We had nine bones, and we built the rest of him out of plaster
of Paris. We ran short of plaster of Paris, or we'd have built a
brontosaur that could sit down beside the Stratford Shakespeare and none
but an expert could tell which was biggest or contained the most plaster.
Shakespeare pronounced "Venus and Adonis" "the first heir of his
invention," apparently implying that it was his first effort at literary
composition. He should not have said it. It has been an embarrassment
to his historians these many, many years. They have to make him write
that graceful and polished and flawless and beautiful poem before he
escaped from Stratford and his family--1586 or '87--age, twenty-two, or
along there; because within the next five years he wrote five great
plays, and could not have found time to write another line.
It is sorely embarrassing. If he began to slaughter calves, and poach
deer, and rollick around, and learn English, at the earliest likely
moment--say at thirteen, when he was supposably wretched from that school
where he was supposably storing up Latin for future literary use--he had
his youthful hands full, and much more than full. He must have had to
put aside his Warwickshire dialect, which wouldn't be understood in
London, and study English very hard. Very hard indeed; incredibly hard,
almost, if the result of that labor was to be the smooth and rounded and
flexible and letter-perfect English of the "Venus and Adonis" in the
space of ten years; and at the same time learn great and fine and
unsurpassable literary FORM.
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