The Shakespearean Myth: William Shakespeare and Circumstantial Evidence

by Appleton Morgan

A coincidence between a passage in "The Advancement of Learning" and in the play of "Troilus and Cressida," Act II., Scene 2 (which, we shall see later on, first appeared in print, advertised as the work of a novice, in 1609, thereafter, within a few months, to be reissued as by William Shakespeare *—who was not, at the date of that edition, either a novice or a first appearance), is worth pausing to tabulate:

[Original]

That the manager of a theater, in dressing up a play for the evening's audience (and such an audience) should tuck in an allusion to Aristotle, to "catch the ** ear of the groundlings"

* Post, "The New Theory."

** It is to be noticed that no similarity of style in these opposed extracts is alleged or relied upon.

—or, finding it already in, should not have a sufficient acquaintance with Aristotle to scent an impropriety and take it out—is no less or no more absurd than that a philosopher, in composing so profound and weighty an essay as the "Advancement of Learning," should go to a cheap play-house for his reference to the Greek sage. If Bacon did attend the theater that night to learn the opinion of Aristotle (whom he had criticised at college at the age of fifteen) on young blood and philosophy, he was misled, for Aristotle said not that young men ought not to hear moral, but ought not to study political philosophy. And the error itself is proof positive—it seems to the Baconians—of an identical source for the two passages. It must not be forgotten, however, that the evidence from these coincidences is cited not to an Anti-Shakespearean case—which is purely historical—but as cumulative to the Baconian case alone. And yet, though the evidence from the "parallelisms" is the least forcible of any presented by the Baconians, so systematically do they occur that the ablest Baconian writer (Judge Holmes) claims that he has been able to reduce them to an ordo, and to know precisely where to expect them, by reference merely to a history of the life of Lord Bacon, and the date of the production. "When I got your 'Letters and Life of Bacon," he writes to Mr. Spedding, "and read that fragment of a masque; having the dates of all the plays in my mind, I felt quite sure at once in which I should find that same matter, if it appeared anywhere (as I expected it would) and went first straight to the 'Midsummer-Night's Dream,' and there came upon it, in the second act, so palpably and unmistakably that I think nothing else than a miracle could shake my belief in it."1 The facts that Lord Bacon expressed himself to the effect that the best way of teaching history was by means of the drama; that there is a connected and continuous series of historical plays (covering by reigns the entire period of the War of the Roses), in the Shakespearean drama from 'King John,' by way of prelude—in which the legitimate heir to the throne is set aside, and the nation plunged into civil war—to 'Richard III.' where the two roses are finally united in one line in Henry VI., and winding up with the reign of Henry VIII.—wherein, as a grand finale to the whole, the splendor of the new line is shown in its reunited vigor"—which (with but one hiatus, the missing reign of Henry VII.) is one complete cycle of English history: and that, on searching among the remains of Francis Bacon, a manuscript "History of Henry VII." is found, which might well be the minutes for a future drama (the opening paragraph of which seems to be a recapitulation of the last scene of the Richard III. of the dramas), is certainly startling. Not necessarily connected with this discovery is the further fact that Mr. Spodding has found, in the library of Northumberland house, among certain of Bacon's manuscripts, a slip of paper, upon which is scrawled eight times, in a clerky hand (not Bacon's), the name "William Shakespeare," together with the names of certain of the known Shakespearian Historical plays, and of certain (as Judge Holmes conjectures) other plays not now

* "Authorship of Shakespeare," third edition, p. 621.

known. * But there is nothing in this discovery more startling than the numberless other coincidences—if they be nothing more—which Judge Holmes has massed in his scholarly work.

Henry Chettle, in 1603, in his "England's Mourning Garment (a rhyme)," wonders that "Melicert does not drop a single sable tear" over the death of "Our Elizabeth." It might, indeed, seem strange had William Shakespeare (supposing these lines to apply to him) been the favorite he is said to have been with Elizabeth. But, while neither Shakespeare nor Bacon sing mortuary strains, of the two (if these stories about Elizabeth's love for Shakespeare are true) it is certainly not strange that Bacon did not; for Bacon, at least, had no cause to idolize his queen.