A BACONIAN ALTERNATIVE.
SHAKESPEARE’S name is like the wagon around which the factions fought in the wars of the Italian republics. One side or the other may have the upper hand, but the wagon rolls on over the living and the dead. In the forties it was a car of Juggernaut for poor Miss Delia Bacon, who thought that her problematical ancestor had wrapped in the disguise of plays for the stage a system of philosophy which he did dare to utter in public. Seven years ago Mrs. Ashmead Windle suffered the same eclipse after writing two pamphlets, one more insane than the other. - The veteran Shakespearean, Mr. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPS, after passing forty years in great piety and industry at Stratford-on-Avon, sorting and having bound many tomes of ancient records belonging to that town, developed symptoms of agitation and came to the windy war of the pamphleteer with the “Stratford oligarchy,” as he calls the Corporation. It is the deliberate opinion of this old scholar that under the management of its oligarchy Stratford has become the seat of Shakerspearean charlatanry instead of the centre of Shakespeare biographical research, ‘‘There are no end of Shakespearean speechifyings, Shakespearean platitudes, drums and trumpets, flags and banners. But it is in vain to look for the dissemination of really effective Shakespeare world.”
Sad to say, the same deplorable loss of temper at the sight of SHAKESPEARE’S name is observable on this side of the water too. There is Mr. IGNATIUS DONNELLY, for instance—why be so harsh with him, or, in the words of a classic, why row? He and his Bacon cipher should be cherished instead of abused. What would become of Philadelphia if the topic of KEELY and his motor should disappear from the local horizon? Mr. IGNATIUS DONNELLY with his cipher is to the Shakespeare monthlies and weeklies what the Keely motor is to publications that notice mechanical and other myths. On what principle he is laughed off the stage let others explain; it passes our understanding. Judicious editing would make column after column out of the Baconian cipher as revived by a Western wag. Do we long to stamp upon and generally express a wish for the heart's blood of our own BARNUM when he puts a particularly choice line of jokes on us in the matter of mermaids and such? Why, then, be ferocious with Donnellys and Keelys?
The latest offender in the matter of the Baconian cipher is this same Mr. HALLWELL-PHILLIPS. whose lack of the sense of humor in all probability embroiled him with the Stratford Corporation. Why does he want to publish in reduced facsimile the famous first folio edition of 1623, so that for a couple of dollars anybody can see what a lot of contemporary poets of the first and third ranks thought of WILL SHAKESPEARE as a man, a dramatist, and an actor? This vulgarization of SHAKESPEARE is going too far, "Any one who reads the two prefaces by JOHN HEMINGE and HENRY CONDELL, the friends and fellow-actors of the poet, will find it almost impossible to imagine that they could have been deceived by him as to the real authorship of the plays. Then comes the long poem to his memory by one BEN IONSON, a sharp and quarrelsome dramatist of great power, self-made, a reader of men, who says in one place of SHAKESPEARE:
“For, if I thought my judgement were of yeeres,
I should commit thee surely with thy peeres,
And tell how farre thou didst our LILY out-shine
Or sporting KID, or MARLOWE'S mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latine, and lesse
Greeke,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seeke
For names; but call forth thund’ring AESCHILUS,
EURIPIDES, and SOPHOCLES to us,
PACUVIUS, ACCIUS, him of Cordova dead,
To life again, to brave thy Buskin tread,
And shake a Stage; Or, when thy Sockes were on,
Leave thee alone, for the comparison
Of all, that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome
Sent forth. or since did from their ashes come.”
Just when we await with pleased expectation the true and revised Baconian cipher from its latest Mahdi this pestilent person issues a cheap edition of the 1623 folio. At the Daniel sale Lady BURDETT-COUTTS paid $3,750 for a good example, and it is rare for a bibliomaniac to get one in his hand. What is discrimination against foreign writers and books worth if it is possible for an unsympathetic Shakespearean in London to deal as shrewd a blow as this to the literary business of IGNATIUS DONNELLY and the sacred cause of sensationalism? It is greatly to be feared that, read by the light of this facsimile, the system of Mr. DONNELLY will fall to the ground, and we shall have in him an awful mental wreck. If he is open to the disinterested advice of a friend he will take a leaf from Mr. KEELY’s book and announce that he has given up the Bacon theory, and will presently open shop with some other novelty much more delightful and, if possible, more improbable. If he clings to the subject, however, he might, for example, prove that SHAKESPEARE and Sir FRANCIS BACON were one and the same person physically, a Jekyll-Hyde of the Elizabethan age. This would make it convenient for SHAKESPEARE, whom some people think was an indifferent actor, to appear quickly after his exit from the scene in the cloak and ruff of Sir Francis Bacon, and by violent applause compel the lickspittle audience to give SHAKESPEARE an ‘‘ovation.” Hastening out under the plea that he was asked to take snuff with Queen ELIZABETH in her box, Sir Francis Bacon might then appear on the stage again as SHAKESPEARE, and, putting his hand to his heart, explain in a broken voice how much he was touched at the condescension of a courtier like Sir Francis, the author of
desperately deep philosophical works, in starting the applause for a wretched actor and fabricator of anti-Comstock plays like himself. Some such scheme as this could be worked out by another kind of
cipher adapted to the peculiarities of the folio of 1623 and everything would be well. Thus we should have our little fun and preserve our DONNELLY for later vagaries and humorous sallies, whereas to scorn our advice will simply bring upon him the danger from which his predecessors, Miss DELIA Bacon and Mrs. ASHMEAD WINDLE, could not escape.
We note that Mr. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE professes to show in the Nineteenth Century that the late Mr. DARWIN wrote the poems of ALFRED, now Lord TENNYSON. Conscientiously we cannot recommend this line of research to the learned ex-Lieutenant-Governor of Minnesota. It might have been a fruitful idea once, but SWINBURNE has bungled it hopelessly. No, he will have to adopt something entirely different, such as the fact, alluded to by Mr. SWINBURNE as “well known,” but of which we were ignorant hitherto, “that the poems issued under the name of WILLIAM WORDSWORTH were actually written by the Duke of WELLINGTON.”
Published: January 15, 1888
Copyright © The New York Times
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