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diff --git a/5127-0.txt b/5127-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c960fa2 --- /dev/null +++ b/5127-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7567 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown, by +Andrew Lang + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown + + +Author: Andrew Lang + + + +Release Date: February 7, 2015 [eBook #5127] +[This file was first posted on May 5, 2002] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKESPEARE, BACON AND THE GREAT +UNKNOWN*** + + +Transcribed from the 1912 Longmans, Green and Co. edition by David Price, +email ccx074@pglaf.org + + [Picture: Shakespeare’s Monument at Stratford-on-Avon (1616–1623?)] + + + + + + SHAKESPEARE + BACON + AND THE GREAT UNKNOWN + + + * * * * * + + BY + ANDREW LANG + + * * * * * + + WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS + + * * * * * + + LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. + 39, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON + NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA + 1912 + + All rights reserved + + * * * * * + + TO + HORACE HOWARD FURNESS + IN MEMORY OF AN + OLD PROMISE + + * * * * * + + + + +PREFACE + + +IT is with some hesitation that I give my husband’s last book to the +world. It was in type when he died, but he had no time to correct even +the first proofs, and doubtless he would have made many changes, if not +in his views at least in his expression of them. Mr. Bartram has +verified the quotations and dates with infinite care, and for this he has +my warmest thanks. For the rest I can but ask those who differ from the +author to remember the circumstances in which the work has been +published. + + L. B. L. + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + INTRODUCTION xiii + I. THE BACONIAN AND ANTI-WILLIAN POSITIONS 1 + II. THE “SILENCE” ABOUT SHAKESPEARE 25 + III. THAT IMPOSSIBLE HE—THE SCHOOLING OF SHAKESPEARE 41 + IV. MR. COLLINS ON SHAKESPEARE’S LEARNING 65 + V. SHAKESPEARE, GENIUS, AND SOCIETY 83 + VI. THE COURTLY PLAYS: “LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST” 119 + VII. CONTEMPORARY RECOGNITION OF WILL AS AUTHOR 133 + VIII. “THE SILENCE OF PHILIP HENSLOWE” 153 + IX. THE LATER LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE—HIS MONUMENT AND 167 + PORTRAITS + X. “THE TRADITIONAL SHAKSPERE” 193 + XI. THE FIRST FOLIO 205 + XII. BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 235 + XIII. THE PREOCCUPATIONS OF BACON 271 + APPENDIX I.—“TROILUS AND CRESSIDA” 293 + APPENDIX II.—CHETTLE’S SUPPOSED ALLUSION TO WILL 302 + SHAKSPERE + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + +SHAKESPEARE’S MONUMENT AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON _Frontispiece_ +(1616–1623?) +COPY OF THE TITLE-PAGE OF “LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST,” 12 +1598. The earliest title-page in which +Shakespeare’s name is given as the author of the +work. + + _From_ J. O. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS’ _Outlines of the + Life of Shakespeare_ +FACSIMILE OF THE AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE “BY ME WILLIAM 47 +SHAKSPEARE.” From one of the Three Sheets of his +Will, dated _March_ 25, 1616. + + _From_ SIR SIDNEY LEE’S _Shakespeare’s Life and + Work_. _By permission of_ Messrs. SMITH, ELDER & + Co. + +FACSIMILE OF MARK-SIGNATURE OF JOHN SHAKESPEARE, +THE POET’S FATHER. From a Deed of Conveyance, +dated _January_ 26, 1596 + + _From_ J. O. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS’ _Outlines of the + Life of Shakespeare_ + +FACSIMILE OF MARK-SIGNATURE OF JUDITH SHAKESPEARE, +THE POET’S SECOND DAUGHTER, AFTERWARDS MRS. THOMAS +QUINEY + +_From_ J. O. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS’ _Outlines of the +Life of Shakespeare_ +THE MONUMENT IN DUGDALE’S “HISTORY OF THE 178 +ANTIQUITIES OF WARWICKSHIRE” (1656) + + _With permission of_ JOHN MURRAY, Esq. +THE CAREW MONUMENT IN STRATFORD CHURCH 180, 181 + +THE CAREW MONUMENT AS REPRESENTED IN DUGDALE’S +“HISTORY OF THE ANTIQUITIES OF WARWICKSHIRE” (1656) +FROM VERTUE’S ENGRAVING OF THE MONUMENT (1725) 185 + + _With permission of_ JOHN MURRAY, ESQ. +LONDON IN THE YEAR 1610, SHOWING THE GLOBE THEATRE 298 +IN THE FOREGROUND + + _From_ J. O. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS’ _Outlines of the + Life of Shakespeare_ + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +THE theory that Francis Bacon was, in the main, the author of +“Shakespeare’s plays,” has now been for fifty years before the learned +world. Its advocates have met with less support than they had reason to +expect. Their methods, their logic, and their hypotheses closely +resemble those applied by many British and foreign scholars to Homer; and +by critics of the very Highest School to Holy Writ. Yet the Baconian +theory is universally rejected in England by the professors and +historians of English literature; and generally by students who have no +profession save that of Letters. The Baconians, however, do not lack the +countenance and assistance of highly distinguished persons, whose names +are famous where those of mere men of letters are unknown; and in circles +where the title of “Professor” is not duly respected. + +The partisans of Bacon aver (or one of them avers) that “Lord Penzance, +Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Palmerston, Judge Webb, Judge Holmes (of +Kentucky, U.S.), Prince Bismarck, John Bright, and innumerable most +_thoughtful scholars eminent in many walks of life_, _and especially in +__the legal profession_ . . . ” have been Baconians, or, at least, +opposed to Will Shakspere’s authorship. To these names of scholars I +must add that of my late friend, Samuel Clemens, D.Litt. of Oxford; +better known to many as Mark Twain. Dr. Clemens was, indeed, no mean +literary critic; witness his epoch-making study of Prof. Dowden’s _Life +of Shelley_, while his researches into the biography of Jeanne d’Arc were +most conscientious. + +With the deepest respect for the political wisdom and literary taste of +Lord Palmerston, Prince Bismarck, Lord Beaconsfield, and the late Mr. +John Bright; and with every desire to humble myself before the judicial +verdicts of Judges Holmes, Webb, and Lord Penzance; with sincere +admiration of my late friend, Dr. Clemens, I cannot regard them as, in +the first place and professionally, trained students of literary history. + +They were no more specially trained students of Elizabethan literature +than myself; they were amateurs in this province, as I am an amateur, who +differ from all of them in opinion. Difference of opinion concerning +points of literary history ought not to make “our angry passions rise.” +Yet this controversy has been extremely bitter. + +I abstain from quoting the “sweetmeats,” in Captain MacTurk’s phrase, +which have been exchanged by the combatants. Charges of ignorance and +monomania have been answered by charges of forgery, lying, “scandalous +literary dishonesty,” and even inaccuracy. Now no mortal is infallibly +accurate, but we are all sane and “indifferent honest.” There have been +forgeries in matters Shakespearean, alas, but not in connection with the +Baconian controversy. + +It is an argument of the Baconians, and generally of the impugners of +good Will’s authorship of the plays vulgarly attributed to him, that the +advocates of William Shakspere, Gent, as author of the plays, differ like +the Kilkenny cats among themselves on many points. All do not believe, +with Mr. J. C. Collins, that Will knew Sophocles, Euripides, and Æschylus +(but not Aristophanes) as well as Mr. Swinburne did, or knew them at +all—for that matter. Mr. Pollard differs very widely from Sir Sidney Lee +on points concerning the First Folio and the Quartos: my sympathies are +with Mr. Pollard. Few, if any, partisans of Will agree with Mrs. Stopes +(herself no Baconian) about the history of the Stratford monument of the +poet. About Will’s authorship of _Titus Andronicus_, and _Henry VI_, +Part I, the friends of Will, like the friends of Bacon, are at odds among +themselves. These and other divergencies of opinion cause the Baconians +to laugh, as if _they_ were a harmonious circle . . . ! For the Baconian +camp is not less divided against itself than the camp of the +“Stratfordians.” Not all Baconians hold that Bacon was the legitimate +son of “that Imperial votaress” Queen Elizabeth. Not all believe in the +Cryptogram of Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, or in any other cryptograms. Not +all maintain that Bacon, in the Sonnets, was inspired by a passion for +the Earl of Essex, for Queen Elizabeth, or for an early miniature of +himself. Not all regard him as the author of the plays of Kit Marlowe. +Not all suppose him to be a Rosicrucian, who possibly died at the age of +a hundred and six, or, perhaps, may be “still running.” Not all aver +that he wrote thirteen plays before 1593. But one party holds that, in +the main, Will was the author of the plays, while the other party votes +for Bacon—or for Bungay, a Great Unknown. I use Bungay as an endearing +term for the mysterious being who was the Author if Francis Bacon was +not. Friar Bungay was the rival of Friar Bacon, as the Unknown (if he +was not Francis Bacon) is the rival of “the inventor of Inductive +reasoning.” + +I could never have expected that I should take a part in this +controversy; but acquaintance with _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_ +(503 pp.), (1908), and later works of Mr. G. G. Greenwood, M.P., has +tempted me to enter the lists. + +Mr. Greenwood is worth fighting; he is cunning of fence, is learned (and +I cannot conceal my opinion that Mr. Donnelly and Judge Holmes were +rather ignorant). He is not over “the threshold of Eld” (as were Judge +Webb and Lord Penzance when they took up Shakespearean criticism). His +knowledge of Elizabethan literature is vastly superior to mine, for I +speak merely, in Matthew Arnold’s words, as “a belletristic trifler.” + +Moreover, Mr. Greenwood, as a practising barrister, is a judge of legal +evidence; and, being a man of sense, does not “hold a brief for Bacon” as +the author of the Shakespearean plays and poems, and does not value +Baconian cryptograms. In the following chapters I make endeavours, +conscientious if fallible, to state the theory of Mr. Greenwood. It is a +negative theory. He denies that Will Shakspere (or Shaxbere, or +Shagspur, and so on) was the author of the plays and poems. Some other +party was, _in the main_, with other hands, the author. Mr. Greenwood +cannot, or does not, offer a guess as to who this ingenious Somebody was. +He does not affirm, and he does not deny, that Bacon had a share, greater +or less, in the undertaking. + +In my brief tractate I have not room to consider every argument; to +traverse every field. In philology I am all unlearned, and cannot +pretend to discuss the language of Shakespeare, any more than I can +analyse the language of Homer into proto-Arcadian and Cyprian, and so on. +Again, I cannot pretend to have an opinion, based on internal evidence, +about the genuine Shakespearean character of such plays as _Titus +Andronicus_, _Henry VI_, Part I, and _Troilus and Cressida_. About them +different views are held _within_ both camps. + +I am no lawyer or naturalist (as Partridge said, _Non omnia possumus +omnes_), and cannot imagine why our Author is so accurate in his frequent +use of terms of law—if he be Will; and so totally at sea in natural +history—if he be Francis, who “took all knowledge for his province.” + +How can a layman pretend to deal with Shakespeare’s legal attainments, +after he has read the work of the learned Recorder of Bristol, Mr. +Castle, K.C.? To his legal mind it seems that in some of Will’s plays he +had the aid of an expert in law, and then his technicalities were +correct. In other plays he had no such tutor, and then he was sadly to +seek in his legal jargon. I understand Mr. Greenwood to disagree on this +point. Mr. Castle says, “I think Shakespeare would have had no +difficulty in getting aid from several sources. There is therefore no +_prima facie_ reason why we should suppose the information was supplied +by Bacon.” + +Of course there is not! + +“In fact, there are some reasons why one should attribute the legal +assistance, say, to Coke, rather than to Bacon.” + +The truth is, that Bacon seems not to have been lawyer enough for Will’s +purposes. “We have no reason to believe that Bacon was particularly well +read in the technicalities of our law; he never seems to have seriously +followed his profession.” {0a} + +Now we have Mr. Greenwood’s testimonial in favour of Mr. Castle, “Who +really does know something about law.” {0b} Mr. Castle thinks that Bacon +really did not know enough about law, and suggests Sir Edward Coke, of +all human beings, as conceivably Will’s “coach” on legal technicalities. +Perhaps Will consulted the Archbishop of Canterbury on theological +niceties? + +_Que sçais je_? In some plays, says Mr. Castle, Will’s law is all right, +in other plays it is all wrong. As to Will’s law, when Mr. Greenwood and +Mr. Castle differ, a layman dare not intervene. + +Concerning legend and tradition about our Will, it seems that, in each +case, we should do our best to trace the _Quellen_, to discover the +original sources, and the steps by which the tale arrived at its late +recorders in print; and then each man’s view as to the veracity of the +story will rest on his sense of probability; and on his bias, his wish to +believe or to disbelieve. + +There exists, I believe, only one personal anecdote of Will, the actor, +and on it the Baconians base an argument against the contemporary +recognition of him as a dramatic author. I take the criticism of Mr. +Greenwood (who is not a Baconian). One John Manningham, +Barrister-at-Law, “a well-educated and cultured man,” notes in his Diary +(February 2, 1601) that “at our feast we had a play called Twelve Night +or What you Will, much like the Comedy of Errors, or Menæchmi in Plautus, +but most like and near to that in Italian called _Inganni_.” He confides +to his Diary the tricks played on Malvolio as “a good practice.” {0c} +That is all. + +About the authorship he says nothing: perhaps he neither knew nor cared +who the author was. In our day the majority of people who tell me about +a play which they have seen, cannot tell me the name of the author. Yet +it is usually printed on the playbill, though in modest type. The public +does not care a straw about the author’s name, unless he be deservedly +famous for writing letters to the newspapers on things in general; for +his genius as an orator; his enthusiasm as a moralist, or in any other +extraneous way. Dr. Forman in his queer account of the plot of “Mack +Beth” does not allude to the name of the author (April 20, 1610). +_Twelfth Night_ was not published till 1623, in the Folio: there was no +quarto to enlighten Manningham about the author’s name. We do not hear +of printed playbills, with author’s names inserted, at that period. It +seems probable that occasional playgoers knew and cared no more about +authors than they do at present. The world of the wits, the critics +(such as Francis Meres), poets, playwrights, and players, did know and +care about the authors; apparently Manningham did not. But he heard a +piquant anecdote of two players and (March 13, 1601) inserted it in his +Diary. + +Shakespeare once anticipated Richard Burbage at an amorous tryst with a +citizen’s wife. Burbage had, by the way, been playing the part of +Richard III. While Will was engaged in illicit dalliance, the message +was brought (what a moment for bringing messages!) that Richard III was +at the door, and Will “caused return to be made that William the +Conqueror was before Richard III. _Shakespeare’s name William_.” (My +italics.) Mr. Greenwood argues that if “Shakspere the player was known +to the world as the author of the plays of Shakespeare, it does seem +extremely remarkable” that Manningham should have thought it needful to +add “Shakespeare’s name William.” {0d} + +But _was_ “Shakspere,” or any man, “known to the world as the author of +the plays of Shakespeare”? No! for Mr. Greenwood writes, “nobody, +outside a very small circle, troubled his head as to who the dramatist or +dramatists might be.” {0e} To that “very small circle” we have no reason +to suppose that Manningham belonged, despite his remarkable opinion that +_Twelfth Night_ resembles the _Menæchmi_. Consequently, it is _not_ +“extremely remarkable” that Manningham wrote “Shakespeare’s name +William,” to explain to posterity the joke about “William the Conqueror,” +instead of saying, “the brilliant author of the Twelfth Night play which +so much amused me at our feast a few weeks ago.” {0f} “Remarkable” out +of all hooping it would have been had Manningham written in the style of +Mr. Greenwood. But Manningham apparently did not “trouble his head as to +who the dramatist or dramatists might be.” “Nobody, outside a very small +circle,” _did_ trouble his poor head about that point. Yet Mr. Greenwood +thinks “it does seem extremely remarkable” that Manningham did not +mention the author. + +Later, on the publication of the Folio (1623), the world seems to have +taken more interest in literary matters. Mr. Greenwood says that then +while “the multitude” would take Ben Jonson’s noble panegyric on +Shakespeare as a poet “_au pied de la lettre_,” “the enlightened few +would recognise that it had an esoteric meaning.” {0g} Then, it seems, +“the world”—the “multitude”—regarded the actor as the author. Only “the +enlightened few” were aware that when Ben _said_ “Shakespeare,” and “Swan +of Avon,” he _meant_—somebody else. + +Quite different inferences are drawn from the same facts by persons of +different mental conditions. For example, in 1635 or 1636, Cuthbert +Burbage, brother of Richard, the famous actor, Will’s comrade, petitioned +Lord Pembroke, then Lord Chamberlain, for consideration in a quarrel +about certain theatres. Telling the history of the houses, he mentions +that the Burbages “to ourselves joined those deserving men, Shakspere, +Heminge, Condell, Phillips and others.” Cuthbert is arguing his case +solely from the point of the original owners or lease-holders of the +houses, and of the well-known actors to whom they joined themselves. +Judge Webb and Mr. Greenwood think that “it does indeed seem strange . . . +that the proprietor[s] of the playhouses which had been made famous by +the production of the Shakespearean plays, should, in 1635—twelve years +after the publication of the great Folio—describe their reputed author to +the survivor of the Incomparable Pair, as merely a ‘man-player’ and ‘a +deserving man.’” Why did he not remind the Lord Chamberlain that this +“deserving man” was the author of all these famous dramas? Was it +because he was aware that the Earl of Pembroke “knew better than that”? +{0h} + +These arguments are regarded by some Baconians as proof positive of their +case. + +Cuthbert Burbage, in 1635 or 1636, did not remind the Earl of what the +Earl knew very well, that the Folio had been dedicated, in 1623, to him +and his brother, by Will’s friends, Heminge and Condell, as they had been +patrons of the late William Shakspere and admirers of his plays. The +terms of this dedication are to be cited in the text, later. _We_ all +_now_ would have reminded the Earl of what he very well knew. Cuthbert +did not. + +The intelligence of Cuthbert Burbage may be gauged by anyone who will +read pp. 481–484 in _William Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, by +the late Mr. Charles Elton, Q.C., of White Staunton. Cuthbert was a +puzzle-pated old boy. The silence as to Will’s authorship on the part of +this muddle-headed old Cuthbert, in 1635–36, cannot outweigh the explicit +and positive public testimony to his authorship, signed by his friends +and fellow-actors in 1623. + +Men believe what they may; but I prefer positive evidence for the +affirmative to negative evidence from silence, the silence of Cuthbert +Burbage. + +One may read through Mr. Greenwood’s three books and note the engaging +varieties of his views; they vary as suits his argument; but he is +unaware of it, or can justify his varyings. Thus, in 1610, one John +Davies wrote rhymes in which he speaks of “our English Terence, Mr. Will +Shakespeare”; “good Will.” In his period patriotic English critics +called a comic dramatist “the English Terence,” or “the English Plautus,” +precisely as American critics used to call Mr. Bryant “the American +Wordsworth,” or Cooper “the American Scott”; and as Scots called the Rev. +Mr. Thomson “the Scottish Turner.” Somewhere, I believe, exists “the +Belgian Shakespeare.” + +Following this practice, Davies had to call Will either “our English +Terence,” or “our English Plautus.” Aristophanes would not have been +generally recognised; and Will was no more like one of these ancient +authors than another. Thus Davies was apt to choose either Plautus or +Terence; it was even betting which he selected. But he chanced to choose +Terence; and this is “curious,” and suggests suspicions to Mr. +Greenwood—and the Baconians. They are so very full of suspicions! + +It does not suit the Baconians, or Mr. Greenwood, to find contemporary +recognition of Will as an author. {0i} Consequently, Mr. Greenwood finds +Davies’s “curious, and at first sight, inappropriate comparison of +‘Shake-speare’ to Terence worthy of remark, for Terence is the very +author whose name is alleged to have been used as a mask-name, or _nom de +plume_, for the writings of great men who wished to keep the fact of +their authorship concealed.” + +Now Davies felt bound to bring in _some_ Roman parallel to Shakespeare; +and had only the choice of Terence or Plautus. Meres (1598) used +Plautus; Davies used Terence. Mr. Greenwood {0j} shows us that Plautus +would not do. “Could _he_” (Shakespeare) “write only of courtesans and +_cocottes_, and not of ladies highly born, cultured, and refined? . . . ” + +“The supposed parallel” (Plautus and Shakespeare) “breaks down at every +point.” Thus, on Mr. Greenwood’s showing, Plautus could not serve +Davies, or should not serve him, in his search for a Roman parallel to +“good Will.” But Mr. Greenwood also writes, “if he” (Shakespeare) “was +to be likened to a Latin comedian, surely Plautus is the writer with whom +he should have been compared.” {0k} Yet Plautus was the very man who +cannot be used as a parallel to Shakespeare. Of course no Roman nor any +other comic dramatist closely resembles the _author_ of _As You Like It_. +They who selected either Plautus or Terence meant no more than that both +were celebrated comic dramatists. Plautus was no parallel to Will. Yet +“surely Plautus is the author to whom he should have been compared” by +Davies, says Mr. Greenwood. If Davies tried Plautus, the comparison was +bad; if Terence, it was “curious,” as Terence was absurdly accused of +being the “_nom de plume_” of some great “concealed poets” of Rome. +“From all the known facts about Terence,” says a Baconian critic (who has +consulted Smith’s _Biographical Dictionary_), “it is an almost +unavoidable inference that John Davies made the comparison to Shakspere +because he knew of the point common to both cases.” The common point is +taken to be, not that both men were famous comic dramatists, but that +Roman literary gossips said, and that Baconians and Mr. Greenwood say, +that “Terence” was said to be a “mask-name,” and that “Shakespeare” is a +mask-name. Of the second opinion there is not a hint in literature of +the time of good Will. + +What surprises one most in this controversy is that men eminent in the +legal profession should be “anti-Shakesperean,” if not overtly Baconian. +For the evidence for the contemporary faith in Will’s authorship is all +positive; from his own age comes not a whisper of doubt, not even a +murmur of surprise. It is incredible to me that his fellow-actors and +fellow-playwrights should have been deceived, especially when they were +such men as Ben Jonson and Tom Heywood. One would expect lawyers, of all +people, to have been most impatient of the surprising attempts made to +explain away Ben Jonson’s testimony, by aid, first, of quite a false +analogy (Scott’s denial of his own authorship of his novels), and, +secondly, by the suppression of such a familiar fact as the constant +inconsistency of Ben’s judgments of his contemporaries in literature. +Mr. Greenwood must have forgotten the many examples of this +inconsistency; but I have met a Baconian author who knew nothing of the +fact. Mr. Greenwood, it is proper to say, does not seem to be satisfied +that he has solved what he calls “the Jonsonian riddle.” Really, there +is no riddle. About Will, as about other authors, his contemporaries and +even his friends, on occasion, Ben “spoke with two voices,” now in terms +of hyperbolical praise, now in carping tones of censure. That is the +obvious solution of “the Jonsonian riddle.” + +I must apologise if I have in places spelled the name of the Swan of Avon +“Shakespeare” where Mr. Greenwood would write “Shakspere,” and _vice +versa_. He uses “Shakespeare” where he means the Author; “Shakspere” +where he means Will; and is vexed with some people who write the name of +Will as “Shakespeare.” As Will, in the opinion of a considerable portion +of the human race, and of myself, _was_ the Author, one is apt to write +his name as “Shakespeare” in the usual way. But difficult cases occur, +as in quotations, and in conditional sentences. By any spelling of the +name I always mean the undivided personality of “Him who sleeps by Avon.” + + + + +I +THE BACONIAN AND ANTI-WILLIAN POSITIONS + + +TILL the years 1856–7 no voice was raised against the current belief +about Shakespeare (1564–1616). He was the author in the main of the +plays usually printed as his. In some cases other authors, one or more, +may have had fingers in his dramas; in other cases, Shakespeare may have +“written over” and transfigured earlier plays, of himself and of others; +he may have contributed, more or less, to several plays mainly by other +men. Separately printed dramas published during his time carry his name +on their title-pages, but are not included in the first collected edition +of his dramas, “The First Folio,” put forth by two of his friends and +fellow-actors, in 1623, seven years after his death. + +On all these matters did commentators, critics, and antiquarians for long +dispute; but none denied that the actor, Will Shakspere (spelled as +heaven pleased), was in the main the author of most of the plays of 1623, +and the sole author of _Venus and Adonis_, _Lucrece_, and the Sonnets. + +Even now, in England at least, it would be perhaps impossible to find one +special and professed student of Elizabethan literature, and of the +classical and European literatures, who does not hold by the ancient +belief, the belief of Shakespeare’s contemporaries and intimates, the +belief that he was, in the sense explained above, the author of the +plays. + +But ours is not a generation to be overawed by “Authority” (as it is +called). A small but eager company of scholars have convinced themselves +that Francis Bacon wrote the Shakespearean plays. That is the point of +agreement among these enthusiasts: points of difference are numerous: +some very wild little sects exist. Meanwhile multitudes of earnest and +intelligent men and women, having read notices in newspapers of the +Baconian books, or heard of them at lectures and tea-parties, disbelieve +in the authorship of “the Stratford rustic,” and look down on the +faithful of Will Shakespere with extreme contempt. + +From the Baconians we receive a plain straightforward theory, “Bacon +wrote Shakespeare,” as one of their own prophets has said. {4a} Since we +have plenty of evidence for Bacon’s life and occupations during the +period of Shakespearean poetic activity, we can compare what he was doing +as a man, a student, a Crown lawyer, a pleader in the Courts, a political +pamphleteer, essayist, courtier, active member of Parliament, and so on, +with what he is said to have been doing—by the Baconians; namely, writing +two dramas yearly. + +But there is another “Anti-Willian” theory, which would dethrone Will +Shakspere, and put but a Shadow in his place. Conceive a “concealed +poet,” of high social position, contemporary with Bacon and Shakespeare. +Let him be so fond of the Law that he cannot keep legal “shop” out of his +love Sonnets even. Make him a courtier; a statesman; a philosopher; a +scholar who does not blench even from the difficult Latin of Ovid and +Plautus. Let this almost omniscient being possess supreme poetic genius, +extensive classical attainments, and a tendency to make false quantities. +Then conceive him to live through the reigns of “Eliza and our James,” +without leaving in history, in science, in society, in law, in politics +or scholarship, a single trace of his existence. He left nothing but the +poems and plays usually attributed to Will. As to the date of his +decease, we only know that it must necessarily have been later than the +composition of the last genuine Shakespearean play—for this paragon wrote +it. + +Such is the Being who occupies, in the theory of the non-Baconian, _but +not Anti-Baconian_, Anti-Willians, the intellectual throne filled, in the +Will Shakespeare theory, by Will; and in the Baconian, by Bacon—two kings +of Brentford on one throne. + +We are to be much engaged by the form of this theory which is held by Mr. +G. G. Greenwood in his _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_. In attempting +to explain what he means I feel that I am skating on very thin ice. +Already, in two volumes (_In Re Shakespeare_, 1909, and _The Vindicators +of Shakespeare_), Mr. Greenwood has accused his critics of frequently +misconceiving and misrepresenting his ideas: wherefore I also tremble. I +am perfectly confident in saying that he “holds no brief for the +Baconians.” He is _not_ a Baconian. His position is negative merely: +Will of Stratford is _not_ 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 _may_ 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,” {7a} and that for his purposes it would be an extremely +serviceable one, if not even essential. For as Bacon was a genius to +whose potentialities one can set no limit, he is something to stand by, +whereas we cannot easily believe—I cannot believe—that the actual +“Author,” the “Shakespeare” lived and died and left no trace of his +existence except his share in the works called Shakespearean. + +However, the idea of the Great Unknown has, for its partisans, this +advantage, that as the life of the august Shade is wholly unknown, we +cannot, as in Bacon’s case, show how he was occupied while the plays were +being composed. He _must_, however, have been much at Court, we learn, +and deep in the mysteries of legal terminology. Was he Sir Edward Coke? +Was he James VI and I? + +It is hard, indeed, to set forth the views of the Baconians and of the +“Anti-Willians” in a shape which will satisfy them. The task, especially +when undertaken by an unsympathetic person, is perhaps impossible. I can +only summarise their views in my own words as far as I presume to +understand them. I conceive the Baconians to cry that “the world +possesses a mass of transcendent literature, attributed to a man named +William _Shakespeare_.” Of a man named William _Shakspere_ (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 +_bourgade_. He obtained, by nefarious genealogical falsehoods (too +common, alas, in heraldry), the right to bear arms; and went on acting. +In 1610–11 (?) he retired to his native place. He never took any +interest in his unprinted manuscript plays; though rapacious, he never +troubled himself about his valuable copyrights; never dreamed of making a +collected edition of his works. He died in 1616, probably of drink +taken. Legal documents prove him to have been a lender of small sums, an +avid creditor, a would-be encloser of commons. In his will he does not +bequeath or mention any books, manuscripts, copyrights, and so forth. It +is utterly incredible, then, that this man wrote the poems and plays, so +rich in poetry, thought, scholarship, and knowledge, which are attributed +to “William Shakespeare.” These must be the works of “a concealed poet,” +a philosopher, a courtier moving in the highest circles, a supreme +legist, and, necessarily, a great poet, and student of the classics. + +No known person of the age but one, Bacon, was a genius, a legist, a +scholar, a great poet, and brilliant courtier, with all the other +qualifications so the author of the plays either was Francis Bacon—or +some person unknown, who was in all respects equally distinguished, but +kept his light under a bushel. Consequently the name “William +Shakespeare” is a pseudonym or “pen-name” wisely adopted by Bacon (or the +other man) as early as 1593, at a time when William Shakspere was +notoriously an actor in the company which produced the plays of the +genius styling himself “William Shakespeare.” + +Let me repeat that, to the best of my powers of understanding and of +expression, and in my own words, so as to misquote nobody, I have now +summarised the views of the Baconians _sans phrase_, and of the more +cautious or more credulous “Anti-Willians,” as I may style the party who +deny to Will the actor any share in the authorship of the plays, but do +not overtly assign it to Francis Bacon. + +Beyond all comparison the best work on the Anti-Willian side of the +controversy is _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, by Mr. G. G. Greenwood +(see my Introduction). To this volume I turn for the exposition of the +theory that “Will Shakspere” (with many other spellings) is an actor from +the country—a man of very scanty education, in all probability, and +wholly destitute of books; while “William Shakespeare,” or with the +hyphen, “Shake-speare,” is a “_nom de plume_” adopted by the Great +Unknown “concealed poet.” + +When I use the word “author” here, I understand Mr. Greenwood to mean +that in the plays called “Shakespearean” there exists work from many +pens: owing to the curious literary manners, methods, and ethics of +dramatic writing in, say, 1589–1611. In my own poor opinion this is +certainly true of several plays in the first collected edition, “The +Folio,” produced seven years after Will’s death, namely in 1623. These +curious “collective” methods of play-writing are to be considered later. + +Matters become much more perplexing when we examine the theory that +“William Shake-speare” (with or without the hyphen), on the title-pages +of plays, or when signed to the dedications of poems, is the chosen +pen-name, or “_nom de plume_,” of Bacon or of the Unknown. + +Here I must endeavour to summarise what Mr. Greenwood has written {11a} +on the name of the actor, and the “_nom de plume_” of the unknown author +who, by the theory, was not the actor. Let me first confess my firm +belief that there is no cause for all the copious writing about the +spellings “Shakespeare” or “Shake-speare”—as indicating the true but +“concealed poet”—and “Shakspere” (&c.), as indicating the Warwickshire +rustic. At Stratford and in Warwickshire the clan-name was spelled in +scores of ways, was spelled in different ways within a single document. +If the actor himself uniformly wrote “Shakspere” (it seems that we have +but five signatures), he was accustomed to seeing the name spelled +variously in documents concerning him and his affairs. In London the +printers aimed at a kind of uniformity, “Shakespeare” or “Shake-speare”: +and even if he wrote his own name otherwise, to him it was indifferent. +Lawyers and printers might choose their own mode of spelling—and there is +no more in the matter. + +I must now summarise briefly, in my own words, save where quotations are +indicated in the usual way, the results of Mr. Greenwood’s researches. +“The family of William Shakspere of Stratford” (perhaps it were safer to +say “the members of his name”) “wrote their name in many different +ways—some sixty, I believe, have been noted . . . but the form +‘Shakespeare’ seems never to have been employed by them”; and, according +to Mr. Spedding, “Shakspere of Stratford never so wrote his name ‘in any +known case.’” (According to many Baconians he never wrote his name in +his life.) On the other hand, the dedications of _Venus and Adonis_ +(1593) and of _Lucrece_ (1594) are inscribed “William Shakespeare” +(without the hyphen). In 1598, the title-page of _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ +“bore the name W. Shakespere,” while in the same year _Richard II_ and +_Richard III_ 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_s._ 8_d._). + + [Picture: Copy of the title-page of “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” 1598. The +earliest title-page in which Shakespeare’s name is given as the author of + the work. From J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps’ Outlines of the Life of + Shakespeare] + +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 _not_ 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 _a_ in the last +syllable. + +I now give the essence of Mr. Greenwood’s words {13a} concerning the _nom +de plume_ of the “concealed poet,” whoever he was. + +“And now a word upon the name ‘Shakespeare.’ That in this form, and more +especially with a hyphen, Shake-speare, the word makes an excellent _nom +de plume_ is obvious. As old Thomas Fuller remarks, the name suggests +_Martial_ 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 ὰπὸ του πάλλειν τὸ δόρυ); and +all will remember Ben Jonson’s verses . . . ” on Shakespeare’s +“true-filed lines”— + + “In each of which he seems to shake a lance, + As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.” + +There is more about Pallas in book-titles (to which additions can easily +be made), and about “Jonson’s Cri-spinus or Cri-spinas,” but perhaps we +have now the gist of Mr. Greenwood’s remarks on the “excellent _nom de +plume_” (_cf._ pp. 31–37. On the whole of this, _cf. The Shakespeare +Problem Restated_, pp. 293–295; a _nom de plume_ called a “pseudonym,” +pp. 307, 312; Shakespeare “a mask name,” p. 328; a “pseudonym,” p. 330; +“_nom de plume_,” p. 335). + +Now why was the “_nom de plume_” or “pseudonym” “William Shakespeare” “an +excellent _nom de plume_” for a concealed author, courtier, lawyer, +scholar, and so forth? If “Shakespeare” suggested Pallas Athene, goddess +of wisdom and of many other things, and so was appropriate, why add +“William”? + +In 1593, when the “pseudonym” first appears in _Venus and Adonis_, a +country actor whose name, in legal documents—presumably drawn up by or +for his friend, Francis Collyns at Stratford—is written “William +Shakespeare,” was before the town as an actor in the leading company, +that of the Lord Chamberlain. This company produced the plays some of +which, by 1598, bear “W. Shakespere,” or “William Shakespeare” on their +title-pages. Thus, even if the actor habitually spelled his name +“Shakspere,” “William Shakespeare” was, practically (on the Baconian +theory), not only a pseudonym of one man, a poet, but also the real name +of another man, a well-known actor, who was _not_ the “concealed poet.” + +“William Shakespeare” or “Shakespere” was thus, in my view, the ideally +worst pseudonym which a poet who wished to be “concealed” could possibly +have had the fatuity to select. His plays and poems would be, as they +were, universally attributed to the actor, who is represented as a person +conspicuously incapable of writing them. With Mr. Greenwood’s arguments +against the certainty of this attribution I deal later. + +Had the actor been a man of rare wit, and of good education and wide +reading, the choice of name might have been judicious. A “concealed +poet” of high social standing, with a strange fancy for rewriting the +plays of contemporary playwrights, might obtain the manuscript copies +from their owners, the Lord Chamberlain’s Company, through that +knowledgeable, witty, and venal member of the company, Will Shakspere. +He might then rewrite and improve them, more or less, as it was his whim +to do. The actor might make fair copies in his own hand, give them to +his company, and say that the improved works were from his own pen and +genius. The lie might pass, but only if the actor, in his life and witty +talk, seemed very capable of doing what he pretended to have done. But +if the actor, according to some Baconians, could not write even his own +name, he was impossible as a mask for the poet. He was also impossible, +I think, if he were what Mr. Greenwood describes him to be. + +Mr. Greenwood, in his view of the actor as he was when he came to London, +does not deny to him the gift of being able to sign his name. But, if he +were educated at Stratford Free School (of which there is no documentary +record), according to Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps “he was removed from school +long before the usual age,” “in all probability” when “he was about +thirteen” (an age at which some boys, later well known, went up to their +universities). If we send him to school at seven or so, “it appears that +he could only have enjoyed such advantages as it may be supposed to have +provided for a period of five or six years at the outside. He was then +withdrawn, and, as it seems, put to calf-slaughtering.” {16a} + +What the advantages may have been we try to estimate later. + +Mr. Greenwood, with Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, thinks that Will “could have +learned but little there. No doubt boys at Elizabethan grammar schools, +if they remained long enough, had a good deal of Latin driven into them. +Latin, indeed, was the one subject that was taught; and an industrious +boy who had gone through the course and attained to the higher classes +would generally be able to write fair Latin prose. But he would learn +very little else” (except to write fair Latin prose?). “What we now call +‘culture’ certainly did not enter into the ‘curriculum,’ nor ‘English,’ +nor modern languages, nor ‘literature.’” {17a} Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps +says that “removed prematurely from school, residing with illiterate +relatives in a bookless neighbourhood, thrown into the midst of +occupations adverse to scholastic progress—it is difficult to believe +that when he first left Stratford he was not all but destitute of +polished accomplishments.” {17b} Mr. Greenwood adds the apprenticeship +to a butcher or draper, but doubts the poaching, and the frequent +whippings and imprisonments, as in the story told by the Rev. R. Davies +in 1708. {17c} + +That this promising young man, “when he came to London, spoke the +Warwickshire dialect or _patois_ is, then, as certain as anything can be +that is incapable of mathematical proof.” {17d} “Here is the young +Warwickshire provincial . . . ” {17e} producing, apparently five or six +years after his arrival in town, _Venus and Adonis_ . . . “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.” {17f} 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.” {17g} + +If it be not conceivable now that the rustic speaking in a _patois_ could +write _Venus and Adonis_, manifestly it was inconceivable in 1593, when +_Venus and Adonis_ 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 _did_ 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 _did_ +persuade, say Ben Jonson, of his authorship and we shall see whether or +not he works this twentieth-century miracle of persuasion. + +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. {18a} But his own bookless actor with a _patois_ seems to +him, as author of _Venus and Adonis_, almost inconceivable. Yet, despite +Will’s bookless rusticity, this poem with _Lucrece_, 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 _not_ +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 _Venus +and Adonis_ or of _Hamlet_.” {19a} + +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 _Venus and Adonis_. 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 _Hamlet_, even if, like Wordsworth, “he had the mind,” +even if the gods had made him more poetical than Wilkins. + +Again, “he had had but little schooling; he had ‘small Latin and less +Greek’” (as Ben Jonson truly says), “but he was a good _Johannes +Factotum_; he could arrange a scene, and, when necessary, ‘bumbast out a +blank verse.’” {19b} + +The “_Johannes Factotum_,” 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. + +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 _Elomire Hypocondre_, 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 _infra_). But I must give the reader a warning. +Concerning “William Shakespeare” as a “_nom de plume_,” 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.’” {21a} + +If this be true, if “some would see through” (Mr. Greenwood, apparently, +means _did_ “see through”) the “_nom de plume_,” the case of the +Anti-Willians is promising. But, in this matter, Mr. Greenwood _se +trompe_. 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 _infra_.) + +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. + +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. + +We all have our personal equations in the way of belief. That the plot +of the “_nom de plume_” 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 “_nom de +plume_” 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. {22a} + +“Very few Englishmen . . . in Elizabethan times, concerned themselves at +all, or cared one brass farthing, about the authorship of plays . . . ” +says Mr. Greenwood. + +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. + +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. + + + + +II +THE “SILENCE” ABOUT SHAKESPEARE + + +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. + +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? + +“It is wonderful,” exclaims Mr. Crouch-Batchelor, “that hundreds of +persons should not have left records of him. {27a} 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.” + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 . . . ” {30a} (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 +_spectacle_, 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. {31a} + +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. {31b} 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. + +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. + +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. + +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.” {33a} + +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, _Patient Grizel_, by three of his +hacks. + +We perhaps come across an effort of the company to prevent or delay the +publication of _The Merchant of Venice_, on July 17, 1598, in the +_Stationers’ Register_. 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. {34a} 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. + +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. {34b} 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. + +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. + +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.” + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _a_ in the second +syllable. + +There is another instance which Mr. Greenwood discusses twice. {37a} In +1599 Jaggard published “_The Passionate Pilgrim_; 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 _Shakespeare_ was +offended, and,” says Mr. Greenwood, “very probably he was so; but as he +was, so I conceive, ‘a concealed poet,’ writing under a _nom de plume_, +he seems to have only made known his annoyance through the medium of +Heywood.” + +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 _The Passionate Pilgrim_ 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.” + +Why was the author so slack when Jaggard, in 1599, published W. S.’s +poems with others _not_ by W. S.? + +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. + +“Here we observe,” says Mr. Greenwood, {38a} “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 _e_ and _a_) 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! + +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 “_nom de plume_” 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 _ne +moveas Camarinam_. + + + + +III +THAT IMPOSSIBLE HE—THE SCHOOLING OF SHAKESPEARE + + +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 _patois_) 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. + +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 +_Cymbeline_, _long_. He must have read a famous line in Horace thus, + + “_Eheu fugaces Posthoome_, _Posthoome_!” + +which could scarce ’scape whipping, even at Stratford Free School. In +the same way he makes the penultimate syllable of Andronicus short, +equally impossible. + +Mr. Greenwood, we shall see, denies to him _Titus Andronicus_, but also +appears to credit it to him, as one of the older plays which he “revised, +improved, and dressed,” {44a} and _that_ 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 _Troilus and Cressida_, 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 _The Winter’s +Tale_ 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. + +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 _The +Winter’s Tale_. For, granting to Mr. Greenwood {45a} 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 +_Delphos_, but not with Ottocar. + +There never was so mad a mixture, not even in _Ivanhoe_; not even in +_Kenilworth_. 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. + +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. + +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. + +It is impossible that the home-keeping yokel should have heard of the +“obscure” (_sic_!) 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 _troupe_ of actors visited Denmark +in 1587. To Will all this knowledge was _impossible_; 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. + + [Picture: Facsimile of the Autograph Signature “By me William + Shakspeare.” From one of the Three Sheets of his Will, dated March 25, +1616. (From Sir Sidney Lee’s Shakespeare’s Life and Work. By permission + of Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co.)] + + [Picture: Facsimile of Mark-Signature of John Shakespeare, the Poet’s + Father. From a Deed of Conveyance, dated January 26, 1596] + + [Picture: Facsimile of Mark-Signature of Judith Shakespeare, the Poet’s + Second Daughter, afterwards Mrs. Thomas Quiney] + +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). + +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. + +“In the Appendix to Malone’s _Life of Shakespeare_ will be found two +Latin letters, written by alumni of Stratford School contemporary with +Shakespeare,” says Mr. Collins. {48a} 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? + +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 _young_ 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, +_one_ Stratford boy could write Latin in the generation following that of +Shakespeare. Thus may reason the Baconians. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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.” {50a} + +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. + +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 _Lavengro_ for details. Conversation books, +_Sententiæ Pueriles_, were in use; with easy books, such as Corderius’s +_Colloquia_, and so on, for boys were taught to _speak_ 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 _Love’s Labour’s Lost_), were used, +with Erasmus’s _Colloquia_, 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.” + +“Pro-di-gi-ous!” exclaims Mr. Greenwood, {51a} 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! + +Mr. Greenwood will not, in the matter of books, go beyond Mr. +Halliwell-Phillipps, {52a} “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 _portions_ 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. + +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.” {52b} + +He has therefore to find a _via media_, 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.’” {53a} Again, “He had had but +little schooling; he had ‘small Latin and less Greek’; but he was a good +_Johannes Factotum_, he could arrange a scene, and, when necessary, +‘bumbast out a blank verse.’” {53b} + +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. + +_When_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +To this amount of taste and curiosity, nowise unexampled in an ordinary +clever boy, add _Genius_, 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!’” {55a} I _do_ 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 _Venus and Adonis_. + +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 . . . ,” 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 _genius_, and hand _that_ over to Bacon—or Bungay. Believe me, Mr. +Greenwood, this is your easiest way!—perhaps this _is_ 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. + +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. {56a} + +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. {56b} + +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 {57a} devotes much space to +disparaging Aubrey (and I do not think him a scientific authority, _moult +s’en faut_), 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.” “_He_ knows, +_he_ knows” which traditions are mythical, and which possess a certain +historical value. + +My own opinion is that Shakspere did “know Latin pretty well,” and was no +_scholar_, 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. + +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 +_always_ 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. _Moi qui parle_, 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. + +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. + +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 _The Traditional Shakespeare_. {59a} Meanwhile, how can you +expect old clerks and sextons, a century after date, in a place where +literature was _not_ 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. + +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. + +Some works of Shakespeare, the _Lucrece_, for example, and _The Comedy of +Errors_ (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. + +Does any contemporary literary allusion to Shakespeare call him +“_learned_”? 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. + +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. + +I conceive that Shakspere “knew Latin pretty well,” and, on Ben Jonson’s +evidence, he knew “less Greek.” That he knew _any_ 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. + +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.” {62a} 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. {62b} + +Let me take one example {62c} of what Mr. E. A. Sonnenschein is quoted as +saying (somewhere) about Shakespeare’s debt to Seneca’s then untranslated +paper _De Clementia_ (1, 3, 3; I, 7, 2; I, 6, I). It inspires Portia’s +speech about Mercy. Here I give a version of the Latin. + +“Clemency becometh, of all men, none more than the King or chief +magistrate (_principem_) . . . 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.” + +The last sentence is fitted with this parallel in Portia’s speech: + + “Consider this + That in the course of Justice none of us + Should see salvation.” + +Here, at least, Protestant theology, not Seneca, inspires Portia’s +eloquence. + +Now take Portia: + + “The quality of Mercy is not strain’d; + It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven + Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed; + It blesseth him that gives and him that takes;” + +(Not much Seneca, so far!) + + “’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes + The thronèd monarch better than his crown; + His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, + The attribute to awe and majesty, + Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; + But Mercy is above this sceptred sway, + It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings, + It is an attribute to God himself; + And earthly power doth then show likest God’s, + When mercy seasons justice . . . ” + +There follows the passage about none of us seeing salvation, already +cited, and theological in origin. + +Whether Shakespeare could or could not have written these reflections, +without having read Seneca’s _De Clementia_, 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. + +My view of Shakespeare’s Latinity is much like that of Sir Walter +Raleigh. {64a} 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. + +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 _Lear_ and the Grave-digger in _Hamlet_, +even Ophelia and Desdemona, are all alike singers of old songs. . . . ” +{65a} He is rich in rural proverbs _not_ recorded in Bacon’s _Promus_. + +Shakespeare in the country, like Scott in Liddesdale, “was making himself +all the time.” + +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 _dicton_. But so may Shakespeare. + + + + +IV +MR. COLLINS ON SHAKESPEARE’S LEARNING + + +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. {69a} 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? + +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. + +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. + +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 _Studies in Shakespeare_, compare the Greek and Roman +texts, and weigh each example of supposed borrowing for himself. +Baconians must delight in this labour. + +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 _Menæchmi_ as the +model of _The Comedy of Errors_. He does not borrow phrases from it, as +he does from North’s _Plutarch_. + +_Venus and Adonis_ owes to Ovid, at most, but ideas for three purple +patches, scattered in different parts of the _Metamorphoses_. _Lucrece_ +is based on the then untranslated _Fasti_ 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. + +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.” +{71a} In that case, how did Shakespeare’s English become contaminated, +as Mr. Collins says it did, with Greek _idioms_, while he only knew the +Greek plays through Latin translations? + +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.” {72a} Yet this method is what he practises +throughout; with what amount of success every reader must judge for +himself. + +He thinks it “surely not unlikely” that Polonius’s + + “Neither a borrower nor a lender be: + For loan oft loses both itself and friend,” + +may be a terse reminiscence of seven lines in Plautus (_Trinummus_, 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. + +Next, take this of Plautus (_Pseudolus_, 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: + + “And as imagination bodies forth + The _forms_ of things unknown, the poet’s pen + Turns them to _shapes_, and gives to airy nothing + A local habitation and a name.” + +The reasoning is odd; imagination bodies forth _forms_, and the poet’s +pen turns them to _shapes_. But to suppose that Shakespeare here +borrowed from Plautus appears highly superfluous. + +These are samples of Mr. Collins’s methods throughout. + +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 “_alienus_” (“what belongs to +another”) meant “slippery”! + +Most of the passages are from plays (_Titus Andronicus_ and _Henry VI_, +i., ii., iii.), which Mr. Greenwood denies (usually) to _his_ author, the +Great Unknown. Throughout these early plays Mr. Collins takes +Shakespeare’s to resemble Seneca’s _Latin_ 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, “_Persicos odi puer +apparatus_” (_Odes_. I, xxxviii. I). Mr. Collins quotes _Lear_ (III, vi. +85) thus, “You will say they are _Persian attire_.” 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 _Persian attire_,” 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. + +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 _Alcibiades I_ of Plato into the +mouth of Achilles in _Troilus and Cressida_, 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 _Troilus_ makes Ulysses quote Plato as “the author” of a remark, and +makes Achilles take up the quotation, which Ulysses goes on to criticise. + +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! + +There were Latin translations of Plato; the _Alcibiades I_ was published +apart, from Ficinus’ version, in 1560, with the sub-title, _Concerning +the Nature of Man_. Who had read it?—Shakespeare, or one of the two +authors (Dekker and Chettle) of another _Troilus and Cressida_ (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? _Troilus +and Cressida_ is indeed a mystery, but Somebody concerned in it had read +Ficinus’ version of the _Alcibiades_; {75a} 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. + +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.” + +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? + +But does Mr. Collins prove (what, as he admits, _cannot_ 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 _are_ cited; and +“similarities, however striking they may be in metaphorical expression,” +cannot safely be used; several pages of them follow. + +Finally, Mr. Collins chooses a single play, the _Aias_ of Sophocles, and +tests Shakespeare by that, unluckily in part from _Titus Andronicus_, +which Mr. Greenwood regards (usually) as non-Shakespearean, or not by his +unknown great author. _Troilus and Cressida_, 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 _Aias_ of +Sophocles, according to Mr. Collins: so did the author of _Romeo and +Juliet_. + +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” {77a} against +three kinds of such parallels, which “may be mere coincidences,” {77b} +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 _Hamlet_ reminds that prince, grieving for his father’s +death, that “all that live must die”: + + “That loss is common to the race, + And common is the common-place.” + +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. _Vestigia nulla retrorsum_ 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— + + “The spirit that I have seen may be the devil.” + +Orestes (_Electra_, Euripides) asks whether it may not be an avenging +dæmon (_alastor_) 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? + +A girl dies or is sacrificed before her marriage, and characters in +_Romeo and Juliet_, and in Euripides, both say that Death is her +bridegroom. Anyone might say that, anywhere, as in the Greek Anthology— + + “For Death not for Love hast thou loosened thy zone.” + +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. + +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. + +The situations, in _Hamlet_ and the _Choephoræ_ and _Electra_, 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. + +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 +_Beowulf_ 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 _Tain Bo Cualgne_, 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 _The Heroic Age_ (1912), especially Chapter +XV, “The Common Characteristics of Teutonic and Greek Heroic Poetry,” and +to what Mr. Chadwick says much might be added. + +But, to be short, Mr. Collins’s case can only be judged by readers of his +most interesting _Studies in Shakespeare_. To me, Hamlet’s soliloquy on +death resembles a fragment from the _Phœnix_ 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, _sine amore jocisque_, borrowed from Mimnermus! There is such a +thing as congruity of genius. Mr. Collins states the hypothesis—not his +own—“that _by a certain natural affinity_ Shakespeare caught also the +accent and tone as well as some of the most striking characteristics of +Greek tragedy.” + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _was_, in the opinion of Mr. +Collins. + +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. + +Polynices, in the _Phœnissæ_ of Euripides (504–506), exclaims: + + “To the stars’ risings, and the sun’s I’d go, + And dive ’neath earth,—if I could do this thing,— + Possess Heaven’s highest boon of sovereignty.” + +Then compare Hotspur: + + “By Heaven, methinks it were an easy leap + To pluck bright honour from the pale faced moon, + Or dive into the bottom of the deep, + Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, + And pluck up drownèd honour by the locks, + So he that doth redeem her thence, might wear + Without corrival all her dignities.” + +What a hurrying crowd of pictures rush through Hotspur’s mind! Is +Shakespeare thinking of the _Phœnissæ_, or is he speaking only on the +promptings of his genius? + + + + +V +SHAKESPEARE, GENIUS, AND SOCIETY + + +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 _impossibility_ of the player’s authorship is +the foundation of the Baconian edifice. + +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 _may_ +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 _may_ +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. + +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 _lutin_ 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 _given_ by some power greater than himself, by +the _Boilyas_ (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. + +In recent times some philosophers, like Mr. F. W. H. Myers, put—in place +of the Muses or the _Boilyas_, 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +On the other side the Baconian, arguing from all that _he_ 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.” + +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. + +Thus, with all Bacon’s occupations and preoccupations, he had, the +Baconians will allow, _genius_. By the miracle of genius he _may_ 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 +_may_ account for his choice of a “_nom de plume_,” 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. + +I am not one of those who deny that Bacon might have written _Hamlet_ “if +he had the mind,” as Charles Lamb said of Wordsworth. Not at all; I am +the last to limit the potentialities of genius. + +But suppose, merely for the sake of argument, that Will Shakspere too had +genius in that amazing degree which, in _Henry V_, 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, + + “Never was such a sudden scholar made.” + +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. + +The young king’s + + “addiction was to courses vain, + His companies unletter’d, rude, and shallow,” + +precisely like Shakespeare’s courses and companions at Stratford + + “Had never noted in him any study.” + +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,” + + “You would say, it hath been all in all his study.” + +He is as intimate with the art of war; to him “Gordian knots of policy” +are “familiar as his garter.” He _must_ have + + “The art and practic part of life,” + +as “mistress to this theorie,” + + “Which is a wonder how his Grace should glean it,” + +as his youth was riotous, and was lived in all men’s gaze, + + “And never noted in him any study, + Any retirement, any sequestration + From open haunts and popularity.” + +The Bishop of Ely can only suggest that Henry’s study or “contemplation” + + “Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night, + Unseen,” + +and Canterbury says + + “It must be so, for miracles are ceased.” + +And thus the miracle of genius baffles the poet, for Henry’s had been +“noisy nights,” notoriously noisy. + +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. + +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. {91a} He +“comes to town” (date unknown) “a needy adventurer”; in 1593 appeared the +poem _Venus and Adonis_, author’s name being printed as “W. Shakespeare.” +Then comes _Lucrece_ (1594). In 1598 _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, 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 _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, 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. + +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 _was_ +no more, and _knew_ 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.” + +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. + +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, {93a} 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.” {93b} + +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 _Human Personality_), 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! + +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. + +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. + +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 _Wallace_; Locke’s +_Essay_; _The Spectator_, 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. + +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. _Venus and Adonis_ 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. + +I take Shakespeare, in London at least, to have read the current +Elizabethan light literature—_Euphues_, Lyly’s Court comedies, novels +full of the classics and of social life; Spenser, Sidney—his _Defence of +Poesy_, and _Arcadia_ (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. {96a} 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: {97a} “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.” + +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! + +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 {97b} from Mr. Morgan. {97c} + +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 _The Epigoniad_, 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 +_mediæval_ legends of Thebes, Troy, and Athens; and of these, _not_ of +Homer, Will made his market. Egypt he knew only in the new English +version of Plutarch’s _Lives_; of Homer, he (or the author of _Troilus +and Cressida_) used only Iliad VII., in Chapman’s new translation (1598). +For the rest he had Lydgate (perhaps), and, certainly, Caxton’s +_Destruction of Troy_, still reprinted as a _popular_ 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 +_Cymbeline_ and _King Lear_! Concerning “the anomalous status of a King +of Scotland under one of its primitive Kings” the author of _Macbeth_ +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!” + +_Mon Dieu_! do historians _not_ 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 _King Lear_ are a popular +tale attached to legendary “history” and a story in Sidney’s _Arcadia_. +Will, whom Mr. Morgan describes as “a letterless peasant lad,” or the +Author, whoever he was, is not “invested with all the love” (_sic_, +_v.1._ “lore”), “which the ages behind him had shut up in clasped books +and buried and forgotten.” + +“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,” _et cætera_. But Shakespeare did _not_ 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 _Plutarch_, done out of the +French; older plays, and the rest of it. Shakespeare does not go to +Tighernach and the _Hennskringla_ 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. + +But Mr. Greenwood asks “what was the poetic output?” in Burns’s case. +{100a} It was what we know, and _that_ 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. + +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 _Morte d’Arthur_ and _Destruction +of Troy_. + +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.” {101a} + +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. + +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 _Le Misanthrope_ of +Poquelin), he might say, + + “_L’Ami du genre humain n’est point du tout mon fait_.” + +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? + +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.” + +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 _them_ 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 _Marquis_. + +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. {103a} + +Thus have these two Baconians perceived that it _is_ 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.” + +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. + +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 +_may_ 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. + +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, _in similar circumstances_, would have +remembered no more of Burns, after the lapse of seventy years. + +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. + +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. + +By 1592, when Greene wrote his _Groatsworth_, “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. + +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. + +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 _Poetaster_, “corrupt young gentry very much, I know it.” I +take the quotation from Mr. Greenwood. {106a} They could not corrupt the +young gentry, if they were not pretty intimate with them. From Ben’s +_Poetaster_, 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; _and are companions for gallants_. A man may skelder +ye, now and then, of half a dozen shillings or so.” {107a} We think of +Nigel Olifaunt in _The Fortunes of Nigel_; but better gallants might +choose to have some acquaintance with Shakespeare. + +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 _c._ 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, _que sçais-je_? Southampton, discovering his qualities, may +have been more interested, interested in a better way. + +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 _Venus +and Adonis_; a poem likely to please any young amorist (1693). + +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 _Lucrece_, +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. + +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.” {109a} 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. + +As to the chances of an actor’s knowing “smart people,” Heywood, who knew +all that world, tells us {109b} that “Tarleton, in his time, was gracious +with the Queen, his sovereign,” Queen Elizabeth. “Will Kempe was in the +favour of his sovereign.” + +_They_ had advantages, they were not literary men, but low comedians. I +am not pretending that, though his + + “flights upon the banks of Thames + So did take Eliza and our James,” + +Will Shakspere “was gracious with the Queen.” + +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.’” + +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 {110a} 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 _them_ it cannot lie; _they_ 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. {111a} + +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.” + +Anyone, however, may prefer to believe that, while William Shakspere was +acting in a company (1592–3), Bacon, or who you please, wrote _Venus and +Adonis_, and, signing “W. Shakspeare,” dedicated it to his young friend, +the Earl, promising to add “some graver labour,” a promise fulfilled in +_Lucrece_. 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 _Venus_ and +_Lucrece_ 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. + +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 _thirteen_ plays, +or even of six. But I have not credited him with the authorship, +between, say, 1587 and 1593, of eleven plays, namely, _Hamlet_, _Romeo +and Juliet_, _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, _Titus Andronicus_, _Comedy of +Errors_, _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, _King John_, the three plays of _Henry +VI_, and _The Taming of the Shrew_. Mr. Greenwood {112a} 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. + +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 “_Titus Andronicus_, the three +plays of _Henry VI_, and possibly also _The Taming of the Shrew_, while +the reference to _Hamlet_ also is, as I have elsewhere shown, of very +doubtful force.” {113a} 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. + +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 +{113b} 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.’” {113c} But, at the close of his work +{113d} 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 _feu_ Mr. Bludyer of _The +Tomahawk_. + +From the five plays left to Shakespeare’s account in p. 51, _King John_ +(as we know it) is now eliminated. “I find it impossible to believe that +the same man was the author of the drama” (_The Troublesome Reign of King +John_) “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 _King John_ of Shakespeare.” {114a} “I +think it is a mistake to endeavour to fortify the argument against him” +(my Will, _toi que j’aime_), “by ascribing to Shakespeare such old plays +as the _King John_ of 1591 or the primitive _Hamlet_.” {114b} + +I thought so too, when I read p. 51, and saw _King John_ apparently still +“coloured on the card” among “Shakespeare’s lot.” We are now left with +_Love’s Labour’s Lost_, _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, _Comedy of Errors_, +and _Romeo and Juliet_, 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 _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, we do +not know the date of _Romeo and Juliet_. Mr. Gollancz dates the former +“about 1592,” and the latter “at 1591.” {114c} This is a mere personal +speculation. Of _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, 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 _The Comedy of Errors_, +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.” {114d} + +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 _me_ +“pause,” if I am to believe that, between 1587 and 1592, Will wrote +_Love’s Labour’s Lost_, _The Comedy of Errors_, _A Midsummer Night’s +Dream_, and _Romeo and Juliet_. 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. + + + + +VI +THE COURTLY PLAYS: “LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST” + + +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. + +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; +_he_ was no courtier, but there is the high courtly style in the speeches +of the great and noble in _Edward II_. 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 +_Euphues_ and his comedies, the age of the _Arcadia_. + +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 _Much Ado about Nothing_ and +_As You Like It_” (and _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, 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 _Natural History_. . . . One could hardly imagine +_Love’s Labour’s Lost_ as existent in the period from 1590 to 1600, had +not Lyly’s work just preceded it.” {120a} + +“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 _Pléiade_ 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.” {121a} + +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 _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ was not Will, but +the courtly “concealed poet.” No doubt Baconians may argue with Mr. R. +M. Theobald {121b} 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.” + +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 _Les Précieuses_ of her day; and +expands into symbolisms in a fantastic jargon. If courtiers of both +sexes conversed in the style of _Euphues_ (which is improbable), they +learned the trick of it from _Euphues_; not the author of _Euphues_ 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. + +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 _not_! + +We now look at _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, 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 _précieux_ and +_précieuses_ who imitated them, as I suggest, even then _Love’s Labour’s +Lost_ 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. + +The scene is the Court of _Ferdinand_, King of Navarre. In 1589–93, the +eyes of England were fixed on the Court of her ally, _Henri_ 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, {124a} find +any “allusions to the Civil War of France.” France and Navarre, in the +play, are in full peace. + +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 _L’Académie Française_, 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. + +Many of Shakespeare’s anachronisms are easily intelligible. He takes a +novel or story about any remote period, or he chooses, as for the +_Midsummer Night’s Dream_, 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 _Troilus and +Cressida_; it is when the author makes the bronze-clad Achæans familiar +with Plato and Aristotle that we are surprised. In _Love’s Labour’s +Lost_ 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? + +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. {126a} 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. + +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! + +“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 +_Second __Frutes_ (1591), and _First Frutes_ (1578), with the English +translation. The books were as accessible to Shakspere as to Bacon. +Either author might also draw from James Sandford’s _Garden of Pleasure_, +done out of the Italian in 1573–6. + +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. _There are +no French politics in the piece_, 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. {127a} “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 _Chronicles_ 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 _conte_, partly based on a passage in Monstrelet. + +Perhaps it will be conceded that _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ 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 _troupe_ in Southern France. + +Mr. Greenwood does not attribute the wit (such as it is), the quips, the +conceits, the affectations satirised in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, 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.” {129a} + +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. + +Mr. Greenwood {129b} appears to be repeating “the case as to this very +remarkable play” as “well summed up by the late Judge Webb in his +_Mystery of William Shakespeare_” (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! + +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. + +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. +_Quantula sapientia_! + + + + +VII +CONTEMPORARY RECOGNITION OF WILL AS AUTHOR + + +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. + +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 _not_ 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. + +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 _merits_ 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. + +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. + +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 _Plays_ and +_Poems_. _That_ is the proposition to be established, and _that_ 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” {136a}—which raises an entirely +different question. + +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”—_that_ 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. + +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. _Miror magis_, 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 _The Passionate Pilgrim_. 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 _The Passionate Pilgrim_, 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. + +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.” + +“Let us, however, examine some of these allusions to Shakspere, real or +supposed,” says the critic. {138a} He begins with the hackneyed words of +the dying man of letters, Robert Greene, in _A Groatsworth of Wit_ +(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 _their_ 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 _Tyger’s heart +wrapt in a Player’s hide_” (“Player’s” in place of “woman’s,” in an old +play, _The Tragedy of Richard_, _Duke of York_, &c.), “supposes he is as +well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an +absolute _Johannes Factotum_, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene +in a country.” + +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 _our_ 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 _Johannes Factotum_”). +“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. + +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.” {140a} As an _actor_ +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, “_for_ 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 _factotum_, can readily be employed by the +players to the prejudice of Greene’s three friends, who are professed +playwrights. + +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.” +{141a} But we cannot help knowing; for Greene has told us. In addition +to gaining renown solely through mouthing “_our_” words, wearing “_our_ +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. + +Even Mr. Greenwood, {141b} 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,” {141c} 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? + +Finally Mr. Greenwood, after saying “it is clear that it is as an actor +rather than as an author that ‘Shake-scene’ is attacked,” {142a} concedes +{142b} 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. + +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. + +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, {143a} “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. + +“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 _Tyger’s heart +wrapped in a player’s hide_, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a +blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute _Johannes +Factotum_, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.” + +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 _our_ +feathers,”—not with the feathers of some one _not_ ourselves, Bacon or +Mr. Greenwood’s Unknown. Mr. Greenwood even says that Shake-scene is +referred to “as beautified with the feathers _which he has stolen_ from +the dramatic writers” (“our feathers”). + +Greene says absolutely nothing about feathers “_which he has stolen_.” +The “feathers,” the words of the plays, were bought, not stolen, by the +actors, “anticks garnished in our colours.” + +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.” + +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? + +It is much safer for him to say that “Shake-scene” is not meant for +Shakespeare. Nobody can prove that it _is_; the pun _may_ be a strange +coincidence,—or any one may say that he thinks it nothing more; if he +pleases. + +Greene nowhere “refers to this Shake-scene as being an impostor, an +upstart crow beautified with the feathers _which he has stolen from the +__dramatic writers_ (“our feathers”)” {145a}—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, _as player_, is “beautified with our feathers.” It is Mr. +Greenwood who adds “beautified with the feathers which he has _stolen_ +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. + +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 _may_ 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 _Groatsworth of Wit_, {146a} +as, if grammar goes for all, they do not refer to Shakespeare, we have +the Cambridge farce or comedy on contemporary literature, the _Return +from Parnassus_ (1602?). The University wits laugh at Shakespeare,—not +an university man, as the favourite poet, in his _Venus and Adonis_, of a +silly braggart pretender to literature, Gullio. + +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, _as an author of plays_, “puts down” the +University wits “and Ben Jonson too.” The date is not earlier than that +of Ben’s satiric play on the poets, _The Poetaster_ (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. + +The point is that Kempe recognises Shakespeare as both actor and author. + +All this “is quite consistent with the theory that Shake-speare was a +pseudonym,” {147a} says Mr. Greenwood. Of course it is, but it is _not_ +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 _he_ +thought that _Kempe_ thought, that his fellow player was the author. But +we have better evidence of what the actors thought than in the Cambridge +play. + +In 1598, as we saw, Francis Meres in _Palladis Tamia_ credits Shakespeare +with _Venus and Adonis_, with privately circulated sonnets, and with a +number of the comedies and tragedies. How the allusions “negative the +hypothesis that Shakespeare was a _nom de plume_ 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. + +Then Weaver (1599) alludes to him as author of _Venus_, _Lucrece_, +_Romeo_, _Richard_, “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 _Venus_ and _Lucrece_. “Besides in plays thy wit winds like +Meander.” I repeat Heywood’s evidence. Thomas Heywood, author of that +remarkable domestic play, _A Woman Killed with Kindness_, 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, + + “Mellifluous Shakespeare whose enchanting quill + Commanded mirth and passion, was but ‘Will.’” + +Does Heywood not identify the actor with the author? No quibbles serve +against the evidence. + +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 _King_,” 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 _Montaigne_, 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 _Adelphi_, 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 _le Secret de Polichinelle_. +Yet none hints at it, and only a very weak cause could catch at so tiny a +straw as the off-chance that Davies _knew_, and used “Terence” as a gibe. +{149a} + +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. +{150a} 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,” {150b} 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. + +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 +_L’Allegro_ just after leaving Cambridge, makes Shakespeare “sweetest +Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,” with “native wood-notes wild”; and gives to +Jonson “the _learned_ 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.” {151a} 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. + + + + +VIII +“THE SILENCE OF PHILIP HENSLOWE” + + +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 +_Venus and Adonis_, 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. +{155a} + +The allusions, I repeat, _do_ 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 _who +Shakespeare_ 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.” + +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 _not_ 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. + +There are notes of payments of money to Henslowe after each performance +of any play in one of his theatres. In these notes _the name of +Shakespeare __is never once mentioned as the author of any play_. How +weird! But in _these_ notes the names of the authors of the plays acted +are never mentioned. Does this suggest that Bacon wrote all these plays? + +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. _But the same of Shakespeare never appears_. +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” (_sic_) “and his +productions.” {157a} + +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 _why_ 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. + +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. + +“If Shakspere the player had been a dramatist, surely Henslowe would have +employed him also, like the others, in that behalf.” {159a} 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 _was_ 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. {159b} Modern publishers +and managers sometimes make the same terms with novelists and +playwrights. + +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. + +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.” {160a} 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. _Credo quia impossibile_!” +{160b} _Credo_ what? and what is _impossible_? 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, +_when he is not doing business with Ben_? 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 +_did_ 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. + +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, 0_s._ 0_d._ If he were a sham, a figure-head, +a liar, a fetcher-and-carrier of manuscripts, _he would be paid for it_. +But he did not deal with Henslowe in his bargainings, and _that_ is why +Henslowe does not mention him. Mr. Greenwood, in one place, {161a} +agrees, so far, with me. “Why did Henslowe not mention Shakespeare as +the writer of other plays” (than _Titus Andronicus_ and _Henry VI_)? “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 _why_ 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?” + +Do you not see that, in the interests of the Great Secret itself, Will +_had_ 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. + +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. + +“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.” +{163a} 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 _not_ +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? + +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,—_takes_ them as a Yankee +pirate-publisher takes my rhymes,—and “rewrites and transforms them.” + +Bacon (or Bungay) _cannot_ “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 “_nom de plume_” “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.” + +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. {164a} 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, _enfin_, _tout le tremblement_. + +“How strange, how more than strange!” + +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 _Henry VI_. Several other plays with names familiar +in Shakespeare’s Works, such as _Titus Andronicus_, all the three parts +of _Henry VI_, _King Leare_ (April 6, 1593), _Henry V_ (May 14, 1592), +_The Taming of a Shrew_ (June 11, 1594), and _Hamlet_, 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. + +There is one rather interesting case. On August 25, 1594, Henslowe +enters “_ne_” (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 _The Merchant of Venice_, 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. + + + + +IX +THE LATER LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE—HIS MONUMENT AND PORTRAITS + + +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. + +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 _Cottar’s Saturday +Night_ and other moral pieces. He was an inconsistent walker. + +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 _his_ +authorship impossible? The objection seems weakly sentimental. + +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! + +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. {171a} I do not, like Mr. +Greenwood, see anything “at all out of the way” in the circumstance “that +a man should be writing _Hamlet_, and at the same time bringing actions +for petty sums lent on loan at some unspecified interest.” {171b} 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 _Hamlet_. 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, _he wrote the +Sonnets to Essex_. Whether he were writing his _Hamlet_ 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. + +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 _The Advancement +of Learning_ (1603–5). He must be a stout-hearted Baconian who can +believe that, between 1599 and 1605, Bacon was writing _Hamlet_, 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. + +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, + + “What a sight it were, + To see thee in our waters yet appear”? + +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, + + “Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like Night, + And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light,” + +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? +{174a} + +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 +_was_ a “gent.” with authentic coat-armour.) + +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” {175a} (library). I only +give this as a lawyer’s opinion. + +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 _Montaigne_, 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. {175b} 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 +_was_ 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.” + +It appears that Shakespeare’s daughter, Judith, could write no more than +her grandfather. {176a} 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. + +As “nothing is known of the disposition and character” {176b} 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? + +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 _not_ the author, and therefore did not interview his +granddaughter in the country. + +“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 {177a} of the monument as +it now exists, he may not be able to say to the face of the poet— + + “Thou wast that all to me, Will, + For which my soul did pine.” + +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 _expertise_, 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. + +Next, glance at the figure opposite. This is a reproduction of “the +earliest representation of the Bust” (and monument) in Dugdale’s +_Antiquities of Warwickshire_ (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.” _The +existing object is what he had_; the monument in Dugdale is what, I hope, +no architect of 1616–23 could have imagined or designed. + + [Picture: The Monument in Dugdale’s “History of the Antiquities of + Warwickshire” (1656) (By permission of John Murray, Esq.)] + +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), “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 _Warwickshire_ are far and away greater than in the monument to +William Shakespeare.” + +Mr. Greenwood, {179a} 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.” + +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.” {180a} + +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. + + [Picture: The Carew Monument in Stratford Church] + + [Picture: The Carew Monument as Represented in Dugdale’s “History of the + Antiquities of Warwickshire” (1656)] + +Now Mrs. Stopes {180b} 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. + +If ever what we see to-day was substituted for anything like what +Dugdale’s man drew, the date of the substitution is unknown. + +Mrs. Stopes herself discovered the documents which disprove her theory. +They were known to Halliwell-Phillipps, who quotes an unnamed +“contemporary account.” {181a} 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. _That_, 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 _Othello_ 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_s._, 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, _the +original monument_ 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 _History and Antiquities of Stratford-on-Avon_, {182a} 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.” + +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. + +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_s._) “to his churchwardens if Hall +added (_sic_) a cloak, a pen, and manuscript.” He “could not help +changing” the face, and so on. + +Now it was physically impossible to _add_ 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. _Pour tout potage_ he had +but £12, 10_s._ 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 {183a} 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.” + +Mr. Greenwood {183b} quotes Halliwell-Phillipps’s _Works of Shakespeare_ +(1853), 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 +_Outlines_ 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 _Outlines_; 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. + +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 _Shakespeare_ +(1709), and that by Grignion so late as 1786, for anything but copies of +the design in Dugdale, with modifications made _à plaisir_. 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. + +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.” + + [Picture: From Vertue’s Engraving of the Monument (1725) (By permission + of John Murray, Esq.)] + +“_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?” {186a} Such, indeed, are the things that +Baconians might readily say: do say, I believe. + +Dugdale’s engraving reproduces the first words of a Latin inscription, +still on the monument: + + _Judicio Pylium_, _genio Socratem_, _arte Maronem_ + _Terra tegit_, _populus mæret_, _Olympus habet_: + +“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 _Olympus_ for heaven in epitaphs, it is sufficient to consult the +learning of Mr. Elton. {186b} 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. {187a} 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. + +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,” {187b} “by +the author of _Hamlet_.” 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. {187c} For +Baconians the lines are bad enough to be the work of William Shakspere of +Stratford. + +Meanwhile, in 1649, when Will’s daughter, Mrs. Hall, died, her epitaph +spoke quite respectfully of her father’s intelligence. + + “Witty above her sex, but that’s not all, + Wise to salvation was good Mistris Hall, + Something of Shakespeare was in _that_, but _this_ + Wholly of Him with whom she’s now in bliss.” {187d} + +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. + +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 _move his bones_? A mean +and vulgar curse indeed!” {188a} And the authority for the circumstance +that he died with a mean and vulgar curse upon his lips? + +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.” + +If Shakespeare _did_, that accommodation of himself to his audience was +the last stroke of his wisdom, or his wit. {189a} 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. + +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. + +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 _Icones_. 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, {190a} 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. + +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. + + + + +X +“THE TRADITIONAL SHAKSPERE” + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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.” + +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. + +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, _non sine gloria_! Even _that_ was +forgotten. + +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. + +Yet {198a} 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 (_where_, 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 _bourgade_, 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. + +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 +_these_ were local traditions. How could these _rustauds_ have an +opinion about “natural wit,” how could they have known the names of Ben +and Drayton? + +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 _not_ wish to believe it”? + +And do you want to believe it? + +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 _Hamlet_ +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!” +{200a} + +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 _Roscius Anglicanus_, had notes from Charles Booth, prompter at +Drury Lane. On May 28, 1663, Davenant reproduced _Hamlet_, 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.” {201a} 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. + +It is Mr. Pepys (December 30, 1668) who chronicles Davenant’s splendid +revival of _Henry VIII_, 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.” + +The stage is notoriously tenacious of such traditions. + +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.” {201b} 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. + +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 _Venus and Adonis_, +_Lucrece_, 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 _engouement_ 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. + + + + +XI +THE FIRST FOLIO + + +“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. + +The mystery as to the sources, editing, and selection of plays in the +Folio (1623) appears to be impenetrable. The title-page says that _all_ +the contents are published “according to the true original copies.” If +_only_ 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), {207a} 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: +_even those_” (namely, the pieces previously ill-produced by pirates) +“are now offered to your view cur’d, and perfect of their limbes; and +_all the rest_” (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 _all_ previously published separate plays are +explicitly said to be stolen and deformed, but “_divers_ stolen copies” +are denounced. Mr. Pollard makes the same point in _Shakespeare Folios +and Quartos_, p. 2 (1909). + +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 _Hamlet_ 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 _prima facie_ evidence that the sale to publishers of plays +afterwards duly entered on the Stationers’ Registers was regulated by +their lawful owners.” {208a} + +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 _Much Ado about Nothing_ (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 _all_ the Quartos. It could be +truly said that _divers_ stolen and maimed copies had been foisted on +“abused” purchasers, and really no more _is_ said. Dr. Furness writes, +“When we now find them using as ‘copy’ one of these very Quartos” (_Much +Ado about Nothing_, 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 _was_ their meaning, I think, the Quarto +of _Much Ado_ had _not_ been “maimed” and “deformed,” as divers other +quartos, stolen and surreptitious, had been. + +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. + +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 _all_ the separate editions of Shakespeare’s plays were +‘stolen,’ ‘surreptitious’ and imperfect, _and that all those published in +the Folio were printed from the author’s own manuscripts_” (my italics). +The Editors agree with Dr. Furness, not with Mr. Pollard, whose learned +opinion coincides with my own. + +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.” {210a} 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 “_all the +rest_” 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. + +Among the plays spoken of as “all the rest,” namely, those not hitherto +published and not deformed by the fraudulent, are, _Tempest_, _Two +Gentlemen_, _Measure for Measure_, _Comedy of Errors_, _As You Like It_, +_All’s Well_, _Twelfth Night_, _Winter’s Tale_, _Henry VI_, iii., _Henry +VIII_, _Coriolanus_, _Timon_, _Julius Cæsar_, _Macbeth_, _Antony and +Cleopatra_, and _Cymbeline_. Also _Henry VI_, i., ii., _King John_, and +_Taming of the Shrew_, 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 _The Shrew_, _Timon_, _Julius +Cæsar_, _All’s Well_, and _Henry VIII_. 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.” + +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.” + +This may be meant to _suggest_, but does not _affirm_, that the actors +_have_ “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. + +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 _prima cura_, 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 _Discoveries_ (notes, memories, brief essays), “I remember the +players have _often_ 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. + +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.” +_Hamlet_, 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.” + +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 +_Richard III_, appear in the Folio of 1623. Again, the _Merry Wives_ of +the Folio, is nearly twice as long as the quarto of 1619, yet keeps old +errors. + +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 _The Merry Wives_ in extent, +and also leave all the errors of the fourth quarto uncorrected? + +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. + +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. +{215a} 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. + +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, _Richard III_ 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?” +{216a} 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 _Richard III_ 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.” +{217a} + +Mr. Greenwood, after criticising other systems, writes, {217b} “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 “_nom de plume_” 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.” + +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 _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, and _Shakespeare_, _Genius_, _and +Society_) how Will picked up his notions of courtly ways. + +“Another hypothesis,” the Baconian hypothesis,—“_nom de plume_” and +all,—Mr. Greenwood thinks “an extremely reasonable one”: I cannot easily +conceive of one more unreasonable. + +“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’?” {218a} + +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 “_nom de plume_.” +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. + +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. + +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 (_Lar_ or Brownie), + + “Thou stand’st as if some mystery thou didst.” + +Mr. Greenwood does not know what this can mean; nor do I. {219a} + +“Jonson, it appears” (on what authority?), “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. + +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 _De +Augmentis_, which was published in 1623, was the work of Jonson.” {219b} +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.” {219c} + +_Très bien_, 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. {220a} Now the man for whom Ben, in 1623, was “doing work”—was +BACON,—so Judge Webb says. {220b} + +Therefore, by this hypothesis of Mr. Greenwood, {220c} the Great Unknown +was Bacon,—just the hypothesis of the common Baconian. + +Is my reasoning erroneous? Is the “supposing” suggested by Mr. Greenwood +{220d} 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”) when he wants to explain away Ben’s evidence, in his verses +in the Folio, to the Stratford actor as the Author. + +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!” +{221a} 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 “_nom de plume_” 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 _Advancement of +Learning_ into Latin prose. Mr. Greenwood quotes, without reference, +Archbishop Tenison as saying that Ben helped Bacon in doing his works +into Latin. {221b} 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 _lingua franca_ 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. + +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.” + +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, {222a} 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,” _written_) “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.” {222b} How did this occur? The book {222c} +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 “_nom de plume_”? + +It is not my fault if I think that Mr. Greenwood’s hypotheses {222d}—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. {222e} 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 _plat +contraire_,”—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.” {223a} Then away fly the hypotheses {223b} 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 +_Titus_ (_Andronicus_) and _Henry VI_,” {223c} 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.” {223d} Perhaps! but if so the two +hypotheses, {223e} that either the genuine Shakespeare {223f} 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 {223g} was done after 1616 and before 1623?”), or {223h} 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.” {224a} 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” _Troilus and Cressida_. {224b} + +Neither Ben, nor the actual Simon Pure, the author, the auto-Shakespeare, +could fail to know the truth about _Trodus and Cressida_. But the Editor +{224c} did _not_ know the truth, the whole canon is “doubtful.” +Therefore the hypothesis, the “supposing,” that the actual author did the +revising, {224d} and the other hypothesis that he gave Ben the work, +{224e} seem to me wholly impossible. But Mr. Greenwood needs the +“supposings” of pp. 290, 293; and as he rejects _Titus Andronicus_ and +_Henry VI_ (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? + +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 _Titus Andronicus_ and +_Henry VI_, though both are in the Folio, as the work of _his_ +“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 _Titus_, +and _Henry VI_, and be “in no little doubt about” _Troilus and Cressida_? +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 “_nom de plume_” of “William Shakespeare” (with or without the +hyphen). Yet the Editor of the Folio does not know—and Mr. Greenwood +does know—_Henry VI_ and _Titus_ are “wrong ones.” + +Mr. Greenwood’s way out, if I follow him, is this: {225a} “Judge +Stotsenburg asks, ‘Who wrote _The Taming of a Shrew_ printed in 1594, and +who wrote _Titus Andronicus_, _Henry VI_, or _King Lear_ referred to in +the Diary?’” (Henslowe’s). The Judge continues: “Neither Collier nor any +of the Shaxper commentators make (_sic_) 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.” + +Mr. Greenwood says, “My own conviction is that . . . these plays were +‘revised, improved, and dressed by some one whom they called +Shakespeare.’” {226a} (Whom _who_ called Shakespeare?) In that case +these plays,—say _Titus Andronicus_ and _Henry VI_, Part 1,—which Mr. +Greenwood denies to _his_ “Shakespeare” were just as much _his_ +Shakespeare’s plays as any other plays (and there are several), which +_his_ Shakespeare “revised, improved, and dressed.” Yet _his_ +Shakespeare is _not_ author of _Henry VI_, {226b} not the author of +_Titus Andronicus_. {226c} “Mr. Anders,” writes Mr. Greenwood, “makes +what I think to be a great error in citing _Henry VI_ and _Titus_ as +genuine plays of Shakespeare.” {226d} + +He hammers at this denial in nineteen references in his Index to _Titus +Andronicus_. Yet Ben, or Bacon, or the Unknown thought that these plays +_were_ “genuine plays” of “Shakespeare,” the concealed author—Bacon or +Mr. Greenwood’s man. It appears that the immense poet who used the “_nom +de plume_” 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.” + +Finally, {227a} 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. + +One is seriously puzzled to discover the critic’s meaning. _The Taming +of a Shrew_, _Titus_, _Henry VI_, and _King Lear_, 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 +_Titus_ “is not _Shakespearean_ at all.” Mr. Greenwood, I repeat, +constantly denies the “Shakespearean” character to _Titus_ and _Henry +VI_. “The conclusion of the whole matter is that _Titus_ and _The +Trilogy of Henry VI_ are not the work of Shakespeare: that his hand is +probably not to be found at all in _Titus_, and only once or twice, if at +all, in _Henry VI_, Part I, but that he it probably was who altered and +remodelled the two parts of the old _Contention of the Houses of York and +Lancaster_, thereby producing _Henry VI_, Parts II and III.” {228a} + +Yet {228b} _Titus_ and _Henry VI_ appear as “revised, improved, and +dressed” by the mysterious “some one whom they called Shakespeare.” If +Mr. Greenwood’s conclusion {228c} be correct, “Shakespeare” had no right +to place _Henry VI_, Part I, and _Titus_ in his Folio. If his +“conviction” {228d} be correct, Shakespeare had as good a right to them +as to any of the plays which he revised, and improved, and dressed. They +_must_ be “Shakespearean” if Mr. Greenwood is right {228e} 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 _Troilus and +Cressida_. “The Folio Editor had, evidently, no little doubt about that +play.” {228f} + +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 +_Titus_ and _Henry VI_, 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, _Titus Andronicus_, and _Henry VI_. {229a} + +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.’” {229b} + +This statement is made {229c} about “these plays,” including _Titus +Andronicus_ and _Henry VI_, while {229d} “_Titus_ and the _Trilogy of +Henry VI_ are not the work of Shakespeare . . . his hand is probably not +to be found at all in _Titus_, and only once or twice in _Henry VI_, Part +I,” though he probably made Parts II and III out of older plays. + +I do not know where to have the critic. If _Henry VI_, Part I, and +_Titus_ 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 _Titus_ and _Henry +VI_, Part I. + +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 (_he_, 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. + +“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.” + +This painful discourse must have been held at Gorhambury,—if Ben edited +the Folio—for Francis. + +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, {231a} “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! + +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, +{231b} 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, {232a} +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. + +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 _not_ +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 “_if the author_” (Bacon or somebody very like him) +“_had been careless about keeping copies of his manuscripts_ . . . ” +{232b} 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. + +In 1911 Mr. Greenwood writes, “There is overwhelming authority for the +view that _Titus Andronicus_ is not _Shakespearean_ at all.” {233a} In +that case, neither Bacon, nor the Unknown, nor Ben, acting for either, +can have been the person who put _Titus_ into the Folio. + + + + +XII +BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE + + +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.” {237a} + +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 _works_: in 1619 to Drummond of Hawthornden; in 1623 in commendatory +verses to the Folio; while, about 1630, probably, in his posthumously +published _Discourses_, 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 _tone_ 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. + +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. + +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 _Discourses_ 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 _they_ 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. + +In addition to his three known mentions of Shakespeare by name (1619, +1623, 1630?), Ben certainly appears to satirise his rival at a much +earlier date; especially as Pantalabus, a playwright in _The Poetaster_ +(1601), and as actor, poet, and plagiarist in an epigram, _Poet-Ape_, +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 +_Every Man in His Humour_. It appears that he conceived some grudge +against the actors, and apparently against Shakespeare and other +playwrights, for, in 1601, his _Poetaster_ 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 _The Poetaster_, Histrio, the actor, +is advised to ingratiate himself with _Pantalabus_, “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 _Pantalabus_, from the Greek words for “to _take up all_,” which +means that, as poet, he is a plagiarist. Jonson repeats this charge in +his verses called _Poet-Ape_— + + “_He takes up all_, makes each man’s wit his own, + And told of this, he slights it.” + +In a scene added to _The Poetaster_ in 1616, the author (Ben) is advised +not + + “With a sad and serious verse to wound + Pantalabus, railing in his saucy jests,” + +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. + +A reply to the _Poetaster_, namely _Satiromastix_ (by Dekker and +Marston?), introduces Jonson himself as babbling darkly about “Mr. +Justice Shallow,” and “an Innocent Moor” (Othello?). Here is question of +“administering strong pills” to Jonson; _then_, + + “What lumps of hard and indigested stuff, + Of bitter _Satirism_, of _Arrogance_, + Of _Self-love_, of _Detraction_, of a black + And stinking _Insolence_ should we fetch up!” + +This “pill” is a reply to Ben’s “purge” for the poets in his _Poetaster_. +Oh, the sad old stuff! + +Referring to Jonson’s _Poetaster_, and to _Satiromastix_, the +counter-attack, we find a passage in the Cambridge play, _The Return from +Parnassus_ (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 +_The Poetaster_) “giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare +hath given him a purge . . . ” + +The Cambridge author, perhaps, is thinking of the pill (not purge) which, +in _Satiromastix_, 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 _The +Poetaster_, using the term “_Poet-Ape_,” for he calls the actors at large +“apes.” + +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. + +Poet-Ape is an actor-playwright “_that would be thought our chief_”—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 + + “grown + To a little wealth and credit in the scene,” + +of no other actor-playwright could this be said. + +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 _Pantalabus_. 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 _did_ work over +earlier plays which his company had acquired; or, if Shakespeare did +not,—then, I presume,—Bacon did! + +_That_, 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 _Pantalabus_, “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. + +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.” {244a} 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.” {245a} We proved, by quoting Greene’s +words, that he said nothing which could be tortured into this sense. +{245b} 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.” {245c} Mr. Greenwood tries to find the +Anti-Willian hypothesis in Greene’s _Groatsworth of Wit_ and in Ben’s +epigram. It is in neither. + +Jonson is not accusing Shakespeare of pretending to be the author of +plays written by somebody else, but of “making _each man’s_ wit his own,” +and the _men_ are the other dramatists of the day. Thus the future “may +judge” Shakespeare’s work “to be his as well as _ours_.” + +It is “we,” the living and recognised dramatists, whom Shakespeare is +said to plagiarise from; so boldly that + + “_We_, _the robbed_, leave rage, and pity it.” + +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. + +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. + +The “works” of which Ben wrote so splenetically in _Poet-Ape_, 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,—_whoever_ +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 _works_ are still as irreconcilable as +ever. + +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”—_but not to +Drummond_. 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?), 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. + +We now come to Ben’s panegyrics in the Folio of 1623. Ben heads the +lines, + + “TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED + THE AUTHOR + MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE + AND + WHAT HE HATH LEFT US.” + +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: + + “Soul of the Age! + The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage! + My Shakespear rise: I will not lodge thee by + Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie + A little further, to make thee a room: + Thou art a monument, without a tomb, + And art alive still, while thy book doth live, + And we have wits to read, and praise to give.” + +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: + + “And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek, + From thence to honour thee I would not seek + For names, but call forth thund’ring Æschylus,” + +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.” + +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”? + +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.” + +To produce such lines requires labour, requires conscious “art.” So +Shakespeare _had_ “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?” {249a} + +Can anything be more like Ben Jonson? + +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 _not_ 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 _now_ he could not forget the small Latin and less +Greek! + +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. {250a} They are concerned with the supposed +“_original_ bust,” as represented in Dugdale’s engraving of 1656. What +the Baconians hope to make out of “the _original_ bust” I am quite unable +to understand. {250b} Again, I leave untouched some witticisms {250c} 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 . . . ” {251a} 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. + +“Then follow these memorable words, which I have already discussed: + + “‘And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek . . . ’” {251b} + +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.” + +(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.” + +(2) P. 88. Nothing of importance. + +(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. + +(4) P. 222. “And we have recognised that Jonson’s ‘small Latin and less +Greek’ must be explained away” (a quotation from somebody). + +(5) P. 225. Allusion to anecdote of “Latin (latten) spoons.” + +(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. + +(7) The next references in the laudable Index are to pp. 474, 475. +“Then follow these memorable words, which I have already discussed: + + “‘And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,’ + +words which those who see how singularly inappropriate they are to the +author of the _Plays_ and _Poems_ 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.” + +_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 +_The Shakespeare Problem Restated_ 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.’ +. . . ” + +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. + +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, {253a} 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 _Raffles_, as to the idioms of burglars. + +To return to criticism, we are to admit that Jonson was really writing +“with his tongue in his cheek,” knowing that, as a fact, “_Shakespeare_” +(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.” {254a} + +So this is Mr. Greenwood’s method of “explaining away” the memorable +words. He seems to conjecture that Will was not _Shakespeare_, 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 “_nom de plume_” +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.” + +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 _did_ write the plays, and had small Latin and less Greek, +Ben meant that he did _not_ 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. {255a}) +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.” + +In this manuscript occurs, then, a brief prose note, headed, _De +Shakespeare nostrati_, 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. ‘_Sufflaminandus erat_,’ 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, ‘Cæsar, 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. + +Of whom is Ben writing? Of the author of _Julius Cæsar_,—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 _is here the actor-author_, whom the players, +his friends, commended “wherein he faulted,” namely, in not “blotting” +where, in a thousand cases, Ben wishes that he _had_ 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? + +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 . . . ” + +Perhaps, but the Baconians appear to assume that a “fair copy” is not, +and cannot be, a copy in the handwriting of the author. + +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. + +To finish Mr. Greenwood’s observations, “if they” (the players) “really +thought that the author of the plays wrote them off _currente calamo_, +and never” (or “hardly ever”) “blotted a line, never revised, never made +any alterations, they knew nothing whatever concerning the real +Shakespeare.” {258a} + +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. + +The Players’ testimony, through Jonson, cannot be destroyed by the “easy +stratagem” of Mr. Greenwood. + +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 {259a} +“as a very special occasion.” Well, it _was_ 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. + +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.” {260a} + +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, + + “Thou stand’st as if some mystery thou didst.” + +“What was that ‘mystery’?” asks Mr. Greenwood. {260b} 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, {260c} that +Jonson was with Bacon, helping to translate _The Advancement of Learning_ +in June, 1623. + +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 _Bacon_ 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? + +Between the passage on some “efficient cause” “at the back of Ben’s +mind,” {261a} and the passage on Ben’s visits to Bacon in 1621–3, {261b} +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 _Discoveries_. The first is entirely confined to +praise of Bacon as an orator. Bacon is next mentioned in a Catalogue of +Writers as “_he who hath filled up all numbers_, and performed that in +our tongue which may be preferred or compared either to _insolent Greece +or haughty Rome_,” words used of Shakespeare by Jonson in the Folio +verses. + +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” {262a} 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. + +Another startling coincidence is that, in _Discoveries_, 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 _had_ “the +rule of his own wit,” Bacon “_could_ 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 _two_ writers of +whom this description was appropriate . . . ?” Was there only one, and +was it of Bacon, under the name of “Shakespeare,” that Ben wrote _De +Shakespeare nostrati_? + +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 _Bacon_ should be stopped.” “Many times _Bacon_ fell into +those things could not escape laughter,” such as Cæsar’s supposed line, +“and such like, which were ridiculous.” “_Bacon_ redeemed his vices with +his virtues. There was ever more in _Bacon_ to be praised than to be +pardoned.” + +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 _Discoveries_: 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 _Discoveries_ +he speaks, among English dramatists, of Shakespeare alone. + +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.” + +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, {264a} 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 _Discoveries_ he appears to +confound one with the other, it is because the solemn seal of secrecy had +been imposed on him.” They _would_ say, they _do_ 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 _pretends_ that he is +speaking of Shakespeare. + +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. + +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 _does_ he mean? + +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.” +{266a} On what evidence does it “seem”? The opinion of Judge Webb. + +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? + +Mr. Greenwood, like the Genius at the birthday supper, + + “Stands as if some mystery he did.” + +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. + +“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). + +Among justifiable lies I do not reckon that of Scott if ever he plumply +denied that he wrote the _Waverley_ 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,” {267a} 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 _The Bride of Lammermoor_, 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 _he_ 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. + +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. _He_ had not written +the Shakespearean plays. Nobody was asking _him_ if he had written them. +If he knew that the author was Bacon, and knew it under pledge of +secrecy, and was asked (_per impossibile_) “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 +_Discoveries_, 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, {268a} +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. + +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. + +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 _Waverley_ novels. + +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 +_Waverley_ 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. + +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 _doubtless_ (‘I thank thee, +Jew’ (meaning Sir Sidney Lee), ‘for teaching me that word’!) he would +have remained true to that solemn pledge.” {270a} + +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. + + + + +XIII +THE PREOCCUPATIONS OF BACON + + +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? + +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, _a priori_ 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, _How_ +may it be done? Upon that question answered followed the resolution to +try and do it.” + +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.” {274a} The vocation, the +idea, the object, were not poetical. + +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. + +Thus, at the age of twenty-two (1583), 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 _Temporis +Partus Maximus_, ‘The Greatest Birth of Time,’” and “we need not doubt +that between Law and Philosophy he found enough to do.” {275a} 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.” {275b} 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 _Love’s +Labour’s Lost_! 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 _not_ mean +the writing of _Venus and Adonis_ (1593), nor of _Lucrece_ (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 . . . ” {276a} Really, from first to last he was the prince of +begging-letter writers, endlessly asking for place, pensions, reversions, +money, and more money. + +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 _modern_ it all is!), and the rest of it? But +just because Bacon, at thirty-one, _is_ 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 _Venus and Adonis_, and whatever plays of the +period,—say, _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, +_Henry VI_, 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 _did_, 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. + +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 _literary_ +aim. They must take his alternative—to be “some sorry bookmaker, _or_ a +pioneer in that mine of truth,” as meaning that he would either be the +literary hack of a company of players, _or_ 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! + +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.” + +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 _openly_ of a tenderly passionate attachment to that young man; +not more than _this_, “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.” {279a} +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. _Was Essex then a +married man_? If so, the Sonneteer’s insistence on his marrying must be +symbolical of—anything else you please. + +We know that Bacon, at this period, “did nothing” but “ruminate” about +Essex. The words are his own! (1604). No plays, no _Venus and Adonis_, +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.” {279b} Both are +excellent, though, for a Court festival, not very gay. + +He also, very early in 1593, wrote an answer to Father Parson’s (?) +famous indictment of Elizabeth’s Government, in _Observations on a +Libel_. {280a} What with ruminating on Essex, and this essay, he was not +solely devoted to _Venus and Adonis_ and to furbishing-up old plays, +though, no doubt, he _may_ have unpacked his bosom in the Sonnets, and +indulged his luscious imaginations in _Venus and Adonis_. 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. + +All these activities of Bacon, in the year of _Venus and Adonis_, 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. +{281a} Of these State affairs the projected Union with Scotland was the +most onerous. He was also writing _The Advancement of Learning_ (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.” +{281b} 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.” + +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, _Lear_, _Macbeth_, _Othello_, and saw life _en noir_: man +delighted him not, nor woman either. + +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. {282a} 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?) + +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. {282b} “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.” {283a} 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. {283b} 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. + +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.” {284a} 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. {284b} Was that worthy of Bacon? + +All these charges against _le vieux Williams_ (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. + + * * * * * + +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 _aut Diabolus_, _aut Franciscus_, +which, freely interpreted, means, “If Bacon is not the author, who the +devil is?” + +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 _his_ “mellifluous +Shakespeare” is “Will,” as his Beaumont was “Frank,” his Marlowe “Kit,” +his Fletcher, “Jack.” The author of _Daiphantus_ (1604), mentioning the +popularity of _Hamlet_, 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 _who_ their “Shakespeare” was, any more than they needed to say _who_ +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. + +“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, _sufflaminandus est_; “he needs to have the brake put on.” {287a} + +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. + +Such was Shakespeare, according to a rival. + +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. + +“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. {288a} 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. + +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,” {288b} 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 _dicta_—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. + +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. + +“_Ne me dites jamais cette bête de mot_, _impossible_,” said Napoleon: it +is indeed a stupid word where genius is concerned. + +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. + +“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?” + +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.” + + + + +APPENDICES + + +APPENDIX I +“TROILUS AND CRESSIDA” + + +TO myself _Troilus and Cressida_ is, with _Henry VI_, 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 +_Cypria_, these favourite heroes of Homer, Odysseus and Diomede, were +represented as scoundrels, assassins, and cowards. + +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 +_Athens_,” 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. + +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. + +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 _Les +Trois Mousquetaires_. 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. + +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. + +Once more, when Hector is dead, and Achilles bids his men to + + “cry amain, + Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain,” + +we think of Iliad, XXII, 390–393, where Achilles commands the Myrmidons +to go singing the pæan + + “Glory have we won, we have slain great Hector!” + +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. + +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 _Histriomastix_, by Marston and others, a +burlesque speech in which Troilus, addressing Cressida, speaks of “thy +knight,” who “_Shakes_ his furious _Speare_,” 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. {297a} 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 “_Shakes_ his +furious _Speare_” in _Histriomastix_ refers to Shakespeare in connection +with Cressida, while, in 1599, Dekker and Chettle were doing a _Troilus +and Cressida_ for a company not Shakespeare’s, then there were _two +Troilus and Cressida_ in the field. A licence to print a _Troilus and +Cressida_ 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 _at the Globe_.” {298a} The author of the Preface (Ben Jonson, +Mr. Greenwood thinks, {298b}) 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 _Troilus and Cressida_, +and if Shakespeare is alluded to in connection with Cressida, in +_Histriomastix_ (1599), then it appears to me that Shakespeare, in +1598–9, after Chapman’s portion of the Iliad appeared, was author of one +_Troilus and Cressida_, 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 _Troilus and Cressida_, 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? + + [Picture: London in the year 1610, showing the Globe Theatre in the + Foreground] + +Perhaps not: but meanwhile Mr. Greenwood cites Judge Stotsenburg’s +opinion {298c} that Henslowe’s entries of April 1599 “refute the +Shakespearean claim to the authorship of _Troilus and Cressida_,” 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 _Troilus and +Cressida_ 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 _Histriomastix_. {299a} How that evidence proves that “a +play of _Troilus and Cressida_ had been _published_ 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. + +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), {300a} but it is, later at least, played by +Shakespeare’s company; and perhaps Bacon gets none of the £4 paid {300b} +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. + +“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.” {301a} 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,” {301b} the autocratic James was very capable of protecting +himself against larcenous publishers. + + + +APPENDIX II +CHETTLE’S SUPPOSED ALLUSION TO WILL SHAKSPERE + + +IN discussing contemporary allusions to William Shakspere or Shakespeare +(or however you spell the name), I have not relied on Chettle’s remarks +(in _Kind-Hart’s Dreame_, 1592) concerning Greene’s _Groatsworth of Wit_. +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 _two_. “With _neither_ of them that +take offence was I acquainted” (at the time when he edited the +_Groatsworth_), “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.” + +Speaking from his own observation, Chettle avers that the person of whom +he speaks is civil in his demeanour, and (_apparently_) 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 _not_ +“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” _was_ 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 _not_ 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.” {304a} + +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. + +I do not know the name of any one of the three to whom Greene addressed +the _Groatsworth_, 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 _seen_ 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. _His_ writing is not part of his +profession, so he is not, in 1592 (I conceive), Lodge, Peele, Marlowe, or +Nash. + +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 +_Groatsworth of Wit_ “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. {305a} + +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 _him_. 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. + +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 +_parergon_, 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. + +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. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{0a} E. J. Castle, _Shakespeare_, _Bacon_, _Jonson_, _and Greene_, pp. +194–195. + +{0b} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 145. + +{0c} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 340. + +{0d} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 340, 341. + +{0e} _In Re Shakespeare_, p. 54. + +{0f} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 341. + +{0g} _Ibid._, p. 470. + +{0h} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 339. + +{0i} _The Vindicators of Shakespeare_, pp. 115–116. + +{0j} _Ibid._, p. 49. + +{0k} _The Vindicators of Shakespeare_, p. 14. + +{4a} _Francis Bacon Wrote Shakespeare_. By H. Crouch-Batchelor, 1912. + +{7a} _The Shakespere Problem Restated_, p. 293. + +{11a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 31–37. + +{13a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 36–37. + +{16a} _Tue Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 20. + +{17a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 47–48. + +{17b} _Ibid._, pp. 54–55. + +{17c} _Ibid._, p. 54. + +{17d} _Ibid._, p. 56. + +{17e} _Ibid._, p. 59. + +{17f} _Ibid._, p. 62. + +{17g} _Ibid._, p. 193. + +{18a} See his _Vindicators of Shakespeare_, p. 210. + +{19a} _Vindicators_, p. 187. + +{19b} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 223. + +{21a} _In Re Shakespeare_, p. 54. + +{22a} In a brief note of two pages (_Cornhill Magazine_, 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. + +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 _nom +de guerre_, 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.) + +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.” + +_C’est là le miracle_! + +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. + +{27a} _Francis Bacon Wrote Shakespeare_, p. 37. + +{30a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 333. + +{31a} 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. + +{31b} See chap. XI, _The First Folio_. + +{33a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 305, 306. + +{34a} Furness, _Merchant of Venice_, pp. 271, 272. + +{34b} On this see Mr. Pollard’s _Shakespeare Folios and Quartos_, pp. +1–9. + +{37a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 202, 348, 349. + +{38a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 349. + +{44a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 356. + +{45a} _In Re Shakespeare_, p. 88, note I. + +{48a} _Studies in Shakespeare_, p. 15; _Life of Shakespeare_, by Malone, +pp. 561–2, 564; Appendix, XI, xvi. + +{50a} C. I. Elton, _William Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, pp. +97, 98. + +{51a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 44. + +{52a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 39. + +{52b} _Vindicators of Shakespeare_, p. 210. + +{53a} _Vindicators of Shakespeare_, p. 187. + +{53b} _Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 223. + +{55a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 69. + +{56a} See chapter X, _The Traditional Shakespeare_. + +{56b} See C. I. Elton, _William Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, +pp. 48, 343–8. + +{57a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 207–9. + +{59a} Chapter X, _infra._ + +{62a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 96. + +{62b} See chapter X, _The Traditional Shakespeare_. + +{62c} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 94–96. + +{64a} _Shakespeare_, pp. 38–40. + +{65a} Raleigh, _Shakespeare_, pp. 77, 78. + +{69a} So he seems to me to do; but in _Vindicators of Shakespeare_, p. +135, he shows great caution: “I refer the reader to Mr. Collin’s essay, +and ask him to judge for himself.” + +{71a} _Studies in Shakespeare_, p. 15. + +{72a} _Studies in Shakespeare_, p. 21. + +{75a} _Alcibiades_, I, pp. 132, 133; _Troilus_, III, scene 3. + +{77a} _Studies in Shakespeare_, p. 46. + +{77b} _Iliad_, p. 63. + +{91a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 54, 55. + +{93a} _National Review_, vol. xxxix., 1902. + +{93b} _The Pilot_, Aug. 30, 1902, p. 220. + +{96a} The oldest mention of a _circulating_ library known to me is in +Hull, in 1650, when Sir James Turner found it excellent. + +{97a} In his _Shakespeare_ (_English Men of Letters_), pp. 66, 67. + +{97b} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 77, 78. + +{97c} _The Shakespearean Myth_, p. 162. + +{100a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 76. + +{101a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 81, note I. + +{103a} Penzance, _The Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy_, pp. 150, 151. +Citing Appleton Morgan’s _Shakespearean Myth_, pp. 248, 298. + +{106a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 175. + +{107a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 457. + +{109a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 58. + +{109b} _Apology the Actors_, 1612. + +{110a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 267. + +{111a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 267, 268. + +{112a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 50–52. + +{113a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 51. + +{113b} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 51. + +{113c} _Ibid._, p. 500, citing Mr. Reed’s _Francis Bacon our +Shake-speare_, chap. ii. pp. 62, 63. + +{113d} _Ibid._, pp. 500–520, chap xvi. + +{114a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 512. + +{114b} _Ibid._, p. 514. + +{114c} _Ibid._, p. 386, note I. + +{114d} _Ibid._, p. 93. + +{120a} _Cambridge History of English Literature_, vol. v. p. 126. Prof. +G. P. Baker. + +{121a} Furness, _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, pp. xiii., 348–350: _cf._ pp. +348, 349, for the four distinct styles of linguistic affectation of the +period, at least as they are represented in literature. + +{121b} _Shakespeare Studies in Baconian Light_, Appendix on Marlowe. + +{124a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 516. + +{126a} Act i. Scene 2. Furness, _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, p. 45, note. + +{127a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 67, 68. + +{129a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 66. + +{129b} _Ibid._, p. 67. + +{136a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 307. + +{138a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 308. + +{140a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 309. + +{141a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 310. + +{141b} _Ibid._, pp. 310, 311. + +{141c} _Ibid._, p. 311. + +{142a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 309. + +{142b} _Ibid._, pp. 311, 312. + +{143a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 312, 313. + +{145a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 313. + +{146a} See Appendix II, “_Chettle’s supposed allusion to Will +Shakspere_.” + +{147a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 330. + +{149a} _The Vindicators of Shakespeare_, pp. 115, 116, 211. _See_ my +Introduction, p. xxii. + +{150a} _The Vindicators of Shakespeare_, p. 210. + +{150b} _Ibid._, p. 136. + +{151a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 338. + +{155a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 346. + +{157a} Cited in _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 353. + +{159a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 353. + +{159b} _Diary_, pp. xxvii, xxviii. + +{160a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 367. + +{160b} _Ibid._, pp. 368, 369. + +{161a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 354. + +{163a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 366. + +{164a} Some Baconians say so! + +{171a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 181, 397. + +{171b} _Ibid._, p. 186. + +{174a} Some verses of Fletcher’s may, perhaps, refer to Beaumont’s +death. + +{175a} C. I. Elton, _Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, pp. 246, +247. + +{175b} As to the Aldine Ovid in the Bodleian, see Mr. Greenwood in _The +Vindicators of Shakespeare_, 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 _expertise_. 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. + +{176a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 196. + +{176b} _Ibid._, p. 197. + +{177a} See _Frontispiece_. + +{179a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 247, 248, note I. + +{180a} _National Review_, June 1912, p. 903. + +{180b} _Pall Mall Gazette_, November 1910. + +{181a} _Outlines_, vol. i. p. 283. + +{182a} P. 73, 1806. + +{183a} _Outlines_, vol. i. p. 283. + +{183b} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 247. + +{186a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 248–249. + +{186b} C. I. Elton, _William Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, pp. +236–237. + +{187a} C. I. Elton, _William Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, p. +228. + +{187b} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 199. + +{187c} C. I. Elton, _William Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, pp. +332–333. + +{187d} _Ibid._, p. 250. + +{188a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 199, note 1. + +{189a} C. I. Elton, _William Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, pp. +339, 342. + +{190a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 238. + +{198a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 214. + +{200a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 214, note 2. + +{201a} C. I. Elton, _William Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, p. +56. + +{201b} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 28, 29. + +{207a} Like Mr. Greenwood, I think that Ben was the penman. + +{208a} Pollard, _ut supra_, p. 10. + +{210a} Pollard, _ut supra_, pp. 64–80. + +{215a} Pollard, _ut supra_, pp. 121–124. + +{216a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 287–288. + +{217a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 290–291. + +{217b} _Ibid._, pp. 292, 293. + +{218a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 293. + +{219a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 489, 490. + +{219b} _Ibid._, p. 491. + +{219c} _Studies in Shakespeare_, p. 352. + +{220a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 293. + +{220b} _Ibid._, p. 491. + +{220c} _Ibid._, p. 293. + +{220d} _Ibid._, p. 293. + +{221a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 297. + +{221b} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 297. + +{222a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 293. + +{222b} _Ibid._, p. 351. + +{222c} _Ibid._, p. 351. + +{222d} _Ibid._, pp. 290, 293. + +{222e} _Ibid._, pp. 351, 358. + +{223a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 351. + +{223b} _Ibid._, pp. 290, 293. + +{223c} _Ibid._, p. 351. + +{223d} _Ibid._, p. 351. + +{223e} _Ibid._, pp. 290, 293. + +{223f} _Ibid._, p. 290. + +{223g} _Ibid._, pp. 290, 291. + +{223h} _Ibid._, p. 293. + +{224a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 351. + +{224b} _Ibid._, p. 358. + +{224c} _Ibid._, pp. 351, 358. + +{224d} _Ibid._, p. 290. + +{224e} _Ibid._, p. 293. + +{225a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 355, 356. + +{226a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 355, 356. + +{226b} _Ibid._, pp. 158, 160, 162 (“not the original author”), 170. + +{226c} _Ibid._, pp. 130–151, 160, 168. + +{226d} _Ibid._, p., 123, note 2. + +{227a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 356. + +{228a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 160. + +{228b} _Ibid._, p. 356. + +{228c} _Ibid._, p. 160. + +{228d} _Ibid._, p. 356. + +{228e} _Ibid._, pp. 290, 293. + +{228f} _Ibid._, p. 358. + +{229a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, 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. + +{229b} _Ibid._, p. 365. + +{229c} _Ibid._, p. 365. + +{229d} _Ibid._, p. 160. + +{231a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 276. + +{231b} _Ibid._, p. 290. + +{232a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 293. + +{232b} _Ibid._, p. 294. + +{233a} _The Vindicators of Shakespeare_, p. 57 (1911). + +{237a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 453. + +{244a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 466. + +{245a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 313. + +{245b} _Supra_, p. 143. + +{245c} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 466. + +{249a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 482. + +{250a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 467, 471. + +{250b} See chapter IX on _The Later Life of Shakespeare_. + +{250c} _Ibid._, pp. 472, 474. + +{251a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 473. + +{251b} _Ibid._, p. 474. + +{253a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 475. + +{254a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 106. + +{255a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 478. + +{258a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 480. + +{259a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 483. + +{260a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 483. + +{260b} _Ibid._, pp. 489–490. + +{260c} See chapter XI, _The First Folio_. + +{261a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 483. + +{261b} _Ibid._, pp. 489–491. + +{262a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 486. + +{264a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 488. + +{266a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 491. + +{267a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 295, _cf._ p. 499. + +{268a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 295, 499. + +{270a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 499. + +{274a} _Letters and Life of Francis Bacon_, edited by James Spedding, +vol. i. p. 4 (1861). + +{275a} _Letters and Life of Francis Bacon_, edited by James Spedding, +vol. i. p. 31. + +{275b} _Ibid._, vol. i. pp. 74–95. + +{276a} _Letters and Life of Francis Bacon_, edited by James Spedding, +vol. i. pp. 108–109. + +{279a} _Letters and Life of Francis Bacon_, edited by James Spedding, +vol. i. p. 106. + +{279b} _Ibid._, vol. i. pp. 121–143. + +{280a} Sixty pages in Spedding’s _Letters and Life of Francis Bacon_, +vol. i. pp. 146–208. + +{281a} See his statement (1603), Spedding, iii. pp. 84–87. + +{281b} _Ibid._, iii. p. 253. + +{282a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 371–406. + +{282b} _The Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy_, p. 198. + +{283a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 391. + +{283b} _Ibid._, pp. 408–410. + +{284a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 425. + +{284b} _Ibid._, p. 431. + +{287a} _Sufflamen_ is the “drag” or “brake.” Ben’s, “it was necessary +he should be _stopped_,” is an incorrect translation. + +{288a} Quoted by Sir Walter Raleigh, _Shakespeare_, p. 65. + +{288b} _Ibid._, p. 65. + +{297a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 358–362. + +{298a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 491–494. + +{298b} _Ibid._, p. 495. + +{298c} _Ibid._, pp. 358–360. + +{299a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 361. + +{300a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 360. + +{300b} _Ibid._, p. 358. + +{301a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 495, note I. + +{301b} _Ibid._, p. 494. + +{304a} _Vindicators of Shakespeare_, p. 69. + +{305a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 317–319. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKESPEARE, BACON AND THE GREAT +UNKNOWN*** + + +******* This file should be named 5127-0.txt or 5127-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/5/1/2/5127 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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