The Bacon- Shakespeare Folly 371 



knew the Earl of Southampton. Some years ago, 

 Mr. Appleton Morgan, who does not wish to be 

 regarded as a Baconizer, published an essay on the 

 Warwickshire dialect, in whicH he maintained that 

 since no traces of that kind of speech occur in 

 &quot; Venus and Adonis,&quot; therefore it could not have 

 been written by a young man fresh from a small 

 Warwickshire town. This is a specimen of the 

 loose kind of criticism which prepares soil for 

 Delia-Baconian weeds to grow in. The poem was 

 published in 1593, seven or eight years after 

 Shakespeare s coming to London ; and we are asked 

 to believe that the world s greatest genius, one of 

 the most consummate masters of speech that ever 

 lived, could tarry seven years in the city without 

 learning how to write what Hosea Biglow calls 

 &quot; citified English &quot; ! One can only exclaim with 

 Gloster, &quot; O monstrous fault, to harbour such a 

 thought ! &quot; 



In those years Shakespeare surely learned much 

 else. It seems clear that he had a good reading 

 acquaintance with French and Italian, though he 

 often uses translations, as for instance Florio s 

 version of Montaigne. In estimating what Shake 

 speare &quot; must have &quot; known or &quot; could not have &quot; 

 known, one needs to use more caution than some 

 of our critics display. For example, in &quot; The 



