Extent of the literature.
A Bacon Society was founded in London in 1885 to develop and promulgate the unintelligible theory, and it inaugurated a magazine (named since May 1893 ‘Baconiana’). A quarterly periodical also called ‘Baconiana,’ and issued in the same interest, was established at Chicago in 1892. ‘The Bibliography of the Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy’ by W. H. Wyman, Cincinnati, 1884, gives the
titles of two hundred and fifty-five books or pamphlets on both sides of the subject, published since 1848; the list was continued during 1886 in ‘Shakespeariana,’ a monthly journal published at Philadelphia, and might now be extended to fully twice its original number.
The abundance of the contemporary evidence attesting Shakespeare’s responsibility for the works published under his name gives the Baconian theory no rational right to a hearing while such authentic examples of Bacon’s effort to write verse as survive prove beyond all possibility of contradiction that, great as he was as a prose writer and a philosopher, he was incapable of penning any of the poetry assigned to Shakespeare. Defective knowledge and illogical or casuistical argument alone render any other conclusion possible.
III.—THE YOUTHFUL CAREER OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON.
Southampton and Shakespeare.
From the dedicatory epistles addressed by Shakespeare to the Earl of Southampton in the opening pages of his two narrative poems, ‘Venus and Adonis’ (1593) and ‘Lucrece’ (1594), [374a] from the account given by Sir William D’Avenant, and recorded by Nicholas Rowe, of the earl’s liberal bounty to the poet, [374b] and from the language of the sonnets, it is abundantly clear that Shakespeare enjoyed very friendly relations with Southampton from the time when his genius was nearing its maturity. No contemporary document or tradition gives the faintest suggestion that Shakespeare was the friend or protégé of any man of rank other than Southampton; and the student of Shakespeare’s biography has reason to ask for some information respecting him who enjoyed the exclusive distinction of serving Shakespeare as his patron.
Parentage. Birth on Oct. 6, 1573.
Southampton was a patron worth cultivating. Both his parents came of the New Nobility, and enjoyed vast wealth. His father’s father was Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII, and when the monasteries were dissolved, although he was faithful to the old religion, he was granted rich estates in Hampshire, including the abbeys of Titchfield and Beaulieu in the New Forest. He was created Earl of Southampton early in Edward VI’s reign, and, dying shortly afterwards, was succeeded by his only son, the father of Shakespeare’s friend. The second earl loved magnificence in his household. ‘He was highly reverenced and favoured of all that were of his own rank, and bravely attended and served by the
best gentlemen of those counties wherein he lived. His muster-roll never consisted of four lacqueys and a coachman, but of a whole troop of at least a hundred well-mounted gentlemen and yeomen.’ [375a] The second earl remained a Catholic, like his father, and a chivalrous avowal of sympathy with Mary Queen of Scots procured him a term of imprisonment in the year preceding his distinguished son’s birth. At a youthful age he married a lady of fortune, Mary Browne, daughter of the first Viscount Montague, also a Catholic. Her portrait, now at Welbeck, was painted in her early married days, and shows regularly formed features beneath bright auburn hair. Two sons and a daughter were the issue of the union. Shakespeare’s friend, the second son, was born at her father’s residence, Cowdray House, near Midhurst, on October 6, 1573. He was thus Shakespeare’s junior by nine years and a half. ‘A goodly boy, God bless him!’ exclaimed the gratified father, writing of his birth to a friend. [375b] But the father barely survived the boy’s infancy. He died at the early age of thirty-five—two days before the child’s eighth birthday. The elder son was already dead. Thus, on October 4, 1581, the second and only surviving son became third Earl of Southampton, and entered on his great inheritance. [375c]