CHAPTER VI



When Shakespeare died, in 1616, great literary productions
attributed to him as author had been before the London world and in
high favor for twenty-four years. Yet his death was not an event.
It made no stir, it attracted no attention. Apparently his eminent
literary contemporaries did not realize that a celebrated poet had
passed from their midst. Perhaps they knew a play-actor of minor
rank had disappeared, but did not regard him as the author of his
Works. "We are justified in assuming" this.

His death was not even an event in the little town of Stratford.
Does this mean that in Stratford he was not regarded as a celebrity
of ANY kind?

"We are privileged to assume"--no, we are indeed OBLIGED to assume-
-that such was the case. He had spent the first twenty-two or
twenty-three years of his life there, and of course knew everybody
and was known by everybody of that day in the town, including the
dogs and the cats and the horses. He had spent the last five or
six years of his life there, diligently trading in every big and
little thing that had money in it; so we are compelled to assume
that many of the folk there in those said latter days knew him
personally, and the rest by sight and hearsay. But not as a
CELEBRITY? Apparently not. For everybody soon forgot to remember