The Lake County star. [volume] (Chase, Mich.) 1873-current, 1874-10-29
SHAKESPEARE.



tFrom the New York Herald
"Ah yea, you have the divine Williams"
ANONYMOUS FRESoHMAN.
Of all the absurdities of the are we
live in the most absurd is the claim
brought into court for Friar Bacon as the
author of the works of "Diyine Will
liams." The assumption and arguments
advanced from time to time to prove
that Napoleon |. escaped alive from st.
Helena; that there was no such man;
that We have royal Bourbon among us;
that Louis XVII, still lives, and that he
is German; that Horace Greeley was
an old time Democrat and that Parson
Brownlow is Quaker, may be pro-
nOunced the WITNESSES Of idiots or the
experiments of wicked wags upon credu-
lous fools; but this claim set up for Ba-
con as the writer of Shakspeare's plays is
the quintessence of all these stupidities.
First, in behalf of Shakespeare, there
are his contemporaries cloud of wit
nesses. Second, from the immense
amount of heavy literary work which
we know was done by Bacon. 1t was
simply impossible that he could do any
more, considering the amount of his
time taken up in public affairs, plumber
ing rings and official corruptions. Third,
If he had had the time to write the plays
of Shakespeare, he had neither the genius,
the imagination, the temperament, the
training nor the theatrical! experience
and taste as skilled laborer required to
produce Shakspeare's plays. Fourth,
from his extensive learning, Bacon, even
if consulted in the preparation of these
plays for the stage, could not have COM
mitted and would not have tolerated
their glaring and ridiculous chronology
ical and geographical blunders, which,
perhaps, more than any other intrinsic
evidence, prove them the work of Shaks-
peare. He was not scholar. He was
genius, poet, keen observer of men
and things; but he was practical man,
withal, and wrote his plays, not for glory
or posterity, but for so much money and
for present uses. AS forhis plumbers, we re-
peat, they prove the claim to his plays
against Bacon beyond all question. For
instance, in the Midsummer Nights
Dream" we have Theseus, as a contem-
porary of Hercules, making this state
ment:-
THEsEUs-No doubt they rose up early, to OBJ
serve the rite Of May.
Here Shakespeare refers to the old
English May-day celebration of the
young people in their dances around the
May pole, etc. That there was no month
of May in Greece and no dancing around
the May pole at Athens in the days of
Theseus, Shakespeare did not know and
did not care. He knew "the rite ofMay"
understood by his London audience, and
that was enough. Again in the same
play, we have this:-
THEsEUs-Good morrow, friends st. Valentine
is past.
Begin these woods birds but to couple
nOw2
Now speech from Julius Caesar refer
ring to Christopher Columbus as man
of the past would have been about as
near the mark in the matter of time as
this reference of Theseus to St. Valen-
tine. But, again. In the play of GAS
You Like It," and in the scenes located
in" The Forest of Arden" or Garden
nes,' as immortalized in Byron's descrip-
ton of the battle of Waterloo, we have
Rosalind discovering billet dour on
palm tree, and we have green and gild-
ed snake, slipping into bush: -
Under which bush's shade
lioness with udders all drawn dry,
Bacon, had he been consulted about this
palm tree and this lioness, would have
said, Strike them out, for there is no
evidence that palm tree or lionesses
ever fourished on the soil of Belgium"
But Shakespeare neither knew nor cared
whether they ever fourished there or
not. He was writing tor the London
stage and not for a geographical society.
Geography, forsooth That sort of
thing was not in his line.
SCENE 3-Bohemia a desert country neaf the sea.
No doubt Shakespeare supposed that
Bohemia had a sea coast, and that it was
flanked by desert country; but right
or wrong, what was the difference to the
audience of his London theater? What
did they know about Bohemia? Bacon,
however, in getting up a play located in
Bohemia would not have committed or
permitted such blunder as this.
We turn next to the play of "Cymbe-
line" the scenes of which are laid partly
in Britain and some in Italy. Time,
during the reign of Augustus. Here we
have TACT /, scene 81 at Rome the entrce
of Philaro, Iachimo, and a Frenchman,
Dutchman and Spaniard, when there
were no such nationalitiesi existence.
And we have Caius Lucius referring to
tribute from Britain to Rome of 5000,
when there was no such currency in the
world. And then we have Guiderius
singing in Britain
Golden lads and lasses must,
AS chimney sweepers, come to dust,
when there was not chimney in the
whole island. And then we have trump
cts all round, but drums, too, in the
time of Augustus. But why not, when
Max Maretzek, two hundred years after
Shakespeare, gave procession of Druids
("Norma in Mexico, armed with
muskets and revolvers, and the priest of
the Druids wearing green goggles? The
unities of time and place, including
Barnum's museum, in John Brougham's
Pocahontas," are much nearer the
facts than we find them in Shakspeare's
"Cymbeline." ~ -. q
Bacon could not have been guilty as
play writer of any such geographical
or chronological blunders as these we
find in Shakspeare's plays. Had Bacon
understood the work of aplay writer he
would doubtless have gave us something
from the adventures of Sir Walter
IediClRn III INOIbn SdlOllitt, VI vi Sdpbtln
John Smith in Virginia, and something
from the turbulent history of Ireland.
And how it was that Shakespeare could
find nothing in the expeditions to- this
continent and their wonderful discov-
cries of his day, upon which to produce
something more definitely American
than the Tempest? ?" 1t was because
his time was occupied with his theater.
His library was there, and from the
musty plays of that library and its dead
manuscripts he obtained the rough
drafts of most of his plays. He took
them, revised them, colored them, put
his bright fancies and happy thoughts
into them, made them new in the trans
formation, and 80 they became Shaks-
peare's works.
He found no manuscripts Of old for
Il. =. yUo1&o- Del - g..