The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries (89 page)

And when he returned to Stratford in his mid-forties he had become a wealthy man through the use of his talents. Is it conceivable that he did not even bother to take a single printed copy of any of his works with him – there were many extant – and that he even left behind in London
the library he must have accumulated over the years? Of course, he may have done so – but in that case, what happened to them? Why are they not mentioned in his will?

Shakespeare scholars reply that in Elizabethan times acting was not regarded as a particularly respectable profession – hardly more so than pimping – and that Shakespeare may have preferred to keep it to himself. This is true. But writers, then as now, were regarded as a cut above most other professions, and Shakespeare was also the author of the sonnets,
The Rape of Lucrece
and
Venus and Adonis
. The sonnets appeared in 1609, two years before he retired to Stratford – surely he would have taken a few copies with him to distribute to his friends and family? Surely he would have made sure that copies of his works went to his beloved daughter Susanna to whom he left most of his estate in the will, and to her husband, the distinguished physician Dr John Hall, who was later to refuse a knighthood from Charles I? Again, the scholars reply that he may well have done so, and that Shakespeare’s books simply vanished over the next fifty years or so – by which time admirers were beginning to show an interest in the playwright. It could be true, but it sounds somehow unlikely.

The Rev. Wilmot had another reason for doubting that the gentleman of Stratford wrote the plays. They seem to reveal a man of wide learning and experience: a knowledge of medicine, law, botany and foreign countries, as well as of court life. Where would a butcher’s son from Stratford have the opportunity of gaining such knowledge? Francis Bacon, on the other hand – philosopher, essayist and Lord Chancellor – was known as one of the most erudite men of his time. . . .

For Wilmot one of the main problems was that Shakespeare’s reputation had increased so much since his death that it was difficult to sort out the truth from the later legends. Until 1660 – when the theatres opened again after the Puritan interregnum – he remained half forgotten (although his collected plays had appeared in 1623). There was a Shakespeare revival during the Restoration, but his plays were “adapted” and almost totally rewritten. John Aubrey’s
Brief Lives
(1682) has an extremely “brief” life of Shakespeare – a mere two pages – in which he says that Shakespeare was a butcher’s son, and that he would make dramatic speeches when he had to kill a calf. By that time the Stratford vicar John Ward had noted in his diaries (1661–3) the legend about Shakespeare dying after a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton. By 1670 Shakespeare’s reputation with the playgoing public was as high as it had been in 1600, and unscrupulous booksellers were getting rid of all kinds of old plays by declaring they were by
Shakespeare. The “Shakespeare boom” was largely the work of Sir William Davenant, who was reputed to be Shakespeare’s godson – perhaps his son – and who devoted much of his life to reviving the reputation of his idol. The first
Life
of Shakespeare appeared in 1709, as the introduction to Nicholas Rowe’s six-volume edition of Shakespeare; Rowe obtained much of his information from the actor Thomas Betterton, another worshipper of the bard, who had made a pilgrimage to Stratford to collect stories and traditions in about 1708. It was Rowe who first printed the story about how Shakespeare fled from Stratford after being caught poaching the deer of Sir Thomas Lucy. From then on the legends multiplied: stories of carousing in Warwickshire villages – notably “drunken Bidford” – of rhymes about fellow-townsmen, of holding horses’ heads outside the theatre when he first came to London, of his love affairs, his appearances before Queen Elizabeth and King James, and dozens more. In 1769 Shakespeare was now regarded with such reverence that the burghers of Stratford decided to hold bicentenary celebrations, and asked the famous actor David Garrick to take charge of the Jubilee. (They were, in fact, five years too late – Shakespeare was born in 1564 – but no one seemed to mind this.) Shakespeare had already become a source of income to the tradesmen of Stratford. Rain spoiled the celebrations, and Garrick lost a small fortune; nevertheless, the Jubilee may be said to have established the “Shakespeare Industry” as Stratford’s chief source of income.

But in the same year, 1769, Herbert Lawrence, a friend of Garrick’s, published an amusing allegory called
The Life and Adventures of Common Sense
which describes how a plausible rogue and habitual thief named Shakespeare stole some of the attributes of Wisdom, Genius and Humour and used them to write plays. It was not meant to be a serious accusation, but it seemed to demonstrate a mildly satirical attitude to the Shakespeare Industry. Soon after this the Rev. James Wilmot moved to Barton-on-the-Heath and began those researches that led him to conclude that Shakespeare’s real name was Francis Bacon. But when the Quaker James Cowell imparted these conclusions to the Ipswich Philosophical Society in 1803 he swore them to silence about the name of their author, and they seem to have kept their word.

The absurd episode of the Ireland forgeries demonstrates the extent to which “Bardolatry” (as Shaw was to call it) had gained a foothold by the 1790s. Samuel Ireland, a prosperous author of travel books, worshipped Shakespeare, and allowed various tradesmen of Stratford to sell him a large number of Shakespeare relics, including a goblet carved from the mulberry tree planted in Shakespeare’s garden and the chair on
which Shakespeare sat in his courting days. Ireland’s youngest son William craved his father’s affection, and began forging small Shakespeare items, such as a mortgage deed. His father’s greed led him finally to forge whole Shakespeare plays which for a while fooled many experts. The bubble finally burst in 1796, when Ireland’s play
Vortigern
was presented at Drury Lane; at the line: “And when this solemn mockery is ended” the audience burst into boos and jeers. When William finally confessed to the forgeries his father flatly refused to believe him, remaining convinced that such “works of genius” were beyond the powers of his untalented son. In the previous century there had been a far more sensible and balanced attitude – Samuel Pepys thought
Twelfth Night
“but a silly play” and
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“the most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life”. By the mid-nineteenth century, Shakespeare was regarded as a godlike genius whose feeblest lines were regarded as beyond criticism. Matthew Arnold expressed this attitude of mindless worship in a sonnet that began:

It was probably this kind of uncritical veneration that lay at the root of the various heresies that began to spring up in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1848 the American consul at Vera Cruz, Joseph C. Hart, wrote a book on
The Romance of Yachting
in which he paused to reflect: “Ah, Shakespeare – Immortal Bard – who were you”? And in the next thirty-five pages, Hart digresses from yachting to suggest the theory that the Stratford actor was merely a hack who inserted bawdy lines into plays that had been written by starving poets. In 1857 William Henry Smith published
Bacon and Shakespeare
in which he pointed out that nothing we know about Shakespeare indicates that he could be the author of the plays, while Bacon had all the necessary qualifications.

He had already been anticipated by a brilliant and attractive American lady, Delia Bacon, who had started life as a schoolteacher, then become an author and lecturer. Her special subjects were history and literature, and her study of Shakespeare convinced her – for the reasons we have already discussed – that the retired actor of Stratford was an unlikely author for the plays. She became convinced that the evidence for Bacon’s authorship lay in England, probably in the tomb itself. She gained the support of that eminent Bostonian Ralph Waldo Emerson,
and of a New York banker who admired Bacon, Charles Butler. She sailed for England in the spring of 1853, armed with an introduction to Carlyle from Emerson. Carlyle took to her at once and gave her support; so did Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was American consul in Liverpool. She spent three years living in lodgings and writing her book to prove that Bacon was Shakespeare. The publishers Chapman and Hall sent her a rejection note declining to have any part in “an attack on one of the most sacred beliefs of the nation and indeed of all nations” – a phrase that expresses the almost religious bigotry that had become typical of the British attitude to Shakespeare. In 1856 she moved to Stratford and charmed the clerk of the church into allowing her to spend some time locked alone in the church; but at the last minute her nerve failed her – or perhaps she was merely demoralized at the thought of trying to rip up the floor of the church and dig down seventeen feet, the reputed depth of the grave.

In 1857, Delia Bacon finally brought out her
Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded
. (Hawthorne, with whom she had quarrelled, paid for it.) But it proved to be a confused and confusing book – it is not even clear whether her “suspect” is Bacon, Raleigh, Spenser, Sidney or the Earl of Oxford. Her main thesis was obviously absurd – that a group of enlightened scholars concocted the plays, using the Stratford actor as a “front”, in order to express convictions that might otherwise have led to imprisonment and torture. Reviewers were understandably scathing. After so many years of effort, Delia was shattered, and her mind gave way soon after. A nephew found her in a lunatic asylum, and took her back to New England, where she died at the age of forty-eight.

Delia Bacon’s success was greater than she lived to realize; she had raised the question of Shakespeare’s authorship, and now many others took it up, including Emerson, Whitman, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry James senior. In England the prime minister, Lord Palmerston, read William Henry Smith’s book and became a Baconian.

In 1867 there came to light one of the most interesting and convincing pieces of evidence connecting Bacon and Shakespeare. A librarian commissioned by the Duke of Northumberland to examine manuscripts in Northumberland House came upon a folio volume consisting of twenty-two sheets folded double. It seemed clear that it had belonged to Francis Bacon – at least, it contained mostly copies of works written by him. Nine pieces remained in the folder, and there were probably more. The cover, headed “Mr ffrauncis Bacon”, also has the word “Nevill” written twice at the top. Just below this are the words “Ne vele velis”, the family motto of Bacon’s nephew Sir Henry Nevill. The script
contains two different sets of handwriting, probably those of amanuenses – presumably Bacon’s. The cover contains a list which seems to be a table of contents – since it mentions a number of pieces which are actually in the folder, such as four essays by Bacon, “Philipp against monsieur” – a letter from Sir Philip Sidney dissuading the Queen from marrying the Duke of Anjou, “Speeches for Lord Essex at the tylt” – speeches by Bacon written for the Earl of Essex, and “Loycester’s Common Wealth” – an incomplete copy of Leicester’s Commonwealth. But the cover also lists items that were no longer in the folio, including Nashe’s banned play
The Isle of Dogs
, and “Richard the Second” and “Richard the Third”. And immediately above these Shakespeare titles: “By Mr ffrauncis William Shakespeare”.

In fact this evidence is less powerful than it looks at first. “Richard the Second”, while not actually banned, was something of a “sensitive” play, and Shakespeare had been obliged to omit some lines from the first quarto edition of 1597 (which is also the likeliest date for the Northumberland manuscript). When Essex rebelled in 1601 he paid for a special performance of
Richard II
, hoping that a play about a king who was deposed might inspire Londoners to join his insurrection. (It was unsuccessful, and he was executed.) The “sensitive” lines about deposition were restored in an edition after Queen Elizabeth’s death.
Richard III
was about the same sensitive subject, and may also have been regarded as dubious. As a Privy Councillor of the queen, and her legal adviser, it was Bacon’s job to study “sensitive” works – he had also read a work by Dr Hayward on Richard II which had “much incensed Queen Elizabeth”; Dr Hayward was committed to the Tower for treason, but Bacon told the queen the book was harmless.

So we may assume that the Northumberland folder originally contained several “banned” works on which Bacon had been asked to give an opinion. A closer look at the cover shows that the name “Mr ffrauncis Bacon” and “Mr ffrauncis” has been doodled several times perhaps by Bacon himself; Shakespeare’s name has also been doodled repeatedly. But a close examination of the manuscript shows that it is quite untrue to claim that someone has doodled “Mr ffrauncis William Shakespeare”. “ffrauncis” and “William Shakespeare” are on different levels, and the surname Bacon is written directly below “Mr ffrauncis” (with the phrase “your sovereign” written upside down between them). “William Shakespeare” is written directly above the titles of his two plays and obviously refers to them.

So, regretfully, the Northumberland MS must be abandoned as a proof that there was a closer connection between Bacon and
Shakespeare than is generally supposed; all it proves is that Bacon had read
Richard II
and
Richard III
in the course of his duties as the queen’s adviser.