takes a great deal
of explaining away, nor are the laboured explanations of the people who
assume that the life of genius is perfect, worth the ink and paper
devoted to them. The estrangement might have been the fault of the man,
or his wife, or both; it is a matter that ceased to be important when
one or both had died. We make our conjectures and pass on; others come
to do the same; but the first is likely to be as far from the truth as
the last. We do not find any reliable information that can clear the
darkness enshrouding the poet's life; even Aubrey's "Lives of Eminent
Men," in which the poet is described as "handsome and well shaped," was
written more than fifty years after his death, and was founded upon the
gossip of an old actor.

There is hardly more than one portrait that may be supposed to show the
poet as he was. This was discovered by Mr. Edgar Flower in 1892; it is
painted on an elm panel, with "Wm. Shakespeare, 1609," in the left-hand
corner. Several leading authorities have agreed that it may be the
original from which Martin Droeshout engraved his half-length portrait
for the folio of 1623, a likeness that was accepted as satisfactory by
Ben Jonson, though it was clearly a second-hand work, because the
engraver was no more than fifteen when Shakespeare died. The portrait is
now in the Memorial Gallery at Stratford. Dr. Sidney Lee, in his
fascinating "Life of William Shakespeare," a work that has run into many
editions, tells us that upwards of sixty portraits of Shakespeare have
been offered to the National Gallery since 1856, and that not one of
these has been shown to be authentic. How fortunate, then, that the
deeds and signatures quite beyond suspicion have told the world so much
about the business side of the poet's life. Just as the forgery of
portraits has been of common occurrence, so the forgery of deeds has
been a source of amusement, if not of profit, to many; but happily there
is always a strong critical faculty waiting to deal with startling
discoveries, and those that survive the sifting of the keen intellects
that examine them may be accepted in perfect good faith.

We have the safe material upon which to base the conclusion that the
poet left Stratford penniless, or well-nigh penniless, in 1585; that
after eleven years of hard work in London, in the course of which he
probably paid brief visits to his home, travelling by way of Oxford and
stopping at the Crown Inn, he returned to rest