Mark Twain
Is Shakespeare Dead?
About the print version
Is Shakespeare Dead? From my autobiography.
Mark Twain
Harper & Brothers
New York
1909
Published: 1909
IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?
FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY
MARK TWAIN
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMIX Copyright, 1909, by MARK TWAIN COMPANY.
All rights reserved.
Published April, 1909.
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
Chapter VIII, "Shakespeare as a Lawyer," is taken from "The Shakespeare
Problem Restated," by George G. Greenwood, M.P., published by John Lane, of
London, and the John Lane Company, of New York. We are indebted to the John Lane
Company for permission to publish the extract.
IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?
FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY
I
SCATTERED here and there through the stacks of unpublished manuscript which
constitute this formidable Autobiography and Diary of mine, certain chapters
will in some distant future be found which deal with "Claimants" -- claimants
historically notorious: Satan, Claimant; the Golden Calf, Claimant; the Veiled
Prophet of Khorassan, Claimant; Louis XVII., Claimant; William Shakespeare,
Claimant; Arthur Orton, Claimant; Mary Baker G. Eddy, Claimant -- and the rest of them. Eminent Claimants, successful Claimants, defeated
Claimants, royal Claimants, pleb Claimants, showy Claimants, shabby Claimants,
revered Claimants, despised Claimants, twinkle starlike here and there and
yonder through the mists of history and legend and tradition -- and oh, all the
darling tribe are clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about them with
deep interest and discuss them with loving sympathy or with rancorous
resentment, according to which side we hitch ourselves to. It has always been so
with the human race. There was never a Claimant that couldn't get a hearing, nor
one that couldn't accumulate a rapturous following, no matter how flimsy and
apparently unauthentic his claim might be. Arthur Orton's claim that he was the
lost Tichborne baronet come to life again was as flimsy as Mrs. Eddy's that she wrote Science and Health from the direct dictation of the Deity;
yet in England near forty years ago Orton had a huge army of devotees and
incorrigible adherents, many of whom remained stubbornly unconvinced after their
fat god had been proven an impostor and jailed as a perjurer, and to-day Mrs.
Eddy's following is not only immense, but is daily augmenting in numbers and
enthusiasm. Orton had many fine and educated minds among his adherents, Mrs.
Eddy has had the like among hers from the beginning. Her church is as well
equipped in those particulars as is any other church. Claimants can always count
upon a following, it doesn't matter who they are, nor what they claim, nor
whether they come with documents or without. It was always so. Down out of the
long-vanished past, across the abyss of the ages, if you listen you can still hear the believing multitudes shouting for Perkin Warbeck and
Lambert Simnel.
A friend has sent me a new book, from England -- The Shakespeare Problem
Restated -- well restated and closely reasoned; and my fifty years' interest in
that matter -- asleep for the last three years -- is excited once more. It is an
interest which was born of Delia Bacon's book -- away back in that ancient day
-- 1857, or maybe 1856. About a year later my pilot-master, Bixby, transferred
me from his own steamboat to the Pennsylvania, and placed me under the orders
and instructions of George Ealer -- dead now, these many, many years. I steered
for him a good many months -- as was the humble duty of the pilot-apprentice:
stood a daylight watch and spun the wheel under the severe superintendence and
correction of the master.
He was a prime chess player and an idolater of Shakespeare. He would play chess
with anybody; even with me, and it cost his official dignity something to do
that. Also -- quite uninvited -- he would read Shakespeare to me; not just
casually, but by the hour, when it was his watch, and I was steering. He read
well, but not profitably for me, because he constantly injected commands into
the text. That broke it all up, mixed it all up, tangled it all up -- to that
degree, in fact, that if we were in a risky and difficult piece of river an
ignorant person couldn't have told, sometimes, which observations were
Shakespeare's and which were Ealer's. For instance:
What man dare, I dare!
Approach thou what are you laying in the leads for? what a hell of an idea!
like the rugged ease her off a little, ease her off! rugged Russian bear,
the armed rhinoceros
or the there she goes! meet her, meet her! didn't you know she'd smell the
reef if you crowded it like that? Hyrcan tiger; take any shape but that and
my firm nerves she'll be in the woods the first you know! stop the
starboard! come ahead strong on the larboard! back the starboard! . . . Now
then, you're all right; come ahead on the starboard; straighten up and go
'long, never tremble: or be alive again, and dare me to the desert damnation
can't you keep away from that greasy water ? pull her down! snatch her!
snatch her baldheaded! with thy sword; if trembling I inhabit then, lay in
the leads! -- no, only the starboard one, leave the other alone, protest me
the baby of a girl. Hence horrible shadow! eight bells -- that watchman's
asleep again, I reckon, go down and call Brown yourself, unreal mockery,
hence!"
He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy and
tragic, but it was a damage to me, because I have never since been able to read
Shakespeare in a calm and sane way.
I cannot rid it of his explosive interlardings, they break in everywhere with
their irrelevant " What in hell are you up to now! pull her down! more! more! --
there now, steady as you go," and the other disorganizing interruptions that
were always leaping from his mouth. When I read Shakespeare now, I can hear them
as plainly as I did in that long-departed time -- fifty-one years ago. I never
regarded Ealer's readings as educational. Indeed they were a detriment to me.
His contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring that detail he
was a good reader, I can say that much for him. He did not use the book, and did
not need to; he knew his Shakespeare as well as Euclid ever knew his
multiplication table.
Did he have something to say -- this Shakespeare-adoring Mississippi pilot -- anent Delia Bacon's book? Yes. And he said it; said it all the time, for
months -- in the morning watch, the middle watch, the dog watch; and probably
kept it going in his sleep. He bought the literature of the dispute as fast as
it appeared, and we discussed it all through thirteen hundred miles of river
four times traversed in every thirty-five days -- the time required by that
swift boat to achieve two round trips. We discussed, and discussed, and
discussed, and disputed and disputed and disputed; at any rate he did, and I got
in a word now and then when he slipped a cog and there was a vacancy. He did his
arguing with heat, with energy, with violence; and I did mine with the reserve
and moderation of a subordinate who does not like to be flung out of a
pilot-house that is perched forty feet above the water. He was fiercely loyal to
Shakespeare and cordially scornful of Bacon and of all the pretensions of the Baconians. So was I -- at first. And at first he was glad that that was my attitude. There were even
indications that he admired it; indications dimmed, it is true, by the distance
that lay between the lofty boss-pilotical altitude and my lowly one, yet
perceptible to me; perceptible, and translatable into a compliment -- compliment
coming down from above the snow-line and not well thawed in the transit, and not
likely to set anything afire, not even a cub-pilot's self-conceit; still a
detectable compliment, and precious.
Naturally it flattered me into being more loyal to Shakespeare -- if possible
-- than I was before, and more prejudiced against Bacon -- if possible -- than I
was before. And so we discussed and discussed, both on the same side, and were
happy. For a while. Only for a while.
Only for a very little while, a very, very, very little while. Then the
atmosphere began to change; began to cool off.
A brighter person would have seen what the trouble was, earlier than I did,
perhaps, but I saw it early enough for all practical purposes. You see, he was
of an argumentative disposition. Therefore it took him but a little time to get
tired of arguing with a person who agreed with everything he said and
consequently never furnished him a provocative to flare up and show what he
could do when it came to clear, ...
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