SHAKESPEARE OR BACON ?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 4026, 13 January 1875, Page 6 (Supplement)

SHAKESPEARE OR BACON ?

" Who. wrote ' Shakespeare V" is at present a question as fully discussed amongst students as "the third term",is amongst politicians. American scholars, with characteristic disregard for old, accepted beliefs, are, almost without exception, suspicious of, and even antagonistic to, Shakespeare's right of authorship and glory. The most prominent of these "heretics",is .Nathaniel Holmes, Judge and Professor of Law in Harvard University, Cambridge. .In the last number of "Pra3cr's," there is a .most interesting review of the whole' question, a recent book of .Professor Holmes's standing as the chief text. There are some old and many new .aspects of the debate given at length in the English Magazine, which we have not space for. In the following resumS, the various arguments against Shakes-' peare's authorship are used, simply as a concise statement of the case of Nathaniel Holmes et al. vs. William Shaicesneare. The argument is readily dualised*thus : First, the proofs that Shake3peare could not or did not write the plays ; secondly, the proof that Sir Francis Bacon did.

To start, then, ah initio, Shakspeare received no education save that gained at the Free Grammar School of Stratford. He could have received no private tuition afc the hands of lu3 father or mother, both being illiterate, and neither of them able to write. Removed from school at the age of fourteen, it is a matter of doubt whether he passed the next seven years as a vagabond or as a student at law or physic. Certain ifc is, however, that there is no record of his having practised either. Certain ifc is, too, that of the time from his leaving school to his arrival in London, there exists no record of hia having written anything "except the mere tradition of a lampoon upon Sir Thomas Lucy," of whicli '' not a scrap " remains, while the fragment of verses accepted as having been written by him in late life, are miserable dcggerel. No verses of Shakspeare's or his contemporaries are extant. Schlegel, the German critic, contrasting the extent ofthe wisdom and philosophy of the plays with the accented account of Shakspeare's life, considers ifc to be " a mere fabulous story, a blind and extravagant error." " The Shakespearian Society" has ascertained that he was "a good-natured, jovial man, in no wise superior to his kind." It was tins facetious manager-actor who, in the brief intervals between work and sleep, dashed off a " Hamlet" or a " Lear !" Carlyle Jean Paul .Richter, and Goethe all declared themselves utterly unable to reconcile Ins hfe with his works. Bon Johnson I states that "he remembers to have heard it remarked by the actors that no line of the writing of the plays was altered." Is it a fair inference thafc the reason is becauso they were copied? Shakespeare never claimed the plays, and died without seeing them in print, " Timon of Athens is founded upon the untranslated Gree* of Lucian. Throughout all the plays there are scattered broadcast materials,^ ideae, and expressions, gathered ir-nn bophocle3, Euripides, Plato, Virgil^ Horace, and Soneca, indifferently, whether the originals were translated into Tuiglish or not Tlio " Comedy of Errors"- is little more than a reproduction of the " Mence^hini" of Plautus, and was produced at Christmas, 1594—a year beforo any English translation appeared, Plautus was a notably favourite author of Bacon's How, then, could Shakspeare-have been j i-o re quote Joiison, a man of " little Latin and les Greek?'' Shakspeare must have known French and Latin intimately, too, for many of his plots a'o taken Irom Cinthio, Boccaccio and Beileforcst, all at thafc time untranslated The medical knowledge displayed in the plays is profound, the Shiksperian exm-essious being in exact accordance with 'those of Galen, Hippocrates and Rabelais, all familiar authors to Bacon, of whom Dr Bucknell says there was " more of medicine than of law in his essays." The intimate acquaintance with all law points displayed in the dramas ia even more noteworthy. This knowledge was mis* pronounced in the plays produced from 1590 to IG2O, which, hriass v's mare clearly to the prq.-.fs advanced by Pi-ufes-aos? Bfilmo3 of'Baean's authorship _ In 1587, tiie year of SimksptaWs arrival in London, Baoon had jusfc been called to the bar, but being thrown into the society of a number of "theatergoing lords," ho became at straitened in circumstances thafc in 1592 he wrote to Lord Burleigh to say that he was so poor thafc he should be obliged to turn " bookmaker. " During the next two years eifht dr ten of the earlier plays were'produced, though none, of them under Shakspeare's d was nofc until 159S that N.. Shakspeare " appeared on the title page. As to Bacon's play-writing proclivities, they appeared as oarly as loS? when he assisted the young lawyers of Gray's Inn in getting up the tragedy of " The Misfortunes of Arthur." °Durin« Bacon's years of "retirement," too" he was constantly producing plays at Ins brother Anthony's house, a state of affairs which his mother considered as endangering his precious soul, whilst Macaulay and Mr Spedding both declare that as late jw 1613 Bacon prepared a masque tor the rung's entertainment. In IGO7-8 Baoon was engaged upon his " Characters of Julius and Augustus Ccesar," directly after the conclusion of which the tragedy of ''Julius Ciesar" was put on the B Li«e" Again, m Shakespeare's historical plays the series extends from the deposition of Richard I. to tho birth of Elizabeth. But tliere is no play of Henry Vi. It is Bacon himself who fills the hiatus. In his fragments of history every other roK'ii is unfinished ; that of Henry VI. is the only one completed. Bid these two «r ea fc geniuses work in the same groove ] fi so it is very reinarjcahle that in his apo- I thegn^s, the repository of the sayings and doings of all the great wits and men of the day. Bacon should not make a single mention of this "great spirit ! " ° In tho above much has necessarily been left to the reader's deducive faculties but this much should be plainly stated.' In 1613 Bacon became Attorney-General and then and there the production of 'Shakespeare's Plays". ceased, although Shakespeare was at that time in the prune of life. Baoon, having no longer any reason for "book-making," gavo°it up. He was a lawyer, and it was from the law, and nofc " book-making," that he looked for his reputation. At that time play-wnghts and play-actors wero held in evil repute, Coke going so far as to class them with thieves and vagabonds. What was more likely, then, but thafc Bacon should strive to conceal his experience in such a life ? His, " Johannes Factotum," was of no further use to the "hidden poet," to use Bacon's own words. Bacon however did nofc forget his children, for in_lG32 he presented a copy of the first printed edition of the plays to his friend Sir Tobie. Here the circumstantial evidence ceases, but. thei c follows such "ascites and net-work of parallelisms of thought and expressions" found in the plays and essays — says Dr Holmes — without a doubfc, that not from the managerial offico noy the lodgings of the " facetious' actor, but from the retired chambers of Gray's Inn and the solicitudes of the lodge at Twickenham, emanated the mighty works of art which form the "spine of English literature" and which surpass even the Greek tragedy I—San Francisco Chronicle.