“Perhaps,” I said, “Shakespeare was the Belasoo of that day--the
managerial genius, unable to write plays himself, but with the supreme
gift of making effective drama from the plays of others. In that case it
is not unlikely that the plays would be known as Shakespeare's. Even
in this day John Luther Long's 'Madam Butterfly' is sometimes called
Belasco's play; though it is doubtful if Belasco ever wrote a line of
it.”
He considered this view, but not very favorably. The Booth book was at
this time a secret, and he had not told me anything concerning it;
but he had it in his mind when he said, with an air of the greatest
conviction:
“I know that Shakespeare did not write those plays, and I have reason to
believe he did not touch the text in any way.”
“How can you be so positive?” I asked.
He replied:
“I have private knowledge from a source that cannot be questioned.”
I now suspected that he was joking, and asked if he had been consulting
a spiritual medium; but he was clearly in earnest.
“It is the great discovery of the age,” he said, quite seriously. “The
world will soon ring with it. I wish I could tell you about it, but I
have passed my word. You will not have long to wait.”
I was going to sail for the Mediterranean in February, and I asked if it
would be likely that I would know this great secret before I sailed. He
thought not; but he said that more than likely the startling news would
be given to the world while I was on the water, and it might come to me
on the ship by wireless. I confess I was amazed and intensely curious by
this time. I conjectured the discovery of some document--some Bacon
or Shakespeare private paper which dispelled all the mystery of the
authorship. I hinted that he might write me a letter which I could open
on the ship; but he was firm in his refusal. He had passed his word, he
repeated, and the news might not be given out as soon as that; but he
assured me more than once that wherever I might be, in whatever remote
locality, it would come by cable, and the world would quake with it. I
was tempted to give up my trip, to be with him at Stormfield at the time
of the upheaval.
Naturally the Shakespeare theme was uppermost during the remaining days
that we were together. He had engaged another stenographer, and was now
dictating, forenoons, his own views on the subject--views coordinated
with those of Mr. Greenwood, whom he liberally quoted, but embellished
and decorated in his own gay manner. These were chapters for his
autobiography, he said, and I think he had then no intention of making
a book of them. I could not quite see why he should take all this
argumentary trouble if he had, as he said, positive evidence that Bacon,
and not Shakespeare, had written the plays. I thought the whole matter
very curious.
The Shakespeare interest had diverging by-paths. One evening, when we
were alone at dinner, he said:
“There is only one other illustrious man in history about whom there is
so little known,” and he added, “Jesus Christ.”
He reviewed the statements of the Gospels concerning Christ, though he
declared them to be mainly traditional and of no value. I agreed that
they contained confusing statements, and inflicted more or less with
justice and reason; but I said I thought there was truth in them, too.
“Why do you think so?” he asked.
“Because they contain matters that are self-evident--things eternally
and essentially just.”
“Then you make your own Bible?”
“Yes, from those materials combined with human reason.”
“Then it does not matter where the truth, as you call it, comes from?”
I admitted that the source did not matter; that truth from Shakespeare,
Epictetus, or Aristotle was quite as valuable as from the Scriptures. We
were on common ground now. He mentioned Marcus Aurelius, the Stoics, and
their blameless lives. I, still pursuing the thought of Jesus, asked:
“Do you not think it strange that in that day when Christ came,
admitting that there was a Christ, such a character could have come
at all--in the time of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, when all was
ceremony and unbelief?”
“I remember,” he said, “the Sadducees didn't believe in hell. He brought
them one.”
“Nor the resurrection. He brought them that, also.”
He did not admit that there had been a Christ with the character and
mission related by the Gospels.
“It is all a myth,” he said. “There have been Saviours in every age of
the world. It is all just a fairy tale, like the idea of Santa Claus.”
“But,” I argued, “even the spirit of Christmas is real when it is
genuine. Suppose that we admit there was no physical Saviour--that it is
only an idea--a spiritual embodiment which humanity has made for
itself and is willing to improve upon as its own spirituality improves,
wouldn't that make it worthy?”
“But then the fairy story of the atonement dissolves, and with it
crumbles the very foundations of any established church. You can create
your own Testament, your own Scripture, and your own Christ, but you've
got to give up your atonement.”
“As related to the crucifixion, yes, and good riddance to it; but the
death of the old order and the growth of spirituality comes to a sort of
atonement, doesn't it?”
He said:
“A conclusion like that has about as much to do with the Gospels and
Christianity as Shakespeare had to do with Bacon's plays. You are
preaching a doctrine that would have sent a man to the stake a few
centuries ago. I have preached that in my own Gospel.”
I remembered then, and realized that, by my own clumsy ladder, I had
merely mounted from dogma, and superstition to his platform of training
the ideals to a higher contentment of soul.