The Facts About Shakespeare Part 7

[Page Heading: Corruptions of Text]

The defects to which the texts of the surrept.i.tiously obtained Quartos are particularly subject include omissions and alterations due to lapse of memory on the part of the actors, additions due to the tendency to improvise which Shakespeare censures in _Hamlet_, omissions due to the reporter's failure to hear or to write quickly enough, garbled paraphrases made up to supply such omissions, and the writing of prose as verse and verse as prose.

Such are the most important of the causes of the corruptions which the long series of editors of Shakespeare have devoted their study and their ingenuity to remedying. The series really begins with the second Folio of 1632 and is continued with but slight improvements in the third Folio of 1663, reprinted with the addition of _Pericles_ and six spurious plays in 1664, and in the fourth Folio of 1685. The emendations made in the seventeenth-century editions are mainly modernizations in spelling and such minor changes as occurred to members of the printing staff. In no case do they have any authority except such as may be supposed to belong to a man not far removed from Shakespeare in date; and they add about as many mistakes as they remove.

The difficulty of the task of the modern editor varies greatly from play to play. It is least in the twenty plays for which the First Folio is the sole authority, greater in the eight in which the Folio reprints a Quarto with some variations, greatest in the nine in which Folio and Quarto represent rival versions. In these last cases, it is the duty of the editor to decide from all the accessible data which version has the best claim to represent the author's intention, and to make that a basis to be departed from only in clear cases of corruption. The temptation, which no editor has completely resisted, is naturally towards an eclecticism which adopts the reading that seems most plausible in itself, without giving due weight to the general authority of the text chosen as a basis. If carried far, such eclecticism results in a patchwork quite distinct from any version that Shakespeare can have known.

The first editor of Shakespeare, in the modern sense, was Nicholas Rowe, poet laureate under Queen Anne. He published in 1709 an edition of the plays in six octavo volumes, preceded by the first formal memoir of the dramatist, and furnished with notes. The poems were issued in the following year in similar form, with essays by Gildon. Rowe based his text upon that of the fourth Folio, with hardly any collation of previous editions. He corrected a large number of the more obvious corruptions, the most notable of his emendations being perhaps the phrase in _Twelfth Night_, "Some are become great," which he changed to "Some are born great." On the external aspect of the plays Rowe has left a deeper mark than any subsequent editor. In the Folios only eight of the plays had lists of _dramatis personae_; Rowe supplied them for the rest. In the Folios the division into acts and scenes is carried out completely in only seventeen cases, it is partially done in thirteen, and in six it is not attempted at all. Rowe again completed the work, and though some of his divisions have been modified and others should be, he performed this task with care and intelligence. He modernized the spelling and the punctuation, completed the exits and entrances, corrected many corrupt speech-tags, and arranged many pa.s.sages where the verse was disordered. In virtue of these services, he must, in spite of his leaving much undone, be regarded as one of the most important agents in the formation of our modern text.

[Page Heading: Rowe and Pope]

A second edition of Rowe's Shakespeare was published in 1714, and in 1725 appeared a splendid quarto edition in six volumes, edited by Alexander Pope. In his preface Pope made strong professions of his good faith in dealing with the text. "I have discharged," he said, "the dull duty of an editor to my best judgment, with more labor than I expect thanks, with a religious abhorrence of all innovation, and without any indulgence to my private sense or conjecture.... The various readings are fairly put in the margin, so that anyone may compare 'em; and those I have preferred into the text are constantly _ex fide codic.u.m_, upon authority.... The more obsolete or unusual words are explained." Hardly one of these statements is entirely true. Pope possessed copies of the first and second Folios, and at least one Quarto of each play that had been printed before 1623, except _Much Ado_, but these he consulted only occasionally, and seldom registered the variants as he said he had done.

When he did, he gave no clue to their source. He constantly inserted his private conjectures without notice, and his explanations of difficult expressions are few and frequently wrong. Pa.s.sages considered by him inferior or spurious he relegated to the foot of the pages; others he merely omitted without notice. His ear was often jarred by the freedom of Shakespeare's verse, and he did his best to make it "regular" by eighteenth-century standards. Yet Pope spent much ingenuity in striving to better the text, and no small number of restorations and emendations are to be credited to him, especially in connection with the arrangement of the verse. He is to be credited also with discernment in rejecting the seven plays added to the Shakespearean canon in the third Folio, of which only _Pericles_ has since been restored.

The weaknesses of Pope's edition did not long remain hidden. In the spring of 1726 appeared "Shakespeare Restored: or, a Specimen of the many Errors, as well committed, as unamended, by Mr. Pope in his late edition of this Poet. Designed not only to correct the said edition, but to restore the True Reading of Shakespeare in all the Editions ever yet publish'd." Lewis Theobald, the author, was a translator and scholar, much better equipped than Pope for the work of editing, and his merciless exposure of Pope's defects gave a foretaste of the critical ability later displayed in the edition of Shakespeare which he published in 1734. Lovers of Shakespeare discerned at the time the service performed by Theobald in this attack on Pope, but the publication in 1728 of the first edition of the _Dunciad_, with Theobald as hero, gave Pope his revenge, and cast over the reputation of his critic a cloud which is only now dispersing. Modern scholars.h.i.+p, however, has come to recognize the primacy of Theobald among emendators of Shakespeare's text, and the most famous of his contributions, his correction of "a table of green fields" to "'a babled of green fields," in Quickly's account of the death of Falstaff in _Henry V_, II. iii. 17, is only a specially brilliant example of the combination of acuteness, learning, and sympathy which made his edition a landmark in the history of the text. For many of his troubles, however, Theobald was himself to blame; he attacked his opponents with unnecessary vehemence, as he expressed his appreciation of his own work with unnecessary emphasis; he was not always candid as to what he owed to others, even to the despised edition of Pope, from which he printed; and he indulged his appet.i.te for conjecture at times beyond reasonable bounds.

[Page Heading: Theobald and Hanmer]

Theobald's edition was followed in 1744 by that of Sir Thomas Hanmer in six beautifully printed volumes. This edition is based on that of Pope, and even goes farther than Pope's in relegating to the foot of the page pa.s.sages supposed unworthy. Hanmer performed no collating worth mentioning, but made some acute conjectures.

The student is apt to be prejudiced against the work of William Warburton on account of the extravagance of his claims and his ungenerous treatment of predecessors to whom he was greatly indebted.

"The Genuine Text," he announced, "(collated with all former editions and then corrected and emended) is here settled: Being restored from the Blunders of the first editors and the Interpolations of the two Last"; yet he based his text on Theobald's and joined Pope's name with his own on the t.i.tle-page. Whatever value belongs to Warburton's edition (1747) lies in a number of probable conjectural emendations, some of which he had previously allowed Theobald to use, and in the amusing bombast and arrogance of many of his notes. The feeble support that lay behind the pretensions of this editor was exposed by a number of critics such as John Upton, Zachary Grey, Benjamin Heath, and Thomas Edwards, who did not issue new editions, but contributed a considerable number of corrections and interpretations.

The value of Dr. Johnson's edition (1765) does not lie in his emendations, which are usually, though not always, poor, or in his collation of older editions, for which he was too indolent, but in the st.u.r.dy common-sense of his interpretations and the consummate skill frequently shown in paraphrases of obscure pa.s.sages. His Preface to the edition was the most weighty general estimate of Shakespeare so far produced, and remains a valuable piece of criticism. In scientific treatment of the text, involving full use of all the Quartos and Folios then accessible, Johnson and his predecessors were far surpa.s.sed by Edward Capell, who issued his edition in ten volumes in 1768.

Unfortunately, the enormous labor Capell underwent did not bear its full fruit, for he suppressed much of his textual material in the interests of a well-printed page, and his preface and notes are written in a crabbed style that obscures the acuteness of his editorial intelligence.

He elaborated stage directions, and carried farther the correction of disarranged meter; but, like most of his fellow-editors in that century, he did less than justice to his predecessors and was too indulgent to his own conjectures. This edition was supplemented by volumes of notes published in 1775 (1 vol.) and 1779-1783 (3 vols.).

[Page Heading: Johnson and Capell]

Before the publication of Capell's text, the antiquary George Steevens had issued in 1766 reprints of twenty of the early Quartos; and in 1773 he produced, in a.s.sociation with Johnson, an edition with a good text in which he benefited from Capell's labors (though he denies this). Through his knowledge of Elizabethan literature he made substantial contributions to the interpretation of difficult pa.s.sages. He restored _Pericles_ to a place in the canon, but excluded the _Poems_, because "the strongest Act of Parliament that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their service." To the second edition of Johnson and Steevens's text (1778) Edmund Malone contributed his famous "Essay on the Chronology of Shakespeare's Plays," which began modern investigation of this subject. The third edition was revised in 1785 by Isaac Reed; and this was succeeded by the edition of Malone in 1790, in which the vast learning and conscientious care of that scholar combined to produce the most trustworthy text so far published. Malone was not brilliant, but he was extremely erudite and candid, and his so-called "Third Variorum" edition in twenty-one volumes, brought out after his death by James Boswell in 1821, is a mine of information on theatrical history and cognate matters, which will probably always be of value to students of the period. The name of "First Variorum Edition" is given to the fifth edition of Johnson and Steevens, revised by Reed in 1803, and "Second Variorum" to the sixth edition of the same, 1813. Meantime occasional critiques of complete editions contributed something to the text. Johnson's edition called forth comment by Kendrick in 1765 and Tyrwhitt in 1766, and the Johnson and Steevens text was criticized by Joseph Ritson in 1783 and 1788, and by J. Monck Mason in 1785. The first American edition was published in Philadelphia in 1795-1796 from Johnson's text; the first continental edition at Brunswick in 1797-1801 by C. Wagner.

[Page Heading: Nineteenth-Century Editors]

The editions of the nineteenth century are too numerous for detailed mention here. Pa.s.sing by the "family" Shakespeare of T. Bowdler, 1807 and 1820, and the editions of Harness, 1825, and Singer, 1826, we note the editions of 1838-1842, and 1842-1844 in which Charles Knight resorted to the text of the First Folio as an exclusive authority. J. P.

Collier in his edition of 1844 leaned, on the other hand, to the side of the Quartos, but later became a clever if somewhat rash emendator, who spoiled his reputation by seeking to obtain authority for his guesses by forging them in a seventeenth-century hand in a copy of the second Folio. The colossal volumes of J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps's edition, 1853-1865, contain stores of antiquarian ill.u.s.tration; and in the edition of Delius, 1854-1861, we have the chief contribution of Germany to the text of Shakespeare. Delius, like Knight, though not to the same extreme, exaggerated the authority of the First Folio; but for the plays for which that is the sole source, his text has earned high respect.

Alexander Dyce, wisest of Elizabethan scholars, produced in 1857 a characteristically sane text, on the whole the best to this date; while in America in 1857-1860 and 1859-1865 the brilliant but erratic Richard Grant White produced editions which show a commendable if puzzling openness to conviction in successive changes of opinion.

From 1863 to 1866 appeared the first issue of the Cambridge Shakespeare, edited originally by W. G. Clark, J. Glover, and W. A. Wright. The responsibility for the later revised edition of 1891-3 is Dr. Wright's.

The exceedingly careful and exhaustive collation of all previous textual readings in the notes of this edition make it indispensable for the serious student, and its text, substantially reprinted in the Globe edition, is the most widely accepted form of the works of Shakespeare which has ever been circulated. The over-emphasis on the First Folio which has been noted in Knight and Delius is no longer found here, and in general the comparative value of Quarto and Folio is weighed in the case of each play. Occasionally, in cases like that of _Richard III_, where both Quarto and Folio are good but vary widely, the Cambridge editors seem more eclectic than their general theory warrants, and the punctuation is still archaic, clinging to the eighteenth-century tradition. But the acceptance of this careful and conservative text has been a wholesome influence in Shakespearean study.

The only completely reedited texts which have been issued since the revised Cambridge edition are that of the Oxford Shakespeare, by W. J.

Craig, on principles very similar to the Cambridge, and the Neilson text, originally published in one volume in 1906 and revised and reprinted in the Tudor Shakespeare. The ma.s.sive volumes of Dr. H. H.

Furness's _New Variorum Shakespeare_, begun in 1871 (17 volumes issued), now reprint the text of the First Folio, and show marked traces of the tendency to follow this authority without due discrimination. This monumental abstract of all previous criticism is of great value to the professional student of Shakespeare, and its textual apparatus has the advantage over the Cambridge edition of recording not only the first occurrence of a reading, but the names of the chief editors who have adopted it. It thus gives a compendious history of editorial judgment on all disputed points.

[Page Heading: Recent Editors]

The conjectural emendation of Shakespeare still goes on, but since Dyce, comparatively few suggestions find general acceptance. More progress has been made in interpretation through the greater accessibility of contemporary doc.u.ments and the advance in recent years in our knowledge of Elizabethan theatrical conditions. But, in view of the circ.u.mstances under which the original editions were printed, there will always be room for variations of individual opinion in many cases, both as to what Shakespeare wrote and as to what he meant.

CHAPTER VIII

QUESTIONS OF AUTHENTICITY

Owing to the conditions of publication described in Chapter VII there are questions as to the authenticity of a number of the poems and plays ascribed to Shakespeare. Of the poems, "The Phnix and the Turtle" and "A Lover's Complaint" have been sometimes rejected as unworthy, but there is no other evidence against the ascription to him by the original publishers. The case of _The Pa.s.sionate Pilgrim_ is different and is interesting as ill.u.s.trating the methods of piracy practised by booksellers and as affording the only record of a protest by Shakespeare against the free use which they made of his name. This anthology was published by W. Jaggard in 1599 as "by W. Shakespeare." The third edition in 1612 added two pieces by Thomas Heywood. Heywood immediately protested and in the postscript to his _Apologie for Actors_, 1612, declared that Shakespeare was "much offended with M. Jaggard that (altogether unknown to him) presumed to make so bold with his name." Of the twenty poems that made up the volume, only five are certainly by Shakespeare, two appearing also in _The Sonnets_ and three in _Love's Labour's Lost_. Six others can be a.s.signed to contemporary poets. The authors.h.i.+p of the remaining nine is unknown, but probably only one or two are by Shakespeare.

[Page Heading: The Shakespeare Apocrypha]

In addition to the thirty-seven plays now included in all editions of Shakespeare, some forty others have been, for one reason or another, attributed to him. The First Folio contained thirty-six plays; and it is a strong evidence of the honesty and information of its editors, Heming and Condell, that subsequent criticism has been satisfied to retain the plays of their choice and to make but one addition, _Pericles_. Of these plays, however, it is now generally agreed that a number are not entirely the work of Shakespeare, but were written by him in part in collaboration with other writers, _e.g._, _t.i.tus Andronicus_, _1_, _2_, and _3 Henry VI_, _Timon of Athens_, _Pericles_, and _Henry VIII_. Of two of these, _t.i.tus Andronicus_ and _1 Henry VI_, some students refuse to give Shakespeare any share. Of the forty doubtful plays, there is not one which in its entirety is now credited to Shakespeare; and only three or four in which any number of competent critics see traces of his hand.

Only in the case of _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_ is there any weight of evidence or opinion that he had a considerable share.

The second Folio kept to the thirty-six plays of the First Folio; but the second printing of the third Folio (1664) added seven plays: _Pericles Prince of Tyre_, _The London Prodigal_, _The History of Thomas Lord Cromwell_, _Sir John Oldcastle_, _Lord Cobham_, _The Puritan Widow_, _A Yorks.h.i.+re Tragedy_, _The Tragedy of Locrine_. These seven plays were also included in the fourth Folio, and as supplementary volumes to Rowe's, Pope's, and some later editions. They were all originally published in quarto as by W. S., or William Shakespeare, but except in the case of _Pericles_, this has been regarded as a bookseller's mistake or deception without warrant. _Locrine_, "newly set forth, overseen, and corrected by W. S., 1595," is a play of about the date of _t.i.tus Andronicus_, and is probably by Greene, Peele, or some imitator of Marlowe and Kyd. _Sir John Oldcastle_ appeared in 1600 in two quartos, one of which ascribed it to William Shakespeare, but it was clearly composed for the Admiral's men as a rival to the Falstaff plays which the Chamberlain's men had been acting. _Thomas Lord Cromwell_ (1602) and _The Puritan_ (1607) were ascribed to W. S., on their t.i.tle-pages, but offer no possible resemblances to Shakespeare. _The London Prodigal_ (1605) and _A Yorks.h.i.+re Tragedy_ (1608) were both acted by Shakespeare's company, and bore his name on their first editions, and the latter also on a second edition, 1619. The external evidence for his authors.h.i.+p is virtually the same as in the case of _Pericles_, which also was acted by his company, appeared under his name during his lifetime, but was rejected by the editors of the First Folio. No one, however, can discover any suggestion of Shakespeare in _The London Prodigal_. _A Yorks.h.i.+re Tragedy_ is a domestic tragedy in one act, dealing with a contemporary murder. It gives the conclusion of a story also treated in a play, _The Miseries of Enforced Marriage_ (1607) by George Wilkins, the author of a novel _The Painful Adventures of Pericles_, and sometimes suggested as a collaborator on the play _Pericles_. _A Yorks.h.i.+re Tragedy_ is very unlike Shakespeare, but it has a few pa.s.sages of extraordinarily vivid prose, which might conceivably owe something to him.

[Page Heading: The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen]

_The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_ was registered April 8, 1634, and appeared in the same year with the following t.i.tle-page "The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen: Presented at the Blackfriars by the Kings Maiesties servants, with great applause: Written by the memorable Worthies of their time;

Mr. John Fletcher, and } } Gent.

Mr. William Shakespeare}

Printed at London by the Tho. Cotes for Iohn Waterson; and are to be sold at the signe of the Crowne in Paul's Church-yard. 1634." The exclusion of the play from the First Folio may be explained on the same basis as the exclusion of _Pericles_; for in each play Shakespeare wrote the minor part. There is now general agreement that _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_ was written by two authors with distinct styles, and that the author of the larger portion is Fletcher. The attribution of the non-Fletcherian part to Shakespeare has been upheld by Lamb, Coleridge, De Quincey, Spalding (in a notable Letter on Shakespeare's Authors.h.i.+p of _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_, 1833), Furness, and Littledale (who edited the play for _The New Shakespeare Society_, Series II, 1, 8, 15, London, 1876-1885); but there are still many critics who do not believe that Shakespeare had any part in the play. This question will probably always remain a matter of opinion; but the evidence of various verse tests confirms esthetic judgment in a.s.signing about two fifths of the verse to Shakespeare. The Shakespearean portion, here and there possibly touched by Fletcher, includes, I. i; I. ii; I. iii; I. iv. 1-28; III. i; III.

ii; V. i. 17-73; V. iii. 1-104; V. iv, and perhaps the prose II. i and IV. iii.

The dance in the play is borrowed from an anti-masque in Beaumont's _Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn_, presented at court, February 20, 1613. This fixes the date of composition for the play in 1613, the same year as _Henry VIII_, on which it is now generally agreed that Shakespeare and Fletcher collaborated. On both of the plays the collaboration seems to have been direct; _i.e._, after making a fairly detailed outline, each writer took certain scenes, and, to all intents, completed these scenes after his own fas.h.i.+on.

One other play must be mentioned in connection with _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_. _Cardenio_, entered on the Stationers' Register, 1653, was described as "by Fletcher and Shakespeare." It seems probably identical with a _Cardenno_ acted at court by the King's men in May, 1613, and a _Cardenna_ in June, 1613. Attempts have been made to connect it with _Double Falsehood_, a.s.signed to Shakespeare by Theobald on its publication in 1728.

[Page Heading: Last Ascriptions]

Other non-extant plays ascribed to Shakespeare after 1642 require no attention, nor do a number of Elizabethan plays a.s.signed to him in certain of their later quartos. Among these are _The Troublesome Reign of King John_, on which Shakespeare's _King John_ was based; _The First Part of The Contention_, and (the Second Part) _The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York_ (versions of _2 Henry VI_ and _3 Henry VI_); and _The Taming of a Shrew_, the basis of Shakespeare's play. The relation of Shakespeare's plays to these earlier versions is discussed in the introductions to the respective volumes of the Tudor Shakespeare. Other plays a.s.signed, without grounds, to Shakespeare by late seventeenth-century booksellers are _The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Arraignment of Paris, Fair Em, Mucedorus_, and _The Birth of Merlin_.

A few other anonymous plays have been ascribed to Shakespeare by modern critics. Of chief note are _Arden of Feversham_, 1592, first attributed to Shakespeare by Edward Jacob in 1770; _Edward III_, 1596, included with other false attributions to Shakespeare in a bookseller's list of 1659, and edited and a.s.signed to Shakespeare by Capell in 1760; _Sir Thomas More_, an old play of about 1587, preserved in ma.n.u.script until edited by Dyce in 1844 and a.s.signed to Shakespeare by Richard Simpson in 1871. There is no evidence for the ascription of various portions of these plays to Shakespeare, except that certain pa.s.sages seem to some critics characteristic of him. But at the date when the three plays were written his style had not attained its characteristic individuality; and the a.s.signment of these anonymous plays to any particular author neglects the obvious fact that many writers of that period present similar traits of versification and imagery. The attribution to Shakespeare of the Countess of Salisbury episode in _Edward III_, parts of the insurrection scenes in _Sir Thomas More_, and a few pa.s.sages in _Arden of Feversham_ has scarcely any warrant beyond the enthusiastic admiration of certain critics for these pa.s.sages.

Thus only one play of the Shakespeare Apocrypha has any considerable claim to admission into the canon. The evidence for his partic.i.p.ation in _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_ is about as strong as in _Pericles_, and the part a.s.signed to him is fairly comparable with his contribution to _Henry VIII_.

An account of the Shakespeare Apocrypha is, however, incomplete without reference to the forgeries of doc.u.ments or plays. Theobald published _Double Falsehood_ in 1728, as based on a seventeenth-century ma.n.u.script which he conjectured to be by Shakespeare. John Jordan, a resident of Stratford, forged the will of Shakespeare's father, and probably some other papers in his _Collections_, 1780; William Henry Ireland, with the aid of his father, produced in 1796 a volume of forged papers purporting to relate to Shakespeare's career, and on April 2, 1796, Sheridan and Kemble presented at Drury Lane the tragedy of _Vortigern_, really by Ireland, but said by him to have been found among Shakespeare's ma.n.u.scripts. Ireland was exposed by Malone, and he published a confession of his forgeries in 1805. More skilful and far more disturbing to Shakespearean scholars.h.i.+p are the forgeries of John Payne Collier, extending over a period from 1835 to 1849. These included ma.n.u.script corrections in a copy of the second Folio, and many doc.u.ments concerning the biography of Shakespeare and the history of the Elizabethan theater. These forgeries have vitiated many of Collier's most important publications, as his _Memoirs of Edward Alleyn_, and _History of English Dramatic Poetry_.

[Page Heading: Forgeries]

We turn now from attempts to increase Shakespeare's writings to an extraordinary effort to deny him the authors.h.i.+p of all his plays. Doubts on this score seem to have been raised by Joseph C. Hart in his _Romance of Yachting_, 1848, and by an article in _Chambers' Journal_, August 7, 1852. In 1856, Mr. W. H. Smith first proposed Bacon's authors.h.i.+p in a letter to Lord Ellesmere, "Was Lord Bacon the author of Shakespeare's plays?" These were followed by an article by Miss Delia Bacon in _Putnam's Monthly_, 1856, and a volume, _The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare unfolded by Delia Bacon_. Since Miss Bacon's book, her hypothesis has resulted in the publication of hundreds of volumes and pamphlets supporting many variations of the theory. Some are content to view the authors.h.i.+p as a mystery, a.s.signing the plays to an unknown author. Others attribute the authors.h.i.+p to a club of distinguished men, or to Sir Anthony s.h.i.+rley, or the Earl of Rutland, or another. Others give Bacon only a portion of the plays, as those containing many legal terms. The majority, however, are thoroughgoing "Baconians," and the most prodigious cases of misapplied ingenuity have been the efforts to find in the First Folio a cipher, by which certain letters are selected which proclaim Bacon's authors.h.i.+p; as _The Great Cryptogram_, 1887, by Ignatius Donnelly, and _The Bi-Literal Cypher of Francis Bacon_, 1900, by Mrs. Gallup. Such cyphers are mutually destructive, and their absurdity has been repeatedly demonstrated. Either they will not work without much arbitrary manipulation, or they work too well and are found to indicate Bacon's authors.h.i.+p of literature written before his birth and after his death. Yet similar 'discoveries' continue to be announced.

The evidences supporting Shakespeare's authors.h.i.+p have been set forth sufficiently in this volume and offer no basis for an att.i.tude of skepticism. A few considerations may be recalled as correctives for a partial or mistaken reading of the evidence. (1) Though the records of Shakespeare's life are meager, they are fuller than for any other Elizabethan dramatist. Indeed we know little of the biography of any men of the sixteenth century unless their lives affected church or politics and hence found preservation in the records. There is no 'mystery' about Shakespeare. (2) Records amply establish the ident.i.ty between Shakespeare the actor and the writer. Moreover, the plays contain many words and phrases natural to an actor, many references to the actor's art, and show a wide and detailed knowledge of the ways and peculiarities of the theater. (3) The extent of observation and knowledge in the plays is, indeed, remarkable, but it is not accompanied by any indication of thorough scholars.h.i.+p, or a detailed connection with any profession outside of the theater, or a profound knowledge of the science or philosophy of the time. (4) The law terms are numerous, and usually correct, but do not establish any great knowledge of the law.

Elizabethan London was full of law students who were among frequent patrons of the theater. Through acquaintance with these gentlemen Shakespeare might have readily acquired all the law that he displays.

Moreover Shakespeare had an opportunity to gain a considerable familiarity with the law through the frequent litigations in which he and his father were concerned. (5) The dedication, commendatory poems, and address to the readers prefixed to the First Folio ought in themselves to be sufficient to remove the skepticism as to Shakespeare's authors.h.i.+p.

[Page Heading: The "Baconian" Question]