Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great Unknown Part 9

"Let us, however, examine some of these allusions to Shakspere, real or supposed," says the critic. {138a} He begins with the hackneyed words of the dying man of letters, Robert Greene, in A Groatsworth of Wit (1592). The pamphlet is addressed to Gentlemen of his acquaintance "that spend their wits in making plays"; he "wisheth them a better exercise," and better fortunes than his own. (Marlowe is supposed to be one of the three Gentlemen playwrights, but such suppositions do not here concern us.) Greene's is the ancient feud between the players and the authors, between capital and labour. The players are the capitalists, and buy the plays out and out,--cheap.

The author has no royalties; and no control over the future of his work, which a Shakspere or a Bacon, a Jonson or a Chettle, or any handyman of the company owning the play, may alter as he pleases. It is highly probable that the actors also acquired most of the popular renown, for, even now, playgoers have much to say about the players in a piece, while they seldom know the name of the playwright. Women fall in love with the actors, not with the authors; but with "those puppets," as Greene says, "that speake from our mouths, these anticks, garnished in our colours." Ben Jonson, we shall see, makes some of the same complaints,--most natural in the circ.u.mstances: though he managed to retain the control of his dramas; how, I do not know. Greene adds that in his misfortunes, illness, and poverty, he is ungratefully "forsaken," by the players, and warns his friends that such may be THEIR lot; advising them to seek "some better exercise." He then writes--and his meaning cannot easily be misunderstood, I think, but misunderstood it has been--"Yes, trust them not" (trust not the players), "FOR there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his TYGER'S HEART WRAPT IN A PLAYER'S HIDE" ("Player's" in place of "woman's," in an old play, The Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York, &c.), "supposes he is as well able to b.u.mbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake- scene in a country."

The meaning is pellucid. "Do not trust the players, my fellow playwrights, for the reasons already given, for they, in addition to their glory gained by mouthing OUR words, and their ingrat.i.tude, may now forsake you for one of themselves, a player, who thinks his blank verse as good as the best of yours" (including Marlowe's, probably).

"The man is ready at their call ("an absolute Johannes Factotum").

"In his own conceit" he is "the only Shake-scene in a country."

"Seek you better masters," than these players, who have now an author among themselves, "the only Shake-scene," where the pun on Shakespeare does not look like a fortuitous coincidence. But it may be, anything may happen.

The sense, I repeat, is pellucid. But Mr. Greenwood writes that if Shake-scene be an allusion to Shakespeare "it seems clear that it is as an actor rather than as an author he is attacked." {140a} As an ACTOR the person alluded to is merely a.s.sailed with the other actors, his "fellows." But he is picked out as presenting another and a new reason why authors should distrust the players, "FOR there is" among themselves, "in a player's hide," "an upstart crow"--who thinks his blank verse as good as the best of theirs. He is, therefore, necessarily a playwright, and being a factotum, can readily be employed by the players to the prejudice of Greene's three friends, who are professed playwrights.

Mr. Greenwood says that "we do not know why Greene should have been so particularly bitter against the players, and why he should have thought it necessary so seriously to warn his fellow playwrights against them." {141a} But we cannot help knowing; for Greene has told us. In addition to gaining renown solely through mouthing "OUR"

words, wearing "OUR feathers," they have been bitterly ungrateful to Greene in his poverty and sickness; they will, in the same circ.u.mstances, as cruelly forsake his friends; "yes, for they now have" an author, and to the playwrights a dangerous rival, in their own fellows.h.i.+p. Thus we know with absolute certainty why Greene wrote as he did. He says nothing about the superior financial gains of the players, which Mr. Greenwood suspects to have been the "only"

cause of his bitterness. Greene gives its causes in the plainest possible terms, as did Ben Jonson later, in his verses "Poet-Ape"

(Playwright-Actor). Moreover, Mr. Greenwood gives Greene's obvious motives on the very page where he says that we do not know them.

Even Mr. Greenwood, {141b} anxious as he is to prove Shake-scene to be attacked as an actor, admits that the words "supposes himself as well able to b.u.mbast out a blank verse as the best of you," "do seem to have that implication," {141c} namely, that "Shake-scene" is a dramatic author: what else can the words mean; why, if not for the Stage, should Shake-scene write blank verse?

Finally Mr. Greenwood, after saying "it is clear that it is as an actor rather than as an author that 'Shake-scene' is attacked,"

{142a} concedes {142b} that it "certainly looks as if he" (Greene) "meant to suggest that this Shake-scene supposed himself able to compose, as well as to mouth verses." Nothing else can possibly be meant. "The rest of you" were authors, not actors.

If not, why, in a whole company of actors, should "Shake-scene" alone be selected for a special victim? Shake-scene is chosen out because, as an author, a factotum always ready at need, he is more apt than the professed playwrights to be employed as author by his company: this is a new reason for not trusting the players.

I am not going to take the trouble to argue as to whether, in the circ.u.mstances of the case, "Shake-scene" is meant by Greene for a pun on "Shake-speare," or not. If he had some other rising player- author, the Factotum of a cry of players, in his mind, Baconians may search for that personage in the records of the stage. That other player-author may have died young, or faded into obscurity. The term "the only Shake-scene" may be one of those curious coincidences which do occur. The presumption lies rather on the other side. I demur, when Mr. Greenwood courageously struggling for his case says that, even a.s.suming the validity of the surmise that there is an allusion to Shakspere, {143a} "the utmost that we should be ent.i.tled to say is that Greene here accuses Player Shakspere of putting forward, as his own, some work, or perhaps some parts of a work, for which he was really indebted to another" (the Great Unknown?). I do more than demur, I defy any man to exhibit that sense in Greene's words.

"The utmost that we should be ent.i.tled to say," is, in my opinion, what we have no shadow of a t.i.tle to say. Look at the poor hackneyed, tortured words of Greene again. "Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his TYGER'S HEART WRAPPED IN A PLAYER'S HIDE, supposes he is as well able to b.u.mbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake- scene in a country."

How can mortal man squeeze from these words the charge that "Player Shakspere" is "putting forward, as his own, some work, or perhaps some parts of a work, for which he was really indebted to another"?

It is as an actor, with other actors, that the player is "beautified with OUR feathers,"--not with the feathers of some one NOT ourselves, Bacon or Mr. Greenwood's Unknown. Mr. Greenwood even says that Shake-scene is referred to "as beautified with the feathers WHICH HE HAS STOLEN from the dramatic writers" ("our feathers").

Greene says absolutely nothing about feathers "WHICH HE HAS STOLEN."

The "feathers," the words of the plays, were bought, not stolen, by the actors, "anticks garnished in our colours."

Tedious it is to write many words about words so few and simple as those of Greene; meaning "do not trust the players, for one of them writes blank verse which he thinks as good as the best of yours, and fancies himself the only Shake-scene in a country."

But "Greene here accuses Player Shakspere of putting forward, as his own, some work, or perhaps some parts of a work, for which he was really indebted to another," this is "the utmost we should be ent.i.tled to say," even if the allusion be to Shakspere. How does Mr.

Greenwood get the Anti-Willian hypothesis out of Greene's few and plain words?

It is much safer for him to say that "Shake-scene" is not meant for Shakespeare. n.o.body can prove that it IS; the pun MAY be a strange coincidence,--or any one may say that he thinks it nothing more; if he pleases.

Greene nowhere "refers to this Shake-scene as being an impostor, an upstart crow beautified with the feathers WHICH HE HAS STOLEN FROM THE DRAMATIC WRITERS ("our feathers")" {145a}--that is, Greene makes no such reference to Shake-scene in his capacity of writer of blank verse. Like all players, who are all "anticks garnisht in our colours," Shake-scene, AS PLAYER, is "beautified with our feathers."

It is Mr. Greenwood who adds "beautified with the feathers which he has STOLEN from the dramatic writers." Greene does not even remotely hint at plagiarism on the part of Shake-scene: and the feathers, the plays of Greene and his friends, were not stolen but bought. We must take Greene's evidence as we find it,--it proves that by "Shake- scene" he means a "poet-ape," a playwright-actor; for Greene, like Jonson, speaks of actors as "apes." Both men saw in a certain actor and dramatist a suspected rival. Only one such successful practising actor-playwright is known to us at this date (1592-1601),--and he is Shakespeare. Unless another such existed, Greene, in 1592, alludes to William Shak(&c.) as a player and playwright. This proves that the actor from Stratford was accepted in Greene's world as an author of plays in blank verse. He cannot, therefore, have seemed incapable of his poetry.

Let us now briefly consider other contemporary allusions to Shakespeare selected by Mr. Greenwood himself. No allusion can prove that Shakespeare was the author of the work attributed to him in the allusions. The plays and poems MAY have been by James VI and I, "a parcel-poet." The allusions can prove no more than that, by his contemporaries, Shakespeare was believed to be the poet, which is impossible if he were a mere rustic ignoramus, as the Baconians aver.

Omitting some remarks by Chettle on Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, {146a} as, if grammar goes for all, they do not refer to Shakespeare, we have the Cambridge farce or comedy on contemporary literature, the Return from Parna.s.sus (1602?). The University wits laugh at Shakespeare,--not an university man, as the favourite poet, in his Venus and Adonis, of a silly braggart pretender to literature, Gullio.

They also introduce Kempe, the low comedy man of Shakespeare's company, speaking to Burbage, the chief tragic actor, of Shakespeare as a member of their company, who, AS AN AUTHOR OF PLAYS, "puts down"

the University wits "and Ben Jonson too." The date is not earlier than that of Ben's satiric play on the poets, The Poetaster (1601), to which reference is made. Since Kempe is to be represented as wholly ignorant, his opinion of Shakespeare's pre-eminent merit only proves, as in the case of Gullio, that the University wits decried the excellences of Shakespeare. In him they saw no scholar.

The point is that Kempe recognises Shakespeare as both actor and author.

All this "is quite consistent with the theory that Shake-speare was a pseudonym," {147a} says Mr. Greenwood. Of course it is, but it is NOT consistent with the theory that Shakespeare was an uneducated, bookless rustic, for, in that case, his mask would have fallen off in a day, in an hour. Of course the Cambridge author only proves, if you will, that HE thought that KEMPE thought, that his fellow player was the author. But we have better evidence of what the actors thought than in the Cambridge play.

In 1598, as we saw, Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia credits Shakespeare with Venus and Adonis, with privately circulated sonnets, and with a number of the comedies and tragedies. How the allusions "negative the hypothesis that Shakespeare was a nom de plume is not apparent," says Mr. Greenwood, always constant to his method. I repeat that he wanders from the point, which is, here, that the only William Shak(&c.) known to us at the time, in London, was credited with the plays and poems on all sides, which proves that no incompatibility between the man and the works was recognised.

Then Weaver (1599) alludes to him as author of Venus, Lucrece, Romeo, Richard, "more whose names I know not." Davies (1610) calls him "our English Terence" (the famous comedian), and mentions him as having "played some Kingly parts in sport." Freeman (1614) credits him with Venus and Lucrece. "Besides in plays thy wit winds like Meander." I repeat Heywood's evidence. Thomas Heywood, author of that remarkable domestic play, A Woman Killed with Kindness, was, from the old days of Henslowe, in the fifteen-nineties, a playwright and an actor; he survived into the reign of Charles I. Writing on the familiar names of the poets, "Jack Fletcher," "Frank Beaumont," "Kit Marlowe," "Tom Nash," he says,

"Mellifluous Shakespeare whose enchanting quill Commanded mirth and pa.s.sion, was but 'Will.'"

Does Heywood not identify the actor with the author? No quibbles serve against the evidence.

We need not pursue the allusions later than Shakespeare's death, or invoke, at present, Ben Jonson's panegyric of 1623. As to Davies, his dull and obscure epigram is addressed "To our English Terence, Mr. Will Shake-speare." He accosts Shakespeare as "Good Will." He remarks that, "as some say," if Will "had not played some Kingly parts in sport," he had been "a companion for a KING," and "been a King among the meaner sort." n.o.body, now, can see the allusion and the joke. Shakespeare's company, in 1604, acted a play on the Gowrie Conspiracy of 1600. King James suppressed the play after the second night, as, of course, he was brought on the stage throughout the action: and in very droll and dreadful situations. Did Will take the King's part, and annoy gentle King Jamie, "as some say"? n.o.body knows. But Mr. Greenwood, to disable Davies's recognition of Mr.

Will as a playwright, "Our English Terence," quotes, from Florio's Montaigne, a silly old piece of Roman literary gossip, Terence's plays were written by Scipio and Laelius. In fact, Terence alludes in his prologue to the Adelphi, to a spiteful report that he was aided by great persons. The prologue may be the source of the fable- -that does not matter. Davies might get the fable in Montaigne, and, knowing that some Great One wrote Will's plays, might therefore, in irony, address him as "Our English Terence." This is a pretty free conjecture! In Roman comedy he had only two names known to him to choose from; he took Terence, not Plautus. But if Davies was in the great Secret, a world of others must have shared le Secret de Polichinelle. Yet none hints at it, and only a very weak cause could catch at so tiny a straw as the off-chance that Davies KNEW, and used "Terence" as a gibe. {149a}

The allusions, even the few selected, cannot prove that the actor wrote the plays, but do prove that he was believed to have done so, and therefore that he was not so ignorant and bookless as to demonstrate that he was incapable of the poetry and the knowledge displayed in his works. Mr. Greenwood himself observes that a Baconian critic goes too far when he makes Will incapable of writing.

Such a Will could deceive no mortal. {150a} But does Mr. Greenwood, who finds in the Author of the plays "much learning, and remarkable cla.s.sical attainments," or "a wide familiarity with the cla.s.sics,"

{150b} suppose that his absolutely bookless Will could have persuaded his intimates that he was the author of plays exhibiting "a wide familiarity with the cla.s.sics," or "remarkable cla.s.sical attainments." The thing is wholly impossible.

I do not remember that a single contemporary allusion to Shakespeare speaks of him as "learned," erudite, scholarly, and so forth. The epithets for him are "sweet," "gentle," "honeyed," "sugared," "honey- tongued"--this is the convention. The tradition followed by Milton, who was eight years of age when Shakespeare died, and who wrote L'Allegro just after leaving Cambridge, makes Shakespeare "sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child," with "native wood-notes wild"; and gives to Jonson "the LEARNED sock." Fuller, like Milton, was born eight years before the death of Shakespeare, namely, in 1608. Like Milton he was a Cambridge man. The First Folio of Shakespeare's works appeared when each of these two bookish men was aged fifteen. It would necessarily revive interest in Shakespeare, now first known as far as about half of his plays went: he would be discussed among lovers of literature at Cambridge. Mr. Greenwood quotes Fuller's remark that Shakespeare's "learning was very little," that, if alive, he would confess himself "to be never any scholar." {151a} I cannot grant that Fuller is dividing the persons of actor and author. Men of Shakespeare's generation, such as Jonson, did not think him learned; nor did men of the next generation. If Mr. Collins's view be correct, the men of Shakespeare's and of Milton's generations were too ignorant to perceive that Shakespeare was deeply learned in the literature of Rome, and in the literature of Greece. Every one was too ignorant, till Mr. Collins came.

CHAPTER VIII: "THE SILENCE OF PHILIP HENSLOWE"

When Shakespeare is mentioned as an author by contemporary writers, the Baconian stratagem, we have seen, is to cry, "Ah, but you cannot prove the author mentioned to be the actor." We have seen that Meres (1598) speaks of Shakespeare as the leading tragic and comic poet ("Poor poet-ape that would be thought our chief," quoth Jonson), as author of Venus and Adonis, and as a sonneteer. "All this does nothing whatever to support the idea that the Stratford player was the author of the plays and poems alluded to," says Mr. Greenwood, playing that card again. {155a}

The allusions, I repeat, DO prove that Shak(&c.), the actor, was believed to be the author, till any other noted William Shak(&c.) is found to have been conspicuously before the town. "There is nothing at all to prove that Meres, native of Lincolns.h.i.+re, had any personal knowledge of Shakespeare." There is nothing at all to prove that Meres, native of Lincolns.h.i.+re, had any personal knowledge of nine- tenths of the English authors, famous or forgotten, whom he mentions.

"On the question--who was Shakespeare?--he throws no light." He "throws no light on the question" "who was?" any of the poets mentioned by him, except one, quite forgotten, whose College he names . . . To myself this "sad repeated air,"--"critics who praise Shakespeare do not say WHO SHAKESPEARE was,"--would appear to be, not an argument, but a subterfuge: though Mr. Greenwood honestly believes it to be an argument,--otherwise he would not use it: much less would he repeat it with frequent iteration. The more a man was notorious, as was Will Shakspere the actor, the less the need for any critic to tell his public "who Shakespeare was."

As Mr. Greenwood tries to disable the evidence when Shakespeare is alluded to as an author, so he tries to better his case when, in the account-book of Philip Henslowe, an owner of theatres, money-lender, p.a.w.n-broker, purchaser of plays from authors, and so forth, Shakespeare is NOT mentioned at all. Here is a mystery which, properly handled, may advance the great cause. Henslowe has notes of loans of money to several actors, some of them of Shakespeare's company, "The Lord Chamberlain's." There is no such note of a loan to Shakespeare. Does this prove that he was not an actor? If so, Burbage was not an actor; Henslowe never names him.

There are notes of payments of money to Henslowe after each performance of any play in one of his theatres. In these notes THE NAME OF SHAKESPEARE IS NEVER ONCE MENTIONED AS THE AUTHOR OF ANY PLAY. How weird! But in THESE notes the names of the authors of the plays acted are never mentioned. Does this suggest that Bacon wrote all these plays?

On the other hand, there are frequent mentions of advances of money to authors who were working at plays for Henslowe, singly, or in pairs, threes, fours, or fives. We find Drayton, Dekker, Chapman, and nine authors now forgotten by all but antiquarians. We have also Ben Jonson (1597), Marston, Munday, Middleton, Webster, and others, authors in Henslowe's pay. BUT THE SAME OF SHAKESPEARE NEVER APPEARS. Mysterious! The other men's names, writes Dr. Furness, occur "because they were all writers for Henslowe's theatre, but we must wait at all events for the discovery of some other similar record, before we can produce corresponding memoranda regarding Shaksper" (sic) "and his productions." {157a}

The natural mind of the ordinary man explains all by saying, "Henslowe records no loans of money to Shakspere the actor, because he lent him no money. He records no payments for plays to Shakespeare the author-actor, because to Henslowe the actor sold no plays." That is the whole explanation of the Silence of Philip Henslowe. If Shakspere did sell a play to Henslowe, why should that financier omit the fact from his accounts? Suppose that the actor was illiterate as Baconians fervently believe, and sold Bacon's plays, what prevented him from selling a play of Bacon's (under his own name, as usual) to Henslowe? To obtain a Baconian reply you must wander into conjecture, and imagine that Bacon forbade the transaction. Then WHY did he forbid it? Because he could get a better price from Shakspere's company? The same cause would produce the same effect on Shakspere himself; whether he were the author, or were Bacon's, or any man's go-between. On any score but that of money, why was Henslowe good enough for Ben Jonson, Dekker, Heywood, Middleton, and Webster, and not good enough for Bacon, who did not appear in the matter at all, but was represented in it by the actor, Will? As a gentleman and a man of the Court, Bacon would be as much discredited if he were known to sell (for 6 pounds on an average) his n.o.ble works to the Lord Chamberlain's Company, as if he sold them to Henslowe.

I know not whether the great lawyer, courtier, scholar, and philosopher is supposed by Baconians to have given Will Shakspere a commission on his sales of plays; or to have let him keep the whole sum in each case. I know not whether the players paid Shakspere a sum down for his (or Bacon's) plays, or whether Will received a double share, or other, or any share of the profits on them, as Henslowe did when he let a house to the players. n.o.body knows any of these things.

"If Shakspere the player had been a dramatist, surely Henslowe would have employed him also, like the others, in that behalf." {159a} Henslowe would, if he could have got the "copy" cheap enough. Was any one of "the others," the playwrights, a player, holding a share in his company? If not, the fact makes an essential difference, for Shakspere WAS a shareholder. Collier, in his preface to Henslowe's so-called "Diary," mentions a playwright who was bound to scribble for Henslowe only (Henry Porter), and another, Chettle, who was bound to write only for the company protected by the Earl of Nottingham.

{159b} Modern publishers and managers sometimes make the same terms with novelists and playwrights.

It appears to me that Shakspere's company would be likely, as his plays were very popular, to make the same sort of agreement with him, and to give him such terms as he would be glad to accept,--whether the wares were his own--or Bacon's. He was a keen man of business.

In such a case, he would not write for Henslowe's pittance. He had a better market. The plays, whether written by himself, or Bacon, or the Man in the Moon, were at his disposal, and he did not dispose of them to Henslowe, wherefore Henslowe cannot mention him in his accounts. That is all.

Quoting an American Judge (Dr. Stotsenburg, apparently), Mr.

Greenwood cites the circ.u.mstance that, in two volumes of Alleyn's papers "there is not one mention of such a poet as William Shaksper in his list of actors, poets, and theatrical comrades." {160a} If this means that Shakspere is not mentioned by Alleyn among actors, are we to infer that William was not an actor? Even Baconians insist that he was an actor. "How strange, how more than strange," cries Mr. Greenwood, "that Henslowe should make no mention in all this long diary, embracing all the time from 1591 to 1609, of the actor-author . . . No matter. Credo quia impossibile!" {160b} Credo what? and what is IMPOSSIBLE? Henslowe's volume is no Diary; he does not tell a single anecdote of any description; he merely enters loans, gains, payments. Does Henslowe mention, say, Ben Jonson, WHEN HE IS NOT DOING BUSINESS WITH BEN? Does he mention any actor or author except in connection with money matters? Then, if he did no business with Shakspere the actor, in borrowing or lending, and did no business with Shakespeare the author, in borrowing, lending, buying or selling, "How strange, how more than strange" it would be if Henslowe DID mention Shakespeare! He was not keeping a journal of literary and dramatic jottings. He was keeping an account of his expenses and receipts. He never names Richard Burbage any more than he mentions Shakespeare.