Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great Unknown E-Book

Andrew Lang

• Herausgeber: Andrew Lang
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

The theory that Francis Bacon was, in the main, the author of “Shakespeare’s plays,” has now been for fifty years before the learned world. Its advocates have met with less support than they had reason to expect. Their methods, their logic, and their hypotheses closely resemble those applied by many British and foreign scholars to Homer; and by critics of the very Highest School to Holy Writ. Yet the Baconian theory is universally rejected in England by the professors and historians of English literature; and generally by students who have no profession save that of Letters. The Baconians, however, do not lack the countenance and assistance of highly distinguished persons, whose names are famous where those of mere men of letters are unknown; and in circles where the title of “Professor” is not duly respected.

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Andrew Lang

Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great Unknown

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Table of contents

INTRODUCTION

I THE BACONIAN AND ANTI-WILLIAN POSITIONS

II THE “SILENCE” ABOUT SHAKESPEARE

III THAT IMPOSSIBLE HE—THE SCHOOLING OF SHAKESPEARE

IV MR. COLLINS ON SHAKESPEARE’S LEARNING

V SHAKESPEARE, GENIUS, AND SOCIETY

VI THE COURTLY PLAYS: “LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST”

VII CONTEMPORARY RECOGNITION OF WILL AS AUTHOR

VIII “THE SILENCE OF PHILIP HENSLOWE”

IX THE LATER LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE—HIS MONUMENT AND PORTRAITS

X “THE TRADITIONAL SHAKSPERE”

XI THE FIRST FOLIO

XII BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE

XIII THE PREOCCUPATIONS OF BACON

APPENDICES

FOOTNOTES

INTRODUCTION

The theory that Francis Bacon was, in the main, the author of “Shakespeare’s plays,” has now been for fifty years before the learned world.  Its advocates have met with less support than they had reason to expect.  Their methods, their logic, and their hypotheses closely resemble those applied by many British and foreign scholars to Homer; and by critics of the very Highest School to Holy Writ.  Yet the Baconian theory is universally rejected in England by the professors and historians of English literature; and generally by students who have no profession save that of Letters.  The Baconians, however, do not lack the countenance and assistance of highly distinguished persons, whose names are famous where those of mere men of letters are unknown; and in circles where the title of “Professor” is not duly respected.The partisans of Bacon aver (or one of them avers) that “Lord Penzance, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Palmerston, Judge Webb, Judge Holmes (of Kentucky, U.S.), Prince Bismarck, John Bright, and innumerable most thoughtful scholars eminent in many walks of life, and especially in the legal profession . . . ” have been Baconians, or, at least, opposed to Will Shakspere’s authorship.  To these names of scholars I must add that of my late friend, Samuel Clemens, D.Litt. of Oxford; better known to many as Mark Twain.  Dr. Clemens was, indeed, no mean literary critic; witness his epoch-making study of Prof. Dowden’s Life of Shelley, while his researches into the biography of Jeanne d’Arc were most conscientious.With the deepest respect for the political wisdom and literary taste of Lord Palmerston, Prince Bismarck, Lord Beaconsfield, and the late Mr. John Bright; and with every desire to humble myself before the judicial verdicts of Judges Holmes, Webb, and Lord Penzance; with sincere admiration of my late friend, Dr. Clemens, I cannot regard them as, in the first place and professionally, trained students of literary history.They were no more specially trained students of Elizabethan literature than myself; they were amateurs in this province, as I am an amateur, who differ from all of them in opinion.  Difference of opinion concerning points of literary history ought not to make “our angry passions rise.”  Yet this controversy has been extremely bitter.I abstain from quoting the “sweetmeats,” in Captain MacTurk’s phrase, which have been exchanged by the combatants.  Charges of ignorance and monomania have been answered by charges of forgery, lying, “scandalous literary dishonesty,” and even inaccuracy.  Now no mortal is infallibly accurate, but we are all sane and “indifferent honest.”  There have been forgeries in matters Shakespearean, alas, but not in connection with the Baconian controversy.It is an argument of the Baconians, and generally of the impugners of good Will’s authorship of the plays vulgarly attributed to him, that the advocates of William Shakspere, Gent, as author of the plays, differ like the Kilkenny cats among themselves on many points.  All do not believe, with Mr. J. C. Collins, that Will knew Sophocles, Euripides, and Æschylus (but not Aristophanes) as well as Mr. Swinburne did, or knew them at all—for that matter.  Mr. Pollard differs very widely from Sir Sidney Lee on points concerning the First Folio and the Quartos: my sympathies are with Mr. Pollard.  Few, if any, partisans of Will agree with Mrs. Stopes (herself no Baconian) about the history of the Stratford monument of the poet.  About Will’s authorship of Titus Andronicus, and Henry VI, Part I, the friends of Will, like the friends of Bacon, are at odds among themselves.  These and other divergencies of opinion cause the Baconians to laugh, as if they were a harmonious circle . . . !  For the Baconian camp is not less divided against itself than the camp of the “Stratfordians.”  Not all Baconians hold that Bacon was the legitimate son of “that Imperial votaress” Queen Elizabeth.  Not all believe in the Cryptogram of Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, or in any other cryptograms.  Not all maintain that Bacon, in the Sonnets, was inspired by a passion for the Earl of Essex, for Queen Elizabeth, or for an early miniature of himself.  Not all regard him as the author of the plays of Kit Marlowe.  Not all suppose him to be a Rosicrucian, who possibly died at the age of a hundred and six, or, perhaps, may be “still running.”  Not all aver that he wrote thirteen plays before 1593.  But one party holds that, in the main, Will was the author of the plays, while the other party votes for Bacon—or for Bungay, a Great Unknown.  I use Bungay as an endearing term for the mysterious being who was the Author if Francis Bacon was not.  Friar Bungay was the rival of Friar Bacon, as the Unknown (if he was not Francis Bacon) is the rival of “the inventor of Inductive reasoning.”I could never have expected that I should take a part in this controversy; but acquaintance with The Shakespeare Problem Restated (503 pp.), (1908), and later works of Mr. G. G. Greenwood, M.P., has tempted me to enter the lists.Mr. Greenwood is worth fighting; he is cunning of fence, is learned (and I cannot conceal my opinion that Mr. Donnelly and Judge Holmes were rather ignorant).  He is not over “the threshold of Eld” (as were Judge Webb and Lord Penzance when they took up Shakespearean criticism).  His knowledge of Elizabethan literature is vastly superior to mine, for I speak merely, in Matthew Arnold’s words, as “a belletristic trifler.”Moreover, Mr. Greenwood, as a practising barrister, is a judge of legal evidence; and, being a man of sense, does not “hold a brief for Bacon” as the author of the Shakespearean plays and poems, and does not value Baconian cryptograms.  In the following chapters I make endeavours, conscientious if fallible, to state the theory of Mr. Greenwood.  It is a negative theory.  He denies that Will Shakspere (or Shaxbere, or Shagspur, and so on) was the author of the plays and poems.  Some other party was, in the main, with other hands, the author.  Mr. Greenwood cannot, or does not, offer a guess as to who this ingenious Somebody was.  He does not affirm, and he does not deny, that Bacon had a share, greater or less, in the undertaking.In my brief tractate I have not room to consider every argument; to traverse every field.  In philology I am all unlearned, and cannot pretend to discuss the language of Shakespeare, any more than I can analyse the language of Homer into proto-Arcadian and Cyprian, and so on.  Again, I cannot pretend to have an opinion, based on internal evidence, about the genuine Shakespearean character of such plays as Titus Andronicus, Henry VI, Part I, and Troilus and Cressida.  About them different views are held within both camps.I am no lawyer or naturalist (as Partridge said, Non omnia possumus omnes), and cannot imagine why our Author is so accurate in his frequent use of terms of law—if he be Will; and so totally at sea in natural history—if he be Francis, who “took all knowledge for his province.”How can a layman pretend to deal with Shakespeare’s legal attainments, after he has read the work of the learned Recorder of Bristol, Mr. Castle, K.C.?  To his legal mind it seems that in some of Will’s plays he had the aid of an expert in law, and then his technicalities were correct.  In other plays he had no such tutor, and then he was sadly to seek in his legal jargon.  I understand Mr. Greenwood to disagree on this point.  Mr. Castle says, “I think Shakespeare would have had no difficulty in getting aid from several sources.  There is therefore no prima facie reason why we should suppose the information was supplied by Bacon.”Of course there is not! “In fact, there are some reasons why one should attribute the legal assistance, say, to Coke, rather than to Bacon.”The truth is, that Bacon seems not to have been lawyer enough for Will’s purposes.  “We have no reason to believe that Bacon was particularly well read in the technicalities of our law; he never seems to have seriously followed his profession.” [0a]Now we have Mr. Greenwood’s testimonial in favour of Mr. Castle, “Who really does know something about law.” [0b]  Mr. Castle thinks that Bacon really did not know enough about law, and suggests Sir Edward Coke, of all human beings, as conceivably Will’s “coach” on legal technicalities.  Perhaps Will consulted the Archbishop of Canterbury on theological niceties?Que sçais je?  In some plays, says Mr. Castle, Will’s law is all right, in other plays it is all wrong.  As to Will’s law, when Mr. Greenwood and Mr. Castle differ, a layman dare not intervene.Concerning legend and tradition about our Will, it seems that, in each case, we should do our best to trace the Quellen, to discover the original sources, and the steps by which the tale arrived at its late recorders in print; and then each man’s view as to the veracity of the story will rest on his sense of probability; and on his bias, his wish to believe or to disbelieve.There exists, I believe, only one personal anecdote of Will, the actor, and on it the Baconians base an argument against the contemporary recognition of him as a dramatic author.  I take the criticism of Mr. Greenwood (who is not a Baconian).  One John Manningham, Barrister-at-Law, “a well-educated and cultured man,” notes in his Diary (February 2, 1601) that “at our feast we had a play called Twelve Night or What you Will, much like the Comedy of Errors, or Menæchmi in Plautus, but most like and near to that in Italian called Inganni.”  He confides to his Diary the tricks played on Malvolio as “a good practice.” [0c]  That is all.About the authorship he says nothing: perhaps he neither knew nor cared who the author was.  In our day the majority of people who tell me about a play which they have seen, cannot tell me the name of the author.  Yet it is usually printed on the playbill, though in modest type.  The public does not care a straw about the author’s name, unless he be deservedly famous for writing letters to the newspapers on things in general; for his genius as an orator; his enthusiasm as a moralist, or in any other extraneous way.  Dr. Forman in his queer account of the plot of “Mack Beth” does not allude to the name of the author (April 20, 1610).  Twelfth Night was not published till 1623, in the Folio: there was no quarto to enlighten Manningham about the author’s name.  We do not hear of printed playbills, with author’s names inserted, at that period.  It seems probable that occasional playgoers knew and cared no more about authors than they do at present.  The world of the wits, the critics (such as Francis Meres), poets, playwrights, and players, did know and care about the authors; apparently Manningham did not.  But he heard a piquant anecdote of two players and (March 13, 1601) inserted it in his Diary.Shakespeare once anticipated Richard Burbage at an amorous tryst with a citizen’s wife.  Burbage had, by the way, been playing the part of Richard III.  While Will was engaged in illicit dalliance, the message was brought (what a moment for bringing messages!) that Richard III was at the door, and Will “caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard III.  Shakespeare’s name William.”  (My italics.)  Mr. Greenwood argues that if “Shakspere the player was known to the world as the author of the plays of Shakespeare, it does seem extremely remarkable” that Manningham should have thought it needful to add “Shakespeare’s name William.” [0d]But was “Shakspere,” or any man, “known to the world as the author of the plays of Shakespeare”?  No! for Mr. Greenwood writes, “nobody, outside a very small circle, troubled his head as to who the dramatist or dramatists might be.” [0e]  To that “very small circle” we have no reason to suppose that Manningham belonged, despite his remarkable opinion that Twelfth Night resembles the Menæchmi.  Consequently, it is not “extremely remarkable” that Manningham wrote “Shakespeare’s name William,” to explain to posterity the joke about “William the Conqueror,” instead of saying, “the brilliant author of the Twelfth Night play which so much amused me at our feast a few weeks ago.” [0f]  “Remarkable” out of all hooping it would have been had Manningham written in the style of Mr. Greenwood.  But Manningham apparently did not “trouble his head as to who the dramatist or dramatists might be.”  “Nobody, outside a very small circle,” did trouble his poor head about that point.  Yet Mr. Greenwood thinks “it does seem extremely remarkable” that Manningham did not mention the author.Later, on the publication of the Folio (1623), the world seems to have taken more interest in literary matters.  Mr. Greenwood says that then while “the multitude” would take Ben Jonson’s noble panegyric on Shakespeare as a poet “au pied de la lettre,” “the enlightened few would recognise that it had an esoteric meaning.” [0g]  Then, it seems, “the world”—the “multitude”—regarded the actor as the author.  Only “the enlightened few” were aware that when Ben said “Shakespeare,” and “Swan of Avon,” he meant—somebody else.Quite different inferences are drawn from the same facts by persons of different mental conditions.  For example, in 1635 or 1636, Cuthbert Burbage, brother of Richard, the famous actor, Will’s comrade, petitioned Lord Pembroke, then Lord Chamberlain, for consideration in a quarrel about certain theatres.  Telling the history of the houses, he mentions that the Burbages “to ourselves joined those deserving men, Shakspere, Heminge, Condell, Phillips and others.”  Cuthbert is arguing his case solely from the point of the original owners or lease-holders of the houses, and of the well-known actors to whom they joined themselves.  Judge Webb and Mr. Greenwood think that “it does indeed seem strange . . . that the proprietor[s] of the playhouses which had been made famous by the production of the Shakespearean plays, should, in 1635—twelve years after the publication of the great Folio—describe their reputed author to the survivor of the Incomparable Pair, as merely a ‘man-player’ and ‘a deserving man.’”  Why did he not remind the Lord Chamberlain that this “deserving man” was the author of all these famous dramas?  Was it because he was aware that the Earl of Pembroke “knew better than that”? [0h]These arguments are regarded by some Baconians as proof positive of their case.Cuthbert Burbage, in 1635 or 1636, did not remind the Earl of what the Earl knew very well, that the Folio had been dedicated, in 1623, to him and his brother, by Will’s friends, Heminge and Condell, as they had been patrons of the late William Shakspere and admirers of his plays.  The terms of this dedication are to be cited in the text, later.  We all now would have reminded the Earl of what he very well knew.  Cuthbert did not.The intelligence of Cuthbert Burbage may be gauged by anyone who will read pp. 481–484 in William Shakespeare, His Family and Friends, by the late Mr. Charles Elton, Q.C., of White Staunton.  Cuthbert was a puzzle-pated old boy.  The silence as to Will’s authorship on the part of this muddle-headed old Cuthbert, in 1635–36, cannot outweigh the explicit and positive public testimony to his authorship, signed by his friends and fellow-actors in 1623.Men believe what they may; but I prefer positive evidence for the affirmative to negative evidence from silence, the silence of Cuthbert Burbage.One may read through Mr. Greenwood’s three books and note the engaging varieties of his views; they vary as suits his argument; but he is unaware of it, or can justify his varyings.  Thus, in 1610, one John Davies wrote rhymes in which he speaks of “our English Terence, Mr. Will Shakespeare”; “good Will.”  In his period patriotic English critics called a comic dramatist “the English Terence,” or “the English Plautus,” precisely as American critics used to call Mr. Bryant “the American Wordsworth,” or Cooper “the American Scott”; and as Scots called the Rev. Mr. Thomson “the Scottish Turner.”  Somewhere, I believe, exists “the Belgian Shakespeare.”Following this practice, Davies had to call Will either “our English Terence,” or “our English Plautus.”  Aristophanes would not have been generally recognised; and Will was no more like one of these ancient authors than another.  Thus Davies was apt to choose either Plautus or Terence; it was even betting which he selected.  But he chanced to choose Terence; and this is “curious,” and suggests suspicions to Mr. Greenwood—and the Baconians.  They are so very full of suspicions!It does not suit the Baconians, or Mr. Greenwood, to find contemporary recognition of Will as an author. [0i]  Consequently, Mr. Greenwood finds Davies’s “curious, and at first sight, inappropriate comparison of ‘Shake-speare’ to Terence worthy of remark, for Terence is the very author whose name is alleged to have been used as a mask-name, or nom de plume, for the writings of great men who wished to keep the fact of their authorship concealed.”Now Davies felt bound to bring in some Roman parallel to Shakespeare; and had only the choice of Terence or Plautus.  Meres (1598) used Plautus; Davies used Terence.  Mr. Greenwood [0j] shows us that Plautus would not do.  “Could he” (Shakespeare) “write only of courtesans and cocottes, and not of ladies highly born, cultured, and refined? . . . ” “The supposed parallel” (Plautus and Shakespeare) “breaks down at every point.”  Thus, on Mr. Greenwood’s showing, Plautus could not serve Davies, or should not serve him, in his search for a Roman parallel to “good Will.”  But Mr. Greenwood also writes, “if he” (Shakespeare) “was to be likened to a Latin comedian, surely Plautus is the writer with whom he should have been compared.” [0k]  Yet Plautus was the very man who cannot be used as a parallel to Shakespeare.  Of course no Roman nor any other comic dramatist closely resembles the author of As You Like It.  They who selected either Plautus or Terence meant no more than that both were celebrated comic dramatists.  Plautus was no parallel to Will.  Yet “surely Plautus is the author to whom he should have been compared” by Davies, says Mr. Greenwood.  If Davies tried Plautus, the comparison was bad; if Terence, it was “curious,” as Terence was absurdly accused of being the “nom de plume” of some great “concealed poets” of Rome.  “From all the known facts about Terence,” says a Baconian critic (who has consulted Smith’s Biographical Dictionary), “it is an almost unavoidable inference that John Davies made the comparison to Shakspere because he knew of the point common to both cases.”  The common point is taken to be, not that both men were famous comic dramatists, but that Roman literary gossips said, and that Baconians and Mr. Greenwood say, that “Terence” was said to be a “mask-name,” and that “Shakespeare” is a mask-name.  Of the second opinion there is not a hint in literature of the time of good Will.What surprises one most in this controversy is that men eminent in the legal profession should be “anti-Shakesperean,” if not overtly Baconian.  For the evidence for the contemporary faith in Will’s authorship is all positive; from his own age comes not a whisper of doubt, not even a murmur of surprise.  It is incredible to me that his fellow-actors and fellow-playwrights should have been deceived, especially when they were such men as Ben Jonson and Tom Heywood.  One would expect lawyers, of all people, to have been most impatient of the surprising attempts made to explain away Ben Jonson’s testimony, by aid, first, of quite a false analogy (Scott’s denial of his own authorship of his novels), and, secondly, by the suppression of such a familiar fact as the constant inconsistency of Ben’s judgments of his contemporaries in literature.  Mr. Greenwood must have forgotten the many examples of this inconsistency; but I have met a Baconian author who knew nothing of the fact.  Mr. Greenwood, it is proper to say, does not seem to be satisfied that he has solved what he calls “the Jonsonian riddle.”  Really, there is no riddle.  About Will, as about other authors, his contemporaries and even his friends, on occasion, Ben “spoke with two voices,” now in terms of hyperbolical praise, now in carping tones of censure.  That is the obvious solution of “the Jonsonian riddle.”I must apologise if I have in places spelled the name of the Swan of Avon “Shakespeare” where Mr. Greenwood would write “Shakspere,” and vice versa.  He uses “Shakespeare” where he means the Author; “Shakspere” where he means Will; and is vexed with some people who write the name of Will as “Shakespeare.”  As Will, in the opinion of a considerable portion of the human race, and of myself, was the Author, one is apt to write his name as “Shakespeare” in the usual way.  But difficult cases occur, as in quotations, and in conditional sentences.  By any spelling of the name I always mean the undivided personality of “Him who sleeps by Avon.”

I THE BACONIAN AND ANTI-WILLIAN POSITIONS

Till the years 1856–7 no voice was raised against the current belief about Shakespeare (1564–1616). He was the author in the main of the plays usually printed as his. In some cases other authors, one or more, may have had fingers in his dramas; in other cases, Shakespeare may have “written over” and transfigured earlier plays, of himself and of others; he may have contributed, more or less, to several plays mainly by other men. Separately printed dramas published during his time carry his name on their title-pages, but are not included in the first collected edition of his dramas, “The First Folio,” put forth by two of his friends and fellow-actors, in 1623, seven years after his death.On all these matters did commentators, critics, and antiquarians for long dispute; but none denied that the actor, Will Shakspere (spelled as heaven pleased), was in the main the author of most of the plays of 1623, and the sole author ofVenus and Adonis,Lucrece, and the Sonnets.Even now, in England at least, it would be perhaps impossible to find one special and professed student of Elizabethan literature, and of the classical and European literatures, who does not hold by the ancient belief, the belief of Shakespeare’s contemporaries and intimates, the belief that he was, in the sense explained above, the author of the plays.But ours is not a generation to be overawed by “Authority” (as it is called). A small but eager company of scholars have convinced themselves that Francis Bacon wrote the Shakespearean plays. That is the point of agreement among these enthusiasts: points of difference are numerous: some very wild little sects exist. Meanwhile multitudes of earnest and intelligent men and women, having read notices in newspapers of the Baconian books, or heard of them at lectures and tea-parties, disbelieve in the authorship of “the Stratford rustic,” and look down on the faithful of Will Shakespere with extreme contempt.From the Baconians we receive a plain straightforward theory, “Bacon wrote Shakespeare,” as one of their own prophets has said.[4a]Since we have plenty of evidence for Bacon’s life and occupations during the period of Shakespearean poetic activity, we can compare what he was doing as a man, a student, a Crown lawyer, a pleader in the Courts, a political pamphleteer, essayist, courtier, active member of Parliament, and so on, with what he is said to have been doing—by the Baconians; namely, writing two dramas yearly.But there is another “Anti-Willian” theory, which would dethrone Will Shakspere, and put but a Shadow in his place. Conceive a “concealed poet,” of high social position, contemporary with Bacon and Shakespeare. Let him be so fond of the Law that he cannot keep legal “shop” out of his love Sonnets even. Make him a courtier; a statesman; a philosopher; a scholar who does not blench even from the difficult Latin of Ovid and Plautus. Let this almost omniscient being possess supreme poetic genius, extensive classical attainments, and a tendency to make false quantities. Then conceive him to live through the reigns of “Eliza and our James,” without leaving in history, in science, in society, in law, in politics or scholarship, a single trace of his existence. He left nothing but the poems and plays usually attributed to Will. As to the date of his decease, we only know that it must necessarily have been later than the composition of the last genuine Shakespearean play—for this paragon wrote it.Such is the Being who occupies, in the theory of the non-Baconian,but not Anti-Baconian, Anti-Willians, the intellectual throne filled, in the Will Shakespeare theory, by Will; and in the Baconian, by Bacon—two kings of Brentford on one throne.We are to be much engaged by the form of this theory which is held by Mr. G. G. Greenwood in hisThe Shakespeare Problem Restated. In attempting to explain what he means I feel that I am skating on very thin ice. Already, in two volumes (In Re Shakespeare, 1909, andThe Vindicators of Shakespeare), Mr. Greenwood has accused his critics of frequently misconceiving and misrepresenting his ideas: wherefore I also tremble. I am perfectly confident in saying that he “holds no brief for the Baconians.” He isnota Baconian. His position is negative merely: Will of Stratford isnotthe author of the Shakespearean plays and poems. Then who is? Mr. Greenwood believes that work by an unknown number of hands exists in the plays first published all together in 1623. Here few will differ from him. But, setting aside this aspect of the case, Mr. Greenwood appears to me to believe in an entity named “Shakespeare,” or “the Author,” who is the predominating partner; though Mr. Greenwood does not credit him with all the plays in the Folio of 1623 (nor, perhaps, with the absolute entirety of any given play). “The Author” or “Shakespeare” is not a syndicate (like the Homer of many critics), but an individual human being, apparently of the male sex. As to the name by which he was called on earth, Mr. Greenwood is “agnostic.” He himself is not Anti-Baconian. He does not oust Bacon and put the Unknown in his place. He neither affirms nor denies that Bacon may have contributed, more or less, to the bulk of Shakespearean work. To put it briefly: Mr. Greenwood backs the field against the favourite (our Will), and Baconmaybe in the field. If he has any part in the whole I suspect that it is “the lion’s part,” but Mr. Greenwood does not commit himself to anything positive. We shall find (if I am not mistaken) that Mr. Greenwood regards the hypothesis of the Baconians as “an extremely reasonable one,”[7a]and that for his purposes it would be an extremely serviceable one, if not even essential. For as Bacon was a genius to whose potentialities one can set no limit, he is something to stand by, whereas we cannot easily believe—I cannot believe—that the actual “Author,” the “Shakespeare” lived and died and left no trace of his existence except his share in the works called Shakespearean.However, the idea of the Great Unknown has, for its partisans, this advantage, that as the life of the august Shade is wholly unknown, we cannot, as in Bacon’s case, show how he was occupied while the plays were being composed. Hemust, however, have been much at Court, we learn, and deep in the mysteries of legal terminology. Was he Sir Edward Coke? Was he James VI and I?It is hard, indeed, to set forth the views of the Baconians and of the “Anti-Willians” in a shape which will satisfy them. The task, especially when undertaken by an unsympathetic person, is perhaps impossible. I can only summarise their views in my own words as far as I presume to understand them. I conceive the Baconians to cry that “the world possesses a mass of transcendent literature, attributed to a man named WilliamShakespeare.” Of a man named WilliamShakspere(there are many varieties of spelling) we certainly know that he was born (1564) and bred in Stratford-on-Avon, a peculiarly dirty, stagnant, and ignorant country town. There is absolutely no evidence that he (or any Stratford boy of his standing) ever went to Stratford school. His father, his mother, and his daughter could not write, but, in signing, made their marks; and if he could write, which some of us deny, he wrote a terribly bad hand. As far as late traditions of seventy or eighty years after his death inform us, he was a butcher’s apprentice; and also a schoolmaster “who knew Latin pretty well”; and a poacher. He made, before he was nineteen, a marriage tainted with what Meg Dods calls “ante-nup.” He early had three children, whom he deserted, as he deserted his wife. He came to London, we do not know when (about 1582, according to the “guess” of an antiquary of 1680); held horses at the door of a theatre (so tradition says), was promoted to the rank of “servitor” (whatever that may mean), became an actor (a vagabond under the Act), and by 1594 played before Queen Elizabeth. He put money in his pocket (heaven knows how), for by 1597 he was bargaining for the best house in his nativebourgade. He obtained, by nefarious genealogical falsehoods (too common, alas, in heraldry), the right to bear arms; and went on acting. In 1610–11 (?) he retired to his native place. He never took any interest in his unprinted manuscript plays; though rapacious, he never troubled himself about his valuable copyrights; never dreamed of making a collected edition of his works. He died in 1616, probably of drink taken. Legal documents prove him to have been a lender of small sums, an avid creditor, a would-be encloser of commons. In his will he does not bequeath or mention any books, manuscripts, copyrights, and so forth. It is utterly incredible, then, that this man wrote the poems and plays, so rich in poetry, thought, scholarship, and knowledge, which are attributed to “William Shakespeare.” These must be the works of “a concealed poet,” a philosopher, a courtier moving in the highest circles, a supreme legist, and, necessarily, a great poet, and student of the classics.No known person of the age but one, Bacon, was a genius, a legist, a scholar, a great poet, and brilliant courtier, with all the other qualifications so the author of the plays either was Francis Bacon—or some person unknown, who was in all respects equally distinguished, but kept his light under a bushel. Consequently the name “William Shakespeare” is a pseudonym or “pen-name” wisely adopted by Bacon (or the other man) as early as 1593, at a time when William Shakspere was notoriously an actor in the company which produced the plays of the genius styling himself “William Shakespeare.”Let me repeat that, to the best of my powers of understanding and of expression, and in my own words, so as to misquote nobody, I have now summarised the views of the Baconianssans phrase, and of the more cautious or more credulous “Anti-Willians,” as I may style the party who deny to Will the actor any share in the authorship of the plays, but do not overtly assign it to Francis Bacon.Beyond all comparison the best work on the Anti-Willian side of the controversy isThe Shakespeare Problem Restated, by Mr. G. G. Greenwood (see my Introduction). To this volume I turn for the exposition of the theory that “Will Shakspere” (with many other spellings) is an actor from the country—a man of very scanty education, in all probability, and wholly destitute of books; while “William Shakespeare,” or with the hyphen, “Shake-speare,” is a “nom de plume” adopted by the Great Unknown “concealed poet.”When I use the word “author” here, I understand Mr. Greenwood to mean that in the plays called “Shakespearean” there exists work from many pens: owing to the curious literary manners, methods, and ethics of dramatic writing in, say, 1589–1611. In my own poor opinion this is certainly true of several plays in the first collected edition, “The Folio,” produced seven years after Will’s death, namely in 1623. These curious “collective” methods of play-writing are to be considered later.Matters become much more perplexing when we examine the theory that “William Shake-speare” (with or without the hyphen), on the title-pages of plays, or when signed to the dedications of poems, is the chosen pen-name, or “nom de plume,” of Bacon or of the Unknown.Here I must endeavour to summarise what Mr. Greenwood has written[11a]on the name of the actor, and the “nom de plume” of the unknown author who, by the theory, was not the actor. Let me first confess my firm belief that there is no cause for all the copious writing about the spellings “Shakespeare” or “Shake-speare”—as indicating the true but “concealed poet”—and “Shakspere” (&c.), as indicating the Warwickshire rustic. At Stratford and in Warwickshire the clan-name was spelled in scores of ways, was spelled in different ways within a single document. If the actor himself uniformly wrote “Shakspere” (it seems that we have but five signatures), he was accustomed to seeing the name spelled variously in documents concerning him and his affairs. In London the printers aimed at a kind of uniformity, “Shakespeare” or “Shake-speare”: and even if he wrote his own name otherwise, to him it was indifferent. Lawyers and printers might choose their own mode of spelling—and there is no more in the matter.I must now summarise briefly, in my own words, save where quotations are indicated in the usual way, the results of Mr. Greenwood’s researches. “The family of William Shakspere of Stratford” (perhaps it were safer to say “the members of his name”) “wrote their name in many different ways—some sixty, I believe, have been noted . . . but the form ‘Shakespeare’ seems never to have been employed by them”; and, according to Mr. Spedding, “Shakspere of Stratford never so wrote his name ‘in any known case.’” (According to many Baconians he never wrote his name in his life.) On the other hand, the dedications ofVenus and Adonis(1593) and ofLucrece(1594) are inscribed “William Shakespeare” (without the hyphen). In 1598, the title-page ofLove’s Labour’s Lost“bore the name W. Shakespere,” while in the same yearRichard IIandRichard IIIbear “William Shake-speare,” with the hyphen (not without it, as in the two dedications by the Author). “The name which appears in the body of the conveyance and of the mortgage bearing” (the actor’s) “signature is ‘Shakespeare,’ while ‘Shackspeare’ appears in the will, prepared, as we must presume, by or under the directions of Francis Collyns, the Stratford solicitor, who was one of the witnesses thereto” (and received a legacy of £13, 6s.8d.).Thus, at Stratford even, the name was spelled, in legal papers, as it is spelled in the two dedications, and in most of the title-pages—and also is spelled otherwise, as “Shackspeare.” In March 1594 the actor’s name is spelled “Shakespeare” in Treasury accounts. The legal and the literary and Treasury spellings (and conveyances and mortgages and wills arenotliterature) are Shakespeare, Shackspeare, Shake-speare, Shakespere—all four are used, but we must regard the actor as never signing “Shakespeare” in any of these varieties of spelling—if sign he ever did; at all events he is not known to have used theain the last syllable.I now give the essence of Mr. Greenwood’s words[13a]concerning thenom de plumeof the “concealed poet,” whoever he was. “And now a word upon the name ‘Shakespeare.’ That in this form, and more especially with a hyphen, Shake-speare, the word makes an excellentnom de plumeis obvious. As old Thomas Fuller remarks, the name suggestsMartialin its warlike sound, ‘Hasti-vibrans or Shake-speare.’ It is of course further suggestive of Pallas Minerva, the goddess of Wisdom, for Pallas also was a spear-shaker (Pallas ὰπὸ του πάλλειν τὸ δόρυ); and all will remember Ben Jonson’s verses . . . ” on Shakespeare’s “true-filed lines”— “In each of which he seems to shake a lance,As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.”There is more about Pallas in book-titles (to which additions can easily be made), and about “Jonson’s Cri-spinus or Cri-spinas,” but perhaps we have now the gist of Mr. Greenwood’s remarks on the “excellentnom de plume” (cf.pp. 31–37. On the whole of this,cf. The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 293–295; anom de plumecalled a “pseudonym,” pp. 307, 312; Shakespeare “a mask name,” p. 328; a “pseudonym,” p. 330; “nom de plume,” p. 335).Now why was the “nom de plume” or “pseudonym” “William Shakespeare” “an excellentnom de plume” for a concealed author, courtier, lawyer, scholar, and so forth? If “Shakespeare” suggested Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom and of many other things, and so was appropriate, why add “William”?In 1593, when the “pseudonym” first appears inVenus and Adonis, a country actor whose name, in legal documents—presumably drawn up by or for his friend, Francis Collyns at Stratford—is written “William Shakespeare,” was before the town as an actor in the leading company, that of the Lord Chamberlain. This company produced the plays some of which, by 1598, bear “W. Shakespere,” or “William Shakespeare” on their title-pages. Thus, even if the actor habitually spelled his name “Shakspere,” “William Shakespeare” was, practically (on the Baconian theory), not only a pseudonym of one man, a poet, but also the real name of another man, a well-known actor, who wasnotthe “concealed poet.” “William Shakespeare” or “Shakespere” was thus, in my view, the ideally worst pseudonym which a poet who wished to be “concealed” could possibly have had the fatuity to select. His plays and poems would be, as they were, universally attributed to the actor, who is represented as a person conspicuously incapable of writing them. With Mr. Greenwood’s arguments against the certainty of this attribution I deal later.Had the actor been a man of rare wit, and of good education and wide reading, the choice of name might have been judicious. A “concealed poet” of high social standing, with a strange fancy for rewriting the plays of contemporary playwrights, might obtain the manuscript copies from their owners, the Lord Chamberlain’s Company, through that knowledgeable, witty, and venal member of the company, Will Shakspere. He might then rewrite and improve them, more or less, as it was his whim to do. The actor might make fair copies in his own hand, give them to his company, and say that the improved works were from his own pen and genius. The lie might pass, but only if the actor, in his life and witty talk, seemed very capable of doing what he pretended to have done. But if the actor, according to some Baconians, could not write even his own name, he was impossible as a mask for the poet. He was also impossible, I think, if he were what Mr. Greenwood describes him to be.Mr. Greenwood, in his view of the actor as he was when he came to London, does not deny to him the gift of being able to sign his name. But, if he were educated at Stratford Free School (of which there is no documentary record), according to Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps “he was removed from school long before the usual age,” “in all probability” when “he was about thirteen” (an age at which some boys, later well known, went up to their universities). If we send him to school at seven or so, “it appears that he could only have enjoyed such advantages as it may be supposed to have provided for a period of five or six years at the outside. He was then withdrawn, and, as it seems, put to calf-slaughtering.”[16a]What the advantages may have been we try to estimate later.Mr. Greenwood, with Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, thinks that Will “could have learned but little there. No doubt boys at Elizabethan grammar schools, if they remained long enough, had a good deal of Latin driven into them. Latin, indeed, was the one subject that was taught; and an industrious boy who had gone through the course and attained to the higher classes would generally be able to write fair Latin prose. But he would learn very little else” (except to write fair Latin prose?). “What we now call ‘culture’ certainly did not enter into the ‘curriculum,’ nor ‘English,’ nor modern languages, nor ‘literature.’”[17a]Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps says that “removed prematurely from school, residing with illiterate relatives in a bookless neighbourhood, thrown into the midst of occupations adverse to scholastic progress—it is difficult to believe that when he first left Stratford he was not all but destitute of polished accomplishments.”[17b]Mr. Greenwood adds the apprenticeship to a butcher or draper, but doubts the poaching, and the frequent whippings and imprisonments, as in the story told by the Rev. R. Davies in 1708.[17c]That this promising young man, “when he came to London, spoke the Warwickshire dialect orpatoisis, then, as certain as anything can be that is incapable of mathematical proof.”[17d]“Here is the young Warwic [...]