Henry James, in a letter to Miss Violet Hunt, thus delivers himself with regard to the authorship of the plays and poems of “Shakespeare”[1]:—“I am ‘a sort of’ haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practised on a patient world. The more I turn him round and round the more he so affects me.”

Now I do not for a moment suppose that in so writing the late Mr. Henry James had any intention of affixing the stigma of personal fraud upon William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon. Doubtless he used the term “fraud” in a semi-jocular vein as we so often hear it made use of in the colloquial language of the present day, and his meaning is nothing more, and nothing less, than this, viz., that the belief that the plays and poems of “Shakespeare” were, in truth and in fact, the work of “the man from Stratford,” (as he subsequently, in the same letter, styles “the divine William”) is one of the greatest of all the many delusions which have, from time to time, afflicted a credulous and “a patient world.” He believed that when, in the year 1593, the dedication of Venus and Adonis to the Young Earl of Southampton was signed “William Shakespeare,” that signature did not, in truth and in fact, stand for the Stratford player who never so signed himself, but for a very different person, in quite another sphere of life, who desired to preserve his anonymity. He believed that when plays were published in the name of “Shake-speare” that name did not, in truth and in fact, stand for “the man from Stratford,” but again for that same person—or it might be, and in certain cases certainly was, for some other—who desired to publish plays under the mask of a convenient pen-name. And if the authorship of these poems and plays came, in course of time, to be attributed to William Shakspere, the player from Stratford-upon-Avon, who himself never uttered a word, or wrote a syllable, or took any steps whatever to claim the authorship of those poems and plays for himself, but was content merely to play the part of “William the Silent” from first to last, there is, surely, no reason to brand him as a cheat and a “fraud” upon that account, and we may be quite sure that that highly-gifted and distinguished man of literature, Henry James—one of the intellectuals of our day—had no intention of so branding him.

A lady, a short time ago, wrote a book to explain the play of Hamlet in quite a new light, by making reference to the special political circumstances of the time when it appeared, such as the “Scottish succession,” the character of James I, certain events in the lives of Mary Queen of Scots, Burleigh, Essex, Southampton, Elizabeth Vernon, and other historical figures, and producing “detailed analogies between episodes of contemporary history and the play,”[2] and, in reply to certain objections raised by a well-known critic, she essayed to justify herself by an appeal to the doctrine of “Relativity,” which, as she declared with some warmth, had come to stay whether her captious critic wanted it or not!

This lofty invocation of Einstein’s theory of Time, Space, and the Universe—a theory so difficult of comprehension that only a favoured few can even affect to understand it—in support of a new interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s plays, was, certainly, somewhat ridiculous, but the lady was quite right in her contention—which would equally hold good though Einstein had never lived or taught—that in forming our judgments on men long gone, whether of their characters or their actions, or their sayings or their writings, we must ever bear in mind the views, the beliefs, the opinions, and the special circumstances of the time and the society in which they lived. Now, it is well known that in Elizabethan and Jacobean times opinion with regard to what I may call literary deception was very different from what it is at the present day when we at any rate affect much greater scrupulosity with regard to these matters. Such literary deceptions, which in these days would be condemned as “frauds,” were, in those times, constantly and habitually practised, and considered quite venial sins, if, indeed, they were looked upon as sins at all. That is a fact which should never be lost sight of when we are considering problems of authorship, or writings of dubious interpretation (such as some of Ben Jonson’s, e.g.) in those long-gone and very different times.

Now, I am one of those who agree with the late Mr. Henry James, and with the present highly-distinguished French scholar and historian, Professor Abel Lefranc—I refer here to his negative views only—with regard to the authorship of the plays and poems of “Shakespeare.” In my humble opinion (which, to be quite honest, I may say is not “humble” at all!), that the plays and poems of “Shakespeare” were not written by William Shakspere, the player who came from Stratford, is as certain as anything can be which is not susceptible of actual mathematical proof. Who then wrote the plays? (Let us leave the poems on one side for the present). Well, that the work of many pens appears in the Folio of 1623 is surely indisputable. Few if any, of the “orthodox” would be found to deny it. There is little, if any, of “Shakespeare”—whoever he was—in the first part of Henry VI, and, surely, not much more in the second and third parts. Very little, if any part, of The Taming of the Shrew is “Shakespearean.” The great majority of critics exclude Titus altogether. The work of pens other than the Shakespearean pen is to be found in Pericles, and Timon, and Troilus and Cressida, and even in Macbeth. Henry VIII, though published as by “Shakespeare,” was almost undoubtedly the work of Fletcher and Massinger in collaboration.[3] The list might be added to but it is unnecessary to do so. I repeat, the work of many pens is to be found in the Folio of 1623, but there is, of course, one man whose work eclipses that of all the rest, one man who stands pre-eminent and unrivalled, towering high above the others; one man of whom it may be said, as of Marcellus of old, that insignis ingreditur, victorque viros supereminet omnes. Find that man, find the author of Hamlet, and Lear, and Othello—to give but a few examples—and you will have found the true “Shakespeare.” But set your hearts at rest; you will never find him in the man whose vulgar and banal life (in the course of which not one—I do not say generous but—even respectable action can be discovered by all the researches of his biographers) is to be read in the pages of Halliwell-Phillipps and Sir Sidney Lee—the life of which so little is known, and yet so much too much!

Meantime it is amusing, or would be so if it were not so lamentable, to see our solemn and entirely self-satisfied Pundits and Mandarins of “Shakespearean” literature ever trying to see daylight through the millstone of the Stratfordian faith; ever broaching some brand-new theory, and affecting to find something in this Shakespearean literature which nobody ever found before them, but which as they fondly imagine, somehow, and in some way, tends to support the old outworn Stratfordian tradition. Perhaps some “prompt copy” of an old Elizabethan drama is discovered. It is hailed with exultation as affording proof that plays in those times were printed from “prompt copies,” and further cryptic arguments are adduced in support of the absurd theory that the Stratford player dashed off the plays of “Shakespeare,” currente calamo, and handed them over to his fellow “deserving men,” Heminge and Condell, and the rest, with “scarse a blot” upon them, and that the plays were printed from these precious “unblotted autographs.” An old Manuscript Play is found. It is the work of several pens. In it are discovered three pages in an unknown hand. See now! Here is a hand “of the same class” as the “Shakespeare” (i.e., “Shakspere”) signatures! Why, it is Shakspere’s own handwriting! Look at Shakspere’s will—the will in which no book or manuscript is mentioned, but wherein are small bequests to Shakspere’s fellow-players, those “deserving men” Burbage, and Heminge, and Condell, to buy them rings withal, and of the testator’s sword, and parcel-gilt bowl, and “second-best bedstead”—and there you will find three words well and distinctly written in a firm hand—“By me William.” Yes, and the “W” of “William” is so carefully written that it even has “the ornamental dot” under the curve of the right limb thereof! But why, then, are the signatures themselves such miserable, illegible scrawls? Oh, fools and blind! Cannot you see that player William in this case reversed the usual procedure; that he intended to sign the last of the three pages of his Will first (“But why?”—“Oh, never mind why!”); that the poor man was in extremis (true he lived another month after signing, and his Will witnesses that he was “in perfect health and memorie, God be praysed!” Mais cela n’empÊche pas); and that he made a tremendous effort, and wrote the words “By me William,” in a fine distinct hand—“ornamental dot” and all!—and then collapsed utterly and could only make illiterate scrawls for his surname, and the other two signatures. But these words, “By me William,” are in the same handwriting as that of the “addition” to Sir Thomas More! What? You say they were manifestly written by the Law Scrivener! What? You say the handwriting of this “addition” differs manifestly and fundamentally from the handwriting of the “Shakspere” signatures (which, wretched scrawls as they are, differ profoundly one from the other), as anybody can see who does not happen to be a “paleographer” with an idÉe fixe! What? You say that! Yah, fool! Yah, fanatic! What do you know about it, I should like to know![4]

Such is all too frequently the language of the soi-disant “orthodox” to the poor “heretic”; such are “the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes”!

Then we have a man—an “orthodox” wiseacre—who tells us that, without doubt, the “dark lady” of the Sonnets was Mistress Mary Fitton, and we are to subscribe to the belief that Mary Fitton, one of Elizabeth’s Maids of Honour, had an intrigue with a common player—one “i’ the statute!” It is nothing to tell the people who have made this wonderful discovery that Mary Fitton was not a “dark lady,” but a fair lady, as her portraits at Arbury show. It is nothing to tell them that, though among the remarkable contemporaneous documents in the Muniment Room at Arbury there is much mention of Mary Fitton’s liaison with that proud nobleman, Lord Pembroke, not a breath is to be discovered of any suggestion of her so degrading herself as to have an intrigue with “a man-player”—one who was a “rogue and vagabond” were it not for the licence of a great personage. No, all this goes for nothing when it is necessary somehow, by hook or by crook, to identify the Stratford player with the author of the Sonnets of “Shakespeare.” O miseras hominum mentes, O pectora cÆca!

Then yet another finds this “dark lady” in the person of the wife of an Oxford Inn Keeper, with whom, forsooth, player Shakspere had an intrigue, on his way from Stratford to London, or vice versa, and laborious investigations are undertaken, and many learned letters are written to the Press about this other imaginary “dark lady”—“that woman colour’d ill”[5]—and all the family history of the Davenants is exploited in this foolish quest. Then, again, another makes the discovery that William Shakspere, the Stratford player, had conceived a feeling of violent hatred against “Resolute John Florio,” the translator of Montaigne (who was, by the way, so far as we know, a good worthy man), so he caricatures this hateful person in the hateful (!) character of Jack Falstaff—the Falstaff of King Henry IV! But we don’t hate Jack Falstaff! On the contrary we all love old Jack Falstaff, in spite of his many faults and failings. We can’t help loving him, for his unfailing good humour and his unrivalled wit! “Oh, that is nothing, nothing,” says our critic from across the Atlantic—one Mr. Acheson of New York—who has made this grand discovery. “Will Shakspere of Stratford hated Florio, so he has lampooned him and ridiculed him in this hateful character of Falstaff! Of that there is no possible doubt. I am Sir Oracle, and when I speak let no dog bark![6]”

And so I might go on to multiply the examples of this “Stratfordian” folly. And we, who see the absurdity of all this, are called “Fanatics!” But what is “Fanaticism”? It is the madness which possesses the worshippers at the shrine. These men have bowed themselves down at the traditional Stratfordian Shrine; they have accepted without thinking the dogmas of the Stratfordian faith; they are impervious to reasoning and to common sense; they have surrendered their judgment; “their eyes they have closed, lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their hearts, and should be converted” to truth and reason. Verily, these are the real “fanatics.”

Let me for a moment, before passing on, call attention to some words written by those distinguished “Shakespearean” critics Dr. Richard Garnett, and Dr. Edmund Gosse, in their Illustrated English Literature. They speak of “that knowledge of good society, and that easy and confident attitude towards mankind which appears in Shakespeare’s plays from the first, and which are so unlike what might have been expected from a Stratford rustic.... The first of his plays were undoubtedly the three early comedies, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Comedy of Errors, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which must have appeared in 1590-1591, or perhaps in the latter year only. The question of priority among them is hard to settle, but we may concur with Mr. [now Sir Sidney] Lee in awarding precedence to Love’s Labour’s Lost. All three indicate that the runaway Stratford youth had, within five or six years, made himself the perfect gentleman, master of the manners and language of the best society of his day, and able to hold his own with any contemporary writer.”[7]

Now this miraculous “runaway Stratford youth,” came to London “a Stratford rustic,” in the year 1587,[8] and, according to his biographers, being a penniless adventurer, had to seek for a living in “very mean employments,” as Dr. Johnson says, whether as horse-holder, or “call boy,” or “super” on the stage, or what you will. His parents were entirely illiterate, and he left his two daughters in the same darkness of ignorance. We may assume that he had attended for a few years at the “Free School” at Stratford (as Rowe, his earliest biographer, calls it), although there is really no evidence in support of that assumption, but it is admitted even by the most zealous and orthodox Stratfordians that he “had received only an imperfect education.”[9] But I will not again recapitulate the facts (real or supposed) of this mean and vulgar life. Let the reader, I say again, study it in the pages of Halliwell-Phillipps, and Sir Sidney Lee.[10]

And now let us consider for a moment that extraordinary play, Love’s Labour’s Lost, which, as we have seen, “appeared” in 1590 or 1591, according to Messrs. Garnett and Gosse, but of which Mr. Fleay writes: “The date of the original production cannot well be put later than 1589.” It was, as the “authorities” are all agreed, Shakespeare’s first drama, and it is remarkable for this fact, among other things, that unlike other Shakespearean plays it is not an old play re-written, nor is the plot taken from some other writer. The plot of Love’s Labour’s Lost is an original one.

And now let us see what Professor Lefranc, who has made a very special study of this play, has to tell us about it, premising that I do not cite his remarks as “authoritative,” but merely as a clear statement of the facts of the case by one who has exceptional knowledge of the history of the time in which the action of the play is supposed to take place.

“Everybody knows,” he writes, “that the scene of this very original comedy is laid at the Court of Navarre, at a date nearly contemporaneous with the play, when Henri de Bourbon was the reigning sovereign of this little kingdom, before he became Henri IV of France.... That the author of Love’s Labour’s Lost knew and had visited the Court of Navarre is at once obvious to anyone who will study the play without any preconceived hypothesis and who takes the trouble to learn something about the history of this little Kingdom of NÉrac.... All the explanations which have been given of this play, the first of the Shakespearean dramas, in order to bolster up the theory of its composition by Shakspere the player at the very outset of his career as a playwright, as also every element of the comedy itself, and every known incident in the life of the Stratford player, prove the impossibility of his being the author of it. All these theories and hypotheses put forward during the last 120 years are of such total improbability, indeed of such miserable tenuity, that some day people will wonder how they could possibly find acceptance for so long.”

M. Lefranc cites Montegut, a French Shakespearean scholar and a critic of noted insight and perspicacity, who writes: “It is extraordinary to see how Shakespeare is faithful even in the most minute details to historical truth and to local colour,” and he proceeds to demonstrate that many allusions in this wonderful play of Love’s Labour’s Lost cannot be properly understood or appreciated without reference to the memoirs of the celebrated Marguerite de Valois, who is herself the “Princess of France” of the comedy (in the original edition called “The Queen”[11]), who comes with her suite to visit Henri at his Court of NÉrac. The Princess of France, then, was originally Queen Marguerite of Navarre, and this comedy represents her as coming to rejoin her husband at NÉrac to endeavour to regain his love, and to settle many questions relative to her dowry of Aquitaine. That this journey actually took place, that Marguerite paid a long visit to the Court of Navarre where a series of entertainments were held in her honour, and that the question of her dowry in Aquitaine was then discussed at length is established by the Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois.[12] The author, then, had in his mind events of contemporaneous history which had taken place at the Court of Navarre, and with which he appears to have been personally familiar. The memoirs, too, throw light on several passages of the drama which would be obscure without them. Take (e.g.) Act II, Sc. 1, where Biron asks Rosaline, “Did not I dance with you at Brabant once?” Here we have an allusion to the visit of Marguerite to Spa in 1577, of which a full account is given in her Memoirs, where she tells of balls at Mons, Namur, and Liege, all in a country which was at that time constantly spoken of as Brabant. Again, in Act V, Sc. 2, there is an obscure allusion, which seems to be satisfactorily explained by a reference to the story of the unfortunate HÉlÈne de Tournon, related by Marguerite in her Memoirs. Further, in Act V, Sc. 2, we have an allusion to the manner in which Henri of Navarre, the “Vert Galant,” wrote, prepared, and sealed his love letters, as though the author was familiar with the amorous King’s poetical letter addressed by him to the “Charmante Gabrielle” d’EstrÉs; while the circumstances described in Act I, Sc. 1, are explained in the light of fact by a letter from Cobham to Walsingham dated from Paris in June, 1583.

But it would take far too much time to dilate further upon this, the first of the Shakespearean plays. I can only refer my readers, for further light, to Professor Lefranc’s work Sous le Masque de William Shakespeare.[13]

Yet we are required to believe—nay, we are “fanatics” if we do not believe—that this extraordinary play was composed by the “Stratford rustic” some two years after he had “run away” from Stratford, and, further, that he composed two other remarkable comedies, The Comedy of Errors, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, just about the same time! Verily this is a faith which does not remove mountains, but simply swallows them whole—a faith which appears to me more worthy of Bedlam than of the intelligence of rational human beings. On the other hand, there is no difficulty whatever in believing that this unique play—which shows that the author of it was not only a “perfect gentleman, master of the manners and language of the best society of the day,” but also one familiar with the doings, and “happenings” and amusements and entourage of the Court of Henri of Navarre at NÉrac on the occasion of the visit of Marguerite de Valois to that Court—was written by a man who lived and moved in a very different sphere of society from that in which Shakspere of Stratford lived and moved, but who was desirous of concealing his identity as a playwright under a convenient mask-name.

Yet, as M. Lefranc truly says, “L’hÉtÉrodoxie dans ce domaine [the “Shakespearean” authorship to wit] a paru jusqu’À prÉsent aux maÏtres des universitÉs et aux Érudits, une opinion de mauvais goÛt, temeraire et malsÉante, dont la science patentÉe n’avait pas À s’occuper, sauf pour la condamner.”[14] But he continues—I will now translate—“I am convinced that every one who has preserved an independent opinion concerning the Shakespeare problem will recognise that the old positions of the traditional doctrine can no longer be maintained.... The laws of psychology, and, what is more, of simple common sense, ought to banish for ever the absurd theory which would have us believe in an incomparable writer whose life was absolutely out of harmony with the marvellous works which appeared in his name. It is time to take decisive action against that immense error, and against the incredible naivetÉ upon which it rests.”

“Simple common sense.” Aye, but when I spoke not long ago to a well-known writer, who is a Stratfordian enragÉ, of “common sense” in this matter, what was his reply? “Oh, damn common sense!”—a characteristic interjection which might well be adopted as the motto of all the “Stratfordian” highbrows of the present day.

But, adds Professor Lefranc, “If many still refuse to admit the existence of a Shakespeare problem, yet the time is at hand when nobody will any longer venture to deny it, unless he is prepared at the same time to deny all the evidence in the case. It is clear that a new era of Shakespearean study has recently presented itself. Scepticism with regard to the Stratford man is spreading in spite of the resistance of the multifarious defenders of the old tradition. A number of beliefs, accepted for many years as dogmas, are disappearing every day. The rock of credulity is crumbling away. The Stratfordians will, sooner or later, be reduced, under the pressure of a more enlightened public opinion, to change their tactics and modify the assumptions of their creed. In truth, speaking generally, the best-established reproach to which the learned men who have concerned themselves with Shakespeare, according to the rules of Stratfordian orthodoxy, have laid themselves open, is not so much that they have maintained the traditional doctrine with regard to the poet-actor, but rather that in the face of the innumerable enigmas which are involved in the history of his life, and his [supposed] works, and even of the text of those works, they have never had the candour to admit even the existence of all these obscure problems. At every step in Shakespearean study these difficulties and incoherences are encountered, but these learned men affect not to see them.... Truly, in view of such superb assurance, the lay reader could never imagine the existence of all the gratuitous assumptions, the naÏve assertions, the inadmissible interpretations that are to be found in the works of these gentlemen, which the public have been accustomed to accept as infallible authorities. Yet, even the most famous and the most admired amongst them would have to yield to an investigation conducted according to the simple rules of the art of reasoning, that is to say of sound common sense. The hour has come when the representatives of the ‘Shakespearean’ dogma will have to change their attitude. They will have to renounce both their silence and their credulity. Above all, they will have to admit the necessity of inquiries, and discussions hostile to their creed, to make a tabula rasa of many points, and to take in hand once more the investigation thereof ab imis fundamentis, resolutely putting away those prejudices which have so long blinded them to the truth.”

So writes Professor Abel Lefranc, with much more to the same purport and effect, and, in my judgment, he writes both wisely and well. But if he really believes that our hidebound Pundits and Mandarins of the Stratfordian faith will ever “put away those prejudices which have so long blinded them to the truth,” and give impartial consideration to the facts of the Shakespeare Problem in the light of reason and “commonsense,” I fear me he reckons without his host and is destined to be very sadly undeceived.[15]{24}

We are brought back, however, to the question: Who, then, is the real “Shakespeare”? That is a question which I have never attempted to answer. It has been quite sufficient for me to confine my arguments to the negative side of the Shakespeare Problem. The positive, or constructive side I have hitherto been content to leave to others.

Now, there is a large number of persons, many of them rational and intelligent men and women, of quite sound mind and understanding, who believe that the real “Shakespeare” is to be found in the person of Francis Bacon. But there are “Baconians and Baconians.” There are the wild Baconians who find Bacon everywhere, but especially in ciphers, cryptograms, anagrams, acrostics, and in all sorts of occult figures and emblems[16]—those who believe amongst other things, that Bacon was the son of Queen Elizabeth, that he lived in philosophic concealment many years after the date usually assigned as that of his death, that he wrote practically all the English literature worthy of that name of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, and that he hid his “Shakespearean” manuscripts in the mud of the River Wye or some other equally inappropriate and ridiculous place, where no sane man would ever dream of looking for them.

The wild and unrestrained “Baconians” have, undoubtedly, done great injury to the cause which they desire to advocate; and not only have they injured that cause, but they have greatly prejudiced the discussion of the Shakespeare Problem as a whole. For in such cases we are all liable to be “tarred by the same brush,” and the sanest of “Anti-Stratfordian” reasoners has, unfortunately, not escaped the back-wash of the ridicule which these eccentrics have brought upon themselves.

There are, however, “Baconians” of another class—the sane “Baconians” who are content to argue the matter—and some of them have argued it with great knowledge and ability—in the calm light of reason and common sense. Of these one of the sanest and ablest was my friend the late Edward Walter Smithson, whose little book Shakespeare—Bacon. An Essay,[17] published anonymously some three and twenty years ago, attracted no little attention, and did much to help the cause in support of which it was written. He published, however, nothing more on the subject till 1913, in November of which year there appeared in The Nineteenth Century an article from his pen entitled “Ben Jonson’s Pious Fraud.” The greater part of this article I have quoted by way of preface to his essay now published on Jonson’s Masque of Time Vindicated,[18] and it may be as well to cite the commencement of it at this place:

Here it becomes necessary to say a word in explanation of the present work. The late Edward Smithson left by his Will a sum of money to myself and a friend who prefers to remain anonymous, with the suggestion that it might be made use of in the endeavour to ascertain—to use his own words—“the true parentage of Shakespeare (not Shakspere),” meaning thereby, as there can be no doubt, that such sum might be employed, if thought well—for there was no definite trust attached to it—in furtherance of the quest of the true “Shakespeare,” whether he might be found in Francis Bacon (as he himself thought was the case) or in some other writer of the period in question. Moreover, he had left in type certain “Baconian” essays, which, although he gave no specific directions to that effect, it was known that he desired to be published as his last words on a matter in which he was so deeply interested, and these, at the request of his wife who survives him, I have supervised and prepared for publication. Here a difficulty presented itself. Some of these essays deal, to a certain extent, with the same subject matter, and, consequently, the reader will find in them a certain amount of repetition. At first I thought it might be possible to avoid this by collating the various manuscripts, and fusing them together, as it were, into one volume. It soon became apparent, however, that such “fusion” would lead to “confusion,” and would be detrimental to Mr. Smithson’s work. I trust, therefore, that the recurrence of various arguments, or sentiments, in the following essays, will meet with generous toleration on the part of the reader. After all, a certain amount of repetition is, sometimes, likely to do more good than harm. The famous Mr. Justice Maule, while still at the Bar, was once arguing a case before three Judges, one of whom, finding the distinguished counsel somewhat prolix on this occasion, and inclined to repeat his arguments, exclaimed testily: “Really, Mr. Maule, that is the third time you have made that observation!” “Well,” replied Maule, quite imperturbably, “there are three of your Lordships!” To repeat an argument once for each Judge on the Bench was, then, in this great advocate’s opinion, quite a right, proper, and useful thing to do. I am in hopes, therefore, that there may be the same justification for a considerable amount of repetition in the case now presented to a court—that of the reading public—which, it is hoped, may consist of many more Judges than those addressed by Mr. Justice Maule.

I would make this further observation with regard to Edward Smithson’s Essays, though perhaps it is hardly necessary to make it. Although it has been a pleasure to me to edit them, so far as they required editing at all, I have, of course, no responsibility for the arguments or the opinions expressed in them. Mr. Smithson, in the passage I have quoted above from his article in The Nineteenth Century, says that I “ostentatiously disclaim being a Baconian.” I am sorry if that disclaimer was made “ostentatiously,” but speaking now, after the lapse of many years, and I trust without a shred of “ostentation”—which, certainly, would be very much out of place—I must say that I am still unwilling to label myself as a “Baconian.” It was, I think, Professor Huxley who said that, if asked whether he believed that there were inhabitants in Mars, his reply would be that he neither believed nor disbelieved. He did not know. This is the “agnostic” position in which I find myself with regard to the hypothesis that Bacon is the true Shakespeare. I really do not know. Nevertheless, an astronomer who had adopted Professor Huxley’s position concerning the possible existence of inhabitants in Mars, might without prejudice to that agnostic position, find himself impelled to set forth certain arguments which seemed to him to tell in favour of such a possibility. In the same way it occurred to me some years ago to write certain essays on the Baconian side of the case, two of which I now venture to publish as a sequel to those of Mr. Smithson’s authorship. I recognise that there is much that may quite fairly and reasonably be urged in favour of the Baconian case. Merely to ridicule that case appears to me to be indicative of folly rather than wisdom on the part of those who adopt such an attitude. Nevertheless, when all is said and done, I am far from thinking that the Baconian authorship of any of the plays or poems published in the name of “Shakespeare” has been actually proved. That Francis Bacon had, at any rate, something to do with the production of some of these plays and poems is, at least, a very plausible hypothesis. As Professor Lefranc writes, “Que l’auteur du thÉÂtre Shakespearien ait ÉtÉ en rapport avec Francis Bacon, c’est ce que nous avons toujours ÉtÉ portÉ À admettre pour bien des raisons,”[24] and in support of that hypothesis I may be said to hold a brief pro hÂc vice in the two “Baconian” Essays which I now venture to publish. But that is all. I endeavour to keep an open mind upon this, as upon many other doubtful questions. Professor Lefranc himself has shown, with great learning and conspicuous ability, that a strong case can be made in favour of William Stanley, Sixth Earl of Derby, as the author of some, at any rate, of the “Shakespearean” plays, and more especially of that extraordinary play Love’s Labour’s Lost.[25] But the constructive side of the “Shakespeare Problem” I must be content to leave to younger and abler men, and such as have much more time to devote to it than I have. With regard, however, to “the man from Stratford,” as Mr. Henry James styles him, or the “Stratford rustic,” as Messrs. Garnett and Gosse do not hesitate to characterize him, his supposed authorship may, and, indeed, must be, set aside as one of the greatest and most unfortunate of the many delusions which have, from time to time, imposed themselves upon a credulous and “patient world.”[26]

I cannot conclude this note without a brief reference to two articles which have lately appeared in the Quarterly Review (October, 1921, and January, 1922), under the heading of “Recent Shakespearean Research,” by Mr. C. R. Haines. I can find little or nothing that can be recalled “recent” in them unless we give a quite unwonted extension to the meaning of that word. Mr. Haines even includes such vieux jeu as the Plume MSS. in his “recent” Shakespearean Research, but they certainly contain some very remarkable statements. I will, however, here content myself by quoting the following letter which I sent to the Nation and AthenÆum after reading the first of these articles, and which appeared in that paper on November 26th, last:

“RECENT SHAKESPEAREAN RESEARCH.”

Sir,—In an article under the above heading in the October number of the Quarterly Review, Mr. C. R. Haines writes (p. 229): “There cannot be the smallest doubt that Shakespeare [i.e., William Shakspere, of Stratford] was possessed of books at his death. One of these, with his undoubted signature [my italics], ‘W. Sh^r.’ is still extant in the Bodleian Library.... A second, Florio’s version of Montaigne (1603), bears the signature ‘Wilm Shakspere,’ which is with some reason regarded as genuine.”

Now Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, who, I believe, is generally considered our foremost “paleographer,” has told us that the “Florio’s Montaigne” signature is an “undoubted forgery” (I have in my possession a letter of his addressed from the British Museum in 1904 to the late Sir Herbert Tree, and kindly forwarded by the latter to me, in which Sir Edward so states); and the same high authority writes in “Shakespeare’s England” (Vol. I, p. 308, n.): “Nor is it possible to give a higher character to the signature, ‘W^m Sh^e.’ (not ‘W. Sh^r,’ as Mr. Haines prints it) in the Aldine Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses,’ 1502, in the Bodleian Library.”

How in the face of this Mr. C. R. Haines can assert that the book referred to, in the Bodleian Library, bears Shakespeare’s “undoubted signature,” or that the “Florio” signature is with reason regarded as genuine, I am quite unable to understand.

A further question is suggested by the following passage in Mr. Haines’s article. Alluding to the suit of “Belott v. Mountjoy,” he writes: “From this suit we also learn an interesting by-fact, namely, that Belott and his wife, after quitting the Mountjoys, lived in the house of George Wilkins, the playwright, who had the honour of collaborating with Shakespeare in ‘Pericles,’ and possibly in ‘Timon.’” Here I would ask what particle of evidence is there that the “George Wilkins, Victualler,” mentioned in the action, was George Wilkins the pamphleteer and hack-dramatist? It is true Professor Wallace has told us that, although “we have known nothing about Wilkins personally before,” he thinks that “more than one reader with a livelier critical interest in these [Shakespearean] plays may be able to smell the victualler” (Harper’s Magazine, March, 1910, p. 509); but, really, we can hardly be expected to put implicit confidence in the deductions of Dr. Wallace’s olfactory organ. What warrant, then, has Mr. Haines to characterize as a “fact” that which is only guess-work and assumption? For my part, I can no more “smell the victualler” in the author of “The Miseries of Inforst Marriage” than I can “smell” (as did Professor Wallace) the French official Herald in Mountjoy of Muggle Street!

One more question and I have done, though many more occur to me. Mr. Haines invites our attention to “The Plume MSS., which gave us the only glimpse of John Shakespeare at his home, cracking jests with his famous son” (p. 241). May I respectfully ask him if it is not the fact that this pleasant picture of John Shakespeare rests upon the (alleged) statement of Sir John Mennes, and that Sir John Mennes was born on March 1st, 1599, whereas John Shakespeare died in September, 1601, so that the infant Mennes must, presumably, have been taken from his cradle in Kent, in his nurse’s arms, for the purpose of interviewing that “merry-cheeked old man,” of which interview he made a record from memory when he had learnt to write?

I trust Mr. Haines will enlighten a perplexed inquirer as to these matters in the second article, which, as I gather, he is to contribute to the Quarterly Review on the results of “Recent Shakespearean Research.”—Yours, &c.,

George Greenwood.