lver-gilt bowls and
second-best beds in those days, and when a departing person owned one he
gave it a high place in his will.

The will mentioned NOT A PLAY, NOT A POEM, NOT AN UNFINISHED LITERARY
WORK, NOT A SCRAP OF MANUSCRIPT OF ANY KIND.

Many poets have died poor, but this is the only one in history that
has died THIS poor; the others all left literary remains behind. Also a
book. Maybe two.

If Shakespeare had owned a dog--but we not go into that: we know he
would have mentioned it in his will. If a good dog, Susanna would have
got it; if an inferior one his wife would have got a downer interest in
it. I wish he had had a dog, just so we could see how painstakingly he
would have divided that dog among the family, in his careful business
way.

He signed the will in three places.

In earlier years he signed two other official documents.

These five signatures still exist.

There are NO OTHER SPECIMENS OF HIS PENMANSHIP IN EXISTENCE. Not a line.

Was he prejudiced against the art? His granddaughter, whom he loved, was
eight years old when he died, yet she had had no teaching, he left no
provision for her education, although he was rich, and in her mature
womanhood she couldn't write and couldn't tell her husband's manuscript
from anybody else's--she thought it was Shakespeare's.

When Shakespeare died in Stratford, IT WAS NOT AN EVENT. It made no
more stir in England than the death of any other forgotten theater-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 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