SECTION 1 - The Problem stated

Summary

‘Horatio.’ Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.

Hamlet. No, faith, not a jot: but to follow with modesty enough and likelihood to lead it.’

In describing this Essay as A Chapter in the Early Life of Shakespeare, I am conscious that I may be charged with some presumption as well as that ‘curiosity’ which is deprecated by Horatio. I do not claim for proven a contention which rests on hypothesis, however buttressed with circumstance. With Hamlet I follow with modesty where likelihood leads.

It cannot be a matter indifferent to us to trace the natural stages which brought the Stratford boy to the heights of his transfiguration. The blank period of Shakespeare's youth can only be filled with material which is largely conjectural. But conjecture must not surpass the limits of the humanly credible, and it must begin with no postulates or undocumented assumptions. If it be assumed that Shakespeare stood apart from all the conditions which govern the rest of humanity, and that in the preparation for his life's work he neither had nor required the helps and suggestions without which the celestial fire cannot in other men be fanned into flame, then cadit quaestio. If the ordinarily accepted tradition of his stunted education, mean surroundings and coarse occupation at Stratford be an article of orthodox belief, then I should be fain to accept the Baconian faith, or profess myself, with Sir George Greenwood, a pure agnostic.