第7章

CONJECTURES

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 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 retired 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 slaughtered 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 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 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 tries 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-stealing,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--1586or '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 wrenched from that school where he was supposably storing up Latin for future literary use--he 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 letter-perfect 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.