| Cryptographic Shakespeare |
| Cryptographic Shakespeare |
Is Shakespeare Dead ? ? ?
From My Autobiography
By Mark Twain
I
Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished manuscript which constitute this formidable
Autobiography and Diary of mine, certain chapters will in some distant future be found which deal with
"Claimants"--claimants historically notorious: Satan, Claimant; the Golden Calf, Claimant; the Veiled Prophet of
Khorassan, Claimant; Louis XVII., Claimant; William Shakespeare, Claimant; Arthur Orton, Claimant; Mary Baker G.
Eddy, claimant--and the rest of them. Eminent Claimants, successful Claimants, defeated Claimants, royal
Claimants, pleb Claimants, showy Claimants, shabby Claimants, revered Claimants, despised Claimants, twinkle
starlike here and there and yonder through the mists of history and legend and tradition--and oh, all the darling tribe
are clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about them with deep interest and discuss them with loving
sympathy or with rancorous resentment, according to which side we hitch ourselves to. It has always been so with
the human race. There was never a Claimant that couldn't get a hearing, nor one that couldn't accumulate a
rapturous following, no matter how flimsy and apparently unauthentic his claim might be. Arthur Orton's claim that
he was the lost Tichborne baronet come to life again was as flimsy as Mrs. Eddy's that she wrote Science and Health
from the direct dictation of the Deity; yet in England near forty years ago Orton had a huge army of devotees and
incorrigible adherents, many of whom remained stubbornly unconvinced after their fat god had been proven an
impostor and jailed as a perjurer, and today Mrs. Eddy's following is not only immense, but is daily augmenting in
numbers and enthusiasm. Orton had many fine and educated minds among his adherents, Mrs. Eddy has had the
like among hers from the beginning. Her church is as well equipped in those particulars as is any other church.
Claimants can always count upon a following, it doesn't matter who they are, nor what they claim, nor whether they
come with documents or without. It was always so. Down out of the long-vanished past, across the abyss of the
ages, if you listen you can still hear the believing multitudes shouting for Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel.
A friend has sent me a new book, from England--The Shakespeare Problem Restated--well restated and closely
reasoned; and my fifty years' interest in that matter asleep for the last three years is excited once more. It is an
interest which was born of Delia Bacon's book--away back in that ancient day--1857, or maybe 1856. About a year
later my pilot-master, Bixby, transferred me from his own steamboat to the Pennsylvania, and placed me under the
orders and instructions of George Ealer--dead now, these many, many years. I steered for him a good many
months--as was the humble duty of the pilot-apprentice: stood a daylight watch and spun the wheel under the
severe superintendence and correction of the master. He was a prime chess player and an idolater of Shakespeare.
He would play chess with anybody; even with me, and it cost his official dignity something to do that. Also--quite
uninvited--he would read Shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when it was his watch, and I was
steering. He read well, but not profitably for me, because he constantly injected commands into the text. That broke
it all up, mixed it all up, tangled it all up to that degree, in fact, that if we were in a risky and difficult piece of river
an ignorant person couldn't have told, sometimes, which observations were Shakespeare's and which were Ealer's.
For instance:
What man dare, I dare!
"Approach thou what are you laying in the leads for? what a hell of an idea! like the rugged ease her off a little,
ease her off! rugged Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the there she goes! meet her, meet her! didn't you know
she'd smell the reef if you crowded it like that? Hyrcan tiger; take any shape but that and my firm nerves she'll be in
the woods the first you know! stop the starboard! come ahead strong on the larboard! back the starboard! . . . Now
then, you're all right; come ahead on the starboard; straighten up and go 'long, never tremble: or be alive again, and
dare me to the desert damnation can't you keep away from that greasy water ? pull her down! snatch her! snatch her
baldheaded! with thy sword; if trembling I inhabit then, lay-in the leads!--no, only the starboard one, leave the other
alone, protest me the baby of a girl. Hence horrible shadow! eight bells--that watchman's asleep again, I reckon, go
down and call Brown yourself, unreal mockery, hence!"
He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy and tragic, but it was a damage to me,
because I have never since been able to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way. I cannot rid it of his explosive
interlardings, they break in everywhere with their irrelevant " What in hell are you up to now! pull her down! more!
more!--there now, steady as you go," and the other disorganizing interruptions that were always leaping from his
mouth. When I read Shakespeare now, I can hear them as plainly as I did in that long-departed time--fifty-one years
ago. I never regarded Ealer's readings as educational. Indeed they were a detriment to me.
His contributions to the text seldom improved it, it barring that detail he was a good reader, I can say that much
for him. He did not use the book, and did not need to; he knew his Shakespeare as well as Euclid ever knew his
multiplication table. Did he have something to say--this Shakespeare-adoring Mississippi pilot--anent Delia Bacon's
book? Yes. And he said it; said it all the time, for months--in the morning watch, the middle watch, the dog watch;
and probably kept it going in his sleep. He bought the literature of the dispute as fast as it appeared, and we
discussed it all through thirteen hundred miles of river four times traversed in every thirty-five days--the time
required by that swift boat to achieve two round trips. We discussed, and discussed, and discussed, and disputed
and disputed and disputed; at any rate he did, and I got in a word now and then when he slipped a cog and there
was a vacancy. He did his arguing with heat, with energy, with violence; and I did mine with the reserve and
moderation of a subordinate who does not like to be flung out of a pilot-house that is perched forty feet above the
water. He was fiercely loyal to Shakespeare and cordially scornful of Bacon and of all the pretensions of the
Baconians. So was I--at first. And at first he was glad that that was my attitude. There were even indications that he
admired it; indications dimmed, it is true, by the distance that lay between the lofty bosspilotical altitude and my
lowly one, yet perceptible to me; perceptible, and translatable into a compliment--compliment coming down from
above the snow-line and not well thawed in the transit, and not likely to set anything afire, not even a cub-pilot's
self-conceit; still a detectable compliment, and precious.
Naturally it flattered me into being more loyal to Shakespeare--if possible--than I was before, and more
prejudiced against Bacon--if possible than I was before. And so we discussed and discussed, both on the same side,
and were happy. For a while. Only for a while. Only for a very little while, a very, very, very little while. Then the
atmosphere began to change; began to cool off.
A brighter person would have seen what the trouble was, earlier than I did, perhaps, but I saw it early enough
for all practical purposes. You see, he was of an argumentative disposition. Therefore it took him but a little time to
get tired of arguing with a person who agreed with everything he said and consequently never furnished him a
provocative to flare up and show what he could do when it came to clear, cold, hard, rose-cut, hundred-faceted,
diamond-flashing reasoning. That was his name for it. It has been applied since, with complacency, as many as
several times, in the Bacon-Shakespeare scuffle. On the Shakespeare side.
Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to me when principle and personal interest
found themselves in opposition to each other and a choice had to be made: I let principle go, and went over to the
other side. Not the entire way, but far enough to answer the requirements of the case. That is to say, I took this
attitude, to wit: I only believed Bacon wrote Shakespeare, whereas I knew Shakespeare didn't. Ealer was satisfied
with that, and the war broke loose. Study, practice, experience in handling my end of the matter presently enabled
me to take my new position almost seriously; a little bit later, utterly seriously; a little later still, lovingly, gratefully,
devotedly; finally: fiercely, rabidly, uncompromisingly. After that, I was welded to my faith, I was theoretically
ready to die for it, and I looked down with compassion not unmixed with scorn, upon everybody else's faith that
didn't tally with mine. That faith, imposed upon me by self-interest in that ancient day, remains my faith to-day, and
in it I find comfort, solace, peace, and never-failing joy. You see how curiously theological it is. The "rice Christian"
of the Orient goes through the very same steps, when he is after rice and the missionary is after him; he goes for rice,
and remains to worship.
Ealer did a lot of our "reasoning"--not to say substantially all of it. The slaves of his cult have a passion for
calling it by that large name. We others do not call our inductions and deductions and reductions by any name at all.
They show for themselves, what they are, and we can with tranquil confidence leave the world to ennoble them with
a title of its own choosing.
Now and then when Ealer had to stop to cough, I pulled my induction-talents together and hove the
controversial lead myself: always getting eight feet, eight-and-a-half, often nine, sometimes even
quarter-less-twain--as I believed; but always "no bottom," as he said.
I got the best of him only once. I prepared myself. I wrote out a passage from Shakespeare--it may have been
the very one I quoted a while ago, I don't remember--and riddled it with his wild steamboatful interlardings. When
an unrisky opportunity offered, one lovely summer day, when we had sounded and buoyed a tangled patch of
crossings known as Hell's Half Acre, and were aboard again and he had sneaked the Pennsylvania triumphantly
through it without once scraping sand, and the A. T. Lacey had followed in our wake and got stuck, and he was
feeling good, I showed it to him. It amused him. I asked him to fire it off: read it; read it, I diplomatically added, as
only he could read dramatic poetry. The compliment touched him where he lived. He did read it; read it with
surpassing fire and spirit; read it as it will never be read again; for he knew how to put the right music into those
thunderous interlardings and make them seem a part of the text, make them sound as if they were bursting from
Shakespeare's own soul, each one of them a golden inspiration and not to be left out without damage to the massed
and magnificent whole.
I waited a week, to let the incident fade; waited longer; waited until he brought up for reasonings and
vituperation my pet position, my pet argument, the one which I was fondest of, the one which I prized far above all
others in my ammunition-wagon, to wit: that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare's works, for the reason
that the man who wrote them was limitlessly familiar with the laws, and the law-courts, and law-proceedings, and
lawyer-talk, and lawyer-ways--and if Shakespeare was possessed of the infinitely-divided star-dust that constituted
this vast wealth, how did he get it, and where, and when? "From books."
From books! That was always the idea. I answered as my readings of the champions of my side of the great
controversy had taught me to answer: that a man can't handle glibly and easily and comfortably and successfully the
argot of a trade at which he has not personally served. He will make mistakes; he will not, and cannot, get the
trade-phrasings precisely and exactly right; and the moment he departs, by even a shade, from a common
trade-form, the reader who has served that trade will know the writer hasn't. Ealer would not be convinced; he said
a man could learn how to correctly handle the subtleties and mysteries and free-masonries of any trade by careful
reading and studying. But when I got him to read again the passage from Shakespeare with the interlardings, he
perceived, himself, that books couldn't teach a student a bewildering multitude of pilot-phrases so thoroughly and
perfectly that he could talk them off in book and play or conversation and make no mistake that a pilot would not
immediately discover. It was a triumph for me. He was silent awhile, and I knew what was happening: he was
losing his temper. And I knew he would presently close the session with the same old argument that was always his
stay and his support in time of need; the same old argument, the one I couldn't answer--because I dasn't: the
argument that I was an ass, and better shut up. He delivered it, and I obeyed.
Oh, dear, how long ago it was--how pathetically long ago! And here am I, old, forsaken, forlorn and alone,
arranging to get that argument out of somebody again.
When a man has a passion for Shakespeare, it goes without saying that he keeps company with other standard
authors. Ealer always had several high class books in the pilot-house, and he read the same ones over and over
again, and did not care to change to newer and fresher ones. He played well on the flute, and greatly enjoyed
hearing himself play. So did I. He had a notion that a flute would keep its health better if you took it apart when it
was not standing a watch; and so, when it was not on duty it took its rest, disjointed, on the compass-shelf under the
breast board. When the Pennsylvania blew up and became a drifting rack-heap freighted with wounded and dying
poor souls (my young brother Henry among them), pilot Brown had the watch below, and was probably asleep and
never knew what killed him; but Ealer escaped unhurt. He and his pilot-house were shot up into the air; then they
fell, and Ealer sank through the ragged cavern where the hurricane deck and the boiler deck had been, and landed in
a nest of ruins on the main deck, on top of one of the unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog of scalding and
deadly steam. But not for long. He did not lose his head: long familiarity with danger had taught him to keep it, in
any and all emergencies. He held his coat-lapels to his nose with one hand, to keep out the steam, and scrabbled
around with the other till he found the joints of his flute, then he took measures to save himself alive, and was
successful. I was not on board. I had been put ashore in New Orleans by Captain Klinefelter. The reason--however, I
have told all about it in the book called Old Times on the Mississippi, and it isn't important anyway, it is so long ago.
II
WHEN I was a Sunday-school scholar something more than sixty years ago, I became interested in Satan, and
wanted to find out all I could about him. I began to ask questions, but my class-teacher, Mr. Barclay the
stone-mason, was reluctant about answering them, it seemed to me. I was anxious to be praised for turning my
thoughts to serious subjects when there wasn't another boy in the village who could be hired to do such a thing. I
was greatly interested in the incident of Eve and the serpent, and thought Eve's calmness was perfectly noble. I
asked Mr. Barclay if he had ever heard of another woman who, being approached by a serpent, would not excuse
herself and break for the nearest timber. He did not answer my question, but rebuked me for inquiring into matters
above my age and comprehension. I will say for Mr. Barclay that he was willing to tell me the facts of Satan's history,
but he stopped there: he wouldn't allow any discussion of them.
In the course of time we exhausted the facts. There were only five or six of them, you could set them all down
on a visiting-card. I was disappointed. I had been meditating a biography, and was grieved to find that there were
no materials. I said as much, with the tears running down. Mr. Barclay's sympathy and compassion were aroused,
for he was a most kind and gentle-spirited man, and he patted me on the head and cheered me up by saying there
was a whole vast ocean of materials! I can still feel the happy thrill which these blessed words shot through me.
Then he began to bail out that ocean's riches for my encouragement and joy. Like this: it was
"conjectured"--though not established--that Satan was originally an angel in heaven; that he fell; that he rebelled, and
brought on a war; that he was defeated, and banished to perdition. Also, "we have reason to believe" that later he
did so-and-so; that "we are warranted in supposing"that at a subsequent time he travelled extensively, seeking
whom he might devour; that a couple of centuries afterward, "as tradition instructs us," he took up the cruel trade of
tempting people to their ruin, with vast and fearful results; that by-and-by, "as the probabilities seem to indicate," he
may have done certain things, he might have done certain other things, he must have done still other things.
And so on and so on. We set down the five known facts by themselves, on a piece of paper, and numbered it
"page 1"; then on fifteen hundred other pieces of paper we set down the "conjectures," and "suppositions," and
"maybes," and "perhapses," and "doubtlesses," and "rumors," and "guesses, "and" probabilities," and "likelihoods,
"and" we are permitted to think, "and" we are warranted in believings," and "might have beens," and "could have
beens," and "must have beens," and "unquestionably," and "without a shadow of doubts"--and behold!
Materials? Why, we had enough to build a biography of Shakespeare!
Yet he made me put away my pen; he would not let me write the history of Satan. Why? Because, as he said, he
had suspicions; suspicions that my attitude in this matter was not reverent; and that a person must be reverent when
writing about the sacred characters. He said any one who spoke flippantly of Satan would be frowned upon by the
religious world and also be brought to account.
I assured him, in earnest and sincere words, that he had wholly misconceived my attitude; that I had the highest
respect for Satan, and that my reverence for him equalled, and possibly even exceeded, that of any member of any
church. I said it wounded me deeply to perceive by his words that he thought I would make fun of Satan, and deride
him, laugh at him, scoff at him: whereas in truth I had never thought of such a thing, but had only a warm desire to
make fun of those others and laugh at them. "What others?" "Why, the Supposers, the Perhapsers, the
Might-Have-Beeners, the Could-Have-Beeners, the Must-Have-Beeners, the Without-a-Shadow-of-Doubters, the
We-are-Warranted-in-Believingers, and all that funny crop of solemn architects who have taken a good solid
foundation of five indisputable and unimportant facts and built upon it a Conjectural Satan thirty miles high."
What did Mr. Barclay do then? Was he disarmed? Was he silenced? No. He was shocked. He was so shocked
that he visibly shuddered. He said the Satanic Traditioners and Perhapsers and Conjecturers were themselves
sacred! As sacred as their work. So sacred that whoso ventured to mock them or make fun of their work, could not
afterward enter any respectable house, even by the back door.
How true were his words, and how wise! How fortunate it would have been for me if I had heeded them. But I
was young, I was but seven years of age, and vain, foolish, and anxious to attract attention. I wrote the biography,
and have never been in a respectable house since.
III
How curious and interesting is the parallel--as far as poverty of biographical details is concerned--between Satan
and Shakespeare. It is wonderful, it is unique, it stands quite alone, there is nothing resembling it in history, nothing
resembling it in romance, nothing approaching it even in tradition. How sublime is their position, and how
overtopping, how sky-reaching, how supreme--the two Great Unknowns, the two Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They
are the best known unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet.
For the instruction of the ignorant I will make a list, now, of those details of Shakespeare's history which are
facts--verified facts, established facts, undisputed facts.
Facts
He was born on the 23d of April, 1564. Of good farmer-class parents who could not read, could not write, could
not sign their names.
At Stratford, a small back settlement which in that day was shabby and unclean, and densely illiterate. Of the
nineteen important men charged with the government of the town, thirteen had to "make their mark" in attesting
important documents, because they could not write their names.
Of the first eighteen years of his life nothing is known. They are a blank.
On the 27th of November (1582) William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Whateley.
Next day William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Hathaway. She was eight years his senior.
William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. In a hurry. By grace of a reluctantly-granted dispensation there was
but one publication of the banns.
Within six months the first child was born.
About two (blank) years followed, during which period nothing at all happened to Shakespeare, so far as anybody
knows.
Then came twins--1585. February.
Two blank years follow.
Then--1587--he makes a ten-year visit to London, leaving the family behind.
Five blank years follow. During this period nothing happened to him, as far as anybody actually knows.
Then--1592--there is mention of him as an actor.
Next year--1593--his name appears in the official list of players.
Next year--1594--he played before the queen. A detail of no consequence: other obscurities did it every year of the
forty-five of her reign. And remained obscure.
Three pretty full years follow. Full of play-acting. Then:
In 1597 he bought New Place, Stratford.
Thirteen or fourteen busy years follow; years in which he accumulated money, and also reputation as actor and
manager.
Meantime his name, liberally and variously spelt, had become associated with a number of great plays and poems,
as (ostensibly) author of the same.
Some of these, in these years and later, were pirated, but he made no protest.
Then--1610-1611--he returned to Stratford and settled down for good and all, and busied himself in lending money,
trading in tithes, trading in land and houses; shirking a debt of forty-one shillings, borrowed by his wife during his
long desertion of his family; suing debtors for shillings and coppers; being sued himself for shillings and coppers;
and acting as confederate to a neighbor who tried to rob the town of its rights in a certain common, and did not
succeed.
He lived five or six years--till 1616--in the joy of these elevated pursuits. Then he made a will, and signed each of
its three pages with his name.
A thoroughgoing business man's will. It named in minute detail every item of property he owned in the
world--houses, lands, sword, silver-gilt bowl, and so on--all the way down to his "second-best bed" and its furniture.
It carefully and calculatingly distributed his riches among the members of his family, overlooking no individual of
it. Not even his wife: the wife he had been enabled to marry in a hurry by urgent grace of a special dispensation
before he was nineteen; the wife whom he had left husbandless so many years; the wife who had had to borrow
forty-one shillings in her need, and which the lender was never able to collect of the prosperous husband, but died at
last with the money still lacking. No, even this wife was remembered in Shakespeare's will.
He left her that "second-best bed."
And not another thing; not even a penny to bless her lucky widowhood with.
It was eminently and conspicuously a business man's will, not a poet's.
It mentioned not a single book.
Books were much more precious than swords and silver-gilt bowls and second best beds in those days, and when
a departing person owned one he gave it a high place in his will.
The will mentioned not a play, not a poem not an unfinished literary work, not a scrap of manuscript of any kind.
Many poets have died poor, but this is the only one in history that has died this poor; the others all left literary
remains behind. Also a book. Maybe two.
If Shakespeare had owned a dog--but we need not go into that: we know he would have mentioned it in his will. If
a good dog, Susanna would have got it; if an inferior one his wife would have got a dower interest in it. I wish he
had had a dog, just so we could see how painstakingly he would have divided that dog among the family, in his
careful business way.
He signed the will in three places.
In earlier years he signed two other official documents.
These five signatures still exist.
There are no other specimens of his penmanship in existence. Not a line.
Was he prejudiced against the art? His granddaughter, whom he loved, was eight years old when he died, yet she
had had no teaching, he left no provision for her education although he was rich, and in her mature womanhood she
couldn't write and couldn't tell her husband's manuscript from anybody else's--she thought it was Shakespeare's.
When Shakespeare died in Stratford it was not an event. It made no more stir in England than the death of any
other forgotten theater-actor would have made. Nobody came down from London; there were no lamenting poems,
no eulogies, no national tears--there was merely silence, and nothing more. A striking contrast with what happened
when Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon, and Spenser, and Raleigh and the other distinguished literary folk of
Shakespeare's time passed from life! No praiseful voice was lifted for the lost Bard of Avon; even Ben Jonson waited
seven years before he lifted his.
So far as anybody actually knows and can prove, Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life.
So far as anybody knows and can prove, he never wrote a letter to anybody in his life.
So far as any one knows, he received only one letter during his life.
So far as any one knows and can prove, Shakespeare of Stratford wrote only one poem during his life. This one is
authentic. He did write that one a fact which stands undisputed; he wrote the whole of it; he wrote the whole of it
out of his own head. He commanded that this work of art be engraved upon his tomb, and he was obeyed. There it
abides to this day. This is it:
Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be he yt moves my bones.
In, the list as above set down, will be found every positively known fact of Shakespeare's life, lean and meager as
the invoice is. Beyond these details we know not a thing about him. All the rest of his vast history, as furnished by
the biographers, is built up, course upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures--an Eiffel Tower of
artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation of inconsequential facts.
From My Autobiography
By Mark Twain
I
Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished manuscript which constitute this formidable
Autobiography and Diary of mine, certain chapters will in some distant future be found which deal with
"Claimants"--claimants historically notorious: Satan, Claimant; the Golden Calf, Claimant; the Veiled Prophet of
Khorassan, Claimant; Louis XVII., Claimant; William Shakespeare, Claimant; Arthur Orton, Claimant; Mary Baker G.
Eddy, claimant--and the rest of them. Eminent Claimants, successful Claimants, defeated Claimants, royal
Claimants, pleb Claimants, showy Claimants, shabby Claimants, revered Claimants, despised Claimants, twinkle
starlike here and there and yonder through the mists of history and legend and tradition--and oh, all the darling tribe
are clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about them with deep interest and discuss them with loving
sympathy or with rancorous resentment, according to which side we hitch ourselves to. It has always been so with
the human race. There was never a Claimant that couldn't get a hearing, nor one that couldn't accumulate a
rapturous following, no matter how flimsy and apparently unauthentic his claim might be. Arthur Orton's claim that
he was the lost Tichborne baronet come to life again was as flimsy as Mrs. Eddy's that she wrote Science and Health
from the direct dictation of the Deity; yet in England near forty years ago Orton had a huge army of devotees and
incorrigible adherents, many of whom remained stubbornly unconvinced after their fat god had been proven an
impostor and jailed as a perjurer, and today Mrs. Eddy's following is not only immense, but is daily augmenting in
numbers and enthusiasm. Orton had many fine and educated minds among his adherents, Mrs. Eddy has had the
like among hers from the beginning. Her church is as well equipped in those particulars as is any other church.
Claimants can always count upon a following, it doesn't matter who they are, nor what they claim, nor whether they
come with documents or without. It was always so. Down out of the long-vanished past, across the abyss of the
ages, if you listen you can still hear the believing multitudes shouting for Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel.
A friend has sent me a new book, from England--The Shakespeare Problem Restated--well restated and closely
reasoned; and my fifty years' interest in that matter asleep for the last three years is excited once more. It is an
interest which was born of Delia Bacon's book--away back in that ancient day--1857, or maybe 1856. About a year
later my pilot-master, Bixby, transferred me from his own steamboat to the Pennsylvania, and placed me under the
orders and instructions of George Ealer--dead now, these many, many years. I steered for him a good many
months--as was the humble duty of the pilot-apprentice: stood a daylight watch and spun the wheel under the
severe superintendence and correction of the master. He was a prime chess player and an idolater of Shakespeare.
He would play chess with anybody; even with me, and it cost his official dignity something to do that. Also--quite
uninvited--he would read Shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when it was his watch, and I was
steering. He read well, but not profitably for me, because he constantly injected commands into the text. That broke
it all up, mixed it all up, tangled it all up to that degree, in fact, that if we were in a risky and difficult piece of river
an ignorant person couldn't have told, sometimes, which observations were Shakespeare's and which were Ealer's.
For instance:
What man dare, I dare!
"Approach thou what are you laying in the leads for? what a hell of an idea! like the rugged ease her off a little,
ease her off! rugged Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the there she goes! meet her, meet her! didn't you know
she'd smell the reef if you crowded it like that? Hyrcan tiger; take any shape but that and my firm nerves she'll be in
the woods the first you know! stop the starboard! come ahead strong on the larboard! back the starboard! . . . Now
then, you're all right; come ahead on the starboard; straighten up and go 'long, never tremble: or be alive again, and
dare me to the desert damnation can't you keep away from that greasy water ? pull her down! snatch her! snatch her
baldheaded! with thy sword; if trembling I inhabit then, lay-in the leads!--no, only the starboard one, leave the other
alone, protest me the baby of a girl. Hence horrible shadow! eight bells--that watchman's asleep again, I reckon, go
down and call Brown yourself, unreal mockery, hence!"
He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy and tragic, but it was a damage to me,
because I have never since been able to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way. I cannot rid it of his explosive
interlardings, they break in everywhere with their irrelevant " What in hell are you up to now! pull her down! more!
more!--there now, steady as you go," and the other disorganizing interruptions that were always leaping from his
mouth. When I read Shakespeare now, I can hear them as plainly as I did in that long-departed time--fifty-one years
ago. I never regarded Ealer's readings as educational. Indeed they were a detriment to me.
His contributions to the text seldom improved it, it barring that detail he was a good reader, I can say that much
for him. He did not use the book, and did not need to; he knew his Shakespeare as well as Euclid ever knew his
multiplication table. Did he have something to say--this Shakespeare-adoring Mississippi pilot--anent Delia Bacon's
book? Yes. And he said it; said it all the time, for months--in the morning watch, the middle watch, the dog watch;
and probably kept it going in his sleep. He bought the literature of the dispute as fast as it appeared, and we
discussed it all through thirteen hundred miles of river four times traversed in every thirty-five days--the time
required by that swift boat to achieve two round trips. We discussed, and discussed, and discussed, and disputed
and disputed and disputed; at any rate he did, and I got in a word now and then when he slipped a cog and there
was a vacancy. He did his arguing with heat, with energy, with violence; and I did mine with the reserve and
moderation of a subordinate who does not like to be flung out of a pilot-house that is perched forty feet above the
water. He was fiercely loyal to Shakespeare and cordially scornful of Bacon and of all the pretensions of the
Baconians. So was I--at first. And at first he was glad that that was my attitude. There were even indications that he
admired it; indications dimmed, it is true, by the distance that lay between the lofty bosspilotical altitude and my
lowly one, yet perceptible to me; perceptible, and translatable into a compliment--compliment coming down from
above the snow-line and not well thawed in the transit, and not likely to set anything afire, not even a cub-pilot's
self-conceit; still a detectable compliment, and precious.
Naturally it flattered me into being more loyal to Shakespeare--if possible--than I was before, and more
prejudiced against Bacon--if possible than I was before. And so we discussed and discussed, both on the same side,
and were happy. For a while. Only for a while. Only for a very little while, a very, very, very little while. Then the
atmosphere began to change; began to cool off.
A brighter person would have seen what the trouble was, earlier than I did, perhaps, but I saw it early enough
for all practical purposes. You see, he was of an argumentative disposition. Therefore it took him but a little time to
get tired of arguing with a person who agreed with everything he said and consequently never furnished him a
provocative to flare up and show what he could do when it came to clear, cold, hard, rose-cut, hundred-faceted,
diamond-flashing reasoning. That was his name for it. It has been applied since, with complacency, as many as
several times, in the Bacon-Shakespeare scuffle. On the Shakespeare side.
Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to me when principle and personal interest
found themselves in opposition to each other and a choice had to be made: I let principle go, and went over to the
other side. Not the entire way, but far enough to answer the requirements of the case. That is to say, I took this
attitude, to wit: I only believed Bacon wrote Shakespeare, whereas I knew Shakespeare didn't. Ealer was satisfied
with that, and the war broke loose. Study, practice, experience in handling my end of the matter presently enabled
me to take my new position almost seriously; a little bit later, utterly seriously; a little later still, lovingly, gratefully,
devotedly; finally: fiercely, rabidly, uncompromisingly. After that, I was welded to my faith, I was theoretically
ready to die for it, and I looked down with compassion not unmixed with scorn, upon everybody else's faith that
didn't tally with mine. That faith, imposed upon me by self-interest in that ancient day, remains my faith to-day, and
in it I find comfort, solace, peace, and never-failing joy. You see how curiously theological it is. The "rice Christian"
of the Orient goes through the very same steps, when he is after rice and the missionary is after him; he goes for rice,
and remains to worship.
Ealer did a lot of our "reasoning"--not to say substantially all of it. The slaves of his cult have a passion for
calling it by that large name. We others do not call our inductions and deductions and reductions by any name at all.
They show for themselves, what they are, and we can with tranquil confidence leave the world to ennoble them with
a title of its own choosing.
Now and then when Ealer had to stop to cough, I pulled my induction-talents together and hove the
controversial lead myself: always getting eight feet, eight-and-a-half, often nine, sometimes even
quarter-less-twain--as I believed; but always "no bottom," as he said.
I got the best of him only once. I prepared myself. I wrote out a passage from Shakespeare--it may have been
the very one I quoted a while ago, I don't remember--and riddled it with his wild steamboatful interlardings. When
an unrisky opportunity offered, one lovely summer day, when we had sounded and buoyed a tangled patch of
crossings known as Hell's Half Acre, and were aboard again and he had sneaked the Pennsylvania triumphantly
through it without once scraping sand, and the A. T. Lacey had followed in our wake and got stuck, and he was
feeling good, I showed it to him. It amused him. I asked him to fire it off: read it; read it, I diplomatically added, as
only he could read dramatic poetry. The compliment touched him where he lived. He did read it; read it with
surpassing fire and spirit; read it as it will never be read again; for he knew how to put the right music into those
thunderous interlardings and make them seem a part of the text, make them sound as if they were bursting from
Shakespeare's own soul, each one of them a golden inspiration and not to be left out without damage to the massed
and magnificent whole.
I waited a week, to let the incident fade; waited longer; waited until he brought up for reasonings and
vituperation my pet position, my pet argument, the one which I was fondest of, the one which I prized far above all
others in my ammunition-wagon, to wit: that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare's works, for the reason
that the man who wrote them was limitlessly familiar with the laws, and the law-courts, and law-proceedings, and
lawyer-talk, and lawyer-ways--and if Shakespeare was possessed of the infinitely-divided star-dust that constituted
this vast wealth, how did he get it, and where, and when? "From books."
From books! That was always the idea. I answered as my readings of the champions of my side of the great
controversy had taught me to answer: that a man can't handle glibly and easily and comfortably and successfully the
argot of a trade at which he has not personally served. He will make mistakes; he will not, and cannot, get the
trade-phrasings precisely and exactly right; and the moment he departs, by even a shade, from a common
trade-form, the reader who has served that trade will know the writer hasn't. Ealer would not be convinced; he said
a man could learn how to correctly handle the subtleties and mysteries and free-masonries of any trade by careful
reading and studying. But when I got him to read again the passage from Shakespeare with the interlardings, he
perceived, himself, that books couldn't teach a student a bewildering multitude of pilot-phrases so thoroughly and
perfectly that he could talk them off in book and play or conversation and make no mistake that a pilot would not
immediately discover. It was a triumph for me. He was silent awhile, and I knew what was happening: he was
losing his temper. And I knew he would presently close the session with the same old argument that was always his
stay and his support in time of need; the same old argument, the one I couldn't answer--because I dasn't: the
argument that I was an ass, and better shut up. He delivered it, and I obeyed.
Oh, dear, how long ago it was--how pathetically long ago! And here am I, old, forsaken, forlorn and alone,
arranging to get that argument out of somebody again.
When a man has a passion for Shakespeare, it goes without saying that he keeps company with other standard
authors. Ealer always had several high class books in the pilot-house, and he read the same ones over and over
again, and did not care to change to newer and fresher ones. He played well on the flute, and greatly enjoyed
hearing himself play. So did I. He had a notion that a flute would keep its health better if you took it apart when it
was not standing a watch; and so, when it was not on duty it took its rest, disjointed, on the compass-shelf under the
breast board. When the Pennsylvania blew up and became a drifting rack-heap freighted with wounded and dying
poor souls (my young brother Henry among them), pilot Brown had the watch below, and was probably asleep and
never knew what killed him; but Ealer escaped unhurt. He and his pilot-house were shot up into the air; then they
fell, and Ealer sank through the ragged cavern where the hurricane deck and the boiler deck had been, and landed in
a nest of ruins on the main deck, on top of one of the unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog of scalding and
deadly steam. But not for long. He did not lose his head: long familiarity with danger had taught him to keep it, in
any and all emergencies. He held his coat-lapels to his nose with one hand, to keep out the steam, and scrabbled
around with the other till he found the joints of his flute, then he took measures to save himself alive, and was
successful. I was not on board. I had been put ashore in New Orleans by Captain Klinefelter. The reason--however, I
have told all about it in the book called Old Times on the Mississippi, and it isn't important anyway, it is so long ago.
II
WHEN I was a Sunday-school scholar something more than sixty years ago, I became interested in Satan, and
wanted to find out all I could about him. I began to ask questions, but my class-teacher, Mr. Barclay the
stone-mason, was reluctant about answering them, it seemed to me. I was anxious to be praised for turning my
thoughts to serious subjects when there wasn't another boy in the village who could be hired to do such a thing. I
was greatly interested in the incident of Eve and the serpent, and thought Eve's calmness was perfectly noble. I
asked Mr. Barclay if he had ever heard of another woman who, being approached by a serpent, would not excuse
herself and break for the nearest timber. He did not answer my question, but rebuked me for inquiring into matters
above my age and comprehension. I will say for Mr. Barclay that he was willing to tell me the facts of Satan's history,
but he stopped there: he wouldn't allow any discussion of them.
In the course of time we exhausted the facts. There were only five or six of them, you could set them all down
on a visiting-card. I was disappointed. I had been meditating a biography, and was grieved to find that there were
no materials. I said as much, with the tears running down. Mr. Barclay's sympathy and compassion were aroused,
for he was a most kind and gentle-spirited man, and he patted me on the head and cheered me up by saying there
was a whole vast ocean of materials! I can still feel the happy thrill which these blessed words shot through me.
Then he began to bail out that ocean's riches for my encouragement and joy. Like this: it was
"conjectured"--though not established--that Satan was originally an angel in heaven; that he fell; that he rebelled, and
brought on a war; that he was defeated, and banished to perdition. Also, "we have reason to believe" that later he
did so-and-so; that "we are warranted in supposing"that at a subsequent time he travelled extensively, seeking
whom he might devour; that a couple of centuries afterward, "as tradition instructs us," he took up the cruel trade of
tempting people to their ruin, with vast and fearful results; that by-and-by, "as the probabilities seem to indicate," he
may have done certain things, he might have done certain other things, he must have done still other things.
And so on and so on. We set down the five known facts by themselves, on a piece of paper, and numbered it
"page 1"; then on fifteen hundred other pieces of paper we set down the "conjectures," and "suppositions," and
"maybes," and "perhapses," and "doubtlesses," and "rumors," and "guesses, "and" probabilities," and "likelihoods,
"and" we are permitted to think, "and" we are warranted in believings," and "might have beens," and "could have
beens," and "must have beens," and "unquestionably," and "without a shadow of doubts"--and behold!
Materials? Why, we had enough to build a biography of Shakespeare!
Yet he made me put away my pen; he would not let me write the history of Satan. Why? Because, as he said, he
had suspicions; suspicions that my attitude in this matter was not reverent; and that a person must be reverent when
writing about the sacred characters. He said any one who spoke flippantly of Satan would be frowned upon by the
religious world and also be brought to account.
I assured him, in earnest and sincere words, that he had wholly misconceived my attitude; that I had the highest
respect for Satan, and that my reverence for him equalled, and possibly even exceeded, that of any member of any
church. I said it wounded me deeply to perceive by his words that he thought I would make fun of Satan, and deride
him, laugh at him, scoff at him: whereas in truth I had never thought of such a thing, but had only a warm desire to
make fun of those others and laugh at them. "What others?" "Why, the Supposers, the Perhapsers, the
Might-Have-Beeners, the Could-Have-Beeners, the Must-Have-Beeners, the Without-a-Shadow-of-Doubters, the
We-are-Warranted-in-Believingers, and all that funny crop of solemn architects who have taken a good solid
foundation of five indisputable and unimportant facts and built upon it a Conjectural Satan thirty miles high."
What did Mr. Barclay do then? Was he disarmed? Was he silenced? No. He was shocked. He was so shocked
that he visibly shuddered. He said the Satanic Traditioners and Perhapsers and Conjecturers were themselves
sacred! As sacred as their work. So sacred that whoso ventured to mock them or make fun of their work, could not
afterward enter any respectable house, even by the back door.
How true were his words, and how wise! How fortunate it would have been for me if I had heeded them. But I
was young, I was but seven years of age, and vain, foolish, and anxious to attract attention. I wrote the biography,
and have never been in a respectable house since.
III
How curious and interesting is the parallel--as far as poverty of biographical details is concerned--between Satan
and Shakespeare. It is wonderful, it is unique, it stands quite alone, there is nothing resembling it in history, nothing
resembling it in romance, nothing approaching it even in tradition. How sublime is their position, and how
overtopping, how sky-reaching, how supreme--the two Great Unknowns, the two Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They
are the best known unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet.
For the instruction of the ignorant I will make a list, now, of those details of Shakespeare's history which are
facts--verified facts, established facts, undisputed facts.
Facts
He was born on the 23d of April, 1564. Of good farmer-class parents who could not read, could not write, could
not sign their names.
At Stratford, a small back settlement which in that day was shabby and unclean, and densely illiterate. Of the
nineteen important men charged with the government of the town, thirteen had to "make their mark" in attesting
important documents, because they could not write their names.
Of the first eighteen years of his life nothing is known. They are a blank.
On the 27th of November (1582) William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Whateley.
Next day William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Hathaway. She was eight years his senior.
William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. In a hurry. By grace of a reluctantly-granted dispensation there was
but one publication of the banns.
Within six months the first child was born.
About two (blank) years followed, during which period nothing at all happened to Shakespeare, so far as anybody
knows.
Then came twins--1585. February.
Two blank years follow.
Then--1587--he makes a ten-year visit to London, leaving the family behind.
Five blank years follow. During this period nothing happened to him, as far as anybody actually knows.
Then--1592--there is mention of him as an actor.
Next year--1593--his name appears in the official list of players.
Next year--1594--he played before the queen. A detail of no consequence: other obscurities did it every year of the
forty-five of her reign. And remained obscure.
Three pretty full years follow. Full of play-acting. Then:
In 1597 he bought New Place, Stratford.
Thirteen or fourteen busy years follow; years in which he accumulated money, and also reputation as actor and
manager.
Meantime his name, liberally and variously spelt, had become associated with a number of great plays and poems,
as (ostensibly) author of the same.
Some of these, in these years and later, were pirated, but he made no protest.
Then--1610-1611--he returned to Stratford and settled down for good and all, and busied himself in lending money,
trading in tithes, trading in land and houses; shirking a debt of forty-one shillings, borrowed by his wife during his
long desertion of his family; suing debtors for shillings and coppers; being sued himself for shillings and coppers;
and acting as confederate to a neighbor who tried to rob the town of its rights in a certain common, and did not
succeed.
He lived five or six years--till 1616--in the joy of these elevated pursuits. Then he made a will, and signed each of
its three pages with his name.
A thoroughgoing business man's will. It named in minute detail every item of property he owned in the
world--houses, lands, sword, silver-gilt bowl, and so on--all the way down to his "second-best bed" and its furniture.
It carefully and calculatingly distributed his riches among the members of his family, overlooking no individual of
it. Not even his wife: the wife he had been enabled to marry in a hurry by urgent grace of a special dispensation
before he was nineteen; the wife whom he had left husbandless so many years; the wife who had had to borrow
forty-one shillings in her need, and which the lender was never able to collect of the prosperous husband, but died at
last with the money still lacking. No, even this wife was remembered in Shakespeare's will.
He left her that "second-best bed."
And not another thing; not even a penny to bless her lucky widowhood with.
It was eminently and conspicuously a business man's will, not a poet's.
It mentioned not a single book.
Books were much more precious than swords and silver-gilt bowls and second best beds in those days, and when
a departing person owned one he gave it a high place in his will.
The will mentioned not a play, not a poem not an unfinished literary work, not a scrap of manuscript of any kind.
Many poets have died poor, but this is the only one in history that has died this poor; the others all left literary
remains behind. Also a book. Maybe two.
If Shakespeare had owned a dog--but we need not go into that: we know he would have mentioned it in his will. If
a good dog, Susanna would have got it; if an inferior one his wife would have got a dower interest in it. I wish he
had had a dog, just so we could see how painstakingly he would have divided that dog among the family, in his
careful business way.
He signed the will in three places.
In earlier years he signed two other official documents.
These five signatures still exist.
There are no other specimens of his penmanship in existence. Not a line.
Was he prejudiced against the art? His granddaughter, whom he loved, was eight years old when he died, yet she
had had no teaching, he left no provision for her education although he was rich, and in her mature womanhood she
couldn't write and couldn't tell her husband's manuscript from anybody else's--she thought it was Shakespeare's.
When Shakespeare died in Stratford it was not an event. It made no more stir in England than the death of any
other forgotten theater-actor would have made. Nobody came down from London; there were no lamenting poems,
no eulogies, no national tears--there was merely silence, and nothing more. A striking contrast with what happened
when Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon, and Spenser, and Raleigh and the other distinguished literary folk of
Shakespeare's time passed from life! No praiseful voice was lifted for the lost Bard of Avon; even Ben Jonson waited
seven years before he lifted his.
So far as anybody actually knows and can prove, Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life.
So far as anybody knows and can prove, he never wrote a letter to anybody in his life.
So far as any one knows, he received only one letter during his life.
So far as any one knows and can prove, Shakespeare of Stratford wrote only one poem during his life. This one is
authentic. He did write that one a fact which stands undisputed; he wrote the whole of it; he wrote the whole of it
out of his own head. He commanded that this work of art be engraved upon his tomb, and he was obeyed. There it
abides to this day. This is it:
Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be he yt moves my bones.
In, the list as above set down, will be found every positively known fact of Shakespeare's life, lean and meager as
the invoice is. Beyond these details we know not a thing about him. All the rest of his vast history, as furnished by
the biographers, is built up, course upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures--an Eiffel Tower of
artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation of inconsequential facts.
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