“He had contrived with himself a vast and tragical plot.” H. VII., p. 302.
“As to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies.” Essays, p. 95.
The stage and stage plays were constantly in Bacon’s mind. The point is not well taken that Bacon could not have written the plays from lack of familiarity with the stage, from lack of the old plays that were the basis of some, from the impossibility of altering the plays extant, or of collaborating with other writers in the historical dramas. Bacon had access to all sorts and conditions of men, to all varieties of literature, but the proofs of collaboration are entirely wanting.
Again, Sir Henry states: “His [Shakespeare’s] knowledge of law was supposed to be wonderful by Lord Campbell but does not commend itself to Judge Allen.”
This is the opinion of one man opposed to that of another. Warner, in speaking of the chorus in Act i., Sc. ii., H. V., says: “It reads like the result of a lawyer’s struggle to embalm his brief in blank verse.”
A little further on in Sir Henry’s speech we find an allusion to 'Shakespeare’s careless notions about law, geography, and historical accuracy.’
When the great German Schlegel wrote, “I undertake to prove that Shakespeare’s anachronisms are for the most part committed purposely and after great consideration,” the truism was more far-reaching than he knew. The double purpose that many lines and often whole passages serve, was the real cause of the anachronisms, and want of historical accuracy. In Richard the Second the pathetic scene of the queen’s interview with the dethroned Richard as he is being led to the Tower, is “both historically inaccurate and psychologically impossible. The king and queen did not meet again at all after their parting when Richard set out for Ireland, and Queen Isabel was a child.”—Warner’s Hist. Nearly the entire scene is a part of the hidden cipher drama, The White Rose of Britain, and is the parting of the pretended Richard, Duke of York,—Warbeck, named by the Duchess of Burgundy the White Rose,—from his faithful wife, Katharine, to whom the title was afterward given.
“Qu. This way the King will come: this is the way
To Julius Cæsar’s ill-erected Tower:
To whose flint bosome, my condemned Lord