SHAKESPEARE PASSES

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 April 1931, Page 9

SHAKESPEARE PASSES

an amusing skit. An amusing skit on the ShakespeareBacon controversy is contributed to the “London Mercury” by J. C. Squire, who records some of the events that follow the discovery by Professor Skinner J. Gubbitt, of Jones University, Jonestown, U.S.A., of proofs that Bacon wrote the Shakespearian plays. Professor Gubbitt unearthed at the foot of an old oak in Gorhambury Park, St. Albans, a leaden box which contained a confession by Francis Bacon relating to the plays, and also the manuscript of an unpublished play, “Alexander the Great,” which to Shakespearian scholars contained irrefutable evidence that the hand that wrote it was the hand that wrote Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and all the ether plays attributed to Shakespeare. Gorhambury Park, which, is two miles from St. Albans and about twenty miles from London, was the country seat, of Francis Bacon. It is now the ancestral home of the Earl of Verulam. Francis Bacon died there on April 9, 1626, and there is still visible the ruins of the great house in which he lived in almost regal splendour. In describing the contents of the box dug up by- Professor Gubbitt, Mr Squire writes: —“There in handwriting which no expert could distinguish from Bacon’s acknowledged, script were extracts of a confession telling the whole story of his concealment in the interests of his career, of his employment of the theatrical manager, of his preparation of a hiding place, the search for which —and he admitted his diabolic amusement at the thought—would rack the brains of generations, and of his abandonment of the muse shortly after Shakespeare’s very inconvenient death. There were receipts, signed in Shakespeare’s cramped scrawl, for moneys paid, which explained the. age-long mystery of his wealth, and the coat of arms and the line house at ford. His much-discussed indolence at the end of his life was explained by Bacon being too busy to write plays. All these papers might have been questioned, (though only by those who will question anything. But the extracts from “Alexander the Great.” commanded instant recognition by all the greatest poets and critics in England. ' « A GREAT DEMAND. “There were repercussions everywhere,” continues Mr Squire. “To the publishing trade, which had been going through a. very bad time, the event was a godsend. For the rights cf Professor Gubbitt’s own book (which sold a million copies in Britain before the year ended) too great a sum was asked for any individual firm to produce. The Publishers’ Association, therefore, formed an ad hoc company, in which all its members took shares, and was able, acting thus solidly, to make a bargain which was advantageous to the whole trade. Every book about Shakespeare which discussed his life or authorship was superseded, but the demand for ney books covering the ground in a Baconian sense far more than compensated for this, whilst thousands of subjects for new books on the newly integrated corpus of Bacon’s life and works leap at once to the eye of scholarship. The West End theatres enjoyed such a season as they had never enjoyed since the golden days of musical comedy. Hitherto it had been a maxim in London that ‘Shakespeare did not pay.’ But at the height of the season tollowing Professor Gubbitt’s discovery every single theatre in the West End was playing Bacon, and every single play of Bacon’s could be seen in the West End, with the exception. of ‘Pericles’ —and that, was running at the Old Vic. Stimulated by the flow of riches, the theatrical managers of London rose to fimprecarious heights, which even they had never scaled before. There were three competing productions of ‘Othello,” in which the chief role was taken by a real Moor, a real Turk, and a real negro respectively. Troilus was acted by a real Greek, Florizel by a real Bohemian, - Hamlet by a real Dane, Macbeth by a real Scotsman; and there was a tremendously ambitious performance of ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ in which all the parts were taken by real Italians, except those of Shylock and Jessica, which were played by real Jews, and those of the foreign suitors, which gave opportunities to a real Englishman, a real Frenchman, and a real German.” THE SLUMP. But Stratford-on-Avon, which formerly attracted scores of thousands of tourists every year to Shakespeare s birthplace, suffered a. severe slump. “The town council, especially convened, had debated the problem of authorship with all the fierce unanimity of a vested interest fighting for its life,” states Mr Squire.’ “When everybody else in England had been converted, Stratford remained passionately .Shakespearian.” A few months later “Mr John Drinkwatcr, making his annual attempt to visit Mamble, drew attention to the acute distress prevailing at Stratford. It was as though a great agricultural district had. had not a poor crop, but. no crop at. all. no single, ear of wheat, not a root, not a fruit, not a. blade of grass even. A whole town was’out. of work, and its ruin was spreading far and wide over the surrounding districts, half of whose capital had directly or indirectly been invested in the Shakespeare industry. Publicans were starving, lodging housekeepers were starving, not a postcard a. week had been sold by the stationers, not a cigar by the • tobacconists: a multitude of vergers, caretakers, and guides, who had spent years mastering the American language, now found the labour of years entirely wasted.” '