Chief exponents. Its vogue in America. Extent of the litera ture. resembling Toby Matthew's: 'The Book of Controversies issued under the name of F. Baconus hath this addition to the said name, alias Southwell, as those of that Society shift their names as often as their shirts' ('Reliquiæ Wottonianæ,' 1672, p. 475). Joseph C. Hart (U.S. Consul at Santa Cruz, d. 1855), in his Romance of Yachting' (1848), first raised doubts of Shakespeare's authorship of the plays and poems associated with his name. There followed in a like temper 'Who wrote Shakespeare?' in 'Chambers's Journal,' August 7, 1852, and an article by Miss Delia Bacon in 'Putnam's Monthly,' January 1856. On the latter was based The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare unfolded by Delia Bacon,' with a neutral preface by Nathaniel Hawthorne (London and Boston, 1857). Miss Delia Bacon, who was the first to spread far abroad a spirit of scepticism respecting the established facts of Shakespeare's career, died insane on September 2, 1859. Mr. William Henry Smith, a resident in London, seems first to have suggested the Baconian hypothesis in 'Was Lord Bacon the author of Shakespeare's plays? a letter to Lord Ellesmere ' (1856), which was republished as 'Bacon and Shakespeare' (1857). The most learned exponent of this strange theory was Nathaniel Holmes, an American lawyer, who published at New York in 1866 'The Authorship of the Plays attributed to Shakespeare,' a monument of misapplied ingenuity (4th edit. 1886, 2 vols.). Bacon's 'Promus of Formularies and Elegancies,' a commonplace book in Bacon's handwriting in the British Museum (London, 1883), was first edited by Mrs. Henry Pott, a voluminous advocate of the Baconian theory; it contained many words and phrases common to the works of Bacon and Shakespeare, and Mrs. Pott pressed the argument from parallelisms of expression to its extremest limits. The Baconian theory has found its widest acceptance in America. There it achieved its wildest manifestation in the book called 'The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon's Cypher in the so-called Shakespeare Plays' (Chicago and London, 1887, 2 vols.), which was the work of Mr. Ignatius Donnelly of Hastings, Minnesota. The author pretended to have discovered among Bacon's papers a numerical cipher which enabled him to pick out letters appearing at certain intervals in the pages of Shakespeare's First Folio, and the selected letters formed words and sentences categorically stating that Bacon was author of the plays. Many refutations have been published of Mr. Donnelly's arbitrary and baseless contention. A Bacon Society was founded in London in 1885 to develop and promulgate the unintelligible theory, and it inaugurated a magazine (named since May 1893 'Baconiana '). A quarterly periodical also called 'Baconiana,' and issued in the same interest, was established at Chicago in 1892. 'The Bibliography of the Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy,' by W. H. Wyman, Cincinnati, 1884, gives the titles of two hundred and fifty-five books or pamphlets on both sides of the subject, which were published since 1848; the list was continued during 1886 in Shakespeariana,' a monthly journal published at Philadelphia, and might now be extended to fully twice its original number. 6 The abundance of the contemporary evidence attesting Shakespeare's responsibility for the works published under his name gives the Baconian theory no rational right to a hearing; while such authentic examples of Bacon's effort to write verse as survive prove beyond all possibility of contradiction that, great as he was as a prose writer and a philosopher, he was incapable of penning any of the poetry assigned to Shakespeare. Defective knowledge and illogical or casuistical argument alone render any other conclusion possible. INDEX sonnet form of a letter of Helen, America, enthusiasm for Shakespeare ABBEY, Mr. E. A., 192 Amphitruo of Plautus, the, and a Adam, in As You Like It, played by Adaptations by Shakespeare of old Adaptations of Shakespeare's plays Alleyn, Edward, manages the amal- Allot, Robert, 173 All's Well that Ends Well: the Antony and Cleopatra: allusion to Apollonius and Silla, Historie of, 107 allusion to the conceit of the im- 90 Arcadia,' Sidney's, 125 Arden family, of Alvanley, 96 Arden, Edward, executed for com- See Shakespeare, Arden, Robert (1), sheriff of Warwick- shire and Leicestershire in 1438, 4 106 Ariosto, I Suppositi of, 78; Orlando Aristotle, quotation from, made by Armenian language, translation of Arms, coat of, Shakespeare's, 93-7 Art in England, its indebtedness to As You Like It: allusion to the relations with the trade of butcher, Ayrer, Jacob, his Die schöne Sidea, BACON, Miss Delia, 210 Bandello, the story of Romeo and 'Bankside' edition of Shakespeare, 181 Barante, recognition of the greatness Barnay, Ludwig, 195 Barnes, Barnabe, the probable rival Asbies, the chief property of Robert Assimilation, literary, Shakespeare's Aston Cantlowe, 4; place of the mar- Barton collection of Shakespeareana Baynes, Thomas Spencer, 207 Beaumont, Francis, on 'things done Bedford, Lucy, Countess of, 76 |