Chapter 2

have a copy of the original French), Mary plunges into the affected and figured style already practised by _Les Précieuses_ of her day; and expands into symbolisms in a fantastic jargon. If courtiers of both sexes conversed in the style of _Euphues_ (which is improbable), they learned the trick of it from _Euphues_; not the author of _Euphues_ from them. Lyly’s most popular prose was accessible to Shakespeare. The whole convention as to how the great should speak and bear themselves was accessible in poetry and the drama. A man of genius naturally made his ladies and courtiers more witty, more “conceited,” more eloquent, more gracious than any human beings ever were anywhere, in daily life.

It seems scarcely credible that one should be obliged to urge facts so obvious against the Baconian argument that only a Bacon, intimately familiar with the society of the great, could make the great speak as, in the plays, they do—and as in real life they probably did _not_!

We now look at _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, published in quarto, in 1598, as “corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere.” The date of composition is unknown, but the many varieties of versification, with some allusions, mark it as among the earliest of the dramas. Supposing that Shakespeare obtained his knowledge of fine manners and speech, and of the tedious quips and conceits which he satirises, from the contemporary poems, plays, and novels which abounded in them, and from _précieux_ and _précieuses_ who imitated them, as I suggest, even then _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ is an extremely eccentric piece. I cannot imagine how a man who knew the foreign politics of his age as Bacon did, could have dreamed of writing anything so eccentric, that is, if it has any connection with foreign politics of the time.

The scene is the Court of _Ferdinand_, King of Navarre. In 1589–93, the eyes of England were fixed on the Court of her ally, _Henri_ of Navarre, in his struggle with the League and the Guises; the War of Religion. But the poet calls the King “Ferdinand,” taking perhaps from some story this non-existent son of Charles III of Navarre (died 1425): to whom, according to Monstrelet, the Burgundian chronicler of that time, the French king owed 200,000 ducats of gold. This is a transaction of the early fifteenth century, and leads to the presence of the princess of France as an envoy at the Court of Navarre in the play; the whole thing is quite unhistorical, and has the air of being borrowed from some lost story or brief novel. Bacon’s brother, Anthony, was English minister at the Court of Navarre. What could tempt Bacon to pick out a non-historical King Ferdinand of Navarre, plant him in the distant days of Jeanne d’Arc, and make him, at that period, found an Academe for three years of austere study and absence of women? But, if Bacon did this, what could induce him to give to the non-existent Ferdinand, as companions, the Maréchal de Biron with de Longueville (both of them, in 1589–93, the chief adherents of Henri of Navarre), and add to them “Dumain,” that is, the Duc de Mayenne, one of the Guises, the deadly foes of Henri and of the Huguenots? Even in the unhistorically minded Shakespeare, the freak is of the most eccentric,—but in Bacon this friskiness is indeed strange. I cannot, like Mr. Greenwood, {124a} find any “allusions to the Civil War of France.” France and Navarre, in the play, are in full peace.

The actual date of the fabulous King Ferdinand would have been about 1430. By introducing Biron, Longueville, and the Duc de Mayenne, and Bankes’s celebrated educated horse, the author shifts the date to 1591. But the Navarre of the play is a region “out of space, out of time,” a fairy world of projected Academes (like that of the four young men in de la Primaudaye’s _L’Académie Française_, Englished in 1586) and of peace, while the actual King of Navarre of 1591 was engaged in a struggle for life and faith; and in his ceaseless amours.

Many of Shakespeare’s anachronisms are easily intelligible. He takes a novel or story about any remote period, or he chooses, as for the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, a period earlier than that of the Trojan war. He gives to the Athens contemporary with the “Late Minoan III” period (1600 B.C.?) a Duke, and his personages live like English nobles and rustics of his own day, among the fairies of English folk-lore. It is the manner of Chaucer and of the poets and painters of any age before the end of the eighteenth century. The resulting anachronisms are natural and intelligible. We do not expect war-chariots in _Troilus and Cressida_; it is when the author makes the bronze-clad Achæans familiar with Plato and Aristotle that we are surprised. In _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ we do not expect the author to introduce the manners of the early fifteenth century, the date of the affair of the 200,000 ducats. Let the play reflect the men and manners of 1589–93,—but why place Mayenne, a fanatical Catholic foe of Navarre, among the courtiers of the Huguenot King of Navarre?

As for de Mayenne (under the English spelling of the day Dumain) appearing as a courtier of his hated adversary Henri, Bacon, of all men, could not have made that absurd error. It was Shakespeare who took but an absent-minded interest in foreign politics. If Bacon is building his play on an affair, the ducats, of 1425–35 (roughly speaking), he should not bring in a performing horse, trained by Bankes, a Staffordshire man, which was performing its tricks at Shrewsbury—in 1591. {126a} Thus early we find that great scholar mixing up chronology in a way which, in Shakespeare even, surprises; but, in Bacon, seems quite out of keeping.

Shakespeare, as Sir Sidney Lee says, gives Mayenne as “Dumain,”—Mayenne, “whose name was so frequently mentioned in popular accounts of French affairs in connection with Navarre’s movements that Shakespeare was led to number him also among his supporters.” Bacon would not have been so led! As Mayenne and Henri fought against each other at Ivry, in 1590, this was carrying nonsense far, even for Will, but for the earnestly instructive Bacon!

“The habits of the author could not have been more scholastic,” so Judge Webb is quoted, “if he had, like Bacon, spent three years in the University of Cambridge . . . ” Bacon, or whoever corrected the play in 1598, might have corrected “primater” into “pia mater,” unless Bacon intended the blunder for a malapropism of “Nathaniel, a Curate.” Either Will or Bacon, either in fun or ignorance, makes Nathaniel turn a common Italian proverb on Venice into gibberish. It was familiar in Florio’s _Second __Frutes_ (1591), and _First Frutes_ (1578), with the English translation. The books were as accessible to Shakspere as to Bacon. Either author might also draw from James Sandford’s _Garden of Pleasure_, done out of the Italian in 1573–6.

Where the scholastic habits of Bacon at Cambridge are to be discovered in this play, I know not, unless it be in Biron’s witty speech against study. If the wit implies in the author a Cambridge education, Costard and Dull and Holofernes imply familiarity with rustics and country schoolmasters. Where the author proves that he “could not have been more familiar with French politics if, like Bacon, he had spent three years in the train of an Ambassador to France,” I cannot conjecture. _There are no French politics in the piece_, any more than there are “mysteries of fashionable life,” such as Bacon might have heard of from Essex and Southampton. There is no “familiarity with all the gossip of the Court”; there is no greater knowledge of foreign proverbs than could be got from common English books. There is abundance, indeed overabundance of ridicule of affected styles, and quips, with which the literature of the day was crammed: call it Gongorism, Euphuism, or what you please. One does not understand how or where Judge Webb (in extreme old age) made all these discoveries, sympathetically quoted by Mr. Greenwood. {127a} “Like Bacon, the author of the play must have had a large command of books; he must have had his “Horace,” his “Ovidius Naso,” and his “good old ‘Mantuan.’” What a prodigious “command of books”! Country schoolmasters confessedly had these books on the school desks. It was not even necessary for the author to “have access to the _Chronicles_ of Monstrelet.” It is not known, we have said, whether or not such plot as the play possesses, with King Ferdinand and the 100,000 ducats, or 200,000 ducats (needed to bring the Princess and the mythical King Ferdinand of Navarre together), were not adapted by the poet from an undiscovered _conte_, partly based on a passage in Monstrelet.

Perhaps it will be conceded that _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ is not a play which can easily be attributed to Bacon. We do not know how much of the play existed before Shakespeare “augmented” it in 1598. We do not know whether what he then corrected and augmented was an early work of his own or from another hand, though probably it was his own. Molière certainly corrected and augmented and transfigured, in his illustrious career in Paris, several of the brief early sketches which he had written when he was the chief of a strolling _troupe_ in Southern France.

Mr. Greenwood does not attribute the wit (such as it is), the quips, the conceits, the affectations satirised in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, to Will’s knowledge of the artificial style then prevalent in all the literatures of Western Europe, and in England most pleasingly used in Lyly’s comedies. No, “the author must have been not only a man of high intellectual culture, but one who was intimately acquainted with the ways of the Court, and the fashionable society of his time, as also with contemporary foreign politics.” {129a}

I search the play once more for the faintest hint of knowledge of foreign politics. The embassy of the daughter of the King of France (who, by the date of the affair of the ducats, should be Charles VII) has been compared to a diplomatic sally of the mother of the childless actual King of France (Henri III), in 1586, when Catherine de Medici was no chicken. I do not see in the embassy of the Princess of the story any “intimate acquaintance with contemporary foreign politics” about 1591–3. The introduction of Mayenne as an adherent of the King of Navarre, shows either a most confused ignorance of foreign politics on the part of the author, or a freakish contempt for his public. I am not aware that the author shows any “intimate acquaintance with the ways” of Elizabeth’s Court, or of any other fashionable society, except the Courts which Fancy held in plays.

Mr. Greenwood {129b} appears to be repeating “the case as to this very remarkable play” as “well summed up by the late Judge Webb in his _Mystery of William Shakespeare_” (p. 44). In that paralysing judicial summary, as we have seen, “the author could not have been more familiar with French politics if, like Bacon, he had spent three years in the train of an Ambassador to France.” The French politics, in the play, are to send the daughter of a King of France (the contemporary King Henri III was childless) to conduct a negotiation about 200,000 ducats, at the Court, steeped in peace, of a King of Navarre, a scholar who would fain be a recluse from women, in an Academe of his own device. Such was not the Navarre of Henri in his war with the Guises, and Henri did not shun the sex!

Such are the “contemporary foreign politics,” the “French politics” which the author knows—as intimately as Bacon might have known them. They are not foreign politics, they are not French politics, they are politics of fairy-land: with which Will was at least as familiar as Bacon.

These, then, are the arguments in favour of Bacon, or the Great Unknown, which are offered with perfect solemnity of assurance: and the Baconians repeat them in their little books of popularisation and propaganda. _Quantula sapientia_!

VII CONTEMPORARY RECOGNITION OF WILL AS AUTHOR

IT is absolutely impossible to prove that Will, or Bacon, or the Man in the Moon, was the author of the Shakespearean plays and poems. But it is easy to prove that Will was recognised as the author, by Ben Jonson, Heywood, and Heminge and Condell the actors, to take the best witnesses. Meanwhile we have received no hint that any man except Will was ever suspected of being the author till 1856, when the twin stars of Miss Delia Bacon and Mr. Smith arose. The evidence of Ben Jonson and the rest can only prove that professed playwrights and actors, who knew Will both on and off the stage, saw nothing in him not compatible with his work. Had he been the kind of letterless country fellow, or bookless fellow whom the Baconians and Mr. Greenwood describe, the contemporary witnesses cited must have detected Will in a day; and the story of the “Concealed Poet” who really, at first, did the additions and changes in the Company’s older manuscript plays, and of the inconceivably impudent pretences of Will of Stratford, would have kept the town merry for a month. Five or six threadbare scholars would have sat down at a long table in a tavern room, and, after their manner, dashed off a Comedy of Errors on the real and the false playwright.

Baconians never seem to think of the mechanical difficulties in their assumed literary hoax. If Will, like the old Hermit of Prague who never saw pen and ink, could not even write, the hoax was a physical impossibility. If he could write, but was a rough bookless man, his condition would be scarcely the more gracious, even if he were able to copy in his scrawl the fine Roman hand of the concealed poet. I am surprised that the Baconians have never made that point. Will’s “copy” was almost without blot or erasion, the other actors were wont to boast. Really the absence of erasions and corrections is too easily explained on the theory that Will was _not_ the author. Will merely copied the fair copies handed to him by the concealed poet. The farce was played for some twenty years, and was either undetected or all concerned kept the dread secret—and all the other companies and rival authors were concerned in exposing the imposture.

The whole story is like the dream of a child. We therefore expect the Anti-Willians to endeavour to disable the evidence of Jonson, Heywood, Heminge, and Condell. Their attempts take the shape of the most extravagant and complex conjectures; with certain petty objections to Ben’s various estimates of the _merits_ of the plays. He is constant in his witness to the authorship. To these efforts of despair we return later, when we hope to justify what is here deliberately advanced.

Meanwhile we study Mr. Greenwood’s attempts to destroy or weaken the testimony of contemporary literary allusions, in prose or verse, to the plays as the work of the actor. Mr. Greenwood rests on an argument which perhaps could only have occurred to legal minds, originally, perhaps to the mind of Judge Webb, not in the prime vigour of his faculties. Not very many literary allusions remain, made during Will’s life-time, to the plays of Shakespeare. The writers, usually, speak of “Shakespeare,” or “W. Shakespeare,” or “Will Shakespeare,” and leave it there. In the same way, when they speak of other contemporaries, they name them,—and leave it there, without telling us “who” (Frank) Beaumont, or (Kit) Marlowe, or (Robin) Greene, or (Jack) Fletcher, or any of the others “were.” All interested readers knew who they were: and also knew who “Shakespeare” or “Will Shakespeare” was. No other Will Shak(&c.) was prominently before the literary and dramatic world, in 1592–1616, except the Warwickshire provincial who played with Burbage.

But though the mere names of the poets, Ben Jonson, Kit Marlowe, Frank Beaumont, Harry Chettle, and so forth, are accepted as indicating the well-known men whom they designate, this evidence to identity does not satisfy Mr. Greenwood, and the Baconians, where Will is concerned. “We should expect to find allusions to dramatic and poetical works published under the name of ‘Shakespeare’; we should expect to find Shakespeare spoken of as a poet and a dramatist; we should expect, further, to find some few allusions to Shakespeare or Shakspere the player. And these, of course, we do find; but these are not the objects of our quest. What we require is evidence to establish the identity of the player with the poet and dramatist; to prove that the player was the author of the _Plays_ and _Poems_. _That_ is the proposition to be established, and _that_ the allusions fail, as it appears to me, to prove,” says Mr. Greenwood. He adds, “At any rate they do not disprove the theory that the true authorship was hidden under a pseudonym” {136a}—which raises an entirely different question.

Makers of allusions to the plays must identify Shakespeare with the actor, explicitly; must tell us who this Shakespeare was, though they need not, and usually do not, tell us who the other authors mentioned were; and though the world of letters and the Stage knew but one William Shakspere or Shakespeare, who was far too familiar to them to require further identification. But even if the makers of allusions did all this, and said, “by W. Shakespeare the poet, we mean W. Shakespeare the actor”—_that_ is not enough. For they may all be deceived, may all believe that a bookless, untutored man is the author. So we cannot get evidence correct enough for Mr. Greenwood.

Destitute as I am of legal training, I leave this notable way of disposing of the evidence to the judgement of the Bench and the Bar, a layman intermeddleth not with it. Still, I am, like other readers, on the Jury addressed,—I do not accept the arguments. _Miror magis_, as Mr. Greenwood might quote Latin. We have already seen one example of this argument, when Heywood speaks of the author of poems by Shakespeare, published in _The Passionate Pilgrim_. Heywood does nothing to identify the actor Shakspere with the author Shakespeare, says Mr. Greenwood. I shall prove that, elsewhere, Heywood does identify them, and no man knew more of the world of playwrights and actors than Heywood. I add that in his remarks on _The Passionate Pilgrim_, Heywood had no need to say “by W. Shakespeare I mean the well-known actor in the King’s Company.” There was no other William Shakspere or Shakespeare known to his public.

It is to no purpose that Mr. Greenwood denies, as we have seen above, that the allusions “disprove the theory that the true authorship was hidden under a pseudonym.” That is an entirely different question. He is now starting quite another hare. Men of letters who alluded to the plays and poems of William Shakespeare, meant the actor; that is my position. That they may all have been mistaken: that “William Shakespeare” was Bacon’s, or any one’s pseudonym, is, I repeat, a wholly different question; and we must not allow the critic to glide away into it through an “at any rate”; as he does three or four times. So far, then, Mr. Greenwood’s theory that it was impossible for the actor Shakspere to have been the author of the plays, encounters the difficulty that no contemporary attributed them to any other hand: that none is known to have said, “This Warwickshire man cannot be the author.”

“Let us, however, examine some of these allusions to Shakspere, real or supposed,” says the critic. {138a} He begins with the hackneyed words of the dying man of letters, Robert Greene, in _A Groatsworth of Wit_ (1592). The pamphlet is addressed to Gentlemen of his acquaintance “that spend their wits in making plays”; he “wisheth them a better exercise,” and better fortunes than his own. (Marlowe is supposed to be one of the three Gentlemen playwrights, but such suppositions do not here concern us.) Greene’s is the ancient feud between the players and the authors, between capital and labour. The players are the capitalists, and buy the plays out and out,—cheap. The author has no royalties; and no control over the future of his work, which a Shakspere or a Bacon, a Jonson or a Chettle, or any handyman of the company owning the play, may alter as he pleases. It is highly probable that the actors also acquired most of the popular renown, for, even now, playgoers have much to say about the players in a piece, while they seldom know the name of the playwright. Women fall in love with the actors, not with the authors; but with “those puppets,” as Greene says, “that speake from our mouths, these anticks, garnished in our colours.” Ben Jonson, we shall see, makes some of the same complaints,—most natural in the circumstances: though he managed to retain the control of his dramas; how, I do not know. Greene adds that in his misfortunes, illness, and poverty, he is ungratefully “forsaken,” by the players, and warns his friends that such may be _their_ lot; advising them to seek “some better exercise.” He then writes—and his meaning cannot easily be misunderstood, I think, but misunderstood it has been—“Yes, trust them not” (trust not the players), “FOR there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his _Tyger’s heart wrapt in a Player’s hide_” (“Player’s” in place of “woman’s,” in an old play, _The Tragedy of Richard_, _Duke of York_, &c.), “supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute _Johannes Factotum_, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.”

The meaning is pellucid. “Do not trust the players, my fellow playwrights, for the reasons already given, for they, in addition to their glory gained by mouthing _our_ words, and their ingratitude, may now forsake you for one of themselves, a player, who thinks his blank verse as good as the best of yours” (including Marlowe’s, probably). “The man is ready at their call” (“an absolute _Johannes Factotum_”). “In his own conceit” he is “the only Shake-scene in a country.” “Seek you better masters,” than these players, who have now an author among themselves, “the only Shake-scene,” where the pun on Shakespeare does not look like a fortuitous coincidence. But it may be, anything may happen.

The sense, I repeat, is pellucid. But Mr. Greenwood writes that if Shake-scene be an allusion to Shakespeare “it seems clear that it is as an actor rather than as an author he is attacked.” {140a} As an _actor_ the person alluded to is merely assailed with the other actors, his “fellows.” But he is picked out as presenting another and a new reason why authors should distrust the players, “_for_ there is” among themselves, “in a player’s hide,” “an upstart crow”—who thinks his blank verse as good as the best of theirs. He is, therefore, necessarily a playwright, and being a _factotum_, can readily be employed by the players to the prejudice of Greene’s three friends, who are professed playwrights.

Mr. Greenwood says that “we do not know why Greene should have been so particularly bitter against the players, and why he should have thought it necessary so seriously to warn his fellow playwrights against them.” {141a} But we cannot help knowing; for Greene has told us. In addition to gaining renown solely through mouthing “_our_” words, wearing “_our_ feathers,” they have been bitterly ungrateful to Greene in his poverty and sickness; they will, in the same circumstances, as cruelly forsake his friends; “yes, for they now have” an author, and to the playwrights a dangerous rival, in their own fellowship. Thus we know with absolute certainty why Greene wrote as he did. He says nothing about the superior financial gains of the players, which Mr. Greenwood suspects to have been the “only” cause of his bitterness. Greene gives its causes in the plainest possible terms, as did Ben Jonson later, in his verses “Poet-Ape” (Playwright-Actor). Moreover, Mr. Greenwood gives Greene’s obvious motives on the very page where he says that we do not know them.

Even Mr. Greenwood, {141b} anxious as he is to prove Shake-scene to be attacked as an actor, admits that the words “supposes himself as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you,” “do seem to have that implication,” {141c} namely, that “Shake-scene” is a dramatic author: what else can the words mean; why, if not for the Stage, should Shake-scene write blank verse?

Finally Mr. Greenwood, after saying “it is clear that it is as an actor rather than as an author that ‘Shake-scene’ is attacked,” {142a} concedes {142b} that it “certainly looks as if he” (Greene) “meant to suggest that this Shake-scene supposed himself able to compose, as well as to mouth verses.” Nothing else can possibly be meant. “The rest of you” were authors, not actors.

If not, why, in a whole company of actors, should “Shake-scene” alone be selected for a special victim? Shake-scene is chosen out because, as an author, a factotum always ready at need, he is more apt than the professed playwrights to be employed as author by his company: this is a new reason for not trusting the players.

I am not going to take the trouble to argue as to whether, in the circumstances of the case, “Shake-scene” is meant by Greene for a pun on “Shake-speare,” or not. If he had some other rising player-author, the Factotum of a cry of players, in his mind, Baconians may search for that personage in the records of the stage. That other player-author may have died young, or faded into obscurity. The term “the only Shake-scene” may be one of those curious coincidences which do occur. The presumption lies rather on the other side. I demur, when Mr. Greenwood courageously struggling for his case says that, even assuming the validity of the surmise that there is an allusion to Shakspere, {143a} “the utmost that we should be entitled to say is that Greene here accuses Player Shakspere of putting forward, as his own, some work, or perhaps some parts of a work, for which he was really indebted to another” (the Great Unknown?). I do more than demur, I defy any man to exhibit that sense in Greene’s words.

“The utmost that we should be entitled to say,” is, in my opinion, what we have no shadow of a title to say. Look at the poor hackneyed, tortured words of Greene again. “Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his _Tyger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide_, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute _Johannes Factotum_, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.”

How can mortal man squeeze from these words the charge that “Player Shakspere” is “putting forward, as his own, some work, or perhaps some parts of a work, for which he was really indebted to another”? It is as an actor, with other actors, that the player is “beautified with _our_ feathers,”—not with the feathers of some one _not_ ourselves, Bacon or Mr. Greenwood’s Unknown. Mr. Greenwood even says that Shake-scene is referred to “as beautified with the feathers _which he has stolen_ from the dramatic writers” (“our feathers”).

Greene says absolutely nothing about feathers “_which he has stolen_.” The “feathers,” the words of the plays, were bought, not stolen, by the actors, “anticks garnished in our colours.”

Tedious it is to write many words about words so few and simple as those of Greene; meaning “do not trust the players, for one of them writes blank verse which he thinks as good as the best of yours, and fancies himself the only Shake-scene in a country.”

But “Greene here accuses Player Shakspere of putting forward, as his own, some work, or perhaps some parts of a work, for which he was really indebted to another,” this is “the utmost we should be entitled to say,” even if the allusion be to Shakspere. How does Mr. Greenwood get the Anti-Willian hypothesis out of Greene’s few and plain words?

It is much safer for him to say that “Shake-scene” is not meant for Shakespeare. Nobody can prove that it _is_; the pun _may_ be a strange coincidence,—or any one may say that he thinks it nothing more; if he pleases.

Greene nowhere “refers to this Shake-scene as being an impostor, an upstart crow beautified with the feathers _which he has stolen from the __dramatic writers_ (“our feathers”)” {145a}—that is, Greene makes no such reference to Shake-scene in his capacity of writer of blank verse. Like all players, who are all “anticks garnisht in our colours,” Shake-scene, _as player_, is “beautified with our feathers.” It is Mr. Greenwood who adds “beautified with the feathers which he has _stolen_ from the dramatic writers.” Greene does not even remotely hint at plagiarism on the part of Shake-scene: and the feathers, the plays of Greene and his friends, were not stolen but bought. We must take Greene’s evidence as we find it,—it proves that by “Shake-scene” he means a “poet-ape,” a playwright-actor; for Greene, like Jonson, speaks of actors as “apes.” Both men saw in a certain actor and dramatist a suspected rival. Only one such successful practising actor-playwright is known to us at this date (1592–1601),—and he is Shakespeare. Unless another such existed, Greene, in 1592, alludes to William Shak(&c.) as a player and playwright. This proves that the actor from Stratford was accepted in Greene’s world as an author of plays in blank verse. He cannot, therefore, have seemed incapable of his poetry.

Let us now briefly consider other contemporary allusions to Shakespeare selected by Mr. Greenwood himself. No allusion can prove that Shakespeare was the author of the work attributed to him in the allusions. The plays and poems _may_ have been by James VI and I, “a parcel-poet.” The allusions can prove no more than that, by his contemporaries, Shakespeare was believed to be the poet, which is impossible if he were a mere rustic ignoramus, as the Baconians aver. Omitting some remarks by Chettle on Greene’s _Groatsworth of Wit_, {146a} as, if grammar goes for all, they do not refer to Shakespeare, we have the Cambridge farce or comedy on contemporary literature, the _Return from Parnassus_ (1602?). The University wits laugh at Shakespeare,—not an university man, as the favourite poet, in his _Venus and Adonis_, of a silly braggart pretender to literature, Gullio.

They also introduce Kempe, the low comedy man of Shakespeare’s company, speaking to Burbage, the chief tragic actor, of Shakespeare as a member of their company, who, _as an author of plays_, “puts down” the University wits “and Ben Jonson too.” The date is not earlier than that of Ben’s satiric play on the poets, _The Poetaster_ (1601), to which reference is made. Since Kempe is to be represented as wholly ignorant, his opinion of Shakespeare’s pre-eminent merit only proves, as in the case of Gullio, that the University wits decried the excellences of Shakespeare. In him they saw no scholar.

The point is that Kempe recognises Shakespeare as both actor and author.

All this “is quite consistent with the theory that Shake-speare was a pseudonym,” {147a} says Mr. Greenwood. Of course it is, but it is _not_ consistent with the theory that Shakespeare was an uneducated, bookless rustic, for, in that case, his mask would have fallen off in a day, in an hour. Of course the Cambridge author only proves, if you will, that _he_ thought that _Kempe_ thought, that his fellow player was the author. But we have better evidence of what the actors thought than in the Cambridge play.

In 1598, as we saw, Francis Meres in _Palladis Tamia_ credits Shakespeare with _Venus and Adonis_, with privately circulated sonnets, and with a number of the comedies and tragedies. How the allusions “negative the hypothesis that Shakespeare was a _nom de plume_ is not apparent,” says Mr. Greenwood, always constant to his method. I repeat that he wanders from the point, which is, here, that the only William Shak(&c.) known to us at the time, in London, was credited with the plays and poems on all sides, which proves that no incompatibility between the man and the works was recognised.

Then Weaver (1599) alludes to him as author of _Venus_, _Lucrece_, _Romeo_, _Richard_, “more whose names I know not.” Davies (1610) calls him “our English Terence” (the famous comedian), and mentions him as having “played some Kingly parts in sport.” Freeman (1614) credits him with _Venus_ and _Lucrece_. “Besides in plays thy wit winds like Meander.” I repeat Heywood’s evidence. Thomas Heywood, author of that remarkable domestic play, _A Woman Killed with Kindness_, was, from the old days of Henslowe, in the fifteen-nineties, a playwright and an actor; he survived into the reign of Charles I. Writing on the familiar names of the poets, “Jack Fletcher,” “Frank Beaumont,” “Kit Marlowe,” “Tom Nash,” he says,

“Mellifluous Shakespeare whose enchanting quill Commanded mirth and passion, was but ‘Will.’”

Does Heywood not identify the actor with the author? No quibbles serve against the evidence.

We need not pursue the allusions later than Shakespeare’s death, or invoke, at present, Ben Jonson’s panegyric of 1623. As to Davies, his dull and obscure epigram is addressed “To our English Terence, Mr. Will Shake-speare.” He accosts Shakespeare as “Good Will.” He remarks that, “as some say,” if Will “had not played some Kingly parts in sport,” he had been “a companion for a _King_,” and “been a King among the meaner sort.” Nobody, now, can see the allusion and the joke. Shakespeare’s company, in 1604, acted a play on the Gowrie Conspiracy of 1600. King James suppressed the play after the second night, as, of course, he was brought on the stage throughout the action: and in very droll and dreadful situations. Did Will take the King’s part, and annoy gentle King Jamie, “as some say”? Nobody knows. But Mr. Greenwood, to disable Davies’s recognition of Mr. Will as a playwright, “Our English Terence,” quotes, from Florio’s _Montaigne_, a silly old piece of Roman literary gossip, Terence’s plays were written by Scipio and Laelius. In fact, Terence alludes in his prologue to the _Adelphi_, to a spiteful report that he was aided by great persons. The prologue may be the source of the fable—that does not matter. Davies might get the fable in Montaigne, and, knowing that some Great One wrote Will’s plays, might therefore, in irony, address him as “Our English Terence.” This is a pretty free conjecture! In Roman comedy he had only two names known to him to choose from; he took Terence, not Plautus. But if Davies was in the great Secret, a world of others must have shared _le Secret de Polichinelle_. Yet none hints at it, and only a very weak cause could catch at so tiny a straw as the off-chance that Davies _knew_, and used “Terence” as a gibe. {149a}

The allusions, even the few selected, cannot prove that the actor wrote the plays, but do prove that he was believed to have done so, and therefore that he was not so ignorant and bookless as to demonstrate that he was incapable of the poetry and the knowledge displayed in his works. Mr. Greenwood himself observes that a Baconian critic goes too far when he makes Will incapable of writing. Such a Will could deceive no mortal. {150a} But does Mr. Greenwood, who finds in the Author of the plays “much learning, and remarkable classical attainments,” or “a wide familiarity with the classics,” {150b} suppose that his absolutely bookless Will could have persuaded his intimates that he was the author of plays exhibiting “a wide familiarity with the classics,” or “remarkable classical attainments.” The thing is wholly impossible.

I do not remember that a single contemporary allusion to Shakespeare speaks of him as “learned,” erudite, scholarly, and so forth. The epithets for him are “sweet,” “gentle,” “honeyed,” “sugared,” “honey-tongued”—this is the convention. The tradition followed by Milton, who was eight years of age when Shakespeare died, and who wrote _L’Allegro_ just after leaving Cambridge, makes Shakespeare “sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,” with “native wood-notes wild”; and gives to Jonson “the _learned_ sock.” Fuller, like Milton, was born eight years before the death of Shakespeare, namely, in 1608. Like Milton he was a Cambridge man. The First Folio of Shakespeare’s works appeared when each of these two bookish men was aged fifteen. It would necessarily revive interest in Shakespeare, now first known as far as about half of his plays went: he would be discussed among lovers of literature at Cambridge. Mr. Greenwood quotes Fuller’s remark that Shakespeare’s “learning was very little,” that, if alive, he would confess himself “to be never any scholar.” {151a} I cannot grant that Fuller is dividing the persons of actor and author. Men of Shakespeare’s generation, such as Jonson, did not think him learned; nor did men of the next generation. If Mr. Collins’s view be correct, the men of Shakespeare’s and of Milton’s generations were too ignorant to perceive that Shakespeare was deeply learned in the literature of Rome, and in the literature of Greece. Every one was too ignorant, till Mr. Collins came.

VIII “THE SILENCE OF PHILIP HENSLOWE”

WHEN Shakespeare is mentioned as an author by contemporary writers, the Baconian stratagem, we have seen, is to cry, “Ah, but you cannot prove the author mentioned to be the actor.” We have seen that Meres (1598) speaks of Shakespeare as the leading tragic and comic poet (“Poor poet-ape that would be thought our chief,” quoth Jonson), as author of _Venus and Adonis_, and as a sonneteer. “All this does nothing whatever to support the idea that the Stratford player was the author of the plays and poems alluded to,” says Mr. Greenwood, playing that card again. {155a}

The allusions, I repeat, _do_ prove that Shak(&c.), the actor, was believed to be the author, till any other noted William Shak(&c.) is found to have been conspicuously before the town. “There is nothing at all to prove that Meres, native of Lincolnshire, had any personal knowledge of Shakespeare.” There is nothing at all to prove that Meres, native of Lincolnshire, had any personal knowledge of nine-tenths of the English authors, famous or forgotten, whom he mentions. “On the question—who was Shakespeare?—he throws no light.” He “throws no light on the question” “who was?” any of the poets mentioned by him, except one, quite forgotten, whose College he names . . . To myself this “sad repeated air,”—“critics who praise Shakespeare do not say _who Shakespeare_ was,”—would appear to be, not an argument, but a subterfuge: though Mr. Greenwood honestly believes it to be an argument,—otherwise he would not use it: much less would he repeat it with frequent iteration. The more a man was notorious, as was Will Shakspere the actor, the less the need for any critic to tell his public “who Shakespeare was.”

As Mr. Greenwood tries to disable the evidence when Shakespeare is alluded to as an author, so he tries to better his case when, in the account-book of Philip Henslowe, an owner of theatres, money-lender, pawn-broker, purchaser of plays from authors, and so forth, Shakespeare is _not_ mentioned at all. Here is a mystery which, properly handled, may advance the great cause. Henslowe has notes of loans of money to several actors, some of them of Shakespeare’s company, “The Lord Chamberlain’s.” There is no such note of a loan to Shakespeare. Does this prove that he was not an actor? If so, Burbage was not an actor; Henslowe never names him.

There are notes of payments of money to Henslowe after each performance of any play in one of his theatres. In these notes _the name of Shakespeare __is never once mentioned as the author of any play_. How weird! But in _these_ notes the names of the authors of the plays acted are never mentioned. Does this suggest that Bacon wrote all these plays?

On the other hand, there are frequent mentions of advances of money to authors who were working at plays for Henslowe, singly, or in pairs, threes, fours, or fives. We find Drayton, Dekker, Chapman, and nine authors now forgotten by all but antiquarians. We have also Ben Jonson (1597), Marston, Munday, Middleton, Webster, and others, authors in Henslowe’s pay. _But the same of Shakespeare never appears_. Mysterious! The other men’s names, writes Dr. Furness, occur “because they were all writers for Henslowe’s theatre, but we must wait at all events for the discovery of some other similar record, before we can produce corresponding memoranda regarding Shaksper” (_sic_) “and his productions.” {157a}

The natural mind of the ordinary man explains all by saying, “Henslowe records no loans of money to Shakspere the actor, because he lent him no money. He records no payments for plays to Shakespeare the author-actor, because to Henslowe the actor sold no plays.” That is the whole explanation of the Silence of Philip Henslowe. If Shakspere did sell a play to Henslowe, why should that financier omit the fact from his accounts? Suppose that the actor was illiterate as Baconians fervently believe, and sold Bacon’s plays, what prevented him from selling a play of Bacon’s (under his own name, as usual) to Henslowe? To obtain a Baconian reply you must wander into conjecture, and imagine that Bacon forbade the transaction. Then _why_ did he forbid it? Because he could get a better price from Shakspere’s company? The same cause would produce the same effect on Shakspere himself; whether he were the author, or were Bacon’s, or any man’s go-between. On any score but that of money, why was Henslowe good enough for Ben Jonson, Dekker, Heywood, Middleton, and Webster, and not good enough for Bacon, who did not appear in the matter at all, but was represented in it by the actor, Will? As a gentleman and a man of the Court, Bacon would be as much discredited if he were known to sell (for £6 on an average) his noble works to the Lord Chamberlain’s Company, as if he sold them to Henslowe.

I know not whether the great lawyer, courtier, scholar, and philosopher is supposed by Baconians to have given Will Shakspere a commission on his sales of plays; or to have let him keep the whole sum in each case. I know not whether the players paid Shakspere a sum down for his (or Bacon’s) plays, or whether Will received a double share, or other, or any share of the profits on them, as Henslowe did when he let a house to the players. Nobody knows any of these things.

“If Shakspere the player had been a dramatist, surely Henslowe would have employed him also, like the others, in that behalf.” {159a} Henslowe would, if he could have got the “copy” cheap enough. Was any one of “the others,” the playwrights, a player, holding a share in his company? If not, the fact makes an essential difference, for Shakspere _was_ a shareholder. Collier, in his preface to Henslowe’s so-called “Diary,” mentions a playwright who was bound to scribble for Henslowe only (Henry Porter), and another, Chettle, who was bound to write only for the company protected by the Earl of Nottingham. {159b} Modern publishers and managers sometimes make the same terms with novelists and playwrights.

It appears to me that Shakspere’s company would be likely, as his plays were very popular, to make the same sort of agreement with him, and to give him such terms as he would be glad to accept,—whether the wares were his own—or Bacon’s. He was a keen man of business. In such a case, he would not write for Henslowe’s pittance. He had a better market. The plays, whether written by himself, or Bacon, or the Man in the Moon, were at his disposal, and he did not dispose of them to Henslowe, wherefore Henslowe cannot mention him in his accounts. That is all.

Quoting an American Judge (Dr. Stotsenburg, apparently), Mr. Greenwood cites the circumstance that, in two volumes of Alleyn’s papers “there is not one mention of such a poet as William Shaksper in his list of actors, poets, and theatrical comrades.” {160a} If this means that Shakspere is not mentioned by Alleyn among actors, are we to infer that William was not an actor? Even Baconians insist that he was an actor. “How strange, how more than strange,” cries Mr. Greenwood, “that Henslowe should make no mention in all this long diary, embracing all the time from 1591 to 1609, of the actor-author . . . No matter. _Credo quia impossibile_!” {160b} _Credo_ what? and what is _impossible_? Henslowe’s volume is no Diary; he does not tell a single anecdote of any description; he merely enters loans, gains, payments. Does Henslowe mention, say, Ben Jonson, _when he is not doing business with Ben_? Does he mention any actor or author except in connection with money matters? Then, if he did no business with Shakspere the actor, in borrowing or lending, and did no business with Shakespeare the author, in borrowing, lending, buying or selling, “How strange, how more than strange” it would be if Henslowe _did_ mention Shakespeare! He was not keeping a journal of literary and dramatic jottings. He was keeping an account of his expenses and receipts. He never names Richard Burbage any more than he mentions Shakespeare.

Mr. Greenwood again expresses his views about this dark suspicious mystery, the absence of Shakespeare or Shakspere (or Shak, as you like it), from Henslowe’s accounts, if Shak(&c.) wrote plays. But the mystery, if mystery there be, is just as obscure if the actor were the channel through which Bacon’s plays reached the stage, for the pretended author of these masterpieces. Shak—was not the man to do all the troking, bargaining, lying, going here and there, and making himself a motley to the view for £0, 0_s._ 0_d._ If he were a sham, a figure-head, a liar, a fetcher-and-carrier of manuscripts, _he would be paid for it_. But he did not deal with Henslowe in his bargainings, and _that_ is why Henslowe does not mention him. Mr. Greenwood, in one place, {161a} agrees, so far, with me. “Why did Henslowe not mention Shakespeare as the writer of other plays” (than _Titus Andronicus_ and _Henry VI_)? “I think the answer is simple enough.” (So do I.) “Neither Shakspere nor ‘Shakespeare’ ever wrote for Henslowe!” The obvious is perceived at last; and the reason given is “that he was above Henslowe’s ‘skyline,’” “he” being the Author. We only differ as to _why_ the author was above Henslowe’s “sky-line.” I say, because good Will had a better market, that of his Company. I understand Mr. Greenwood to think,—because the Great Unknown was too great a man to deal with Henslowe. If to write for the stage were discreditable, to deal (unknown) with Henslowe was no more disgraceful than to deal with “a cry of players”; and as (unknown) Will did the bargaining, the Great Unknown was as safe with Will in one case as in the other. If Will did not receive anything for the plays from his own company (who firmly believed in his authorship), they must have said, “Will! dost thou serve the Muses and thy obliged fellows for naught? Dost thou give us two popular plays yearly,—gratis?”

Do you not see that, in the interests of the Great Secret itself, Will _had_ to take the pay for the plays (pretended his) from somebody. Will Shakspere making his dear fellows and friends a present of two masterpieces yearly was too incredible. So I suppose he did have royalties on the receipts, or otherwise got his money; and, as he certainly did not get them from Henslowe, Henslowe had no conceivable reason for entering Will’s name in his accounts.

Such are the reflections of a plain man, but to an imaginative soul there seems to be a brooding mist, with a heart of fire, which half conceals and half reveals the darkened chamber wherein abides “The Silence of Philip Henslowe.” “The Silence of Philip Henslowe,” Mr. Greenwood writes, “is a very remarkable phenomenon . . . ” It is a phenomenon precisely as remarkable as the absence of Mr. Greenwood’s name from the accounts of a boot-maker with whom he has never had any dealings.

“If, however, there was a man in high position, ‘a concealed poet,’” who “took the works of others and rewrote and transformed them, besides bringing out original plays of his own . . . then it is natural enough that his name should not appear among those [of the] for the most part impecunious dramatists to whom Henslowe paid money for playwriting.” {163a} Nothing can be more natural, and, in fact, the name of Bacon, or Southampton, or James VI, or Sir John Ramsay, or Sir Walter Raleigh, or Sir Fulke Greville, or any other “man in high position,” does _not_ appear in Henslowe’s accounts. Nor does the name of William Shak(&c.). But why should it not appear if Will sold either his own plays, or those of the noble friend to whom he lent his name and personality—to Henslowe? Why not?

Then consider the figure, to my mind impossible, of the great “concealed poet” “of high position,” who can “bring out original plays of his own,” and yet “takes the works of others,” say of “sporting Kyd,” or of Dekker and Chettle, and such poor devils,—_takes_ them as a Yankee pirate-publisher takes my rhymes,—and “rewrites and transforms them.”

Bacon (or Bungay) _cannot_ “take” them without permission of their legal owners,—Shakspere’s or any other company;—of any one, in short, who, as Ben Jonson says, “buys up reversions of old plays.” How is he to manage these shabby dealings? Apparently he employs Will Shakspere, spells his own “_nom de plume_” “Shakespeare,” and has his rewritings and transformations of the destitute author’s work acted by Will’s company. What a situation for Bacon, or Sir Fulke Greville, or James VI, or any “man in high position” whom fancy can suggest! The plays by the original authors, whoever they were, could only be obtained by the “concealed poet” and “man in high position” from the legal owners, Shakspere’s company, usually. The concealed poet had to negotiate with the owners, and Bacon (or whoever he was) employed that scamp Will Shakspere, first, I think, to extract the plays from the owners, and then to pretend that he himself, even Will, had “rewritten and transformed them.”

What an associate was our Will for the concealed poet; how certain it was that Will would blackmail the “man in high position”! “Doubtless” he did: we find Bacon arrested for debt, more than once, while Will buys New Place, in Stratford, with the money extorted from the concealed poet of high position. {164a} Bacon did associate with that serpent Phillips, a reptile of Walsingham, who forged a postscript to Mary Stuart’s letter to Babington. But now, if not Bacon, then some other concealed poet of high position, with a mysterious passion for rewriting and transforming plays by sad, needy authors, is in close contact with Will Shakspere, the Warwickshire poacher and ignorant butcher’s boy, country schoolmaster, draper’s apprentice, _enfin_, _tout le tremblement_.

“How strange, how more than strange!”

The sum of the matter seems to me to be that from as early as March 3, 1591, we find Henslowe receiving small sums of money for the performances of many plays. He was paid as owner or lessee of the House used by this or that company. On March 3, 1591, the play acted by “Lord Strange’s (Derby’s) men” was _Henry VI_. Several other plays with names familiar in Shakespeare’s Works, such as _Titus Andronicus_, all the three parts of _Henry VI_, _King Leare_ (April 6, 1593), _Henry V_ (May 14, 1592), _The Taming of a Shrew_ (June 11, 1594), and _Hamlet_, paid toll to Henslowe. He “received” so much, on each occasion, when they were acted in a theatre of his. But he never records his purchase of these plays; and it is not generally believed that Shakespeare was the author of all these plays, in the form which they bore in 1591–4: though there is much difference of opinion.

There is one rather interesting case. On August 25, 1594, Henslowe enters “_ne_” (that is, “a new play”) “Received at the Venesyon Comodey, eighteen pence.” That was his share of the receipts. The Lord Chamberlain’s Company, that of Shakespeare, was playing in Henslowe’s theatre at Newington Butts. If the “Venesyon Comodey” (Venetian Comedy) were _The Merchant of Venice_, this is the first mention of it. But nobody knows what Henslowe meant by “the Venesyon Comodey.” He does not mention the author’s name, because, in this part of his accounts he never does mention the author or authors. He only names them when he buys from, or lends to, or has other money dealings with the authors. He had none with Shakespeare, hence the Silence of Philip Henslowe.

IX THE LATER LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE—HIS MONUMENT AND PORTRAITS

IN the chapter on the Preoccupations of Bacon the reader may find help in making up his mind as to whether Bacon, with his many and onerous duties and occupations, his scientific studies, and his absorbing scientific preoccupation, is a probable author of the Shakespearean plays. Mr. Greenwood finds the young Shakspere impossible—because of his ignorance—which made him such a really good pseudo-author, and such a successful mask for Bacon, or Bacon’s unknown equivalent. The Shakspere of later life, the well-to-do Shakspere, the purchaser of the right to bear arms; so bad at paying one debt at least; so eager a creditor; a would-be encloser of a common; a man totally bookless, is, to Mr. Greenwood’s mind, an impossible author of the later plays.

Here, first, are moral objections on the ground of character as revealed in some legal documents concerning business. Now, I am very ready to confess that William’s dealings with his debtors, and with one creditor, are wholly unlike what I should expect from the author of the plays. Moreover, the conduct of Shelley in regard to his wife was, in my opinion, very mean and cruel, and the last thing that we could have expected from one who, in verse, was such a tender philanthropist, and in life was—women apart—the best-hearted of men. The conduct of Robert Burns, alas, too often disappoints the lover of his _Cottar’s Saturday Night_ and other moral pieces. He was an inconsistent walker.

I sincerely wish that Shakespeare had been less hard in money matters, just as I wish that in financial matters Scott had been more like himself, that he had not done the last things that we should have expected him to do. As a member of the Scottish Bar it was inconsistent with his honour to be the secret proprietor of a publishing and a printing business. This is the unexplained moral paradox in the career of a man of chivalrous honour and strict probity: but the fault did not prevent Scott from writing his novels and poems. Why, then, should the few bare records of Shakspere’s monetary transactions make _his_ authorship impossible? The objection seems weakly sentimental.

Macaulay scolds Scott as fiercely as Mr. Greenwood scolds Shakspere,—for the more part, ignorantly and unjustly. Still, there is matter to cause surprise and regret. Both Scott and Shakspere are accused of writing for gain, and of spending money on lands and houses with the desire to found families. But in the mysterious mixture of each human personality, any sober soul who reflects on his own sins and failings will not think other men’s failings incompatible with intellectual excellence. Bacon’s own conduct in money matters was that of a man equally grasping and extravagant. Ben Jonson thus describes Shakespeare as a social character: “He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature . . . I loved the man and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any.” Perhaps Ben never owed money to Shakspere and refused to pay!

We must not judge a man’s whole intellectual character, and declare him to be incapable of poetry, on the score of a few legal papers about matters of business. Apparently Shakspere helped that Elizabethan Mr. Micawber, his father, out of a pecuniary slough of despond, in which the ex-High Bailiff of the town was floundering,—pursued by the distraint of one of the friendly family of Quiney—Adrian Quiney. They were neighbours and made a common dunghill in Henley Street. {171a} I do not, like Mr. Greenwood, see anything “at all out of the way” in the circumstance “that a man should be writing _Hamlet_, and at the same time bringing actions for petty sums lent on loan at some unspecified interest.” {171b} Nor do I see anything at all out of the way in Bacon’s prosecution of his friend and benefactor, Essex (1601), while Bacon was writing _Hamlet_. Indeed, Shakspere’s case is the less “out of the way” of the two. He wanted his loan to be repaid, and told his lawyer to bring an action. Bacon wanted to keep his head (of inestimable value) on his shoulders; or to keep his body out of the Tower; or he merely, as he declares, wanted to do his duty as a lawyer of the Crown. In any case, Bacon was in a tragic position almost unexampled; and was at once overwhelmed by work, and, one must suppose, by acute distress of mind, in the case of Essex. He must have felt this the more keenly, if, as some Baconians vow, _he wrote the Sonnets to Essex_. Whether he were writing his _Hamlet_ when engaged in Essex’s case (1601), or any other of his dramatic masterpieces, even this astonishing man must have been sorely bestead to combine so many branches of business.

Thus I would reply to Mr. Greenwood’s amazement that Shakspere, a hard creditor, and so forth, should none the less have been able to write his plays. But if it is meant that a few business transactions must have absorbed the whole consciousness of Shakespeare, and left him neither time nor inclination for poetry, consider the scientific preoccupation of Bacon, his parliamentary duties, his ceaseless activity as “one of the legal body-guard of the Queen” at a time when he had often to be examining persons accused of conspiracy,—and do not forget his long and poignant anxiety about Essex, his constant efforts to reconcile him with Elizabeth, and to advocate his cause without losing her favour; and, finally, the anguish of prosecuting his friend, and of knowing how hardly the world judged his own conduct. Follow him into his relations with James I; his eager pursuit of favour, the multiplicity of his affairs, his pecuniary distresses, and the profound study and severe labour entailed by the preparation for and the composition of _The Advancement of Learning_ (1603–5). He must be a stout-hearted Baconian who can believe that, between 1599 and 1605, Bacon was writing _Hamlet_, and other masterpieces of tragedy or comedy. But all is possible to genius. What Mr. Greenwood’s Great Unknown was doing at this period, “neither does he know, nor do I know, but he only.” He, no doubt, had abundance of leisure.

At last Shakspere died (1616), and had not the mead of one melodious tear, as far as we know, from the London wits, in the shape of obituary verses. This fills Mr. Greenwood with amazement. “Was it because ‘the friends of the Muses’ were for the most part aware that Shakespeare had not died with Shakspere?” Did Jonson perchance think that his idea might be realised when he wrote,

“What a sight it were, To see thee in our waters yet appear”?

and so on. Did Jonson expect and hope to see the genuine “Shakespeare” return to the stage, seven years after the death of Shakspere the actor, the Swan of Avon? As Jonson was fairly sane, we can no more suspect him of having hoped for this miracle than believe that most of the poets knew the actor not to be the author. Moreover Jonson, while desiring that Shakespeare might “shine forth” again and cheer the drooping stage, added,

“Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like Night, And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light,”

that is—the Folio of 1623. Ben did not weave the amazing tissue of involved and contradictory falsities attributed to him by Baconians. Beaumont died in the same year as Shakspere, who died in the depths of the country, weary of London. Has Mr. Greenwood found obituary poems dropped on the grave of the famous Beaumont? Did Fletcher, did Jonson, produce one melodious tear for the loss of their friend; in Fletcher’s case his constant partner? No? Were the poets, then, aware that Beaumont was a humbug, whose poems and plays were written by Bacon? {174a}

I am not to discuss Shakespeare’s Will, the “second-best bed,” and so forth. But as Shakespeare’s Will says not a word about his books, it is decided by Mr. Greenwood that he had no books. Mr. Greenwood is a lawyer; so was my late friend Mr. Charles Elton, Q.C., of White Staunton, who remarks that Shakespeare bequeathed “all the rest of my goods, chattels, leases, &c., to my son-in-law, John Hall, gent.” (He really _was_ a “gent.” with authentic coat-armour.)

It is with Mr. Elton’s opinion, not with my ignorance, that Mr. Greenwood must argue in proof of the view that “goods” are necessarily exclusive of books, for Mr. Elton takes it as a quite natural fact that Shakespeare’s books passed, with his other goods, to Mr. Hall, and thence to a Mr. Nash, to whom Mr. Hall left “my study of books” {175a} (library). I only give this as a lawyer’s opinion.

There is in the Bodleian an Aldine Ovid, “with Shakespeare’s” signature (merely Wm. She.), and a note, “This little volume of Ovid was given to me by W. Hall, who sayd it was once Will Shakespeare’s.” I do not know that the signature (like that on Florio’s _Montaigne_, in the British Museum) has been detected as a forgery; nor do I know that Shakespeare’s not specially mentioning his books proves that he had none. Lawyers appear to differ as to this inference: both Mr. Elton and Mr. Greenwood seem equally confident. {175b} But if it were perfectly natural that the actor, Shakspere, should have no books, then he certainly made no effort, by the local colour of owning a few volumes, to persuade mankind that he _was_ the author. Yet they believed that he was—really there is no wriggling out of it. As regards any of his own MSS. which Shakespeare may have had (one would expect them to be at his theatre), and their monetary value, if they were not, as usual, the property of his company, and of him as a member thereof, we can discuss that question in the section headed “The First Folio.”

It appears that Shakespeare’s daughter, Judith, could write no more than her grandfather. {176a} Nor, I repeat, could the Lady Jane Gordon, daughter of the great Earl of Huntly, when she was married to the Earl of Bothwell in 1566. At all events, Lady Jane “made her mark.” It may be feared that Judith, brought up in that very illiterate town of Stratford, under an illiterate mother, was neglected in her education. Sad, but very common in women of her rank, and scarcely a proof that her father did not write the plays.

As “nothing is known of the disposition and character” {176b} of Shakespeare’s grand-daughter, Lady Barnard, who died in 1670, it is not so paralysingly strange that nothing is known of any relics or anecdotes of Shakespeare which she may have possessed. Mr. Greenwood “would have supposed that she would have had much to say about the great poet,” exhibited his books (if any), and so forth. Perhaps she did,—but how, if we “know nothing about her disposition and character,” can we tell? No interviewers rushed to her house (Abington Hall, Northampton-shire) with pencils and notebooks to record her utterances; no reporter interviewed her for the press. It is surprising, is it not?

The inference might be drawn, in the Baconian manner, that, during the Commonwealth and Restoration, “the friends of the Muses” knew that the actor was _not_ the author, and therefore did not interview his granddaughter in the country.

“But, at any rate, we have the Stratford monument,” says Mr. Greenwood, and delves into this problem. Even the Stratford monument of Shakespeare in the parish church is haunted by Baconian mysteries. If the gentle reader will throw his eye over the photograph {177a} of the monument as it now exists, he may not be able to say to the face of the poet—

“Thou wast that all to me, Will, For which my soul did pine.”

But if he has any knowledge of Jacobean busts on monuments, he will probably agree with me in saying, “This effigy, though executed by somebody who was not a Pheidias, and who perhaps worked merely from descriptions, is, at all events, Jacobean.” The same may assuredly be said of the monument; it is in good Jacobean style: the pillars with their capitals are graceful: all the rest is in keeping; and the two inscriptions are in the square capital letters of inscriptions of the period; not in italic characters. Distrusting my own _expertise_, I have consulted Sir Sidney Colvin, and Mr. Holmes of the National Portrait Gallery. They, with Mr. Spielmann, think the work to be of the early seventeenth century.

Next, glance at the figure opposite. This is a reproduction of “the earliest representation of the Bust” (and monument) in Dugdale’s _Antiquities of Warwickshire_ (1656). Compare the two objects, point by point, from the potato on top with holes in it, of Dugdale, which is meant for a skull, through all the details,—bust and all. Does Dugdale’s print, whether engraved by Hollar or not, represent a Jacobean work? Look at the two ludicrous children, their legs dangling in air; at the lions’ heads above the capitals of the pillars; at the lettering of the two visible words of the inscription, and at the gloomy hypochondriac or lunatic, clasping a cushion to his abdomen. That hideous design was not executed by an artist who “had his eye on the object,” if the object were a Jacobean monument: while the actual monument was fashioned in no period of art but the Jacobean. From Digges’ rhymes in the Folio of 1623, we know that Shakespeare already had his “Stratford monument.” _The existing object is what he had_; the monument in Dugdale is what, I hope, no architect of 1616–23 could have imagined or designed.

[Picture: The Monument in Dugdale’s “History of the Antiquities of Warwickshire” (1656) (By permission of John Murray, Esq.)]

Dugdale’s engraving is not a correct copy of any genuine Jacobean work of art. Is Dugdale accurate in his reproductions of other monuments in Stratford Church? To satisfy himself on this point, Sir George Trevelyan, as he wrote to me (June 13, 1912), “made a sketch of the Carew Renaissance monument in Stratford Church, and found that the discrepancies between the original tomb and the representation in Dugdale’s _Warwickshire_ are far and away greater than in the monument to William Shakespeare.”

Mr. Greenwood, {179a} while justly observing that “the little sitting figures . . . are placed as no monumental sculptor would place them,” “on the whole sees no reason at all why we should doubt the substantial accuracy of Dugdale’s figure . . . It is impossible to suppose that Hollar would have drawn and that Dugdale would have published a mere travesty of the Stratford Monument.”

I do not know who drew the design, but a travesty of Jacobean work it is in every detail of the monument. A travesty is what Dugdale gives as a representation of the Carew monument. Mr. Greenwood, elsewhere, repeating his criticism of the impossible figures of children, says: “This is certainly mere matter of detail, and, in the absence of other evidence, would give us no warrant for doubting the substantial accuracy of Dugdale’s presentment of the ‘Shakespeare’ bust.” {180a}

Why are we to believe that Dugdale’s artist was merely fantastic in his design of the children (and also remote from Jacobean taste in every detail), and yet to credit him with “substantial accuracy” in his half-length of a gloomy creature clutching a cushion to his stomach? With his inaccuracies as to the Carew monument, why are we to accept him as accurate in his representation of the bust? Moreover, other evidence is not wanting. It is positively certain that the monument existing in 1748, was then known as “the original monument,” and that no other monument was put in its place, at that date or later.

[Picture: The Carew Monument in Stratford Church]

[Picture: The Carew Monument as Represented in Dugdale’s “History of the Antiquities of Warwickshire” (1656)]

Now Mrs. Stopes {180b} argues that in 1748 the monument was “entirely reconstructed,” and so must have become no longer what Dugdale’s man drew, but what we see to-day. It is positively certain that her opinion is erroneous.

If ever what we see to-day was substituted for anything like what Dugdale’s man drew, the date of the substitution is unknown.

Mrs. Stopes herself discovered the documents which disprove her theory. They were known to Halliwell-Phillipps, who quotes an unnamed “contemporary account.” {181a} This account Mrs. Stopes, with her tireless industry, found in the Wheler manuscripts, among papers of the Rev. Joseph Greene, in 1746 Head Master of the Grammar School. In one paper of September 1740 “the original monument” is said to be “much impaired and decayed.” There was a scheme for making “a new monument” in Westminster Abbey. _That_, I venture to think, would have been in Hanoverian, not in Jacobean taste and style. But there was no money for a new monument. Mrs. Stopes also found a paper of November 20, 1748, showing that in September 1746, Mr. Ward (grandfather of Mrs. Siddons) was at Stratford with “a cry of players.” He devoted the proceeds of a performance of _Othello_ to the reparation of the then existing monument. The amount was twelve pounds ten shillings. The affair dragged on, one of the Church-wardens, a blacksmith, held the £12, 10_s._, and was troublesome. The document of November 20, 1748, was drawn up to be signed, but was not signed, by the persons who appear to be chiefly concerned in the matter. It directed that Mr. Hall, a local limner or painter, is to “take care, according to his ability, that the monument shall become as like as possible to what it was when first erected.” This appears to have been the idea of Mr. Greene. Another form of words was later adopted, directing Mr. Hall, the painter, “to repair and beautify, or to have the direction of repairing and beautifying, _the original monument_ of Shakespeare the poet.” Mrs. Stopes infers, justly in my opinion, that Hall “would fill up the gaps, restore what was amissing as he thought it ought to be, and finally repaint it according to the original colours, traces of which he might still be able to see.” In his _History and Antiquities of Stratford-on-Avon_, {182a} Mr. Wheler tells us that this was what Hall did. “In the year 1748 the monument was carefully repaired, and the original colours of the bust, &c., as much as possible preserved by Mr. John Hall, limner, of Stratford.”

It follows that we see the original monument and bust, but the painting is of 1861, for the bust, says Wheler, was in 1793 “painted in white,” to please Malone. It was repainted in 1861.

Mrs. Stopes, unluckily, is not content with what Hall was told to do, and what, according to Wheler, he did. She writes: “It would only be giving good value for his money” (£12, 10_s._) “to his churchwardens if Hall added (_sic_) a cloak, a pen, and manuscript.” He “could not help changing” the face, and so on.

Now it was physically impossible to _add_ a cloak, a pen, and manuscript to such a stone bust as Dugdale’s man shows; to take away the cushion pressed to the stomach, and to alter the head. Mr. Hall, if he was to give us the present bust, had to make an entirely new bust, and, to give us the present monument in place of that shown in Dugdale’s print, had to construct an entirely new monument. Now Hall was a painter, not (like Giulio Romano) also an architect and sculptor. _Pour tout potage_ he had but £12, 10_s._ He could not do, and he did not do these things! he did not destroy “the original monument” and make a new monument in Jacobean style. He was straitly ordered to “repair and beautify the original monument”; he did repair it, and repainted the colours. That is all. I do not quote what Halliwell-Phillipps tells us {183a} about the repairing of the forefinger and thumb of the right hand, and the pen; work which, he says, had to be renewed by William Roberts of Oxford in 1790. He gives no authority, and Baconians may say that he was hoaxed, or “lied with circumstance.”

Mr. Greenwood {183b} quotes Halliwell-Phillipps’s _Works of Shakespeare_ (1853), in which he says that the design in Dugdale’s book “is evidently too inaccurate to be of any authority; the probability being that it was not taken from the monument itself.” Indeed the designer is so inaccurate that he gives the first word of the Latin inscription as “Judicyo,” just as Oudry blunders in the Latin inscription of a portrait of Mary Stuart which he copied badly. Mr. Greenwood proceeds: “In his _Outlines_ Halliwell simply ignores Dugdale. His engraving was doubtless too inconvenient to be brought to public notice!” Here Halliwell is accused of suppressing the truth; if he invented his minute details about the repeated reparation of the writing hand,—not represented in Dugdale’s design,—he also lied with circumstance. But he certainly quoted a genuine “contemporary account” of the orders for repairing and beautifying the original monument in 1748, and I presume that he also had records for what he says about reparations of the hand and pen. He speaks, too, of substitutions for decayed alabaster parts of the monument, though not in his _Outlines_; and I observe that, in Mrs. Stopes’s papers, there is record of a meeting on December 20, 1748, at which mention was made of “the materials” which Hall was to use for repairs.

To me the evidence of the style as to the date of both monument and bust speaks so loudly for their accepted date (1616–23) and against the Georgian date of 1748, that I need no other evidence; nor do I suppose that any one familiar with the monumental style of 1590–1620 can be of a different opinion. In the same way I do not expect any artist or engraver to take the engraving of the monument in Rowe’s _Shakespeare_ (1709), and that by Grignion so late as 1786, for anything but copies of the design in Dugdale, with modifications made _à plaisir_. In Pope’s edition (1725) Vertue gives the monument with some approach to accuracy, but for the bald plump face of the bust presents a top-heavy and sculpturally impossible face borrowed from “the Chandos portrait,” which, in my opinion, is of no more authority than any other portrait of Shakespeare. None of them, I conceive, was painted from the life.

The Baconians show a wistful longing to suppose the original bust, copied in Dugdale, to have been meant for Bacon; but we need not waste words over this speculation. Mr. Greenwood writes that “if I should be told that Dugdale’s effigy represented an elderly farmer deploring an exceptionally bad harvest, ‘I should not feel it to be strange!’ Neither should I feel it at all strange if I were told that it was the presentment of a philosopher and Lord Chancellor, who had fallen from high estate and recognised that all things are but vanity.”

[Picture: From Vertue’s Engraving of the Monument (1725) (By permission of John Murray, Esq.)]

“_I_ should not feel it to be strange” if a Baconian told me that the effigy of a living ex-Chancellor were placed in the monument of the dead Will Shakspere, and if, on asking why the alteration was made, I were asked in reply, in Mr. Greenwood’s words, “Was Dugdale’s bust thought to bear too much resemblance to one who was not Shakspere of Stratford? Or was it thought that the presence of a woolsack” (the cushion) “might be taken as indicating that Shakspere of Stratford was indebted for support to a certain Lord Chancellor?” {186a} Such, indeed, are the things that Baconians might readily say: do say, I believe.

Dugdale’s engraving reproduces the first words of a Latin inscription, still on the monument:

_Judicio Pylium_, _genio Socratem_, _arte Maronem_ _Terra tegit_, _populus mæret_, _Olympus habet_:

“Earth covers, Olympus” (heaven? or the Muses’ Hill?) “holds him who was a Nestor in counsel; in poetic art, a Virgil; a Socrates for his Dæmon” (“Genius”). As for the “Genius,” or dæmon of Socrates, and the permitted false quantity in making the first syllable of Socrates short; and the use of _Olympus_ for heaven in epitaphs, it is sufficient to consult the learning of Mr. Elton. {186b} The poet who made such notable false quantities in his plays had no cause to object to another on his monument. We do not know who erected the monument, and paid for it, or who wrote or adapted the epitaph; but it was somebody who thought Shakespeare (or Bacon?) “a clayver man.” The monument (if a trembling conjecture may be humbly put forth) was conceivably erected by the piety of Shakespeare’s daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Hall. They exhibit a taste for the mortuary memorial and the queer Latin inscription. Mrs. Hall gratified the Manes of her poor mother, Mrs. Shakespeare, with one of the oddest of Latin epitaphs. {187a} It opens like an epigram in the Greek Anthology, and ends in an unusual strain of Christian mysticism. Mr. Hall possesses, perhaps arranged for himself, a few Latin elegiacs as an epitaph.

The famous “Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear,” and so on, on the stone in the chancel, beneath which the sacred dust of Shakespeare lies, or lay, is the first of “the last lines written, we are told,” {187b} “by the author of _Hamlet_.” Who tells us that Shakespeare wrote the four lines of doggerel? Is it conceivable that the authority for Shakespeare’s authorship of the doggerel is a tradition gleaned by Mr. Dowdall of Queen’s in 1693, from a parish clerk, aged over eighty, he says,—criticism makes the clerk twenty years younger. {187c} For Baconians the lines are bad enough to be the work of William Shakspere of Stratford.

Meanwhile, in 1649, when Will’s daughter, Mrs. Hall, died, her epitaph spoke quite respectfully of her father’s intelligence.

“Witty above her sex, but that’s not all, Wise to salvation was good Mistris Hall, Something of Shakespeare was in _that_, but _this_ Wholly of Him with whom she’s now in bliss.” {187d}

Thirty-three years after Shakespeare’s death he was still thought “witty” in Stratford. But what could Stratford know? Milton and Charles I were of the same opinion; so was Suckling, and the rest of the generation after Shakespeare. But they did not know, how should they, that Bacon (or his equivalent) was the genuine author of the plays and poems. The secret, perhaps, so widely spread among “the friends of the Muses” in 1616, was singularly well kept by a set of men rather given to blab as a general rule.

I confess to be passing weary of the Baconian hatred of Will, which pursues him beyond his death with sneers and fantastic suspicions about his monument and his grave, and asks if he “died with a curse upon his lips, an imprecation against any man who might _move his bones_? A mean and vulgar curse indeed!” {188a} And the authority for the circumstance that he died with a mean and vulgar curse upon his lips?

About 1694, a year after Mr. Dowdall in 1693, and eighty years almost after Shakespeare’s death, W. Hall, a Queen’s man, Oxford (the W. Hall, perhaps, who gave the Bodleian Aldine Ovid, with Shakespeare’s signature, true or forged, to its unknown owner), went to Stratford, and wrote about his pilgrimage to his friend Mr. Thwaites, a Fellow of Queen’s. Mr. Hall heard the story that Shakespeare was the author of the mean and vulgar curse. He adds that there was a great ossuary or bone-house in the church, where all the bones dug up were piled, “they would load a great number of waggons.” Not desiring this promiscuity, Shakespeare wrote the Curse in a style intelligible to clerks and sextons, “for the most part a very ignorant sort of people.”

If Shakespeare _did_, that accommodation of himself to his audience was the last stroke of his wisdom, or his wit. {189a} Of course there is no evidence that he wrote the mean and vulgar curse: that he did is only the pious hope of the Baconians and Anti-Willians.

Into the question of the alleged portraits of Shakespeare I cannot enter. Ben spoke well of the engraving prefixed to the First Folio, but Ben, as Mr. Greenwood says, was anxious to give the Folio “a good send-off.” The engraving is choicely bad; we do not know from what actual portrait, if from any, it was executed. Richard Burbage is known to have amused himself with the art of design; possibly he tried his hand on a likeness of his old friend and fellow-actor. If so, he may have succeeded no better than Mary Stuart’s embroiderer, Oudry, in his copy of the portrait of her Majesty.

That Ben Jonson was painted by Honthorst and others, while Shakespeare, as far as we know, was not, has nothing to do with the authorship of the plays. Ben was a scholar, the darling of both Universities; constantly employed about the Court in arranging Masques; his learning and his Scottish blood may have led James I to notice him. Ben, in his later years, was much in society; fashionable and literary. He was the father of the literary “tribe of Ben.” Thus he naturally sat for his portrait. In the same way George Buchanan has, and had, nothing like the fame of Knox. But as a scholar he was of European reputation; haunted the Court as tutor of his King, and was the “good pen” of the anti-Marian nobles, Murray, Morton, and the rest. Therefore Buchanan’s portrait was painted, while of Knox we have only a woodcut, done, apparently, after his death, from descriptions, for Beza’s _Icones_. The Folio engraving may have no better source. Without much minute research it is hard to find authentic portraits of Mary Stuart, and, just as in Shakespeare’s case, {190a} the market, in her own day and in the eighteenth century, was flooded with “mock-originals,” not even derived (in any case known to me) from genuine and authentic contemporary works.

One thing is certain about the Stratford bust. Baconians will believe that Dugdale’s man correctly represented the bust as it was in his time; and that the actual bust is of 1748, in spite of proofs of Dugdale’s man’s fantastic inaccuracy; in spite of the evidence of style; and in spite of documentary evidence that “the original monument” was not to be destroyed and replaced by the actual monument, but was merely “repaired and beautified” (painted afresh) by a local painter.

X “THE TRADITIONAL SHAKSPERE”

IN perusing the copious arguments of the Anti-Shakesperean but Non-Baconian Mr. Greenwood, I am often tempted, in Socratic phrase, to address him thus: Best of men, let me implore you, first, to keep in memory these statements on which you have most eloquently and abundantly insisted, namely, that society in Stratford was not only not literary, but was illiterate. Next pardon me for asking you to remember that the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth century did not resemble our fortunate age. Some people read Shakespeare’s, Beaumont’s, and Fletcher’s plays. This exercise is now very rarely practised. But nobody cared to chronicle literary gossip about the private lives and personal traits of these and several other Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, in the modern manner. Of Shakespeare (pardon, I mean Shakspere), the actor, there is one contemporary anecdote, in my poor opinion a baseless waggery. Of Beaumont there is none. Of a hand-maid of Fletcher, who drank sack in a tumbler, one anecdote appears at the end of the seventeenth century,—nothing better. Meanwhile of Shakspere the “traditions” must be sought either at Stratford or in connection with the London Stage; and in both cases the traditions began to be in demand very late.

As Stratford was not literary, indeed was terribly illiterate, any traditions that survived cannot conceivably have been literary. That is absolutely certain. Natives at Stratford had, by your own hypothesis, scant interest in literary anecdote. Fifty years after Shakespeare’s death, no native was likely to cherish tales of any sprouts of wit (though it was remembered in 1649, that he was “witty”), or any “wood-notes wild,” which he may have displayed or chirped at an early age.

Such things were of no interest to Stratford. If he made a speech when he killed a calf, or poached, or ran away to town, the circumstance might descend from one gaffer to another; he might even be remembered as “the best of his family,”—the least inefficient. Given your non-literary and illiterate Stratford, and you can expect nothing more, and nothing better, than we receive.

Let me illustrate by a modern example. In 1866 I was an undergraduate of a year’s standing at Balliol College, Oxford, certainly not an unlettered academy. In that year, the early and the best poems of a considerable Balliol poet were published: he had “gone down” some eight years before. Being young and green I eagerly sought for traditions about Mr. Swinburne. One of his contemporaries, who took a First in the final Classical Schools, told me that “he was a smug.” Another, that, as Mr. Swinburne and his friend (later a Scotch professor) were not cricketers, they proposed that they should combine to pay but a single subscription to the Cricket Club. A third, a tutor of the highest reputation as a moralist and metaphysician, merely smiled at my early enthusiasm,—and told me nothing. A white-haired College servant said that “Mr. Swinburne was a very quiet gentleman.”

Then you take us to dirty illiterate Stratford, from fifty to eighty years after Shakspere’s death,—a Civil War and the Reign of the Saints, a Restoration and a Revolution having intervened,—and ask us to be surprised that no anecdotes of Shakspere’s early brilliance, a century before, survived at Stratford.

A very humble parallel may follow. Some foolish person went seeking early anecdotes of myself at my native town, Selkirk on the Ettrick. From an intelligent townsman he gathered much that was true and interesting about my younger brothers, who delighted in horses and dogs, hunted, shot, and fished, and played cricket; one of them bowled for Gloucestershire and Oxford. But about me the inquiring literary snipe only heard that “Andra was aye the stupid ane o’ the fam’ly.” Yet, I, too, had bowled for the local club, _non sine gloria_! Even _that_ was forgotten.

Try to remember, best of men, that literary anecdotes of a fellow townsman’s youth do not dwell in the memories of his neighbours from sixty to a hundred years after date. It is not in human nature that what was incomprehensible to the grandsire should be remembered by the grandson. Go to “Thrums” and ask for literary memories of the youth of Mr. Barrie.

Yet {198a} the learned Malone seems to have been sorry that little of Shakespeare but the calf-killing and the poaching, and the dying of a fever after drink taken (_where_, I ask you?), with Ben and Drayton, was remembered, so long after date, at Stratford, of all dirty ignorant places. Bah! how could these people have heard of Drayton and Ben? Remember that we are dealing with human nature, in a peculiarly malodorous and densely ignorant _bourgade_, where, however, the “wit” of Shakespeare was not forgotten (in the family) in 1649. See the epithet on the tomb of his daughter, Mrs. Hall.

You give us the Rev. John Ward, vicar of Stratford (1661–3), who has heard that the actor was “a natural wit,” and contracted and died of a fever, after a bout with Drayton and Ben. I can scarcely believe that _these_ were local traditions. How could these _rustauds_ have an opinion about “natural wit,” how could they have known the names of Ben and Drayton?

When you come to Aubrey, publishing in 1680, sixty years after Shakespeare’s death, you neglect to trace the steps in the descent of his tradition. As has been stated, Beeston, “the chronicle of the Stage” (died 1682), gave him the story of the school-mastering; Beeston being the son of a servitor of Phillips, an actor and friend of Shakespeare, who died eleven years before that player. The story of the school-mastering and of Shakespeare “knowing Latin pretty well,” is of no value to me. I think that he had some knowledge of Latin, as he must have had, if he were what I fancy him to have been, and if (which is mere hypothesis) he went for four years to a Latin School. But the story does not suit you, and you call it “a mere myth,” which, “of course, will be believed by those who wish to believe it.” But, most excellent of mortals, will it not, by parity of reasoning, “of course be disbelieved by those who do _not_ wish to believe it”?

And do you want to believe it?

To several stage anecdotes of the actor as an excellent instructor of younger players, you refer slightingly. They do not weigh with me: still, the Stage would remember Shakspere (or Shakespeare) best in stage affairs. In reference to a very elliptic statement that, “in _Hamlet_ Betterton benefited by Shakespeare’s coaching,” you write, “This is astonishing, seeing that Shakspere had been in his grave nearly twenty years when Betterton was born. The explanation is that Taylor, of the Black Fryars Company, was, according to Sir William Davenant, instructed by Shakspere, and Davenant, who had seen Taylor act, according to Downes, instructed Betterton. There is a similar story about Betterton playing King Henry VIII. Betterton was said to have been instructed by Sir William, who was instructed by Lowen, who was instructed by Shakspere!” {200a}

Why a note of exclamation? Who was Downes, and what were his opportunities of acquiring information? He “was for many years book-keeper in the Duke’s Company, first under Davenant in the old house . . . ” Davenant was notoriously the main link between “the first and second Temple,” the theatre of Shakespeare whom, as a boy, he knew, and the Restoration theatre. Devoted to the traditions of the stage, he collected Shakespearean and other anecdotes; he revived the theatre, cautiously, during the last years of Puritan rule, and told his stories to the players of the early Restoration. As his Book-keeper with the Duke of York’s Company, Downes heard what Davenant had to tell; he also, for his _Roscius Anglicanus_, had notes from Charles Booth, prompter at Drury Lane. On May 28, 1663, Davenant reproduced _Hamlet_, with young Betterton as the Prince of Denmark. Davenant, says Charles Booth, “had seen the part taken by Taylor, of the Black Fryars Company, and Taylor had been instructed by the author,” (not Bacon but) “Mr. William Shakespeare,” and Davenant “taught Mr. Betterton in every particle of it.” Mr. Elton adds, “We cannot be sure that Taylor was taught by Shakespeare himself. He is believed to have been a member of the King’s Company before 1613, and to have left it for a time before Shakespeare’s death.” {201a} His name is in the list in the Folio of “the principall Actors in all these plays,” but I cannot pretend to be certain that he played in them in Will’s time.

It is Mr. Pepys (December 30, 1668) who chronicles Davenant’s splendid revival of _Henry VIII_, in which Betterton, as the King, was instructed by Sir William Davenant, who had it from old Mr. Lowen, that had his instruction “from Mr. Shakespear himself.” Lowin, or Lowen, joined Shakespeare’s Company in 1604, being then a man of twenty-eight. Burbage was the natural man for Hamlet and Henry VIII; but it is not unusual for actors to have “understudies.”

The stage is notoriously tenacious of such traditions.

When we come with you to Mr. W. Fulman, about 1688, and the additions to his notes made about 1690–1708, we are concerned with evidence much too remote, and, in your own classical style, “all this is just a little mixed.” {201b} With what Mr. Dowdall heard in 1693, and Mr. William Hall (1694) heard from a clerk or sexton, or other illiterate dotard at Stratford, I have already dealt. I do not habitually believe in what I hear from “the oldest aunt telling the saddest tale,”—no, not even if she tells a ghost story, or an anecdote about the presentation by Queen Mary of her portrait to the ancestor of the Laird,—the portrait being dated 1768, and representing her Majesty in the bloom of girlhood. Nor do I care for what Rowe said (on Betterton’s information), in 1709, about Shakespeare’s schooling; nor for what Dr. Furnivall said that Plume wrote; nor for what anybody said that Sir John Mennes (Menzies?) said. But I do care for what Ben Jonson and Shakespeare’s fellow-actors said; and for what his literary contemporaries have left on record. But this evidence you explain away by ætiological guesses, absolutely modern, and, I conceive, to anyone familiar with historical inquiry, not more valuable as history than other explanatory myths.

What Will Shakspere had to his literary credit when he died, was men’s impressions of the seeing of his acted plays; with their knowledge, if they had any, of fugitive, cheap, perishable, and often bad reprints, in quartos, of about half of the plays. Men also had _Venus and Adonis_, _Lucrece_, and the Sonnets, which sold very poorly, and I do not wonder at it. Of the genius of Shakespeare England could form no conception, till the publication of the Folio (1623), not in a large edition; it struggled into a Third Edition in 1664. The _engouement_ about the poet, the search for personal details, did not manifest itself with any vigour till nearly thirty years after 1664—and we are to wonder that the gleanings, at illiterate Stratford, and in Stage tradition, are so scanty and so valueless. What could have been picked up, by 1680–90, about Bacon at Gorhambury, or in the Courts of Law, I wonder.

XI THE FIRST FOLIO

“THE First Folio” is the name commonly given to the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays. The volume includes a Preface signed by two of the actors, Heminge and Condell, panegyrical verses by Ben Jonson and others, and a bad engraved portrait. The book has been microscopically examined by Baconians, hunting for cyphered messages from their idol in italics, capital letters, misprints, and everywhere. Their various discoveries do not win the assent of writers like the late Lord Penzance and Mr. Greenwood.

The mystery as to the sources, editing, and selection of plays in the Folio (1623) appears to be impenetrable. The title-page says that _all_ the contents are published “according to the true original copies.” If _only_ MS. copies are meant, this is untrue; in some cases the best quartos were the chief source, supplemented by MSS. The Baconians, following Malone, think that Ben Jonson wrote the Preface (and certainly it looks like his work), {207a} speaking in the name of the two actors who sign it. They say that Shakespeare’s friends “have collected and published” the plays, have so published them “that whereas you were abus’d with divers stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors that exposed them: _even those_” (namely, the pieces previously ill-produced by pirates) “are now offered to your view cur’d, and perfect of their limbes; and _all the rest_” (that is, all the plays which had not been piratically debased), “absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them.” So obscure is the Preface that not _all_ previously published separate plays are explicitly said to be stolen and deformed, but “_divers_ stolen copies” are denounced. Mr. Pollard makes the same point in _Shakespeare Folios and Quartos_, p. 2 (1909).

Now, as a matter of fact, while some of the quarto editions of separate plays are very bad texts, others are so good that the Folio sometimes practically reprints them, with some tinkerings, from manuscripts. Some quartos, like that of _Hamlet_ of 1604, are excellent, and how they came to be printed from good texts, and whether or not the texts were given to the press by Shakespeare’s Company, or were sold, or stolen, is the question. Mr. Pollard argues, on grounds almost certain, that “we have strong _prima facie_ evidence that the sale to publishers of plays afterwards duly entered on the Stationers’ Registers was regulated by their lawful owners.” {208a}

The Preface does not explicitly deny that some of the separately printed texts were good, but says that “divers” of them were stolen and deformed. My view of the meaning of the Preface is not generally held. Dr. H. H. Furness, in his preface to _Much Ado about Nothing_ (p. vi), says, “We all know that these two friends of Shakespeare assert in their Preface to the Folio that they had used the Author’s manuscripts, and in the same breath denounce the Quartos as stolen and surreptitious.” I cannot see, I repeat, that the Preface denounces _all_ the Quartos. It could be truly said that _divers_ stolen and maimed copies had been foisted on “abused” purchasers, and really no more _is_ said. Dr. Furness writes, “When we now find them using as ‘copy’ one of these very Quartos” (_Much Ado about Nothing_, 1600), “we need not impute to them a wilful falsehood if we suppose that in using what they knew had been printed from the original text, howsoever obtained, they held it to be the same as the manuscript itself . . . ” That _was_ their meaning, I think, the Quarto of _Much Ado_ had _not_ been “maimed” and “deformed,” as divers other quartos, stolen and surreptitious, had been.

Shakspere, unlike most of the other playwrights, was a member of his Company. I presume that his play was thus the common good of his Company and himself. If they sold a copy to the press, the price would go into their common stock; unless they, in good will, allowed the author to pocket the money.

It will be observed that I understand the words of the Preface otherwise than do the distinguished Editors of the Cambridge edition. They write, “The natural inference to be drawn from this statement” (in the Preface) “is that _all_ the separate editions of Shakespeare’s plays were ‘stolen,’ ‘surreptitious’ and imperfect, _and that all those published in the Folio were printed from the author’s own manuscripts_” (my italics). The Editors agree with Dr. Furness, not with Mr. Pollard, whose learned opinion coincides with my own.

Perhaps it should be said that I reached my own construction of the sense of this passage in the Preface by the light of nature, before Mr. Pollard’s valuable book, based on the widest and most minute research, came into my hands. By the results of that research he backs his opinion (and mine), that some of the quartos are surreptitious and bad, while others are good “and were honestly obtained.” {210a} The Preface never denies this; never says that all the quartos contain maimed and disfigured texts. The Preface draws a distinction to this effect, “even those” (even the stolen and deformed copies) “are now cured and perfect in their limbs,”—that is, have been carefully edited, while “_all the rest_” are “absolute in their numbers as he conceived them.” This does not allege that all the rest are printed from Shakespeare’s own holograph copies.

Among the plays spoken of as “all the rest,” namely, those not hitherto published and not deformed by the fraudulent, are, _Tempest_, _Two Gentlemen_, _Measure for Measure_, _Comedy of Errors_, _As You Like It_, _All’s Well_, _Twelfth Night_, _Winter’s Tale_, _Henry VI_, iii., _Henry VIII_, _Coriolanus_, _Timon_, _Julius Cæsar_, _Macbeth_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, and _Cymbeline_. Also _Henry VI_, i., ii., _King John_, and _Taming of the Shrew_, appeared now in other form than in the hitherto published Quartos bearing these or closely similar names. We have, moreover, no previous information as to _The Shrew_, _Timon_, _Julius Cæsar_, _All’s Well_, and _Henry VIII_. The Preface adds the remarkable statement that, whatever Shakespeare thought, “he uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.”

It is plain that the many dramas previously unpublished could only be recovered from manuscripts of one sort or another, because they existed in no other form. The Preface takes it for granted that the selected manuscripts contain the plays “absolute in their numbers as he conceived them.” But the Preface does not commit itself, I repeat, to the statement that all of these many plays are printed from Shakespeare’s own handwriting. After “as he conceived them,” it goes on, “Who, as he was a most happy imitator of nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together: and what he thought he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.”

This may be meant to _suggest_, but does not _affirm_, that the actors _have_ “all the rest” of the plays in Shakespeare’s own handwriting. They may have, or may have had, some of his manuscripts, and believed that other manuscripts accessible to them, and used by them, contain his very words. Whether from cunning or design, or from the Elizabethan inability to tell a plain tale plainly, the authors or author of the Preface have everywhere left themselves loopholes and ways of evasion and escape. It is not possible to pin them down to any plain statement of facts concerning the sources for the hitherto unpublished plays, “the rest” of the plays.

These, at least, were from manuscript sources which the actors thought accurate, and some may have been “fair copies” in Shakespeare’s own hand. (Scott, as regards his novels, sent his _prima cura_, his first writing down, to the press, and his pages are nearly free from blot or erasion. In one case at least, Shelley’s first draft of a poem is described as like a marsh of reeds in water, with wild ducks, but he made very elegant fair copies for the press.) Let it be supposed that Ben Jonson wrote all this Preface, in accordance with the wishes and instructions of the two actors who sign it. He took their word for the almost blotless MSS. which they received from Shakespeare. He remarks, in his posthumously published _Discoveries_ (notes, memories, brief essays), “I remember the players have _often_ mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line.” And Ben gives, we shall later see, his habitual reply to this habitual boast.

As to the sources of such plays as had been “maimed and deformed by injurious impostors,” and are now “offered cur’d and perfect of their limbs,” “it can be proved to demonstration,” say the Cambridge Editors, “that several plays in the Folio were printed from earlier quarto editions” (but the players secured a retreat on this point), “and that in other cases the quarto is more correctly printed, or from a better manuscript than the Folio text, and therefore of higher authority.” _Hamlet_, in the Folio of 1623, when it differs from the quarto of 1604, “differs for the worse in forty-seven places, while it differs for the better in twenty places.”

Can the wit of man suggest any other explanation than that the editing of the Folio was carelessly done; out of the best quartos and MSS. in the theatre for acting purposes, and,—if the players did not lie in what they “often said,” and if they kept the originals,—out of some MSS. received from Shakspere? Whether the two players themselves threw into the press, after some hasty botchings, whatever materials they had, or whether they employed an Editor, a very wretched Editor, or Editors, or whether the great Author, Bacon, himself was his own Editor, the preparation of a text was infamously done. The two actors, probably, I think, never read through the proof-sheets, and took the word of the man whom they employed to edit their materials, for gospel. The editing of the Folio is so exquisitely careless that twelve printer’s errors in a quarto of 1622, of _Richard III_, appear in the Folio of 1623. Again, the _Merry Wives_ of the Folio, is nearly twice as long as the quarto of 1619, yet keeps old errors.

How can we explain the reckless retention of errors, and also the large additions and improvements? Did the true author (Bacon or Bungay) now edit his work, add much matter, and go wrong forty-seven times where the quarto was right, and go right twenty times when the quarto was wrong? Did he, for the Folio of 1623, nearly double _The Merry Wives_ in extent, and also leave all the errors of the fourth quarto uncorrected?

In that case how negligent was Bacon of his immortal works! Now Bacon was a scholar, and this absurd conduct cannot be imputed, I hope, to him.

Mr. Pollard is much more lenient than his fellow-scholars towards the Editor or Editors of the Folio. He concludes that “manuscript copies of the plays were easily procurable.” Sixteen out of the thirty-six plays existed in quartos. Eight of the sixteen were not used for the Folio; five were used, “with additions, corrections, or alterations” (which must have been made from manuscripts). Three quartos only were reprinted as they stood. The Editors greatly preferred to use manuscript copies; and showed this, Mr. Pollard thinks, by placing plays, never before printed, in the most salient parts of the three sets of dramas in their book. {215a} They did make an attempt to divide their plays into Acts and Scenes, whereas the quartos, as a general rule, had been undivided. But the Editors, I must say, had not the energy to carry out their good intentions fully—or Bacon or Bungay, if the author, wearied in well-doing. The work is least ill done in the Comedies, and grows worse and worse as the Editor, or Bacon, or Bungay becomes intolerably slack.

A great living author, who had a decent regard for his own works, could never have made or passed this slovenly Folio. Yet Mr. Greenwood argues that probably Bungay was still alive and active, after Shakspere was dead and buried. (Mr. Greenwood, of course, does not speak of Bungay, which I use as short for his Great Unknown.) Thus, _Richard III_ from 1597 to 1622 appeared in six quartos. It is immensely improved in the Folio, and so are several other plays. Who made the improvements, which the Editors could only obtain in manuscripts? If we say that Shakespeare made them in MS., Mr. Greenwood asks, “What had he to work upon, since, after selling his plays to his company, he did not preserve his manuscript?” {216a} Now I do not know that he did sell his plays to his company. We are sure that Will got money for them, but we do not know what arrangement he made with his company. He may have had an author’s rights in addition to a sum down, as later was customary, and he had his regular share in the profits. Nor am I possessed of information that “he did not preserve his manuscript.” How can we know that? He may have kept his first draft, he may have made a fair copy for himself, as well as for the players, or may have had one made. He may have worked on a copy possessed by the players; and the publisher of the quartos of 1605, 1612, 1622, may not have been allowed to use, or may not have asked for the latest manuscript revised copy. The _Richard III_ of the Folio contains, with much new matter, the printer’s errors of the quarto of 1622. I would account for this by supposing that the casual Editor had just sense enough to add the new parts in a revised manuscript to the quarto, and was far too lazy to correct the printer’s errors in the quarto. But Mr. Greenwood asks whether “the natural conclusion is not that ‘some person unknown’ took the Quarto of 1622, revised it, added the new passages, and thus put it into the form in which it appeared in 1623.” This natural conclusion means that the author, Bungay, was alive in 1622, and put his additions and improvements of recent date into the quarto of 1622, but never took the trouble to correct the errors in the quarto. And so on in other plays similarly treated. “Is it not a more natural conclusion that ‘Shakespeare’” (Bungay) “himself revised its publication, and that some part of this revision, at any rate, was done after 1616 and before 1623.” {217a}

Mr. Greenwood, after criticising other systems, writes, {217b} “There is, of course, another hypothesis. It is that Shakespeare” (meaning the real author) “did not die in 1616,” and here follows the usual notion that “Shakespeare” was the “_nom de plume_” of that transcendent genius, “moving in Court circles among the highest of his day (as assuredly Shakespeare must have moved)—who wished to conceal his identity.”

I have not the shadow of assurance that the Author “moved in Court circles,” though Will would see a good deal when he played at Court, and in the houses of nobles, before “Eliza and our James.” I never moved in Court circles: Mr. Greenwood must know them better than I do, and I have explained (see _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, and _Shakespeare_, _Genius_, _and Society_) how Will picked up his notions of courtly ways.

“Another hypothesis,” the Baconian hypothesis,—“_nom de plume_” and all,—Mr. Greenwood thinks “an extremely reasonable one”: I cannot easily conceive of one more unreasonable.

“Supposing that there was such an author as I have suggested, he may well have conceived the idea of publishing a collected edition of the plays which had been written under the name of Shakespeare, and being himself busy with other matters, he may have entrusted the business to some ‘literary man,’ to some ‘good pen,’ who was at the time doing work for him; and why not to the man who wrote the commendatory verses, the ‘Lines to the Reader’” (opposite to the engraving), “and, as seems certain, the Preface, ‘to the great variety of Readers’?” {218a}

That man, that “good pen,” was Ben Jonson. On the “supposing” of Mr. Greenwood, Ben is “doing work for” the Great Unknown at the time when “the business” following on the “idea of publishing a collected edition of the plays which had been written under the name of Shakespeare” occurred to the illustrious but unknown owner of that “_nom de plume_.” In plain words of my own,—the Author may have entrusted “the business,” and what was that business if not the editing of the Folio?—to Ben Jonson—“who was at the time doing work for him”—for the Author.

Here is a clue! We only need to know for what man of “transcendent genius, universal culture, world-wide philosophy . . . moving in Court circles,” and so on, Ben “was working” about 1621–3, the Folio appearing in 1623.

The heart beats with anticipation of a discovery! “On January 22, 1621, Bacon celebrated his sixtieth birthday with great state at York House. Jonson was present,” and wrote an ode, with something about the Genius of the House (_Lar_ or Brownie),

“Thou stand’st as if some mystery thou didst.”

Mr. Greenwood does not know what this can mean; nor do I. {219a}

“Jonson, it appears” (on what authority?), “was Bacon’s guest at Gorhambury, and was one of those good ‘pens,’” of whom Bacon speaks as assisting him in the translation of some of his books into Latin.

Bacon, writing to Toby Mathew, June 26, 1623, mentions the help of “some good pens,” Ben Jonson he does not mention. But Judge Webb does. “It is an undoubted fact,” says Judge Webb, “that the Latin of the _De Augmentis_, which was published in 1623, was the work of Jonson.” {219b} To whom Mr. Collins replies, “There is not a particle of evidence that Jonson gave to Bacon the smallest assistance in translating any of his works into Latin.” {219c}

_Très bien_, on Judge Webb’s assurance the person for whom Ben was working, in 1623, was Bacon. Meanwhile, Mr. Greenwood’s “supposing” is “that there was such an author” (of transcendent genius, and so on), who “may have entrusted the editing of his collected plays” to some “good pen,” who was at the time “doing work for him,” and “why not to”—Ben Jonson. {220a} Now the man for whom Ben, in 1623, was “doing work”—was BACON,—so Judge Webb says. {220b}

Therefore, by this hypothesis of Mr. Greenwood, {220c} the Great Unknown was Bacon,—just the hypothesis of the common Baconian.

Is my reasoning erroneous? Is the “supposing” suggested by Mr. Greenwood {220d} any other than that of Miss Delia Bacon, and Judge Webb? True, Mr. Greenwood’s Baconian “supposing” is only a working hypothesis: not a confirmed belief. But it is useful to his argument (see “Ben Jonson and Shakespeare”) when he wants to explain away Ben’s evidence, in his verses in the Folio, to the Stratford actor as the Author.

Mr. Greenwood writes, in the first page of his Preface: “It is no part of my plan or intention to defend that theory,” “the Baconian theory.” Apparently it pops out contrary to the intention of Mr. Greenwood. But pop out it does: at least I can find no flaw in the reasoning of my detection of Bacon: I see no way out of it except this: after recapitulating what is said about Ben as one of Bacon’s “good pens” with other details, Mr. Greenwood says, “But no doubt that way madness lies!” {221a} Ah no! not madness, no, but Baconism “lies that way.” However, “let it be granted” (as Euclid says in his sportsmanlike way) that Mr. Greenwood by no means thinks that his “concealed poet” is Bacon—only some one similar and similarly situated and still active in 1623, and occupied with other business than supervising a collected edition of plays written under his “_nom de plume_” of Shakespeare. Bacon, too, was busy, with supervising, or toiling at the Latin translation of his scientific works, and Ben (according to Judge Webb) was busy in turning the _Advancement of Learning_ into Latin prose. Mr. Greenwood quotes, without reference, Archbishop Tenison as saying that Ben helped Bacon in doing his works into Latin. {221b} Tenison is a very late witness. The prophetic soul of Bacon did not quite trust English to last as long as Latin, or he thought Latin, the _lingua franca_ of Europe in his day, more easily accessible to foreign students, as, of course, it was. Thus Bacon was very busy; so was Ben. The sad consequence of Ben’s business, perhaps, is that the editing of the Folio is notoriously bad; whether Ben were the Editor or not, it is infamously bad.

Conceivably Mr. Greenwood is of the same opinion. He says, “It stands admitted that a very large part of that volume” (the Folio) “consists of work that is not ‘Shakespeare’s’ at all.”

How strange, if Ben edited it for the Great Unknown—who knew, if any human being knew, what work was “Shakespeare’s”! On Mr. Greenwood’s hypothesis, {222a} or “supposing,” the Unknown Author “may well have conceived the idea of publishing a collected edition of the plays which had been written” (not “published,” _written_) “under the name of Shakespeare, and, being himself busy with other matters, he may have entrusted the business to” some “good pen,” “and why not to”—Ben. Nevertheless “a very large part of that volume consists of work that is not ‘Shakespeare’s’ at all.” {222b} How did this occur? The book {222c} is “that very doubtful ‘canon.’” How, if “Shakespeare’s” man edited it for “Shakespeare”? Did “Shakespeare” not care what stuff was placed under his immortal “_nom de plume_”?

It is not my fault if I think that Mr. Greenwood’s hypotheses {222d}—the genuine “Shakespeare” either revised his own works, or put Ben on the editorial task—are absolutely contradicted by his statements in another part of his book. {222e} For the genuine “Shakespeare” knew what plays he had written, knew what he could honestly put forth as his own, as “Shakespeare’s.” Or, if he placed the task of editing in Ben’s hands, he must have told Ben what plays were of his own making. In either case the Folio would contain these, and no others. But—“the _plat contraire_,”—the very reverse,—is stated by Mr. Greenwood. “It stands admitted that a very large portion of that volume” (the Folio) “consists of work that is not ‘Shakespeare’s’” (is not Bacon’s, or the other man’s) “at all.” {223a} Then away fly the hypotheses {223b} that the auto-Shakespeare, or that Ben, employed by the auto-Shakespeare (apparently Bacon) revised, edited, and prepared for publication the auto-Shakespearean plays. For Mr. Greenwood “has already dealt with _Titus_ (_Andronicus_) and _Henry VI_,” {223c} and proved them not to be auto-Shakespearean—and he adds “there are many other plays in that very doubtful ‘canon’” (the Folio) “which, by universal admission, contain much non-Shakespearean composition.” {223d} Perhaps! but if so the two hypotheses, {223e} that either the genuine Shakespeare {223f} revised (“is it not a more natural solution that ‘Shakespeare’ himself revised his works for publication, and that some part, at any rate, of this revision {223g} was done after 1616 and before 1623?”), or {223h} that he gave Ben (who was working, by the conjecture, for Bacon) the task of editing the Folio,—are annihilated. For neither the auto-Shakespeare (if honest), nor Ben (if sober), could have stuffed the Folio full of non-Shakespearean work,—including four “non-Shakespearean” plays,—nor could the Folio be “that very doubtful canon.” {224a} Again, if either the auto-Shakespeare or Ben following his instructions, were Editor, neither could have, as the Folio Editor had “evidently no little doubt about” _Troilus and Cressida_. {224b}

Neither Ben, nor the actual Simon Pure, the author, the auto-Shakespeare, could fail to know the truth about _Trodus and Cressida_. But the Editor {224c} did _not_ know the truth, the whole canon is “doubtful.” Therefore the hypothesis, the “supposing,” that the actual author did the revising, {224d} and the other hypothesis that he gave Ben the work, {224e} seem to me wholly impossible. But Mr. Greenwood needs the “supposings” of pp. 290, 293; and as he rejects _Titus Andronicus_ and _Henry VI_ (both in the Folio), he also needs the contradictory views of pp. 351, 358. On which set of supposings and averments does he stand to win?

Perhaps he thinks to find a way out of what appears to me to be a dilemma in the following fashion: He will not accept _Titus Andronicus_ and _Henry VI_, though both are in the Folio, as the work of _his_ “Shakespeare,” his Unknown, the Bacon of the Baconians. Well, we ask, if your Unknown, or Bacon, or Ben,—instructed by Bacon, or by the Unknown,—edited the Folio, how could any one of the three insert _Titus_, and _Henry VI_, and be “in no little doubt about” _Troilus and Cressida_? Bacon, or the Unknown, or the Editor employed by either, knew perfectly well which plays either man could honestly claim as his own work, done under the “_nom de plume_” of “William Shakespeare” (with or without the hyphen). Yet the Editor of the Folio does not know—and Mr. Greenwood does know—_Henry VI_ and _Titus_ are “wrong ones.”

Mr. Greenwood’s way out, if I follow him, is this: {225a} “Judge Stotsenburg asks, ‘Who wrote _The Taming of a Shrew_ printed in 1594, and who wrote _Titus Andronicus_, _Henry VI_, or _King Lear_ referred to in the Diary?’” (Henslowe’s). The Judge continues: “Neither Collier nor any of the Shaxper commentators make (_sic_) any claim to their authorship in behalf of William Shaxper. Since these plays have the same names as those included in the Folio of 1623 the presumption is that they are the same plays until the contrary is shown. Of course it may be shown, either that those in the Folio are entirely different except in name, or that these plays were revised, improved, and dressed by some one whom they” (who?) “called Shakespeare.”

Mr. Greenwood says, “My own conviction is that . . . these plays were ‘revised, improved, and dressed by some one whom they called Shakespeare.’” {226a} (Whom _who_ called Shakespeare?) In that case these plays,—say _Titus Andronicus_ and _Henry VI_, Part 1,—which Mr. Greenwood denies to _his_ “Shakespeare” were just as much _his_ Shakespeare’s plays as any other plays (and there are several), which _his_ Shakespeare “revised, improved, and dressed.” Yet _his_ Shakespeare is _not_ author of _Henry VI_, {226b} not the author of _Titus Andronicus_. {226c} “Mr. Anders,” writes Mr. Greenwood, “makes what I think to be a great error in citing _Henry VI_ and _Titus_ as genuine plays of Shakespeare.” {226d}

He hammers at this denial in nineteen references in his Index to _Titus Andronicus_. Yet Ben, or Bacon, or the Unknown thought that these plays _were_ “genuine plays” of “Shakespeare,” the concealed author—Bacon or Mr. Greenwood’s man. It appears that the immense poet who used the “_nom de plume_” of “Shakespeare” did not know the plays of which he could rightfully call himself the author; that (not foreseeing Mr. Greenwood’s constantly repeated objections) he boldly annexed four plays, or two certainly, which Mr. Greenwood denies to him, and another about which “the Folio Editor was in no little doubt.”

Finally, {227a} Mr. Greenwood is “convinced,” “it is my conviction” that some plays which he often denies to his “Shakespeare” were “revised, improved, and dressed by some one whom they called Shakespeare.” That some one, if he edited or caused to be edited the Folio, thought that his revision, improvement, and dressing up of the plays gave him a right to claim their authorship—and Mr. Greenwood, a dozen times and more, denies to him their authorship.

One is seriously puzzled to discover the critic’s meaning. _The Taming of a Shrew_, _Titus_, _Henry VI_, and _King Lear_, referred to in Henslowe’s “Diary,” are not “Shakespearean,” we are repeatedly told. But “my own conviction is that . . . ” these plays were “revised, improved, and dressed by some one whom they called Shakespeare.” But to be revised, improved, and dressed by some one whom they called Shakespeare, is to be as truly “Shakespearean” work as is any play so handled “by Shakespeare.” Thus the plays mentioned are as truly “Shakespearean” as any others in which “Shakespeare” worked on an earlier canvas, and also _Titus_ “is not _Shakespearean_ at all.” Mr. Greenwood, I repeat, constantly denies the “Shakespearean” character to _Titus_ and _Henry VI_. “The conclusion of the whole matter is that _Titus_ and _The Trilogy of Henry VI_ are not the work of Shakespeare: that his hand is probably not to be found at all in _Titus_, and only once or twice, if at all, in _Henry VI_, Part I, but that he it probably was who altered and remodelled the two parts of the old _Contention of the Houses of York and Lancaster_, thereby producing _Henry VI_, Parts II and III.” {228a}

Yet {228b} _Titus_ and _Henry VI_ appear as “revised, improved, and dressed” by the mysterious “some one whom they called Shakespeare.” If Mr. Greenwood’s conclusion {228c} be correct, “Shakespeare” had no right to place _Henry VI_, Part I, and _Titus_ in his Folio. If his “conviction” {228d} be correct, Shakespeare had as good a right to them as to any of the plays which he revised, and improved, and dressed. They _must_ be “Shakespearean” if Mr. Greenwood is right {228e} in his suggestion that “Shakespeare” either revised his works for publication between 1616 and 1623, or set his man, Ben Jonson, upon that business. Yet neither one nor the other knew what to make of _Troilus and Cressida_. “The Folio Editor had, evidently, no little doubt about that play.” {228f}

So neither “Shakespeare” nor Ben, instructed by him, can have been “the Folio Editor.” Consequently Mr. Greenwood must abandon his suggestion that either man was the Editor, and may return to his rejection of _Titus_ and _Henry VI_, Part I. But he clings to it. He finds in Henslowe’s Diary “references to, and records of the writing of, such plays” as, among others, _Titus Andronicus_, and _Henry VI_. {229a}

Mr. Greenwood, after rejecting a theory of some one, says, “Far more likely does it appear that there was a great man of the time whose genius was capable of ‘transforming dross into gold,’ who took these plays, and, in great part, rewrote and revised them, leaving sometimes more, and sometimes less of the original work; and that so rewritten, revised, and transformed they appeared as the plays of ‘Shake-speare.’” {229b}

This statement is made {229c} about “these plays,” including _Titus Andronicus_ and _Henry VI_, while {229d} “_Titus_ and the _Trilogy of Henry VI_ are not the work of Shakespeare . . . his hand is probably not to be found at all in _Titus_, and only once or twice in _Henry VI_, Part I,” though he probably made Parts II and III out of older plays.

I do not know where to have the critic. If _Henry VI_, Part I, and _Titus_ are in no sense by “Shakespeare,” then neither “Shakespeare” nor Ben for him edited or had anything to do with the editing of the Folio. If either or both had to do with the editing, as the critic suggests, then he is wrong in denying Shakespearean origin to _Titus_ and _Henry VI_, Part I.

Of course one sees a way out of the dilemma for the great auto-Shakespeare himself, who, by one hypothesis, handed over the editing of his plays to Ben (_he_, by Mr. Greenwood’s “supposing,” was deviling at literary jobs for Bacon). The auto-Shakespeare merely tells Ben to edit his plays, and never even gives him a list of them. Then Ben brings him the Folio, and the author looks at the list of Plays.

“Mr. Jonson,” he says, “I have hitherto held thee for an honest scholar and a deserving man in the quality thou dost profess. But thou hast brought me a maimed and deformed printed copy of that which I did write for my own recreation, not wishful to be known for so light a thing as a poet. Moreover, thou hast placed among these my trifles, four plays to which I never put a finger, and others in which I had no more than a thumb. The Seneschal, Mr. Jonson, will pay thee what is due to thee; thy fardels shall be sent whithersoever thou wilt, and, Mary! Mr. Jonson, I bid thee never more be officer of mine.”

This painful discourse must have been held at Gorhambury,—if Ben edited the Folio—for Francis.

It is manifest, I hope, that about the Folio Mr. Greenwood speaks with two voices, and these very discordant. It is also manifest that, whoever wrote the plays left his materials in deep neglect, and that, when they were collected, some one gathered them up in extreme disorder. It is extraordinary that the Baconians and Mr. Greenwood do not see the fallacy of their own reasoning in this matter of the Folio. They constantly ridicule the old view that the actor, Will Shakspere (if, by miracle, he were the author of the plays), could have left them to take their fortunes. They are asked, what did other playwrights do in that age? They often parted with their whole copyright to the actors of this or that company, or to Henslowe. The new owners could alter the plays at will, and were notoriously anxious to keep them out of print, lest other companies should act them. As Mr. Greenwood writes, {231a} “Such, we are told, was the universal custom with dramatists of the day; they ‘kept no copies’ of their plays, and thought no more about them. It will, I suppose, be set down to fanaticism that I should doubt the truth of this proposition, that I doubt if it be consonant with the known facts of human nature.” But whom, except Jonson, does Mr. Greenwood find editing and publishing his plays? Beaumont, Fletcher, Heywood? No!

If the Great Unknown were dead in 1623, his negligence was as bad as Will’s. If he were alive and revised his own work for publication, {231b} he did it as the office cat might have done it in hours of play. If, on the other side, he handed the editorial task over to Ben, {232a} then he did not even give Ben a list of his genuine works. Mr. Greenwood cites the case of Ben Jonson, a notorious and, I think, solitary exception. Ben was and often proclaimed himself to be essentially a scholar. He took as much pains in prefacing, editing, and annotating his plays, as he would have taken had the texts been those of Greek tragedians.

Finally, all Baconians cry out against the sottish behaviour of the actor, Will, if being really the author of the plays, he did not bestir himself, and bring them out in a collected edition. Yet no English dramatist ventured on doing such a thing, till Ben thus collected his “works” (and was laughed at) in 1616. The example might have encouraged Will to be up and doing, but he died early in 1616. If Will were _not_ the author, what care was Bacon, or the Unknown, taking of his many manuscript plays, and for the proper editing of those which had appeared separately in pamphlets? As indolent and casual as Will, the great Author, Bacon or another, left the plays to take their chances. Mr. Greenwood says that “_if the author_” (Bacon or somebody very like him) “_had been careless about keeping copies of his manuscripts_ . . . ” {232b} What an “if” in the case of the great Author! This gross neglect, infamous in Will, may thus have been practised by the Great Unknown himself.

In 1911 Mr. Greenwood writes, “There is overwhelming authority for the view that _Titus Andronicus_ is not _Shakespearean_ at all.” {233a} In that case, neither Bacon, nor the Unknown, nor Ben, acting for either, can have been the person who put _Titus_ into the Folio.

XII BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE

THE evidence of Ben Jonson to the identity of Shakespeare the author with Shakspere the actor, is “the strength of the Stratfordian faith,” says Mr. Greenwood. “But I think it will be admitted that the various Jonsonian utterances with regard to ‘Shakespeare’ are by no means easy to reconcile one with the other.” {237a}

It is difficult to reply briefly to Mr. Greenwood’s forty-seven pages about the evidence of Jonson. But, first, whenever in written words or in reported conversation, Ben speaks of Shakespeare by name, he speaks of his _works_: in 1619 to Drummond of Hawthornden; in 1623 in commendatory verses to the Folio; while, about 1630, probably, in his posthumously published _Discourses_, he writes on Shakespeare as the friend and “fellow” of the players, on Shakespeare as his own friend, and as a dramatist. On each of these three occasions, Ben’s _tone_ varies. In 1619 he said no more to Drummond of Hawthornden (apparently on two separate occasions) than that Shakespeare “lacked art,” and made the mistake about a wreck on the sea-coast of Bohemia.

In 1619, Ben spoke gruffly and briefly of Shakespeare, as to Drummond he also spoke disparagingly of Beaumont, whom he had panegyrised in an epigram in his own folio of 1616, and was again to praise in the commendatory verses in the Folio. He spoke still more harshly of Drayton, whom in 1616 he had compared to Homer, Virgil, Theocritus, and Tyræus! He told an unkind anecdote of Marston, with whom he had first quarrelled and then made friends, collaborating with him in a play; and very generously and to his great peril, sharing his imprisonment. To Drummond, Jonson merely said that he “beat Marston and took away his pistol.” Of Sir John Beaumont, brother of the dramatist, Ben had written a most hyperbolical eulogy in verse; luckily for Sir John, to Drummond Ben did not speak of him. Such was Ben, in panegyric verse hyperbolical; in conversation “a despiser of others, and praiser of himself.” Compare Ben’s three remarks about Donne, all made to Drummond. Donne deserved hanging for breaking metre; Donne would perish for not being understood: and Donne was in some points the first of living poets.

Mr. Greenwood’s effort to disable Jonson’s evidence rests on the contradictions in his estimates of Shakespeare’s poetry, in notices scattered through some thirty years. Jonson, it is argued, cannot on each occasion mean Will. He must now mean Will, now the Great Unknown, and now—both at once. Yet I have proved that Ben was the least consistent of critics, all depended on the occasion, and on his humour at the moment. This is a commonplace of literary history. The Baconians do not know it; Mr. Greenwood, if he knows it, ignores it, and bases his argument on facts which may be unknown to his readers. We have noted Ben’s words of 1619, and touched on his panegyric of 1623. Thirdly, about 1630 probably, Ben wrote in his manuscript book _Discourses_ an affectionate but critical page on Shakespeare as a man and an author. Always, in prose, and in verse, and in recorded conversation, Ben explicitly identified Shakspere (William, of Stratford) with the author of the plays usually ascribed to him. But the Baconian Judge Webb (in extreme old age), and the anti-Shakespearean Mr. Greenwood and others, choose to interpret Ben’s words on the theory that, in 1623, he “had his tongue in his cheek”; that, like Odysseus, he “mingled things false with true,” that _they_ know what is true from what is false, and can undo the many knots which Ben tied in his tongue. How they succeed we shall see.

In addition to his three known mentions of Shakespeare by name (1619, 1623, 1630?), Ben certainly appears to satirise his rival at a much earlier date; especially as Pantalabus, a playwright in _The Poetaster_ (1601), and as actor, poet, and plagiarist in an epigram, _Poet-Ape_, published in his collected works of 1616; but probably written as early as 1602. It is well known that in 1598 Shakespeare’s company acted Ben’s _Every Man in His Humour_. It appears that he conceived some grudge against the actors, and apparently against Shakespeare and other playwrights, for, in 1601, his _Poetaster_ is a satire both on playwrights and on actors, whom he calls “apes.” The apparent attacks on Shakespeare are just such as Ben, if angry and envious, would direct against him; while we know of no other poet-player of the period to whom they could apply. For example, in _The Poetaster_, Histrio, the actor, is advised to ingratiate himself with _Pantalabus_, “gent’man parcel-poet, his father was a man of worship, I tell thee.” This is perhaps unmistakably a blow at Shakespeare, who had recently acquired for his father and himself arms, and the pleasure of writing himself “gentleman.” This “parcel-poet gent’man” “pens lofty, in a new stalking style,”—he is thus an author, he “pens,” and in a high style. He is called _Pantalabus_, from the Greek words for “to _take up all_,” which means that, as poet, he is a plagiarist. Jonson repeats this charge in his verses called _Poet-Ape_—

“_He takes up all_, makes each man’s wit his own, And told of this, he slights it.”

In a scene added to _The Poetaster_ in 1616, the author (Ben) is advised not

“With a sad and serious verse to wound Pantalabus, railing in his saucy jests,”

and obviously slighting the charges of plagiarism. Perhaps Ben is glancing at Shakespeare, who, if accused of plagiary by an angry rival, would merely laugh.

A reply to the _Poetaster_, namely _Satiromastix_ (by Dekker and Marston?), introduces Jonson himself as babbling darkly about “Mr. Justice Shallow,” and “an Innocent Moor” (Othello?). Here is question of “administering strong pills” to Jonson; _then_,

“What lumps of hard and indigested stuff, Of bitter _Satirism_, of _Arrogance_, Of _Self-love_, of _Detraction_, of a black And stinking _Insolence_ should we fetch up!”

This “pill” is a reply to Ben’s “purge” for the poets in his _Poetaster_. Oh, the sad old stuff!

Referring to Jonson’s _Poetaster_, and to _Satiromastix_, the counter-attack, we find a passage in the Cambridge play, _The Return from Parnassus_ (about 1602). Burbage, the tragic actor, and Kempe, the low-comedy man of Shakespeare’s company, are introduced, discussing the possible merits of Cambridge wits as playwrights. Kempe rejects them as they “smell too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphosis . . . ” The purpose, of course, is to laugh at the ignorance of the low-comedy man, who thinks “Metamorphosis” a writer, and does not suspect—how should he?—that Shakespeare “smells of Ovid.” Kempe innocently goes on, “Why, here’s our fellow” (comrade) “Shakespeare puts them all down” (all the University playwrights), “aye, and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace” (in _The Poetaster_) “giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge . . . ”

The Cambridge author, perhaps, is thinking of the pill (not purge) which, in _Satiromastix_, might be administered to Jonson. The Cambridge author may have thought that Shakespeare wrote the passage on the pill which was to “fetch up” masses of Ben’s insolence, self-love, arrogance, and detraction. If this be not the sequence of ideas, it is not easy to understand how or why Kempe is made to say that Shakespeare has given Jonson a purge. Stupid old nonsense! There are other more or less obscure indications of Jonson’s spite, during the stage-quarrel, against Shakespeare, but the most unmistakable proof lies in his verses in “Poet-Ape.” I am aware that Ben’s intention here to hit at Shakespeare has been denied, for example by Mr. Collins with his usual vigour of language. But though I would fain agree with him, the object of attack can be no known person save Will. Jonson was already, in _The Poetaster_, using the term “_Poet-Ape_,” for he calls the actors at large “apes.”

Jonson thought so well of his rhymes that he included them in the Epigrams of his first Folio (1616). By that date, the year of Shakespeare’s death, if he really loved Shakespeare, as he says, in verse and prose, Ben might have suppressed the verses. But (as Drummond noted) he preferred his jest, such as it was, to his friend; who was not, as usually understood, a man apt to resent a very blunt shaft of very obsolete wit. Like Molière, Shakespeare had outlived the charge of plagiarism, made long ago by the jealous Ben.

Poet-Ape is an actor-playwright “_that would be thought our chief_”—words which, by 1601, could only apply to Shakespeare; there was no rival, save Ben, near his throne. The playwright-actor, too, has now confessedly

“grown To a little wealth and credit in the scene,”

of no other actor-playwright could this be said.

He is the author of “works” (Jonson was laughed at for calling his own plays “works”), but these works are “the frippery of wit,” that is, a tissue of plagiarisms, as in the case of _Pantalabus_. But “told of this he slights it,” as most successful authors, when accused, as they often are, of plagiarism by jealous rivals, wisely do;—so did Molière. This Poet-Ape began his career by “picking and gleaning” and “buying reversions of old plays.” This means that Shakespeare _did_ work over earlier plays which his company had acquired; or, if Shakespeare did not,—then, I presume,—Bacon did!

_That_, with much bad humour, is the gist of the rhymes on Poet-Ape. Ben thinks Shakespeare’s “works” very larcenous, but still, the “works,” as such, are those of the poet-actor. I hope it is now clear that Poet-Ape, who, like _Pantalabus_, “takes up all”; who has “grown to a little wealth and credit in the scene,” and who “thinks himself the chief” of contemporary dramatists, can be nobody but Shakespeare. Hence it follows that the “works” of Poet-Ape, are the works of Shakespeare. Ben admits, nay, asserts the existence of the works, says that they may reach “the after-time,” but he calls them a mass of plagiarisms,—because he is in a jealous rage.

But this view does not at all suit Mr. Greenwood, for it shows Ben regarding Shakespeare as the “Ape,” or Actor, and also as the “Poet” and author of the “works.” Yet Ben’s words mean nothing if not that an actor is the author of works which Ben accuses of plagiarism. Mr. Greenwood thinks that the epigram proves merely that “Jonson looked upon Shakspere (if, indeed, he refers to him) as one who put forward the writings of others as his own, or, in plain English, an impostor.” “The work which goes in his name is, in truth, the work of somebody else.” {244a} Mr. Greenwood put the same interpretation on Greene’s words about “Shakescene,” and we showed that the interpretation was impossible. “The utmost we should be entitled to say” (if Shake-scene be meant for Shakspere) “is that Greene accuses Player Shakspere of putting forward, as his own, some work or perhaps some parts of a work, for which he was really indebted to another.” {245a} We proved, by quoting Greene’s words, that he said nothing which could be tortured into this sense. {245b} In the same way Ben’s words cannot be tortured into the sense that “the work which goes in his” (Poet-Ape’s) “name is, in truth, the work of somebody else.” {245c} Mr. Greenwood tries to find the Anti-Willian hypothesis in Greene’s _Groatsworth of Wit_ and in Ben’s epigram. It is in neither.

Jonson is not accusing Shakespeare of pretending to be the author of plays written by somebody else, but of “making _each man’s_ wit his own,” and the _men_ are the other dramatists of the day. Thus the future “may judge” Shakespeare’s work “to be his as well as _ours_.”

It is “we,” the living and recognised dramatists, whom Shakespeare is said to plagiarise from; so boldly that

“_We_, _the robbed_, leave rage, and pity it.”

Ben does not mean that Shakespeare is publishing, as his own, whole plays by some other author, but that his works are tissues of scraps stolen from his contemporaries, from “us, the robbed.” Where are to be found or heard of any works by a player-poet of 1601, the would-be chief dramatist of the day, except those signed William Shak(&c.). There are none, and thus Ben, at this date, is identifying Will Shakspere, the actor, with the author of the Shakespearean plays, which he expects to reach posterity; “after times may judge them to be his,” as after times do to this hour.

Thus Ben expresses, in accordance with his humour on each occasion, most discrepant opinions of Will’s works, but he never varies from his identification of Will with the author of the plays.

The “works” of which Ben wrote so splenetically in _Poet-Ape_, were the works of a Playwright-Actor, who could be nobody but the actor Shakespeare, as far as Ben then knew. If later, and in altered circumstances, he wrote of the very same works in very different terms, his “utterances” are “not easily reconcilable” with each other,—_whoever_ the real author of the works may be. If Bacon, or Mr. Greenwood’s anonymous equivalent for Bacon, were the author, and if Ben came to know it, his attitudes towards the _works_ are still as irreconcilable as ever.

Perhaps Baconians and Mr. Greenwood might say, “as long as Ben believed that the works were those of an Actor-Playwright, he thought them execrable. But when he learned that they were the works of Bacon (or of some Great One), he declared them to be more than excellent”—_but not to Drummond_. I am reluctant to think that Jonson was the falsest and meanest of snobs. I think that when his old rival, by his own account his dear friend, was dead, and when (1623) Ben was writing panegyric verses about the first collected edition of his plays (the Folio), then between generosity and his habitual hyperbolical manner when he was composing commendatory verses, he said,—not too much in the way of praise,—but a good deal more than he later said (1630?), in prose, and in cold blood. I am only taking Ben as I find him and as I understand him. Every step in my argument rests on well-known facts. Ben notoriously, in his many panegyric verses, wrote in a style of inflated praise. In conversation with Drummond he censured, in brief blunt phrases, the men whom, in verse, he had extolled. The Baconian who has not read all Ben’s panegyrics in verse, and the whole of his conversations with Drummond, argues in ignorance.

We now come to Ben’s panegyrics in the Folio of 1623. Ben heads the lines,

“TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED THE AUTHOR MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND WHAT HE HATH LEFT US.”

Words cannot be more explicit. Bacon was alive (I do not know when Mr. Greenwood’s hidden genius died), and Ben goes on to speak of the Author, Shakespeare, as dead, and buried. He calls on him thus:

“Soul of the Age! The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage! My Shakespear rise: I will not lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room: Thou art a monument, without a tomb, And art alive still, while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read, and praise to give.”

Beaumont, by the way, died in the same year as Shakespeare, 1616, and, while Ben here names him with Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare, his contemporaries have left no anecdotes, no biographical hints. In the panegyric follow the lines:

“And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek, From thence to honour thee I would not seek For names, but call forth thund’ring Æschylus,”

and the other glories of the Roman and Attic stage, to see and hear how Shakespeare bore comparison with all that the classic dramatists did, or that “did from their ashes come.”

Jonson means, “despite your lack of Greek and Latin I would not shrink from challenging the greatest Greek and Roman tragedians to see how you bear comparison with themselves”?

Mr. Greenwood and the Baconians believe that the author of the plays abounded in Latin and Greek. In my opinion his classical scholarship must have seemed slight indeed to Ben, so learned and so vain of his learning: but this is part of a vexed question, already examined. So far, Ben’s verses have brought not a hint to suggest that he does not identify the actor, his Beloved, with the author. Nothing is gained when Ben, in commendatory verses, praises “Thy Art,” whereas, speaking to Drummond of Hawthornden (1619), he said that Shakespeare “wanted art.” Ben is not now growling to Drummond of Hawthornden: he is writing a panegyric, and applauds Shakespeare’s “well-turned and true-filed lines,” adding that, “to write a living line” a man “must sweat,” and “strike the second heat upon the Muses’ anvil.”

To produce such lines requires labour, requires conscious “art.” So Shakespeare _had_ “art,” after all, despite what Ben had said to Drummond: “Shakespeare lacked art.” There is no more in the matter; the “inconsistency” is that of Ben’s humours on two perfectly different occasions, now grumbling to Drummond; and now writing hyperbolically in commendatory verses. But the contrast makes Mr. Greenwood exclaim, “Can anything be more astonishing and at the same time more unsatisfactory than this?” {249a}

Can anything be more like Ben Jonson?

Did he know the secret of the authorship in 1619? If so, why did he say nothing about the plays of the Great Unknown (whom he called Shakespeare), save what Drummond reports, “want of art,” ignorance of Bohemian geography. Or did Ben _not_ know the secret till, say, 1623, and then heap on the very works which he had previously scouted praise for the very quality which he had said they lacked? If so, Ben was as absolutely inconsistent, as before. There is no way out of this dilemma. On neither choice are Ben’s utterances “easy to reconcile one with the other,” except on the ground that Ben was—Ben, and his comments varied with his varying humours and occasions. I believe that, in the commendatory verses, Ben allowed his Muse to carry him up to heights of hyperbolical praise which he never came near in cold blood. He was warmed with the heat of poetic composition and wound up to heights of eulogy, though even _now_ he could not forget the small Latin and less Greek!

We now turn to Mr. Greenwood’s views about the commendatory verses. On mature consideration I say nothing of his remarks on Ben’s couplets about the bad engraved portrait. {250a} They are concerned with the supposed “_original_ bust,” as represented in Dugdale’s engraving of 1656. What the Baconians hope to make out of “the _original_ bust” I am quite unable to understand. {250b} Again, I leave untouched some witticisms {250c} on Jonson’s lines about Spenser, Chaucer, and Beaumont in their tombs—lines either suggested by, or suggestive of others by an uncertain W. Basse, “but the evidence of authorship seems somewhat doubtful. How the date is determined I do not know . . . ” {251a} As Mr. Greenwood knows so little, and as the discussion merely adds dust to the dust, and fog to the mist of his attempt to disable Ben’s evidence, I glance and pass by.

“Then follow these memorable words, which I have already discussed:

“‘And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek . . . ’” {251b}

In “these memorable words,” every non-Baconian sees Ben’s opinion about his friend’s lack of scholarship. According to his own excellent Index, Mr. Greenwood has already adverted often to “these memorable words.”

(1) P. 40. “ . . . if this testimony is to be explained away as not seriously written, then are we justified in applying the same methods of interpretation to Jonson’s other utterances as published in the Folio of 1623. But I shall have more to say as to that further on.”

(2) P. 88. Nothing of importance.

(3) P. 220. Quotation from Dr. Johnson. Ben, “who had no imaginable temptation to falsehood,” wrote the memorable words. But Mr. Greenwood has to imagine a “temptation to falsehood,”—and he does.

(4) P. 222. “And we have recognised that Jonson’s ‘small Latin and less Greek’ must be explained away” (a quotation from somebody).

(5) P. 225. Allusion to anecdote of “Latin (latten) spoons.”

(6) Pp. 382, 383. “Some of us” (some of whom?) “have long looked upon it as axiomatic . . . that Jonson’s ‘small Latin and less Greek,’ if meant to be taken seriously, can only be applicable to Shakspere of Stratford and not to Shakespeare,” that is, not to the Unknown author. Unluckily Ben, in 1623, is addressing the shade of the “sweet Swan of Avon,” meaning Stratford-on-Avon.

(7) The next references in the laudable Index are to pp. 474, 475. “Then follow these memorable words, which I have already discussed:

“‘And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,’

words which those who see how singularly inappropriate they are to the author of the _Plays_ and _Poems_ of Shakespeare have been at such infinite pains to explain away without impeaching the credit of the author, or assuming that he is here indulging in a little Socratic irony.”

_I_ do not want to “explain” Ben’s words “away”: I want to know how on earth Mr. Greenwood explains them away. My view is that Ben meant what he said, that Will, whose shade he is addressing, was no scholar (which he assuredly was not). I diligently search Mr. Greenwood’s scriptures, asking How does he explain Ben’s “memorable words” away? On p. 106 of _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_ I seem to catch a glimmer of his method. “Once let the Stratfordians” (every human and non-Baconian person of education) “admit that Jonson when he penned the words ‘small Latin and less Greek’ was really writing ‘with his tongue in his cheek.’ . . . ”

Once admit that vulgarism concerning a great English poet engaged on a poem of Pindaric flight, and of prophetic vision! No, we leave the admission to Mr. Greenwood and his allies.

To consider thus is to consider too seriously. The Baconians and Anti-Willians have ceased to deserve serious attention (if ever they did deserve it), and virtuous indignation, and all that kind of thing, when they ask people who care for poetry to “admit” that Ben wrote his verses “with his tongue in his cheek.” Elsewhere, {253a} in place of Ben’s “tongue in his cheek,” Mr. Greenwood prefers to suggest that Ben “is here indulging in a little Socratic irony.” Socrates “with his tongue in his cheek”! Say “talking through his throat,” if one may accept the evidence of the author of _Raffles_, as to the idioms of burglars.

To return to criticism, we are to admit that Jonson was really writing “with his tongue in his cheek,” knowing that, as a fact, “_Shakespeare_” (the Great Unknown, the Bacon of the Baconians) “had remarkable classical attainments, and they, of course, open the door to the suggestion that the entire poem is capable of an ironical construction and esoteric interpretation.” {254a}

So this is Mr. Greenwood’s method of “explaining away” the memorable words. He seems to conjecture that Will was not _Shakespeare_, not the author of the plays; that Jonson knew it; that his poem is, as a whole, addressed to Bacon, or to the Great Unknown, under his “_nom de plume_” of “William Shakespeare”; that the address to the “Swan of Avon” is a mere blind; and that Ben only alludes to his “Beloved,” the Stratford actor, when he tells his Beloved that his Beloved has “small Latin and less Greek.” All the praise is for Bacon, or the Great Unknown (Mr. Harris), the jeer is for “his Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, And what he hath left Us.”

As far as I presume to understand this theory of the “tongue in the cheek,” of the “Socratic irony,” this is what Mr. Greenwood has to propose towards “explaining away” the evidence of Ben Jonson, in his famous commendatory verses. When we can see through the dust of words we find that the “esoteric interpretation” of the commendatory verses is merely a reassertion of the general theory: a man with small Latin and less Greek could not have written the plays and poems. Therefore when Ben explicitly states that his Beloved, Mr. Shakespeare of Stratford, the Swan of Avon _did_ write the plays, and had small Latin and less Greek, Ben meant that he did _not_ write them, that they were written by somebody else who had plenty of Greek and Latin. It is a strange logical method! Mr. Greenwood merely reasserts his paradox, and proves it, like certain Biblical critics of more orthodoxy than sense, by aid of his private “esoteric method of interpretation.” Ben, we say, about 1630, in prose and in cold blood, and in a humour of criticism without the old rancour and envy, or the transitory poetic enthusiasm, pens a note on Shakespeare in a volume styled “Timber, or Discoveries, made upon men and Matter, as they have flowed out of his daily Readings; or had their reflux to his peculiar Notion of the Times.” Ben died in 1637; his MS. collection of notes and brief essays, and reflections, was published in 1641. Bacon, of whom he wrote his impressions in this manuscript, had died in 1626. Ben was no longer young: he says, among these notes, that his memory, once unusually strong, after he was past forty “is much decayed in me . . . It was wont to be faithful to me, but shaken with age now . . .” (I copy the extract as given by Mr. Greenwood. {255a}) He spoke sooth: he attributes to Orpheus, in “Timber,” a line from Homer, and quotes from Homer what is not in that poet’s “works.”

In this manuscript occurs, then, a brief prose note, headed, _De Shakespeare nostrati_, on our countryman Shakespeare. It is an anecdote of the Players and their ignorance, with a few critical and personal remarks on Shakespeare. “I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, ‘Would he had blotted a thousand,’ which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by (that) wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped. ‘_Sufflaminandus erat_,’ as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too! Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him, ‘Cæsar, thou dost me wrong.’ He replied, ‘Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause’; and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.” Baconians actually maintain that Ben is here speaking of Bacon.

Of whom is Ben writing? Of the author of _Julius Cæsar_,—certainly, from which, his memory failing, he misquotes a line. If Ben be in the great secret—that the author was Bacon, or Mr. Greenwood’s Great Unknown, he is here no more enthusiastic about the Shadow or the Statesman, than about Shakespeare; no less cool and critical, whoever may be the subject of his comments. Whether, in the commendatory verses, he referred to the Actor-Author, or Bacon, or the Shining Shadow, or all of them at once, he is now in a mood very much more cool and critical. If to be so cool and critical is violently inconsistent in the case of the Stratford actor, it is not less so if Ben has Bacon or the Shadow in his mind. Meanwhile the person of whom he speaks _is here the actor-author_, whom the players, his friends, commended “wherein he faulted,” namely, in not “blotting” where, in a thousand cases, Ben wishes that he _had_ blotted. Can the most enthusiastic Baconian believe that when Ben wrote about the players’ ignorant applause of Shakespeare’s, of their friend’s lack of care in correction, Ben had Bacon in his mind?

As for Mr. Greenwood, he says that in Ben’s sentence about the players and their ignorant commendation, “we have it on Jonson’s testimony that the players looked upon William Shakspere the actor as the author of the plays and praised him for never blotting out a line.” We have it, and how is the critic to get over or round the fact? Thus, “We know that this statement” (about the almost blotless lines) “is ridiculous; that if the players had any unblotted manuscripts in their hands (which is by no means probable) they were merely fair copies . . . ”

Perhaps, but the Baconians appear to assume that a “fair copy” is not, and cannot be, a copy in the handwriting of the author.

As I have said before, the Players knew Will’s handwriting, if he could write. If they received his copy in a hand not his own, and were not idiots, they could not praise him and his unerring speed and accuracy in penning his thoughts. If, on the other hand, Will could not write, in their long friendship with Will, the Players must have known the fact, and could not possibly believe, as they certainly did, “on Jonson’s testimony” in his authorship.

To finish Mr. Greenwood’s observations, “if they” (the players) “really thought that the author of the plays wrote them off _currente calamo_, and never” (or “hardly ever”) “blotted a line, never revised, never made any alterations, they knew nothing whatever concerning the real Shakespeare.” {258a}

Nothing whatever? What they did not know was merely that Will gave them fair copies in his own hand, as, before the typewriting machine was invented, authors were wont to do. Within the last fortnight I heard the error attributed to the players made by an English scholar who is foremost in his own field of learning. He and I were looking at some of Dickens’s MSS. They were full of erasions and corrections. I said, “How unlike Scott!” whose first draft of his novels exactly answered to the players’ description of Will’s “copy.” My friend said, “Browning scarcely made an erasion or change in writing his poems,” and referred to Mr. Browning’s MSS. for the press, of which examples were lying near us. “But Browning must have made clean copies for the press,” I said: which was as new an idea to my learned friend as it was undreamed of by the Players:—if what they received from him were his clean copies.

The Players’ testimony, through Jonson, cannot be destroyed by the “easy stratagem” of Mr. Greenwood.

Mr. Greenwood now nearly falls back on Bacon, though he constantly professes that he “is not the advocate of Bacon’s authorship.” The author was some great man, as like Bacon as one pea to another. Mr. Greenwood says that Jonson looked on the issue of the First Folio {259a} “as a very special occasion.” Well, it _was_ a very special occasion; no literary occasion could be more “special.” Without the Folio, badly as it is executed, we should perhaps never have had many of Shakespeare’s plays. The occasion was special in the highest degree.

But, says Mr. Greenwood, “if we could only get to the back of Jonson’s mind, we should find that there was some efficient cause operating to induce him to give the best possible send-off to that celebrated venture.” {260a}

Ben was much in the habit of giving “sendoffs” of great eloquence to poetic “ventures” now forgotten. What could “the efficient cause” be in the case of the Folio? At once Mr. Greenwood has recourse to Bacon; he cannot, do what he will, keep Bacon “out of the Memorial.” Ben was with Bacon at Gorhambury, on Bacon’s sixtieth birthday (January 22, 1621). Ben wrote verses about the Genius of the old house,

“Thou stand’st as if some mystery thou didst.”

“What was that ‘mystery’?” asks Mr. Greenwood. {260b} What indeed? And what has all this to do with Ben’s commendatory verses for the Folio, two years later? Mr. Greenwood also surmises, as we have seen, {260c} that Jonson was with Bacon, helping to translate _The Advancement of Learning_ in June, 1623.

Let us suppose that he was: what has that to do with Ben’s verses for the Folio? Does Mr. Greenwood mean to hint that _Bacon_ was the “efficient cause operating to induce” Ben “to give the best possible send-off” to the Folio? One does not see what interest Bacon had in stimulating the enthusiasm of Ben, unless we accept Bacon as author of the plays, which Mr. Greenwood does not. If Mr. Greenwood thinks that Bacon was the author of the plays, then the facts are suitable to his belief. But if he does not,—“I hold no brief for the Baconians,” he says,—how is all this passage on Ben’s visits to Bacon concerned with the subject in hand?

Between the passage on some “efficient cause” “at the back of Ben’s mind,” {261a} and the passage on Ben’s visits to Bacon in 1621–3, {261b} six pages intervene, and blur the supposed connection between the “efficient cause” of Ben’s verses of 1623, and his visits to Bacon in 1621–3. These intercalary pages are concerned with Ben’s laudations of Bacon, by name, in his _Discoveries_. The first is entirely confined to praise of Bacon as an orator. Bacon is next mentioned in a Catalogue of Writers as “_he who hath filled up all numbers_, and performed that in our tongue which may be preferred or compared either to _insolent Greece or haughty Rome_,” words used of Shakespeare by Jonson in the Folio verses.

Mr. Greenwood remarks that Jonson’s Catalogue, to judge by the names he cites (More, Chaloner, Smith, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sidney, Hooker, Essex, Raleigh, Savile, Sandys, and so on), suggests that “he is thinking mainly of wits and orators of his own and the preceding generation,” not of poets specially. This is obvious; why should Ben name Shakespeare with More, Smith, Chaloner, Eliot, Bishop Gardiner, Egerton, Sandys, and Savile? Yet “it is remarkable that no mention should be made of the great dramatist.” Where is Spenser named, or Beaumont, or Chaucer, with whom Ben ranked Shakespeare? Ben quoted of Bacon the line he wrote long before of Shakespeare as a poet, about “insolent Greece,” and all this is “remarkable,” and Mr. Greenwood finds it “not surprising” {262a} that the Baconians dwell on the “extraordinary coincidence of expression,” as if Ben were incapable of repeating a happy phrase from himself, and as if we should wonder at anything the Baconians may say or do.

Another startling coincidence is that, in _Discoveries_, Ben said of Shakespeare “his wit was in his own power,” and wished that “the rule of it had been so too.” Of Bacon, Ben wrote, “his language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious.” Thus Bacon _had_ “the rule of his own wit,” Bacon “_could_ spare or pass by a jest,” whereas Shakespeare apparently could not—so like were the two Dromios in this particular! Strong in these convincing arguments, the Baconians ask (not so Mr. Greenwood, he is no Baconian), “were there then _two_ writers of whom this description was appropriate . . . ?” Was there only one, and was it of Bacon, under the name of “Shakespeare,” that Ben wrote _De Shakespeare nostrati_?

Read it again, substituting “Bacon” for “Shakespeare.” “I remember the players,” and so on, and what has Bacon to do here? “Sometimes it was necessary that _Bacon_ should be stopped.” “Many times _Bacon_ fell into those things could not escape laughter,” such as Cæsar’s supposed line, “and such like, which were ridiculous.” “_Bacon_ redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in _Bacon_ to be praised than to be pardoned.”

Thus freely, according to the Baconians, speaks Ben of Bacon, whom he here styles “Shakespeare,”—Heaven knows why! while crediting him with the players as his friends. Ben could not think or speak thus of Bacon. Mr. Greenwood occupies his space with these sagacities of the Baconians; one marvels why he takes the trouble. We are asked why Ben wrote so little and that so cool (“I loved him on this side idolatry as much as any”) about Shakespeare. Read through Ben’s _Discoveries_: what has he to say about any one of his great contemporary dramatists, from Marlowe to Beaumont? He says nothing about any of them; though he had panegyrised them, as he panegyrised Beaumont, in verse. In his prose _Discoveries_ he speaks, among English dramatists, of Shakespeare alone.

We are also asked by the Baconians to believe that his remarks on Bacon under the name of Shakespeare are really an addition to his more copious and infinitely more reverential observations on Bacon, named by his own name; “I have and do reverence him for the greatness that was only proper to himself.” Also (where Bacon is spoken of as Shakespeare) “He redeemed his vices by his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned . . . Sometimes it was necessary that he should be stopped . . . Many times he fell into those things that could not escape laughter.”

These two views of Bacon are, if you like, incongruous. The person spoken of is in both cases Bacon, say the Baconians, and Mr. Greenwood sympathetically alludes to their ideas, {264a} which I cannot qualify in courteous terms. Baconians “would, of course, explain the difficulty by saying that however sphinx-like were Jonson’s utterances, he had clearly distinct in his own mind two different personages, viz. Shakspere the player, and Shakespeare the real author of the plays and poems, and that if in the perplexing passage quoted from the _Discoveries_ he appears to confound one with the other, it is because the solemn seal of secrecy had been imposed on him.” They _would_ say, they _do_ say all that. Ben is not to let out that Bacon is the author. So he tells us of Bacon that he often made himself ridiculous, and so forth,—but he _pretends_ that he is speaking of Shakespeare.

All this wedge of wisdom, remember, is inserted between the search for “the efficient cause” of Ben’s panegyric (1623), in the Folio, on his Beloved Mr. William Shakespeare, and the discovery of Ben’s visits to Bacon in 1621–3.

Does Mr. Greenwood mean that Ben, in 1623 (or earlier), knew the secret of Bacon’s authorship, and, stimulated by his hospitality, applauded his works in the Folio, while, as he must not disclose the secret, he throughout speaks of Bacon as Shakespeare, puns on that name in the line about seeming “to shake a lance,” and salutes the Lord of Gorhambury as “Sweet Swan of Avon”? Mr. Greenwood cannot mean that; for he is not a Baconian. What _does_ he mean?

Put together his pages 483, 489–491. On the former we find how “it would appear” that Jonson thought the issue of the Folio (1623) “a very special occasion,” and that perhaps if we could only “get to the back of his mind, we should find that there was some efficient cause operating to induce him to give the best possible send-off to that celebrated venture.” Then skip to pp. 489–491, and you find very special occasions: Bacon’s birthday feast with its “mystery”; Ben as one of Bacon’s “good pens,” in 1623. “The best of these good pens, it seems, was Jonson.” {266a} On what evidence does it “seem”? The opinion of Judge Webb.

Is this supposed collaboration with Bacon in 1623, “the efficient cause operating to induce” Ben “to give the best possible send-off” to the Folio? How could this be the “efficient cause” if Bacon were not the author of the plays?

Mr. Greenwood, like the Genius at the birthday supper,

“Stands as if some mystery he did.”

On a trifling point of honour, namely, as to whether Ben were a man likely to lie, tortuously, hypocritically, to be elaborately false about the authorship of the Shakespearean plays, it is hopelessly impossible to bring the Baconians and Mr. Greenwood (who “holds no brief for the Baconians”) to my point of view. Mr. Greenwood rides off thus—what the Baconians do is unimportant.

“There are, as everybody knows, many falsehoods that are justifiable, some that it is actually a duty to tell.” It may be so; I pray that I may never tell any of them (or any more of them).

Among justifiable lies I do not reckon that of Scott if ever he plumply denied that he wrote the _Waverley_ novels. I do not judge Sir Walter. Heaven forbid! But if, in Mr. Greenwood’s words, he, “we are told, thought it perfectly justifiable for a writer who wished to preserve his anonymity, to deny, when questioned, the authorship of a work, since the interrogator had no right to put such a question to him,” {267a} I disagree with Sir Walter. Many other measures, in accordance with the conditions of each case, were open to him. Some are formulated by his own Bucklaw, in _The Bride of Lammermoor_, as regards questions about what occurred on his bridal night. Bucklaw would challenge the man, and cut the lady, who asked questions. But Scott’s case, as cited, applies only to Bacon (or Mr. Greenwood’s Unknown), if _he_ were asked whether or not he were the author of the plays. No idiot, at that date, was likely to put the question! But, if anyone did ask, Bacon must either evade, or deny, or tell the truth.

On the parallel of Scott, Bacon could thus deny, evade, or tell the truth. But the parallel of Scott is not applicable to any other person except to the author who wishes to preserve his anonymity, and is questioned. The parallel does not apply to Ben. _He_ had not written the Shakespearean plays. Nobody was asking _him_ if he had written them. If he knew that the author was Bacon, and knew it under pledge of secrecy, and was asked (_per impossibile_) “Who wrote these plays?” he had only to say, “Look at the title-page.” But no mortal was asking Ben the question. But we are to suppose that, in the panegyric and in _Discoveries_, Ben chooses to assert, first, that Shakespeare was his Beloved, his Sweet Swan of Avon; and that he “loved him, on this side idolatry, as much as any.” There is no evidence that he did love Shakespeare, except his own statement, when, according to the Baconians, he is really speaking of Bacon, and, according to Mr. Greenwood, of an unknown person, singularly like Bacon. Consequently, unless we can prove that Ben really loved the actor, he is telling a disgustingly hypocritical and wholly needless falsehood, both before and after the death of Bacon. To be silent about the authorship of a book, an authorship which is the secret of your friend and patron, is one thing and a blameless thing. All the friends, some twenty, to whom Scott confided the secret of his authorship were silent. But not one of them publicly averred that the author was their very dear friend, So-and-so, who was not Scott, and perhaps not their friend at all. That was Ben’s line. Thus the parallel with Scott drawn by Mr. Greenwood, twice, {268a} is no parallel. It has no kind of analogy with Ben’s alleged falsehoods, so elaborate, so incomprehensible except by Baconians, and, if he did not love the actor Shakspere dearly, so detestably hypocritical, and open to instant detection.

It is not easy to find a parallel to the conduct with which Ben is charged. But suppose that Scott lived unsuspected of writing his novels, which, let us say, he signed “James Hogg,” and died without confessing his secret, and without taking his elaborate precautions for its preservation on record.

Next, imagine that Lockhart knew Scott’s secret, under vow of silence, and was determined to keep it at any cost. He therefore, writing after the death of Hogg of Ettrick, and in Scott’s lifetime, publishes verses declaring that Hogg was his “beloved” (an enormous fib), and that Hogg, “Sweet Swan of Ettrick,” was the author of the _Waverley_ novels.

To complete the parallels, Lockhart, after Scott’s death, leaves a note in prose to the effect that, while he loved Hogg on this side idolatry (again, a monstrous fable), he must confess that Hogg, author of the _Waverley_ novels, often fell into things that were ridiculous; and often needed to have a stopper put on him for all these remarks. Lockhart, while speaking of Hogg, is thinking of Scott—and he makes the remarks solely to conceal Scott’s authorship of the novels—of which, on the hypothesis, nobody suspected Scott to be the author. Lockhart must then have been what the Baconian Mr. Theobald calls Mr. Churton Collins, “a measureless liar,”—all for no reason.

Mr. Greenwood, starting as usual from the case, which is no parallel, of Scott’s denying his own authorship, goes on, “for all we know, Jonson might have seen nothing in the least objectionable in the publication by some great personage of his dramatic works under a pseudonym” (under another man’s name really), “even though that pseudonym led to a wrong conception as to the authorship; and that, if, being a friend of that great personage, and working in his service” (Ben worked, by the theory, in Bacon’s), “he had solemnly engaged to preserve the secret inviolate, and not to reveal it even to posterity, then _doubtless_ (‘I thank thee, Jew’ (meaning Sir Sidney Lee), ‘for teaching me that word’!) he would have remained true to that solemn pledge.” {270a}

To remain “true,” Ben had only to hold his peace. But he lied up and down, and right and left, and even declared that Bacon was a friend of the players, and needed to be shut up, and made himself a laughing-stock in his plays,—styling Bacon “Shakespeare.” All this, and much more of the same sort, we must steadfastly believe before we can be Baconians, for only by believing these doctrines can we get rid of Ben Jonson’s testimony to the authorship of Will Shakspere, Gent.

XIII THE PREOCCUPATIONS OF BACON

LET us now examine a miracle and mystery in which the Baconians find nothing strange; nothing that is not perfectly normal. Bacon was the author of the Shakespearean plays, they tell us. Let us look rapidly at his biography, after which we may ask, does not his poetic supremacy, and imaginative fertility, border on the miraculous, when we consider his occupations and his ruling passion?

Bacon, born in 1561, had a prodigious genius, was well aware of it, and had his own ideal as to the task which he was born to do. While still at Cambridge, and therefore before he was fifteen, he was utterly dissatisfied, as he himself informed Dr. Rawley, with the scientific doctrines of the Schools. In the study of nature they reasoned from certain accepted ideas, _a priori_ principles, not from what he came to call “interrogation of Nature.” There were, indeed, and had long been experimental philosophers, but the school doctors went not beyond Aristotle; and discovered nothing. As Mr. Spedding puts it, the boy Bacon asked himself, “If our study of nature be thus barren, our method of study must be wrong; might not a better method be found? . . . Upon the conviction ‘This may be done,’ followed at once the question, _How_ may it be done? Upon that question answered followed the resolution to try and do it.”

This was, in religious phrase, the Conversion of Bacon, “the event which had a greater influence than any other upon his character and future course. From that moment he had a vocation which employed and stimulated him . . . an object to live for as wide as humanity, as immortal as the human race; an idea to live in vast and lofty enough to fill the soul for ever with religious and heroic aspirations.” {274a} The vocation, the idea, the object, were not poetical.

In addition to this ceaseless scientific preoccupation, Bacon was much concerned with the cause of reformed religion (then at stake in France, and supposed to be in danger at home), and with the good government of his native country. He could only aid that cause by the favour of Elizabeth and James; by his services in Parliament, where, despite his desire for advancement, he conscientiously opposed the Queen. He was obliged to work at such tasks of various sorts, legal and polemical literature, as were set him by people in power. With these three great objects filling his heart, inspiring his ambition, and occupying his energies and time, we cannot easily believe, without direct external evidence, that he, or any mortal, could have leisure and detachment from his main objects (to which we may add his own advancement) sufficient to enable him to compose the works ascribed to Shakespeare.

Thus, at the age of twenty-two (1583), when, if ever, he might have penned sonnets to his mistress’s eyebrow, he reports that he wrote “his first essay on the Instauration of Philosophy, which he called _Temporis Partus Maximus_, ‘The Greatest Birth of Time,’” and “we need not doubt that between Law and Philosophy he found enough to do.” {275a} For the Baconians take Bacon to have been a very great lawyer (of which I am no judge), and Law is a hard mistress, rapacious of a man’s hours. In 1584 he entered Parliament, but we do not hear anything very important of his occupations before 1589, when he wrote a long pamphlet, “Touching the Controversies of the Church of England.” {275b} He had then leisure enough; that he was not anonymously supplying the stage with plays I can neither prove nor disprove: but there is no proof that he wrote _Love’s Labour’s Lost_! By 1591–2, we learn much of him from his letter to Cecil, who never would give him a place wherein he could meditate his philosophy. He was apparently hard at scientific work. “I account my ordinary course of study and meditation to be more painful than most parts of action are.” He adds, “The contemplative planet carries me away wholly,” and by contemplation I conceive him to mean what he calls “vast contemplative ends.” These he proceeds to describe: he does _not_ mean the writing of _Venus and Adonis_ (1593), nor of _Lucrece_ (1594), nor of comedies! “I have taken all knowledge to be my province,” and he recurs to his protest against the pseudo-science of his period. “If I could purge knowledge of two sorts of rovers whereof the one, with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities; the other with blind experiments, and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries . . . This, whether it be curiosity, or vainglory, or nature, or (if one take it favourably) philanthropy, is so fixed in my mind that it cannot be removed.” If Cecil cannot help him to a post, if he cannot serve the truth, he will reduce himself, like Anaxagoras, to voluntary poverty, “ . . . and become some sorry bookmaker, or a true pioneer in that mine of truth . . . ” {276a} Really, from first to last he was the prince of begging-letter writers, endlessly asking for place, pensions, reversions, money, and more money.

Though his years were thirty-one, Bacon was as young at heart as Shelley at eighteen, when he wrote thus to Cecil, “my Lord Treasurer Burghley.” What did Cecil care for his youngish kinsman’s philanthropy, and “vast speculative ends” (how _modern_ it all is!), and the rest of it? But just because Bacon, at thirty-one, _is_ so extremely “green,” going to “take all knowledge for his province” (if some one will only subsidise him, and endow his research), I conceive that he was in earnest about his reformation of science. Surely no Baconian will deny it! Being so deeply in earnest, taking his “study and meditation” so hard, I cannot see him as the author of _Venus and Adonis_, and whatever plays of the period,—say, _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _Henry VI_, Part I,—are attributed to him, about this time, by Baconians. Of course my view is merely personal or “subjective.” The Baconians’ view is also “subjective.” I regard Bacon, in 1591, and later, as intellectually preoccupied by his vast speculative aims:—what he says that he desires to do, in science, is what he _did_, as far as he was able. His other desires, his personal advancement, money, a share in the conduct of affairs, he also hotly pursued, not much to his own or the public profit. There seems to be no room left, no inclination left, for competition in their own line with Marlowe, Greene, Nash, and half a dozen other professed playwrights: no room for plays done under the absurd pseudonym of an ignorant actor.

You see these things as the Baconians do, or as I do. Argument is unavailing. I take Bacon to have been sincere in his effusive letter to Cecil. Not so the Baconians; he concealed, they think, a vast _literary_ aim. They must take his alternative—to be “some sorry bookmaker, _or_ a pioneer in that mine of truth,” as meaning that he would either be the literary hack of a company of players, _or_ the founder of a regenerating philosophy. But, at that date, playwrights could not well be called “bookmakers,” for the owners of the plays did their best to keep them from appearing as printed books. If Bacon by “bookmaker” meant “playwright,” he put a modest value on his poetical work!

Meanwhile (1591–2), Bacon attached himself to the young, beautiful, and famous Essex, on the way to be a Favourite, and gave him much excellent advice, as he always did, and, as always, his advice was not taken. It is not a novel suggestion, that Essex is the young man to whom Bacon is so passionately attached in the Sonnets traditionally attributed to Shakespeare. “I applied myself to him” (that is, to Essex), says Bacon, “in a manner which, I think, happeneth rarely among men.” The poet of the Sonnets applies himself to the Beloved Youth, in a manner which (luckily) “happeneth rarely among men.”

It is difficult to fit the Sonnets into Bacon’s life. But, if you pursue the context of what Bacon says concerning Essex, you find that he does not speak _openly_ of a tenderly passionate attachment to that young man; not more than _this_, “I did nothing but advise and ruminate with myself, to the best of my understanding, propositions and memorials of anything that might concern his Lordship’s honour, fortune, or service.” {279a} As Bacon did nothing but these things (1591–2), he had no great leisure for writing poetry and plays. Moreover, speaking as a poet, in the Sonnets, he might poetically exaggerate his intense amatory devotion to Essex into the symbolism of his passionate verse. _Was Essex then a married man_? If so, the Sonneteer’s insistence on his marrying must be symbolical of—anything else you please.

We know that Bacon, at this period, “did nothing” but “ruminate” about Essex. The words are his own! (1604). No plays, no _Venus and Adonis_, nothing but enthusiastic service of Essex and the Sonnets. Mr. Spedding, indeed, thinks that, to adorn some pageant of Essex (November 17, 1592), Bacon kindly contributed such matter as “Mr. Bacon in Praise of Knowledge” (containing his usual views about regenerating science), and “Mr. Bacon’s Discourse in Praise of his Sovereign.” {279b} Both are excellent, though, for a Court festival, not very gay.

He also, very early in 1593, wrote an answer to Father Parson’s (?) famous indictment of Elizabeth’s Government, in _Observations on a Libel_. {280a} What with ruminating on Essex, and this essay, he was not solely devoted to _Venus and Adonis_ and to furbishing-up old plays, though, no doubt, he _may_ have unpacked his bosom in the Sonnets, and indulged his luscious imaginations in _Venus and Adonis_. I would not limit the potentialities of his genius. But, certainly, this amazing man was busy in quite other matters than poetry; not to mention his severe “study and meditation” on science.

All these activities of Bacon, in the year of _Venus and Adonis_, do not exhaust his exercises. Bacon, living laborious days, plunged into the debate in the Commons on Supply and fell into Elizabeth’s disgrace, and vainly competed with Coke for the Attorney-Generalship, and went on to write a pamphlet on the conspiracy of Lopez, and to try to gain the office of Solicitor-General, to manage Essex’s affairs, to plead at the Bar, to do Crown work as a lawyer, to urge his suit for the Solicitorship; to trifle with the composition of “Formularies and Elegancies” (January 1595), to write his Essays, to try for the Mastership of the Rolls, to struggle with the affairs of the doomed Essex (1600–1), while always “labouring in secret” at that vast aim of the reorganisation of natural science, which ever preoccupied him, he says, and distracted his attention from his practice and from affairs of State. {281a} Of these State affairs the projected Union with Scotland was the most onerous. He was also writing _The Advancement of Learning_ (1605). “I do confess,” he wrote to Sir Thomas Bodley, “since I was of any understanding, my mind hath in effect been absent from that I have done.” {281b} His mind was with his beloved Reformation of Learning: this came between him and his legal, his political labours, his pamphlet-writing, and his private schemes and suits. To this burden of Atlas the Baconians add the vamping-up of old plays for Shakespeare’s company, and the inditing of new plays, poems, and the Sonnets. Even without this considerable addition to his tasks, Bacon is wonderful enough, but with it—he needs the sturdy faith of the Rationalist to accept him and his plot—to write plays under the pseudonym of “William Shakespeare.”

Talk of miracles as things which do not happen! The activities of Bacon from 1591 to 1605; the strain on that man’s mind and heart,—especially his heart, when we remember that he had to prosecute his passionately adored Essex to the death; all this makes it seem, to me, improbable that, as Mrs. Pott and her school of Baconians hold, he lived to be at least a hundred and six, if not much older. No wonder that he turned to tragedy, _Lear_, _Macbeth_, _Othello_, and saw life _en noir_: man delighted him not, nor woman either.

The occupations, and, even more, the scientific preoccupation of Bacon, do not make his authorship of the plays a physical impossibility. But they make it an intellectual miracle. Perhaps I may be allowed to set off this marvel against that other portent, Will Shakspere’s knowledge and frequent use of terms of Law. {282a} I do not pretend to understand how Will came to have them at the tip of his pen. Thus it may be argued that the Sonnets are by Bacon and no other man, because the Law is so familiar to the author, and his legal terms are always used with so nice an accuracy, that only Bacon can have been capable of these mysterious productions. (But why was Bacon so wofully inaccurate in points of scholarship and history?)

By precisely the same argument Lord Penzance proves that Bacon (not Ben, as Mr. Greenwood holds) wrote for the players the Dedication of the Folio. {282b} “If it should be the case that Francis Bacon wrote the plays, he would, probably, afterwards have written the Dedication of the Folio, and the style of it” (stuffed with terms of law) “would be accounted for.” Mr. Greenwood thinks that Jonson wrote the Dedication; so Ben, too, was fond of using legal terms in literature. “Legal terms abounded in all plays and poems of the period,” says Sir Sidney Lee, and Mr. Greenwood pounces on the word “all.” {283a} However he says, “We must admit that this use of legal jargon is frequently found in lay-writers, poets, and others of the Elizabethan period—in sonnets for example, where it seems to us intolerable.” Examples are given from Barnabe Barnes. {283b} The lawyers all agree, however, that Shakespeare does the legal style “more natural,” and more accurately than the rest. And yet I cannot even argue that, if he did use legal terms at all, he would be sure to do it pretty well.

For on this point of Will’s use of legal phraseology I frankly profess myself entirely at a loss. To use it in poetry was part of the worse side of taste at that period. The lawyers with one voice declare that Will’s use of it is copious and correct, and that their “mystery” is difficult, their jargon hard to master; “there is nothing so dangerous,” wrote Lord Campbell, “as for one not of the craft to tamper with our freemasonry.” I have not tampered with it. Perhaps a man of genius who found it interesting might have learned the technical terms more readily than lawyers deem possible. But Will, so accurate in his legal terms, is so inaccurate on many other points; for example, in civil and natural history, and in classic lore. Mr. Greenwood proves him to be totally at sea as a naturalist. On the habits of bees, for example, “his natural history of the insect is as limited as it is inaccurate.” {284a} Virgil, though not a Lord Avebury, was a great entomologist, compared with Will. About the cuckoo Will was recklessly misinformed. His Natural History was folklore, or was taken from that great mediæval storehouse of absurdities, the popular work of Pliny. “He went to contemporary error or antiquated fancy for his facts, not to nature,” says a critic quoted by Mr. Greenwood. {284b} Was that worthy of Bacon?

All these charges against _le vieux Williams_ (as Théophile Gautier calls our Will) I admit. But Will was no Bacon; Will had not “taken all knowledge for his province.” Bacon, I hope, had not neglected Bees! Thus the problem, why is Will accurate in his legal terminology, and reckless of accuracy in quantity, in history, in classic matters, is not by me to be solved. I can only surmise that from curiosity, or for some other unknown reason, he had read law-books, or drawn information from Templars about the meaning of their jargon, and that, for once, he was technically accurate.

* * * * *

We have now passed in review the chief Baconian and Anti-Willian arguments against Will Shakespeare’s authorship of the plays and poems. Their chief argument for Bacon is _aut Diabolus_, _aut Franciscus_, which, freely interpreted, means, “If Bacon is not the author, who the devil is?”

We reply, that man is the author (in the main) to whom the works are attributed by every voice of his own generation which mentions them, namely, the only William Shakespeare that, from 1593 to the early years of the second decade of the following century, held a prominent place in the world of the drama. His authorship is explicitly vouched for by his fellow-players, Heminge and Condell, to whom he left bequests in his will; and by his sometime rival, later friend, and always critic, Ben Jonson; Heywood, player and playwright and pamphleteer, who had been one of Henslowe’s “hands,” and lived into the Great Rebellion, knew the stage and authors for the stage from within, and _his_ “mellifluous Shakespeare” is “Will,” as his Beaumont was “Frank,” his Marlowe “Kit,” his Fletcher, “Jack.” The author of _Daiphantus_ (1604), mentioning the popularity of _Hamlet_, styles it “one of friendly Shakespeare’s tragedies.” Shakespeare, to him, was our Will clearly, a man of known and friendly character. The other authors of allusions did not need to say _who_ their “Shakespeare” was, any more than they needed to say _who_ Marlowe or any other poet was. We have examined the possibly unprecedented argument which demands that they who mention Shakespeare as the poet must, if they would enlighten us, add explicitly that he is also the actor.

“But all may have been deceived” by the long conspiracy of the astute Bacon, or the Nameless One. To believe this possible, considering the eager and suspicious jealousy and volubility of rival playwrights, is to be credulous indeed. The Baconians, representing Will almost as incapable of the use of pen and ink as “the old hermit of Prague,” destroy their own case. A Will who had to make his mark, like his father, could not pose as an author even to the call-boy of his company. Mr. Greenwood’s bookless Will, with some crumbs of Latin, and some power of “bumbasting out a blank verse,” is a rather less impossible pretender, indeed; but why and when did the speaker of patois, the bookless one, write blank verse, from 1592 onwards, and where are his blank verses? Where are the “works” of Poet-Ape? As to the man, even Will by tradition, whatever it may be worth, he was “a handsome, well-shaped man; very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant, smooth wit.” To his fellow-actors he was “so worthy a friend and fellow” (associate). To Jonson, “he was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed so freely that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped.” If Jonson here refers, as I suppose he does, to his conversation, it had that extraordinary affluence of thoughts, each mating itself with as remarkable originality of richly figured expressions, which is so characteristic of the style of Shakespeare’s plays. In this prodigality he was remote indeed from the style of the Greeks; “panting Time toils after him in vain,” and even the reader, much more the listener, might say, _sufflaminandus est_; “he needs to have the brake put on.” {287a}

Such, according to unimpeachable evidence, was Will. Only despair can venture the sad suggestion that, under the name of Shakespeare, Ben is here speaking of Bacon, as “falling into those things which could not escape laughter . . . which were ridiculous.” But to this last poor shift and fantastic guess were the Anti-Willians and Baconians reduced.

Such was Shakespeare, according to a rival.

But it is “impossible” that a man should have known so much, especially of classical literature and courtly ways, and foreign manners and phrases, if he had no more, at most, than four or five years at a Latin school, and five or six years in that forcing-house of faculty, the London of the stage, in the flush of the triumph over the Armada.

“With innumerable sorts of English books and infinite fardles of printed pamphlets this country is pestered, all shops stuffed, and every study furnished,” says a contemporary. {288a} If a doubter will look at the cheap and common books of that day (a play in quarto, and the Sonnets of Shakespeare, when new, were sold for fippence) in any great collection; he will not marvel that to a lover of books, poor as he might be, many were accessible. Such a man cannot be kept from books.

If the reader will look into “the translations and imitations of the classics which poured from the press . . . the poems and love-pamphlets and plays of the University wits” (when these chanced to be printed), “the tracts and dialogues in the prevailing taste,” {288b} he will understand the literary soil in which the genius of Shakespeare blossomed as rapidly as the flowers in “Adonis’ garden.” The whole literature was, to an extent which we find tedious, saturated with classical myths, anecdotes, philosophic _dicta_—a world of knowledge of a kind then “in widest commonalty spread,” but now so much forgotten that, to Baconians and the public, such lore seems recondite learning.

The gallants who haunted the stage, and such University wits as could get the money, or had talent (like Crichton) to “dispute their way through Europe,” made the Italian tour, and, notoriously, were “Italianate.” They would not be chary of reminiscences of Florence, Venice, and Rome. Actors visited Denmark and Germany. No man at home was far to seek for knowledge of Elsinore, the mysterious Venetian “tranect or common ferry,” the gondolas, and the Rialto. There was no lack of soldiers fresh and voluble from the foreign wars. Only dullards, or the unthinking, can be surprised by the ease with which a quick-witted man, having some knowledge of Latin, can learn to read a novel in French, Italian, or Spanish. That Shakespeare was the very reverse of a dullard, of the clod of Baconian fancy, is proved by the fact that he was thought capable of his works. For courtly manners he had the literary convention and Lyly’s Court Comedies, with what he saw when playing at the Court and in the houses of the great. As to untaught nobility of manners, there came to the Court of France in 1429, from a small pig-breeding village on the marches of Lorraine, one whose manners were deemed of exquisite grace, propriety, and charm, by all who saw and heard her: of her manners and swift wit and repartee, the official record of her trial bears concordant evidence. Other untaught gifts she possessed, and the historic record is unimpeached as regards that child of genius, Jeanne d’Arc.

“_Ne me dites jamais cette bête de mot_, _impossible_,” said Napoleon: it is indeed a stupid word where genius is concerned.

If intellectual “miracles” were impossible to genius, even Bacon could not have been and done all that he was and did, and also the author of the Shakespearean plays and poems; even Ben could not have been the scholar that he was. For the rest, I need not return on my tracks and explain once more such shallow mysteries as the “Silence of Philip Henslowe,” and the lack of literary anecdotage about Shakespeare in a stupendously illiterate country town. Had Will, not Ben, visited Drummond of Hawthornden, we should have matter enough of the kind desired.

“We have the epics of Homer,” people say, “what matters it whether they be by a Man, or by a Syndicate that was in business through seven centuries? We have the plays of Shakespeare, what matters it whether he, or Bacon, or X. were, in the main, the author?”

It matters to us, if we hold such doubts to be fantastic pedantries, such guesses contrary to the nature of things; while we wish to give love and praise and gratitude where they are due; to that Achæan “Father of the rest”; and to “friendly Shakespeare.”

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I “TROILUS AND CRESSIDA”

TO myself _Troilus and Cressida_ is, with _Henry VI_, Part I, the most mysterious among the Shakespearean plays. Here we find, if Will wrote it, or had any hand in it, the greatest poet of the modern world in touch with the heroes of the greatest poet of the ancient world; but the English author’s eyes are dimmed by the mists and dust of post-Homeric perversions of the Tale of Troy. The work of perversion began, we know, in the eighth century before our era, when, by the author of the _Cypria_, these favourite heroes of Homer, Odysseus and Diomede, were represented as scoundrels, assassins, and cowards.

In the Prologue to the play (whosoever wrote it) we see that the writer is no scholar. He makes the Achæan fleet muster in “the port of _Athens_,” of all places. Even Ovid gave the Homeric trysting-place, Aulis, in Bœotia. (This Prologue is not in the Folio of 1623.) Six gates hath the Englishman’s Troy, and the Scæan is not one of them.

The loves of Troilus and Cressida, with Pandarus as go-between, are from the mediæval Troy books, and were wholly unknown to Homer, whose Pandarus is only notable for loosing a traitor’s shaft at Menelaus, in time of truce, and for his death at the hand of Diomede. The play begins after the duel (Iliad, III) between Paris and Menelaus: in the play, not in Homer, Paris “retires hurt,” as is at first reported. Hector has a special grudge against the Telamonian Aias. As in the Iliad there is a view of the Achæans, taken from the walls by Priam and Helen; so, in the play, Pandarus and Cressida review the Trojans re-entering the city. Paris turns out not to be hurt after all.

In Act i. Scene 3, the Achæans hold council, and regret the disaffection of Achilles. Here comes Ulysses’ great speech on discipline, in armies, and in states, the gradations of rank and duty; commonly thought to be a leaf in Shakespeare’s crown of bays. The speeches of Agamemnon and Nestor are dignified; indeed the poet treats Agamemnon much more kindly than Homer is wont to do. But the poet represents Achilles as laughing in his quarters at Patroclus’s imitation of the cough and other infirmities of old Nestor, to which Homer, naturally, never alludes. Throughout, the English poet regards Achilles with the eyes of his most infamous late Greek and ignorant mediæval detractors. The Homeric sequence of events is so far preserved that, on the day of the duel between Paris and Menelaus, comes (through Æneas) the challenge by Hector to fight any Greek in “gentle and joyous passage of arms” (Iliad, VII). As in the Iliad, the Greeks decide by lot who is to oppose Hector; but by the contrivance of Odysseus (not by chance, as in Homer) the lot falls on Aias. In the Iliad Aias is as strong and sympathetic as Porthos in _Les Trois Mousquetaires_. The play makes him as great an eater of beef, and as stupid as Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Achilles, save in a passage quite out of accord with the rest of the piece, is nearly as dull as Aias, is discourteous, and is cowardly! No poet and no scholar who knew Homer’s heroes in Homer’s Greek, could thus degrade them; and the whole of the revilings of Thersites are loathsome in their profusion of filthy thoughts. It does not follow that Will did not write the part of Thersites. Some of the most beautiful and Shakespearean pieces of verse adorn the play; one would say that no man but Will could have written them. Troilus and Cressida, at first, appear “to dally with the innocence of love”; and nothing can be nobler and more dramatic than the lines in which Cressida, compelled to go to her father, Calchas, in the Greek camp, in exchange for Antenor, professes her loyalty in love. But the Homeric and the alien later elements,—the story of false love,—cannot be successfully combined. The poet, whoever he was, appears to weary and to break down. He ends, indeed, as the Iliad ends, with the death of Hector, but Hector, in the play, is murdered, while resting unarmed, without shield and helmet, after stripping a suit of sumptuous mail from a nameless runaway. In the play he has slain Patroclus, but has not stripped him of the armour of Achilles, which, in Homer, he is wearing. Achilles then meets Hector, but far from rushing to avenge on him Patroclus, he retires like a coward, musters his men, and makes them surround and slay the defenceless Hector.

Cressida, who is sent to her father Calchas, in the Greek camp, in a day becomes “the sluttish spoil of opportunity,” and of Diomede, and the comedy praised by the preface-writer of a quarto of 1609, is a squalid tragedy reeking of Thersites and Pandarus, of a light o’ love, and the base victory of cruel cowardice over knightly Hector. Yet there seemed to be muffled notes from the music, and broken lights from the splendour of Homer. When Achilles eyes Hector all over, during a truce, and insultingly says that he is thinking in what part of his body he shall drive the spear, we are reminded of Iliad, XXII, 320–326, where Achilles searches his own armour, worn by Patroclus, stripped by Hector from him, and worn by Hector, for a chink in the mail. Yet, after all, these points are taken, not from the Iliad, but from Caxton’s popular Troy Book.

Once more, when Hector is dead, and Achilles bids his men to

“cry amain, Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain,”

we think of Iliad, XXII, 390–393, where Achilles commands the Myrmidons to go singing the pæan

“Glory have we won, we have slain great Hector!”

The sumptuous armour stripped by Hector from a nameless man, recalls his winning of the arms of Achilles from Patroclus. But, in fact, this passage is also borrowed, with the murder of Hector, from Caxton, except as regards the pæan.

It may be worth noting that Chapman’s first instalment of his translation of the Iliad, containing Books I, II, and VII–XI, appeared in 1598, and thence the author could adapt the passages from Iliad, Book VII. In or about 1598–9 occurred, in _Histriomastix_, by Marston and others, a burlesque speech in which Troilus, addressing Cressida, speaks of “thy knight,” who “_Shakes_ his furious _Speare_,” while in April 1599, Henslowe’s account-book contains entries of money paid to Dekker and Chettle for a play on Troilus and Cressida, for the Earl of Nottingham’s Company. {297a} Of this play no more is known, nor can we be sure that Chapman’s seven Books of the Iliad (I, II, VII–XI) of 1598 attracted the attention of playwrights, from Shakespeare to Chettle and Dekker, to Trojan affairs. The coincidences at least are curious. If “_Shakes_ his furious _Speare_” in _Histriomastix_ refers to Shakespeare in connection with Cressida, while, in 1599, Dekker and Chettle were doing a _Troilus and Cressida_ for a company not Shakespeare’s, then there were _two Troilus and Cressida_ in the field. A licence to print a _Troilus and Cressida_ was obtained in 1602–3, but the quarto of our play, the Shakespearean play, is of 1609, “as it is acted by my Lord Chamberlain’s men,” that is, by Shakespeare’s Company. Now Dekker and Chettle wrote, apparently, for Lord Nottingham’s Company. One quarto of 1609 declares, in a Preface, that the play has “never been staled with the stage”; another edition of the same year, from the same publishers, has not the Preface, but declares that the piece “was acted by the King’s Majesty’s servants _at the Globe_.” {298a} The author of the Preface (Ben Jonson, Mr. Greenwood thinks, {298b}) speaks only of a single author, who has written other admirable comedies. “When he is gone, and his comedies out of sale, you will scramble for them, and set up a new English Inquisition.” Why? The whole affair is a puzzle. But if the author of the Preface is right about the single author of _Troilus and Cressida_, and if Shakespeare is alluded to in connection with Cressida, in _Histriomastix_ (1599), then it appears to me that Shakespeare, in 1598–9, after Chapman’s portion of the Iliad appeared, was author of one _Troilus and Cressida_, extant in 1602–3 (when its publication was barred till the publisher “got authority”), while Chettle and Dekker, in April 1599, were busy with another _Troilus and Cressida_, as why should they not be? In an age so lax about copyright, if their play was of their own original making, are we to suppose that there was copyright in the names of the leading persons of the piece, Troilus and Cressida?

[Picture: London in the year 1610, showing the Globe Theatre in the Foreground]

Perhaps not: but meanwhile Mr. Greenwood cites Judge Stotsenburg’s opinion {298c} that Henslowe’s entries of April 1599 “refute the Shakespearean claim to the authorship of _Troilus and Cressida_,” which exhibits “the collaboration of two men,” as “leading commentators” hold that it does. But the learned Judge mentions as a conceivable alternative that “there were two plays on the subject with the same name,” and, really, it looks as if there were! The Judge does not agree “with Webb and other gifted writers that Bacon wrote this play.” So far the Court is quite with him. He goes on however, “It was, in my opinion, based on the foregoing facts, originally the production of Dekker and Chettle, added to and philosophically dressed by Francis Bacon.” But, according to Mr. Greenwood, “it is admitted not only that the different writing of two authors is apparent in the Folio play, but also that ‘Shakespeare’ must have had at least some share in a play of _Troilus and Cressida_ as early as the very year 1599, in the spring of which Dekker and Chettle are found engaged in writing their play of that name,” on the evidence of _Histriomastix_. {299a} How that evidence proves that “a play of _Troilus and Cressida_ had been _published_ as by ‘Shakespeare’ about 1599,” I know not. Perhaps “published” means “acted”? “And it is not unreasonable to suppose that this play” (“published as by Shakespeare”) “was the one to which Henslowe alludes”—as being written in April 1599, by Dekker and Chettle.

If so, the play must show the hands of three, not two, men, Dekker, Chettle, and “Shakespeare,” the Great Unknown, or Bacon. He collaborates with Dekker and Chettle, in a play for Lord Nottingham’s men (according to Sir Sidney Lee), {300a} but it is, later at least, played by Shakespeare’s company; and perhaps Bacon gets none of the £4 paid {300b} to Dekker and Chettle. Henslowe does not record his sale of the Dekker and Chettle play to Shakespeare’s or to any company or purchaser. Without an entry of the careful Henslowe recording his receipts for the sale of the Dekker and Chettle play to any purchaser, it is not easy to see how Shakespeare’s company procured the manuscript, and thus enabled him to refashion it. Perhaps no reader will fail to recognise his hand in the beautiful blank verse of many passages. I am not familiar enough with the works of Dekker and Chettle to assign to them the less desirable passages. Thersites is beastly: a Yahoo of Swift’s might poison with such phrases as his the name and nature of love, loyalty, and military courage. But whatsoever Shakespeare did, he did thoroughly, and if he were weary, if man delighted him not, nor woman either, he may have written the whole piece, in which love perishes for the whim of “a daughter of the game,” and the knightly Hector is butchered to sate the vanity of his cowardly Achilles. If Shakespeare read the books translated by Chapman, he must have read them in the same spirit as Keats, and was likely to find that the poetry of the Achæan could not be combined with the Ionian, Athenian, and Roman perversions, as he knew them in the mediæval books of Troy, in the English of Lydgate and Caxton. The chivalrous example of Chaucer he did not follow. Probably Will looked on the play as one of his failures. The Editor, if we can speak of an Editor, of the Folio clearly thrust the play in late, so confusedly that it is not paged, and is not mentioned in the table of the contents.

“The Grand Possessors” of the play referred to in the Preface to one of the two quartos of 1609 we may suppose to be Shakespeare’s Company. In this case the owners would not permit the publication of the play if they could prevent it. The title provokes Mr. Greenwood to say, “Why these worthies should be so styled is not apparent; indeed the supposition seems not a little ridiculous.” {301a} Of course, if the players were the possessors, “grand” is merely a jeer, by a person advertising a successful piracy. And in regard to Tieck’s conjecture that James I is alluded to as “the grand possessor, for whom the play was expressly written,” {301b} the autocratic James was very capable of protecting himself against larcenous publishers.

APPENDIX II CHETTLE’S SUPPOSED ALLUSION TO WILL SHAKSPERE

IN discussing contemporary allusions to William Shakspere or Shakespeare (or however you spell the name), I have not relied on Chettle’s remarks (in _Kind-Hart’s Dreame_, 1592) concerning Greene’s _Groatsworth of Wit_. Chettle speaks of it, saying, “in which a letter, written to divers play-makers, is offensively by one or two of them taken.” It appears that by “one or two” Chettle means _two_. “With _neither_ of them that take offence was I acquainted” (at the time when he edited the _Groatsworth_), “and with one of them I care not if I never be.” We do not know who “the Gentlemen his Quondam acquaintance,” addressed by Greene, were. They are usually supposed to have been Marlowe, Peele, and Lodge, or Nash. We do not know which of the two who take offence is the man with whom Chettle did not care to be acquainted. Of “the other,” according to Chettle, “myself have seen his demeanour no less civil than he is excellent in the quality he professes” (that is, “in his profession,” as we say), “besides divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty; and his facetious grace in writing that approves his art.”

Speaking from his own observation, Chettle avers that the person of whom he speaks is civil in his demeanour, and (_apparently_) that he is “excellent in the quality he professes”—in his profession. Speaking on the evidence of “divers of worship,” the same man is said to possess “facetious grace in writing.” Had his writings been then published, Chettle, a bookish man, would have read them and formed his own opinion. Works of Lodge, Peele, and Marlowe had been published. Writing is _not_ “the quality he professes,” is not the “profession” of the man to whom Chettle refers. On the other hand, the profession of Greene’s “Quondam acquaintance” _was_ writing, “they spend their wits in making Plays.” Thus the man who wrote, but whose profession was not that of writing, does not, so far, appear to have been one of those addressed by Greene. It seems undeniable that Greene addresses gentlemen who are “playmakers,” who “spend their wits in making Plays,” and who are _not_ actors; for Greene’s purpose is to warn them against the rich, ungrateful actors. If Greene’s friends, at the moment when he wrote, were, or if any one of them then was, by profession an actor, Greene’s warning to him against actors, directed to an actor, is not, to me, intelligible. But Mr. Greenwood writes, “As I have shown, George Peele was one of the playwrights addressed by Greene, and Peele was a successful player as well as playwright, and might quite truly have been alluded to both as having ‘facetious grace in writing,’ and being ‘excellent in the quality he professed,’ that is, as a professional actor.” {304a}

I confess that I did not know that George Peele, M.A., of Oxford, had ever been a player, and a successful player. But one may ask,—in 1592 did George Peele “profess the quality” of an actor; was he then a professional actor, and only an occasional playwright? If so, I am not apt to believe that Greene seriously advised him not to put faith in the members of his own profession. From them, as a successful member of their profession (a profession which, as Greene complains, “exploited” dramatic authors), Peele stood in no danger. Thus I do not see how Chettle’s professional actor, reported to have facetious grace in writing, can be identified with Peele. The identification seems to me impossible. Peele and Marlowe, in 1592, were literary gentlemen; Lodge, in 1592, was filibustering, though a literary man; he had not yet become a physician. In 1592, none of the three had any profession but that of literature, so far as I am aware. The man who had a special profession, and also wrote, was not one of these three; nor was he Tom Nash, a mere literary gentleman, pamphleteer and playwright.

I do not know the name of any one of the three to whom Greene addressed the _Groatsworth_, though the atheistic writer of tragedies seems meant, and disgracefully meant, for Marlowe. I only know that Chettle is expressing his regrets for Greene’s language to some one whom he applauded as to his exercise of his profession; and who, according to “divers of worship,” had also “facetious grace in writing.” “Myself have seen him no less civil than he is excellent in the quality he professes”; whether or not this means that Chettle has _seen_ his excellence in his profession, I cannot tell for certain; but Chettle’s remark is, at least, contrasted with what he gives merely from report—“the facetious grace in writing” of the man in question. _His_ writing is not part of his profession, so he is not, in 1592 (I conceive), Lodge, Peele, Marlowe, or Nash.

Who, then, is this mysterious personage? Malone, Dyce, Steevens, Collier, Halliwell-Phillipps, Knight, Sir Sidney Lee, Messrs. Gosse and Garnett, and Mr. J. C. Collins say that he is Will Shakspere. But Mr. Fleay and Mr. Castle, whose “mind” is “legal,” have pointed out that this weird being cannot be Shake-scene (or Shakspere, if Greene meant Shakspere), attacked by Greene. For Chettle says that in the _Groatsworth of Wit_ “a letter, written to divers play-makers, is offensively by one or two of them taken.” The mysterious one is, therefore, one of the playwrights addressed by Greene. Consequently all the followers of Malone, who wrote before Messrs. Fleay and Castle, are mistaken; and what Mr. Greenwood has to say about Sir Sidney Lee, J. C. Collins, and Dr. Garnett, and Mr. Gosse, in the way of moral reprobation, may be read by the curious in his pages. {305a}

Meanwhile, if we take Chettle to have been a strict grammarian, by his words—“a letter, written to divers play-makers, is offensively by one or two of them taken,” Will is excluded; the letter was most assuredly not written to _him_. But I, whose mind is not legal, am not certain that Chettle does not mean that the letter, written to divers play-makers, was by one or two makers of plays offensively taken.

This opinion seems the less improbable, as the person to whom Chettle is most apologetic excels in a quality or profession, which is contrasted with, and is not identical with, “his facetious grace in writing”—a _parergon_, or “ bye-work,” in his case. Whoever this person was, he certainly was not Marlowe, Peele, Lodge, or Nash. We must look for some other person who had a profession, and also was reported to have facetious grace in writing.

If Chettle is to be held tight to grammar, Greene referred to some one unknown, some one who wrote for the stage, but had another profession. If Chettle is not to be thus tautly construed, I confess that to myself he seems to have had Shakspere, even Will, in his mind. For Will in 1592 had “a quality which he professed,” that of an actor; and also (I conceive) was reported to have “ facetious grace in writing.” But other gentlemen may have combined these attributes; wherefore I lay no stress on the statements of Chettle, as if they referred to our Will Shakspere.

FOOTNOTES

{0a} E. J. Castle, _Shakespeare_, _Bacon_, _Jonson_, _and Greene_, pp. 194–195.

{0b} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 145.

{0c} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 340.

{0d} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 340, 341.

{0e} _In Re Shakespeare_, p. 54.

{0f} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 341.

{0g} _Ibid._, p. 470.

{0h} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 339.

{0i} _The Vindicators of Shakespeare_, pp. 115–116.

{0j} _Ibid._, p. 49.

{0k} _The Vindicators of Shakespeare_, p. 14.

{4a} _Francis Bacon Wrote Shakespeare_. By H. Crouch-Batchelor, 1912.

{7a} _The Shakespere Problem Restated_, p. 293.

{11a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 31–37.

{13a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 36–37.

{16a} _Tue Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 20.

{17a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 47–48.

{17b} _Ibid._, pp. 54–55.

{17c} _Ibid._, p. 54.

{17d} _Ibid._, p. 56.

{17e} _Ibid._, p. 59.

{17f} _Ibid._, p. 62.

{17g} _Ibid._, p. 193.

{18a} See his _Vindicators of Shakespeare_, p. 210.

{19a} _Vindicators_, p. 187.

{19b} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 223.

{21a} _In Re Shakespeare_, p. 54.

{22a} In a brief note of two pages (_Cornhill Magazine_, November 1911) he makes such reply as the space permits to a paper of my own, “Shakespeare or X?” in the September number. With my goodwill he might have written thirty-two pages to my sixteen, but I am not the Editor, and never heard of Mr. Greenwood’s note till May 1912.

He says that I had represented him as stating that the Unknown genius adopted the name of William Shake-speare or Shakespeare “as a good _nom de guerre_, without any reference to the fact that there was an actor in existence of the name of William Shakspere, whose name was sometimes written Shakespeare, and without the least idea that the works he published under this pseudonym would be fathered upon the actor . . . ” (My meaning has obviously been too obscurely stated by me.)

Mr. Greenwood next writes that the confusion between the actor, and the unknown taking the name William Shakespeare, “did happen and was intended to happen.”

_C’est là le miracle_!

How could it happen if the actor were the bookless, ignorant man whom Mr. Greenwood describes? It could not happen: Will must have been unmasked in a day. The fact that a strange plot existed was only too obvious. The Unknown’s secret must have been tracked by the hounds of keenest nose in the packs of rival and jealous authors and of actors. None gives tongue.

{27a} _Francis Bacon Wrote Shakespeare_, p. 37.

{30a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 333.

{31a} In the passage which I quoted, with notes of omission, from Mr. Greenwood (p. 333), he went on to say that the eulogies of the poet by “some cultured critics of that day,” “afford no proof that the author who published under the name of Shakespeare was in reality Shakspere the Stratford player.” That position I later contest.

{31b} See chap. XI, _The First Folio_.

{33a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 305, 306.

{34a} Furness, _Merchant of Venice_, pp. 271, 272.

{34b} On this see Mr. Pollard’s _Shakespeare Folios and Quartos_, pp. 1–9.

{37a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 202, 348, 349.

{38a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 349.

{44a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 356.

{45a} _In Re Shakespeare_, p. 88, note I.

{48a} _Studies in Shakespeare_, p. 15; _Life of Shakespeare_, by Malone, pp. 561–2, 564; Appendix, XI, xvi.

{50a} C. I. Elton, _William Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, pp. 97, 98.

{51a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 44.

{52a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 39.

{52b} _Vindicators of Shakespeare_, p. 210.

{53a} _Vindicators of Shakespeare_, p. 187.

{53b} _Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 223.

{55a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 69.

{56a} See chapter X, _The Traditional Shakespeare_.

{56b} See C. I. Elton, _William Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, pp. 48, 343–8.

{57a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 207–9.

{59a} Chapter X, _infra._

{62a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 96.

{62b} See chapter X, _The Traditional Shakespeare_.

{62c} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 94–96.

{64a} _Shakespeare_, pp. 38–40.

{65a} Raleigh, _Shakespeare_, pp. 77, 78.

{69a} So he seems to me to do; but in _Vindicators of Shakespeare_, p. 135, he shows great caution: “I refer the reader to Mr. Collin’s essay, and ask him to judge for himself.”

{71a} _Studies in Shakespeare_, p. 15.

{72a} _Studies in Shakespeare_, p. 21.

{75a} _Alcibiades_, I, pp. 132, 133; _Troilus_, III, scene 3.

{77a} _Studies in Shakespeare_, p. 46.

{77b} _Iliad_, p. 63.

{91a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 54, 55.

{93a} _National Review_, vol. xxxix., 1902.

{93b} _The Pilot_, Aug. 30, 1902, p. 220.

{96a} The oldest mention of a _circulating_ library known to me is in Hull, in 1650, when Sir James Turner found it excellent.

{97a} In his _Shakespeare_ (_English Men of Letters_), pp. 66, 67.

{97b} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 77, 78.

{97c} _The Shakespearean Myth_, p. 162.

{100a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 76.

{101a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 81, note I.

{103a} Penzance, _The Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy_, pp. 150, 151. Citing Appleton Morgan’s _Shakespearean Myth_, pp. 248, 298.

{106a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 175.

{107a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 457.

{109a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 58.

{109b} _Apology the Actors_, 1612.

{110a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 267.

{111a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 267, 268.

{112a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 50–52.

{113a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 51.

{113b} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 51.

{113c} _Ibid._, p. 500, citing Mr. Reed’s _Francis Bacon our Shake-speare_, chap. ii. pp. 62, 63.

{113d} _Ibid._, pp. 500–520, chap xvi.

{114a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 512.

{114b} _Ibid._, p. 514.

{114c} _Ibid._, p. 386, note I.

{114d} _Ibid._, p. 93.

{120a} _Cambridge History of English Literature_, vol. v. p. 126. Prof. G. P. Baker.

{121a} Furness, _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, pp. xiii., 348–350: _cf._ pp. 348, 349, for the four distinct styles of linguistic affectation of the period, at least as they are represented in literature.

{121b} _Shakespeare Studies in Baconian Light_, Appendix on Marlowe.

{124a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 516.

{126a} Act i. Scene 2. Furness, _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, p. 45, note.

{127a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 67, 68.

{129a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 66.

{129b} _Ibid._, p. 67.

{136a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 307.

{138a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 308.

{140a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 309.

{141a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 310.

{141b} _Ibid._, pp. 310, 311.

{141c} _Ibid._, p. 311.

{142a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 309.

{142b} _Ibid._, pp. 311, 312.

{143a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 312, 313.

{145a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 313.

{146a} See Appendix II, “_Chettle’s supposed allusion to Will Shakspere_.”

{147a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 330.

{149a} _The Vindicators of Shakespeare_, pp. 115, 116, 211. _See_ my Introduction, p. xxii.

{150a} _The Vindicators of Shakespeare_, p. 210.

{150b} _Ibid._, p. 136.

{151a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 338.

{155a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 346.

{157a} Cited in _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 353.

{159a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 353.

{159b} _Diary_, pp. xxvii, xxviii.

{160a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 367.

{160b} _Ibid._, pp. 368, 369.

{161a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 354.

{163a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 366.

{164a} Some Baconians say so!

{171a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 181, 397.

{171b} _Ibid._, p. 186.

{174a} Some verses of Fletcher’s may, perhaps, refer to Beaumont’s death.

{175a} C. I. Elton, _Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, pp. 246, 247.

{175b} As to the Aldine Ovid in the Bodleian, see Mr. Greenwood in _The Vindicators of Shakespeare_, pp. 191, 192. Of course he raises every objection, but I do not feel sure that either an affirmative or negative result can be attained by _expertise_. We are not told when or where the Bodleian obtained the book; nor what is the date of the handwriting of the inscription about W. Hall, a personage whom we are to meet later. A good deal of business is done in forging names in books.

{176a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 196.

{176b} _Ibid._, p. 197.

{177a} See _Frontispiece_.

{179a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 247, 248, note I.

{180a} _National Review_, June 1912, p. 903.

{180b} _Pall Mall Gazette_, November 1910.

{181a} _Outlines_, vol. i. p. 283.

{182a} P. 73, 1806.

{183a} _Outlines_, vol. i. p. 283.

{183b} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 247.

{186a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 248–249.

{186b} C. I. Elton, _William Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, pp. 236–237.

{187a} C. I. Elton, _William Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, p. 228.

{187b} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 199.

{187c} C. I. Elton, _William Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, pp. 332–333.

{187d} _Ibid._, p. 250.

{188a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 199, note 1.

{189a} C. I. Elton, _William Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, pp. 339, 342.

{190a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 238.

{198a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 214.

{200a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 214, note 2.

{201a} C. I. Elton, _William Shakespeare_, _His Family and Friends_, p. 56.

{201b} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 28, 29.

{207a} Like Mr. Greenwood, I think that Ben was the penman.

{208a} Pollard, _ut supra_, p. 10.

{210a} Pollard, _ut supra_, pp. 64–80.

{215a} Pollard, _ut supra_, pp. 121–124.

{216a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 287–288.

{217a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 290–291.

{217b} _Ibid._, pp. 292, 293.

{218a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 293.

{219a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 489, 490.

{219b} _Ibid._, p. 491.

{219c} _Studies in Shakespeare_, p. 352.

{220a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 293.

{220b} _Ibid._, p. 491.

{220c} _Ibid._, p. 293.

{220d} _Ibid._, p. 293.

{221a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 297.

{221b} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 297.

{222a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 293.

{222b} _Ibid._, p. 351.

{222c} _Ibid._, p. 351.

{222d} _Ibid._, pp. 290, 293.

{222e} _Ibid._, pp. 351, 358.

{223a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 351.

{223b} _Ibid._, pp. 290, 293.

{223c} _Ibid._, p. 351.

{223d} _Ibid._, p. 351.

{223e} _Ibid._, pp. 290, 293.

{223f} _Ibid._, p. 290.

{223g} _Ibid._, pp. 290, 291.

{223h} _Ibid._, p. 293.

{224a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 351.

{224b} _Ibid._, p. 358.

{224c} _Ibid._, pp. 351, 358.

{224d} _Ibid._, p. 290.

{224e} _Ibid._, p. 293.

{225a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 355, 356.

{226a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 355, 356.

{226b} _Ibid._, pp. 158, 160, 162 (“not the original author”), 170.

{226c} _Ibid._, pp. 130–151, 160, 168.

{226d} _Ibid._, p., 123, note 2.

{227a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 356.

{228a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 160.

{228b} _Ibid._, p. 356.

{228c} _Ibid._, p. 160.

{228d} _Ibid._, p. 356.

{228e} _Ibid._, pp. 290, 293.

{228f} _Ibid._, p. 358.

{229a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 365. I will bet Mr. Greenwood any sum not exceeding half a crown that he cannot find any “records of the writing of” either of these plays in Henslowe’s “Diary,”—his account book of expenses and receipts.

{229b} _Ibid._, p. 365.

{229c} _Ibid._, p. 365.

{229d} _Ibid._, p. 160.

{231a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 276.

{231b} _Ibid._, p. 290.

{232a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 293.

{232b} _Ibid._, p. 294.

{233a} _The Vindicators of Shakespeare_, p. 57 (1911).

{237a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 453.

{244a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 466.

{245a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 313.

{245b} _Supra_, p. 143.

{245c} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 466.

{249a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 482.

{250a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 467, 471.

{250b} See chapter IX on _The Later Life of Shakespeare_.

{250c} _Ibid._, pp. 472, 474.

{251a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 473.

{251b} _Ibid._, p. 474.

{253a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 475.

{254a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 106.

{255a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 478.

{258a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 480.

{259a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 483.

{260a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 483.

{260b} _Ibid._, pp. 489–490.

{260c} See chapter XI, _The First Folio_.

{261a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 483.

{261b} _Ibid._, pp. 489–491.

{262a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 486.

{264a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 488.

{266a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 491.

{267a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 295, _cf._ p. 499.

{268a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 295, 499.

{270a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 499.

{274a} _Letters and Life of Francis Bacon_, edited by James Spedding, vol. i. p. 4 (1861).

{275a} _Letters and Life of Francis Bacon_, edited by James Spedding, vol. i. p. 31.

{275b} _Ibid._, vol. i. pp. 74–95.

{276a} _Letters and Life of Francis Bacon_, edited by James Spedding, vol. i. pp. 108–109.

{279a} _Letters and Life of Francis Bacon_, edited by James Spedding, vol. i. p. 106.

{279b} _Ibid._, vol. i. pp. 121–143.

{280a} Sixty pages in Spedding’s _Letters and Life of Francis Bacon_, vol. i. pp. 146–208.

{281a} See his statement (1603), Spedding, iii. pp. 84–87.

{281b} _Ibid._, iii. p. 253.

{282a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 371–406.

{282b} _The Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy_, p. 198.

{283a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 391.

{283b} _Ibid._, pp. 408–410.

{284a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 425.

{284b} _Ibid._, p. 431.

{287a} _Sufflamen_ is the “drag” or “brake.” Ben’s, “it was necessary he should be _stopped_,” is an incorrect translation.

{288a} Quoted by Sir Walter Raleigh, _Shakespeare_, p. 65.

{288b} _Ibid._, p. 65.

{297a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 358–362.

{298a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 491–494.

{298b} _Ibid._, p. 495.

{298c} _Ibid._, pp. 358–360.

{299a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 361.

{300a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 360.

{300b} _Ibid._, p. 358.

{301a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, p. 495, note I.

{301b} _Ibid._, p. 494.

{304a} _Vindicators of Shakespeare_, p. 69.

{305a} _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_, pp. 317–319.