Chapter XV: Part III

It was only by just such circumstantial evidence as has been grouped in these papers (such as the {295}Elizabethan orthography and philology--the use of Roman instead of Arabic numerals! etc.) that the Ireland imposture was exploded. Forgery is the imitation of an original, and, If the original be inimitable, there can surely be no forgery. In the case of forgery of a signature, lawyers and experts know that the nearer the imitation, the more easy is it detectable; for no man writes his own name twice precisely alike, and, if two signatures attributed to the same hand are found to be _fac similes_, and, on being superimposed against the light, match each other in every detail, it is irrefutable evidence that one is intentionally simulated. * In the case of literary style, however, we are deprived of this safeguard, because, the more nearly exact the counterfeit, the more easily the critic is deceived. Pope was not afraid to entrust whole sections of the paraphrase he called the "Odyssy of Homer," just as Michael Angelo did his frescoes, to journey-workmen--and not a critic has ever been able to pronounce, or even guess, which was Pope and which was Pope's apprentice; and not only the Chatterton, Ireland, and Macpherson forgeries, but the history of merely sportive imitation and parody prove that literary style is any thing but inimitable; that, in fact, it requires no genius, and very little cleverness to counterfeit it. ** Nor is--what is incessantly appealed {296}to--"the internal evidence of the plays themselves" of any particular value to the end in view.

* Hunt versus Lawless, New York Superior Court, November,
1879. And see, also, Moore versus United States, 2 Otto,
United States, 270. Criminal Law Journal, Jersey City, N.
J., March, 1881. Arty "Calligraphy and the Whittaker Case."

** The curious reader is referred to "Supercheries
Literaries, Pastiches, etc.," one of the unique labors of
the late M. Delapierre. London, Trubner & Co., 1872.

Were the question before us, "Was the author of these works a poet, statesman, philosopher, lawyer?" etc., etc., this internal evidence would be, indeed, invaluable. But it is not. The question is not _what_, but _who_, was the author. Was his family name "Shakespeare," and was he christened "William"? The Shakespearean has been allowed to confound these questions, and to answer them together, until they have become as inseparable as Demosthenes and his pebble-stones. But, once separated, it is manifest that the internal evidence drawn from the works themselves, however satisfactory as to the one question, is utterly incompetent as to the other, and that it is by purely external--that is to say, by circumstantial evidence, by history, and by the record--that the question before us must be answered, if, indeed, it ever is to be answered at all. And, therefore, it is by circumstantial evidence alone, we think, that literary imposture can be satisfactorily exposed. Neither can we trust to internal evidence alone; for an attempt to write the biography of William Shakespeare by means of the internal evidence of the Shakespearean plays, has inevitably resulted in the questions we have already encountered. Was Shakespeare a lawyer, was Shakespeare a physician--a natural philosopher--a chemist--a botanist--a classical scholar--a student of contemporary life and manners--an historian--a courtier--an aristocrat--a biblicist--a journeyman printer, and the rest!--and in giving us the fairy stories of Mr. Knight and Mr. De Quincy in place of the truth we crave. For we can not close our eyes to the fact that history very decid{297}edly negatives the idea that William Shakespeare, of Stratford, was either a lawyer, a physician, a courtier, a philosopher, an aristocrat, or a soldier. Moreover, while the internal evidence is fatal to the Shakespearean theory, it preponderates in favor of the Baconians: for, when we should ask these questions concerning Francis Bacon, surely the answer of history would be, Yes--yes, indeed; all this was Francis Bacon. The minute induction of his new and vast philosophy did not neglect the analysis of the meanest herb or the humblest fragment of experimental truth that could minister to the comfort or the health of man. And where else, in the range of letters--except in the Shakespearean works, where kings and clowns alike take their figures of speech from the analogies of nature--is the parallel of all this faithful accumulation of detail and counterfeit handwriting of Nature? The great ex-chancellor had stooped to watch even the "red-hipped bumble-bee" and the "small gray-coated gnat." Had the busy manager been studying them as well? His last act on earth was to alight from his carriage to gather handfuls of snow, to ascertain if snow could be utilized to prevent decomposition of dead flesh; and it is related that, in his dying moments--for the very act precipitated the fever of which he died--he did not forget, to record that the experiment had succeeded "excellently well." From these to lordly music, * and in all the range between, no science had escaped Francis Bacon. Had the busy {298}manager followed or preceded the philosopher's footsteps, step by step, up through them all?

* Ulrici, p. 248, book ii, Chapter vi., refers to "Two
Gentlemen of Verona," Act 1, Sc. 2. as proving that the
author of that play "possessed in an unusual degree the
power of judging and understanding the theory of music."

And did he pause in his conception or adaptation of a play, pen in hand, to take a trip to Italy, or a run-up into Scotland to get the name of a hostelry or the topography of a highway, to make it an encyclopaedia as well as a play as he went along? If the manager alone was the author of these works, there is, we have seen, no refuge from this conviction. But, if, as is the New Theory, those plays were amplified for the press by a learned hand, perhaps, after all, he was the stage manager, actor, and human being that history asserts him to have been. If, as has been conjectured, William Shakespeare sketched the clowns and wenches with which these stately dramas are relieved, it would account for the supposed Warwickshire source of many of them. And if William Shakespeare was pretty familiar with the constabulary along his route between home and theater, so often traveled by himself and jolly coetaneans with heads full of Marian Hackett's ale, and thought some of them good enough to put into a play, his judgment has received the approval of many audiences beside those of the Bankside and Blackfriars. The Shakespearean plays, as now performed in our theaters, are the editions of Cibber, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, Macready, Booth, Irving, and others, and, while preserving still the dialogues which passed, perhaps, through Shakespeare's hands, retain no traces of his industry, once so valuable to the Globe and Blackfriars, but now rejected as unsuited to the exigencies of the modern stage, the "business" inserted in them by William Shakespeare's editorship has long since been rejected. Little as there is of the man of {299}Stratford in our libraries, there is still less of him in our theaters in 1881. But the world still retains the honest Dogberry, who lived at Grendon, in Bucks, on the road from London to Stratfordtown, and doubtless many more of the witty manager's master strokes. At least, the "New Theory" and the "Delia Bacon Theory" coincide in this, that William Shakespeare was fortunate in the manuscripts brought to him, and grew rich in making plays out of them and matching them to his spectacles.

Such, briefly sketched, are the theories concerning these glorious transcripts of the age of Elizabeth, which, while two centuries of literature between is obsolete and moribund, are yet unwithered and unstaled, and the most priceless of all the treasuries of the age of Victoria. And yet, there seems to be a feeling that any exploration after their authorship is a sacrilege, and that this particular historical question must be left untouched--as Pythagoras would not eat beans, as parricidal--that William Shakespeare is William Shakespeare--and the doggerel curse of Stratford hangs over and forefends the meddling with his bones. But no witch's palindrome for long can block the march of reason and of research. Modern scholarship is every day dissolving chimera, and, if this Shakespeare story has no basis of truth, it must inevitably be abolished along with the rest. If this transcendent literature had come down to us without the name, would it have been sacrilege to search for its paternity? And does the mere name of William Shakespeare make that, which is otherwise expedient, infamous? {300}Or, is this the meaning of the incantation on the tomb--that cursed shall he be that seeks to penetrate the secret of the plays? Such, indeed, was the belief that drove poor Delia Bacon mad. But we decline to see any thing but the calm historical question. It seems to us that, if we are at liberty to dispute as much as we like as to whether two a's or only one, or three e's or only two belong of right in the name "Shakespeare," surely it can not be debarred us to ask of the Past the origin of the thousand-souled pages we call by that name. We believe that, if the existence of these three theories--as to each of which it is possible to say so much--proves any thing, it proves that history and circumstantial evidence oppose the possibility of William Shakespeare's authorship of the works called his, and that there is a reasonable doubt as to whether any one man did write, or could have written, either with or without a Bodleian or an Astor Library at his elbow, the whole complete canon of the Shakespearean works.

But is there not a refuge from all these more or less conflicting theories in the simple canon that human experience is a safer guide than conjecture or miracle? In our own day, the astute manager draws from bushels of manuscript plays, submitted to him by ambitious amateurs or plodding playwrights, the few morsels he deems worthy of his stage, and, restringing them on a thread of his own, or another's, presents the result to his audiences. Can we imagine a reason why the same process should have been improbable in the days of Elizabeth and James? And if among these amateurs and playwrights there happened to be the same proportion of lawyers, courtiers, politicians, {301}soldiers, musicians, physicians, naturalists, botanists, and the rest (as well as contributions from the hundreds of learned clerks whom the disestablishment of the monasteries had driven to their wits for support), that we would be likely to find among the corresponding class to-day, it would surely be a less violent explanation of "the myriad-minded Shakespeare," than to conjecture the "Shakespeare" springing, without an interval for preparation, at once into the finished crown and acme of each and all of these. In fact, is it not William Shakespeare the editor, and not the author, to whom our veneration and gratitude is due?

It almost seems as if not only the skepticism of the doubter but the criticism of scholarship has all along tended irresistibly to accept this compromise, as all criticism must eventually coincide with history, if it be criticism at all. The closest examination of the Shakespearean plays has revealed to scholars traces of more than one hand. It is past a hundred years since Theobald declared that, "though there are several master strokes in these three plays (viz.: the three parts of 'King Henry VI.'), yet I am almost doubtful whether they were entirely of his (Shakespeare's) writing. And unless they were wrote by him very early, I should rather imagine them to have been brought to him as a director of the stage, and so have received some finishing beauties at his hands. An accurate observer will easily see the diction of them is more obsolete, and the numbers more mean and prosaical than in the generality of his genuine composition." *

* Theobald's Shakespeare (1733). Vol. IV., p. 110.

We have elsewhere shown {302}that Farmer stumbled upon the same difficulty. Malone "wrote a long dissertation," says Mr. Grant White, "to show that the three parts of 'King Henry VI.' were not Shakespeare's, but had only been altered and enriched by him; and that the first 'part' was written by another person than the author of the second and third."* Drake proposed that the "First Part of 'King Henry VI.' be excluded from future editions of Shakespeare's Works, because it offers no trace of any finishing strokes from the master bard." ** "It remains to inquire," says Hallam (after a discussion of these plays, which he says Shakespeare remodeled from two old plays "in great part Marlowe, though Greene seems to have put in for some share in their composition"), "who are to claim the credit of these other plays, so great a portion of which has passed with the world for the genuine work of Shakespeare." *** And again, what share he (Shakespeare) may have had in similar repairs of the many plays he represented, can not be determined. **** And Dyee, Halliwell, and all the others follow Mr. Hallam (whose authority' is Greene's well-known complaint about the "Johannes Factotum, who struts about with his tyger's heart wrapped in a player's hide;" *v which allusion to a line in the third part of Henry the Sixth, locates the particular "steal" which Greene had most at heart when he complained).

* An essay on the authorship of the three parts of King
Henry the Sixth. By Richard Grant White. Riverside Press. H.
O. Houghton & Go., Cambridge, Mass., 1859.

** Shakespeare and His Times. Vol. II., p. 297.

*** Note to Hallam's Literature of Europe. Part II., chap,
vi., § 30.

**** Id., §35.

*v "O, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide."--III. Hen.
VI.

Last of all comes Mr. {303}Grant White, a most profound believer in Shakespeare, and all that name implies! with "An Essay on the authorship of the Three Parts of King Henry the Sixth," * to prove that William Shakespeare, in plagiarizing from the earlier tragedies, only plagiarized from himself, he himself having really written all that was worth saving in them! Mr. White labors considerably to fix the exact date at which Marlowe, Peale and Greene--the most eminent play writers of the day--employed a raw Stratford youth, just truanting in London, to kindly run over, prune, and perfect their manuscripts for them, and to clear Mr. White's Shakespeare from the stigma of what, if true, Mr. White admits to have been a "want of probity on Shakespeare's part, accompanied by a hardly less culpable indifference on the part of his fellows." ** This "indifference" can not be charged to one sufferer, at least, Robert Greene, who was not silent when he saw his work unblushingly appropriated: thus giving us assurance of one occasion, at least, upon which William Shakespeare posed as editor instead of author.

At any rate, we have seen the circumstantial evidence has been corroborated by the experts (for so, to borrow a figure, let us call them) Aubrey, Cartwright, Digges, Denham, Fuller, *** and Ben Jonson.

* Cambridge, Mass.: H. O. Houghton & Co. Riverside Press,
1859

** Id, p. 100.

*** See the quotation from his "Worthies of England," in
the foot-note, ante, this chapter.

All these assure us (Ben Jonson twice, once in writing and once in conversation) that William Shakespeare was a nat{304}ural wit--a wag in the crude--but that he wanted art. Old Dominie Ward made a note "to read Shakespeare's plays to post him," but even he had heard that he was a wit, but that he wanted art. * This testimony may not compel conviction, but it is all we have; we must take it, or go without any testimony at all. At any rate, it sustains and is sustained by the circumstances, and these seven different witnesses, at least, testify, without procurement, collusion, or knowledge of the use to be made of their testimony, and opposed to them all is only the little elegiac rhyme by one of themselves:=

```"Yet must I not give nature all thy art,

```My gentle Shakespeare must enjoy a part."=

Only one single scrap of mortuary effusion on which to hang the fame of centuries! And if we exclude the circumstantial evidence and the expert testimony as false, and admit the one little rhyme as true, then our reason, judgment, and inner consciousness must accept as the author of the learned, laborious, accurate, eloquent, and majestic Sheakespearean pages, a wag--a funny fellow whose "wit (to quote Jonson again) was in his own power," but not "the rule of it," so much so, "that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped."

* Ante, page 68.

Surely it is a much less violent supposition that this funny Mr. Shakespeare--who happened to be employed in the theater where certain masterpieces were taken to be cut up into plays to copy out of them each actor's parts--that this waggish penman, as he wrote out the parts in big, round hand, improved on or interpolated a palpable hit, a merry speech, the {304}last popular song, or sketched entire a role with a name familiar to his boyish ear--the village butt, or sot, or justice of the peace, * may he; or, why not some fellow scapegrace of olden times by Avon banks? He did it with a swift touch and a mellow humor that relieved and refreshed the stately speeches, making the play all the more available and the copyist all the more valuable to the management. But, all the same, how this witty Mr. Shakespeare would have roared at a suggestion that the centuries after him should christen by his--the copyist's--name all the might and majesty and splendor, all the philosophy and pathos and poetry, every word that he wrote out, unblotting a line, for the players!

* He had not failed to see Dogberry and Shallow in the
little villages of Warwickshire--and the wonderful "Watch."
The "Watch" of those days was indeed something to wonder at.
In a letter of Lord Burleigh to Sir Francis Walsingham,
written in 1586, the writer says that he once saw certain of
them standing "so openly in pumps" in a public place, that
"no suspected person would come nigh them;" and, on his
asking them what they stood there for, they answered that
they were put there to apprehend three men, the only
description they had of them was that one of them had a
hooked nose. "If they be no better instructed but to find
three persons by one of them having a hooked nose, they may
miss thereof," reflects Burghley, with much reason. Mr.
Halliwell Phillips, in his "Outline of the Life of William
Shakespeare" (Brighton, 1881), page 66, thinks that this is
unlikely, because the magistrate mentioned by Aubrey would
have been too old in 1642, if he had been the model sought.

It must be conceded, say the new theorists:

I. That the plays, whether in the shape we now have them or not, are, at least, under the same {306}names and with substantially the same dramatis personæ.

II. That William Shakespeare was the stage manager, or stage editor; or, at any rate, touched up the plays for representation.

III. That the acting copies of the plays, put into the hands of the players to learn their parts from, were more or less in the handwriting of William Shakespeare, and that from these acting copies the first folio of 1623 was set up and printed.

At least, the best evidence at hand seems to establish all three of these propositions. This evidence is meager and accidental, but, for that very reason, involuntary, and, therefore, not manufactured; and it establishes the above propositions, as far as it goes, as follows:

I. In a volume, "Poste, with a racket of Madde-Letters," printed in 1603, a young woman is made to say to her lover: "It is not your liustie rustie can make me afraide of your big lookes, for I saw the plaie of Ancient Pistoll, where a craking coward was well cudgelled for his knavery; your railing is so near the rascall that I am almost ashamed to bestow so good a name as the rogue upon you."

Again, Sharpham, in his "Fleire," printed in 1607, has this piece of dialogue:

"_Kni_.--And how lives he with 'am?

"_Fie_.--Faith, like This be in the play, a' has almost killed himselfe with the scabbard!"

The first author thus makes his young woman to have seen Henry V., and the second alludes to the Midsummer-Night's Dream, where the bumpkin is made to kill himself by falling on his {307}scabbard instead of his sword. Besides, in the imperfect versions of the plays which the printers were able to make up, from such unauthorized sources as best served them, it is thought that there are unmistakable evidences that one of the sources was the shorthand of a listener, who, not catching a word or phrase distinctly, would put down something that sounded enough like it to betray the sources and his copy. For example: In the spring of 1602, a play called "The Revenge of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." was presented at the Globe theater. In 1603, two booksellers, Ling and Trundell, printed a play of that title, put William Shakespeare's name to it, and sold it. Now, in this version, we have such errors as "right done" for "write down" (Act I., Scene ii.); "invenom'd speech" for "in venom steeped" (Act I., Scene i.); "I'll provide for you a grave" for "most secret and most grave" (Act III, Scene iv.); "a beast devoid of reason" for "a beast that wants discourse of reason," and the like. Ling and Trundell, somehow or other, procured better copy, and printed a corrected edition in the following year; but the errors in their first edition were precisely such as would result from an attempt to report the play phonetically, as it was delivered by the actors on the stage. All the printers of the day seem to have made common piracy out of these plays, impelled thereto by their exceeding popularity. Hash says that the first part of King Henry VI., especially, had a wonderful run for those days, being witnessed by at least ten thousand people. *

* We take all these references from "Outlines of the Life of
Shakespeare," by I. O. Halliwell Phillips (Brighton. Printed
for the author's friends, for presents only. 1881), page 40,
to which capital volume we acknowledge our exceeding
obligation. Mr. Grant White in the Atlantic Monthly, October
1881, believes that he is able to trace the surreptitious
"copy" of this first Hamlet to the actor who took the part
of Voltimand. The inference from Mr. White's account of the
transaction, is precisely that we have noted in the text.

Of {308}this play a garbled version was put on the market by Millington, who, soon after, did the same thing by the Henry V.

II. Davenant instructed Betterton how to render the part of Henry VIII., assuring him that he (Davenant) had his own instructions from Lowin, and that Lowin got them from William Shakespeare in person. * (We have not accepted Davenant's evidence as likely to be of much value, when assuming to be Shakespeare's son, successor, literary executor, and the like, but this does not appear, on its face, improbable, and is no particular less if untrue.) Ravens-croft, who re-wrote Titus Andronicus in 1687, says, in his preface: "I have been told by some anciently conversant with the stage, that it (this play) was not originally his (Shakespeare's), but brought by a private actor to be acted, and he only gave some master touches to one or two of the principal parts or characters." **

"I am assured," says Gildon, *** "from very good hands, that the person that acted Iago was in much esteem as a comedian, which made Shakespeare put several words and expressions into his part, perhaps not so agreeable to his character, to make the audience laugh, who had not yet learned to endure to be serious a whole play."

* Id.

** Id.

*** Reflections on Rymer's "Short View of Tragedy," quoted
by Mr. Halliwell Phillips, in his work cited in last note.

(But if Shakespeare put them in to "catch the ear of the groundlings," who took {309}them out again for the folio of 1623? The Baconians would probably ask: "Did Bacon, after Shakespeare was dead?" And it could not have been a proofreader; for, if there was any proof-reader, he was the most careless one that ever lived. The folio of 1623 is crowded with typographical errors.) Somebody--necessarily Shakespeare--was in the habit of introducing into these Shakespearean plays the popular songs of the day. For example, the song, "A Lover and His Lass," in "As you Like it." was written by Thomas Morley, and printed in his "First Book of Ayres; or, Little Short Songs," in 1600. * And the ballad, "Farewell, Dear Love," in "Twelfth Night," has previously appeared in 1601, in the "Book of Ayres" of Robert Jones. ** It is probable, however, says Mr. Halliwell Phillips, that William Shakespeare had withdrawn from the management of the Globe; at the date of its destruction during the performance of Henry VIII. (which Mr. Phillips calls the first play on the English stage in which dramatic art was sacrificed to stage effect. It is curious, this being the case, to find the New Shakespeare Society rejecting the Henry VIII. as not Shakespearean on the philological evidence, and assuring us that Wolsey's soliloquy is not Shakespeare's, as did Mr. Spedding so many years before).

* In the last issue of the "Transactions of the New
Shakespeare Society" is a copy of what purports to be a
manuscript respecting the delivery of certain red cloth to
Shakespeare, on the occasion of a reception to James I., by
the corporation of London, in 1604, unearthed and guaranteed
by Mr. Furnivall.

** Folio, London, 1601.

The story of Queen Elizabeth's order for "Falstaff in Love" first appeared, in 1702, in the {310}preface to John Dennis's "Comicale Gallant," from whom Rowe quoted. Although smacking of the same flavor as the Southampton and King James "yarns"--it is worth noting that this story may possess, perhaps, some vestige of foundation. If these sounding plays, so full of religion, politics, philosophy, and statecraft, were presented at Shakespeare's theater, it is only natural that it should come to Elizabeth's ears. The lion Queen did not care to have her subjects instructed too far. She liked to keep them well in hand, and was only--she and her ministers--too ready to "snuff treason in certain things that went by other's names." The run of comedies at other theaters were harmless enough (an adultery for a plot, and an unsuspecting husband for a butt. This was a comedy; plus a little blood, it was a tragedy). Let the people have their fill of amusement, but it is better not to meddle with philosophy and politics. So there are things more unlikely to have happened than that Elizabeth, through her Lord Chamberlain, should have intimated to manager Shakespeare to give them something more in the run and appetite of the day. * The "Merry Wives of Windsor" was, in due time, underlined. But, somehow or other, it was with a would-be adulterer, rather than an injured husband, for a butt; and, somehow or other, Galen and Esculapius and Epicurius had intruded where there was no need of them.

* Collier--"Lives of Shakespeare's Actors, Introduction,
page xv."--says that there were at least two, and perhaps
three, other William Shakespeares in London in these days.

The salaciousness Elizabeth wanted (if the story is true) was all there, as well as the transformation scene; but, at the end, there is a re{311}buke to lechery and to lecherous minds that is not equivocal in its terms. * But that any of this Shakespeare fortune came, by way of gift or otherwise, from Southampton, there is no ground, except silly and baseless rumor, for believing. If Southampton had been the Rothschild of his time--which he was very far from being--he would not have given a thousand pounds (a sum we have estimated as equaling $25,000 to-day, but which Mr. Grant White puts at $30,000, and which Mr. Halliwell Phillips, ** on account of the "often fictitious importance attached to cash, arising from its comparative scarcity in those days," says ought even be as high as twelve pounds for one) to a casual acquaintance. The mere passing of such a sum would seem to involve other relations; and if Southampton knew Shakespeare, or Shakespeare Southampton, let it be demonstrated from some autobiographical or historical source--from some other source than the "Biographies of William Shakespeare," written by those slippery rhapsodists, the Shakespereans. If Damon and Pythias were friends, let it appear from the biographies of Damon, as well as from the biographies of Pythias. Let us find it in some of Southampton's papers, or in the archives or papers of some of his family, descendants, contemporaries, or acquaintances; in the chronicles of Elizabeth, Raleigh, Cecil, Essex, Rutland, Montgomery, Camden, Coke, Bacon, Tobie Mathew, Ben Jonson, or of somebody alive and with open eyes in London {312}at about that date, before we yield it historical assent, and make oath to it so solemnly.

* Perhaps, if the story were true, a rebuke to Elizabeth
personally in the line (Act V., Scene v.), "Our radiant
Queen hates sluts and sluttery."

As a matter of fact, and as the industrious Mr. Lodge confesses, * there is no such trace or record. Except from, the "biographers" of Shakespeare, no note, hint, or surmise, connecting the two names, can be anywhere unearthed, and they only draw the suggestion on which they build such lofty treatises from a dedication printed in the days when printers helped themselves to any name they wanted without fear of an injunction out of chancery. That any sonnets were ever dedicated to Southampton by anybody, is, we have seen, pure invention.

III. But that the famous First Folio of 1623 was set up from piecemeal parts written for separate actors, and that these were in William Shakespeare's handwriting, there seems to be contemporary circumstantial evidence.

We have seen that, although Ben Jonson has, for two hundred and fifty years, been believed when he said in poetry that William Shakespeare was not only the "Star of Poets" for genius, but that besides he would "sweat and strike the second heat upon the muses's anvil;" when he said in prose that "The players often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare that in writing (whatever he wrote) he never blotted out a line," he was supposed to be using a mere figure of speech. But it seems that he was telling the truth. For, in 1623--Shakespeare having been dead seven years--Heminges and Condell--two "players" (i. e., {313}actors), and the same that Shakespeare in his Will calls his "fellows"--publish the first edition of the plays we now call "Shakespeare"--and, on the title-page of that edition, advertise them as "published according to the _true original copies_."

* Portraits, Henry Wreothlesey, Earl of Southampton, Yol.
III., page 155. Bohn's edition.

Further on in their preface, they repeat, almost in his very words, Ben Jon-son's statement, asserting that "We have scarce received from him (William Shakespeare) a blot in his papers." What papers? What indeed, but "the true original copies" of these plays which were in William Shakespeare's handwriting? What else could it have been that "the players" (according to Ben Jonson) saw? Does anybody suppose that the poet's own first draft, untouched of the file and unperfumed of the lamp, went into "the players'" hands, for them to learn their parts from? And, even if _one_ player was allowed to study his part from the inspired author's first draft, his fellow "players" must have taken or received a copy or copies of their parts; they could not all study their parts from the same manuscript. The only reasonable supposition, therefore, is, that William Shakespeare made it part of his duties at the theater to _write out_ in a fair hand the parts for the different "players" (and no wonder they mentioned it, as "an honor" to him, that he lightened their labors considerably by the legibility of his penmanship, by never blotting out a line) and that, in course of time, these "true original copies" were collected from their fellow-actors by Heminges and Condell, and by them published; they remarking, in turn, upon the excellence of the penmanship so familiar to them. There is only wanted to confirm this supposition, a piece of {314}actual evidence as to what Heminges and Condell _did_ print from.

Now, it happens that, by their own careless proof reading, Heminges and Condell have actually supplied this piece of missing circumstantial evidence, as follows: Naturally, in these true original copies of a particular actors part, the name of the actor assuming that part would be written in the margin, opposite to or instead of the name of the character he was to personate; precisely as is done to-day by the theater copyist in copying parts for distribution among the company. It happened that, in setting up the types for this first edition from these fragmentary actors' copies, the printers would often accidentaly, from following "copy" too closely, set up these real names of the actors instead of the names of the characters. And--as any one taking up a copy or fac-simile of this famous "first folio" can see for himself--the editors carelessly overlooked these errors in the proof, and there they remain to this day: "Jacke Wilson," for "Balthazar," "Andrew" and "Cowley," for "Dogberry;"

"Kempe," for "Verges," and the like--the names of Shakespeare's actors--instead of the parts they took in the piece. It seems superfluous to again suggest that these unblotted "copies" could not have been the author's first draft of a play, or that an author does not write his compositions in manifold, or that there had been many actors to learn their parts in the course of from sixteen to twenty years.

Besides--even if Heminges and Condell had not told us--it would have still been perfectly evident, from an inspection of the "first folio," that the "copy" it was set up from was never completely in their hands, but {315}was collected piecemeal during the manufacture. For instance, we see where the printers left a space of twenty-nine pages, between "Romeo and Juliet" and "Julius Cæsar," in which to print the "Timon of Athens." But all the copy they could find of the "Timon" only made _eighteen_ pages, and so--by huge "head pieces" and "tail pieces," and a "Table of the Actor's Names" (given in no other instance) in coarse capitals--they eked out the "signature;" and, by omitting the whole of the next "signature," carried the pagination over from "98" to "109." The copy for "Troilus and Cres-sida" seems not to have been received until the volume was in the binder's hands (which is remarkable, too, for that play had been in print for fourteen years). The play is not mentioned in the table of contents, but is tucked in without paging (except that the first five pages are numbered 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, whereas the paging of the volume had already reached 232). "Troilus and Cressida," thus printed, fills two "signatures" lacking one page, and so somebody at hand wrote a "Prologue" in rhyme--setting out the argument--to save the blank page, and the like. Whatever "papers" Heminges and Condell "received from William Shakespeare then, were fair, unblotted copies of the actor parts, made by him for their use. It appears then, that--minute scholarship and the records apart--the foreman of a printing-house would have been at any time in the past two hundred and fifty years, without assistance from the commentators, able to settle the great Shakespearean authorship controversy.

While--from one standpoint--this testimony of the types is strong circumstantial evidence against {316}the Baconian theory, taken from another standpoint it is quite as strongly corroborative. For on the one hand, Bacon was alive when this folio was printed, and the man who rewrote his essays eleven times would scarcely have allowed his plays to go to the public so shiftlessly printed. But on the other hand, if the book was printed without consulting him, that insurmountable barrier--the fact that Bacon never claimed these plays--is swept away at once. We have simply to assume that he always intended, at some convenient season, to acknowledge them: that he was not satisfied with them as they appeared in the Heminges and Condell edition, and proposed revising them himself before claiming them, (we know how difficult he found it to satisfy his own censorship) or that he purposed completing the series, (for which the sketch of the Henry VII may have been placed among his private memoranda) at his leisure. We have then only to imagine that death overtook him suddenly (his death was sudden) before this programme had been completed, and his not acknowledging them; not leaving them--incomplete as he believed them--to "the next ages," was characteristic of the man.

"If I go, who remains? If I remain, who goes?" said Dante to the Council of Florence. Take the Shakespearean pages away from English literature, and what remains? Detain them, and what departs? And yet are men to believe that the writer of these pages left no impress on the history of his age and no item in the chronicle of his time? that, in the intensest focus of the clear, calm, electric-light of nineteenth century inspection and investigation, their author {317}stands only revealed in the gossip of goodwives or the drivel of a pot-house clientage? Who is it--his reason and judgment once enlisted--who believes this thing?

Columbus discovered the continent we call after the name of another. Where shall we find written the names of the genii whose fruit and fame this Shakespeare has stolen. Having lost "our Shakespeare" both to-day and forever, it will doubtless remain--as it is--the question, "Who wrote the Shakespearean dramas?" The evidence is all in--the testimony is all taken. Perhaps it is a secret that even Time will never tell, that is hidden deep down in the crypt and sacristy of the Past, whose seal shall never more be broken. In the wise land of China it is said that when a man has deserved well of the state, his countrymen honor, with houses and lands and gifts and decorations, not himself, but his father and his mother. Perhaps, learning a lesson from the Celestials; we might rear a shaft to the fathers and the mothers of the Immortality that wrote the Book of Nature, the mighty book which "age can not wither, nor custom stale" and whose infinite variety for three centuries has been and, until Time shall be no more, will be close to the hearts of every age and cycle of men--household words for ever and ever, The Book--thank heaven!--that nothing can divorce from us.

THE END.

INDEX

A.

Actors, names of Shakespeare, printed by mistake in first folio, 314.

Actors, fellows of W. S. Did they suspect imposition? 37.

Of Shakespeare's day, expected to improvise, 260.

Actresses, none in Shakespeare's day, 273.

Addison, Joseph, his estimate of Shakespearean plays, 26.

Alterations of the plays in 1st folio. See Emendations.

Althea, classical error as to, 210.

Angling, knowledge of, displayed in plays, 228.

Anonymous authorship, 283.

Or pseudonymic, fashionable in those days, 176.

Anti-Shakespearean theories--

A compromise of, suggested, 300.

Theobald anticipates, 301.

Areopagitica, Milton's, first asserted author's rights, 108.

Aristotle, Bacon and Shakespeare misquote passage of, 241.

Arms, John Shakespeare's, purchased by his son, 97.

Coat of, "cut from whole cloth," 274.

Obtained by falsehood, 274-275, note.

Protest against them, 274, note.

Purchased with Shakespeare's first earnings, 274.

Why Shakespeare purchased, 274.

Article in Chambers' Journal first raises authorship question, 185.

Aubrey, his testimony, 47, 69-71.

Expert evidence of, 303-304.

Audiences. See Plays.

Did not want scientific treatises, 229.

Formative days of, 263.

Not critical, 13.

The Shakespearean, 114-259.

Author, his interest to be anonymous, 113.

Eights, what were, 108.

Compensation, how obtained, 108.

Author of the plays. See Plays.

His fidelity to national characteristics, 42.

Insight of, into the human heart, no guess work, 43.

Of text, did not write stage business, 117.

Authorship of Henry VI., R. 0. White's idea of, 303.

Anonymous, 283.

Anonymous or pseudonymic authorship, prevalent, 176.

See Joint authorship.

Insecurity of. See Author, Copyright, Nashe, Printers, Plays.

Insecurity of authorship. See Star Chamber.

Autographs of W. S. See "Florio'" autograph.

B.

Bacon, and Shakespeare misquote passage of Aristotle, 241.

And Shakespeare, unknown to each other, 144.

Appears in New Theory, 284.

Believes in teaching history by drama, 242.

Could have appraised the S. Drama 180.

Did William Shakespeare write works of, 38, 39.

Directs certain MS. locked up, 244.

Driven to "the Jews," 233. See "Shylock."

His acquirements, 232.

His estimate of the theatre, 203.

His letter to the Queen, 237.

His "Northumberland MS.," 242.

His reasons for concealment, 201, 316.

His "Sonnet" what may be, 280, 281.

His youth compared with Shakespeare's, 232.

Last act of, his memorandum concerning, 297.

Letter to Sir John Davies, 236, 237.

May have brought together first folio, 236.

Neglected nothing, 297.

No cause to mourn for Elizabeth, 243.

Not mentioned to Shakespeare by Jonson, 145.

Bacon, often wrote in other's names, 243.

Or is he told of Shakespeare by, 145.

Possesses the qualities assigned to author of the dramas, 175.

Silent as to William Shakespeare, 180.

Surmised philosophical purpose, 203.

When appointed attorney-general plays cease to appear, 233.

Bacon, Delia, apparent audacity of announcement, 186.

Believed in a joint authorship, 206.

Believes "Hamlet" to be key-note of the plays, 190.

Claims to have discovered Bacon's clew, 192.

Death of, 200.

Estimate of her book, 196, note.

Extracts from her first paper, 189.

Her approach to an overt act, 197-199.

Her belief as to the manuscripts, 193, 194.

Her poverty, 188-195.

Her question as to the MS. answered, 244.

History of her theory, 188.

What it really was, 191.

Reception of her theory in America, 187.

In England, 187.

Supposed to be mad, 10, 11.

But her madness contageous, 11.

Visits Stratford, 174-195.

Old Verulam, id.

What her madness was, 191, 300.

Writes her first paper in 1855, 186.

"Baconian" and "Delia Bacon" theories discriminated, 201.

Baconian theory, abstract of, 232.

Bibliography of the, 246.

Indifferent as to Wm. S. being a law student, 245.

In general, what, 203.

Preponderance for, 297.

Bailey, Rev. John, invents a new Shakespeare story, 160, note.

"Bartholomew Fair," induction to. See Jonson, Ben, 139. Becker Death Mask, the, 103.

Bed, the second best, 50.

Not explained by R. Gr. White or by Steevens, 65.

"Beeston," author of "Schoolmaster story," 60.

"Beeston," who was he? 160.

Belleforest, borrowed from in the plays, 221.

Berni, paraphrased by Iago, 64.

Best seats at theatres on the stage, 273.

Bible, Shakespeare and the, 60, note, 231.

Bibliography of the Baconian theory, 246.

"Biographies" of William Shakespeare, modern, 161.

De Quincy's, 157.

Birthday of W. S. See St. George's day.

Blackfriars Theater, James Burbage builds, 256.

Blood, circulation of the, 208-210.

Boaden, James, his summary of the portraits, 93.

Boccaccio, borrowed from in the plays, 221.

Bohemia. See Sea-coast of Bohemia.

Book-making, knowledge of, displayed in plays. See Printing.

Botany, knowledge of, displayed in the plays. See Flowers.

Boucicault, Dion, a surmised example of what W. S. was, 31.

His suggestion, 285.

Answer to, 285.

Boys, took female parts in Shakespeare's day, 273.

Brother of W. S. See Oldys.

Brown C. Armitage, his discovery as to Sonnets, 278.

Brown, Henry, theory of the Sonnets, 279.

Bunyan, John, analogy of life to Shakespeare, 165, 166.

Illustrations of what genius can not do, 164.

Burbage, James, builds the Blackfriars theater, 256.

Burbage, Richard, lines interpolated in Hamlet to suit, 34, note.

Said to have painted portraits of W. S., 99.

Burns, Robert, an example of genius, 162.

Comparison between, and "Shakespeare," 219.

Illustration of what genius can not do, 163.

"Business" of Wm. Shakespeare, now obsolete, 298.

Bust in possession of Garrick Club, 105. See Garrick Club Bust.

Bust, the Stratford, 97. See Portraits.

Whitewashed, by Malone, 97.

Byron, Lord, his estimate of the Shakespearean plays, 19.

C.

Campbell, Lord, his notice of the legal acquirements of W. S. 59.

Canon of the plays, first folio plus Pericles, 291.

Capell, preserves specimens of Shakespeare's wit, 270.

Carlyle, Thomas, calls on Delia Bacon, 195.

Suggested her writing first paper, 195.

Cartwright, expert evidence as to, 303.

Testimony as to Shakespeare's acquirements, 264.

Catholic, Roman, was Shakespeare a, 117. See Papist.

Chandos portrait, the, 97.

Rumored to have been by Burbage, 99.

Chatterton, Thomas, difference between his case and Shakespeare's, 54.

Chettle, wonders that Shakespeare does not mourn Elizabeth, 243.

His apology for Greene's expression, 125.

Christian Monastery in Ephesus in days of Pericles, 116.

Chronologies of the plays, absurdity of the so-called, 86.

"Chronologies," where they all agree, 41.

Cinthio, borrowed from in the plays, 221.

Circumstantial evidence, corroborated, 303, passim.

Necessary to these questions, 294.

Classical knowledge, displayed in plays, 207, 208.

Difficulties suggested by, 211.

Clergy, benefit of, 262, note.

Included all learned professions, id.

Clown, the principal actor in Shakespearean theaters, 260, 261.

Coat of arms, Shakespeare's. See Arms.

Cohn, Albert, his theory as to Shakespeare in Germany, 216.

Coincidences, Shakespearean's idea of the, 83, note.

Coleridge, his opinion as to authorship, 45.

Commentators, bore down upon the Shakespearean text, 10.

Commentary, sample of the run of, 86.

Compromise theory, 300; applied to Henry VI., 302.

Theobald and others anticipate, 300, 301.

Condell, Henry. See Heminges & Condell.

Contemporaries of W. S., why they did not suspect him, or silent if they did, 57.

Contemporary statements in Baconian theory, 230.

Conversations of Ben Jonson with Drummond of Hawthorn-den, 139.

Copies, "true, original," identified, 312, 313, 314, 315.

Copyright, Disraeli thinks first folio a scheme for, 219, note.

First claimed 28 years after W. S.'s death, 108.

First English law of, 106. See Author.

Cornelius, Jansen, said to have been family painter of Southampton, 101.

Court of Star Chamber, takes jurisdiction of matters literary, 106.

Curse of Stratford, 299, 300.

D.

Davies, Rev. Richard, his account of W. S., 73.

Davies, Sir John, letter from Bacon to, 237.

Davenant, Sir William, owned the Chandos portrait, 100.

Claimed illegitimate descent from W. S., 100, note.

Death mask, the Becker, 103.

Dedication of the Sonnets, 277.

Why insulting, 282.

Twisted out of shape, 277.

Simple explanation of, 278.

"Delia Bacon" and "Baconian" theories, discriminated, 201.

Delia Bacon and new theories coincide, 299.

See Bacon, Delia. Denham, expert evidence of, 303, 304.

Testimony as to Shakespeare's acquirements, 265.

De Quincy, Thomas, his "biography" of W. S., 157.

Analyzed, 157.

Ignores authorities, 159.

Deer stealing, "rejected on insufficient evidence," 114.

Difficulty is that we know so much about W. S., rather than so little, 155.

Digges, expert evidence of 303, 304.

Testimony as to Skakesperean acquirements, 264.

"Discoveries" of Ben Jonson, fatal to Shakespearean theory, 134-136.

Disraeli thinks first folio a scheme for copyright, 249, note.

Dogberry, prototypes of, 301.

Doubtful plays, the, 285, 286, 287.

Doubtful plays, tlie, never disowned by Shakespeare, 287.

Not doubtful in Shakespeare's day, 285-290.

One missing, 290.

Dowdell Letter, the, 72.

Down, Edward, locates Proserpo's Island, 88, note.

Drama, esteemed by Bacon a form of teaching history, 242.

Droeshout portrait, 92-94.

Not flattering to its subject. 93.

Only one ever "authenticated," 103.

Probably accurate likeness, 94.

Was faithfully engraved, 94.

Drummond of Hawthornden, Ben Jonson's conversations with, 139.

Dryden, John, his estimate of Shakespearean plays, 21.

Dugdale, his mention of Shakespeare, 77.

"Duke Humphrey," a missing, doubtful play, 290.

Dyce follows Hallam, 302.

E.

Earlom portrait, the, 102.

Elaborations of the plays. See Emendations.

Elizabeth, Queen. See Queen Elizabeth.

Elizabeth, the English of, 208.

Elizabethan Dramatists, estimate of, 202.

Ellesmere, W. II. Smith's letter to, 187.

Elze, Dr. Carl, believes the S. was in Germany and Scotland, 221.

Emendations of the plays in first folio, extensiveness of, 234.

English, a then neglected accomplishment, 217.

A very rare accomplishment in Elizabeth's day, 41.

Probably not taught in Stratford grammar school, 41.

Purity of, used in plays, 218.

The, of Elizabeth, 207.

The, of Shakespeare, not derived from a study of contemporary writers, 42.

English Library, what was the, of Shakespeare's day, 230.

English renaissance drama. See Renaissance drama, English.

Enlargements of the plays in first folio. See Emendations.

Entomology, knowledge of, displayed in the plays, 227-229.

Epitaph on Shakespeare's tomb, 124.

Epitaphs, by William Shakespeare, on Elias James, John â Coombe, and others, 40.

Epitaphs, how Halliwell accounts for, 270.

Of W. S. not claimed by anybody else, 231.

Complete collection of, 119.

Essex connected with plays, 284..

Evelyn, his estimate of Shakespearean plays, 20.

"Evening Mass," not necessarily indicative of Shakespeare's creed, 118.

Evidence, internal, failure of, 296.

Of historical plays as to Bacon, 242.

Poetry not competent of, a fact, 131.

See Typographical evidence, Printing.

Expert evidence as to the plays, 303.

F.

Fac similes. See Forgery.

"Falstaff in love," order for, 309, 310.

Family of Shakespeare, not zealous of their relative's reputation, 83.

Farmer, Dr., his solution of the Shakespearean difficulty, 181.

Specimen of, 182.

His theory of Shakespeare, quite as incredible as the other, 183.

Stops just short of the truth, 183.

Felton's portrait. 93. See Portraits.

Female parts, taken by boys, 202.

Fire, great, of London, not accountable for dearth of Shakespearean records, 79.

First folio, contains only twenty-six known plays, 287;

Dilemma presented by, 290.

Evidence of authorship from, 312, 313, 314, 315.

Inspection of, proves sources of, 314.

Printed from Shakespeare's copies, 306-312. See Typographical evidence.

Time of appearance suggestive, 234. See Emendations.

"Florio," the, in British Museum, 169.

Flowers, knowledge of, displayed in plays, 229.

Forgery, fac simile is usually, 295.

Literary, not difficult, 295.

Of a signature, 295.

French and Italian, not taught at Stratford school, 221.

Fuller, eight years old when Shakespeare died. 269.

Expert evidence of, 303, 304.

Extract from, 269, note.

His estimate of the Shakespearean plays, 20.

His mention of Shakespeare, 77..

Testimony as to Shakespeare's acquirements, 265, 266, note.

Furness, W. II., unable to accept Shakespearean authorship, 154, 201.

G.

Gallants, relations with managers, 274.

Garrick Club bust, the, 105. See Portraits.

Geography, knowledge of, displayed in plays, 219.

Geology, knowledge of, in the plays, 213.

Germany, Shakespeare in, Cohn's theory, 216.

"Good friend, for Jesus's sake, forbear," etc., 124.

Grammar School of Stratford. See Stratford School. Gravitation, law of, stated in the plays, 212.

Great fire of London. See Fire.

Greene, Robert, a father of the English stage, 252

Cited as a witness, contra, 250, 251.

Had his admirers, 251, note.

His estimate of Wm. Shakespeare, 58.

No worse than his kind, 252.

Only contemporary of W. S. who exposed the forgery, 58 The "steal" he complained of, 302.

Title of his book, 126, note.

Contents of, 266.

Told the truth about Wm. Shakespeare, 124, 125, 126, note.

"Groat's worth of wit." See Greene, 126.

"Groom, Lord Leicester's," Delia Bacon's name for S., 193.

H.

Habitues of Shakespeare's theaters, who were, 37.

Hallam, Henry, doubtful as to accepting S.'s authorship, 45.

His estimate of the plays, 207.

Opinion as to their philology, 207.

Halliwell, accounts for the epitaphs, 270.

Follows Hallam, 302.

Halliwell-Phillips, J. C., his "outlines." 253.

Does not dispel the difficulties, 254.

Hamlet, believed by Delia Bacon to be key-note of plays, 190,

Harrison, John, cited as a witness, 250.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, his narrative of Delia Bacon, 197, 198.

Hawthornden, Drummond of. See Drummond of Hawthornden.

Heminges & Condell, cited as witnesses, 250.

Corroborate Jon son's testimony, 35.

How procured emendations, 234, 235.

Their "copy" for first folio, 315.

Their reason for the first folio, 249, note.

Henry the Sixth, Grant White's idea of, 303.

Greene's complaint about, 302.

Not Shakespeare's, 302.

Wonderful "run" of, 307.

Henry the Seventh, curious evidence of Bacon's, 242.

Heywood, author of portions of "Passionate Pilgrim," 109.

Writes plays of the period, 264.

"Historic Doubt," the Shakespearean myth not a, 66.

Historical evidence. See Circumstantial evidence. Passim. Historical plays, evidence of, as to Bacon, 242.

History, Bacon thinks taught by drama, 242.

Hume, David, his estimate of Shakespearean plays, 25.

Hunter, Rev. Joseph, identifies Proserpo's Island, 87, note.

I

Iago, a comedian's part, 308.

Speech of, a striking paraphrase of Berni, 64.

Ideal Shakespeare, every man may select his own, 99

"Imogen" name and character, whence taken, 217.

Imposture literary, state of the law favorable to, 113.

Ingleby, Dr C. M., his plea for Shakespeare, 250 Innuendo, evidence by way of, 237.

Supporting Ben Jonson 238, note.

Innuendoes, of Sir Tobie Matthew, 147, 237.

Insecurity of authorship, 109. See Authorship, Copyright, Printers, etc.

Nashe's, testimony as to, 109.

Heywood's, testimony as to, 109.

Internal evidence. See Evidence, internal.

Italian and French, not taught at Stratford school, 221.

Italy, knowledge of, displayed in plays, 219, 220.

Intricate acquaintance with manners and customs of, 220.

J.

"Jacques-Peter," probably original form of name "Shakespeare,". 172.

James, King. See King James.

Jansen, the S. portrait, 101.

Johnson, Gerard, said to have made Stratford bust, 97.

Johnson, Samuel, his estimate of Shakespearean plays, 26, 27, 28.

Specimens of his commentaries on plays, 27.

Joint authorship, Miss Bacon's theory was, 200.

Jones, Inigo, devises trappings for court masques, 271.

Jonson, Ben, a "famous witness," 152.

An expert witness, 303, 304.

Applies same words and figure to Bacon and to W. S. 145 A university man, 43.

Cited as a witness, contra, 250.

His conversations with Drummond, 139.

His "Discoveries" fatal to Shakespearean theory, 134-136.

His fling at Shakespeare in prologue, etc., 138.

His obituary verses, 129.

His testimony, 129.

Analysis of, 131.

His opinion of the Droeshout likeness, 92-94.

Why is libel on W. S., 98.

His plays not popular, 272.

Never mentions Bacon to W. S. or W. S. to Bacon, 145.

Plays Boswell to Bacon and Shakespeare alike, 146.

Studiously inclined, 43.

Wants to blot out 1,000 Shakespearean lines, 137.

Jordan, John, 74.

Jordan, John, probable inventor of story and verses, 123.

Judith Shakespeare, never taught to write her name. 40, 172.

K.

King James's letter, story of, when invented, 44, 167.

King, Thomas, his "Plea" for Shakespeare, 248.

His argument, 249.

L.

Ladies, seated on the stage, 273.

Lampoon on Sir Thomas Lucy, two versions of, 123.

Latinisms, in the plays, 207.

Law in "Merchant of Venice," 215, note.

Lawyers. See Young lawyers.

Learning contained in the plays, 205.

No reason for its being there, 229.

Legal acquirements of author of the plays, 59, 214.

Libraries, public or circulating, none in London, 52.

Library. See English library.

Did he have a, 266, 267.

Plays can not be studied without a, 266.

Plays not composed without a, 266.

Shakespeare's, what it must have been, 212.

License to print, meaning of a, 108.

Ling & Trundell, procure copies in shorthand, 307.

Proof of fact, 307.

Lin tot, Bernard, invented the King James letter story in 1710, 44, 168.

Literary imposture. See Imposture, literary.

Literature, persecuted if unlicensed, 107.

See Star Chamber, Copyright, 107.

"Lord Leicester's groom." See "Groom."

"Lover's complaint," appears with the Sonnets, 277.

"Lucrece," of doubtful authorship, 41, 218.

Lucy, Sir Thomas, lampoon on, 123.

M.

Macaulay, accounts for Bunyan's works, 165, 166.

Maids of honor, seated on the stage, 273.

Malone, Edmund, his "chronologies," 86, 87.

His contributions to Shakespearean biography, 76, et seq.

His Shakespearean labors, 76, 80, 85.

Whitewashes the Stratford bust, 97.

Management, theatrical, no sinecure in 17th century, 48.

Manuscripts, Bacon's Will directs certain, locked up, 244.

Delia Bacon's idea of their disposition, 193, 194.

May yet come to light, 244.

Minute and constant search for, 49, 50.

Northumberland, discovered by Spedding, 242.

Marshall's picture, 95. See Portraits.

Masques, William Shakespeare wrote none, 271.

Massey, Gerald, makes a romance from sonnets, 283.

Matthew, Sir Tobie, banters Bacon, 237.

His postscripts, 180, 181, 236, 237.

Innuendos of, 181.

Knew Bacon, but not Shakespeare, 147.

Quotation from, to this effect, 148.

Why he did not reveal Bacon's secret, 152, note.

Medicine, knowledge of, displayed in the plays, 210-215.

Medico-Legal knowledge, displayed in the plays, 215.

Merchant of Venice, law in, 245, note.

Meres, Francis, cited as a witness, 250.

His testimony critical, not historical, 132.

Merry Wives of Windsor, story of order for, may be true, 310.

Rebuke to lechery in, 310.

Perhaps to Elizabeth, 310, note.

Milton, John, first to claim author's copyright, 108.

His Areopagitica, 108.

His estimate of Shakespearean plays, 20, 36.

Value of his estimate, 20, 36.

Mitylene, curious custom prevalent in, alluded to in Pericles, 55, note.

Monasteries, dissolution of the, 175.

Monastery, Christian, in Ephesus, 116.

Montgomery, perhaps connected with plays, 284.

Music, familiarity with, 297, note,

N.

Nashe, Thomas, his testimony to insecurity of authorship, 109.

New and Delia Bacon theories, coincide, 299.

New theory, alternative presented by, 202.

Further details of, 284.

The, what is, 256.

Newton, his discoveries anticipated by plays, 212.

Northumberland MSS., discovered by Spedding, 242.

"Noverint," what Nashe may have meant by, 245.

O.

Oldys, story about a brother of William Shakespeare, 84.

Orthography of name Shakespeare, 169-171.

Othello, appears seven years after Shakespeare's death, 290.

P.

Palmerston, Lord, convert to Baconian theory, 143.

His idea of Ben Jonson, 143.

Papist, was W. S. a, 74, 117.

Parallelisms, argument from in Baconian theory, 238.

Holmes's list of, 238.

Examples of, 239, 240.

Reduced to an ordo by Holmes, 241.

Passionate Pilgrim, not written by W. S., 276.

Shakespeare's name removed in 3d edition, 276.

The, written partly by Heywood, 109.

Pascal, difference between his case and Shakespeare's, 55.

Pembroke, a dedication of Sonnets to, insulting, 282.

Sonnets could not be dedicated to, 281.

Pepys, his estimate of Shakespearean plays, 20.

"Pericles," allusion to a peculiar custom in, 55, note.

Rejected by first folio, but restored by Shakespeareans, 290.

Phillips. See Halliwell-Phillips.

Philological test of Shakespearean plays, 205-207.

Pickpockets, pilloried on the stage, 259, note,

Plagiarism. See Authorship, Greene, Heywood, Plays, Printers. Plays, anachronisms not misleading, 118.

Audiences of the, not critical as to the dialogue, 13.

Plays, authorship of, revealed, 312, 313, 314, 315.

Boys took female parts in, 273.

Classical knowledge of the, 208.

Contemporary criticism of the character of, 14.

Doubt as to single authorship of, 300.

Dramatic license of these, 118.

Emendations of, in first folio. See Emendations, First folio. Forty-two credited to W. Shakespeare, 290.

How put into type, 112, 306, 307.

Manuscripts of, jealously guarded by theaters, 115 Manuscripts of the, how procured, 110.

Name of actors in, 314.

Name of author of, 296.

Need not have been didactic, 271, 272.

Not composed without a library, 266.

No tradition connecting Shakespeare with composition of, 267.

Ordinarily mere local sketches, 263, 264.

Passed with first audiences as Shakespeare's, 15.

Printed instead of acted, 263.

Probable reason why called Shakespeare's, 56. Shakespearean, canon of, 291.

Sources of unauthorized reprints of, 307.

Tabulated, 289.

Taken down in shorthand, 307.

The, a phenomenon in experience, 1.

The "copyrights" of, 50.

Not mentioned in the will, 50.

The doubtful. See Doubtful plays.

Their action only used, 272.

The masses not "up" to, to-day, 261.

The philological test of, 205-207.

The present text made by piecemeal since W. S.'s death,

The, were popular with their first audiences, 15.

Traces in, of aristocratic authorship, 283.

Typographical evidence of authorship of, 312, 313, 314, 315. Use of Warwickshire names in the, 248.

Use of Warwickshire expressions in the, 248.

Plays, were performed, 305, 306, 307.

Where did the printers get hold of, 105, 306, 307. See Printers, Typographical evidence.

Why Bacon may not have acknowledged, 316.

Written to be played, not printed, 106.

Poems, dedication of, to Southampton, 179.

Fathered upon Shakespeare, 180.

The, See their various titles.

"Poetaster," the, a hit at Shakespeare in, 256, note.

Poetical works of William Shakespeare, complete collection, 119.

Poetry, not competent evidence of a fact, 131.

Pope, Alexander, his apprentices write parts of, 295.

His estimate of plays, 26.

Indicates portions to admire, 205.

Portraits, Boaden's account of the, 90.

Bust in possession of Garrick Club, 105.

Criticised as if purely ideal, 92.

Droeshout, the only one that ever was authenticated, 92.

Earlom's copy, 102.

One lately discovered in Australia, 104.

Shakespearean argument from the, 91, 92.

The Chandos, 99.

The Felton Head.

The Jansen, 101.

The Marshall.

The Stratford bust, 97.

The Zuccharo, 101.

"Practicable" scenery, unknown, 260.

Exceptions, 260, note.

Presumption, the, as to the Shakespearean authorship, its value, 15.

Well disturbed in 1856, 187.

Printed matter, most careful record of, in those days, 116.

Printers, assigned any name they pleased to literary work, 109.

Did what they pleased with literary work, 109.

Of first folio followed copy too closely, 314.

Where did they get "copy" for the plays, 105, 112.

Printing, knowledge of, displayed in plays, 222-227.

Of the Sonnets. See Sonnets.

Prologue to "Every Man in his Humour," 138. See Jonson, Ben.

Proof reader, of first folio, 309.

Prophesy, no such thing as a prophet of the past, 56.

Proserpo's Island "located," by Hunter, 87, note; by Dowden, 88, note.

Pseudonymic authorship. See anonymous.

Putnam's Magazine, article in, 185. See Bacon, Delia.

Q.

Queen Elizabeth, her apochryphal correspondence with W. S., 168.

Her order for Falstaff may be true, 309, 310.

Legend of her order for "Merry Wives," 150, note.

Queen Elizabeth's glove, story of, 168.

Question of the authorship, why not raised earlier, 18.

First raised in Chamber's Journal, 185.

R.

Raleigh, knows nothing of William Shakespeare, 149.

Perhaps connected with plays, 284.

Suggested as an author of the S. Drama, 175.

"Ratsei's Ghost," pamphlet of, 243.

Ravenscroft, his estimate of Shakespearean plays, 23.

Readings, various, of the text of the plays, what they prove, 34.

Red cloth issued to Shakespeare, 309, note.

Renaissance drama, English, 174, 202.

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, copies the Chandos, 99.

Roman Catholic, was Shakespeare a, 117.

"Rosalin's complaint," not by W. S., 283.

Rowe, his life of W. S., probably honest, 76.

Rutland, perhaps connected with plays, 284.

Rymer, Thomas, his estimate of Shakespearean plays, 24.

S.

Scenery. See Practicable scenery, 260.

"Schoolmaster Story." See Beeston.

Scotland, Dr. Elze thinks Shakespeare was in, 221.

Sea-coast of Bohemia, 230.

A part of the stage business, 178.

A theory for, 178, note.

Second-best bed, explained by Shakespeareans, 89.

Shaftesbury, his estimate of Shakespearean plays, 24.

Shakespeare, John, ale-taster of Stratford, 46.

Fined for throwing muck, 253.

Records of his life, 46.

Shakespeare, Judith. See Judith Shakespeare.

Shakespeare, Mrs. Wm., why she did not live with her husband, 90.

Shakespeare, Susanna. See Susanna Hall.

Slandered by a neighbor, 253.

Law suit for 253.

Shakespeare, the name, original form probably "Jacques-Peter," 172.

Shakespeare, "William, a good penman, 32.

A reckless borrower, 265.

Authography of the name, 169.

Author, not editor, 303.

A "utility" gentleman in the stock company, 31-33. "Autograph" in British Museum, 169.

A wag, not a worker, 304.

Born versed in all knowledge? 219.

Career in Stratford, 47.

Covers his tracks well, 293.

Credited with forty-two plays in lifetime, 290.

Did he make emendations to plays, 234, 235, 236.

Did he write Bacon's works, 204.

Did not write his first composition in his native patois, 41. Difficulties presented by his Will, 49.

Does not disclaim authorship of Passionate Pilgrim, 276. Dramatic canon of, and Bacon, 203 Editor, not author. 306-308.

Expert evidence as to, 303.

Family. See Family of Shakespeare.

"Father" anything, willing to, 287.

Fortunate enough to secure a poet, 176, 177.

Funny Mr., 304.

His authorship disproved by first folio, 313, 314, 315.

His birthday, 157.

St. George's day selected for, 158.

Shakespeare, William, his "business" rejected, 298.

His death bed, 125, 126.

His income, in modern figures, $25,000, 40.

His income, perhaps exaggerated by Ward, 75.

His interest to keep plays out of print, if his, 115.

His library. See Library, 266.

His literary acquirements, 39.

His name a safe pseudonym, 284.

His name discovered in Northumberland MSS., 242.

His rapid accumulation of wealth, 43.

A self-made man, 43.

His supposed travels, 216.

His weakness for pedigrees, 256, note.

Holding horses, story not improbable, 168.

Interpolates as he copies, 304.

Interpolates popular songs, 309.

Made his money by acting, 244.

Makes Iago a comedian, 308.

May have been pre-contracted to his wife, 253.

Name possesses market value, 257, 263.

Name removed from 3d edition of "Passionate Pilgrim," 276.

Natural that he should have followed players to London, 51.

Never suspected his reputation, 305.

No pride of authorship in, 268.

Not a law student, 245.

Not solicitous or expectant of any posthumous fame, 48.

No tradition connecting, with composition of plays, 267.

No uncertainty as to his character, 38.

Nowhere met in tradition or history, as a school-boy, 40.

One "biographer" of, 161.

Only one attempt to prove him a university man, 222.

Other duties, 33.

Out of favor with King James, 150, note.

Portraits of, 91.

Usually criticised as if purely ideal, 92.

Probably remodeled the plays, 177.

Records of his life, 46.

Retires to money lending in Stratford, 233.

Rev. Richard Davie's life of, 73.

Shakespeare, William, R. G. White accuses him of "want of probity," 303.

Sketches Dogberry, 298, 299.

Specimen of his wit, 270.

Speculations as to first employment, 257.

"Wanted art," 140.

Was he admitted to noble companionship? 274.

Was he a Roman Catholic? 117.

Was not lawyer, physician, etc., 297.

Was there any-thing he did not know? 230.

Where did he find his leisure? 231.

Where did he get his material? question never asked, 166, 167.

Who wrote. See Who wrote Shakespeare. Passim,

Why he purchased arms, 274.

Wrote no masques, 271.

Shakespearean question, not what, but who? 296.

Shakespeare's Poetical Works, complete collection of, 119.

Sharpham, his evidence, 306.

"Shylock" appears at a suggestive time, 233.

Sidney, description of theatrical properties, 258.

Siege of Troy, gunpowder at, 179.

Signatures, 295. See Forgery.

Smith, W. H., can not accept S.'s authorship, 154.

Follows Miss Bacon, does not claim priority over her, 187.

Thinks that W. S. could not read or write, 171.

Songs, Shakespeare introduces popular, 309.

Sonnets, authorship of, not involved in this question, 276.

Dedicated by their printer to friend of his own, 277.

Mr. Bernsdorf's theory as to, 280.

Mr. Boaden's theory of, 279.

Mr. Brown's theory is of doubtful force, 279.

M. Chasles's theory as to, 280.

Mr. Dowden's theory as to, 280.

Mr. Massey,s theory as to, 282.

Mr. Minto's theory as to, 280.

Mr. Niel's theory as to, 282.

Mr. Thompson's theory as to, 280.

Mr. Wordsworth's theory as to, 280.

Sonnets, speculations as to meaning of, 278-282.

Why assigned to Shakespeare, 277.

Southampton, a comparatively poor man, 273, 311.

Dedication to, as "Mr. W. H.,: insulting, 282.

Alleged acquaintance with Shakespeare, 41, 311, 312.

Did he forget his caste? 273, 274.

His gift to Shakespeare incredible, 41, 180.

How perhaps connected with plays, 284.

Never suspected of literary tastes, 1, 273.

No evidence that he knew Shakespeare, 311, 312.

Biographers find no trace of it, 311.

Story manufactured by Shakespeareans, 311, 312.

Poems dedicated to, 179.

Story of his munificence, why probably a forgery, 44, 311, 312.

Supposed friendship for Shakespeare, 273.

Why great doubt as to his being a companion of Shakespeare, 40.

Spedding, James, believed in more than one author of Henry VIII., 184.

Spenser and Chaucer, the great fire not fatal to records of, 80.

Spenser, his reference to "Gentle Willie," explained, 148, note.

His reference to "Ætion," 147, note.

Stage, best seats were on the, 273.

"Business," probably not written by author of text, 117. See "Business."

Modern, rejects the Shakespearean "business"

Then only available depot for literary work, 174.

Star Chamber, court of, 100.

Had jurisdiction of literary matter, id.

Stationers' Company, the blood-hound of the Star Chamber, 107.

The origin of, 107.

Steele, Richard, his estimate of Shakespearean plays, 26.

St. George's day, selected as a birth-clay for W. S. 158.

Stratford bust, 97. See Portraits.

Said to be by Gerard Johnson, 97.

Said to be by Thomas Stanton. 105.

Stratford Grammar School, was W. S. a pupil of, 52.

Stratford portrait, the, 105.

Stratford School, speculations as to, 42, 52, 53, 214, 217,

Stratford, vicar of, treats Miss Bacon tenderly, 198.

Style, literary, not reliable evidence, 294.

Of Bacon and Shakespeare dissimilar, 294.

Of the Shakespearean plays, 205.

"Reader must judge for himself as to, 294.

"Suppers after the play," 274.

Susanna Hall, enigmatical epitaph over, 85.

Swift, Dean, his estimate of Shakespearean plays, 23.

T.

Taine, his picture of Shakespearean theaters, 258.

Of Shakespearean audiences, 259.

Tate, Nahum, his estimate of Shakespearean plays, 21.

"Tempest," was a drollery in Ben Jonson's day, 139, note.

Theater, management of, a precarious livelihood in the 17th century, 48.

Theaters, best seats on the stage, 259.

Of Shakespeare's day, description of, 258.

Shakespearean habitues of, 37.

See Audiences, Plays. Theobald and others, anticipate compromise theory, 301,

Theobald believed in more than one Shakespearean author, 181.

Theories, compromise between, 300.

Shakespearean, three well defined, 188.

See New Theory, Delia Bacon, and Baconian.

Who anticipated, 301.

T.

Thompson, Wm., his "Renaissance Drama," 247.

Thinks manuscripts may be safe, 244.

Thorpe, Thomas, dedicates the Sonnets to a friend, 277, 278.

Prints and copyrights the Sonnets, 277.

Trade-mark, sort of common in name, 292.

Travels, Wm. Shakespeare's supposed, 216.

Treatises, scientific, the audiences did not want, 229.

"Troilus and Cressida," 285. See Doubtful plays.

Troy. See Siege of Troy.

"True, original copies," proof of what they were, 313, 314.

See Copies, First folio, Typographical evidence.

Typographical evidence of authorship, 312, 313, 314, 315,

U.

Ulrici, opinion of, learning of plays, 221.

Unitary theory, property of Smith and Holmes. See Bacon, Delia, 200.

V.

Vega, Lope de, computed to have written 21,300,000 verses, 184.

Writes "without blotting a line," 184.

Venice, knowledge of, displayed in plays, 219.

Venus and Adonis, argument from that poem alone, 43.

Boldness of assignment to W. S., 275.

Popularity of, 293.

Why not a first production, 294.

Why of doubtful authorship, 41, 218.

W.

Ward, Dominie, hears about Shakespeare, 304.

Testimony as to Shakespeare's acquirements, 265.

Ward, Rev. John, his account of W. S., 68.

Warwickshire, names, use of, in the plays, 248.

Expressions, use of in plays, 248.

"Watch," the, actual curiosities, 305.

Burghley's account of, 305, note.

Werner, anticipated by the plays, 213.

"Wet combats," wit combats were, 268.

Is it a misprint? 269.

"W. H.," a friend of Thorpe, dedicator or dedicatee? 278.

Theories as to meaning of, 280-282.

Various translations of, 279.

Who was he? 109, 279, 280, 282.

White, R. G., admits that managers "kept a poet," 85, note.

His idea of Henry VI., 303.

Opinion of English of plays, 218.

Who wrote Shakespeare? Passim. Question first asked in 1852, 185.

Wilkes, Geo., his "American Point of View," 247.

Will, difficulties of the, explained, 271.

Will, no mention of any plays in, 50.

Or of any theatrical property, 50.

"Wit combats," were "wet combats," 268.

Wood, Anthony, his mention of W. S., 78.

Works, poetical, of W. S. See Poetical works.

Wotton, description of a popular play, 263.

Description of theaters of his days, 258.

Y.

"Young ladies' argument," the, 91.

Young lawyers, wrote plays rapidly, 84, note.

Z.

Zuccharo, portrait, the, 107. See Portraits.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Shakespearean Myth, by Appleton Morgan