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Reprinted from The School Review, Vol. XIII, No. 9, November, 1 905 
 
 A SPECULATION REGARDING SHAKESPEARE 
 
 EMERSON VENABLE 
 Cincinnati, Ohio 
 
 Whether with or without reason, it has long been regarded as a 
 wonderful fact that so little is definitely known concerning the life 
 of Shakespeare, that prodigy described in the words of Carlyle as 
 "the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record 
 of himself in the way of hterature." In spite of the mass of detail 
 which has been brought together by a laborious investigation "extend- 
 ing over two hundred years"- — an amount of circumstantial evidence 
 which "far exceeds that accessible in the case of any other contem- 
 porary professional writer"' — only a few scattered rays of light 
 have been shed upon the personality and conduct of the man who 
 "was not of an age, but for all time!" 
 
 "Shakespeare's will is in our hands," writes the historian Ward, 
 "but there is little or nothing to be read out of it which reveals to 
 us even the slightest corner of his life or character."^ After all the 
 voluminous results of nineteenth-century research have been care- 
 fully and discriminatingly sifted, we find ourselves no nearer to the 
 mystery of the man Shakespeare than were our eighteenth-century 
 ancestors. Nothing of essential importance has been added to the 
 story of his Hfe as briefly summarized by the antiquarian Steevens, 
 more than a century ago. "All," said he, "that is known with 
 any degree of certainty concerning Shakespeare is — that he was 
 bom at Stratford-upon-Avon, married and had children there; went 
 to London, where he commenced actor and wrote poems and plays; 
 returned to Stratford, made his will, died and was buried." The 
 Danish scholar, Brandes, who begins his entertaining and erratic 
 Critical Study with the admission that "a biography of Shakespeare is 
 difficult, but not impossible,"^ repeats the facts which his predecessors 
 
 1 Sidney Lee, Shakespeare^ s Life and Work. 
 
 2 A. W. Ward, A History oj English Dramatic Literature. 
 
 3 Georg Brandes. William Shakespeare: A Critical Study. 
 
7l8 THE SCHOOL REVIEW ".'V^^'V^ 
 
 furnish, adding little that is new except the stuff of his ingenious 
 dreams. And Sidney Lee concludes that, though "the fully ascer- 
 tained facts are numerous enough to define sharply the general 
 direction that Shakespeare's career followed," nevertheless, "some 
 important links are missing, and at some critical points appeal to 
 conjecture is inevitable."^ According to Emerson, "Shakespeare 
 is the only biographer of Shakespeare ; and even he can tell nothing, 
 except to the Shakespeare in us; that is, to our most apprehensive 
 and sympathetic hour." 
 
 Especially meager are the data relating to Shakespeare's plans 
 and occupations subsequent to his retirement to Stratford, about 
 the year 1611. 
 
 Rev. John Ward, who from 1662 to 1668 was vicar of Stratford, 
 left a diary in which he said: 
 
 I have heard that Mr. Shakespeare was a natural wit, without any art at all; 
 he frequented the plays all his younger time, but in his elder days lived at Strat- 
 ford and supplied the stage with two plays every year, and for it had an allow- 
 ance so large, that hee spent att the rate of 1000 1. a year, as I have heard. 
 Shakespear, Drayton and Jhonson, had a merie meeting, and itt seems drank 
 too hard, for Shakespear died of a feavour there contracted. 
 
 The gossipy notes of Vicar Ward were written, probably, in 1661, 
 about forty-five years after Shakespeare's death, and nearly half 
 a century before Nicholas Rowe, the first editor of the plays of 
 Shakespeare, published, in 1709, what he entitled Some Account 0} 
 the Life d^c. of Mr. William Shakespear, for the "most considerable 
 part" of which he owned a "particular obligation" to Thomas 
 Betterton, whose veneration for the memory of Shakespeare had 
 "engaged him to make a journey into Warwickshire." Rowe's 
 Account was the standard biography of the eighteenth century, and 
 is still quoted with confidence by most commentators. Concerning 
 Shakespeare's withdrawal from public affairs, all that is said is that 
 
 The latter part of his life was spent, as all men of good sense will wish theirs to . 
 be, in ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends. He had the good 
 fortune to gather an estate equal to his occasion, and, in that, to his wish; and 
 is said to have spent some years before his death at his native Stratford. His 
 pleasurable wit, and good nature, engaged him in the acquaintance, and entitled 
 him to the friendship of gentlemen of the neighborhood. 
 
 I Sidney Lee, op. cit. 
 
 Authr. 
 
A SPECULATION REGARDING SHAKESPEARE 719 
 
 The opinion generally held by scholars of today, as has been 
 said, seems to be based upon the second-hand and scanty memorials 
 loosely put together by Nicholas Rowe. Sidney Lee expresses the 
 approximate result of modern conjecture concerning the motives of 
 Shakespeare, in these words: 
 
 His literary achievements and successes were chiefly valued as serving the 
 prosaic end of providing permanently for himself and his daughters. His highest 
 ambition was to restore among his fellow-townsmen the family repute which 
 his father's misfortunes had imperiled. Ideals so homely are reckoned rare 
 among poets, but Chaucer and Sir Walter Scott, among writers of exalted genius, 
 vie with Shakespeare in the sobriety of their personal aims and in the sanity of 
 their mental attitude towards life's ordinary incidents.^ 
 
 This hypothesis, notwithstanding the fact that it is promulgated 
 by writers of high authority and accepted by popu'ar consent, cannot 
 but appear to some minds unsatisfactory, inconsistent, and repugnant^ 
 to common sense. One recalls Shakespeare's own exclamation: 
 "O lame and impotent conclusion!" The venture of this essay is 
 to offer, on speculative grounds tenable at least in argument, some 
 objections to the commonly accepted opinion concerning Shakes- 
 peare's last years, and to suggest a somewhat different hypothesis 
 for explaining the facts and traditions in controversy. 
 
 The principal reasons urged in support of the view held by Lee 
 and others, that Shakespeare relinquished literary pursuits and went 
 back to Stratford in the year 161 1, being then forty-seven years of 
 age, and devoted the rest of his life to the material welfare of him- 
 self and family, are based upon evidence which may be set forth 
 under the following heads: (i) tradition; (2)- Shakespeare's will, 
 and other legal documents; (3) lack of positive testimony contra- 
 dictory of assumed facts; (4) errors in the First Folio; (5) Shake- 
 speare abandoned dramatic composition about 161 1. 
 
 Let us consider the force and validity of deductions drawn from 
 these five principal sources. 
 
 In the first place, no certainty can ever be derived from tradition; 
 that is, from mere rumor and vague assertion. Neither Ward nor 
 Rowe recorded what he himself knew, but each only repeated or 
 paraphrased the words of other men. Rowe is not sure that Shake- 
 speare returned to Stratford at all! He says Shakespeare "is said to 
 have spent some years" there. 
 
 I Op. cit. 
 
720 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 
 
 In regard to the witness afforded by Shakespeare's will, and 
 by documents in the Public Record Office relating to his estates 
 and land-purchases, and the like, not much need be said. The 
 author of our most reliable and most recent History 0} English 
 Dramatic Literature admits that the will does not reveal to us "even 
 the slightest corner of Shakespeare's life or character." In it no 
 reference is made to the poet's literary property, but it does not 
 follow from this that he had not anticipated so important a matter, 
 and provided some other means of securing to posterity that intel- 
 lectual wealth which, as Carlyle strikingly said, outvalues the empire 
 of India. The "Agreements," "Recoveries," and other legal papers 
 which, for Shakespeare as for any other man who owned anything 
 or had any civil interests, were drafted and filed away for reference, 
 are formal records of transactions in no way uncommon. 
 
 Coming to the third objection to the acceptance of the facts 
 assumed by Lee and Brandes, and others, it is to be remarked that 
 sound reasoning is not satisfied that any proposition or assertion is 
 true, simply because no positive testimony contradictory of it has 
 been produced. It may be a fact that Wordsworth was destitute 
 of the sense of smell; that, as has been facetiously said, his nose 
 was "an idle promontory projecting into a desert air;" but one 
 hesitates to accept this as a proven certainty merely on the negative 
 evidence that he does not allude to odors of any kind in his poems. 
 So it might have been that Shakespeare lost his sense of beauty or 
 his taste for art when he reached middle life; yet one finds it hard 
 to admit the probability of such deterioration, no matter how posi- 
 tively stated; for, although proof that it was not so may be lacking, 
 the conjecture that it was so outrages the understanding. 
 
 The fourth point to be considered — namely, the allegation that 
 many errors which Shakespeare might have been expected to correct 
 appear in the First Folio edition of his dramas — has much force, 
 and, at first thought, seems to support the theory in question. How- 
 ever, it is by no means certain that Shakespeare did not contemplate 
 the revision of his works for the press. Evidence in support of a 
 contrary theory has been discovered in the First Folio. Let the 
 tables be turned on the advocates of the old theory. Can they dis- 
 prove conjecture by opposite conjecture ? 
 
A SPECULATION REGARDING SHAKESPEARE 721 
 
 The fifth and last of the propositions in dispute assumes that 
 Shakespeare gave up his art after disposing of his stock in the Globe 
 and the Black Friars Theater. 
 
 ■ This was in substance what Rowe beheved and wrote down in a 
 book, two centuries ago. Essentially this beHef, or supposition, 
 has been incorporated into most of the biographies of Shakespeare 
 that have ever been written. Is it proven ? Is it true ? Is it cred- 
 ible ? Is it not absurd ? 
 
 The theory which supposes that William Shakespeare, in sound 
 health, at the age of only forty-seven, chose to abandon his high estate 
 as thinker and poet, in order to devote his energies to domestic con- 
 cerns, m.oney-getting, and the conventions of EngHsh country life, 
 is repugnant to human reason. The idea is incredible ! We instinc- 
 tively reject it. Almost every Shakespearian writer, great and small, 
 when he comes to tell the old story over, remarks on the wonder- 
 fulness of it, and mentions the case as exceptional! 
 
 Mr. Mabie, in his Shakespeare, Poet, Dramatist and Man, seems 
 almost to apologize for the unaccountable course of the man whose 
 sanity is rightly considered to be undoubted, and whom Emerson 
 characterizes as "inconceivably wise." Mr. Mabie says: "From 
 the standpoint of today he was still a young man ; but men grew old 
 much earher three centuries ago." There is some truth in this, 
 but in a list of twenty of Shakespeare's eminent contemporaries I 
 find that not one of these lived fewer years than three-score, while 
 at least eight of them reached or passed three-score and ten. Bacon 
 and Ben Jonson and Drayton and Raleigh and Burton and Knox 
 and Chapman and Shirley all hved to be old men ; Coke was eighty- 
 two when he died, and Herrick eighty-three. The father and the 
 mother of Shakespeare both lived to a ripe old age, and two of his 
 daughters reached nearly three-score and ten; so there can be no 
 doubt that the chances of longevity were in the poet's blood and 
 bone. A modern insurance agent would consider such a man a good 
 risk, with the probabilities of holding out at least twenty years longer. 
 
 Common sense is opposed to conjectures usually brought to the 
 support of the wisdom of the notion that Shakespeare changed his 
 habits of mind, and renounced his book and pen, when he sold out 
 his business in London and betook himself to Stratford. If he did 
 
722 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 
 
 degenerate into a character so commonplace as is ascribed to him, 
 or into the scornful, misanthropic pessimist which Brandes fancies 
 him, it is not strange that, baffled by such a paradox, Deha Bacon 
 regarded him as a "booby" and denied the possibility of his having 
 written the works published under his name. The presumptions 
 of the cryptogram theorists are hardly more preposterous than are 
 the self- contradictory explanations of Shakespeare's alleged conduct 
 in the last eight or ten years of his life. Miss Bacon, in 1853, tells, 
 in one of her letters, how she told Thomas Carlyle that no one who 
 knew the plays attributed to Shakespeare could believe Shakespeare 
 wrote them. "It was then," wrote she, "that Carlyle began to 
 shriek. You could have heard him a mile!" The shriek was 
 natural, and should have settled the controversy. But the method 
 of reasoning which concludes that Shakespeare's "highest ambition 
 was to restore the family repute," and that his "literary achieve- 
 ments were chiefly valued as serving the prosaic end of providing 
 permanently for himself and his daughters," merely because of 
 absence of specific contemporary testimony that he was like other 
 great literary artists in his devotion to ideal, as opposed to mercenary 
 and materiahstic, standards of achievement — this method of reason- 
 ing — or, better say, of confusing reason- — might well be held respon- 
 sible for the modern "war to the knife against Shakespeare's per- 
 sonality," as Brandes puts it, and for the wild speculations of the 
 Baconians from Joseph Hart to Ignatius Donnelly. The trans- 
 formed Shakespeare of the Rowe theory, being impossible and 
 inconceivable, must seem a literary impostor- — he could never have 
 been the man who wrote Hamlet and Macbeth! He is a myth! 
 Francis Bacon wrote him ! See into what chaos the mind is thrown 
 when it revolts against its own laws. Is there not a simpler and 
 more natural way of explaining and reconciling the facts relating to 
 Shakespeare's plans and occupations during the period extending 
 from 161 1 to the time of his unexpected death, some five years 
 later ? 
 
 Several causes may reasonably be given, any one or all of which 
 will account for the removal from London, Shakespeare's temporary 
 abode and place of business, to Stratford, where his family lived, 
 and which he always regarded as his home. 
 
A SPECULATION RECrARDING SHAKESPEARE 723 
 
 According to Professor Baynes/ it is probable that as early as 
 1608 Shakespeare decided to return to his native place, "as soon 
 as he could conveniently terminate his London engagements," 
 because of a series of "chequered domestic experiences." His 
 father had died in 1601; his youngest brother, in 1607; his mother, 
 in 1608; his eldest daughter had married in 1607, and, in the next 
 year, had borne an infant, the only grandchild of his that he lived to 
 see. "With these vivid and varied family experiences," says Baynes, 
 "a strong wave of home yearning seems to have set in, which gradu- 
 ally drew the poet back to Stratford." 
 
 Or it may have been that, warned by the increasing pressure of 
 Puritan protest against the stage, and foreseeing disaster to his 
 business, he deemed it, prudent to avoid risks of future loss, and 
 resolved to make sure of what he had earned by investing it in real 
 estate in Warwickshire. 
 
 Another reasonable supposition is that the labors and cares of 
 theatrical management had become iiksome, and that he felt the 
 need of rest and the restorative influences of nature. He may have 
 had some premonition of physical breakdown, or, it may be, had 
 experienced some intolerable seizure of mental fatigue or nervous 
 distress, such as not unfrequently follows severe and long-continued 
 effort of brain. The energy which goes to the creation of a great 
 original work of literature or art drains the very soul of its vitality. 
 Carlyle suffered an anguish of reaction as often as he produced a 
 book. It would be easy to multiply instances of the kind in the 
 biography of great thinkers and writers. Within the eight years 
 immediately preceding the time of his "retirement," Shakespeare 
 had brought forth at least twelve of his dramas, including Hamlet, 
 Othello, Macbeth, and Lear; and how could he escape the inevitable 
 exhaustion entailed by such prodigious labor of mind ? What more 
 natural than that he should seek to restore his strength and cheer- 
 fulness by a change of scene and a release from worry ? 
 
 It was not his intention to give up literature and to lose touch 
 with his old associates; nor did he, after his removal to the country, 
 fail to pay occasional visits to London. He probably planned to 
 economize his forces, bodily and spiritual, to regulate his exertions 
 
 I T. Spencer Baynes, "Shakespeare," in EncydopcBdia Britaiiiiica. 
 
724 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 
 
 according to his own moods, to divide his time between the duties 
 of a freeholder and the pursuits of literary composition, and, per- 
 haps, to revise his dramatic works, in order to secure that "legiti- 
 mate fame" for which, hke his friend Ben Jonson, he must have 
 wished. Doubtless he was a practical man and attended promptly 
 to his business affairs; but, to use the words of Professor Baynes, 
 "he could promptly throw the whole burden aside, and in the exer- 
 cise of his noble art pierce with an eagle's wing the very highest 
 heaven of invention." 
 
 From the conjectures just stated, and from others of similar 
 import, the speculations of this article originate. On what founda- 
 tion, it will be asked, are these conjectures grounded ? 
 
 The argument is based on evidence of several kinds, four of which 
 will be presented, in the following order: (i) evidence from tradition 
 and history; (2) evidence from comments and admissions of Shake- 
 spearian scholars; (3) character and testimony of Shakespeare's 
 literary contemporaries; (4) internal evidence shown in Shake- 
 speare's writings. Each of these topics will now be briefly examined. 
 
 First, the evidence of tradition and history: Lewis Theobald, 
 in the preface to his edition of Shakespeare, published in 1733, 
 repeats, in quaint language, a current tradition, which, if true, or in 
 any wise approximating to truth, pours a flood of light upon our 
 subject. Theobald says: 
 
 How much our Author employ'd himself in Poetry, after his Retirement 
 from the Stage, does not so evidently appear: Very few posthumous Sketches 
 of his Pen have been recover'd to ascertain that Point. We have been told, indeed, 
 in Print, but not till very lately, That two large Chests full of this Great Man's 
 loose Papers and Manuscripts, in the Hands of an ignorant Baker of Warwick 
 (who married one of the Descendants from our Shakespeare), were carelessly 
 scatter' d and thrown about, as Garret-Lumber and Litter, to the particular 
 Knowledge of the late Sir William Bishop; till they were all consumed in the 
 general Fire and Destruction of that Town. I cannot help being a little apt to 
 distrust the Authority of this Tradition; because as his Wife surviv'd him seven 
 Years, and as his Favourite Daughter Susanna surviv'd her twenty-six Years, 
 'tis very improbable they should allow such a Treasure to be remov'd, and trans- 
 lated into a remoter Branch of the Family, without a Scrutiny first made into 
 the Value of it.^ 
 
 ' D. Nichol Smith, Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare (Glasgow, 1Q03) 
 
A SPECULATION REGARDING SHAKESPEARE 725 
 
 Theobald's doubt that Shakespeare's widow and his daughter 
 would suffer those precious chests to be removed and lost, would 
 not be shared by all modern historians. There is little likelihood 
 that Anna Hathaway appreciated her husband or valued his papers. 
 As for the daughter, we may agree with Brandes that "it is incon- 
 ceivable that Susanna could have any real understanding of, or 
 sympathy with, her father."^ She was a rabid Puritan, and per- 
 haps thought it a virtuous act to rid the house of a lot of wicked 
 stage-plays. 
 
 The manuscripts of Shakespeare may have been lost in the way 
 the tradition declares them to have been, or they may have been 
 destroyed in the author's lifetime, in 161 3, when the Globe Theater 
 was burned; what became of them is one of the unknow^ables. 
 Copies of his plays were extant; else how could his friends and 
 fellow-actors, John Heming and Henry Condell, furnish the material 
 for the First Folio edition of his works, a publication which appeared 
 in 1623, seven years after the death of the author? This query 
 leads us to the important testimony of the "two obscure actors," 
 to whom, in the opinion of Lowell, "posterity owes a greaier debt 
 than to any two men living in 1623." 
 
 The fact that Heming and Condell were well regarded by their 
 contemporaries is well attested by a memorial poem which forms part 
 of the preliminary matter of the First Folio, and which begins with 
 the words: 
 
 Shakespeare, at length thy pious fellows give 
 The world thy Works. 
 
 Furthermore, the will of Shakespeare makes it certain that these 
 two men stood high in his confidence and affection, for, excepting 
 Richard Burbage, they only of his "fellows" were remembered 
 with a token of his intimate regard, each receiving the bequest of 
 "xxvjsviijd. Apeece to buy ringes." 
 
 In the dedication prefixed to the First Folio occur these words, 
 addressed to the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Montgomery, 
 and signed by Heming and Condell: 
 
 But since your Lordships have beene pleas'd to thinke these trifles some- 
 thing, heertofore; and have prosecquuted both them, and their Author living, 
 
 I William Shakespeare: A Critical Study. 
 
726 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 
 
 with so much favour: we hope, that, (they out-living him, and he not having 
 the fate, common with some, to be exequutor to his owne writings) you will 
 use the like indulgence toward them, you have done unto their parent. . . 
 We have but collected them, and done an office to the dead, to procure his 
 Orphanes, Guardians; without ambition either of selfe-profit, or fame: onely 
 to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend & Fellow alive, as was our Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 The same editors, in a succeeding address to "The Great Variety 
 of Readers," say this: 
 
 It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to haue bene wished, that the 
 Author himself had liued to haue set forth, and overseen his owne writings; 
 But since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he by death departed from that 
 right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, 
 to have collected & publish' d them; and so to have published them, as where 
 (before) you were abus'd with diverse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, 
 and deformed by the frauds of injurious impostors, that exposed them: Even 
 those, are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and all 
 the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them; who, as he was a happy 
 imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went 
 together; and what he thought, he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce 
 received from him a blot in his papers. 
 
 This testimony, which clearly implies that Shakespeare's most 
 intimate companions had expected him to be executor of his "owne 
 writings," and, indeed, that he had begun the task of revision, is 
 generahy slighted by conservative editors. 
 
 Passing on from testimony of this class, which is very abundant, 
 we come to an exceedingly important kind of evidence — that adduced 
 from the critics themselves. Although not one of these can be 
 claimed as wholly accepting the view contended for, many, if not 
 most, of these admit that Shakespeare could not have abandoned 
 literary composition altogether after his withdrawal from I^ondon, 
 
 Charles Knight, reasoning from data derived from a critical 
 comparison of the First FoHo edition of the plays and the Quarto 
 copies, is convinced that Shakespeare guarded with "jealous care" 
 the "more important" of his dramas, "so as to leave with his 'fel- 
 lows' more complete copies than had been preserved by the press." 
 Among British authorities, Knight stands pre-eminent in defense 
 of the conviction that Shakespeare was Shakespeare to the end of 
 his life. In his luminous book, William Shakespeare: A Biography, 
 published in 1843, ^^ speaks as follows: 
 
A SPECULATION REGARDING SHAKESPEARE 727 
 
 Every one agrees that during the last three or four years of his life Shakes- 
 peare ceased to write, yet we venture to think that every one is in error 
 
 There were no circumstances, as far as we can collect, to have prevented him 
 finally leaving London several years before 1613. But his biographers, having 
 fixed a period for the termination of his connection with the active business 
 of the theater, assume that he became wholly unemployed; that he gave himself 
 up, as Rowe described, to "ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends." 
 .... But when the days of pleasure arrived, is it reasonable to believe that 
 the mere habit of his life would not assert its ordinary control; that the greatest 
 of intellects would suddenly sink to the condition of an every-day man — cherish- 
 ing no high plans for the future, looking back with no desire to equal and excell 
 the work of the past ? At the period of life when Chaucer began to write the 
 Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare, according to his biographers, was suddenly 
 and utterly to cease to write. We can not believe it. 
 
 Another witness, August Schlegel, the first and perhaps tlie 
 greatest of the sesthetic scliool of Sliakespearian inteipreters, in his 
 Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, says: 
 
 It would be singular indeed if Shakespeare, notwithstanding the modesty of 
 a great mind, which he certainly possessed in a peculiar degree, should never 
 
 have dreamed of posthumous fame What foundation, then, is there 
 
 for the contrary assertion, which would degrade the immortal artist to the condi- 
 tion of a daily laborer for a rude multitude ? — Merely this, that he himself pub- 
 lished no edition of his whole works it is ... . not impossible that the 
 
 right of property in his unprinted pieces was no longer vested in Shakespeare, 
 or had not at least yet reverted to him. — His fellow managers entered on the 
 publication seven years after his death, (which probably cut short his intention), 
 as it would appear, on their own account and for their own advantage'. 
 
 Ward admits, as do most Shakespearian writers, that Henry 
 VIII was written after the year 161 1. Dowden, while not allowing 
 that Shakespeare wrote much at Stratford, is, like Knight, reluctant 
 to believe that the master had parted from his genius, broken his 
 staff, and drowned his book "deeper than did ever plummet sound." 
 "Prospero," he acknowledges, "must forever have remained some- 
 what apart from other dukes and Warwickshire magnificoes, by 
 virtue of the enchanted island and the marvelous years of mageship."^ 
 
 Arguing from the character and report of his literary contem- 
 poraries, Shakespeare could not have been the person invented by 
 Rowe and patented perpetually by succeeding biographers. He 
 
 1 August Schlegel, Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. 
 
 2 Edward Dowden, Shakespeare: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art. 
 
728 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 
 
 was the choice and master-spirit of the wits and singers of the 
 period — "soul of the age!" — the "spacious times" of Elizabeth. 
 The fact that Bacon did not recognize the greatness of Shakespeare, 
 though strange, is not inexplicable. Herbert Spencer, in his inter- 
 minable Autobiography does not mention Tennyson, and names 
 Wordsworth only to disparage him. But, in that elder day, Edmund 
 Spenser unerrinlgy discerned the transcendent genius 
 
 Whose Muse, full of high thoughts invention, 
 
 Doth Hke himself herocially sound. ^ 
 
 It requires a poet, or at least a poetic temperament, to discover 
 and appreciate a poet. Schlegel and Goethe and Coleridge are 
 illuminating diviners and interpreters of Shakespeare. Ben Jonson's 
 lines, "To the memory of my beloved, the Author, Mr. Wilham 
 Shakespeare, and what he hath left us," is worth more as an appraise- 
 ment of Shakespeare the artist than a whole library of ordinary 
 criticism. What knowledge, what insight, in the words: 
 
 .... he 
 
 Who casts to write a living line, must sweat, 
 
 (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat 
 
 Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same, 
 
 And himself with it, that he thinks to fame; 
 
 Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn; 
 
 For a good poet's made, as well as born. 
 
 And such wert thou! 
 
 This Shakespeare whom Jonson knew — who, with the sweat of 
 his immortal soul, shaped upon the Muses' anvil the lines which 
 were to render poem and poet famous — was not the easy-going 
 husbandman, or the money-loving William Shakespeare, Gentleman, 
 of Stratford, who had dropped poetry and taken up "contentment" 
 as a vocation. 
 
 In this connection one recalls the oft-repeated and well-attested 
 story of that last supper which the three congenial poets, Shakespeare, 
 Jonson, and Drayton, had together in Stratford, a short time before 
 Shakespeare's death. Jonson had come up from London, probably 
 to attend the wedding of Shakespeare's daughter, and the two were 
 entertained by their honored and beloved friend. Tradition says 
 they took rather too many cups of kindness on the occasion. Whether 
 
 I "Colin Clouts Come Home Againe," 11. 446, 447. 
 
A SPECULATION REGARDING SHAKESPEARE 729 
 
 Shakespeare and his boon-brothers drank sack or canary, deponent 
 sayeth not, but we may well believe they talked about books and 
 poems and plays, and not much about things of this world. Drayton 
 had recently (1605) reprinted his most important works, and Jonson 
 was preparing for the press the first volume of the Folio edition of 
 his dramas, which came out within the same year, a few months 
 after Shakespeare's death. We can fancy there might have been 
 some intimate canvassing as to Shakespeare's literary labors and 
 intentions. 
 
 No, Shakespeare's last years were not spent in ease and con- 
 tentment. His literary successes were not valued chiefly for the 
 prosaic end of "providing" houses and lands and food and raiment 
 for himself and his daughters. His chief aims were less material, 
 less sordid. His highest ambition was not to restore the family 
 repute. He was family repute! Nor was he unhke other poets, 
 except in greater greatness. 
 
 How doubt that Shakespeare, measurer of worth, 
 Gaged his own measure? Was that splendor dim 
 
 Which should outsplendor all the names of earth, 
 Was that, now dazzling us, obscure to him ? 
 
 Did he all realms of human thought explore 
 
 And search all nature to its heart of fire, 
 Yet his own majesty of man ignore 
 
 In London playwright and in Stratford Squire?' 
 
 Is it conceivable that the Shakespeare who with jealous precau- 
 tion guarded his dead ashes — "Curst be he that moves my bones!" — 
 had no forethought to preserve his fame ? The strongest refutation 
 of such an assumption is to be found in the writings of Shakespeare 
 himself. Read the plays, the long poems, the Sonnets, and be con- 
 vinced. He did think of the sweetness of being remembered after 
 death, as witness Hamlet's bitter speech to Opheha: "O heavens! 
 died two months ago, and not forgotten yet ? Then there's hope a 
 great man's memory may'outHve his life half a year; but, by 'r lady, 
 he must build churches then; or else shall he suffer not thinking on." 
 Assuredly Shakespeare was confident that his own work would sur- 
 vive the centuries, as his sonnets abundantly testify. 
 
 ' Coates Kinney, " Mists of Fire." 
 
730 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 
 
 Not marble, nor the gilded monuments 
 
 Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.' 
 
 Sidney Lee says that "Chaucer and Scott, among writers of 
 exalted genius, vie with Shakespeare in the sobriety of their personal 
 aims," etc. This may readily be granted, and it is also true that 
 they, like other poets, were so much in love with their art that they 
 never forsook it. 
 
 Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales, 
 At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales, ^ 
 
 and Scott on his death-bed still continued the work of his imagina- 
 tion. Milton and Wordsworth and Browing pursued their ideals to 
 the last, and Tennyson, approaching the bourn whence no traveler 
 returns, encouraged the faltering faith of his soul by reading the 
 dirge in "Cymbeline," doubtless moved thereto by the closing lines: 
 
 Quiet consummation have, 
 
 And renowned be thy grave. 
 
 "Look here, upon this picture and on this," of Shakespeare in 
 the last years of his life at Stratford — the one sketched by Rowe, 
 and since retouched with bolder coloring by many pencils, the other 
 portrayed in the light of a new hypothesis. Both are attempts at a 
 correct likeness, and necessarily have much in common; but they 
 differ in some essential features. Which is the truer representation 
 of the real Shakespeare ? 
 
 The later conception would delineate a man in the prime of life, 
 successful in all his undertakings, unrivaled in his achievements in 
 the highest department of literary endeavor, applauded by every 
 rank, from "Eliza and our James," on the throne, to the groundlings 
 in the pit of the Black Friars. His way of life is accompanied by 
 "honor, love, obedience, troops of friends." As regards fortune, 
 he is "seated in the mean;" not cursed with the "superfluity" 
 which "comes sooner by white hairs," but blest with the "compe- 
 tency" which "lives longer." And he would live longer and accom- 
 pHsh more, not planning to die, but rather to take a new lease of 
 strength and ambition. If sick or weary from overtasks, he would 
 recuperate and then resume his high calling. The period is transi- 
 tional in his career; he has turned a new chapter, not closed the 
 
 I Sonnet LV. ' Longfellow, "Morituri Salutamus." 
 
A SPECULATION REGARDING SHAKESPEARE 731 
 
 book. Perhaps he will, at leisure, go over all his works, as he had 
 gone over portions of Hamlet and of other plays, correcting errors 
 and adding new matter. Certainly he will not abandon his art or 
 stop thinking. Unless incapacitated by sickness, he will be no less 
 absorbed in the "business of his dreams" after his retirement from 
 theatrical management, than before. 
 
 Scientific method seeks a generalization which will reconcile 
 apparently conflicting data. The prevailing unpsychological inter- 
 pretation of the known facts of Shakespeare's last years at Stratford 
 has led to strange vagaries. It has transformed the greatest man of 
 all time into a chimerical myth. It has distorted criticism whenever 
 an attempt has been made to interpret Shakespeare's works in the 
 light of his supposed character. In this paper, wdiile attention has 
 been focused upon the period of his life regarding which the least 
 is known, the facts of his entire career have been kept constantly in 
 mind. May not the hypothesis here offered suggest a means by 
 which the harsh and jangled bells of diverse opinion may be put 
 into harmony ? 
 

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