Chapter XI: Part V: The Baconian Theory (2)

And if William Shakespeare in his lifetime made those revisions for Heminges and Condell (who appear on the title-page of this folio of 1623 as editors, and an{235}nounce in the preface that this edition is printed from the "true original copies") at Stratford (where, according to his own inventory, he had neither library nor books--nor bookcase, nor writing table, for that matter), why did he not print them himself, for his own benefit, instead of performing all this labor of emendation for somebody else? He could not have been fearful lest he would lose money by them, for they had been the foundation and source of all his fortune. Nor had he grown, in his old age, indifferent to gain (let the ghost of the poor "delinquent for malt delivered" assure us of that!). He could not have revised them for pure glory: for, in his previous career, while in London, he had shown no interest in them, permitting them to be surreptitiously printed by whoever, in the same town with himself, listed so to do. He had even allowed them to be mixed up with other people's trash, his name signed to all indifferently, and the whole made footballs of by the London printers, under his very nose, without so much as lifting a voice in protest, or to declare which were his and which were not. * Besides, if he had revised them for the glory of his own name, why did he not cause them to be printed? Nor can we suppose that he was employed to revise them, for pay, by Heminges and Condell, because, if they did so employ him, why did they carry the expense of the revision for seven long years, until he and his wife were both in their graves, before reimbursing themselves by printing the first folio for the market!

* See post, "The New Theory," where it appears that, at the
time Shakespeare was producing certain plays on his stage,
certain others were being printed and circulated, as his,
outside.

Last, and most wonderful {236}of all, in this first folio are included all these entirely new plays which had never been heard of before! Who wrote those, and why? The answer to these riddles, the Baconians say, is that, when again at leisure, Bacon bethought himself of his scattered progeny, and--whether proposing to publicly own them or not--whether to secure them for posterity or merely for his own pastime--he devoted that leisure to a revision of the works by means of which he had bridged the first long interval in his career. At any rate, when the revision appeared, it is matter of fact that William Shakespeare was dead and in his grave, and speculation has nothing to do with that.

Besides the coincidence of the plays appearing during Bacon's first retirement: ceasing altogether at his first elevation, and appearing in revised and improved form again after his final downfall, and during his second privacy, the Baconians cite: I. Contemporary statements, which include (A), Sir Tobie Matthew's famous postscript: * "The most prodigious wit of these times is of your name, though he be known by another" (which Mr. Weiss ** explains, very lamely in our opinion, by arguing that the _other_ name by which Bacon was known, and to which Matthew alludes, was "_Viscount St. Albans_); (B), a letter from Bacon

* Bacon was in the habit of sending certain of his lighter
manuscripts to Sir Tobie, and this postscript was appended
to a letter acknowledging the receipt of Bacon's "great and
esteemed favor of the 9th of April."

** "Wit, Humor and--Shakespeare." By John Weiss. Boston.
Roberts Brothers, 1876. Matthew writes this in a letter
acknowledging receipt of a volume sent him by Bacon. If that
volume was a copy of the "First Folio," the postscript would
be intelligible.

him{237}self, to Sir John Davies, who is going to meet the new king James (with whom Bacon is striving for favor, looking to his own preferment), in which he commits to Sir John's "faithful care and discretion" his interests at court, and adds, "So, asking you to be good to concealed poets, I continue," etc., etc.; * II. Evidence by way of Innuendo, including another of Matthew's postscripts (the one in which he writes to Bacon, "I will not return you weight for weight, but measure for measure," etc.); also, perhaps, the injunctions of secrecy in Bacon's own letters to Matthew, to "be careful of the writings submitted to you, that no one see them." There is, besides, in many of Bacon's preserved letters something suggestive of a "curious undermeaning, impressing the reader with an idea of more than appears on the surface." The idea of the stage, as a figure of speech, occurs in a letter to the Queen: "Far be it from me to stage myself," etc.; and in one to lady Buckingham, "I do not desire to stage myself but for the comfort of a private life," etc. "Dramatic poesy," he declares, "is as history made visible." Writing to Matthew, he refers to a "little work of my recreation;" and Matthew, in return, banters him on writing many things "under another name." This is in 1609, and no more "Shakespeare" plays appear until Othello, in 1621. The Jonson obituary verse--in which occur the encomiums so rung in our ears by the Shakespeareans (and which we have--earlier in these pages--seen was all they really had behind them), which we have thought could be most easily explained on the "_nil mortuis nisi bonum_" theory--are also

* Holmes, "Authorship of Shakespeare,"

{238}regarded, we believe, by the Baconians, as Innuendo. *

III. The Parallelisms. That is to say, an almost identity of phraseology, found in both the Baconian and Shakespearean writings. The best list of these is to be found in Judge Holmes' book, covering some twenty-five closely-printed pages. ** Of the value of this latter class of evidence, it is for every reader to judge for himself; but that a writer of exact science and moral philosophy should plagiarize from the theater, or the theater from the writer of exact science and moral philosophy; or (still more improbable) that two contemporary authors, in the full glare of the public eye, should select each other's works to habitually and regularly plagiarize upon, are altogether, it seems to the Baconians, out of the question.

* It is curious to find the Baconians appealing to this
"best evidence" for the other side. But they read it as an
Innuendo. For example, the verses--

"Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage Or
influence, cheer the crooping stage!

Which--since thy flight from hence, hath-mourned like night
And despaired day--but for thy volume's light--"
they say, do not and can not, refer to William Shakespeare
at all. For this was published in 1623, and William
Shakespeare had been dead seven years. He could not "shine
forth" again, except figuratively, in his volume, and this
he already does by the publication of his works, and is
admitted to do in the next line, where it is said that but
for "thy volume's light" the stage would "mourn in night."
The Baconians, who believe that Ben Jonson himself was the
"Heminges and Condell" who edited the first folio, regarded
this whole poem as a sop to Bacon, on Ben Jonson's part.

** Pp. 306-326.

[Ill 0237]

[Ill 0238]

But even the conceiving of so unusual a state of affairs as a political philosopher and playwright contracting together to mutually plagiarize from each other's writ{239}ings would hardly account for the coincidence between the cottage scene (Act IV, Scene 3) in "A Winter's Tale," and Bacon's "Essay on Gardens," in which he maintained that "there ought to be gardens for all the months of the year; in which severally things of beauty may be in their season," which he proceeds to suggest:

{240}Were we assured that the prose in the left-hand column was the poet's first rough notes for the exquisite poetry in the second, would there be any internal evidence for doubting it? And when it appears that "The Essay on Gardens" was not printed until 1625, nine years after William Shakespeare's death and burial, and two years after an edition of his alleged plays, rewritten and revised, had appeared (when so deliberate a "steal" would hardly be profitable), the exoteric evidence seems at least to command attention.

A coincidence between a passage in "The Advancement of Learning" and in the play of "Troilus and Cressida," Act II., Scene 2 (which, we shall see later on, first appeared in print, advertised as the work of a novice, in 1609, thereafter, within a few months, to be reissued as by William Shakespeare *--who was not, at the date of that edition, either a novice or a first appearance), is worth pausing to tabulate:

That the manager of a theater, in dressing up a play for the evening's audience (and _such_ an audience) should tuck in an allusion to Aristotle, to "catch the ** {241}ear of the groundlings"

* Post, "The New Theory."

** It is to be noticed that no similarity of style in these opposed extracts is alleged or relied upon.

--or, finding it already in, should not have a sufficient acquaintance with Aristotle to scent an impropriety and take it out--is no less or no more absurd than that a philosopher, in composing so profound and weighty an essay as the "Advancement of Learning," should go to a cheap play-house for his reference to the Greek sage. If Bacon _did_ attend the theater that night to learn the opinion of Aristotle (whom he had criticised at college at the age of fifteen) on young blood and philosophy, he was misled, for Aristotle said not that young men ought not to _hear moral_, but ought not to _study political_ philosophy. And the error itself is proof positive--it seems to the Baconians--of an identical source for the two passages. It must not be forgotten, however, that the evidence from these coincidences is cited not to an Anti-Shakespearean case--which is purely historical--but as cumulative to the Baconian case alone. And yet, though the evidence from the "parallelisms" is the least forcible of any presented by the Baconians, so systematically do they occur that the ablest Baconian writer (Judge Holmes) claims that he has been able to reduce them to an ordo, and to know precisely where to expect them, by reference merely to a history of the life of Lord Bacon, and the date of the production. "When I got your 'Letters and Life of Bacon," he writes to Mr. Spedding, "and read that fragment of a masque; having the dates of all the plays in my mind, I felt quite sure at once in which I should find that same matter, if it appeared anywhere (as I expected it would) and went first straight to the 'Midsummer-Night's Dream,' and there came upon it, in the second {242}act, so palpably and unmistakably that I think nothing else than a miracle could shake my belief in it."1 The facts that Lord Bacon expressed himself to the effect that the best way of teaching history was by means of the drama; that there is a connected and continuous series of historical plays (covering by reigns the entire period of the War of the Roses), in the Shakespearean drama from 'King John,' by way of prelude--in which the legitimate heir to the throne is set aside, and the nation plunged into civil war--to 'Richard III.' where the two roses are finally united in one line in Henry VI., and winding up with the reign of Henry VIII.--wherein, as a grand finale to the whole, the splendor of the new line is shown in its reunited vigor"--which (with but one hiatus, the missing reign of Henry VII.) is one complete cycle of English history: and that, on searching among the remains of Francis Bacon, a manuscript "History of Henry VII." is found, which might well be the minutes for a future drama (the opening paragraph of which seems to be a recapitulation of the last scene of the Richard III. of the dramas), is certainly startling. Not necessarily connected with this discovery is the further fact that Mr. Spodding has found, in the library of Northumberland house, among certain of Bacon's manuscripts, a slip of paper, upon which is scrawled eight times, in a clerky hand (not Bacon's), the name "William Shakespeare," together with the names of certain of the known Shakespearian Historical plays, and of certain (as Judge Holmes conjectures) other plays not now

* "Authorship of Shakespeare," third edition, p. 621.

{243}known. * But there is nothing in this discovery more startling than the numberless other coincidences--if they be nothing more--which Judge Holmes has massed in his scholarly work.

Henry Chettle, in 1603, in his "England's Mourning Garment (a rhyme)," wonders that "Melicert does not drop a single sable tear" over the death of "Our Elizabeth." It might, indeed, seem strange had William Shakespeare (supposing these lines to apply to him) been the favorite he is said to have been with Elizabeth. But, while neither Shakespeare nor Bacon sing mortuary strains, of the two (if these stories about Elizabeth's love for Shakespeare are true) it is certainly not strange that Bacon did not; for Bacon, at least, had no cause to idolize his queen.

Ben Jonson's eulogies of Shakespeare, in verse, nowhere surpass, as we have seen, his eulogies of Bacon, in prose. He calls Lord Bacon "the acme of our language," and, as Mr. Thompson suggests, "no pinnacle has two acmes."

"On every variety of court enfolding," continues that writer, "was Bacon daily employed, writing in others' names; and, if we do not think worse of Plato for personating Socrates, or of Cicero for personating Cato," neither should ill be thought of Bacon for borrowing a name "to cover his aim," etc.2 Meanwhile, "this acme of our language 'was poor and a borrower." In 1605, is published an anonymous pamphlet, called "Ratsei's Ghost."

* Holmes' "Authorship of Shakespeare," 3d edition, pp. 657-
-682.

*** The Renascence Drama, p. 59.

In it, one Ratsei, a highwayman, is about to be hung, and gives some parting advice to a strolling player; tells {244}him to go to London, where he would learn to be frugal and thrifty; to feed upon all men, hut let none feed on him; make his hand stranger to his pocket, his heart slow to perform his tongue's promise; and when he felt his purse well lined, to buy some place of lordship in the country; that, growing weary of playing, his money may then bring him to dignity and reputation; that he need care for no man--no, not for them that before made him proud with speaking their words on the stage.

"If this satirical passage," says Mr. Thompson, "plainly alludes to him who went to London very meanly, and came, in time, to be exceedingly wealthy, it confirms Greene's saying, that Shakespeare made his money by _acting_, not by writing, plays, and by usury." *

As to Miss Bacon's question, "What did William Shakespeare do with Bacon's manuscripts?" Mr. Thompson ** seems to think that they may yet be brought to light. They "appear to have been so many times hypothetically burned, at Stratford, in the Globe theater, the London fire, by their owners (by purchase) at the play-house, to hinder rivals from using them," that Mr. Thompson argues that "it is probable they are still to the fore." Bacon's Will directs certain papers laid away in boxes, cabinets, and presses, to be collected, sealed up, and put away, "so as not to have them ready for present publication."

* Id., p. 200.

* Renascence Drama, or History made Visible. By "William
Thompson. Melbourne, 1880.

He was "not ignorant that those kind of writings would, with less pains and embracement (perhaps), yield more luster and reputation to my name, than those other which I {245}have in hand." They could bide their time, and, since William Shakespeare and his fellows do not dispose of them, the inference is that they were not allowed to retain them.

The Baconian theory, it is to be noticed, is quite indifferent as to whether William Shakespeare, on first turning up at London, found employment (as Mr. Grant White asserts) in his "cousin's law-office" or not: or whether, at any stage in his career, either in Stratford or London, he was an attorney's clerk, hard 'prentice at the trade of "noverint." (By which slur Mr. Fullom believes that Nash meant, not that Shakespeare was a "noverint," but that the young "nove-rints" of the time were "Shakespeare's;" that is to say, that they scribbled, out of hand, for the stage.) The Shakespearean problem is neither increased nor diminished by the proposition; even an attorney's clerk could not have written all the Shakespearean pages. Should it be necessary, however, to find a law-student in London who could have managed some of them, why not allow Francis Bacon his claim among the rest? He has, at least, this advantage of his rival; that, while it is the general impression now-a-days that William Shakespeare was not a law-student, as a matter of fact Francis Bacon _was_. *

* And too good a law student, we think, to have written the
law in the "Merchant of Venice." For, although Lord Bacon
was apt to discover the public feeling, and quick to array
himself on the right side (and spitting at Jews has always
been accounted of Gentiles for righteousness), he must have
seen that Shylock had a standing in court on the merits of
his case.

But Portia begins her extraordinary (according to common law
at least) judgment by deciding for the Jew in that, not
having paid the principal sum, Antonio must suffer in the
foreclosure of the mortgage, as it were, upon his person.
This is against the letter of any known law, which gives an
equity of redemption to the debtor in all such cases. Her
next decision is, that the Jew has his election between the
principal sum and the penalty, and that, with his election,
not the law itself can interfere. This, again, is not law;
for the law abhors a penalty, and even in a foreclosure will
not allow the debtor to be mulcted in more than the face of
his debt, interest, and costs. But now, having decided,
against all law, for the Jew, Portia begins deciding for the
Christian, and the first point she makes is that, when
Shylock takes his pound, he must not take a hair's weight
more or less, nor yet one ounce of blood. This, again, is
clearly not law, since it is an eternal principle of
jurisprudence that, when the law grants any thing it also
grants everything that is necessary to the conversion of
that thing to possession (as, when it grants a farm, it
likewise tacitly grants a right of way to that farm). So, if
Shylock had had any title to his pound of flesh, he would
certainly have had a title to draw as much blood as it was
absolutely necessary to draw in cutting out that pound, and
such portions of flesh over and above a pound as it would be
absolutely necessary to cut out, providing the cutting out
was done by a skillful operator and not a bungler. Astounded
at this turn of the tide, Shylock deliberates, and finally
cries, "Well, give me my principal and let me go!" Portia
thereupon renders her fourth decision, which is the most
astounding of all--namely, that, having once refused a
tender of the money in open court, the Jew is not entitled
to change his mind and take it! Since the days of Moses--
certainly since the days of Littleton--a tender has never
quite destroyed a debt, but only the interest and costs
accruing upon it, after the tender! Such a glaring and high-
handed sacrifice of common law and common sense to stage
effect might have been conceived of by a manager anxious for
the plaudits and pence of a crowded house, scarcely by a
future lord chancellor of England.

{246}As to the bibliography of the Baconian theory, there are two volumes which will probably always remain its text-books, viz., Judge Holmes's book, of which the first edition appeared in 1862; and Mr. Smith's, printed in 1857, which made a convert of {247}Lord Palmerston. Mr. Wilkes's exceedingly fresh and readable work, "Shakespeare from an American Point of View," and Mr. King's "Bacon versus Shakespeare; a Plea for the Defendant," as textbooks on the other side, could hardly be expected to produce much disorder in Messrs. Holmes and Smith's stern and compact columns of facts and argument.

Mr. Wilkes * decides off-hand against this Baconian theory at the start, and then goes on, like his predecessors, to construct a Shakespeare to suit himself. It is to his praise that he has endeavored to construct this Shakespeare out of the Shakespearean pages, rather than to have unreined his fancy. But he makes his own particular Shakespeare, nevertheless. The Wilkes Shakespeare is a Romanist. We consider this to William Shakespeare's praise, for to be a good Romanist is to be a good Christian, and to be one in a Protestant reign is to be a consistent Christian as well. But this is all the good Mr. Wilkes's Shakespeare is. Beyond that he is base-born, a man despised of his equals, and a flunkey and tidewaiter at the knees of an aristocracy to which he can not attain--an obscene jester, etc., etc.--and this author he calls Shakespeare. Such a one, whoever he is, is neither Bacon nor Raleigh, at all events. In 1880, Mr. Thompson, of Melbourne, Australia, published a volume, "Renascence Drama; or, History made Visible," ** devoted to an accumulation of fact and argument--rather than to a presentation of the case already made--in favor of the Baconian theory.

* Shakespeare from an American Point of View. New York: D.
Appleton & Co., 1877.

** Melbourne: Sands & McDougall, Collins street, west,
1880.

Mr. {248}Thompson aims to answer the more refined objections to that theory, by showing that Bacon's mind and art rather overgrasped than undergrasped the matter and form of these Shakespearean drama, and his work is an extremely valuable and charming contribution to the pro-Baconian view.

In his abounding zeal for "our Shakespeare," Mr. King * gives us much eulogy, very little argument, and remakes but one or two points, namely, that a large proportion of the Shakespearean characters are made to bear Warwickshire names, such as Ford, Page, Evans, Hugh, Oliver, Sly, Marion Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, Curtis, Burton Heath, Fluellen, Bar-dolph, and so on; and that certain expressions which have puzzled commentators, such as "make straight" (meaning "make haste"), "quoth" (meaning "went"), the use of the word "me" in place of "for me," "old" for "frequent," etc., are Warwickshire expressions, and current in no other parts of England. But, as anybody can see, the majority of these are far from being uncommon names, and are quite as prevalent in New York, for example, as they are or were in Warwickshire. And if, as has been suggested, Mr. Manager Shakespeare dressed up his friends' dialogues for his own stage, and tucked in the clowns and jades, this usage of Warwick names might well be accounted for.

* Bacon and Shakespeare: A Plea for the Defendant. By-
Thomas King. Montreal: Lovell Printing and Publishing
Company, 1875.

Four of these names are taken out of "The Merry Wives of Windsor," and three of them from the induction to the "Taming of the Shrew"--matter in the composition of which Shakespeare or {249}any other playwright might have had the largest hand, without entitling himself to any Olympus. And if, in the dressing up, Shakespeare inserted a clown or a sot here and there, to make sport, what would be more natural than that he should put into their mouths the _argot_ he had grown up amid in his boyhood, and make the drunken turnkey in "Macbeth" to say, with hiccoughs, "If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have _old_ turning the key?" For, as Mr. King can see for himself, the cardinals and kings do not use these phrases; nor, we may add, are the surnames he particularizes ever bestowed on them, but only on the low-comedy characters of the plays.

Surely, if William Shakespeare ever were forced "upon the country," as the lawyers say, as against my Lord Bacon, he would wish his case to the jury rather without Mr. King's "plea" than with it. As a "plea" on any side of an historical question, it is, to be sure, nothing, if not candid; but, as a personal appeal to posterity to, willy-nilly, believe that certain players and others in the age of Elizabeth knew not guile, it is touching and beautiful in the extreme. "Who shall, say Heminges and Condell lied?" * "Could rare Ben Jonson, who is worthy of our love and respect, have lied?" **

* "Bacon versus Shakespeare: A Plea for the Defendant."
By-Thomas King. Montreal, and Rouse's Point, New York:
Lovell Printing, etc., Company, 1875, p. 9.

** Ibid., p. 10. Heminges and Condell "profess that 'they
have done this office to the dead only to keep the memory of
so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare.'
Yet their utter negligence, shown in their fellow's volume,
is no evidence of their pious friendship, nor perhaps of
their care or their intelligence. The publication was not, I
fear, so much an offering of friendship as a pretext to
obtain the copyright.' (Disraeli, "Amenities of Authors--
Shakespeare.")

Did Shakespeare practice a deceit upon his {250}noble and generous patron? Could _he_ be guilty of a lie?" * And so on. To much the same effect (the reverence due the name "Shakespeare," the improbability of Jonson and others telling an untruth, etc.) is an anonymous volume, "Shakespeare not an Impostor, by an English Critic," ** published in 1857; and finally, in 1877, was published a paper, read before the Royal Society of Literature, by C. M. Ingleby, M. A., LL.D., a vice-president *** of the same. Dr. Ingleby is severe upon all anti-Shakespeareans, whose minds he likens to "Macadam's sieves," which "retain only those ingredients which are unsuited to the end in view" (whatever that may mean), and thinks that "the profession of the law has the inevitable effect of fostering the native tendency of such minds." Unlike the others, however, Dr. Ingleby does not confine himself to expressions of his interest in the anti-Shakespeareans "as examples of wrong-headedness," but attempts an examination of the historical testimony. In favor of the Shakespearean authorship, he names seven witnesses, viz., John Harrison, Francis Meres, Robert Greene, Henry Chettle, Heminges, Condell, and Ben Jonson. John Harrison was the printer (publisher) who published the "Venus and Adonis" in 1593, and the "Lucrece" in 1594.

* Ibid., p. 13.

** George Townsend (according to Allibone), London: G.
Routledge & Co., Farringdon street, 1857.

*** "Shakespeare: The Man and the Book." London: Josiah
Adams, Trubner & Co., 1877, Part L, p. 38. "The Authorship
of the Works attributed to Shakespeare."

Each of these was without {251}an author's name on the title-page, though each was dedicated to Southampton, in an address dedicatory, signed "William Shakespeare." This is all that the Harrison evidence amounts to, except that Dr. Ingleby says, "It is to me quite incredible that Harrison would have done this unless Shakespeare had written the dedications, or at least had been a party to them." * As to Meres, anybody can see by reading him that he wrote as a _critic_, and not as an historian. ** To subpoena Greene as a witness to Shakespeare's genius, is at least a bold stroke; for, as has been seen, Greene is very emphatic to the effect that William Shakespeare was a mere "Johannes Factotum," or Jack-of-all-trades, who trained in stolen plumage, and the Shakespeareans (Dr. Ingleby alone excepted) have universally exerted themselves to break the force of this testimony by proving Greene a drunkard, jealous, etc. *** Greene {252}was a graduate of Cambridge--a learned man--"one of the fathers," says Lamb, "of the English stage."

* Ibid., p. 42.

** "Palladis Tamia, Wit's Commonwealth," 1598.

*** That Robert Greene was much more than a drunkard and a
pretender, but that, to the contrary, he had many admirers
who were not unaware of the effrontery of his debtor,
Shakespeare, a search among the old literature of the day
would reveal. In a quarto tract, dated 1594, "Greene's
Funeralls, by R. B., Gent.," is a copy of verses, the last
stanza of which runs:

"Greene is the pleasing object of an eye

Greene pleased the eye of all that looked upon him;

Greene is the ground of every painter's dye,

Greene gave the ground to all that wrote upon him:

Nay, more; the men that so eclipsed his fame,

Purloined his plumes, can they deny that same?"

Hallam believes that the last two lines are directed
principally at William Shakespeare. ("Literature of Europe,"