Last AscriptionsOther non-extant plays ascribed to Shakespeare after 1642 require no attention, nor do a number of Elizabethan plays assigned to him in certain of their later quartos. Among these are The Troublesome Reign of King John, on which Shakespeare's King John was based; The First Part of The Contention, and (the Second Part) The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York (versions of 2 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI); and The Taming of a Shrew, the basis of Shakespeare's play. The relation of Shakespeare's plays to these earlier versions is discussed in the introductions to the respective volumes of the Tudor Shakespeare. Other plays assigned, without grounds, to Shakespeare by late seventeenth-century booksellers are The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Arraignment of Paris, Fair Em, Mucedorus, and The Birth of Merlin.
A few other anonymous plays have been ascribed to Shakespeare by modern critics. Of chief note are Arden of Feversham, 1592, first attributed to Shakespeare by Edward Jacob in 1770; Edward III, 1596, included with other false attributions to Shakespeare in a bookseller's list of 1659, and edited and assigned to Shakespeare by Capell in 1760; Sir Thomas More, an old play of about 1587, preserved in manuscript until edited by Dyce in 1844 and assigned to Shakespeare by Richard Simpson in 1871. There is no evidence for the ascription of various portions of these plays to Shakespeare, except that certain passages seem to some critics characteristic of him. But at the date when the three plays were written his style had not attained its characteristic individuality; and the assignment of these anonymous plays to any particular author neglects the obvious fact that many writers of that period present similar traits of versification and imagery. The attribution to Shakespeare of the Countess of Salisbury episode in Edward III, parts of the insurrection scenes in Sir Thomas More, and a few passages in Arden of Feversham has scarcely any warrant beyond the enthusiastic admiration of certain critics for these passages.
Thus only one play of the Shakespeare Apocrypha has any considerable claim to admission into the canon. The evidence for his participation in The Two Noble Kinsmen is about as strong as in Pericles, and the part assigned to him is fairly comparable with his contribution to Henry VIII.
An account of the Shakespeare Apocrypha is, however, incomplete without reference to the forgeries of documents or plays. Theobald published Double Falsehood in 1728, as based on a seventeenth-century manuscript which he conjectured to be by Shakespeare. John Jordan, a resident of Stratford, forged the will of Shakespeare's father, and probably some other papers in his Collections, 1780; William Henry Ireland, with the aid of his father, produced in 1796 a volume of forged papers purporting to relate to Shakespeare's career, and on April 2, 1796, Sheridan and Kemble presented at Drury Lane the tragedy of Vortigern, really by Ireland, but Forgeriessaid by him to have been found among Shakespeare's manuscripts. Ireland was exposed by Malone, and he published a confession of his forgeries in 1805. More skilful and far more disturbing to Shakespearean scholarship are the forgeries of John Payne Collier, extending over a period from 1835 to 1849. These included manuscript corrections in a copy of the second Folio, and many documents concerning the biography of Shakespeare and the history of the Elizabethan theater. These forgeries have vitiated many of Collier's most important publications, as his Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, and History of English Dramatic Poetry.
We turn now from attempts to increase Shakespeare's writings to an extraordinary effort to deny him the authorship of all his plays. Doubts on this score seem to have been raised by Joseph C. Hart in his Romance of Yachting, 1848, and by an article in Chambers' Journal, August 7, 1852. In 1856, Mr. W. H. Smith first proposed Bacon's authorship in a letter to Lord Ellesmere, "Was Lord Bacon the author of Shakespeare's plays?" These were followed by an article by Miss Delia Bacon in Putnam's Monthly, 1856, and a volume, The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare unfolded by Delia Bacon. Since Miss Bacon's book, her hypothesis has resulted in the publication of hundreds of volumes and pamphlets supporting many variations of the theory. Some are content to view the authorship as a mystery, assigning the plays to an unknown author. Others attribute the authorship to a club of distinguished men, or to Sir Anthony Shirley, or the Earl of Rutland, or another. Others give Bacon only a portion of the plays, as those containing many legal terms. The majority, however, are thoroughgoing "Baconians," and the most prodigious cases of misapplied ingenuity have been the efforts to find in the First Folio a cipher, by which certain letters are selected which proclaim Bacon's authorship; as The Great Cryptogram, 1887, by Ignatius Donnelly, and The Bi-Literal Cypher of Francis Bacon, 1900, by Mrs. Gallup. Such cyphers are mutually destructive, and their absurdity has been repeatedly demonstrated. Either they will not work without much arbitrary manipulation, or they work too well and are found to indicate Bacon's authorship of literature written before his birth and after his death. Yet similar 'discoveries' continue to be announced.
The evidences supporting Shakespeare's authorship have been set forth sufficiently in this volume and offer no basis for an attitude of skepticism. A few considerations may be recalled as correctives for a partial or mistaken reading of the evidence. (1) Though the records of Shakespeare's life are meager, they are fuller than for any other Elizabethan dramatist. Indeed we know little of the biography of any men of the sixteenth century unless their lives affected church or politics and hence found preservation in the records. There is no 'mystery' about Shakespeare. (2) Records amply establish the identity between The "Baconian" QuestionShakespeare the actor and the writer. Moreover, the plays contain many words and phrases natural to an actor, many references to the actor's art, and show a wide and detailed knowledge of the ways and peculiarities of the theater. (3) The extent of observation and knowledge in the plays is, indeed, remarkable, but it is not accompanied by any indication of thorough scholarship, or a detailed connection with any profession outside of the theater, or a profound knowledge of the science or philosophy of the time. (4) The law terms are numerous, and usually correct, but do not establish any great knowledge of the law. Elizabethan London was full of law students who were among frequent patrons of the theater. Through acquaintance with these gentlemen Shakespeare might have readily acquired all the law that he displays. Moreover Shakespeare had an opportunity to gain a considerable familiarity with the law through the frequent litigations in which he and his father were concerned. (5) The dedication, commendatory poems, and address to the readers prefixed to the First Folio ought in themselves to be sufficient to remove the skepticism as to Shakespeare's authorship.
The following considerations apply to the attribution to Bacon, so far as that rests on any tangible basis: (1) Sir Tobie Matthews writes in a letter to Bacon, written some time later than January, 1621, "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." The sentence probably refers to Father Thomas Southwell, a Jesuit, whose real surname was Bacon. There is nothing to connect it with Shakespeare. (2) The parallelisms between passages in Shakespeare and Bacon deal with phrases in common use and fail to establish any connection between the two men. (3) The few surviving examples of Bacon's verse suggest no ability as a poet. (4) Bacon's life is well known, and it offers no hint of connection with the theaters and no space in its crowded annals for the production of Shakespeare's plays. In fact, if we had to find an author for Shakespeare's plays among writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Bacon would be about the last person conceivable.