It is probably safe to take for granted that Bacon was acquainted with Shakspere; that the relation between them began maybe as early as 1588, and was concerned with playhouse property; that this property was held by Shakspere on trust for Bacon; and that it was sold, perhaps to the trustees, by Bacon’s orders some time before 1613.
The name of “Shakespeare” seems to have made its first public appearance in print with Venus and Adonis,[56] a poem which was dedicated in perfectly well-bred terms to an earl; licensed by an archbishop who had once been Bacon’s tutor;[57] and expressed on its title page patrician contempt for all things vulgar. By whose order was the name Shakespeare printed at foot of its Dedication to the Earl of Southampton? In the dearth of evidence the following guesses may pass muster. They are put into an unhistorical present in order to show at a glance that they, or most of them, are mere guess-work:—About 1592, Bacon makes up his mind to publish Venus and Adonis. Publication in his own name is vetoed by fear of offending powerful friends, his uncle Burghley in particular; and he prefers pseudonymity to anonymity. What he wants is a temporary mask which he fully expects to be able to throw off before long. In this mood, he calls on Richard Field, a London printer hailing originally from Stratford, and recommended to him by Sir John Harington, whose Orlando Furioso Field has just printed. Field happens to mention Shakspere which he pronounces Shaxper. Bacon, already acquainted with the young fellow of that name, decides that a fictitious person, whose name he pronounces Shakespeare, shall be the putative father of his Poem. Little dreams he, poet though he be, that he is thereby preparing a human grave for that immortality of Fame (as poet) which he has begun to anticipate for himself. The Poem appears in 1593; and is followed next year by Lucrece, fathered by the same Shakespeare, and dedicated to the same young Earl. Some years later, the name is stereotyped by Meres’s Commonwealth of Wits, where Shakespeare is mentioned seven or eight times—as the English Ovid; as one of our best tragic and best comic poets; as one of our most “wittie” and accomplished writers, and so forth.[58] A few years later still, Bacon begins to be perplexed what to do with his Shakespeare copyright, and his perplexity rises with every advance in his profession. Before succeeding to the Attorney-Generalship he realises once for all that complications, professional, social, and various, have made it impossible for him to think of fathering even a selection of his poetical offspring. In despair to escape from the impasse, he even talks of burning MSS. But the threat is not carried out. Soon after his melancholy downfall sympathetic and admiring friends, notably the two Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery—Southampton probably stood aloof, memories of the Essex affair still rankling in his mind—take counsel together, expostulate with him, entreat him to let them bear all expenses and responsibilities connected with publication, and to clinch their argument tell him that they have sounded the literary dictator of the day, Ben Jonson, and got his promise to undertake the work of editing, collecting, writing the necessary prefatory matter, and so forth. Bacon yields consent on certain conditions, the most embarrassing of which is that the true authorship of the plays be for ever kept dark—by means of “dissimulation,” if dissimulation will serve; if not, then by “simulation,” i.e., the lie direct.[59] The conditions are accepted with misgivings on Jonson’s part. He is aware that he will have no trouble with Mr. Shakspere’s executors, their interest in the copyrights involved being as negligible as their testator’s had been. And he knows Heminge and Condell well enough to feel certain that they will not have the smallest objection, either to being assigned prominent places in the forthcoming Book, or to his putting into their mouths statements, etc., concerning Shakespeare, which he himself would shrink from uttering. But even so, the task is no sinecure.
Here guess-work ends.
The famous Folio, with its apparatus of Dedication, prefatory Address, Ode, to “my beloved the author,” etc., made its appearance in 1623. The Dedication intimates (with ironical emphasis on the word “trifles”) that the author of these “trifles” was dead, “he not having the fate common with some to be exequutor to his owne writings.... We have but collected them, and done an office to the dead, to procure his Orphanes, Guardians: without ambition either of selfe-profit, or fame: onely to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend and Fellow alive, as was our Shakespeare.”
The Address expresses a wish that the Author had lived to set forth “his owne writings. But since it hath bin ordain’d otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends the office” of collection, etc. This is followed by a statement, probably half jest, half irony, that the Author uttered his thoughts with such “easinesse, that wee have scarse received from him a blot on his papers.” That Heminge and Condell had no hand in either Dedication or Address is sufficiently proved by turns and phrases characteristically Jonsonian. They, I suppose, had given Jonson carte blanche, and he made use of the gift, in the interest of literature which might otherwise have suffered irreparable loss. In this way the fiction of Shakespeare’s identity with Shakspere was so plausibly documented, that Jonson might have spared himself any further trouble on that score. But either to make assurance doubly sure, or to show his dexterity, he set about the writing of his Ode as if the fiction had not been planted already. Some of the Ode’s features need no further comment than they have received. But the “small Latin” and “Swan of Avon” allusions deserve a word or two more. Both passages point at Shakspere and away from Shakespeare. What was their raison d’être? They were exceptionally significant touches to an elaborate system of camouflage, by which posterity, including ourselves, was to be deluded.
Hitherto the accent has been too much on the unessentials of the Ode, and far too little on its beauties. No nobler contemporary appreciation of Shakespeare has reached our ears, and that is a cogent reason for gratitude to its author. Before taking leave of him, I venture to make free with one of his apostrophes. The lines would then run thus:
Soule of the Age!
The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage!
My Bacon rise!
In order to correct misapprehensions which may have arisen through my having slipped into positive statements, where ex hypothesi or conditional ones might have been desired, I wish expressly to disclaim any intention to dogmatise. Scientific certainty is out of the question. High probability we may reach, perhaps have reached. But that is the limit. That Bacon was Shakespeare, the only Shakespeare that matters, is merely a working hypothesis. Of other hypothetical Shakespeares who have been put forward, a certain Earl of Rutland would have deserved serious consideration, had he been as able a writer as was his father-in-law, Sidney. The only formidable competing hypothesis might seem to be that of a Great Unknown. But this essentially is a confession of ignorance, and some of its supporters are sceptics who amuse themselves by falling upon every hypothesis in turn.[60]]