Bacon and Shakespeare 6

Bacon and Shakespeare 6

In 1582, before he was nineteen years of age, Shakespeare married Anne

Hathaway, and three years afterwards he left Stratford for London. It

was during this period, says Mr. Theobald, that “the true Shakespeare

was studying diligently, and filling his mind with those vast stores

of learning--classic, historic, legal, scientific--which bare such

splendid fruit in his after life.” As Mr. Theobald’s contention is

that Bacon was the “true Shakespeare,” let us consider for a moment

how young Francis was employing his abilities at this particular time.

In 1579 he returned to England after a two years’ residence in France.

He had revealed an early disposition to extend his studies beyond the

ordinary limits of literature, and to read the smallest print of the

book of nature. He was already importuning his uncle, Lord Burghley,

for some advancement which might enable him to dispense with the

monotonous routine of legal studies. Failing in this endeavour, he was

admitted as a barrister of Gray’s Inn, was elected to Parliament for

Melcombe Regis, composed his first philosophical work, which he named

“with great confidence, and a magnificent title,” _The Greatest Birth

of Time_, and another treatise entitled, _Advice to Queen Elizabeth_.

In the case of the poet we have no record; in that of the future Lord

Chancellor we get the key of the nature which rendered the man as

“incapable of writing _Hamlet_ as of making this planet.”

 

[Illustration: ANNA LADY BACON, MOTHER OF FRANCIS BACON.

 

(From an original picture in the collection of Lord Verulam at

Gorhambury).]

 

William Beeston, a 17th century actor, has left it on record that,

after leaving Stratford, Shakespeare was for a time a country

schoolmaster. In 1586 he arrived in London. His only friend in the

Metropolis was Richard Field, a fellow townsman, whom he sought

out, and with whom, as publisher, he was shortly to be associated. It

is uncertain when Shakespeare joined the Lord Chamberlain’s company

of actors, but documentary evidence proves that he was a member of it

in 1594, and that in 1603, after the accession of James I., when they

were called the King’s Players, he was one of its leaders. This company

included among its chief members Shakespeare’s life-long friends,

Richard Burbage, John Heming, Henry Condell, and Augustine Phillips,

and it was under their auspices that his plays first saw the light.

 

Before they opened at the Rose on the Bankside, Southwark, in 1592, the

Lord Chamberlain’s company had played at The Theatre in Shoreditch,

and in 1599 they opened at the Globe, which was afterwards the only

theatre with which Shakespeare was professionally associated. In this

year he acquired an important share in the profits of the company,

and his name appears first on the list of those who took part in the

original performance of Ben Jonson’s _Every Man in His Humour_. Mr.

Theobald states that Shakespeare had become a fairly prosperous theatre

manager in 1592, but as he did not secure his interest in the business

until seven years later, what probably is meant is that Shakespeare was

combining the duties of stage manager, acting manager, and treasurer

of the theatre. It would appear that, recognising the fact that the

period in Shakespeare’s life between 1588 and 1592 is a blank “which no

research can fill up,” Mr. Theobald considers that he is justified in

making good the deficiency out of his own inner consciousness.

 

As occasion will require that Mr. Theobald’s contribution to the

controversy shall presently be dealt with, it may not be out of place

here to explain the object, so far as it is intelligible, of his

_Shakespeare Studies in Baconian Light_ (Sampson Low, 1901). It would

have been a fair thing to assume that the design of the author of

this volume of over 500 pages, was to prove the Baconian authorship

of Shakespeare, but as Mr. Theobald has since written to the Press

to protest against this interpretation of his motives, we must take

his words as he gives his parallels “for what they are worth.” In the

opening lines of his preface, Mr. Theobald declares that while the

greatest name in the world’s literature is Shakespeare, there is in

the world’s literature no greater name than Bacon. Really, it would

seem that if his object is not to prove that the two names stand for

one and the same individual, this statement is sheer nonsense. Before

the end of the preface is reached, he frankly avows his belief that

“when the time comes for a general recognition of Bacon as the true

Shakespeare, the poetry will still be called “Shakespeare,” and that

no one will find anything compromising in such language, any more than

we do when we refer to George Eliot or George Sand, meaning Miss Evans

or Madame Dudevant.” But if Mr. Theobald was as versed in his study of

the subject as Mrs. Gallup, Dr. Owen, Mr. A. P. Sinnett, or even Bacon

himself, he would know that when this general recognition comes to pass

the author of the Plays will not be called Shakespeare, or Bacon, but

Francis “Tidder, or Tudor”--otherwise Francis I. of England--provided,

of course, that the bi-literallists can substantiate their cipher. But

as Mr. Theobald does not design to prove the Baconian theory, he does

not, of course, require the evidence of the great Chancellor, or he

may, as a disparager of cipher speculations, accept such evidence “for

what it is worth.”

 

 

 

 

_Mr. Theobald, a Baconian by Intuition._

 

 

Mr. Theobald’s “preliminaries” are chiefly remarkable for three diverse

reasons. We learn therefrom that he is a Baconian by intuition--“the

persuasion took hold of his mind” as soon as Holme’s _Authorship

of Shakespeare_ was placed in his hand--that he does not admit the

existence of genius, and that he is intolerant of “clamours and

asperities, denunciations and vituperations,” and the personal abuse

employed by anti-Baconians, whom he alludes to as Hooligans, and

compares with geese. So long as he keeps to the trodden path of

Baconian argument, he is only about as perverse and incorrect as

the rest of--to use his own __EXPRESSION__ as applied to Shakespearean

students--“the clan.” But he becomes amusing when he ventures to

present new arguments in support of Bacon’s claim, variously abusive

in his references to Shakespeare, and desperately dogmatic in his

pronouncement of the faith that is in him.

 

“Among the many shallow objections brought against the Baconian

theory,” writes Mr. Theobald in his chapter on Bacon’s literary

output, “one is founded on the assumption that Bacon was a voluminous

writer, and that if we add to his avowed literary productions, the

Shakespearean dramas, he is loaded with such a stupendous literary

progeny as no author could possibly generate. Moreover, he was so busy

in state business as a lawyer, judge, counsellor, member of Parliament,

confidential adviser to the King, and the responsible rulers in State

and Church, that he had very little spare time for authorship.”

 

[Illustration: SIR NATHANIEL BACON.

 

From the original, in the collection of The Right Honble the Earl of

Verulam.]

 

In order to demonstrate that this shallow objection, as Mr. Theobald

calls it, is a well-founded and irrefutable statement of fact, we

have only to refer to Lord Bacon’s life and to his letters. From

1579, when he returned from France, until the end of his life he

was distracted between politics and science; he put forward as his

reason for seeking office that he might thereby be able to help on his

philosophic projects which with him were paramount, and the poignant

regret of his last years was that he had allowed himself to be diverted

from philosophy into politics. He found “no work so meritorious,”

so serviceable to mankind, “as the discovery and development of the

arts and inventions that tend to civilise the life of men.” In his

letter to Lord Burghley in 1592, he expressed the hope that in the

service of the State he could “bring in industrious observations,

grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries--the

best state of that province”--the province embracing all nature which

he had made his own. But office was denied him, and he returned to

“business” and to his constant bewailings of the fact that he had no

time for literature. In 1607 he settled the plan of the _Instauratio

Magna_; which had been foreshadowed in his _Advancement of Learning_,

published two years previously. In 1609 he wrote to Toby Mathew, “My

_Instauratio_ sleeps not,” and again, in the same year, “My great work

goeth forward; and after my manner I alter ever when I add; so that

nothing is finished till all is finished.” From 1609 to 1620 Bacon

spent such leisure as he could snatch from his other work in revising

the _Novum Organum_ (the second part of his _Magna Instauratio_), of

which his chaplain, Rawley, says that he had seen “at least twelve

copies revised year by year, one after another, and amended in the

frame thereof.” In 1620, when the _Novum Organum_ was published,

the author sent it into the world uncompleted, because he had begun

to number his days, and “would have it saved.” This was the book he

alluded to as “my great work”--the work of his life, and he issued

it as a fragment because he had not been able to find time to finish

it. The belief that he had “very little spare time for authorship” is

no shallow objection brought against the Baconian theory--it is an

irrefutable fact, proved not only out of the mouth, but in the life, of

Lord Bacon.

 

In spite, however, of all positive evidence to the contrary, Mr.

Theobald proceeds to bolster up his contention that Bacon had time, and

to spare, for literary pursuits, by the following most amazing piece of

logic. He contends, in the first place, that “an estimate of the entire

literary output of Bacon, as a scientific and philosophical writer,

proves the amount to be really somewhat small.” He takes the fourteen

volumes of Spedding’s _Life and Works_, subtracts the prefaces, notes,

editorial comments, and the biographical narrative, puts aside as of

“no literary significance whatever,” all business letters, speeches,

State papers, etc., and thus reduces the total amount of literature

to Bacon’s credit in the seven volumes devoted to the _Life_ to some

375 pages. “If we calculate the whole amount contained in the fourteen

volumes, we shall find it may be reckoned at about six such volumes,

each containing 520 pages. On this method of calculation and selection,

all that Mr. Theobald can find, “for his whole life, amounts to about

70 pages per annum, less than six pages a month.” Turning from Bacon

to Shakespeare, Mr. Theobald finds that here again is a man whose

literary output has been greatly exaggerated, for “if the Shakespeare

poetry was the only work of William Shakespeare, certainly he was not

a voluminous writer. _Thirty-one years may be taken as a moderate

estimate of the duration of his literary life, i.e., from 1585 till his

death in 1616._ And the result is 37 plays and the minor poems--not

two plays for each year.” Mr. Theobald, it will be seen, possesses the

same weakness for statistics that Mr. Dick evinced for King Charles’

head; he drops in his little estimate in season and out of season, and

his appraisements are as manifold as they are fallacious. The period

of Shakespeare’s dramatic output was confined to twenty years, from

1591 to 1611--if he had continued writing plays till his death in 1616,

Bacon’s alleged playwriting would not have ceased with such significant

suddenness in 1611. But what conclusion does Mr. Theobald arrive at

as the result of his estimates? No less than this, that if the whole

of Shakespeare, and the whole of Bacon’s acknowledged works belong to

the same author, “the writer was not a voluminous author--_not by any

means so voluminous as Miss Braddon_ or Sir Walter Scott.” That Mr.

Theobald should not hesitate to class Miss Braddon’s novels with the

plays of Shakespeare, which belong to the supreme rank of literature,

or even with Bacon’s “royal mastery of language never surpassed, never

perhaps equalled,” is the most astounding link in this astounding

chain of so-called evidence. But Mr. Theobald advances it with the

utmost confidence. “Therefore,” he sums up, “let this objection stand aside; it vanishes into invisibility as soon as it is accurately tested”--_i.e._, weighed up, like groceries, by the pound.