Page:1909. Is Shakespeare Dead? From My Autobiography.djvu/71

IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD? 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 every body 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 any contact with him or any incident connected with him. The dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him or known 57