Bacon and Shakespeare 9

Bacon and Shakespeare 9

“The poison’d fountain clears itself again,

And why not I from this compelled stain?”

 

Everybody knows that Bacon, “for some time after his condemnation,

expected to resume his ordinary functions as counsellor to Parliament,

and adviser to the King”--_ergo_ Lucrece was Bacon’s prototype--in

petticoats. Moreover, in the _Essays_, Bacon affixes to a meditative

reflection in one of his philosophical propositions the phrase, “I

cannot tell.” The same phrase, scarcely remarkable in itself, occurs

several times in the Plays. Mr. Theobald devotes a whole chapter of

his book to emphasising this remarkable coincidence. He advances pages

of historical parallels, and he remarks, almost enthusiastically, that

both Shakespeare and Bacon have dilated with pitiless logic on “the

uselessness of hope.”

 

[Illustration: ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER.

 

From an original painting in the possession of The Marquis of

Salisbury.]

 

But Mr. Theobald is most amusing when he compares Bacon’s _Essay of

Love_ with the treatment of Love in Shakespeare. We know Bacon’s

opinion of love, as expressed in the _Essay_, and we find it difficult

to reconcile it with the rhapsodies that we find in the Plays; we

remember _Romeo and Juliet_, and the exquisite comment, “Imagine Juliet

as the party, loved”--or, rather, we should do so, if Mr. Theobald

was not at our elbow to explain the apparent contradiction in thought

and term. Love, it would appear, has two sides. There is the “bosom”

side, and the business side. Here we have a full and convincing

explanation of the difference between the views of love as expressed

in the _Essay_, and the Shakespearean application of the sentiment as

displayed in his dramas. In the Plays, Bacon regarded love from the

“bosom” point of view, while in the _Essay_, the “very brief, very

aphoristic, very concentrated, never discoursive or rhetorical, but

severely reflective and practical essay,” he was dealing with Juliet

as a “business” detail--a contracting party, in short--“the party

loved.” Nothing could be more convincing! It would almost lead us to

entertain a greater admiration for Bacon than Spedding could hope

for. He has not only voiced two such entirely contradictory views of

love as we find in the _Essay_ of Bacon and the plays of Shakespeare,

but he has, with the aid of Mr. Theobald, showed that, “curiously

enough,” the two conflicting __EXPRESSION__s are “significantly identical.”

There is surely no need to proceed further. Mr. Theobald has proved

his contention, and we must perforce accept his conclusions that

Shakespeare, the arch-impostor, the champion literary fraud of all

time, was “either entirely uneducated, or very imperfectly educated;

that his Latin was small, his Greek less, and his pure English least

of all; that such handwriting as his could never have figured on a

University examination paper--this is the opinion, it will be observed,

of an M.A., and a former editor of _The Bacon Journal_--that his whole

life was too full of business, too much devoted to money to leave any

extensive opportunities for study, or for large, broad, world-covering

experience.”

 

But if we make it a _sine quâ non_ that the writer of the Plays was

a man of leisure not devoted to mammon, “with ample opportunity for

study, and of a broad-world covering experience” (whatever that may

precisely mean), it is proof positive that he was not the man whom we

know as Francis Bacon. Bacon’s whole life was devoted to business,

and to the getting of money; he had no leisure, as he is for ever

telling us, for his life’s work, and his experience of the world of

men was so superficial and misleading that it sent Essex to the block,

brought the King to loggerheads with his Parliament, and encompassed

the utter downfall and disgrace of the cunning Chancellor. We need not

be flustered by Mr. Theobald’s hysterical opinion that Shakespeare’s

writing was “so execrably bad, so unmistakably rustic and plebean,

that one may reasonably doubt whether his penmanship extended beyond

the capacity of signing his name to a business document,” because

we have Spedding’s statement that Shakespeare’s signature is simply

characteristic of the caligraphy of the time, and we know by comparison

that it is in advance, both in style and legibility, of that of Sir

Nicholas Bacon, the father of the great Pretender.

 

Mr. Harold Bayley, the author of _The Tragedy of Sir Francis Bacon_,

is, in the same degree, disdainful of facts. He declares that he will

quote verbatim from Mr. Sidney Lee’s well-known _Life of Shakespeare_

which would be most commendable in him if he did it--but he doesn’t.

Rather he quotes the opinion of Richard Grant White, who says that

“Shakespeare was the son of a Warwickshire peasant,” who “signed his

name with a mark,” and that the Poet was “apprenticed to a butcher.”

It is but waste of space to repeat that such assertions are palpably

false. It may be true, as Mr. Bayley states, that Stratford, in 1595,

was in an unsanitary condition, and that the Metropolitan theatres were

the resort of undesirable persons--even that Shakespeare entered the

play-house as a servitor, but all this proves nothing. It is also true

that, up to the time that Shakespeare’s plays began to be produced,

“there had been nothing in his career that would cause us to suppose

he was a sublime genius,” but until Homer, or Michael Angelo, or

Rudyard Kipling began to produce their masterpieces, we knew of nothing

in them to make us accept them as heaven-born geniuses. Mr. Bayley

assumes that Shakespeare left Stratford-upon-Avon in 1585 with “_Venus

and Adonis_, _Lucrece_, and, perhaps, _Hamlet_, in his pocket.” The

reason for his assumption is not vouchsafed to us. True, our dramatist

left Stratford in 1585, but _Venus_ was not published until 1593, and

it was not until 1602 that _Hamlet_ was produced. The mere fact that

“in the sixteenth century the provincial dialects were so marked that

the county gentry ... had difficulty in making themselves understood,

except to their provincial neighbours,” proves that both these works

were composed after Shakespeare had been for some time a resident in

London, and indeed it is ridiculous to suppose that it took him eight

years to find a publisher for _Venus and Adonis_. Donnelly deciphered

the Bishop of Worcester’s opinion that Shakespeare was “a butcher’s

rude and vulgar apprentice,” who “in our opinion was not likely to have

writ them (the Plays).” “In our opinion” is scarcely evidence. Mr.

Bayley’s contemptuous reference to Shakespeare’s handwriting as “five

strange scrawls,” is combated by Spedding’s authoritative dictum, and

his immediately succeeding conclusion that the classical allusions

and references in the Plays prove the author to have been “a cultured

aristocrat,” robs his entire argument of sapiency or merit.

 

Mr. Harold Bayley’s _The Tragedy of Francis Bacon_, is, in my

opinion, an inconsequential contribution to the controversy. In

the chapter on Papermarks, his contention that every fresh device

necessitates a new mould (p. 38) is correct, but his deductions are

senseless; the fact being that the paper is contributed from very

many--mostly foreign--mills. Take one of Caxton’s books--say, _The

Golden Legend_--and you will find 50 different water-marks in one

volume; if all the copies could be examined, probably double or treble

the number would be revealed. One hasn’t the patience to follow Mr.

Bayley’s “reasoning”: he believes one of the paper-marks (No. 55) to

be Rosicrucian--it is the Divine monogram, and traceable to the first

century. No. 14, the “fool’s-cap,” gives the name to a size of paper

still extant--so of the vase, or “pott.” The symbols are allusive,

heraldic, or “canting,” mostly emblematic, or in rebus form. That is

all. What more natural for the paper-maker _Lile_ than to take the

Fleur-de-lys for his trade symbol? With respect to printers’ headlines,

tail-pieces, etc., they were (and are) simply fancy types used for

decorative purposes. The oak, and its fruit the acorn--the rose, Tudor

or otherwise, the lily, typifying our conquest of France, only erased

from the Royal Arms _temp._ George III., would all, from a national

standpoint, become the commonest form of ornament, and each, in its

turn, lend itself to the fancy of the designer, who, Mr. Bayley would

have us think, were all under the direction of Francis Bacon, who

wove a wonderful story by this puerile means. As for the printers’

“hieroglyphics,” as Mr. Bayley calls them, they have been used almost

from the invention of the art to the present time. Amongst publishers,

too, they are common. The printer of _The Tragedy of Sir Francis Bacon_

employs one: a lion supporting the trade symbol of Aldus. I have not

consulted Mr. Whittingham, but (if he knows anything at all about it)

he would probably say the device signifies that he is the English

successor of the Venetian printer!

 

[Illustration]

 

So far as Shakespeare’s handwriting is concerned, I do not propose

at the present moment to go beyond the opinion of Spedding. It would

profit nothing to enter into a discussion on the subject until one has

something tangible in the way of evidence to offer. Shakespeare’s

Will, for instance, has always been regarded as a witness for the

Baconian case, but if the result of the investigations I am prosecuting

confirm my suspicions, it will become a piece of important evidence for

Shakespeare. The _bona-fides_ of this Will have always appeared to be

more than questionable, and I am hopeful of being in a position shortly

to connect it with the great fraud which I am satisfied has been

perpetrated by Bacon.

 

 

 

 

_The Bi-Literal Cipher._

 

 

The most interesting feature of the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy at

the present moment is the alleged discovery by Mrs. Elizabeth Wells

Gallup, of Detroit, U.S.A., of a bi-literal cipher by Bacon, which

appears in no fewer than forty-five books, published between 1591 and

1628. Mrs. Gallup was assisting Dr. Orville W. Owen (also of Detroit,

U.S.A.), in the preparation of the later books of his _Sir Francis

Bacon’s Cipher Story_, and in the study of the “great word cipher,”

discovered by Dr. Owen, when she became convinced that the very full

explanation found in _De Augmentis Scientiarum_ of the bi-literal

method of cipher-writing, was something more than a mere treatise on

the subject. She applied the rules given to the peculiarly italicised

words, and “letters in two forms,” as they appear in the photographic

facsimile of the 1623 folio edition of the Shakespeare plays. The

surprising disclosures that resulted from the experiment, sent her

to the original editions of Bacon’s known works, and from those to

all the authors whose books Bacon claimed as his own. The bi-literal

cipher, according to Mrs. Gallup, held true in every instance, and

she is fully entitled to have her discovery thoroughly investigated

before it is condemned as a “pure invention.” Mrs. Gallup solemnly

declares her translation to be “absolutely veracious,” and until it is

authoritatively declared that the bi-literal cipher does not exist in

the works in which she professes to have traced it, I am not prepared

to question her _bonâ fides_. Her conclusions are absurd, but her

premises may be proved to be impregnable. She is convinced of the

soundness of her discoveries, and she forthwith leaps to the conclusion

that “the proofs are overwhelming and irresistible, that Bacon was the

author of the delightful lines attributed to Spenser--the fantastic

conceits of Peele and Greene--the historical romances of Marlowe--the

immortal plays and poems put forth in Shakespeare’s name--as well

as the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ of Burton.” Mrs. Gallup shows scant

appreciation of the illimitable genius she claims for Bacon in this

sentence.

 

The inaccurately described bi-literal cipher, which Bacon, who

claims to have invented it, explained with great elaboration in his

_De Augmentis Scientiarum_, has nothing whatever to do with the

composition or the wording of the works in which it is said to exist.

It depends not on the author, but on the printer. It is altogether a

matter of typography. One condition alone is necessary--control over

the printing, so as to ensure its being done from specially marked

manuscripts, or altered in proof. It shall, as Bacon says, be performed

thus:--“First let all the letters of the alphabet, by transposition, be

resolved into two letters only--hence bi-literal--for the transposition

of two letters by five placings will be sufficient for 32 differences,

much more than 24, which is the number of the alphabet. The example of such an alphabet is on this wise:--