HOUT SHADOW OF DOUBT THE TOM-CAT CONTAINS
THE MOUSE."

VI

When Shakespeare died, in 1616, great literary productions attributed
to him as author had been before the London world and in high favor for
twenty-four years. Yet his death was not an event. It made no stir, it
attracted no attention. Apparently his eminent literary contemporaries
did not realize that a celebrated poet had passed from their midst.
Perhaps they knew a play-actor of minor rank had disappeared, but
did not regard him as the author of his Works. "We are justified in
assuming" this.

His death was not even an event in the little town of Stratford. Does
this mean that in Stratford he was not regarded as a celebrity of ANY
kind?

"We are privileged to assume"--no, we are indeed OBLIGED to assume--that
such was the case. He had spent the first twenty-two or twenty-three
years of his life there, and of course knew everybody and was known by
everybody of that day in the town, including the dogs and the cats and
the horses. He had spent the last five or six years of his life there,
diligently trading in every big and little thing that had money in it;
so we are compelled to assume that many of the folk there in those said
latter days knew him personally, and the rest by sight and hearsay.
But not as a CELEBRITY? Apparently not. For everybody soon forgot to
remember any contact with him or any incident connected with him. The
dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him or known
about him in the first twenty-three years of his life were in the same
unremembering condition: if they knew of any incident connected with
that period of his life they didn't tell about it. Would the if they had
been asked? It is most likely. Were they asked? It is pretty apparent
that they were not. Why weren't they? It is a very plausible guess that
nobody there or elsewhere was interested to know.

For seven years after Shakespeare's death nobody seems to have been
interested in him. Then the quarto was published, and Ben Jonson awoke
out of his long indifference and sang a song of praise and put it in the
front of the book. Then silence fell AGAIN.

For sixty years. Then inquiries into Shakespeare's Stratford life began
to be made, of Stratfordians. Of Stratfordians who had known Shakespeare
or had seen him? No. Then of Stratfordians who had seen people who
had known or seen people who had seen Shakespeare? No. Apparently the
inquires were only made of Str