Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown

lad, speaking in patois) should have possessed the wide, deep, and accurate scholarship displayed by the author of the plays and poems. It is imposs

ubjects, information in which the whole literature of England then abounded. He also finds in the plays some knowledge of certain Latin authors, which cann

ssessed, he did not use his knowledge like a scholar. We do not see how a scholar could make, as the scansion of his blank verse proves t

s Posthoome,

d Free School. In the same way he makes the penultim

ojans cite Plato and Aristotle in Troilus and Cressida, while Plato and Aristotle lived more than a thousand years after the latest conceivable date of the siege of Troy, I cannot possibly suppose that a scholar would have permitted to himself the freak, any more than that in The Winter's Tale he should have borrowed from an earlier novel the

es snubbed him. Indeed, Ben could have made mirth enough out of The Winter's Tale. For, granting to Mr. Greenwood [45a] that "the mention of Delphos suggests the Bohemia of a much earlier date, and under the reign of Ottocar (1255–78) Bohemia extended from the Adriatic to the shores of the Bal

sion," never heard of Ottocar (no more than I), and made a delightful congeries of errors in gaiety of heart. Nobody shall convince me that Francis Bacon was so charmingly irresponsible; but I cannot speak so confidently of Mr. Greenwoo

n she was carried off by Dis. How could she, brought up in the hut of a Bohemian shepherd, know anything of the Ra

of Warwickshire, should have created the noble and witty ladies of the Court; and known the style of

e of actors visited Denmark in 1587. To Will all this knowledge was impossible; for these and many more exquisite reasons the yokel's authorship of the plays is a physical impossibility. But scholars neither invent nor tolerate such strange liberties with time and place, with history, geography, and common sense. Will Shaks

ermen, "made their marks," in place of signing their names to documents. Shakespeare's father, wife, and daughter "made their marks,"

ammar School, about 1564–77, that any given boy attended it; for no

r. Collins. [48a] But though the writers were Stratford boys contemporary with Shakespeare, in later life his associates, as there is no roll of pupils' names

eare's friend," who, if he could read Sturley's letter, could read Latin. Then young Richard Quiney, apparently aged eleven, wrote in Latin to his father. If young Richard Quiney be the son of Shakespeare's friend, Richard Qui

pere, in his own rank and known to him, learned Latin, which they retained

w of what was then the most progressive College in learning of those at Oxford, namely, Corpus Christi. That Shakespeare could have been his pupil is unc

Ipswich, from 1528; in another in 1611; but as we do not possess any special information about Stratford School, Mr. Greenwood opposes the admission of evidence f

and before the Reformation the Brethren of the Guild were "to find a priest fit and able in knowledge to teach grammar freely to all scholars coming to him, taking nothing for their teaching . . . " "The Founder's liberal endow

e incomes of other masters of Grammar Schools, and thereby find out if the Head-Master was very cheap. Mr. Elton (

d was learned by rote, as by George Borrow, in the last century. See Lavengro for details. Conversation books, Sententi? Pueriles, were in use; with easy books, such as Corderius's Colloquia, and so on, for boys were taught to speak Latin, the common language of the educated in Europe. Waifs of the Armada, Spaniards wrecked on the Irish coast, met "a savage who knew La

self, according to my class-master, was "a bad and careless little boy" at thirteen, incurably idle, but I well remember reading in Ovid and C?sar, and Sallust, while the rest of my time was devoted to the total neglect of the mathematics, English "as she was taught," History, and whatsoever else was expected from me. Shakespeare's time was not thus frittered away; Latin was all he learned (if he went to school),

ks chained to the desks of the free schools." Mr. Collins himself gives but "a few classical books," of which portions were read.

course, that the pretension of the extreme Baconians-Will could not even write his name-is absurd. If he could not write, he could not pass as the

. So "I think it highly probable," says Mr. Greenwood, "that he attended the Grammar School at Stratford for four or five years, and that, later in life, after some years in London, he was probably able to 'bumbast out a line,' and perhaps to pose a

began by re-making old plays; then won "some little wealth and credit on the scene," who had his "works" printed (for Ben expects them to reach posterity), and whom Ben accused of plagiarism from himself and his contemporaries. But this Shake-scene, this Poet-Ape, is merely our

ed? By 1592 "Shake-scene" was ambitious, and thought his blank verse as good as the best that Greene's friends, including Marlowe, could write. He had plenty of time to

Latin, I think, as would account for all the knowledge of the Roman tongue which he displays. His amount of teaching at school would carry and tempt ev

set school tasks were concerned, I tried very early to worry the se

at best, it was. "The Stratfordian," says Mr. Greenwood, "will ingeminate 'Genius! Genius!'" [55a] I do say "Genius," and stand by it. The ordinary cleve

pting the tradition of his lively wit; admitting that he had some Latin and literature, I would find in him a sufficiently plausible mask for that immense Unknown with a strange taste for furbishing up older plays. I would merely deny to Will his genius, and

speare's youth are of little value as evidence; but, if it pleases Mr. Greenwood, I will, for the sake of argument, accept the whole of them. Assuredly I

hilling piece of gold; and the same "to my servant, Christopher Beeston." Christopher's son, William, in 1640, became deputy to Davenant in the management of "the King's and Queen's Young Company", and through Beeston, according to Aubrey, Davenant learned;

," and had been a rural dominie. Mr. Greenwood [57a] devotes much space to disparaging Aubrey (and I do not think him a scientific authority, moult s'en faut), but Mr. Greenwood here says not a word as to the steps in the descent of the tradition. He frequently repeats himself, thereby forcing me to more iteration than I like. He had already disparage

ak true, by a year later than the age, twelve, when Bacon went to Cambridge. Will, a clever kind of lad (on my theory), left school at an age when some other c

ore he left Stratford, and after he left school (1577–87?), I can easily suppose that he was not always butchering calves, poaching, and making love; and that, if he could get books in no other way, this graceless fellow might be detected on a summer evening, knitting his brows over the stories and jests of the chained Ovid and Plaut

opinion that if he were fond of stories and romance, had no English books of poetry and romance, and had acquired as much power of reading Latin as a li

y now, if he likes, turn to my reply in The Traditional Shakespeare. [59a] Meanwhile, how can you expect old clerks and sextons, a century after date, in a place where literature was not of supreme interest, to retain a tradition that Will used to read sometimes (if he did), in circumstances of privacy? As far as I am able to judge, had I been a boy at Stratford school for four years, had

or his uses. As a fact, he made use of English translations, and also of Latin texts. Scholars like Bacon do not use bad translations of easy La

out the sense of the Latin, never difficult, for himself. He could also "get a construe," when in London, or help in reading, from a more academic acquaintance: or buy a construe at no high ransom from some poor scholar. No contemporary calls him scholarly; the generation of men who were small boys when he died held him for no scholar. The current English li

iment of "learned." What Ben Jonson thought of his learning (but Ben's standard was very high), what Milton and Fuller, boys of eight when he died, thought of his learning, we know. They thought him

burne among the dead, and Mr. Mackail and Sir Gilbert Murray-if I may be pardoned for mentioning contemporary names. But Elizabethan scholarly poets, and Milton, never regarded Shakespeare as learned.

ords. My attitude must, to the Baconians, seem frivolous, vexatious, and evasive. I cannot pretend to know what was Shakspere's precise amount of proficiency in Latin when he was writ

in a London where Latinists were as common as now they are rare in literary society, he might read more, and be helped in his reading. Any clever man might do as much, not to speak of a man of genius. "And yet, alas, there is no record or tradition of all this prodigious industry. . . . " I am not speaking of "prodigious industry," and of that-at school. In a regio

e) about Shakespeare's debt to Seneca's then untranslated paper De Clementia (1, 3, 3; I,

ted in the higher office . . . But if the placable and just gods punish not instantly with their thunderbolts the sins of the powerful, how much more just it is that a man set over men should gently exercise his power. What? Holds not he the place

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as "out of his own head," he might not hear Seneca's words translated in a sermon, or in conversation, or read them cited in an English book, each reader m

it is the opinion usually held by people who approach the subject, and who have had a classical educa

igh, "are extraordinarily rich in the floating debris of popular literature,-scraps and tags and broken ends of songs and ballads and romances and proverbs. In this respect he is notable even among his contemporaries. . . . Edgar and Ia

ike Scott in Liddesdale, "was

solete rural words. Bacon, too, may have had a memory rich in all