Is Shakespeare Dead?.........................................................................................................................................1

Mark Twain ..............................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I .............................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER II ............................................................................................................................................4

CHAPTER III..........................................................................................................................................6

CHAPTER IV..........................................................................................................................................8

CHAPTER V.........................................................................................................................................11

CHAPTER VI........................................................................................................................................12

CHAPTER VII .......................................................................................................................................14

CHAPTER VIII.....................................................................................................................................17

CHAPTER IX........................................................................................................................................22

CHAPTER X.........................................................................................................................................24

CHAPTER XI........................................................................................................................................27

CHAPTER XII .......................................................................................................................................28

CHAPTER XIII.....................................................................................................................................29

Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished manuscript which constitute this formidable

Autobiography and Diary of mine, certain chapters will in some distant future be found which deal with

"Claimants"claimants historically notorious: Satan, Claimant; the Golden Calf, Claimant; the Veiled

Prophet of Khorassan, Claimant; Louis XVII., Claimant; William Shakespeare, Claimant; Arthur Orton,

Claimant; Mary Baker G. Eddy, Claimantand the rest of them. Eminent Claimants, successful Claimants,

defeated Claimants, royal Claimants, pleb Claimants, showy Claimants, shabby Claimants, revered

Claimants, despised Claimants, twinkle starlike here and there and yonder through the mists of history and

legend and traditionand oh, all the darling tribe are clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about

them with deep interest and discuss them with loving sympathy or with rancorous resentment, according to

which side we hitch ourselves to. It has always been so with the human race. There was never a Claimant that

couldn't get a hearing, nor one that couldn't accumulate a rapturous following, no matter how flimsy and

apparently unauthentic his claim might be. Arthur Orton's claim that he was the lost Tichborne baronet come

to life again was as flimsy as Mrs. Eddy's that she wrote Science and Health from the direct dictation of the

Deity; yet in England near forty years ago Orton had a huge army of devotees and incorrigible adherents,

many of whom remained stubbornly unconvinced after their fat god had been proven an impostor and jailed

as a perjurer, and today Mrs. Eddy's following is not only immense, but is daily augmenting in numbers and

enthusiasm. Orton had many fine and educated minds among his adherents, Mrs. Eddy has had the like

among hers from the beginning. Her church is as well equipped in those particulars as is any other church.

Claimants can always count upon a following, it doesn't matter who they are, nor what they claim, nor

whether they come with documents or without. It was always so. Down out of the longvanished past, across

the abyss of the ages, if you listen you can still hear the believing multitudes shouting for Perkin Warbeck

A friend has sent me a new book, from EnglandThe Shakespeare Problem Restatedwell restated and

closely reasoned; and my fifty years' interest in that matterasleep for the last three yearsis excited once

more. It is an interest which was born of Delia Bacon's bookaway back in that ancient day1857, or

maybe 1856. About a year later my pilotmaster, Bixby, transferred me from his own steamboat to the

Pennsylvania, and placed me under the orders and instructions of George Ealerdead now, these many,

many years. I steered for him a good many monthsas was the humble duty of the pilotapprentice: stood a

daylight watch and spun the wheel under the severe superintendence and correction of the master. He was a

prime chess player and an idolater of Shakespeare. He would play chess with anybody; even with me, and it

cost his official dignity something to do that. Alsoquite uninvitedhe would read Shakespeare to me; not

just casually, but by the hour, when it was his watch, and I was steering. He read well, but not profitably for

me, because he constantly injected commands into the text. That broke it all up, mixed it all up, tangled it all

upto that degree, in fact, that if we were in a risky and difficult piece of river an ignorant person couldn't

have told, sometimes, which observations were Shakespeare's and which were Ealer's. For instance:

Approach thou WHAT are you laying in the leads for? what a hell of an idea! like the rugged ease her off a

little, ease her off! rugged Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the THERE she goes! meet her, meet her!

didn't you KNOW she'd smell the reef if you crowded it like that? Hyrcan tiger; take any shape but that and

my firm nerves she'll be in the WOODS the first you know! stop the starboard! come ahead strong on the

larboard! back the starboard! . . . NOW then, you're all right; come ahead on the starboard; straighten up and

go 'long, never tremble: or be alive again, and dare me to the desert damnation can't you keep away from that

greasy water? pull her down! snatch her! snatch her baldheaded! with thy sword; if trembling I inhabit then,

lay in the leads!no, only the starboard one, leave the other alone, protest me the baby of a girl. Hence

horrible shadow! eight bellsthat watchman's asleep again, I reckon, go down and call Brown yourself,

He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy and tragic, but it was a damage to me,

because I have never since been able to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way. I cannot rid it of his

explosive interlardings, they break in everywhere with their irrelevant "What in hell are you up to NOW! pull

her down! more! MORE!there now, steady as you go," and the other disorganizing interruptions that were

always leaping from his mouth. When I read Shakespeare now, I can hear them as plainly as I did in that

longdeparted timefiftyone years ago. I never regarded Ealer's readings as educational. Indeed they were

His contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring that detail he was a good reader, I can say that

much for him. He did not use the book, and did not need to; he knew his Shakespeare as well as Euclid ever

Did he have something to saythis Shakespeareadoring Mississippi pilotanent Delia Bacon's book?

Yes. And he said it; said it all the time, for monthsin the morning watch, the middle watch, the dog watch;

and probably kept it going in his sleep. He bought the literature of the dispute as fast as it appeared, and we

discussed it all through thirteen hundred miles of river four times traversed in every thirtyfive daysthe

time required by that swift boat to achieve two round trips. We discussed, and discussed, and discussed, and

disputed and disputed and disputed; at any rate he did, and I got in a word now and then when he slipped a

cog and there was a vacancy. He did his arguing with heat, with energy, with violence; and I did mine with

the reserve and moderation of a subordinate who does not like to be flung out of a pilothouse that is perched

forty feet above the water. He was fiercely loyal to Shakespeare and cordially scornful of Bacon and of all the

pretensions of the Baconians. So was Iat first. And at first he was glad that that was my attitude. There

were even indications that he admired it; indications dimmed, it is true, by the distance that lay between the

lofty bosspilotical altitude and my lowly one, yet perceptible to me; perceptible, and translatable into a

complimentcompliment coming down from above the snowline and not well thawed in the transit, and

not likely to set anything afire, not even a cubpilot's selfconceit; still a detectable compliment, and

Naturally it flattered me into being more loyal to Shakespeareif possiblethan I was before, and more

prejudiced against Baconif possible than I was before. And so we discussed and discussed, both on the

same side, and were happy. For a while. Only for a while. Only for a very little while, a very, very, very little

A brighter person would have seen what the trouble was, earlier than I did, perhaps, but I saw it early enough

for all practical purposes. You see, he was of an argumentative disposition. Therefore it took him but a little

time to get tired of arguing with a person who agreed with everything he said and consequently never

furnished him a provocative to flare up and show what he could do when it came to clear, cold, hard,

rosecut, hundred faceted, diamondflashing reasoning. That was his name for it. It has been applied since,

with complacency, as many as several times, in the BaconShakespeare scuffle. On the Shakespeare side.

Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to me when principle and personal

interest found themselves in opposition to each other and a choice had to be made: I let principle go, and went

over to the other side. Not the entire way, but far enough to answer the requirements of the case. That is to

say, I took this attitude, to wit: I only BELIEVED Bacon wrote Shakespeare, whereas I KNEW Shakespeare

didn't. Ealer was satisfied with that, and the war broke loose. Study, practice, experience in handling my end

of the matter presently enabled me to take my new position almost seriously; a little bit later, utterly

seriously; a little later still, lovingly, gratefully, devotedly; finally: fiercely, rabidly, uncompromisingly. After

that, I was welded to my faith, I was theoretically ready to die for it, and I looked down with compassion not

unmixed with scorn, upon everybody else's faith that didn't tally with mine. That faith, imposed upon me by

selfinterest in that ancient day, remains my faith today, and in it I find comfort, solace, peace, and

neverfailing joy. You see how curiously theological it is. The "rice Christian" of the Orient goes through the

very same steps, when he is after rice and the missionary is after HIM; he goes for rice, and remains to

Ealer did a lot of our "reasoning"not to say substantially all of it. The slaves of his cult have a passion for

calling it by that large name. We others do not call our inductions and deductions and reductions by any name

at all. They show for themselves, what they are, and we can with tranquil confidence leave the world to

Now and then when Ealer had to stop to cough, I pulled my inductiontalents together and hove the

controversial lead myself: always getting eight feet, eightandahalf, often nine, sometimes even

I got the best of him only once. I prepared myself. I wrote out a passage from Shakespeareit may have

been the very one I quoted a while ago, I don't rememberand riddled it with his wild steamboatful

interlardings. When an unrisky opportunity offered, one lovely summer day, when we had sounded and

buoyed a tangled patch of crossings known as Hell's Half Acre, and were aboard again and he had sneaked

the Pennsylvania triumphantly through it without once scraping sand, and the A. T. Lacey had followed in

our wake and got stuck, and he was feeling good, I showed it to him. It amused him. I asked him to fire it off:

read it; read it, I diplomatically added, as only he could read dramatic poetry. The compliment touched him

where he lived. He did read it; read it with surpassing fire and spirit; read it as it will never be read again; for

HE knew how to put the right music into those thunderous interlardings and make them seem a part of the

text, make them sound as if they were bursting from Shakespeare's own soul, each one of them a golden

inspiration and not to be left out without damage to the massed and magnificent whole.

I waited a week, to let the incident fade; waited longer; waited until he brought up for reasonings and

vituperation my pet position, my pet argument, the one which I was fondest of, the one which I prized far

above all others in my ammunitionwagon, to wit: that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare's

works, for the reason that the man who wrote them was limitlessly familiar with the laws, and the lawcourts,

and lawproceedings, and lawyertalk, and lawyerwaysand if Shakespeare was possessed of the

infinitelydivided stardust that constituted this vast wealth, how did he get it, and WHERE, and WHEN?

From books! That was always the idea. I answered as my readings of the champions of my side of the great

controversy had taught me to answer: that a man can't handle glibly and easily and comfortably and

successfully the argot of a trade at which he has not personally served. He will make mistakes; he will not,

and cannot, get the tradephrasings precisely and exactly right; and the moment he departs, by even a shade,

from a common tradeform, the reader who has served that trade will know the writer HASN'T. Ealer would

not be convinced; he said a man could learn how to correctly handle the subtleties and mysteries and

freemasonries of any trade by careful reading and studying. But when I got him to read again the passage

from Shakespeare with the interlardings, he perceived, himself, that books couldn't teach a student a

bewildering multitude of pilotphrases so thoroughly and perfectly that he could talk them off in book and

play or conversation and make no mistake that a pilot would not immediately discover. It was a triumph for

me. He was silent awhile, and I knew what was happening: he was losing his temper. And I knew he would

presently close the session with the same old argument that was always his stay and his support in time of

need; the same old argument, the one I couldn't answerbecause I dasn't: the argument that I was an ass, and

Oh, dear, how long ago it washow pathetically long ago! And here am I, old, forsaken, forlorn and alone,

When a man has a passion for Shakespeare, it goes without saying that he keeps company with other standard

authors. Ealer always had several highclass books in the pilothouse, and he read the same ones over and

over again, and did not care to change to newer and fresher ones. He played well on the flute, and greatly

enjoyed hearing himself play. So did I. He had a notion that a flute would keep its health better if you took it

apart when it was not standing a watch; and so, when it was not on duty it took its rest, disjointed, on the

compassshelf under the breastboard. When the Pennsylvania blew up and became a drifting rackheap

freighted with wounded and dying poor souls (my young brother Henry among them), pilot Brown had the

watch below, and was probably asleep and never knew what killed him; but Ealer escaped unhurt. He and his

pilot house were shot up into the air; then they fell, and Ealer sank through the ragged cavern where the

hurricane deck and the boiler deck had been, and landed in a nest of ruins on the main deck, on top of one of

the unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog of scalding and deadly steam. But not for long. He did

not lose his head: long familiarity with danger had taught him to keep it, in any and all emergencies. He held

his coatlappels to his nose with one hand, to keep out the steam, and scrabbled around with the other till he

found the joints of his flute, then he is took measures to save himself alive, and was successful. I was not on

board. I had been put ashore in New Orleans by Captain Klinefelter. The reasonhowever, I have told all

about it in the book called Old Times on the Mississippi, and it isn't important anyway, it is so long ago.

When I was a Sundayschool scholar something more than sixty years ago, I became interested in Satan, and

wanted to find out all I could about him. I began to ask questions, but my classteacher, Mr. Barclay the

stonemason, was reluctant about answering them, it seemed to me. I was anxious to be praised for turning

my thoughts to serious subjects when there wasn't another boy in the village who could be hired to do such a

thing. I was greatly interested in the incident of Eve and the serpent, and thought Eve's calmness was

perfectly noble. I asked Mr. Barclay if he had ever heard of another woman who, being approached by a

serpent, would not excuse herself and break for the nearest timber. He did not answer my question, but

rebuked me for inquiring into matters above my age and comprehension. I will say for Mr. Barclay that he

was willing to tell me the facts of Satan's history, but he stopped there: he wouldn't allow any discussion of

In the course of time we exhausted the facts. There were only five or six of them, you could set them all

down on a visitingcard. I was disappointed. I had been meditating a biography, and was grieved to find that

there were no materials. I said as much, with the tears running down. Mr. Barclay's sympathy and

compassion were aroused, for he was a most kind and gentlespirited man, and he patted me on the head and

cheered me up by saying there was a whole vast ocean of materials! I can still feel the happy thrill which

Then he began to bail out that ocean's riches for my encouragement and joy. Like this: it was

"conjectured"though not established that Satan was originally an angel in heaven; that he fell; that he

rebelled, and brought on a war; that he was defeated, and banished to perdition. Also, "we have reason to

believe" that later he did soandso; that "we are warranted in supposing" that at a subsequent time he

travelled extensively, seeking whom he might devour; that a couple of centuries afterward, "as tradition

instructs us," he took up the cruel trade of tempting people to their ruin, with vast and fearful results; that

byandby, "as the probabilities seem to indicate," he may have done certain things, he might have done

And so on and so on. We set down the five known facts by themselves, on a piece of paper, and numbered it

"page 1"; then on fifteen hundred other pieces of paper we set down the "conjectures," and "suppositions,"

and "maybes," and "perhapses," and "doubtlesses," and "rumors," and "guesses," and "probabilities," and

"likelihoods," and "we are permitted to thinks," and "we are warranted in believings," and "might have

beens," and "could have beens," and "must have beens," and "unquestionablys," and "without a shadow of

Yet he made me put away my pen; he would not let me write the history of Satan. Why? Because, as he said,

he had suspicions; suspicions that my attitude in this matter was not reverent; and that a person must be

reverent when writing about the sacred characters. He said any one who spoke flippantly of Satan would be

I assured him, in earnest and sincere words, that he had wholly misconceived my attitude; that I had the

highest respect for Satan, and that my reverence for him equalled, and possibly even exceeded, that of any

member of any church. I said it wounded me deeply to perceive by his words that he thought I would make

fun of Satan, and deride him, laugh at him, scoff at him: whereas in truth I had never thought of such a thing,

but had only a warm desire to make fun of those others and laugh at THEM. "What others?" "Why, the

Supposers, the Perhapsers, the MightHaveBeeners, the CouldHave Beeners, the MustHaveBeeners,

the WithoutaShadowofDoubters, the WeareWarrantedinBelievingers, and all that funny crop of

solemn architects who have taken a good solid foundation of five indisputable and unimportant facts and built

What did Mr. Barclay do then? Was he disarmed? Was he silenced? No. He was shocked. He was so shocked

that he visibly shuddered. He said the Satanic Traditioners and Perhapsers and Conjecturers were

THEMSELVES sacred! As sacred as their work. So sacred that whoso ventured to mock them or make fun of

their work, could not afterward enter any respectable house, even by the back door.

How true were his words, and how wise! How fortunate it would have been for me if I had heeded them. But

I was young, I was but seven years of age, and vain, foolish, and anxious to attract attention. I wrote the

How curious and interesting is the parallelas far as poverty of biographical details is concernedbetween

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 overtopping, how skyreaching, how supremethe two Great Unknowns, the two

Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They are the bestknown unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon

For the instruction of the ignorant I will make a list, now, of those details of Shakespeare's history which are

Of good farmerclass 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

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 reluctantlygranted dispensation

About two (blank) years followed, during which period NOTHING AT ALL HAPPENED TO

Five blank years follow. During this period NOTHING HAPPENED TO HIM, as far as anybody actually

Next year1594he played before the queen. A detail of no consequence: other obscurities did it every

Thirteen or fourteen busy years follow; years in which he accumulated money, and also reputation as actor

Meantime his name, liberally and variously spelt, had become associated with a number of great plays and

Some of these, in these years and later, were pirated, but he made no protest. Then161011he 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 fortyone 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 yearstill 1616in the joy of these elevated pursuits. Then he made a will, and signed

A thoroughgoing business man's will. It named in minute detail every item of property he owned in the

worldhouses, lands, sword, silvergilt bowl, and so onall the way down to his "secondbest bed" and its

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 fortyone 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

Books were much more precious than swords and silvergilt bowls and secondbest beds in those days, and

The will mentioned NOT A PLAY, NOT A POEM, NOT AN UNFINISHED LITERARY WORK, NOT A

Many poets have died poor, but this is the only one in history that has died THIS poor; the others all left

If Shakespeare had owned a dogbut we need 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 dower 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

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'sshe thought

When Shakespeare died in Stratford IT WAS NOT AN EVENT. It made no more stir in England than the

death of any other forgotten theatre actor would have made. Nobody came down from London; there were

no lamenting poems, no eulogies, no national tearsthere 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

SO FAR AS ANYBODY KNOWS AND CAN PROVE, he never wrote a letter to anybody in 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 onea 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,

Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare: Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones

In the list as above set down, will be found EVERY POSITIVELY KNOWN fact of Shakespeare's life, lean

and meagre 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 skyhigh from a very flat and very thin foundation of

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 schoolthe 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

They "suppose" he assisted his father in the butchering business; and that, being only a boy, he didn't have to

do fullgrown butchering, but only slaughtered calves. Also, that whenever he killed a calf he made a

highflown 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 or 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 longdead 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 twentysix

years in that little townjust 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, calfbutchering accounts for Titus Andronicus, the only playain't

it?that the Stratford Shakespeare ever wrote; and yet it is the only one everybody tries to chouse him out

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

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 worldon

The next addition to the young Shakespeare's Stratford history comes easy. The historian builds it out of the

surmised deer stealing, and the surmised trial before the magistrate, and the surmised vengeanceprompted

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 fiftyseven 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

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 '87age, twentytwo, or along

there; because within the next five years he wrote five great plays, and could not have found time to write

It is sorely embarrassing. If he began to slaughter calves, and poach deer, and rollick around, and learn

English, at the earliest likely momentsay at thirteen, when he was supposably wrenched from that school

where he was supposably storing up Latin for future literary usehe 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 letterperfect 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 timefor he was going to make

brilliant and easy and admirationcompelling 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

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 shoptalk 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 Behring Strait whalefishery and the shoptalk

of the veteran exercisers of that adventurebristling trade through catching catfish with a "trotline" Sundays.

But the surmise is damaged by the fact that there is no evidenceand not even traditionthat the young

It is further surmised that the young Shakespeare accumulated his lawtreasures in the first years of his

sojourn in London, through "amusing himself" by learning booklaw in his garret and by picking up

lawyertalk 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

There is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding horses in front of the London theatres, mornings

and afternoons. Maybe he did. If he did, it seriously shortened his lawstudy hours and his recreationtime in

the courts. In those very days he was writing great plays, and needed all the time he could get. The

horseholding legend ought to be strangled; it too formidably increases the historian's difficulty in accounting

for the young Shakespeare's eruditionan 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 soldierpeople and sailorpeople

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

In the usual way: by surmise. It is SURMISED that he travelled 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 yearsor whatever length of time a surmiser needs in his businessand

thus became familiar with soldiership and soldierways and soldiertalk, and generalship and generalways

Maybe he did all these things, but I would like to know who held the horses in the meantime; and who

studied the books in the garret; and who frollicked in the lawcourts for recreation. Also, who did the

For he became a callboy; 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)

Right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theatres, 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 poemhis only poem, his darlingand laid him down

Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare: Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones

He was probably dead when he wrote it. Still, this is only conjecture. We have only circumstantial 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

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 onethe 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 lawwhich 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 habitsodden Shakespearite to cipherup 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 lapbred, house fed, uneducated,

inexperienced kitten; take a rugged old Tom that's scarred from stem to rudderpost with the memorials of

strenuous experience, and is so cultured, so educated, so limitlessly erudite that one may say of him "all

catknowledge is his province"; also, take a mouse. Lock the three up in a holeless, crackless, exitless

prisoncell. 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

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 catassizes on the shed roof nights, for recreation, when no one was noticing, and harvested a

knowledge of cat courtforms and cat lawyertalk in that way: it COULD have done it, therefore without a

doubt it did; it could have gone soldiering with a wartribe when no one was noticing, and learned

soldierwiles and soldierways, 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 opportunityto 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 weatherdefying

We know what the Baconian's verdict would be: "THERE IS NOT A RAG OF EVIDENCE THAT THE

When Shakespeare died, in 1616, great literary productions attributed to him as author had been before the

London world and in high favor for twentyfour 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 playactor of minor rank had disappeared, but did not

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

"We are privileged to assume"no, we are indeed OBLIGED to assume that such was the case. He had

spent the first twentytwo or twentythree 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 twentythree 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

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

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 legenddim and fading and indefinite legend; legend of the calfslaughtering rank, and

Has it ever happened beforeor sincethat 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 himutterly 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

When I examine my own casebut 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

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 bookeducation came to a standstill forever, and I became a printer's apprentice, on board and

clothes, and when the clothes failed I got a hymnbook 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 Mississippithirteen hundred milesin the dark and in the dayas well as a baby

knows the way to its mother's paps day or night. So they licensed me as a pilotknighted me, so to

speakand I rose up clothed with authority, a responsible servant of the United States government.

Now then. Shakespeare died younghe was only fiftytwo. He had lived in his native village twentysix

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 factno,

LEGENDand 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

birthdate. 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 firsthand 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 dogfight and

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

Now then, I am away along in lifemy seventythird year being already well behind meyet SIXTEEN of

my Hannibal schoolmates are still alive today, and can telland do tellinquirers 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 oldyoung vigor. Another little lassie to whom I paid

attention in Hannibal when she was nine years old and I the same, is still alivein Londonand 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 watercareerwhich is exactly as long ago as the

whole invoice of the lifeyears of Shakespeare numberthere are still findable two or three riverpilots who

saw me do creditable things in those ancient days; and several white headed engineers; and several

roustabouts and mates; and several deckhands who used to heave the lead for me and send up on the still

night air the "sixfeetSCANT!" that made me shudder, and the "Marktwain!" that took the

shudder away, and presently the darling "By the deepfour!" that lifted me to heaven for joy. {1} 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.

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

It is maintained that the man who wrote the plays was not merely myriadminded, but also

myriadaccomplished: 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 generalizingwhich is not evidence, and not proofor upon details, particulars,

Experts of unchallengeable authority have testified definitely as to only one of Shakespeare's multifarious

craftequipments, so far as my recollections of ShakespeareBacon talk abide with mehis lawequipment.

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 letterperfect in his handling of royal courtmanners 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 pastmaster in those languages; I don't rememberwell, I don't remember that there is

TESTIMONYgreat testimonyimposing testimonyunanswerable and unattackable testimony as to any

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 Shakespearelaw is good law or

not; and whether his lawcourt procedure is correct or not, and whether his legal shoptalk is the shoptalk

of a veteran practitioner or only a machinemade counterfeit of it gathered from books and from occasional

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 sailortalk 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

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 catheaded, and the ship under headway.

The royal yards were all crossed at once, and royals and skysails 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

studdingsail gear; and sail after sail the captain piled upon her, until she was covered with canvas, her sails

Our antagonist was in her best trim. Being clear of the point, the breeze became stiff, and the royalmasts

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 topgallant

mastheads 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 foreroyal!""Weather sheet's home!""Lee sheet's home!""Hoist away, sir!"

is bawled from aloft. "Overhaul your clewlines!" shouts the mate. "Ayeaye, sir, all clear!""Taut leech!

What would the captain of any sailingvessel 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 seamanshipconsidering the changes in ships and shiptalk that have

necessarily taken place, unrecorded, unremembered, and lost to history in the last three hundred years? It is

my conviction that Shakespeare's sailortalk would be Choctaw to him. For instance from The Tempest:

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

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

If a man should write a book and in it make one of his characters say, "Here, devil, empty the quoins into the

standing galley and the imposing stone into the hellbox; assemble the comps around the frisket and let them

jeff for takes and be quick about it," I should recognize a mistake or two in the phrasing, and would know

I have been a quartz miner in the silver regionsa pretty hard life; I know all the palaver of that business: I

know all about discovery claims and the subordinate claims; I know all about lodes, ledges, outcroppings,

dips, spurs, angles, shafts, drifts, inclines, levels, tunnels, airshafts, "horses," clay casings, granite casings;

quartz mills and their batteries; arastras, and how to charge them with quicksilver and sulphate of copper; and

how to clean them up, and how to reduce the resulting amalgam in the retorts, and how to cast the bullion

into pigs; and finally I know how to screen tailings, and also how to hunt for something less robust to do, and

find it. I know the argot of the quartzmining and milling industry familiarly; and so whenever Bret Harte

introduces that industry into a story, the first time one of his miners opens his mouth I recognize from his

phrasing that Harte got the phrasing by listeninglike ShakespeareI mean the Stratford onenot by

experience. No one can talk the quartz dialect correctly without learning it with pick and shovel and drill and

I have been a surfaceminergoldand I know all its mysteries, and the dialect that belongs with them;

and whenever Harte introduces that industry into a story I know by the phrasing of his characters that neither

I have been a "pocket" minera sort of gold mining not findable in any but one little spot in the world, so far

as I know. I know how, with horn and water, to find the trail of a pocket and trace it step by step and stage by

stage up the mountain to its source, and find the compact little nest of yellow metal reposing in its secret

home under the ground. I know the language of that trade, that capricious trade, that fascinating

buriedtreasure trade, and can catch any writer who tries to use it without having learned it by the sweat of

I know several other trades and the argot that goes with them; and whenever a person tries to talk the talk

peculiar to any of them without having learned it at its source I can trap him always before he gets far on his

And so, as I have already remarked, if I were required to superintend a BaconShakespeare controversy, I

would narrow the matter down to a single questionthe only one, so far as the previous controversies have

informed me, concerning which illustrious experts of unimpeachable competency have testified: WAS THE

experience? I would put aside the guesses, and surmises, and perhapses, and mighthavebeens, and

couldhave beens, and musthavebeens, and weare justifiedinpresumings, and the rest of those vague

spectres and shadows and indefinitenesses, and stand or fall, win or lose, by the verdict rendered by the jury

upon that single question. If the verdict was Yes, I should feel quite convinced that the Stratford Shakespeare,

the actor, manager, and trader who died so obscure, so forgotten, so destitute of even village consequence that

sixty years afterward no fellowcitizen and friend of his later days remembered to tell anything about him,

Chapter XIII of The Shakespeare Problem Restated bears the heading "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

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

"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. 5s. 0d. 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

But when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal subjects, he is naturally apt to make an exhibition of

his incompetence. "Let a nonprofessional 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

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 allcomprehending

mind; it has the appearance of technical skill." Another lawyer and wellknown 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 thirtyfour plays, and only in one single instance in the

fiftyfour 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

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 JudgeOrdinary 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

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

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

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

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. HalliwellPhillipps. (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

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

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

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,

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

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 HalliwellPhillipps 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 companyand 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

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

This testimony is so strong, so direct, so authoritative; and so uncheapened, unwatered by guesses, and

surmises, and maybeso's, and mighthavebeens, and couldhavebeens, and musthavebeens, 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 Shakespeareand WASN'T.

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 StratfordShakespeare

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

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.

Since the Stratford Shakespeare couldn't have written the Works, we infer that somebody did. Who was it,

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 tonight"? I remember them very well. Their authorship was claimed by most

of the grownup people who were alive at the time, and every claimant had one plausible argument in his

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 competentnot 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? Nothe people knew who it was that had been along there:

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

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 equipmentboth natural and acquiredfor the

miracle; and that no other Englishman of his day possessed the like; or, indeed, anything closely approaching

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

agea history consisting of known facts, displayed in minute and multitudinous detail; FACTS, not guesses

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 welltodo 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 acquaintancenot 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

inferencewith 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 iton 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

historybuilding 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

presumptiontadpole he is not going to STAY tadpole in their historytank; no, they know how to develop

him into the giant fourlegged bullfrog of FACT, and make him sit up on his hams, and puff out his chin, and

look important and insolent and cometo stay; and assert his genuine simonpure 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 ifbut 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 lawyera 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

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 historyless 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 fulland 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

sailorphrases 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

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 thembarren of all of them.

Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare: Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones

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

He continued to distinguish himself in Parliament, particularly by his exertions in favor of one excellent

measure on which the King's heart was setthe 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 judgesa decision the legality of which

may be questioned, but the beneficial effect of which must be acknowledgedwas in a great measure

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

The Wisdom of the Ancients, a work which if it had proceeded from any other writer would have been

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

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

In 1612 a new edition of the Essays appeared, with additions surpassing the original collection both in bulk

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

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,

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

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

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

Here are some scattered remarks (from Macaulay) which throw light upon Bacon, and seem to indicateand

With great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude of comprehension such as has never yet been

The "Essays" contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of character, no peculiarity in the ordering of a

house, a garden or a courtmasque, could escape the notice of one whose mind was capable of taking in the

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

In a letter written when he was only thirtyone, to his uncle, Lord Burleigh, he said, "I have taken all

Though Bacon did not arm his philosophy with the weapons of logic, he adorned her profusely with all the

The practical faculty was powerful in Bacon; but not, like his wit, so powerful as occasionally to usurp the

There are too many places in the Plays where this happens. Poor old dying John of Gaunt volleying

secondrate puns at his own name, is a pathetic instance of it. "We may assume" that it is Bacon's fault, but

No imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly subjugated. It stopped at the first check from

In truth much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary worldamid 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 daydreams there was nothing wildnothing 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

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

The cloudcap'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

Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare: Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones

When a person reads the noble verses about the cloudcap'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,

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 seventyfour

years? It would grieve me to know that any one could think so injuriously of me, so uncomplimentarily, so

unadmiringly of me. Nono, 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 hightariff and lowtariff; and prohibition and

antiprohibition; 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 secondhand, 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

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 deeplyloved tar baby has never been known to

disintegrate swiftly, it is a very slow process. It took several thousand years to convince our fine

raceincluding every splendid intellect in itthat there is no such thing as a witch; it has taken several

thousand years to convince that same fine raceincluding every splendid intellect in itthat 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 chipmunktracks 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, toothere 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 carethat 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

One of the most trying defects which I find in thesethesewhat 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 reverencenames

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, thento 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

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

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 selfconceited, 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

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

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 selfrestraint.

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

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

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

will be the last. Taught by the methods found effective in extinguishing earlier offenders by the Inquisition,

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 Tudorsa 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 onethe most famous, the most renownedby far the most illustrious of them

allShakespeare! 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, prizefighters,

murderers, pirates, conspirators, horsejockeys, buncosteerers, 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, surgeonsyou can get the lifehistories of all of them but

ONE. Just onethe most extraordinary and the most celebrated of them allShakespeare!

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 lifehistories of all those people, too. You will then have listed 1500

celebrities, and you can trace the authentic lifehistories of the whole of them. Save onefar and away the

most colossal prodigy of the entire accumulationShakespeare! 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 commonplace

persona 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 lifehistory of every renowned RACE HORSE of modern timesbut 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 itselfHE 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

Its quite plain significanceto 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,

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. Today a Hannibal

CourierPost 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

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 seventythree 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 graybeards gather about the fires and begin

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 familythe housekeeperfor nearly

fortyfive 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

I remember her well. I have a picture of her in my mind which was graven there, clear and sharp and vivid,

sixtythree 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'erdoweels in

Hannibal two generations ago. Plenty of grayheads there remember them to this day, and can tell you about

them. Isn't it curious that two "towndrunkards" and one halfbreed 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