'Too old, by Heaven! Let still the woman take
An elder than herself.'
And again:
'Then let thy love be younger than thyself,
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent;
For women are as roses, whose fair flower
Being once displayed, doth fall that very hour.'
It is, we confess, very difficult to suppose that Shakspeare, with his unquestionable good feeling, could have written this unhandsome insult to his own wife, though it is very easy to imagine his passing it over in a hurried perusal previous to its presentation in the green-room.
One thing at least appears certain, and not disputed—the plays apparently rise, if we may use the expression, as the series goes on; all at once, Shakspeare, with a fortune, leaves London, and the supply ceases. Is this compatible with such a genius thus culminating, on any other supposition than the death of the poet and the survival of the employer?
Well, reader, how like you our hypothesis? We confess we do not like it ourselves; but we humbly think it is at least as plausible as most of what is contained in the many bulky volumes written to connect the man, William Shakspeare, with the poet of Hamlet. We repeat, there is nothing recorded in his everyday life that connects the two, except the simple fact of his selling the poems and realising the proceeds, and their being afterwards published with his name attached; and the statements of Ben Jonson, which, however, are quite compatible with his being in the secret. In fact, the only other hypothesis which we think will serve at all, is to suppose that Shakspeare, like Mohammed, instead of going to a garret, went to a cave, and received his Koran from Gabriel; but then the mischief is, that Shakspeare is the most readable of authors, and the Koran, perhaps the most unreadable trash ever inflicted on a student—at least its translation is; and besides, no angel of them all could ever have shewn such an acquaintance with our (to a celestial) unkindred humanity as these poems display. Perhaps the best and crowning hypothesis is that of Byron about Junius:
That what we Shakspeare call,
Was really, truly, nobody at all.
Thus, whether Shakspeare were written by nobody or not, it seems pretty well proved that nobody gave the plays to Shakspeare; so that, whether by inheritance, purchase, or divine afflatus, the man who wrote Shakspeare was—William Shakspeare.