George Greenwood.
I turned, therefore, with some interest to Mr. Haines’s second article, but, alas, I found no enlightenment therein. He has treated my questions with a very discreet silence. Well, no doubt “silence is golden”—in some cases. But such is “Shakespearean” criticism at the present day, of which these articles are a very instructive and characteristic specimen. I am aware, of course, that if I were to offer a paper in reply to them, however conclusive that reply might be, and even if it were quite up to the literary standard of the Review in question, it would be at once returned to me by the editor—if not consigned to the “W.P.B.”—for the all-sufficient reason that the writer is guilty of vile and intolerable heresy (to wit that he shares the conviction of the late Henry James—and many others alive and dead—that the author of Hamlet and Lear and Othello was actually a well-educated man, of high position, and the representative of the highest culture of his day), and is therefore taboo to the editors of all decent journals. Id sane intolerandum! Indeed, with the exception of the editor of the National Review—to whom the thanks of all unprejudiced and liberal-minded men are most justly due—I know of no editor of an English quarterly or monthly magazine, since the lamented death of Mr. Wray Skilbeck, who does not maintain this boycott as though it were a matter of moral obligation, just as but a few years since they boycotted the Free-thinker and the Rationalist. They freely open their columns to attacks upon the “Anti-Stratfordian,” but on no account must he be allowed to reply.
Whether such an attitude redounds to the credit of English literature it is not for me, a “heretic,” to say. I would only venture to refer the reader to the observations of Professor Abel Lefranc—a scholar and critic of European reputation—upon this matter, in whose judgment it seems that such an attitude with regard to an extremely interesting literary problem is not only absurdly prejudiced and narrow-minded, but one which—I tremble as I say it—makes some of our literary highbrows not a little ridiculous in the eyes of men of common sense and unfettered judgment.[27]
THE MASQUE OF “TIME VINDICATED”[28]
The following extract from Mr. Smithson’s Article in The Nineteenth Century of November 1913, headed “Ben Jonson’s Pious Fraud,” may well stand as a preface to his now published Essay on Jonson’s Masque of Time Vindicated, which was written by him in the year 1919. The reader may also be referred to Chapters VI and VII of his Shakespeare-Bacon, published in 1899.
It is odd that we Baconians, differing as we do from our opponents in so many points, should agree with them so entirely on one—the supreme importance of the testimony of Ben Jonson. This paper is mainly concerned with two of his utterances, the Ode in the First Folio, and the Prince’s Masque. Both the one and the other belong in point of composition to the same period, 1622-3. We will begin with the Masque completed no doubt a few months earlier than the Ode. In my opinion they were vital parts of one great scheme of which Bacon, i.e., Bacon-Shakespeare, was the subject.
The genesis of the Prince’s Masque was probably on this wise: assuming that Bacon was bent on disowning his plays, the publication of them, however generous in intention, could at best be only a left-handed compliment to him. Consequently if the scheme was to yield any true satisfaction to its originators (or any suitable consolation to Bacon regarded as the victim of malicious if not disloyal persecution), it would have to give scope for some direct (ad virum) expression, in their own persons if possible, of love and admiration for their hero. A prince brought up in the court of James the First would be sure to decide that a Masque was the thing and Ben Jonson the man. As the audience would necessarily be select and discreet (Court influence being potent), the risk of disclosure was not serious; and even if it had been, Jonson’s skill would have been equal to the task of hoodwinking any probable audience. On this occasion luck helped cunning. In the nick of time, George Wither, a “prodigious pourer forth of rhime,” happened to publish a volume of Satirical Essays in rhyme, with a ridiculous dedication of the thing to himself as patron and protector. This I fancy gave Jonson just what he wanted—a red herring to draw across the scent.