Part 24

One short magazine article cannot possibly deal with the subject exhaustively, therefore I only attempt to make a general protest against the Editor’s paper, and to illustrate a few of its weaknesses.

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law”; from which proverb it would seem that the arguments for Bacon’s authorship would require to be ten times as strong as Shakespeare’s, before they can have a reasonable chance of ousting the present possessor from his dramatic name and fame. On the contrary, there is no real _argument_ for putting Bacon out of the great sphere which he designed for himself, into one designed by his admirers, but utterly incongruous to his nature and powers. All his own contemporaries, all his immediate successors, and all their descendants for 250 years, attributed the plays to their author, Shakespeare. Guess-work began about the middle of the nineteenth century, and like a snowball rolling, gradually increased by external accretion, but not by vital energy. I do not deny that there are some apparent difficulties and some strange coincidences, or Baconianism, as a cult, could not have been possible. But these difficulties depend upon our temporary ignorance, these coincidences may be explained in a different way from that on which the Baconians insist.

Francis Bacon was a genius, and a well-trained one. He early saw the deficiencies of the science and philosophy of his day. His devotees to-day do not follow his prime advice for conducting investigations enunciated in his great “Novum Organum,” “to search after negatives” to any hypothesis they may start. On the contrary, they greedily accept everything, however unfounded, that tells in the favour of their new theory, and ignore whatever contradicts their points. No amount of repetition will make a hazy and unfounded tradition into a fact, and inferences from unsound premises give no worthy conclusion. I can only bring forward a few of my facts here, and still fewer of my inferences.

Echoing the cry of old, “Can any good come out of Nazareth?” the Baconians commence by crying, “Can any good come out of Stratford and Warwickshire?” and to give weight to the cry, strive to belittle the place.

It may be remembered that a fine German writer, Jean Paul Richter, insisted that a “poet should always have himself born in a small city.” There are many reasons that made the “small city” of Stratford eminently suitable for the birthplace of a poet. It was at the very heart of England, the centre of the converging influences of descent and of legend from British and Saxon and Danish ancestors. The great Roman roads crossed not far off, and Stratford, with her substantial bridge, was on the line of traffic. Stratford was a thriving town, “emporiolum non inelegans,” says Camden. Its gentle, undulating scenery lay just on the borders of a great forest,

Where nightingales in Arden sit and sing.

(Drayton.)

It had had an aristocratic semi-religious guild from ancient times, centre of the county families, an old college, now also passed away, and a noble church, still existing. Becon, a great scholar, in 1549 speaks of Warwickshire as the most intellectual of all the English counties, and Stratford, in Shakespeare’s time at least, had a town-council intelligent enough to know the value of a good schoolmaster, and to seek to secure him in the practical way by offering double the amount of salary enjoyed by the head-master of Eton and others. The books used in the grammar schools of the day can be found in the writings of Mulcaster and Brinsley, and by reference to the Stationers’ Registers. The status of the schoolmaster determined the character of the study and of the books. Those who say that Stratford was then a “bookless neighbourhood” speak without book. It is easy for a particular instance to destroy so universal an affirmative. There was, at least, one suit at law because a man had not returned a book he had borrowed; and from my own knowledge of their names, I can state that one curate alone had 170 books of the best selections in philosophy, divinity, history, literature, and legend. I know that Mr. Shakespeare bought at least one.

After decrying Stratford, the Baconians attempt to defame young Stratford Shakespeare. Fortunately, when he was young, his father was one of the most important men in the place, and as the grammar-school was free to all the sons of burgesses, it is more than reasonable to suppose that he had his full opportunities given him. Of course, he may have neglected them, which is an occasional way with a genius. There is _no_ authority for the statement that Shakespeare was apprenticed to a butcher. Even if he had been so, that circumstance would not have quenched a native genius that rebelled against it. Wolsey was the son of a butcher, so was Akenside. Keats was the son of a livery stable keeper. There _is_ authority for his early marriage, imprudent because his father was in pecuniary difficulties at the time, but just the kind of marriage one would have expected from his poetic, impulsive tendencies. His relations to life, property, and literature were more like those of Sir Walter Scott than any other man. When he found himself in difficulties, he bravely set himself to the task of attempting to retrieve the fallen fortunes of the family, and set off to London. The Baconians firmly believe that he had to fly to escape the consequences of his poaching affair, but has it never struck them how humorous it is to think that Bacon showed spite at Sir Thomas Lucy, for the whipping that Shakespeare received? Bacon in reality was a very good friend of the Lucy family. I exposed the whole falsity of this tradition two years ago in the “Fortnightly Review,” in an article entitled “Justice Shallow _not_ a Satire on Sir Thomas Lucy.”

When young Shakespeare went to London, there is proof that he renewed his acquaintanceship with his Stratford friend, Richard Field, the apprentice, son-in-law, and successor of Vautrollier, the great printer, who had two printing presses, and was allowed to keep six foreign journeymen. For some years, at least, it is evident that he took time to read Field’s books. Webster, his contemporary dramatist, calls him “_industrious_ Shakespeare.” I say it is evident, because with the exception of a few books referred to, such as Wilson’s “Art of Rhetoric,” “The Paradise of Dainty Devices,” “Seneca,” “Plautus,” “Holinshed’s History of England and Scotland,” and others, this one firm alone printed all the books that were _necessary_ for the poet’s culture, and all classics that he refers to directly.

The limitation in authorities is a strong argument against Bacon’s authorship, as well as the plentiful crop of unscholarly blunders to be found in the plays.

Besides Field’s library, another opportunity of education and culture was found for the poet in the romantic and faithful friendship of the young Earl of Southampton, a law-student and patron of literature. How can Baconians gravely assert that Bacon _could_ have written these two dedications of 1593 and 1594 to Shakespeare’s poems? How could he speak of the one poem as the “first heir of his invention,” when he already had written much and designed more? How could he say to Southampton in print, “What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours,” while he was at that time a sworn follower of the Earl of Essex? Shakespeare had no position in society or literature sufficient to induce Bacon to use his name as a mantle, by the time that Shakespeare’s two poems were brought out by Shakespeare’s friend, Dick Field. The sonnets resemble the poems too much in phrases, feelings, and situations to doubt that the author is the same, and all the three are claimed by Shakespeare in print.

Now, can the Baconians explain how they can believe that Bacon, who at the age of thirty-one had already planned “The Greatest Birth of Time,” and, filled with the sublime self-conceit of conscious power, had written to Lord Burghley in that year that he “had taken all knowledge to be his province,” should have addressed the half-trained young lad, Southampton (among many other similar phrases), in the modest lines:

Thine eyes that taught the dumb on high to sing, And heavy ignorance aloft to fly, Have added feathers to the learned’s wing, And given grace a double majesty. Yet be most proud of that which I compile, Whose influence is thine and born of thee, In other’s works thou dost but mend the style, And arts with thy sweet graces graced be-- But thou art all my art, and dost advance As high as learning my rude ignorance.

Bacon simply could not have written these lines, at least.

And it must be remembered that whoever was able to write the sonnets and the poems, might become able in time to write the fuller and richer plays.

There remain witnesses abundant that Shakespeare’s London career was a personal success. Greene’s envy, no less than Chettle’s praise, point to it, W. Covell, Thomas Edwards, the authors of the Parnassus Plays, John Weever, John Davies, and Thomas Thorpe; that he was a good actor, John Marston, the dramatist, affirms, by asking whether he or Burbage acted best; John Davies also couples their names together as players having

Wit, courage, good shape, good parts and all good.

and says of Shakespeare that he was a fit “companion for a king.”

Thou hast no rayling but a raygning witt, And honesty thou sow’st which they do reape.

The praises of his “works” are emphasized by Professor Meres and many others; and the testimony of the love and appreciation of “his fellows” is unstinted. It must never be forgotten that perhaps the most undoubted praise was that which an admirer fixed upon his tombstone, a shelter to which surely Bacon cannot enter.

I must also protest against the assumption that Shakespeare “returned to Stratford to lead an illiterate life.” He returned there to live in the best house in the town, bearing arms (then a much greater distinction than now), as _all_ his friends and relatives did, to associate on intimate terms with the Combes, Collins, Walkers, Shaws, Nashes, and probably all the county families, as tradition says, especially that of William Somerville, of Edreston. He returned there, and continued to write his plays in the bosom of his family, with one son-in-law, the most distinguished physician of his time, the possessor of a good library, and his other prospective son-in-law, cultured up to the level, at least, of affixing a suggestive French proverb to his accounts, the year that he was Chamberlain.

_It is not a fact_ that he did not teach his favourite daughter to read and write. It is probably because she responded more rapidly to culture than her sister did that she became his favourite, as his will proves. She is recorded to have been “witty above her sex,” and like her father. Her signature can still be seen in Stratford.

I now come to a stock statement of the Baconians that might seem to a careless student founded on fact, that he spent his time as a maltster and moneylender. They never have taken the trouble to find out (as I have) the number of contemporary Warwickshire Shakespeares. There was a second John in Stratford-on-Avon, and a third in a neighbouring village. There were several of the name of William in the immediate neighbourhood, There was even one at Hatton, who had a daughter _Susanna_ in 1596; there was another who was a malt-dealer and a money-lender. His transactions commence during the poet’s life, but, alas for the Baconian argument, they _continue for ten years after the poet’s death_. The receipts can still be seen at Warwick Castle. Of course, “selling malt” or not, is quite irrelevant to the question in hand. There is only one point, however, that may be noted in connection with it. In all the plays there is no allusion to the processes of malt-making, beyond the one proverb, or to the technique of brewing or wine-making, as there is, for instance, of printing. Shakespeare only treats the finished article, as sold in the taverns, or drunk in the halls. He only notes philosophically the effect that stimulants have on the hearts, brains, and characters of men. This question never troubles Bacon, but he knows all about the manufacture, the keeping, storing, curing of ale, wine, mead, and metheglin.

A similar powerful contrast may be seen regarding the differing treatments of the horse and the chase. The poems and plays are full of reference to the delights of the chase and the sympathy subsisting between a rider and his noble steed. The whole works of Bacon supply only three prosy references to the existence of “the horse.”

The great stronghold of the Baconians is “The Promus.” But the notes there are not _proved_ to be original. Some of them can be shown to be borrowed echoes of what the writer heard and read. Bacon was a great borrower, as Shakespeare also undoubtedly was. Only a poet is not expected to acknowledge “sources” in his dramas; which a prose writer, in leisurely detail, is expected to do (Robert Burton in his “Anatomy of Melancholy” did so). Only last month I came across one of Chamberlain’s letters, which records a witty saying of the Duchess of Richmond. The writer adds, it might have got into Bacon’s Apophthegms, which he had just published, “not much to his credit.” Whole passages and facts are borrowed by Bacon without acknowledgement from the ancients, trusting to the general ignorance of his readers. The very cipher he claimed as his own was published by Jean Baptist Porta in 1568, and by Blaise de Vigenère in 1587.

I do not attempt to deal with the absurd notion that any real poet could weight the wings of his muse with a cipher. Dr. Nicholson of Leamington gave the _reductio ad absurdum_ to Mr. Donnelly’s, and other writers have let in light upon later attempts at cipher mysteries.

The author of “The great Stratford Superstition” says there are no improbabilities in supposing Bacon to have written the plays. What? Bacon write “Romeo and Juliet”? He did not know what love was! In his Essay on Love he calmly asserts that the stage had been more beholden to love than the life of man. In his life without love, the “marriages” he sought, and the one he secured, were all mercantile transactions. He did not deserve to be happy in matrimony. Bacon write the humours of the fat knight? Bacon was full of wisdom and abounded in wit, but of humour he was absolutely destitute.

Unfortunately, once only have we a story of Bacon crossing Shakespeare’s path, a crucial illustration of the impossibility of his having written one play at least. “The Comedy of Errors” was based on the Menoechmi of Plautus, a translation of which was registered in the books of the Stationers’ Company on 10th June 1594. Books at that time were nearly always handed about in MS. before printing, seeking patrons. Very probably this one was shown to the Earl of Southampton, or Shakespeare may have seen it in MS. It was more than six months after the registration of the Menoechmi that the “Comedy of Errors” appeared in peculiar circumstances, which I have treated fully elsewhere. It was acted as a new play by Shakespeare’s company, amid the uproars in Gray’s Inn Hall, 28th December 1594, when the Prince of Purpoole’s plans came to grief. The Benchers felt it an intolerable disgrace, and appointed Bacon to write a proper play to retrieve the lost honour of Gray’s Inn. He wrote them the “Masque of the Councillors,” which pleased his fellows, and the company that they had re-invited to make amends for the “Night of Errors.” This masque may yet be read, and is exactly the measure of the dramatic capability of Francis Bacon. It is quite a mistake to imagine that a good play would have discredited him. On the contrary, the having written the first English blank verse tragedy was, even at the time, considered the highest distinction of a more aristocratic man than Bacon, a diplomatist too, Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst.

Bacon’s allusion to himself as “a concealed poet” can be clearly understood by those who study his works. He would have called the “Utopia” of Sir Thomas More a concealed poem, as he did call his own “New Atlantis,” (See “De Augmentis Scientiarum,” Book II, Poesy, chap. 13.)

On the other hand, he distinctly states, “I profess not to be a poet, but I _prepared_ a sonnet directly tending to draw on her Majesty’s reconcilement to my Lord of Essex, _which I showed to a great person, who commended it_!” Spedding, Bacon’s most able editor and biographer, says of the poor versions of certain psalms put into English metre, “These were the _only_ verses certainly of Bacon’s making that have come down to us, and probably, with one or two slight exceptions, the only verses he ever wrote.”

With Bacon and with Spedding I agree, and with Shakespeare.[105]

_“Broad Views,” April 1904._

FOOTNOTES:

[104] Mr. Sinnet, the Editor of “Broad Views,” had in March 1904 written an article in that Review under the above title in support of Bacon’s authorship of Shakespeare’s Works, and had allowed me to reply the following month.

[105] I had published my volume called “The Bacon-Shakespere Question Answered” at a time when I was under the dominance of Dr. Furnivall in regard to the spelling of the name, 1889.

XXX

SIXTEENTH CENTURY WOMEN STUDENTS

Though we are all familiar with the lives of certain notable ladies who reached a high standard of learning during the sixteenth century, little or nothing is known concerning the general education of girls and women of that period. No Royal Reports enlighten us concerning their opportunities, and no private study has elicited and combined a definite series of details. It is therefore important to note and collate all that may be gleaned concerning this interesting subject.

There is reason to believe that in earlier times the schools that _were_ founded, were intended for “liberi”--not “pueri” alone--and that what education there was for the people was open to children of both sexes, as the trades were. I may illustrate what I mean by the statute enacted 7 Henry IV, c. 17.

“That no man or woman, of whatsoever estate or condition they be, shall put their son or their daughter to serve as an apprentice, except he or she have land or rent to the value of 20 shillings by the year, and no man or woman shall receive an apprentice contrary to this ordinance, provided ... always that every man or woman of what estate or condition that he be, shall be free to set their son or daughter to take learning at any manner school that pleaseth them within the Realm.” (Statutes of the Realm.)

But by a limitation of meaning, the word “children” lost its ambiguity of sex, and privileges became limited to boys which our ancestors intended for girls and boys. This took place all the more rapidly in the sixteenth century. Reforms and reformations have always a tendency to be to the disadvantage of women.

The intellectual developments of England during the sixteenth century were moulded by three main streams of influence--that of the Italian Renaissance, which partially passed to us through France; that of the German and Swiss Reformation; and that of the rapid improvements in the art of printing. Social and political changes stimulated the national intellect to high fervours, and the literary spirit predominated. How much women shared in the general advance of culture is too frequently only a matter of inference, just as we may learn that a sheep, which we have not seen, has passed through a hedge by a fleece of wool caught on the branches. That many women had learned to read we may infer from the religious history of the time. We hear of women as amid those who flocked to buy the testaments of Tyndale and the great Bibles of Rogers; of women who suffered as heretics during the first half, and as recusants during the second half, of the century, doomed by the discovery of their _books_. And we know, on the other side, that Dr. John Hall, of Maidstone, in his “Court of Virtue,” reproached the gayer maidens of the country with reading wicked songs and romances, when they should have been reading the Scriptures. When the decisions of the foreign universities against King Henry’s marriage “were publyshed, all wyse men in the realme moche abhorred that marriage; but women and such as wer more wylful than wyse or learneyd spake against the Determinacion and sayde that the Universities were corrupt, and enticed so to doo,”[106] an opinion that many wise men have held since. How _were_ they educated? Probably all mothers who knew taught their daughters, if only for the sake of acquiring medical and cookery receipts. Doubtless, all who were rich enough had tutors, and there is every reason to believe that any number of unrecorded Dame Schools flourished throughout the length and breadth of the land, where children of both sexes were taught the elements of reading from the Hornbook. (One lady who was admitted to the Guild of Boston in the early part of the century was described as a _schoolmistress_.) I have been fortunate enough to find corroboration of my opinion in the pages of a notable book on the education of boys, by Richard Mulcaster, First Master of the Merchant Taylors’ School, 1581. He says: “Seeing that I begin so low as the first elementary, wherein we see that young maidens be also _ordinarily trained_,” etc. That seems to imply primary education for many, if not for the mass of the people.

A still thicker veil hides us from the true state of their secondary education. The destruction of the convents involved the destruction of many opportunities of feminine culture. Fuller says of them: “They were the schools where the girls and maids of the neighbourhood were taught to read and work, and sometimes a little Latin was taught them, music, and Church History.”

Among the numerous schools founded or refounded in the century, the Collegiate schools seem always to have been reserved for boys, but we have no means of knowing whether the schools founded by private laymen for _children_ were not originally intended for both sexes in England, as they always were in Scotland, at the Reformation. We know that Christ Church Hospital was so, and it is quite probable that many others have since drifted into the one-sided channel of masculine privilege. Stow includes in his list of “charitable men” the names of many women. The number of grants to schools and colleges is remarkable, and suggests sympathy with education, that might have extended to that of girls. He concludes: “Thus much for the worthiness of citizens, both men and women, in this citie.” I have not yet met an instance of a private foundation of a school expressly for girls, or even of one in which they were _stated_ to have been included, until the next century. Then Lucy, daughter of Sir Henry Goodyere, niece of Drayton’s Warwickshire “Idea,” prevailed on her husband, Sir Francis Nethersole of Kent, to found a school in her native town of Polesworth, with “a liberal maintenance of a schoolmaster and schoolmistress, to teach the _children_ of the parish, the boys to read and write English, the girls to read and to work with the needle.” Whether the founders were following an old custom, or whether they found that unprotected foundations were apt to lapse, their intention was preserved by cutting in stone over the doorways, associated with their coats of arms, the words “puerorum, puellarum” (Dugdale’s “Warwickshire” under “Polesworth”).