"Honey-tongued Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue,
I swore Apollo got them, and none other"—
probably means, if it means any thing, precisely what it says, namely, that when he read the plays, he swore that they were certainly Apollo's. And if the comments of Henry Chettle, Sir John Davies, Leonard Digges, Hugh Holland, and the rest, do not read to the same effect, they have a meaning beyond what they express. But panegyric is not history—at least it can not override history.
Between the affirmative theory of the Stratfordian authorship, then, and the demonstration of its utter impossibility and absurdity, there actually remains but the single barrier of the Jonsonian testimony, contained in the copy of verses entitled "To the Memory of my Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us," written by Mr. Ben Jon-son, and prefixed to the famous folio of 1623. If this testimony should ever be ruled out as incompetent, there would actually remain nothing except to lay the Shakespearean hoax away, as gently as might be, alongside its fellows in the populous limbo of exploded fallacies.
However, let it not be ruled out merely on the ground that it is in rhyme. We have no less an authority than Littleton—"auetoritas philosopho-rum, medieorum et poetarum sunt in causis allegan-dæ et tenendæ" *—to the effect that the testimony, even of poets, is sometimes to be received. It is to be ruled out rather by a process akin to impeachment of the witness—by its appearing that the witness, elsewhere in the same controversy, testifies to a state of facts exactly opposite. For the truth is that, whatever Ben Jonson felt moved to say about his "pal" William Shakespeare, whenever, "as a friend, he dropped into poetry," he was considerably more careful when he sat himself down to write "cold prose."
* "Co. Lit.," 264 A.
Just as "Bully Bottom," fearing lest a lion should "fright the ladies," and "hang every mother's son" of his troupe, devised a prologue to explain that the lion was no lion, but only Snug the Joiner, "a man as other men are," so Master Ben Jonson, however tropical and effusive as to his contemporary in his prosody, in his prologue in prose was scrupulous to leave only the truth behind him. Mountains—Ossian piled on Pelion—of hearsay and lapse of time; oceans of mere opinion and "gush" would, of course, amount to precisely nothing at all when ranged alongside of the testimony of one single, competent, contemporary eye-witness. No wonder the Shakespeareans are eager to subpoena Ben Jonson's verses. But, all the same, they are marvelously careful not to subpoena his prose.
And yet this prose is extant, and by no means inaccessible. Malien Jonson died, in 1637, he left behind him certain memoranda which were published in 1640, and are well-known as "Ben Jonson's Discoveries." One of these memoranda—for the work is in the disjointed form of a common-place book of occasional entries—is devoted to the eminent men of letters in the era spanned by its author's own acquaintance or familiarity. It runs as follows:
Cicero is said to be the only wit that the people of Rome had equaled to their empire. Imperium par imperio. We have had many, and in their several ages (to take in the former sæculum), Sir Thomas More, the elder Wiat, Henry, Earl of Surry, Chal-oner, Smith, Eliot, B. Gardiner, were, for their times, admirable; and the more because they began eloquence with us. Sir Nicholas Bacon was singular and almost alone in the beginning of Elizabeth's time. Sir Philip Sidney and Mr. Hooker (in different matter) grew great masters of wit and language, and in whom all vigour of invention and strength of judgment met. The Earl of Essex, noble and high, and Sir Walter Raleigh not to be contemned, either for judgment or style. Sir Henry Saville, grave and truly lettered. Sir Edwin Sandys, excellent in both. Lord Egerton, a grave and great orator, and best when he was provoked. But his learned and able, but unfortunate successor, is he that hath filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue which may be compared or preferred either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome. * In short, within this view, and about this time, were all the wits born that could honour a language or help study. Now things daily fall; wits grow downward and eloquence grows backward. So that he may be so named and stand as the mark and ———— of our language. **
* Judge Holmes ("Authorship of Shakespeare," third edition,
p. 650) italicises these words to point the allusion to
Bacon, and to notice that the passage in "The Discoveries,"
immediately preceding the above, is a direct allusion to
Bacon, while the phrase "insolent Greece and haughty
Rome" occurs in line thirty-nine of the verses eulogistic of
William Shakespeare.
** "Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter: as
they have flowed out of his Daily Readings, or had their
Reflux to his Peculiar Notion of the Time." By Ben Jonson.
"Works," by Peter Whalley, vol. vii., p. 99.