that is—the Folio of 1623. Ben did not weave the amazing tissue of involved and contradictory falsities attributed to him by Baconians. Beaumont died in the same year as Shakspere, who died in the depths of the country, weary of London. Has Mr. Greenwood found obituary poems dropped on the grave of the famous Beaumont? Did Fletcher, did Jonson, produce one melodious tear for the loss of their friend; in Fletcher’s case his constant partner? No? Were the poets, then, aware that Beaumont was a humbug, whose poems and plays were written by Bacon? [174a]
I am not to discuss Shakespeare’s Will, the “second-best bed,” and so forth. But as Shakespeare’s Will says not a word about his books, it is decided by Mr. Greenwood that he had no books. Mr. Greenwood is a lawyer; so was my late friend Mr. Charles Elton, Q.C., of White Staunton, who remarks that Shakespeare bequeathed “all the rest of my goods, chattels, leases, &c., to my son-in-law, John Hall, gent.” (He really was a “gent.” with authentic coat-armour.)
It is with Mr. Elton’s opinion, not with my ignorance, that Mr. Greenwood must argue in proof of the view that “goods” are necessarily exclusive of books, for Mr. Elton takes it as a quite natural fact that Shakespeare’s books passed, with his other goods, to Mr. Hall, and thence to a Mr. Nash, to whom Mr. Hall left “my study of books” [175a] (library). I only give this as a lawyer’s opinion.
There is in the Bodleian an Aldine Ovid, “with Shakespeare’s” signature (merely Wm. She.), and a note, “This little volume of Ovid was given to me by W. Hall, who sayd it was once Will Shakespeare’s.” I do not know that the signature (like that on Florio’s Montaigne, in the British Museum) has been detected as a forgery; nor do I know that Shakespeare’s not specially mentioning his books proves that he had none. Lawyers appear to differ as to this inference: both Mr. Elton and Mr. Greenwood seem equally confident. [175b] But if it were perfectly natural that the actor, Shakspere, should have no books, then he certainly made no effort, by the local colour of owning a few volumes, to persuade mankind that he was the author. Yet they believed that he was—really there is no wriggling out of it. As regards any of his own MSS. which Shakespeare may have had (one would expect them to be at his theatre), and their monetary value, if they were not, as usual, the property of his company, and of him as a member thereof, we can discuss that question in the section headed “The First Folio.”
It appears that Shakespeare’s daughter, Judith, could write no more than her grandfather. [176a] Nor, I repeat, could the Lady Jane Gordon, daughter of the great Earl of Huntly, when she was married to the Earl of Bothwell in 1566. At all events, Lady Jane “made her mark.” It may be feared that Judith, brought up in that very illiterate town of Stratford, under an illiterate mother, was neglected in her education. Sad, but very common in women of her rank, and scarcely a proof that her father did not write the plays.
As “nothing is known of the disposition and character” [176b] of Shakespeare’s grand-daughter, Lady Barnard, who died in 1670, it is not so paralysingly strange that nothing is known of any relics or anecdotes of Shakespeare which she may have possessed. Mr. Greenwood “would have supposed that she would have had much to say about the great poet,” exhibited his books (if any), and so forth. Perhaps she did,—but how, if we “know nothing about her disposition and character,” can we tell? No interviewers rushed to her house (Abington Hall, Northampton-shire) with pencils and notebooks to record her utterances; no reporter interviewed her for the press. It is surprising, is it not?
The inference might be drawn, in the Baconian manner, that, during the Commonwealth and Restoration, “the friends of the Muses” knew that the actor was not the author, and therefore did not interview his granddaughter in the country.
“But, at any rate, we have the Stratford monument,” says Mr. Greenwood, and delves into this problem. Even the Stratford monument of Shakespeare in the parish church is haunted by Baconian mysteries. If the gentle reader will throw his eye over the photograph [177a] of the monument as it now exists, he may not be able to say to the face of the poet—
“Thou wast that all to me, Will,
For which my soul did pine.”
But if he has any knowledge of Jacobean busts on monuments, he will probably agree with me in saying, “This effigy, though executed by somebody who was not a Pheidias, and who perhaps worked merely from descriptions, is, at all events, Jacobean.” The same may assuredly be said of the monument; it is in good Jacobean style: the pillars with their capitals are graceful: all the rest is in keeping; and the two inscriptions are in the square capital letters of inscriptions of the period; not in italic characters. Distrusting my own expertise, I have consulted Sir Sidney Colvin, and Mr. Holmes of the National Portrait Gallery. They, with Mr. Spielmann, think the work to be of the early seventeenth century.