Oscar Wilde - "The Soul of Man"

Walter Savage Landor - "Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare"

Tobias Smollett - "The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Part I."

Bao Gan - "Sou Shen Ji, volume 15 17, 300 A.D."

Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown

A >> Andrew Lang >> Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown




I know not whether the great lawyer, courtier, scholar, and
philosopher is supposed by Baconians to have given Will Shakspere a
commission on his sales of plays; or to have let him keep the whole
sum in each case. I know not whether the players paid Shakspere a
sum down for his (or Bacon's) plays, or whether Will received a
double share, or other, or any share of the profits on them, as
Henslowe did when he let a house to the players. Nobody knows any of
these things.

"If Shakspere the player had been a dramatist, surely Henslowe would
have employed him also, like the others, in that behalf." {159a}
Henslowe would, if he could have got the "copy" cheap enough. Was
any one of "the others," the playwrights, a player, holding a share
in his company? If not, the fact makes an essential difference, for
Shakspere WAS a shareholder. Collier, in his preface to Henslowe's
so-called "Diary," mentions a playwright who was bound to scribble
for Henslowe only (Henry Porter), and another, Chettle, who was bound
to write only for the company protected by the Earl of Nottingham.
{159b} Modern publishers and managers sometimes make the same terms
with novelists and playwrights.

It appears to me that Shakspere's company would be likely, as his
plays were very popular, to make the same sort of agreement with him,
and to give him such terms as he would be glad to accept,--whether
the wares were his own--or Bacon's. He was a keen man of business.
In such a case, he would not write for Henslowe's pittance. He had a
better market. The plays, whether written by himself, or Bacon, or
the Man in the Moon, were at his disposal, and he did not dispose of
them to Henslowe, wherefore Henslowe cannot mention him in his
accounts. That is all.

Quoting an American Judge (Dr. Stotsenburg, apparently), Mr.
Greenwood cites the circumstance that, in two volumes of Alleyn's
papers "there is not one mention of such a poet as William Shaksper
in his list of actors, poets, and theatrical comrades." {160a} If
this means that Shakspere is not mentioned by Alleyn among actors,
are we to infer that William was not an actor? Even Baconians insist
that he was an actor. "How strange, how more than strange," cries
Mr. Greenwood, "that Henslowe should make no mention in all this long
diary, embracing all the time from 1591 to 1609, of the actor-author
. . . No matter. Credo quia impossibile!" {160b} Credo what? and
what is IMPOSSIBLE? Henslowe's volume is no Diary; he does not tell
a single anecdote of any description; he merely enters loans, gains,
payments. Does Henslowe mention, say, Ben Jonson, WHEN HE IS NOT
DOING BUSINESS WITH BEN? Does he mention any actor or author except
in connection with money matters? Then, if he did no business with
Shakspere the actor, in borrowing or lending, and did no business
with Shakespeare the author, in borrowing, lending, buying or
selling, "How strange, how more than strange" it would be if Henslowe
DID mention Shakespeare! He was not keeping a journal of literary
and dramatic jottings. He was keeping an account of his expenses and
receipts. He never names Richard Burbage any more than he mentions
Shakespeare.

Mr. Greenwood again expresses his views about this dark suspicious
mystery, the absence of Shakespeare or Shakspere (or Shak, as you
like it), from Henslowe's accounts, if Shak(&c.) wrote plays. But
the mystery, if mystery there be, is just as obscure if the actor
were the channel through which Bacon's plays reached the stage, for
the pretended author of these masterpieces. Shak--was not the man to
do all the troking, bargaining, lying, going here and there, and
making himself a motley to the view for 0 pounds, 0s, 0d. If he were
a sham, a figure-head, a liar, a fetcher-and-carrier of manuscripts,
HE WOULD BE PAID FOR IT. But he did not deal with Henslowe in his
bargainings, and THAT is why Henslowe does not mention him. Mr.
Greenwood, in one place, {161a} agrees, so far, with me. "Why did
Henslowe not mention Shakespeare as the writer of other plays" (than
Titus Andronicus and Henry VI)? "I think the answer is simple
enough." (So do I.) "Neither Shakspere nor 'Shakespeare' ever wrote
for Henslowe!" The obvious is perceived at last; and the reason
given is "that he was above Henslowe's 'skyline,'" "he" being the
Author. We only differ as to WHY the author was above Henslowe's
"sky-line." I say, because good Will had a better market, that of
his Company. I understand Mr. Greenwood to think,--because the Great
Unknown was too great a man to deal with Henslowe. If to write for
the stage were discreditable, to deal (unknown) with Henslowe was no
more disgraceful than to deal with "a cry of players"; and as
(unknown) Will did the bargaining, the Great Unknown was as safe with
Will in one case as in the other. If Will did not receive anything
for the plays from his own company (who firmly believed in his
authorship), they must have said, "Will! dost thou serve the Muses
and thy obliged fellows for naught? Dost thou give us two popular
plays yearly,--gratis?"

Do you not see that, in the interests of the Great Secret itself,
Will HAD to take the pay for the plays (pretended his) from somebody.
Will Shakspere making his dear fellows and friends a present of two
masterpieces yearly was too incredible. So I suppose he did have
royalties on the receipts, or otherwise got his money; and, as he
certainly did not get them from Henslowe, Henslowe had no conceivable
reason for entering Will's name in his accounts.

Such are the reflections of a plain man, but to an imaginative soul
there seems to be a brooding mist, with a heart of fire, which half
conceals and half reveals the darkened chamber wherein abides "The
Silence of Philip Henslowe." "The Silence of Philip Henslowe," Mr.
Greenwood writes, "is a very remarkable phenomenon . . . " It is a
phenomenon precisely as remarkable as the absence of Mr. Greenwood's
name from the accounts of a boot-maker with whom he has never had any
dealings.

"If, however, there was a man in high position, 'a concealed poet,'"
who "took the works of others and rewrote and transformed them,
besides bringing out original plays of his own . . . then it is
natural enough that his name should not appear among those [of the]
for the most part impecunious dramatists to whom Henslowe paid money
for playwriting." {163a} Nothing can be more natural, and, in fact,
the name of Bacon, or Southampton, or James VI, or Sir John Ramsay,
or Sir Walter Raleigh, or Sir Fulke Greville, or any other "man in
high position," does NOT appear in Henslowe's accounts. Nor does the
name of William Shak(&c.). But why should it not appear if Will sold
either his own plays, or those of the noble friend to whom he lent
his name and personality--to Henslowe? Why not?

Then consider the figure, to my mind impossible, of the great
"concealed poet" "of high position," who can "bring out original
plays of his own," and yet "takes the works of others," say of
"sporting Kyd," or of Dekker and Chettle, and such poor devils,--
TAKES them as a Yankee pirate-publisher takes my rhymes,--and
"rewrites and transforms them."

Bacon (or Bungay) CANNOT "take" them without permission of their
legal owners,--Shakspere's or any other company;--of any one, in
short, who, as Ben Jonson says, "buys up reversions of old plays."
How is he to manage these shabby dealings? Apparently he employs
Will Shakspere, spells his own "nom de plume" "Shakespeare," and has
his rewritings and transformations of the destitute author's work
acted by Will's company. What a situation for Bacon, or Sir Fulke
Greville, or James VI, or any "man in high position" whom fancy can
suggest! The plays by the original authors, whoever they were, could
only be obtained by the "concealed poet" and "man in high position"
from the legal owners, Shakspere's company, usually. The concealed
poet had to negotiate with the owners, and Bacon (or whoever he was)
employed that scamp Will Shakspere, first, I think, to extract the
plays from the owners, and then to pretend that he himself, even
Will, had "rewritten and transformed them."

What an associate was our Will for the concealed poet; how certain it
was that Will would blackmail the "man in high position"!
"Doubtless" he did: we find Bacon arrested for debt, more than once,
while Will buys New Place, in Stratford, with the money extorted from
the concealed poet of high position. {164a} Bacon did associate with
that serpent Phillips, a reptile of Walsingham, who forged a
postscript to Mary Stuart's letter to Babington. But now, if not
Bacon, then some other concealed poet of high position, with a
mysterious passion for rewriting and transforming plays by sad, needy
authors, is in close contact with Will Shakspere, the Warwickshire
poacher and ignorant butcher's boy, country schoolmaster, draper's
apprentice, enfin, tout le tremblement.

"How strange, how more than strange!"

The sum of the matter seems to me to be that from as early as March
3, 1591, we find Henslowe receiving small sums of money for the
performances of many plays. He was paid as owner or lessee of the
House used by this or that company. On March 3, 1591, the play acted
by "Lord Strange's (Derby's) men" was Henry VI. Several other plays
with names familiar in Shakespeare's Works, such as Titus Andronicus,
all the three parts of Henry VI, King Leare (April 6, 1593), Henry V
(May 14, 1592), The Taming of a Shrew (June 11, 1594), and Hamlet,
paid toll to Henslowe. He "received" so much, on each occasion, when
they were acted in a theatre of his. But he never records his
purchase of these plays; and it is not generally believed that
Shakespeare was the author of all these plays, in the form which they
bore in 1591-4: though there is much difference of opinion.

There is one rather interesting case. On August 25, 1594, Henslowe
enters "ne" (that is, "a new play") "Received at the Venesyon
Comodey, eighteen pence." That was his share of the receipts. The
Lord Chamberlain's Company, that of Shakespeare, was playing in
Henslowe's theatre at Newington Butts. If the "Venesyon Comodey"
(Venetian Comedy) were The Merchant of Venice, this is the first
mention of it. But nobody knows what Henslowe meant by "the Venesyon
Comodey." He does not mention the author's name, because, in this
part of his accounts he never does mention the author or authors. He
only names them when he buys from, or lends to, or has other money
dealings with the authors. He had none with Shakespeare, hence the
Silence of Philip Henslowe.



CHAPTER IX: THE LATER LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE--HIS MONUMENT AND
PORTRAITS



In the chapter on the Preoccupations of Bacon the reader may find
help in making up his mind as to whether Bacon, with his many and
onerous duties and occupations, his scientific studies, and his
absorbing scientific preoccupation, is a probable author of the
Shakespearean plays. Mr. Greenwood finds the young Shakspere
impossible--because of his ignorance--which made him such a really
good pseudo-author, and such a successful mask for Bacon, or Bacon's
unknown equivalent. The Shakspere of later life, the well-to-do
Shakspere, the purchaser of the right to bear arms; so bad at paying
one debt at least; so eager a creditor; a would-be encloser of a
common; a man totally bookless, is, to Mr. Greenwood's mind, an
impossible author of the later plays.

Here, first, are moral objections on the ground of character as
revealed in some legal documents concerning business. Now, I am very
ready to confess that William's dealings with his debtors, and with
one creditor, are wholly unlike what I should expect from the author
of the plays. Moreover, the conduct of Shelley in regard to his wife
was, in my opinion, very mean and cruel, and the last thing that we
could have expected from one who, in verse, was such a tender
philanthropist, and in life was--women apart--the best-hearted of
men. The conduct of Robert Burns, alas, too often disappoints the
lover of his Cottar's Saturday Night and other moral pieces. He was
an inconsistent walker.

I sincerely wish that Shakespeare had been less hard in money
matters, just as I wish that in financial matters Scott had been more
like himself, that he had not done the last things that we should
have expected him to do. As a member of the Scottish Bar it was
inconsistent with his honour to be the secret proprietor of a
publishing and a printing business. This is the unexplained moral
paradox in the career of a man of chivalrous honour and strict
probity: but the fault did not prevent Scott from writing his novels
and poems. Why, then, should the few bare records of Shakspere's
monetary transactions make HIS authorship impossible? The objection
seems weakly sentimental.

Macaulay scolds Scott as fiercely as Mr. Greenwood scolds Shakspere,-
-for the more part, ignorantly and unjustly. Still, there is matter
to cause surprise and regret. Both Scott and Shakspere are accused
of writing for gain, and of spending money on lands and houses with
the desire to found families. But in the mysterious mixture of each
human personality, any sober soul who reflects on his own sins and
failings will not think other men's failings incompatible with
intellectual excellence. Bacon's own conduct in money matters was
that of a man equally grasping and extravagant. Ben Jonson thus
describes Shakespeare as a social character: "He was indeed honest,
and of an open and free nature . . . I loved the man and do honour
his memory on this side idolatry as much as any." Perhaps Ben never
owed money to Shakspere and refused to pay!

We must not judge a man's whole intellectual character, and declare
him to be incapable of poetry, on the score of a few legal papers
about matters of business. Apparently Shakspere helped that
Elizabethan Mr. Micawber, his father, out of a pecuniary slough of
despond, in which the ex-High Bailiff of the town was floundering,--
pursued by the distraint of one of the friendly family of Quiney--
Adrian Quiney. They were neighbours and made a common dunghill in
Henley Street. {171a} I do not, like Mr. Greenwood, see anything "at
all out of the way" in the circumstance "that a man should be writing
Hamlet, and at the same time bringing actions for petty sums lent on
loan at some unspecified interest." {171b} Nor do I see anything at
all out of the way in Bacon's prosecution of his friend and
benefactor, Essex (1601), while Bacon was writing Hamlet. Indeed,
Shakspere's case is the less "out of the way" of the two. He wanted
his loan to be repaid, and told his lawyer to bring an action. Bacon
wanted to keep his head (of inestimable value) on his shoulders; or
to keep his body out of the Tower; or he merely, as he declares,
wanted to do his duty as a lawyer of the Crown. In any case, Bacon
was in a tragic position almost unexampled; and was at once
overwhelmed by work, and, one must suppose, by acute distress of
mind, in the case of Essex. He must have felt this the more keenly,
if, as some Baconians vow, HE WROTE THE SONNETS TO ESSEX. Whether he
were writing his Hamlet when engaged in Essex's case (1601), or any
other of his dramatic masterpieces, even this astonishing man must
have been sorely bestead to combine so many branches of business.

Thus I would reply to Mr. Greenwood's amazement that Shakspere, a
hard creditor, and so forth, should none the less have been able to
write his plays. But if it is meant that a few business transactions
must have absorbed the whole consciousness of Shakespeare, and left
him neither time nor inclination for poetry, consider the scientific
preoccupation of Bacon, his parliamentary duties, his ceaseless
activity as "one of the legal body-guard of the Queen" at a time when
he had often to be examining persons accused of conspiracy,--and do
not forget his long and poignant anxiety about Essex, his constant
efforts to reconcile him with Elizabeth, and to advocate his cause
without losing her favour; and, finally, the anguish of prosecuting
his friend, and of knowing how hardly the world judged his own
conduct. Follow him into his relations with James I; his eager
pursuit of favour, the multiplicity of his affairs, his pecuniary
distresses, and the profound study and severe labour entailed by the
preparation for and the composition of The Advancement of Learning
(1603-5). He must be a stout-hearted Baconian who can believe that,
between 1599 and 1605, Bacon was writing Hamlet, and other
masterpieces of tragedy or comedy. But all is possible to genius.
What Mr. Greenwood's Great Unknown was doing at this period, "neither
does he know, nor do I know, but he only." He, no doubt, had
abundance of leisure.

At last Shakspere died (1616), and had not the mead of one melodious
tear, as far as we know, from the London wits, in the shape of
obituary verses. This fills Mr. Greenwood with amazement. "Was it
because 'the friends of the Muses' were for the most part aware that
Shakespeare had not died with Shakspere?" Did Jonson perchance think
that his idea might be realised when he wrote,


"What a sight it were,
To see thee in our waters yet appear"?


and so on. Did Jonson expect and hope to see the genuine
"Shakespeare" return to the stage, seven years after the death of
Shakspere the actor, the Swan of Avon? As Jonson was fairly sane, we
can no more suspect him of having hoped for this miracle than believe
that most of the poets knew the actor not to be the author. Moreover
Jonson, while desiring that Shakespeare might "shine forth" again and
cheer the drooping stage, added,


"Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like Night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume's light,"


that is--the Folio of 1623. Ben did not weave the amazing tissue of
involved and contradictory falsities attributed to him by Baconians.
Beaumont died in the same year as Shakspere, who died in the depths
of the country, weary of London. Has Mr. Greenwood found obituary
poems dropped on the grave of the famous Beaumont? Did Fletcher, did
Jonson, produce one melodious tear for the loss of their friend; in
Fletcher's case his constant partner? No? Were the poets, then,
aware that Beaumont was a humbug, whose poems and plays were written
by Bacon? {174a}

I am not to discuss Shakespeare's Will, the "second-best bed," and so
forth. But as Shakespeare's Will says not a word about his books, it
is decided by Mr. Greenwood that he had no books. Mr. Greenwood is a
lawyer; so was my late friend Mr. Charles Elton, Q.C., of White
Staunton, who remarks that Shakespeare bequeathed "all the rest of my
goods, chattels, leases, &c., to my son-in-law, John Hall, gent."
(He really WAS a "gent." with authentic coat-armour.)

It is with Mr. Elton's opinion, not with my ignorance, that Mr.
Greenwood must argue in proof of the view that "goods" are
necessarily exclusive of books, for Mr. Elton takes it as a quite
natural fact that Shakespeare's books passed, with his other goods,
to Mr. Hall, and thence to a Mr. Nash, to whom Mr. Hall left "my
study of books" {175a} (library). I only give this as a lawyer's
opinion.

There is in the Bodleian an Aldine Ovid, "with Shakespeare's"
signature (merely Wm. She.), and a note, "This little volume of Ovid
was given to me by W. Hall, who sayd it was once Will Shakespeare's."
I do not know that the signature (like that on Florio's Montaigne, in
the British Museum) has been detected as a forgery; nor do I know
that Shakespeare's not specially mentioning his books proves that he
had none. Lawyers appear to differ as to this inference: both Mr.
Elton and Mr. Greenwood seem equally confident. {175b} But if it
were perfectly natural that the actor, Shakspere, should have no
books, then he certainly made no effort, by the local colour of
owning a few volumes, to persuade mankind that he WAS the author.
Yet they believed that he was--really there is no wriggling out of
it. As regards any of his own MSS. which Shakespeare may have had
(one would expect them to be at his theatre), and their monetary
value, if they were not, as usual, the property of his company, and
of him as a member thereof, we can discuss that question in the
section headed "The First Folio."

It appears that Shakespeare's daughter, Judith, could write no more
than her grandfather. {176a} Nor, I repeat, could the Lady Jane
Gordon, daughter of the great Earl of Huntly, when she was married to
the Earl of Bothwell in 1566. At all events, Lady Jane "made her
mark." It may be feared that Judith, brought up in that very
illiterate town of Stratford, under an illiterate mother, was
neglected in her education. Sad, but very common in women of her
rank, and scarcely a proof that her father did not write the plays.

As "nothing is known of the disposition and character" {176b} of
Shakespeare's grand-daughter, Lady Barnard, who died in 1670, it is
not so paralysingly strange that nothing is known of any relics or
anecdotes of Shakespeare which she may have possessed. Mr. Greenwood
"would have supposed that she would have had much to say about the
great poet," exhibited his books (if any), and so forth. Perhaps she
did,--but how, if we "know nothing about her disposition and
character," can we tell? No interviewers rushed to her house
(Abington Hall, Northampton-shire) with pencils and notebooks to
record her utterances; no reporter interviewed her for the press. It
is surprising, is it not?

The inference might be drawn, in the Baconian manner, that, during
the Commonwealth and Restoration, "the friends of the Muses" knew
that the actor was NOT the author, and therefore did not interview
his granddaughter in the country.

"But, at any rate, we have the Stratford monument," says Mr.
Greenwood, and delves into this problem. Even the Stratford monument
of Shakespeare in the parish church is haunted by Baconian mysteries.
If the gentle reader will throw his eye over the photograph {177a} of
the monument as it now exists, he may not be able to say to the face
of the poet -


"Thou wast that all to me, Will,
For which my soul did pine."


But if he has any knowledge of Jacobean busts on monuments, he will
probably agree with me in saying, "This effigy, though executed by
somebody who was not a Pheidias, and who perhaps worked merely from
descriptions, is, at all events, Jacobean." The same may assuredly
be said of the monument; it is in good Jacobean style: the pillars
with their capitals are graceful: all the rest is in keeping; and
the two inscriptions are in the square capital letters of
inscriptions of the period; not in italic characters. Distrusting my
own EXPERTISE, I have consulted Sir Sidney Colvin, and Mr. Holmes of
the National Portrait Gallery. They, with Mr. Spielmann, think the
work to be of the early seventeenth century.

Next, glance at the figure opposite. This is a reproduction of "the
earliest representation of the Bust" (and monument) in Dugdale's
Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656). Compare the two objects, point
by point, from the potato on top with holes in it, of Dugdale, which
is meant for a skull, through all the details,--bust and all. Does
Dugdale's print, whether engraved by Hollar or not, represent a
Jacobean work? Look at the two ludicrous children, their legs
dangling in air; at the lions' heads above the capitals of the
pillars; at the lettering of the two visible words of the
inscription, and at the gloomy hypochondriac or lunatic, clasping a
cushion to his abdomen. That hideous design was not executed by an
artist who "had his eye on the object," if the object were a Jacobean
monument: while the actual monument was fashioned in no period of
art but the Jacobean. From Digges' rhymes in the Folio of 1623, we
know that Shakespeare already had his "Stratford monument." THE
EXISTING OBJECT IS WHAT HE HAD; the monument in Dugdale is what, I
hope, no architect of 1616-23 could have imagined or designed.

Dugdale's engraving is not a correct copy of any genuine Jacobean
work of art. Is Dugdale accurate in his reproductions of other
monuments in Stratford Church? To satisfy himself on this point, Sir
George Trevelyan, as he wrote to me (June 13, 1912), "made a sketch
of the Carew Renaissance monument in Stratford Church, and found that
the discrepancies between the original tomb and the representation in
Dugdale's Warwickshire are far and away greater than in the monument
to William Shakespeare."

Mr. Greenwood, {179a} while justly observing that "the little sitting
figures . . . are placed as no monumental sculptor would place them,"
"on the whole sees no reason at all why we should doubt the
substantial accuracy of Dugdale's figure . . . It is impossible to
suppose that Hollar would have drawn and that Dugdale would have
published a mere travesty of the Stratford Monument."

I do not know who drew the design, but a travesty of Jacobean work it
is in every detail of the monument. A travesty is what Dugdale gives
as a representation of the Carew monument. Mr. Greenwood, elsewhere,
repeating his criticism of the impossible figures of children, says:
"This is certainly mere matter of detail, and, in the absence of
other evidence, would give us no warrant for doubting the substantial
accuracy of Dugdale's presentment of the 'Shakespeare' bust." {180a}

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