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. Rightly viewed, calf-butchering accounts for "Titus Andronicus,"
the only play--ain't it?--that the Stratford Shakespeare ever wrote; and
yet it is the only one everybody tried to chouse him out of, the
Baconians included.
The historians find themselves "justified in believing" that the young
Shakespeare poached upon Sir Thomas Lucy's deer preserves and got haled
before that magistrate for it. But there is no shred of respectworthy
evidence that anything of the kind happened.
The historians, having argued the thing that MIGHT have happened into the
thing that DID happen, found no trouble in turning Sir Thomas Lucy into
Mr. Justice Shallow. They have long ago convinced the world--on surmise
and without trustworthy evidence--that Shallow IS Sir Thomas.
The next addition to the young Shakespeare's Stratford history comes
easy. The historian builds it out of the surmised deer-steeling, and the
surmised trial before the magistrate, and the surmised vengeance-prompted
satire upon the magistrate in the play: result, the young Shakespeare was
a wild, wild, wild, oh, SUCH a wild young scamp, and that gratuitous
slander is established for all time! It is the very way Professor Osborn
and I built the colossal skeleton brontosaur that stands fifty-seven feet
long and sixteen feet high in the Natural History Museum, the awe and
admiration of all the world, the stateliest skeleton that exists on the
planet.
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