It is further surmised that the young Shakespeare accumulated his law-treasures in the first years of his sojourn in London, through "amusing himself" by learning book-law in his garret and by picking up lawyer-talk and the rest of it through loitering about the law-courts and listening.But it is only surmise; there is no EVIDENCE that he ever did either of those things.They are merely a couple of chunks of plaster of Paris.
There is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding horses in front of the London theaters, mornings and afternoons.Maybe he did.If he did, it seriously shortened his law-study hours and his recreation-time in the courts.In those very days he was writing great plays, and needed all the time he could get.The horse-holding legend ought to be strangled; it too formidably increases the historian's difficulty in accounting for the young Shakespeare's erudition--an erudition which he was acquiring, hunk by hunk and chunk by chunk, every day in those strenuous times, and emptying each day's catch into next day's imperishable drama.
He had to acquire a knowledge of war at the same time; and a knowledge of soldier-people and sailor-people and their ways and talk; also a knowledge of some foreign lands and their languages:
for he was daily emptying fluent streams of these various knowledges, too, into his dramas.How did he acquire these rich assets?
In the usual way: by surmise.It is SURMISED that he traveled in Italy and Germany and around, and qualified himself to put their scenic and social aspects upon paper; that he perfected himself in French, Italian, and Spanish on the road;that he went in Leicester's expedition to the Low Countries, as soldier or sutler or something, for several months or years--or whatever length of time a surmiser needs in his business--and thus became familiar with soldiership and soldier-ways and soldier-talk and generalship and general-ways and general-talk, and seamanship and sailor-ways and sailor-talk.
Maybe he did all these things, but I would like to know who held the horses in the mean time; and who studied the books in the garret; and who frolicked in the law-courts for recreation.
Also, who did the call-boying and the play-acting.
For he became a call-boy; and as early as '93 he became a "vagabond"--the law's ungentle term for an unlisted actor; and in '94 a "regular" and properly and officially listed member of that (in those days) lightly valued and not much respected profession.
Right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theaters, and manager of them.Thenceforward he was a busy and flourishing business man, and was raking in money with both hands for twenty years.Then in a noble frenzy of poetic inspiration he wrote his one poem--his only poem, his darling--and laid him down and died:
Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones And curst be he yt moves my bones.
He was probably dead when he wrote it.Still, this is only conjecture.We have only circumstantial evidence.Internal evidence.
Shall I set down the rest of the Conjectures which constitute the giant Biography of William Shakespeare? It would strain the Unabridged Dictionary to hold them.He is a brontosaur: nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster of Paris.
V
"We May Assume"
In the Assuming trade three separate and independent cults are transacting business.Two of these cults are known as the Shakespearites and the Baconians, and I am the other one--the Brontosaurian.
The Shakespearite knows that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's Works; the Baconian knows that Francis Bacon wrote them; the Brontosaurian doesn't really know which of them did it, but is quite composedly and contentedly sure that Shakespeare DIDN'T, and strongly suspects that Bacon DID.We all have to do a good deal of assuming, but I am fairly certain that in every case Ican call to mind the Baconian assumers have come out ahead of the Shakespearites.Both parties handle the same materials, but the Baconians seem to me to get much more reasonable and rational and persuasive results out of them than is the case with the Shakespearites.The Shakespearite conducts his assuming upon a definite principle, an unchanging and immutable law: which is:
2 and 8 and 7 and 14, added together, make 165.I believe this to be an error.No matter, you cannot get a habit-sodden Shakespearite to cipher-up his materials upon any other basis.
With the Baconian it is different.If you place before him the above figures and set him to adding them up, he will never in any case get more than 45 out of them, and in nine cases out of ten he will get just the proper 31.
Let me try to illustrate the two systems in a simple and homely way calculated to bring the idea within the grasp of the ignorant and unintelligent.We will suppose a case: take a lap-bred, house-fed, uneducated, inexperienced kitten; take a rugged old Tom that's scarred from stem to rudder-post with the memorials of strenuous experience, and is so cultured, so educated, so limitlessly erudite that one may say of him "all cat-knowledge is his province"; also, take a mouse.Lock the three up in a holeless, crackless, exitless prison-cell.Wait half an hour, then open the cell, introduce a Shakespearite and a Baconian, and let them cipher and assume.The mouse is missing:
the question to be decided is, where is it? You can guess both verdicts beforehand.One verdict will say the kitten contains the mouse; the other will as certainly say the mouse is in the tom-cat.