Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great Unknown
Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great UnknownINTRODUCTIONI THE BACONIAN AND ANTI-WILLIAN POSITIONSII THE “SILENCE” ABOUT SHAKESPEAREIII THAT IMPOSSIBLE HE—THE SCHOOLING OF SHAKESPEAREIV MR. COLLINS ON SHAKESPEARE’S LEARNINGV SHAKESPEARE, GENIUS, AND SOCIETYVI THE COURTLY PLAYS: “LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST”VII CONTEMPORARY RECOGNITION OF WILL AS AUTHORVIII “THE SILENCE OF PHILIP HENSLOWE”IX THE LATER LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE—HIS MONUMENT AND PORTRAITSX “THE TRADITIONAL SHAKSPERE”XI THE FIRST FOLIOXII BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEAREXIII THE PREOCCUPATIONS OF BACONAPPENDICESFOOTNOTESCopyright
Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great Unknown
Andrew Lang
INTRODUCTION
The theory that Francis Bacon was, in the main, the author of
“Shakespeare’s plays,” has now been for fifty years before the
learned world. Its advocates have met with less support than
they had reason to expect. Their methods, their logic, and
their hypotheses closely resemble those applied by many British and
foreign scholars to Homer; and by critics of the very Highest
School to Holy Writ. Yet the Baconian theory is universally
rejected in England by the professors and historians of English
literature; and generally by students who have no profession save
that of Letters. The Baconians, however, do not lack the
countenance and assistance of highly distinguished persons, whose
names are famous where those of mere men of letters are unknown;
and in circles where the title of “Professor” is not duly
respected.The partisans of Bacon aver (or one of them avers) that “Lord
Penzance, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Palmerston, Judge Webb, Judge
Holmes (of Kentucky, U.S.), Prince Bismarck, John Bright, and
innumerable mostthoughtful scholars eminent in
many walks of life,and
especially in the legal profession. . . ” have
been Baconians, or, at least, opposed to Will Shakspere’s
authorship. To these names of scholars I must add that of my
late friend, Samuel Clemens, D.Litt. of Oxford; better known to
many as Mark Twain. Dr. Clemens was, indeed, no mean literary
critic; witness his epoch-making study of Prof. Dowden’sLife of Shelley, while his researches
into the biography of Jeanne d’Arc were most
conscientious.With the deepest respect for the political wisdom and
literary taste of Lord Palmerston, Prince Bismarck, Lord
Beaconsfield, and the late Mr. John Bright; and with every desire
to humble myself before the judicial verdicts of Judges Holmes,
Webb, and Lord Penzance; with sincere admiration of my late friend,
Dr. Clemens, I cannot regard them as, in the first place and
professionally, trained students of literary history.They were no more specially trained students of Elizabethan
literature than myself; they were amateurs in this province, as I
am an amateur, who differ from all of them in opinion.
Difference of opinion concerning points of literary history ought
not to make “our angry passions rise.” Yet this controversy
has been extremely bitter.I abstain from quoting the “sweetmeats,” in Captain MacTurk’s
phrase, which have been exchanged by the combatants. Charges
of ignorance and monomania have been answered by charges of
forgery, lying, “scandalous literary dishonesty,” and even
inaccuracy. Now no mortal is infallibly accurate, but we are
all sane and “indifferent honest.” There have been forgeries
in matters Shakespearean, alas, but not in connection with the
Baconian controversy.It is an argument of the Baconians, and generally of the
impugners of good Will’s authorship of the plays vulgarly
attributed to him, that the advocates of William Shakspere, Gent,
as author of the plays, differ like the Kilkenny cats among
themselves on many points. All do not believe, with Mr. J. C.
Collins, that Will knew Sophocles, Euripides, and Æschylus (but not
Aristophanes) as well as Mr. Swinburne did, or knew them at all—for
that matter. Mr. Pollard differs very widely from Sir Sidney
Lee on points concerning the First Folio and the Quartos: my
sympathies are with Mr. Pollard. Few, if any, partisans of
Will agree with Mrs. Stopes (herself no Baconian) about the history
of the Stratford monument of the poet. About Will’s
authorship ofTitus Andronicus,
andHenry VI, Part I, the
friends of Will, like the friends of Bacon, are at odds among
themselves. These and other divergencies of opinion cause the
Baconians to laugh, as iftheywere a harmonious circle . . . ! For the Baconian camp
is not less divided against itself than the camp of the
“Stratfordians.” Not all Baconians hold that Bacon was the
legitimate son of “that Imperial votaress” Queen Elizabeth.
Not all believe in the Cryptogram of Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, or in
any other cryptograms. Not all maintain that Bacon, in the
Sonnets, was inspired by a passion for the Earl of Essex, for Queen
Elizabeth, or for an early miniature of himself. Not all
regard him as the author of the plays of Kit Marlowe. Not all
suppose him to be a Rosicrucian, who possibly died at the age of a
hundred and six, or, perhaps, may be “still running.” Not all
aver that he wrote thirteen plays before 1593. But one party
holds that, in the main, Will was the author of the plays, while
the other party votes for Bacon—or for Bungay, a Great
Unknown. I use Bungay as an endearing term for the mysterious
being who was the Author if Francis Bacon was not. Friar
Bungay was the rival of Friar Bacon, as the Unknown (if he was not
Francis Bacon) is the rival of “the inventor of Inductive
reasoning.”I could never have expected that I should take a part in this
controversy; but acquaintance withThe Shakespeare
Problem Restated(503 pp.), (1908), and later
works of Mr. G. G. Greenwood, M.P., has tempted me to enter the
lists.Mr. Greenwood is worth fighting; he is cunning of fence, is
learned (and I cannot conceal my opinion that Mr. Donnelly and
Judge Holmes were rather ignorant). He is not over “the
threshold of Eld” (as were Judge Webb and Lord Penzance when they
took up Shakespearean criticism). His knowledge of
Elizabethan literature is vastly superior to mine, for I speak
merely, in Matthew Arnold’s words, as “a belletristic
trifler.”Moreover, Mr. Greenwood, as a practising barrister, is a
judge of legal evidence; and, being a man of sense, does not “hold
a brief for Bacon” as the author of the Shakespearean plays and
poems, and does not value Baconian cryptograms. In the
following chapters I make endeavours, conscientious if fallible, to
state the theory of Mr. Greenwood. It is a negative
theory. He denies that Will Shakspere (or Shaxbere, or
Shagspur, and so on) was the author of the plays and poems.
Some other party was,in the main, with other hands, the author. Mr. Greenwood cannot,
or does not, offer a guess as to who this ingenious Somebody
was. He does not affirm, and he does not deny, that Bacon had
a share, greater or less, in the undertaking.In my brief tractate I have not room to consider every
argument; to traverse every field. In philology I am all
unlearned, and cannot pretend to discuss the language of
Shakespeare, any more than I can analyse the language of Homer into
proto-Arcadian and Cyprian, and so on. Again, I cannot
pretend to have an opinion, based on internal evidence, about the
genuine Shakespearean character of such plays asTitus Andronicus,Henry VI, Part I, andTroilus and Cressida. About them
different views are heldwithinboth camps.I am no lawyer or naturalist (as Partridge said,Non omnia possumus omnes), and cannot
imagine why our Author is so accurate in his frequent use of terms
of law—if he be Will; and so totally at sea in natural history—if
he be Francis, who “took all knowledge for his
province.”How can a layman pretend to deal with Shakespeare’s legal
attainments, after he has read the work of the learned Recorder of
Bristol, Mr. Castle, K.C.? To his legal mind it seems that in
some of Will’s plays he had the aid of an expert in law, and then
his technicalities were correct. In other plays he had no
such tutor, and then he was sadly to seek in his legal
jargon. I understand Mr. Greenwood to disagree on this
point. Mr. Castle says, “I think Shakespeare would have had
no difficulty in getting aid from several sources. There is
therefore noprima faciereason
why we should suppose the information was supplied by
Bacon.”Of course there is not!
“In fact, there are some reasons why one should attribute the
legal assistance, say, to Coke, rather than to Bacon.”The truth is, that Bacon seems not to have been lawyer enough
for Will’s purposes. “We have no reason to believe that Bacon
was particularly well read in the technicalities of our law; he
never seems to have seriously followed his profession.”[0a]Now we have Mr. Greenwood’s testimonial in favour of Mr.
Castle, “Who really does know something about law.”[0b]
Mr. Castle thinks that Bacon really did not know enough about law,
and suggests Sir Edward Coke, of all human beings, as conceivably
Will’s “coach” on legal technicalities. Perhaps Will
consulted the Archbishop of Canterbury on theological
niceties?Que sçais je? In some plays,
says Mr. Castle, Will’s law is all right, in other plays it is all
wrong. As to Will’s law, when Mr. Greenwood and Mr. Castle
differ, a layman dare not intervene.Concerning legend and tradition about our Will, it seems
that, in each case, we should do our best to trace theQuellen, to discover the original
sources, and the steps by which the tale arrived at its late
recorders in print; and then each man’s view as to the veracity of
the story will rest on his sense of probability; and on his bias,
his wish to believe or to disbelieve.There exists, I believe, only one personal anecdote of Will,
the actor, and on it the Baconians base an argument against the
contemporary recognition of him as a dramatic author. I take
the criticism of Mr. Greenwood (who is not a Baconian). One
John Manningham, Barrister-at-Law, “a well-educated and cultured
man,” notes in his Diary (February 2, 1601) that “at our feast we
had a play called Twelve Night or What you Will, much like the
Comedy of Errors, or Menæchmi in Plautus, but most like and near to
that in Italian calledInganni.” He confides to his Diary the tricks played on
Malvolio as “a good practice.”[0c]
That is all.About the authorship he says nothing: perhaps he neither knew
nor cared who the author was. In our day the majority of
people who tell me about a play which they have seen, cannot tell
me the name of the author. Yet it is usually printed on the
playbill, though in modest type. The public does not care a
straw about the author’s name, unless he be deservedly famous for
writing letters to the newspapers on things in general; for his
genius as an orator; his enthusiasm as a moralist, or in any other
extraneous way. Dr. Forman in his queer account of the plot
of “Mack Beth” does not allude to the name of the author (April 20,
1610). Twelfth Nightwas
not published till 1623, in the Folio: there was no quarto to
enlighten Manningham about the author’s name. We do not hear
of printed playbills, with author’s names inserted, at that
period. It seems probable that occasional playgoers knew and
cared no more about authors than they do at present. The
world of the wits, the critics (such as Francis Meres), poets,
playwrights, and players, did know and care about the authors;
apparently Manningham did not. But he heard a piquant
anecdote of two players and (March 13, 1601) inserted it in his
Diary.Shakespeare once anticipated Richard Burbage at an amorous
tryst with a citizen’s wife. Burbage had, by the way, been
playing the part of Richard III. While Will was engaged in
illicit dalliance, the message was brought (what a moment for
bringing messages!) that Richard III was at the door, and Will
“caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before
Richard III. Shakespeare’s name
William.” (My italics.) Mr.
Greenwood argues that if “Shakspere the player was known to the
world as the author of the plays of Shakespeare, it does seem
extremely remarkable” that Manningham should have thought it
needful to add “Shakespeare’s name William.”[0d]Butwas“Shakspere,” or
any man, “known to the world as the author of the plays of
Shakespeare”? No! for Mr. Greenwood writes, “nobody, outside
a very small circle, troubled his head as to who the dramatist or
dramatists might be.”[0e]
To that “very small circle” we have no reason to suppose that
Manningham belonged, despite his remarkable opinion thatTwelfth Nightresembles theMenæchmi. Consequently, it
isnot“extremely remarkable”
that Manningham wrote “Shakespeare’s name William,” to explain to
posterity the joke about “William the Conqueror,” instead of
saying, “the brilliant author of the Twelfth Night play which so
much amused me at our feast a few weeks ago.”[0f]
“Remarkable” out of all hooping it would have been had Manningham
written in the style of Mr. Greenwood. But Manningham
apparently did not “trouble his head as to who the dramatist or
dramatists might be.” “Nobody, outside a very small
circle,”didtrouble his poor
head about that point. Yet Mr. Greenwood thinks “it does seem
extremely remarkable” that Manningham did not mention the
author.Later, on the publication of the Folio (1623), the world
seems to have taken more interest in literary matters. Mr.
Greenwood says that then while “the multitude” would take Ben
Jonson’s noble panegyric on Shakespeare as a poet “au pied de la lettre,” “the
enlightened few would recognise that it had an esoteric
meaning.”[0g]
Then, it seems, “the world”—the “multitude”—regarded the actor as
the author. Only “the enlightened few” were aware that when
Bensaid“Shakespeare,” and
“Swan of Avon,” hemeant—somebody else.Quite different inferences are drawn from the same facts by
persons of different mental conditions. For example, in 1635
or 1636, Cuthbert Burbage, brother of Richard, the famous actor,
Will’s comrade, petitioned Lord Pembroke, then Lord Chamberlain,
for consideration in a quarrel about certain theatres.
Telling the history of the houses, he mentions that the Burbages
“to ourselves joined those deserving men, Shakspere, Heminge,
Condell, Phillips and others.” Cuthbert is arguing his case
solely from the point of the original owners or lease-holders of
the houses, and of the well-known actors to whom they joined
themselves. Judge Webb and Mr. Greenwood think that “it does
indeed seem strange . . . that the proprietor[s] of the playhouses
which had been made famous by the production of the Shakespearean
plays, should, in 1635—twelve years after the publication of the
great Folio—describe their reputed author to the survivor of the
Incomparable Pair, as merely a ‘man-player’ and ‘a deserving
man.’” Why did he not remind the Lord Chamberlain that this
“deserving man” was the author of all these famous dramas?
Was it because he was aware that the Earl of Pembroke “knew better
than that”?[0h]These arguments are regarded by some Baconians as proof
positive of their case.Cuthbert Burbage, in 1635 or 1636, did not remind the Earl of
what the Earl knew very well, that the Folio had been dedicated, in
1623, to him and his brother, by Will’s friends, Heminge and
Condell, as they had been patrons of the late William Shakspere and
admirers of his plays. The terms of this dedication are to be
cited in the text, later. Weallnowwould have
reminded the Earl of what he very well knew. Cuthbert did
not.The intelligence of Cuthbert Burbage may be gauged by anyone
who will read pp. 481–484 inWilliam
Shakespeare,His Family and
Friends, by the late Mr. Charles Elton, Q.C., of
White Staunton. Cuthbert was a puzzle-pated old boy.
The silence as to Will’s authorship on the part of this
muddle-headed old Cuthbert, in 1635–36, cannot outweigh the
explicit and positive public testimony to his authorship, signed by
his friends and fellow-actors in 1623.Men believe what they may; but I prefer positive evidence for
the affirmative to negative evidence from silence, the silence of
Cuthbert Burbage.One may read through Mr. Greenwood’s three books and note the
engaging varieties of his views; they vary as suits his argument;
but he is unaware of it, or can justify his varyings. Thus,
in 1610, one John Davies wrote rhymes in which he speaks of “our
English Terence, Mr. Will Shakespeare”; “good Will.” In his
period patriotic English critics called a comic dramatist “the
English Terence,” or “the English Plautus,” precisely as American
critics used to call Mr. Bryant “the American Wordsworth,” or
Cooper “the American Scott”; and as Scots called the Rev. Mr.
Thomson “the Scottish Turner.” Somewhere, I believe, exists
“the Belgian Shakespeare.”Following this practice, Davies had to call Will either “our
English Terence,” or “our English Plautus.” Aristophanes
would not have been generally recognised; and Will was no more like
one of these ancient authors than another. Thus Davies was
apt to choose either Plautus or Terence; it was even betting which
he selected. But he chanced to choose Terence; and this is
“curious,” and suggests suspicions to Mr. Greenwood—and the
Baconians. They are so very full of suspicions!It does not suit the Baconians, or Mr. Greenwood, to find
contemporary recognition of Will as an author.[0i]
Consequently, Mr. Greenwood finds Davies’s “curious, and at first
sight, inappropriate comparison of ‘Shake-speare’ to Terence worthy
of remark, for Terence is the very author whose name is alleged to
have been used as a mask-name, ornom de
plume, for the writings of great men who wished
to keep the fact of their authorship concealed.”Now Davies felt bound to bring insomeRoman parallel to Shakespeare; and
had only the choice of Terence or Plautus. Meres (1598) used
Plautus; Davies used Terence. Mr. Greenwood[0j]shows
us that Plautus would not do. “Couldhe” (Shakespeare) “write only of
courtesans andcocottes, and
not of ladies highly born, cultured, and refined? . . .
”
“The supposed parallel” (Plautus and Shakespeare) “breaks
down at every point.” Thus, on Mr. Greenwood’s showing,
Plautus could not serve Davies, or should not serve him, in his
search for a Roman parallel to “good Will.” But Mr. Greenwood
also writes, “if he” (Shakespeare) “was to be likened to a Latin
comedian, surely Plautus is the writer with whom he should have
been compared.”[0k]
Yet Plautus was the very man who cannot be used as a parallel to
Shakespeare. Of course no Roman nor any other comic dramatist
closely resembles theauthorofAs You Like It.
They who selected either Plautus or Terence meant no more than that
both were celebrated comic dramatists. Plautus was no
parallel to Will. Yet “surely Plautus is the author to whom
he should have been compared” by Davies, says Mr. Greenwood.
If Davies tried Plautus, the comparison was bad; if Terence, it was
“curious,” as Terence was absurdly accused of being the “nom de plume” of some great “concealed
poets” of Rome. “From all the known facts about Terence,”
says a Baconian critic (who has consulted Smith’sBiographical Dictionary), “it is an
almost unavoidable inference that John Davies made the comparison
to Shakspere because he knew of the point common to both
cases.” The common point is taken to be, not that both men
were famous comic dramatists, but that Roman literary gossips said,
and that Baconians and Mr. Greenwood say, that “Terence” was said
to be a “mask-name,” and that “Shakespeare” is a mask-name.
Of the second opinion there is not a hint in literature of the time
of good Will.What surprises one most in this controversy is that men
eminent in the legal profession should be “anti-Shakesperean,” if
not overtly Baconian. For the evidence for the contemporary
faith in Will’s authorship is all positive; from his own age comes
not a whisper of doubt, not even a murmur of surprise. It is
incredible to me that his fellow-actors and fellow-playwrights
should have been deceived, especially when they were such men as
Ben Jonson and Tom Heywood. One would expect lawyers, of all
people, to have been most impatient of the surprising attempts made
to explain away Ben Jonson’s testimony, by aid, first, of quite a
false analogy (Scott’s denial of his own authorship of his novels),
and, secondly, by the suppression of such a familiar fact as the
constant inconsistency of Ben’s judgments of his contemporaries in
literature. Mr. Greenwood must have forgotten the many
examples of this inconsistency; but I have met a Baconian author
who knew nothing of the fact. Mr. Greenwood, it is proper to
say, does not seem to be satisfied that he has solved what he calls
“the Jonsonian riddle.” Really, there is no riddle.
About Will, as about other authors, his contemporaries and even his
friends, on occasion, Ben “spoke with two voices,” now in terms of
hyperbolical praise, now in carping tones of censure. That is
the obvious solution of “the Jonsonian riddle.”I must apologise if I have in places spelled the name of the
Swan of Avon “Shakespeare” where Mr. Greenwood would write
“Shakspere,” andvice versa. He uses “Shakespeare” where he means the Author;
“Shakspere” where he means Will; and is vexed with some people who
write the name of Will as “Shakespeare.” As Will, in the
opinion of a considerable portion of the human race, and of
myself,wasthe Author, one is
apt to write his name as “Shakespeare” in the usual way. But
difficult cases occur, as in quotations, and in conditional
sentences. By any spelling of the name I always mean the
undivided personality of “Him who sleeps by Avon.”
I THE BACONIAN AND ANTI-WILLIAN POSITIONS
Till the years 1856–7 no voice was raised against the current
belief about Shakespeare (1564–1616). He was the author in
the main of the plays usually printed as his. In some cases
other authors, one or more, may have had fingers in his dramas; in
other cases, Shakespeare may have “written over” and transfigured
earlier plays, of himself and of others; he may have contributed,
more or less, to several plays mainly by other men.
Separately printed dramas published during his time carry his name
on their title-pages, but are not included in the first collected
edition of his dramas, “The First Folio,” put forth by two of his
friends and fellow-actors, in 1623, seven years after his
death.On all these matters did commentators, critics, and
antiquarians for long dispute; but none denied that the actor, Will
Shakspere (spelled as heaven pleased), was in the main the author
of most of the plays of 1623, and the sole author ofVenus and Adonis,Lucrece, and the Sonnets.Even now, in England at least, it would be perhaps impossible
to find one special and professed student of Elizabethan
literature, and of the classical and European literatures, who does
not hold by the ancient belief, the belief of Shakespeare’s
contemporaries and intimates, the belief that he was, in the sense
explained above, the author of the plays.But ours is not a generation to be overawed by “Authority”
(as it is called). A small but eager company of scholars have
convinced themselves that Francis Bacon wrote the Shakespearean
plays. That is the point of agreement among these
enthusiasts: points of difference are numerous: some very wild
little sects exist. Meanwhile multitudes of earnest and
intelligent men and women, having read notices in newspapers of the
Baconian books, or heard of them at lectures and tea-parties,
disbelieve in the authorship of “the Stratford rustic,” and look
down on the faithful of Will Shakespere with extreme
contempt.From the Baconians we receive a plain straightforward theory,
“Bacon wrote Shakespeare,” as one of their own prophets has
said.[4a] Since we have plenty of evidence for Bacon’s life and
occupations during the period of Shakespearean poetic activity, we
can compare what he was doing as a man, a student, a Crown lawyer,
a pleader in the Courts, a political pamphleteer, essayist,
courtier, active member of Parliament, and so on, with what he is
said to have been doing—by the Baconians; namely, writing two
dramas yearly.But there is another “Anti-Willian” theory, which would
dethrone Will Shakspere, and put but a Shadow in his place.
Conceive a “concealed poet,” of high social position, contemporary
with Bacon and Shakespeare. Let him be so fond of the Law
that he cannot keep legal “shop” out of his love Sonnets
even. Make him a courtier; a statesman; a philosopher; a
scholar who does not blench even from the difficult Latin of Ovid
and Plautus. Let this almost omniscient being possess supreme
poetic genius, extensive classical attainments, and a tendency to
make false quantities. Then conceive him to live through the
reigns of “Eliza and our James,” without leaving in history, in
science, in society, in law, in politics or scholarship, a single
trace of his existence. He left nothing but the poems and
plays usually attributed to Will. As to the date of his
decease, we only know that it must necessarily have been later than
the composition of the last genuine Shakespearean play—for this
paragon wrote it.Such is the Being who occupies, in the theory of the
non-Baconian,but not Anti-Baconian, Anti-Willians, the intellectual throne filled, in the Will
Shakespeare theory, by Will; and in the Baconian, by Bacon—two
kings of Brentford on one throne.We are to be much engaged by the form of this theory which is
held by Mr. G. G. Greenwood in hisThe Shakespeare
Problem Restated. In attempting to explain
what he means I feel that I am skating on very thin ice.
Already, in two volumes (In Re
Shakespeare, 1909, andThe
Vindicators of Shakespeare), Mr. Greenwood has
accused his critics of frequently misconceiving and misrepresenting
his ideas: wherefore I also tremble. I am perfectly confident
in saying that he “holds no brief for the Baconians.” He
isnota Baconian. His
position is negative merely: Will of Stratford isnotthe author of the Shakespearean
plays and poems. Then who is? Mr. Greenwood believes
that work by an unknown number of hands exists in the plays first
published all together in 1623. Here few will differ from
him. But, setting aside this aspect of the case, Mr.
Greenwood appears to me to believe in an entity named
“Shakespeare,” or “the Author,” who is the predominating partner;
though Mr. Greenwood does not credit him with all the plays in the
Folio of 1623 (nor, perhaps, with the absolute entirety of any
given play). “The Author” or “Shakespeare” is not a syndicate
(like the Homer of many critics), but an individual human being,
apparently of the male sex. As to the name by which he was
called on earth, Mr. Greenwood is “agnostic.” He himself is
not Anti-Baconian. He does not oust Bacon and put the Unknown
in his place. He neither affirms nor denies that Bacon may
have contributed, more or less, to the bulk of Shakespearean
work. To put it briefly: Mr. Greenwood backs the field
against the favourite (our Will), and Baconmaybe in the field. If he has
any part in the whole I suspect that it is “the lion’s part,” but
Mr. Greenwood does not commit himself to anything positive.
We shall find (if I am not mistaken) that Mr. Greenwood regards the
hypothesis of the Baconians as “an extremely reasonable
one,”[7a]and that for his purposes it would be an extremely
serviceable one, if not even essential. For as Bacon was a
genius to whose potentialities one can set no limit, he is
something to stand by, whereas we cannot easily believe—I cannot
believe—that the actual “Author,” the “Shakespeare” lived and died
and left no trace of his existence except his share in the works
called Shakespearean.However, the idea of the Great Unknown has, for its
partisans, this advantage, that as the life of the august Shade is
wholly unknown, we cannot, as in Bacon’s case, show how he was
occupied while the plays were being composed. Hemust, however, have been much at
Court, we learn, and deep in the mysteries of legal
terminology. Was he Sir Edward Coke? Was he James VI
and I?It is hard, indeed, to set forth the views of the Baconians
and of the “Anti-Willians” in a shape which will satisfy
them. The task, especially when undertaken by an
unsympathetic person, is perhaps impossible. I can only
summarise their views in my own words as far as I presume to
understand them. I conceive the Baconians to cry that “the
world possesses a mass of transcendent literature, attributed to a
man named WilliamShakespeare.” Of a man named WilliamShakspere(there are many varieties of
spelling) we certainly know that he was born (1564) and bred in
Stratford-on-Avon, a peculiarly dirty, stagnant, and ignorant
country town. There is absolutely no evidence that he (or any
Stratford boy of his standing) ever went to Stratford school.
His father, his mother, and his daughter could not write, but, in
signing, made their marks; and if he could write, which some of us
deny, he wrote a terribly bad hand. As far as late traditions
of seventy or eighty years after his death inform us, he was a
butcher’s apprentice; and also a schoolmaster “who knew Latin
pretty well”; and a poacher. He made, before he was nineteen,
a marriage tainted with what Meg Dods calls “ante-nup.” He
early had three children, whom he deserted, as he deserted his
wife. He came to London, we do not know when (about 1582,
according to the “guess” of an antiquary of 1680); held horses at
the door of a theatre (so tradition says), was promoted to the rank
of “servitor” (whatever that may mean), became an actor (a vagabond
under the Act), and by 1594 played before Queen Elizabeth. He
put money in his pocket (heaven knows how), for by 1597 he was
bargaining for the best house in his nativebourgade. He obtained, by
nefarious genealogical falsehoods (too common, alas, in heraldry),
the right to bear arms; and went on acting. In 1610–11 (?) he
retired to his native place. He never took any interest in
his unprinted manuscript plays; though rapacious, he never troubled
himself about his valuable copyrights; never dreamed of making a
collected edition of his works. He died in 1616, probably of
drink taken. Legal documents prove him to have been a lender
of small sums, an avid creditor, a would-be encloser of
commons. In his will he does not bequeath or mention any
books, manuscripts, copyrights, and so forth. It is utterly
incredible, then, that this man wrote the poems and plays, so rich
in poetry, thought, scholarship, and knowledge, which are
attributed to “William Shakespeare.” These must be the works
of “a concealed poet,” a philosopher, a courtier moving in the
highest circles, a supreme legist, and, necessarily, a great poet,
and student of the classics.No known person of the age but one, Bacon, was a genius, a
legist, a scholar, a great poet, and brilliant courtier, with all
the other qualifications so the author of the plays either was
Francis Bacon—or some person unknown, who was in all respects
equally distinguished, but kept his light under a bushel.
Consequently the name “William Shakespeare” is a pseudonym or
“pen-name” wisely adopted by Bacon (or the other man) as early as
1593, at a time when William Shakspere was notoriously an actor in
the company which produced the plays of the genius styling himself
“William Shakespeare.”Let me repeat that, to the best of my powers of understanding
and of expression, and in my own words, so as to misquote nobody, I
have now summarised the views of the Baconianssans phrase, and of the more cautious
or more credulous “Anti-Willians,” as I may style the party who
deny to Will the actor any share in the authorship of the plays,
but do not overtly assign it to Francis Bacon.Beyond all comparison the best work on the Anti-Willian side
of the controversy isThe Shakespeare Problem
Restated, by Mr. G. G. Greenwood (see my
Introduction). To this volume I turn for the exposition of
the theory that “Will Shakspere” (with many other spellings) is an
actor from the country—a man of very scanty education, in all
probability, and wholly destitute of books; while “William
Shakespeare,” or with the hyphen, “Shake-speare,” is a “nom de plume” adopted by the Great
Unknown “concealed poet.”When I use the word “author” here, I understand Mr. Greenwood
to mean that in the plays called “Shakespearean” there exists work
from many pens: owing to the curious literary manners, methods, and
ethics of dramatic writing in, say, 1589–1611. In my own poor
opinion this is certainly true of several plays in the first
collected edition, “The Folio,” produced seven years after Will’s
death, namely in 1623. These curious “collective” methods of
play-writing are to be considered later.Matters become much more perplexing when we examine the
theory that “William Shake-speare” (with or without the hyphen), on
the title-pages of plays, or when signed to the dedications of
poems, is the chosen pen-name, or “nom de
plume,” of Bacon or of the Unknown.Here I must endeavour to summarise what Mr. Greenwood has
written[11a]on the name of the actor, and the “nom de
plume” of the unknown author who, by the theory,
was not the actor. Let me first confess my firm belief that
there is no cause for all the copious writing about the spellings
“Shakespeare” or “Shake-speare”—as indicating the true but
“concealed poet”—and “Shakspere” (&c.), as indicating the
Warwickshire rustic. At Stratford and in Warwickshire the
clan-name was spelled in scores of ways, was spelled in different
ways within a single document. If the actor himself uniformly
wrote “Shakspere” (it seems that we have but five signatures), he
was accustomed to seeing the name spelled variously in documents
concerning him and his affairs. In London the printers aimed
at a kind of uniformity, “Shakespeare” or “Shake-speare”: and even
if he wrote his own name otherwise, to him it was
indifferent. Lawyers and printers might choose their own mode
of spelling—and there is no more in the matter.I must now summarise briefly, in my own words, save where
quotations are indicated in the usual way, the results of Mr.
Greenwood’s researches. “The family of William Shakspere of
Stratford” (perhaps it were safer to say “the members of his name”)
“wrote their name in many different ways—some sixty, I believe,
have been noted . . . but the form ‘Shakespeare’ seems never to
have been employed by them”; and, according to Mr. Spedding,
“Shakspere of Stratford never so wrote his name ‘in any known
case.’” (According to many Baconians he never wrote his name
in his life.) On the other hand, the dedications ofVenus and Adonis(1593) and ofLucrece(1594) are inscribed “William
Shakespeare” (without the hyphen). In 1598, the title-page
ofLove’s Labour’s Lost“bore
the name W. Shakespere,” while in the same yearRichard IIandRichard
IIIbear “William Shake-speare,” with the hyphen
(not without it, as in the two dedications by the Author).
“The name which appears in the body of the conveyance and of the
mortgage bearing” (the actor’s) “signature is ‘Shakespeare,’ while
‘Shackspeare’ appears in the will, prepared, as we must presume, by
or under the directions of Francis Collyns, the Stratford
solicitor, who was one of the witnesses thereto” (and received a
legacy of £13, 6s.8d.).Thus, at Stratford even, the name was spelled, in legal
papers, as it is spelled in the two dedications, and in most of the
title-pages—and also is spelled otherwise, as “Shackspeare.”
In March 1594 the actor’s name is spelled “Shakespeare” in Treasury
accounts. The legal and the literary and Treasury spellings
(and conveyances and mortgages and wills arenotliterature) are Shakespeare,
Shackspeare, Shake-speare, Shakespere—all four are used, but we
must regard the actor as never signing “Shakespeare” in any of
these varieties of spelling—if sign he ever did; at all events he
is not known to have used theain the last syllable.I now give the essence of Mr. Greenwood’s words[13a]concerning thenom de plumeof the “concealed poet,” whoever he was.
“And now a word upon the name ‘Shakespeare.’ That in
this form, and more especially with a hyphen, Shake-speare, the
word makes an excellentnom de plumeis obvious. As old Thomas Fuller remarks, the name
suggestsMartialin its warlike
sound, ‘Hasti-vibrans or Shake-speare.’ It is of course
further suggestive of Pallas Minerva, the goddess of Wisdom, for
Pallas also was a spear-shaker (Pallas ὰπὸ του πάλλειν τὸ δόρυ);
and all will remember Ben Jonson’s verses . . . ” on Shakespeare’s
“true-filed lines”—
“In each of which he seems to shake a lance,As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.”There is more about Pallas in book-titles (to which additions
can easily be made), and about “Jonson’s Cri-spinus or Cri-spinas,”
but perhaps we have now the gist of Mr. Greenwood’s remarks on the
“excellentnom de plume”
(cf.pp. 31–37. On the
whole of this,cf. The Shakespeare Problem
Restated, pp. 293–295; anom de
plumecalled a “pseudonym,” pp. 307, 312;
Shakespeare “a mask name,” p. 328; a “pseudonym,” p. 330; “nom de plume,” p. 335).Now why was the “nom de plume” or “pseudonym” “William Shakespeare” “an excellentnom de plume” for a concealed author,
courtier, lawyer, scholar, and so forth? If “Shakespeare”
suggested Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom and of many other
things, and so was appropriate, why add “William”?In 1593, when the “pseudonym” first appears inVenus and Adonis, a country actor
whose name, in legal documents—presumably drawn up by or for his
friend, Francis Collyns at Stratford—is written “William
Shakespeare,” was before the town as an actor in the leading
company, that of the Lord Chamberlain. This company produced
the plays some of which, by 1598, bear “W. Shakespere,” or “William
Shakespeare” on their title-pages. Thus, even if the actor
habitually spelled his name “Shakspere,” “William Shakespeare” was,
practically (on the Baconian theory), not only a pseudonym of one
man, a poet, but also the real name of another man, a well-known
actor, who wasnotthe
“concealed poet.”
“William Shakespeare” or “Shakespere” was thus, in my view,
the ideally worst pseudonym which a poet who wished to be
“concealed” could possibly have had the fatuity to select.
His plays and poems would be, as they were, universally attributed
to the actor, who is represented as a person conspicuously
incapable of writing them. With Mr. Greenwood’s arguments
against the certainty of this attribution I deal
later.Had the actor been a man of rare wit, and of good education
and wide reading, the choice of name might have been
judicious. A “concealed poet” of high social standing, with a
strange fancy for rewriting the plays of contemporary playwrights,
might obtain the manuscript copies from their owners, the Lord
Chamberlain’s Company, through that knowledgeable, witty, and venal
member of the company, Will Shakspere. He might then rewrite
and improve them, more or less, as it was his whim to do. The
actor might make fair copies in his own hand, give them to his
company, and say that the improved works were from his own pen and
genius. The lie might pass, but only if the actor, in his
life and witty talk, seemed very capable of doing what he pretended
to have done. But if the actor, according to some Baconians,
could not write even his own name, he was impossible as a mask for
the poet. He was also impossible, I think, if he were what
Mr. Greenwood describes him to be.Mr. Greenwood, in his view of the actor as he was when he
came to London, does not deny to him the gift of being able to sign
his name. But, if he were educated at Stratford Free School
(of which there is no documentary record), according to Mr.
Halliwell-Phillipps “he was removed from school long before the
usual age,” “in all probability” when “he was about thirteen” (an
age at which some boys, later well known, went up to their
universities). If we send him to school at seven or so, “it
appears that he could only have enjoyed such advantages as it may
be supposed to have provided for a period of five or six years at
the outside. He was then withdrawn, and, as it seems, put to
calf-slaughtering.”[16a]What the advantages may have been we try to estimate
later.