Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great Unknown

by Andrew Lang

Mr. Greenwood, like the Genius at the birthday supper,

“Stands as if some mystery he did.”

On a trifling point of honour, namely, as to whether Ben were a man likely to lie, tortuously, hypocritically, to be elaborately false about the authorship of the Shakespearean plays, it is hopelessly impossible to bring the Baconians and Mr. Greenwood (who “holds no brief for the Baconians”) to my point of view. Mr. Greenwood rides off thus—what the Baconians do is unimportant.

“There are, as everybody knows, many falsehoods that are justifiable, some that it is actually a duty to tell.” It may be so; I pray that I may never tell any of them (or any more of them).

Among justifiable lies I do not reckon that of Scott if ever he plumply denied that he wrote the Waverley novels. I do not judge Sir Walter. Heaven forbid! But if, in Mr. Greenwood’s words, he, “we are told, thought it perfectly justifiable for a writer who wished to preserve his anonymity, to deny, when questioned, the authorship of a work, since the interrogator had no right to put such a question to him,” [267a] I disagree with Sir Walter. Many other measures, in accordance with the conditions of each case, were open to him. Some are formulated by his own Bucklaw, in The Bride of Lammermoor, as regards questions about what occurred on his bridal night. Bucklaw would challenge the man, and cut the lady, who asked questions. But Scott’s case, as cited, applies only to Bacon (or Mr. Greenwood’s Unknown), if he were asked whether or not he were the author of the plays. No idiot, at that date, was likely to put the question! But, if anyone did ask, Bacon must either evade, or deny, or tell the truth.

On the parallel of Scott, Bacon could thus deny, evade, or tell the truth. But the parallel of Scott is not applicable to any other person except to the author who wishes to preserve his anonymity, and is questioned. The parallel does not apply to Ben. He had not written the Shakespearean plays. Nobody was asking him if he had written them. If he knew that the author was Bacon, and knew it under pledge of secrecy, and was asked (per impossibile) “Who wrote these plays?” he had only to say, “Look at the title-page.” But no mortal was asking Ben the question. But we are to suppose that, in the panegyric and in Discoveries, Ben chooses to assert, first, that Shakespeare was his Beloved, his Sweet Swan of Avon; and that he “loved him, on this side idolatry, as much as any.” There is no evidence that he did love Shakespeare, except his own statement, when, according to the Baconians, he is really speaking of Bacon, and, according to Mr. Greenwood, of an unknown person, singularly like Bacon. Consequently, unless we can prove that Ben really loved the actor, he is telling a disgustingly hypocritical and wholly needless falsehood, both before and after the death of Bacon. To be silent about the authorship of a book, an authorship which is the secret of your friend and patron, is one thing and a blameless thing. All the friends, some twenty, to whom Scott confided the secret of his authorship were silent. But not one of them publicly averred that the author was their very dear friend, So-and-so, who was not Scott, and perhaps not their friend at all. That was Ben’s line. Thus the parallel with Scott drawn by Mr. Greenwood, twice, [268a] is no parallel. It has no kind of analogy with Ben’s alleged falsehoods, so elaborate, so incomprehensible except by Baconians, and, if he did not love the actor Shakspere dearly, so detestably hypocritical, and open to instant detection.

It is not easy to find a parallel to the conduct with which Ben is charged. But suppose that Scott lived unsuspected of writing his novels, which, let us say, he signed “James Hogg,” and died without confessing his secret, and without taking his elaborate precautions for its preservation on record.

Next, imagine that Lockhart knew Scott’s secret, under vow of silence, and was determined to keep it at any cost. He therefore, writing after the death of Hogg of Ettrick, and in Scott’s lifetime, publishes verses declaring that Hogg was his “beloved” (an enormous fib), and that Hogg, “Sweet Swan of Ettrick,” was the author of the Waverley novels.

To complete the parallels, Lockhart, after Scott’s death, leaves a note in prose to the effect that, while he loved Hogg on this side idolatry (again, a monstrous fable), he must confess that Hogg, author of the Waverley novels, often fell into things that were ridiculous; and often needed to have a stopper put on him for all these remarks. Lockhart, while speaking of Hogg, is thinking of Scott—and he makes the remarks solely to conceal Scott’s authorship of the novels—of which, on the hypothesis, nobody suspected Scott to be the author. Lockhart must then have been what the Baconian Mr. Theobald calls Mr. Churton Collins, “a measureless liar,”—all for no reason.

Mr. Greenwood, starting as usual from the case, which is no parallel, of Scott’s denying his own authorship, goes on, “for all we know, Jonson might have seen nothing in the least objectionable in the publication by some great personage of his dramatic works under a pseudonym” (under another man’s name really), “even though that pseudonym led to a wrong conception as to the authorship; and that, if, being a friend of that great personage, and working in his service” (Ben worked, by the theory, in Bacon’s), “he had solemnly engaged to preserve the secret inviolate, and not to reveal it even to posterity, then doubtless (‘I thank thee, Jew’ (meaning Sir Sidney Lee), ‘for teaching me that word’!) he would have remained true to that solemn pledge.” [270a]