One Baconian objection to Shakespeare’s authorship is that during his early years in London (say 1587–92) he was “such a sudden scholar made” in various things.
The young king’s
“addiction was to courses vain,
His companies unletter’d, rude, and shallow,”
precisely like Shakespeare’s courses and companions at Stratford
“Had never noted in him any study.”
Stratford tradition, a century after Shakespeare left the town, did not remember “any study” in him; none had been “noted,” nor could have been remembered. To return to Henry, he shines in divinity, knowledge of “commonwealth affairs,”
“You would say, it hath been all in all his study.”
He is as intimate with the art of war; to him “Gordian knots of policy” are “familiar as his garter.” He must have
“The art and practic part of life,”
as “mistress to this theorie,”