The second gift Bryson gives me in this is the concept that if there really was a Love’s Labours Won, there were probably enough copies made that it could still be found one day. I know it marks me out as a bit freaky, but I’ll admit it anyway: I would give a lot to be able to go and spend 18 hours a day studying cramped and often faded and illegible 16th century documents looking for mentions of Shakespeare.
If for no other reason, I would treasure this book for two things: first was the story of the husband and wife team of Charles and Hulda Wallace who, driven in the early 1900’s by the husband’s obsession with Shakespeare, spent 18 hour days poring over the public record from Will’s lifetime and made some discoveries (and then he lost his mind and went paranoiac and got into oil). Even with all that, a researcher simply can’t expect so very many mentions of Shakespeare in the public record: unless he was getting married, baptizing a child, or involved in an arrest or lawsuit (or dying), there simply would be no official documentation. Shakespeare’s name was spelled dozens of different ways, including by himself, and never “Shakespeare”. It’s been four hundred years records have deteriorated or gone up in flames what records there are can be next to impossible to locate and once located to read and/or decipher.
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