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.