foolish, and self-conceited, 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 my conscience, and where did he get
that right?”
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
watered enough, just as it 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 self-restraint. 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 what Irreverence really IS.
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eventually be withdrawn from all the sects but me.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 bandying of disrespectful epithets,
no more heart burnings.
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 an Arthur-Orton-Mary-Baker-Thompson-Eddy-Louis-the-
Seventeenth-Veiled-Prophet-of-Khorassan will be the last. Taught
by the methods found effective in extinguishing earlier offenders
by the Inquisition, of holy memory, I shall know how to quiet them.
CHAPTER XIII
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 Tudors–a 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 one–the most famous, the most
renowned–by far the most illustrious of them all–Shakespeare!
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, prize-fighters,
murderers, pirates, conspirators, horse-jockeys, bunco-steerers,
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, surgeons–you can get the
life-histories of all of them but ONE. Just one–the most
extraordinary and the most celebrated of them all–Shakespeare!
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 life-histories of all those people, too. You will
then have listed 1500 celebrities, and you can trace the authentic
life-histories of the whole of them. Save one–far and away the
most colossal prodigy of the entire accumulation–Shakespeare!
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 common-place person–a 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 life-history of every renowned RACE-
HORSE of modern times–but not Shakespeare’s! There are many