Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown | Page 7

believe--that the actual "Author," the "Shakespeare"
lived and died and left no trace of his existence except his share in the
works called Shakespearean.
However, the idea of the Great Unknown has, for its partisans, this
advantage, that as the life of the august Shade is wholly unknown, we
cannot, as in Bacon's case, show how he was occupied while the plays
were being composed. He MUST, however, have been much at Court,
we learn, and deep in the mysteries of legal terminology. Was he Sir
Edward Coke? Was he James VI and I?
It is hard, indeed, to set forth the views of the Baconians and of the
"Anti-Willians" in a shape which will satisfy them. The task, especially
when undertaken by an unsympathetic person, is perhaps impossible. I
can only summarise their views in my own words as far as I presume to
understand them. I conceive the Baconians to cry that "the world
possesses a mass of transcendent literature, attributed to a man named
William SHAKESPEARE." Of a man named William SHAKSPERE
(there are many varieties of spelling) we certainly know that he was
born (1564) and bred in Stratford-on-Avon, a peculiarly dirty, stagnant,
and ignorant country town. There is absolutely no evidence that he (or
any Stratford boy of his standing) ever went to Stratford school. His
father, his mother, and his daughter could not write, but, in signing,
made their marks; and if he could write, which some of us deny, he
wrote a terribly bad hand. As far as late traditions of seventy or eighty
years after his death inform us, he was a butcher's apprentice; and also
a schoolmaster "who knew Latin pretty well"; and a poacher. He made,
before he was nineteen, a marriage tainted with what Meg Dods calls
"ante-nup." He early had three children, whom he deserted, as he
deserted his wife. He came to London, we do not know when (about
1582, according to the "guess" of an antiquary of 1680); held horses at
the door of a theatre (so tradition says), was promoted to the rank of
"servitor" (whatever that may mean), became an actor (a vagabond
under the Act), and by 1594 played before Queen Elizabeth. He put
money in his pocket (heaven knows how), for by 1597 he was

bargaining for the best house in his native bourgade. He obtained, by
nefarious genealogical falsehoods (too common, alas, in heraldry), the
right to bear arms; and went on acting. In 1610-11 (?) he retired to his
native place. He never took any interest in his unprinted manuscript
plays; though rapacious, he never troubled himself about his valuable
copyrights; never dreamed of making a collected edition of his works.
He died in 1616, probably of drink taken. Legal documents prove him
to have been a lender of small sums, an avid creditor, a would-be
encloser of commons. In his will he does not bequeath or mention any
books, manuscripts, copyrights, and so forth. It is utterly incredible,
then, that this man wrote the poems and plays, so rich in poetry,
thought, scholarship, and knowledge, which are attributed to "William
Shakespeare." These must be the works of "a concealed poet," a
philosopher, a courtier moving in the highest circles, a supreme legist,
and, necessarily, a great poet, and student of the classics.
No known person of the age but one, Bacon, was a genius, a legist, a
scholar, a great poet, and brilliant courtier, with all the other
qualifications so the author of the plays either was Francis Bacon-- or
some person unknown, who was in all respects equally distinguished,
but kept his light under a bushel. Consequently the name "William
Shakespeare" is a pseudonym or "pen-name" wisely adopted by Bacon
(or the other man) as early as 1593, at a time when William Shakspere
was notoriously an actor in the company which produced the plays of
the genius styling himself "William Shakespeare."
Let me repeat that, to the best of my powers of understanding and of
expression, and in my own words, so as to misquote nobody, I have
now summarised the views of the Baconians sans phrase, and of the
more cautious or more credulous "Anti-Willians," as I may style the
party who deny to Will the actor any share in the authorship of the
plays, but do not overtly assign it to Francis Bacon.
Beyond all comparison the best work on the Anti-Willian side of the
controversy is The Shakespeare Problem Restated, by Mr. G. G.
Greenwood (see my Introduction). To this volume I turn for the
exposition of the theory that "Will Shakspere" (with many other

spellings) is an actor from the country--a man of very scanty education,
in all probability, and wholly destitute of books; while "William
Shakespeare," or with the hyphen, "Shake-speare," is a "nom