SHAKESPEARE OR BACON ?

BY

SIR THEODORE MARTIN, K.C.B.

REPRINTED FROM BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE'

WITH ADDITIONS

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS

EDINBURGH AND LONDON

MDCCCLXXXVIII

All Rights reserved

SHAKESPEARE OR BACON?

"How one starts at the conjunction of the names of Bacon and Shakespeare! And how strange it seems that no other than a casual conjunction of their names should seem to exist, or should yet have been discovered!" So wrote Sir Henry Taylor (27th August 1870) to Mr James Spedding, adding an expression of his surprise that two of the world's greatest men should have lived at the same time and in the same city without to all appearance having known each other, or "leaving some mark and token of the knowledge.” In his reply, four days afterwards, Mr Spedding says: "I see nothing surprising in the fact for I take it to be a fact that Bacon knew nothing about Shakespeare, and that he knew nothing of Bacon except his political writings and his popular reputation as a rising lawyer, of which there is no reason to suppose that he was

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ignorant. Why should Bacon have known more of Shakespeare than you do of Mark Lemon, or Planché, or Morton ? . . I have no reason to think that Bacon had ever seen or read anything of Shakespeare's composition. 'Venus and Adonis' and the 'Rape of Lucrece' are the most likely; but one can easily imagine his reading them, and not caring to read anything else by the same hand."1

The study of a lifetime, devoted with enthusiasm to a scrutiny of the writings and character of Bacon, and guided by the light of a fine critical faculty and a profound acquaintance with not only Shakespeare but with every great English writer of the era of Elizabeth and James, gives to these words of Mr Spedding a weight beyond that of any writer of mark who has Idealt with this question before or since. No one can say of him, that he did not know the literary characteristics of both Bacon and Shakespeare with all conceivable thoroughness. Neither can it be questioned, that he of all men is entitled to speak with authority not only of what Bacon could do or could not do as an author, but also of what was possible for him to have done, consistently with the occupations and necessities of his life. This being so, when he states his convic1 Sir Henry Taylor's Correspondence, pp. 306, 307. London: 1888.