Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1902-03-24
Irvina en- Shakespeare.

The latest to punctuTe tne ToStoi
humbug is Sir Henry Irving and he
does it in artistic. style in a recent ad-
dress at Princeton University which
is printed in the columns of the New
York Tribune Maunchausen himself
never cqualed for fable and folly the
story of those who have contended that
Sir Francis Bacon wrote the plays COM
monty ascribed to William Shakes
peare They have ''discovered' vari-
Gus "ciphers" showing that Bacon not
only wrote these works but also almost
all the literary creations of that time.
One cipher even proves that Bacon
was the son of Queen Elizabeth! Yet
many people have swallowed these
stories, which stand to literature as the
yellow journals do to the newspaper
world.
Irving touches the controversy with
the hand of a master and no abstract
or quotation can give the reader an adj
equate conception of his address. 1t is
direct and incisive and it's humor is
caustic. He cites, of course, authOri-
ties contemporary with Shakespeare,
which have never been successfully
controverted,-the authorities, namely,
of the Greene & Chettle pamphlets,
Heminge, Condell, Ben Jonson, etc.
but the main contention of his lu-
minous and piquant address is that
Shakespeare was an actor, and that
the works of Shakespeare abound with
evidence that it was an actor who
wrote them. This has always been
maintained by practical critics of the
Shakespearian drama. but Sir Henry
Irving's statement of the case is novel
and forcible, and it is made not only
with dextrous skill and felicitous il
lustration, but with the authority of
vast experience. If any man living has
grasped the spirit of Shakespeares
plays it is this great actor, who has
studied them all his life, has acted in
almost all of them that are ever played,
is identified with some of their greatest
characters, and has edited one of the
best editions of them in existence. Let
US quote the closing paragraph in
which Irving sums up his reasons for
rejecting wholly the Baconian theory:
Until it can be shown how the most
alert intellectual world of Elizabeth
lent itself to a gigantic imposture of
which there is no evidence except a
silly cipher. we cannot take the Ba-
contains with the gravity they demand.
When they say it is incredible that d
man of ShakeSpeare's education and
upbringing could have written his
plays, and tell us that Bacon wrote not
only his own works but all Shake
speare and an ever increasing list of
other authors as we'll, they ignore both
the sense of proportion and the sense
of the ridiculous. l say little of the
wanton eagerness with which they
smrch the characters of men who lived
and died in the esteem of their fellows
There can be no reasonable doubt that
Shakespeare inspired the warmest adj
miration and personal affection. Ben
Jonson's witness on that score is en-
phatic. l fear that the desire to drag
down Shakespeare from his pedestal,
and to treat the testimony of his per-
sonal friends as that of lying rogues is
due to that antipathy to the actors
calling which has it's eccentric mani
festations even to this day. Some peo-
pie. l believe. are spiritually comforted
by the notion that the plays which they
misread at home, but would on no ac-
count see enacted, were written not by
a vagabond player who stole a deer in
his hot youth, and kept company with
Bardolph's nose, but by a statesman, a
philosopher and a judge, who was con-
victed of taking money from suitors,
and degraded in his old age. | make no
complaint of this singular frame of
mind, for its lack of charity touches
not only Shakespeare and his fellow
actors men like Burbage and Edward
Alleyn. on whose fame there is no re-
proach, but gathers under one compre-
hensive anathema whole society of
distinguished men in alfiranks of life
poets and patrons courtiers and critics
They all knew Shakespeare and his
work, and they are all accused as fools
who were deceived by an illiterate
mountebank or as knaves who were
hired by the penniless, but legitimate
son of Queen Elizabeth. l have too
much respect for Shakespeare. for the
stage to which he gave splendid and
imperishable renown, and for the call
ing in which all actors reverentiy fol-
low his footsteps-to suppose that he
needs to be shielded against ignorance
or malice"