The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1893-02-19
THE MYSTERY OF GENIUS.


are gratifying assurance that the popular
taste is equal to the level of really fine
dramatic representation of high tragedy.
1t is a curious fact that this play Of
Julius Cesar" of which DR.. johnson de-
clared that no other of his works contained
more unmistakable marks of Shakspeare's
SURPRISING genius, is included among
those which the defenders of the Baconian
hypothesis maintain were entirely COM
posed by Bacon. No one familiar with
the facts can believe for q moment that
Bacon had any hand in the writing
OF Shakspeare's plays. There is abso-
lutely nothing in the plays themselves or
in the training of the author inconsistent
with their being the work of Shakespeare.
OF scholarship they contain nothing, they
are the work of man of genius, q man of
vdst knowledge. small learning and little
scholarship in the sense that Bacon and
Milton or Tennyson or Ben Jonson were
scholars. The composition of Shak-
speare's classical plays like Julius
Cesar" needed no scholar to compose
them, for London toward the close of the
sixteenth century was flooded with cheap
translations Of Greek and Latin plays.
histories, biographies and essays from
which such classical knowledge az is
evinced in the Shakspearean dramas could
have been obained at second hand by
a self-educated actor, who did not
leave the excellent grammar school
of Stratford until after he was IA, q
school whose curriculum included as
much Latin and Greek as boy would
need to know to enter the sophomore class
in provincial American college in New
England thirty years ago. As for the So
called learning Of the plays, it 10 full of
gaps. blunders. anachronisms, geograph-
ical absurdities and blunders such as
Bacon or any university man like Chap
man, Daniel or Marlows would have been
incapable of.
Tho dramas contain not the slightest
evidence of first-hand, comprehensive and
accurate erudition. None of the support
ers Of the Baconian hypothesis can explain
away the address prefixed by the players
Hemyge and Condell to the first folio
edition of 1923 (seven years after the poets
DEATH. in which they unequivocally repre-
sent Shakespeare as the author of the
thirty-six dramas contained in the folio
copy. The same declaration is made I'M
nistakably in the lsudatory verses COM
posed for the same edition by Ben Jonson.
q scholar, a soldier and q man Of
dignity and honor, of whom no eulo-
CYSTIC puff" could prossibly have been
purchased by literary quack or
impostOr. 1t is pretended that Hamlet"
contains evidence of having been written
by lawyer; you might as we'll say that,
because certain diseases are described with
striking accuracy in ''Timon OF Athens"
its author must have been a doctor. Lord
Campbell. great English lawyer, care
fully reviewed the Shakspearean plays
with view of seeing whether the legal
requirements exhibited would even justify
the theory that they were written by a
lawyers clerk. His verdict was mot
proven" The description Of the "points"
of perfect horse given by Shakespeare are
so accurate that you might say the man
must have been q jockey or veterinary
surgeon.
The truth is that the only mystery about
the plays and their author is involved in
the immense distance between man Of
literary genius and man of scholastic &C.
quirements and mere literary learning
The author Of the plays was clearly man
of genius: and was clearly not a man of
ing that the author of the plays was man
of poetic genius. there is no more mystery
about his work than belongs to the per-
Torrance of any other man Of genius.
who has not been subjected to the
discipline and training of a university
of learning. Genius, which docs
what it must, while talent does what
1t can,' is always mystery to peda-
gogues and other monuments of medi-
ocrity. Napoleon Bonaparte was u "mys-
terry" 10 the veteran Austrian and
Prussian soldiers, who had been trained
Napoleon had neither military schools nor
experience behind him he broke all the
rules of the art of war; he was "the devils
unaccountable: he was the man of genius
scattering military martinets and peda-
gogues 20 the right and left. The eloquence
of Patrick Henry WAS mystery unsolved
hy his experience. his antecedent training
or studies; the mystery Of genius again.
Mirabeau. the imperial Jove of the French
Revolution. its one great orator and states
man, - mystery. the mystery OF
genius again: nothing in his anteeedents
10 explain how he suddenly shot up from
the level of gifted rake and gay Lothario
TO the stature Of a great statesman. The
mystery of genius again, which owes moth
ing 10 schools and therefore schools in vain
seek solution for genius. which does what
il must, not with the help of schools. but
without their help and in spite of them.
for the sdven, of a man Of genius is often
the death knell Of false system of schools
of political philosophy. of military science
of literary art, of moral and physical
science.
Take an Illustration drasn from the
stage. The greatest actor Of the English
stage, Edmund kean. was the illeg,timAte
child OF 4 wanton woman by dissolute
n. AN. the son Of miserable poverty and
shame. He grew up utterly without e-iu-
cation except such As men OF ertraor,;i.
nary brightness pick up on the sidewa
and In the tavern: he never vas student:
he INDUCED his animal passions without
restraint; he was s drunkari, and We
such was the astonishing force OF his
ra "a vapsuS IN az hs iaara5 n, q ko,,3 -,