“Jonson, it appears” (on what authority?), “was Bacon’s guest at
Gorhambury, and was one of those good ‘pens,’” of whom Bacon speaks as
assisting him in the translation of some of his books into Latin.
Bacon, writing to Toby Mathew, June 26, 1623, mentions the help of “some
good pens,” Ben Jonson he does not mention. But Judge Webb does. “It is
an undoubted fact,” says Judge Webb, “that the Latin of the _De
Augmentis_, which was published in 1623, was the work of Jonson.” {219b}
To whom Mr. Collins replies, “There is not a particle of evidence that
Jonson gave to Bacon the smallest assistance in translating any of his
works into Latin.” {219c}
_Très bien_, on Judge Webb’s assurance the person for whom Ben was
working, in 1623, was Bacon. Meanwhile, Mr. Greenwood’s “supposing” is
“that there was such an author” (of transcendent genius, and so on), who
“may have entrusted the editing of his collected plays” to some “good
pen,” who was at the time “doing work for him,” and “why not to”—Ben
Jonson. {220a} Now the man for whom Ben, in 1623, was “doing work”—was
BACON,—so Judge Webb says. {220b}
Therefore, by this hypothesis of Mr. Greenwood, {220c} the Great Unknown
was Bacon,—just the hypothesis of the common Baconian.
Is my reasoning erroneous? Is the “supposing” suggested by Mr. Greenwood
{220d} any other than that of Miss Delia Bacon, and Judge Webb? True,
Mr. Greenwood’s Baconian “supposing” is only a working hypothesis: not a
confirmed belief. But it is useful to his argument (see “Ben Jonson and
Shakespeare”) when he wants to explain away Ben’s evidence, in his verses
in the Folio, to the Stratford actor as the Author.
Mr. Greenwood writes, in the first page of his Preface: “It is no part of
my plan or intention to defend that theory,” “the Baconian theory.”
Apparently it pops out contrary to the intention of Mr. Greenwood. But
pop out it does: at least I can find no flaw in the reasoning of my
detection of Bacon: I see no way out of it except this: after
recapitulating what is said about Ben as one of Bacon’s “good pens” with
other details, Mr. Greenwood says, “But no doubt that way madness lies!”
{221a} Ah no! not madness, no, but Baconism “lies that way.” However,
“let it be granted” (as Euclid says in his sportsmanlike way) that Mr.
Greenwood by no means thinks that his “concealed poet” is Bacon—only some
one similar and similarly situated and still active in 1623, and occupied
with other business than supervising a collected edition of plays written
under his “_nom de plume_” of Shakespeare. Bacon, too, was busy, with
supervising, or toiling at the Latin translation of his scientific works,
and Ben (according to Judge Webb) was busy in turning the _Advancement of
Learning_ into Latin prose. Mr. Greenwood quotes, without reference,
Archbishop Tenison as saying that Ben helped Bacon in doing his works
into Latin. {221b} Tenison is a very late witness. The prophetic soul
of Bacon did not quite trust English to last as long as Latin, or he
thought Latin, the _lingua franca_ of Europe in his day, more easily
accessible to foreign students, as, of course, it was. Thus Bacon was
very busy; so was Ben. The sad consequence of Ben’s business, perhaps,
is that the editing of the Folio is notoriously bad; whether Ben were the
Editor or not, it is infamously bad.
Conceivably Mr. Greenwood is of the same opinion. He says, “It stands
admitted that a very large part of that volume” (the Folio) “consists of
work that is not ‘Shakespeare’s’ at all.”
How strange, if Ben edited it for the Great Unknown—who knew, if any
human being knew, what work was “Shakespeare’s”! On Mr. Greenwood’s
hypothesis, {222a} or “supposing,” the Unknown Author “may well have
conceived the idea of publishing a collected edition of the plays which
had been written” (not “published,” _written_) “under the name of
Shakespeare, and, being himself busy with other matters, he may have
entrusted the business to” some “good pen,” “and why not to”—Ben.
Nevertheless “a very large part of that volume consists of work that is
not ‘Shakespeare’s’ at all.” {222b} How did this occur? The book {222c}
is “that very doubtful ‘canon.’” How, if “Shakespeare’s” man edited it
for “Shakespeare”? Did “Shakespeare” not care what stuff was placed
under his immortal “_nom de plume_”?
It is not my fault if I think that Mr. Greenwood’s hypotheses {222d}—the
genuine “Shakespeare” either revised his own works, or put Ben on the
editorial task—are absolutely contradicted by his statements in another
part of his book. {222e} For the genuine “Shakespeare” knew what plays
he had written, knew what he could honestly put forth as his own, as
“Shakespeare’s.” Or, if he placed the task of editing in Ben’s hands, he
must have told Ben what plays were of his own making. In either case the
Folio would contain these, and no others. But—“the _plat
contraire_,”—the very reverse,—is stated by Mr. Greenwood. “It stands
admitted that a very large portion of that volume” (the Folio) “consists
of work that is not ‘Shakespeare’s’” (is not Bacon’s, or the other man’s)
“at all.” {223a} Then away fly the hypotheses {223b} that the
auto-Shakespeare, or that Ben, employed by the auto-Shakespeare
(apparently Bacon) revised, edited, and prepared for publication the
auto-Shakespearean plays. For Mr. Greenwood “has already dealt with
_Titus_ (_Andronicus_) and _Henry VI_,” {223c} and proved them not to be
auto-Shakespearean—and he adds “there are many other plays in that very
doubtful ‘canon’” (the Folio) “which, by universal admission, contain
much non-Shakespearean composition.” {223d} Perhaps! but if so the two
hypotheses, {223e} that either the genuine Shakespeare {223f} revised
(“is it not a more natural solution that ‘Shakespeare’ himself revised
his works for publication, and that some part, at any rate, of this
revision {223g} was done after 1616 and before 1623?”), or {223h} that he
gave Ben (who was working, by the conjecture, for Bacon) the task of
editing the Folio,—are annihilated. For neither the auto-Shakespeare (if
honest), nor Ben (if sober), could have stuffed the Folio full of
non-Shakespearean work,—including four “non-Shakespearean” plays,—nor
could the Folio be “that very doubtful canon.” {224a} Again, if either
the auto-Shakespeare or Ben following his instructions, were Editor,
neither could have, as the Folio Editor had “evidently no little doubt
about” _Troilus and Cressida_. {224b}
Neither Ben, nor the actual Simon Pure, the author, the auto-Shakespeare,
could fail to know the truth about _Trodus and Cressida_. But the Editor
{224c} did _not_ know the truth, the whole canon is “doubtful.”
Therefore the hypothesis, the “supposing,” that the actual author did the
revising, {224d} and the other hypothesis that he gave Ben the work,
{224e} seem to me wholly impossible. But Mr. Greenwood needs the
“supposings” of pp. 290, 293; and as he rejects _Titus Andronicus_ and
_Henry VI_ (both in the Folio), he also needs the contradictory views of
pp. 351, 358. On which set of supposings and averments does he stand to
win?
Perhaps he thinks to find a way out of what appears to me to be a dilemma
in the following fashion: He will not accept _Titus Andronicus_ and
_Henry VI_, though both are in the Folio, as the work of _his_
“Shakespeare,” his Unknown, the Bacon of the Baconians. Well, we ask, if
your Unknown, or Bacon, or Ben,—instructed by Bacon, or by the
Unknown,—edited the Folio, how could any one of the three insert _Titus_,
and _Henry VI_, and be “in no little doubt about” _Troilus and Cressida_?
Bacon, or the Unknown, or the Editor employed by either, knew perfectly
well which plays either man could honestly claim as his own work, done
under the “_nom de plume_” of “William Shakespeare” (with or without the
hyphen). Yet the Editor of the Folio does not know—and Mr. Greenwood
does know—_Henry VI_ and _Titus_ are “wrong ones.”
Mr. Greenwood’s way out, if I follow him, is this: {225a} “Judge
Stotsenburg asks, ‘Who wrote _The Taming of a Shrew_ printed in 1594, and
who wrote _Titus Andronicus_, _Henry VI_, or _King Lear_ referred to in
the Diary?’” (Henslowe’s). The Judge continues: “Neither Collier nor any
of the Shaxper commentators make (_sic_) any claim to their authorship in
behalf of William Shaxper. Since these plays have the same names as
those included in the Folio of 1623 the presumption is that they are the
same plays until the contrary is shown. Of course it may be shown,
either that those in the Folio are entirely different except in name, or
that these plays were revised, improved, and dressed by some one whom
they” (who?) “called Shakespeare.”
Mr. Greenwood says, “My own conviction is that . . . these plays were
‘revised, improved, and dressed by some one whom they called
Shakespeare.’” {226a} (Whom _who_ called Shakespeare?) In that case
these plays,—say _Titus Andronicus_ and _Henry VI_, Part 1,—which Mr.
Greenwood denies to _his_ “Shakespeare” were just as much _his_
Shakespeare’s plays as any other plays (and there are several), which
_his_ Shakespeare “revised, improved, and dressed.” Yet _his_
Shakespeare is _not_ author of _Henry VI_, {226b} not the author of
_Titus Andronicus_. {226c} “Mr. Anders,” writes Mr. Greenwood, “makes
what I think to be a great error in citing _Henry VI_ and _Titus_ as
genuine plays of Shakespeare.” {226d}
He hammers at this denial in nineteen references in his Index to _Titus
Andronicus_. Yet Ben, or Bacon, or the Unknown thought that these plays
_were_ “genuine plays” of “Shakespeare,” the concealed author—Bacon or
Mr. Greenwood’s man. It appears that the immense poet who used the “_nom
de plume_” of “Shakespeare” did not know the plays of which he could
rightfully call himself the author; that (not foreseeing Mr. Greenwood’s
constantly repeated objections) he boldly annexed four plays, or two
certainly, which Mr. Greenwood denies to him, and another about which
“the Folio Editor was in no little doubt.”
Finally, {227a} Mr. Greenwood is “convinced,” “it is my conviction” that
some plays which he often denies to his “Shakespeare” were “revised,
improved, and dressed by some one whom they called Shakespeare.” That
some one, if he edited or caused to be edited the Folio, thought that his
revision, improvement, and dressing up of the plays gave him a right to
claim their authorship—and Mr. Greenwood, a dozen times and more, denies
to him their authorship.
One is seriously puzzled to discover the critic’s meaning. _The Taming
of a Shrew_, _Titus_, _Henry VI_, and _King Lear_, referred to in
Henslowe’s “Diary,” are not “Shakespearean,” we are repeatedly told. But
“my own conviction is that . . . ” these plays were “revised, improved,
and dressed by some one whom they called Shakespeare.” But to be
revised, improved, and dressed by some one whom they called Shakespeare,
is to be as truly “Shakespearean” work as is any play so handled “by
Shakespeare.” Thus the plays mentioned are as truly “Shakespearean” as
any others in which “Shakespeare” worked on an earlier canvas, and also
_Titus_ “is not _Shakespearean_ at all.” Mr. Greenwood, I repeat,
constantly denies the “Shakespearean” character to _Titus_ and _Henry
VI_. “The conclusion of the whole matter is that _Titus_ and _The
Trilogy of Henry VI_ are not the work of Shakespeare: that his hand is
probably not to be found at all in _Titus_, and only once or twice, if at
all, in _Henry VI_, Part I, but that he it probably was who altered and
remodelled the two parts of the old _Contention of the Houses of York and
Lancaster_, thereby producing _Henry VI_, Parts II and III.” {228a}
Yet {228b} _Titus_ and _Henry VI_ appear as “revised, improved, and
dressed” by the mysterious “some one whom they called Shakespeare.” If
Mr. Greenwood’s conclusion {228c} be correct, “Shakespeare” had no right
to place _Henry VI_, Part I, and _Titus_ in his Folio. If his
“conviction” {228d} be correct, Shakespeare had as good a right to them
as to any of the plays which he revised, and improved, and dressed. They
_must_ be “Shakespearean” if Mr. Greenwood is right {228e} in his
suggestion that “Shakespeare” either revised his works for publication
between 1616 and 1623, or set his man, Ben Jonson, upon that business.
Yet neither one nor the other knew what to make of _Troilus and
Cressida_. “The Folio Editor had, evidently, no little doubt about that
play.” {228f}
So neither “Shakespeare” nor Ben, instructed by him, can have been “the
Folio Editor.” Consequently Mr. Greenwood must abandon his suggestion
that either man was the Editor, and may return to his rejection of
_Titus_ and _Henry VI_, Part I. But he clings to it. He finds in
Henslowe’s Diary “references to, and records of the writing of, such
plays” as, among others, _Titus Andronicus_, and _Henry VI_. {229a}
Mr. Greenwood, after rejecting a theory of some one, says, “Far more
likely does it appear that there was a great man of the time whose genius
was capable of ‘transforming dross into gold,’ who took these plays, and,
in great part, rewrote and revised them, leaving sometimes more, and
sometimes less of the original work; and that so rewritten, revised, and
transformed they appeared as the plays of ‘Shake-speare.’” {229b}
This statement is made {229c} about “these plays,” including _Titus
Andronicus_ and _Henry VI_, while {229d} “_Titus_ and the _Trilogy of
Henry VI_ are not the work of Shakespeare . . . his hand is probably not
to be found at all in _Titus_, and only once or twice in _Henry VI_, Part
I,” though he probably made Parts II and III out of older plays.
I do not know where to have the critic. If _Henry VI_, Part I, and
_Titus_ are in no sense by “Shakespeare,” then neither “Shakespeare” nor
Ben for him edited or had anything to do with the editing of the Folio.
If either or both had to do with the editing, as the critic suggests,
then he is wrong in denying Shakespearean origin to _Titus_ and _Henry
VI_, Part I.
Of course one sees a way out of the dilemma for the great
auto-Shakespeare himself, who, by one hypothesis, handed over the editing
of his plays to Ben (_he_, by Mr. Greenwood’s “supposing,” was deviling
at literary jobs for Bacon). The auto-Shakespeare merely tells Ben to
edit his plays, and never even gives him a list of them. Then Ben brings
him the Folio, and the author looks at the list of Plays.
“Mr. Jonson,” he says, “I have hitherto held thee for an honest scholar
and a deserving man in the quality thou dost profess. But thou hast
brought me a maimed and deformed printed copy of that which I did write
for my own recreation, not wishful to be known for so light a thing as a
poet. Moreover, thou hast placed among these my trifles, four plays to
which I never put a finger, and others in which I had no more than a
thumb. The Seneschal, Mr. Jonson, will pay thee what is due to thee; thy
fardels shall be sent whithersoever thou wilt, and, Mary! Mr. Jonson, I
bid thee never more be officer of mine.”
This painful discourse must have been held at Gorhambury,—if Ben edited
the Folio—for Francis.
It is manifest, I hope, that about the Folio Mr. Greenwood speaks with
two voices, and these very discordant. It is also manifest that, whoever
wrote the plays left his materials in deep neglect, and that, when they
were collected, some one gathered them up in extreme disorder. It is
extraordinary that the Baconians and Mr. Greenwood do not see the fallacy
of their own reasoning in this matter of the Folio. They constantly
ridicule the old view that the actor, Will Shakspere (if, by miracle, he
were the author of the plays), could have left them to take their
fortunes. They are asked, what did other playwrights do in that age?
They often parted with their whole copyright to the actors of this or
that company, or to Henslowe. The new owners could alter the plays at
will, and were notoriously anxious to keep them out of print, lest other
companies should act them. As Mr. Greenwood writes, {231a} “Such, we are
told, was the universal custom with dramatists of the day; they ‘kept no
copies’ of their plays, and thought no more about them. It will, I
suppose, be set down to fanaticism that I should doubt the truth of this
proposition, that I doubt if it be consonant with the known facts of
human nature.” But whom, except Jonson, does Mr. Greenwood find editing
and publishing his plays? Beaumont, Fletcher, Heywood? No!
If the Great Unknown were dead in 1623, his negligence was as bad as
Will’s. If he were alive and revised his own work for publication,
{231b} he did it as the office cat might have done it in hours of play.
If, on the other side, he handed the editorial task over to Ben, {232a}
then he did not even give Ben a list of his genuine works. Mr. Greenwood
cites the case of Ben Jonson, a notorious and, I think, solitary
exception. Ben was and often proclaimed himself to be essentially a
scholar. He took as much pains in prefacing, editing, and annotating his
plays, as he would have taken had the texts been those of Greek
tragedians.
Finally, all Baconians cry out against the sottish behaviour of the
actor, Will, if being really the author of the plays, he did not bestir
himself, and bring them out in a collected edition. Yet no English
dramatist ventured on doing such a thing, till Ben thus collected his
“works” (and was laughed at) in 1616. The example might have encouraged
Will to be up and doing, but he died early in 1616. If Will were _not_
the author, what care was Bacon, or the Unknown, taking of his many
manuscript plays, and for the proper editing of those which had appeared
separately in pamphlets? As indolent and casual as Will, the great
Author, Bacon or another, left the plays to take their chances. Mr.
Greenwood says that “_if the author_” (Bacon or somebody very like him)
“_had been careless about keeping copies of his manuscripts_ . . . ”
{232b} What an “if” in the case of the great Author! This gross
neglect, infamous in Will, may thus have been practised by the Great
Unknown himself.
In 1911 Mr. Greenwood writes, “There is overwhelming authority for the
view that _Titus Andronicus_ is not _Shakespearean_ at all.” {233a} In
that case, neither Bacon, nor the Unknown, nor Ben, acting for either,
can have been the person who put _Titus_ into the Folio.
XII
BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE
THE evidence of Ben Jonson to the identity of Shakespeare the author with
Shakspere the actor, is “the strength of the Stratfordian faith,” says
Mr. Greenwood. “But I think it will be admitted that the various
Jonsonian utterances with regard to ‘Shakespeare’ are by no means easy to
reconcile one with the other.” {237a}
It is difficult to reply briefly to Mr. Greenwood’s forty-seven pages
about the evidence of Jonson. But, first, whenever in written words or
in reported conversation, Ben speaks of Shakespeare by name, he speaks of
his _works_: in 1619 to Drummond of Hawthornden; in 1623 in commendatory
verses to the Folio; while, about 1630, probably, in his posthumously
published _Discourses_, he writes on Shakespeare as the friend and
“fellow” of the players, on Shakespeare as his own friend, and as a
dramatist. On each of these three occasions, Ben’s _tone_ varies. In
1619 he said no more to Drummond of Hawthornden (apparently on two
separate occasions) than that Shakespeare “lacked art,” and made the
mistake about a wreck on the sea-coast of Bohemia.
In 1619, Ben spoke gruffly and briefly of Shakespeare, as to Drummond he
also spoke disparagingly of Beaumont, whom he had panegyrised in an
epigram in his own folio of 1616, and was again to praise in the
commendatory verses in the Folio. He spoke still more harshly of
Drayton, whom in 1616 he had compared to Homer, Virgil, Theocritus, and
Tyræus! He told an unkind anecdote of Marston, with whom he had first
quarrelled and then made friends, collaborating with him in a play; and
very generously and to his great peril, sharing his imprisonment. To
Drummond, Jonson merely said that he “beat Marston and took away his
pistol.” Of Sir John Beaumont, brother of the dramatist, Ben had written
a most hyperbolical eulogy in verse; luckily for Sir John, to Drummond
Ben did not speak of him. Such was Ben, in panegyric verse hyperbolical;
in conversation “a despiser of others, and praiser of himself.” Compare
Ben’s three remarks about Donne, all made to Drummond. Donne deserved
hanging for breaking metre; Donne would perish for not being understood:
and Donne was in some points the first of living poets.
Mr. Greenwood’s effort to disable Jonson’s evidence rests on the
contradictions in his estimates of Shakespeare’s poetry, in notices
scattered through some thirty years. Jonson, it is argued, cannot on
each occasion mean Will. He must now mean Will, now the Great Unknown,
and now—both at once. Yet I have proved that Ben was the least
consistent of critics, all depended on the occasion, and on his humour at
the moment. This is a commonplace of literary history. The Baconians do
not know it; Mr. Greenwood, if he knows it, ignores it, and bases his
argument on facts which may be unknown to his readers. We have noted
Ben’s words of 1619, and touched on his panegyric of 1623. Thirdly,
about 1630 probably, Ben wrote in his manuscript book _Discourses_ an
affectionate but critical page on Shakespeare as a man and an author.
Always, in prose, and in verse, and in recorded conversation, Ben
explicitly identified Shakspere (William, of Stratford) with the author
of the plays usually ascribed to him. But the Baconian Judge Webb (in
extreme old age), and the anti-Shakespearean Mr. Greenwood and others,
choose to interpret Ben’s words on the theory that, in 1623, he “had his
tongue in his cheek”; that, like Odysseus, he “mingled things false with
true,” that _they_ know what is true from what is false, and can undo the
many knots which Ben tied in his tongue. How they succeed we shall see.
In addition to his three known mentions of Shakespeare by name (1619,
1623, 1630?), Ben certainly appears to satirise his rival at a much
earlier date; especially as Pantalabus, a playwright in _The Poetaster_
(1601), and as actor, poet, and plagiarist in an epigram, _Poet-Ape_,
published in his collected works of 1616; but probably written as early
as 1602. It is well known that in 1598 Shakespeare’s company acted Ben’s
_Every Man in His Humour_. It appears that he conceived some grudge
against the actors, and apparently against Shakespeare and other
playwrights, for, in 1601, his _Poetaster_ is a satire both on
playwrights and on actors, whom he calls “apes.” The apparent attacks on
Shakespeare are just such as Ben, if angry and envious, would direct
against him; while we know of no other poet-player of the period to whom
they could apply. For example, in _The Poetaster_, Histrio, the actor,
is advised to ingratiate himself with _Pantalabus_, “gent’man
parcel-poet, his father was a man of worship, I tell thee.” This is
perhaps unmistakably a blow at Shakespeare, who had recently acquired for
his father and himself arms, and the pleasure of writing himself
“gentleman.” This “parcel-poet gent’man” “pens lofty, in a new stalking
style,”—he is thus an author, he “pens,” and in a high style. He is
called _Pantalabus_, from the Greek words for “to _take up all_,” which
means that, as poet, he is a plagiarist. Jonson repeats this charge in
his verses called _Poet-Ape_—
“_He takes up all_, makes each man’s wit his own,
And told of this, he slights it.”
In a scene added to _The Poetaster_ in 1616, the author (Ben) is advised
not
“With a sad and serious verse to wound
Pantalabus, railing in his saucy jests,”
and obviously slighting the charges of plagiarism. Perhaps Ben is
glancing at Shakespeare, who, if accused of plagiary by an angry rival,
would merely laugh.
A reply to the _Poetaster_, namely _Satiromastix_ (by Dekker and
Marston?), introduces Jonson himself as babbling darkly about “Mr.
Justice Shallow,” and “an Innocent Moor” (Othello?). Here is question of
“administering strong pills” to Jonson; _then_,
“What lumps of hard and indigested stuff,
Of bitter _Satirism_, of _Arrogance_,
Of _Self-love_, of _Detraction_, of a black
And stinking _Insolence_ should we fetch up!”
This “pill” is a reply to Ben’s “purge” for the poets in his _Poetaster_.
Oh, the sad old stuff!
Referring to Jonson’s _Poetaster_, and to _Satiromastix_, the
counter-attack, we find a passage in the Cambridge play, _The Return from
Parnassus_ (about 1602). Burbage, the tragic actor, and Kempe, the
low-comedy man of Shakespeare’s company, are introduced, discussing the
possible merits of Cambridge wits as playwrights. Kempe rejects them as
they “smell too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphosis
. . . ” The purpose, of course, is to laugh at the ignorance of the
low-comedy man, who thinks “Metamorphosis” a writer, and does not
suspect—how should he?—that Shakespeare “smells of Ovid.” Kempe
innocently goes on, “Why, here’s our fellow” (comrade) “Shakespeare puts
them all down” (all the University playwrights), “aye, and Ben Jonson
too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace” (in
_The Poetaster_) “giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare
hath given him a purge . . . ”
The Cambridge author, perhaps, is thinking of the pill (not purge) which,
in _Satiromastix_, might be administered to Jonson. The Cambridge author
may have thought that Shakespeare wrote the passage on the pill which was
to “fetch up” masses of Ben’s insolence, self-love, arrogance, and
detraction. If this be not the sequence of ideas, it is not easy to
understand how or why Kempe is made to say that Shakespeare has given
Jonson a purge. Stupid old nonsense! There are other more or less
obscure indications of Jonson’s spite, during the stage-quarrel, against
Shakespeare, but the most unmistakable proof lies in his verses in
“Poet-Ape.” I am aware that Ben’s intention here to hit at Shakespeare
has been denied, for example by Mr. Collins with his usual vigour of
language. But though I would fain agree with him, the object of attack
can be no known person save Will. Jonson was already, in _The
Poetaster_, using the term “_Poet-Ape_,” for he calls the actors at large
“apes.”
Jonson thought so well of his rhymes that he included them in the
Epigrams of his first Folio (1616). By that date, the year of
Shakespeare’s death, if he really loved Shakespeare, as he says, in verse
and prose, Ben might have suppressed the verses. But (as Drummond noted)
he preferred his jest, such as it was, to his friend; who was not, as
usually understood, a man apt to resent a very blunt shaft of very
obsolete wit. Like Molière, Shakespeare had outlived the charge of
plagiarism, made long ago by the jealous Ben.
Poet-Ape is an actor-playwright “_that would be thought our chief_”—words
which, by 1601, could only apply to Shakespeare; there was no rival, save
Ben, near his throne. The playwright-actor, too, has now confessedly
“grown
To a little wealth and credit in the scene,”
of no other actor-playwright could this be said.
He is the author of “works” (Jonson was laughed at for calling his own
plays “works”), but these works are “the frippery of wit,” that is, a
tissue of plagiarisms, as in the case of _Pantalabus_. But “told of this
he slights it,” as most successful authors, when accused, as they often
are, of plagiarism by jealous rivals, wisely do;—so did Molière. This
Poet-Ape began his career by “picking and gleaning” and “buying
reversions of old plays.” This means that Shakespeare _did_ work over
earlier plays which his company had acquired; or, if Shakespeare did
not,—then, I presume,—Bacon did!
_That_, with much bad humour, is the gist of the rhymes on Poet-Ape. Ben
thinks Shakespeare’s “works” very larcenous, but still, the “works,” as
such, are those of the poet-actor. I hope it is now clear that Poet-Ape,
who, like _Pantalabus_, “takes up all”; who has “grown to a little wealth
and credit in the scene,” and who “thinks himself the chief” of
contemporary dramatists, can be nobody but Shakespeare. Hence it follows
that the “works” of Poet-Ape, are the works of Shakespeare. Ben admits,
nay, asserts the existence of the works, says that they may reach “the
after-time,” but he calls them a mass of plagiarisms,—because he is in a
jealous rage.
But this view does not at all suit Mr. Greenwood, for it shows Ben
regarding Shakespeare as the “Ape,” or Actor, and also as the “Poet” and
author of the “works.” Yet Ben’s words mean nothing if not that an actor
is the author of works which Ben accuses of plagiarism. Mr. Greenwood
thinks that the epigram proves merely that “Jonson looked upon Shakspere
(if, indeed, he refers to him) as one who put forward the writings of
others as his own, or, in plain English, an impostor.” “The work which
goes in his name is, in truth, the work of somebody else.” {244a} Mr.
Greenwood put the same interpretation on Greene’s words about
“Shakescene,” and we showed that the interpretation was impossible. “The
utmost we should be entitled to say” (if Shake-scene be meant for
Shakspere) “is that Greene accuses Player Shakspere of putting forward,
as his own, some work or perhaps some parts of a work, for which he was
really indebted to another.” {245a} We proved, by quoting Greene’s
words, that he said nothing which could be tortured into this sense.
{245b} In the same way Ben’s words cannot be tortured into the sense
that “the work which goes in his” (Poet-Ape’s) “name is, in truth, the
work of somebody else.” {245c} Mr. Greenwood tries to find the
Anti-Willian hypothesis in Greene’s _Groatsworth of Wit_ and in Ben’s
epigram. It is in neither.
Jonson is not accusing Shakespeare of pretending to be the author of
plays written by somebody else, but of “making _each man’s_ wit his own,”
and the _men_ are the other dramatists of the day. Thus the future “may
judge” Shakespeare’s work “to be his as well as _ours_.”
It is “we,” the living and recognised dramatists, whom Shakespeare is
said to plagiarise from; so boldly that
“_We_, _the robbed_, leave rage, and pity it.”
Ben does not mean that Shakespeare is publishing, as his own, whole plays
by some other author, but that his works are tissues of scraps stolen
from his contemporaries, from “us, the robbed.” Where are to be found or
heard of any works by a player-poet of 1601, the would-be chief dramatist
of the day, except those signed William Shak(&c.). There are none, and
thus Ben, at this date, is identifying Will Shakspere, the actor, with
the author of the Shakespearean plays, which he expects to reach
posterity; “after times may judge them to be his,” as after times do to
this hour.
Thus Ben expresses, in accordance with his humour on each occasion, most
discrepant opinions of Will’s works, but he never varies from his
identification of Will with the author of the plays.
The “works” of which Ben wrote so splenetically in _Poet-Ape_, were the
works of a Playwright-Actor, who could be nobody but the actor
Shakespeare, as far as Ben then knew. If later, and in altered
circumstances, he wrote of the very same works in very different terms,
his “utterances” are “not easily reconcilable” with each other,—_whoever_
the real author of the works may be. If Bacon, or Mr. Greenwood’s
anonymous equivalent for Bacon, were the author, and if Ben came to know
it, his attitudes towards the _works_ are still as irreconcilable as
ever.
Perhaps Baconians and Mr. Greenwood might say, “as long as Ben believed
that the works were those of an Actor-Playwright, he thought them
execrable. But when he learned that they were the works of Bacon (or of
some Great One), he declared them to be more than excellent”—_but not to
Drummond_. I am reluctant to think that Jonson was the falsest and
meanest of snobs. I think that when his old rival, by his own account
his dear friend, was dead, and when (1623) Ben was writing panegyric
verses about the first collected edition of his plays (the Folio), then
between generosity and his habitual hyperbolical manner when he was
composing commendatory verses, he said,—not too much in the way of
praise,—but a good deal more than he later said (1630?), in prose, and in
cold blood. I am only taking Ben as I find him and as I understand him.
Every step in my argument rests on well-known facts. Ben notoriously, in
his many panegyric verses, wrote in a style of inflated praise. In
conversation with Drummond he censured, in brief blunt phrases, the men
whom, in verse, he had extolled. The Baconian who has not read all Ben’s
panegyrics in verse, and the whole of his conversations with Drummond,
argues in ignorance.
We now come to Ben’s panegyrics in the Folio of 1623. Ben heads the
lines,
“TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED
THE AUTHOR
MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
AND
WHAT HE HATH LEFT US.”
Words cannot be more explicit. Bacon was alive (I do not know when Mr.
Greenwood’s hidden genius died), and Ben goes on to speak of the Author,
Shakespeare, as dead, and buried. He calls on him thus:
“Soul of the Age!
The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage!
My Shakespear rise: I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a 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.”
Beaumont, by the way, died in the same year as Shakespeare, 1616, and,
while Ben here names him with Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare, his
contemporaries have left no anecdotes, no biographical hints. In the
panegyric follow the lines:
“And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee I would not seek
For names, but call forth thund’ring Æschylus,”
and the other glories of the Roman and Attic stage, to see and hear how
Shakespeare bore comparison with all that the classic dramatists did, or
that “did from their ashes come.”
Jonson means, “despite your lack of Greek and Latin I would not shrink
from challenging the greatest Greek and Roman tragedians to see how you
bear comparison with themselves”?
Mr. Greenwood and the Baconians believe that the author of the plays
abounded in Latin and Greek. In my opinion his classical scholarship
must have seemed slight indeed to Ben, so learned and so vain of his
learning: but this is part of a vexed question, already examined. So
far, Ben’s verses have brought not a hint to suggest that he does not
identify the actor, his Beloved, with the author. Nothing is gained when
Ben, in commendatory verses, praises “Thy Art,” whereas, speaking to
Drummond of Hawthornden (1619), he said that Shakespeare “wanted art.”
Ben is not now growling to Drummond of Hawthornden: he is writing a
panegyric, and applauds Shakespeare’s “well-turned and true-filed lines,”
adding that, “to write a living line” a man “must sweat,” and “strike the
second heat upon the Muses’ anvil.”
To produce such lines requires labour, requires conscious “art.” So
Shakespeare _had_ “art,” after all, despite what Ben had said to
Drummond: “Shakespeare lacked art.” There is no more in the matter; the
“inconsistency” is that of Ben’s humours on two perfectly different
occasions, now grumbling to Drummond; and now writing hyperbolically in
commendatory verses. But the contrast makes Mr. Greenwood exclaim, “Can
anything be more astonishing and at the same time more unsatisfactory
than this?” {249a}
Can anything be more like Ben Jonson?
Did he know the secret of the authorship in 1619? If so, why did he say
nothing about the plays of the Great Unknown (whom he called
Shakespeare), save what Drummond reports, “want of art,” ignorance of
Bohemian geography. Or did Ben _not_ know the secret till, say, 1623,
and then heap on the very works which he had previously scouted praise
for the very quality which he had said they lacked? If so, Ben was as
absolutely inconsistent, as before. There is no way out of this dilemma.
On neither choice are Ben’s utterances “easy to reconcile one with the
other,” except on the ground that Ben was—Ben, and his comments varied
with his varying humours and occasions. I believe that, in the
commendatory verses, Ben allowed his Muse to carry him up to heights of
hyperbolical praise which he never came near in cold blood. He was
warmed with the heat of poetic composition and wound up to heights of
eulogy, though even _now_ he could not forget the small Latin and less
Greek!
We now turn to Mr. Greenwood’s views about the commendatory verses. On
mature consideration I say nothing of his remarks on Ben’s couplets about
the bad engraved portrait. {250a} They are concerned with the supposed
“_original_ bust,” as represented in Dugdale’s engraving of 1656. What
the Baconians hope to make out of “the _original_ bust” I am quite unable
to understand. {250b} Again, I leave untouched some witticisms {250c} on
Jonson’s lines about Spenser, Chaucer, and Beaumont in their tombs—lines
either suggested by, or suggestive of others by an uncertain W. Basse,
“but the evidence of authorship seems somewhat doubtful. How the date is
determined I do not know . . . ” {251a} As Mr. Greenwood knows so
little, and as the discussion merely adds dust to the dust, and fog to
the mist of his attempt to disable Ben’s evidence, I glance and pass by.
“Then follow these memorable words, which I have already discussed:
“‘And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek . . . ’” {251b}
In “these memorable words,” every non-Baconian sees Ben’s opinion about
his friend’s lack of scholarship. According to his own excellent Index,
Mr. Greenwood has already adverted often to “these memorable words.”
(1) P. 40. “ . . . if this testimony is to be explained away as not
seriously written, then are we justified in applying the same methods of
interpretation to Jonson’s other utterances as published in the Folio of
1623. But I shall have more to say as to that further on.”
(2) P. 88. Nothing of importance.
(3) P. 220. Quotation from Dr. Johnson. Ben, “who had no imaginable
temptation to falsehood,” wrote the memorable words. But Mr. Greenwood
has to imagine a “temptation to falsehood,”—and he does.
(4) P. 222. “And we have recognised that Jonson’s ‘small Latin and less
Greek’ must be explained away” (a quotation from somebody).
(5) P. 225. Allusion to anecdote of “Latin (latten) spoons.”
(6) Pp. 382, 383. “Some of us” (some of whom?) “have long looked upon
it as axiomatic . . . that Jonson’s ‘small Latin and less Greek,’ if
meant to be taken seriously, can only be applicable to Shakspere of
Stratford and not to Shakespeare,” that is, not to the Unknown author.
Unluckily Ben, in 1623, is addressing the shade of the “sweet Swan of
Avon,” meaning Stratford-on-Avon.
(7) The next references in the laudable Index are to pp. 474, 475.
“Then follow these memorable words, which I have already discussed:
“‘And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,’
words which those who see how singularly inappropriate they are to the
author of the _Plays_ and _Poems_ of Shakespeare have been at such
infinite pains to explain away without impeaching the credit of the
author, or assuming that he is here indulging in a little Socratic
irony.”
_I_ do not want to “explain” Ben’s words “away”: I want to know how on
earth Mr. Greenwood explains them away. My view is that Ben meant what
he said, that Will, whose shade he is addressing, was no scholar (which
he assuredly was not). I diligently search Mr. Greenwood’s scriptures,
asking How does he explain Ben’s “memorable words” away? On p. 106 of
_The Shakespeare Problem Restated_ I seem to catch a glimmer of his
method. “Once let the Stratfordians” (every human and non-Baconian
person of education) “admit that Jonson when he penned the words ‘small
Latin and less Greek’ was really writing ‘with his tongue in his cheek.’
. . . ”
Once admit that vulgarism concerning a great English poet engaged on a
poem of Pindaric flight, and of prophetic vision! No, we leave the
admission to Mr. Greenwood and his allies.
To consider thus is to consider too seriously. The Baconians and
Anti-Willians have ceased to deserve serious attention (if ever they did
deserve it), and virtuous indignation, and all that kind of thing, when
they ask people who care for poetry to “admit” that Ben wrote his verses
“with his tongue in his cheek.” Elsewhere, {253a} in place of Ben’s
“tongue in his cheek,” Mr. Greenwood prefers to suggest that Ben “is here
indulging in a little Socratic irony.” Socrates “with his tongue in his
cheek”! Say “talking through his throat,” if one may accept the evidence
of the author of _Raffles_, as to the idioms of burglars.
To return to criticism, we are to admit that Jonson was really writing
“with his tongue in his cheek,” knowing that, as a fact, “_Shakespeare_”
(the Great Unknown, the Bacon of the Baconians) “had remarkable classical
attainments, and they, of course, open the door to the suggestion that
the entire poem is capable of an ironical construction and esoteric
interpretation.” {254a}
So this is Mr. Greenwood’s method of “explaining away” the memorable
words. He seems to conjecture that Will was not _Shakespeare_, not the
author of the plays; that Jonson knew it; that his poem is, as a whole,
addressed to Bacon, or to the Great Unknown, under his “_nom de plume_”
of “William Shakespeare”; that the address to the “Swan of Avon” is a
mere blind; and that Ben only alludes to his “Beloved,” the Stratford
actor, when he tells his Beloved that his Beloved has “small Latin and
less Greek.” All the praise is for Bacon, or the Great Unknown (Mr.
Harris), the jeer is for “his Beloved, the Author, Mr. William
Shakespeare, And what he hath left Us.”
As far as I presume to understand this theory of the “tongue in the
cheek,” of the “Socratic irony,” this is what Mr. Greenwood has to
propose towards “explaining away” the evidence of Ben Jonson, in his
famous commendatory verses. When we can see through the dust of words we
find that the “esoteric interpretation” of the commendatory verses is
merely a reassertion of the general theory: a man with small Latin and
less Greek could not have written the plays and poems. Therefore when
Ben explicitly states that his Beloved, Mr. Shakespeare of Stratford, the
Swan of Avon _did_ write the plays, and had small Latin and less Greek,
Ben meant that he did _not_ write them, that they were written by
somebody else who had plenty of Greek and Latin. It is a strange logical
method! Mr. Greenwood merely reasserts his paradox, and proves it, like
certain Biblical critics of more orthodoxy than sense, by aid of his
private “esoteric method of interpretation.” Ben, we say, about 1630, in
prose and in cold blood, and in a humour of criticism without the old
rancour and envy, or the transitory poetic enthusiasm, pens a note on
Shakespeare in a volume styled “Timber, or Discoveries, made upon men and
Matter, as they have flowed out of his daily Readings; or had their
reflux to his peculiar Notion of the Times.” Ben died in 1637; his MS.
collection of notes and brief essays, and reflections, was published in
1641. Bacon, of whom he wrote his impressions in this manuscript, had
died in 1626. Ben was no longer young: he says, among these notes, that
his memory, once unusually strong, after he was past forty “is much
decayed in me . . . It was wont to be faithful to me, but shaken with
age now . . .” (I copy the extract as given by Mr. Greenwood. {255a})
He spoke sooth: he attributes to Orpheus, in “Timber,” a line from Homer,
and quotes from Homer what is not in that poet’s “works.”
In this manuscript occurs, then, a brief prose note, headed, _De
Shakespeare nostrati_, on our countryman Shakespeare. It is an anecdote
of the Players and their ignorance, with a few critical and personal
remarks on Shakespeare. “I remember the players have often mentioned it
as an honour to Shakespeare that (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted
out a line. My answer hath been, ‘Would he had blotted a thousand,’
which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this
but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their
friend by (that) wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own
candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side
idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free
nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions and gentle expressions,
wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he
should be stopped. ‘_Sufflaminandus erat_,’ as Augustus said of
Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so
too! Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter, as
when he said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him, ‘Cæsar, thou
dost me wrong.’ He replied, ‘Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause’;
and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his
virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.”
Baconians actually maintain that Ben is here speaking of Bacon.
Of whom is Ben writing? Of the author of _Julius Cæsar_,—certainly, from
which, his memory failing, he misquotes a line. If Ben be in the great
secret—that the author was Bacon, or Mr. Greenwood’s Great Unknown, he is
here no more enthusiastic about the Shadow or the Statesman, than about
Shakespeare; no less cool and critical, whoever may be the subject of his
comments. Whether, in the commendatory verses, he referred to the
Actor-Author, or Bacon, or the Shining Shadow, or all of them at once, he
is now in a mood very much more cool and critical. If to be so cool and
critical is violently inconsistent in the case of the Stratford actor, it
is not less so if Ben has Bacon or the Shadow in his mind. Meanwhile the
person of whom he speaks _is here the actor-author_, whom the players,
his friends, commended “wherein he faulted,” namely, in not “blotting”
where, in a thousand cases, Ben wishes that he _had_ blotted. Can the
most enthusiastic Baconian believe that when Ben wrote about the players’
ignorant applause of Shakespeare’s, of their friend’s lack of care in
correction, Ben had Bacon in his mind?
As for Mr. Greenwood, he says that in Ben’s sentence about the players
and their ignorant commendation, “we have it on Jonson’s testimony that
the players looked upon William Shakspere the actor as the author of the
plays and praised him for never blotting out a line.” We have it, and
how is the critic to get over or round the fact? Thus, “We know that
this statement” (about the almost blotless lines) “is ridiculous; that if
the players had any unblotted manuscripts in their hands (which is by no
means probable) they were merely fair copies . . . ”
Perhaps, but the Baconians appear to assume that a “fair copy” is not,
and cannot be, a copy in the handwriting of the author.
As I have said before, the Players knew Will’s handwriting, if he could
write. If they received his copy in a hand not his own, and were not
idiots, they could not praise him and his unerring speed and accuracy in
penning his thoughts. If, on the other hand, Will could not write, in
their long friendship with Will, the Players must have known the fact,
and could not possibly believe, as they certainly did, “on Jonson’s
testimony” in his authorship.
To finish Mr. Greenwood’s observations, “if they” (the players) “really
thought that the author of the plays wrote them off _currente calamo_,
and never” (or “hardly ever”) “blotted a line, never revised, never made
any alterations, they knew nothing whatever concerning the real
Shakespeare.” {258a}
Nothing whatever? What they did not know was merely that Will gave them
fair copies in his own hand, as, before the typewriting machine was
invented, authors were wont to do. Within the last fortnight I heard the
error attributed to the players made by an English scholar who is
foremost in his own field of learning. He and I were looking at some of
Dickens’s MSS. They were full of erasions and corrections. I said, “How
unlike Scott!” whose first draft of his novels exactly answered to the
players’ description of Will’s “copy.” My friend said, “Browning
scarcely made an erasion or change in writing his poems,” and referred to
Mr. Browning’s MSS. for the press, of which examples were lying near us.
“But Browning must have made clean copies for the press,” I said: which
was as new an idea to my learned friend as it was undreamed of by the
Players:—if what they received from him were his clean copies.
The Players’ testimony, through Jonson, cannot be destroyed by the “easy
stratagem” of Mr. Greenwood.
Mr. Greenwood now nearly falls back on Bacon, though he constantly
professes that he “is not the advocate of Bacon’s authorship.” The
author was some great man, as like Bacon as one pea to another. Mr.
Greenwood says that Jonson looked on the issue of the First Folio {259a}
“as a very special occasion.” Well, it _was_ a very special occasion; no
literary occasion could be more “special.” Without the Folio, badly as
it is executed, we should perhaps never have had many of Shakespeare’s
plays. The occasion was special in the highest degree.
But, says Mr. Greenwood, “if we could only get to the back of Jonson’s
mind, we should find that there was some efficient cause operating to
induce him to give the best possible send-off to that celebrated
venture.” {260a}
Ben was much in the habit of giving “sendoffs” of great eloquence to
poetic “ventures” now forgotten. What could “the efficient cause” be in
the case of the Folio? At once Mr. Greenwood has recourse to Bacon; he
cannot, do what he will, keep Bacon “out of the Memorial.” Ben was with
Bacon at Gorhambury, on Bacon’s sixtieth birthday (January 22, 1621).
Ben wrote verses about the Genius of the old house,
“Thou stand’st as if some mystery thou didst.”
“What was that ‘mystery’?” asks Mr. Greenwood. {260b} What indeed? And
what has all this to do with Ben’s commendatory verses for the Folio, two
years later? Mr. Greenwood also surmises, as we have seen, {260c} that
Jonson was with Bacon, helping to translate _The Advancement of Learning_
in June, 1623.
Let us suppose that he was: what has that to do with Ben’s verses for the
Folio? Does Mr. Greenwood mean to hint that _Bacon_ was the “efficient
cause operating to induce” Ben “to give the best possible send-off” to
the Folio? One does not see what interest Bacon had in stimulating the
enthusiasm of Ben, unless we accept Bacon as author of the plays, which
Mr. Greenwood does not. If Mr. Greenwood thinks that Bacon was the
author of the plays, then the facts are suitable to his belief. But if
he does not,—“I hold no brief for the Baconians,” he says,—how is all
this passage on Ben’s visits to Bacon concerned with the subject in hand?
Between the passage on some “efficient cause” “at the back of Ben’s
mind,” {261a} and the passage on Ben’s visits to Bacon in 1621–3, {261b}
six pages intervene, and blur the supposed connection between the
“efficient cause” of Ben’s verses of 1623, and his visits to Bacon in
1621–3. These intercalary pages are concerned with Ben’s laudations of
Bacon, by name, in his _Discoveries_. The first is entirely confined to
praise of Bacon as an orator. Bacon is next mentioned in a Catalogue of
Writers as “_he who hath filled up all numbers_, and performed that in
our tongue which may be preferred or compared either to _insolent Greece
or haughty Rome_,” words used of Shakespeare by Jonson in the Folio
verses.
Mr. Greenwood remarks that Jonson’s Catalogue, to judge by the names he
cites (More, Chaloner, Smith, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sidney, Hooker, Essex,
Raleigh, Savile, Sandys, and so on), suggests that “he is thinking mainly
of wits and orators of his own and the preceding generation,” not of
poets specially. This is obvious; why should Ben name Shakespeare with
More, Smith, Chaloner, Eliot, Bishop Gardiner, Egerton, Sandys, and
Savile? Yet “it is remarkable that no mention should be made of the
great dramatist.” Where is Spenser named, or Beaumont, or Chaucer, with
whom Ben ranked Shakespeare? Ben quoted of Bacon the line he wrote long
before of Shakespeare as a poet, about “insolent Greece,” and all this is
“remarkable,” and Mr. Greenwood finds it “not surprising” {262a} that the
Baconians dwell on the “extraordinary coincidence of expression,” as if
Ben were incapable of repeating a happy phrase from himself, and as if we
should wonder at anything the Baconians may say or do.
Another startling coincidence is that, in _Discoveries_, Ben said of
Shakespeare “his wit was in his own power,” and wished that “the rule of
it had been so too.” Of Bacon, Ben wrote, “his language, where he could
spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious.” Thus Bacon _had_ “the
rule of his own wit,” Bacon “_could_ spare or pass by a jest,” whereas
Shakespeare apparently could not—so like were the two Dromios in this
particular! Strong in these convincing arguments, the Baconians ask (not
so Mr. Greenwood, he is no Baconian), “were there then _two_ writers of
whom this description was appropriate . . . ?” Was there only one, and
was it of Bacon, under the name of “Shakespeare,” that Ben wrote _De
Shakespeare nostrati_?
Read it again, substituting “Bacon” for “Shakespeare.” “I remember the
players,” and so on, and what has Bacon to do here? “Sometimes it was
necessary that _Bacon_ should be stopped.” “Many times _Bacon_ fell into
those things could not escape laughter,” such as Cæsar’s supposed line,
“and such like, which were ridiculous.” “_Bacon_ redeemed his vices with
his virtues. There was ever more in _Bacon_ to be praised than to be
pardoned.”
Thus freely, according to the Baconians, speaks Ben of Bacon, whom he
here styles “Shakespeare,”—Heaven knows why! while crediting him with the
players as his friends. Ben could not think or speak thus of Bacon. Mr.
Greenwood occupies his space with these sagacities of the Baconians; one
marvels why he takes the trouble. We are asked why Ben wrote so little
and that so cool (“I loved him on this side idolatry as much as any”)
about Shakespeare. Read through Ben’s _Discoveries_: what has he to say
about any one of his great contemporary dramatists, from Marlowe to
Beaumont? He says nothing about any of them; though he had panegyrised
them, as he panegyrised Beaumont, in verse. In his prose _Discoveries_
he speaks, among English dramatists, of Shakespeare alone.
We are also asked by the Baconians to believe that his remarks on Bacon
under the name of Shakespeare are really an addition to his more copious
and infinitely more reverential observations on Bacon, named by his own
name; “I have and do reverence him for the greatness that was only proper
to himself.” Also (where Bacon is spoken of as Shakespeare) “He redeemed
his vices by his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than
to be pardoned . . . Sometimes it was necessary that he should be stopped
. . . Many times he fell into those things that could not escape
laughter.”
These two views of Bacon are, if you like, incongruous. The person
spoken of is in both cases Bacon, say the Baconians, and Mr. Greenwood
sympathetically alludes to their ideas, {264a} which I cannot qualify in
courteous terms. Baconians “would, of course, explain the difficulty by
saying that however sphinx-like were Jonson’s utterances, he had clearly
distinct in his own mind two different personages, viz. Shakspere the
player, and Shakespeare the real author of the plays and poems, and that
if in the perplexing passage quoted from the _Discoveries_ he appears to
confound one with the other, it is because the solemn seal of secrecy had
been imposed on him.” They _would_ say, they _do_ say all that. Ben is
not to let out that Bacon is the author. So he tells us of Bacon that he
often made himself ridiculous, and so forth,—but he _pretends_ that he is
speaking of Shakespeare.
All this wedge of wisdom, remember, is inserted between the search for
“the efficient cause” of Ben’s panegyric (1623), in the Folio, on his
Beloved Mr. William Shakespeare, and the discovery of Ben’s visits to
Bacon in 1621–3.
Does Mr. Greenwood mean that Ben, in 1623 (or earlier), knew the secret
of Bacon’s authorship, and, stimulated by his hospitality, applauded his
works in the Folio, while, as he must not disclose the secret, he
throughout speaks of Bacon as Shakespeare, puns on that name in the line
about seeming “to shake a lance,” and salutes the Lord of Gorhambury as
“Sweet Swan of Avon”? Mr. Greenwood cannot mean that; for he is not a
Baconian. What _does_ he mean?
Put together his pages 483, 489–491. On the former we find how “it would
appear” that Jonson thought the issue of the Folio (1623) “a very special
occasion,” and that perhaps if we could only “get to the back of his
mind, we should find that there was some efficient cause operating to
induce him to give the best possible send-off to that celebrated
venture.” Then skip to pp. 489–491, and you find very special occasions:
Bacon’s birthday feast with its “mystery”; Ben as one of Bacon’s “good
pens,” in 1623. “The best of these good pens, it seems, was Jonson.”
{266a} On what evidence does it “seem”? The opinion of Judge Webb.
Is this supposed collaboration with Bacon in 1623, “the efficient cause
operating to induce” Ben “to give the best possible send-off” to the
Folio? How could this be the “efficient cause” if Bacon were not the
author of the plays?
Mr. Greenwood, like the Genius at the birthday supper,
“Stands as if some mystery he did.”
On a trifling point of honour, namely, as to whether Ben were a man
likely to lie, tortuously, hypocritically, to be elaborately false about
the authorship of the Shakespearean plays, it is hopelessly impossible to
bring the Baconians and Mr. Greenwood (who “holds no brief for the
Baconians”) to my point of view. Mr. Greenwood rides off thus—what the
Baconians do is unimportant.
“There are, as everybody knows, many falsehoods that are justifiable,
some that it is actually a duty to tell.” It may be so; I pray that I
may never tell any of them (or any more of them).
Among justifiable lies I do not reckon that of Scott if ever he plumply
denied that he wrote the _Waverley_ novels. I do not judge Sir Walter.
Heaven forbid! But if, in Mr. Greenwood’s words, he, “we are told,
thought it perfectly justifiable for a writer who wished to preserve his
anonymity, to deny, when questioned, the authorship of a work, since the
interrogator had no right to put such a question to him,” {267a} I
disagree with Sir Walter. Many other measures, in accordance with the
conditions of each case, were open to him. Some are formulated by his
own Bucklaw, in _The Bride of Lammermoor_, as regards questions about
what occurred on his bridal night. Bucklaw would challenge the man, and
cut the lady, who asked questions. But Scott’s case, as cited, applies
only to Bacon (or Mr. Greenwood’s Unknown), if _he_ were asked whether or
not he were the author of the plays. No idiot, at that date, was likely
to put the question! But, if anyone did ask, Bacon must either evade, or
deny, or tell the truth.
On the parallel of Scott, Bacon could thus deny, evade, or tell the
truth. But the parallel of Scott is not applicable to any other person
except to the author who wishes to preserve his anonymity, and is
questioned. The parallel does not apply to Ben. _He_ had not written
the Shakespearean plays. Nobody was asking _him_ if he had written them.
If he knew that the author was Bacon, and knew it under pledge of
secrecy, and was asked (_per impossibile_) “Who wrote these plays?” he
had only to say, “Look at the title-page.” But no mortal was asking Ben
the question. But we are to suppose that, in the panegyric and in
_Discoveries_, Ben chooses to assert, first, that Shakespeare was his
Beloved, his Sweet Swan of Avon; and that he “loved him, on this side
idolatry, as much as any.” There is no evidence that he did love
Shakespeare, except his own statement, when, according to the Baconians,
he is really speaking of Bacon, and, according to Mr. Greenwood, of an
unknown person, singularly like Bacon. Consequently, unless we can prove
that Ben really loved the actor, he is telling a disgustingly
hypocritical and wholly needless falsehood, both before and after the
death of Bacon. To be silent about the authorship of a book, an
authorship which is the secret of your friend and patron, is one thing
and a blameless thing. All the friends, some twenty, to whom Scott
confided the secret of his authorship were silent. But not one of them
publicly averred that the author was their very dear friend, So-and-so,
who was not Scott, and perhaps not their friend at all. That was Ben’s
line. Thus the parallel with Scott drawn by Mr. Greenwood, twice, {268a}
is no parallel. It has no kind of analogy with Ben’s alleged falsehoods,
so elaborate, so incomprehensible except by Baconians, and, if he did not
love the actor Shakspere dearly, so detestably hypocritical, and open to
instant detection.
It is not easy to find a parallel to the conduct with which Ben is
charged. But suppose that Scott lived unsuspected of writing his novels,
which, let us say, he signed “James Hogg,” and died without confessing
his secret, and without taking his elaborate precautions for its
preservation on record.
Next, imagine that Lockhart knew Scott’s secret, under vow of silence,
and was determined to keep it at any cost. He therefore, writing after
the death of Hogg of Ettrick, and in Scott’s lifetime, publishes verses
declaring that Hogg was his “beloved” (an enormous fib), and that Hogg,
“Sweet Swan of Ettrick,” was the author of the _Waverley_ novels.
To complete the parallels, Lockhart, after Scott’s death, leaves a note
in prose to the effect that, while he loved Hogg on this side idolatry
(again, a monstrous fable), he must confess that Hogg, author of the
_Waverley_ novels, often fell into things that were ridiculous; and often
needed to have a stopper put on him for all these remarks. Lockhart,
while speaking of Hogg, is thinking of Scott—and he makes the remarks
solely to conceal Scott’s authorship of the novels—of which, on the
hypothesis, nobody suspected Scott to be the author. Lockhart must then
have been what the Baconian Mr. Theobald calls Mr. Churton Collins, “a
measureless liar,”—all for no reason.
Mr. Greenwood, starting as usual from the case, which is no parallel, of
Scott’s denying his own authorship, goes on, “for all we know, Jonson
might have seen nothing in the least objectionable in the publication by
some great personage of his dramatic works under a pseudonym” (under
another man’s name really), “even though that pseudonym led to a wrong
conception as to the authorship; and that, if, being a friend of that
great personage, and working in his service” (Ben worked, by the theory,
in Bacon’s), “he had solemnly engaged to preserve the secret inviolate,
and not to reveal it even to posterity, then _doubtless_ (‘I thank thee,
Jew’ (meaning Sir Sidney Lee), ‘for teaching me that word’!) he would
have remained true to that solemn pledge.” {270a}
To remain “true,” Ben had only to hold his peace. But he lied up and
down, and right and left, and even declared that Bacon was a friend of
the players, and needed to be shut up, and made himself a laughing-stock
in his plays,—styling Bacon “Shakespeare.” All this, and much more of
the same sort, we must steadfastly believe before we can be Baconians,
for only by believing these doctrines can we get rid of Ben Jonson’s
testimony to the authorship of Will Shakspere, Gent.
XIII
THE PREOCCUPATIONS OF BACON
LET us now examine a miracle and mystery in which the Baconians find
nothing strange; nothing that is not perfectly normal. Bacon was the
author of the Shakespearean plays, they tell us. Let us look rapidly at
his biography, after which we may ask, does not his poetic supremacy, and
imaginative fertility, border on the miraculous, when we consider his
occupations and his ruling passion?
Bacon, born in 1561, had a prodigious genius, was well aware of it, and
had his own ideal as to the task which he was born to do. While still at
Cambridge, and therefore before he was fifteen, he was utterly
dissatisfied, as he himself informed Dr. Rawley, with the scientific
doctrines of the Schools. In the study of nature they reasoned from
certain accepted ideas, _a priori_ principles, not from what he came to
call “interrogation of Nature.” There were, indeed, and had long been
experimental philosophers, but the school doctors went not beyond
Aristotle; and discovered nothing. As Mr. Spedding puts it, the boy
Bacon asked himself, “If our study of nature be thus barren, our method
of study must be wrong; might not a better method be found? . . . Upon
the conviction ‘This may be done,’ followed at once the question, _How_
may it be done? Upon that question answered followed the resolution to
try and do it.”
This was, in religious phrase, the Conversion of Bacon, “the event which
had a greater influence than any other upon his character and future
course. From that moment he had a vocation which employed and stimulated
him . . . an object to live for as wide as humanity, as immortal as the
human race; an idea to live in vast and lofty enough to fill the soul for
ever with religious and heroic aspirations.” {274a} The vocation, the
idea, the object, were not poetical.
In addition to this ceaseless scientific preoccupation, Bacon was much
concerned with the cause of reformed religion (then at stake in France,
and supposed to be in danger at home), and with the good government of
his native country. He could only aid that cause by the favour of
Elizabeth and James; by his services in Parliament, where, despite his
desire for advancement, he conscientiously opposed the Queen. He was
obliged to work at such tasks of various sorts, legal and polemical
literature, as were set him by people in power. With these three great
objects filling his heart, inspiring his ambition, and occupying his
energies and time, we cannot easily believe, without direct external
evidence, that he, or any mortal, could have leisure and detachment from
his main objects (to which we may add his own advancement) sufficient to
enable him to compose the works ascribed to Shakespeare.
Thus, at the age of twenty-two (1583), when, if ever, he might have
penned sonnets to his mistress’s eyebrow, he reports that he wrote “his
first essay on the Instauration of Philosophy, which he called _Temporis
Partus Maximus_, ‘The Greatest Birth of Time,’” and “we need not doubt
that between Law and Philosophy he found enough to do.” {275a} For the
Baconians take Bacon to have been a very great lawyer (of which I am no
judge), and Law is a hard mistress, rapacious of a man’s hours. In 1584
he entered Parliament, but we do not hear anything very important of his
occupations before 1589, when he wrote a long pamphlet, “Touching the
Controversies of the Church of England.” {275b} He had then leisure
enough; that he was not anonymously supplying the stage with plays I can
neither prove nor disprove: but there is no proof that he wrote _Love’s
Labour’s Lost_! By 1591–2, we learn much of him from his letter to
Cecil, who never would give him a place wherein he could meditate his
philosophy. He was apparently hard at scientific work. “I account my
ordinary course of study and meditation to be more painful than most
parts of action are.” He adds, “The contemplative planet carries me away
wholly,” and by contemplation I conceive him to mean what he calls “vast
contemplative ends.” These he proceeds to describe: he does _not_ mean
the writing of _Venus and Adonis_ (1593), nor of _Lucrece_ (1594), nor of
comedies! “I have taken all knowledge to be my province,” and he recurs
to his protest against the pseudo-science of his period. “If I could
purge knowledge of two sorts of rovers whereof the one, with frivolous
disputations, confutations, and verbosities; the other with blind
experiments, and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so
many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded
conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries . . . This,
whether it be curiosity, or vainglory, or nature, or (if one take it
favourably) philanthropy, is so fixed in my mind that it cannot be
removed.” If Cecil cannot help him to a post, if he cannot serve the
truth, he will reduce himself, like Anaxagoras, to voluntary poverty, “ . . .
and become some sorry bookmaker, or a true pioneer in that mine of
truth . . . ” {276a} Really, from first to last he was the prince of
begging-letter writers, endlessly asking for place, pensions, reversions,
money, and more money.
Though his years were thirty-one, Bacon was as young at heart as Shelley
at eighteen, when he wrote thus to Cecil, “my Lord Treasurer Burghley.”
What did Cecil care for his youngish kinsman’s philanthropy, and “vast
speculative ends” (how _modern_ it all is!), and the rest of it? But
just because Bacon, at thirty-one, _is_ so extremely “green,” going to
“take all knowledge for his province” (if some one will only subsidise
him, and endow his research), I conceive that he was in earnest about his
reformation of science. Surely no Baconian will deny it! Being so
deeply in earnest, taking his “study and meditation” so hard, I cannot
see him as the author of _Venus and Adonis_, and whatever plays of the
period,—say, _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_,
_Henry VI_, Part I,—are attributed to him, about this time, by Baconians.
Of course my view is merely personal or “subjective.” The Baconians’
view is also “subjective.” I regard Bacon, in 1591, and later, as
intellectually preoccupied by his vast speculative aims:—what he says
that he desires to do, in science, is what he _did_, as far as he was
able. His other desires, his personal advancement, money, a share in the
conduct of affairs, he also hotly pursued, not much to his own or the
public profit. There seems to be no room left, no inclination left, for
competition in their own line with Marlowe, Greene, Nash, and half a
dozen other professed playwrights: no room for plays done under the
absurd pseudonym of an ignorant actor.
You see these things as the Baconians do, or as I do. Argument is
unavailing. I take Bacon to have been sincere in his effusive letter to
Cecil. Not so the Baconians; he concealed, they think, a vast _literary_
aim. They must take his alternative—to be “some sorry bookmaker, _or_ a
pioneer in that mine of truth,” as meaning that he would either be the
literary hack of a company of players, _or_ the founder of a regenerating
philosophy. But, at that date, playwrights could not well be called
“bookmakers,” for the owners of the plays did their best to keep them
from appearing as printed books. If Bacon by “bookmaker” meant
“playwright,” he put a modest value on his poetical work!
Meanwhile (1591–2), Bacon attached himself to the young, beautiful, and
famous Essex, on the way to be a Favourite, and gave him much excellent
advice, as he always did, and, as always, his advice was not taken. It
is not a novel suggestion, that Essex is the young man to whom Bacon is
so passionately attached in the Sonnets traditionally attributed to
Shakespeare. “I applied myself to him” (that is, to Essex), says Bacon,
“in a manner which, I think, happeneth rarely among men.” The poet of
the Sonnets applies himself to the Beloved Youth, in a manner which
(luckily) “happeneth rarely among men.”
It is difficult to fit the Sonnets into Bacon’s life. But, if you pursue
the context of what Bacon says concerning Essex, you find that he does
not speak _openly_ of a tenderly passionate attachment to that young man;
not more than _this_, “I did nothing but advise and ruminate with myself,
to the best of my understanding, propositions and memorials of anything
that might concern his Lordship’s honour, fortune, or service.” {279a}
As Bacon did nothing but these things (1591–2), he had no great leisure
for writing poetry and plays. Moreover, speaking as a poet, in the
Sonnets, he might poetically exaggerate his intense amatory devotion to
Essex into the symbolism of his passionate verse. _Was Essex then a
married man_? If so, the Sonneteer’s insistence on his marrying must be
symbolical of—anything else you please.
We know that Bacon, at this period, “did nothing” but “ruminate” about
Essex. The words are his own! (1604). No plays, no _Venus and Adonis_,
nothing but enthusiastic service of Essex and the Sonnets. Mr. Spedding,
indeed, thinks that, to adorn some pageant of Essex (November 17, 1592),
Bacon kindly contributed such matter as “Mr. Bacon in Praise of
Knowledge” (containing his usual views about regenerating science), and
“Mr. Bacon’s Discourse in Praise of his Sovereign.” {279b} Both are
excellent, though, for a Court festival, not very gay.
He also, very early in 1593, wrote an answer to Father Parson’s (?)
famous indictment of Elizabeth’s Government, in _Observations on a
Libel_. {280a} What with ruminating on Essex, and this essay, he was not
solely devoted to _Venus and Adonis_ and to furbishing-up old plays,
though, no doubt, he _may_ have unpacked his bosom in the Sonnets, and
indulged his luscious imaginations in _Venus and Adonis_. I would not
limit the potentialities of his genius. But, certainly, this amazing man
was busy in quite other matters than poetry; not to mention his severe
“study and meditation” on science.
All these activities of Bacon, in the year of _Venus and Adonis_, do not
exhaust his exercises. Bacon, living laborious days, plunged into the
debate in the Commons on Supply and fell into Elizabeth’s disgrace, and
vainly competed with Coke for the Attorney-Generalship, and went on to
write a pamphlet on the conspiracy of Lopez, and to try to gain the
office of Solicitor-General, to manage Essex’s affairs, to plead at the
Bar, to do Crown work as a lawyer, to urge his suit for the
Solicitorship; to trifle with the composition of “Formularies and
Elegancies” (January 1595), to write his Essays, to try for the
Mastership of the Rolls, to struggle with the affairs of the doomed Essex
(1600–1), while always “labouring in secret” at that vast aim of the
reorganisation of natural science, which ever preoccupied him, he says,
and distracted his attention from his practice and from affairs of State.
{281a} Of these State affairs the projected Union with Scotland was the
most onerous. He was also writing _The Advancement of Learning_ (1605).
“I do confess,” he wrote to Sir Thomas Bodley, “since I was of any
understanding, my mind hath in effect been absent from that I have done.”
{281b} His mind was with his beloved Reformation of Learning: this came
between him and his legal, his political labours, his pamphlet-writing,
and his private schemes and suits. To this burden of Atlas the Baconians
add the vamping-up of old plays for Shakespeare’s company, and the
inditing of new plays, poems, and the Sonnets. Even without this
considerable addition to his tasks, Bacon is wonderful enough, but with
it—he needs the sturdy faith of the Rationalist to accept him and his
plot—to write plays under the pseudonym of “William Shakespeare.”
Talk of miracles as things which do not happen! The activities of Bacon
from 1591 to 1605; the strain on that man’s mind and heart,—especially
his heart, when we remember that he had to prosecute his passionately
adored Essex to the death; all this makes it seem, to me, improbable
that, as Mrs. Pott and her school of Baconians hold, he lived to be at
least a hundred and six, if not much older. No wonder that he turned to
tragedy, _Lear_, _Macbeth_, _Othello_, and saw life _en noir_: man
delighted him not, nor woman either.
The occupations, and, even more, the scientific preoccupation of Bacon,
do not make his authorship of the plays a physical impossibility. But
they make it an intellectual miracle. Perhaps I may be allowed to set
off this marvel against that other portent, Will Shakspere’s knowledge
and frequent use of terms of Law. {282a} I do not pretend to understand
how Will came to have them at the tip of his pen. Thus it may be argued
that the Sonnets are by Bacon and no other man, because the Law is so
familiar to the author, and his legal terms are always used with so nice
an accuracy, that only Bacon can have been capable of these mysterious
productions. (But why was Bacon so wofully inaccurate in points of
scholarship and history?)
By precisely the same argument Lord Penzance proves that Bacon (not Ben,
as Mr. Greenwood holds) wrote for the players the Dedication of the
Folio. {282b} “If it should be the case that Francis Bacon wrote the
plays, he would, probably, afterwards have written the Dedication of the
Folio, and the style of it” (stuffed with terms of law) “would be
accounted for.” Mr. Greenwood thinks that Jonson wrote the Dedication;
so Ben, too, was fond of using legal terms in literature. “Legal terms
abounded in all plays and poems of the period,” says Sir Sidney Lee, and
Mr. Greenwood pounces on the word “all.” {283a} However he says, “We
must admit that this use of legal jargon is frequently found in
lay-writers, poets, and others of the Elizabethan period—in sonnets for
example, where it seems to us intolerable.” Examples are given from
Barnabe Barnes. {283b} The lawyers all agree, however, that Shakespeare
does the legal style “more natural,” and more accurately than the rest.
And yet I cannot even argue that, if he did use legal terms at all, he
would be sure to do it pretty well.
For on this point of Will’s use of legal phraseology I frankly profess
myself entirely at a loss. To use it in poetry was part of the worse
side of taste at that period. The lawyers with one voice declare that
Will’s use of it is copious and correct, and that their “mystery” is
difficult, their jargon hard to master; “there is nothing so dangerous,”
wrote Lord Campbell, “as for one not of the craft to tamper with our
freemasonry.” I have not tampered with it. Perhaps a man of genius who
found it interesting might have learned the technical terms more readily
than lawyers deem possible. But Will, so accurate in his legal terms, is
so inaccurate on many other points; for example, in civil and natural
history, and in classic lore. Mr. Greenwood proves him to be totally at
sea as a naturalist. On the habits of bees, for example, “his natural
history of the insect is as limited as it is inaccurate.” {284a} Virgil,
though not a Lord Avebury, was a great entomologist, compared with Will.
About the cuckoo Will was recklessly misinformed. His Natural History
was folklore, or was taken from that great mediæval storehouse of
absurdities, the popular work of Pliny. “He went to contemporary error
or antiquated fancy for his facts, not to nature,” says a critic quoted
by Mr. Greenwood. {284b} Was that worthy of Bacon?
All these charges against _le vieux Williams_ (as Théophile Gautier calls
our Will) I admit. But Will was no Bacon; Will had not “taken all
knowledge for his province.” Bacon, I hope, had not neglected Bees!
Thus the problem, why is Will accurate in his legal terminology, and
reckless of accuracy in quantity, in history, in classic matters, is not
by me to be solved. I can only surmise that from curiosity, or for some
other unknown reason, he had read law-books, or drawn information from
Templars about the meaning of their jargon, and that, for once, he was
technically accurate.
* * * * *
We have now passed in review the chief Baconian and Anti-Willian
arguments against Will Shakespeare’s authorship of the plays and poems.
Their chief argument for Bacon is _aut Diabolus_, _aut Franciscus_,
which, freely interpreted, means, “If Bacon is not the author, who the
devil is?”
We reply, that man is the author (in the main) to whom the works are
attributed by every voice of his own generation which mentions them,
namely, the only William Shakespeare that, from 1593 to the early years
of the second decade of the following century, held a prominent place in
the world of the drama. His authorship is explicitly vouched for by his
fellow-players, Heminge and Condell, to whom he left bequests in his
will; and by his sometime rival, later friend, and always critic, Ben
Jonson; Heywood, player and playwright and pamphleteer, who had been one
of Henslowe’s “hands,” and lived into the Great Rebellion, knew the stage
and authors for the stage from within, and _his_ “mellifluous
Shakespeare” is “Will,” as his Beaumont was “Frank,” his Marlowe “Kit,”
his Fletcher, “Jack.” The author of _Daiphantus_ (1604), mentioning the
popularity of _Hamlet_, styles it “one of friendly Shakespeare’s
tragedies.” Shakespeare, to him, was our Will clearly, a man of known
and friendly character. The other authors of allusions did not need to
say _who_ their “Shakespeare” was, any more than they needed to say _who_
Marlowe or any other poet was. We have examined the possibly
unprecedented argument which demands that they who mention Shakespeare as
the poet must, if they would enlighten us, add explicitly that he is also
the actor.
“But all may have been deceived” by the long conspiracy of the astute
Bacon, or the Nameless One. To believe this possible, considering the
eager and suspicious jealousy and volubility of rival playwrights, is to
be credulous indeed. The Baconians, representing Will almost as
incapable of the use of pen and ink as “the old hermit of Prague,”
destroy their own case. A Will who had to make his mark, like his
father, could not pose as an author even to the call-boy of his company.
Mr. Greenwood’s bookless Will, with some crumbs of Latin, and some power
of “bumbasting out a blank verse,” is a rather less impossible pretender,
indeed; but why and when did the speaker of patois, the bookless one,
write blank verse, from 1592 onwards, and where are his blank verses?
Where are the “works” of Poet-Ape? As to the man, even Will by
tradition, whatever it may be worth, he was “a handsome, well-shaped man;
very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant, smooth wit.” To his
fellow-actors he was “so worthy a friend and fellow” (associate). To
Jonson, “he was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an
excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he
flowed so freely that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped.”
If Jonson here refers, as I suppose he does, to his conversation, it had
that extraordinary affluence of thoughts, each mating itself with as
remarkable originality of richly figured expressions, which is so
characteristic of the style of Shakespeare’s plays. In this prodigality
he was remote indeed from the style of the Greeks; “panting Time toils
after him in vain,” and even the reader, much more the listener, might
say, _sufflaminandus est_; “he needs to have the brake put on.” {287a}
Such, according to unimpeachable evidence, was Will. Only despair can
venture the sad suggestion that, under the name of Shakespeare, Ben is
here speaking of Bacon, as “falling into those things which could not
escape laughter . . . which were ridiculous.” But to this last poor
shift and fantastic guess were the Anti-Willians and Baconians reduced.
Such was Shakespeare, according to a rival.
But it is “impossible” that a man should have known so much, especially
of classical literature and courtly ways, and foreign manners and
phrases, if he had no more, at most, than four or five years at a Latin
school, and five or six years in that forcing-house of faculty, the
London of the stage, in the flush of the triumph over the Armada.
“With innumerable sorts of English books and infinite fardles of printed
pamphlets this country is pestered, all shops stuffed, and every study
furnished,” says a contemporary. {288a} If a doubter will look at the
cheap and common books of that day (a play in quarto, and the Sonnets of
Shakespeare, when new, were sold for fippence) in any great collection;
he will not marvel that to a lover of books, poor as he might be, many
were accessible. Such a man cannot be kept from books.
If the reader will look into “the translations and imitations of the
classics which poured from the press . . . the poems and love-pamphlets
and plays of the University wits” (when these chanced to be printed),
“the tracts and dialogues in the prevailing taste,” {288b} he will
understand the literary soil in which the genius of Shakespeare blossomed
as rapidly as the flowers in “Adonis’ garden.” The whole literature was,
to an extent which we find tedious, saturated with classical myths,
anecdotes, philosophic _dicta_—a world of knowledge of a kind then “in
widest commonalty spread,” but now so much forgotten that, to Baconians
and the public, such lore seems recondite learning.
The gallants who haunted the stage, and such University wits as could get
the money, or had talent (like Crichton) to “dispute their way through
Europe,” made the Italian tour, and, notoriously, were “Italianate.”
They would not be chary of reminiscences of Florence, Venice, and Rome.
Actors visited Denmark and Germany. No man at home was far to seek for
knowledge of Elsinore, the mysterious Venetian “tranect or common ferry,”
the gondolas, and the Rialto. There was no lack of soldiers fresh and
voluble from the foreign wars. Only dullards, or the unthinking, can be
surprised by the ease with which a quick-witted man, having some
knowledge of Latin, can learn to read a novel in French, Italian, or
Spanish. That Shakespeare was the very reverse of a dullard, of the clod
of Baconian fancy, is proved by the fact that he was thought capable of
his works. For courtly manners he had the literary convention and Lyly’s
Court Comedies, with what he saw when playing at the Court and in the
houses of the great. As to untaught nobility of manners, there came to
the Court of France in 1429, from a small pig-breeding village on the
marches of Lorraine, one whose manners were deemed of exquisite grace,
propriety, and charm, by all who saw and heard her: of her manners and
swift wit and repartee, the official record of her trial bears concordant
evidence. Other untaught gifts she possessed, and the historic record is
unimpeached as regards that child of genius, Jeanne d’Arc.
“_Ne me dites jamais cette bête de mot_, _impossible_,” said Napoleon: it
is indeed a stupid word where genius is concerned.
If intellectual “miracles” were impossible to genius, even Bacon could
not have been and done all that he was and did, and also the author of
the Shakespearean plays and poems; even Ben could not have been the
scholar that he was. For the rest, I need not return on my tracks and
explain once more such shallow mysteries as the “Silence of Philip
Henslowe,” and the lack of literary anecdotage about Shakespeare in a
stupendously illiterate country town. Had Will, not Ben, visited
Drummond of Hawthornden, we should have matter enough of the kind
desired.
“We have the epics of Homer,” people say, “what matters it whether they
be by a Man, or by a Syndicate that was in business through seven
centuries? We have the plays of Shakespeare, what matters it whether he,
or Bacon, or X. were, in the main, the author?”
It matters to us, if we hold such doubts to be fantastic pedantries, such
guesses contrary to the nature of things; while we wish to give love and
praise and gratitude where they are due; to that Achæan “Father of the
rest”; and to “friendly Shakespeare.”