Читать книгу Bacon is Shake-Speare - Durning-Lawrence Edwin - Страница 2

"What does it matter whether the immortal works were written by Shakespeare (of Stratford) or by another man who bore (or assumed) the same name?"

Some twenty years ago, when this question was first propounded, it was deemed an excellent joke, and I find that there still are a great number of persons who seem unable to perceive that the question is one of considerable importance.

When the Shakespeare revival came, some eighty or ninety years ago, people said "pretty well for Shakespeare" and the "learned" men of that period were rather ashamed that Shakespeare should be deemed to be "the" English poet.

Dryden did not write these lines in reference to Shakespeare but to Milton. Where will you find the person who to-day thinks Milton comes within any measurable distance of the greatest genius among the sons of earth who was called by the name of Shakespeare?

Ninety-two years ago, viz.: in June 1818, an article appeared in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, under the heading "Time's Magic Lantern. No. V. Dialogue between Lord Bacon and Shakspeare" [Shakespeare being spelled Shakspeare]. The dialogue speaks of "Lord" Bacon and refers to him as being engaged in transcribing the "Novum Organum" when Shakspeare enters with a letter from Her Majesty (meaning Queen Elizabeth) asking him, Shakspeare, to see "her own" sonnets now in the keeping of her Lord Chancellor.

Of course this is all topsy turvydom, for in Queen Elizabeth's reign

Bacon was never "Lord" Bacon or Lord Chancellor.

But to continue, Shakspeare tells Bacon "Near to Castalia there bubbles also a fountain of petrifying water, wherein the muses are wont to dip whatever posies have met the approval of Apollo; so that the slender foliage which originally sprung forth in the cherishing brain of a true poet becomes hardened in all its leaves and glitters as if it were carved out of rubies and emeralds. The elements have afterwards no power over it."

Bacon. Such will be the fortune of your own productions.

Shakspeare. Ah my Lord! Do not encourage me to hope so. I am but a poor unlettered man, who seizes whatever rude conceits his own natural vein supplies him with, upon the enforcement of haste and necessity; and therefore I fear that such as are of deeper studies than myself, will find many flaws in my handiwork to laugh at both now and hereafter.

Bacon. He that can make the multitude laugh and weep as you do Mr. Shakspeare need not fear scholars… More scholarship might have sharpened your judgment but the particulars whereof a character is composed are better assembled by force of imagination than of judgment…

Shakspeare. My Lord thus far I know, that the first glimpse and conception of a character in my mind, is always engendered by chance and accident. We shall suppose, for instance, that I, sitting in a tap-room, or standing in a tennis court. The behaviour of some one fixes my attention… Thus comes forth Shallow, and Slender, and Mercutio, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

Bacon. These are characters who may be found alive in the streets. But how frame you such interlocutors as Brutus and Coriolanus?

Shakspeare. By searching histories, in the first place, my Lord, for the germ. The filling up afterwards comes rather from feeling than observation. I turn myself into a Brutus or a Coriolanus for the time; and can, at least in fancy, partake sufficiently of the nobleness of their nature, to put proper words in their mouths… My knowledge of the tongues is but small, on which account I have read ancient authors mostly at secondhand. I remember, when I first came to London, and began to be a hanger-on at the theatres, a great desire grew in me for more learning than had fallen to my share at Stratford; but fickleness and impatience, and the bewilderment caused by new objects, dispersed that wish into empty air…

This ridiculous and most absurd nonsense, which appeared in 1818 in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine was deemed so excellent and so instructive that (slightly abridged) it was copied into "Reading lessons for the use of public and private schools" by John Pierpont, of Boston, U.S.A., which was published in London nearly twenty years later, viz., in 1837.

As I said before, the dialogue is really all topsy turvydom, for the writer must have known perfectly well that Bacon was not Lord Keeper till 1617, the year after Shakspeare's death in 1616, and was not made Lord Chancellor till 1618, and that he is not supposed to have began to write the "Novum Organum" before the death of Queen Elizabeth.

I have therefore arrived at the conclusion that the whole article was really intended to poke fun at the generally received notion that the author of the plays was an _un_lettered man, who picked up his knowledge at tavern doors and in taprooms and tennis courts. I would specially refer to the passage where Bacon asks "How frame you such interlocutors as Brutus and Coriolanus?" and Shakspeare replies "By searching histories, in the first place, my Lord, for the germ. The filling up afterwards comes rather from feeling than observation. I turn myself into a Brutus or a Coriolanus for the time and can at least in fancy partake sufficiently of the nobleness of their nature to put proper words in their mouths."

Surely this also must have been penned to open the eyes of the public to the absurdity of the popular conception of the author of the plays as an _un_lettered man who "had small Latin and less Greek"!

The highest scholarship not only in this country and in Germany but throughout the world has been for many years concentrated upon the classical characters portrayed in the plays, and the adverse criticism of former days has given place to a reverential admiration for the marvellous knowledge of antiquity displayed throughout the plays in the presentation of the historical characters of bygone times; classical authority being found for nearly every word put into their mouths.

What does it matter whether the immortal works were written by Shakspeare (of Stratford) or by a great and learned man who assumed the name Shakespeare to "Shake a lance at Ignorance"? We should not forget that this phrase "Shake a lance at Ignorance" is contemporary, appearing in Ben Jonson's panegyric in the Shakespeare folio of 1623.