peare died in Stratford _it was not an event_. It made no
more stir in England than the death of any other forgotten theatre-actor
would have made. Nobody came down from London; there were no lamenting
poems, no eulogies, no national tears--there was merely silence, and
nothing more. A striking contrast with what happened when Ben Jonson,
and Francis Bacon, and Spenser, and Raleigh and the other distinguished
literary folk of Shakespeare's time passed from life! No praiseful voice
was lifted for the lost Bard of Avon; even Ben Jonson waited seven years
before he lifted his.

_So far as anybody actually knows and can prove_, Shakespeare of
Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life.

_So far as anybody knows and can prove_, he never wrote a letter to
anybody in his life.

_So far as any one knows_, _he received only one letter during his life_.

So far as any one _knows and can prove_, Shakespeare of Stratford wrote
only one poem during his life. This one is authentic. He did write that
one--a fact which stands undisputed; he wrote the whole of it; he wrote
the whole of it out of his own head. He commanded that this work of art
be engraved upon his tomb, and he was obeyed. There it abides to this
day. This is it:

Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be he yt moves my bones.

In the list as above set down, will be found _every positively known_
fact of Shakespeare's life, lean and meagre as the invoice is. Beyond
these details we know _not a thing_ about him. All the rest of his vast
history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon
course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures--an Eiffel Tower of
artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation
of inconsequential facts.

CHAPTER IV--CONJECTURES

The historians "suppose" that Shakespeare attended the Free School in
Stratford from the time he was seven years old till he was thirteen.
There is no _evidence_ in existence that he ever went to school at all.

The historians "infer" that he got his Latin in that school--the school
which they "suppose" he attended.

They "suppose" his father's declining fortunes made it necessary for him
to leave the school they supposed he attended, and get to work and help
support his parents and their ten children. But there is no evidence
that he ever entere