SECTION 7 - Concerning Genius

Summary

‘But then,’ cries Stratford, ‘Genius! Genius defies conditions, oversteps ordinary law, works miracles.’ ‘Nothing almost sees miracles,’ I would reply, but the obstinacy of Orthodoxy, which is the denial of Faith and Reason. Genius only works with supplied materials. The Stratfordian apologist cites as exemplifying ‘the mysterious origin and miraculous processes of all poetic genius’ the cases of Chatterton, Burns, Keats, ‘and other poets of humbler status and fortune than Shakespeare.’ Who the ‘other poets’ may be I do not know. To thrust Chatterton into the company of Shakespeare is ridiculous. Burns is at home with cottars and ploughmen, very uncomfortable in Edinburgh drawing-rooms, and his stock of reading is of the smallest. The suggested parallel of Keats is most unfortunate. He was the son of a well-to-do father, and he had an excellent schooling which included Latin and French. His master was the father of his friend, Charles Cowden Clarke. He started life with books at hand and in the company of literary friends. In one respect his experience was not unlike the supposed experience of Shakespeare: for a short time he was an apprentice—but to a surgeon, not to a butcher.

A far better instance of untutored genius is that of Dickens, the circumstances of whose upbringing furnish an almost exact parallel to those of the legendary Shakespeare.