The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-08-30
F'rom the Kansas City Times.

Frcm the Kansas City Times.
 T1HE Baoonian theory with respect to
 the authorship of the immortal
 \ plays said to have, been writ ten by the drunken, llliterate clown of Strat-on-Avon,' has again ''rlz up." The theory is now hurled in defiance at trembling world by Sir Edwin Burning Lawrence, baronet, in ''The Shakespeare Myth" a g page pam phlet published by Gay & Hancock Lrd, of London Sir Edwin obviously is fore most exponent of the movement to place Will Shakespeare in his proper place which by the way is not a nice place at all. Sir Edwin is the author of Bacon in Shakespeare" published in 191o "vhich." observes Sir Edwin, modestly, placed in every library in the world, has carried everywhere the news of t.4s decease of the myth
 "The Shakespeare Myth" is most in- genious collection of arguments, more or less convincing, aimed to show tho elabo- rate and laborious means employed by Sir Francis Bacon to conceal his identity as author of the literary jewels of the Eng fish language The evidence is entirely cryptical. being founded on so-called sym bols cleverly hidden in the text of the folio of plays published in 162s The au- thor's elucidation of these symbols, wh'-e reasonably logical. is strongly, reminiscent of the hidden word puzzles which delight readers of the St. Nicholas Magazine. If converts be found to Sir Edwin's way of thinking, they must agree with him shat although Stowe places Bacon sew enth in his fist of Elizabethan poets and 'ncthing of any poetical importance hear- ing Bacon's name had been up to that time d6l0) published. there can be no doubt that he was the greatest of poets since the world began
 Sir Edwin quotes from several great students of Shakespeare to support his convictions-Bisma for instance; Lord Painierston and John Bright, who said that 'any man who believed that William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet or Lear was A foel' Also, with imperturbable gravity, he announces that in 1909 Mark Twain, whose position as Americas foremost hu- mcrist the English baronet appears to have overlooked, helped to bury the Shakespeare myth in his book. ''ls Shakes
 
 peare Dead?' Says Mark Twain:
 About Shakespeare you can find out nothing. Nothing to any importance Nothing worth the trouble of slowing away in your memory. Nothing that even remotely indicates that he was ever any thing more than a distinctly common place person. A small trader Tn small village. v. We can go to the records and find out the life history of every renowned race horse of modern tmes-but not shakespeare'si"
 The Shakespeare Myth starts with a discussion of the Folio of Plays of 1923. There were ss plays in the volume. we are told that the number, ((36.' was used in many eases by .Bacon. and bore. in shcrt. sort of symbolistc significance a mystic numeral, as it were It was not an accident that there happened to be S5 plays certainly not. The thrty-sixth Of Bacon's Essays" Is entitled, "Fattioni,' nles ming stage plays. And so forth, in like II amer The inference is obvious. We are now confronted with lengthy dissertation on a portrait of Shakes peare which appears on the front of the First Folio of Plays. William Shakes peare, it concludes, washothing more than lay figure, a nom de plume, beneath which the real immortal author hid 1T is very clever. We must now ackno"i- edge that the picture is nothing more thah a putty faced, straw filled dummy upon which-signifcan fact-the rsgnt nand sleeve is, in reality, the back Of the left hand sleeve. It certainly appears so Tn the picture, and nrom this. fact supported by other symboical engravings Of which one is on the title page of Bacon's De Augmentis.v and another on the title page O; his Henry vII.' the student obtains infallible proof that everything connect ed with the plays is performed left handedly,' that is. underhandedly' and l secretly in shadow!
 With regard to the 'so-called" Shakes.