Baconian Essays — Text and Context

hakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon. Doubtless he used the term “fraud” in a semi-jocular vein as we so often hear it made use of in the colloquial language of the present day, and his meaning is nothing more, and nothing less, than this, viz., that the belief that the plays and poems of “Shakespeare” were, in truth and in fact, the work of “the man from Stratford,” (as he subsequently, in the same letter, styles “the divine William”) is one of the greatest of all the many delusions which have, from time to time, afflicted a credulous and “a patient world.” He believed that when, in the year 1593, the dedication of _Venus and Adonis_ to the Young Earl of Southampton was signed “William Shakespeare,” that signature did not, in truth and in fact, stand for the Stratford player who never so signed himself, but for a very different person, in quite another sphere of life, who desired to preserve his anonymity. He believed that when plays were published in the name of “Shake-speare” that name did not, in truth and in fact, stand for “the man from Stratford,” but again for that same person--or it might be, and in certain cases certainly was, for some other--who desired to publish plays under the mask of a convenient pen-name. And if the authorship of these poems and plays came, in course of time, to be attributed to William Shakspere, the player from Stratford-upon-Avon, who himself never uttered a word, or wrote a syllable, or took any steps whatever to claim the authorship of those poems and plays for himself, but was content merely to play the part of “William the Silent” from first to last, there is, surely, no reason to brand him as a cheat and a “fraud” upon that account, and we may be quite sure that that highly-gifted and distinguished man of literature, Henry James--one of the intellectuals of our day--had no intention of so branding him.

A lady, a short time ago, wrote a book to explain the play of _Hamlet_ in quite a new light, by making reference to the special political circumstances of the time when it appeared, such as the “Scottish succession,” the character of James I, certain events in the lives of Mary Queen of Scots, Burleigh, Essex, Southampton, Elizabeth Vernon, and other historical figures, and producing “detailed analogies between episodes of contemporary history and the play,”[2] and, in reply to certain objections raised by a well-known critic, she essayed to justify herself by an appeal to the doctrine of “Relativity,” which, as she declared with some warmth, had come to stay whether her captious critic wanted it or not!

This lofty invocation of Einstein’s theory of Time, Space, and the Universe--a theory so difficult of comprehension that only a favoured few can even affect to understand it--in support of a new interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s plays, was, certainly, somewhat ridiculous, but the lady was quite right in her contention--which would equally hold good though Einstein had never lived or taught--that in forming our judgments on men long gone, whether of their characters or their actions, or their sayings or their writings, we must ever bear in mind the views, the beliefs, the opinions, and the special circumstances of the time and the society in which they lived. Now, it is well known that in Elizabethan and Jacobean times opinion with regard to what I may call literary deception was very different from what it is at the present day when we at any rate affect much greater scrupulosity with regard to these matters. Such literary deceptions, which in these days would be condemned as “frauds,” were, in those times, constantly and habitually practised, and considered quite venial sins, if, indeed, they were looked upon as sins at all. That is a fact which should never be lost sight of when we are considering problems of authorship, or writings of dubious interpretation (such as some of Ben Jonson’s, e.g.) in those long-gone and very different times.

Now, I am one of those who agree with the late Mr. Henry James, and with the present highly-distinguished French scholar and historian, Professor Abel Lefranc--I refer here to his negative views only--with regard to the authorship of the plays and poems of “Shakespeare.” In my humble opinion (which, to be quite honest, I may say is not “humble” at all!), that the plays and poems of “Shakespeare” were not written by William Shakspere, the player who came from Stratford, is as certain as anything can be which is not susceptible of actual mathematical proof. Who then wrote the plays? (Let us leave the poems on one side for the present). Well, that the work of many pens appears in the Folio of 1623 is surely indisputable. Few if any, of the “orthodox” would be found to deny it. There is little, if any, of “Shakespeare”--whoever he was--in the first part of _Henry VI_, and, surely, not much more in the second and third parts. Very little, if any part, of _The Taming of the Shrew_ is “Shakespearean.” The great majority of critics exclude _Titus_ altogether. The work of pens other than the Shakespearean pen is to be found in _Pericles_, and _Timon_, and _Troilus and Cressida_, and even in _Macbeth_. _Henry VIII_, though published as by “Shakespeare,” was almost undoubtedly the work of Fletcher and Massinger in collaboration.[3] The list might be added to but it is unnecessary to do so. I repeat, the work of many pens is to be found in the Folio of 1623, but there is, of course, one man whose work eclipses that of all the rest, one man who stands pre-eminent and unrivalled, towering high above the others; one man of whom it may be said, as of Marcellus of old, that _insignis ingreditur, victorque viros supereminet omnes_. Find that man, find the author of _Hamlet_, and _Lear_, and _Othello_--to give but a few examples--and you will have found the true “Shakespeare.” But set your hearts at rest; you will never find him in the man whose vulgar and banal life (in the course of which not one--I do not say generous but--even respectable action can be discovered by all the researches of his biographers) is to be read in the pages of Halliwell-Phillipps and Sir Sidney Lee--the life of which so little is known, and yet so much too much!

Meantime it is amusing, or would be so if it were not so lamentable, to see our solemn and entirely self-satisfied Pundits and Mandarins of “Shakespearean” literature ever trying to see daylight through the millstone of the Stratfordian faith; ever broaching some brand-new theory, and affecting to find something in this Shakespearean literature which nobody ever found before them, but which as they fondly imagine, somehow, and in some way, tends to support the old outworn Stratfordian tradition. Perhaps some “prompt copy” of an old Elizabethan drama is discovered. It is hailed with exultation as affording proof that plays in those times were printed from “prompt copies,” and further cryptic arguments are adduced in support of the absurd theory that the Stratford player dashed off the plays of “Shakespeare,” _currente calamo_, and handed them over to his fellow “deserving men,” Heminge and Condell, and the rest, with “scarse a blot” upon them, and that the plays were printed from these precious “unblotted autographs.” An old Manuscript Play is found. It is the work of several pens. In it are discovered three pages in an unknown hand. See now! Here is a hand “of the same class” as the “Shakespeare” (i.e., “Shakspere”) signatures! Why, it is Shakspere’s own handwriting! Look at Shakspere’s will--the will in which no book or manuscript is mentioned, but wherein are small bequests to Shakspere’s fellow-players, those “deserving men” Burbage, and Heminge, and Condell, to buy them rings withal, and of the testator’s sword, and parcel-gilt bowl, and “second-best bedstead”--and there you will find three words well and distinctly written in a firm hand--“By me William.” Yes, and the “W” of “William” is so carefully written that it even has “the ornamental dot” under the curve of the right limb thereof! But why, then, are the signatures themselves such miserable, illegible scrawls? Oh, fools and blind! Cannot you see that player William in this case reversed the usual procedure; that he intended to sign the last of the three pages of his Will first (“But _why_?”--“Oh, never mind _why_!”); that the poor man was _in extremis_ (true he lived another month after signing, and his Will witnesses that he was “in perfect health and memorie, God be praysed!” _Mais cela n’empêche pas_); and that he made a tremendous effort, and wrote the words “By me William,” in a fine distinct hand--“ornamental dot” and all!--and then collapsed utterly and could only make illiterate scrawls for his surname, and the other two signatures. But these words, “By me William,” are in the same handwriting as that of the “addition” to _Sir Thomas More_! What? You say they were manifestly written by the Law Scrivener! _What?_ You say the handwriting of this “addition” differs manifestly and fundamentally from the handwriting of the “Shakspere” signatures (which, wretched scrawls as they are, differ profoundly one from the other), as anybody can see who does not happen to be a “paleographer” with an _idée fixe_! What? You say that! Yah, fool! Yah, fanatic! What do _you_ know about it, I should like to know![4]

Such is all too frequently the language of the _soi-disant_ “orthodox” to the poor “heretic”; such are “the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes”!

Then we have a man--an “orthodox” wiseacre--who tells us that, without doubt, the “dark lady” of the Sonnets was Mistress Mary Fitton, and we are to subscribe to the belief that Mary Fitton, one of Elizabeth’s Maids of Honour, had an intrigue with a common player--one “i’ the statute!” It is nothing to tell the people who have made this wonderful discovery that Mary Fitton was _not_ a “dark lady,” but a _fair_ lady, as her portraits at Arbury show. It is nothing to tell them that, though among the remarkable contemporaneous documents in the Muniment Room at Arbury there is much mention of Mary Fitton’s _liaison_ with that proud nobleman, Lord Pembroke, not a breath is to be discovered of any suggestion of her so degrading herself as to have an intrigue with “a man-player”--one who was a “rogue and vagabond” were it not for the licence of a great personage. No, all this goes for nothing when it is necessary somehow, by hook or by crook, to identify the Stratford player with the author of the Sonnets of “Shakespeare.” _O miseras hominum mentes, O pectora cæca!_

Then yet another finds this “dark lady” in the person of the wife of an Oxford Inn Keeper, with whom, forsooth, player Shakspere had an intrigue, on his way from Stratford to London, or _vice versa_, and laborious investigations are undertaken, and many learned letters are written to the Press about this other imaginary “dark lady”--“that woman colour’d ill”[5]--and all the family history of the Davenants is exploited in this foolish quest. Then, again, another makes the discovery that William Shakspere, the Stratford player, had conceived a feeling of violent hatred against “Resolute John Florio,” the translator of Montaigne (who was, by the way, so far as we know, a good worthy man), so he caricatures this hateful person in the hateful (!) character of Jack Falstaff--the Falstaff of _King Henry IV_! But we _don’t_ hate Jack Falstaff! On the contrary we all love old Jack Falstaff, in spite of his many faults and failings. We can’t help loving him, for his unfailing good humour and his unrivalled wit! “Oh, that is nothing, nothing,” says our critic from across the Atlantic--one Mr. Acheson of New York--who has made this grand discovery. “Will Shakspere of Stratford _hated_ Florio, so he has lampooned him and ridiculed him in this hateful character of Falstaff! Of that there is no possible doubt. I am Sir Oracle, and when I speak let no dog bark![6]”

And so I might go on to multiply the examples of this “Stratfordian” folly. And we, who see the absurdity of all this, are called “Fanatics!” But what is “Fanaticism”? It is the madness which possesses the worshippers at the shrine. These men have bowed themselves down at the traditional Stratfordian Shrine; they have accepted without thinking the dogmas of the Stratfordian faith; they are impervious to reasoning and to common sense; they have surrendered their judgment; “their eyes they have closed, lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their hearts, and should be converted” to truth and reason. Verily, _these_ are the real “fanatics.”

Let me for a moment, before passing on, call attention to some words written by those distinguished “Shakespearean” critics Dr. Richard Garnett, and Dr. Edmund Gosse, in their _Illustrated English Literature_. They speak of “that knowledge of good society, and that easy and confident attitude towards mankind which appears in Shakespeare’s plays _from the first_, and which are so unlike what might have been expected from _a Stratford rustic_.... The first of his plays were undoubtedly the three early comedies, _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, _The Comedy of Errors_, and _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, which must have appeared in 1590-1591, or perhaps in the latter year only. The question of priority among them is hard to settle, but we may concur with Mr. [now Sir Sidney] Lee in awarding precedence to _Love’s Labour’s Lost_. All three indicate that the runaway Stratford youth had, within five or six years, made himself the perfect gentleman, master of the manners and language of the best society of his day, and able to hold his own with any contemporary writer.”[7]

Now this miraculous “runaway Stratford youth,” came to London “a Stratford rustic,” in the year 1587,[8] and, according to his biographers, being a penniless adventurer, had to seek for a living in “very mean employments,” as Dr. Johnson says, whether as horse-holder, or “call boy,” or “super” on the stage, or what you will. His parents were entirely illiterate, and he left his two daughters in the same darkness of ignorance. We may assume that he had attended for a few years at the “Free School” at Stratford (as Rowe, his earliest biographer, calls it), although there is really no evidence in support of that assumption, but it is admitted even by the most zealous and orthodox Stratfordians that he “had received only an imperfect education.”[9] But I will not again recapitulate the facts (real or supposed) of this mean and vulgar life. Let the reader, I say again, study it in the pages of Halliwell-Phillipps, and Sir Sidney Lee.[10]

And now let us consider for a moment that extraordinary play, _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, which, as we have seen, “appeared” in 1590 or 1591, according to Messrs. Garnett and Gosse, but of which Mr. Fleay writes: “The date of the original production cannot well be put later than 1589.” It was, as the “authorities” are all agreed, Shakespeare’s first drama, and it is remarkable for this fact, among other things, that unlike other Shakespearean plays it is not an old play re-written, nor is the plot taken from some other writer. The plot of _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ is an original one.

And now let us see what Professor Lefranc, who has made a very special study of this play, has to tell us about it, premising that I do not cite his remarks as “authoritative,” but merely as a clear statement of the facts of the case by one who has exceptional knowledge of the history of the time in which the action of the play is supposed to take place.

“Everybody knows,” he writes, “that the scene of this very original comedy is laid at the Court of Navarre, at a date nearly contemporaneous with the play, when Henri de Bourbon was the reigning sovereign of this little kingdom, before he became Henri IV of France.... That the author of _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ knew and had visited the Court of Navarre is at once obvious to anyone who will study the play without any preconceived hypothesis and who takes the trouble to learn something about the history of this little Kingdom of Nérac.... All the explanations which have been given of this play, the first of the Shakespearean dramas, in order to bolster up the theory of its composition by Shakspere the player at the very outset of his career as a playwright, as also every element of the comedy itself, and every known incident in the life of the Stratford player, prove the impossibility of his being the author of it. All these theories and hypotheses put forward during the last 120 years are of such total improbability, indeed of such miserable tenuity, that some day people will wonder how they could possibly find acceptance for so long.”

M. Lefranc cites Montegut, a French Shakespearean scholar and a critic of noted insight and perspicacity, who writes: “It is extraordinary to see how Shakespeare is faithful even in the most minute details to historical truth and to local colour,” and he proceeds to demonstrate that many allusions in this wonderful play of _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ cannot be properly understood or appreciated without reference to the memoirs of the celebrated Marguerite de Valois, who is herself the “Princess of France” of the comedy (in the original edition called “The Queen”[11]), who comes with her suite to visit Henri at his Court of Nérac. The Princess of France, then, was originally Queen Marguerite of Navarre, and this comedy represents her as coming to rejoin her husband at Nérac to endeavour to regain his love, and to settle many questions relative to her dowry of Aquitaine. That this journey actually took place, that Marguerite paid a long visit to the Court of Navarre where a series of entertainments were held in her honour, and that the question of her dowry in Aquitaine was then discussed at length is established by the Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois.[12] The author, then, had in his mind events of contemporaneous history which had taken place at the Court of Navarre, and with which he appears to have been personally familiar. The memoirs, too, throw light on several passages of the drama which would be obscure without them. Take (e.g.) Act II, Sc. 1, where Biron asks Rosaline, “Did not I dance with you at Brabant once?” Here we have an allusion to the visit of Marguerite to Spa in 1577, of which a full account is given in her Memoirs, where she tells of balls at Mons, Namur, and Liege, all in a country which was at that time constantly spoken of as Brabant. Again, in Act V, Sc. 2, there is an obscure allusion, which seems to be satisfactorily explained by a reference to the story of the unfortunate Hélène de Tournon, related by Marguerite in her Memoirs. Further, in Act V, Sc. 2, we have an allusion to the manner in which Henri of Navarre, the “Vert Galant,” wrote, prepared, and sealed his love letters, as though the author was familiar with the amorous King’s poetical letter addressed by him to the “Charmante Gabrielle” d’Estrés; while the circumstances described in Act I, Sc. 1, are explained in the light of fact by a letter from Cobham to Walsingham dated from Paris in June, 1583.

But it would take far too much time to dilate further upon this, the first of the Shakespearean plays. I can only refer my readers, for further light, to Professor Lefranc’s work _Sous le Masque de William Shakespeare_.[13]