d or retired from the school they suppose he attended.

They "suppose" he assisted his father in the butchering business; and
that, being only a boy, he didn't have to do full-grown butchering, but
only slaughtered calves. Also, that whenever he killed a calf he made a
high-flown speech over it. This supposition rests upon the testimony of
a man who wasn't there at the time; a man who got it from a man who could
have been there, but did not say whether he was or not; and neither of
them thought to mention it for decades, and decades, and decades, and two
more decades after Shakespeare's death (until old age and mental decay
had refreshed and vivified their memories). They hadn't two facts in
stock about the long-dead distinguished citizen, but only just the one:
he slaughtered calves and broke into oratory while he was at it.
Curious. They had only one fact, yet the distinguished citizen had spent
twenty-six years in that little town--just half his lifetime. However,
rightly viewed, it was the most important fact, indeed almost the only
important fact, of Shakespeare's life in Stratford. Rightly viewed. For
experience is an author's most valuable asset; experience is the thing
that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he
writes. Rightly viewed, calf-butchering accounts for _Titus Andronicus_,
the only play--ain't it?--that the Stratford Shakespeare ever wrote; and
yet it is the only one everybody tries to chouse him out of, the
Baconians included.

The historians find themselves "justified in believing" that the young
Shakespeare poached upon Sir Thomas Lucy's deer preserves and got haled
before that magistrate for it. But there is no shred of respectworthy
evidence that anything of the kind happened.

The historians, having argued the thing that _might_ have happened into
the thing that _did_ happen, found no trouble in turning Sir Thomas Lucy
into Mr. Justice Shallow. They have long ago convinced the world--on
surmise and without trustworthy evidence--that Shallow _is_ Sir Thomas.

The next addition to the young Shakespeare's Stratford history comes
easy. The historian builds it out of the surmised deer-stealing, and the
surmised trial before the magistrate, and the surmised vengeance-prompted
satire upon the magistrate in the play: result, the young Shakespeare was
a wild, wild, wild, oh _such_ a wild young scamp, and that gratuitous
slander is established for all time! It is