Bacon is Shake-Speare.

by Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence.

TO THE READER

The plays known as Shakespeare's are at the present time universally acknowledged to be the "Greatest birth of time," the grandest production of the human mind. Their author also is generally recognised as the greatest genius of all the ages. The more the marvellous plays are studied, the more wonderful they are seen to be.

Cla.s.sical scholars are amazed at the prodigious amount of knowledge of cla.s.sical lore which they display. Lawyers declare that their author must take rank among the greatest of lawyers, and must have been learned not only in the theory of law, but also intimately acquainted with its forensic practice. In like manner, travellers feel certain that the author must have visited the foreign cities and countries which he so minutely and graphically describes.

It is true that at a dark period for English literature certain critics denied the possibility of Bohemia being accurately described as by the sea, and pointed out the "manifest absurdity" of speaking of the "port" at Milan; but a wider knowledge of the actual facts has vindicated the author at the expense of his unfortunate critics.

It is the same with respect to other matters referred to in the plays. The expert possessing special knowledge of any subject invariably discovers that the plays shew that their author was well acquainted with almost all that was known at the time about that particular subject.

And the knowledge is so extensive and so varied that it is not too much to say that there is not a single living man capable of perceiving half of the learning involved in the production of the plays. One of the greatest students of law publicly declared, while he was editor of the _Law Times_, that although he thought that he knew something of law, yet he was not ashamed to confess that he had not sufficient legal knowledge or mental capacity to enable him to fully comprehend a quarter of the law contained in the plays.

Of course, men of small learning, who know very little of cla.s.sics and still less of law, do not experience any of these difficulties, because they are not able to perceive how great is the vast store of learning exhibited in the plays.

There is also shewn in the plays the most perfect knowledge of Court etiquette, and of the manners and the methods of the greatest in the land, a knowledge which none but a courtier moving in the highest circles could by any possibility have acquired.

In his diary, Wolfe Tone records that the French soldiers who invaded Ireland behaved exactly like the French soldiers are described as conducting themselves at Agincourt in the play of "Henry V," and he exclaims, "It is marvellous!" (Wolfe Tone also adds that Shakespeare could never have seen a French soldier, but we know that Bacon while in Paris had had considerable experience of them.)

The mighty author of the immortal plays was gifted with the most brilliant genius ever conferred upon man. He possessed an intimate and accurate acquaintance, which could not have been artificially acquired, with all the intricacies and mysteries of Court life. He had by study obtained nearly all the learning that could be gained from books. And he had by travel and experience acquired a knowledge of cities and of men that has never been surpa.s.sed.

Who was in existence at that period who could by any possibility be supposed to be this universal genius? In the days of Queen Elizabeth, for the first time in human history, one such man appeared, the man who is described as the marvel and mystery of the age, and this was the man known to us under the name of Francis Bacon.

In answer to the demand for a "mechanical proof that Bacon is Shakespeare" I have added a chapter shewing the meaning of "Honorificabilitudinitatibus," and I have in Chapter XIV. shewn how completely the doc.u.ments recently discovered by Dr. Wallace confirm the statements which I had made in the previous chapters.

I have also annexed a reprint of Bacon's "Promus," which has recently been collated with the original ma.n.u.script. "Promus" signifies Storehouse, and the collection of "Fourmes and Elegancyes" stored therein was largely used by Bacon in the Shakespeare plays, in his own acknowledged works, and also in some other works for which he was mainly responsible.

I trust that students will derive considerable pleasure and profit from examining the "Promus" and from comparing the words and phrases, as they are there preserved, with the very greatly extended form in which many of them finally appeared.

EDWIN DURNING-LAWRENCE.

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 a.s.sumed) 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.

Of course this is all topsy turvydom, for in Queen Elizabeth's reign Bacon was never "Lord" Bacon or Lord Chancellor.

But to continue, Shakspeare tells Bacon "Near to Castalia there bubbles also a fountain of petrifying water, wherein the muses are wont to dip whatever posies have met the approval of Apollo; so that the slender foliage which originally sprung forth in the cherishing brain of a true poet becomes hardened in all its leaves and glitters as if it were carved out of rubies and emeralds. The elements have afterwards no power over it."

_Bacon_. Such will be the fortune of your own productions.

_Shakspeare_. Ah my Lord! Do not encourage me to hope so. I am but a poor unlettered man, who seizes whatever rude conceits his own natural vein supplies him with, upon the enforcement of haste and necessity; and therefore I fear that such as are of deeper studies than myself, will find many flaws in my handiwork to laugh at both now and hereafter.

_Bacon_. He that can make the mult.i.tude laugh and weep as you do Mr. Shakspeare need not fear scholars.... More scholarship might have sharpened your judgment but the particulars whereof a character is composed are better a.s.sembled by force of imagination than of judgment....

_Shakspeare_. My Lord thus far I know, that the first glimpse and conception of a character in my mind, is always engendered by chance and accident. We shall suppose, for instance, that I, sitting in a tap-room, or standing in a tennis court. The behaviour of some one fixes my attention.... Thus comes forth Shallow, and Slender, and Mercutio, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

_Bacon_. These are characters who may be found alive in the streets. But how frame you such interlocutors as Brutus and Coriola.n.u.s?

_Shakspeare_. By searching histories, in the first place, my Lord, for the germ. The filling up afterwards comes rather from feeling than observation. I turn myself into a Brutus or a Coriola.n.u.s for the time; and can, at least in fancy, partake sufficiently of the n.o.bleness of their nature, to put proper words in their mouths....

My knowledge of the tongues is but small, on which account I have read ancient authors mostly at secondhand. I remember, when I first came to London, and began to be a hanger-on at the theatres, a great desire grew in me for more learning than had fallen to my share at Stratford; but fickleness and impatience, and the bewilderment caused by new objects, dispersed that wish into empty air....

This ridiculous and most absurd nonsense, which appeared in 1818 in _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_ was deemed so excellent and so _instructive_ that (slightly abridged) it was copied into "Reading lessons for the use of public and private schools" by John Pierpont, of Boston, U.S.A., which was published in London nearly twenty years later, viz., in 1837.

As I said before, the dialogue is really all topsy turvydom, for the writer must have known perfectly well that Bacon was not Lord Keeper till 1617, the year after Shakspeare's death in 1616, and was not made Lord Chancellor till 1618, and that he is not supposed to have began to write the "Novum Organum" before the death of Queen Elizabeth.

I have therefore arrived at the conclusion that the whole article was really intended to poke fun at the generally received notion that the author of the plays was an _un_lettered man, who picked up his knowledge at tavern doors and in taprooms and tennis courts. I would specially refer to the pa.s.sage where Bacon asks "How frame you such interlocutors as Brutus and Coriola.n.u.s?" and Shakspeare replies "By searching histories, in the first place, my Lord, for the germ. The filling up afterwards comes rather from feeling than observation. I turn myself into a Brutus or a Coriola.n.u.s for the time and can at least in fancy partake sufficiently of the n.o.bleness of their nature to put proper words in their mouths."

Surely this also must have been penned to open the eyes of the public to the absurdity of the popular conception of the author of the plays as an _un_lettered man who "had small Latin and less Greek"!

The highest scholarship not only in this country and in Germany but throughout the world has been for many years concentrated upon the cla.s.sical characters portrayed in the plays, and the adverse criticism of former days has given place to a reverential admiration for the marvellous knowledge of antiquity displayed throughout the plays in the presentation of the historical characters of bygone times; cla.s.sical authority being found for nearly every word put into their mouths.

What does it matter whether the immortal works were written by Shakspeare (of Stratford) or by a great and learned man who a.s.sumed the name Shakespeare to "Shake a lance at Ignorance"? We should not forget that this phrase "Shake a lance at Ignorance" is contemporary, appearing in Ben Jonson's panegyric in the Shakespeare folio of 1623.

CHAPTER II.

The Shackspere Monument, Bust, and Portrait.

In the year 1909 Mr. George Hookham in the January number of the _National Review_ sums up practically all that is really known of the life of William Shakspeare of Stratford as follows:--

'We only know that he was born at Stratford, of illiterate parents-- (we do _not_ know that he went to school there)--that, when 18-1/2 years old, he married Anne Hathaway (who was eight years his senior, and who bore him a child six months after marriage); that he had in all three children by her (whom with their mother he left, and went to London, having apparently done his best to desert her before marriage);--that in London he became an actor with an interest in a theatre, and was reputed to be the writer of plays;--that he purchased property in Stratford, to which town he returned;--engaged in purchases and sales and law-suits (of no biographical interest except as indicating his money-making and litigious temperament); helped his father in an application for coat armour (to be obtained by false pretences); promoted the enclosure of common lands at Stratford (after being guaranteed against personal loss); made his will--and died at the age of 52, without a book in his possession, and leaving nothing to his wife but his second best bed, and this by an afterthought. No record of friendship with anyone more cultured than his fellow actors.

No letter,--only two contemporary reports of his conversation, one with regard to the commons enclosure as above, and the other in circ.u.mstances not to be recited unnecessarily.

In a word we know his parentage, birth, marriage, fatherhood, occupation, his wealth and his chief ambition, his will and his death, and absolutely nothing else; his death being received with unbroken and ominous silence by the literary world, not even Ben Jonson who seven years later glorified the plays _in excelsis_, expending so much as a quatrain on his memory.'