Matus Irvin Leigh - Shakespeare, In Fact

Shakespeare, In Fact

IRVIN LEIGH MATUS

With a New Introduction by
THOMAS MANN

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.
Mineola, New York

To Sam and Marilyn Schoenbaum
With affection and gratitude

Copyright

Copyright 1994 by Irvin Leigh Matus
Copyright 2012 by Paul Matus
Introduction to the Dover Edition Copyright 2012 by Thomas Mann
All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2012, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published in 1994 by The Continuum Publishing Company, New York. Thomas Mann has provided a new Introduction to this Dover edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Matus, Irvin Leigh.

Shakespeare, in fact / Irvin Leigh Matus ; with a new introduction by Thomas Mann. Dover ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-486-49027-4
ISBN-10: 0-486-49027-0

1. Shakespeare, William, 15641616Authorship. 2. Dramatists, EnglishEarly modern, 15001700Biography. 3. Shakespeare, William, 15641616AuthorshipOxford theory. 4. English dramaAuthorship. I. Title.

PR2939.M36 2012
822.33dc23
[B]

2012020697

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation
49027001
www.doverpublications.com

Contents

T he author of this book, the late Irvin Matus (1941-2011) was a truly unusual character. He is already something of a legend in the field of Shakespeare scholarship. He had no formal education beyond a high school diploma, but he wrote two of the best books ever on the Bard and his era. At the time he finished the first one, Shakespeare: The Living Record, twenty years ago, he was living on a heating grate behind the Library of Congress. In some ways he was like Thoreau, in his disregard for money and his determination to march to the beat of his own drum. That doesnt quite capture him, however. I think he could also be described as a real-life character out of a Dickens novelthat is, if a Cockney accent could be replaced by a strong Brooklyn equivalent.

Upon first meeting him, you would not have suspected how brilliant, or how quirky, he was. You would, however, have been immediately impressed by his cheerfulness, affability, and talkativeness. Irv loved a conversation about ideas, or a good chin wag, as he put it. That was partly due to his natural extroversion, but also to the fact that he couldnt afford most other amusements. In his last year he was living on income of well under $4,000, almost all from Social Security; he had a low-rent apartment by then. He would seldom call friends on the telephone, to avoid running up his own phone bill; but when he did want to talk, to me anyway, hed leave voicemail messages on my work number, time-stamped at 2:00 a.m., to call him back the next day. Actually, it would usually be two voicemails, as Irv could not say anything within a two-minute time limit. Any friend who did call him in the evening would not be able to hang up for at least an hour. There would always be one more thing that Irv thought of to talk about. But then you usually didnt want to hang up once he got going.

He always wore a sport coat (he had a few) and kept himself immaculately groomed; but, again, you would not have known that, in his seventh decade, he was still wearing one coat that hed had since high schoolhe kept it very carefully mended that whole time.

I got to know Irv at the Library of Congress, where Im a reference librarian in the Main Reading Room. With the Folger Shakespeare Library being right across the street, those two blocks on Capitol Hill formed much of Irvs universe for many years. He actually boycotted the Folger, however, for a whole decadehe thought that, after the appearance of his second book on the Bard (this one), the library administration there simply owed him free photocopying privileges, which he didnt get. He would not deign to set foot in the place again until, eventually, the culpable Director retired and a new one was appointed. (I believe he also lost a dishwashing job once because he thought hed wiped enough crockery that the restaurant owed him two meals.) He didnt get free photocopying under the new Director, either; but the offender of his dignity had left, and that was apparently sufficient. Slights to his pride bothered him more than costs to his wallet, and they sometimes led him to cut himself off from others in ways that, in my judgment (not his), hurt only him. That was some of his quirkiness, lurking below the surface. He was also greatly disappointed that the MacArthur Foundation did not deign to discover him and supply him with a genius grantalthough in that respect he was probably more similar to his academic brethren than he wouldve liked to admit. Irv prided himself on not being an academicand that he never went to college, except to teach. (He was a guest lecturer a number of times at different institutions.)

His major quirk was that he abhorred any job that required regular hours; the few that he had did not last long. He did telemarketing for the Kennedy Center for a few months; he also had a job, briefly, hawking food in the stands of the Washington Nationals stadium during their baseball games. He lost that, though, because his boss didnt like it that, because of his immense knowledge of baseball history, he spent so much time talking to the fans in his section of the bleachers. He went through periods of house-sitting for friends or acquaintances, although some found, to their dismay, that he would re-arrange their apartments, and that it was much harder to get him out than to invite him in. For a few months while he was finishing Shakespeare: The Living Record he was indeed living on the street (but he had a study desk, during the day, at the Library of Congress). Although there was a Washington Post article about him at that time, an account which he generally liked, he did not at all like being known as a homeless person reduced to such dire straits. I was told never to mention that in introducing him to people. (I hope hell forgive me for presenting him more in the round here than he would allow while he lived. I really do want people to know how extraordinary he was.) He eventually wound up in what I think was a subsidized public housing complex, and then a retirement community far enough out in the suburbs of DC that his Social Security would pay for it; but he would never talk about his sources of income. Although he could take pride in what he wrote and did, he could not be proud of what he earned, and so a kind of wall would come up if any conversation drifted in that direction. I know he got some help from a cousin, a former member of Congress; they had been close friends since childhood, and Irv was helping him to write his memoirs. Or that, at least, was the pretext for the financial aid. His apartments were rather nice; he did have a second-hand TV and a DVD player, a small filing cabinet, and a lot of books (including an old Encyclopedia Britannica), and the usual tables, chairs, and bed. He also had an old computer, without Internet access, that conked out on him frequently during hot weather. I dont know how he acquired any of this. I do know, though, that in his last two years he was monitoring his lifestyle to the level of penniesit made a real difference to him when the cost of a postage stamp went up; and when the fare for the Metro system increased by about a dollar, it drastically reduced the number of times he could come into DC every month.

Apart from his literary pursuits he was addicted to watching Jeopardy on TV, and took great satisfaction in calculating how much money he would have won, in beating the various contestants to answers, had he been on the show himself. In his last year, however, he swore off the program entirelythe categories of questions, he said, were tending more and more toward pop culture references that he loathed, as their presence implied an endorsement of such things as an important part of general knowledge. (I can readily imagine the vehemence of Irvs diatribe if he had lived to see a