Shakespeare's environment

by C. C. Stopes

FOOTNOTES:

[99] In Harl. MS. 6388: “The King Sent Process to the Sheriffes that they should choose no Burgesses nor Knights that had any Knowledge of the laws of the Realm by reason whereof it was called The Layman’s Parliament.”

[100] In the same MS., f. 15, there is a transcript of a similar text with notable differences: “John Hornby arrested the Prince in the Priory.” (Date a year earlier.) Also Add. MS. 11364.

[101] Referring to the popular risings which commenced at that date.

[102] I noted this name because Francis Collins of Warwick became Shakespeare’s lawyer, and town clerk of Stratford-upon-Avon after Thomas Green.

[103] The first note is of Canute’s time and St. Nicholas Church. The annals proper begin in 1348 with John Ward, Jordan Sheppy, Nicholas Michell, Richard Freeborne, “William Horne. 1352-3 a drie Summer, rained not from March till July, and there was a dearth.”

XXIX
THE STRATFORD POET

The Editor[104] has courteously allowed me to reply to his article, “The Great Stratford Superstition,” as I have studied all the works of Bacon and Shakespeare, most of the writings concerning the Baconian Heresy, and have answered the chief of them. The first recorded student of Shakespeare was a woman, Mrs. Ann Merrick, who, on 21st January 1638, wrote from the country to a friend in London, that she could not come to town that year, but must content herself “with the study of Shakespeare and the History of Women” (State Papers, Dom. Ser., Charles I, 409 (167).) In these two interests, thus early and specially combined, I follow the lady’s lead.

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.