expected to resume his ordinary functions as counsellor to Parliament,
and adviser to the King”--_ergo_ Lucrece was Bacon’s prototype--in
petticoats. Moreover, in the _Essays_, Bacon affixes to a meditative
reflection in one of his philosophical propositions the phrase, “I
cannot tell.” The same phrase, scarcely remarkable in itself, occurs
several times in the Plays. Mr. Theobald devotes a whole chapter of
his book to emphasising this remarkable coincidence. He advances pages
of historical parallels, and he remarks, almost enthusiastically, that
both Shakespeare and Bacon have dilated with pitiless logic on “the
uselessness of hope.”
[Illustration: ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER.
From an original painting in the possession of The Marquis of
Salisbury.]
But Mr. Theobald is most amusing when he compares Bacon’s _Essay of
Love_ with the treatment of Love in Shakespeare. We know Bacon’s
opinion of love, as expressed in the _Essay_, and we find it difficult
to reconcile it with the rhapsodies that we find in the Plays; we
remember _Romeo and Juliet_, and the exquisite comment, “Imagine Juliet
as the party, loved”--or, rather, we should do so, if Mr. Theobald
was not at our elbow to explain the apparent contradiction in thought
and term. Love, it would appear, has two sides. There is the “bosom”
side, and the business side. Here we have a full and convincing
explanation of the difference between the views of love as expressed
in the _Essay_, and the Shakespearean application of the sentiment as
displayed in his dramas. In the Plays, Bacon regarded love from the
“bosom” point of view, while in the _Essay_, the “very brief, very
aphoristic, very concentrated, never discoursive or rhetorical, but
severely reflective and practical essay,” he was dealing with Juliet
as a “business” detail--a contracting party, in short--“the party
loved.” Nothing could be more convincing! It would almost lead us to
entertain a greater admiration for Bacon than Spedding could hope
for. He has not only voiced two such entirely contradictory views of
love as we find in the _Essay_ of Bacon and the plays of Shakespeare,
but he has, with the aid of Mr. Theobald, showed that, “curiously
enough,” the two conflicting expressions are “significantly identical.”
There is surely no need to proceed further. Mr. Theobald has proved
his contention, and we must perforce accept his conclusions that
Shakespeare, the arch-impostor, the champion literary fraud of all
time, was “either entirely uneducated, or very imperfectly educated;
that his Latin was small, his Greek less, and his pure English least
of all; that such handwriting as his could never have figured on a
University examination paper--this is the opinion, it will be observed,
of an M.A., and a former editor of _The Bacon Journal_--that his whole
life was too full of business, too much devoted to money to leave any
extensive opportunities for study, or for large, broad, world-covering
experience.”
But if we make it a _sine quâ non_ that the writer of the Plays was
a man of leisure not devoted to mammon, “with ample opportunity for
study, and of a broad-world covering experience” (whatever that may
precisely mean), it is proof positive that he was not the man whom we
know as Francis Bacon. Bacon’s whole life was devoted to business,
and to the getting of money; he had no leisure, as he is for ever
telling us, for his life’s work, and his experience of the world of
men was so superficial and misleading that it sent Essex to the block,
brought the King to loggerheads with his Parliament, and encompassed
the utter downfall and disgrace of the cunning Chancellor. We need not
be flustered by Mr. Theobald’s hysterical opinion that Shakespeare’s
writing was “so execrably bad, so unmistakably rustic and plebean,
that one may reasonably doubt whether his penmanship extended beyond
the capacity of signing his name to a business document,” because
we have Spedding’s statement that Shakespeare’s signature is simply
characteristic of the caligraphy of the time, and we know by comparison
that it is in advance, both in style and legibility, of that of Sir
Nicholas Bacon, the father of the great Pretender.
Mr. Harold Bayley, the author of _The Tragedy of Sir Francis Bacon_,
is, in the same degree, disdainful of facts. He declares that he will
quote verbatim from Mr. Sidney Lee’s well-known _Life of Shakespeare_
which would be most commendable in him if he did it--but he doesn’t.
Rather he quotes the opinion of Richard Grant White, who says that
“Shakespeare was the son of a Warwickshire peasant,” who “signed his
name with a mark,” and that the Poet was “apprenticed to a butcher.”
It is but waste of space to repeat that such assertions are palpably
false. It may be true, as Mr. Bayley states, that Stratford, in 1595,
was in an unsanitary condition, and that the Metropolitan theatres were
the resort of undesirable persons--even that Shakespeare entered the
play-house as a servitor, but all this proves nothing. It is also true
that, up to the time that Shakespeare’s plays began to be produced,
“there had been nothing in his career that would cause us to suppose
he was a sublime genius,” but until Homer, or Michael Angelo, or
Rudyard Kipling began to produce their masterpieces, we knew of nothing
in them to make us accept them as heaven-born geniuses. Mr. Bayley
assumes that Shakespeare left Stratford-upon-Avon in 1585 with “_Venus
and Adonis_, _Lucrece_, and, perhaps, _Hamlet_, in his pocket.” The
reason for his assumption is not vouchsafed to us. True, our dramatist
left Stratford in 1585, but _Venus_ was not published until 1593, and
it was not until 1602 that _Hamlet_ was produced. The mere fact that
“in the sixteenth century the provincial dialects were so marked that
the county gentry ... had difficulty in making themselves understood,
except to their provincial neighbours,” proves that both these works
were composed after Shakespeare had been for some time a resident in
London, and indeed it is ridiculous to suppose that it took him eight
years to find a publisher for _Venus and Adonis_. Donnelly deciphered
the Bishop of Worcester’s opinion that Shakespeare was “a butcher’s
rude and vulgar apprentice,” who “in our opinion was not likely to have
writ them (the Plays).” “In our opinion” is scarcely evidence. Mr.
Bayley’s contemptuous reference to Shakespeare’s handwriting as “five
strange scrawls,” is combated by Spedding’s authoritative dictum, and
his immediately succeeding conclusion that the classical allusions
and references in the Plays prove the author to have been “a cultured
aristocrat,” robs his entire argument of sapiency or merit.
Mr. Harold Bayley’s _The Tragedy of Francis Bacon_, is, in my
opinion, an inconsequential contribution to the controversy. In
the chapter on Papermarks, his contention that every fresh device
necessitates a new mould (p. 38) is correct, but his deductions are
senseless; the fact being that the paper is contributed from very
many--mostly foreign--mills. Take one of Caxton’s books--say, _The
Golden Legend_--and you will find 50 different water-marks in one
volume; if all the copies could be examined, probably double or treble
the number would be revealed. One hasn’t the patience to follow Mr.
Bayley’s “reasoning”: he believes one of the paper-marks (No. 55) to
be Rosicrucian--it is the Divine monogram, and traceable to the first
century. No. 14, the “fool’s-cap,” gives the name to a size of paper
still extant--so of the vase, or “pott.” The symbols are allusive,
heraldic, or “canting,” mostly emblematic, or in rebus form. That is
all. What more natural for the paper-maker _Lile_ than to take the
Fleur-de-lys for his trade symbol? With respect to printers’ headlines,
tail-pieces, etc., they were (and are) simply fancy types used for
decorative purposes. The oak, and its fruit the acorn--the rose, Tudor
or otherwise, the lily, typifying our conquest of France, only erased
from the Royal Arms _temp._ George III., would all, from a national
standpoint, become the commonest form of ornament, and each, in its
turn, lend itself to the fancy of the designer, who, Mr. Bayley would
have us think, were all under the direction of Francis Bacon, who
wove a wonderful story by this puerile means. As for the printers’
“hieroglyphics,” as Mr. Bayley calls them, they have been used almost
from the invention of the art to the present time. Amongst publishers,
too, they are common. The printer of _The Tragedy of Sir Francis Bacon_
employs one: a lion supporting the trade symbol of Aldus. I have not
consulted Mr. Whittingham, but (if he knows anything at all about it)
he would probably say the device signifies that he is the English
successor of the Venetian printer!
[Illustration]
So far as Shakespeare’s handwriting is concerned, I do not propose
at the present moment to go beyond the opinion of Spedding. It would
profit nothing to enter into a discussion on the subject until one has
something tangible in the way of evidence to offer. Shakespeare’s
Will, for instance, has always been regarded as a witness for the
Baconian case, but if the result of the investigations I am prosecuting
confirm my suspicions, it will become a piece of important evidence for
Shakespeare. The _bona-fides_ of this Will have always appeared to be
more than questionable, and I am hopeful of being in a position shortly
to connect it with the great fraud which I am satisfied has been
perpetrated by Bacon.
_The Bi-Literal Cipher._
The most interesting feature of the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy at
the present moment is the alleged discovery by Mrs. Elizabeth Wells
Gallup, of Detroit, U.S.A., of a bi-literal cipher by Bacon, which
appears in no fewer than forty-five books, published between 1591 and
1628. Mrs. Gallup was assisting Dr. Orville W. Owen (also of Detroit,
U.S.A.), in the preparation of the later books of his _Sir Francis
Bacon’s Cipher Story_, and in the study of the “great word cipher,”
discovered by Dr. Owen, when she became convinced that the very full
explanation found in _De Augmentis Scientiarum_ of the bi-literal
method of cipher-writing, was something more than a mere treatise on
the subject. She applied the rules given to the peculiarly italicised
words, and “letters in two forms,” as they appear in the photographic
facsimile of the 1623 folio edition of the Shakespeare plays. The
surprising disclosures that resulted from the experiment, sent her
to the original editions of Bacon’s known works, and from those to
all the authors whose books Bacon claimed as his own. The bi-literal
cipher, according to Mrs. Gallup, held true in every instance, and
she is fully entitled to have her discovery thoroughly investigated
before it is condemned as a “pure invention.” Mrs. Gallup solemnly
declares her translation to be “absolutely veracious,” and until it is
authoritatively declared that the bi-literal cipher does not exist in
the works in which she professes to have traced it, I am not prepared
to question her _bonâ fides_. Her conclusions are absurd, but her
premises may be proved to be impregnable. She is convinced of the
soundness of her discoveries, and she forthwith leaps to the conclusion
that “the proofs are overwhelming and irresistible, that Bacon was the
author of the delightful lines attributed to Spenser--the fantastic
conceits of Peele and Greene--the historical romances of Marlowe--the
immortal plays and poems put forth in Shakespeare’s name--as well
as the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ of Burton.” Mrs. Gallup shows scant
appreciation of the illimitable genius she claims for Bacon in this
sentence.
The inaccurately described bi-literal cipher, which Bacon, who
claims to have invented it, explained with great elaboration in his
_De Augmentis Scientiarum_, has nothing whatever to do with the
composition or the wording of the works in which it is said to exist.
It depends not on the author, but on the printer. It is altogether a
matter of typography. One condition alone is necessary--control over
the printing, so as to ensure its being done from specially marked
manuscripts, or altered in proof. It shall, as Bacon says, be performed
thus:--“First let all the letters of the alphabet, by transposition, be
resolved into two letters only--hence bi-literal--for the transposition
of two letters by five placings will be sufficient for 32 differences,
much more than 24, which is the number of the alphabet. The example of
such an alphabet is on this wise:--
A a a a a a I or J a b a a a R b a a a a
B a a a a b K a b a a b S b a a a b
C a a a b a L a b a b a T b a a b a
D a a a b b M a b a b b U or V b a a b b
E a a b a a N a b b a a W b a b a a
F a a b a b O a b b a b X b a b a b
G a a b b a P a b b b a Y b a b b a
H a a b b b Q a b b b b Z b a b b b
For the purpose of introducing this alphabet into the book which is
to contain the secret message, certain letters are taken to stand
for “a’s” and others for “b’s.” In Bacon’s illustration, he employed
two different founts of italic type, using the letters of fount “a”
to stand for “a’s,” and the letters of fount “b” to stand for “b’s.”
Bacon takes the word “fuge” to exhibit the application of the alphabet,
thus:--
F U G E.
a a b a b b a a b b a a b b a a a b a a
The word is enfolded, as an illustration, in the sentence _Manere te
volo donec venero_, as follows:--
MANERE TE VOLO DONEC VENERO.
a a b a b | b a a b b | a a b b a | a a b a a
F. | U. | G. | E.
A more ample example of the cipher is given on the page which is here
reproduced from Mrs. Gallup’s book. The work in which the “interiour”
letter is enfolded is the first _Epistle of Cicero_, and the cipher
letter it contains is as follows:
All is lost. Mindarus is killed. The soldiers want food.
We can neither get hence nor stay longer here.
[Illustration: _Cicero’s First Epistle._
(NOTE)--This Translation from Spedding, Ellis & Heath Ed.]
Bacon had a three-fold motive for putting his cipher into every book of
merit that was published in his day. In the first place, it allowed him
to claim the authorship of the book. In the second, in Mrs. Gallup’s
own words, “it was the means of conveying to a future time the truth
which was being concealed from the world concerning himself--his right
to be King of England--secrets of State regarding Queen Elizabeth--his
mother--and other prominent characters of that day--the correction
of English history in important particulars, the exposure of the
wrongs that had been put upon him;” and, equally important, thirdly,
of publishing his version of the wrongs he had done to others, and
to Essex in particular. Concerning the amazing diversity of style
displayed in the many works, he says in his cipher: “I varied my stile
to suit men, since no two shew the same taste and like imagination....”
“When I have assum’d men’s names, th’ next step is to create for each
a stile naturall to the man that yet should let my owne bee seene,
as a thrid of warpe in my entire fabricke.” His explanation of the
diversity of merit that is displayed in the works of Robert Greene and
of Shakespeare, is not less interesting and instructive. “It shall bee
noted in truth that some (plays) greatly exceede their fellowes in
worth, and it is easily explained. Th’ theame varied, yet was alwayes
a subject well selected to convey the secret message. Also the plays
being given out as tho’gh written by the actor, to whom each had bin
consign’d, turne one’s genius suddainlie many times to suit th’ new
man.”
“In this actour that wee now emploie (the cipher appears in the 1611
quarto edition of _Hamlet_), is a wittie veyne different from any
formerly employ’d. [Bacon appears to have forgotten that he employed
the ‘masque’ of Shakespeare in the quarto editions of _Richard II._
(1598), _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, _Much Ado About Nothing_, _The
Merchant of Venice_ (1600), and of _King Lear_, _Henry V._ (1608), and
_Pericles_ (1609)]. In truth it suiteth well with a native spirrit,
humourous and grave by turnes in ourself. Therefore, when wee create
a part that hath him in minde, th’ play is correspondingly better
therefor.”
In the cipher story which is found by Mrs. Gallup in _Titus
Andronicus_, Bacon again recurs to the superior merit of the plays put
forth in Shakespeare’s name, and he extols the merits of Shakespeare as
an interpreter of these dramas:--
“We can win bayes, lawrell gyrlo’ds and renowne, and we can raise a
shining monumente which shale not suffer the hardly wonne, supremest,
crowning glory to fade. Nere shal the lofty and wide-reaching honor
that such workes as these bro’t us bee lost whilst there may even a
work bee found to afforde opportunity to actors--who may play those
powerful parts which are now soe greeted with great acclayme--to winne
such names and honours as Wil Shakespear, o’ The Glob’ so well did win,
acting our dramas.
“That honour must to earth’s final morn yet follow him, but al fame won
from th’ authorshippe (supposed) of our plays must in good time--after
our owne worke, putting away its vayling disguises, standeth forth as
you (the decipherer) only know it--bee yeelded to us.”
If Mr. Mallock reposes any confidence in his Bacon--according to Mrs.
Gallup--he must at once withdraw his description of Shakespeare as a
“notoriously ill-educated actor.” Bacon himself, in the foregoing,
acknowledges that Will Shakespeare derived a well-won reputation and
honours by acting in his dramas. At the same time Bacon is confident
that the dramas will win for him, as author, “supremest, crowning, and
unfading glory.”
Here, almost at the outset of these cipher revelations, we are met
by a passage, plausible in itself, but which, read in the light of
our knowledge of Bacon’s doubts upon the permanency of the English
language, calls for careful consideration. Bacon rested his fame
upon his Latin writings. He wrote always for the appreciation of
posterity. As he advanced in years, he appears, says Abbott, to have
been more and more impressed with the hopelessness of any expectations
of lasting fame or usefulness based upon English books. He believed
implicitly that posterity would not preserve works written in the
modern languages--“for these modern languages will at one time or other
play the bank-rowtes (bankrupts) with books.” Of his Latin translation
of the _Advancement of Learning_, he said, “It is a book I think will
live, and be a citizen of the world, as English books will not,”
and he predicted that the Latin volume of his _Essays_ would “last
as long as books shall last.” So confident was he that his writings
would achieve immortality, that he dedicated his _Advancement of
Learning_ to the King, in order that the virtues and mental qualities
of his Majesty might be handed down to succeeding ages in “some
solid work, fixed memorial, and immortal monument.” Bacon’s pride in
his work was monumental, his “grasp on futurity” was conceived in a
spirit of “magnificent audacity;” every scrap of his writings was
jealously preserved and robed in the time-resisting garments of a dead
language. Is it conceivable in this magnificent egoist that he should
have displayed such gross carelessness, such wanton unconcern in his
plays that, but for the labours of a couple of actors in collecting
and arranging them, they would have been utterly lost? It is simply
incredible that Bacon should have based his anticipation of immortality
upon plays which for years were tossed about the world in pirated and
mutilated editions, and in many instances, until the issue of the
first folio in 1623, existed only in the form of the actor’s prompt
books. The sixteen plays, in quarto, which were in print in 1616, were
published without the co-operation of the author. They were to win for
their author unfading glory, yet he was at no pains to collect them.
The first folio was printed from the acting versions in use by the
company with which Shakespeare had been associated, and the editorial
duties were undertaken by two of Shakespeare’s friends and fellow
actors, whose motives rather than their literary fitness for the task
call for commendation. It was dedicated to two noblemen, with whom, so
far as we know, Bacon had no social or political intercourse.
[Illustration]
Mr. Theobald considers that Bacon’s “confident assurance of holding a
lasting place in literature,” his anticipation of immortality, could
only have been advanced by the man who voiced the same conviction
in the Shakespeare _Sonnets_. The deduction is based on arbitrary
conjecture, and a limited acquaintance with the literary conceits of
the time. But Shakespeare claimed as his medium of immortality the
language which Bacon predicted could not endure.
“So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see--
So long lives this, and this gives life to Thee,”
wrote Shakespeare. This was English, the purest and the sweetest that
tongue ever uttered, and Bacon was dressing his thoughts in Latin that
they might outlive the language which Shakespeare wrote. Ronsard and
Desportes, in France, and in England, Drayton, Daniel, and, indeed,
all the Elizabethan poets, had made the topic a commonplace. In his
_Apologie for Poetrie_, Sir Philip Sidney wrote that it was the custom
of poets “to tell you that they will make you immortal by their
verses,” and both Shakespeare and Bacon adopted the current conceit
when they referred to the “eternising” faculty of their literary
effusions. It is not claimed by, or for, Bacon that he was the
author of Drayton’s _Idea_ or Daniel’s _Delia_, but if Mr. Theobald’s
style of reasoning is to be taken at his own valuation, the master of
Gorhambury, and none other, was responsible for the poetic output of
both these singers.
_Bacon’s “Sterne and Tragicle History.”_
We are assured by another Baconian student that the Shakespeare plays
were not an end, but merely a means to an end, the end being the
revelation of Bacon’s history, and the composition of further plays
and poems from the material which he had warehoused in the dramas
attributed to Shakespeare and other authors. The initial, and most
important fact which Mrs. Gallup’s deciphered story reveals, is, not
that Francis Bacon was the author of Shakespeare’s plays, but that he
was the legitimate son of Queen Elizabeth, by Robert Dudley, afterwards
Earl of Leicester. The disclosure is so startling, so quaint, so
incredible, and withal so interesting, that the revelation both appeals
to and outrages our credulity. From our knowledge of Elizabeth and
of Bacon, we can more readily believe that the Queen was the mother
of Bacon, than that Bacon was the father of Shakespeare’s plays. At
Gorhambury is to be seen a pair of oil paintings, by Hilliard, of
Elizabeth and Leicester. The pictures are a match in size, style,
and treatment. The doublet in which Leicester is portrayed is of the
same material as that of the gown in which the Queen is represented.
Moreover, they were a present from Elizabeth to Sir Nicholas Bacon, the
foster father of Francis, who signs his cipher revelations, “Francis
First of England,” “Francis Bacon (Rightful) R,” “F.B. or T.” or
“Francis of E.”, as the humour seized him.
The deciphered secret story, the “sterne and tragicle” history of
Bacon’s political wrongs commences in the first edition of Edmund
Spenser’s _Complaints_ (1590 and 1591); but it was not until the
_Faerie Queene_ was published (1596) that he appropriates the
authorship of Spenser’s works. His first care is to establish his claim
to the throne:
“Our name is Fr. Bacon, by adoption, yet it shall be different. Being
of blood roial (for the Queen, our sov’raigne, who married by a private
rite the Earle Leicester--and at a subseque’t time, also, as to make
surer thereby, without pompe, but i’ th’ presence o’ a suitable number
of witnesses, bound herselfe by those hymeneall bands againe--is our
mother, and wee were not base-born, or base-begot), we be Tudor, and
our stile shall be Francis First, in all proper cours of time, th’ King
of our realme.
“Early in our life, othe (oath)--or threat as binding in effect as
othe, we greatly doubt--was made by our wilful parent concerning
succession, and if this cannot bee chang’d, or be not in time
withdrawn, we know not how the kingdome shall be obtain’d. But ’tis
thus seene or shewn that it can bee noe other’s by true desce’t, then
is set down. To Francis First doth th’ crowne, th’ honor of our land
belong....”
[Illustration: GORHAMBURY, A.D. 1568.]
[Illustration: GORHAMBURY, A.D. 1795.]
[Illustration: GORHAMBURY, A.D. 1821.]