Bacon is Shake-Speare. Durning-Lawrence Edwin
of their nature, to put proper words in their mouths… My knowledge of the tongues is but small, on which account I have read ancient authors mostly at secondhand. I remember, when I first came to London, and began to be a hanger-on at the theatres, a great desire grew in me for more learning than had fallen to my share at Stratford; but fickleness and impatience, and the bewilderment caused by new objects, dispersed that wish into empty air…
This ridiculous and most absurd nonsense, which appeared in 1818 in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine was deemed so excellent and so instructive that (slightly abridged) it was copied into "Reading lessons for the use of public and private schools" by John Pierpont, of Boston, U.S.A., which was published in London nearly twenty years later, viz., in 1837.
As I said before, the dialogue is really all topsy turvydom, for the writer must have known perfectly well that Bacon was not Lord Keeper till 1617, the year after Shakspeare's death in 1616, and was not made Lord Chancellor till 1618, and that he is not supposed to have began to write the "Novum Organum" before the death of Queen Elizabeth.
I have therefore arrived at the conclusion that the whole article was really intended to poke fun at the generally received notion that the author of the plays was an _un_lettered man, who picked up his knowledge at tavern doors and in taprooms and tennis courts. I would specially refer to the passage where Bacon asks "How frame you such interlocutors as Brutus and Coriolanus?" and Shakspeare replies "By searching histories, in the first place, my Lord, for the germ. The filling up afterwards comes rather from feeling than observation. I turn myself into a Brutus or a Coriolanus for the time and can at least in fancy partake sufficiently of the nobleness of their nature to put proper words in their mouths."
Surely this also must have been penned to open the eyes of the public to the absurdity of the popular conception of the author of the plays as an _un_lettered man who "had small Latin and less Greek"!
The highest scholarship not only in this country and in Germany but throughout the world has been for many years concentrated upon the classical characters portrayed in the plays, and the adverse criticism of former days has given place to a reverential admiration for the marvellous knowledge of antiquity displayed throughout the plays in the presentation of the historical characters of bygone times; classical authority being found for nearly every word put into their mouths.
What does it matter whether the immortal works were written by Shakspeare (of Stratford) or by a great and learned man who assumed the name Shakespeare to "Shake a lance at Ignorance"? We should not forget that this phrase "Shake a lance at Ignorance" is contemporary, appearing in Ben Jonson's panegyric in the Shakespeare folio of 1623.
CHAPTER II
The Shackspere Monument, Bust, and Portrait.
In the year 1909 Mr. George Hookham in the January number of the National Review sums up practically all that is really known of the life of William Shakspeare of Stratford as follows: —
'We only know that he was born at Stratford, of illiterate parents – (we do not know that he went to school there) – that, when 18-1/2 years old, he married Anne Hathaway (who was eight years his senior, and who bore him a child six months after marriage); that he had in all three children by her (whom with their mother he left, and went to London, having apparently done his best to desert her before marriage); – that in London he became an actor with an interest in a theatre, and was reputed to be the writer of plays; – that he purchased property in Stratford, to which town he returned; – engaged in purchases and sales and law-suits (of no biographical interest except as indicating his money-making and litigious temperament); helped his father in an application for coat armour (to be obtained by false pretences); promoted the enclosure of common lands at Stratford (after being guaranteed against personal loss); made his will – and died at the age of 52, without a book in his possession, and leaving nothing to his wife but his second best bed, and this by an afterthought. No record of friendship with anyone more cultured than his fellow actors.
No letter, – only two contemporary reports of his conversation, one with regard to the commons enclosure as above, and the other in circumstances not to be recited unnecessarily.
In a word we know his parentage, birth, marriage, fatherhood, occupation, his wealth and his chief ambition, his will and his death, and absolutely nothing else; his death being received with unbroken and ominous silence by the literary world, not even Ben Jonson who seven years later glorified the plays in excelsis, expending so much as a quatrain on his memory.'
[Illustration: Plate III. The Stratford Monument,
From Dugdale's Warwickshire, 1656.]
[Illustration: Plate IV. The Stratford Monument as it appears at the present time.]
To this statement by Mr. George Hookham I would add that we know W. Shakspeare was christened 26th April 1564, that his Will which commences "In the name of god Amen! I Willim Shackspeare, of Stratford upon Avon, in the countie of warr gent in perfect health and memorie, god be praysed," was dated 25th (January altered to) March 1616, and it was proved 22nd June 1616, Shakspeare having died 23rd April 1616, four weeks after the date of the Will.
We also know that a monument was erected to him in Stratford Church. And because L. Digges, in his lines in the Shakespeare folio of 1623 says "When Time dissolves thy Stratford Moniment,"1 it is supposed that the monument must have been put up before 1623. But we should remember that as Mrs. Stopes (who is by no means a Baconian) pointed out in the Monthly Review of April 1904, the original monument was not like the present monument which shews a man with a pen in his hand; but was the very different monument which will be found depicted in Sir William Dugdale's "Antiquities of Warwickshire," published in 1656. The bust taken from this is shewn on Plate 5, Page 14, and the whole monument on Plate 3, Page 8.
[Illustration: Plate V. The Stratford Bust, from Dugdale's Warwickshire.
Published 1656.]
The figure bears no resemblance to the usually accepted likeness of Shakspeare. It hugs a sack of wool, or a pocket of hops to its belly and does not hold a pen in its hand.
In Plate 6, Page 15, is shewn the bust from the monument as it exists at the present time, with the great pen in the right hand and a sheet of paper under the left hand. The whole monument is shewn on Plate 4, Page 9.
[Illustration: Plate VI. The Stratford Bust as it appears at the present time.]
The face seems copied from the mask of the so-called portrait in the 1623 folio, which is shewn in Plate 8.
[Illustration: Plate VIII. Full size Facsimile of part of the Title Page of the 1623 Shakespeare folio]
It is desirable to look at that picture very carefully, because every student ought to know that the portrait in the title-page of the first folio edition of the plays published in 1623, which was drawn by Martin Droeshout, is cunningly composed of two left arms and a mask. Martin Droeshout, its designer, was, as Mr. Sidney Lee tells us, but 15 years of age when Shakspeare died. He is not likely therefore ever to have seen the actor of Stratford, yet this is the "Authentic," that is the "Authorised" portrait of Shakspeare, although there is no question – there can be no possible question – that in fact it is a cunningly drawn cryptographic picture, shewing two left arms and a mask.
The back of the left arm which does duty for the right arm is shewn in
Plate 10, Page 26.
[Illustration: Plate X. The Back of the Left Arm, from Plate VIII]
Every tailor will admit that this is not and cannot be the front of the right arm, but is, without possibility of doubt, the back of the left arm.
[Illustration: Plate XI. The Front of the Left Arm, from Plate VIII]
[Illustration: (not included in list of plates) The Front of Left Arm.
From Plate VIII. The Back of Left Arm From Plate VIII. Arranged
Tailor fashion, shoulder to shoulder, as in the Gentleman's TailorMagazine, April, 1911]
Plate 11 shews the front of the left arm, and you at once perceive that
Digges really means "When Time dissolves thy Stratford Mask".