The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-02

upon the question, who wrote the works of Shakespeare? e.. -.,,,-.,.s
 The declaration Is made: Shakes peare (he meant Shakspere) is pill lar of the world. Whosoever wrenches that name jars the harmony of the universe This excessive rhetoric has no meaning for me. Does 1t mean that when Thomas Coverdale said, 'T am one of those who believe that Bacon wrote Shakespeare;' and that when in 1S43 Professor Gforrer. one of Europe's eminent scholars. said that "It was impossible for the historic Shakspere to have written the works of Shakes peare;" and that when Prince Bismarck, referring to the Baconian claim, said, After all there may be something in It." and that when Joseph c. Hart says of Shakspere, "IIe was not the mate of the literary characters of his day and none knew it better than him. self. It Is a fraud upon the world to thrust his surreptitious fame upon us;" Does Dr. Richardson mean to assert that when these gentlemen thus spoke, the harmony of the universe was jared into discord? What plants or stars fell? Were the heavens hung with black Has not the universe, so far as we know. been about as before, with its regularity of seed time and harvest? ? The only thing that has gone wrong Is Halley's comet. But can the Ba- conians be held responsible for the loss of the comets tail? Referring to the storms and the witches in Macbeth the learned au- thor of The Baconian Lunacy," says: An earthquake could not so convulse and shatter" Now, if the author of that statement will agree, I'll give him my place in an earthquake and take his place In a theatre where Macbeth is being played with it's sham lightnin 8 and It's thunder produced by a stall wart stage hand battering with muf fled mallet upon piece of sheet iron! Words, words, words" Polonius. Rhetoric Is often "lunacy."
 The learned doctor calls Baoonians "gh ouls" because tn cir literary inves- tigatlons lead them to expose the false ness of the claims of the actor, the money lender. the litigious fellow of Stratford. Is Matthew Arnold ghoul because his critical studies have brought him to the conclusion that Isaiah" was not written by Isaiah, but by two authors? Is one a ghoul be- cause he does not believe that all the Homeric poems were not written by the blind old poet of ,"Scio's rock y isle?" For 250 years the literary world attributed to Sir Francis Bacon the authorship of Christian Paradoxes''. Was Grosart ghoul, when, in 1864, he proved conolusively that Bacon was not ! the author, and never claimed to be, but that it was the work of Herbert Palmer?
 That grave of Shakspere has its mys- tery felt 1t years ago as stood look ing down upon it. Why should Shakespeare have been so solicitous of his poor bones and their preservation, and so indifferent to the fate of his manuscripts? Not | banning one in his will, and yet particular izing an old secondhand bedstead? Why should he have gone out to select his | own gravestone and write his clumsy l lines thereon, invoking curse upon any 1 one that should disturb his bones? Why | should he have wanted to be buried deeper than anyone else? Seventeen | feet deep" It Is said by Dr. Richardson that Shakspere was tracked with anx- | iety on his deathbed lest some heartless clerk or fiendish sexton should profane | his tomb, disrupt his skeleton and cast | the remains into the bone house.; and this explains the doggerel epitaph. which, | according to Dr. Richardson's statement, | is only prose, since 1t contains no meta | phor. Good friend for Jesus sake for bear to dig the dust enclosed here; blast | be the man that spares my bones and curst be he that moves these stones And so, he feared that his bones would be dug up from the church-chancel and l profanely cast into the hone-house. did he? Why? What had he done? We know | much of the immortality of his younger years, but surely he had outlived that. l What gross wrong had he committed that his deathbed's pillow should be filled
 with thorns? Dr. Richardson says that