A PERSONATION: WHO AM I?
Reading edition
There have been few people more written about, and yet there is very little known of me. I wish I had known, during my life, that I was to become so famous, for I might have taken pains to leave accurate accounts of myself. I wrote a great deal, yet there is much discussion even over my signature. I was born and brought up in the country, as you can easily judge from the many allusions to country pleasures and sights in my works. My parents were poor, and I had to depend on myself; and when still young decided to go to London—many say because I could not live happily with my wife, whom I had married when but eighteen. I sought and found employment in London in the theatres. I was anxious to return home (which I had left a poor lad) a rich man; so I worked early and late, and about twelve years after leaving home was able to buy one of the best houses in my native place. It has always been supposed I did not like my wife very much, because in my will I left her only my "second-best bed"; but then people forget that she also had her dower. I wrote over thirty-seven books, though some of the writings attributed to me are not mine, and scholars will dispute about me probably to the end of time.
Except that I was born, married, went to London, wrote, returned home, made a will, and died, there is nothing certainly known about me: everything else is conjecture, for, alas! I had no Boswell. My books have been translated into all civilized tongues, my sayings are as familiar in men's mouths "as household words," and though about me the world may know little, no one can be considered well educated who is not conversant with my books.
I forgot to tell you I was born on the 23d of April, 1564, and died on the 23d of April, 1616—not an old man, you see, to have gained such fame; yet every year many pilgrims visit my birth-place and my grave, the epitaph on which has alone enabled me to lie quietly in the country church-yard, for many would like to see me in Westminster Abbey, where there is a fine monument to me.