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THE

BACON-SHAKSPERE QUESTION.

n

THE

BACON SHAKSPERE QUESTION.

BY

C, STOPES.

T. G. JOHNSON, 121 Fleet Street, E.G. 1 SSS.

fC

PREFACE.

THE great Shaksperean scholars consider it beneath their dignity to answer the asser- tions of the Baconians. " Silence " may be " golden " in defence of the character of the living, but in regard to the character of the dead, I think that speech is golden when it answers speech ; and proof, when it contests proof. Hence I thought it not in vain to put together the main results of the studies I had undertaken on my own account during the past two years. These may help to turn the balance of opinion in some wavering minds, or to aid some warm Shakspereans (that are too busy to go through original work on their own account) to reconsider the subject justly, and " give a reason for the faith that is in them."

C. Stopes.

,-\ / .

^*# study in preparatmi for a series of articles on Stiimdants in the Trade Journal Wine, Spirit & Beer, suggested to the Author the force of proof available on this question; and its subsequent expansion in the present form.

INTRODUCTION.

THE practical use of an introduction may best be served by quoting a few writers on the general question — as, for instance, Dr< Ingleby's remarks on the controversy : " It serves to call particular attention to the existence of a class of minds, which, like Macadam's sieves, retain only those ingredients that are unsuited to the end in view. Mix up a quantity of matters relevant and irrelevant, and those minds will eliminate from the instrument of reasoning every point on which the reasoning ought to turn, and then proceed to exercise their constitutional per- versity on the residue." " Of all men who have left their impress on the reign of the first Maiden Queen, not one can be found who was so deficient in human sympathies as XorcrijaclDn. As for such a man portrayiiTg" a woman' in all her natural sim- plicity, purity and grace ; as to his imagining and bodying forth in natural speech and action such exquisite creations as Miranda, Perdita, Cordelia, Desdemona, Marina — the supposition is the height of absurdity." Professor Dowden also gives a suggestive paragraph : " Bacon and Shakspere _ stand far apart. In moral character and in gifts' of intellect and soul, we should find little resem- blance between them. While Bacon's sense of the presence of physical law in the Universe was for his time extraordinarily developed, he seems prac- tically to have acted upon the theory that the moral laws of the world are not inexorable, but rather by tactics and dexterity may be cleyerly__

viii The Bacon- Shakspere Qitestmi,

7^ evaded. Their supremacy was acknowledged by Shakspere in the minutest as well as in the greatest concerns of human life. Bacon's superb intellect was neither disturbed nor impelled by the promptings of his heart. Of perfect friend- ship or of perfect love, he may, without reluctance, yc^ be pronounced incapable. Shakspere yielded his ' whole nature to boundless and measureless de- votion. Bacon's ethical writings sparkle with a frosty brilliancy of fancy, playing over the worldly maxims which constituted his wisdom for the conduct of life. Shakspere reaches to the ulti- mate truths of human life and character through a supreme and indivisible energy of love, ima- gination and thought. Yet Bacon and Shakspere belonged to the one great movement of humanity." * But perhaps Carlyle should specially be quoted, on account of the strange use that Mr. Donnelly has made of some of his phrases, and because of the further support we know he would have given to us now, had he lived. " Given your hero, what is he to become — conqueror, king, philosopher, or poet? ... He will read the world and its laws ; the world with its laws will be there to read. He must be able to be all, to be any. . . . They have penetrated into the sacred mystery of the Universe, what Goethe calls ' The open secret.' It is unexampled, that calm creative perspicacity of Shakspere. The thing he looks at reveals not this or that face of it, but its in- most heart and generic secret ; it dissolves itself in light before him, so that he discerns the per- fect structure of it. . . . Novum Orgamim and all the intellect you will find in Bacon is of a quite secondary order — earthy, material, poor, in comparison with this. He had the Seeing Eye. . . Sceptical dilettantism, the curse of these ages — a curse; hat will not last for ever — does indeed, in this the higher province of human things, as

* ]\Ti)id and Art of SJiahspere.

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. ix

in all provinces, make sad work, and our rever- ence for great men, all crippled, blinded, paralytic, as it is, comes out in poor plight, hardly recog- nisable. But now, were dilettantism, scepticism, triviality, and all that sorrowful brood, only cast out of us ! " * The perplexity of the question seems to rise from the difficulty of believing that a heaven- born genius should have arisen amid upper-class tradesmen and farmers. Yet surely in a country that, from a lower peasant class of the farming community, produced a Carlyle and a Burns, this extraordinary event need not be considered impos- sible, even had it not been proved true.

* I/crocs and Ilcro-ivorsJiip.

BIOGRAPHICAL DATES.

1536 — 160S. Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, and Earl

of Dorset (dramatic poet). 1552 — 1596. George Peele (dramatic poet). 1552 — 1618. Sir Walter Raleigh (poet and historian). 1553 — 1599. Edmund Spenser (poet). 1554 — 1601. John Lyly (dramatic poet, and author of

Eitphucs). 1554 — 1586. Sir Philip Sydney (soldier, poet, and author

of the Arcadia). 1554 — 1628. Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (philosophic

poet). 1556 — 1625. Thomas Lodge (dramatist and prose-writer). 1557 — 1634. George Chapman (dramatic poet, translator). 155S — 1609. William Warner {All>io)i''s England, historical

poem). 1560 — 1592. Robert Greene (dramatist and pamphleteer). 1561 — 1512. Sir John Harington : publishes his translation

of Ariosto, 1591. 1570. — 1632. Edward Fairfax: publishes his version of

Tasso, 1600. 1501 — 1626. Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, Viscount St.

Alban (philosopher, historian, &c.). 1562 — 1619. Samuel Daniel (poet). 1562 — 1593. Christopher Marlowe (dramatist and poet). 1563 — 1618. John Davies of Hereford. 1563 — 1631. Michael Drayton (poet, author oi rolyolhiou). 1563 — 1618. Joshua Sylvester (translates Du Bartas). 1564 — 1616. William Shakspere.

1567 — 1600. Thomas Nash (dramatist and pamphleteer). 156S — 1639. Sir Henry Wotton (essayist and poet). 1569 — 1640. John Webster (dramaiic poet). 1565 — 1626. Sir John Davies (philosophic poet). 1573 — 1631. Dr. John Donne (poet and preacher). 1574 — 1626. Richard Barnefield (poet). 1574 — 1637. Ben Jonson (dramatist).

The Bacon- Sliakspere Question.

1575—1634. John Marston (dramatist). 1576 — 1625. John Fletcher (dramatist and poet). 1586 — 1615. Francis Beaumont (dramatist and poel). Minor Dramatists : —

Henry Chettle.

Thomas Dekker.

Thomas Middleton.

Robert Taylor.

William Rowley.

Cyril Tourneur.

Thomas Nabbes.

John Day.

William Ilaughton.

SOME INTRODUCTORY DATES. 1558— 1603. Elizabeth's Reign,

1575 The Lord Mayor expels players from London. They settle outside the liberty.

1576 Theatres built outside the liberty: —

1st. The Theatre. 2nd. The Curtain. 3rd. Blackfriars, by Burbage. 4th. The Globe on Bankside, A great controversy rises as to morality of plays.

1576-9 Gosson, after trying his hand at writing for the

stage, alters his views, and brings out Tlie Sclioolc of Abuse, censuring plays, &c. ; dedi- cated to Sir Philip Sydney.

1583 Philip Stubbes, in his Anatomy of Abuses,

exposes and denounces Stage Plays and thcii- Evils.

1586 Sydney dies. Shakspere comes to London.

1592 Greene, Nash, and Harvey engage in a literary

controversy.

1593 — 1594' VlUUs and Adonis and I.uctcce published and dedicated by the author to Lord South- ampton.

^595 Sydney's Apoloc^y for Poetry, in which he

takes the opposite view to Stubbes, is pub- lished. Clarke, in his PoUmanlcia, first refers to Venus and Adonis and Liicrece as Shaks- pere'.s.

xii The Bacon-Shakspere Qiiestmi.

1597 Bacon's iS'^jrt'^'j published by the author. Shaks-

pere's /i/c//ard //., Richard III., and Romeo andyuliet published by the printers as Shaks- pere's.

159S Francis Meres, M.A., a graduate of both Uni-

versities, notices Shakspere with praise in Palladis Tamia.

1599 John Rainoldcs publishes his Overtlircnu of

Siage Flays.

1 601 John Shakspere died.

1601-2. (Jan. 18.) Merry J Fives of Windsor, as originally written, licensed for the press ; printed 410, 1602. Said to have owed its origin to the Queen's express desire to see Falstaff on the stage in love. The play is remarkable and unique as containing the sole attempt by Shakspere in the direction of a panegyric on royalty.

1606 The Return fro7n Parnassus, acted about 1602,

is printed with a highly eulogistic account and flattering estimate of Shakspere.

1607 Shakspere's daughter Susanna marries Dr. Ilall.

1609 Sonnets published.

1610 Ilistrio-mastix; or, the Player Whipt.

161 2 Apology for Actors by Thomas Heywood,

is printed.

1 61 3 Globe Theatre burnt during performance of

Henry VIII.

1614 Shakspere, according to contemporary testi-

mony, expresses a strong repugnance to the enclosure of common lands near Stratford.

161 5 Gxee.r\c'?, Refutation of the^^ Apology for ActorsJ'

1616 Shakspere's daughter Judith marries Richard

Quiney. 1616 Shakspere dies. Jonson at Stratford.

1616 AH Jonson's papers burned. (Did he take

Shakspere's to London ? — C. Brown.) Great

fire at Stratford. 1623 Shakspere's wife, Anne Hathaway, dies.

Ileming and CondcU bring out his collected

works. 1642 Edict against plays.

THE

BACON-SHAKSPERE QUESTION:

WITH A SPECIAL ILLUSTRATION FROM THE CONSIDERATION OF STIMULANTS.

By C. Stopes.

Chapter I.

THE CHARACTER AND EDUCATION OF THE WRITER OF THE PLAYS.

The attempt to dethrone Shakspere, wliirh has been made in the columns of tlie Daily Telegraphy is not a new thing. Dr. Jamieson, the anonymous writer in Chambers's Journal^ was, I beheve, the first to create a reasoned doubt of Shakspere having written these plays, and suggest that "he kept a poet." IMiss Delia Bacon, who believed that poet to have been Bacon, was never- theless so inconsistent as to dwell over every souvenir of Shakspere, to haunt the places where he lived, to spend even a night in Stratford Church by his tomb, and lost her reason in her perplexity. But she suggested the idea in America, where many writers have worked at it. In England, Mr. W. H. Smith wrote a book to prove the same proposition ; and then Mrs. Potts took it up, and gave her Thirly- two Reasons for believing that Bacon wrote Shaks- pere. She does not give the one reason that "he did so;" which Mr. Donnelly tries to do now, though he is not very successful.

2 The Bacon-SJiakspcre Question.

I may divide my answer into four groups.

I St. The probability from known character and education of the writer of the plays.

2nd. Internal evidence, gained by comparing Shakspere's plays and the works of Bacon, and referring each to the character of the ascribed author and supposed author.

3rd. The external evidence of most of the poems and plays being at some time claimed by Shakspere, and never by Bacon.

4th. The external evidence of the writings of contemporaries, some of whom personally knew both these great men.

The question is too large to be discussed fully in these pages, yet I must briefly notice each of our heads, and consider specially the rather novel question : What is the relation these two writers hold to the views regarding wine, spirits, and beer expressed in either set of works?

The proceedings of the Bacon Society tell us " the contention of the Baconians is that William Shakspere had no hand whatever in the production of either the plays or the poems — that he was an uneducated man, who could just manage to write his own name ; that there is not a particle of evidence that he ever wrote, or could write, anything else." They also accuse him of every sin and crime, short of murder, to take away his character, and thus argue from his want of character an incapacity to have produced his poems. It is reasoning in a circle with a vengeance, when the arguine7itum ad Jwininein is thus made to contradict the argumeniwn ad rem.

ist. I cannot imagine any literary student asserting Bacon's claim; we cannot imagine any psychological student believing in its possibility. The psychologic aspect is of prime importance in such a discussion, and this will be expanded in the internal evidence. It has been well said, " Some men are born colour-blind, and cannot distinguish

The Baco)i-Shakspere (Question. 3

colour ; they who could believe the Baconian theory would seem to have been born character-blind."

Jean Paul Richter said that every poet ought to choose to have himself born in a small town, so as to grow up having the advantages of town and country life. This happened in Shakspere's case, and every other condition known of his life is essentially congruous with the idea of a poet's de- velopment. Warwickshire is a central county, the great Roman roads from Dover to Chester and from Totnes to Lincoln met there, so that much traffic and interchange of ideas must have sharpened the natives. Drayton speaks of it as " Warlike Warwickshire." It was the border- land between the Celtic and Teutonic races. Shakspere is the type Englishman who has com- bined the mobility and fancy of the Celt, with the depth and energy of the Teuton, and the place of his birth must not be ignored. Further, it was formerly the district of J/tvr/^e, whither King Alfred sent for Scholars, and which gave the literary language to later England.* Stratford was no inconsiderable town. In Speede's county map of England, i6ic,t we find it marked as of the same size and importance as Warwick, and second only to Coventry in the county. It possessed the first highway bridge over the iA.von below Warwick, and much traffic must therefore have passed through it. Shakspere was born of one of the best families within that town.ij: His father had passed through the various grades of municipal dignity, being successively Ale-taster, one of the four Constables, one of the four Affeerors, then High Alderman or Bailiff of Stratford ; and a sense of importance and general interest must have risen in his house. He was evidently much respected,

* Becon, in his Dedication to the Princess Elizalx-'th of the Fcarl of Joy, 1549, mentions that Warwickshire was distinguished amony; the English counties for ihc intelligence of its inhabitants. — Eu.

t See Appendix, Note I. X See Appendix, Note 2.

4 The BaconShakspere QtiestioJi.

and he must have met the best society to be had. His wife, an heiress of the neighbouring old family of Arden, of good connexions, would doubtless pour into the youthful ears of her children the family and local legends, for tradition in those days took the place of much of our modern education ; a sense of the romance of war, and the pomp of courts would thus arise in young Shakspere's heart. We can see how he would appreciate the martial suggestion in his patronymic so much made of by his contem- poraries.* He would certainly get the best oppor- tunities of education the place could afford. Nine years before his birth, King Edward VI. specially interested himself in the re-establishment by Royal Charter of the Free Grammar school of Stratford, which had been suppressed at the dissolution of the religious houses in his father's reign. Mr. Baynes gives a list of the books used there. But I imagine that to this list should be added Thomas Wilson's Art of Rhetoric, y^WoXx was dedicated in 1557 to the Earl of Warwick, to whom Stratford belonged. Not only does he explain how "Three things are required of an orator, to teache, to delight, and to persuade ; " but lago's speech, which the Baconians insist is from untranslated Berni, is found therein. William must have learned something at school. But the river, the stile-paths, the woods, the wild flowers, the clouds, and the birds must have been an attrac- tion to the natural poet-soul. The old chap-books and romances must have floated many a time between the pages of his Latin Grammar and his eyes. He lived on storied ground. Guy of Warwick and

* A record of the name appears in Kent in 1279 : " Some are named from that they carried, as Pahiier . . . Long sword, Broadspear, and, in some such respect, Shakespeare. " — Camden'' s Rcniaincs, Ed. 1605. " Bieakspcar, Shakspear, and the like, have bin surnames imposed upon tlie first bearers of them for valour and feates of amies." — Verstegan's Restilution of Decayed Intelligence, Ed. 1605. In Poly- doron (undated) " Names were first questionlesse given for distinction, facultie, consanguinity, desert, quality .... Armstrong, Shakspere of high quality."

The Bacon-Shahpere Question. 5

Heraud of Arden formerly roamed there. Eves- ham and Bosworth were fought on the borders of the Shire. Layamon and Piers Ploughman and Wycliffe, were writers of the district. Henry VII. and Eliza- beth had slept in Coventry, where the Mysteries lingered until Shakspere's youth. The neighbour- hood was haunted by suggestions. The town lay in the fair forest of Arden, placed on the sweet Avon, whose scenery is often suggested in his works.

No doubt he often was dreaming and indolent ; he might remember himself when he wrote of the " School-boy creeping unwillingly to school," or play- ing truant from facts to weave his fancies " of imagin- ation all compact." Doubtless the temptations of beautiful Mother Nature were often too much for him, and he would rush off from the chattering town to the sweet solemn silences of the Forest of Arden, thinking, " I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows ; " and perhaps he would dream there till he saw the Fairy Queen as evening fell, and was sworn into her service like Thomas of Ercildoune. It was all so natural, however, for one like him to have merry times with young fellows as he grew older, and to play big school- boy pranks on Sir Thomas Lucy and his keepers. We cannot but think there must have been some foundation for the legend of deer-stealing. It was a part of the romance of youth to follow the legends of the past. The law of the time proves that no dreadful consequences would have ensued on such a deed, even if Lucy wished to enforce them, which was not likely, when the culprit was a child of his old neighbour, Mary Arden. My own opinion is that Lucy had with- drawn from intimacy with the family at the time of its waning fortunes, and roused a bitter feeling thus, echoed in Timon. But it was not Sir Thomas Lucy that drove Shakspere from Stratford.

His over-early and impetuous love, suddenly sobered by a hasty marriage, suggests many a poetic thought in his love scenes. But it was his too rapid

6 The Bacon- Shakspere Question.

awakening to the responsibilities of paternity that changed the current of his Hfe. His father had a large family to support upon the lands and the trade slipping from him ; and more than enough domestic help to perform the various employments that farmers combined in those days before the division- of-labour-system had arisen. Times or people had changed, and the fortunes of the family grew darkest just before its rising dawn. Its eldest- born son rose to its rescue. There is no doubt that the money difficulties of that period acted as a peculiar, and perhaps necessary training for the free poet soul, and were the real cause of his after industry and worldly success. When, in the midst of his father's money anxieties (that he evidently sympathised in), he complicated matters by marry- ing Anne Hathaway before he could support her, he certainly felt that he must give tip his future life to duty. Yet that he had power to combine two dissimilar aims, and succeed in both, showed no common mind. In choosing a career, he allowed his inclinations some play ; buckled on his knapsack, and, like many another man, went to seek his fortune in London, and found it. He went not unknown. His mother had good friends; but it is more than likely he went straight to his old school-fellow Field, who was a printer in Blackfriars. In Blackfriars also were the players that had been down in Stratford, Warwickshire men, Burbage among them. To them would he go, possibly with Veims and Adonis, the " first heir of his invention," in his pocket. If he went to London in 1586, he must have returned to Stratford in 15S7, for he then concurred with his parents in giving up his right to inheritance in Asbies, that they might transfer it freely to Lambert, for a further sum of ;^2o. Several companies of players were in Stratford that year, and it is more than likely he went to London along with them. His father had always been fond of spectacle, had been kind to the players in the

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 7

day of his power, and they, more than likely, had a kindly feeling towards the young Benedict of their own neighbourhood, on whom the cares of domestic life were now pressing so heavily. For there is no doubt his parents and younger brethren leaned on him, as well as Anne and his three children. His player-friends could not help him outside of their own circle, but " they would see what they could do for him." He was young, handsome, healthy, and ambitious, a charming companion, a versatile genius. They very soon discovered his gifts, taught him to act, and seeing his power in impromptu, set him to alter and freshen up some of their old stock of plays. His success in that department kindled him to spend his powers on original work, and in a few years he was famous, how few relatively may be calculated, by comparing with his, the number of years it generally takes a poet to get written about by other poets, or by professors of literature. The universality of his genius, his power of thought, his congruity of dic- tion and sweetness of versification must have been fed by a wonderful power of observation, and reten- tive force of memory. His mind was like a magnet that drew all grains of iron to itself, and impressed its power on what it drew.

Just think how rapidly he would develope then. Transplanted from the centre of a small town where everyone knew him, to the fringes of a great city unknown to him, the unknown ; how small the unit to him would seem before the mass of humanity. Instead of the Coventry Mysteries of his boyhood, and the travelling players of his youth, he would gaze from the best theatres at the best plays of the time.* At first a spectator, he soon entered behind the scenes. f The stage is a different thing when one treads it ; life is a different thing when seen from behind the footlights. The people would become the actors to him, and he learned their ways by heart. He was endowed with a

* See Appendix, Note 3. f See Appendix, Note 4.

8 The Bacon-Sliakspcre Qiiestion.

determination to make the best possible of every opportunity. Among the stage-properties would be a large stock of manuscript and printed plays, accepted and rejected. The Drama was then a modern revival. It was not long since Sackville's " Ferrex and Porrex " had initiated Tragedy, and Nicholas Udall's " Ralph Roister Doister " had led off true Comedy. How eagerly he would pore over the ripening powers of Lyly, Greene, Peele, INTarlowe, Kyd, and Lodge, with a preliminary rap- ture that kindled his own soul.

We knoiu that he had a volume of Montaigne's Essays.* This was translated by Florio, who taught the French and Italian languages, and lived in the pay of the Earl of Southampton, whom he called the " Pearl of Peers." From this connexion he probably knew Shakspere, and might have given him this copy of Montaigne's Essays. It is evident he had read them. I think that, beyond Hall, Holinshed, and the Bible, all his further book knowledge can have been extracted from the publications by VautroUier, the printer, whom Field succeeded, and with whom he lived.

People have often asked, Where is Shakspere's Library ? I feel inclined to answer, There ! Be- cause the list of the publications of that firm seems to supply all that is wanting for the material of the plays and poems. We give this list in the Notes.! We can well imagine his first period in London, spent in sharing the same room widi Field, eagerly reading the books thus naturally brought within his reach, and fiUing up the gaps in his education with an interest that no scholastic method could have done. Perhaps even, as Mr. Blades suggests with more forcible arguments than are brought forward to prove Shakspere belonging to any other profession, he might have learned type- setting and proof-correcting then, as there are in his works so many phrases that, to a printer's eye,

* See Appendix, Note 5. f See Appendix, Note 6.

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 9

intimate special knowledge of his trade. Mr. Halliwell-Philips suggests that he must, at least, have gone carefully over his dedicated poems, as the title-page and the typography are so superior to anything else of the time. At the same time he learns old London life. We hear later of his wit-combats at "the Mermaid," where, among all Avits, he was the chief. And there must we seek the origin of many a tavern-scene and word-combat in the plays.

There probably he became acquainted with the best wits of the age — noble, or fighting the battle of life like him, for bread — and he became the Poet of them all, feeling, thinking, expressing for all. He would meet no man without learning some- thing from him ; so there would be suggestions from Burbage and all the players ; from the poets and lawyers that met at the Mermaid ; from Southampton and Elizabeth and all the nobles \ mingling with memories of the rustic homely souls he knew in Stratford, modifying himself iho. under- lying substratum of all.

Hence in a period when the dicta of Pastoral Poetry had been pushed to an absurdity, when every poet was a " Shepherd," even on the sea or the battlefield, there arose a new and unexpected vision. A real Shepherd, sprung from a real inland farm, appeared and conquered the whole realm of poetry ; and the masks of the mock-shepherd poets were cast away tor ever. But the chivalric romance, the Arcadianism and the Euphuism ; the Mystery and the Morality ; the Tragedy and the Comedy ; the History of the nation and the Life of the people that had been rising like the four sides of a pyramid up to its apex, ended there in him. No one has ever risen higher. There need so many and so varied elements to the making of an all-round man.

The determination of his poetic form he owed to his worldly success, as well as his worldly misfortunes. The litigation* between Burbage's

♦ See Appendix, Note 4.

10 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

sons and other intending partners, show the true meaning of Greene's jealousy of him, and of the ruling power he had acquired in five years.

Turn to Bacon, full of ambitions, with no personal duty to others to raise or purify them. Essentially a city youth, a University student, a classic critic, an observant traveller, a man of the world, a statesman born and bred, a lawyer, a member of Parliament, an essayist, a scientist, a philosopher — in short, the author of " The greatest birth of Time."

That was his secret work, the idea of his life, his happiness, his hope, his Alpha and Omega. His own acknowledged poems are scarcely third- rate : his masques, such as the " Conference of Pleasure," pompous speeches, with flattery in them, as a means to display magnificent robes. In his later years he gives a translation of the Psalms of commonplace type, occasionally even with crude rhymes, such as —

" The huge Leviathan Doth make the sea to seethe as boiling pan."

Maurice calls him, "This enemy of poets and poetry," because his very definitions of poetry are defective ; he considers the drama far from what it ought to be ; " it is not good to remain long in the theatre." He writes an Essay on Love ; he can analyse its elements ; neither in life nor writing does he acknowledge its power. His faults were essentially unpoetical, his character was selfish and self-centred, he never did an impulsive thing in his life ; he fell in love at forty-three, and married at forty-six a young and eligible maiden ; did not make her happy, and was not very happy with her himself. A hunter for place and reward all his life, he pUed his sovereign with petitions, and, beside his sovereign, all his sovereign's favourites. He might have loved Essex in his own way, but he deserted him ; he could not have honoured James and Villiers, but he loaded them with adulation.

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. ii

His undoubted superiority gave him rivals; his eagerness to please made him enemies ; his speeches in Parliament offended Elizabeth, who thought him more showy than deep ; his secret experi- ments and " speculations " disgusted his relative, Burleigh. Writing poetry would have been a venial offence compared to this of " speculation." Buck- hurst, Raleigh, Davies, Spenser, and many others were known poets and in office. Doubtless Eliza- beth's shrev/d eye read his inner character better than he thought, better than her successor did. Under James his efforts to rise were crowned with success, and he fell a victim rather to his vanity and his rivals than to his crimes.* His tremendous energy and perseverance are worthy of note. From sixteen to sixty he kept making expermients, studying philo- sophy, noting facts, writing and rewriting his mar- vellous collection of philosophic works — some of them even twelve times ; attending to his health, diet, and medicines in a very special way ; besides the work of Parliament, of office, of society, of gaiety, of masque-writing, with occasional acting and shows to make him like the other gay men of the period.

We must remember, also, he was before his limes. The practical nature of his science was considered degrading, and his philosophy confusing. It did not develop so naturally as that of Bruno, writing at the same period. The Instatiratio Magna was presented to Sir Edward Coke in 1620, who wrote on the title page —

Edw. C, ex done Auctoris,

" Auctori Consilium, Instaurare paras vcterum documcnta sophovum, Instaurare Leges Justitiamqiie prius."

And over the device of the ship passing between Hercules' pillars. Sir Edward wrote —

" It deseiveth not to he read in Schooles^ But to be freighted in the ' Ship of Fooles.' "

* See Appendix, Note 7 '

12 The Baco7i-Shakspere Question.

Mr. Henry Cuffe said that '* a fool could not have written this work, and a wise man would not." And King James used to say the book was "like the peace of God, that passeth all understanding." Yet while in advance of many, he was behind some. He did not agree with Galileo ; Sir Thomas Bodley, while praising, criticised sharply both his style and works. Harvey would not allow him to be a great scholar, saying, " He writes philosophy like a Lord Chancellor." Sir Toby Matthew seemed his most faithful admirer through life and death.

He was constantly occupied either in his pro- fessional or his literary and scientific ambitions. How the Baconians imagine he could find time to write the plays, even if he had the inspiration, I know not. The question of time taken, even for his acknowledged writings, occurs to his own mind. In his Epistle Dedicatory to the King, prefacing his great work, he says : " Your Majesty may perhaps accuse me of larceny, having stolen from your affairs so much time as was required for this work. I know not what to say for myself. For of time there can be no restitution, unless it be that what has been abstracted from your business, may, perhaps, go to the memory of your name and the honour of your age."

Further, the plays are evidently the work of an actor of the very modern English school of dramatic art. Bacon would have scorned their scholar- ship, despised their neglect of the unities, denied their passion, and ignored their wit, and he did so, in a general way, throughout his writings. Ben Jonson was more near to him in every way, and it would have been much more natural to say that he wrote Ben Jonson's plays to teach Sliakspere how to do it.

The plan I have proposed to myself is more general than verbally critical. The Baconians are unwise, they try to prove too much. They say Shakspere was utterly illiterate and unable to write any of his works. If I can only prove he wrote

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 13

" some," or even that he was capable of writing "any," we can prove their universal assertion /c/y*? by a particular.

The personal animus shown in the way their proofs are treated, discounts from the validity of their conclusions. But before we take the opinion of witnesses, we must see what each of these writers had to say for himself. The contrast between their opinions on poetry, drama, the stage, love, marriage, fatherhood, life, space, time and eternity have been treated elsewhere. I have tested them on hitherto untried ground, that of their manner of viewing stimulants, and I consider the result satisfactory.

14 The Bacon- Shakspere Question.

Chapter II.

THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF SHAKSPERE'S PLAVS AND bacon's books.

One very striking point of contrast has not been sufficiently noted elsewhere. Bacon is essentially a subjective writer — subjective to an extraordinary degree, even when he is scientific. He writes much in the first person ; his very experiments are narrated as "singular" or "in consort ; " his great Idea is an invitation to mankind to work with Jiim. The hundreds of his letters which have been preserved support this peculiarity : he says, " I know I am censured of some conceit of mine ability."

Shakspere, on the other hand, is objective to as extraordinary a degree. He never writes in the first person, except in the Sonnets, and even there we can notice an objective dominating power, and a suggestion that they too might have been written dramatically, or as a natural expression or ydxctfor the friends to whom he gave them to express their feelings to their friends. In all other writings the man Shakspere never brings himself forward by word or suggestion. The actor-element in him throws him so intensely into the real life of the being he delineates, that he becomes, as it were, simply a vehicle to carry the thoughts of a Romeo, a Hamlet, a Cossar, a Lear, where even the use of the first and second persons are practically the third to him.

The unobtrusiveness of Shakspere's life re- flected itself in his wiitings. His dramatic form veiled him, as he intended it should. It could not have veiled Bacon. You would at once have been

\

The Bacon- Shahpere Question. 15

able to pick out which character he meant most nearly to represent himself, as you can do in Byron. When Bacon writes for the stage, he writes masques, utterly unlike Shakspere, and just like himself— thoughtful, heavy, and adulatory. " They answer very well to the general description in Bacon's Essays of Avhat a masque should be, with its loud and cheerful music, abundance of light and colour, graceful motions and forms, and such things as do naturally take the sense." (Spedding's Bacoji).

With the same exception of the Sonnets, Shak- spere also writes little to the second person. Bacon is always intensifying its use, and is full of flattery as well as dedication. Not only does he pile it on to Elizabeth and James, but to every one who could in any way help him. That it was the position and not the man he honoured, may be seen by the way he forgot the warm helpful cordiality of Essex ; and prepared adulation and advice for succeeding royal favourites, however unworthy. This, though partly a part of character, is also an element of style, only to be discovered now in the literary works of each.

The simple, manly character of Shakspere prevented him ever writing " Panegyrics," "Elegies," Dedications, of the fulsome type in which Bacon constantly indulged. He never mentions EHzabeth except in Cranmer's speech in " Henry VHI." He never alludes to James except in " Macbeth." The simple dedication of "Venus and Adonis" to Southampton by Shakspere, may be compared to Bacon's dedica- tion of his "Advancement of Learning" to James.

The whole structure of language in the two writers is as characteristic, and, therefore, as different as is possible in the case of two great men living at the same time, in the same city, serving the same sovereign, rubbing shoulders with the same men, conversing with the same wits, hoping the same national thoughts.

1 6 The Bacon-Shakipere Question.

No author more often repeats similar phrases, and ideas sometimes identical, than Bacon, because he was a Scientist ; while the recurrences of Shakspere arc few, and are modified by the mood and the circumstance as becomes a Poet and a Philosopher.

Just as one can say it is impossible that Shakspere could have written Bacon, without a learning he did not possess, so we can say it was impossible for Bacon to have written Shakspere without putting into the poems some of the learning he did possess.

The relation each holds to wine, spirits, and beer is peculiar. Bacon was a scientist ; he con- sidered no experiment too vulgar to be regarded. Trade facts and habits were collected and criticised by his thoughtful mind. He notices wine more than beer ; cyder and perry a little ; spirits, in any separate modern form, not at all. He gives advice as to the process of wine-making — methods of grafting vines, of training and manuring them, of ripening and preserving grapes, of the must, clarification, maturation, and methods of treatment, such as burymg, heating, cooling. He tests the relative weights of wine and water. He treats of barley as seed, as growing corn, drying corn, as malt, as mash, as beer, and of other forms of grain that might be used as malt. He writes of hops, of finings, of casking, of bottling, of preserving, of doctoring. He gives valuable historical information as to the taxes on ale- houses, and the monopoly of sweet wines ; legal information regarding felony, pardonable when a man is mad, but not when he is drunk. He writes the " Natural History of Drunkenness and its Effects." He gives some preventives against inebriety — i.e., by burning wine, taking sugar with it — taking large draughts rather than small ones — and recommends oil or milk as an antidote to its after-effects.

The moral question never touches him ; not even

The Bacofi-Shahpcre Question. 17

in his " Colours of Good and Evil," does he con- sider drink in relation to character. The psycho- logical effect is treated only physiologically. Man, to him, is but a means of experimenting upon the various etitects of spirit in wine. We do not hear of Bacon mingling with the "people," or indulging in their "small ales," though he uses beer chiefly with medicine. Being a gentleman, and moving only among gentlemen, he chiefly affected wine, probably of expensive sorts, as he was a connoisseur.

Shakspere, in his non-dramatic poems — i.e.^ "Venus and Adonis," " Lucrece," "Passionate Pilgrim," "Sonnets," &c., never mentions wine or strong drink, as if it did not play so large a part in his life as the Baconians give it.

But it is different when we turn from the poems that shadow forth his own thoughts, to those that represent the thoughts of others. He knows that stimulants form an important element, not only of action, but also of character. The author of Shakspere was always ready to suggest what knowledge he had gleaned on every subject. Had he been Bacon, he could not have avoided some allusions to his knowledge and experiments on this point. Among the many trades and professions, the critics have " proved " that Shakspere " must have practised," no one has hitherto suggested his being a brewer, distiller, wine-maker, maltster, or lecturer on the art of manufacturing liquors, as one might well have said of Bacon. Indeed, Mrs. Potts gives as one reason that he could not have written the plays, that he did not allude to a brewing, &c. Now, we see that this test acts quite on the other side. It is rather amusing to find that in Mr. Donnelly's book, that has come out since these articles were penned for the magazine, he says that Shakspere li'as a brriver. I am not going to contest this question ; only this is just the point in which he would require most help from Bacon. Shakspere in his plays, at least, receives and knows only the " finished product," and treats

1 8 The Bacon-Shakspere Questmu

it only in relation to man. We find he knows the value of "froth and lime" and "sugar" to the Tapster, probably learned when, in some holiday, he enacted the part he gave to Prince Henry. He knew that tapsters sometimes put water in their beer ; that brewing was one of the duties of a good housewife ; that ale and beer were the drinks of the people ; and where they could Lest be got. He was aware that wine was the drink of some foreign nations, who considered themselves on that account superior to the "ale-drinking Englishman;" that wine was the drink of the upper classes in this country, probably from its greater cost and its higher and more subtle effects. The habit of drinking healths was in full fashion in his day ; and the " heavy drinking " had begun amongst English- men, which had previously prevailed among the Germans and Dutch. A number of interesting phrases are preserved to us in relation to this special subject. One little geographical notice tells powerfully in favour of Shakspere, if not against Bacon. In the induction to the Taming of the Shrew, he praises the power of the " Wincot Ale," which sent Christopher Sly to sleep. Now, Wincot was the birth-place of Shakspere's mother, Mary Arden, and the place of her inheritance — a village at a walking distance from Stratford, famed for its ale, which no doubt he had often tasted on his youthful wanderings.

Perry and cyder are never mentioned. No allusion appears in any drinking scene to spirits by any modern name, except aqua vitce, which appears twice — once in connexion with an Irish- man, hence not meaning brandy. When Juliet's nurse calls out, "Some aqica vi/cv, ho !" it is sup- posed to be simply a restorative. But while giving thus comparatively little information on the objec- tive nature of these drinks, Shakspere has given us a masterly analysis of the subjective effects of stimulants in various degrees on different minds, and the views they have of it. The simple honest

The Bacoji-Shakspere Question, 19

Adam, in As Ybu Like It, considers his abstinence in youth the cause of his health and strength in age ; the bloated Falstaff gives as the reason of Prince Henry's superiority over his father, the free use of wine. Lady Macbeth is made " bold " by what had made her attendants drunk. Falstaff is always requiring a reinforcement of Dutch courage, in " an intolerable deal of sack to a halfpenny-worth of bread." The degradation of a higher nature is shown in Mark Anthony ; but the most masterly descrip- tion of the effects on an imaginative, sensitive, and hot-blooded man is shown in Cassio. He knows he cannot stand much wine ; he has already suffered in the past ; he has resolved to have no more than one cup ; tempted to his destruction by the cold- blooded villain lago, by specious pretexts, he feels the full shame of his broken resolve to himself, of his broken faith to Othello, as a moral death.

In several of his plays, Shakspere makes no men- tion of any stimulant ; these are the Midsummer Night's Dream, Loves Labours' Lost, Winter s Tale, Airs Well That Ends Well, Comedy of Errors, Richard II., Part 3, Henry VI., and Titus Andronicus. The only allusion in Much Ado About Nothing is Leonato's invitation to Dogberry, " Drink some wine ere you go " ; and in King John the only suggestion lies in Faulconbridge's exclamation : —

St. George — that swinged the dragon, and ere since, Sits on his horseback at mine hostess' door, Teach us some fence !

It is interesting to note the different kinds of stimulant and the names of the vessels and accessories named in different plays : —

"Cup of Charncco," "sack," "pot of double beer," "Three-hooped pot," "Claret," "Wine," and "beer." {Henry VI., Part 2.)

"Butt of Malmsey," "Sop," "Wine." {King Richard II.)

"Pot of small ale," "Pot of the smallest ale,"

20

The Bacon- Shakspere Questioji.

" Stone jugs and sealed quarts," "Fat alewife," "Sheer ale," " On the score." (Ind. to Taming of the Shrew)

" Muscadel and sops." {Taming of the Shretc.)

" Wine and wassail," " Drink." (Macbeth.)

" Drunken spilth of wine," " Subde juice o' the grape," " Honest water." {Timon of Athens)

"Cup us," "Vats," "Tippling," "Wine." i^Antony and Cleopatra)

"Stoops of wine," " Measure," "Potations pottle deep," "Flowing cups," "Old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh in the alehouse," "Chronicle small beer," '' The wine she drinks is made of grapes," " Cup,"" Canakin," " Potent in potting," "Pottle," " Pint," " Dead drunk." {Othello.)

" Stoops [or, as in first folio, stopes] of wine," " Flagon of Rhenish," " The Queen carouses," " Throw a union in the cup," " A stoup of liquor." {Hamlet)

" Can," " Canary," " Cakes and ale," " Stoop of wine." {Twelfth Night)

''Aqua vitce^ "Healths five fathom deep." {Romeo and Juliet.)

"Pot of ale," " Cups of ales." {Hemy V)

" Quart of sack," " Toast," "Spigot," "Canary," "Pipe-wine," "Wine and sugar," " Pottle of burnt sack," "Toast," ''Aqua vita bottle," " Fap." {Merry Wives of Windsor. )^

" Ale and cakes," " Baiting of bumbards [ale- barrels]." {King Henry VIII.)

" Glasses* is your only drinking," says Falstaff, when his landlady complains she must sell her silver if he will not pay her bill. _ But " glass," to hold liquor, was then an innovation, as shown in contemporary literature ; and it is only mentioned elsewhere once — i.e., in Met- chant of Venice.

" Sack," " Bottle," " Wme." {Tempest.)

" Bowl of wine" (m Julius Caesar, Pericles, and Richard III.).

* See Appendix, Note 8,

TJie Bacon-Shakspere Question, 21

" Bottle brandished," " Sherris," "Sherrissack," "The poor creature, small beer," "Canaries," "Crack a quart," "Pottlepot." y^Hcnry IV., Part 5.)

" These mad, mustachio, purple-hued malt worms," " Bombard of sack," "A brewer's horse," " Madeira," " Pint," " Cup of wine," " Brown bastard," "Tavern," "Bottle." (^^//^^/K, Part i.)

Shakspere also shews many of the habits pre- vailing in the country at his time. While alluding to " brewers " and to " brewer's horses," he shews the prevalence of private brewing, chiefly by women, and the habits of drinking beer in those days, before the importation of tea and coffee.

In the Tzao Getitle/nen of Verona, Speed, in giving a " cate-log" of a maiden's conditions, says : —

She brews good ale.

Launce. And thereof comes the proverb, "Blessing o' your heart, you brew good ale."

Speed. She will often praise her liquor.

Launce. If her liquor be good, she shall ; if she will not, I will ; for good things should be praised. (Act 2, Scene i.)

Also Doctor Caius has for his housekeeper Mrs. Quickly {Merry Wives of Windsor) : —

Quickly. I keep his house ; and I wash, wring, brew, bake, scour, dress meat and drink, make the beds, and do all myself.

Simple. 'Tis a great charge to come under one body's hands.

(Act I, Scene 4.)

In Act 3, Scene 3, Mrs. Ford says to her menservants, " Be ready here, hard by in the brew- house."

He tells us that " Good wine needs no bush. . . Yet to good wine they do use good bushes." (Epi- logue ioAs you Like it.)

We find a general use of *' sops in wine."

In the Taming of the Shrew, Act 3, Scene 2 :— '

After many ceremonies done, lie calls for wine : " A health," quoth ho, as if He had been aboard, carousing to his mates After a storm ; quaffed oil the muscadel

22 The Bacon-Shakspere QuestioJi.

And threw the sops all in the sexton's face,

Having no other reason,

But that his beard grew thin and gingerly,

And seemed to ask him sops, as he was drinking.*

Sir John Falstaff was much attracted by " sops " in wine, " toasts " in his sack, in his ordinary life and an allusion to the habit is given in Richard I I I . , when the \st Murderer says, —

Throw him [Clarence] in the Malmsey butt in the next room.

2nd Murderer. Oh ! excellent device, and make a sop of him. (Act I, Scene 4.)

" Cakes and ale " seemed to have been given at christenings, for at Westminster the porter beats back the crowd, at the christening of the infant, afterwards Queen Elizabeth.

You must be seeing christenings ? Do you look for ale and cakes here, you rude rascals ?

{King Henry VIII. , Act 5, Scene 3.)

In the Merry Wives of Windsor and King Henry IV., we have an example of the jolly side of tavern-life — not the lowest, and one often redeemed with touches of humour, wit, and wisdom. Act I, Scene i, Merry Wives, Slender says : —

Though I cannot remember what I did when you made me drunk, yet I am not altogether an ass.

Falst. What say you, Scarlet and John ?

Bard, Why, sir, for my part, I say, the gentleman had drunk himself out of his five sentences.

Evans. It is his five senses : fie, what the ignorance is !

Bard. And being fap, sir, was as they say, cashiered ; and so conclusions passed the careers.

* We find in Laneham's Letter (1575), Leland's Colhctanca, that it was the custom then, at the marriage of the humblest as well as of the highest, for a " bride- cup," sometimes called a "knitting-cup," to be quaffed in church. At the marriage of Philip and Mary in Winchester Cathedral in 1554, after mass was done, wine and sops were hallowed and delivered to them both. And there is another description of a real rustic wedding, when the sweet "bride-cup" attracted the flies around.

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 23

Slender. Ay, you spake in Latin then too; but 'tis no matter : I'll ne'er be drunk whilst I live again, but in honest, civil, godly company, for this trick : if I be drunk, I'll be drunk with those that have the fear of God, and not with drunken knaves.

Evans. So Got judge me, that is a virtuous mind.

Foi'd promises them a " pottle of burnt sack," and as Mrs. Quickly said—

In such wine and sugar of the best and fairest, as would have won any woman's heart

Bard. Sir John, there's one Master Brook below would fam speak with you, and be acquainted with you ; and hath sent your worship a morning draught of sack.

Falst. Call him in. Such Urooks are welcome to me, that o'erflow such liquor

Ford. I will rather trust an Irishman with my aqua vitje bottle. (Act 2, Scene 2.)

Host. I will to my honest Knight Falstaff, and drink canary with him.

Ford {aside). I think I shall drink in pipe-wine first with """• (Act 3, Scene 2.)

Falst. Go fetch me a quart of sack : put a toast in it. Have I lived to be carried in a basket? . . . Come let me pour in some sack to the Thames water. . . . Take away these chalices : Go brew me a pottle of sack finely.

Bard. With eggs, sir ?

Falst, Simple of itself ; I'll no pullet-sperm in my brewage.

(Act 3, Scene 5.)

In King Henry IV. Part i. —

Falst. Now, Hal, what time o' day is it, lad ?

P. Henry. Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demantl that truly which thou wouldst truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of day ? unless hours were cups of sack.

Poins. What says Sir John Sack-and-Sugar ? Jack, how agrees the devil and thee about thy soul, that thou soldest him on Good Friday last, for a cup of Madeira, and a cold capon's leg ? . . .

Falst. Rare words, brave world, Hostess, my breakfast come ? O, I could wish this tavern were my dmm ! (Act I, Scene 2i)

34 ^^^ Bacon-Shakspen Question.

In Part 2, Silence sings : —

A cup of wine that's brisk and fine, And drink unto the leman mine ; And a merry heart lives long-a. . . .

Shal. You'll crack a quart together. Ha ! will you not, Master Bardolph ? Bard, Yes, sir, m a pottle-pot. (Act 5, Scene 3.)

The payment for these pleasures puzzled many, as it did Falstaff : —

Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry ; fill me a bottle of sack.

Bard. Will you give me the money, captain ?

Falst. Lay out, lay out.

Bard. This bottle makes an angel.

Falst. An' if it do, take it for thy labour ; if it make twenty, take them all, I'll answer the coinage.

(Part I, Act 4, Scene 2.)

This aspect is also suggested in Cyinheline. The Gaoler says to Posthumus : —

A heavy reckoning for you, sir : But the comfort is, you shall be called to no more payments, fear no more tavern bills, which are often the sadness of parting, as the procuring of mirth ; you come in faint for want of meat, depart reeling with too much drink ; sorry that you have paid too much, and sorry that you are paid too much ; purse and brain both empty, — the brain the heavier for being too light, the purse too light being drawn of heaviness. (Act 5, Scene 4.)

This light way of considering death is illus- trated in Measure for Measure, when the Gaoler

says : —

Look you, the warrant's come.

Barnard. You rogue, I have been drinking all night, I am not fitted for it.

Cloiu)i. O, the better, sir ; for he that drinks all night, and is hanged betimes in the morning, may sleep the sounder all the next day. (Act 4, Scene 3.)

The Merry Wives of Windsor illustrates the Elizabethan tapster : —

Host. I will entertain Bardolph ; he shall draw, he shall tap ; said I well, bully Hector? Fah. Do so, mine host.

The Bacon-Shakspcre Question. 25

Host. I have spoke ; let him follow. Let me see thee froth and lime ; I am at a word ; follow 1

Fals. Bardolph, follow him ; a tapster is a good trade ; an old cloak makes a new jerkin ; a withered serving-man a fresh tapster : Go, adieu.

Bar. It is a life I have desired : I will thrive.

Pistol. O, base Hungarian wight ! Wilt thou the spigot wield ? (Act I, Scene 3.)

Steevens explains the above phrase by saying, "the beer was frothed by putting soap in the tankard, and the sack sparkling by lime in the glass." He does not give his authority for this very peculiar recipe of the tapster's craft Shaks- pere, however, alludes to the habit elsewhere : in Measure for Measure: — for instance —

Escal. Come hither to me, Master Froth. Master Froth, I would not have you acquainted with tapsters ; they will draw you, Master Froth, and you will hang them. Get you gone, and let me hear no more of you.

Froth. I thank your worship : For mine own part, I never come into any room in a taphouse, but I am drawn in.

(Act 3, Scene i.)

In King Henry IF,, Part i , Poins asks : —

Where hast been, Hal ?

P. Hmry. With three or four loggerheads, with three or our score hogsheads. I am sworn brother to a leash of drawers. . . . They call drinking deep, dyeing scarlet. . . . To conclude, I am so good a proticient in one quarter of an hour, that I can drink with any tinker in his own language during my Hfe. . . . But, sweet Ned, to sweeten which name of Ned I give thee this pennyworth of sugar. . . • clapped even now into my hand by an under-skinker ; one that never spake other English in his life than " eight shillings and six- pence," and "You are welcome," with this shrill addition, " Anon, anon, sir ! Score a pint of Bastard in the I lalf- moon," or so. But, Ned, to drive away time till FalstafY come, I prithee do thou stand in some by-room, while I question my puny drawer to what end he gave me the sugar. . . . How long have you to serve, Francis ?

Fran. Forsooth, five years. . . .

P. Henry. Five years 1 by'r Lady, a long lease for the clinking of pewter. . . . Your brown bastard is your only drink : for, look you, Francis, your white doublet will sully : in Barbary, sir, it cannot come to so much. . . .

26 Tiie Bacon- S/iakspcn Question,

Fals, A plague of all cowards ! Give me a cup of sack. . . You rogue, here's lime in this sack too. . , Yet a coward is worse than a cup of sack with lime in it. . .

(Act 2, Scene 4.)

In relation to the heavy drinking * said to have been lately imported from the Flemings and Germans by the English soldiers who campaigned abroad, we may note that Mrs. Page calls Sir John Falstaff " The Flemish Drunkard."

In the Merchant of Venice, Nerissa asks : —

How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony's nephew ?

For. Very vilely in the morning, when he is sober ; and most vilely in the afternoon, when he is drunk ; when he is best, he is a little worse than a man : and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast ; an the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I shall make shift to go without him.

Ner. If he should offer to choose, and choose the right casket, you should refuse to perform your father's will, if you should refuse to accept him.

For. Therefore, for fear of the worst, I pray thee set a deep glass of Rhenish wine on the contrary casket ; for, if the devil be within, and that temptation without, I know he will choose it. I will do anything, Nerissa, ere I will be married to a sponge. (Act i, Scene 2.)

But the habit seems to have been widely spread by Shakspere's time, and coupled with that of " drinking healths," as we see in Stubb's " Anatomy of Abuses," and Nash's " Pierce Penilesse's Suppli- cation to the Devil." For instance, in Romeo and lidicf, Mercutio says Queen Mab makes a soldier dream *' of healths 5 fathom deep." We may also refer to the carousals in Twelfth Night: —

Sir Toby. These clothes are good enough to drink in, and so be these boots too ! an they be not, let them hang them- selves in their own straps.

Mar. That quaffing and drinking will undo you : I heard my lady talk of it yesterday. . . They add moreover, Sir Andrew's drunk nightly in your company.

Sir Toby. With drinking healths to my niece. I'll drink to her as long as there is a passage in my throat, and drink in lUyria. He's a coward, and a coystril, that will not

* See Appendix, Note 9.

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 27

drink to my niece, till his brains turn o' the toe like a parish-top. . . .

Sir Toby. O Knight, thou lackst a cup of canary, when did I see thee so put down ?

Sir Andrevj. Never in your life, I think, unless you see canary put me down : Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian, or an ordinary man has ; but I am a great eater of beef, and that does harm to my wit.

(Act I, Scene 2.)

Olivia. What's a drunken man like, fool ?

Clown. Like a drowned man, a fool and a madman ; one draught above heat makes him a fool : the second mads him, and a third drowns him.

Olivia. Go thou and seek the crowner, and let him sit o* my coz ; for he's in the third stage of drink, he's drowned : go look after him.

Clo7un. He is but mad yet, and the fool shall look to the madman. (Act i, Scene 5.)

Sir Toby. A false conclusion, and I hate it as an unfilled can. ... Do not our lives consist of the four elements ?

Sir And. 'Faith, so they say ; but I think, it consists rather of eating and drinking.

Sir Toby, Thou art a scholar : let us therefore eat and drink. Marian, I say, a stoop of wine. . .

Clotun. . , . The Myrmidons are no bottle-ale houses. . .

Mai. Do you make an alehouse of my lady's house, that ye squeak out your cozier's catches without any instigation or remorse of voice ? . . .

Sir Toby. Out o' time ? Sir, ye lie. Art any more than a steward ? Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale ? .... A stoop of wine, Maria ! . . . (Act 2, Scene 2.)

Sir Toby. Sot, didst see Dick Surgeon, Sot ?

Clozan. Ah, he's drunk, Sir Toby, an houragone ; his eyes were set at 8 this morning.

Sir Toby. Then he's a rogue, and a passy-measures pavin. I hate a drunken rogue. . .

Clo7un^s Song. But when I came unto my bed,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain. With toss-pots still had drunken head For the rain it raineth every day.

(Act 5, Scene i.)

Shakspere does not often prophesy into a future beyond his own time; but one of these

28 The BacoJi-Shakspere Question.

cases occurs when in King Lear, Act 3, Scene 3, the Fool says : —

I'll speak a prophecy ere I go . . .

When Brewers mar their malt with water . . .

Then shall the realm of Albion

Come to great confusion.

He makes Cranmer prophesy of Elizabeth at her christening in Westminster —

In her days every man shall eat in safety Under his own vine, what he plants :

{Henry VII L)

which suggests a more general cultivation of the vine than might have been supposed.

He notices " the vines of France " in King Lear ; also in Henry K, Burgundy groans that the war should hurt France :

Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart, unpruned dies . . . And as our vineyards, fallows, meads and hedges Defective in their natures, grow to wildness.

Wine is the drink of France, the trade of France. Hence the French cannot appreciate ale.

Constable. Can sodden water,

A drench for sur-rein'd jades, their barley broth, Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat ? And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine. Seem frosty ? {Hcivy V., Act 3, Scene 5.)

He imphes, also, that wine is a drink ot the upper classes and of those who ape them.

Mateiiius. I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in't, . . if the drink you give me touch my palate adversely, I make a crooked face at it.

(Coriolamis, Act 2, Scene i.)

This distinction between ale and wine is noted in the Socialistic creed propounded 300 years ago by Shakspere as Jack Cade. The expressions in some points are very much like the present ideas

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 29

of socialism among the masses, though Jack Cade meant to be "KING" of these masses — a good king, however, who should bring in a millennium.

Caae. There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny : the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops ; and I shall make it felony to drink small beer : all the realm shall be in common ; and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass. . . . There shall be no money ; all shall eat and drink on ray score. . . . (Henry VI., Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2.)

And here, sitting upon London-stone, I charge and com- mand that, at the city's cost, the conduit run nothing but claret wine, this first year of our reign. (Act 4, Scene 6.)

It is also illustrated in the Induction to the Taming of the Shreiv, where the " Wincot Ale " was too much for Christopher Sly :—

Sly. For God's sake, a pot of small ale.

I Servant, Will't please your lordship drink a cup of sack? . . .

Sly. I never drank sack in my life. . . .

Lord. Heaven cease this idle humour in your honour. . . .

Sly. Am not I Christopher Sly, old Sly's son of Burton Heath ; by birth a pedlar, by education a cordmaker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now, by present profession, a tinker. Ask Marian Racket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not : if she say I am not fourteen-pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lyingest knave in Christendom.

Lord. Thou art a lord, and nothing but a lord. . . .

Sly. I do not sleep ; I see, I hear, I speak. Upon my life I am a lord indeed. And once again, a pot o' the smallest ale, . . .

Serv. These fifteen years you have been in a dream, Or when you waked, so waked as if you slept.

Sly. These fifteen years ? By my fay, a goodly nap — But did I never speak of all that time ?

Set-v. Ah yes, my lord, but very idle words — For though you lay here in this goodly chamber Yet would ye say, ye were beaten out of doors. And rail upon the hostess of the house And say you would present her at the leet* Because she brought stone jugs and no scaled quarts.

* At the leet, or court-leet, of a manor, the jury presented those who used false weights and measures, and amongst others, those who, like the " fat alowife of Wincot," used jugs of irregular capacity instead of the scaled and licensed quarts.

30 The Bacon- Shakspcrc Question.

We also see the social distinction of the quality of the drink noted in Ki7ig Henry IV., Part 2, Act 2, Scene 2 : —

P. Henry. Dotli it not show vilely in me to desire sma beer?

Poins. Why, a prince should not be so loosely studied as to remember so weak a composition.

P. Henry. Belike, then, my appetite was not princely got, for in truth I do remember the poor creature, small beer. . . .

As Shakspere makes the beer-drinking English beat the wine-drinking French, so he makes the beer-drinking EngUsh beat the wine-drinking English in the judicial combat :—

\st Neigh. Here, neighbour Horner, I drink to you in a cup of sack : and fear not, neighbour, you shall do well enough.

2.nd Neigh. And here, neighbour, here's a cup of charneco.

yd Neigh. And here's a pot of good double beer, neighbour : and fear not your man.

Horner. Let it come, i'faith, and I'll pledge you all : and a fig for Peter ! . . .

\st Prent. Here, Peter, I drink to thee, and be not afraid.

■znd Prent. Be merry, Peter, and fear not thy master; fight for the credit of apprentices.

Peter. I thank you all : drink and pray for me, I pray you; for, I think, I have taken my last draught in this world

York. Take away his weapon : Fellow ! Thank God and the good wine in thy master's way.

{King Henry VI., Part 2, Act 2, Scene 4.)

The only two characters who emphatically drink water instead of wine, are Adam and Apemantus the former in As You Like It says : —

Though I look old, yet am I strong and lusty,

For in my youth I never did apply

Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood. (Act 2, Scene 3.)

And Apemantus in Timon : —

Ay ; to see meat fill knaves and wine heat fools. . . If I were a huge man I should fear to drink at meals Lest they should spy my windpipe's dangerous notes : Great men should drink with harness on their throats. Tim. My lord, in heart : and let the health go round. Lord. Let it flow this way, my good lord.

The Bacon-Sliahpcre Qiiestmi. 31

Apcm. Flow this way ? A brave fellow ! He keeps his tides well. Those healths will make thee and thy state look ill, Timon, Here's that which is too weak to be a sinner, Honest water, which ne'er left man i' the mire : This and my food are equals ; there's no odds, Feasts are too proud to give thanks to the gods.

(Act r, Sc. I, 2.

The only real "praise of wine " he puts in the mouth of Falstaff : —

This same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me '. nor a man cannot make him laugh ; but that's no marvel, he drinks no wine. There's never any of these demure boys come to any proof; for their drink doth so over-cool their blood. . . A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain ; dries me there all the foolish, and dull and crudy vapours which environ it, makes it appre- hensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, delectable shapes ; which, delivered o'er to the voice (the tongue), which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is, the warming of the blood ; which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice ; but the sherris warms it, and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extreme. It illumineth the face, which as a beacon gives warning to the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm : and then the vital commoners, and inland petty spirits, muster me all to their captain, the heart ; who, great and puffed up with this retinue, dolh any deed of courage ; and this valour comes of sherris : so that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack ; for that sets it awork ; and learning a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil ; till sack commences it, and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it that Prince Henry is valiant, for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, sterile, and bare land, manured, husbanded, and tilled, with excellent endeavour of drinking good, and good store of fertile sherris ; that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sons, the principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack.

(Hcmy IV., Part I, Act 4, Scene 4.)

He certainly lived up to his creed in the use o wine, but the wine lived not up to his ideas of the making a man of him, and his cowardice gives a whole "Morality "in this one character. Prince

32 The Bacoii-Shakspere Question.

Henry, when imitating his father in giving his opinion of Falstaff, said : —

Why dost thou converse with that huge trunk of humours. . . . That Bombard of Sack. . . Wherein is he good but to taste sack and drink it ? . . .

Then in the scene where Prince Henry picks his pockets : —

Let's see what they be — read his papers.

Poins. Item, a capon 2s. 2d. ; Item, sauce, 4d. ; Item, sack, two gallons, 5s. 8d. ; anchovies and sack after supper, 2s. 6d. ; Item, bread, a half-penny. Ob.

P. Henry. O monstrous ! But one halfpenny-worth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack.

(Henry JV., Part i, Act 2, Scene 4.)

The general impression given is, that people thought that wine, in the first instance, Jills the veins 7vith bloody as in Pericles, Thaisa says to her suitor : —

The King, my father, sir, hath drunk to you . . . Wishing it so much blood unto your life. Per. I thank both him and you, and pledge him freely.

(Act 2, Scene 3.)

Memnius. He was not taken well, he had not dined, The veins unfilled, our blood is cold, and then We pout upon the morning, are unapt To give or to forgive ; but when we have stuffed These pipes and these conveyances of our blood, With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls Than in our priest-like fasts. {Coriolanus^ Act $, Scene I.

That it acts medicinally; see the Tempest, when Stephano finds CaUban.

If he have never drunk wine afore, it will go near to remove his fit if I can recover him, and keep him tame . . . Here is that which will give language to you. (Act 2, Sc. 2.)

I am weary — yea, my memory is tired ;

Have we no wine here? (Coriolamts, Act i, Scene 9.)

I will see what physic the tavern affords.

{Henry VI., Act 2, Scene 3.)

The Bacon-Shahpere Question. 33

That it heats the Hood, as in King Henry VIII.

Sands. The red wine first must rise In their fair cheeks, my lord, then we shall have them Talk us to silence. (Act i, Scene 4.)

In Troiliis and Crcssida, Achilles says : —

I'll heat his blood with Greekish wine to-night,

Which with my scimitar I'll cool to-morrow.

Patroclus, let us feast him to the height. (Act 5. Scene I.)

That it fires the face. The effect on Bardolplis complexion illustrates this.

P. Henry. O villain, thou stolest a cup of sack eighteen years ago, and wert taken with the manner, and ever since thou hast blushed extempore. (Part i. Act 2, Scene i.)

Fal. The fiend hath pricked down Bardolph * irrecoverable, and his fate is Lucifer's private kitchen, where he doth nothing but roast malt worms. (Part 2, Act i. Scene 4.)

'Tis in the nose of thee, Bardolph. Thou art the knight of the burning lamp . . . Thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bon-fire light. Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches walking with thee in the night between tavern and tavern : but the sack that thou hast drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap, at he dearest chandler's in Europe. (Part 2, Act 3, Scene 3.

That it fevers the heart: —

Charm, I had rather heat my liver with drinking.

{A7it. and CUo., Act I, Scene 2.)

Timon says : —

Go suck the subtle juice o' the grape

Till the high fever seethe your blood to froth,

And so scape hanging. (Act 4, Scene 3.)

Thus it makes some natures bold — like Lady Macbeth's ; and by just a turn in the scale this courage develops into quarrelsomeness and mur- derousness.

Fluellcn. * Alexander in his rages, and his furies, and his cholers, and his moods, and his displeasures, and his in- dignations, and also being a little intoxicated in his prains, did, in his ales and his angers, look you, kill his pest friend, Clylus. (King Henry V., Act 4, Scene 7.)

* Bardolph and Fluellen are names found in Stratford Records.

34 The Bacon- Shakspere Question.

That it drow7is the reason. — Macheth's grooms sink in " swinish sleep."

Lady M. . . . His two chamberlains Will I with wine and wassail so convince, That memory, the warder of the brain, Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason A limbeck only.

(Macbeth, Act i. Scene 7.)

A Senator says of his friend to Alcibiades : —

He's a sworn rioter : he has a sin

That often drowns him, and takes his valour prisoner

If there were no foes, that were enough

To overcome him : in that beastly fury

He has been known to commit outrages

And cherish factions ; 'tis inferred to us

His days are foul and his drink dangerous.

(Timoti, Act 3, Scene 5.)

Macbeth's Porter considers " Drink is a great provoker of three evil things ; " but though " drink gave him the lie last night " " he requited him for his lie, and made a shift to cast him."

And finally degrades the man. — " Antony and Cleopatra " shows the degrading power of habitual intoxication on noble natures. Enobarbus says the fortunes of all shall be " drunk to bed." Caesar says of Antony :

He fishes, drinks, and wastes the lamps of night in revel. . . . He sits and keeps the turn of tippling with a slave, and reels the streets at noon. . . . Antony, leave thy lascivious wassailes.

E710. Ay Sir, we did sleep day out of countenance, and made the night light with drinking. (Act 2, Scene 2.)

Cleopatra even shows a trace of scorn : —

And next morn Ere the ninth hour I drunk him to his bed Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst I wore his sword Philippan.

The banquet in Scene 7, Act 2, is a sermon on Temperance, with the moral of the fates of the guests.

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 35

Menas tells Pompey, *' Thou art, if thou darest be, the earthly Jove."

Men, For my part I am sorry it is turned to a drinking. Pompey doth this day laugh away his fortune.

Pompey. . . . Desist and drink.

Eno. . . . Here's to thee, Menas. . .

Pompey. Fill till the cup be hid.

Eno. There's a strong fellow, Menas.

Menas. Why?

Eno. 'A bears the third part of the world. Man, seest not ?

Men. The third part then is drunk. Would it were all, that it might go on wheels.

Eno. Drink thou, increase the reels.

Pomp. This is not yet an Alexandrian feast.

Ant. It ripens towards it. Strike the vessels, ho ! Here is to Cctsar.

Cctsar. 1 could well forbear it.

It is monstrous labour, when I wash my brain And it grows fouler. ... I had rather fast From all, four days, than drink so much in one. . . .

. . . Gentle lords, let's part. You see we have burnt our cheeks : strong Enobarbus Is weaker than the wine ; and mine own tongue Splits what it speaks ; the wild disguise hath almost Anticked us all."

Eno. Shall we dance now the Egyptian Bacchanals And celebrate our drink ?

Pomp. Let's ha't, good soldier I

Ant. Come, let us all take hands ; Till that the conquering wine hath steeped our sense In soft and delicate Lethe.

Eno. All take hands ;

Make battery to our ears with the loud music The while I'll place you. Then the boy shall sing. The holding every man shall bear, as loud As his strong sides can volley.

Come, thou monarch of the vine, Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne. In thy vats our cares are drowned ; W'ith thy grapes our hairs are crowned ; Cup us, till the world go round ; Cup us, till the world go round I

Pompey dropped out ; Antony still followed the same life. In Act 4, Scene 9, Antony cried :—

Come, Lets have one other gaudy night ; call to me All my sad captains ; till our bowls ; once more

36 The Bacon-Shahpere Qimiion.

Let's mock the midnight bell. . . .

Scant not my cups, and make as much of me

As when mine empire was your fellow, too,

And suffered my command. . . . Let's to supper ; come,

And drown consideration.

And so the end was wrought, and hence came Cleo's prophecy : —

The quick comedians Extemporally will stage us, and present Our Alexandrian revels : Antony Shall be brought drunken forlli. . . . Now no more The juice of Egypt's grape shall moist this lip. (Act 5, Sc. 2.)

And thus these great Hves ended. The meta- physic tendency of Shakspere's mind leads him to sad and solemn thoughts of the carelessness of man, of the shortness of Hfe, the evanescence of glory, the dominance of the Unseen. Man per- ceives not the real and the permanent, he drops the reality to pursue shadows ; after all, all men are like drinkers at a banquet. Sad as he leaves us in the sunset of the earthly glory of Antony, there is even a greater sadness written in Othello in the fate of Cassio. For, with him it was not a frequent habit, nor even a natural inclination, but an insidious temptation ; he suffered, not for a course of riotous living, but for one false step, and he dragged down with him other good and pure lives. In Othello there is another " revel," a Cyprian banquet (Act 2, Scene 3) : —

lago. Come, lieutenant, I have a stoop of wine ; and here without are a brace of Cyprus gallants, that would fain have a measure to the health of black Othello.

Cassio. Not to-night, good lago ; I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking. I could well wish courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment.

lago. O ! they are our friends ; but one cup. I'll drink for you.

Cassio. I have drunk but one cup to-night, and that was craftily qualified, too, and behold what innovation it makes here : I am unfortunate in the infirmity, and dare not tax my weakness with any more. . . .

lago. If I can fasten but one cup upon him, With that which he hath drunk to-night already,

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 37

He'll be as full of quarrel and offence

As my young mistress' dog. Now, my sick fool Roderigo,

Whom love has turned ahnost the wrong side out,

To Desdemona has to-night caroused

Potations pottle-deep ; and he's to watch :

Three lads of Cyprus — noble swelling spirits —

Have I to-night flustered with flowing cups ;

And they watch, too. Now, 'mongst this flock of drunkards

Am I to put my Cassio.

Cassio. 'Fore heaven, they have given me a rouse already.

Mon. Good faith, a little one, not past a pint, as I am a soldier.

lago. Some wine, hoa !

And let the canakin clink, clink.

And let the canakin clink : A soldier's a man ; a man's life's but a span.

Why, then, let a soldier drink.

Some wine, boys.

Cassio. 'Fore heaven, an excellent song.

lago. I learned it in England, where, indeed, they are most potent in potting; your Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander — Drink, hoa ! — are nothing to your English.

Cas. Is your Englishman so exquisite in his drinking?

lago Why, he drinks you with facility, your

Dane dead drunk ; he sweats not to overthrow your Almain, he gives your Hollander a vomit ere the next pottle can be filled.

Cassio. To the health of our general.

lago. Some wine, hoa ! . . .

Cassio. Do not think, gentlemen, I am drunk ; this is my ancient — I can stand well enough, I can speak well enough. . .

lago. You see this fellow that is gone before, He is a soldier fit to stand by Caesar And give direction : and do but see his vice ; 'Tis to his virtue a just equinox, The one as long as the other : 'tis a pity of him, I fear the trust Othello puts him in On some odd time of his infirmity. Will shake this island. . .

Then, after tempting him, lago leads the excited Cassio to quarrel with the excited Roderigo, taking care that witnesses are prepared to carry the news to Othello. Meanwhile, Cassio is sobered, and horrified by being told he is "drunk," and l.iy seeing Othello approach. . . .

4

38 The Bacon-Shakspcre Question.

lago. What, are you hurt, lieutenant ?

Cassio. Ay, past all surgery,

lago. Marry, heaven forbid !

Cassio. Reputation, Reputation, Reputation. O, I have lost my Reputation ! I have lost the immortal part, sir, of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, lago, my reputation !

/ago. As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily wound ; there is more offence in that, than in reputation. . . .

Cassio. I will rather sue to be despised, than to deceive so good a commander with so slight, so drunken, so indiscreet an officer. Drunk? and speak parrot, and squabble? swagger? and swear? and discourse fustian with one's own shadow ? Oh, thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil ? . . .

lago. What had he done to you ?

Cassio. I remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly: a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. O, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains ; that we should, with joy, pleasure, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts.

lago. Why, but you are now well enough : How came you to be recovered ?

Cassio. It hath pleased the devil, drunkenness, to give place to the devil, wrath : one imperfectness shows me another, to make me frankly despise myself.

/ago. Come, you are too severe a moraler : As the time, the place, and the condition of this country stands, I could heartily wish this had not befallen ; but since it is as it is, mend it for your own good.

Cassio. I will ask him for my place again ; he shall tell me I am a drunkard ! Had I as many mouths as Hydra, such an answer would stop them all. To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, presently a beast I O strange 1 — Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil.

lago. Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well-used ; exclaim no more against it. And good lieutenant, I think you think I love you ?

Cassio. I have well approved it, sir. I ? drunk ?

lago. You, or any man living, may be drunk at a time, man. . . .

lago, like Mephistopheles, attempts to harden his conscience. Desdemona, hke the angels, pardoning his fault, would remove his penalty : —

And yet his trespass, in our common reason (Save that, they say, the wars must make example Out of their best) is not almost a fault To incur a private check. (Act 3, Scene 2.)

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 39

Though there is a good deal said about wine in the Tempest, it illustrates no great question. And in the Masque, Ceres is addressed as the bounteous lady who spreads the rich leas with wheat, rye, barley and pole-clipped vineyards.

Trinculo echoes Falstafif, " Was there ever a man a coward that drank so much sack as I to-day ? "

The death-scene in Hamlet represents his uncle following the classic usage of throwing a pearl into the cup to honour a special guest, to conceal the poison.

Set me the stoup^ of wine upon that table. The king shall drink to Hamlet's better breath ; And in the cup an union shall he throw. . . . Stay, give me drink : Hamlet, this pearl is thine ; Here's to thy health. Give him the cup. Qtieen. The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.

The result of my reading is to make me believe that Shakspere approved of stimulant in exceeding moderation ; that he preferred beer to wine ; and that, even when drinking im- moderately, it was better to drink beer than wine. In spite of Falstaff's praise, the series of quotations I have given show that the evils of excessive drinking chiefly came through the use of " wine " — the Irishman's aqua vitcc being little known. All his characters that came to evil through drink (like Edgar in King Lear) — " Wine loved they dearly." He never blames that "poor creature, small beer."

But the important consideration in regard to the discussion is, that in treating the drinking- customs of difterent peoples, or ancient times — for instance, in Ki/ig Lear, Antony and Cleopatray Liamlet, &c. — Shakspere commits anachronisms and incongruities impossible to such a thorough student of history and literature as was Bacon, and yet these very errors were in keeping with the canons of dramatic art at the time, of which Bacon disapproved.

40 The Bacon-Shakspere Quest ion.

The- learning of Shakspere is just such as might have been commenced, amid varied interrup- tions, at a good Grammar-school, and finished by later reading and conversation. Though, like Keats, he was keenly sympathetic with ancient story and literature, his classics were eclectic and uncertain ; his linguistic education fragmentary ; his science undeveloped. He was acquainted with the use of stimulants as known in a home, an inn, or an ale- house, as he had proved in many a parish between Stratford and London. What was written in the plays might well have been written by Shakspere with such an experience as he was known to have had ; and with such humour, genius and morality as he possessed.

It is very different when we turn to Bacon's works. The learning of Bacon ranged over all that was known and had been known to man, in history, philosophy and science, and he supplemented this by continual experiments, observations and corre- spondence. He knew several languages, read largely in all, and wrote much in Latin. From his position, as well as from his mission, he was able to learn much of our subjects, and he was, in several peculiar ways, connected with " The Trade." His friend Essex, according to Queen Elizabeth's own profession, fell through his urgency in desiring a re- newal of the farm of sweet wines. In James's reign, Bacon arranged the settlement of this monopoly on the Lady Arabella. At his own fall, the twenty- seventh charge brought against him was that he had been bribed by the French merchants to force their wines upon unwilling London vintners, by putting their persons illegally in prison. Another charge was that he had accepted bribes from three parties, when the Company of Apothecaries separated from the Grocers. Previously to this, he had not been considered free of blame in allowing Christopher Villiers, the brother of the Duke of Buckingham, to oppress the keepers of alehouses by extortions and fines, in his monopoly of licensing powers,

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 41

In his purely intellectual relations to the subject he is more honourably known. In his " Advice to Sir George Villiers," regarding home industries, we find he notes : " First, for the home trade, I first commend unto your consideration the encourage- ment of tillage, which will enable the kingdom to bring forth corn for the natives. . . . Third, plant- ing of orchards, in a soil and air fit for them is very profitable as well as pleasurable ; cyder and perry are notable beverages in sea-voyages. . . . Fifth, the planting of hopyards are found very profitable for the planters." Not only did he give political counsel to those in power, but he gave scientific counsel to those in practice, which, though occa- sionally confused by superstition and credulity, was wonderfully sound and suggestive, considering the state of advancement in his time. He showed the dignity of dietetics. "Among the particular arts, those are to be preferred which exhibit, alter and prepare natural bodies and materials of things, such as agriculture, cooking and chemistry." (Para- sceve V. and elsewhere.)

He notices the paucity of technical literature, and suggests "A Catalogue of Particular Histories that ought to be written." "55. History of the Food ot Man, and of all things Eatable and Drinkable, and of all Diet; and of the variety of the same ac- cording to nations and smaller differences. 83. History of AVine. 84. History of the Cellar and of dift'erent kinds of Drinks. 128. Miscellaneous History of Common Experiments that have not yet been raised into an art." These histories we are now helping this great Suggestor to complete ; these experiments we have kept working out that he begun. In his Advaticement of Learnings Book II., he says : " For history of Nature, wrought or mechanical, I find some collections made of agriculture, and likewise of manual arts, but commonly with a rejection of experiments familiar and vulgar. For it is esteemed a kind of dishonour unto learning, to descend to inquiry or

42 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

meditation upon matters mechanical, except they be such as may be thought secrets, rarities, and special subtilties." Bacon thereupon by example, aswellasby precept, went on to show the value of " experiments familiar and vulgar." We may consider a few of these in relation to our subjects. He suggests the soaking of cornseeds in various liquids before planting {Nat. Hist., c. v., 402), and gives the experiments he performed himself. After the corn has grown, " winds are injurious to the corn crops at 3 seasons — namely, on the opening of the flower, at the shedding of the flower, and near the time of ripening ; " and he gives the reasons of this. {History of Winds, 24.) He advises men to inquire more into the diseases of corn. {Nat. Hist., c. vii., 661), 696, 670.) He notices the importance of "waters" in making malt, &c., in Nat. Hist., c. iv., 391, 392, 393 ; and in 394 he adds : " Fourthly, try them by making drinks stronger or smaller with the same quantity of malt ; and you may conclude that that water which maketh the stronger drink is the more concocted and nourishing, though perhaps it be not so good for medicinal use. Such water is commonly the water of large and navigable rivers, or of large and clean ponds of standing water, for upon both them the sun hath more power than upon fountains and small rivers. And I conceive that chalk water is next them the best for going furthest in drink, for that also helpeth concoction." Nat. Hist., c. vii., 647, he notes that "Barley, as appeareth in the maltmg, being steeped in water three days, and afterwards the water drained from it, and the barley turned upon a dry floor, will sprout half an inch long at least, and if it be let alone, and not turned, much more, until the heart be out." 648. " Malt in the drenching will swell ; and that in such a manner, as after the putting forth in sprouts, and the drying upon the kiln, there will be gained at least a bushel in eight ; and yet the sprouts are rubbed off; and there will be a bushel of dust besides the malt, which I suppose

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 43

to be, not only by the loose and open lying of the parts, but by some addition of substance from the water." In Nat. Hist., c. ix., 857, he tells us " Barley in the boiling swelleth not much, wheat swelleth more, rice extremely," and gives the reasons. 649. " Malt gathereth a sweetness to the taste, which appeareth yet more in the wort. The dulcoration of things is worthy to be tried to the full : for that dulcoration importeth a degree to the nourishment, and the making of things inali- mental to become alimental, may be an experiment of great profit for making new victual."

In Nat. Hist., c. i., 49, "Indian maize hath of certain an excellent spirit of nourishment, I judge the same of rice." 24. " In the same way, if beer were to be brewed not only of the grains of wheat, barley, oats or peas, but should likewise have about a third part of roots or fat pulps, as potato roots, the pith of artichokes, burdocks, or any other sweet and esculent roots, I conceive it would be a drink much more conducive to longevity than beer made of grain." It is evident that the modern definition of " Pure Beer " had not then arisen as a standard on a battle-field.

In the History of Dense and Rare he treats I, of Must: "New beer, and the like, when casked, swell and rise exceedingly, so that, unless they obtain a vent, they will burst the cask ; but if this be given them they rise and froth up, and, as it were, boil over." He gives a whole series of experiments on beer.

In the same way he treats of wine from the begin- ning. Nat. Hist., c. vii., 668 : " The grafting of vines upon vines, as I take it, is not now in use ; the ancients had it, and had three ways, the first was incision, which is the ordinary manner of grafting ; the second was terebration through the middle of the stock, and pulling in tlie scions there \ and the third was paring of two vines that grew together to the marrow, and binding them close."

Nat. Hist.^ c. i., 35, is on *' Making vines

44 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

fruitful. It is reported of credit, that if )-ou lay good store of kernels of grapes about the root of a vine, it will make the vine come earlier and prosper better. The cause may be, for that the kernels draw out of the earth juice fit to nourish the tree, as those that would be trees of themselves, though there were no root ; but the root, being of greater strength, robbeth and devoureth the nourishment when they have drawn it." And in c. v., 457, "It is reported that trees will grow greater and bear better fruit, if you put lees of wine to the root."

In Nat. Hist., c. vii., 638 : "As for the vine it is noted that it beareth more grapes when it is young ; but grapes that make better wine when it is old ; for that the juice is better concocted, and we see that some wine is inflammable, so as it hath a kind of oiliness."

664. " Showers, if they come a little before the ripening of fruits do good to vines, but it is rather for plenty than for goodness, for the best vines are in the driest vintages." 666. " It is strange which is observed by some of the ancients, that dust keepeth the fruitfulness of vines, insomuch as they cast dust upon them of purpose. It should seem that that powdering, when a shower cometh, niaketh a kind of soiling to the tree, being earth and water finely laid on. And they note, that countries where the fields and ways are dusty bear the best wines."

Next after his favourite scents of violets and musk-roses and decaying strawberry leaves, he prefers the scent of the vine-flower, and suggests utilising it in wine.

He notices in his essay Of Judicature (L. vi.), " Where the wine-press is hard wrought, it yields a harsh wine, that tastes of the grape stone."

In De Aiiginentis Scientiaruin (L. v.). He speaks of cider, &c., according to the Roman adage, "one cluster of grapes ripens faster by the side of another. . . . Our cyder

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 45

makers have an excellent way of imitating the operation. For they take care not to bruise or squeeze the apples till they have lain together for awhile in heaps, and so ripened by mutual contact ; that the too great acidity of the drink may be corrected." This fact is repeated, like most of the other facts that interest him, several times in his writings ; and he certainly was much interested in cider, as also in perry.

Yet he does not ignore mead. In the History of Life and Death, Part II., 22: "Mead, I imagine, would not be bad if strong and old ; but since all honey has some acidity in it (as rnay be seen by the corrosive water that the chemists extract from it, which can even dissolve metals), it would be better to make a similar drink with sugar, not lightly infused, but incorporated as firmly as honey in mead, and keep it for a year or six months, so that the water may lose its crudity, and the sugar may acquire subtlety."

He does not forget the various steps in finishing any drink. Nat. Hist., c. iii., 30S : "The longer malt or herbs, or the like, are infused in liquor, the more thick and troubled the liquor is ; but the longer they be decocted in the liquor, the clearer it is. The reason is plain, because in infusion the longer it is, the greater is the part of the gross body that goeth into the liquor, but in decoction, though more goeth forth, yet it either purgeth at the top, or settleth at the bottom. And therefore the most exact way to clarify is, first to infuse, and then to take off the liquor and decoct it ; as they do in beer, which hath malt first infused in the li(|uor, and is afterwards boiled with the hop. This is referred to separation."

In Nat. Hist., c. iv., 301, he goes on to the Clarification of Liquors : " Liquors are many of them at the first tliick and troubled, as muste, wort, juices of fruits, or herbs expressed, and by time they settle and clarify. But to make them clear before the time is great work ; for it is a spur to

46 The Bacon-Shaksperc Question.

nature, and putleth her out of her pace : and besides it is of good use for making drinks and sauces potable and serviceable speedily. But to know the means of accelerating clarification, we must first know the causes of clarification. The ist cause is, by the separation of the grosser parts of the liquid from the finer; the 2nd, by the equal distribution of the spirits of the liquor, with the tangible parts, for that ever representeth bodies clear and untroubled ; the 3rd, by the refining the spirit itself, which thereby giveth to the liquor more splendour and more lustre."

The following paragraphs continue the subject: 302 treats of " Separation by weight, by heat ; by adhesion, as when a body more viscous is mingled with the liquor; by percolation, &c." 303. "Of the even distribution of spirits by heat, motion, time, or mixture of some other body." . . .

304. " Of heat, motion, and mixture of some other body which hath virtue to attenuate."

305. " It is in common practice to draw wine and beer from the lees, which we call racking, whereby it will clarify much the sooner ; for the lees, though they keep the drink in heart and make it lasting, yet withal, they cast up some spissitude, and this instance is to be referred to separation." In 306, he gives experiments to show that " it were good to try what the adding to the liquor more lees than his own will work ; " and also in 307, " Take new beer, and put in some quantity of stale beer into it, and see if it will not accelerate the clarification." In 309, he advises experiments by putting hot embers, renewed daily, round the bottles of new beer ; and lime quenched and unquenched, and notice the effect on even distri- bution or refining of the spirit. 310. He suggests shaking — " Take bottles and swing them, or carry them in a wheelbarrow over rough ground twice a-day ; but then you may not fill the bottles full, but leave some air, for if the liquor come close to the stopple, it cannot play nor flower; and when

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 47

you have shaken them well either way, pour the drink into another bottle, stopped also close after the usual manner, for if it stay with much drink in it, the drink will pall ; neidier will it settle so perfectly in all the parts. Let it stand some twenty-four hours ; then take it, and put it again into a bottle with air, /// supra; and thence into a bottle stopped, /// supra; and so repeat the operations for seven days. Note, that in the emptying of one bottle into another you must do it swiftly, lest the drink pall. This instance is referred to the even distribution of the spirits by motion." Elsewhere he suggests ropes in the cask. In 311, he treats of clarification by percolation, or separation by adhesion — Let " milk be put into new beer, and stirred with it, for it may be that the grosser part of the beer will cleave to the milk; the doubt is, whether it will sever again, which is soon tried. It is usual in clarifying Hippocras to put in milk, which after severeth and carrieth with it the grosser parts of the Hippocras, as hath been said elsewhere. Eggs are tried by some. Also for the better clarification by percolation when they thin new beer; they use to let it pass through a strainer ; and it is like, the finer the strainer is the clearer it will be."

Nat. Hist., c. iv., 312, he goes on to maturation : "For the maturation of drinks, it is wrought by the congregation of the spirits together, whereby they digest more perfectly the grosser parts ; and it is effected partly by the same means that clarification is, whereof we spake before; but then note that an extreme clarification doih spread the spirits so smooth as they become dull and the drink dead, which ought to have a little flowering. And therefore all your clear amber drink is flat." 313. " We see the degrees of maturation of drinks : in niuste, in wine (as it is drunk ), and in vinegar. Whereas muste hath not the spirits well congre- gated ; wine hath them well united, so as they make the parts somewhat more oily ; vinegar hath

48 27te Bacon-Shakspere Quesimi.

them congregated, but more jejune and in smaller

quantity, the greatest and finest spirit part being exhaled : for we see vinegar is made by setting the vessel of wine against the hot sun ; and therefore vinegar will not burn, for that the finer part is exhaled." 314. "The refreshing or quickening of drink palled or dead, is by enforcing the motion of the spirit ; so we see that open weather relaxeth the spirit, and maketh it more lively in motion. We see also bottling of beer or ale, while it is new and full of spirit, so that it spirteth when the stopple is taken forth, maketh the drink more quick and windy, A pan of coals in the cellar doth likewise good, and maketh the drink work again. New drink, put to drink which is dead, provoketh it to work again ; nay, which is more, as some affirm, a brewing of new beer set by old beer maketh it work again. It were good also to enforce the spirits by some mixtures, that may excite and quicken them ; as by putting into the bottles, nitre, chalk, hme, &c." 3x5. "It is tried, that the burying the bottles of drink well- stopped, either in dry earth, a good depth ; or in the bottom of a well within water ; and best of all, the hanging of them in a deep well some- what above the water for some fortnight's space, is an excellent means of making drink fresh and quick ; for the cold doth not cause any exhaling of the spirits at all, as heat doth, though it rarefieth the rest that remain ; but cold maketh the spirits vigorous and irritates them, whereby they incorpo- rate the parts of liquor perfectly."

Novum Orgaman, xlvii. : " Among prerogative instances in the 23rd place is quantity ; which borrowing a term from medicine, I call also doses of nature. ... All particular virtues act according to the greater or less quantity of the body. Large quantities of water corrupt slowly, small ones quickly. Wine and beer ripen and become fit to drink much more quickly in bottles than in casks."

Nat, Hist., c. ix., 861. "Time doth change fruit,

The Bacon-Shahpere Question. 49

as apples, pears, &c., from more sour to more sweet ; but contrariwise liquors, even those that are of the juice of fruit, from more sweet to more sour ; as wort, muste, new verjuice, &c. The cause is, the congregation of the spirits together; for in both kinds the spirit is attenuated by time : but in the first kind it is more diffused, and more mustered by the grosser parts, which the spirits do but digest. But in drinks the spirits do reign, and finding less opposition of the parts, become tliemselves more strong, which causeth also more strength in the liquor; such as if the spirits be of the hotter sort, the liquor becometh apt to burn ; but in time, it causeth likewise, when the higiier spirits are evaporated, more sourness."

Novum Organuj/i, Book 2nd, 1. " Polychrest instances, or instances of general use. ... I remember to have heard of bottles of wine being let down into a deep well to cool ; but through accident or neglect being left there for many years, and then taken out, and that the wine was not only free from sourness and flatness, but much finer tasted, owing, it would seem, to a more exquisite commixture of its parts."

In Life arid Death, Part II., 23 : "Age in wine or liquor engenders subtlety in the parts of the liquor and acrimony in the spirits ; whereof the first is beneficial, the second hurtful. To avoid, therefore, this complication, put into the cask, before the wine has settled at all, a piece of well- boiled pork or venison, that the spirits of the wine may have something to prey upon and devour, and thereby lose their pungency."

Of Heat and Cold: "The sunbeams do ripen all fruits, and addeth to them a sweetness or fat- ness ; and yet some sultry, hot days, overcast, are noted to ripen more than bright days. The sun- beams are thought to mend distilled waters, the glasses being well-stopped ; and to make them more virtuous and fragrant. The sunbeams do turn wine into vinegar, but query whether they

50 The Bacon-Sliakspere Question.

would not sweeten verjuice ? The sunbeams do pall any wine or beer that is set in them. Bitter frosts do make all drinks to taste more dead and flat. Paracelsus reporteth, if a glass of wine be set upon a terrass in a bitter frost, it will leave some liquor unfrozen in the centre of the glass, which excelleth spirit us vini drawn by fire."

Nat. Hist., c. ix., 898. " The turning of wine into vinegar is a kind of putrefaction ; and in making of vinegar they use to set vessels of wine over against the noon sun, which calleth out the more oily spirits, and leaveth the liquor more sour and hard. We see also that burnt wine is more hard and astringent than wine sunburnt. It is said that cyder in navigations under the line ripeneth, when wine or beer soureth. It were good to set a rundlet of verjuice over against the sun in summer, as they do vinegar, to see whether it will ripen and sweeten."

In History of Dense and Rare, 3. '' I have heard that new wine just trodden out, and still fermenting, when put into a strong and thick glass (the mouth of the glass being so closed and sealed that the must could neither burst it nor break through), as the spirit could find no vent, has with continued circulation and vexation, completely transformed itself into tartar, so that nothing remained in the glass except vapour and lees. But of this I am not certain."

Nat. Hist., c. viii., 781. " It is said they have a manner to prepare the Greek wines, to keep them from fuming and inebriating, by adding some sulphur or alum, whereof the one is unctuous, the other is astringent. And certain it is, that those two natures do most repress fumes. This experi- ment should be transferred unto other wine and strong beer by putting in some like substances, while they work, which may make them both to fume less and to inflame less."

Nat. Hist., c. iv., 339. " All moulds are inceptions of putrefaction." 341. "The ist means of prevent-

The Bacon- Shaksperc Question. 51

ing putrefaction is cold ; for so we see that meat and drink will keep longer unputrified or unsoured in winter than in summer. . . . put in conservatories of snow, will keep fresh. This worketh by the de- tention of the tangible parts." 342. "The 2nd is astringents." 343. " The 3rd is excluding the air, and again exposing to the air, &c. . . ." 344. "The 4th is motion and stirring. . . ." 345. "The 6th is the strengthening of the spirits of bodies. It should be tried also whether chalk put into water or drink doth not preserve it from putrefying or speedy souring. So we see that strong beer will last longer than small; and all things that are hot and aro- matical do help to preserve liquors." 347. "The 7th is the separation of cruder parts." 348. " The 8th is the drawing forth continually of the part where putrefaction beginneth." 349. " The 9th is a commixture of something that is more oily and sweet." 350. " The loth is the commixture of something that is dry." In 378, he again mentions hanging bottles of wine, beer, and milk in wells in various stages, and the results.

He notices that " all bodies have their own dimensions and gravities ; water has more weight but less dimension than wine." In De Aiigm. Scient. he has numerous experiments to prove this scattered all over the work.

The idea of stimulants seemed to run much in his head — many of his figures of speech being taken from their technology. " Silence is the fermentation of thought " {De Aiigm, Sciejit.). In Novum Orgauum (xx.), he calls his first group of collected instances his " First Vintage." He gives the action of yeast as an example of natural magic (li.). He explains poetically the Greek fable of Dionysus or P.acchus. Illustrations from ancient Theogony and Mythology. Example of Dionysus or Bacchus : "In his early youth he was the first to invent and explain the culture of the vine, and the making of wine and its use ; whereby becoming illustrious, he subdued the whole world. . . His sacred

52 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

tree was the ivy. " Founders and uniters of States were honoured but with titles of worthies or demi- gods, as Hercules ; on tlie other side, such as were inventors and authors of new arts, endowments, and commodities towards man's life, were ever con- secrated amongst the gods themselves — as Ceres and Bacchus." In his prose poem, which con- tained his ideas of a perfect state — The New Atlantis — he said : " There were two long galleries, one in which were patterns and samples of all rare inventions, and in the other were statues of all the principal inventors, such as the Inventor of Wine, the Inventor of Bread, the Inventor of Sugar." *' We had also drink of three sorts, all wholesome and good ; wine of the grape ; a drink of grain, such as is with us our ale, but more clear ; and a kind of cyder made of a fruit of that country — a wonderful pleasing and refreshing drink."

After describing the festivities of the " Son of the Vine," with his cluster of golden grapes, the narrator tells him, "We have also large and various orchards and gardens . . where trees and berries are set, whereof we make divers kinds of drinks, besides the vineyards. ... I will not hold you long with recounting of our brew-houses and bake- houses and kitchens where are made divers drinks, breads, and meats rare, and of special effects. Wines we have of grapes ; and drinks of other juice, of fruits, of grains, and of roots, and of mixtures with honey, sugar, manna, and fruits dried and decocted. Also of the tears or wound- ings of trees, and of the pulp of canes. And these drinks are of several ages, some to the age or last of forty years. We have these drinks also brewed with several herbs and roots and spices ; yea, with several fleshes and w:hite meats, whereof some of the drinks are such as they are in effect meat and drink both. And, above all, we strive to have drinks of extreme thin parts to insinuate into the body, and yet without all biting and sharp- ness, or fretting ; insomuch as some of them put upon

The Bacon- Shakspere Question. 53

the back of your hand will, with a little stay, pass through to the palm, and yet taste mild to the mouth. We have also waters which we ripen in that fashion as they become nourishing ; so that they are indeed excellent drink, and many will use no other."

The health-question was ever-present to his mind, and he is always considering the substances con- ducive to longevity, combining them with beer and wine, and daily using them. As he says himself, he was always "puddering in medicines," and he considered all medicines made more powerful by being mixed with wine or beer. Paul's advice to Timothy was not lost upon Bacon. " Take a Utile wine for thy stomach's sake and for thy frequent infirmities." His special combinations are worthy of a separate paper — e.g., his " Capon-Beer," "Wine for the spirits, "Wine against adverse melancholy," "Restorative wines," "Ale of raisins," "Methusalem water," &c. In his History of Life and Death (vii. 12), he has "The preparation of drinks suited to longevity may be comprised in one precept. Of water-drinkers there is no need to speak, for as has been said elsewhere, such a diet may continue life for a certain time, but can never prolong it to any great extent. But in other spirituous liquors (as wine, beer, mead, and the like) the one thing to be aimed at and observed as the sum of all, is to make the parts of the Hquor as fine, and the spirit as mild as possible." And he repeats various experiments to make it so.

" I do much marvel that no Englishman, or Dutchman, or German doth set up brewing in Constantinople, considering they have such quantity of barley. For, as for the general sort of men, frugality may be the cause of drinking water, for that it is no small saving to pay nothing for one's drink, but the better sort might well be at the cost. And yet I wonder the less at it, because I see France, Italy, or Spain, have not taken into use beer or ale ; which, perhaps, if they did would better both their healths and their complexions.

5

54 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

It is likely it would be matter of great gain to any that should begin it in Turkey." — A^at. Hist. 705.

In Nat. Hist., c. viii., 727, he tells us, " The use of wine in dry or consumed bodies is hurtful; in moist and full bodies it is good ; " and gives the reasons. He also brings forward a precept of Aristotle that " wine be forborne in all consump- tions." " If it must be taken, let it be burnt."

He gives the quaintest causes for the effects of drunkenness in Nat. Hist., c. viii., 724, 725. " Drunken men reel, they tremble, they cannot stand, nor speak strongly. They imagine every- thing turneth round ; they imagine also that things come upon them ; they see not well things afar off; those things that they see near at hand they see out of their place, and sometimes they see things double. The cause of the imagination that things turn round is, for that the spirits themselves turn, being com- pressed by the vapour of the wine, for any liquid body upon comjDression turneth, as we see in water, and it is all one to the sight whether the visual spirits move, or the object moveth, or the medicine moveth. And we see that long turning round breedeth the same imagination. The cause of the imagination that things come upon them is, for that the spirits visual themselves draw back, which maketh the object seem to come on ; and besides, when they see things turn round and move, fear maketh them think they come upon them. The cause that they cannot see things afar off, is the weakness of the spirits ; for in every megrim or vertigo there is an obtenebration joined with a semblance of turning round, which we see also in the hghter sort of swoonings. The cause of seeing things out of their place is the refraction of the spirits visual ; for the vapour is an unequal medium, and it is as the sight of things out of place in water. The cause of seeing things double, is the swift and unquiet motion of the spirits, being oppressed, to and fro ; for, as was said before, the motion of the spirits visual, and the motion of the

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 55

object, make the same appearances ; and for the swift motion of the object, we see, if you filHp a lute string, it sheweth double or treble."

726. Men are sooner drunk with small draughts than with great. And again, wine sugared inebriateth less than wine pure. The cause of the former is, for that the wine descendeth not so fast to the bottom of the stomach, but maketh longer stay in the upper part of the stomach and sendeth vapours forth to the head, and therefore inebriateth sooner. And for the same reason sops in wine, quantity for quantity, inebriate more than wine of itself. The cause of the latter is, for that the sugar doth inspissate the spirits of the wine, and maketh them not so easy to resolve into vapout. Nay, farther, it is thought to be some remedy against inebriating, if wine sugared be taken after wine pure. And the same effect is wrought, either by oil or milk, taken upon much drinking.

The works of Bacon on " Drinks " would fill a large volume, which might be called, " VVme, Beer, and Cider." He never mentions spirits or aqua vitic. He has very little original matter amusing, and Shakspere's wit is not suggested in his works. Some co\{tc\.^^ quotations^ however, may be deemed so, as for instance : —

Apophthegm, 108. One was examined upon certain scandalous words spoken against the king. He confessed them, and said : " It is true I spake them \ and if the wine had not failed, I had said much more."

Apophthegm, 53. "A physician advised his patient that had sore eyes, that he should abstain from wine \ " but the patient said : " I think, rather, Sir, from wine and water, for I have often marked it in blue eyes, and I have seen water come forth, but wine never."'

Apophthegm, 134. Alonso of Arragon was wont to say in commendation of age, *' That age appeared best in four things — old wood to burn ; old wine to drink ; old friends to trust ; and old authors to read."

56 The Bacon-Sliakspere Question.

" Let therefore the drinks in use be subtle, yet free from all acrimony and acidity ; as are those wines, which, as the old woman says in Plautus; ' are toothless with age.' "

Apophthegm 29. The Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was asked his opinion by Queen Ehzabeth of one of these monopoly licenses? And he answered, " Madam, will you have me speak the truth? Ltccntice detcriores sianiis" We are all the worse for licenses. A good motto for Sir Wilfrid.

" It is written of Epicurus, that, after his disease was judged desperate, he drowned his stomach and senses with a large draught and ingurgitation of wine — hence he was not sober enough to taste any bitterness in Stygian waters." {Adv. of Learning II.)

As Spedding notices, he was very careless in giving his authorities, often even appropriating ideas wholesale, without acknowledging the debt.

In his Pronius (1594-96), edited by Mrs. Potts, are many phrases and several proverbs in English and foreign languages, intended as suggestions for future work. Much has been made of parallelisms between the Froniiis and the plays of Shakspere ; but anything found there is certain not to be original, so nothing can be based on it. For instance, Nash says, " softer fire makes sweeter malt," and Shakspere, in "As You Like It," says, "Good wine needs no bush." We need not, however, be surprised to find that Bacon, either from them or from others, had heard the phrases and booked them.

470. Soft fire makes sweet malt.

512. Linuc radiis non 7naturescit Botriis. The cluster does not ripen in the rays of the moon.

517. Good wine needs no bush.*

* John Davies, of Hereford, says — " Good wine doth need no bush, Lord, who can tell, How oft this old said saw, hath praised new books."

{1603.)

The Bacon-Shakspcre Question. 57

582. Buon vin cattiva testa, dice il Griega. Good wine makes a bad head, says the Greek.

583. Buon vin favola lunga. Good wine talks long.

631. As he brews, so must he drink,

777. Ad vinwn diserti. Eloquent at wine. \Eras7n.)

878. An owles egg. It was an old superstition, that if a child ate of an owles egg before it had tasted wine it would be a total abstainer all its life.

910. The vinegar of sweet wine.t

999. I?i vino Veritas.

1605. Vin sur lait sonhait; I ait snr vin, venin.

1608. A la trogne on cognoist Vyvrogne.

16 1 2. Vin vieux, amy vieux.^ et or vieiix, sont aim'es en tons lieux.

In the Adv. of Lear?wig, Book II., as Philocrates sported with Demosthenes, " You may not marvel, Athenians, that Demosthenes and I do differ, for he drinketh water and I drink wine." And like as we read of the ancient parable of the two gates of Sleep in Virgil, if we put on sobriety and attention, we shall find it a sure maxim in knowledge, that the more pleasant liquor of wine is the more vaporous, and the braver gate of ivory sendeth forth the falser dreams." In the Interpretation of Nature (cxxii.), "I may say then of myself that which one said in jest" (since it marks the dis- tinction so truly), " It cannot be that we should think alike, when one drinks water and the other drinks wine. Now, other men, as well in ancient as in modern times, have in the matter of sciences drunk a crude liquor like water, whereas I pledge mankind in a liquor strained from countless grapes, from grapes ripe and fully seasoned, collected in clusters, and gathered and then squeezed in the press, and finally purified and clarified in the vat.

The sweetest wine turneth to the sharpest vinegar." Euphucs' Ai!ato»iy of Wit, 1579

58 Tlic Bacon- Shahpere Question.

And, therefore, it is no wonder if they and I do not think aUke."

The authors of Shakspere's and of Bacon's works -vLx^ drank different Hquors; and therefore they did -7^ not think ahke. The first drank nectar ; the second, wine and beer. The first could not have yoked the horses of Apollo to the car of common- place experiment, the second would have fallen like Icarus, with melted wings from his high flight, had he essayed it.

The Bacon- Shakspere Qiiestion. 59

Chapter III. Whether were the Poems and Plays

CLAIMED BY ShAKSPERE OR BaCON ?

Shakspere wrote his Sonnets and gave them to his friend?, which Meres proves ; he wrote his poems, printed them, signed and dedicated them lo Southampton — which was never till now con- sidered less than proof he composed them ; he wrote his plays and sold them to his company, which credited him with them by giving him place and power, and publishing them with his name after his death. He acted his own plays and others, so that he knew just what would tell on an audience, and thence he won his fame.

The Sonnets expressly say he was a player, and did not like his profession ; they say he was a poet, whose lofty rhymes should live, and that his name was Will. They harmonise with his expressions elsewhere, and with the general tone of feeling in

the plays : —

Sonnet ex.

" Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to the view, Gored mine own fancies, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of affections new : Most true it is, that I have looked on truth Askance and strangely ; . . ."

Sonnet cxi.

" Oh, for my sake do you with fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not belter for my life ])rovide Than public means, which puljlic manners breeds."

Co The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

Sonnet cxxxvi.

" If thy soul check thee, that I come so near,

Swear to thy blind soul tliat I was thy IViU." . . . Make but my name thy love, and love that still. And then thou lov'st me — for my name is Will."

Though considering that the Sonnets would live, he evidently considered himself able for higher work. I rather fancy that in this one instance his feeling and Bacon's coincided, and that he would have named them " toys," even if he did not really mean them as a satire on the romantic sonnets of the period, as Mr. Brown suggests. If he did so, then in them, as in the character of Falstaff, he was a fellow-worker with his famous contemporary Cervantes, in killing with ridicule the last outbursts of mediaeval chivalry, then dead at heart and root.

1593. We have already pomted out that Shaks- pere'only wrote two dedications, both simple, manly, and like modern forms ; nevertheless, the first, the dedication to Venus and Adonis, is written as to a patron : —

To the Right Honourable Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton, &c. : —

Right Honourable,

I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my un- polished lines to your Lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden ; only if your honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour. I)Ut if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your honouralile survey, and your honour to your heart's content ; which I wish may always answer your own wish, and the world's hopeful expectation.

Your Honour's in all duty,

William Shakspere,

Consider the meaning of the phrases " unpolished lines," " take advantage of all idle hours," " First heir of my invention," "The world's hopeful expectation " — these cannot fit into the Baconian

The Bacon-SJiahspcre Question. 6i

story in any way. In one year, however, the admiration of his poetic power had caused Southampton to receive him and honour him as a friend, by which degree of intimacy Shakspere opened his heart Hke a flower to the sun. Hence the second dedication is to a friend — a friend superior in rank, but one who could feel Burns' idea even then common to the heart of man :

"The rank is but the guinea stamp TI:ie man's the gowd and a' tliat."

1594. Dedication of The Rape of Lucrece, in the following year : —

To the Right Honourable Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton, &c.: —

The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end ; whereof this pamphlet without beginning is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of accept- ance. ^\ hat I have done is yours ; what I have to do k yours ; being part in all I have devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater ; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness.

Your Lordship's in all duty,

William Shaksperk.

He acknowledges his love, his duty, and confesses

his hnes to be ii7iti/fored, which Bacon could not have done. He confesses all past and future work devoted to Southampton, which Bacon could not have done, as he shared his dedications among many, reserving his best for Queens and Kings.

I do not think Baconians gather the full import of these simple dedications. The fawning servility, and ambitious expediencies in Bacon's dedications, though harmonious enough to the ideas of the time, are not so to ours. They remind us of one of the Apophthegms he preserved. "Of the like nature was the answer which Aristippus made, when, having a petition to Uionysius and no ear given to him, he fell down at his feet, whereupon Dionysius staid, and gave him the hearing and granted it ;

62 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

and afterwards some person, tender on behalf of philosophy, reproved Aristippus that he would offer the profession of philosophy such an indignity, as for a private suit to fall at a tyrant's feet ; but he answered that it was not his fault, but the fault of Dionysius, that had ears in his feet."

1599. The first edition of The Passionate Pilgrim was published ; a second edition published has not been preserved.

In 161 2 the third edition was repubUshed as Shakspere's by William Jaggard. Two of Thomas Heywood's sonnets were included ; and in an Apology for Actors^ 161 2, Hey wood said that his Epistle of ""^ Helen to Paris^' and ^^ Paris to Helen" had been printed in his Troja Britaimica, 1609, which might make the world think he had stolen them from Shakspere, and that Shakspere, to do himself right, had reprinted them ; " but as I must acknowledge my lines not worth Shakspere's patronage, under whom Jaggard hath published them, so the author I know to be much offended with ]\I. Jaggard, that altogether unknown to him, presumed to make so free with his name." And Jaggard was forced to publish his next edition without Shakspere's name on the title-page.

That "friendly Shakspere," as Scoloker calls him, should have thus sided with Hey wood and others in regard to their claims, may be taken as an inverse assumption of the property of the re- mainder of the verses, unclaimed by others. The world then knew very much of private matters, and made these as public as possible, as we may see in the Nashe-Harvey scurrilous series of pamphlets, rising out of Greene's, but not a word is said against Shakspere. The plays printed under his name would have been contested by some rival, made a handle for attacks by some enemy, had they not been really his ; pirated as they doubtless often were, he gives a negative assent by silence.

Robert Chester, in 1601, printed Loves Martyr,

The Bacon-Shaksperc Question. 63

or Rosalinds Complaint, allegorically shadowing the Truth of I.ove in the constant fate of the Phoenix and Turtle. " To these are added some new compositions .... done by the best and chiefest of our modern e writers, with their names subscribed to their particular workes ; never before extant ; and now first consecrated by them all generally, to the love and merit of the true-noble knight, Sir John Salisburie," among whom Shaks- pere writes and signs his only philosophic poem, in which he makes a notice of the obsequies of the Phoenix and the Turtle-dove figure forth mystically the idea of spiritual union. There is no flattery in it either to Chester or Salisbury.

Bacon ?iever, at any time, claimed any of Shaks- pere's works. Bacon's habit was first to plan a work, then by slow steps of experiment and verifi- cation to execute it ; he wrote, re-wrote, altered, improved, translated. He preserved every scrap he ever wrote, he kept even copies of his private letters, notes of his speeches, memoranda of his smart sayings, even of things he only meant to have said, and quotations from his reading, and he signed his name to all his own composi- tions. He had no faith in the perpetuity or universality of the English language, and had most of his works translated into Latin, that all might read. "These modern languages will play the bankrupt with books," he said. Further, as he copies his works, some of them even twelve times, and " alters ever as he adds, writes, or translates," " nothing is finished until all is finished." Each of his copies, to himself and his executors, is a separate entity, however separated by language or time. In his last will he charged his executors that " ALL his writings should be printed, and sent in books fair-bound to the King's Library, to the University of Cambridge, to Trinity and Benet's Colleges there, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to Eton College, that they nii^^ht not be forgotten in this country."

64 The Bacoti-Shakspere Question.

Is it likely that a man so careful of every scrap, of every duplicate, so desirous of fame, after all possible danger was over of losing his mother's affections or his Queen's advancement, as the Baconians dream, because of his passion for writing plays, would have voluntarily ignored at death a mass of writings that, even in bulk, bore no mean proportion to those he had acknow- ledged, and that in quality bore a nobler impress of genius and thought than any he had printed ?

At the end of The Resuscitation published in 1657, Dr. Rawley gives what he entitles " a perfect List of his Lordship's works both in English and Latin," which he concludes by these words, " As for other pamphlets, whereof there are several put forth under his Lordship's name, they are not to he owned for his."

Is it possible that executors or dependents, so devoted as Matthew and Rawley, could have examined his papers without finding some rough draft, some memorandum, some private copy, some cipher, that would have revealed that these poems and plays had also a right to be bound in the "fair volumes" and sent to all the learned Uni- versities? The Promits was the only scrap un- printed by them, because they knew it contained nothing original even in arrangement ; and the Conference of Pleasure in its complete form, which was found in the box of papers in Northumberland House. The speeches are, however, in a separate form incorporated in his works.

The only ghost of authority for a claim that has been brought forward is connected with this North- umberland MS. But it is a ghost that was never alive. There Bacon's Conference of Pleasure is copied by a clerk, probably for some of his patrons, who were to act in it, or dress and speak in it. The paper volume formerly contained other works now lost. A list appears on the outer page, among which are " Richard II., Richard III., Asmutid and Cornelia, Isle of Dogs, by Nashe and inferior plaiers."

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 65

Over the page is scribbled " Shakspeare," " Bacon,'' " Neville," " Ne vile velis," &c. — probably by some fine thread of association or classification. The old " Percy'' may have played in these other pieces too. But there is no claiming the authorship of any of them for anybody. The prosy and flattering speeches of the Squire, the Hermit, the Soldier, the Statesman, and the reply of the Squire, are just as like Bacon as they are unlike anything of Shakspere's. Certainly The Isle of Bogs was by Nash.''' The Asinund and Cornelia might have been his also — but though the Baconians give it to Bacon, no one in the British Museum knows any- thing about it. Whether the Richard II. and II L were Shakspere's rendering of these histories we have no means to prove. Yet this chance scribble of a copying clerk is one of the strongest pillars of the Baconian edifice ! And the other is like to it.

Bacon writes a letter to the poet Sir John Davies,t asking him to help his advancement and be good to " conceled poets;" but one has only to turn to his remarks on poesy to understand what he means by that. We can see that he separates the matter from the form, that he sees parabolical poetry above dramatic, and calls it an artifice for conceal- ment, independent of the conditions of verse or prose.

" The measure of words has produced a vast body of art — namely. Poesy, considered with refer- ence not to the matter of it, but to the style and form of it, that is to say, metre and verse. But for Poesy, whether we speak of Inventions or metre, it is like a luxuriant plant that comes out of the lust of the earth, without any formal seed. Wherefore, it spreads everywhere and is scattered far and wide, so that it would be vain to take thought about the

* He was imprisoned for it. " As Acta;on was worried of his own hounds, so is Tom Nash of his Isle of Dogs,^'

t See Appendix, Note 10.

66 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

defects of it. With this, therefore, we need not trouble ourselves."— Z?^ Ai/gm. Sci. libr. vi.

(P^esy — feigned History or Fables.) De Aug- ineiiiis, Book II. " It is concerned with indi- viduals ... it commonly exceeds the measure of nature, joining at pleasure things which in nature would never have come together, and introducing things which in nature would never have come together, and introducing things which in nature would never have come to pass. . . . This is the work of Imagination."

Chap. xiii. " Under the name of Poesy, I treat only of feigned History. . . . Narrative poetry is a mere imitation of History. . . . Dramatic poetry is History made visible ; for it represents actions as if they were present, whereas History represents them as past." "A sound argument may be drawn from Poesy to show that there is agreeable to the spirit of man a more ample greatness, a more perfect order, and a more beautiful variety than it can anywhere find in nature. . . . Dramatic poetr}'^, which has the Theatre for its world, would be of excellent use if well directed. For the stage is capable of no small influence both of discipline and corruption. Now of corruptions of this kind we have enough ; but the discipline has in our times been plainly neglected. And though in modern states play-acting is esteemed but as a toy, except when it is too satirical and biting ; yet among the ancients it was used as a means of educating men's minds to virtue. Nay, it has been regarded by learned men and great philosophers as a kind of musician's bow by which men's minds may be played upon. And certainly, it is most true, and one of the great secrets of nature, that the minds of men are more open to impressions and affections wlien many are gathered together than when they are alone. . . . True history may be written in verse, and feigned history in prose. ... It is of double use, and serves for contrary purposes, for it serves for an infoldment ;

The Bacon-Shakspere Questioji. 67

and it likewise serves for illustration. In the latter case the object is a certain method of teaching ; in the former, an artifice for concealment. . . . The numbers of Pythagoras, the enigmas of the Sphinx, the fables of ^sop, the apophthegms of ancient sages were parabolical poesy ... a mystery in- volved in many of them." . . .

The JVe70 Atlantis and the Masques would quite fit his definitions. On the other hand, he distinctly states to the Earl of Essex : " I profess not to be a poet ; but I prepared _a sonnet directly tending^ to_drawonHer Majesty's reconcilement to my Lord^wHich~l remember^ also showed to a great person, one of my Lord's nearest friends, who commended it. This though it be, as I said, but a toy, yet it showed plainly in what spirit I proceeded." We may rest assured that, if Bacon did not profess to be a poet, he was not one. The " Lines to a Retired Courtier " are not claimed by Bacon, but given to him by Baconians. I should much rather think them by Raleigh. Much is also made of the phrase, " Tragedy and Comedy are of the same Alphabet." That can be read simply enough, if we take it to mean that the same letters and words re-arranged differently can tell of woes and death, or mirth and joy. This idea is supported by another sentence written to Sir Toby Mathew (1621), "Set the Alphabet in a frame, as you can very well do." Even if it meant something more, it could easily be explained from the table of the Greek Alphabet, under which he classifies all the branches of his learning and works, not a purely poetical idea.*

* Bacon's " Alphabet of Nature." The Alphabet is con- structed and directed in this manner. The history and experiments occupy first place, &c. : — •

Earth . . Greater masses t r t t 67th enquiry. Water . . Greater masses v v v v 6Sth enquiry. Air . . Greater masses </) (p cp (j) 69th enquiry.

[/•or continuation of Fool-note sec p. 6S.

68 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

He distinctly states what he would do, if left to himself: "The call for me, it is book learning." ** I confess I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ones." " I am like ground fresh. If I be left to myself, I will grow and bear natural philosophy ; but if the King will plow me up again and sow rae on, I hope to give him some yield. ... If active, I should write —

1. The Reconciling of Laws.

2. The Disposing of Wartls.

3. Limiting the Jurisdiction of Courts.

If contemplative I would write —

1. Going on with the story of Henry VIII,

2. General treatise of De Legibus et Justitia.

3. The Holy War."

Writing to Sir Thomas Bodley, he says : " There- fore calling myself home, I have now for a time enjoyed myself, whereof likewise I desire to make the world partake. My labours, if I may so term that which was the comfort of my other labours, — I have dedicated to the king." And this was Cogitaia et Visa — i.e., philosophical writings — no claim for poetry. His being " wholly exercised in inventions " is also evidently explained by the experiments and inventions he made. "I have taken all knowledge to be my province ; and if I

Fire. . . Greater masses XX X X 7°*^ enquiry. Heavens Greater masses y ^j (/. »/j7ist enquiry. Meteors Greater masses w w to w 72nd enquiry.

Conditions of Beings. Existence and non-existence a a a a 73rd enquiry. Possibility and impossibility (3 ^ (i ^ 74th enquiry. Much and Little . . . . y y y 7 75th enquiry. Durable and transitoiy . . S S S S 76th enquiry. Natural and unnatural .. e e t £ 77th enquiry. Natural and artificial . . c C G C 7Sth enquiry, &c.

Such then is the rule and plan of the Alphabet. May God the Maker, the Preserver, the Renewer of the universe, of His love and compassion to man, protect and guide this work, both in its ascent to His glory, and in its descent to the good of man, through His only Son, God with us. — Spedciing's Bacon.

The Bacou-Shakspcre Queslioii. 69

could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with disputations, confutations and verbosities, the other with bhnd experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils; I hope I should bring in, industrious obser- vations, grounded conclusions, and profitable iiiven- tions and discoveries ; the best state of that province. This, whether it be curiosity or vain glory, or nature, or if one take it favourably, philanthropia, is so fixed in my mind that it cannot be removed." Letter to Jh/rg/iky, 1592. He often uses the word in this sense, as well as his previous one — a poetic conception of a fictitious tale, such as would suggest our modern novel. Therefore we may exonerate Bacon from claiming the Plays.

But not only were the Poems and Plays printed as Shakspere's at the outset, both in the early editions and the standard editions of 1623 and 1632, but they continued to be so by the old stationers and by the modern editors without excep- tion or scepticism. We must not forget the old proverb, " Possession is nine points of the law." Our arguments, then, do not require to be one-quarter as strong as those of the other side to overwhelm them. But we have an opinion, shared by many, that they are stronger. Of the translations of certain Psalms into English verse by Bacon 1624, Spedding says: "These were the only verses cer- tainly of Bacon's making that have come to us, and probably with one or two slight exceptions the only verses he ever wrote."

70 The Bacon-Shakspere Qiusiion.

Chapter IV. External Evidence.

We have, further, the psychological improbability tliat so many men must have been in the secret, if secret there was ; and that all should have been able to keep it, not to only keep it even in silence, but to go out of their way to falsify the focts. We hold that truth is more natural to men than untruth; and that a truth depending upon a simple definite fact of yes or no, would have been sure to have leaked out through some of the many confede- rates necessary to so great and complex a plot as this must necessarily have been, had it been.

The unanimous external evidence of other people's writings, however, is the most convincing proof.

1592. The earliest printed notice which alludes to Shakspere is in Greene's Groaf s-worth of Wit, where he, in an oft-quoted passage, evidently aims at Shak- spere's growing fame and his entrance on a dra- matic career as the actor and adapter of other men's dramas, and calls him " an absolute y<?//(Z//«df Factotum " and " the only Shakescene in a country." It suggests that he also assisted in stage-manage- ment, and points to the fact that he was dominant by that time, and that other witty writers were subject to his pleasures.

Greene's scorn of the actors, the "puppits,'' the "buckram gentleman," seems embittered by the fact that one of them should be " able to bumbast out a blanke verse as well as the best of you." As a rival of Shakspere, it is wonderful he had so little else to say against him.

The Bacon- Shaksperc Quesiion. 71

Green's Groat s-'ivorth of Wit. " Young Juvenal that biting satyrist.* And thou no less de- serving than the other two. . . . Base-minded men all three of you, if by my rniserie ye be not v/arned ; for unto none of you (like me) sought those burres to cleave: those Puppits (I meane) that speak from our mouths, those anticks garnished in our colours. Is it strange that I, to whom they all have been beholding ; is it not like that you, to v/hom they all have been beholding, shall (were ye in that case that I am now) be both at once of them forsaken ? Yes, trust them not : for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his t Tiger's Heart Wrapt in a Players Hide supposes he is as well able to bunibast out a blanke verse as the best of you ; and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shakescene in a countrie. Oh, that I might intreate your rare wits to be employed in more profitable courses ; and let these Apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions. . . . Whilst you may, seeke you better maisters, for it is pittie men of such rare wits] should be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes. In this I might insert two more that both have writ against these buckram gentlemen. For other new comers I leave them to the mercy of those painted monsters, who, I doubt not, will drive the best-minded to despise them."

This and Greene's Quippe for an upstati Courtier really led to the Nash-Harvey dispute, as Nash was by some supposed to have aided Greene ; by others, Chetile, the editor, was blamed. The one point, however, in which all concerned agreed was the praise of Shakspere, and the clearing his name from any blame.

* Nash.

t " Oh, Tyger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide." — 3rd Part, King Jlcnry VI.

X .Marlow, Lodge iJid Nash.

72 The Bacon'Shakspcre Questiofi.

*' Greene, the coney-catcher of this dreame, the autour — for his dainty device deserveth the Hauter . . . . I would not wish a sworn enemie to be more basely valued, or more vilely reputed than the common voice of the citie esteemelh him that sought fame by diffamation of other, but hath utterly discredited himself, and is notoriously grown a proverbe of infamy and contempt. . . . Honour is precious, worship of value, fame in- valuable. They perillously threaten the Common- wealth that go about to violate the inviolable partes thereof, many will sooner lose their lives than the least jott of their reputation. "§

1592. In Fierce Fe?i?nlesse, by Thomas Nash, we find " Other newes I am advertised of, that a scald triviall lying pamphlet called Green's Groafs-7vortIi of Wit is given out to be of my doing. God never have care of my soule, but utterly renounce me, if the least word or syllable in it proceeded from my pen." Further, " How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French) to thinke that after he had lyen two hundred yeares in his toombe, he should triumph again on the stage, and have his bones new embalmed with the teares of 10,000 spectators at least (at several times) who, in the tragedian that represents his person imagine they see him fresh-bleeding." And again, " If you tell them what a glorious thing it is to have Henry V. represented on the stage leading the French King prisoner and forcing both him and the Dolphin to swear fealtie. Aye, but (will they say) what doo we get by it? respecting neither the right of fame that is due to the nobility deceased, nor what hopes of eternity are to be proposed to ad- venturous minds, to encourage them forward." Nash further praises plays in general.

1592. In Foiire Letters and certain Sonnets, especially touching Robert Greene and other parties by him abused, Gabriel Harvey praises Shakspere,

§ Very suggestive of Casslo's regard for "reputation."

The Bacon- Shakspere Question. 73

and also says : " If any distresse be miserable, dif- famation is intolerable, especially to mindes that would rather deserve just commendation than un- just slander. That is done, cannot de facto be un- done ; but I appeale to wisedome how discreetly, and to justice, how deservedly it is done ; and request the one to do us reason in shame of Im- pudency, and beseech the other to do us right in reproach of Calumny. It was my intention so to demeane myself in the whole, and so to temper my stile in every part, that I might neither seeme blinded with affection, nor enraged with passion ; nor partiall to friend, nor prejudicial! to enemie , nor injurious to the worst, nor offensive to any, but mildely and calmly shew how discredite reboundeth upon the autors, as dust flyeth back into the wag's eyes, that will need be puffing it out." And, in the next year, in Pierce's Supererogation he adds, " He is very simple who would fear a rayling Greene."

1592. Greene's friend Chettle, who had edited Greene's " Groatsworth," publishes Kind Barfs Dream, in which he says of Shakspere, "I am as sorry as if the originall fault had beene my fault, because myselfe have scene his demeanour no less civille than he, exelent in the qualitie he professes. Besides, divers of worship, have reported his uprightness of deahng, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing which aprooves his art." This proves him no "rude groome," but of civil demeanour, excellent in the " qualitie he professes " — Le., acting and improving on plays, with a facetious grace in writing with art and with good friends.

I shall now set down in order of time the re- markable sequence of witnesses for Shakspere's title to be regarded as the author of the plays and poems : —

1593. A letter written to Lord de Chfford styles Shakspere " our English Tragedian." In this year Venus and Adonis was printed.

74 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

1594. Henry Willobie, in his Avisa, says : —

" And Shakspere paints poor Lucrece rape."

In his introductory verses on his love-troubles, Willobie consults his friend Shakspere, " who not long before had tried the courtesy of a like passion."

1594. " You that to shew your wits have taken toyle In registering the deeds of noble men, And sought for matter on a forraine soyle As worthier subjects of your silver pen, Whom you have raised from dark oblivion's den ; You that have writ of chaste Lucretia \Vhose death was witness of her spotless life ; Or penned the praise of sad Cornelia, Whose blameless name hath made her name to rise As noble Pompey's most renowned wife. Hither unto your home direct youre eies Whereas unthought on, much more matter lies."

(Sir William Herbert : Epicedium of Lady Helen Branch.')

1594. " Lucrece, of whom proud Rome hath boasted long Lately revived to live another age."

(Drayton's Matilda.)

1594. Still finest wits are 'stilling Venus' rose.

(Robert Southwell.)

1595. "All praiseworthy Lucretia of sweet Shakspere."

(Marg. note to Clark's Polimanteia.)

1595- " And there though last, not least is Action A gentler shepherd may nowhere be found, Whose muse, full of high thought's invention, Doth like himself heroically sound."*

(Spenser's Colin Clonfs come home again.)

1595. In George Markham's tragedy of Sir Richard Grefwille, he addresses Southampton thus:

" Thou, the laurel of the muses' hill, Whose eyes doth crown the most victorious pen."

— meaning Shakspere.

1596. The Prologue to Ben Jonson's Every

* This surely could not be Bacon, Action means eagle- flight, suggesting his poetry. Shakspere was the only heroic name of the period. All poets then were poetically called shepherds.

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 75

Man in His Humour alludes to Shakspere's Henry V. and Henry VI. He said that the world had had enough of Shakspere's style, and that he was going to shew it how plays should be written.

" Though need make many poets, and some such As art and nature have not bettered much ; Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage, As he dare serve the ill customs of the age, Or purchase your delight at such a rate As, for it, he himself must justly hate ; To make a child now swaddled, to proceed Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed, Past threescore jears ; or, with three rusty swords, And help of some few foot and half-foot words, Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars, And in the tyring-house bring woundb to scars ; He rather prays you will be pleasdl to see, One such to-day, as other plays should be, Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas. Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please ; Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard The gentlewomen ; nor roll'd bullet heard To say, it thunders ; nor tempestuous drum Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come ; But deeds and language, such as men do use, And persons, such as comedy would choose, When she would show an image of the times And sport with human follies, not wiih crimes. Except we make them such, by loving still Our popular errors, where we know they're ill ; I mean such errors as you'll all confess. By laughing at them, they deserve no less : Which, when you heartily do, there's hope left then You, that have so graced monsters, may like men."

1596. "Will you reade Catullus ? Take Shak- spere," says Richard Carew, in his Essay on The Excelle7icy of the Efiglish Tongue, attached to his Survey of Cornwall.

1596. The Be JVitt Papers, lately discovered at Berlin, give interesting notices of the four London theatres — the Theatre, the Curtain, the Rose, and the Crown — and say how large (^fitted for 3,000), and how beautiful they were.

1598. The familiar passage in the Palladis

76 The Bacon- Shakspere Question.

Tamia of Francis Meres, which places Shakspere in this year above all ancient or modern Avriters, was republished in the edition of 1634.

This history of literature (written probably in 1596) shows that in about ten years Shakspere had taken the first rank in literature as well as on the stage, and no one, so much as Francis Meres, Professor of Rhetoric in Oxford, would have naturally studied the subject so care- fully and critically in his period. "As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakspere. Witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends, &c. . . . As Piautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latins, so Shakspere among ye Englishe is the most ex- cellent in both kinds for the stage ; for comedy, witness his Getitlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love's Labour Lost, his Love's Labour Wonne, his Midsummer A^ig/it''s Dream, and his Alerchajite of Venice ; for tragedy, his Richard II., Richard ILL, Henry IV., King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet. As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speak with Piautus' tongue, if they would speak Latine, so I say, that the muses would speak with Shakspere's fine-filed phrase if they would speak English. As Ovid said . . and as Horace saith of his works ... so say I severally of Sir Philip Sydney's, Spenser's, Drayton's, Daniel's, Shaks- pere's, and Warner's works. . . As Pindarus Anacreon, and Callimachus among the Greeks and Horace and Catullus among the Latines . . so Shakspere. . . . For tragedie, our best are . . Shakspere, &c.; for comedie, our best are . . Shakspere, &c. The most passionate among us to bewail the perplexities of love . . . Shakspere, &c." — Meres' Wit's Treasury. One interesting fact may be noted, that Meres, at the time of

The Baeo7i-Shakspere Question. 77

this publication, was living near the Globe Theatre, and must have heard Shakspere, andmost probably knew him personally.

1598. Richard Barnfield, in his Remembrance of some English Poets, praises Shakspere for his Litcrece.

" And Shakspere, thou whose honey-flowing vaine (Pleasing the world) thy praises doth olitaine ; Whose Venus and whoje Lucrece, (sweet and chaste) Thy name in Fame's immorteil Booke have placed. Live ever you — at least, in fame live ever — Well may the body dye, but Fame dies never." {A Remembrance of some Em^lish Poets.)

1598. John Marston, in his Scourge of Villainy, says : —

"A hall! A hall! Room for the Spheres, the Orbes celestial Will dance Kemp's jigge. . . I set thy lips abroach, from whence doth flow Nought but pure Juliet and Romeo. Say, who acts best ? Drusus or Roscio ? Now I have hmi, that nere of oughte did speake But when of playes or plaiers he did treate, Hath made a common-place book out of plaies, And speaks in print ; at least what e'er he sayes Is warranted by Curtaine plaudeties.* If ere you heard him courtmg Lesbia's eyes. Say (courteous Sir) speaks he not movingly From out some new pathetic tragedy. He writes, he rails, he jests, he courts, what not And all from out his huge long-scraped stock Of well-penned playes."

{Ilumonrs, Satyr 10.)

Drusus being -a name applied to Shakspere for his noble bearing, and Roscius to Burbage. In Satyr 7, Marston also says, 1598 :

" A man, a man ; a kingdom for a man. Why, how now, currish mad Athenian? "

1598. Gabriel Harvey's note on Speght's Chaucer.

" The younger sort take much deliglit in Shakspere's Venus and Adonis ; but his Lucrece, and his tragedy oi

♦ See Appendix, Note 9.

78 The Bacon-Shakspere Qitestion.

Hamld Prince of Dctimark have it in them to pL-ase the wiser sort."

1599- Jo^''^! Weever, Ad Gidieltmim Shaksperc : —

*' Honie-tongued Shakspere, when I saw thine issue, I swore Apollo got them and none other, Their rosie-tinted features clothed in tissue Some heaven-born godesse said to be their mother. Rose-cheeked Adonis with his amber tresses, Faire fier-hot Venus charming him to love her — Chaste Lucretia, vergine like her dresses, Prowd lust-stung Tarquine seeking still to prove her, Romeo, Richard ; more whose names I know not. Their sugred tongues and power attractive beauty, Say they are saints although that saints they shew not, For thousand vowes to them subjective dutie, They burne in love thy childre Shakspere bet the Go, woo thy muse, more nymphibh brood beget the."

(Epigrams in Oldest Cut and Newest Fashion.)

1600. Samuel Nicolson compliments Shakspere by cribbing largely from him without acknowledg- ment in '■'■ Acolastiis his After ■ Wittc ;" which, however, only proves the existence of the plays, and Nicolson's knowledge and appreciation of them. We must remember that the Drama, ap- plied to pleasure apart from instruction, was not fifty years old at this time.

1600. Shakspere is mentioned 79 times in England's Farnassits. Editor, Robert Allot. In England's Helicon, edited by Bodenham, among other pieces appears the lines from LoTe's Labour Lost, beginning, '' On a day, alack the day," with the name of Shakspere attached to it.

1600. J. M, The 7ic7ve Metamorphosis ; a Feast 0/ Fancie.

" It seems 'tis true that \V(iIliam) S(hakspcre) ^aid, When once he heard one courting of a mayde,

' Beleeve not thou men's fained flatteries. Lovers will tell a Ijushelful of lies.' "

1602. The Return from Parnassus, of which the value cannot be overstated, publicly acted by the students of St. John's College, Cambridge.

The Dacon-Shakspere Question. 79

The Return from Parnassus, or The Scourge of Simony, publicly acted by the students of St. John's College in Cambridge in January 1602, was printed in 1606. The reprint is edited by E. Arber. The Introduction tells us of it : —

"A comedy written by a University pen in 1601, ami addressing itself to one of the most cultivated audiences possible at that time in the country ; which thus publicly testifies on the stage, in the character of Richard ISurbage and William Kempe (Shakspere"s fellow-actors) to his confessed supremacy at that date, not only over all University dramatists, but also over all the London professional play- wrights, Ben Jonson included. , . . We must point out important testimony first, to the disreputability, and then to the profitableness of the new vocation of tire professional, play-actor ; not of the poet-actor, like Shakspere and Jonson. It was probably owing to the fact that they had written no plays that Burbage and Kempe were singled out for their posts in the play."

" The Pilgrimage to Pernassus and the Rcturnc from Pernassus, have stood the honest stage-keepers in many a crown's expense."*

In judging the various poets, Ingenioso asks Judiciot what he thinks of William Shakspere — referring to the Sonnets, &c.

" Who loves Adonis love or Lucre's rape, His sweeter verse containes Hart-robbing life. Could but a graver subject him content, Without love's foolish languishment?"

The French phrases in the play bear a strong resemblance to those of Shakspere. Act 4, Scene 5, IJurbagc, Kempe. :j: Kempe makes criticism on Cambridge acting.

Burbage. A little teaching will mend these faults, and it may be besides they will be able to pen a part.

k'enife. Few of the University pen plaies well, they smell too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphoses,

* This was the third play by the same writer.

t The criticism by Ingenioso and Judicio is of Francis Meres' List of Poets — among whom is William Shakspere. "These being modern and extant poets, that have lived together, from many of their cxtantc workes and some I:cp( in private. "

X 'ihe Kempe of ihtfigge and the Nine Days' U'omter.

8o The Bacon- Shakspere Question. '

and talke too much of Proserpina and Juppiter. Why, here's our fellow Shakspere puts them all downc, aye, and Beu Jonson, too. O, that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakspere hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit.

Burba^e. It's a shrewd fellow indeed. . . .

Kempc. Be merry, my lads ; you have happened upon the most excellent vocation in the world for money ; they come north and south to bring it to our playhouse, and for honours., who of more report than Dick Burbage and Will? . . .

Kenipe to Philornnsits. Thou wilt do well in time, if thou wilt be ruled by thy betters — that is, by myself and such grave aldermen of the playhouse.

Burbage. I like your face and the proportion of your body for Richard III. I pray, M. Philomusus, let me see you act a little of it.

/'////. Now is the winter of our discontent,

Made glorious summer by the sonne of York.

Allusion is made also to the " Isle of Dogs." 1603. A Mournful Dittie, entituled ElizabetKs Losse : —

" You poets all, brave Shakspere, Jonson, Greene, Bestow your time to write for England's Queene,

Lament, lament, &c. Returne your songs and sonnets and your layes, To set forth sweet Elizabetha's praise.

Lament, lament, &c."

1603. Chettle's England's Mournifig Garment: " Nor doth the silver-tongued Melicert, Drop from his honied muse one sable teare To mourne her death, who graced his desert. And to his laies opened her Royall eare Shepherd, remember our Elizabeth, And sing her rape, done by that Tarquin, Death."

1603. Davies of Hereford's Micro cosmos^* re- printed in 1605. To W. S. and R. B. :—

Stage- Some followed her by acting all men's parts,

plaiers. These on a stage she raised in scorne to fall. And made them mirrors by their acting arts,

W S & ^^ 'I'^rein men saw their faults though ne'er so small.

R.' B.' Yet some she guerdoned not to their deserts. But other some were but ill-action all, Who while they acted ill, ill stayed behinde (By custom of their manners) in their minde. Players, I love you and your qualitie,

* See Appendix, Note 10.

The Baco7i-Shakspere Question. 8i

As you are men that pass time not abused ;

And some I love for painting poesie, Sinionldes And say fell Fortune cannot be excused, saith That hath for better uses you refused :

speakmg^ Wit, courage, good shape, good parts and all good, painting. As long as all these goods are no worse used.

And though the stage doth stain pure gentle blood,

Vet generous ye are in minde and mood.

(77/^ Civil Warrcs of Death or Fortune.)

1604. Scoloker,in the Introduction to Z>/,r7///a;/^//j-, refers to " friendly Shakspere's tragedies."

1604. " It should come home to the vulgar's element, like friendly Shakspere's Tragedies, where the comedian rides, where the tragedian stands on tip-toe. Faith, it should please all, like Prince Hamlet. But in sadnesse, then it were to be feared he would run mad ; in bOoth, I will not be moon- sick to please ; nor out of my wits though I displease all." — (Anthony Scoloker, Diaphantits, or tJu Passions of Love, 1604.)

1604. John Cook's Epigrams* In the twelfth we find : —

" Some dare do this, some other humbly craves. For helpe of spirits in their sleeping graves, As he that calde to Shakspere, Johnson, Greoic To write of their dead noble Queene."

Cook's evidence is unusually weighty, as he also was an actor, and knew the truth behind the scenes. Cook was the author of the play Green's Tii Quoque, 1614.

1605. Camden, in his Remaines^ brackets Shakspere with Sydney and other foremost wits of that time.

" These may suffice for some poetical descriptions of our ancient pods. If I would come to our time, what a world could I present to you out of Sir Philip Sydney. . . . William Shakspere and other most prc;^i),inl wits of these our times, whom succeeding ages may justly admire."

(Reiiiaines coneernin!; Britainc, William Camden, 1605.)

* Cook's authorship of the volume cited is ascertained from the Stationer's Register.

82 The Bacon-Shakspcre Question.

1606. Ratsey's Ghost appears in which we can view the way a spendthrift rival sees other people's economy and self-denial. As this was only an imaginary memoir of a great burglar who had been hanged, we have the views of the writer probably superimposed upon the known opinions of Ratsey himself. A company of actors in the provinces had played before Ratsey for forty shillings, of which money the highwayman robbed them, and he advised the chief man to go to London to a manager supposed to be Burbage.

*' There shalt thou learn to be frugal (for players were never so thrifty as they are now about London). . . . When thou feelest thy purse well-lined, buy thee some place of lord- ship in the country, that, growing weary of playing, thy money may bring thee to dignity and reputation ; then thou needest care for no man."

The Player answers : —

" I have heard, indeed, of some that have gone to London very meanly, and have come in time to be exceeding wealthy.''

As Shakspere had not retired at this time, but was still working to support his family and widowed mother, Ratsey's satire may not be meant for him, though he had already bought New Place ; others were also rich — as Alleyn. I think, however, that the Player's answer does refer to him. We may- take the tract as at least of contemporaneous interest.

1607. Barkstead's Mirrha, the mother of Adonis.

" But stay, my muse ! in thine own confines keep, And wage not warre with so deare loved a neighbour. But having sung thy day-song, rest and sleepe. Preserve thy small fame, and his greater favour. His song was worthy merit (Shakspere hee), Sung the faire blossom, thou the withered tree, Laurell is due to him, his art and wit Hath purchased it. Cypress thy brow will fit."

Barkstead, like Kempe and Cook above-cited, was a player.

The Bacon-Shakspere Qnesiion. Zt^

1609. ^Dedication by Thorpe to Mr. W. H. of *' Shakspere's Sonnets," as they are expUcitly termed on the laconic title, which reminds us of Venus and Adonis, and Lucrece.

To the onlie begetter of

These ensuing sonnets

f Mr. \V. H. All happinesse

And that eternitie

promised

by

Our ever-living poet

wisheth

The well-wishing

Adventurer in

setting

forth.

T. T., M.iy 20, 1609. Never before imprinted. \

This could not have been addressed to William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, as it is not reverent enough. Poems by a Mr. W. H. appear in England's Helicon, 1600. Whether it was William Hughes, or whoever it was, it refers only to the person who got them or collected them for Thorpe, not to the inspirer or composer.

1609. § Troilus and Crcssida is published with a preface headed Newes, praising Shakspere, ||

"A never writer to an ever reader. Newes. Eternal reader you have here a new play never staled with the stage. "If

* Thomas Thorpe was a Warwickshire man. ViJc un- published MSS. of Rev. J. Hunter, British Museum.

t Was this the same W. Hammond, to whom in an early M.S. copy of Middleton's IVitch that drama is inscribed? Hammond is there mentioned as a patron of literature.— Ed.

\ Edward Alleyn notes that he bouglit a copy for five- pence, which price is mentioned on tlie copy possessed by Earl Spenser.

§ See Appendix, Note 12.

!l It was a time when an enigmatic vein must have been in favour, for in a tract of 1607, a translation from the Dutch, the I'.ditor heads a sort of Preface in this same fashion. "Newes to the Reader, or to whom the Buyer desires to send Newes." — Ed.

•il This phrase was a mistake, and afterwards withdrawn.

84 The Baco7i-Shakspere Question.

and concluding thus : —

" and beleeve this that when bee is gone and his Coni- medies out of sale, you will scramble for them and set up a new English inquisition."

1 6 10 — 161 1. * Davies of Hereford mentions Shakspere in the most comphmentary manner, as a man fit to be a companion to a king.

" Some say (good Will), which I, in sport do sing ; Hadst thou not played some kingly parts in sport, Thou hadst been a companion for a king — And beene a king among the meaner sorte. Some others rail, but rail as they think fitt. Thou hast no rayling but a raygning witt. And honesty thou sow'st which they do reape, So to increase their slock which they do keepe."

[^Thc Scourge of Folly,')

1 610. Bis t no Mastix ; or. The Player Whipt, alludes to Shakspere.

1610. Dr. Simon Forman notes in his Diary th.a.t he had witnessed the performance of Macbeth^ Winter's Tale, &c, and criticises them.

1612. Preface to Webster's White Devil co\y^t% Shakspere with Dekker and Heywood, and praises their "right happy and copious industry."

" Detraction is the sworn friend to ignor- ance ; for my own part, I have ever truly cherished my good opinion of other men's worthy labours ; especially of that full and heightened style of Master Chapman, the laboured and understanding works of Master Jonson, the no less worthy com- posures of the both worthily excellent Master Beaumont and Master Fletcher ; and lastly (with- out wrong last to be named) the right happy and copious industry of Master Shakspere, Master Dekker, and Master Heywood ; wishing what I write may be read by their light ; protesting that, in the strength of mine own judgment, I know them

* See Appendix, Note 10.

The Bacon-Shakspcrc Question. 85

so worthy ; that though I rest silent in my own work, yet to most of theirs I dare (without flattery) fix that of Martial, '' Non norunt hsec monumenta mori." Preface to The White Devil: or, Vittoria Corrof7ibonar' John Webster.

161 3. Globe Theatre burned down.

1614. Sir Wilham Drummond.

" The last we have are Sir William Alexander and Shakspere, who have lately published their works."

In 1 6 14, Thomas Freeman to Master William Shakspere : —

" Shakspere, that nhnble merciuy, thy brain.

Lulls many hundred Argus-eyes asleepe ; So fit, for so thou fashioneih thy vaine,

At the horse-foote fountain thou hast drunke full deepe. Vertues or vice, the theme to thee all one is.

Who loves chaste life, there's Lucrece for a teacher ; Who list read lust, there's Venus and Adonis,

Tnie model of the most lascivious leatcher. Besides in plays thy wit winds like Meander,

Whence needy new composers borrow more Than Terence doth from Plautus and Menander.

But to praise thee aright I want thy store ; Then let thine own works thine own worthe upraise

And help to adorne thee with deserved bales.'' (Freeman's Epigrams, Runne and a Great Cast.)

1614. Christopher Brooke, Ghost of Richard III. celebrates the author of the antecedent drama, but does not name him.

" To him that imped my Fame with Clio's quill. Whose magick raised her from Oblivion's den. That writ my slorie on the Muses' Mill,

And with my actions dignified his pen ; He that from Helicon sencls many a rill. Whose nectared veines are drunke by thirstie help ; Crowned be his stile with fame, his head with bays; And none detract, but gratulare his praise."

(The Ghost of Riiihard III. expressing himself.)

16 15, John Stow'a Chronicles, augmented by

* \Ve should prize this attestation particularly, as it brings Shakspere before us as a diligent student and painstaking ■writer ; as we know otherwise he must have been.

86 The Bacon-Shakspere Qutsiion.

Edmund Howes, mention Shakspere : " Our mo- dern and present excellent poets, which worthily flourish in their owne workes, and all of them in my own knowledge, lived together in this Queene's raigne ; according to their priorities as neere as I could, I have orderly set downe " . . . the 13th is " M. Willie Shakspeare."

16 1 5. Henry Vaughan's sacred poems say that George Herbert's poems gave the first check to Shakspere, " a most flourishing and advanced wit " of his time.

1 616. Inscription on Shakspere's Tomb : —

" Judicio Pylium, Genio Socratem, Arte Maronem, Terra Tegit, Populus Maeret, Olympus Habet." " Stay passenger, why goest thou by so fast ;

Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath placed Within this monument — Shakspere, with whome (^uick Nature dide ; whose name doth deck ys tombe Far more than cost ; see all yt he hath writt leaves living art, but page to serve his wilt."

Obiit. Ano. Doi. 1616, ylitatis 53, Die 23 Ap. " Good frend, for Jesu's sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare ; Blest be ye man yt spares these stones And curst be he yt moves my bones."

j6i8. Ben Jonson to Drummond : "Shakspere wanted art and sometimes sense ; for, in one of his plays, he brought in a number of men saying they had been shipwrecked in Bohemia, where is no sea by near a hundred miles."

1 62 1 . Burton's Atiatotfiy of Melatulwly alludes to Venus and Ado fiis, Ro?iieo and Julkt, Benedict and Betteris.

1623. We now come to the credentials presented by the introduction to the first folio.

To THE Reader.

This figure that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut.

Wherein the graver had a strife With Nature to outdo the life.

Ah, could he but have drawne his wit

The BiUon-S/iakspere Question. 87

As well in t.rasse as he hath hit His face ; the print would then surpass

All that was ever wri*. in brasse ; But since he cannot, reader, looke

Not on his picture but his book.

(Prefixed to Drocshout's portrait of Shakspere.)

B. T.

Dedication, To the most noble and Incomparable paire of Brethren, William Earl of Pembroke, &c. and Philip Earl of Montgomery, <S:c. '• Right Honourable — Vvhilst we studie to be thankful in one particular for the many favours we have received from your lordships, we are falne upon the ill fortune, to mingle two the most diverse things that can be, feare and rashnesse ; rashnesse in the enterprize and feare of the successe. For, when we valew the places your Highnesses sustaine, we cannot but know their dignity greater than to descend to the reading of these trifles ; and, while we name them trifles, we have deprived ourselves of the defence of our Dedication. But, since your lordships have been pleased to consider these trifles something heretofore, and have prosecuted both them and their author living with so much favour, we hope that (they out-living him and he not having the same fate, common with some, to be executor to his owne writings) you will use the like indulgence toward them, you have done unto their parent. There is a great difference whether any booke choose his patrones or find them. This hath done both. For so much were your Lordship's likings of the severall parts when they were acted, as before they were published, the volume asked to

be yours We have collected them and done

an oflice to the dead to procure his orphanes guardians ; without ambition either of self-profit or fame, only to keep the memory of so worlliy a friend and fellowe alive, as was our Shakspere, by humble offer of his playes, to your most noble patronage. . . . Wemost humbly consecrate to your Highnesses these reraames of your servant Shakespeare ; that

88 TJic Bocon-Shal:spcre Question.

what delight is in them may be ever your lord- ships', the reputation his, and the faults ours, if any be committed by a payre so careful to show their gratitude both to the living and the dead as is your lordships most bounden,

John Hemingk.

Henry Condell.

To THE Great Variety of Reader.

From the most able to him that can but spelL There you are numbered. We had rather you were weighed. Especially when the fate of all bookes depends upon your capacities, and not of your heads alone but of your purses. Well ! it is now publique, and you will stand for your privileges wee know, to read and censure. Do so, but buy it first. That doth best commend a book, the stationer sayes. Then, how odde soever your braines be, or your wisedomes, make your license the same, and spare not. . . Whatever you do, buy. Censure will not drive a trade or make the Jacke go. And though you be a magistrate of wit, and sit on the stage at Black Friars, or the Cock Pit, to arraigne plays daily, know these playes have had their trial already, and stood out all appeales and do now come forth quitted rather by a decree of Court than any purchased letters of recom- mendation.

It had been a thing, we confesse, worthy to have been wished that the author himself had lived to have set forth and overseen his owne writings, but since it hath been ordained otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his friends the office of their care and paine, to have collected and published them, and so to have published them, as where (before) you were abused with diverse stolen and surrep- titious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealths of injurious impostors, that exposed them ; even those are now offered to your view cured, and perfect of their limbes ; and

The Bacon-Shaksperc Question. 89

all the rest as he conceived them. Who, as he was a happy imitator of nature, lie was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together, and what he thought he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our province, who onely gather his works and give them you, to praise him. It is yours that reade him. And there we hope, to your divers capacities, you will find enough, both to draw and hold you \ for his wit can no more lie hid, than it could be lost. Read him theretore again and again ; and then, if you do not like him, you are in some manifest danger, not to understand him.

John Hemtnge. Henry Condell.

To the memorie of M. W. Shakspere.

Wee wondred (Shakspere) that thou wentst so sooiie,

From the world's stage to the grave's tyring-roome.

Wee thought thee dead, but this thy printed worth

Tels thy spectators that thou went'st but forth,

To enter with applause. An actor's art

Can dye and live, to acte a second part

Thai's but an exit of mortalitie,

This, a re-entrance to a Plaudite. J. M.

1623. The verses before the book by W. Basse, On Mr. William Shakspere : —

" Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh To learned Beaumont, and rare Beaumont ly A little nearer Chaucer to make roome For Shakspere, in your threefold, fourfold tomb. To lodge all four in one bed make a shift Until Domesday, for hardly will a fifte Betwixt this day and that by fate be slaine For whom the curtains shall be drawn again. But if l*recedency in death doe barre, A fourth place in your sacred sepulcher In this uncarved marble of thy own, Sleep, brave Tragedian, Shakspere sleep alone. Thy unmolested rest, unshared cave Possesse as Lord, not tenant, to thy grave, That unto others it may counted be Honour hereafter to be laid by thee."

9° The Bacoji-Shakspcre Qimiioti.

1623. Hugh Holland upon the lines and life of the famous scenic poet Master William Shakspere.

"Those hands, which you so clapt, go now and wring You Britaine's brave ; for done are Shakspere's day-. His days are done that made the dainty playes, WTiich make the globe of Heaven and Earth to ring. Dried is that vein, dried is tlie Thespian Spring, Turned ail to teares, and Phoebus clouds his rays. That corps, that coffin now bestick with bays, Which crowned him Poet first, then Poet's King. If Tragedies might any Prologue have All those he made, would scarce make one to this, Where fame, now that he gone is to the grave, (Death's public tyring-house) the Nuncius is. For though his line of life went soone about The life yet of his lines shall never out."

1623. The magnificent eulogy of Jonson is almost a household word, so to speak, in our literature.

" Ben Jonson. To the memory of my beloved ; the Author, Mr. William Shakspere : —

To draw no envy (Shakspere) on thy name,

Am I thus ample to thy Booke and Fame ;

While I confess thy writings to be such

As neither man nor muse can praise too much.

'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. . .

I therefore will begin. Soule of the Age !

The applause ! delight ! the wonder of our stage ;

My Shakspere, rise ! I will not lodge thee by

Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye

A little further to make thee a roome ;

Thou art a monument, without a tombe,

And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live,

And we have wits to read, and praise to give. . .

And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greeke

Yrom thence to honour thee, I would not seeke

For names ; but call for thundering yEschylus,

Euripides, and Sophocles to us ;

Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead

To life again, to hear thy buskin tread,

And shake a stage ; or, when thy socks were on,

Leave thee alone for the comparison

Of all that insolent Greece, or haughty Rome

Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.

Triumph, my Britaine, thou hast one to shesve

To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. (ji

He was not for an age, but for all time. Nature herselfe was proud of his designes, And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines Which were so richly spun, and woven to fit As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit. Yet must 1 not give nature all ; thy art. My gentle Shakspere, must enjoy a part ; For, though the poet's matter nature be, His art doth give the fashion, and that he Who casts to write a living line must sweat, (Such as thine are) and strike the seconde heat Upon the mule's anvil, turn the same (And himself with it) that he thinks to frame, Or for the laurel he may gain a scorne, For a good poet's made, as well as born ; And such wert thou.

Look how the Father's face Lives in his issue, even so the race ; Of Shakspere's mind and manners brightly shines In his wellturned and true-tiled lines. S*eet Swan of Avon ! what a sight it were To see thee in our vvaters yet appeare, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames That so did lake Eliza and our James ! But stay, 1 see thee in the hemisphere Advanced, and made a constellation there ! Shine forth thou star of pocts, and with rage Or influence chide or cheere the drooping stage, Which, since thy flight fro hence hath mourned like night, And despairs day, but for thy volumes light.

— Ben Jo7uoti.

Yet Drummond says of Jonson, " He is a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of oihers." * Therefore his praise is stronger than that of others.

* John Davies, of Hereford, says to Ben Jonson, in his Scourge of Folly, 1 6 U : —

" Thou art sounde in body ; hut some say, thy soule Envy doth ulcer ; yet corrupted hearts Such censurers must have."

Dryden concurred with Rowe in thinking these verges sparing and invidious, while Boswell thought them sincere because so appropriate. Supported by the passage in Timber, I think there is no doubt he felt and meant all he said.

92 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

1623. Leonard Digges writes a poem to the memory of the deceased author, Maister William Shakspere : —

Shakspere, at length thy pious fellows give

The world thy works ; thy workes by which outlive

Thy tomb, thy name must, when that stone is rent

And time dissolves thy Stratford momument,

Here we alive shall view thee still. This Booke,

When Brasse and Marble fade, shall make thee looke,

Fresh to all ages ; when Posteritie

Shall loathe what's new, think all is prodegie

That is not Shakspere's ; every line, each verse

Here shall revive, redeeme thee from thy Herse.

Nor fire, nor cankering age, as Naso said

Of his, thy wit-fraught book shall once invade,

Nor shall I e'er believe, or thinke thee dead

(Though mist) untill our Bankroul stage be sped

(Impossible) with some new strain to out-do

Passions of Juliet and her Romeo ;

(Jr till I heare a scene more nobly take

Than when thy half-sword parleying Romans spake.

Till these, till any of thy volumes' rest,

Shall with more fire, more feeling be exprest,

Be sure, our Shakspere, thou canst never dye.

But crowned with laurel, live eternally. L. Digs^es.

This portion of the Anti-Baconian evidence is a singularly valuable and representative series of affidavits, so to speak, from men who knew Shakspere in many relations. Condell was pro- bably a native of Stratford or the immediate vicinity, where a family of this not very common name remains.

1623. The Office-book of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels to James I., Charles I., and Charles H, Variorum, vol. HI, 1623-36. To the Duchess of Richmond, in the King's absence, was given the Winter s Tale, by the K. Company the J 8th Jan., 1623. At Whitehall.

Upon New Year's night, the Prince only being there, the first part of Sir John Fal staff, by the King's Company. At Whitehall, 1624.

For the King's players. An olde playe, called Winter's Tale, formerly allowed of Sir George Bucke, and likewise by mee, on Mr. Hemmings his

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 93

worde that there was nothing profane, added or reformed, though the allowed booke was missinge ; and therefore I returned it without a fee, this 19th August, 1623.

Received from Mr. Hemmings in their company's name, to forbid the playing of Shakspere's plays to the Red Bull Company, this nth of April, 1627. £S OS. od.

On Saturday, the 17th of November (mistake for 1 6th), being the Queen's Birthday, Kicharde the Thirde was acted by the K. players at St. James, when the King and Queene were present, it being the first play the Queene sawe since her M"^'^ delivery of the Duke of York, 1633.

On Tuesday night, at Saint James, the 26th of November, 1633, was acted before the King and Queene, the lainiiige of the Shrezc. I.ikt.

On Wednesday niglit the first of January, 1633, Cyynbelyne was acted at Court by the King's players. Well likt of the King.

The White?-'' s Tale was acted on Thursday night at Court, the i6th January, 1633, by the K. players and likt.

/ulius Cccsar at St. James, the 31st January, 1636. This, of course, only proves that Shakspere wrote plays. Those mentioned we know, from other sources, to be his.

1625. Richard James to Sir Henry Bourchier : —

" A young gentle Lady of your acquaintance, having read ye works of Shakspere, made me this question. How Sir John Falstaffe or Fastolf, as he is written in ye Statute Book of Maudlin College in Oxford, where every day that society were bound to make memorie of his soule, could be dead in ye time of Harrie ye fifte, and again live in ye time of Harrie ye Sixt, to be banished for cowardice." — D. Ingleby's Centurie of Praysc.

1625. Ben Jonson's Timber, or Discoveries.

De Shakspeare Nostrat. — Augustus in Hat.

" I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspere, that in his writing

94 The Bacon-S/iakspere Question.

(whatsoever he penned), he never blotted out a hne. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand — which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted ; 1 to justify mine own candour : for I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was (indeed) honest, and of an open and free nature ; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions ; wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped. ' Snfflamin- andus erat,^ as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power, would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things, could not escape laughter; as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, * Csesar, thou dost me wrong," he replied, ' Caesar did never wrong but with just cause,' and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than pardoned." This conclusively proves that Jonson loved " the man," and not the works only, and that the man had extraordinary conversa- tional powers. It is but a step to the writing of thoughts, which here is also proved ; so that, even had Bacon written the plays, Shakspere is shown capable of having done so himself.

1627. Drayton's Epistle to Henry Reynolds : —

" Shakspere, thou had'st as smooth a comicke vaine, Fitting the socks, and in thy natural braine, As strong conception and as clear a rage As anyone that trafficked with the stage."

1630. Abraham Cowley's Poetical Revenge : —

" May hec, Bee by his father in his study tooke, At Shakspere's plays instead of the Lord Cooke."

The Bacon- SJiakspere Quesiioti. 95

1630. John Taylor (the Water-Poet), in his Travels in Bohemia, alludes to Shakspere's seaports there.

1630. The Praise of Hemp Seed. Works III. : —

Spenser and Shakspere did in art excel Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniel.

(John Taylor, the IVater-Poet. )

1630. Archy's Ba7u/i(e/ 0/ /esfs (first printed in 1630) has a story of one travelling through Stratford, " a town most remarkable for the birth of famous William Shakspere."

1630. John Milton's splendid Epitaph, thougli printed later in the editions of 1632 and 1640, was said to have been written in this year. Coming from a Puritan, printed in the lime of Puritan ascendency, it is very powerful in his argument.

•' An Epitaph on the admirable dramatic poet,, William Shakspere : —

What needs my Shakspere, for his honoured bones.

The labour of an age in piled stones?

Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid

Under a star y-pointing pyramid ?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name.

Thou, in our wonder and astonishment.

Hast built thy.sell a live lung monument.

For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,

Thy easy numbers llow ; and that each lieart

Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book,

Those Delphic lines with deep impression look.

Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,

Dost make us marble with too much conceiving.

And so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie.

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die."

(/ohn Milton.)

1632. Milton also alludes to Shakspere in EAlkgro.

"Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned socks be on ; Or sweetest Shakspere, Fancy's child, -" Warble his native wood-notes wild."

g6 The Bixcon-Shakspere Question.

1632. Thomas Randolph alludes to some of the plays.

1632. " Read Jonson, Shakspere, Beaumont, Fletcher, or Thy neat limned pieces, skilful Massinger." (Sir Aston Cokaine, lines prefixed to Massinger.)

1632. The 2nd folio edition repeats the portraits and lines by Jonson. It is printed by Thomas Cotes for Robert Allot ; but the address to Lords Pembroke and Montgomery remain.

Then comes the lines " Upon the effigies of my worthy friend, the author, Master William Shakspere : —

Spectator, this life's shadow is to see. The truer image of a livelier he. Turn reader ; but observe his comic vaine, Laugh and proceed next to a tragic strain. Then weep, so when thou find'st two contraries, Two different passions from thy rapt soul rise. . Say (who alone effect such wonders could)

Rare Shakspere to the life thou dost beholde."

1633. On worthy Master Shakspere and his poems : —

" A mind reflecting ages past, whose cleere And equal surface can make things appeare Distant a thousand years, and represent Them in their lively colours just extent. . . In that deepe duskie dungeon to discerne A Royal Ghost from Churls ; by art to learne The physiognomic of shades and give Them suddaiiie birth, wondering how oft they live. What story coldly tells, what poets faine At secondhand, and picture without braine. Senseless and soullesse showes. To give a stage (Ample and true with life) voyce, action, age ; To raise our ancient sovereigns from their hearse ; Make kings his subjects by exchanging verse. . . This and much more, which cannot be exprest But by himselfe, his tongue, and his owne brest, Was .Shakespeare's freehold, which his cuning braine ImjDroved by favour of the nine-fold traine. The buskined Muse, the Comick Queen, the grand And louder tone of Clio : nimble hand, And nimbler foote of the melodious paire,

The Baco7i-S}iakspere Question. 97

The silver-voiced lady, the most faire

Calliope, whose speaking silence daunts,

And she whose prayse the heavenly body chants.

These joynlly woo'd him, envying one another

(Obeyed by all as spouse but loved as brother),

And wrought a curious robe of sable grave,

Fresh greene, and pleasant yellow, red most brave,

And constant blew, rich purple, guiltless white,

The lowly russet, and the scarlet bright,

Brancht and embroidered like the painted spring ;

Each leaf matched with a flower, and each string

Of golden wire, each line of silke : there run

Italian workes, whose thread the sisters spun ;

And there did sing, or seem to sing, the choyse

Birdes of a forrayn note and curious voyce. . .

Now when they could no longer him enjoy

In mortall garments peat, death may destroy,

They say, his body, but his verse shall live.

And more than nature takes our hands shall give.

In a lesse volume but more strongly bound,

Shakespeare shall breathe and speake, in laurel crowned

Which never fades. Fed with Ambrosian meate.

In a well-lined vesture rich and neate.

So with this robe they clothe him, bid him weare it,

For time shall never staine nor envy teare it."

— /. M. S.

1633. John Hales of Eton, " In a conversation between Sir John Stickhng, Sir Wilham Davenant Endymion Porter, Mr. Hales of Eaton, and Ben [onson, Sir John Suckling, who was a professed admirer of Shakspere, had undertaken his defence against Ben Jonson with some warmth; Mr. Hales, who had sat still some time hearing Ben frequently reproaching him with the want of learning and Ignorance of the Antients, told him at last ' that, if Mr. Shakspere had not read the Antients, he had likewise not stolen anything from them (a fault that the other made no conscience of), and that if he would produce any one Topick finely treated by any of them, he would undertake to show sotnething upon the same subject, at least as well written, by Shakspere.'" — Roivc's Life.

1633. A marginal note to William Prynne's His- triowasiix refers to Shakspere's plays as printed on finer paper and more in demand than the Bible.

98 The Bacon- Shakspe re Question.

" Some play-bookes since I first undertook this sub ject are grown from quarto into folio ; which yet bear so p;ood a price and sale, that I cannot but with grief relate it, they are now new printed in far better pnper than most octavo or quarto Bibles." .... " Note, Shakspere's plays are printed in the best crown paper, far better than most Bibles. Above 40,000 play-books have been printed and vented within these two years." — To the Christian Reader.

Habington glances at this in his Castara, 1634.

1634. William Habington to a friend inviting him to a meeting upon promise :

" May you drinke beare, or that adulterate wine, Which makes the zeale of Amf,terdam divine, If you make breache of promise. T have now So rich a sacke, that even your selfe will bow T' adore my Genius. Of this wine should Prynne Drinke but a plenteous glasse, he would beginne A health to Shakspere's ghost." Castara.

1635. T. Hey wood's Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels, alluding to the writers and actors being called by their Christian names, specifies " the en- chanting quill of mellifluous Shakspere."

" Our moderne poets to that passe are driven, Those names arc curtailed that they first had given. . . . Mel'iflunus Shakspere, whose enchanting quill Commanded mirth and passion, was but Witt."

1636. Sir John Suckling's Fraginenta Aurea.

" The sweat of learned Jonson's brain And gentle Shakspere's easier strain."

1636. Sir John Suckling's Prologue to the Goblins.

" When Shakspere, Beaumont, Fletcher ruled the stage, There scarce were ten good pallats in the age. More curious cooks than guests ; for men would eat Most heartily of any kind of meat."

1636. Sir John Suckling's Letters : " We are at length arrived at that river, about the uneven running of which my friend Mr. William Shakspere

The Bacon-Shaksperc Qiiesilon. 99

makes Henry Hotspur quarrel so highly with his fellow-rebels."

Other minor tributes appear in this year.

1637. " Who without Latine helpes had been as rare

As Beaumont, Fletcher, or as Shakspere were."

(Jasper Mayne, Jonsonuis V'irbiiis.)

1637. "Yet Shakspere, Beaumont, Jonson, these three shall Make up the Gem in the point verticall."

(Owen Feltham, _/(7;/.r^«/«^ Virbtits.)

1637. " Shakspere may make grief merry ; Beaumont's stile Ravish, and melt anger into a smile."

(Richard West, yi^wjow/wi Jlrhius.)

1637. " That Latine hee reduced and could command

That which your Shakspere scarce could understand." (H. Ramsey, yofisofiius Virbins.)

1637. Samuel Holland's Don Zara del Fogo (not printed till 1656) mentions that "Shakspere and others [were] willing to water their bays with their blood rather than part with their proper right."

1638. P^pitaph on Jonson, Jasper Mayne : —

" Though the priest had translated for that time The Liturgy, and buried thee in rime. So that in meter we had heard it said, Poetique dust is to poetique laid ;

And though that dust being Shakspere's thou mightst have Not his roome, but the I'oet for thy grave. . . . Who without Latine helps hadst been as rare As Beaumont, Fletcher, or as Shakspere were ; And, like them, from thy native stock couldst say, Poets and kings are not born every day."

1638. Davenant's Ode: "In remembrance of Master William Shakspere."

1638. James Mervyn prefixed to Shirley's Royal Master—

" That limbus I could have believed thy brain Where Beaumont, Fletcher, Shakspere, and a traine Of glorious poets in their active heate Move in that orbe as in their former scale. Fach casting in his dose, Beaumont his weight, Shakspere liLs mirth, and Fletcher his conceit."

loo The Biicon Shakspe7-e Question.

164c. Thomas Bancroft to Shakspere : —

" Thy muse's suc;ared dainties seem to us Like the famed apples of old Tantahis ; For we (a(hiiiring) see and hear thy straincs, But none 1 see or heare those sweets attaines. . . Thou hast so used thy pen or fshooke tliy sficare), Tliat poets startle, nor thy wit come neere."

1640. The i2mo. edition of the poems of Shak- spere gives new testimonials : —

To the Reader, — I here presume under favour to present to your view some excellent and sweetely composed poems of Master William Shakspere, which in themselves appeare of the same purity, the Authour himselfe then living avouched; they had not the fortune by reason of their Infancie in his death, to have the due acomodation of propor- tionable glory with the rest of his ever living works, yet the lines of themselves will afford you a more authentick approbation than my assurance any way can, to invite your allowance, in your perusall you shall finde them seren, cleere and elegandy plaine. such gentle straines as shall recreate, and not per- plexe your braine, no intricate or cloudy stuff to puzzell your intellect, but perfect eloquence, such as will raise your admiration to his praise : this assurance I know will not differ from your acknow- ledgment. And certain I am my opinion will be seconded by the sufficiency of these ensuing lines. I have been somewhat solicitous to bring this forth to the perfect view of all men, and in so doing, glad to be serviceable for the continuance of glory to the deserved Author in these his poems.

John Bensok.

Of Mr. William Shakspere.

What, lofty Shakspere, art again revived? And virbius-like now shows't thyself twice-lived 'Tis love that thus to thee is showne The labours his, the glory still thine owne These learned poems amongst thine after-birth That makes thy name immortall on the earth,

The Bacon- Shakspere Question. lOi

Will make the learned still admire to see The muses' gifts so full, infused on thee. Let carping Momus barke, and bite his fill, And ignorant Davus slight thy learned skill.* Yet those who know the worth of thy desert, And with true judgment can discern thy art, "Will be admirers of thy high-tuned straine, Amongst whose number let me still remain.

John Warren.

Upon Master William Shakspere.

Poets are borne not made, when I would prove

This truth, the glad rememberance I must love

Of never dying Shakspere who alone

Is argument enough to prove that one.

First that he was a poet none could doubt,

That heard the applause of what he sees set out

Imprimed ; where thou hast (I will not say)

Reader, his workes for to contrive a play ;

(To him 'twas none) the patterne of all wit

Art without art unparalleled as yet.

Next Nature onely hclpt him, for looke thorovv

This whole booke thou shalt finde he doth not borowe.

One phrase from Greekes nor Latines imitate,

Nor once from vulgar languages translate,

Nor plagiari-like from others gleane,

Nor begges he from each witty friend a scene

To piece his Acts with ; all that he doth write

Is pure his owne, plot, language, exquisite.

Then vanish upstart Writers to each stage,

You needy Poetasters of this age. . . .

I doe not wonder when you offer at

Black-Friers, that you suffer, 'tis the fate

Of richer veines, prime judgments that have fared

The worse with this deceased man compared.

So have I scene, when Caesar would appeare

And on the stage at half-sword parley were

Brutus and Cassius ; oh, how the audience

Were ravished, with what wonder they went thence,

When some new day they would not brook a line

Of tedius, though well-laboured Catiline.

Sejanus too, was irksome, they prized more

Honest lago or the jealous Moore.

And though the Fox and subtle Alchemist

Long intermitted, could not quite be mist,

Though these have shamed all Ancients, and might raise

Their authours' merit with a crown of Bayes.

* There were some carpers even in those days.

8

102 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

Yet these sometimes, even at a friend's desire,

Acted, have scarce defrayed the sea-cole fire,

And doore-keepers ; when let but Falstaffe come,

Hal, Poines, the rest, you scarce shall have a roome.

All is so pestered ; let but Beatrice

And Benedicke be scene ; loe, in a trice

The cockpit, galleries, boxes, all are full

To heare Malvoglio, that cross-gartered gull,

Briefe, there is nothing in his wit-fraught booke,

\Vhose sound we would not heare, or whose worth looke

Like old coyndgold, whose lines in every page

Shall passe true currant to succeeding age,

Leonard Digges.

After the elegies by J. M. and W. B., reprinted from the 1632 edition, comes "An Elegie on the Death of that famous Writer and Actor, Mr. WiUiam Shakspere." —

' • • Let learned Johnson sing a dirge for thee,

And fill our Orbe with mournful harmony.

But we neede no remembrancer, thy fame

Shall still accompany thy honoured name

To all posterity, and make us be

Sensible of what we lost in losing thee.

Being the Age's wonder, whose smooth rhimes

Did more reforme than lash the looser times.

Nature herselfe did her own selfe admire,

As oft as thou wert pleased to attire

Her in her native lusture and confesse

Thy dressing was her chiefest comlinesse.

How can we then forget thee, when the age.

Her chiefest tutor, and the widdow'd stage.

Her onely favourite in thee hath lost ;

And Nature's selfe, what she did bragge of most.

Sleep then, rich Soule of numbers, whilst poor we,

Enjoy the profits of thy legacie.

And think it happinesse enough we have

So much of thee redeemed from the grave

As may suffice to enlighten future times,

With the bright lustre of thy matchless rhimes.

Anon.

To Mr. William Shakspere : —

" Shakespeare, we must be silent in thy praise, 'Cause our encomiums will but blast thy bays, Which envy could not, that thou didst so well. Let thine own histories prove a chronicle. ''

Anon

The Bacon-Shakspen Question. 103

1641. A complaint of poor players out of occupation because of the plague — and doubtless, also, Puritan ascendancy.

1642. James Shirley, Prologue to The Sisters.

" To Shakspere comes, whose mirth did once beguile, Dull hours, and buskined, made even sorrow smile."

1643. Sir Richard Baker's Chronicle says : —

" For writers of Plays, and such as had been Players themselves, William Shakspere and Benjamin Jonson have specially left their names recomirrended to posteritie."

1644. Mercurius Britamiicus, No. 20, gives an account of the misfortunes befalling a man who edited a Sunday newspaper : " Aulicus " is "a wofuU spectacle and object of dulnesse, and tribulation, not to be recovered by the Protestant or Catholique liquor, either ale or strong beer, or sack or claret, or hippocras, or muscadine, or rosalpis, which has been reputed formerly by his grandfather Ben Jonson, and his uncle, Shakspere ; and his cowzen Germains Beaumont and Fletcher, the onely blossoms for the brain, the restoratives for the wit, the bathing for the nine muses ; but none of these are nov^^ able either to wann him into a quibble, or to inflame him into a sparkle of inven- tion, and all this because he hath prophaned the Sabbath by his pen."

1644-5. '^^^^ great Assises holden in Parnassus by Apollo and his Assessours, at which sessions are arraigned the newspapers of the time.

In this one point 1 specially notice the peculiar manner the Baconians have of disobeying their great master, to seek after *' negative instances " of any opinion one may hold. They bring forward the title page to prove that Bacon was set high above Shakspere, and only next Apollo, and therefore the author of the plays ; and they ivith- hold the contents.

Lord Verulam is Chancellor, as fitted his office,

164 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

and placed among the learned men, who have also benefited by the printer's art. Shakspere is placed among the jurors, as z. poet among poets. Joseph Scaliger, the Censor, tells Apollo, considering typography : —

'* This instrument of Art is now possest By some who have in Art no interest."

Apollo sends for Torquato Tasso with troops to bring in all that had defiled the Press with scurrilous pamphlets, to

" Where Phoebus on his high tribunall sate, With his assessours in triumphant state, Sage Verulam, sublimed for science great, As Chancellor, next him had the first seat."

The others were arranged in order of considera- tion of their learning, and the amount of detraction they had suffered at the hands of the newspapers. Jonson was made the keeper or jailor. He first brought fortli " Mercurius Britannicus." Then the jury was impanelled, twelve good men : —

*' Hee who was called first in all the list, George Withers hight, entitled satyrist ; Then Gary, May, and Davenant were called forth, Renowned poets all and men of worth, If wit may passe for worth. Then Sylvester, Sands, Drayton, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Shakespeare and Heywood, poets good and free ; Dramatic writers all but the first three. These were empanelled all, and, being sworne, A just and perfect verdict to returne. . . Then Edmund Spenser, Gierke of the Assize, Read the endictment loud, which did comprise Matters of scandall and contempt extreme. Done 'gainst the Dignity and Diademe Of great Apollo, and that legal course Which throughout all Parnassus was in force."

The prisoner, Mercurius Britannicus, pleads not guilty, and requests the jurors' names to be read over again, excepting to George Withers on the plea that he himself was " a cruel satyrist." He

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 105

next tried to set aside two other able jurors, on the plea they were translators — ■

" Deserving Sands and gentle Sylvester," But Apollo judges that translators can be poets. The next culprit, Meicurius Aulicus, is blamed for bringing in the exploded doctrine of the Florentine MacchiaveUi. He objects to the juror May, because, though a poet, he " cannot trust his truth." Another prisoner objects to other jurors, but Apollo quenches him —

" He should be tried By twelve who were sufficient men and fit, Both for integrity and pregnant wit."

Bribery is attempted, but Apollo scorns it, and puts the briber in prison under " Honest Ben." Another prisoner objects to to Gary for a " luxurious pen " " with foule conceits." The last prisoner objected —

" By Ilistrionicke Poets to be tryed, 'Gainst whom he thus mahciously enveighed. Shakspere's a mimicke, Massinger a sot, I ley wood for Aganippe takes a plot. Beaumont and Fletcher make one poet ; they Single dare not adventure on a play. . . . Thus spake the prisoner, then among the crowd Plautus and Terence 'gan to mutter loud, And old Menander was but ill-apayd, While Aristophanes his wrath bewrayed With words opprobrius, for it galled him shrewdly To see dramatic poets taxed so lewdly."

Another prisoner, Spye, objects to Drayton. Apollo is indignant.

" How boldly hath this proud traducing Spye And his comrades our honest poets checkt, Who from the best have ever found respect."

There is nothing for Bacon — all for Shakspere here.

1646. S. Shepherd, in his Tlie Times displayed in Six Sestiads, says : —

" See him whose tragic scean Euripides Doth equal, and with Sophocles we may Compare great Shakspere."

ic6 The Bacon-Shaksptre Que it ion.

1647. " '-ihz.'^^yat to thee was dall, whose best wit lies I' the Lady's question and the Fool's replies, Old fashioned wit, which walked from town to town. William Cartwright on Fletcher. "

1647. " The flowing compositions of the then-expired Sweet Swan of Avon — Shakspere."

(James Shirley, Dedicatory EputU oj Ten Players,

lieaumont & Fletcher's works ) 1647. " When Jon-Vjn, Shakspere, and thyself did sit And swayed in the triumvirate of wit. Yet what from Jonson's oyle and sweat did flow. Or what more easy nature did bestow (m Shakspere's gentler muse, in thee full-grownc, Their graces doth appeare."

(Sir John Denham on Fletcher.)

Others also connect these names.

1649. Milton in Eikonoklastes says that "Shak- spere was the closet companion of Charles ; " as also says Cooke, Appeal to Rational Mirth.

1649. The epitaph upon his daughter, Mrs. .Susanna Hall, shows the estimation of his character : —

" Here lyeth ye Ujdy of Savanna, wife to John Hall, Gent., ye daughter of William Shakspere, Gent. She deceased ye llth of July, A,D. 1649, aged 66.

" Witty above her sexe, but that's rot all— WLse to salvation was goo<-l Mistress Hall. Something of Shakspere was in that, but this Wholy of f lim with whom she's now in blisse. Then, passenger, hast ne'ere a teare To weepe with her, that wept with all ? That wept, yet set herself to chere Them up with comfort's o-jrdiall. Her love shall live, her merc7 spread \^Tien ihou hast ne'er a tear to shed."

1650. Henry Vaughan testifies to George Herbert's Poems having rendered Shakspere less popular. It was the Puritan time.

165 1. S, Sheppard, in his Epigrams, includes one on Shakspere.

" I. Sacred Spirit, while thy lyre

Echoed o'er the Arcadian plains Even Apollo did admire Orpheus wondered at thy strains.

The Bacon- Shakspere Question. 107

3. Who wrote his lines with a sunbeame,

More durable than Time or Fate ; Others boldly do blaspheme

Like those who seem to preach, but prate.

4. Thou wert truly priest-elect,

Chosen darling to the nine, Such a trophy to erect

By thy wit and skill divine.

5. That were all their other glories

(Thine excepted) torn away, By thine admirable stories

Their garments ever shall be gay.

6. Where thy honoured bones do lie,

As Statins once to Maro's urn, Thither every year will I

Slowly tread and sadly turn."

1652. A Hermeticall Banquet, drest by a Spagiri- call Cooke : —

"Poeta is her minion, to whom she (Eloquentia) resigns the whole government of her family. Ovid she makes Major Domo ; Homer, because a merry Greek, Master of the Wine- cellars ; Shakspere, Butler ; Ben Jonson, Clerk of the Kitchen; Ir'enner, his Turnspit ; and Taylor, his scvdlion."

1653. Sir Richard Baker's Chronicles : —

" Richard Burbage and Edward AUeyne — two such actors as no age must ever look to see the like. . . . For writers of plays, and such as had been players themselves, William Shakspere and Benjamin Jonson have specially left their names recommended to posterity."

1653. Sir Aston Cokaine, Prelude to Broioi's Plays.

" Shakspere (more rich in humours) entertaine The crowded Theatres with his happy vaine."

1656. Samuel Holland, Wit and Fancy in a Maze : —

" Behold Shakspere and Fletcher appeared (bringing with them a strong party) as if they meant to water the bays with bloud, rather than part with their proper right, which indeed Apollo and the Muses had (with much justice) conferred upon them, so that now there is likely to be a trouble in Triplex. . . . Shakspere and Fletcher, surrounded with their life-guard — viz., Gosse, Massinger, Decker, Webster, Suckling, Cartwright, Carew."

loS The Bacon SJiahpere Question.

1658. In verses to Mr. Clement Fisher, of Wincot, accompanying his Small Poems, Sir Aston Cokaine says : —

" Shakspere, your Wincot Ale hath much renowned,*. That fox'd a beggar so (by cliance was founde Sleephig), that there needed not many a word To make him to believe he was a Lord ; But you affirm (and in it seem most eager) 'Twill make a Lord as drunk as any beggar. Bid Norton brew such Ale as Shakspere fancies Did put Kit Sly into such Lordly trances, And let us meet there (for a fit of Gladnesse), And drink ourselves merry in sober sadness."

Also, " Now, Stratford-upon-Avon, we would choose Thy gentle and ingenuous Shakspere Muse. . . . Our Warwickshire the heart of England is. As you most evidently have proved by this."

1660. Restoration.

1660. {Circa.) Richard Flecknoe writes : — " For playes, Shakspere was one of the first who inverted

the Dramatic Stile, from dull History to quick Comedy. . . .

upon whom Jonson refined." (Essays on the English Stage.)

1660. Sir Richard Baker's Chronicles cj England: —

" Poetry was never more resplendent, nor more graced ; wherein Jonson, Silvester, Shakspere, iS:c., not only excelled their own countrymen, but the whole world beside."

166 1. An Antidote against Melancholy, made up in Pi lies cotnpounded of M^itty Ballads, Jovial Songs, and Merry Catches. At p. 72 of this collection of ballads, we have a catch : —

" Wilt thou be fatt, I'll tell thee hovv

Thou shalt quickly do the feat, And that so plump a thing as thou

Was never yet made up of meat. Drink off thy Sack ! 'twas only that Made Bacchus and Jack Falstaffe fat."

1662. Fuller's JF^^/Y/wV^, under Warwickshire, has: _" William Shakspere was born at Stratford on Avon in

this county ; in whom three eminent poets may seem to be confounded, i. Martial, in the warlike sound of his sur- name (whence some conjecture him of a military extraction.) Hastivibrans or Shakspeare. 2. Ovid, the most natural and

* Alluding to the Induction to the Tatnhig of the Shrew.

The Bacon- Shakspere Question. 109

witty of all poets. 3. Plautus, who was an exact comedian, yet never any scholar, as our Shakspeare (if alive) would confess himself. Add to all these, that though his genius generally was jocular, and inclining him to festivity, yet he could, when so disposed, be solemn and serious, as appears by his tragedies; so that Heraclitus himself (I mean if secret and unseen) might afford to smile at his comedies, they were so merry ; and Democritus scarce forbear to sigli at his tragedies, they were so mournful. He was an eminent instance of the truth of that rule, Poela non fit sed nascitnr. [One is not made, but born a poet.] Indeed, his learning was very little. . . . Nature itself was all the art which was used upon him. Many were the wit combats betvvixc him and Ben Jonson, which two I beheld like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learn- ing, solid but slow in his performances ; Shakspere, like the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention."*

To Mr. Davenport, Sheppard says : — " Thou rival'st Shakspere, though thy glory's less."

1648 to 1679. Diary of Rev. J. Ward, Vicar of Stratford : " Shakspere frequented the plays all his younger time, but in his elder days lived at Strat- ford, and supplied the stage with two plays every year."

While we survey such an extraordinary assem- blage of certificates, which speak of William Shakspere's clear and indefeasible title to the works, which have always been taken by the world to be his and his alone, we feel that the authenticity of no other poet could be attested by so many or so powerful allusions, within a period, through which he might have lived. It is a singular con- sensus of opinion on the part of intelligent and educated persons, many of whom were contem-

* " What things we have seen Done at the Mermaid. Heard words that have been So nimble and so full of subtle flame As if that every one from whom they came Had meant to put his whole soul in a jest."

Beaumont's lines on the Mermaid Tavern.

no The Bacon-Shakspere Qiiestion.

poraries, and to some of whom the poet was as perfectly well known as Tennyson or Swinbuine IS to the present age. The attestations are clear and definite. They all tell one story. There are a few other traditions regarding him, of the gossiping conglomerate style, that may or may not be true, but do not bear on the point.

The Traditional period begins after this — namely, with Aubrey in 1680.=^' Every one knows how easily he was imposed upon. To understand this, one may refer to the Ontlmes of the Life of Shakspere, by Mr. Halliwell-Phillips, for the history of the Davenant Scandal, and others. The critical period begun with Dryden, the elaborative period in our own century, the sceptical outburst in our own life- time. We have only dealt with facts and contem- porary witnesses.

We find that Warwickshire and Stratford were con- sidered honoured for being the birth-place of Shak-

* Most of the "traditions " arise from him, though several came into existence as late as 1748. Though John Aubrey had a good education, and intellectual tastes, he was cre- dulous and inexact to an extraordinary degree. Malone said he was a dupe to every gossip. Perhaps a list of his other works best give the qualities of his mind : —

I. Miscellanies ; Day-Fatality ; Local-Fatality ; Ostenta ; Omens ; Dreams ; Apparitions ; Voices ; Impulses ; Knock- ings ; Blows Invisible ; Prophecies ; Marvels ; Magic ; Transportation in the Air ; Visions in a Beril, or Glass ; Converse with Angels and Spirits ; Corps-Candles in Wales ; Oracles ; Exstacy ; Glances of Love ; Envy ; .Second-sighted Persons.

II. A Perambulation of the County of Surrey.

III. I. The Natural History of Wiltshire.

2. Architectonica Sacra.

3. An Apparatus for the Lives of our English and other Mathematical Writers.

4. An Interpretation of Villare Anglicanum.

5. The Life of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury (his friend).

6. An Idea of Education of Young Gentlemen.

7. Designatio de Easton Piers in Com. Wilts, per me (eheu) infortunatum J ohannem Aubrey, R.S. Socium.

The Bacoii-Sliakspere Qiteslion, iii

spere ; that he had come to town to seek his fortune, was handsome and gifted, welcomed and loved by the actors ; adored by the people, received by the nobles, and honoured by both sovereigns ; jealously spoken of only by Greene, whose opinion was worth nothing, and by Ben Jonson''' in the first instance, who nobly made up for it, d.wdi perhaps by the jealous author oi Ratsefs Ghost. At that time of savage attacks and gross raillery, no other word was ever said against Shakspere — whose life must have been open to the Argus-eyed scrutiny of many rivals. Beyond and above rancour or reply, he was called "gentle," "honey-tongued," "friendly," "silver-tongued," "noble," "rare," "having no rayling but a rayning wit." There would be no- thing peculiar in considering so dominant a per- sonality capable of writing poems, had he not been proved to have done so. His wit and conversation made him reig7i in his own circles ; his acting powers were great ; his literary powers unparalleled. Had this great cheat been per- petrated, Ben Jonson must have known. Upon what principle could we explain his panegyric to the beloved " departed sweet Swan of Avon," if applied to the " living Lord Keeper of York House, Strand ? " Had the Baconians demanded the honour for AfitJiony Bacon, it would not have been so utterly incongruous ; for he was dead, yet at the same time obviously a man whose life had not shown the fruits of wit possible to it. Had they demanded it for Raleigh ; for Beaumont, or Fletcher, or any one of the other drama-writers, there might have seemed some probability in it. An actor must have written the plays.

But reading has only increased my conviction, that, whoever wrote the plays, Bacon did not, and his editor, Spedding, thought the same.

There are no contemi)orary or early suggestions of Bacon's authorship. The first dreams of it have

* Appendix, Note 13.

1 1 2 The Bacon- Shakspen Question.

arisen in this century. Much has been said and ])roved, contested and disproved, regarding the authorship of the fourth Gospel. This attempt at disproving our fiftJi Gospel is another outcome of the same destructive creed, but, fortunately, the laws regarding the authenticity of testimony and credility of witnesses can be fully satisfied in this case, and the attack resisted. The Daily Telegraph committed a fallacy in using the question-begging epithet '"'•Dethroning Shakspere" ; without doubt, it was an attenpt to do so — success requires greater strength than that. The " attempt and not the deed confounds it." Some good comes out of all evil. The good for us in this discussion is, that it sends us back, from second-hand traditions and repeated errors, forgeries, misstatements and misconstructions, to read anew the real authors, and their real friends and foes, in the living reality of time and space contemporary with them. The more one reads of them, the less it seems necessary to answer the Baconian statements ; the answers seem so simple and self-evident.

The Bacoji-Shakspere Question.

.M.

Chapter V.

Thirty-two Reasons for Believing that Bacon Wrote Shakspere : and, Did Francis Bacon Write Shakspere ? — By Mrs. Potts.

These are the most reasonable of the expositions of the Baconian theory, though of course I disagree with most of its statements, and with all its conclusions. Nevertheless, they might have had some validity and have been considered gravely, if the plays had really come down to us anonymously, and not universally attributed to Shakspere. Still, it is well to hear both sides of the question ; and I condense the statements : —

I. " That nothing in his life makes it impossible for Bacon to have wTitten the plays."

II. "That chronological order, dates, and other }/^ particulars coincide with facts in the life of Bacon." ^/ ^ J

III. " The hints given by the author's experiences '^P\ applicable to Bacon and not with Shakspere." ^ "^

I disagree wholly with these three statements.

IV. " That Bacon was a poet." /^ Butso were many others, better able than he to

write the plays.

V. That Bacon was addicted to the theatre, got up masques, and wrote The Confere?ice of Pleasure, The Gesta Grayonun, Alasqueof an Indian Princey No person who could write the plays woiild have written these ; but as I have said so much on this point already in the general question I must pass on.

VI. "The Earls of Southampton and Pembroke .^ are not shown to have any intimacy with Shakspere -' i-l

114 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

but they had with Bacon." The "dedications" would have been all the more impossible to Bacon, had they been written to an intimate. But it is distinctly proved that Shakspere knew at least Southampton, just in the way the dedications suggest. The Baconians make so much use of tradition that they also should remember the very persistent one, that Southampton gave Shakspere the money to buy New Place as a present from himself.

VII. " Many of the wits and poets acknowledge Bacon their chief." No doubt Bacon was a great man, but there are a greater number of acknow- ledgments of Shakspere's superiority.

The Great Assises of Parnassus. We have shown how entirely the interior of this pamphlet, of which the title page is quoted here, supports Shakspere in his true position as actor and dramatic poet.

VIII. " That Ben Jonson used the same words in addressing both." Only one similar phrase, and I show elsewhere how that might arise. " Ben Jonson does not put Shakspere among the sixteen greatest wits of the day." That can easily be accounted for. " Sir Henry Wotton does not mention him at all." As, however, he also omitted Spenser, and other great poets, this is not so sur- prising.

IX. "That in the time of Bacon's poverty, 1623, Ben Jonson tried to push the sale of Shakspere's works." The conclusion desired non-seqidtur. These were printed by Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, at the charges of W. Jaggard, Ed. Blount, J. Smithweeke, and W. Apsley, and all profits were shared by these, with probably a commission to Ben Jonson, and no share to Bacon.

X. "That Bacon had some connexion with Shakspere." This is, however, only shown by the same clerk scribbling their names on the same sheet of paper in the Northumberland MS, explained in Chap. III.

The Bacon- Shakspere Question. 115

XI. "That he uses 'the alphabet."' This is the "Alphabet of the Sciences." See Spedding's Bacon and page 67, a^ite.

XII. "That Sir Toby Matthew's letter from abroad adds — P.S. The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation, on this side of the sea is of your lordship's name, though he be known by another." This of course refers to his brother, Anthony Bacon ; when on his secret service missions abroad he used an alias. " This side of the sea " excludes the possibility of his meaning Francis Bacon, as Matthew did not meet him • there, when in his extreme youth he was abroad. " Invention " he repeatedly uses, as the application of imagination to experiment so as to make discoveries.

XIII. "That he called himself a 'concealed poet ' to Sir John Davies." * Unless it had meant that Bacon had written Davies' Nosce Teipsmn for him, how was Davies to know what he meant ? If Bacon wrote Shakspere's plays and spoke of it, he would not be a 'concealed poet.' It really refers to his parabolical writings. See his defini- tions of poetry referred to in Chap. III.

XIV. and xv. " The knowledge in the plays is that of Bacon," &c. But Bacon's knotvledge is much more extensive and thorough than that of the plays, and of a different nature. As Shakspere had a cousin, and many friends lawyers ; as he lived near the Law Courts, frequenting the same taverns ; as his father had been in an office that required some legal knowledge ; as all people of the period seemed to go through numerous petty litigations ; and as most dramatic writers of the time used law phrases freely, it is not unnatural Shakspere should have done so. Shakspere for his classical stories used the translations then so abundant — North's translation of riutarch's Livcs^ published by Vautrollier ; translations of Ovid and Cicero by the same ; Diana of Monteniayor,

* See Appendix, Note 10.

ii6 The Bacon- Shakspere Qicestion.

translated by Thomas Wilson ; The Menaechmi of Plautus translated earlier, and published in 1595; Montaigne's Essays, translated by Florio; Baudwin's "Collection of the sayings of all the wise, 1547."'^ Then there was Lilly's Euphues, Sidney's Arcadia, Greene's plays and novels, with those of Marlowe and others; histories, travels, essays, probably Bacon's among the number, which had probably been pirated; as, "like those who have an orchard ill-neighboured, he had been forced to gather too early to save his fruit," or publish to keep his profits and credit.

" Shakspere's Library " has been collected by Collier and Hazlitt.

The general science of the plays comes not from Bacon's mind. The flowers of Shakspere are those naturally observed by a poet born amid rich woodland and river scenery, and trans])orted to the suburbs of a large city, where woods were still within walking distance, and where some plants not very common were found by Gerard in the very Theatre-Field. (See Gerard's " Historic of Plants," 1597).

XVI. " That the subjects which engross them are the same."

XVII. " That the observations on character are the same."

I can only say I disagree with both these propositions.

XVIII. That the scientific errors are the same." That is very natural, and depends on the advance- ment of the times ; the scientific knowledge, how- ever, is different both in kind and in degree.

XIX. " Bacon's studies of any time introduced into plays of the same date," and

XX. " In several editions of a play. Bacon's increased knowledge shown in the later editions." There are different means of accounting for the element of truth that lies in these ; as well as in the

* See Appendix, Note 14.

The Bacon-SJiakspcrc Question. 1 1 7

XXI. " Vocabulary very much the same."

XXIII. "Baconian ideas and groups of ideas appear in the plays." I have shown elsewhere, however, that Bacon, no less than Shakspere, read much and borrowed much.

XXIV. " Mrs. Cowden Clarke's ninety-five points of Shakspere's style common to Bacon."

XXV. ** Shakspere grammar of Dr. Abbott serves for Bacon."

XXVI. " Figures of speech frequently the same."

XXVII. " The Promus notes do not appear in Bacon's works, but in Shakspere's plays." Very probably they were taken from them, or from common sources. None of them were original ; but we see that many of the proverbs and headings do appear in Bacon's works and not in Shakspere's : for instance, phrases regarding wine.

XXVIII. "Superstitious and religious belief the same." I think them quite different.

XXIX. " Bacon's favourite authors Shakspere's also." But we must remember Bacon's age was nearly the same as Shakspere's, his period, his place of residence, his public, his Sovereign, some of his friends, and many of his circumstances. Is there no resemblance between other two writers in the same period, or of Dryden's period, or Words- worth's period, of a similar nature ?

XXX. " Striking omissions from the plays fit the character and circumstances of Bacon. No village experiences, no brewing, cider-making, or baking." We have shown that just in these points Bacon was more interested than Shakspere, and more likely to mention them. " No children are men- tioned, therefore the childless Bacon wrote them." I think Mrs. Potts trips here, Macduff's feeling for his children could only be pourtrayed by a father. Constance and Arthur and other parents and children appear. But the interests of the times

9

ii8 Ihc Bacon-Shakspere Question.

were more centred in adult life, and Shakspere sup- plied a demand.

XXXI. "That the Folio of 1623 included Plays never before heard of." That is to say, it included Plays of which the criticism by name has not come down to us. But these were collected by the pro- prietors of the theatre to which he sold them 3 and who had no interest in publishing the plays beyond the loving desire to " keep the memory of their worthy fellow alive," even at the cost of their copy- right. " The Folio was published two years after Bacon's fall, when he was trying to publish every- thing on account of poverty and failing health." But how, without a free confession, would he get his hands into the manuscript chest of the theatre, so as to select, and reconstruct the number he wished printed ? How did he bribe so many concerned — proprietors, poets, printers, publishers, Ben Jonson in particular, not only to tell liberal lies, but to stick to them ? What profit could come to him as his proportion of the reprint ? But we know from his life he was otherwise employed at the time.

XXXII. *' That the difficulties which have to be explained away are much less in the case of Bacon than of Shakspere." I do not think so.

The other pamphlet — " Did Francis Bacon turile Shakespeare ? " — gives the parallels more calmly and dispassionately than other Baconian writings do. But I cannot see how any one could consider them either proofs or reasonings. The first proof brought forward is, " Bacon's mother was a lady, Shakspere's mother of a peasant family."* Though this contrast is quite irrelevant to the subject in hand, genius being above social distinction, one cannot accept it. The family of the Ardens was very far above the rank of peasants : a comfortable, well-to-do, well-connected family, farming their

* See Appendix, Note 2.

The Bacon- Shahspere Question. 119

own lands, and living in houses very much above the average of the times, having a memory of a higher past, and aspirations towards a higher future, that could not have entered a peasanfs brain. It is very evident that Mary Arden was at once possessed of powers and charms. She was her father's favourite daughter, and a methodical help- meet for her ambitious but unpractical husband. She was the mother of a powerful and charming man, and as men generally take after their mothers, we may suppose her also to be susceptible to the beauties of nature, and human life. A happier and more healthy-minded mother was she for a great man, than the learned, ambitious, narrow, masterful Lady Bacon, whose mind preyed on itself until it went crazy.

" It will tax ingenuity to invent any satisfactory explanation of the facts that some of Shakspere's plays appeared during his life-time without his name, and some did not appear till after his death, supposing William Shakspere to have been the author." The very simple and satisfactory ex- planation is, that the habits of these days in regard to publication were perfectly different from ours ; that it was perfectly common for writers to publish even their own writings without name or signature ; and to do so in some editions and not in others ; that Shakspere v/rote for the stage, and therefore for the proprietors, and it was not to their interest to publish ; and his later plays, when his name had been famous some time, were more likely to be jealously guarded than the earlier. But the pirates were always about, and either put on names or no names on the title page, to suit their own convenience. "After his retirement," the Rev. John Ward, vicar of Stratford-on-Avon, in 1663 writes that "Shakspere wrote two ilays every year for the stage, for which he was so well paid, he could spend at the rate of a thousand a year."

I believe it was a sense that, being removed from the sphere of pure poetry, by the mercantile

120 The Bacon- SJiakspcrc Question.

impulse towards them, lliey fell so far short of his ideas of what they should be, which prevented his caring to publish them. Various other queries and difficulties are brought forward, all the important points of which could be answered. The parallelisms only shew how well the industry of Shakspere kept him abreast of the literature of the time. But we could not go through each trifling dispute in detail, without writing a mighty volume. Our ignorance of many facts is to be deplored. But we believe we have shewn enough^ to prove that Bacon is utterly innocent of making" any claim to the plays, and that Shakspere stands firm on the rock of his rights.

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 12 r

CHAPTER VI. Bacon's Ciphers.

Bacon sometimes, as in Valerius Terminus, wrote his doctrines in a purposely abrupt and obscure style, such as would " choose its reader." He did not give his philosophy in a form which " whoso runs may read," and was scornful of " the general reader." But there is not the slightest grounds in his works for beUeving there was a cipher in them. Nay rather, he apologised for introducing ciphers as a part of learning at all. His connexion with Essex, with his brother Anthony, with so many treasonable and state affairs, must have taught him the value of thoroughly understanding the powers of conceal- ment in writing ; and we are not surprised he con- siders ciphers in his general survey of learning. But he gives them no prominence.

In the 6th Book of De Aug}?ieniis, Chapter I., Bacon treats of Ciphers and the method of De- ciphering. " Communications may either be written by the common alphabet (which is used by every- body), or by a secret or private one agreed upon by particular persons, called Ciphers. There are many kinds, simple and mixed, those in two different letters ; wheel-ciphers, key-ciphers, word- ciphers, and the like. There may be a double alphabet of significants and non-significants. The three merits of a cipher are: ist, easy to write ; 2nd, safe, or impossible to be deciphered without the key ; 3rd, such as not to raise suspicion." " Now for this elusion of enquiry there is a new and useful contrivance for it, which, as I have it by me, why should 1 set it down among the desiderata.

122

The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

instead of propounding the thing itself? It is this — let a man have two alphabets, one of true letters, the other of non-significants, and let him unfold in them two letters at once, the one carrying the secret, the other such a letter as the writer would have been likely to send. Then if anyone be strictly examined as to the cipher, let him offer the alphabet of non-significants for the true letteis, and the alphabet of true letters for the non-significants. Thus the examiner will fall upon the exterior letter, which, finding probable, he will not suspect anything of another letter written." He then alludes to his own contrivance in his early youth in Paris (which he gives in full), and is the same as that mentioned in Every Boy's Book. " But for avoiding suspicion altogether, I will add another contrivance. The way to do it is this — first let all the letters of the alphabet be resolved into transpositions of two letters only. For the transposition of two letters through five places will yield 32 differences, much more than 24 which is the number of letters in our alphabet." Example of an alphabet in two letters : —

A	B	c	D	E	F
aaaaa	aaaab	aaaba	aaabb	aabaa	aabab
G	II	I	K	L	M
aabba	aabbb	abaaa	abaab	ababa	ababb
N	0	r	Q	R	S
.ihbaa	abbab	abbba	abbbb	baaaa	baaab
T	V	W	X	Y	Z

baaba baabb babaa babab babba babbb

" Nor is it a slight thing which is thus by the way effected. For hence we see how thoughts may be communicated at any distance of place by means of any objects perceptible either to the eye or ear, provided only those objects are capable of two dift'erences. It was subject to this condition that the infolding writing shall contain five times as many letters as the writing infolded, and no other condition or restriction is implied.

The Bacon-Shaksperc Question. 123

" When you prepare to write you must reduce the interior epistle to this Hteral alphabet. Let the interior epistle be

FLY.

Example of Reduction.

FLY

aabab ababa babba

Have by you at the same time another alphabet in two forms ; I mean one in which each of the letters of the common alphabet, both capital and small, is exhibited in two different forms — any forms that you find convenient. Then take your interior epistle, reduced to the bi-literal shape, and adapt to it, letter by letter, your exterior epistle in the bi-form character, then write it out. The exterior epistle is "Do not go till I come."

Example of Adaptation, FLY aa bab ab aba b a bba Do not go till I come.

" The doctrine of cyphers carries with it another doctrine, which is its relative. This is the doctrine of deciphering, or of detecting ciphers, though one be quite ignorant of the alphabet used or the private understanding between the parties, a thing requiring both labour and ingenuity, and dedicated, as the other likewise is, to the secrets of princes. By skilful precaution indeed it may be made useless ; though as things are, it is of very great use, for if good and safe ciphers were introduced, there are very many of them which altogether elude and exclude the decipherer, and yet are sufficiently con- venient and ready to read and write. But such is the rawness and unskilfulness of secretaries and clerks in the courts of Kings, that the greatest matters are commonly trusted to weak and futile ciphers."

In paragraph 202 Bacon speaks of a cipher within a cipher : " You write in a common cipher,

124 T^^^ Bacon-Shakspere Question.

with an alphabet of eighteen letters, the cipher being such that the five vowels are used as nulls ; then by the last cipher the five vowels are made significant and give the hidden sense." He seems to speak of this as his own. Mr. Ellis's notes to Spedding's Bacon say: "The earliest writer on ciphers, except Trithemius, whom he quotes, is John Baptist Porta, whose work De Occiiltis Literarum Notts was reprinted at Strasburg in 1606. The wheel-cipher is described in chapters 7, 8, and 9. The Ciphra Clavis, described by Porta, is a cipher of position. The cipher of words is worked at both by Trithemius and Porta. The Traitc. des Chiffres on secretes manieres d'escnre par Blaise de Vigenere, Boiu-bomiais, Paris 1587, brings forward another cipher. The two authors whom he chiefly mentions are Trithemius and Porta. The key cipher of which Porta speaks he ascribes to a certain Belasio, who employed it as early as 1549, Porta's book not being published until 1563: " Auquel il a insere le chiffre sans faire mention dont il le tenoit." Porta's book, he goes on to say was not " en vente " till 1568. The invention was ascribed to Belasio by the Grand Vicar of St. Peter's at Rome, who was a great scholar in ciphers. Vigenere gives an account of ciphers in which letters are represented by combinations of other letters, which Porta already had done. But he also gives the bi- literal alphabet and the combinations above. The transition from this to Bacon's cipher is so easy, that the credit given to him must materially be re- duced.

The Baconians have been driven to the desperate attempt of seeking and finding a cipher in the plays to prop up their otherwise unsupported conclusions. The strange thing is, that }io cipJier suggested is draion cither from Bacoiis works, or from those of his instructors. Another point worthy of considera- tion is, that more than one different cipher reader professes to find a different cipher under different

The Bacon-Shakspere Qiiestion. 125

conditions in the same works, giving the same chief conclusions, with different accessories. How many ciphers can the same works enrol at the same time is a new puzzle, as difficult to solve as the author- ship of Shakspere's plays.

Mrs. C. F. A. Windle, of San Francisco, has one pamphlet addressed to the New Shakspere Society in i88r, and another to the Trustees of the British Museum in 1882, " On the Discovery of the Cipher of Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, alike in his prose writings and the Shakspeare dramas, proving that he wrote the latter." She quotes Bacon on cipher : " Writing in the received manner no way obstructs the pronunciation, but leaves it free. . . . But to prevent all suspicion we shall annex a cipher of our own which has the highest perfection of a cipher, that oi ^x^vixi'^'va'g omnia per omnia.'''' Mrs. Windle says, " There is not so much as a single line of all Bacon's prose works or letters, as he has, with omniscient security and provision trans- mitted them, without, as it now appears, its definite design of a final conjoinder with this great resur- rection, and its assigned part in the fulfilment and proof of the predestined miracle." She claims Montaigne's Essays for him, and also adds : " I have already hinted my belief that the marvellous psychological phenomenon of his future recognition l3y another mind was pre-conceived by Lord Verulam as a part of the value to the world of his anticipated resurrection. It stamps his work with the miracle of prophecy and fulfilment. . . . For myself, it were stupid and soulless in me not to have felt in this revelation, as it has come to me, a direction and inspiration something more than merely natural ; a mysterious intercommunication with the spirit of this first of all the departed, as still existent, apart from, no less than in the immortal work, in which it has been mine, as the favoured human agent, to recover him to the world. ... I feel the deepest responsibility rest- ing on me to fulfil perfectly lliis duty, devolved ow me

126 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

from the unseen realm ; more especially as I realise that iflef/ to another the tnie expositmi 7vill never be made." One example given is from Cymbeline : " When at the time that a Posthumous fame, borne of a British Lion shall, unconsciously and without seeking, find itself embraced by the tender ' Ariel ' of its own Book, Ah, Rare one! and when the branches of Bacon's poetry, philosophy, and virtue, which lopped from the stately Cedar of Britain's renown have been dead many years, shall after- wards revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow, then shall the misery of his delayed recognition terminate, Britain be fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty." "I am assured that the recognition of Bacon's title cannot be much longer delayed."

A great contrast to the slender bulk of Mrs. Windle's Cryptogram, are Mr. Donnelly's mighty volumes of the Great Cryptogram :

"That the Cipher is there; that I have found it out, that the narrative given is real, no man can doubt who reads this book to the end."

" A more brain-racking problem was never sub- mitted to the intellect of man."

" I was often reminded of the Western story of the lost traveller whose highway changed into a wagon-road, his wagon-road disappeared in a bridle-path, his bridle-path merged into a cow-path and his cow-path at last degenerated into a squirrel- track, which ran zip a tree ! "

I quote three of Mr. Donnelly's own sentences, with the Jirst of which I disagree.

I have honestly done my duty, and have read the whole of Mr. Donnelly's weighty volumes from beginning to end. They reflect great credit in the first place on Messrs. Sampson Low «Sc Co., who have admirably performed a difficult task. There are some chapters in the work that possess interest and value ; for instance, those on the parallelisms and identities in thought, expression, constructions and errors in Bacon and Shakspere. I respect

The Bacon- Shakspere Question, 127

the industry and perseverance that have led the author through labours equal to those of Hercules, and I only wish that more exactitude, honesty, fairness, learning, and common sense had been added to the industry, so that a book had been produced creditable alike to Mr. Donnelly and his country.

The work divides itself naturally into two parts^ the resume of what is called the Baconian theory, and Mr. Donnelly's own special contribution, which he calls the Great Cryptogram, possibly to dis- tinguish it from others. In regard to the general question, I consider that "The great assizes holden in Parnassus" would not permit Mr. Don- nelly to be a judge, or even to be a juryman or witness in such a question, because he is — ist, too violent a partisan. A personal " animus " against Shakspere is shown in every line, in every noun and adjective he flings at him. 2nd. He is illogical in the reasonings he brings to bear on facts. 3rd. He is inconsistent in the adducing of the facts he reasons from. 4th. He sometimes falsifies facts, either through ignorance or selection. He says of Shakspere's editors, "False in one point, false in all." — " O noble judge ! A Daniel come to judg- ment ! I thank thee (Donnelly) for teaching me that word." 5th. The current of his faith and imagination carries him away. Mr. Donnelly was evidently intended to be an original poet.

Fortunately for us, the laws of authenticity of testimony and credibiHty of witnesses decide that the witness of the large group of contemporaries who knew Shakspere and Bacon, is more valid than the opinion of one man born about 300 years after them, in another hemisphere, even when he is backed by a following of iriends who think it would be more congruous to their own thought that Bacon wrote Shakspere.

The previous chapters have shown the weak- ness of his case, the real points of difference in

128 The Bacon-Shakspere Questioti.

character, in the works of the men, and in the testimony for each.

Mr. Donnelly is a master of bathos. "Here I would remark that it is sorrowful, nay pitiful, nay shameful, to read the fearful abuse which in sewer- rivers has deluged the fair memory of Francis Bacon within the last four months." I think Mr. Donnelly does not believe he is the worst sinner in this respect, nor does he imagine that the sentence might much more naturally be written of the Baconians in their abuse of Shakspere. They have dwelt upon unauthenticated tradition (when it is uncomplimentary), misjudged it, garbled it, and set it in opposition to well authenticated writings. Truly, as was once said of the Pharisees, " Ye have made the Scriptures of none effect through your tradition." And when Mr. Donnelly does judge from writings he selects the unsavoury, dwells on them, magnifies them, and clouds there- with his style and reasoning, ignoring all points that tell against him, and attempting to make his readers do the same. What though Stratford was at times " unsavoury " ? All towns of the period were. Great ladies carried sweet odoured balls " to smell to," when they became aware of the offensive. Can a poet not escape to the woodlands and the primrose banks? And, after all, even though the whole question is utterly irrele- vant, is open-air drainage more injurious to brain- power than a drainage that gives a superficial tidiness and sends the deadly drain-poisoned airs through chink and cranny to suck the life out of body and soul like a vampire bat ?

Mr. Donnelly says Shakspere had nearly every vice, and was disgraced in the eyes of men in every way ; that he was coarse, vulgar, and ugly ; was indeed the original of Falstaff, of crooked Richard, and of Caliban ! Has he not read Dr. Ingleby's " Centurie of Prayse ? '' His superiority to " his fellows" and those who wrote for the stage may be seen by the position he had taken towards

The Bacon- Shahspcre Question. 129

them in seven years after his arrival in London. " In the greatest age of Enghsh Uterature the greatest man of his species Uves in London for nearly 30 years, and no man takes any note of his presence." This need not be re-answered. "Com- pare the Uttle we know of him, and the much we know of Ben Jonson." The men are different ; Jonson is Uke Bacon, and likes to let men know about him.

Yet one thing that Mr. Donnelly says of him as a crowning insult, I might have believed. He says : "I have proved he was a brewer." "We peep into the kitchen of New Place, Stratford, and we see the occupant brewing beer." I wished to welcome him into the guild, for which he would certainly have needed Bacon's knowledge to fit him ; and looking back to the early chapter that proves it, I find it really must be transcribed as a fine specimen of the style of Mr. Donnelly's " reasonings."

"Shakspere a brewer. He carried on brewing * in New Place. It is very probable the alleged " author of Hamlet carried on the business of " brewing beer in his residence at New Place. He " sued Philip Rogers in 1604 for several bushels of *' ' malt ' sold him at various times between March 27 " and the end of May of that year, amounting in all " to the value of ;,^ I 15s. lod. The business of beer- " making was not unusual among his townsmen.

"George Perrye, besides his glover's trade, " useth buying and selling of wool and yarn and " making of malte. Robert Butler, besides his "glover's occupation, useth making of malte.

"Rychard Castell, Rother Market, useth his " glover's occupation, his wife uttering weeklye by " bruyinge ij strikes of malte. INIr. Persons for a " long tymc used malting of malte and bruyinge to "sell in his house." — {did MSS., 1595.)

(This is taken from the notes to Mr. Halliwell- Philipps's book without the context.)

130 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

•* Think of the author of Hamlet and of Lear brewing beer ! "

But Mr. Donnelly has tripped here. // is no proof, that he should hold malt, and that other men who held malt brewed beer to sell. Malt was often received as rent. Malting and brewing were carried on in every gentleman's house of the king- dom at that time ; but the only home in which it is proved that the Head of the House concerned himself with the manufacture was Bacon s ; because we have his experiments, written with his own hand. Therefore, if Bacon did write Hamlet and Lear^ we ;;/z/j/ " think of the author of these plays as brewing beer," And why should he not? Mortal men do not live the whole twenty-four hours on the Mount of Transfiguration.

" The identities of the question of temperance ; " I find the strongest contrasts.

" It is a little surprising that a writer whose sym- pathies were always with the aristocracy should convert the finest house in Stratford, built by Sir Hugh Clopton, into a Brewery, and employ himself peddling out malt to his neighbours and sueing them when they did not pay promptly. And taken in connection with the sale of malt, there is another curious fact that throws some light upon the character of the man of the household. In the Chamberlain's account of Stratford we find a charge in 1614 for 'one quart of sack and one quart of clarett wine given to a preacher at the New Place.' What manner of man must he have been who would require the town to pay for the wine he furnished his guests?" It seems to be forgotten that towns often gave handsome gifts to indi- viduals ; that in this case the smallness of the gift to the preacher who had pleased them all depended on the knowledge that he had been liberally treated at the best house in the place. The choice of wine was not unusual for a gift.

It appears original to this work that " Shakspere was a Brewer." We would be willing to accept

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 131

him as such without proof, were it only to see in it more than a coincidence that the hberaUty of his successors, Messrs. Flower & Son, has enabled the Stratford of to-day to do fitting honour to the greatest native of Stratford.

Mr. Donnelly follows the well-known legal trick classed among the Logical Fallacies — "No case; abuse the plaintiff's attorney, or himself." So he abuses Warwickshire, Stratford, the house where Shakspere was born ; forgetful that for the period it was large and substantial enough for a man in a very good position. He abuses his name, his family and himself, and his supporters, in every possible way.

He (Donnelly) tries to suggest vile thoughts of Shakspere, and even that there "was something wrong in the breed," because Shakspere's first child appeared sooner than is usual after marriage. Pope's biography can prove that no explanation ot this need be necessary, but we must further remember that the habits of the time were different from ours ; that the pre-contract or betrothal had a more binding force than the engagement of our days, and was equivalent to a civil marriage. Surely in times when the same thing happened in the cases of Sir Walter Raleigh and Earl Southampton, at older age, without blame or disgrace, there is no need to annihilate a man so young for a fault that he repaired as fully as he could, if there were a fault at all. And we must emphatically assert, there is no authority for any suspicion of a further blot on his fair fame through life.

Mr. Donnelly says Shakspere was a "usurer." I think that he was a man wlio had discovered the uses of adversity, and learned the lessons of ex- perience, and that, seeing that his father had lost his fair chances for himself and family by careless- ness in money matters, he had determined the value alike of exactitude and economy.

" He combined with others to oppress the poor, when an attempt was made to enclose the public

132 The Bacon-Shakspcre Question.

lands " ; while the fact remains on record that he opposed and prevented the enclosures. " He was a mean peasant, and lied to beg a coat of arms for his father."'^ Facts are against Mr. Donnelly here also. Shakspere's honour was unimpeached and unimpeachable. " The author of the plays was a profound scholar and laborious student, and therefore must be Bacon." I differ from Mr. Donnelly in the degree of profundity apparent, which would take a volume as large as his own to contest, and I have proved that Shakspere also was a "laborious student." Mr. Donnelly does not seem to be aware of the numerous translations of foreign authorities then extant ; nor of the character his fellow-dramatist, Webster, gave Shakspere for his "right happy and copious industry;" nor of the opportunities he had for education late in life, even if he had neglected his school.

Some questions are asked which I should like to be able to answer. There are, of course, some extraordinary things in connexion with him, or Mr. Donnelly would not have had the chance of writing this book. Five-and-a- ^ half volumes of the large catalogues of names of , books in the British Museum are occupied by editions of Shakspere, or books written about him. The chief difficulty in studying him is this fact. But we must remember that fires happened fre- quently then, and were often on the trail of Shak- spere ; that the Globe was burned down in 1613 ; that Ben Jonson was in Stratford-on-Avon in 1616, at the time of Shakspere's death ; that probably he took some of Shakspere's papers to London with him ; that Ben Jonson's papers were destroyed by fire late in the same year. The will of his son-in- law, Dr. Hall, who with his wife was his residuary legatee in 1635, says: "Concerning my study of bookes, I leave them to my sonn Nash, to dispose of them as you see good. As for my manuscripts,

♦ Appendix, Note 2.

The Bacon- Shakspere Question. 133

I would have given them to Mr. Boles if he had been here ; but forasmuch as he is not here present, you may, son Nash, burn them, or do with them what you please." Some of these were original* though some may have been Shakspere's. There is a tradition that a grand-nephew of his had a large box of his papers, which were destroyed in the great fire at Warwick.

Mr. Donnelly supports his case on Carlyle, who makes this most significant speech : " The wisdom displayed in Shakspeare was equal in profoundness to the great Lord Bacon's Novum OrganuniT Our edition of Carlyle says otherwise : "It is unexampled, that calm creative perspicacity of Shakspere. . . . Novum Organum^ and all the intellect you will find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary order — earthy, material, poor in com- parison with this." t

He tries to prove that because Bacon writes a better hand than Shakspere he was more likely to write the plays. It may be peculiar to my collec- tion of autographs, but I find there the boldest and best handwritings are those of the fools.

Mr. Donnelly strengthens his position by as- serting, "The writer of the plays must have been in Scotland." Bacon is not proved to have gone so far, while Burbage's company played in Edin- burgh in t6oi, and it is more than possible Shaks- pere was with them. It is discovered that Ben

* " Select Obsen-ations on English liodies, or Cures both Kmpericall and Ilistoricall performed upon very eminent persons in desperate diseases, first written in Latin by Mr. Jolin Hall, Physician, living at Stratford-on-Avon, in War- wickshire, where he was very famous, as also in the counties adjacent, as appears by these Observations drawn out of several! hundreds of his, as choysest ; now put into English for common benefit by James Cooke, rractitioner in Physick • and Chinirgery," 1657.

[ " Heroes and Hero- Worship."

10

134 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

J onson uses the same phrase once in regard to Bacon and Shaksperc. Of Shakspere, in 1623, " When thy socks are on Leave thee alone for the comparison Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome."

This phrase impressed J onson as a good one, and after the manner of his patron Bacon, he serves it up again rechauffe in his Discoveries when he placed Bacon among the great Orators that treated oratory as an art. It is possible he had thought of Mark Antony's oration when he applied that phrase to Shakspere, and by asso- ciated ideas, quoted it for Bacon.

"Bacon's imagination is revealed in his works;" for instance, " For as statues and pictures are dumb histories, so histories are speaking pictures." This, like many others of Mr. Donnelly's, is an unfor- tunate selection, as it is cribbed from Simonides without any acknowledgment, a common habit of Bacon's. Mr. Donnelly acknowledges Spedding to be a high authority, and we have his authority for this patent fact, as well as for the other, that Bacon wrote little else than his metrical paraphrases of the Psalms in verse.

" Bacon took part in many plays." He wrote some Masques, which nobles played in, but he chiefly concerned himself with the decorative part of the getting-up of others. " Why was it the fountain of Shakspere's song closed as soon as Bacon's necessities ended ?" asks Mr. Donnelly. Odier Baconians insist that because they kept appearing after Shakspere's death Bacon wrote them.

"The whole publication of the folio of 1623, is based on a fraudulent statement. . . . False in one thing, false in all." The MSS. of Heming and Condell were probably the play-house copies, the earlier editions being pirated from eager listeners catching up the occasionally varied acting forms, ■ and, as it is perfectly certain that Shakspere in acting would modify his phrases to his peculiar mood at the time, that quite accounts for

The Baccn-Shakspere Question. 135

the singular variations in the texts. " If the Plays are not Shakspere's, then the whole make-up of the folio is a fraud, and the dedi- cation and the introduction are probably both from the pen of Bacon " — which means, in short, if Shakspere wrote the plays it was a fraud, if Shak- spere did not write the plays it was a fraud ; but either Shakspere or Bacon wrote the plays, so in either case it was a fraud. Query, would the fraud be nobler if Bacon perpetrated it than if Heming and Condell did ? Would not the falseness affect Bacoji in this case more radically than the loving- liearted slips of an actor who wished to commemo- rate his dead poet ?

Mr. Donnelly gives us a syllogism in Carnestres, to prove Shakspere could not have written the plays, and that a lawyer did so ; but if he converts this into Celarent and a true Universal, he will find a strange conclusion from strange premises. He says afterwards, " Nothing is more conclu- sively proved than that the author of the plays was a lawyer." I am sorry for the stability of things, if " nothing " is stronger than this.

" Bacon is naturally given to secretiveness, and seeks a disguise." That may be true. In his Essay on Truth, he says, " The admixture of a lie doth ever make truth more pleasant." " His works were dangerous to worldly success." Why did poems not hinder the worldly advancement of others — Sackville, Raleigh, Sir John Davies even ? To this latter Bacon wrote asking, as he asked all his correspondents, for help — " be good to con- cealed poets " — and this is the climax of the proof he wrote Shakspere's plays. But how was Davies to know this ? Is it not more likely that he wrote Nosce teipsnm — that went about in Davies' name ? ^

I do indeed wonder that Mr. Donnelly did not claim this for him when he was at it. If Bacon wrote all his own works, all Shakspere's, all

* See Appendix, Note 10,

1 36 TlieBacon-Shaksperc Question.

Montaigne's, all Burton's, all Marlowe's and the minor Dramatists' productions, all anonymous works (as is demanded for him), surely this sen- tence might have engulphed those of Sir John Davies also, who writes a philosophic work and metrical translation of some Psalms. Mr. Donnelly proves so much, that the same reasonings would prove much more. Burton's Anatomy of Melan- cJioly is not at all unlike his style, therefore he wrote it. It was not signed in the first edition (162 1 ), but was in the second of 1632. But Mr. Donnelly did not remember that Bacon was a Cambridge man, and tliat Burton's Anatomy of Me/afic/to/y was published at Oxford, then a keener rival than it is now. Mrs. Windle had first sug- gested that Bacon wrote Montaigne ; Mr. Donnelly clings to the idea. " We are brought face to face with this dilemma ; either Francis Bacon wrote the Essays of Montaigne ; or Francis Bacon stole many of his noblest thoughts and the whole scheme of his philosophy from Montaigne." The choice is fair, but there is no dilemma at all. Bacon invariably takes every good thing he finds in his reading, assimilates it, uses it, thanks God and himself for it, and says nothing of the debt to his ignorant public.

We now come to the Cipher. We cannot but remark the extraordinary manner in which the Cipher supports, in a coarse, vulgar, pointless story, the opinions of the Baconian Theory. Yet surely no insult to the dignity and character of Bacon ; no insult to his knowledge and style was ever offered by any one like to this. That HE could have invented and inserted Donnelly's Cipher in the plays ! It crowns all. The con- clusions that might be drawn from it are these : I St, Mr. Donnelly's, that Bacon wrote the plays, and inserted the Cipher. No man that had any notion of the dignity of poetry could so degrade it by making it a pack-horse to bear a burden of mean prose-gossip. Were that supposition

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. (37

granted, his character is stained, and he is proved a liar, a hypocrite and a plagiarist of no ordinary meanness. For beside all the dishonesty of the publications and dedications of the Folio, he would have to bear the odium of copying Plutarch, Tacitus, &c., and cribbing all other previous playwrights' works, without having any right to do so. And we must remember that what in Shakspere — actor, manager, playwright, as well as poet — was justified and justifiable, in Bacon would be gross plagiarism and contemptible literary robbery.

2nd. " But another of those luminous intellects (whose existence is a subject of perpetual per- plexity to those who reverence God) has made the further suggestion that granted there is a Cipher in the plays. Bacon put it there to cheat Shakspere out of his just rights and honours." There is much to be said in support of this "luminous intellect." If Bacon could crib from ISIontaigne enough to fix Mr. Donnellyjbetween the two horns of a dilemma, why should he not do more ? " False in one point, false in all." We thank thee for that word, again and again. And the very Cipher which Bacon claims, which suggested to Mr. Donnelly his years of patient labour, was cribbed from Vigenere's volume, and taken possession of ivithoiit acknmv- Icdgmcnt. If he stole the Cipher, what was there to prevent him stealing the plays, think some. We do not think so. Bacon only appropriated what he valued, and his own works prove that he did not value the plays.

3rd. A third conclusion has come to some that Mr. Donnelly put there what he found there, or manipu- lated things to the obscuring of the senses, after the principles of Messrs. Maskelyne & Cooke. As Mr. Donnelly assures us he did not, we accept his word, though we think it one of the most slip-shod Ciphers that ever have been found out, and one that Bacon would have been ashamed of. Cer- tainly this is more intricate and ingenious than that

138 The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

of Mrs. Windle, but she had the advantage of priorit}'. The tales she educes are also more poetically told. But we come here to the new puzzle. How may ciphers co-exist in the same works, at the same time, under different conditions, to be opened only by " luminous intellects ?" Does " one nail not drive out another " here ?

4th. But there is a fourth possibility that I claim as original. Most things connected with Shakspere are uncommon. As men used to seek the Sortes Virgilia/uc, many have sought the Sortes ShaksperiancE. Is it not possible that what materialists might call chance, fatalists fate, or superstition-mongers the ministers of the black art, might have arranged the words so as to have tempted Mr. Donnelly to find a sequence in the un- connected and a story in chance words ? The style of the Cryptogram narrative is wonderfully like the Oraailar. That these same powers generally help a man to spell out what he wants to see is very well-known.

" Black spirits and white,

Red spirits and grey. Mingle, mingle, mingle,

You that mingle may."

But the general experience is that the "mingling" is neither profitable nor pleasant in the long run. Macbeth began "to doubt the equivocation of the fiend that lied like truth," and concluded : —

" Be these juggling fiends no more believed That palter with us in a double sense ; That keep the word of promise to our ear And break it to our hope."

Though fiends and faith have ahke gone out of fashion, it is just possible that the "mingling" remains, and that this is a specimen.

I could find a possible fifth conclusion, but will not suggest it, so here is a Tetra- lemma, a more horned animal even than the Montaigne Dilemma. The worst of it is, that

The Bacon-Shakspcre Question. 139

each horn buffets somebody — either Bacon, whom we reverence for what he has really done or been ; or Mr. Donnelly, whom we ought to rever- ence for what he wanted to do. None of them affect Shakspere at all.

Mr. Donnelly says Bacon was the original " Hamlet " and " Prospero." " Miranda " is " the Works of Alphabet;" but that is worked out by the application of Mrs. Windle's Cipher. INIr. Donnelly's is too intricate to give anything so simple. According to his own showing, the in- tricacies of the Cipher pressed as heavily upon Bacon as on himself.

" The cipher pressed him hard when he wrote such a sentence as this : " The horse will sooner con an oration." ( Troilus and Cressida, act ii. so. i). "As there is no Francisco present or any- where in the play, this is all rambling nonsense, and the word is dragged in for a purpose." " Are there any other plays in the world where characters appear for an instant, and disappear in this extra- ordinary fashion, saying nothing and doing nothing?'' "What was the purpose of this nonsensical scene, which, as some one has said, is about on the par of a negro-minstrel shew ? . . . It enabled the author to bring in the name of Francis twenty times in less than a column." " The complicated exigencies of the cipher com- pel Bacon to talk nonsense." And so Mr. Donnelly is content. He fancies that he proves that the plays are too good to be written by Shakspere, that Bacon wrote them ; but that, at the same time, they contain much "nonsense." Be sure that Mr. Donnelly could not prove that without talking much nonsense himself. " Let us examine this. The word Bacon is an unusual word in literary work. ... I undertake to say that the reader cannot find in any work of prose or poetry, not a biography of Bacon, in that age, or any subsequent age, where no reference was intended to be made to the man Bacon, such

140 The Bacon-SIiaksperc Question.

another collocation of Nicholas — Bacon — Baconfed — Bacons. I challenge the sceptical to undertake the task ! " And I, the sceptical, accept the challenge. In "Gammer Gurton's Needle,"'* printed 1575, Mr. Donnelly will find "Bacons" enough to prove that play written by Queen Elizabeth's little Lord Keeper at the age of thirteen.

The conclusion of our argument is this — while the philosophic spirit urges us to doubt, so as to " prove all things," it also impels us to believe those facts that satisfy the needs and nature of proof; and such a proved fact we beUeve this to be — that Shakspere wrote the plays and poems that have always been attributed to him.

" Our Shakspere wrote, too, in an age as blest. The happiest poet of his time and best. A gracious Prince's favour cheered his muse, A constant favour he ne'er feared to lose."

OXWAY.

* See Appendix, Note 15.

7 he Bacon-Shakspere Question. 141

APPENDIX.

Note I.

Specdc's County Map of England was ])ublished 1610. lie draws the relative size and importance of the towns ami villages by a condensed little group of buildings, and, in spite of the scorn thrown at " the peasant-village of Strat- ford," we lind it is marked the same size as Warwick, and second only to Coventry in the county. It has the first highway bridge over the Avon below Warwick, so that much traffic would have necessarily passed through the town. Snitterfield, the residence of Shakspere's uncle, is also sketched as large as Charlecote. Stratford belonged to the liarls of Warwick. It was incorporated in i553- The parish of old Stratford was fifteen miles in circumference, and in- cluded Shottery, Clopton, Little Wilmcote, &c. " The Col- lege " had been well endowed, and up to 1535 supported four priests at ;^5 6s. Sd., and a schoolmaster at ;i^io salary ; so education was then honoured. At the dissolution of ' ' the Holy Cuild," the town received the possessions together with the great tithes, to maintain a vicar, a curate, and a school- master, to pay the almspeople, and repair the chapel, bridge, and other public buildings. Half of these tithes Shakspcrc bought at the suggestion of Abraham Sturley to his brother- in-law, Richard Quiney. " It seemeth by your father that our countryman, ^Nlr. Shakspere, is willing to disburse some money. . . . Move him to deal in the matter of our tithes. liy the instructions you can give him thereof, and by the friends he can make therefore. ... It obtained would advance him in deed, and would do us //inch gvoiL" The Grammar School, founded by the Rev. Mr. Jolape in Henry VI. 's reign, had got into difficulties in Henry VIII. 's reign, but the charter of Edward VI. guaranteed the schoolmaster an an- nual stipend of /['20 and a free house. This being liberal for the period, it is likely they had as good work as could be done at the time. Mr. IJaynes gives a list of the books used at the time in education. I think it very probable that to his list would be added Thomas Wilson's j4)-i oj Rhetoric, dedicated to the Earl of Warwick in 1557. Not from ]>erni, but from this book, at some period of his life, did Shakspere borrow lago's speech, " Who steals my purse, steals trash."

14^ The Bacon-Shakspere Question.

Note 2.

A. W. C. Ilallen's Pedigree of Shakspere's Family :—

In the draft of the grant of arms, John Shakspere is styled gentleman, and his great grandfather referred to as having rendered faithful and valiant service to Henry VII. A fac- simile of the grant of arms by Sir William Dethick, Garter, 20th October, 1596, also of the assignment of arms to Mary Ardcn, his wife, in 1599, appeared Kn Miscellanea Genealogica aT\(X Heraldic a, 3rd series, July, 1SS4, page 109. It has been proved that her father was the descendant in the male line of Turchill de Arden (temp. Will. I.), who was descended from the Saxon Earls of Warwick, who were dispossessed at the Conquest, and then took their name from Arden, their principal manor in Warwickshire.

(See Mr. Russel French's Shakspereana Genealogica.)

The Grant of Arms to Shakspere : —

The original, in the Heralds' Office, is marked G. 13, p. 349. There is also a manuscript in the Heralds' Office, marked W. 2, p. 276, where notice is taken of this coat, and that the person to whom it was granted had borne magis- tracy at Stratford-on-Avon.

(Waldron's Shaksperian Miscellany.)

The armorial bearings appropriate to the family of Shaks- pere are : Or, on a bend sable, a tilting speare of the first point upwards, headed argent ; crest, a falcon displayed argent, supporting a spear in pale or.

^ '^^ (R. K. W^helcr.)

Note 3.

(Waldron's Shaksperian Miscellany.)

" Early in Elizabeth's reign, the established players of London began to act in temporary theatres in the yards of inns."

In the time of Shakspere were seven theatres ; three private houses — viz., I?lackfriars, W'hitefriars, the Cockpit or Phoenix in Druiy Lane ; and four public theatres. The Globe on the Bank Side ; the Curtain in Shoreditch ; the Red Bull at the upper end of St. John Street; and the Fortune in Whitecross Street.

Note 4.

1635. A collection of ]iapers relating to shares and sharers in the Globe and Blackfriars Theatres, preserved among the official manuscripts of the Lord Chamberlain at St. James's

The Bacon- Shakspere Questwii. 143

Palace. Eenefield, Swanstown, and Pollard appealed to be allowed to buy a share in these : Cuthbert Burbage, and Winifred, his brother's wife, and William, his son, petitioned "not to be disabled of our livelihoods by men so soon shot up, since it hath been the custom that they should come to it by far more antiquity and desert than these can justly attri- bute to themselves. . . . The father of us, Cuthbert and Richard Burbage, was the first builder of playhouses, and was himself in his younger years a player. The Theatre he built with many hundred pounds taken up at interest, . . . and at like expense built the Globe, with more summes taken up at interest ; and to ourselves we joined those deso-jing men, Shakspere, Hemings Condell, Philipps, and others, partners in the profittes of that they call the house. . . . Now for the Blackfriars, that is our inheritance ; our father purchased it at extreme rates, and made it into a play- house with great charge and trouble, . . . and placed men players, which were, Hemings, Condell, Shakspere, tic."

Note 5.

The authenticity of the autograph of Shakspere in tlic YXono's Montaigne oi 1603 in the British Museum has been questioned. But it can be traced to Warwickshire, and as having been in the possession of a gentleman there prior to the Ireland epoch. See Sir F. Madden's pamphlet, 1838.

Note 6.

Vautrollier's Publications, London and Edinburgh.

1 566- 1605.

Balnaves. Confession of Faith containing iiow the troubled man should seek refuge of his God. 1584.

Bacon, Thomas. The sicke man's salve, where the faithful Christians may learn to behave themselves pacicntly and thankfully. 1584-

Bdlot, Jacques. Le jardin de vertus et bonnes mceurs.

Beio's Theodore de Works, 1570.

Bible. In many editions.

Bright, Timothy. A Treatise on Melancholy, containing the causes thereof, and reasons of the strange effects it worketh in our minds and bodies. 15S6.

Bruno's Giordano. Philosophy.

Calvin, Jean. The institution of the Christian Religion, written in Latine by Mr. John Calvine, and translated into English by Thomas Norton, 1578.

i.|.4 The Bacon-Shakspcrc Question.

Ckalona; Sir Thomas. De Regis Anglorum inslauranda Libri decern.

Ciceyo's Oi-ationes (ad imprimendum solum).

Coligny, Gaspard Dc, Admiral of France. The lyfc of this most godly Captain, &c.

Dc Bean Cliesne. Translated by J ohn Baildon. A book containing divers sorts of hands, &c.

De la Motte. A brief introduction to music. Collected by r. de La Motte, a Frenchman. Licensed. London, Svo. 1574.

De Sainliens, Claude. The French Littleton, etc., Campu di Fior, or else the flourie field of foure languages for the futherance of the learners of the Latine. French, English, but chiefly of the Italian tongues. 1583.

Fulkc. Two treatises written against the Papists.

GcntUis. " Disputatio dc Auctoribus et Spectaloribus Tabularum non notandis." Reprinted. Shakspere Society. Series V.

Giiicciardini's " Description of the Low Countries." 1 567.

Ilemmingscii. The faith of the Church Militant. James /, The works of.

La Ramce,

Lcntiilits. An Italian grammar written in Latin by M. Scipio Leululo, and turned into English by Henry Grantham. 1578 and 1587.

Leo7vita. An Astrological Catechism, Englished by Turner.

VEspine.

Manzio, A. <^ P. Phrases Linguii: Latin.L'. 1579.

J\Ierbtir£.

Mnllasler's " Ovid's Metamorphoses.'' " Ovid's Epistles." " Ovid's Art of Love."

" Plutarch's Lives." From the French of Amyoll. Englished by Sir Thomas North. Folio. 1579.

Saluste die Bavins. Scribonins. Verniii^U. Virgil.

Also histories of England and Scotland.

A treatise on French verbs. 1581.

A most easie, perfect and absolute way to learn the French tungue. 1581.

(Field republishes many of these — as also a long list of his own, some of them very suggestive.)

TIic Bacou'Shakspere Question. 145

Ariosto Lodovico. " Orlnndo Fiuioso in English Ilernicri! Verse."

/?anvui;/i, Philip. " Tlic Method of Phisick," &c.

P)ig°s, Walter. " A summary and true discourse of Sir F. Drake's West Indian Voyage," &c.

Calvin. Ca}?ideii,

Campion, Thoinas. " Observations in the Art of English Poesie."

Cogan, Tlwvias. ' ' The haven of health, chiefly made for the use of Students."

Datiiice, Edward. "A brief discourse, dialogue, wish, iScc."

Desainliens. Digges. Herring.

Hume, David (of Godscrofl). " Daphnis-Amaryllis."

Jiivenalis {Decinms Junius). "J.J. et A. Persii Flacci Satyrae."

Shakspere's " Venus and Adonis." Shakspcre's " Rape of Lucrece."

Note 7.

Ben Jonson on Bacon — "Timl)er" — "My conceit of his person was never increased towards him by his place or honours, but I have and do reverence him for tlie greatness that was only proper to himself, in that beseemed to me ever, by liis work, one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration, that had been in many ages. In his adversity, 1 even prayed that God would give him strength ; for greatness he could not want. Neither could I condole in a word or syllable for him, as knowing no accident could do harm to virtue, but rather help to make it manifest."

Note S.

In Lodge's Illustrations (jf British History, Vol. II., p. 251 (edition I'ygi), there is a letter from the Earl of Shrewsbury. 1599, to Thomas Baudewyn, in which the postscript says : " 1 wold have you bye me glasses to drink in : Send me word what olde plat yeldes the ounce, for I wyll not leve me a cuppe of sylvare to drink in, but I wyll see the next terme his creditors payde." Whether the Earl sold his plate and his example made " glasses " fashionable, Shakspere in Henry //'., Part II., makes Falstaff say, "Glasses are the only drinking." . . .

Note 9.

Tiie English of the days of Elizabeth accused the people of the Low Countries witii having taught them to

146 The Bacon-Shakspen Question.

drink to excess. The " men of war " who had cam- paigned in Flanders, according to Sir John Smythe, in his Discourses, 1590, introduced this vice amongst us, "whereof it is come to pass that now-a-days there are very few feasts where our said men of war are present, but that they do invite and procure all the company, of what calling soever they be, to carousing and quaffing ; and because they will not be denied their challenges, they, with many new songes, ceremonies, and reverences, drink to the health and prosperity of princes, to the health of counsellors, and unto the health of their greatest friends both at home and abroad, in which exercise they never cease till they be dead drunk, or, as the Flemings say, " Doot drunken." He adds, " And this aforesaid detestable vice hath within these six or seven years taken wonderful root amongst our English nation, that in times past was wont to be of all nations of Christendom ime of the soberest."

Note 10.

John Davies, of Hereford, 1563 — 1618, was a writing- master. He writes The Scourge of Folly, Microcosmus, Urate's Pilgrimage^ The Muse^ s Saci-ijice, and many minor poems; as well as versified translations of the Psalms. He writes praises of Shakspere, as our English Terence, &c., and in one poem says —

" Good wine doth need no bush. Lord, who can telle How ofte this old-said saw hath praised new books?"

We mention this because the proverb is one of the identities given by the Baconians.

Sir John Davies, a lawyer and Iriend of Bacon's, 1569 — 1626, publishes Orchestra, 1596; Hymns to Asira-a (Eliza- beth), 1599; Metrical Psalms, N^osce Tcipsitm, 1599. Went to Scotland to " welcome " King James in i6or. Bacon asked him then to be good to '• conceled poets," and he doubtless was so, as we find James ready to receive Bacon when he came to England. Query, Whether did Bacon write his Orchestra, Psalms, or Nosce Teipsum, or all three ?

Note II.

An amusing illustration of the life of the times may be found in Deckar. Deckar's GitWs Hornbook, 1609, is addressed to gulls in general.

Chap. 6 shows " How a young gallant should behave him- self in a play-house."

" The theatre is your Poet's Royal Exchange, on which their muses (they are now turned to merchants) meeting,

The Bacon- Shakspere Question. 147

barter away that light commodity of words, for a lighter ware than words, Plaudities and the Breaih of the Oreat Beast, which (like the threatening of two cowards), vanish all into the aire. Seat yourself on the very rushes where tlie Commedy is to dance. For do but cast up a rcclconing what large commings in are pursed up by sitting on the stage, first a conspicuous eminence is gotten, by which means the best and most essential! parts of a gallant (good cloaths and a pro- portionable legge, white hands, the Persian lock, and a tolerable beard) are perfectly revealed. Ly sitting on the stage you have a signed patent to engross the whole com- modity of censure, may lawfully presume to be a girder, stand at the helme to steere the passage of scenes, yet no man shall once offer to hinder you from obtaining the title of an insolent over-weening coxcombe." lie goes on to tell him satirically how to draw attention to himself by applaud- ing in the wrong place. " To conclude, hoord up the finest play-scraps you can get upon which your leane witte may most savourly feede, for want of other stuffe, when the Arcadian and Euphuis'd gentlewomen have their tongues sharpened to set on you ; that quality (next to your shittle- cocke) is the only furniture to a courtier that is but a new beginner and is but in his A.B.C of complement."

Note 12.

The preface to the first edition of Troilns and Cressida 1609: " A never writer, to an ever reader, Newes, Eternall reader, you have heere a new play, never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palmes of the vulgar, and yet passing full of the palme comicall ; for it is a birth of the brain that never undertooke anything comicall vainly ; and were but the vaine names of commedies changed for the titles of commodities, or of playes for pleas, you should see all those grand censors, that now stile them such vanities, flock to them for the maine grace of their gravities ; especially this author's commedies, that are so framed to the life that they serve for the most common commentaries of all the actions of our lives ; showing such a dexteritie and power of witte, that the most displeased with plays are pleased with his commedies. And all such dull and heavy-witted worldlings as were never capable of the witte of a commedie, coming by report of them to his representations, have found that witte there that they never found in themselves, and have parted better-wittied than they came ; feeling end edge of wit set upon them, more than ever they dreamed they had brain to grind it on. . . . Amongst all there is none more witty than this. . , . It deserves such a labour as well as the best commedie in Terence or I'lautus, and believe this, that when hee is gone, and his commedies out of sale, you will scramble for them, and set up a new English Inquisition."

148 The Bacon- Shakspere Question.

Note 13. l.vi. Epigram. I'oet-Ape.

Poor Poet-Ape, that would he thought our chief,

Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit From bondage is Ijecome so liold a thief,

As we the robbed, leave rage, and pity it. At first he made low-shifts, would pick and glean,

Buy the reversion of old plays ; now grown To a little wealth, and credit in the scene,

He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own. And, told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes

The sluggish gaping auditor devours ; He marks not whose 'twas first : and after times

May judge it to be his, as well as ours. Fool ! as if half eyes will not know a fleece From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece?

Ben Jonson is supposed to have expressed in this his feel- ings of jealousy towards Shakspere's successes in his early days, before he knew and "loved the man."

Note 14.

William Baudwin, author of the Myrroiir for Magistrates, has a poem on Richard H. and on Richard IH. 1571.

He is the compiler of a "Treatise of Morall Philosophy, contayning the sayings of the wyse wherein you maye see the worlhie and wittie "sayings of the Philosophers, Emperors, Kynges and Orators, of their lyvcs, their aunswers, of what linage they come of ; of what countrie ihey were, whose worthy and notable precepts, counsailes, parables and semblables, doe hereafter followe." The editions of 1547, 1567, 1575, 1584, 1587, 1591, iSglJ, 1610, 1620, 1630, are in the British Museum.

His 1st Book is—

Of Lives and Aunswers.

2nd. Of Philosophical Theologie.

3rd. Of Kynges and Rulers, and of Lawe.

4th. Of Sorrow and Lamentation.

5th. Of Mental Powers and Virtues.

6th. An admonition to avoid all kinds of vices.

This has been a rich field for readers and writers of the period, and one can trace much of Shakspere's knowledge and ])hilosophy to it.

Note 15.

Gammer Gurton's Needle, by Mr. S., Master of Arts, acted at Christ's College, Cambridge, was pubhshed 1575; and

The Bacon-Shakspere Question. 149

though later than Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister Doister, is by many considered the first English Comedy.

(First Act. First Scene.)

Diccon. Many a peece of bacon have I had out of their bailees, In roming over the countrie in long and wery walkes. . . . When I saw it booted not, out at doores I hied mee, And caught a slip of bacon, when I saw none spyed mee. Which I intend, not far hence, unless my purpose fayle, Shall serve for a shoeing home to draw on two pots of ale

2nd Act. The Song. " Back and side go bare," &c.

Diccon. Well done, by Gog's Malt, well sung and well

sayde. . . . Hodge. A pestilence light on all ill luck, chad thought yet for all this, Of a morsel of bacon behinde the dore, at worst should not

misse. But when I sought a slyp to cut, as I was wont to do — Gog's soul, Diccon, Gyp our cat, had eat the bacon too. (W^ich bacon Diccon stole, as is declared before.) Diccon. Ill luck, quod he ? Mary swere it Hodge, this day the truth tel. Thou rose not on thy right side, or els blest thee not wel, Thy milk slopt up, thy bacon filched, that was too bad luck — Hodge !

T. G. Johnson, Printer, 121 Fleet Street, E.G.

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