Chapter II: Part 2

On the subject of the education of William Shakespeare it is inevitable that there should be conflicting opinions. Those who would deck out the memory of Bacon with the literary robe, “the garment which,” according to Mr. R. M. Theobald, is “too big and costly” for the “small and insignificant personality” of Shakespeare, will not concede that he was better educated than his father, who--the error does not lose for want of repetition--“signed his name by a mark.” Supporters of the traditional theory, however, reply, “we do not require evidence to show that he was an educated man--we have his works, and the evidence of Ben Jonson, John Heming, and Henry Condell to prove it.” Mr. Theobald argues that because there is no positive proof that he had any school education, it is logical to conclude that he had none. Mr. A. P. Sinnett, with the same reckless disregard for facts, says, “We know that he (William Shakespeare) was the son of a tradesman at Stratford, who could not read or write.” And in another place, “there is no rag of evidence that he (William Shakespeare) ever went to school.” Mr. W. H. Mallock describes him, still without “a rag of evidence” to support his assertion, as “a notoriously ill-educated actor, who seems to have found some difficulty in signing his own name.” All evidence we have to guide us on this point of Shakespeare’s schooling is that he was entitled to free tuition at the Grammar School at Stratford, which was re-constituted on a mediæval foundation by Edward VI. As the son of a prominent and prosperous townsman, he would, for a moral certainty, have been sent by his father to school (Mr. Sidney Lee favours the probability that he entered the school in 1571), where he would receive the ordinary instruction of the time in the Latin language and literature. The fact that the French passages in _Henry V._ are grammatically correct, but are not idiomatic, makes it certain that they were written by a school-taught linguist, and not by a man like Bacon, who, from his lengthy residence on the Continent, must have been a master of colloquial, idiomatic French. Ben Jonson, in his profound, and somewhat self-conscious command of classical knowledge, spoke slightingly of Shakespeare’s “small Latin and less Greek,” which is all that his plays would lead us to credit him with. His liberal use of translations, and his indebtedness to North’s translations of _Plutarch’s Lives_, also substantiates this theory.

We cannot regard, as a great scholar, an author who “gives Bohemia a coast line, makes Cleopatra play billiards, mixes his Latin, and mulls his Greek.” Mr. Reginald Haines, who has made a study of Shakespeare for the express purpose of testing his classical attainments, denies emphatically that he shows any acquaintance with Greek at all. His conclusions are worthy of consideration: “Of course there are common allusions to Greek history and mythology such as every poet would have at command, but no reference at first hand to any Greek writer.... As far as I know there are but four real Greek words to be found in Shakespeare’s works--_threne_, _cacodemon_, _practic_, and _theoric_. It is impossible to suppose that Bacon could have veiled his classical knowledge so successfully in so extensive a field for its display, or that he could, for instance, have perpetrated such a travesty of Homer as appears in _Troilus and Cressida_. With Latin, the case is somewhat different. Shakespeare certainly knew a little grammar-school Latin. He was familiar with Ovid, and even quotes him in the original; and he certainly knew Virgil, and Seneca, Cæsar, and something of Terence and Horace, and, as I myself believe, of Juvenal. But he very rarely quotes Latin, unless it be a proverb or some stock quotation from Mantuanus or a tag from a Latin grammar. When he uses conversational Latin, as in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, the idiom is shaky. The quotations from Horace, &c., in _Titus Andronicus_ are certainly not by Shakespeare. Nor are the Latinisms like “palliament” in that play. Still he has a very large vocabulary of Latin words such as _renege_, to _gust_ (taste), and we may fairly say that Shakespeare knew Latin as well as many sixth form boys, but not as a scholar.” Two years ago a writer in the _Quarterly Review_, who had gone through all the alleged examples of erudition and evidences of wide and accurate classical scholarship in the Shakespearean plays, showed them to be entirely imaginary.

In 1582, before he was nineteen years of age, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, and three years afterwards he left Stratford for London. It was during this period, says Mr. Theobald, that “the true Shakespeare was studying diligently, and filling his mind with those vast stores of learning--classic, historic, legal, scientific--which bare such splendid fruit in his after life.” As Mr. Theobald’s contention is that Bacon was the “true Shakespeare,” let us consider for a moment how young Francis was employing his abilities at this particular time. In 1579 he returned to England after a two years’ residence in France. He had revealed an early disposition to extend his studies beyond the ordinary limits of literature, and to read the smallest print of the book of nature. He was already importuning his uncle, Lord Burghley, for some advancement which might enable him to dispense with the monotonous routine of legal studies. Failing in this endeavour, he was admitted as a barrister of Gray’s Inn, was elected to Parliament for Melcombe Regis, composed his first philosophical work, which he named “with great confidence, and a magnificent title,” _The Greatest Birth of Time_, and another treatise entitled, _Advice to Queen Elizabeth_. In the case of the poet we have no record; in that of the future Lord Chancellor we get the key of the nature which rendered the man as “incapable of writing _Hamlet_ as of making this planet.”

(From an original picture in the collection of Lord Verulam at Gorhambury).]

William Beeston, a 17th century actor, has left it on record that, after leaving Stratford, Shakespeare was for a time a country schoolmaster. In 1586 he arrived in London. His only friend in the Metropolis was Richard Field, a fellow townsman, whom he sought out, and with whom, as publisher, he was shortly to be associated. It is uncertain when Shakespeare joined the Lord Chamberlain’s company of actors, but documentary evidence proves that he was a member of it in 1594, and that in 1603, after the accession of James I., when they were called the King’s Players, he was one of its leaders. This company included among its chief members Shakespeare’s life-long friends, Richard Burbage, John Heming, Henry Condell, and Augustine Phillips, and it was under their auspices that his plays first saw the light.

Before they opened at the Rose on the Bankside, Southwark, in 1592, the Lord Chamberlain’s company had played at The Theatre in Shoreditch, and in 1599 they opened at the Globe, which was afterwards the only theatre with which Shakespeare was professionally associated. In this year he acquired an important share in the profits of the company, and his name appears first on the list of those who took part in the original performance of Ben Jonson’s _Every Man in His Humour_. Mr. Theobald states that Shakespeare had become a fairly prosperous theatre manager in 1592, but as he did not secure his interest in the business until seven years later, what probably is meant is that Shakespeare was combining the duties of stage manager, acting manager, and treasurer of the theatre. It would appear that, recognising the fact that the period in Shakespeare’s life between 1588 and 1592 is a blank “which no research can fill up,” Mr. Theobald considers that he is justified in making good the deficiency out of his own inner consciousness.

As occasion will require that Mr. Theobald’s contribution to the controversy shall presently be dealt with, it may not be out of place here to explain the object, so far as it is intelligible, of his _Shakespeare Studies in Baconian Light_ (Sampson Low, 1901). It would have been a fair thing to assume that the design of the author of this volume of over 500 pages, was to prove the Baconian authorship of Shakespeare, but as Mr. Theobald has since written to the Press to protest against this interpretation of his motives, we must take his words as he gives his parallels “for what they are worth.” In the opening lines of his preface, Mr. Theobald declares that while the greatest name in the world’s literature is Shakespeare, there is in the world’s literature no greater name than Bacon. Really, it would seem that if his object is not to prove that the two names stand for one and the same individual, this statement is sheer nonsense. Before the end of the preface is reached, he frankly avows his belief that “when the time comes for a general recognition of Bacon as the true Shakespeare, the poetry will still be called “Shakespeare,” and that no one will find anything compromising in such language, any more than we do when we refer to George Eliot or George Sand, meaning Miss Evans or Madame Dudevant.” But if Mr. Theobald was as versed in his study of the subject as Mrs. Gallup, Dr. Owen, Mr. A. P. Sinnett, or even Bacon himself, he would know that when this general recognition comes to pass the author of the Plays will not be called Shakespeare, or Bacon, but Francis “Tidder, or Tudor”--otherwise Francis I. of England--provided, of course, that the bi-literallists can substantiate their cipher. But as Mr. Theobald does not design to prove the Baconian theory, he does not, of course, require the evidence of the great Chancellor, or he may, as a disparager of cipher speculations, accept such evidence “for what it is worth.”

_Mr. Theobald, a Baconian by Intuition._

Mr. Theobald’s “preliminaries” are chiefly remarkable for three diverse reasons. We learn therefrom that he is a Baconian by intuition--“the persuasion took hold of his mind” as soon as Holme’s _Authorship of Shakespeare_ was placed in his hand--that he does not admit the existence of genius, and that he is intolerant of “clamours and asperities, denunciations and vituperations,” and the personal abuse employed by anti-Baconians, whom he alludes to as Hooligans, and compares with geese. So long as he keeps to the trodden path of Baconian argument, he is only about as perverse and incorrect as the rest of--to use his own expression as applied to Shakespearean students--“the clan.” But he becomes amusing when he ventures to present new arguments in support of Bacon’s claim, variously abusive in his references to Shakespeare, and desperately dogmatic in his pronouncement of the faith that is in him.

“Among the many shallow objections brought against the Baconian theory,” writes Mr. Theobald in his chapter on Bacon’s literary output, “one is founded on the assumption that Bacon was a voluminous writer, and that if we add to his avowed literary productions, the Shakespearean dramas, he is loaded with such a stupendous literary progeny as no author could possibly generate. Moreover, he was so busy in state business as a lawyer, judge, counsellor, member of Parliament, confidential adviser to the King, and the responsible rulers in State and Church, that he had very little spare time for authorship.”

From the original, in the collection of The Right Honble the Earl of Verulam.]

In order to demonstrate that this shallow objection, as Mr. Theobald calls it, is a well-founded and irrefutable statement of fact, we have only to refer to Lord Bacon’s life and to his letters. From 1579, when he returned from France, until the end of his life he was distracted between politics and science; he put forward as his reason for seeking office that he might thereby be able to help on his philosophic projects which with him were paramount, and the poignant regret of his last years was that he had allowed himself to be diverted from philosophy into politics. He found “no work so meritorious,” so serviceable to mankind, “as the discovery and development of the arts and inventions that tend to civilise the life of men.” In his letter to Lord Burghley in 1592, he expressed the hope that in the service of the State he could “bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries--the best state of that province”--the province embracing all nature which he had made his own. But office was denied him, and he returned to “business” and to his constant bewailings of the fact that he had no time for literature. In 1607 he settled the plan of the _Instauratio Magna_; which had been foreshadowed in his _Advancement of Learning_, published two years previously. In 1609 he wrote to Toby Mathew, “My _Instauratio_ sleeps not,” and again, in the same year, “My great work goeth forward; and after my manner I alter ever when I add; so that nothing is finished till all is finished.” From 1609 to 1620 Bacon spent such leisure as he could snatch from his other work in revising the _Novum Organum_ (the second part of his _Magna Instauratio_), of which his chaplain, Rawley, says that he had seen “at least twelve copies revised year by year, one after another, and amended in the frame thereof.” In 1620, when the _Novum Organum_ was published, the author sent it into the world uncompleted, because he had begun to number his days, and “would have it saved.” This was the book he alluded to as “my great work”--the work of his life, and he issued it as a fragment because he had not been able to find time to finish it. The belief that he had “very little spare time for authorship” is no shallow objection brought against the Baconian theory--it is an irrefutable fact, proved not only out of the mouth, but in the life, of Lord Bacon.

In spite, however, of all positive evidence to the contrary, Mr. Theobald proceeds to bolster up his contention that Bacon had time, and to spare, for literary pursuits, by the following most amazing piece of logic. He contends, in the first place, that “an estimate of the entire literary output of Bacon, as a scientific and philosophical writer, proves the amount to be really somewhat small.” He takes the fourteen volumes of Spedding’s _Life and Works_, subtracts the prefaces, notes, editorial comments, and the biographical narrative, puts aside as of “no literary significance whatever,” all business letters, speeches, State papers, etc., and thus reduces the total amount of literature to Bacon’s credit in the seven volumes devoted to the _Life_ to some 375 pages. “If we calculate the whole amount contained in the fourteen volumes, we shall find it may be reckoned at about six such volumes, each containing 520 pages. On this method of calculation and selection, all that Mr. Theobald can find, “for his whole life, amounts to about 70 pages per annum, less than six pages a month.” Turning from Bacon to Shakespeare, Mr. Theobald finds that here again is a man whose literary output has been greatly exaggerated, for “if the Shakespeare poetry was the only work of William Shakespeare, certainly he was not a voluminous writer. _Thirty-one years may be taken as a moderate estimate of the duration of his literary life, i.e., from 1585 till his death in 1616._ And the result is 37 plays and the minor poems--not two plays for each year.” Mr. Theobald, it will be seen, possesses the same weakness for statistics that Mr. Dick evinced for King Charles’ head; he drops in his little estimate in season and out of season, and his appraisements are as manifold as they are fallacious. The period of Shakespeare’s dramatic output was confined to twenty years, from 1591 to 1611--if he had continued writing plays till his death in 1616, Bacon’s alleged playwriting would not have ceased with such significant suddenness in 1611. But what conclusion does Mr. Theobald arrive at as the result of his estimates? No less than this, that if the whole of Shakespeare, and the whole of Bacon’s acknowledged works belong to the same author, “the writer was not a voluminous author--_not by any means so voluminous as Miss Braddon_ or Sir Walter Scott.” That Mr. Theobald should not hesitate to class Miss Braddon’s novels with the plays of Shakespeare, which belong to the supreme rank of literature, or even with Bacon’s “royal mastery of language never surpassed, never perhaps equalled,” is the most astounding link in this astounding chain of so-called evidence. But Mr. Theobald advances it with the utmost confidence. “Therefore,” he sums up, “let this objection stand aside; it vanishes into invisibility as soon as it is accurately tested”--_i.e._, weighed up, like groceries, by the pound.

Mr. Theobald is scarcely complimentary to Shakespeare’s champions in this controversy, but his language is positively libellous when he refers to Shakespeare himself. His personality is “small and insignificant;”--he is a “shrunken, sordid soul, fattening on beer, and coin, and finding sweetness and content in the _stercorarium_ of his Stratford homestead”--a “feeble, and funny, and most ridiculous mouse.” Mr. Theobald almost argues himself not a Baconian by his assertion that “no Baconian, so far as I know, seeks to help his cause by personal abuse, or intolerant and wrathful speech.”

_Was Shakespeare the “Upstart Crow?”_

All that we can allege with any certainty about Shakespeare, between 1586 and 1602, is that he must have obtained employment at one or other of the only two theatres existing in London at that time (The Theatre, and The Curtain)--perhaps, as Malone has recorded, in the capacity of call-boy--that he became an actor, was employed in polishing up the stock-plays presented by the Company, and that _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ was produced in the Spring of 1591. Assuming that Shakespeare was the author of this play--assuming, that is to say, that Ben Jonson, John Heming, and Henry Condell were neither arrant fools, nor wilful perjurers--it is evident that the “insignificant,” “shrunken, sordid soul,” “this ridiculous mouse” had education, application, a natural taste for the stage; and what is more--and more than Mr. Theobald can comprehend--he had genius. Mr. Theobald does not arrive at any such conclusion. Apart altogether from Mrs. Gallup’s cipher revelations, he is convinced by another “flash of intuition” that Ben Jonson was a fellow conspirator with Bacon in the ridiculous plot of foisting Bacon’s plays upon the world as the work of Shakespeare, and that Heming and Condell were but the tools of the disgraced Lord Chancellor.

But if Shakespeare was not advancing towards prosperity by the feasible methods I have conjectured, how can Mr. Theobald account for his ultimately emerging from the “depths of poverty” into a position of comparative affluence? The explanation is simplicity itself: “If a needy, and probably deserving vagabond” (page 11).--Why deserving? He was a “shrunken, sordid soul” on page 7!--“dives into the abyss of London life, lies _perdu_ for a few years, and then emerges as a tolerably wealthy theatrical manager; you know that he must have gained some mastery of theatrical business.” So far the inference is legitimate and convincing; but how? Must he not have disclosed exceptional ability as an actor or playwright, or--? listen to Mr. Theobald!--“he must have made himself a useful man in the green room, a skilful organiser of players and stage effects--he must have found out how to govern a troop of actors, reconciling their rival egotisms, and utilising their special gifts; how to cater for a capricious public, and provide attractive entertainments. Anyhow, he would have little time for other pursuits--if a student at all, his studies would be very practical relating to matters of present or passing interest. _During this dark period he has been carving his own fortune, filling his pockets, not his mind; working for the present, not for the future. But it was exactly then that the plays began to appear._”

Mr. Theobald’s argument can only be described as a reckless, illogical, and absurd distortion of possibilities, and it is the more inconsequential since it proceeds to defeat its primary object. In the first place it is supremely ridiculous to assume that the paltry services of Shakespeare in the green room and the carpenter’s shop, secured for him his pecuniary interest in the Globe Theatre, or the respect and friendship of the leading dramatists of his day, or even the enmity of jealous rivals in the craft. Yet Mr. Theobald attempts to substantiate his conclusions by distorting the obvious meaning of Robt. Greene’s reference to Shakespeare in _A Groat’s Worth of Wit_. Greene was not an actor, but a dramatist; he was a man of dissolute habits, a poet of rare charm, but a playwright of only moderate ability and repute. He was a gentleman by birth, and a scholar by training. He had the lowest opinion of actors--he envied them their success, and despised their avocation. In _The Return from Parnassus_ he betrays his prejudice in the following lines, which are put into the mouth of a poor and envious student:--

“England affords these glorious vagabonds,
That carried erst their fardels on their backs,
Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets,
Sweeping it in their glaring satin suits,
And pages to attend their masterships;
With mouthing words that better wits had framed,
They purchase lands, and now esquires are made.”

To the jaundiced mind of Robert Greene, the accumulation of means by an actor was a crime in itself, but that a mere mummer should dare to compete with the scholar and the poet in the composition of plays--more, that he should write plays that exceeded in popularity those of the superior person, the student--was a personal affront. On his death-bed, in 1592, Greene found an outlet for his resentment in writing an ill-natured farewell to life, in which he girded bitterly at the new dramatist, whose early plays had already brought him into public notice. He warns his three brother playwrights--Marlowe, Nash, and Peele--against the “upstart crow, the only Shake-scene in the country” who “supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you.” How it is possible to interpret these words to mean that the “upstart crow” was not an author, “but only an actor who pretended to be an author also,” the oldest inhabitant of Colney Hatch and Mr. Theobald must decide between them. These anything but “cryptic” words, as Mr. Theobald describes them, can have but one interpretation, and that is the one their author intended. They do not imply that Shakespeare, the “upstart crow,” is not the author of the plays imputed to him, but that he considers his plays as good as those of the older dramatists. His profession of authorship is not questioned, but the quality of his work is savagely challenged. Any other construction put upon the passage is sheer nonsense. Mr. Theobald appeals to the “most gentle and gentlemanly critics” to be patient and tolerant with the Baconians--“men as sound in judgment and as well equipped in learning as yourselves”--but it is high time that this kind of wilful misrepresentation and perversion of common sense should be condemned in plain language. If Greene had believed that Shakespeare was wearing feathers that did not rightfully belong to him, if he were pretending to be what he really was not; if, in Mr. Theobald’s confident explanation, he had no right to profess himself an author at all, we may be quite certain that Greene would have said so outright--he would not have adopted a “cryptic” style, and left it for Mr. Theobald to decipher his meaning.

Mr. Theobald’s alternative theory that the word “Shake-scene” does not refer to Shakespeare at all, is even more preposterous. “In 1592 ‘Shakespeare’ did not exist at all, and only two or three of the plays which subsequently appeared under this name could have been written.” But those two or three plays included, as far as we can tell, _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, and _The Comedy of Errors_--plays of sufficient promise to secure any author recognition as a poet and dramatist. If Mr. Theobald entertains any serious doubts as to the identification of Shakespeare in the “Shake-scene” of Greene, he may be advised to read the apology for this attack which Henry Chettle, the publisher, prefixed to a tract of Greene’s in the same year. “I am as sorry,” Chettle wrote, “as if the originall fault had been my fault, because myselfe have seene his (_i.e._, Shakespeare’s) demeanour no lesse civill than he (is) exelent in the qualitie he professes, besides divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty and his facetious grace in writing that aprooves his art.”

Extract from the Will of Lord Bacon.

“For my burial I desire it may be in St. Michael’s Church, near St. Albans; there was my Mother buried, and it is the only Christian Church within the walls of Old Verulam.

“For my name and memory I leave it to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages.”]

This apology put forth by Henry Chettle is an invaluable attestation to the character and literary standing of Shakespeare--“his uprightness in dealing” is a matter of public report, and “his facetious grace in writing” is frankly acknowledged. At a period when professional rivalries ran strong, and no man’s reputation was above attack, a publisher and fellow author is seen regarding Shakespeare not only as a man to whom an apology was due, but to whom it appeared expedient to make one. In treating of the personal history of Shakespeare, it must be borne in mind that although the duly-attested facts regarding him are regrettably few, the poet was widely known to the leading literary and theatrical men of his day. Ben Jonson, his brother actor and dramatist, and Michael Drayton were his intimate friends. Condell and Heming remained in close relationship with Shakespeare until his death, and Richard Burbage was his partner in the business of the Globe Theatre. In _Pericles_ and _Timon_, Shakespeare worked in collaboration with George Wilkins, a dramatic writer of some repute, and William Rowley, a professional reviser of plays. There were besides, the members of the Globe Company, men who lived their lives beside him, rehearsed under him, learned from him, interpreted him. Yet none of these men appear to have entertained the slightest doubt upon the genuineness of his claims to authorship, while every contemporaneous reference to him is couched in terms of affection and admiration. The only possible explanation of this remarkable fact is that Shakespeare and Bacon were one and the same person--a theory that the most hardened Baconian has not yet thought it advisable to advance.

_Wm. Shakespeare, Money Lender and Poet._

Mr. Theobald is unfortunate in his selection of the points he raises in Shakespeare’s career in order to belittle the character of the poet. He writes: “His known occupations, apart from theatre business, were money-lending, malt-dealing, transactions in house and land property.” There is not the slightest evidence to show that Shakespeare traded as a money-lender; his only interest in malt-dealing was confined to one transaction, and his transactions in houses and lands were those of any man who invests his savings in real estate. The phrase is, as the most superficial Shakespeare student will recognise, misleading in substance, and incorrect as a statement of fact. In another part of his determinedly one-sided book, Mr. Theobald dismisses, in a paragraph, the contention that Shakespeare’s poems are illuminated and illustrated by Shakespeare’s life. The obvious rejoinder is that there is nothing in the life of Shakespeare that makes it difficult for us to accept him as the author of the Plays, whereas the whole life and character of Bacon makes his pretensions more than difficult, even impossible, of acceptance.

In 1593, _Venus and Adonis_ was published by Shakespeare’s friend and fellow townsman, Richard Field, and in the following year _Lucrece_ was issued at the sign of the White Greyhound in St. Paul’s Churchyard. Both poems were dedicated to Shakespeare’s first and only patron, the Earl of Southampton, with whom Bacon is not known to have sought any intimacy until 1603, when he addressed to him a characteristic letter of conciliation. (In 1621, when Bacon was accused of corruption, the Earl of Southampton pointed out the insufficiency of the Lord Chancellor’s original confession, and it was largely the result of his firm and unfriendly attitude that Bacon’s abject submission and acknowledgment of the justice of the charges, was placed before the Lords). These poems constituted Shakespeare’s appeal to the reading public. The response was instantaneous and enthusiastic. “Critics vied with each other,” writes Mr. Sidney Lee, “in the exuberance of the eulogies, in which they proclaimed that the fortunate author had gained a place in permanence on the summit of Parnassus.” _Lucrece_, Michael Drayton declared, in his _Legend of Matilda_ (1594), was “revived to live another age.” In 1595, William Clerke, in his _Polimanteia_, gave “all praise” to “Sweet Shakespeare” for his _Lucrecia_. John Weever, in a sonnet addressed to “honey-tongued” Shakespeare in his _Epigrams_ (1595), eulogised the two poems as an unmatchable achievement, although he mentions the plays _Romeo_, and _Richard_, and “more whose names I know not.” Richard Carew, at the same time, classed him with Marlowe, as deserving the praises of an English Catullus. Printers and publishers of the poems strained their resources to satisfy the demands of eager purchasers. No fewer than seven editions of _Venus_ appeared between 1594 and 1602; an eighth followed in 1617. _Lucrece_ achieved a fifth edition in the year of Shakespeare’s death. The Queen quickly showed him special favour, and until her death in 1603, Shakespeare’s plays were repeatedly acted in her presence.

When the sonneteering vogue reached England from Italy and France, Shakespeare applied himself to the composition of sonnets, with all the force of his poetic genius. Of the hundred and fifty-four sonnets that survive, the greater number were probably composed in 1593 and 1594. Many are so burdened with conceits and artificial quibbles that their literary value is scarcely discernible; but the majority, on the other hand, attain to supreme heights of poetic expression, sweetness, and imagery. They are of peculiar interest, as disclosing the relationship that existed between Southampton and Shakespeare. No less than twenty of the sonnets are undisguisedly addressed to the patron of the poet’s verse: three of them are poetical transcriptions of the devotion which he expressed to Southampton in his dedicatory preface to _Lucrece_. The references are direct and unmistakable. In 1603, when the accession of James I. opened the gates of Southampton’s prison, Bacon was meekly writing to him: “I would have been very glad to have presented my humble service to your Lordship by my attendance if I could have foreseen that it should not have been unpleasing to you,” and hypocritically assuring him, “How credible soever it may seem to you at first, yet it is as true as a thing God knoweth, that this great change (_i.e._, the release of Southampton, and his favour with the new monarch, whose good-will Bacon ardently desired), hath wrought in me no other change towards your Lordship than this, that I may safely be now that which I was truly before.” The Earl of Southampton considered these protestations of friendship so incredible, as coming from the man who had consigned Essex, Bacon’s own friend and patron, to the headsman, and sent Southampton himself to the Tower, that he appears to have made no response to this letter, and twenty years afterwards he materially contributed to the Lord Chancellor’s discomfiture. One has only to compare this letter with the sonnet with which Shakespeare saluted his patron on his release from the Tower, to recognise the impossibility of regarding the two compositions as the work of the same man.

_The “True Shakespeare.”_

If Bacon was the “true Shakespeare,” as Mr. Theobald calls him, the question naturally arises as to his motive in concealing the authorship of the plays and the poems. Baconians explain this extraordinary act of reticence on the ground that dramatic authorship was held in low esteem, and that the fact, if known, would have proved an obstacle to his advancement at Court. This contention, though fully borne out by Bacon’s cipher writings, is ridiculous in the extreme. In the first place, it was not the profession of dramatic authorship, but the calling of the actor that was held in low esteem. Furthermore, poetry was not under the ban that attached to the stage, and it cannot be denied that the acknowledged authorship of _Venus and Adonis_, of _Lucrece_, or of the _Sonnets_, would have won for Bacon more favour at Elizabeth’s Court than he ever secured by his philosophy. Poetry was held in high esteem; sonneteering was the vogue. Buckingham, in the next reign, wrote a play, _The Rehearsal_, and Essex had composed a masque. The publication of _The Faerie Queene_, in 1589, secured for Edmund Spenser an introduction to the Queen, who made him her poet laureate in the same year. Why should Bacon have persisted in devoting himself to a branch of literature which appears to have advanced his interests so little? Elizabeth was never impressed by his genius; she acknowledged his great wit and learning, but accounted him “not deep.” James criticised his philosophy with lofty captiousness, and compared his _Novum Organum_ to “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.” It would be neither discreditable to his pride as a poet, nor contrary to the nature of the man, to believe that if he could safely have claimed the authorship of _Lucrece_ and _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, he would not have hesitated for an hour in so doing. _Venus and Adonis_ won for Shakespeare the favour of Elizabeth, while, under the sovereignty of her successor, Shakespeare’s company gave between forty and fifty performances at Court during the first five years of his reign. Is it not rather absurd to believe that Bacon should have remained quiescent while his unavowed work was being acclaimed as “immortal,” and the works published under his own name were either neglected, or treated to a contemptuous _mot_ by the very person whose admiration he was feverishly striving to attract?

Yet the Baconians find no difficulty in accepting this explanation of secrecy--Mr. A. P. Sinnett regards the motive as perfectly intelligible. Bacon, he contends, was not writing his plays for fame, but for the money it brought him. Mr. Theobald contends that the plays could not have been written by Shakespeare because he was too busily employed in “carving his own fortune” ... “filling his pockets” ... “working for the present, not for the future,” to devote the necessary leisure to literary pursuits. Bacon himself, according to the bi-literal cipher discoveries of Mrs. Gallup, declares that so far from receiving remuneration for his plays, he paid “a sufficient reward in gold” to Shakespeare for the use of his name. “He was left quite without resources,” Mr. Sinnett explains, “and he took up dramatic writing for the sake of the money it earned him.” Before we are won over by this fallacious explanation, we would inquire how it was that Bacon, who was left without resources in 1577, did not produce his first play until 1591, and then paid for the luxury of concealing his indiscretion. Mr. Sinnett’s next sentence is instructive as a specimen of Baconian reasoning. “After Bacon obtained an office of profit at forty-six, no more Shakespeare plays appeared, though the reputed author lived for ten more years in dignified leisure at Stratford.” It may, of course, be regarded as a “shallow objection” to raise, but Bacon was fifty-one years of age when Shakespeare retired to Stratford. Moreover, Bacon obtained no office of profit in 1611. He was made Solicitor-General, and became a rich man, in 1607, but until his appointment to the Attorney-Generalship in 1613 he was continually suing for promotion and applying for a better paid office. It is, indeed, significant that Bacon was silent as a playwright from the time of Shakespeare’s retirement. When he was Chancellor, and enjoyed a yearly income equal to between £60,000 and £70,000 of our money, he continued to compose his scientific works, and he was still actively engaged in the task between 1621 and 1626 when he was again reduced to comparative penury, and the more remunerative employment of play-writing would have relieved his financial position without detriment to his political prospects. The source from whence he could have augmented his inadequate income was neglected while he employed himself in writing a _Digest of the Laws of England_, _The History of Henry VII._, _Sylva Sylvarum_, _Augmentis Scientiarum_, _The Dialogue of the Holy War_, some additional _Essays_, and the translation of “certain Psalms into English verse.” Bacon, according to Baconians, produced his plays during the busiest period of his political career, and in the days of his leisure and impecuniosity--“when Shakespeare was not present to shield him from the disgrace of possessing poetic and dramatic genius”--he produced his versification of the Psalms.

From the original of Hilliard, in the collection of The Right Honble the Earl of Verulam.]

Mr. Sinnett, in common with Mr. Theobald and, indeed, all other upholders of the Baconian theory, has a distinctly original way of dealing with matters of fact. Mr. Theobald invents his facts to suit his argument; Mr. Sinnett ignores all facts that prove intractable. Thus Mr. Sinnett in _The National Review_: “All through the plays there is no allusion to Stratford.” And again: “While Bacon seems to have gone North to curry favour with James on his accession, _Macbeth_ was written just after that event. Certainly there is no reason to suppose that Shakespeare ever went to Scotland.” What nonsense is all this! Although personalities are rare in the Plays, there are a number of literal references to Stratford, and Shakespeare’s native county, in _The Taming of the Shrew_; and local allusions are also to be found in the second part of _Henry IV._ and _The Merry Wives of Windsor_. In his _Life of William Shakespeare_, Mr. Lee enumerates several instances in point. “Barton Heath,” we read is, “Barton-on-the-Heath, the home of Shakespeare’s aunt, Edmund Lambert’s wife, and of her sons. The tinker, in _The Taming of the Shrew_, confesses that he has run up a score with Marian Hacket, the fat ale wife of Wincot. The references to Wincot and the Hackets are singularly precise. The name of the maid of the inn is given as Cicely Hacket, and the ale-house is described in the stage direction as ‘on a heath.’” Again, in _Henry IV._, the local reference to William Visor, of Woncot, and the allusions to the region of the Cotswold Hills, and the peculiar Cotswold custom of sowing “red lammas” wheat at an unusually early season of the agricultural year, are unmistakable. Mr. Sinnett’s assumptions that Bacon went to Scotland and that Shakespeare did not, are entirely arbitrary. In point of fact we may be quite sure that Bacon did not go to Scotland, and we have no reason to believe that Shakespeare was ever in Venice, or Sardis, or “a wood near Athens.” The author of the _Letters from Hell_ was not under suspicion because he could not claim to have been ferried across the Styx to get his local colour.

If we are to accept the Baconian opinion of Shakespeare it is difficult to understand how Bacon came to allow him to make a successful application on behalf of his father, John Shakespeare, to the College of Heralds for a grant of arms in 1597. Bacon was an aristocrat and a firm believer in his order. If he knew Shakespeare to be a notoriously ill-educated actor, a man little better than a vagabond, an impostor, a villain with “some humour,” whom Bacon employed as the original model for Sir John Falstaffe and Sir Toe-be--as Mr. Harold Bayley states--why did he not prevent his intimate friend, the Earl of Essex, the Earl of Southampton, and William Camden, the great scholar and antiquary, from being hoaxed by this impudent rogue, and prevent the Shakespeares from obtaining the desired grant? These three friends of Shakespeare certainly facilitated the proceedings.

_Mr. Theobald’s Parallels and Mr. Bayley’s Conclusions._

When Mr. Theobald gets away from his biographical pabulum and plunges into the literary arguments for Bacon’s authorship of the plays, he has little that is original to reveal, but much that is new in the way of parallels and coincidences. In the first place, he takes it for granted that Shakespeare could not, by any possibility, have written the plays. He does not prove it, but--_cela va sans dire_. Then he proceeds, to the extent of some four hundred pages of matter, to demonstrate, by reference to the significant Baconian characteristics in the plays, and the still more significant parallels between the poetry of Shakespeare and the philosophy of Bacon, that Bacon must be the author of both. Bacon, for instance, appears to have had a “very curious habit” of striking himself on the breast when he wished to emphasise an argument. Brutus, Ophelia, Clarence’s little boy, and Claudio, are all represented as using a similar gesture. Some such lamentations as Bacon may be supposed to have uttered after his fall, are to be found in _King Lear_, and Lucrece’s self-condemnation of herself to death for an offence of which she is entirely innocent is, of course, inspired by Bacon’s behaviour in making a full and humble submission to the Lords in respect of offences which he never committed. The mere fact that _Lucrece_ was published in 1594, and that Bacon’s downfall did not take place until 1621, is a point of no moment--we can readily agree with Mr. Theobald that “there is a very curious reflection of Bacon’s character and temperament in the poem of _Lucrece_.” Lucrece absolves herself in the reflection,

“The poison’d fountain clears itself again,
And why not I from this compelled stain?”

Everybody knows that Bacon, “for some time after his condemnation, expected to resume his ordinary functions as counsellor to Parliament, and adviser to the King”--_ergo_ Lucrece was Bacon’s prototype--in petticoats. Moreover, in the _Essays_, Bacon affixes to a meditative reflection in one of his philosophical propositions the phrase, “I cannot tell.” The same phrase, scarcely remarkable in itself, occurs several times in the Plays. Mr. Theobald devotes a whole chapter of his book to emphasising this remarkable coincidence. He advances pages of historical parallels, and he remarks, almost enthusiastically, that both Shakespeare and Bacon have dilated with pitiless logic on “the uselessness of hope.”

From an original painting in the possession of The Marquis of Salisbury.]

But Mr. Theobald is most amusing when he compares Bacon’s _Essay of Love_ with the treatment of Love in Shakespeare. We know Bacon’s opinion of love, as expressed in the _Essay_, and we find it difficult to reconcile it with the rhapsodies that we find in the Plays; we remember _Romeo and Juliet_, and the exquisite comment, “Imagine Juliet as the party, loved”--or, rather, we should do so, if Mr. Theobald was not at our elbow to explain the apparent contradiction in thought and term. Love, it would appear, has two sides. There is the “bosom” side, and the business side. Here we have a full and convincing explanation of the difference between the views of love as expressed in the _Essay_, and the Shakespearean application of the sentiment as displayed in his dramas. In the Plays, Bacon regarded love from the “bosom” point of view, while in the _Essay_, the “very brief, very aphoristic, very concentrated, never discoursive or rhetorical, but severely reflective and practical essay,” he was dealing with Juliet as a “business” detail--a contracting party, in short--“the party loved.” Nothing could be more convincing! It would almost lead us to entertain a greater admiration for Bacon than Spedding could hope for. He has not only voiced two such entirely contradictory views of love as we find in the _Essay_ of Bacon and the plays of Shakespeare, but he has, with the aid of Mr. Theobald, showed that, “curiously enough,” the two conflicting expressions are “significantly identical.” There is surely no need to proceed further. Mr. Theobald has proved his contention, and we must perforce accept his conclusions that Shakespeare, the arch-impostor, the champion literary fraud of all time, was “either entirely uneducated, or very imperfectly educated; that his Latin was small, his Greek less, and his pure English least of all; that such handwriting as his could never have figured on a University examination paper--this is the opinion, it will be observed, of an M.A., and a former editor of _The Bacon Journal_--that his whole life was too full of business, too much devoted to money to leave any extensive opportunities for study, or for large, broad, world-covering experience.”

But if we make it a _sine quâ non_ that the writer of the Plays was a man of leisure not devoted to mammon, “with ample opportunity for study, and of a broad-world covering experience” (whatever that may precisely mean), it is proof positive that he was not the man whom we know as Francis Bacon. Bacon’s whole life was devoted to business, and to the getting of money; he had no leisure, as he is for ever telling us, for his life’s work, and his experience of the world of men was so superficial and misleading that it sent Essex to the block, brought the King to loggerheads with his Parliament, and encompassed the utter downfall and disgrace of the cunning Chancellor. We need not be flustered by Mr. Theobald’s hysterical opinion that Shakespeare’s writing was “so execrably bad, so unmistakably rustic and plebean, that one may reasonably doubt whether his penmanship extended beyond the capacity of signing his name to a business document,” because we have Spedding’s statement that Shakespeare’s signature is simply characteristic of the caligraphy of the time, and we know by comparison that it is in advance, both in style and legibility, of that of Sir Nicholas Bacon, the father of the great Pretender.

Mr. Harold Bayley, the author of _The Tragedy of Sir Francis Bacon_, is, in the same degree, disdainful of facts. He declares that he will quote verbatim from Mr. Sidney Lee’s well-known _Life of Shakespeare_ which would be most commendable in him if he did it--but he doesn’t. Rather he quotes the opinion of Richard Grant White, who says that “Shakespeare was the son of a Warwickshire peasant,” who “signed his name with a mark,” and that the Poet was “apprenticed to a butcher.” It is but waste of space to repeat that such assertions are palpably false. It may be true, as Mr. Bayley states, that Stratford, in 1595, was in an unsanitary condition, and that the Metropolitan theatres were the resort of undesirable persons--even that Shakespeare entered the play-house as a servitor, but all this proves nothing. It is also true that, up to the time that Shakespeare’s plays began to be produced, “there had been nothing in his career that would cause us to suppose he was a sublime genius,” but until Homer, or Michael Angelo, or Rudyard Kipling began to produce their masterpieces, we knew of nothing in them to make us accept them as heaven-born geniuses. Mr. Bayley assumes that Shakespeare left Stratford-upon-Avon in 1585 with “_Venus and Adonis_, _Lucrece_, and, perhaps, _Hamlet_, in his pocket.” The reason for his assumption is not vouchsafed to us. True, our dramatist left Stratford in 1585, but _Venus_ was not published until 1593, and it was not until 1602 that _Hamlet_ was produced. The mere fact that “in the sixteenth century the provincial dialects were so marked that the county gentry ... had difficulty in making themselves understood, except to their provincial neighbours,” proves that both these works were composed after Shakespeare had been for some time a resident in London, and indeed it is ridiculous to suppose that it took him eight years to find a publisher for _Venus and Adonis_. Donnelly deciphered the Bishop of Worcester’s opinion that Shakespeare was “a butcher’s rude and vulgar apprentice,” who “in our opinion was not likely to have writ them (the Plays).” “In our opinion” is scarcely evidence. Mr. Bayley’s contemptuous reference to Shakespeare’s handwriting as “five strange scrawls,” is combated by Spedding’s authoritative dictum, and his immediately succeeding conclusion that the classical allusions and references in the Plays prove the author to have been “a cultured aristocrat,” robs his entire argument of sapiency or merit.

Mr. Harold Bayley’s _The Tragedy of Francis Bacon_, is, in my opinion, an inconsequential contribution to the controversy. In the chapter on Papermarks, his contention that every fresh device necessitates a new mould (p. 38) is correct, but his deductions are senseless; the fact being that the paper is contributed from very many--mostly foreign--mills. Take one of Caxton’s books--say, _The Golden Legend_--and you will find 50 different water-marks in one volume; if all the copies could be examined, probably double or treble the number would be revealed. One hasn’t the patience to follow Mr. Bayley’s “reasoning”: he believes one of the paper-marks (No. 55) to be Rosicrucian--it is the Divine monogram, and traceable to the first century. No. 14, the “fool’s-cap,” gives the name to a size of paper still extant--so of the vase, or “pott.” The symbols are allusive, heraldic, or “canting,” mostly emblematic, or in rebus form. That is all. What more natural for the paper-maker _Lile_ than to take the Fleur-de-lys for his trade symbol? With respect to printers’ headlines, tail-pieces, etc., they were (and are) simply fancy types used for decorative purposes. The oak, and its fruit the acorn--the rose, Tudor or otherwise, the lily, typifying our conquest of France, only erased from the Royal Arms _temp._ George III., would all, from a national standpoint, become the commonest form of ornament, and each, in its turn, lend itself to the fancy of the designer, who, Mr. Bayley would have us think, were all under the direction of Francis Bacon, who wove a wonderful story by this puerile means. As for the printers’ “hieroglyphics,” as Mr. Bayley calls them, they have been used almost from the invention of the art to the present time. Amongst publishers, too, they are common. The printer of _The Tragedy of Sir Francis Bacon_ employs one: a lion supporting the trade symbol of Aldus. I have not consulted Mr. Whittingham, but (if he knows anything at all about it) he would probably say the device signifies that he is the English successor of the Venetian printer!

So far as Shakespeare’s handwriting is concerned, I do not propose at the present moment to go beyond the opinion of Spedding. It would profit nothing to enter into a discussion on the subject until one has something tangible in the way of evidence to offer. Shakespeare’s Will, for instance, has always been regarded as a witness for the Baconian case, but if the result of the investigations I am prosecuting confirm my suspicions, it will become a piece of important evidence for Shakespeare. The _bona-fides_ of this Will have always appeared to be more than questionable, and I am hopeful of being in a position shortly to connect it with the great fraud which I am satisfied has been perpetrated by Bacon.

_The Bi-Literal Cipher._

The most interesting feature of the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy at the present moment is the alleged discovery by Mrs. Elizabeth Wells Gallup, of Detroit, U.S.A., of a bi-literal cipher by Bacon, which appears in no fewer than forty-five books, published between 1591 and 1628. Mrs. Gallup was assisting Dr. Orville W. Owen (also of Detroit, U.S.A.), in the preparation of the later books of his _Sir Francis Bacon’s Cipher Story_, and in the study of the “great word cipher,” discovered by Dr. Owen, when she became convinced that the very full explanation found in _De Augmentis Scientiarum_ of the bi-literal method of cipher-writing, was something more than a mere treatise on the subject. She applied the rules given to the peculiarly italicised words, and “letters in two forms,” as they appear in the photographic facsimile of the 1623 folio edition of the Shakespeare plays. The surprising disclosures that resulted from the experiment, sent her to the original editions of Bacon’s known works, and from those to all the authors whose books Bacon claimed as his own. The bi-literal cipher, according to Mrs. Gallup, held true in every instance, and she is fully entitled to have her discovery thoroughly investigated before it is condemned as a “pure invention.” Mrs. Gallup solemnly declares her translation to be “absolutely veracious,” and until it is authoritatively declared that the bi-literal cipher does not exist in the works in which she professes to have traced it, I am not prepared to question her _bonâ fides_. Her conclusions are absurd, but her premises may be proved to be impregnable. She is convinced of the soundness of her discoveries, and she forthwith leaps to the conclusion that “the proofs are overwhelming and irresistible, that Bacon was the author of the delightful lines attributed to Spenser--the fantastic conceits of Peele and Greene--the historical romances of Marlowe--the immortal plays and poems put forth in Shakespeare’s name--as well as the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ of Burton.” Mrs. Gallup shows scant appreciation of the illimitable genius she claims for Bacon in this sentence.