The New York herald., 1921-03-30
Bacon, the Poet.
Could the Author OF These Lines Have
Written Shakespeare's Plays?

To TILE New YORK HERALD: So many
persons have been engaging in the per-
ennial controversy as to whether or not
to him without the slightest qualifica-
tons for the task that 1 trust THE NEW
YORK HERALD will permit one who was
brought up IN Warwickshire. Shake
speare's county, to offer an opinion from
an unconventional angle.
There is only difference of year
or so in the age of Henry Watterson
the doughty non-Shakespeare champion.
and myself. Until the age Of thirteen
went to grammar school within
few miles OF Stratford on Avon Of the
same foundation as Shakespeare's school,
both in common with a number Of
schools throughout England founded by
King Edward VI. in 1863.
Colonel Watterson clinchcs his dictum
by saying "The man who can believe
that Shakespeare did write the plays
could believe that Benedict Arnold wrote
the Declaration Of Independence and
Herbert Spencer the novels OF Dickens"
This is fiippant antithesis on the part
of Colonel Watterson. who apparently
fails to grasp either the situation or the
character of Shakespeare.
Shakespeare was a monumental genius
and primarily a poet. as his sonnets and
poems prove. There are no rules gov
erning a genius. His writing plays and
collaborating and revising with other
playwrights was an incidental business
enterprise in connection with the the
atre. SO successful was he that he
amassed n competency. He did not
have to study how TO write poems and
plays any more than the Polish boy
ence OF chess.
If Shakespeare did not write the
poems and plays who did? II certainly
was not any OF his contemporaries. II
was not Marlowe or Ben Jonson OF
Drayton or any one OF n round dozen
OF other playwrights.
Now as to the Bacon question. Charles
r. Easton of Providence, r.. L.. points
out in letter TO THE NEW YORK HER
AID as an argument In favor OF the
Bacon authorship that the stage being
held In worse than light esteem, he
Francis Bacon concealed the fact. II he
feared the charge Of being a playwright
Il was surely no disgrace to be poet
with the example OF Homer. Virgil
Dante and Chaucer before him. Being
fairly familiar with the Baconian style
Sweetheart Shakespeare critics or the
whole pack of other little dogs to find g
single line in Bacons Essays. The Ad.
vancement of Learning" "The Novum
Organum" or his other works that Is
poetical. Bacon did write verse. and the
following poem is tho best if not the
only important example:
THE WORLD.
BY FRANCIS BACON.
A version OF an epigram attributed TO Pos
idippus.
The worlds a bubble and the life Of mar
less than a span,
In HIS conception wrctched from the Won't
| so 20 the Tomb
Curst from the Cradle and brought up Z,
years with cares and Fears,
Who. then. to frail mortality shall trust
But limns on water or but writes In dust.
Yet since with sorrow here we live oppres
What life is best?
Courts are but only superficial Schools I,
dandlc Fools.
The rural parts are turned into a Den o.
| Savage men,
And where's city from all vice so free
But may te termd the worst OF all III,
| three
Domestic cares affiict the Husbands bee
or pains his head:
Those that live single take II for ours,
1 or do things worse,
These would have children. those that hav'
them none or wish them gone:
What II then 70 have or have no wife.
But single thradom or double strife?
our own affections still at home 10 please
| Is Disease.
To cross the seas TO any foreign soil peri
and toll;
Wars with their noise alright us: the,
cease when we are worse in peace.
Sane men are asked to believe thai
the author Of the foregoing metrica