He has therefore to find a via media, to present, as the pseudo-author, a Will who possessed neither books nor manuscripts when he made his Testament; a rustic, bookless Will, speaking a patois, who could none the less pass himself off as the author. So “I think it highly probable,” says Mr. Greenwood, “that he attended the Grammar School at Stratford for four or five years, and that, later in life, after some years in London, he was probably able to ‘bumbast out a line,’ and perhaps to pose as ‘Poet-Ape who would be thought our chief.’” 45 Again, “He had had but little schooling; he had ‘small Latin and less Greek’; but he was a good Johannes Factotum, he could arrange a scene, and, when necessary, ‘bumbast out a blank verse.’” 46
But this is almost to abandon Mr. Greenwood’s case. Will appears to me to be now perilously near acceptance as Greene’s “Shake-scene,” who was a formidable rival to Greene’s three professional playwrights: and quite as near to Ben’s Poet-Ape “that would be thought our chief,” who began by re-making old plays; then won “some little wealth and credit on the scene,” who had his “works” printed (for Ben expects them to reach posterity), and whom Ben accused of plagiarism from himself and his contemporaries. But this Shake-scene, this Poet-Ape, is merely our Will Shakespeare as described by bitterly jealous and envious rivals. Where are now the “works” of “Poet-Ape” if they are not the works of Shakespeare which Ben so nobly applauded later, if they are not in the blank verse of Greene’s Shake-scene? “Shakespeare’s plays” we call them.
When was it “necessary” for the “Stratford rustic” to “bumbast out a blank verse”? Where are the blank verses which he bumbasted out? For what purposes were they bumbasted? By 1592 “Shake-scene” was ambitious, and thought his blank verse as good as the best that Greene’s friends, including Marlowe, could write. He had plenty of time to practise before the date when, as Ben wrote, “he would be thought our chief.” He would not cease to do that in which he conceived himself to excel; to write for the stage.
When once Mr. Greenwood deems it “highly probable” that Will had four or five years of education at a Latin school, Will has as much of “grounding” in Latin, I think, as would account for all the knowledge of the Roman tongue which he displays. His amount of teaching at school would carry and tempt even a boy who was merely clever, and loved to read romantic tales and comic plays, into Ovid and Plautus – English books being to him not very accessible.
Here I may speak from my own memories, for though utterly idle where set school tasks were concerned, I tried very early to worry the sense out of Aristophanes – because he was said to contain good reading.
To this amount of taste and curiosity, nowise unexampled in an ordinary clever boy, add Genius, and I feel no difficulty as to Will’s “learning,” such as, at best, it was. “The Stratfordian,” says Mr. Greenwood, “will ingeminate ‘Genius! Genius!’” 47 I do say “Genius,” and stand by it. The ordinary clever boy, in the supposed circumstances, could read and admire his Ovid (though Shakespeare used cribs also), the man of genius could write Venus and Adonis.
Had I to maintain the Baconian hypothesis, I would not weigh heavily on bookless Will’s rusticity and patois. Accepting Ben Jonson’s account of his “excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility.. ,” accepting the tradition of his lively wit; admitting that he had some Latin and literature, I would find in him a sufficiently plausible mask for that immense Unknown with a strange taste for furbishing up older plays. I would merely deny to Will his genius, and hand that over to Bacon – or Bungay. Believe me, Mr. Greenwood, this is your easiest way! – perhaps this is your way? – the plot of the unscrupulous Will, and of your astute Bungay, might thus more conceivably escape detection from the pack of envious playwrights.
According to “all tradition,” says Mr. Greenwood, Shakespeare was taken from school at the age of thirteen. Those late long-descended traditions of Shakespeare’s youth are of little value as evidence; but, if it pleases Mr. Greenwood, I will, for the sake of argument, accept the whole of them. Assuredly I shall not arbitrarily choose among the traditions: all depends on the genealogical steps by which they reach us, as far as these can be discovered. 48
According to the tattle of Aubrey the antiquary, publishing in 1680, an opinion concerning Shakspere’s education reached him. It came thus; there had been an actor in Shakspere’s company, one Phillips, who, dying in 1605, left to Shakspere the usual thirty-shilling piece of gold; and the same “to my servant, Christopher Beeston.” Christopher’s son, William, in 1640, became deputy to Davenant in the management of “the King’s and Queen’s Young Company”, and through Beeston, according to Aubrey, Davenant learned; through Beeston Aubrey learned, that Shakespeare “understood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his younger days a school-master in the country.” Aubrey writes that “old Mr. Beeston, whom Mr. Dryden calls ‘the chronicle of the stage,’” died in 1682. 49
This is a fair example of the genealogy of the traditions. Phillips, a friend of Shakspere, dies in 1605, leaving a servant, Christopher Beeston (he, too, was a versifier), whose son, William, dies in 1682; he is “the chronicle of the stage.” Through him Davenant gets the story, through him Aubrey gets the story, that Shakspere “knew Latin pretty well,” and had been a rural dominie. Mr. Greenwood 50 devotes much space to disparaging Aubrey (and I do not think him a scientific authority, moult s’en faut), but Mr. Greenwood here says not a word as to the steps in the descent of the tradition. He frequently repeats himself, thereby forcing me to more iteration than I like. He had already disparaged Aubrey in note I to p. 105, but there he approached so closely to historical method as to say that “Aubrey quotes Beeston, a seventeenth-century actor, as his authority.” On p. 209 he dismisses the anecdote (which does not suit his book) as “a mere myth.” “He knows, he knows” which traditions are mythical, and which possess a certain historical value.
My own opinion is that Shakspere did “know Latin pretty well,” and was no scholar, as his contemporaries reckoned scholarship. He left school, if tradition speak true, by a year later than the age, twelve, when Bacon went to Cambridge. Will, a clever kind of lad (on my theory), left school at an age when some other clever lads became freshmen. Why not? Gilbert Burnet (of whom you may have heard as Bishop of Salisbury under William III) took his degree at the age of fourteen.
Taking Shakspere as an extremely quick, imaginative boy, with nothing to learn but Latin, and by the readiest road, the colloquial, I conceive him to have discovered that, in Ovid especially, were to be found the most wonderful and delightful stories, and poetry which could not but please his “green unknowing youth.” In the years before he left Stratford, and after he left school (1577–87?), I can easily suppose that he was not always butchering calves, poaching, and making love; and that, if he could get books in no other way, this graceless fellow might be detected on a summer evening, knitting his brows over the stories and jests of the chained Ovid and Plautus on his old schoolroom desk. Moi qui parle, I am no genius; but stories, romance, and humour would certainly have dragged me back to the old desks – if better might not be, and why not Shakspere? Put yourself in his place, if you have ever been a lad, and if, as a lad, you liked to steal away into the world of romance, into fairyland.
If Will wrote the plays, he (and indeed whoever wrote the plays) was a marvel of genius. But I am not here claiming for him genius, but merely stating my opinion that if he were fond of stories and romance, had no English books of poetry and romance, and had acquired as much power of reading Latin as a lively, curious boy could easily gain in four years of exclusively Latin education, he might continue his studies as he pleased, yet be, so far, no prodigy.
I am contemplating Will in the conditions on which the Baconians insist; if they will indeed let us assume that for a few years he was at a Latin school. I credit