BIBLIOGRAPHY
—OF THE—
BACON-SHAKESPEARE
CONTROVERSY,

—WITH—

NOTES AND EXTRACTS.

By W. H. WYMAN.

CINCINNATI:
PETER G. THOMSON,
1884.

COPYRIGHTED,
1884,
BY W. H. WYMAN.

[Pg 3]

PREFACE.

In July, 1882, the compiler of this work issued a small privately-printed Bibliography of the Bacon-Shakespeare Literature, including all the titles then ascertained—63 in number. Since that time, additional titles and interesting material have so accumulated that he has thought proper to present this volume—the work, or amusement of leisure evenings—believing that the discussion has reached a point that entitles it to as complete a Bibliography as can be made. While personally entertaining no doubts as to Shakespeare’s authorship, he believes that the discussion has its compensating features in inciting a study of the Shakespearian dramas, and of the works as well of the dramatists and philosophers—in fact, the literary history—of the Elizabethan age. It is, perhaps, due to the various theorists that the ground-work of their opinions be known, and it is due no less to the memory of William Shakespeare that these adverse theories, and the arguments in answer, shall be so presented as to enable any one, who wishes to investigate the question, to form an intelligent opinion for himself.

As to the Bibliography, so far as titles are concerned, no pains have been spared to make it complete. It is believed to contain a list of all the books, pamphlets, and magazine [4]articles on the question, as well as a large proportion of the reviews, the more important newspaper articles, etc. Of the latter, a few may be included that are unimportant—as it has been difficult to decide just where to draw the line—but the intention has been to include nothing, except some collateral matters of special interest, that is not of some use in the formation of an opinion.

While the endeavor has been to embody in some part of it, in a general way, all the main points of the discussion, this work does not pretend to be a complete reflex of all the arguments or the evidence adduced. It is simply a list of the titles, to which are added such brief memoranda as will give the main facts in regard to this literature, and something as to its authors. By the notes and extracts, an effort has been made to relieve the tediousness of a dry Bibliography. Where extracts are given, such have usually been chosen as were thought to embody some interesting feature, or a hint of the argument—these to be distributed so evenly as to leave no doubts of a bibliographical impartiality. In short, the aim has been to point out to those who desire this information just where it may be found. In common with one of the writers, who has adopted an expression of Lord Bacon’s: “We have only taken upon us to ring a bell, to call other wits together, which is the meanest office.”

And as to the extracts, an apology is doubtless due to the writers. It may well be appalling to the author of a book or an article, bristling with telling arguments and eloquent passages, to find here a quotation wrenched from its appropriate context, embodying only a single idea, and that, perhaps, the one he values least—or, possibly, none at all. The compiler admits all this in advance, with the single remark that he has made no attempt—it being simply impossible within the limits of this work—to do any sort of justice to the various productions, many of them learned, ingenious, and cultured.

The compilation and arrangement has not been without its difficulties. With such a varied mass of material—many of the articles being without any proper titles, it has been impossible to follow an exact Bibliographical formula. Though [5]crude in this respect, it is hoped that it has been so arranged as to be intelligible. The titles have been placed chronologically as best calculated to show the history and progress of the discussion, thus rendering it necessary to divide a few, such as Notes and Queries, which would more properly come together. As it has been found impracticable to give a full explanation of many of the titles, the general tenor of each has been thus indicated:

the last including all articles which for any reason can not be classed as For or Against.

A recapitulation of some of the main features of the Bibliography may be interesting:

Of the 255 titles, there are, For Shakespeare, 117; Against Shakespeare, 73; Unclassified, 65. In addition to the above, there are about 100 sub-titles, of more or less importance, represented by a, b, c, etc.

As to nationality, the origin of the articles (titles) may be classed as follows: American, 161; English, 69; Australian, 10; Scotch, 4; Canadian, 3; German, 2; French, 2; Italy, Holland, Ireland, and India, 1 each.

Taken chronologically, there appeared in 1848, 1; 1852, 1; 1853, 1; 1856, 9; 1857, 11; 1860, 2; 1862, 1; 1863, 2; 1865, 1; 1866, 12; 1867, 8; 1869, 2; 1870, 2; 1874, 28; 1875, 11; 1876, 2; 1877, 7; 1878, 9; 1879, 10; 1880, 9; 1881, 27; 1882, 30; 1883, 61; 1884, to date, 8. This can not, of course, be relied upon as giving more than an approximate idea of the relative progress of the controversy, as the titling of articles—especially those of minor importance—has been much more practicable in the later years.

There has been ample opportunity for an examination of these works. Of the 255 titles, copies of 249 are in the library of the compiler. The titles lacking are 48, 92, 109, 117; also, the articles under 151 and 161 in part.

In explanation of the different ways of spelling Shakespeare, Shakespearian, etc., in these pages, it is proper to say [6]that the intention has been to follow, in all titles and extracts, the methods adopted by the various writers.

The compiler tenders his acknowledgments to many friends and correspondents for information and assistance, in all cases courteously furnished. An additional favor will be conferred by further information as to any errors or omitted titles.

It will be seen by a reference to the notes, that not less than five new works are foreshadowed, some of which will be published. Evidently the discussion is not ended. The subject is one that appeals too strongly to the iconoclastic spirit of the age for that. It is likely to afford as endless a theme as the authorship of Junius, or the personality of Homer. If the authorship of the Shakespearian dramas is not now settled, in that sense it never will be settled, for it is not, in its very nature, susceptible of such proof as will satisfy everybody. And though the world may always hold to its faith in William Shakespeare, none the less will there always be doubters.

W. H. W.

Walnut Hills,
Cincinnati, April 10th, 1884.

[7]

BACON-SHAKESPEARE

CONTROVERSY.

[8]
[9]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1  The Ancient Lethe. In The Romance of Yachting; Voyage the First. By Joseph C. Hart, author of “Miriam Coffin,” etc. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1848; 12mo. pp. 332. (See pages 207-243).

Anti-Sh.

The first known publication questioning the right of Shakespeare to the authorship of the Shakespearian dramas.

Col. Hart’s article seems to have been overlooked, and not brought to the notice of those who were interested in the question, until it was used by the compiler of this work as the first title in The Bibliography of the Bacon-Shakespeare Literature, of which this is an extension. Up to that time, the article in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal (see next title), seems to have been accepted by all the authorities as the first mention. The Romance of Yachting is a gossipy account of a voyage to Spain, in a merchant ship, in which are interwoven discussions of various topics in a free and easy style. This chapter is supposed to be written on the banks of the Guadalete—the ancient Lethe. Hence the title.

[10]

“Alas, Shakespeare! Lethe is upon thee! But if it drown thee, it will give up and work the resurrection of better men and more worthy. Thou hast had thy century; they are about having theirs.”

---

“He was not the mate of the literary characters of his day, and none knew it better than himself. It is a fraud upon the world to thrust his surreptitious fame upon us. He had none that was worthy of being transmitted. The enquiry will be, who were the able literary men who wrote the dramas imputed to him? The plays themselves, or rather a small portion of them, will live as long as English literature is regarded as worth pursuit. The authorship of the plays is no otherwise material to us, than as a matter of curiosity, and to enable us to render exact justice; but they should not be assigned to Shakespeare alone, if at all.”

The author contrasts Shakespeare with the other Elizabethan writers. He argues that the facts known in the life of Shakespeare, so far as they are known, are incompatible with the authorship, and takes up the plays in review, claiming that he had very little part in them. He suggests no other author.

(Col. Hart was a lawyer, journalist, and yachtsman—residing in, and well-known in New York, especially from 1832 to 1850—the friend and associate of Willis, Poe, Park Benjamin, Col. Porter, of The Spirit, etc. He was a Colonel in the National Guard. During his later years he was U. S. Consul lo Santa Cruz de Teneriffe, and died there in 1855, in his 57th year. A private letter concerning him says: “He was quite proud of writing that chapter as to Shakespeare, and declared that in time his views must become accepted.”)

2  Who Wrote Shakespeare? An article in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, August 7, 1852.

Anti-Sh.

The author of this is unknown. The article was for a long time accepted as “the first mention.” It is moderate in tone, contrasting the commonplace life of Shakespeare with his works, and suggests that he may have “kept a poet.”

“May not William Shakespeare—the cautious, calculating man, careless of fame, and intent only on money-making—have found, in some furtherest garret, overlooking the silent highway of the Thames, some pale, wasted student, with a brow as ample and lofty as his own, who had written the Wars of the Roses, and who, with eyes of genius gleaming [11]through despair, was about, like Chatterton, to spend his last copper coin upon some cheap and speedy mode of death? What was to hinder William Shakespeare from reading, appreciating, and purchasing these dramas, and thereafter keeping his poet as Mrs. Packwood did?”

---

“Well, reader, how like you our hypothesis? We confess we do not like it ourselves; but we humbly think it is, at least, as plausible as most of what is contained in the many bulky volumes written to connect the man, William Shakespeare, with the poet of Hamlet. We repeat, there is nothing recorded in his every-day life that connects the two, except the simple fact of his selling the poems and realizing the proceeds, and their being afterwards published with his name attached; and the statements of Ben Jonson, which, however, are quite compatible with his being in the secret.”

The writer opens his article with an allusion to Miss Kitty’s “Shikspur! Who wrote it?” in High Life Below Stairs. To explain this allusion: This farce, with the query so frequently alluded to in this controversy, was written by the Rev. James Townley, and first acted in Drury Lane in 1759. The dramatis personæ in the following dialogue are servants, who hold high carnival in the absence of the owners of the mansion, all, except Kitty, assuming the titles of their respective masters and mistresses:

“Lady Bab— * * * I never read but one book.

Kitty—What is it your ladyship is so fond of?

Lady Bab—Shikspur. Did you never read Shikspur?

Sir Harry—I never heard of it.

Kitty—Shikspur! Shikspur! Who wrote it? No, I never read Shikspur.

Lady Bab—Then you have an immense pleasure to come.

Duke—Shikspur! Who wrote it?

Sir Harry—Who wrote it? Why, Ben Jonson.

Duke—Oh, I remember, it was Kolly Kibber.

Kitty—Well, then, I’ll read it over one afternoon or other.”

3  Notes and Queries. London. First Series.

a—From Theta, Vol. VIII, p. 438, November 5, 1853.

b—Answer by C, Vol. X, p. 106, August 15, 1854.

Unc.

Unimportant, except as the commencement of the series of articles running through Notes and Queries, which will be found hereafter arranged in chronological order.

[12]

4  William Shakespeare and his Plays. An Inquiry Concerning Them. By Delia Bacon. In Putnam’s Monthly, January, 1856, pages 1-19.

Anti-Sh.

Miss Bacon was the first writer who connected Lord Bacon with the authorship of the Shakespearian dramas, and in this article she first suggests it—not directly, but rather by inference. It was written during her stay in England (at St. Albans), and was the real commencement of the “Bacon-Shakespeare” controversy. As this was before her mind became so completely clouded by her intense thought on the subject, it is much clearer in its style than her subsequent book. In it she draws the contrast between the known facts in the life of Shakespeare, and the magnificence of the dramas that bear his name.

“Shall this crowning literary product of that great epoch, wherein these new ages have their beginning, vividly arranged in its choicest refinements, flashing everywhere on the surface with its costliest wit, crowded everywhere with its subtlest scholasticisms, betraying, on every page, its broadest, freshest range of experience, its most varied culture, its profoundest insight, its boldest grasp of comprehension—shall this crowning result of so many preceding ages of growth and culture, with its essential, and now probable connection with the new scientific movement of the time from which it issues, be able to conceal from us, much longer, its history?—shall we be able to accept in explanation of it, much longer, the story of the Stratford poacher?”

(Delia Bacon was born in Tallmadge, Ohio, February 2, 1811. She was the daughter of Rev. David Bacon, one of the early Western missionaries, and sister of the late Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon. She was educated at Miss Catherine E. Beecher’s school, in Hartford, and is described as a woman of rare intellect and attainments. Her profession was that of a teacher and lecturer—the first woman, Mrs. Farrar says, whom she had ever known to speak in public. At this time, she resided in Boston. Having conceived the idea of the Baconian authorship, she became a monomaniac on the subject. Visiting England, in 1853, in search of proofs for her theory, she spent five years there, first at St. Albans, where she supposed [13]Bacon to have written the plays; then at London, where she wrote The Philosophy of Shakespeare Unfolded; and subsequently at Stratford-on-Avon. Here, after the publication and non-success of her book, she lost her reason wholly and entirely. She was returned to her friends in Hartford, in April, 1858, and died there September 2, 1859.)

5  Review of Delia Bacon’s Article in Putnam’s Monthly. In the Athenæum, London, July 26, 1856, p. 108.

Pro-Sh.

“The process by which Shakespeare is reduced to nothing is certainly startling. Take away all the evidences of the poet’s supreme intellect—refuse him the witness of his works—and it is, of course, very easy to say the poor player was unequal to his mighty task. But the same process could reduce Bacon from a great law-giver in the empire of thought, to a corrupt lawyer and base flatterer in the Court of King James. Take the facts which stand apart from his intellectual action—erect the idea of man upon them—and it will be as easy to raise a theory that not Bacon but Shakespeare wrote the Essays and Novum Organum.”

6  Was Lord Bacon the Author of Shakespeare’s Plays? A letter to Lord Ellesmere. By William Henry Smith. Pamphlet. Printed for private circulation. London: September, 1856. (This was reproduced in Littell’s Living Age, November, 1856. 4 pages in Littell).

Anti-Sh.

This was addressed to the Earl of Ellesmere, as the late President of the Shakespeare Society. It takes strong grounds in favor of the Baconian authorship.

A question of precedence as to the Baconian advocacy arose between Mr. Smith and Miss Bacon’s friends. Hawthorne in his preface to Miss Bacon’s book animadverted upon Mr. Smith for “taking to himself this lady’s theory,” resulting in the correspondence published in Smith’s book. In his letter Mr. Smith claimed that he had never seen Miss Bacon’s Putnam’s Monthly article until after his pamphlet was published, [14]and also that he had held these opinions for twenty years previously. But as Miss Bacon’s article was published eight months previous to his pamphlet, and reviewed in the Athenæum in the meantime, his want of knowledge was certainly very singular, and the precedence must be awarded to her.

(Mr. William Henry Smith, who still resides in London, was the first English Baconian. He not only wrote, but lectured on the subject. During the past fifteen years, we find nothing from his pen, but from recent advices we infer that his interest in the question is unabated, and that he may yet be heard from.)

7  Was Lord Bacon the Author of Shakespeare’s Plays?

a—In the Literary Gazette, London, Sept. 6, 1856.

b—In the same, Oct. 18, 1856.

Pro-Sh.

Both articles are notices of Smith’s Ellesmere pamphlet—the latter a comprehensive review. Towards its close, the writer recapitulates the contemporary evidence, and adds:

“Now, before Mr. Smith proceeds to take possession of the plays in the name of Lord Bacon, he should show his right to dispossess the occupying tenant. This can be done only by overturning the mass of evidence, upon the faith of which the whole world has hitherto believed Shakespeare, if we may so express it, to be the author of his own works. When Mr. Smith shall have done this, and proved that Greene, Chettle, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and the rest, and the traditions, to boot, as thick as leaves in Vallambrosa, are one and all unworthy of credit, he shall then be in a position to assert Lord Bacon’s claim—but not one moment sooner.”

8  Review of Smith’s Letter to Lord Ellesmere. In the Athenæum, London, Sept. 13, 1856, p. 1133.

Pro-Sh.

“Of course—as our readers have seen—we reject altogether the theory of an extra authorship of Shakespeare’s plays; and on any idle day of the year, should we ever find one, we will undertake to prove, just as plausibly as Mr. Smith here proves the authorship of Lear and Hamlet to belong to Bacon, that Shakespeare composed the Instauration and wrote the Essays.”

[15]

9  Notes and Queries. London. Second Series.

a—From A. Hopper, II, 267, Oct. 4, 1856.

b—Review of Ellesmere letter, II, 320, Oct. 18, 1856.

c—From Vox, II, 369, Nov. 8, 1856.

d—From W. H. S. [Smith] II, 503, Dec. 27, 1856.

e—From R. Slocomb, II, 504, Dec. 27, 1856.

Unc.

10  Shakespeare and Lord Bacon. In the Illustrated London News, October 25, 1856. 1 column.

Unc.

An account of a lecture by Wm. Henry Smith, at the Beethoven Rooms, Harley street, London.

11  On the Art of Cavilling. “All is humbug.” In Blackwood’s Magazine, Edinburgh, November, 1856. 15 pages.

Pro-Sh.

An answer to Smith’s Ellesmere letter.

“It proves an unlimited power of credulity among the class [the cavillers] to which its writer belongs, and throws some light upon that extraordinary mental process by which men of a crotchety turn of mind can set up pure unreason in the face of plain truth; but it proves nothing whatever about Francis Bacon, nor throws the smallest glimmer of illumination on those mysterious productions called Shakespeare’s Plays.”

12  Shakespeare and Bacon. “A little chink may let in much light.” Anonymous. [By Dr. C. M. Ingleby.] In Illustrated London News, Dec. 6, 1856, p. 577.

Pro-Sh.

In this Dr. Ingleby summarizes the arguments of Smith in the Ellesmere letter, and comprehensively answers them.

13  I won’t have Bacon. A communication by John Bull. In Illustrated London News, January 10, 1857.

Pro-Sh.

[16]

“I won’t have Bacon. I will have my own cherished “Will.” I have borne a great deal, and never changed my faith. I have seen him chipped, mauled, befribbled, and overdone. I have seen upholsterers and classic managers cloud his genius in fustian and explanations. I have heard shouts against his anachronisms, and anathemas against his want of the unities and his knowledge of Greek; but never thought an Englishman and a Smith would try to prove that he was a swindler—a thief—a jackdaw, and died in the odor of sanctity, the pilferer of Bacon. * * * * I know the pestilent vapor will pass away, and the steady glories of Will. Shakespeare break forth again; but in the meantime we shiver under a passing cloud.”

14  Bacon and Shakespeare. Letter from William Henry Smith, on the Psalms translated by Bacon. In the Athenæum, London, January 24, 1857, p. 122.

Anti-Sh.

Mr. Smith claims that these translations show the poetic faculty in Bacon. “His mind was so essentially poetical, that it was as great a constraint to him to write prose, as to spare, or pass by a jest.”

15  William Shakespeare not an Impostor. By an English Critic. [Geo. H. Townsend.] London and New York: G. Routledge & Co., 1857, 12mo. pp. 122.

Pro-Sh.

The especial purpose of this book is to answer Smith’s Ellesmere letter, which the author criticises severely, but it takes in the question in its fullest scope. His preface aptly describes it:

“The author has endeavored to collect within the compass of a small volume the historical documents and the testimonies of the poet’s contemporaries, by which the claim of William Shakespeare to the authorship of the six-and-thirty plays, published in the folio edition of 1623, is clearly established. His title is confirmed by such a mass of evidence, that many readers, who have not investigated the matter, will wonder how it could have been called in question.”

The author gives a summary of Smith’s argument (copied from Notes and Queries), and answers it as follows:

[17]

“He contends: 1. That the character of Shakespeare, as sketched by Pope, is the exact biography of Bacon. 2. That Bacon possessed dramatic talent to a high degree, and could, according to his biographers, assume the most different characters, and speak the language proper to each, with a facility that was perfectly natural. 3. That he wrote and assisted at bal-masques, and was an intimate friend of Lord Southampton, the alleged patron of Shakespeare. 4. That the first folio of 1623 was not published till Bacon had been driven to private life, and had leisure to revise his literary works; and that as he was obliged to raise money by almost any means, it is at least probable that he did so by writing plays. 5. That Shakespeare was a man of business rather than poetry, and acknowledged his poems and sonnets, but never laid claim to the plays.”

“This is, after all [says Mr. Townsend], as good a summary as can be given of the wretched arguments upon which Mr. William Henry Smith bases his new, preposterous and altogether untenable theory. They may be dismissed in a few sentences. 1. Shakespeare’s character could not possibly be the biography of another man. 2. Bacon’s ability for dramatic composition can not be accepted as proof that he wrote plays, to the authorship of which he never laid claim, and which were attributed to, and acknowledged by, one of his contemporaries. 3. Lord Southampton, the friend of Shakespeare and Bacon, is, as we shall see more fully in another chapter, a witness against Mr. William Henry Smith and his theory. 4. Bacon’s leisure and want of funds will never justify even the suspicion that he wrote the plays of Shakespeare. 5. The assertion that Shakespeare was a man of business rather than poetry is directly at variance with the truth, as any person who has perused the Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and the Sonnets, will at once admit. It is equally false to assert that Shakespeare did not claim the authorship of these dramas.”

Here is the author’s comparison of Bacon and Shakespeare:

“No two minds could be more dissimilar than those of Bacon and Shakespeare; they were both monarchs in the realms of literature, but they sat upon different thrones; theirs was not a joint sovereignty; they ruled over different empires. Shakespeare possessed great natural genius; Bacon’s mind was a store-house of learning. The one had power to create, the other to mould all human knowledge to his mighty will. Bacon was a dictator amongst philosophers and schoolmen; Shakespeare, a king among poets. The one dived deep beneath the surface, and brought up rich pearls of thought; the other plucked the flowers as he passed along; received his inspiration direct from all-bounteous Nature, and held mysterious communion with her.”

(Mr. Townsend is better known as the author of the Manual of Dates and Men of the Time. He resided in London, [18]and died there in 1869. A series of disappointments so affected his mind as to lead him to take his own life.)

16  Reviews of Townsend’s Shakespeare Not an Impostor.

a—In the Athenæum, London, February 14, 1857, p. 213.

b—In the Literary Gazette, London, Feb. 21, 1857, p. 181.

Pro-Sh.

“The book is honestly meant, but can its writer conceive that any such book was needed? If he does, the fact is as noticeable as Mr. William Henry Smith’s lucubrations.”—Athenæum.

17  The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded. By Delia Bacon. With a Preface by Nathaniel Hawthorne. London: Groombridge & Sons, 1857. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1857. 8vo. pp. 582.

Anti-Sh.

Miss Bacon’s book was mainly written during her residence in London. In it she makes no attempt to deal with the historical side of the question—that being reserved for another volume, never published. She confines herself to the development of her theory of a hidden under-current of philosophy in the works of both Bacon and Shakespeare, veiled in cipher and allegory for the Elizabethan times, but to be read and understood by a future age. This is outlined in Mr. Hawthorne’s preface:

“In the present volume, accordingly, the writer applies herself to the demonstration and development of a system of philosophy, which has presented itself to her as underlying the superficial and ostensible text of Shakespeare’s plays. Traces of the same philosophy, too, she conceives herself to have found in the acknowledged works of Lord Bacon, and in the works of other writers contemporary with him. All agree in one system; all the traces indicate a common understanding and unity of purpose in men among whom no brotherhood has hitherto been suspected, except as representatives of a grand and brilliant age, when the human intellect made a marked step in advance.”

[19]

As to the authorship, Miss Bacon points to Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, and possibly others of the wits and dramatists of the age. Her style of writing is so redundant that no brief extract can be made, within the limits of this work, which will give anything like a clear statement of her theories. In the following, the theme is the Shakespearian dramas:

“Man, as he is, booked, surveyed—surveyed from the continent of nature, put down as he is in her book of kinds, not as he is from his own interior, isolated conceptions only—the universal powers and causes as they are developed in him, in his untaught affections, in his utmost sensuous darkness—the universal principle instanced where it is most buried, the cause in nature found—man as he is in his heights and in his depths, ‘from his lowest note to the top of his key’—man in his possibilities, in his actualities, in his thought, in his speech, in his book language, and in his every day words, in his loftiest lyric tongue, in his lowest pit of play-house degradation, searched out, explained, interpreted. * * * * It is man’s life, and the culture of it, erected into an art or science, that these books contain. In the lowness of the lowest, and in the aspiration of the noblest, the powers whose entire history must make the basis of a successful morality and policy are found. It is all abstracted or drawn into contemplation, ‘that the precepts of cure and culture may be more rightly concluded.’ ‘For that which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule.’”

“It is not necessary to illustrate this criticism in this case, because in this case the design looks through the execution elsewhere. The criticism of the Novum Organum, the criticism of the Advancement of Learning, and the criticism of Raleigh’s History of the World, than which there is none finer, when once you penetrate its crust of profound erudition, is here on the surface. And the scholasticism is not more obtrusive here, the learned sock is not more ostentatiously paraded, than in some critical places in these performances; while the humor that underlies the erudition issues from a depth of learning not less profound.”

For a sketch of the theory of the book, see the extract (Title 20) from the National Review.

18  Review of Delia Bacon’s Philosophy of Shakespeare Unfolded. In the Athenæum, London, April 11, 1857, p. 461.

Pro-Sh.

[20]

19  Review of the Books of Delia Bacon and W. H. Smith. In the Literary Gazette, London, May 9, 1857.

Pro-Sh.

20  The Alleged Non-Existence of Shakespeare. In the National Review, London, July, 1857.

Pro-Sh.

A very long and caustic review of Delia Bacon’s book. We give the commencement of it, from its value to the reader as an interpretation of the book itself.

“American philosophy delights in hiding its light under a bushel. Emerson is not easy reading; the Poughkeepsie seer (not that we wish to class them together) is sometimes difficult of construction; but Delia Bacon is harder still. We have met with nothing in the range of literature so like the attempt to find a needle in a bundle of hay, as the task of extracting a definite meaning from the vast body of obscure verbiage and inconsequential reasoning in which she has folded up her ideas. As far as we can make out, however, the following is her theme and the thread of her argument:

In the days of Elizabeth and James, a conquest more complete and more degrading than that of the first Norman King had overwhelmed England. At the same time, the first fruits of the revival of learning were ripening in England. There was a body of men here, at the head of whom were Raleigh and Lord Bacon, of boundless penetration, wisdom, and philanthropy. The cause of freedom and human advancement was that to which their whole souls and lives were devoted. Some of them ventured an overt act against the government, which was speedily crushed. It was necessary to conceal the new light which it was their mission to shed forth upon the world. Yet so to hide it, that while it should not betray itself to the jealous scrutiny of a tyrannical autocracy, it yet should be discoverable to the gifted eye, and buried only to be disinterred, in its due time, by the sagacity of future generations. We know that in his youth Lord Bacon busied himself with ciphers; he speaks of word ciphers as well as letter ciphers; be sure, then, that in ciphers he has hidden the learning he dared not lay bare to the face of day. Those who search his works with a discriminating eye, will find abundant hints scattered through them that they have an esoteric meaning subtly hidden beneath their obvious expressions. He was the master-mind of a ‘secret association’ of men who made it their business to perfect and transmit to posterity a ‘new and all-comprehending science of life and practice.’ It is in the later and more finished works of this school—the Advancement of Learning, Hamlet, Lear, [21]the Tempest, and the Novum Organum—that the key to the secret doctrines of which it is the object of Miss Bacon’s work to furnish the interpretation is best found; but it lies also wrapt up, like the tree in the bud, in the earliest and most faulty plays of the collection.”

21  Bacon and Shakespeare. An Inquiry Touching Players, Play-Houses, and Play-Writers, in the days of Elizabeth. By William Henry Smith, Esq. To which is appended an abstract of a MS. respecting Tobie Matthew. London: John Russell Smith, 1857. 12mo. pp. 162.

Anti-Sh.

This is an enlargement and extension of the letter to Lord Ellesmere.

“To consider the probability of these plays having been written by William Shakespeare, and to attack the evidence by which the assertion that they were is supported, is our present object.”

“Proof that they were written by some other person, we do not yet hope to be able to adduce, but merely such evidence of the probability of this being the case, as may induce some active inquiry in the direction indicated.”

A short summary of Mr. Smith’s arguments will be found under the answer of Mr. Townsend to the Ellesmere letter (Title 15). Mr. Smith says in his epitome:

* * * “Very little indeed is known of the history of Shakespeare, and that in no way connects him with these plays—that the writer of them must have possessed a vast variety of talents, such as have been reported to have been found in Francis Bacon, and in him alone; that the wit and poetry are of a kind that were peculiarly his—that William Shakespeare, of Stratford-on-Avon, connected himself with a class which had only recently sprung into existence, and which were held in the utmost contempt—that he was neither eminent as an actor, nor as a writer, during his life time, nor celebrated as such in the period immediately succeeding his death—that there are some remarkable coincidences of expression in these plays and in the writings of Bacon, and that the latter was ever careful to note any thing like a quotation * * * [and, as reasons why Bacon did not claim the plays] that literary labor was not at that time voluntarily pursued for pecuniary recompense, and the few that followed such an occupation were regarded with the utmost contempt—that a play was hardly considered [22]a literary work, and ranked infinitely below a sonnet, and that learned men would as little have prided themselves upon writing one, as upon writing a bon mot.” * * * * *

22  Notice in the Athenæum, London, August 15, 1857, of the correspondence between Hawthorne and William Henry Smith, p. 1036.

Pro-Sh.

Mr. Smith transmits a copy of the correspondence above mentioned, but the Athenæum declines to be convinced that he knew nothing of Delia Bacon’s theory previous to the publication of his Ellesmere letter.

23  Shakespeare in Modern Thought. In the North American Review, October, 1857. [By Rev. C. C. Shackford.] 24 pages.

Pro-Sh.

A portion of the article is devoted to a review of Miss Bacon’s book.

“There is, on the other hand, in Miss Bacon’s work, a spirit of subtile analysis, a deep moral insight, and a penetrating research, which, separated from the monomania of her particular theory, enlists our admiration, and is adapted to throw much light upon Shakespeare’s genius, and makes us feel that there are in him vast depths of thought, and presentations of great human and social laws of development, of which, as yet, we have scarcely dreamed. On every page, nay, over almost every paragraph, we are forced to exclaim: ‘O matter and impertinency, mixed reason in madness!’ The significant contents of the political and philosophical status of that age are minutely exhibited. The particular theory of the book, and the special pleading through inferences, hints, and analogies in thought and expression, to prove that the philosophy and the plays of the age proceeded literally from the same brain and the same hand, we may put aside as impertinent, and a merely fine-spun, fanciful speculation, and there will be left a valuable contribution to the real criticism of Shakespeare, as embodying the whole spirit of the Baconian philosophy, and as the ripe flower and consummated product of the tendencies and outstreaming influences of that wonderful period of development for the English genius.”

[23]

24  Harrington: A Story of True Love. [By William D. O’Connor.] Boston: Thayer & Eldridge, 1860, 12mo. pp. 558. (See Chapter XII, pages 215-221).

Anti-Sh.

To explain this unique title: Hawthorne, in his Recollections of a Gifted Woman (Title 27), says of Miss Bacon’s book:

“I believe it has been the fate of this remarkable book never to have had more than a single reader. But, since my return to America, a young man of genius and enthusiasm has assured me that he has positively read the book from beginning to end, and is completely a convert to its doctrines. It belongs to him, therefore, and not to me—whom, in almost the last letter that I received from her, she declared unworthy to meddle with her work—it belongs surely to this one individual, who has done her so much justice as to know what she wrote, to place Miss Bacon in her due position before the public and posterity.”

The “young man” referred to (in 1863) is the author of this novel. The story itself is of the times of the Fugitive Slave Law. Mr. O’Connor introduces his own Baconian theories through the dialogue of his title-hero, Harrington. He also renders an acknowledgment to Miss Bacon as their source, in a note at the end of the book:

“The reader of the twelfth chapter of this book, may already have observed that Harrington, if he had lived, would have been a believer in the theory regarding the origin and purpose of the Shakespearian drama, as developed in the admirable work by Miss Delia Bacon, entitled, ‘The Philosophy of Shakespeare’s Plays Unfolded,’ in which belief I should certainly agree with Harrington. I wish it were in my power to do even the smallest justice to that mighty and eloquent volume, whose masterly comprehension and insight, though they could not save it from being trampled upon by the brutal bison of the English press, yet lift it to the dignity, whatever may be its faults, of being the best work ever composed upon the Baconian or Shakespearian writings. It has been scouted by the critics as the product of a distempered ideality. Perhaps it is. But there is a prudent wisdom, says Goethe, and there is a wisdom that does not remind us of prudence; and, in like manner, I may say that there is a sane sense, and there is a sense that does not remind us of sanity. At all events, I am assured that the candid and ingenuous reader Miss Bacon wishes for, will find it more to his profit to be insane with her on the subject of Shakespeare, than sane with Dr. Johnson.”

[24]

(Mr. O’Connor resides in Washington, and is an officer connected with the Treasury Department. It is understood that he has finally obeyed the injunction Hawthorne put upon him, “to place Miss Bacon in her due position before the public and posterity,” and has prepared an article on the subject, which will soon be published.)

25  Editors and Commentators, in the Life of Edmond Malone, Editor of Shakespeare. By Sir James Prior. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1860.

Unc.

Writing of a date about 1780-90, Sir James Prior says of the Shakespearian discussions:

“Editors and commentators appear at every turn in all societies. In the club-house we meet three or four of a morning; in the park see them meditating by the Serpentine, or under a tree in Kensington Gardens; no dinner table is without one or two; in the theatre you view them by the dozens. Volume after volume is poured out in note, comment, conjecture, new reading, statement, or mis-statement, contradiction, or variation of all kinds. Reviews, magazines, and newspapers report these with as little mercy on the reader, as to give occasional emendations of their own. Some descant upon his sentiments, some upon his extravagancies, some upon his wonderful creations, or flights of imagination, some upon his language, or phraseology. Several suppose that he wrote more plays than he acknowledged; others, that he fathered more than he had written, while the last opinions are still more original and extraordinary—that his name is akin to a myth, and that he wrote no plays at all! Every new aspirant in this struggle for distinction aims to push his predecessor from his stool.”

26  Notes and Queries. London: Third Series. From T. J. Buckton, II, 502, Dec. 27, 1862.

Unc.

27  Recollections of a Gifted Woman. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the Atlantic Monthly, January, 1863. (See pages 43-58.) Reprinted also with Hawthorne’s Works in Our Old Home.

Unc.

This is interesting as a record of Miss Bacon’s experiences in England while writing her book, and especially so as to [25]her efforts to have the tomb of Shakespeare opened, believing that she would find within it manuscript proofs of her theory. Hawthorne himself, though he wrote the preface to her book, was not a believer. “Being conscious within myself of a sturdy unbelief,” he says.

“I had heard, long ago, that she believed that the material evidences of her dogma as to the authorship, together with the key of the new philosophy, would be found buried in Shakespeare’s grave. Recently, as I understood her, this notion had been somewhat modified, and was now accurately defined and fully developed in her mind, with a result of perfect certainty. In Lord Bacon’s letters, on which she laid her finger as she spoke, she had discovered the key and clue to the whole mystery. There were definite and minute instructions how to find a will and other documents relating to the conclave of Elizabethan philosophers, which were concealed (when and by whom she did not inform me) in a hollow space in the under surface of Shakespeare’s grave-stone. Thus the terrible prohibition to remove the stone was accounted for. The directions, she intimated, went completely and precisely to the point, obviating all difficulties in the way of coming at the treasures; and even, if I remember right, were so contrived as to ward off any troublesome consequences likely to ensue from the interference of the parish-officers. All that Miss Bacon now remained in England for—indeed, the object for which she had come hither, and which had kept her here for three years past—was to obtain possession of these material and unquestionable proofs of the authenticity of her theory.”

28  The Identity of Shakespeare as a Writer of Plays. A chapter in The Biography and Bibliography of Shakespeare. By Henry G. Bohn. Privately-printed (40 copies) for the Philobiblon Society. London, 1863. (See pages 291-300.)

Pro-Sh.

This chapter gives a sketch of the various anti-Shakespearian works, following it by the historical and contemporary evidence in favor of Shakespeare, derived from Ben Jonson, Francis Meres, Milton, Greene, Basse, etc., and adds:

“The positive testimony of Ben Jonson alone, who, though Shakespeare’s friend, was a rival, and not at all likely to concede more than belonged to him, ought in itself be a sufficient answer. He was constantly near the poet; knew what he wrote, and when he wrote; and [26]after his death was engaged in promoting the publication of his works. In conjunction with him, John Heminge and Henry Condell, Shakespeare’s intimate friends and fellow-players, and who are recognized as such in his will, attest the authorship of all the plays in the first folio, by subscribing themselves as witnesses. This volume, too, is dedicated to those high-minded noblemen, William, Earl of Pembroke, and Philip, Earl of Montgomery, who would not, and could not, have consented to let themselves be made party to a notorious fraud. Indeed, King James himself, as well as the Earl of Southampton (who was intimate with both Lord Bacon and Shakespeare) and all the players, playwrights, and literati of the day, must have been acquiescent in the contemptible and gratuitous deception—may we not say forgery?”

---

“In conclusion, we will only observe that Shakespeare had jealous and watchful rivals enough to expose him had any suspicion existed of his not being the actual author of the fame-absorbing plays which bore his name during his life-time.”

29  Lord Palmerston. An article in Fraser’s Magazine, London, November, 1865.

Anti-Sh.

Page 666 contains the paragraph usually relied upon to prove Lord Palmerston’s belief in the Baconian theory:

“Literature was the fashion of Lord Palmerston’s early days, when (as Sydney Smith remarked) a false quantity in a man was pretty nearly the same as a faux pas in a woman. He was tolerably well up in the chief Latin and English classics; but he entertained one of the most extraordinary paradoxes touching the greatest of them, that was ever broached by a man of his intellectual calibre. He maintained that the plays of Shakespeare were really written by Bacon, who passed them off under the name of an actor, for fear of compromising his professional prospects and philosophic gravity. Only last year when this subject was discussed at Broadlands, Lord Palmerston suddenly left the room, and speedily returned with a small volume of dramatic criticisms, in which the same theory (originally started by an American lady) was supported by supposed analogies of thought and expression. ‘There,’ he said, ‘read that and you will come to my opinion.’ When the positive testimony of Ben Jonson, in the verses prefixed to the edition of 1623, was adduced, he remarked, ‘O, those fellows always stand up for one another, or he may have been deceived like the rest.’ The argument had struck Lord Palmerston by its originality, and he wanted leisure for a searching exposure of its groundlessness.”

The volume alluded to was Smith’s Bacon and Shakespeare.

[27]

30  Miss Delia Bacon. Chapter XL, in Mrs. John Farrar’s Recollections of Seventy Years. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1866. 16mo. (Pages 319-331.)

Unc.

An interesting account of Miss Bacon’s historical lectures, and of her subsequent experiences in England.

“She [Miss Bacon] had no notion of going to England to teach history; all she wanted to go for was to obtain proof of the truth of her theory, that Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him, but that Lord Bacon did. * * * The lady whom she was visiting put her copy of his works out of sight, and never allowed her to converse with her on this, her favorite subject. We considered it dangerous for Miss Bacon to dwell on this fancy, and thought that, if indulged, it might become a monomania, which it subsequently did.”

---

“She suffered many privations [in London] during the time that she was writing her book. She lived on the poorest food, and was often without the means of having a fire in her chamber. She told me that she wrote a great part of her large octavo volume sitting up in bed, in order to keep warm.”

31  Notes and Queries. London. Third Series. From Q, with editorial answer, IX, 155, February 24, 1866.

Unc.

32  The Authorship of Shakespeare. By Nathaniel Holmes. New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1866, 12mo. pp. 601. Second edition, 1868. (Third edition, with appendix, referred to hereafter, 1876, pp. 696.)

Anti-Sh.

Judge Holmes is the apostle of Baconianism. His book, first published in 1866, has gone through several editions, and has been regarded as the text-book and authority for all controversialists on that side. Though largely reviewed and discussed, there has been but one book written directly in answer to it—that of Mr. King.

We can not do better than to give Judge Holmes’s theorem in his own language (hitherto unpublished):

[28]

“This work undertakes to demonstrate, not only that William Shakespeare did not, but that Francis Bacon did, write the plays and poems. It presents a critical view of the personal history of the two men, their education, learning, attainments, surroundings, and associates, the contemporaneousness of the writings in question, in prose and verse, an account of the earlier plays and editions, the spurious plays, and ‘the true original copies.’ It gives some evidence that Bacon was known to be the author by some of his contemporaries. It shows in what manner William Shakespeare came to have the reputation of being the writer. It exhibits a variety of facts and circumstances, which are strongly suggestive of Bacon as the real author. A comparison of the writings of contemporary authors in prose and verse, proves that no other writer of that age, but Bacon, can come into any competition for the authorship. It sifts out a chronological order of the production of the plays, and of the several writings of Bacon, ascertaining the exact dates, whenever possible, and shows that the more significant parallelisms run in the same order, and are of such a nature, both by their dates and their own character, as absolutely to preclude all possibility of borrowing, otherwise than as Bacon borrowed from himself. It is amply demonstrated that mere common usage, or the ordinary practice of writers, can furnish no satisfactory explanation of these parallelisms and identities. There is a continuous presentation of parallel or identical passages, throughout the work, with such commentary as was deemed necessary or advisable in order to bring out their full force and significance; and twenty pages of minor parallelisms are given in one body, without commentary.”

“It gives some extensive proofs that Bacon was a poet, and suggests some reasons for his concealment of his poetical authorship. There is some indication of the object and purpose the author had in view in writing these plays. It is shown that the tenor of their teaching is in keeping with Bacon’s ideas upon the subject treated in them. The latter half of the book presents more especially the parallelism in scientific and philosophical thought, with a view to show the identity of the plays and the writings of Bacon, in respect to their philosophy and standard of criticism; and in this there is an endeavor to show that the character and drift of the philosophy of Bacon (as well as that of the plays) was substantially identical with the realistic idealism of the more modern, as of the more ancient writers on the subject.”

“It is recognized that the evidence drawn from historical facts and biographical circumstances, are not in themselves alone entirely conclusive of the matter, however suggestive or significant as clearing the way for more decisive proofs, or as raising a high degree of probability; and it is conceded, that, in the absence of more direct evidence, the most decisive proof attainable is to be found in a critical and thorough comparison of the writings themselves, and that such a comparison will clearly establish the identity of the author as no other than Francis Bacon.”

[29]

We have been recently assured by Judge Holmes, that he has seen nothing in any new fact, criticism, or discussion of the subject, that has in the least degree shaken his convictions.

(Hon. Nathaniel Holmes is a graduate of Harvard University, in the class of 1837. Since 1839 he has practiced law in St. Louis for the greater part of the time, but was, from 1865 to 1868, Judge of the Supreme Court of Missouri, and from 1868 to 1872, a Professor of Law in the Law School of Harvard. He has now retired from professional life, and resides at Cambridge, Mass.)

33  Notice of Judge Holmes’s Work. In The Nation, New York, March 29, 1866, p. 402.

Pro-Sh.

34  The Authorship of Shakespeare. A review of Holmes’s Authorship in the Brooklyn (N. Y.) Daily Eagle, October 24, 1866. 2 columns.

Pro-Sh.

35  Did Shakespeare Write Shakespeare? Review of Holmes’s Authorship in the Round Table, New York, October 27, 1866. 4 columns.

Pro-Sh.

36  Hypotheses of Shakespearian Criticism. In the Home Journal, New York, October 27, 1866. 3 columns.

Pro-Sh.

37  The Authorship of Shakespeare. A review of Holmes, in the Jewish Messenger, New York, November 2, 1866. 1 column.

Pro-Sh.

38  Shakespeare. Was he Himself or Somebody Else?

a—Article in the Springfield (Mass.) Republican, November 7, 1866. 2½ columns.

b—In same paper, a letter from its Boston correspondent, November 3, 1866.

Pro-Sh.

[30]

39  The Authorship of Shakespeare. A communication from Richard J. Hinton, of Washington, D. C. In the Round Table, New York, Nov. 17, 1866. 3 columns.

Anti-Sh.

Mr. Hinton writes this to call the attention of the public to the position taken by Mr. O’Connor in his Harrington novel.

40  Bacon vs. Shakespeare. An article in review of Judge Holmes. In the New York Methodist, November 17, 1866. 1½ columns.

Pro-Sh.

41  Was Lord Bacon an Impostor? In Fraser’s Magazine, London, December, 1866.

Unc.

There are incidental allusions to the authorship on pages 718, 721, 730, and 731. It was answered by Baron Liebig, in Fraser of April, 1867, under the same title, without special reference to this question.

42  Holmes’s Authorship of Shakespeare. [By A. G. Sedgwick.] In North American Review, January, 1867. 2½ pages.

Pro-Sh.

43  Holmes’s Authorship of Shakespeare. In Literary Notices, Harper’s Magazine, January, 1867, p. 263. ½ page.

Pro-Sh.

44  Bacon and Shakespeare. A letter from James H. Hackett. In the Evening Post, New York, January 26, 1867. 2 columns.

Pro-Sh.

45  Was Bacon the Author of Shakespeare? Two articles by Marmontel, in the Christian Observer and Presbyterian Witness, Richmond, Va. The first dated February 7, 1867. 2 columns each.

Pro-Sh.

[31]

46  The Authorship of Shakespeare. A review of Holmes in the Athenæum, London, February 23, 1867, page 249.

Pro-Sh.

47  The Authorship of Shakespeare. An article in review of Holmes, in the Saturday Reader, Montreal, Canada, April 6, 1867. 2 columns.

Pro-Sh.

48  Communications in the Daily Gazette, Birmingham, England.

a—By T. H. P., May 27, 1867.

b—By William Henry Smith, July 1, 1867.

c—By T. H. P., July 1, 1867.

Unc.

49  Delia Bacon. By Sidney E. Holmes. [Mrs. Sarah E. Henshaw.] In The Advance, Chicago, December 26, 1867. 1½ columns.

Unc.

A tribute to the memory of Delia Bacon, including a mention of her theory, by a former friend and pupil.

“Delia Bacon was a woman of a genius rare and incomparable. Wherever she went, there walked a queen in the realm of mind. To converse with her was to be carried captive. The most ordinary topic became fascinating when she dealt with it, for whatever subject she touched, she invested with her own wonderful wealth of thought and illustration, and association, and imagery, until all else was forgotten in her magical converse.”

---

“Her theory of Shakespeare has been accepted by some able minds. Had she lived to advocate it, it is not too much to say that it would have deeply impressed the literary world. But while she was in the midst of her researches, that fine intellect, overwrought and too highly sublimated, fell into confusion, and henceforth was to be, as was that of the Hamlet which she had so often analyzed, ‘like sweet bells jangled, out of tune, and harsh.’ Thus discredit was thrown upon her favorite theory, and a melancholy key afforded to some of her later [32]experiences. ‘O! What a noble mind was here o’erthrown!’ Alas! Alas! Who would have thought that these words, so often read and dwelt upon in her study of the great dramatist, were but the prophecy of her own tragical end?”

50  Did William Shakespeare write Shakespeare’s Plays? Chapter XIII, in The Shakespeare Treasury of Wisdom and Knowledge. By Chas. W. Stearns, M. D. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1869 and 1878. See pages 394-413.

Pro-Sh.

Assuming that there is no possible question as to the authorship of the poems, Dr. Stearns shows the parallelisms in thought and expression between the poems and the plays, as conclusive evidence in favor of Shakespeare.

51  Did Bacon Write Shakespeare? An anonymous article in the New York Clipper, May 1, 1869. 1½ columns.

Unc.

52  A Conference of Pleasure, Composed for some festive occasion about the year 1592. By Francis Bacon. Edited from a Manuscript belonging to the Duke of Northumberland. By James Spedding. London: (Privately-printed) 1870. 4to pp. xxxi, 54.

Pro-Sh.

This was edited by Mr. Spedding from a portion of the Northumberland MSS. referred to by Judge Holmes (see pages 657-682, edition of 1876). These MSS. were found in 1867, in a box of old papers, which had probably lain for nearly a century unopened, in the library of Northumberland House in London. With them was a MS. title-page, indicating that the paper book which it covered had once contained, in addition to the four speeches composing the Conference of Pleasure, several other of Bacon’s orations and essays. Also, Richard II, [33]Richard III, Asmund and Cornelia, Thomas Nashe’s Isle of Dogs, and papers by other authors. Of these, only a part remained, when the document was discovered, the Shakespeare plays being amongst the missing. The MSS. were in bad condition, from fire and the ravages of time—the edges being badly burned, probably from a fire which occured in Northumberland House in 1780.

Accompanying Mr. Spedding’s book is a fac-simile of this MS. title-page, and it is on this that the interest turns. It shows, in addition to the original table of contents, a mass of scribblings, written all over the sheet, containing a variety of names, phrases, quotations, idly and carelessly written, apparently by some copyist or clerk. Amongst these scribblings occurs the name of Frauncis Bacon several times, and that of William Shakespeare eight or nine times repeated. As to its date, Mr. Spedding says: “All I can say is that I find nothing, either in these later scribblings, or what remains of the book itself, to indicate a date later than the reign of Elizabeth.” Further, that he finds no traces of the handwriting of Bacon.

The reference to this question is to be found in the introduction, pages xxii-xxv.

Mr. Spedding discovers nothing in these MSS. to disturb his belief in the Shakespearian authorship, and regards it as a simple coincidence that the productions of Shakespeare and Bacon should be copied in the same book, and their names scribbled on the title-page. “At the present time,” he says, “if the waste leaf on which a law-stationer’s apprentice tries his pens were examined, I should expect to find on it the name of the poet, novelist, dramatic author, or actor of the day, mixed with snatches of the last new song,” etc. * * * “And that is exactly the sort of thing we have here.” Judge Holmes, however, ventures the suggestion that they may have been made in Bacon’s own study, by his own amanuensis; that this fact would account for the two names being scribbled on the title-leaf by one in the secret; and that Bacon himself may have destroyed the missing Shakespeare plays before his death, by way of suppressing the evidence of his authorship.

These MSS. are especially interesting from the fact that [34]if the scribblings are of a date contemporary with Shakespeare and Bacon, it is believed to be the only place where their names have been found mentioned together in anything written in that age.

53  Notice of Holmes’s Authorship. In the Minneapolis (Minn.) Tribune, of March 23, 1870. 1 column.

Unc.

This article refers to a lecture delivered in Minneapolis in the winter of 1872-73, by Hon. Ignatius Donnelly, of Minnesota, taking the position that the pro-Bacon argument was a strong one, but not conclusive; in short, that the verdict must be the Scotch one, “not proven.” It is understood that Mr. Donnelly is now engaged upon a work, in which, after further thought and study of the question, he takes the ground that Bacon was the author of both the plays and poems. It is expected that it will be published soon.

54  The Baconian Origin of Shakespeare’s Plays, being some facts and arguments going to show that the dramatic works imputed to William Shakespeare were not, and could not have been, written by him, but were the production of Lord Bacon. By Rev. A. B. Bradford, of Enon, Pa. A lecture, printed in the Golden Age, May 30, 1874. Also, in the Argus and Radical, Beaver, Pa., December 29, 1875. 6 columns.

Anti-Sh.

The author is a strong Baconian. He follows mainly the same line of argument as Judge Holmes.

55  Shakespeare and Lord Bacon. By “Colley Cibber.” [James Rees]. A series of six articles in the Sunday Mercury, Philadelphia, for June 7, 14, 21, and 28; and July 5 and 12, 1874. 9 columns.

Pro-Sh.

[35]

The writer takes for his motto: “Mingle no matter of doubtful with the simplicity of truth,” from Ben Jonson’s Discoveries. The articles cover the whole range of the subject.

56  Authenticity of Shakespeare’s Plays. By “Gallery Critic.” A series of twelve articles in the Sunday Republic, Philadelphia, for June 28; July 5, 12, 19, and 26; August 2, 9, 16, 23, and 30; September 6 and 20, 1874. 20 columns.

Anti-Sh.

Written in answer to “Colley Cibber” above, and fully as comprehensive. The author is unknown.

57  The Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy. Two short notices in the American Bibliopolist, New York, for July and August, 1874.

a—Letter from Hibernicus.

b—Did Bacon write Shakespeare?

Pro-Sh.

58  Who Wrote “Shakespere?” By J. V. P. [J. V. Prichard]? In Fraser’s Magazine, London, August, 1874. (Reproduced in Littell’s Living Age, October, 1874). 10 pages.

Anti-Sh.

This is a noted article in the controversy. On it were founded the series of opinions, interviews, etc., appearing soon after in the New York Herald, and frequent reference to it will be found in the writings on the subject. The article itself is devoted mainly to a very full and complete summary of Judge Holmes’s book, with many extracts and references.

The name of the writer has not generally been known. Mr. Wilkes, in his book, speaks of the paper as an “exceedingly ingenious article, written by a young American,” whom he met in London at the time of the publication; but does not give his name. We have sufficient reason, however, for crediting it to Mr. J. V. Prichard.

[36]

59  Notes and Queries. London. Fifth Series.

a—From C. A. Ward, II, 161, August 29, 1874.

b—From Jabez [Dr. Ingleby], II, 246, Sept. 26, 1874.

c—From H. S. Skipton, II, 350, Oct. 31, 1874.

Unc.

60  Shakespeare—An Interesting Discussion. Who wrote Shakespeare? In the New York Herald, September 6, 1874.

a—Letter from London, embodying a copy of the “J. V. P.” article in Fraser’s Magazine.

b—Did Bacon write Shakespeare’s Plays? an editorial article.

Unc.

The commencement of the interesting series of articles—communications, interviews, editorials, etc.—appearing in the Herald during September and October, which will be found in subsequent titles. It has not been thought necessary to add to them many notes or explanations, as the head-lines have been liberally copied, and serve to explain their general tenor.

61  Was Shakespeare a Dummy? Opinions of Live Dramatic Authorities on the subject. The Press and Public taking up the discussion. Baconians rather rare. In the Herald, Sept. 8, 1874.

a—Who wrote Bacon? by Franklin.

b—Shakespeare as a Stage Manager, from the Brooklyn Eagle.

c—Let Shakespeare Alone, from the Philadelphia Press.

d—Shakespeare and Bacon, an editorial.

Unc.

This article also gives interviews with Dion Boucicault, Howard Paul, Bret Harte, Richard Grant White, Nym Crinkle [A. C. Wheeler], and Lester Wallack. It is proper to say that Mr. White disavows the interview.

[37]

62  Shakespeare or Bacon? Commentators, Quidnuncs, and Annotators. In the Herald, September 9, 1874.

a—Views of men who have studied the subject.

b—The Elizabethan Era, by A. M.

c—Letters from “Old Punch Writer” and “Garrick.”

Unc.

This issue comprises interviews with John Brougham, A. Oakey Hall, E. C. Stedman, and Mayor Havemeyer. Mr. Hall gives the opinions, also, of William E. Burton, James T. Brady, and “Falstaff” Hackett.

63  Shakespeare. Explanations as to why the authenticity of the plays are doubted. The origin of the Baconian theory. In the Herald, September 10, 1874.

a—Views of Horace Howard Furness.

b—Bacon did not write Shakespeare, by R. Davey.

c—Editorial article.

Pro-Sh.

64  A Shakespearean Mare’s Nest. In New York Times, September 10, 1874.

a—The Intellectual Department of the Herald, etc., in Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, September 8, 1874.

b—The Hogs Again. In Philadelphia Press, September 7, 1874.

Pro-Sh.

All of these are editorials, and devoted mainly to the humorous disparagement of the Herald articles.

“The voice of the interviewer is still heard in the land. * * * His mind is racked as to the authenticity of Shakespeare’s works. * * * The great absurdity of the fancy or notion (for it does not attain to the dignity of a theory), is that, starting from the point that it is incredible to believe that Shakespeare could have written his plays, so astonishing are their evidences of knowledge, and of mental [38]power, it adds these plays to the wonderful offspring of Bacon’s mind, thus seeking to set aside one fact assumed to be monstrously incredible by setting up another, still more monstrous and still more incredible. Shakespeare is impossible, but Bacon plus Shakespeare is possible!”—Daily Times.

“The intellectual department of the New York Herald has begun to devote its energies to the settlement of the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, and in pursuance of its purpose it has obtained the opinions of several eminent citizens of New York upon the subject. A feeling of sadness, perhaps of gloom, will overspread the world when the fact becomes public that the person known as ‘Nym Crinkle’ has expressed the conviction that Shakespeare did not write the dramas in question. * * * * In the meantime, while these giant minds in New York are wrestling with the great subject, the vast multitude of us sit here in the outer darkness, unable to scale the intellectual heights reached by Crinkle and the rest, but waiting with nervous anxiety the result of their deliberations.”—Evening Bulletin.

65  Shadowy Shakespeare. A graphic interview with the disembodied Bard. He admits being a Boucicault. Lord Bacon’s wraith refuses to tell his secret. In the Herald, September 11, 1874.

a—Opinions of Judge Pierrepont, John E. Owens, and Daniel Dougherty.

b—Shakespeare a spirit medium. By J. B. Burgess.

c—Did Shakespeare write Bacon? By J. E. T.

d—A Poser from Scotia. By Th. Ainslie.

Unc.

This contains an alleged interview with the spirit of Shakespeare, through Foster, the medium, with the result as above. Bacon was also assumed to be present, but “would not talk.”

66  Shakespeare or Bacon? In the Herald, September 12, 1874.

a—Et tu, Brute? by T.

b—Bacon never claimed them, by Ylon.

c—Sir Walter Scott’s idea, by Hibernicus.

d—A word for him, by Solferino.

e—Puzzling Facts, from the Boston Post.

Unc.

[39]

67  Shakespeare vs. Bacon. A Judicial Luminary sums up the Charges. In the Herald, September 13, 1874.

a—Interview with Recorder Hackett.

b—A New View of Shakespeare.

c—The Value of the Shakespearian Discussion, an editorial.

Unc.

68  The Shakespeare Controversy. In the Herald, September 14, 1874.

a—Comparison of the Events of Shakespeare’s and Bacon’s Lives, by Addison B. Burk.

b—No one person ever wrote them, by R. S. G.

c—Bacon’s learning a point against his authorship, by T. L. W.

Unc.

69  Authorship of Shakespeare. In the Oakland (Cal.) Daily Transcript, September 15, 1874. 2 columns.

Pro-Sh.

70  Shakespeare’s Authorship. In the Herald, September 19, 1874.

a—Views of Henry Ward Beecher on the new Criticisms of the Baconian School.

b—Shakespeare and his Contemporaries, by C. G. G.

c—A Question for the Baconians, by W. V.

d—Bacon’s Lifetime—Pursuit of Philosophy and Politics Irreconcilable with the Authorship of Shakespeare’s Plays, by J. E. Tuel.

e—The True Authorship Discovered, by Bloxon.

f—Another triumph, from the Indianapolis Sentinel.

g—Shakespeare. Who is he? from the Lebanon (Pa.) Courier.

h—Journalistic Enterprise, from the Milwaukee News.

Unc.

[40]

71  Shakespeare and Bacon. The Relations of Shakespeare to the Modern Stage. The Great Authors Contrasted and Reviewed. In the Herald, September 20, 1874.

a—Opinion of Prof. Hiram Corson.

b—Interview with L. Clarke Davis, of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

c—Shakespeare and the Stage, an editorial.

Unc.

72  Bacon and Shakespeare. In the Herald, September 21, 1874.

a—Did Shakespeare write the Novum Organum? by S.

b—Shakespeare’s Soliloquy.

Unc.

73  Carlyle on Shakespeare and Bacon. By Amicus. In the Herald, September 25, 1874.

Pro-Sh.

The writer calls attention to Mr. Carlyle’s views, in Heroes and Hero Worship—Lecture III.

“It is unexampled, I think, the calm, creative perspicacity of Shakespeare. Novum Organum, and all the intellect you will find in Bacon, is of quite a secondary order—earthly material, poor in comparison with this. Amongst modern men, one finds, with strictness, almost nothing of the same rank. Goethe alone, since the days of Shakespeare, reminds one of it.”—Carlyle.

74  Shakespeare and Bacon. Two Opposite Kinds of Genius. In the Herald, September 26, 1874.

a—Shakespeare’s Blunders an Argument against the Baconians. Opinion of Prof. O’Leary, of Manhattan College.

b—The Internal Evidence of the Plays, by The Doctor.

Pro-Sh.

[41]

75  Who Wrote Shakespeare? In the Herald, September 27, 1874.

a—The answers of leading Corkonians to the Query.

b—A few objections answered—a novel theory refuted, by D.

c—The Shakespeare Controversy, an editorial.

Unc.

76  Shakespeare and Bacon. Contrast of the two Minds, by M. D. In the Herald, Sept. 28, 1874.

Pro-Sh.

77  Shakespeare and Bacon. In the Herald, October 5, 1874.

a—Intellectual Distinctions, as classified by McDermott.

b—The Literary Test, by S. N. Carvalho.

c—Shakespeare not a borrower, by B. J. A.

Pro-Sh.

78  Shakespeare or Bacon? In the Herald, October 11, 1874.

a—Opinion of Professor John S. Hart.

b—The Progressive Development of Shakespeare’s Education in the Plays, by Franklin.

c—One more Baconian heard from; letter from Index.

d—What the old actors thought, by David Pollock.

Unc.

79  The Shakespeare Controversy. An editorial article in the Herald, October 11, 1874.

Pro-Sh.

With this number, the Herald supposed the discussion in its columns closed (though, as it will be seen, there was one more article), and gave an editorial summary of its conclusions. Extract:

[42]

“Up to this time we have declined to interpolate our own opinion upon the authorship; but now, in closing the discussion, after yielding ample time and space to those who wished to take part in it, we must say that the weight of testimony is altogether against the claim made for Bacon. Nothing new has been advanced in behalf of the Holmes theory, while on the contrary, the internal evidence of the plays, and the facts of history, have been overwhelmingly shown to be in favor of Shakespeare as the author. * * * * We believe, in short, that nothing has been said in this debate to weaken our faith in Shakespeare, while much has been shown which strengthens it. William Shakespeare is, therefore, in our opinion, the author of the plays which in his own day, and ever since, have been attributed to him by universal consent, and the plea made for Bacon is of ‘such stuff as dreams are made on,’ a theory which has for its chief use to make the fame of Shakespeare more glorious.”

80  Shakespeare. In the Herald, October 19, 1874.

a—A letter to the editor of the Herald, from the writer of the Fraser article, [J. V. Prichard]? dated London, October 1, 1874.

b—A New Point in the Discussion, an editorial.

Unc.

The last of the Herald articles. The Fraser writer introduces several matters not within the scope of his first paper, such as the discovery of the Northumberland manuscripts, and the claim that Bacon was the author of Richard II, arising out of the conversation between Queen Elizabeth and Lord Bacon at the time of the Essex treason. The latter is answered by the Herald.

81  Shakespeare’s Centurie of Prayse, being materials for a history of opinion on Shakespeare and his works, culled from the writers of the first century after his rise. By C. M. Ingleby, LL.D. For the Editor. London: 1874. 8vo. pp. 362. (Second edition, for the New Shakespere Society, revised with many additions, by Lucy Toulmin Smith. London: 1879. Imp. 8vo. pp. 471.)

Unc.

[43]

There may be a question as to the propriety of inserting this title, but it is so often referred to, and is so important an authority in the investigation of the subject, that it seems to be justifiable.

“To my mind, there is no book printed that is a stronger argument against the Baconians than is Dr. Ingleby’s Centurie of Prayse. Although to prove that Shakespeare wrote the dramas attributed to him formed no part of the motive of its publication, yet the work does prove it, and most completely.”—Joseph Crosby.

82  The Tendency to Skepticism. A short editorial notice of the theory in Scribner’s Monthly, for January, 1875, p. 392.

Pro-Sh.

“Skepticism is the characteristic of the period, and the more mischief it accomplishes, the better pleased its votaries are. Opinions that have prevailed for centuries, and have received the sanction of the wisest and best, are especially obnoxious to them. * * * * To admit the Baconian theory of Shakespeare, except as an ingenious piece of pleasantry, demands a brain so addled with theory as to be incapable of literary judgment, or a capacity for credulity not given to mere commonplace mortals.”

83  Notes and Queries. London. Fifth Series.

a—From C. A. Ward, III, 32, January 9, 1875.

b—From H. S. Skipton, and Jabez [Dr. Ingleby], III, 193, March 6, 1875.

c—From C. A. Ward, III, 458, June 5, 1875.

d—From Jabez, IV, 55, July 17, 1875.

Unc.

84  Bacon versus Shakespere. A Plea for the Defendant. By Thomas D. King. Montreal, and Rouse’s Point, N. Y.: Lovell Printing and Publishing Company, 1875. 12mo. pp. 187.

Pro-Sh.

Mr. King’s book is an answer to Judge Holmes, and is intensely Shakespearian. He instances the testimony of Ben Jonson, Heminge, and Condell, in the folio of 1623, and impliedly that of Pembroke, Montgomery, and Southampton, [44]who, if there was an untruth, must have been accessories to it. He also relies on other contemporary evidence, which he cites, of which we give only that of Francis Meres, in the Palladis Tamia (Wit’s Treasury), 1598.

“As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines: so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for Comedy witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love labors lost, his Love labours wonne, his Midsummer Nights dreame; & his Merchant of Venice: for Tragedy his Richard ii, Richard iii, Henry iv, King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo & Juliet.”

We quote one paragraph:

“Read your Shakespeare, peruse and re-peruse him, at your fireside, in meditative silence apart from the company of theatrical representation; you will be astonished what a treasure his pages disclose of noble sentiment, of acute observation, of instructive reflections, of sage advice, of practical truth, and moral wisdom. Read the writings of Bacon for their true philosophy, read and compare these two great Elizabethan lights, and the more carefully and attentively you do so, the more firmly I am impressed with the belief that but a misguided and infatuated judgment can bring you to any other conclusion relative to Shakespeare’s authorship than that formed, and openly stated by Ben Jonson and Milton, whose testimony ought to be conclusive against the Baconian Theory.”

The author devotes considerable space to a denial of the claim to the poetic faculty in Bacon, which he illustrates by copious selections from Shakespeare, and from the well-known poetry of Bacon, the paraphrases of the Psalms. He claims that the writer of “Shakespeare” was of Warwickshire origin, giving instances of terms in that dialect used in the plays in proof. He also gives a list of ancient and modern authors, the philosophers, metaphysicians, etc., in one column, and the poets and dramatists in another, by way of comparison, and adds:

“Let any one read, even cursorily, the works of these philosophers, dramatists, and poets, and I feel certain that they will come to this conclusion, that Bacon never wrote the plays and poems of Shakespeare. Interchange of, or joint authorship, is quite as likely between Locke and Dryden, Newton and Addison, Blair and Cowper, etc., etc., as between Bacon and Shakespeare.”

[45]

(Mr. King is a resident of Montreal, and is an active member of its Shakespeare Society.)

Note—Another Montreal authority on this subject is Ven. Archdeacon William T. Leach, LL.D., of McGill College and University, who delivered one of the College lectures on Bacon and Shakespeare, November 13, 1879. His studies of these authors have induced him to believe in Bacon’s authorship of the works, and his lecture is a strong presentation of that theory. It has never been published.

85  The Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy. By E. O. Vaile. An article in Scribner’s Monthly, April, 1875. (See pages 743 to 754.)

Unc.

This is not only a fair history of the controversy, but a very complete and impartial summary of all the points at issue. It will be found interesting and useful to any one desiring information as to the arguments used in the discussion. It summarizes under numerical heads: Negative propositions against Shakespeare, 10; circumstantial points in favor of Bacon, 14; answers to the foregoing, favorable to Shakespeare, 16.

Of the many points made in this article, we lay it under contribution for two only. The first refers to such hints as have been gathered from contemporary literature containing, as is claimed, circumstantial evidence in favor of the Baconian theory. In the following extracts the author’s comments are omitted:

“In 1592, Greene published a satiric poem, A Groatsworth of Witte bought with a Million of Repentance. In it he warns his friends who spend their wits in play-making to seek other employment, “for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his Tyger’s heart, wrapt in a player’s hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Factotum is, in his own conceyt, the only Shakescene in a Countrey.”

Writing to his friend, Mr. Tobie Matthew, about that time [1607-8], Bacon remarks: “I showed you some model, though at that time methought you were as willing to hear Julius Cæsar, as Queen Elizabeth commended.”

[46]

While Bacon is striving to gain a foothold with the new sovereign, James I., he writes to Master Davis, then going to meet the King, committing his interests at court to Master Davis’s faithful care and discretion, and closing the letter thus: “So desiring you to be good to concealed poets, I continue.”

To Mr. Tobie Matthew, Bacon was in the habit of sending his books as they came out. In a neat letter, “To the Lord Viscount St. Albans,” without date, Matthew acknowledges the “receipt of your great and noble token of favor of the 9th of April,” and appends the following P. S.: “The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation, and of this side of the sea, is of your Lordship’s name, though he be known by another.”

On an occasion Bacon enclosed a “recreation,” as he termed his lighter literary productions, to Tobie Matthew. Matthew, in a reply, without date or address, uses these suggestive words: “I will not promise to return you weight for weight, but measure for measure.”

The second point: We here gather from Mr. Vaile’s article a partial summary of the evidences of Shakespeare’s authorship, taken from the writings of his contemporaries:

“The earliest mention of Shakespeare by a contemporary is by Edmund Spenser, in 1591, in The Teares of the Muses. Complaint by Thalia, lines 205-210.

And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made

To mock herselfe, and Truth to imitate,

With kindly counter under mimic shade,

Our pleasant Willy, Ah! is dead of late:

With whom all ioy and iolly meriment

Is also deaded, and in dolour drent.

In 1592 appeared Kinde Hart’s Dreame, a poem of considerable interest and merit, by Henrie Chettle. From Chettle’s address to his readers, we learn that he was the editor of Greene’s posthumous work, A Groatsworth of Witte, before referred to. The quotation which has been made from this work, together with other allusions in it, seems to have given offense, at least to two authors of the time. In Chettle’s Address, the following passage occurs, referring to Shakespeare, as all critics agree:

“With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them I care not if I neuer be; the other, whome at that time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had, for that as I haue moderated the heat of liuing writers, and might haue vsed my owne discretion (especially in such a case) the author being dead, that I did not, I am as sorry, as if the originall fault had beene my fault, because myselfe haue seene his demeanor no lesse ciuill than he exclent [47]in the qualitie he professes; besides, diuers of worship haue reported his vprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writting that approoues his art.”—Percy Society Publications, vol. v.

John Webster, in the preface to his play, The White Devil—1612—speaks thus:

“Detraction is the sworne friend to ignorance; for mine owne part, I haue euer truly cherisht my good opinion of other men’s worthy labours, especially of that full and haightned style of maister Chapman, * * * and lastly (without wrong last to be named), the right happy and copious industry of m. Shake-speare, m. Decker, and m. Heywood.”—John Webster’s Works. London: 1857, vol. ii.

Ben Jonson’s eulogy upon Shakespeare, first published in the folio of 1623, is well known. In his prose, the same author makes a long and affectionate reference to the friend of his youth. The following is a part: * * * “For I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was indeed honest and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was necessary that he should be stopped.”—Discoveries. Probably written in 1636.

A few more quotations, without doubt correct, are added, as given in Allibone’s Dictionary of Authors. Art. Shakespeare.

“As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to liue in Pythagoras; so the sweete wittie soule of Ouid liues in mellifluous hony-tongued Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his priuate friends. * * * *

As Epius Stolo said, the Muses would speak with Plautus tongue, if they would speak Latin; so I say the Muses would speak with Shakespeare’s fine filed phrase, if they would speak English.”—Francis Meres, Wit’s Treasury, 1598.

And Shakespeare, thou whose hony-flowing vaine

(Pleasing the world) thy praises doth obtaine

Whose Venus and whose Lucrece (sweete and chaste)

Thy name in fame’s immortal booke have plac’t,

Live ever you; at least, in fame live ever!

Well may the bodye die, but fame dies never.

—Richard Barnefeild, Poems in Divers Humors, 1598.

To our English Terence, Mr. William Shake-spere.

Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing,

Hadst thou not plaid some Kingly parts in sport,

Thou hadst been a companion for a King,

And beene King among the meaner sort.

—Sir John Davies in his Scourge of Folly, 1611-14.

[48]

Mr. Vaile concludes:

“So far as this discussion attempts an explanation of the origin or existence of genius, it is certainly quite futile; and quite as unworthy is the attempt to adjust the mere honor of authorship between two individuals simply. But the question is by no means an unimportant one, whether genius has worked in this instance, by the use of means necessary to ordinary mortals, or whether its inspiration has been immediate and complete.”

(Mr. Vaile is a resident of Oak Park, Chicago, where he is connected with several educational publications.)

A concise statement of the more important contemporary allusions to Shakespeare, will be found in Mr. F. G. Fleay’s Shakespeare Manual, pages 12-21.

86  Bacon’s Psalms. In the Old Cabinet, Scribner’s Monthly, April, 1875. (See pages 758-59.)

Pro-Sh.

This contains extracts from Bacon’s acknowledged verses—the seven versified psalms—by way of comparison with the poetry of Shakespeare. The psalms paraphrased are I, XII, XC, CIV, CXXVI, CXXXVII, and CXLIX.

“According to the editors of Bacon’s Works (Messrs. Spedding, Ellis, and Heath), ‘the only verses of Bacon’s making that have come down to us, and probably, with one or two slight exceptions, the only verses he ever attempted,’ were ‘the translation of certain Psalms into English verse.’ He wrote also a sonnet, meant, say the editors, ‘in some way or other to assist in sweetening the Queen’s temper toward the Earl of Essex; and it has either not been preserved at all, or not so as to be identified.’ Two other poems have been ascribed to him, although it is not absolutely certain that he wrote them. Really, then, the seven versified Psalms constitute all of Bacon’s poetry which may be said to be in evidence on the point of his poetic ability. * * * * For the curiosity of the thing, we transcribe the opening stanzas of Bacon’s translation of Psalm cxxxvii:

When as we sat, all sad and desolate,

By Babylon upon the river’s side,

Eas’d from the tasks which in our captive state

We were enforced daily to abide,

Our harps we had brought with us to the field,

Some solace to our heavy souls to yield.

[49]

But soon we found we fail’d of our account,

For when our minds some freedom did obtain,

Straightways the memory of Sion Mount

Did cause afresh our wounds to bleed again;

So that with present griefs, and future fears,

Our eyes burst forth into a stream of tears.

As for our harps, since sorrow struck them dumb,

We hang’d them on the willow-trees were near;

Yet did our cruel masters to us come,

Asking of us some Hebrew songs to hear;

Taunting us rather in our misery,

Than much delighting in our melody.”

87  “Shakespeare’s Centurie of Prayse.” By Prof. Hiram Corson. In the Cornell Review (Cornell University Literary Magazine), Ithaca, New York, for May, 1875. 10 pages.

Pro-Sh.

A review of Dr. Ingleby’s book, from the standpoint of its value in proving the Shakespearian authorship.

“And when we look at the slim arguments that have been so painstakingly concocted against Shakespeare’s claims, and in favor of Lord Bacon’s, we are forced to attribute the remarkable dispute to one of two causes, or to them both, for they are intimately, if not inseparably, allied:

1. The iconoclastic tendency of the age; and,

2. The predominant analytic character of the thought of the age.”

88  The Bacon-Shakespeare Theory. By E. C. T. [Rev. Edward C. Towne]. Two articles in the Christian Register, Boston, for May 22, and 29, 1875. 1½ columns each.

Pro-Sh.

The first article treats of Delia Bacon, her monomania, and the causes which may have led to it; the second is a critical review of Judge Holmes.

(The author resides at Westboro’, Mass. Several other papers by him will be found noted hereafter.)

89  Holmes’s Authorship of Shakespeare. Notice in the Saturday Review, London, July 24, 1875.

Pro-Sh.

[50]

90  Holmes’s Authorship of Shakespeare. In the Civil Service Review, August 7, 1875.

Pro-Sh.

91  Shakespeare and Bacon. By G. S. [George Stronach, M.A.] In the Hornet, London, August 11, 1875.

a—Bacon and Shakespeare, by Scotus, in the same, August 18, 1875.

Anti-Sh.

The paper in the Hornet is a concise statement of the Baconian argument.

(Mr. Stronach is connected with the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh. It is understood that he has in preparation a treatise sustaining the Baconian theory, which will be published at some future time.)

92  Bacon and Shakespeare. A series of communications in the Notes and Queries column of the Newcastle (England) Weekly Chronicle, in 1875, under the dates following: August 28; September 4, 11, 18, and 25; October 2, 9, 16, 23, and 30; and November 6, 13, and 20.

Unc.

93  The Authorship of Shakespeare. By Nathaniel Holmes, with an Appendix of Additional Matters, including a notice of the recently discovered Northumberland MSS., with an introduction. Edition of 1876. (Appendix, pages 603 to 696.)

Anti-Sh.

As this was printed ten years later than the edition we have first titled (1866), and contains new matter, it is inserted here to preserve the chronological order.

In the introduction Judge Holmes gives a general review of the argument, and introduces a correspondence between Mr. James Spedding, the biographer of Bacon, and himself. Also, between Mr. Spedding and Mr. W. H. Smith.

[51]

The appendix, aside from the notices of the Northumberland MSS., is chiefly made up of cumulative evidence on the topics of the original edition. We give one passage from the introduction:

“I have not yet discovered one authentic fact which would necessitate the inference that William Shakespeare was the author of this poetry. The further facts of a historical kind now presented, while strongly pointing to Francis Bacon as the author, are not at all conclusive. Indeed, the extrinsic circumstances all together, though powerfully suggestive and convincing, can not be said to be absolutely conclusive of the matter. The strongest evidence lies in the comparison of the writings, and the demonstration (as I conceive) must rest at last, and chiefly, upon the essential identity, individuality, and oneness of the writer of this poetry and of Bacon’s works, as exhibited in a thorough critical comparison of the writings themselves. But, of course, where the evidence fails to convince, or carries no weight at all, or even seems to prove a difference rather than an identity, there is an end of the argument. Nevertheless, it is my belief that any one who will take the trouble to make that comparison, in an adequate manner, will not fail to be convinced of that identity.”

In Mr. Spedding’s letter, occupying six closely-printed pages, he says:

“If Shakespeare had no knowledge as a scholar or man of science, neither do the works attributed to him show traces of trained scholarship or scientific education. Given the faculties (which nature bestows as freely upon the poor as upon the rich), you will find that all the acquired knowledge, art, and dexterity which the Shakespearian plays imply, was easily attainable by a man who was laboring in his vocation, and had nothing else to do.”

---

“Among the parallelisms which you have collected with such industry to prove the identity of the two writers, I have not observed one in which I should not myself have inferred from the difference in style a difference of hand. Great writers, especially being contemporary, have many features in common; but if they are really great writers, they write naturally, and nature is always individual. I doubt if there are five lines together to be found in Bacon which could be mistaken for Shakespeare, or five lines in Shakespeare which could be mistaken for Bacon, by one who was familiar with the several styles and practiced in such observation.”

We insert here an extract from a review of Judge Holmes’s book in the Athenæum, London, of February 23, 1867, probably by the Editor, Mr. William Hepworth Dixon:

[52]

“Mr. Nathaniel Holmes is an American gentleman, residing in St. Louis, a long way from the manuscript papers, which can alone throw any new light upon the subject. He has mastered Miss Delia Bacon’s book; also the new edition of Lord Bacon’s works, and The Story of Lord Bacon’s Life, and with the help of a subtle intellect, he has so arranged the mass of evidence tending to separate two most important lives in English history, as to aid in confusing the perception of many persons. For our own part, we do not care to enter once again into the reasons which induced us to reject, in mass and detail, all the conjectures offered in support of Bacon’s authorship of Hamlet and Macbeth. When we had Miss Bacon’s works before us we gave our reasons fully; and as nothing new has been found in way of buttress to her argument, we may safely let the discussion lapse, which we do in thorough respect for Mr. Holmes, who, distant student though he be of English literary history, is well aware of what is going on in this country. He takes a perfectly noble and impartial view of Bacon’s conduct, both in his relations to Essex and the administration of justice. But we can not go forward with him in his theory of Bacon being the secret author of Shakespeare’s plays.”

94  L’Ideale in Letteratura. Letture fatte avanti al Regio Istituto Lombardo, dal membro effettivo, Dott. Antonio Buccellati, Milano, 1876. Pamphlet, pp. 144. (The Ideal in Literature. Lectures delivered before the Royal Lombard Institute, by the acting member, Dr. Antonio Buccellati.)

Unc.

A general reference to the subject on pages 74-77. It includes in a note an extract from a paper in the Memoriale Diplomatique, the date of which is not given.

95  Shakespeare from an American Point of View; including an inquiry as to his religious faith, and his knowledge of law, with the Baconian theory considered. By George Wilkes. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1877, 8vo. pp. 471. Second edition, 1881.

Pro-Sh.

It will be seen from the title of Mr. Wilkes’s book, that it is quite comprehensive—and his argument that the writer of the plays was a Catholic, and was not a trained lawyer, [53]are either of them fatal, in his opinion, to the Baconian theory. He devotes several chapters, by way of illustration, to a comparison of the life, genius, and characteristics of Shakespeare and Bacon. He differs from Lord Campbell in his estimate of the “Legal Acquirements of Shakespeare,” and takes up “The Testimony of the Plays” (pages 81-419), reviewing them, as to the question of authorship, from both the religious and legal point of view. As to the latter, he says:

* * * “The author of the Shakespeare plays did not possess any great knowledge of the law; or, if he did, his dramatic writings do not show it. He exhibits, without doubt, a familiarity in law expressions, and applies them with a precision and a happiness of application in all cases, which apparently carries the idea that he may have served in an attorney’s office; but not one of them, nor do all of them together, mark anything higher than mere general principles and forms of practice, or such surface clack and knowledge as were within the mental reach of any clever scrivener or conveyancer’s clerk. On the contrary, whenever Shakespeare steps beyond the surface comprehension of the solicitor’s phraseology, and attempts to deal with the spirit and philosophy of law, he makes a lamentable failure. The Merchant of Venice, Comedy of Errors, Winter’s Tale, and Measure for Measure, contain conspicuous proofs of this deficiency.” * * *

An extract from the recapitulation:

“We may be told, at this stage, that such an extent of search and demonstration as I have devoted to these Baconian points is not necessary to dispose of a bubble which has never floated among the public with any amount of success; and we may be flippantly assured that the inexorable reasoning faculty of Time alone, would, of itself, dispel the fallacy; but such contemptuous treatment is not adequate to the treatment of a theory which has received the support of such minds as that of Lord Palmerston, and such scholars and critics as Judge Holmes and General B. F. Butler in America. Bubbles thus patronized must be entirely exploded, or they will be sure to reappear whenever the world has a sick or idle hour, and delusions find their opportunity to strike. Moreover, nothing is lost by our inquiries, after all, beyond a little time; and I doubt not all true admirers of our poet will agree that one new ray of light which may thus be thrown upon the character and history of Shakespeare, will justify octavos of discussion.”

The author embodies in his book the Euphonic or Musical Test, by Prof. Taverner, which is the subject of a separate title. Of this essay, Mr. Wilkes says:

[54]

“To the multitude, its proofs may appear less potent than some others I have advanced, but with scholars and rhetorical experts, the Euphonic test will probably be more fatal to the Baconian theory than any other.”

(The author is well known as the former editor of Wilkes’s Spirit of the Times.)

96  The Musical or Euphonic Test. The respective styles of Shakespeare and Bacon, judged by the laws of Elocutionary Analysis, and Melody of Speech. By Prof. J. W. Taverner. 1877.

Pro-Sh.

This essay is included in Mr. Wilkes’s book. See pages 424 to 461.

“As the handwriting of one man among thousands can be determined by experts, so no lengthy examples of style—the expression and language of any two authors of note, can fail to indicate the individual mind to which one or the other belongs. * * * But how much more comprehensive are the combinations that constitute the style, the language, the adornments, the illustrations, the figurative expression, the place of the emphasis, the form of the phrases, the source of the metaphors, the character of the similes; but our enumeration would become too long; then, finally, that emanation of the rhythm of the breathing, and of the pulse, and the endowments of the ear, that marshals all those forms and phrases in a certain order with reference to melody and cadence.”

---

“The outcome of the life-long process to which we have referred, by which the style of a writer is formed—that feature of it to which our treatment of this subject, for the present, relates—is the most subtle; for we have to investigate that of which the writer himself was, possibly, the most unconscious—that which, like his gait, or some other habit, has, perhaps, received no positive attention whatever. Yet, it may be held that nothing becomes more rigid and fixed than the mould and matrix in which his thoughts are ultimately fashioned and expressed. The modes of thinking would, in some instances, have to be identical, to produce identical melodies of speech.

“In Shakespeare’s prose we shall find that all this is marvelously free and varied, and that his blank verse conforms strictly to a certain set of chimes. In Bacon, besides Latin forms, we shall not lack examples [55]of a certain sort of duplicates and triplicates, antithetic parallelisms, and harmonic or alternate phrases (and, to use a strong Baconianism), and the like.”

---

“Bacon, himself, gives testimony to the weight and value of such evidence, for he, himself, relates that Queen Elizabeth, being incensed with a certain book [Dr. Hayward’s], dedicated to my Lord of Essex, expressed an opinion that there was treason in it, and would not be persuaded that it was his writing whose name was to it; but that it had some more mischievous author, and said, with great indignation, that she would have him racked to produce his author. ‘I replied,’ says Bacon, ‘Nay, Madam, he is a doctor; never rack his person, but rack his style; let him have pen, ink, and paper, and help of books, and be enjoined to continue the story where it breaketh off, and I will undertake, by collating the styles, to judge whether he were the author or no.’”

Prof. Taverner proceeds to illustrate his position by a comparison of extracts from the essays and the plays.

“It would be as easy to suppose, by these evidences, Bacon and Shelley to have been one and the same author, as that these several specimens of Shakespeare and of Bacon could proceed from one and the same mind.”

97  The Leopold Shakespeare. Edited by F. J. Furnivall. (See Notes, p. CXXIV, edition 1877.)

Pro-Sh.

“I doubt whether any such idiotic suggestion as this authorship of Shakespeare’s works by Bacon has ever been made before, or will ever be made again, with regard to either Bacon or Shakespeare. The tomfoolery of it is infinite.”

This note is expanded in the edition of 1882.

98  Is Sir Walter Raleigh the Author of Shakespeare’s Plays and Sonnets? By George S. Caldwell. Melbourne, Australia: Stillwell & Knight, 1877. Pamphlet, pp. 32.

Anti-Sh.

Mr. Caldwell answers his query in the affirmative. He is now engaged upon a new book in development of his theory. We give below an extract from a letter received from him referring to his new work:

[56]

“The greater portion of the book will be taken up by extracts from the History of the World, and from the plays. These extracts will show so complete an identification of opinions, principles, and peculiarities of thought and expression, as will, I am sanguine, carry conviction to the minds of every interested reader, that the plays must have been written by Raleigh. * * * * After five years’ consideration, I now say that the materials in my possession are sufficient to finally settle the controversy.”

(Mr. Caldwell is a resident of Melbourne, and understood to be in the British Postal Service.)

99  The Authorship of the Works Attributed to Shakespeare. (Chapter IV, part I, pages 38 to 72.) In Shakespeare: The Man and the Book. By C. M. Ingleby, M.A., LL.D. London: 1877.

Pro-Sh.

This paper was read before the Royal Society of Literature, January 22, 1868. See Transactions, Vol. IX, new series.

“The critic has the same interest in the works of Miss Delia Bacon, Mr. W. H. Smith, and Judge Holmes, as the physician has in morbid anatomy. He reads them, not so much for the light which they throw on the question of authorship, as for their interest as examples of wrongheadedness. It is not at all a matter of moment whether Bacon, Raleigh, or another be the favorite on whom the works are fathered, but it is instructive to discover by what plausible process the positive evidences of Shakespeare’s authorship (scanty as they are) are put out of court. As to Bacon, as first favorite, I suppose any one conversant with the life and authentic works of that powerful but unamiable character, must agree with Mr. Spedding’s judgment, that unless he be the author of “Shakespeare,” neither his life or his writings give us any assurance that he could excel as a dramatic poet. Of all men who have left their impress on the reign of the first maiden Queen, not one can be found who was so deficient in human sympathies as Lord Bacon. As for such a man portraying a woman in her natural simplicity, purity, and grace; as to his imagining and bodying forth in natural speech and action, such exquisite creations as Miranda, Perdita, Cordelia, Desdemona, Marina—the supposition is the height of absurdity. What, as it seems to me, has led astray the few writers who have set up a claim for Lord Bacon, is his admirable gift of language, scarcely inferior to Shakespeare himself. This almost unique endowment caused Bacon to manifest a kind of likeness to Shakespeare in matters into which [57]the sympathies of the man and the training of the dramatic poet do not enter. Hence it is easy to cull from the works of these two great masters a considerable number of curious parallels. I have looked over the collections of Messrs. W. H. Smith and Holmes, and I must confess I am astonished; but my astonishment has not been provoked by the quantity or closeness of the resemblances adduced, but by the spectacle of educated men attempting to found such an edifice on such a foundation.”

100  Notes and Queries. London. Fifth Series.

a—From Jabez [Dr. Ingleby], VII, 55, January 20, 1877.

b—From R. P. Hampton Roberts, VII, 234, March 24, 1877.

Unc.

101  Shakespeare from an American Point of View. A review of Wilkes’s book in the Catholic World, New York, for June, 1877. (Pages 422-428.)

Unc.

This review refers only slightly to the authorship, the question mainly discussed being Mr. Wilkes’s views regarding the Catholicism of Shakespeare.

102  The Political Purpose of the Renascence Drama. The Key to the Argument. By Cerimon [Dr. William Thomson], Melbourne, Sidney and Adelaide: George Robertson, 1878. Pamphlet, 8vo. pp. 57.

Anti-Sh.

The first of the several pamphlets and books by Dr. Thomson, which will be found distributed through this list. A fair illustration of his manner of treating the plays—as to the Political Purpose—may be found in the paragraph following, relating to Hamlet:

“When the King in the play asks if there is ‘no offence in’t,’ he but repeats Queen Elizabeth’s query, put, in her palace, about another treasonable entertainment, of which Bacon had, at that very time, to allay her well-grounded suspicions. She feared the disloyalty of one [58]whom he endeavored to reconcile and become her loyal servant. ‘She had good opinion that there was treason in it.’ Readers of history know the allusion.”

The allusion, of course, is to the affair of the Essex treason—Dr. Hayward’s book, the “First Yeare of King Henry the Fourth”—and the play of Richard II. For this, see Holmes, p. 96, 97, and 135; in appendix, Spedding’s letter to Holmes, p. 617; Holmes to Spedding, p. 619.

(Dr. William Thomson, at the time these works were written, was a practicing physician at Melbourne, Australia. He was evidently a fine scholar, and an intense Baconian. He died during the past year, at the age of 63. We quote from a private letter from Melbourne: “The Baconian theory of Shakespeare’s writings was an intense hobby with him, and even the day before he died, he sent for some books on the subject—the ruling passion strong in death. * * * He was ever ready to put on the literary war-paint, and raised up numerous enemies thereby.”)

103  Shakespeare. Was he a Myth? or, What did he Write? By Charles Cockbill Cattell. London: Charles Watts, n. d. [1878]. Pamphlet, 12mo. pp. 16.

Pro-Sh.

The first of a series of pamphlets, which will be found cited hereafter, all combating the Baconian theory. We extract one paragraph:

“A curious point in history is that, while it devotes much space to describe all the details about persons who would now be forgotten but for Shakespeare, it leaves him unnoticed. So far as I have read, Bacon, who is supposed to have known nearly every thing of his age, does not mention Shakespeare. Sir Henry Wotton, to whom we are so much indebted, does not name him, although he survived Shakespeare twenty years. It is only common fairness to state that Sir Henry also omits to mention Spenser, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Massinger, Beaumont and many others; so that Shakespeare is only one among the many ‘myths’ of that generation, if non-mention by Sir Henry proves that. Emerson’s explanation of that is given in his own inimitable style: ‘No one suspected he [Shakespeare] was the poet of the human race. * * * [59]Their genius failed them to find out the best head in the universe. Our poet’s mask was impenetrable; you can not see the mountain near.’ Emerson further says: ‘For executive faculty, for creation, Shakespeare is unique. No man can imagine it better. * * * He clothes the creatures of his legend with form and sentiment, as if they were people who lived under his roof.’”

104  Article “Shakespeare.” In the Dictionary of Authors. By S. Austin Allibone. Philadelphia: 1878.

Pro-Sh.

“Shakespeare, the most Illustrious of the Sons of Men.—We have earned the right, by hard labour, to assert that there is not in the 1100 pages of Delia Bacon and Judge Holmes, the shadow of the shade of an argument to support their wild and most absurd hypothesis. Bacon was as little capable of writing ‘Shakespeare’s Plays’ as any other man.”

“Within that circle, none durst walk but he.”

105  Who Wrote Shakespeare? In an Appendix to Studies on the Text of Shakespeare. By John Bulloch. London and Aberdeen: 1878, 8vo. (See pages 317-322.)

Unc.

Mainly a review of the question, without an expression of opinion.

106  A Chapter of Comparative Chronology. 1561-1626. Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare. By John Bulloch. In an Appendix to Studies on the Text of Shakespeare. London and Aberdeen: 1878, 8vo. (See pages 323-328.)

Unc.

A chronological history of the main facts in the lives of Bacon and Shakespeare, the dates of the appearance of their works, etc. It is very valuable in an examination of the historical side of the subject.

[60]

107  Shakespeare et la Theorie Baconienne. Par M. Berard Varagnac. In the Journal des Debats, Paris, June 21, 1878. 4 columns.

Pro-Sh.

Nominally a review of Wilkes. The writer, however, goes into the subject generally. His conclusions are obvious, even to one who is not proficient in the French language, from his final remark:

“C’est pourquoi l’on nous permettra de penser que la theorie Baconienne n’est autre chose que ce qu’ils appellent la-bas d’un mot expressif non moins usite que la chose dans la patrie de Barnum—un humbug.”

108  Shakespeare and the Baconian Theory. By M. Berard Varagnac. In the American Register, Paris, July 6, 1878. 2½ columns.

Pro-Sh.

A translation of the article in the Journal des Debats, above. (See Title 107.)

109  Un Proces Litteraire: Bacon contre Shakespeare! By M. J. Villemain. In L’Instruction Publique: Revue des Lettres, Science et Arts, Paris. Two articles, August 31 and September 7, 1878. (A Literary Suit: Bacon against Shakespeare.)

Anti-Sh.

“To sum it all up, we may conclude thus: everything which there is good in Shakespeare’s dramas comes from Bacon; everything which there is bad in Bacon’s dramas comes from Shakespeare.”

110  Notice in De Nederlandsche Spectator. The Hague, Holland, October 12, 1878.

Unc.

Unimportant—simply a short notice, occasioned by the French articles of M. Varagnac and M. Villemain, which will be found in the preceding titles.

[61]

111  Lord Bacon and the Plays. Essay No. VII, in Wit, Humor, and Shakespeare. By John Weiss. Boston: 1879. (See pages 247-269.)

Pro-Sh.

Mr. Weiss, after taking strong ground against the Baconian position, concludes:

“It is not entirely just to say that the contributions of men who favor the theory are specimens of literary futility. They are frequently valuable to the scholar by throwing unexpected side-lights upon the plays; they also furnish suggestions to the interpreter. They have amassed a quantity of collateral information of Shakespeare’s epoch, which the critic will thankfully acknowledge when he uses it. The minute and laborious research which Judge Holmes has expended upon his volume, the literary, historical, and social parallelisms which he discloses, the philosophy and style of thinking of Elizabeth’s age, put the lover of Shakespeare under obligation.”

112  Lord Bacon: Did he write Shakespeare’s Plays? A reply to Judge Holmes, Miss Delia Bacon, and Mr. W. H. Smith. By Charles C. Cattell. Birmingham: G. & J. H. Shipway, 1879. Pamphlet, 12mo. pp. 16.

Pro-Sh.

“Shakespeare has been described as honest, open, gentle, free, honorable, and amiable, while Bacon has been described as ambitious, covetous, base, selfish, unamiable, and unscrupulous. Now, taking these descriptions as a fair index of their souls, which is the more likely to have portrayed the women of Shakespeare’s plays?”

113  Great Men’s Views on Shakespeare. By Charles C. Cattell, with an essay by Dr. Ingleby. Birmingham: 1879. 12mo. pp. 55, 68, 16, 14.

Pro-Sh.

A collection of extracts from Dryden, Goethe, Lessing, the Schlegels, De Stael, Scott, Beatty, Coleridge, Irving, and many others, relating to Shakespeare; Dawson’s Lectures and Speeches on Shakespeare; and two of Mr. Cattell’s pamphlets—all bound in one volume.

[62]

114  The Shakespearean Myth. By Appleton Morgan. A series of four articles in Appletons’ Journal, New York.

a—The Shakespearean Myth, February, 1879, p. 112-126.

b—The Appeal to History, June, 1879, p. 481-497.

c—Extra Shakespearean Theories, I, June, 1880, p. 481-497.

d—Extra Shakespearean Theories, II, July, 1880, p. 14-35.

Anti-Sh.

These were the first articles Mr. Morgan published on the question. They were subsequently enlarged and reproduced in his book of the same title. (See 147.) As Mr. Morgan’s views are fully explained in the subsequent title, we do not refer to them here.

115  The Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy. By Wm. J. Rolfe. In Shakespeariana, Literary World, Boston, March 1, 1879. 1½ columns.

Pro-Sh.

Mr. Rolfe, after a concise review of the subject, sums up: that the authorship was never questioned by Shakespeare’s contemporaries, who had every motive for, and opportunity of detecting such a fraud, nor for nearly three hundred years later; that the poems are unquestionable, and that there are striking similarities between them and the questioned plays; that Bacon’s acknowledged verses bear no comparison to those of Shakespeare; and that the plays came to an end at Shakespeare’s death, when Bacon had still ten years of literary leisure, with no danger of injuring his reputation by acknowledging or continuing them.

116  “Shakespeare and the Musical Glasses.” By Myron B. Benton. In Appletons’ Journal, April, 1879. (See pages 336-344.)

Pro-Sh.

[63]

An answer to Mr. Morgan’s first article in Appletons’ Journal:

“While denying with emphatic iteration that Shakespeare is the true author, he [Mr. Morgan] would persuade us that the plays and poems attributed to him are the composite work of an indefinite number of minds, varying in all degrees of the scale of ability, from the insight of a profound philosopher, and the scholarship and culture of a chivalrous gentlemen, down to the level—down, indeed, to the very ‘bottom-lands’ of a grade of imbecility vague and appalling. * * * The genial Goldsmith must have had a premonition of these latter-day enlightenments when he wrote of ‘Shakespeare and the Musical Glasses.’ * * * Here was one of his [Shakespeare’s] contemporaries, for instance, Lord Bacon, whose acknowledged works are also voluminous. Is it possible to believe that there was a common authorship to both? Each is characterized by a strongly individualized style, as all writings are that the world cares to read. Each has a flavor distinct from the other. Yet, if Bacon be the author of both sets of works, he must in one of them have assumed a style of composition foreign to him—a thing impossible, even were there a motive for such an undertaking. * * * Similarity, or even identity, of ideas, or precepts, or axioms—any likeness of speculation or philosophy—all these are nothing whatever. The human mind, at the root, is everywhere the same. Counterparts appear constantly in literature, even in widely-severed nations and ages. Such parallels as are pointed out in Bacon and Shakespeare can be discovered in almost any two writers; but of that individuality that must permeate the work of any writer, in manner of treatment, in style, there seem to be no traces in common.”

117  Notices of Sir Patrick Colquhoun’s Essay on The Authorship of Shakespeare. In the London journals, as follows:

a—In the Globe, May 23, 1879.

b—In the Daily Telegraph, May 24, 1879.

c—In Bell’s Weekly Messenger, June 2, 1879.

Unc.

Sir Patrick Colquhoun’s paper was read before the Royal Society of Literature, London, May 21, 1879. It has never been printed. He holds Shakespeare “to have been a mere theatrical manager, who bought the plays of poor authors, and perhaps suggested certain buffooneries for the delectation of the gods,” etc. This essay has since been recast and considerably augmented; and it is probable that it may yet be published in book form.

[64]

118  The Shakespeare Plays, the Theatre, etc. Who wrote Shakespeare? By O. F. [O. Follett, of Sandusky, O.] Printed for private circulation. Sandusky: May, 1879. Pamphlet, pp. 47.

Anti-Sh.

“If, then, Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare, who did? The question is already answered. But one man could. Only one [Bacon] was fully equipped for the task in its full proportions. * * * It has been “aut Cæsar aut nullus”—Shakespeare or nothing. Not a line, not a scrap, not a sentiment outside the dramas and poems has been vouchsafed to us, as a test of style, or by which to measure capacity. Without preparation, without drill, this man is master of all learning, law, physic, theology, nay, of state-craft as well. If Shakespeare proper was all this, then Shakespeare the poet was a miracle, and may be worshiped—and Stratford may well be his shrine.”

119  The So-called Shakespearean Myth. By F. R., Barrie. [Francis Rye, of Barrie, Ontario, Canada.] In the Canadian Monthly for July, 1879. (See pages 76-79.)

Pro-Sh.

An answer to Mr. Morgan’s articles in Appletons’ Journal.

120  Who Wrote Shakespeare’s Plays? By Henry G. Atkinson, F.G.S. In the Spiritualist, London, July 4, 1879.

Anti-Sh.

Mr. Atkinson is an ardent Baconian. His writings on the subject consist principally of short articles in various periodicals, which will be found noted hereafter.

“It would be absurd to expect to find the same variety in Bacon’s philosophical writings as in the plays, where we have philosophy and poetry combined, together with wit, humor, and every kind of character and turn of sentiment. But here is Ben Jonson’s account of Bacon. Bacon’s prose, says Judge Holmes, is Shakespearian poetry, and Shakespeare’s poetry is Baconian prose. Jonson says: ‘There happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking. [65]His language, where he could spare, or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him without loss. He commanded when he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man who heard him was lest he should make an end.’ Here, then, we have related, from one most capable of judging, those very qualities of mind we should expect to find in the writer of the plays, but which Shakespeare was never known to have exhibited at any time, or in any place; and we have not a scrap of his play-writing existing, or ever known to have existed, nor referred to in his will. Some of his finest plays were not known to exist until seven years after his death, in the collected folio of 1623.”

121  On Renascence Drama, or History made Visible. By William Thomson, F.R.C.S., F.L.S., Melbourne, Australia: Sands & McDougall, 1880. 8vo. pp. 359.

Anti-Sh.

Dr. Thomson’s title is adopted from Bacon’s History of Learning: “Dramatic poetry is as history made visible; for it represents actions as if they were present, whereas history represents them as past.” He continues in this work the argument as to the political purpose of certain of the Shakespearian plays, which he classes under the style of the Renascence Drama; and, reasoning from that standpoint, claims the authorship for Bacon. The book commences:

“The political purpose of the Renascence Drama has never been defined. And yet for a patriotic object the series of plays so named were evidently written. The motive is avowed in prologue, epilogue and induction; and everywhere throughout the works the aim is obvious. You are required to

‘Think you see

The very persons of our noble story

As they were living.’”

The author reviews The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Julius Cæsar, Hamlet, Othello, and others of the plays, from his view as to the political motive of Bacon in producing them, interpreting them as allegories bearing on persons and events of [66]the time. In his elucidation of Twelfth Night, he goes so far as to indicate “the persons represented in false names” for all the leading characters. A recapitulation of these may be interesting to the student of history, as well as the student of Shakespeare: Duke Orsino is Sir Philip Sidney; Sebastian, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex; Sir Toby Belch, Sir Francis Knollys; Sir Andrew Aguecheek, the Earl of Leicester; Malvolio, Sir Walter Raleigh; Fabian, Sir Fulke Greville; Feste, the clown, Dick Tarleton; Olivia, Queen Elizabeth; Viola, Penelope Devereux; and Maria, Lettice Knollys.

A critic has said of Dr. Thomson’s argument: “If he has succeeded in anything, it is in unearthing a wealth of verbiage, which is more than proof against a powerful microscopic analysis. Whatever may be his object, he conceals it by his language.” An extract from an article in the Freeman’s Journal, Dublin (title 154), will give evidence of the scope of the book:

“He [Dr. Thomson] argues from the identity of the language in the plays and Bacon’s works—from the difficulty of finding where Shakespeare, who was all but totally uneducated, got all the wondrous learning that the works attributed to him exhibit—from the notorious fact of Bacon’s universal learning—and from facts connected with the dates of the publication of the poems and dramas, which can scarcely be reconciled with the incidents of Shakespeare’s life, and which fit in admirably with the stages of Bacon’s chequered career. Dr. Thomson argues also, with considerable acumen and subtlety, from the inferences which the allegorical and political interpretation of such plays as even Hamlet and Macbeth require; and he argues to the same effect from the sonnets, and from the non-dedication of the sonnets to the Earl of Southampton in 1609, to whom in 1593 the poems of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece were dedicated. This circumstance, which is such a crux on the ordinary interpretation that Shakespeare was the author of the sonnets, and that Southampton was his loving patron, is easily explicable on being reminded that in the interval between the appearance of the two sets of poems, the Earl of Southampton, on his liberation from prison, had become a deadly enemy of Bacon.”

122  “Mr. Hudson’s Four Reasons.” (See Shakespeare: his Life, Art, and Character. By Rev. H. N. Hudson. Vol. I, p. 269, edition of 1880.)

Pro-Sh.

[67]

* * * “It was Lord Bacon, not Shakespeare, who enjoyed so richly the friendship and patronage of the generous Essex; and how he requited the same is known much too well for his credit. I am not unmindful that this may yield some comfort to those who would persuade us that Shakespeare’s plays were written by Lord Bacon. Upon this point I have just four things to say:

“First—Bacon’s requital of the Earl’s bounty was such a piece of ingratitude as I can hardly conceive the author of King Lear to have been guilty of.

“Second—The author of Shakespeare’s plays, whoever he may have been, certainly was not a scholar; he had indeed something vastly better than learning, but he had not that.

“Third—Shakespeare never philosophizes; Bacon never does anything else.

“Fourth—Bacon’s mind, great as it was, might have been cut out of Shakespeare’s without being missed.”

Noticing the above, Dr. Ingleby adds another reason:

“Fifth—Bacon excelled all writers of his day in prose; but the very best of the verses attributed to him (not all his, by the way) are fourth-rate; while Shakespeare’s verse is everywhere incomparably better than his prose; and he thus excelled where Bacon most faulted.”

123  The Authorship of Shakespeare. A controversy between H. G. Atkinson, F.G.S., and Mr. Charles C. Cattell. London: H. Cattell & Co., n. d. [1880]. Pamphlet, 12mo. pp. 16.

Unc.

This consists of three papers on each side of the question, reprinted from the pages of the Secular Review, London.

124  The Authorship of Shakespeare’s Plays. A review of Holmes. In the Southern Quarterly Review, New Orleans, January, 1880. By the editor, Daniel K. Whitaker. (See pages 172-179.)

Pro-Sh.

125  Judge Holmes’s “Parallelisms” between Shakespeare and Bacon. By Wm. J. Rolfe. In Shakespeariana, Literary World, Boston, April 10, 1880. 2 columns.

Pro-Sh.

[68]

126  Shakespeare. A letter from Mr. Joseph Crosby, Zanesville, O. In the Church Eclectic, Utica, N. Y., November, 1880. (See pages 719-728.)

Pro-Sh.

The paper of Mr. Crosby was originally written as a private letter to Rev. Dr. James A. Bolles, who transmitted it to the Eclectic for publication. It is quite comprehensive, occupying eight pages of the magazine, and is an answer to Mr. Morgan’s Shakespearean Myth articles, and also to the other arguments against Shakespeare’s authorship.

“But our Shakespeare was not an uneducated man; on the contrary, he was, for the time, a man of letters. We know that he received a fair grammar-school education, * * * and education at those grammar-schools was very thorough in those days. After he went to London, we soon hear of him in the best society; he was a natural absorbent, and no doubt had, in addition to the advantages of high-toned conversation, access to all such books as the time supplied. It is a great error to speak of Shakespeare, as many do, as an ‘inspired ignoramus.’ And then, after all, it was not mere scholastic knowledge that Shakespeare needed for his productions. Jonson had this, in an eminent degree; and his dramas are, I think, only the worse for it. Shakespeare knew enough to read Hall, and More, and Holinshead, and North’s Plutarch for his history; and enough of the modern languages to read Italian and other continental novels for the sake of the plots—the dry-bones, on which he built the flesh and blood of life in his immortal works. The real books that Shakespeare studied were the Book of Mankind and the Book of Nature, and these he knew by heart. He needed not a university to teach him these. While his style shows frequently, by the radical and exact senses in which he employs numerous words, that he had a competent knowledge of the Latin language, it is in his using the idiomatic powers of the English language, in their highest perfection, that its force and beauty consist. Jonson’s style, as a dramatic writer, is often marred, and enfeebled, and spoilt, by his exuberant Latin quotations, and magniloquence, and learned affectation; and that is why I say that Shakespeare’s ‘little Latin and less Greek’ stood him in better stead than all the ponderous learning and classic conceits that weighted the poetry of his rival.

---

“There is one argument that these theorists seem never to have examined, viz: that deducible from Shakespeare’s poems and sonnets. These no one has ever disputed his authorship of. That cannot be disputed, for he published them himself, and dedicated them to noblemen [69]of the day, under his own name. And yet can any intelligent person read these works, and not be convinced that the same mind and hand produced them that produced the dramas? There are not only similar expressions, but whole lines, similes, metaphors, and turns of thought are constantly recurring, the same in each. This, to my mind, is as strong an argument as I could ask. A careful study of the poems and sonnets is a great help to understanding many things in the plays: and the fact that one person wrote both is as undoubted and clear to me as noonday.” * * * *

127  Was Bacon Shakespeare? By R. C. C. [Richard Colama Close]. In the Victorian Review, Melbourne, Australia, for November, 1880. (See pages 54-70.)

Pro-Sh.

An answer to Dr. Thomson’s Renascence Drama.

* * * “There has been no single instance, from the earliest historic times up to the present day, where the combination of a Bacon and a Shakespeare, the impersonations of the highest talent and the greatest genius, has found its centre in one man. It is possible, but not more possible than a miracle. Few have ever exceeded Bacon in the force, vigour, terseness, clearness, and splendor of his prose. None has ever exceeded Shakespeare, either as a writer of dramas or comedies. Bacon, as a prose writer, stands in the midst of a goodly company. The most we can say of Bacon is, that in this genre he was primus inter pares. Shakespeare, as a dramatic genius, stood in lonely grandeur. He was first, and had no equals.”

(Mr. Close is a barrister in Sydney, New South Wales.)

128  Shakespeare’s Biography. Does it conform to the Author of the Plays? By “Lancer.” [O. C. Stouder.] In the Wittenberger Magazine, Springfield, O., November, 1880. 2 pages.

Anti-Sh.

129  The Authorship of Shakespeare. A reply to “Lancer.” By Mr. Joseph Crosby. In the Wittenberger, December, 1880. 2 pages.

Pro-Sh.

[70]

130  Shakespeare: Did he write the works attributed to him? With notes on “What Shakespeare Learnt at School.” By Charles C. Cattell. London: Henry Cattell & Co., n. d. [probably 1881]. Pamphlet, pp. 16.

Pro-Sh.

“It seems desirable that, in a publication of this kind, some reference should be made to the three articles by Prof. T. F. Baynes, which appeared in 1879 and 1880, on What Shakespeare Learnt at School. * * * That he could have been sent to one is certain, for the school at Stratford-on-Avon was restored in 1553 by Edward. VI, and the constitution and management were the same as other schools established at that period, and the course of instruction is known by the records preserved of Rotherham school, which gives a list of books generally used in the grammar schools of the country. * * * At that time, children were sent to the English side of the grammar school at the age of five, and at seven they commenced the study of Latin, the regular course taking about ten years; so that boys usually left school, for work or for university study, at fifteen. * * * The articles were published in Fraser’s Magazine in 1879 and 1880, and, to my mind, sufficiently explain how the youthful Bard of Avon might lay up the treasures of learning deemed so essential in the production of his immortal works—his possession of which has been so often doubted, and in some instances positively denied to him. How such a man, living in such a time, and at such a place, could acquire the necessary classic knowledge, no longer remains a mystery.”

131  Carlyle’s Opinion. (See Thomas Carlyle, by Moncure D. Conway. New York: 1881.)

Pro-Sh.

Speaking of Carlyle, on page 122, Mr. Conway says:

“He was more patient in listening to Miss Bacon, also introduced by Emerson, when she tried to persuade him that Shakespeare’s plays were written by Lord Bacon. Carlyle never thought much of the philosopher who had been unable to recognize such a contemporary as Kepler; and his only reply to Miss Bacon was, ‘Lord Bacon could as easily have created this planet as he could have written Hamlet.’ I have heard that when she had gone he added, to a letter written to his friend in Concord, the brief postscript, ‘Your woman’s mad.’

T. C.”

[71]

132  Did Shakespeare Write Bacon’s Works? By Rev. James Freeman Clarke. In the North American Review for February, 1881. (See pages 163-175.)

Pro-Sh.

“When we ask whether it would have been easier for the author of the philosophy to have composed the drama, or the dramatic poet to have written the philosophy, the answer will depend upon which is the greater of the two. The greater includes the less, but the less can not include the greater. * * * Great as are the thoughts of the Novum Organum, they are inferior to that world of thought which is in the drama. We can easily conceive that Shakespeare, having produced in his prime the wonders and glories of the plays, should in his after leisure have developed the leading ideas of the Baconian philosophy. But it is difficult to imagine that Bacon, while devoting his main strength to politics, to law, to philosophy, should have, as a mere pastime for his leisure, produced in his idle moments the greatest intellectual work ever done on earth.”

133  Who Wrote Shakespeare? By Baconian. [William W. Ferrier, of Angola, Ind.] A series of eight articles in February and March, 1881, in the Angola (Ind.) Herald. Dated February 9, 16, and 23; March 2, 9, 16, 23, and 30.

Anti-Sh.

The writer gives all the main points in the controversy from the Baconian standpoint. In his introduction he says that “a noted Shakespearean doubter—Dr. Farmer—lived in the eighteenth century, and that still earlier than this, as men began to study the literature and lives of the Elizabethan period, difficulties arose in regard to harmonizing the book Shakespeare with the man Shakespeare.”

We quote, from the third paper, as to one point only:

“The mind that wrote Shakespeare was a mighty mind. But it was one broadened and deepened, nurtured and cultured by the learning and experience of ages. These plays tell of more than mere genius. They tell of years of earnest study; of patient investigation; of a genius that made available all the concentrated resources of the times. Let us consider briefly the works and minds of some prominent in the middle [72]ages, and find there, in this way, a consistency that is not in the life and works of William Shakespeare. English literature, that had originated in Caedmon, that had burst into full glory in Chaucer, and with him had also passed away, met again in its beauty and grandeur a glad welcome when Spenser, amid the blaze of the magnificent court of Elizabeth, placed at her feet the Faerie Queene. But Spenser’s life was a life leading to the production of grand ideal poetry. His education, combined with natural genius, had prepared him for it. * * * Early in the Christian Renaissance, there originated, within prison walls, a book which has the greatest hold, next to the Bible, upon the English people. That book was the Pilgrim’s Progress. * * * Linked with the name of the old prisoner of Bradford, this immortal book has came down to us in its journey adown the centuries; and the world that questions the authorship of Shakespeare, finds nothing inharmonious or incongruous between the life of Bunyan and this grand work. * * * Contemporary with Shakespeare was one known as a ‘genuine literary leviathan.’ It was Ben Jonson, erudite in all the classics, of whom it has been said, ‘he had so well entered into and digested the Greek and Latin ideas, that they were incorporated with his own.’ But Ben Jonson’s education made him this. * * * The years of the Christian Renaissance brought forth another work that the world will not let die. It is the immortal epic of Milton—Paradise Lost. But England has known no more erudite man than Milton; and whatever of profound knowledge there is found in his works, may be readily accounted for by cause and effect. * * * Thus, it may be seen, that from the works and lives of such as Spenser, Bunyan, Jonson, and Milton, no argument can be adduced in favor of William Shakespeare.”

134  Did Bacon Write Fletcher’s Plays? By William J. Rolfe. In Shakespeariana, Literary World, Boston, February 12, 1881.

Unc.

“Bacon did write Fletcher’s Plays, for the Judge [Holmes] proves it—just as he proves that he wrote Shakespeare’s plays.”

135  Is there any Doubt as to the Authorship? In the Harvard University Bulletin, April 1, 1881.

Unc.

A short list of the references for the use of students in debate.

[73]

136  “Our Club.” Shakespeare Night, April 26, 1881. H. Holl in the Chair. An address delivered by Mr. Holl, being in part an answer to Dr. Benj. W. Richardson. With letter to Dr. R. Pamphlet, 12mo. pp. 22.

Pro-Sh.

The address of Dr. Richardson’s, alluded to above, was delivered before “Our Club” (the original Hooks and Eyes, rechristened), at the annual Shakespeare dinner, in April, 1877. It has never been published. It seems, while expressing some doubts, to have opposed the Baconian hypothesis.

137  William Shakespeare in Romance and Reality. By William Thomson. Melbourne: Sands & McDougall, 1881. 8vo. pp. 95.

Anti-Sh.

This is a continuation of the Renascence Drama, including an answer to the criticisms of that work, but of a more practical turn—devoted more to the historical than to the allegorical and political argument.

“Not only is Bacon’s name always linked with that of Shakespeare, but no other name is ever so associated. No other author unwittingly enters men’s thoughts along with the author of the drama, except alone Bacon; and he is the only magician or creator of the prevailing Baconian philosophy. Alluding to Shakespeare’s forestalling Newton when making Cressida compare her heart to the center of the earth, drawing all things to it, it is asked how he knew what Newton was going to discover. But Voltaire long ago showed where Bacon forestalled Newton. How, then, did he know what Newton would discover? Either both Bacon and Shakespeare forestalled Newton on the great physical discovery, or one mind did so in two different ways, at the same instant of time. * * * When Bacon explained to King James how ‘bodies fall toward the center of the earth,’ and ‘iron trembles under adamant,’ Shakespeare made Prince Troilus vow he would be true to Cressida,

‘As iron to adamant, as earth to the centre.’

While her love for him in return

‘Is as the very centre of the earth,

Drawing all things to it.’”

[74]

138  Shakespeare—The Plays and Poems Logically and Historically Considered. Addendum to “Who Wrote Shakespeare?” By O. F. [O. Follett]. Sandusky, O.: May, 1881. Pamphlet, pp. 12.

Anti-Sh.

A continuation of Mr. Follett’s first pamphlet.

139  Was Shakespeare a Myth? By Broadbrim. [J. H. Warwick, Brooklyn, N. Y.] A series of three articles in the Angola (Ind.) Republican, May 25, June 8, and June 22, 1881.

Pro-Sh.

The first two of these articles treat the subject, in the author’s words, “from the ground-work of fact and historical probability;” the concluding one invites attention to “the character of the age that produced Shakespeare,” with an analysis of “the character of those who have been instrumental in propagating the libels on his memory.”

140  Articles in Shakespeariana. In the Literary World, Boston, of dates following:

a—Judge Holmes on Julius Cæsar, June 4, 1881.

b—New Champions of the Baconian Theory (Mrs. Windle and Dr. Thomson), November 5, 1881.

c—Morgan’s Shakespearean Myth, Dec. 3, 1881.

Unc.

141  Was Bacon Shakespeare? An Exposition of the Great Controversy. By E. W. Tullidge. In Tullidge’s Quarterly Magazine, Salt Lake City, Utah, July, 1881. 13 pages.

Anti-Sh.

“It is startlingly singular that directly Shakespeare is brought down to the human plane, and considered there, whether as a supreme poet, or a supreme metaphysician (both of which he was) he became Bacon. Of all men of the Elizabethan age, and perhaps of any age, Bacon is the [75]only equivalent for Shakespeare. * * * And it is something very like a hidden record, long concealed, of the real identity of Shakespeare suddenly brought to light, that the name of Bacon, once started, so nearly answers to the entire mystery of Shakespeare, even before investigation of the proof that he was the one who had lent to another his lion’s skin. It was this very fact, indeed, which has started able authors and critics to investigate this subject, and which inclines multitudes to believe ‘there is something in it.’”

(Mr. Tullidge is the editor of the Quarterly, and a strong Baconian. Several lengthy articles from his pen will be found noted in this list.)

142  The Sweet Bard of Avon, and The Shakespearean Question. By Baconian. [William W. Ferrier.] Two articles in the Angola (Ind.) Herald, dated July 27, and August 5, 1881.

Anti-Sh.

An answer to the “Broadbrim” articles.

143  Address to the New Shakespere Society of London. Discovery of Lord Verulam’s undoubted authorship of the “Shakespere” Works. By Mrs. C. F. Ashmead Windle. San Francisco: Joseph Winterburn & Co., Printers, 1881. (Printed for the author.) Pamphlet, pp. 46.

Anti-Sh.

The first of Mrs. Windle’s pamphlets. For an example of her special theories see title of the second pamphlet, No. 165.

144  Shakespeare, not Bacon. By J. S. [James Smith]. In the Daily Argus, Melbourne, Australia, August 20, 1881. 3½ columns. (Reprinted in the Stratford-on-Avon Herald, November 4, and November 11, 1881.)

Pro-Sh.

After citing contemporary authorities as to the authorship of Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and The Passionate Pilgrim, the writer says:

[76]

“I submit that Shakespeare’s authorship of the three poems enumerated, is established by contemporary testimony sufficiently strong to satisfy any court of justice in the world, albeit I am not aware that his paternity of the Sonnets, or of The Lover’s Complaint, has ever been seriously disputed. I shall now proceed to show that the same hand which wrote the whole of the before-mentioned works also produced the dramas. And I shall rely upon the very same kind of evidence as that which has been employed to sustain the fanciful and extravagant theory that Bacon was the author of them. But though it will resemble it in kind, it will be found to be, unless I am very much mistaken, greater in volume and weightier in character than that which has been so laboriously collected and so ingeniously set forth by Mr. N. Holmes, Miss Delia Bacon, and by Mr. W. H. Smith.”

He then cites a long list of parallelisms between the poems and the plays, and peculiar words used in the same sense in each, to substantiate his position. “In his plays, Shakespeare naturally fell into the same forms of expression as those he has previously made use of in his poems, and occasionally repeated himself both in thought and word.”

(Mr. Smith is a resident of Melbourne—an editorial writer on the Argus.)

145  Bacon, not Shakespeare. By W. T., in rejoinder to the Shakespeare, not Bacon, of J. S. [By Dr. William Thomson]. Melbourne, Australia, August 20, 1881. Pamphlet, pp. 16.

Anti-Sh.

A portion of this only appears in an addenda to Romance and Reality.

“The bare fact that the dramas and poems are from the same hand has never been doubted, but I affirm that not Shakespeare but Bacon wrote both. J. S. only compares Shakespeare with Shakespeare, but he does not compare Shakespeare with Bacon, as he necessarily must do before he can confute any inference deduced from that comparison. * * * He, therefore, dare not allow himself to become acquainted with the contents of my book, whose syllogism is—

“Whoever wrote the Sonnets wrote the Plays.

I show Bacon to have writ the Sonnets;

Therefore, Bacon also wrote the Plays.”

[77]

146  Bacon and Shakespeare on Vivisection. By E. H. Plumptre, D.D. In the Spectator, London, August 24, 1881. (Copied in Good Literature, New York, September 17, 1881.)

Unc.

This does not refer to the Bacon-Shakespeare question proper, but the title is inserted as Dr. Thomson answered it from the standpoint of the authorship. (See title 156.)

147  The Shakespearean Myth. William Shakespeare and Circumstantial Evidence. By Appleton Morgan, A.M., L.L.B., author of “The Law of Literature,” “Notes to Best’s Principles of Evidence,” etc., etc. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1881. 8vo. pp. 342.

Anti-Sh.

This work is an enlargement of the four articles under the same title, appearing in Appletons’ Journal in 1879 and 1880.

Mr. Morgan adopts the editorial or proprietary theory. He gives a schedule of the difficulties connected with the question of the authorship, and a digest of the several theories framed to meet them. He states his reasons for rejecting all of the latter, and offers a new synthetic theory in their place, somewhat as follows:

“I. From contemporary evidence, recorded in law courts and public offices, we are, perhaps, better informed of the personnel of William Shakespeare, than of any other private gentleman of Elizabeth’s reign.

“II. There can be no doubt that he came to London in great poverty, and in a comparatively few years’ residence, was enabled to retire with a fortune which—although variously estimated by his friends and rivals—was certainly very large for those days.

“III. To have accumulated so large a fortune in so short a time by literary labor would have been exceptional in any case, but the mental equipment brought by William Shakespeare to London does not seem to have been equal to such an accumulation in his; it certainly was not equal to the Venus and Adonis, the Hamlet, and the other masterpieces which began to crowd upon each other—in none of which can any trace of Warwickshire dialect or origin be found.

[78]

“IV. If, however, Shakespeare made his fortune in the management of theatres (which became popular in London at this time, and in which he met but indifferent competition), it is reasonable to suppose that these plays, being exclusively secured by him, and becoming popular through his stage handling, came to be, not only the sources of his fortune, but identified and called by his name; certainly, less unreasonable (however exceptional) than to rest all this poetry, pathos, philosophy, and human experience in the genius of a letterless rustic, with a reputation in his native village for scapegrace escapades, gallantries, and poaching expeditions, rather than for meditation, study, or literary composition.

“V. But while claiming for Shakespeare a proprietary rather than a productive title in the plays, Mr. Morgan is very far from estimating him a dummy. ‘Surely it is a less violent supposition that this funny Mr. Shakespeare, as he wrote out the parts in big round hand, improved on or interpolated a palpable hit, a droll speech, the last popular song; or sketched entire a role with a name familiar to his boyish ear—the village butt or sot, or justice of the peace, or why not some fellow-scapegrace of olden times by Avon banks. He did it with a swift touch and mellow humor that relieved and refreshed the stately speeches—making the play all the more available.’ * * *

“VI. The only testimony really negativing this view is Ben Jonson’s. But that this is mere mortuary eulogy—is anything but the sort of evidence ‘we accept in our personal affairs, our courts of justice, in matters in which we have anything at stake, or any living interest’ (p. 131), and is, moreover, perfectly disposed of by Jonson himself, in his Discoveries, and conversations with Drummond, when he commends Shakespeare’s fluency and industry, but omits all mention of him in his list of eminent writers, poets, and thinkers of that age.

“Mr. Morgan disclaims any conjectures as to the authors of the Shakespearean text. But while admitting that Bacon, or even Raleigh, may have had a hand in them, insists that the extant records of Elizabeth’s day (and what are extant are a presumptive clue to such as have disappeared) point directly to a proprietary, rather than any other description of interest, in the plays and poems in William Shakespeare.”

We give a portion of the closing paragraph:

* * * “Having lost ‘our Shakespeare’ both to-day and forever, it will doubtless remain—as it is—the question, ‘Who wrote the Shakespearean dramas?’ The evidence is all in—the testimony is all taken. Perhaps it is a secret that even Time will never tell, that is hidden down in the crypt and sacristy of the Past, whose seal shall never more be broken. In the wise land of China it is said that where a man has deserved well of the State, his countrymen honor, with houses and lands and gifts and decorations, not himself, but his father and his [79]mother. Perhaps, learning a lesson from the Celestials, we might rear a shaft to the fathers and mothers of the Immortality that wrote the Book of Nature, the mighty book which ‘age can not wither, nor custom stale,’ and whose infinite variety for three centuries has been, and, until Time shall be no more, will be close to the hearts of every age and cycle of men—household words for ever and ever. The Book—thank heaven!—that nothing can divorce from us.”

(Mr. Appleton Morgan, whose frequent contributions to this controversy will be found mentioned in this list, is a graduate of Racine College, Wisconsin, class of 1867. He is at present a resident of New York City—by profession, an attorney at law.)

148  Who William Shakespeare Was. By David Graham Adee, of Washington. Two articles in the Republic, Washington, D. C., October 29 and November 5, 1881. 3 columns.

Pro-Sh.

Mr. Adee’s papers give the contemporary evidences of Shakespeare’s authorship.

149  The Plays of Shakespeare. By David Graham Adee. In the Republic, Washington, D. C., November 12, 1881. 3 columns.

Pro-Sh.

This article refers only incidentally to the authorship.

150  “The Shakespearean Myth.” [By J. G. Pyle]. A review of Mr. Morgan’s book. In the Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, November 15, 1881. 1 column.

Anti-Sh.

“Such an addition as this volume to the evidence of the case against Shakespeare, is a noteworthy event in the literary world. * * * Mr. Morgan’s book, gathering up, in lawyer fashion, the scattered threads of inconsistencies and improbabilities, is a valuable and welcome addition to the evidence in this controversy. * * * The questions raised long ago, and now presented in form, make up an indictment which the Shakespearean must break down by cogent [80]explanations, or yield to the growing belief that, whether the ‘myriad-minded’ Shakespeare be metaphor or fact, he never wrote all that has come down the centuries as his, to rank his name with the immortals.”

151  Reviews and Notices of Morgan’s Shakespearean Myth. In the journals following:

a—Sandusky (O.) Register, November 15, 1881.

b—Pittsburgh Telegraph, November 15, 1881.

c—Cincinnati Gazette, November 15, 1881.

d—Chicago Inter-Ocean, November 19, 1881.

e—Sacramento (Cal.) Record-Union, Nov. 19, 1881.

f—Philadelphia American, November 26, 1881.

Unc.

152  A Brief against Shakespeare. In the Tribune, New York, November 25, 1881. 1 column.

Pro-Sh.

A review of the Myth:

* * * “The presumption, for example, that Mr. Appleton Morgan is the author of the book before us is so strong, so overwhelming, that nobody living will entertain the thought of addressing a question on that point to the publishers; and yet we have absolutely no evidence of the fact, except the implied assertion of the title-page; no more evidence, indeed—and no less—than we have that Shakespeare wrote the plays that bear his name. Three hundred years hence it will be as impossible to prove that Mr. Morgan really wrote the book, as it is now to prove that Shakespeare wrote the plays, and for some man of the twenty-second century to argue that some other lawyer probably wrote it, merely because there is no way of proving that the alleged is the real authorship, will be no more illogical than Mr. Morgan’s parallel argument in the Shakespeare case is.”

153  “The Shakespearean Myth.” A review of Mr. Morgan’s book, by N. H. [Nathaniel Holmes]. Printed in the St. Louis Globe Democrat, November 17, 1881. 1½ columns.

Anti-Sh.

“We have to regret that the author’s ‘scope’ did not allow him to bring his critical abilities to bear on a comparison of the plays with the writings of Francis Bacon. Hidden down deep in the crypt, a [81]‘Delian diver’ like him might possibly find the key that would unlock the principal secret. Not that he appears himself so much to controvert that possibility—it seems not to have come within his historical and circumstantial point of view. * * * The theory that manuscripts were brought to the theatre by sundry authors, to be scissored and adapted by the manager, strikes out at one stroke, or tacitly overlooks, nearly all that has ever been peculiar (sui generis), extraordinary, precious and wonderful in this work; * * * it leaves them open to manifold contributors, as if such a thing as this Shakespearean drama really is, however the case may have been with Homer, or the psalms of David, were at all possible in that way; and we are strongly inclined to think that this mode of creation of it, though perhaps possible to some extent, may prove to be, on the whole, as mythical as the man William himself.”

154  Dr. Thomson’s Pamphlets. A notice of two of the pamphlets, in the Freeman’s Journal, Dublin, November 23, 1881.

Unc.

An extract from this will be found under title 121.

155  Historical Iconoclasts. What are we to believe? Joan of Arc, William Tell, Marshal Ney, Pocahontas, Powhatan, Captain Kidd, etc. gone! Is Shakespeare to follow? By John W. Bell. In the Toledo (O.) Blade, December 4, 1881. 1½ columns.

Anti-Sh.

The tenor of this article is sufficiently indicated by the head-lines given above.

156  Bacon and Shakespeare on Vivisection, in reply to Dean Plumptre. By W. T. [Dr. William Thomson.] Melbourne, December 10, 1881. Pamphlet, 8vo. pp. 39.

Anti-Sh.

Though Dean Plumptre’s paper did not refer to the question of the authorship, Dr. Thomson answers it from that standpoint.

[82]

157  Shakespeare in Amerika. Eine Literarhistorische Studie. Von Karl Knortz. Berlin: Verlag von Theodor Hofmann. 1882. pp. 85. (Shakespeare in America. A Literary-historical Study.)

Pro-Sh.

This book, though printed in Berlin, is really an American work, as it was written in this country. Pages 29 to 41 are devoted to a review of the works on the authorship question. Mr. Knortz sums up his conclusions against the Baconian theory, and adds:

(Translation.) “Yet this controversy did some good; it induced the public to give more attention to the works of these two Englishmen; but it especially promoted the study of Shakespeare.”

(Karl Knortz is well known as the author of several works on American literature, translations of American poetry, etc.—for the most part printed in Germany. He resides in New York.)

158  The Political Allegories in the Renascence Drama of Francis Bacon. By William Thomson, F.R.C.S. Melbourne: Sands & McDougall, 1882. Pamphlet, pp. 46.

Anti-Sh.

Dr. Thomson here carries out his idea of the political purpose, alludes to the forthcoming Promus, and replies to his critics of the Australian press. He answers Dr. Stearns at considerable length, and recapitulates and expands his own arguments as to Bacon’s authorship of the Sonnets.

159  Spedding’s Vindication of Bacon. A review of “Spedding’s Evenings with a Reviewer; or, Macaulay and Bacon.” By R. M. Theobald. In the Nonconformist and Independent, London. Two articles, January 12, 1882; and January 26, 1882. 5 columns.

Unc.

[83]

These papers contain a reference to the Northumberland manuscripts.

160  Notes and Queries. London. Sixth Series. Bacon’s Essex-Sonnet, and Thomson’s Renascence Drama. By Dr. C. M. Ingleby. v. 62, January 28, 1882.

Pro-Sh.

161  Reviews and Notices of Morgan’s Shakespearean Myth:

a—Saturday Review, London, January 28, 1882.

b—Milwaukee Sentinel, February 12, 1882.

c—Washington Post, April 24, 1882.

d—Madison (Wis.) State Journal, July 22, 1882.

Unc.

162  Francis Bacon and Shakespeare’s Plays. In the Oracle, London, February 4, 1882. 2 columns.

Unc.

This is in answer to the request of L. J. M. for information, and gives, in a short form, the arguments (evidently condensed from Vaile’s paper in Scribner) used to support the anti-Shakespearian theory, with a list of the authorities.

163  Query 4275. In Notes and Queries column, Evening Transcript, Boston, February 13, 1882.

Unc.

It having been intimated that Delia Bacon was induced to commence her investigations through a fancied relationship to the family of Lord Bacon, this query asked for information on that point. The answers, five in number, give various references and authorities, but no definite answer to the question. The fact seems to be that no such consanguinity was ever claimed.

[84]

164  Articles in Shakespeariana, in the Literary World, Boston, of dates following:

a—Letter of Appleton Morgan, with answer, February 25, 1882.

b—“The Bibliography of the Bacon-Shakespeare Literature,” October 21, 1882.

Unc.

165  Report to the British Museum on behalf of the Annals of Great Britain and the reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Discovery and opening of the cipher of Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, alike in his prose writings and the “Shakespere” dramas, proving him the author of the dramas. By Mrs. C. F. Ashmead Windle. San Francisco: Jos. Winterburn & Co., Printers, 1882. (Printed for the author.) Pamphlet, pp. 40.

Anti-Sh.

Mrs. Windle’s second pamphlet. We would rather avoid any mention of this if it could be done with justice to the history of the discussion. The following extract from the article (title 179), on the author and her latest essay, in the San Francisco Chronicle of August 20, 1882, will give an idea of the extraordinary unreason of this effusion:

“The text of this irrational essay seems to have been the passage in Bacon’s De Augmentis Scientiarum on Ciphers, and putting this to the idea of allegory, she gets, as the result, the belief that all of Shakspere’s (Bacon’s) plays are written in cipher. The nature of that cipher is a puzzler, indeed; it is cabalistic, it is bi-lateral, it has a Biblical aspect, it is prophetic, it is under a spell, it is commodious, it is adroit, and it is altogether the most extraordinary example of moonshine and vagary that the curious could wish to puzzle over. The reader, however, had best judge for himself by an example or two. The title of every play has its explanatory catch. That of Othello is:

A tale, oh! I tell, oh!

Oh, dell, oh! What wail, oh!

Oh, hill, oh! What willow!

What hell, oh! What will, oh!

At will, oh! At well, oh!

I dwell, oh!

[85]

“All the characters in the play have their attendant jingles. Desdemona goes ‘With a demon A, with a moan, ah!’ and means the double tragedy of Bacon’s muse; and Emilia stands with ‘I’m ill, you, I mill you,’ and refers to ‘the expression of Bacon’s ill, continued in play after play, as milestones of his life.’ All the characters are sphinxes and riddle-mongers; they are ‘related cues’ to everything under the sun, and it all means—nothing. Similar catches and symbols are repeated in all the plays. Titus Andronicus has:

Tie t’ us and drone accuse;

Tie t’ us and drown a curse;

Tie t’ us and drum the news.

“This play is Bacon’s judgment of his own case, since Martius means ‘March you us,’ and refers to his service; Publius means ‘Publish us,’ and refers to his fame, etc. As the work goes on, even the plays are not adhered to, and Holy Writ and Montaigne’s Essays come in for an equal share of ‘explanation.’ If by this time the value of Mrs. Windle’s discovery is not apparent, it will need no further extracts to know that too close an application to ‘a startling exemplification in philological science’ has wrought its mischief and unsettled a mind which, with proper use, might have produced something more valuable and less pitiable than a Cipher.”

166  Notes and Queries. London. Sixth Series.

a—Bacon a poet, by Henry G. Atkinson, V, 205, March 18, 1882.

b—Answer to above, by Dr. Ingleby, V, 316, April 22, 1882.

c—From Dr. Ingleby, VI, 277, September 30, 1882.

d—From Este, VI, 416, November 18, 1882.

e—From Dr. Ingleby, VI, 492, December 16, 1882.

Unc.

167  Shylock’s Case. By Nathaniel Holmes. In Tullidge’s Quarterly Magazine, Salt Lake, Utah, April, 1882. 13 pages.

Anti-Sh.

This is a review of The Struggle for Law, by Dr. Rudolph von Ihering, of Göttingen, who maintains that injustice was done to Shylock. Judge Holmes’s argument is that the writer of the Trial Act in the Merchant of Venice was a skillful lawyer—in fact, Bacon himself.

[86]

168  “Morgan’s Shakespearean Myth.” A notice of the book in the Westminster Review, London, April 1, 1882. 2 pages.

Pro-Sh.

169  Judge Holmes and his Great Subject—Francis Bacon. By E. W. Tullidge. In Tullidge’s Quarterly Magazine, Salt Lake, April, 1882. 8 pages.

Anti-Sh.

170  The Bacon-Shakespeare Literature. By W. H. W. [W. H. Wyman]. In the Madison (Wis.) State Journal, April 24, 1882. 5 columns.

Pro-Sh.

A partial Bibliographical list (25 titles), with some account of Delia Bacon, and an outline of the origin, history, and arguments of the controversy.

171  The Biography of William Shakespeare. By F. [Edward Fillebrown, Brookline, Mass.] In the Brookline Chronicle, May 27, 1882. 1 column.

Anti-Sh.

172  “The Shakespearean Myth.” By R. M. Theobald. In the Nonconformist and Independent, London, June 1, 1882. 2 columns.

Anti-Sh.

A comprehensive and favorable review of the Myth:

“It is intended to prove that the author of Shakespeare, being a scholar, a courtier, a lawyer, master of all the knowledge and science of his age, could not have been a rustic adventurer, ill-educated, untraveled, unfamiliar with court life, busy in making money, and with no time for self-culture. Mr. Morgan is unable to believe this amazing paradox, and accordingly rejects it.”

[87]

173  The Genius and Methods of Shakespeare. By E. W. Tullidge. In Tullidge’s Quarterly Magazine, Salt Lake, Utah, July, 1882. 12 pages.

Anti-Sh.

174  “The Shakespearean Myth.” Notice of Morgan’s book in the British Quarterly Review, London, July 1, 1882.

Pro-Sh.

175  Bibliography of the Bacon-Shakespeare Literature. Compiled by W. H. Wyman. 8vo. pp. 8. Cincinnati, July 1, 1882. 63 titles.

Unc.

This was privately-printed, and contained all the ascertained titles up to the time of issue. The present Bibliography is an extension of it.

176  Shakespeare, Bacon and Christianity. By Henry G. Atkinson. In the Philosophic Inquirer, Madras, India, July 2, 1882. 1 column.

Anti-Sh.

177  Did Shakespeare write his own works? An editorial article in the Oshkosh (Wis.) Northwestern, July 17, 1882.

Pro-Sh.

The Editor, Gen. T. S. Allen, calls attention to a lecture by the late Hon. George B. Smith, of Madison, Wisconsin, delivered at Chicago, Madison, and other places a few years since. Mr. Smith’s lecture was never printed. It was a forcible presentation of the Baconian theory.

178  An Anti-Shakespearean Plea. By J. W. B. [John W. Bell]. In the Madison (Wis.) State Journal, July 22, 1882. 1 column.

Anti-Sh.

[88]

Occasioned by the Bibliographical article and summary in the same paper, April 24, 1882.

179  The Bacon Cipher. The ruin it wrought on a strong intellect. A strange discovery in Literature. In the San Francisco Chronicle, August 20, 1882. (Copied in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Sept. 19, 1882.) 1½ columns.

Unc.

This article refers to Mrs. Windle and her writings. An extract from it will be found in connection with Mrs. W.’s second pamphlet (title 165).

180  Query 4929. In Notes and Queries column of the Evening Transcript, Boston.

a—Query as to merits of the question, August 21, 1882.

b—Answers to above, September 24, 1882.

Unc.

181  Bacon as a man of Letters. By Henry G. Atkinson. In the Secular Review, London, September 23, 1882. 1 column.

Anti-Sh.

182  Notice of the bibliography of the discussion, in the Bibliographer, London, October 22, 1882, page 151.

Pro-Sh.

After mentioning the early authorities, the editor says: “but before this we believe an Englishman lectured to such people as would listen to him on his theory that Shakespeare’s plays were written by the monks.”

183  Shakespeare, Bacon and Free Thought. By Henry G. Atkinson, in the National Reformer, London, October 22, 1882.

Anti-Sh.

[89]

184  Some Shakespearean Commentators. By Appleton Morgan. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1882. Fifty copies printed for sale. Pamphlet, 12mo. pp. 44.

Anti-Sh.

This pamphlet is a general answer by Mr. Morgan to the criticisms of the Shakespearean Myth. The following extract from a summary of it will indicate some of the points made by the author:

“So far from being new-fangled, a doubt as to what were Shakespeare’s plays and poems is as old as the first folio itself; that the name was often pirated, and the piracies often detected; that there was a statute in Elizabeth’s day that would have operated to forbid the publication of plays without being first editorially scrutinized; that these plays must have had an editor or editors, as well as an author or authors; and that if produced anonymously, it was much more likely that they should pass by their editors’ then by their authors’ names. Further, that instead of laying this question at rest, the labors of the Shakespeareans are only emphasizing it, and adding to its difficulty.”

The Milwaukee Sentinel (title 202) has this in its summary:

“In the present treatise Mr. Morgan simply recapitulates some of his previous statements; touches at some length on the general absurdity of Edmond Malone; discusses the views of Wm. J. Rolfe, James Freeman Clarke, Henry N. Hudson, and Dr. Ingleby; and finally proceeds to review several disagreeable reviewers, each one of whom, Mr. Morgan intimates, through a very pithy quotation from Huxley, ‘acquired his knowledge from the book he judges—as the Abyssinian is said to provide himself with steaks from the ox who carries him.’”

185  The Absurdity of the Theory that Lord Bacon wrote the plays of Shakespeare. By J. Wilson Ross. In Modern Thought, London, for December, 1882. 4 pages.

Pro-Sh.

186  The Authorship of Shakespeare. By Henry G. Atkinson. In the National Reformer, London, December 31, 1882.

Anti-Sh.

[90]

187  The Promus of Formularies and Elegancies (being Private Notes, circ. 1594, hitherto unpublished) by Francis Bacon, illustrated and elucidated by passages from Shakespeare. By Mrs. Henry Pott. With preface by E. A. Abbott, D.D., Head Master of the City of London School, 1883. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. (with fac-simile sheet of Promus). 8vo. pp. 628.

Anti-Sh.

This book is the latest important contribution to the Baconian theory.

The MSS. known as the Promus form a part of the Harleian Collection in the British Museum, and have never before been published. They consist of fifty sheets or folios, nearly all in the handwriting of Bacon, containing 1655 different entries or memorandums. The whole seems to have been kept by Bacon as a sort of commonplace book, in which he entered at different times brief forms of expression, phrases, proverbs, verses from the Bible; and quotations from Seneca, Horace, Virgil, Erasmus, and many other writers. These are in various languages—English, French, Italian, etc. As to the use of this collection, we give Mrs. Pott’s explanation:

“The Promus, then, was Bacon’s shop or storehouse, from which he would draw forth things new and old—turning, twisting, expanding, modifying, changing them, with that ‘nimbleness’ of mind, that ‘aptness to perceive analogies,’ which he notes as being necessary to the inventor of aphorisms, and which, elsewhere, he speaks of decidedly, though modestly, as gifts with which he felt himself to be specially endowed.

“It was a storehouse also of pithy and suggestive sayings, of new, graceful, or quaint terms of expression, of repartee, with bright ideas jotted down as they occurred, and which were to reappear, ‘made-up,’ variegated, intensified, and indefinitely multiplied, as they radiated from that wonderful ‘brayne cut with many facets.’”

Mrs. Pott believes that Bacon prepared these notes for use in his literary works, and she elaborates her theory that Bacon wrote “Shakespeare” by taking up in review the whole of the 1655 entries, and citing, by the thousand, what she claims [91]to be parallel thoughts and passages in the plays. To prove that the forms of expression used in the Promus are not contained in contemporary or precedent literature, the author gives, in an appendix, a list of upwards of five thousand works which she has examined for that purpose and in which she claims they are almost unknown.

“It must be held, then, that no sufficient explanation of the resemblances which have been noted between the writings of Bacon and Shakespeare is afforded by the supposition that these authors may have studied the same sciences, learned the same languages, read the same books, frequented the same sort of society. To satisfy the requirements of such a hypothesis, it will be necessary further to admit that from their scientific studies these two men derived identically the same theories; from their knowledge of languages the same proverbs, turns of expression, and peculiar use of words; that they preferred and chiefly quoted the same books in the Bible and the same authors; and last, not least, that they derived from their education and surroundings the same tastes and the same antipathies, and from their learning, in whatever way it was acquired, the same opinions and the same subtle thoughts.

---

“We should almost have to bring ourselves to believe that Bacon took notes for the use of Shakespeare, since in the Promus may be found several hundred notes of which no trace has been discovered in the acknowledged writings of Bacon, or of any contemporary writer but Shakespeare, but which are more or less clearly reproduced in the plays, and sometimes in the Sonnets.

“Such things, it must be owned, pass all ordinary powers of belief, and the comparison of points such as those which have been hinted at impress the mind with a firm conviction that Francis Bacon, and he alone, wrote all the plays and sonnets which are attributed to Shakespeare, and that William Shakespeare was merely the able and jovial manager, who, being supported by some of Bacon’s rich and gay friends (such as Lord Southampton and Lord Pembroke), furnished the theatre for the due representation of the plays, which were thus produced by Will. Shakespeare, and thenceforward called by his name.”

(Mrs. Pott resides in London. This book, to which she has devoted many years of labor, is, we believe, her only literary work. But it is understood that she has another work in preparation, devoted to the historical side of the question, which will probably appear within a few months, under the title of “Francis Bacon, Poet, Philosopher, and Dramatist.”)

[92]

188  Articles in Shakespeariana, in the Literary World, Boston, of dates following:

a—Letter from Appleton Morgan, Jan. 13, 1883.

b—Bacon’s Promus, January 27, 1883.

Unc.

189  Was Bacon Shakespeare? The New Evidences from the Harleian Collection. In the Advertiser, Boston, January 13, 1883. (Copied in the Tribune, Chicago, January 20, 1883.) 1½ columns.

Unc.

190  The Promus, etc. [By Richard J. Hinton]. In the Gazette, Washington, D. C., January 14, 1883. 1 column.

Anti-Sh.

A mention of the Promus, with a sketch of Mr. O’Connor’s “Harrington” theories, and some reminiscences of Delia Bacon.

191  Bacon’s Notes in Shakespeare’s Plays. In the World, New York, Jan. 15, 1883. 1½ columns.

Pro-Sh.

A review of the Promus:

“Mrs. Pott has really made the most important, because it is the most direct and scientific, contribution to the Baconian side of the controversy, but her book does little to confirm any theory except the theory that great minds think alike.”

192  Bacon-Shakespeare. By Rev. Edward C. Towne. A series of three articles in the Boston Evening Transcript, January 19, 23, and 25, 1883. 3 columns each.

Pro-Sh.

In these papers are comprised a very complete general review of the whole subject; an account of the various theories and the books containing them; and a comparison of the intellect, character and writings of Bacon and Shakespeare. A short extract as to style:

[93]

“Bacon’s style is stiff and weighty, where Shakespeare’s is free and light. Bacon is classical, while Shakespeare is natural. Bacon has always the same formal mode of expression, his own mode only, even if he tries to write dialogues and to represent characters; while Shakespeare easily introduces a high variety—always, too, in character. The hand that wrote the plays could easily have imitated Bacon, but there is not a page of Shakespeare which Bacon could have written. The style of Shakespeare is as impossible to Bacon as violets to a pumpkin vine, or tea roses to a prize cabbage. The one was the most prosaic of classical writers, a Latinist more than an English writer; while the other was as thoroughly English as he was perfectly poetical.”

193  The New Literary Conundrum. Was it Shakespeare or Bacon? The Story the Plays tell. A letter in the New York correspondence of the Evening Post, Hartford, Conn., January 20, 1883. 2 columns.

Pro-Sh.

194  A Minute Among the Amenities. (Ad finem). By William Thomson, Garnoch, South Yarra, Melbourne, Feb. 1, 1883. Pamphlet, 8vo. pp. 24.

Anti-Sh.

The amenities in this are undiscoverable. Dr. Thomson, in his peculiar style, answers his critics of the Leader, the Argus, the Academy and the Australasian, claiming that he was denied a hearing in those periodicals, and forced to reply in a pamphlet. His ad finem was prophetic, as it was his last work.

195  A New Shakesperian Commentary. Review of the Promus. In the Saturday Review, London, February 3, 1883. 2 columns.

Pro-Sh.

“It appears that, having been engaged for many years in proving ‘from internal evidence Bacon’s authorship of the plays known as Shakespeare’s,’ Mrs. Pott’s attention was called to these manuscripts by some remarks made by Mr. Spedding in his edition of Bacon’s works. These remarks led Mrs. Pott to suppose that a further examination might produce corroborative evidence of the points she was laboring to establish. [94]This hope has been fulfilled, she considers, ‘to a degree beyond expectation,’ and the notes, she adds, ‘whatever may be the views taken of the commentary upon them, possess in themselves a value which must be recognized by all the students of language.’ * * * That she has been instrumental in producing an extremely interesting volume, as everything must be interesting that contributes in any way to our knowledge of such a man as Bacon, we allow, and for so much, as we have said, we tender her our most hearty thanks; but that its publication tends in any way to establish her theory—of the theory itself it is quite unnecessary to speak—we do no less heartily deny.”

196  The Promus of Formularies and Elegancies. A review in the Athenæum, London, February 3, 1883. 3 columns.

Pro-Sh.

197  Bacon and Shakespeare. An article on the Promus from the Courant, Hartford, February 7, 1883. (Copied in the Record, Philadelphia, February 12, 1883.) 1 column.

Unc.

198  Was Lord Bacon the Author of Shakespeare’s Plays? A communication in the Sun, New York, copied in the Tribune, Denver, Colorado, February 17, 1883.

Unc.

199  Bacon’s Promus. By A. A. A. [Hon. Alvey A. Adee, of Washington, D. C.] In the Republic, Washington, February 17, 1883. 8 columns.

Pro-Sh.

A very complete and comprehensive critique of the Promus. Mr. Adee thinks the work valuable to the philologist rather than as a confirmation of the Baconian theory. “The lovers of the works,” he says, “which, to adopt a favorite phrase of the Baconians, ‘go about’ under the name of Shakespeare, owe a debt of gratitude to this untiring delver in a new and rich mine of virgin ore for her painstaking contribution to the general knowledge.” He takes up in review [95]a large number of the Promus entries; questions the correctness of many of Mrs. Pott’s citations, and differs from her entirely as to their value as parallelisms in proving the Baconian authorship.

“A critical, and above all, impartial and unbiased revision of this work, with the single aim of selecting only such passages of the Poet’s work as shall, by their context and their true spirit and intent, be found to present unquestionable analogy with the Promus entries, would give invaluable aid to the earnest student. It would not be venturesome to assert that, in such a case, the 4404 parallelisms discerned by Mrs. Pott would shrink to a much more manageable number. Nor would it be hazardous to surmise that a like impartial re-reading of the six thousand works through which Mrs. Pott has labored in vain would be rewarded with the discovery of analogies which have escaped her toilsome scrutiny. It would, perhaps, be unkind to hint that, while the most distant allusions and constructions found in the Poet’s canon have been seized upon, nothing short of practical identity would seem to have been admitted in the case of parallelisms between the Promus and other precedent or contemporary writings. But an impression that this is the Darwinian law of selection which has governed the survival of the fittest phrases for the purpose in hand, must inevitably grow on the unprejudiced mind of the reader.

---

“Of making books, or rather of Mrs. Pott’s manner of making books, there is no end. Given commonplace texts, time, patience, the power of reaching conclusions ‘by sudden flight,’ and a Concordance—and ‘’tis as easy as lying.’ As honest Touchstone says: ‘I’ll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners and suppers and sleeping hours excepted; it is the right butter-women’s rank to market.’

“Still, Mrs. Pott’s book is a step in the right direction, and serves a good turn. It may not instantly convince the world that Bacon wrote Shakespeare, or even that Shakespeare wrote the Promus, as Dr. Abbott seems to insinuate, but the insight it gives into structural peculiarities and turns of speech is well-nigh priceless. * * * As regards the analogies and parallelisms sought to be shown, the kindest course is to say as little as possible about them.”

200  Shakespeare and Bacon. Judge Holmes gives his reasons for believing Bacon was Shakespeare. And Father Higgins, S. J., gives his for thinking Shakespeare was himself. In the Republican, St. Louis, Feb. 17, 1883. 1 column.

Unc.

[96]

An account of two interviews, called out by the publication of the Promus. The first is with Judge Holmes, who claims that the received accounts of Shakespeare’s life do not warrant the supposition of his authorship, and continues:

“To this is opposed the supposition that the plays were written by one [Bacon] whose mind was well disciplined from early infancy, whose life was spent in the prosecution of the deepest and most important studies known to man, with results of the greatest magnitude produced in whatever path his genius may have chosen for itself to tread. He was surrounded by influences the most cultured, and those most likely to give him insight into the lives of the great, which is so prominent a feature in the plays which give rise to the controversy; and yet he possessed, from the positions of trust which he held, every opportunity for looking into and examining the motives for action, even amongst the most lowly. In the plays as we have them there occur numberless passages, referring to classical authors, the Latin, the Greek, the Italian, the German, the French and the Spanish, and these references are not such as could be learned from translation, for many of those found in these plays are there for the first time expressed in the English language. Is it at all likely one of whom Ben Jonson wrote that he knew ‘little Latin and less Greek,’ could by any possibility have picked up in his rather shambling career, the familiarity with these authors which the plays set forth?”

Rev. Father Higgins, of the St. Louis University, takes the opposite view. We give one point only:

“There is another objection to the Baconian claim which is of much weight. The author of the dramas was either a Catholic or one whose early mind had been imbued with Catholic ideas. If there be any one religion which is supported by the plays it is the Catholic faith. You remember the passage in Hamlet concerning the time in which the mass is celebrated, and in other places he refers pointedly to a purgatory. If Lord Bacon wrote the plays these passages could never have occurred, since his position in regard to the events which were happening at that time, and which had already happened, would have made him anxious to blot out all remembrances of the customs of the religion which was in such disfavor at the court. Shakespeare may not have been a Catholic, though there are other things which point to his so being, but at least in the position which he held he would have had no reasons such as existed in Bacon’s mind for trampling out traditions, which he has only fastened more closely in men’s minds, and has done so in a very beautiful manner.”

[97]

201  Gammon of Bacon. In the London Punch, February 17, 1883.

Pro-Sh.

Occasioned by the publication of the Promus:

“Scene—Lord Bacon’s library. Bacon recumbent and meditating as usual (‘Sic Sedebat’), in his arm-chair.

Bacon—The proof of the pudding lieth in the eating and experiment, and not in the supposition or imagination thereof. (A gentle tap at the door.) Come in! (Enter Shakespeare.) What, Will! Thou art right welcome. Sit thee down, Will. (Shakespeare sits.) And now, how doth business at the Globe? How goeth our Hamlet?

Shakespeare—Indifferent well, my Lord.

Bacon—Why, so. Playest thou the Ghost still?

Shakespeare—Aye, my good Lord, even yet, at times, so please you.

Bacon—It pleases me well. Talk of your Ghost, doth the Ghost at the G. continue to walk as he ought?

Shakespeare—Punctually, my Lord, in good sooth, every Saturday night.

Bacon—Good. I will therefore thank thee to hand me over the balance of our little account.

Shakespeare—I shall, my Lord, incontinently. Meanwhile, so please your Lordship, I must become yet further your Lordship’s debtor for the wealth, I mean the workmanship, of your wit. My Lord, Her Majesty the Queen did last night come to see Henry the Fourth. After the play she called me to her presence, and did declare her pleasure that I should produce her a piece, with a part for Falstaff, and therein present Falstaff in love.

Bacon—How didst thou answer her?

Shakespeare—In your Lordship’s own words—‘I shall in all my best obey you, Madam.’

Bacon—And what then said she?

Shakespeare—Straightway capped your line, my Lord, saying, ‘Why ’tis a loving and a fair reply.’

Bacon—Long live the Queen! But, Falstaff in love! A most inconceivable suggestion and unimaginable fancy of Her Most Gracious Majesty’s, in respect both of love and of Falstaff.

Shakespeare—But how, then, my Lord, may we in anywise manage to perform her Royal command?

Bacon—About my brains! Methinks I seem to spy some glimmer of a way. A gross fat man fallen into the conceit that some fair dame is enamoured of him, lured on to make love to her after his own fashion. Falstaff in love c’y pres, as we say at Westminster.

[98]

Shakespeare—That would serve, my Lord.

Bacon—Falstaff thereto befooled, moreover, by the contrivance of some merry women. Merry? Ha! So! Why, certainly it seems to myself that all this hath passed through my mind before—as we do sometimes feel. I must have dreamt of writing such a play. Methinks I even recollect the name on’t. Merry! Yea, marry, quotha—Merry Wives of Windsor.

Shakespeare—A title passing good, my Lord, and a taking. Truly, a happy thought.—Let me pray your Lordship about it presently.

Bacon—Marry and shall, with all the expedition I may. As soon as possible, I’ll send it to thy playhouse.

Shakespeare—A thousand thanks, my Lord.

Bacon—In the meantime, I prithee forget not that small balance.

Shakespeare—Trust me, my Lord.

Bacon—Needs must I until thou render me the needful.

Shakespeare—Your Lordship shall be straightway satisfied. I humbly take my leave.” [Exit Shakespeare.]

202  Shakespearean Controversy. Appleton Morgan’s Valiant Fight with the Shakespeareans. In the Sentinel, Milwaukee, February 18, 1883. 1 column.

Anti-Sh.

203  Shakespearean Parallels. By A. A. A. [Hon. Alvey A. Adee]. In the Republic, Washington, February 24, 1883. 5 columns.

Pro-Sh.

In this article, apropos of the “parallelisms” of Judge Holmes and Mrs. Pott, the writer says:

“Theorists such as these appear to lose sight of the circumstance that, in the limitless mines of human knowledge, there are ideas so simple and trite in themselves, so natural to all minds, that their recurrence in varying setting, through successive ages, is a foregone conclusion.”

The writer takes the Imitation of Christ, by Thomas-a-Kempis (the first translation into English being printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1502) as an illustration, and finds many striking analogies and parallelisms with the plays of Shakespeare, a few of which he gives. He adds that “treated as Dr. Holmes has treated Bacon’s works, the alleged identities may be made almost countless.” We quote from the concluding paragraphs:

[99]

“It is a relief to lay down the cap and bells, and cast the cocks’-comb truncheon aside, and look for a moral to point this idle tale. What is it? Simply this, that the fount of commonplace is inexhaustible from generation to generation, and that whosoever dippeth therein, whether with a golden goblet or a pipkin of common clay, whether he be a Thomas-a-Kempis, a Shakespeare, or a Tupper, brings up, after all, but triteness and commonplace. What wonder, then, that parallels abound in the writings of all times?

---

“And yet it must be confessed that to many readers, whose reason cannot penetrate the mere mask of words and discern behind it the mystery of style, the soul that fills the form with the breath of supremest life, this analysis by parallels may be misleading, even to a sense of partial conviction. To such can only be said, in the words of the ever-living Poet:

“O place, O form!

How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,

Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls

To thy false meaning.”

(Measure for Measure, II, iv, 12.)”

204  To Certain Theorists. A sonnet. By W. L. Shoemaker. In Shakespeariana, in the Literary World, Boston, February 24, 1883.

Pro-Sh.

Mr. Shoemaker’s sonnet is the only poetry yet discovered in this prosaic controversy:

205  Shakespeare’s Geheimnisz und Bacon’s Promus. In the Allgemeine Zeitung, Stuttgart and Munchen: March 1, 1883. 4 columns.

Anti-Sh.

[100]

The first German article. A translation of this title will be found below.

206  Shakespeare’s Secret and Bacon’s “Promus.” An article in the Allgemeine Zeitung of March 1, 1883. Translated from the German, and printed by special request. Price three pence. H. Wills, Printer, Loughborough, England. Pamphlet, 12mo. pp. 12.

Anti-Sh.

This article is anonymous. It is nominally a review of the Promus, but discusses the question generally, and is most vehemently Baconian throughout:

“In the eyes of the masses [in England] Shakespeare passes for a supernatural being. He who doubts of his divinity is guilty of high treason, or even of blasphemy.

“Such prejudice is unknown in America. There it has long been accepted as an acknowledged fact that Bacon wrote the Shakespearean dramas.”

207  Shakespeare v. Bacon. A review of the Promus in the Spectator, London, March 3, 1883. 2 columns.

Pro-Sh.

208  Dr. Edwin A. Abbott, Mrs. Henry Pott, and Lord Bacon. In the St. James’s Gazette, London, March 10, 1883. 1 page.

Pro-Sh.

209  Mrs. Pott on Shakespeare’s Women. In Shakespeariana, in the Literary World, Boston, March 10, 1883.

a—Note from A. A. A. [Adee] on the Promus.

Pro-Sh.

Mr. Rolfe takes issue with Mrs. Pott as to her opinions of Shakespeare’s women, and quotes from a foot-note on page 479 of the Promus:

[101]

“From the entries which referred to women we see that Bacon formed very unfavorable views regarding them, views which unhappy passages in his own life probably tended to confirm. The Shakespeare Plays seem to exhibit the same unfavorable sentiments of their author. There are 130 female personages in the Plays, and the characters of these seem to be easily divisible into six classes:

“1. Furies or viragoes, such as Tamora, Queen Margaret, Goneril, Regan, and even Lady Macbeth in the dark side of her character.

“2. Shrews and sharp-tongued women, as Katherine, Constance, and many others, when they are represented as angry.

“3. Gossiping and untrustworthy women, as most of the maids, hostesses, etc., and as Percy insinuates that he considers his wife to be.

“4. Fickle, faithless, and artful—a disposition which seems assumed throughout the Plays to be the normal condition of womanhood.

“5. Thoroughly immoral, as Cleopatra, Phrynia, Timandra, Bianca.

“6. Gentle, simple, and colorless, as Hero, Olivia, Ophelia, Cordelia, etc.

“Noteworthy exceptions, which exhibit more exalted and truer pictures of good and noble women, are the characters of Isabella, of Volumnia, and of Katherine of Arragon; but these are not sufficient to do away with the impression that, on the whole, the author of the Plays had but a poor opinion of women; that love he regarded as youthful passion, marriage as a doubtful happiness.”

It will be noticed that Mrs. Pott omits to classify Imogen, Rosalind, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Viola, Miranda, and others.

In answer, Mr. Rolfe quotes from Charles Cowden-Clarke, “who is one of the most sympathetic and appreciative of critics (partly, no doubt, because Mary Cowden-Clarke was his wife and fellow-worker):”

“Of all the writers that ever existed, no one ought to stand so high in the love and gratitude of women as he. He has indeed been their champion, their laureate, their brother, their friend. * * * He has asserted their prerogative, as intellectual creatures, to be the companions (in the best sense), the advisers, the friends, the equals of men. He has endowed them with the true spirit of Christianity and brotherly love, enduring all things, forgiving all things, hoping all things; and it is no less remarkable that, with a prodigality of generosity, he has not unfrequently placed the heroes in his stories at a disadvantage with them.”

Cowden-Clarke proceeds to illustrate this by Hero and Claudio in Much Ado (the play he is discussing at the time), and quotes also, in confirmation of the statement, the characters of Bertram in All’s Well, [102]of Posthumus in Cymbeline, of Leontes in the Winter’s Tale, and of Proteus in the Two Gentlemen of Verona. He adds:

“All these characters not only appear at a disadvantage by, but they are unworthy of the women with whom they are united. Shakespeare has himself made the Duke in Twelfth Night say:

However we do praise ourselves,

Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,

More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,

Than women’s are.

A remarkable confession that for a man! Therefore Shakespeare is the writer, above all others, whom women should most take to their hearts; for it may be said to have been mainly through his influence that their claims in society were acknowledged in England, when throughout the civilized world their position was that of mere domestic drudges.”

210  The Promus, etc. A review in the Tribune, New York, March 11, 1883. 1¼ columns.

Pro-Sh.

“We have made a very thorough examination of these 1655 Promus memorandums, and of the passages which are produced in illustration and elucidation of them; we have read every word that the authoress has written in support of her theory; we have done so, we are sure, in a candid spirit, but we have to say, as the result of our examination, that we have not found an instance, not one, in which a passage in the plays is shown to have its origin in the Promus. The method of elucidating the Promus by ‘Shakespeare’ seems to have been to fix upon the most salient word in one of Bacon’s notes, and then to take up Mrs. Cowden-Clarke’s Concordance to Shakespeare, and find by its aid passages in which that word occurs, or more rarely a phrase which expresses in some modified or related form the idea conveyed by the Promus word or phrase. The result is a display of a word or a phrase on one side and several like words or phrases on the other; but of any necessary connection between them, of any inkling of a growth of the latter from the former, there is an utter and total absence.”

211  The Promus, etc. A review in the Nation, New York, March 15, 1883. 2 columns.

Pro-Sh.

[103]

212  The Authorship of Shakespeare. An editorial article. [By J. G. Pyle]. In the Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn., March 25, 1883. 1 column.

Anti-Sh.

A notice of the Promus, introducing Morgan’s review.

“While there can be no doubt that the editress has carried her comparisons to the last degree of attenuation, and has discovered resemblances where there is nothing but the recurrence of a single unimportant word in the Promus and in the Plays on which to stand, yet, when these instances are eliminated, there remains a body of coincidences which cannot be dismissed with a cool assumption of superiority to all modern ‘vagaries,’ and which will require some more coherent explanation than the article by Richard Grant White in the last Atlantic.”

213  A Review of Bacon’s Promus. By Appleton Morgan. In the Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn. Part I, March 25, 1883; Part II, April 1, 1883. 5 columns.

Anti-Sh.

In this paper, besides going into a general review of the subject, Mr. Morgan gives a summary, under twelve heads, of the Net Results of the Promus, at the conclusion of which he says:

“Now which existing anti-Shakespearean theory does the evidence of this Promus most clearly corroborate? There are four of these theories, all of which have many parts in common, but no two of which are exactly alike, viz:

“1. That Bacon and the rest of a coterie of political philosophers and moralists wrote in Hermetic or cryptographical compositions a philosophy for ‘the next ages’ which they dared not promulgate in Elizabeth’s reign (Miss Delia Bacon’s theory).

“2. That Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare (the Baconian theory).

“3. That the coterie (perhaps the same as that Miss Bacon suggested) wrote the plays to amuse themselves—and induced William Shakespeare to father them for a consideration (the New theory).

“4. That whoever wrote them, William Shakespeare was stage editor only of the plays (the Editorial theory).

“It seems to us that the new evidence offered by the Promus marshals itself, with the least violence, on the side of either Theory 2 or Theory 4, and, as between these latter, most naturally on the side of Theory 4.”

[104]

214  The Authorship of Miss Bacon’s Book. In the Sunday Telegraph, Milwaukee, Wis. Three articles of dates following:

Unc.

a—An Odd Literary Sensation. [Editorial, by Col. E. A. Calkins]. March 25, 1883.

“Miss Bacon, as she alleged to be the case with Shakespeare, was not the author of her own book. It was written throughout by T. C. Leland, then a stenographic reporter on the New York Tribune. * * * Mr. Leland stated to literary gentlemen with whom he became acquainted at Madison [in 1853] that he was engaged in this labor, and had partly completed Miss Bacon’s work. * * * He did not claim to be more than her mere amanuensis, though in fact he was something more, as he furnished the forms of expression which Miss Bacon employed while transferring her views to paper.”

b—Miss Delia Bacon. Letter from W. H. W. [W. H. Wyman]. April 8, 1883.

“Doubtless there would be a poetic or retributive justice in denying to Delia Bacon the authorship of her own book, but, unfortunately for this theory, I cannot see how it can have the slightest foundation in fact. * * * [References are given to Mrs. Farrar’s Recollections, and to Hawthorne’s Preface to Miss Bacon’s work.] * * * These extracts show conclusively that neither of her works on this subject were written in this country, nor until some years after the reported conversations; and even that in England she could have had no assistance is clear, from the fact that she was alone, and it was with the utmost difficulty that she sustained herself during that time. * * * I do not call your attention to these misapprehensions because I have any belief in Delia Bacon’s theories, but simply that justice may be done to the memory of a woman whose sad fate has caused her to be greatly misunderstood.”

c—Letter from T. C. Leland, dated New York, August 22, 1883; printed September 9, 1883.

“I think it was in the late fall of 1852, or perhaps it was December, I was engaged to report some lectures delivered in this city by Miss Delia Bacon, on the Art and Culture of Egypt and other ancient nations. Though she was a very ready, fluent, and, at times, eloquent speaker, yet when she came to take up her pen she wrote slowly and with difficulty. She expressed a wish one day that I should help her in this respect. I suggested that, if she could dictate to me, an audience of one, as fluently and happily as she did to an audience of [105]hundreds, she would be a perfect success. We agreed to make the experiment, but, on trial, she found that an amanuensis was practically somewhat better, but not much, than a pen. There was, on trial, one advantage; that occasionally she would have inspired moments and a spurt of thought and rapid utterances; and these gushes I could take down and save, which otherwise she could not have traced rapidly enough on paper, and would have lost. * * * But in all this I played the part, simply and only, of an amanuensis, putting down her words conscientiously without any change or amendment of mine. My short-hand notes were translated into long-hand copy just as she delivered the words, and handed to her. I suppose that these notes were the basis, in whole or in part—probably a larger part—of her subsequent book.”

215  Bacon’s Promus Again. By A. A. A. [Adee]. In the Republic, Washington, March 31, 1883.

Pro-Sh.

216  The Shakespeare-Bacon Question. A Bibliographical list of the works on the subject in the Boston Public Library. In the Bulletin of the Library for April, 1883. 38 titles.

Unc.

217  The Bacon-Shakespeare Craze. By Richard Grant White. In the Atlantic Monthly for April, 1883. (See pages 507-521.)

Pro-Sh.

In this paper, Mr. White expresses his personal indifference as to whether Bacon, Shakespeare, or anybody else is to be credited with the authorship, as it “affects in no way the value or interest of the plays;” he gives a very complete and unfavorable review of the Promus, occupying ten pages; instances the sonnets, as impossible to have been written by Bacon, who did not therefore write the plays; and makes a brilliant comparison between Bacon and Shakespeare, showing “the unlikeness of Bacon’s mind and of his style to those of the writer of the plays.” The following is an extract from the concluding paragraph:

“As to treating the question seriously, that is not to be done by men of common sense and moderate knowledge of the subject. * * * It [106]is as certain that William Shakespeare wrote (after the theatrical fashion, and under the theatrical conditions of his day) the plays that bear his name, as it is that Francis Bacon wrote the Novum Organum, the Advancement of Learning, and the Essays. The notion that Bacon also wrote Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, Hamlet, King Lear, and Othello, is not worth five minutes’ consideration by any reasonable creature.”

218  Richard Grant White and “The Bacon-Shakespeare Craze.” By F. [Edward Fillebrown]. In the Commonwealth, Boston, March 31, 1883. 1 column.

Anti-Sh.

219  “The Bacon-Shakespeare Craze.” Letter of Appleton Morgan in the Post, Boston, April 2, 1883. ¼ column.

Anti-Sh.

220  “The Bacon-Shakespeare Craze” of Richard Grant White. By O. F. [O. Follett]. In the Register, Sandusky, O., April 5, 1883. 1 column.

Anti-Sh.

221  The Promus, etc. A notice of the book in the Mercury, Leeds, England, April 11, 1883.

Pro-Sh.

222  Shakespeare’s Schooling, with Some Light as to the Elizabethan Boy. Letter from Appleton Morgan. In the Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn., April 15, 1883. ½ column.

Anti-Sh.

A dissertation on the insufficiency of the schools in Shakespeare’s day. In illustration of this, Mr. Morgan quotes schoolmaster Evans and his pupil William, in Merry Wives of Windsor, Act IV, Scene 1.

[107]

223  The Bacon-Shakespeare Theory. In the Morning Journal, Cincinnati, April 16, 1883. 1 column.

Pro-Sh.

224  Shakespearian Circle-Squaring. A criticism of the Promus, in the Pall Mall Gazette, London, April 20, 1883. 1½ columns.

Pro-Sh.

225  Articles in Shakespeariana, in the Literary World, Boston, April 21, 1883.

a—Cleopatra’s “Billiards.” Note from Hon. A. A. Adee, with remarks by the Editor.

b—Mr. Grant White on Bacon and Shakespeare.

Pro-Sh.

Mr. Adee calls attention to the fact that the often quoted (but disputed) anachronism in Antony and Cleopatra—where Cleopatra says to her attendant, Charmian, “let’s to billiards”—was doubtless obtained from Chapman, who uses the word “billiards” similarly in his Blind Beggar of Alexandria, printed ten years before Antony and Cleopatra, was written. As to the anachronisms generally, Mr. Rolfe says:

* * * “If, to preserve his incognito, Bacon had refrained from any parade of his scholarship, and had even put occasional anachronisms into the mouths of his characters, we cannot imagine him showing the habitual ignorance in such matters that Shakespeare does. He could never have made Coriolanus talk of ‘graves in the holy church-yard,’ or Menenius, in the same play, of ‘Galen’—‘an anachronism of near 650 years,’ as Dr. Grey called it—or Mark Antony, of coming to ‘bury’ Cæsar, and the like. These frequent and free-and-easy blunders, so utterly inconsistent with the scholarly habit of mind, are of themselves a sufficient refutation of the theory that ‘Bacon wrote Shakespeare.’”

226  Shakespeare. By Rev. Edward C. Towne. Two articles in the Evening Transcript, Boston. I, April 28, 1883; II, August 3, 1883. 3 columns each.

Pro-Sh.

[108]

These articles are devoted principally to the life, genius, and character of Shakespeare as disproving the Baconian theory.

227  “Our Shakespeare Club.” Remarks of Sam. Timmins, Chairman. In the Daily Mail, Birmingham, England, April 24, 1883.

Pro-Sh.

Mr. Timmins presided at the annual dinner of the club on the birth-day of Shakespeare, at the Plow and Harrow Hotel, Birmingham, and made the opening address, opposing all the anti-Shakespearian theories.

228  “Bacon’s Promus.” Two letters of Appleton Morgan of this title. In the Republic, Washington, April 28, and March 24, 1883.

Anti-Sh.

229  Shakespeare as a Myth. By Henry Hooper. In the Commercial Gazette, Cincinnati, April 29, 1883. 3 columns.

Pro-Sh.

Occasioned by Morgan’s Shakespearean Myth, to which it is a reply.

“If Shakespeare alone wrote these plays, then it is the greatest miracle on record, says Mr. Morgan. If it be a miracle for one, it would be a combination of miracles for ten, or even two, to compose Hamlet or Othello. * * * The joint composition theory is as improbable and impossible as it would be for an orchestra to invent a Symphony of Beethoven. You might just as well say that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is the joint work of a number of musicians, viz: that the violin players composed the string parts, the reed players the flute and oboe parts, and the trombones and double basses their scores. This is not more absurd than the theory that a pale student, a needy scholar, a ready writer, an actor and a stage manager produced Twelfth Night and King Lear.”

[109]

230  Who Was Shakespeare? Address by Mr. William Leighton, Jr., at the Shakespeare Club Banquet, Wheeling, W. Va., April 23, 1883. In the Sunday Register, Wheeling, April 29, 1883.

Pro-Sh.

In Mr. Leighton’s address the authorship is only incidentally referred to.

“Genius is the touch of God’s hand, an inspiration that comes not out of any college, but is evoked from the soul by its own tendencies and aspirations; and, so born, can only be fostered into healthy maturity by unremitting labor. The attempt to take from Shakespeare’s brow the laurel crown of the most glorious of bards is a vain effort to rob a dead man of well-earned honors; and why? Because a yeoman must not presume to stand above a nobleman; or a poet, who has not been to college, dare to mount the winged steed. But Shakespeare’s honors can not be taken from him by idle sophistry or arbitrary dogmatism; he has entrenched himself in the hearts of his countrymen, and his position is impregnable.”

231  Who Is Shakespeare? Address by Mr. Joseph Crosby, at the Shakespeare Club Banquet, Wheeling, W. Va., as above. In the Sunday Register, Wheeling, April 29, 1883.

Pro-Sh.

Mr. Crosby—whose views will be found under title 126—devotes a portion only of this address to the authorship.

232  Letter from Appleton Morgan. In the Church Eclectic, Utica, N. Y., for May, 1883. 3 pages.

Anti-Sh.

A reply to the letter of Mr. Crosby’s in the same magazine for November, 1880. We quote one point only:

“I am sure I can refer the writer to at least half a score of authorities which will agree that the tuition in provincial grammar-schools of the Sixteenth Century was simply ridiculous, and a travesty; a little of A, B, C, and Lily’s Accidence, and a good deal of birch; and that however it made boys truants, it hardly graduated ‘men of letters.’”

[110]

233  Bosh about Bacon. By A. B. B. [A. B. Braley, Madison, Wis.] In the Sunday Telegraph, Milwaukee, Wis., May 20, 1883, 1½ columns. Also, The Bacon Cranks. Evidence of Shakespeare’s Contemporaries. In the same paper, June 10, 1883. 1½ columns.

Pro-Sh.

234  Shakespeare at Home. Letter from M. D. C. [Moncure D. Conway], from Stratford-on-Avon, April 21, 1883. In the Commercial Gazette, Cincinnati, May 26, 1883. 2 columns.

Unc.

An interesting letter from Mr. Conway on the occasion of one of the commemorative celebrations at Stratford.

Referring to Delia Bacon’s book:

* * * “Perhaps there never was such a monument of wasted ability. There is hardly anything in it of a negative character, very little that shows apprehension of the real points in the Shakespearean traditions that tempt skepticism. Her book dwells on the affirmation that Bacon wrote the plays; that may easily be answered by any one who will turn from a page of Shakespeare to one of Bacon, which, to most people, is turning from a winged to an earth-bound genius. But the incidental theory that Shakespeare did not write these plays, though at present the fad of a few, is not unlikely to acquire large proportions in the future. Such is the inevitable doom of every set of traditions that have not been subjected to severe skeptical criticism.

---

“For the back-ground of miracle is always present—namely, that the village lad, son of a man who could not write his name, wrote all these mighty works, died at the age of fifty-three, and yet left no manuscript, no records, so that not even his birth-day is known.

“Yet here are the works. Somebody wrote them. Or it would be truer to say that somebody recognized the great world-histories and legends, exhumed them, covered them with flesh and blood, and breathed into them the breath of life. For here we are enjoying them, and finding amid all these creations the presence of a central mind, however inapprehensible.”

235  Who Wrote Julius Cæsar? By H. I. In the Times-Star, Cincinnati, May 29, 1883. 2 columns.

Anti-Sh.

[111]

The writer takes the occasion of the Cincinnati Dramatic Festival to make this inquiry:

“The Dramatic Festival of this city was inaugurated by the production, at immense cost and great splendor, of the play of Julius Cæsar. It must have been ‘indeed an oasis’—with McCullough and Murdoch, Barrett, Louis James, and Miss Forsyth in the fore-front, five hundred Roman citizens and soldiers in perfect drill—a spectacle this to have gladdened with happy moisture the eyes, could they have seen it, of—the—author. Who was he?”

The writer professes his belief that the author was Francis Bacon, and advances a claim of parallel thoughts, etc., between the plays and the Advancement of Learning in support of his opinion.

236  Hat Francis Bacon die Dramen William Shakespeare’s Geschrieben? Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der geistigen Verirrungen. Von Dr. Eduard Engel, Leipzig, 1883. (Did Francis Bacon Write William Shakespeare’s Plays? A contribution to the history of Intellectual Errors.) Pamphlet, pp. 43.

Pro-Sh.

Dr. Engel takes for his text Mrs. Pott’s Promus, and this pamphlet is in answer to that work, and to the favorable notice of it appearing in the Allgemeine Zeitung (see titles 205 and 206), which he ascribes to ‘Herr V.’ He strongly opposes all anti-Shakespearian theories.

“It would be deplorable, and would contradict all the history of the world’s literature, if Lord Bacon had written Shakespeare’s plays. It would be deplorable—and this decides the matter—because it would then be shown, for the first time in the history of mankind, that a poetical genius of the highest sublimity, and a character of the lowest baseness, could exist in one and the same man.”

Dr. Engel closes his essay with a quotation from Herder:

“I have in my mind an immense figure of a man, sitting high on a rocky summit; at his feet, storm, tempest, and the raging of the sea; but his head in the beams of heaven. This is Shakespeare. Only, with this addition, that far below, at the foot of his rocky throne, are murmuring crowds, who expound, preserve, condemn, defend, worship, slander, over-rate, and abuse him—and of all this he hears nothing.”

[112]

237  Bacon and Shakespeare. In Shakespeariana, in the Literary World, Boston, June 2, 1883.

Pro-Sh.

The editor introduces in this article an extract from a letter received by Mr. Joseph Crosby from “one of the most learned and philosophical of living Shakespearian critics.” The writer of the letter [Dr. Ingleby, of England] says, after expressing his dissent from the opinions of those who believe that it is immaterial whether the plays were written by Shakespeare or Bacon:

“And I cannot without concern witness the crazy efforts of these would-be critics to separate what history has joined together, and to make over the better half of Shakespeare’s fame to a man, not only immeasurably his inferior, but of a totally different order of mind. * * * I have read, studied, and written upon Francis Bacon, and seem to myself to know the man well; as well as I know Shakespeare, through his works. I do not hesitate to say that Bacon’s strength lay in his Analysis: he was a most acute and sagacious critic of the past, and moreover knew the needs of man, and in what direction those needs could be met, and to some extent satisfied. But this made him a tremendous Apollyon—a destructive force of the greatest, the most momentous character. He succeeded as a destroyer, but when he attempted to construct, he made a conspicuous failure. * * * Such a man write Shakespeare! It is really not worth five minutes’ discussion.”

238  About Shakespeare. By Joseph A. Woodhull. In the Republican, Angola, Ind., June 27, 1883. 1½ columns.

Pro-Sh.

239  A Bit of the Baconian Theory. A letter from Constance M. Pott. [Mrs. Henry Pott.] In the Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn., July 15, 1883. 1 column.

Anti-Sh.

This letter is mainly a description of St. Albans, the residence of Lord Bacon, with its historical associations and its objects of archæological interest, as compared with Stratford-on-Avon, and what R. Grant White calls its “museum of doubtful relics and gimcracks.”

[113]

240  William Done For. By John W. Bell. In the Commercial Gazette, July 21, 1883. ½ column.

Anti-Sh.

An answer to Mr. Hooper’s article (title 229) in same paper.

241  Mr. O’Connor’s Letter. In Bucke’s life of Walt Whitman. Philadelphia, August, 1883. (See pages 88 to 93.)

Anti-Sh.

This is an introductory letter by William D. O’Connor to his Good Grey Poet, printed in the appendix to the above work.

“The main scope and purpose of the Shakespeare drama are definitely given by Lord Bacon in connection with his assertion that the compilation of the natural history of the human passions is the first duty of philosophy, and that it is particularly the province of poetry. In this connection he describes the Shakespearean work perfectly. Therein, he says, ‘we may find painted forth, with great life, how passions are kindled and incited; how pacified and refrained; and how again contained from act and further degree; how they disclose themselves; how they work; how they vary; how they gather and fortify; how they are inwrapped, one within another; and how they do fight and encounter one with another; and other the like particulars.’ ‘That is to say,’ remarks Dr. Kuno Fischer, quoting this passage: ‘Bacon desires nothing less than a natural history of the passions; the very thing that Shakespeare has produced.’

---

“The only supreme tyrant is ignorance. If I sought to express the Shakespeare drama in the image of a person, I would not choose the eidolon of any feudal emperor. My choice would be a man like Francis Bacon, * * * wise with all the lore of all the ages, the companion and counsellor of princes, the familiar of gypsies, and tinkers, and sailors as well; deep-eyed, with long insight into the minds of men of every degree; master of multiform experiences; traveled, elegant, courtly, august, intrepid, loyal, gentle, compassionate, sorrowful, beautiful; clothed, from fondness for sumptuous apparel, in purple three-piled velvet, rich laces, and the hat with plumes, yet loving—another anecdote tells of him—to ride with bared head, in the warm and perfumed rains of spring, that he might feel upon him, he said, the universal spirit of the world.”

[114]

242  A Bibliography of the Exhumation Question. By Dr. C. M. Ingleby. In Shakespeare’s Bones. London: Trübner & Co., 1883. 4to. pp. 48.

Unc.

This Bibliography is appended to Dr. Ingleby’s book, and is pertinent to this question only in its references to an exhumation as likely to set at rest the theories (Miss Bacon’s, for instance) as to documents being deposited in the tomb of Shakespeare.

243  The Sonnets of Shakespeare. When, to Whom, and by Whom Written. By Antiquary. (Reprinted from the Truth Seeker, New York, of August 18, 1883.) Pamphlet, 12mo. pp. 12.

Anti-Sh.

The author gives the dedication of the Sonnets:

“To the onlie begetter of | these insuing Sonnets | Mr. W. H. all happinesse | and that eternitie | promised by | our ever-living poet | wisheth | the well-wishing | adventurer in | setting forth | T. T.”

The American Cyclopedia says:

“To whom they were written, and in whose person [T. T.] is among the most difficult of unsolved literary problems. * * * Who this ‘onlie begetter’ was, no man has yet been able satisfactorily to show.”

The writer discusses the various theories on this subject. His conclusions may be summed up in the following extract:

“All the internal and external evidence points to the year 1590 as the date, Francis Bacon as the writer, and the Earl of Essex as the person addressed.”

244  Mr. Morgan and Shakespeare. In the Pioneer Press, St. Paul, August 19, 1883, introducing a letter from Appleton Morgan. 1½ columns.

Anti-Sh.

This refers mainly to Fleay’s Shakespeare Manual, which (Mr. Morgan claims) proves that “many hands and many brains were concerned in composing the works we call Shakespeare.”

[115]

245  The Gout Club Discusses the Authorship of Shakespeare. In the Tribune, Denver, Col., October 14, 1883. 3 columns.

Unc.

What is here called the Gout Club of Denver, consists of a few congenial spirits who meet socially and discuss various subjects in an informal way. In this article various gentlemen are credited with opinions and speeches on the question. The colloquists consist of Col. Ward H. Lamon, Col. J. B. Belford, Judge Ward, Col. Craig, Major Carson, Col. Dormer, and Judge Steck.

Reference is made in this discussion to an article, Who Wrote Shakespeare’s Henry VIII? by J. S. [James Spedding], in the Gentleman’s Magazine for August, 1850, as the earliest mention of a doubt as to the authorship. (The date is erroneously given as February, 1852.) That article, however, does not raise the general question of the authorship, but simply claims to discover the hand of Fletcher in a portion of this play, as a co-worker with Shakespeare.

246  The Offer to the New Shakespere Society. In the Academy, London, November 24, 1883.

Unc.

The “curiosities” of this literature would be incomplete without the following:

“Mr. Furnivall, as director of the New Shakespere Society, has received an amusing letter from New South Wales. A gentleman there has, after seven years’ search, discovered, not only the well-known historical character who wrote all Shakespeare’s plays and poems, but the very month and spot in which eleven of the plays were written, and the probable date and locality in which the rest were composed, the author’s object in writing them, and the historical characters and events meant by the dramatic ones; further, that one character was interpolated, and one entire play was written by the author after Shakespeare’s death. This antipodean discoverer can also now date and explain all the Sonnets except four (123, 124, 144, 146), and those ‘will be explained on a future occasion.’ He knows who ‘Mr. W. H.,’ the begetter of the Sonnets, was, and all the persons to whom they were addressed; and he can show that our royal family is descended from Perdita. So [116]certain is the researcher of the value of his discoveries that he offers to come to London and unfold his secrets to the New Shakespere Society, if only they will guarantee him the payment of £30,000 in case he can convince the majority of them of the truth of his discoveries. A letter from the Premier of New South Wales attests the high standing and sanity of the discoverer.”

247  Notes on Julius Cæsar. By Wm. J. Rolfe. In Shakespeariana (the new Shakespearian monthly. New York: Leonard Scott Publishing Co.), for December, 1883.

Pro-Sh.

A part only of the article refers to this subject:

“The closeness with which the dramatist follows Plutarch in Julius Cæsar and the other Roman plays has been noted by the commentators generally. * * * Even the blunders of Plutarch, or of his copyists or editors (as Decius Brutus for Decimus Brutus, Calphurnia for Calpurnia, and the like), are literally reproduced in the play. To my mind this is proof positive that Bacon did not write it. He was too good a scholar to follow blindly the translation of a translation, repeating errors which a scholar would neither make himself nor fail to detect in another; and he was too independent to adopt the views of any one authority without comparing them with others that were equally well known to him.”

248  Lawyer or no Lawyer. Letter from Appleton Morgan. In Shakespeariana, New York, for January, 1884.

Anti-Sh.

Mr. Morgan argues from the “grave-digger travesty” in Hamlet, and the trial scene in the Merchant of Venice, that “William Shakespeare was neither a lawyer nor a lawyer’s clerk.”

“It is wicked to peep and botanize over the magnificent and matchless poetry of that matchless trial scene. But if it is worth while to find out who wrote that magnificent and matchless poetry, these questions ought not to be stifled.”

[117]

249  Did Shakespeare Write Shakespeare? By Prof. J. H. Gilmore. In the Standard, Chicago, January 31, 1884. 2 columns.

Pro-Sh.

“The plays do not evince learning, but genius. They are especially deficient in that refinement which springs from thorough culture, and which Bacon pre-eminently possessed. Indeed, as insisted by Dowden, the whole habit and spirit of Bacon’s mind and the mind of Shakespeare were different.”

The comparison of Shakespeare and Bacon alluded to above will be found in Dowden’s Shakespeare: His Mind and Art, pages 16, 17.

250  “Who Was Holofernes?” By Mrs. Henry Pott. In Shakespeariana, New York, for February, 1884. 2 pages.

Anti-Sh.

This was occasioned by an article of Mr. Henry Hooper’s, in Shakespeariana, for December, 1883, under the same title, intimating that Shakespeare had Lord Bacon in his mind as the model for Holofernes, the pedantic schoolmaster in Love’s Labor Lost. Mrs. Pott believes that the character of Holofernes was drawn by Bacon himself as an example of “pedantic and wordy affectations,” and quotes from his works to sustain her opinion.

251  The Law in Shakespeare. By C. K. Davis. St. Paul: West Publishing Co., 1884. 12mo. pp. 303.

Pro-Sh.

An index of Legal Terms and References in the plays, with an introduction (pages 3-59) devoted to the Baconian theory in part.

“And now comes some one and says that here is more proof that Shakespeare is a mere alias for Bacon. It is difficult to touch or let alone this vagary with any patience. One is inclined to protest simply in the words of Shakespeare’s epitaph:

[118]

Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare

To digg the dust encloased heare,

and pass on, deeming all secure against a desecration worse than that which the poet cursed.

---

“Charles I. was sixteen years of age when Shakespeare died. Bacon dedicated to him his history of Henry VII. Shakespeare in Macbeth nobly magnified the House of Stuart by a prophecy of its perpetuity. The works of Shakespeare were the closet companion of Charles, who was reproached for this by Milton, at a time when the fierce zealots of rebellion had come to look upon the drama as sinful. Falkland was Charles’s councilor, and it is from him that we have respecting Caliban, the first critical estimate extant of any character in Shakespeare. And yet from prince, king, courtier, poet, or scholar, we hear no hint which can give this modern theory the slightest support.”

252  Davis’s “The Law in Shakespeare.” Two articles in the Pioneer Press, St. Paul, February 24, 1884. [By Appleton Morgan].

a—Review of the book. 2½ columns.

b—Gov. Davis on Shakespeare. ½ column.

Anti-Sh.

The following is the conclusion of the last named article:

“Gov. Davis has added a notable contribution to the material accumulating to answer this question, if answered it ever is to be. The Baconians will, perhaps, accuse him of unprofessional conduct in moving to cross off the roll of Shakespearean possibilities the name of a great lawyer and Lord Chancellor. But they will find their consolation in the fact that here is an entirely new arsenal for carrying on their warfare. For nobody has ever so unmistakably shown the lawyer in the plays before. In fact, Gov. Davis will thus find his peace all around. Shakespeareans will purr him for his heavy blows at the Baconians; Baconians will secretly approve him for building better than he knew when he traced an aristocratic lawyer in every Shakespearean line; and the neutral student will add the book to his Shakespeariana, among the fresh rather than the stale matter, with pleasure and thanksgiving. No Minnesotian will fail to feel honored that one of our most distinguished fellow-citizens has, for the first time, drawn from the history of Francis Bacon, if not from that of William Shakespeare, an almost insuperable and insurmountable reason why Francis Bacon, at least, could not have been William Himself.”

[119]

253  The Baconian Theory. Review of the Promus, in the Times, New York, Feb. 25, 1884. 1 column.

Pro-Sh.

“In publishing this Promus, Mrs. Pott has not only failed to prove that Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays, but she has gone a long way toward proving that Bacon could not possibly have written them. It is inconceivable that a poet in keeping a note book of phrases, etc., to be used in his finished work, should not frequently write out in the glow of creation, whole passages, or, at least, consecutive lines of verse, to be afterward incorporated in his poem. Let any one compare, for instance, Hawthorne’s note book with his tales and romances. He will find entire pages transferred almost bodily from the former into the latter. He will find scores of metaphors, similes, reflections, outlines for stories, descriptions, incidents, etc., the language of which is reproduced, in great part literally, in the completed works of the romancer. There is no such resemblance to be detected anywhere between the fragmentary jottings in the Promus and the text of Shakespeare’s plays. On the other hand, there are in the Promus numbers of quotations and sentences which Bacon did use in his acknowledged writings, and in such cases the language is almost always identical, and any one familiar with the Essays, e. g. will recognize the source of many sayings that have struck his mind.”

254  Shakespeare as a Foreign Linguist. By Prof. James A. Harrison. In Shakespeariana, New York, for March, 1884.

Pro-Sh.

This paper merely refers to the authorship in this suggestive question:

“If Bacon had been the author of these plays, would he not have strewn them with innumerable Latinisms?”

255  Whose Sonnets? By Appleton Morgan. In the Manhattan, New York, May, 1884. 8 pages.

Anti-Sh.

“Either these Sonnets are those mentioned as circulating among Shakespeare’s private friends prior to 1598, or they are not. If they are, they are as doubtfully his as is the rest of the literary matter given by Meres, so far as we know. If they are not, then they have no claim to be called Shakespeare’s except from the fact that his name was put on the title pages of three books of verses, among which verses they appeared.”

[121]

INDEX TO TITLES.

In this index is included, not only the writers, but others who are mentioned as having expressed opinions. Where initials or assumed names are used, and the name of the writer is not known, the articles are indexed only to the magazine or other serial in which they appeared. References are to Title numbers, not pages.

• Abbott, Dr. Edwin A., 187.
• Academy, London, 246.
• Adee, Alvey A., 199, 203, 209, 215, 225.
• Adee, David Graham, 148, 149.
• Advance, Chicago, 49.
• Advertiser, Boston, 189.
• Ainslie, Th., 65.
• Allen, T. S., 177.
• Allgemeine Zeitung, Stuttgart, 205, 206.
• Allibone, S. Austin, 104.
• American, Philadelphia, 151.
• American Register, Paris, 108.
• Appletons’ Journal, N. Y., 114, 116.
• Argus and Radical, Beaver, Pa., 54.
• Argus, Melbourne, 144.
• Athenæum, London, 5, 8, 14, 16, 18, 22, 46, 196.
• Atkinson, Henry G., 120, 123, 166, 176, 181, 183, 186.
• Atlantic Monthly, Boston, 27, 217.
• Bacon, Miss Delia, 4, 17.
• Beecher, Henry Ward, 70.
• Belford, J. B., 245.
• Bell, John W., 155, 178, 240.
• Bell’s Weekly Messenger, London, 117.
• Benton, Myron B., 116.
• Bibliographer, London, 182.
• Bibliopolist (American), N. Y., 57.
• Blackwood’s Magazine, Edinburgh, 11.
• Blade, Toledo, O., 155.
• Bohn, Henry G., 28.
• Boston Public Library Bulletin, 216.
• Boucicault, Dion, 61.
• Bradford, Rev. A. B., 54.
• Brady, James T., 62.
• Braley, A. B., 233.
• British Quarterly Review, London, 174.
• Brougham, John, 62.
• Buccellati, Prof. Antonio, 94.
• Buckton, T. J., 26.
• Bulletin, Philadelphia, 64.
• Bulloch, John, 105, 106.
• Burgess, J. B., 65.
• Burk, Addison B., 68.
• Burton, William E., 62.
• Butler, Gen. B. F., 95.
• Caldwell, George S., 98.
• Calkins, E. A., 214.
• [122]Canadian Monthly, Toronto, 119.
• Carlyle, Thomas, 73, 131.
• Carson, Major, 245.
• Carvalho, S. N., 77.
• Catholic World, New York, 101.
• Cattell, Charles C., 103, 112, 113, 123, 130.
• Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, 2.
• Christian Observer, Richmond, 45.
• Christian Register, Boston, 88.
• Chronicle, Brookline, Mass., 171.
• Chronicle, Newcastle, Eng., 92.
• Chronicle, San Francisco, 165, 179.
• Church Eclectic, Utica, N. Y., 126, 232.
• Civil Service Review, 90.
• Clarke, Rev. J. Freeman, 132.
• Clipper, New York, 51.
• Close, Richard Colama, 127.
• Colquhoun, Sir Patrick, 117.
• Commercial Gazette, Cincinnati, 229, 234, 240.
• Commonwealth, Boston, 218.
• Conway, Moncure D., 131, 234.
• Cornell Review, Ithaca, N. Y., 87.
• Corson, Prof. Hiram, 71, 87.
• Courant, Hartford, Conn., 197.
• Courier, Lebanon, Pa., 70.
• Craig, Col., 245.
• Crosby, Joseph, 81, 126, 129, 231.
• Davey, R., 63.
• Davis, C. K., 251.
• Davis, L. Clarke, 71.
• Dixon, William Hepworth, 93.
• Donnelly, Ignatius, 53.
• Dormer, Col., 245.
• Dougherty, Daniel, 65.
• Eagle, Brooklyn, 34, 61.
• Engel, Dr. Eduard, 236.
• Enquirer, Cincinnati, 179.
• Evening Post, New York, 44.
• Farrar, Mrs. John, 30.
• Ferrier, William W., 133, 142.
• Fillebrown, Edward, 171, 218.
• Follett, O., 118, 138, 220.
• Fraser’s Magazine, London, 29, 41, 58.
• Freeman’s Journal, Dublin, 121, 154.
• Furness, Horace Howard, 63.
• Furnivall, F. J., 97.
• Gazette, Birmingham, Eng., 48.
• Gazette, Cincinnati, 151.
• Gazette, Washington, 190.
• Gilmore, J. H., 249.
• Globe Democrat, St. Louis, 153.
• Globe, London, 117.
• Golden Age, 54.
• Good Literature, New York, 146.
• Hackett, James H., 44, 62.
• Hackett, Recorder, 67.
• Hall, A. Oakey, 62.
• Harper’s Magazine, New York, 43.
• Harrison, Prof. James A., 254.
• Hart, Prof. John S., 78.
• Hart, Joseph C., 1.
• Harte, Bret, 61.
• Harvard University Bulletin, 135.
• Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 6, 17, 22, 24, 27.
• Henshaw, Mrs. Sarah E., 49.
• Herald, Angola, Ind., 133, 142.
• Herald, New York, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80.
• Herald, Stratford-on-Avon, 144.
• Higgins, Rev. Father, 200.
• Hinton, Richard J., 39, 190.
• Holl, H., 136.
• Holmes, Nathaniel, 32, 93, 153, 167, 200.
• Home Journal, New York, 36.
• Hooper, Henry, 229, 250.
• Hopper, A., 9.
• Hornet, London, 91.
• Hudson, Rev. Henry N., 122.
• Illustrated London News, 10, 12, 13.
• Ingleby, Dr. C. M., 12, 59, 81, 83, 99, 100, 122, 160, 166, 237, 242.
• [123]Inter-Ocean, Chicago, 151.
• Jewish Messenger, New York, 37.
• Journal des Debats, Paris, 107.
• King, Thomas D., 84.
• Knortz, Karl, 157.
• Lamon, Ward H., 245.
• Leach, Rev. William T., 84.
• Leighton, William, Jr., 230.
• Leland, T. C., 214.
• L’Instruction Publique, Paris, 109.
• Literary Gazette, London, 7, 16, 19.
• Literary World, Boston, 115, 125, 134, 140, 164, 188, 204, 209, 225, 237.
• Littell’s Living Age, Boston, 6, 58.
• Mail, Birmingham, Eng., 227.
• Manhattan, New York, 255.
• Memoriale Diplomatique, Paris, 94.
• Mercury, Leeds, Eng., 221.
• Mercury (Sunday), Philadelphia, 55.
• Methodist, New York, 40.
• Modern Thought, London, 185.
• Morgan, Appleton, 114, 147, 164, 184, 188, 213, 219, 222, 228, 232, 244, 248, 252, 255.
• Morning Journal, Cincinnati, 223.
• Nation, New York, 33, 211.
• National Reformer, London, 183, 186.
• National Review, London, 20.
• Nederlandsche Spectator, The Hague, 110.
• News, Milwaukee, 70.
• Nonconformist and Independent, London, 159, 172.
• North American Review, Boston and New York, 23, 42, 132.
• Northwestern, Oshkosh, Wis., 177.
• Notes and Queries, London, 3, 9, 26, 31, 59, 83, 100, 160, 166.
• O’Connor, William D., 24, 241.
• O’Leary, Prof., 74.
• Oracle, London, 162.
• Owens, John E., 65.
• Pall Mall Gazette, London, 224.
• Palmerston, Lord, 29, 95.
• Philosophic Inquirer, Madras, India, 176.
• Pierrepont, Edwards, 65.
• Pioneer Press, St. Paul, 150, 212, 213, 222, 239, 244, 252.
• Plumptre, Rev. E. H., 146.
• Pollock, David, 78.
• Post, Boston, 66, 219.
• Post (Evening), Hartford, Conn., 193.
• Post, Washington, 161.
• Pott, Mrs. Henry, 187, 239, 250.
• Press, Philadelphia, 61, 64.
• Prichard, J. V., 58, 80.
• Prior, Sir James, 25.
• Punch, London, 201.
• Putnam’s Monthly, New York, 5.
• Pyle, J. G., 150, 212.
• Record, Philadelphia, 197.
• Record-Union, Sacramento, Cal., 151.
• Rees, James, 55.
• Register, Sandusky, O., 151, 220.
• Register, Wheeling, W. Va., 230, 231.
• Republic (Sunday), Philadelphia, 56.
• Republic, Washington, 148, 149, 199, 203, 215, 228.
• Republican, Angola, Ind., 139, 238.
• Republican, Springfield, Mass., 38.
• Republican, St. Louis, 72, 200.
• Richardson, Dr. B. W., 136.
• Roberts, R. P. Hampton, 100.
• Robinson, W. S., 38.
• Rolfe, William J., 115, 125, 134, 209, 225, 247.
• Ross, J. Wilson, 185.
• Round Table, New York, 35, 39.
• Rye, Francis, 119.
• Saturday Reader, Montreal, 47.
• Saturday Review, London, 89, 161, 195.
• [124]Scribner’s Monthly, New York, 82, 85, 86.
• Secular Review, London, 123, 181.
• Sedgwick, A. G., 42.
• Sentinel, Indianapolis, 70.
• Sentinel, Milwaukee, 161, 184, 202.
• Shackford, Rev. C. C., 23.
• Shakespeariana, New York, 247, 248, 250, 254.
• Shoemaker, W. L., 204.
• Skipton, H. S., 59, 83.
• Slocomb, R., 9.
• Smith, George B., 177.
• Smith, James, 144.
• Smith, Lucy Toulmin, 81.
• Smith, William Henry, 6, 9, 14, 21, 22, 48.
• Southern Quarterly Review, New Orleans, 124.
• Spectator, London, 146, 207.
• Spedding, James, 52, 93, 245.
• Spiritualist, London, 120.
• Standard, Chicago, 249.
• State Journal, Madison, Wis., 161, 170, 178.
• Stearns, Chas. W., 50.
• Steck, Judge, 245.
• Stedman, E. C., 62.
• Stouder, O. C., 128.
• St. James’s Gazette, London, 208.
• Stronach, George, 91.
• Sun, New York, 198.
• Taverner, Prof. J. W., 96.
• Telegraph, London, 117.
• Telegraph (Sunday), Milwaukee, 214, 233.
• Telegraph, Pittsburg, 151.
• Theobald, R. M., 159, 172.
• Thomson, Dr. William, 102, 121, 137, 145, 156, 158, 194.
• Times, New York, 64, 253.
• Times-Star, Cincinnati, 235.
• Timmins, Sam., 227.
• Towne, Rev. Edward C., 88, 192, 226.
• Townsend, Geo. H., 15.
• Transcript (Evening), Boston, 163, 180, 192, 226.
• Transcript, Oakland, Cal., 69.
• Tribune, Chicago, 189.
• Tribune, Denver, Col., 198, 245.
• Tribune, Minneapolis, Minn., 53.
• Tribune, New York, 152, 210.
• Truth Seeker, New York, 243.
• Tuel, J. E., 70.
• Tullidge, E. W., 141, 169, 173.
• Tullidge’s Quarterly, Salt Lake, Utah, 141, 167, 169, 173.
• Vaile, E. O., 85.
• Varagnac, Berard, 107, 108.
• Victorian Review, Melbourne, 127.
• Villemain, M. J., 109.
• Wallack, Lester, 61.
• Ward, C. A., 59, 83.
• Ward, Judge, 245.
• Warwick, J. H., 139.
• Weiss, John, 111.
• Westminster Review, London, 168.
• Wheeler, A. C., 61.
• Whitaker, Daniel K., 124.
• White, Richard Grant, 61, 217.
• Wilkes, George, 58, 95.
• Windle, Mrs. C. F. Ashmead, 143, 165.
• Wittenberger Magazine, Springfield, O., 128, 129.
• Woodhull, Joseph A., 238.
• World, New York, 191.
• Wyman, W. H., 170, 175, 214.