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!’” {55a} 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. {56a}

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. {56b}