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THE SHAKESPEAREAN MYTH

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

By Appleton Morgan

Author Of "The Law Of Literature,"

"Notes To Best's Principles Of Evidence," Etc., Etc=


````Sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves;

````Sic vos non vobis vellera fertis oves;

````Sic vos non vobis melliflcatus apes;

````Sic vos non vobis fertis aratra boves.

`````--_P. Virgil. Maro_=

Cincinnati, Robert Clarke & Co

1881



TO D. T. MORGAN, ESQ.,

OF WHIP'S CROSS, WALTHAMSTOW, ESSEX, ENGLAND.

My Dear Sir:

I do not know your opinion on the matter treated in these pages. Very
possibly you will disagree with every line of my Brief. But it gives me
pleasure to connect my name with yours on this page, and to subscribe
myself

Very faithfully, your kinsman,

APPLETON MORGAN.

October, 1881.




PREFACE.

|M. Guizot, in his History of England, states the Shakespearean
problem in a few words, when he says: "Let us finally mention the great
comedian, the great tragedian, the great philosopher, the great poet,
who was in his lifetime butcher's apprentice, poacher, actor, theatrical
manager, and whose name is William Shakespeare. In twenty years, amid
the duties of his profession, the care of mounting his pieces, of
instructing his actors, he composed the thirty-two tragedies and
comedies, in verse and prose, rich with an incomparable knowledge of
human nature, and an unequaled power of imagination, terrible and comic
by turns, profound and delicate, homely and touching, responding to
every emotion of the soul, divining all that was beyond the range of
his experience and for ever remaining the treasure of the age--all this
being accomplished, Shakespeare left the theater and the busy world,
at the age of forty-five, to return to Stratford-on-Avon, where lived
peacefully in the most modest retirement, writing nothing and never
returning to the stage--ignored and unknown if his works had not forever
marked out his place in the world--a strange example of an imagination
so powerful, suddenly ceasing to produce, and closing, once for all, the
door to the efforts of genius."

But M. Guizot is very far from suggesting any prima facie inconsistency
in this statement as it stands.

Since every man reads the Shakespearean pages for himself and between
the lines, much of what we are expected to accept as Shakespearean
criticism must fail of universal appreciation and sympathy. But none who
read the English tongue can well be unconcerned with the question as
to <b>who wrote</b> those pages; and it would be affectation to deny that
the intense realism of our day is offering some startling contributions
to the solution of that question.

For instance, the gentlemen of the "New Shakespeare Society" (whom
Mr. Swinburne rather mercilessly burlesques in his recent "_Studies of
Shakespeare_") submit these dramas to a quantitative analysis; and,
by deliberately counting the "male," "female," "weak," and "stopped"
endings, and the Alexandrines and catalectics (just as a mineralogist
counts the degrees and minutes in the angles of his crystals), insist on
their ability to pronounce didatically and infallibly what was written
by William Shakespeare, and at what age; what was composed by Dekker,
Fletcher, Marlowe, or anybody else; what was originally theirs, touched
up by William Shakespeare or _vice versa_, etc. It is curious to observe
how this process invariably gives all the admirable sentiments to
William Shakespeare, and all the questionable ones to somebody else; but
at least these New Shakespearean gentlemen have surrendered somewhat of
the "cast-iron" theory of our childhood--that every page, line, and word
of the immortal Shakespearean Drama was written by William Shakespeare
demi-god, and by none other--perhaps, even opened a path through which
the unbelievers may become, in due time, orthodox.

There are still, however, a great many persons who are disposed to wave
the whole question behind them, much as Mr. Podsnap disposed of the
social evil or a famine in India. It is only a "Historic Doubt," they
say, and "Historic Doubts" are not rare, are mainly contrived to exhibit
syllogistic ingenuity in the teeth of facts, etc., etc. The French, they
say, have the same set of problems about Molière. Was he a lawyer?
was he a doctor? etc.--and they all find their material in internal
evidence--e. g., an accurate handling of the technique of this or that
profession or science: parallelism, practical coincidence, or something
of that sort.

The present work is an attempt to examine, for the benefit of these
latter, from purely external evidence, a question which, dating only
within the current quarter century, is constantly recurring to confront
investigation, and, like Banquo's troublesome shade, seems altogether
indisposed to "down."

I have to add my acknowledgments to Mr. Julian Norris, for his careful
preparation of the Index to these pages.

Grandview-on-Hudson, October 2, 1881. {009}




THE SHAKESPEAREAN MYTH.



PART I. THE MYSTERY.

[Illustration: 9015]

HE thirty-seven plays called, collectively, "Shakespeare," are a
phenomenon, not only in English letters, but in human experience. The
literature of the country to which they belong, had, up to the date
of their appearance, failed to furnish, and has been utterly powerless
since, to produce any type, likeness, or formative trace of them; while
the literature of other nations possesses not even a corresponding type.
The history of a century on either side of their era discloses, within
the precints of their birth, no resources upon which levy could have
been made for their creation. They came and went like a meteor; neither
borrowing of what they found, nor loaning to what they left, their own
peculiar and unapproachable magnificence.

The unremitting researches of two centuries have only been able to
assign their authorship (where it rested at first) to an hiatus in the
life of a wayward village lad named William Shakespeare--who fled his
native town penniless and before the constable, to return, in a few
years, a well-to-do esquire--with a coat of arms and money in his
pocket. {010}We have the history of the boy, and certain items as to
the wealthy squire, who left behind him two or three exceedingly
common-place and conventional epitaphs (said to be his handiwork) and
a remarkable will; but, between them, no hint of history, chronicle, or
record. Still, within this unknown period of this man's career, these
matchless dramas came from somewhere, and passed current under his name.

The death of their reputed author attracted no contemporary attention,
and for many years thereafter the dramas remained unnoticed. Although
written in an idiom singularly open to the comprehension of all classes
and periods of English-speaking men, no sooner did they begin to be
remarked, than a cloud of what are politely called "commentators" bore
down upon them; any one who could spell feeling at liberty to furnish
a "reading;" and any one who supposed himself able to understand one of
these "readings," to add a barnacle in the shape of a "note." From these
"commentators" the stately text is even now in peril, and rarely, even
to-day, can it be perused, except one line at a time, across the top
of a dreary page of microscopic and exasperating annotation. But, up to
within a very few years, hardly a handful of Shakespearean students
had arisen with courage to admit--what scarcely any one of the
"commentators" even, could have failed to perceive--the utterly
inadequate source ascribed to the plays themselves.

It is not yet thirty years since an American lady was supposed to have
gone crazy because she declared that William Shakespeare, of the Globe
and Black-friars theaters in London, in the days of Elizabeth, was not
the author of these certain dramas and poems {011}for which--for almost
three hundred years--he has stood sponsor.

Miss Bacon's "madness," indeed, has been rapidly contageous. Now-a-days,
men make books to prove, not that William Shakespeare did not write
these works, but that Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, or some other
Elizabethan, did not. And we even find, now and then, a treatise written
to prove that William Shakespeare was, after all, their author; an
admission, at least, that the ancient presumption to that effect no
longer covers the case. And, doubtless, the correct view is within this
admission. For, probably, if permitted to examine this presumption by
the tests which would be applied to any other question of fact, namely,
the tests of contemporary history, muniments, and circumstantial
evidence, it will be found to be quite as well established and proved
that William Shakespeare was not the author of the plays that go by his
name, as any other fact, occurring in London between the years 1585
and 1616, not recorded in history or handed down by tradition, could be
established and proved in 1881.

If a doubt as to the authorship of the plays had arisen at any time
during or between those years, and had been kept open thereafter, the
probability is that it would have been settled by this time. But, as it
is, we may be pretty certain that no such doubt did arise, and that
no such question was asked, during the years when those who could have
dispelled the doubt or answered the question were living. When we
are about to visit a theater in these days, what we ask and concern
ourselves with is: Is the play entertaining? Does it "draw?" And, when
we wit{012}ness it, the question is: Do we enjoy it--or does it bore us?
Will we recommend our friends to come that they may be entertained, too,
and that we may discuss it with them? or will we warn them to keep away?
We very speedily settle these questions for ourselves. Doubtless we
may and do inquire who the author is. But we do not enter into any
discussion upon the subject, or charge our minds enough with the matter
to doubt it when we are told. The author's name is, not unusually,
printed on the play-bill before us; we glance at it indifferently, take
what is told us for granted, and think no more about it. If the name
happens to be assumed, we may possibly see its identity discussed in the
dramatic columns of our newspapers next morning, or we may not. If the
play entertains us, we commend it. If it drags, we sneer at it, get up
and go off. That is all the concern we give it. The evening has slipped
away; and, with it, any idle speculations as to the playwright who has
essayed to amuse us for an hour.

If, three hundred years hence, a question as to who wrote the play we
saw at Mr. Daly's theater or Mr. Wallack's theater last evening should
come up, there would be very little evidence, not any records, and
scarcely an exhibit to refer to in the matter. Copies of the play-bill
or the newspapers of the day might chance to be discovered; but
these--the internal testimony of the play itself, if any, and a sort
of tacit presumption growing out of a statement it was nobody's cue to
inquire into at the time it was made, and had been nobody's business to
scrutinize since--would constitute all the evidence at hand. How this
supposititious case is precisely all-fours with the facts {013}in the
matter of the dramatic works which we call, collectively, Shakespeare's.
Precisely: except that, on the evenings when those plays were acted,
there were no play-bills, and, on the succeeding morning, no daily
newspaper. We have, therefore, in 1881, much fewer facilities for
setting ourselves right as to their authorship than those living three
hundred years after us could possess in the case we have supposed.
The audiences who witnessed a certain class of plays at Shakespeare's
theaters, in the years between 1585 and 1606, were entertained. The
plays "drew." People talked of them about town, and they become valuable
to their proprietors. The mimic lords and ladies were acceptable to
the best seats; the rabble loved the show and glitter and the alarum of
drums; and all were Britons who gloated over rehearsal of the prowess
of their own kings and heroes, and to be told that their countrymen at
Agincourt had slain ten thousand Frenchmen at an expense of but five
and twenty of themselves. But, if M. Taine's description of the
Shakespearean theaters and the audience therein wont to assemble may be
relied upon, we can pretty safely conclude that they troubled themselves
very little as to who fashioned the dialogue the counterfeit kings and
queens, soldiers, lords, and ladies spoke; or that they saw any thing in
that dialogue to make such speculation appear worth their while. Nor can
we discover any evidence, even among the cultured courtiers who listened
to them--or in the case of Elizabeth herself, who is said to have loved
them (which we may as well admit for the argument's sake)--that
any recognition of the plays as works worthy of any other than a
stage-manager, occurred. {014}Even if it should appear that these plays
thus performed were the plays we now call Shakespeare's; had any of this
audience suspected that these plays were not written for them, but for
all time; that, three hundred years later--when the plays should not
only be extant, but more loved and admired than ever--the thinking world
should set itself seriously to probe the mystery of their origin; there
might have been some interest as to their producer manifested, and we
might have had some testimony competent to the exact point to-day.

But it is evident enough that no such prophetic vision was vouchsafed
to them, and no such prophetic judgment passed. Nor is the phenomenon
exceptional. The critic, does not live, even to-day, however learned or
cultured or shrewd, who would take the responsibility of affirming upon
his own judgment, or even upon the universal judgment of his age and
race, that any literary composition would be, after a lapse of three
hundred years, not only extant, but immortal, hugged as its birthright
by a whole world. Such a statement would have been contrary to
experience, beyond the prophecy of criticism, and therefore only to be
known--if known at all--as a Fact. Moreover, it could only be known as
a fact at the expiration of the three hundred years. Doubtless, few
critics would care, in any case, to commit themselves upon record one
way or the other in a matter so hypothetical and speculative as the
judgment of posterity upon a literary performance, and certainly nothing
of the sort occurred in Shakespeare's day, even if there were any
dramatic or literary critics to speculate upon the subject. There can be
no doubt--and it must be conceded {015}--that certain acted plays _did_
pass with their first audiences, and that certain printed plays, both
contemporaneously and for years thereafter, did pass with the public
who read them, as the compositions of Mr. Manager Shakespeare; and that
probably even the manager's pot companions, who had better call to know
him than any others, saw nothing to shake their heads at in his claim
to be their author (provided he ever made any such claim; which, by the
way, does not appear from any record of his life, and which nobody ever
asserted as a fact). If they did--with the exception only of Robert
Greene--they certainly kept their own counsel. On the one hand, then,
the question of the authorship was never raised, and, on the other
hand, if it had been, the scholars and critics who studied the plays
(supposing that there were any such in those days) could not possibly
have recognized them as immortal. If they had so recognized them, they
would doubtless have left us something more satisfactory as to the
authorship of the compositions than the mere "impression that they were
informed" that the manager of the theater where they were produced wrote
them; that they supposed he was clever enough to have done so, and they
therefore took it for granted that he did. That is all there is of the
evidence of Shakespeare's own day, as to the question--if it still is a
question--before us.

But how about the presumption--the legal presumption, arising from such
lapse of time as that the memory of