ALIFORNIA

WILLIAM SHAKSPERE AND

ROBERT GREENE

THE EVIDENCE

I

This book was written primarily for private satisfaction, the author having no desire for approbation, and to disclose merely the true William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon; to find him as a man; to feel his personal presence; to know him as he was known by his neighbors as landowner, money lender, captain of amusements, actor, play-broker and litigant. From dusty records that do not awaken a deific impulse may be read the true story of his life, but, before directing the readers' attention to the documentary evidence, which can be entirely depended upon in regard to himself, his family, neighbors, fellow-actors and associates,

TIMIA OL

AMBORLIAD

2

WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

we desire to cut out the worthless conjectures which are contained in most, if not all, of the recent works on the subject of Shakespeare. Circumstances, however slight, may give rise to idle conjectures, but their worthlessness may be best discerned by setting up against them reasonable ones. To repeat apocryphal anecdotes and manufactured traditions that are not reasonable inferences from concurrent events is to dissipate mental energy; antiquity per se adds nothing to confirmation or probability. In that digest of biography, so often quoted, George Stevens tells his readers in less than fifty words all he knew with any degree of certainty concerning Shakspere, with the exception of his conjectures as to the authorship of the poems and plays. This great Shaksperean commentator indulges in no aesthetic dreams or whimsical conjectures which taint the credibility of his successors by their statement of them as proven facts.

Of all kinds of literature, biography

extends the most generous hospitality. Its subjects live an after life in affiliation with the readers without regard to condition. In seeking to renew the enthusiasm of our youth for this species of writing we visit the public library and find many changes in biographical history, such as the elimination of spurious tradition and fanciful conjecture. For instance, instead of the traditional life of Washington, there is a life of the true Washington; and, instead of a caricatured life of Cromwell, there is a record of the duly attested facts of the many-sided and wondrous Cromwell. With what astonishment we survey the huge issue of books on Shakspere which stand conspicuous on the shelves! There are more than ten thousand books and pamphlets-many of them of the memoir order-almost every one of which has a biographical preface; but we find that most, if not all, the biographers of Shakspere still lead the reader into the shadow of chaotic conjecture and might-have-been, and that