As a matter of fact, and as the industrious Mr. Lodge confesses, * there is no such trace or record. Except from, the "biographers" of Shakespeare, no note, hint, or surmise, connecting the two names, can be anywhere unearthed, and they only draw the suggestion on which they build such lofty treatises from a dedication printed in the days when printers helped themselves to any name they wanted without fear of an injunction out of chancery. That any sonnets were ever dedicated to Southampton by anybody, is, we have seen, pure invention.
III. But that the famous First Folio of 1623 was set up from piecemeal parts written for separate actors, and that these were in William Shakespeare's handwriting, there seems to be contemporary circumstantial evidence.
We have seen that, although Ben Jonson has, for two hundred and fifty years, been believed when he said in poetry that William Shakespeare was not only the "Star of Poets" for genius, but that besides he would "sweat and strike the second heat upon the muses's anvil;" when he said in prose that "The players often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare that in writing (whatever he wrote) he never blotted out a line," he was supposed to be using a mere figure of speech. But it seems that he was telling the truth. For, in 1623—Shakespeare having been dead seven years—Heminges and Condell—two "players" (i. e., actors), and the same that Shakespeare in his Will calls his "fellows"—publish the first edition of the plays we now call "Shakespeare"—and, on the title-page of that edition, advertise them as "published according to the true original copies."
* Portraits, Henry Wreothlesey, Earl of Southampton, Yol.
III., page 155. Bohn's edition.
Further on in their preface, they repeat, almost in his very words, Ben Jon-son's statement, asserting that "We have scarce received from him (William Shakespeare) a blot in his papers." What papers? What indeed, but "the true original copies" of these plays which were in William Shakespeare's handwriting? What else could it have been that "the players" (according to Ben Jonson) saw? Does anybody suppose that the poet's own first draft, untouched of the file and unperfumed of the lamp, went into "the players'" hands, for them to learn their parts from? And, even if one player was allowed to study his part from the inspired author's first draft, his fellow "players" must have taken or received a copy or copies of their parts; they could not all study their parts from the same manuscript. The only reasonable supposition, therefore, is, that William Shakespeare made it part of his duties at the theater to write out in a fair hand the parts for the different "players" (and no wonder they mentioned it, as "an honor" to him, that he lightened their labors considerably by the legibility of his penmanship, by never blotting out a line) and that, in course of time, these "true original copies" were collected from their fellow-actors by Heminges and Condell, and by them published; they remarking, in turn, upon the excellence of the penmanship so familiar to them. There is only wanted to confirm this supposition, a piece of actual evidence as to what Heminges and Condell did print from.
Now, it happens that, by their own careless proof reading, Heminges and Condell have actually supplied this piece of missing circumstantial evidence, as follows: Naturally, in these true original copies of a particular actors part, the name of the actor assuming that part would be written in the margin, opposite to or instead of the name of the character he was to personate; precisely as is done to-day by the theater copyist in copying parts for distribution among the company. It happened that, in setting up the types for this first edition from these fragmentary actors' copies, the printers would often accidentaly, from following "copy" too closely, set up these real names of the actors instead of the names of the characters. And—as any one taking up a copy or fac-simile of this famous "first folio" can see for himself—the editors carelessly overlooked these errors in the proof, and there they remain to this day: "Jacke Wilson," for "Balthazar," "Andrew" and "Cowley," for "Dogberry;"
"Kempe," for "Verges," and the like—the names of Shakespeare's actors—instead of the parts they took in the piece. It seems superfluous to again suggest that these unblotted "copies" could not have been the author's first draft of a play, or that an author does not write his compositions in manifold, or that there had been many actors to learn their parts in the course of from sixteen to twenty years.
Besides—even if Heminges and Condell had not told us—it would have still been perfectly evident, from an inspection of the "first folio," that the "copy" it was set up from was never completely in their hands, but was collected piecemeal during the manufacture. For instance, we see where the printers left a space of twenty-nine pages, between "Romeo and Juliet" and "Julius Cæsar," in which to print the "Timon of Athens." But all the copy they could find of the "Timon" only made eighteen pages, and so—by huge "head pieces" and "tail pieces," and a "Table of the Actor's Names" (given in no other instance) in coarse capitals—they eked out the "signature;" and, by omitting the whole of the next "signature," carried the pagination over from "98" to "109." The copy for "Troilus and Cres-sida" seems not to have been received until the volume was in the binder's hands (which is remarkable, too, for that play had been in print for fourteen years). The play is not mentioned in the table of contents, but is tucked in without paging (except that the first five pages are numbered 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, whereas the paging of the volume had already reached 232). "Troilus and Cressida," thus printed, fills two "signatures" lacking one page, and so somebody at hand wrote a "Prologue" in rhyme—setting out the argument—to save the blank page, and the like. Whatever "papers" Heminges and Condell "received from William Shakespeare then, were fair, unblotted copies of the actor parts, made by him for their use. It appears then, that—minute scholarship and the records apart—the foreman of a printing-house would have been at any time in the past two hundred and fifty years, without assistance from the commentators, able to settle the great Shakespearean authorship controversy.
While—from one standpoint—this testimony of the types is strong circumstantial evidence against the Baconian theory, taken from another standpoint it is quite as strongly corroborative. For on the one hand, Bacon was alive when this folio was printed, and the man who rewrote his essays eleven times would scarcely have allowed his plays to go to the public so shiftlessly printed. But on the other hand, if the book was printed without consulting him, that insurmountable barrier—the fact that Bacon never claimed these plays—is swept away at once. We have simply to assume that he always intended, at some convenient season, to acknowledge them: that he was not satisfied with them as they appeared in the Heminges and Condell edition, and proposed revising them himself before claiming them, (we know how difficult he found it to satisfy his own censorship) or that he purposed completing the series, (for which the sketch of the Henry VII may have been placed among his private memoranda) at his leisure. We have then only to imagine that death overtook him suddenly (his death was sudden) before this programme had been completed, and his not acknowledging them; not leaving them—incomplete as he believed them—to "the next ages," was characteristic of the man.
"If I go, who remains? If I remain, who goes?" said Dante to the Council of Florence. Take the Shakespearean pages away from English literature, and what remains? Detain them, and what departs? And yet are men to believe that the writer of these pages left no impress on the history of his age and no item in the chronicle of his time? that, in the intensest focus of the clear, calm, electric-light of nineteenth century inspection and investigation, their author stands only revealed in the gossip of goodwives or the drivel of a pot-house clientage? Who is it—his reason and judgment once enlisted—who believes this thing?