Wit, Humor, and Shakspeare: Twelve Essays

by John Weiss

One is tempted to make this surmise serve to explain a famous argument which the Baconians derive from a letter written by a friend to Bacon in acknowledgment of the present of a volume which he had lately published. This friend was Tobie Matthew, a devoted adherent of Bacon, who had done him important service from time to time, and who consequently was frequently saluted with the little pots of incense which Tobie swung adoringly before his patron. Now Bacon wrote him a letter dated the 9th of April, the year not given; but it must have been after January, 1621, because Matthew's reply addresses the Viscount St. Albans, and Bacon did not receive that title previously to the above date. Bacon's letter accompanied a copy of a volume. Matthew's reply acknowledges this "great and noble token" of his "lordship's favor." And the Baconians claim that this token was the Folio of the Plays, published in 1623; and they point triumphantly to the postscript to Matthew's letter, which runs thus: "The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation, and of this side of the sea, is of your lordship's name, though he be known by another;" that is to say, a few intimate friends, like Matthew, knew perfectly well that Bacon wrote the plays, but suffered them, for prudential reasons, to appear under the name of Shakspeare, who doubtless had some hand in them. The temptation is, I say, to account for that postscript by supposing that Matthew was acquainted with those inferior passages which may have strayed into the plays from the pen of Bacon, that he appraised them with the judgment of a toady, and exaggerated their quantity as well as quality. This method for breaking the force of Matthew's postscript I reject, for the simple reason that it is not only strained, but superfluous; for Bacon published his "History of Henry VII." in March, 1622, the "De Augmentis" in October, 1623, and the "Apothegms" in December, 1624. One of these books, probably the first of them, and the first which Matthew had received from Bacon since he was made Viscount St. Albans, was sent; and Matthew took the first opportunity to flatter Bacon with his title in connection with his genius, saying in the postscript, "A most prodigious wit is my friend Bacon, though he now passes by the other designation as Viscount St. Albans."

It is alleged that Bacon did not wish to be reputed a poet, lest his preferment and prospects at the Court should be impaired. It seems to me that he needed not to dread the imputation of having written poems. Veins of a lively fancy run through the prose of his great treatises, and he was largely endowed with the scientific imagination; but his verses are dry as a remainder biscuit. The divine art was not in those days imputed to any man on such pretences.

One advocate of the Baconian theory thinks that the poems of "Lucrece" and "Adonis" were dedicated to Southampton, under the name of Shakspeare, as an arranged and designed cover, for the real author. But why, supposing this, was Shakspeare selected as the cover? A man selected for such a purpose must have been deemed by contemporaries competent to have written the poems, else there could have been no cover in using his name.

Did Ben Jonson, who was intimate with Bacon, know the secret of the authorship of the plays, and thus know that the manuscripts in use among the players must have been copies, and yet say, in praise of Shakspeare, "I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakspeare, that in writing (whatever he penned) he never blotted out a line"? Jonson could never have written so in the secret conviction that Shakspeare did not compose the lines, some of which Jonson wished he had blotted.

With respect to the saying which was common among the players, the following points deserve consideration: First, it may have been a generalization carelessly made by admiring friends and comrades; second, what did they really know about it? They only saw the acting copies made for the theatre whose property they were. They knew nothing about Shakspeare's preliminary sketches and studies, the first drafts, the tentative outlines and passages. Third, the total absence of suspicion among them that he did not write the plays, but only copied them from some unknown author's manuscript, is unaccountable. Every probability would be against it. Among the players who knew Shakspeare, saw his daily life, computed how and where he spent his time, gauged him as a companion and a wit, such a secret would soonest leak out and spread all over London, or his reputed authorship would be soonest exploded and treated as a joke. For they and Jonson best knew the man. And this probability was not rebutted by Lord Palmerston; when, alluding to Jonson's remarks, he jauntily said, "Oh, these fellows will always stand up for each other!" for what reasons existed for protecting Shakspeare by reticence or by elaborate lying?

In the discussion, which has lately been renewed, upon the authorship of the plays, the points which are chiefly relied on by the Baconians are these: 1. The plays are too great, and out of all proportion to the obscurity which rests upon Shakspeare's life, and to the insignificance of his contemporary fame. 2. They are filled with all kinds of classical allusion, professional information, legal, medical, horticultural, scientific, to an extent which an obscure play actor could not possibly comprise within the limits of his ragged and scanty education. 3. The plays contain remarkable parallelisms with passages in Bacon's works, and coincidences of thought and expression.

These are the points of chief consequence which claim the plays for Bacon. To the critics who make this claim it is wonderful that one man from Stratford, so little known and prized, of whom no account of education and career survives, should have sent down to posterity, side by side with the great works of Bacon, compositions which are parallel in greatness and abreast of them in fame. They are too great for any one man of that epoch, unless that man be the greatest and wisest of his day. But how much more wonderful is the problem which, by implication, these critics set before us,—namely, to account for the fact that Bacon should have produced not only Shakspeare, a miracle for one mind, but himself besides! It taxes the resource of miracle less sharply to refer the plays back again to Shakspeare.

For which shall we prefer? To accredit Bacon with the authorship because he knew all the law and science which the plays include; or to accredit Shakspeare with it because he possessed all the poetic flow, imagery, and plastic art, all the passion and humor, which the plays include? Of the two sets of endowments, which could have resulted in the plays? Not the first without the second. But the second, then, being absolutely essential, must make the first to be also an essential accessory, whether we can or cannot account for the possessorship of it by Shakspeare. Because we can, from the published writings of Bacon, derive the fact that, however poetic his prose may sometimes be, and fertile in apposite wit and fancy, it does not supply the peculiar imagination, and, least of all, the genial sense of humor, which reigns through all the plays. If the more important qualities be impossible to Bacon, a sufficient accessory acquaintance with terms of law, facts of science, and scraps of classic learning may not be impossible to Shakspeare.

Let us ask, too, would Bacon have taken the risk of writing for the theatre? His relations with the Queen, his desires for office and persistent struggles to attain it, his exigency to keep a clean record with the Cecils and his other jealous rivals, are supposed to have been the motives for concealing his authorship. The opinion of public circles would have tainted him with the "vulgar scandal" of being a playwright. No doubt it would, and have effectually barred advancement. For he was known, watched, dreaded, appraised, opposed by too many people. His secret would not have waited two centuries for another Bacon to discover. How much worse for the aspiring statesman would have been an exposed concealment. The more exacting the motive for concealment appears, the more exacting appears the motive for doing nothing that required concealment.

All which Bacon did for the Court, from a politic disposition, in getting up masques and entertainments, was openly done. The labored and jejune speeches, and other matters, which he prepared for masques, have come down to us. He could be tolerated in this, and not in writing for the theatre, because a writer of plays could not wrest from public opinion the grave and stately responsibilities which he was eager to assume. Other lawyers of the day wrote for the stage; but they were not born in the line of England's chancellors.