What Is Man? and Other Essays
well behind me—yet _sixteen_ of my Hannibal schoolmates are still alive
today, and can tell—and do tell—inquirers dozens and dozens of
incidents of their young lives and mine together; things that happened
to us in the morning of life, in the blossom of our youth, in the good
days, the dear days, “the days when we went gipsying, a long time ago.”
Most of them creditable to me, too. One child to whom I paid court when
she was five years old and I eight still lives in Hannibal, and she
visited me last summer, traversing the necessary ten or twelve hundred
miles of railroad without damage to her patience or to her old-young
vigor. Another little lassie to whom I paid attention in Hannibal when
she was nine years old and I the same, is still alive—in London—and
hale and hearty, just as I am. And on the few surviving
steamboats—those lingering ghosts and remembrancers of great fleets
that plied the big river in the beginning of my water-career—which is
exactly as long ago as the whole invoice of the life-years of
Shakespeare numbers—there are still findable two or three river-pilots
who saw me do creditable things in those ancient days; and several
white-headed engineers; and several roustabouts and mates; and several
deck-hands who used to heave the lead for me and send up on the still
night the “Six—feet—_scant!_” that made me shudder, and the
“M-a-r-k—_twain!_” that took the shudder away, and presently the
darling “By the d-e-e-p—_four!_” that lifted me to heaven for joy.[4]
They know about me, and can tell. And so do printers, from St. Louis to
New York; and so do newspaper reporters, from Nevada to San Francisco.
And so do the police. If Shakespeare had really been celebrated, like
me, Stratford could have told things about him; and if my experience
goes for anything, they’d have done it.
[4] Four fathoms—twenty-four feet.
VII
If I had under my superintendence a controversy appointed to decide
whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare or not, I believe I would place
before the debaters only the one question, _was shakespeare ever a
practicing lawyer_? and leave everything else out.
It is maintained that the man who wrote the plays was not merely
myriad-minded, but also myriad-accomplished: that he not only knew some
thousands of things about human life in all its shades and grades, and
about the hundred arts and trades and crafts and professions which men
busy themselves in, but that he could _talk_ about the men and their
grades and trades accurately, making no mistakes. Maybe it is so, but
have the experts spoken, or is it only Tom, Dick, and Harry? Does the
exhibit stand upon wide, and loose, and eloquent generalizing—which is
not evidence, and not proof—or upon details, particulars, statistics,
illustrations, demonstrations?
Experts of unchallengeable authority have testified definitely as to
only one of Shakespeare’s multifarious craft-equipments, so far as my
recollections of Shakespeare-Bacon talk abide with me—his
law-equipment. I do not remember that Wellington or Napoleon ever
examined Shakespeare’s battles and sieges and strategies, and then
decided and established for good and all that they were militarily
flawless; I do not remember that any Nelson, or Drake, or Cook ever
examined his seamanship and said it showed profound and accurate
familiarity with that art; I don’t remember that any king or prince or
duke has ever testified that Shakespeare was letter-perfect in his
handling of royal court-manners and the talk and manners of
aristocracies; I don’t remember that any illustrious Latinist or
Grecian or Frenchman or Spaniard or Italian has proclaimed him a
past-master in those languages; I don’t remember—well, I don’t remember
that there is _testimony_—great testimony—imposing
testimony—unanswerable and unattackable testimony as to any of
Shakespeare’s hundred specialties, except one—the law.
Other things change, with time, and the student cannot trace back with
certainty the changes that various trades and their processes and
technicalities have undergone in the long stretch of a century or two
and find out what their processes and technicalities were in those
early days, but with the law it is different: it is mile-stoned and
documented all the way back, and the master of that wonderful trade,
that complex and intricate trade, that awe-compelling trade, has
competent ways of knowing whether Shakespeare-law is good law or not;
and whether his law-court procedure is correct or not, and whether his
legal shop-talk is the shop-talk of a veteran practitioner or only a
machine-made counterfeit of it gathered from books and from occasional
loiterings in Westminster.
Richard H. Dana served two years before the mast, and had every
experience that falls to the lot of the sailor before the mast of our
day. His sailor-talk flows from his pen with the sure touch and the
ease and confidence of a person who has _lived_ what he is talking
about, not gathered it from books and random listenings. Hear him:
Having hove short, cast off the gaskets, and made the bunt of each sail
fast by the jigger, with a man on each yard, at the word the whole
canvas of the ship was loosed, and with the greatest rapidity possible
everything was sheeted home and hoisted up, the anchor tripped and
cat-headed, and the ship under headway.
Again:
The royal yards were all crossed at once, and royals and sky-sails set,
and, as we had the wind free, the booms were run out, and all were
aloft, active as cats, laying out on the yards and booms, reeving the
studding-sail gear; and sail after sail the captain piled upon her,
until she was covered with canvas, her sails looking like a great white
cloud resting upon a black speck.
Once more. A race in the Pacific:
Our antagonist was in her best trim. Being clear of the point, the
breeze became stiff, and the royal-masts bent under our sails, but we
would not take them in until we saw three boys spring into the rigging
of the _California_; then they were all furled at once, but with orders
to our boys to stay aloft at the top-gallant mast-heads and loose them
again at the word. It was my duty to furl the fore-royal; and while
standing by to loose it again, I had a fine view of the scene. From
where I stood, the two vessels seemed nothing but spars and sails,
while their narrow decks, far below, slanting over by the force of the
wind aloft, appeared hardly capable of supporting the great fabrics
raised upon them. The _California_ was to windward of us, and had every
advantage; yet, while the breeze was stiff we held our own. As soon as
it began to slacken she ranged a little ahead, and the order was given
to loose the royals. In an instant the gaskets were off and the bunt
dropped. “Sheet home the fore-royal!”—“Weather sheet’s home!”—“Lee
sheet’s home!”—“Hoist away, sir!” is bawled from aloft. “Overhaul your
clew-lines!” shouts the mate. “Aye-aye, sir, all clear!”—“Taut leech!
belay! Well the lee brace; haul taut to windward!” and the royals are
set.
What would the captain of any sailing-vessel of our time say to that?
He would say, “The man that wrote that didn’t learn his trade out of a
book, he has _been_ there!” But would this same captain be competent to
sit in judgment upon Shakespeare’s seamanship—considering the changes
in ships and ship-talk that have necessarily taken place, unrecorded,
unremembered, and lost to history in the last three hundred years? It
is my conviction that Shakespeare’s sailor-talk would be Choctaw to
him. For instance—from “_The Tempest_”:
_Master_. Boatswain!
_Boatswain_. Here, master; what cheer?
_Master_. Good, speak to the mariners: fall to ’t, yarely, or we
run ourselves to ground; bestir, bestir! (_Enter Mariners_.)
_Boatswain_. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare,
yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master’s whistle.... Down
with the topmast! yare! lower, lower! Bring her to try wi’ the main
course.... Lay her a-hold, a-hold! Set her two courses. Off to sea
again; lay her off.
That will do, for the present; let us yare a little, now, for a change.
If a man should write a book and in it make one of his characters say,
“Here, devil, empty the quoins into the standing galley and the
imposing-stone into the hell-box; assemble the comps around the frisket
and let them jeff for takes and be quick about it,” I should recognize
a mistake or two in the phrasing, and would know that the writer was
only a printer theoretically, not practically.
I have been a quartz miner in the silver regions—a pretty hard life; I
know all the palaver of that business: I know all about discovery
claims and the subordinate claims; I know all about lodes, ledges,
outcroppings, dips, spurs, angles, shafts, drifts, inclines, levels,
tunnels, air-shafts, “horses,” clay casings, granite casings; quartz
mills and their batteries; arastras, and how to charge them with
quicksilver and sulphate of copper; and how to clean them up, and how
to reduce the resulting amalgam in the retorts, and how to cast the
bullion into pigs; and finally I know how to screen tailings, and also
how to hunt for something less robust to do, and find it. I know the
argot of the quartz-mining and milling industry familiarly; and so
whenever Bret Harte introduces that industry into a story, the first
time one of his miners opens his mouth I recognize from his phrasing
that Harte got the phrasing by listening—like Shakespeare—I mean the
Stratford one—not by experience. No one can talk the quartz dialect
correctly without learning it with pick and shovel and drill and fuse.
I have been a surface miner—gold—and I know all its mysteries, and the
dialect that belongs with them; and whenever Harte introduces that
industry into a story I know by the phrasing of his characters that
neither he nor they have ever served that trade.
I have been a “pocket” miner—a sort of gold mining not findable in any
but one little spot in the world, so far as I know. I know how, with
horn and water, to find the trail of a pocket and trace it step by step
and stage by stage up the mountain to its source, and find the compact
little nest of yellow metal reposing in its secret home under the
ground. I know the language of that trade, that capricious trade, that
fascinating buried-treasure trade, and can catch any writer who tries
to use it without having learned it by the sweat of his brow and the
labor of his hands.
I know several other trades and the argot that goes with them; and
whenever a person tries to talk the talk peculiar to any of them
without having learned it at its source I can trap him always before he
gets far on his road.
And so, as I have already remarked, if I were required to superintend a
Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, I would narrow the matter down to a
single question—the only one, so far as the previous controversies have
informed me, concerning which illustrious experts of unimpeachable
competency have testified: _Was The Author Of Shakespeare’s Works A
Lawyer?_—a lawyer deeply read and of limitless experience? I would put
aside the guesses and surmises, and perhapses, and might-have-beens,
and could-have-beens, and must-have-beens, and,
we-are-justified-in-presumings,and the rest of those vague specters and
shadows and indefinitenesses, and stand or fall, win or lose, by the
verdict rendered by the jury upon that single question. If the verdict
was Yes, I should feel quite convinced that the Stratford Shakespeare,
the actor, manager, and trader who died so obscure, so forgotten, so
destitute of even village consequence, that sixty years afterward no
fellow-citizen and friend of his later days remembered to tell anything
about him, did not write the Works.