The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-04-23
Shakespeare and the BacOniafts

Shakespeare and the DdcohiditS
 The Shakespeare tercentenary IS too much for the Baconians. Those s+,,donts and so-called students who have contended that Francis Bacon was the author of the plays credited to Shakespeare had been keeping ouiet of late, and it was thought that good taste would prompt them to lie low. at any rate until the pageants, the school programmes and the liter ary revelings incident to the observ- ance of the anniversary of Shake speare's death were past, but thelr bride of opinion got the best of them and their dissenting attitude has de- manded expression.
 Several short articles in support ot the Baconian theory have appeared in the periodical press within the past few days and there are more to come; but from a comic opera point of view inc climax of the controversy seems to have been reached in Chicago, when Judge Richard s. Tuthill of the circuit court, in a decision rendered in an injunction suit, declared Bacon to be the author of the works of Shakespeare. The injunction which was dissolved had issued on the petl- ton of motion picture manufactur- CT, one MT. Selig, to restrain one George Fabyan, publisher, from com pleting publication of books intended to prove that Bacon wrote the plays, on the ground that it would inJure Selig's motion pictures of Shake spearian productions.
 The court, after reviewing Shake speare's life, took Judicial notice of historical facts" and found that for sixty years there had been a contro- versy over the Shakespeare author ship and "that the question always has been an open question among scholars of equal authority" Also he found that "vast bibliography, esti- mated by those who are in position to know, at twenty thousand vol umes, has been written in discussion of the vexed question" Judge Tuthill did not express himself clearly when he made it appear that in each of these twenty thousand volumes ref erence was made to controversy re- lating to authorship. Twenty thou sand books, probably more, have been written about the immortal bard, but in none of them is there question of his identity, and in few of them ques- tion of his marvellous achievement Yet the Cook county pundit decides that the name Shakespeare is only a sobriquet of Bacon.
 It may be that the motion picture man will take an appeal and finally get the case before the supreme court of the United States. That would be interesting and might add to the gaiety of nations.
 Shakespeare had some schooling; not much, however, as education is understood today, but being man of uncommon intellect and uncommon insight into human motives; lover of nature, hater of sham, and a poet, he made rapid progress in ac- quiring the technic of the art of putting his thoughts on paper.
 Francis Bacon was a learned man a rare classical scholar and trained logician. The plays contain many anachronisms, the like of which Ba con could not have been guilty of Shakespeare's imagination was spon taneous. He was, in short, nothing less than a genius, which accounts for the divine afflatus in his plays ant sonnets.
 The world is indebted to Bacon fol the development of the inductiv' method and indebted, too, to him for : strong prose style.
 Shakespeare was not scholar. bu