fertilizing and tending, to grow up into a strong and hardy and
weather-defying “THERE ISN’T A SHADOW OF A DOUBT” at last–and it
usually happens.
We know what the Baconian’s verdict would be: “THERE IS NOT A RAG
OF EVIDENCE THAT THE KITTEN HAS HAD ANY TRAINING, ANY EDUCATION,
ANY EXPERIENCE QUALIFYING IT FOR THE PRESENT OCCASION, OR IS INDEED
EQUIPPED FOR ANY ACHIEVEMENT ABOVE LIFTING SUCH UNCLAIMED MILK AS
COMES ITS WAY; BUT THERE IS ABUNDANT EVIDENCE–UNASSAILABLE PROOF,
IN FACT–THAT THE OTHER ANIMAL IS EQUIPPED, TO THE LAST DETAIL,
WITH EVERY QUALIFICATION NECESSARY FOR THE EVENT. WITHOUT SHADOW
OF DOUBT THE TOMCAT CONTAINS THE MOUSE.”
CHAPTER VI
When Shakespeare died, in 1616, great literary productions
attributed to him as author had been before the London world and in
high favor for twenty-four years. Yet his death was not an event.
It made no stir, it attracted no attention. Apparently his eminent
literary contemporaries did not realize that a celebrated poet had
passed from their midst. Perhaps they knew a play-actor of minor
rank had disappeared, but did not regard him as the author of his
Works. “We are justified in assuming” this.
His death was not even an event in the little town of Stratford.
Does this mean that in Stratford he was not regarded as a celebrity
of ANY kind?
“We are privileged to assume”–no, we are indeed OBLIGED to assume-
-that such was the case. He had spent the first twenty-two or
twenty-three years of his life there, and of course knew everybody
and was known by everybody of that day in the town, including the
dogs and the cats and the horses. He had spent the last five or
six years of his life there, diligently trading in every big and
little thing that had money in it; so we are compelled to assume
that many of the folk there in those said latter days knew him
personally, and the rest by sight and hearsay. But not as a
CELEBRITY? Apparently not. For everybody soon forgot to remember
any contact with him or any incident connected with him. The
dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him or known
about him in the first twenty-three years of his life were in the
same unremembering condition: if they knew of any incident
connected with that period of his life they didn’t tell about it.
Would they if they had been asked? It is most likely. Were they
asked? It is pretty apparent that they were not. Why weren’t
they? It is a very plausible guess that nobody there or elsewhere
was interested to know.
For seven years after Shakespeare’s death nobody seems to have been
interested in him. Then the quarto was published, and Ben Jonson
awoke out of his long indifference and sang a song of praise and
put it in the front of the book. Then silence fell AGAIN.
For sixty years. Then inquiries into Shakespeare’s Stratford life
began to be made, of Stratfordians. Of Stratfordians who had known
Shakespeare or had seen him? No. Then of Stratfordians who had
seen people who had known or seen people who had seen Shakespeare?
No. Apparently the inquiries were only made of Stratfordians who
were not Stratfordians of Shakespeare’s day, but later comers; and
what they had learned had come to them from persons who had not
seen Shakespeare; and what they had learned was not claimed as
FACT, but only as legend–dim and fading and indefinite legend;
legend of the calf-slaughtering rank, and not worth remembering
either as history or fiction.
Has it ever happened before–or since–that a celebrated person who
had spent exactly half of a fairly long life in the village where
he was born and reared, was able to slip out of this world and
leave that village voiceless and gossipless behind him–utterly
voiceless, utterly gossipless? And permanently so? I don’t
believe it has happened in any case except Shakespeare’s. And
couldn’t and wouldn’t have happened in his case if he had been
regarded as a celebrity at the time of his death.
When I examine my own case–but let us do that, and see if it will
not be recognizable as exhibiting a condition of things quite