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The Problem
OF THE
jmkespfatf $Ia#0
BY
George C. Bompas
LONDON
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY, LIMITED
ffl DU1I6I.H1 i «)Ull'.l
Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, E.C.
1902
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WH1TTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
7 O
IH
THE ARGUMENT.
IN a letter which appeared in "The Times" on 28th
December, 1901, I suggested the following points re-
lating to the authorship of the Shakespeare plays, as deserv-
ing thoughtful consideration.
1. According to Halliwell-Phillipps, Shakspere's most
complete biographer, Shakspere, when he left Stratford at
the age of twenty-one or twenty-three, was " all but destitute
of polished accomplishments," and " could not have had the
opportunity of acquiring a refined style of composition."
2. There is no evidence that he was addicted to study,
but much to the contrary.
3. The plays show an acquaintance with Latin, Greek,
Italian, French and Spanish ; and with many works in these
different languages.
4. Also an exact knowledge of law, in its various branches,
and of medicine, natural history, horticulture and natural
philosophy, up to and beyond the limit of learning of the
age.
5. One man there was, of surpassing genius, who, by
laborious study, had acquired all these forms of knowledge.
Was there another who had attained exactly the same vari-
ous knowledge by intuition ?
6. Macaulay, Shelley and Spedding recognize that the
poetical faculty was powerful in Bacon's mind. He was also
devoted to the drama, and declared that " dramatic poesy
would be of excellent use if well directed, for the stage is
capable of no small use, both of discipline and corruption " ;
9S
iv The Argument.
" a kind of musician's bow, by which men's minds may be
played upon."
7. The vocabulary of the plays is a new development of
English speech. Max Miiller declares that " Shakespeare
displayed a greater variety of expression than probably any
writer in any language." He estimated Milton's vocabulary
at 8,000 words; Shakespeare's at 15,000 words. Bacon's
vocabulary is practically the same as that of the Shakespeare
plays.
8. Not only the learning, but also the errors of the plays
are identical with those of Bacon's works.
9. Parallelisms of thought and expression exist through-
out the plays and Bacon's works, hard to explain save by
unity of authorship. More than a thousand of such parallel-
isms have been collected.
10. Bacon kept a notebook, containing over 1,600 quota-
tions, proverbs and turns of expression, called the " Promus
of Formularies and Elegancies." These are largely used in
the plays.
11. There is strong evidence that several of the plays
appeared before William Shakspere left Stratford.
12. The plays fit curiously into the life of Bacon, but
show scarcely a point of contact with Shakspere's life. The
scenes of nearly all the plays are foreign. The scenes of
several of the earlier plays are laid in France, where Bacon
had resided for two and a half years. Others, as " 3
Henry VI." and "Cymbeline," have their scenes at St.
Albans, Bacon's home. "The Merchant of Venice" was
acted when Anthony Bacon had just delivered his brother
Francis from the Jews. The " dark period " of the plays
coincides with the death of Essex and of Anthony Bacon in
1601. "The Tempest" appeared when the ships sent out
by the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery and Bacon
were wrecked at the Bermudas. " Henry VIII.," " Corio-
The Argiiment. v
lanus " and " Timon " appeared seven years after Shak-
spere's death ; but, appropriately to their subjects, after
Bacon's fall.
13. The death of William Shakspere in 16 16, leaving
neither books nor manuscripts, did not stop the production
of new plays, nor prevent the rewriting of old ones : but
when Bacon became Solicitor-General in 1607 the plays
diminished ; and when he was appointed Attorney-General
in 1 613 they ceased ; but to be resumed after his fall in 1621.
14. Two arguments support William Shakspere's claims.
First, common repute ; but we learn from Greene's " Fare-
well to Folly," that it was the practice of play-writers of
" calling and gravity " to "get some other to set their names
to their verses."
15. The main, nay, the sole substantial argument is the
Folio of 1623 and Ben Jonson's preface. But Ben Jonson
up to 1616, the year of Shakspere's death, was bitterly
jealous of him, and lost no opportunity of a sneer. In
1620 he became Bacon's literary assistant in latinizing
Bacon's works, and suddenly became a worshipper of the
author of the plays, expressing the same profound admira-
tion which he also expressed for Bacon, and in similar
terms. Ben Jonson was the chief editor of the Folio-
Heminge and Condell appear to have been nominal editors,
seeking no profit and undertaking no charges. But Jonson
was, at the same time, Bacon's literary assistant. The Folio
must, therefore, have been published with Bacon's know-
ledge, and it may well have been under his control.
If the publication of the Folio was, in fact, controlled by
Bacon, the presumption of authorship may be reversed !
In the following pages endeavour is made to give to these
several points some of the consideration they deserve.
GEORGE C. BOMPAS.
LONDON, February, 1902.
CONTENTS.
I'AGK
I. The Problem i
II. William Shakspere's Life and Education . 5
III. Francis Bacon's Life and Education . . 17
IV. Comparison of the Plays with Bacon's Prose
Works 23
V. The "Promus" 37
VI. Comparison of the Plays with Bacon's Life . 42
VII. "Hamlet" 49
VIII. "Twelfth Night," "Love's Labour's Lost,"
"Two Gentlemen of Verona" and "Mid-
summer Night's Dream " 59
IX. Historical Plays, 1591 64
X. "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece," 1 593- 1 594 68
XI. The "Comedy of Errors" and Other Plays,
1 594- 1600 73
XII. The Dark Period, 1601-1606 .... 82
XIII. Bacon's Late Prosperity, 1606-1620 ... 85
XIV. Bacon's Fall, 1621 89
XV. Contemporary Allusions 93
XVI. The Folio of 1623 98
XVII. Ruts in the Clouds 107
XVIII. Conclusion 11 1
Index 117
THE PROBLEM OF THE
SHAKESPEARE PLAYS.
The Inquirie of Truth, which is the Love-making or Wooing of it ;
the knowledge of Truth, which is the Presence of it ; and the Beleefe
of Truth, which is the Enjoying of it ; is the Sovereigne Good of
humane nature. — Francis Bacon, Essay of Truth.
I. THE PROBLEM.
THE most interesting, perhaps, of literary problems, and
not the least intricate, is that of the authorship of the
Shakespeare plays.
That the plays, or most of them, were attributed to
William Shakspere ' in his lifetime is not doubted, nor that
this gave him a high reputation with many of his con-
temporaries. Yet the difficulty of reconciling the production
of works of such consummate genius, and such various
knowledge, with the known facts of Shakspere's life, has
been profoundly felt by many thoughtful men.
Many of the keenest intellects of the last century have
expressed their doubts of Shakspere's authorship of the plays.
Lord Byron and Lord Palmerston shared these doubts ;
Hallam sought in vain the true author. Lord Beaconsficld
in 1837 put the same doubt in the mouth of one of the char-
acters in " Venctia." " And who is Shakespeare ? We know
1 " Shakespeare," is the spelling used throughout when referring to
the plays; "Shakspere" for the reputed author.
I'.
2 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
as much of him as we do of Homer. Did he write half the
plays attributed to him? Did he write one whole play? I
doubt it." In 1852 appeared in "Chambers' Edinburgh
Journal" the first English essay on "Who wrote Shake-
speare?" expressing the same doubts. In 1856 Delia Bacon
in America questioned Shakspere's claim. Nathaniel Haw-
thorne aided the publication of her book, and wrote its
preface. In the same year William Henry Smith wrote his
letter to Lord Ellesmere, and in 1857 a short treatise pointing
out Francis Bacon as the probable author. Lord Campbell
in 1859 elaborately showed that the author must have been a
trained lawyer, which there is no evidence that Shakspere was
or could have been. In 1867 Judge Holmes in America, in
1883 Mrs. Pott in England, advocated Francis Bacon's title
to the authorship of the plays. James Russell Lowell speaks
of " the apparition known to moderns as Shakespeare."
Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote : " I would not be surprised
to find myself ranged with Mrs. Pott and Judge Holmes on
the side of the philosopher against the play-actor." John
G. Whittier wrote : " Whether Bacon wrote the wonderful
plays or not, I am quite sure the man Shakspere neither did
nor could." Sir Edwin Arnold argues for Bacon's author-
ship. Gladstone stated thus his opinion : " Considering
what Bacon was, I have always regarded the discussion as
one perfectly serious and to be respected " ; and John
Bright said bluntly : " Any man who believes that William
Shakspere of Stratford wrote ' Hamlet ' or ' Lear ' is a fool ! "
Excepting William Shakspere, if he was the author of
these plays, the most towering intellect of that age was
Francis Bacon, who had, Macaulay writes, " the most
exquisitely constructed intellect that has ever been be-
stowed on any of the children of men " ; and whom Hallam
styles " the wisest and greatest of mankind."
If William Shakspere did not write the plays, no other
The Problem. 3
than Francis Bacon could be suggested, as having the various
attainments possessed by their author. The problem to
be solved therefore is — Was William Shakspere, or Francis
Bacon the true author of these plays ?
To examine the question thus arising, to weigh impartially
the evidence on both sides, is a deeply interesting inquiry ;
yet the inquiry is by most men treated with scorn : and not-
withstanding the eminent doubters just named, and many
others, Mr. Sidney Lee, Shakspere's recent and very able
biographer, ventures to pronounce that the theory of Bacon's
authorship of the plays has " no rational right to a
hearing " !
The arts of criticism and of historic inquiry, and also
the just appreciation of the genius of the plays, are of
modern growth ; no wonder, therefore, that the authorship
of the plays has until lately remained unquestioned. Evelyn
in 1 66 1 reports that the plays "begin to disgust the present
age." Pepys described " Midsummer Night's Dream " as
the " most insipid, ridiculous " play, and " Romeo and
Juliet " the " worst " he had ever seen, and " Twelfth
Night" as "silly." Hume charged both Shakspere and
Bacon with " defective taste and elegance." Addison found
the plays "very faulty." Dr. Johnson declared that Shak-
spere had not perhaps produced " one play which, as the
work of a contemporary writer, would be heard to the
conclusion." Dryden considered Shakspere as "below the
dullest writers of our own or any precedent age." From
the beginning of the eighteenth century Shakspere's reputa-
tion steadily rose in England. Lessing in Germany claimed
for him in 1759 the first place. But Voltaire in 1776
described Shakspere as a barbarian, whose works, "a huge
dunghill," contained some pearls !
The genius of these plays is now everywhere acknow-
ledged ; yet few, comparatively, seem aware of the existence
4 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
of a problem concerning their authorship, and fewer still of
the evidence relating to it. To gather up and present con-
cisely this evidence and weigh its effect is the task before
us, and all who love the plays should welcome the inquiry.
An impartial hearing is invited from all who sincerely
seek truth, and say with Polonius : " I will find out where
truth is hid, though it were hid indeed in the centre." ' To
such "Truth will come to light — in the end truth will out."
First, then, it has been said that the doubts are unfounded,
for that the powers of genius cannot be limited, and that the
genius of the author of the plays was unrivalled. A wide
sympathy with humanity, an intuition of character may be
allowed, but the character of the plays should have some
correspondence with the character of the man, and there is
no royal road to learning.
Suppose while the authorship of the Waverley Novels,
works of undoubted genius, remained a mystery, someone
had announced that the greatest genius in Scotland was
Robert Burns, that he therefore wrote the Waverley Novels,
would anyone have believed it ? Robert Burns, an illiterate
ploughman, notwithstanding his undoubted genius, "warb-
ling his native wood-notes wild," could not have written the
novels. These showed evidence of high education, of varied
knowledge of law, history, archaeology and geography, and
of society modern and mediaeval, which no illiterate genius
could possess. The novels reflected the life, not of Robert
Burns, but of Walter Scott.
A similar incoherence exists between the life of William
Shakspere and the plays which bear his name ; a like con-
sonance may be found between those plays and the life and
intellect of Bacon.
The genius of the plays is admitted, and also the variety,
the universality of the knowledge they display. What
1 "Hamlet," II. ii. 157. 2 "Merchant of Venice," II. ii.
Shakspere s Life and Education. 5
branch indeed of knowledge is there which they do not
illustrate, up to the limit of the attainment of that age.
Treatises have been written upon the knowledge shown in
the plays of law, medicine, trees, flowers, natural history and
philosophy. They show a knowledge of Latin, which per-
vades the language of the plays, and of many Latin authors,
of Plautus and Tacitus, Virgil, Horace, Ovid and others ;
of Greek, of Plato and Lucian ; to which Malone adds Lu-
cretius, Statius, Catullus, Seneca, Sophocles and Euripides ;
a colloquial knowledge of French ; an intimate knowledge of
Italian language and literature, from which, and often from
untranslated novels, so many of the plays are taken ; an ac-
quaintance with Spanish, from which one play and many
sayings are derived ; and generally a wide knowledge of
literature, both classical and contemporary, English and
foreign.
One man then lived, of surpassing genius, who took all
knowledge for his province, who by laborious study had
attained and possessed all this various knowledge.
Was there another, who had also attained it, by intuition ?
To form any judgment the facts of Shakspere's life must
be considered.
II. WILLIAM SHAKSPERE'S LIFE AND
EDUCATION.
WILLIAM SHAKSPERE was born at Stratford on
22nd or 23rd April, 1564.
His father, John Shakspere, was a well-to-do tradesman at
Stratford, a glover, corn and hide merchant, and butcher.
The rudeness which surrounded William Shakspere's child-
hood is shown by his father being fined twelve pence in
1552 for maintaining a dirt heap in front of his house in
6 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
Henley Street, instead of removing the filth to the neigh-
bouring town-midden. The Stratford archives are said by
Mr. Sidney Lee to show that John Shakspere could write, but
this is doubted by Halliwell-Phillipps, and he seems usually
to have only made his mark ; he had, however, some skill
in accounts, and held in succession various municipal offices,
until in 1585 he fell into debt and difficulty.1
His mother, Mary Shakspere, though " well provided with
worldly goods, was apparently without education; several
extant documents bear her mark, and there is no proof that
she could sign her name."2
There can be little doubt that William Shakspere went for
some years to the free grammar school of Stratford, for he
did learn to write. At that school, in ordinary course, he
would learn reading and writing and the rudiments of Latin.
Of his writing five signatures alone remain, and these are
the only certain evidence of the tuition he received, a
tuition in this respect certainly imperfect or carelessly used.
It is indeed hard to believe that the writer of those five
crabbed signatures could have been a fluent and prolific
author.
" The best authorities unite in telling us," his biographer
Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps writes/1 "that the poet imbibed a
certain amount of Latin at school, but that his acquaintance
with that language was throughout life of a very limited
character." "It is not probable that scholastic learning was
ever congenial to his tastes ; and it should be recollected
that books, in most parts of the country, were then of very
rare occurrence. Lilly's grammar, and a few classical works
chained to the desks of the free school, were probably the
1 " Life of Shakespeare," by Sidney Lee, p. 5 ; Halliwell-Phillipps,
"Outlines of Life of Shakespeare," ii. p. 369.
'■* Lee, p. 7 ; Halliwell-Phillipps, i. p. 28.
1 Halliwell-Phillipps, i. p. 53.
Shakspere s Life and Education. 7
only volumes of the kind to be found at Stratford-on-Avon.
Exclusive of Bibles, Church services, psalters and educational
manuals, there were certainly not more than two or three
dozen books, if so many, in the whole town. The copy of
the black-letter English history, so often depicted as well
thumbed by Shakspere and his father, never existed out of
imagination."
English was but little taught in such schools. The first Eng-
lish grammar was not published until 1586, some years after
William Shakspere left school.1 Neither Italian nor Spanish
would be taught at all.
He probably left school about 1577, at the age of thirteen,
when his father's failing fortunes required the son's help in
his then trade of butcher, to which more than one tradition
recorded by Aubrey and Dowdall assert the son was ap-
prenticed.2
There is no evidence that the boy was addicted to study,
by which stores of varied knowledge could be acquired. His
course of life seems rather that of an idle youth, caring
neither for honesty, morality, nor good character.
A popular local legend attached to a tree long shown as
" Shakspere's crab tree " described him as sleeping off under
it the effects of a hard drinking bout with the neighbouring
village of Bidford.
" The independent testimony of Archdeacon Davies, who
was vicar of Sapperton, Gloucestershire, late in the seven-
teenth century, is to the effect that Shakspere was much
given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits, par-
ticularly from Sir Thos. Lucy, who had him oft whipt, and
sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native-
county, to his great advancement." '
Rowe in 1709 gives a like account.
Deerstealers were then subject to three months' imprison-
1 Goadby, p. 101. 2 Lcc, p. 18. ■ Ibid., p. 27.
8 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
ment, but such seclusion was hardly favourable to study, or
to a refinement of language.
" Removed prematurely from school ; residing with illit-
erate relatives in a bookless neighbourhood ; thrown into
the midst of occupations adverse to scholastic progress, it is
difficult," Halliwell-Phillipps writes, " to believe that when he
first left Stratford, he was not all but destitute of polished
accomplishments. He could not, at all events under the
circumstances in which he had then so long been placed,
have had the opportunity of acquiring a refined style of
composition."1
The same writer supposes that in London the youth
would find the means of self-education. It is hard to be-
lieve that, at the age of twenty-one or twenty-three, having
shown no sign of studious habits in the leisure of his youth,
he could, as horse-boy or prompter's call-boy, or in the then
despised trade of an actor, have acquired culture, education
and learning. There were no night schools or free libraries
in those days.
Books were scarce, and there is no sign, outside the
plays and poems, that William Shakspere ever possessed
one, the genuineness of his supposed signature in the copy
of Florio's Montaigne in the British Museum being at
least disputable.2
If he had been an enthusiastic student, and by some
extraordinary means had acquired many languages and
much learning, his contemporaries must surely have known
it ; but the impression he produced on them was the contrary.
The writers of that age assert that Shakspere was, in fact,
notoriously unlearned. Leonard Digges, one of the preface
writers of the folio of 1623, writing in 1640 says: "Nature
only helped him." Thomas Fuller in 1662 : " His learning
was very little." Sir John Denham in 1668: "Old mother
1 Halliwell-Phillipps, i. p. 95. 2 Lee, p. 285.
Shakspere s Life and Education. 9
wit and nature gave Shakspere and Fletcher all they have."
Chetwood in 1684: "Shakspere said all that Nature could
impart." In the same year Winstanley wrote of another :
" Never any scholar, as our Shakspere if alive would con-
fess"; and Gerard Langbaine in 1691: "He was as much
a stranger to French as to Latin." 1
How, then, could an unlearned man write learned plays ?
Some striking contrast there must have been between the
man and the works which bore his name, which made men
marvel at Shakspere the unlearned.
It has been supposed that towards the end of 1585
Shakspere left Stratford, but the year 1587 seems the more
likely date. In 1586 a distress was issued against John
Shakspere's goods, but none were found. In March of the
following year he was imprisoned, and sued out a writ of
habeas corpus to obtain his liberty. In the same year, 1587,
several companies of players visited Stratford ; 2 and it seems
likely, from the coincidence of date, that William Shakspere,
gaining no support from his father or his father's trade, then
joined the players and followed them to London. There
is evidence that William Shakspere was in Stratford in
1587, since in that year he joined with his father and
mother in a release of her property of Ashbies to John
Lambert the mortgagee, a transaction which John Shak-
spere endeavoured in 1589, and again in 1597, to set aside,
but without success. Nothing more is heard of William
Shakspere until 1592.
In the meantime, in 1582, when only eighteen, William
Shakspere had formed an intimacy with a neighbouring
farmer's daughter, Anne Hathaway, eight years older than
himself, whom lie married in November or December of
that year, apparently under pressure of her relations, and
1 " Uacon V. Shakspere," by Edwin Reed, to which book the
author is much indebted. - Lee, p. 33.
io Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
who bore him a daughter in May, 1583, and twin son and
daughter in January, 1585.
The more closely Shakspere's life is scrutinized, the more
unamiable he appears.
To hurry on his marriage with Anne Hathaway, two
friends of her father (who had lately died) took the unusual
step of giving a bond in the Worcester registry on the 28th
November, 1582, which enabled the marriage to take place
immediately with only one publication of banns. But on
the previous day, 27th November, a licence had been taken
out of the same registry for the marriage of William Shak-
spere with Ann Whately ! It has been suggested as possible
that this was another William Shakspere ; but the coincid-
ence of time, and the sudden and unusual pressing on of
Anne Hathaway's marriage, leave little room for doubt that,
but for her friends' interference, Shakspere would have de-
serted Anne Hathaway and married another woman; nor
does this disagree with his after conduct to his wife.
"All the evidence points to the conclusion, which the fact
that he had no more children confirms, that in the later
months of the year 1585 [or 1587] he left Stratford, and that,
although he was never wholly estranged from his family, he
saw little of his wife or children for eleven years." '
The emphasis with which the author of the plays insists
that a woman should take in marriage "an elder than her-
self," and that prenuptial intimacy is productive of "barren
hate, sour-eyed disdain, and discord," suggests, it is said,
" a personal interpretation " ! It is rather one of the many
discords between the plays and Shakspere's life.
Of these eleven years, apart from the inferences drawn
from the plays and poems which bear the name of Shake-
speare, scarcely anything is known.
On his arrival in London he is said at first to have held
1 Lee, p. 26.
Shakspere s Life and Education. 1 1
horses for visitors to the theatre, then to have been engaged
as call-boy or supernumerary, and then as actor. He is
noticed as an actor in 1592, and was a member of the Lord
Chamberlain's Company in 1594, in December of which year
he acted before the Queen at Greenwich. He is said to have
lodged near the Bear Garden in Southwark in 1596, and in
the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, in 1598. The com-
pany acted successively at the Theatre and the Curtain, both
near Shoreditch, the Rose Theatre, the Globe, the Black
friars Theatre, at various provincial towns, and sometimes
at Court. In 1598 he acted in Ben Jonson's " Every Man
in his Humour," and in 1603 in " Sejanus." Aubrey quotes
an old actor as saying that Shakspere " did act exceedingly
well." Rowe identifies only one of his parts, namely, the
ghost in " Hamlet," and describes it as " the top of his per-
formance."
The only personal incident of this period which has come
down to us is the story of a trick practised upon his fellow-
player Richard Burbage, marking a loose life.1
Let us pass over for a while these eleven mysterious
years, which are supposed to have converted William Shak-
spere into the most brilliant literary genius of all time,
and consider him when he returned again to Stratford in
1596.
He then had made money, and in 1597 he bought New
Place, the largest house in Stratford, and added field to
field in after years, though living partly in London until
161 1 ; but all we learn of him is that he lent money and
sued for its repayment. From his many suits he seems to
have been a hard man and litigious. " He inherited his
father's love of litigation." 2 This is another discord between
his life and the plays, which hold usurers up to contempt,
and praise Antonio, who lent money without interest and
1 Lee, p. 265. 2 Ibid., p. 206.
1 2 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
spoilt the usurer's trade. Bacon, be it observed, wrote an
essay against usury.
Shakspere's literary fame was little appreciated at Strat-
ford, and did not even obtain the toleration of the drama
there; for in the year 1602 the board of aldermen pro-
hibited the future performance of any stage plays at Strat-
ford under a penalty of ten shillings, increased in 1612, the
year after Shakspere's final retirement to Stratford, to ten
pounds.
The status of a player was then a low one ; for, by a
statute of Elizabeth of 1571, players must procure a licence
from a peer or personage of higher degree, or they were
adjudged rogues and vagabonds. These licences were
freely given by Elizabeth and her nobles, so that, although
the first theatre in London was erected in 1576, there were
in London in 1587 six companies of players, besides three
companies of boy-actors from the choirs of St. Paul's and
the Chapel Royal, and from Westminster Scholars. Yet in
1597 the Lord Mayor denounced the theatre as "a place for
vagrants, thieves, horse-stealers, contrivers of treason, and
other idle and dangerous persons."
Shakspere's two daughters were twelve or thirteen years
old when their father returned to Stratford in 1596, but
were allowed to grow up in ignorance, notwithstanding the
scorn with which the author of the plays denounces ignor-
ance ; another discord !
"O thou monster ignorance, how deformed dost thou
look ! " — Love's Labour 's Lost
"There is no darkness but ignorance." — Twelfth Night.
" Ignorance the curse of God, knowledge the wing where-
with we fly to heaven."— 2 Henry IV.
"The common curse of mankind folly and ignorance."
— Troilus and Cressida.
Susannah, the eldest daughter, was not sufficiently edu-
Shakspere s Life and Education. 13
cated to be able to recognize her husband's writing ; Judith
could not sign her name.
Shakspere's wife, it must be supposed, rejoined him, since
she is mentioned in his will ; but stories current in his life-
time and afterwards show, at least, that his reputation when
in London, and after his return to Stratford, was not one of
fidelity to her.1 Another discord, since the plays condemn
unchastity in every form. Nor did he, unless compelled,
repay the forty shillings borrowed of her father's shepherd
during her husband's neglect. This remained unpaid when
the shepherd died in 1601, and he directed his executor to
recover the money from Shakspere and distribute it among
the poor of Stratford.
John Shakspere's money troubles appear, indeed, to have
ceased on his son's return ; and father and son combined in
a curious application for a grant of arms, based on fictitious
statements, which ultimately in 1589 proved so far success-
ful that the arms were assumed, though not recorded.
In 1605 Shakspere bought a portion of Stratford tithes,
and thereupon engaged in litigation with the town. In 1614
he joined in an application for the inclosure of the common
land, by which he hoped to profit, but was defeated by the
corporation of Stratford.
On 25th April, 16 16, he died, and according to the testi-
mony of John Ward, vicar of Stratford from 1662 to 1668,
from the effects of a drinking bout. The tradition at least
shows a reputation for intemperance.
The plays express contempt for intemperance.
To sit
And keep the turn of tippling with a slave,
To reel the streets at noon, and stand the bullet
With knaves that smell of sweat.
Antony and Cleopatra, I. iv.
1 Lee, p. 265.
1 4 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
" O that men should put an enemy in their mouths to
steal away their brains ! that we should with joy, pleasance,
revel and applause transform ourselves into beasts. To be
now a sensible man, by-and-by a fool, and presently a beast !
O strange ! Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the in-
gredient is a devil." — Othello, II. iii.
When he is best he is little worse than a man ;
And when he is worst he is little better than a beast.
Merry Wives, I. ii.
Oh, monstrous beast ! how like a swine he lies.
Taming of the Shrew.
This Bacon may have written : can Shakspere have done
so?
The lines on the slab over Shakspere's grave in Stratford
were, according to a letter written in 1694, by William Hall,
an Oxford graduate, "in his lifetime ordered to be cut on
his tomb-stone," which is confirmed by the fact that the
epitaph seems to have prevented his wife being buried
beside him. The lines show little evidence of poetic genius.
Another doggerel epitaph on John Combe is attributed to
Shakspere by Aubrey and Rowe.
Shakspere by his will commenced in January, and signed
in March, 1616, gave New Place and all his residuary estate
to his eldest daughter, Susannah Hall. To Judith he gave
a silver bowl, a life interest in a house, ^£150 in money,
which included her marriage portion of ^100, and a further
^150 should she survive him three years. He left, among
other legacies, " 36/8 to each of his fellowes, John Heminge,
Richard Burbage and Henry Condell, with which to buy
memorial rings." To his wife, by an interlineation in the
will, he left "his second best bed with its furniture," and
nothing more. She may have been entitled to dower out
of some part of his lands, but on his last purchase in 1613,
of a house in Blackfriars, he barred his wife's dower.
Shakspere s Life and Education. 1 5
Although there is careful mention of his various landed
and house properties, his household furniture, his plate, his
bowl, his sword and his wearing apparel, there is no men-
tion of books or manuscripts, or literary property. Yet if
he was the learned student, the wide-read and prolific author
he is reputed to have been, he must have possessed a
library of books, a rare and valuable possession in those
days, and many manuscripts of the successive editions of
the plays.
A man so careful, nay, greedy of money, had he been the
author of the most famous plays of the period, not to say of
all time, would surely have turned them to some account, or
given some direction about them in his will.
The interest he acquired in the London theatres as one of
the actors probably ceased on his retirement ; and it has
been suggested that all his rights in the plays may have been
made over to the company of players. But there was no
such transfer recorded at Stationers' Hall, where after 1594
all plays were required to be registered before publication ;
nor is there any evidence of a transfer which could prevent
him from publishing the twenty plays yet unpublished. On
the contrary, his fellow-players, Heminge and Condell, did
afterwards publish them, and disclaimed any such title.
They say in the dedication of the folio : " We have but col-
lected them, and done an office to the dead to procure his
Orphanes guardians, without ambition of selfe-profit or
fame ; onely to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend
and Fellowe alive as was our Shakespeare." But William
Shakspere left no trace of books or manuscripts !
In 1642 Dr. James Cooke, a surgeon in attendance on
royalist troops stationed at Stratford, visited Mrs. Hall,
Shakspere's eldest daughter, a widow since 1635, and ex-
amined the manuscripts in her possession ; but they were
of her husband's and not of her father's composition,
1 6 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
though she insisted that they were written by a debtor,
who had pledged them to her husband. Dr. Cooke says :
" I being acquainted with Mr. Hall's hand told her that
one or two of them were her husband's and showed them to
her. She denied, I affirmed, till I perceived she began to
be offended." Mrs. Hall, therefore, although her father's
executrix and residuary legatee, knew nothing of any manu-
scripts written by him, or of other literary remains, and
could not distinguish her husband's writing.
Observe how the end of Shakspere's life fits in with the
beginning. There is the same unamiable, intemperate,
immoral life, the same carelessness and neglect of wife and
children ; no sign of learned education, or books, or litera-
ture ; no more trace of the plays at the end of his life than
at the beginning.
A character wide as the poles from the character revealed
by the plays of their author. Genius may doubtless be
subject to human infirmity, but should be at least discernible
in the life and character of the man. Whence in his sordid
life could William Shakspere derive the noble thoughts, the
profound philosophy, the generous sentiments, the various
learning, the pure ideal of womanhood, the aristocratic
sense, the tone and speech of courts and camps, which
characterize the plays ?
" I cannot marry this fact to his verse," Emerson wrote.
" Other admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping
with their thought, but this man in wide contrast."
Coleridge, assuming Shakspere's authorship of the plays,
rejected the facts of his life and character. "Ask your
hearts," he exclaimed, "ask your common sense to conceive
the possibility of the author of the plays being the anomalous,
the wild, the irregular genius of our daily criticism. What !
are we to have miracles in sport ? Does God choose idiots
by whom to convey divine truth to men ? "
Bacons Life and Edtication. 1 7
It is this discord between the life of William Shakspere
and the plays which bear his name, which caused the doubts
of those acute and thoughtful men whose names have been
cited. Weighing the facts of William Shakspere's life, it
seems improbable, if not incredible, that he should have
written the plays.
III. FRANCIS BACON'S LIFE AND EDUCATION.
IN striking contrast was Francis Bacon's mental equip-
ment. Born on 22nd January, 1561, he was the son of
the wise Sir Nicholas Bacon for twenty years Lord Keeper.
His mother, noted for her learning and piety, was able to
correspond with Archbishop Jewell in Greek, and to read,
write and translate Latin and Italian. From her Bacon
would early acquire a familiar knowledge of Italian language
and literature, from which so many of the plays are derived.
In April, 1573, at the age of twelve, he entered Cambridge
University, and was trained under Whitgift, afterwards Arch-
bishop. At Christmas, 1575, he left Cambridge, having
mastered all the knowledge he could gain at the University
and " run through the whole circle of the liberal arts."
Disappointed with Aristotle's philosophy, he even then con-
ceived the idea that a better method might be found ; but
he acquired a wide knowledge of classical and modern
language and literature, such knowledge as is conspicuous
in the plays.
In 1576, being then fifteen, he entered as a student at
Gray's Inn. Already he enjoyed the Queen's favour, who
called him her young Lord Keeper. In September of the
same year he went with Sir Amyas Paulet, the English
ambassador, to Paris, and remained in France for two and
c
1 8 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
a half years, where he gained a colloquial knowledge of
French and some of Spanish ; and he made afterwards a col-
lection of Spanish proverbs. He saw many parts of France,
Blois, Tours and Poitiers, where he stayed some months,
thus visiting the battlefields famous in English history. A
knowledge of French and of these battle scenes is reflected
in the plays. During his absence the Queen, in May, 1577,
was entertained for five days by his father, Sir Nicholas
Bacon, at Gorhambury, near St. Albans.1
Bacon brought back despatches to the Queen, which
mentioned him as " of great hope and endued with many
good and singular parts." During these years he lived with
princes and nobles, and learned the manners and language
of the Court. Shakspere's associates at Stratford were
peasants and apprentices.
The death of Sir Nicholas Bacon, in 1579, recalled
Francis Bacon to his home at Gorhambury. He then took
up his abode in Gray's Inn, and began laboriously to study
law. Disappointed of his father's intended provision, of
which he received only a fifth part, he had now to make
his livelihood by his profession or by literary effort.
We are wont to think of Bacon only as the grave philo-
sopher of his later life ; but his philosophical writings did
not begin to appear for seventeen years after his returti from
Paris. Meantime, though studying law, his life was that of
the brilliant courtier, the associate of Essex and Southamp-
ton and Sidney; the chief contriver of the masques and
entertainments at Gray's Inn, or before the Queen at Green-
wich. Not free from extravagance, his narrow means in-
volved him in many difficulties. How were his necessities
to be met?
Philosophical writings in advance of the age are not often
either popular or lucrative ; it was said by Cuffe, Essex's
1 Nicholls's " Progresses."
Bacon s Life and Education. 19
secretary, of the " Novum Organum," when published in
1600, that "a fool could not have written it and a wise
man would not." And Coke wrote on his presentation
copy :
It deserveth not to be read in Schools,
But to be freighted in the Ship of Fools. l
If, then, any other form of literature more readily saleable
lay open, would not Bacon be likely to use it, if he could
by any means escape the charge of frivolity, and avoid
injury to his professional career?
Not until 1596 were his " Maxims of the Law and Treatise
on the Colours of Good and Evil" published, and in 1597
the first ten of his fifty-eight Essays appeared. Though he
diligently studied law, it was distasteful. He was called to
the Outer Bar in June, 1582, but could not plead in Court
until he became a bencher in 1586, and his first case seems
to have been in January, 1594. He had entered Parliament
in 1584. Disappointed of office, and struggling with debt,
he threatened in 1592 to throw up the law, and become
"a sorry bookmaker or a true pioneer in the mine of truth."
Was there no fruit of his teeming brain during these
seventeen years to help his empty purse ?
At this period from -£6 to j£n was the price ordinarily
paid to an author for a play," but these sums should be
multiplied by eight to represent their present value.
A needy barrister of the present day would be glad to
earn from ^50 to ^90 by writing a play, if his talents
enabled him to do so, and Bacon may well have been glad
to earn the equivalent in his day.
Now there is evidence that Francis Bacon, during these
years, before the publication of philosophical books, was
in fact engaged in some course of study or literary work
1 Disraeli's " Curiosities of Literature," p. 492.
2 Lee, p. 197.
20 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
(he was, he says, "a man born for literature") which to
one at least of his friends seemed derogatory if not dis-
graceful.
This appears from a remarkable letter written in 1607
by Sir Thomas Bodley, the founder of the Bodleian Library,
Oxford, on receipt of Bacon's " Cogitata et Visa." The
letter congratulates Bacon on having at length made choice
of a fit subject of study, natural philosophy, " which course,"
he adds, " would to God — to whisper as much in your ear
— you had followed at the first, when you fell to the study
of such a study as was not worthy such a student."
Sir Thomas shared the prevailing prejudice against Eng-
lish plays, and would not admit "such baggage" into his
library.
It has been doubted if Bacon had poetic genius, or
dramatic taste, to fit him for such authorship.
" In wit," Macaulay says, " if by wit be meant the power
of perceiving analogies between things which appear to have
nothing in common, he never had an equal ; not even
Cowley, not even the author of 'Hudibras.' . . . The
poetical faculty was powerful in Bacon's mind. ... In
truth, much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary
world."
Shelley said : " Lord Bacon was a poet. His language has
a sweet and majestic rhythm which satisfies the sense, no
less than the almost super-human wisdom of his philosophy
satisfies the intellect." x
His versions of the Psalms, written in sickness, have been
adduced as evidence of want of poetic talent ; but these,
though such translations cramp poetic genius, are certainly
finer than some of Milton's versions — for example, Milton's
version of the 7th Psalm ; yet Milton was undoubtedly a
poet. Let two verses from each suffice for comparison :
1 Prose Works, iii. p. 107.
Bacons Life and Education. 21
O Lord, thou art our home, to whom we fly,
And so hast always been from age to age ;
Before the hills did intercept the eye,
Or that the frame was up of earthly stage,
One God thou wert, and art, and still shalt be ;
The line of time, it doth not measure thee.
Thou carriest man away as with a tide,
Then down swim all his thoughts that mounted high,
Much like a mocking dream that will not bide,
But flies before the sight of aching eye ;
Or as the grass that cannot term obtain
To see the summer come about again.
Bacon, Psalm XC.
Lord, my God, to Thee I fly,
Save me and secure me under
Thy protection while I cry ;
Lest as a lion (and no wonder)
He haste to tear my soul asunder,
Tearing and no rescue nigh.
He digged a pit and delved it deep,
And fell into the pit he made :
His mischief that due course doth keep
Turns on his head ; and his ill trade
Of violence will, undelayed,
Fall on his crown with ruin steep.
Milton, Psalm VII.
Spedding writes : " I should myself infer that Bacon had
all the natural faculties which a poet wants, a fine ear for
metre, a fine feeling for imaginative effect in words, and a
vein of poetic passion : the thought could not well be fitted
with imagery, words and rhythm more apt and imaginative ;
and there is a tenderness of expression, which comes mani-
festly out of a heart in sensitive sympathy with nature. . . . The
heroic couplet could hardly do its work better in the hands
of Dryden."
Nor does Bacon's stately prose differ more widely from
the poetry of the plays than the prose of Milton's " Areo-
pagitica" does from " Comus " and " L'Allegro."
It is certain also that Bacon wrote other poetry than that
22 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
which bore his name, since he described himself and was
described by others as " a concealed poet." x
As to dramatic taste. In that age, when the drama and its
votaries were despised, Bacon perceived and taught that the
drama ought to be used for the education and elevation of
the people.
" Dramatic poesy is as history made visible, for it repre-
sents actions as if they were present, whereas History
represents them as past." Dramatic poesy, " which has the
theatre for its world, would be of excellent use if well di-
rected ; 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. But 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." ~
Again, in "The Masculine Birth of Time," speaking of
the obstructions caused by the ignorance and bigotry of the
age, he writes : "A new process must be instituted by which
to insinuate ourselves into minds so entirely obstructed. . . .
So men generally taste well knowledges that are drenched in
flesh and blood, civil history, morality, policy, about which
men's affections, praises, fortunes do turn and are conversant."
And in the second book of the Latin translation of the
" Advancement of Learning," he urges that " the art of
acting {actio theatralis) should be made a part of the educa-
tion of youth — for though it be of ill repute as a profession,
yet as a part of discipline it is of excellent use."
The Shakespeare plays realized Bacon's ideal, yet no-
where does he make allusion to them !
1 Post, p. 108. 2 " De Augmentis," book ii., ch. xiii.
The Plays and Bacon s Prose. 23
Francis Bacon and his brother Anthony appear both to
have had a passion for the drama. Anthony, soon after his
return in 1592 from his travels, left his brother to take up
his abode in Bishopsgate, near the Bull Theatre, where
several of the Shakespeare plays were acted.
Their mother, Lady Anne Bacon, was gravely concerned
at her sons' taste for stage performances, and wrote that
she trusts " they will not mum nor mask nor sinfully revel
at Gray's Inn " ; but Francis Bacon continued through
life to be the " chief contriver " of the masques at Gray's
Inn.
Lady Anne was a masterful woman, whose rigid Puritan
opinions her sons might not openly offend. Anthony,
while travelling abroad, once hired a Roman Catholic
servant, to his mother's grave displeasure, and sent him on
some errand to England. Lady Anne straightway clapped
the man in gaol as a Papist, and refused the entreaties of
both her sons to let him out.
Surveying Francis Bacon's life, his character and educa-
tion, his intellectual training and social experience, his
poetical imagination and dramatic taste, and his various
learning, are not these the very qualities which the plays
themselves demand for their author, in all of which William
Shakspere seems hopelessly deficient ?
IV. COMPARISON OF THE PLAYS WITH
BACON'S PROSE WORKS.
IF the contrast between Shakspere's life and Bacon's life,
and between their intellectual endowment and training,
points to Bacon rather than Shakspere as the probable
author of the plays, what is the internal evidence of the
plays themselves ?
24 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
The more closely the plays are examined, the larger
looms the difficulty of attributing them to Shakspere, and
the closer appears their affinity with the prose works of
Bacon. Under a superficial difference of style, inherent in
the difference of subject, will be found an underlying
identity of thought and expression hard to explain except
by unity of authorship.
Estimates have been made of different vocabularies.
Some labourers, Max Miiller tells us, have not 300 words in
their vocabulary. "A well-educated person in England
who has been at a public school and at the University, who
reads his Bible, his Shakespeare, 'The Times,' and all
the books of Mudie's Library, seldom uses more than about
3,000 or 4,000 words in actual conversation. Accurate
thinkers and close reasoners, who avoid vague and general
expressions, and wait till they find the word that exactly fits
their meaning, employ a larger stock, and eloquent speakers
may rise to a command of 10,000. Shakespeare, who dis-
played a greater variety of expression than probably any
writer in any language, produced all his plays with about
15,000 words. Milton's works are built up with 8,000 ; and
the Hebrew Testament says all it has to say with 5,642
words." '
Professor Craik estimates Shakespeare's vocabulary at
21,000 and Milton's at 7,000. It has been computed that
Shakespeare gave 3,000, or some say 5,000, new words to
our language, and these largely derived from the Latin ;
and about 2,000 words are said to be used once only in the
plays.2 Without relying on the exactness of these estimates,
there can be no doubt that the vocabulary of the plays is
one of extraordinary richness.
Whence could Shakspere, emerging from a provincial
1 a
Science of Language," vol. i., pp. 277-278.
2 Theobald, "Shakespeare Studies," p. 431.
The Plays and Bacons Prose. 25
town, with the imperfect education described by Halliwell-
Phillipps, gain this affluence of speech, which could only be
acquired by familiarity with classical and modern language
and literature ?
This familiarity Bacon possessed, and made it his study
"to enrich languages by mutual exchanges, so that the
several beauties of each may be combined (as in the Venus
of Apelles) into a most beautiful image of speech."
And this rich vocabulary belonged equally to Bacon and
to the Shakespeare plays.
Dr. Johnson said : " A dictionary of the English language
might be compiled from Bacon's works alone."
Excluding, for fair comparison, from Bacon's prose works
absolute technicalities, and from the plays absolute collo-
quialisms, oaths, etc., unsuitable for philosophic works, 97
per cent, of the words, Mrs. Pott states, are common to
Bacon and Shakespeare. Did Bacon acquire this wealth of
words from Shakspere, or the plays from Bacon ?
Not only the words, but the expressions and turns of
speech are curiously alike in the plays and in Bacon's prose
works.
For example, Mr. Bengough,1 a student of Shakespeare,
compared Bacon's "History of Henry VII." with Shake-
speare's " King John," and found in these two works alone
22 metaphors used in both, several catchwords often re-
peated in both, 9 or 10 peculiar phrases used in both, 20 or
more words peculiar or used in an unusual sense occurring
in both ; he found, indeed, 21 passages in one scene of the
play (Act II., Sc. ii.) with corresponding passages in three
pages of the history, and concludes that the only rational
hypothesis is, that the same mind employed the same words
in both cases.
Numerous similar lists of parallelisms, to the number of
1 " ISaconiana."
26 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
1,000 and more, have been pointed out between the other
plays and Bacon's prose works.1
The cogency of this argument increases in proportion to
the number of examples examined ; a few only can here be
given.
"Periander being consulted with how to preserve a
tyranny ; bid the messenger stand still, and he walking in a
garden topped all the highest flowers, signifying the cutting
off and the keeping low of the nobility." — De Aug., vi. i.
Go thou, and like an executioner
Cut off the heads of too fast growing sprays
That look too lofty in our commonwealth :
All must be even in our government.
Richard II, III. iv. 33.
Being once perfected how to grant suits,
How to deny them ; who t' advance, and who
To trash for over-topping.
Tempest, I. ii.
The Moon so constant in inconstancy.
Bac, Trans. Psalm CIV.
Oh, swear not by the Moon, the inconstant Moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
Rom. and Jul., II. ii. 109.
" His purpose was to break the knot of the conspiracy."
—Hist. Hen. VII.
There 's a knot, a gin, a conspiracy against me.
Merry Wives, IV. ii. 123.
This ancient knot of dangerous adversaries.
Richard III., III. i. 182.
1 Parallelisms have been collected by Judge Holmes in " Authorship
of Shakespeare," pp. 303-325 ; by Mrs. Pott in " State Metaphors,"
in the " Journal of the Bacon Society," and in Bacon's " Promus " ;
by Mr. Wigston, "Francis Bacon," pp. 192-268 ; by Mr. Edwin Reed
in "Bacon v. Shakspere," pp. 57-80; by Mr. Donnelly in the first
vol. of the "Great Cryptogram"; and by Mr. R. M. Theobald in
"Shakespeare Studies in Baconian Light."
The Plays and Bacons Prose. 27
" A subtler error is this, that art is conceiv'd to be a sort
of addition to nature." — Advt. of Learning.
So that over art,
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes.
This [grafting] is an art
Which does mend nature, changes it rather, but
The art itself is nature.
Winter's Tale.
"Wretches — have been able to stir earthquakes by the
murdering of Princes." — Charge against Owen.
Wherefore this ghastly looking ? What 's the matter ?
O ! 'twas a din to fright a monster's ear,
To make an earthquake.
Tempest, II. i. 309.
" ' Ordinatio belli et pacis est absoluti imperii,' a principal
flower of the crown. For if those flowers should wither and
fall, the garland will not be worth the wearing." — Report,
1606-7.
Catesby. Till Richard wear the garland of the realm.
Hastings. How ! wear the garland ! dost thou mean the crown ?
Richard III., III. ii.
"To see if he could heave at his lordship's authority." —
Observations on War and Peace.
I'll venture one heave at him.
Henry 17//., II. ii. 85.
"As for discontentments, they are in the body politic
like to humours in the natural, which are apt to gather a
preternatural heat and inflame." — Essay of Sedition.
Stop their marches 'fore we are inflamed.
Our discontented counties do revolt —
This inundation of distempered humour
Rests by you only to be qualified.
John, V. i. 7.
" To give moderate liberty for griefs is a safe way, for he
28 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
that makes the wound to bleed inwardly endangereth malign
ulcers and pernicious imposthumes." — Essay of Sedition.
This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks and shows no cause without
Why the man dies.
Hamlet, IV. iv. 27.
Such instances of identity both of thought and expres-
sion may be multiplied almost indefinitely.
There are also tricks of style common both to the plays
and prose works, such as triple antitheses. For example :
" Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some
have greatness thrust upon them." — Shakespeare.
" Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,
and some few to be chewed and digested." — Bacon.
" It would be an argument for a week, laughter for a
month, and a good jest for ever." — Shakespeare.
" Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them,
and wise men use them." — Bacon.
" One draught above heat makes him a fool, a second
mads him, and third drowns him." — Shakespeare.
" Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man,
and writing an exact man." — Bacon.
A long list of such triplets has been extracted from the
plays and from the prose works.1
Of fifty-three points of style, which were selected by
Mrs. Cowden Clarke in the " Shakespeare Key " as being
" specialities " and "characteristics " of Shakespeare, almost
all have been found in the prose works of Bacon.
Not only the words and phrases, but the learning and
opinions expressed in the plays and in the prose works of
Bacon are the same, and in both the learning is largely
drawn from books rather than from observation.
The knowledge of law shown in the plays is wide and
1 Edwin Reed, pp. 191-194.
The Plays and Bacons Prose. 29
accurate, and could not be exhibited except by a trained
lawyer ; and this knowledge is not shown merely by a formal
description of legal proceedings, which may be learned, but
crops up even in the mouths of the heroines, in metaphors
which would only occur to a lawyer. In one scene the
lover, wishing for a kiss, prays for a grant of pasture on his
mistress's lips. She replies that "they are no common,
though several they be," playing on the law of common of
pasture and severalty.
Mistress Page understood the strongest form of assurance
of property, when she says of Falstaff : " If the devil have
him not in fee simple, with fine and recovery, he will never
I think attempt us again." — Merry Wives, IV. ii.
Portia knew the charges and interrogatories of a bill in
Chancery. She says :
Let us go in
And charge us there upon int'rogatories,
And we will answer all things faithfully.
Merchant of Venice, V. i.
Lord Campbell, in his treatise on " Shakespeare's Legal
Acquirements," says : " While novelists and dramatists are
constantly making mistakes as to the law of marriage, of
wills and inheritance ; to Shakespeare's law, lavishly as he
expounds it, there can be neither demurrer nor bill of ex-
ception nor writ of error."
One writer ' enumerates 250 law terms used or referred
to in the plays, of which 200 are treated with more or less
fullness in Bacon's legal tracts.
The stress of this serious, if not insuperable difficulty,
induced a conjecture that Shakspere had passed a year or
two in a lawyer's office. This is abandoned ; but it is now
suggested that his legal acquirements were gained by ob-
servation of his father's many legal processes, and inter-
1 (<
Iiaconiana," vol. i., p. 154.
30 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
course with members of the Inns of Court : l an inadequate
mode of legal education. Law is not contagious !
As to medicine. In an age when Queen Elizabeth's
physician, Dr. William Bulleyn, prescribed for a nervous
child "a smal yonge mouse rosted," and King James's
physician, Sir Theodore Aulbone, relied on pulverized
human bones, " raspings of a human skull unburied " and
balsam of bats ; when Dr. Hall, Shakspere's son-in-law,
was accustomed to prescribe human fat, tonics of earth-
worms and snails, frog spawn water and swallows' nests,
Bacon and the author of the plays, though deeply versed in
medicine, are equally free from such absurdities and pre-
scribe identical remedies.
Bacon recommends to produce sleep " the tear of poppy,"
henbane and mandrake.
We read in " Othello " :
Not poppy nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world
Shall ever minister thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou ow'dst once.
Bacon and the Shakespeare plays both recommend as a
cordial carduus betiedictus, and cite the bitters oicoloqiiintida;
both refer to the ventricles of the brain and the pia mater
as the seat of the intellect ; and the symptoms of Falstaff's
death, the fumbling hands, sharpened nose and cold ex-
tremities, are described in " Henry V." in the same terms as
Bacon uses in his " History of Life and Death."
Dr. Bucknill, in a treatise on the " Medical Knowledge of
Shakespeare," discusses that knowledge as shown in each
one of the plays, and " arrives at the conviction that the
great dramatist had at least been a diligent student of all
medical knowledge existing at his time," and he finds " not
merely evidence but proof that Shakespeare had read widely
1 Lee, p. 32.
The Plays and Bacons Prose. 3 1
in medical literature." The same writer observes that
" physical science, upon which modern medicine is founded,
traces its parentage no higher than to Shakespeare's great
contemporary, Bacon."
Treatises have been written on the natural history of the
plays, on the animal lore, the birds, the insects ; but the
varied knowledge was gathered from books rather than
observation. An acute writer in the " Quarterly Review "
for April, 1894, tells from what books this learning was
taken, sometimes almost word for word : " He borrows
from Gower and Chaucer and Spenser, from Drayton and
Du Bartas and Lyly and William Brown, from Pliny, Ovid,
Virgil and the Bible ; borrows, in fact, everywhere he can,
but with a symmetry that makes his natural history har-
monious as a whole, and a judgment that keeps it always
moderate and possible."
" Shakespeare," he continues, " was curiously unob-
servant of animated nature. He seems to have seen
very little — Stratford-on-Avon was, in his day, enmeshed
in streams, yet he has not a single kingfisher. Not
in all his streams or pools is there an otter, a water-rat, a
fish rising, a dragon-fly, a moor-hen, or a heron — to the
living objects about him he seems to have been obstinately
purblind and half deaf. His boyhood was passed among
the woods, and yet in all the woods in his plays there is
neither wood-pecker nor wood-pigeon — we never hear or
see a squirrel in the trees, nor a night-jar hawking over the
bracken."
Knowledge accumulated from books must share their
errors, and there are many errors of natural history in the plays.
Bees are often described, but mistakenly :
We'll follow where thou Iead'st,
Like slinging bees in hottest summer's day
Led by their master to the flowered fields.
Titus Andron., V. i.
32 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
" The passage," the reviewer adds, " is of course ridiculous,
but it is taken from Du Bartas."
The old bees die, the young possess their hive.
"A monumental error, the most compendious mis-state-
ment possible."
The most elaborate description of a beehive and its
inhabitants is in " Henry V.," of which the same writer
observes : " As poetry it is a most beautiful passage," but
" with an error of fact in every line. It is taken from the
' Euphues ' of Lyly."
The same store of knowledge of natural history, gathered
from books and not free from like error, is found in Bacon's
prose works.
Bacon calls Perkin Warbeck "this little cockatrice of a
king that was able to destroy those that did not espy him
first." Three Shakespeare plays refer to the supposed deadly
power of the cockatrice's eye.
Bacon questions " if the stone taken out of a toad's head
be not of virtue."
In Shakespeare we read :
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
Bacon speaks of the wisdom of crocodiles that shed tears
when they would devour.
In Shakespeare we find : "As the mournful crocodile, with
sorrow snares relenting passengers."
Yet Shakspere appears to have had no books, and was
accounted by his fellows not studious but unlearned !
So in horticulture ; of the thirty-three flowers of Shake-
speare, Bacon enumerates thirty in his Essay on Gardens or
in his " Sylva Sylvarum."
The Plays and Bacons Prose. 33
Not only so, but Bacon's curious experiments in horti-
culture reappear in the plays :
" Take common brier and set it amongst violets or wall-
flowers, and see whether it will not make the violets or
wall-flowers sweeter." — Natural History, Experiment 488.
The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighboured by fruit of baser quality.
Henry V., I. i.
"As terebration doth meliorate fruit, so upon the like
reason doth letting of plant's blood, as pricking vines or
other trees after they be of some growth ; and thereby let-
ting forth gums or tears." — Natural History, Experiment
464.
And wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees,
Lest being over-proud with sap and blood
With too much riches it confound itself.
Richard II, III. iv.
And the same explanation of knots in trees, causing irregular
branches, is given by Bacon and in the plays.
" The cause whereof is that the sap ascendeth unequally,
and doth, as it were, tire and stop by the way. And it
seemeth they have some closeness and hardness on their
stalk, which hindereth the sap from going up, until it hath
gathered into a knot and so is more urged to put forth." —
Natural History, 389.
Checks and disasters
Grow in the veins of actions highest reared,
As knots by the conflux of meeting sap
Infect the sound pine and divert his grain,
Tortive and errant from his course of growth.
Troilus and Cressida, I. iii.
In all subjects treated of by Bacon, the human body,
sound and light, heat and cold, germination and putrefaction
the history of the winds, astronomy, astrology, meteorology
D
34 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
and witchcraft, the plays and prose works closely corre-
spond, and both exhibit a learning up to the limit of that
age.
Nay more, when Bacon's philosophical opinions change,
the philosophy of the plays changes simultaneously. For
instance, in the 1604 edition of "Hamlet," the Prince, ad-
dressing his mother, says : " Sense sure you have, else could
you not have motion."
This accords with the ancient doctrine that everything
that has motion has sense. Bacon's "Advancement of
Learning" was first published in 1605, and it states this
doctrine of the ancients with some approval. But in 1623
a new edition of the " Advancement of Learning " was pub-
lished, which expressly declared that there is motion in
inanimate bodies, without sense, but with a kind of percep-
tion. In the same year the first folio of the plays was pub-
lished, and the passage above quoted from " Hamlet " was
omitted. It no longer agreed with Bacon's opinion.
In " Natural Philosophy " not only the same wisdom, but
the same errors, are found in Bacon's prose works and in the
plays. For example, Bacon supposed that fire extinguished
fire. In the " History of Henry VII." he describes that
Perkin Warbeck at the siege of Exeter fired one of the
gates. " But the citizens perceiving the danger blocked up
the gate inside with faggots and other fuel, which they like-
wise set on fire, and so repulsed fire with fire." In the
"Advancement of Learning" Bacon again wrote: "Flame
doth not mingle with flame but remaineth contiguous."
In " King John," Pandulph tells the King : " Falsehood
falsehood cures, as fire cools fire." Again in "Coriolanus " :
" One fire drives out one fire, one nail one nail" ; and again
in " Two Gentlemen of Verona " :
Even as one heat another heat expels,
Or as one nail by strength drives out another.
The Plays and Bacons Prose. 35
Bacon also supposed that the sea swells before a storm.
" It is everywhere taken notice of that waters do some-
what swell and rise before tempests." — Natural History of
Winds.
" As there are certain hollow blasts of wind, secret swell-
ing of seas before a tempest, so are there in states."— Essay
of Sedition.
In Shakespeare the same thought is expressed.
Before the days of change still is it so
By a divine instinct, men's minds mistrust
Ensuing danger ; as by proof, we see
The waters swell before a boisterous storm.
Richard, III. , II. iii.
Hamlet uses this strange expression :
O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.
Act I. Sc. ii. 229.
But this is the echo of Bacon's philosophy, who wrote :
" The emission of the spirit produces dryness ; the deten-
tion and working thereof within the body either melts, or
putrefies, or vivifies." "The spirit in a body of firm texture
is detained, though against its will." — History of Life and
Death, pp. 321, 328.
Bacon speaks of " the irregularities of Mars " (" De Aug.,"
bk. iii.).
In Shakespeare we find :
Mars his true moving, even as in the heavens
So in the earth to this day is not known.
Henry VI., I. ii.
Bacon did not readily accept the Copernican theory of
the heavens. In his " Essay of Wisdom " he speaks of the
Earth " that only stands fast upon his own centre, whereas
all things that have affinity with the heavens move upon the
centre of another."
36 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
Shakespeare says :
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,
Observe degree, priority, and place.
Troilus and Cress., I. iii.
On the other hand, Bacon anticipated in principle New-
ton's discovery of gravitation. He wrote :
" The loadstone draws inferior to superior powers as iron
in atoms cleaves to the magnet, but in mass will, like a true
patriot, with appetite of amity fall towards the centre of the
earth."
Voltaire exclaims : " But what sagacity in Bacon to imagine
what no one else had thought of."
In Shakespeare we find the same principle stated :
But the strong base and building of my love
Is as the very centre of the earth,
Drawing all things to it.
Troilus and Cress. , IV. ii.
As to religion. In an age embittered by religious hatred
and persecution, Bacon, though a Protestant, enjoined a
large tolerance and condemned persecution.
The same spirit shines through the plays. Cranmer is
praised, but there is no satire upon the priests, who are
always represented as benevolent and venerable ; and as to
persecution the author writes :
It is an heretic that makes the fire,
Not she who burns in it.
Winter's Tale, II. iii.
The Bible was then a scarce book, and William Shakspere
seems an unlikely man to be addicted to its study ; but the
writer of the plays was very familiar with its contents, as
was also Francis Bacon, who often refers to its histories,
and in his " Promus " noted down twenty-two passages for
literary use.
Can it be from two different minds that knowledge and
ideas flow in such identical channels ?
The " Promus.'' 2>7
V. THE "PROMUS."
THE " Promus " is another branch of evidence identi-
fying Bacon with the authorship of the plays.
Bacon for many years, from December, 1594, kept a
notebook to enlarge his powers of language, called a
" Promus of Formularies and Elegancies." 1 It contains over
1,600 notes from classical and modern literature, including
668 proverbs— English, French, Spanish and Italian. These
notes reappear to a large extent both in Bacon's prose works
and in the plays.
It cannot be seriously supposed that Bacon made these
notes from the plays, for use in his philosophical writings.
The following are illustrations of the use in the plays of
Bacon's notebook. Six entries in the "Promus" occur very
near together, probably made at about the same time, in
January, 1595, since the next folio of the "Promus" is
dated 27th January, 1595. The corresponding words and
phrases are found in eleven consecutive lines of " Romeo and
Juliet," which was probably written about that date.
Promus.
Rome.
Good morrow.
Romeo and Juliet.
Romeo.
Good morrow.
Sweet for speech in the morning. What early tongue so sweet sa-
luteth me.
Lodged next. Where care lodges sleep will never
He.
Golden sleep.
Uprouse.
There golden sleep doth reign.
Thou art uproused by some dis-
temperature.
"Golden sleep " was a new simile, " uprouse " a new word.
This parallelism can scarcely be mere coincidence : the
1 " The Promus of Formularies and Elegancies," by Francis Bacon
edited and illustrated by Mrs. Henry Pott, 1883.
o
8 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
writer of " Romeo and Juliet " must surely have had Bacon's
" Promus " at his elbow.
The same folio of the "Promus," No. in, contains an
even more striking coincidence with the plays. This folio
begins with forms of salutation : " Good morrow," " Good
swoear," " Good travaile," " Good matins," " Good betimes,
bonum Mane," " Bon ioure," " Bon ioure, Bridegroome,"
" Good day to me and good morrow to you." What object,
it will be asked, could Bacon have in noting down these
forms of salutation, and indorsing this sheet " Formularies
and Elegancies " ?
In truth, they were not then in common use in England ;
and the fact that they were so noted down, and four of them
borrowed from the French, shows that Bacon had been
struck with the courtesies of France, and wished to introduce
or encourage like courtesies in England.
Mrs. Pott, in a laborious examination of the literature
of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, com-
prising 328 authors and 5,300 of their works,1 only found
three instances of the use of any of these forms of salutation
before 1594, the date of the "Promus."
Ben Jonson a little later uses "good morrow" two or
three times ; and Beaumont and Fletcher, in more than
forty plays, use " good morrow " five times, " good day "
once, "good night " four times, "good even" once.
In the Shakespeare plays the forms of salutation noted in
the "Promus " are used about 250 times, with the addition
in " King Lear " of "good dawning."
A striking instance of identity of thought and purpose
between Bacon's notebook and the plays.
Bacon, in the concluding lines of his Essay on Travel,
ridicules the man who lets travel appear rather in his apparel
and gestures than in his discourse ; whereas he should only
1 " Promus," pp. 81, 82, and 536-566.
The "Promus!
39
" prick in some flowers of that he had learned abroad into
the customs of his own country." This Bacon did when he
" pricked in " these flowers of courteous speech into his
" Promus " and thence transplanted them to bloom abund-
antly in the plays.
Out of numerous other striking parallels between the
'• Promus " and the plays a few may here be given as
examples :
From Bacon's " Promus."
God sendeth fortune to fools.
He who dissembles is not free.
Our sorrows are our schoolmas-
ters.
He who lends to a friend loses
double.
He is the devil's porter who does
more than what is required of
him.
Love me little, love me long.
Make not two sorrows of one.
What the eye seeth not the heart
rueth not.
At length the string cracks.
From the Plays.
Call me not fool till heaven hath
sent me fortune.
As You Like It, II. vii.
The dissembler is a slave.
Pericles, I. i.
Give sorrow leave awhile to tutor
me. Richard II., IV. i.
For loan oft loses both itself and
friend. Hamlet, I. iii.
I'll devil porter it no further.
Macbeth, II. iii.
Love moderately, long love does
so. Romeo and Juliet, II. vi.
Two together weeping make one
woe. Richard II., V. i.
Let him not know 't and he 's not
robbed at all.
Othello, III. iii.
The strings of life began to crack.
Lear, V. iii.
There seems scarcely a sentiment or opinion expressed in
the plays which has not its counterpart in the acknowledged
works of Bacon.
Tennyson indeed thought that the author of the Essay
on Love could not have written " Romeo and Juliet," be-
cause he speaks of love as tending "to trouble a man's
4-0 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
fortunes and make him untrue to his own ends " ; but he
forgot that Shakespeare also says :
To be wise and love
Exceeds man's might, that dwells with Gods above.
Trot /us and Cress., III. ii.
And Proteus complains :
I leave myself, my friend, and all for love.
Thou Julia, thou hast metamorphosed me,
Made me neglect my studies, lose my time,
War with good counsel, set the world at naught,
Made wit with musing weak, heart sick with thought.
Two Gentlemen of Verona, I. i.
Moreover, in 1591-2, before the date of "Romeo and
Juliet," Bacon, then in his prime, extolled love, and wrote a
masque, " The Conference of Pleasure," containing a speech
in "Praise of Love," in which love is declared to be "the
noblest affection " of the mind. The Essay in its final form
was written in declining years, in 1623, when his married life
was overclouded and embittered. What wonder he should
then declare that " the stage is more beholden to love than
the life of man " ?
But the picturing of love in the plays (though not in
many of them is it the ruling motive) does with singular
exactness anticipate the philosophy of love as taught in the
Essay.
" Great spirits and great business do keep out this weak
passion " ; and so Coriolanus and Brutus, Hamlet and Hot-
spur, repress their love, and " sever it from their serious
affairs." In weaker natures love is wayward and hyper-
bolical, oft " losing riches and wisdom," as shown in " Love's
Labour 's Lost," or by Proteus and Benedick and Florizel.
" Transported to the mad degree," it " does much mischief,
sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury," as in Mark
Antony or Romeo or Othello.1
1 R. M. Theobald, "Shakespeare Studies," p. 129.
The "Promus." 41
Is it conceivable that two different minds, one of the
highest cultivation, the other imperfectly educated, should
each, independently of the other, achieve a series of extra-
ordinary works in advance of their age, yet identical in
language of unexampled richness, in knowledge, philosophy,
opinion, in wisdom and error, and in form of expression ?
It seems impossible.
In 182 1, while the authorship of the Waverley Novels
was still undisclosed, eight letters were published by Mr.
Adolphus, identifying the author of the novels with the writer
of Scott's poems ; by the knowledge shown both in the
novels and the poems of classical and modern languages, of
law, of social manners, of history and locality ; by poetic
feeling and by moral character ; and finally by parallelisms of
thought and expression, of which eighty instances were cited.
Scott was pointed out as the only known author combining
these various attributes, and it was noticed that he was never
referred to by the novelist. The argument was sound and
convincing, but the like argument identifies with still greater
force the writings of Francis Bacon with the Shakespeare
plays, in which the intellectual identity is equally varied and
complete, while the parallelisms may be counted as more
than a thousand. Francis Bacon alone combines the multi-
farious knowledge found in these plays, and these plays he
never names.
Observe ! this evidence is cumulative, its force grows with
the number of examples. If eighty instances are convincing,
by what ratio shall we gauge the demonstration of a thousand?
If likeness of opinion suggests identity, what shall we say
when every branch of knowledge of Bacon's many-sided
mind is thus reflected in the plays ?
42 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
VI. COMPARISON OF THE PLAYS WITH
BACON'S LIFE.
BUT further, the plays reflect Bacon's life, not Shak-
spere's.
One striking peculiarity of the plays is that, notwithstand-
ing the variety and originality they display, the plots are not
original, but embroidered upon some old tale or history. It
is very strange that the author's so versatile mind should
never invent an original story !
But this was consonant with Bacon's mind, who, when
writing his " History of Henry VII.," wished " there had been
already digested any tolerable chronicle as a simple narrative
of the actions themselves, which should only have needed
out of the former helps to be enriched with the counsels,
and the speeches, and notable peculiarities." ' Just so the
author of the plays used and enriched the old chronicles
and tales.
Another singularity of the plays is that, apart from the
historical plays, the scenes are nearly alway laid abroad.
Few of the Elizabethan dramas had foreign scenes.
Greene, who had travelled in Spain, wrote a play in 1585
entitled "The Comical History of Alphonso, King of
Aragon." Kidd about 1592 produced "Jeronimo" and
"The Spanish Tragedy." Peile about 1594 wrote "The
Battle of Alcazar," and perhaps " Alphonsus of Germany."
Ben Jonson in 1596 laid in Italy the scene of " Every Man
in his Humour," but changed the scene to England in the
next edition of the play in 1598. He also took three sub-
jects from ancient Roman history. Chapman, the learned
translator of Homer and other classics, who began writing
1 Bacon's Works, by Spedding, vol. vi., p. 17.
The Plays and Bacons Life. 43
plays about 1597, chose a foreign scene for his first play,
" The Blind Beggar of Alexandria," and for some other
plays after Elizabeth's death. Marlowe, whose plays in
style, in subject and in metre so strangely resemble the
Shakespeare plays as to suggest collaboration, if not a closer
origin, chose foreign scenes for his three plays of " Tambur-
laine," " The Jew of Malta " and " The Massacre of Paris,"
between 1585 and 1589.
All the Shakespeare plays have foreign scenes, save some
of the historical plays ; the " Merry Wives," which continues
" Henry IV." ; " Cymbeline," whose scene is Bacon's home ;
and " King Lear."
To Bacon, who lived two and a half years in France,
whose brother Anthony continued in foreign travel for many
years, and who maintained through life intimate corre-
spondence with others resident abroad, it would be natural,
seeking "fresh woods and pastures new," to let his imagina-
tion dwell on foreign scenes. But what could put it into
the head of William Shakspere, fresh from a provincial
tuwn, to talk of nothing else but foreign parts, of which he
could know little or nothing !
Notwithstanding a few errors, the plays show a know-
ledge of foreign countries, especially of France and Italy,
much beyond that ordinarily attained in that age. Francis
Bacon's travels were probably confined to France. Anthony
visited Germany and Switzerland, and in 1582 intended to
go on to Italy, but was then hindered by war. His intimate
friend and correspondent, Nicholas Faunt, after travelling
in Germany, passed six or seven years between Geneva and
North Italy, and as Anthony continued his travels until
1 592, he doubtless often accompanied Faunt to Italy.
The chief error charged against the author of the plays is
allotting a seashore to Bohemia in " Winter's Tale." This
error appears to have arisen from a transposition, without
44 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
consequent correction, of the scenes in Greene's romance
of " Pandosto," on which the play is founded.1 The romance
begins in Bohemia and ends in Sicily. The play transposes
the scenes ; hence the sailors land in Bohemia instead of
Sicily. Notwithstanding his encyclopaedic learning, Francis
Bacon was often careless of details, and incurred James's
satirical remark, " De minimis non curat lex." 2
Another error alleged is that in "The Two Gentlemen
of Verona " Valentine and Launce are made to embark at
Verona for Milan ; but the Adige is navigable, and the em-
barkation was by river, for Launce declares that if the river
were dry he could fill it with his tears.
This play, moreover, was probably written before 1592,
when Anthony Bacon returned, and brought Francis the
exact knowledge of Venice, Padua and Verona which the
plays exhibit, as Elze shows in his essay on the " Supposed
Travels of Shakespeare."
Mr. Sidney Lee admits that "it is in fact unlikely that
Shakspere ever set foot on the continent of Europe in either
a private or professional capacity."
Again, notwithstanding what is alleged in the preface to
the folio of 1623, the plays did not spring from the poet's
brain perfect and complete, like Minerva from the head of
Jupiter. They often began with a sketch, which was from
time to time re-edited and enlarged until final completion.
In this way, too, were Bacon's prose works composed.
Bacon, we are told, rewrote his " Essays " thirty times.
His chaplain and biographer, Dr. Rawley, says : " I myself
have seen at the least twelve copies of the ' Instauration '
revised year by year, one after another, and every year
altered and amended in the frame thereof, till at last it
1 Temple Shakespeare.
2 For instances of inaccuracies see Bacon's " Apothegms," Devey's
notes, Bonn's edition.
The Plays and Bacons Life. 45
came to that model in which it was committed to the
press."
Consider now in detail the origin and history of the plays.
The development of the mediaeval moralities into the
regular drama took place in the sixteenth century. Italy
led the way early in the century. Ariosto (1474-1533) has
been styled the father of modern comedy. In France,
Stephen Jodelle (153 2- 1572) first introduced tragedy and
comedy of modern character. Other dramatists succeeded,
borrowing largely from the Italian, and in 1576, the year of
Bacon's arrival in Paris, a permanent colony of Italian
players was established in France, so that Bacon saw in
Paris both French and Italian plays, and could form the
opinion, afterwards strongly expressed, that the stage, then
too often licentious, should be raised to be a means of
instruction for the people.
The English stage was not then more pure than that of
France, nor does William Shakspere's life point him out as
a probable reformer of its morals ; but it is a striking coin-
cidence that in 1576, in which year Francis Bacon first
came to London and attended the Court, the first beginning
of the Shakespeare plays appeared; and in 1579, the very
year in which Francis Bacon returned to England from
France, signs of improvement were noted in the English
stage, and in that year appeared, in its earliest form,
another, or perhaps two other, of the Shakespeare plays.
In 1576 a " Historie of Errors" was played at Hampton
Court before the Queen by the " Children of Pauls."
This was doubtless the original or first sketch of the
" Comedy of Errors," which was founded on the " Menaech-
mi " of Plautus, not then translated. The author was
therefore a classical scholar, and had access to the Court,
conditions fitting well with Francis Bacon, then fresh from
Cambridge, brilliant and precocious, and eager to attract
46 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
the Queen's favour. The same play, probably (miscalled
in the Account of Revels "A Historie of Ferrars"), was
"shewed before Her Majesty at Wyndesor on Twelf daie
(1581) at night, enacted by the Lord Chamberleyne's ser-
vants." That Bacon was the anonymous author is con-
firmed by the fact that, the next time we hear of the
"Comedy of Errors," it was acted in 1594, at Francis
Bacon's Inn, Gray's Inn, under his direction and in asso-
ciation with a masque wholly or in great part written by
him.
In 1579 Stephen Gosson, in his " School of Abuse," con-
taining "a pleasant invective against poets, pipers, players
and such like caterpillars of the Commonwealth," while ex-
pressing penitence for some plays he had himself written,
tells us that, " As some of the players are farre from abuse,
so some of their plays are without rebuke, which are as
easily remembered, as quickly reckoned." Of such he
names, with five others, " The Jew showne at the Bull, re-
presenting the greediness of worldly choosers and bloody
mindes of usurers."
In the year of Bacon's return from France, therefore, there
was acted at the Bull, where several of the Shakespeare
plays were afterwards produced, a play with the double plot
of the " Merchant of Venice," the " Caskets " and " The
Jew," now first united ; both stories taken from Italian
sources, the cruel Jew from a novel not translated.1
It is difficult to point to any English dramatist of that
date familiar with Italian literature, and competent to dis-
cover and combine these two Italian stories into an English
comedy. No one has claimed the play, which therefore was
probably produced anonymously. Lilly is the only dramatist
of any note who is known to have begun work at this date ;
he began to write in 1578 and lived till 1601. He wrote
1 Lee, p. 66.
The Plays and Bacons Life. 47
many graceful though fantastic masques, but did not claim
this play.
Peile, Greene and Marlowe are said to have begun work
about 1584 or 1585. Nash came to London in 1589.
Chapman, Ben Jonson and Dekker began eight or ten years
later. Marlowe was at this date a youth of fifteen ; Peile
was of full age, having been born in 1552. He was an able
writer, but he lived until about 1598, when this play had
been again acted, under the name of "The Venesyon
Comedie," and never claimed the play. On the contrary,
his last play, "Willie Beguiled," contains passages parodying
the " Merchant of Venice." 1
The coincidence of date, the foreign scene, and the un-
translated Italian source of the play, Bacon being intimately
acquainted with Italian literature, all point to the probability
that the "Play of the Jew," which was acted in 1579, it
would seem anonymously, was one of Francis Bacon's
earliest dramas.
If so, his active intellect and pressing necessities make it
unlikely that it was the only one, and there is some evidence
of others.
Gosson mentions a " History of Caesar and Pompey " as
also acted in 1579. This may have been the first form of
"Julius Caesar." A French tragedy called "The Death of
Caesar," written by J. Guerin, was acted in Paris in 1578,"
and may have suggested the theme. In 1579 also North's
translation of Plutarch appeared, containing the lives of
Caesar, Brutus and Antony, and upon North's translation
the play of " Julius Caesar" appears to be partly based.
Francis Bacon was at this period very busy about some-
thing of seeming mystery, for Nicholas Faunt, in a letter to
Anthony of 31st March, 1583, says he called at Gray's Inn
1 Fleay, " Chronicle," vol. ii., p. 159.
a Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. p. 257.
48 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
to see Francis, and " I was answered by his servant that he
was not at leisure to speak with me. This strangeness which
hath at other times been used towards me by your brother
hath made me sometimes to doubt that he greatly mistaketh
me."
The nature of Francis Bacon's studies during these years
was, as we have seen, known to his friend Sir Thomas
Bodley, and by him strongly condemned.
In 1584, the year after Faunt's letter, "Felix and Philo-
mena," a lost play, on which it is acknowledged ' " The Two
Gentlemen of Verona " was founded, was acted at Court.
This play had also a foreign source and foreign scene. It
was drawn from the Spanish romance of " Diana," which was
not translated until 1596 or 1598, and, not being claimed by
any dramatist, it was probably anonymous. Yet the author
was a man of cultivation, acquainted with the Spanish lan-
guage and literature, and of sufficient interest at Court to
have the play acted before the Queen All this is very con-
sistent with Bacon's authorship.
The Earl of Leicester was at this time, and until his
death in 1588, the patron of the principal company of
players, the Queen's, after 1594 called the Lord Chamber-
lain's Company. Francis Bacon was a constant attendant
at Court, and was in favour with the Queen, whose enter-
tainment he often afterwards promoted, and could readily
arrange with Leicester for the performance of this play.
William Shakspere had not then left Stratford.
1 Lee, p. 53.
" Hamlet '." 49
VII. " HAMLET."
T AMLET " next appears ; its early history deserves
i- JL close attention.
The play was first acted at some time between 1584 and
1589, probably in 1584 or 1585. The scene and source
of " Hamlet " are foreign. The story was drawn from the
French " Histoires Tragiques " of Belleforest, not translated
until 1608, or from the earlier Latin " Historia Danica" of
Saxo Grammaticus. The play was therefore the work of a
scholar. The play transforms the legend, and is a typical
example of the dramatist's power to " enrich " his subject
" with counsels and speeches and notable peculiarities,"
transmuting dross into gold.
The Ghost, so powerful a motive in the play, finds no
place in the legend. The secrecy of the crime, its detection
by the " Mousetrap " play, and the gravediggers scene, all
are new ; and, from a vulgar temptress procured by the
uncle to test Hamlet's madness, has been created the pure
and pathetic character of Ophelia.
The play, though acted before 1589, was not published
until 1603. The question is whether the early play and the
published play were substantially the same and by the same
author. One evidence of identity is that both contained
the new and striking episode of the Ghost.
The production of the play, having for its subject the
poisoning of a monarch, deeply avenged, was doubtless
connected with the plots for the murder of Elizabeth by
poison, which in 1584, and again in 1594, strongly excited
the public mind. The play was calculated to arouse in-
dignation against such crimes, and to inspire in those
tempted to commit them a wholesome dread of vengeance.
E
50 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
In 1584 several of such plots were discovered, investigated
and punished. Francis Bacon, who entered Parliament in
that year, thereupon addressed to the Queen a letter of
warning and advice. " Care," he wrote, " one of the natural
and true-bred children of unfeigned affection, awaked with
these late wicked and barbarous attempts, would needs
exercise my pen to your sacred Majesty."
On 28th February, 1587-8, certain devices and shows
were presented to Her Majesty by the gentlemen of Gray's
Inn (Bacon's Inn) at Her Highness's Court at Greenwich,
including a masque of " The Misfortunes of Arthur," ' partly
devised by Francis Bacon. Seven plays were also performed
before the Queen by the children of Paul's and Her Majesty's
servants during these revels. Whether these plays included
the original play of " Hamlet " we know not ; the first distinct
allusion to the play appears in Nash's preface to Greene's
" Menaphon " in 1589, when the play must have been well
known and already often acted.
Both Nash and Greene were dramatists of University
education, who jealously resented the intrusion by inter-
lopers, without classical education, of foreign translated
plays in blank verse. Greene in 1585, in his "Planeto-
machia," denounced " some avaricious player — who not
content with his own province [of acting] should dare to
intrude into the field of authorship, which ought to belong
solely to the professed scholars." In 1588 he sneers again
at this play-writer, and speaks of "gentlemen poets" who
set " the end of scholarism in an English blank verse — it is
the humor of a novice that tickles them with self-love."
Nash, in his preface of 1589, sneers at a few of our
" triviall translators," and proceeds : " It is a common
practice now-a-daies, amongst a sort of shifting companions
1 Collier's " History of the Drama," pp. 266-268 ; Knight's " Bio-
graphy of Shakespeare," pp. 326-327.
" Hci7nlet" 51
that runne through every arte and thrive by none, to leave
the trade of noverint wherein they were borne, and busie
themselves with the endeavours of art ; that could scarcelie
latinize their neck-verse if they should have neede ; yet
English Seneca read by candle-light yeeldes manie good
sentences as ' Bloud is a beggar,' and so forth : and if you
intreate him faire in a frostie morning he will affoord you
whole Hamlets, I should say Handfuls of tragical speaches."
— "Idiot art-masters who think to outbrave better pens
with the swelling bombast of bragging verse, and translate
twopenny pamphlets from the Italian.1'
What caused this outburst of jealousy from Greene and
Nash ? By some this satire is supposed to refer to Shak-
spere, who had but lately come to London ; by others, to
be pointed at Thomas Kydd, who about this date was writ-
ing plays ; but Kydd is not known to have translated from
the Italian. Probably the satire was directed against the
anonymous and, as yet, unknown author, whose foreign
dramas in blank verse, drawn from Italian, Spanish or
French stories, were gaining a popularity excelling that of
the rhyming comedies of Nash and Greene or Lodge.
In 1 591 Greene, in his "Farewell to Folly," sneers at
the practice of concealing the authorship of plays under
other names. " Others — if they come to write or publish
anything in print — which for their calling a?id gravity being
loth to have any profane pamphlets pass under their hand,
get some other to set his name to their verses. Thus is
the ass made proud by this underhand brokery. And he
that cannot write true English without the aid of clerks
of parish churches will needs make himself the father of
interludes."
In 1594 another plot against Elizabeth's life was dis-
covered ; her physician Lopez was bribed with 50,000
crowns to poison her by putting a poisoned jewel into her
52 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
cup. Bacon took official part in the inquiry into the guilt
of Lopez, who was executed on 7th June, 1594.
Two days later, on 9th June, 1594, " Hamlet " was acted
at Newington Butts by " My lord Admiralle and my lord
Chamberlen men." *
In the play the cup prepared for Hamlet, but drunk by
the Queen, is poisoned with a pearl.
In 1596 Lodge, in "Wits Miserie," alludes to the Ghost
" which cries so miserably at the Theatre like an oyster wife
' Hamlet revenge.' " This new supernatural element, the
ghost impelling Hamlet to avenge his murder, goes far to
prove the substantial identity of the play acted before 1589,
and again in 1594, with the play published in 1603 and 1604.
In 1598, the year in which the name of Shakespeare was
first printed on the title-page of a play, " Hamlet " appears
to have been assigned to him as the author.
Steevens, in his preface to " Hamlet," writes : " I have
seen a copy of Speight's edition of Chaucer which formerly
belonged to Gabriel Harvey (the antagonist of Nash), who
in his own handwriting has set down ' Hamlet ' as a per-
formance with which he was well acquainted in the year
1598. His words are these: 'The younger sort take much
delight in Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis"; but his
" Lucrece " and his tragedy of " Hamlet, Prince of Den-
marke," have it in them to please the wiser sort, 1598.' "
The copy of Chaucer referred to has disappeared, and
Halliwell-Phillipps doubts if the date of Gabriel Harvey's
note is reliable ; but Steevens's statement is precise, and
confirms the identity of the play, well known in and before
1598, with the play afterwards published in Shakespeare's
name.
The identity of the actors points to the same conclusion.
In 1594 "Hamlet" was played by the Lord Admiral and
1 Henslowe's Diary.
"Hamlet? 53
the Lord Chamberlain's men, who from 1594 to 1596 acted
together at Newington Butts. In 1596 "Hamlet" was
played at " The Theatre " which James Burbage built in
1576, and where the Lord Chamberlain's Company were
acting in 1596.1 The play therefore belonged to that com-
pany ; and according to tradition Richard Burbage excelled
in the part of Hamlet, and William Shakspere, who was a
member of the company in and after 1594, took the part of
the Ghost, " the top of his performance." Were there two
Hamlets, and two Ghosts, conceived by two different
authors, and acted alternately or successively by the same
actors ? A strange theory, which seems confuted by the
title of the play when published.
On 26th July, 1602, "A book called the revenge of
Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, as it was lately acted by the
Lord Chamberlain his servants," was entered on the register
of the Stationers' Company.
In the following year, 1603, "Hamlet" was published
under the title of "The Tragical Historie of Hamlet, Prince
of Denmark, by William Shakespeare, as it hath beene
divers times acted by his Highnesse servants in the citie of
London, as also in the two Universities of Cambridge and
Oxford and elsewhere."
The play now published was, therefore, not a new one,
but the old one well known as so often acted by the Lord
Chamberlain's Company in many places.
In 1604 a revised and much longer version was published
as "The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,
by William Shakespeare, newly imprinted and enlarged to
almost as much again as it was, according to the true and
perfect copy."
In the folio of 1623 it was again printed, with some
further additions and some omissions.
1 Lee, p. 36.
54 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
The precise words, " Hamlet revenge," spoken by the
Ghost, and which had become a common saying in 1596,
are not found in the published editions ; but the title regis-
tered in 1602, "The Revenge of Hamlet," suggests that
some earlier copies contained them, or that some actor
declaimed them and so gave them currency. The passion
of the play as first acted was probably less restrained than
in the printed editions.1
The continuous popularity of the play, presented re-
peatedly by the same company, the Ghost specially char-
acteristic of the Shakespeare play, its description when pub-
lished as the well-known play so often acted by the Lord
Chamberlain's Company : all these are marks which com-
bine to establish the substantial identity of the play pub-
lished in 1603 with the play acted in and before 1589.
But in 1589 William Shakspere had but lately left
Stratford, and, according to D'Avenant's story, was holding
horses at the Theatre. He could scarcely yet have become
an actor, nor is it reasonably credible that he had already
composed " Hamlet " and obtained its production.
Bacon at this date had returned from France ten years,
and was studying law at Gray's Inn, but falling into debt.
He was devoted to the drama, and had perhaps already
produced four plays, "The Plaie of Errors," "The Jew,"
" Caesar," and " Felix and Philomena." He was well known
and esteemed at Court, familiar with Lord Leicester, and
doubtless also with the Queen's Company of players, and,
well knowing the dangers to which Elizabeth was exposed,
was eager to " exercise his pen in her service."
The philosophic character and the medical science and
legal skill of the play point to the philosophic mind and
medical and legal skill of Bacon, rather than to the early
essay of a provincial youth, for its origin.
1 Halliwell-Phillipps, vol. ii., p. 312.
" Hamlet" 55
The play seems tinged with the vague pantheistic philo-
sophy of Giordano Bruno,1 who lectured in Paris against
Aristotle in 1579 (in which year Bacon also was in Paris),
and who was in England from 1583 to 1585, was patronized
by Sir Philip Sidney, to whom he dedicated two of his books,
and doubtless would obtain the sympathy and friendship of
Francis Bacon. The coincidence of date is interesting,
having regard to the philosophical cast of the play.
The philosophy of Greece also appears in the play.
Bacon names among other Greek philosophers, too
slightingly perused, Parmenides, of whose works a few
fragments have been preserved by Plato. The essence of
Parmenides' teaching was that Being is the sole reality, and
not Being is nothing,2 " Wherefore either to be or not to be
is the unconditioned alternative." Here may be traced
the germ of Hamlet's soliloquy. Parmenides also taught
that the sun and stars are real fires. Bacon adopted this
opinion and Hamlet expresses it : " Doubt that the stars
are fire — but never doubt my love."
But there is also singular evidence of medical science.
The circulation of the blood was not announced by Harvey
until 1 6 16 ; but the valvular structure of the veins was dis-
covered before this time by Fabricius, a physician of Padua,
to whom Harvey went to study in 1598. This stage of the
discovery appears to have been known to the author of
" Hamlet," who also understood the action of certain poisons
in coagulating the blood and throwing out pustules.
The Ghost thus describes his murder :
Sleeping within mine orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
1 " Shakespeariana," vol. i., p. 31 ; Field's notes to "Romeo and
Juliet."
a " Baconiana, " vol. i., p. 223.
56 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of mine ears did pour
The leperous distilment ; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigour it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood : so did it mine,
And a most instant tetter barked about
Most lazar like, with vile and loathsome crust,
All my smooth body.
The like knowledge appears afterwards in " Coriolanus,"
where Menenius, in telling the fable of the belly and the
members, says of the digested food :
I send it through the rivers of your blood,
Even to the Court, the heart — to the seat of the brain ;
And through the cranks and offices of men,
The strongest nerves and small inferior veins
From me receive that natural competency
Whereby they live.
How came the author of " Hamlet " by this knowledge ?
Francis Bacon had correspondents in Italy and at Padua, and
studied deeply physiology and the operation of poisons.
Can William Shakspere be reasonably supposed to have
gained this knowledge at Stratford.
As to legal attainment, it has been pointed out by Lord
Campbell * that the gravediggers scene shows an accurate
knowledge of the law relating to suicides, as discussed in
the case of Hales v. Petit in Plowden's " Reports" (1578).
Knowledge proper to Bacon, but very strange in William
Shakspere.
Much conjecture has been indulged in as to the relation
of the first to the second quarto edition of " Hamlet." It
1 " Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements," p. 104.
"Hamlet" 57
has been suggested that the 1603 edition was printed1
" apparently from a MS. of the old play by Kyd, as hurriedly
altered by Shakspere for the occasion, but with the omission
of many speeches, which, being written on separate papers,
had passed into the hands of the several actors ; their defect
being made up as best might be." Again,2 that the edition
of 1603 was "a piratical and carelessly transcribed copy of
Shakspere's first draft of the play."
These conjectures appear inconsistent with the facts
shown by the books themselves.
The greater part of the play of 1603 is verbatim the same
as that of 1604, and must have had the same author. The
title of the play of 1603 declares it to be that which the
Lord Chamberlain's Company were accustomed to act. That
it was not copied or taken down from the play of 1604 is
shown by Polonius being named Corambus in 1603. The
difference between the two editions consists not in incident
but chiefly in the expansion of the speeches, developing
the characters of the play. The speeches are not dropped
out in 1603, but are expanded in 1604. Thus revised
and enlarged the play became the true and perfect copy.
A like revision and expansion took place with regard to
others of these plays, "The Merry Wives," the Second
part of " Henry VI.," and others. The two titles tell
the plain facts and cannot be ignored. There appears no
just ground for the imputation of piracy. The book was
duly entered at Stationers' Hall in 1602 by James Roberts,
who probably therefore printed the edition of 1603 for
Ling and Trundell, the publishers ; and who certainly
printed the edition of 1604 for the same publisher, Nicholas
Ling.
That the edition of 1603 was not a mutilated copy of that
1 Fleay, " Chronicle of the English Drama," vol. ii., p. 1S6.
a Lee, p. 223.
58 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
of 1604, but that the latter was a distinct revision, is con-
firmed by the German " Hamlet." " Hamlet " is included
with " Romeo and Juliet," " Julius Caesar " and " King
Lear," in a list dated 1626 of English plays acted in that
year at Dresden.1 The earliest extant German version is
dated in 17 10. It is vulgarized in the translation ; but the
incidents are nearly the same as those of the English play
of 1603, and the Chamberlain is named Corambus, showing
that the German play had an origin distinct from and earlier
than the English play of 1604.
Leicester's company of players accompanied him to the
Low Countries when he went thither as commander-in-chief
in 1585. The play, as we have seen, belonged to that
company. It seems probable that by that company and
at that date the play of " Hamlet " was first introduced into
Germany.
If the evidence identifies the " Hamlet " acted in and
before 1589 with the "Hamlet" of 1603 and 1604, William
Shakspere cannot reasonably be supposed to have been the
author. If Shakspere was not the author, to whom but to
Francis Bacon can the authorship be attributed ? And it will
not be disputed that the author of "Hamlet" was the
author of the other plays.
1 Cohn's " Shakespeare in Germany," p. cxv.
Other Plays. 59
VIII. "TWELFTH NIGHT," "LOVE'S LABOUR'S
LOST," "TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA"
AND "MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM."
TWELFTH NIGHT " in its original form, if the sug-
gestions of an ingenious writer may be accepted,1
also appeared in 1584 or 1585 as a thinly-veiled satire on
members of the English Court.
In D'Israeli's " Curiosities of Literature " it is stated that
" Coke was exhibited on the stage for his ill-usage of Raleigh,
as was suggested by Theobald in a note on 'Twelfth Night'";
but the play may be more probably explained as a satire in
the person of Malvolio, Olivia's steward, upon Raleigh, then
the Queen's Chamberlain, whose overweening arrogance
embittered the envy caused by his sudden rise to royal
favour.
Raleigh, Aubrey says, " was a fine fellow but damnable
proud." Bacon relates Lord Oxford's sneer at Raleigh,
"When Jacks go up heads go down." He offended the
court ladies, as Bacon also tells,2 by saying " they were like
witches for they could do hurt, but they could do no good ! "
The ladies doubtless retaliated, and would enjoy even an
imaginary discomfiture of their contemner. Maria's descrip-
tion of Malvolio as " smiling his face into more lines than
are in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies "
would be referred to Raleigh, whose captains returned in
September, 1584, from their first exploring voyage to the
West.3
1 "Renascence Drama, or History made Visible," by William
Thomson, K. R.C.S., F.L.S. Melbourne, 1880.
s "Apothegms."
,1 This may be a later addition referring to Hakluyt's Map, published
in 1599 or 1600 (Lee, p. 210).
60 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
The Clown doubtless represented, or was represented
by, Dick Tarleton, whom for his ready wit Leicester brought
from being a cowherd on his estate to become Court Jester,
a post he retained until in 1584 his biting jest at the un-
popular favourite banished him from Court.1 "See," he
said, pointing to Raleigh, who with Leicester was sitting
beside Elizabeth, " the knave commands the Queen !" After
leaving Court, Tarleton became or continued the chief
comedian in Leicester's company of players ; he went with
Leicester to the Low Countries in 1585, and died in 1588.
Tarleton also kept a tavern in Gracious, now Gracechurch
Street, hard by the chiming tower of St. Benet's Church.
Hence the wit passage between the Clown and Viola.
" Viola. Save thee, friend, and thy music. Dost thou live
by thy tabor?
Clown. No, sir, I live by the church.
Viola. Art thou a churchman.
Clown. No such matter, sir. I do live by the church, for
I do live at my house, and my house doth stand by the
church."
And again, the Clown says to Orsino :
"The bells of St. Bennet may put you in mind, one, two,
three."
The Captain's advice to Sebastian, " In the south suburb,
at the Elephant, is best to lodge," further shows that, though
the scene and the actors are disguised as of Illyria, they
belong really to the English Court, and to London city.
The Elephant, now surviving as the Elephant and Castle,
would be one of the first hostelries reached on entering
London on the south from the sea-coast.
1 Bohun's " Character of Elizabeth."
Other Plays. 61
The Clown also satirically refers to the transmigration of
souls, which strange notion of Pythagoras was revived by
Giordano Bruno when in England from 1583 to 1585, the
suggested date of the play.
" Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning
wild fowl ?
Malvolio. That the soul of our grandam might haply in-
habit a bird."
Sir Toby Belch, Olivia's kinsman, recalled Elizabeth's
own cousin, Sir Francis Knollys, a jovial old soldier, who by
virtue of " consanguinity " took liberties in the royal house-
hold, as Sir Toby did in Olivia's. His chamber being hard
by the dormitory of the maids of honour, he declared
" that they used when retired for the night to frisk and hey
about," so that it was in vain for him to attempt sleep or
study. One night, " when the maids of honour were un-
usually obstreperous," he marched into their dormitory with
his night-cap on and book in hand, and paced up and down
declaiming in Latin, declaring that he would not leave them
in quiet possession, without they permitted him to rest in
his apartments.
Sebastian may represent young Robert Devereux, after-
wards Earl of Essex, who in 1584 entered the brilliant
Court, and Viola, perhaps, his sister Penelope, whose
beauty changed Sir Philip Sidney's courtly admiration of
Elizabeth to a passion for herself, which her marriage with
Lord Rich disappointed.
Other allusions in the play may be traced with more or
less probability, and others may exist no longer recog-
nizable.
In that age personal satire was common, and playwrights
freely lampooned one another ; but a court satire needed for
its writer one within the circle of the Court, familiar with
62 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
court gossip, and with tact showing how far and in what
direction satire might safely go. These qualifications be-
longed to Bacon rather than to Shakspere.
"Twelfth Night" was acted, probably in a revised form,
at the Middle Temple Hall on February 2nd, 1601-2.
The satire on the English Court was followed by a
travesty of the French Court. In " Love's Labour 's Lost "
the King of Navarre and his courtiers and some of the in-
cidents of the play are drawn from contemporary characters
and events of the French Court. The scene in which the
princess's lovers press their suit in the disguise of Russians
follows the reception at Elizabeth's Court, in 1584, of Rus-
sian ambassadors, who sought a wife among the English
nobility for the Tsar.
" Love's Labour 's Lost " is commonly said from internal
evidence to be the earliest of the Shakespeare plays, because
of the large number of rhymes which it contains ; and, al-
though this character may depend on subject as well as
date, this play appears to be the first which in point of date
could be attributed to William Shakspere. But how strange
a subject it seems for him to choose for his first essay in
drama.
Bacon from his residence in France knew all the leaders
in French politics, and doubtless saw the Russian am-
bassadors at the English Court ; but what could Shakspere,
living at Stratford, probably until 1587, be likely to know
of French politics or Russian ambassadors ?
"The Two Gentlemen of Verona," which is thought to
have next appeared, was probably a revision of the lost
" History of Felix and Philomena " already mentioned.
Both were founded on the Spanish romance of " Diana," of
which no translation was published until 1596 or 1598.
Bacon knew Spanish, and in his " Promus " collected
Spanish proverbs, but it is scarcely possible that Shakspere
Other Plays. 63
could be acquainted with the Spanish language or literature,
or could have discovered this Spanish romance ; he could
not have done so at Stratford in 1584, when "Felix and
Philomena " appeared.
The scenes of these two plays were laid abroad, a choice
well fitting Bacon's life, but hard to reconcile with Shak-
spere's.
" Midsummer Night's Dream " is believed by Fleay to be
one of the earliest of the plays on account of the 850
rhyming lines it contains, exceeding those of any other of
the plays except " Love's Labour 's Lost," which has more
than 1,000. Only three other plays, " Romeo and Juliet,"
" Richard II." and the "Comedy of Errors," exceed 200. '
The play was probably written in celebration of a mar-
riage, and several authors 2 have assumed that it was com-
posed for Southampton's marriage in 1598. Elze points
out a that this is inconsistent with the clandestine circum-
stances of Southampton's marriage, for which he was
promptly imprisoned by Elizabeth, and he suggests Essex's
marriage in 1590 as the more probable occasion.
Oberon's vision is thought to refer to Leicester's fete-
to Elizabeth at Kenilworth in 1575, which argues an early
date for the play.
This theory agrees well with Francis Bacon's authorship,
whose intimacy with Essex might well lead him so to grace
his marriage. But it is difficult to suppose that William
Shakspere within three years from leaving Stratford in 1587
could have attained the refinement and skill which charac-
terize the play, or the distinction of being chosen to write
it for such an occasion.
1 " Shakespeare Manual," p. 131.
a Tieck, Ulrici, Gerald, Massey.
' Elze's "Essays," " Midsummer Night's Dream."
64 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
IX. HISTORICAL PLAYS, 1591.
THE next play is believed to be the First part of
"Henry VI.," commencing the historical series and
dramatizing the wars in France. It was produced on 3rd
March, 1591, J and obtained a popular triumph. "How it
would have joyed brave Talbot, the terror of the French,"
wrote Nash in August, 1592, "to think that after he had
lyne two hundred yeares in his tombe hee should triumph
againe on the stage, and have his bones embalmed with the
teares of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times),
who in the tragedian that represents his person imagine
that they behold him fresh bleeding."
The scenes of this play Bacon had himself visited ; the
effect of its acting was just such as he desired for the his-
torical drama, " History made Visible."
The Second and Third parts of " Henry VI. " were acted
in the same or the following year. These depict the wars
of the Roses ; the Second part describes the battle of St.
Albans, which was fought within a mile or two of Bacon's
home. From his childhood he grew up amid the memories
of Henry VI. In the Abbey Church are the tombs of Earl
Warwick's family, with the Nevil's crest, "The rampant
bear chained to the ragged staff," of the Greys his kindred,
of Queen Margaret and good Duke Humphrey of Gloucester,
all of whom are mentioned in the Third part of " Henry VI."
Historical plays were then almost a novelty, although a
popular play of " The Victories of Henry V. " was acted
and one or two others. It was natural that Bacon should
essay historical drama which he so commended, and natural
1 Henslowe's Diary ; Lee, p. 56.
Historical Plays. 65
that he should choose the historical scenes with which he
was most familiar : but it was a strange coincidence that
Shakspere (if it was really he) should not only choose
historical drama, but should, in making his first essay, select
for his subject three historical scenes so intimately connected
with Bacon's life.
Two lines in " 1 Henry VI. " point to Bacon rather
than Shakspere as the author of this play :
Thy promises are like Adonis' gardens
That one day bloomed and fruitful were the next.
Critics were long puzzled to trace this legend. It has
been found in Plato's " Phredrus," which Bacon knew,
but which was not translated in Shakspere's time. But
" Adonis' Gardens " is also one of Bacon's " Promus " notes,
drawn from Erasmus.
A few lines further on "the rich jewelled coffer of Darius"
is mentioned, of which the story, taken from Pliny and
Strabo, is told by Bacon in the first book of " De Aug-
ments " ; another instance of the identity, in thought and
knowledge, of the author of the plays and Bacon.
It seems as difficult to fit the scenes and subjects of these
plays, as their language and learning into the life of Shakspere.
Genius, in every other case, takes colour from its sur-
roundings, however it may transmute them.
Walter Scott wrote of mediaeval romance, and of Scottish
history and homely life ; Robert Burns of " Banks and
Braes " and rustic beauty ; Dickens invested vulgar life
with picturesqueness, humour and pathos ; Thackeray wrote
tales of the Charterhouse ; Disraeli, political novels; Glad-
stone, Homeric dissertations. Shakspere's receptivi •genius,
if he really possessed it, must have absorbed the scenes
and customs of his Warwickshire home, as George Eliot
did, and then the vivid variety of town life when he came
F
66 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
to London. With a mind so filled, but with little book-
learning, in what form is his genius supposed to burst out ?
French politics, Italian novel, Roman history, Spanish
romance, Danish legend, Latin play, French wars and the
battle of St. Albans !
It is a tissue of improbabilities which multiply by geo-
metrical progression into the impossible. But all fit natur-
ally and exactly into the life of Francis Bacon, and reflect
its varying colour.
If Bacon was the author of the plays this could not be
avowed ; some author must be named for plays so successful.
In the contempt in which the stage was then held, an
avowal of the authorship of stage plays would have de-
stroyed Bacon's good prospects of judicial or other office,
and ruined his professional career. It would have dis-
graced him at Court, and bitterly incensed his mother.
Literature as a profession, even apart from play-writing,
was then deemed degrading to a man of position. Mon-
taigne said for a man of good family to addict himself to
literature for so "abject an end as gain " was "unworthy of
the grace and favour of the Muses." Selden, in his "Table
Talk," says : " 'Tis ridiculous for a Lord to print verses,
'tis well enough to make them to please himself, but to
make them public is foolish"; and the author of "The
Arte of English Poesie " (1589) says he has known "very
many notable gentlemen of the Court that have written
(poetry) commendably and suppressed it again, or else
suffered it to be published without their own names to it." 1
Suchy^«jc d' esprit might be circulated privately in manu-
script without the loss of caste which publication for profit
would entail.
Shakspere's name was given forth as the author of the
plays. This role would be but awkwardly assumed by a
1 " Shakespeare, Bacon, an Essay," p. 36.
Historica I Plays. 6 7
young illiterate player, and may well have seemed to his
fellows incongruous or unaccountable, and have excited
their jealousy and suspicion ; although those who only
knew him from the works which bore his name may have
expressed unfeigned admiration. Nash in 1589 had sneered
at some " Idiot art-masters who think to outbrave better
pens with the swelling bombast of bragging verse and trans-
late twopenny pamphlets from the Italian." But when the
trilogy of " Henry VI." achieved such brilliant success, and
was claimed by Shakspere, suspicion broke out into denun-
ciation ; and Greene in 1592, in his "Groatsworth of Wit,"
warned his friends against the upstart. "An upstart crow
beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart
wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to
bombast a blank verse as the best of you, and being an
absolute Johannes Factotum is in his own conceit the only
Shake-scene in a country."
The words " With his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's
hide " are parodied from the line in " 3 Henry VI." : " O
tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide."
It has been erroneously supposed that Chettle, who pub-
lished Greene's " Groatsworth of Wit," afterwards apolo-
gized, in his " Kind Hearts Dream," for this as an attack on
Shakspere. This is an error ; the apology and the character-
sketch it contained do not, as Fleay and Castle have pointed
out,1 refer at all to Shakspere, but to one of the three writers
whom Greene had addressed and severely censured, prob-
ably Marlowe. The error was begun by Malone, and has
been copied by subsequent writers. Chettle's words are :
" About three months since died Mr. Robert Greene, leaving
many papers in sundry booksellers' hands, among others
his ' Groatsworth of Wit,' in which a letter written to divers
1 Fleay, "Chronicle History of Shakespeare," p. Ill; "Shake-
speare, Bacon, Jonson, ami Greene," l>y Castle, p. 163.
68 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
play-writers is offensively by one or two of them taken. —
With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and
with one of them I care not if I never be. The other
whom at that time I did not so much spare as since I wish
I had — that I did not I am as sorry as if the original fault
had been my fault."
If the suspicions of the genuineness of Shakspere's claims
should spread the mask might not avail, the true authorship
of the plays might be discovered. If, however, Shakspere's
reputation as a poet were established, this might be averted.
What next followed certainly had this effect.
X. "VENUS AND ADONIS" AND " LUCRECE,"
IN 1593, the London theatres being closed on account
of the plague, which would prevent the author of the
plays, whether Bacon or Shakspere, from gaining money by
fresh dramas, the classical poem of " Venus and Adonis "
appeared, without an author's name on the title-page, but
with a dedication to the Earl of Southampton, signed
" William Shakespeare." The Earl of Southampton, then
a young man of twenty, lodged in Gray's Inn, and was well
known to Bacon and his brother Anthony. He was a close
friend of Essex, for whom Francis and Anthony Bacon were
then acting as secretaries or assistants. He afterwards be-
came associated with Essex in his treasonable schemes ;
Bacon then renounced the friendship of both, and the
dedication did not appear in the later editions.
To show some connection between Southampton and
William Shakspere, any intimacy between a nobleman and
a young actor being unlikely, a story is cited, recorded by
Nicholas Rowe with some hesitation more than a century
" Venus and Adonis " and " Litcrece" 69
later, in 1709, and said to be handed down by Sir William
D'Avenant, "that Lord Southampton at one time gave
Shakspere a thousand pounds to enable him to go through
with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to."
The story is not reconcilable with the facts of Shakspere's
life. His first purchase was of New Place for ^60 in
1597. At this time his income as an actor is estimated at
^130 a year, irrespective of any profit from the plays.1 In
1598 we find him lending money at Stratford. In that year
Southampton was committed to prison on account of his
secret marriage with one of the Queen's Maids of Honour.
He was already ruined by his extravagance, and had joined
the Paris embassy to endeavour to retrieve his position.
Being recalled to answer for his offence, he wrote thus to
Essex from Paris in September, 1598: "My so sudden
return is a kind of punishment which I imagine Her
Majesty's will is not to lay upon me ; I mean because, when
I am returned, I protest unto your lordship I scarce know
what course to take to live, having at my departure let to
farm that poor estate I had left for the satisfying my
creditors, and payment of those debts which I came to owe
by following her court, and have reserved only such a
portion as will maintain myself and a very small train in
the time of my travels."2 In 1599 Shakspere acquired from
Burbage shares in the Globe Theatre, "doubtless freely
bestowed," 3 estimated to bring him in ^500 a year. In
1 601 Southampton was again imprisoned for complicity in
Essex's rebellion, and was not released until April, 1603.
His name was now struck out from the dedication of the
poems. In 1602 Shakspere, then living in affluence at
Stratford, bought lands for ^320, and in 1605 a lease of
tithes for ,£440. It cannot be supposed that Southamp-
1 Lcc, p. 199. - Hatfield MSS., 1598.
3 Lee, p. 201.
jo Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
ton's aid, while he was still in prison or recently released,
was either offered or required for these purchases.
If the story has any foundation, it may possibly refer to
some act of liberality of Southampton to Francis Bacon,
who was in money straits, and to whom Essex in 1594 trans-
ferred property worth ^1,800 in reward for long service.
To " Venus and Adonis " was prefixed a Latin quotation
from Ovid's "Amores." Of the poem Charles and Mary
Cowden Clarke, who seem to have studied it more ac-
curately than Shakspere's life, write : " It bears palpable
tokens of college elegance and predilection, both in story and
in treatment. The air of niceness and stiffness peculiar to the
schools invests these efforts of the youthful genius with almost
unmistakable signs of having been written by a schoolman."
One of Shakspere's contemporaries, the author of " Poli-
manteia " (1595), fell into the like error, or divined the true
author, when he wrote that Shakspere was both a " schollar "
and also a member of one or more of the " three English
Universities, Cambridge, Oxford and the Inns of Court."
A description well fitting either Francis or Anthony Bacon,
but not William Shakspere.
In those days, when men travelled little even in their
own country, the provincial dialects were strong and per-
sistent. It is difficult to conceive that William Shakspere,
so soon after leaving Stratford, could have written a poem
so polished, elegant and classical.
Moreover, the dedication describes the poem as "the
first heir of mine invention," a remarkable expression, in-
consistent apparently with its authorship by the writer of
the plays, whoever he might be, unless, as some have been
driven to suppose, it was written by Shakspere before he
left Stratford — a difficult theory !
In the previous year, 1592, Anthony Bacon returned
from his foreign travels, and lived with Francis at Gray's
" Venus and Adonis " and " Lucrece^ J i
Inn until 1594, and then went to live near the Bull Theatre.
He was two years older than Francis, and had an equal
education ; the brothers were devoted to each other, and
doubtless Anthony, until his death in 1601, aided Francis
in his literary work, including the plays, if he wrote them.
He was, Dr. Rawley tells us, " of as great a wit as his
brother, but less learned." Among Anthony Bacon's cor-
respondence at Lambeth Palace is a French elegy to his
memory, which addresses him as " the flower of Englishmen
and the honor of the nine Muses and of Pallas, who now
wander without guide or succour through the wood." It
would seem from this that Anthony was known as a poet,
although no poems are known to have been published in
his name.
Is it an improbable conjecture that Anthony Bacon may
have written " Venus and Adonis," which is as poetical as
the plays, but less learned ? This may have been " the first
heir of his invention." The moral tone of the poem differs
widely from that of the plays, and seems to harmonize as
little with the character of Francis Bacon as the polished
elegance of the verse does with the education of William
Shakspere.
In the year 1594 the poem " Lucrece " was published,
with a similar dedication to Lord Southampton, signed
" William Shakespeare." The authorship of the two poems
was doubtless the same.
Although the writing of poems might be less objectionable
in a lawyer than writing plays, its avowal would have been a
serious obstacle to Francis Bacon's professional advance-
ment, since even his philosophical writings are said to have
been used by his rivals to exclude him from office. The same
objection might be felt by Anthony to the publication of
poems in his name, and there was, if Francis Bacon wrote
the plays, the attribution of which to Shakspere was already
72 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
the subject of suspicion, strong reason for confirming Shak-
spere's poetic reputation.
On the other hand, how could Shakspere have possibly
acquired the cultured and classical style these poems show,
and why should he describe them as " the first heir of mine
invention"? Both these poems were printed by Richard
Field, who had lately come from Stratford-on-Avon and
commenced a printing business in London, and with whom
William Shakspere was probably acquainted ; but Field's
name does not again appear.
These poems were greatly admired, and gained for William
Shakspere high praise, and did in fact confirm his reputation
both as poet and play-writer. John Weever, in a sonnet
addressed to "honey-tongued Shakespeare" in 1595, eulogized
the two poems as an unmatchable achievement, mentioning
at the same time the plays " Romeo " and " Richard," and
" more whose names I know not."
The numerous editions show that the publication of these
poems was profitable to the author, whoever he may have
been.
Letters between Bacon and Essex, hereafter quoted,
appear to show that Essex knew that Bacon was a poet.
Southampton, from his intimacy with Essex and Bacon,
probably shared the secret, and would understand that
Shakespeare was an assumed name.
It must be noted that, although the Shakspere family
spelt their name in twenty-six different ways,1 never until
the dedication of these poems was the name known to be
spelt " Shakespeare."
This spelling was afterwards generally adopted when the
name was printed on the plays, but, in seventeen instances,
with a hyphen between the syllables, as if it was a nom-de-
plume or a metaphor rather than a proper name ; and the
1 Elze's "Essays."
" Comedy of Errors" etc. 73
title-page of the folio of 1623 shows the spear shaken by Wit
from behind a mask at Ignorance. In none of the five sig-
natures of Shakspere extant does he appear to have so spelt
his name, though all are written late in life ; nor in any of
the 166 entries in the Stratford records is the name so spelt ;
only in the poems and plays, and in the proceedings to
obtain the grant of arms ; and in some deeds, but not all,
after that date, does this spelling appear ; and it is not then
adopted by Shakspere himself, as his later signatures show.
Shakspere is the spelling in the registry of baptism and of
burial, Shagspere in the marriage bond. In 1604 the Ac-
counts of Revels at Court show that " Measure for Measure "
and " The Plaie of Errors," and in 1605 " The Merchant of
Venis," were played before the King. In both places "The
poet which made the Plaies " is given as " Shaxberd." l
Is it not then a suggestive coincidence that, just about the
time when the name " Shakespeare " first appeared, someone
was experimenting with this name in connection with the
name of Francis Bacon, and wrote it out seven times, and
the name Francis Bacon three times, on the cover of a book
containing several of Francis Bacon's writings in manuscript,
and also the manuscripts of two of the Shakespeare plays ?
Yet this appears from the Northumberland House manu-
script hereafter described.
XI. THE "COMEDY OF ERRORS" AND OTHER
PLAYS, 1 594- 1600.
THE "Comedy of Errors " reappeared in 1594, being
probably a revised form of the " Historie of Errors "
played at Hampton Court in 1576.
1 Shakspere's name does not appear elsewhere in the Accounts of
Revels ; nor at all in the Stationers' Registry, nor in Ilenslowe's
Diary.
74 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
"A Comedy of Errors like to Plautus his Menechmi"
was played by the players at Grays' Inn on Innocents' Day,
December, 1594, as is recorded in the " Gesta Graiorum."
The players are described as a " Company of base and
common fellows," to distinguish them from the members of
the Inn, who acted in the accompanying masque, which,
according to Spedding, was composed by Bacon, the " chief
contriver " of the masques and revels there. Was Bacon or
one of those " base and common fellows " more probably the
classical scholar, who adapted this play from the untranslated
" Menaechmi " of Plautus ?
On the same day William Shakspere had made his first
recorded appearance before the Queen at Greenwich Palace,
acting in a comedy or interlude with William Kempe and
Richard Burbage. Halliwell-Phillipps 1 supposes that the
same company came late at night to Grays' Inn to act in
the " Comedy of Errors," and if Shakspere wrote the comedy
he would doubtless be there; but the description of the
players is little consistent with his recognition as the author
of the play.
In 1592 and 1593 Francis Bacon was in money straits,
borrowing from Jews and Lombards, and almost decided
to abandon the legal profession and become " a sorry book-
maker." About this time he was arrested on a bond.
Anthony again and again came to his relief, and mortgaged
his estate to pay his brother's debts. In 1594 he writes
that " He is poor and sick, working for bread." Upon
what work was he then engaged to supply his need ?
In 1593 and 1595 he wrote two masques, "The Conference
of Pleasure " and " The Indian Prince," for Essex to present
before the Queen. But in 1594, when Bacon was in such
sore need of money, the author of the plays was very
prolific. This year, it is believed, saw the production of
1 Vol. i., p. 124.
"Co?nedy of Errors" etc. 75
" Richard II.," "Titus Andronicus," " King John," and also
an early form of " The Merchant of Venice," then called
"The Venesyon Comedy," in addition to the "Comedy of
Errors."
It is, indeed, a strange coincidence if, just after Anthony
had delivered his brother from the Jews, it occurred to
Shakspere to represent on the stage Antonio delivering
Bassanio from the clutches of Shylock. If, again, "The
Venesyon Comedy " was only a reproduction of the play of
"The Jew showne at the Bull " in 1579, that play Shak-
spere could not have written.
What makes the hypothesis of Shakspere's authorship
still more difficult is that this play, whenever written, was
founded on an Italian novel not then accessible except in
the original Italian.1
It may be remarked that Anthony, the name of Francis
Bacon's brother, to whom he was devoted, is a favourite
name with the author of the plays. It occurs in " Love's
Labour 's Lost," " Much Ado about Nothing," " Henry V.,"
"Richard III.," "Romeo and Juliet," "Anthony and
Cleopatra," "Julius Caesar" and "Macbeth."
Both "Richard II." and "Richard III." were pub-
lished anonymously in 1597, as they had "been publicly
acted by the Rt. Hon. Lord Chamberlain his servants."
A curious history attaches to the play of " Richard II."
Dealing with the deposition of a king, it gave offence to
Elizabeth, who was jealous of her own title to the crown.
When the play was printed, the deposition scene was
omitted in the earlier editions. The offence of the play
was increased, when in 1598 Sir John Haygarth published
a history of the first year of Henry IV. 's reign, describing
the deposition of Richard, and dedicated the book to Essex
in terms of adulation : for this Haygarth was sent to the
1 Lee, pp. 65, 66.
j 6 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
Tower. The play was acted, at the instigation of Essex
and his followers, in the afternoon before his insurrection in
February, 1601, but failed to excite the populace to rise as
Essex had hoped. The Queen complained * that " This
Tragedie of Richard 2nd had been played with seditious
intent forty times in open streets and houses," and one
head of the indictment preferred against the conspirators
was that they had procured with money the old tragedy of
the tragical abdication of Richard II. to be performed in a
public theatre before the conspirators.
" Titus Andronicus," a play showing classical knowledge,
was performed in January, 1594,2 with much success; it
was published anonymously in 1600 and was included in
the folio of 1623.
To 1594 or 1595 are attributed "All's Well that Ends
Well " and " The Taming of the Shrew." These plays have
foreign scenes. They were first published in 1623.
The correspondence already pointed out between the
" Promus " notes and " Romeo and Juliet " may lead us to
attribute this play to 1595, in which year Francis Meres
mentions it, though Lee assigns it to 1594, and Dr. Delius
suggested 1591 because of the Nurse's remark, "'Tis since
the earthquake now eleven years," the last earthquake in
England having been in 1580. Perhaps the first draft of the
play may have been written in 1591. The play is founded
on an Italian story, though this, it appears, had been trans-
lated. Italian literature was familiar to Bacon ; Shakspere
would learn nothing of it at the Stratford Grammar School ;
books, whether original or translations, were scarce in those
days, and Shakspere appears to have had none. " Romeo
and Juliet," again, has a foreign scene ; it was printed
anonymously in 1597, 1599 and 1609.
1 Isaac Reed's " Shakespeare" Note to Richard II.
2 Lee, p. 302.
" Comedy of Errors," etc. jj
Essex was in 1594 and 1595 endeavouring, but in vain,
to obtain for Bacon the office of Solicitor-General.
On 1 8th May, 1594, Essex wrote to Bacon that the Queen
" did acknowledge you had a great wit, and an excellent
gift of speech, and much other good learning. But in law
she rather thought you could make show to the uttermost
of your knowledge, than that you were deep."
Bacon, weary of waiting, wrote thus to Essex in 1595 :
" I am neither much in appetite (for the office) nor much
in hope ; for as to the appetite the waters of Parnassus are
not like the waters of the Spaw, which give a stomach, but
rather they quench appetites and desires."
What were these waters of Parnassus, which were so
satisfying as to quench even the desire for office ? Parnassus
was the home of the Muses, all devoted to poetry and the
drama, save Clio, the Muse of history, and Urania. Whence,
and in what channel, flowed in 1595 those streams of poetry
which satiated Bacon's desires?
In another letter, written about the same date, Bacon ex-
presses his weariness and disappointment in pursuit of
office.
" For to be like a child, following a bird, which, when he
is nearest flieth away and lighteth a little before; and then
the child after it again, and so on in infinitum. I am weary
of it."
The metaphor is reproduced in "Coriolanus ": " I saw
him run after a gilded butterfly ; and when he caught it, he
let it go again, and after it again ; and over and over he
comes and up again."
In another letter of 1595 Bacon writes to Essex : "I am
purposed not to follow the practice of the law, and m\
reason is only because it drinketh too much time, which I
have dedicated to better purposes."
Of the year 1596 Spedding writes : " It is easier to under-
78 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
stand why Bacon was resolved not to devote his life to the
ordinary practice of a lawyer, than what plan he had in view
to clear himself of the difficulties which were now accumu-
lating upon him, and to obtain means of living and working.
What course he betook himself to at the crisis at which we
have now arrived I cannot possibly say. I do not find any
letter of his which can possibly be assigned to the winter of
1596, nor have I met among his brother's papers with any-
thing which indicates what he was about."
The mystery is solved if he was the author of the
plays.
In 1597 historical plays were resumed in the First and
Second parts of "Henry IV.," followed by "The Merry
Wives of Windsor," the last having an English scene, but
being again in part founded on an Italian novel.
In this year, 1597, the first edition of ten of Bacon's
" Essays " appeared, dedicated to his " deare brother, you
that are next myself." What, it may again be asked, had
been up to this time the employment of so active and versa-
tile a mind, being, as he declares, " born for literature " ?
In " The Taming of the Shrew " and in the Second
part of " Henry IV." are found the only traces of the
neighbourhood of Stratford or of any connection with the
life of Shakspere. Christopher Sly and Marian Hacket
and the villages of Wincot and Woncot and Barton-on-the-
Heath are said to be names found in the neighbourhood of
Stratford, and Justice Shallow is said to be a satire upon
Sir Thomas Lucy. The connection is but slight, and it does
not account for the absence of any such references before.
On the other hand, it is remarkable that just at this time
Bacon was brought into connection with the neighbourhood
of Stratford; for in 1598 Bacon, in reward for services,
received a royal grant of a valuable lease of the Rectory and
■Church of Cheltenham and the Chapel of Charlton Kings,
" Comedy of Errors" etc. 79
lying about twenty-five miles from Stratford and twenty
from Barton-on-the-Heath. Some years later, in 1606,
Bacon married a step-daughter of Sir John Pakington, who
lived near Stratford, and by his marriage became connected
with Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, whose daughter Joyce
his cousin, Sir William Cook, had already married in 1601,
so that Bacon had ample opportunity of becoming acquainted
with the district. " The Taming of the Shrew " was first
printed in 1623.
A play entitled " The Taming of a Shrew " was printed in
quarto in 1594. It is difficult to determine the relation of
this play to the one printed in the folio of 1623. The in-
duction is substantially alike in both plays, though improved
in the later play. The last scenes between Katharine and
Petruchio are nearly alike in both plays, and must have
been written by the same author. The other scenes in the
earlier play are of doubtful authorship. The allusions to
the Stratford neighbourhood are introduced in the later
play.
In the year 1598 Shakespeare's name appears for the first
time on the title-page of a play, namely "Love's Labour's
Lost," hitherto played anonymously. The title-page de-
scribes the play as " presented before her Highness this last
Christmas. Newly corrected and augmented by W. Shake-
speare." A court performance probably required the name
of the author to be given. Up to this date the plays were
published anonymously, although Shakspere may have been
already the reputed author of some, and now became
generally recognized as the author of these plays.
Mercs in 1598 highly extolled Shakespeare as most excel-
lent in tragedy and comedy, and names his poems and six
comedies, "Two Gentlemen of Verona," "Errors," "Love's
Labour 's Lost," " Love's Labour 's Won," " Midsummer
Night's Dream " and " Merchant of Venice," and six
8o Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
tragedies, "Richard II.," "Richard III.," "Henry V.,"
" King John," " Titus " and " Romeo and Juliet," and his
sugared sonnets among his private friends. As the plays
until 1598 were published anonymously, Meres's list cannot
be relied upon as complete.
But why, if Shakspere was the author, should the plays
have been published until 1598 anonymously?
To Bacon secrecy was essential, not only on his mother's
account, but because he was still looking forward with
Essex's aid to be appointed Solicitor-General ; but he failed
as yet to obtain the appointment, apparently through the
opposition of his cousins the Cecils, who represented him as
"A Speculative man, a dangerous individual therefore in
the realities of business." Had it been known he was a
writer of stage plays or poems, all hopes of preferment
would have vanished.
In 1598 "Henry V." was written, which was performed
in 1599.
It was published anonymously in 1600, 1602, 1608, and
in an enlarged form in 1623. This play dramatized the
French wars, the battle of Agincourt, and the scenes visited
by Bacon in early life. The play also shows that the author
was a friend of Essex, whose return from his command in
Ireland was then expected.
Were now the general of our gracious Empress
(As in good time he may) from Ireland coming
Bringing rebellion broached upon his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit
To welcome him.
Act V.
In 1599 two of the most perfect of the comedies were
probably written, " Much Ado about Nothing " and " As
You Like It," the former of them drawn apparently from
Italian sources and both with foreign scenes.
"Troilus and Cressida" was probably written about this
" Comedy of Errors" etc. 81
time, since in 1602-3 a licence was obtained "For the
booke of Troilus and Cressida as it is acted by my Lord
Chamberlayne's men." It was not printed till 1608, when
it appeared, perhaps in an altered form, with Shakespeare's
name on the title-page, and with a curious preface extolling
him as a writer of comedies, and asserting that the piece
had not been acted, but had escaped from " the grand
possessors."1 This play borrows so much from the Greek
that Steevens concluded that Shakspere could not have
wholly written it. I
In 1596 Shakspere had returned to Stratford. He was
now a man of some wealth. An actor's profession, though de-
spised, was lucrative. Richard Burbage was able to build the
Globe and Blackfriars theatres ; Alleyne built and endowed
Dulwich College. Shakspere's income as an actor, apart
from any money he may have received from the plays or
poems, would probably exceed ^130, equivalent to ,£1,040
in our times." In 1597, as already stated, he bought New
Place for ^60, and thereafter lived, partly at least, at Strat-
ford, though still residing part of the year in London until
161 1, when he finally retired to Stratford. He lodged on
his journeys to and fro at the Crown Inn at Oxford, kept
by John Davenant, a respectable but sombre man, who had
a beautiful and witty wife.
In 1599 or 1600 William Shakspere acquired from
Richard Burbage and his brother shares in the Globe and
Blackfriars theatres then newly built. These shares, it is
estimated, would bring in at least ,£500 a year, equivalent
now to ^4,000 a year.3
In a petition presented to the Lord Chamberlain by
Richard Burbage's wife, son and brother in 1636, the
1 Bacon was at this time Solicitor-General. No new play was
published after this, until "Othello" in 1622.
'' Lee, p. 199. -1 Ibid. i p. 201.
G
82 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
transaction is thus described: "We built the Globe, and
to ourselves we joyned those deserving men Shakspere,
Hemings, Condall, Phillips and others. Now for the
Blackfriers (we) placed men players which were Hemings,
Condall, Shakspere, and others." '
It appears that the owners of the theatre were entitled to
one half of the receipts, except the outer doors, correspond-
ing to the modern pit, the other half of the " galleries " and
the outer doors being assigned to the actors, who out of
their share " defrayed all wages to hired men, apparell,
J>oetes, lightes and other charges of the house whatsoever."
Heminge and Condell, it is expressly stated, had their
shares for nothing, and the same may be assumed for what-
ever interest Shakspere had.
XII. THE DARK PERIOD, 1601-1606.
A MARKED change now came over the plays : instead
of the brilliant comedies a series of tragedies ap-
peared, though Shakspere continued at Stratford, buying
and selling, and living in rich though selfish respectability.
It is true that in the year 1601 his father, John Shakspere,
died; but in 1602 William Shakspere bought for ^320
107 acres of land at Stratford, and in the same year a
cottage and garden near New Place, and was living a
prosperous life.
The Shadow is found darkening Bacon's life. Essex was
executed in 1601, Anthony Bacon died soon after, and
Lady Anne fell into mental derangement. Elizabeth died
in 1603. Now, as always, it is the course of Bacon's life,
not that of Shakspere, which is reflected in the plays.
In 1603 and 1604 the two editions of "Hamlet" were
published, the latter much enlarged.
1 Halliwell-Phillipps, vol. i., pp. 313-319.
The Dark Period. 83
In 1604 " Othello " was written, which was acted before
King James at Whitehall on 1st November.
At this time, according to tradition, Shakspere seduced
the wife of the host of the Crown Inn, who early in 1605
gave birth to a son, who afterwards became Sir William
D'Avenant, of whom Shakspere was the reputed father ; nor
did the son disclaim the relationship ; a bizarre coincidence
indeed, ill-fitting Shakspere's life, if Shakspere at this time
really wrote and brought out " Othello."
The tradition, which both Halliwell-Phillipps and Sidney
Lee desire to be disbelieved, is confirmed by several authors
quoted by the former in an appendix. The facts shown are
that John Davenant, the innkeeper, was a respectable but
morose man, his wife noted for her beauty and attractions.
Aubrey adds : "She had a very light report." Shakspere, then
a rich actor, married but unfaithful, was a frequent and wel-
come guest ; a child was born, popularly imputed to him,
to whom he stood godfather and gave his name ; the jest
was oft repeated, that the boy should not take the name of
godfather in vain. Grown to manhood, clever and vain,
the boy became Sir William D'Avenant, and did not dis-
claim, but rather boasted of the relationship; his brothers
were dull as their father. Against this is set that John
Davenant, whether ignorant or tolerant, remained subject to
his wife's charms, and, surviving her, desired to be buried
in the same tomb.
In 1604, also, the scarcely less incongruous play of
"Measure for Measure" was produced, whose moral is,
that chastity is dearer than life, and mercy the noblest
virtue of princes. It was acted before the King at White-
hall on 26th December.
Both the last mentioned plays had foreign scenes, and
were drawn as so often from Italian sources.
In 1605 "Macbeth" followed. This play indicates
84 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
local knowledge by the author.1 Bacon, as appears from
a letter printed by Spedding, had been sent in 1603 to
meet King James after his accession, before he came to
London, and had an interview with him, apparently in
Scotland, since the treasurer of Scotland was present.
There is no evidence that Shakspere ever was in Scotland."
The Scotch history of King James's ancestors, and the
witch scenes which accorded with the King's Demonology,
adroitly sought the King's favour. In the same year, 1605,
Ben Jonson, Marston and Chapman, less skilled in the
ways of Courts, were sent to prison by order of the King
for attacks made on the stage against the Scots, and against
the King's book on demonology. Was it more probably
Shakspere or Bacon, whose courtier instincts moulded the
play of " Macbeth " ?
" King Lear " was written about the same time ; it was
acted at Whitehall on 26th December, 1606, and registered
on 26th November, 1607. Bacon's father was born at Chisle-
hurst, in Kent. The men of Kent are praised in " 2 Henry
VI.," and many of the towns of Kent and also the Goodwin
Sands are mentioned in the plays. Bacon, in passing to
and from France had seen Shakespeare's cliff and the sam-
phire gatherers. The delineation of madness in " King
Lear," and in the later editions of " Hamlet," probably
reflects the mental state of Bacon's mother, but has no
known correspondence with Shakspere's life. Shakspere
may have visited Dover in 1597 with the Queen's Com-
pany, but his name is not recorded in their provincial
tours.
1 Knight's "Life of Shakespeare." - Lee, p. 41.
Bacons Late Prosperity. 85
XIII. BACON'S LATE PROSPERITY, 1606-1620.
IN 1606 a period of prosperity began for Bacon's life. In
1606, in the forty-sixth year of his age, he married, after
three years' courtship, Alice Barnham, "an alderman's
daughter — an handsome maiden, and to his liking." He
settled upon her a sum double her own marriage portion,
which shows that his pecuniary position was at length
established. On Anthony's death in 1601 he had suc-
ceeded to Gorhambury. In 1607 he was at length pro-
moted to the office of Solicitor-General, with an income of
;£i,ooo a year.
Freedom from money cares and pressure of official
business might well interrupt the production of new plays,
if Bacon was their author. No such explanation can be
given of a sudden cessation of Shakspere's mental activity,
after the extraordinary profusion of the ten years preceding
1607 ; but from the date when Bacon took office, the pro-
duction of the plays suddenly diminished, and when he was
appointed Attorney-General in 16 13 they ceased.
With the following exceptions, no more plays are known
to have been produced from 1606 until Shakspere's death
in 1616; nor, indeed, until Bacon's fall and until the pub-
lication of the folio of 1623. But the character of the plays
again changed with Bacon's changed life, and brightened
with its brightness.
In May, 1608, Edward Blount entered in the Stationers'
Register, by authority of Sir George Buc, the licenser of
plays, " A booke called Anthony and Cleopatra." It was
not published, however, until the folio of 1623; nor is it
known to have been produced on the stage.
86 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
In 1608 "Pericles" was printed — a doubtful play, not
included in the first folio.
In 1609-10 Bacon was a fellow-member with the Earls of
Southampton, Pembroke and Montgomery, in the Virginia
Company, which, in 1609, sent out a fleet to the West Indies
under Sir John Somers. The fleet was terribly vexed by
storms on the voyage. The ship " Admiral " was wrecked
upon the Bermudas ; of which an account appeared soon
afterwards in Jourdain's " Discovery of the Bermudas, other-
wise called the Isle of Devils."
On 1st November, 161 1, the delightful comedy of "The
Tempest," whose scene was "the still vexed Bermoothes,"
was represented before the King at Whitehall. The gentle
airs, and the spirits and devils, that infested the island,
referred to the Bermudas. The seafaring terms, with which
the play opens, show an accurate knowledge of ships, also
shown in Bacon's treatise on the sailing of ships published
in the same year. Shakspere is never known to have
gone to sea, and would know little of such matters. The
incidental music was composed by one of the royal
musicians. This might well be arranged by Bacon, who,
notwithstanding his official duties, prepared in the follow-
ing year a splendid masque, presented by the Gentlemen
of Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple, on the occasion of
the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth with the Elector
Palatine.
William Shakspere had already left London and finally
settled at New Place in September, 161 1,1 and there-
after produced no new drama, though he survived for five
years.
" The Tempest " contains many allusions to Bacon's later
studies, "The History of the Winds," "Ebb and Flow of
the Sea," " The Sailing of Ships," and others.
1 Lee, p. 257.
Bacons Late Prosperity. Sy
" Cymbeline " is recorded by Dr. Firman the astrologer,
who kept a list of performances, to have been acted in 1610
or 161 1, and "Winter's Tale" on 15th May, 161 1; both
comedies full of charm.
Cymbeline was a British king who reigned at Verulam in
the early part of the Christian era, and whose coins have
been found at Verulam. Strange that the imagination
of Shakspere (if he wrote the play) should continue to
hover round the home of Bacon, while Stratford is unnamed
and Warwickshire scarcely referred to.
In " Winter's Tale " the statue is ascribed to Giulio
Romano, at which critics have scoffed, saying that he was
only a painter ; but in the first edition of Vasari, published
in 1550, and never translated, he is described as also an
architect and sculptor. This Shakspere could not probably
be acquainted with, but would be the natural source of
Bacon's information. The three plays last named were first
printed in the folio of 1623.
With these exceptions, no new play is known to have
been produced between 1606 and 1623.
In 1616 William Shakspere died at Stratford, leaving
neither books nor manuscripts. No special notice of the
event is recorded to have been taken at the time, but some
time before 1623 his bust, by a Dutch sculptor resident in
London, was put up in the church, by whom is not known,
with a laudatory epitaph.
Some remarkable facts bearing upon our inquiry must
here be considered.
Only sixteen of the thirty-six Shakespeare plays were
published in William Shakspere's lifetime, and several of
these anonymously.
But between 1595 and 161 3 seven plays by inferior
writers were published, three with the name of Shakespeare
on the title, one with " W. Sh." and three with " W. S." on
8S Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
the title, by which it is admitted William Shakespeare was
intended.1
The appearance of Shakespeare's name on the title of a
play is therefore no certain evidence of its authorship.
After 1594 no plays might be published without licence
and registry at Stationers' Hall ; but no protest or objection
by William Shakspere is recorded to the use of his name on
these plays. No other dramatist appears to have allowed
such a use of his name.
It has been suggested that the publishers were un-
scrupulous, and stole his name to increase their profits ;
but if William Shakspere's name was now worth money, he
scarcely seems the man to allow its use gratis. If, however,
William Shakspere was accustomed to treat his name as a
marketable commodity, how slender becomes the presump-
tion that any of the plays which bear his name were written
by him. Nay, the more brilliant and the more learned are
the plays, the less credible is his authorship.
It is even more noteworthy that the death of William
Shakspere did not prevent the revisal and rewriting of
plays already published, nor the production of some new
ones !
Bacon became Secretary of State in 161 2, Attorney-
General in 16 1 3, Privy Councillor in 161 6, and Lord
Keeper in 161 7. In 16 18 he was appointed Lord Chan-
cellor and created Baron Verulam ; and on 27th January,
162 1, was made Viscount St. Albans. These offices well
account for the total cessation of the plays in 161 1 if they
were written by him. No such explanation applies to Shak-
spere, who lived until 1616.
1 " Locrine," 1595 ; " Puritan Widow," 1607 ; " Thos. Lord Crom-
well," 1613, with full name.— "Oldcastle," 1600; " London Prodigal,"
1605; "Yorkshire Tragedy," 1608. W. S.— " Troublesome Reign of
King John," 161 1. W. Sh. The registry of these plays does not give
the name of the author, which appeared on the title-page.
Bacons Fall. 89
It should be mentioned that a play concerning Henry VIII.,
entitled " All is true, representing some principal pieces in
the reign of Henry VIII.," was in course of performance at
the Globe Theatre on June 29th, 161 3, when the firing of
some cannon incidental to the performance set fire to the
playhouse, which was burned down. Fleay gives reasons
for believing that this play was not that printed in the folio
of 1623. The earlier play seems to have had a clown as a
prominent character; the later play is, as the prologue
shows, serious and grave, and must have been at least re-
cast.
During this period, however, in the spring of 1609, a
book entitled "Shakespeare's sonnets never before im-
printed " was entered at Stationers' Hall and published by
Thomas Thorpe. The vexed questions of their authorship
and true meaning are too long for discussion here, nor do
the difficulties seem to weigh seriously on one side or the
other upon the present question of the authorship of the
plays. Some " sugared sonnets " had, as we have seen,
been circulated in manuscript some years before under
Shakespeare's name. In polished style and in moral tone
the sonnets resemble the "Venus and Adonis" and " Lu-
crece " rather than the plays. They may not, perhaps, be
all the product of one mind.
In 1 619 the Second and Third parts of " Henry VI." and
" The Merry Wives of Windsor " were reprinted, but in
each case in their original short form. No new play was
printed between 1608 and 1622.
XIV. BACON'S FALL, 1621.
IN 162 1 came Bacon's fall, due to the malice of his
enemies, the corruption of his servants, and to care-
lessness rather than misconduct on his own part. His great
90 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
wealth vanished, but he retained in adversity the favour of
the King and the admiration of his friends. Being forced
to give up York House, he retired to Gorhambury and
devoted himself to literary work. " I could never bring
myself," Ben Jonson wrote, "to condole with the great man
after his fall, knowing as I did that no accident could do
harm to his virtue, but rather make it manifest. He seemed
to me ever by his work one of the greatest men and most
worthy of admiration."
The facts as to Bacon's alleged corruption appear from
Spedding's investigations to stand thus.
On being accused of corruption, Bacon at first indignantly
denied the charge, declaring that he had never received
bribe or present to influence his judgment in the course of
any suit. He admitted having received presents from suitors
after judgment had been given, but this was according to
long established custom, to which no exception had ever been
taken. So in " The Merchant of Venice " the Duke says :
Antonio, gratify this gentleman (Portia, the judge),
For in my mind you are much bound to him.
And Bassanio offers the 3,000 ducats which were the con-
dition of the bond.
When, however, the charge was pressed against Bacon
with regard to specific cases, it appeared that his servants had
often taken secret bribes under pretence of influencing his
favour, and also that in a few instances Bacon had himself
received presents after judgment given, but, inadvertently,
before the suit had been completely wound up. This Bacon
admitted was technically, if not morally wrong. But further,
Bacon was too sagacious not to perceive, the question being
now raised, that the custom of gifts to judges, however time-
honoured, was in principle indefensible, and liable to mani-
fold abuse. He confessed therefore that he had transgressed,
Bacons Fall. 9 1
and could not justify his conduct, though at the same time
asserting that he was " the justest chancellor that hath been
in the five changes since Sir Nicholas Bacon's time." He
seems to have been urged to plead guilty and rely on the
King's clemency, probably in order that so eminent a scape-
goat might divert the attack from other highly placed offend-
ers. He was thereupon deprived of office and disgraced, and
even committed to the Tower, but quickly released. The
ruinous fine imposed on him was not, however, enforced.
Three plays fitting the change of circumstances may well
be attributed to this period : " Henry VIII.," " Timon of
Athens " and " Coriolanus." The first described the fall of
Wolsey ; <: Timon" paints vividly and bitterly the ingratitude
and neglect which attend a great man's fall ; " Coriolanus "
describes the power of envy, and the fickleness of the
people.
" Timon" was founded partly on the story in Plutarch, but
principally on the untranslated Greek of Lucian.1 Bacon
had studied Timon's story in both authors; for, in his
Essay on Goodness, he alludes to the misanthropi, who,
Plutarch says, make it their practice to bring men to the
bough, and yet leave never a tree in their garden as Timon
had ; and in the "Advancement " he speaks of the flatterers
in the later stage of the Roman State, of which kind Lucian
maketh a merry description.
There is no such evidence that Shakspere had studied
Plutarch and the Greek of Lucian.
In July, 162 1, immediately after his fall, Bacon began
his " History of Henry VII.," and completed it, and sent a
copy to King James on 8th October of the same year. It
is significant that the Shakes] >eare plays contain the history
of England and the Wars of the Roses from Richard II. to
Henry VIII., except the reign of Henry VII., which saw the
1 Knight's " Stories of Shakespeare," p. 71.
92 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
union of the Roses. This gap was filled up by Bacon's
"History of Henry VII."
In the following year, 1622, Bacon, after receiving back
the manuscript of Henry VII. , made notes for an intended
interview with the King, at which he would propose to em-
ploy his pen upon the story of Henry VIII. ; and, on the
following 10th January, Sir Thomas Wilson reported to the
King, that Bacon had applied to him for such papers as he
had in his custody relating to Henry VIII. ; and was directed
by the King to supply Bacon with any papers he might re-
quire. That Bacon then set to work upon the " History of
Henry VIII." in some form appears both from common
report and from his own letter, for on 10th February, 1623,
Chamberlayne wrote : " The Lord (Bacon) busies himself
about books, and hath set out two lately, ' Historia Vent-
orum ' and ' De Vita et Morte.' I have not seen either of
them, because I have not leisure, but if the Life of Henry
VIII. which they say he is about might come out after his
own manner, I should find time and means enough to read
it"; and on 21st February, 1623, Bacon wrote to Bucking-
ham, then in Spain, and asked to be remembered to the
Prince (Charles I.), "who I hope ere long will make me
leave He?iry VIII. and set me on work in relation of his
Highness's heroical adventures."
Of a prose history of Henry VIII. Bacon left only two or
three prefatory pages, enough perhaps to give colour to his
request for official documents, but someone at this time was
writing or rewriting the play of " Henry VIII.," and the in-
ference seems strong that it was Francis Bacon who now
painted with sympathetic pathos the fall of Wolsey.
In 1622 "Othello," which had been acted in and after
1604, was published.
Surveying from this point the plays as a whole, are they
not both a transcript of Bacon's intellect and a mirror of
Contemporary Allusions. 93
his life ? Have they any point of contact with Shakspere's
life or character? Is it possible or reasonably credible that
Shakspere could have collected so many stories from Italian
or Spanish novels and classic histories, or conceived and
described such various foreign scenes, or displayed such
varied learning, and such knowledge of courtly life ?
XV. CONTEMPORARY ALLUSIONS.
IN circumstantial evidence each additional coincidence
not only adds to but multiplies its force; so that an
unbroken chain of probabilities may grow to a certainty.
Against the chain of circumstantial evidence which has
been adduced two facts are opposed, contemporary repute
and the folio of 1623.
William Shakspere's reputed authorship of the plays is
not, however, wholly inconsistent with Bacon's real author-
ship, since if Bacon was the true author it is probable, from
the circumstances of his life and expectations, that the
authorship would be concealed. We have also seen * that
it was the practice of the time for authors of " calling and
gravity " to suppress their names, or get some other to set
his name to their verses.
It has been urged, however, that Shakspere's con-
temporaries must have detected whether he was or not the
author of the plays attributed to him, and numerous con-
temporary references to his reputed works have been
diligently collated, but few describing the man himself.
Dr. Ingleby, who collected these references in his
" Centurie of Prayse " and " Shakespeare Allusion Books,"
attached "so little weight to contemporary rumour" that
he cites seven witnesses only, of whom " there are but four
1 Ante, pp. 5 1 , 67.
94 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
who directly identify the man or the actor with the writer
of the plays and poems." These were the four editors or
preface writers of the folio of 1623, presently to be con-
sidered. Dr. Ingleby adds : " It is plain for one thing that
the bard of our admiration was unknown to the men of that
age. Assuredly no one during the ' Centurie ' had any sus-
picion that the genius of Shakespeare was unique."
The personal allusions seem the least favourable.
Greene, we have seen, denounced "the upstart."
Nash, who eulogized the play of " Henry VI.," has also
been referred to. He was a close friend of Greene, and in
a letter of 1589 prefixed to Greene's " Menaphon," spoke in
like contemptuous terms of some ignoramus, who can
scarcely be other than the object of Greene's scorn, since it
points to a player-author who translated from the Italian.
"Amongst this kind of men, that repose Eternity in the
mouth of a player, I can but engross some deep-read school-
men and grammarians, who have no more learning in their
skull than will serve to take up a commodity, nor art in their
brains. Idiot art-masters, who think to outbrave better pens
with the swelling bombast of bragging verse, and translate
twopenny pamphlets from the Italian, without any know-
ledge even of its articles. It may be the ingrafted overflow
of some kill-cow conceit."
" Deep-read schoolmen and grammarians " may point
ironically at someone educated only at a grammar school.
Nash and Greene and several other of the Elizabethan
dramatists were University men.
To kill the cow or calf was, in the slang phrase of the
day, to make extemporary speeches during a performance
on the stage, such as Shakspere probably often made.
Two anonymous writers, some years later, refer apparently
to Shakspere, since no other player-author, at this date, is
known to have acquired wealth or affected gentility.
Contemporary Allusions. 95
One writes thus : " Thou shalt learn to be frugal, to feed
upo7i all men, and when thou feelest thy purse well-lined
buy thee some place in the country." — Ratsies Ghost, 1605.
Another writes :
With mouthing words that better wits have framed
They purchase lands, and now esquires are made.
Return from Parnassus, 1 606.
Ben Jonson appears to have entertained the like contempt
of Shakspere until about the year 1620, when he became
associated with Bacon, and assisted him in latinizing his
works.1
Ben Jonson's epigram, published with others in 16 16, the
year of Shakspere's death, but probably written earlier, can
scarcely apply to any but Shakspere.
Poor poet ape, that would be thought our chief —
Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit
From brokerage is become so bold 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. — Tush 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.
Ape is the term elsewhere applied by Jonson to players.
Shakspere was the only actor who claimed to be a dramatist,
whose plays excelled Jonson's in popularity, and would
excite his jealousy.
In the epilogue to " Every Man in his Humour," acted
in 1598, and printed in 1616, Ben Jonson satirizes Shak-
spere's neglect of the unities of the drama.
Though need makes many pints, and some such
As wit and nature hath not bettered much,
1 See Edwin Reed, pp. 92-101.
96 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
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 years, 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 wounds to scars.
The whole of this prologue, Steevens says, " is a malicious
sneer at Shakspere."
In the "Poetaster" (1601) he elaborately ridicules his
use of new words derived from the Latin.
Rufus Laberius (red-haired1 Shaker) Crispinus, a poet-
actor, who had obtained a coat of arms and whose father
was lately dead (characteristics plainly identifying Shakspere),
is accused by Horace of stealing words from him, and is
condemned by Caesar to take a pill from Virgil, which causes
him to vomit up the uncouth words retrograde, reciprocal,
defunct, and many others. At length Caesar dissolves the
court with these words :
It is the bane and torment of our ears
To hear the discords of those jangling rhymes
That with their bad and scandalous practices
Bring all true arts and learning in contempt.
Blush, folly, blush, here 's none that fears
The wagging of an ass's ears,
Detraction is but baseness varlet
And apes are apes though clothed in scarlet.
A scarlet dress was the badge of an actor's profession.
Shakspere and his fellow-actors walked in King James's
Coronation procession, and each received four and a half
yards of scarlet cloth.
1 Shakspere, according to the bust at Stratford, had red or auburn
hair. Some have supposed Dekker or Marston to be the object of this
satire; an error, since they, though play-writers, were not actors.
Contemporary Allusions. 97
In the induction to "Bartholomew Fair," acted in 1614,
three years after "The Tempest" appeared, Jonson again
wrote : " If there never be a servant monster in a fair, who
can help it ? he (the author) says ; or a nest of antics ; he is
loth to make nature afraid like those who beget tales, tem-
pests and such like drolleries, to mix his head with other
men's heels." The reference is to Caliban, and to the dance
of Satyrs in " Winter's Tale." " Our author," says Jonson's
editor, Whalley, "is still venting his sneers at Shakspere."
In 1619 Jonson told Drummond of Hawthornden that
Shakspere "wanted art and sometimes sense."
These sneers were doubtless due to jealousy, but Jonson
also despised Shakspere's want of education, which he ap-
parently considered incompatible with the plays attributed
to him ; and the fact that seven plays and some poems were
published in Shakspere's name, besides those now claimed
for him, gave further ground for the repeated imputation of
appropriating other men's work.
Strenuous endeavours have been made to explain away
Ben Jonson's animosity against Shakspere, by urging that
these bitter gibes cannot have been meant for him, or that
they showed a passing irritation hiding the love verging on
idolatry, which Ben Jonson afterwards expressed for the
author of the plays ■ but the animosity seems too plain to
be reconcilable with such love.
This jealous animosity, which continued until Shakspere's
death in 161 6, was transformed into a profound admiration
for the author of the plays, when Jonson, about 1620,
became Bacon's literary assistant ; and this new-born ad-
miration was expressed in Jonson's preface to the first folio
of the Shakespeare plays, the publication of which in 1623
Jonson undertook to aid or control.
H
98 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
XVI. THE FOLIO OF 162
5'
THE folio of 1623 contains thirty-six plays, of which
twenty were now printed for the first time. It was
nominally edited by John Heminge and Henry Condell,
two of Shakspere's company of players, to whom he be-
queathed legacies for mourning rings. They state that they
have collected the plays "without ambition of selfe-profit
or fame, onely to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend
and Fellowe alive as was our Shakespeare."
Heminge and Condell did not, however, undertake the
cost of the book, which was printed by Isaac Jaggard and
Edward Blount, " at the charges of W. Jaggard (Isaac Jag-
gard's father), Ed. Blount, J. Smithweeke and W. Aspley,"
the two last of whom had each published two of the Shake-
speare plays.
The printers, Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, obtained,
on 8th November, 1623, licence from the Stationers' Com-
pany to publish sixteen of the twenty unpublished plays.
The four others, " King John," First and Second " Henry
VI.," and the "Taming of the Shrew," were not now
licensed, probably because they were based on or were
revisions of earlier plays already published. The licence
shows that no transfer of the title to these plays had been
before recorded.
A portrait of William Shakspere was prefixed to the
volume with a laudatory verse by Ben Jonson, who also
wrote a longer preface in praise of the plays and their author.
Leonard Digges and two other minor poets also wrote
prefatory verses. Such prefatory poems were the custom of
the period ; Spenser's " Faery Queen " was prefaced by
seventeen poems and sonnets.
The prefaces to the folio of 1623, by Heminge and Con-
^
The Folio 0/1625. 99
dell and by Ben Jonson, are justly deemed the strongest
evidence which exists in favour of Shakspere's authorship of
the plays ; and, but for the cogency of the internal and cir-
cumstantial evidence to the contrary, and Ben Jonson's
striking change of appreciation, might, at first view, be
accepted as concluding the matter.
Closer examination may show that there is a mystery
surrounding this folio, which the prefaces do not solve.
The book is dedicated to the Earls of Pembroke and
Montgomery, both intimate friends of Bacon, who were
associated with him in the Virginian Company. The pre-
face is nominally by Heminge and Condell, and describes
the plays as " trifles." The dedication is also in their name,
but the use made of Pliny's epistle to Vespasian, prefixed
to his " Natural History," makes it unlikely that the dedica-
tion was written by them. It has been with more probability
ascribed to Ben Jonson.
The title-page showed Wit from behind a mask, shaking a
spear at Ignorance, emphasizing the metaphorical spelling
and use of the supposed author's name ; a metaphor also
applied by Ben Jonson to the author of the plays in his
preface : " He seems to shake a lance, as brandished in the
face of Ignorance."
The contents of the folio present serious difficulties. Of
the twenty plays now printed for the first time fourteen are
known to have been acted.
" All 's Well that Ends Well," now first printed, is prob-
ably the same as " Love's Labour \s Won," mentioned by
Meres in 1598, in his enumeration of Shakespeare's plays.
A play of "Julius C?esar" was, as we have seen, acted in
1579, 1589 and 1594, but was first printed in the folio.
No performance of "Antony and Cleopatra" is recorded.
" Coriolanus " and "Timon of Athens," and " Henry VII I. "
in its present form, are now heard of for the first time.
ioo Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
All the sixteen plays before published differ more or less
from the quarto editions ; some are largely rewritten.
The Second and Third parts of " Henry VI." were pub-
lished in 1594 and 1595 under the titles, respectively, of
" The First Part of the Contention between the two famous
Houses York and Lancaster " and "The True Tragedy of
Richard Duke of York." These had been republished in
161 9, three years after Shakspere's death, under the same
titles as at first. In the folio of 1623, however, they appear
under new titles, and the Second part now contained 1,578
new lines and is otherwise much altered.
" The Merry Wives of Windsor" was also reprinted in 16 19,
after Shakspere's death, in the same form as in 1602 ; but
in the folio it becomes nearly twice as long as in the quarto.
"Othello" was first printed and published in 1622, the
year before the issue of the folio ; but in the folio it received
numerous alterations.
Who revised and rewrote these plays long after Shak-
spere's death, and whence came the plays of which there is
no previous record ? This is a mystery !
The account of the folio given by Heminge and Condell
in their preface cannot be reconciled with the facts.
" As where before we were abused with divers stolen and
surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds
and stealths of incurious impostors that exposed them, even
those are now offered to your view cured and perfect in
their limbes, and all the rest absolute in their members as
he conceived them, who, as he was a happie imitator of
Nature, was a most gentle expressor of it. His mind and
hand went together : and what he thought he uttered with
that Easinesse that we have scarse received from him a blot
in his paper " ; and they further state the plays were now
printed from " the true original copies."
The story is a fiction.
The Folio 0/162$. 1 o 1
The copies from which the folio was printed, whenceso-
ever obtained, were not the "true original copies." The
plays had been written and rewritten, altered and enlarged.
Nor is it credible that the writer of the five crabbed and
scarce legible signatures of William Shakspere could write
" with that easinesse " that he wrote the " true original
copies " of the thirty-six plays fluently, as he imagined them
and with scarce a blot !
Why was this fiction invented, unless to conceal the true
provenance of the copies used for the folio ? Whence did
these copies really come, and what has become of them ?
This is a mystery.
It is probably true that the previous publication of the
plays was in some instances, but not always, unauthorized
and piratical. Fleay considers 1 that all the quartos issued
up to 1 600 were authorized, but that later ones were surrep-
titious ; but if Shakspere was their author, why did he not
stop the piracy? If Bacon wrote them, Shakspere could
not, and Bacon would not, assert a legal claim.
Mr. Sidney Lee asserts that all the quarto editions of the
Shakespeare plays were published surreptitiously, and de-
nounces William Jaggard as "a well-known pirate pub-
lisher"; but these statements seem at least exaggerated.
James Roberts, who printed the quartos of " The Merchant
of Venice," " Midsummer Night's Dream," and the " Ham-
let" of 1604, enjoyed for nearly twenty years the privilege,
under licence from the Stationers' Company, of printing
the playbills, a privilege he could scarcely have retained
had he habitually pirated plays against the will of the
author and players, and in defiance of the rules of the
Stationers' Company. The Jaggard family, John, William,
Isaac and E. Jaggard, were among the chief printers of
London. William Jaggard was appointed in 161 1 printer
1 Fleay's "Manual," p. 270.
102 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
to the City of London; and in 1613 the Jaggards bought
James Roberts's business, and with it the privilege of print-
ing the playbills. They also published four editions of
Bacon's "Essays" in 1606, 1612, 1613 and 1624. William
Aspley and John Smethwick had each published two of the
Shakespeare quartos. It is not likely that Ben Jonson
would select as publishers or printers of the Shakespeare
folio men notorious for having pirated the plays. It is
more reasonable to believe that the previous publications
by Aspley and Smethwick were legitimate. Once only is
Shakespeare alleged to have expressed any offence at the use
of his name, and no protest by him is at any time recorded.1
Leonard Digges, a few of whose lines were printed in the
folio, attained perhaps the highest pitch of unreality in the
following verses, which, though seemingly intended for the
folio, were relegated to a volume of the Shakespeare poems
printed in 1640.
Next Nature only helped him, for look through
His whole book, you shall find he doth not borrow
One phrase from Greeks, nor Latins imitate,
Nor once from vulgar languages translate,
Nor plagiary like from others glean,
Nor begs he from each witty friend a scene
To piece his acts with ; all that he doth write
Is pure his own ; plot, language exquisite.
Another fiction !
The publication of a volume of thirty-six plays, of which
twenty were before unpublished, was in those days a great
literary undertaking. Heminge and Condell, the nominal
editors, though friends of Shakspere in his lifetime, were
not literary men, but two players. It is unlikely, if not
impossible, that they should undertake such a task without
the help, and indeed without the superintendence, of others.
The printers and their associates who undertook the
1 Lee, p. 182.
The Folio 0/1623. 103
charges were none of them literary men ; but one of the
chief literary figures of the day, Ben Jonson, who had lately
published his own works in folio, worked in co-operation
with them. He wrote the principal preface and probably
the dedication, and seems to have been the chief editor.
Here may be found the solution of the mystery. For
Ben Jonson, " the learned and judicious poet," about three
years before had, as already stated, become Bacon's friend
and literary assistant, and was, as Archbishop Tenison tells
us,1 one of the " good pens " who aided him in translating
his works into Latin, "the universal language," as Bacon
styled it. Bacon's Latin, notwithstanding his learning, was
(as indeed the " Promus " shows) imperfect. In 1621
Jonson was staying with Bacon at Gorhambury, and wrote
a sonnet in his praise on his birthday. In that year came
Bacon's fall, which, however, did not lessen the esteem of
Jonson or of Bacon's other friends. Bacon, in now devoting
what remained of life to literary work, had Jonson's con-
tinued help.
Whatever control, therefore, Jonson had over the pro-
duction of the folio was, in fact, or may well have been, the
control of Bacon, who, however, could not appear or per-
sonally interfere in the publication, as he was still hoping
for some official appointment.
These considerations change considerably the point of view.
The fact that the folio was thus published with Bacon's
privity under Ben Jonson's direction, and printed by the
printers of Bacon's "Essays," makes a wide difference in
the inferences to be drawn.
At this date Bacon's wealth had vanished, and he was
involved in debt. He was in broken health, but striving to
complete his literary work while life lasted.
Twenty plays remained unpublished, sixteen had been
1 Bacon's Works, by Montagu, vol. i., p. xviii.
104 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
published separately. It was at this crisis of Bacon's life,
Shakspere having been dead seven years, that it was decided
to publish all the plays together. Can it be doubted that
the decision was Bacon's ?
If so, it was necessary that someone should control the
publication without Bacon's name appearing. This Ben
Jonson could best undertake, but, having regard to his
known association with Bacon, it would also be necessary
to find nominal editors who had some connection with
William Shakspere. This condition Heminge and Condell
fulfilled. Seeking neither fame nor profit, nor undertaking
charges, they would be docile and unsuspicious instru-
ments. Others were found to undertake the charges of
printing and publication, with what share of profit we know
not, but under the control of Ben Jonson, who was himself
under the direction of Bacon.
The new plays, the largely rewritten or revised editions,
and the unblotted copies, may thus be explained.
What, assuming that Bacon wrote the plays, had Jonson
to do ? First, to write such a commendation of the book
as might promote its sale. Next, to divert from Bacon any
suspicion of authorship which the publication of twenty new
plays would cause to be much discussed. This not easy
task he effectually accomplished in the preface by the free
exercise of his dramatic powers, though at some expense of
historic truth. A portrait of William Shakspere, with another
verse prefixed, completed the illusion.
That the preface is expressed to apply to Shakspere, and
was intended to be so read, is plain enough, but the high
praise is really given to the works ; the name Shakespeare
was a mask or a metaphor. " Reader, look not on his
Picture, but his Book." The true author Jonson doubtless
knew, but was bound to conceal.
In what other way can be explained the sudden change
The Folio of 1623. 105
in Jonson's estimate of Shakspere, of whom he seems to
have been bitterly jealous, and at whom, up to 16 16, the
year of Shakspere's death, he lost no opportunity of sneering ?
Jonson's preface extols Shakespeare above all dramatists
modern or ancient.
When the socks are on
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughtie Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
In his " Discoveries," written after Bacon's death, Jonson
enumerates fifteen men of that age, great masters of wit
and language, from Sir Thomas More to Lord Chancellor
Egerton, and proceeds : " But his learned (but unfortunate)
successor is he who has filled up all numbers and performed
that in our tongue which may be compared or preferred
either to insolent Greece or haughtie Rome. — So that he
may be named and stand as the mark and a^r\ of our
language."
Shakespeare is here ignored ; the real man is named.
In another passage Shakespeare is named. " I remember
the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shake-
speare, that, in his writing, whatsoever he penned he never
blotted a line. My answer had been, would he had blotted
a thousand ; which they thought a malevolent speech. I
had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance who
choose that circumstance to commend their friend by,
wherein he most faulted ; 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, and gentle
expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that some-
times it was necessary he should be stopped."
The irregularity of the plays, often satirized by Jonson,
was doubtless still displeasing to his somewhat pedantic
taste ; but, in qualifying the eulogy of his preface, he repeats
his admiration of their author, still known as Shakespeare.
1 06 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
But William Shakspere was not idolized by Jonson ; the
man whom he idolized he thus described, in the same
" Discoveries " :
"There happened in my time one noble speaker, who was
full of gravity in his speaking. His language (when he
would spare or pass by a jest) was nobly censorious. . . .
He commanded when he spoke, and had his judges angry
and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections
more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him
was lest he should make an end."
" My conceit of his person was never increased toward
him by his place or honours ; but I have and do reverence
him for the greatness that was only proper to himself; in
that he seemed to me ever by his work one of the greatest
men and most worthy of admiration that had been in many
ages. In his adversity I ever 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 his virtue, but rather help to make
it manifest."
If Bacon was the author of the plays, it is inherently
probable that he would at this date, when striving to com-
plete his literary work, publish the unpublished plays, and
that the name of Shakespeare would be still used, and
that Ben Jonson would be the instrument of their pub-
lication.
But neither date nor circumstances of publication agree
with Shakspere's authorship. Why the long delay? Why
the nominal editors? Why the fictitious prefaces? Why
Ben Jonson's superintendence ?
The just conclusion appears to be that the thirty-six plays
were collected and published in the folio, not by Heminge
and Condell, who lent their names without responsibility for
charges or hope of profit, but by Francis Bacon himself,
Rifts in the Clotids. 107
\
through the aid of Ben Jonson, his literary assistant, and
thus the folio becomes, instead of an objection to, strong
confirmation of, Francis Bacon's authorship of the plays.
XVII. RIFTS IN THE CLOUDS.
LITERARY secrecy was a habit of Bacon's life. When
a youth in Paris he invented a biliteral cipher, which
is described in the sixth book of " De Augmentis." l Both
he and his brother Anthony were throughout life engaged
in cryptic correspondence. Anthony's correspondence
abounds in feigned names and hidden meanings, and the
names and dates in Sir Tobie Matthew's letters to Francis
Bacon are disguised.
Bacon was skilled in mystification. At one time, when
he was endeavouring to bring Essex into favour with the
Queen, he composed a fictitious correspondence for the eye
of the Queen. "I did draw," he says, " with my Lord
privily and by his appointment, two letters, the one written
as from my brother, the other as an answer returned from
my Lord, both to be by me in secret manner shewed to the
Queen — as a mean to work her Majesty to receive the Earl
again to favour and attendance at Court."
Bacon often composed for Essex letters, speeches, and
once at least a masque, which went under Essex's name.
In his Essay of Simulation Bacon writes : " An habit of
secrecy is both Politick and Morall. No man can be secret
except he give himself a little scope of Dissimulation ; which
is, as it were, but the skirts or Frame of Secrecy. The best
1 A book lately published under the title of "The Biliteral Cipher
of Francis Bacon," by Mrs. E. W. Gallup of Chicago, has been
tested by the present author, who is satisfied that it is unworthy of
credence.
io8 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
composition and Temperature is, to have Opennesse in Fame
and Opinion ; Secrecy in Habit ; Dissimulation in reason-
able use ; and a Power to faigne if there be no Remedy."
Notwithstanding this careful secrecy some hints have
transpired.
Bacon spoke of himself and was spoken of by others as
"a concealed poet."
In 1600 Bacon received a visit from Queen Elizabeth at
"his lodge at Twicknam." "At which time," he says, "I
had, though I profess not to be a poet, prepared a sonnet
directly tending and alluding to draw on her Majesty's
reconcilement to my Lord."
In 1603 Bacon, writing to Sir John Davies to bespeak
the favour of the King, asks him " to be good to concealed
poets."
Stowe in his Chronicles (161 5) enumerated twenty-four
of " Our modern and present excellent poets which worthely
flourish in their own workes," in the Queen's reign, and
amongst them Edmond Spencer, Esq.; Sir Philip Sidney,
Knight ; Sir Francis Bacon, Knight ; Maister George Chap-
man, Gentleman ; Mr. William Shakespeare, Gentleman ;
Michael Draiton, Esquire, and Mr. Benjamin Johnson,
gentleman.
Florio, a learned Italian, the translator of Montaigne's
Essays, also translated many of Bacon's works for publication
abroad. In his preface to Montaigne's Essays he commends
a certain sonnet, now generally attributed to Bacon, written
as he says by a friend of his, " who loved better to be a poet
than to be counted so."
John Aubrey, Milton's friend, who was born the year after
Bacon's death, and who was familiar with those who knew
the Chancellor personally, states that " his lordship was a
good poet but concealed."
Bacon alludes mysteriously to literary work in terms not
Rifts in the Clouds. 109
applicable in date or language to his philosophical writings.
In 1595 we have seen how he wrote of the waters of Par-
nassus. In the " Promus," which he commenced in December,
1594, he notes, " Law at Twickenham for the merrie tales."
His philosophical writings were certainly not " merrie tales,''
nor did they begin to appear until 1597. The comedies
then rapidly appearing were " merrie tales," and contained
much law.
In his correspondence with Sir Tobie Matthew, his " kind
inquisitor," to whom he was wont to submit his writings,
Bacon alludes mysteriously to " works of my recreation,"
" other works " and " the Alphabet," which last may be
explained by a " Promus " note : " Tragedy and Comedy are
made of the same alphabet." In one letter Sir Tobie
writes : " I return you not weight for weight, but measure for
measure."
In 1604, at about the time when the great tragedies of
" Hamlet," " King Lear," " Macbeth " and " Othello" were
appearing, Bacon writes to Matthew apologizing for some
neglect, on the ground that his head had been " wholly em-
ployed on invention."
In a letter to Matthew, probably of 1609, Bacon writes :
" I sent you some copies of my Book of the Advancement,
which you desired, and a little tvork of my recreation which
you desired not. My Instauration I reserve for our con-
ference ; it sleeps not. Those works of the Alphabet are in
my opinion of less use to you where you are now than at
Paris ; and therefore I conceived that you had sent me a
kind of tacit countermand of your former request. But in
regard that some friends of yours insisted here, I send them
to yo. , and, for my part, I value your own reading more than
your publishing them to others."
In a postscript to a letter to Bacon addressed by Sir Tobie
to Viscount St. Albans, written therefore after 27th January,
1 1 o Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
162 1, acknowledging a letter of 9th April sending some
" great and noble token," probably one of Bacon's works,
Sir Tobie writes : " The most prodigious wit that ever I
knew, of my nation and of this side of the sea, is of your
Lordship's name, though he be known by another.''''
The praise is evidently intended for Bacon, and declares
that, whether in England or on the Continent, Bacon was
the most prodigious wit he ever knew, though the works of
his genius passed under another name.
Sir Tobie's letter was apparently written from abroad
between 18th April and 10th October, 1623, between which
dates he was absent from England on a mission to the Duke
of Buckingham and Prince Charles in Spain. Sir Tobie was
resident in London in 1621 and 1622. Bacon's " De Aug-
ments "was published in October, 1623. The Shakespeare
folio was entered at Stationers' Hall in November, 1623, but
seems to have been printed early in the year, one copy bear-
ing date 1622. One of these two books was probably the
" Great and noble token " sent to Sir Tobie Matthew ; the
terms of the postscript point to the Shakespeare folio.
In Northumberland House was found in a box of old
papers a volume of manuscripts, of which there is a table of
contents. These are nearly all Bacon's works, though not in
his handwriting. Two manuscripts mentioned in the con-
tents are missing from the volume, namely, " Richard II."
and " Richard III.," two of the Shakespeare plays. It may
therefore be truly said that the only place where any manu-
script of the Shakespeare plays is known to have existed is
in this volume in association with Bacon's works, while their
removal from the volume shows an intention to suppress
them.
But further, the cover of the volume is scrawled over, in
writing of the period, with the name William Shakespeare
seven times repeated, and also that of Francis Bacon three
Conclusion. 1 1 1
times, and also with two scraps from " Love's Labour 's
Lost " and " Lucrece."
Now it will be remembered, and the coincidence is notable,
that " Lucrece " and " Venus and Adonis " were the first two
works which bore the name of Shakespeare, and this in 1593
and 1594, and that "Love's Labour's Lost," written about
1591 or 1592, but not published until 1598, was the first play
which was printed with that name ; and these were the first
instances in which the name was spelt in the new metaphorical
manner. Further, that "Richard II." and "Richard III."
were written in or about 1593 or 1594.
Does it not look as if someone associated with Francis
Bacon about the year 1593, with his head full of " Lucrece "
and " Love's Labour 's Lost," was trying how this trans-
formed name of William Shakespeare would look if used
and printed in this connection ; and so wrote it out seven
times, before it was decided to put it to the dedications of
"Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece," and to the play of
" Love's Labour 's Lost." It certainly was not William
Shakspere who was thus trying the new name !
All these are hints, not in themselves conclusive, but
curiously fitting in with the threefold strand of moral, in-
tellectual and circumstantial evidence which attests Bacon's
authorship : rifts in the clouds that shroud the authorship
of the plays.
XVIII. CONCLUSION.
BACON died on 9th April, 1626. By his will he gave
careful direction for the custody of his " cabinets and
presses full of papers," and for their publication or suppres-
sion according to the judgment of his literary executors.
1 1 2 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
" For my name and memory I leave it to men's charitable
speeches and to foreign nations and to the next ages."
His death was deeply deplored.
His secretary, Dr. Rawley, collected thirty-two Latin
elegies written by Bacon's friends, chiefly University men of
some eminence. These call on Apollo and the Muses to
lament his loss ; one especially invoking Melpomene, the
Muse of tragedy and lyric poetry, another Clio, the Muse of
history. Another begins : " If thou should'st seek, O
Bacon, to reclaim all thou hast given to poesy and the
world." Another commences :
Hush, for our grief a speaking silence loves,
Now he is gone, our only Orator,
Teller of tales that mazed the Courts of Kings, etc.
These elegies clearly recognize Bacon as a poet, though the
plays are not expressly mentioned, and the " Instauration "
and other writings are in some referred to.
In 1645, in an anonymous book attributed to George
Withers the poet, which describes a great assize held on
Mount Parnassus, Apollo sits at the summit, and next to
him Bacon sits as Chancellor of Parnassus, Edmund Spenser
as clerk. Shakespeare stands below as a juror only to
witness to Bacon's pre-eminence.
Bacon, therefore, at his death was by his friends acknow-
ledged as a true poet ; yet no poems, save the versions of a
few Psalms, were published in his name.
Critics profess to trace in some of the plays a second
hand, of Marlowe or some other; Shakspere may be sug-
gested to have thus had a part in their production, although
the plays bear in themselves the stamp of Bacon's genius.
It may be suggested that the plays were written by Bacon
and Shakspere in collaboration. Collaboration was in that
age not infrequent. Let us then imagine that, in those
Coiichision. 113
lodgings of Anthony Bacon beside the theatre, Shakspere
sometimes met Francis Bacon, who may have told the
stories of Italian novels, Spanish romances or Latin plays,
while Anthony narrated his travels and suggested foreign
scenes, or described the associations of their home at
St. Albans ; and Francis may have produced his " Promus,"
and poured out stores of proverbs and witty sayings, and
discussed the latest problems of philosophy.
Will this hypothesis suit and explain the facts ? What
sympathy or fellowship could exist between characters so
opposite as Bacon and Shakspere ? Bacon might use Shak-
spere : he could not love him.
And Shakspere did not acquire Bacon's philosophy and
learning, but was still reputed unlearned.
Besides this, the language of the plays and of Bacon's
prose was a new development of English speech. Could
Bacon teach this speech to Shakspere ?
If the language, the philosophy, the knowledge of law, of
literature, of courts and camps, the types of noble manhood
and female purity were derived from Bacon, what but the
mask is left for Shakspere ?
Something may be added as to Marlowe, over whose
plays hangs a mystery, singularly like that which shadows
the Shakespeare plays.
Marlowe's reputation was almost entirely posthumous.
Only two of the plays which have since been assigned to
him were published during his lifetime. These are the two
parts of " Tamburlaine," and they were published anonym
ously. The three other principal plays attributed to Marlowe
are " Dr. Faustus," " The Jew of Malta " and " Edward II."
The prologue to " The Troublesome Reign of King
John " (upon which is founded the Shakespeare play of
"King John") appears to assign "Tamburlaine" to the
same author. This prologue runs :
1
ii4 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
You that with friendly grace and smoothed brow
Have entertained the Scythian Tamburlaine,
And given applause unto an infidel,
Vouchsafe to welcome with like courtesy
A warlike Christian and your countryman.
Marlowe died on ist June, 1593. "Faustus" is not
known to have existed before 1594, and that date is doubt-
ful. It was registered 7th January, 1601 ; the earliest extant
editions are 1604 and 1609. In 16 16 it was republished,
enlarged to half as much again, by whom is unknown.
Each edition contains allusions which seem of later date
than Marlowe's death; the last edition speaks of "Bruno
led in chains," an event several years later than Marlowe's
death.
"The Jew of Malta" was not registered until 1594, and
the earliest known edition is 1633.
"Edward II." was entered at Stationers' Hall in July,
1593, shortly after Marlowe's death, but is not known to
have been published until 1598. Some classical poems are
also attributed to Marlowe. " Dido " was published in
1594 ; " Hero and Leander " was entered in 1593 and pub-
lished in 1598.
No collected edition of Marlowe's works was published
until 1826.
Marlowe has been called the precursor of Shakespeare ;
"To him," it has been said, "we are indebted for the
first regular form of the English drama cleared of rhymes,
and he may be considered as the link between Shakespeare
and the Moralities."1 "Before him," Swinburne writes,
" there was neither genuine blank verse nor a genuine
tragedy in our language." 2
The finest passages of the plays attributed to Marlowe
are indistinguishable from Shakespeare; and some critics
1 " English Cyclopaedia." - " Encyclopaedia Britannica."
Conclusion. 115
assert that Marlowe's hand is plainly seen, in collaboration
with Shakespeare, in the First part of " Henry VI.," one of
the earliest of the Shakespeare plays.
Marlowe's plays are more diffuse, more turgid and less
restrained, perhaps more immature than the Shakespeare
plays; but the style of both is curiously alike, and the
language, especially of " Edward II.," is closely allied to that
of the Shakespeare plays. This resemblance, if not identity,
has been shown in an elaborate comparison of the play of
"Edward II." with the plays of Shakespeare, by Mr. R. M.
Theobald.1
But Marlowe was three years younger than Francis
Bacon ; " Tamburlaine " and " Dr. Faustus " were not acted
before 1588 or 1589, "The Jew of Malta" later. The
author of the Shakespeare plays therefore preceded Marlowe,
and it was doubtless he who, either in collaboration or in-
dependently, impressed upon the anonymous plays attributed
to Marlowe the form of blank verse, the historic subjects
and foreign scenes, and some at least of the poetic genius
which characterize the Shakespeare plays.
If Bacon wrote the first sketch of "The Merchant of
Venice" and of "Julius Caesar" in 1579, of "The Two
Gentlemen of Verona" in 1584, and of " Hamlet" in 1585,
he may well have collaborated with Marlowe in the pro-
duction of some of the Marlowe plays, especially " Edward
II.," and have revised these plays after Marlowe's death —
if indeed " Edward II." is not more probably an early play
of Francis Bacon? This would fill up and explain the
interval between the plays of the " Jew " and " Hamlet," and
the plays of " Love's Labour 's Lost " and " Henry VI."
Marlowe was killed in a tavern brawl on 1st June, 1593.
In the same year Shakespeare's name first appeared in print.
To sum up. The facts of Shakspere's life render his
1 Theobald, " Shakespeare Studies," p. 415.
1 1 6 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
authorship of the plays which bear his name so inconceivable
that Schlegel pronounces it " a mere fabulous story, a blind
and extravagant error." But, in these plays, the genius of
Bacon is manifest ; they bear the stamp of his character
they reflect his intellect, they speak his language, they mirror
his life.
It is surely an impossibility that of these two men Shak-
spere should have written the plays : a moral impossibility,
if we contrast their moral characters ; an intellectual impos-
sibility, for the plays are redolent of Bacon's intellect, and
of a learning proper to him, but which Shakspere cannot
reasonably be supposed to have possessed ; a biographical
impossibility, for the plays are part of Bacon's life but not
of Shakspere's.
INDEX.
Appreciation of plays gradual, 3.
Aubrey, John, 108.
Bacon, Anthony, 23, 43, 44, 70, 74.
Bacon, Francis, birth and educa-
tion, 17.
Visit to France, 17.
Return to England, 18.
Philosophical writings, iS, 19.
First publications, 19.
Poetic power, 20.
Version of Psalms, 20, 21.
Dramatic taste, 22.
Vocabulary, 25.
" Promus," 37.
Essay of Love, 40.
Travels, 17, 43.
Late prosperity, 85.
Marriage, 85.
Promotion to office, 88.
Fall, 89.
Death, III.
Will, in.
Bacon, Lady Anne, 17, 23.
" Bartholomew Fair," 97.
Uengough, E. , comparison of "His-
tory of Henry VII." with
" King John," 25.
Bodley, Sir Thomas, letter, 20.
Kruno, Giordano, 55.
Bucknill, Dr., medicine in plays,
30.
Hurbage, Richard, II, 67, 81.
Campbell, Lord, "Shakespeare's
Legal Acquirements," 2, 29.
Chettle's apology, 67.
Coleridge, 16.
Comparison of plays with Bacon's
prose works, 23.
Concealed poets, 108.
Contemporary allusions, 93.
Cooke, Dr. James, 15.
Cowden Clarke, Mrs., points of
style, 28.
Craik, Professor, vocabulary, 24.
Dark period, 82.
D'Avenant, Sir William, 83.
Davies, Archdeacon, William
Shakspere's youth, 7.
Digges, Leonard, 102.
Drama, origin of modern, 45.
Dramatists, contemporary, 47.
Drummond of Ilawthornden, 97.
Elegies on Bacon, 112.
Emerson, 16.
Epigram of Ben Jonson, 95.
Essays, 19, 78.
Essex, Earl of, 80.
" Every Man in his Humour,'' 95.
Faunt, Nicholas, 43, 47.
Flowers in Shakespeare, 32.
Florin, translator of Montaigne's
Essays, 108.
Folio of 1623, 98.
Germany, " Hamlet " in, 58.
Globe and Blackfriars Theatres
shares in, 67, Si.
1 1 8 Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.
Gosson, " School of Abuse," 46, 47.
Greene, Richard, 50, 51, 67, 94.
Halliwell-Phillipps, W. Shakspere's
education, 6.
Heminge and Condell, 98, 104.
" Henry VII., History of," 91.
Jaggards, IOI.
Johnson, Dr., 3, 25.
Tonson, Ben, 95, 103-107.
Law terms, 29.
Leicester, Earl of, 48.
Literature as a profession, 66.
Lodge, 52.
"Lucrece," 71.
Macaulay, opinion of Bacon, 20.
Marlowe, 47, 67, 112.
Masques, " Conference of Plea-
sure," " Indian Prince," 74.
Matthew, Sir Tobie, 109.
Max Miiller, 24.
Meres, eulogy of plays, 79.
Metaphors, bird and butterfly, 77.
Northumberland House manuscript,
no.
Parmenides, 55.
Parallelisms, 26-28.
" Parnassus, waters of," 77.
"Poetaster," 96.
" Polimanteia," 70.
Pott, Mrs., comparison of vocabu-
laries, 25.
"Promus," 37.
Psalms, versions of, 21.
Rifts in the clouds, 107.
Shakespeare : vocabulary, 24.
Parallelisms, 26-28.
Triple antitheses, 28.
Knowledge of law, 29.
Shakespeare :
Knowledge of medicine, 30.
,, ,, natural history, 31.
Errors in natural history, 31.
Knowledge of horticulture, 33.
Change of opinion, 34.
Natural philosophy, 34.
Religion, 36.
Love, 39.
Plots not original, 42.
Scenes foreign, 42.
Errors in geography, 43.
Shakespeare plays : " Historie of
Errors," 45.
" Merchant of Venice," 46.
" Felix and Philomena," 48.
"Hamlet," 49, 82.
"Twelfth Night," 59.
" Love's Labour's Lost," 62.
"Two Gentlemen of Verona," 62.
" Midsummer Night's Dream,"
63.
Historical plays, 64.
"Henry VI.," Part I., 64.
" Henry VI.," Parts II. and III. ,
64.
" Comedy of Errors," 73.
"King John," 75-
"Richard IL," 75.
"Richard III.," 75.
" Titus Andronicus," 75, 76.
" Venesyon Comedy," 75.
"All's Well that Ends Well," 76.
" Taming of the Shrew," 76.
" Romeo and Juliet," 76.
"Henry IV.," Parts I. and II.,
78.
" Merry Wives of Windsor," 78.
"Henry V," 80.
" Much Ado about Nothing," 80.
" As You Like It," 80.
" Troilus and Cressida," 80.
" Othello," 83.
"Measure for Measure," 83.
" Macbeth," 83.
" King Lear," 84.
Index.
119
Shakespeare plays :
"Antony and Cleopatra," 85.
" Pericles," 86.
" Tempest," 86.
" Cymbeline," 87.
" Winter's Tale," 87.
"Henry VIII.," 91.
"Timon of Athens," 91.
" Conolanus," 91.
Shokspere, John, 5, 9, 13.
Shakspere, Judith, 12.
Shakspere, Mary, 6.
Shakspere, Susannah, 12, 15.
Shakspere, various spelling of name,
72.
Shakspere, William : birth, 5.
Education, 6.
Crabtree legend, 7.
Reputed unlearned, 8.
Marriage, 9, 10.
Arrival in London, 10.
Shakspere, William :
Appearance before the Queen, II,
74-
First appearance of name on
plays, 79.
Purchase of New Place, II, Si.
Return to Stratford, 81, 86.
Purchase of lands, II, 82.
Death, 13, 87.
Will, 14.
Shelley, Bacon a poet, 20.
Simulation, Essay of, 107.
Spedding, " Life of Bacon," 21, 77.
Sonnet to Queen Elizabeth, 108.
Southampton, Earl of, 68.
Stratford, prohibition of dramatic
performances, 12.
Stowe's Chronicle, 108.
" Venus and Adonis," 68.
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