Is Shakespeare Dead?
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Mark Twain >> Is Shakespeare Dead?
The practical faculty was powerful in Bacon; but not, like his wit,
so powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of his reason, and
to tyrannize over the whole man.
There are too many places in the Plays where this happens. Poor
old dying John of Gaunt volleying second-rate puns at his own name,
is a pathetic instance of it. "We may assume" that it is Bacon's
fault, but the Stratford Shakespeare has to bear the blame.
No imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly
subjugated. It stopped at the first check from good sense.
In truth much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world--amid
things as strange as any that are described in the "Arabian Tales"
. . . amid buildings more sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin,
fountains more wonderful than the golden water of Parizade,
conveyances more rapid than the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more
formidable than the lance of Astolfo, remedies more efficacious
than the balsam of Fierabras. Yet in his magnificent day-dreams
there was nothing wild--nothing but what sober reason sanctioned.
Bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the Novum Organum
. . . Every part of it blazes with wit, but with wit which is
employed only to illustrate and decorate truth. No book ever made
so great a revolution in the mode of thinking, overthrew so many
prejudices, introduced so many new opinions.
But what we most admire is the vast capacity of that intellect
which, without effort, takes in at once all the domains of science-
-all the past, the present and the future, all the errors of two
thousand years, all the encouraging signs of the passing times, all
the bright hopes of the coming age.
He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close and rendering
it portable.
His eloquence would alone have entitled him to a high rank in
literature.
It is evident that he had each and every one of the mental gifts
and each and every one of the acquirements that are so prodigally
displayed in the Plays and Poems, and in much higher and richer
degree than any other man of his time or of any previous time. He
was a genius without a mate, a prodigy not matable. There was only
one of him; the planet could not produce two of him at one birth,
nor in one age. He could have written anything that is in the
Plays and Poems. He could have written this:
The cloud-cap'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like an insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Also, he could have written this, but he refrained:
Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be ye yt moves my bones.
When a person reads the noble verses about the cloud-cap'd towers,
he ought not to follow it immediately with Good friend for Iesus
sake forbeare, because he will find the transition from great
poetry to poor prose too violent for comfort. It will give him a
shock. You never notice how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is,
until you bite into a layer of it in a pie.
CHAPTER XI
Am I trying to convince anybody that Shakespeare did not write
Shakespeare's Works? Ah, now, what do you take me for? Would I be
so soft as that, after having known the human race familiarly for
nearly seventy-four years? It would grieve me to know that any one
could think so injuriously of me, so uncomplimentarily, so
unadmiringly of me. No-no, I am aware that when even the brightest
mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a
superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind,
in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and
conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem
to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if
I could do it myself. We always get at second hand our notions
about systems of government; and high-tariff and low-tariff; and
prohibition and anti-prohibition; and the holiness of peace and the
glories of war; and codes of honor and codes of morals; and
approval of the duel and disapproval of it; and our beliefs
concerning the nature of cats; and our ideas as to whether the
murder of helpless wild animals is base or is heroic; and our
preferences in the matter of religious and political parties; and
our acceptance or rejection of the Shakespeares and the Arthur
Ortons and the Mrs. Eddys. We get them all at second-hand, we
reason none of them out for ourselves. It is the way we are made.
It is the way we are all made, and we can't help it, we can't
change it. And whenever we have been furnished a fetish, and have
been taught to believe in it, and love it and worship it, and
refrain from examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear
and strong, that can persuade us to withdraw from it our loyalty
and our devotion. In morals, conduct, and beliefs we take the
color of our environment and associations, and it is a color that
can safely be warranted to wash. Whenever we have been furnished
with a tar baby ostensibly stuffed with jewels, and warned that it
will be dishonorable and irreverent to disembowel it and test the
jewels, we keep our sacrilegious hands off it. We submit, not
reluctantly, but rather gladly, for we are privately afraid we
should find, upon examination, that the jewels are of the sort that
are manufactured at North Adams, Mass.
I haven't any idea that Shakespeare will have to vacate his
pedestal this side of the year 2209. Disbelief in him cannot come
swiftly, disbelief in a healthy and deeply-loved tar baby has never
been known to disintegrate swiftly, it is a very slow process. It
took several thousand years to convince our fine race--including
every splendid intellect in it--that there is no such thing as a
witch; it has taken several thousand years to convince that same
fine race--including every splendid intellect in it--that there is
no such person as Satan; it has taken several centuries to remove
perdition from the Protestant Church's program of postmortem
entertainments; it has taken a weary long time to persuade American
Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to bear it the
best they can; and it looks as if their Scotch brethren will still
be burning babies in the everlasting fires when Shakespeare comes
down from his perch.
We are The Reasoning Race. We can't prove it by the above
examples, and we can't prove it by the miraculous "histories" built
by those Stratfordolaters out of a hatful of rags and a barrel of
sawdust, but there is a plenty of other things we can prove it by,
if I could think of them. We are The Reasoning Race, and when we
find a vague file of chipmunk-tracks stringing through the dust of
Stratford village, we know by our reasoning powers that Hercules
has been along there. I feel that our fetish is safe for three
centuries yet. The bust, too--there in the Stratford Church. The
precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm bust, the serene bust,
the emotionless bust, with the dandy moustache, and the putty face,
unseamed of care--that face which has looked passionlessly down
upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty years and will still
look down upon the awed pilgrim three hundred more, with the deep,
deep, deep, subtle, subtle, subtle, expression of a bladder.
CHAPTER XII
Irreverence
One of the most trying defects which I find in these--these--what
shall I call them? for I will not apply injurious epithets to them,
the way they do to us, such violations of courtesy being repugnant
to my nature and my dignity. The furthest I can go in that
direction is to call them by names of limited reverence--names
merely descriptive, never unkind, never offensive, never tainted by
harsh feeling. If THEY would do like this, they would feel better
in their hearts. Very well, then--to proceed. One of the most
trying defects which I find in these Stratfordolaters, these
Shakesperoids, these thugs, these bangalores, these troglodytes,
these herumfrodites, these blatherskites, these buccaneers, these
bandoleers, is their spirit of irreverence. It is detectable in
every utterance of theirs when they are talking about us. I am
thankful that in me there is nothing of that spirit. When a thing
is sacred to me it is impossible for me to be irreverent toward it.
I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been
irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other
people. Am I in the right? I think so. But I ask no one to take
my unsupported word; no, look at the dictionary; let the dictionary
decide. Here is the definition:
Irreverence. The quality or condition of irreverence toward God
and sacred things.
What does the Hindu say? He says it is correct. He says
irreverence is lack of respect for Vishnu, and Brahma, and
Chrishna, and his other gods, and for his sacred cattle, and for
his temples and the things within them. He endorses the
definition, you see; and there are 300,000,000 Hindus or their
equivalents back of him.
The dictionary had the acute idea that by using the capital G it
could restrict irreverence to lack of reverence for OUR Deity and
our sacred things, but that ingenious and rather sly idea
miscarried: for by the simple process of spelling HIS deities with
capitals the Hindu confiscates the definition and restricts it to
his own sects, thus making it clearly compulsory upon us to revere
HIS gods and HIS sacred things, and nobody's else. We can't say a
word, for he has our own dictionary at his back, and its decision
is final.
This law, reduced to its simplest terms, is this: 1. Whatever is
sacred to the Christian must be held in reverence by everybody
else; 2, whatever is sacred to the Hindu must be held in reverence
by everybody else; 3, therefore, by consequence, logically, and
indisputably, whatever is sacred to ME must be held in reverence by
everybody else.
Now then, what aggravates me is, that these troglodytes and
muscovites and bandoleers and buccaneers are ALSO trying to crowd
in and share the benefit of the law, and compel everybody to revere
their Shakespeare and hold him sacred. We can't have that:
there's enough of us already. If you go on widening and spreading
and inflating the privilege, it will presently come to be conceded
that each man's sacred things are the ONLY ones, and the rest of
the human race will have to be humbly reverent toward them or
suffer for it. That can surely happen, and when it happens, the
word Irreverence will be regarded as the most meaningless, and
foolish, and self-conceited, and insolent, and impudent and
dictatorial word in the language. And people will say, "Whose
business is it, what gods I worship and what things hold sacred?
Who has the right to dictate to my conscience, and where did he get
that right?"
We cannot afford to let that calamity come upon us. We must save
the word from this destruction. There is but one way to do it, and
that is, to stop the spread of the privilege, and strictly confine
it to its present limits: that is, to all the Christian sects, to
all the Hindu sects, and me. We do not need any more, the stock is
watered enough, just as it is.
It would be better if the privilege were limited to me alone. I
think so because I am the only sect that knows how to employ it
gently, kindly, charitably, dispassionately. The other sects lack
the quality of self-restraint. The Catholic Church says the most
irreverent things about matters which are sacred to the
Protestants, and the Protestant Church retorts in kind about the
confessional and other matters which Catholics hold sacred; then
both of these irreverencers turn upon Thomas Paine and charge HIM
with irreverence. This is all unfortunate, because it makes it
difficult for students equipped with only a low grade of mentality
to find out what Irreverence really IS.
It will surely be much better all around if the privilege of
regulating the irreverent and keeping them in order shall
eventually be withdrawn from all the sects but me. Then there will
be no more quarrelling, no more bandying of disrespectful epithets,
no more heart burnings.
There will then be nothing sacred involved in this Bacon-
Shakespeare controversy except what is sacred to me. That will
simplify the whole matter, and trouble will cease. There will be
irreverence no longer, because I will not allow it. The first time
those criminals charge me with irreverence for calling their
Stratford myth an Arthur-Orton-Mary-Baker-Thompson-Eddy-Louis-the-
Seventeenth-Veiled-Prophet-of-Khorassan will be the last. Taught
by the methods found effective in extinguishing earlier offenders
by the Inquisition, of holy memory, I shall know how to quiet them.
CHAPTER XIII
Isn't it odd, when you think of it: that you may list all the
celebrated Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen of modern times,
clear back to the first Tudors--a list containing five hundred
names, shall we say?--and you can go to the histories, biographies
and cyclopedias and learn the particulars of the lives of every one
of them. Every one of them except one--the most famous, the most
renowned--by far the most illustrious of them all--Shakespeare!
You can get the details of the lives of all the celebrated
ecclesiastics in the list; all the celebrated tragedians,
comedians, singers, dancers, orators, judges, lawyers, poets,
dramatists, historians, biographers, editors, inventors, reformers,
statesmen, generals, admirals, discoverers, prize-fighters,
murderers, pirates, conspirators, horse-jockeys, bunco-steerers,
misers, swindlers, explorers, adventurers by land and sea, bankers,
financiers, astronomers, naturalists, Claimants, impostors,
chemists, biologists, geologists, philologists, college presidents
and professors, architects, engineers, painters, sculptors,
politicians, agitators, rebels, revolutionists, patriots,
demagogues, clowns, cooks, freaks, philosophers, burglars,
highwaymen, journalists, physicians, surgeons--you can get the
life-histories of all of them but ONE. Just one--the most
extraordinary and the most celebrated of them all--Shakespeare!
You may add to the list the thousand celebrated persons furnished
by the rest of Christendom in the past four centuries, and you can
find out the life-histories of all those people, too. You will
then have listed 1500 celebrities, and you can trace the authentic
life-histories of the whole of them. Save one--far and away the
most colossal prodigy of the entire accumulation--Shakespeare!
About him you can find out NOTHING. Nothing of even the slightest
importance. Nothing worth the trouble of stowing away in your
memory. Nothing that even remotely indicates that he was ever
anything more than a distinctly common-place person--a manager, an
actor of inferior grade, a small trader in a small village that did
not regard him as a person of any consequence, and had forgotten
all about him before he was fairly cold in his grave. We can go to
the records and find out the life-history of every renowned RACE-
HORSE of modern times--but not Shakespeare's! There are many
reasons why, and they have been furnished in cartloads (of guess
and conjecture) by those troglodytes; but there is one that is
worth all the rest of the reasons put together, and is abundantly
sufficient all by itself--HE HADN'T ANY HISTORY TO RECORD. There
is no way of getting around that deadly fact. And no sane way has
yet been discovered of getting around its formidable significance.
Its quite plain significance--to any but those thugs (I do not use
the term unkindly) is, that Shakespeare had no prominence while he
lived, and none until he had been dead two or three generations.
The Plays enjoyed high fame from the beginning; and if he wrote
them it seems a pity the world did not find it out. He ought to
have explained that he was the author, and not merely a nom de
plume for another man to hide behind. If he had been less
intemperately solicitous about his bones, and more solicitous about
his Works, it would have been better for his good name, and a
kindness to us. The bones were not important. They will moulder
away, they will turn to dust, but the Works will endure until the
last sun goes down.
MARK TWAIN.
P.S. March 25. About two months ago I was illuminating this
Autobiography with some notions of mine concerning the Bacon-
Shakespeare controversy, and I then took occasion to air the
opinion that the Stratford Shakespeare was a person of no public
consequence or celebrity during his lifetime, but was utterly
obscure and unimportant. And not only in great London, but also in
the little village where he was born, where he lived a quarter of a
century, and where he died and was buried. I argued that if he had
been a person of any note at all, aged villagers would have had
much to tell about him many and many a year after his death,
instead of being unable to furnish inquirers a single fact
connected with him. I believed, and I still believe, that if he
had been famous, his notoriety would have lasted as long as mine
has lasted in my native village out in Missouri. It is a good
argument, a prodigiously strong one, and a most formidable one for
even the most gifted, and ingenious, and plausible Stratfordolater
to get around or explain away. To-day a Hannibal Courier-Post of
recent date has reached me, with an article in it which reinforces
my contention that a really celebrated person cannot be forgotten
in his village in the short space of sixty years. I will make an
extract from it:
Hannibal, as a city, may have many sins to answer for, but
ingratitude is not one of them, or reverence for the great men she
has produced, and as the years go by her greatest son Mark Twain,
or S. L. Clemens as a few of the unlettered call him, grows in the
estimation and regard of the residents of the town he made famous
and the town that made him famous. His name is associated with
every old building that is torn down to make way for the modern
structures demanded by a rapidly growing city, and with every hill
or cave over or through which he might by any possibility have
roamed, while the many points of interest which he wove into his
stories, such as Holiday Hill, Jackson's Island, or Mark Twain
Cave, are now monuments to his genius. Hannibal is glad of any
opportunity to do him honor as he has honored her.
So it has happened that the "old timers" who went to school with
Mark or were with him on some of his usual escapades have been
honored with large audiences whenever they were in a reminiscent
mood and condescended to tell of their intimacy with the ordinary
boy who came to be a very extraordinary humorist and whose every
boyish act is now seen to have been indicative of what was to come.
Like Aunt Beckey and Mrs. Clemens, they can now see that Mark was
hardly appreciated when he lived here and that the things he did as
a boy and was whipped for doing were not all bad after all. So
they have been in no hesitancy about drawing out the bad things he
did as well as the good in their efforts to get a "Mark Twain
story," all incidents being viewed in the light of his present
fame, until the volume of "Twainiana" is already considerable and
growing in proportion as the "old timers" drop away and the stories
are retold second and third hand by their descendants. With some
seventy-three years young and living in a villa instead of a house
he is a fair target, and let him incorporate, copyright, or patent
himself as he will, there are some of his "works" that will go
swooping up Hannibal chimneys as long as gray-beards gather about
the fires and begin with "I've heard father tell" or possibly "Once
when I."
The Mrs. Clemens referred to is my mother--WAS my mother.
And here is another extract from a Hannibal paper. Of date twenty
days ago:
Miss Becca Blankenship died at the home of William Dickason, 408
Rock Street, at 2.30 o'clock yesterday afternoon, aged 72 years.
The deceased was a sister of "Huckleberry Finn," one of the famous
characters in Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer. She had been a member of
the Dickason family--the housekeeper--for nearly forty-five years,
and was a highly respected lady. For the past eight years she had
been an invalid, but was as well cared for by Mr. Dickason and his
family as if she had been a near relative. She was a member of the
Park Methodist Church and a Christian woman.
I remember her well. I have a picture of her in my mind which was
graven there, clear and sharp and vivid, sixty-three years ago.
She was at that time nine years old, and I was about eleven. I
remember where she stood, and how she looked; and I can still see
her bare feet, her bare head, her brown face, and her short tow-
linen frock. She was crying. What it was about, I have long ago
forgotten. But it was the tears that preserved the picture for me,
no doubt. She was a good child, I can say that for her. She knew
me nearly seventy years ago. Did she forget me, in the course of
time? I think not. If she had lived in Stratford in Shakespeare's
time, would she have forgotten him? Yes. For he was never famous
during his lifetime, he was utterly obscure in Stratford, and there
wouldn't be any occasion to remember him after he had been dead a
week.
"Injun Joe," "Jimmy Finn," and "General Gaines" were prominent and
very intemperate ne'er-do-weels in Hannibal two generations ago.
Plenty of gray-heads there remember them to this day, and can tell
you about them. Isn't it curious that two "town-drunkards" and one
half-breed loafer should leave behind them, in a remote Missourian
village, a fame a hundred times greater and several hundred times
more particularized in the matter of definite facts than
Shakespeare left behind him in the village where he had lived the
half of his lifetime?
MARK TWAIN.
Footnotes:
{1} Four fathoms--twenty-four feet.
{2} From chapter XIII of "The Shakespeare Problem Restated."