The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1874-10-31
Shakespeare or Bacon 4?

/ AASSA-AA o. Aallf Atst4--E1 amongst Students n
the third term Is amongst politicians. Amer
lean scholars, with Characteristic disregard FOL
old, accepted beliefs, are, almost without excep-
ton, suspicious OF and even antagonistie 90 Shaks
peare's right Of authorship and glory. Th,
most prominent Of these = heretics " is Nathanie,
Holmes, Judge and Professor Of law in Harvard
University, Cambridge. La the last number o.
traser's' there is a most interesting review Of
the whole question, q recent book of Professor
Holmes standing as the chief text. There an
some old and many new aspects of the debate
given at length in the English magazine which we
have not space for. In the following resume the
various arguments against Shakspeare's author
ship are used simply as a concise statement of the
case of Nathaniel Holmes ct al. vs.. William Shaks-
peare. The argument is readily dualiZed thus
First. the proofs that Shakespeare could not or did
not write the plays secondly, the proof that Sir
Francis Bacon did.
To start, then, Gb fEIlio, Shakespeare received no
education save that gained at the Free Grammar
School Of Stratford. He could have received no
private tuition at the hands Of his father or
mother, both being lliterate, and neither of them
able to write. Removed from school at the age of
fourteen, 1t is q matter Of doubt whether he
passed the next seven years as q vagabond or as a
student at law or Of physic. Certain it is, how
ever, that there is no record of his having prac-
tlced either. Certain 1t is, too, that Of the time
from his leaving school to his arrival in London,
there exists no record of his having written any
thing, except the mere tradition Of a lampoon
upon Sir Thomas Lucy" of which "not a scrap"
remains, while the fragments of verses, accepted
as having been written by him in late life, are
miserable doggerel. No verses Of Shakspeare's
or his contemporaries are extant. Schlegel, the
great German critic, contrasting the extent of the
wisdom and philosophy of the plays with the &C
cepted account OF ShakspeaFe's life, considers it
to be ga mere fabulous story, a blind and extrav-
agant error" 1.-THE Shakspearian Society" has
ascertained that he was ga good-natured, ioYial
man, in no wise superior to his kind" 1t was
this %iacetlous manager+actor who, in the brief in
tervals between work and sleep, dashed of q
.Hamht or a Lear! Carlyle, Jean Paul Richter
and Goethe all declared themselves utterly unable
to reconcile his life with his works. Ben Jonson
states that "he remembers to have heard it re-
marked by the actors that no line of the writing
of the plays was altered" Is it a fair inference
that the reason is because they were copied
Shakespeare never claimed the plays, and died
without seeing them in print. fsmon of Athens
is founded upon the unfrGnSkated Greek of Lucian.
Throughout all the plays there are scattered
broadcast materials, ideas and expressions, gath
cred from Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Virgil,
Horace and Seneca, indiferently, whether the
originals were translated into English or not.
The Comedy Of Errors is little more than a re-
production of the Menechini of Plautus, and was
produced at Christmas, 1904 year before any
English translation appeared. Plautus was q
tavorite author of Bacon's. How, then,
could Shakespeare have been, to re-quote Jonson,
- "Ah Va vi IStllu anu less 1T6Sk OQdkS-
peare must have known French and Latin init
mately, too, for many of his plots are taken from
Clnthio, Boccaecio and Belleforest, all at that
time untranslated. The medical knowledge dis
played in the plays is profound, the Shaksrearian
expressions being in exact accordance with those
OF Galen, Hippocrates and Rabelair, all familiar
to Bacon, of whom DIR. Bucknell says
there was more of medicine than of law In his
The intimate acquaintance with all law
points displayed in the dramas is even more note
This knowledge was most pronounced
IN the plays produced from 1890 to 1920, which
brings US more clearly to the proofs advanced by
Holmes of Bacon's authorship.
In 1887, the year of Shakspeare's arrival in
London, Bacon had just been called to the bar,
but being thrown into the society of a number of
: theater-going lords" he became so straitened in
circumstances that in 1892 he wrote to Lord Bur-
elgh to say that he was so poor that he should
be obliged to turn "book-maker." During the
next two years eight or ten of the earlier plays
we're produced, though none of them under Shaks-
oeare's name, and it was not until 1893 that " W.
shakespeare " appeared on the title page. As to
6acon's p~iay-writing proclivities, they appeared
early as 1887, when he assisted the young law
OF Gray's Inn in getting up The tragedy of
me MtS0rtuneS Of Arthur. During Bacon's
ears of retirement too, he was constantly
plays at his brother Anthony's house,
state of affairs which his mother considered as
ndangering bis precious soul, whilst Macauley
nd Mr.. Speeding both declare that as late as
OLD Bacon prepared a mas9ue for the Kings en-
In l607-8 Bacon was engaged
pom his Characters of julius and Augustus
'esar, directly after the conclusion of which the
'agedy OF Juhns Cesar was put on the stage.
gain, in Shakspeare's historical PLAYS, the series
ltends from the deposition of Richard 1. to the
nth OF Elizabeth. But there is no play of Henry
L. 1t Is Bacon himself who fills the hiatus. In
Is fragments Of history every other reign is un-
lished; that of Henry vi. is the only one COM
eted' Did these two great geniuses work in +,
&c same groove? If so, it is very remarkable
at IN his aPofhegms, the repository of the say
IS and doIngs of all the great wits and men of
e day, Bacon should not make a single mention
this great spirit !"
In the above much has necessarily been left to
readers deducive faculties, but this much
ould he plainly stated In 1913 Bacon be-
me Attorney General, and then and there the n
OF "Sbakspeare's Plays' ceased, al /
ough Shakespeare was at that time in the prime
lie. Bacon having no longer any reason for
look-maklng, gave it up. He was a lawyer,
d It was from the law and not " book-making" n
1t he looked for his reputation. At that time, "
and play-actors were held in evil re-
te, Coke going so far as to class them with
ewes and vagabonds. What was more likely,
N, but that Bacon should strive to conceal his
oerience in such a life? His, johannes Fac
um," was of no further use to the hidden
to use Bacon's own words. Bacon, how
T, did not forget his children, for in 1922 he
scented a copy OF the first printed edition of the
Us to his friend, Sir Tobie.
1ere the circumstantIal evidence ceases, but
re follows such ga series and network Of par -
,lisms of thought and expressions found in
plays and essays-says DR.. Holmes-without a
oubt, that not from the managerial Office nor
lodgings of the " facetious" actor, but from
retired chambers of Gray's Inn and the solicit
es of the lodge at Twickenham, emanated the ~
.hty works of art which form the 'sspine of W
literature and which surpass even the
ek tragedy San Francisco Chronicle.