BACON CRYPTOGRAMS IN SHAKE-SPEARE 'A 77? They said they would not hear of Verulam ; Forbad my tongue to speak of Verulam; But I 'will find them 'when they are asleep, And in their ears I'll holla Verulam ! Nay, I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak Nothing but Verulam, and give it them, To keep their anger still in motion. BACON CRYPTOGRAMS in SHAKE-SPEARE AND OTHER STUDIES By ISAAC HULL PLATT Boston Small, Maynard and Company 1905 Copyright, 1905, by ISAAC HULL PLATT All Rights Reserved Published August, Rose Valley Press Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, U. S. A. In this band of scholars, dreamers and enquirers, appears the most comprehensive, sensible, originative of the minds of the age, Francis Bacon, a great and luminous intellect, one of the finest of this poetic progeny, vuho, like his predecessors, vjas naturally disposed to clothe his ideas in the most splendid dress ; in this age, a thought did not seem complete until it had assumed a form and color. But <what dis- tinguished him from the others is, that 'with him an image only serves to concentrate mediation. He reflected long, stamped on his mind all parts and joints of his subject; and then, instead of dissipating his com- plete idea in a graduated chain of reasoning, he embodies it in a com- parison so expressive, exact, transparent, that behind the figure <we perceive all the details of the idea, like a liquor in a fair crystal vase. This is his mode of thought, by symbols, not by analysis ; instead of explaining his idea, he transposes and translates it translates it entire, to the smallest details, enclosing all in the majesty of a grand period, or in the brevity of a striking sentence. Thence springs a style of admirable richness, gravity and vigor, novj solemn and symmetrical, nonu concise and piercing, alvoays elaborate and full of color. There is nothing in English prose superior to his diction. Shakespeare and the seers do not contain more vigorous or expressive condensations of thought, more resembling inspiration, and in Bacon they are to be found everywhere. In short, his process is that of the creators; it is intuition, not reasoning. When he has laid up his store of facts, the greatest possible, on some vast subject, on some entire province of the mind, on the nuhole anterior philosophy, on the general condition of the sciences, on the po*wer and limits of human reason, he casts over all this a comprehensive vievu, as it vjere a great net, brings up a universal idea, condenses his idea into a maxim and hands it to us nuith the vjords, " Verify and profit by it." TAINE. 2032474 PREFACE So many and so startling have been the revela- tions promised to an expectant world under the title of Baconian ciphers and cryptograms, and so far have they fallen short of realization, that it is not to be wondered at if the world is somewhat weary of the subject. Nevertheless, there are Bacon cryptograms, and in this little book I have attempted to demonstrate some of them. They are very simple and innocent. They raise no social question they pump no hidden shame. They deal with no secret marriages in the Tower or elsewhere, nor do they throw the slightest cloud on the title of the present reigning family of England to the throne. They may be merely curiosities of literature. They are that at least and as such I bespeak for them attention. Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke as a prophet, when, fifty years ago, he declared that Miss Ba- BACON CRYPTOGRAMS con's book had opened the question so that it could never again be closed. Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke as a prophet when, in 1883, he said that the wonderful parallelisms in Shake- speare and Bacon must and will be wrought out and followed out to such fair conclusions as they shall be found to force honest minds to adopt. I do not care to follow a bad example and call names not even tu quoque but when Mr. Sidney Lee applies such terms as fools and madmen to all who even give a serious hearing to the Baconian hypothesis a group including not only such men as Emerson and Holmes, but Lord Palmerston, Gladstone, Bismarck and John Bright; and, by implication, those who have expressed doubts as to the orthodox views regarding the authorship of the Plays: Hallam, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, Lowell and many other famous men and famous scholars, to say nothing of such eminent jurists as Judge Webb and Lord Penzance, who on the ii PREFACE simple ground of evidence have declared for the Baconian authorship of the Plays when Mr. Sid- ney Lee consigns all these to the madhouse, and calls them fools, what shall we say of Sidney Lee ? Nothing. We will observe the Amenities of Lit- erature and let Echo answer. But that madhouse ! As a club it would rival The House-Boat on the Styx. A short time since I wrote a brief biography of Walt Whitman. Among the notices it received there is one I cherish as a gem. It is this : A recent unfortunate literary incident will go a good ways toward nullifying the respect with which Isaac Hull Platt's Walt Whitman, in Small, Maynard and Company's admirable Beacon Biog- raphies, will be greeted. In the November num- ber of The Conservator Mr. Platt expresses the opinion that the astonishing " fake " word " honoriricabilitudinitatibus," in Love's Labour's Lost, may be interpreted to mean that Francis Bacon wrote the so-called Shakespearean dramas. BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Such conduct is a rude shock to one's critical faith. If Mr. Platt proposes to stand as the spon- sor for that kind of rubbish, why may not his biography of Walt Whitman prove equally silly ? Any new defense of the Baconian theory puts a man in the position of the ingenious Ignatius Donnelly or the still more cryptic Dr. Beven. The remarkable aspect of the situation, how- ever, has now to be unfolded. Mr. Platt is at the same time deluded and sane. If common sense will peremptorily ridicule the absurd Shakespeare anagram it cannot do aught but applaud Mr. Platt's temperate, loyal, vivid and vastly interest- ing biography of the "good gray poet." The author is an avowed and enthusiastic Whitmanite and yet has not permitted his ardor to interfere with the plain truth. Considering its noteworthy brevity, his account of the life of the author of Leaves of Grass leaves little to be desired. It is singularly complete. When Mr. Platt writes of Whitman he is apparently just as sensible as he is foolish when igniting the Bacon-Shakespeare fuse. PREFACE I rather like that last expression, "igniting the Bacon-Shakespeare fuse." Twenty years ago I was called a lunatic for lending an attent ear to Whitman. So the whirligig of Time brings in his revenges, and who can name the lunatics of twenty years to come ? In regard to the " ab spelled backward " con- undrum in Love's Labour's Lost, I will quote the note from Dr. Furness's Variorum : Ba] Halliwell : This dialogue is constructed on the actual mode of the elementary education of the time, which has been partially continued to the present day. That this is the case is seen by the following instruction given in the Ludus Liter- arius or the Grammar Schoole, 1627, p. 19 ft Then teach them to put the consonants in order before every vo well and to repeate them oft over together; as thus : to begin with b, and to say ba, be, bi, bo, bu. So d, da, de, di, do, du. . . . When they can doe all these, then teach them to spell them in order, thus ; What spells b-a ? If the BACON CRYPTOGRAMS childe cannot tell, teach him to say thus ; b-a, ba ; b-e, be ; b-i, bi. . . . Then aske him againe what spels b-a, and he will tell you ; so all the rest in order." This is unquestionable as far as it goes but it does not give the answer to Moth's conundrum, and I have yet to hear of any spelling book or any treatise on pedagogy that touches the subject of spelling ab backward with the horn on his head. The answer to the conundrum may be found on page thirty-two of the present brochure. The Northumberland MSS., mentioned in these pages, were discovered in 1867, but they have re- mained in the seclusion of the library of the Duke of Northumberland, at Alnwick Castle, in North- umberlandshire, and of course inaccessible to the general public until, in 1904, they were reproduced in collotype facsimile under the direction of Mr. Frank J. Burgoyne, Librarian of the Lambeth Public Libraries. This document Dr. Appleton PREFACE Morgan, in New Shakespeareana, calls the Ro- setta Stone of the Baconian controversy, and it would seem that the orthodox Shaksperians them- selves recognize and are afraid of the startling and revolutionary character of its evidence. It was reviewed in The London Athenaeum for August 27, 1904, to the extent of three pages, the reviewer going to the minuteness of analyzing the editor's sources of information, which he claims in some cases were extraneous to the MSS. themselves, but the fact of prime importance, the juxtaposition of the names of Bacon and Shakespeare and the names of their productions, which is the truly surprising thing about the book, its sole claim to importance and the raison d'etre of its reproduc- tion, he slurs over with bare mention in a single line. This is an example of scholarly, orthodox criticism where the Verulam problem is concerned. If any one phenomenon similar to these men- tioned in these pages in regard to Shake-speare, BACON CRYPTOGRAMS but not connecting his name with that of Bacon, had been noted, the commentators would have vied with one another to trace out its final ramifi- cations, but the mere mention of Bacon's name is treated with derision and not, as it should be, with an honest attempt to examine and weigh evidence. This is surely not the true critical spirit. It is not necessary to assume at present that " Bacon wrote Shake-speare," but it certainly is necessary in the interest of honest criticism and fair play to make a strenuous effort to determine the reason for this continual association of their names. It is to this spirit of honest criticism and fair play that I make my appeal. The chapter on the cryptograms in Love's Labour's Lost and that on the probable relation of William Shaksper to the Plays have appeared dur- ing the last year in The Conservator, Philadelphia. So much confusion exists in regard to the spell- ing of the name Shake-speare that a word in VIII PREFACE reference to the system I have adopted may not be out of place. The actor spelled his name Shaksper ; in the records of Stratford it is spelled in various ways, Shaxpur, Shacksper, &c., but always with the first syllable short. On title-pages, the name of the author is invariably spelled Shakespeare or Shake-speare, except in the case of Love's Labour's Lost, where it is spelled Shakespere ; but always the first syllable is long. I therefore spell the name of the actor-manager Shaksper, and the name of the author Shake-speare, and use the corresponding derivatives, Shaksper- ian and Shakespearean. By this I neither affirm nor deny the identity of the actor and author. That is the question at issue ; but so long as it is at issue I shall not consider that any ref- erence on the part of contemporaries or others to Plays or Poems of Shakespeare or Shake-speare is any evidence of the identity of the author with the actor. It is a pen name in any case. BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Since the first part of this book was written I have learned that the reviewer in the Quarterly Review, referred to on page seventeen, is Mr. Andrew Lang, who has since elaborated his review into a rather long essay which is the subject of my final chapter. I have not attempted to give a synopsis of the pro-Bacon argument ; that is too voluminous for the limits which I have assigned to myself. I have undertaken simply to present certain facts which I have observed, with mention, when it seemed necessary, of correlated facts observed by others. The literature of the subject is volumin- ous enough already. The case on its merits is sufficiently well stated in the works of Judge Holmes, Mr. Edwin Reed, Judge Webb and others ; I only add my mite in the interest of fair play. My attention has been called to a new work by Mr. Tudor Jenks, In the Days of Shakespeare. PREFACE Mr. Jenks seems to be quite orthodox, yet he makes the concession that "young men in need of money and with a taste for writing worked for the theaters then as they work for the periodical press now. . . . Francis Bacon was very likely to have been one of these. We know that he pre- pared masques and pageants and revels for Grays' Inn festivities ; we know he was long a barrister in need of money and with little practice. No doubt he did what so many men of his time are known to have done, used his pen to earn money from theatrical managers. . . . Gray's Inn was famous for its masques and revels. Francis Ba- con, we are told, was long the presiding genius of the Inn, and wrote masques for their festivities besides directing them. Here, then, is a locality where Shakespeare may have come in contact with the great philosopher." Now there, for once, is an honest way of treating the matter. Some more concessions of that kind may lead to the highway BACON CRYPTOGRAMS to the truth. With such concessions it is only a matter of degree. But how many of the Verulam jewels got imbedded and which are they ? CONTENTS Introductory .... . . . . 1 The Bacon cryptogram in Love's Labour's Lost ... 16 The Bacon cryptogram in the Shake-speare Quartos . . 41 A suggestion as to the probable relation of William Shaksper to the Shake-speare plays . , : . .< ? . . 51 Testimony of the First Folio . . . . ' . . . 62 An orthodox defense . . . . . . . 88 Did Marston and Hall read the Quarto monograms ? . . 105 An afterword . 117 INTRODUCTORY What I am about to say in the following pages I do not regard as controversial. I shall not con- tend that "Bacon wrote Shake-speare" nor offer any argument in the Bacon-Shake-speare contro- versy unless a plain statement of facts of easy verification shall be considered an argument. I have used the expression "Bacon-Shake-speare controversy " because it is generally accepted, but I am in doubt whether that can be properly called a controversy in which one side presents evidence and the other only calls names. Whether or not the believers in the Baconian authorship of the Plays ought to be inside or outside of the mad- house may be the subject of an interesting dis- cussion on its own merits but it does not seem likely to give us any information as to who wrote Hamlet and Lear. What I here offer is simply the result of obser- l BACON CRYPTOGRAMS ration. I shall offer no attempt at explanation, and, in order to avoid controversy at present irrelevant, I wish distinctly to deny that what I am about to present proves Bacon's authorship of the Plays. What I do claim, and I think in reason, is that they seem to constitute grounds for a very strong suspicion that he was in some manner con- cerned in their production or associated with them. If I am right in this it would appear to open a reasonable and interesting field of investigation to students of English literature. The odium scholasticum of today seems to follow very closely in the tracks of the odium theologicum of a generation or two ago. Nobody today even hints at burning, hanging, or even putting into a madhouse, those misguided people who have doubts that the apparent motion of the sun was stayed awhile at Joshua's command or that the whale made a meal upon Jonah, but to the mad-' house with those who have doubts in regard to the 2 INTRODUCTORY truth of a literary tradition decidedly less well authenticated ! My presentation of the facts orvagaries which follows may show me to be more puzzled in ignor- ance than the Egyptians in their fog, but that is beside the point ; what I want to know is what it all means. Before pointing out any of my own discoveries or vain imaginings I shall call attention to a few of like nature which have already been pointed out, because in dealing with a case which in its very nature depends upon circumstantial evidence, the more that can be adduced in corroboration the better. I shall not, however, go into any discus- sion of the Donnelly and Gallup ciphers, for the reason that they are at present in too chaotic a state to yield any satisfaction. As for Mrs. Gal- lup's, no one but she seems to be able to distinguish the differentiation of type upon which it is founded, and her cipher story is so improbable in itself as 3 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS to require an absolute demonstration to warrant belief in it. On the other hand, however, in the book called Baconiana, or Certain genuine Remains of Sir Francis Bacon, &c., &c., published in 1679, in the Introduction, by Thomas Tenison, Arch- bishop of Canterbury, it is distinctly inferred that a cipher such as is described by Mrs. Gallup fol- lowing Bacon's own description does exist in Bacon's Advancement of Learning, edition of 1623. The passage from Dr. Tenison's Introduc- tion is as follows: "The fairest, and most correct, Edition of this Book in Latine, is that in Folio, printed at London, Anno 1623. And whoever would understand the Lord Bacon's Cypher, let him consult that accurate Edition. For, in some other Editions which I have perused, the form of the Letters of the Alphabet, in which much of the Mystery consisteth, is not observed: But the Roman and Italic shapes of them are con- founded." 4 INTRODUCTORY In regard to Mr. Donnelly's cipher the case is somewhat different. His failure to give an intel- ligent interpretation of it has caused it to pass almost out of notice, but nevertheless, in the course of his investigations, he did show some curious facts, which have never been gainsaid, about the arrangement of the text of the First Folio, in reference to the pagination and the posi- tion of certain words, and their numerical relation, which are strongly suggestive of a cryptic signifi- cance. The talk about "mere coincidence" is mere nonsense. If a pistol bullet, removed from the body of a murdered man, is found to fit an empty chamber of the prisoner's revolver, nobody dismisses the matter as "mere coincidence." It may not be proof, but it is evidence. That "was a time," as Miss Bacon says, " when the cipher, in which one could write omniaper omnia, was in request when even 'wheel ciphers' and * doubles' were thought not unworthy of philo- 5 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS sophic notice. It was a time, too, when the phon- ographic art was cultivated and put to other uses than at present, and when a nom de plume was re- quired for other purposes than to serve as the refuge of an author's modesty or vanity or caprice. It was a time when puns and charades and enigmas and anagrams and monograms and ciphers and puzzles were not mere sport and child's play : when they had need to be close and solvable only to those who should solve them." I suppose no one will venture to deny it; nor, I suppose, will anyone deny that the brothers Anthony and Francis Bacon were proficient in the invention and use of cryptic writing, and that they carried on correspondence with its aid ; so that if they or either of them had anything to do with the produc- tion of the Shake-speare plays there is no improb- ability but exactly the reverse in the proposition that cryptograms were used there, and that propo- sition would not be invalidated by the fact that 6 INTRODUCTORY unsuccessful attempts have been made to discover and read them. If cryptic allusions are actually found in the Plays and Poems they would seem to be matters for explanation rather than for ridicule and sneers. That there are such allusions I shall attempt to show, and I shall begin with a very brief review of some of the allusions to "Bacon" in the Plays and Poems which have already been pointed out and which suggest the idea that they may have a cryptic meaning. The word " Bacon" itself occurs only twice in the Plays and both times under suspicious circum- stances. The passages are as follows: Mrs. Quickly Hang-hog, is latten for Bacon, I warrant you. Merry Wives, IV, /. Second Carrier I have a Gammon of Bacon, and two razes of Ginger, to be delivered as farre as Charing-crosse. 1st Henry, IV, II, I. Mr. Donnelly showed the curious fact that in the Folio "Hang hog is Latin for Bacon" occurs 7 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS on the 53d page of the Comedies, and "gammon of Bacon" on the 53d page of the Histories ; also, that the word " Bacon," in "gammon of Bacon/' is the 371st word on the page, excluding from the count words in parentheses, and that this number is equal to the number of the page, 53, multiplied by 7, the number of italicized words in the first column, 7x53=371. Apparently, however, he did not notice that the word " Bacon," in " Latten for Bacon," in the Merry Wives, is the 795th word on the page, excluding from the count words in parentheses, that there are 15 italicized words in the first column and that 15x53=795. The passage in the Merry Wives occurs in a short scene, having no connection with the plot of the play. It did not appear in the Quarto of 1602, but for the first time in the Folio of 1623. It con- tains a pun on Bacon's name which, strange to say, reappears in a story related by himself which was not published until after his death, which 8 INTRODUCTORY occurred ten years after Shaksper's death. It is as follows : Sir Nicholas Bacon being appointed a judge for the Northern Circuit, and having brought his trials that came before him to such a pass, as the passing of sentence on malefactors, he was by one of the malefactors mightily importuned for to save his life ; which, when nothing that he said did avail, he at length desired his mercy on account of kin- dred. " Prithee," said my lord judge, " how came that in ? " "Why, if it please you, my lord, your name is Bacon and mine is Hog, and in all ages Hog and Bacon have been so near kindred that they are not to be separated." " Ay, but," replied Judge Bacon, "you and I cannot be kindred ex- cept you be hanged, for Hog is not Bacon until it be well hanged." Bacon's Apothegms, No. 36. The passage in Henry IV contains a pun equally obvious; "a gammon of Bacon" being equivalent to a hoax or humbug on the part of Bacon. On the 53d page of the Comedies, in the other 9 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS column, nearly opposite the words, " Hang hog is latten for Bacon," is this: "Well I will proclaim myself what I am;" and on the 53d page of the Histories, in the other column, opposite the words, " I have a Gammon of Bacon," occur the words : " We have the receit of Fern-seed, we walk invisible." It has been said that the two passages referred to are the only ones in the Plays in which the name "Bacon" appears. It may be well to add that " Bacon-fed " and " Bacons " both occur in the First Part of Henry Fourth, but I fail to dis- cover any reference to the proper name in either, at least any sufficiently distinct to be worth men- tioning in this connection. In that exceedingly clever and entertaining book called, Is it Shakespeare ? which is based especially upon a study of the Sonnets, and the evidence of Bacon's hand in them, the ingenious author calls attention to the twenty-sixth Sonnet : 10 INTRODUCTORY Lord of my loue, to whom in vassalage Thy merrit hath my dutie strongly knit; To thee I send this written ambassage To witness duty, not to show my wit. Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine May make seeme bare, in wanting words to show it; But that I hope some good conceit of thine In thy souls thought (all naked) will bestow it : Til whatsoever star that guides my mouing, Points to me graciously with faire aspect, And puts apparrell on my tottered louing, To show me worthy of their sweet respect, Then may I dare to boast how I doe love thee, Til then, not show my head where thou maist proue me. " This Sonnet," the author goes on to say, " as all critics admit, has an interesting and remarkable resemblance to the dedication of Lucrece to the Earl of Southampton in 1594, which was signed by William Shakespeare. This Sonnet is certainly 11 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS addressed to some one in high position ; the words vassalage and ambassage settle that. It also seems to be the concluding Sonnet (L'envoi) of a sequence (XVIII-XXVI), where deep love and admiration are expressed for a high-born youth, and where the author, although he rather auda- ciously claims immortality for his verse (S. XVII), still for 'fear of trust' does not go the whole length of expressing his love, or, as it appears, even his name as yet, but the verses or * books' that he sends are to be the ' dumb presagers ' of his ' speaking breast' (S. XXIII). And he fin- ishes, in this last Sonnet of the sequence (XXVI), by hoping that his young friend will have such a 'good conceit' of the bare verses sent, that he will take them in and cherish them in their nakedness; and then, the author hints, if his stars lend auspicious help to his future move- ments Then may I dare to boast how 1 do love thee, 12 INTRODUCTORY Till then not show my head where thou may'st prove me. Now we shall see how the author lets out the great secret in those words show my head. This Sonnet (XXVI) naturally leads us to make a closer examination of the dedication of Lucrece, with which it is evidently connected. The dedica- tion reads as follows : THE RAPE OF LUCRECE TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLEY Earle of Southampton, and Baron of Titchfield The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end : wherefore this Pamphlet without beginning is but a superfluous Moity. The warrant I have of your Honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored Lines, makes it assured of accept- ance. What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours, being part in all I have, devotedly yours. Were my worth greater, my duety would show greater ; meane time, as it is, it is bound to 13 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS your Lordship: to whom I wish long life still lengthened with all happiness. Your Lordship's in all duety, William Shakespeare. Now all this seems plain and straightforward enough, except the apparently unmeaning and un- necessary remark about 'this Pamphlet without be- ginning' being 'but a superfluous Moity.' Such a statement naturally leads one to examine the 'beginning' of the Pamphlet in its first edition as presented and dedicated to Southampton, and lo ! Bacon ' shows his head ' at once, for the first two lines are headed by this monogram F B R /. e. Fr. B., which may well be called also a super- fluous moity of Fr. Bacon, Fr. representing one half of his name with the superfluous B flowing over from the other half." The first two lines of the poem are printed thus : 14 INTRODUCTORY FRom the besieged Ardea all in post Borne by the trustless wings of false desire. Not only does this cryptogram, Fr. B., appear at the beginning of the Poem, but the signature, F. Bacon, at the end, by a certain peculiar arrange- ment of the letter F in " Finis " and the syllables "ba" and "con" in the last two lines. Of course the italics are mine, but the F, ba and con are so arranged as to be in an absolutely straight line in original : The Romans plausibly did give consent To Tarquin's everlasting banishment FINIS For a full explanation of these curiosities and others of a like character the reader is referred to the original work. They are mentioned here merely to show that those which are about to be described do not stand alone. 15 THE BACON CRYPTOGRAM IN LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST In 1897 I sent a note to The Conservator showing that the curious Hog Latin word Honor- ificabilitudinitatibus in act V scene 1 of Love's Labour's Lost, is an anagram of the Latin sentence, "Hi ludi, tuiti sibi, Fr. Bacono nati" which may be translated, " These plays, origina- ting with Francis Bacon, are protected for them- selves," or " entrusted to themselves." I stated at the time that as the word had been used before the appearance of the play, in the Lament for Scotland, for instance, the existence of the anagram would seem to have little significance were it not for certain concurrent facts. Some of those facts I set forth at the time and to some others my atten- tion has been called since. It is for the purpose of setting these forth and bringing all together that I again recur to the subject. In order to present 16 IN LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST the evidence properly it will be necessary to re- capitulate, which I shall do very briefly. Before proceeding I might say that the note was rather extensively quoted at home and abroad and commented upon mainly in the way of ridicule and, as usual in such cases, garbled. The Quar- terly Review did me the honor to notice it with the remark that the anagramatic sentence " is mag- nificent but it is not Latin." In this my critic was mistaken. I do not make this statement on the ground of any scholarship of my own, but on the authority of eminent Latinists in England, Ire- land, Canada and the United States. It is some- what unusual but perfectly correct Latin. But there is no need to discuss Latin grammar ; the meaning is clear enough. The play opens with lines strikingly suggestive of a sentence in a letter from Bacon to Bishop Andrews, which, not only in this connection but in itself, is significant. " But I count the use that 17 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death to be an untimely antici- pation of that which is proper to follow a man and not go along with him." And they are almost equally suggestive of a passage in Bacon's Ad- vancement of Learning. " The pretense thereof is to remove vulgar capacities from being admitted to the secrets of knowledge, and to reserve them to selected auditors, or wits of such sharpness as can pierce the veil." Moreover, the main intent of the play seems to be to ridicule the peculiar scholastic learning which, it is well known, Bacon held in extreme contempt. These of course are but hints. I shall proceed at once to the consideration of the scene which claims our attention, the first of the last act ; and will note here that for the pur- poses of our investigation a modern edition, amended, corrected and improved by the various editors, is of no value whatever. We must go to 18 IN LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST the Quarto of 1598 or to the Folio of 1623 which is printed practically verbatim from the 1598 Quarto or to a reprint of one of them. The following, which is as much of the scene in question as we shall have to do with, is reprinted verbatim from the Quarto of 1598, which is the earliest publication of any play bearing the name William Shakespeare on the title-page. The Folio of 1623 which is the next edition differs from this only in the correction of a few obvious mis- prints. The quotations following are from the Folio. Enter the Pedant, the Curat, and Dull. Pedant. Satis quid sufficit. Curat. I prayse God for you sir, your reasons at Dinner haue been sharp & sententious : pleasant without scurillitie, wittie without affection, auda- cious without impudencie, learned without opinion, and strange without heresie : I did conuerse this quandam day with a companion of the kings, who is intituled, nommated, or called, Don Adriano de Armatho. 19 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Fed. Noui hominum tanquam te y His humour is loftie, his discourse peremptorie : his tongue fyled, his eye ambitious, his gait maiestical, and his generall behauiour vaine, rediculous, & thrasoni- call. He is too picked, to spruce, too affected, to od as it were, too peregrinat as I may call it. Curat. A most singular and choyce Epithat, Draw-out his Table-booke Peda. He draweth out the thred of his verbositie, finer then the staple of his argument. I abhorre such phanatticall phantasms, such insociable and poynte deuise companions, such rackers of ortag- riphie, as to speak dout fine, when he should say doubt; det, when he shold pronounce debt; debt, not det : he clepeth a Calfe, Caulfe : halfe, haulfe : neighbour vocaturnebour ; neigh abreuiated ne : this is abhominable, which he would call ab- bominable, it insinuateth me of infamie : ne inteligis domine, to make frantique lunatique ? Curat. Laus deo, bene intelligo. Peda. Borne boon for boon prescian, a litle scratcht, twil serue. 20 IN LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST Enter Braggart, Boy. Cur at. Vides ne quis venit? Peda. Video, et gaudio. Brag. Chirra. Peda. Quari Chirra, not Sirra ? Brag. Men of peace well incontred. Ped. Most millitarie sir salutation. Boy. They have been at a great feast of Lan- guages, and stolne the scraps. Clow. O they haue lyud long on the almsbasket of wordes. I maruaile thy M. hath not eaten thee for a worde, for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus : thou art easier swal- lowed then a flapdragon. Page. Peace, the peale begins. Brag. Mounsier, are you not lettred ? Page. Yes yes, he teaches boyes the Horne- booke : What is Ab speld backward with the home on his head ? Poda. Ba, peuricia with a home added, Pag. Ba most seely Sheepe, with a home: you heare his learning. Peda. Quis Quis thou Consonant ? 21 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Pag. The last of the five Vowels if You repeate them, or the fift if I. Peda. I will repeate them : a e I. Pag. The Sheepe, the other two concludes it o u. Brag. Now by the sault wane of the meditara- nium, a sweete tutch, a quicke vene we of wit, snip snap, quick and home, it reioyceth my intel- lect, true wit. Page. Offerd by a child to an old man : which is wit-old. Peda. What is the figure ? What is the figure ? Page. Homes. Peda. Thou disputes like an Infant : goe whip thy Gigg. Pag. Lende me your Home to make one, and I will whip about your Infamie unu cita a gigge of a Cuckolds home. Clow. And I had but one peny in the world thou shouldst haue it to buy Ginger bread : Holde, there is the verie Remuneration I had of thy Maister, thou halfepennie purse of wit, thou Pidgin-egge of discretion. O and the heavens were so pleased, that thou wart but my Bastard ; 22 IN LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST What a ioyfull father wouldst make me ? Go to, thou hast it ad dungel at the fingers ends, as they say. The scene begins with a conversation be- tween the schoolmaster and the curate and the first words are, " Satis quidsufficit." Why " quid " is printed instead of " quod " I do not know. The text is full of apparent errors of this kind, all of which have been carefully corrected by modern editors. The words "Satis quid sufficit" are printed in italics, and, interspersed through the first half of the scene, are a number of other Latin sentences, each distinguished from the body of the text by being printed in italics. Including the one already mentioned they are in translation as follows : "That which suffices is enough." " I know the man as well as I know thee." "Do you understand me, sir ? " " Praise God ! I un- derstand well." Then comes a series of vocables they cannot be called words and cannot be trans- 23 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS lated, because they are meaningless as follows: " Borne boon for boon prescian" This has been in- terpreted by various editors, each to suit his own fancy, some changing it to make Latin, some to make French, some giving it up as hopelessly cor- rupt and abandoning it altogether. It will be re- ferred to again further on, but to continue the Latin phrases in italics : " Do you see who comes ? " " I see and rejoice." " Wherefore ? " Then comes the long word, honorificabilitudinitatibus, which, while not exactly classic Latin, is easily enough translated thus : " By the power of the making for honor," and it is the anagram of this Latin sen- tence which, translated, is : " These plays, origi- nating with Francis Bacon, are protected for them- selves," maugre The Quarterly Review. As has frequently been pointed out, the word in a slightly different and shorter form honorifica- bilitudino or honorificabilitudine, probably the latter ; the final letter is not very clear occurs on the 24 IN LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST cover of the famous Northumberland manuscripts, which consist of a part of a manuscript book dis- covered in Northumberland House in 1867, and are admitted to have been in Bacon's library. The part of the book remaining contains a number of Bacon's acknowledged works. On the cover is a table of contents. In this table, in addition to the names of the papers by Bacon, which the book actually contains, there are listed the names of two Shake-speare plays, Richard II and Richard III. These are near the end of the list ; unfortunately the corresponding part of the book is missing, " as rare things will, it vanished," and, as usual when we seem to be approaching anything directly con- nected with the relation of Bacon and Shake- speare, we are left in mystery. On the blank spaces of the cover of the Northumberland MSS. there are written, in a con- temporary hand, a number of sentences, phrases, words and parts of words, including the names 25 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Bacon and William Shakespeare, several times repeated, and oddly mixed, in one case actually reading, " By Mr. Francis William Shakespeare Bacon, Rychard the second, Rychard the third." There are some lines of Latin verse as follows : Multis annis jam transacts y Nulla fides est in pactis, Mell in ore, Verba lactis, fell in corde, ffraus in factis. " Many years having now passed, the compact is no longer binding Honey in the mouth, words of milk, bitterness in the heart, fraud in the deed." It may be noted here, for whatever it is worth, that on the second of April, 1597, Rodolphe Brad- ley wrote to Anthony Bacon : " Your gracious speeches concerning the getting of a prebend- shippe for me ... be the words of a faith- full friende and not of a courtiour, who hath Mel in ore et verba lactis, sed fel in corde et fraus in factis." 26 IN LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST Then there is aline from Shake-speare's Lucrece, but with a variant in the last word : " Reveal- ing day through every cranny peeps," followed by the words, " and see your William Shakespeare." And there is the long word already mentioned (honor ificabilitudine} which in this form is an ana- gram of " Initio hi ludi Fr. Bacone," " These plays [are] in their inception, Francis Bacon's." This book has recently been published in a photographic facsimile reproduction which presumably can be seen at any of the large libraries. The Northumberland MSS., as has been said, are known to have been in Bacon's library and are in the handwriting of his secretaries. The words on the cover are supposed to have been written by John Davies of Hereford, he who about 1610 ad- dressed to Bacon this sonnet: Thy bounty and the Beauty of thy Witt Comprisd in Lists of Law and learned Arts, Each making thee for great Imployment fitt 27 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Which now thou hast, (though short of thy deserts) Compells my pen to let fall shining Inke And to bedew the Bates that deck thy Front; And to thy health in Helicon to drinke As to her Eellamour the Muse is wont: For thou dost her embosom ; and, dost use Her company for sport twixt grave affairs : So vtterest Law the liuelyer through thy Muse. And for that all thy Notes are sweetest Aires ; My Muse thus notes thy worth in ev'ry Line! With yncke which thus she sugars ; so, to shine. Here we have a direct statement (by one in a position to know) that Bacon was beguiling himself with the Muse during the intervals of his profes- sional and philosophic labors a statement prob- ably by the very man who wrote those curious items on the MSS. cover, or, to be rid of probabilities, certainly either by him or by one of his fellow sec- retaries. The allusion in the last line of this son- net to Shake-speare's "sugared sonnets among his private friends," seems very obvious. 28 IN LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST Now, to go back to the combination of syllables, Borne boon for boon prescian. Immediately following it, in Roman text, are the words, " a little scratcht, 'twill serve." It is well known that in the print- ing of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a short dash or " scratch " over a letter indicated the elision of a letter or letters which should follow it. All printed matter of that era shows it on almost every page. Some time after the publica- tion of my former paper on this subject the Rev. William J. Sutton, of Mungret College, Limerick, Ireland, made a suggestion in The New Ireland Review which he has since embodied in his book, The Shakespeare Enigma. It is this : The inex- plicable line, " Borne boon for boon prescian" is an anagram of " Pro bono orbis F. Bacon e nemo" which makes no sense. But " a little scratcht, 'twill serve." We put the little scratch over the e making it esfznd it reads : "Pro bono orbis F. Bacon e [est] nemo" "For the good of all, F. Bacon is 29 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS nameless." Taking the italicised words, and, in- cluding the two anagrams, they read thus : " That which suffices is enough." " I know the man as well as I know thee." " Do you understand me, sir ? " " Praise God ! I understand well." " For the good of all, F. Bacon is nameless." " Do you see who comes ? " "I see and rejoice." " Where- fore ! " " [ By the power of the making for hon- or. ] " " These plays, originating with Fr. Bacon, are protected for themselves." "Who is it? Who is it?" So far we have a remarkable concatena- tion of enigmas, but we have by no means finished. The speech of Costard to Moth, the pert little page, and his reply, are as follows : Clown [ Costard} O they have liv'd long on the almes-basket of words. I marvell thy M. hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus : Thou art easier swallowed than a flapdragon. Page [ Moth ] Peace, the peale begins. 30 IN LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST The story we have been told may be hard to swallow, but not so hard as a flapdragon. A flap- dragon was a raisin or some other dainty, floating on ignited brandy, and the sport was to catch it in the mouth and swallow it while the brandy was still burning. The game was one peculiar to Hal- loween or Christmas or Twelfth Night ; I will not specify which, because in the first place I do not know, and in the second place if I were to make a mistake I should be held up to ridicule and all my statements overthrown. And I do not like ridicule ; if I did I should write advocating the Baconian authorship of the Plays. But to proceed : Eragart iArmado to Holofemes.] Mounsier, are you not lettred ? Page [ Moth ] Yes, yes, he teaches boyes the Horne-booke: What is Ab speld backward with the horn on his head? Pedagogue [ Holofemes ] Ba, puericia with a home added. 31 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Page [ Moth ] Ba most seely Sheepe, with a home : you heare his learning. Holofernes' reply does not seem to be a very satisfactory answer to the conundrum, and I doubt if I should have guessed it if the hint had not been dropped in a letter which was sent to me by my friend, the late Dr. Bucke, from Mr. A. Ans- combe, suggesting that the horn might refer to some mark of abbreviation. I take this occasion to thank Mr. Anscombe never having had op- portunity of doing so before for his very sug- gestive hint, for I soon found that a horn-shaped mark at the beginning of a word on the head in Elizabethan writing and printing, stood for the syllable con; thus 3clave=conclave. Any diction- ary of printing will verify this statement. Then Ab with the horn on its head is 3ab and back- ward it is, as I have shown in New Shakespeareana, ba;3=Bacon. " Coincidences " seem to be galling one another's kibes but they will not hold off yet. 32 IN LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST Next comes : Pedagogue [Holof ernes 1 Quis quis, [who is it who is it ? ] thou Consonant ? Why was Moth called a " consonant ? " I have sometimes thought perhaps [con sonansl because he was sounding with or interrupting the school- master ; on the other hand it may be because he sounded "con" on the head of ab backward, thereby furnishing a somewhat obscure answer to the question. Then follows this : Page [ Moth ] The last of the five Vowels if You repeat them, the fift if I. Pedagogue [Holofernes] I will repeat them : a e I. Page The Sheepe, the other two concludes it o u. Braggart [Armado] Now by the salt wave of the medeteranium, a sweet tutch, a quick venewe of wit, snip snap, quick & home, it rejoyceth my intellect, true wit. Page Offered by a childe to an old man : which is wit-old. 33 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Pedagogue What is the figure? What is the figure ? Page Homes. Pedagogue Thou disputes like an Infant: goe whip thy Gigge. Page Lend me your Home to make one, and I will whip about your Infamie unum cita a gigge of a Cuckolds home. We will stop with unum cita, which the editors, pitying Shake-speare's ignorance and trying to throw a cloak over it, have changed to circum circa. Possibly, however, Shake-speare meant what he said, unum cita, which I will render, rather freely, " name the man. " You have had your puzzle put to you who is it? For myself I cannot tell, but in reviewing the scene it has occurred to me that perhaps if the play appeared as the offspring of another than its real father, this fact might account for the refer- ences to the cuckold and explain why the horn- 34 IN LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST shaped mark of abbreviation on the head of a b is called a "cuckold's horn." Being only an Ameri- can and half educated and standing in dread of being classed with " a certain wretched group of dilettanti who swarm over Europe and America " ( with compliments to Mr. Sidney Lee, Dr. Brandes and other recent critics) I refrain from making any answer, though the greatest fool even an Ameri- can fool can ask questions that sometimes puzzle the wisest scholars to answer. I only ask the questions. Will the wise men answer? Unum cita! Quis? Quis? Since the publication of the foregoing paper in The Conservator of November and December, 1904, two objections have been suggested to the belief that these cryptograms in Love's Labour's Lost are not the result of accident. The first ap- plies to the anagram noticed by Father Sutton in "Borne boon for boon prescian" and is to the effect 35 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS that the usual explanation is quite sufficient: namely, that Prescian, or rather Priscian, being the name of a Roman grammarian, "Prescian a little scratched " would mean that there was an error in grammar. But this view is hardly borne out by the text of either the Quarto or Folio, which, except for corrections in spelling, is the same. "Borne boon for boon prescian, a little scratcht, twil serve." Both the italics and the comma make the word "prescian" part of the supposed Latin phrase ; moreover, it is not printed with a capital as it should be if the proper name were intended. The other objection applies to the whole sub- ject, and is that the play is one of the earliest, per- haps the very earliest, of the Shakespearean col- lection, and at that early date Bacon, supposing that he had anything to do with it, could scarcely have anticipated the celebrity and permanence that would attach to the dramas. Therefore, he would have had no reason for this cryptic self-assertion, 36 IN LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST .nor would he anticipate any curiosity that might arise as to its interpretation. In answer to this I would say that while this play is undoubtedly one of the earliest of those known as Shake-speare's, it was not published till 1598, and then is described as being " newly corrected and augmented." The first part of this scene, in which these curiosities occur, is probably one of the augmentations, as it has nothing to do with the plot of the play. In the same year, 1598, there appeared Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia, Wit's Treasury, in which he says : As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latines, so Shakespeare, among the English, is the most ex- cellent in both kinds for the stage ; witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love Labour's lost, his Love Labour's Wonne, his Midsummer's Night Dreame, and his Merchant of Venice : for tragedy, his Richard the 2, Rich- ard the 3, Henry the 4, King John, Titus An- dronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet. 37 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Meres' book, Palladis Tamia, bears the imprint, "At London. Printed by P. Short for Cuthbert Burbie, 1598." Love's Labour's Lost, "At Lon- don by W. W. for Cuthbert Burby, 1598." Here, then, are two books, issued in the same year by the same publisher, one making for the first time the claim that the twelve dramas mentioned in the above list are Shake-speare's, the other being the first play ever printed, so far as we know, bearing Shake-speare's name upon the title-page. The two are the first public announcements of Shake-speare as a playwright. For the four years previous that name had been well known as that of the author of Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, poems which had been received with applause by literary men and the public alike. During these four years, and probably even before, plays now known as Shake-speare's had appeared and be- come familiar to the play-going public but they had all appeared anonymously. Not until this 38 IN LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST year, 1598, had a distinct claim been made that their author was the well known poet, and then it was made almost simultaneously by the publica- tion of Meres' list and by the appearance of the name " William Shakespeare " for the first time on the title-page of any play, and that one of those mentioned by Meres. Meres' list, then, having identified the author of Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece with the author of the twelve plays mentioned by him, all of which by this time had become popular, this would appear to be the very time and place of all for the true author to make his claim, if such claim was ever to be made, and would seem to make it quite clear what plays were designated by "hi ludi." 39 DESIGN ONE DESIGN TWO DESIGN THREE 40 THE BACON CRYPTOGRAM IN THE SHAKE-SPEARE QUARTOS The three figures on the opposite page are re- productions of the headpieces of the Quartos of : I. A Pleasaunt Conceited History, called The Taming of a Shrew. Printed at London by Peter Short, 1594. II. The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, &c. London. Printed by Thomas Creed for Thomas Millington, 1594. III. The Tragedy of King Richard the second. London. Printed by Valentine Simmes for Andrew Wise, 1597. I fail to find the first form of headpiece in any of the Quartos other than The Taming of a Shrew. The second appears in The First Part of the Con- tention, as mentioned above, and in the following : The Famous Victories of Henry the fifth, Lon- 41 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS don, Printed by Thomas Creede, 1598 ; The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and luliet, London, Printed by Thomas Creed for Cuthbert Burby, 1599; The Chronicle History of Henry the fift, London, Printed by Thomas Creed, 1600 ; The Tragedy of King Richard the third, Newly augmented by William Shakespeare, London, Printed by Thomas Creede, 1602 ; A Most pleasaunt and excellent conceited Comedy of Syr John Falstaffe and the merrie Wives of Windsor &c., By William Shakespeare, London, Printed by T. C. for Arthur Johnson, 1602. The third appears not only in Richard II., but also in The Tragedy of King Richard the third, London, Printed by Valentine Sims, for Andrew Wise, 1597; The second part of Henry the fourth, Written by William Shakespeare, London, Printed by V. S. for Andrew Wise and William Aspley, 1600 ; The Tragicall History of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke by William Shake-speare, At London 42 IN THE SHAKE-SPEARE QUARTOS printed for N. L. and lohn Trundell 1603; and Shake-speare's Sonnets, Never before Imprinted, At London By G. Eld for T. T. Upon comparing the three devices it will be seen that they are essentially alike, differing only in their outward flourishes. DESIGN FOUR Each is distinctly a cryptogram or monogram of the letters B-A-C-O-N. By turning the figures so that the left hand end is down the B is suffi- ciently apparent, occupying the middle of the space. The upright is formed by the top of the vase and the branches growing from it. While the loops of the B do not come quite together and the character is not as distinctly formed as the other 43 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS four it clearly represents a B. The AC on the left hardly needs pointing out. The O and N are on the right, the O formed by the reversed C, the ends of the loop of which are united by a twig and leaf. It may be objected that a similar arrangement of twig and leaf obtains in the C on the left, which is true, and it seems to be so de- signed that it may be read as either C or O. But it is hardly to be supposed that if a cryptogram were intended the readingwould be made DESIGN FIVE perfectly obvious. Symmetry had to be preserved or the secret would have been ex- posed at once. The character on the right is clearly an O, or if it is insisted that we disregard the connecting twig and leaf because we have done so on the left, then the symbol represents the C reverse, which as has been shown stands for con, and we have B-A-C-O-N, anyhow, or at least 44 IN THE SHAKE-SPEARE QUARTOS B-A-C-C-O-N, as the name was sometimes spelled. The N is formed by the same loop, the long curved arm reaching out to the right and the twig and flower on top. There are the letters B-A-C-O-N in direct order and with no more confusion or ob- scurity than usually appears in monograms printed by stationers on letter paper. But this is not all. If the figures are held with the right hand end downward at the beginning or what will then be the top in each emerges the letter F, and if they are reversed, then in what in that position be- comes the top, ap- pears the letter R. Now strip them of their appendages and they appear thus : FR. BACON. I confess I am not any too certain about 45 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS the R ; it seems a little weak in the back. Perhaps for that I may have drawn slightly upon my imagi- nation, so I shall not insist upon it ; but to make six letters fall together so as to spell F. Bacon is surely enough to ask of any " mere coincidence." So far my investigations have been confined to such of the Shake-speare Quartos as appear in the Griggs-Praetorius photo-lithographic reproduc- tions. In what other books of the period this monogram may be found I cannot say. I am told that somewhat similar designs appeared in books of a later date after Bacon's death but I have seen none in which I could find all the letters of " Bacon." At that late period they would have little if any significance anyhow, and as the matter stands it is sufficiently curious that in twelve of the forty-three Shake-speare Quartos reproduced by Messrs. Griggs and Praetorius Bacon's name should appear distinctly at the top of the first page. I am quite well aware 46 IN THE SHAKE-SPEARE QUARTOS that of several of the plays mentioned, the author- ship is not usually attributed to Shake-speare, but this does not remove or lessen the mystery, and they are all in one way or another connected with his work. How did the name Fr. Bacon get there and what does it signify ? It did not happen by accident. Simply a printer's device, someone will say. But here are five different printers and at least three different blocks. But if it is a printer's device, why should it spell Fr. Bacon ? Why should five different printers each put his name at the beginning of his books unless Bacon had some- thing to do with them ? Is it possible that he was a special partner in five different printing houses ? It does not seem likely but perhaps it is worth in- vestigating. Anyhow the fact remains that here is the name Fr. Bacon staring us in the face from the top of the first page of twelve of the Shake- speare Quartos. To recapitulate and classify ; the Roman num- 47 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS erals in the last column indicating the design ac- cording to the arrangement above : Play Printer Date Design 1 Shrew. Short 1594 I 2 Contention. Creed 1594 II 3 Rich. II. Sims 1597 III 4 Rich. III. Sims 1597 III 5 Fam. Vic. Creed 1598 II 6 R. & J. Creed 1599 II 7 II. Hy. IV. Sims 1600 III 8 Henry V. Creed 1600 II 9 Rich. III. Creed 1602 II 10 Mer. W. Creed 1602 II 11 Hamlet. for N. L. & I. T. 1603 III 12 Sonnets. Eld 1609 III Design One then appears only once and that in one of the two earliest of the series and was used by Short in 1594. Design Two appears to have been used only by IN THE SHAKE-SPEARE QUARTOS Creed and was used by him in six books of dates, from 1594 to 1602. Design Three seems to have been used by three printers by Sims three times and by the printer of the 1603 Hamlet and Eld each once. For any thing that 1 can see these five prints may all be from the same block. Now, how is all this to be accounted for? Did Creed copy Short's design or Short Creed's ? and then did Sims copy from both and pass his block on to the nameless printer of Hamlet and he to Eld ? And if so why, unless it had some cryptic meaning which was sought to be perpetuated ? It would appear to be a very interesting problem to students of early printing. I am not one, and I pass the question on to them. I am perfectly aware of an objection that will be made to what I have pointed out : that it is possi- ble to form any letter or combinations of letters out of any design by removing what one pleases. My 49 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS answer is, let the objector try to form the letters of any other name from these designs without impair- ing their structural anatomy. One might say that we have no proof that there are arteries in the hu- man body because a skilful dissector might carve their semblance out of an amorphous mass with his dissecting knife. When fossil remains were first discovered throwing a doubt on the orthodox opinions about the creation of the world the na- tural inference drawn by men of a scientific and ra- tional habit of mind was met in two different ways in two different quarters. Voltaire said they were shells dropped from pilgrims' hats. Holy monks said they were put there by God to test men's faith. Perhaps one of the explanations will apply to these fossils. The question whether the significance of this monogram was known to any contemporary of Shake-speare will be considered in the final chap- ter. 50 A SUGGESTION AS TO THE PROBABLE RELATION OF WILLIAM SHAKSPER TO THE SHAKE-SPEARE PLAYS As long ago as 1880, Appleton Morgan, in his masterly work, The Shakespearean Myth, which with all his pains he has never since been able to refute, advanced the theory that the Shake-speare plays as they come to us today, through the First Folio, are the joint product of at least two men, one the anonymous master poet and dramatist whom we know as Shake-speare, the other some business man connected with a playhouse, probably Will- iam Shaksper, the play broker, actor and manager. In the book already referred to, Is it Shake- speare ? by A Cambridge Graduate, the proposi- tion is somewhat elaborated. This author says that there seems to be a strong evidence that the shrewd actor-manager was always ready to use, for his stage purposes, any suitable plays, new or old, 51 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS that came into his hands that he would change them by the addition of gags and the omission of what he deemed unsuitable for his purpose as he saw fit ; which in fact is about what any theatrical manager does today. If this should prove to be the case it would ac- count for most of those discrepancies of style and manner which have given the commentators so much trouble and led to the invention by them of all those whimsical "tests" to determine which particular lines were written by Shake-speare and which by Johannes Factotum. That plays were mutilated in this fashion in those days is clear from the testimony of Ben Jonson. In his address To the Readers, prefixed to Sejanus, he says with his own delightful sarcasm : " Lastly, I would inform you this book, in all numbers, is not the same with that which was acted on the pub- lic stage ; wherein a second pen had good share ; in place of which, I have rather chosen to put 52 A SUGGESTION weaker and no doubt less pleasing of my own than to defraud so happy a genius of his right by my loathed usurpation." The instances of internal evidence pointing to William Shaksper, or any Stratford-on-Avon man, as the author, seem to be only two that in the Induction to the Taming of the Shrew and that in the first scene of the first act of the Merry Wives of Windsor. I shall attempt to show in both cases that the condition and history of the text is more in accord with the theory of Dr. Morgan and the Cambridge Graduate than with that of a Stratford-on-Avon authorship. In the Induction to the Taming of the Shrew the drunken tinker is named Christopher Sly ; he is "old Sly's son of Burton-Heath"; he refers for identification to " Marian Racket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot"; he speaks of "Cicely Hacket," "Stephen Sly," "John Naps of Greece," "Peter Turph" and " Henry Pimpernell "; all these names 53 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS of people and places being, as is well known, associated with the neighborhood of Stratford-on- Avon. Now, as early as 1594, there was " Printed at London by Peter Short " The Taming of a Shrew. It is an amplification of this that appears in the First Folio as The Taming of the Shrew. The former is believed by no one to be the work of Shake-speare ; it is wholly un-Shakespearean ; and yet furnishes the outline of the story and con- tains a sketch of the Induction with the character of Sly. This, in the Folio play, is developed and expanded in a truly Shakespearean manner. Per- haps there is nothing in all Shake-speare that shows more conclusively the work of two different writers than this very Induction, and the local allusions are clearly traced to some other hand than that of the great dramatist. There is nothing in the ear- lier form of the play that might not easily be the work of any fairly clever hack writer of plays, and 54 A SUGGESTION yet Sly, who carries us to Warwickshire and Gloucestershire, is his creation. It may easily be that here is where Mr. Manager Shaksper shows his hand. To be sure the local names, other than that of Sly, do not appear in the Quarto but only in the Folio version, but this does not affect the ar- gument as mere names of course could have been readily supplied by the actor-manager with the in- tent of carrying out the local coloring first sug- gested by the name Christopher Sly. It is generally conceded that the first scene of The Merry Wives of Windsor refers to Shaksper's deer stealing adventure and that Justice Shallow stands for Sir Thomas Lucy. This scarcely ad- mits of a doubt. The discussion about the "dozen white luces " in the coat of a Gloucestershire jus- tice leaves little to the imagination on this score, and thus we find, for the second and last time, the Plays in touch with the man Shaksper. How- ever it may be, this story seems as if it may 55 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS have some connection with one in Holinshed's Chronicles : Sir William Wise having lent to the king, Henry VIII, his signet to seal a letter, who having pow- dered eremies engray'd in the scale, the king paused and lookit thereat, considering. " Why, how now, Wise?" quoth the king. "What! hast thou lice here? " "An, if it like your majes- tic," quoth Sir William, " a louse is a rich coat ; for by giving the louse I part arms with the French king, in that he giveth the flour-de-lice '." Whereat the king heartily laugh'd, to hear how prettily so byting a taunt was so suddenly turned to so pleas- aunte a conceite.* The Quarto of The Merry Wives, 1602, the only Quarto worth noticing, for that of 1619 was merely a reprint of it, is a poor abortive thing, containing less than two-thirds in mass and less than a tenth in matter of the finished play as we find it in the Folio. The commentators have always The Rosicracisuis, by Hvcrave Jennings, page 50. 56 A SUGGESTION been at war as to whether it was an early sketch or a mangled version a needless war, for it is plainly both a mangled version of a first sketch, as the very first page shows. Shallow says : " Never talke to me. He make a star-chamber matter of it. The councell shall know it." Know what ? With- out another word on the subject, the discussion of Mr. Slender's pretensions to the hand of Miss Page is opened. This surely was not to be made a star-chamber matter. The Folio makes it clear that it is Falstaff's deer stealing that provokes Shal- low's threat. I do not mean to say that the story of the poaching is not mentioned in the Quarto. It is, but the reference to it, explaining the initial speech of Justice Shallow and which contained the supposed allusion to Lucy, is omitted. Conceding, then, that the incident of Shaksper's deer stealing exploit forms the thesis of this pas- sage of the play, the question of how it came there still remains open. It by no means follows that 57 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS the poacher was the author. Grant White says : " The text of that edition ( 1602) contains evidence that it was written after the production of Henry IV, and it probably represents a play written has- tily (in a fortnight to please the queen, tradition says) by Shake-speare, with the help of some other playwright, whose work was rejected on a revision of the comedy, to which we owe the version printed in the Folio of 1623." * The Quarto shows plainly the evidence of a hurried, bungled com- position, and it tends to confirm the tradition that it was hastily produced for the stage, and it must have been mangled somewhere between the au- thor's hands and those of the printer. Not only are there omissions that leave the fragmentary pas- sages meaningless but there are passages as hope- lessly un-Shakespearean as anything in The Tam- ing of a Shrew ; witness the dialogue between Fen- ton and Anne Page in Act III, scene 4. Hence, * Introduction to The Merry Wives, second edition. 58 A SUGGESTION taking all things into consideration, it is impossi- ble to say in all cases exactly what Shake-speare wrote. It might not be unreasonable to claim that this caricature of Sir Thomas is a gag, especially as it does not appear in the Quarto. However, I do not accept that explanation, but believe it to have been written by Shake-speare himself, and this for three reasons : first, because, while it does not appear in the Quarto, the sentence introducing it does, showing that something has been omitted, presumably that which appears in the correspond- ing place in the Folio ; second, because it is a typical example of Shakespearean wit, and third, because I do not believe that Shake-speare was Shaksper. Nearly all the commentators accept the tradi- tion that the play was produced very hastily in re- sponse to some kind of order from court in fourteen days it is said ; be that as it may, it shows signs of haste. Now, if a play broker needing, in a hurry, a play with Falstaff as the principal char- 59 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS acter, had gone to his favorite playwright with his commission, what is more likely than that he should have suggested what appeared to be an amusing incident in his own career as good ma- terial to work up what is more likely than that the playwright should have said : " Very good, indeed, but the joke will be on you, for you must be Falstaff " ? What is more unlikely than that the dramatist should have burlesqued himself as Falstaff ? But if there is anything at all in the story Falstaff is as surely Shaksper as Shallow is Lucy. However this may be, that there is one caricature in the play under consideration it seems impossible to doubt. The author has not even taken the trouble to disguise the name of his vic- tim. Dr. John Caius was a professor at Cambridge until 1573 when he died. He was of a very iras- cible and quarrelsome temper, continually in broils with the students who hated and ridiculed him. He had some of them whipped and put 60 A SUGGESTION into the stocks. He continually engaged in per- sonal altercation with them. He had an especial antipathy to Welshmen. All of which character- istics go to identify him with his namesake of the play. The students finally appealed to Lord Treasurer Burleigh, whose nephew, Francis Bacon, was then a student at Cambridge.* This does not seem to be a reminiscence that Mr. Manager Shaksper would have been likely to suggest. Ford and Page are, 1 believe, Stratford, or at least Warwickshire, names, but they may very eas- ily have been supplied by the manager, and tak- ing all these things into consideration they would seem to indicate that William Shaksper's connec- tion with the Plays was managerial rather than au- thorial. ' See Francis Bacon OUT Shakespeare, br Edwin Reed. Also Dictionary of National Biography. 61 TESTIMONY OF THE FIRST FOLIO In his recent interesting but somewhat conjec- tural Life of Shakespeare, Dr. Rolfe argues that it is absurd to suppose that Bacon had anything to do with the editing of the Shake-speare Folio of 1623 on the ground that the many typographical errors in that volume show "beyond the possibil- ity of a doubt, that the plays in the Folio could not have been carefully revised or seen through the press by any person who had had experience in editing, printing or publishing." He adds : " That Francis Bacon could have edited them or supervised their publication is inconceivable ex- cept to a fool or a Baconian." It is to be hoped that the Baconians are duly appreciative of this differentiation it is a very unusual courtesy. In reply to this a believer in the Baconian editor- ship of the First Folio might in the first place quote Spedding to the effect that many of Bacon's early 62 TESTIMONY OF THE FIRST FOLIO works, published during his lifetime and presum- ably under his supervision, are quite as badly printed as is the Shake-speare First Folio. Next, he might show that, at the time of the appearance of the Folio, Bacon was suffering from the mental distress following what is known as his "fall", and that he was very deeply occupied in matters which probably to him, at that period of his life, ap- peared of much greater consequence, and that whatever share he might have had in the matter was undoubtedly delegated to secretaries. He might also suggest that if Bacon wished to remain unknown in the matter he would have been care- ful not to have allowed his hand to appear in it, thereby providing Dr. Rolfe with his argument. He might also call attention to the fact that the only literary man who is known to have had any connection with the publication of the Folio was Ben Jonson, and he could show on the authority of William Drummond and Archbishop Tenison 63 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS that Jonson was at or about this time one of Bacon's secretaries, which would seem to be bring- ing the matter pretty closely home to Bacon's door. He might also ask Dr. Rolfe to join him in a guessing match as to who wrote the very re- markable Dedication of the Folio and the Ad- dress to the Great Variety of Readers. Surely not Heminge and Condell ! It may be fairly said that the only evidence connecting the Shake-speare plays with William Shaksper as their author is the first collected edi- tion, published in 1623, seven years after Shaks- per's death, and known as the " First Folio." The spelling Shaksper is used to designate the player. That appears to be his own spelling as far as his autographs are legible and it was the most common spelling of the name of the Strat- ford family. The name Shakespeare makes its first appearance in English annals appended to the dedication of Venus and Adonis in 1593 ; with all 64 TESTIMONY OF THE FIRST FOLIO the sixty-seven, more or less, ways in which the name of the Stratford family was spelled, that never occurs. The first syllable was always short and the pronunciation appears to have been Shax- pur, probably a corruption of Jacques Pierre, al- though Dr. Rolfe says this derivation is absurd. It is true that between 1597 and 1611 forty-two plays were published as having been written by William Shakespeare orShake-speare. Langbaine, in his English Dramatic Poets (1691), enumerates forty-six plays. This list of forty-two contains such plays as The Merry Devil of Edmonton and The Puritan or the Widow of Watling Street, plays which no one ever has, since the beginning of Shakespearean criticism, supposed for an in- stant came from the master's hand. This list of forty-two comprises only the plays published as Shake-speare's, though many others were attributed to him. Shaksper was a popular theatrical man- ager, and it is very likely that plays produced 65 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS on the stage by him were spoken of as his or as Shake-speare's without a very distinct idea as to authorship. Hence if the testimony ended here the natural and only supposition would be that during those years " William Shake-speare " was a popular pseudonym used by anyone who chose to append it to any anonymous play, and that there must have been two, if not more, authors who thus used it or the publishers of the plays used it for them. In 1616 William Shaksper died at Stratford on Avon, leaving a most circumstan- tial will, which enumerated his possessions down to his " silver gilt bowl " and his famous "second best bed," but which contained no mention of any books, manuscripts or any interest in any literary property whatever. Nor has any evidence been produced dating from his lifetime that he at any time had any such interest. So the matter rested till 1623, so it probably would have rested till this day, and the author of the wonderful dramas 66 TESTIMONY OF THE FIRST FOLIO would be still regarded as the great unknown if it had not been for the publication of the Folio. This purported to be, as its title page declares, " Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, published according to the True Originall Copies, London, printed by Isaac lag- gard and Ed. Blount, 1623." This volume contains thirty-six plays, which may be classified in three groups : First, eighteen selected from the forty-two already mentioned as having been published during Shaksper's lifetime as by William Shakespeare or Shake-speare ; sec- ond, one, Othello, which had been published in like manner in 1622, six years after Shaksper's death ; third, seventeen, which had not been previously published, six of which, according to Dr. Halli- well-Phillips, we now hear of indisputably for the first time. These thirty-six plays, with Pericles, which later editors have added, constitute the canon as we have it to-day. 67 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Several of the Plays as they appear in the Folio are revised versions of the texts of the Quartos. This is especially noticeable in the case of Othello, the first edition of which appeared in 1622 six years after the actor's death and yet it underwent a thorough revision with additions, thoroughly characteristic of Shake-speare, before its appear- ance in the Folio the next year. Richard III likewise was revised and augmented between 1621 and 1623. Three names besides those of the printers are prominently connected with this publication, those of John Heminge, Henry Condell and Ben Jon- son. Heminge and Condell were fellow actors with Shaksper and they sign the dedication, which is to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomerie, and the address "to the Great Variety of Readers." These are very curious documents. While un- doubtedly designed to convey the idea that the Plays are the work of the Stratford player, they 68 TESTIMONY OF THE FIRST FOLIO avoid an explicit statement to that effect. More- over, they are written in a style indicating the hand of a master of English. They suggest thorough classical scholarship and a richness of metaphor and skill in its use, and withal a grace of diction not to be expected, and, in fact, incon- ceivable in such unlearned men as Heminge and Condell are known to have been. Moreover, they are very much in the style of many of the prose passages of the Plays themselves. Part of the dedication is almost a translation of the dedica- tion of one of Pliny's works to the Emperor Titus. Here is an example of the diction: " Country hands reach forth milk, cream, fruits or what they have, and many nations, we have heard, that had not gums and incense, obtained their requests with a leavened cake. It was no fault to approach their gods by what means they could, and the most, though meanest of things, are made more precious when dedicated to Temples." 69 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Now, if manner, style, diction mean anything, this dedication was written by no other than Fran- cis Bacon. It is, of course, useless to argue about style, but anyone sufficiently interested can com- pare the dedication as a whole with Bacon's Essays. Two other points should be noted in regard to this dedication. One is that it adopts an air of familiarity which it would have been impossible for men in the position of Heminge and Condell to use in addressing two noble lords at that day, and the other is that it fairly bristles with legal terms, as do the Plays. " To procure his orphans, guardians," " We cannot go beyond our own powers " (the legal phrase ultra vires), " We have deprived ourselves of the defense of our dedica- tion," " Prosecuted their author," "To be execu- tor of his own writing." It has been suggested that this dedication was written by Jonson. If it was written by him he wrote it in a very different and more poetic style than is shown in any of his 70 TESTIMONY OF THE FIRST FOLIO acknowledged prose that has come down to us. In regard to the "Address to the Readers " the case is not so clear. It might have been written by Jonson ; its badinage somewhat resembles that of some of his introductions, but the wit is more sprightly. I believe this also to be by Bacon for one reason, that it also is top-heavy with legal phrases not a peculiarity of Jonson's " Had their trial already and stood out all appeals " and "Come forth acquitted by a decree of Court" are examples. We now turn back to the title page and find it disfigured by the horrible Droeshout "portrait," " a hard, wooden, staring thing," as Grant White calls it, that bears no resemblance, except by way of caricature, to anything human, least of all a poet. This is confronted by Ben Jonson's enig- matical verse : This Figure, that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut ; 71 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Wherein the Graver had a strife With Nature, to outdo the Life : O could he but have drawn his wit As well in brass, as he hath hit His face, the Print would then surpass All that was ever writ in brass. But since he cannot, Reader, look Not on his Picture, but his book. We know how Browning parodied this : This figure that thou seest tut ; Was it for gentle Shakespeare put ? But what does Jonson mean ? One meaning of "for" is "in place of." In place of gentle Shake- speare was put this thing, and if the artist had been a little more successful "the print would then surpass all that was ever writ in brass." But under the circumstances we are instructed to look not at the picture but at the book. This seems a very curious way of commending the picture, and suggests a hoax a brazen hoax. 72 TESTIMONY OF THE FIRST FOLIO A contributor to Notes and Queries, 10th S. III., January 28, 1905, who writes from the Middle Temple, London, paraphrases these verses thus : The figure or portrait opposite was cut (en- graved) and inserted here for (instead, or in place, of) the Gentle Shakespeare (the Shakespeare of the following Plays Francis Bacon, who was "gentle "both in birth and disposition). In executing it the engraver endeavored to pro- duce a likeness more lifelike than nature. O could he have drawn his wit (the Gentle Shakespeare's ) as well in brass as he has hit his face (the features of the other), the print would have surpassed in beauty any engraving before produced. But, since he cannot (or could not), Reader, look ( for that wit ) not at his picture ( the Strat- ford man's picture), but his book (the Gentle Shakespeare's book). But Jonson's connection with the Folio does not end here. Following the Address to the Read- 73 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS ers comes his splendid trumpet blast : " To the Memory of my Beloved Master, William Shake- speare, and what he has left us." " I confess," he says, " thy writings to be such as neither man nor muse can praise too much," and again : Leave thee alone for the comparison Of all, that insolent Greece, or haughty Rome Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. These lines are addressed, of course, to " Shake- speare," that is, to the author of the Plays. It will be remembered that, at or about the time of the publication of the First Folio, Jonson was one of Bacon's private secretaries, or " good pens," as he calls them, and in a position to know what was going on. This seems to bring Bacon pretty close to, at least, an editorial association with the Folio. At Jonson's death he left a book in manuscript 74 TESTIMONY OF THE FIRST FOLIO called Timbre, or Discoveries Made upon Men and Nature. It contains two passages which should be compared with this poem. The first refers to Francis Bacon, and he says of him that " he filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue which may be compared or preferred either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome . . . so that he may be named and stand as the mark and acme of our language ; " exactly, it will be ob- served, what he had previously said about the au- thor of the Shake-speare plays, while of William Shaksper, the player, he said that he "loved the man and honored his memory," but that "he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary that he be stopped snuffed out." " But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than par- doned." In the same volume he enumerates the greatest " wits " of his time. The list is: More, Wyatt, Surrey, Challoner, Smith, Eliot, Gardiner, 75 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sir Philip Sidney, Hooker, Essex, Raleigh, Savile, Sandys, Egerton and Fran- cis Bacon. Has he omitted him whom he de- clared to be the greatest of all, or has he mentioned him by another name ? In Discoveries the headline to the note on Shaksper is De Shakespeare Nostrafre] our fellow, or companion, Shakespeare. In the lines facing the portrait the designation is " The Gentle Shake- speare ; " so it seems that in Ben Jonson's mind there were two " Shakespeares," the " Gentle Shakespeare" and our crony, the actor, and how differently they are described ! Look on this pic- ture and on this. Nevertheless the tendency shown by some ad- vocates of the Baconian theory to disparage the personal character of William Shaksper is to be deprecated as tending to provoke unnecessary hostility and as not being founded on known facts. Jonson's description of him is practically the only 76 TESTIMONY OF THE FIRST FOLIO contemporary evidence we have. In full it is as follows : De Shakespeare nostrat. Augustus in Hat. I re- member, the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted ; and to justify mine own candor ; for I loved the man and do honor his memory, on this side idol- atry, as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature ; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions and gentle expressions ; wherein he flowed with that facility, that some- times it was necessary he should be stopped : Suf- flaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power, would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things, could not escape laughter : as he said in 77 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, " Caesar thou dost me wrong." He replied, " Caesar did never wrong but with just cause," and such like which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned. This would not indicate that he was either dis- honest or ignorant. He appears to have been a genial companion, a shrewd business man, and a most skilful theatrical manager. If Bacon, or some other, was the author of the Plays, Shaksper was certainly his confidential agent, and it is very prob- able that it is chiefly by his agency that the Plays have been preserved to us and, even if he did not write them, as associated with their production and preservation, his name should be forever held in honor. In the Address to the Readers Heminge and Condell or whoever wrote the address signed by them say that they have so published the Plays 78 TESTIMONY OF THE FIRST FOLIO that " as where before you were abused with divers stolen and surreptitious copies, maimed and de- formed by the frauds and stealths of injurious im- postors, that exposed them ; even those are now offered to your view, cured and perfect of their limbs and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them . . . and what he thought he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers." Now, whatever that means, it does not mean, literally, what it says, as is shown by the fact that the printers of the Folio followed as their copy, in many cases, the Quartos the " stolen and sur- reptitious copies" even to repeating their mis- prints, and Ben Jonson in his introductory poem says: " He who casts to write a living line must sweat (such as thine are) and strike the second heat upon the Muses' anvil," and he speaks of his " well turned and true filed lines." This is hardly consistent with the idea that the Plays were struck 79 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS off at a white heat without a blot an erasure or emendation and, besides, we know in the cases of Plays that ran through a number of editions that they were worked over many times. On January 22, 1621, Bacon celebrated his six- tieth birthday. Jonson was present and read a poem beginning thus : Hail, happy Genius of this ancient pile! How comes it all things so about thee smile ? The fire, the wine, the men ! And in the midst Thou stand'st as if some mystery thou didst! Pardon, I read it in thy face What was the " mystery ? " In connection with this matter of Ben Jonson's testimony, I will call attention to one other matter which, while it has been sometimes noticed, has never seemed to be treated as fully as it deserves. In or about 1601, appeared Ben Jonson's burles- que play, The Poetaster, in which some contem- porary is held up to ridicule in the character of 80 TESTIMONY OF THE FIRST FOLIO Ovid the Younger. This Ovid is a young lawyer or law student of Rome in the time of Augustus, but instead of applying himself to the law he devotes his time to writing poetry and stage plays in opposition to the wishes of his father and other friends and to their great disgust. This caricature is a palpable hit at young Francis Bacon, whose lighter literary pursuits were strenuously opposed by his mother, his uncle, Lord Burleigh, and by his friend Sir Thomas Bodley, the founder of the Bodleian Library, who excluded from it all English dramatic works. Bacon presented Bodley with a copy of his Cogita et Visa in 1607, and Bodley, in replying, congratulated Bacon on having at last made choice of a fit subject of study, "which course," he added, " would to God to whisper as much into your ear you had followed at the first, when you fell to the study of such a study as was not worthy such a student." Moreover, The Poetaster is filled with broad or covert allusions to 81 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS the earlier Shake-speare plays, one scene in parti- cular being a broad burlesque of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. Ovid makes love to Julia, the daughter of the Emperor Augustus, who ap- pears at a window above. Ovid quotes, with only slight variations, from Romeo and Juliet and from Hamlet and other Shake-speare plays. In another place he is represented as writing, in the course of his poetic effusions, the very lines that appear on the title-page of Venus and Adonis, though they are of course given in English translation : Kneele hindes to trash ; me let bright Phoebus swell, With cups full flowing from the Muses' well. No explanation has been given of this burlesque except on the theory that Francis Bacon or some- one situated exactly as he was wrote the Plays and Poems. A fuller account of this curious play and its application to the theory of Baconian au- thorship may be found in that extremely interest- 82 TESTIMONY OF THE FIRST FOLIO ing little volume, Bacon-Shakespeare, an Essay, by E. W. S. (Smithson). It is the opinion of the author of Is It Shakespeare ? that Bacon as the au- thor of poems and plays is also referred to in the character of Sir John Daw in Jonson's Silent Woman. All these are matters which Shaksper- ians tacitly agree to ignore. Jonson's attitude, in these early years, seems to have been anything but well disposed toward Ba- con, to whom there can be but little doubt he in- tended his " Cheveril" Epigrams to apply: ON CHEVERIL Cheveril cries out my verses libels are ; And threatens the Star-chamber and the bar. What are thy petulant pleadings, Cheveril, then, That quit'st the cause so oft, and rail'st at men. ON CHEVERIL THE LAWYER No cause, nor client fat, will Cheveril leese, But as they come, on both sides he takes fees, 83 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS And pleaseth both ; for while he melts his grease, For this; that wins, for whom he holds his peace. A Cheveril conscience is one easily stretched like a kid glove. Jonson probably had the pro- fessional jealousy toward the amateur intruder into the domain of the playwright. His feeling for Bacon, however, underwent a great change in later years, before the time when he wrote of him that "he hath filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue, which may be compared or preferred either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome. . . . Now things daily fall, wits grow downward, and eloquence grows backward ; so that he may be named and stand as the mark and acme of our language." Among contemporary allusions to Shake-speare or Shaksper there is only one, so far as I can learn, that seems to tend to identify them, and that is in The Return from Parnassus, a play 84 TESTIMONY OF THE FIRST FOLIO acted at St. John's College, Cambridge, about 1601, in which Burbage and Kemp, Shaksper's fellow-players, appear and discuss theatrical and other matters, including the talents of the " Uni- versity Pens." Kemp says: "Why here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, ay and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben is a pestilent fellow ; he brought up Horace giving the Poets a pill,* but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him beray his credit." The author of Is It Shakespeare? believes this " purge " to be the play of Troilus and Cressida. Now here does seem, for once, to be a positive identification of Shaksper, "our fellow Shake- speare," with the poet, and the Shaksperians make the most of it. The Baconians reply that there is no question that Shaksper and Shake-speare were identified in the popular mind at the time. The Plays were known as Shakespeare's plays and * An allusion to a scene in Jonson's The Poetaster. 85 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Shaksper or his company owned and presented them. The dialogue in The Return from Parnas- sus proves nothing more than that the author shared the common delusion or, knowing better, preferred to keep his own counsel. If Ben Jonson's Epigram, On Poet-ape, applies to Shaksper the actor-manager, as is usually con- ceded, it shows very clearly what Shaksper's part was in the production of the Plays. Poor Poet-ape that would be thought our chief, Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit, From brokerage is become so bold a thief, As we the robb'd, leave rage, and pity it. At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean, Buy the reversion of old plays ; now grown To little wealth and credit in the scene, He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own, And told of this he slights it. Tut, such crimes The sluggish gaping auditor devours. He marks not whose 'twas first, and aftertimes May judge it to be his, as well as ours. 86 TESTIMONY OF THE FIRST FOLIO Fool ! as if half eyes will not know a fleece From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece. He was a play-broker, he bought up the rever- sions of old plays, he appropriated the wit of each, and, when remonstrated with, showed perfect in- difference as well he might if he had Bacon behind him. Jonson at least thought that he, with half an eye, could distinguish the shreds and patches of the manager and adapter from "the whole piece" of the supreme poet. And who was in a better position to know than Ben Jonson? AN ORTHODOX DEFENSE Mr. Andrew Lang, in the Study called The Shakespeare-Bacon Imbroglio, one of those in- cluded in the book called The Valet's Tragedy and other Studies, commences his defense of the orthodox Shaksperian position by quoting with approval a certain " sage " to the effect that "there are foolisher fellows than the Baconians those who argue against them;" whereupon Mr. Lang proceeds to argue against them to the extent of forty-five pages, thus giving the Baconians the satisfaction of resting in the assured conviction that they are less foolish than Mr. Lang, which as a rule is not foolish at all. It should be a great consolation to them either to receive this spon- taneous tribute or to welcome Mr. Lang into their fellowship of "foolish fellows." He next declares that " on the other hand, ig- norance has often cherished beliefs which science 88 AN ORTHODOX DEFENSE has been obliged reluctantly to admit. The exis- tence of meteorites and the phenomena of hypno- tism were familiar to the ancient world and to modern peasants while philosophy disdained to investigate them. In fact, it is never really prudent to overlook a widely spread opinion." This has been my main contention through this series of papers, but it leads Mr. Lang to a most curious non sequitur. " Thus," he says, " a light is thrown on the nature of popular delusions " like the existence of meteorites and the phenomena of hypnotism, we are left to suppose. The fact is leaving "modern peasants" out of account, as they probably have no views on the subject whatever that in many subjects, like the one at present under discussion, the generally well informed man of the world, who draws his infor- mation from all available sources, is in a better position to come to a just conclusion than is the professional scholar or other specialist. The pro- 89 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS fessional scholar is a specialist. He is set apart for a certain purpose, which is to investigate cer- tain facts and phenomena and report his results. It is to him other men must go to get these facts as they need them. If the "scholar" or other specialist cannot pass his information on he is in that capacity at least useless. Mr. Lang thinks that none but scholars should venture to pro- nounce on Shake-speare's scholarship. Well, Mr. Churton Collins is a scholar in the strictest sense of the word and he has shown conclusively in his elaborate Studies in Shakespeare that the author of the Plays was thoroughly familiar with the Greek and Latin classics ; it is not necessary to suppose that he was in the strict sense of the word a " scholar ; " nobody claims that for Bacon in fact, but what he thought he might require he went and took, and he always seemed to know where to find it. It appears that it was Mr. Lang who said that 90 AN ORTHODOX DEFENSE "Hi ludi, tuiti sibi, Fr. Bacono nati" " is magnifi- cent but it is not Latin." Of course there is no question that Mr. Lang understands Latin, but observe what queer things he says about it. Mr. Donnelly, in trying to establish a certain parallel the precise parallel is of no consequence, no single parallel is translated three lines from Cat- ullus Soles occidere et redire possunt ; Nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux, Nox est perpetuo una dormienda thus: The lights of heaven go out and return ; When once our brief candle goes out, One night is to be perpetually slept. But, says Mr. Lang, " soles are not lights and brevis lux is not a candle." They are not ? I had al- ways supposed, when I read in the first chapter of Genesis that " God made two great lights ; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to 91 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS rule the night," that the " greater light " referred to was the sun, but now we are told that suns are not lights ! As for brevis lux, I suppose it will be admitted that lux is a flame and that when Mac- beth said, " Out, out brief candle," he contem- plated extinguishing the flame, not throwing the candle bodily out of the window. This is really presuming too much on the ignorance of the Ba- conians. Having now discovered Mr. Lang's method of dealing with Latin, I can breath freely once more about my anagramatic sentence. But now comes another beautiful example of the dis- ingenuousness with which this controversy is conducted. Mr. Lang says: "Dr. Platt, by ma- nipulating the scraps of Latin in Love's Labour's Lost, extracts 'Hi ludi, tuiti sibi, Fr. Bacono nati.' " Dr. Platt did nothing of the sort as any- body can see by referring to page twenty-four of this book. The sentence was "extracted " from a sin- gle word containing twenty-seven letters and every 92 AN ORTHODOX DEFENSE single one of them was used and used only once. Now, as I cannot suppose that Mr. Lang would intentionally deceive any one, I am driven to the conclusion that on this occasion he did not take the trouble to inform himself about the matter of which he was talking which is the very same laches he is so fond of fastening upon his oppo- nents. I hope that this is the retort courteous. Bacon's Promus or Commonplace book has been discussed so much that further mention of it would seem to be unnecessary if it were not for a curious perversion which Mr. Lang makes of an argument which has been drawn from it. The book, as is well known, is a commonplace or memorandum book kept by Bacon, and in it occur thousands of words, phrases and sentences which appear again in the Plays. Whether they appear elsewhere is beside the present discussion. The point is that when Mrs. Pott edited the book in 1883, she called attention to one single 93 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS page, page 111, on which there occur these entries : Rome, Golden sleep, Uprouse, The Larke ; and that these entries were suggestive of notes for Romeo and Juliet, two passages of which will occur to anyone : But where unbruised youth with unstuff'd brain Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign : Therefore thy earliness doth me assure, Thou art up-rous'd by some distemperature. and It was the nightingale and not the lark, That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear. Mr. Lang's treatment of this proposition is to ignore it and in place of it to give an impression that Mrs. Pott's argument is that the common oc- currence of "golden sleep" and "up-rouse" in Bacon's note book, and in Romeo and Juliet, is a proof that Bacon wrote the play, which assumed contention he then laughs out of court. Of course 94 AN ORTHODOX DEFENSE no such contention was ever made. The point is the curious juxtaposition of the words beginning with Rome which word Mr. Lang entirely ig- nores. Rome with the mark of elision spells Romeo. As William D. O'Connor showed years ago, in Hamlet's Note-Book, it can spell nothing else no known word nor known proper name. This is easily tested by placing each of the letters of the alphabet in succession after Rome. All of this Mr. Lang ignores. It is easy to combat your opponents' arguments if you supply them for yourself. In this case there was no particular argument. Attention was called to a curious co- incidence and the coincidence is still unaccounted for. For all I know Bacon may have attended a performance of Romeo and Juliet and taken notes, but what strange notes to take ! It is another thing to be accounted for, that is all. According to Mr. Lang, the Baconian theory implies the belief that Bacon would for five or six 95 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS pounds patch up and revamp an old play, which he thinks is very absurd. Well, at the time when Bacon was imprisoned for debt it is probable that he would have found five or six pounds very con- venient. But the Baconian theory does not re- quire any such assumption. That Shake-speare produced the immortal dramas by patching up the work of old forgotten playwrights is an assump- tion of the orthodox Shaksperians though they have never been able to find the old playwrights. The Baconians believe that when the Plays show evidence of revision that the author has revised his own work, the work of his apprentice years, which would be the natural view to take in any such case. An examination of Love's Labour's Lost shows in two places very clearly and very in- terestingly just what the revision was, by reason of the copyist or printer having left in the old version while adding the new. Here is one ex- ample : AN ORTHODOX DEFENSE FIRST VERSION From women's eyes this doctrine I derive : They are the ground, the books, the academes From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire. REVISED VERSION From women's eyes this doctrine I derive : They sparkle still the right Promethean fire ; They are the books, the arts, the academes That show, contain and nourish all the world. Does this look like patching up and revamping the work of another playwright ? It is hardly fair for the Shaksperians to foist their theories off on the Baconians and expect the Baconians to account for them. This revamping theory seems to have been invented in order to try and get the known career of the actor within planetary distance of the author. That Shaksper, as manager of the theater, adapted plays may readily be admitted, but that is an entirely different matter. Besides, why the as- sumption that the Plays were written for money ? 97 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS The Baconians are not responsible for that. Says Grant White and he is only expressing the gen- erally received opinion : All that we know of his life and of his domestic career leaves us no room for doubt that, if his pub- lic had preferred it, he would have written thirty seven plays like Titus Andronicus, just as readily, though not as willingly, as he wrote As You Like It, King Lear, Hamlet and Othello. He wrote what he wrote only to fill the theater and his own pockets. It is not unlikely that in the days that Bacon was in the hands of the " Lombards", the five or six pounds the sum Mr. Lang has fixed upon would have been very acceptable and would most undoubtedly have been an inducement to write ; but in viewing the Plays en masse it is quite evi- dent that the man who could write them could not help writing them and that the true and sufficient motive was the glory of the Creator and the relief 98 AN ORTHODOX DEFENSE of man's estate and the bestowal of a priceless and immortal legacy upon all the sons of men. Then our critic thinks the Baconian theory is reduced to an absurdity because Bacon would never have entrusted his precious compositions to a raw country lout. Of course not, but who painted that picture ? Not the Baconians but the orthodox Shaksperian biographers themselves. Grant White said: The biographer of Shakespeare must record these facts, because the literary antiquaries have unearthed, produced and pitilessly printed them as new particulars in the life of Shakespeare. We hunger and we receive these husks ; we open our mouths for food and we break our teeth against these stones. The Baconians, so far as they have accepted the story, accepted it as they found it. The probabil- ity to be deduced from the evidence seems to be that Shaksper was rather deficient in book-learn- 99 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS ing, which is not in the least incompatible with his being a shrewd business man and good theatrical manager and a suitable agent for Bacon if Bacon was indeed the author but is hardly consistent with his writing Hamlet and Lear. Besides think of it the author of Hamlet allowing his daughters to be brought up without being taught to write ! That fact alone is sufficient to put Mr. William Shaksper out of court. Mr. Lang thinks it is presumptuous for those who are not " scholars " to form or express opin- ions on the matter of the authorship of the Plays. This leads him into a curious paradox that it re- quires scholarship to form an opinion of plays which he thinks it required no scholarship to write. I have not selected Mr. Lang's Study for criti- cism from any ill will to Mr. Lang nor because I consider it more unfair or unreasonable than others but because it is recent and typical. The argu- 100 AN ORTHODOX DEFENSE ment for the Baconian authorship depends upon a vast mass of circumstantial evidence. It is not a chain but a bundle of rods. Whether Jupiter can break it or not remains to be seen ; " but to pull out one or two of the weakest of the rods from the bundle and triumphantly proclaim their weakness does not materially effect the strength of the case. What ought to be sought in the matter is the truth, not mere controversial success. When Bacon's Promus was edited by Mrs. Pott, in 1883, it was with a preface by Dr. E. A. Abbott, who has never been suspected of heretical ideas on the subject. In this preface, while not accepting the editor's views, he claimed for the book the greatest value and interest as throwing light on the growth and development of our language during the most important period of its evolution and illustrating Bacon's connection with them, as well as the development of his own won- derful power of expression. In spite of all this 101 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS and of Dr. Abbott's endorsement of the Promus as a most important document entirely apart from the question of the authorship of Shake-speare, it was received by the " Scholars " with a unanimous burst of ridicule and abuse, expressed for the most part in terms showing that they had not even ex- amined the book and had entirely mistaken its purport and purpose. This abuse they even ex- tended to Bacon himself. Only last year, in his Studies in Shakespeare, Mr. Churton Collins as- serts Bacon to have been a man " without a spark of genial humor ; that in his voluminous works there is no trace of any light play of wit and fancy, of any profound passion, of any esthetic enthus- iasm." If it had not been for the acrimony and petulant peevishness which the danger threatening their settled teachings provokes would Mr. Collins or any other man of letters write thus of one of whom Macaulay declared : " The poetic faculty was pow- 102 AN ORTHODOX DEFENSE erful in Bacon's mind, but not, like his wit, so powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of his reason and to tyrannize over the whole man. Much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world " ? Of whom it was said by Shelley : " Lord Bacon was a poet. His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm which satisfies the sense no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philos- ophy satisfies the intellect. It is a strain which distends and then bursts the circumference of the reader's mind, and pours itself forth together with it into the universal element with which it has perpetual sympathy " ? Of whom Lord Lytton said : " Poetry pervaded the thoughts, it inspired the similes, it hymned in the majestic sentences of the wisest of mankind " ? But let us listen a moment to the great Verulam himself : But howsoever these things are thus in men's de- praved judgements and affections, yet Truth, which 103 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of Truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it ; the knowledge of Truth, which is the presence of it ; and the belief of Truth, which is the enjoying of it ; is the sovereign good of human nature. It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore and to see ships tossed upon the sea : a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle and to see a battle and the adven- tures thereof below but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of Truth, a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene, and to see the errors and wanderings and mists and tempests in the vale below ; so always that this prospect be with pity and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence and turn upon the poles of Truth. 104 DID MARSTON AND HALL READ THE QUARTO MONOGRAMS? In 1598, John Marston published two books, one known as Pigmalion's Image and Certain Satyrs, the other, The Scourge of Villainie, the latter consisting of another series of satires. Mars- ton and Hall, as it is needless to say, were the rival satirists of the time, attacking each other and most of the contemporary writers and other prom- inent people. It is generally conceded that a number of passages in the Satires refer to Shake- speare. That Marston was familiar with Shake- speare's work and impressed by it is evident almost at a glance. Pygmalion's Image is written in the unusual meter of Venus and Adonis and, in some appended verses, that poem is directly referred to : So Labeo did complaine his love was stone, Obdurate, flinty, so relentlesse none ; 105 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Yet Lynceus knowes, that in the end of this, He wrought as strange a metamorphosis. This seems to be a sufficiently clear allusion to the lines in Venus and Adonis, 199-200 Art thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel, Nay, more than flint, for stone at rain relenteth ? and to the strange metamorphosis at the end, that of Adonis into a flower. The name Labeo, thus becomes a key to various allusions to the author of the Shake-speare works in the satires of both Marston and Hall. A fuller discussion of this interesting subject may be found in the second chapter of a book which I advise all interested to read, the Cambridge Graduate's Is It Shakespeare? Marston's familiarity with Shake-speare is also shown in his plays. His Antonio's Revenge, pub- lished in 1602, may almost be said to be founded on Hamlet, much of the plot and many of the inci- dents being taken directly from it. 106 MARSTON AND HALL In Shakespeariana for February and March, 1884, Mr. Fleay showed that Marston drew from or alluded to Shake-speare in eleven of his plays to say nothing of his other writings. His allusions to Shake-speare are as a rule satirical, but the satire is not so virulent as that directed to some other contemporary writers, Ben Jonson for instance, who was so incensed that he beat Marston and took away his pistol. Shake- speare took a gentler but perhaps a more efficient vengeance by caricaturing Marston as Malvolio. Marston's abbreviated signature was IO: MA. Malvolio, in Twelfth Night, act II, scene v, after rinding the letter dropped in his way by Maria, reads : I may command where I adore ; but silence, like a Lucrece knife With bloodless stroke my heart doth gore : M, O, A, I, doth sway my life. Marston is represented as having been exceed- 107 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS ingly vain and pragmatical. He was continually taking to task other writers for alleged indecencies and immoralities qualities in which his own writ- ings excelled. In devising the plot against Mal- volio, Maria says : " Marry sir, sometimes he is a kind of a puritan," and presently adds : " The devil a puritan that he is, or anything constantly but a time-pleaser ; an affectioned ass, that cons state without book and utters it by great swarths ; the best persuaded of himself, so crammed, as he thinks, with excellences, that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him." " Some- times a kind of a puritan," would seem to apply to Marston very well. Sir Andrew's threat to beat him may refer to the beating he had from Jonson ; anyhow the " consonancy of the sequel " is sufficiently clear. Several of the allusions to the Shake-speare works in the Satires of both Marston and Hall seem to hint at a concealed authorship of the Plays and 108 MARSTON AND HALL Poems, and that the true author was a lawyer. In one line, the seventy seventh of Marston's Satire IV, somebody, apparently the true Shake-speare, is referred to as Mediocria firma, which is about equivalent to spelling out Bacon in so many let- ters, as Mediocria firma was Bacon's family motto and can be seen under his coat of arms surmount- ing most of his portraits. This is in what appears to be a reply on the part of Marston to the attack of Hall and was published shortly after. The passage is as follows : Fond censurer ! why should those mirrors seeme So vile to thee, which better judgements deeme Exquisite then, and in our polish'd times May run for sencefull tollerable lines ? What, not mediocria firma from thy spight ? In that same year, 1598, Hall, in the first Satire of Book IV, had written : Labeo is whip't and laughs me in the face : Why ? for I smite and hide the galled-place. 109 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Gird but the Cynick's helmet on his head, Cares he for Talus, or his flayle of lead ? Long as the crafty Cuttle lieth sure In the black Cloud of his thicke vomiture, Who list complaine of wronged faith or fame, When he may shift it to another's name ? Marcus Antistius Labeo was a prominent law- yer in Rome, mentioned by Horace, who offended the Emperor Augustus by his too frank speech. Now Bacon was a lawyer, and, as is well known, had given offence to his sovereign by his defence of the privilege of Parliament in the matter of the subsidies bill in 1593. So far as this goes the name applies very well to Bacon. To be sure it does not go very far, but what follows is sug- gestive. He girds on the Cynic's helmet and throws out, like the cuttlefish, a cloud that ob- scures himself and shifts what he has done or written to another's name. Now The Honourable Order of The Knights of the Helmet was the 110 MARSTON AND HALL title assumed by the Gray's Inn revelers. In their revels Bacon was known to have a promi- nent part, and it was during the Christmas cele- bration in 1594 that the Comedy of Errors was attempted to be performed at Gray's Inn at the time when, by reason of overcrowding, so much confusion ensued that the Ambassador from the Inner Temple withdrew with his train in discon- tent, " so that the night was begun and continued to the end in nothing but confusion and errors : whereupon it was ever afterwards called the Night of Errors." Some critics have tried to identify Hall's Labeo with Marston himself, but this seems impossible because at that time Marston had published noth- ing and it is certainly reasonable to suppose that by Labeo Hall and Marston referred to the same person. If this is so, how does it happen that the Labeo whom we found associated with Venus and Adonis is spoken of as girding on the Cynic's ill BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Helmet, hiding himself like a cuttlefish and shift- ing what he has done to another's name ? I have refrained from treating this branch of the subject more fully because the Cambridge Graduate has already done so, but I have referred to it as introductory to a phase of the matter of which he does indee,d speak but to which he gives an interpretation which to me at least seems less satisfactory than the one presently to be of- f erred. In The Scourge of Villainy, Satire IX, which carries the headline, "Here's a Toy to mocke an Ape indeede" occur these lines : My soule adores judiciall schollership ; But when to servile imitatorship Some spruce Athenian pen is prentized, Tis worse than apish. Fie ! be not flattered With seeming worth ! Fond affectation Befits an ape, and mumping Babilon. O what a tricksie, lerned, nicking strain 112 MARSTON AND HALL Is this applauded, senseless, modern vain ! When late I heard it from sage Mutius lips, How ill, methought, such wanton jiggin skips Beseem'd his graver speech. "Farre fly thy fame, Most, most of me beloved ! whose silent name One letter bounds. Thy true judiciall stile I ever honour ; and, if my love beguile Not much my hopes, then thy unvalued worth Shall mount faire place, when apes are turned forth." Praise from Marston for anyone is very rare indeed, but who can be the subject of this eulo- gium blended with reproof ? Well, he evidently has the following characteristics: He has "judi- cial scholarship " and a " spruce Athenian pen " that is, the pen of a university man but is "pren- ticed" to " imitatorship," which is "worse than apish." His "wanton jiggin skips," so Marston thought, did not beseem " his graver speech ; " but unless the writer's hopes were beguiled by his love, 113 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS " then thy unvalued worth Shall mount faire place, when apes are turned forth." Apes was a frequent term of reproach for play- actors, so it is here pretty evident that the person addressed, one of judicial scholarship and having a university education, is debasing his talents by writing for the stage in a manner which fails to meet Marston's full approval, and his name is silent, /'. e., concealed. If Bacon were writing for the stage it would fit him very well, but of course we know there were others writing for the stage whom it would fit except as to the " silent name." But we know of Marston's allusions to Shake- speare and to Mediocria frrna, so we naturally think of them. But what about that " silent name one letter bounds ? " Marston is nothing if not sphynx-like. The Mediocria firma puzzle was comparatively easy. Let others make their guesses at this. Here is mine : The silent name Mutius again suggests silence bounded by one letter is 114 MARSTON AND HALL nothing else than Bacon's monogram in the Quar- tos. For what is a monogram but a single letter or character bounding a name ? " Monos alone : gramma a letter. A character consisting of sev- eral letters in one." That is the way it is given in the Century Dictionary. The Cambridge Graduate suggests that this may refer to the F in the monogram F B R at the beginning of Lucrece, but the F can hardly be said to bound the name in that case, whereas in the Quarto monograms the name is entirely bounded or enclosed in a single character. Perhaps somebody better versed in the literary gossip of those days my ignorance has no bear- ing on the problem can make a better guess, but until I hear of it, I shall adhere to mine, and if my guess is right, one man at least, as early as 1598, had read this particular cryptogram. 115 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS In fact, unless the monograms in the Quartos are mere accidental combinations of letters it would appear that the passage quoted is a most evident reference to it. Of course some other explanation may be found, but there are so many things in need of explanation. 116 AN AFTERWORD I am told by a correspondent that there is no need for the orthodox Shaksperians to answer questions ; that they are in full possession and that any child can ask puzzling questions. Well, the Shaksperians are in possession, but not in undisturbed possession, and it does not indicate much confidence in one's title to refuse to permit it to be examined. As for the proposition in re- gard to the child's questions, it reminds me of a re- cent newspaper story. A little boy's mother says to him : " Willie, you must stop asking your father questions. Don't you see they annoy him ? " To which the boy replies : " No'm, it ain't my ques- tions that annoy him. It's the answers he can't give that make him mad." Perhaps, after all, children's questions blaze the way to human en- lightenment, and we have long ago heard out of whose mouths wisdom is ordained. 117 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS In this little book I have endeavored to set forth some of the facts encountered in the course of my reading, tending to connect the name of Francis Bacon with the Plays and Poems known as Shake-speare's. Their meaning, their interpre- tation, their bearing upon the authorship of those immortal works, I leave to the reader. They are not offered in jest but they resemble a jest in that their prosperity lies in the ear of him w r ho hears them, never in the tongue of him who utters them. The question raised is one not to be dismissed by taunts nor scoffs nor jeers. I have no personal sensitiveness, but taunts, scoffs and jeers do not aid in the elucidation of the problem and we want the truth. The world will not be forever satisfied with those two putforths of Pope rf The brightest, wisest, meanest of mankind," and " For gain, not glory, winged his roving flight and grew immortal in his own despite." They have been repeated 118 AN AFTERWORD parrot-like ad nauseum. We want the truth. We want to know the mighty mind behind the mighty work. " Cui bonol" says one, "we have the Plays." Yes, thank God ! we have the Plays, but we want more. We want to know whence they came, what mind they represent, in what granite their foothold is tenoned and mortised, whether they represent a successful attempt to pack the theater and acquire a competency and a coat of arms ; or whether they are the outpourings of a soul bent upon the glory of the Creator and the relief of Man's estate. Unseen, in the great minster-dome of time, Whose shafts are centuries, its spangled roof The vaulted universe, our Master sits, And organ-voices, like a far-off chime, Roll through the aisles of thought ; the sunlight flits From arch to arch, and as he sits aloof, Kings, Heroes, Priests, in concourse vast, sublime, 119 BACON CRYPTOGRAMS Glances of love and cries from battle field, His wizard power breathes on the living air. Warm faces gleam and pass ; child, woman, man y In the long multitude, but he, concealed, Our bard eludes us ; vainly each face we scan, It is not he, his features are not there, But being thus hid his greatness is revealed* * F. G. Scott in Shattifrariana, Novtmktr, rS&S 120 NOTES PAGE 16. " Honorificabilitudinitatibui . " Concerning the translation of the anagram, a correspondent writes to me from the Middle Temple, London. " I think tuiti sibi may be rendered freely but legitimately, 'their own guardians,' and so the whole passage may be read : ' These plays, the offspring [or children] of Francis Bacon [are] their own guardians.' Now please compare this with the phrase in the Epistle Dedicatorie of the Folio : ' W^e have done an office to the dead to procure his orphans guard- ians ' his orphans, the children, to which before there were no guardians not having been acknowledged by their parent. There seems a close connection between the two phrases, and this point, I think, strengthens your position." The trouble in the mind of Mr. Lang and others probably arises from the use of "-tuitpf " as a passive and not a deponent verb, but I am quite sure that this usage > has classical authority. PAGE 31. " What is Ab speld backward ivitA a horn on his head? " As I am seeking information and not trying to uphold a thesis, I will offer a suggestion as to a possible but to my mind a very im- probable explanation of the occurrence of this riddle in the text. A writer in Shakespeariana for December, 1883, suggested that Holofernes was intended as a caricature of Bacon. If that were a fact of course it would account for the bringing in of his name in this connection. The resemblance, however, seems to be limited to the facts that Bacon was a learned man and that Holofernes pre- tended to be one, and the suggestion is so very far-fetched that I can hardly think that the writer made it in earnest, but rather that he meant it as a joke on the Baconians. 121 That Bacon associated the word " horn " with a curved line is manifest from his Sylva Sylvarum, section 132 : " It would be tried how, and with what proportion of disadvantage, the voice will be carried in an horn, which is a line arched." PAGE 64. " That Jonson ivas at or about this time one of Bacon's secretaries.'''' Mr. John Churton Collins is a scholar. That is admitted by all. In his Studies in Shakespeare, 1904, pp. 351-2, he says : " Equally unwarrantable and baseless are Dr. Webb's assertions about the relations between Ben Jonson and Bacon. ' It is probable,' he says, ' that Jonson assisted Bacon in the preparation of the Novum Or- ganum.* It is improbable, and in the highest degree improbable, that Ben Jonson had anything to do with the Novum Organum. 'It is an undoubted fact,' continues Dr. Webb, 'that the Latin of the De Augmentis, which was published in 1623, was the work of Jonson.' . . . There is not a particle of evidence that Jonson gave the smallest assistance to Bacon in translating any of his works into Latin." And in a footnote he adds : " Probably the explana- tion is given by Tenison, Baconiana, p. 25, namely, that Bacon had assistance in translation, re-writing, or, at least, carefully revis- ing it himself. The only translator named is Herbert. Hobbes is also said to have assisted him." Turning to Archbishop Tenison's Introduction to Baconiana to which Mr. Collins refers we find, on p. 25, nothing related to the subject ; on p. 24, however, is this : " Afterwards he enlarged the second of those two discourses, [ The Advancement of Learn- ing] which contained especially the above said Partition, and di- vided the matter into eight books, and, knowing that this work was desired beyond the Seas, and being also aware that books written in a modern language, which receiveth much change, in a few years, 122 were out of use ; he caused that part of it which he had written in English, to be translated into the Latin tongue, by Mr. Herbert, and some others, who were esteemed masters in the Roman eloquence." On p. 60, of the same Introduction, we find, referring to Bacon's Apothegms and Essays, this : " His Lordship wrote them in the English tongue, and enlarged them as occasion served, and at last added to them the Colours of Good and Evil, which are likewise found in his book De Augmentis. The Latin translation of them was a work performed by divers hands ; by those of Doctor Hacket (late Bishop of Lichfield), Mr. Benjamin Johnson (the learned and judicious poet) and some others whose names I once heard from Dr. Ranvley, but I cannot recal them." So much for Mr. Collins' ipse dixit \ 123 NO LONGER MOURN FOR ME WHEN I AM DEAD THAN YOU SHALL HEAR THE SURLY SULLEN BELL GIVE WARNING TO THE WORLD THAT I AM FLED FROM THIS VILE WORLD, WITH VILEST WORMS TO DWELL: NAY, IF YOU READ THIS LINE, REMEMBER NOT THE HAND THAT WRIT IT; FOR I LOVE YOU SO, THAT I IN YOUR SWEET THOUGHTS WOULD BE FORGOT IF THINKING ON ME THEN SHOULD MAKE YOU WOE. O, IF, I SAY, YOU LOOK UPON THIS VERSE WHEN I PERHAPS COMPOUNDED AM WITH CLAY, DO NOT SO MUCH AS MY POOR NAME REHEARSE, BUT LET YOUR LOVE EVEN WITH MY LIFE DECAY; LEST THE WISE WORLD SHOULD LOOK INTO YOUR MOAN, AND MOCK YOU WITH ME AFTER I AM GONE. SHAKE-SPEARE. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. A 000 027 488 6 EITHER TOR TRAGEDY COMEDY- HISTORY: HAMLET- ACT- H SCENE: n s