as Peele’s or Spenser’s, now as my owne, then againe in th’ name of
authours, so cald, who plac’d workes of mixt sort before a reading
world, prose and poetry. To Robt. Greene did I entruste most of that
work....”
Bacon has limited our speculations upon the extent of his literary
work by definitely mentioning the works which he wrote in a cipher
discovered by Dr. Owen:
“We will enumerate them by their whole titles
From the beginning to the end: William Shakespeare,
Robert Greene, George Peele, and Christopher Marlowe’s
Stage plays; _The Faerie Queen_, _Shepherd’s Calendar_,
And all the works of Edmund Spenser;
_The Anatomy of Melancholy_ of Robert Burton,
_The History of Henry VII._, _The Natural History_,
_The Interpretation of Nature_, _The Great Instauration_,
_Advancement of Learning_, _The De Augmentis Scientiarum_,
_Our Essays_, and all the other works of our own.”
Even when we note that the _Advancement_ and _De Augmentis_ are the
English and Latin versions of the same work--a fact that Dr. Owen
appears to have overlooked--Mr. Theobald must acknowledge that this
represents a very fair literary output, but it does not form the full
list of his works. The names of his cipher or interiour works, are
enumerated by Mrs. Gallup:
“There are five histories as followes: _The Life o’ Elizabeth_, _The
Life of Essex_, _The White Rose o’ Britaine_, _The Life and Death of
Edward Third_, _The Life of Henry th’ Seventh_; five tragedies: _Mary
Queene o’ Scots_, _Robert th’ Earl o’ Essex_ (my late brother), _Robert
th’ Earle o’ Leicester_ (my late father), _Death o’ Marlowe_, _Ann
Bullen_; three comedies: _Seven Wise Men o’ th’ West_, _Solomon th’
Second_, _The Mouse-Trap_.”
_Bacon and “Divine Aide.”_
Bacon himself appears to have been struck with the immensity of his
production, and he cast about for some plausible explanation that
would justify it in the eyes of his twentieth century admirers. Human
endurance and fecundity would, he foresaw, be regarded as unequal to
the strain--Divine assistance alone could make so colossal a task
possible:
“Whosoever may question assertions that tend to shew y’ mankinde
evidences of a Divine thought interfusing th’ human minde, hath but
to prove it by experiment. He would not bee ready to cavil, or laugh
to scorn this assertion, which I may repeate anon, that Divine aide
was given me in my work. I have, at th’ least, accomplished a great
work in fewe yeares, work of such a difficult nature that no one hand
could accomplish, except other than myselfe upheld or directed it.” And
“anon,” he repeats, “surely my hand and braine have but short rest. I
firmly believe it were not in the power of humane beings to do anie
more than I have done, yet I am but partlie satisfied.”
These excerpts, which have been given at some length, disclose not
only the exact nature and extent of the alleged claims, but the
style and manner in which they are couched. There is nothing of the
literary polish and elegance in the cipher writing which we find in
all of Bacon’s acknowledged works, but taking into consideration the
difficulties of dropping the cipher into the books in which it is said
to appear, and the even greater difficulties of interpreting it, it
seems manifestly unfair to dismiss the entire thing as an imposture on
that account. Mr. Mallock’s contention is that Mrs. Gallup’s theory is
sufficiently plausible to merit it an unprejudiced investigation. If
the cipher proves to be altogether false, the manner in which it has
been elaborated will, Mr. Mallock submits, form a curious incident in
literary history; while should it prove true, it will be more curious
still. Apart from the cipher, Mr. Sinnett declares, there are floods of
reasons for disbelieving that Shakespeare could have written the plays.
Mr. Sinnett, and the other leaders of the Baconian cult, do not appear
to see that if their theory is to outlast the present controversy, the
cipher business must be thrown overboard forthwith.
As Mr. William Archer has said with reference to these ciphers, the
point at issue is as plain as a pike-staff. We are not concerned, while
we deal with this phase of the subject, in the verbal parallels between
Shakespeare’s writings and those of Bacon, nor with the vehemently
expressed conviction of students and scholars that Bacon did not write
_Shakespeare_. All we desire to know is whether the ciphers which
Mrs. Gallup and Dr. Owen contend are contained in certain books (the
_First Folio Shakespeare_ among others) really exist. Mr. Mallock says
that until an examination by experts in typography has negatived this
theory, he is inclined to believe it. His position is unassailable.
Nothing further can be argued or asserted (with conviction) until a
committee of experts have made their report. If they declare that the
cipher has no foundation in fact, the students who have carefully
perused Mrs. Gallup’s great work--great invention it will then be--and
Dr. Owen’s many volumes of badly-constructed, ridiculous plays and
poems, will give both Mrs. Gallup and Dr. Owen credit for a veritable
triumph of misapplied energy and endurance--for having conceived a
masterpiece of diabolical inventiveness, for having revealed a perfect
genius for the perpetration of literary fraud.
Personally, I do not expect to learn that they will be convicted of
the possession of such an exceptional gift of deception. Their labours
smack of honesty; their conclusions betray an ingenuous credulity that
calls for respect. It will, indeed, surprise most people who have made
a study of their works, if it is proved that the cipher they claim to
have discovered, and manipulated with such marvellous results, is a
myth. But assuming that a properly-constituted committee did declare
that the cipher was to be found in all the books indicated, and that
the investigation corroborated the revelations made by Mrs. Gallup and
Dr. Owen, there would still remain the question as to who concealed the
statements in the different volumes, and whether there is any truth in
them.
I think, nay I claim, that in the event of the cipher being verified,
and the translations being confirmed, that (_a_) The cipher could have
been introduced by no other man than Bacon; and that (_b_) The whole
of the statements found therein are false from beginning to end. In a
searching investigation into the cipher undertaken by a correspondent
of the _Times_, a single page of the cipher was tested, but the test is
not, as the _Times_ claims for it, entirely convincing. The method of
investigation employed is excellent. A greatly enlarged photograph is
taken of a page from the _Epistle Dedicatory_ to the _Ruine of Time_ in
the 1591 edition of Spenser’s _Complaints_, and the “A” and “B” letters
which Mrs. Gallup herself assigns to the parts respectively are cut
out and arranged in parallel columns. When these two sets of letters
are seen side by side it would, indeed, be difficult for the untrained
eye to distinguish any marks of dissimilarity between them. But as Mr.
Mallock tells us, “although even the naked eye can be soon trained to
perceive that in many cases the letters belong to different founts,
yet these differences are of so minute a kind that in other cases they
allude the eye without the aid of a magnifying glass; and even with
the aid of a magnifying glass, the eye of the amateur, at all events,
remains doubtful, and unable to assign the letters to this alphabet
or to that.” The correspondent of the _Times_ leads us to infer that
he has been unable to verify the existence of the cipher in the page
he has tested, and Mr. Lee has declared, without hesitation, that the
cipher does not exist in the Shakespeare First Folio. On the other
hand, Mr. Mallock had little difficulty in distinguishing the different
founts in the facsimiles from the _Novum Organum_ and Spenser’s
_Complaints_. He experimented with a large number of passages, and
comparing his interpretation with that of Mrs. Gallup, he found that
it coincided with hers, sometimes in four cases out of seven, and not
infrequently in five. “It appears to me,” Mr. Mallock writes, “to
be almost inconceivable that multiplied coincidences such as these
can be the work of chance, or that they can originate otherwise than
in the fact that in these pages at all events--the preface to the
_Novum Organum_, printed in 1620, and in the Dedication of Spenser’s
_Complaints_, printed in 1591--a bi-literal cipher exists, in both
cases the work of Bacon; and if such a cipher really exists here, the
probabilities are overwhelming that Mrs. Gallup is right, and that we
shall find it existing in the first folio of Shakespeare also.”
_Shakespeare and Bacon in Collaboration._
Bacon’s ciphers, which were, according to the evidence adduced from the
bi-literal, six in number, grew one out of the other. Bacon evidently
expected the bi-literal to be discovered first, for in this cipher he
explains the word-cipher, in which his hidden, or “interiour” works are
concealed. Dr. Owen discovered this word-cipher without the aid of the
bi-literal, and by following its directions he has deciphered over a
thousand pages of blank verse, comprising _Letters to the Decipherer_,
_A Description of Queen Elizabeth_, a poem entitled _The Spanish
Armada_, _An Account of Bacon’s Life in France_, and several plays. In
the _Epistle to the Decipherer_, Bacon says, “For thirty-three years
have we gone in travail, with these, the children of our wit,” and
proceeds to adjure the unknown to
“Sware by my sword never to speak of this
That you have found while we do live;”
and again--
“Sweare never to publish that we conceal under the names
Of others our own till we are dead,
Sweare never to reveal the secret cipher words
That guide your steps from part to part,
Nor how it is gathered, joined or put together,
Till we be dead, so help you God!”
The chief point to be noted about these cipher stories, biographies
and plays is that they are built up of quotations from the works of
all the authors whose writings Bacon claims to be his own. Dr. Owen
asks us, in all seriousness, to believe that Bacon composed the plays
of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Peel, and Greene, and the poems by Spenser,
as they appear in the cipher translation, and that he subsequently
“decomposed and composed them again” for circulation in his own day,
under the names of the various authors who acted as his masques. “When
deciphered and replaced in their original form,” Dr. Owen asserts,
“they _mean something_ which they _do not_ in the plays.” Such a
statement, as anyone can prove by turning to these curious deciphered
books, is both fallacious and absurd.
Let us see what these passages which _mean nothing_ in the plays mean
in the cipher stories. The pledge which Hamlet imposes upon Horatio and
Marcellus after the interview with the ghost is a serviceable case in
point. Hamlet’s words are almost too familiar to need repeating:
“So help you mercy, that how strange
Or odd soe’er I bear myself--
As I, perchance, hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on--
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With arms encumber’d thus, or this head shake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As ‘Well, well, we know;’--or ‘We could, and if we would;’
Or ‘If we list to speak;’--or, ‘There be, an if they might:’--
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me;--This not to do,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you,
Swear.”
No one can question the fitness and perfect appropriateness of the
foregoing passage in _Hamlet_, but it is doubtful if anybody, other
than Dr. Owen, will recognise their cogency when they are addressed by
Bacon to his unknown decipherer.
Bacon declares that Bottom’s recital of his dream, which commences,
“The eye of man hath not heard,
The ear of man hath not seen,”
is
“Simply and plainly, the ingenious means of writing
Without creating suspicion;”
and he goes on to explain that the decipherer can, by changing
“The words from one end to another, make it read aright.”
Bacon heartens his timorous decipherer with the words, “Be thou not,
therefore, afraid of greatness”--the greatness that he will attain as
the reward of his decipherations. “Some,” he assures the unknown, in
the memorable words, “have greatness thrust upon them,” and he further
reminds him that
“There is a tide in the affairs of man,
Which taken at the flood,
Leads on to glorious fortune.”
“Nature and fortune joined to make you great,” Bacon tells his
decipherer, from the text of _King John_, and one can almost imagine
Dr. Owen blushing with conscious pride, as he translated this borrowed
gem. He implores the modest unknown to free his (Bacon’s) name from the
disgraceful part he had in the death of the Earl of Essex, and cries--
“Oh, if I could
I would make a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon your soul within the house....
You should not rest
Between the elements of earth and air,
But you should pity me----”
Words full of passion and beautiful imagery when spoken by Viola, on
behalf of Orsino, to the haughty and unresponsive Lady Olivia, but
sheer drivel when taken as Bacon’s exhortation to the discover of his
wrongs.
But one travels in this precious cipher from foolishness to
foolishness--from destruction to damnation, in quick, long strides. In
the _Spanish Armada_, Elizabeth receives and answers the ambassadors of
the King of Spain in the words that Henry V. employs in parley with the
messengers of the Dauphin. She proclaims her physical superiority to
her sister in the braggart language of Faulconbridge before King John
beginning
“An’ if my brother had my shape....
If my legs were two such riding rods,”
and the next dozen pages are a literal transcription of the first act
of _Henry V._ A hundred pages further on we are introduced to Bacon’s
brother Anthony. The brothers meet during the progress of a storm--the
storm that is described in Act I. Sc. III. of _Julius Cæsar_. The scene
is placed in Dover, and Bacon who
“... never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire,”
happened in the streets upon
“A common slave,” who
“Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn
Like twenty torches joined; and yet his hand,
Not sensible of fire, remained unscorched.
Against the _Citadell_ I met a lion,
Who glared upon me, and went surly by
Without annoying me.”
Bacon, in his normal moods, employs the royal style of “we” and “us”
when referring to himself, but in moments of agitation, when, for
instance, slaves and lions promenade the thoroughfares of Dover, he
drops, instinctively, like a Scotchman into his native manner. “Whilst
walking thus,” he continues:
“Submitting me unto the hideous night,
And bared my bosom to the thunderstone,”
“I met foster-brother Anthony,” who said,
“O Francis, this disturbed city is not to walk in,
Who ever knew the heavens menace so?...
Let’s to an inn.”
It might be thought that the foregoing instances have been carefully
sought out and employed to italicise the foolishness of Dr. Owen’s
statement that the plays were first composed in this form, and that in
this form alone is their true meaning and relevancy fully demonstrated.
Such, however, is far from being the fact. If the reader will take the
trouble to wade through the mass of incoherent commonplace, illuminated
as it is by passages of Shakespeare’s brilliant wit and inspired poesy
which make up these five volumes, he will find scores upon scores of
such meaningless and inopportune mis-quotations.
[Illustration: THE BUST OF SHAKESPEARE AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON.]
Dr. Owen himself concedes that “some parts of the deciphered
material”--viz., those parts which have not their origin in
Shakespeare, Spenser, and the works of the other masques--“are not
equal in literary power, poetic thought, nor artistic construction
to the well-known efforts of Shakespeare,” but he accounts for this
inequality on the ground that “the necessities for concealment were
so great as to make the difficulties of the cipher serious, and
artistic re-construction impossible.” If it be granted, for the sake
of argument, that the quotations from the plays, which appear in these
“interiour” works, were from the pen of Shakespeare, and that the
original parts are the product of Bacon, then Spedding’s contention
that there are not “five lines together to be found in Bacon which
could be mistaken for Shakespeare, or five lines in Shakespeare which
could be mistaken for Bacon, by one who was familiar with their several
styles, and practised in such observations,” is proved up to the hilt.
Indeed, and without any such concession being allowed, it is impossible
to compare the original lines with the pirated passages in these
cipher books, and accept the two as the work of the same hand. Dr.
Owen, who is evidently neither “familiar with the several styles” of
Shakespeare and Bacon, nor “practised in such observations,” invites
his readers “to set aside the different names upon the title pages, and
ask themselves whether two or more men could have written so exactly
alike.” His conclusions are equally destitute of logic or critical
acumen: “Either Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare were the same
man, at least so far as the writings are concerned; or else, for once
in the history of mankind, two men, absolutely dissimilar in birth, in
education, and in bringing up, had the same thoughts, used the same
words, piled up the same ideas, wrote upon the same subjects, and
thought, wrote, talked, and dreamed absolutely alike.” It is true that
Shakespeare, in cipher, bears an amazing likeness to Shakespeare in the
plays, but if the Shakespeare in the cipher is to be compared with the
Bacon either here or in his recognised works, Dr. Owen’s conclusions
are palpably absurd.
Dr. Owen promises still further cipher revelations of the same
startling nature, which will explain how Bacon succeeded in using his
various masques during the lifetime of the alleged authors. “In the
decipherings which will appear in their regular order,” he says, “I
have found an epitome of the lives of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Green (he
is probably referring to Greene), Burton, Peele and Spenser ... the
circumstances under which they were employed, and the sums of money
paid to each for the use of his name. Anthony Bacon, the foster-brother
of Francis, was the unknown owner of the Globe Theatre. Shakespeare,
while uneducated, possessed a shrewd wit, and some talent as an actor.
He received, as a bribe, a share in the proceeds of the theatre,
and was the reputed manager. Bacon, with his Court education and
aristocratic associations, could not be known as the author of plays or
the associate of play actors, and put Shakespeare forward as the mask
which covered his greatest work.”
_The Tragical Historie of our Late Brother Robert, Earl of Essex._
Even at the risk of wearying my readers, it is necessary for the
purposes of this book, to make a critical inspection of one of the
“interiour” plays which Dr. Owen has deciphered from many of the
principal works of the Elizabethan-Jacobean era. As all these hidden
plays are derived from the same source--the writings of Shakespeare,
Spenser, Greene, Marlowe, Peele, and Burton--the choice of a subject
for consideration would appear to be immaterial. _The Tragedy of Mary
Queen of Scots_, a “remarkable production,” according to Dr. Owen,
and one that “has been pronounced a masterpiece,” would seem to have
the first claim upon our attention. The selection of “_The Tragical
Historie of our late brother Robert, Earl of Essex_, by the author
of _Hamlet_, _Richard III._, _Othello_, &c.,” has been decided upon,
however; because, in the first place, it is a later production, and in
the second, it is declared by Dr. Owen to bear “the impress of greater
skill, more experience, and far more intense personal feeling.” In the
Publisher’s Note, we are informed that it is “one of the marvels of
literature,” and “a work of the most thrilling interest and historical
value.” The prologue, which takes the form of a soliloquy, embodies
“the deepest philosophy concerning things natural and spiritual,
temporal and eternal.” It can, moreover, “only be measured from the
point of view of its author, Francis Bacon.” This “wonderful prologue,”
which comprises some 200 lines of blank verse, is really a wonder of
misapplied misappropriation. It opens with the Seven Ages of Man, to
which Bacon adds an eighth, “which rounds out and finishes the story,
with the “exit” from human view of all that is mortal:
“Last scene of all
That ends this strange eventful history,
The old man dies; and on the shoulders of his brethren,
To the heavy knolled bells, is borne
In love and sacred pity, through the gates
Of the holy edifice of stone, where, all in white,
The goodly vicar meets them and doth say:--
‘I am the resurrection and the life;’
And then doth mount the pulpit stairs and doth begin:--
‘O Lord, have mercy on us wretched sinners!’
The people answering cry as with one voice,
‘O Lord, have mercy on us wretched sinners!’
Then through the narrow winding churchway paths,
With weary task foredone, under the shade
Of melancholy boughs gently set down
Their venerable burden, and from the presence
Of the sun they lower him into the tomb.”
The “eighth” age, it will be observed, is not an age at all, but a
funeral. To this striking addition to one of Shakespeare’s best known
passages, Bacon tacks on the whole of Hamlet’s soliloquy, “To be or not
to be,” commencing with “To sleep, perchance to dream: ay, there’s the
rub;” helps himself to a pinch of Hamlet’s lines, “Oh, that this too
solid flesh would melt,” acknowledges in the language of the King that
“Our offence is rank, it smells to Heaven!” promises that
... “When our younger brothers’ play is done,
We’ll play a comedy, my lord, wherein
The players that come forth, will to the life present
The pliant men that we as masks employ;”
borrows from Hamlet’s advice to the players, and so--
“The curtain’s drawn. Begin.”
The entire mosaic is the most unintelligible, inept, and exasperating
mixture of pathos, bathos, and sheer drivel that has ever been claimed
as the work of a learned, sane man.
The first act opens outside the Queen’s hunting lodge. Elizabeth
alludes to her hounds in the lines allotted by Shakespeare to Theseus
(_A Midsummer Night’s Dream_), and has an interview with the Earl of
Essex, who comes to bring news of the Irish rising; and Bacon, who
remains mute during the entire scene. In the second scene, Essex and
Mr. Secretary Cecil come to open rupture in the presence of the Queen.
Cecil cries, in Shylock’s words,
“Thou call’st me a dog before thou hast a cause,
But since I am a dog, beware my fangs;”
and Essex retorts, in the prayer of Richard II.,
“Now put it, _heaven_, in his physician’s mind
To help him to his grave immediately!
The lining of his coffers shall make coats
To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars.”
In the mouth of King Richard II., these words had some meaning, for
it was the King’s intention to seize the possessions of old John of
Gaunt after his demise, and Gaunt was on his death-bed. But Cecil is
in excellent good health, and if he were likely to die not a shilling
of his personalty would have reverted to the crown. If this was the
original form in which Bacon composed the plays of Shakespeare, he was
undoubtedly mad.
The Queen then administers to Essex the historical box on the ear,
which so enrages the choleric nobleman that he “essays to draw his
sword,” and is summarily dismissed by the Queen, who, immediately
repenting upon the reflection,
“How bravely did he brave me in my seat,
Methought he bore him here as doth a lion,”
despatches Cecil to follow and bring him back. Essex boxes Cecil’s
ear, refuses to listen to his wife’s reproof, and having sent for his
brother, Francis Bacon (who greets him with
“Brother, to fall from heaven unto hell,
To be cubbed up upon a sudden,
Will kill you”----)
dismisses the smug, but “rightful Prince of Wales,” and soliloquises--