Bacon and Shakespeare 17

Bacon and Shakespeare 17

But despite the appalling evidence of poetical incapacity presented by

this versification of the Psalms, a staunch Baconian, by a train of

argument which is only equalled by that employed by Mr. Theobald, has

proved, to his own satisfaction, that Bacon was a poet, by locating

the position which the Plays occupy in the scheme of Bacon’s works.

This ingenious logician has discovered that the two most extraordinary

facts connected with Bacon’s philosophy are (_a_) that the most eminent

students have been unable to understand his “method of interpretation,”

and (_b_) that the last three parts of the _Instauratio Magna_ are

apparently wholly lost. Because Ellis and Spedding both declare that

“of his philosophy they can make nothing,” and that “he failed in the

very thing in which he was most bent,” therefore he must be a poet.

Because the last three books of the _Instauratio_ are “apparently

wholly lost”--which is the writer’s perversion of the indubitable fact

that they were never written--therefore the comedies, histories, and

tragedies of Shakespeare actually form the fourth, fifth, and sixth

books of “the great work.” Firstly (to present this argument fairly),

Bacon declared his intention to insinuate his philosophy into men’s

minds by a method which would provoke no controversy; secondly (this

is not exactly proved, but just stated as a fact), Bacon wrote the

works of Shakespeare; and thirdly, the Plays are the treasure house of

all art, science, and wisdom. The natural and inevitable deduction is

that they must form the missing--_i.e._, the unwritten--parts of the

_Instauratio Magna_.

 

I am afraid that we must decline to accept so ingenious a piece of

sophistry. Until it is proved that the Psalms are a forgery, or that

they have been erroneously attributed to Bacon, we have a gauge of his

poetical ability which is fatal to his pretensions to the authorship of

the Plays, of Spenser, or of any one of the books which we are asked to

believe emanated from his stupendous intellect.

 

 

 

 

“_Did Shakespeare Write Bacon?_”

 

 

Mr. Leslie Stephen, with amazing nerve and a fine sense of humour,

has carried the war of the rival claims into the enemies’ country,

and propounded the theory, with no little plausibility, that so far

from Bacon being the author of the Plays, Shakespeare was the real

writer of Bacon’s philosophical works. Mr. Theobald claims to prove

that Bacon had ample leisure in which to write all Shakespeare and his

own books as well. Mr. Stephen has come to the conclusion that his

time was so fully occupied with business, and political and financial

anxieties, that he never found the opportunity he was always seeking

to perfect his great philosophical reform. Up to the year of the

accession of James I., he had not been able to prepare any statement

of his philosophic ideas. His desire, as we know from his letters, was

to stand well with the King; his scruples, as we also gather from his

letters, did not make him hesitate to employ questionable practices

when he had his own interests to serve. If he had not time to write,

he could get a book written for him. He selected Shakespeare, who at

this period had a great reputation as the author of _Hamlet_, for the

purpose. Why Shakespeare, it may be asked? Because, says Mr. Stephen,

he knew Shakespeare through Ben Jonson; he knew Southampton as a

friend and patron of Shakespeare, and he therefore employed Shakespeare

through Southampton--the present of £1,000, which it is known was made

to Shakespeare by his youthful patron, being money paid by Bacon on

account, for the writing of the _Advancement of Learning_.

 

If the supposition that Shakespeare wrote this book for Bacon be

correct, argues Mr. Stephen, “he might naturally try to insert

some intimation of authorship to which he could appeal in case of

necessity.” Mr. Stephen sought for the intimation in the _Advancement_,

and he discovered it in the first 81 letters. The opening words are,

“There were under the law, excellent King, both daily sacrifices and

free will offerings the one pro” (ceeding, &c.) These letters (to the

end of pro) can be re-arranged to make the following: “Crede Will

Shakespeare, green innocent reader; he was the author of excellent

writing; F. B. N. fifth idol. lye.” For the assistance of any one who

cares to verify the cipher, Mr. Stephen explains that in both cases

(the original and the decipheration) A occurs in 4 places, B in 1, C in

3, D in 3, E in 15, F in 4, G in 2, H in 4, I in 6, K in 1, L in 6, N

in 6, O in 4, P in 1, R in 7, S in 3, T in 5, U in 1, W in 3, X in 1,

and Y in 1.

 

[Illustration: THE CHANCEL OF TRINITY CHURCH, STRATFORD-ON-AVON.]

 

Mr. Stephen assumes that Shakespeare explained this saucy little

anagram to Bacon when the work was published, and that Bacon retaliated

by “getting at” the printers of the folio after Shakespeare’s death,

and inserting a cryptogram claiming the authorship for himself. Bacon

is imagined to have said to himself, “If Shakespeare succeeds in

claiming my philosophy, I will take his plays in exchange.” “He had

become,” says our theorist, “demoralised to the point at which he could

cheat his conscience by such lamentable casuistry.” In 1608 Bacon

was Solicitor-General, and a rich man. He approached Shakespeare

a second time with the object of having his great philosophical work

continued. Three years afterwards, Shakespeare left the stage, and

retired to pass the last five years of his life at Stratford. Why did

he retire? “Because,” says Mr. Stephen, “Bacon had grown rich and could

make it worth his while to retire to a quiet place where he would

not be tempted to write plays, or drink at the ‘Mermaid,’ or make

indiscreet revelations.” If it should be asked what he was doing, the

answer is obvious. He was writing the _Novum Organum_. Baconians and

Mr. Leslie Stephen are agreed that the _Novum Organum_ is the work of

a poet, and that it was written by the author of the Plays. But if it

is conceded that Shakespeare wrote _Novum Organum_, it still remains a

mystery to Baconians as to who wrote Shakespeare. After Shakespeare’s

death, Bacon, in _De Augmentis_, wrote that “the theatre might be

useful either for corruption or for discipline; but in modern times

there is plenty of corruption on the stage, and no discipline.” Mr.

Stephen deduces from this that in order to aim a back-handed blow at

Shakespeare, Bacon would blaspheme the art of which he claimed to be

master--that he was, in fact, according to our other theorist, fouling

the fourth, fifth, and sixth books of his _Instauratio Magna_.

 

Neither of the theories we have just reviewed need be taken seriously.

We know that Bacon himself gave an account of the scheme of the

_Magna Instauratio_ in a section of the _Novum Organum_, called the

_Distributio Operis_. The fourth book was to have contained examples

of the “new method,” and of the results to which it led. The fifth was

to contain what Bacon had accomplished in Natural Philosophy without

the aid of his own method, and the sixth was to set forth the New

Philosophy--the results of the application of the new method, and all

the Phenomena of the Universe. Mr. Leslie Ellis tells us that Bacon

never hoped to complete the sixth part; he speaks of it as a thing _et

supra vires et ultra spes nostras collocata_. Mr. Leslie Stephen’s

whimsical retort to the _Instauratio_ theory may be regarded as a _jeu

d’esprit_.

 

 

 

 

_The Case for Shakespeare._

 

 

In propounding their theory that Bacon was the author of the plays

attributed to Shakespeare, the Baconians rely on two main arguments:

the plausibility of the idea that they should have emanated from the

man whom Macaulay declared to possess the “most exquisitely constructed

intellect that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of men,”

and the extraordinary unlikelihood that a man of Shakespeare’s origin

and antecedents should have written them. More recently, the disclosure

of the bi-literal and the “word” ciphers, running through certain

editions of the plays, and in Bacon’s works, have placed a new weapon

in the hands of Shakespeare’s traducers. Already some of the supporters

of Bacon’s claims have assumed a sceptical attitude towards the

“cipher speculations”--partly, I suspect, on account of their American

origin--and Mr. A. P. Sinnett, whilst claiming that if the bi-literal

cipher is substantiated, the Bacon case is demonstrated up to the

hilt, hedges himself behind the assertion that the curious allegations

now brought forward do not affect, one way or the other, the general

force of the literary argument that supports the Baconian idea. But,

unless a gigantic fraud is being attempted--which we have no reason to

suppose is the case--Mrs. Elizabeth Wells Gallup’s bi-literal cipher

can easily be substantiated. When this is accomplished, we only get to

the point that Bacon claims to have been the author of the plays put

forth by all his contemporaries, while the conviction still remains,

as it was expressed by Carlyle, that “Bacon could no more have written

_Hamlet_ than he could have made this planet.”

 

It is interesting in this connection to briefly sum up the concensus of

expert opinion that the leading scholars and students of Elizabethan

literature hold on the subject. Mr. Sidney Lee, whose _Life of

William Shakespeare_ has been called “the most useful, the most

judicious, and the most authoritative of all existing biographies of

the poet,” regards the theory as “fantastic.” The substance of Mr.

Lee’s conclusions is that “the abundance of the contemporary evidence

attesting Shakespeare’s responsibility for the works published under

his name, gives the Baconian theory no rational right to a hearing;

while such authentic examples of Bacon’s effort to write verse as

survive prove, beyond all possibility of contradiction, that great as

he was as a prose writer and a philosopher, he was incapable of penning

any of the poetry assigned to Shakespeare. Defective knowledge and

illogical, or casuistical, argument alone render any other conclusion

possible.”

 

[Illustration: Shakespeare Autographs

 

_Conveyance of House in Blackfriars, 10th. March, 1612._

 

_Mortgage of House in Blackfriars, 11th. March, 1612._

 

_The three signatures to the Will, 25th. March, 1616._]