insisted that a “poet should always have himself born in a small
city.” There are many reasons that made the “small city” of Stratford
eminently suitable for the birthplace of a poet. It was at the very
heart of England, the centre of the converging influences of descent
and of legend from British and Saxon and Danish ancestors. The great
Roman roads crossed not far off, and Stratford, with her substantial
bridge, was on the line of traffic. Stratford was a thriving town,
“emporiolum non inelegans,” says Camden. Its gentle, undulating scenery
lay just on the borders of a great forest,
Where nightingales in Arden sit and sing.
(Drayton.)
It had had an aristocratic semi-religious guild from ancient times,
centre of the county families, an old college, now also passed
away, and a noble church, still existing. Becon, a great scholar,
in 1549 speaks of Warwickshire as the most intellectual of all the
English counties, and Stratford, in Shakespeare’s time at least,
had a town-council intelligent enough to know the value of a good
schoolmaster, and to seek to secure him in the practical way by
offering double the amount of salary enjoyed by the head-master of Eton
and others. The books used in the grammar schools of the day can be
found in the writings of Mulcaster and Brinsley, and by reference to
the Stationers’ Registers. The status of the schoolmaster determined
the character of the study and of the books. Those who say that
Stratford was then a “bookless neighbourhood” speak without book. It is
easy for a particular instance to destroy so universal an affirmative.
There was, at least, one suit at law because a man had not returned a
book he had borrowed; and from my own knowledge of their names, I can
state that one curate alone had 170 books of the best selections in
philosophy, divinity, history, literature, and legend. I know that Mr.
Shakespeare bought at least one.
After decrying Stratford, the Baconians attempt to defame young
Stratford Shakespeare. Fortunately, when he was young, his father was
one of the most important men in the place, and as the grammar-school
was free to all the sons of burgesses, it is more than reasonable to
suppose that he had his full opportunities given him. Of course, he may
have neglected them, which is an occasional way with a genius. There
is _no_ authority for the statement that Shakespeare was apprenticed
to a butcher. Even if he had been so, that circumstance would not
have quenched a native genius that rebelled against it. Wolsey was
the son of a butcher, so was Akenside. Keats was the son of a livery
stable keeper. There _is_ authority for his early marriage, imprudent
because his father was in pecuniary difficulties at the time, but
just the kind of marriage one would have expected from his poetic,
impulsive tendencies. His relations to life, property, and literature
were more like those of Sir Walter Scott than any other man. When he
found himself in difficulties, he bravely set himself to the task of
attempting to retrieve the fallen fortunes of the family, and set off
to London. The Baconians firmly believe that he had to fly to escape
the consequences of his poaching affair, but has it never struck them
how humorous it is to think that Bacon showed spite at Sir Thomas
Lucy, for the whipping that Shakespeare received? Bacon in reality was
a very good friend of the Lucy family. I exposed the whole falsity of
this tradition two years ago in the “Fortnightly Review,” in an article
entitled “Justice Shallow _not_ a Satire on Sir Thomas Lucy.”
When young Shakespeare went to London, there is proof that he renewed
his acquaintanceship with his Stratford friend, Richard Field, the
apprentice, son-in-law, and successor of Vautrollier, the great
printer, who had two printing presses, and was allowed to keep six
foreign journeymen. For some years, at least, it is evident that he
took time to read Field’s books. Webster, his contemporary dramatist,
calls him “_industrious_ Shakespeare.” I say it is evident, because
with the exception of a few books referred to, such as Wilson’s “Art
of Rhetoric,” “The Paradise of Dainty Devices,” “Seneca,” “Plautus,”
“Holinshed’s History of England and Scotland,” and others, this one
firm alone printed all the books that were _necessary_ for the poet’s
culture, and all classics that he refers to directly.
The limitation in authorities is a strong argument against Bacon’s
authorship, as well as the plentiful crop of unscholarly blunders to be
found in the plays.
Besides Field’s library, another opportunity of education and culture
was found for the poet in the romantic and faithful friendship of the
young Earl of Southampton, a law-student and patron of literature. How
can Baconians gravely assert that Bacon _could_ have written these two
dedications of 1593 and 1594 to Shakespeare’s poems? How could he speak
of the one poem as the “first heir of his invention,” when he already
had written much and designed more? How could he say to Southampton in
print, “What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours,” while
he was at that time a sworn follower of the Earl of Essex? Shakespeare
had no position in society or literature sufficient to induce Bacon to
use his name as a mantle, by the time that Shakespeare’s two poems
were brought out by Shakespeare’s friend, Dick Field. The sonnets
resemble the poems too much in phrases, feelings, and situations to
doubt that the author is the same, and all the three are claimed by
Shakespeare in print.
Now, can the Baconians explain how they can believe that Bacon, who at
the age of thirty-one had already planned “The Greatest Birth of Time,”
and, filled with the sublime self-conceit of conscious power, had
written to Lord Burghley in that year that he “had taken all knowledge
to be his province,” should have addressed the half-trained young lad,
Southampton (among many other similar phrases), in the modest lines:
Thine eyes that taught the dumb on high to sing,
And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,
Have added feathers to the learned’s wing,
And given grace a double majesty.
Yet be most proud of that which I compile,
Whose influence is thine and born of thee,
In other’s works thou dost but mend the style,
And arts with thy sweet graces graced be--
But thou art all my art, and dost advance
As high as learning my rude ignorance.
Bacon simply could not have written these lines, at least.
And it must be remembered that whoever was able to write the sonnets
and the poems, might become able in time to write the fuller and richer
plays.
There remain witnesses abundant that Shakespeare’s London career was a
personal success. Greene’s envy, no less than Chettle’s praise, point
to it, W. Covell, Thomas Edwards, the authors of the Parnassus Plays,
John Weever, John Davies, and Thomas Thorpe; that he was a good actor,
John Marston, the dramatist, affirms, by asking whether he or Burbage
acted best; John Davies also couples their names together as players
having
Wit, courage, good shape, good parts and all good.
and says of Shakespeare that he was a fit “companion for a king.”
Thou hast no rayling but a raygning witt,
And honesty thou sow’st which they do reape.
The praises of his “works” are emphasized by Professor Meres and
many others; and the testimony of the love and appreciation of “his
fellows” is unstinted. It must never be forgotten that perhaps the most
undoubted praise was that which an admirer fixed upon his tombstone, a
shelter to which surely Bacon cannot enter.
I must also protest against the assumption that Shakespeare “returned
to Stratford to lead an illiterate life.” He returned there to live
in the best house in the town, bearing arms (then a much greater
distinction than now), as _all_ his friends and relatives did, to
associate on intimate terms with the Combes, Collins, Walkers, Shaws,
Nashes, and probably all the county families, as tradition says,
especially that of William Somerville, of Edreston. He returned there,
and continued to write his plays in the bosom of his family, with one
son-in-law, the most distinguished physician of his time, the possessor
of a good library, and his other prospective son-in-law, cultured up
to the level, at least, of affixing a suggestive French proverb to his
accounts, the year that he was Chamberlain.
_It is not a fact_ that he did not teach his favourite daughter to
read and write. It is probably because she responded more rapidly to
culture than her sister did that she became his favourite, as his will
proves. She is recorded to have been “witty above her sex,” and like
her father. Her signature can still be seen in Stratford.
I now come to a stock statement of the Baconians that might seem to a
careless student founded on fact, that he spent his time as a maltster
and moneylender. They never have taken the trouble to find out (as
I have) the number of contemporary Warwickshire Shakespeares. There
was a second John in Stratford-on-Avon, and a third in a neighbouring
village. There were several of the name of William in the immediate
neighbourhood, There was even one at Hatton, who had a daughter
_Susanna_ in 1596; there was another who was a malt-dealer and a
money-lender. His transactions commence during the poet’s life, but,
alas for the Baconian argument, they _continue for ten years after the
poet’s death_. The receipts can still be seen at Warwick Castle. Of
course, “selling malt” or not, is quite irrelevant to the question in
hand. There is only one point, however, that may be noted in connection
with it. In all the plays there is no allusion to the processes of
malt-making, beyond the one proverb, or to the technique of brewing or
wine-making, as there is, for instance, of printing. Shakespeare only
treats the finished article, as sold in the taverns, or drunk in the
halls. He only notes philosophically the effect that stimulants have on
the hearts, brains, and characters of men. This question never troubles
Bacon, but he knows all about the manufacture, the keeping, storing,
curing of ale, wine, mead, and metheglin.
A similar powerful contrast may be seen regarding the differing
treatments of the horse and the chase. The poems and plays are full
of reference to the delights of the chase and the sympathy subsisting
between a rider and his noble steed. The whole works of Bacon supply
only three prosy references to the existence of “the horse.”
The great stronghold of the Baconians is “The Promus.” But the notes
there are not _proved_ to be original. Some of them can be shown to
be borrowed echoes of what the writer heard and read. Bacon was a
great borrower, as Shakespeare also undoubtedly was. Only a poet is
not expected to acknowledge “sources” in his dramas; which a prose
writer, in leisurely detail, is expected to do (Robert Burton in his
“Anatomy of Melancholy” did so). Only last month I came across one of
Chamberlain’s letters, which records a witty saying of the Duchess of
Richmond. The writer adds, it might have got into Bacon’s Apophthegms,
which he had just published, “not much to his credit.” Whole passages
and facts are borrowed by Bacon without acknowledgement from the
ancients, trusting to the general ignorance of his readers. The very
cipher he claimed as his own was published by Jean Baptist Porta in
1568, and by Blaise de Vigenère in 1587.
I do not attempt to deal with the absurd notion that any real poet
could weight the wings of his muse with a cipher. Dr. Nicholson of
Leamington gave the _reductio ad absurdum_ to Mr. Donnelly’s, and other
writers have let in light upon later attempts at cipher mysteries.
The author of “The great Stratford Superstition” says there are no
improbabilities in supposing Bacon to have written the plays. What?
Bacon write “Romeo and Juliet”? He did not know what love was! In his
Essay on Love he calmly asserts that the stage had been more beholden
to love than the life of man. In his life without love, the “marriages”
he sought, and the one he secured, were all mercantile transactions. He
did not deserve to be happy in matrimony. Bacon write the humours of
the fat knight? Bacon was full of wisdom and abounded in wit, but of
humour he was absolutely destitute.
Unfortunately, once only have we a story of Bacon crossing
Shakespeare’s path, a crucial illustration of the impossibility of his
having written one play at least. “The Comedy of Errors” was based
on the Menoechmi of Plautus, a translation of which was registered
in the books of the Stationers’ Company on 10th June 1594. Books at
that time were nearly always handed about in MS. before printing,
seeking patrons. Very probably this one was shown to the Earl of
Southampton, or Shakespeare may have seen it in MS. It was more than
six months after the registration of the Menoechmi that the “Comedy
of Errors” appeared in peculiar circumstances, which I have treated
fully elsewhere. It was acted as a new play by Shakespeare’s company,
amid the uproars in Gray’s Inn Hall, 28th December 1594, when the
Prince of Purpoole’s plans came to grief. The Benchers felt it an
intolerable disgrace, and appointed Bacon to write a proper play to
retrieve the lost honour of Gray’s Inn. He wrote them the “Masque of
the Councillors,” which pleased his fellows, and the company that they
had re-invited to make amends for the “Night of Errors.” This masque
may yet be read, and is exactly the measure of the dramatic capability
of Francis Bacon. It is quite a mistake to imagine that a good play
would have discredited him. On the contrary, the having written the
first English blank verse tragedy was, even at the time, considered
the highest distinction of a more aristocratic man than Bacon, a
diplomatist too, Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst.
Bacon’s allusion to himself as “a concealed poet” can be clearly
understood by those who study his works. He would have called the
“Utopia” of Sir Thomas More a concealed poem, as he did call his own
“New Atlantis,” (See “De Augmentis Scientiarum,” Book II, Poesy, chap.
13.)
On the other hand, he distinctly states, “I profess not to be a poet,
but I _prepared_ a sonnet directly tending to draw on her Majesty’s
reconcilement to my Lord of Essex, _which I showed to a great person,
who commended it_!” Spedding, Bacon’s most able editor and biographer,
says of the poor versions of certain psalms put into English metre,
“These were the _only_ verses certainly of Bacon’s making that have
come down to us, and probably, with one or two slight exceptions, the
only verses he ever wrote.”
With Bacon and with Spedding I agree, and with Shakespeare.[105]
_“Broad Views,” April 1904._
FOOTNOTES:
[104] Mr. Sinnet, the Editor of “Broad Views,” had in March 1904
written an article in that Review under the above title in support of
Bacon’s authorship of Shakespeare’s Works, and had allowed me to reply
the following month.
[105] I had published my volume called “The Bacon-Shakespere Question
Answered” at a time when I was under the dominance of Dr. Furnivall in
regard to the spelling of the name, 1889.
XXX
SIXTEENTH CENTURY WOMEN STUDENTS
Though we are all familiar with the lives of certain notable ladies
who reached a high standard of learning during the sixteenth century,
little or nothing is known concerning the general education of girls
and women of that period. No Royal Reports enlighten us concerning
their opportunities, and no private study has elicited and combined
a definite series of details. It is therefore important to note and
collate all that may be gleaned concerning this interesting subject.
There is reason to believe that in earlier times the schools that
_were_ founded, were intended for “liberi”--not “pueri” alone--and that
what education there was for the people was open to children of both
sexes, as the trades were. I may illustrate what I mean by the statute
enacted 7 Henry IV, c. 17.
“That no man or woman, of whatsoever estate or condition they be,
shall put their son or their daughter to serve as an apprentice,
except he or she have land or rent to the value of 20 shillings by the
year, and no man or woman shall receive an apprentice contrary to this
ordinance, provided ... always that every man or woman of what estate
or condition that he be, shall be free to set their son or daughter
to take learning at any manner school that pleaseth them within the
Realm.” (Statutes of the Realm.)
But by a limitation of meaning, the word “children” lost its ambiguity
of sex, and privileges became limited to boys which our ancestors
intended for girls and boys. This took place all the more rapidly in
the sixteenth century. Reforms and reformations have always a tendency
to be to the disadvantage of women.
The intellectual developments of England during the sixteenth century
were moulded by three main streams of influence--that of the Italian
Renaissance, which partially passed to us through France; that of the
German and Swiss Reformation; and that of the rapid improvements in the
art of printing. Social and political changes stimulated the national
intellect to high fervours, and the literary spirit predominated. How
much women shared in the general advance of culture is too frequently
only a matter of inference, just as we may learn that a sheep, which we
have not seen, has passed through a hedge by a fleece of wool caught
on the branches. That many women had learned to read we may infer from
the religious history of the time. We hear of women as amid those
who flocked to buy the testaments of Tyndale and the great Bibles of
Rogers; of women who suffered as heretics during the first half, and
as recusants during the second half, of the century, doomed by the
discovery of their _books_. And we know, on the other side, that Dr.
John Hall, of Maidstone, in his “Court of Virtue,” reproached the
gayer maidens of the country with reading wicked songs and romances,
when they should have been reading the Scriptures. When the decisions
of the foreign universities against King Henry’s marriage “were
publyshed, all wyse men in the realme moche abhorred that marriage;
but women and such as wer more wylful than wyse or learneyd spake
against the Determinacion and sayde that the Universities were
corrupt, and enticed so to doo,”[106] an opinion that many wise men
have held since. How _were_ they educated? Probably all mothers who
knew taught their daughters, if only for the sake of acquiring medical
and cookery receipts. Doubtless, all who were rich enough had tutors,
and there is every reason to believe that any number of unrecorded
Dame Schools flourished throughout the length and breadth of the land,
where children of both sexes were taught the elements of reading from
the Hornbook. (One lady who was admitted to the Guild of Boston in
the early part of the century was described as a _schoolmistress_.) I
have been fortunate enough to find corroboration of my opinion in the
pages of a notable book on the education of boys, by Richard Mulcaster,
First Master of the Merchant Taylors’ School, 1581. He says: “Seeing
that I begin so low as the first elementary, wherein we see that young
maidens be also _ordinarily trained_,” etc. That seems to imply primary
education for many, if not for the mass of the people.
A still thicker veil hides us from the true state of their secondary
education. The destruction of the convents involved the destruction of
many opportunities of feminine culture. Fuller says of them: “They were
the schools where the girls and maids of the neighbourhood were taught
to read and work, and sometimes a little Latin was taught them, music,
and Church History.”
Among the numerous schools founded or refounded in the century, the
Collegiate schools seem always to have been reserved for boys, but
we have no means of knowing whether the schools founded by private
laymen for _children_ were not originally intended for both sexes in
England, as they always were in Scotland, at the Reformation. We know
that Christ Church Hospital was so, and it is quite probable that
many others have since drifted into the one-sided channel of masculine
privilege. Stow includes in his list of “charitable men” the names of
many women. The number of grants to schools and colleges is remarkable,
and suggests sympathy with education, that might have extended to that
of girls. He concludes: “Thus much for the worthiness of citizens,
both men and women, in this citie.” I have not yet met an instance
of a private foundation of a school expressly for girls, or even of
one in which they were _stated_ to have been included, until the next
century. Then Lucy, daughter of Sir Henry Goodyere, niece of Drayton’s
Warwickshire “Idea,” prevailed on her husband, Sir Francis Nethersole
of Kent, to found a school in her native town of Polesworth, with “a
liberal maintenance of a schoolmaster and schoolmistress, to teach
the _children_ of the parish, the boys to read and write English,
the girls to read and to work with the needle.” Whether the founders
were following an old custom, or whether they found that unprotected
foundations were apt to lapse, their intention was preserved by
cutting in stone over the doorways, associated with their coats of
arms, the words “puerorum, puellarum” (Dugdale’s “Warwickshire” under
“Polesworth”).
Whatever may be proved of foundations, I have always been convinced of
the existence of voluntary secondary schools (_see_ “L.L.L.,” iv, 2),
and here again Richard Mulcaster supports my opinion. As master of a
boys’ school, and professing only to write for them, he might well have
passed over girls, but he did not. He devotes a whole chapter to the
subject of their education. Seeing that some still doubted the wisdom
of teaching them _further than the elementary_, he gives, as four good
reasons for doing so:
First. Because it is the _custom of my country_.
Second. Because it is a duty which we owe to them, wherein we are
charged in conscience not to leave them lame in that which is for them.
Third. Because of their own towardness, which God would never have
given them had He meant them to remain idle.
Fourth. Because of the excellent effects in that sex when they have
had the help of good bringing up.
Their natural towardness ought to be cultivated because we have it by
commandment of the Lord, to train up, not only our own sex, but our
females, and He makes an account of natural talents.
In expanding these heads, he adds suggestions that in modern
terminology at least would imply that there were special opportunities
for girls; for he says: “The custom of my countrie hath made the
maiden’s training her approved travail,” though elsewhere he states
that “there is no _public_ provision, but such as the professors of
their training do make of themselves.” He would not have them go
to the public grammar schools or the universities, but advises all
parents to educate them according to their powers. He regrets that
girls _in general_ only study until about the age of thirteen or
fourteen, “wherein the matter which they must deal withal, cannot be
very much in so little time, for the perfitting thereof requireth much
travail!” “Some _Timon_ will say, What should women do with learning?
Such a churlish carper will never pick out the best!” “Is it nothing
to us to have our children’s mothers well furnished in mind, and well
strengthened in body?” Mulcaster would give them the pencil to draw,
the pen to write; teach them some logic, rhetoric, philosophy to
furnish their general discourses, and the knowledge of some tongues,
as well as housewifery. He says that the selection of studies depended
upon whether a girl was intended to marry or to earn her bread. As
the trades-guilds were then open to them, education would be of value
to those prepared to enter any of these, or to become teachers, or
practitioners in some branches of medicine, such as barber-surgeons,
midwives, etc. Mulcaster, besides giving theories, states facts: