SHAKESPEARE.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1987, 18 May 1875, Page 2

SHAKESPEARE.

And I have stood upon Achir.es' tomb, And heard Troy doubted!' Time may doubt of Rome,

With the termination of the engagement of Mr and Mrs Darrell terminated probably for some time the production of

Shakespeare's plays at the Thames, and, as the thoughts of many may have been me^re than usually turned towards Sliakespeare by the representations or misrepresentations of Mr and Mis Darrell and Company it may be not out of place if a few words be said about the argument which now runs so high at home, as to whether or not Shakespeare himself was the author of the plays which bear his name. It is but little more than five months ago that a writer in the New Zealand Herald, bursting,as it were, with all the importance (as he thought) of a new discovery, or else having imbibed one. of those spurious forms of courage which, Aristotle tells us, emanate " through ignorance," rushed into print, and, first having premised that "we live in an age of scepticism," proceeded to endeavour to lessen the scepticism he deplored by afutile attempt toshow that Bacon, and not Shakespeare, wrote the plays attributed to the latter/ His arguments are somewhat feeble, though they might please a positivist. They may be briefly summed up to be these— " Shakespeare's worjks, as we have them, are the works of. a scholar; Shakespeare was no scholar; therefore Bacon wrote them." A conclusion about as sensible to come to as was that of the schoolmaster who, wishing to find out which out of a .classofboyshadbeen making anoise,begaa at the top, and having asked each boy in turn whether he had done so, and being answered in the negative, turned to the last boy, and, without giving him time to answer, exclaimed: " Then —— it must be you! " Surely Milton the statesman, scholar, poet, and regicide, must have had opportunities of knowing—being, as he was fc almost a contemporary of Shakespeare—whether the great playwright'i plays were original or not, and would he have -written the lines—

What needs my Shakespeare for hia hallowed bohea The labours of an age in piled stones,' • -' ~ Or that his sacred relics should be hid Under a starry-pointed pyramid, &c. - if he had had, ihe slightest suspicion of the works" attributed to Shakespeare being the fruits of Bacon's pen. Surely, too, Ben Johnson must have had more opportunities of knowing and. judging of Shakespeare than either Mr Smith, with his railway library at. home, or. Judge Holmes, of America, with all Harvard at his back. But after all, although the writer of the article in the Herald (Not. 30,1874) has adduced many instances in the lives of Bacon and Shakespeare which he thinks may be made to agree, it i% but the merest presumptive evidence. I believe the first advocate of the Baconian theory was not the IS. Z. H., but a Miss Delia Bacon, who tried, though in vain, to obtain access to Shakespeare's .tomb. The idea then broached was taken up by Mr Smith, Eraser's Magazine, Judge Holmes and the New Zealand Herald, but as far as I see, neither the originator or her followers have been able to prore anything. The writer in the Herald states that Shakespeare's works display an intimate acquaintance with Latin, Greek, History, &c., a knowledge which he declares it impossible that Shakespeare 1 from his previous habits could ever have acquired. This theory has been advanced before, but has never been

satisfactorily proved, while on the con-

trary there are many things in Shake* speare's. writings which seem to,.ahoy. ; that Shakespeare was almost the reverse: < of what his would-be detractors, would wish to prove him. Take for example that Shakespeare in his play of "Julius Caesar" calls one of -rj the conspirators " Decius " Brutus, when * he makes Csesar say,," doth not Deems bootless kneel ? " while " history " asserts ' the name of the assassin to nave been " Decimus; " or again ia the same play he calls the adopted son .of Caesar "Octavius," whereas tbe real name of the favored emperor who reigned when " peace was o'erspread o'er all the earth " was Octavianus. These two instances go almost to prove the contrary of that intimate knowledge of Latin.which he .of the Herald assumes the author of Shakespeare to have possessed; so also as regards history, "to take one instance out of many," as Virgil hath it; Shakespeare in his play of " King Lear," disregarding the real name of the,mad king's daughter " Cordeilla," softens it down into the much more euphonetic name of "Cordelia." Many more instances. could easily be adduced to prove that it' is not necessary to doubt the faith of three centuries, because an anonymous writer declares Shakespeare to have been neither a "scholar,'' "lawyer," or "historian," but they are not necessary, because the "onus probandi" lies with the poets detractors'; and until they bring more speaking proofs that the parallelisms of Judge Holmes, and the hypothetical pamphlet of Mr Robert Greene are true, we are quite content to. believe that Mr Furniss when writing of Shakespeare has . written truly what he Las written well. ;" Who can define the limits of the powers of assimilation possessed by so great a genius ? A stray hint, a passing allusion' dropped in conversation by learned men of the time on social evenings at the "Mermaid " may have been sufficient to bear such fruits as we see displayed in his works." Non Dubitans.