William, knowing that his wife would inherit legal dower, one-third of his real property, and being cared for by her daughter Susannah, only bequeathed to the "former Anne Hathaway," the personal gift of his "second best bed."
I asked Shakspere one evening about a month before his death if he intended the piece of bed furniture for his wife as a rebuke or a compliment.
He replied: "Jack, if you were not so inquisitive you would not have so much knowledge!"
I thanked him for his lucid explanation, and let the incident go at that remark.
As he was in a good-natured, facetious mood, I asked him why it was that in all his dramatic plays of forty years composition he had never placed on the boards a great Irish character, although he had created Egyptian, Grecian, Italian, French, German, Danish, Scotch and English representatives that would go down the ages in eloquent glory.
I said, "William, you only formulated in Henry the Fifth Captain MacMorris, a Scotch-Irish bastard-renegade character, who bears about as much relation to a true Irish gentleman as does a shark to a whale, a hawk to an eagle, or a lynx to a lion."
"Well, Jack, you know as well as I do that the 'eloquent,' 'brave,' 'Irish rebel,' against monarchy and tyrannical power has been the sharpest thorn in the sides of English royalty, and that with the enmity of Henry the Eighth, Queen Elizabeth, King James, and the London Protestants, a great, lofty Irish Catholic character would not have been popular, and ministered to our daily desire for pence, shillings and pounds!
"Yet posterity will notice the brave wit and greatness of the Irish race by their absence from my business plays."
While writing for the sake of Truth,
From my wild, daring, earliest youth,
You knew I never acted rash
Or failed to fill my purse with cash;
For, after all is past and told
Among the foolish, wise and old—
The plot of life is to enfold
Within your grasp, Imperial Gold!