The authorship of Shakespeare

Front matter

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Preface

In these days, perhaps, there needs be no apology for writing a book. But a book without a preface, like a dinner without a grace, would seem to be uncivil. Let us have, at least, " so much as will serve to be prologue to an egg and butter." This book must speak for itself : I did not see any good reason why it should not be printed. It may be, that the belles-letters critics will think little of it, or the trade still less, or the fixed orthodoxies, that it ought never to have been written at all, or the philosophers, that it is no great affair at best. But inasmuch as thought and knowledge among men lie stratified, as it were, like the densities of the ocean, or the air, in gradations infinite between the lower deeps and the higher realms, this book, like any other that is thrown into the flowing sea of things, may find its own level and so float somewhere ; howsoever that level should come near to measuring the weight of book, writer, and reader. It does not presume to contain anything that is positively new, or that was unknown before : it claims only to state things in its own way. I have sometimes thought I had hit upon a new idea, or discovered a new fact, but I was pretty sure to find the same thing stated, or glanced at, in a week or so, in some newspaper, or in some book, new or old, and for that matter (it might be) as old as the vi PREFACE.

hieroglyphics. If some things in this book should be new to some readers, they will bear in mind the saying of Plato, that " what is strange is the result of ignorance in the case of all " ; and if, to others, some things should appear to be either not new, or, if new, not true, they will, of course, exercise the common privilege and judge for themselves.

Doubtless there have been many who could never rest satisfied with the story of William Shakespeare, any more than a Coleridge, or a Schlegel ; nor attain to any clear solution of the problem, that the spontaneous genius of a born poet, without the help of much learning, should come to see deeper into all the mysteries of God, Nature, and Man, and write better about the universal world, than the most accomplished scholars, critics, and philosophers, and be himself still unaware that he had done anything remarkable, wholly indifferent to fame (what might be no great wonder), and even (what may be more to the point) utterly heedless of the preservation of works which the author, howsoever he might deem them to be but trifles idly cast from him, could not but know to be " the wanton burthen of the prime " and the best (in that kind) of the age in which he lived, or of many ages : — as if he had been one,

" whose hand, Like the base 'Indian, threw a pearl away, Richer than all his tribe " ; —

an unparalleled mortal, indeed! — nor of that other problem, that a common under -actor should turn poet, and, rummaging over the hereditary lumber of the play - house, should gather up the best of the traditional material, and through the limbec of his

PREFACE. Vll

capacious brain distil the quintessence of British genius from time immemorial, — a truly representative man, forsooth ! Incredulous men that have been born as well as poets, and perhaps never believed so much as the tale about Santa Claus, not to speak of many other prodigious miracles, may have preferred to disbelieve all the biographers, critics, and teachers ; or, if still believing them, to deny, flatly, in the outset, without further question, or any particular search, that there could be, or was, anything so very great in this Shakespeare drama after all ; or they may even have tried to persuade themselves that this ingenious actor had, by frequent hearing, caught the manner of the stage, and learned like a parrot to imitate the tone, style, and diction of tragedy and comedy alike ; still believing that no deep learning, no superior wisdom, no high art, and no divine revelation, beyond the natural flow of good native wit and sense, was to be found in these plays, and that what little learning the author had, was all borrowed, or picked up about the streets and theatres, allowing only that he was gifted with some sharp powers of observation, " a facetious grace in writing," and a pretty large amount of faculty in general. And so, not imagining that the highest and best things could spontaneously well up in such a man as from an original fountain of inspiration, they may have laid him up on a shelf, and never afterwards looked for such things in his works ; and the jewels that lay scattered within sight may have been passed by unseen, as if they had been pearls cast before swine : —

" 'T is very pregnant, The jewel that we find, we stoop and take 't,

Vlll PREFACE.

Because we see it; but what we do not see, We tread upon, and never think of it."

Meas. for Meets., Act II. Sc. 1.

Bacon found it to be just so with the history of Winds ; for, says he, " it is evident, that the dullness of men is such and so infelicitous, that when things are put before their feet, they do not see them, unless admonished, but pass right on." It would stand to reason, that the most precious things would not be strewn abroad thus by a mere swine-herd, if they had not come into his possession in an accidental or some other way, and without his having much knowledge of their real value ; nor by a coney-catching, beer-drinking idler, or a common play-actor, or even a prosperous stage-manager. It must be admitted that learning does not come by instinct ; nor can sensible men be made to believe that high philosophy can come by fantastic miracle. There never was any royal road to mathematics, though there have been very royal mathematicians.

An article appeared in Putnam's Magazine for January 1856 (afterwards known to have been written by Delia Bacon), in which some general considerations were set forth with much eloquence and ability, why William Shakespeare could not have written the plays which have been attributed to him ; and the opinion was also pretty distinctly intimated, that Lord Bacon was the real author of them, or, at least, that he had had some hand in the work ; but no proofs were then adduced. Being much struck with this idea, and for my own satisfaction, I began to look for the evidence on which such a proposition might rest, and finding it very considerable, and indeed quite amazing, I had thrown my

PREFACE. JX

notes into some form, before the publication of Miss Bacon's work in 1857. 1 Her book not appearing to have satisfied the critical world of the truth of her theory, much more than the " Letter to Lord Ellesmere," by Mr. William Henry Smith, I have thought it worth while to give them the results of my studies also, which have been considerably extended, since that date ; and if enough be not found herein to settle the question on impregnable grounds, it may at least tend to exculpate them from any supposition of mental aberration in so far as they have ascribed this authorship to Francis Bacon. But I do not at all agree with her opinion that any other person had a hand in the work : on the contrary, I will endeavor to show that the whole genuine canon of Shakespeare was written by this one and the same author. It may be that some persons have been already convinced of this fact : but the critics appear to be agreed in rejecting the theory altogether. More direct and palpable proofs seem to be required ; for this " our Shakespeare " was not to be stripped of the peerless mantle he had worn unquestioned for above two centuries and a half, on mere generalities, however conclusive to the mind of the philosophical thinker. Certainly, if he is to be put on trial for his name and reputation, he has a right to be confronted with the proofs in the high court of criticism ; and his jury, which is the great republic of letters, will require the best and the most ample evidence to be produced, before they will agree to disrobe him of all his honors. On nothing less than proof, the most positive, direct, and complete, will those " foreign

1 Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded. By Delia Bacon, with a Preface by Nathaniel Hawthorne. London and Boston, 1857.

X PREFACE.

nations and next ages," to whom the final appeal was made, now consent (such is the tenacity of long adverse possession) to eject the ass from the lion's skin, and turn over the rich legacy they have so long accepted in his name to the credit of another, though that other be one who considered his name and memory worth bequeathing to them : —

" Blanch. 0, well did he become that lion's robe That did disrobe the lion of that robe !

Bast. It lies as sightly on the back of him As great Alcides' shews upon an ass. — But, ass, I '11 take that burthen from your back, Or lay on that shall make your shoulders crack."

K. John, Act II. Sc. 1.

It should be understood, to what manner of man this authorship belongs ; for it is not only

" a fault to heaven, A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, To reason most absurd,"

but a positive injury done to learning and philosophy, and to every individual scholar and man, who shall be taught to believe the enormous impossibility that such works could be, and were, written by mere genius without learning, or by some more fantastically supernatural inspiration. Does not any honest man feel an unutterable indignation, when he discovers (after long years of thought and study, perhaps), that he has been all the while misled by false instruction, and that, consequently, the primest sources of truth have been left lumbering his shelves in neglect, because he could not, or even because he could (for it would be much the same thing with him, if he could) be made to believe that anything more could come from a very common (or indeed a very uncommon) person, than such a man could

PREFACE. .XI

know, and that he has thus been drawn aside by false shadows from those paths which alone can lead to a comprehensible philosophy of the universe, the real basis at last of his everlasting accountabilities, and been put off and befooled with paltry child's fables ? By the help of the Eternal Power and such abilities as we possess, let the truth and the proof of it come forth as fast, and spread as wide, as it is possible to make it. There is no danger of its getting too far by any means whatever.

The chief object of this work is, to do something toward making the truth of this matter appear, still more clearly, and on other and (if possible) quite unanswerable grounds. It was written under the supposition that no one else would undertake to do the same thing better ; and it is published because it is believed that the duty is not yet sufficiently done (and I know very well how inadequate is this attempt to do it), that sublime duty, which the great testator, by his last will, left to foreign nations and the next ages to perform, whenever they should be able like himself to comprehend "the universal world," and, with Plato, to recognize the Philosopher, the Poet, the Seer, and the Saviour of men, for all one, — justice to his name and memory.

For the quotations from the Plays of Shakespeare, I have preferred to make them conform to the text of the edition edited by Richard Grant "White, and published in Boston, in 1859 - 1862, except in a very few instances in which his emendations, or previous readings, appeared to me to be so clearly erroneous that I could not accept them ; and I have done this the more readily, because this edition has

Xii PREFACE.

evidently been edited with great care, good critical judgment, and excellent scholarship, and especially for the reason that the editor has taken the Folio of 1623 as the basis of his text and his criticism.

For the text of Bacon, I have used the edition of his works edited by Basil Montagu (London 1825), and the American republication of it (Philadelphia 1854), and also the excellent edition of Spedding, Ellis, and Heath (since the republication of it in Boston, in 1860-1864), which has been edited with extraordinary learning and ability ; but as the larger part of my work was done before this edition appeared, I have not thought it worth while to undertake the labor of making the references conform to either one edition only. Wherever I have discovered an erroneous reading to have been corrected by the later and better edition, I have not failed to profit by it. In making quotations from the Latin works, I have not hesitated to give my own translations, when no better were at hand, but always with especial care to preserve as far as possible the style, manner, and diction of the author, and, at all events, the exact meaning of the original, as it would be expressed in the language of modern philosophy.

For the Letters of Bacon, I have had to depend mainly upon the edition of Montagu, but with the valuable assistance of the first two volumes of the " Letters and Life of Lord Bacon " by James Spedding (London 1861-2), which contain the letters and occasional works down to the year 1601, carefully edited and explained in chronological order ; and I have regretted exceedingly that the remaining volumes of this interesting and important work have inot yet appeared.

PREFACE. Xiii

The Frontispiece, engraved and brought to life by Mr. Joseph Andrews of Boston, is taken from the engraving (in Montagu's edition) of the white marble monument which was erected to the memory of Lord Bacon by " the care and gratitude " of Sir Thomas Meautys, within the precincts of old Verulam, " representing his full portraiture in the posture of studying," says Dr. Rawley, together with a part of the inscription composed by that " rare wit," Sir Henry Wotton.

Without more, the work is submitted to the consideration and judgment of the general jury of candid readers ; and, as more than one author has said before, if they shall find half the pleasure in reading it that I have had in writing it, they shall be welcome.

N. HOLMES.

St. Louis, May 21st, 1866.

AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE

Chapter I. Peeliminaeies. — Shakespeare

" Do not inflate plain things into marvels, but reduce marvels to plain things."

Bacon.

The biography of William Shakespeare may now be considered as in the main settled and fixed for all time. Modern research has explored every forgotten corner in search of new facts ; all discoverable archives and dusty repositories of lost books and derelict papers have been ransacked ; every known record, monument, and relic, of the age in which he lived, has been thoroughly questioned, even to the last trace and tradition of his name and family ; and, failing any further genuine data, the most ingenious and consummate forgeries have been attempted. And if all honest inquiry be not yet exhausted, it has been made sufficiently clear, at least, that but little more can be added hereafter to what is already known of his personal history, and nothing that can be expected materially to change the general scope and character of the latest received account of his life. He is thus delivered down to us as essentially an uneducated man, whether we are to speak of education in the sense of modern times, or of the sixteenth century, or of the ancient schools. True, there have been great self-educated men in all times ; as, indeed, who is not, at last, in one sense, a self-educated man ? That there is a vast difference, however, between the learning and philosophy which the same genius will attain to, in a given time, in any age, with the aid of all existing helps, and that which he may reach without such aid, no man needs to be informed. School, or no school, without books and studies, we know that learning is impossible.

Beyond that primary instruction which could be obtained at the free grammar-school of Stratford-on-Avon, in which Latin was taught by one master, nearly three centuries ago, it is pretty certain that William Shakespeare had no learning from public institutions, or from private tuition. His father, John Shakespeare, a glover by trade, sometime wool-stapler and butcher, at different times constable, high bailiff, and alderman of Stratford-on-Avon, and, at last, a gentleman, by grant of a coat-of-arms from the Herald's College, in 1599, at the instance of his son William, when he had attained to prosperity, was no doubt a respectable burgher of that place, but certainly so illiterate that he could not write his own name, and executed written instruments by making his mark ; and the same was the case with his mother, notwithstanding that she was descended of an ancient family of goodly estate. From the manner in which the name was written by members of the family in Warwickshire, it is evident that it was usually pronounced Shaxper, though it seems to have had no fixed spelling among them, not even with William himself, for his autographic signatures to his will appear to have it both Shahspere and Shakspeare ; but it was printed in his lifetime, and in the Folio of 1623, and passed into the contemporary literature, as Shakespeare ; and so let it remain. 1

William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon, on the 23d day of April, 1564, and according to what is known of his early life, he attended the free grammar-school of that place for some few years and until about the year 1578, when he was taken from school, his assistance being 1 Halliwell's Life of William Shakespeare, London, 1848.

required by his father in his business at home. The occupations in which his father appears to have been engaged, at this time, were those of an ordinary yeoman, including the business of a glover, a wool-stapler, and, as some say, a butcher also ; and he was, at the same time, and down to the year 1586, an alderman of the corporation of Stratford. On the 28th day of November, 1582, the son William was married, at the age of eighteen, to Ann Hathaway, some years older than himself, and the daughter of a neighboring farmer. Their eldest daughter, Susanna, was born in May following ; but his latest biographer thinks there must have been some preliminary espousals, in accordance with a frequent custom of the time, as early as the summer of 1582. 1 After this date, his father appears to have fallen into embarrassed circumstances. He was superseded in his office of alderman, in 1586, for non-attendance, and was presented as a recusant, in 1592, " for not coming to church for feare of process for debt." There is indubitable evidence that, for several years prior to 1587, different theatrical companies from London occasionally visited Stratford-on-Avon (the native place of some of the actors), in some instances, under the patronage of John Shakespeare and other aldermen ; and it is highly probable that the son William would be attracted to their company. There are uncertain traditions also that, during this period, he had been in the habit of drinking beer with the pot-house clubs, hunting coneys for amusement, and poaching on the neighboring deer-parks by way of romance, until he was driven away from Stratford by the persecution of Sir Thomas Lucy ; but whether from this cause, or driven by stress of poverty, or merely drawn by the attractions of the theatre, it appears that, about the year 1587, he went up to London, carrying with him but a small stock of learning, and became attached to the theatre in a very humble capacity.

Ben Jonson informs us that he had " but small Latin i HalliwelL and less Greek " ; and " rare Ben " must certainly have known the truth of the matter. Indeed, it is plain his learning must have been little enough, however obtained ; and in this, all the traditions concur. } Precisely how his time was employed, during these nine years after leaving the grammar-school, of course we cannot certainly know ; but there is no intimation in anything that has come down to us, that he was at all given to books, or to studies of any kind./ The employments in which it would seem to be almost certain he must have been engaged, the circumstances which surrounded him, and the few details of his life which have been preserved, would all go to exclude the hypothesis of his having given any considerable attention to letters or studies, in this period. There is no written composition of his in existence, belonging to this time, and no proof that there ever was any, except a mere tradition of a lampoon upon Sir Thomas Lucy, of which no scrap has been authentically preserved. The verses which later traditions have attributed to him, whether as fragments of this supposed lampoon, or as epitaphs and epigrams written towards the close of his career, are, as any one may see, but miserable doggerel at best, and might have been written by the sorriest poetaster. With Halliwell and other critics, though immaterial to our purpose, we may safely reject them all as having no reliable basis of authenticity, and as necessarily implying, on the supposition of such basis, "a deterioration of power for which no one has assigned a sufficient reason." 1 The critic who would find a trace of the great poet in these performances, should remember Bacon's caution to the interpreter of nature : " If the sow with her snout should happen to imprint the letter A upon the ground, wouldst thou, therefore, imagine she could write out a whole tragedy as one letter ? " 2

1 Halliwell, 270.

2 Interp. of Nat, Works, by Montagu, (London), XV., 101; Temporis Partus Mas., Works, by Spedding, Ellis, and Heath, (Boston), VII., 30.

EMPLOYMENTS.

§ 2. EMPLOYMENTS.

That his first employment, on coming to London, was that of a link-boy, holding horses at the door of the theatre, as some traditions represent, would seem to be very questionable ; but that it was not in any capacity above that of a mere " servitor," or under-actor, his most careful biographers seem to admit as highly probable, if not quite certain. The first certain knowledge that we have of him in London, however, is of the date of 1592, when there seems to have been a distinct allusion to his name in Greene's " Groatsworth of Wit," in which, apparently speaking for himself and other writers for the stage against the actors, " those Anticks garnisht in our colours," Greene says : " Yes, trust them not ; for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygres heart, wrapt in a players hyde, supposes hee is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you ; and beeing an absolute Johannes factotum, is, in his owne conceyt, the only Shake-scene in a countrey." * From this it may be inferred that he was beginning to have some kind of reputation as an author of plays, and, in 1593-4, the " Venus and Adonis " and the " Rape of Lucrece " are dedicated to the Earl of Southampton under his name. From this time forward a few scattered notices of him have been gathered up from contemporary records and documents relating to purchases of lands, his money dealings with his neighbors, and ordinary business transactions ; but, abating all merely mythical traditions of uncertain origin, and the impudent forgeries of these later times, no further authentic reference to his position in the theatre occurs until 1598, when his name is mentioned by Meres as the reputed author of several of these plays, and two of them are printed with his name as author on the title-page, in that year. That he was one of the inhabitants of Southwark,

l See Halliwell's Life, 144.

6 EMPLOYMENTS.

dwelling near the Bear Garden in 1596, seems to rest upon very questionable authority; but, in 1597, he had purchased New Place, in Stratford-on-Avon, where his family continued to reside until his death. In 1598, we find him lending money to his neighbors, and performing his part on the stage ; and in 1599, he had succeeded in obtaining for his father the grant of a coat of arms from the Herald's College, which descended to himself in 1601. And in 1604, when the perfected " Hamlet " had been produced, he had become a leading manager and sharer in the Globe and Blackfriars, and his name stood second only in the list of patentees, " His Majesty's Servants." From this date until 1613, the personal notices that remain to us exhibit him as being always very attentive to matters of business, rapidly growing in estate, purchasing farms, houses, and tythes in Stratford, bringing suits for small sums against various persons for malt delivered, money loaned, and the like, carrying on agricultural pursuits and other kinds of traffic, with " a good grip o' the siller," and executing business commissions in London for his Stratford neighbors, while we are to suppose he was, at the same time, producing such plays as the " Hamlet," the " Macbeth," the " Othello," the " Lear," and the " Julius Caesar " ; whence it might certainly be concluded, that he had an excellent capacity for business in addition to his other arts and superhuman gifts ; but there is nowhere the slightest note or trace of his literary occupations.

He had now acquired a brilliant reputation and an ample estate. It seems probable that he quit acting upon the stage about the year 1608, and that, in 1610, he finally retired from any active participation in the affairs of the theatre, though he may have still continued to receive for a time his share of the income as one of the largest proprietors ; but how long, it is not certainly known. It would seem probable, however, that he had parted with his interest in the theatres sometime before the 30th of June, 1613,

MANUSCRIPTS. 7

when the Globe theatre was destroyed by fire. It is known that as late as March, 1613, he made the purchase of a house in the Blackfriars ; and this is the last transaction in which he is positively ascertained to have been concerned in London. After this date, we hear of him only at Stratford-on-Avon, attending to business and the ordinary affairs of life, leisurely enjoying the social intercourse of his neighbors and his family, until his death in 1616. Indeed, throughout his life (as his most zealous biographer is obliged to confess), "the best evidence we can produce exhibits him as paying more regard to his social affairs than to his profession." 1 And so, it would seem to be true, as some still think, that, in the words of Pope, —

" Shakespeare, whom you and every playhouse-bill Style the divine, matchless, what you will, For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight, And grew immortal in his own despight."

§ 3. MANUSCRIPTS.

No original manuscript of any play, or poem, letter, or other prose composition, in the handwriting of William Shakespeare, has ever been discovered : none is known to have been preserved within the reach of the remotest definite tradition. It does not appear by any direct proof that the original manuscript of any one of the plays or poems was ever seen, even in his own time, in his own handwriting, under such circumstances as to afford any conclusive evidence, however probable, that he was the original author. " I remember," says Ben Jonson, " the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penn'd) hee never blotted out line." "We have only to suppose for a moment that the manuscripts may have been copied by him from some unknown complete and finished originals, which were kept a secret from the world, and this wonder of the players would be i Halliwell, 194.

8 MANUSCRIPTS.

at once explained. Meres, in 1598, speaks of " his sugred sonnets among his private friends," as if they had been circulated in manuscript ; but even this does not exclude the possibility of another having been the author, in the same way, though in itself highly improbable at first view. / That he was universally reputed to be the author of these works, in his own time, not merely by the public in general, but by contemporary writers, his fellows of the theatre, the printers and publishers, and some great personages, and that the fact was never publicly questioned, in that age, nor indeed until a very recent date, must be admitted, though some evidence may be adduced herein, tending to show that the contrary was known, or at least strongly suspected, by some few persons at that day.; It is enough here to remark, that this reputation alone is not absolutely conclusive of the question. No more is that other very pregnant circumstance, the fact that the " Venus and Adonis " and the " Rape of Lucrece " were dedicated to the Earl of Southampton under the name of William Shakespeare ; for it is clearly possible, however improbable at first view, that even this may have been arranged and designed as a cover for the real author. In short, there is no positive and direct evidence in any contemporary record, fact, circumstance, or event, relating to Shakespeare, which is in itself of such a nature that it must be accepted in his favor as conclusive of the question of this authorship. He makes no mention of his manuscripts, or literary property, in his will ; nor is there a trace of evidence that they ever came into the possession of his executors, or of any member of his family. But for this there may have been the less occasion, if we assume that the manuscript copies had all been sold to the theatre, and that not a single duplicate copy had ever been retained in his own possession. It might be possible, indeed, that some of them may have been burnt with the Globe theatre in 1613:/ when the Fortune was burnt, in 1621, we know the play-books were all lost. It is a wholly gratuitous assumption, however, though barely possible, that they were heedlessly cast aside into old chests, and suffered to be destroyed by fires, or that they fell into the hands of ignorant persons to be used for waste paper. If he had contemplated a revision of his works for publication during his own life, from the accomplishment of which he was prevented by sudden illness and death, it is scarcely credible that he should not have given some instructions to that end, either to his executors in his will, or to some confidential friend on whom such injunction would not have been lost. Heming and Condell give us no intimation, in their Preface to the Folio of 1623, from what source they had received " the true original copies " : we are left to infer that they had gathered them up from the theatres owned by the company.