As to the bibliography of the Baconian theory, there are two volumes which will probably always remain its text-books, viz., Judge Holmes's book, of which the first edition appeared in 1862; and Mr. Smith's, printed in 1857, which made a convert of Lord Palmerston. Mr. Wilkes's exceedingly fresh and readable work, "Shakespeare from an American Point of View," and Mr. King's "Bacon versus Shakespeare; a Plea for the Defendant," as textbooks on the other side, could hardly be expected to produce much disorder in Messrs. Holmes and Smith's stern and compact columns of facts and argument.
Mr. Wilkes * decides off-hand against this Baconian theory at the start, and then goes on, like his predecessors, to construct a Shakespeare to suit himself. It is to his praise that he has endeavored to construct this Shakespeare out of the Shakespearean pages, rather than to have unreined his fancy. But he makes his own particular Shakespeare, nevertheless. The Wilkes Shakespeare is a Romanist. We consider this to William Shakespeare's praise, for to be a good Romanist is to be a good Christian, and to be one in a Protestant reign is to be a consistent Christian as well. But this is all the good Mr. Wilkes's Shakespeare is. Beyond that he is base-born, a man despised of his equals, and a flunkey and tidewaiter at the knees of an aristocracy to which he can not attain—an obscene jester, etc., etc.—and this author he calls Shakespeare. Such a one, whoever he is, is neither Bacon nor Raleigh, at all events. In 1880, Mr. Thompson, of Melbourne, Australia, published a volume, "Renascence Drama; or, History made Visible," ** devoted to an accumulation of fact and argument—rather than to a presentation of the case already made—in favor of the Baconian theory.
* Shakespeare from an American Point of View. New York: D.
Appleton & Co., 1877.
** Melbourne: Sands & McDougall, Collins street, west,
1880.
Mr. Thompson aims to answer the more refined objections to that theory, by showing that Bacon's mind and art rather overgrasped than undergrasped the matter and form of these Shakespearean drama, and his work is an extremely valuable and charming contribution to the pro-Baconian view.
In his abounding zeal for "our Shakespeare," Mr. King * gives us much eulogy, very little argument, and remakes but one or two points, namely, that a large proportion of the Shakespearean characters are made to bear Warwickshire names, such as Ford, Page, Evans, Hugh, Oliver, Sly, Marion Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, Curtis, Burton Heath, Fluellen, Bar-dolph, and so on; and that certain expressions which have puzzled commentators, such as "make straight" (meaning "make haste"), "quoth" (meaning "went"), the use of the word "me" in place of "for me," "old" for "frequent," etc., are Warwickshire expressions, and current in no other parts of England. But, as anybody can see, the majority of these are far from being uncommon names, and are quite as prevalent in New York, for example, as they are or were in Warwickshire. And if, as has been suggested, Mr. Manager Shakespeare dressed up his friends' dialogues for his own stage, and tucked in the clowns and jades, this usage of Warwick names might well be accounted for.
* Bacon and Shakespeare: A Plea for the Defendant. By-
Thomas King. Montreal: Lovell Printing and Publishing
Company, 1875.
Four of these names are taken out of "The Merry Wives of Windsor," and three of them from the induction to the "Taming of the Shrew"—matter in the composition of which Shakespeare or any other playwright might have had the largest hand, without entitling himself to any Olympus. And if, in the dressing up, Shakespeare inserted a clown or a sot here and there, to make sport, what would be more natural than that he should put into their mouths the argot he had grown up amid in his boyhood, and make the drunken turnkey in "Macbeth" to say, with hiccoughs, "If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key?" For, as Mr. King can see for himself, the cardinals and kings do not use these phrases; nor, we may add, are the surnames he particularizes ever bestowed on them, but only on the low-comedy characters of the plays.
Surely, if William Shakespeare ever were forced "upon the country," as the lawyers say, as against my Lord Bacon, he would wish his case to the jury rather without Mr. King's "plea" than with it. As a "plea" on any side of an historical question, it is, to be sure, nothing, if not candid; but, as a personal appeal to posterity to, willy-nilly, believe that certain players and others in the age of Elizabeth knew not guile, it is touching and beautiful in the extreme. "Who shall, say Heminges and Condell lied?" * "Could rare Ben Jonson, who is worthy of our love and respect, have lied?" **
* "Bacon versus Shakespeare: A Plea for the Defendant."
By-Thomas King. Montreal, and Rouse's Point, New York:
Lovell Printing, etc., Company, 1875, p. 9.
** Ibid., p. 10. Heminges and Condell "profess that 'they
have done this office to the dead only to keep the memory of
so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare.'
Yet their utter negligence, shown in their fellow's volume,
is no evidence of their pious friendship, nor perhaps of
their care or their intelligence. The publication was not, I
fear, so much an offering of friendship as a pretext to
obtain the copyright.' (Disraeli, "Amenities of Authors—
Shakespeare.")
Did Shakespeare practice a deceit upon his noble and generous patron? Could he be guilty of a lie?" * And so on. To much the same effect (the reverence due the name "Shakespeare," the improbability of Jonson and others telling an untruth, etc.) is an anonymous volume, "Shakespeare not an Impostor, by an English Critic," ** published in 1857; and finally, in 1877, was published a paper, read before the Royal Society of Literature, by C. M. Ingleby, M. A., LL.D., a vice-president *** of the same. Dr. Ingleby is severe upon all anti-Shakespeareans, whose minds he likens to "Macadam's sieves," which "retain only those ingredients which are unsuited to the end in view" (whatever that may mean), and thinks that "the profession of the law has the inevitable effect of fostering the native tendency of such minds." Unlike the others, however, Dr. Ingleby does not confine himself to expressions of his interest in the anti-Shakespeareans "as examples of wrong-headedness," but attempts an examination of the historical testimony. In favor of the Shakespearean authorship, he names seven witnesses, viz., John Harrison, Francis Meres, Robert Greene, Henry Chettle, Heminges, Condell, and Ben Jonson. John Harrison was the printer (publisher) who published the "Venus and Adonis" in 1593, and the "Lucrece" in 1594.