WHO WROTE SHAKESPEARE?

Evening Star, Issue 20318, 29 October 1929, Page 11

WHO WROTE SHAKESPEARE?

THE UNSOLVED MYSTERY “ None w'ho read the English tongue can well be unconcerned with the question as to who wrote those pages.”—-Appleton Morgan. Early in the fifties of last century .in anonymous writer in ‘ Chambers’s Journal,’ used the title of this article, and lishtly raised the question by supposing" that Shakespeare, in some gar,ct near the Inns of Court, found a tarving student, and used him as a ‘‘ghost” to write his plays (states L." Bernard Hall in the Melbourne 1 Argus ’). This was before Delia Bacon and W. H Smith had almost simultaneously begun the Bacon versus Shakespeare controversy which has since raged intermittently, though lately with ever-increasing vigour. Seventy-five years have passed, and countless books and magazine articles have but added fuel to the_ flames which, so far, have guarded this secret from any final and indubitable proof of authenticity. The mere reading of the life of the man, with its meagre and shabby details, upon which, however, imposing ' suppositional biographies have been founded, acts as a spur and a goad to further efforts to unravel the legend that has grown up round this most honoured name, England's proudest possession. The commonly accepted Shakespeare story is so overlaid by post-dated tradition and incredible assumption that we are apt to lose sight of the very scanty materials upon which that story is founded. The bare undisputed facts should be separated and considered apart from the fanciful gloss superadded. Unless this distinction is made \ the legend may be pushed to such lengths that all sense or proportion and reality will be lost. In broaching this subject, “we have,” as an Elizabethan writer puts it, “ only taken upon us to ring a bell, to call other _ wits together*,” to see how we stand in regard to the greatest literary problem in the world..

With all due deference to those who claim that the identity of Shakespeare hag been fully established, the paradox for many still exists, the mystery grows, and the gulf between the man nominated and the works themselves widens with every decade. Plainly we cannot “marry ” the facts of his life to his verse. “ Other admirable men,’ writes Emerson, “ have led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man, in wide contrast.’’ This is not wholly a literary question. What knowledge Shakespeare had of Latin or Greek is for scholars to determine. We must have the opinion of expert practitioners in law, philosophy, physics, botany, and sport, rightly to estimate his knowledge of these subjects. But of the possibility of the wide knowledge displayed of every department of human activity being acquired by even an o’ertopping genius in the time allowed < by the accepted dates, and in the circumstances of Shakespeare’s environment, it is open to any man of ordinary sense and experience to form an opinion and contribute to a verdict which at present can only be described as in a state of flux. “The life of Shakespeare,” says Charles Dickens, “ is a fine mystery, and I tremble every day lest something should turn up.” THE SCANTY LIFE STORY. It is not surprising that wo have no contemporary account or impression of Shakespeare "as an actor or of the parts, ho played either in his own or other plays? Of the three sole records of his name appearing, one in 1594, is an irregular entry, after date. There is another, in 1598, in Every Man in His Humour,” and a third, in 1603, in 1 Sejanus.’ Even then no actor in the company had a part assigned to him. Is it not passing strange that Henslowe, who kept a voluminous diary from 1591 to 1609. at which time Shakespeare was supposed to be making his earliest pronounced successes in Henslowe’s Theatre, neve, once so much as mentions his name, or that Edward Alleyn in his papers a id memoirs has absolutely nothing to say of this supreme genius, though they contain the nanyss of the principal actors and play-poets of that time? Is it not in cl edible that he neither registered nor claimed as his own any of the immortal, or repudiated any of the worthless, dramas presented under his

name, or displayed the slightest interest in their fate? Is it not amazing that the burbages with, whom he was so long associated could, in 1635, even after publication of the First Folio, only refer to him among others, as one of their “ deserving men ” and “ men players.” Is it not past belief that no scrap of writing, lot alone dramatic manuscripts, save six almost undecipherable signatures, has been found, nor any provision made in his will for the disposal or editing of his works, that there is no contemporary record of personal acquaintance with the celebrated men of his day, and that he died as he lived without attracting any particular attention? Neither his wife, of whom wo know nothing, nor his daughters appear to have preserved a single letter from him or even to have recounted any of his sayings or doings. Is there nothing to be cleared up about the monument to Shakespeare in Stratford Church—who raised it, and why the. original portrait of the bust and the disposition of the hands were materially altered in 1749? Even the spelling of the name Shakespeare by which we know him is only the way in which it was, with or without a hyphen, printed on tho title pages of Poems and Plays, and not as he himself in any known case wrote it. Professor Saintsbury admits that “ almost all the received stuff of his life-story is shreds and patches of tradition, if not positive dream-work,” If this summary does not constitute a mystery and problem of the first magnitude, we do not know where to look for one. Such a case, we should say, is unparalleled in the history of art or letters. The literature of that date, certainly, was packed with veiled allusions to persons and current events. It was frequently the work of “concealed poets” and anonymous writers, or it was published under any name or initials that would best help to sell it, while the prefatory Address to the Reader was often used as a veritable “ smoke-screen ” to obscure the truth. At that time many writers, for social or political motives, desired to remain unknown, and therefore they 7 invented, borrowed, or lured, “masks,” or feigned names. Thus, if “Shakespeare ” were used as a “ pen-name, contemporary references to works published under that name would be no identification of the author. But why should Shakespeare, a player, wish to conceal tho fact of his authorship of the plays or to allow his fame and deserts to go by 7 default? So much arc many students of “Shakespeare” convinced that he was aristocrats, lii.c' i l v cnHnref familiar with courts and their cere monin', and at least well travelled in France and Italy, that in every attribution hazarded a courtier has been named—Bacon, Raleigh, or the Earls of Oxford, Derby, and Rutland. The . action of every accepted play has been laid in a courtly setting, with the ex ception of ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor,’ and here the author was abso-

lutely at home in tin's royal borough and its outlying parts, while the well-bred ease displayed by his characters has never been so much as questioned. THE STUDENT PHILOSOPHER. Emerson wrote of him ; “What point, of morals, of manners, of economy, of philosophy, of religion, of taste, of tho conduct of life lias he not settled? What mystery has ho not signified his knowledge of? What office, or function, or district of man’s work has ho not remembered? What King has ho not taught State? What maiden has not found him finer than her delicacy? What lover has ho not outloved ? What sago has he not outsecn? What gentleman has he not instructed in the ludeuess of his behaviour?” Yet the Manninglmiu story, only to be referred to in the pothouse and the smoking room, is, as Sir Sidney Leo admits, “the sole anecdote of Shakespeare that is positively time,” and we are asked to believe that the known to have been recorded in his life-immortal poet who was “not of an age but for all time,” composed the doggerel curse cut upon the nameless tombstone in Stratford Church, and left it to the world as his dying request and final creative effort! If. as Profesor Max Muller states. Shakespeare uses 15,000 words, when 8.000 sufficed for Milton and 3,000 or 4.000 for tho ordinary educated man, does not this indicate someone, or more than one person, pressing the jargon of every class or cailinf, and words derived from dead and foreign languages, into his service, an operation requiring an extraordinary range of acquaintance and knowledge of etymology 7 only possible to a man of the world and widely 7 read scholar? Lord Chief Justice Campbell testifies, “To Shakespeare’s law, lavishly as he propounds it, there can neither be demurrer nor bill of exception, nor writ of error.” “Tho practice of the courts,” says ■Judge Webb, “was as familiar to Shakespeare as tho theory■ of the law.” Where did Shakespeare loam his law? When, indeed, in his life were leisure and means for study 7 found to acquit himself, as our author does, in constitutional and ancient history, law, medicine, philosophy 7, and what not? “In Shakespeare,” says Dryden, “are to be found all arts and sciences, all moral and natural philosophy.” Where may we look for a “ foreground ” to this achievement? The details we have of his life aro undistinguished to a degree. They give no hint of a studious disposition, concern in intellectual pursuits, or evidence of any social or literary 7 position. They give the very opposite impression. Ben Jonson’s personal and glowing tribute cannot bo wholly 7 accepted in the face of these facts. Moreover, Jonsou spoke with two voices. There were gibes about “poet-apes” and “parcel-poets” before the laudatory ode prefacing the First Folio, and tho opinion that “ Shakespeare wanted “arte” as well as other carping criticisms written deliberately .years afterward. “If at times,” said Rowo in 1709, “ ho has affected to commend him it has always been with some reserve, insinuating his incorrectness, a careless manner of writing, and a went r.f judgment.” Indeed the publication of the First Foh'o in 1623, instead of --living our doubts, proves only another 'xaspeiatmg enigma. Lord Penzance, an eminent law lord, in his judicial summing up of the evidence for and against the authenticity attributed to ■ho work, declares; “Nothing than Shakespeare did himself in the course of his life has como to light which

identifies him as the writer of these plays, or indeed of any particular play. The Quartos were printed and registered. each of them separately, by private individuals, with whom in respect of this matter there is not, as far as I know, the slightest trace of evidence that Shakespeare himself was in any way connected. The account given of the Folio the causes of its publication, and the source or sources from which its most valuable and interesting version of the Shakespeare plays was drawn, is clouded by insincerity, mystery, and even inconsistency.”