Bacon is Shake-Speare. Durning-Lawrence Edwin

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СКАЧАТЬ in Lists of Law and learned Arts,

           Each making thee for great Imployment fitt

           Which now thou hast, (though short of thy

               deserts)

           Compells my pen to let fall shining Inke

           And to bedew the Baies that deck thy Front; —

           And to thy health in Helicon to drinke

           As to her Bellamour the Muse is wont:

           For thou dost her embozom; and dost vse

           Her company for sport twixt grave affaires;

           So vtterst Law the liuelyer through thy Muse.

           And for that all thy Notes are sweetest Aires;

       My Muse thus notes thy worth in eu'ry Line,

       With yncke which thus she sugers; so, to shine."

      But nothing can much exceed in value the testimony of Ben Jonson who in his "Discoveries," 1641, says "But his learned, and able (though unfortunate) Successor [Bacon in margin] is he, who hath fill'd up all numbers, and perform'd that in our tongue, which may be compar'd or preferr'd either to insolent Greece, or haughty Rome."

      "He who hath filled up all numbers" means unquestionably "He that hath written every kind of poetry."5

      Alexander Pope the poet declares that he himself "lisped in numbers for the numbers came." Ben Jonson therefore bears testimony to the fact that Bacon was so great a poet that he had in poetry written that "which may be compar'd or preferr'd either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome."

      But in 1623 Ben Jonson had said of the AUTHOR of the plays

       "Or when thy sockes were on Leaue thee alone, for the comparison Of all, that insolent Greece or haughtie Rome Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come."

      Surely the statements in the "Discoveries" were intended to tell us who was the AUTHOR of the plays.

      After perusing these contemporary evidences, and they might be multiplied, it is difficult to understand how anyone can venture to dispute Bacon's position as pre-eminent in poetry. But it may be of interest to those who doubt whether Bacon (irrespective of any claim to the authorship of the plays) could be deemed to be a great poet, to quote here the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley, who in his "Defence of Poetry" says

      "Bacon was a poet. His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the intellect. It is a strain which distends and then bursts the circumference of the reader's mind, and pours itself forth together with it into the universal element with which it has perpetual sympathy."

      The immortal plays are the "Greatest Birth of Time," and contain a short summary of the wisdom of the world from ancient times, and they exhibit an extent and depth of knowledge in every branch which has never been equalled at any period of the world's history. In classic lore, as the late Mr. Churton Collins recently pointed out, they evince the ripest scholarship. And this is confirmed by classical scholars all the world over.

      None but the profoundest lawyers can realise the extent of the knowledge not only of the theory but of the practice of Law which is displayed. Lord Campbell says that Lord Eldon [supposed to have been the most learned of judges] need not have been ashamed of the law of Shakespeare. And as an instance of the way in which the members of the legal profession look up to the mighty author I may mention that some years ago, at a banquet of a Shakespeare Society at which Mr. Sidney Lee and the writer were present, the late Mr. Crump, Q.C., editor of the Law Times, who probably possessed as much knowledge of law as any man in this country, declared that to tell him that the plays were not written by the greatest lawyer the world has ever seen, or ever would see, was to tell him what he had sufficient knowledge of law to know to be nonsense. He said also that he was not ashamed to confess that he himself, though he had some reputation for knowledge of law, did not possess sufficient legal knowledge to realise one quarter of the law that was contained in the Shakespeare plays.

      It requires a philologist to fully appreciate what the enormous vocabulary employed in the plays implies.

      Max Muller in his "Science of Language," Vol. I, 1899, p. 379, says

      "A well-educated person in England, who has been at a public school and at the University … seldom uses more than about 3,000 or 4,000 words. … The Hebrew Testament says all that it has to say with 5,642 words, Milton's poetry is built up with 8,000; and Shakespeare, who probably displayed a greater variety of expression than any writer in any language … produced all his plays with about 15,000 words."

      Shakspeare the householder of Stratford could not have known so many as one thousand words.

      But Bacon declared that we must make our English language capable of conveying the highest thoughts, and by the plays he has very largely created what we now call the English language. The plays and the sonnets also reveal their author's life.

      In the play of "Hamlet" especially, Bacon seems to tell us a good deal concerning himself, for the auto-biographical character of that play is clearly apparent to those who have eyes to see. I will, however, refer only to a single instance in that play. In the Quarto of 1603, which is the first known edition of the play of "Hamlet," we are told, in the scene at the grave, that Yorick has been dead a dozen years; but in the 1604 Quarto, which was printed in the following year, Yorick is stated to have been dead twenty-three years. This corrected number, twenty-three, looks therefore like a real date of the death of a real person. The words in the Quarto of 1604 are as follows: —

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      1

      Digges really means "When Time dissolves thy Stratford Mask".

      2

      Through the whole play the fact that Puntarvolo represents Bacon is continually apparent to the instructed reader. Note especially Act II., Scene 3, where Puntarvolo addresses his wife, who appears at a window, in a parody of the address of Romeo to Juliet. Again in Act II., Scene 3, Carlo Buffone calls Puntarvolo "A yeoman pheuterer." Pheuter or feuter means a rest or supportfor a spear – which is informing.

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