It is impossible that the home-keeping yokel should have heard of the “obscure” (_sic_!) Court of Navarre; and known that at Venice there was a place called the Rialto, and a “common ferry” called “the tranect.” It is impossible that he should have had “an intimate knowledge of the castle of Elsinore,” though an English _troupe_ of actors visited Denmark in 1587. To Will all this knowledge was _impossible_; for these and many more exquisite reasons the yokel’s authorship of the plays is a physical impossibility. But scholars neither invent nor tolerate such strange liberties with time and place, with history, geography, and common sense. Will Shakspere either did not know what was right, or, more probably, did not care, and supposed, like Fielding in the old anecdote, that the audience “would not find it out.” How could a scholar do any of these things? He was as incapable of them as Ben Jonson. Such sins no scholar is inclined to; they have, for him, no temptations. [Picture: Facsimile of the Autograph Signature “By me William Shakspeare.” From one of the Three Sheets of his Will, dated March 25, 1616. (From Sir Sidney Lee’s Shakespeare’s Life and Work. By permission of Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co.)] [Picture: Facsimile of Mark-Signature of John Shakespeare, the Poet’s Father. From a Deed of Conveyance, dated January 26, 1596] [Picture: Facsimile of Mark-Signature of Judith Shakespeare, the Poet’s Second Daughter, afterwards Mrs. Thomas Quiney] As to Shakspere’s schooling, the Baconians point at the current ignorance of Stratford-on-Avon, where many topping burgesses, even aldermen, “made their marks,” in place of signing their names to documents. Shakespeare’s father, wife, and daughter “made their marks,” in place of signing. So did Lady Jane Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Huntly, when she married the cultivated Earl of Bothwell (1566). There is no evidence, from a roll of schoolboys at Stratford Free Grammar School, about 1564–77, that any given boy attended it; for no roll exists. Consequently there is no evidence that Will was a pupil. “In the Appendix to Malone’s _Life of Shakespeare_ will be found two Latin letters, written by alumni of Stratford School contemporary with Shakespeare,” says Mr. Collins. {48a} But though the writers were Stratford boys contemporary with Shakespeare, in later life his associates, as there is no roll of pupils’ names how do we know, the Baconians may ask, that these men were educated at Stratford School? Why not at Winchester, Eton, St. Paul’s, or anywhere? Need one reply?