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.