WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT SHAKESPEARE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 84, 5 December 1874, Page 10

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT SHAKESPEARE.

4HAx article appeared recently in • Jrazer's Magazine,' attempting to prove that lord Bacon was the real author of Shakespeare's plays • and the question, strange to say, has attracted considerable attention' The American Press has lately devoted columns to the matter ; and amongst its utterances we notice an article in the 'Boston Post' headed, « Who was Shakesphere ? " Into the merits of this question ow limits forbid us to enter at length ; but some of the running comments of our contemporary, which seem to endorse the sceptical side of the question, require correction. Here is one of the passages referred to : — r i»

"We know absolutely nothing about him. We are more familiar with the lives of every literary man of his generation. Of Greene and Marlowe, of Massinger, and Ben Johnson, of Beaumont, Fletcher, and Southampton— nay, of the poets and historiaus of more than a century before— we have ample and satisfactory records. Of Shakespeare's life, in its most ordinary details, we have simply nothing ; not a scran of the manuscripts of his plays is extant; of his hand-writing there are but two bare signatures, " William Shakespeare," and not a line or dot more.

Now this as it stands is not true. Although we do not know all that may be desired about the life of William Shakespeare, we do know a great deal— as much, on the average, as of that of any literary matt of his time, and very much more than of Philip Massinger, one of the names cited by our friend of the < Post,' who appaxentl/forgets that the only mortuary record left of Massinger was the touching entry in the pariah register, « Phillip Maasrager, a stranger " S * Of Shakespeare, we do know the date of his birth, the name of his school and schoolmaster, the freaks of his boyhood, the probable period ofhisarmalinLondon-that he leased theatres there, and was S facto a man of substance and "no vagabond," that he published and dedicated two poems to Lord Soutliamptom (by the way, who is the Southampton our friend places among the literary men ?) that he uurchased property at Stratford and farmed laud there by the agency of Jia brothers. We know, moreover, that he made his fortune and reinnnn a S]° n &U °° me ' a \ mo ™yj<> c*e * with us of upwards of 10,000 dollars pet -annum, that he ouried his son Hamnet, a boy often years of age, and had his two daughters, Susannah and Judith, ma " *wd respectably. Finally, we are all familiar with his last Si and testament (where his name is signed four or five times), and with the facts of his death, burial-place and tomb. We also emphaticaUy d^ that he was laughed at by his contemporaries. * *»* S\ 8 . tmo hiß F M a ! Gu-TG u-T CaUa him " sl * ak <«cene» iv an offensive aod libellous pamphlet, which proves nothing but Shakespeare's popularity and Greene's exacerbation. He patronised Ben inetead of being patronised by the latter, as the • Post ' has ft* o**0 ** m «„„ XT? !f^ im \ in S* ? a P acit y t !» Bta g e manager, that Ben Johneon, whe had tried bricklaying, soldiering and acting with no success was introduced as a dramatist, and the fact does no little honor t0 his judgment. Ben and he were the two sovereign spirits that kept the "table in a roar ?' at the'" Mermaid," the celebrated club founded by Baleigb »nd frequented by the choice spirits of that day. But let Z W what Ben Johnson who knew him well >d intimately as a man and an author, says of him :—: — ' au

"Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage ! My Shakespeare rise ! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer or Spencer, or bid Beaumont lie A little further off, to make thee room ! Thou art a monument without a tomb, And art alive still, while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read, and praise to give !"

Sir William Davenant relates that Shakespeare received from Lord {Southampton, on account; of the dedication of his two t>oems £1000 equal, probably, to five times the amount to-day— rather strone evidence, we apprehend, of his standing in the ranks of tie poets. The same Sir William was willing to have it believed that he was Shakespeare s son, even at the expense of his mother's honor-another fact suggestive of inferences. m When Archbishop Whately wrote lu 8 « Historic Doubts of the Existence of Napoleon Buonaparte," he admirably understood and admirably satirised the sceptical march of our century. Where will incredulity end ? Did Columbus discover America ? Newton, attractXon ? 0 ™ Tey ' fche circulation of the blood ? Morse, the electric telegraph i The negative of every one of these facts is capable of elaborate argumentation; and of such negatives are new theories made. The question of Bacon w. Shakespeare ia one for a literary expert. There w, we apprehend, sufficient internal evidence in the acknowledged composition of each to put the question of their dissimilarity or identity beyond a doubt. A great poet and critic has summed up Shakespeare s style thus : "All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them, not laboriously, but luckily Those •who accuse him of having wanted learning give him the greater comxtvendation. He needed not the spectacles of books to read nature." iSzx^ssssiss.' if Bo> • oos ifc hold with regard to the