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.
IV
Conjectures
The historians "suppose" that Shakespeare attended the Free School in
Stratford from the time he was seven years old till he was thirteen.
There is no EVIDENCE in existence that he ever went to school at all.
The historians "infer" that he got his Latin in that school--the school
which they "suppose" he attended.
They "suppose" his father's declining fortunes made it necessary for him
to leave the school they supposed he attended, and get to work and help
support his parents and their ten children. But there is no evidence
that he ever entered or returned from the school they suppose he
attended.
They "suppose" he assisted his father in the butchering business; and
that, being only a boy, he didn't have to do full-grown butchering, but
only slaughtering calves. Also, that whenever he killed a calf he made a
high-flown speech over it. This supposition rests upon the testimony
of a man who wasn't there at the time; a man who got it from a man
who could have been there, but did not say whether he was nor not; and
neither of them thought to mention it for decades, and decades, and
decades, and two more decades after Shakespeare's death (until old age
and mental decay had refreshed and vivified their memories). They hadn't
two facts in stock about the long-dead distinguished citizen, but only
just the one: he slaughtered calves and broke into oratory while he was
at it. Curious. They had only one fact, yet the distinguished citizen
had spent twenty-six years in that little town--just half his lifetime.
However, rightly viewed, it was the most important fact, indeed almost
the only important fact, of Shakespeare's life in Stratford. Rightly
viewed. For experience is an author's most valuable asset; experience
is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into
the book he writes. Right
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