A GAMMON OF BACON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16234, 20 May 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

A GAMMON OF BACON.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS WORK

BY FRANK MORTON". I

\\ k have been ... very modestly, I W E have been celebrating, very modestly, ! the tercentenary of Shakespeare, and feu ! that purpose we have assumed that j Shakespeare or Shake speare was no other | than Will Shakspere, or Shaxber, or I Shaxpere, or Shackspere, or Shaxbere, a | young pea- of Stratford, who -went to | London, :-pent some rears / there as an j actor, and ultimately returned to Stratford with a sum of money, there spent the remainder of his life in complete obscurity, and there in the end died. If we are to celebrate • Shakespeare by celebrating the death and burial of some man of his time, we might as well celebrate Will Shakspere as any other. He certainly has a better claim than most, since lie was connected with the production of certain of the Plays, even though none of them was attributed to him until after he had finally left London. But I d.) not believe that Will of. Stratford wrote*, the great works that are England's most precious possession. To believe that seems to "me to be ridiculous; almost as ridiculous as to believe that Francis Bacon ■wrote them. The Baconian Theory. Mind you, I have nothing to say against the Baconians and their gammon. They prove the perverse ingenuity of the human mind and increase the gaiety of nations. Wo know that some of the plays are a hotch-potch, and that all have, been cut about and mishandled; but there is a great hand visible in them all. and the same great hand shows even more clearly in. the finest of the poems. We are asked by the Baconians to believe that Bacon was Shakespeare: that he wrote the poems and the playsßacon, who had not a gleam of poesy in him, and not a suggestion of the humour that so illuminates Shakespeare's rich humanity ! But the Baconians have even, less humour than Bacon had. They have gone all over the world for their evidences ; they have even gone to the editorial desk of the (hush!) "Tailor and Cutter." They will have yon believe that Bacon wrote the plays, got Will of Stratford to produce them, and so sedulously concealed his own connection with them that he contrived diabolical and tedious cryptograms in the bodies of the plays themselves. The pity of the age is that Baconians can't get fences to "whitewash, or some other decent and useful thing to do.

1 should love to know who Shakespeare was. I don't know, and I'm content to 1 know that I don't know. Cryptograms. But I still owe to the Baconians the discovery of the fact that the study of cryptograms is a delightful amusement for winter evenings. I have just worked out one from Everyman's Library, Vol. 1., of Ancient Hebrew Literature. It is very : ingenious. It is an ingenious chain of forty-fifth letters in twelfth pages, and it discloses the fact that Moses has been long misunderstood, the Book of Leviticus having been written in English by Frank Morton. I can prove by the same system that I wrote "Paradise Lost," the " Religio Medici," and the Memoirs of Casanova- If this sort cf thing goes on I shall have ,to put my rates up. Shakespeare as a Classic. There is this curious thing, while I think of it, about the Baconian trumpery. Your zealous Baconian cares nothing about the works of Shakespeare as a classic of the language. You shall not find him rolling perfect passages from his tongue, for his tongue is not attuned to any such noble uses. We others, we revere Shakespeare. He is one of those great ones whom, not having seen, we love. We don't care who wrote the plays, so long as the plays were written. If by some miracle of nature the plays were, after all, written by the Stratford peasant and inconspicuous actor, so much the more power to Will. It is their very greatness that makes Will seem so impossible. The thing is as incredible as if some person should now arise and attribute the romances of Mr. Mauri' 3 Hewlett to some obscure baker's apprentice. Lacking proof to the contrary, that might seem to be remotely possiblecertainly not more impossible than it would seem if the same picturesque and scholarly essays in fine fiction were attributed to the Mayor of Invercargill or the A stronomer-Roy a!

The fakers of cryptograms are all busy besmirchers of a great reputation— two great reputations, for Bacon really suffers much indignity in the process. He was a great philosopher and scientist, but he had no dramatic or lyrical gift. To ask 01 expect him to write the tender and exultant music of ''Romeo and Juliet" how absurd it is'. It is much as if one should find somewhere a new and superbly perfect chronometer, and say, "' This must be the work of Alderman McTavish, the eminent occasional Presbyterian." Why should McTavish be dragged in at all ?

The Writer and the Work. Hut men are like that. They will turn away from any glory of the world to haggle about the shape of a tin dish or the price of soap. The other day, on a remote mountain top. an ass gave iii, obtruding, a perfectly uninteresting sci mi- i tine explanation of the tints of sunset. Every phenomenon of nature is to bo estimated by some huckster's , tapemeasure. There are moral blitherers who will tell you that birds do not sing for icy. but merely because they ale domestic in their instincts. If Bacon is to be j admitted Shakespeare, how shall any man : lie safe? We n't want to have all our' lives spoiled by these insistent dabblers. ! Wliv should the ham's of impious nobodies '' be for evei fumbling anions; Shakespeare's ] great dust' Goldsmith wrote " The Vicar of Wake- j field.'* but 1 should love my Vicar no no ; the loss if lie had been created by some j other pen. The writer passes, but the l work remains. If Bacon wrote Shake- i speare's plays— Bacon, that is to say,' was not Bacon, but another sort of fellow ' altogether—l shall be interested to hear' it, but Shakespeare will still be Shake H fare, the uuapjuoaehed, the unapproach- ' able. Shakespeare, whoever lie may have I ; been, wrote this : * ' ! n Mi.-tress trine. v.-ii°re :>r< you roamins? ' i O. Ptiiy and hear-, rouv tme love's coining, * | r '['hilt can ejus both high and low; "' ! i Trio n.-> further. v>rettv sweet ' '. I Journeys end in lover? lnpptintr. ! Kxrrv -wipe man's son doth know. ! What is l.r-e? Ti« not hereafUr: Pre»»nt mirth hath present laughter What's to tnii"' i« still unsure: In delay there lies no plenty: Th-n rouic kiss me. swoet-and-twonty. Youth's a stuff will not endure. Shakespeare wrote it. and that i<* ' enough for me. Had some other golden ' ' oil o attuned by God *nng it, 1 should love it just as well. We do not know who wrote this (but. is it the less sweet for that?) : — With that the shepherd -wake*! from sleeping. And onyine that '-the day was He said. "Now take my soul in keeping. My sweetest dear! Kiss P'" and take my so'-,] in keeping. Since I must po. now day is near." The man has cone back to his God. He is one with the rose and the dawn, one with all dear imperishable things. But the Voice remains. That the ma-i's name was this or that— matters it'.' i