Bacon is Shake-Speare | Page 5

of bygone times; classical
authority being found for nearly every word put into their mouths.
What does it matter whether the immortal works were written by
Shakspeare (of Stratford) or by a great and learned man who assumed
the name Shakespeare to "Shake a lance at Ignorance"? We should not
forget that this phrase "Shake a lance at Ignorance" is contemporary,
appearing in Ben Jonson's panegyric in the Shakespeare folio of 1623.
CHAPTER II.
The Shackspere Monument, Bust, and Portrait.
In the year 1909 Mr. George Hookham in the January number of the
National Review sums up practically all that is really known of the life
of William Shakspeare of Stratford as follows:--
'We only know that he was born at Stratford, of illiterate parents-- (we
do not know that he went to school there)--that, when 18-1/2 years old,
he married Anne Hathaway (who was eight years his senior, and who
bore him a child six months after marriage); that he had in all three
children by her (whom with their mother he left, and went to London,
having apparently done his best to desert her before marriage);--that in
London he became an actor with an interest in a theatre, and was

reputed to be the writer of plays;--that he purchased property in
Stratford, to which town he returned;--engaged in purchases and sales
and law-suits (of no biographical interest except as indicating his
money-making and litigious temperament); helped his father in an
application for coat armour (to be obtained by false pretences);
promoted the enclosure of common lands at Stratford (after being
guaranteed against personal loss); made his will--and died at the age of
52, without a book in his possession, and leaving nothing to his wife
but his second best bed, and this by an afterthought. No record of
friendship with anyone more cultured than his fellow actors.
No letter,--only two contemporary reports of his conversation, one with
regard to the commons enclosure as above, and the other in
circumstances not to be recited unnecessarily.
In a word we know his parentage, birth, marriage, fatherhood,
occupation, his wealth and his chief ambition, his will and his death,
and absolutely nothing else; his death being received with unbroken
and ominous silence by the literary world, not even Ben Jonson who
seven years later glorified the plays in excelsis, expending so much as a
quatrain on his memory.'
[Illustration: Plate III. The Stratford Monument, From Dugdale's
Warwickshire, 1656.]
[Illustration: Plate IV. The Stratford Monument as it appears at the
present time.]
To this statement by Mr. George Hookham I would add that we know
W. Shakspeare was christened 26th April 1564, that his Will which
commences "In the name of god Amen! I Willim Shackspeare, of
Stratford upon Avon, in the countie of warr gent in perfect health and
memorie, god be praysed," was dated 25th (January altered to) March
1616, and it was proved 22nd June 1616, Shakspeare having died 23rd
April 1616, four weeks after the date of the Will.
We also know that a monument was erected to him in Stratford Church.
And because L. Digges, in his lines in the Shakespeare folio of 1623

says "When Time dissolves thy Stratford Moniment,"[1] it is supposed
that the monument must have been put up before 1623. But we should
remember that as Mrs. Stopes (who is by no means a Baconian) pointed
out in the Monthly Review of April 1904, the original monument was
not like the present monument which shews a man with a pen in his
hand; but was the very different monument which will be found
depicted in Sir William Dugdale's "Antiquities of Warwickshire,"
published in 1656. The bust taken from this is shewn on Plate 5, Page
14, and the whole monument on Plate 3, Page 8.
[Illustration: Plate V. The Stratford Bust, from Dugdale's Warwickshire.
Published 1656.]
The figure bears no resemblance to the usually accepted likeness of
Shakspeare. It hugs a sack of wool, or a pocket of hops to its belly and
does not hold a pen in its hand.
In Plate 6, Page 15, is shewn the bust from the monument as it exists at
the present time, with the great pen in the right hand and a sheet of
paper under the left hand. The whole monument is shewn on Plate 4,
Page 9.
[Illustration: Plate VI. The Stratford Bust as it appears at the present
time.]
The face seems copied from the mask of the so-called portrait in the
1623 folio, which is shewn in Plate 8.
[Illustration: Plate VIII. Full size Facsimile of part of the Title Page of
the 1623 Shakespeare folio]
It is desirable to look at that picture very carefully, because every
student ought to know that the portrait in the title-page of the first folio
edition