It is strange how sometimes an opinion altogether untenable, which some one has broached, is taken up by others, and comes in time to be accepted as true by a considerable number. It was some twenty-five years ago that a Miss Delia Bacon published an elaborate argument whose end was to show that not William Shakspere, but Lord Francis Bacon, was the author of the immortal plays which bear the former’s name. She first gave her discovery—unquestionably of the highest importance, if correct—to the world in a magazine article; but afterward embodied it in quite a large volume, to which Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote an introduction, though he did not accept the writer’s theory. This was the beginning of a controversy which is still alive. Perhaps the number has never been very large of those who believe that the glory of Shakspere belongs to Bacon; but there have always been some to entertain the preposterous notion, from Miss Bacon to Mrs. Henry Pott.
The latter lady has recently issued a book which has excited some interest. The title—somewhat drawn out—is, “The Promus of Formularies and Elegancies (being private notes,circa1594, hitherto unpublished) of Francis Bacon, illustrated and elucidated by passages from Shakspere.” Mrs. Pott’s undertaking is one more in the line of Miss Delia Bacon. By a comparison of the Bacon notes, in forms of expression and thought, with passages of the Shakspere tragedies and comedies, she endeavors to verify the theory that the great English philosopher—author of the “Novum Organum,” and characterized by Pope as “the greatest, wisest, and meanest of mankind”—is also author of the works accorded to the Bard of Avon. That she succeeds in her task she herself evidently entertains no doubt, but probably not many will agree with her. She finds correspondences and similarities in passages compared where her readers will try in vain to find them; and it is putting the matter mildly to say that her undertaking is a great failure.
Considerable ingenuity and much enthusiasm have been shown by advocates of the theory which makes Lord Bacon the author of the works of Shakspere; but the theory is an absurd one, with nothing whatever to support it. The internal evidence, contained in the works of the two authors, not only gives the theory no support, but is alone enough to a sane mind completely to demolish it. The whole cast of Bacon’s mind, as shown by his known writings, was as unlike as it could be to that of the person who wrote the Shakspere dramas and sonnets. And what other evidence is adduced by those who would have us transfer to another the laurels of the man who was easilythe greatest mind in all literature? None whatever. The truth is, it is the improbability from the nature of the case—or, as some would say, the impossibility—that such a person as William Shakspere, the son of a Stratford yeoman, with limited educational opportunities, whose youth was by no means promising, should have produced the works to which for two centuries his name has been attached, which is at the bottom of the theory which gives the authorship to another. This, and nothing else, originated the idea, and keeps it alive. We are told that to believe in Shakspere as the author of these works, universally acknowledged as unapproached and unapproachable, is to believe a miracle. “Whence hath this man this wisdom?” it is asked, as was asked of the Divine Man; and we are reminded that the stream never rises higher than the fountain. Shakspere could not have produced the works—the power was not in him, it is reasoned, but the wise Bacon might have done it; therefore people search for the wherewithal to substantiate an assumption giving the authorship to the latter. But we must believe the miracle; there is no escape. Did Milton write the “Paradise Lost,” and Lord Bacon the “Novum Organum?” Is the Iliad the work of Homer? It is just as certain that the Shakspere writings were the offspring of Shakspere’s genius. We admit the marvel, but there is no setting aside of the fact. And when we are asked to explain how this man could have acquired the power to produce these prodigies of human genius, we can only say, the Maker gave it to him.