Here then are two wanderers--and there is a river in Monmouth and a
river in Macedon. Puck, also, is ‘that merry WANDERER of the night.’
Then ‘A BOUNCING AMAZON’ is mentioned in the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’
and ‘the fountain of the great river of the Amazons’ is alluded to in
the fragment of the masque. Cupid too occurs in the play, and in the
masque the wanderer is BLIND; now Cupid is blind, sometimes, but hardly
when ‘a certain aim he took.’ The Indian, in the masque, presents
Elizabeth with ‘his gift AND PROPERTY TO BE EVER YOUNG,’ and the herb,
in the play, has a ‘VIRTUOUS PROPERTY.’
For such exquisite reasons as these the masque and the ‘Midsummer
Night’s Dream’ are by one hand, and the masque is by Bacon. For some
unknown cause the play is full of poetry, which is entirely absent
from the masque. Mr. Holmes was a Judge; sat on the bench of American
Themis--and these are his notions of proof and evidence. The parallel
passages which he selects are on a level with the other parallels
between Bacon and Shakespeare. One thing is certain: the writer of the
masque shows no signs of being a poet, and a poet Bacon explicitly ‘did
not profess to be.’ One piece of verse attributed to Bacon, a loose
paraphrase of a Greek epigram, has won its way into ‘The Golden
Treasury.’ Apart from that solitary composition, the verses which Bacon
‘prepared’ were within the powers of almost any educated Elizabethan.
They are on a level with the rhymes of Mr. Ruskin. It was only when he
wrote as Shakespeare that Bacon wrote as a poet.
We have spoken somewhat harshly of Mr. Holmes as a classical scholar,
and as a judge of what, in literary matters, makes evidence. We hasten
to add that he could be convinced of error. He had regarded a sentence
of Bacon’s as a veiled confession that Bacon wrote ‘Richard II.,’
‘which, though it grew from me, went after about in others’ names.’
Mr. Spedding averred that Mr. Holmes’s opinion rested on a grammatical
misinterpretation, and Mr. Holmes accepted the correction. But ‘nothing
less than a miracle’ could shake Mr. Holmes’s belief in the common
authorship of the masque (possibly Bacon’s) and the ‘Midsummer Night’s
Dream’--so he told Mr. Spedding. To ourselves nothing short of a
miracle, or the visitation of God in the shape of idiocy, could bring
the conviction that the person who wrote the masque could have written
the play. The reader may compare the whole passage in Mr. Holmes’s work
(pp. 228-238). We have already set forth some of those bases of his
belief which only a miracle could shake. The weak wind that scarcely
bids the aspen shiver might blow them all away.
Vast space is allotted by Baconians to ‘parallel passages’ in Bacon
and Shakespeare. We have given a few in the case of the masque and the
‘Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ The others are of equal weight. They are on a
level with ‘Punch’s’ proofs that Alexander Smith was a plagiarist. Thus
Smith:
No CHARACTER that servant WOMAN asked;
Pope writes:
Most WOMEN have no CHARACTER at all.
It is tedious to copy out the puerilities of such parallelisms. Thus
Bacon:
If we simply looked to the fabric of the world;
Shakespeare:
And, like the baseless fabric of a vision.
Bacon:
The intellectual light in the top and consummation of thy
workmanship;
Shakespeare:
Like eyasses that cry out on the top of the question.
Myriads of pages of such matter would carry no proof. Probably the
hugest collection of such ‘parallels’ is that preserved by Mrs. Pott
in Bacon’s ‘Promus,’ a book of 628 pages. Mrs. Pott’s ‘sole object’ in
publishing ‘was to confirm the growing belief in Bacon’s authorship
of the plays.’ Having acquired the opinion, she laboured to strengthen
herself and others in the faith. The so-called ‘Promus’ is a manuscript
set of notes, quotations, formulae, and proverbs. As Mr. Spedding says,
there are ‘forms of compliment, application, excuse, repartee, etc.’
‘The collection is from books which were then in every scholar’s
hands.’ ‘The proverbs may all, or nearly all, be found in the common
collections.’ Mrs. Pott remarks that in ‘Promus’ are ‘several hundreds
of notes of which no trace has been discovered in the acknowledged
writings of Bacon, or of any other contemporary writer but Shakespeare.’
She adds that the theory of ‘close intercourse’ between the two men is
‘contrary to all evidence.’ She then infers that ‘Bacon alone wrote all
the plays and sonnets which are attributed to Shakespeare.’ So Bacon
entrusted his plays, and the dread secret of his authorship, to a
boorish cabotin with whom he had no ‘close intercourse’! This is lady’s
logic, a contradiction in terms. The theory that Bacon wrote the plays
and sonnets inevitably implies the closest intercourse between him and
Shakespeare. They must have been in constant connection. But, as Mrs.
Pott truly says, this is ‘contrary to all evidence.’
Perhaps the best way to deal with Mrs. Pott is to cite the author of
her preface, Dr. Abbott. He is not convinced, but he is much struck by a
very exquisite argument of the lady’s. Bacon in ‘Promus’ is writing down
‘Formularies and Elegancies,’ modes of salutation. He begins with ‘Good
morrow!’ This original remark, Mrs. Pott reckons, ‘occurs in the plays
nearly a hundred times. In the list of upwards of six thousand words
in Appendix E, “Good morrow” has been noted thirty-one times.... “Good
morrow” may have become familiar merely by means of “Romeo and Juliet.”’
Dr. Abbott is so struck by this valuable statement that he writes:
‘There remains the question, Why did Bacon think it worth while to write
down in a notebook the phrase “Good morrow” if it was at that time in
common use?’
Bacon wrote down ‘Good morrow’ just because it WAS in common use. All
the formulae were in common use; probably ‘Golden sleepe’ was a regular
wish, like ‘Good rest.’ Bacon is making a list of commonplaces about
beginning the day, about getting out of bed, about sleep. Some are in
English, some in various other languages. He is not, as in Mrs. Pott’s
ingenious theory, making notes of novelties to be introduced through his
plays. He is cataloguing the commonplace. It is Mrs. Pott’s astonishing
contention, as we have seen, that Bacon probably introduced the phrase
‘Good morrow!’ Mr. Bucke, following her in a magazine article, says:
‘These forms of salutation were not in use in England before Bacon’s
time, and it was his entry of them in the “Promus” and use of them
in the plays that makes them current coin day by day with us in the
nineteenth century.’ This is ignorant nonsense. ‘Good morrow’ and ‘Good
night’ were as familiar before Bacon or Shakespeare wrote as ‘Good
morning’ and ‘Good night’ are to-day. This we can demonstrate. The very
first Elizabethan handbook of phrases which we consult shows that ‘Good
morrow’ was the stock phrase in regular use in 1583. The book is ‘The
French Littelton, A most Easie, Perfect, and Absolute way to learne the
Frenche Tongue. Set forth by Claudius Holyband. Imprinted at London by
Thomas Vautrollier, dwelling in the blacke-Friers. 1583.’ (There is an
edition of 1566.)