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46 FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
that the man wrote an
signatures, however, prove
awful hand. They are even drawn in such a childish
fashion that some graphologists have concluded
therefrom, that the man could write nothing beyond
his own name.
As regards the education of the actor, we know for
a positive fact that it was very deficient. True, he
frequented the Free Grammar School at Stratford,
but not for long. The fact that he is said (!)
to have
been a lawyer's clerk for a short time, was not likely
to render him a scholar. His early marriage and the
fact that he forsook his wife and three children, were
feats but ill-calculated to stamp him as the literary hero
of his day.
As to the personality of the man, we are told that
he became an actor in London, and that later on he
rose to be one of the chief part-owners, or one of
the leading members of the company. But little is
positively known as to the parts he played. It is
probable that he mostly took the comic parts.
Ben
Jonson informs us that in his extemporising on the
stage he at times o'ershot the mark.
At the age of forty-five, or thereabouts, he finally
retired from London life and returned to his native
town Stratford-on-Avon, where he died in 1616. In
his Last Will no mention is made of any literary rights
or claims upon any plays or books is
; nothing said of
books or manuscripts, to be left to his heirs, whereas
in other details he even goes so far as to dispose of his
second-best bedstead.
At his death not a line was penned in all England,
not a word, deploring the loss of a great poet.
In direct contrast to all these facts stands the