BIBLIOGRAPHY (continued 3)

Anti-Sh.

A dissertation on the insufficiency of the schools in Shakespeare’s day. In illustration of this, Mr. Morgan quotes schoolmaster Evans and his pupil William, in Merry Wives of Windsor, Act IV, Scene 1.

223 The Bacon-Shakespeare Theory. In the Morning Journal, Cincinnati, April 16, 1883. 1 column.

Pro-Sh.

224 Shakespearian Circle-Squaring. A criticism of the Promus, in the Pall Mall Gazette, London, April 20, 1883. 1½ columns.

Pro-Sh.

225 Articles in Shakespeariana, in the Literary World, Boston, April 21, 1883.

a—Cleopatra’s “Billiards.” Note from Hon. A. A. Adee, with remarks by the Editor.

b—Mr. Grant White on Bacon and Shakespeare.

Pro-Sh.

Mr. Adee calls attention to the fact that the often quoted (but disputed) anachronism in Antony and Cleopatra—where Cleopatra says to her attendant, Charmian, “let’s to billiards”—was doubtless obtained from Chapman, who uses the word “billiards” similarly in his Blind Beggar of Alexandria, printed ten years before Antony and Cleopatra, was written. As to the anachronisms generally, Mr. Rolfe says:

* * * “If, to preserve his incognito, Bacon had refrained from any parade of his scholarship, and had even put occasional anachronisms into the mouths of his characters, we cannot imagine him showing the habitual ignorance in such matters that Shakespeare does. He could never have made Coriolanus talk of ‘graves in the holy church-yard,’ or Menenius, in the same play, of ‘Galen’—‘an anachronism of near 650 years,’ as Dr. Grey called it—or Mark Antony, of coming to ‘bury’ Cæsar, and the like. These frequent and free-and-easy blunders, so utterly inconsistent with the scholarly habit of mind, are of themselves a sufficient refutation of the theory that ‘Bacon wrote Shakespeare.’”

226 Shakespeare. By Rev. Edward C. Towne. Two articles in the Evening Transcript, Boston. I, April 28, 1883; II, August 3, 1883. 3 columns each.

Pro-Sh.

These articles are devoted principally to the life, genius, and character of Shakespeare as disproving the Baconian theory.

227 “Our Shakespeare Club.” Remarks of Sam. Timmins, Chairman. In the Daily Mail, Birmingham, England, April 24, 1883.

Pro-Sh.

Mr. Timmins presided at the annual dinner of the club on the birth-day of Shakespeare, at the Plow and Harrow Hotel, Birmingham, and made the opening address, opposing all the anti-Shakespearian theories.

228 “Bacon’s Promus.” Two letters of Appleton Morgan of this title. In the Republic, Washington, April 28, and March 24, 1883.

Anti-Sh.

229 Shakespeare as a Myth. By Henry Hooper. In the Commercial Gazette, Cincinnati, April 29, 1883. 3 columns.

Pro-Sh.

Occasioned by Morgan’s Shakespearean Myth, to which it is a reply.

“If Shakespeare alone wrote these plays, then it is the greatest miracle on record, says Mr. Morgan. If it be a miracle for one, it would be a combination of miracles for ten, or even two, to compose Hamlet or Othello. * * * The joint composition theory is as improbable and impossible as it would be for an orchestra to invent a Symphony of Beethoven. You might just as well say that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is the joint work of a number of musicians, viz: that the violin players composed the string parts, the reed players the flute and oboe parts, and the trombones and double basses their scores. This is not more absurd than the theory that a pale student, a needy scholar, a ready writer, an actor and a stage manager produced Twelfth Night and King Lear.”

230 Who Was Shakespeare? Address by Mr. William Leighton, Jr., at the Shakespeare Club Banquet, Wheeling, W. Va., April 23, 1883. In the Sunday Register, Wheeling, April 29, 1883.

Pro-Sh.

In Mr. Leighton’s address the authorship is only incidentally referred to.

“Genius is the touch of God’s hand, an inspiration that comes not out of any college, but is evoked from the soul by its own tendencies and aspirations; and, so born, can only be fostered into healthy maturity by unremitting labor. The attempt to take from Shakespeare’s brow the laurel crown of the most glorious of bards is a vain effort to rob a dead man of well-earned honors; and why? Because a yeoman must not presume to stand above a nobleman; or a poet, who has not been to college, dare to mount the winged steed. But Shakespeare’s honors can not be taken from him by idle sophistry or arbitrary dogmatism; he has entrenched himself in the hearts of his countrymen, and his position is impregnable.”

231 Who Is Shakespeare? Address by Mr. Joseph Crosby, at the Shakespeare Club Banquet, Wheeling, W. Va., as above. In the Sunday Register, Wheeling, April 29, 1883.

Pro-Sh.

Mr. Crosby—whose views will be found under title 126—devotes a portion only of this address to the authorship.

232 Letter from Appleton Morgan. In the Church Eclectic, Utica, N. Y., for May, 1883. 3 pages.

Anti-Sh.

A reply to the letter of Mr. Crosby’s in the same magazine for November, 1880. We quote one point only:

“I am sure I can refer the writer to at least half a score of authorities which will agree that the tuition in provincial grammar-schools of the Sixteenth Century was simply ridiculous, and a travesty; a little of A, B, C, and Lily’s Accidence, and a good deal of birch; and that however it made boys truants, it hardly graduated ‘men of letters.’”

233 Bosh about Bacon. By A. B. B. [A. B. Braley, Madison, Wis.] In the Sunday Telegraph, Milwaukee, Wis., May 20, 1883, 1½ columns. Also, The Bacon Cranks. Evidence of Shakespeare’s Contemporaries. In the same paper, June 10, 1883. 1½ columns.

Pro-Sh.

234 Shakespeare at Home. Letter from M. D. C. [Moncure D. Conway], from Stratford-on-Avon, April 21, 1883. In the Commercial Gazette, Cincinnati, May 26, 1883. 2 columns.

Unc.

An interesting letter from Mr. Conway on the occasion of one of the commemorative celebrations at Stratford.

Referring to Delia Bacon’s book:

* * * “Perhaps there never was such a monument of wasted ability. There is hardly anything in it of a negative character, very little that shows apprehension of the real points in the Shakespearean traditions that tempt skepticism. Her book dwells on the affirmation that Bacon wrote the plays; that may easily be answered by any one who will turn from a page of Shakespeare to one of Bacon, which, to most people, is turning from a winged to an earth-bound genius. But the incidental theory that Shakespeare did not write these plays, though at present the fad of a few, is not unlikely to acquire large proportions in the future. Such is the inevitable doom of every set of traditions that have not been subjected to severe skeptical criticism.

“For the back-ground of miracle is always present—namely, that the village lad, son of a man who could not write his name, wrote all these mighty works, died at the age of fifty-three, and yet left no manuscript, no records, so that not even his birth-day is known.

“Yet here are the works. Somebody wrote them. Or it would be truer to say that somebody recognized the great world-histories and legends, exhumed them, covered them with flesh and blood, and breathed into them the breath of life. For here we are enjoying them, and finding amid all these creations the presence of a central mind, however inapprehensible.”

235 Who Wrote Julius Cæsar? By H. I. In the Times-Star, Cincinnati, May 29, 1883. 2 columns.

Anti-Sh.

The writer takes the occasion of the Cincinnati Dramatic Festival to make this inquiry:

“The Dramatic Festival of this city was inaugurated by the production, at immense cost and great splendor, of the play of Julius Cæsar. It must have been ‘indeed an oasis’—with McCullough and Murdoch, Barrett, Louis James, and Miss Forsyth in the fore-front, five hundred Roman citizens and soldiers in perfect drill—a spectacle this to have gladdened with happy moisture the eyes, could they have seen it, of—the—author. Who was he?”

The writer professes his belief that the author was Francis Bacon, and advances a claim of parallel thoughts, etc., between the plays and the Advancement of Learning in support of his opinion.

236 Hat Francis Bacon die Dramen William Shakespeare’s Geschrieben? Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der geistigen Verirrungen. Von Dr. Eduard Engel, Leipzig, 1883. (Did Francis Bacon Write William Shakespeare’s Plays? A contribution to the history of Intellectual Errors.) Pamphlet, pp. 43.

Pro-Sh.

Dr. Engel takes for his text Mrs. Pott’s Promus, and this pamphlet is in answer to that work, and to the favorable notice of it appearing in the Allgemeine Zeitung (see titles 205 and 206), which he ascribes to ‘Herr V.’ He strongly opposes all anti-Shakespearian theories.

“It would be deplorable, and would contradict all the history of the world’s literature, if Lord Bacon had written Shakespeare’s plays. It would be deplorable—and this decides the matter—because it would then be shown, for the first time in the history of mankind, that a poetical genius of the highest sublimity, and a character of the lowest baseness, could exist in one and the same man.”

Dr. Engel closes his essay with a quotation from Herder:

“I have in my mind an immense figure of a man, sitting high on a rocky summit; at his feet, storm, tempest, and the raging of the sea; but his head in the beams of heaven. This is Shakespeare. Only, with this addition, that far below, at the foot of his rocky throne, are murmuring crowds, who expound, preserve, condemn, defend, worship, slander, over-rate, and abuse him—and of all this he hears nothing.”

237 Bacon and Shakespeare. In Shakespeariana, in the Literary World, Boston, June 2, 1883.

Pro-Sh.

The editor introduces in this article an extract from a letter received by Mr. Joseph Crosby from “one of the most learned and philosophical of living Shakespearian critics.” The writer of the letter [Dr. Ingleby, of England] says, after expressing his dissent from the opinions of those who believe that it is immaterial whether the plays were written by Shakespeare or Bacon:

“And I cannot without concern witness the crazy efforts of these would-be critics to separate what history has joined together, and to make over the better half of Shakespeare’s fame to a man, not only immeasurably his inferior, but of a totally different order of mind. * * * I have read, studied, and written upon Francis Bacon, and seem to myself to know the man well; as well as I know Shakespeare, through his works. I do not hesitate to say that Bacon’s strength lay in his Analysis: he was a most acute and sagacious critic of the past, and moreover knew the needs of man, and in what direction those needs could be met, and to some extent satisfied. But this made him a tremendous Apollyon—a destructive force of the greatest, the most momentous character. He succeeded as a destroyer, but when he attempted to construct, he made a conspicuous failure. * * * Such a man write Shakespeare! It is really not worth five minutes’ discussion.”

238 About Shakespeare. By Joseph A. Woodhull. In the Republican, Angola, Ind., June 27, 1883. 1½ columns.

Pro-Sh.

239 A Bit of the Baconian Theory. A letter from Constance M. Pott. [Mrs. Henry Pott.] In the Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn., July 15, 1883. 1 column.

Anti-Sh.

This letter is mainly a description of St. Albans, the residence of Lord Bacon, with its historical associations and its objects of archæological interest, as compared with Stratford-on-Avon, and what R. Grant White calls its “museum of doubtful relics and gimcracks.”

240 William Done For. By John W. Bell. In the Commercial Gazette, July 21, 1883. ½ column.

Anti-Sh.

An answer to Mr. Hooper’s article (title 229) in same paper.

241 Mr. O’Connor’s Letter. In Bucke’s life of Walt Whitman. Philadelphia, August, 1883. (See pages 88 to 93.)

Anti-Sh.

This is an introductory letter by William D. O’Connor to his Good Grey Poet, printed in the appendix to the above work.

“The main scope and purpose of the Shakespeare drama are definitely given by Lord Bacon in connection with his assertion that the compilation of the natural history of the human passions is the first duty of philosophy, and that it is particularly the province of poetry. In this connection he describes the Shakespearean work perfectly. Therein, he says, ‘we may find painted forth, with great life, how passions are kindled and incited; how pacified and refrained; and how again contained from act and further degree; how they disclose themselves; how they work; how they vary; how they gather and fortify; how they are inwrapped, one within another; and how they do fight and encounter one with another; and other the like particulars.’ ‘That is to say,’ remarks Dr. Kuno Fischer, quoting this passage: ‘Bacon desires nothing less than a natural history of the passions; the very thing that Shakespeare has produced.’

“The only supreme tyrant is ignorance. If I sought to express the Shakespeare drama in the image of a person, I would not choose the eidolon of any feudal emperor. My choice would be a man like Francis Bacon, * * * wise with all the lore of all the ages, the companion and counsellor of princes, the familiar of gypsies, and tinkers, and sailors as well; deep-eyed, with long insight into the minds of men of every degree; master of multiform experiences; traveled, elegant, courtly, august, intrepid, loyal, gentle, compassionate, sorrowful, beautiful; clothed, from fondness for sumptuous apparel, in purple three-piled velvet, rich laces, and the hat with plumes, yet loving—another anecdote tells of him—to ride with bared head, in the warm and perfumed rains of spring, that he might feel upon him, he said, the universal spirit of the world.”

242 A Bibliography of the Exhumation Question. By Dr. C. M. Ingleby. In Shakespeare’s Bones. London: Trübner & Co., 1883. 4to. pp. 48.

Unc.

This Bibliography is appended to Dr. Ingleby’s book, and is pertinent to this question only in its references to an exhumation as likely to set at rest the theories (Miss Bacon’s, for instance) as to documents being deposited in the tomb of Shakespeare.

243 The Sonnets of Shakespeare. When, to Whom, and by Whom Written. By Antiquary. (Reprinted from the Truth Seeker, New York, of August 18, 1883.) Pamphlet, 12mo. pp. 12.

Anti-Sh.

The author gives the dedication of the Sonnets:

“To the onlie begetter of | these insuing Sonnets | Mr. W. H. all happinesse | and that eternitie | promised by | our ever-living poet | wisheth | the well-wishing | adventurer in | setting forth | T. T.”

The American Cyclopedia says:

“To whom they were written, and in whose person [T. T.] is among the most difficult of unsolved literary problems. * * * Who this ‘onlie begetter’ was, no man has yet been able satisfactorily to show.”

The writer discusses the various theories on this subject. His conclusions may be summed up in the following extract:

“All the internal and external evidence points to the year 1590 as the date, Francis Bacon as the writer, and the Earl of Essex as the person addressed.”

244 Mr. Morgan and Shakespeare. In the Pioneer Press, St. Paul, August 19, 1883, introducing a letter from Appleton Morgan. 1½ columns.

Anti-Sh.

This refers mainly to Fleay’s Shakespeare Manual, which (Mr. Morgan claims) proves that “many hands and many brains were concerned in composing the works we call Shakespeare.”

245 The Gout Club Discusses the Authorship of Shakespeare. In the Tribune, Denver, Col., October 14, 1883. 3 columns.

Unc.

What is here called the Gout Club of Denver, consists of a few congenial spirits who meet socially and discuss various subjects in an informal way. In this article various gentlemen are credited with opinions and speeches on the question. The colloquists consist of Col. Ward H. Lamon, Col. J. B. Belford, Judge Ward, Col. Craig, Major Carson, Col. Dormer, and Judge Steck.

Reference is made in this discussion to an article, Who Wrote Shakespeare’s Henry VIII? by J. S. [James Spedding], in the Gentleman’s Magazine for August, 1850, as the earliest mention of a doubt as to the authorship. (The date is erroneously given as February, 1852.) That article, however, does not raise the general question of the authorship, but simply claims to discover the hand of Fletcher in a portion of this play, as a co-worker with Shakespeare.

246 The Offer to the New Shakespere Society. In the Academy, London, November 24, 1883.

Unc.

The “curiosities” of this literature would be incomplete without the following:

“Mr. Furnivall, as director of the New Shakespere Society, has received an amusing letter from New South Wales. A gentleman there has, after seven years’ search, discovered, not only the well-known historical character who wrote all Shakespeare’s plays and poems, but the very month and spot in which eleven of the plays were written, and the probable date and locality in which the rest were composed, the author’s object in writing them, and the historical characters and events meant by the dramatic ones; further, that one character was interpolated, and one entire play was written by the author after Shakespeare’s death. This antipodean discoverer can also now date and explain all the Sonnets except four (123, 124, 144, 146), and those ‘will be explained on a future occasion.’ He knows who ‘Mr. W. H.,’ the begetter of the Sonnets, was, and all the persons to whom they were addressed; and he can show that our royal family is descended from Perdita. So certain is the researcher of the value of his discoveries that he offers to come to London and unfold his secrets to the New Shakespere Society, if only they will guarantee him the payment of £30,000 in case he can convince the majority of them of the truth of his discoveries. A letter from the Premier of New South Wales attests the high standing and sanity of the discoverer.”

247 Notes on Julius Cæsar. By Wm. J. Rolfe. In Shakespeariana (the new Shakespearian monthly. New York: Leonard Scott Publishing Co.), for December, 1883.

Pro-Sh.

A part only of the article refers to this subject:

“The closeness with which the dramatist follows Plutarch in Julius Cæsar and the other Roman plays has been noted by the commentators generally. * * * Even the blunders of Plutarch, or of his copyists or editors (as Decius Brutus for Decimus Brutus, Calphurnia for Calpurnia, and the like), are literally reproduced in the play. To my mind this is proof positive that Bacon did not write it. He was too good a scholar to follow blindly the translation of a translation, repeating errors which a scholar would neither make himself nor fail to detect in another; and he was too independent to adopt the views of any one authority without comparing them with others that were equally well known to him.”

248 Lawyer or no Lawyer. Letter from Appleton Morgan. In Shakespeariana, New York, for January, 1884.

Anti-Sh.

Mr. Morgan argues from the “grave-digger travesty” in Hamlet, and the trial scene in the Merchant of Venice, that “William Shakespeare was neither a lawyer nor a lawyer’s clerk.”

“It is wicked to peep and botanize over the magnificent and matchless poetry of that matchless trial scene. But if it is worth while to find out who wrote that magnificent and matchless poetry, these questions ought not to be stifled.”

249 Did Shakespeare Write Shakespeare? By Prof. J. H. Gilmore. In the Standard, Chicago, January 31, 1884. 2 columns.

Pro-Sh.

“The plays do not evince learning, but genius. They are especially deficient in that refinement which springs from thorough culture, and which Bacon pre-eminently possessed. Indeed, as insisted by Dowden, the whole habit and spirit of Bacon’s mind and the mind of Shakespeare were different.”

The comparison of Shakespeare and Bacon alluded to above will be found in Dowden’s Shakespeare: His Mind and Art, pages 16, 17.

250 “Who Was Holofernes?” By Mrs. Henry Pott. In Shakespeariana, New York, for February, 1884. 2 pages.

Anti-Sh.

This was occasioned by an article of Mr. Henry Hooper’s, in Shakespeariana, for December, 1883, under the same title, intimating that Shakespeare had Lord Bacon in his mind as the model for Holofernes, the pedantic schoolmaster in Love’s Labor Lost. Mrs. Pott believes that the character of Holofernes was drawn by Bacon himself as an example of “pedantic and wordy affectations,” and quotes from his works to sustain her opinion.

251 The Law in Shakespeare. By C. K. Davis. St. Paul: West Publishing Co., 1884. 12mo. pp. 303.

Pro-Sh.

An index of Legal Terms and References in the plays, with an introduction (pages 3-59) devoted to the Baconian theory in part.

“And now comes some one and says that here is more proof that Shakespeare is a mere alias for Bacon. It is difficult to touch or let alone this vagary with any patience. One is inclined to protest simply in the words of Shakespeare’s epitaph:

and pass on, deeming all secure against a desecration worse than that which the poet cursed.

“Charles I. was sixteen years of age when Shakespeare died. Bacon dedicated to him his history of Henry VII. Shakespeare in Macbeth nobly magnified the House of Stuart by a prophecy of its perpetuity. The works of Shakespeare were the closet companion of Charles, who was reproached for this by Milton, at a time when the fierce zealots of rebellion had come to look upon the drama as sinful. Falkland was Charles’s councilor, and it is from him that we have respecting Caliban, the first critical estimate extant of any character in Shakespeare. And yet from prince, king, courtier, poet, or scholar, we hear no hint which can give this modern theory the slightest support.”

252 Davis’s “The Law in Shakespeare.” Two articles in the Pioneer Press, St. Paul, February 24, 1884. [By Appleton Morgan].

a—Review of the book. 2½ columns.

b—Gov. Davis on Shakespeare. ½ column.

Anti-Sh.

The following is the conclusion of the last named article:

“Gov. Davis has added a notable contribution to the material accumulating to answer this question, if answered it ever is to be. The Baconians will, perhaps, accuse him of unprofessional conduct in moving to cross off the roll of Shakespearean possibilities the name of a great lawyer and Lord Chancellor. But they will find their consolation in the fact that here is an entirely new arsenal for carrying on their warfare. For nobody has ever so unmistakably shown the lawyer in the plays before. In fact, Gov. Davis will thus find his peace all around. Shakespeareans will purr him for his heavy blows at the Baconians; Baconians will secretly approve him for building better than he knew when he traced an aristocratic lawyer in every Shakespearean line; and the neutral student will add the book to his Shakespeariana, among the fresh rather than the stale matter, with pleasure and thanksgiving. No Minnesotian will fail to feel honored that one of our most distinguished fellow-citizens has, for the first time, drawn from the history of Francis Bacon, if not from that of William Shakespeare, an almost insuperable and insurmountable reason why Francis Bacon, at least, could not have been William Himself.”

253 The Baconian Theory. Review of the Promus, in the Times, New York, Feb. 25, 1884. 1 column.

Pro-Sh.

“In publishing this Promus, Mrs. Pott has not only failed to prove that Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays, but she has gone a long way toward proving that Bacon could not possibly have written them. It is inconceivable that a poet in keeping a note book of phrases, etc., to be used in his finished work, should not frequently write out in the glow of creation, whole passages, or, at least, consecutive lines of verse, to be afterward incorporated in his poem. Let any one compare, for instance, Hawthorne’s note book with his tales and romances. He will find entire pages transferred almost bodily from the former into the latter. He will find scores of metaphors, similes, reflections, outlines for stories, descriptions, incidents, etc., the language of which is reproduced, in great part literally, in the completed works of the romancer. There is no such resemblance to be detected anywhere between the fragmentary jottings in the Promus and the text of Shakespeare’s plays. On the other hand, there are in the Promus numbers of quotations and sentences which Bacon did use in his acknowledged writings, and in such cases the language is almost always identical, and any one familiar with the Essays, e. g. will recognize the source of many sayings that have struck his mind.”

254 Shakespeare as a Foreign Linguist. By Prof. James A. Harrison. In Shakespeariana, New York, for March, 1884.

Pro-Sh.

This paper merely refers to the authorship in this suggestive question:

“If Bacon had been the author of these plays, would he not have strewn them with innumerable Latinisms?”

255 Whose Sonnets? By Appleton Morgan. In the Manhattan, New York, May, 1884. 8 pages.

Anti-Sh.

“Either these Sonnets are those mentioned as circulating among Shakespeare’s private friends prior to 1598, or they are not. If they are, they are as doubtfully his as is the rest of the literary matter given by Meres, so far as we know. If they are not, then they have no claim to be called Shakespeare’s except from the fact that his name was put on the title pages of three books of verses, among which verses they appeared.”