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III
The contrast between the coarse and illiterate circumstances of his early life, and the highly cultured character of the work he is supposed to have produced, is not, however, the strongest aspect of this particular argument: although quite alone it is enough to have created serious misgivings. The compelling force of this argument from contrast is only fully felt when it is clearly realized that the career of William Shakspere divides naturally into three periods: not two. We have the opening period at Stratford just indicated; we have a middle period during which he is supposed to have resided mainly in London and produced the remarkable literature to which he owes his fame; and we have a closing period spent, like the first, in the unwholesome intellectual atmosphere of Stratford. And it is the existence of this series of three periods which furnishes the data for a sound scientific examination of the problem.
The fact which, once grasped, will carry us forward most quickly to a final settlement of this question is that the closing period of his life at Stratford stands in as marked contrast to the supposed middle period in London as does the first, and under precisely the same aspect, but very much less explicably. [22] The operation of hidden forces and agencies might partly account for the obscure youth, blossoming out as the most cultured writer of his day. But with the literary fame he is supposed to have won, how can we explain the reversion to the non-intellectual record of his closing Stratford period? For it is as destitute of an aftermath of literary glory as the first period was devoid of promise. Having it is supposed by virtue of an immeasurable genius forced himself out of an unrefined and illiterate milieu into the very forefront of the literary and intellectual world, he returns whilst still in his prime, and probably whilst relatively still a young man, to his original surroundings. For the last eighteen years of his life he has himself described as "William Shakspere, of Stratford-upon-Avon"; yet, with so prolonged a residence there, such intellectual gifts as he is supposed to have possessed, such force of character as would have been necessary to raise him in the first instance, he passes his life amongst a mere handful of people without leaving the slightest impress of his eminent powers, or the most trifling fruits of his attainments and educational emancipation upon any one or anything in Stratford. In the busy crowded life of London it is possible to conceal both the defects and qualities of personality, and men may easily pass there for what they are not; but one man of exceptional intellectual powers, improved by an extraordinary feat of self-culture, could hardly fail to leave a very strong impression of himself upon a small community of people, mostly uneducated, such as then formed the population of Stratford. When, then, we are told that that man was living at one time at the rate of £1,000 a year (£8,000 of to-day) - and Sir Sidney Lee sees nothing improbable in the tradition - the idea that such a man could live in such a place, in such style, and leave no trace of his distinctive powers and interests in the records of the community is the kind of story which, we are convinced, practical men will refuse to believe once they are fairly confronted with it.
Had he walked out of Stratford an ignorant boor in [23] 1587 and returned ten years later having learnt nothing more during his absence than how to get hold of money and keep it, there is absolutely nothing in the records of all his affairs at Stratford that need have been in the slightest degree different from what it is. There was at least one man in Stratford who could write in a good style of penmanship, and he addressed a letter to Shakspere while in London. This is the only letter that has been preserved of any that may have been addressed to Shakspere in the whole course of his life, and the reader may see a facsimile of it in the book "Shakespeare's England." Its only purpose, however, is to negotiate a loan of £30 and it contains no suggestion of any intellectual community between the two men. This letter reappears under circumstances which would quite justify a suspicion that Shakspere himself had been unable to read it. No suggestion of its having been answered has been discovered, nor is there the faintest trace of any letter from his pen to any other person in Stratford. We do not mean merely that no autograph letter has been preserved, but there is no mention of any letter, no trace of a single phrase or word reported as having been addressed to any one during all these years, as a personal message from what we are asked to believe was the most facile pen in England. According to every Stratfordian authority he lived and worked for many years in London whilst directing a mass of important business in Stratford. Then he lived for many years in retirement in Stratford whilst plays from his pen were making their appearance in London. In all, he followed this divided plan of life for nearly twenty years (1597-1616); a plan which, if ever in this world a man's affairs called for letters, must have entailed a large amount of correspondence, had he been able to write; yet not the faintest suggestion of his ever having written a letter exists either in authentic record or in the most imaginative tradition. And the people who believe this still stand out for a monopoly of sane judgment.
[24] He returns to this "bookless neighbourhood" one of the most enlightened men in Christendom it is supposed, yet even Rumour, whose generous invention has created so much "biography" for him, has not associated his years of retirement with a single suggestion of a book or bookish occupations. Possessing, it is presumed, a mind teeming with ideas, and coffers overflowing, there is no suggestion of any enterprise in which he was interested for dispelling the intellectual darkness of the community in which he lived. Having, it is supposed, performed a great work in refining and elevating the drama in London, and having thus ready to his hands a powerful instrument for brightening and humanizing the social life of the fifteen hundred souls that at the time formed the population of Stratford, he is never once reported to have filled up his own leisure with so congenial an occupation as getting up a play for the people of Stratford or in any way interesting himself in the dramatic concerns of the little community: nor even, when plays were banned, raising his voice or using his pen in protest.
On the other hand there are records of his purchasing land, houses and tithes: of his carrying on business as a maltster: of his money-lending transactions: of his prosecution of people for small debts at a time when according to Sir Sidney Lee his yearly income would be about £600 (or £4,800 in money of to-day). We have particulars of his store of corn; of his making an orchard; "a well-authenticated tradition that he planted a mulberry tree with his own hands"; but not the slightest record of anything suggestive of what are supposed to have been his dominating interests. On the contrary he appears, even in his choice of a home, quite regardless of those things that press upon the senses and sensibilitie's of esthetic natures. For in picturing his last moments Halliwell-Phillipps refers to "the wretched sanitary conditions surrounding his residence," and adds, "If truth and not romance is to be invoked, were the woodbine and sweet honeysuckle within reach of the [25] poet's deathbed, their fragrance would have been neutralized by their vicinity to middens, fetid water-courses, mudwalls and piggeries." It is to this his biographer attributes the last illness of the great dramatist, rather than to conviviality.