Part 37

This example alone proves that men who are not scholars venture to pronounce on Shakespeare’s scholarship, and that men who take absurd statements at second hand dare to constitute themselves judges of a question of evidence and of erudition.

The worthy Mr. Donnelly then quotes Mr. Holmes for Shakespeare’s knowledge of the Greek drama. Turning to Mr. Holmes (who takes his motto, if you please, from Parmenides), we find that the author of ‘Richard II.’ borrowed from a Greek play by Euripides, called ‘Hellene,’ as did the author of the sonnets. There is, we need not say, no Greek play of the name of ‘Hellene.’ As Mr. Holmes may conceivably mean the ‘Helena’ of Euripides, we compare Sonnet cxxi. with ‘Helena,’ line 270. The parallel, the imitation of Euripides, appears to be--

By their dark thoughts my deeds must not be shown,

with--

Prooton men ouk ons adikoz eimi duskleez,

which means, ‘I have lost my reputation though I have done no harm.’ Shakespeare, then, could not complain of calumny without borrowing from ‘Hellene,’ a name which only exists in the fancy of Mr. Nathaniel Holmes. This critic assigns ‘Richard II.,’ act ii., scene 1, to ‘Hellene’ 512-514. We can find no resemblance whatever between the three Greek lines cited, from the ‘Helena,’ and the scene in Shakespeare. Mr. Holmes appears to have reposed on Malone, and Malone may have remarked on fugitive resemblances, such as inevitably occur by coincidence of thought. Thus the similarity of the situations of Hamlet and of Orestes in the ‘Eumenides’ is given by similarity of legend, Danish and Greek. Authors of genius, Greek or English, must come across analogous ideas in treating analogous topics. It does not follow that the poet of ‘Hamlet’ was able to read AEschylus, least of all that he could read him in Greek.

Anglicised version of the author’s original Greek text.

The ‘Comedy of Errors’ is based on the ‘Menaechmi’ of Plautus. It does not follow that the author of the ‘Comedy of Errors’ could read the ‘Menaechmi’ or the ‘Amphitryon,’ though Shakespeare had probably Latin enough for the purpose. The ‘Comedy of Errors’ was acted in December 1594. A translation of the Latin play bears date 1595, but this may be an example of the common practice of post-dating a book by a month or two, and Shakespeare may have seen the English translation in the work itself, in proof, or in manuscript. In those days MSS. often circulated long before they were published, like Shakespeare’s own ‘sugared sonnets.’ However, it is highly probable that Shakespeare was equal to reading the Latin of Plautus.

In ‘Twelfth Night’ occurs--

Like the Egyptian thief, at point of death, kill what I love.

Mr. Donnelly writes: ‘This is an allusion to a story from Heliodorus’s “AEthiopica.” I do not know of any English translation of it in the time of Shakespeare.’ The allusion is, we conceive, to Herodotus, ii. 121, the story of Rhampsinitus, translated by ‘B. R.’ and published in 1584. In ‘Macbeth’ we find--

All our yesterdays have LIGHTED fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, BRIEF CANDLE.

This is ‘traced,’ says Mr. Donnelly, ‘to Catullus.’ He quotes:--

Soles occidere et redire possunt; Nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux, Nox est perpetuo una dormienda.

Where is the parallel? It is got by translating Catullus thus:--

The LIGHTS of heaven go out and return; When once our BRIEF CANDLE goes out, One night is to be perpetually slept.

But soles are not ‘lights,’ and brevis lux is not ‘brief candle.’ If they were, the passages have no resemblance. ‘To be, or not to be,’ is ‘taken almost verbatim from Plato.’ Mr. Donnelly says that Mr. Follett says that the Messrs. Langhorne say so. But, where is the passage in Plato?

Such are the proofs by which men ignorant of the classics prove that the author of the poems attributed to Shakespeare was a classical scholar. In fact, he probably had a ‘practicable’ knowledge of Latin, such as a person of his ability might pick up at school, and increase by casual study: points to which we return. For the rest, classical lore had filtered into contemporary literature and translations, such as North’s Plutarch.

As to modern languages, Mr. Donnelly decides that Shakespeare knew Danish, because he must have read Saxo Grammaticus ‘in the original tongue’--which, of course, is NOT Danish! Saxo was done out of the Latin into French. Thus Shakespeare is not exactly proved to have been a Danish scholar. There is no difficulty in supposing that ‘a clayver man,’ living among wits, could pick up French and Italian sufficient for his uses. But extremely stupid people are naturally amazed by even such commonplace acquirements. When the step is made from cleverness to genius, then the dull disbelieve, or cry out of a miracle. Now, as ‘miracles do not happen,’ a man of Shakespeare’s education could not have written the plays attributed to him by his critics, companions, friends, and acquaintances. Shakespeare, ex hypothesi, was a rude unlettered fellow. Such a man, the Baconians assume, would naturally be chosen by Bacon as his mask, and put forward as the author of Bacon’s pieces. Bacon would select a notorious ignoramus as a plausible author of pieces which, by the theory, are rich in knowledge of the classics, and nobody would be surprised. Nobody would say: ‘Shakespeare is as ignorant as a butcher’s boy, and cannot possibly be the person who translated Hamlet’s soliloquy out of Plato, “Hamlet” at large out of the Danish; who imitated the “Hellene” of Euripides, and borrowed “Troilus and Cressida” from the Greek of Dares Phrygius’--which happens not to exist. Ignorance can go no further than in these arguments. Such are the logic and learning of American amateurs, who sometimes do not even know the names of the books they talk about, or the languages in which they are written. Such learning and such logic are passed off by ‘the less than half educated’ on the absolutely untaught, who decline to listen to scholars.

We cannot of course furnish a complete summary of all that the Baconians have said in their myriad pages. All those pages, almost, really flow from the little volume of Mr. Smith. We are obliged to take the points which the Baconians regard as their strong cards. We have dealt with the point of classical scholarship, and shown that the American partisans of Bacon are not scholars, and have no locus standi. We shall take next in order the contention that Bacon was a poet; that his works contain parallel passages to Shakespeare, which can only be the result of common authorship; that Bacon’s notes, called ‘Promus,’ are notes for Shakespeare’s plays; that, in style, Bacon and Shakespeare are identical. Then we shall glance at Bacon’s motives for writing plays by stealth, and blushing to find it fame. We shall expose the frank folly of averring that he chose as his mask a man who (some assert) could not even write; and we shall conclude by citing, once more, the irrefragable personal testimony to the genius and character of Shakespeare.

To render the Baconian theory plausible it is necessary to show that Bacon had not only the learning needed for ‘the authorship of Shakespeare,’ but that he gives some proof of Shakespeare’s poetic qualities; that he had reasons for writing plays, and reasons for concealing his pen, and for omitting to make any claim to his own literary triumphs after Shakespeare was dead. Now, as to scholarship, the knowledge shown in the plays is not that of a scholar, does not exceed that of a man of genius equipped with what, to Ben Jonson, seemed ‘small Latin and less Greek,’ and with abundance of translations, and books like ‘Euphues,’ packed with classical lore, to help him. With the futile attempts to prove scholarship we have dealt. The legal and medical lore is in no way beyond the ‘general information’ which genius inevitably amasses from reading, conversation, reflection, and experience.

A writer of to-day, Mr. Kipling, is fond of showing how easily a man of his rare ability picks up the terminology of many recondite trades and professions. Again, evidence taken on oath proves that Jeanne d’Arc, a girl of seventeen, developed great military skill, especially in artillery and tactics, that she displayed political clairvoyance, and that she held her own, and more, among the subtlest and most hostile theologians. On the ordinary hypothesis, that Shakespeare was a man of genius, there is, then, nothing impossible in his knowledge, while his wildly daring anachronisms could have presented no temptation to a well-regulated scientific intellect like that of Bacon. The Baconian hypothesis rests on the incredulity with which dulness regards genius. We see the phenomenon every day when stupid people talk about people of ordinary cleverness, and ‘wonder with a foolish face of praise.’ As Dr. Brandes remarks, when the Archbishop of Canterbury praises Henry V. and his universal accomplishments, he says:

Which is a wonder, how his grace should glean it, Since his addiction was to courses vain, His companies unletter’d, rude, and shallow, His hours fill’d up with riots, banquets, sports AND NEVER NOTED IN HIM ANY STUDY, Any retirement, any sequestration, From open haunts and popularity.

Yet, as the Archbishop remarks (with doubtful orthodoxy), ‘miracles are ceased.’

Shakespeare in these lines describes, as only he could describe it, the world’s wonder which he himself was. Or, if Bacon wrote the lines, then Bacon, unlike his advocates, was prepared to recognise the possible existence of such a thing as genius. Incredulity on this head could only arise in an age and in peoples where mediocrity is almost universal. It is a democratic form of disbelief.

For the hypothesis, as we said, it is necessary to show that Bacon possessed poetic genius. The proof cannot possibly be found in his prose works. In the prose of Mr. Ruskin there are abundant examples of what many respectable minds regard as poetic qualities. But, if the question arose, ‘Was Mr. Ruskin the author of Tennyson’s poems?’ the answer could be settled, for once, by internal evidence. We have only to look at Mr. Ruskin’s published verses. These prove that a great writer of ‘poetical prose’ may be at the opposite pole from a poet. In the same way, we ask, what are Bacon’s acknowledged compositions in verse? Mr. Holmes is their admirer. In 1599 Bacon wrote in a letter, ‘Though I profess not to be a poet, I prepared a sonnet,’ to Queen Elizabeth. He PREPARED a sonnet! ‘Prepared’ is good. He also translated some of the Psalms into verse, a field in which success is not to be won. Mr. Holmes notes, in Psalm xc., a Shakespearean parallel. ‘We spend our years as a tale that is told.’ Bacon renders:

As a tale told, which sometimes men attend, And sometimes not, our life steals to an end.

In ‘King John,’ iii. 4, we read:--