unaccountable and incredible, but it is actually negatived by the
known facts of his career.” Lord Penzance then refers to the
fact that “by 1592 (according to the best authority, Mr. Grant
White) several of the plays had been written. ‘The Comedy of
Errors’ in 1589, ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ in 1589, ‘Two Gentlemen
of Verona’ in 1589 or 1590,” and so forth, and then asks, “with
this catalogue of dramatic work on hand . . . was it possible
that he could have taken a leading part in the management and
conduct of two theaters, and if Mr. Phillipps is to be relied
upon, taken his share in the performances of the provincial tours
of his company–and at the same time devoted himself to the study
of the law in all its branches so efficiently as to make himself
complete master of its principles and practice, and saturate his
mind with all its most technical terms?”
I have cited this passage from Lord Penzance’s book, because
it lay before me, and I had already quoted from it on the matter
of Shakespeare’s legal knowledge; but other writers have still
better set forth the insuperable difficulties, as they seem to
me, which beset the idea that Shakespeare might have found them
in some unknown period of early life, amid multifarious other
occupations, for the study of classics, literature, and law, to
say nothing of languages and a few other matters. Lord Penzance
further asks his readers: “Did you ever meet with or hear of an
instance in which a young man in this country gave himself up to
legal studies and engaged in legal employments, which is the only
way of becoming familiar with the technicalities of practice, unless
with the view of practicing in that profession? I do not believe
that it would be easy, or indeed possible, to produce an instance
in which the law has been seriously studied in all its branches,
except as a qualification for practice in the legal profession.”
This testimony is so strong, so direct, so authoritative;
and so uncheapened, unwatered by guesses, and surmises, and
maybe-so’s, and might-have-beens, and could-have-beens, and must-
have-beens, and the rest of that ton of plaster of Paris out of
which the biographers have built the colossal brontosaur which
goes by the Stratford actor’s name, that it quite convinces me
that the man who wrote Shakespeare’s Works knew all about law and
lawyers. Also, that that man could not have been the Stratford
Shakespeare–and WASN’T.
Who did write these Works, then?
I wish I knew.
—–
1. From Chapter XIII of THE SHAKESPEARE PROBLEM RESTATED.
By George G. Greenwood, M.P. John Lane Company, publishers.
IX
Did Francis Bacon write Shakespeare’s Works? Nobody knows.
We cannot say we KNOW a thing when that thing has not been
proved. KNOW is too strong a word to use when the evidence is
not final and absolutely conclusive. We can infer, if we want
to, like those slaves. . . . No, I will not write that word,
it is not kind, it is not courteous. The upholders of the
Stratford-Shakespeare superstition call US the hardest names they
can think of, and they keep doing it all the time; very well,
if they like to descend to that level, let them do it, but I
will not so undignify myself as to follow them. I cannot call
them harsh names; the most I can do is to indicate them by terms
reflecting my disapproval; and this without malice, without venom.
To resume. What I was about to say was, those thugs have built
their entire superstition upon INFERENCES, not upon known and
established facts. It is a weak method, and poor, and I am
glad to be able to say our side never resorts to it while there
is anything else to resort to.
But when we must, we must; and we have now arrived at a
place of that sort. . . . Since the Stratford Shakespeare
couldn’t have written the Works, we infer that somebody did.
Who was it, then? This requires some more inferring.
Ordinarily when an unsigned poem sweeps across the continent
like a tidal wave whose roar and boom and thunder are made up of