|IN 1898 the Shakespeare myth was mortally wounded by the curious collection of "may have beens," "might have beens," "could have beens," "should have beens," "must have beens," etc., collected in Sir Sidney Lee's supposititious life of William Shakespeare. In 1910 it was killed by the Cambridge History of English Literature, edited by Dr. Ward, Master of Peterhouse, and Mr. Waller, also of Peterhouse, for in Volume V., pages 165-6-7, we read: "We are not quite sure of the identity of Shakespeare's father; we are by no means certain of the identity of his wife.... We do not know whether he ever went to school.. . . No biography of Shakespeare, therefore, which deserves any confidence has ever been constructed without a large infusion of the tell-tale words 'apparently,' 'probably,' 'there can be little doubt,' and no small infusion of the still more tell-tale 'perhaps,' 'it would be natural,' 'according to what was usual at the time,' and so forth... John Shakespeare married Mary Arden, an heiress of a good yeomanry family, but as to whose connection with a more distinguished one of the same name there remains much room for doubt." I should add that no letter addressed to Shakespeare exists excepting one asking for a loan of £30; and that no contemporary letter referring to him has been discovered excepting three which are about money. In 1910 appeared my own book, "Bacon is Shakespeare," which, placed in every library in the world, has carried everywhere the news of the decease of the myth. In 1911 Mark Twain's book, "Is Shakespeare dead?" which had been published in 1909 in England, was included in the Tauchnitz collection, and therefore likewise carries the news of the decease of the myth all over the earth. Mark Twain describes Shakespeare as just a "Tar Baby," and says: "About him you can find out nothing. Nothing of any importance. Nothing worth the trouble of stowing away in your memory. Nothing that even remotely indicates that he was ever anything more than a distinctly commonplace person... a small trader in a small village that did not regard him as a person of any consequence, and had forgotten all about him before he was cold in his grave.... * We can go to the records and find out the life-history of every renowned racehorse of modern times--but not Shakespeare's! There are many reasons why, and they have been furnished in cartloads (of guess and conjecture). . . but there is one that is worth all the rest of the reasons put together, and is abundantly sufficient all by itself--he hadn't any history to tell. There is no way of getting round that deadly fact. And no sane way has yet been discovered of getting round its formidable significance." * Note.--Stratford owes all its glory to two of its sons, John, Archbishop of Canterbury, who built a church there; and Hugh Clopton, who built, at his own cost, a bridge of fourteen arches across the Avon. Translated from Jean Blaeu, 1645.