 Illustration from AMERICAN EXAMINER, 1910 from the Dave Thomson collection |
If Shakespeare had been born and bred on a barren and unvisited rock
in the ocean his mighty intellect would have had no outside material to
work with, and could have invented none; and no outside influences, teachings,
moldings, persuasions, inspirations, of a valuable sort, and could have
invented none; and so Shakespeare would have produced nothing. How curious and interesting is the parallel--as far as poverty of biographical
details is concerned--between Satan and Shakespeare. ...They are the best-known
unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet. |
Shall I set down the rest of the great Conjecture which constitute the Giant
Biography of William Shakespeare? It would strain the Unabridged Dictionary
to hold them. He is a brontosaur: nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster.
- "Is Shakespeare Dead?"
All the rest of his vast history, as furnished by the biographers, is built
up, course upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures--an Eiffel
Tower of artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation
of inconsequential facts.
- "Is Shakespeare Dead?"
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