William Shakespeare portrayed by himself: a revelation of the poet in the career and character of one of his own dramatic heroes

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CHAPTER I. The Universal interest in the personality OF THE poet WHAT THE WRITER

intends to show.

IT is said that ten thousand different essays, pamphlets and books have been printed and published concerning the life and writings of William Shakespeare. This is something unparalleled in the history of literature. No other name among men of letters has created such an interest. What an amazing attraction, what a boundless fascination, must people find in the life and character of this man ! Men of every nation, of every rank, are captivated by him. All the world wish to know the antecedents, the family, the training, of the

I man who produced the most superb dramas in literature — whence he derived that marvellous power of dramatic presentation, that wonderful skill, knowledge, and wisdom* as poet, philosopher, and dramatist, which he displays in all his works. All men are amazed at the circumstance, that a man of the people, of no particular education, of no remarkable lineage, should have surpassed all other men in intellectual power, in the richness and greatness of his productions ; — all men, I say, except a few erratic individuals in recent years, whose extraordinary views are not supported by any foundation worth a moment's consideration. ^ People of foreign nations are so much interested in him, that they learn English merely to read his works in the original ; and there is hardly a language capable of literary expression into which these works have not been again and again translated. < He is called the father of German literature, and even at the present day is more read and studied in Germany than any native author. His birthplace, now the ^^ property of the English nation, has become a Mecca to which pilgrims from the four corners of the world resort ; the relation and explanation of the events of his life form one of the great problems of modern times ; and societies for the study and elucidation of his writings have been organized in every part of the civilized world. He is the glory of the English-speaking race, and every member of that race, from one end of the world to the other, is more or less indebted to him for what he is, for what culture or enlightenment he possesses, for what largeness of view, superior power of expression, or increased social and intellectual advantages, he enjoys ; — indeed, I may say that mankind is indebted to him for a richer and more copious speech, a larger social and intellectual life, and a more abundant fund of rational amusement, than it ever possessed before.

Such is the man whom I propose to unveil, as delineating his own character and career in the person of one of his dramatic heroes ; such is the man whose life I intend to unfold to my readers, without the aid of a cipher or any remarkable hocus-pocus, in such plain characters that all the world may read and perceive its truth. When the life and character of a literary man cannot be found in the records of his friends and acquaintances, and no personal memoirs of him are extant, the only proper place to look for him is in his works ; and when the known incidents of his career, and the known traits of his character, agree in a remarkable manner with those of one, and only one, of his heroes, it is natural to infer that he delineated himself in that hero, and that that delineation must afford a better view of him than any other that can be obtained. I shall show that in the very plays in which that extraordinary gentleman, Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, has discovered a cipher showing that they were written by Lord Bacon, the real author, Shakespeare, reveals himself, his life, his character, as plainly and purposely as any author ever revealed himself in one of his works. I shall show that the identity of this character with the Poet holds good through three different plays ; nay, through four different plays ; and to the man who wishes to make some personal acquaintance with Shakespeare, this presentation of him will, I am confident, afford much more satisfaction, and give a far better view of the man, than any or all of his meager biographies. So sure am I of this, that I think every lover of Shakespeare will, after reading this essay, not only peruse the plays in question with increased satisfaction and delight, but experience a feeling of thankfulness toward the writer for having rescued our beloved Poet from even a suspicion of foul play, and for having silenced forever this vain and pernicious babble about Bacon's authorship of his plays.

CHAPTER IL

THE ARGUMENT STATED THE HISTORICAL

DATA OF THE PLAY.

SOMETIMES a truth is discovered by long years of labor and patient study; sometimes by an unexpected flash of thought. In the latter case, the investigation and proof follow the discovery ; in the former, they precede it. I had taken up Huth's " Life of Henry Thomas Buckle "—which is a good account of a remarkable man, for whose character and genius I entertain the deepest respect, and over whose untimely fate I have shed tears of regret — and was running over it for the second time, when I came to this passage, quoted to show the wide scope and versatility of Buckle's talents :

Hear him but reason in divinity, And, all-admiring, with an inward wish

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You would desire the king were made a prelate :

Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,

You would say, it hath been all-in-all his study :

List his discourse of war, and you shall hear

A fearful battle rendered you in music :

Turn him to any cause of policy,

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,

Familiar as his garter ; that, when he speaks.

The air, a chartered libertine, is still.

And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,

To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences.

On reading this, I said to myself, ^' That can suit no man except Shakespeare himself : whence are these lines?" On looking up the passage, I found it formed part of the Archbishop's description of Prince Henry, now become king, in the First Act of Kin£- Henry the Fifth ; and I made up my mind, from that instant, that the character was none other than that of Shakespeare himself. I knew what Prince Henry was, and knew something of him as Henry the Fifth; but had not, till then, dreamt of him as other than an historical character. Now, the more carefully I studied Shakespeare's portraiture of him, the more I became convinced that the character was a portrait of the Poet himself; and if the reader will have the patience to follow me for a few pages, I hope to convince him likewise of its truth.

From all that we know of Shakespeare's early history, that of Prince Henry corresponds to it very closely; and from all that we know of his later history, the correspondence will be found to be, in a sense, equally close. The character, companions, and habits of life of Prince Henry were such as are known to have been those of the youthful Shakespeare ; and the character, companions, and habits of his later years were such as correspond with those of the triumphant and all-surpassing English Poet. We know that Shakespeare was a roysterer in his early days ; that his '' youth had wandered faulty and irregular " ; that he loved good cheer, merry companions, and a free and easy life ; that he was fond of lively conversation and wit-combats, and that he excelled in these ; that he got into trouble in one,

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at least, of his escapades with these companions, and that, like the Prince, he suffered at the hands of judicial authority. In fact, the Poet could hardly avoid perceiving these remarkable coincidences, and could hardly avoid recalling his own experiences while delineating those of the Prince. The Prince having been such a man as he had been in his youth ; his experiences and diversions having been similar to his own ; his companions and adventures having been of a like nature, it was natural that he should at once make up his mind to delineate his own character and companions, his own life and adventures, in those of the Prince.

Under these circumstances, the conclusion inevitably forces itself upon the mind, that the Poet, in writing a play in which this character is a leading personage, drew upon his own experience, and painted himself in this character. As this has been done by so many others, is there anything more natural than that he too should, in a work of art, have availed himself of this privilege ?

and is there anything surprising in the fact, that the characters he here drew should be among the most life-like, most interesting and strongest ever drawn by him ? Is there anything more natural than that one of these characters, his favorite and most strongly marked historical character, whose career he follows through three different plays, should be nothing more, in disposition, manner, and conversation, than a delineation of his own ?

Holinshed, Shakespeare's great authority, from whom he derives the main events in Prince Henry's career, thus describes the Prince : *^ Indeed, he was youthfully given, grown to audacity ; and had chosen him companions, with whom he spent the time in such recreations and delights as he fancied. Yet it would seem, by the report of some writers, that his behavior was not offensive, or at least tending to the damage of anybody ; since he had a care to avoid doing of wrong and to tender his affections within the tract of virtue, whereby

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he opened unto himself a ready passage of good liking among the prudent sort, and was beloved of such as could discern his disposition." And elsewhere the same chronicler says : '' This king, even at first appointing with himself to show that princely honors should change public manners, determined to put on him the shape of a new man. For whereas aforetime he had made himself a companion unto misruly mates of dissolute order and life, he now banished them all from his presence ; and in their places chose men of gravity, wit, and high policy, by whose wise counsel he might at all times rule to his honor and dignity." And old Caxton speaks of him as '' a noble prince after he was king and crowned ; howbeit, in his youth he had been wild, reckless, and spared nothing of his lusts and desires."

Human nature is the same in prince and peasant ; men and women are all moved by the same passions and desires, no matter what their rank or station ; and Shakespeare saw in this prince a man

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with whom he had much in common^ with whose erring youth and misruly mates he had large sympathy from simi^ larity of experience, and for whose sub^ sequent reformation and heroic career he had warm and enthusiastic admiration* The Prince was an EiigHshman, his countryman, a man who had shed luster on the name and history of his country ; a man who lived at a time not so very remote from his own but that he could readily transport himself into it ; and he saw in his career and character his own reflected as in a glass, his youth recalled as by a wonderful coincidence ; and he determined to display it on the stage. Like the Prince, he had in his youth been led into wild and irregular courses ; yet ** his behavior had not been offensive, nor tending to the damage of anybody," and doubtless he took care *' to avoid doing of wrong, and to tender his affections within the tract of virtue, whereby he would open unto himself a ready passage of good liking among the prudent sort, and be beloved of such as could discern

PORTRA VED B V mMSElR his disposition." He therefore naturally felt drawn toward a man who had undergone the same ordeal as he had, incurred the same obloquy, experienced the same ''durance vile" for defiance of authority, and finally emerged unscathed into a nobler and higher sphere of life, shedding luster on his country and glorifying the English name. Undoubtedly it was of himself and his own youth that he thought when he caused the Prince's father to say :

Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds, And he, the noble image of my youth, Is overspread with them.

Shakespeare, therefore, was conscious of the fact, that he needed but to draw upon his own life and experience to give a perfect picture of the man whom he resembled ; and it was consequently a labor of love for him

to tell the world, England did never owe so sweet a hope, So much misconstrued in his wantonness.

For the Poet was, you may be sure, even in youth, a prince among his fellows, the first and foremost among the associates of his youth as among those of his manhood. Let the reader, familiar with Shakespeare, call to mind his impression of the character of Prince Henry, as delineated in the First and the Second Part of Henry IV. ; let him think of him as he showed himself in his wit-combats with Falstaff ; in his thoughtful yet sarcastic encounters with Poins ; in his kindly demeanor toward Mrs. Quickly and her "loggerheads " ; in his good-natured and fun-loving pranks with the tapster Francis ; in his ready appreciation and kindly recognition of Falstaff s witty page ; in his noble behavior toward his father and his brothers, and in his generous conduct over the defeated and dying Hotspur ; — let him remember the vein of philosophy and deep thinking that runs through all his talk, notwithstanding its looseness, and his eloquent and poetic utterances in his interviews with his father ; let him call to mind his familiarity with the common people, with Tom, Dick and Francis,

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and his ability to ''drink with any tinker in his own language during his life " ; his love of punning and witticisms, his quips, cranks, and quiddities ; — let him recall all these things, and he cannot fail to perceive that this character is such as he and all the world have ever associated with that of the gentle, wise and large-hearted poet Shakespeare. Let him follow me a little farther, and I shall lay before him matter which, without the aid of riddles, ciphers, or mysteries of any kind, must convince him, almost beyond doubt, that the Prince and the Poet are one and the same person.

j5 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Chapter III

THE ARGUMENT CONTINUED AND FORTI- FIED — HOW GENIUS GETS AN EDUCA- TION.

BEFORE taking up the Prince in the order in which he appears, and going right on with him to the end, let me first complete the impression made by the extract I gave from the opening scene in Henry F"., and thus show how this interesting Prince, full of knowledge and power, came by his education :

Arch. The king is full of grace and fair regard.

Bish. And a true lover of the holy Church.

Arch. The courses of his youth promised it not. The breath no sooner left his father's body, But that his wildness, mortified in him, Seemed to die too : yea, at that very moment, Consideration like an angel came, And whipped the offending Adam out of him, Leaving his body as a paradise, To envelop and contain celestial spirits. Never was such a sudden scholar made ;

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Never came reformation in a flood,

With such a heady current, scouring faults ;

Nor never hydra-headed wilfulness

So soon did lose his seat, and all at once.

As in this king.

Bish. We are blessed in the change.

Arch. Hear him but reason in divinity, And, all-admiring, with an inward wish You would desire the king were made a prelate : Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs. You would say it hath been all-in-all his study : List his discourse of war, and you shall hear A fearful battle rendered you in music ; Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter ; that, when he speaks, The air, a chartered libertine, is still, And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears, To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences ; So that the art and practic part of life Must be the mistress to his theoric : Which is a wonder, how his grace should glean it. Since his addiction was to courses vain ; His companions unlettered, rude, and shallow ; His hours filled up with riots, banquets, sports ; And never noted in him any study, Any retirement, any sequestration From open haunts and popularity.

This is precisely the language of those who now say Shakespeare could not have

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been the author of the works attributed to him, and seems by a kind of prophecy to have been made to answer them. Now mark how the Bishop is made to explain how such a man may come by his knowledge :

JBish. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle, And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best Neighbored by fruit of baser quality : And so the prince obscured his contemplation Under the veil of wildness ; which, no doubt, Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night, Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.

Arch, It must be so ; for miracles are ceased. And therefore we must needs admit the means How things are perfected.

How significant, how autobiographical these lines seem, in the light of what we know of Shakespeare I Is it not plain that a man may study, grow, ripen, and become wise and capable without all the world knowing the process? Is it not evident that his power and knowledge may grow.

Like the summer grass, fastest by night, Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty ?

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Shakespeare undoubtedly studied when most people thought he was asleep. His early years in Stratford — where he is supposed to have written Vemcs and Adonis — were, we may be sure, by no means studyless years ; for a man of genius will study ; it is the breath of his nostrils; no man of genius was ever known not to study. Study, or as the Archbishop puts it, contemplation is the very life, the very food of his soul ; and he cannot exist without it. So that he probably owed much more to midnight oil than anybody ever suspected. Miracles have indeed ceased, and therefore we must admit that men attain perfection by other means than by the direct Interposition of Providence. How many minds there are that, by self-exertion alone, have equalled those most carefully trained by pedagogues and professors! These are they that, ''cresclve in their faculty, grow like the summer grass, fastest by night," in quiet and silent meditation ; -these are they that have made, not merely books, but the world the subject of their studies; not merely science, but men and women, institutions, governments, and passing events ; and the result is a large and liberal intellectual culture, without pedantry or self-conceit, and with faculties working free of all narrow rules and regulations.

The chief argument of the believers in the Baconian theory is, that while Shakespeare was a man of little or no literary culture, and had passed his youth in common labor.

His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow ; His hours filled up with riots, banquets, sports ; And never noted in him any study, Any retirement, any sequestration From open haunts and popularity,

Bacon was from his earliest years the child of culture, the recipient of the best training of his day, the companion of princes, statesmen, scholars, and refined people, and a thinker and student all his life ; and that none but a man of this stamp could have composed the plays which go under Shakespeare's name. Lord Bacon was all they claim him to be, a man of wonderful powers and vast learning; but those who advance this argument against Shakespeare know nothing of the nature and working of genius. Such people seem to be unaware of the fact, that some of the finest minds the world ever saw grew to maturity and worked most of their wonders without having received any special training, without being endowed with any extraordinary culture, and without having had the advantage of any society beyond the commonest ; and that some of the finest productions, in art and literature, that the world possesses, are the work of men who spent their lives amid rude and unlettered companions. Bunyan, who wrote the finest allegory produced in 2000 years, and whose style as a writer is unsurpassed for force, beauty, and simplicity, was a common tinker, whose associates were tinkers, tapsters, bell-ringers, soldiers, and puritanical ranters, and who had learned little more than to read the English Bible; Burns, the first and finest poet of Scotland, whose works are read and admired by the whole civilized world, was a common laboring peasant, up to his knees in dirt and manure till his twenty-^eighth year, with hardly any schooling to speak of, land with none but cattle, carters, and country bumpkins for companions ; Lincoln, the first and foremost of American statesmen, whose speeches in the campaign against Douglas and whose address at Gettysburg will stand comparison with the best utterances of our most polished orators, was born in a log-cabin in the wild West and bred as a common rail-splitter and boatman. What education these men had, they got, like every man of real power, by self-exertion, by their own quiet, unaided efforts. No man, not even the college-graduate, acquires through the teaching of others the power which makes him what he is ; no man ever acquires any real mental power except by his own efforts ; and no man ever attained distinction in art or literature except by what he taught himself. It is only when the scholar has broken away

from his teachers and begun to teach himself that he commences to gain power ; it is only when his mind begins to work of its own accord that it commences to expand into independent activity. Not scholastic nor literary lore ; not intellectual training nor foreign travel ; not the companionship of princes nor of refined 1 and cultured people ; none of these things supplies the Promethean spark which enables the poet to work his wonders ; — it is something finer, nobler, rarer than ■ any or all of these things ; it is that divine essence which we call genius, that intellectual li^fht which comes from God through nature, which shines steadily or ' fitfully in the peasant as in the prince, , and which all other things may aid, but * which none can create.

Let me give one or two more examples. Here is our most famous and perhaps most highly admired American orator, Patrick Henry, who spent nearly all his time, till his fortieth year, in fishing and hunting in the rivers and woods of Virginia, becoming familiar with nature

H and man in their wildest state, and caring almost as little for books as the aborigines with whom he associated. He was literally a denizen of the woods most of his life, and never took a book in hand except when compelled to do so. It was in this free and independent way of living that he acquired that passionate love of liberty for which he was afterwards distinguished, and which he so eloquently expressed in his famous speech against George III. He had been at one time a store-keeper, at another, according to Jefferson, a bar-keeper, at another a student at law ; and when he presented himself before the examiners to secure his license to practice, he was found to be so deficient in legal knowledge that it was only by special favor that he obtained his license ; and yet, when the Revolutionary war broke out, and duty summoned him to action, he suddenly burst upon the world as an orator of the first rank, a man of remarkable power, whose speeches annihilated all opposition and determined the fate of the nation in a

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great crisis ; a man who stood head and shoulders above all the learned and college-bred men by whom he was surrounded.

Here is Charles James Fox, one of the ablest of English statesmen and most eloquent of English orators, of whom Sir Philip Francis, who knew him well, made this remarkable statement: " They know nothing of Mr. Fox who think that he was what is commonly called well educated, I know that he was directly or very nearly the reverse. His mind educated itself; not by early study or instruction, but by active listening and rapid apprehension. He said so himself in the House of Commons when he and Mr. Burke parted — [that he had learned more from the conversation of Mr. Burke than from all the books he had ever read]. His powerful understanding grew like a forest oak, not by cultivation, but by neglect."

^* Grew by neglect ! " what an expression ! It seems to hit the mark exactly, not only with regard to the great orator, but with regard to the great dramatist, For if the mind of the EngHsh statesman and orator could grow by neglect, why not that of his great countryman, the allobserving and all-absorbing Shakespeare? Who does not know that there are certain plants which flourish best when free from all restraint ? and who has not heard of men and women who declared they prospered best when entirely free from the restraints and restrictions of the pedagogue and the ferule ? ''His powerful understanding grew like a forfest oak, not by cultivation, but by neglect." I thank thee, Sir Philip, for that word ; it is an inspiration of genius, revealing the true nature of genius: it is Junius describing Fox. Probably no words could better characterize Shakespeare's education, which, poor as it may seem to the Baconians, was far better for him than having his head stuffed with Greek particles and Latin roots. Classical training might have spoiled him, as it has spoiled many a man before and since : it might have squeezed nature out of him, and moulded him into one of those stiff, formal, pedantic writers of classical poetry that were so common in his day and are not unknown in ours. As it was, he painted English men and manners in English words and in English ways ; he represented his countrymen in the language and in the manner of his countrymen ; he spoke like the common people and thought like the most cultured, and had he received a Greek and Latin training, he might have given all his thoughts a breek and Latin tinge, and written no better than the rest of the learned dramatic tribe.

Here is the French Shakespeare, Moliere, the man who, of all French writers, has most truly observed and painted human nature— this man was brought up to his father's trade, that of a frtpier, or mender of old clothes. Like Burns's mother, he could

" Gar auld claes look amaist as weel's the new ; " and doubtless his early training served him in good stead in his later occupation as playwright and stage-manager.

It was not until one eventful night in his fifteenth year, when a kinsman brought him to see a comedy acted at the Hotel de Bourgogne, that he conceived a desire for "something better than he had known," something fitter for him than mending and refashioning old clothes ; and a burning thirst for knowledge took possession of him. He longed for an opportunity to cultivate his mind, to " unroll the ample page of knowledge, rich with the spoils of time " ; and he succeeded, much against the will of his father, in gaining admission to a Jesuit college. But it is well known that a man who is thus suddenly awakened to the importance and beauty of knowledge, and starving for the want of it, will get an education in spite of poverty or riches, danger or difficulty, in spite of the arbitrary rules of pedants, or the dull formalism of professors ; and nobody imagines that Moliere became what he was through the training of schoolmasters. 'Tis true, O worshipper of Greek-and-Latin culture ! this man Moliere, the greatest of

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all French writers, did learn to clean, mend, and alter old clothes, as a means of earning his bread ! Although Shakespeare was the son of a wool-comber, and is said to have worked at his father's trade, he suffered no humiliation thereby, any more than Moliere, nor rendered himself less capable of intellectual exertion. A certain amount of manual labor is, in fact, favorable to intellectual exertion. What an honor and what an encouragement to the hardy sons of Toil, to think that the two greatest dramatic poets of the two greatest European nations should belong to their guild !

The great power of genius, the great achievements of genius, come, not from the study of books, but from personal observation and silent reflection. There are many men of eminence who have openly declared, that their college training was worse than useless ; that it was nothing but a hindrance to their mental development (for there are very few real teachers in the world) ; that they had to unlearn most of what they had learned at college ; and that their real training began only after leaving college. It was intercourse with the world that did lor them what their teachers were unable to do : it was personal experience among men that awoke in them a thirst for knowledge and a determination to study for themselves. " I learned nothing at college," says Voltaire, " but Latin and nonsense." " I am sorry that I ever was sent to college," says Ralph Bernal Osborne, the brilliant parliamentary orator, " for I learned nothing there but vices and bad habits." " It is good to go through college," says Emerson, ''to see how little there is in it;" and Hazlitt boldly maintains that " any man who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a narrow escape."