The hypothesis that the works of Shakespeare were written by Bacon
has now been before the world for more than forty years. It has been
supported in hundreds of books and pamphlets, but, as a rule, it has
been totally neglected by scholars. Perhaps their indifference may seem
wise, for such an opinion may appear to need no confutation. ‘There are
foolisher fellows than the Baconians,’ says a sage--‘those who argue
against them.’ On the other hand, ignorance has often cherished beliefs
which science has been obliged reluctantly to admit. The existence of
meteorites, and the phenomena of hypnotism, were familiar to the ancient
world, and to modern peasants, while philosophy disdained to investigate
them. In fact, it is never really prudent to overlook a widely spread
opinion. If we gain nothing else by examining its grounds, at least we
learn something about the psychology of its advocates. In this case
we can estimate the learning, the logic, and the general intellect of
people who form themselves into Baconian Societies, to prove that the
poems and plays of Shakespeare were written by Bacon. Thus a light is
thrown on the nature and origin of popular delusions.
*(1) ‘Bacon and Shakespeare,’ by William Henry Smith (1857);
(2) ‘The Authorship of Shakespeare,’ by Nathaniel Holmes (1875); (3)
‘The Great Cryptogram,’ by Ignatius Donnelly (1888); (4) ‘The Promus of
Formularies and Elegancies of Francis Bacon,’ by Mrs. Henry Pott (1883);
(5) ‘William Shakespeare,’ by Georg Brandes (1898); (6) ‘Shakespeare,’
by Sidney Lee (in the Dictionary of National Biography, 1897); (7)
‘Shakespeare Dethroned’ (in Pearson’s Magazine, December 1897); (8) ‘The
Hidden Lives of Shakespeare and Bacon,’ by W. G. Thorpe, F.S.A. (1897).
(9) ‘The Mystery of William Shakespeare,’ by Judge Webb (1902).
The Baconian creed, of course, is scouted equally by special students
of Bacon, special students of Shakespeare, and by almost all persons
who devote themselves to sound literature. It is equally rejected by
Mr. Spedding, the chief authority on Bacon; by Mr. H. H. Furness, the
learned and witty American editor of the ‘Variorum Shakespeare;’ by Dr.
Brandes, the Danish biographer and critic; by Mr. Swinburne, with his
rare knowledge of Elizabethan and, indeed, of all literature; and by Mr.
Sidney Lee, Shakespeare’s latest biographer. Therefore, the first point
which strikes us in the Baconian hypothesis is that its devotees are
nobly careless of authority. We do not dream of converting them, but it
may be amusing to examine the kind of logic and the sort of erudition
which go to support an hypothesis not freely welcomed even in Germany.
The mother of the Baconian theory (though others had touched a guess at
it) was undeniably Miss Delia Bacon, born at Tallmadge, Ohio, in 1811.
Miss Bacon used to lecture on Roman history, illustrating her theme by
recitations from Macaulay’s ‘Lays.’ ‘Her very heart was lacerated,’ says
Mr. Donnelly, ‘and her womanly pride wounded, by a creature in the shape
of a man--a Reverend (!) Alexander MacWhorter.’ This Celtic divine was
twenty-five, Miss Bacon was thirty-five; there arose a misunderstanding;
but Miss Bacon had developed her Baconian theory before she knew Mr.
MacWhorter. ‘She became a monomaniac on the subject,’ writes Mr. Wyman,
and ‘after the publication and non-success of her book she lost her
reason WHOLLY AND ENTIRELY.’ But great wits jump, and, just as Mr.
Darwin and Mr. Wallace simultaneously evolved the idea of Natural
Selection, so, unconscious of Miss Delia, Mr. William Henry Smith
developed the Baconian verity.
From the days of Mr. William Henry Smith, in 1856, the great Baconian
argument has been that Shakespeare could not conceivably have had the
vast learning, classical, scientific, legal, medical, and so forth, of
the author of the plays. Bacon, on the other hand, and nobody else, had
this learning, and had, though he concealed them, the poetic powers of
the unknown author. Therefore, prima facie, Bacon wrote the works of
Shakespeare. Mr. Smith, as we said, had been partly anticipated, here,
by the unlucky Miss Delia Bacon, to whose vast and wandering book Mr.
Hawthorne wrote a preface. Mr. Hawthorne accused Mr. Smith of plagiarism
from Miss Delia Bacon; Mr. Smith replied that, when he wrote his first
essay (1856), he had never even heard the lady’s name. Mr. Hawthorne
expressed his regret, and withdrew his imputation. Mr. Smith is the
second founder of Baconomania.
Like his followers, down to Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, and Mr. Bucke, and
General Butler, and Mr. Atkinson, who writes in ‘The Spiritualist,’ and
Mrs. Gallup, and Judge Webb, Mr. Smith rested, first, on Shakespeare’s
lack of education, and on the wide learning of the author of the poems
and plays. Now, Ben Jonson, who knew both Shakespeare and Bacon, averred
that the former had ‘small Latin and less Greek,’ doubtless with truth.
It was necessary, therefore, to prove that the author of the plays had
plenty of Latin and Greek. Here Mr. John Churton Collins suggests that
Ben meant no more than that Shakespeare was not, in the strict sense,
a scholar. Yet he might read Latin, Mr. Collins thinks, with ease and
pleasure, and might pick out the sense of Greek books by the aid of
Latin translations. To this view we return later.
Meanwhile we shall compare the assertions of the laborious Mr. Holmes,
the American author of ‘The Authorship of Shakespeare’ (third edition,
1875), and of the ingenious Mr. Donnelly, the American author of ‘The
Great Cryptogram.’ Both, alas! derive in part from the ignorance
of Pope. Pope had said: ‘Shakespeare follows the Greek authors, and
particularly Dares Phrygius.’ Mr. Smith cites this nonsense; so do Mr.
Donnelly and Mr. Holmes. Now the so-called Dares Phrygius is not a
Greek author. No Greek version of his early mediaeval romance, ‘De Bello
Trojano,’ exists. The matter of the book found its way into Chaucer,
Boccaccio, Lydgate, Guido de Colonna, and other authors accessible
to one who had no Greek at all, while no Greek version of Dares was
accessible to anybody.* Some recent authors, English and American, have
gone on, with the credulity of ‘the less than half educated,’ taking
a Greek Dares for granted, on the authority of Pope, whose Greek was
‘small.’ They have clearly never looked at a copy of Dares, never known
that the story attributed to Dares was familiar, in English and French,
to everybody. Mr. Holmes quotes Pope, Mr. Donnelly quotes Mr. Holmes,
for this Greek Dares Phrygius. Probably Shakespeare had Latin enough to
read the pseudo-Dares, but probably he did not take the trouble.
*See Brandes, William Shakespeare, ii. 198-202.
This example alone proves that men who are not scholars venture to
pronounce on Shakespeare’s scholarship, and that men who take absurd
statements at second hand dare to constitute themselves judges of a
question of evidence and of erudition.
The worthy Mr. Donnelly then quotes Mr. Holmes for Shakespeare’s
knowledge of the Greek drama. Turning to Mr. Holmes (who takes his
motto, if you please, from Parmenides), we find that the author of
‘Richard II.’ borrowed from a Greek play by Euripides, called ‘Hellene,’
as did the author of the sonnets. There is, we need not say, no Greek
play of the name of ‘Hellene.’ As Mr. Holmes may conceivably mean the
‘Helena’ of Euripides, we compare Sonnet cxxi. with ‘Helena,’ line 270.
The parallel, the imitation of Euripides, appears to be--
By their dark thoughts my deeds must not be shown,
with--
Prooton men ouk ons adikoz eimi duskleez,
which means, ‘I have lost my reputation though I have done no harm.’
Shakespeare, then, could not complain of calumny without borrowing
from ‘Hellene,’ a name which only exists in the fancy of Mr. Nathaniel
Holmes. This critic assigns ‘Richard II.,’ act ii., scene 1, to
‘Hellene’ 512-514. We can find no resemblance whatever between the three
Greek lines cited, from the ‘Helena,’ and the scene in Shakespeare. Mr.
Holmes appears to have reposed on Malone, and Malone may have remarked
on fugitive resemblances, such as inevitably occur by coincidence of
thought. Thus the similarity of the situations of Hamlet and of Orestes
in the ‘Eumenides’ is given by similarity of legend, Danish and Greek.
Authors of genius, Greek or English, must come across analogous ideas in
treating analogous topics. It does not follow that the poet of ‘Hamlet’
was able to read AEschylus, least of all that he could read him in
Greek.
Anglicised version of the author’s original Greek text.
The ‘Comedy of Errors’ is based on the ‘Menaechmi’ of Plautus. It does
not follow that the author of the ‘Comedy of Errors’ could read the
‘Menaechmi’ or the ‘Amphitryon,’ though Shakespeare had probably Latin
enough for the purpose. The ‘Comedy of Errors’ was acted in December
1594. A translation of the Latin play bears date 1595, but this may be
an example of the common practice of post-dating a book by a month or
two, and Shakespeare may have seen the English translation in the work
itself, in proof, or in manuscript. In those days MSS. often circulated
long before they were published, like Shakespeare’s own ‘sugared
sonnets.’ However, it is highly probable that Shakespeare was equal to
reading the Latin of Plautus.