SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21136, 19 March 1932, Page 10 (Supplement)

SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS.

AUTHORSHIP QUESTION.

LONDON WRITER'S SALLY. Whatever else may be entailed by ewan an indirect challenge ta> that unsparing body of enthusiasts, tho Baconians, one thing remains clear. They do not allow themselves to stagnate. Tho web of conjecture that they originally threw round the mere authorship of Shakespeare's plays has now grown into an intricate and glittering romance, which tho most elaborate historic fiction could hardly parallel, remarks a writer in the Morning Post.

We havo now to accept, for instance, not only that both Bacon and Essex were sons of Queen Elizabeth, but that Arabella Stuart was a daughter of Mary Queen of Scots and the Earl of Leicester. The lovely Arabella would thus be, according to the Baconian " whole-hoggers," a stepsister of Bacon himself, supposing Leicester to have been his real father.

What more natural, in these circumstances, than that she should play Viola in " Twelfth Night," imagining that it were written and produced by her brilliant young stepbrother? Her subsequent cross-Channel adventure in boy's clothes would also fall into place. In spite of a respectful disbelief over these and other charming fancies, there is at least entertainment in a little volume called " The Personal Poems of Francis Bacon," by Alfred Dodd. These prove (o be what we k'now as Shakespeare's Sonnets, rearranged and annotated. The idea is that they were in part addressed to Queen Elizabeth, not, of course, as tho " Dark Lady," but as Bacon's mother. Also Mr. Dodd suggests that important Masonic messages are involved in them, liucon was, we know, a Rosicrucian. W.hether his Stratford rival had any claims in that direction is still to be proved. Certainly wo heard nothing of theso when Lord A m pthill and other distinguished Freemasons 1 visited Stratford to lay tho... foundation stone of the. present theatre.

One's own feeling is th'at if only the Baconians read more of their own Bacon, even at the risk of devoting themselves less generously to our Shakespeare, they would realise better how utterly different are the styles of the two men.