Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown

nt in Shakespeare's work, namely, "congruity of g

rves") to stand for the occurrence of an event, or the performance of an action which, to the speaker who applies the word "miracle," seems "impossible." The speaker therefore says, "The event is impossible; miracles do not happen: therefore the reported event never oc

tions the circumstance that Will may have been, not merely "a sharp boy" but a boy of great parts; and not without a love of stories and poetry: a passion which, in a bookless region, could only be gratified through folk-song, folk-tale, and such easy Latin as he might take the trouble to read. If we add to these ve

Molière. "Genius" is claimed for Shakespeare in an inscription on his Stratford monument, erected at latest some six years after his death. Following this path of thought we come to "inspiration": the notion of it, as familiar to Australian savages as to any modern minds, is that, to the poet, what he produces is given by some power greater

r the Genius-what they call the "Subliminal Self," something "far more deeply interfused than the every

only higher in degree, and not at all different in kind, fr

l science or experimental psychology, or by psychical research, or by the study of heredity. When I speak of "the genius of Shakespeare," of Jeanne d'Arc, of Bacon, even of Wellington, I possibly have a meaning wh

Napoleon said, "impossible." At once, on either side, we assume that we k

f Bacon, and from all that has reached us about Bacon's occupations and preoccupations, from 1590 to 1605-tha

he knows, or can imagine, of the actor's education, conditions of life,

acon, in his works, his aims, his inclinations, and in his life, than we know a

older plays for a company of actors: he did it extremely well, but what a quaint taste for a courtier and scholar! The eccentricities of genius may account for his choice of a "nom de plume," which,

mlet "if he had the mind," as Charles Lamb said of Wordsworth.

of Ely and the Archbishop of Canterbury describe and discuss in the case of the young king. In this passage we perceive that the poe

ch a sudden s

that during his early years in London (say 1587–92)

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dge and accomplishments; for all Bacon's known exertions and occupations, and his deepest and most absorbing interest, were remote from the art of tragedy and comedy. If we are to admit the marvel of genius in Bacon, of w

onis, author's name being printed as "W. Shakespeare." Then comes Lucrece (1594). In 1598 Love's Labour's Lost, printed as "corrected and augmented" by "W. Shakespere." And so on with all the rest. Criticism of the learning and splendour of the two poems follows. To Love's Labour's Lost, and the amusing th

nians know that all the early works ascribed to the actor were impossible, to a man of, say thirty-who was no more, and knew no more, than they know that the actor was and knew;

, with a tenacious memory, may enable a small boy to know more facts of many sorts than his elders and betters and all the neighbours. They are puzzled, if they make the discovery of his knowledge. Scott was such a small boy; whether we think him a man of genius or not. Shakspere, even the actor, was, perhaps, a man of genius, and possessed this pow

too was equally moved. I replied that these pseudoscientific "facts" had long been commonplaces. Pliny was a rich source of them. Professor Dowden took the matter up, with full knowledge, [93a] and reconverted Mr. Tyrrell, who wrote: "I am not versed in the liter

Personality), and to consider the humble problem of "Calculating Boys," which is touched on also by Cardinal Newman. How do they, at the age of innocence, arrive at their ama

ature, take Will in place of Pascal and Gauss, and (in manners and matte

ean plays. But that author and Burns have this in common with each other (and obviously with Homer), that their work arises from a basis of older materials, already manipulated by earlier artists. Burns almost always has a key-note already touched, as confessedly in the poems of h

lar Scots poets of his century, with a world of old Scots songs. These things, and such as these, were Burns's given literary materials. He used them in the only way open to him, in poems written for a rural audience, and published for an Edinburgh public. No classical, no theatrical materials were given; or, if he read the old d

o him was the theatre. Badly as it paid the outside author, there was nothing that paid better. Venus and Adonis brought "more praise than pudding," if one may venture a guess. With the freedom of the th

manner, and knowledge of how the great were supposed (in books) to comport and conduct themselves. The books were cheap, and could be borrowed, and turned over at the booksellers' stalls. [96a] The Elizabethan style was omnipresent. Suppose that Shakespeare was a clever man, a lover of reading, a rapid reader with an excellent memory, easily influenced, like Burns, by what he read, and I really think that my conjectures are not too audacious. Not only "the man in the street," but "the reading public" (so loved by Coleridge), have not the beginning of a guess as to the way in whi

re not a few men who have no pretensions to genius. The accomplishment is only a mar

loquent passage of comparison between the knowledge of Burns a

n of Plutarch's Lives; of Homer, he (or the author of Troilus and Cressida) used only Iliad VII., in Chapman's new translation (1598). For the rest he had Lydgate (perhaps), and, certainly, Caxton's Destruction of Troy, still reprinted as a popular book as late as 1713. Will did not, as Mr. Morgan says, "reproduce the very counterfeit civilisations and manners of nations born and buried and passed into history a thousand years before he had been begotten. . . " He bestowed the manners of medi?val chivalrous romance on his Trojans and Greeks. He accommodated prehistoric Athens with a Duke. He gave Scotland cannon three hundred years too early; and made Cleopatra play at billiards. Look at his notion o

ources of King Lear are a popular tale attached to legendary "history" and a story in Sidney's Arcadia. Will, whom Mr. Morgan describes as "a letterless peasant lad," o

with his contaminated legends; North's Plutarch, done out of the French; older plays, and the rest of it. Shakespeare does not go to Tighernach and the Hennskringla for Macbeth; or for Hamlet to the saga which is the source of Saxo; or for his English chronicle-plays to the State Papers. Shakespeare did not, like William of Deloraine, dig up "clas

at suited his age and his circumstances. It was lyric, idyll, song, and satire; it was not drama, for to the Stag

classicism and foreign romance of the period, with the wide, sketchy, general information, the commonly known fragments from the great banquet of the classics,-with such history, wholly uncritical, as Holinshed

come an actuality, and what it will produce, depends upon the moral qualities with which it is associate

and think that Shakespeare of Stratford had genius, and that what it produced was in accordance with the opportunities open to it,

s, the pamphlets, and, above all, the plays, and the wine, the wild talk, the wit, the travellers' tales, the seamen's company, the vision of the Court, the gallants, the beauties; and he needed the People, of whom he does not speak in the te

umain n'est point

g, or law-court, and chamber of criminal examination-rooms haunting Bacon make acquaintance with Mrs. Quickly, and Doll Tearsheet, an

ourtly society (which, by the way, are purely poetic and conventional), than

rdolphs, and carters, from a hint or two, a glance," I answer that Will had much better sources for them in his own experience of l

e, that aged Judge. The way is short. These pictures of rural life and character were interpolated into the plays of Bacon by his collaborat

orlds and aspects of character which he could scarcely draw "from the life." I am willing to ascribe miracles to

ot live in "Society," though both rubbed shoulders with it, or looked at it over the invisible barrier between the ac

his multitude of very low-lived persons? Rustics and rural constables he may have lovingly studied at Gorhambury, but for his collection of other very loose fish Bacon must have kept queer company. So yo

published: that was impossible for Shakespeare at Stratford, if he had written any lyrics. Suppose him to be a poet, an observer, a wit, a humorist. Tradition a

ts of park-palings, as he was married at eighteen, he could not break so lightly as Burns did,-some outlying deer he could not so readily shoot at, perhaps, but I am not surprised if he assailed other deer, and was in troubles many. Unlike Burns, he had a keen eye for the main

nd he made for London, and, by tradition, we first find him heading straight for the theatre, holding horses at the door, and organising a small brigade of boys as his deputies. According to Ben Jonson he shone

lso an author, or a furbisher of older plays, and, as a member of the company, is a rival to be dreaded by Greene's three author friend

man connected with the stage. Among these, in that age, we may, perhaps, reckon a good deal of very mixed society-writin

t the attention of the gallants. The players, says Asinius Lupus, in Jonson's Poetaster, "corrupt young gentry very much, I know it." I take the quotation from Mr. Greenwood. [106a] They could not corrupt the young gentry, if they were not pretty intimate with them. From Ben's Poetaster, which bristles with envy of the players, Mr. Greenwood also quotes a railing address by a copper captain to Histrio, a p

tire of the actors, their acquisition of land and of coats of arms infuriated the sweated playwrights. Envy of the actors appears in the Cambridge "Parnassus" plays of c. 1600–2. In the mouth of Will Kempe, who acted Dogberry in Shakespeare's company, and was in favour, says Heywood, with Queen Elizabeth, the Cambridge authors put this brag: "For Londoners, who of more report than Dick Burbage and Will Kempe? He is not counted a gentleman that kno

d by the young, handsome, popular Earl of Southampton; who found him interesting, and interested himself in the po

are the surprise of Mr. Greenwood. He, conceivably, will argue that the Earl knew the real concealed author, and the secret of the pseudonym. But of the hypothesis of such a choice of a pseudonym, enough has been said. Whatever happened, whatev

ry literary anecdote about Shakespeare, as about Beaumont, Dekker, Chapman, Heywood, and Fletcher, there is none, or next to none. There is the tradition that Southampton gave the poet ￡1000 towards a purchase to which he had a mind. (Rowe seems to have got this from Davenant,

t world, tells us [109b] that "Tarleton, in his time, was gracious with the Queen

literary men, but low comedians.

on the bank

Eliza and

"was gracious w

d received permission to dedicate. They say that the Earls "have prosecuted both the plays and their authour living" (while in life) "with much favour." They "have collected

that as it may, the Preface signed by the two players speaks to Pembroke and Montgomery. To them it cannot lie; they know whether they patronised the actor or not; whether they believed, or not, that the plays were their "servant's." How is Mr. Greenwood to overcome this certain testimony

he author. That is not nearly explicit enough for the precise Baconians. But the Earls knew whether what was said were true or false. I am not sure whether the Baconians regard them as having been duped as to the authorship,

Earl, promising to add "some graver labour," a promise fulfilled in Lucrece. In 1593, Bacon was chiefly occupied, we shall see, with the affairs of a young and beautiful Earl-the Earl of Essex, not of Southampton: to Es

By 1592 Will had not time to be guilty of thirteen plays, or even of six. But I have not credited him with the authorship, between, say, 1587 and 1593, of eleven plays, namely, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream, Titus Andronicus, Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost,

by Will. Mr. Greenwood writes, "Some of the dates are disputable"; and, for himself, would omit "Titus Andronicus, the three plays of Henry VI, and possibly also The Taming of the Shrew, while the reference to Hamlet also is, a

l's eleven; and they fairly frighten him, if he be a "Stratfordian." "Will, even Will," says the Stratfordian, "could not have composed the five, much less the eleven, much less Mr. Edwin Reed's thirteen 'before 1592.'" [113c] But, at the

of King John) "published in 1591, and that which, so far as we know, first saw the light in the Folio of 1623 . . . Hardly a single line of the original version reappears in the King John of Shakespeare." [

early plays is "following darkness like a dream." We do not know the date of A Midsummer Night's Dream, we do not know the date of Romeo and Juliet. Mr. Gollancz dates the former "about 1592," and the latter "at 1591." [114c] This is a mere personal speculation. Of Love's Labour's Lost, we only know that our v

s as a dramatist may be placed about 1591–3. There would then have been no specious appearance of miracles to be credited by Stratfordians to Will. But even so, we have sufficient to "give us pause," says Mr. Greenwood, with justice. It gives me "pause," if I am to believe that, between 1587 and 1592, Will wrot