assets?

In the usual way: by surmise. It is _surmised_ that he travelled in
Italy and Germany and around, and qualified himself to put their scenic
and social aspects upon paper; that he perfected himself in French,
Italian and Spanish on the road; that he went in Leicester's expedition
to the Low Countries, as soldier or sutler or something, for several
months or years--or whatever length of time a surmiser needs in his
business--and thus became familiar with soldiership and soldier-ways and
soldier-talk, and generalship and general-ways and general-talk, and
seamanship and sailor-ways and sailor-talk.

Maybe he did all these things, but I would like to know who held the
horses in the meantime; and who studied the books in the garret; and who
frollicked in the law-courts for recreation. Also, who did the
call-boying and the play-acting.

For he became a call-boy; and as early as '93 he became a "vagabond"--the
law's ungentle term for an unlisted actor; and in '94 a "regular" and
properly and officially listed member of that (in those days)
lightly-valued and not much respected profession.

Right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theatres, and
manager of them. Thenceforward he was a busy and flourishing business
man, and was raking in money with both hands for twenty years. Then in a
noble frenzy of poetic inspiration he wrote his one poem--his only poem,
his darling--and laid him down and died:

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.

He was probably dead when he wrote it. Still, this is only conjecture.
We have only circumstantial evidence. Internal evidence.

Shall I set down the rest of the Conjectures which constitute the giant
Biography of William Shakespeare? It would strain the Unabridged
Dictionary to hold them. He is a Brontosaur: nine bones and six hundred
barrels of plaster of paris.

CHAPTER V--"We May Assume"

In the Assuming trade three separate and independent cults are
transacting business. Two of these cults are known as the Shakespearites
and the Baconians, and I am the other one--the Brontosaurian.

The Shakespearite knows that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's Works; the
Baconian knows that Francis Bacon wrote them; the Brontosaurian doesn't
really know which of them did it, but is quite composedly and contentedly
sure that Shakespeare _did