Arizona republican., 1911-05-01

Chepstow, England - DR.. Orville
Owen. the American who is digging in
the River Wye, for proofs that Bacon
wrote the plays credited to Shakes
peare, expects TO find within day or
two what are the contents of the cache
which he says ne has found in the river
He is certain that ii VIII contain the
documents he is after
Buried i'm the mud of the River Wye.
DIR. Orviie owen. an optimistic Amer
lean. expects TO find documents to
prove that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the
plays of Shakespeare. According 10 the
doctors calculations, the supposed
documents have been in the bottom OF
the river several hundred years. but he
doesn't believe that viii make any diff
ference in their legibility The docu-
mentS that are going 10 be found as
soon as the tide is favorable and a lit
tie more digging is done already have
been decided upon. They are, DR..
owen believes. diary Of Francis Ba-
con. manuscripts of the plays IGr which
Shakespeare has been given credit and
the story of Bacon's birth.
But this Industrious Bacon person did
not stop when he had dashed off the
plays which were published under
Shakespeare name. That might seem
like enough for one man to write, but
DIR. owen has inside information that
makes him positive that Sir Francis
was responsible for. in fact wrote,
Sponsors "Faery Queen all the works
of MarloWe, Green, Peele and Sir Philip
Sidney. as well as BurtOn's Anatomy
Of Melancholy. There are proofs of
that buried in the river, too, and if
they are not too badly crawdad eaten,
the doctor expects to be able To prove
all his contentious to a doubling world.
DR.. Owens theories about Shake
speare are by no means new. The Ba-
CONAN controversy is a chronic sort of
disease. which breaks out with unusual
malignity and new symptoms from time
TO time Americans, ever the most in
genious race in the world. according to
their own admissions. have taken an
active part in keeping things stirred up.
Every now and then some new man.
who has been a distinguished student
of Shakespeare for forty years. though
nobody ever heard of him before, an
nounces that he has discovered that
by taking six lines from five different
plays. disSecting them and putting the
letters back together again in iambic
pentameter with a dash of limerick, and
then reading the sentence thus formed
backwards you learn that it was really
Bacon who was responsible for Mac
beth. Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and
the rest Of them.
Bacon. they explain. was really
Queen Elizabeths son, by a secret
marriage. Being a king by birth. al
though nobody except the principals
ald few confidants knew it, of course
it wouldn't do for Sir Francis to write
plays and sign his name to them. At
least his royal mother didn't think So
and as she had an awful temper and
red hair and a well trained AK artist
who disposed OF persons who bored the
queen. Sir Francis FASTENED to agree
with her So he went to this Shake
speare person. who, the BacOnites tell
YOU solemnly, never wrote a play
his life and knew less about literature
than the average congressman does
about the tariff. Shakespeare agreed
to let the plays be published in his
ldlllt. anu " AAtil ilt Sd " llt " d. SflAAil6
away with them in good style decided
TO die without ever letting the public
know the real facts in the case.
Sir Francis, however. suspecting
from the first that the Stratford rus
tic was a crab had written cryptic
grams in his plays telling all about it,
II remained for American scholars to
discover these cryptOgrams. which they
nave been doing regularly for more
than twenty years.
one of the first men who believed
that Bacon was the real author of the
plays was Ignatius Donnelly. an Irish
American politician, who published
book in 1855 called The Great cryptic
gram" in which he gave his eXplana-
ton. Donnelly had MANY followers. He
died ten years ago, and one Of the next
persons to rise up in Sir Francis de-
Tense was Mrs. Elizabeth Gallup Wells
of London, who had much - say in
1902 to prove it was really Bacon who
did it.
J. c. Nicol, an Englishman. sprung a
variation in 1907 when he announced
that neither Bacon nor Shakespeare
had anything to do with it. hut that
Henry " TllltSiIt. NlllIu tdll % SOuAiA-
ampton. really wrote the plays NicOl
said he would be glad to prove his
secret TO the public if anybody cared
to insult him with some real money
Nobody did.
Perhaps the worst phase Of the con-
troversy is the number of books for
which it has been responsible. The lat
est Of these, entitled Bacon is Shake
speare" was written by Sir Edwin
burning Lawrence, Bart. b. A, Ii. b,
and n few other things. 1t was pub
lished last year. and if anybody ever
believed Shakespeare amounted to
much he has only to read the Bart's
book to see his mistake. DR.. Owen
hopes to push the good work along by
his mud grubbing exploits.