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 school
–the 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 ever entered or
returned from the school they suppose he attended.
They “suppose” he assisted his father in the butchering
business; and that, being only a boy, he didn’t have to do full-
grown butchering, but only slaughtering calves. Also, that
whenever he killed a calf he made a high-flown 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 nor 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 long-dead
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
twenty-six years in that little town–just 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, calf-butchering accounts for “Titus Andronicus,” the only
play–ain’t it?–that the Stratford Shakespeare ever wrote; and
yet it is the only one everybody tried to chouse him out of, the
Baconians included.
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 evidence that anything of the kind happened.
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 world–on surmise and without trustworthy
evidence–that Shallow IS Sir Thomas.
The next addition to the young Shakespeare’s Stratford
history comes easy. The historian builds it out of the surmised
deer-steeling, and the surmised trial before the magistrate, and
the surmised vengeance-prompted 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 fifty-
seven 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 which was biggest or contained the most plaster.
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 ’87–age, twenty-two, or along there; because
within the next five years he wrote five great plays, and could
not have found time to write another line.
It is sorely embarrassing. If he began to slaughter calves,
and poach deer, and rollick around, and learn English, at the
earliest likely moment–say at thirteen, when he was supposably
wretched from that school where he was supposably storing up