SECTION 9.OBSERVA TION. 67 



both with the William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon. This, 

 too, is not difficult to compass. Diverse documents render it 

 evident that an actor of that name existed at the time at the 

 very theatre where the Shakespearean plays were regularly per- 

 formed. Moreover, one of the Prefaces to the 1623 Folio, 

 which many Baconians claim to have been edited by Bacon 

 himself, contains definite statements by his fellow actors Heminge 

 and Condell, to the effect that the author of the plays and the 

 actor were one. They say that their object in publishing the 

 collected edition was "to keep the memory of so worthy a 

 friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare"; and Ben 

 Jonson, in a famous passage in his Timber, published in 1641, 

 takes this for granted (pp. 97, 98). In that Folio, too, there are 

 allusions directly connecting Shakespeare with Stratford- oil- 

 Avon, even his monument being referred to. Thus Ben Jonson, 

 in his Ode, addresses Shakespeare as the "Sweet Swan of 

 Avon", and Leonard Digges, in his poetical effusion, speaks 

 of ". . . thy Stratford monument". 



Lastly, in Shakespeare's will there is mention of three of his 

 fellow actors, John Heminge, Richard Burbage, and Henry 

 Condell, whilst a fellow actor, A. Phillips, in his will, left "to my 

 fellowe, William Shakespeare, a thirty-shillings piece of gold". 

 (On Shakespeare, the actor, see Sir Sidney Lee's Life of Shake- 

 speare.) The chain of evidence in favour of the theory that 

 the reputed author of the plays is the real author, is, therefore, 

 as complete as we could wish, short of extensive biographical 

 documentation. 



Now to Bacon and the plays. Is it not incredible that Bacon 

 should have published the plays under another's name, a man 

 well-known in the community, said by Baconians generally to 

 have been utterly incapable of composing them? To continue 

 successfully such a deception for twenty years or more, as is 

 implied, would be nothing less than miraculous. We do not 

 encounter here a fictitious pseudonym ; but an individual dwell- 

 ing in what was then the dramatic hub of the Elizabethan 

 universe, and perforce known to multitudes. Only a Shake- 

 speare, it is evident, could properly impersonate a Shakespeare. 



Here is another small, but significant point. The title page of 

 the first Folio has a portrait described as that of Shakespeare's. 

 Now how extraordinary this is on the Baconian theory! Why 

 have had a portrait at all? And if there was to be one, why 

 not subtle suggestions of the person of Bacon? The portrait 

 is in flagrant contradiction with the assumption that the plays 

 were not by Shakespeare. 



How strange, too, that not only should the sponsors of the 

 first Folio be two actors who speak of the author as a fellow 

 and friend of theirs, but state repeatedly that the author is no 

 longer among the living. They protest: "It had been a thing, 

 we confess, worthy to have been wished, that the author 



