Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1916-04-13

~ with the interesting taCt that Caesar
isdead. This is the way of it:
Locust Did you know that Caesar is dead.
Spruce: l didn't even know he sick.
It's familiar, but try it on Shakespeare and
you get the reverse English. Just at present
they" are celebrating the 3OOth anniversary
of Shakespeare's death. And a great number
of people not only didn't know he was sick,
but are strongly inclined to believe that he
never lived.
Funny, isn't It? Here is the greatest genius
of all time, the man about whom Swinburne
wrote, 1T is not only the crownng glory of
England, it is the crownng glory of mankind
that such man should ever have been born
as William Shakespeare" And in sober, Sc.
rious earnestness great number of perfectly
intelligent people insist that William Shake.
speare, the author of the plays. simply did
not exist. There was a play-actor named
Shakespeare, or Shixpur. or something of that
sort, they admit, who played the Ghost in
Hamlet" But that play was written by an
entirely different person, who used the name
Shakespeare as a psuedonym.
Della Bacon Started 1t
It started with an American woman Della
Bacon. In 1857 she published a book, and
what put it into her head, except possibly her
last name, man can say. She expounded
tne pnllOSODny Oh tne shakespeare plays TO
prove that Francis Bacon wrote them. Thirty
years later Ignatius Donnelly, a Philadephan
who went West and believed that Atlantis
actually existed and was nominated for Vice
President with Peter Cooper on the Peoples
ticket, published "The Great Cryptogram."
With miraculous system of figures, such as
taking the first letter and dividing by six
multiplying the number of the last word but
sixteen on the 240th page of the First Folio
he arrived at the same concusion-that Bacon
wrote all the plays. 1t is said that by EN-.
ploying the same cipher some one else worked
out the astonishing prophecy, "DOnnely will
find it,"
Cryptograms aside. there is something to
be said for the absolute logic of the anti.
Shakespeare argument. Mark Twain said a
great deal in his delightful book. "Is Shake.
speare Dead?" In the first place, while we
know much about all of Shakespeare's con-
temporaries, we know virtually nothing about
him-about the greatest genius of them all.
What we know about the Shakespeare play
actor is little enough. but it is about ten times
as much as we know about the playwriter.
His only creative work we are sure about is
this, from his gravestone:
Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blessed be ye manyt spares thes stones
ana cufst De lie " moves my DOnes.
Not a very poetic specimen. is it. for the man
who wrote "Prosperos InvocatiOn"'
If Shakespeare Didn't, Who Did?
Everything we know about Shakespeare is
Enthusiastically" and presumably" and
"withoutadoubtedly." Nothing is certainly.
The plays were written by man who knew
the law, who knew the stage, who knew some
thing of Greek and Latin, who knew the GUS
toms of the nobility and the habits of the
common people, who knew France and the
realms of the imagination The ardent STRAIT.
fordolaters, as Mark Twain calls them, say
that without a doubt Shakespeare hung
around the law courts" and picked up the
slang. They do not doubt that he studied
when he wasn't hanging around. They ex-
plain everything by a beautiful process OF
conjecture which all sounds reasonable enough,
but which proves nothing.
When it's all over they cry out. well, If
Shakespeare didn't write them, who did2"
Il wish knew" says Twain.
Since the days of Della Bacon and Ignatius
Donnelly and Mrs Gallup and host OF Others,
the Baconians have backed considerably. They
find It easier to question than TO assert They
have stopped backing Bacon, but they are
decidedly raising the odds against the man
from stratford. They say that there was only
one man living at the end of the sixteenth
century who had taken all knowledge to be his
province, and who was lawyer and a wit and
a philosopher, and who knew human nature
and had been abroad and knew the classics
ana was, IN general, the most versatile and
most brilliant man Of all time. That man
was Francis Bacon, Lord Yerulam. Yiscount
ST Adams. They say 1t Is fair chance that
this man wrote the plays, and since play
writing ana everything connected with the
stazs WAS dlstinctlvaly below stairs at the
fisaa ruhIfshed thzna under another name