BACON IS SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER I. — "What does it matter whether the immortal works were written by
Shakespeare (of Stratford) or by another man who bore (or assumed) the same name?"
Some twenty years ago, when this question was first propounded, it was deemed an excellent joke, and I find that there still are a great number of persons who seem unable to perceive that the question is one of considerable importance.
When the Shakespeare revival came, some eighty or ninety years ago, people said "pretty well for Shakespeare" and the "learned" men of that period were rather ashamed that Shakespeare should be deemed to be "the" English poet.
"Three poets in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy and England did adorn,
. . . . . . . . . .
The force of Nature could no further go,
To make a third she joined the other two."
Dryden did not write these lines in reference to Shakespeare but to Milton. Where will you find the person who to-day thinks Milton comes within any measurable distance of the greatest genius among the sons of earth who was called by the name of Shakespeare?
Ninety-two years ago, viz.: in June 1818, an article appeared in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, under the heading "Time's Magic Lantern. No. V. Dialogue between Lord Bacon and Shakspeare" [Shakespeare being spelled Shakspeare]. The dialogue speaks of "Lord" Bacon and refers to him as being engaged in transcribing the "Novum Organum" when Shakspeare enters with a letter from Her Majesty (meaning Queen Elizabeth) asking him, Shakspeare, to see "her own" sonnets now in the keeping of her Lord Chancellor.