****
But see, his face is black and full of blood;
His eyeballs further out than when he lived,
Staring full ghastly, like a strangled man;
His hair upreared, his nostrils stretched with struggling;
* "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare." J. C. Bucknill, M. D.
London, 1860. And see Appendix I.
** The Forum. By David Paul Brown. Philadelphia, 1856.
His hands abroad displayed, as one that grasped
And tugged for life, and was by strength subdued. ****
It can not be but he was murdered here;
The least of all these signs were probable." *
All the arts, sciences, and literatures must have been mastered by our sleepless Shakespeare, either at Stratford school, or in the midst of his London career, when operating two theaters, reading plays for his stage, editing them, engrossing the parts for his actors, and acting himself. (And Mr. Cohn will have it that in these unaccounted-for times, he had visited Germany with his troupe and performed in all its principal cities, coining money as he went.) ** Mr. Brown, Dr. Bell, and others, announce that they believe that these travels of his extended to Italy, and Mr. Thoms and Mr. Cohn, to some extent, account for Shakespeare on the continent, by believing that, instead of going at once to London, when fleeing from Stratford before Sir Thomas Lucy, he enlisted under Leicester for the Netherlands in 1585, but left the ranks for the more lucrative career of an actor. But these theories only crowd still more thickly the brief years in which the great works (which are, after all, what the world regards in these investigations), appeared.
* 2 Henry VI., Act 3, scene ii.
** "Shakespeare in Germany. By Albert Cohn. London and
Berlin: Asher &Co., 1865. And see Shakespeare's
Autographical Poems, by Charles Armitage Brown. Essays on
Shakespeare, by Karl Elze. London, Macmillan & Co., 1874.
The Suppose Travels of Shakespeare. Three Notelets on
Shakespeare. Thoms: London, 1865.
Either at Stratford school, or in the Blackfriars, or else by pure intuition, all this exact learning must have "been absorbed.
The classical course conducted by Hunt and Jenkins must have been far more advanced than is common in our modern colleges, in Columbia or Harvard, for example. For not only did Rowe and Knight find traces in "Shakespeare" of the Electra of Sophocles, Colman of Ovid, Farmer of Horace and Virgil, Steevens of Plautus, and White of Euripides, which are read today in those universities; but Pope found traces of Dares and Phrygius, and Malone of Lucretius, Status and Catullus, which are not ordinarily used as textbooks to-day in our colleges.
The name and character of "Imogen" is derived from an Italian novel not then—and perhaps not how—translated into English. Tschischwitz finds in "Hamlet" the philosophy of Giordano Bruno, professor at Wittemberg in 1583-86. All these are no stumbling-blocks to those who adhere to the Baconian authorship.
But, Spanish, Italian, Greek and Latin aside, was English taught at Stratford school? If it were, it would have been the most wonderful of all, for, as a matter of fact in those days, and for many long years thereafter, English was a much snubbed acquirement. The idea of education was to read, talk, and quote Latin, Greek, and the dead languages, the child was put to his "accidence." instead of his horn-book, and scholars scorned to spend much time on their own vernacular. But even should we concede that it was genius that made the village boy master of a diction the grandest of which his mother tongue was capable, there is a greater difficulty beyond, over which the concession will not lift us. This difficulty has been so succinctly stated by Mr. Grant White, in his "Essay Toward the Expression of Shakespeare's Genius," that we can not do better than quote his words. "It was only in London that those plays could have been written. London had but just before Shakespeare's day made its metropolitan supremacy felt as well as acknowledged throughout England. As long as two hundred years after that time the county of each member of Parliament was betrayed by his tongue..... Northumberland, or Cornwall, or Lancashire might have produced Shakespeare's mind; but had he lived in any one of those counties, or in another, like them remote in speech as in locality from London, and written for his rural neighbors instead of for the audiences of the Blackfriars and the Globe, the music of his poetry would have been lost in sounds uncouth and barbarous to the general ear, the edge of his fine utterance would have been turned upon the stony roughness of his rustic phraseology. His language would have been a dialect which must needs have been translated to be understood by modern English ears." * As Mr. White wrote these words, did it not occur to him that, by his own chronology, ** this Warwickshire rustic came to London with "Venus and Adonis" in his pocket, and began, almost immediately, the production of plays, not in the Warwickshire dialect, which he had grown up in from his birth, but in a diction that needs no translating "to be understood by modern English ears?"
* Shakespeare's Works, Vol. I., p. cxcvi.
** Id., p. cxxi.
Robert Burns became great in the dialect of his home, which he made into music through the alembic of his genius. When, later in life, he essayed to write in metropolitan English, says Principal Shairp, "he was seldom more than a third-rate—a common clever versifier." * But this uncouth Warwickshire rustic writes, as his first essay in English composition, the most elegant verses the age produced, and which for polish and care surpass his very latest works! Every step in the received Shakespeare's life appears to have been a miracle: for, according to them, the boy Shakespeare needed to be taught nothing, but was born versed in every art, tongue, knowledge, and talent, and did every thing without tuition or preparation.
And in the long vacation of this precious school how much our worthy pupil—whose paternal parent was in hiding from his creditors so that he dare not be seen at church—supplemented its curriculum by feasts of foreign travel! For it is only the careful student of these plays who knows or conceives either their wealth of exact reference to the minutest features of the lands or the localities in which their actions lie, or the conclusions to be drawn therefrom. There were no guide-books or itineraries of Venice published until after William Shakespeare had ceased writing for the stage: and yet, while schoolboy facts—such as that Venice is built in the sea, or that gondolas take the place of wheeled vehicles, or that there is a leaning tower at Pisa, or a coliseum at Verona or Rome—are not referred to (the out-door action in "Othello" or the "Merchant of Venice" is *
* "English Men of Letters. Robert Burns.
always in a street or open place in that city, canals and gondolas being never mentioned), the most casual, inadvertant, and trivial details of Italian matters (such as a mere tourist, however he might have observed, would scarcely have found of enough interest to mention to his neighbors on returning home), are familiarly and incidentally alluded to, making the phenomena of all this familiarity with Italy quite too prominent to be overlooked. A poet like Samuel Rogers writes a poem on Italy. All that is massive, venerable, and sublime; all that touches his heart as pitiful, or appeals to his nature as sensuous and romantic, goes down in his poem. The scenes Mr. Rogers depicts are those which crowd most upon the cultivated tourist to-day—the past of history that must stir the soul to enthusiasm. But here are plays, written before the days of guide-books (and if there had been any such things, they would have enlarged upon the same features that Mr. Rogers did), which are at home in the unobserved details which the fullest Murray or Baedeker find it unnecessary to mention. Portia sends her servant Balthazar to fetch "notes and garments" of her learned cousin, Bellario, and to meet her at the "common ferry which trades to Venice." There are two characters named "Gobbo" in the play—a frequent Venetian name in a certain obscure walk, and one which a mere tourist would be most unlikely to meet with. Othello brings Desdemona from her father's house to his residence in the "Sagittary." In "Two Gentlemen of Verona," Valentine is made to embark at Verona for Milan, and in "Hamlet," Baptista is used as the name of a woman. Both of these latter were sneered at as mistakes for some hundred years, until one learned German discovers that Baptista is not uncommonly used as a woman's name in Italy, * and another learned German that, in the sixteenth century, Milan and Verona were actually connected by canals, ** with which the surface of Italy was intersected! etc., etc. Dr. Elze was made a careful collation of these instances (which need not detain us here except by way of reference), in an essay on the supposed travels of Shakespeare, wherein he, from the same internal evidence, regards it certain that the writer (William Shakespeare he calls him), not only visited Italy, but Scotland, absorbing all he saw with the same microscopical exactness.
And were the modern languages also taught by this myriad-minded Jenkins? Mr. Grant White says emphatically, No! "Italian and French, we may be sure, were not taught at Stratford school." *** And yet William Shakespeare borrowed copiously from Boccaccio, Cinthio, and Belleforest.
Ulrici **** says (quoting Klein) that the author of "Romeo and Juliet" must have read "Hadriana," a tragedy by an Italian named Groto, and Mr. Grant White points out that Iago's speech, "Who steals my purse, steals trash," etc., is a perfect paraphrase of a stanza in Berni's "Orlando Innamorato," of which poem, says Mr. White, to this day (1864) there is no English version.
* A Von Beumont. Allgemeine Zeitung, Oct. 21, 1870.
** Karl Elze on Shakespeare, p. 296. London. Macmillan &
Co. 1874.
*** Memoir. Works, p. xxi.
**** Vol. I, p. 253.
Mr. White furnishes a translation of the stanza of Berni, which is certainly startingly like.1 And yet Mr. White clings to his Stratford school, where "Beeston" told Aubrey that William Shakespeare was once a school-master. Perhaps Mr. White refuses to be converted because he has discovered that Dr. Farmer discovered that, when, in the "Taming of the Shrew," Tranio quotes Terence, "he is inaccurate, and gives the passage, not as it appears in the text of the Latin dramatist, but as it is misquoted in the Latin grammar of William Lily; a school-book in common use among our forefathers when William Shakespeare was a boy." ** But (though somebody has suggested that William might have risen to be "head boy" at Stratford grammar school; and been, in that capacity, intrusted with hearing the lessons of the smaller boys, whence the school-master story may have arisen), the Beestou story has been rejected by all the commentators with a unanimity of which, we believe, it is the only instance, in case of a Shakespearean detail. So far as we know, there has been but one effort to prove that William Shakespeare was a university man. ***
* Ante, p. 64, note.
** Id. p. xx.
*** "Some Shakespearean and Spenserian MSS.," "American
Whig Review," December, 1851,
But if, instead of going to school, or operating a theater, William had passed his days as a journeyman printer, he could hardly have been more at home to the mysteries of that craft. Mr. Blades, a practical printer, has found in the Works so many terms, technical to and employed in the exact sense of the composing and press-rooms, that they seriously add to the enumeration of possible Shakesperean vocations. For example:
"Behold, my Lords,
Although the print be little, the whole matter
And copy of the father,
The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger."
Witness, also, the following:
"You are but as a form in wax, by him imprinted.
—Midsummer-Night's Dream, I, 1.
"His heart, with your print impressed.
—Lovés Labours Lost, II, 1.
A small type, called nonpareil, was introduced into English printing houses from Holland about the year 1650, and became admired and preferred beyond the others in common use. It seems to have become a favorite type with Shakespeare, who calls many of his lady characters "Nonpareils." Prospero calls his daughter "a Nonpareil." (Tempest, Act III, Scene 2d) Olivia, in "Twelfth Night," is the "Nonpareil of Beauty" (Act I, Scene 5), and in Cymbeline, Posthumous is made to call Imogen the "Nonpareil of her time" (Act II, Scene 5).
When a certain number of pages of type have been composed they are placed in an iron frame called a "chase," laid upon an "imposing" stone, a piece of beveled wood, called a "sidestick," is placed beside the pages, and small wedges of beveled hard wood, called "coigns," or "quoins," are tightly driven in, holding the pages firmly in their places, and making a compact "form." Surely there is an allusion to this in Pericles III, 1.
"By the four opposing coigns
Which the world together joins."
Before tlie "form" is taken from the stone to be put on the press, the quoins are made very tight with a "mallet" to insure its "lifting" safely.
"There is no more conceit in him than there is in a mallet."
—2 Henry IV, 2.
which process is called "locking-up," and when completed, the form is said, technically, to be "locked-up," or fast.
"fast locked-up in sleep."
—Measure for Measure, IV, 2.
And to what but the care taken by a printer to make his forms "register" can we attribute the use of that word in Anthony and Cleopatra, Act IV. Scene 9.
"But let the world rank me in register—
A master leaver and a fugitive."
Punctuation is a fruitful source of misunderstanding between an author and his printer. Very few authors punctuate their manuscript as they would wish to see it in the print, and fewer yet are apt to be good natured and satisfied when the printer punctuates for them. William Shakespeare may have remembered this when he wrote:
"Wherefore stand you on nice points?"
—3 Henry VI, iv, 7.
"Stand a comma 'tween their amities."
—Hamlet, V, 2.
"My point and period,... ill or well."
—Lear, IV 7.
"points that seem impossible."
—Pericles, V, 1.
"Puts the period often from his place."
—Lucrece, line 565.
"You find not the apostrophes, and so miss the accent."
"No levelled malice infests one comma."
— Timon, I, 1.
"Come we to full points here? And are et ceteras nothing?"
Possibly a book-worm, or even a bookseller might draw as many similes as Shakespeare did, from books—as for example:
"Show me your image in some antique book."
—Sonnet, 1. ix.
"Has a book in his pocket with red letters in it."
—2 Henry VI, ix, 2.
"My red dominical—my golden letter!"
—Loves Labours Lost, V, 2.
referring to the rubricated editions of books so common in the seventh century, or the golden letters used in the calendar; or again,
"To place upon the volume of your deeds
As in a title-page, your worth of arms."
—Pericles, 77, 3.
"This man's brow, like to a title-leaf,
Foretells the nature of a tragic volume."
—2 Henry IV, i, 1.
But in the following:
"The vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear."
—Sonnet, 1. xxvii.
it is hard to be persuaded that direct allusion is not made to the English custom (which still obtains, as any body may see for himself by opening a book printed—wherever published—in England) of placing the typographer's imprint upon the vacant or extra leaf or leaves—where the text runs short, at the end of the volume; just as, if an American publisher, who buys a hundred copies of an English work, may stipulate to have his imprint put upon the title-page (or, perhaps, print his own title-page in this country), the last page of the book itself will invariably reveal whether the actual manufacture was in England or not; an analogy which implies technical information. An image employed by Othello, who takes his wife's hand in his, and says,
"Here's a young and sweating devil."
—Othello, III. 4.
is, Mr. Blades thinks, misunderstood. If his wife's palm was the messenger, as Othello suspected, of her desires to Cassio, there would be some propriety—from a printer's standpoint—in calling it "a devil," for a printer's "devil" is his messenger or errand boy: though another meaning is not so far fetched in sound to a non-professional.
We have mentioned that the Stationer's Company was a fraternity composed only of monopolists, each of whom had a monopoly, from the crown, of the printing of certain books. It was a part of their duty to give notice of this monopoly upon every impression of the book, precisely as the notice of copyright entry is obliged by law to be printed to-day upon copyrighted books. The entry was to be expressed, after the printer's name, or at least, conspicuously on the title-page, in the formula, "cum privilégia ad imprimendum solum;" and as the formula was to be incessantly used it was undoubtedly "kept standing" in the composing room.
It is curious to notice, in the "Taming of the Shrew," Act iv., Scene 4, the recurrence of this formula in a speech of Biondello:
Bion. I can not tell; except they are busied about a counterfeit assurance; take you assurance of her cum privilegio ad im-primendum solum to the church.
It is to be noticed that the word "counterfeit" in the above speech, was a printer's term in those days; and, used in the printer's technical sense, would be applicable; for Biondello is counseling Lucertio to marry Bianca out of hand, and without waiting for her father and his counselor who are discussing the marriage treaty. A "counterfeit" was a reprint (as we would say now, a "reprint in fac-simile"). *
* Marabren's Parallel List of technical Typographical
Terms—art., "Counterfeit." We take the above from Mr.
Blades' "Shakespeare and Typography." London, 1872.
Again: it might be supposed that a country lad should know the ways of dogs and birds and beasts and creeping things. But it happens to be human experience that the country lad is the least likely person to turn out a naturalist. It is much more probable that some over-worked shoemaker, in some rare escape from his city garret, should find his thoughts awakened by watching an ant-hill, and succeed in years in making himself an entomologist; than that the farmer's boy, who catches bugs every day to bait his fish-hook, should turn out an entomologist; just as it is not the farmer's daughter, but the fashionable young lady from town who tramps the fields and tears her hands for wild-flowers or wets her feet for the pond lilies. But whoever wrote the plays had found time to learn all the ways of these. Says Bottom, to Cobweb, the fairy, in "Midsummer Wight's Bream," "Monsieur, get your weapons in your hand and kill me a red-hipped bumblebee on the top of a thistle." In the United States as well as England, there is no more likely place to find a bumblebee in midsummer than on a thistle. In "Much Ado about Nothing," Benedict says to Margaret "Thy wit is as quick as a greyhound's mouth. It catches." The peculiarity of a greyhound is that, unlike other dogs, it is able to catch game in its mouth as it runs; other hounds must stop to do this. In "As You Like It," Celia tells Rosalind that Monsieur Le Beau, who comes with his mouth full of news, will feed it to them "as pigeons feed their young," and Rosalind replies, "Then we shall be news crammed." Pigeons bring food to their young in their crops, and cram it down their young ones' throats, as no other birds do. In "Twelfth Night" the clown tells Viola that "fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings—the husband's the bigger." The pilchard closely resembles the herring, but is thicker and heavier, with larger scales. In the same play Maria says of Malvolio, "Here comes the trout which must be caught with tickling." Expert anglers know that by gently tickling a trout's sides and belly, it can be so mesmerized as to be taken out of the water with the hand. In "As you Like It," we have the lines "For look where Beatrice, like the lapwing, runs close by the ground to hear our conference." The lapwing is a kind of plover which is very swift of foot and which, when trying to avoid being seen, keeps its head close to the ground as it runs. Says Lear's fool, "The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long that it had its head bit off by its young." The hedge-sparrow in England is a favorite bird for the cuckoo to impose its young upon. In "All's Well that Ends Well," Lafeu says of Farolles "I took this lark for a bunting." The English bunting is a field bird of the same form and color as the lark, but inferior as a singer. And so the figures are always accurate, "the ousel-cock so black of hue," "the throstle with his note so true," "the wren with little quill," "the russet-pated chough, rising and cawing at the guns report." And so of flowers, as when Perdita speaks of
—daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty—
the writer knew that in England the daffodil blooms in February and March, while the swallow never appears until April. In none of the allusions to nature or natural phenomena in the plays, is there any such thing as guess work. * Now, what was the necessity for all this technical, geographical, botanical, and occult learning, in a simple drama thrown off by an Elizabethan dramatist, earning his living by catering to an Elizabethan audience? It was not only unnecessary, but almost fatal to his success. The Elizabethan audience did not want scientific treatises.
* And see further "The natural History of the Insects
mentioned in Shakespeare," by R. Paterson. London: A. K.
Newman & Co., Leadenhall street, "The natural
History of the Insects mentioned in Shakespeare," by R.
Paterson. London: A. K. Newman & Co., Leadenhall street,
1841.
But nothing—from governmental polity to the stuffing of a fowl—from processes of the human mind to the management of kitchen gardens—was too small or rude for a philosopher's (let us say for Francis Bacon's) vast purposes. How otherwise are they to be accounted for?
That Shakespeare borrowed Greene's famous "sea-coast" is a point either way. If he took it supposing that Bohemia had a sea-coast, the omnipotent knowledge assigned him by his worshipers failed him at least once. And if he knew (as is now claimed, though on what authority we know not), that Bohemia once possessed provinces on the Adriatic, he knew, as usual, what the acute research of three hundred years has only just developed. And was agriculture taught at this Stratford school, and politics and the art of war?1 And was there any thing that William Shakespeare did not know? We are entitled to ask these questions, for it must be remembered that, before the appearance of the Shakespearean dramas, there was practically no literature written in the English tongue. To use the words of Macauley, "A person who did not read Latin and Greek could read nothing, or next to nothing.... The Italian was the only modern language which possessed any thing that could be called a literature." ** One possessing, then, merely "small Latin and less Greek," could not have written "Shakespeare." Still less could he have written it out of Gower and Chaucer, and the shelf-full of English hooks that made up all there was in English letters.
* See "Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier?" Three Notelets on
Shakespeare, by Wm. J. Thoms, London. John Russell Smith,
1865.
** Essays. Lord Bacon.
But if the Stratford grammar-school confined its teachings to the pages of the English bible alone, it worked wonders, for Bishop Wadsworth goes so far as to declare, that "take the entire range of English literature—put together our best authors, who have written on subjects not professedly religious, and we shall not find, I believe, in them all, printed so much evidence of the Bible being read and used, as in Shakespeare alone." * Yet William Shakespeare had little opportunity for self-education, except these two terms at Stratford school; he was a lad-of-all-work at the Bankside Theater, when a mere child. He was only fifty-two years old when he died. He was one of several partners in certain theatrical establishments in London, in the years when he must have put all this multitudinous learning, he had carried in his head so long, on paper. He was so active, industrious, and shrewd in those years, that he alone of the partners was able to retire with a fortune—to purchase lands and a grant of arms for his father (whence he himself might become an esquire by descent); and, in the years of leisure after his retirement, he wrote only three or four epitaphs, which no other graduate of Stratford school would probably have cared to claim.
* Shakespeare's use of the Bible. By Charles Wadsworth, p.
345. London. Smith Elder & Co., 1880.
It has only been within the last few years that hardy spirits—like Nathaniel Holmes—whose education has led them to look judicially backward from effects to causes—and whose experience had impressed them with the idea that most effects come in natural procession from causes somewhere—were courageous enough to seek the solution of this mystery—not in what is called the "internal evidence" of the plays themselves, but in the circumstances and surroundings, that is to say, in the external evidence of their date and production.
The Baconian theory is simply that, so far as the records of the Elizabethan period are accessible, there was but one man in England, at the date at which this Shakespearean literature appeared, who could have produced it. * The history of Bacon's life, his massive acquirements, his profound scholarship even as a child: his advantages of foreign travel, his ambitious acquaintance with the court: and, joined to all, his dire necessities and his successive retirements (the dates of which, when collated, coincide with the dates at which the plays—tallying in matter with the circumstantial surroundings of Bacon's life as, for example, Shylock appeared at about the time when Bacon was most helplessly in the toils of what he calls "the Lombardo"):—all this need not be recapitulated here. He was born and bred in the atmosphere of libraries. While William Shakespeare was poaching on Avon banks, the little Francis was impressed with the utter inadequacy of Aristotle's method to grapple with modern needs, and meditating its superseding with labors of his own.
* Had the plays come down to us anonymously, had the labor
of discovering the author been imposed upon after-
generations, I think we could have found no one of that day
but Bacon to whom to assign this crown. In this case it
would have been resting now on his head by almost common
consent."—(W. H. Furness to Judge Holmes, third edition of
"Authorship of Shakespeare," p. 628).
The gray-haired Queen, who in youth had called him her little Lord Keeper, will not lift a hand to aid him in his poverty, or to advance him in the State, regarding him as a man of study rather than of practice and experience; and so Bacon is known to have remained, bemoaning (as he himself says in a letter to Burleigh, written in 1592) "the meanness of my [his] estate; for though I can not accuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful, yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get." * This is the very year, 1592, in which Robert Greene "discovers that a new poet has arisen who is becoming the only shake-scene in a county;" and so far forgets himself as to become "jealous" of "William Shakespeare, who, up to this time, has only been a "Johannes Factotum," of not much account until he borrows "our feathers." ** And so, until 1611, Bacon is driven to the Jews. Why should he not, in his pressing necessity for "lease of quick revenue," bethink him of the resources within himself, and seek a cover whereunder—without embarrassing his hope of future preferment—he may turn into gold his years of study and travel, by means of a quick pen?
In 1611, when he is suddenly created attorney-general, the Shakespearean plays cease abruptly, to appear no more for ever. William Shakespeare closes out his theatrical interest in London, and retires, to moneylending (as some say), in Stratford. He dies in 1616.
* Speckling, "Letters and Life of Bacon," vol. i, p. 108.
** Ante, p. 125
Lord Bacon reaches his highest pinnacle of greatness, and falls, in 1621. In 1623, while Bacon is again spending his time in the strictest privacy and retirement, there suddenly appears a folio, "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare," amended, revised, enlarged, and improved, including at least seventeen (Mr. Smith says twenty-three) plays which had never appeared or been heard of in Shakespeare's lifetime.
Few of us—outside the ranks of commentators, like Mr. Grant White, and others, who give their valuable lives to this study—dream how vast were the emendations and revisions, enlargements and corrections of the old Shakespearean plays given to the world in this folio of 1623. Mr. White says that in the one play of "Love's Labours Lost" there are inserted newlines in almost every speech.1 Another, "The Merry Wives of Windsor," according to Knight, ** has double the number of lines it originally possessed in 1600. The "Henry V." has nineteen hundred new lines. The "Titus Andronicus" has an entire scene added, and the "Much Ado about Nothing" and "The Lear" are so altered and elaborated, with curtailment here and enlargement there, as to lead Mr. Knight to declare that "none but the hand of the master could have superadded them." *** But, if William Shakespeare was the "master," how did his hand reach up out of the grave under Stratford chancel, where it had rested seven years, to make these improvements?
* Cited by Holmes, "Authorship of Shakespeare," third
edition, p. 71.
** "Studies of Shakespeare," p. 337.
*** Id.
And if William Shakespeare in his lifetime made those revisions for Heminges and Condell (who appear on the title-page of this folio of 1623 as editors, and announce in the preface that this edition is printed from the "true original copies") at Stratford (where, according to his own inventory, he had neither library nor books—nor bookcase, nor writing table, for that matter), why did he not print them himself, for his own benefit, instead of performing all this labor of emendation for somebody else? He could not have been fearful lest he would lose money by them, for they had been the foundation and source of all his fortune. Nor had he grown, in his old age, indifferent to gain (let the ghost of the poor "delinquent for malt delivered" assure us of that!). He could not have revised them for pure glory: for, in his previous career, while in London, he had shown no interest in them, permitting them to be surreptitiously printed by whoever, in the same town with himself, listed so to do. He had even allowed them to be mixed up with other people's trash, his name signed to all indifferently, and the whole made footballs of by the London printers, under his very nose, without so much as lifting a voice in protest, or to declare which were his and which were not. * Besides, if he had revised them for the glory of his own name, why did he not cause them to be printed? Nor can we suppose that he was employed to revise them, for pay, by Heminges and Condell, because, if they did so employ him, why did they carry the expense of the revision for seven long years, until he and his wife were both in their graves, before reimbursing themselves by printing the first folio for the market!
* See post, "The New Theory," where it appears that, at the
time Shakespeare was producing certain plays on his stage,
certain others were being printed and circulated, as his,
outside.
Last, and most wonderful of all, in this first folio are included all these entirely new plays which had never been heard of before! Who wrote those, and why? The answer to these riddles, the Baconians say, is that, when again at leisure, Bacon bethought himself of his scattered progeny, and—whether proposing to publicly own them or not—whether to secure them for posterity or merely for his own pastime—he devoted that leisure to a revision of the works by means of which he had bridged the first long interval in his career. At any rate, when the revision appeared, it is matter of fact that William Shakespeare was dead and in his grave, and speculation has nothing to do with that.
Besides the coincidence of the plays appearing during Bacon's first retirement: ceasing altogether at his first elevation, and appearing in revised and improved form again after his final downfall, and during his second privacy, the Baconians cite: I. Contemporary statements, which include (A), Sir Tobie Matthew's famous postscript: * "The most prodigious wit of these times is of your name, though he be known by another" (which Mr. Weiss ** explains, very lamely in our opinion, by arguing that the other name by which Bacon was known, and to which Matthew alludes, was "Viscount St. Albans); (B), a letter from Bacon
* Bacon was in the habit of sending certain of his lighter
manuscripts to Sir Tobie, and this postscript was appended
to a letter acknowledging the receipt of Bacon's "great and
esteemed favor of the 9th of April."
** "Wit, Humor and—Shakespeare." By John Weiss. Boston.
Roberts Brothers, 1876. Matthew writes this in a letter
acknowledging receipt of a volume sent him by Bacon. If that
volume was a copy of the "First Folio," the postscript would
be intelligible.
himself, to Sir John Davies, who is going to meet the new king James (with whom Bacon is striving for favor, looking to his own preferment), in which he commits to Sir John's "faithful care and discretion" his interests at court, and adds, "So, asking you to be good to concealed poets, I continue," etc., etc.; * II. Evidence by way of Innuendo, including another of Matthew's postscripts (the one in which he writes to Bacon, "I will not return you weight for weight, but measure for measure," etc.); also, perhaps, the injunctions of secrecy in Bacon's own letters to Matthew, to "be careful of the writings submitted to you, that no one see them." There is, besides, in many of Bacon's preserved letters something suggestive of a "curious undermeaning, impressing the reader with an idea of more than appears on the surface." The idea of the stage, as a figure of speech, occurs in a letter to the Queen: "Far be it from me to stage myself," etc.; and in one to lady Buckingham, "I do not desire to stage myself but for the comfort of a private life," etc. "Dramatic poesy," he declares, "is as history made visible." Writing to Matthew, he refers to a "little work of my recreation;" and Matthew, in return, banters him on writing many things "under another name." This is in 1609, and no more "Shakespeare" plays appear until Othello, in 1621. The Jonson obituary verse—in which occur the encomiums so rung in our ears by the Shakespeareans (and which we have—earlier in these pages—seen was all they really had behind them), which we have thought could be most easily explained on the "nil mortuis nisi bonum" theory—are also
* Holmes, "Authorship of Shakespeare,"
regarded, we believe, by the Baconians, as Innuendo. *
III. The Parallelisms. That is to say, an almost identity of phraseology, found in both the Baconian and Shakespearean writings. The best list of these is to be found in Judge Holmes' book, covering some twenty-five closely-printed pages. ** Of the value of this latter class of evidence, it is for every reader to judge for himself; but that a writer of exact science and moral philosophy should plagiarize from the theater, or the theater from the writer of exact science and moral philosophy; or (still more improbable) that two contemporary authors, in the full glare of the public eye, should select each other's works to habitually and regularly plagiarize upon, are altogether, it seems to the Baconians, out of the question.
* It is curious to find the Baconians appealing to this
"best evidence" for the other side. But they read it as an
Innuendo. For example, the verses—
"Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage Or
influence, cheer the crooping stage!
Which—since thy flight from hence, hath-mourned like night
And despaired day—but for thy volume's light—"
they say, do not and can not, refer to William Shakespeare
at all. For this was published in 1623, and William
Shakespeare had been dead seven years. He could not "shine
forth" again, except figuratively, in his volume, and this
he already does by the publication of his works, and is
admitted to do in the next line, where it is said that but
for "thy volume's light" the stage would "mourn in night."
The Baconians, who believe that Ben Jonson himself was the
"Heminges and Condell" who edited the first folio, regarded
this whole poem as a sop to Bacon, on Ben Jonson's part.
** Pp. 306-326.
But even the conceiving of so unusual a state of affairs as a political philosopher and playwright contracting together to mutually plagiarize from each other's writings would hardly account for the coincidence between the cottage scene (Act IV, Scene 3) in "A Winter's Tale," and Bacon's "Essay on Gardens," in which he maintained that "there ought to be gardens for all the months of the year; in which severally things of beauty may be in their season," which he proceeds to suggest:
[Original]
Were we assured that the prose in the left-hand column was the poet's first rough notes for the exquisite poetry in the second, would there be any internal evidence for doubting it? And when it appears that "The Essay on Gardens" was not printed until 1625, nine years after William Shakespeare's death and burial, and two years after an edition of his alleged plays, rewritten and revised, had appeared (when so deliberate a "steal" would hardly be profitable), the exoteric evidence seems at least to command attention.
A coincidence between a passage in "The Advancement of Learning" and in the play of "Troilus and Cressida," Act II., Scene 2 (which, we shall see later on, first appeared in print, advertised as the work of a novice, in 1609, thereafter, within a few months, to be reissued as by William Shakespeare *—who was not, at the date of that edition, either a novice or a first appearance), is worth pausing to tabulate:
[Original]
That the manager of a theater, in dressing up a play for the evening's audience (and such an audience) should tuck in an allusion to Aristotle, to "catch the ** ear of the groundlings"
* Post, "The New Theory."
** It is to be noticed that no similarity of style in these opposed extracts is alleged or relied upon.
—or, finding it already in, should not have a sufficient acquaintance with Aristotle to scent an impropriety and take it out—is no less or no more absurd than that a philosopher, in composing so profound and weighty an essay as the "Advancement of Learning," should go to a cheap play-house for his reference to the Greek sage. If Bacon did attend the theater that night to learn the opinion of Aristotle (whom he had criticised at college at the age of fifteen) on young blood and philosophy, he was misled, for Aristotle said not that young men ought not to hear moral, but ought not to study political philosophy. And the error itself is proof positive—it seems to the Baconians—of an identical source for the two passages. It must not be forgotten, however, that the evidence from these coincidences is cited not to an Anti-Shakespearean case—which is purely historical—but as cumulative to the Baconian case alone. And yet, though the evidence from the "parallelisms" is the least forcible of any presented by the Baconians, so systematically do they occur that the ablest Baconian writer (Judge Holmes) claims that he has been able to reduce them to an ordo, and to know precisely where to expect them, by reference merely to a history of the life of Lord Bacon, and the date of the production. "When I got your 'Letters and Life of Bacon," he writes to Mr. Spedding, "and read that fragment of a masque; having the dates of all the plays in my mind, I felt quite sure at once in which I should find that same matter, if it appeared anywhere (as I expected it would) and went first straight to the 'Midsummer-Night's Dream,' and there came upon it, in the second act, so palpably and unmistakably that I think nothing else than a miracle could shake my belief in it."1 The facts that Lord Bacon expressed himself to the effect that the best way of teaching history was by means of the drama; that there is a connected and continuous series of historical plays (covering by reigns the entire period of the War of the Roses), in the Shakespearean drama from 'King John,' by way of prelude—in which the legitimate heir to the throne is set aside, and the nation plunged into civil war—to 'Richard III.' where the two roses are finally united in one line in Henry VI., and winding up with the reign of Henry VIII.—wherein, as a grand finale to the whole, the splendor of the new line is shown in its reunited vigor"—which (with but one hiatus, the missing reign of Henry VII.) is one complete cycle of English history: and that, on searching among the remains of Francis Bacon, a manuscript "History of Henry VII." is found, which might well be the minutes for a future drama (the opening paragraph of which seems to be a recapitulation of the last scene of the Richard III. of the dramas), is certainly startling. Not necessarily connected with this discovery is the further fact that Mr. Spodding has found, in the library of Northumberland house, among certain of Bacon's manuscripts, a slip of paper, upon which is scrawled eight times, in a clerky hand (not Bacon's), the name "William Shakespeare," together with the names of certain of the known Shakespearian Historical plays, and of certain (as Judge Holmes conjectures) other plays not now
* "Authorship of Shakespeare," third edition, p. 621.
known. * But there is nothing in this discovery more startling than the numberless other coincidences—if they be nothing more—which Judge Holmes has massed in his scholarly work.
Henry Chettle, in 1603, in his "England's Mourning Garment (a rhyme)," wonders that "Melicert does not drop a single sable tear" over the death of "Our Elizabeth." It might, indeed, seem strange had William Shakespeare (supposing these lines to apply to him) been the favorite he is said to have been with Elizabeth. But, while neither Shakespeare nor Bacon sing mortuary strains, of the two (if these stories about Elizabeth's love for Shakespeare are true) it is certainly not strange that Bacon did not; for Bacon, at least, had no cause to idolize his queen.
Ben Jonson's eulogies of Shakespeare, in verse, nowhere surpass, as we have seen, his eulogies of Bacon, in prose. He calls Lord Bacon "the acme of our language," and, as Mr. Thompson suggests, "no pinnacle has two acmes."
"On every variety of court enfolding," continues that writer, "was Bacon daily employed, writing in others' names; and, if we do not think worse of Plato for personating Socrates, or of Cicero for personating Cato," neither should ill be thought of Bacon for borrowing a name "to cover his aim," etc.2 Meanwhile, "this acme of our language 'was poor and a borrower." In 1605, is published an anonymous pamphlet, called "Ratsei's Ghost."
* Holmes' "Authorship of Shakespeare," 3d edition, pp. 657-
-682.
*** The Renascence Drama, p. 59.
In it, one Ratsei, a highwayman, is about to be hung, and gives some parting advice to a strolling player; tells him to go to London, where he would learn to be frugal and thrifty; to feed upon all men, hut let none feed on him; make his hand stranger to his pocket, his heart slow to perform his tongue's promise; and when he felt his purse well lined, to buy some place of lordship in the country; that, growing weary of playing, his money may then bring him to dignity and reputation; that he need care for no man—no, not for them that before made him proud with speaking their words on the stage.
"If this satirical passage," says Mr. Thompson, "plainly alludes to him who went to London very meanly, and came, in time, to be exceedingly wealthy, it confirms Greene's saying, that Shakespeare made his money by acting, not by writing, plays, and by usury." *
As to Miss Bacon's question, "What did William Shakespeare do with Bacon's manuscripts?" Mr. Thompson ** seems to think that they may yet be brought to light. They "appear to have been so many times hypothetically burned, at Stratford, in the Globe theater, the London fire, by their owners (by purchase) at the play-house, to hinder rivals from using them," that Mr. Thompson argues that "it is probable they are still to the fore." Bacon's Will directs certain papers laid away in boxes, cabinets, and presses, to be collected, sealed up, and put away, "so as not to have them ready for present publication."
* Id., p. 200.
* Renascence Drama, or History made Visible. By "William
Thompson. Melbourne, 1880.
He was "not ignorant that those kind of writings would, with less pains and embracement (perhaps), yield more luster and reputation to my name, than those other which I have in hand." They could bide their time, and, since William Shakespeare and his fellows do not dispose of them, the inference is that they were not allowed to retain them.
The Baconian theory, it is to be noticed, is quite indifferent as to whether William Shakespeare, on first turning up at London, found employment (as Mr. Grant White asserts) in his "cousin's law-office" or not: or whether, at any stage in his career, either in Stratford or London, he was an attorney's clerk, hard 'prentice at the trade of "noverint." (By which slur Mr. Fullom believes that Nash meant, not that Shakespeare was a "noverint," but that the young "nove-rints" of the time were "Shakespeare's;" that is to say, that they scribbled, out of hand, for the stage.) The Shakespearean problem is neither increased nor diminished by the proposition; even an attorney's clerk could not have written all the Shakespearean pages. Should it be necessary, however, to find a law-student in London who could have managed some of them, why not allow Francis Bacon his claim among the rest? He has, at least, this advantage of his rival; that, while it is the general impression now-a-days that William Shakespeare was not a law-student, as a matter of fact Francis Bacon was. *
* And too good a law student, we think, to have written the
law in the "Merchant of Venice." For, although Lord Bacon
was apt to discover the public feeling, and quick to array
himself on the right side (and spitting at Jews has always
been accounted of Gentiles for righteousness), he must have
seen that Shylock had a standing in court on the merits of
his case.
But Portia begins her extraordinary (according to common law
at least) judgment by deciding for the Jew in that, not
having paid the principal sum, Antonio must suffer in the
foreclosure of the mortgage, as it were, upon his person.
This is against the letter of any known law, which gives an
equity of redemption to the debtor in all such cases. Her
next decision is, that the Jew has his election between the
principal sum and the penalty, and that, with his election,
not the law itself can interfere. This, again, is not law;
for the law abhors a penalty, and even in a foreclosure will
not allow the debtor to be mulcted in more than the face of
his debt, interest, and costs. But now, having decided,
against all law, for the Jew, Portia begins deciding for the
Christian, and the first point she makes is that, when
Shylock takes his pound, he must not take a hair's weight
more or less, nor yet one ounce of blood. This, again, is
clearly not law, since it is an eternal principle of
jurisprudence that, when the law grants any thing it also
grants everything that is necessary to the conversion of
that thing to possession (as, when it grants a farm, it
likewise tacitly grants a right of way to that farm). So, if
Shylock had had any title to his pound of flesh, he would
certainly have had a title to draw as much blood as it was
absolutely necessary to draw in cutting out that pound, and
such portions of flesh over and above a pound as it would be
absolutely necessary to cut out, providing the cutting out
was done by a skillful operator and not a bungler. Astounded
at this turn of the tide, Shylock deliberates, and finally
cries, "Well, give me my principal and let me go!" Portia
thereupon renders her fourth decision, which is the most
astounding of all—namely, that, having once refused a
tender of the money in open court, the Jew is not entitled
to change his mind and take it! Since the days of Moses—
certainly since the days of Littleton—a tender has never
quite destroyed a debt, but only the interest and costs
accruing upon it, after the tender! Such a glaring and high-
handed sacrifice of common law and common sense to stage
effect might have been conceived of by a manager anxious for
the plaudits and pence of a crowded house, scarcely by a
future lord chancellor of England.
As to the bibliography of the Baconian theory, there are two volumes which will probably always remain its text-books, viz., Judge Holmes's book, of which the first edition appeared in 1862; and Mr. Smith's, printed in 1857, which made a convert of Lord Palmerston. Mr. Wilkes's exceedingly fresh and readable work, "Shakespeare from an American Point of View," and Mr. King's "Bacon versus Shakespeare; a Plea for the Defendant," as textbooks on the other side, could hardly be expected to produce much disorder in Messrs. Holmes and Smith's stern and compact columns of facts and argument.
Mr. Wilkes * decides off-hand against this Baconian theory at the start, and then goes on, like his predecessors, to construct a Shakespeare to suit himself. It is to his praise that he has endeavored to construct this Shakespeare out of the Shakespearean pages, rather than to have unreined his fancy. But he makes his own particular Shakespeare, nevertheless. The Wilkes Shakespeare is a Romanist. We consider this to William Shakespeare's praise, for to be a good Romanist is to be a good Christian, and to be one in a Protestant reign is to be a consistent Christian as well. But this is all the good Mr. Wilkes's Shakespeare is. Beyond that he is base-born, a man despised of his equals, and a flunkey and tidewaiter at the knees of an aristocracy to which he can not attain—an obscene jester, etc., etc.—and this author he calls Shakespeare. Such a one, whoever he is, is neither Bacon nor Raleigh, at all events. In 1880, Mr. Thompson, of Melbourne, Australia, published a volume, "Renascence Drama; or, History made Visible," ** devoted to an accumulation of fact and argument—rather than to a presentation of the case already made—in favor of the Baconian theory.
* Shakespeare from an American Point of View. New York: D.
Appleton & Co., 1877.
** Melbourne: Sands & McDougall, Collins street, west,
1880.
Mr. Thompson aims to answer the more refined objections to that theory, by showing that Bacon's mind and art rather overgrasped than undergrasped the matter and form of these Shakespearean drama, and his work is an extremely valuable and charming contribution to the pro-Baconian view.
In his abounding zeal for "our Shakespeare," Mr. King * gives us much eulogy, very little argument, and remakes but one or two points, namely, that a large proportion of the Shakespearean characters are made to bear Warwickshire names, such as Ford, Page, Evans, Hugh, Oliver, Sly, Marion Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, Curtis, Burton Heath, Fluellen, Bar-dolph, and so on; and that certain expressions which have puzzled commentators, such as "make straight" (meaning "make haste"), "quoth" (meaning "went"), the use of the word "me" in place of "for me," "old" for "frequent," etc., are Warwickshire expressions, and current in no other parts of England. But, as anybody can see, the majority of these are far from being uncommon names, and are quite as prevalent in New York, for example, as they are or were in Warwickshire. And if, as has been suggested, Mr. Manager Shakespeare dressed up his friends' dialogues for his own stage, and tucked in the clowns and jades, this usage of Warwick names might well be accounted for.
* Bacon and Shakespeare: A Plea for the Defendant. By-
Thomas King. Montreal: Lovell Printing and Publishing
Company, 1875.
Four of these names are taken out of "The Merry Wives of Windsor," and three of them from the induction to the "Taming of the Shrew"—matter in the composition of which Shakespeare or any other playwright might have had the largest hand, without entitling himself to any Olympus. And if, in the dressing up, Shakespeare inserted a clown or a sot here and there, to make sport, what would be more natural than that he should put into their mouths the argot he had grown up amid in his boyhood, and make the drunken turnkey in "Macbeth" to say, with hiccoughs, "If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key?" For, as Mr. King can see for himself, the cardinals and kings do not use these phrases; nor, we may add, are the surnames he particularizes ever bestowed on them, but only on the low-comedy characters of the plays.
Surely, if William Shakespeare ever were forced "upon the country," as the lawyers say, as against my Lord Bacon, he would wish his case to the jury rather without Mr. King's "plea" than with it. As a "plea" on any side of an historical question, it is, to be sure, nothing, if not candid; but, as a personal appeal to posterity to, willy-nilly, believe that certain players and others in the age of Elizabeth knew not guile, it is touching and beautiful in the extreme. "Who shall, say Heminges and Condell lied?" * "Could rare Ben Jonson, who is worthy of our love and respect, have lied?" **
* "Bacon versus Shakespeare: A Plea for the Defendant."
By-Thomas King. Montreal, and Rouse's Point, New York:
Lovell Printing, etc., Company, 1875, p. 9.
** Ibid., p. 10. Heminges and Condell "profess that 'they
have done this office to the dead only to keep the memory of
so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare.'
Yet their utter negligence, shown in their fellow's volume,
is no evidence of their pious friendship, nor perhaps of
their care or their intelligence. The publication was not, I
fear, so much an offering of friendship as a pretext to
obtain the copyright.' (Disraeli, "Amenities of Authors—
Shakespeare.")
Did Shakespeare practice a deceit upon his noble and generous patron? Could he be guilty of a lie?" * And so on. To much the same effect (the reverence due the name "Shakespeare," the improbability of Jonson and others telling an untruth, etc.) is an anonymous volume, "Shakespeare not an Impostor, by an English Critic," ** published in 1857; and finally, in 1877, was published a paper, read before the Royal Society of Literature, by C. M. Ingleby, M. A., LL.D., a vice-president *** of the same. Dr. Ingleby is severe upon all anti-Shakespeareans, whose minds he likens to "Macadam's sieves," which "retain only those ingredients which are unsuited to the end in view" (whatever that may mean), and thinks that "the profession of the law has the inevitable effect of fostering the native tendency of such minds." Unlike the others, however, Dr. Ingleby does not confine himself to expressions of his interest in the anti-Shakespeareans "as examples of wrong-headedness," but attempts an examination of the historical testimony. In favor of the Shakespearean authorship, he names seven witnesses, viz., John Harrison, Francis Meres, Robert Greene, Henry Chettle, Heminges, Condell, and Ben Jonson. John Harrison was the printer (publisher) who published the "Venus and Adonis" in 1593, and the "Lucrece" in 1594.
* Ibid., p. 13.
** George Townsend (according to Allibone), London: G.
Routledge & Co., Farringdon street, 1857.
*** "Shakespeare: The Man and the Book." London: Josiah
Adams, Trubner & Co., 1877, Part L, p. 38. "The Authorship
of the Works attributed to Shakespeare."
Each of these was without an author's name on the title-page, though each was dedicated to Southampton, in an address dedicatory, signed "William Shakespeare." This is all that the Harrison evidence amounts to, except that Dr. Ingleby says, "It is to me quite incredible that Harrison would have done this unless Shakespeare had written the dedications, or at least had been a party to them." * As to Meres, anybody can see by reading him that he wrote as a critic, and not as an historian. ** To subpoena Greene as a witness to Shakespeare's genius, is at least a bold stroke; for, as has been seen, Greene is very emphatic to the effect that William Shakespeare was a mere "Johannes Factotum," or Jack-of-all-trades, who trained in stolen plumage, and the Shakespeareans (Dr. Ingleby alone excepted) have universally exerted themselves to break the force of this testimony by proving Greene a drunkard, jealous, etc. *** Greene was a graduate of Cambridge—a learned man—"one of the fathers," says Lamb, "of the English stage."
* Ibid., p. 42.
** "Palladis Tamia, Wit's Commonwealth," 1598.
*** That Robert Greene was much more than a drunkard and a
pretender, but that, to the contrary, he had many admirers
who were not unaware of the effrontery of his debtor,
Shakespeare, a search among the old literature of the day
would reveal. In a quarto tract, dated 1594, "Greene's
Funeralls, by R. B., Gent.," is a copy of verses, the last
stanza of which runs:
"Greene is the pleasing object of an eye
Greene pleased the eye of all that looked upon him;
Greene is the ground of every painter's dye,
Greene gave the ground to all that wrote upon him:
Nay, more; the men that so eclipsed his fame,
Purloined his plumes, can they deny that same?"
Hallam believes that the last two lines are directed
principally at William Shakespeare. ("Literature of Europe,"
Part II., ch. vi., p. 32, note.)
A selection of his poems, edited by Lamb, is printed in
Bohn's Standard Library. But by far the most careful account
of Greene's career, as connected with "William Shakespeare,
is to be found in "The School of Shakespeare," by Richard
Simpson, London: Chatto & Windus, 1878, Vol. II., p. 339.
He does not seem to have approved of William Shakespeare's borrowing his plumes; but the impression that he was a monster of debauchery and drunkenness is derived wholly from his own posthumous work, "The Confessions of Robert Greene," etc., London, 1592, which lays the black paint on so thickly that it should have put the critics on their guard. Greene was probably no worse than his kind. Henry Chettle edited Greene, and personally deprecated some of its hard sayings as to Shakespeare, on account of his (Shakespeare's) being a clever, civil sort of fellow, and of "his facetious grace in writing;" but more particularly, no doubt, because "divers of worship" had taken him up, and he (Chettle) did not wish to appear as approving slander of a reigning favorite. Heminges and Condell were men of straw, whose names are signed to the preface to the "first folio," who otherwise bear no testimony one way or the other, but whose book, as will be demonstrated further on, is an unwilling witness against its purported author. And Ben Jonson, who brings up the rear of this precious seven, has been already disposed of. That theory must be pretty soundly grounded in truth, against which there is nothing but rhetoric to hurl, and, in our opinion, it would be entirely safe—if not for the Baconians, for the anti-Shakespeareans, at least—to rest their case on the arguments for the other side. And we believe the more thoughtful among Shakespeareans are beginning to recognize it, and coming to comprehend that, if they are to keep their Shakespeare they must re-write their "Biographies;" spend less time in proving him to have been an epitome of the moral virtues—beyond the temptation of deer stealing, beer drinking, and skylarking, etc.—and devote more attention to his opportunities for acquiring the lore and technical knowledge his alleged pages so accurately handle. Especially has Mr. Halliwell Phillips, in his little book (in which he binds himself to cite no dates or authorities subsequent to 1616), * impressed us as endeavoring to meet this emergency. But we find that he has not met it. He has, indeed, developed many details of curious interest—as that John Shakespeare was, in April, 1552, fined twelve pence for throwing muck into the street in front of his house; and that he was several times a candidate for high bailiff of Stratford (or mayor, as the office was afterward called) before finally arriving at that dignity in 1568; that July 15, 1613, there was heard at Worcester Assizes a curious lawsuit, brought by Dr. John Hall, Shakespeare's son-in-law, against a neighbor for slandering his wife (Susannah Shakespeare), which suit appears to have been "fixed" in some way before coming to trial.
* Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare. Brighton. Printed
for the Author's friends, 1881. We should add to our list of
hooks Mr. O. Follet's two able pamphlets on the Baconian
theory. Sandusky, Ohio, 1880.
Mr. Phillips brings much learning to prove that William may have been "pre-contracted" to Anne Hathaway—that his death may have been from malarial fever rather than inebriation—which have nothing at all to do with the question or the practical difficulties cited by the anti-Shakespeareans, one way or the other. But as to those practical difficulties, he brings no light and has no word to say.