WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE : HIS POSITION AS REGARDS THE PLAYS, ETC. BY WILLIAM HENRY SMITH, AUTHOR OF "Bacon and Shakespeare," an Inquiry touching Players, THE BACON SOCIETY, HART STREET, LONDON: SKEFFINGTON & SON, 163, PICCADILLY. M.DCCC.LXXXIV. TO THE READER, Most of the facts, or seeming facts, in the follow pages, reached me after my publication in 1857. I present them, “naked and unarmed, not seeking preoccupate the liberty of men's judgments by confutation THE AUTHO London, June, 1884. 9324 5664 ba BACON & SHAKESPEARE. "One of these men is genius to the other, HEN in 1856, in a "Letter to Lord WHE Ellesmere," the late President of the Shakespeare Society, "printed for private circulation," we suggested that Francis Bacon might have been the author of the Plays attributed to Shakespeare, we expected to have received from the persons to whom that pamphlet was sent prompt replies containing statements of facts and argument irrefragable, sufficient to have immediately convinced us that our supposition was erroneous and untenable. Instead of this, though some adopted the safer course of saying nothing-or simply contented themselves by vilifying and abusing the person who had the audacity to broach so unpardonable a heresy-other some-in combating our statements exhibited so little know 258 ledge of the Plays and Writings attributed to Shakespeare, and so much less of those which are and always have been acknowledged as Bacon's-that the impression which had been made upon us by reading the authors themselves was confirmed and strengthened by reading the arguments of those who resisted the conclusion towards which we felt ourselves so greatly, though unwillingly, impelled. Under these circumstances, although in our "Letter" we had stated that "we should abstain from any attempt to compare the writings of the two authors, not merely because it was a labour too vast to enter upon " then, but more particularly because it is essentially the province of the literary student," which we do not pretend to be yet as we to use an expression of Bacon's, "had taken upon us to ring a bell, to call other wits together, which is the meanest office," and as, like unready servants, they had stared at the bell instead of answering it, we were compelled to do our own errand, and reluctantly made some further entrance into the matter, by publishing our little book, entitled "An Inquiry touching Players, Play-houses, and Play-writers, in the days of Elizabeth." London: J. R. Smith, 1857. The late Lord Campbell wrote a book upon Shakespeare's Legal Attainments," published 1859, which has brought that portion of hakespeare's writings which have considerable aring upon the subject under discussion, ther prominently before the public. It is a perficial work, hardly worthy of the high legal nctionary from whom it emanated. Mr. William Lowes Rushton has some reason › complain that Lord Campbell's work has Otained so much notice whilst his very able ttle pamphlet on the same subject, published lly a year before Lord Campbell's book, has net with comparatively little attention in this ountry, though highly appreciated in Germany, to the language of which country it has been ranslated. We have no hesitation in saying hat Mr. William Lowes Rushton's pamphlets, Shakespeare a Lawyer," published in 1858, Shakespeare's Legal Maxims," published in 859, "Shakespeare Illustrated," by old uthors, parts 1 and 2 published in 1867-68, and “Shakespeare's Testamentary Language,' published in 1869, are amongst the most erudite and valuable works that have been conributed to Shakespearian literature. They convincingly prove that the writer of the plays had profoundly studied the principles, and was |