The observed of all observers"—
for "an amazing genius which could pervade all nature at a glance, and to whom nothing within the limits of the universe appeared to be unknown;" * and his instinct should have assured him that.—however the works which such a genius had left behind him might travel under the name of the butcher's boy—it was not the pen of the butcher-boy that had written them; that the composer of pages "from which, were all the arts and sciences lost, they might be recovered," ** was no "jack-of-all-trades," and could not have lived and publicly presented his compositions nightly, year in and year out, in the glare of a metropolis crowded with courtiers, play-goers, and students—in the age and days of Bacon and Raleigh and Elizabeth—unknown save to a handful of his pot-fellows, and faded out of the world, unknown and unnoticed, fading from the memory of men, without the passing of an item in their mouths!
* Whalley.
** Ibid. A curious instance of this familiarity—to be
found in the Shakespearean dramas—with the least noticed
facts of science, and which, so far as we know, has escaped
the critics, we might allude to here: In one of Jules
Verne's realistic stories wherein he springs his romantic
catastrophes upon scientific phenomena—"Michael Strogoff"—
he makes Michael fall among enemies who sentence him to be
blinded. The blinding is to be accomplished with a heated
iron, but Michael sees his mother at his side, and, tears
suffusing his eyes, the heat of the iron is neutralized, and
fails to destroy the sight. So, in "King John," Act IV.,
Scene 1, Arthur says to Hubert:
The iron of itself, though heat red-hot,
Approaching near these eyes would drink my tears And quench
his fiery indignation.
This may be mere coincidence, but the dramas are crowded
with such coincidences, and for that, if for that only, are
marvelous. In either case, according to the Shakespereans,
we have only to go on, for the rest of time, in discovering
new truths in nature and facts in science, only to find that
the Stratford butcher's boy knew all about them three
hundred years ago—was familiar with all that we have yet to
learn, and that to his unlettered genius our wisdom was to
be sheer foolishness.
Most wonderful of all, this utter ignoring of William Shakespeare among the poets, if unjust, provoked no remonstrance from the immediate family or any kin of the Stratford lad. Either the Shakespeares, Ardens, and Hathaways were wonderfully destitute of family pride, or else the obscurity accorded their connection was perfectly just and proper. No voice of kin or affinity of William Shakespeare (at least we may say this with confidence) ever claimed immortality for him; although it can not be said that they had no opportunity, had they wished to do so, for William Shakespeare's granddaughter, Lady Barnard, was alive until 1670; his sister, Joan Hart, till 1646; and his daughters, Susannah Hall and Judith Queeny, until 1662. So that Dugdale, at least, if not Wood and the rest of them, would not have had to go far to confirm any rumors they might have stumbled upon as to the acquirements and accomplishments of the man Shakespeare; but it seems that not even the partiality of his own kin, nor family fame, nor pride of ancestry, ever conceived the idea of palming off their progenitor upon futurity as a giant of any build. If there is any exception to this statement, it would appear to be as follows:
I. It is recorded by Oldys that, one of his (Shakespeare's) "younger brothers, who lived to a great age, when questioned, in his last days, about William, said he could remember nothing of his performance but seeing him 'act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein, being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried to a table at which he was seated among some company, and one of them sang a song.'" Mr. Fullom has demonstrated from the Shakespeare family records, that Oldys must have been mistaken as to any brother of William Shakespeare's having furnished this reminiscence; but, admitting it as the statement of a surviving brother, it stands for what it is, and it certainly is not the record or tradition of one whose popular memory in men's minds was that of an immortal prodigy. *
* We take this quotation from Mr. Grant White's article on
Shakespeare in Appleton's "American Cyclopoedia." Mr.
White's admirable contributions to our Shakespearean
literature entitle his opinion to great weight in any mooted
question as to William Shakespeare; and we must confess
that, in some portions, his paper we have just mentioned
almost suggests him as agreeing with us as to his subject.
Mr. White says, in another place: "Young lawyers and poets
produced plays rapidly. Each theatrical company not only
'kept a poet,' but had three or four, in its pay. At the
time of his leaving Stratford the drama was rising rapidly
in favor with all classes in London, where actors were made
much of in a certain way. And where there was a constant
demand for new plays, ill-provided younger sons of the
gentry, and others who had been bred at the universities and
the inns-of-court, sought to mend their fortunes by
supplying this demand." And again: "We are tolerably well
informed by contemporary writers as to the performances of
the eminent actors of that time, but of Shakespeare's we
read nothing." Mr. White admits, a few lines below the
sentence just quoted, that Shakespeare's position in the
stock at the Blackfriars was "general utility." We should
rather call it, from the evidence, "first old man."
II. An epitaph was placed over the remains of Susannah Hall, presumably by one of the family, which read:
"Witty above her sex, but that's not all:
Wise to salvation was good Mistress Hall.
Something of Shakespeare was in that, but this