[22] See Jonson’s censure of Poetry in his day, for being “a meane Mistresse to such as have wholly addicted themselves to her; or given their names up to her family. They who have but saluted her on the by ... she hath done much for, and advanced in the way of their own professions, both the Law and the Gospel, beyond all they could have hoped without her favour.” This means, I take it, that Jonson had in his eye Bacon and others as striking examples of Poetry’s generosity, and himself a shining illustration of her meanness. As for the prosperous burgher of Stratford, he was not in the picture, for Jonson was treating of poets. [Original Note.]
[23] But surely this statement, put into the mouths of the players by the author of the Folio preface, could not have referred to printed matter? If the players did indeed, receive papers with “scarce a blot” they were, doubtless, fair copies. [G. G.]
[24] See Sous le Masque de Shakespeare. Vol. I, p. 130.
[25] As for the claims of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, see “Shakespeare” Identified, by J. Thomas Looney (Cecil Palmer, 1920).
[26] With reference to the “Baconian” theory I must here quote words recently written by one who bears a highly distinguished name in the ranks of literature. Mr. George Moore, writing in reply to a criticism by Mr. Gosse, published in the Sunday Times, thus expresses his opinion upon that question: “Some of Shakespeare’s finest plays were not only revised, but remoulded; ‘Hamlet’ is one of these, and it is not an exaggeration to say that its revisions were spread over at least twenty years; and I thought when I wrote the little booklet, ‘Fragments from Héloïse and Abélard,’ that the text of ‘Othello’ in the Folio contained 160 lines that are not to be found in the quarto, and I think so still; 160 lines were added between the publication of the quarto [in 1622] and the folio [1623], and these lines cannot be attributed to any other hand but the author’s; they are among the best in the play, and among them will be found lines dear to all who hold the belief that Bacon and not the mummer was the author of the plays:
Like the Pontic Sea
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Helespont.”
See the Sunday Times, August 28, 1921. With reference to the 160 new lines added in the folio version of Othello and which “cannot be attributed to any other hand but the author’s,” it will be remembered that William Shakspere of Stratford died some six years before the publication of the quarto of 1622. (See Is there a Shakespeare Problem? p. 443 et seq.)
[27] In the Fortnightly Review of January, 1922, Mr. W. Bayley Kempling gravely informs us that Shakespeare bestowed the name of “Mountjoy” on the French Herald in Henry V. in honour of the “tire-maker” of that name with whom player Shakespeare lodged for a time in Mugwell (i.e., Monkwell) Street, thereby repeating the preposterous error of Dr. Wallace (often exposed by the present writer amongst others) who wrote in ignorance of the fact that “Mountjoy King at Arms” was the official name of a French Herald who, as Holinshed informs us, made his appearance at Agincourt! Had Mr. Kempling condescended to read an “heretical” author he might have been saved from this absurd mistake.
[28] This Essay was written by Mr. Smithson in 1919-20.
[29] The words of the original are: