V. SHAKESPEARE OR BACON? The one who mastered "all things and relations of this world." -Schlagel. The question for our consideration is: Shakespeare or Bacon? This implies that either Shakespeare or Francis Bacon is the author of the works generally considered heretofore as the writings of William Shakespeare, and more especially The Plays, his most important literary productions. Our sympathies are all with Shakespeare in the controversy, and we almost hate the iconoclasts who would drag down and dash to pieces the beautiful image he established in the literary world, and the critics who would hurl him from such an exalted throne of greatness and power, unique in itself, and unparalleled by any author in the world's history. But as honest investigators of the literature of the past, searching for its sources, we must throttle our sympathies, look with calm eyes at the cold facts, and answer, if we can, the old question-what is truth?—even though it shake our faith in all authors of the past, and even history itself. Honest investigators cannot live upon fiction. Truth and honesty are no more necessary to religion than to literature. This evening we shall consider a few of the internal and circumstantial evidences as to whether Shakespeare was the author of the works known as his plays, and at our next meeting, by the kindness of the club, we will consider the evidence to support the theory of the second part of our subject: Whether Bacon wrote the plays known as Shakespeare's, including the Cryptogram, claimed to have been discovered by the Hon. Ignatius Donnelly. After over three hundred years the consensus of the literary criticism of the most enlightened period of the world's history is, that there is nothing in all literature that surpasses these plays in mental strength and acu men, extent of resources and elegance of expression. They show their author to have been a scholar of most extensive culture, a man of the broadest sympathies, and a knowledge of character, especially in the higher walks of life, that enabled him to portray not only the acts and manners of the poor mechanics, farmers, burghers and village politicians, but of kings, queens, courtiers and statesmen. He had an intimate acquaintance with Latin and Greek, French, Italian and Spanish, and probably the Danish languages; and was thoroughly informed in all the political and religious questions of history and of his age, and was one who moved in the highest walks of scholastic life, and amid the polite and upper grades of social, political and court life. In short, a most remarkable intellect, distinguished scholar, philosopher, statesman, lawyer, scientist, politician, poet and writer of his own or any other period of the world's history. Was William Shakespeare such a man, and could he have produced these works under the most favorable environments of a most inspired genius? Let his life and acts reply. It is conceded by ail that he obtained nothing by hereditary powers of mind, only that he had an attractive form, good disposition and a fine personal presence. Neither his immediate or remote ancestors were distinguished as great or noble, in literary, social or military affairs. His father, called John the butcher, was at one time an alderman in politics, and a butcher and wool dealer by occupation. He was born in a favorable era as the morning rays of a new day, the Elizabethan era, were breaking over the earth, on the 23d day of April, 1564, at Stratford-onAvon. His father's name was John Shakespeare, and his mother's Mary Ardeen, and both were of peasant families. He was supposed to have been for a short time at the Stratford grammar school, and a school teacher; but this is all only tradition, and there is no positive proof that either statement is true. He was born in a very humble home situated in Henry street. The chambers were wretched, the walls were whitewashed, the black rafters laid crosswise, and the miserable dwelling sheltered a decayed familyaccording to Victor Hugo. The family had been cursed with political aspirations-the father having been an alderman and the grandfather a bailiff. The name signifies "Shake spear." The family had for a coat of arms an arm holding a spear, allusive arms conferred, they say, by Queen Elizabeth, in 1595, and visible on his tomb in the church of Stratford-on-Avon. Some affirm that only an application for a grant of coat-armor to his father was made in 1596, and in 1599; but the matter seems to have gone no farther than the drafting of designs by the heralds. Shakespeare's relatives, however, at a later date, assumed his right to the coatof-arms suggested by his father in 1596. At the age of fifteen he commenced active life as a butcher in his father's slaughter house, according to Aubry. At eighteen he married. Victor Hugo says, between the days of the slaughter house and the marriage he composed his first quatrain, directed against the neighboring villagers. His maiden effort in poetry was as follows: "Piping Pelworth, Dancing Marston, Haunted Hillsborough, Hungry Grafton, Beggarly Broom and Drunken Bidford." Hugo says he was "tipsy himself," under an apple tree, when he wrote this quatrain. It was then that he discovered Anna Hathaway, a pretty girl eight years older than himself, whom he soon married, and in five months was a father. Several children were born to them. One son died in his twelfth year, and two daughters, Susanna and Judith, reached their majority. Susanna married a Puritan doctor, and Judith a merchant. In 1587 he went to London, some say to avoid legal arrests and prosecutions (the probable cause), some, to escape from his family, and still others, to cultivate his supposed wonderful dramatic talent. It is conceded by all that he commenced at the bottom of the ladder of fame by holding the horses at the theater. Then by degrees he was employed as a "super" and a "walking" or "utility gentleman." He gradually rose in his profession as manager and actor, until he acted in Hamlet; but not as Hamlet, only as the ghost. In 1598 he was shareholder in and manager of Black Friar and the Globe Theaters, and was so prosperous that he pur chased at Stratford-on-Avon a home called New Place, and loaned money to the burghers. In 1605 he is still a large shareholder in and the manager of the Globe Theater, and is still before the courts and buying more land at Stratford. In 1610, at the age of forty-seven, while in the very prime of life, he leaves London and the theaters, and retires to private life at Stratford-on-Avon, and assumes his father's old calling of wool dealer and farmer, or, as Hugo says, spent the remainder of his life with his flowers in his garden. In 1611 he has a law-suit with a neighbor, and in 1616, April 23d, he died at Stratford-on-Avon, at the age of fifty-two years. In the diary of the Vicar of Stratford, a Mr. Wood, appears this significant entry of that date: "Shakespeare, Drayton and Ben Jonson, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever thus contracted." His death attracted no attention of special import, either at Stratford or at London, and the great world was wonderfully ignorant that the most gifted of the sons of men and sweetest bard that it had ever seen was dead. Why is there no record of his funeral services, or the respectful attendance of at least his theatrical friends and contemporaneous actors and writers, and court officials, who in that age delighted to honor all who were at the head of any branch of literary excellence? It is also conceded by all, that he wrote nothing after he retired from London. Feeling somewhat ill on the 25th of March, 1616, he prepared his will, of three pages, and signed it with a trembling hand. Each page shows a different signature; but we do not attach much importance to this. Every article of value is enumerated and disposed of which he possessed, even a ring to an old friend, and an old bedstead to his wife. Yet there is not a word in it, in reference to his literary works, nor any claim for them or any part of them by himself, or his friends or executors, or administrators. No library, no books, no manuscripts, are even mentioned in the will or claimed by the heirs. Was there ever such an instance, before or since, of such a distinguished author, as we are asked to believe, of worldwide fame and repute-a man of sufficient wealth, who dying and leaving a will, had not a library or books or literary productions of any value or kind, to leave to his friends or heirs? He seems in no way to have been distinguished in social and court life of his period. To have paid very little attention to politics and less to religion. Instead of the sweet and gentle spirit, and the noble and manly demeanor that characterizes most of the distinguished poets and writers of history, he was of such a coarse and brutal temperament, of such degrading habits, that even in his family life, his cruel treatment of his wife and children, was such as to forever bar him from the affectionate regard of even purely literary critics, where these facts were known. In the family, if anywhere, the masks are occasionally thrown off, and the real man is seen as he is, and his true nobility of intellect and soul is apparent, especially to those who have entered the domain of his loves and are dependent upon him for the richest experiences of life. The author of the plays honors women everywhere and at all times, and writes in imperishable letters of light of the purity and peace of true love. But not a word from Shakespeare is found about his wife, the mother of at least a part of his children, after he goes to London, on and after the unfortunate and probably forced marriage. In 1597 he lost his son, of whom the only trace on earth is one line in the death register of the parish of Stratford-onAvon: "1597, August 17, Hammet Filius William Shakespeare." September 6, 1601, his father died. Susanna, his eldest daughter, was said to be somewhat clever, and was married to a Puritan doctor, and Judith, his youngest daughter, to a merchant. Judith could neither read nor write, but signed her name with a cross, and suffered all the disadvantages that such ignorance and neglect entails. Nearly all her life, while approaching womanhood, her father was in London, then the first city of the world; had, it is supposed, ample means to have given her the best opportunities; in an age when a woman sat upon the throne of England, and while his friends would have us believe he was associating with, and absorbing from scholars and the most cultured of the world his unschooled intuitions, his own daughter was allowed to grow up unable to read or write, and utterly ignorant of the vast and beautiful intellectual world in which it is claimed he reigned supreme. Is this possible to believe of any parent for a moment, and especially of one who says: 236556B |