Bacon is Shake-Speare Part 13

"Shakespeare was the third witness examined.

Although, forsooth, the matter of his statements is of no high literary quality and the manner is lacking in imagination and style, as the Rev.

Joseph Green in 1747 complained of the will, we feel none the less as we hear him talk that we have for the first time met Shakespeare in the flesh and that the acquaintance is good."

As a matter of fact none of the words of any of the deponents are their own words, but they are the words of the lawyers who drew the Answers to the Interrogatories. The present writer, when a pupil in the chambers of a distinguished lawyer who afterwards became a Lord Justice, saw any number of Interrogatories and Answers to Interrogatories, and even a.s.sisted in their preparation. The last thing that any one of the pupils thought of, was in what manner the client would desire to express his own views. They drew the most plausible Answers they could imagine, taking care that their words were sufficiently near to the actual facts for the client to be able to swear to them.

The so-called signature "Wilm Shaxp'r," is written by the lawyer or law clerk who wrote the lower part of Shakespeare's depositions, and this same clerk also wrote the depositions above the name of another witness who really _signs_ his own name, viz., "Daniell Nicholas." The only mark William Shakespeare put to the doc.u.ment was the blot above which the abbreviated name "Wilm Shaxp'r" was written by the lawyer or law clerk.

The doc.u.ments shew that Shakespeare of Stratford occasionally "lay" in the house in Silver Street, and Ben Jonson's words in "The Staple of News" (Third Intermeane; Act iii.), to which Dr. Wallace refers viz., that "Siluer-Streete" was "a good seat for a Vsurer" are very informing, because as we have before pointed out the Stratford man was a cruel usurer.

Dr. Wallace's contention that Mountjoy, the wig-maker, of the corner house in Silver Street where Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, Gentleman, occasionally slept, was the original of the name of the Herald in Henry V.[14] really surpa.s.ses, in want of knowledge of History, anything that the writer has ever previously encountered, and he is afraid that it really is a measure of the value of Dr. Wallace's other inferences connecting the illiterate Stratford Rustic with the great Dramatist who "took all knowledge for his province."

Dr. Wallace's "New Shakespeare Discoveries" are really extremely valuable and informing, and very greatly a.s.sist the statements which the writer has made in the previous chapters, viz., that the Stratford Householder was a mean Rustic who was totally unable to read or to write, and was not even an actor of repute, but was a mere hanger-on at the Theatre. Indeed, the more these important doc.u.ments are examined the clearer it will be perceived that, as Dr. Wallace points out, they shew us that the real William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, gentleman, was not the "Aristocrat," whom Tolstoi declares the author of the plays to have been, but was in fact a man who resided [occasionally when he happened to revisit London] "in a hardworking family," a man who was familiar with hairdressers and their apprentices, a man who mixed as an equal among tradesmen in a humble position of life, who referred to him as "One Shakespeare." These doc.u.ments prove that "One Shakespeare" was not and could not have been the "poet and dramatist." In a word these doc.u.ments strongly confirm the fact that

BACON IS SHAKESPEARE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate XLI. Facsimile of the Dedication of Powell's "Attourney's Academy," 1630]

CHAPTER XV.

Appendix.

The facsimile shewn in Plate 41, Page 176, is from "The Attourney's Academy," 1630. The reader will perceive that the ornamental heading is printed upside down. In the ordinary copies it is not so printed, but only in special copies such as that possessed by the writer; the object of the upside-down printing being, as we have already pointed out in previous pages, to reveal, to those deemed worthy of receiving it, some secret concerning Bacon.

In the present work, while we have used our utmost endeavour to place in the vacant frame, the true portrait of him who was the wonder and mystery of his own age and indeed of all ages, we have never failed to remember the instructions given to us in "King Lear":--

"Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest."

Our object has been to supply exact and positive information and to confirm it by proofs so accurate and so certain as to compel belief and render any effective criticism an impossibility.

It may however not be without advantage to those who are becoming convinced against their will, if we place before them a few of the utterances of men of the greatest distinction who, without being furnished with the information which we have been able to afford to our readers, were possessed of sufficient intelligence and common sense to perceive the truth respecting the real authors.h.i.+p of the Plays.

LORD PALMERSTON, b. 1784, d. 1865.

Viscount Palmerston, the great British statesman, used to say that he rejoiced to have lived to see three things--the re-integration of Italy, the unveiling of the mystery of China and j.a.pan, and the explosion of the Shakespearian illusions.--_From the Diary of the Right Hon.

Mount-Stewart E. Grant_.

LORD HOUGHTON, b. 1809, d. 1885.

Lord Houghton (better known as a statesman under the name of Richard Monckton Milnes) reported the words of Lord Palmerston, and he also told Dr. Appleton Morgan that he himself no longer considered Shakespeare, the actor, as the author of the Plays.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, b. 1772, d. 1834.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the eminent British critic and poet, although he a.s.sumed that Shakespeare was the author of the Plays, rejected the facts of his life and character, and says: "Ask your own hearts, ask your own common sense, to conceive the possibility of the author of the Plays being the anomalous, the wild, the irregular genius of our daily criticism. What! are we to have miracles in sport? Does G.o.d choose idiots by whom to convey divine truths to man?"

JOHN BRIGHT, b. 1811, d. 1889.

John Bright, the eminent British statesman, declared: "Any man that believes that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote Hamlet or Lear is a fool." In its issue of March 27th 1889, the _Rochdale Observer_ reported John Bright as scornfully angry with deluded people who believe that Shakespeare wrote Oth.e.l.lo.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, b. 1803, d. 1882.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American philosopher and poet, says: "As long as the question is of talent and mental power, the world of men has not his equal to show.... The Egyptian verdict of the Shakespeare Societies comes to mind that he was a jovial actor and manager. I cannot marry this fact to his verse."--_Emerson's Works. London, 1883.

Vol. 4, p. 420_.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, b. 1807, d. 1892.

John Greenleaf Whittier, the American poet, declared: "Whether Bacon wrote the wonderful plays or not, I am quite sure the man Shakspere neither did nor could."

DR. W. H. FURNESS, b. 1802, d. 1891.

Dr. W. H. Furness, the eminent American scholar, who was the father of the Editor of the Variorum Edition of Shakespeare's Works, wrote to Nathaniel Holmes in a letter dated Oct. 29th 1866: "I am one of the many who have never been able to bring the life of William Shakespeare and the plays of Shakespeare within planetary s.p.a.ce of each other. Are there any two things in the world more incongruous? Had the plays come down to us anonymously, had the labor of discovering the author been imposed upon after generations, I think we could have found no one of that day but F. Bacon to whom to a.s.sign the crown. In this case it would have been resting now on his head by almost common consent."

MARK TWAIN, b. 1835, d. 1910.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who wrote under the pseudonym of Mark Twain, was,--it is universally admitted,--one of the wisest of men. Last year (1909) he published a little book with the t.i.tle, "Is Shakespeare dead?"

In this he treats with scathing scorn those who can persuade themselves that the immortal plays were written by the Stratford clown. He writes, pp. 142-3: "You can trace the life histories of the whole of them [the world's celebrities] save one far and away the most colossal prodigy of the entire acc.u.mulation--Shakespeare. About him you can find out _nothing_. Nothing of even the slightest importance. Nothing worth the trouble of stowing away in your memory. Nothing that even remotely indicates that he was ever anything more than a distinctly common-place person--a manager,[15] an actor of inferior grade, a small trader in a small village that did not regard him as a person of any consequence, and had forgotten him before he was fairly cold in his grave. We can go to the records and find out the life-history of every renowned _race-horse_ of modern times--but not Shakespeare's! There are many reasons why, and they have been furnished in cartloads (of guess and conjecture) by those troglodytes; but there is one that is worth all the rest of the reasons put together, and is abundantly sufficient all by itself--_he hadn't any history to record_. There is no way of getting around that deadly fact. And no sane way has yet been discovered of getting round its formidable significance. Its quite plain significance --to any but those thugs (I do not use the term unkindly) is, that Shakespeare had no prominence while he lived, and none until he had been dead two or three generations. The Plays enjoyed high fame from the beginning."

PRINCE BISMARCK, b. 1815, d. 1898.

We are told in Sydney Whitman's "Personal Reminiscences of Prince Bismarck," pp. 135-6, that in 1892, Prince Bismarck said, "He could not understand how it were possible that a man, however gifted with the intuitions of genius, could have written what was attributed to Shakespeare unless he had been in touch with the great affairs of state, behind the scenes of political life, and also intimate with all the social courtesies and refinements of thought which in Shakspeare's time were only to be met with in the highest circles."

"It also seemed to Prince Bismarck incredible that the man who had written the greatest dramas in the world's literature could of his own free will, whilst still in the prime of life, have retired to such a place as Stratford-on-Avon and lived there for years, cut off from intellectual society, and out of touch with the world."

The foregoing list of men of the very greatest ability and intelligence who were able clearly to perceive the absurdity of continuing to accept the commonly received belief that the Mighty Author of the immortal Plays was none other than the mean rustic of Stratford, might be extended indefinitely, but the names that we have mentioned are amply sufficient to prove to the reader that he will be in excellent company when he himself realises the truth that

BACON IS SHAKESPEARE.

A NEUER WRITER, TO AN EUER READER. NEWES.

Eternall reader, you haue heere a new play, neuer stal'd with the Stage, neuer clapper-clawd with the palmes of the vulger, and yet pa.s.sing full of the palme comicall; for it is a birth of your braine, that neuer under-tooke any thing commicall, vainely: And were but the vaine names of commedies changde for the t.i.tles of Commodities, or of Playes for Pleas; you should see all those grand censors, that now stile them such vanities, flock to them for the maine grace of their grauities: especially this authors Commedies, that are so fram'd to the life, that they serve for the most common Commentaries, of all the actions of our Hues shewing such a dexteritie, and power of witte, that the most displeased with Playes are pleasd with his Commedies.....

And beleeue this, that when hee is gone, and his Commedies out of sale, you will scramble for them, and set up a new English Inquisition. Take this for a warning, and at the perrill of your pleasures losse, and Judgements, refuse not, nor like this the lesse, for not being sullied, with the smoaky breath of the mult.i.tude.[16]

ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA.

Footnote to page 45. There was a forest of Arden in Warwicks.h.i.+re.

Footnote to page 51. This Richard Quyney's son Thomas married 10th February 1616, Judith, William Shakespeare's younger daughter, who, like her father, the supposed poet, was totally illiterate, and signed the Register with a mark.

Footnote to page 62. In 1615, although nothing of poetical importance bearing Bacon's name had been published, we find in Stowe's "Annales,"