From Fraser's Magazine. hints which collateral investigation has brought to light since 1867, that the enTHE late Lord Palmerston maintained tire theory may reach the public eye. that the Plays of Shakspere were written Under the first head - the "Early Life by Lord Verulam, who passed them off of Shakspere "— our author concludes under the name of an actor, for fear of that, beyond that primary instruction compromising his professional prospects which could be obtained at the Free and philosophic gravity. Grammar School at Stratford, in which "There," observed his Lordship (see Latin was taught by one of the masters, Fraser's Magazine, November 1865) to a it is pretty certain that Shakspere had no company of friends at "Broadlands," education from public institutions or from "read that ("Bacon and Shakespeare," by private tuition. Such is the view mainW. H. Smith), and you will come over to tained by the mass of the biographers, my opinion." When the positive testi- with the exception of Lord Campbell, mony of Ben Jonson, in the verses pre- Messrs. Rushton, Heard, and others, who fixed to the edition of 1623, was adduced, would have seven years of the poet's life, he remarked, "Oh, those fellows always after his sudden withdrawal from school stand up for one another; or he may at the age of fourteen, devoted to the have been deceived like the rest." During study of the law; Drs. Bucknil and the past eight years evidences of Lord Stearns, an equal amount of time to the Palmerston's theory have been accumu- acquiring of the medical art; while lating in skilful hands; but by far the Bishop Wordsworth concludes his intermost masterly work upon the subject is esting work with the remark: "Take the that of the Hon. Nathaniel Holmes, entire range of English literature, put Judge, and Professor of Law in Harvard together our best authors who have writUniversity, Cambridge, U.S.A. ten upon subjects not professedly religious or theological, and we shall not find, I believe, in them all united so much evidence of the Bible having been read and used as we have found in Shakespeare alone." His book - the "Authorship of Shakespeare," an octavo of 600 pages seeks to ground this belief upon scientific rather than circumstantial evidence, and is logically divided into parts, beginning with the "Preliminaries - Shakespeare and Bacon," which settle, so far as the researches of that day were concerned, their relative lives, education, and occupations. Immediately following are the "Proofs" of the theory, which lead to the next department-"More Direct Proofs." Then succeeds a series of "Models," "Philosophical Evidences," thieves and rogues. To which enumeraand the "Spiritual Illumination," while the "Conclusion" contains a treatise upon the "Philosopher and Poet." Indeed, one commentator asserts that volumes may be filled, severally, with proofs of the dramatist's familiarity with husbandry, farming, gardening, and domestic economy; military and nautical affairs, the fine arts, trade, politics, and government; handicraft, horses and field sports, and even the language and arts of tion may be added the exhaustive knowledge of Court etiquette of which the plays give evidence, which would be quite Such is the skeleton of the production as hazardous for untutored manipulation of a subtle intellect, fortified by sound as matters of the legal profession; as to scholarship and unique research among which Lord Campbell says: "There is the Baconian and Shaksperian annals. nothing so dangerous as for one not of It will be the endeavour of the present the craft to tamper with our free-masoncritic (not convert) so to depict the "ex- ry." Our author follows the usually retraordinary paradox" in its own full ceived accounts of the father, John Shakstrength, together with a few borrowed spere, that though he was no doubt a The Authorship of Shakespeare. Nathaniel Holmes. Second edition. New York, 1867. Hurd and Houghton. • Shakespeare's Use of the Bible. Charles Wordsworth. London, 1864. P. 290. respectable burgher at Stratford, he was certainly so illiterate that he could not write his name, and executed written instruments by making his mark; and that the same was the case with his mother, notwithstanding she was descended of an ancient family of goodly estate. These historical facts are adduced to prove that the boy William could have received no "private tuition" at the parental knee, and that the father bequeathed not so much as a printed page to his son. Several of the leading essayists upon Shakspere are quoted who were unable to find agreement in the accounts of the Poet's strange Bohemian life and the products of his genius, which have become as it were the very spine of modern literature. The assertion is made that there exists no written compositions of Shakspere The German critic Schlegel, equally amazed belonging to the time previous to his go- at the extent of the knowledge and the depth ing to London, and no proof that there of the philosophy of these plays of Shakeever was any, except a mere tradition of speare, the author of which he could not but a lampoon upon Sir Thomas Lucy, of consider as one who had mastered "all the which no scrap has been authentically things and relations of this world," does not preserved. "The verses which later tra- hesitate to declare the received accounts of ditions have attributed to him, whether his life to be “a mere fabulous story, a blind and extravagant error." . . . Indeed, the bare as fragments of this supposed lampoon, or proposition that this man on his arrival in as epitaphs and epigrams written towards London, at the age of twenty-three, with only the close of his career, are, as any one such a history as we possess of his earlier life, may see, but miserable doggerel at the education, studies, and pursuits, could have best, and might have been written by the begun almost immediately to produce the sorriest poetaster." Shakspere is said, matchless works which we know by his name, by Rowe and Aubrey, to have made in not merely the most masterly works of art, late life the well-known lines upon John- and as such, in the opinion of eminent critics, a-Combe, which effusion the biographers surpassing the Greek tragedy itself, but classivainly attempt to blot from their memo- cal poems and plays the most profoundly ries. Mr. Richard Grant White is conphilosophical in the English language or in strained to remark: * “I am inclined to any other (for no less a critic than Goethe has think that he (Shakspere) did crack this awarded this high praise), may justly strike us at the outset as simply preposterous and abinnocent joke upon his friend, using, as surd. "What," exclaims Coleridge at this he would be likely to use, an old, well- consequence of the traditional biography, known jest, and giving it a new turn upon" are we to have miracles in sport? . . . Does the money-lender's name." Mr. Dowdall, in an existing letter to Edward Southwell, dated April 10, 1692, † remarks that Shakspere's epitaph was written by the poet himself a little before his death. Furthermore it is mentioned by Mr. Steevens as a singular circumstance that "Shakespeare does not appear to have written any verses on his contemporaries, either in praise of the living, or in honour of the dead." There are, however, several verses in existence God choose idiots by whom to convey divine truths to man?" Emerson, no less considering that the Shakespeare Society had ascertained that this William Shakespeare was a "goodnatured sort of man, a jovial actor, manager, and shareholder, not in any striking manner distinguished from other actors and manwithal, . . . is apparently obliged to lay down agers," and that he was "a veritable farmer" the problem in despair, with the significant confession: "I cannot marry this fact to his verse. Other admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought; but this man in wide contrast." In like manner Memoir of Shakespeare. R. G. White. Boston, Jean Paul Richter "would have him buried, if U.S.A., 1865. P. 101. t Ibid. P. 107. Shakespeare's Plays. Johnson, Steevens, Reed. London, 1803. Vol. I. p. 90. his life were like his writings, with Pythag *Halliwell's Life of Shakespeare. London, 1848. i P. 270. In the Returne from Pernassus, * 1606, Act V. sc. I, one Studioso, "going aside," says: Better it is 'mongst fiddlers to be chiefe, oras, Plato, Socrates, and the highest nobility | soul that had taken "all knowledge for of the human race, in the same best conse- his province." crated earth of our globe, God's flower-garden in the deep North."... Carlyle, that other master-critic of our time, chewing the cud of "this careless mortal, open to the universe and its influences, not caring strenuously to open himself; who, Prometheus-like, will scale Heaven (if it must be so), and is satisfied if he therewith pay the rent of his London playhouses," as it were, with the imperturbability of Teufelsdroch himself, simply breaks out at last with the brief exclamation: "An unparalleled mortal." England affordes those glorious vagabonds, They purchase lands, and now Esquires are made. Our author maintains that it does not appear by any direct proof that the original manuscript of any one of the plays or poems was ever seen, even in the writer's It is somewhat singular that Shaktime, in his own handwriting, under such spere was the only one of his profession circumstances as to afford any conclusive who by pecuniary successes was enabled evidence, however probable, that he was to purchase lands, and by a grant-of-arms, the original author. made to his father in 1599, became him I remember (says Ben Jonson) the players self by its descent an Esquire, 1601. have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writings (whatsoever he penn'd) hee never blotted out a line. "We have only to suppose for a moment," observes our author, "that the manuscripts may have been copied by him from some unknown com plete and finished originals, which were kept a secret from the world, and this wonder of the players would be at once explained." Citing the custom of Bacon, Burke, Goethe, Alfieri, Virgil, and others of first writing in brief, then extending, and finally of subjecting the whole to rigid correction, the author remarks: That Shakspere was universally reputed to have been the author of the Sonnets, and that the fact was never questioned until a recent date, our author admits, though he adduces some evidence tending to show that the contrary was known, or, at least, strongly suspected, by some persons at the time of their publication. Mr. Dyce gives warning that the allusions scattered through the whole series of Sonnets are not to be hastily referred to the personal circumstances of Shakspere, although one or two of them reflect his genuine feelings." Mr. Halliwell observes: "It is remarkable plays." Where is the record in all literary history that contemporary writers refer to them of extended compositions like these dramas having been spun out in this Arachne-like (the Sonnets) much oftener than to the fashion? Common actors might possibly believe, or imagine, that their facetious manager, A writer on this subject in the Atheamidst the daily bustle of the theatre, and innæum (September 13, 1856) remarks: the few hours of leisure which he could snatch from business or from sleep, out of his miraculous invention, and with the inspired pen of born genius, could dash off a Hamlet or a Lear as easily as twinkle his eye. He maintains that the judicious judge and critic must rather turn his search to the retired chambers of Gray's Inn, to the Lodge at Twickenham Park, or to the gardens at Gorhambury, where sat brooding in silence and in private the great There is the one great fact to begin with Shakespeare never claimed the plays as his own. His poems he claimed and his sonnets he claimed; and there is an undoubted difficulty in understanding how a man who cared for Lucrece and Venus and Adonis could be The Returne from Pernassus, or The Scourge of Simony. Publiquely acted by the Students of Saint John's College in Cambridge. 1606. ↑ Shakespeare's Works. Rev. A. Dyce. London 1866. Second edition, Vol. I. pp. 98-9. Halliwell's Life. London, 1848. Pp. 158-9. negligent about Hamlet and Othello. Yet Shakespeare was unquestionably indifferent about the dramas which were played in his name at the theatres and at the Court, and died without seeing the most remarkable series of intellectual works that ever issued from the brain of man set in the custody of type. At a later stage the author explains in extenso his views for maintaining that Lucrece and Venus and Adonis were dedicated to Southampton, under the name of Shakspere, as an arranged and designed cover for the real author. The argument for the learning and philosophic attainments of Shakespeare must depend upon the internal evidence contained in the writings themselves, not only unsupported in any adequate manner, but for the most part absolutely contradicted by the known facts of his personal history. Farmer, Steevens, and Malone, after laborious research, undertook to produce a list of the translations of ancient authors known to have existed in the English tongue in the time of Shakspere, as a source of all his classical erudition But it falls far short of furnishing a satisfactory explanation of the matter, in our day, and in the face of numerous instances to the contrary, scarcely less decisive than this one, that the Timon of Athens turns out to have been founded in great part upon the untranslated Greek of Lucian; besides that it is now clear enough to the attentive student, that this author drew materials, ideas, and even expressions from the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides and even Plato, no less than from the Latin of Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Seneca, and Tacitus . . . apparently with the utmost indifference to the question whether they had ever been translated into English or not. Indeed, Rowe found traces in Shakspere of the Electra of Sophocles; Colman, of Ovid; Pope, of Dares Phygius, and other Greek authors; Farmer, of Horace and Virgil; Malone, of Lucretius, Statius, Catullus, Seneca, Sophocles, and Euripides; Steevens, of Plautus; Knight, of the Antigone of Sophocles; and White of the Alcestis of Euripides. Mr. Colman notes the fact as quite certain that the author of the Taming of the Shrew had at least read Ovid, from whose Epistles we find these lines: I believe, however, Jonson's meaning to be that to his comparatively slender knowledge of Latin, Shakspere never added any acquaintance with the Greek; and such I am persuaded was the case.t The Comedy of Errors was little more than a reproduction, in a different dress, of the Menæchmi of Plautus, also an author frequently quoted by Bacon. The first performance of the play took place during the Christmas revels, 1594, on which occasion it is historically certain that Bacon furnished, at least, à masque, and, as our author attempts to prove, this play also; and there was no English translation of the Menæchmi before 1595. The masque alluded to is described and attributed to Bacon by Mr. Spedding. Ritson maintains that the Comedy of Errors was not originally Shakspere's, but proceeded from some playwright who was capable of reading the Menæchmi without a translation. While Capell very justly remarks: "If the poet had not dipped into Plautus, surreptus had never stood in his copy, the translation having no such agnomen, but calling one brother simply Menæchmus, the other Sosicles." Judge Holmes is of opinion that the author of the pseudo-plays of Shakspere must have been also conversant with the French and Italian languages. The plots of several of the plays are taken from the stories of Cinthio, Boccaccio, and Belleforest, which "are not known to have been translated into English. He, however, admits that one volume of Painter's translation of the Histoires Tragiques and Florio's Montaigne were in existence as early as 1603. Of these modern languages Mr. Dyce apprehends that Shakspere "knew but little," while Mr. Grant White affirms: " Italian and French were not taught, we may be sure, at Stratford Grammar School." The dramatist's medical knowledge is of such profundity, that Dr. Bucknil observes : — Appendix to Colman's Translation of Terence. † Dyce. Second edition, Vol. I. p. 27. White's Memoir. P. 21. The immortal dramatist paid an amount of attention to subjects of medical interest scarcely if at all inferior to that which has served as the basis of the learned and ingenious argument, that this intellectual king of men had devoted seven good years of his life to the practice of law.* No acquaintance which William Shakespeare could have had with law, consistently with the known facts of his life, can reason ably account for this striking feature in the plays. It was not to be had in the office of a bailiff, and the considerations referred to by Lord Campbell ought to be taken as satisfacstudent at law at Stratford-upon-Avon; esIt has been suggested that Shakspere tory that he could never have been a regular might have gained his apparently ex-pecially since his Lordship did not become a haustless knowledge of medicine from convert to this unavoidable and very necessary his son-in-law, Dr. Hall conclusion of Mr. Collier. Lord Campbell remarks upon Shakspere's juridical phrases and forensic allusions: "On the retrospect I am amazed, not only by their number, but by the accuracy and propriety with which they "There is nothing so dangerous as for are uniformly introduced; " and he adds: one not of the craft to tamper with our This is indeed possible (replies our author), but it would be a more satisfactory explanation of this special feature in the plays if it did not require us to carry back his medical studies, at least, to the date of King John, and almost make them encroach upon those seven good years already demanded for the study of law, especially in the absence of any positive evidence in his personal history that he had ever looked into a book of law or free-masonry."* medicine. wonderful on any other theory, the dresses Mr. Collier in these words: The Lord Chief Justice thought we Bacon devoted so much attention to might be justified in believing that Shakspeare was a clerk in an attorney's medicine, that he gives a general survey office at Stratford without any direct of medical learning down to his own Collier, upon "the seeming utter impos time in his Advancement of Learning. proof of the fact, mainly relying, with Mr. Dr. Bucknill notices that "there is more of medicine than of law in Bacon's Es-sibility of Shakespeare's having acquired, says and Advancement of Learning." Our author devotes much space to a scholarly and interesting comparison between the medical views of Shakspere and those of Bacon, and concludes that the Shaksperian expressions are in exact accordance with the doctrines of Galen, Hippocrates, Rabelais, and others with whose writings Bacon was quite familiar, for he cites and reviews those very authors, with many more. Instances adduced by Dr. Bucknill amount, not merely to evidence, but to proof, that Shakspere had read widely in medical literature; while the learned physician, commenting upon the dramatist's knowledge of psychology, remarks that "it has been possible to compare his knowledge with the most advanced knowledge of the present day." And yet no period of Shakspere's life is known to have been devoted to the study of medicine, and he bequeaths no trace of a library in his will. He was a lawyer, too! Still I warn you that I myself remain rather sceptical. All that I can admit to you is that you may be right. Resuming the judge, howYou must ever, I must lay down that your opponents are the onus probandi rests upon you. not called upon to prove a negative, and that likewise remember that you require us implicitly to believe a fact, which, were it true, positive and irrefragable evidence in ShakeNot having been speare's own hand-writing might have been forthcoming to establish it. actually enrolled as an attorney, neither the records of the local court at Stratford, nor the superior courts at Westminster, would present his name, in being concerned in any suits as an attorney; but it might have been reasondeeds or wills witnessed by him still extant, ably expected that there would have been and, after a very diligent search, none such We are as- can be discovered. Nor can this consideration be disregarded, that between Nash's Epistle in the end of the sixteenth century, and Chalmers' suggestion, nearly two hundred years after, there is no hint by his foes or his friends of Shakespeare's having consumed pens, paper, ink, and pounce in an attorney's office at Stratford.t sured that his use of legal terms and phrases and his representations of legal proceedings are of such a kind and character that it is apparent at once to the mind of a lawyer that the writer had been educated to that profession. • Shakespeare's Medical Knowledge. J. C. Bucknill, M.D. London, 1860. P. & Bucknill's Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare. Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements. Joha Lord Campbell. London, 1859. P. 107. t Campbell. P. 110. |