_ III
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 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 downer 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 theater-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 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 meager 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. _