The Bacon- Shakespeare Folly 385 



perhaps soon after his arrival in London. This 

 seems to me not improbable. On the other hand, 

 &quot; The Merchant of Venice &quot; contains such crazy 

 law that it is hard to imagine it coming even from 

 a lawyer s clerk. At all events, we may safely say 

 that the legal knowledge exhibited in the plays is 

 no more than might readily have been acquired by 

 a man of assimilative genius associating with law 

 yers. It simply shows the range and accuracy of 

 Shakespeare s powers of observation. 



Let us come now to the second part of the Delia 

 Bacon theory. Having satisfied herself that Wil 

 liam Shakespeare could not have written the poems 

 and plays published under his name, she jumped 

 to the conclusion that Francis Bacon was the au 

 thor. Surely, a singular choice ! Of all men, 

 why Francis Bacon ? l Why not, as I said before, 

 George Chapman or Ben Jonson, men who were 

 at once learned scholars and great poets? Chap 

 man, like Marlowe, could write the &quot;mighty line.&quot; 

 Jonson had rare lyric power ; his verses sing, as 

 witness the wonderful &quot; Do but look on her eyes,&quot; 

 which Francis Bacon could no more have written 

 than he could have jumped over the moon. To 



1 There is reason for believing that this choice was an instance 

 of the megalomania developed by Miss Bacon s malady. She 

 imagined a remote kinship between herself and Lord Bacon. 

 Possibly there may have been such kinship. 



