The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1910-08-07

|THE heading of the recent articles
running in The Age-Herald.
i what the Baconians Say" leaves
the author DR. Evans, out of it, so that
IL need not ask his forgiveness Tor COM
menting upon their assumptions ana
methods with the freedom they merit.
| Shakespeare, we are told, was mere
player, a mere mountebank, and how
|could a mere mountebank have written
the worlds greatest masterpieces? Fur
/ ther, he was a mental, and held horses at
F the Globe theatre at "a penny head
| He did. He held Pegasus; he held Barbary,
| the fiery courser of Bolingbroke; he held
s'the steeds of the north" whose necks
were clothed in thunder but whose
names l have now forgotten.
Who wrote the plays of Shakespeare?
shakespeare wrote them. Shakespeare be-
|1ongs to the world He is the scholars
|heritage-the patrimony of the race. Not
| to defend, not to champion him as one OF
1.-The greatest ornaments and benefactors OF
mankind would in me be the blacklist In
gratitude. l do not understand his CO.
|lossal gifts any more than l do one OF
Millions angels or the mechanism Of the
universe, but that has nothing to do
with my admiration and devotion. I had
rather have written "All the Worlds a
X6taBe, OF MeICutlO 'tluttH may
I to have swum the Hellespont. l had
rather have written Marc Antony's ad-
dress over the dead body of Caesar than
to have been crowned victor at the
Olympic games. I had rather have been
the author of Lear than to have built
the pyramids. I had rather have seen
the bard himself In the humble role Of
Adam In "As You Like It." or of the
Ghost in Hamlet" than to have seen
Edmund Kean in 'Sir Giles Overreach,"
when he depleted anger so wildly that
veteran actors collapsed with terror upon
the stage, and Lord Byron, who occu-
pied front seat-so great was his agi-
tation-fell forward In cataleptic fit.
Shakespeare Is a pillar of the world
Whoever wrenches that name jars the
harmony of the universe. He was not a
being of mere flesh and blood-surely a
demigod. No mortal could have worked
effects upon the stage that paralleled or
surpassed the great transports of nature
The table scene In Macbeth, the tragic
death of Duncan exceeds In grandeur and
horror thunder storm in the Alps. The
witches orgy Is more eerie, more weird
more awful, more picturesque than the
confict of elements that form their
dreadful background. An earthquake
could not so convulse and shatter.
do not ask what the Baconians
Saw" I want Cto know what the Bacon
ans do Deep down in that grave at
stratford, from which issue rays of light
that illumine the world, hear the clank
of picks and shovels. I see dusky forms
shopping down and trying to pluck the
gold sovereigns from those sacred eyes,
to place them upon the stony orbs that
looked with heartless indifference upon
The .death-agonies of the noble Essex. My
God, what a desecration!.
'They are neither man nor woman,
They are neither brute nor human,
They are Ghouls!'
On fat grave-stone in front of his
monument in Trinity we read these lines.
said to have been grayed by the bard
himself.
'Good friend, for Jesus sake forbeare
10 digg the dust encloased here.
Blest be the man that spares my bones.
And curst be he that moves these
stones"
Shakespeare has been racked with anx-
(ety on his death-bed lest some heart
ess clerk or fiendish sexton should pro-
fame his tomb, disrupt his skeleton, and
east the remains into the bone house.
rhe considerate clerk passed him by.
The respectful sexton and grave-digger
nolested him not, but the profane Ba-
conian has not been idle.
Looking down upon this tablet, the
Baconians cry: Shakespeare is bad
heller. too ignorant to have written the