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The pamphlet, aside from its jealousy of Shakespeare, is a sad picture of a man of genius dying of dissipation, and contains a warning to other playwrights of the time, whose lives were apparently almost as bad as that of Greene. Prior to 1588 only three true Chronicle plays are known to have been acted.
Shakespeare had a theatre with the ground as its floor and the sky as its ceiling; but New York, which has fifty theatres and annually spends $100,000,000 in the box offices of its varied amusement resorts, has rarely in two centuries produced a play that has lived. To-day, man has a cinematographic brain.
If the bible is inspired, does the author of it need the support of the law to command respect? We don't need any law to make mankind respect Shakespeare. We come to the altar of that great man and cover it with our gratitude without a statute. Think of a law to govern tastes! Think of a law to govern mind, or any question whatever! Think of the way in which they have supported the bible!
That he should have descanted in lawyer language when he had a forensic subject in hand, such as Shylock's bond, was to be expected, but the knowledge of law in 'Shakespeare' was exhibited in a far different manner: it protruded itself on all occasions, appropriate or inappropriate, and mingled itself with strains of thought widely divergent from forensic subjects."
Shakespeare held horses for a few pennies a night in front of a London theater, and later did menial service back of the scenes. Disraeli was an office boy, Carlyle a stone-mason's attendant, and Ben Jonson was a bricklayer.
If he had a grief, it was that he had discovered no great man who in return for practical favours would engrave his memory in brass. He was a Maecenas without a Horace, an Earl of Southampton without a Shakespeare.
I am taking him not to be a dullard but a poet. People did not commonly talk in the poetical way, heaven knows; people did not write in the poetic convention. There is a curious exception in Letter VIII of the Casket Letters from Mary to Bothwell. Lyly's most popular prose was accessible to Shakespeare.
"Hullo!" he cried "is that Portia?" "Yes, but please don't take any notice if I say funny things. I don't mean to. Dad loved The Merchant of Venice, and I know quite a lot of lines by heart." "How perfectly delightful to meet a girl who wears neither sensible boots nor spectacles but who appreciates Shakespeare! Lud! I thought such treasures were mythical. Flamby, I have a great idea.
And Ruth's little undeveloped plans, which the facile fingers were to carry out, received a fresh and sudden impetus. You have thus the three heads of the present chapter. How could any one help taking a fancy to Rosamond Holabird? In the first place, as Mrs. Van Alstyne said, there was the name, "a making for anybody"; for names do go a great way, notwithstanding Shakespeare.
"'Glad to know him, says I, 'but in his present condition he reminds me of the joke Shakespeare got off on Julius Cæsar. We might say about your friend: "'Imperious What's-his-name, dead and turned to stone No use to write or call him on the 'phone. "'Hunky, says High Jack Snakefeeder, looking at me funny, 'do you believe in reincarnation?
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