Page:1909. Is Shakespeare Dead? From My Autobiography.djvu/21

IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD? I cannot rid it of his explosive interlardings, they break in everywhere with their irrelevant "What in hell are you up to now! pull her down! more! more!—there now, steady as you go," and the other disorganizing interruptions that were always leaping from his mouth. When I read Shakespeare now, I can hear them as plainly as I did in that long-departed time—fifty-one years ago. I never regarded Ealer's readings as educational. Indeed they were a detriment to me.

His contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring that detail he was a good reader, I can say that much for him. He did not use the book, and did not need to; he knew his Shakespeare as well as Euclid ever knew his multiplication table. Did he have something to say—this Shakespeare-adoring Mississippi pilot—