ingenii, a mere work of recreation. And it is quite possible that the great philosopher and statesman on the threshold of age may have looked on the intellectual revels of his youth and early manhood as a Midsummer Night's Dream and a Winter's Tale-a tale that had been told—a dream that had vanished into air. Whether Shakespeare wrote for gain or not, it is certain that he did not write for glory. Whoever was entitled to that glorious name he never claimed it. Nearly thirty years elapsed before the Great Folio was given to the world as the work of Shakespeare, and during that time the mighty genius lay perdu. The Player never claimed the laurels, and the Philosopher renounced them. The last infirmity of noble minds is not the infirmity of the noblest. For what after all is literary glory? In the highest creations of genius it is the work that is immortal; the personality of the author melts into a mist. What do we actually know of Shakespeare? Whether his immortalities were composed in lodgings at Southwark or in chambers at Gray's Inn, we know nothing, absolutely nothing, about him. We are told that he was not for an age, but for all time. Yet what is it that time has conferred upon him? The glory and the nothing of a name. NOTE A.-OF SHAKESPEARE AND SIR THOMAS LUCY. NOTE B.-OF SHAKESPEARE AS A SPORTSMAN. NOTE C.-OF MONEY IN THE TIME OF SHAKESPEARE. NOTE D.-Of CopyrighT IN THE TIME OF SHAKESPEARE. NOTE E.-OF SHAKE-SPEARE'S SONNets. NOTE F.-OF THE SHAKESPEARE FOLIO. NOTE G.-OF BACON'S PROMUS. NOTE H.-OF THE NORTHUMBERLAND PAPERS. NOTE I.-OF BACON'S APOLOGY. NOTE K.-OF SHAKESPEARE'S KNOWLEDGE OF IRELAND. R° NOTE A Of Shakespeare ana Sir Thomas Lucy OWE and his followers are of opinion that Shakspere's 'deer stealing' was the cause of his flight from Stratford. But Sir Thomas Lucy was a knight of the shire as well as a justice of the peace, and he might have madea Star Chamber matter of it,' as easily as Justice Shallow in the case of Falstaff. Shakspere's flight, as it seems to me, was occasioned, not by his deer-stealing, but by the financial difficulties with which he and his family were overwhelmed. It appears from a letter of Bacon to Sir Thomas Lucy which must have been written before July 1600, when Sir Thomas died, that a near kinsman of Bacon's had recently married a daughter of the knight; and 'this bond of alliance,' Bacon writes,' shall on my part tie me to give all tribute to your good fortunes upon all occasions that my poor strength can yield.' When everyone has his fancy, we may be permitted to indulge in the imagination that Bacon visited Charlecote, and learned from Lucy how Shakspere had beaten his men, killed his deer, broken open his lodge, and kissed his keeper's daughter. He may even have tasted the Wincot ale, and formed the acquaintance of the Hackets and the Slys of The Taming of the Shrew. Bacon, moreover, would seem to have been acquainted with the Gloucestershire of Shallow. He writes, in his Natural History, apparently from personal experience, 'There is a church in Gloucester, and, as I have heard, the like is in some other places, where, if you speak against a wall softly, another shall hear your voice better a good way off than near at hand' (s. 148). Bacon, therefore, may have had all the knowledge of Gloucestershire which is displayed in Henry the Fourth and the Merry Wives of Windsor. True, this is mere fancy, but it is not more fanciful than the theory that there was an interval between Shakespeare's flight from Stratford and his arrival in London, during which he visited certain imaginary relations in Dursley, and formed the acquaintance of William Visor of Wincot, and Clement Parkes of the Hill (Madden, The Diary of Master William Silence, p. 373). I see no reason for identifying Justice Shallow with Sir Thomas Lucy. The luces of the Knight of Charlecote were not twelve but three; and the coat' of the knight was obviously introduced to give occasion to the Welshman's wit. |