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 Author 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 the 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 post-mortem 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 bowers 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 mustache,
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.