Itis absolutely impossible to prove that Will, or Bacon, or the Man in the Moon, was the author of the Shakespearean plays and poems. But it is easy to prove that Will was recognised as the author, by Ben Jonson, Heywood, and Heminge and Condell the actors, to take the best witnesses. Meanwhile we have received no hint that any man except Will was ever suspected of being the author till 1856, when the twin stars of Miss Delia Bacon and Mr. Smith arose. The evidence of Ben Jonson and the rest can only prove that professed playwrights and actors, who knew Will both on and off the stage, saw nothing in him not compatible with his work. Had he been the kind of letterless country fellow, or bookless fellow whom the Baconians and Mr. Greenwood describe, the contemporary witnesses cited must have detected Will in a day; and the story of the “Concealed Poet” who really, at first, did the additions and changes in the Company’s older manuscript plays, and of the inconceivably impudent pretences of Will of Stratford, would have kept the town merry for a month. Five or sixthreadbare scholars would have sat down at a long table in a tavern room, and, after their manner, dashed off a Comedy of Errors on the real and the false playwright.
Baconians never seem to think of the mechanical difficulties in their assumed literary hoax. If Will, like the old Hermit of Prague who never saw pen and ink, could not even write, the hoax was a physical impossibility. If he could write, but was a rough bookless man, his condition would be scarcely the more gracious, even if he were able to copy in his scrawl the fine Roman hand of the concealed poet. I am surprised that the Baconians have never made that point. Will’s “copy” was almost without blot or erasion, the other actors were wont to boast. Really the absence of erasions and corrections is too easily explained on the theory that Will wasnotthe author. Will merely copied the fair copies handed to him by the concealed poet. The farce was played for some twenty years, and was either undetected or all concerned kept the dread secret—and all the other companies and rival authors were concerned in exposing the imposture.
The whole story is like the dream of a child. We therefore expect the Anti-Willians to endeavour to disable the evidence of Jonson, Heywood, Heminge, and Condell. Their attempts take the shape of the most extravagant and complex conjectures; with certain petty objections to Ben’s various estimates of themeritsof theplays. He is constant in his witness to the authorship. To these efforts of despair we return later, when we hope to justify what is here deliberately advanced.
Meanwhile we study Mr. Greenwood’s attempts to destroy or weaken the testimony of contemporary literary allusions, in prose or verse, to the plays as the work of the actor. Mr. Greenwood rests on an argument which perhaps could only have occurred to legal minds, originally, perhaps to the mind of Judge Webb, not in the prime vigour of his faculties. Not very many literary allusions remain, made during Will’s life-time, to the plays of Shakespeare. The writers, usually, speak of “Shakespeare,” or “W. Shakespeare,” or “Will Shakespeare,” and leave it there. In the same way, when they speak of other contemporaries, they name them,—and leave it there, without telling us “who” (Frank) Beaumont, or (Kit) Marlowe, or (Robin) Greene, or (Jack) Fletcher, or any of the others “were.” All interested readers knew who they were: and also knew who “Shakespeare” or “Will Shakespeare” was. No other Will Shak(&c.) was prominently before the literary and dramatic world, in 1592–1616, except the Warwickshire provincial who played with Burbage.
But though the mere names of the poets, Ben Jonson, Kit Marlowe, Frank Beaumont, Harry Chettle, and so forth, are accepted as indicating the well-known men whom they designate, thisevidence to identity does not satisfy Mr. Greenwood, and the Baconians, where Will is concerned. “We should expect to find allusions to dramatic and poetical works published under the name of ‘Shakespeare’; we should expect to find Shakespeare spoken of as a poet and a dramatist; we should expect, further, to find some few allusions to Shakespeare or Shakspere the player. And these, of course, we do find; but these are not the objects of our quest. What we require is evidence to establish the identity of the player with the poet and dramatist; to prove that the player was the author of thePlaysandPoems.Thatis the proposition to be established, andthatthe allusions fail, as it appears to me, to prove,” says Mr. Greenwood. He adds, “At any rate they do not disprove the theory that the true authorship was hidden under a pseudonym”[136a]—which raises an entirely different question.
Makers of allusions to the plays must identify Shakespeare with the actor, explicitly; must tell us who this Shakespeare was, though they need not, and usually do not, tell us who the other authors mentioned were; and though the world of letters and the Stage knew but one William Shakspere or Shakespeare, who was far too familiar to them to require further identification. But even if the makers of allusions did all this, and said, “by W. Shakespeare the poet, we mean W. Shakespeare the actor”—thatis not enough. Forthey may all be deceived, may all believe that a bookless, untutored man is the author. So we cannot get evidence correct enough for Mr. Greenwood.
Destitute as I am of legal training, I leave this notable way of disposing of the evidence to the judgement of the Bench and the Bar, a layman intermeddleth not with it. Still, I am, like other readers, on the Jury addressed,—I do not accept the arguments.Miror magis, as Mr. Greenwood might quote Latin. We have already seen one example of this argument, when Heywood speaks of the author of poems by Shakespeare, published inThe Passionate Pilgrim. Heywood does nothing to identify the actor Shakspere with the author Shakespeare, says Mr. Greenwood. I shall prove that, elsewhere, Heywood does identify them, and no man knew more of the world of playwrights and actors than Heywood. I add that in his remarks onThe Passionate Pilgrim, Heywood had no need to say “by W. Shakespeare I mean the well-known actor in the King’s Company.” There was no other William Shakspere or Shakespeare known to his public.
It is to no purpose that Mr. Greenwood denies, as we have seen above, that the allusions “disprove the theory that the true authorship was hidden under a pseudonym.” That is an entirely different question. He is now starting quite another hare. Men of letters who alludedto the plays and poems of William Shakespeare, meant the actor; that is my position. That they may all have been mistaken: that “William Shakespeare” was Bacon’s, or any one’s pseudonym, is, I repeat, a wholly different question; and we must not allow the critic to glide away into it through an “at any rate”; as he does three or four times. So far, then, Mr. Greenwood’s theory that it was impossible for the actor Shakspere to have been the author of the plays, encounters the difficulty that no contemporary attributed them to any other hand: that none is known to have said, “This Warwickshire man cannot be the author.”
“Let us, however, examine some of these allusions to Shakspere, real or supposed,” says the critic.[138a]He begins with the hackneyed words of the dying man of letters, Robert Greene, inA Groatsworth of Wit(1592). The pamphlet is addressed to Gentlemen of his acquaintance “that spend their wits in making plays”; he “wisheth them a better exercise,” and better fortunes than his own. (Marlowe is supposed to be one of the three Gentlemen playwrights, but such suppositions do not here concern us.) Greene’s is the ancient feud between the players and the authors, between capital and labour. The players are the capitalists, and buy the plays out and out,—cheap. The author has no royalties; and no control over the future of his work, which aShakspere or a Bacon, a Jonson or a Chettle, or any handyman of the company owning the play, may alter as he pleases. It is highly probable that the actors also acquired most of the popular renown, for, even now, playgoers have much to say about the players in a piece, while they seldom know the name of the playwright. Women fall in love with the actors, not with the authors; but with “those puppets,” as Greene says, “that speake from our mouths, these anticks, garnished in our colours.” Ben Jonson, we shall see, makes some of the same complaints,—most natural in the circumstances: though he managed to retain the control of his dramas; how, I do not know. Greene adds that in his misfortunes, illness, and poverty, he is ungratefully “forsaken,” by the players, and warns his friends that such may betheirlot; advising them to seek “some better exercise.” He then writes—and his meaning cannot easily be misunderstood, I think, but misunderstood it has been—“Yes, trust them not” (trust not the players), “FORthere is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with hisTyger’s heart wrapt in a Player’s hide” (“Player’s” in place of “woman’s,” in an old play,The Tragedy of Richard,Duke of York, &c.), “supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absoluteJohannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.”
The meaning is pellucid. “Do not trust theplayers, my fellow playwrights, for the reasons already given, for they, in addition to their glory gained by mouthingourwords, and their ingratitude, may now forsake you for one of themselves, a player, who thinks his blank verse as good as the best of yours” (including Marlowe’s, probably). “The man is ready at their call” (“an absoluteJohannes Factotum”). “In his own conceit” he is “the only Shake-scene in a country.” “Seek you better masters,” than these players, who have now an author among themselves, “the only Shake-scene,” where the pun on Shakespeare does not look like a fortuitous coincidence. But it may be, anything may happen.
The sense, I repeat, is pellucid. But Mr. Greenwood writes that if Shake-scene be an allusion to Shakespeare “it seems clear that it is as an actor rather than as an author he is attacked.”[140a]As anactorthe person alluded to is merely assailed with the other actors, his “fellows.” But he is picked out as presenting another and a new reason why authors should distrust the players, “forthere is” among themselves, “in a player’s hide,” “an upstart crow”—who thinks his blank verse as good as the best of theirs. He is, therefore, necessarily a playwright, and being afactotum, can readily be employed by the players to the prejudice of Greene’s three friends, who are professed playwrights.
Mr. Greenwood says that “we do not know why Greene should have been so particularly bitter against the players, and why he should have thought it necessary so seriously to warn his fellow playwrights against them.”[141a]But we cannot help knowing; for Greene has told us. In addition to gaining renown solely through mouthing “our” words, wearing “ourfeathers,” they have been bitterly ungrateful to Greene in his poverty and sickness; they will, in the same circumstances, as cruelly forsake his friends; “yes, for they now have” an author, and to the playwrights a dangerous rival, in their own fellowship. Thus we know with absolute certainty why Greene wrote as he did. He says nothing about the superior financial gains of the players, which Mr. Greenwood suspects to have been the “only” cause of his bitterness. Greene gives its causes in the plainest possible terms, as did Ben Jonson later, in his verses “Poet-Ape” (Playwright-Actor). Moreover, Mr. Greenwood gives Greene’s obvious motives on the very page where he says that we do not know them.
Even Mr. Greenwood,[141b]anxious as he is to prove Shake-scene to be attacked as an actor, admits that the words “supposes himself as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you,” “do seem to have that implication,”[141c]namely, that “Shake-scene” is a dramatic author:what else can the words mean; why, if not for the Stage, should Shake-scene write blank verse?
Finally Mr. Greenwood, after saying “it is clear that it is as an actor rather than as an author that ‘Shake-scene’ is attacked,”[142a]concedes[142b]that it “certainly looks as if he” (Greene) “meant to suggest that this Shake-scene supposed himself able to compose, as well as to mouth verses.” Nothing else can possibly be meant. “The rest of you” were authors, not actors.
If not, why, in a whole company of actors, should “Shake-scene” alone be selected for a special victim? Shake-scene is chosen out because, as an author, a factotum always ready at need, he is more apt than the professed playwrights to be employed as author by his company: this is a new reason for not trusting the players.
I am not going to take the trouble to argue as to whether, in the circumstances of the case, “Shake-scene” is meant by Greene for a pun on “Shake-speare,” or not. If he had some other rising player-author, the Factotum of a cry of players, in his mind, Baconians may search for that personage in the records of the stage. That other player-author may have died young, or faded into obscurity. The term “the only Shake-scene” may be one of those curious coincidenceswhich do occur. The presumption lies rather on the other side. I demur, when Mr. Greenwood courageously struggling for his case says that, even assuming the validity of the surmise that there is an allusion to Shakspere,[143a]“the utmost that we should be entitled to say is that Greene here accuses Player Shakspere of putting forward, as his own, some work, or perhaps some parts of a work, for which he was really indebted to another” (the Great Unknown?). I do more than demur, I defy any man to exhibit that sense in Greene’s words.
“The utmost that we should be entitled to say,” is, in my opinion, what we have no shadow of a title to say. Look at the poor hackneyed, tortured words of Greene again. “Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with hisTyger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absoluteJohannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.”
How can mortal man squeeze from these words the charge that “Player Shakspere” is “putting forward, as his own, some work, or perhaps some parts of a work, for which he was really indebted to another”? It is as an actor, with other actors, that the player is “beautified withourfeathers,”—not with the feathers of some onenotourselves, Bacon or Mr. Greenwood’s Unknown. Mr. Greenwood even says that Shake-scene is referred to “as beautified with the featherswhich he has stolenfrom the dramatic writers” (“our feathers”).
Greene says absolutely nothing about feathers “which he has stolen.” The “feathers,” the words of the plays, were bought, not stolen, by the actors, “anticks garnished in our colours.”
Tedious it is to write many words about words so few and simple as those of Greene; meaning “do not trust the players, for one of them writes blank verse which he thinks as good as the best of yours, and fancies himself the only Shake-scene in a country.”
But “Greene here accuses Player Shakspere of putting forward, as his own, some work, or perhaps some parts of a work, for which he was really indebted to another,” this is “the utmost we should be entitled to say,” even if the allusion be to Shakspere. How does Mr. Greenwood get the Anti-Willian hypothesis out of Greene’s few and plain words?
It is much safer for him to say that “Shake-scene” is not meant for Shakespeare. Nobody can prove that itis; the punmaybe a strange coincidence,—or any one may say that he thinks it nothing more; if he pleases.
Greene nowhere “refers to this Shake-scene as being an impostor, an upstart crow beautified with the featherswhich he has stolen from thedramatic writers(“our feathers”)”[145a]—that is, Greene makes no such reference to Shake-scene in his capacity of writer of blank verse. Like all players, who are all “anticks garnisht in our colours,” Shake-scene,as player, is “beautified with our feathers.” It is Mr. Greenwood who adds “beautified with the feathers which he hasstolenfrom the dramatic writers.” Greene does not even remotely hint at plagiarism on the part of Shake-scene: and the feathers, the plays of Greene and his friends, were not stolen but bought. We must take Greene’s evidence as we find it,—it proves that by “Shake-scene” he means a “poet-ape,” a playwright-actor; for Greene, like Jonson, speaks of actors as “apes.” Both men saw in a certain actor and dramatist a suspected rival. Only one such successful practising actor-playwright is known to us at this date (1592–1601),—and he is Shakespeare. Unless another such existed, Greene, in 1592, alludes to William Shak(&c.) as a player and playwright. This proves that the actor from Stratford was accepted in Greene’s world as an author of plays in blank verse. He cannot, therefore, have seemed incapable of his poetry.
Let us now briefly consider other contemporary allusions to Shakespeare selected by Mr. Greenwood himself. No allusion can prove that Shakespeare was the author of the work attributed to him in the allusions. The plays and poemsmayhavebeen by James VI and I, “a parcel-poet.” The allusions can prove no more than that, by his contemporaries, Shakespeare was believed to be the poet, which is impossible if he were a mere rustic ignoramus, as the Baconians aver. Omitting some remarks by Chettle on Greene’sGroatsworth of Wit,[146a]as, if grammar goes for all, they do not refer to Shakespeare, we have the Cambridge farce or comedy on contemporary literature, theReturn from Parnassus(1602?). The University wits laugh at Shakespeare,—not an university man, as the favourite poet, in hisVenus and Adonis, of a silly braggart pretender to literature, Gullio.
They also introduce Kempe, the low comedy man of Shakespeare’s company, speaking to Burbage, the chief tragic actor, of Shakespeare as a member of their company, who,as an author of plays, “puts down” the University wits “and Ben Jonson too.” The date is not earlier than that of Ben’s satiric play on the poets,The Poetaster(1601), to which reference is made. Since Kempe is to be represented as wholly ignorant, his opinion of Shakespeare’s pre-eminent merit only proves, as in the case of Gullio, that the University wits decried the excellences of Shakespeare. In him they saw no scholar.
The point is that Kempe recognises Shakespeare as both actor and author.
All this “is quite consistent with the theorythat Shake-speare was a pseudonym,”[147a]says Mr. Greenwood. Of course it is, but it isnotconsistent with the theory that Shakespeare was an uneducated, bookless rustic, for, in that case, his mask would have fallen off in a day, in an hour. Of course the Cambridge author only proves, if you will, thathethought thatKempethought, that his fellow player was the author. But we have better evidence of what the actors thought than in the Cambridge play.
In 1598, as we saw, Francis Meres inPalladis Tamiacredits Shakespeare withVenus and Adonis, with privately circulated sonnets, and with a number of the comedies and tragedies. How the allusions “negative the hypothesis that Shakespeare was anom de plumeis not apparent,” says Mr. Greenwood, always constant to his method. I repeat that he wanders from the point, which is, here, that the only William Shak(&c.) known to us at the time, in London, was credited with the plays and poems on all sides, which proves that no incompatibility between the man and the works was recognised.
Then Weaver (1599) alludes to him as author ofVenus,Lucrece,Romeo,Richard, “more whose names I know not.” Davies (1610) calls him “our English Terence” (the famous comedian), and mentions him as having “played some Kingly parts in sport.” Freeman (1614) credits him withVenusandLucrece. “Besides inplays thy wit winds like Meander.” I repeat Heywood’s evidence. Thomas Heywood, author of that remarkable domestic play,A Woman Killed with Kindness, was, from the old days of Henslowe, in the fifteen-nineties, a playwright and an actor; he survived into the reign of Charles I. Writing on the familiar names of the poets, “Jack Fletcher,” “Frank Beaumont,” “Kit Marlowe,” “Tom Nash,” he says,
“Mellifluous Shakespeare whose enchanting quillCommanded mirth and passion, was but ‘Will.’”
“Mellifluous Shakespeare whose enchanting quillCommanded mirth and passion, was but ‘Will.’”
Does Heywood not identify the actor with the author? No quibbles serve against the evidence.
We need not pursue the allusions later than Shakespeare’s death, or invoke, at present, Ben Jonson’s panegyric of 1623. As to Davies, his dull and obscure epigram is addressed “To our English Terence, Mr. Will Shake-speare.” He accosts Shakespeare as “Good Will.” He remarks that, “as some say,” if Will “had not played some Kingly parts in sport,” he had been “a companion for aKing,” and “been a King among the meaner sort.” Nobody, now, can see the allusion and the joke. Shakespeare’s company, in 1604, acted a play on the Gowrie Conspiracy of 1600. King James suppressed the play after the second night, as, of course, he was brought on the stage throughout the action: and in very droll and dreadful situations. Did Will take theKing’s part, and annoy gentle King Jamie, “as some say”? Nobody knows. But Mr. Greenwood, to disable Davies’s recognition of Mr. Will as a playwright, “Our English Terence,” quotes, from Florio’sMontaigne, a silly old piece of Roman literary gossip, Terence’s plays were written by Scipio and Laelius. In fact, Terence alludes in his prologue to theAdelphi, to a spiteful report that he was aided by great persons. The prologue may be the source of the fable—that does not matter. Davies might get the fable in Montaigne, and, knowing that some Great One wrote Will’s plays, might therefore, in irony, address him as “Our English Terence.” This is a pretty free conjecture! In Roman comedy he had only two names known to him to choose from; he took Terence, not Plautus. But if Davies was in the great Secret, a world of others must have sharedle Secret de Polichinelle. Yet none hints at it, and only a very weak cause could catch at so tiny a straw as the off-chance that Daviesknew, and used “Terence” as a gibe.[149a]
The allusions, even the few selected, cannot prove that the actor wrote the plays, but do prove that he was believed to have done so, and therefore that he was not so ignorant and bookless as to demonstrate that he was incapable of the poetry and the knowledge displayed in hisworks. Mr. Greenwood himself observes that a Baconian critic goes too far when he makes Will incapable of writing. Such a Will could deceive no mortal.[150a]But does Mr. Greenwood, who finds in the Author of the plays “much learning, and remarkable classical attainments,” or “a wide familiarity with the classics,”[150b]suppose that his absolutely bookless Will could have persuaded his intimates that he was the author of plays exhibiting “a wide familiarity with the classics,” or “remarkable classical attainments.” The thing is wholly impossible.
I do not remember that a single contemporary allusion to Shakespeare speaks of him as “learned,” erudite, scholarly, and so forth. The epithets for him are “sweet,” “gentle,” “honeyed,” “sugared,” “honey-tongued”—this is the convention. The tradition followed by Milton, who was eight years of age when Shakespeare died, and who wroteL’Allegrojust after leaving Cambridge, makes Shakespeare “sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,” with “native wood-notes wild”; and gives to Jonson “thelearnedsock.” Fuller, like Milton, was born eight years before the death of Shakespeare, namely, in 1608. Like Milton he was a Cambridge man. The First Folio of Shakespeare’s works appeared when each of these two bookish men was aged fifteen. It would necessarily revive interest in Shakespeare, nowfirst known as far as about half of his plays went: he would be discussed among lovers of literature at Cambridge. Mr. Greenwood quotes Fuller’s remark that Shakespeare’s “learning was very little,” that, if alive, he would confess himself “to be never any scholar.”[151a]I cannot grant that Fuller is dividing the persons of actor and author. Men of Shakespeare’s generation, such as Jonson, did not think him learned; nor did men of the next generation. If Mr. Collins’s view be correct, the men of Shakespeare’s and of Milton’s generations were too ignorant to perceive that Shakespeare was deeply learned in the literature of Rome, and in the literature of Greece. Every one was too ignorant, till Mr. Collins came.
WhenShakespeare is mentioned as an author by contemporary writers, the Baconian stratagem, we have seen, is to cry, “Ah, but you cannot prove the author mentioned to be the actor.” We have seen that Meres (1598) speaks of Shakespeare as the leading tragic and comic poet (“Poor poet-ape that would be thought our chief,” quoth Jonson), as author ofVenus and Adonis, and as a sonneteer. “All this does nothing whatever to support the idea that the Stratford player was the author of the plays and poems alluded to,” says Mr. Greenwood, playing that card again.[155a]
The allusions, I repeat,doprove that Shak(&c.), the actor, was believed to be the author, till any other noted William Shak(&c.) is found to have been conspicuously before the town. “There is nothing at all to prove that Meres, native of Lincolnshire, had any personal knowledge of Shakespeare.” There is nothing at all to prove that Meres, native of Lincolnshire, had any personal knowledge of nine-tenths of the English authors, famous or forgotten, whom hementions. “On the question—who was Shakespeare?—he throws no light.” He “throws no light on the question” “who was?” any of the poets mentioned by him, except one, quite forgotten, whose College he names . . . To myself this “sad repeated air,”—“critics who praise Shakespeare do not saywho Shakespearewas,”—would appear to be, not an argument, but a subterfuge: though Mr. Greenwood honestly believes it to be an argument,—otherwise he would not use it: much less would he repeat it with frequent iteration. The more a man was notorious, as was Will Shakspere the actor, the less the need for any critic to tell his public “who Shakespeare was.”
As Mr. Greenwood tries to disable the evidence when Shakespeare is alluded to as an author, so he tries to better his case when, in the account-book of Philip Henslowe, an owner of theatres, money-lender, pawn-broker, purchaser of plays from authors, and so forth, Shakespeare isnotmentioned at all. Here is a mystery which, properly handled, may advance the great cause. Henslowe has notes of loans of money to several actors, some of them of Shakespeare’s company, “The Lord Chamberlain’s.” There is no such note of a loan to Shakespeare. Does this prove that he was not an actor? If so, Burbage was not an actor; Henslowe never names him.
There are notes of payments of money to Henslowe after each performance of any play in one of his theatres. In these notesthe name of Shakespeareis never once mentioned as the author of any play. How weird! But inthesenotes the names of the authors of the plays acted are never mentioned. Does this suggest that Bacon wrote all these plays?
On the other hand, there are frequent mentions of advances of money to authors who were working at plays for Henslowe, singly, or in pairs, threes, fours, or fives. We find Drayton, Dekker, Chapman, and nine authors now forgotten by all but antiquarians. We have also Ben Jonson (1597), Marston, Munday, Middleton, Webster, and others, authors in Henslowe’s pay.But the same of Shakespeare never appears. Mysterious! The other men’s names, writes Dr. Furness, occur “because they were all writers for Henslowe’s theatre, but we must wait at all events for the discovery of some other similar record, before we can produce corresponding memoranda regarding Shaksper” (sic) “and his productions.”[157a]
The natural mind of the ordinary man explains all by saying, “Henslowe records no loans of money to Shakspere the actor, because he lent him no money. He records no payments for plays to Shakespeare the author-actor, because to Henslowe the actor sold no plays.” That is the whole explanation of the Silence of Philip Henslowe. If Shakspere did sell a play to Henslowe, why should that financier omit the fact from his accounts? Suppose that the actor was illiterateas Baconians fervently believe, and sold Bacon’s plays, what prevented him from selling a play of Bacon’s (under his own name, as usual) to Henslowe? To obtain a Baconian reply you must wander into conjecture, and imagine that Bacon forbade the transaction. Thenwhydid he forbid it? Because he could get a better price from Shakspere’s company? The same cause would produce the same effect on Shakspere himself; whether he were the author, or were Bacon’s, or any man’s go-between. On any score but that of money, why was Henslowe good enough for Ben Jonson, Dekker, Heywood, Middleton, and Webster, and not good enough for Bacon, who did not appear in the matter at all, but was represented in it by the actor, Will? As a gentleman and a man of the Court, Bacon would be as much discredited if he were known to sell (for £6 on an average) his noble works to the Lord Chamberlain’s Company, as if he sold them to Henslowe.
I know not whether the great lawyer, courtier, scholar, and philosopher is supposed by Baconians to have given Will Shakspere a commission on his sales of plays; or to have let him keep the whole sum in each case. I know not whether the players paid Shakspere a sum down for his (or Bacon’s) plays, or whether Will received a double share, or other, or any share of the profits on them, as Henslowe did when he let a house to the players. Nobody knows any of these things.
“If Shakspere the player had been a dramatist, surely Henslowe would have employed him also, like the others, in that behalf.”[159a]Henslowe would, if he could have got the “copy” cheap enough. Was any one of “the others,” the playwrights, a player, holding a share in his company? If not, the fact makes an essential difference, for Shaksperewasa shareholder. Collier, in his preface to Henslowe’s so-called “Diary,” mentions a playwright who was bound to scribble for Henslowe only (Henry Porter), and another, Chettle, who was bound to write only for the company protected by the Earl of Nottingham.[159b]Modern publishers and managers sometimes make the same terms with novelists and playwrights.
It appears to me that Shakspere’s company would be likely, as his plays were very popular, to make the same sort of agreement with him, and to give him such terms as he would be glad to accept,—whether the wares were his own—or Bacon’s. He was a keen man of business. In such a case, he would not write for Henslowe’s pittance. He had a better market. The plays, whether written by himself, or Bacon, or the Man in the Moon, were at his disposal, and he did not dispose of them to Henslowe, wherefore Henslowe cannot mention him in his accounts. That is all.
Quoting an American Judge (Dr. Stotsenburg, apparently), Mr. Greenwood cites the circumstance that, in two volumes of Alleyn’s papers “there is not one mention of such a poet as William Shaksper in his list of actors, poets, and theatrical comrades.”[160a]If this means that Shakspere is not mentioned by Alleyn among actors, are we to infer that William was not an actor? Even Baconians insist that he was an actor. “How strange, how more than strange,” cries Mr. Greenwood, “that Henslowe should make no mention in all this long diary, embracing all the time from 1591 to 1609, of the actor-author . . . No matter.Credo quia impossibile!”[160b]Credowhat? and what isimpossible? Henslowe’s volume is no Diary; he does not tell a single anecdote of any description; he merely enters loans, gains, payments. Does Henslowe mention, say, Ben Jonson,when he is not doing business with Ben? Does he mention any actor or author except in connection with money matters? Then, if he did no business with Shakspere the actor, in borrowing or lending, and did no business with Shakespeare the author, in borrowing, lending, buying or selling, “How strange, how more than strange” it would be if Henslowedidmention Shakespeare! He was not keeping a journal of literary and dramatic jottings. He was keeping an account of his expensesand receipts. He never names Richard Burbage any more than he mentions Shakespeare.
Mr. Greenwood again expresses his views about this dark suspicious mystery, the absence of Shakespeare or Shakspere (or Shak, as you like it), from Henslowe’s accounts, if Shak(&c.) wrote plays. But the mystery, if mystery there be, is just as obscure if the actor were the channel through which Bacon’s plays reached the stage, for the pretended author of these masterpieces. Shak—was not the man to do all the troking, bargaining, lying, going here and there, and making himself a motley to the view for £0, 0s.0d.If he were a sham, a figure-head, a liar, a fetcher-and-carrier of manuscripts,he would be paid for it. But he did not deal with Henslowe in his bargainings, andthatis why Henslowe does not mention him. Mr. Greenwood, in one place,[161a]agrees, so far, with me. “Why did Henslowe not mention Shakespeare as the writer of other plays” (thanTitus AndronicusandHenry VI)? “I think the answer is simple enough.” (So do I.) “Neither Shakspere nor ‘Shakespeare’ ever wrote for Henslowe!” The obvious is perceived at last; and the reason given is “that he was above Henslowe’s ‘skyline,’” “he” being the Author. We only differ as towhythe author was above Henslowe’s “sky-line.” I say, because good Will had a better market, that of his Company. I understandMr. Greenwood to think,—because the Great Unknown was too great a man to deal with Henslowe. If to write for the stage were discreditable, to deal (unknown) with Henslowe was no more disgraceful than to deal with “a cry of players”; and as (unknown) Will did the bargaining, the Great Unknown was as safe with Will in one case as in the other. If Will did not receive anything for the plays from his own company (who firmly believed in his authorship), they must have said, “Will! dost thou serve the Muses and thy obliged fellows for naught? Dost thou give us two popular plays yearly,—gratis?”
Do you not see that, in the interests of the Great Secret itself, Willhadto take the pay for the plays (pretended his) from somebody. Will Shakspere making his dear fellows and friends a present of two masterpieces yearly was too incredible. So I suppose he did have royalties on the receipts, or otherwise got his money; and, as he certainly did not get them from Henslowe, Henslowe had no conceivable reason for entering Will’s name in his accounts.
Such are the reflections of a plain man, but to an imaginative soul there seems to be a brooding mist, with a heart of fire, which half conceals and half reveals the darkened chamber wherein abides “The Silence of Philip Henslowe.” “The Silence of Philip Henslowe,” Mr. Greenwood writes, “is a very remarkable phenomenon . . . ” It is a phenomenonprecisely as remarkable as the absence of Mr. Greenwood’s name from the accounts of a boot-maker with whom he has never had any dealings.
“If, however, there was a man in high position, ‘a concealed poet,’” who “took the works of others and rewrote and transformed them, besides bringing out original plays of his own . . . then it is natural enough that his name should not appear among those [of the] for the most part impecunious dramatists to whom Henslowe paid money for playwriting.”[163a]Nothing can be more natural, and, in fact, the name of Bacon, or Southampton, or James VI, or Sir John Ramsay, or Sir Walter Raleigh, or Sir Fulke Greville, or any other “man in high position,” doesnotappear in Henslowe’s accounts. Nor does the name of William Shak(&c.). But why should it not appear if Will sold either his own plays, or those of the noble friend to whom he lent his name and personality—to Henslowe? Why not?
Then consider the figure, to my mind impossible, of the great “concealed poet” “of high position,” who can “bring out original plays of his own,” and yet “takes the works of others,” say of “sporting Kyd,” or of Dekker and Chettle, and such poor devils,—takesthem as a Yankee pirate-publisher takes my rhymes,—and “rewrites and transforms them.”
Bacon (or Bungay)cannot“take” them without permission of their legal owners,—Shakspere’sor any other company;—of any one, in short, who, as Ben Jonson says, “buys up reversions of old plays.” How is he to manage these shabby dealings? Apparently he employs Will Shakspere, spells his own “nom de plume” “Shakespeare,” and has his rewritings and transformations of the destitute author’s work acted by Will’s company. What a situation for Bacon, or Sir Fulke Greville, or James VI, or any “man in high position” whom fancy can suggest! The plays by the original authors, whoever they were, could only be obtained by the “concealed poet” and “man in high position” from the legal owners, Shakspere’s company, usually. The concealed poet had to negotiate with the owners, and Bacon (or whoever he was) employed that scamp Will Shakspere, first, I think, to extract the plays from the owners, and then to pretend that he himself, even Will, had “rewritten and transformed them.”
What an associate was our Will for the concealed poet; how certain it was that Will would blackmail the “man in high position”! “Doubtless” he did: we find Bacon arrested for debt, more than once, while Will buys New Place, in Stratford, with the money extorted from the concealed poet of high position.[164a]Bacon did associate with that serpent Phillips, a reptile of Walsingham, who forged a postscript to Mary Stuart’s letter to Babington. But now, if not Bacon, then some other concealed poet of high position, with amysterious passion for rewriting and transforming plays by sad, needy authors, is in close contact with Will Shakspere, the Warwickshire poacher and ignorant butcher’s boy, country schoolmaster, draper’s apprentice,enfin,tout le tremblement.
“How strange, how more than strange!”
The sum of the matter seems to me to be that from as early as March 3, 1591, we find Henslowe receiving small sums of money for the performances of many plays. He was paid as owner or lessee of the House used by this or that company. On March 3, 1591, the play acted by “Lord Strange’s (Derby’s) men” wasHenry VI. Several other plays with names familiar in Shakespeare’s Works, such asTitus Andronicus, all the three parts ofHenry VI,King Leare(April 6, 1593),Henry V(May 14, 1592),The Taming of a Shrew(June 11, 1594), andHamlet, paid toll to Henslowe. He “received” so much, on each occasion, when they were acted in a theatre of his. But he never records his purchase of these plays; and it is not generally believed that Shakespeare was the author of all these plays, in the form which they bore in 1591–4: though there is much difference of opinion.
There is one rather interesting case. On August 25, 1594, Henslowe enters “ne” (that is, “a new play”) “Received at the Venesyon Comodey, eighteen pence.” That was his share of the receipts. The Lord Chamberlain’s Company,that of Shakespeare, was playing in Henslowe’s theatre at Newington Butts. If the “Venesyon Comodey” (Venetian Comedy) wereThe Merchant of Venice, this is the first mention of it. But nobody knows what Henslowe meant by “the Venesyon Comodey.” He does not mention the author’s name, because, in this part of his accounts he never does mention the author or authors. He only names them when he buys from, or lends to, or has other money dealings with the authors. He had none with Shakespeare, hence the Silence of Philip Henslowe.
Inthe chapter on the Preoccupations of Bacon the reader may find help in making up his mind as to whether Bacon, with his many and onerous duties and occupations, his scientific studies, and his absorbing scientific preoccupation, is a probable author of the Shakespearean plays. Mr. Greenwood finds the young Shakspere impossible—because of his ignorance—which made him such a really good pseudo-author, and such a successful mask for Bacon, or Bacon’s unknown equivalent. The Shakspere of later life, the well-to-do Shakspere, the purchaser of the right to bear arms; so bad at paying one debt at least; so eager a creditor; a would-be encloser of a common; a man totally bookless, is, to Mr. Greenwood’s mind, an impossible author of the later plays.
Here, first, are moral objections on the ground of character as revealed in some legal documents concerning business. Now, I am very ready to confess that William’s dealings with his debtors, and with one creditor, are wholly unlike what I should expect from the author of the plays. Moreover,the conduct of Shelley in regard to his wife was, in my opinion, very mean and cruel, and the last thing that we could have expected from one who, in verse, was such a tender philanthropist, and in life was—women apart—the best-hearted of men. The conduct of Robert Burns, alas, too often disappoints the lover of hisCottar’s Saturday Nightand other moral pieces. He was an inconsistent walker.
I sincerely wish that Shakespeare had been less hard in money matters, just as I wish that in financial matters Scott had been more like himself, that he had not done the last things that we should have expected him to do. As a member of the Scottish Bar it was inconsistent with his honour to be the secret proprietor of a publishing and a printing business. This is the unexplained moral paradox in the career of a man of chivalrous honour and strict probity: but the fault did not prevent Scott from writing his novels and poems. Why, then, should the few bare records of Shakspere’s monetary transactions makehisauthorship impossible? The objection seems weakly sentimental.
Macaulay scolds Scott as fiercely as Mr. Greenwood scolds Shakspere,—for the more part, ignorantly and unjustly. Still, there is matter to cause surprise and regret. Both Scott and Shakspere are accused of writing for gain, and of spending money on lands and houses with the desire to found families. But in the mysteriousmixture of each human personality, any sober soul who reflects on his own sins and failings will not think other men’s failings incompatible with intellectual excellence. Bacon’s own conduct in money matters was that of a man equally grasping and extravagant. Ben Jonson thus describes Shakespeare as a social character: “He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature . . . I loved the man and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any.” Perhaps Ben never owed money to Shakspere and refused to pay!
We must not judge a man’s whole intellectual character, and declare him to be incapable of poetry, on the score of a few legal papers about matters of business. Apparently Shakspere helped that Elizabethan Mr. Micawber, his father, out of a pecuniary slough of despond, in which the ex-High Bailiff of the town was floundering,—pursued by the distraint of one of the friendly family of Quiney—Adrian Quiney. They were neighbours and made a common dunghill in Henley Street.[171a]I do not, like Mr. Greenwood, see anything “at all out of the way” in the circumstance “that a man should be writingHamlet, and at the same time bringing actions for petty sums lent on loan at some unspecified interest.”[171b]Nor do I see anything at all out of the way in Bacon’s prosecution of his friend and benefactor,Essex (1601), while Bacon was writingHamlet. Indeed, Shakspere’s case is the less “out of the way” of the two. He wanted his loan to be repaid, and told his lawyer to bring an action. Bacon wanted to keep his head (of inestimable value) on his shoulders; or to keep his body out of the Tower; or he merely, as he declares, wanted to do his duty as a lawyer of the Crown. In any case, Bacon was in a tragic position almost unexampled; and was at once overwhelmed by work, and, one must suppose, by acute distress of mind, in the case of Essex. He must have felt this the more keenly, if, as some Baconians vow,he wrote the Sonnets to Essex. Whether he were writing hisHamletwhen engaged in Essex’s case (1601), or any other of his dramatic masterpieces, even this astonishing man must have been sorely bestead to combine so many branches of business.
Thus I would reply to Mr. Greenwood’s amazement that Shakspere, a hard creditor, and so forth, should none the less have been able to write his plays. But if it is meant that a few business transactions must have absorbed the whole consciousness of Shakespeare, and left him neither time nor inclination for poetry, consider the scientific preoccupation of Bacon, his parliamentary duties, his ceaseless activity as “one of the legal body-guard of the Queen” at a time when he had often to be examining persons accused of conspiracy,—and do not forget his long andpoignant anxiety about Essex, his constant efforts to reconcile him with Elizabeth, and to advocate his cause without losing her favour; and, finally, the anguish of prosecuting his friend, and of knowing how hardly the world judged his own conduct. Follow him into his relations with James I; his eager pursuit of favour, the multiplicity of his affairs, his pecuniary distresses, and the profound study and severe labour entailed by the preparation for and the composition ofThe Advancement of Learning(1603–5). He must be a stout-hearted Baconian who can believe that, between 1599 and 1605, Bacon was writingHamlet, and other masterpieces of tragedy or comedy. But all is possible to genius. What Mr. Greenwood’s Great Unknown was doing at this period, “neither does he know, nor do I know, but he only.” He, no doubt, had abundance of leisure.
At last Shakspere died (1616), and had not the mead of one melodious tear, as far as we know, from the London wits, in the shape of obituary verses. This fills Mr. Greenwood with amazement. “Was it because ‘the friends of the Muses’ were for the most part aware that Shakespeare had not died with Shakspere?” Did Jonson perchance think that his idea might be realised when he wrote,
“What a sight it were,To see thee in our waters yet appear”?
“What a sight it were,To see thee in our waters yet appear”?
and so on. Did Jonson expect and hope to seethe genuine “Shakespeare” return to the stage, seven years after the death of Shakspere the actor, the Swan of Avon? As Jonson was fairly sane, we can no more suspect him of having hoped for this miracle than believe that most of the poets knew the actor not to be the author. Moreover Jonson, while desiring that Shakespeare might “shine forth” again and cheer the drooping stage, added,
“Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like Night,And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light,”
“Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like Night,And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light,”
that is—the Folio of 1623. Ben did not weave the amazing tissue of involved and contradictory falsities attributed to him by Baconians. Beaumont died in the same year as Shakspere, who died in the depths of the country, weary of London. Has Mr. Greenwood found obituary poems dropped on the grave of the famous Beaumont? Did Fletcher, did Jonson, produce one melodious tear for the loss of their friend; in Fletcher’s case his constant partner? No? Were the poets, then, aware that Beaumont was a humbug, whose poems and plays were written by Bacon?[174a]
I am not to discuss Shakespeare’s Will, the “second-best bed,” and so forth. But as Shakespeare’s Will says not a word about his books, it is decided by Mr. Greenwood that he had no books. Mr. Greenwood is a lawyer; so was my late friend Mr. Charles Elton, Q.C., of White Staunton,who remarks that Shakespeare bequeathed “all the rest of my goods, chattels, leases, &c., to my son-in-law, John Hall, gent.” (He reallywasa “gent.” with authentic coat-armour.)
It is with Mr. Elton’s opinion, not with my ignorance, that Mr. Greenwood must argue in proof of the view that “goods” are necessarily exclusive of books, for Mr. Elton takes it as a quite natural fact that Shakespeare’s books passed, with his other goods, to Mr. Hall, and thence to a Mr. Nash, to whom Mr. Hall left “my study of books”[175a](library). I only give this as a lawyer’s opinion.
There is in the Bodleian an Aldine Ovid, “with Shakespeare’s” signature (merely Wm. She.), and a note, “This little volume of Ovid was given to me by W. Hall, who sayd it was once Will Shakespeare’s.” I do not know that the signature (like that on Florio’sMontaigne, in the British Museum) has been detected as a forgery; nor do I know that Shakespeare’s not specially mentioning his books proves that he had none. Lawyers appear to differ as to this inference: both Mr. Elton and Mr. Greenwood seem equally confident.[175b]But ifit were perfectly natural that the actor, Shakspere, should have no books, then he certainly made no effort, by the local colour of owning a few volumes, to persuade mankind that hewasthe author. Yet they believed that he was—really there is no wriggling out of it. As regards any of his own MSS. which Shakespeare may have had (one would expect them to be at his theatre), and their monetary value, if they were not, as usual, the property of his company, and of him as a member thereof, we can discuss that question in the section headed “The First Folio.”
It appears that Shakespeare’s daughter, Judith, could write no more than her grandfather.[176a]Nor, I repeat, could the Lady Jane Gordon, daughter of the great Earl of Huntly, when she was married to the Earl of Bothwell in 1566. At all events, Lady Jane “made her mark.” It may be feared that Judith, brought up in that very illiterate town of Stratford, under an illiterate mother, was neglected in her education. Sad, but very common in women of her rank, and scarcely a proof that her father did not write the plays.
As “nothing is known of the disposition and character”[176b]of Shakespeare’s grand-daughter, Lady Barnard, who died in 1670, it is not so paralysingly strange that nothing is known of any relics or anecdotes of Shakespeare which she may have possessed. Mr. Greenwood “wouldhave supposed that she would have had much to say about the great poet,” exhibited his books (if any), and so forth. Perhaps she did,—but how, if we “know nothing about her disposition and character,” can we tell? No interviewers rushed to her house (Abington Hall, Northampton-shire) with pencils and notebooks to record her utterances; no reporter interviewed her for the press. It is surprising, is it not?
The inference might be drawn, in the Baconian manner, that, during the Commonwealth and Restoration, “the friends of the Muses” knew that the actor wasnotthe author, and therefore did not interview his granddaughter in the country.
“But, at any rate, we have the Stratford monument,” says Mr. Greenwood, and delves into this problem. Even the Stratford monument of Shakespeare in the parish church is haunted by Baconian mysteries. If the gentle reader will throw his eye over the photograph[177a]of the monument as it now exists, he may not be able to say to the face of the poet—
“Thou wast that all to me, Will,For which my soul did pine.”
“Thou wast that all to me, Will,For which my soul did pine.”
But if he has any knowledge of Jacobean busts on monuments, he will probably agree with me in saying, “This effigy, though executed by somebody who was not a Pheidias, and who perhaps worked merely from descriptions, is, atall events, Jacobean.” The same may assuredly be said of the monument; it is in good Jacobean style: the pillars with their capitals are graceful: all the rest is in keeping; and the two inscriptions are in the square capital letters of inscriptions of the period; not in italic characters. Distrusting my ownexpertise, I have consulted Sir Sidney Colvin, and Mr. Holmes of the National Portrait Gallery. They, with Mr. Spielmann, think the work to be of the early seventeenth century.
Next, glance at the figure opposite. This is a reproduction of “the earliest representation of the Bust” (and monument) in Dugdale’sAntiquities of Warwickshire(1656). Compare the two objects, point by point, from the potato on top with holes in it, of Dugdale, which is meant for a skull, through all the details,—bust and all. Does Dugdale’s print, whether engraved by Hollar or not, represent a Jacobean work? Look at the two ludicrous children, their legs dangling in air; at the lions’ heads above the capitals of the pillars; at the lettering of the two visible words of the inscription, and at the gloomy hypochondriac or lunatic, clasping a cushion to his abdomen. That hideous design was not executed by an artist who “had his eye on the object,” if the object were a Jacobean monument: while the actual monument was fashioned in no period of art but the Jacobean. From Digges’ rhymes in the Folio of 1623, we know that Shakespeare already hadhis “Stratford monument.”The existing object is what he had; the monument in Dugdale is what, I hope, no architect of 1616–23 could have imagined or designed.
The Monument in Dugdale’s “History of the Antiquities of Warwickshire” (1656) (By permission of John Murray, Esq.)
Dugdale’s engraving is not a correct copy of any genuine Jacobean work of art. Is Dugdale accurate in his reproductions of other monuments in Stratford Church? To satisfy himself on this point, Sir George Trevelyan, as he wrote to me (June 13, 1912), “made a sketch of the Carew Renaissance monument in Stratford Church, and found that the discrepancies between the original tomb and the representation in Dugdale’sWarwickshireare far and away greater than in the monument to William Shakespeare.”
Mr. Greenwood,[179a]while justly observing that “the little sitting figures . . . are placed as no monumental sculptor would place them,” “on the whole sees no reason at all why we should doubt the substantial accuracy of Dugdale’s figure . . . It is impossible to suppose that Hollar would have drawn and that Dugdale would have published a mere travesty of the Stratford Monument.”
I do not know who drew the design, but a travesty of Jacobean work it is in every detail of the monument. A travesty is what Dugdale gives as a representation of the Carew monument. Mr. Greenwood, elsewhere, repeating his criticism of the impossible figures of children, says: “Thisis certainly mere matter of detail, and, in the absence of other evidence, would give us no warrant for doubting the substantial accuracy of Dugdale’s presentment of the ‘Shakespeare’ bust.”[180a]
Why are we to believe that Dugdale’s artist was merely fantastic in his design of the children (and also remote from Jacobean taste in every detail), and yet to credit him with “substantial accuracy” in his half-length of a gloomy creature clutching a cushion to his stomach? With his inaccuracies as to the Carew monument, why are we to accept him as accurate in his representation of the bust? Moreover, other evidence is not wanting. It is positively certain that the monument existing in 1748, was then known as “the original monument,” and that no other monument was put in its place, at that date or later.
The Carew Monument in Stratford Church
The Carew Monument as Represented in Dugdale’s “History of the Antiquities of Warwickshire” (1656)
Now Mrs. Stopes[180b]argues that in 1748 the monument was “entirely reconstructed,” and so must have become no longer what Dugdale’s man drew, but what we see to-day. It is positively certain that her opinion is erroneous.
If ever what we see to-day was substituted for anything like what Dugdale’s man drew, the date of the substitution is unknown.
Mrs. Stopes herself discovered the documents which disprove her theory. They were known to Halliwell-Phillipps, who quotes an unnamed “contemporary account.”[181a]This account Mrs. Stopes, with her tireless industry, found in the Wheler manuscripts, among papers of the Rev. Joseph Greene, in 1746 Head Master of the Grammar School. In one paper of September 1740 “the original monument” is said to be “much impaired and decayed.” There was a scheme for making “a new monument” in Westminster Abbey.That, I venture to think, would have been in Hanoverian, not in Jacobean taste and style. But there was no money for a new monument. Mrs. Stopes also found a paper of November 20, 1748, showing that in September 1746, Mr. Ward (grandfather of Mrs. Siddons) was at Stratford with “a cry of players.” He devoted the proceeds of a performance ofOthelloto the reparation of the then existing monument. The amount was twelve pounds ten shillings. The affair dragged on, one of the Church-wardens, a blacksmith, held the £12, 10s., and was troublesome. The document of November 20, 1748, was drawn up to be signed, but was not signed, by the persons who appear to be chiefly concerned in the matter. It directed that Mr. Hall, a local limner or painter, is to “take care, according to his ability, that the monument shall become as like as possible to what it was when first erected.” This appears to have been the idea of Mr. Greene. Another form of words was later adopted, directing Mr. Hall, the painter,“to repair and beautify, or to have the direction of repairing and beautifying,the original monumentof Shakespeare the poet.” Mrs. Stopes infers, justly in my opinion, that Hall “would fill up the gaps, restore what was amissing as he thought it ought to be, and finally repaint it according to the original colours, traces of which he might still be able to see.” In hisHistory and Antiquities of Stratford-on-Avon,[182a]Mr. Wheler tells us that this was what Hall did. “In the year 1748 the monument was carefully repaired, and the original colours of the bust, &c., as much as possible preserved by Mr. John Hall, limner, of Stratford.”
It follows that we see the original monument and bust, but the painting is of 1861, for the bust, says Wheler, was in 1793 “painted in white,” to please Malone. It was repainted in 1861.
Mrs. Stopes, unluckily, is not content with what Hall was told to do, and what, according to Wheler, he did. She writes: “It would only be giving good value for his money” (£12, 10s.) “to his churchwardens if Hall added (sic) a cloak, a pen, and manuscript.” He “could not help changing” the face, and so on.
Now it was physically impossible toadda cloak, a pen, and manuscript to such a stone bust as Dugdale’s man shows; to take away the cushion pressed to the stomach, and to alter the head. Mr. Hall, if he was to give us the present bust,had to make an entirely new bust, and, to give us the present monument in place of that shown in Dugdale’s print, had to construct an entirely new monument. Now Hall was a painter, not (like Giulio Romano) also an architect and sculptor.Pour tout potagehe had but £12, 10s.He could not do, and he did not do these things! he did not destroy “the original monument” and make a new monument in Jacobean style. He was straitly ordered to “repair and beautify the original monument”; he did repair it, and repainted the colours. That is all. I do not quote what Halliwell-Phillipps tells us[183a]about the repairing of the forefinger and thumb of the right hand, and the pen; work which, he says, had to be renewed by William Roberts of Oxford in 1790. He gives no authority, and Baconians may say that he was hoaxed, or “lied with circumstance.”
Mr. Greenwood[183b]quotes Halliwell-Phillipps’sWorks of Shakespeare(1853), in which he says that the design in Dugdale’s book “is evidently too inaccurate to be of any authority; the probability being that it was not taken from the monument itself.” Indeed the designer is so inaccurate that he gives the first word of the Latin inscription as “Judicyo,” just as Oudry blunders in the Latin inscription of a portrait of Mary Stuart which he copied badly. Mr. Greenwoodproceeds: “In hisOutlinesHalliwell simply ignores Dugdale. His engraving was doubtless too inconvenient to be brought to public notice!” Here Halliwell is accused of suppressing the truth; if he invented his minute details about the repeated reparation of the writing hand,—not represented in Dugdale’s design,—he also lied with circumstance. But he certainly quoted a genuine “contemporary account” of the orders for repairing and beautifying the original monument in 1748, and I presume that he also had records for what he says about reparations of the hand and pen. He speaks, too, of substitutions for decayed alabaster parts of the monument, though not in hisOutlines; and I observe that, in Mrs. Stopes’s papers, there is record of a meeting on December 20, 1748, at which mention was made of “the materials” which Hall was to use for repairs.
To me the evidence of the style as to the date of both monument and bust speaks so loudly for their accepted date (1616–23) and against the Georgian date of 1748, that I need no other evidence; nor do I suppose that any one familiar with the monumental style of 1590–1620 can be of a different opinion. In the same way I do not expect any artist or engraver to take the engraving of the monument in Rowe’sShakespeare(1709), and that by Grignion so late as 1786, for anything but copies of the design in Dugdale, with modifications madeà plaisir. InPope’s edition (1725) Vertue gives the monument with some approach to accuracy, but for the bald plump face of the bust presents a top-heavy and sculpturally impossible face borrowed from “the Chandos portrait,” which, in my opinion, is of no more authority than any other portrait of Shakespeare. None of them, I conceive, was painted from the life.
The Baconians show a wistful longing to suppose the original bust, copied in Dugdale, to have been meant for Bacon; but we need not waste words over this speculation. Mr. Greenwood writes that “if I should be told that Dugdale’s effigy represented an elderly farmer deploring an exceptionally bad harvest, ‘I should not feel it to be strange!’ Neither should I feel it at all strange if I were told that it was the presentment of a philosopher and Lord Chancellor, who had fallen from high estate and recognised that all things are but vanity.”
From Vertue’s Engraving of the Monument (1725) (By permission of John Murray, Esq.)
“Ishould not feel it to be strange” if a Baconian told me that the effigy of a living ex-Chancellor were placed in the monument of the dead Will Shakspere, and if, on asking why the alteration was made, I were asked in reply, in Mr. Greenwood’s words, “Was Dugdale’s bust thought to bear too much resemblance to one who was not Shakspere of Stratford? Or was it thought that the presence of a woolsack” (the cushion) “might be taken as indicating that Shakspere of Stratford was indebted for supportto a certain Lord Chancellor?”[186a]Such, indeed, are the things that Baconians might readily say: do say, I believe.