John Kendrick Bangs

“ Finally I came here, and when it got to the ears of the authorities that I was in Hades, they sent me back for the fourth time to earth in the person of William Shakespeare.
That is the whole of the Jonah story. It is a sad story, and I regret it; and I am sorry for the impostor when I reflect that the character he has assumed possesses attractions for him. His real life must have been a fearful thing if he is happy in his impersonation, and for his punishment let us leave him where he is. Having told the truth, I have done my duty. ”

“ We were all alike as two peas in the olden days, and at a time when men reached to an advanced age which is not known now, it frequently became almost impossible to distinguish one old man from another. ”

“ How was it, the critics of the years since have asked--how was it that this untutored little savage from leafy Warwickshire, with no training and little education, came into London with "Venus and Adonis" in manuscript in his pocket? It is quite evident that the critic fraternity have no Sherlock Holmes in their midst. It would not take much of an eye, a true detective's eye, to see the milk in that cocoanut, for it is but a simple tale after all. The way of it was this: On my way from Stratford to London I walked through Coventry, and I remained in Coventry overnight. ”

“ That the public chose to think the works mine was none of my fault. I never claimed them, and the line on the title-page, "By William Shakespeare," had reference to the publisher only, and not, as many have chosen to believe, to the author. Thus were published Lord Bacon's "Hamlet," Raleigh's poems, several plays of Messrs. Beaumont and Fletcher--who were themselves among the cleverest adapters of the times--and the rest of that glorious monument to human credulity and memorial to an impossible, wholly apocryphal genius, known as the work of William Shakespeare. ”