Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown | Page 6

not hold by the ancient
belief, the belief of Shakespeare's contemporaries and intimates, the
belief that he was, in the sense explained above, the author of the plays.
But ours is not a generation to be overawed by "Authority" (as it is
called). A small but eager company of scholars have convinced
themselves that Francis Bacon wrote the Shakespearean plays. That is
the point of agreement among these enthusiasts: points of difference are
numerous: some very wild little sects exist. Meanwhile multitudes of
earnest and intelligent men and women, having read notices in
newspapers of the Baconian books, or heard of them at lectures and
tea-parties, disbelieve in the authorship of "the Stratford rustic," and
look down on the faithful of Will Shakespere with extreme contempt.
From the Baconians we receive a plain straightforward theory, "Bacon
wrote Shakespeare," as one of their own prophets has said. {4a} Since
we have plenty of evidence for Bacon's life and occupations during the
period of Shakespearean poetic activity, we can compare what he was
doing as a man, a student, a Crown lawyer, a pleader in the Courts, a
political pamphleteer, essayist, courtier, active member of Parliament,
and so on, with what he is said to have been doing--by the Baconians;
namely, writing two dramas yearly.
But there is another "Anti-Willian" theory, which would dethrone Will
Shakspere, and put but a Shadow in his place. Conceive a "concealed
poet," of high social position, contemporary with Bacon and
Shakespeare. Let him be so fond of the Law that he cannot keep legal
"shop" out of his love Sonnets even. Make him a courtier; a statesman;
a philosopher; a scholar who does not blench even from the difficult
Latin of Ovid and Plautus. Let this almost omniscient being possess
supreme poetic genius, extensive classical attainments, and a tendency
to make false quantities. Then conceive him to live through the reigns
of "Eliza and our James," without leaving in history, in science, in
society, in law, in politics or scholarship, a single trace of his existence.
He left nothing but the poems and plays usually attributed to Will. As
to the date of his decease, we only know that it must necessarily have

been later than the composition of the last genuine Shakespearean
play--for this paragon wrote it.
Such is the Being who occupies, in the theory of the non-Baconian,
BUT NOT ANTI-BACONIAN, Anti-Willians, the intellectual throne
filled, in the Will Shakespeare theory, by Will; and in the Baconian, by
Bacon--two kings of Brentford on one throne.
We are to be much engaged by the form of this theory which is held by
Mr. G. G. Greenwood in his The Shakespeare Problem Restated. In
attempting to explain what he means I feel that I am skating on very
thin ice. Already, in two volumes (In Re Shakespeare, 1909, and The
Vindicators of Shakespeare), Mr. Greenwood has accused his critics of
frequently misconceiving and misrepresenting his ideas: wherefore I
also tremble. I am perfectly confident in saying that he "holds no brief
for the Baconians." He is NOT a Baconian. His position is negative
merely: Will of Stratford is NOT the author of the Shakespearean plays
and poems. Then who is? Mr. Greenwood believes that work by an
unknown number of hands exists in the plays first published all
together in 1623. Here few will differ from him. But, setting aside this
aspect of the case, Mr. Greenwood appears to me to believe in an entity
named "Shakespeare," or "the Author," who is the predominating
partner; though Mr. Greenwood does not credit him with all the plays
in the Folio of 1623 (nor, perhaps, with the absolute entirety of any
given play). "The Author" or "Shakespeare" is not a syndicate (like the
Homer of many critics), but an individual human being, apparently of
the male sex. As to the name by which he was called on earth, Mr.
Greenwood is "agnostic." He himself is not Anti-Baconian. He does not
oust Bacon and put the Unknown in his place. He neither affirms nor
denies that Bacon may have contributed, more or less, to the bulk of
Shakespearean work. To put it briefly: Mr. Greenwood backs the field
against the favourite (our Will), and Bacon MAY be in the field. If he
has any part in the whole I suspect that it is "the lion's part," but Mr.
Greenwood does not commit himself to anything positive. We shall
find (if I am not mistaken) that Mr. Greenwood regards the hypothesis
of the Baconians as "an extremely reasonable one," {7a} and that for
his purposes it would be an extremely serviceable one, if not even

essential. For as Bacon was a genius to whose potentialities one can set
no limit, he is something to stand by, whereas we cannot easily
believe--I cannot