fact, indeed almost the only important fact, of Shakespeare's life
in Stratford. Rightly viewed. For experience is an author's most
valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and
the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes. Rightly
viewed, calf-butchering accounts for Titus Andronicus, the only
play--ain't it?--that the Stratford Shakespeare ever wrote; and yet
it is the only one everybody tries to chouse him out of, the
Baconians included.

The historians find themselves "justified in believing" that the
young Shakespeare poached upon Sir Thomas Lucy's deer preserves and
got haled before that magistrate for it. But there is no shred of
respectworthy evidence that anything of the kind happened.

The historians, having argued the thing that MIGHT have happened
into the thing that DID happen, found no trouble in turning Sir
Thomas Lucy into Mr. Justice Shallow. They have long ago convinced
the world--on surmise and without trustworthy evidence--that
Shallow IS Sir Thomas.

The next addition to the young Shakespeare's Stratford history
comes easy. The historian builds it out of the surmised deer-
stealing, and the surmised trial before the magistrate, and the
surmised vengeance-prompted satire upon the magistrate in the play:
result, the young Shakespeare was a wild, wild, wild, oh SUCH a
wild young scamp, and that gratuitous slander is established for
all time! It is the very way Professor Osborn and I built the
colossal skeleton brontosaur that stands fifty-seven feet long and
sixteen feet high in the Natural History Museum, the awe and
admiration of all the world, the stateliest skeleton that exists on