and others,

But Ireland's and Jordan's frauds are clumsy compared with those that belong to the present century. Most of the works Forgeries relating to the biography of Shakespeare or the promulgated history of the Elizabethan stage produced by John by Collier Payne Collier, or under his supervision, between 1835 1835-1849. and 1849 are honeycombed with forged references to Shakespeare, and many of the forgeries have been admitted unsuspectingly into literary history. The chief of these forged papers I arrange below in the order of the dates that have been allotted to them by their manufacturers.'

1589 (November). Appeal from the Blackfriars players (16 in number) to the Privy Council for favour. Shakespeare's name stands twelfth. From the manuscripts at Bridgewater House, belonging to the Earl of Ellesmere. First printed in Collier's 'New Facts regarding the Life of Shakespeare,' 1835.

1596 (July). List of inhabitants of the Liberty of Southwark, Shakespeare's name appearing in the sixth place. First printed in Collier's 'Life of Shakespeare,' 1858, p. 126.

1596. Petition of the owners and players of the Blackfriars' Theatre to the Privy Council in reply to an alleged petition of the inhabitants requesting the closing of the playhouse. Shakespeare's name is fifth on the list of petitioners. This forged paper is in the Public Record Office, and was first printed in Collier's 'History of English Dramatic Poetry' (1831), vol. i. p. 297, and has been constantly reprinted as if it were genuine."

Reference has already been made to the character of the manuscript correc. tions made by Collier in a copy of the Second Folio of 1632, known as the Perkins Folio. See p. 312, note 2. The chief authorities on the subject of the Collier forgeries are: An Inquiry into the Genuineness of the Manuscript Corrections in Mr. J. Payne Collier's Annotated Shakspere Folio, 1632, and of certain Shaksperian Documents likewise published by Mr. Collier, by N. E. S. A. Hamilton, London, 1860; A Complete View of the Shakespeare Controversy concerning the Authenticity and Genuineness of Manuscript Matter affecting the Works and Biography of Shakspere, published by J. Payne Collier as the Fruits of his Researches, by C. M. Ingleby, LL.D. of Trinity College, Cambridge, London, 1861; Catalogue of the Manuscripts and Muniments of Alleyn's College of God's Gift at Dulwich, by George F. Warner, M.A., 1881; Notes on the Life of James Payne Collier, with a Complete List of his Works and an Account of such Shakespeare Documents as are believed to be spurious, by Henry B. Wheatley, London, 1884.

See Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1595-7, p. 310.

1596 (circa). A letter signed H. S. (i.e. Henry, Earl of Southampton), addressed to Sir Thomas Egerton, praying protection for the players of the Blackfriars Theatre, and mentioning Burbage and Shakespeare by name. First printed in Collier's 'New Facts.'

1596 (circa). A list of sharers in the Blackfriars Theatre, with the valuation of their property, in which Shakespeare is credited with four shares, worth 9331. 65. 8d. This was first printed in Collier's New Facts,' 1835, p. 6, from the Egerton MSS. at Bridgewater House. 1602 (August 6). Notice of the performance of 'Othello' by Burbage's 'players' before Queen Elizabeth when on a visit to Sir Thomas Egerton, the lord-keeper, at Harefield, in a forged account of disbursements by Egerton's steward, Arthur Mainwaringe, from the manuscripts at Bridgewater House, belonging to the Earl of Ellesmere. Printed in Collier's 'New Particulars regarding the Works of Shakespeare,' 1836, and again in Collier's edition of the 'Egerton Papers,' 1840 (Camden Society), pp. 342-3.

1603 (October 3). Mention of 'Mr. Shakespeare of the Globe' in a letter at Dulwich from Mrs. Alleyn to her husband; part of the letter is genuine. First published in Collier's Memoirs of Edward Alleyn,' 1841, p. 63.1 1604 (April 9). List of the names of eleven players of the King's Company fraudulently appended to a genuine letter at Dulwich College from the Privy Council bidding the Lord Mayor permit performances by the King's players. Printed in Collier's Memoirs of Edward Alleyn,' 1841, p. 68.2

1605 (November-December). Forged entries in Master of the Revels' account-books (now at the Public Record Office) of performances at Whitehall by the King's players of the 'Moor of Venice'-i.e. 'Othello'-on November 1, and of 'Measure for Measure' on December 26. Printed in Peter Cunningham's 'Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court' (pp. 203-4), pub'See Warner's Catalogue of Dulwich MSS. pp. 24-6. 2 Cf. ibid. pp. 26-7.

lished by the Shakespeare Society in 1842. Doubtless based on Malone's trustworthy memoranda (now in the Bodleian Library) of researches among genuine papers formerly at the Audit Office at Somerset House.1

1607. Notes of performances of 'Hamlet' and ' Richard II' by the crews of the vessels of the East India Company's fleet off Sierra Leone. First printed in ‘Narratives of Voyages towards the North-West, 1496-1631,' edited by Thomas Rundall for the Hakluyt Society, 1849, p. 231, from what purported to be an exact transcript in the India Office' of the 'Journal of William Keeling,' captain of one of the vessels in the expedition. Keeling's manuscript journal is still at the India Office, but the leaves that should contain these entries are now, and have long been, missing from it.

1609 (January 4). A warrant appointing Robert Daborne, William Shakespeare, and others instructors of the Children of the Revels. From the Bridgewater House MSS. first printed in Collier's 'New Facts,' 1835.

1609 (April 6). List of persons assessed for poor rate in Southwark, April 6, 1609, in which Shakespeare's name appears. First printed in Collier's 'Memoirs of Edward Alleyn,' 1841, p. 91. The forged paper is at Dulwich.

1611 (November). Forged entries in Master of the Revels' account-books (now at the Public Record Office) of performances at Whitehall by the King's Players of the 'Tempest' on November 1, and of the 'Winter's Tale' on November 5. Printed in Peter Cunningham's 'Extracts from the Revels Accounts,' p. 210. Doubtless based on Malone's trustworthy memoranda of researches among genuine papers formerly at the Audit Office at Somerset House."

II.

THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY.

Its source.

THE apparent contrast between the homeliness of Shakespeare's Stratford career and the breadth of observation and knowledge displayed in his literary work has evoked the fantastic theory that Shakespeare was not the author of the literature that passes under his name, and perverse attempts have been made to assign his works to his great contemporary, Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the great contemporary prose-writer, philosopher, and lawyer. It is argued that Shakespeare's plays embody a general omniscience (especially a knowledge of law) which was possessed by no contemporary except Bacon; that there are many close parallelisms between passages in Shakespeare's and passages in Bacon's works,' and that Bacon makes

Most of those that are commonly quoted are phrases in ordinary use by all writers of the day. The only point of any interest raised in the argument from parallelisms of expression centres about a quotation from Aristotle which Bacon and Shakespeare not merely both make, but make in what looks at a first glance to be the same erroneous form. Aristotle wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics, i. 8, that young men were unfitted for the study of political philosophy. Bacon, in the Advancement of Learning (1605), wrote: 'Is not the opinion of Aristotle worthy to be regarded wherein he saith that young men are not fit auditors of moral philosophy?' (bk. ii. p. 255, ed. Kitchin). Shakespeare, about 1603, in Troilus and Cressida, 11. ii. 166, wrote of young men whom Aristotle thought unfit to hear moral philosophy.' But the alleged error of substituting moral for political philosophy in Aristotle's text is more apparent than real. By 'political' philosophy Aristotle, as his context amply shows, meant the ethics of civil society, which are hardly distinguishable from what is commonly called 'morals. In the summary paraphrase of Aristotle's Ethics which was translated into English from the Italian, and published in 1547, the passage to which both Shakespeare and Bacon refer is not rendered literally, but its general drift is given as a warning that moral philosophy is not a fit subject for study by youths who are naturally passionate and headstrong. Such an interpretation of Aristotle's language is common among sixteenth and seventeenth century writers. In a French translation of the Ethics by the Comte de Plessis, pub

enigmatic references in his correspondence to secret 'recreations' and 'alphabets' and concealed poems for which his alleged employment as a concealed dramatist can alone account. Toby Matthew wrote to Bacon (as Viscount St. Toby Matthew's Albans) at an uncertain date after January 1621: letter. 'The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation and of this side of the sea is of your Lordship's name, though he be known by another.' 1 This unpretending sentence is distorted into conclusive evidence that Bacon wrote works of commanding excellence under another's name, and among them probably Shakespeare's plays. According to the only sane interpretation of Matthew's words, his 'most prodigious wit' was some Englishman named Bacon whom he met abroad -probably a pseudonymous Jesuit like most of Matthew's friends. (The real surname of Father Thomas Southwell, who was a learned Jesuit domiciled chiefly in the Low Countries, was Bacon. He was born in 1592 at Sculthorpe, near Walsingham, Norfolk, being son of Thomas Bacon of that place, and he died at Watten in 1637.)

Joseph C. Hart (U. S. Consul at Santa Cruz, d. 1855), in his 'Romance of Yachting' (1848), first raised doubts of Shake

ponents.

speare's authorship. There followed in a like temper Chief ex- 'Who wrote Shakespeare?' in 'Chambers's Journal, August 7, 1852, and an article by Miss Delia Bacon in 'Putnams' Monthly,' January 1856. On the latter was based 'The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare unfolded by Delia Bacon,' with a neutral preface by Nathaniel Hawthorne, London and Boston, 1857. Miss Delia Bacon, who was the first to spread abroad a spirit of scepticism respecting the established facts of Shakespeare's career, died insane on September 2, lished at Paris in 1553, the passage is rendered 'parquoy le ieune enfant n'est suffisant auditeur de la science civile;' and an English commentator (in a manuscript note written about 1605 in a copy of the book in the British Museum) turned the sentence into English thus: Whether a young man may be a fitte scholler of morall philosophie.' In 1622 an Italian essayist, Virgilio Malvezzi, in his preface to his Discorsi sopra Cornelio Tacito, has the remark, 'E non è discordante da questa mia opinione Aristotele, il qual dice, che i giovani non sono buoni ascultatori delle morali' (cf. Spedding, Works of Bacon, i. 739, iii. 440).

Cf. Birch, Letters of Bacon, 1763, p. 392. A foolish suggestion has been made that Matthew was referring to Francis Bacon's brother Anthony, who died in 1601 Matthew was writing of a man who was alive more than twenty years later.