Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great Unknown. Andrew Lang

But one party holds that, in the main, Will was the author of the plays, while the other party votes for Bacon—or for Bungay, a Great Unknown. I use Bungay as an endearing term for the mysterious being who was the Author if Francis Bacon was not. Friar Bungay was the rival of Friar Bacon, as the Unknown (if he was not Francis Bacon) is the rival of “the inventor of Inductive reasoning.”

      I could never have expected that I should take a part in this controversy; but acquaintance with The Shakespeare Problem Restated (503 pp.), (1908), and later works of Mr. G. G. Greenwood, M.P., has tempted me to enter the lists.

      Mr. Greenwood is worth fighting; he is cunning of fence, is learned (and I cannot conceal my opinion that Mr. Donnelly and Judge Holmes were rather ignorant). He is not over “the threshold of Eld” (as were Judge Webb and Lord Penzance when they took up Shakespearean criticism). His knowledge of Elizabethan literature is vastly superior to mine, for I speak merely, in Matthew Arnold’s words, as “a belletristic trifler.”

      Moreover, Mr. Greenwood, as a practising barrister, is a judge of legal evidence; and, being a man of sense, does not “hold a brief for Bacon” as the author of the Shakespearean plays and poems, and does not value Baconian cryptograms. In the following chapters I make endeavours, conscientious if fallible, to state the theory of Mr. Greenwood. It is a negative theory. He denies that Will Shakspere (or Shaxbere, or Shagspur, and so on) was the author of the plays and poems. Some other party was, in the main, with other hands, the author. Mr. Greenwood cannot, or does not, offer a guess as to who this ingenious Somebody was. He does not affirm, and he does not deny, that Bacon had a share, greater or less, in the undertaking.

      In my brief tractate I have not room to consider every argument; to traverse every field. In philology I am all unlearned, and cannot pretend to discuss the language of Shakespeare, any more than I can analyse the language of Homer into proto-Arcadian and Cyprian, and so on. Again, I cannot pretend to have an opinion, based on internal evidence, about the genuine Shakespearean character of such plays as Titus Andronicus, Henry VI, Part I, and Troilus and Cressida. About them different views are held within both camps.

      I am no lawyer or naturalist (as Partridge said, Non omnia possumus omnes), and cannot imagine why our Author is so accurate in his frequent use of terms of law—if he be Will; and so totally at sea in natural history—if he be Francis, who “took all knowledge for his province.”

      How can a layman pretend to deal with Shakespeare’s legal attainments, after he has read the work of the learned Recorder of Bristol, Mr. Castle, K.C.? To his legal mind it seems that in some of Will’s plays he had the aid of an expert in law, and then his technicalities were correct. In other plays he had no such tutor, and then he was sadly to seek in his legal jargon. I understand Mr. Greenwood to disagree on this point. Mr. Castle says, “I think Shakespeare would have had no difficulty in getting aid from several sources. There is therefore no prima facie reason why we should suppose the information was supplied by Bacon.”

      Of course there is not!

      “In fact, there are some reasons why one should attribute the legal assistance, say, to Coke, rather than to Bacon.”

      The truth is, that Bacon seems not to have been lawyer enough for Will’s purposes. “We have no reason to believe that Bacon was particularly well read in the technicalities of our law; he never seems to have seriously followed his profession.” [0a]

      Now we have Mr. Greenwood’s testimonial in favour of Mr. Castle, “Who really does know something about law.” [0b] Mr. Castle thinks that Bacon really did not know enough about law, and suggests Sir Edward Coke, of all human beings, as conceivably Will’s “coach” on legal technicalities. Perhaps Will consulted the Archbishop of Canterbury on theological niceties?

      Que sçais je? In some plays, says Mr. Castle, Will’s law is all right, in other plays it is all wrong. As to Will’s law, when Mr. Greenwood and Mr. Castle differ, a layman dare not intervene.

      Concerning legend and tradition about our Will, it seems that, in each case, we should do our best to trace the Quellen, to discover the original sources, and the steps by which the tale arrived at its late recorders in print; and then each man’s view as to the veracity of the story will rest on his sense of probability; and on his bias, his wish to believe or to disbelieve.

      There exists, I believe, only one personal anecdote of Will, the actor, and on it the Baconians base an argument against the contemporary recognition of him as a dramatic author. I take the criticism of Mr. Greenwood (who is not a Baconian). One John Manningham, Barrister-at-Law, “a well-educated and cultured man,” notes in his Diary (February 2, 1601) that “at our feast we had a play called Twelve Night or What you Will, much like the Comedy of Errors, or Menæchmi in Plautus, but most like and near to that in Italian called Inganni.” He confides to his Diary the tricks played on Malvolio as “a good practice.” [0c] That is all.

      About the authorship he says nothing: perhaps he neither knew nor cared who the author was. In our day the majority of people who tell me about a play which they have seen, cannot tell me the name of the author. Yet it is usually printed on the playbill, though in modest type. The public does not care a straw about the author’s name, unless he be deservedly famous for writing letters to the newspapers on things in general; for his genius as an orator; his enthusiasm as a moralist, or in any other extraneous way. Dr. Forman in his queer account of the plot of “Mack Beth” does not allude to the name of the author (April 20, 1610). Twelfth Night was not published till 1623, in the Folio: there was no quarto to enlighten Manningham about the author’s name. We do not hear of printed playbills, with author’s names inserted, at that period. It seems probable that occasional playgoers knew and cared no more about authors than they do at present. The world of the wits, the critics (such as Francis Meres), poets, playwrights, and players, did know and care about the authors; apparently Manningham did not. But he heard a piquant anecdote of two players and (March 13, 1601) inserted it in his Diary.

      Shakespeare once anticipated Richard Burbage at an amorous tryst with a citizen’s wife. Burbage had, by the way, been playing the part of Richard III. While Will was engaged in illicit dalliance, the message was brought (what a moment for bringing messages!) that Richard III was at the door, and Will “caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard III. Shakespeare’s name William.” (My italics.) Mr. Greenwood argues that if “Shakspere the player was known to the world as the author of the plays of Shakespeare, it does seem extremely remarkable” that Manningham should have thought it needful to add “Shakespeare’s name William.” [0d]

      But was “Shakspere,” or any man, “known to the world as the author of the plays of Shakespeare”? No! for Mr. Greenwood writes, “nobody, outside a very small circle, troubled his head as to who the dramatist or dramatists might be.” [0e] To that “very small circle” we have no reason to suppose that Manningham belonged, despite his remarkable opinion that Twelfth Night resembles the Menæchmi. Consequently, it is not “extremely remarkable” that Manningham wrote “Shakespeare’s name William,” to explain to posterity the joke about “William the Conqueror,” instead of saying, “the brilliant author of the Twelfth Night play which so much amused me at our feast a few weeks ago.” [0f] “Remarkable” out of all hooping it would have been had Manningham written in the style of Mr. Greenwood. But Manningham apparently did not “trouble his head as to who the dramatist or dramatists might be.” “Nobody, outside a very small circle,” did trouble his poor head about that point. Yet Mr. Greenwood thinks “it does seem extremely remarkable” that Manningham did not mention the author.

      Later, on the publication of the Folio (1623), the world seems to have taken more interest in literary matters. Mr. Greenwood says that then while “the multitude” would take Ben Jonson’s noble panegyric on Shakespeare as a poet “au pied de la lettre,” “the enlightened few would recognise that it had an esoteric meaning.” [0g] Then, it seems, “the world”—the “multitude”—regarded