Max Muller in his "Science of Language," Vol. I, 1899, p. 379, says
"A well-educated person in England, who has been at a public school and at the University ... seldom uses more than about 3,000 or 4,000 words. ... The Hebrew Testament says all that it has to say with 5,642 words, Milton's poetry is built up with 8,000; and Shakespeare, who probably displayed a greater variety of expression than any writer in any language ... produced all his plays with about 15,000 words."
Shakspeare the householder of Stratford could not have known so many as one thousand words.
But Bacon declared that we must make our English language capable of conveying the highest thoughts, and by the plays he has very largely created what we now call the English language. The plays and the sonnets also reveal their author's life.
In the play of "Hamlet" especially, Bacon seems to tell us a good deal concerning himself, for the auto-biographical character of that play is clearly apparent to those who have eyes to see. I will, however, refer only to a single instance in that play. In the Quarto of 1603, which is the first known edition of the play of "Hamlet," we are told, in the scene at the grave, that Yorick has been dead a dozen years; but in the 1604 Quarto, which was printed in the following year, Yorick is stated to have been dead twenty-three years. This corrected number, twenty-three, looks therefore like a real date of the death of a real person. The words in the Quarto of 1604 are as follows:—
Hamlet, Act v, Scene i.
"[Grave digger called.] Clow[n] ... heer's a scull
now hath lyen you i' th' earth 23 yeeres ... this
same scull, sir, was, sir, Yorick's skull, the Kings
jester ...
Ham[let]. Alas poore Yoricke, I knew him
Horatio, a fellow of infinite iest, of most excellent
fancie, hee hath bore me on his backe a thousand
times ... Heere hung those lyppes that I haue
kist, I know not howe oft, where be your gibes now?
your gamboles, your songs, your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roare, not one
now to mocke your owne grinning...."
The King's Jester who died about 1580-1, just twenty-three years before 1604 (as stated in the play), was John Heywood, the last of the King's Jesters. The words spoken by Hamlet exactly describe John Heywood, who was wont to set the table in a roar with his jibes, his gambols, his songs, and his flashes of merriment. He was a favourite at the English Court during three if not four reigns, and it is recorded that Queen Elizabeth as a Princess rewarded him. It is an absolutely gratuitous assumption that he was obliged permanently to leave England when she became Queen. Indeed it is believed that he was an intimate friend of the Bacon family, and must have carried little Francis Bacon any number of times upon his back, and the little fellow must have kissed him still more oftentimes. The story in the play of "Hamlet" seems, therefore, to fit in exactly with the facts of Bacon's life; but it is not possible that the most fertile imagination of the most confirmed Stratfordian can suppose that the Stratford actor ever saw John Heywood, who died long before Shakspere came to London.