Part 14

“If my Fate would permit me to live according to my Wishes I would flie over into _England_, that I might behold whatsoever remaineth, in your cabinet of the _Verulamian_ Workmanship, and at least make my eyes witnesses of it, if the possession of the Merchandize be yet denied to the Publick.... At present I will support the Wishes of my impatient desire, with hope of seeing, one Day, those [issues] which being committed to faithful Privacie, wait the time till they may safely see the Light, and not be stifled in their Birth.”

This letter, we note in passing, shows us that in the _Verulamian_ literary Workshop certain “Merchandize” was produced which was “denied to the public”--that in fact (as we know by other evidence to have been the case) there were many writings of Bacon “committed to faithful Privacie”--to Rawley e.g.--which were to be kept unpublished till they could “safely see the light,” but which, most unfortunately, were lost or destroyed.

The suggestion, therefore, is that this paper volume, now known as the Northumberland MS., was a product of the famous Verulamian Workshop or _Scriptorium_, and Mr. Bompas adopting (with too great facility as I think) Mr. Dowse’s hypothesis that “the scribbler” was John Davies of Hereford, and referring to the known fact that the “Praises” were written for Essex’s _Device_ in 1592, points out that at that date John Davies was only 27 and at the beginning of his career, and that it is “fifteen years later, in 1607, that an entry appears in the Northumberland accounts of a payment showing his employment by the Earl.” Mr. Bompas, therefore, suggests that in 1592 Davies might have been in Bacon’s employ; he seems, however to have overlooked the fact that, according to Mr. Dowse, the “Praises” were _not_ written by Davies, since they are “in a totally different hand.”[112] The one fact which emerges is that we really do not know who wrote any part of the Manuscript, but that it was written for Bacon by one or more of his secretaries seems entirely probable, seeing that six of the nine pieces which now form its contents are transcripts of Bacon’s works, then unpublished. How Bacon, or his secretary, came into possession of two unpublished plays of Shakespeare, is a matter for speculation.

As to the “scribble” itself Mr. Spedding writes: “At the present time, if the waste leaf on which a law stationer’s apprentice tries his pens were examined, I should expect to find on it the name of the poet, novelist, dramatic author, or actor of the day, mixed with snatches of the last new song, and scribblings of ‘My dear Sir,’ ‘Yours sincerely,’ and ‘This Indenture witnesseth.’ And this is exactly the sort of thing which we have here.” Mr. Dowse demurs to this, for, says he, “the cases are not parallel: there is nothing trivial or vulgar in our scribbler: he was a serious and even religious man: the subjects that interest him are lofty, and like his acquaintance noble.” I will not offer an opinion on this point, viz., as to whether the scribbler was merely an idle penman, or “a serious and religious” penman, but, however that may be, I do not think that Mr. Spedding’s analogy holds good. “A law stationer’s apprentice” might certainly exercise his pen on a “waste leaf” as Mr. Spedding suggests, but an outer sheet of a paper volume in which works of importance, or so considered, were transcribed, the whole volume being stitched together, can hardly be described as a waste leaf. In days when printing was far less common than it is now such a volume would be valuable. Moreover, on the outside leaf were written the contents of the volume. A law stationer’s apprentice would hardly dare to exercise his idle pen on the outside skin of a newly-engrossed deed. I am inclined, therefore, to agree with Mr. Dowse that the scribblings were to a certain extent “serious.” There is method in their madness. And they are such “acts of ownership,” that the scribbler must have had a complete _dominium_ over the document.

I have been long, and I fear, tedious over this curious work, but the more one considers Mr. Dowse’s tract the more does one find it provocative of criticism. I will now leave the regions of imagination for those of fact. Whether or not John Davies of Hereford was “the Scribbler” seems to me of comparatively little importance.[113] What is of importance is this:--We have here an undoubtedly Elizabethan manuscript volume. Its contents, as they have come down to us, are nine articles, out of which seven are by Bacon. It seems, therefore very reasonable to believe that the volume was written for Bacon and was perhaps a product of the “Verulamian workshop.” Very possibly it was presented by him either to the Earl of Northumberland, or to Sir Henry Neville, his own nephew. It is quite reasonable to believe that among the contents of the volume, as it originally stood, were the two Shakespearean plays, _Richard II_ and _Richard III_. In any case these were noted on the outer leaf either as having been transcribed, or for future transcription. Such note would not, in all probability, have been made after 1597, when these plays were first (anonymously) published, at the price of sixpence each. At that date “Shakespeare” was unknown to the public as a dramatic author, for not a play had as yet been published under that name. Here then we have the names and the works of Bacon and Shakespeare associated, in close juxtaposition, in a contemporaneous manuscript. Further, the transcriber of, at any rate, part of the work, writing not idly but with serious thought, exercises his pen by writing the names, or parts of the names of Shakespeare and Bacon, over and over again, on the outside sheet. “William Shakespeare,” the author of _Richard II_ and _Richard III_, seems to be a name familiar to him, although those plays had not as yet been published, and indeed were not published under the name of “Shake-speare” till 1598. He writes the name of “Shakespeare” “as it was always printed,” and not as Shakspere of Stratford “in any known case ever wrote it.” And not content with associating thus closely the names of Shakespeare and Bacon, on a volume containing some works by both these writers, if two they really were, he must needs, on the same outer sheet, quote a line, slightly varied, from _Lucrece_, and a word from _Love’s Labour’s Lost_. No other name of poet, or actor, appears upon “the Scribble” as distinct from the table of contents. It is all either Shakespeare or Bacon.

If a dishonest Baconian could fabricate fictitious evidence in the same way as the forger Ireland did for Shakspere, it seems to me that he might well endeavour to concoct such a document as this. But the Northumberland MS. is an undoubtedly genuine document, and it is but natural that the “Baconians” should make the most of it.--G.G.

FINAL NOTE

There is one argument in support of the contention that Bacon was the author of _Venus and Adonis_ which seems to me to deserve more attention than it has hitherto received.

It was, I believe, first put forward by the late Reverend Walter Begley, of St. John’s College, Cambridge, in his book, _Is it Shakespeare?_[114]--a work which every one interested in the Shakespeare problem ought to read, because it is replete with both information and amusement, and there is hardly a dull page in it. The argument is derived from the Satires of Marston and Hall, our early English satirists, of the sixteenth century, who wrote in bitter vein the one against the other. Both of them have a good deal to say concerning one _Labeo_, which is a pseudonym for some anonymous writer of the time. Now in 1598 Marston published a poem founded on the lines and model of _Venus and Adonis_, which he called “Pigmalion’s Image” (_sic_)--a love poem, not a satire--and as an appendix to it he wrote some lines “in prayse of his precedent Poem,” where “Pigmalion” had, according to the old legend, succeeded in bringing the image he had wrought out of ivory to life, and in this appendix occur the following lines:

And in the end (the end of love I wot), Pigmalion hath a jolly boy begot. So Labeo did complaine his love was stone, Obdurate, flinty, so relentlesse none; Yet Lynceus knowes that in the end of this He wrought as strange a metamorphosis.

Now compare the following lines from _Venus and Adonis_ (199-200):

Art thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel-- Nay, more than flint, for stone at rain relenteth.

Here we have Labeo’s complaint almost word for word, and we are reminded that at the end of _Venus and Adonis_ there was the “strange metamorphosis” of Adonis into a flower, quite as strange as that of “Pigmalion’s Image.”

Is it not clear, then, that by Labeo is meant the author of _Venus and Adonis_? It may be said, of course, that it was not the author, but Venus who complained that Adonis was “obdurate, flinty,” and relentless, but that is a futile objection, for Marston evidently puts the words of Venus into Labeo’s mouth, and it can only be the author of the poem to whom he alludes.

Who, then, was _Labeo_? Well, “these University wits,” as Mr. Begley writes, “were steeped in Horace, Juvenal, Persius, and Ovid, and thence brought forth a nickname whenever an occasion required it.” Now in Horace we read:

Labeone insanior inter sanos dicatur.

and we learn that M. Antistius Labeo was a famous lawyer, who, it is said, by too much free speaking had offended the Emperor Augustus.[115]

But what more have we about this sixteenth century Labeo? Well, Bishop Hall in his satires mentions him several times, and reflects upon him as a licentious writer who takes care to preserve his anonymity, and, like the cuttle-fish, involves himself in a cloud of his own making. Thus in the second book of his satires, which he called (after Plautus) _Virgidemiæ_, i.e., a bundle of rods, Hall attacks Labeo in the following words:

For shame! write better, Labeo, or write none; Or betterwrite, or, Labeo, write alone. (Bk. II, Sat. 1)

and he ends this satire thus:

For shame! write cleanly, Labeo, or write none.

From these lines we may infer, as Mr. Begley says, that Labeo did not write alone, but in conjunction with, or under cover of, another author, and also that he did not write “cleanly,” but in a lascivious style, such as the style of _Venus and Adonis_, it might be.

But there is a further passage in Hall’s _Virgidemiæ_ (Book IV, Sat. 1) which I must quote:

_Labeo_ is whipp’d and laughs me in the face: Why? for I smite, and hide the galléd place. Gird but the Cynick’s Helmet on his head, Cares he for _Talus_ or his flayle of lead?

Long as the crafty _Cuttle_ lieth sure In the black _Cloude_ of his thick vomiture, Who list complain of wrongéd faith or fame When he may shift it to another’s name?

It would take too long if, in this note, I were to attempt the explanation of this “Sphinxian” passage, as Dr. Grosart called it, but the general meaning seems clear enough, viz.: “I, the Satirist, whip Labeo, but Labeo merely laughs at me, for he knows he can shift the blame, and the punishment, on to another whose name he makes use of, while he himself lies, like the Cuttle, in the Cloud of his own vomiture.”[116]

Then, writes Mr. Begley, “Labeo is the writer of _Venus and Adonis_; and as there is every reason to think that Marston used the name Labeo because Hall had used it, we are therefore able to infer that Hall and Marston both mean the same man. We, therefore, advance another step, and infer that the author of _Venus and Adonis_ did not write alone, that he shifted his work to another’s name (certainly a Baconian characteristic), and acted like a cuttle-fish by interposing a dark cloud between himself and his pursuers.”

But what proof or evidence is there that Labeo stood for Bacon? Well, Marston’s Satires were published, with his “Pigmalion’s Image,” in 1598, several months after Hall’s first three books of _Virgidemiæ_ had appeared, and in his Satire IV, entitled _Reactio_, Marston goes through pretty well the whole list of writers whom Hall had attacked, and defends them, but, curiously enough, he seems to take no notice of Hall’s attack on Labeo, though that attack was a marked and recurrent one. But, says Mr. Begley, “_Labeo is there_, but concealed in an ingenious way by Marston, and passed over in a line that few would notice or comprehend. But when it _is_ noticed it becomes one of the most direct proofs we have on the Bacon-Shakespeare question, and, what is more, a genuine and undoubted contemporary proof.” What, then, is that proof? It is found in a line addressed by Marston to Hall:

What, not _mediocria firma_ from thy spite? (Sat. IV, 77)

That is to say: “What, did not even _mediocria firma_ escape thy spite?”--or we might translate: “What, was not even _mediocria_ safe (_firma_) from thy spite?”

“_Mediocria firma_,” therefore, stands for a writer, and one who had been attacked by Hall. And who was that writer? Of this there can, surely, be no doubt. “Mediocria firma” was Bacon’s motto, and we find it engraved over the well-known portrait of _Franciscus Baconus Baro de Verulam_, which appears at the commencement of his _Sylva Sylvarum_. Moreover, it is a motto which has never been used except by the Earls of Verulam or the Bacon family. “Mediocria firma,” therefore, stands for Bacon. But is “Mediocria firma” identical with “Labeo”?

Well, “Labeo,” as used by Marston, stands for the author of _Venus and Adonis_. Of that, I think, there can be no doubt. And Hall’s “Labeo,” the elusive author of a lascivious poem, who writes under a pseudonym and who is always prepared to shift the responsibility upon somebody else, seems eminently characteristic of Francis Bacon. And it is Bacon, under the guise of “Mediocria firma,” the spiteful attacks upon whom in Hall’s Satires are deprecated by Marston. In fine, it seems to be eminently probable, though it cannot be said to be absolutely proved, that “Labeo” and “Mediocria firma” are one and the same.

The above is but a brief outline of the argument put before his readers by the late Walter Begley, and I have no space to elaborate it further in this note. I should like, however, to add one final word. If Bacon was the author of _Venus and Adonis_, then he was also the author of _Lucrece_. Well, for myself, I should not be at all surprised to find that he was, in fact, the author of that long, wearisome, tedious, and pedantic poem, where the outraged matron, “_après avoir été violée autant qu’on peut l’être_,” like Candide’s Cunegonde, and “pausing for means to mourn some newer way,” at last “calls to mind where hangs a piece of skilful painting, made for Priam’s Troy,” the contemplation of which leads to a prolonged train of reflection concerning Ajax and Ulysses, Paris and Helen, Hector and Troilus, Priam and Hecuba, etc., etc., all of which is singularly out of place in the mouth of Tarquin’s unhappy victim. Nor would I, in this connection, omit to refer to that long and curious and unwanted passage concerning heraldry which we find in an earlier part of the poem (lines 54-72), and upon which Mr. George Wyndham remarks that: “Whenever Shakespeare in an age of technical conceit indulges in one ostentatiously, it will always be found that his apparent obscurity arises from our not crediting him with a technical knowledge which he undoubtedly possessed, be it of heraldry, of law, or philosophic disputation.”

Here, in conclusion, I would advert to a passage in this stilted poem which is curiously illustrative of “Shakespeare’s knowledge of a not generally known custom among the ancient Romans.” When Tarquin has forced an entry into the chamber of Lucrece, we read: “Night wandering weasels shriek to see him there,”--a line which for a long time puzzled all the commentators. For what could _weasels_ be doing in Collatine’s house or in Lucrece’s chamber? At last, however, some scholar directed attention to the note on Juvenal’s Satire XV, 7, in Mayor’s edition, where we learn that some animal of the weasel tribe was kept by the Romans in their houses for some purpose or another; and referring to Facciolati’s Dictionary, we read: “Mustela, γαλὴ, animal quadrupes parvum sed oblongum, flavi coloris, muribus, columbis, gallinis infestum. Duo autem sunt genera: _alterum, domesticum quod in domibus nostris oberrat_, et catulos suos, ut auctor est Cicero, quotidie transfert, mutatque sedem, serpentes persequitur,” etc.

The Romans then, it seems, had no knowledge of the domestic cat, and had domesticated an animal of the weasel tribe which they kept in the house to kill mice or it might be snakes, and for other purposes. Now, this is just the sort of out-of-the-way and recondite information which Bacon would have delighted in. But does any sane and reasonable man suppose that Will Shakspere of Stratford had ever heard of the “night-wandering weasel” in an ancient Roman house? The Baconian authorship of _Venus and Adonis_ and _Lucrece_, and, I would add, the _Sonnets_, may be rejected as “not proven,” but the idea that these works were written by the player who came to London as a “Stratford rustic” in 1587, is surely one of the most foolish delusions that have ever obsessed and deceived the credulous mind of man. _O miseras hominum mentes, O pectora cæca!_

THE END.

_Cahill & Co., Ltd., London, Dublin and Drogheda._

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Letters of Henry James._ Macmillan, 1920, Vol. I., p. 432.

[2] See _Times Literary Supplement_, June 2, 1921. Article headed “Hamlet and History.”

[3] See _Sidelights on Shakespeare_ by H. Dugdale Sykes. (The Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford-upon-Avon. 1919.)

[4] The theory that the handwriting of this “addition” to the play of _Sir Thomas More_ is the same handwriting as that of the Shakspere signatures, is, I do not hesitate to say, one of the most absurd propositions ever advanced even in Shakespearean controversy.

[5] See _Sonnet_ 144.

[6] It is only necessary to read the life of John Florio in the _Dict. of National Biography_ or the _Encyc. Brit._ to appreciate the absurdity of this attempt to find him in Shakespeare’s Falstaff. An almost equally silly attempt has been made by another sapient critic to identify him with Holofernes in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_. Now no two characters could be more dissimilar than those of Falstaff and Holofernes, yet Florio according to one wiseacre was the prototype of the former, and according to another wiseacre of the latter! But there is no limit to the absurdities which are symptomatic of the _rabies Stratfordiana_.

[7] _English Literature._ An Illustrated Record (1903), pp. 199, 200, 202. Italics mine.

[8] So says that distinguished Shakespearean scholar, Mr. Fleay, who points out that in the previous year the theatres were closed owing to the plague.

[9] Sir E. Maunde Thompson, in _Shakespeare’s Handwriting_, p. 26.

[10] So far, that is, as Sir Sidney’s _Life of Shakespeare_ is, or purports to be, biographical, and setting aside the “fanciful might-have-beens.”

[11] She so appears in the Quarto, and also in the Folio in certain places (II. 1 and IV. 1, e.g.) where, as in other passages, the play seems to have been imperfectly revised.

[12] Boyet in the play (II. 1) calls upon the Princess (or Queen) to reflect that her mission to Navarre was to raise a claim “of no less weight than Aquitaine, a dowry for a Queen.”

[13] Vol. II, ch. 7.

[14] _Sous le Masque_, vol. I, 21. He might, I think, have included certain editors of newspapers and magazines in his statement, though not always “_érudits_.”

[15] M. Abel Lefranc, it may be mentioned, is _Professeur au Collège de France_, and one of our highest authorities on Rabelais and the period of the Renaissance, not to mention Moliére, and other historical periods. “But, surely, we need not go to a Frenchman for enlightenment on our great English poet!” wrote a British commentator in the Press the other day--a most characteristic utterance, and superbly illustrative of the insular conceit which no _entente cordiale_ seems to have the power to dissipate. But is it not highly probable that a French scholar, applying himself to the study of the Shakespeare Problem with an impartial mind, with no innate or national prejudices to obscure his vision, being himself an enthusiastic worshipper at the shrine of Shakespeare, the poet and dramatist, might be able to throw light upon many things which are “beyond the skyline” of those who have grown up in the school of an old and unquestioned tradition to which they cling as though it were part and parcel of the British constitution, and, as it were, a necessary ingredient of the national glory?

[16] I am, I need scarcely say, very far from denying the possible existence of ciphers, cryptograms, and anagrams, whether in “Shakespeare’s” plays and poems or in other literature of that day. It is known that such things were frequently made use of by writers of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Bacon himself gives us an example of the biliteral cipher, and it is known that he often employed such cryptic methods of writing. It is none the less true that the search for these things by “Baconian” enthusiasts of the present day has frequently led to very distressing results, for “that way madness lies.”

[17] Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1899.

[18] This Masque, also called “The Prince’s Masque,” forms the subject of two chapters (VI and VII) in Mr. Smithson’s book, _Shakespeare--Bacon_.

[19] The title-page bears date 1899. [G. G.]

[20] I may be allowed to refer to my booklet, _Ben Jonson and Shakespeare_ (Cecil Palmer, 1921). [G. G.]

[21] But Lord Campbell cannot be quoted as a “Baconian.” [G. G.]

[22] See Jonson’s censure of Poetry in his day, for being “a meane Mistresse to such as have wholly addicted themselves to her; or given their names up to her family. They who have but saluted her on the by ... she hath done much for, and advanced in the way of their own professions, both the _Law_ and the _Gospel_, beyond all they could have hoped without her favour.” This means, I take it, that Jonson had in his eye Bacon and others as striking examples of Poetry’s generosity, and himself a shining illustration of her meanness. As for the prosperous burgher of Stratford, he was not in the picture, for Jonson was treating of poets. [Original Note.]

[23] But surely this statement, put into the mouths of the players by the author of the Folio preface, could not have referred to _printed_ matter? If the players did indeed, receive papers with “scarce a blot” they were, doubtless, fair copies. [G. G.]

[24] See _Sous le Masque de Shakespeare_. Vol. I, p. 130.

[25] As for the claims of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, see _“Shakespeare” Identified_, by J. Thomas Looney (Cecil Palmer, 1920).

[26] With reference to the “Baconian” theory I must here quote words recently written by one who bears a highly distinguished name in the ranks of literature. Mr. George Moore, writing in reply to a criticism by Mr. Gosse, published in the _Sunday Times_, thus expresses his opinion upon that question: “Some of Shakespeare’s finest plays were not only revised, but remoulded; ‘Hamlet’ is one of these, and it is not an exaggeration to say that its revisions were spread over at least twenty years; and I thought when I wrote the little booklet, ‘Fragments from Héloïse and Abélard,’ that the text of ‘Othello’ in the Folio contained 160 lines that are not to be found in the quarto, and I think so still; 160 lines were added between the publication of the quarto [in 1622] and the folio [1623], and these lines cannot be attributed to any other hand but the author’s; they are among the best in the play, and among them will be found lines dear to all who hold the belief that Bacon and not the mummer was the author of the plays: