Is Shakespeare Dead? — Chapters 4 and 5

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_."