DAVID AND GOLIATH. "Goliath comes with sword and spear The best commentary upon all these fabrications is uttered by Prince Henry in 1 Henry IV, ii, 4: "These lies are like the father that begets them, gross as a mountain, open, palpable." If the reader will ask the writers who give currency in their biographies of William Shaksper to the foregoing lies for the authority for their statements, he will find that they can present no satisfactory evidence in justification of their assertions. Can any one produce a letter or note from the Earl of Southampton to Shaksper evidencing the gift? or can a copy thereof be produced? Can any receipt or memorandum be found penned by or for Shaksper, acknowledging the receipt of so large a sum of money? Is there a record of such a transaction any where? The same question might be asked as to the letter which it is pretended that King James wrote to Shaksper. Such a letter or a copy of it, if produced and authenticated, would put an end to all controversy, if it acknowledged directly or indirectly Shaksper's ability as a writer. Whatever faults King James had, he could not be accused of a want either of learning or discernment as to scholarship. If King James knew Shaksper, some evidence of that knowledge would long ago have been unearthed. The reader might also ask when and where did Shaksper teach school? Who were his pupils? What evidence can be produced that he ever taught a school, either in Warwickshire or any where else? And if he was a lawyer's clerk, and a valued assistant to lawyers in Stratford or any where else in the preparation of their cases, how and when and by what reliable authority were the facts as to his clerkship and valuable services ascertained? It is only necessary for the reader to refer to the "Outlines" of Halliwell-Phillips to discover that there is no warrant for the story that he was a schoolmaster or a lawyer's clerk. CHAPTER XIV. THE CONJECTURES AND GUESSES WHICH MAKE UP THE SHAKSPER BIOGRAPHY. "Thou hast damnable iteration.” -First Henry IV, i, 2. I will ask the student reader to go over this chapter carefully, not because it will interest or please, but for the reason that it discloses how the life of an ignorant man has been manufactured or transformed into that of an intellectual, talented, and learned poet, by means of conjecture and bold assertion, based, as one of the manufacturers has to admit, not upon what was or is really known about the man, but upon the poetry which is circulated under a name somewhat like his. It is very natural that the believers in the Shaksper claim to authorship should resort to the plays and poems to obtain material for their biographies of the man. His real life facts are so meager, so inappropriate, so disappointing, that they are compelled to formulate biographies of their idol based entirely on conjecture. A Shaksper biographer reasons thus: "Since nothing, absolutely nothing, of the slightest importance is known of the man called. William Shaksper or Shakespeare, the reputed author of the Shakespeare plays and poems, except through the plays and poems themselves, I will manufacture a life of the man, that is, of such a man as the writer of the plays doubtless was. I will make him a schoolmaster. I will make him a lawyer's clerk and accurate adviser of all the lawyers in and about Stratford-on-Avon. I will make him a gentle, courteous, able, and refined scholar. I will make him the petted companion of noblemen and the favorite, not only of the Virgin Queen, but also of the scholarly James. I will make him a traveler and sojourner in foreign lands, and a master of modern as well as of ancient languages. I will make him the patron and helper of young and aspiring, but inexperienced, poets. I will make him so alluring, mentally and physically, that such manufactured charms and gifts will account for his being not only courted, but even seduced, by a maid of honor of the high and mighty Elizabeth. And in order to shut off the criticisms of doubters and unbelievers, I will make him so intellectually tall, so much higher and greater than other literary men, that he will appear to the world as utterly indifferent to praise or censure. I will exalt him above all writers of every age and clime, not by the power of fact, but by means of conjecture and invention. All that I write in this vein will captivate and suit the popular taste. Populus vult decipi et decipiatur." The biographies of Shaksper, therefore, are not made up of real, actual facts, but of guesses, conjectures, and possibilities. They are mainly works of the imagination, more or less adorned and beautified according to the ability and talents of the composer of the biography. I will commence with Collier, and I will merely give in this chapter a few of such phrases as are constantly employed by him and the other writers of Shaksper's biography to make up a life of Shaksper. What he desires the indulgent public to believe as fact, he puts in his biography in the conjectural form, thus: "It has been supposed that. Little doubt can be entertained that. It was probably. It has generally been stated and be lieved. We can not help thinking that. It is, we apprehend. Malone conjectures that. It is highly probable that. We decidedly concur with Malone in thinking that. We doubt if. We may presume that. Considering all the circumstances, there might be good reason. We may take it for granted that. It has been alleged that. We therefore apprehend that. It is very possible, therefore. It has been matter of speculation that. We have additional reasons for thinking that. We can have no hesitation in believing that. We also consider it more than probable that. There is some little ground for thinking that. If the evidence upon this point were even more scanty, we should be convinced that. It was at this juncture probably, if indeed he were ever in that country, that Shaksper visited Italy. We have already stated our deliberate and distinct opinion that. It must have been about this period that. We may be sure that. We have concluded, as we think we may do very fairly, that. Another reason for thinking that, etc., is that. We may feel assured that. As far as we can judge, there is good reason for believing that. It is our opinion that. It is our conviction that. We apprehend likewise that. It is not at all improbable that. Our chief reason for thinking it unlikely that. We may suppose that. We may assume, perhaps, in the absence of any direct testimony that. It is highly probable that. We suppose Shakespeare to have ceased to act in the summer of 1604. There is no doubt that. There is reason for believing that. It is possible, as we have said, that. Such may have been the nature of the transaction. We can only conjecture. Nevertheless, although we suppose him. It is very likely that. |