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diff --git a/old/sbun10h.htm b/old/sbun10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..00e5e2d --- /dev/null +++ b/old/sbun10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,8289 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> +<title>Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown</title> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown, by Andrew Lang</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown +by Andrew Lang +(#36 in our series by Andrew Lang) + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. 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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown + +Author: Andrew Lang + +Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5127] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on May 5, 2002] +[Most recently updated: May 5, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII +</pre> +<p> +<a name="startoftext"></a> +Transcribed from the 1912 Longmans, Green and Co. edition by David Price, +email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +SHAKESPEARE, BACON AND THE GREAT UNKNOWN<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +INTRODUCTION<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 +<i>thoughtful scholars eminent in many walks of life</i>,<i> and especially +in the legal profession </i>. . . ” 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 <i>Life of Shelley</i>,<i> </i>while his researches +into the biography of Jeanne d’Arc were most conscientious.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>Titus Andronicus</i>,<i> </i>and <i>Henry +VI</i>,<i> </i>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 <i>they </i>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.”<br> +<br> +I could never have expected that I should take a part in this controversy; +but acquaintance with <i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated </i>(503 pp.), +(1908), and later works of Mr. G. G. Greenwood, M.P., has tempted me +to enter the lists.<br> +<br> +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.”<br> +<br> +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, <i>in the main</i>,<i> +</i>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.<br> +<br> +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 +<i>Titus Andronicus</i>,<i> Henry VI</i>,<i> </i>Part I, and <i>Troilus +and Cressida</i>. About them different views are held <i>within +</i>both camps.<br> +<br> +I am no lawyer or naturalist (as Partridge said, <i>Non omnia possumus +omnes</i>),<i> </i>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.”<br> +<br> +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 <i>prima facie </i>reason why we should suppose +the information was supplied by Bacon.”<br> +<br> +Of course there is not!<br> +<br> +“In fact, there are some reasons why one should attribute the +legal assistance, say, to Coke, rather than to Bacon.”<br> +<br> +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.” <a name="citation0a"></a><a href="#footnote0a">{0a}</a><br> +<br> +Now we have Mr. Greenwood’s testimonial in favour of Mr. Castle, +“Who really does know something about law.” <a name="citation0b"></a><a href="#footnote0b">{0b}</a> +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?<br> +<br> +<i>Que sçais je</i>?<i> </i>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.<br> +<br> +Concerning legend and tradition about our Will, it seems that, in each +case, we should do our best to trace the <i>Quellen</i>,<i> </i>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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>Inganni.” +</i>He confides to his Diary the tricks played on Malvolio as “a +good practice.” <a name="citation0c"></a><a href="#footnote0c">{0c}</a> +That is all.<br> +<br> +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). <i>Twelfth Night </i>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.<br> +<br> +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. <i>Shakespeare’s +name William</i>.” (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.” <a name="citation0d"></a><a href="#footnote0d">{0d}</a><br> +<br> +But <i>was </i>“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.” +<a name="citation0e"></a><a href="#footnote0e">{0e}</a> To that +“very small circle” we have no reason to suppose that Manningham +belonged, despite his remarkable opinion that <i>Twelfth Night </i>resembles +the <i>Menæchmi</i>. Consequently, it is <i>not </i>“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.” <a name="citation0f"></a><a href="#footnote0f">{0f}</a> +“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,” +<i>did </i>trouble his poor head about that point. Yet Mr. Greenwood +thinks “it does seem extremely remarkable” that Manningham +did not mention the author.<br> +<br> +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 “<i>au pied de la lettre</i>,”<i> +</i>“the enlightened few would recognise that it had an esoteric +meaning.” <a name="citation0g"></a><a href="#footnote0g">{0g}</a> +Then, it seems, “the world” - the “multitude” +- regarded the actor as the author. Only “the enlightened +few” were aware that when Ben <i>said </i>“Shakespeare,” +and “Swan of Avon,” he <i>meant</i> - somebody else.<br> +<br> +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”? +<a name="citation0h"></a><a href="#footnote0h">{0h}</a><br> +<br> +These arguments are regarded by some Baconians as proof positive of +their case.<br> +<br> +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. <i>We </i>all <i>now </i>would have reminded the +Earl of what he very well knew. Cuthbert did not.<br> +<br> +The intelligence of Cuthbert Burbage may be gauged by anyone who will +read pp. 481-484 in <i>William Shakespeare</i>,<i> His Family and Friends</i>,<i> +</i>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.<br> +<br> +Men believe what they may; but I prefer positive evidence for the affirmative +to negative evidence from silence, the silence of Cuthbert Burbage.<br> +<br> +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.”<br> +<br> +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!<br> +<br> +It does not suit the Baconians, or Mr. Greenwood, to find contemporary +recognition of Will as an author. <a name="citation0i"></a><a href="#footnote0i">{0i}</a> +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 <i>nom de plume</i>,<i> +</i>for the writings of great men who wished to keep the fact of their +authorship concealed.”<br> +<br> +Now Davies felt bound to bring in <i>some </i>Roman parallel to Shakespeare; +and had only the choice of Terence or Plautus. Meres (1598)<i> +</i>used Plautus; Davies used Terence. Mr. Greenwood <a name="citation0j"></a><a href="#footnote0j">{0j}</a> +shows us that Plautus would not do. “Could <i>he</i>”<i> +</i>(Shakespeare) “write only of courtesans and <i>cocottes</i>,<i> +</i>and not of ladies highly born, cultured, and refined? . . . ”<br> +<br> +“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.” <a name="citation0k"></a><a href="#footnote0k">{0k}</a> +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 +<i>author </i>of <i>As You Like It</i>. 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 “<i>nom de plume</i>”<i> </i>of some +great “concealed poets” of Rome. “From all the +known facts about Terence,” says a Baconian critic (who has consulted +Smith’s <i>Biographical Dictionary</i>), “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.<br> +<br> +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.”<br> +<br> +I must apologise if I have in places spelled the name of the Swan of +Avon “Shakespeare” where Mr. Greenwood would write “Shakspere,” +and <i>vice versa</i>. 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, <i>was </i>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.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER I: THE BACONIAN AND ANTI-WILLIAN POSITIONS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 of <i>Venus and Adonis</i>,<i> Lucrece</i>,<i> +</i>and the Sonnets.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +From the Baconians we receive a plain straightforward theory, “Bacon +wrote Shakespeare,” as one of their own prophets has said. <a name="citation4a"></a><a href="#footnote4a">{4a}</a> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Such is the Being who occupies, in the theory of the non-Baconian, <i>but +not Anti</i>-<i>Baconian</i>,<i> </i>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.<br> +<br> +We are to be much engaged by the form of this theory which is held by +Mr. G. G. Greenwood in his <i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>. +In attempting to explain what he means I feel that I am skating on very +thin ice. Already, in two volumes (<i>In Re Shakespeare</i>,<i> +</i>1909, and <i>The Vindicators of Shakespeare</i>), 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 is <i>not </i>a Baconian. His position is negative merely: +Will of Stratford is <i>not </i>the 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 Bacon <i>may </i>be 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,” +<a name="citation7a"></a><a href="#footnote7a">{7a}</a> 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.<br> +<br> +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. He <i>must</i>,<i> </i>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?<br> +<br> +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 William <i>Shakespeare</i>.” Of +a man named William <i>Shakspere </i>(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 native <i>bourgade. +</i>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.<br> +<br> +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.”<br> +<br> +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 Baconians <i>sans phrase</i>,<i> </i>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.<br> +<br> +Beyond all comparison the best work on the Anti-Willian side of the +controversy is <i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>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 “<i>nom de plume</i>” adopted by the Great Unknown +“concealed poet.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 “<i>nom de plume</i>,”<i> </i>of +Bacon or of the Unknown.<br> +<br> +Here I must endeavour to summarise what Mr. Greenwood has written <a name="citation11a"></a><a href="#footnote11a">{11a}</a> +on the name of the actor, and the “<i>nom de plume</i>”<i> +</i>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.<br> +<br> +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 +of <i>Venus and Adonis</i> (1593) and of <i>Lucrece </i>(1594) are inscribed +“William Shakespeare” (without the hyphen). In 1598, +the title-page of <i>Love</i>’<i>s Labour</i>’<i>s Lost +</i>“bore the name W. Shakespere,” while in the same year +<i>Richard II </i>and <i>Richard III </i>bear “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, 6<i>s</i>. 8<i>d</i>.).<br> +<br> +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 are <i>not </i>literature) +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 the <i>a </i>in the last syllable.<br> +<br> +I now give the essence of Mr. Greenwood’s words <a name="citation13a"></a><a href="#footnote13a">{13a}</a> +concerning the <i>nom de plume </i>of the “concealed poet,” +whoever he was.<br> +<br> +“And now a word upon the name ‘Shakespeare.’ +That in this form, and more especially with a hyphen, Shake-speare, +the word makes an excellent <i>nom de plume </i>is obvious. As +old Thomas Fuller remarks, the name suggests <i>Martial </i>in 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 απο του +παλλειν το δορυ); +and all will remember Ben Jonson’s verses . . . ” on Shakespeare’s +“true-filed lines” -<br> +<br> +<br> +“In each of which he seems to shake a lance,<br> +As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.”<br> +<br> +<br> +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 “excellent <i>nom de plume</i>” (<i>cf. </i>pp. 31-37. +On the whole of this, <i>cf. The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> +</i>pp. 293-295; a <i>nom de plume </i>called a “pseudonym,” +pp. 307, 312; Shakespeare “a mask name,” p. 328; a “pseudonym,” +p. 330; “<i>nom de plume</i>,”<i> </i>p. 335).<br> +<br> +Now why was the “<i>nom de plume</i>”<i> </i>or “pseudonym” +“William Shakespeare” “an excellent <i>nom de plume</i>”<i> +</i>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”?<br> +<br> +In 1593, when the “pseudonym” first appears in <i>Venus +and Adonis</i>,<i> </i>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 was <i>not </i>the “concealed +poet.”<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.” <a name="citation16a"></a><a href="#footnote16a">{16a}</a><br> +<br> +What the advantages may have been we try to estimate later.<br> +<br> +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.’” <a name="citation17a"></a><a href="#footnote17a">{17a}</a> +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.” <a name="citation17b"></a><a href="#footnote17b">{17b}</a> +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. <a name="citation17c"></a><a href="#footnote17c">{17c}</a><br> +<br> +That this promising young man, “when he came to London, spoke +the Warwickshire dialect or <i>patois </i>is, then, as certain as anything +can be that is incapable of mathematical proof.” <a name="citation17d"></a><a href="#footnote17d">{17d}</a> +“Here is the young Warwickshire provincial . . . ” <a name="citation17e"></a><a href="#footnote17e">{17e}</a> +producing, apparently five or six years after his arrival in town, <i>Venus +and Adonis </i>. . . “Is it conceivable that this was the work +of the Stratford Player of whom we know so little, but of whom we know +so much too much? If so we have here a veritable sixteenth-century +miracle.” <a name="citation17f"></a><a href="#footnote17f">{17f}</a> +Moreover, “our great supposed poet and dramatist had at his death +neither book nor manuscript in his possession, or to which he was legally +entitled, or in which he had any interest whatever.” <a name="citation17g"></a><a href="#footnote17g">{17g}</a><br> +<br> +If it be not conceivable now that the rustic speaking in a <i>patois +</i>could write <i>Venus and Adonis</i>, manifestly it was inconceivable +in 1593, when <i>Venus and Adonis </i>was signed “William Shakespeare.” +No man who knew the actor (as described) could believe that he was the +author, but there does not exist the most shadowy hint proving that +the faintest doubt was thrown on the actor’s authorship; ignorant +as he was, bookless, and rude of speech. For such a Will as Mr. +Greenwood describes to persuade the literary and dramatic world of his +age that he <i>did </i>write the plays, would have been a miracle. +Consequently Mr. Greenwood has to try to persuade us that there is no +sufficient evidence that Will <i>did </i>persuade, say Ben Jonson, of +his authorship and we shall see whether or not he works this twentieth-century +miracle of persuasion.<br> +<br> +Of course if Will were unable to write even his name, as an enthusiastic +Baconian asserts, Mr. Greenwood sees that Will could not easily pass +for the Author. <a name="citation18a"></a><a href="#footnote18a">{18a}</a> +But his own bookless actor with a <i>patois </i>seems to him, as author +of <i>Venus and Adonis</i>,<i> </i>almost inconceivable. Yet, +despite Will’s bookless rusticity, this poem with <i>Lucrece</i>,<i> +</i>which displays knowledge of a work of Ovid not translated into English +by 1593, was regarded as his own. I must suppose, therefore, that +Will was <i>not </i>manifestly so ignorant of Latin as Mr. Greenwood +thinks. “I think it highly probable,” says this critic, +“that he attended the Grammar School at Stratford” (where +nothing but Latin was taught) “for four or five years, and that, +later in life, after some years in London, he was probably able to ‘bumbast +out a line,’ and perhaps to pose as ‘Poet-Ape that would +be thought our chief.’ Nay, I am not at all sure that he +would not have been capable of collaborating with such a man as George +Wilkins, and perhaps of writing quite as well as he, if not even better. +But it does not follow from this that he was the author either of <i>Venus +and Adonis </i>or of <i>Hamlet</i>.” <a name="citation19a"></a><a href="#footnote19a">{19a}</a><br> +<br> +Nothing follows from all this: we merely see that, in Mr. Greenwood’s +private opinion, the actor might write even better than George Wilkins, +but could not write <i>Venus and Adonis</i>. Will, therefore, +though bookless, is not debarred here from the pursuits of literature, +in partnership with Wilkins. We have merely the critic’s +opinion that Will could not write <i>Hamlet</i>,<i> </i>even if, like +Wordsworth, “he had the mind,” even if the gods had made +him more poetical than Wilkins.<br> +<br> +Again, “he had had but little schooling; he had ‘small Latin +and less Greek’” (as Ben Jonson truly says), “but +he was a good <i>Johannes Factotum; </i>he could arrange a scene, and, +when necessary, ‘bumbast out a blank verse.’” <a name="citation19b"></a><a href="#footnote19b">{19b}</a><br> +<br> +The “<i>Johannes Factotum</i>,”<i> </i>who could “bumbast +out a blank verse,” is taken from Robert Greene’s hackneyed +attack on an actor-poet, “Shake-scene,” published in 1592. +“Poet-Ape that would be thought our chief,” is from an epigram +on an actor-poet by Ben Jonson (1601-16?). If the allusions by +Greene and Jonson are to our Will, he, by 1592, had a literary ambition +so towering that he thought his own work in the new art of dramatic +blank verse was equal to that of Marlowe (not to speak of Wilkins), +and Greene reckoned him a dangerous rival to three of his playwright +friends, of whom Marlowe is one, apparently.<br> +<br> +If Jonson’s “Poet-Ape” be meant for Will, by 1601 +Will would fain “be thought the chief” of contemporary dramatists. +His vanity soared far above George Wilkins! Greene’s phrases +and Jonson’s are dictated by spite, jealousy, and envy; and from +them a true view of the work of the man whom they envy, the actor-poet, +cannot be obtained. We might as well judge Molière in the +spirit of the author of <i>Elomire Hypocondre</i>,<i> </i>and of de +Visé! The Anti-Willian arguments keep on appearing, going +behind the scenes, and reappearing, like a stage army. To avoid +this phenomenon I reserve what is to be said about “Shake-scene” +and “Poet-Ape” for another place (pp. 138-145 <i>infra</i>). +But I must give the reader a warning. Concerning “William +Shakespeare” as a “<i>nom de plume</i>,”<i> </i>or +pseudonym, Mr. Greenwood says, “Some, indeed, would see through +it, and roundly accuse the player of putting forth the works of others +as his own. To such he would be a ‘Poet-Ape,’ or ‘an +upstart crow’ (Shake-scene) ‘beautified with the feathers +of other writers.’” <a name="citation21a"></a><a href="#footnote21a">{21a}</a><br> +<br> +If this be true, if “some would see through” (Mr. Greenwood, +apparently, means <i>did </i>“see through”) the “<i>nom +de plume</i>,”<i> </i>the case of the Anti-Willians is promising. +But, in this matter, Mr. Greenwood <i>se trompe</i>. Neither Greene +nor Jonson accused “Shake-scene” or “Poet-Ape” +of “putting forth the works of others as his own.” +That is quite certain, as far as the scorns of Jonson and Greene have +reached us. (See pp. 141-145 <i>infra</i>.)<br> +<br> +If an actor, obviously incapable of wit and poetry, were credited with +the plays, the keenest curiosity would arise in “the profession,” +and among rival playwrights who envied the wealth and “glory” +of the actors. This curiosity, prompting the wits and players +to watch and “shadow” Will, would, to put it mildly, most +seriously imperil the secret of the concealed author who had the folly +to sign himself “William Shakespeare.” Human nature +could not rest under such a provocation as the “concealed poet” +offered.<br> +<br> +This is so obvious that had one desired to prove Bacon or the Unknown +to be the concealed author, one must have credited his mask, Will, with +abundance of wit and fancy, and, as for learning - with about as much +as he probably possessed. But the Baconians make him an illiterate +yokel, and we have quoted Mr. Greenwood’s estimate of the young +Warwickshire provincial.<br> +<br> +We all have our personal equations in the way of belief. That +the plot of the “<i>nom de plume</i>” should have evaded +discovery for a week, if the actor were the untutored countryman of +the hypotheses, is to me, for one, absolutely incredible. A “concealed +poet” looking about for a “<i>nom de plume</i>”<i> +</i>and a mask behind which he could be hidden, would not have selected +the name, or the nearest possible approach to the name, of an ignorant +unread actor. As he was never suspected of not being the author +of the plays and poems, Will cannot have been a country ignoramus, manifestly +incapable of poetry, wit, and such learning as the plays exhibit. +Every one must judge for himself. Mr. Greenwood fervently believes +in what I disbelieve. <a name="citation22a"></a><a href="#footnote22a">{22a}</a><br> +<br> +“Very few Englishmen . . . in Elizabethan times, concerned themselves +at all, or cared one brass farthing, about the authorship of plays . +. . ” says Mr. Greenwood.<br> +<br> +Very few care now. They know the actors’ names: in vain, +as a rule, do I ask playgoers for the name of the author of their entertainment. +But in Elizabeth’s time the few who cared were apt to care very +much, and they would inquire intensely when the Stratford actor, a bookless, +untaught man, was announced as the author of plays which were among +the most popular of their day. The seekers never found any other +author. They left no hint that they suspected the existence of +any other author. Hence I venture to infer that Will seemed to +them no unread rustic, but a fellow of infinite fancy, - no scholar +to be sure, but very capable of writing the pieces which he fathered.<br> +<br> +They may all have been mistaken. Nobody can prove that Heywood +and Ben Jonson, and the actors of the Company, were not mistaken. +But certain it is that they thought the Will whom they knew capable +of the works which were attributed to him. Therefore he cannot +possibly have been the man who could not write, of the more impulsive +Baconians; or the bookless, and probably all but Latinless, man of Mr. +Greenwood’s theory. The positions already seem to me to +be untenable.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER II: THE “SILENCE” ABOUT SHAKESPEARE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Before proceeding further to examine Mr. Greenwood’s book, and +the Baconian theories, with the careful attention which they deserve, +we must clear the ground by explaining two points which appear to puzzle +Baconians, though, to be sure, they have their own solutions of the +problems.<br> +<br> +The first question is: Why, considering that Shakespeare, by the consent +of the learned of most of the polite foreign nations, was one of the +world’s very greatest poets, have we received so few and such +brief notices of him from the pens of his contemporaries?<br> +<br> +“It is wonderful,” exclaims Mr. Crouch-Batchelor, “that +hundreds of persons should not have left records of him. <a name="citation27a"></a><a href="#footnote27a">{27a}</a> +We know nearly as much about the most insignificant writer of the period +as we know of him, but fifty times more about most of his contemporaries. +It is senseless to try to account for this otherwise than by recognising +that the man was not the author.”<br> +<br> +Mr. Crouch-Batchelor is too innocent. He sees the sixteenth century +in the colours of the twentieth. We know nothing, except a few +dates of birth, death, entrance at school, College, the Inns of Court, +and so forth, concerning several of Shakespeare’s illustrious +contemporaries and successors in the art of dramatic poetry. The +Baconians do not quite understand, or, at least, keep steadily before +their minds, one immense difference between the Elizabethan age and +later times. In 1590-1630, there was no public excitement about +the characters, personalities, and anecdotage of merely literary men, +poets, and playwrights, who held no position in public affairs, as Spenser +did; or in Court, Society, and War, as Sidney did; who did not write +about their own feuds and friendships, like Greene and Nash; who did +not expand into prefaces and reminiscences, and satires, like Ben Jonson; +who never killed anybody, as Ben did; nor were killed, like Marlowe; +nor were involved, like him, in charges of atheism, and so forth; nor +imprisoned with every chance of having their ears and noses slit, like +Marston. Consequently, silence and night obscure the lives and +personalities of Kyd, Chapman, Beaumont, Fletcher, Dekker, Webster, +and several others, as night and silence hide Shakespeare from our view.<br> +<br> +He was popular on the stage; some of his plays were circulated separately +in cheap and very perishable quartos. No collected edition of +his plays appeared during his life; without that he could not be studied, +and recognised in his greatness. He withdrew to the country and +died. There was no enthusiastic curiosity about him; nobody Boswellised +any playwright of his time. The Folio of 1623 gave the first opportunity +of studying him as alone he can be studied. The Civil Wars and +the Reign of the Saints distracted men’s minds and depressed or +destroyed the Stage.<br> +<br> +Sir William Davenant, a boy when Shakespeare died, used to see the actor +at his father’s inn at Oxford, was interested in him, and cherished +the embers of the drama, which were fading before the theatres were +closed. Davenant collected what he could in the way of information +from old people of the stage; he told Shakespearean anecdotes in conversation; +a few reached the late day when uncritical inquiries began, say 1680-90 +at earliest. The memories of ancient people of the theatre and +clerks and sextons at Stratford were ransacked, to very little purpose.<br> +<br> +As these things were so, how can we expect biographical materials about +Shakespeare? As to the man, as to how his character impressed +contemporaries, we have but the current epithets: “friendly,” +“gentle,” and “sweet,” the praise of his worth +by two of the actors in his company (published in 1623), and the brief +prose note of Ben Jonson, - this is more than we have for the then so +widely admired Beaumont, Ben Jonson’s friend, or Chapman, or the +adored Fletcher. “Into the dark go one and all,” Shakespeare +and the others. To be puzzled by and found theories on the silence +about Shakespeare is to show an innocence very odd in learned disputants.<br> +<br> +The Baconians, as usual, make a puzzle and a mystery out of their own +misappreciation of the literary and social conditions of Shakespeare’s +time. That world could not possibly appreciate his works as we +do; the world, till 1623, possessed only a portion of his plays in cheap +pamphlets, in several of these his text was mangled and in places unintelligible. +And in not a single instance were anecdotes and biographical traits +of playwrights recorded, except when the men published matter about +themselves, or when they became notorious in some way unconnected with +their literary works. Drummond, in Scotland, made brief notes +of Ben Jonson’s talk; Shakespeare he never met.<br> +<br> +That age was not widely and enthusiastically appreciative of literary +merit in playwrights who were merely dramatists, and in no other way +notorious or eminent. Mr. Greenwood justly says “the contemporary +eulogies of the poet afford proof that there were some cultured critics +of that day of sufficient taste and acumen to recognise, or partly recognise, +his excellence . . . ” <a name="citation30a"></a><a href="#footnote30a">{30a}</a> +(Here I omit some words, presently to be restored to the text.) +From such critics the poet received such applause as has reached us. +We also know that the plays were popular; but the audiences have not +rushed to pen and ink to record their satisfaction. With them, +as with all audiences, the actors and the <i>spectacle</i>,<i> </i>much +more than the “cackle,” were the attractions. When +Dr. Ingleby says that “the bard of our admiration was unknown +to the men of that age,” he uses hyperbole, and means, I presume, +that he was unknown, as all authors are, to the great majority; and +that those who knew him in part made no modern fuss about him. <a name="citation31a"></a><a href="#footnote31a">{31a}</a><br> +<br> +The second puzzle is, - Why did Shakespeare, conscious of his great +powers, never secure for his collected plays the permanence of print +and publication? We cannot be sure that he and his company, in +fact, did not provide publishers with the copy for the better Quartos +or pamphlets of separate plays, as Mr. Pollard argues on good grounds +that they sometimes did. <a name="citation31b"></a><a href="#footnote31b">{31b}</a> +For the rest, no dramatic author edited a complete edition of his works +before Ben Jonson, a scholarly man, set the example in the year of Shakespeare’s, +and of Beaumont’s death (1616). Neither Beaumont nor Fletcher +collected and published their works for the Stage. The idea was +unheard of before Jonson set the example, and much of his work lay unprinted +till years after his death. We must remember the conditions of play-writing +in Shakespeare’s time.<br> +<br> +There were then many poets of no mean merit, all capable of admirable +verse on occasion; and in various degrees possessed of the lofty, vigorous, +and vivid style of that great age. The theatre, and writing for +the theatre, afforded to many men of talent a means of livelihood analogous +to that offered by journalism among ourselves. They were apt to +work collectively, several hands hurrying out a single play; and in +twos or threes, or fours or fives, they often collaborated.<br> +<br> +As a general rule a play when finished was sold by the author or authors +to a company of players, or to a speculator like the notorious Philip +Henslowe, and the new owners, “the grand possessors,” were +usually averse to the publication of the work, lest other companies +might act it. The plays were primarily written to be acted. +The company in possession could have the play altered as they pleased +by a literary man in their employment.<br> +<br> +To follow Mr. Greenwood’s summary of the situation “it would +seem that an author could restrain any person from publishing his manuscript, +or could bring an action against him for so doing, so long as he had +not disposed of his right to it; and that the publisher could prevent +any other publisher from issuing the work. At the same time it +is clear that the law was frequently violated . . . whether because +of the difficulty of enforcing it, or through the supineness of authors; +and that in consequence authors were frequently defrauded by surreptitious +copies of their works being issued by piratical publishers.” <a name="citation33a"></a><a href="#footnote33a">{33a}</a><br> +<br> +It may appear that to “authors” we should, in the case of +plays, add “owners,” such as theatrical companies, for no +case is cited in which such a company brings an action against the publisher +of a play which they own. The two players of Shakespeare’s +company who sign the preface to the first edition of his collected plays +(1623, “The First Folio”) complain that “divers stolen +and surreptitious copies” of single plays have been put forth, +“maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealths of injurious impostors.” +They speak as if they were unable to prevent, or had not the energy +to prevent, these frauds. In the accounts of the aforesaid Henslowe, +we find him paying forty shillings to a printer to stop or “stay” +the printing of a play, <i>Patient Grizel</i>,<i> </i>by three of his +hacks.<br> +<br> +We perhaps come across an effort of the company to prevent or delay +the publication of <i>The Merchant of Venice</i>,<i> </i>on July 17, +1598, in the <i>Stationers</i>’<i> Register</i>. James Robertes, +and all other printers, are forbidden to print the book without previous +permission from the Lord Chamberlain, the protector of Will Shakespeare’s +company. Two years passed before Robertes issued the book. <a name="citation34a"></a><a href="#footnote34a">{34a}</a> +As is well known, Heywood, a most prolific playwright, boasts that he +never made a double sale of his pieces to the players and the press. +Others occasionally did, which Heywood clearly thought less than honest.<br> +<br> +As an author who was also an actor, and a shareholder in his company, +Will’s interests were the same as theirs. It is therefore +curious that some of his pieces were early printed, in quartos, from +very good copies; while others appeared in very bad copies, clearly +surreptitious. Probably the company gave a good MS. copy, sometimes, +to a printer who offered satisfactory terms, after the gloss of novelty +was off the acted play. <a name="citation34b"></a><a href="#footnote34b">{34b}</a> +In any case, we see that the custom and interests of the owners of manuscript +plays ran contrary to their early publication. In 1619 even Ben +Jonson, who loved publication, told Drummond that half of his comedies +were still unprinted.<br> +<br> +These times were not as our own, and must not be judged by ours. +Whoever wrote the plays, the actor, or Bacon, or the Man in the Moon; +whoever legally owned the manuscripts, was equally incurious and negligent +about the preservation of a correct text. As we shall see later, +while Baconians urge without any evidence that Bacon himself edited, +or gave to Ben Jonson the duty of editing, the first collected edition +(1623), the work has been done in an indescribably negligent and reckless +manner, and, as Mr. Greenwood repeatedly states, the edition, in his +opinion, contains at least two plays not by his “Shakespeare” +- that “concealed poet” - and masses of “non-Shakespearean” +work.<br> +<br> +How this could happen, if Bacon (as on one hypothesis) either revised +the plays himself, or entrusted the task to so strict an Editor as Ben +Jonson, I cannot imagine. This is also one of the difficulties +in Mr. Greenwood’s theory. Thus we cannot argue, “if +the actor were the author, he must have been conscious of his great +powers. Therefore the actor cannot have been the author, for the +actor wholly neglected to collect his printed and to print his manuscript +works.”<br> +<br> +This argument is equally potent against the authorship of the plays +by Bacon. He, too, left the manuscripts unpublished till 1623. +“But he could not avow his authorship,” cry Baconians, giving +various exquisite reasons. Indeed, if Bacon were the author, he +might not care to divulge his long association with “a cry of +players,” and a man like Will of Stratford. But he had no +occasion to avow it. He had merely to suggest to the players, +through any safe channel, that they should collect and publish the works +of their old friend Will Shakspere.<br> +<br> +Thus indifferent was the main author of the plays, whether he were actor +or statesman; and the actor, at least, is not to blame for the chaos +of the first collected edition, made while he was in his grave, and +while Bacon was busy in revising and superintending Latin translations +of his works on scientific subjects.<br> +<br> +We now understand why there are so few contemporary records of Shakspere +the man; and see that the neglect of his texts was extreme, whether +or not he were the author. The neglect was characteristic of the +playwrights of his own and the next generation. In those days +it was no marvel; few cared. Nine years passed before a second +edition of the collected plays appeared: thirty-two years went by before +a third edition was issued - years of war and tumult, yet they saw the +posthumous publication of the collected plays of Beaumont and Fletcher.<br> +<br> +There remains one more mystery connected with publication. When +the first collected edition of the plays appeared, it purported to contain +“All His Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies.” According +to the postulate of the Baconians it was edited by the Author, or by +Jonson acting for him. It contains several plays which, according +to many critics, are not the author’s. This, if true, is +mysterious, and so is the fact that a few plays were published, as by +Shakespeare, in the lifetime both of the actor and of Bacon; plays which +neither acknowledged for his own, for we hear of no remonstrance from +- whoever “William Shakespeare” was. It is impossible +for me to say why there was no remonstrance.<br> +<br> +Suppose that Will merely supplied Bacon’s plays, under his own +name, with a slight difference in spelling, to his company. It +was as much his interest, in that case, to protest when Bacon’s +pen-name was taken in vain, as if he had spelled his own surname with +an <i>a </i>in the second syllable.<br> +<br> +There is another instance which Mr. Greenwood discusses twice. <a name="citation37a"></a><a href="#footnote37a">{37a}</a> +In 1599 Jaggard published “<i>The Passionate Pilgrim; </i>W. Shakespeare.” +Out of twenty poems, five only were by W. S. In 1612, Jaggard +added two poems by Tom Heywood, retaining W. Shakespeare’s name +as sole author. “Heywood protested” in print, “and +stated that <i>Shakespeare </i>was offended, and,” says Mr. Greenwood, +“very probably he was so; but as he was, so I conceive, ‘a +concealed poet,’ writing under a <i>nom de plume</i>,<i> </i>he +seems to have only made known his annoyance through the medium of Heywood.”<br> +<br> +If so, Heywood knew who the concealed poet was. Turning to pp. +348, 349, we find Mr. Greenwood repeating the same story, with this +addition, that the author of the poems published by Jaggard, “to +do himself right, hath since published them in his own name.” +That is, W. Shakespeare has since published under his own name such +pieces of <i>The Passionate Pilgrim </i>as are his own. “The +author, I know,” adds Heywood, “was much offended with Mr. +Jaggard that (altogether unknown to him) presumed to make so bold with +his name.”<br> +<br> +Why was the author so slack when Jaggard, in 1599, published W. S.’s +poems with others <i>not </i>by W. S.?<br> +<br> +How can anyone explain, by any theory? It was as open to him in +1599 as in 1612 to publish his own pieces under his own name, or pen-name.<br> +<br> +“Here we observe,” says Mr. Greenwood, <a name="citation38a"></a><a href="#footnote38a">{38a}</a> +“that Heywood does nothing to identify ‘the author with +the player.’” This is, we shall see, the eternal argument. +Why should Heywood, speaking of W. Shakespeare, explain what all the +world knew? There was no other W. Shakespeare (with or without +the <i>e </i>and <i>a</i>)<i> </i>but one, the actor, in the world of +letters of Elizabeth and James. Who the author was Heywood himself +has told us, elsewhere: the author was - Will!<br> +<br> +But why Shakespeare was so indifferent to the use of his name, or, when +he was moved, acted so mildly, it is not for me or anyone to explain. +We do not know the nature of the circumstances in detail; we do not +know that the poet saw hopes of stopping the sale of the works falsely +attributed to him. I do not even feel certain that he had not +a finger in some of them. Knowing so little, a more soaring wit +than mine might fly to the explanation that “Shakespeare” +was the “<i>nom de plume</i>” of Bacon or his unknown equivalent, +and that he preferred to “let sleeping dogs lie,” or, as +Mr. Greenwood might quote the Latin tag, said <i>ne moveas Camarinam.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +</i>CHAPTER III: THAT IMPOSSIBLE HE - THE SCHOOLING OF SHAKESPEARE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The banner-cry of the Baconians is the word “Impossible!” +It is impossible that the actor from Stratford (as they think of him, +a bookless, untutored lad, speaking in <i>patois</i>)<i> </i>should +have possessed the wide, deep, and accurate scholarship displayed by +the author of the plays and poems. It is impossible that at the +little Free School of Stratford (if he attended it), he should have +gained his wide knowledge of the literatures of Greece and Rome. +To these arguments, the orthodox Stratfordian is apt to reply, that +he finds in the plays and poems plenty of inaccurate general information +on classical subjects, information in which the whole literature of +England then abounded. He also finds in the plays some knowledge +of certain Latin authors, which cannot be proved to have been translated +at the date when Shakespeare drew on them. How much Latin Shakespeare +knew, in our opinion, will presently be explained.<br> +<br> +But, in reply to the Baconians and the Anti-Willians, we must say that +while the author of the plays had some lore which scholars also possessed, +he did not use his knowledge like a scholar. We do not see how +a scholar could make, as the scansion of his blank verse proves that +the author did make, the second syllable of the name of Posthumus, in +<i>Cymbeline</i>,<i> long. </i>He must have read a famous line +in Horace thus,<br> +<br> +<br> +“<i>Eheu fugaces Posthoome, Posthoome</i>!”<br> +<br> +<br> +which could scarce ‘scape whipping, even at Stratford Free School. +In the same way he makes the penultimate syllable of Andronicus short, +equally impossible.<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood, we shall see, denies to him <i>Titus Andronicus</i>,<i> +</i>but also appears to credit it to him, as one of the older plays +which he “revised, improved, and dressed,” <a name="citation44a"></a><a href="#footnote44a">{44a}</a> +and <i>that </i>is taken to have been all his “authorship” +in several cases. A scholar would have corrected, not accepted, +false quantities. In other cases, as when Greeks and Trojans cite +Plato and Aristotle in <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>,<i> </i>while Plato +and Aristotle lived more than a thousand years after the latest conceivable +date of the siege of Troy, I cannot possibly suppose that a scholar +would have permitted to himself the freak, any more than that in <i>The +Winter</i>’<i>s Tale </i>he should have borrowed from an earlier +novel the absurdity of calling Delphi “Delphos” (a non-existent +word), of confusing “Delphos” with Delos, and placing the +Delphian Oracle in an island. In the same play the author, quite +needlessly, makes the artist Giulio Romano (1492-1546) contemporary +with the flourishing age of the oracle of the Pythian Apollo. +This, at least, would not be ignorance.<br> +<br> +We have, I think, sufficient testimony to Ben’s inability to refrain +from gibes at Shakspere’s want of scholarship. Rowe, who +had traditions of Davenant’s, tells how, in conversation with +Suckling, Davenant, Endymion Porter, and Hales of Eton, Ben harped on +Will’s want of learning; and how Hales snubbed him. Indeed, +Ben could have made mirth enough out of <i>The Winter</i>’<i>s +Tale</i>. For, granting to Mr. Greenwood <a name="citation45a"></a><a href="#footnote45a">{45a}</a> +that “the mention of Delphos suggests the Bohemia of a much earlier +date, and under the reign of Ottocar (1255-78) Bohemia extended from +the Adriatic to the shores of the Baltic,” that only makes matters +far worse. “Delphos” never was a place-name; there +was no oracle on the isle of “Delphos”; there were no Oracles +in 1255-78 (A.D.); and Perdita, who could have sat for her portrait +to Giulio Romano, was contemporary with an Oracle at <i>Delphos</i>,<i> +</i>but not with Ottocar.<br> +<br> +There never was so mad a mixture, not even in <i>Ivanhoe; </i>not even +in <i>Kenilworth</i>. Scott erred deliberately, as he says in +his prefaces; but Will took the insular oracle of Delphos from Greene, +inserted Giulio Romano “for his personal diversion,” never +heard of Ottocar (no more than I), and made a delightful congeries of +errors in gaiety of heart. Nobody shall convince me that Francis +Bacon was so charmingly irresponsible; but I cannot speak so confidently +of Mr. Greenwood’s Great Unknown, a severe scholar, but perhaps +a frisky soul. There was no region called Bohemia when the Delphic +oracle was in vigour; - this apology (apparently contrived by Sir Edward +Sullivan) is the most comic of erudite reflections.<br> +<br> +Some cruel critic has censured the lovely speech of Perdita, concerning +the flowers which Proserpine let fall, when she was carried off by Dis. +How could she, brought up in the hut of a Bohemian shepherd, know anything +of the Rape of Proserpine? Why not, as she lived in the days of +the Delphic Oracle - and Giulio Romano, and of printed ballads.<br> +<br> +It is impossible, Baconians cry, that the rabbit-stealer, brought up +among the Audreys and Jaquenettas of Warwickshire, should have created +the noble and witty ladies of the Court; and known the style of his +Armado; and understood how dukes and kings talk among themselves - usually +in blank verse, it appears.<br> +<br> +It is impossible that the home-keeping yokel should have heard of the +“obscure” (<i>sic</i>!)<i> </i>Court of Navarre; and known +that at Venice there was a place called the Rialto, and a “common +ferry” called “the tranect.” It is impossible +that he should have had “an intimate knowledge of the castle of +Elsinore,” though an English <i>troupe </i>of actors visited Denmark +in 1587. To Will all this knowledge was <i>impossible; </i>for +these and many more exquisite reasons the yokel’s authorship of +the plays is a physical impossibility. But scholars neither invent +nor tolerate such strange liberties with time and place, with history, +geography, and common sense. Will Shakspere either did not know +what was right, or, more probably, did not care, and supposed, like +Fielding in the old anecdote, that the audience “would not find +it out.” How could a scholar do any of these things? +He was as incapable of them as Ben Jonson. Such sins no scholar +is inclined to; they have, for him, no temptations.<br> +<br> +As to Shakspere’s schooling, the Baconians point at the current +ignorance of Stratford-on-Avon, where many topping burgesses, even aldermen, +“made their marks,” in place of signing their names to documents. +Shakespeare’s father, wife, and daughter “made their marks,” +in place of signing. So did Lady Jane Gordon, daughter of the +Earl of Huntly, when she married the cultivated Earl of Bothwell (1566).<br> +<br> +There is no evidence, from a roll of schoolboys at Stratford Free Grammar +School, about 1564-77, that any given boy attended it; for no roll exists. +Consequently there is no evidence that Will was a pupil.<br> +<br> +“In the Appendix to Malone’s <i>Life of Shakespeare </i>will +be found two Latin letters, written by alumni of Stratford School contemporary +with Shakespeare,” says Mr. Collins. <a name="citation48a"></a><a href="#footnote48a">{48a}</a> +But though the writers were Stratford boys contemporary with Shakespeare, +in later life his associates, as there is no roll of pupils’ names +how do we know, the Baconians may ask, that these men were educated +at Stratford School? Why not at Winchester, Eton, St. Paul’s, +or anywhere? Need one reply?<br> +<br> +Mr. Collins goes on, in his simple confiding way, to state that “one +letter is by Abraham Sturley, afterwards an alderman of Stratford . +. . ” Pursuing the facts, we find that Sturley wrote in +Latin to “Richard Quiney, Shakespeare’s friend,” who, +if he could read Sturley’s letter, could read Latin. Then +<i>young </i>Richard Quiney, apparently aged eleven, wrote in Latin +to his father. If young Richard Quiney be the son of Shakespeare’s +friend, Richard Quiney, then, of course, his Latin at the age of eleven +would only prove that, if he were a schoolboy at Stratford, <i>one </i>Stratford +boy could write Latin in the generation following that of Shakespeare. +Thus may reason the Baconians.<br> +<br> +Perhaps, however, we may say that if Stratford boys contemporary with +Shakspere, in his own rank and known to him, learned Latin, which they +retained in manhood, Shakspere, if he went to school with them, may +have done as much.<br> +<br> +Concerning the school, a Free Grammar School, we know that during Shakespeare’s +boyhood the Mastership was not disdained by Walter Roche, perhaps a +Fellow of what was then the most progressive College in learning of +those at Oxford, namely, Corpus Christi. That Shakespeare could +have been his pupil is uncertain; the dates are rather difficult. +I think it probable that he was not, and we do not know the qualifications +of the two or three succeeding Masters.<br> +<br> +As to the methods of teaching and the books read at Grammar Schools, +abundance of information has been collected. We know what the +use was in one very good school, Ipswich, from 1528; in another in 1611; +but as we do not possess any special information about Stratford School, +Mr. Greenwood opposes the admission of evidence from other academies. +A man might think that, however much the quality of the teaching varied +in various free schools, the nominal curriculum would be fairly uniform.<br> +<br> +As to the teacher, a good endowment would be apt to attract a capable +man. What was the endowment of Stratford School? It was +derived from the bequest of Thomas Jolyffe (died 1482), a bequest of +lands in Stratford and Dodwell, and before the Reformation the Brethren +of the Guild were “to find a priest fit and able in knowledge +to teach grammar freely to all scholars coming to him, taking nothing +for their teaching . . . ” “The Founder’s liberal +endowment made it possible to secure an income for the Master by deed. +Under the Reformation, Somerset’s Commission found that the School +Master had £10 yearly by patent; the school was well conducted, +and was not confiscated.” <a name="citation50a"></a><a href="#footnote50a">{50a}</a><br> +<br> +Baconians can compare the yearly £20 (the salary in 1570-6, which +then went much further than it does now) with the incomes of other masters +of Grammar Schools, and thereby find out if the Head-Master was very +cheap. Mr. Elton (who knew his subject intimately) calls the provision +“liberal.” The Head-Master of Westminster had £20 +and a house.<br> +<br> +As to the method of teaching, it was colloquial; questions were asked +and answered in Latin. This method, according to Dr. Rouse of +Perse School, brings boys on much more rapidly than does our current +fashion, as may readily be imagined; but experts vary in opinion. +The method, I conceive, should give a pupil a vocabulary. Lilly’s +Latin Grammar was universally used, and was learned by rote, as by George +Borrow, in the last century. See <i>Lavengro </i>for details. +Conversation books, <i>Sententiæ Pueriles</i>,<i> </i>were in +use; with easy books, such as Corderius’s <i>Colloquia</i>,<i> +</i>and so on, for boys were taught to <i>speak </i>Latin, the common +language of the educated in Europe. Waifs of the Armada, Spaniards +wrecked on the Irish coast, met “a savage who knew Latin,” +and thus could converse with him. The Eclogues of Mantuanus, a +Latin poet of the Renaissance (the “Old Mantuan” of <i>Love</i>’<i>s +Labour</i>’<i>s Lost</i>),<i> </i>were used, with Erasmus’s +<i>Colloquia</i>,<i> </i>and, says Mr. Collins, “such books as +Ovid’s Metamorphoses” (and other works of his), “the +Æneid, selected comedies of Terence and Plautus, and portions +of Cæsar, Sallust, Cicero, and Livy.”<br> +<br> +“Pro-di-gi-ous!” exclaims Mr. Greenwood, <a name="citation51a"></a><a href="#footnote51a">{51a}</a> +referring to what Mr. Collins says Will had read at school. But +precocious Latinity was not thought “prodigious” in an age +when nothing but Latin was taught to boys - not even cricket. +Nor is it to be supposed that every boy read in all of these authors, +still less read all of their works, but these were the works of which +portions were read. It is not prodigious. I myself, according +to my class-master, was “a bad and careless little boy” +at thirteen, incurably idle, but I well remember reading in Ovid and +Cæsar, and Sallust, while the rest of my time was devoted to the +total neglect of the mathematics, English “as she was taught,” +History, and whatsoever else was expected from me. Shakespeare’s +time was not thus frittered away; Latin was all he learned (if he went +to school), and, as he was (on my theory) a very clever, imaginative +kind of boy, I can conceive that he was intensely interested in the +stories told by Ovid, and in Catiline’s Conspiracy (thrilling, +if you know your Sallust); and if his interest were once aroused, he +would make rapid progress. My own early hatred of Greek was hissing +and malignant, but as soon as I opened Homer, all was changed. +One was intensely interested!<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood will not, in the matter of books, go beyond Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, +<a name="citation52a"></a><a href="#footnote52a">{52a}</a> “Lilly’s +Grammar, and a few classical works chained to the desks of the free +schools.” Mr. Collins himself gives but “a few classical +books,” of which <i>portions </i>were read. The chains were +in all the free schools, if Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps is right. +The chains, if authentic, do not count as objections.<br> +<br> +Here it must be noted that Mr. Greenwood’s opinion of Will’s +knowledge and attainments is not easily to be ascertained with precision. +He sees, of course, that the pretension of the extreme Baconians - Will +could not even write his name - is absurd. If he could not write, +he could not pass as the author. Mr. Greenwood “fears that +the arguments” (of a most extreme Baconian) “would drive +many wandering sheep back to the Stratfordian fold.” <a name="citation52b"></a><a href="#footnote52b">{52b}</a><br> +<br> +He has therefore to find a <i>via media</i>,<i> </i>to present, as the +pseudo-author, a Will who possessed neither books nor manuscripts when +he made his Testament; a rustic, bookless Will, speaking a patois, who +could none the less pass himself off as the author. So “I +think it highly probable,” says Mr. Greenwood, “that he +attended the Grammar School at Stratford for four or five years, and +that, later in life, after some years in London, he was probably able +to ‘bumbast out a line,’ and perhaps to pose as ‘Poet-Ape +who would be thought our chief.’” <a name="citation53a"></a><a href="#footnote53a">{53a}</a> +Again, “He had had but little schooling; he had ‘small Latin +and less Greek’; but he was a good <i>Johannes Factotum</i>,<i> +</i>he could arrange a scene, and, when necessary, ‘bumbast out +a blank verse.’” <a name="citation53b"></a><a href="#footnote53b">{53b}</a><br> +<br> +But this is almost to abandon Mr. Greenwood’s case. Will +appears to me to be now perilously near acceptance as Greene’s +“Shake-scene,” who was a formidable rival to Greene’s +three professional playwrights: and quite as near to Ben’s Poet-Ape +“that would be thought our chief,” who began by re-making +old plays; then won “some little wealth and credit on the scene,” +who had his “works” printed (for Ben expects them to reach +posterity), and whom Ben accused of plagiarism from himself and his +contemporaries. But this Shake-scene, this Poet-Ape, is merely +our Will Shakespeare as described by bitterly jealous and envious rivals. +Where are now the “works” of “Poet-Ape” if they +are not the works of Shakespeare which Ben so nobly applauded later, +if they are not in the blank verse of Greene’s Shake-scene? +“Shakespeare’s plays” we call them.<br> +<br> +<i>When </i>was it “necessary” for the “Stratford +rustic” to “bumbast out a blank verse”? Where +are the blank verses which he bumbasted out? For what purposes +were they bumbasted? By 1592 “Shake-scene” was ambitious, +and thought his blank verse as good as the best that Greene’s +friends, including Marlowe, could write. He had plenty of time +to practise before the date when, as Ben wrote, “he would be thought +our chief.” He would not cease to do that in which he conceived +himself to excel; to write for the stage.<br> +<br> +When once Mr. Greenwood deems it “highly probable” that +Will had four or five years of education at a Latin school, Will has +as much of “grounding” in Latin, I think, as would account +for all the knowledge of the Roman tongue which he displays. His +amount of teaching at school would carry and tempt even a boy who was +merely clever, and loved to read romantic tales and comic plays, into +Ovid and Plautus - English books being to him not very accessible.<br> +<br> +Here I may speak from my own memories, for though utterly idle where +set school tasks were concerned, I tried very early to worry the sense +out of Aristophanes - because he was said to contain good reading.<br> +<br> +To this amount of taste and curiosity, nowise unexampled in an ordinary +clever boy, add <i>Genius</i>,<i> </i>and I feel no difficulty as to +Will’s “learning,” such as, at best, it was. +“The Stratfordian,” says Mr. Greenwood, “will ingeminate +‘Genius! Genius!’” <a name="citation55a"></a><a href="#footnote55a">{55a}</a> +I <i>do </i>say “Genius,” and stand by it. The ordinary +clever boy, in the supposed circumstances, could read and admire his +Ovid (though Shakespeare used cribs also), the man of genius could write +<i>Venus and Adonis.<br> +<br> +</i>Had I to maintain the Baconian hypothesis, I would not weigh heavily +on bookless Will’s rusticity and patois. Accepting Ben Jonson’s +account of his “excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle +expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility . . <i>. </i>,”<i> +</i>accepting the tradition of his lively wit; admitting that he had +some Latin and literature, I would find in him a sufficiently plausible +mask for that immense Unknown with a strange taste for furbishing up +older plays. I would merely deny to Will his <i>genius</i>,<i> +</i>and hand <i>that </i>over to Bacon - or Bungay. Believe me, +Mr. Greenwood, this is your easiest way! - perhaps this <i>is </i>your +way? - the plot of the unscrupulous Will, and of your astute Bungay, +might thus more conceivably escape detection from the pack of envious +playwrights.<br> +<br> +According to “all tradition,” says Mr. Greenwood, Shakespeare +was taken from school at the age of thirteen. Those late long-descended +traditions of Shakespeare’s youth are of little value as evidence; +but, if it pleases Mr. Greenwood, I will, for the sake of argument, +accept the whole of them. Assuredly I shall not arbitrarily choose +among the traditions: all depends on the genealogical steps by which +they reach us, as far as these can be discovered. <a name="citation56a"></a><a href="#footnote56a">{56a}</a><br> +<br> +According to the tattle of Aubrey the antiquary, publishing in 1680, +an opinion concerning Shakspere’s education reached him. +It came thus; there had been an actor in Shakspere’s company, +one Phillips, who, dying in 1605, left to Shakspere the usual thirty-shilling +piece of gold; and the same “to my servant, Christopher Beeston.” +Christopher’s son, William, in 1640, became deputy to Davenant +in the management of “the King’s and Queen’s Young +Company”, and through Beeston, according to Aubrey, Davenant learned; +through Beeston Aubrey learned, that Shakespeare “understood Latin +pretty well, for he had been in his younger days a school-master in +the country.” Aubrey writes that “old Mr. Beeston, +whom Mr. Dryden calls ‘the chronicle of the stage,’” +died in 1682. <a name="citation56b"></a><a href="#footnote56b">{56b}</a><br> +<br> +This is a fair example of the genealogy of the traditions. Phillips, +a friend of Shakspere, dies in 1605, leaving a servant, Christopher +Beeston (he, too, was a versifier), whose son, William, dies in 1682; +he is “the chronicle of the stage.” Through him Davenant +gets the story, through him Aubrey gets the story, that Shakspere “knew +Latin pretty well,” and had been a rural dominie. Mr. Greenwood +<a name="citation57a"></a><a href="#footnote57a">{57a}</a> devotes much +space to disparaging Aubrey (and I do not think him a scientific authority, +<i>moult s</i>’<i>en faut</i>),<i> </i>but Mr. Greenwood here +says not a word as to the steps in the descent of the tradition. +He frequently repeats himself, thereby forcing me to more iteration +than I like. He had already disparaged Aubrey in note I to p. +105, but there he approached so closely to historical method as to say +that “Aubrey quotes Beeston, a seventeenth-century actor, as his +authority.” On p. 209 he dismisses the anecdote (which does +not suit his book) as “a mere myth.” “<i>He +</i>knows, <i>he </i>knows” which traditions are mythical, and +which possess a certain historical value.<br> +<br> +My own opinion is that Shakspere did “know Latin pretty well,” +and was no <i>scholar</i>,<i> </i>as his contemporaries reckoned scholarship. +He left school, if tradition speak true, by a year later than the age, +twelve, when Bacon went to Cambridge. Will, a clever kind of lad +(on my theory), left school at an age when some other clever lads became +freshmen. Why not? Gilbert Burnet (of whom you may have +heard as Bishop of Salisbury under William III) took his degree at the +age of fourteen.<br> +<br> +Taking Shakspere as an extremely quick, imaginative boy, with nothing +to learn but Latin, and by the readiest road, the colloquial, I conceive +him to have discovered that, in Ovid especially, were to be found the +most wonderful and delightful stories, and poetry which could not but +please his “green unknowing youth.” In the years before +he left Stratford, and after he left school (1577-87?), I can easily +suppose that he was not <i>always </i>butchering calves, poaching, and +making love; and that, if he could get books in no other way, this graceless +fellow might be detected on a summer evening, knitting his brows over +the stories and jests of the chained Ovid and Plautus on his old schoolroom +desk. <i>Moi qui parle</i>,<i> </i>I am no genius; but stories, +romance, and humour would certainly have dragged me back to the old +desks - if better might not be, and why not Shakspere? Put yourself +in his place, if you have ever been a lad, and if, as a lad, you liked +to steal away into the world of romance, into fairyland.<br> +<br> +If Will wrote the plays, he (and indeed whoever wrote the plays) was +a marvel of genius. But I am not here claiming for him genius, +but merely stating my opinion that if he were fond of stories and romance, +had no English books of poetry and romance, and had acquired as much +power of reading Latin as a lively, curious boy could easily gain in +four years of exclusively Latin education, he might continue his studies +as he pleased, yet be, so far, no prodigy.<br> +<br> +I am contemplating Will in the conditions on which the Baconians insist; +if they will indeed let us assume that for a few years he was at a Latin +school. I credit the graceless loon with the curiosity, the prompt +acquisitiveness, the love of poetry and romance, which the author of +the plays must have possessed in youth. “Tradition says +nothing of all that,” the Baconian answers, and he may now, if +he likes, turn to my reply in <i>The Traditional Shakespeare</i>. <a name="citation59a"></a><a href="#footnote59a">{59a}</a> +Meanwhile, how can you expect old clerks and sextons, a century after +date, in a place where literature was <i>not </i>of supreme interest, +to retain a tradition that Will used to read sometimes (if he did), +in circumstances of privacy? As far as I am able to judge, had +I been a boy at Stratford school for four years, had been taught nothing +but Latin, and had little or no access to English books of poetry and +romance, I should have acquired about the same amount of Latin as I +suppose Shakspere to have possessed. Yet I could scarcely, like +him, have made the second syllable in “Posthumus” long! +Sir Walter Scott, however, was guilty of similar false quantities: he +and Shakspere were about equally scholarly.<br> +<br> +I suppose, then, that Shakspere’s “small Latin” (as +Jonson called it) enabled him to read in the works of the Roman clerks; +to read sufficient for his uses. As a fact, he made use of English +translations, and also of Latin texts. Scholars like Bacon do +not use bad translations of easy Latin authors. If Bacon wanted +Plutarch, he went to Plutarch in Greek, not to an English translation +of a French translation of a Latin translation.<br> +<br> +Some works of Shakespeare, the <i>Lucrece</i>,<i> </i>for example, and +<i>The Comedy of Errors </i>(if he were not working over an earlier +canvas from a more learned hand), and other passages, show knowledge +of Latin texts which in his day had not appeared in published translations, +or had not been translated at all as far as we know. In my opinion +Will had Latin enough to puzzle out the sense of the Latin, never difficult, +for himself. He could also “get a construe,” when +in London, or help in reading, from a more academic acquaintance: or +buy a construe at no high ransom from some poor scholar. No contemporary +calls him scholarly; the generation of men who were small boys when +he died held him for no scholar. The current English literature +of his day was saturated with every kind of classical information; its +readers, even if Latinless, knew, or might know a world of lore with +which the modern man is seldom acquainted. The ignorant Baconian +marvels: the classically educated Baconian who is not familiar with +Elizabethan literature is amazed. Really there is nothing worthy +of their wonder.<br> +<br> +Does any contemporary literary allusion to Shakespeare call him “<i>learned</i>”? +He is “sweet,” “honey-tongued,” “mellifluous,” +and so forth, but I ask for any contemporary who flattered him with +the compliment of “learned.” What Ben Jonson thought +of his learning (but Ben’s standard was very high), what Milton +and Fuller, boys of eight when he died, thought of his learning, we +know. They thought him “Fancy’s child” (Milton) +and with no claims to scholarship (Fuller), with “small Latin +and less Greek” (Jonson). They speak of Shakespeare the +author and actor; not yet had any man divided the persons.<br> +<br> +Elizabethan and Jacobean scholarly poets were widely read in the classics. +They were not usually, however, scholars in the same sense as our modern +scholarly poets and men of letters; such as Mr. Swinburne among the +dead, and Mr. Mackail and Sir Gilbert Murray - if I may be pardoned +for mentioning contemporary names. But Elizabethan scholarly poets, +and Milton, never regarded Shakespeare as learned. Perhaps few +modern men of letters who are scholars differ from them. The opinion +of Mr. Collins is to be discussed presently, but even he thought Shakespeare’s +scholarship “inexact,” as we shall see.<br> +<br> +I conceive that Shakspere “knew Latin pretty well,” and, +on Ben Jonson’s evidence, he knew “less Greek.” +That he knew <i>any </i>Greek is surprising. Apparently he did, +to judge from Ben’s words. My attitude must, to the Baconians, +seem frivolous, vexatious, and evasive. I cannot pretend to know +what was Shakspere’s precise amount of proficiency in Latin when +he was writing the plays. That between his own knowledge, and +construes given to him, he might easily get at the meaning of all the +Latin, not yet translated, which he certainly knew, I believe.<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood says “the amount of reading which the lad Shakspere +must have done, and assimilated, during his brief sojourn at the Free +School is positively amazing.” <a name="citation62a"></a><a href="#footnote62a">{62a}</a> +But I have shown how an imaginative boy, with little or no access to +English poetry and romances, might continue to read Latin “for +human pleasure” after he left school. As a professional +writer, in a London where Latinists were as common as now they are rare +in literary society, he might read more, and be helped in his reading. +Any clever man might do as much, not to speak of a man of genius. +“And yet, alas, there is no record or tradition of all this prodigious +industry. . . . ” I am not speaking of “prodigious +industry,” and of that - at school. In a region so non-literary +as, by his account, was Stratford, Mr. Greenwood ought not to expect +traditions of Will’s early reading (even if he studied much more +deeply than I have supposed) to exist, from fifty to seventy years after +Will was dead, in the memories of the sons and grandsons of country +people who cared for none of these things. The thing is not reasonable. +<a name="citation62b"></a><a href="#footnote62b">{62b}</a><br> +<br> +Let me take one example <a name="citation62c"></a><a href="#footnote62c">{62c}</a> +of what Mr. E. A. Sonnenschein is quoted as saying (somewhere) about +Shakespeare’s debt to Seneca’s then untranslated paper <i>De +Clementia </i>(1, 3, 3; I, 7, 2; I, 6, I). It inspires Portia’s +speech about Mercy. Here I give a version of the Latin.<br> +<br> +“Clemency becometh, of all men, none more than the King or chief +magistrate (<i>principem</i>) <i>. . . </i>No one can think of anything +more becoming to a ruler than clemency . . . which will be confessed +the fairer and more goodly in proportion as it is exhibited in the higher +office . . . But if the placable and just gods punish not instantly +with their thunderbolts the sins of the powerful, how much more just +it is that a man set over men should gently exercise his power. +What? Holds not he the place nearest to the gods, who, bearing +himself like the gods, is kind, and generous, and uses his power for +the better? . . . Think . . . what a lone desert and waste Rome +would be, were nothing left, and none, save such as a severe judge would +absolve.”<br> +<br> +The last sentence is fitted with this parallel in Portia’s speech:<br> +<br> +<br> + “Consider this<br> +That in the course of Justice none of us<br> +Should see salvation.”<br> +<br> +<br> +Here, at least, Protestant theology, not Seneca, inspires Portia’s +eloquence.<br> +<br> +Now take Portia:<br> +<br> +<br> +“The quality of Mercy is not strain’d;<br> +It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven<br> +Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;<br> +It blesseth him that gives and him that takes;”<br> +<br> +<br> +(Not much Seneca, so far!)<br> +<br> +<br> +“’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes<br> +The thronèd monarch better than his crown;<br> +His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,<br> +The attribute to awe and majesty,<br> +Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;<br> +But Mercy is above this sceptred sway,<br> +It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,<br> +It is an attribute to God himself;<br> +And earthly power doth then show likest God’s,<br> +When mercy seasons justice . . . ”<br> +<br> +<br> +There follows the passage about none of us seeing salvation, already +cited, and theological in origin.<br> +<br> +Whether Shakespeare could or could not have written these reflections, +without having read Seneca’s <i>De Clementia</i>,<i> </i>whether, +if he could not conceive the ideas “out of his own head,” +he might not hear Seneca’s words translated in a sermon, or in +conversation, or read them cited in an English book, each reader must +decide for himself. Nor do I doubt that Shakespeare could pick +out what he wanted from the Latin if he cast his eye over the essay +of the tutor of Nero.<br> +<br> +My view of Shakespeare’s Latinity is much like that of Sir Walter +Raleigh. <a name="citation64a"></a><a href="#footnote64a">{64a}</a> +As far as I am aware, it is the opinion usually held by people who approach +the subject, and who have had a classical education. An exception +was the late Mr. Churton Collins, whose ideas are discussed in the following +chapter.<br> +<br> +In his youth, and in the country, Will could do what Hogg and Burns +did (and Hogg had no education at all; he was self-taught, even in writing). +Will could pick up traditional, oral, popular literature. “His +plays,” says Sir Walter Raleigh, “are extraordinarily rich +in the floating debris of popular literature, - scraps and tags and +broken ends of songs and ballads and romances and proverbs. In +this respect he is notable even among his contemporaries. . . . +Edgar and Iago, Petruchio and Benedick, Sir Toby and Pistol, the Fool +in <i>Lear </i>and the Grave-digger in <i>Hamlet</i>,<i> </i>even Ophelia +and Desdemona, are all alike singers of old songs. . . . ” <a name="citation65a"></a><a href="#footnote65a">{65a}</a> +He is rich in rural proverbs <i>not </i>recorded in Bacon’s <i>Promus.<br> +<br> +</i>Shakespeare in the country, like Scott in Liddesdale, “was +making himself all the time.”<br> +<br> +The Baconian will exclaim that Bacon was familiar with many now obsolete +rural words. Bacon, too, may have had a memory rich in all the +tags of song, ballad, story, and <i>dicton</i>. But so may Shakespeare.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IV: MR. COLLINS ON SHAKESPEARE’S LEARNING<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +That Shakspere, whether “scholar” or not, had a very wide +and deep knowledge both of Roman literature and, still more, of the +whole field of the tragic literature of Athens, is a theory which Mr. +Greenwood seems to admire in that “violent Stratfordian,” +Mr. Churton Collins. <a name="citation69a"></a><a href="#footnote69a">{69a}</a> +I think that Mr. Collins did not persuade classical scholars who have +never given a thought to the Baconian belief, but who consider on their +merits the questions: Does Shakespeare show wide classical knowledge? +Does he use his knowledge as a scholar would use it?<br> +<br> +My friend, Mr. Collins, as I may have to say again, was a very wide +reader of poetry, with a memory like Macaulay’s. It was +his native tendency to find coincidences in poetic passages (which, +to some, to me for example, did not often seem coincidental); and to +explain coincidences by conscious or subconscious borrowing. One +remarked in him these tendencies long before he wrote on the classical +acquirements of Shakespeare.<br> +<br> +While Mr. Collins tended to account for similarities in the work of +authors by borrowing, my tendency was to explain them as undesigned +coincidences. The question is of the widest range. Some +inquirers explain the often minute coincidences in myths, popular tales, +proverbs, and riddles, found all over the world, by diffusion from a +single centre (usually India). Others, like myself, do not deny +cases of transmission, but in other cases see spontaneous and independent, +though coincident invention. I do not believe that the Arunta +of Central Australia borrowed from Plutarch the central feature of the +myth of Isis and Osiris.<br> +<br> +It is not on Shakespeare’s use, now and then, of Greek and Latin +models and sources, but on coincidences detected by Mr. Collins himself, +and not earlier remarked, that he bases his belief in the saturation +of Shakespeare’s mind with Roman and Athenian literature. +Consequently we can only do justice to Mr. Collins’s system, if +we compare example after example of his supposed instances of Shakespeare’s +borrowing. This is a long and irksome task; and the only fair +plan is for the reader to peruse Mr. Collins’s <i>Studies in Shakespeare</i>,<i> +</i>compare the Greek and Roman texts, and weigh each example of supposed +borrowing for himself. Baconians must delight in this labour.<br> +<br> +I shall waive the question whether it were not possible for Shakespeare +to obtain a view of the manuscript translation of plays of Plautus made +by Warner for his unlearned friends, and so to use the <i>Menæchmi +</i>as the model of <i>The Comedy of Errors</i>. He does not borrow +phrases from it, as he does from North’s <i>Plutarch.<br> +<br> +Venus and Adonis </i>owes to Ovid, at most, but ideas for three purple +patches, scattered in different parts of the <i>Metamorphoses. +Lucrece </i>is based on the then untranslated <i>Fasti </i>of Ovid. +I do not think Shakespeare incapable of reading such easy Latin for +himself; or too proud to ask help from a friend, or buy it from some +poor young University man in London. That is a simple and natural +means by which he could help himself when in search of a subject for +a play or poem; and ought not to be overlooked.<br> +<br> +Mr. Collins, in his rapturous account of Shakespeare’s wide and +profound knowledge of the classics, opens with the remark: “Nothing +which Shakespeare has left us warrants us in pronouncing with certainty +that he read the Greek classics in the original, or even that he possessed +enough Greek to follow the Latin versions of those classics in the Greek +text.” <a name="citation71a"></a><a href="#footnote71a">{71a}</a> +In that case, how did Shakespeare’s English become contaminated, +as Mr. Collins says it did, with Greek <i>idioms</i>,<i> </i>while he +only knew the Greek plays through Latin translations?<br> +<br> +However this is to be answered, Mr. Collins proceeds to prove Shakespeare’s +close familiarity with Latin and with Greek dramatic literature by a +method of which he knows the perils - “it is always perilous to +infer direct imitation from parallel passages which may be mere coincidences.” +<a name="citation72a"></a><a href="#footnote72a">{72a}</a> Yet +this method is what he practises throughout; with what amount of success +every reader must judge for himself.<br> +<br> +He thinks it “surely not unlikely” that Polonius’s<br> +<br> +<br> +“Neither a borrower nor a lender be:<br> +For loan oft loses both itself and friend,”<br> +<br> +<br> +may be a terse reminiscence of seven lines in Plautus (<i>Trinummus</i>,<i> +</i>iv. 3). Why, Polonius is a coiner of commonplaces, and if +ever there were a well-known reflection from experience it is this of +the borrowers and lenders.<br> +<br> +Next, take this of Plautus (<i>Pseudolus</i>,<i> </i>I, iv. 7-10), “But +just as the poet when he has taken up his tablets seeks what exists +nowhere among men, and yet finds it, and makes that like truth which +is mere fiction.” We are to take this as the possible germ +of Theseus’s theory of the origin of the belief in fairies:<br> +<br> +<br> +“And as imagination bodies forth<br> +The <i>forms </i>of things unknown, the poet’s pen<br> +Turns them to <i>shapes</i>,<i> </i>and gives to airy nothing<br> +A local habitation and a name.”<br> +<br> +<br> +The reasoning is odd; imagination bodies forth <i>forms</i>,<i> </i>and +the poet’s pen turns them to<i> shapes</i>. But to suppose +that Shakespeare here borrowed from Plautus appears highly superfluous.<br> +<br> +These are samples of Mr. Collins’s methods throughout.<br> +<br> +Of Terence there were translations - first in part; later, in 1598, +of the whole. Of Seneca there was an English version (1581). +Mr. Collins labours to show that one passage “almost certainly” +implies Shakespeare’s use of the Latin; but it was used “by +an inexact scholar,” - a terribly inexact scholar, if he thought +that “<i>alienus</i>” (“what belongs to another”) +meant “slippery”!<br> +<br> +Most of the passages are from plays (<i>Titus Andronicus </i>and <i>Henry +VI</i>,<i> </i>i., ii., iii.), which Mr. Greenwood denies (usually) +to <i>his </i>author, the Great Unknown. Throughout these early +plays Mr. Collins takes Shakespeare’s to resemble Seneca’s +<i>Latin </i>style: Shakespeare, then, took up Greek tragedy in later +life; after the early period when he dealt with Seneca. Here is +a sample of borrowing from Horace, “<i>Persicos odi puer apparatus</i>” +(<i>Odes</i>. I, xxxviii. I). Mr. Collins quotes <i>Lear </i>(III, +vi. 85) thus, “You will say they are <i>Persian attire</i>.” +Really, Lear in his wild way says to Edgar, “I do not like the +fashion of your garments: you will say they are Persian; but let them +be changed.” Mr. Collins changes this into “you will +say they are <i>Persian attire</i>,”<i> </i>a phrase “which +could only have occurred to a classical scholar.” The phrase +is not in Shakespeare, and Lear’s wandering mind might as easily +select “Persian” as any other absurdity.<br> +<br> +So it is throughout. Two great poets write on the fear of death, +on the cries of new-born children, on dissolution and recombination +in nature, on old age; they have ideas in common, obvious ideas, glorified +by poetry, - and Shakespeare, we are told, is borrowing from Lucretius +or Juvenal; while the critic leaves his reader to find out and study +the Latin passages which he does not quote. So arbitrary is taste +in these matters that Mr. Collins, like Mr. Grant White, but independently, +finds Shakespeare putting a thought from the <i>Alcibiades I </i>of +Plato into the mouth of Achilles in <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>,<i> +</i>while Mr. J. M. Robertson suggests that the borrowing is from Seneca +- where Mr. Collins does not find “the smallest parallel.” +Mr. Collins is certainly right; the author of <i>Troilus </i>makes Ulysses +quote Plato as “the author” of a remark, and makes Achilles +take up the quotation, which Ulysses goes on to criticise.<br> +<br> +Thus, in this play, not only Aristotle (as Hector says) but Plato are +taken to have lived before the Trojan war, and to have been read by +the Achæans!<br> +<br> +There were Latin translations of Plato; the <i>Alcibiades I </i>was +published apart, from Ficinus’ version, in 1560, with the sub-title, +<i>Concerning the Nature of Man</i>. Who had read it? - Shakespeare, +or one of the two authors (Dekker and Chettle) of another <i>Troilus +and Cressida </i>(now lost), or Bacon, or Mr. Greenwood’s Unknown? +Which of these Platonists chose to say that Plato and Aristotle lived +long before Homer? Which of them followed the Ionic and mediæval +anti-Achæan view of Homer’s heroes, as given in the Troy +Books of the Middle Ages, and yet knew Iliad, Book VII, and admired +Odysseus, whom the Ionian tradition abhors? <i>Troilus and Cressida +</i>is indeed a mystery, but Somebody concerned in it had read Ficinus’ +version of the <i>Alcibiades</i>; <a name="citation75a"></a><a href="#footnote75a">{75a}</a> +and yet made the monstrous anachronism of dating Aristotle and Plato +before the Trojan war. “That was his fun,” as Charles +Lamb said in another connection.<br> +<br> +Mr. Collins, it is plain, goes much further than the “small Latin” +with which his age (like myself) credited Shakespeare. He could +read Latin, Mr. Collins thinks, as easily as an educated Briton reads +French - that is, as easily as he reads English. Still further, +Shakespeare, through Latin translations, was so saturated with the Greek +drama “that the characteristics which differentiate his work from +the work of his contemporaries and recall in essentials the work of +the Greek dramatists are actually attributable to these dramatists.”<br> +<br> +Ben Jonson, and all the more or less well-taught University wits, as +far as I remember, like Greene, Marlowe, and Lyly, do not show much +acquaintance with Euripides, Æschylus, Sophocles, and do not often +remind us of these masters. Shakespeare does remind us of them +- the only question is, do the resemblances arise from his possession +of a genius akin to that of Greece, or was his memory so stored with +all the treasures of their art that the waters of Helicon kept bubbling +up through the wells of Avon?<br> +<br> +But does Mr. Collins prove (what, as he admits, <i>cannot </i>be demonstrated) +that Shakespeare was familiar with the Attic tragedians? He begins +by saying that he will not bottom his case “on the ground of parallels +in sentiment and reflection, which, as they express commonplaces, are +likely to be” (fortuitous) “coincidences.” Three +pages of such parallels, all from Sophocles, therefore follow. +“Curiously close similarities of expression” are also barred. +Four pages of examples therefore follow, from Sophocles and Æschylus, +plays and fragments, Euripides, and Homer too (once!). Again, +“identities of sentiment under similar circumstances” are +not to be cited; two pages <i>are </i>cited; and “similarities, +however striking they may be in metaphorical expression,” cannot +safely be used; several pages of them follow.<br> +<br> +Finally, Mr. Collins chooses a single play, the <i>Aias </i>of Sophocles, +and tests Shakespeare by that, unluckily in part from <i>Titus Andronicus</i>,<i> +</i>which Mr. Greenwood regards (usually) as non-Shakespearean, or not +by his unknown great author. <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>,<i> </i>whatever +part Shakespeare may have had in it, does suggest to me that the author +or authors knew of Homer no more than the few books of the Iliad, first +translated by Chapman and published in 1598. But he or they did +know the <i>Aias </i>of Sophocles, according to Mr. Collins: so did +the author of <i>Romeo and Juliet.<br> +<br> +</i>Now all these sorts of parallels between Shakespeare and the Greeks +are, Mr. Collins tells us, not to count as proofs that Shakespeare knew +the Greek tragedians. “We have obviously to be on our guard” +<a name="citation77a"></a><a href="#footnote77a">{77a}</a> against three +kinds of such parallels, which “may be mere coincidences,” +<a name="citation77b"></a><a href="#footnote77b">{77b}</a> fortuitous +coincidences. But these coincidences against which “we must +be on our guard” fill sixteen pages (pp. 46-63). These pages +must necessarily produce a considerable effect in the way of persuading +the reader that Shakespeare knew the Greek tragedians as intimately +as Mr. Collins did. Mr. Greenwood is obliged to leave these parallels +to readers of Mr. Collins’s essay. Indeed, what more can +we do? Who would read through a criticism of each instance? +Two or three may be given. The Queen in <i>Hamlet </i>reminds +that prince, grieving for his father’s death, that “all +that live must die”:<br> +<br> +<br> +“That loss is common to the race,<br> +And common is the common-place.”<br> +<br> +The Greek Chorus offers the commonplace to Electra, - and here is a +parallel! Again, two Greeks agree with Shakespeare that anxious +expectation of evil is worse than actual experience thereof. Greece +agrees with Shakespeare that ill-gotten gains do not thrive, or that +it is not lucky to be “a corby messenger” of bad news; or +that all goes ill when a man acts against his better nature; or that +we suffer most from the harm which we bring on ourselves; or that there +is strength in a righteous cause; or that blood calls for blood (an +idea common to Semites, Greeks, and English readers of the Bible); or +that, having lost a very good man, you will not soon see his like again, +- and so on as long as you please. Of such wisdom are proverbs +made, and savages and Europeans have many parallel proverbs. <i>Vestigia +nulla retrorsum </i>is as well known to Bushmen as to Latinists. +Manifestly nothing in this kind proves, or even suggests, that Shakespeare +was saturated in Greek tragedy. But page on page of such facts +as that both Shakespeare and Sophocles talk, one of “the belly-pinched +wolf,” the other of “the empty-bellied wolf,” are +apt to impress the reader - and verily both Shakespeare and Æschylus +talk of “the heart dancing for joy.” Mr. Collins repeats +that such things are no proof, but he keeps on piling them up. +It was a theory of Shakespeare’s time that the apparent ghost +of a dead man might be an impersonation of him by the devil. Hamlet +knows this -<br> +<br> +<br> +“The spirit that I have seen may be the devil.”<br> +<br> +<br> +Orestes (<i>Electra</i>,<i> </i>Euripides) asks whether it may not be +an avenging dæmon (<i>alastor</i>)<i> </i>in the shape of a god, +that bids him avenge his father. Is Shakespeare borrowing from +Euripides, or from a sermon, or any contemporary work on ghosts, such +as that of Lavater?<br> +<br> +A girl dies or is sacrificed before her marriage, and characters in +<i>Romeo and Juliet</i>,<i> </i>and in Euripides, both say that Death +is her bridegroom. Anyone might say that, anywhere, as in the +Greek Anthology -<br> +<br> +<br> +“For Death not for Love hast thou loosened thy zone.”<br> +<br> +<br> +One needs the space of a book wherein to consider such parallels. +But confessedly, though a parade is made of them, they do not prove +that Shakespeare constantly read Greek tragedies in Latin translations.<br> +<br> +To let the truth out, the resemblances are mainly found in such commonplaces: +as when both Aias and Antony address the Sun of their latest day in +life; or when John of Gaunt and Aias both pun on their own names.<br> +<br> +The situations, in <i>Hamlet </i>and the <i>Choephoræ </i>and +<i>Electra</i>,<i> </i>are so close that resemblances in some passages +must and do occur, and Mr. Collins does not comment specially upon the +closest resemblance of all: the English case is here the murder of Duncan, +the Greek is the murder of Agamemnon.<br> +<br> +Now it would be easy for me to bring forward many close parallels between +Homer and the old Irish epic story of Cuchulainn, between Homer and +<i>Beowulf </i>and the Njal’s saga, yet Norsemen and the early +Irish were not students of Homer! The parallel passages in Homer, +on one side, and the Old Irish <i>Tain Bo Cualgne</i>,<i> </i>and the +Anglo-Saxon epics, are so numerous and close that the theory of borrowing +from Homer has actually occurred to a distinguished Greek scholar. +But no student of Irish and Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry has been found, +I think, to suggest that Early Irish and Anglo-Saxon Court minstrels +knew Greek. The curious may consult Mr. Munro Chadwick’s +<i>The Heroic Age </i>(1912), especially Chapter XV, “The Common +Characteristics of Teutonic and Greek Heroic Poetry,” and to what +Mr. Chadwick says much might be added.<br> +<br> +But, to be short, Mr. Collins’s case can only be judged by readers +of his most interesting <i>Studies in Shakespeare</i>. To me, +Hamlet’s soliloquy on death resembles a fragment from the <i>Phœnix +</i>of Euripides no more closely than two sets of reflections by great +poets on the text that “of death we know nothing” are bound +to do, - though Shakespeare’s are infinitely the richer. +For Shakespeare’s reflections on death, save where Christians +die in a Christian spirit, are as agnostic as those of the post-Æschylean +Greek and early Anglo-Saxon poets. In many respects, as Mr. Collins +proves, Shakespeare’s highest and deepest musings are Greek in +tone. But of all English poets he who came nearest to Greece in +his art was Keats, who of Greek knew nothing. In the same way, +a peculiar vein of Anglo-Saxon thought, in relation to Destiny and Death, +is purely Homeric, though necessarily unborrowed; nor were a native +Fijian poet’s lines on old age, <i>sine amore jocisque</i>,<i> +</i>borrowed from Mimnermus! There is such a thing as congruity +of genius. Mr. Collins states the hypothesis - not his own - “that +<i>by a certain natural affinity </i>Shakespeare caught also the accent +and tone as well as some of the most striking characteristics of Greek +tragedy.”<br> +<br> +Though far from accepting most of Mr. Collins’s long array of +Greek parallels, I do hold that by “natural affinity,” by +congruity of genius, Shakespeare approached and resembled the great +Athenians.<br> +<br> +One thing seems certain to me. If Shakspere read and borrowed +from Greek poetry, he knew it as well (except Homer) as Mr. Collins +knew it; and remembered what he knew with Mr. Collins’s extraordinary +tenacity of memory.<br> +<br> +Now if “Shakespeare” did all that, he was not the actor. +The author, on Mr. Collins’s showing, must have been a very sedulous +and diligent student of Greek poetry, above all of the drama, down to +its fragments. The Baconians assuredly ought to try to prove, +from Bacon’s works, that he was such a student.<br> +<br> +Mr. Collins, “a violent Stratfordian,” overproved his case. +If his proofs be accepted, Shakspere the actor knew the Greek tragedians +as well as did Mr. Swinburne. If the author of the plays were +so learned, the actor was not the author, in my opinion - he <i>was</i>,<i> +</i>in the opinion of Mr. Collins.<br> +<br> +If Shakespeare’s spirit and those of Sophocles and Æschylus +meet, it is because they move on the same heights, and thence survey +with “the poet’s sad lucidity” the same “pageant +of men’s miseries.” But how dissimilar in expression +Shakespeare can be, how luxuriant and apart from the austerity of Greece, +we observe in one of Mr. Collins’s parallels.<br> +<br> +Polynices, in the <i>Phœnissæ </i>of Euripides (504-506), +exclaims:<br> +<br> +<br> +“To the stars’ risings, and the sun’s I’d go,<br> +And dive ’neath earth, - if I could do this thing, -<br> +Possess Heaven’s highest boon of sovereignty.”<br> +<br> +<br> +Then compare Hotspur:<br> +<br> +<br> +“By Heaven, methinks it were an easy leap<br> +To pluck bright honour from the pale faced moon,<br> +Or dive into the bottom of the deep,<br> +Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,<br> +And pluck up drownèd honour by the locks,<br> +So he that doth redeem her thence, might wear<br> +Without corrival all her dignities.”<br> +<br> +<br> +What a hurrying crowd of pictures rush through Hotspur’s mind! +Is Shakespeare thinking of the <i>Phœnissæ</i>,<i> </i>or +is he speaking only on the promptings of his genius?<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER V: SHAKESPEARE, GENIUS, AND SOCIETY<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A phrase has been used to explain the Greek element in Shakespeare’s +work, namely, “congruity of genius,” which is apt to be +resented by Baconians. Perhaps they have a right to resent it, +for “genius” is hard to define, and genius is invoked by +some wild wits to explain feats of Shakespeare’s which (to Baconians) +appear “miracles.” A “miracle” also is +notoriously hard to define; but we may take it (“under all reserves”) +to stand for the occurrence of an event, or the performance of an action +which, to the speaker who applies the word “miracle,” seems +“impossible.” The speaker therefore says, “The +event is impossible; miracles do not happen: therefore the reported +event never occurred. The alleged performance, the writing of +the plays by the actor, was impossible, was a miracle, therefore was +done by some person or persons other than the actor.” This +idea of the <i>impossibility </i>of the player’s authorship is +the foundation of the Baconian edifice.<br> +<br> +I have, to the best of my ability, tried to describe Mr. Greenwood’s +view of the young provincial from Warwickshire, Will Shakspere. +If Will were what Mr. Greenwood thinks he was, then Will’s authorship +of the plays seems to me, “humanly speaking,” impossible. +But then Mr. Greenwood appeared to omit from his calculations the circumstance +that Will <i>may </i>have been, not merely “a sharp boy” +but a boy of great parts; and not without a love of stories and poetry: +a passion which, in a bookless region, could only be gratified through +folk-song, folk-tale, and such easy Latin as he might take the trouble +to read. If we add to these very unusual but not wholly impossible +tastes and abilities, that Will <i>may </i>have been a lad of genius, +there is no more “miracle” in his case than in other supreme +examples of genius. “But genius cannot work miracles, cannot +do what is impossible.” Do what is impossible to whom? +To the critics, the men of common sense.<br> +<br> +Alas, all this way of talking about “miracles,” and “the +impossible,” and “genius” is quite vague and popular. +What do we mean by “genius”? The Latin term originally +designates, not a man’s everyday intellect, but a spirit from +without which inspires him, like the “Dæmon,” or, +in Latin, “Genius” of Socrates, or the <i>lutin </i>which +rode the pen of Molière. “Genius” is claimed +for Shakespeare in an inscription on his Stratford monument, erected +at latest some six years after his death. Following this path +of thought we come to “inspiration”: the notion of it, as +familiar to Australian savages as to any modern minds, is that, to the +poet, what he produces is <i>given </i>by some power greater than himself, +by the <i>Boilyas </i>(spirits) or Pundjel, the Father of all. +This palæolithic psychology, of course, is now quite discredited, +yet the term “genius” is still (perhaps superstitiously) +applied to the rare persons whose intellectual faculties lightly outrun +those of ordinary mortals, and who do marvels with means apparently +inadequate.<br> +<br> +In recent times some philosophers, like Mr. F. W. H. Myers, put - in +place of the Muses or the <i>Boilyas</i>,<i> </i>or the Genius - what +they call the “Subliminal Self,” something “far more +deeply interfused than the everyday intellect.” This subconscious +self, capable of far more than the conscious intelligence, is genius.<br> +<br> +On the other side, genius may fairly be regarded as faculty, only higher +in degree, and not at all different in kind, from the everyday intellect +which, for example, pens this page.<br> +<br> +Thus as soon as we begin to speak of “genius,” we are involved +in speculations, psychological, psychical, physical, and metaphysical; +in difficulties of all sorts not at present to be solved either by physiological +science or experimental psychology, or by psychical research, or by +the study of heredity. When I speak of “the genius of Shakespeare,” +of Jeanne d’Arc, of Bacon, even of Wellington, I possibly have +a meaning which is not in all respects the meaning of Mr. Greenwood, +when he uses the term “genius”; so we are apt to misunderstand +each other. Yet we all glibly use the term “genius,” +without definition and without discussion.<br> +<br> +At once, too, in this quest, we jostle against “that fool of a +word,” as Napoleon said, “impossible.” At once, +on either side, we assume that we know what is possible and what is +impossible, - and so pretend to omniscience.<br> +<br> +Thus some “Stratfordians,” or defenders of the actor’s +authorship, profess to know - from all the signed work of Bacon, and +from all that has reached us about Bacon’s occupations and preoccupations, +from 1590 to 1605 - that the theory of Bacon’s authorship of the +plays is “impossible.” I, however, do not profess +this omniscience.<br> +<br> +On the other side the Baconian, arguing from all that <i>he </i>knows, +or thinks he knows, or can imagine, of the actor’s education, +conditions of life, and opportunities, argues that the authorship of +the actor is “impossible.”<br> +<br> +Both sides assume to be omniscient, but we incontestably know much more +about Bacon, in his works, his aims, his inclinations, and in his life, +than we know about the actor; while about “the potentialities +of genius,” we know - very little.<br> +<br> +Thus, with all Bacon’s occupations and preoccupations, he had, +the Baconians will allow, <i>genius</i>. By the miracle of genius +he <i>may </i>have found time and developed inclination, to begin by +furbishing up older plays for a company of actors: he did it extremely +well, but what a quaint taste for a courtier and scholar! The +eccentricities of genius <i>may </i>account for his choice of a “<i>nom +de plume</i>,”<i> </i>which, if he desired concealment, was the +last that was likely to serve his turn. He may also have divined +all the Doll Tearsheets and Mrs. Quicklys and Pistols, whom, conceivably, +he did not much frequent.<br> +<br> +I am not one of those who deny that Bacon might have written <i>Hamlet +</i>“if he had the mind,” as Charles Lamb said of Wordsworth. +Not at all; I am the last to limit the potentialities of genius.<br> +<br> +But suppose, merely for the sake of argument, that Will Shakspere too +had genius in that amazing degree which, in <i>Henry V</i>,<i> </i>the +Bishop of Ely and the Archbishop of Canterbury describe and discuss +in the case of the young king. In this passage we perceive that +the poet had brooded over and been puzzled by the “miracle” +(he uses the word) of genius. Says Canterbury speaking of the +Prince’s wild youth,<br> +<br> +<br> +“Never was such a sudden scholar made.”<br> +<br> +<br> +One Baconian objection to Shakespeare’s authorship is that during +his early years in London (say 1587-92) he was “such a sudden +scholar made” in various things.<br> +<br> +The young king’s<br> +<br> +<br> + “addiction was to courses vain,<br> +His companies unletter’d, rude, and shallow,”<br> +<br> +<br> +precisely like Shakespeare’s courses and companions at Stratford<br> +<br> +<br> +“Had never noted in him any study.”<br> +<br> +<br> +Stratford tradition, a century after Shakespeare left the town, did +not remember “any study” in him; none had been “noted,” +nor could have been remembered. To return to Henry, he shines +in divinity, knowledge of “commonwealth affairs,”<br> +<br> +<br> +“You would say, it hath been all in all his study.”<br> +<br> +<br> +He is as intimate with the art of war; to him “Gordian knots of +policy” are “familiar as his garter.” He <i>must +</i>have<br> +<br> +<br> +“The art and practic part of life,”<br> +<br> +<br> +as “mistress to this theorie,”<br> +<br> +<br> +“Which is a wonder how his Grace should glean it,”<br> +<br> +<br> +as his youth was riotous, and was lived in all men’s gaze,<br> +<br> +<br> +“And never noted in him any study,<br> +Any retirement, any sequestration<br> +From open haunts and popularity.”<br> +<br> +<br> +The Bishop of Ely can only suggest that Henry’s study or “contemplation”<br> +<br> +<br> +“Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,<br> +Unseen,”<br> +<br> +<br> +and Canterbury says<br> +<br> +<br> +“It must be so, for miracles are ceased.”<br> +<br> +<br> +And thus the miracle of genius baffles the poet, for Henry’s had +been “noisy nights,” notoriously noisy.<br> +<br> +Now, as we shall later show, Bacon’s rapid production of the plays, +considering his other contemporary activities and varied but always +absorbing interests, was as much a miracle as the sudden blossoming +of Henry’s knowledge and accomplishments; for all Bacon’s +known exertions and occupations, and his deepest and most absorbing +interest, were remote from the art of tragedy and comedy. If we +are to admit the marvel of genius in Bacon, of whose life and pursuits +we know much, by parity of reasoning we may grant that the actor, of +whom we know much less, may have had genius: had powers and could use +opportunities in a way for which Baconians make no allowance.<br> +<br> +We now turn to Mr. Greenwood’s chapter, “Shakespeare and +‘Genius.’” It opens with the accustomed list +of poor Will’s disqualifications, “a boy born of illiterate +parents,” but we need not rehearse the list. <a name="citation91a"></a><a href="#footnote91a">{91a}</a> +He “comes to town” (date unknown) “a needy adventurer”; +in 1593 appeared the poem <i>Venus and Adonis</i>,<i> </i>author’s +name being printed as “W. Shakespeare.” Then comes +<i>Lucrece </i>(1594). In 1598 <i>Love</i>’<i>s Labour</i>’<i>s +Lost</i>,<i> </i>printed as “corrected and augmented” by +“W. Shakespere.” And so on with all the rest. +Criticism of the learning and splendour of the two poems follows. +To <i>Love</i>’<i>s Labour</i>’<i>s Lost</i>,<i> </i>and +the amusing things written about it by Baconians, I return; and to Shakespeare’s +“impossible” knowledge of courtly society, his “polish +and urbanity,” his familiar acquaintance with contemporary French +politics, foreign proverbs, and “the gossip of the Court” +of Elizabeth: these points are made by His Honour Judge Webb.<br> +<br> +All this lore to Shakespeare is “impossible” - he could +not read, say some Baconians, or had no Latin, or had next to none; +on these points I have said my say. The omniscient Baconians know +that all the early works ascribed to the actor were impossible, to a +man of, say thirty - who <i>was </i>no more, and <i>knew </i>no more, +than they know that the actor was and knew; and as for “Genius,” +it cannot work miracles. Genius “bestows upon no one a knowledge +of facts,” “Shakespeare, however favoured by nature, could +impart only what he had learned.”<br> +<br> +Precisely, but genius as I understand it (and even cleverness) has a +way of acquiring knowledge of facts where the ordinary “dull intelligent +man” gains none. Keen interest, keen curiosity, swift observation, +even the power of tearing out the things essential from a book, the +gift of rapid reading; the faculty of being alive to the fingertips, +- these, with a tenacious memory, may enable a small boy to know more +facts of many sorts than his elders and betters and all the neighbours. +They are puzzled, if they make the discovery of his knowledge. +Scott was such a small boy; whether we think him a man of genius or +not. Shakspere, even the actor, was, perhaps, a man of genius, +and possessed this power of rapid acquisition and vivid retention of +all manner of experience and information. To what I suppose to +have been his opportunities in London, I shall return. Meanwhile, +let the doubter take up any popular English books of Shakespeare’s +day: he will find them replete with much knowledge wholly new to him +- which he will also find in Shakespeare.<br> +<br> +A good example is this: Judge Webb proclaimed that in points of scientific +lore (the lore of that age) Shakespeare and Bacon were much on a level. +Professor Tyrrell, in a newspaper, said that the facts staggered him, +as a “Stratfordian.” A friend told me that he too +was equally moved. I replied that these pseudoscientific “facts” +had long been commonplaces. Pliny was a rich source of them. +Professor Dowden took the matter up, with full knowledge, <a name="citation93a"></a><a href="#footnote93a">{93a}</a> +and reconverted Mr. Tyrrell, who wrote: “I am not versed in the +literature of the Shakespearian era, and I assumed that the Baconians +who put forward the parallelisms had satisfied themselves that the coincidences +were peculiar to the writings of the philosopher and the poet. +Professor Dowden has proved that this is not so.” <a name="citation93b"></a><a href="#footnote93b">{93b}</a><br> +<br> +Were I to enter seriously on this point of genius, I should begin by +requesting my adversaries to read Mr. F. W. H. Myers’s papers +on “The Mechanism of Genius” (in his <i>Human Personality</i>),<i> +</i>and to consider the humble problem of “Calculating Boys,” +which is touched on also by Cardinal Newman. How do they, at the +age of innocence, arrive at their amazing results? How did the +child Pascal, ignorant of Euclid, work out the Euclidean propositions +of “bars and rounds,” as he called lines and circles? +Science has no solution!<br> +<br> +Transport the problem into the region of poetry and knowledge of human +nature, take Will in place of Pascal and Gauss, and (in manners and +matter of war) Jeanne d’Arc; - and science, I fancy, is much to +seek for a reply.<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood considers, among others, the case of Robert Burns. +The parallel is very interesting, and does not, I think, turn so much +to Mr. Greenwood’s advantage as he supposes. The genius +of Burns, of course, is far indeed below the level of that of the author +of the Shakespearean plays. But that author and Burns have this +in common with each other (and obviously with Homer), that their work +arises from a basis of older materials, already manipulated by earlier +artists. Burns almost always has a key-note already touched, as +confessedly in the poems of his predecessor, Fergusson; of Hamilton +of Gilbertfield; in songs, popular or artistic, and so forth. +He “alchemised” his materials, as Mr. Greenwood says of +his author of the plays; turned dross into gold, brick into marble. +Notoriously much Shakespearean work is of the same nature.<br> +<br> +The education of Burns he owed to his peasant father, to his parish +school (in many such schools he might have acquired Latin and Greek; +in fact he did not), to a tutor who read with him some English and French; +and he knew a modernised version of Blind Harry’s <i>Wallace; +</i>Locke’s <i>Essay; The Spectator</i>,<i> </i>novels of the +day, and vernacular Scots poets of his century, with a world of old +Scots songs. These things, and such as these, were Burns’s +given literary materials. He used them in the only way open to +him, in poems written for a rural audience, and published for an Edinburgh +public. No classical, no theatrical materials were given; or, +if he read the old drama, he could not, in his rural conditions, and +in a Scotland where the theatre was in a very small way, venture on +producing plays, for which there was no demand, while he had no knowledge +of the Stage. Burns found and filled the only channels open to +him, in a printed book, and in music books for which he transmuted old +songs.<br> +<br> +The bookish materials offered to Will, in London, were crammed with +reminiscences from the classics, were mainly romantic and theatrical; +and, from his profession of actor, by far the best channel open to him +was the theatre. Badly as it paid the outside author, there was +nothing that paid better. <i>Venus and Adonis </i>brought “more +praise than pudding,” if one may venture a guess. With the +freedom of the theatre Will could soar to all heights and plumb all +depths. No such opportunity had Burns, even if he could have used +it, and, owing to a variety of causes, his spirit soon ceased to soar +high or wing wide.<br> +<br> +I take Shakespeare, in London at least, to have read the current Elizabethan +light literature <i>- Euphues</i>,<i> </i>Lyly’s Court comedies, +novels full of the classics and of social life; Spenser, Sidney - his +<i>Defence of Poesy</i>,<i> </i>and <i>Arcadia </i>(1590) - with scores +of tales translated from the Italian, French, and Spanish, all full +of foreign society, and discourses of knights and ladies. He saw +the plays of the day, perhaps as one of “the groundlings.” +He often beheld Society, from without, when acting before the Queen +and at great houses. He had thus, if I am right, sufficient examples +of style and manner, and knowledge of how the great were supposed (in +books) to comport and conduct themselves. The books were cheap, +and could be borrowed, and turned over at the booksellers’ stalls. +<a name="citation96a"></a><a href="#footnote96a">{96a}</a> The +Elizabethan style was omnipresent. Suppose that Shakespeare was +a clever man, a lover of reading, a rapid reader with an excellent memory, +easily influenced, like Burns, by what he read, and I really think that +my conjectures are not too audacious. Not only “the man +in the street,” but “the reading public” (so loved +by Coleridge), have not the beginning of a guess as to the way in which +a quick man reads. Watch them poring for hours over a newspaper! +Let me quote what Sir Walter Raleigh says: <a name="citation97a"></a><a href="#footnote97a">{97a}</a> +“Shakespeare was one of those swift and masterly readers who know +what they want of a book; they scorn nothing that is dressed in print, +but turn over the pages with a quick discernment of all that brings +them new information, or jumps with their thought, or tickles their +fancy. Such a reader will have done with a volume in a few minutes, +yet what he has taken from it he keeps for years. He is a live +man; and is sometimes judged by slower wits to be a learned man.”<br> +<br> +I am taking Shakespeare to have been a reader of this kind, as was Dr. +Johnson, as are not a few men who have no pretensions to genius. +The accomplishment is only a marvel to - well, I need not be particular +about the kind of person to whom it is a marvel!<br> +<br> +Here, in fairness, the reader should be asked to consider an eloquent +passage of comparison between the knowledge of Burns and of Will, quoted +by Mr. Greenwood <a name="citation97b"></a><a href="#footnote97b">{97b}</a> +from Mr. Morgan. <a name="citation97c"></a><a href="#footnote97c">{97c}</a><br> +<br> +Genius, says Mr. Morgan, “did not guide Burns’s untaught +pen to write of Troy or Egypt, of Athens and Cyprus.” No! +that was not Burns’s lay; nor would he have found a public had +he emulated the contemporary St. Andrews professor, Mr. Wilkie, who +wrote <i>The Epigoniad</i>,<i> </i>and sang of Cadmeian Thebes, to the +delight of David Hume, his friend. The public of 1780-90 did not +want new epics of heroic Greece from Mossgiel; nor was the literature +accessible to Burns full of the mediæval legends of Troy and Athens. +But the popular literature accessible to Will was full of the <i>mediæval +</i>legends of Thebes, Troy, and Athens; and of these, <i>not </i>of +Homer, Will made his market. Egypt he knew only in the new English +version of Plutarch’s <i>Lives; </i>of Homer, he (or the author +of <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>)<i> </i>used only Iliad VII., in Chapman’s +new translation (1598). For the rest he had Lydgate (perhaps), +and, certainly, Caxton’s <i>Destruction of Troy</i>,<i> </i>still +reprinted as a <i>popular </i>book as late as 1713. Will did not, +as Mr. Morgan says, “reproduce the very counterfeit civilisations +and manners of nations born and buried and passed into history a thousand +years before he had been begotten. . . ” He bestowed the +manners of mediæval chivalrous romance on his Trojans and Greeks. +He accommodated prehistoric Athens with a Duke. He gave Scotland +cannon three hundred years too early; and made Cleopatra play at billiards. +Look at his notion of “the very manners” of early post-Roman +Britain in <i>Cymbeline </i>and <i>King Lear</i>!<i> </i>Concerning +“the anomalous status of a King of Scotland under one of its primitive +Kings” the author of <i>Macbeth </i>knew no more than what he +read in Holinshed; of the actual truth concerning Duncan (that old prince +was, in fact, a young man slain in a blacksmith’s bothy), and +of the whole affair, the author knew nothing but a tissue of sophisticated +legends. The author of the plays had no knowledge (as Mr. Morgan +inexplicably declares that he had) of “matters of curious and +occult research for antiquaries or dilettanti to dig out of old romances +or treaties or statutes rather than for historians to treat of or schools +to teach!”<br> +<br> +<i>Mon Dieu</i>!<i> </i>do historians <i>not </i>treat of “matters +of curious research” and of statutes and of treaties? As +for “old romances,” they were current and popular. +The “occult” sources of <i>King Lear </i>are a popular tale +attached to legendary “history” and a story in Sidney’s +<i>Arcadia</i>. Will, whom Mr. Morgan describes as “a letterless +peasant lad,” or the Author, whoever he was, is not “invested +with all the love” (<i>sic</i>,<i> v.1. </i>“lore”),<i> +</i>“which the ages behind him had shut up in clasped books and +buried and forgotten.”<br> +<br> +“Our friend’s style has flowery components,” Mr. Greenwood +adds to this deliciously eloquent passage from his American author, +“and yet Shakespeare who did all this,” <i>et cætera</i>. +But Shakespeare did <i>not </i>do “all this”! We know +the sources of the plays well enough: novels in one of which “Delphos” +is the insular seat of an oracle of Apollo; Holinshed, with his contaminated +legends; North’s <i>Plutarch</i>,<i> </i>done out of the French; +older plays, and the rest of it. Shakespeare does not go to Tighernach +and the <i>Hennskringla </i>for Macbeth; or for Hamlet to the saga which +is the source of Saxo; or for his English chronicle-plays to the State +Papers. Shakespeare did not, like William of Deloraine, dig up +“clasped books, buried and forgotten.” There is no +original research; the author uses the romances, novels, ballads, and +popular books of uncritical history which were current in his day. +Mr. Greenwood knows that; Mr. Morgan, perhaps, knew it, but forgot what +he knew; hurried away by the Muse of Eloquence. And the common +Baconian may believe Mr. Morgan.<br> +<br> +But Mr. Greenwood asks “what was the poetic output?” in +Burns’s case. <a name="citation100a"></a><a href="#footnote100a">{100a}</a> +It was what we know, and <i>that </i>was what suited his age and his +circumstances. It was lyric, idyll, song, and satire; it was not +drama, for to the Stage he had no access, he who passed but one winter +in Edinburgh, where the theatre was not the centre of literature.<br> +<br> +Shakespeare came, with genius and with such materials as I have suggested, +to an entirely different market, the Elizabethan theatre. I have +tried to show how easily his mind might be steeped in the all-pervading +classicism and foreign romance of the period, with the wide, sketchy, +general information, the commonly known fragments from the great banquet +of the classics, - with such history, wholly uncritical, as Holinshed +and Stow, and other such English chroniclers, could copiously provide; +with the courtly manners mirrored in scores of romances and Court plays; +and in the current popular <i>Morte d</i>’<i>Arthur </i>and <i>Destruction +of Troy.<br> +<br> +</i>I can agree with Mr. Greenwood, when he says that “Genius +is a potentiality, and whether it will ever become an actuality, and +what it will produce, depends upon the moral qualities with which it +is associated, and the opportunities that are open to it - in a word, +on the circumstances of its environment.” <a name="citation101a"></a><a href="#footnote101a">{101a}</a><br> +<br> +Of course by “moral qualities,” a character without spot +or stain is not intended: we may take that for granted. Otherwise, +I agree; and think that Shakespeare of Stratford had genius, and that +what it produced was in accordance with the opportunities open to it, +and with “the circumstances of its environment.” Without +the “environment,” no Jeanne d’Arc, - without the +environment, no Shakespeare.<br> +<br> +To come to his own, Shakespeare needed the environment of “the +light people,” the crowd of wits living from hand to mouth by +literature, like Greene and Nash; and he needed that pell-mell of the +productions of their pens: the novels, the poems, the pamphlets, and, +above all, the plays, and the wine, the wild talk, the wit, the travellers’ +tales, the seamen’s company, the vision of the Court, the gallants, +the beauties; and he needed the People, of whom he does not speak in +the terms of such a philanthropist as Bacon professedly was. Not +as an aristocrat, a courtier, but as a simple literary man, William +does not like, though he thoroughly understands, the mob. Like +Alceste (in <i>Le Misanthrope </i>of Poquelin), he might say,<br> +<br> +<br> +“<i>L</i>’<i>Ami du genre humain n</i>’<i>est point +du tout mon fait.</i>”<br> +<br> +<br> +In London, not in Stratford, he could and did find his mob. This +reminds one to ask, how did the Court-haunting, or the study-haunting, +or law-court, and chamber of criminal examination-rooms haunting Bacon +make acquaintance with Mrs. Quickly, and Doll Tearsheet, and drawers, +and carters, and Bardolph, and Pistol, and copper captains, and all +Shakespeare’s crowd of people hanging loose on the town?<br> +<br> +It is much easier to discover how Shakespeare found the tone and manners +of courtly society (which, by the way, are purely poetic and conventional), +than to find out where Bacon got his immense knowledge of what is called +“low life.”<br> +<br> +If you reply, as regards Bacon, “his genius divined the Costards +and Audreys, the Doll Tearsheets and tapsters, and drawers, and Bardolphs, +and carters, from a hint or two, a glance,” I answer that Will +had much better sources for <i>them </i>in his own experience of life, +and had conventional poetic sources for his courtiers - of whom, in +the quick, he saw quite as much as Molière did of his <i>Marquis.<br> +<br> +</i>But one Baconian has found out a more excellent way of accounting +for Bacon’s pictures of rude rustic life, and he is backed by +Lord Penzance, that aged Judge. The way is short. These +pictures of rural life and character were interpolated into the plays +of Bacon by his collaborator, William Shakspere, actor, “who prepared +the plays for the stage.” This brilliant suggestion is borrowed +from Mr. Appleton Morgan. <a name="citation103a"></a><a href="#footnote103a">{103a}</a><br> +<br> +Thus have these two Baconians perceived that it <i>is </i>difficult +to see how Bacon obtained his knowledge of certain worlds and aspects +of character which he could scarcely draw “from the life.” +I am willing to ascribe miracles to the genius of Bacon; but the Baconians +cited give the honour to the actor, “who prepared the plays for +the stage.”<br> +<br> +Take it as you please, my Baconian friends who do not believe as I believe +in “Genius.” Shakespeare and Molière did not +live in “Society,” though both rubbed shoulders with it, +or looked at it over the invisible barrier between the actor and the +great people in whose houses or palaces he takes the part of Entertainer. +The rest they divined, by genius.<br> +<br> +Bacon did not, perhaps, study the society of carters, drawers, Mrs. +Quickly, and Doll Tearsheet; of copper captains and their boys; not +at Court, not in the study, did he meet them. How then did he +create his multitude of very low-lived persons? Rustics and rural +constables he <i>may </i>have lovingly studied at Gorhambury, but for +his collection of other very loose fish Bacon must have kept queer company. +So you have to admit “Genius,” - the miracle of “Genius” +in your Bacon, - to an even greater extent than I need it in the case +of my Will; or, like Lord Penzance, you may suggest that Will collaborated +with Bacon.<br> +<br> +Try to imagine that Will was a born poet, like Burns, but with a very +different genius, education, and environment. Burns could easily +get at the Press, and be published: that was impossible for Shakespeare +at Stratford, if he had written any lyrics. Suppose him to be +a poet, an observer, a wit, a humorist. Tradition at Stratford +says something about the humorist, and tradition, <i>in similar circumstances</i>,<i> +</i>would have remembered no more of Burns, after the lapse of seventy +years.<br> +<br> +Imagine Will, then, to have the nature of a poet (that much I am obliged +to assume), and for nine or ten years, after leaving school at thirteen, +to hang about Stratford, observing nature and man, flowers and foibles, +with thoughts incommunicable to Sturley and Quiney. Some sorts +of park-palings, as he was married at eighteen, he could not break so +lightly as Burns did, - some outlying deer he could not so readily shoot +at, perhaps, but I am not surprised if he assailed other deer, and was +in troubles many. Unlike Burns, he had a keen eye for the main +chance. Everything was going to ruin with his father; school-mastering, +if he tried it (I merely follow tradition), was not satisfactory. +His opinion of dominies, if he wrote the plays, was identical with that +frequently expressed, in fiction and privately, by Sir Walter Scott.<br> +<br> +Something must be done! Perhaps the straitest Baconian will not +deny that companies of players visited Stratford, or even that he may +have seen and talked with them, and been attracted. He was a practical +man, and he made for London, and, by tradition, we first find him heading +straight for the theatre, holding horses at the door, and organising +a small brigade of boys as his deputies. According to Ben Jonson +he shone in conversation; he was good company, despite his rustic accent, +that terrible bar! The actors find that out; he is admitted within +the house as a “servitor” - a call-boy, if you like; an +apprentice, if you please.<br> +<br> +By 1592, when Greene wrote his <i>Groatsworth</i>,<i> </i>“Shakescene” +thinks he can bombast out a blank verse with the best; he is an actor, +he is also an author, or a furbisher of older plays, and, as a member +of the company, is a rival to be dreaded by Greene’s three author +friends: whoever they were, they were professional University playwrights; +the critics think that Marlowe, so near his death, was one of them.<br> +<br> +Will, supposing him to come upon the town in 1587, has now had, say, +five years of such opportunities as were open to a man connected with +the stage. Among these, in that age, we may, perhaps, reckon a +good deal of very mixed society - writing men, bookish young blades, +young blades who haunt the theatre, and sit on the stage, as was the +custom of the gallants.<br> +<br> +What follows? Chaff follows, a kind of intimacy, a supper, perhaps, +after the play, if an actor seems to be good company. This is +quite natural; the most modish young gallants are not so very dainty +as to stand aloof from any amusing company. They found it among +prize-fighters, when Byron was young, and extremely conscious of the +fact that he was a lord. Moreover there were no women on the stage +to distract the attention of the gallants. The players, says Asinius +Lupus, in Jonson’s <i>Poetaster</i>,<i> </i>“corrupt young +gentry very much, I know it.” I take the quotation from +Mr. Greenwood. <a name="citation106a"></a><a href="#footnote106a">{106a}</a> +They could not corrupt the young gentry, if they were not pretty intimate +with them. From Ben’s <i>Poetaster</i>,<i> </i>which bristles +with envy of the players, Mr. Greenwood also quotes a railing address +by a copper captain to Histrio, a poor actor, “There are some +of you players honest, gentlemanlike scoundrels, and suspected to ha’ +some wit, as well as your poets, both at drinking and breaking of jests; +<i>and are companions for gallants</i>. A man may skelder ye, +now and then, of half a dozen shillings or so.” <a name="citation107a"></a><a href="#footnote107a">{107a}</a> +We think of Nigel Olifaunt in <i>The Fortunes of Nigel; </i>but better +gallants might choose to have some acquaintance with Shakespeare.<br> +<br> +To suppose that young men of position would not form a playhouse acquaintanceship +with an amusing and interesting actor seems to me to show misunderstanding +of human nature. The players were, when unprotected by men of +rank, “vagabonds.” The citizens of London, mainly +Puritans, hated them mortally, but the young gallants were not Puritans. +The Court patronised the actors who performed Masques in palaces and +great houses. The wealth and splendid attire of the actors, their +acquisition of land and of coats of arms infuriated the sweated playwrights. +Envy of the actors appears in the Cambridge “Parnassus” +plays of <i>c</i>. 1600-2. In the mouth of Will Kempe, who acted +Dogberry in Shakespeare’s company, and was in favour, says Heywood, +with Queen Elizabeth, the Cambridge authors put this brag: “For +Londoners, who of more report than Dick Burbage and Will Kempe? +He is not counted a gentleman that knows not Dick Burbage and Will Kempe.” +It is not my opinion that Shakespeare was, as Ben Jonson came to be, +as much “in Society” as is possible for a mere literary +man. I do not, in fancy, see him wooing a Maid of Honour. +He was a man’s man, a peer might be interested in him as easily +as in a jockey, a fencer, a tennis-player, a musician, <i>que sçais-je</i>? +Southampton, discovering his qualities, may have been more interested, +interested in a better way.<br> +<br> +In such circumstances which are certainly in accordance with human nature, +I suppose the actor to have been noticed by the young, handsome, popular +Earl of Southampton; who found him interesting, and interested himself +in the poet. There followed the dedication to the Earl of <i>Venus +and Adonis; </i>a poem likely to please any young amorist (1693).<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood cries out at the audacity of a player dedicating to an +Earl, without even saying that he has asked leave to dedicate. +The mere fact that the dedication was accepted, and followed by that +of <i>Lucrece</i>,<i> </i>proves that the Earl did not share the surprise +of Mr. Greenwood. He, conceivably, will argue that the Earl knew +the real concealed author, and the secret of the pseudonym. But +of the hypothesis of such a choice of a pseudonym, enough has been said. +Whatever happened, whatever the Earl knew, if it were discreditable +to be dedicated to by an actor, Southampton was discredited; for we +are to prove that all in the world of letters and theatre who have left +any notice of Shakespeare identified the actor with the poet.<br> +<br> +This appears to me to be the natural way of looking at the affair. +But, says Mr. Greenwood, of this intimacy or “patronage” +of Southampton “not a scrap of evidence exists.” <a name="citation109a"></a><a href="#footnote109a">{109a}</a> +Where would Mr. Greenwood expect to find a scrap of evidence? +In literary anecdote? Of contemporary literary anecdote about +Shakespeare, as about Beaumont, Dekker, Chapman, Heywood, and Fletcher, +there is none, or next to none. There is the tradition that Southampton +gave the poet £1000 towards a purchase to which he had a mind. +(Rowe seems to have got this from Davenant, - through Betterton.) +In what documents would the critic expect to find a scrap of evidence? +Perhaps in Southampton’s book of his expenditure, and that does +not exist. It is in the accounts of Prince Charlie that I find +him, poor as he was, giving money to Jean Jacques Rousseau.<br> +<br> +As to the chances of an actor’s knowing “smart people,” +Heywood, who knew all that world, tells us <a name="citation109b"></a><a href="#footnote109b">{109b}</a> +that “Tarleton, in his time, was gracious with the Queen, his +sovereign,” Queen Elizabeth. “Will Kempe was in the +favour of his sovereign.”<br> +<br> +<i>They </i>had advantages, they were not literary men, but low comedians. +I am not pretending that, though his<br> +<br> +<br> + “flights upon the banks of Thames<br> +So did take Eliza and our James,”<br> +<br> +<br> +Will Shakspere “was gracious with the Queen.”<br> +<br> +We may compare the dedication of the Folio of 1623; here two players +address the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery. They have the audacity +to say nothing about having asked and received permission to dedicate. +They say that the Earls “have prosecuted both the plays and their +authour living” (while in life) “with much favour.” +They “have collected and published the works of ‘the dead’ +. . . only to keep alive the memory of so worthy a Friend, and Fellow” +(associate) “as was our Shakespeare, ‘your servant Shakespeare.’”<br> +<br> +Nothing can possibly be more explicit, both as to the actor’s +authorship of the plays, and as to the favour in which the two Earls +held him. Mr. Greenwood <a name="citation110a"></a><a href="#footnote110a">{110a}</a> +supposes that Jonson wrote the Preface, which contains an allusion to +a well-known ode of Horace, and to a phrase of Pliny. Be that +as it may, the Preface signed by the two players speaks to Pembroke +and Montgomery. To <i>them </i>it cannot lie; <i>they </i>know +whether they patronised the actor or not; whether they believed, or +not, that the plays were their “servant’s.” +How is Mr. Greenwood to overcome this certain testimony of the Actors, +to the identity of their late “Fellow” the player, with +the author; and to the patronage which the Earls bestowed on him and +his compositions? Mr. Greenwood says nothing except that we may +reasonably suppose Ben to have written the dedication which the players +signed. <a name="citation111a"></a><a href="#footnote111a">{111a}</a><br> +<br> +Whether or not the two Earls had a personal knowledge of Shakespeare, +the dedication does not say in so many words. They had seen his +plays and had “favoured” both him and them, with so much +favour, had “used indulgence” to the author. That +is not nearly explicit enough for the precise Baconians. But the +Earls knew whether what was said were true or false. I am not +sure whether the Baconians regard them as having been duped as to the +authorship, or as fellow-conspirators with Ben in the great Baconian +joke and mystery - that “William Shakespeare” the author +is not the actor whose Stratford friend, Collyns, has his name written +in legal documents as “William Shakespeare.”<br> +<br> +Anyone, however, may prefer to believe that, while William Shakspere +was acting in a company (1592-3), Bacon, or who you please, wrote <i>Venus +and Adonis</i>,<i> </i>and, signing “W. Shakspeare,” dedicated +it to his young friend, the Earl, promising to add “some graver +labour,” a promise fulfilled in <i>Lucrece</i>. In 1593, +Bacon was chiefly occupied, we shall see, with the affairs of a young +and beautiful Earl - the Earl of Essex, not of Southampton: to Essex +he did not dedicate his two poems (if <i>Venus </i>and <i>Lucrece </i>were +his). He “did nothing but ruminate” (he tells the +world) on Essex. How Mr. Greenwood’s Unknown was occupied +in 1593-4, of course we cannot possibly be aware.<br> +<br> +I have thus tried to show that Will Shakspere, if he had as much schooling +as I suggest; and if he had four or five years of life in London, about +the theatre, and, above all, had genius, might, by 1592, be the rising +player-author alluded to as “Shakescene.” There remains +a difficulty. By 1592 Will had not time to be guilty of <i>thirteen +</i>plays, or even of six. But I have not credited him with the +authorship, between, say, 1587 and 1593, of eleven plays, namely, <i>Hamlet</i>,<i> +Romeo and Juliet</i>,<i> Midsummer Night</i>’<i>s Dream</i>,<i> +Titus Andronicus</i>,<i> Comedy of Errors</i>,<i> Love</i>’<i>s +Labour</i>’<i>s Lost</i>,<i> King John</i>,<i> </i>the three plays +of <i>Henry VI</i>,<i> </i>and <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i>. +Mr. Greenwood <a name="citation112a"></a><a href="#footnote112a">{112a}</a> +cites Judge Webb for the fact that between the end of 1587 and the end +of 1592 “some half-dozen Shakespearean dramas had been written,” +and for Dr. Furnivall’s opinion that eleven had been composed.<br> +<br> +If I believed that half a dozen, or eleven Shakespearean plays, as we +have them, had been written or composed, between 1587 and 1592, I should +be obliged to say that, in my opinion, they were not composed, in these +five years, by Will. Mr. Greenwood writes, “Some of the +dates are disputable”; and, for himself, would omit “<i>Titus +Andronicus</i>,<i> </i>the three plays of <i>Henry VI</i>,<i> </i>and +possibly also <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i>,<i> </i>while the reference +to <i>Hamlet </i>also is, as I have elsewhere shown, of very doubtful +force.” <a name="citation113a"></a><a href="#footnote113a">{113a}</a> +This leaves us with six of Dr. Furnivall’s list of earliest plays +put out of action. The miracle is decomposing, but plays numerous +enough to stagger my credulity remain.<br> +<br> +I cannot believe that the author even of the five plays before 1592-3 +was the ex-butcher’s boy. Meanwhile these five plays, written +by somebody before 1593, meet the reader on the threshold of Mr. Greenwood’s +book <a name="citation113b"></a><a href="#footnote113b">{113b}</a> with +Dr. Furnivall’s eleven; and they fairly frighten him, if he be +a “Stratfordian.” “Will, even Will,” says +the Stratfordian, “could not have composed the five, much less +the eleven, much less Mr. Edwin Reed’s thirteen ‘before +1592.’” <a name="citation113c"></a><a href="#footnote113c">{113c}</a> +But, at the close of his work <a name="citation113d"></a><a href="#footnote113d">{113d}</a> +Mr. Greenwood reviews and disbands that unlucky troop of thirteen Shakespearean +plays “before 1592” as mustered by Mr. Reed, a Baconian +of whom Mr. Collins wrote in terms worthy of <i>feu </i>Mr. Bludyer +of <i>The Tomahawk.<br> +<br> +</i>From the five plays left to Shakespeare’s account in p. 51, +<i>King John </i>(as we know it) is now eliminated. “I find +it impossible to believe that the same man was the author of the drama” +(<i>The Troublesome Reign of King John</i>)<i> </i>“published +in 1591, and that which, so far as we know, first saw the light in the +Folio of 1623 . . . Hardly a single line of the original version +reappears in the <i>King John </i>of Shakespeare.” <a name="citation114a"></a><a href="#footnote114a">{114a}</a> +“I think it is a mistake to endeavour to fortify the argument +against him” (my Will, <i>toi que j</i>’<i>aime</i>),<i> +</i>“by ascribing to Shakespeare such old plays as the <i>King +John </i>of 1591 or the primitive <i>Hamlet</i>.” <a name="citation114b"></a><a href="#footnote114b">{114b}</a><br> +<br> +I thought so too, when I read p. 51, and saw <i>King John </i>apparently +still “coloured on the card” among “Shakespeare’s +lot.” We are now left with <i>Love</i>’<i>s Labour</i>’<i>s +Lost</i>,<i> Midsummer Night</i>’<i>s Dream</i>,<i> Comedy of +Errors</i>,<i> </i>and <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>,<i> </i>out of Dr. Furnivall’s +list of plays up to 1593. The phantom force of miraculously early +plays is “following darkness like a dream.” We do +not know the date of <i>A Midsummer Night</i>’<i>s Dream</i>,<i> +</i>we do not know the date of <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>. Mr. Gollancz +dates the former “about 1592,” and the latter “at +1591.” <a name="citation114c"></a><a href="#footnote114c">{114c}</a> +This is a mere personal speculation. Of <i>Love</i>’<i>s +Labour</i>’<i>s Lost</i>,<i> </i>we only know that our version +is one “corrected and augmented” by William Shakespeare +in 1598. I dare say it is as early as 1591-2, in its older form. +Of <i>The Comedy of Errors</i>,<i> </i>Mr. Collins wrote, “It +is all but certain that it was written between 1589 and 1592, and it +is quite certain that it was written before the end of 1594.” +<a name="citation114d"></a><a href="#footnote114d">{114d}</a><br> +<br> +The legion of Shakespearean plays of date before 1593 has vanished. +The miracle is very considerably abated. In place of introducing +the airy hosts of plays before 1592, in p. 51, it would have been, perhaps, +more instructive to write that, as far as we can calculate, Shakespeare’s +earliest trials of his pinions as a dramatist may be placed about 1591-3. +There would then have been no specious appearance of miracles to be +credited by Stratfordians to Will. But even so, we have sufficient +to “give us pause,” says Mr. Greenwood, with justice. +It gives <i>me </i>“pause,” if I am to believe that, between +1587 and 1592, Will wrote <i>Love</i>’<i>s Labour</i>’<i>s +Lost</i>,<i> The Comedy of Errors</i>,<i> A Midsummer Night</i>’<i>s +Dream</i>,<i> </i>and <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>. There is a limit +even to my gullibility, and if anyone wrote all these plays, as we now +possess them, before 1593, I do not suppose that Will was the man. +But the dates, in fact, are unknown: the miracle is apocryphal.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VI: THE COURTLY PLAYS: “LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +We now come to consider another “miracle” discovered in +the plays, - a miracle if the actor be the author. The new portent +is the courtliness and refinement (too often, alas! the noblest ladies +make the coarsest jokes) and wit of the speeches of the noble gentlemen +and ladies in the plays. To be sure the refinement in the jests +is often conspicuously absent. How could the rude actor learn +his quips and pretty phrases, and farfetched conceits? This question +I have tried to answer already, - the whole of these fashions abound +in the literature of the day.<br> +<br> +Here let us get rid of the assumption that a poet could not make the +ladies and gentlemen of his plays converse as they do converse, whether +in quips and airs and graces, or in loftier style, unless he himself +frequented their society. Marlowe did not frequent the best society; +<i>he </i>was no courtier, but there is the high courtly style in the +speeches of the great and noble in <i>Edward II</i>. Courtiers +and kings never did speak in this manner, any more than they spoke in +blank verse. The style is a poetical convention, while the quips +and conceits, the airs and graces, ran riot through the literature of +the age of Lyly and his <i>Euphues </i>and his comedies, the age of +the <i>Arcadia.<br> +<br> +</i>A cheap and probable source of Will’s courtliness is to be +found in the courtly comedies of John Lyly, five of which were separately +printed between 1584 and 1592. Lyly’s “real significance +is that he was the first to bring together on the English stage the +elements of high comedy, thereby preparing the way for Shakespeare’s +<i>Much Ado about Nothing </i>and <i>As You Like It</i>”<i> </i>(and +<i>Love</i>’<i>s Labour</i>’<i>s Lost</i>,<i> </i>one may +add). “Whoever knows his Shakespeare and his Lyly well can +hardly miss the many evidences that Shakespeare had read Lyly’s +plays almost as closely as Lyly had read Pliny’s <i>Natural History. +</i>. . . One could hardly imagine <i>Love</i>’<i>s Labour</i>’<i>s +Lost </i>as existent in the period from 1590 to 1600, had not Lyly’s +work just preceded it.” <a name="citation120a"></a><a href="#footnote120a">{120a}</a><br> +<br> +“It is to Lyly’s plays,” writes Dr. Landmann, “that +Shakespeare owes so much in the liveliness of his dialogues, in smartness +of expression, and especially in that predilection for witticisms, quibbles, +and playing upon words which he shows in his comedies as well as in +his tragedies.” There follows a dissertation on the affected +styles of Guevara and Gongora, of the <i>Pléiade </i>in France, +and generally of the artificial manner in Europe, till in England we +reach Lyly, “in whose comedies,” says Dr. Furness, “I +think we should look for motives which appeared later in Shakespeare.” +<a name="citation121a"></a><a href="#footnote121a">{121a}</a><br> +<br> +The Baconians who think that a poet could not derive from books and +court plays his knowledge of fashions far more prevalent in literature +than at Court, decide that the poet of <i>Love</i>’<i>s Labour</i>’<i>s +Lost </i>was not Will, but the courtly “concealed poet.” +No doubt Baconians may argue with Mr. R. M. Theobald <a name="citation121b"></a><a href="#footnote121b">{121b}</a> +that “Bacon wrote Marlowe,” and, by parity of reasoning +many urge, though Mr. Theobald does not, that Bacon wrote Lyly, pouring +into Lyly’s comedies the grace and wit, the quips and conceits +of his own courtly youth. “What for no?” The +hypothesis is as good as the other hypotheses, “Bacon wrote Marlowe,” +“Bacon wrote Shakespeare.”<br> +<br> +The less impulsive Baconians and the Anti-Willians appear to ignore +the well-known affected novels which were open to all the world, and +are noted even in short educational histories of English literature. +Shakespeare, in London, had only to look at the books on the stalls, +to read or, if he had the chance, to see Lyly’s plays, and read +the poems of the time. I am taking him not to be a dullard but +a poet. It was not hard for him, if he were a poet of genius, +not only to catch the manner of Lyly’s Court comedies, and “Marlowe’s +mighty line” (Marlowe was not “brought up on the knees of +Marchionesses”!), but to improve on them. People did not +commonly talk in the poetical way, heaven knows; people did not write +in the poetic convention. Certainly Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth +talked and wrote, as a rule (we have abundance of their letters), like +women of this world. There is a curious exception in Letter VIII +of the Casket Letters from Mary to Bothwell. In this (we have +a copy of the original French), Mary plunges into the affected and figured +style already practised by <i>Les Précieuses </i>of her day; +and expands into symbolisms in a fantastic jargon. If courtiers +of both sexes conversed in the style of <i>Euphues </i>(which is improbable), +they learned the trick of it from <i>Euphues; </i>not the author of +<i>Euphues </i>from them. Lyly’s most popular prose was +accessible to Shakespeare. The whole convention as to how the +great should speak and bear themselves was accessible in poetry and +the drama. A man of genius naturally made his ladies and courtiers +more witty, more “conceited,” more eloquent, more gracious +than any human beings ever were anywhere, in daily life.<br> +<br> +It seems scarcely credible that one should be obliged to urge facts +so obvious against the Baconian argument that only a Bacon, intimately +familiar with the society of the great, could make the great speak as, +in the plays, they do - and as in real life they probably did <i>not</i>!<br> +<br> +We now look at <i>Love</i>’<i>s Labour</i>’<i>s Lost</i>,<i> +</i>published in quarto, in 1598, as “corrected and augmented +by W. Shakespere.” The date of composition is unknown, but +the many varieties of versification, with some allusions, mark it as +among the earliest of the dramas. Supposing that Shakespeare obtained +his knowledge of fine manners and speech, and of the tedious quips and +conceits which he satirises, from the contemporary poems, plays, and +novels which abounded in them, and from <i>précieux </i>and <i>précieuses +</i>who imitated them, as I suggest, even then <i>Love</i>’<i>s +Labour</i>’<i>s Lost </i>is an extremely eccentric piece. +I cannot imagine how a man who knew the foreign politics of his age +as Bacon did, could have dreamed of writing anything so eccentric, that +is, if it has any connection with foreign politics of the time.<br> +<br> +The scene is the Court of <i>Ferdinand</i>,<i> </i>King of Navarre. +In 1589-93, the eyes of England were fixed on the Court of her ally, +<i>Henri </i>of Navarre, in his struggle with the League and the Guises; +the War of Religion. But the poet calls the King “Ferdinand,” +taking perhaps from some story this non-existent son of Charles III +of Navarre (died 1425): to whom, according to Monstrelet, the Burgundian +chronicler of that time, the French king owed 200,000 ducats of gold. +This is a transaction of the early fifteenth century, and leads to the +presence of the princess of France as an envoy at the Court of Navarre +in the play; the whole thing is quite unhistorical, and has the air +of being borrowed from some lost story or brief novel. Bacon’s +brother, Anthony, was English minister at the Court of Navarre. +What could tempt Bacon to pick out a non-historical King Ferdinand of +Navarre, plant him in the distant days of Jeanne d’Arc, and make +him, at that period, found an Academe for three years of austere study +and absence of women? But, if Bacon did this, what could induce +him to give to the non-existent Ferdinand, as companions, the Maréchal +de Biron with de Longueville (both of them, in 1589-93, the chief adherents +of Henri of Navarre), and add to them “Dumain,” that is, +the Duc de Mayenne, one of the Guises, the deadly foes of Henri and +of the Huguenots? Even in the unhistorically minded Shakespeare, +the freak is of the most eccentric, - but in Bacon this friskiness is +indeed strange. I cannot, like Mr. Greenwood, <a name="citation124a"></a><a href="#footnote124a">{124a}</a> +find any “allusions to the Civil War of France.” France +and Navarre, in the play, are in full peace.<br> +<br> +The actual date of the fabulous King Ferdinand would have been about +1430. By introducing Biron, Longueville, and the Duc de Mayenne, +and Bankes’s celebrated educated horse, the author shifts the +date to 1591. But the Navarre of the play is a region “out +of space, out of time,” a fairy world of projected Academes (like +that of the four young men in de la Primaudaye’s <i>L</i>’<i>Académie +Française</i>,<i> </i>Englished in 1586) and of peace, while +the actual King of Navarre of 1591 was engaged in a struggle for life +and faith; and in his ceaseless amours.<br> +<br> +Many of Shakespeare’s anachronisms are easily intelligible. +He takes a novel or story about any remote period, or he chooses, as +for the <i>Midsummer Night</i>’<i>s Dream</i>,<i> </i>a period +earlier than that of the Trojan war. He gives to the Athens contemporary +with the “Late Minoan III” period (1600 B.C.?) a Duke, and +his personages live like English nobles and rustics of his own day, +among the fairies of English folk-lore. It is the manner of Chaucer +and of the poets and painters of any age before the end of the eighteenth +century. The resulting anachronisms are natural and intelligible. +We do not expect war-chariots in <i>Troilus and Cressida; </i>it is +when the author makes the bronze-clad Achæans familiar with Plato +and Aristotle that we are surprised. In <i>Love</i>’<i>s +Labour</i>’<i>s Lost </i>we do not expect the author to introduce +the manners of the early fifteenth century, the date of the affair of +the 200,000 ducats. Let the play reflect the men and manners of +1589-93, - but why place Mayenne, a fanatical Catholic foe of Navarre, +among the courtiers of the Huguenot King of Navarre?<br> +<br> +As for de Mayenne (under the English spelling of the day Dumain) appearing +as a courtier of his hated adversary Henri, Bacon, of all men, could +not have made that absurd error. It was Shakespeare who took but +an absent-minded interest in foreign politics. If Bacon is building +his play on an affair, the ducats, of 1425-35 (roughly speaking), he +should not bring in a performing horse, trained by Bankes, a Staffordshire +man, which was performing its tricks at Shrewsbury - in 1591. <a name="citation126a"></a><a href="#footnote126a">{126a}</a> +Thus early we find that great scholar mixing up chronology in a way +which, in Shakespeare even, surprises; but, in Bacon, seems quite out +of keeping.<br> +<br> +Shakespeare, as Sir Sidney Lee says, gives Mayenne as “Dumain,” +- Mayenne, “whose name was so frequently mentioned in popular +accounts of French affairs in connection with Navarre’s movements +that Shakespeare was led to number him also among his supporters.” +Bacon would not have been so led! As Mayenne and Henri fought +against each other at Ivry, in 1590, this was carrying nonsense far, +even for Will, but for the earnestly instructive Bacon!<br> +<br> +“The habits of the author could not have been more scholastic,” +so Judge Webb is quoted, “if he had, like Bacon, spent three years +in the University of Cambridge . . . ” Bacon, or whoever +corrected the play in 1598, might have corrected “primater” +into “pia mater,” unless Bacon intended the blunder for +a malapropism of “Nathaniel, a Curate.” Either Will +or Bacon, either in fun or ignorance, makes Nathaniel turn a common +Italian proverb on Venice into gibberish. It was familiar in Florio’s +<i>Second Frutes </i>(1591), and <i>First Frutes </i>(1578), with the +English translation. The books were as accessible to Shakspere +as to Bacon. Either author might also draw from James Sandford’s +<i>Garden of Pleasure</i>,<i> </i>done out of the Italian in 1573-6.<br> +<br> +Where the scholastic habits of Bacon at Cambridge are to be discovered +in this play, I know not, unless it be in Biron’s witty speech +against study. If the wit implies in the author a Cambridge education, +Costard and Dull and Holofernes imply familiarity with rustics and country +schoolmasters. Where the author proves that he “could not +have been more familiar with French politics if, like Bacon, he had +spent three years in the train of an Ambassador to France,” I +cannot conjecture. <i>There are no French politics in the piece</i>,<i> +</i>any more than there are “mysteries of fashionable life,” +such as Bacon might have heard of from Essex and Southampton. +There is no “familiarity with all the gossip of the Court”; +there is no greater knowledge of foreign proverbs than could be got +from common English books. There is abundance, indeed overabundance +of ridicule of affected styles, and quips, with which the literature +of the day was crammed: call it Gongorism, Euphuism, or what you please. +One does not understand how or where Judge Webb (in extreme old age) +made all these discoveries, sympathetically quoted by Mr. Greenwood. +<a name="citation127a"></a><a href="#footnote127a">{127a}</a> +“Like Bacon, the author of the play must have had a large command +of books; he must have had his “Horace,” his “Ovidius +Naso,” and his “good old ‘Mantuan.’” +What a prodigious “command of books”! Country schoolmasters +confessedly had these books on the school desks. It was not even +necessary for the author to “have access to the <i>Chronicles +</i>of Monstrelet.” It is not known, we have said, whether +or not such plot as the play possesses, with King Ferdinand and the +100,000 ducats, or 200,000 ducats (needed to bring the Princess and +the mythical King Ferdinand of Navarre together), were not adapted by +the poet from an undiscovered <i>conte</i>,<i> </i>partly based on a +passage in Monstrelet.<br> +<br> +Perhaps it will be conceded that <i>Love</i>’<i>s Labour</i>’<i>s +Lost </i>is not a play which can easily be attributed to Bacon. +We do not know how much of the play existed before Shakespeare “augmented” +it in 1598. We do not know whether what he then corrected and +augmented was an early work of his own or from another hand, though +probably it was his own. Molière certainly corrected and +augmented and transfigured, in his illustrious career in Paris, several +of the brief early sketches which he had written when he was the chief +of a strolling <i>troupe </i>in Southern France.<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood does not attribute the wit (such as it is), the quips, +the conceits, the affectations satirised in <i>Love</i>’<i>s Labour</i>’<i>s +Lost</i>,<i> </i>to Will’s knowledge of the artificial style then +prevalent in all the literatures of Western Europe, and in England most +pleasingly used in Lyly’s comedies. No, “the author +must have been not only a man of high intellectual culture, but one +who was intimately acquainted with the ways of the Court, and the fashionable +society of his time, as also with contemporary foreign politics.” +<a name="citation129a"></a><a href="#footnote129a">{129a}</a><br> +<br> +I search the play once more for the faintest hint of knowledge of foreign +politics. The embassy of the daughter of the King of France (who, +by the date of the affair of the ducats, should be Charles VII) has +been compared to a diplomatic sally of the mother of the childless actual +King of France (Henri III), in 1586, when Catherine de Medici was no +chicken. I do not see in the embassy of the Princess of the story +any “intimate acquaintance with contemporary foreign politics” +about 1591-3. The introduction of Mayenne as an adherent of the +King of Navarre, shows either a most confused ignorance of foreign politics +on the part of the author, or a freakish contempt for his public. +I am not aware that the author shows any “intimate acquaintance +with the ways” of Elizabeth’s Court, or of any other fashionable +society, except the Courts which Fancy held in plays.<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood <a name="citation129b"></a><a href="#footnote129b">{129b}</a> +appears to be repeating “the case as to this very remarkable play” +as “well summed up by the late Judge Webb in his <i>Mystery of +William Shakespeare</i>”<i> </i>(p. 44). In that paralysing +judicial summary, as we have seen, “the author could not have +been more familiar with French politics if, like Bacon, he had spent +three years in the train of an Ambassador to France.” The +French politics, in the play, are to send the daughter of a King of +France (the contemporary King Henri III was childless) to conduct a +negotiation about 200,000 ducats, at the Court, steeped in peace, of +a King of Navarre, a scholar who would fain be a recluse from women, +in an Academe of his own device. Such was not the Navarre of Henri +in his war with the Guises, and Henri did not shun the sex!<br> +<br> +Such are the “contemporary foreign politics,” the “French +politics” which the author knows - as intimately as Bacon might +have known them. They are not foreign politics, they are not French +politics, they are politics of fairy-land: with which Will was at least +as familiar as Bacon.<br> +<br> +These, then, are the arguments in favour of Bacon, or the Great Unknown, +which are offered with perfect solemnity of assurance: and the Baconians +repeat them in their little books of popularisation and propaganda. +<i>Quantula sapientia</i>!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VII: CONTEMPORARY RECOGNITION OF WILL AS AUTHOR<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +It is absolutely impossible to prove that Will, or Bacon, or the Man +in the Moon, was the author of the Shakespearean plays and poems. +But it is easy to prove that Will was recognised as the author, by Ben +Jonson, Heywood, and Heminge and Condell the actors, to take the best +witnesses. Meanwhile we have received no hint that any man except +Will was ever suspected of being the author till 1856, when the twin +stars of Miss Delia Bacon and Mr. Smith arose. The evidence of +Ben Jonson and the rest can only prove that professed playwrights and +actors, who knew Will both on and off the stage, saw nothing in him +not compatible with his work. Had he been the kind of letterless +country fellow, or bookless fellow whom the Baconians and Mr. Greenwood +describe, the contemporary witnesses cited must have detected Will in +a day; and the story of the “Concealed Poet” who really, +at first, did the additions and changes in the Company’s older +manuscript plays, and of the inconceivably impudent pretences of Will +of Stratford, would have kept the town merry for a month. Five +or six threadbare scholars would have sat down at a long table in a +tavern room, and, after their manner, dashed off a Comedy of Errors +on the real and the false playwright.<br> +<br> +Baconians never seem to think of the mechanical difficulties in their +assumed literary hoax. If Will, like the old Hermit of Prague +who never saw pen and ink, could not even write, the hoax was a physical +impossibility. If he could write, but was a rough bookless man, +his condition would be scarcely the more gracious, even if he were able +to copy in his scrawl the fine Roman hand of the concealed poet. +I am surprised that the Baconians have never made that point. +Will’s “copy” was almost without blot or erasion, +the other actors were wont to boast. Really the absence of erasions +and corrections is too easily explained on the theory that Will was +<i>not </i>the author. Will merely copied the fair copies handed +to him by the concealed poet. The farce was played for some twenty +years, and was either undetected or all concerned kept the dread secret +- and all the other companies and rival authors were concerned in exposing +the imposture.<br> +<br> +The whole story is like the dream of a child. We therefore expect +the Anti-Willians to endeavour to disable the evidence of Jonson, Heywood, +Heminge, and Condell. Their attempts take the shape of the most +extravagant and complex conjectures; with certain petty objections to +Ben’s various estimates of the <i>merits </i>of the plays. +He is constant in his witness to the authorship. To these efforts +of despair we return later, when we hope to justify what is here deliberately +advanced.<br> +<br> +Meanwhile we study Mr. Greenwood’s attempts to destroy or weaken +the testimony of contemporary literary allusions, in prose or verse, +to the plays as the work of the actor. Mr. Greenwood rests on +an argument which perhaps could only have occurred to legal minds, originally, +perhaps to the mind of Judge Webb, not in the prime vigour of his faculties. +Not very many literary allusions remain, made during Will’s life-time, +to the plays of Shakespeare. The writers, usually, speak of “Shakespeare,” +or “W. Shakespeare,” or “Will Shakespeare,” +and leave it there. In the same way, when they speak of other +contemporaries, they name them, - and leave it there, without telling +us “who” (Frank) Beaumont, or (Kit) Marlowe, or (Robin) +Greene, or (Jack) Fletcher, or any of the others “were.” +All interested readers knew who they were: and also knew who “Shakespeare” +or “Will Shakespeare” was. No other Will Shak(&c.) +was prominently before the literary and dramatic world, in 1592-1616, +except the Warwickshire provincial who played with Burbage.<br> +<br> +But though the mere names of the poets, Ben Jonson, Kit Marlowe, Frank +Beaumont, Harry Chettle, and so forth, are accepted as indicating the +well-known men whom they designate, this evidence to identity does not +satisfy Mr. Greenwood, and the Baconians, where Will is concerned. +“We should expect to find allusions to dramatic and poetical works +published under the name of ‘Shakespeare’; we should expect +to find Shakespeare spoken of as a poet and a dramatist; we should expect, +further, to find some few allusions to Shakespeare or Shakspere the +player. And these, of course, we do find; but these are not the +objects of our quest. What we require is evidence to establish +the identity of the player with the poet and dramatist; to prove that +the player was the author of the <i>Plays </i>and <i>Poems. That +</i>is the proposition to be established, and <i>that </i>the allusions +fail, as it appears to me, to prove,” says Mr. Greenwood. +He adds, “At any rate they do not disprove the theory that the +true authorship was hidden under a pseudonym” <a name="citation136a"></a><a href="#footnote136a">{136a}</a> +- which raises an entirely different question.<br> +<br> +Makers of allusions to the plays must identify Shakespeare with the +actor, explicitly; must tell us who this Shakespeare was, though they +need not, and usually do not, tell us who the other authors mentioned +were; and though the world of letters and the Stage knew but one William +Shakspere or Shakespeare, who was far too familiar to them to require +further identification. But even if the makers of allusions did +all this, and said, “by W. Shakespeare the poet, we mean W. Shakespeare +the actor”<i> - that </i>is not enough. For they may all +be deceived, may all believe that a bookless, untutored man is the author. +So we cannot get evidence correct enough for Mr. Greenwood.<br> +<br> +Destitute as I am of legal training, I leave this notable way of disposing +of the evidence to the judgement of the Bench and the Bar, a layman +intermeddleth not with it. Still, I am, like other readers, on +the Jury addressed, - I do not accept the arguments. <i>Miror +magis</i>,<i> </i>as Mr. Greenwood might quote Latin. We have +already seen one example of this argument, when Heywood speaks of the +author of poems by Shakespeare, published in <i>The Passionate Pilgrim</i>. +Heywood does nothing to identify the actor Shakspere with the author +Shakespeare, says Mr. Greenwood. I shall prove that, elsewhere, +Heywood does identify them, and no man knew more of the world of playwrights +and actors than Heywood. I add that in his remarks on <i>The Passionate +Pilgrim</i>,<i> </i>Heywood had no need to say “by W. Shakespeare +I mean the well-known actor in the King’s Company.” +There was no other William Shakspere or Shakespeare known to his public.<br> +<br> +It is to no purpose that Mr. Greenwood denies, as we have seen above, +that the allusions “disprove the theory that the true authorship +was hidden under a pseudonym.” That is an entirely different +question. He is now starting quite another hare. Men of +letters who alluded to the plays and poems of William Shakespeare, meant +the actor; that is my position. That they may all have been mistaken: +that “William Shakespeare” was Bacon’s, or any one’s +pseudonym, is, I repeat, a wholly different question; and we must not +allow the critic to glide away into it through an “at any rate”; +as he does three or four times. So far, then, Mr. Greenwood’s +theory that it was impossible for the actor Shakspere to have been the +author of the plays, encounters the difficulty that no contemporary +attributed them to any other hand: that none is known to have said, +“This Warwickshire man cannot be the author.”<br> +<br> +“Let us, however, examine some of these allusions to Shakspere, +real or supposed,” says the critic. <a name="citation138a"></a><a href="#footnote138a">{138a}</a> +He begins with the hackneyed words of the dying man of letters, Robert +Greene, in <i>A Groatsworth of Wit </i>(1592). The pamphlet is +addressed to Gentlemen of his acquaintance “that spend their wits +in making plays”; he “wisheth them a better exercise,” +and better fortunes than his own. (Marlowe is supposed to be one +of the three Gentlemen playwrights, but such suppositions do not here +concern us.) Greene’s is the ancient feud between the players +and the authors, between capital and labour. The players are the +capitalists, and buy the plays out and out, - cheap. The author +has no royalties; and no control over the future of his work, which +a Shakspere or a Bacon, a Jonson or a Chettle, or any handyman of the +company owning the play, may alter as he pleases. It is highly +probable that the actors also acquired most of the popular renown, for, +even now, playgoers have much to say about the players in a piece, while +they seldom know the name of the playwright. Women fall in love +with the actors, not with the authors; but with “those puppets,” +as Greene says, “that speake from our mouths, these anticks, garnished +in our colours.” Ben Jonson, we shall see, makes some of +the same complaints, - most natural in the circumstances: though he +managed to retain the control of his dramas; how, I do not know. +Greene adds that in his misfortunes, illness, and poverty, he is ungratefully +“forsaken,” by the players, and warns his friends that such +may be <i>their </i>lot; advising them to seek “some better exercise.” +He then writes - and his meaning cannot easily be misunderstood, I think, +but misunderstood it has been - “Yes, trust them not” (trust +not the players), “FOR there is an upstart crow, beautified with +our feathers, that with his <i>Tyger</i>’<i>s heart wrapt in a +Player</i>’<i>s hide</i>”<i> </i>(“Player’s” +in place of “woman’s,” in an old play, <i>The Tragedy +of Richard</i>,<i> Duke of York</i>,<i> </i>&c.), “supposes +he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; +and being an absolute <i>Johannes Factotum</i>,<i> </i>is in his own +conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.”<br> +<br> +The meaning is pellucid. “Do not trust the players, my fellow +playwrights, for the reasons already given, for they, in addition to +their glory gained by mouthing <i>our </i>words, and their ingratitude, +may now forsake you for one of themselves, a player, who thinks his +blank verse as good as the best of yours” (including Marlowe’s, +probably). “The man is ready at their call (“an absolute +<i>Johannes Factotum</i>”)<i>. </i>“In his own conceit” +he is “the only Shake-scene in a country.” “Seek +you better masters,” than these players, who have now an author +among themselves, “the only Shake-scene,” where the pun +on Shakespeare does not look like a fortuitous coincidence. But +it may be, anything may happen.<br> +<br> +The sense, I repeat, is pellucid. But Mr. Greenwood writes that +if Shake-scene be an allusion to Shakespeare “it seems clear that +it is as an actor rather than as an author he is attacked.” <a name="citation140a"></a><a href="#footnote140a">{140a}</a> +As an <i>actor </i>the person alluded to is merely assailed with the +other actors, his “fellows.” But he is picked out +as presenting another and a new reason why authors should distrust the +players, “<i>for </i>there is” among themselves, “in +a player’s hide,” “an upstart crow” - who thinks +his blank verse as good as the best of theirs. He is, therefore, +necessarily a playwright, and being a <i>factotum</i>,<i> </i>can readily +be employed by the players to the prejudice of Greene’s three +friends, who are professed playwrights.<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood says that “we do not know why Greene should have +been so particularly bitter against the players, and why he should have +thought it necessary so seriously to warn his fellow playwrights against +them.” <a name="citation141a"></a><a href="#footnote141a">{141a}</a> +But we cannot help knowing; for Greene has told us. In addition +to gaining renown solely through mouthing “<i>our</i>”<i> +</i>words, wearing “<i>our </i>feathers,” they have been +bitterly ungrateful to Greene in his poverty and sickness; they will, +in the same circumstances, as cruelly forsake his friends; “yes, +for they now have” an author, and to the playwrights a dangerous +rival, in their own fellowship. Thus we know with absolute certainty +why Greene wrote as he did. He says nothing about the superior +financial gains of the players, which Mr. Greenwood suspects to have +been the “only” cause of his bitterness. Greene gives +its causes in the plainest possible terms, as did Ben Jonson later, +in his verses “Poet-Ape” (Playwright-Actor). Moreover, +Mr. Greenwood gives Greene’s obvious motives on the very page +where he says that we do not know them.<br> +<br> +Even Mr. Greenwood, <a name="citation141b"></a><a href="#footnote141b">{141b}</a> +anxious as he is to prove Shake-scene to be attacked as an actor, admits +that the words “supposes himself as well able to bumbast out a +blank verse as the best of you,” “do seem to have that implication,” +<a name="citation141c"></a><a href="#footnote141c">{141c}</a> namely, +that “Shake-scene” is a dramatic author: what else can the +words mean; why, if not for the Stage, should Shake-scene write blank +verse?<br> +<br> +Finally Mr. Greenwood, after saying “it is clear that it is as +an actor rather than as an author that ‘Shake-scene’ is +attacked,” <a name="citation142a"></a><a href="#footnote142a">{142a}</a> +concedes <a name="citation142b"></a><a href="#footnote142b">{142b}</a> +that it “certainly looks as if he” (Greene) “meant +to suggest that this Shake-scene supposed himself able to compose, as +well as to mouth verses.” Nothing else can possibly be meant. +“The rest of you” were authors, not actors.<br> +<br> +If not, why, in a whole company of actors, should “Shake-scene” +alone be selected for a special victim? Shake-scene is chosen +out because, as an author, a factotum always ready at need, he is more +apt than the professed playwrights to be employed as author by his company: +this is a new reason for not trusting the players.<br> +<br> +I am not going to take the trouble to argue as to whether, in the circumstances +of the case, “Shake-scene” is meant by Greene for a pun +on “Shake-speare,” or not. If he had some other rising +player-author, the Factotum of a cry of players, in his mind, Baconians +may search for that personage in the records of the stage. That +other player-author may have died young, or faded into obscurity. +The term “the only Shake-scene” may be one of those curious +coincidences which do occur. The presumption lies rather on the +other side. I demur, when Mr. Greenwood courageously struggling +for his case says that, even assuming the validity of the surmise that +there is an allusion to Shakspere, <a name="citation143a"></a><a href="#footnote143a">{143a}</a> +“the utmost that we should be entitled to say is that Greene here +accuses Player Shakspere of putting forward, as his own, some work, +or perhaps some parts of a work, for which he was really indebted to +another” (the Great Unknown?). I do more than demur, I defy +any man to exhibit that sense in Greene’s words.<br> +<br> +“The utmost that we should be entitled to say,” is, in my +opinion, what we have no shadow of a title to say. Look at the +poor hackneyed, tortured words of Greene again. “Yes, trust +them not; for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, +that with his <i>Tyger</i>’<i>s heart wrapped in a player</i>’<i>s +hide</i>,<i> </i>supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank +verse as the best of you; and being an absolute <i>Johannes Factotum</i>,<i> +</i>is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.”<br> +<br> +How can mortal man squeeze from these words the charge that “Player +Shakspere” is “putting forward, as his own, some work, or +perhaps some parts of a work, for which he was really indebted to another”? +It is as an actor, with other actors, that the player is “beautified +with <i>our </i>feathers,” - not with the feathers of some one<i> +not </i>ourselves, Bacon or Mr. Greenwood’s Unknown. Mr. +Greenwood even says that Shake-scene is referred to “as beautified +with the feathers <i>which he has stolen </i>from the dramatic writers” +(“our feathers”)<i>.<br> +<br> +</i>Greene says absolutely nothing about feathers “<i>which he +has stolen</i>.” The “feathers,” the words of +the plays, were bought, not stolen, by the actors, “anticks garnished +in our colours.”<br> +<br> +Tedious it is to write many words about words so few and simple as those +of Greene; meaning “do not trust the players, for one of them +writes blank verse which he thinks as good as the best of yours, and +fancies himself the only Shake-scene in a country.”<br> +<br> +But “Greene here accuses Player Shakspere of putting forward, +as his own, some work, or perhaps some parts of a work, for which he +was really indebted to another,” this is “the utmost we +should be entitled to say,” even if the allusion be to Shakspere. +How does Mr. Greenwood get the Anti-Willian hypothesis out of Greene’s +few and plain words?<br> +<br> +It is much safer for him to say that “Shake-scene” is not +meant for Shakespeare. Nobody can prove that it <i>is; </i>the +pun <i>may </i>be a strange coincidence, - or any one may say that he +thinks it nothing more; if he pleases.<br> +<br> +Greene nowhere “refers to this Shake-scene as being an impostor, +an upstart crow beautified with the feathers <i>which he has stolen +from the dramatic writers </i>(“our feathers”)” <a name="citation145a"></a><a href="#footnote145a">{145a}</a> +- that is, Greene makes no such reference to Shake-scene in his capacity +of writer of blank verse. Like all players, who are all “anticks +garnisht in our colours,” Shake-scene, <i>as player</i>,<i> </i>is +“beautified with our feathers.” It is Mr. Greenwood +who adds “beautified with the feathers which he has <i>stolen +</i>from the dramatic writers.” Greene does not even remotely +hint at plagiarism on the part of Shake-scene: and the feathers, the +plays of Greene and his friends, were not stolen but bought. We +must take Greene’s evidence as we find it, - it proves that by +“Shake-scene” he means a “poet-ape,” a playwright-actor; +for Greene, like Jonson, speaks of actors as “apes.” +Both men saw in a certain actor and dramatist a suspected rival. +Only one such successful practising actor-playwright is known to us +at this date (1592-1601), - and he is Shakespeare. Unless another +such existed, Greene, in 1592, alludes to William Shak(&c.) as a +player and playwright. This proves that the actor from Stratford +was accepted in Greene’s world as an author of plays in blank +verse. He cannot, therefore, have seemed incapable of his poetry.<br> +<br> +Let us now briefly consider other contemporary allusions to Shakespeare +selected by Mr. Greenwood himself. No allusion can prove that +Shakespeare was the author of the work attributed to him in the allusions. +The plays and poems <i>may </i>have been by James VI and I, “a +parcel-poet.” The allusions can prove no more than that, +by his contemporaries, Shakespeare was believed to be the poet, which +is impossible if he were a mere rustic ignoramus, as the Baconians aver. +Omitting some remarks by Chettle on Greene’s <i>Groatsworth of +Wit</i>, <a name="citation146a"></a><a href="#footnote146a">{146a}</a> +as, if grammar goes for all, they do not refer to Shakespeare, we have +the Cambridge farce or comedy on contemporary literature, the <i>Return +from Parnassus </i>(1602?). The University wits laugh at Shakespeare, +- not an university man, as the favourite poet, in his <i>Venus and +Adonis</i>,<i> </i>of a silly braggart pretender to literature, Gullio.<br> +<br> +They also introduce Kempe, the low comedy man of Shakespeare’s +company, speaking to Burbage, the chief tragic actor, of Shakespeare +as a member of their company, who, <i>as an author of plays</i>,<i> +</i>“puts down” the University wits “and Ben Jonson +too.” The date is not earlier than that of Ben’s satiric +play on the poets, <i>The Poetaster </i>(1601), to which reference is +made. Since Kempe is to be represented as wholly ignorant, his +opinion of Shakespeare’s pre-eminent merit only proves, as in +the case of Gullio, that the University wits decried the excellences +of Shakespeare. In him they saw no scholar.<br> +<br> +The point is that Kempe recognises Shakespeare as both actor and author.<br> +<br> +All this “is quite consistent with the theory that Shake-speare +was a pseudonym,” <a name="citation147a"></a><a href="#footnote147a">{147a}</a> +says Mr. Greenwood. Of course it is, but it is <i>not </i>consistent +with the theory that Shakespeare was an uneducated, bookless rustic, +for, in that case, his mask would have fallen off in a day, in an hour. +Of course the Cambridge author only proves, if you will, that <i>he +</i>thought that <i>Kempe </i>thought, that his fellow player was the +author. But we have better evidence of what the actors thought +than in the Cambridge play.<br> +<br> +In 1598, as we saw, Francis Meres in <i>Palladis Tamia </i>credits Shakespeare +with <i>Venus and Adonis</i>,<i> </i>with privately circulated sonnets, +and with a number of the comedies and tragedies. How the allusions +“negative the hypothesis that Shakespeare was a <i>nom de plume +</i>is not apparent,” says Mr. Greenwood, always constant to his +method. I repeat that he wanders from the point, which is, here, +that the only William Shak(&c.) known to us at the time, in London, +was credited with the plays and poems on all sides, which proves that +no incompatibility between the man and the works was recognised.<br> +<br> +Then Weaver (1599)<i> </i>alludes to him as author of <i>Venus</i>,<i> +Lucrece</i>,<i> Romeo</i>,<i> Richard</i>,<i> </i>“more whose +names I know not.” Davies (1610) calls him “our English +Terence” (the famous comedian), and mentions him as having “played +some Kingly parts in sport.” Freeman (1614) credits him +with <i>Venus </i>and <i>Lucrece</i>. “Besides in plays +thy wit winds like Meander.” I repeat Heywood’s evidence. +Thomas Heywood, author of that remarkable domestic play, <i>A Woman +Killed with Kindness</i>,<i> </i>was, from the old days of Henslowe, +in the fifteen-nineties, a playwright and an actor; he survived into +the reign of Charles I. Writing on the familiar names of the poets, +“Jack Fletcher,” “Frank Beaumont,” “Kit +Marlowe,” “Tom Nash,” he says,<br> +<br> +<br> +“Mellifluous Shakespeare whose enchanting quill<br> +Commanded mirth and passion, was but ‘Will.’”<br> +<br> +<br> +Does Heywood not identify the actor with the author? No quibbles +serve against the evidence.<br> +<br> +We need not pursue the allusions later than Shakespeare’s death, +or invoke, at present, Ben Jonson’s panegyric of 1623. As +to Davies, his dull and obscure epigram is addressed “To our English +Terence, Mr. Will Shake-speare.” He accosts Shakespeare +as “Good Will.” He remarks that, “as some say,” +if Will “had not played some Kingly parts in sport,” he +had been “a companion for a <i>King</i>,”<i> </i>and “been +a King among the meaner sort.” Nobody, now, can see the +allusion and the joke. Shakespeare’s company, in 1604, acted +a play on the Gowrie Conspiracy of 1600. King James suppressed +the play after the second night, as, of course, he was brought on the +stage throughout the action: and in very droll and dreadful situations. +Did Will take the King’s part, and annoy gentle King Jamie, “as +some say”? Nobody knows. But Mr. Greenwood, to disable +Davies’s recognition of Mr. Will as a playwright, “Our English +Terence,” quotes, from Florio’s <i>Montaigne</i>,<i> </i>a +silly old piece of Roman literary gossip, Terence’s plays were +written by Scipio and Laelius. In fact, Terence alludes in his +prologue to the <i>Adelphi</i>,<i> </i>to a spiteful report that he +was aided by great persons. The prologue may be the source of +the fable - that does not matter. Davies might get the fable in +Montaigne, and, knowing that some Great One wrote Will’s plays, +might therefore, in irony, address him as “Our English Terence.” +This is a pretty free conjecture! In Roman comedy he had only +two names known to him to choose from; he took Terence, not Plautus. +But if Davies was in the great Secret, a world of others must have shared +<i>le Secret de Polichinelle</i>. Yet none hints at it, and only +a very weak cause could catch at so tiny a straw as the off-chance that +Davies <i>knew</i>,<i> </i>and used “Terence” as a gibe. +<a name="citation149a"></a><a href="#footnote149a">{149a}</a><br> +<br> +The allusions, even the few selected, cannot prove that the actor wrote +the plays, but do prove that he was believed to have done so, and therefore +that he was not so ignorant and bookless as to demonstrate that he was +incapable of the poetry and the knowledge displayed in his works. +Mr. Greenwood himself observes that a Baconian critic goes too far when +he makes Will incapable of writing. Such a Will could deceive +no mortal. <a name="citation150a"></a><a href="#footnote150a">{150a}</a> +But does Mr. Greenwood, who finds in the Author of the plays “much +learning, and remarkable classical attainments,” or “a wide +familiarity with the classics,” <a name="citation150b"></a><a href="#footnote150b">{150b}</a> +suppose that his absolutely bookless Will could have persuaded his intimates +that he was the author of plays exhibiting “a wide familiarity +with the classics,” or “remarkable classical attainments.” +The thing is wholly impossible.<br> +<br> +I do not remember that a single contemporary allusion to Shakespeare +speaks of him as “learned,” erudite, scholarly, and so forth. +The epithets for him are “sweet,” “gentle,” +“honeyed,” “sugared,” “honey-tongued” +- this is the convention. The tradition followed by Milton, who +was eight years of age when Shakespeare died, and who wrote <i>L</i>’<i>Allegro +</i>just after leaving Cambridge, makes Shakespeare “sweetest +Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,” with “native wood-notes +wild”; and gives to Jonson “the <i>learned </i>sock.” +Fuller, like Milton, was born eight years before the death of Shakespeare, +namely, in 1608. Like Milton he was a Cambridge man. The +First Folio of Shakespeare’s works appeared when each of these +two bookish men was aged fifteen. It would necessarily revive +interest in Shakespeare, now first known as far as about half of his +plays went: he would be discussed among lovers of literature at Cambridge. +Mr. Greenwood quotes Fuller’s remark that Shakespeare’s +“learning was very little,” that, if alive, he would confess +himself “to be never any scholar.” <a name="citation151a"></a><a href="#footnote151a">{151a}</a> +I cannot grant that Fuller is dividing the persons of actor and author. +Men of Shakespeare’s generation, such as Jonson, did not think +him learned; nor did men of the next generation. If Mr. Collins’s +view be correct, the men of Shakespeare’s and of Milton’s +generations were too ignorant to perceive that Shakespeare was deeply +learned in the literature of Rome, and in the literature of Greece. +Every one was too ignorant, till Mr. Collins came.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VIII: “THE SILENCE OF PHILIP HENSLOWE”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +When Shakespeare is mentioned as an author by contemporary writers, +the Baconian stratagem, we have seen, is to cry, “Ah, but you +cannot prove the author mentioned to be the actor.” We have +seen that Meres (1598) speaks of Shakespeare as the leading tragic and +comic poet (“Poor poet-ape that would be thought our chief,” +quoth Jonson), as author of <i>Venus and Adonis</i>,<i> </i>and as a +sonneteer. “All this does nothing whatever to support the +idea that the Stratford player was the author of the plays and poems +alluded to,” says Mr. Greenwood, playing that card again. <a name="citation155a"></a><a href="#footnote155a">{155a}</a><br> +<br> +The allusions, I repeat, <i>do </i>prove that Shak(&c.), the actor, +was believed to be the author, till any other noted William Shak(&c.) +is found to have been conspicuously before the town. “There +is nothing at all to prove that Meres, native of Lincolnshire, had any +personal knowledge of Shakespeare.” There is nothing at +all to prove that Meres, native of Lincolnshire, had any personal knowledge +of nine-tenths of the English authors, famous or forgotten, whom he +mentions. “On the question - who was Shakespeare? - he throws +no light.” He “throws no light on the question” +“who was?” any of the poets mentioned by him, except one, +quite forgotten, whose College he names . . . To myself this “sad +repeated air,” - “critics who praise Shakespeare do not +say <i>who Shakespeare </i>was,” - would appear to be, not an +argument, but a subterfuge: though Mr. Greenwood honestly believes it +to be an argument, - otherwise he would not use it: much less would +he repeat it with frequent iteration. The more a man was notorious, +as was Will Shakspere the actor, the less the need for any critic to +tell his public “who Shakespeare was.”<br> +<br> +As Mr. Greenwood tries to disable the evidence when Shakespeare is alluded +to as an author, so he tries to better his case when, in the account-book +of Philip Henslowe, an owner of theatres, money-lender, pawn-broker, +purchaser of plays from authors, and so forth, Shakespeare is <i>not +</i>mentioned at all. Here is a mystery which, properly handled, +may advance the great cause. Henslowe has notes of loans of money +to several actors, some of them of Shakespeare’s company, “The +Lord Chamberlain’s.” There is no such note of a loan +to Shakespeare. Does this prove that he was not an actor? +If so, Burbage was not an actor; Henslowe never names him.<br> +<br> +There are notes of payments of money to Henslowe after each performance +of any play in one of his theatres. In these notes <i>the name +of Shakespeare is never once mentioned as the author of any play</i>. +How weird! But in <i>these </i>notes the names of the authors +of the plays acted are never mentioned. Does this suggest that +Bacon wrote all these plays?<br> +<br> +On the other hand, there are frequent mentions of advances of money +to authors who were working at plays for Henslowe, singly, or in pairs, +threes, fours, or fives. We find Drayton, Dekker, Chapman, and +nine authors now forgotten by all but antiquarians. We have also +Ben Jonson (1597), Marston, Munday, Middleton, Webster, and others, +authors in Henslowe’s pay. <i>But the same of Shakespeare +never appears</i>. Mysterious! The other men’s names, +writes Dr. Furness, occur “because they were all writers for Henslowe’s +theatre, but we must wait at all events for the discovery of some other +similar record, before we can produce corresponding memoranda regarding +Shaksper” (<i>sic</i>)<i> </i>“and his productions.” +<a name="citation157a"></a><a href="#footnote157a">{157a}</a><br> +<br> +The natural mind of the ordinary man explains all by saying, “Henslowe +records no loans of money to Shakspere the actor, because he lent him +no money. He records no payments for plays to Shakespeare the +author-actor, because to Henslowe the actor sold no plays.” +That is the whole explanation of the Silence of Philip Henslowe. +If Shakspere did sell a play to Henslowe, why should that financier +omit the fact from his accounts? Suppose that the actor was illiterate +as Baconians fervently believe, and sold Bacon’s plays, what prevented +him from selling a play of Bacon’s (under his own name, as usual) +to Henslowe? To obtain a Baconian reply you must wander into conjecture, +and imagine that Bacon forbade the transaction. Then <i>why </i>did +he forbid it? Because he could get a better price from Shakspere’s +company? The same cause would produce the same effect on Shakspere +himself; whether he were the author, or were Bacon’s, or any man’s +go-between. On any score but that of money, why was Henslowe good +enough for Ben Jonson, Dekker, Heywood, Middleton, and Webster, and +not good enough for Bacon, who did not appear in the matter at all, +but was represented in it by the actor, Will? As a gentleman and +a man of the Court, Bacon would be as much discredited if he were known +to sell (for £6 on an average) his noble works to the Lord Chamberlain’s +Company, as if he sold them to Henslowe.<br> +<br> +I know not whether the great lawyer, courtier, scholar, and philosopher +is supposed by Baconians to have given Will Shakspere a commission on +his sales of plays; or to have let him keep the whole sum in each case. +I know not whether the players paid Shakspere a sum down for his (or +Bacon’s) plays, or whether Will received a double share, or other, +or any share of the profits on them, as Henslowe did when he let a house +to the players. Nobody knows any of these things.<br> +<br> +“If Shakspere the player had been a dramatist, surely Henslowe +would have employed him also, like the others, in that behalf.” +<a name="citation159a"></a><a href="#footnote159a">{159a}</a> +Henslowe would, if he could have got the “copy” cheap enough. +Was any one of “the others,” the playwrights, a player, +holding a share in his company? If not, the fact makes an essential +difference, for Shakspere <i>was </i>a shareholder. Collier, in +his preface to Henslowe’s so-called “Diary,” mentions +a playwright who was bound to scribble for Henslowe only (Henry Porter), +and another, Chettle, who was bound to write only for the company protected +by the Earl of Nottingham. <a name="citation159b"></a><a href="#footnote159b">{159b}</a> +Modern publishers and managers sometimes make the same terms with novelists +and playwrights.<br> +<br> +It appears to me that Shakspere’s company would be likely, as +his plays were very popular, to make the same sort of agreement with +him, and to give him such terms as he would be glad to accept, - whether +the wares were his own - or Bacon’s. He was a keen man of +business. In such a case, he would not write for Henslowe’s +pittance. He had a better market. The plays, whether written +by himself, or Bacon, or the Man in the Moon, were at his disposal, +and he did not dispose of them to Henslowe, wherefore Henslowe cannot +mention him in his accounts. That is all.<br> +<br> +Quoting an American Judge (Dr. Stotsenburg, apparently), Mr. Greenwood +cites the circumstance that, in two volumes of Alleyn’s papers +“there is not one mention of such a poet as William Shaksper in +his list of actors, poets, and theatrical comrades.” <a name="citation160a"></a><a href="#footnote160a">{160a}</a> +If this means that Shakspere is not mentioned by Alleyn among actors, +are we to infer that William was not an actor? Even Baconians +insist that he was an actor. “How strange, how more than +strange,” cries Mr. Greenwood, “that Henslowe should make +no mention in all this long diary, embracing all the time from 1591 +to 1609, of the actor-author . . . No matter. <i>Credo quia impossibile</i>!” +<a name="citation160b"></a><a href="#footnote160b">{160b}</a> +<i>Credo </i>what? and what is <i>impossible</i>?<i> </i>Henslowe’s +volume is no Diary; he does not tell a single anecdote of any description; +he merely enters loans, gains, payments. Does Henslowe mention, +say, Ben Jonson, <i>when he is not doing business with Ben</i>? +Does he mention any actor or author except in connection with money +matters? Then, if he did no business with Shakspere the actor, +in borrowing or lending, and did no business with Shakespeare the author, +in borrowing, lending, buying or selling, “How strange, how more +than strange” it would be if Henslowe <i>did </i>mention Shakespeare! +He was not keeping a journal of literary and dramatic jottings. +He was keeping an account of his expenses and receipts. He never +names Richard Burbage any more than he mentions Shakespeare.<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood again expresses his views about this dark suspicious mystery, +the absence of Shakespeare or Shakspere (or Shak, as you like it), from +Henslowe’s accounts, if Shak(&c.) wrote plays. But the +mystery, if mystery there be, is just as obscure if the actor were the +channel through which Bacon’s plays reached the stage, for the +pretended author of these masterpieces. Shak - was not the man +to do all the troking, bargaining, lying, going here and there, and +making himself a motley to the view for £0, 0s, 0<i>d</i>. +If he were a sham, a figure-head, a liar, a fetcher-and-carrier of manuscripts, +<i>he would be paid for it</i>. But he did not deal with Henslowe +in his bargainings, and <i>that </i>is why Henslowe does not mention +him. Mr. Greenwood, in one place, <a name="citation161a"></a><a href="#footnote161a">{161a}</a> +agrees, so far, with me. “Why did Henslowe not mention Shakespeare +as the writer of other plays” (than <i>Titus Andronicus </i>and +<i>Henry VI</i>)? “I think the answer is simple enough.” +(So do I.) “Neither Shakspere nor ‘Shakespeare’ +ever wrote for Henslowe!” The obvious is perceived at last; +and the reason given is “that he was above Henslowe’s ‘skyline,’” +“he” being the Author. We only differ as to <i>why +</i>the author was above Henslowe’s “sky-line.” +I say, because good Will had a better market, that of his Company. +I understand Mr. Greenwood to think, - because the Great Unknown was +too great a man to deal with Henslowe. If to write for the stage +were discreditable, to deal (unknown) with Henslowe was no more disgraceful +than to deal with “a cry of players”; and as (unknown) Will +did the bargaining, the Great Unknown was as safe with Will in one case +as in the other. If Will did not receive anything for the plays +from his own company (who firmly believed in his authorship), they must +have said, “Will! dost thou serve the Muses and thy obliged fellows +for naught? Dost thou give us two popular plays yearly, - gratis?”<br> +<br> +Do you not see that, in the interests of the Great Secret itself, Will +<i>had </i>to take the pay for the plays (pretended his) from somebody. +Will Shakspere making his dear fellows and friends a present of two +masterpieces yearly was too incredible. So I suppose he did have +royalties on the receipts, or otherwise got his money; and, as he certainly +did not get them from Henslowe, Henslowe had no conceivable reason for +entering Will’s name in his accounts.<br> +<br> +Such are the reflections of a plain man, but to an imaginative soul +there seems to be a brooding mist, with a heart of fire, which half +conceals and half reveals the darkened chamber wherein abides “The +Silence of Philip Henslowe.” “The Silence of Philip +Henslowe,” Mr. Greenwood writes, “is a very remarkable phenomenon +. . . ” It is a phenomenon precisely as remarkable as the +absence of Mr. Greenwood’s name from the accounts of a boot-maker +with whom he has never had any dealings.<br> +<br> +“If, however, there was a man in high position, ‘a concealed +poet,’” who “took the works of others and rewrote +and transformed them, besides bringing out original plays of his own +. . . then it is natural enough that his name should not appear among +those [of the] for the most part impecunious dramatists to whom Henslowe +paid money for playwriting.” <a name="citation163a"></a><a href="#footnote163a">{163a}</a> +Nothing can be more natural, and, in fact, the name of Bacon, or Southampton, +or James VI, or Sir John Ramsay, or Sir Walter Raleigh, or Sir Fulke +Greville, or any other “man in high position,” does <i>not +</i>appear in Henslowe’s accounts. Nor does the name of +William Shak(&c.). But why should it not appear if Will sold +either his own plays, or those of the noble friend to whom he lent his +name and personality - to Henslowe? Why not?<br> +<br> +Then consider the figure, to my mind impossible, of the great “concealed +poet” “of high position,” who can “bring out +original plays of his own,” and yet “takes the works of +others,” say of “sporting Kyd,” or of Dekker and Chettle, +and such poor devils, <i>- takes </i>them as a Yankee pirate-publisher +takes my rhymes, - and “rewrites and transforms them.”<br> +<br> +Bacon (or Bungay) <i>cannot </i>“take” them without permission +of their legal owners, - Shakspere’s or any other company; - of +any one, in short, who, as Ben Jonson says, “buys up reversions +of old plays.” How is he to manage these shabby dealings? +Apparently he employs Will Shakspere, spells his own “<i>nom de +plume</i>”<i> </i>“Shakespeare,” and has his rewritings +and transformations of the destitute author’s work acted by Will’s +company. What a situation for Bacon, or Sir Fulke Greville, or +James VI, or any “man in high position” whom fancy can suggest! +The plays by the original authors, whoever they were, could only be +obtained by the “concealed poet” and “man in high +position” from the legal owners, Shakspere’s company, usually. +The concealed poet had to negotiate with the owners, and Bacon (or whoever +he was) employed that scamp Will Shakspere, first, I think, to extract +the plays from the owners, and then to pretend that he himself, even +Will, had “rewritten and transformed them.”<br> +<br> +What an associate was our Will for the concealed poet; how certain it +was that Will would blackmail the “man in high position”! +“Doubtless” he did: we find Bacon arrested for debt, more +than once, while Will buys New Place, in Stratford, with the money extorted +from the concealed poet of high position. <a name="citation164a"></a><a href="#footnote164a">{164a}</a> +Bacon did associate with that serpent Phillips, a reptile of Walsingham, +who forged a postscript to Mary Stuart’s letter to Babington. +But now, if not Bacon, then some other concealed poet of high position, +with a mysterious passion for rewriting and transforming plays by sad, +needy authors, is in close contact with Will Shakspere, the Warwickshire +poacher and ignorant butcher’s boy, country schoolmaster, draper’s +apprentice, <i>enfin</i>,<i> tout le tremblement.<br> +<br> +</i>“How strange, how more than strange!”<br> +<br> +The sum of the matter seems to me to be that from as early as March +3, 1591, we find Henslowe receiving small sums of money for the performances +of many plays. He was paid as owner or lessee of the House used +by this or that company. On March 3, 1591, the play acted by “Lord +Strange’s (Derby’s) men” was <i>Henry VI</i>. +Several other plays with names familiar in Shakespeare’s Works, +such as <i>Titus Andronicus</i>,<i> </i>all the three parts of <i>Henry +VI</i>,<i> King Leare </i>(April 6, 1593), <i>Henry V </i>(May 14, 1592), +<i>The Taming of a Shrew </i>(June 11, 1594), and <i>Hamlet</i>,<i> +</i>paid toll to Henslowe. He “received” so much, +on each occasion, when they were acted in a theatre of his. But +he never records his purchase of these plays; and it is not generally +believed that Shakespeare was the author of all these plays, in the +form which they bore in 1591-4: though there is much difference of opinion.<br> +<br> +There is one rather interesting case. On August 25, 1594, Henslowe +enters “<i>ne</i>”<i> </i>(that is, “a new play”) +“Received at the Venesyon Comodey, eighteen pence.” +That was his share of the receipts. The Lord Chamberlain’s +Company, that of Shakespeare, was playing in Henslowe’s theatre +at Newington Butts. If the “Venesyon Comodey” (Venetian +Comedy) were <i>The Merchant of Venice</i>,<i> </i>this is the first +mention of it. But nobody knows what Henslowe meant by “the +Venesyon Comodey.” He does not mention the author’s +name, because, in this part of his accounts he never does mention the +author or authors. He only names them when he buys from, or lends +to, or has other money dealings with the authors. He had none +with Shakespeare, hence the Silence of Philip Henslowe.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IX: THE LATER LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE - HIS MONUMENT AND PORTRAITS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +In the chapter on the Preoccupations of Bacon the reader may find help +in making up his mind as to whether Bacon, with his many and onerous +duties and occupations, his scientific studies, and his absorbing scientific +preoccupation, is a probable author of the Shakespearean plays. +Mr. Greenwood finds the young Shakspere impossible - because of his +ignorance - which made him such a really good pseudo-author, and such +a successful mask for Bacon, or Bacon’s unknown equivalent. +The Shakspere of later life, the well-to-do Shakspere, the purchaser +of the right to bear arms; so bad at paying one debt at least; so eager +a creditor; a would-be encloser of a common; a man totally bookless, +is, to Mr. Greenwood’s mind, an impossible author of the later +plays.<br> +<br> +Here, first, are moral objections on the ground of character as revealed +in some legal documents concerning business. Now, I am very ready +to confess that William’s dealings with his debtors, and with +one creditor, are wholly unlike what I should expect from the author +of the plays. Moreover, the conduct of Shelley in regard to his +wife was, in my opinion, very mean and cruel, and the last thing that +we could have expected from one who, in verse, was such a tender philanthropist, +and in life was - women apart - the best-hearted of men. The conduct +of Robert Burns, alas, too often disappoints the lover of his <i>Cottar</i>’<i>s +Saturday Night </i>and other moral pieces. He was an inconsistent +walker.<br> +<br> +I sincerely wish that Shakespeare had been less hard in money matters, +just as I wish that in financial matters Scott had been more like himself, +that he had not done the last things that we should have expected him +to do. As a member of the Scottish Bar it was inconsistent with +his honour to be the secret proprietor of a publishing and a printing +business. This is the unexplained moral paradox in the career +of a man of chivalrous honour and strict probity: but the fault did +not prevent Scott from writing his novels and poems. Why, then, +should the few bare records of Shakspere’s monetary transactions +make <i>his </i>authorship impossible? The objection seems weakly +sentimental.<br> +<br> +Macaulay scolds Scott as fiercely as Mr. Greenwood scolds Shakspere, +- for the more part, ignorantly and unjustly. Still, there is +matter to cause surprise and regret. Both Scott and Shakspere +are accused of writing for gain, and of spending money on lands and +houses with the desire to found families. But in the mysterious +mixture of each human personality, any sober soul who reflects on his +own sins and failings will not think other men’s failings incompatible +with intellectual excellence. Bacon’s own conduct in money +matters was that of a man equally grasping and extravagant. Ben +Jonson thus describes Shakespeare as a social character: “He was +indeed honest, and of an open and free nature . . . I loved the man +and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any.” +Perhaps Ben never owed money to Shakspere and refused to pay!<br> +<br> +We must not judge a man’s whole intellectual character, and declare +him to be incapable of poetry, on the score of a few legal papers about +matters of business. Apparently Shakspere helped that Elizabethan +Mr. Micawber, his father, out of a pecuniary slough of despond, in which +the ex-High Bailiff of the town was floundering, - pursued by the distraint +of one of the friendly family of Quiney - Adrian Quiney. They +were neighbours and made a common dunghill in Henley Street. <a name="citation171a"></a><a href="#footnote171a">{171a}</a> +I do not, like Mr. Greenwood, see anything “at all out of the +way” in the circumstance “that a man should be writing <i>Hamlet</i>,<i> +</i>and at the same time bringing actions for petty sums lent on loan +at some unspecified interest.” <a name="citation171b"></a><a href="#footnote171b">{171b}</a> +Nor do I see anything at all out of the way in Bacon’s prosecution +of his friend and benefactor, Essex (1601), while Bacon was writing +<i>Hamlet</i>. Indeed, Shakspere’s case is the less “out +of the way” of the two. He wanted his loan to be repaid, +and told his lawyer to bring an action. Bacon wanted to keep his +head (of inestimable value) on his shoulders; or to keep his body out +of the Tower; or he merely, as he declares, wanted to do his duty as +a lawyer of the Crown. In any case, Bacon was in a tragic position +almost unexampled; and was at once overwhelmed by work, and, one must +suppose, by acute distress of mind, in the case of Essex. He must +have felt this the more keenly, if, as some Baconians vow, <i>he wrote +the Sonnets to Essex</i>. Whether he were writing his <i>Hamlet +</i>when engaged in Essex’s case (1601), or any other of his dramatic +masterpieces, even this astonishing man must have been sorely bestead +to combine so many branches of business.<br> +<br> +Thus I would reply to Mr. Greenwood’s amazement that Shakspere, +a hard creditor, and so forth, should none the less have been able to +write his plays. But if it is meant that a few business transactions +must have absorbed the whole consciousness of Shakespeare, and left +him neither time nor inclination for poetry, consider the scientific +preoccupation of Bacon, his parliamentary duties, his ceaseless activity +as “one of the legal body-guard of the Queen” at a time +when he had often to be examining persons accused of conspiracy, - and +do not forget his long and poignant anxiety about Essex, his constant +efforts to reconcile him with Elizabeth, and to advocate his cause without +losing her favour; and, finally, the anguish of prosecuting his friend, +and of knowing how hardly the world judged his own conduct. Follow +him into his relations with James I; his eager pursuit of favour, the +multiplicity of his affairs, his pecuniary distresses, and the profound +study and severe labour entailed by the preparation for and the composition +of <i>The Advancement of Learning </i>(1603-5). He must be a stout-hearted +Baconian who can believe that, between 1599 and 1605, Bacon was writing +<i>Hamlet</i>,<i> </i>and other masterpieces of tragedy or comedy. +But all is possible to genius. What Mr. Greenwood’s Great +Unknown was doing at this period, “neither does he know, nor do +I know, but he only.” He, no doubt, had abundance of leisure.<br> +<br> +At last Shakspere died (1616), and had not the mead of one melodious +tear, as far as we know, from the London wits, in the shape of obituary +verses. This fills Mr. Greenwood with amazement. “Was +it because ‘the friends of the Muses’ were for the most +part aware that Shakespeare had not died with Shakspere?” +Did Jonson perchance think that his idea might be realised when he wrote,<br> +<br> +<br> + “What a sight it were,<br> +To see thee in our waters yet appear”?<br> +<br> +<br> +and so on. Did Jonson expect and hope to see the genuine “Shakespeare” +return to the stage, seven years after the death of Shakspere the actor, +the Swan of Avon? As Jonson was fairly sane, we can no more suspect +him of having hoped for this miracle than believe that most of the poets +knew the actor not to be the author. Moreover Jonson, while desiring +that Shakespeare might “shine forth” again and cheer the +drooping stage, added,<br> +<br> +<br> +“Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like Night,<br> +And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light,”<br> +<br> +<br> +that is - the Folio of 1623. Ben did not weave the amazing tissue +of involved and contradictory falsities attributed to him by Baconians. +Beaumont died in the same year as Shakspere, who died in the depths +of the country, weary of London. Has Mr. Greenwood found obituary +poems dropped on the grave of the famous Beaumont? Did Fletcher, +did Jonson, produce one melodious tear for the loss of their friend; +in Fletcher’s case his constant partner? No? Were +the poets, then, aware that Beaumont was a humbug, whose poems and plays +were written by Bacon? <a name="citation174a"></a><a href="#footnote174a">{174a}</a><br> +<br> +I am not to discuss Shakespeare’s Will, the “second-best +bed,” and so forth. But as Shakespeare’s Will says +not a word about his books, it is decided by Mr. Greenwood that he had +no books. Mr. Greenwood is a lawyer; so was my late friend Mr. +Charles Elton, Q.C., of White Staunton, who remarks that Shakespeare +bequeathed “all the rest of my goods, chattels, leases, &c., +to my son-in-law, John Hall, gent.” (He really <i>was </i>a +“gent.” with authentic coat-armour.)<br> +<br> +It is with Mr. Elton’s opinion, not with my ignorance, that Mr. +Greenwood must argue in proof of the view that “goods” are +necessarily exclusive of books, for Mr. Elton takes it as a quite natural +fact that Shakespeare’s books passed, with his other goods, to +Mr. Hall, and thence to a Mr. Nash, to whom Mr. Hall left “my +study of books” <a name="citation175a"></a><a href="#footnote175a">{175a}</a> +(library). I only give this as a lawyer’s opinion.<br> +<br> +There is in the Bodleian an Aldine Ovid, “with Shakespeare’s” +signature (merely Wm. She.), and a note, “This little volume of +Ovid was given to me by W. Hall, who sayd it was once Will Shakespeare’s.” +I do not know that the signature (like that on Florio’s <i>Montaigne</i>,<i> +</i>in the British Museum) has been detected as a forgery; nor do I +know that Shakespeare’s not specially mentioning his books proves +that he had none. Lawyers appear to differ as to this inference: +both Mr. Elton and Mr. Greenwood seem equally confident. <a name="citation175b"></a><a href="#footnote175b">{175b}</a> +But if it were perfectly natural that the actor, Shakspere, should have +no books, then he certainly made no effort, by the local colour of owning +a few volumes, to persuade mankind that he <i>was </i>the author. +Yet they believed that he was - really there is no wriggling out of +it. As regards any of his own MSS. which Shakespeare may have +had (one would expect them to be at his theatre), and their monetary +value, if they were not, as usual, the property of his company, and +of him as a member thereof, we can discuss that question in the section +headed “The First Folio.”<br> +<br> +It appears that Shakespeare’s daughter, Judith, could write no +more than her grandfather. <a name="citation176a"></a><a href="#footnote176a">{176a}</a> +Nor, I repeat, could the Lady Jane Gordon, daughter of the great Earl +of Huntly, when she was married to the Earl of Bothwell in 1566. +At all events, Lady Jane “made her mark.” It may be +feared that Judith, brought up in that very illiterate town of Stratford, +under an illiterate mother, was neglected in her education. Sad, +but very common in women of her rank, and scarcely a proof that her +father did not write the plays.<br> +<br> +As “nothing is known of the disposition and character” <a name="citation176b"></a><a href="#footnote176b">{176b}</a> +of Shakespeare’s grand-daughter, Lady Barnard, who died in 1670, +it is not so paralysingly strange that nothing is known of any relics +or anecdotes of Shakespeare which she may have possessed. Mr. +Greenwood “would have supposed that she would have had much to +say about the great poet,” exhibited his books (if any), and so +forth. Perhaps she did, - but how, if we “know nothing about +her disposition and character,” can we tell? No interviewers +rushed to her house (Abington Hall, Northampton-shire) with pencils +and notebooks to record her utterances; no reporter interviewed her +for the press. It is surprising, is it not?<br> +<br> +The inference might be drawn, in the Baconian manner, that, during the +Commonwealth and Restoration, “the friends of the Muses” +knew that the actor was <i>not </i>the author, and therefore did not +interview his granddaughter in the country.<br> +<br> +“But, at any rate, we have the Stratford monument,” says +Mr. Greenwood, and delves into this problem. Even the Stratford +monument of Shakespeare in the parish church is haunted by Baconian +mysteries. If the gentle reader will throw his eye over the photograph +<a name="citation177a"></a><a href="#footnote177a">{177a}</a> of the +monument as it now exists, he may not be able to say to the face of +the poet -<br> +<br> +<br> +“Thou wast that all to me, Will,<br> +For which my soul did pine.”<br> +<br> +<br> +But if he has any knowledge of Jacobean busts on monuments, he will +probably agree with me in saying, “This effigy, though executed +by somebody who was not a Pheidias, and who perhaps worked merely from +descriptions, is, at all events, Jacobean.” The same may +assuredly be said of the monument; it is in good Jacobean style: the +pillars with their capitals are graceful: all the rest is in keeping; +and the two inscriptions are in the square capital letters of inscriptions +of the period; not in italic characters. Distrusting my own <i>expertise</i>,<i> +</i>I have consulted Sir Sidney Colvin, and Mr. Holmes of the National +Portrait Gallery. They, with Mr. Spielmann, think the work to +be of the early seventeenth century.<br> +<br> +Next, glance at the figure opposite. This is a reproduction of +“the earliest representation of the Bust” (and monument) +in Dugdale’s <i>Antiquities of Warwickshire </i>(1656). +Compare the two objects, point by point, from the potato on top with +holes in it, of Dugdale, which is meant for a skull, through all the +details, - bust and all. Does Dugdale’s print, whether engraved +by Hollar or not, represent a Jacobean work? Look at the two ludicrous +children, their legs dangling in air; at the lions’ heads above +the capitals of the pillars; at the lettering of the two visible words +of the inscription, and at the gloomy hypochondriac or lunatic, clasping +a cushion to his abdomen. That hideous design was not executed +by an artist who “had his eye on the object,” if the object +were a Jacobean monument: while the actual monument was fashioned in +no period of art but the Jacobean. From Digges’ rhymes in +the Folio of 1623, we know that Shakespeare already had his “Stratford +monument.” <i>The existing object is what he had; </i>the +monument in Dugdale is what, I hope, no architect of 1616-23 could have +imagined or designed.<br> +<br> +Dugdale’s engraving is not a correct copy of any genuine Jacobean +work of art. Is Dugdale accurate in his reproductions of other +monuments in Stratford Church? To satisfy himself on this point, +Sir George Trevelyan, as he wrote to me (June 13, 1912),<i> </i>“made +a sketch of the Carew Renaissance monument in Stratford Church, and +found that the discrepancies between the original tomb and the representation +in Dugdale’s <i>Warwickshire </i>are far and away greater than +in the monument to William Shakespeare.”<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood, <a name="citation179a"></a><a href="#footnote179a">{179a}</a> +while justly observing that “the little sitting figures . . . +are placed as no monumental sculptor would place them,” “on +the whole sees no reason at all why we should doubt the substantial +accuracy of Dugdale’s figure . . . It is impossible to suppose +that Hollar would have drawn and that Dugdale would have published a +mere travesty of the Stratford Monument.”<br> +<br> +I do not know who drew the design, but a travesty of Jacobean work it +is in every detail of the monument. A travesty is what Dugdale +gives as a representation of the Carew monument. Mr. Greenwood, +elsewhere, repeating his criticism of the impossible figures of children, +says: “This is certainly mere matter of detail, and, in the absence +of other evidence, would give us no warrant for doubting the substantial +accuracy of Dugdale’s presentment of the ‘Shakespeare’ +bust.” <a name="citation180a"></a><a href="#footnote180a">{180a}</a><br> +<br> +Why are we to believe that Dugdale’s artist was merely fantastic +in his design of the children (and also remote from Jacobean taste in +every detail), and yet to credit him with “substantial accuracy” +in his half-length of a gloomy creature clutching a cushion to his stomach? +With his inaccuracies as to the Carew monument, why are we to accept +him as accurate in his representation of the bust? Moreover, other +evidence is not wanting. It is positively certain that the monument +existing in 1748, was then known as “the original monument,” +and that no other monument was put in its place, at that date or later.<br> +<br> +Now Mrs. Stopes <a name="citation180b"></a><a href="#footnote180b">{180b}</a> +argues that in 1748 the monument was “entirely reconstructed,” +and so must have become no longer what Dugdale’s man drew, but +what we see to-day. It is positively certain that her opinion +is erroneous.<br> +<br> +If ever what we see to-day was substituted for anything like what Dugdale’s +man drew, the date of the substitution is unknown.<br> +<br> +Mrs. Stopes herself discovered the documents which disprove her theory. +They were known to Halliwell-Phillipps, who quotes an unnamed “contemporary +account.” <a name="citation181a"></a><a href="#footnote181a">{181a}</a> +This account Mrs. Stopes, with her tireless industry, found in the Wheler +manuscripts, among papers of the Rev. Joseph Greene, in 1746 Head Master +of the Grammar School. In one paper of September 1740 “the +original monument” is said to be “much impaired and decayed.” +There was a scheme for making “a new monument” in Westminster +Abbey. <i>That</i>,<i> </i>I venture to think, would have been +in Hanoverian, not in Jacobean taste and style. But there was +no money for a new monument. Mrs. Stopes also found a paper of +November 20, 1748, showing that in September 1746, Mr. Ward (grandfather +of Mrs. Siddons) was at Stratford with “a cry of players.” +He devoted the proceeds of a performance of <i>Othello </i>to the reparation +of the then existing monument. The amount was twelve pounds ten +shillings. The affair dragged on, one of the Church-wardens, a +blacksmith, held the £12, 10<i>s</i>., and was troublesome. +The document of November 20, 1748, was drawn up to be signed, but was +not signed, by the persons who appear to be chiefly concerned in the +matter. It directed that Mr. Hall, a local limner or painter, +is to “take care, according to his ability, that the monument +shall become as like as possible to what it was when first erected.” +This appears to have been the idea of Mr. Greene. Another form +of words was later adopted, directing Mr. Hall, the painter, “to +repair and beautify, or to have the direction of repairing and beautifying, +<i>the original monument </i>of Shakespeare the poet.” Mrs. +Stopes infers, justly in my opinion, that Hall “would fill up +the gaps, restore what was amissing as he thought it ought to be, and +finally repaint it according to the original colours, traces of which +he might still be able to see.” In his <i>History and Antiquities +of Stratford-on-Avon</i>, <a name="citation182a"></a><a href="#footnote182a">{182a}</a><i> +</i>Mr. Wheler tells us that this was what Hall did. “In +the year 1748 the monument was carefully repaired, and the original +colours of the bust, &c., as much as possible preserved by Mr. John +Hall, limner, of Stratford.”<br> +<br> +It follows that we see the original monument and bust, but the painting +is of 1861, for the bust, says Wheler, was in 1793 “painted in +white,” to please Malone. It was repainted in 1861.<br> +<br> +Mrs. Stopes, unluckily, is not content with what Hall was told to do, +and what, according to Wheler, he did. She writes: “It would +only be giving good value for his money” (£12, 10<i>s</i>.) +“to his churchwardens if Hall added (<i>sic</i>)<i> </i>a cloak, +a pen, and manuscript.” He “could not help changing” +the face, and so on.<br> +<br> +Now it was physically impossible to <i>add </i>a cloak, a pen, and manuscript +to such a stone bust as Dugdale’s man shows; to take away the +cushion pressed to the stomach, and to alter the head. Mr. Hall, +if he was to give us the present bust, had to make an entirely new bust, +and, to give us the present monument in place of that shown in Dugdale’s +print, had to construct an entirely new monument. Now Hall was +a painter, not (like Giulio Romano) also an architect and sculptor. +<i>Pour tout potage </i>he had but £12, 10<i>s</i>. He could +not do, and he did not do these things! he did not destroy “the +original monument” and make a new monument in Jacobean style. +He was straitly ordered to “repair and beautify the original monument”; +he did repair it, and repainted the colours. That is all. +I do not quote what Halliwell-Phillipps tells us <a name="citation183a"></a><a href="#footnote183a">{183a}</a> +about the repairing of the forefinger and thumb of the right hand, and +the pen; work which, he says, had to be renewed by William Roberts of +Oxford in 1790. He gives no authority, and Baconians may say that +he was hoaxed, or “lied with circumstance.”<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood <a name="citation183b"></a><a href="#footnote183b">{183b}</a> +quotes Halliwell-Phillipps’s <i>Works of Shakespeare </i>(1853),<i> +</i>in which he says that the design in Dugdale’s book “is +evidently too inaccurate to be of any authority; the probability being +that it was not taken from the monument itself.” Indeed +the designer is so inaccurate that he gives the first word of the Latin +inscription as “Judicyo,” just as Oudry blunders in the +Latin inscription of a portrait of Mary Stuart which he copied badly. +Mr. Greenwood proceeds: “In his <i>Outlines </i>Halliwell simply +ignores Dugdale. His engraving was doubtless too inconvenient +to be brought to public notice!” Here Halliwell is accused +of suppressing the truth; if he invented his minute details about the +repeated reparation of the writing hand, - not represented in Dugdale’s +design, - he also lied with circumstance. But he certainly quoted +a genuine “contemporary account” of the orders for repairing +and beautifying the original monument in 1748, and I presume that he +also had records for what he says about reparations of the hand and +pen. He speaks, too, of substitutions for decayed alabaster parts +of the monument, though not in his <i>Outlines; </i>and I observe that, +in Mrs. Stopes’s papers, there is record of a meeting on December +20, 1748, at which mention was made of “the materials” which +Hall was to use for repairs.<br> +<br> +To me the evidence of the style as to the date of both monument and +bust speaks so loudly for their accepted date (1616-23) and against +the Georgian date of 1748, that I need no other evidence; nor do I suppose +that any one familiar with the monumental style of 1590-1620 can be +of a different opinion. In the same way I do not expect any artist +or engraver to take the engraving of the monument in Rowe’s <i>Shakespeare +</i>(1709), and that by Grignion so late as 1786, for anything but copies +of the design in Dugdale, with modifications made <i>à plaisir</i>. +In Pope’s edition (1725) Vertue gives the monument with some approach +to accuracy, but for the bald plump face of the bust presents a top-heavy +and sculpturally impossible face borrowed from “the Chandos portrait,” +which, in my opinion, is of no more authority than any other portrait +of Shakespeare. None of them, I conceive, was painted from the +life.<br> +<br> +The Baconians show a wistful longing to suppose the original bust, copied +in Dugdale, to have been meant for Bacon; but we need not waste words +over this speculation. Mr. Greenwood writes that “if I should +be told that Dugdale’s effigy represented an elderly farmer deploring +an exceptionally bad harvest, ‘I should not feel it to be strange!’ +Neither should I feel it at all strange if I were told that it was the +presentment of a philosopher and Lord Chancellor, who had fallen from +high estate and recognised that all things are but vanity.”<br> +<br> +“<i>I </i>should not feel it to be strange” if a Baconian +told me that the effigy of a living ex-Chancellor were placed in the +monument of the dead Will Shakspere, and if, on asking why the alteration +was made, I were asked in reply, in Mr. Greenwood’s words, “Was +Dugdale’s bust thought to bear too much resemblance to one who +was not Shakspere of Stratford? Or was it thought that the presence +of a woolsack” (the cushion) “might be taken as indicating +that Shakspere of Stratford was indebted for support to a certain Lord +Chancellor?” <a name="citation186a"></a><a href="#footnote186a">{186a}</a> +Such, indeed, are the things that Baconians might readily say: do say, +I believe.<br> +<br> +Dugdale’s engraving reproduces the first words of a Latin inscription, +still on the monument:<br> +<br> +<br> +<i>Judicio Pylium</i>,<i> genio Socratem</i>,<i> arte Maronem<br> + Terra tegit</i>,<i> populus mæret</i>,<i> Olympus +habet:<br> +<br> +<br> +</i>“Earth covers, Olympus” (heaven? or the Muses’ +Hill?) “holds him who was a Nestor in counsel; in poetic art, +a Virgil; a Socrates for his Dæmon” (“Genius”). +As for the “Genius,” or dæmon of Socrates, and the +permitted false quantity in making the first syllable of Socrates short; +and the use of <i>Olympus </i>for heaven in epitaphs, it is sufficient +to consult the learning of Mr. Elton. <a name="citation186b"></a><a href="#footnote186b">{186b}</a> +The poet who made such notable false quantities in his plays had no +cause to object to another on his monument. We do not know who +erected the monument, and paid for it, or who wrote or adapted the epitaph; +but it was somebody who thought Shakespeare (or Bacon?) “a clayver +man.” The monument (if a trembling conjecture may be humbly +put forth) was conceivably erected by the piety of Shakespeare’s +daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Hall. They exhibit a taste +for the mortuary memorial and the queer Latin inscription. Mrs. +Hall gratified the Manes of her poor mother, Mrs. Shakespeare, with +one of the oddest of Latin epitaphs. <a name="citation187a"></a><a href="#footnote187a">{187a}</a> +It opens like an epigram in the Greek Anthology, and ends in an unusual +strain of Christian mysticism. Mr. Hall possesses, perhaps arranged +for himself, a few Latin elegiacs as an epitaph.<br> +<br> +The famous “Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear,” +and so on, on the stone in the chancel, beneath which the sacred dust +of Shakespeare lies, or lay, is the first of “the last lines written, +we are told,” <a name="citation187b"></a><a href="#footnote187b">{187b}</a> +“by the author of <i>Hamlet</i>.” Who tells us that +Shakespeare wrote the four lines of doggerel? Is it conceivable +that the authority for Shakespeare’s authorship of the doggerel +is a tradition gleaned by Mr. Dowdall of Queen’s in 1693, from +a parish clerk, aged over eighty, he says, - criticism makes the clerk +twenty years younger. <a name="citation187c"></a><a href="#footnote187c">{187c}</a> +For Baconians the lines are bad enough to be the work of William Shakspere +of Stratford.<br> +<br> +Meanwhile, in 1649, when Will’s daughter, Mrs. Hall, died, her +epitaph spoke quite respectfully of her father’s intelligence.<br> +<br> +<br> +“Witty above her sex, but that’s not all,<br> +Wise to salvation was good Mistris Hall,<br> +Something of Shakespeare was in <i>that</i>, but <i>this<br> +</i>Wholly of Him with whom she’s now in bliss.” <a name="citation187d"></a><a href="#footnote187d">{187d}</a><br> +<br> +<br> +Thirty-three years after Shakespeare’s death he was still thought +“witty” in Stratford. But what could Stratford know? +Milton and Charles I were of the same opinion; so was Suckling, and +the rest of the generation after Shakespeare. But they did not +know, how should they, that Bacon (or his equivalent) was the genuine +author of the plays and poems. The secret, perhaps, so widely +spread among “the friends of the Muses” in 1616, was singularly +well kept by a set of men rather given to blab as a general rule.<br> +<br> +I confess to be passing weary of the Baconian hatred of Will, which +pursues him beyond his death with sneers and fantastic suspicions about +his monument and his grave, and asks if he “died with a curse +upon his lips, an imprecation against any man who might <i>move his +bones</i>? A mean and vulgar curse indeed!” <a name="citation188a"></a><a href="#footnote188a">{188a}</a> +And the authority for the circumstance that he died with a mean and +vulgar curse upon his lips?<br> +<br> +About 1694, a year after Mr. Dowdall in 1693, and eighty years almost +after Shakespeare’s death, W. Hall, a Queen’s man, Oxford +(the W. Hall, perhaps, who gave the Bodleian Aldine Ovid, with Shakespeare’s +signature, true or forged, to its unknown owner), went to Stratford, +and wrote about his pilgrimage to his friend Mr. Thwaites, a Fellow +of Queen’s. Mr. Hall heard the story that Shakespeare was +the author of the mean and vulgar curse. He adds that there was +a great ossuary or bone-house in the church, where all the bones dug +up were piled, “they would load a great number of waggons.” +Not desiring this promiscuity, Shakespeare wrote the Curse in a style +intelligible to clerks and sextons, “for the most part a very +ignorant sort of people.”<br> +<br> +If Shakespeare <i>did</i>,<i> </i>that accommodation of himself to his +audience was the last stroke of his wisdom, or his wit. <a name="citation189a"></a><a href="#footnote189a">{189a}</a> +Of course there is no evidence that he wrote the mean and vulgar curse: +that he did is only the pious hope of the Baconians and Anti-Willians.<br> +<br> +Into the question of the alleged portraits of Shakespeare I cannot enter. +Ben spoke well of the engraving prefixed to the First Folio, but Ben, +as Mr. Greenwood says, was anxious to give the Folio “a good send-off.” +The engraving is choicely bad; we do not know from what actual portrait, +if from any, it was executed. Richard Burbage is known to have +amused himself with the art of design; possibly he tried his hand on +a likeness of his old friend and fellow-actor. If so, he may have +succeeded no better than Mary Stuart’s embroiderer, Oudry, in +his copy of the portrait of her Majesty.<br> +<br> +That Ben Jonson was painted by Honthorst and others, while Shakespeare, +as far as we know, was not, has nothing to do with the authorship of +the plays. Ben was a scholar, the darling of both Universities; +constantly employed about the Court in arranging Masques; his learning +and his Scottish blood may have led James I to notice him. Ben, +in his later years, was much in society; fashionable and literary. +He was the father of the literary “tribe of Ben.” +Thus he naturally sat for his portrait. In the same way George +Buchanan has, and had, nothing like the fame of Knox. But as a +scholar he was of European reputation; haunted the Court as tutor of +his King, and was the “good pen” of the anti-Marian nobles, +Murray, Morton, and the rest. Therefore Buchanan’s portrait +was painted, while of Knox we have only a woodcut, done, apparently, +after his death, from descriptions, for Beza’s <i>Icones</i>. +The Folio engraving may have no better source. Without much minute +research it is hard to find authentic portraits of Mary Stuart, and, +just as in Shakespeare’s case, <a name="citation190a"></a><a href="#footnote190a">{190a}</a> +the market, in her own day and in the eighteenth century, was flooded +with “mock-originals,” not even derived (in any case known +to me) from genuine and authentic contemporary works.<br> +<br> +One thing is certain about the Stratford bust. Baconians will +believe that Dugdale’s man correctly represented the bust as it +was in his time; and that the actual bust is of 1748, in spite of proofs +of Dugdale’s man’s fantastic inaccuracy; in spite of the +evidence of style; and in spite of documentary evidence that “the +original monument” was not to be destroyed and replaced by the +actual monument, but was merely “repaired and beautified” +(painted afresh) by a local painter.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER X: “THE TRADITIONAL SHAKSPERE”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +In perusing the copious arguments of the Anti-Shakesperean but Non-Baconian +Mr. Greenwood, I am often tempted, in Socratic phrase, to address him +thus: Best of men, let me implore you, first, to keep in memory these +statements on which you have most eloquently and abundantly insisted, +namely, that society in Stratford was not only not literary, but was +illiterate. Next pardon me for asking you to remember that the +late sixteenth and the early seventeenth century did not resemble our +fortunate age. Some people read Shakespeare’s, Beaumont’s, +and Fletcher’s plays. This exercise is now very rarely practised. +But nobody cared to chronicle literary gossip about the private lives +and personal traits of these and several other Elizabethan and Jacobean +playwrights, in the modern manner. Of Shakespeare (pardon, I mean +Shakspere), the actor, there is one contemporary anecdote, in my poor +opinion a baseless waggery. Of Beaumont there is none. Of +a hand-maid of Fletcher, who drank sack in a tumbler, one anecdote appears +at the end of the seventeenth century, - nothing better. Meanwhile +of Shakspere the “traditions” must be sought either at Stratford +or in connection with the London Stage; and in both cases the traditions +began to be in demand very late.<br> +<br> +As Stratford was not literary, indeed was terribly illiterate, any traditions +that survived cannot conceivably have been literary. That is absolutely +certain. Natives at Stratford had, by your own hypothesis, scant +interest in literary anecdote. Fifty years after Shakespeare’s +death, no native was likely to cherish tales of any sprouts of wit (though +it was remembered in 1649, that he was “witty”), or any +“wood-notes wild,” which he may have displayed or chirped +at an early age.<br> +<br> +Such things were of no interest to Stratford. If he made a speech +when he killed a calf, or poached, or ran away to town, the circumstance +might descend from one gaffer to another; he might even be remembered +as “the best of his family,” - the least inefficient. +Given your non-literary and illiterate Stratford, and you can expect +nothing more, and nothing better, than we receive.<br> +<br> +Let me illustrate by a modern example. In 1866 I was an undergraduate +of a year’s standing at Balliol College, Oxford, certainly not +an unlettered academy. In that year, the early and the best poems +of a considerable Balliol poet were published: he had “gone down” +some eight years before. Being young and green I eagerly sought +for traditions about Mr. Swinburne. One of his contemporaries, +who took a First in the final Classical Schools, told me that “he +was a smug.” Another, that, as Mr. Swinburne and his friend +(later a Scotch professor) were not cricketers, they proposed that they +should combine to pay but a single subscription to the Cricket Club. +A third, a tutor of the highest reputation as a moralist and metaphysician, +merely smiled at my early enthusiasm, - and told me nothing. A +white-haired College servant said that “Mr. Swinburne was a very +quiet gentleman.”<br> +<br> +Then you take us to dirty illiterate Stratford, from fifty to eighty +years after Shakspere’s death, - a Civil War and the Reign of +the Saints, a Restoration and a Revolution having intervened, - and +ask us to be surprised that no anecdotes of Shakspere’s early +brilliance, a century before, survived at Stratford.<br> +<br> +A very humble parallel may follow. Some foolish person went seeking +early anecdotes of myself at my native town, Selkirk on the Ettrick. +From an intelligent townsman he gathered much that was true and interesting +about my younger brothers, who delighted in horses and dogs, hunted, +shot, and fished, and played cricket; one of them bowled for Gloucestershire +and Oxford. But about me the inquiring literary snipe only heard +that “Andra was aye the stupid ane o’ the fam’ly.” +Yet, I, too, had bowled for the local club, <i>non sine gloria</i>!<i> +</i>Even <i>that </i>was forgotten.<br> +<br> +Try to remember, best of men, that literary anecdotes of a fellow townsman’s +youth do not dwell in the memories of his neighbours from sixty to a +hundred years after date. It is not in human nature that what +was incomprehensible to the grandsire should be remembered by the grandson. +Go to “Thrums” and ask for literary memories of the youth +of Mr. Barrie.<br> +<br> +Yet <a name="citation198a"></a><a href="#footnote198a">{198a}</a> the +learned Malone seems to have been sorry that little of Shakespeare but +the calf-killing and the poaching, and the dying of a fever after drink +taken (<i>where</i>,<i> </i>I ask you?), with Ben and Drayton, was remembered, +so long after date, at Stratford, of all dirty ignorant places. +Bah! how could these people have heard of Drayton and Ben? Remember +that we are dealing with human nature, in a peculiarly malodorous and +densely ignorant <i>bourgade</i>,<i> </i>where, however, the “wit” +of Shakespeare was not forgotten (in the family) in 1649. See +the epithet on the tomb of his daughter, Mrs. Hall.<br> +<br> +You give us the Rev. John Ward, vicar of Stratford (1661-3), who has +heard that the actor was “a natural wit,” and contracted +and died of a fever, after a bout with Drayton and Ben. I can +scarcely believe that <i>these </i>were local traditions. How +could these <i>rustauds </i>have an opinion about “natural wit,” +how could they have known the names of Ben and Drayton?<br> +<br> +When you come to Aubrey, publishing in 1680, sixty years after Shakespeare’s +death, you neglect to trace the steps in the descent of his tradition. +As has been stated, Beeston, “the chronicle of the Stage” +(died 1682), gave him the story of the school-mastering; Beeston being +the son of a servitor of Phillips, an actor and friend of Shakespeare, +who died eleven years before that player. The story of the school-mastering +and of Shakespeare “knowing Latin pretty well,” is of no +value to me. I think that he had some knowledge of Latin, as he +must have had, if he were what I fancy him to have been, and if (which +is mere hypothesis) he went for four years to a Latin School. +But the story does not suit you, and you call it “a mere myth,” +which, “of course, will be believed by those who wish to believe +it.” But, most excellent of mortals, will it not, by parity +of reasoning, “of course be disbelieved by those who do <i>not +</i>wish to believe it”?<br> +<br> +And do you want to believe it?<br> +<br> +To several stage anecdotes of the actor as an excellent instructor of +younger players, you refer slightingly. They do not weigh with +me: still, the Stage would remember Shakspere (or Shakespeare) best +in stage affairs. In reference to a very elliptic statement that, +“in <i>Hamlet </i>Betterton benefited by Shakespeare’s coaching,” +you write, “This is astonishing, seeing that Shakspere had been +in his grave nearly twenty years when Betterton was born. The +explanation is that Taylor, of the Black Fryars Company, was, according +to Sir William Davenant, instructed by Shakspere, and Davenant, who +had seen Taylor act, according to Downes, instructed Betterton. +There is a similar story about Betterton playing King Henry VIII. +Betterton was said to have been instructed by Sir William, who was instructed +by Lowen, who was instructed by Shakspere!” <a name="citation200a"></a><a href="#footnote200a">{200a}</a><br> +<br> +Why a note of exclamation? Who was Downes, and what were his opportunities +of acquiring information? He “was for many years book-keeper +in the Duke’s Company, first under Davenant in the old house . +. . ” Davenant was notoriously the main link between “the +first and second Temple,” the theatre of Shakespeare whom, as +a boy, he knew, and the Restoration theatre. Devoted to the traditions +of the stage, he collected Shakespearean and other anecdotes; he revived +the theatre, cautiously, during the last years of Puritan rule, and +told his stories to the players of the early Restoration. As his +Book-keeper with the Duke of York’s Company, Downes heard what +Davenant had to tell; he also, for his <i>Roscius Anglicanus</i>,<i> +</i>had notes from Charles Booth, prompter at Drury Lane. On May +28, 1663, Davenant reproduced <i>Hamlet</i>,<i> </i>with young Betterton +as the Prince of Denmark. Davenant, says Charles Booth, “had +seen the part taken by Taylor, of the Black Fryars Company, and Taylor +had been instructed by the author, (not Bacon but) “Mr. William +Shakespeare,” and Davenant “taught Mr. Betterton in every +particle of it.” Mr. Elton adds, “We cannot be sure +that Taylor was taught by Shakespeare himself. He is believed +to have been a member of the King’s Company before 1613, and to +have left it for a time before Shakespeare’s death.” <a name="citation201a"></a><a href="#footnote201a">{201a}</a> +His name is in the list in the Folio of “the principall Actors +in all these plays,” but I cannot pretend to be certain that he +played in them in Will’s time.<br> +<br> +It is Mr. Pepys (December 30, 1668) who chronicles Davenant’s +splendid revival of <i>Henry VIII</i>,<i> </i>in which Betterton, as +the King, was instructed by Sir William Davenant, who had it from old +Mr. Lowen, that had his instruction “from Mr. Shakespear himself.” +Lowin, or Lowen, joined Shakespeare’s Company in 1604, being then +a man of twenty-eight. Burbage was the natural man for Hamlet +and Henry VIII; but it is not unusual for actors to have “understudies.”<br> +<br> +The stage is notoriously tenacious of such traditions.<br> +<br> +When we come with you to Mr. W. Fulman, about 1688, and the additions +to his notes made about 1690-1708, we are concerned with evidence much +too remote, and, in your own classical style, “all this is just +a little mixed.” <a name="citation201b"></a><a href="#footnote201b">{201b}</a> +With what Mr. Dowdall heard in 1693, and Mr. William Hall (1694) heard +from a clerk or sexton, or other illiterate dotard at Stratford, I have +already dealt. I do not habitually believe in what I hear from +“the oldest aunt telling the saddest tale,” - no, not even +if she tells a ghost story, or an anecdote about the presentation by +Queen Mary of her portrait to the ancestor of the Laird, - the portrait +being dated 1768, and representing her Majesty in the bloom of girlhood. +Nor do I care for what Rowe said (on Betterton’s information), +in 1709, about Shakespeare’s schooling; nor for what Dr. Furnivall +said that Plume wrote; nor for what anybody said that Sir John Mennes +(Menzies?) said. But I do care for what Ben Jonson and Shakespeare’s +fellow-actors said; and for what his literary contemporaries have left +on record. But this evidence you explain away by ætiological +guesses, absolutely modern, and, I conceive, to anyone familiar with +historical inquiry, not more valuable as history than other explanatory +myths.<br> +<br> +What Will Shakspere had to his literary credit when he died, was men’s +impressions of the seeing of his acted plays; with their knowledge, +if they had any, of fugitive, cheap, perishable, and often bad reprints, +in quartos, of about half of the plays. Men also had <i>Venus +and Adonis</i>,<i> Lucrece</i>,<i> </i>and the Sonnets, which sold very +poorly, and I do not wonder at it. Of the genius of Shakespeare +England could form no conception, till the publication of the Folio +(1623), not in a large edition; it struggled into a Third Edition in +1664. The <i>engouement </i>about the poet, the search for personal +details, did not manifest itself with any vigour till nearly thirty +years after 1664 - and we are to wonder that the gleanings, at illiterate +Stratford, and in Stage tradition, are so scanty and so valueless. +What could have been picked up, by 1680-90, about Bacon at Gorhambury, +or in the Courts of Law, I wonder.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER XI: THE FIRST FOLIO<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“The First Folio” is the name commonly given to the first +collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays. The volume includes +a Preface signed by two of the actors, Heminge and Condell, panegyrical +verses by Ben Jonson and others, and a bad engraved portrait. +The book has been microscopically examined by Baconians, hunting for +cyphered messages from their idol in italics, capital letters, misprints, +and everywhere. Their various discoveries do not win the assent +of writers like the late Lord Penzance and Mr. Greenwood.<br> +<br> +The mystery as to the sources, editing, and selection of plays in the +Folio (1623) appears to be impenetrable. The title-page says that +<i>all </i>the contents are published “according to the true original +copies.” If <i>only </i>MS. copies are meant, this is untrue; +in some cases the best quartos were the chief source, supplemented by +MSS. The Baconians, following Malone, think that Ben Jonson wrote +the Preface (and certainly it looks like his work), <a name="citation207a"></a><a href="#footnote207a">{207a}</a> +speaking in the name of the two actors who sign it. They say that +Shakespeare’s friends “have collected and published” +the plays, have so published them “that whereas you were abus’d +with divers stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by +the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors that exposed them: <i>even +those</i>”<i> </i>(namely, the pieces previously ill-produced +by pirates) “are now offered to your view cur’d, and perfect +of their limbes; and <i>all the rest</i>”<i> </i>(that is, all +the plays which had not been piratically debased), “absolute in +their numbers, as he conceived them.” So obscure is the +Preface that not <i>all </i>previously published separate plays are +explicitly said to be stolen and deformed, but “<i>divers </i>stolen +copies” are denounced. Mr. Pollard makes the same point +in <i>Shakespeare Folios and Quartos</i>,<i> </i>p. 2 (1909).<br> +<br> +Now, as a matter of fact, while some of the quarto editions of separate +plays are very bad texts, others are so good that the Folio sometimes +practically reprints them, with some tinkerings, from manuscripts. +Some quartos, like that of <i>Hamlet </i>of 1604, are excellent, and +how they came to be printed from good texts, and whether or not the +texts were given to the press by Shakespeare’s Company, or were +sold, or stolen, is the question. Mr. Pollard argues, on grounds +almost certain, that “we have strong <i>prima facie </i>evidence +that the sale to publishers of plays afterwards duly entered on the +Stationers’ Registers was regulated by their lawful owners.” +<a name="citation208a"></a><a href="#footnote208a">{208a}</a><br> +<br> +The Preface does not explicitly deny that some of the separately printed +texts were good, but says that “divers” of them were stolen +and deformed. My view of the meaning of the Preface is not generally +held. Dr. H. H. Furness, in his preface to <i>Much Ado about Nothing +</i>(p. vi), says, “We all know that these two friends of Shakespeare +assert in their Preface to the Folio that they had used the Author’s +manuscripts, and in the same breath denounce the Quartos as stolen and +surreptitious.” I cannot see, I repeat, that the Preface +denounces <i>all </i>the Quartos. It could be truly said that +<i>divers </i>stolen and maimed copies had been foisted on “abused” +purchasers, and really no more <i>is </i>said. Dr. Furness writes, +“When we now find them using as ‘copy’ one of these +very Quartos” (<i>Much Ado about Nothing</i>,<i> </i>1600), “we +need not impute to them a wilful falsehood if we suppose that in using +what they knew had been printed from the original text, howsoever obtained, +they held it to be the same as the manuscript itself . . . ” +That <i>was </i>their meaning, I think, the Quarto of <i>Much Ado </i>had +<i>not </i>been “maimed” and “deformed,” as +divers other quartos, stolen and surreptitious, had been.<br> +<br> +Shakspere, unlike most of the other playwrights, was a member of his +Company. I presume that his play was thus the common good of his +Company and himself. If they sold a copy to the press, the price +would go into their common stock; unless they, in good will, allowed +the author to pocket the money.<br> +<br> +It will be observed that I understand the words of the Preface otherwise +than do the distinguished Editors of the Cambridge edition. They +write, “The natural inference to be drawn from this statement” +(in the Preface) “is that <i>all </i>the separate editions of +Shakespeare’s plays were ‘stolen,’ ‘surreptitious’ +and imperfect, <i>and that all those published in the Folio were printed +from the author</i>’<i>s own manuscripts</i>”<i> </i>(my +italics). The Editors agree with Dr. Furness, not with Mr. Pollard, +whose learned opinion coincides with my own.<br> +<br> +Perhaps it should be said that I reached my own construction of the +sense of this passage in the Preface by the light of nature, before +Mr. Pollard’s valuable book, based on the widest and most minute +research, came into my hands. By the results of that research +he backs his opinion (and mine), that some of the quartos are surreptitious +and bad, while others are good “and were honestly obtained.” +<a name="citation210a"></a><a href="#footnote210a">{210a}</a> +The Preface never denies this; never says that all the quartos contain +maimed and disfigured texts. The Preface draws a distinction to +this effect, “even those” (even the stolen and deformed +copies) “are now cured and perfect in their limbs,” - that +is, have been carefully edited, while “<i>all the rest</i>”<i> +</i>are “absolute in their numbers as he conceived them.” +This does not allege that all the rest are printed from Shakespeare’s +own holograph copies.<br> +<br> +Among the plays spoken of as “all the rest,” namely, those +not hitherto published and not deformed by the fraudulent, are, <i>Tempest</i>,<i> +Two Gentlemen</i>,<i> Measure for Measure</i>,<i> Comedy of Errors</i>,<i> +As You Like It</i>,<i> All</i>’<i>s Well</i>,<i> Twelfth Night</i>,<i> +Winter</i>’<i>s Tale</i>,<i> Henry VI</i>,<i> </i>iii., <i>Henry +VIII</i>,<i> Coriolanus</i>,<i> Timon</i>,<i> Julius Cæsar</i>,<i> +Macbeth</i>,<i> Antony and Cleopatra</i>,<i> </i>and <i>Cymbeline</i>. +Also <i>Henry VI</i>,<i> </i>i., ii., <i>King John</i>,<i> </i>and <i>Taming +of the Shrew</i>,<i> </i>appeared now in other form than in the hitherto +published Quartos bearing these or closely similar names. We have, +moreover, no previous information as to <i>The Shrew</i>,<i> Timon</i>,<i> +Julius Cæsar</i>,<i> All</i>’<i>s Well</i>,<i> </i>and <i>Henry +VIII</i>. The Preface adds the remarkable statement that, whatever +Shakespeare thought, “he uttered with that easinesse, that wee +have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.”<br> +<br> +It is plain that the many dramas previously unpublished could only be +recovered from manuscripts of one sort or another, because they existed +in no other form. The Preface takes it for granted that the selected +manuscripts contain the plays “absolute in their numbers as he +conceived them.” But the Preface does not commit itself, +I repeat, to the statement that all of these many plays are printed +from Shakespeare’s own handwriting. After “as he conceived +them,” it goes on, “Who, as he was a most happy imitator +of nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand +went together: and what he thought he uttered with that easiness, that +we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.”<br> +<br> +This may be meant to <i>suggest</i>,<i> </i>but does not <i>affirm</i>,<i> +</i>that the actors <i>have </i>“all the rest” of the plays +in Shakespeare’s own handwriting. They may have, or may +have had, some of his manuscripts, and believed that other manuscripts +accessible to them, and used by them, contain his very words. +Whether from cunning or design, or from the Elizabethan inability to +tell a plain tale plainly, the authors or author of the Preface have +everywhere left themselves loopholes and ways of evasion and escape. +It is not possible to pin them down to any plain statement of facts +concerning the sources for the hitherto unpublished plays, “the +rest” of the plays.<br> +<br> +These, at least, were from manuscript sources which the actors thought +accurate, and some may have been “fair copies” in Shakespeare’s +own hand. (Scott, as regards his novels, sent his <i>prima cura</i>,<i> +</i>his first writing down, to the press, and his pages are nearly free +from blot or erasion. In one case at least, Shelley’s first +draft of a poem is described as like a marsh of reeds in water, with +wild ducks, but he made very elegant fair copies for the press.) +Let it be supposed that Ben Jonson wrote all this Preface, in accordance +with the wishes and instructions of the two actors who sign it. +He took their word for the almost blotless MSS. which they received +from Shakespeare. He remarks, in his posthumously published <i>Discoveries +</i>(notes, memories, brief essays), “I remember the players have +<i>often </i>mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing +(whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line.” And +Ben gives, we shall later see, his habitual reply to this habitual boast.<br> +<br> +As to the sources of such plays as had been “maimed and deformed +by injurious impostors,” and are now “offered cur’d +and perfect of their limbs,” “it can be proved to demonstration,” +say the Cambridge Editors, “that several plays in the Folio were +printed from earlier quarto editions” (but the players secured +a retreat on this point), “and that in other cases the quarto +is more correctly printed, or from a better manuscript than the Folio +text, and therefore of higher authority.” <i>Hamlet</i>,<i> +</i>in the Folio of 1623, when it differs from the quarto of 1604, “differs +for the worse in forty-seven places, while it differs for the better +in twenty places.”<br> +<br> +Can the wit of man suggest any other explanation than that the editing +of the Folio was carelessly done; out of the best quartos and MSS. in +the theatre for acting purposes, and, - if the players did not lie in +what they “often said,” and if they kept the originals, +- out of some MSS. received from Shakspere? Whether the two players +themselves threw into the press, after some hasty botchings, whatever +materials they had, or whether they employed an Editor, a very wretched +Editor, or Editors, or whether the great Author, Bacon, himself was +his own Editor, the preparation of a text was infamously done. +The two actors, probably, I think, never read through the proof-sheets, +and took the word of the man whom they employed to edit their materials, +for gospel. The editing of the Folio is so exquisitely careless +that twelve printer’s errors in a quarto of 1622, of <i>Richard +III</i>,<i> </i>appear in the Folio of 1623. Again, the <i>Merry +Wives </i>of the Folio, is nearly twice as long as the quarto of 1619, +yet keeps old errors.<br> +<br> +How can we explain the reckless retention of errors, and also the large +additions and improvements? Did the true author (Bacon or Bungay) +now edit his work, add much matter, and go wrong forty-seven times where +the quarto was right, and go right twenty times when the quarto was +wrong? Did he, for the Folio of 1623, nearly double <i>The Merry +Wives </i>in extent, and also leave all the errors of the fourth quarto +uncorrected?<br> +<br> +In that case how negligent was Bacon of his immortal works! Now +Bacon was a scholar, and this absurd conduct cannot be imputed, I hope, +to him.<br> +<br> +Mr. Pollard is much more lenient than his fellow-scholars towards the +Editor or Editors of the Folio. He concludes that “manuscript +copies of the plays were easily procurable.” Sixteen out +of the thirty-six plays existed in quartos. Eight of the sixteen +were not used for the Folio; five were used, “with additions, +corrections, or alterations” (which must have been made from manuscripts). +Three quartos only were reprinted as they stood. The Editors greatly +preferred to use manuscript copies; and showed this, Mr. Pollard thinks, +by placing plays, never before printed, in the most salient parts of +the three sets of dramas in their book. <a name="citation215a"></a><a href="#footnote215a">{215a}</a> +They did make an attempt to divide their plays into Acts and Scenes, +whereas the quartos, as a general rule, had been undivided. But +the Editors, I must say, had not the energy to carry out their good +intentions fully - or Bacon or Bungay, if the author, wearied in well-doing. +The work is least ill done in the Comedies, and grows worse and worse +as the Editor, or Bacon, or Bungay becomes intolerably slack.<br> +<br> +A great living author, who had a decent regard for his own works, could +never have made or passed this slovenly Folio. Yet Mr. Greenwood +argues that probably Bungay was still alive and active, after Shakspere +was dead and buried. (Mr. Greenwood, of course, does not speak +of Bungay, which I use as short for his Great Unknown.) Thus, +<i>Richard III </i>from 1597 to 1622 appeared in six quartos. +It is immensely improved in the Folio, and so are several other plays. +Who made the improvements, which the Editors could only obtain in manuscripts? +If we say that Shakespeare made them in MS., Mr. Greenwood asks, “What +had he to work upon, since, after selling his plays to his company, +he did not preserve his manuscript?” <a name="citation216a"></a><a href="#footnote216a">{216a}</a> +Now I do not know that he did sell his plays to his company. We +are sure that Will got money for them, but we do not know what arrangement +he made with his company. He may have had an author’s rights +in addition to a sum down, as later was customary, and he had his regular +share in the profits. Nor am I possessed of information that “he +did not preserve his manuscript.” How can we know that? +He may have kept his first draft, he may have made a fair copy for himself, +as well as for the players, or may have had one made. He may have +worked on a copy possessed by the players; and the publisher of the +quartos of 1605, 1612, 1622, may not have been allowed to use, or may +not have asked for the latest manuscript revised copy. The <i>Richard +III </i>of the Folio contains, with much new matter, the printer’s +errors of the quarto of 1622. I would account for this by supposing +that the casual Editor had just sense enough to add the new parts in +a revised manuscript to the quarto, and was far too lazy to correct +the printer’s errors in the quarto. But Mr. Greenwood asks +whether “the natural conclusion is not that ‘some person +unknown’ took the Quarto of 1622, revised it, added the new passages, +and thus put it into the form in which it appeared in 1623.” +This natural conclusion means that the author, Bungay, was alive in +1622, and put his additions and improvements of recent date into the +quarto of 1622, but never took the trouble to correct the errors in +the quarto. And so on in other plays similarly treated. +“Is it not a more natural conclusion that ‘Shakespeare’” +(Bungay) “himself revised its publication, and that some part +of this revision, at any rate, was done after 1616 and before 1623.” +<a name="citation217a"></a><a href="#footnote217a">{217a}</a><br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood, after criticising other systems, writes, <a name="citation217b"></a><a href="#footnote217b">{217b}</a> +“There is, of course, another hypothesis. It is that Shakespeare” +(meaning the real author) “did not die in 1616,” and here +follows the usual notion that “Shakespeare” was the “<i>nom +de plume</i>”<i> </i>of that transcendent genius, “moving +in Court circles among the highest of his day (as assuredly Shakespeare +must have moved) - who wished to conceal his identity.”<br> +<br> +I have not the shadow of assurance that the Author “moved in Court +circles,” though Will would see a good deal when he played at +Court, and in the houses of nobles, before “Eliza and our James.” +I never moved in Court circles: Mr. Greenwood must know them better +than I do, and I have explained (see <i>Love</i>’<i>s Labour</i>’<i>s +Lost</i>,<i> </i>and <i>Shakespeare</i>,<i> Genius</i>,<i> and Society</i>)<i> +</i>how Will picked up his notions of courtly ways.<br> +<br> +“Another hypothesis,” the Baconian hypothesis, - “<i>nom +de plume</i>”<i> </i>and all, - Mr. Greenwood thinks “an +extremely reasonable one”: I cannot easily conceive of one more +unreasonable.<br> +<br> +“Supposing that there was such an author as I have suggested, +he may well have conceived the idea of publishing a collected edition +of the plays which had been written under the name of Shakespeare, and +being himself busy with other matters, he may have entrusted the business +to some ‘literary man,’ to some ‘good pen,’ +who was at the time doing work for him; and why not to the man who wrote +the commendatory verses, the ‘Lines to the Reader’” +(opposite to the engraving), “and, as seems certain, the Preface, +‘to the great variety of Readers’?” <a name="citation218a"></a><a href="#footnote218a">{218a}</a><br> +<br> +That man, that “good pen,” was Ben Jonson. On the +“supposing” of Mr. Greenwood, Ben is “doing work for” +the Great Unknown at the time when “the business” following +on the “idea of publishing a collected edition of the plays which +had been written under the name of Shakespeare” occurred to the +illustrious but unknown owner of that “<i>nom de plume</i>.” +In plain words of my own, - the Author may have entrusted “the +business,” and what was that business if not the editing of the +Folio? - to Ben Jonson - “who was at the time doing work for him” +- for the Author.<br> +<br> +Here is a clue! We only need to know for what man of “transcendent +genius, universal culture, world-wide philosophy . . . moving in Court +circles,” and so on, Ben “was working” about 1621-3, +the Folio appearing in 1623.<br> +<br> +The heart beats with anticipation of a discovery! “On January +22, 1621, Bacon celebrated his sixtieth birthday with great state at +York House. Jonson was present,” and wrote an ode, with +something about the Genius of the House (<i>Lar </i>or Brownie),<br> +<br> +<br> +“Thou stand’st as if some mystery thou didst.”<br> +<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood does not know what this can mean; nor do I. <a name="citation219a"></a><a href="#footnote219a">{219a}</a><br> +<br> +“Jonson, it appears” (on what authority?),<i> </i>“was +Bacon’s guest at Gorhambury, and was one of those good ‘pens,’” +of whom Bacon speaks as assisting him in the translation of some of +his books into Latin.<br> +<br> +Bacon, writing to Toby Mathew, June 26, 1623, mentions the help of “some +good pens,” Ben Jonson he does not mention. But Judge Webb +does. “It is an undoubted fact,” says Judge Webb, +“that the Latin of the <i>De Augmentis</i>,<i> </i>which was published +in 1623, was the work of Jonson.” <a name="citation219b"></a><a href="#footnote219b">{219b}</a> +To whom Mr. Collins replies, “There is not a particle of evidence +that Jonson gave to Bacon the smallest assistance in translating any +of his works into Latin.” <a name="citation219c"></a><a href="#footnote219c">{219c}</a><br> +<br> +<i>Très bien</i>,<i> </i>on Judge Webb’s assurance the +person for whom Ben was working, in 1623, was Bacon. Meanwhile, +Mr. Greenwood’s “supposing” is “that there was +such an author” (of transcendent genius, and so on), who “may +have entrusted the editing of his collected plays” to some “good +pen,” who was at the time “doing work for him,” and +“why not to” - Ben Jonson. <a name="citation220a"></a><a href="#footnote220a">{220a}</a> +Now the man for whom Ben, in 1623, was “doing work” - was +BACON, - so Judge Webb says. <a name="citation220b"></a><a href="#footnote220b">{220b}</a><br> +<br> +Therefore, by this hypothesis of Mr. Greenwood, <a name="citation220c"></a><a href="#footnote220c">{220c}</a> +the Great Unknown was Bacon, - just the hypothesis of the common Baconian.<br> +<br> +Is my reasoning erroneous? Is the “supposing” suggested +by Mr. Greenwood <a name="citation220d"></a><a href="#footnote220d">{220d}</a> +any other than that of Miss Delia Bacon, and Judge Webb? True, +Mr. Greenwood’s Baconian “supposing” is only a working +hypothesis: not a confirmed belief. But it is useful to his argument +(see “Ben Jonson and Shakespeare”)<i> </i>when he wants +to explain away Ben’s evidence, in his verses in the Folio, to +the Stratford actor as the Author.<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood writes, in the first page of his Preface: “It is +no part of my plan or intention to defend that theory,” “the +Baconian theory.” Apparently it pops out contrary to the +intention of Mr. Greenwood. But pop out it does: at least I can +find no flaw in the reasoning of my detection of Bacon: I see no way +out of it except this: after recapitulating what is said about Ben as +one of Bacon’s “good pens” with other details, Mr. +Greenwood says, “But no doubt that way madness lies!” <a name="citation221a"></a><a href="#footnote221a">{221a}</a> +Ah no! not madness, no, but Baconism “lies that way.” +However, “let it be granted” (as Euclid says in his sportsmanlike +way) that Mr. Greenwood by no means thinks that his “concealed +poet” is Bacon - only some one similar and similarly situated +and still active in 1623, and occupied with other business than supervising +a collected edition of plays written under his “<i>nom de plume</i>”<i> +</i>of Shakespeare. Bacon, too, was busy, with supervising, or +toiling at the Latin translation of his scientific works, and Ben (according +to Judge Webb) was busy in turning the <i>Advancement of Learning </i>into +Latin prose. Mr. Greenwood quotes, without reference, Archbishop +Tenison as saying that Ben helped Bacon in doing his works into Latin. +<a name="citation221b"></a><a href="#footnote221b">{221b}</a> +Tenison is a very late witness. The prophetic soul of Bacon did +not quite trust English to last as long as Latin, or he thought Latin, +the <i>lingua franca </i>of Europe in his day, more easily accessible +to foreign students, as, of course, it was. Thus Bacon was very +busy; so was Ben. The sad consequence of Ben’s business, +perhaps, is that the editing of the Folio is notoriously bad; whether +Ben were the Editor or not, it is infamously bad.<br> +<br> +Conceivably Mr. Greenwood is of the same opinion. He says, “It +stands admitted that a very large part of that volume” (the Folio) +“consists of work that is not ‘Shakespeare’s’ +at all.”<br> +<br> +How strange, if Ben edited it for the Great Unknown - who knew, if any +human being knew, what work was “Shakespeare’s”! +On Mr. Greenwood’s hypothesis, <a name="citation222a"></a><a href="#footnote222a">{222a}</a> +or “supposing,” the Unknown Author “may well have +conceived the idea of publishing a collected edition of the plays which +had been written” (not “published,” <i>written</i>)<i> +</i>“under the name of Shakespeare, and, being himself busy with +other matters, he may have entrusted the business to” some “good +pen,” “and why not to” - Ben. Nevertheless “a +very large part of that volume consists of work that is not ‘Shakespeare’s’ +at all.” <a name="citation222b"></a><a href="#footnote222b">{222b}</a> +How did this occur? The book <a name="citation222c"></a><a href="#footnote222c">{222c}</a> +is “that very doubtful ‘canon.’” How, +if “Shakespeare’s” man edited it for “Shakespeare”? +Did “Shakespeare” not care what stuff was placed under his +immortal “<i>nom de plume</i>”?<br> +<br> +It is not my fault if I think that Mr. Greenwood’s hypotheses +<a name="citation222d"></a><a href="#footnote222d">{222d}</a> - the +genuine “Shakespeare” either revised his own works, or put +Ben on the editorial task - are absolutely contradicted by his statements +in another part of his book. <a name="citation222e"></a><a href="#footnote222e">{222e}</a> +For the genuine “Shakespeare” knew what plays he had written, +knew what he could honestly put forth as his own, as “Shakespeare’s.” +Or, if he placed the task of editing in Ben’s hands, he must have +told Ben what plays were of his own making. In either case the +Folio would contain these, and no others. But - “the <i>plat +contraire</i>,”<i> </i>- the very reverse, - is stated by Mr. +Greenwood. “It stands admitted that a very large portion +of that volume” (the Folio) “consists of work that is not +‘Shakespeare’s’” (is not Bacon’s, or the +other man’s) “at all.” <a name="citation223a"></a><a href="#footnote223a">{223a}</a> +Then away fly the hypotheses <a name="citation223b"></a><a href="#footnote223b">{223b}</a> +that the auto-Shakespeare, or that Ben, employed by the auto-Shakespeare +(apparently Bacon) revised, edited, and prepared for publication the +auto-Shakespearean plays. For Mr. Greenwood “has already +dealt with <i>Titus </i>(<i>Andronicus</i>)<i> </i>and <i>Henry VI</i>,” +<a name="citation223c"></a><a href="#footnote223c">{223c}</a> and proved +them not to be auto-Shakespearean - and he adds “there are many +other plays in that very doubtful ‘canon’” (the Folio) +“which, by universal admission, contain much non-Shakespearean +composition.” <a name="citation223d"></a><a href="#footnote223d">{223d}</a> +Perhaps! but if so the two hypotheses, <a name="citation223e"></a><a href="#footnote223e">{223e}</a> +that either the genuine Shakespeare <a name="citation223f"></a><a href="#footnote223f">{223f}</a> +revised (“is it not a more natural solution that ‘Shakespeare’ +himself revised his works for publication, and that some part, at any +rate, of this revision <a name="citation223g"></a><a href="#footnote223g">{223g}</a> +was done after 1616 and before 1623?”), or <a name="citation223h"></a><a href="#footnote223h">{223h}</a> +that he gave Ben (who was working, by the conjecture, for Bacon) the +task of editing the Folio, - are annihilated. For neither the +auto-Shakespeare (if honest), nor Ben (if sober), could have stuffed +the Folio full of non-Shakespearean work, - including four “non-Shakespearean” +plays, - nor could the Folio be “that very doubtful canon.” +<a name="citation224a"></a><a href="#footnote224a">{224a}</a> +Again, if either the auto-Shakespeare or Ben following his instructions, +were Editor, neither could have, as the Folio Editor had “evidently +no little doubt about” <i>Troilus and Cressida.</i> <a name="citation224b"></a><a href="#footnote224b">{224b}</a><br> +<br> +Neither Ben, nor the actual Simon Pure, the author, the auto-Shakespeare, +could fail to know the truth about <i>Trodus and Cressida</i>. +But the Editor <a name="citation224c"></a><a href="#footnote224c">{224c}</a> +did <i>not </i>know the truth, the whole canon is “doubtful.” +Therefore the hypothesis, the “supposing,” that the actual +author did the revising, <a name="citation224d"></a><a href="#footnote224d">{224d}</a> +and the other hypothesis that he gave Ben the work, <a name="citation224e"></a><a href="#footnote224e">{224e}</a> +seem to me wholly impossible. But Mr. Greenwood needs the “supposings” +of pp. 290, 293; and as he rejects <i>Titus Andronicus </i>and <i>Henry +VI </i>(both in the Folio), he also needs the contradictory views of +pp. 351, 358. On which set of supposings and averments does he +stand to win?<br> +<br> +Perhaps he thinks to find a way out of what appears to me to be a dilemma +in the following fashion: He will not accept <i>Titus Andronicus </i>and +<i>Henry VI</i>,<i> </i>though both are in the Folio, as the work of +<i>his </i>“Shakespeare,” his Unknown, the Bacon of the +Baconians. Well, we ask, if your Unknown, or Bacon, or Ben, - +instructed by Bacon, or by the Unknown, - edited the Folio, how could +any one of the three insert <i>Titus</i>,<i> </i>and <i>Henry VI</i>,<i> +</i>and be “in no little doubt about” <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>? +Bacon, or the Unknown, or the Editor employed by either, knew perfectly +well which plays either man could honestly claim as his own work, done +under the “<i>nom de plume</i>”<i> </i>of “William +Shakespeare” (with or without the hyphen). Yet the Editor +of the Folio does not know - and Mr. Greenwood does know - <i>Henry +VI </i>and <i>Titus </i>are “wrong ones.”<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood’s way out, if I follow him, is this: <a name="citation225a"></a><a href="#footnote225a">{225a}</a> +“Judge Stotsenburg asks, ‘Who wrote <i>The Taming of a Shrew +</i>printed in 1594, and who wrote <i>Titus Andronicus</i>,<i> Henry +VI</i>,<i> </i>or <i>King Lear </i>referred to in the Diary?’” +(Henslowe’s). The Judge continues: “Neither Collier +nor any of the Shaxper commentators make (<i>sic</i>)<i> </i>any claim +to their authorship in behalf of William Shaxper. Since these +plays have the same names as those included in the Folio of 1623 the +presumption is that they are the same plays until the contrary is shown. +Of course it may be shown, either that those in the Folio are entirely +different except in name, or that these plays were revised, improved, +and dressed by some one whom they” (who?) “called Shakespeare.”<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood says, “My own conviction is that . . . these plays +were ‘revised, improved, and dressed by some one whom they called +Shakespeare.’” <a name="citation226a"></a><a href="#footnote226a">{226a}</a> +(Whom <i>who </i>called Shakespeare?) In that case these plays, +- say <i>Titus Andronicus </i>and <i>Henry VI</i>,<i> </i>Part 1, - +which Mr. Greenwood denies to <i>his “</i>Shakespeare” were +just as much <i>his </i>Shakespeare’s plays as any other plays +(and there are several), which <i>his </i>Shakespeare “revised, +improved, and dressed.” Yet <i>his </i>Shakespeare is <i>not +</i>author of <i>Henry VI</i>, <a name="citation226b"></a><a href="#footnote226b">{226b}</a><i> +</i>not the author of <i>Titus Andronicus</i>. <a name="citation226c"></a><a href="#footnote226c">{226c}</a> +“Mr. Anders,” writes Mr. Greenwood, “makes what I +think to be a great error in citing <i>Henry VI </i>and <i>Titus </i>as +genuine plays of Shakespeare.” <a name="citation226d"></a><a href="#footnote226d">{226d}</a><br> +<br> +He hammers at this denial in nineteen references in his Index to <i>Titus +Andronicus</i>. Yet Ben, or Bacon, or the Unknown thought that +these plays <i>were </i>“genuine plays” of “Shakespeare,” +the concealed author - Bacon or Mr. Greenwood’s man. It +appears that the immense poet who used the “<i>nom de plume</i>”<i> +</i>of “Shakespeare” did not know the plays of which he +could rightfully call himself the author; that (not foreseeing Mr. Greenwood’s +constantly repeated objections) he boldly annexed four plays, or two +certainly, which Mr. Greenwood denies to him, and another about which +“the Folio Editor was in no little doubt.”<br> +<br> +Finally, <a name="citation227a"></a><a href="#footnote227a">{227a}</a> +Mr. Greenwood is “convinced,” “it is my conviction” +that some plays which he often denies to his “Shakespeare” +were “revised, improved, and dressed by some one whom they called +Shakespeare.” That some one, if he edited or caused to be +edited the Folio, thought that his revision, improvement, and dressing +up of the plays gave him a right to claim their authorship - and Mr. +Greenwood, a dozen times and more, denies to him their authorship.<br> +<br> +One is seriously puzzled to discover the critic’s meaning. +<i>The Taming of a Shrew</i>,<i> Titus</i>,<i> Henry VI</i>,<i> </i>and +<i>King Lear</i>,<i> </i>referred to in Henslowe’s “Diary,” +are not “Shakespearean,” we are repeatedly told. But +“my own conviction is that . . . ” these plays were “revised, +improved, and dressed by some one whom they called Shakespeare.” +But to be revised, improved, and dressed by some one whom they called +Shakespeare, is to be as truly “Shakespearean” work as is +any play so handled “by Shakespeare.” Thus the plays +mentioned are as truly “Shakespearean” as any others in +which “Shakespeare” worked on an earlier canvas, and also +<i>Titus </i>“is not <i>Shakespearean </i>at all.” +Mr. Greenwood, I repeat, constantly denies the “Shakespearean” +character to <i>Titus </i>and <i>Henry VI</i>. “The conclusion +of the whole matter is that <i>Titus </i>and <i>The Trilogy of Henry +VI </i>are not the work of Shakespeare: that his hand is probably not +to be found at all in <i>Titus</i>,<i> </i>and only once or twice, if +at all, in <i>Henry VI</i>,<i> </i>Part I, but that he it probably was +who altered and remodelled the two parts of the old <i>Contention of +the Houses of York and Lancaster</i>,<i> </i>thereby producing <i>Henry +VI</i>,<i> </i>Parts II and III.” <a name="citation228a"></a><a href="#footnote228a">{228a}</a><br> +<br> +Yet <a name="citation228b"></a><a href="#footnote228b">{228b}</a> <i>Titus +</i>and <i>Henry VI </i>appear as “revised, improved, and dressed” +by the mysterious “some one whom they called Shakespeare.” +If Mr. Greenwood’s conclusion <a name="citation228c"></a><a href="#footnote228c">{228c}</a> +be correct, “Shakespeare” had no right to place <i>Henry +VI</i>,<i> </i>Part I, and <i>Titus </i>in his Folio. If his “conviction” +<a name="citation228d"></a><a href="#footnote228d">{228d}</a> be correct, +Shakespeare had as good a right to them as to any of the plays which +he revised, and improved, and dressed. They <i>must </i>be “Shakespearean” +if Mr. Greenwood is right <a name="citation228e"></a><a href="#footnote228e">{228e}</a> +in his suggestion that “Shakespeare” either revised his +works for publication between 1616 and 1623, or set his man, Ben Jonson, +upon that business. Yet neither one nor the other knew what to +make of <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>. “The Folio Editor had, +evidently, no little doubt about that play.” <a name="citation228f"></a><a href="#footnote228f">{228f}</a><br> +<br> +So neither “Shakespeare” nor Ben, instructed by him, can +have been “the Folio Editor.” Consequently Mr. Greenwood +must abandon his suggestion that either man was the Editor, and may +return to his rejection of <i>Titus </i>and <i>Henry VI</i>, Part I. +But he clings to it. He finds in Henslowe’s Diary “references +to, and records of the writing of, such plays” as, among others, +<i>Titus Andronicus</i>,<i> </i>and <i>Henry VI</i>. <a name="citation229a"></a><a href="#footnote229a">{229a}</a><br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood, after rejecting a theory of some one, says, “Far +more likely does it appear that there was a great man of the time whose +genius was capable of ‘transforming dross into gold,’ who +took these plays, and, in great part, rewrote and revised them, leaving +sometimes more, and sometimes less of the original work; and that so +rewritten, revised, and transformed they appeared as the plays of ‘Shake-speare.’” +<a name="citation229b"></a><a href="#footnote229b">{229b}</a><br> +<br> +This statement is made <a name="citation229c"></a><a href="#footnote229c">{229c}</a> +about “these plays,” including <i>Titus Andronicus </i>and +<i>Henry VI</i>,<i> </i>while <a name="citation229d"></a><a href="#footnote229d">{229d}</a> +“<i>Titus </i>and the <i>Trilogy of Henry VI </i>are not the work +of Shakespeare . . . his hand is probably not to be found at all in +<i>Titus</i>,<i> </i>and only once or twice in <i>Henry VI</i>,<i> </i>Part +I,” though he probably made Parts II and III out of older plays.<br> +<br> +I do not know where to have the critic. If <i>Henry VI</i>,<i> +</i>Part I, and <i>Titus </i>are in no sense by “Shakespeare,” +then neither “Shakespeare nor Ben for him edited or had anything +to do with the editing of the Folio. If either or both had to +do with the editing, as the critic suggests, then he is wrong in denying +Shakespearean origin to <i>Titus </i>and <i>Henry VI</i>,<i> </i>Part +I.<br> +<br> +Of course one sees a way out of the dilemma for the great auto-Shakespeare +himself, who, by one hypothesis, handed over the editing of his plays +to Ben (<i>he</i>,<i> </i>by Mr. Greenwood’s “supposing,” +was deviling at literary jobs for Bacon). The auto-Shakespeare +merely tells Ben to edit his plays, and never even gives him a list +of them. Then Ben brings him the Folio, and the author looks at +the list of Plays.<br> +<br> +“Mr. Jonson,” he says, “I have hitherto held thee +for an honest scholar and a deserving man in the quality thou dost profess. +But thou hast brought me a maimed and deformed printed copy of that +which I did write for my own recreation, not wishful to be known for +so light a thing as a poet. Moreover, thou hast placed among these +my trifles, four plays to which I never put a finger, and others in +which I had no more than a thumb. The Seneschal, Mr. Jonson, will +pay thee what is due to thee; thy fardels shall be sent whithersoever +thou wilt, and, Mary! Mr. Jonson, I bid thee never more be officer +of mine.”<br> +<br> +This painful discourse must have been held at Gorhambury, - if Ben edited +the Folio - for Francis.<br> +<br> +It is manifest, I hope, that about the Folio Mr. Greenwood speaks with +two voices, and these very discordant. It is also manifest that, +whoever wrote the plays left his materials in deep neglect, and that, +when they were collected, some one gathered them up in extreme disorder. +It is extraordinary that the Baconians and Mr. Greenwood do not see +the fallacy of their own reasoning in this matter of the Folio. +They constantly ridicule the old view that the actor, Will Shakspere +(if, by miracle, he were the author of the plays), could have left them +to take their fortunes. They are asked, what did other playwrights +do in that age? They often parted with their whole copyright to +the actors of this or that company, or to Henslowe. The new owners +could alter the plays at will, and were notoriously anxious to keep +them out of print, lest other companies should act them. As Mr. +Greenwood writes, <a name="citation231a"></a><a href="#footnote231a">{231a}</a> +“Such, we are told, was the universal custom with dramatists of +the day; they ‘kept no copies’ of their plays, and thought +no more about them. It will, I suppose, be set down to fanaticism +that I should doubt the truth of this proposition, that I doubt if it +be consonant with the known facts of human nature.” But +whom, except Jonson, does Mr. Greenwood find editing and publishing +his plays? Beaumont, Fletcher, Heywood? No!<br> +<br> +If the Great Unknown were dead in 1623, his negligence was as bad as +Will’s. If he were alive and revised his own work for publication, +<a name="citation231b"></a><a href="#footnote231b">{231b}</a> he did +it as the office cat might have done it in hours of play. If, +on the other side, he handed the editorial task over to Ben, <a name="citation232a"></a><a href="#footnote232a">{232a}</a> +then he did not even give Ben a list of his genuine works. Mr. +Greenwood cites the case of Ben Jonson, a notorious and, I think, solitary +exception. Ben was and often proclaimed himself to be essentially +a scholar. He took as much pains in prefacing, editing, and annotating +his plays, as he would have taken had the texts been those of Greek +tragedians.<br> +<br> +Finally, all Baconians cry out against the sottish behaviour of the +actor, Will, if being really the author of the plays, he did not bestir +himself, and bring them out in a collected edition. Yet no English +dramatist ventured on doing such a thing, till Ben thus collected his +“works” (and was laughed at) in 1616. The example +might have encouraged Will to be up and doing, but he died early in +1616. If Will were <i>not </i>the author, what care was Bacon, +or the Unknown, taking of his many manuscript plays, and for the proper +editing of those which had appeared separately in pamphlets? As +indolent and casual as Will, the great Author, Bacon or another, left +the plays to take their chances. Mr. Greenwood says that “<i>if +the author</i>”<i> </i>(Bacon or somebody very like him) “<i>had +been careless about keeping copies of his manuscripts . . . </i>” +<a name="citation232b"></a><a href="#footnote232b">{232b}</a> +What an “if” in the case of the great Author! This +gross neglect, infamous in Will, may thus have been practised by the +Great Unknown himself.<br> +<br> +In 1911 Mr. Greenwood writes, “There is overwhelming authority +for the view that <i>Titus Andronicus </i>is not <i>Shakespearean </i>at +all.” <a name="citation233a"></a><a href="#footnote233a">{233a}</a> +In that case, neither Bacon, nor the Unknown, nor Ben, acting for either, +can have been the person who put <i>Titus </i>into the Folio.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER XII: BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The evidence of Ben Jonson to the identity of Shakespeare the author +with Shakspere the actor, is “the strength of the Stratfordian +faith,” says Mr. Greenwood. “But I think it will be +admitted that the various Jonsonian utterances with regard to ‘Shakespeare’ +are by no means easy to reconcile one with the other.” <a name="citation237a"></a><a href="#footnote237a">{237a}</a><br> +<br> +It is difficult to reply briefly to Mr. Greenwood’s forty-seven +pages about the evidence of Jonson. But, first, whenever in written +words or in reported conversation, Ben speaks of Shakespeare by name, +he speaks of his <i>works: </i>in 1619 to Drummond of Hawthornden; in +1623 in commendatory verses to the Folio; while, about 1630, probably, +in his posthumously published <i>Discourses</i>,<i> </i>he writes on +Shakespeare as the friend and “fellow” of the players, on +Shakespeare as his own friend, and as a dramatist. On each of +these three occasions, Ben’s <i>tone </i>varies. In 1619 +he said no more to Drummond of Hawthornden (apparently on two separate +occasions) than that Shakespeare “lacked art,” and made +the mistake about a wreck on the sea-coast of Bohemia.<br> +<br> +In 1619, Ben spoke gruffly and briefly of Shakespeare, as to Drummond +he also spoke disparagingly of Beaumont, whom he had panegyrised in +an epigram in his own folio of 1616, and was again to praise in the +commendatory verses in the Folio. He spoke still more harshly +of Drayton, whom in 1616 he had compared to Homer, Virgil, Theocritus, +and Tyræus! He told an unkind anecdote of Marston, with +whom he had first quarrelled and then made friends, collaborating with +him in a play; and very generously and to his great peril, sharing his +imprisonment. To Drummond, Jonson merely said that he “beat +Marston and took away his pistol.” Of Sir John Beaumont, +brother of the dramatist, Ben had written a most hyperbolical eulogy +in verse; luckily for Sir John, to Drummond Ben did not speak of him. +Such was Ben, in panegyric verse hyperbolical; in conversation “a +despiser of others, and praiser of himself.” Compare Ben’s +three remarks about Donne, all made to Drummond. Donne deserved +hanging for breaking metre; Donne would perish for not being understood: +and Donne was in some points the first of living poets.<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood’s effort to disable Jonson’s evidence rests +on the contradictions in his estimates of Shakespeare’s poetry, +in notices scattered through some thirty years. Jonson, it is +argued, cannot on each occasion mean Will. He must now mean Will, +now the Great Unknown, and now - both at once. Yet I have proved +that Ben was the least consistent of critics, all depended on the occasion, +and on his humour at the moment. This is a commonplace of literary +history. The Baconians do not know it; Mr. Greenwood, if he knows +it, ignores it, and bases his argument on facts which may be unknown +to his readers. We have noted Ben’s words of 1619, and touched +on his panegyric of 1623. Thirdly, about 1630 probably, Ben wrote +in his manuscript book <i>Discourses </i>an affectionate but critical +page on Shakespeare as a man and an author. Always, in prose, +and in verse, and in recorded conversation, Ben explicitly identified +Shakspere (William, of Stratford) with the author of the plays usually +ascribed to him. But the Baconian Judge Webb (in extreme old age), +and the anti-Shakespearean Mr. Greenwood and others, choose to interpret +Ben’s words on the theory that, in 1623, he “had his tongue +in his cheek”; that, like Odysseus, he “mingled things false +with true,” that <i>they </i>know what is true from what is false, +and can undo the many knots which Ben tied in his tongue. How +they succeed we shall see.<br> +<br> +In addition to his three known mentions of Shakespeare by name (1619, +1623, 1630?),<i> </i>Ben certainly appears to satirise his rival at +a much earlier date; especially as Pantalabus, a playwright in <i>The +Poetaster </i>(1601), and as actor, poet, and plagiarist in an epigram, +<i>Poet-Ape</i>,<i> </i>published in his collected works of 1616; but +probably written as early as 1602. It is well known that in 1598 +Shakespeare’s company acted Ben’s <i>Every Man in His Humour</i>. +It appears that he conceived some grudge against the actors, and apparently +against Shakespeare and other playwrights, for, in 1601, his <i>Poetaster +</i>is a satire both on playwrights and on actors, whom he calls “apes.” +The apparent attacks on Shakespeare are just such as Ben, if angry and +envious, would direct against him; while we know of no other poet-player +of the period to whom they could apply. For example, in <i>The +Poetaster</i>,<i> </i>Histrio, the actor, is advised to ingratiate himself +with <i>Pantalabus</i>,<i> </i>“gent’man parcel-poet, his +father was a man of worship, I tell thee.” This is perhaps +unmistakably a blow at Shakespeare, who had recently acquired for his +father and himself arms, and the pleasure of writing himself “gentleman.” +This “parcel-poet gent’man” “pens lofty, in +a new stalking style,” - he is thus an author, he “pens,” +and in a high style. He is called <i>Pantalabus</i>,<i> </i>from +the Greek words for “to <i>take up all</i>,”<i> </i>which +means that, as poet, he is a plagiarist. Jonson repeats this charge +in his verses called <i>Poet-Ape -<br> +<br> +<br> +</i>“<i>He takes up all</i>,” makes each man’s wit +his own,<br> +And told of this, he slights it.”<br> +<br> +<br> +In a scene added to <i>The Poetaster </i>in 1616, the author (Ben) is +advised not<br> +<br> +<br> +“With a sad and serious verse to wound<br> +Pantalabus, railing in his saucy jests,”<br> +<br> +<br> +and obviously slighting the charges of plagiarism. Perhaps Ben +is glancing at Shakespeare, who, if accused of plagiary by an angry +rival, would merely laugh.<br> +<br> +A reply to the <i>Poetaster</i>,<i> </i>namely <i>Satiromastix </i>(by +Dekker and Marston?),<i> </i>introduces Jonson himself as babbling darkly +about “Mr. Justice Shallow,” and “an Innocent Moor” +(Othello?)<i>. </i>Here is question of “administering strong +pills” to Jonson; <i>then</i>,<br> +<br> +<br> +“What lumps of hard and indigested stuff,<br> +Of bitter <i>Satirism</i>,<i> </i>of <i>Arrogance</i>,<br> +Of <i>Self-love</i>,<i> </i>of <i>Detraction</i>,<i> </i>of a black<br> +And stinking <i>Insolence </i>should we fetch up!”<br> +<br> +<br> +This “pill” is a reply to Ben’s “purge” +for the poets in his <i>Poetaster</i>. Oh, the sad old stuff!<br> +<br> +Referring to Jonson’s <i>Poetaster</i>,<i> </i>and to <i>Satiromastix</i>,<i> +</i>the counter-attack, we find a passage in the Cambridge play, <i>The +Return from Parnassus </i>(about 1602). Burbage, the tragic actor, +and Kempe, the low-comedy man of Shakespeare’s company, are introduced, +discussing the possible merits of Cambridge wits as playwrights. +Kempe rejects them as they “smell too much of that writer Ovid, +and that writer Metamorphosis . . . ” The purpose, of course, +is to laugh at the ignorance of the low-comedy man, who thinks “Metamorphosis” +a writer, and does not suspect - how should he? - that Shakespeare “smells +of Ovid.” Kempe innocently goes on, “Why, here’s +our fellow” (comrade) “Shakespeare puts them all down” +(all the University playwrights), “aye, and Ben Jonson too. +O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace” +(in <i>The Poetaster</i>)<i> </i>“giving the poets a pill, but +our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge . . . ”<br> +<br> +The Cambridge author, perhaps, is thinking of the pill (not purge) which, +in <i>Satiromastix</i>,<i> </i>might be administered to Jonson. +The Cambridge author may have thought that Shakespeare wrote the passage +on the pill which was to “fetch up” masses of Ben’s +insolence, self-love, arrogance, and detraction. If this be not +the sequence of ideas, it is not easy to understand how or why Kempe +is made to say that Shakespeare has given Jonson a purge. Stupid +old nonsense! There are other more or less obscure indications +of Jonson’s spite, during the stage-quarrel, against Shakespeare, +but the most unmistakable proof lies in his verses in “Poet-Ape.” +I am aware that Ben’s intention here to hit at Shakespeare has +been denied, for example by Mr. Collins with his usual vigour of language. +But though I would fain agree with him, the object of attack can be +no known person save Will. Jonson was already, in <i>The Poetaster</i>,<i> +</i>using the term “<i>Poet-Ape</i>,”<i> </i>for he calls +the actors at large “apes.”<br> +<br> +Jonson thought so well of his rhymes that he included them in the Epigrams +of his first Folio (1616). By that date, the year of Shakespeare’s +death, if he really loved Shakespeare, as he says, in verse and prose, +Ben might have suppressed the verses. But (as Drummond noted) +he preferred his jest, such as it was, to his friend; who was not, as +usually understood, a man apt to resent a very blunt shaft of very obsolete +wit. Like Molière, Shakespeare had outlived the charge +of plagiarism, made long ago by the jealous Ben.<br> +<br> +Poet-Ape is an actor-playwright “<i>that would be thought our +chief</i>” - words which, by 1601, could only apply to Shakespeare; +there was no rival, save Ben, near his throne. The playwright-actor, +too, has now confessedly<br> +<br> +<br> + “grown<br> +To a little wealth and credit in the scene,”<br> +<br> +<br> +of no other actor-playwright could this be said.<br> +<br> +He is the author of “works” (Jonson was laughed at for calling +his own plays “works”), but these works are “the frippery +of wit,” that is, a tissue of plagiarisms, as in the case of <i>Pantalabus</i>. +But “told of this he slights it,” as most successful authors, +when accused, as they often are, of plagiarism by jealous rivals, wisely +do; - so did Molière. This Poet-Ape began his career by +“picking and gleaning” and “buying reversions of old +plays.” This means that Shakespeare <i>did </i>work over +earlier plays which his company had acquired; or, if Shakespeare did +not, - then, I presume, - Bacon did!<br> +<br> +<i>That</i>,<i> </i>with much bad humour, is the gist of the rhymes +on Poet-Ape. Ben thinks Shakespeare’s “works” +very larcenous, but still, the “works,” as such, are those +of the poet-actor. I hope it is now clear that Poet-Ape, who, +like <i>Pantalabus</i>,<i> </i>“takes up all”; who has “grown +to a little wealth and credit in the scene,” and who “thinks +himself the chief” of contemporary dramatists, can be nobody but +Shakespeare. Hence it follows that the “works” of +Poet-Ape, are the works of Shakespeare. Ben admits, nay, asserts +the existence of the works, says that they may reach “the after-time,” +but he calls them a mass of plagiarisms, - because he is in a jealous +rage.<br> +<br> +But this view does not at all suit Mr. Greenwood, for it shows Ben regarding +Shakespeare as the “Ape,” or Actor, and also as the “Poet” +and author of the “works.” Yet Ben’s words mean +nothing if not that an actor is the author of works which Ben accuses +of plagiarism. Mr. Greenwood thinks that the epigram proves merely +that “Jonson looked upon Shakspere (if, indeed, he refers to him) +as one who put forward the writings of others as his own, or, in plain +English, an impostor.” “The work which goes in his +name is, in truth, the work of somebody else.” <a name="citation244a"></a><a href="#footnote244a">{244a}</a> +Mr. Greenwood put the same interpretation on Greene’s words about +“Shakescene,” and we showed that the interpretation was +impossible. “The utmost we should be entitled to say” +(if Shake-scene be meant for Shakspere) “is that Greene accuses +Player Shakspere of putting forward, as his own, some work or perhaps +some parts of a work, for which he was really indebted to another.” +<a name="citation245a"></a><a href="#footnote245a">{245a}</a> +We proved, by quoting Greene’s words, that he said nothing which +could be tortured into this sense. <a name="citation245b"></a><a href="#footnote245b">{245b}</a> +In the same way Ben’s words cannot be tortured into the sense +that “the work which goes in his” (Poet-Ape’s) “name +is, in truth, the work of somebody else.” <a name="citation245c"></a><a href="#footnote245c">{245c}</a> +Mr. Greenwood tries to find the Anti-Willian hypothesis in Greene’s +<i>Groatsworth of Wit </i>and in Ben’s epigram. It is in +neither.<br> +<br> +Jonson is not accusing Shakespeare of pretending to be the author of +plays written by somebody else, but of “making <i>each man</i>’<i>s +</i>wit his own,” and the <i>men </i>are the other dramatists +of the day. Thus the future “may judge” Shakespeare’s +work “to be his as well as <i>ours.</i>”<br> +<br> +It is “we,” the living and recognised dramatists, whom Shakespeare +is said to plagiarise from; so boldly that<br> +<br> +<br> +“<i>We</i>,<i> the robbed</i>,<i> </i>leave rage, and pity it.”<br> +<br> +<br> +Ben does not mean that Shakespeare is publishing, as his own, whole +plays by some other author, but that his works are tissues of scraps +stolen from his contemporaries, from “us, the robbed.” +Where are to be found or heard of any works by a player-poet of 1601, +the would-be chief dramatist of the day, except those signed William +Shak(&c.). There are none, and thus Ben, at this date, is +identifying Will Shakspere, the actor, with the author of the Shakespearean +plays, which he expects to reach posterity; “after times may judge +them to be his,” as after times do to this hour.<br> +<br> +Thus Ben expresses, in accordance with his humour on each occasion, +most discrepant opinions of Will’s works, but he never varies +from his identification of Will with the author of the plays.<br> +<br> +The “works” of which Ben wrote so splenetically in <i>Poet-Ape</i>,<i> +</i>were the works of a Playwright-Actor, who could be nobody but the +actor Shakespeare, as far as Ben then knew. If later, and in altered +circumstances, he wrote of the very same works in very different terms, +his “utterances” are “not easily reconcilable” +with each other, - <i>whoever </i>the real author of the works may be. +If Bacon, or Mr. Greenwood’s anonymous equivalent for Bacon, were +the author, and if Ben came to know it, his attitudes towards the <i>works +</i>are still as irreconcilable as ever.<br> +<br> +Perhaps Baconians and Mr. Greenwood might say, “as long as Ben +believed that the works were those of an Actor-Playwright, he thought +them execrable. But when he learned that they were the works of +Bacon (or of some Great One), he declared them to be more than excellent” +- <i>but not to Drummond</i>. I am reluctant to think that Jonson +was the falsest and meanest of snobs. I think that when his old +rival, by his own account his dear friend, was dead, and when (1623) +Ben was writing panegyric verses about the first collected edition of +his plays (the Folio), then between generosity and his habitual hyperbolical +manner when he was composing commendatory verses, he said, - not too +much in the way of praise, - but a good deal more than he later said +(1630?),<i> </i>in prose, and in cold blood. I am only taking +Ben as I find him and as I understand him. Every step in my argument +rests on well-known facts. Ben notoriously, in his many panegyric +verses, wrote in a style of inflated praise. In conversation with +Drummond he censured, in brief blunt phrases, the men whom, in verse, +he had extolled. The Baconian who has not read all Ben’s +panegyrics in verse, and the whole of his conversations with Drummond, +argues in ignorance.<br> +<br> +We now come to Ben’s panegyrics in the Folio of 1623. Ben +heads the lines,<br> +<br> +<br> +“TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED<br> +THE AUTHOR<br> +MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE<br> +AND<br> +WHAT HE HATH LEFT US.”<br> +<br> +<br> +Words cannot be more explicit. Bacon was alive (I do not know +when Mr. Greenwood’s hidden genius died), and Ben goes on to speak +of the Author, Shakespeare, as dead, and buried. He calls on him +thus:<br> +<br> +<br> + “Soul of the Age!<br> +The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage!<br> +My Shakespear rise: I will not lodge thee by<br> +Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie<br> +A little further, to make thee a room:<br> +Thou art a monument, without a tomb,<br> +And art alive still, while thy book doth live,<br> +And we have wits to read, and praise to give.”<br> +<br> +<br> +Beaumont, by the way, died in the same year as Shakespeare, 1616, and, +while Ben here names him with Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare, his +contemporaries have left no anecdotes, no biographical hints. +In the panegyric follow the lines:<br> +<br> +<br> +“And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,<br> +From thence to honour thee I would not seek<br> +For names, but call forth thund’ring Æschylus,”<br> +<br> +<br> +and the other glories of the Roman and Attic stage, to see and hear +how Shakespeare bore comparison with all that the classic dramatists +did, or that “did from their ashes come.”<br> +<br> +Jonson means, “despite your lack of Greek and Latin I would not +shrink from challenging the greatest Greek and Roman tragedians to see +how you bear comparison with themselves”?<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood and the Baconians believe that the author of the plays +abounded in Latin and Greek. In my opinion his classical scholarship +must have seemed slight indeed to Ben, so learned and so vain of his +learning: but this is part of a vexed question, already examined. +So far, Ben’s verses have brought not a hint to suggest that he +does not identify the actor, his Beloved, with the author. Nothing +is gained when Ben, in commendatory verses, praises “Thy Art,” +whereas, speaking to Drummond of Hawthornden (1619), he said that Shakespeare +“wanted art.” Ben is not now growling to Drummond +of Hawthornden: he is writing a panegyric, and applauds Shakespeare’s +“well-turned and true-filed lines,” adding that, “to +write a living line” a man “must sweat,” and “strike +the second heat upon the Muses’ anvil.”<br> +<br> +To produce such lines requires labour, requires conscious “art.” +So Shakespeare <i>had </i>“art,” after all, despite what +Ben had said to Drummond: “Shakespeare lacked art.” +There is no more in the matter; the “inconsistency” is that +of Ben’s humours on two perfectly different occasions, now grumbling +to Drummond; and now writing hyperbolically in commendatory verses. +But the contrast makes Mr. Greenwood exclaim, “Can anything be +more astonishing and at the same time more unsatisfactory than this?” +<a name="citation249a"></a><a href="#footnote249a">{249a}</a><br> +<br> +Can anything be more like Ben Jonson?<br> +<br> +Did he know the secret of the authorship in 1619? If so, why did +he say nothing about the plays of the Great Unknown (whom he called +Shakespeare), save what Drummond reports, “want of art,” +ignorance of Bohemian geography. Or did Ben <i>not </i>know the +secret till, say, 1623, and then heap on the very works which he had +previously scouted praise for the very quality which he had said they +lacked? If so, Ben was as absolutely inconsistent, as before. +There is no way out of this dilemma. On neither choice are Ben’s +utterances “easy to reconcile one with the other,” except +on the ground that Ben was - Ben, and his comments varied with his varying +humours and occasions. I believe that, in the commendatory verses, +Ben allowed his Muse to carry him up to heights of hyperbolical praise +which he never came near in cold blood. He was warmed with the +heat of poetic composition and wound up to heights of eulogy, though +even <i>now </i>he could not forget the small Latin and less Greek!<br> +<br> +We now turn to Mr. Greenwood’s views about the commendatory verses. +On mature consideration I say nothing of his remarks on Ben’s +couplets about the bad engraved portrait. <a name="citation250a"></a><a href="#footnote250a">{250a}</a> +They are concerned with the supposed “<i>original </i>bust,” +as represented in Dugdale’s engraving of 1656. What the +Baconians hope to make out of “the <i>original </i>bust” +I am quite unable to understand. <a name="citation250b"></a><a href="#footnote250b">{250b}</a> +Again, I leave untouched some witticisms <a name="citation250c"></a><a href="#footnote250c">{250c}</a> +on Jonson’s lines about Spenser, Chaucer, and Beaumont in their +tombs - lines either suggested by, or suggestive of others by an uncertain +W. Basse, “but the evidence of authorship seems somewhat doubtful. +How the date is determined I do not know . . . ” <a name="citation251a"></a><a href="#footnote251a">{251a}</a> +As Mr. Greenwood knows so little, and as the discussion merely adds +dust to the dust, and fog to the mist of his attempt to disable Ben’s +evidence, I glance and pass by.<br> +<br> +“Then follow these memorable words, which I have already discussed:<br> +<br> +<br> +“‘And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek . . . +’” <a name="citation251b"></a><a href="#footnote251b">{251b}</a><br> +<br> +<br> +In “these memorable words,” every non-Baconian sees Ben’s +opinion about his friend’s lack of scholarship. According +to his own excellent Index, Mr. Greenwood has already adverted often +to “these memorable words.”<br> +<br> +<br> +(1) P. 40. “ . . . if this testimony is to be explained +away as not seriously written, then are we justified in applying the +same methods of interpretation to Jonson’s other utterances as +published in the Folio of 1623. But I shall have more to say as +to that further on.”<br> +<br> +(2) P. 88. Nothing of importance.<br> +<br> +(3) P. 220. Quotation from Dr. Johnson. Ben, “who +had no imaginable temptation to falsehood,” wrote the memorable +words. But Mr. Greenwood has to imagine a “temptation to +falsehood,” - and he does.<br> +<br> +(4) P. 222. “And we have recognised that Jonson’s +‘small Latin and less Greek’ must be explained away” +(a quotation from somebody).<br> +<br> +(5) P. 225. Allusion to anecdote of “Latin (latten) +spoons.”<br> +<br> +(6) Pp. 382, 383. “Some of us” (some of whom?) +“have long looked upon it as axiomatic . . . that Jonson’s +‘small Latin and less Greek,’ if meant to be taken seriously, +can only be applicable to Shakspere of Stratford and not to Shakespeare,” +that is, not to the Unknown author. Unluckily Ben, in 1623, is +addressing the shade of the “sweet Swan of Avon,” meaning +Stratford-on-Avon.<br> +<br> +(7) The next references in the laudable Index are to pp. 474, +475. “Then follow these memorable words, which I have already +discussed:<br> +<br> +<br> +“‘And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,’<br> +<br> +<br> +words which those who see how singularly inappropriate they are to the +author of the <i>Plays </i>and <i>Poems </i>of Shakespeare have been +at such infinite pains to explain away without impeaching the credit +of the author, or assuming that he is here indulging in a little Socratic +irony.”<br> +<br> +<i>I </i>do not want to “explain” Ben’s words “away”: +I want to know how on earth Mr. Greenwood explains them away. +My view is that Ben meant what he said, that Will, whose shade he is +addressing, was no scholar (which he assuredly was not). I diligently +search Mr. Greenwood’s scriptures, asking How does he explain +Ben’s “memorable words” away? On p. 106 of <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated </i>I seem to catch a glimmer of his method. +“Once let the Stratfordians” (every human and non-Baconian +person of education) “admit that Jonson when he penned the words +‘small Latin and less Greek’ was really writing ‘with +his tongue in his cheek.’ . . . ”<br> +<br> +Once admit that vulgarism concerning a great English poet engaged on +a poem of Pindaric flight, and of prophetic vision! No, we leave +the admission to Mr. Greenwood and his allies.<br> +<br> +To consider thus is to consider too seriously. The Baconians and +Anti-Willians have ceased to deserve serious attention (if ever they +did deserve it), and virtuous indignation, and all that kind of thing, +when they ask people who care for poetry to “admit” that +Ben wrote his verses “with his tongue in his cheek.” +Elsewhere, <a name="citation253a"></a><a href="#footnote253a">{253a}</a> +in place of Ben’s “tongue in his cheek,” Mr. Greenwood +prefers to suggest that Ben “is here indulging in a little Socratic +irony.” Socrates “with his tongue in his cheek”! +Say “talking through his throat,” if one may accept the +evidence of the author of <i>Raffles</i>,<i> </i>as to the idioms of +burglars.<br> +<br> +To return to criticism, we are to admit that Jonson was really writing +“with his tongue in his cheek,” knowing that, as a fact, +“<i>Shakespeare</i>”<i> </i>(the Great Unknown, the Bacon +of the Baconians) “had remarkable classical attainments, and they, +of course, open the door to the suggestion that the entire poem is capable +of an ironical construction and esoteric interpretation.” <a name="citation254a"></a><a href="#footnote254a">{254a}</a><br> +<br> +So this is Mr. Greenwood’s method of “explaining away” +the memorable words. He seems to conjecture that Will was not +<i>Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>not the author of the plays; that Jonson +knew it; that his poem is, as a whole, addressed to Bacon, or to the +Great Unknown, under his “<i>nom de plume</i>”<i> </i>of +“William Shakespeare”; that the address to the “Swan +of Avon” is a mere blind; and that Ben only alludes to his “Beloved,” +the Stratford actor, when he tells his Beloved that his Beloved has +“small Latin and less Greek.” All the praise is for +Bacon, or the Great Unknown (Mr. Harris), the jeer is for “his +Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, And what he hath left +Us.”<br> +<br> +As far as I presume to understand this theory of the “tongue in +the cheek,” of the “Socratic irony,” this is what +Mr. Greenwood has to propose towards “explaining away” the +evidence of Ben Jonson, in his famous commendatory verses. When +we can see through the dust of words we find that the “esoteric +interpretation” of the commendatory verses is merely a reassertion +of the general theory: a man with small Latin and less Greek could not +have written the plays and poems. Therefore when Ben explicitly +states that his Beloved, Mr. Shakespeare of Stratford, the Swan of Avon +<i>did </i>write the plays, and had small Latin and less Greek, Ben +meant that he did <i>not </i>write them, that they were written by somebody +else who had plenty of Greek and Latin. It is a strange logical +method! Mr. Greenwood merely reasserts his paradox, and proves +it, like certain Biblical critics of more orthodoxy than sense, by aid +of his private “esoteric method of interpretation.” +Ben, we say, about 1630, in prose and in cold blood, and in a humour +of criticism without the old rancour and envy, or the transitory poetic +enthusiasm, pens a note on Shakespeare in a volume styled “Timber, +or Discoveries, made upon men and Matter, as they have flowed out of +his daily Readings; or had their reflux to his peculiar Notion of the +Times.” Ben died in 1637; his MS. collection of notes and +brief essays, and reflections, was published in 1641. Bacon, of +whom he wrote his impressions in this manuscript, had died in 1626. +Ben was no longer young: he says, among these notes, that his memory, +once unusually strong, after he was past forty “is much decayed +in me . . . It was wont to be faithful to me, but shaken with +age now . . . (I copy the extract as given by Mr. Greenwood. <a name="citation255a"></a><a href="#footnote255a">{255a}</a>) +He spoke sooth: he attributes to Orpheus, in “Timber,” a +line from Homer, and quotes from Homer what is not in that poet’s +“works.”<br> +<br> +In this manuscript occurs, then, a brief prose note, headed, <i>De Shakespeare +nostrati</i>,<i> </i>on our countryman Shakespeare. It is an anecdote +of the Players and their ignorance, with a few critical and personal +remarks on Shakespeare. “I remember the players have often +mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that (whatsoever he penned) +he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, ‘Would +he had blotted a thousand,’ which they thought a malevolent speech. +I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance who chose that +circumstance to commend their friend by (that) wherein he most faulted; +and to justify mine own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour +his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, +honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave +notions and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility +that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped. ‘<i>Sufflaminandus +erat</i>,’<i> </i>as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit +was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too! Many +times he fell into those things could not escape laughter, as when he +said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him, ‘Caesar, +thou dost me wrong.’ He replied, ‘Cæsar did +never wrong but with just cause’; and such like, which were ridiculous. +But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more +in him to be praised than to be pardoned.” Baconians actually +maintain that Ben is here speaking of Bacon.<br> +<br> +Of whom is Ben writing? Of the author of <i>Julius Cæsar</i>, +- certainly, from which, his memory failing, he misquotes a line. +If Ben be in the great secret - that the author was Bacon, or Mr. Greenwood’s +Great Unknown, he is here no more enthusiastic about the Shadow or the +Statesman, than about Shakespeare; no less cool and critical, whoever +may be the subject of his comments. Whether, in the commendatory +verses, he referred to the Actor-Author, or Bacon, or the Shining Shadow, +or all of them at once, he is now in a mood very much more cool and +critical. If to be so cool and critical is violently inconsistent +in the case of the Stratford actor, it is not less so if Ben has Bacon +or the Shadow in his mind. Meanwhile the person of whom he speaks +<i>is here the actor-author</i>,<i> </i>whom the players, his friends, +commended “wherein he faulted,” namely, in not “blotting” +where, in a thousand cases, Ben wishes that he <i>had </i>blotted. +Can the most enthusiastic Baconian believe that when Ben wrote about +the players’ ignorant applause of Shakespeare’s, of their +friend’s lack of care in correction, Ben had Bacon in his mind?<br> +<br> +As for Mr. Greenwood, he says that in Ben’s sentence about the +players and their ignorant commendation, “we have it on Jonson’s +testimony that the players looked upon William Shakspere the actor as +the author of the plays and praised him for never blotting out a line.” +We have it, and how is the critic to get over or round the fact? +Thus, “We know that this statement” (about the almost blotless +lines) “is ridiculous; that if the players had any unblotted manuscripts +in their hands (which is by no means probable) they were merely fair +copies . . . ”<br> +<br> +Perhaps, but the Baconians appear to assume that a “fair copy” +is not, and cannot be, a copy in the handwriting of the author.<br> +<br> +As I have said before, the Players knew Will’s handwriting, if +he could write. If they received his copy in a hand not his own, +and were not idiots, they could not praise him and his unerring speed +and accuracy in penning his thoughts. If, on the other hand, Will +could not write, in their long friendship with Will, the Players must +have known the fact, and could not possibly believe, as they certainly +did, “on Jonson’s testimony” in his authorship.<br> +<br> +To finish Mr. Greenwood’s observations, “if they” +(the players) “really thought that the author of the plays wrote +them off <i>currente calamo</i>,<i> </i>and never” (or “hardly +ever”) “blotted a line, never revised, never made any alterations, +they knew nothing whatever concerning the real Shakespeare.” <a name="citation258a"></a><a href="#footnote258a">{258a}</a><br> +<br> +Nothing whatever? What they did not know was merely that Will +gave them fair copies in his own hand, as, before the typewriting machine +was invented, authors were wont to do. Within the last fortnight +I heard the error attributed to the players made by an English scholar +who is foremost in his own field of learning. He and I were looking +at some of Dickens’s MSS. They were full of erasions and +corrections. I said, “How unlike Scott!” whose first +draft of his novels exactly answered to the players’ description +of Will’s “copy.” My friend said, “Browning +scarcely made an erasion or change in writing his poems,” and +referred to Mr. Browning’s MSS. for the press, of which examples +were lying near us. “But Browning must have made clean copies +for the press,” I said: which was as new an idea to my learned +friend as it was undreamed of by the Players:- if what they received +from him were his clean copies.<br> +<br> +The Players’ testimony, through Jonson, cannot be destroyed by +the “easy stratagem” of Mr. Greenwood.<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood now nearly falls back on Bacon, though he constantly professes +that he “is not the advocate of Bacon’s authorship.” +The author was some great man, as like Bacon as one pea to another. +Mr. Greenwood says that Jonson looked on the issue of the First Folio +<a name="citation259a"></a><a href="#footnote259a">{259a}</a> “as +a very special occasion.” Well, it <i>was </i>a very special +occasion; no literary occasion could be more “special.” +Without the Folio, badly as it is executed, we should perhaps never +have had many of Shakespeare’s plays. The occasion was special +in the highest degree.<br> +<br> +But, says Mr. Greenwood, “if we could only get to the back of +Jonson’s mind, we should find that there was some efficient cause +operating to induce him to give the best possible send-off to that celebrated +venture.” <a name="citation260a"></a><a href="#footnote260a">{260a}</a><br> +<br> +Ben was much in the habit of giving “sendoffs” of great +eloquence to poetic “ventures” now forgotten. What +could “the efficient cause” be in the case of the Folio? +At once Mr. Greenwood has recourse to Bacon; he cannot, do what he will, +keep Bacon “out of the Memorial.” Ben was with Bacon +at Gorhambury, on Bacon’s sixtieth birthday (January 22, 1621). +Ben wrote verses about the Genius of the old house,<br> +<br> +<br> +“Thou stand’st as if some mystery thou didst.”<br> +<br> +<br> +“What was that ‘mystery’?” asks Mr. Greenwood. +<a name="citation260b"></a><a href="#footnote260b">{260b}</a> +What indeed? And what has all this to do with Ben’s commendatory +verses for the Folio, two years later? Mr. Greenwood also surmises, +as we have seen, <a name="citation260c"></a><a href="#footnote260c">{260c}</a> +that Jonson was with Bacon, helping to translate <i>The Advancement +of Learning </i>in June, 1623.<br> +<br> +Let us suppose that he was: what has that to do with Ben’s verses +for the Folio? Does Mr. Greenwood mean to hint that <i>Bacon </i>was +the “efficient cause operating to induce” Ben “to +give the best possible send-off” to the Folio? One does +not see what interest Bacon had in stimulating the enthusiasm of Ben, +unless we accept Bacon as author of the plays, which Mr. Greenwood does +not. If Mr. Greenwood thinks that Bacon was the author of the +plays, then the facts are suitable to his belief. But if he does +not, - “I hold no brief for the Baconians,” he says, - how +is all this passage on Ben’s visits to Bacon concerned with the +subject in hand?<br> +<br> +Between the passage on some “efficient cause” “at +the back of Ben’s mind,” <a name="citation261a"></a><a href="#footnote261a">{261a}</a> +and the passage on Ben’s visits to Bacon in 1621-3, <a name="citation261b"></a><a href="#footnote261b">{261b}</a> +six pages intervene, and blur the supposed connection between the “efficient +cause” of Ben’s verses of 1623, and his visits to Bacon +in 1621-3. These intercalary pages are concerned with Ben’s +laudations of Bacon, by name, in his <i>Discoveries</i>. The first +is entirely confined to praise of Bacon as an orator. Bacon is +next mentioned in a Catalogue of Writers as “<i>he who hath filled +up all numbers</i>,<i> </i>and performed that in our tongue which may +be preferred or compared either to <i>insolent Greece or haughty Rome</i>,”<i> +</i>words used of Shakespeare by Jonson in the Folio verses.<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood remarks that Jonson’s Catalogue, to judge by the +names he cites (More, Chaloner, Smith, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sidney, Hooker, +Essex, Raleigh, Savile, Sandys, and so on), suggests that “he +is thinking mainly of wits and orators of his own and the preceding +generation,” not of poets specially. This is obvious; why +should Ben name Shakespeare with More, Smith, Chaloner, Eliot, Bishop +Gardiner, Egerton, Sandys, and Savile? Yet “it is remarkable +that no mention should be made of the great dramatist.” +Where is Spenser named, or Beaumont, or Chaucer, with whom Ben ranked +Shakespeare? Ben quoted of Bacon the line he wrote long before +of Shakespeare as a poet, about “insolent Greece,” and all +this is “remarkable,” and Mr. Greenwood finds it “not +surprising” <a name="citation262a"></a><a href="#footnote262a">{262a}</a> +that the Baconians dwell on the “extraordinary coincidence of +expression,” as if Ben were incapable of repeating a happy phrase +from himself, and as if we should wonder at anything the Baconians may +say or do.<br> +<br> +Another startling coincidence is that, in <i>Discoveries</i>,<i> </i>Ben +said of Shakespeare “his wit was in his own power,” and +wished that “the rule of it had been so too.” Of Bacon, +Ben wrote, “his language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, +was nobly censorious.” Thus Bacon <i>had </i>“the +rule of his own wit,” Bacon “<i>could </i>spare or pass +by a jest,” whereas Shakespeare apparently could not - so like +were the two Dromios in this particular! Strong in these convincing +arguments, the Baconians ask (not so Mr. Greenwood, he is no Baconian), +“were there then <i>two </i>writers of whom this description was +appropriate . . . Was there only one, and was it of Bacon, under the +name of “Shakespeare,” that Ben wrote <i>De Shakespeare +nostrati</i>?<br> +<br> +Read it again, substituting “Bacon” for “Shakespeare.” +“I remember the players,” and so on, and what has Bacon +to do here? “Sometimes it was necessary that <i>Bacon </i>should +be stopped.” “Many times <i>Bacon </i>fell into those +things could not escape laughter,” such as Cæsar’s +supposed line, “and such like, which were ridiculous.” +“<i>Bacon </i>redeemed his vices with his virtues. There +was ever more in <i>Bacon </i>to be praised than to be pardoned.”<br> +<br> +Thus freely, according to the Baconians, speaks Ben of Bacon, whom he +here styles “Shakespeare,” - Heaven knows why! while crediting +him with the players as his friends. Ben could not think or speak +thus of Bacon. Mr. Greenwood occupies his space with these sagacities +of the Baconians; one marvels why he takes the trouble. We are +asked why Ben wrote so little and that so cool (“I loved him on +this side idolatry as much as any”) about Shakespeare. Read +through Ben’s <i>Discoveries: </i>what has he to say about any +one of his great contemporary dramatists, from Marlowe to Beaumont? +He says nothing about any of them; though he had panegyrised them, as +he panegyrised Beaumont, in verse. In his prose <i>Discoveries +</i>he speaks, among English dramatists, of Shakespeare alone.<br> +<br> +We are also asked by the Baconians to believe that his remarks on Bacon +under the name of Shakespeare are really an addition to his more copious +and infinitely more reverential observations on Bacon, named by his +own name; “I have and do reverence him for the greatness that +was only proper to himself.” Also (where Bacon is spoken +of as Shakespeare) “He redeemed his vices by his virtues. +There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned . . . Sometimes +it was necessary that he should be stopped . . . Many times he fell +into those things that could not escape laughter.”<br> +<br> +These two views of Bacon are, if you like, incongruous. The person +spoken of is in both cases Bacon, say the Baconians, and Mr. Greenwood +sympathetically alludes to their ideas, <a name="citation264a"></a><a href="#footnote264a">{264a}</a> +which I cannot qualify in courteous terms. Baconians “would, +of course, explain the difficulty by saying that however sphinx-like +were Jonson’s utterances, he had clearly distinct in his own mind +two different personages, viz. Shakspere the player, and Shakespeare +the real author of the plays and poems, and that if in the perplexing +passage quoted from the <i>Discoveries </i>he appears to confound one +with the other, it is because the solemn seal of secrecy had been imposed +on him.” They <i>would </i>say, they <i>do </i>say all that. +Ben is not to let out that Bacon is the author. So he tells us +of Bacon that he often made himself ridiculous, and so forth, - but +he <i>pretends </i>that he is speaking of Shakespeare.<br> +<br> +All this wedge of wisdom, remember, is inserted between the search for +“the efficient cause” of Ben’s panegyric (1623), in +the Folio, on his Beloved Mr. William Shakespeare, and the discovery +of Ben’s visits to Bacon in 1621-3.<br> +<br> +Does Mr. Greenwood mean that Ben, in 1623 (or earlier), knew the secret +of Bacon’s authorship, and, stimulated by his hospitality, applauded +his works in the Folio, while, as he must not disclose the secret, he +throughout speaks of Bacon as Shakespeare, puns on that name in the +line about seeming “to shake a lance,” and salutes the Lord +of Gorhambury as “Sweet Swan of Avon”? Mr. Greenwood +cannot mean that; for he is not a Baconian. What <i>does </i>he +mean?<br> +<br> +Put together his pages 483, 489-491. On the former we find how +“it would appear” that Jonson thought the issue of the Folio +(1623) “a very special occasion,” and that perhaps if we +could only “get to the back of his mind, we should find that there +was some efficient cause operating to induce him to give the best possible +send-off to that celebrated venture.” Then skip to pp. 489-491, +and you find very special occasions: Bacon’s birthday feast with +its” mystery”; Ben as one of Bacon’s “good pens,” +in 1623. “The best of these good pens, it seems, was Jonson.” +<a name="citation266a"></a><a href="#footnote266a">{266a}</a> +On what evidence does it “seem”? The opinion of Judge +Webb.<br> +<br> +Is this supposed collaboration with Bacon in 1623, “the efficient +cause operating to induce” Ben “to give the best possible +send-off” to the Folio? How could this be the “efficient +cause” if Bacon were not the author of the plays?<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood, like the Genius at the birthday supper,<br> +<br> +<br> +“Stands as if some mystery he did.”<br> +<br> +<br> +On a trifling point of honour, namely, as to whether Ben were a man +likely to lie, tortuously, hypocritically, to be elaborately false about +the authorship of the Shakespearean plays, it is hopelessly impossible +to bring the Baconians and Mr. Greenwood (who “holds no brief +for the Baconians”) to my point of view. Mr. Greenwood rides +off thus - what the Baconians do is unimportant.<br> +<br> +“There are, as everybody knows, many falsehoods that are justifiable, +some that it is actually a duty to tell.” It may be so; +I pray that I may never tell any of them (or any more of them).<br> +<br> +Among justifiable lies I do not reckon that of Scott if ever he plumply +denied that he wrote the <i>Waverley </i>novels. I do not judge +Sir Walter. Heaven forbid! But if, in Mr. Greenwood’s +words, he, “we are told, thought it perfectly justifiable for +a writer who wished to preserve his anonymity, to deny, when questioned, +the authorship of a work, since the interrogator had no right to put +such a question to him,” <a name="citation267a"></a><a href="#footnote267a">{267a}</a> +I disagree with Sir Walter. Many other measures, in accordance +with the conditions of each case, were open to him. Some are formulated +by his own Bucklaw, in <i>The Bride of Lammermoor</i>,<i> </i>as regards +questions about what occurred on his bridal night. Bucklaw would +challenge the man, and cut the lady, who asked questions. But +Scott’s case, as cited, applies only to Bacon (or Mr. Greenwood’s +Unknown), if <i>he </i>were asked whether or not he were the author +of the plays. No idiot, at that date, was likely to put the question! +But, if anyone did ask, Bacon must either evade, or deny, or tell the +truth.<br> +<br> +On the parallel of Scott, Bacon could thus deny, evade, or tell the +truth. But the parallel of Scott is not applicable to any other +person except to the author who wishes to preserve his anonymity, and +is questioned. The parallel does not apply to Ben. <i>He +</i>had not written the Shakespearean plays. Nobody was asking +<i>him </i>if he had written them. If he knew that the author +was Bacon, and knew it under pledge of secrecy, and was asked (<i>per +impossibile</i>)<i> </i>“Who wrote these plays?” he had +only to say, “Look at the title-page.” But no mortal +was asking Ben the question. But we are to suppose that, in the +panegyric and in <i>Discoveries</i>,<i> </i>Ben chooses to assert, first, +that Shakespeare was his Beloved, his Sweet Swan of Avon; and that he +“loved him, on this side idolatry, as much as any.” +There is no evidence that he did love Shakespeare, except his own statement, +when, according to the Baconians, he is really speaking of Bacon, and, +according to Mr. Greenwood, of an unknown person, singularly like Bacon. +Consequently, unless we can prove that Ben really loved the actor, he +is telling a disgustingly hypocritical and wholly needless falsehood, +both before and after the death of Bacon. To be silent about the +authorship of a book, an authorship which is the secret of your friend +and patron, is one thing and a blameless thing. All the friends, +some twenty, to whom Scott confided the secret of his authorship were +silent. But not one of them publicly averred that the author was +their very dear friend, So-and-so, who was not Scott, and perhaps not +their friend at all. That was Ben’s line. Thus the +parallel with Scott drawn by Mr. Greenwood, twice, <a name="citation268a"></a><a href="#footnote268a">{268a}</a> +is no parallel. It has no kind of analogy with Ben’s alleged +falsehoods, so elaborate, so incomprehensible except by Baconians, and, +if he did not love the actor Shakspere dearly, so detestably hypocritical, +and open to instant detection.<br> +<br> +It is not easy to find a parallel to the conduct with which Ben is charged. +But suppose that Scott lived unsuspected of writing his novels, which, +let us say, he signed “James Hogg,” and died without confessing +his secret, and without taking his elaborate precautions for its preservation +on record.<br> +<br> +Next, imagine that Lockhart knew Scott’s secret, under vow of +silence, and was determined to keep it at any cost. He therefore, +writing after the death of Hogg of Ettrick, and in Scott’s lifetime, +publishes verses declaring that Hogg was his “beloved” (an +enormous fib), and that Hogg, “Sweet Swan of Ettrick,” was +the author of the <i>Waverley </i>novels.<br> +<br> +To complete the parallels, Lockhart, after Scott’s death, leaves +a note in prose to the effect that, while he loved Hogg on this side +idolatry (again, a monstrous fable), he must confess that Hogg, author +of the <i>Waverley </i>novels, often fell into things that were ridiculous; +and often needed to have a stopper put on him for all these remarks. +Lockhart, while speaking of Hogg, is thinking of Scott - and he makes +the remarks solely to conceal Scott’s authorship of the novels +- of which, on the hypothesis, nobody suspected Scott to be the author. +Lockhart must then have been what the Baconian Mr. Theobald calls Mr. +Churton Collins, “a measureless liar,” - all for no reason.<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood, starting as usual from the case, which is no parallel, +of Scott’s denying his own authorship, goes on, “for all +we know, Jonson might have seen nothing in the least objectionable in +the publication by some great personage of his dramatic works under +a pseudonym” (under another man’s name really), “even +though that pseudonym led to a wrong conception as to the authorship; +and that, if, being a friend of that great personage, and working in +his service” (Ben worked, by the theory, in Bacon’s), “he +had solemnly engaged to preserve the secret inviolate, and not to reveal +it even to posterity, then <i>doubtless </i>(‘I thank thee, Jew’ +(meaning Sir Sidney Lee), ‘for teaching me that word’!) +he would have remained true to that solemn pledge.” <a name="citation270a"></a><a href="#footnote270a">{270a}</a><br> +<br> +To remain “true,” Ben had only to hold his peace. +But he lied up and down, and right and left, and even declared that +Bacon was a friend of the players, and needed to be shut up, and made +himself a laughing-stock in his plays, - styling Bacon” Shakespeare.” +All this, and much more of the same sort, we must steadfastly believe +before we can be Baconians, for only by believing these doctrines can +we get rid of Ben Jonson’s testimony to the authorship of Will +Shakspere, Gent.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER XIII: THE PREOCCUPATIONS OF BACON<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Let us now examine a miracle and mystery in which the Baconians find +nothing strange; nothing that is not perfectly normal. Bacon was +the author of the Shakespearean plays, they tell us. Let us look +rapidly at his biography, after which we may ask, does not his poetic +supremacy, and imaginative fertility, border on the miraculous, when +we consider his occupations and his ruling passion?<br> +<br> +Bacon, born in 1561, had a prodigious genius, was well aware of it, +and had his own ideal as to the task which he was born to do. +While still at Cambridge, and therefore before he was fifteen, he was +utterly dissatisfied, as he himself informed Dr. Rawley, with the scientific +doctrines of the Schools. In the study of nature they reasoned +from certain accepted ideas, <i>a priori </i>principles, not from what +he came to call “interrogation of Nature.” There were, +indeed, and had long been experimental philosophers, but the school +doctors went not beyond Aristotle; and discovered nothing. As +Mr. Spedding puts it, the boy Bacon asked himself, “If our study +of nature be thus barren, our method of study must be wrong; might not +a better method be found? . . . Upon the conviction ‘This +may be done,’ followed at once the question, <i>How </i>may it +be done? Upon that question answered followed the resolution to +try and do it.”<br> +<br> +This was, in religious phrase, the Conversion of Bacon, “the event +which had a greater influence than any other upon his character and +future course. From that moment he had a vocation which employed +and stimulated him . . . an object to live for as wide as humanity, +as immortal as the human race; an idea to live in vast and lofty enough +to fill the soul for ever with religious and heroic aspirations.” +<a name="citation274a"></a><a href="#footnote274a">{274a}</a> +The vocation, the idea, the object, were not poetical.<br> +<br> +In addition to this ceaseless scientific preoccupation, Bacon was much +concerned with the cause of reformed religion (then at stake in France, +and supposed to be in danger at home), and with the good government +of his native country. He could only aid that cause by the favour +of Elizabeth and James; by his services in Parliament, where, despite +his desire for advancement, he conscientiously opposed the Queen. +He was obliged to work at such tasks of various sorts, legal and polemical +literature, as were set him by people in power. With these three +great objects filling his heart, inspiring his ambition, and occupying +his energies and time, we cannot easily believe, without direct external +evidence, that he, or any mortal, could have leisure and detachment +from his main objects (to which we may add his own advancement) sufficient +to enable him to compose the works ascribed to Shakespeare.<br> +<br> +Thus, at the age of twenty-two (1583),<i> </i>when, if ever, he might +have penned sonnets to his mistress’s eyebrow, he reports that +he wrote “his first essay on the Instauration of Philosophy, which +he called <i>Temporis Partus Maximus</i>,<i> </i>‘The Greatest +Birth of Time,’” and “we need not doubt that between +Law and Philosophy he found enough to do.” <a name="citation275a"></a><a href="#footnote275a">{275a}</a> +For the Baconians take Bacon to have been a very great lawyer (of which +I am no judge), and Law is a hard mistress, rapacious of a man’s +hours. In 1584 he entered Parliament, but we do not hear anything +very important of his occupations before 1589, when he wrote a long +pamphlet, “Touching the Controversies of the Church of England.” +<a name="citation275b"></a><a href="#footnote275b">{275b}</a> +He had then leisure enough; that he was not anonymously supplying the +stage with plays I can neither prove nor disprove: but there is no proof +that he wrote <i>Love</i>’<i>s Labour</i>’<i>s Lost</i>!<i> +</i>By 1591-2, we learn much of him from his letter to Cecil, who never +would give him a place wherein he could meditate his philosophy. +He was apparently hard at scientific work. “I account my +ordinary course of study and meditation to be more painful than most +parts of action are.” He adds, “The contemplative +planet carries me away wholly,” and by contemplation I conceive +him to mean what he calls “vast contemplative ends.” +These he proceeds to describe: he does <i>not </i>mean the writing of +<i>Venus and Adonis </i>(1593), nor of <i>Lucrece </i>(1594), nor of +comedies! “I have taken all knowledge to be my province,” +and he recurs to his protest against the pseudo-science of his period. +“If I could purge knowledge of two sorts of rovers whereof the +one, with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities; the +other with blind experiments, and auricular traditions and impostures, +hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious +observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries +. . . This, whether it be curiosity, or vainglory, or nature, or (if +one take it favourably) philanthropy, is so fixed in my mind that it +cannot be removed.” If Cecil cannot help him to a post, +if he cannot serve the truth, he will reduce himself, like Anaxagoras, +to voluntary poverty, “ . . . and become some sorry bookmaker, +or a true pioneer in that mine of truth . . . ” <a name="citation276a"></a><a href="#footnote276a">{276a}</a> +Really, from first to last he was the prince of begging-letter writers, +endlessly asking for place, pensions, reversions, money, and more money.<br> +<br> +Though his years were thirty-one, Bacon was as young at heart as Shelley +at eighteen, when he wrote thus to Cecil, “my Lord Treasurer Burghley.” +What did Cecil care for his youngish kinsman’s philanthropy, and +“vast speculative ends” (how <i>modern </i>it all is!),<i> +</i>and the rest of it? But just because Bacon, at thirty-one, +<i>is </i>so extremely “green,” going to “take all +knowledge for his province (if some one will only subsidise him, and +endow his research), I conceive that he was in earnest about his reformation +of science. Surely no Baconian will deny it! Being so deeply +in earnest, taking his “study and meditation” so hard, I +cannot see him as the author of <i>Venus and Adonis</i>,<i> </i>and +whatever plays of the period, - say, <i>Love</i>’<i>s Labour</i>’<i>s +Lost</i>,<i> The Two Gentlemen of Verona</i>,<i> Henry VI</i>,<i> </i>Part +I, - are attributed to him, about this time, by Baconians. Of +course my view is merely personal or “subjective.” +The Baconians’ view is also “subjective.” I +regard Bacon, in 1591, and later, as intellectually preoccupied by his +vast speculative aims:- what he says that he desires to do, in science, +is what he <i>did</i>,<i> </i>as far as he was able. His other +desires, his personal advancement, money, a share in the conduct of +affairs, he also hotly pursued, not much to his own or the public profit. +There seems to be no room left, no inclination left, for competition +in their own line with Marlowe, Greene, Nash, and half a dozen other +professed playwrights: no room for plays done under the absurd pseudonym +of an ignorant actor.<br> +<br> +You see these things as the Baconians do, or as I do. Argument +is unavailing. I take Bacon to have been sincere in his effusive +letter to Cecil. Not so the Baconians; he concealed, they think, +a vast <i>literary </i>aim. They must take his alternative - to +be “some sorry bookmaker, <i>or </i>a pioneer in that mine of +truth,” as meaning that he would either be the literary hack of +a company of players, <i>or </i>the founder of a regenerating philosophy. +But, at that date, playwrights could not well be called “bookmakers,” +for the owners of the plays did their best to keep them from appearing +as printed books. If Bacon by “bookmaker” meant “playwright,” +he put a modest value on his poetical work!<br> +<br> +Meanwhile (1591-2), Bacon attached himself to the young, beautiful, +and famous Essex, on the way to be a Favourite, and gave him much excellent +advice, as he always did, and, as always, his advice was not taken. +It is not a novel suggestion, that Essex is the young man to whom Bacon +is so passionately attached in the Sonnets traditionally attributed +to Shakespeare. “I applied myself to him” (that is, +to Essex), says Bacon, “in a manner which, I think, happeneth +rarely among men.” The poet of the Sonnets applies himself +to the Beloved Youth, in a manner which (luckily) “happeneth rarely +among men.”<br> +<br> +It is difficult to fit the Sonnets into Bacon’s life. But, +if you pursue the context of what Bacon says concerning Essex, you find +that he does not speak <i>openly </i>of a tenderly passionate attachment +to that young man; not more than <i>this</i>,<i> </i>“I did nothing +but advise and ruminate with myself, to the best of my understanding, +propositions and memorials of anything that might concern his Lordship’s +honour, fortune, or service.” <a name="citation279a"></a><a href="#footnote279a">{279a}</a> +As Bacon did nothing but these things (1591-2), he had no great leisure +for writing poetry and plays. Moreover, speaking as a poet, in +the Sonnets, he might poetically exaggerate his intense amatory devotion +to Essex into the symbolism of his passionate verse. <i>Was Essex +then a married man</i>?<i> </i>If so, the Sonneteer’s insistence +on his marrying must be symbolical of - anything else you please.<br> +<br> +We know that Bacon, at this period, “did nothing” but “ruminate” +about Essex. The words are his own! (1604). No plays, no +<i>Venus and Adonis</i>,<i> </i>nothing but enthusiastic service of +Essex and the Sonnets. Mr. Spedding, indeed, thinks that, to adorn +some pageant of Essex (November 17, 1592), Bacon kindly contributed +such matter as “Mr. Bacon in Praise of Knowledge” (containing +his usual views about regenerating science), and “Mr. Bacon’s +Discourse in Praise of his Sovereign.” <a name="citation279b"></a><a href="#footnote279b">{279b}</a> +Both are excellent, though, for a Court festival, not very gay.<br> +<br> +He also, very early in 1593, wrote an answer to Father Parson’s +(?)<i> </i>famous indictment of Elizabeth’s Government, in <i>Observations +on a Libel</i>. <a name="citation280a"></a><a href="#footnote280a">{280a}</a> +What with ruminating on Essex, and this essay, he was not solely devoted +to <i>Venus and Adonis </i>and to furbishing-up old plays, though, no +doubt, he <i>may </i>have unpacked his bosom in the Sonnets, and indulged +his luscious imaginations in <i>Venus and Adonis</i>. I would +not limit the potentialities of his genius. But, certainly, this +amazing man was busy in quite other matters than poetry; not to mention +his severe “study and meditation” on science.<br> +<br> +All these activities of Bacon, in the year of <i>Venus and Adonis</i>,<i> +</i>do not exhaust his exercises. Bacon, living laborious days, +plunged into the debate in the Commons on Supply and fell into Elizabeth’s +disgrace, and vainly competed with Coke for the Attorney-Generalship, +and went on to write a pamphlet on the conspiracy of Lopez, and to try +to gain the office of Solicitor-General, to manage Essex’s affairs, +to plead at the Bar, to do Crown work as a lawyer, to urge his suit +for the Solicitorship; to trifle with the composition of “Formularies +and Elegancies” (January 1595), to write his Essays, to try for +the Mastership of the Rolls, to struggle with the affairs of the doomed +Essex (1600-1), while always “labouring in secret” at that +vast aim of the reorganisation of natural science, which ever preoccupied +him, he says, and distracted his attention from his practice and from +affairs of State. <a name="citation281a"></a><a href="#footnote281a">{281a}</a> +Of these State affairs the projected Union with Scotland was the most +onerous. He was also writing <i>The Advancement of Learning </i>(1605). +“I do confess,” he wrote to Sir Thomas Bodley, “since +I was of any understanding, my mind hath in effect been absent from +that I have done.” <a name="citation281b"></a><a href="#footnote281b">{281b}</a> +His mind was with his beloved Reformation of Learning: this came between +him and his legal, his political labours, his pamphlet-writing, and +his private schemes and suits. To this burden of Atlas the Baconians +add the vamping-up of old plays for Shakespeare’s company, and +the inditing of new plays, poems, and the Sonnets. Even without +this considerable addition to his tasks, Bacon is wonderful enough, +but with it - he needs the sturdy faith of the Rationalist to accept +him and his plot - to write plays under the pseudonym of “William +Shakespeare.”<br> +<br> +Talk of miracles as things which do not happen! The activities +of Bacon from 1591 to 1605; the strain on that man’s mind and +heart, - especially his heart, when we remember that he had to prosecute +his passionately adored Essex to the death; all this makes it seem, +to me, improbable that, as Mrs. Pott and her school of Baconians hold, +he lived to be at least a hundred and six, if not much older. +No wonder that he turned to tragedy, <i>Lear</i>,<i> Macbeth</i>,<i> +Othello</i>,<i> </i>and saw life <i>en noir: </i>man delighted him not, +nor woman either.<br> +<br> +The occupations, and, even more, the scientific preoccupation of Bacon, +do not make his authorship of the plays a physical impossibility. +But they make it an intellectual miracle. Perhaps I may be allowed +to set off this marvel against that other portent, Will Shakspere’s +knowledge and frequent use of terms of Law. <a name="citation282a"></a><a href="#footnote282a">{282a}</a> +I do not pretend to understand how Will came to have them at the tip +of his pen. Thus it may be argued that the Sonnets are by Bacon +and no other man, because the Law is so familiar to the author, and +his legal terms are always used with so nice an accuracy, that only +Bacon can have been capable of these mysterious productions. (But +why was Bacon so wofully inaccurate in points of scholarship and history?)<br> +<br> +By precisely the same argument Lord Penzance proves that Bacon (not +Ben, as Mr. Greenwood holds) wrote for the players the Dedication of +the Folio. <a name="citation282b"></a><a href="#footnote282b">{282b}</a> +“If it should be the case that Francis Bacon wrote the plays, +he would, probably, afterwards have written the Dedication of the Folio, +and the style of it” (stuffed with terms of law) “would +be accounted for.” Mr. Greenwood thinks that Jonson wrote +the Dedication; so Ben, too, was fond of using legal terms in literature. +“Legal terms abounded in all plays and poems of the period,” +says Sir Sidney Lee, and Mr. Greenwood pounces on the word “all.” +<a name="citation283a"></a><a href="#footnote283a">{283a}</a> +However he says, “We must admit that this use of legal jargon +is frequently found in lay-writers, poets, and others of the Elizabethan +period - in sonnets for example, where it seems to us intolerable.” +Examples are given from Barnabe Barnes. <a name="citation283b"></a><a href="#footnote283b">{283b}</a> +The lawyers all agree, however, that Shakespeare does the legal style +“more natural,” and more accurately than the rest. +And yet I cannot even argue that, if he did use legal terms at all, +he would be sure to do it pretty well.<br> +<br> +For on this point of Will’s use of legal phraseology I frankly +profess myself entirely at a loss. To use it in poetry was part +of the worse side of taste at that period. The lawyers with one +voice declare that Will’s use of it is copious and correct, and +that their “mystery” is difficult, their jargon hard to +master; “there is nothing so dangerous,” wrote Lord Campbell, +“as for one not of the craft to tamper with our freemasonry.” +I have not tampered with it. Perhaps a man of genius who found +it interesting might have learned the technical terms more readily than +lawyers deem possible. But Will, so accurate in his legal terms, +is so inaccurate on many other points; for example, in civil and natural +history, and in classic lore. Mr. Greenwood proves him to be totally +at sea as a naturalist. On the habits of bees, for example, “his +natural history of the insect is as limited as it is inaccurate.” +<a name="citation284a"></a><a href="#footnote284a">{284a}</a> +Virgil, though not a Lord Avebury, was a great entomologist, compared +with Will. About the cuckoo Will was recklessly misinformed. +His Natural History was folklore, or was taken from that great mediæval +storehouse of absurdities, the popular work of Pliny. “He +went to contemporary error or antiquated fancy for his facts, not to +nature,” says a critic quoted by Mr. Greenwood. <a name="citation284b"></a><a href="#footnote284b">{284b}</a> +Was that worthy of Bacon?<br> +<br> +All these charges against <i>le vieux Williams </i>(as Théophile +Gautier calls our Will) I admit. But Will was no Bacon; Will had +not “taken all knowledge for his province.” Bacon, +I hope, had not neglected Bees! Thus the problem, why is Will +accurate in his legal terminology, and reckless of accuracy in quantity, +in history, in classic matters, is not by me to be solved. I can +only surmise that from curiosity, or for some other unknown reason, +he had read law-books, or drawn information from Templars about the +meaning of their jargon, and that, for once, he was technically accurate.<br> +<br> +<br> +We have now passed in review the chief Baconian and Anti-Willian arguments +against Will Shakespeare’s authorship of the plays and poems. +Their chief argument for Bacon is <i>aut Diabolus</i>,<i> aut Franciscus</i>,<i> +</i>which, freely interpreted, means, “If Bacon is not the author, +who the devil is?”<br> +<br> +We reply, that man is the author (in the main) to whom the works are +attributed by every voice of his own generation which mentions them, +namely, the only William Shakespeare that, from 1593 to the early years +of the second decade of the following century, held a prominent place +in the world of the drama. His authorship is explicitly vouched +for by his fellow-players, Heminge and Condell, to whom he left bequests +in his will; and by his sometime rival, later friend, and always critic, +Ben Jonson; Heywood, player and playwright and pamphleteer, who had +been one of Henslowe’s “hands,” and lived into the +Great Rebellion, knew the stage and authors for the stage from within, +and <i>his </i>“mellifluous Shakespeare” is “Will,” +as his Beaumont was “Frank,” his Marlowe “Kit,” +his Fletcher, “Jack.” The author of <i>Daiphantus +</i>(1604), mentioning the popularity of <i>Hamlet</i>,<i> </i>styles +it “one of friendly Shakespeare’s tragedies.” +Shakespeare, to him, was our Will clearly, a man of known and friendly +character. The other authors of allusions did not need to say +<i>who </i>their “Shakespeare” was, any more than they needed +to say <i>who </i>Marlowe or any other poet was. We have examined +the possibly unprecedented argument which demands that they who mention +Shakespeare as the poet must, if they would enlighten us, add explicitly +that he is also the actor.<br> +<br> +“But all may have been deceived” by the long conspiracy +of the astute Bacon, or the Nameless One. To believe this possible, +considering the eager and suspicious jealousy and volubility of rival +playwrights, is to be credulous indeed. The Baconians, representing +Will almost as incapable of the use of pen and ink as “the old +hermit of Prague,” destroy their own case. A Will who had +to make his mark, like his father, could not pose as an author even +to the call-boy of his company. Mr. Greenwood’s bookless +Will, with some crumbs of Latin, and some power of “bumbasting +out a blank verse,” is a rather less impossible pretender, indeed; +but why and when did the speaker of patois, the bookless one, write +blank verse, from 1592 onwards, and where are his blank verses? +Where are the “works” of Poet-Ape? As to the man, +even Will by tradition, whatever it may be worth, he was “a handsome, +well-shaped man; very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant, +smooth wit.” To his fellow-actors he was “so worthy +a friend and fellow” (associate). To Jonson, “he was, +indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, +brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed so freely that +sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped.” If Jonson +here refers, as I suppose he does, to his conversation, it had that +extraordinary affluence of thoughts, each mating itself with as remarkable +originality of richly figured expressions, which is so characteristic +of the style of Shakespeare’s plays. In this prodigality +he was remote indeed from the style of the Greeks; “panting Time +toils after him in vain,” and even the reader, much more the listener, +might say, <i>sufflaminandus est; </i>“he needs to have the brake +put on.” <a name="citation287a"></a><a href="#footnote287a">{287a}</a><br> +<br> +Such, according to unimpeachable evidence, was Will. Only despair +can venture the sad suggestion that, under the name of Shakespeare, +Ben is here speaking of Bacon, as “falling into those things which +could not escape laughter . . . which were ridiculous.” +But to this last poor shift and fantastic guess were the Anti-Willians +and Baconians reduced.<br> +<br> +Such was Shakespeare, according to a rival.<br> +<br> +But it is “impossible” that a man should have known so much, +especially of classical literature and courtly ways, and foreign manners +and phrases, if he had no more, at most, than four or five years at +a Latin school, and five or six years in that forcing-house of faculty, +the London of the stage, in the flush of the triumph over the Armada.<br> +<br> +“With innumerable sorts of English books and infinite fardles +of printed pamphlets this country is pestered, all shops stuffed, and +every study furnished,” says a contemporary. <a name="citation288a"></a><a href="#footnote288a">{288a}</a> +If a doubter will look at the cheap and common books of that day (a +play in quarto, and the Sonnets of Shakespeare, when new, were sold +for fippence) in any great collection; he will not marvel that to a +lover of books, poor as he might be, many were accessible. Such +a man cannot be kept from books.<br> +<br> +If the reader will look into “the translations and imitations +of the classics which poured from the press . . . the poems and love-pamphlets +and plays of the University wits” (when these chanced to be printed), +“the tracts and dialogues in the prevailing taste,” <a name="citation288b"></a><a href="#footnote288b">{288b}</a> +he will understand the literary soil in which the genius of Shakespeare +blossomed as rapidly as the flowers in “Adonis’ garden.” +The whole literature was, to an extent which we find tedious, saturated +with classical myths, anecdotes, philosophic <i>dicta </i>- a world +of knowledge of a kind then “in widest commonalty spread,” +but now so much forgotten that, to Baconians and the public, such lore +seems recondite learning.<br> +<br> +The gallants who haunted the stage, and such University wits as could +get the money, or had talent (like Crichton) to “dispute their +way through Europe,” made the Italian tour, and, notoriously, +were “Italianate.” They would not be chary of reminiscences +of Florence, Venice, and Rome. Actors visited Denmark and Germany. +No man at home was far to seek for knowledge of Elsinore, the mysterious +Venetian “tranect or common ferry,” the gondolas, and the +Rialto. There was no lack of soldiers fresh and voluble from the +foreign wars. Only dullards, or the unthinking, can be surprised +by the ease with which a quick-witted man, having some knowledge of +Latin, can learn to read a novel in French, Italian, or Spanish. +That Shakespeare was the very reverse of a dullard, of the clod of Baconian +fancy, is proved by the fact that he was thought capable of his works. +For courtly manners he had the literary convention and Lyly’s +Court Comedies, with what he saw when playing at the Court and in the +houses of the great. As to untaught nobility of manners, there +came to the Court of France in 1429, from a small pig-breeding village +on the marches of Lorraine, one whose manners were deemed of exquisite +grace, propriety, and charm, by all who saw and heard her: of her manners +and swift wit and repartee, the official record of her trial bears concordant +evidence. Other untaught gifts she possessed, and the historic +record is unimpeached as regards that child of genius, Jeanne d’Arc.<br> +<br> +“<i>Ne me dites jamais cette bête de mot</i>,<i> impossible</i>,”<i> +</i>said Napoleon: it is indeed a stupid word where genius is concerned.<br> +<br> +If intellectual “miracles” were impossible to genius, even +Bacon could not have been and done all that he was and did, and also +the author of the Shakespearean plays and poems; even Ben could not +have been the scholar that he was. For the rest, I need not return +on my tracks and explain once more such shallow mysteries as the “Silence +of Philip Henslowe,” and the lack of literary anecdotage about +Shakespeare in a stupendously illiterate country town. Had Will, +not Ben, visited Drummond of Hawthornden, we should have matter enough +of the kind desired.<br> +<br> +“We have the epics of Homer,” people say, “what matters +it whether they be by a Man, or by a Syndicate that was in business +through seven centuries? We have the plays of Shakespeare, what +matters it whether he, or Bacon, or X. were, in the main, the author?”<br> +<br> +It matters to us, if we hold such doubts to be fantastic pedantries, +such guesses contrary to the nature of things; while we wish to give +love and praise and gratitude where they are due; to that Achæan +“Father of the rest”; and to “friendly Shakespeare.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +APPENDICES<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +APPENDIX I: “TROILUS AND CRESSIDA”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +To myself <i>Troilus and Cressida </i>is, with <i>Henry VI</i>,<i> </i>Part +I, the most mysterious among the Shakespearean plays. Here we +find, if Will wrote it, or had any hand in it, the greatest poet of +the modern world in touch with the heroes of the greatest poet of the +ancient world; but the English author’s eyes are dimmed by the +mists and dust of post-Homeric perversions of the Tale of Troy. +The work of perversion began, we know, in the eighth century before +our era, when, by the author of the <i>Cypria</i>,<i> </i>these favourite +heroes of Homer, Odysseus and Diomede, were represented as scoundrels, +assassins, and cowards.<br> +<br> +In the Prologue to the play (whosoever wrote it) we see that the writer +is no scholar. He makes the Achæan fleet muster in “the +port of <i>Athens</i>,”<i> </i>of all places. Even Ovid +gave the Homeric trysting-place, Aulis, in Bœotia. (This +Prologue is not in the Folio of 1623.) Six gates hath the Englishman’s +Troy, and the Scæan is not one of them.<br> +<br> +The loves of Troilus and Cressida, with Pandarus as go-between, are +from the mediæval Troy books, and were wholly unknown to Homer, +whose Pandarus is only notable for loosing a traitor’s shaft at +Menelaus, in time of truce, and for his death at the hand of Diomede. +The play begins after the duel (Iliad, III) between Paris and Menelaus: +in the play, not in Homer, Paris “retires hurt,” as is at +first reported. Hector has a special grudge against the Telamonian +Aias. As in the Iliad there is a view of the Achæans, taken +from the walls by Priam and Helen; so, in the play, Pandarus and Cressida +review the Trojans re-entering the city. Paris turns out not to +be hurt after all.<br> +<br> +In Act i. Scene 3, the Achæans hold council, and regret the disaffection +of Achilles. Here comes Ulysses’ great speech on discipline, +in armies, and in states, the gradations of rank and duty; commonly +thought to be a leaf in Shakespeare’s crown of bays. The +speeches of Agamemnon and Nestor are dignified; indeed the poet treats +Agamemnon much more kindly than Homer is wont to do. But the poet +represents Achilles as laughing in his quarters at Patroclus’s +imitation of the cough and other infirmities of old Nestor, to which +Homer, naturally, never alludes. Throughout, the English poet +regards Achilles with the eyes of his most infamous late Greek and ignorant +mediæval detractors. The Homeric sequence of events is so +far preserved that, on the day of the duel between Paris and Menelaus, +comes (through Æneas) the challenge by Hector to fight any Greek +in “gentle and joyous passage of arms” (Iliad, VII). +As in the Iliad, the Greeks decide by lot who is to oppose Hector; but +by the contrivance of Odysseus (not by chance, as in Homer) the lot +falls on Aias. In the Iliad Aias is as strong and sympathetic +as Porthos in <i>Les Trois Mousquetaires</i>. The play makes him +as great an eater of beef, and as stupid as Sir Andrew Aguecheek. +Achilles, save in a passage quite out of accord with the rest of the +piece, is nearly as dull as Aias, is discourteous, and is cowardly! +No poet and no scholar who knew Homer’s heroes in Homer’s +Greek, could thus degrade them; and the whole of the revilings of Thersites +are loathsome in their profusion of filthy thoughts. It does not +follow that Will did not write the part of Thersites. Some of +the most beautiful and Shakespearean pieces of verse adorn the play; +one would say that no man but Will could have written them. Troilus +and Cressida, at first, appear “to dally with the innocence of +love”; and nothing can be nobler and more dramatic than the lines +in which Cressida, compelled to go to her father, Calchas, in the Greek +camp, in exchange for Antenor, professes her loyalty in love. +But the Homeric and the alien later elements, - the story of false love, +- cannot be successfully combined. The poet, whoever he was, appears +to weary and to break down. He ends, indeed, as the Iliad ends, +with the death of Hector, but Hector, in the play, is murdered, while +resting unarmed, without shield and helmet, after stripping a suit of +sumptuous mail from a nameless runaway. In the play he has slain +Patroclus, but has not stripped him of the armour of Achilles, which, +in Homer, he is wearing. Achilles then meets Hector, but far from +rushing to avenge on him Patroclus, he retires like a coward, musters +his men, and makes them surround and slay the defenceless Hector.<br> +<br> +Cressida, who is sent to her father Calchas, in the Greek camp, in a +day becomes “the sluttish spoil of opportunity,” and of +Diomede, and the comedy praised by the preface-writer of a quarto of +1609, is a squalid tragedy reeking of Thersites and Pandarus, of a light +o’ love, and the base victory of cruel cowardice over knightly +Hector. Yet there seemed to be muffled notes from the music, and +broken lights from the splendour of Homer. When Achilles eyes +Hector all over, during a truce, and insultingly says that he is thinking +in what part of his body he shall drive the spear, we are reminded of +Iliad, XXII, 320-326, where Achilles searches his own armour, worn by +Patroclus, stripped by Hector from him, and worn by Hector, for a chink +in the mail. Yet, after all, these points are taken, not from +the Iliad, but from Caxton’s popular Troy Book.<br> +<br> +Once more, when Hector is dead, and Achilles bids his men to<br> +<br> +<br> + “cry amain,<br> +Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain,”<br> +<br> +<br> +we think of Iliad, XXII, 390-393, where Achilles commands the Myrmidons +to go singing the pæan<br> +<br> +<br> +“Glory have we won, we have slain great Hector!”<br> +<br> +<br> +The sumptuous armour stripped by Hector from a nameless man, recalls +his winning of the arms of Achilles from Patroclus. But, in fact, +this passage is also borrowed, with the murder of Hector, from Caxton, +except as regards the pæan.<br> +<br> +It may be worth noting that Chapman’s first instalment of his +translation of the Iliad, containing Books I, II, and VII-XI, appeared +in 1598, and thence the author could adapt the passages from Iliad, +Book VII. In or about 1598-9 occurred, in <i>Histriomastix</i>,<i> +</i>by Marston and others, a burlesque speech in which Troilus, addressing +Cressida, speaks of “thy knight,” who “<i>Shakes </i>his +furious <i>Speare</i>,”<i> </i>while in April 1599, Henslowe’s +account-book contains entries of money paid to Dekker and Chettle for +a play on Troilus and Cressida, for the Earl of Nottingham’s Company. +<a name="citation297a"></a><a href="#footnote297a">{297a}</a> +Of this play no more is known, nor can we be sure that Chapman’s +seven Books of the Iliad (I, II, VII-XI) of 1598 attracted the attention +of playwrights, from Shakespeare to Chettle and Dekker, to Trojan affairs. +The coincidences at least are curious. If “<i>Shakes </i>his +furious <i>Speare</i>”<i> </i>in <i>Histriomastix </i>refers to +Shakespeare in connection with Cressida, while, in 1599, Dekker and +Chettle were doing a <i>Troilus and Cressida </i>for a company not Shakespeare’s, +then there were <i>two Troilus and Cressida </i>in the field. +A licence to print a <i>Troilus and Cressida </i>was obtained in 1602-3, +but the quarto of our play, the Shakespearean play, is of 1609, “as +it is acted by my Lord Chamberlain’s men,” that is, by Shakespeare’s +Company. Now Dekker and Chettle wrote, apparently, for Lord Nottingham’s +Company. One quarto of 1609 declares, in a Preface, that the play +has “never been staled with the stage”; another edition +of the same year, from the same publishers, has not the Preface, but +declares that the piece “was acted by the King’s Majesty’s +servants <i>at the Globe</i>.” <a name="citation298a"></a><a href="#footnote298a">{298a}</a> +The author of the Preface (Ben Jonson, Mr. Greenwood thinks, <a name="citation298b"></a><a href="#footnote298b">{298b}</a>) +speaks only of a single author, who has written other admirable comedies. +“When he is gone, and his comedies out of sale, you will scramble +for them, and set up a new English Inquisition.” Why? +The whole affair is a puzzle. But if the author of the Preface +is right about the single author of <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>,<i> +</i>and if Shakespeare is alluded to in connection with Cressida, in +<i>Histriomastix </i>(1599), then it appears to me that Shakespeare, +in 1598-9, after Chapman’s portion of the Iliad appeared, was +author of one <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>,<i> </i>extant in 1602-3 (when +its publication was barred till the publisher “got authority”), +while Chettle and Dekker, in April 1599, were busy with another <i>Troilus +and Cressida</i>,<i> </i>as why should they not be? In an age +so lax about copyright, if their play was of their own original making, +are we to suppose that there was copyright in the names of the leading +persons of the piece, Troilus and Cressida?<br> +<br> +Perhaps not: but meanwhile Mr. Greenwood cites Judge Stotsenburg’s +opinion <a name="citation298c"></a><a href="#footnote298c">{298c}</a> +that Henslowe’s entries of April 1599 “refute the Shakespearean +claim to the authorship of <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>,”<i> </i>which +exhibits “the collaboration of two men,” as “leading +commentators” hold that it does. But the learned Judge mentions +as a conceivable alternative that “there were two plays on the +subject with the same name,” and, really, it looks as if there +were! The Judge does not agree “with Webb and other gifted +writers that Bacon wrote this play.” So far the Court is +quite with him. He goes on however, “It was, in my opinion, +based on the foregoing facts, originally the production of Dekker and +Chettle, added to and philosophically dressed by Francis Bacon.” +But, according to Mr. Greenwood, “it is admitted not only that +the different writing of two authors is apparent in the Folio play, +but also that ‘Shakespeare’ must have had at least some +share in a play of <i>Troilus and Cressida </i>as early as the very +year 1599, in the spring of which Dekker and Chettle are found engaged +in writing their play of that name,” on the evidence of <i>Histriomastix</i>. +<a name="citation299a"></a><a href="#footnote299a">{299a}</a> +How that evidence proves that “a play of <i>Troilus and Cressida +</i>had been <i>published </i>as by ‘Shakespeare’ about +1599,” I know not. Perhaps “published” means +“acted”? “And it is not unreasonable to suppose +that this play” (“published as by Shakespeare”) “was +the one to which Henslowe alludes” - as being written in April +1599, by Dekker and Chettle.<br> +<br> +If so, the play must show the hands of three, not two, men, Dekker, +Chettle, and “Shakespeare,” the Great Unknown, or Bacon. +He collaborates with Dekker and Chettle, in a play for Lord Nottingham’s +men (according to Sir Sidney Lee), <a name="citation300a"></a><a href="#footnote300a">{300a}</a> +but it is, later at least, played by Shakespeare’s company; and +perhaps Bacon gets none of the £4 paid <a name="citation300b"></a><a href="#footnote300b">{300b}</a> +to Dekker and Chettle. Henslowe does not record his sale of the +Dekker and Chettle play to Shakespeare’s or to any company or +purchaser. Without an entry of the careful Henslowe recording +his receipts for the sale of the Dekker and Chettle play to any purchaser, +it is not easy to see how Shakespeare’s company procured the manuscript, +and thus enabled him to refashion it. Perhaps no reader will fail +to recognise his hand in the beautiful blank verse of many passages. +I am not familiar enough with the works of Dekker and Chettle to assign +to them the less desirable passages. Thersites is beastly: a Yahoo +of Swift’s might poison with such phrases as his the name and +nature of love, loyalty, and military courage. But whatsoever +Shakespeare did, he did thoroughly, and if he were weary, if man delighted +him not, nor woman either, he may have written the whole piece, in which +love perishes for the whim of “a daughter of the game,” +and the knightly Hector is butchered to sate the vanity of his cowardly +Achilles. If Shakespeare read the books translated by Chapman, +he must have read them in the same spirit as Keats, and was likely to +find that the poetry of the Achæan could not be combined with +the Ionian, Athenian, and Roman perversions, as he knew them in the +mediæval books of Troy, in the English of Lydgate and Caxton. +The chivalrous example of Chaucer he did not follow. Probably +Will looked on the play as one of his failures. The Editor, if +we can speak of an Editor, of the Folio clearly thrust the play in late, +so confusedly that it is not paged, and is not mentioned in the table +of the contents.<br> +<br> +“The Grand Possessors” of the play referred to in the Preface +to one of the two quartos of 1609 we may suppose to be Shakespeare’s +Company. In this case the owners would not permit the publication +of the play if they could prevent it. The title provokes Mr. Greenwood +to say, “Why these worthies should be so styled is not apparent; +indeed the supposition seems not a little ridiculous.” <a name="citation301a"></a><a href="#footnote301a">{301a}</a> +Of course, if the players were the possessors, “grand” is +merely a jeer, by a person advertising a successful piracy. And +in regard to Tieck’s conjecture that James I is alluded to as +“the grand possessor, for whom the play was expressly written,” +<a name="citation301b"></a><a href="#footnote301b">{301b}</a> the autocratic +James was very capable of protecting himself against larcenous publishers.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +APPENDIX II - CHETTLE’S SUPPOSED ALLUSION TO WILL SHAKSPERE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +In discussing contemporary allusions to William Shakspere or Shakespeare +(or however you spell the name), I have not relied on Chettle’s +remarks (in <i>Kind-Hart’s Dreame, </i>1592) concerning Greene’s +<i>Groatsworth of Wit</i>. Chettle speaks of it, saying, “in +which a letter, written to divers play-makers, is offensively by one +or two of them taken.” It appears that by “one or +two” Chettle means <i>two</i>. “With <i>neither </i>of +them that take offence was I acquainted” (at the time when he +edited the <i>Groatsworth), </i>“and with one of them I care not +if I never be.” We do not know who “the Gentlemen +his Quondam acquaintance,” addressed by Greene, were. They +are usually supposed to have been Marlowe, Peele, and Lodge, or Nash. +We do not know which of the two who take offence is the man with whom +Chettle did not care to be acquainted. Of “the other,” +according to Chettle, “myself have seen his demeanour no less +civil than he is excellent in the quality he professes” (that +is, “in his profession,” as we say), “besides divers +of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his +honesty; and his facetious grace in writing that approves his art.”<br> +<br> +Speaking from his own observation, Chettle avers that the person of +whom he speaks is civil in his demeanour, and <i>(apparently) </i>that +he is “excellent in the quality he professes” - in his profession. +Speaking on the evidence of “divers of worship,” the same +man is said to possess “facetious grace in writing.” +Had his writings been then published, Chettle, a bookish man, would +have read them and formed his own opinion. Works of Lodge, Peele, +and Marlowe had been published. Writing is <i>not </i>“the +quality he professes,” is not the “profession” of +the man to whom Chettle refers. On the other hand, the profession +of Greene’s “Quondam acquaintance” <i>was </i>writing, +“they spend their wits in making Plays.” Thus the +man who wrote, but whose profession was not that of writing, does not, +so far, appear to have been one of those addressed by Greene. +It seems undeniable that Greene addresses gentlemen who are “playmakers,” +who “spend their wits in making Plays,” and who are <i>not +</i>actors; for Greene’s purpose is to warn them against the rich, +ungrateful actors. If Greene’s friends, at the moment when +he wrote, were, or if any one of them then was, by profession an actor, +Greene’s warning to him against actors, directed to an actor, +is not, to me, intelligible. But Mr. Greenwood writes, “As +I have shown, George Peele was one of the playwrights addressed by Greene, +and Peele was a successful player as well as playwright, and might quite +truly have been alluded to both as having ‘facetious grace in +writing,’ and being ‘excellent in the quality he professed,’ +that is, as a professional actor.” <a name="citation304a"></a><a href="#footnote304a">{304a}</a><br> +<br> +I confess that I did not know that George Peele, M.A., of Oxford, had +ever been a player, and a successful player. But one may ask, +- in 1592 did George Peele “profess the quality” of an actor; +was he then a professional actor, and only an occasional playwright? +If so, I am not apt to believe that Greene seriously advised him not +to put faith in the members of his own profession. From them, +as a successful member of their profession (a profession which, as Greene +complains, “exploited” dramatic authors), Peele stood in +no danger. Thus I do not see how Chettle’s professional +actor, reported to have facetious grace in writing, can be identified +with Peele. The identification seems to me impossible. Peele +and Marlowe, in 1592, were literary gentlemen; Lodge, in 1592, was filibustering, +though a literary man; he had not yet become a physician. In 1592, +none of the three had any profession but that of literature, so far +as I am aware. The man who had a special profession, and also +wrote, was not one of these three; nor was he Tom Nash, a mere literary +gentleman, pamphleteer and playwright.<br> +<br> +I do not know the name of any one of the three to whom Greene addressed +the <i>Groatsworth, </i>though the atheistic writer of tragedies seems +meant, and disgracefully meant, for Marlowe. I only know that +Chettle is expressing his regrets for Greene’s language to some +one whom he applauded as to his exercise of his profession; and who, +according to “divers of worship,” had also “facetious +grace in writing.” “Myself have seen him no less civil +than he is excellent in the quality he professes”; whether or +not this means that Chettle has <i>seen </i>his excellence in his profession, +I cannot tell for certain; but Chettle’s remark is, at least, +contrasted with what he gives merely from report - “the facetious +grace in writing” of the man in question. <i>His </i>writing +is not part of his profession, so he is not, in 1592 (I conceive), Lodge, +Peele, Marlowe, or Nash.<br> +<br> +Who, then, is this mysterious personage? Malone, Dyce, Steevens, +Collier, Halliwell-Phillipps, Knight, Sir Sidney Lee, Messrs. Gosse +and Garnett, and Mr. J. C. Collins say that he is Will Shakspere. +But Mr. Fleay and Mr. Castle, whose “mind” is “legal,” +have pointed out that this weird being cannot be Shake-scene (or Shakspere, +if Greene meant Shakspere), attacked by Greene. For Chettle says +that in the <i>Groatsworth of Wit </i>“a letter, written to divers +play-makers, is offensively by one or two of them taken.” +The mysterious one is, therefore, one of the playwrights addressed by +Greene. Consequently all the followers of Malone, who wrote before +Messrs. Fleay and Castle, are mistaken; and what Mr. Greenwood has to +say about Sir Sidney Lee, J. C. Collins, and Dr. Garnett, and Mr. Gosse, +in the way of moral reprobation, may be read by the curious in his pages. +<a name="citation305a"></a><a href="#footnote305a">{305a}</a><br> +<br> +Meanwhile, if we take Chettle to have been a strict grammarian, by his +words - “a letter, written to divers play-makers, is offensively +by one or two of them taken,” Will is excluded; the letter was +most assuredly not written to <i>him</i>. But I, whose mind is +not legal, am not certain that Chettle does not mean that the letter, +written to divers play-makers, was by one or two makers of plays offensively +taken.<br> +<br> +This opinion seems the less improbable, as the person to whom Chettle +is most apologetic excels in a quality or profession, which is contrasted +with, and is not identical with, “his facetious grace in writing” +- a <i>parergon, </i>or “ bye-work,” in his case. +Whoever this person was, he certainly was not Marlowe, Peele, Lodge, +or Nash. We must look for some other person who had a profession, +and also was reported to have facetious grace in writing.<br> +<br> +If Chettle is to be held tight to grammar, Greene referred to some one +unknown, some one who wrote for the stage, but had another profession. +If Chettle is not to be thus tautly construed, I confess that to myself +he seems to have had Shakspere, even Will, in his mind. For Will +in 1592 had “a quality which he professed,” that of an actor; +and also (I conceive) was reported to have “ facetious grace in +writing.” But other gentlemen may have combined these attributes; +wherefore I lay no stress on the statements of Chettle, as if they referred +to our Will Shakspere.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Footnotes:<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote0a"></a><a href="#citation0a">{0a}</a> E. J. +Castle, <i>Shakespeare</i>,<i> Bacon</i>,<i> Jonson</i>,<i> and Greene</i>,<i> +</i>pp. 194-195.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote0b"></a><a href="#citation0b">{0b}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 145.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote0c"></a><a href="#citation0c">{0c}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 340.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote0d"></a><a href="#citation0d">{0d}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 340, 341.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote0e"></a><a href="#citation0e">{0e}</a> <i>In +Re Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>p. 54.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote0f"></a><a href="#citation0f">{0f}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 341.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote0g"></a><a href="#citation0g">{0g}</a> <i>Ibid.</i>,<i> +</i>p. 470.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote0h"></a><a href="#citation0h">{0h}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>, p. 339.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote0i"></a><a href="#citation0i">{0i}</a> <i>The +Vindicators of Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>pp. 115-116.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote0j"></a><a href="#citation0j">{0j}</a> <i>Ibid.</i>,<i> +</i>p. 49.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote0k"></a><a href="#citation0k">{0k}</a> <i>The +Vindicators of Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>p. 14.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote4a"></a><a href="#citation4a">{4a}</a> <i>Francis +Bacon Wrote Shakespeare</i>. By H. Crouch-Batchelor, 1912.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote7a"></a><a href="#citation7a">{7a}</a> <i>The +Shakespere Problem Restated</i>, p. 293.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote11a"></a><a href="#citation11a">{11a}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 31-37.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote13a"></a><a href="#citation13a">{13a}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 36-37.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote16a"></a><a href="#citation16a">{16a}</a> <i>Tue +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 20.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote17a"></a><a href="#citation17a">{17a}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 47-48.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote17b"></a><a href="#citation17b">{17b}</a> <i>Ibid.</i>,<i> +</i>pp. 54-55.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote17c"></a><a href="#citation17c">{17c}</a> <i>Ibid.</i>,<i> +</i>p. 54.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote17d"></a><a href="#citation17d">{17d}</a> <i>Ibid.</i>,<i> +</i>p. 56.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote17e"></a><a href="#citation17e">{17e}</a> <i>Ibid.</i>,<i> +</i>p. 59.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote17f"></a><a href="#citation17f">{17f}</a> <i>Ibid.</i>,<i> +</i>p. 62.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote17g"></a><a href="#citation17g">{17g}</a> <i>Ibid.</i>,<i> +</i>p. 193.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote18a"></a><a href="#citation18a">{18a}</a> See +his <i>Vindicators of Shakespeare</i>, p. 210.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote19a"></a><a href="#citation19a">{19a}</a> <i>Vindicators</i>,<i> +</i>p. 187.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote19b"></a><a href="#citation19b">{19b}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 223.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote21a"></a><a href="#citation21a">{21a}</a> <i>In +Re Shakespeare</i>, p. 54.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote22a"></a><a href="#citation22a">{22a}</a> In +a brief note of two pages (<i>Cornhill Magazine</i>,<i> </i>November +1911) he makes such reply as the space permits to a paper of my own, +“Shakespeare or X?” in the September number. With +my goodwill he might have written thirty-two pages to my sixteen, but +I am not the Editor, and never heard of Mr. Greenwood’s note till +May 1912.<br> +<br> +He says that I had represented him as stating that the Unknown genius +adopted the name of William Shake-speare or Shakespeare as a good <i>nom +de guerre</i>, without any reference to the fact that there was an actor +in existence of the name of William Shakspere, whose name was sometimes +written Shakespeare, and without the least idea that the works he published +under this pseudonym would be fathered upon the actor . . . ” +(My meaning has obviously been too obscurely stated by me.)<br> +<br> +Mr. Greenwood next writes that the confusion between the actor, and +the unknown taking the name William Shakespeare, “did happen and +was intended to happen.”<br> +<br> +<i>C</i>’<i>est là le miracle</i>!<br> +<br> +How could it happen if the actor were the bookless, ignorant man whom +Mr. Greenwood describes? It could not happen: Will must have been +unmasked in a day. The fact that a strange plot existed was only +too obvious. The Unknown’s secret must have been tracked +by the hounds of keenest nose in the packs of rival and jealous authors +and of actors. None gives tongue.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote27a"></a><a href="#citation27a">{27a}</a> <i>Francis +Bacon Wrote Shakespeare</i>, p. 37.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote30a"></a><a href="#citation30a">{30a}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>, p. 333.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote31a"></a><a href="#citation31a">{31a}</a> In +the passage which I quoted, with notes of omission, from Mr. Greenwood +(p. 333), he went on to say that the eulogies of the poet by “some +cultured critics of that day,” “afford no proof that the +author who published under the name of Shakespeare was in reality Shakspere +the Stratford player.” That position I later contest.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote31b"></a><a href="#citation31b">{31b}</a> See +chap. XI, <i>The First Folio.<br> +<br> +</i><a name="footnote33a"></a><a href="#citation33a">{33a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 305, 306.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote34a"></a><a href="#citation34a">{34a}</a> Furness, +<i>Merchant of Venice</i>,<i> </i>pp. 271, 272.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote34b"></a><a href="#citation34b">{34b}</a> On +this see Mr. Pollard’s <i>Shakespeare Folios and Quartos</i>,<i> +</i>pp. 1-9.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote37a"></a><a href="#citation37a">{37a}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 202, 348, 349.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote38a"></a><a href="#citation38a">{38a}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 349.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote44a"></a><a href="#citation44a">{44a}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 356.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote45a"></a><a href="#citation45a">{45a}</a> <i>In +Re Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>p. 88, note I.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote48a"></a><a href="#citation48a">{48a}</a> <i>Studies +in Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>p. 15; <i>Life of Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>by +Malone, pp. 561-2, 564; Appendix, XI, xvi.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote50a"></a><a href="#citation50a">{50a}</a> C. +I. Elton, <i>William Shakespeare</i>,<i> His Family and Friends</i>, +pp. 97, 98.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote51a"></a><a href="#citation51a">{51a}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 44.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote52a"></a><a href="#citation52a">{52a}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 39.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote52b"></a><a href="#citation52b">{52b}</a> <i>Vindicators +of Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>p. 210.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote53a"></a><a href="#citation53a">{53a}</a> <i>Vindicators +of Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>p. 187.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote53b"></a><a href="#citation53b">{53b}</a> <i>Shakespeare +Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 223.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote55a"></a><a href="#citation55a">{55a}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 69.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote56a"></a><a href="#citation56a">{56a}</a> See +chapter X, <i>The Traditional Shakespeare.<br> +<br> +</i><a name="footnote56b"></a><a href="#citation56b">{56b}</a> +See C. I. Elton, <i>William Shakespeare</i>,<i> His Family and Friends</i>,<i> +</i>pp. 48, 343-8.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote57a"></a><a href="#citation57a">{57a}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 207-9.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote59a"></a><a href="#citation59a">{59a}</a> Chapter +X, <i>infra.<br> +<br> +</i><a name="footnote62a"></a><a href="#citation62a">{62a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 96.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote62b"></a><a href="#citation62b">{62b}</a> See +chapter X, <i>The Traditional Shakespeare.<br> +<br> +</i><a name="footnote62c"></a><a href="#citation62c">{62c}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 94-96.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote64a"></a><a href="#citation64a">{64a}</a> <i>Shakespeare</i>,<i> +</i>pp. 38-40.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote65a"></a><a href="#citation65a">{65a}</a> Raleigh, +<i>Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>pp. 77, 78.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote69a"></a><a href="#citation69a">{69a}</a> So +he seems to me to do; but in <i>Vindicators of Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>p. +135, he shows great caution: “I refer the reader to Mr. Collin’s +essay, and ask him to judge for himself.”<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote71a"></a><a href="#citation71a">{71a}</a> <i>Studies +in Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>p. 15.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote72a"></a><a href="#citation72a">{72a}</a> <i>Studies +in Shakespeare</i>, p. 21.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote75a"></a><a href="#citation75a">{75a}</a> <i>Alcibiades</i>,<i> +</i>I, pp. 132, 133; <i>Troilus</i>,<i> </i>III, scene 3.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote77a"></a><a href="#citation77a">{77a}</a> <i>Studies +in Shakespeare</i>, p. 46.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote77b"></a><a href="#citation77b">{77b}</a> <i>Iliad</i>, +p. 63.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote91a"></a><a href="#citation91a">{91a}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 54, 55.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote93a"></a><a href="#citation93a">{93a}</a> <i>National +Review</i>, vol. xxxix., 1902.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote93b"></a><a href="#citation93b">{93b}</a> <i>The +Pilot</i>, Aug. 30, 1902, p. 220.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote96a"></a><a href="#citation96a">{96a}</a> The +oldest mention of a <i>circulating</i> library known to me is in Hull, +in 1650, when Sir James Turner found it excellent.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote97a"></a><a href="#citation97a">{97a}</a> In +his <i>Shakespeare </i>(<i>English Men of Letters</i>),<i> </i>pp. 66, +67.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote97b"></a><a href="#citation97b">{97b}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 77, 78.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote97c"></a><a href="#citation97c">{97c}</a> <i>The +Shakespearean Myth</i>,<i> </i>p. 162.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote100a"></a><a href="#citation100a">{100a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 76.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote101a"></a><a href="#citation101a">{101a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 81, note I.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote103a"></a><a href="#citation103a">{103a}</a> +Penzance, <i>The Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy</i>,<i> </i>pp. 150, +151. Citing Appleton Morgan’s <i>Shakespearean Myth, </i>pp. +248, 298.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote106a"></a><a href="#citation106a">{106a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>, p. 175.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote107a"></a><a href="#citation107a">{107a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 457.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote109a"></a><a href="#citation109a">{109a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>, p. 58.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote109b"></a><a href="#citation109b">{109b}</a> +<i>Apology the Actors</i>,<i> </i>1612.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote110a"></a><a href="#citation110a">{110a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>, p. 267.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote111a"></a><a href="#citation111a">{111a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>, pp. 267, 268.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote112a"></a><a href="#citation112a">{112a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>, pp. 50-52.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote113a"></a><a href="#citation113a">{113a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 51.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote113b"></a><a href="#citation113b">{113b}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 51.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote113c"></a><a href="#citation113c">{113c}</a> +<i>Ibid</i>., p. 500, citing Mr. Reed’s <i>Francis Bacon our Shake-speare</i>,<i> +</i>chap. ii. pp. 62, 63.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote113d"></a><a href="#citation113d">{113d}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 500-520, chap xvi.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote114a"></a><a href="#citation114a">{114a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 512.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote114b"></a><a href="#citation114b">{114b}</a> +<i>Ibid</i>., p. 514.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote114c"></a><a href="#citation114c">{114c}</a> +<i>Ibid</i>., p. 386, note I.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote114d"></a><a href="#citation114d">{114d}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 93.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote120a"></a><a href="#citation120a">{120a}</a> +<i>Cambridge History of English Literature</i>,<i> </i>vol. v. p. 126. +Prof. G. P. Baker.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote121a"></a><a href="#citation121a">{121a}</a> +Furness, <i>Love</i>’<i>s Labour</i>’<i>s Lost</i>,<i> </i>pp. +xiii., 348-350: <i>cf. </i>pp. 348, 349, for the four distinct styles +of linguistic affectation of the period, at least as they are represented +in literature.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote121b"></a><a href="#citation121b">{121b}</a> +<i>Shakespeare Studies in Baconian Light</i>,<i> </i>Appendix on Marlowe.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote124a"></a><a href="#citation124a">{124a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>, p. 516.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote126a"></a><a href="#citation126a">{126a}</a> +Act i. Scene 2. Furness, <i>Love</i>’<i>s Labour</i>’<i>s +Lost</i>,<i> </i>p. 45, note.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote127a"></a><a href="#citation127a">{127a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 67, 68.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote129a"></a><a href="#citation129a">{129a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 66.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote129b"></a><a href="#citation129b">{129b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 67.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote136a"></a><a href="#citation136a">{136a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>, p. 307.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote138a"></a><a href="#citation138a">{138a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>, p. 308.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote140a"></a><a href="#citation140a">{140a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 309.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote141a"></a><a href="#citation141a">{141a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>, p. 310.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote141b"></a><a href="#citation141b">{141b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 310, 311.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote141c"></a><a href="#citation141c">{141c}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 311.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote142a"></a><a href="#citation142a">{142a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 309.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote142b"></a><a href="#citation142b">{142b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 311, 312.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote143a"></a><a href="#citation143a">{143a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 312, 313.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote145a"></a><a href="#citation145a">{145a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>, p. 313.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote146a"></a><a href="#citation146a">{146a}</a> +See Appendix II, “<i>Chettle</i>’<i>s supposed allusion +to Will Shakspere.</i>”<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote147a"></a><a href="#citation147a">{147a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 330.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote149a"></a><a href="#citation149a">{149a}</a> +<i>The Vindicators of Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>pp. 115, 116, 211. +<i>See</i> my Introduction, p. xxii.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote150a"></a><a href="#citation150a">{150a}</a> +<i>The Vindicators of Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>p. 210.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote150b"></a><a href="#citation150b">{150b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 136.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote151a"></a><a href="#citation151a">{151a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 338.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote155a"></a><a href="#citation155a">{155a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 346.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote157a"></a><a href="#citation157a">{157a}</a> +Cited in <i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 353.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote159a"></a><a href="#citation159a">{159a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 353.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote159b"></a><a href="#citation159b">{159b}</a> +<i>Diary</i>,<i> </i>pp. xxvii, xxviii.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote160a"></a><a href="#citation160a">{160a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 367.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote160b"></a><a href="#citation160b">{160b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 368, 369.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote161a"></a><a href="#citation161a">{161a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 354.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote163a"></a><a href="#citation163a">{163a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 366.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote164a"></a><a href="#citation164a">{164a}</a> +Some Baconians say so!<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote171a"></a><a href="#citation171a">{171a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 181, 397.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote171b"></a><a href="#citation171b">{171b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 186.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote174a"></a><a href="#citation174a">{174a}</a> +Some verses of Fletcher’s may, perhaps, refer to Beaumont’s +death.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote175a"></a><a href="#citation175a">{175a}</a> +C. I. Elton, <i>Shakespeare</i>,<i> His Family and Friends</i>,<i> </i>pp. +246, 247.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote175b"></a><a href="#citation175b">{175b}</a> +As to the Aldine Ovid in the Bodleian, see Mr. Greenwood in <i>The Vindicators +of Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>pp. 191, 192. Of course he raises every +objection, but I do not feel sure that either an affirmative or negative +result can be attained by <i>expertise</i>. We are not told when +or where the Bodleian obtained the book; nor what is the date of the +handwriting of the inscription about W. Hall, a personage whom we are +to meet later. A good deal of business is done in forging names +in books.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote176a"></a><a href="#citation176a">{176a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 196.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote176b"></a><a href="#citation176b">{176b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 197.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote177a"></a><a href="#citation177a">{177a}</a> +See <i>Frontispiece</i>,<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote179a"></a><a href="#citation179a">{179a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 247, 248, note I.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote180a"></a><a href="#citation180a">{180a}</a> +<i>National Review</i>,<i> </i>June 1912, p. 903.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote180b"></a><a href="#citation180b">{180b}</a> +<i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>,<i> </i>November 1910.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote181a"></a><a href="#citation181a">{181a}</a> +<i>Outlines</i>,<i> </i>vol. i. p. 283.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote182a"></a><a href="#citation182a">{182a}</a> +P. 73, 1806.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote183a"></a><a href="#citation183a">{183a}</a> +<i>Outlines</i>,<i> </i>vol. i. p. 283.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote183b"></a><a href="#citation183b">{183b}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 247.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote186a"></a><a href="#citation186a">{186a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 248-249.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote186b"></a><a href="#citation186b">{186b}</a> +C. I. Elton, <i>William Shakespeare</i>,<i> His Family and Friends</i>, +pp. 236-237.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote187a"></a><a href="#citation187a">{187a}</a> +C. I. Elton, <i>William Shakespeare</i>,<i> His Family and Friends</i>, +p. 228.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote187b"></a><a href="#citation187b">{187b}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 199.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote187c"></a><a href="#citation187c">{187c}</a> +C. I. Elton, <i>William Shakespeare</i>,<i> His Family and Friends</i>, +pp. 332-333.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote187d"></a><a href="#citation187d">{187d}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 250.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote188a"></a><a href="#citation188a">{188a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 199, note 1.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote189a"></a><a href="#citation189a">{189a}</a> +C. I. Elton, <i>William Shakespeare</i>,<i> His Family and Friends</i>, +pp. 339, 342.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote190a"></a><a href="#citation190a">{190a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 238.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote198a"></a><a href="#citation198a">{198a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 214.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote200a"></a><a href="#citation200a">{200a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 214, note 2.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote201a"></a><a href="#citation201a">{201a}</a> +C. I. Elton, <i>William Shakespeare</i>,<i> His Family and Friends</i>,<i> +</i>p. 56.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote201b"></a><a href="#citation201b">{201b}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 28, 29.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote207a"></a><a href="#citation207a">{207a}</a> +Like Mr. Greenwood, I think that Ben was the penman.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote208a"></a><a href="#citation208a">{208a}</a> +Pollard, <i>ut supra</i>,<i> </i>p. 10.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote210a"></a><a href="#citation210a">{210a}</a> +Pollard, <i>ut supra</i>,<i> </i>pp. 64-80.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote215a"></a><a href="#citation215a">{215a}</a> +Pollard, <i>ut supra</i>,<i> </i>pp. 121-124.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote216a"></a><a href="#citation216a">{216a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 287-288.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote217a"></a><a href="#citation217a">{217a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 290-291.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote217b"></a><a href="#citation217b">{217b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 292, 293.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote218a"></a><a href="#citation218a">{218a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 293.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote219a"></a><a href="#citation219a">{219a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 489, 490.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote219b"></a><a href="#citation219b">{219b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 491.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote219c"></a><a href="#citation219c">{219c}</a> +<i>Studies in Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>p. 352.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote220a"></a><a href="#citation220a">{220a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 293.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote220b"></a><a href="#citation220b">{220b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 491.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote220c"></a><a href="#citation220c">{220c}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 293.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote220d"></a><a href="#citation220d">{220d}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 293.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote221a"></a><a href="#citation221a">{221a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 297.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote221b"></a><a href="#citation221b">{221b}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 297.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote222a"></a><a href="#citation222a">{222a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 293.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote222b"></a><a href="#citation222b">{222b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 351.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote222c"></a><a href="#citation222c">{222c}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 351.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote222d"></a><a href="#citation222d">{222d}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 290, 293.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote222e"></a><a href="#citation222e">{222e}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 351, 358.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote223a"></a><a href="#citation223a">{223a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 351.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote223b"></a><a href="#citation223b">{223b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 290, 293.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote223c"></a><a href="#citation223c">{223c}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 351.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote223d"></a><a href="#citation223d">{223d}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 351.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote223e"></a><a href="#citation223e">{223e}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 290, 293.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote223f"></a><a href="#citation223f">{223f}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 290.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote223g"></a><a href="#citation223g">{223g}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 290, 291.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote223h"></a><a href="#citation223h">{223h}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 293.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote224a"></a><a href="#citation224a">{224a}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 351.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote224b"></a><a href="#citation224b">{224b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 358.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote224c"></a><a href="#citation224c">{224c}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 351, 358.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote224d"></a><a href="#citation224d">{224d}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 290.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote224e"></a><a href="#citation224e">{224e}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 293.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote225a"></a><a href="#citation225a">{225a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 355, 356.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote226a"></a><a href="#citation226a">{226a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 355, 356.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote226b"></a><a href="#citation226b">{226b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 158, 160, 162 (“not the original author”), +170.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote226c"></a><a href="#citation226c">{226c}</a> +<i>Ibid</i>., pp. 130-151, 160, 168.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote226d"></a><a href="#citation226d">{226d}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p., 123, note 2.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote227a"></a><a href="#citation227a">{227a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 356.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote228a"></a><a href="#citation228a">{228a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 160.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote228b"></a><a href="#citation228b">{228b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 356.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote228c"></a><a href="#citation228c">{228c}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 160.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote228d"></a><a href="#citation228d">{228d}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 356.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote228e"></a><a href="#citation228e">{228e}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 290, 293.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote228f"></a><a href="#citation228f">{228f}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 358.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote229a"></a><a href="#citation229a">{229a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 365. I will +bet Mr. Greenwood any sum not exceeding half a crown that he cannot +find any “records of the writing of” either of these plays +in Henslowe’s “Diary,” - his account book of expenses +and receipts.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote229b"></a><a href="#citation229b">{229b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 365.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote229c"></a><a href="#citation229c">{229c}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 365.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote229d"></a><a href="#citation229d">{229d}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 160.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote231a"></a><a href="#citation231a">{231a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 276.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote231b"></a><a href="#citation231b">{231b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 290.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote232a"></a><a href="#citation232a">{232a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 293.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote232b"></a><a href="#citation232b">{232b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 294.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote233a"></a><a href="#citation233a">{233a}</a> +<i>The Vindicators of Shakespeare</i>,<i> </i>p. 57 (1911).<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote237a"></a><a href="#citation237a">{237a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>, p. 453.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote244a"></a><a href="#citation244a">{244a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 466.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote245a"></a><a href="#citation245a">{245a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 313.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote245b"></a><a href="#citation245b">{245b}</a> +<i>Supra, </i>p. 143.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote245c"></a><a href="#citation245c">{245c}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 466.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote249a"></a><a href="#citation249a">{249a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 482.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote250a"></a><a href="#citation250a">{250a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 467, 471.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote250b"></a><a href="#citation250b">{250b}</a> +See chapter IX on <i>The Later Life of Shakespeare.<br> +<br> +</i><a name="footnote250c"></a><a href="#citation250c">{250c}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 472, 474.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote251a"></a><a href="#citation251a">{251a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 473.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote251b"></a><a href="#citation251b">{251b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 474.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote253a"></a><a href="#citation253a">{253a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 475.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote254a"></a><a href="#citation254a">{254a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 106.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote255a"></a><a href="#citation255a">{255a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 478.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote258a"></a><a href="#citation258a">{258a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 480.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote259a"></a><a href="#citation259a">{259a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 483.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote260a"></a><a href="#citation260a">{260a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 483.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote260b"></a><a href="#citation260b">{260b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 489-490.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote260c"></a><a href="#citation260c">{260c}</a> +See chapter XI, <i>The First Folio.<br> +<br> +</i><a name="footnote261a"></a><a href="#citation261a">{261a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 483.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote261b"></a><a href="#citation261b">{261b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 489-491.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote262a"></a><a href="#citation262a">{262a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 486.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote264a"></a><a href="#citation264a">{264a}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 488.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote266a"></a><a href="#citation266a">{266a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 491.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote267a"></a><a href="#citation267a">{267a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 295, <i>cf. </i>p. +499.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote268a"></a><a href="#citation268a">{268a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 295, 499.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote270a"></a><a href="#citation270a">{270a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 499.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote274a"></a><a href="#citation274a">{274a}</a> +<i>Letters and Life of Francis Bacon</i>,<i> </i>edited by James Spedding, +vol. i. p. 4 (1861).<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote275a"></a><a href="#citation275a">{275a}</a> +<i>Letters and Life of Francis Bacon</i>,<i> </i>edited by James Spedding, +vol. i. p. 31.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote275b"></a><a href="#citation275b">{275b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>vol. i. pp. 74-95.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote276a"></a><a href="#citation276a">{276a}</a> +<i>Letters and Life of Francis Bacon</i>,<i> </i>edited by James Spedding, +vol. i. pp. 108-109.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote279a"></a><a href="#citation279a">{279a}</a> +<i>Letters and Life of Francis Bacon</i>,<i> </i>edited by James Spedding, +vol. i. p. 106.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote279b"></a><a href="#citation279b">{279b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>vol. i. pp. 121-143.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote280a"></a><a href="#citation280a">{280a}</a> +Sixty pages in Spedding’s <i>Letters and Life of Francis Bacon</i>, +vol. i. pp. 146-208.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote281a"></a><a href="#citation281a">{281a}</a> +See his statement (1603), Spedding, iii. pp. 84-87.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote281b"></a><a href="#citation281b">{281b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>iii. p. 253.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote282a"></a><a href="#citation282a">{282a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 371-406.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote282b"></a><a href="#citation282b">{282b}</a> +<i>The Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy</i>,<i> </i>p. 198.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote283a"></a><a href="#citation283a">{283a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 391.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote283b"></a><a href="#citation283b">{283b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 408-410.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote284a"></a><a href="#citation284a">{284a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 425.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote284b"></a><a href="#citation284b">{284b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 431.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote287a"></a><a href="#citation287a">{287a}</a> +<i>Sufflamen </i>is the “drag” or “brake.” +Ben’s, “it was necessary he should be <i>stopped</i>,”<i> +</i>is an incorrect translation.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote288a"></a><a href="#citation288a">{288a}</a> +Quoted by Sir Walter Raleigh, <i>Shakespeare</i>, p. 65.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote288b"></a><a href="#citation288b">{288b}</a> +<i>Ibid</i>., p. 65.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote297a"></a><a href="#citation297a">{297a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 358-362.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote298a"></a><a href="#citation298a">{298a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>pp. 491-494.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote298b"></a><a href="#citation298b">{298b}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>p. 495.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote298c"></a><a href="#citation298c">{298c}</a> +<i>Ibid.</i>,<i> </i>pp. 358-360.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote299a"></a><a href="#citation299a">{299a}</a> <i>The +Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>,<i> </i>p. 361.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote300a"></a><a href="#citation300a">{300a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated, </i>p. 360.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote300b"></a><a href="#citation300b">{300b}</a> +<i>Ibid., </i>p. 358.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote301a"></a><a href="#citation301a">{301a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated, </i>p. 495, note I.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote301b"></a><a href="#citation301b">{301b}</a> +<i>Ibid., </i>p. 494.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote304a"></a><a href="#citation304a">{304a}</a> +<i>Vindicators of Shakespeare</i>, p. 69.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote305a"></a><a href="#citation305a">{305a}</a> +<i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated, </i>pp. 317-319.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, SHAKESPEARE, BACON ETC. ***<br> +<pre> + +******This file should be named sbun10h.htm or sbun10h.zip****** +Corrected EDITIONS of our EBooks get a new NUMBER, sbun11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, sbun10ah.htm + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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