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By “Shakespeare Land,” as used in these pages, Stratford-on-Avon and the country within a radius of from twelve to twenty miles are meant; comprising parts of Warwickshire and Gloucestershire, and some portions of Worcestershire which are mentioned by Shakespeare, or must have been familiar to him. So many thousands annually visit Stratford-on-Avon that the town, and in some lesser degree the surrounding country, are thought to be hackneyed and spoilt for the more intellectual and leisured visitor; but that is very far from being the case. Apart from such acknowledged centres of Shakespearean interest as the Birthplace at Stratford-on-Avon, the parish church, and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage at Shottery; and excepting such great show-places as Kenilworth and Warwick castles, Shakespeare Land is by no means overrun, and is in every way charming and satisfying. Stratford town itself, the very centre of interest, is unspoiled; and the enterprise of the majority of Shakespearean pilgrims is of such a poor quality, and their intellectual requirements as a rule so soon satisfied, that the real beauties of the Warwickshire villages and the towns and villages of the Cotswolds are to them a sealed hook. Except these byways be explored, such an essential side of Shakespeare as that I have touched upon in the chapter “Shakespeare the Countryman” will be little understood.

It is thus entirely a mistaken idea to think the Shakespeare Country overdone. On the contrary, it is much less known than it ought to be, and would be, were it in any other land than our own. And Stratford itself has not done so much as might have been expected in exploiting possible Shakespearean interest. Ancient house-fronts that the poet must have known still await the removal of the plaster which for two centuries or more has covered them; and the Corporation archives have not yet been thoroughly explored.

Incidentally these pages may serve to expose some of the Baconian heresies. If there be many whose judgment is overborne by the tub-thumping of the Baconians, let them turn to some of the extravagances of Donnelly and others mentioned here, and then note the many local allusions which Shakespeare and none other could have written.

The Bacon controversy, which since 1857 has offered considerable employment for speculative minds, and is still in progress, is now responsible for some six hundred books and pamphlets, monuments of perverted ingenuity and industrious research misapplied; of evidence misunderstood, and of judgment biased by a clearly proclaimed intention to place Bacon where Shakespeare stands. These exceedingly well-read gentlemen, profited in strange concealments, have produced a deal of skimble-skamble stuff that galls our good humours. The veriest antics, they at first amuse us, but in a longer acquaintance they are, as Hotspur says of Glendower, “as tedious as a tired horse, a railing wife; Worse than a smoky house.”

This is no place to fully enter the discussion, but we may here note the opinion of Harvey, the great contemporary man of science, on Bacon, the amateur of science. “My Lord Chancellor,” he said, “writes about Science like a Lord Chancellor.” Any one who reads Bacon’s poetry will notice that the poets might have applied the same taunt to his lines.

Yet they tell us now, these strange folk, eager for a little cheap notoriety, not only that “Bacon wrote the Greene, Marlowe, and Shakespeare plays,” but that his is the pen that gives the Authorised Version of the Bible its literary grace. Well, well. They say the owl was a baker’s daughter; a document in madness.

Charles G. Harper.

Ealing, August 24, 1912.