II THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY THE apparent contrast between the homeliness of Shakespeare's The only point of any genuine 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 Tooks 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,' II. 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; it was not peculiar to Shakespeare and Bacon, but was in almost universal vogue at the time they wrote. 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 is the interpretation of Aristotle's language that was adopted by sixteenth and seventeenth century writers of all countries. Erasmus, in the epistle at the close of his popular 'Colloquia' (Florence, 1531, sig. Q Q), wrote of his endeavour to insinuate serious precepts into the minds of young men whom Aristotle rightly described as unfit auditors of moral philosophy' ('in animos adolescentium, quos recte scripsit Aristoteles inidoneos auditores ethicæ philosophiæ '). In a French translation of the 'Ethics' by the Comte de Plessis, published at Paris in 1553, the section is headed 'parquoy le ieune enfant n'est suffisant auditeur de la science civile ;' but 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. No genuine theory of a mysterious literary relationship between Shakespeare and Bacon can be based on the barren fact that each writer quoted a trite Aristotelian apophthegm in the precise form in which it enjoyed in their day a proverbial currency throughout Europe. The Baconian method of argument may also be judged by the following example. Toby Matthew, at an uncertain date Toby after January 1621, wrote to Bacon (as Viscount St. Albans) Matthese words: The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of thew's my nation and of this side of the sea is of your Lordship's name, though he be known by another.' 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, bearing an assumed name. The reference is clearly to one of the pseudonymous Jesuits who were numerous among Matthew's friends. There is little doubt, in fact, that Matthew referred to Father Thomas Southwell, a learned Jesuit domiciled chiefly in the Low Countries, whose real surname 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.) It was with reference to a book published by this man that Sir Henry Wotton wrote a few years later - on December 5, 1638-to Sir Edmund Bacon, half-brother to the great Francis Bacon, in language somewhat P letter. Chief exponents. Its vogue in America. Extent of the litera ture. resembling Toby Matthew's: 'The Book of Controversies issued under the name of F. Baconus hath this addition to the said name, alias Southwell, as those of that Society shift their names as often as their shirts' ('Reliquiæ Wottonianæ,' 1672, p. 475). Joseph C. Hart (U.S. Consul at Santa Cruz, d. 1855), in his Romance of Yachting' (1848), first raised doubts of Shakespeare's authorship of the plays and poems associated with his name. There followed in a like temper 'Who wrote Shakespeare?' in 'Chambers's Journal,' August 7, 1852, and an article by Miss Delia Bacon in 'Putnam's 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 far abroad a spirit of scepticism respecting the established facts of Shakespeare's career, died insane on September 2, 1859. Mr. William Henry Smith, a resident in London, seems first to have suggested the Baconian hypothesis in 'Was Lord Bacon the author of Shakespeare's plays? a letter to Lord Ellesmere' (1856), which was republished as 'Bacon and Shakespeare' (1857). The most learned exponent of this strange theory was Nathaniel Holmes, an American lawyer, who published at New York in 1866 'The Authorship of the Plays attributed to Shakespeare,' a monument of misapplied ingenuity (4th edit. 1886, 2 vols.). Bacon's 'Promus of Formularies and Elegancies,' a commonplace book in Bacon's handwriting in the British Museum (London, 1883), was first edited by Mrs. Henry Pott, a voluminous advocate of the Baconian theory; it contained many words and phrases common to the works of Bacon and Shakespeare, and Mrs. Pott pressed the argument from parallelisms of expression to its extremest limits. The Baconian theory has found its widest acceptance in America. There it achieved its wildest manifestation in the book called 'The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon's Cypher in the so-called Shakespeare Plays' (Chicago and London, 1887, 2 vols.), which was the work of Mr. Ignatius Donnelly of Hastings, Minnesota. The author pretended to have discovered among Bacon's papers a numerical cipher which enabled him to pick out letters appearing at certain intervals in the pages of Shakespeare's First Folio, and the selected letters formed words and sentences categorically stating that Bacon was author of the plays. Many refutations have been published of Mr. Donnelly's arbitrary and baseless contention. A Bacon Society was founded in London in 1885 to develop and promulgate the unintelligible theory, and it inaugurated a magazine (named since May 1893 'Baconiana '). A quarterly periodical also called 'Baconiana,' and issued in the same interest, was established at Chicago in 1892. 'The Bibliography of the Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy,' by W. H. Wyman, Cincinnati, 1884, gives the titles of two hundred and fifty-five books or pamphlets on both sides of the subject, which were published since 1848; the list was continued during 1886 in Shakespeariana,' a monthly journal published at Philadelphia, and might now be extended to fully twice its original number. The abundance of the contemporary evidence attesting Shakespeare's responsibility for the works published under his name gives the Baconian theory no rational right to a hearing; while such authentic examples of Bacon's effort to write verse as survive prove beyond all possibility of contradiction that, great as he was as a prose writer and a philosopher, he was incapable of penning any of the poetry assigned to Shakespeare. Defective knowledge and illogical or casuistical argument alone render any other conclusion possible. |