_ IV
Conjectures
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
returned 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 slaughtering 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 nor 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 tried 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-steeling, 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
wretched 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 Bering
Strait whale-fishery and the shop-talk of the veteran exercises
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 theaters, 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
traveled 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 mean time; and who studied the books in
the garret; and who frolicked 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
theaters, 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. _