THE SHAKESPEARE-BACON CONTROVERSY.
The Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy : a Report of the Trial of an Issue in Westminster Hall, June 20th, 1627. By William Willis, Treasurer of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. (Sampson Low, Marston, and Co. 3s. net.)—Some time since Mr. Webb, a County Court Judge and a lawyer of distinction, published a work entitled "The Mystery of William Shakespeare: a Summary of Evidence," in which he stated the case for Lord Verulam's authorship of the plays with as much reasonableness and force as the inherent weakness of his position allowed. Now Sir William Willis, also a County Court Judge, and one of the most distinguished advocates of a few years since, appears on the orthodox side and treats this wearisome question from a new and interesting point of view. Mr. Willis, considering "that the Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy could be best determined by a trial legally conducted, particularly as such a process would exclude all hearsay evidence or second-hand information," gives the detailed report of an imaginary trial in Westminster Hall in 1627 to determine for the purposes of the administration of Mr. William Shakespeare's estate the authorship of the plays. The choice of the year was settled by the fact that then both Shakespeare and Bacon were dead ; and of course the evidence given to the Court is the evidence only of persons living and documents extant at that date. The examination and cross-examination of the witnesses bring out very clearly the main contentions of each side, while it is im- possible not to admire the really lifelike and almost brilliant play of words and repartee between the counsel and the witnesses. The evidence of Ben Jenson is the pivot of the case. We wish that Air. Willis had cross-examined Mr. Jonson on the subject of his play, The Poetaster, published in 1602. It is alleged by Mr. Webb and others that Shakespeare is caricatured in this play, and that here and in the later reference to the "poet-ape" Jenson bitterly attacks the player. Even if the attacks of 1602 and 1607 are admitted, they are, first of all, arguments in favour of the fact that Shakespeare, by the method of alleged robbery, not from Bacon, but from brother- playwrights, actually wrote the plays ; and secondly, they are not in the least inconsistent with the fact that Jenson seven years after Shakespeare's death—seven years in which he could study the work of the great dead dramatist—was able in the folio of 1623 to declare with noble emphasis his ripe belief in the deathless value of his mighty rival's work. Surely it is easier to believe this than to explain an apparent discrepancy of opinion and criticism by the formulation of a theory that throws on to Bacon's shoulders a new and huge burden of literary creation. It appears to us that the whole Baconian position consists in an attempt to recon- cile facts with preconceived ideas. We are willing to admit the antecedent improbability that the Stratford Grammar School boy should have developed by a process of intellectual training into the Swan of Avon, but we must add that the same antecedent improbability would exist in the case of any given boy in any given age under any given conditions whatsoever. But if we grant the superb genius of the person, whoever he may have been, who produced the Shakespeare plays, the antecedent improbability is swept away, and the entire opportunities of his epoch lay in the grasp of a man possessing a plenitude of receptiveness unknown before, with a personality of style that nothing can hide, and a wealth of imagination that stands alone. It is, therefore, merely beating the air to say that the playwright was not Shakespeare on the ground that Shakespeare was the butcher's son. No " opportunities " could account for the playwright. It is equally vain to say that the playwright was Bacon on the ground that Bacon could be the only man of incomparable attainment in that age. This is, in effect, to say that God could not make both Bacon and Shakespeare, but could make a man who combined the magnificence of each. In order to arrive at such an unnecessary result the laws of evidence are violated, and the verdict of common-sense, which Mr. Willis so vividly places on record, is treated with contempt. No man who has read Bacon and Shakespeare and possesses an ear could for one moment believe that their pens were identical. They live at the opposite poles of literature, and the fact that those who are troubled with the difficulties which lie around the growth of Shakespeare's genius are forced, for want of another personality, to call him Bacon is in itself a proof of the desperate character of their case. It is, indeed, far easier to believe in the Shakespeare we have known than to con- ceive of such a miracle as the man who could deliberately divide his personality into the philosopher who wrote the " Organon" and the dramatist who conceived King Lear. The Baconian declines, as unreasonable, to believe in a superb manifestation of human genius (since such a belief removes all difficulty in accept- ing Shakespeare), and yet offers us instead the anthropomorphic monstrosity which he calls Bacon.
Lord Penzance on the Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy : a Italicial Summing-up. By the Right Hon. Sir James Plaisted Wilde, Baron Penzance. Edited by M. H. Kinnear. With a Biographical Note by F. A. Inderwick, K.C. (Sampson Low, Marston, and Co. 55. net.)—It is with a certain sense of astonishment that we find so distinguished a man as the late Lord Penzance also among the heretics in this strange controversy, and we cannot think that if he had lived to issue his book he would have called his argument against the recognised authorship of the plays a "judicial summing-up," in view of the prefatory note that the reader "must not expect to find in these pages an equal and impartial leaning of the judge alternately to the case of both parties, as would, I hope, be found in any judicial summing-up of the evidence in any real judicial inquiry." Lord Penzance bases his argument on the evidence with regard to Shakespeare that has been already collected (for the most part by orthodox persons) ; he makes no claim to original research; he considers that the attempt to establish a cypher has "totally failed." Mr. Inderwick in his interesting and valuable intro- ductory note describes the book as "an unimpassioned résumé of the case against Shakespeare," and read in this light it is of much interest. The argument consists of an elaborate demonstration of the antecedent improbability that a man of Shakespeare's educa- tion, life, and position rhould have written the plays, of the incon- sistency of Shakespeare's last years at Stratford with the fact of the authorship, and of the likelihood attaching to Bacon as the author if Shakespeare was not. Close perusal and consideration of Lord Pen- zance's pages have left the writer of this notice absolutely unshaken in his orthodoxy. It must be assumed, whoever wrote the plays, that they were written by a man of transcendent genius, and when this fact is assumed the whole argument against Shakespeare of an a priori improbability falls to the ground unless it could be shown that William Shakespeare had not the opportunities of acquiring the knowledge shown in the plays. But no such thing can be shown. It is asserted that Stratford was bookless. It is a pure assumption. In the Middle Ages even in tiny remote towns a considerable library existed, and it is far more likely than not that the boy Shakespeare had access to many books in Stratford. Moreover, his five (or seven) years in London before he became known, and his continual intercourse at the 'Mermaid' with all the most brilliant scholars of the age, sufficiently account (assuming a great memory and an exceptional receptive capacity) for all the learning and the knowledge of law and medicine shown in the plays. Strangely enough, Lord Penzance never mentions the extraordinary opportunities afforded at the 'Mermaid' for the acquisition of curious and recondite knowledge. At such a place the very class of knowledge that Shakespeare shows would have been displayed, while elementary matters would never have been spoken about. Lord Penzance, moreover, neglects most astonish- ingly one point of great magnitude. If Bacon was the author, then a conspiracy of silence, led by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Bacon, of the most elaborate character was successfully contrived. Numbers of persons of the most diverse kinds and of the most varied character were privy to this conspiracy, and yet no whisper of the plot crept out. To believe this is to believe an antecedent improbability that transcends any improbability that lies behind our belief in Shakespeare. So far from any contemporary dis- belief in Shakespeare's authorship appearing, he is accused of stealing for the purposes of his plays from all the authors of his tune. His own suspicious, jealous age and his own literary rivals believed in him. It is the privilege of an unproductive age to disbelieve in him.
Is it Shakespeare? By a Cambridge Graduate. (John Murray. 12s. net.)—If Mr. Begley desired an impartial hearing for his theories concerning the "Nova Solyma," he should have been at greater pains to ensure the anonymity of the present work. Not that we suppose that many readers will have troubled to decipher the author's anagram; but the character of the argumentation, and, indeed, the mere style of the writing, betray his secret within the first few pages. We are certainly not of those who would deny his right to a fair hearing on any a priori grounds, and we have been at pains to follow his evidence in as judicial and critical a temper as possible. If we have sometimes found this a hard, task, it is not from any consideration of the tendency of that evidence, but because his reasoning would be no whit less futile were it directed to the proving of the most obvious or orthodox of propositions. There are two kinds of argu- ment of which Baconian writers have shown themselves par- ticularly fond, and both figure largely in the present volume. One consists in taking some passage of obvious and admitted obscurity—such are frequently to be met with in Elizabethan literature—in imposing upon it some interpretation which supports their particular views, and challenging critics to explain it in accordance with the orthodox position. It will have some day to be recognised that obscurities and corrupt passages do exist, and that an interpretation per se absurd can gather no shred of proba- bility from the fact of no other being advanced. The other favourite method of argument is to take some admitted or assumed fact and therefrom to make some more or less probable inference. We will assume that the chances of the inference being correct are approximately even. A. further inference is then made under much the same conditions. After, say, half-a- dozen steps, a startling result is probably arrived at, which is then triumphantly claimed as "proved." A very elementary know- ledge of arithmetic will, however, show that, apart from its inherent probability, or the reverse, the chance in favour of the final inference being correct is not more than one in sixty- four ! Unlike most Baconians, Mr. Begley bases his arguments largely upon the poems. It has been said of the sonnets that every conceivable interpretation has been placed on them, from the loftiest philosophy to the basest immorality. The present author takes the latter view. Having read into the poems generally evidence of a scandal of a distinctly unpleasant nature, he then proceeds to parade in the light of day certain well-known and unseemly weaknesses of Bacon. These charges he seeks to establish by elaborate and not very convincing chains of argu- ment, when a study of sundry documents in the British Museum would have at once placed the matter beyond all possible doubt. Having thus established a connection to his own satisfaction, he proceeds to see scandal everywhere, from the Chancellor's maintenance of certain old retainers to Rosalind's doublet and hose. The nature of the discussion would forbid our entering here upon any detailed consideration of the case, even did space allow ; we can only say that the arguments advanced are very largely of the nature indicated above.
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