those +slaves . . . No, I will not write that word, it is not kind, it is +not courteous. The upholders of the Stratford-Shakespeare +superstition call US the hardest names they can think of, and they +keep doing it all the time; very well, if they like to descend to +that level, let them do it, but I will not so undignify myself as +to follow them. I cannot call them harsh names; the most I can do +is to indicate them by terms reflecting my disapproval; and this +without malice, without venom. + +To resume. What I was about to say, was, those thugs have built +their entire superstition upon INFERENCES, not upon known and +established facts. It is a weak method, and poor, and I am glad to +be able to say our side never resorts to it while there is anything +else to resort to. + +But when we must, we must; and we have now arrived at a place of +that sort. + +Since the Stratford Shakespeare couldn't have written the Works, we +infer that somebody did. Who was it, then? This requires some +more inferring. + +Ordinarily when an unsigned poem sweeps across the continent like a +tidal wave, whose roar and boom and thunder are made up of +admiration, delight and applause, a dozen obscure people rise up +and claim the authorship. Why a dozen, instead of only one or two? +One reason is, because there's a dozen that are recognizably +competent to do that poem. Do you remember "Beautiful Snow"? Do +you remember "Rock Me to Sleep, Mother, Rock Me to Sleep"? Do you +remember "Backward, turn backward, O Time, in thy flight! Make me +a child again just for to-night"? I remember them very well. +Their authorship was claimed by most of the grown-up people who +were alive at the time, and every claimant had one plausible +argument in his favor, at least: to wit, he could have done the +authoring; he was competent. + +Have the Works been claimed by a dozen? They haven't. There was +good reason. The world knows there was but one man on the planet +at the time who was competent--not a dozen, and not two. A long +time ago the dwellers in a far country used now and then to find a +procession of prodigious footprints stretching across the plain-- +footprints that were three miles apart, each footprint a third of a +mile long and a furlong deep, and with forests and villages mashed +to mush in it. Was there any doubt as to who had made that mighty +trail? Were there a dozen claimants? Were there two? No--the +people knew who it was that had been along there: there was only +one Hercules. + +There has been only one Shakespeare. There couldn't be two; +certainly there couldn't be two at the same time. It takes ages to +bring forth a Shakespeare, and some more ages to match him. This +one was not matched before his time; nor during his time; and +hasn't been matched since. The prospect of matching him in our +time is not bright. + +The Baconians claim that the Stratford Shakespeare was not +qualified to write the Works, and that Francis Bacon was. They +claim that Bacon possessed the stupendous equipment--both natural +and acquired--for the miracle; and that no other Englishman of his +day possessed the like; or, indeed, anything closely approaching +it. + +Macaulay, in his Essay, has much to say about the splendor and +horizonless magnitude of that equipment. Also, he has synopsized +Bacon's history: a thing which cannot be done for the Stratford +Shakespeare, for he hasn't any history to synopsize. Bacon's +history is open to the world, from his boyhood to his death in old +age--a history consisting of known facts, displayed in minute and +multitudinous detail; FACTS, not guesses and conjectures and might- +have-beens. + +Whereby it appears that he was born of a race of statesmen, and had +a Lord Chancellor for his father, and a mother who was +"distinguished both as a linguist and a theologian: she +corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewell, and translated his +Apologia from the Latin so correctly that neither he nor Archbishop +Parker could suggest a single alteration." It is the atmosphere we +are reared in that determines how our inclinations and aspirations +shall tend. The atmosphere furnished by the parents to the son in +this present case was an atmosphere saturated with learning; with +thinkings and ponderings upon deep subjects; and with polite +culture. It had its natural effect. Shakespeare of Stratford was +reared in a house which had no use for books, since its owners, his +parents, were without education. This may have had an effect upon +the son, but we do not know, because we have no history of him of +an informing sort. There were but few books anywhere, in that day, +and only the well-to-do and highly educated possessed them, they +being almost confined to the dead languages. "All the valuable +books then extant in all the vernacular dialects of Europe would +hardly have filled a single shelf"--imagine it! The few existing +books were in the Latin tongue mainly. "A person who was ignorant +of it was shut out from all acquaintance--not merely with Cicero +and Virgil, but with the most interesting memoirs, state papers, +and pamphlets of his own time"--a literature necessary to the +Stratford lad, for his fictitious reputation's sake, since the +writer of his Works would begin to use it wholesale and in a most +masterly way before the lad was hardly more than out of his teens +and into his twenties. + +At fifteen Bacon was sent to the university, and he spent three +years there. Thence he went to Paris in the train of the English +Ambassador, and there he mingled daily with the wise, the cultured, +the great, and the aristocracy of fashion, during another three +years. A total of six years spent at the sources of knowledge; +knowledge both of books and of men. The three spent at the +university were coeval with the second and last three spent by the +little Stratford lad at Stratford school supposedly, and +perhapsedly, and maybe, and by inference--with nothing to infer +from. The second three of the Baconian six were "presumably" spent +by the Stratford lad as apprentice to a butcher. That is, the +thugs presume it--on no evidence of any kind. Which is their way, +when they want a historical fact. Fact and presumption are, for +business purposes, all the same to them. They know the difference, +but they also know how to blink it. They know, too, that while in +history-building a fact is better than a presumption, it doesn't +take a presumption long to bloom into a fact when THEY have the +handling of it. They know by old experience that when they get +hold of a presumption-tadpole he is not going to STAY tadpole in +their history-tank; no, they know how to develop him into the giant +four-legged bullfrog of FACT, and make him sit up on his hams, and +puff out his chin, and look important and insolent and come-to- +stay; and assert his genuine simon-pure authenticity with a +thundering bellow that will convince everybody because it is so +loud. The thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty persons +where reasoning convinces but one. I wouldn't be a thug, not even +if--but never mind about that, it has nothing to do with the +argument, and it is not noble in spirit besides. If I am better +than a thug, is the merit mine? No, it is His. Then to Him be the +praise. That is the right spirit. + +They "presume" the lad severed his "presumed" connection with the +Stratford school to become apprentice to a butcher. They also +"presume" that the butcher was his father. They don't know. There +is no written record of it, nor any other actual evidence. If it +would have helped their case any, they would have apprenticed him +to thirty butchers, to fifty butchers, to a wilderness of butchers- +-all by their patented method "presumption." If it will help their +case they will do it yet; and if it will further help it, they will +"presume" that all those butchers were his father. And the week +after, they will SAY it. Why, it is just like being the past tense +of the compound reflexive adverbial incandescent hypodermic +irregular accusative Noun of Multitude; which is father to the +expression which the grammarians call Verb. It is like a whole +ancestry, with only one posterity. + +To resume. Next, the young Bacon took up the study of law, and +mastered that abstruse science. From that day to the end of his +life he was daily in close contact with lawyers and judges; not as +a casual onlooker in intervals between holding horses in front of a +theatre, but as a practicing lawyer--a great and successful one, a +renowned one, a Launcelot of the bar, the most formidable lance in +the high brotherhood of the legal Table Round; he lived in the +law's atmosphere thenceforth, all his years, and by sheer ability +forced his way up its difficult steeps to its supremest summit, the +Lord Chancellorship, leaving behind him no fellow craftsman +qualified to challenge his divine right to that majestic place. + +When we read the praises bestowed by Lord Penzance and the other +illustrious experts upon the legal condition and legal aptnesses, +brilliances, profundities and felicities so prodigally displayed in +the Plays, and try to fit them to the history-less Stratford stage- +manager, they sound wild, strange, incredible, ludicrous; but when +we put them in the mouth of Bacon they do not sound strange, they +seem in their natural and rightful place, they seem at home there. +Please turn back and read them again. Attributed to Shakespeare of +Stratford they are meaningless, they are inebriate extravagancies-- +intemperate admirations of the dark side of the moon, so to speak; +attributed to Bacon, they are admirations of the golden glories of +the moon's front side, the moon at the full--and not intemperate, +not overwrought, but sane and right, and justified. "At every turn +and point at which the author required a metaphor, simile or +illustration, his mind ever turned FIRST to the law; he seems +almost to have THOUGHT in legal phrases; the commonest legal +phrases, the commonest of legal expressions were ever at the end of +his pen." That could happen to no one but a person whose TRADE was +the law; it could not happen to a dabbler in it. Veteran mariners +fill their conversation with sailor-phrases and draw all their +similes from the ship and the sea and the storm, but no mere +PASSENGER ever does it, be he of Stratford or elsewhere; or could +do it with anything resembling accuracy, if he were hardy enough to +try. Please read again what Lord Campbell and the other great +authorities have said about Bacon when they thought they were +saying it about Shakespeare of Stratford. + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +The Rest of the Equipment + +The author of the Plays was equipped, beyond every other man of his +time, with wisdom, erudition, imagination, capaciousness of mind, +grace and majesty of expression. Every one has said it, no one +doubts it. Also, he had humor, humor in rich abundance, and always +wanting to break out. We have no evidence of any kind that +Shakespeare of Stratford possessed any of these gifts or any of +these acquirements. The only lines he ever wrote, so far as we +know, are substantially barren of them--barren of all of them. + + +Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare +To digg the dust encloased heare: +Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones +And curst be he yt moves my bones. + + +Ben Jonson says of Bacon, as orator: + + +His language, WHERE HE COULD SPARE AND PASS BY A JEST, was nobly +censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more +weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he +uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his (its) own +graces . . . The fear of every man that heard him was lest he +should make an end. + + +From Macaulay: + + +He continued to distinguish himself in Parliament, particularly by +his exertions in favor of one excellent measure on which the King's +heart was set--the union of England and Scotland. It was not +difficult for such an intellect to discover many irresistible +arguments in favor of such a scheme. He conducted the great case +of the Post Nati in the Exchequer Chamber; and the decision of the +judges--a decision the legality of which may be questioned, but the +beneficial effect of which must be acknowledged--was in a great +measure attributed to his dexterous management. + + +Again: + + +While actively engaged in the House of Commons and in the courts of +law, he still found leisure for letters and philosophy. The noble +treatise on the Advancement of Learning, which at a later period +was expanded into the De Augmentis, appeared in 1605 + +The Wisdom of the Ancients, a work which if it had proceeded from +any other writer would have been considered as a masterpiece of wit +and learning, was printed in 1609. + +In the meantime the Novum Organum was slowly proceeding. Several +distinguished men of learning had been permitted to see portions of +that extraordinary book, and they spoke with the greatest +admiration of his genius. + +Even Sir Thomas Bodley, after perusing the Cogitata et Visa, one of +the most precious of those scattered leaves out of which the great +oracular volume was afterward made up, acknowledged that "in all +proposals and plots in that book, Bacon showed himself a master +workman"; and that "it could not be gainsaid but all the treatise +over did abound with choice conceits of the present state of +learning, and with worthy contemplations of the means to procure +it." + +In 1612 a new edition of the Essays appeared, with additions +surpassing the original collection both in bulk and quality. + +Nor did these pursuits distract Bacon's attention from a work the +most arduous, the most glorious, and the most useful that even his +mighty powers could have achieved, "the reducing and recompiling," +to use his own phrase, "of the laws of England." + +To serve the exacting and laborious offices of Attorney General and +Solicitor General would have satisfied the appetite of any other +man for hard work, but Bacon had to add the vast literary +industries just described, to satisfy his. He was a born worker. + + +The service which he rendered to letters during the last five years +of his life, amid ten thousand distractions and vexations, increase +the regret with which we think on the many years which he had +wasted, to use the words of Sir Thomas Bodley, "on such study as +was not worthy such a student." + +He commenced a digest of the laws of England, a History of England +under the Princes of the House of Tudor, a body of National +History, a Philosophical Romance. He made extensive and valuable +additions to his Essays. He published the inestimable Treatise De +Argumentis Scientiarum. + + +Did these labors of Hercules fill up his time to his contentment, +and quiet his appetite for work? Not entirely: + + +The trifles with which he amused himself in hours of pain and +languor bore the mark of his mind. THE BEST JESTBOOK IN THE WORLD +is that which he dictated from memory, without referring to any +book, on a day on which illness had rendered him incapable of +serious study. + + +Here are some scattered remarks (from Macaulay) which throw light +upon Bacon, and seem to indicate--and maybe demonstrate--that he +was competent to write the Plays and Poems: + + +With great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude of +comprehension such as has never yet been vouchsafed to any other +human being. + +The "Essays" contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of +character, no peculiarity in the ordering of a house, a garden or a +court-masque, could escape the notice of one whose mind was capable +of taking in the whole world of knowledge. + + +His understanding resembled the tent which the fairy Paribanou gave +to Prince Ahmed: fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a +lady; spread it, and the armies of powerful Sultans might repose +beneath its shade. + + +The knowledge in which Bacon excelled all men was a knowledge of +the mutual relations of all departments of knowledge. + + +In a letter written when he was only thirty-one, to his uncle, Lord +Burleigh, he said, "I have taken all knowledge to be my province." + + +Though Bacon did not arm his philosophy with the weapons of logic, +he adorned her profusely with all the richest decorations of +rhetoric. + + +The practical faculty was powerful in Bacon; but not, like his wit, +so powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of his reason, and +to tyrannize over the whole man. + + +There are too many places in the Plays where this happens. Poor +old dying John of Gaunt volleying second-rate puns at his own name, +is a pathetic instance of it. "We may assume" that it is Bacon's +fault, but the Stratford Shakespeare has to bear the blame. + +No imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly +subjugated. It stopped at the first check from good sense. + + +In truth much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world--amid +things as strange as any that are described in the "Arabian Tales" +. . . amid buildings more sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin, +fountains more wonderful than the golden water of Parizade, +conveyances more rapid than the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more +formidable than the lance of Astolfo, remedies more efficacious +than the balsam of Fierabras. Yet in his magnificent day-dreams +there was nothing wild--nothing but what sober reason sanctioned. + + +Bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the Novum Organum +. . . Every part of it blazes with wit, but with wit which is +employed only to illustrate and decorate truth. No book ever made +so great a revolution in the mode of thinking, overthrew so many +prejudices, introduced so many new opinions. + +But what we most admire is the vast capacity of that intellect +which, without effort, takes in at once all the domains of science- +-all the past, the present and the future, all the errors of two +thousand years, all the encouraging signs of the passing times, all +the bright hopes of the coming age. + + +He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close and rendering +it portable. + + +His eloquence would alone have entitled him to a high rank in +literature. + + +It is evident that he had each and every one of the mental gifts +and each and every one of the acquirements that are so prodigally +displayed in the Plays and Poems, and in much higher and richer +degree than any other man of his time or of any previous time. He +was a genius without a mate, a prodigy not matable. There was only +one of him; the planet could not produce two of him at one birth, +nor in one age. He could have written anything that is in the +Plays and Poems. He could have written this: + + +The cloud-cap'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, +The solemn temples, the great globe itself, +Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, +And, like an insubstantial pageant faded, +Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff +As dreams are made on, and our little life +Is rounded with a sleep. + + +Also, he could have written this, but he refrained: + + +Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare +To digg the dust encloased heare: +Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones +And curst be ye yt moves my bones. + + +When a person reads the noble verses about the cloud-cap'd towers, +he ought not to follow it immediately with Good friend for Iesus +sake forbeare, because he will find the transition from great +poetry to poor prose too violent for comfort. It will give him a +shock. You never notice how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is, +until you bite into a layer of it in a pie. + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +Am I trying to convince anybody that Shakespeare did not write +Shakespeare's Works? Ah, now, what do you take me for? Would I be +so soft as that, after having known the human race familiarly for +nearly seventy-four years? It would grieve me to know that any one +could think so injuriously of me, so uncomplimentarily, so +unadmiringly of me. No-no, I am aware that when even the brightest +mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a +superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, +in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and +conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem +to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if +I could do it myself. We always get at second hand our notions +about systems of government; and high-tariff and low-tariff; and +prohibition and anti-prohibition; and the holiness of peace and the +glories of war; and codes of honor and codes of morals; and +approval of the duel and disapproval of it; and our beliefs +concerning the nature of cats; and our ideas as to whether the +murder of helpless wild animals is base or is heroic; and our +preferences in the matter of religious and political parties; and +our acceptance or rejection of the Shakespeares and the Arthur +Ortons and the Mrs. Eddys. We get them all at second-hand, we +reason none of them out for ourselves. It is the way we are made. +It is the way we are all made, and we can't help it, we can't +change it. And whenever we have been furnished a fetish, and have +been taught to believe in it, and love it and worship it, and +refrain from examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear +and strong, that can persuade us to withdraw from it our loyalty +and our devotion. In morals, conduct, and beliefs we take the +color of our environment and associations, and it is a color that +can safely be warranted to wash. Whenever we have been furnished +with a tar baby ostensibly stuffed with jewels, and warned that it +will be dishonorable and irreverent to disembowel it and test the +jewels, we keep our sacrilegious hands off it. We submit, not +reluctantly, but rather gladly, for we are privately afraid we +should find, upon examination, that the jewels are of the sort that +are manufactured at North Adams, Mass. + +I haven't any idea that Shakespeare will have to vacate his +pedestal this side of the year 2209. Disbelief in him cannot come +swiftly, disbelief in a healthy and deeply-loved tar baby has never +been known to disintegrate swiftly, it is a very slow process. It +took several thousand years to convince our fine race--including +every splendid intellect in it--that there is no such thing as a +witch; it has taken several thousand years to convince that same +fine race--including every splendid intellect in it--that there is +no such person as Satan; it has taken several centuries to remove +perdition from the Protestant Church's program of postmortem +entertainments; it has taken a weary long time to persuade American +Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to bear it the +best they can; and it looks as if their Scotch brethren will still +be burning babies in the everlasting fires when Shakespeare comes +down from his perch. + +We are The Reasoning Race. We can't prove it by the above +examples, and we can't prove it by the miraculous "histories" built +by those Stratfordolaters out of a hatful of rags and a barrel of +sawdust, but there is a plenty of other things we can prove it by, +if I could think of them. We are The Reasoning Race, and when we +find a vague file of chipmunk-tracks stringing through the dust of +Stratford village, we know by our reasoning powers that Hercules +has been along there. I feel that our fetish is safe for three +centuries yet. The bust, too--there in the Stratford Church. The +precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm bust, the serene bust, +the emotionless bust, with the dandy moustache, and the putty face, +unseamed of care--that face which has looked passionlessly down +upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty years and will still +look down upon the awed pilgrim three hundred more, with the deep, +deep, deep, subtle, subtle, subtle, expression of a bladder. + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +Irreverence + +One of the most trying defects which I find in these--these--what +shall I call them? for I will not apply injurious epithets to them, +the way they do to us, such violations of courtesy being repugnant +to my nature and my dignity. The furthest I can go in that +direction is to call them by names of limited reverence--names +merely descriptive, never unkind, never offensive, never tainted by +harsh feeling. If THEY would do like this, they would feel better +in their hearts. Very well, then--to proceed. One of the most +trying defects which I find in these Stratfordolaters, these +Shakesperoids, these thugs, these bangalores, these troglodytes, +these herumfrodites, these blatherskites, these buccaneers, these +bandoleers, is their spirit of irreverence. It is detectable in +every utterance of theirs when they are talking about us. I am +thankful that in me there is nothing of that spirit. When a thing +is sacred to me it is impossible for me to be irreverent toward it. +I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been +irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other +people. Am I in the right? I think so. But I ask no one to take +my unsupported word; no, look at the dictionary; let the dictionary +decide. Here is the definition: + + +Irreverence. The quality or condition of irreverence toward God +and sacred things. + + +What does the Hindu say? He says it is correct. He says +irreverence is lack of respect for Vishnu, and Brahma, and +Chrishna, and his other gods, and for his sacred cattle, and for +his temples and the things within them. He endorses the +definition, you see; and there are 300,000,000 Hindus or their +equivalents back of him. + +The dictionary had the acute idea that by using the capital G it +could restrict irreverence to lack of reverence for OUR Deity and +our sacred things, but that ingenious and rather sly idea +miscarried: for by the simple process of spelling HIS deities with +capitals the Hindu confiscates the definition and restricts it to +his own sects, thus making it clearly compulsory upon us to revere +HIS gods and HIS sacred things, and nobody's else. We can't say a +word, for he has our own dictionary at his back, and its decision +is final. + +This law, reduced to its simplest terms, is this: 1. Whatever is +sacred to the Christian must be held in reverence by everybody +else; 2, whatever is sacred to the Hindu must be held in reverence +by everybody else; 3, therefore, by consequence, logically, and +indisputably, whatever is sacred to ME must be held in reverence by +everybody else. + +Now then, what aggravates me is, that these troglodytes and +muscovites and bandoleers and buccaneers are ALSO trying to crowd +in and share the benefit of the law, and compel everybody to revere +their Shakespeare and hold him sacred. We can't have that: +there's enough of us already. If you go on widening and spreading +and inflating the privilege, it will presently come to be conceded +that each man's sacred things are the ONLY ones, and the rest of +the human race will have to be humbly reverent toward them or +suffer for it. That can surely happen, and when it happens, the +word Irreverence will be regarded as the most meaningless, and +foolish, and self-conceited, and insolent, and impudent and +dictatorial word in the language. And people will say, "Whose +business is it, what gods I worship and what things hold sacred? +Who has the right to dictate to my conscience, and where did he get +that right?" + +We cannot afford to let that calamity come upon us. We must save +the word from this destruction. There is but one way to do it, and +that is, to stop the spread of the privilege, and strictly confine +it to its present limits: that is, to all the Christian sects, to +all the Hindu sects, and me. We do not need any more, the stock is +watered enough, just as it is. + +It would be better if the privilege were limited to me alone. I +think so because I am the only sect that knows how to employ it +gently, kindly, charitably, dispassionately. The other sects lack +the quality of self-restraint. The Catholic Church says the most +irreverent things about matters which are sacred to the +Protestants, and the Protestant Church retorts in kind about the +confessional and other matters which Catholics hold sacred; then +both of these irreverencers turn upon Thomas Paine and charge HIM +with irreverence. This is all unfortunate, because it makes it +difficult for students equipped with only a low grade of mentality +to find out what Irreverence really IS. + +It will surely be much better all around if the privilege of +regulating the irreverent and keeping them in order shall +eventually be withdrawn from all the sects but me. Then there will +be no more quarrelling, no more bandying of disrespectful epithets, +no more heart burnings. + +There will then be nothing sacred involved in this Bacon- +Shakespeare controversy except what is sacred to me. That will +simplify the whole matter, and trouble will cease. There will be +irreverence no longer, because I will not allow it. The first time +those criminals charge me with irreverence for calling their +Stratford myth an Arthur-Orton-Mary-Baker-Thompson-Eddy-Louis-the- +Seventeenth-Veiled-Prophet-of-Khorassan will be the last. Taught +by the methods found effective in extinguishing earlier offenders +by the Inquisition, of holy memory, I shall know how to quiet them. + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +Isn't it odd, when you think of it: that you may list all the +celebrated Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen of modern times, +clear back to the first Tudors--a list containing five hundred +names, shall we say?--and you can go to the histories, biographies +and cyclopedias and learn the particulars of the lives of every one +of them. Every one of them except one--the most famous, the most +renowned--by far the most illustrious of them all--Shakespeare! +You can get the details of the lives of all the celebrated +ecclesiastics in the list; all the celebrated tragedians, +comedians, singers, dancers, orators, judges, lawyers, poets, +dramatists, historians, biographers, editors, inventors, reformers, +statesmen, generals, admirals, discoverers, prize-fighters, +murderers, pirates, conspirators, horse-jockeys, bunco-steerers, +misers, swindlers, explorers, adventurers by land and sea, bankers, +financiers, astronomers, naturalists, Claimants, impostors, +chemists, biologists, geologists, philologists, college presidents +and professors, architects, engineers, painters, sculptors, +politicians, agitators, rebels, revolutionists, patriots, +demagogues, clowns, cooks, freaks, philosophers, burglars, +highwaymen, journalists, physicians, surgeons--you can get the +life-histories of all of them but ONE. Just one--the most +extraordinary and the most celebrated of them all--Shakespeare! + +You may add to the list the thousand celebrated persons furnished +by the rest of Christendom in the past four centuries, and you can +find out the life-histories of all those people, too. You will +then have listed 1500 celebrities, and you can trace the authentic +life-histories of the whole of them. Save one--far and away the +most colossal prodigy of the entire accumulation--Shakespeare! +About him you can find out NOTHING. Nothing of even the slightest +importance. Nothing worth the trouble of stowing away in your +memory. Nothing that even remotely indicates that he was ever +anything more than a distinctly common-place person--a manager, an +actor of inferior grade, a small trader in a small village that did +not regard him as a person of any consequence, and had forgotten +all about him before he was fairly cold in his grave. We can go to +the records and find out the life-history of every renowned RACE- +HORSE of modern times--but not Shakespeare's! There are many +reasons why, and they have been furnished in cartloads (of guess +and conjecture) by those troglodytes; but there is one that is +worth all the rest of the reasons put together, and is abundantly +sufficient all by itself--HE HADN'T ANY HISTORY TO RECORD. There +is no way of getting around that deadly fact. And no sane way has +yet been discovered of getting around its formidable significance. + +Its quite plain significance--to any but those thugs (I do not use +the term unkindly) is, that Shakespeare had no prominence while he +lived, and none until he had been dead two or three generations. +The Plays enjoyed high fame from the beginning; and if he wrote +them it seems a pity the world did not find it out. He ought to +have explained that he was the author, and not merely a nom de +plume for another man to hide behind. If he had been less +intemperately solicitous about his bones, and more solicitous about +his Works, it would have been better for his good name, and a +kindness to us. The bones were not important. They will moulder +away, they will turn to dust, but the Works will endure until the +last sun goes down. + +MARK TWAIN. + + +P.S. March 25. About two months ago I was illuminating this +Autobiography with some notions of mine concerning the Bacon- +Shakespeare controversy, and I then took occasion to air the +opinion that the Stratford Shakespeare was a person of no public +consequence or celebrity during his lifetime, but was utterly +obscure and unimportant. And not only in great London, but also in +the little village where he was born, where he lived a quarter of a +century, and where he died and was buried. I argued that if he had +been a person of any note at all, aged villagers would have had +much to tell about him many and many a year after his death, +instead of being unable to furnish inquirers a single fact +connected with him. I believed, and I still believe, that if he +had been famous, his notoriety would have lasted as long as mine +has lasted in my native village out in Missouri. It is a good +argument, a prodigiously strong one, and a most formidable one for +even the most gifted, and ingenious, and plausible Stratfordolater +to get around or explain away. To-day a Hannibal Courier-Post of +recent date has reached me, with an article in it which reinforces +my contention that a really celebrated person cannot be forgotten +in his village in the short space of sixty years. I will make an +extract from it: + + +Hannibal, as a city, may have many sins to answer for, but +ingratitude is not one of them, or reverence for the great men she +has produced, and as the years go by her greatest son Mark Twain, +or S. L. Clemens as a few of the unlettered call him, grows in the +estimation and regard of the residents of the town he made famous +and the town that made him famous. His name is associated with +every old building that is torn down to make way for the modern +structures demanded by a rapidly growing city, and with every hill +or cave over or through which he might by any possibility have +roamed, while the many points of interest which he wove into his +stories, such as Holiday Hill, Jackson's Island, or Mark Twain +Cave, are now monuments to his genius. Hannibal is glad of any +opportunity to do him honor as he has honored her. + +So it has happened that the "old timers" who went to school with +Mark or were with him on some of his usual escapades have been +honored with large audiences whenever they were in a reminiscent +mood and condescended to tell of their intimacy with the ordinary +boy who came to be a very extraordinary humorist and whose every +boyish act is now seen to have been indicative of what was to come. +Like Aunt Beckey and Mrs. Clemens, they can now see that Mark was +hardly appreciated when he lived here and that the things he did as +a boy and was whipped for doing were not all bad after all. So +they have been in no hesitancy about drawing out the bad things he +did as well as the good in their efforts to get a "Mark Twain +story," all incidents being viewed in the light of his present +fame, until the volume of "Twainiana" is already considerable and +growing in proportion as the "old timers" drop away and the stories +are retold second and third hand by their descendants. With some +seventy-three years young and living in a villa instead of a house +he is a fair target, and let him incorporate, copyright, or patent +himself as he will, there are some of his "works" that will go +swooping up Hannibal chimneys as long as gray-beards gather about +the fires and begin with "I've heard father tell" or possibly "Once +when I." + + +The Mrs. Clemens referred to is my mother--WAS my mother. + +And here is another extract from a Hannibal paper. Of date twenty +days ago: + + +Miss Becca Blankenship died at the home of William Dickason, 408 +Rock Street, at 2.30 o'clock yesterday afternoon, aged 72 years. +The deceased was a sister of "Huckleberry Finn," one of the famous +characters in Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer. She had been a member of +the Dickason family--the housekeeper--for nearly forty-five years, +and was a highly respected lady. For the past eight years she had +been an invalid, but was as well cared for by Mr. Dickason and his +family as if she had been a near relative. She was a member of the +Park Methodist Church and a Christian woman. + + +I remember her well. I have a picture of her in my mind which was +graven there, clear and sharp and vivid, sixty-three years ago. +She was at that time nine years old, and I was about eleven. I +remember where she stood, and how she looked; and I can still see +her bare feet, her bare head, her brown face, and her short tow- +linen frock. She was crying. What it was about, I have long ago +forgotten. But it was the tears that preserved the picture for me, +no doubt. She was a good child, I can say that for her. She knew +me nearly seventy years ago. Did she forget me, in the course of +time? I think not. If she had lived in Stratford in Shakespeare's +time, would she have forgotten him? Yes. For he was never famous +during his lifetime, he was utterly obscure in Stratford, and there +wouldn't be any occasion to remember him after he had been dead a +week. + +"Injun Joe," "Jimmy Finn," and "General Gaines" were prominent and +very intemperate ne'er-do-weels in Hannibal two generations ago. +Plenty of gray-heads there remember them to this day, and can tell +you about them. Isn't it curious that two "town-drunkards" and one +half-breed loafer should leave behind them, in a remote Missourian +village, a fame a hundred times greater and several hundred times +more particularized in the matter of definite facts than +Shakespeare left behind him in the village where he had lived the +half of his lifetime? + +MARK TWAIN. + + + +Footnotes: + +{1} Four fathoms--twenty-four feet. + +{2} From chapter XIII of "The Shakespeare Problem Restated." + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg eText Is Shakespeare Dead? +
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/old/shkdd10.zip b/old/shkdd10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..22c1eb9 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/shkdd10.zip |