Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1888-01-14
BILL NYE TAKES A HAND.
The Shakspeare-Bacon Puzzle
Wrestled With Conscien-
tiously.
Why Bill Favo-s the Claim of Eli
s1ak,p,a-e= Hi handwriting
Skillfully Touched Upon.

l desire to offer here a few words in
favor of the theory that William Shak'
speare wrote his own works and thought
his own thinks, writes Bill Nye in the
New York World. The time has fully
arrived when we humorists ought to
stand by each other.
/ do not undertake to stand up for
the personal character of Shakespeare,
but l say that he wrote good pieces
and | don't care who knows it. 1t is
doubtless true that at the age of eigh.
teen he married woman eight years
his senior, and that children began to
cluster about their hearthstone in
way that would have made man in a
New York flat commit suicide. Three
little children within fourteen months,
including twins, came to the humble
home of the great bard, and he began
to go out and climb upon the haymo
to do his writing. Sometimes he won.
stay away from home for two or three
weeks at time, fearing that when he
entered the house some one would tell
him that he was again parent
let William Shakespeare knew all the
time that he was great man, and that
some day he would write pieces to
speak. Ho left Stratford ct the age OF
2 and went to London, where he at
tracted very little attention, for he be-
longed to the yeomanry, being kind
of dramatic Horace Greeley, both in
the matter of clothes and penmanship.
Thus it would seem that while Sin
Francis Bacon was attending business
college and getting himself familiar
with the whole-arm movement, so as to
be able to write free, cryptogramous
hand, poor William Shakespeare was
slowly thinking the ha'r off his head
while ever and anon he would bring
out his writing materials and his bright,
ready tongue, and write o sonnet on an
empty stomach.
Much has been said of Mr.. Shak
speare's coarse, irregular, and vulgar
penmarslip, which, it is claimed, shows
the ignorance of its owner, and hence
his inability to write the immortal
plays. Let us compare the signature
of Shakespeare with that of Mr.. Gree
ley, and we notice wonderful SINH ar
ity. There IS the same weird effort in
both cases to out-cryptogram Old
| Crvptogramous himself.
If VIC Judge Shakespeare by his sig
nature, not one of us will be safe.
Death will wipe out our fame with a
wet sponge; John Hancock in one
hundred years from now will be re-
garded as the author of the Declaration
of Independence.
l have every reason to believe that
while William Shakespeare WAS going
| about the streets of London, poor
| but brainy, erratic but smart, bald
headed but filled with a nameless
yearning to write q play with real
water and topical song in it, Francis
| Bacon was practcing on his signature,
getting used to the full-arm movement,
spoil ng sheet after sheet of paper try
ing to make violet swan on red
woven-wire mattress of shaded loops
without taking his pen off the paper,
and running the rebus column of bus
moss college paper.
Poets are made, not born, and many
of them are born with odd and even
disagreeablo characteristics. Some
men are born poets, while it is true
| that some acqu re poetry while others
have poetry thrust upon them. Poetry
is like the faculty, if | may so denom-
mate it, of being able to voluntarily
move the ears. 1t is gift. 1t cannot
be taught to others.
So Shakespeare, with all his poor pen
manship, with his proneness to poach,
with his poverty and his neglect of his
wife and children, could write n play
wherein the leading man and the man
who played the bass drum in the or
chestra did not claim to have made the
principal part.
Shakspe re did not want his plays
published. He wanted to keep them
out of the press in order to pre-
vent their use at spelling schools in
the hands of unskilled artists, and so
there was long period of time during
which the papers could not get hold of
them for publication.
During this time Francis Bacon was
in public life. He and Shakespeare had
nothing in common. Both were great
men, but Bacon's sphere was different
from Shakspeare's. While Bacon was
in the Senate, living high and counting
investigation, Shakespeare had to stuff
three large pillows into his pantaloons
and play Falstaff at one-night stand.
Is it likely that Bacon, breathing the
perfumed air of the Capitol and chuck.
ling the Treasury girls under the chin
ever and anon, hungered for the false
Joy of the undergrad and UNDERSIGNED
dramatist? Scarcely!
That is one reason why prefer to
take the side of Shakespeare rather than
the side of Bacon.
| do not go so far as some of the
friends Of Shakespeare and say that,
while he was lovely character and a
great actor, Bacon was ham: dc
not say that, for Bacon has his good
points.
The thing that ha, done more to in
lure Shakespeare in the eyes of the his
torian than aught else, perhaps, was
his seeming neglect of his wife. But
we should consider both sides of the
question before we pass Judgment.
The Hathaways were queer people,
and Anna was undoubtedly so. Her
father snubbed her in his will inst as
her husband did, which shows that
Mrs. Shakespeare was not highly es-
teemed e,en by her parents. The
brief notice which Anne received in
these two wills means good deal, for
there is nothing quite so thoroughly
unanswerable as probate snub.
Shakespeare in his own will gave to
his wife his second-best bed, and that
was all. When we remember that it
| was n he'd that saope1 in the middle