CHAPTER II.

Repugnance to the Baconites' claim-Queen Elizabeth's estimate of Bacon-His doubt of the permanency of the English languageHis quotations His opinion of stage acting-His Essay on Masques and Triumphs- Ben Jonson's description of Shakespeare's strolling company.

MONG the lovers of Shakespeare there is

AMONG

a repugnance to the thought of attributing his authorship to Bacon that would not be felt to nearly the same degree if the claim were made for Marlowe, Marston, Dekker, and a number of others. These men were Shakespeare's friends; the stage was their livelihood; their hearts were in this art; they loved and honoured their profession, and had dramatic talent of a high order.

The heart warms to them for their comradeship with Shakespeare, and willingly accords them some of his glory, but Bacon's inferiority in everything that constitutes Shakespeare's charm, his expressed contempt for the stage, and the mean motive upon which his claim to

Shakespeare's works is based-that from fear or shame he disowned them-stir up a feeling of protest as though the plays themselves were threatened with some loss or irreparable injury.

The lovers of the plays demand that they shall have an honest origin and a manly author, and will not believe that they could have been written in fear and shame, sneaked out of a back door and imposed upon the wittiest and brightest people of that age, under circumstances that would disgrace all concerned. Considering the undisputed place that is given them, it is natural that any question of their authorship should awaken a deep interest; but it is singular that any one should be willing to dethrone the man who positively put them on the stage, and whose claim to them was absolutely unquestioned during his lifetime and for more than two centuries after his death, without, at least, a most searching test of the right of the new claimant. It is singular also that people should so passively echo the refrain of the doubters as to the college-bred requirements of their author. The most beautiful parts in Shakespeare are in the simplest language, and there is nothing in the story of the plays that

the genius that produced the verse could not have learned from reading.

The one essential that learning and study could not supply was the mind and genius of Shakespeare. The intellectual feature of the subject is, however, not the only one to be considered; the character, tastes, and employments of the two men enter almost as deeply into the possibility of authorship as does the question of learning and scholarly ability, and in these respects no two men were ever more unlike. The "precepts" for Laertes are fully observed in Shakespeare's life, but violated in every phase of Bacon's history:

"To thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.'

It may be urged that Bacon's writings are in accord with the philosophy of the plays, even if his character was not, and therefore that his career cannot be cited against him as their author. It is my conviction that this is not true, and that his writings plainly teach the methods by which he lived; that his rules of life, his ambition, tastes, principles and prejudices were totally antagonistic to the spirit

of the plays, not artistically alone, but in all the truth that they affirm and all the wrong that they expose. This I shall hereafter endeavour to demonstrate by his own expressions.

It is impossible to doubt Shakespeare's sincerity. Each one unconsciously and irresistibly forms an idea of an author, justifying or rejecting what he conveys to the imagination, and thus to the lovers of Shakespeare, the incomparable poet is a lovable man, full of nobility and manhood, and cannot be a corrupt judge and servile politician.

"Gentle, never schooled and yet learned, full of noble device, of all sorts enchantingly beloved."

It is singular that Bacon's learning should give him any claim to dramatic genius or power. He was a great student, and a ready, voluble lawyer. He was well read in everything extant at the time, and had above everything else a marvellous memory, but limited originality, whilst his extreme love for the prosaic studies of law and physics diminishes the probability of any poetic temperament, even were it left to conjecture to determine this point, but he has not failed to express his superiority to fiction and to works of the imagination.

If I have ventured very far in doubting his more than ordinary originality, I have very distinguished authority of his own time to sustain my disbelief; one indeed who knew him intimately; one to whom he gave a new year's gift, 1599-1600, described as follows:

By Mr. Frauncis Bacon, one pettycote of white satten, embrothered all over like feathers and billets, with three brode borders, faire embrothered with snakes and frutage:" none other than Queen Elizabeth herself, who said of him, "Bacon hath great wit and learning, but in law he showeth to the uttermost of his knowledge, and is not deep."

It is reasonable to suppose that if Bacon had written the plays they would have been translated into Latin as his published works were. I think there is nothing over his signature, except his letters, that has not, at least, a Latin title. While he was so unappreciative of the English language, and held it so cheaply that he would not entrust his writings to it, Shakespeare was discovering and creating a depth of power, expression, feeling and beauty in it, that alone, would make it immortal. It is a very strong side-light upon the improbability