Bacon and Shakespeare 19

Bacon and Shakespeare 19

Interesting as are these details, they are, it will be observed,

quite unsupported. What the Major says is, unfortunately, “not

evidence.” If Major Walter had given us chapter and verse for all this

information, we might have verified his evidence for ourselves, but

“Catholic tradition” and the unnamed “families with past histories,”

and the “others” are too vague to pin one’s faith to. We may, however,

assume that Shakespeare was not unknown to Bacon, that they met when

Shakespeare was appearing at Gray’s Inn; and it is quite possible, if

not probable, that Shakespeare consulted Bacon on the legal references

and similes that we find in the Plays.

 

Bacon, although disloyal, and capable of shameless ingratitude towards

his benefactors, had the love of his secretary Rawley, and the warm

esteem of such men as Ben Jonson, Boëner, and Toby Matthew. Abbott,

who is fully awake to his many faults, notes this curious inconsistency

in his nature, and explains it in the conclusion that “whenever he

found men naturally and willingly depending on him, and co-operating

with him ... his natural and general benevolence found full play.”

If we accept this explanation, and it would appear to be the correct

solution of his enigmatic character, we can readily understand that

Bacon, in a patronising, but good-hearted way, would extend no little

favour to a man of Shakespeare’s position and reputation. Shakespeare

would be familiar with Bacon’s works, he may even have had the run of

Bacon’s library in Gray’s Inn--an assumption of their intimacy, which,

if supported by documentary evidence, would establish the theory that

the poet used the philosopher as his model for Polonius. Bacon, the

great philosopher, and the influential politician, would certainly

have “the tribute of the supple knee” of all aspirants to literary

fame. Authors would be proud to attract his notice, publishers would be

flattered to allow him to glance through the proofs of any books that

they were issuing. It is quite natural to suppose that if Shakespeare

was known to Bacon, Heming and Condell would have been aware of the

fact, and an offer to render them some assistance in publishing the

First Folio would have been accepted with alacrity. Such an offer may

have been made through Rawley, his faithful secretary; it might have

come direct from Bacon to the publishers. How he obtained command of

the proofs it is impossible to conjecture with any confidence, but

if it is proved that the cipher exists in the Folio, and the other

works mentioned--and I am satisfied to believe that it does, until a

properly constituted committee reports that it is non-existent--it will

be evident that somebody must have overcome the difficulties that

the task presented. The law at that time recognised no natural right

in an author to the creation of his brain, and the full owner of a

MS. copy of any literary composition was entitled to reproduce it, or

to treat it as he pleased, without reference to the author’s wishes.

Thomas Thorpe, and the other pirates of the period, were always on the

look-out for written copies of plays and poems for publication in this

manner. All Shakespeare’s plays that appeared in print were issued

without his authority, and, in several instances, against his expressed

wish. How did Thorpe and his tribe obtain possession of the manuscripts

of _King Lear_, _Henry V._, _Pericles_, _Hamlet_, _Titus Andronicus_,

and the rest of the sixteen plays which were in print at the date of

the author’s death? If we knew for certain that Shakespeare and Bacon

were on terms of intimacy, it would be a justifiable conjecture to

suppose that the latter might have had a hand in the business, but if

the existence of the cipher in these pirated quartos is verified, we

may be quite sure that Bacon was the publishers’ accessory in securing

the MSS. for publication.

 

It is, however, more difficult to satisfactorily explain the claim

of Bacon to the authorship of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_. The first

edition, in quarto form, was published in 1621; the cipher appears in

the folio that was issued in 1628. In the preface to this edition,

the author announces that he will make no more changes in his work:

“I will not hereafter add, alter, or retract; I have done.” What do

we gather from that, Mrs. Gallup may ask?--surely that Bacon felt his

strength failing when he wrote those words; he certainly did not live

to see the book through the press. But the fact remains that four more

editions were published within Burton’s lifetime, each with successive

alterations and additions. The final form of the book was the sixth

edition (1651-52), printed from an annotated copy given just before

Burton’s death to the publisher, Henry Cripps, who gained, Anthony à

Wood tells us, great profits out of the book. This is one of the points

upon which we shall hope to hear from Mrs. Gallup.

 

In this 1628 folio of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Mrs. Gallup has

deciphered some ninety pages of a partial translation of Homer’s

_Iliad_. But on comparing this translation with that of Alexander Pope,

written about a century later, it becomes clear that it is not taken

from the original Greek of Homer, but is, in fact, a prose rendering

of Pope’s version. But Mrs. Gallup in a letter to the _Times_, which

appears as these pages are going through the press, declares that an

examination of six different English translations of the _Iliad_, and

one Latin, shows her such substantial accord that either of them could

be called with equal justice a paraphrase of Pope, or that Pope had

copied from the others.

 

[Illustration: THE “WHEEL” (IMPROVISED FOR READY REFERENCE), USED BY

Dr. OWEN IN DECIPHERING SIR FRANCIS BACON’S CIPHER WRITINGS.

 

1,000 feet of canvas is covered by the pages of the works used.]

 

 

 

 

_In Conclusion._

 

 

Three of the main arguments which Baconians urge against the claims

of Shakespeare to the authorship of the Plays are, firstly, that

Shakespeare left no books; secondly, that only five of his signatures

have come down to us; and, thirdly, that he makes no reference to his

plays in his Will. When we come to investigate these objections, it

may be said, without hesitation, that they do not amount to a row of

pins. There isn’t a rag of evidence, to employ Mr. Sinnett’s phrase,

to show that he left no books, it is quite certain that he left as

much manuscript as Peele or Marlowe or any of the dramatists of his

period, and it would have been something more than extraordinary if

he had made any reference to copyrights which he did not possess.

The professional playwrights of the period sold their plays outright

to one or other of the acting companies, and they retained no legal

interest in them after the manuscript had passed into the hands of the

theatrical manager. When Shakespeare had disposed of his dramas, he

washed his hands of them, so to speak, and not a single play of the

sixteen that were published during his lifetime was issued under his

supervision. They belonged to the theatre for which they were written.

Shakespeare was only conforming to the general custom in this matter

in betraying no interest in work which did not belong to him. He was

consistently and characteristically indifferent as to what became of

his plays, and in this he forms a striking contrast to Bacon, who had

a mania for preserving and publishing every particle of his writings.

In Shakespeare, this neglect, if surprising, is at least consistent;

in Bacon it is too antagonistic to what is known of his idiosyncracies

to be entertained for a single moment. Bacon must have realised that

his versification of the Psalms was of less merit than the poetry

in the plays. Yet he carefully superintended the publication of the

Psalms, in the same year in which they were written, and kept no copies

of such plays as _The Tempest_, _The Two Gentlemen_, _Measure for

Measure_, _Comedy of Errors_, _As You Like It_, _All’s Well_, _Twelfth

Night_, _Winter’s Tale_, _Henry VI._, _Henry VIII._, _Coriolanus_,

_Timon_, _Julius Cæsar_, _Macbeth_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, and

_Cymbeline_. These works of “supreme literary interest” were rescued

from the dust-bin of the theatres, by the energy and affection of two

of Shakespeare’s brother actors, what time Bacon was translating his

philosophical works into Latin, and publishing the Psalms.

 

In the foregoing pages, Bacon’s character, and the incidents in

his life have, it may be objected, been dealt with in a harsh and

unsympathetic manner. Yet the facts set down are matters of history,

and I claim for the comments, and the conclusions derived therefrom,

that they are neither misleading nor exaggerated. It has been my

endeavour to show that, while all that we know of Bacon’s private life

and his public career--the evidence of his deeds, his sentiments,

his prose, and his verse--prove him to have been a man incapable of

conceiving the poetry of the Plays, there is nothing in the life

of Shakespeare, when freed of the miserable misrepresentations and

baseless accusations introduced by his traducers, which makes it

difficult for us to regard him as the rightful author. One thing we

must recognise in the writer of the greatest poetry of all times--his

genius. We cannot argue that Shakespeare had genius--and, therefore,

he wrote the plays--but we may transpose the argument and declare

that Shakespeare wrote the plays, and therefore he had genius.

But, cries the Baconian, Bacon also possessed genius. The fact is

incontrovertible. His genius inspired him to draw up the scheme of

his _Magna Instauratio_, to write his _Essays_, to invent a new

philosophy, and a most ingenious cipher, but it did not prevent him

from composing some miserably poor verses or enable him to discern

the singular absence of merit in his metrical effusions. There is not

a single “literary” argument of the hundreds put forward in support

of Bacon’s claims to the authorship of the Plays which has validity,

or even plausibility, to recommend it. There is not a single argument

of the hundreds that have been advanced to deprive Shakespeare of his

mantle which can stand the test of investigation. Carlyle declared

Bacon to be as incapable of writing _Hamlet_ as of making this planet.

Spedding, who devoted thirty years of his life to the study of Bacon,

emphatically asserts that, “if there were any reason for supposing that

somebody else was the real author (of Shakespeare), I think I am in a

condition to say that, whoever it was, it was not Bacon.” We know that

Shakespeare put the plays on the stage, and acted in them, and that his

intimate friends, his fellow actors, and the public, believed him to be

the writer. We know, too, that Bacon had a distaste, if not a contempt,

for the stage; that his lifelong complaint was his inability to secure

time for his philosophic studies. To sum up in a sentence, it may be

said that there is no reason to suppose that Bacon was the author of

the Plays, while there is every reason to believe that he was not; and

with respect to Shakespeare, there is no reason to believe he was not

what he claimed to be, and there is tradition, the testimony of all who

had the best means of knowing, to prove that he was.

 

Until very recent times, one of the most tangible arguments of the

Shakespeareans was that Bacon had not claimed the authorship of the

Plays. That argument, if it has not now been thrown down, is, at least,

suspended. The existence of the bi-literal cipher which Mrs. Gallup

preaches, though vigorously attacked, has not yet been exploded. But

if the cipher which contains these claims is verified, in the face

of all circumstantial evidence that prove the claims to be baseless

and preposterous, we are practically convicting Bacon of one of the

greatest and most impudent literary frauds that was ever perpetrated.

Yet that is what I am prepared to find is the case. Nor am I without

warrant for holding this opinion. When the existence of the bi-literal,

and the word-cipher has been acknowledged, we shall find that there are

four other forms of cipher, the “Capital Letter; Time, or as more oft

called, Clocke; Symboll; and Anagrammaticke ... which wee have us’d in

a few of owr bookes.” These ciphers are now being applied to decipher

other messages which Bacon sent down the ages by this secret medium. Of

the nature of these claims, I am, at the moment, unable to speak, but

I am in a position to say that the contents are more sensational than

any that have yet been revealed. The absolute proof of the authorship

of the Plays is promised--but again we shall get no more than what

Bacon considered constituted proof. In reality, it will form part

of a gigantic fraud committed by one of the cleverest men that ever

lived, it will disclose the flaw in “the most exquisitely constructed

intellect that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of men;” it will prove, up to the hilt, the madness of Francis Bacon.