Page:1909. Is Shakespeare Dead? From My Autobiography.djvu/50

IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD? of his own head. He commanded that this work of art be engraved upon his tomb, and he was obeyed. There it abides to this day. This is it:

In, the list as above set down, will be found every positively known fact of Shakespeare's life, lean and meagre as the invoice is. Beyond these details we know not a thing about him. All the rest of his vast history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures an—Eiffel Tower of artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation of inconsequential facts.