"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."