Is Shakespeare Dead? From My Autobiography

CHAPTER V – “We May Assume”

In the Assuming trade three separate and independent cults are transacting business. Two of these cults are known as the Shakespearites and the Baconians, and I am the other one – the Brontosaurian.

The Shakespearite knows that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s Works; the Baconian knows that Francis Bacon wrote them; the Brontosaurian doesn’t really know which of them did it, but is quite composedly and contentedly sure that Shakespeare

didn’t

, and strongly suspects that Bacon

did

. We all have to do a good deal of assuming, but I am fairly certain that in every case I can call to mind the Baconian assumers have come out ahead of the Shakespearites. Both parties handle the same materials, but the Baconians seem to me to get much more reasonable and rational and persuasive results out of them than is the case with the Shakespearites. The Shakespearite conducts his assuming upon a definite principle, an unchanging and immutable law – which is: 2 and 8 and 7 and 14, added together, make 165. I believe this to be an error. No matter, you cannot get a habit-sodden Shakespearite to cipher-up his materials upon any other basis. With the Baconian it is different. If you place before him the above figures and set him to adding them up, he will never in any case get more than 45 out of them, and in nine cases out of ten he will get just the proper 31.

Let me try to illustrate the two systems in a simple and homely way calculated to bring the idea within the grasp of the ignorant and unintelligent. We will suppose a case: take a lap-bred, house-fed, uneducated, inexperienced kitten; take a rugged old Tom that’s scarred from stem to rudder-post with the memorials of strenuous experience, and is so cultured, so educated, so limitlessly erudite that one may say of him “all cat-knowledge is his province”; also, take a mouse. Lock the three up in a holeless, crackless, exitless prison-cell. Wait half an hour, then open the cell, introduce a Shakespearite and a Baconian, and let them cipher and assume. The mouse is missing: the question to be decided is, where is it? You can guess both verdicts beforehand. One verdict will say the kitten contains the mouse; the other will as certainly say the mouse is in the tomcat.

The Shakespearite will Reason like this – (that is not my word, it is his). He will say the kitten

may have been

 attending school when nobody was noticing; therefore

we are warranted in assuming

 that it did so; also, it

could have been

 training in a court-clerk’s office when no one was noticing; since that could have happened,

we are justified in assuming

 that it did happen; it

could have studied catology in a garret

 when no one was noticing – therefore it

did

; it

could have

 attended cat-assizes on the shed-roof nights, for recreation, when no one was noticing, and harvested a knowledge of cat court-forms and cat lawyer-talk in that way: it

could

 have done it, therefore without a doubt it did; it could have gone soldiering with a war-tribe when no one was noticing, and learned soldier-wiles and soldier-ways, and what to do with a mouse when opportunity offers; the plain inference, therefore is, that that is what it

did

. Since all these manifold things

could

 have occurred, we have

every right to believe

 they did occur. These patiently and painstakingly accumulated vast acquirements and competences needed but one thing more – opportunity – to convert themselves into triumphant action. The opportunity came, we have the result;

beyond shadow of question

 the mouse is in the kitten.

It is proper to remark that when we of the three cults plant a “

We think we may assume

,” we expect it, under careful watering and fertilizing and tending, to grow up into a strong and hardy and weather-defying “

there isn’t a shadow of a doubt

” at last – and it usually happens.

We know what the Baconian’s verdict would be: “

There is not a rag of evidence that the kitten has had any training

,

any education

,

any experience qualifying it for the present occasion

,

or is indeed equipped for any achievement above lifting such unclaimed milk as comes its way

;

but there is abundant evidence

—

unassailable proof

,

in fact

—

that the other animal is equipped

,

to the last detail

,

with every qualification necessary for the event

.

Without shadow of doubt the tomcat contains the mouse

.”

CHAPTER VI

When Shakespeare died, in 1616, great literary productions attributed to him as author had been before the London world and in high favor for twenty-four years. Yet his death was not an event. It made no stir, it attracted no attention. Apparently his eminent literary contemporaries did not realize that a celebrated poet had passed from their midst. Perhaps they knew a play-actor of minor rank had disappeared, but did not regard him as the author of his Works. “We are justified in assuming” this.

His death was not even an event in the little town of Stratford. Does this mean that in Stratford he was not regarded as a celebrity of

any

 kind?

“We are privileged to assume” – no, we are indeed

obliged

 to assume – that such was the case. He had spent the first twenty-two or twenty-three years of his life there, and of course knew everybody and was known by everybody of that day in the town, including the dogs and the cats and the horses. He had spent the last five or six years of his life there, diligently trading in every big and little thing that had money in it; so we are compelled to assume that many of the folk there in those said latter days knew him personally, and the rest by sight and hearsay. But not as a

celebrity

? Apparently not. For everybody soon forgot to remember any contact with him or any incident connected with him. The dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him or known about him in the first twenty-three years of his life were in the same unremembering condition: if they knew of any incident connected with that period of his life they didn’t tell about it. Would they if they had been asked? It is most likely. Were they asked? It is pretty apparent that they were not. Why weren’t they? It is a very plausible guess that nobody there or elsewhere was interested to know.

For seven years after Shakespeare’s death nobody seems to have been interested in him. Then the quarto was published, and Ben Jonson awoke out of his long indifference and sang a song of praise and put it in the front of the book. Then silence fell

again

.

For sixty years. Then inquiries into Shakespeare’s Stratford life began to be made, of Stratfordians. Of Stratfordians who had known Shakespeare or had seen him? No. Then of Stratfordians who had seen people who had known or seen people who had seen Shakespeare? No. Apparently the inquiries were only made of Stratfordians who were not Stratfordians of Shakespeare’s day, but later comers; and what they had learned had come to them from persons who had not seen Shakespeare; and what they had learned was not claimed as

fact

, but only as legend – dim and fading and indefinite legend; legend of the calf-slaughtering rank, and not worth remembering either as history or fiction.

Has it ever happened before – or since – that a celebrated person who had spent exactly half of a fairly long life in the village where he was born and reared, was able to slip out of this world and leave that village voiceless and gossipless behind him – utterly voiceless, utterly gossipless? And permanently so? I don’t believe it has happened in any case except Shakespeare’s. And couldn’t and wouldn’t have happened in his case if he had been regarded as a celebrity at the time of his death.

When I examine my own case – but let us do that, and see if it will not be recognizable as exhibiting a condition of things quite likely to result, most likely to result, indeed substantially

sure

 to result in the case of a celebrated person, a benefactor of the human race. Like me.

My parents brought me to the village of Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi, when I was two and a half years old. I entered school at five years of age, and drifted from one school to another in the village during nine and a half years. Then my father died, leaving his family in exceedingly straitened circumstances; wherefore my book-education came to a standstill forever, and I became a printer’s apprentice, on board and clothes, and when the clothes failed I got a hymn-book in place of them. This for summer wear, probably. I lived in Hannibal fifteen and a half years, altogether, then ran away, according to the custom of persons who are intending to become celebrated. I never lived there afterward. Four years later I became a “cub” on a Mississippi steamboat in the St. Louis and New Orleans trade, and after a year and a half of hard study and hard work the U. S. inspectors rigorously examined me through a couple of long sittings and decided that I knew every inch of the Mississippi – thirteen hundred miles – in the dark and in the day – as well as a baby knows the way to its mother’s paps day or night. So they licensed me as a pilot – knighted me, so to speak – and I rose up clothed with authority, a responsible servant of the United States government.

Now then. Shakespeare died young – he was only fifty-two. He had lived in his native village twenty-six years, or about that. He died celebrated (if you believe everything you read in the books). Yet when he died nobody there or elsewhere took any notice of it; and for sixty years afterward no townsman remembered to say anything about him or about his life in Stratford. When the inquirer came at last he got but one fact – no,

legend

– and got that one at second hand, from a person who had only heard it as a rumor, and didn’t claim copyright in it as a production of his own. He couldn’t, very well, for its date antedated his own birth-date. But necessarily a number of persons were still alive in Stratford who, in the days of their youth, had seen Shakespeare nearly every day in the last five years of his life, and they would have been able to tell that inquirer some first-hand things about him if he had in those last days been a celebrity and therefore a person of interest to the villagers. Why did not the inquirer hunt them up and interview them? Wasn’t it worth while? Wasn’t the matter of sufficient consequence? Had the inquirer an engagement to see a dog-fight and couldn’t spare the time?

It all seems to mean that he never had any literary celebrity, there or elsewhere, and no considerable repute as actor and manager.

Now then, I am away along in life – my seventy-third year being already well behind me – yet

sixteen

 of my Hannibal schoolmates are still alive to-day, and can tell – and do tell – inquirers dozens and dozens of incidents of their young lives and mine together; things that happened to us in the morning of life, in the blossom of our youth, in the good days, the dear days, “the days when we went gipsying, a long time ago.” Most of them creditable to me, too. One child to whom I paid court when she was five years old and I eight still lives in Hannibal, and she visited me last summer, traversing the necessary ten or twelve hundred miles of railroad without damage to her patience or to her old-young vigor. Another little lassie to whom I paid attention in Hannibal when she was nine years old and I the same, is still alive – in London – and hale and hearty, just as I am. And on the few surviving steamboats – those lingering ghosts and remembrancers of great fleets that plied the big river in the beginning of my water-career – which is exactly as long ago as the whole invoice of the life-years of Shakespeare number – there are still findable two or three river-pilots who saw me do creditable things in those ancient days; and several white-headed engineers; and several roustabouts and mates; and several deck-hands who used to heave the lead for me and send up on the still night air the “six – feet —

scant

!” that made me shudder, and the “

M-a-r-k – twain

!” that took the shudder away, and presently the darling “By the d-e-e-p – four!” that lifted me to heaven for joy.

1

1

  Four fathoms – twenty-four feet.

 They know about me, and can tell. And so do printers, from St. Louis to New York; and so do newspaper reporters, from Nevada to San Francisco. And so do the police. If Shakespeare had really been celebrated, like me, Stratford could have told things about him; and if my experience goes for anything, they’d have done it.

CHAPTER VII

If I had under my superintendence a controversy appointed to decide whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare or not, I believe I would place before the debaters only the one question,

Was Shakespeare ever a practicing lawyer

? and leave everything else out.

It is maintained that the man who wrote the plays was not merely myriad-minded, but also myriad-accomplished: that he not only knew some thousands of things about human life in all its shades and grades, and about the hundred arts and trades and crafts and professions which men busy themselves in, but that he could

talk

 about the men and their grades and trades accurately, making no mistakes. Maybe it is so, but have the experts spoken, or is it only Tom, Dick, and Harry? Does the exhibit stand upon wide, and loose, and eloquent generalizing – which is not evidence, and not proof – or upon details, particulars, statistics, illustrations, demonstrations?

Experts of unchallengeable authority have testified definitely as to only one of Shakespeare’s multifarious craft-equipments, so far as my recollections of Shakespeare-Bacon talk abide with me – his law-equipment. I do not remember that Wellington or Napoleon ever examined Shakespeare’s battles and sieges and strategies, and then decided and established for good and all, that they were militarily flawless; I do not remember that any Nelson, or Drake or Cook ever examined his seamanship and said it showed profound and accurate familiarity with that art; I don’t remember that any king or prince or duke has ever testified that Shakespeare was letter-perfect in his handling of royal court-manners and the talk and manners of aristocracies; I don’t remember that any illustrious Latinist or Grecian or Frenchman or Spaniard or Italian has proclaimed him a past-master in those languages; I don’t remember – well, I don’t remember that there is

testimony

– great testimony – imposing testimony – unanswerable and unattackable testimony as to any of Shakespeare’s hundred specialties, except one – the law.

Other things change, with time, and the student cannot trace back with certainty the changes that various trades and their processes and technicalities have undergone in the long stretch of a century or two and find out what their processes and technicalities were in those early days, but with the law it is different: it is mile-stoned and documented all the way back, and the master of that wonderful trade, that complex and intricate trade, that awe-compelling trade, has competent ways of knowing whether Shakespeare-law is good law or not; and whether his law-court procedure is correct or not, and whether his legal shop-talk is the shop-talk of a veteran practitioner or only a machine-made counterfeit of it gathered from books and from occasional loiterings in Westminster.

Richard H. Dana served two years before the mast, and had every experience that falls to the lot of the sailor before the mast of our day. His sailor-talk flows from his pen with the sure touch and the ease and confidence of a person who has

lived

 what he is talking about, not gathered it from books and random listenings. Hear him:

Having hove short, cast off the gaskets, and made the bunt of each sail fast by the jigger, with a man on each yard, at the word the whole canvas of the ship was loosed, and with the greatest rapidity possible everything was sheeted home and hoisted up, the anchor tripped and cat-headed, and the ship under headway.

Again:

The royal yards were all crossed at once, and royals and sky-sails set, and, as we had the wind free, the booms were run out, and all were aloft, active as cats, laying out on the yards and booms, reeving the studding-sail gear; and sail after sail the captain piled upon her, until she was covered with canvas, her sails looking like a great white cloud resting upon a black speck.

Once more. A race in the Pacific:

Our antagonist was in her best trim. Being clear of the point, the breeze became stiff, and the royal-masts bent under our sails, but we would not take them in until we saw three boys spring into the rigging of the

California

; then they were all furled at once, but with orders to our boys to stay aloft at the top-gallant mast-heads and loose them again at the word. It was my duty to furl the fore-royal; and while standing by to loose it again, I had a fine view of the scene. From where I stood, the two vessels seemed nothing but spars and sails, while their narrow decks, far below, slanting over by the force of the wind aloft, appeared hardly capable of supporting the great fabrics raised upon them. The

California

 was to windward of us, and had every advantage; yet, while the breeze was stiff we held our own. As soon as it began to slacken she ranged a little ahead, and the order was given to loose the royals. In an instant the gaskets were off and the bunt dropped. “Sheet home the fore-royal!” – “Weather sheet’s home!” – “Lee sheet’s home!” – “Hoist away, sir!” is bawled from aloft. “Overhaul your clewlines!” shouts the mate. “Aye-aye, sir, all clear!” – “Taut leech! belay! Well the lee brace; haul taut to windward!” and the royals are set.

What would the captain of any sailing-vessel of our time say to that? He would say, “The man that wrote that didn’t learn his trade out of a book, he has

been

 there!” But would this same captain be competent to sit in judgment upon Shakespeare’s seamanship – considering the changes in ships and ship-talk that have necessarily taken place, unrecorded, unremembered, and lost to history in the last three hundred years? It is my conviction that Shakespeare’s sailor-talk would be Choctaw to him. For instance – from

The Tempest

:

Master

. Boatswain!

Boatswain

. Here, master; what cheer?

Master

. Good, speak to the mariners: fall to’t, yarely, or we run ourselves to ground; bestir, bestir!

(

Enter mariners

.)

Boatswain

. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master’s whistle.. Down with the topmast! yare! lower, lower! Bring her to try wi’ the main course.. Lay her a-hold, a-hold! Set her two courses. Off to sea again; lay her off.

That will do, for t