The Bacon- Shakespeare Folly 393 



dress a man as " thou " was to treat him as socially 

 inferior; such familiarity was allowable only be- 

 tween members of the same family or in speaking 

 to servants, just as you address your wife, and 

 likewise the cook and housemaid, by their Christian 

 names, while with the ladies of your acquaintance 

 such familiarity would be rudeness. The same 

 rule for the pronoun survives to-day in French and 

 German, but has been forgotten in English. In 

 the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1604, Justice 

 Coke insulted the prisoner by calling out, " Thou 

 viper ! for I thou thee, thou traitor ! " Now, one 

 of our Baconizers thinks that his idol, in writing 

 "Twelfth Night," introduced Sir Toby's sugges- 

 tion in order to recall to the audience Coke's abu- 

 sive remark. Once more, a little attention to dates 

 would have prevented the making of a bad blun- 

 der. We know from Manningham's Diary that 

 "Twelfth Night" had been on the stage nearly 

 two years before Raleigh's trial. On the other 

 hand, to say that the play might have suggested to 

 Coke his coarse speech would be admissible, but 

 idle, inasmuch as the expression " to thou a man " 

 was an every-day phrase in that age. 



Here it naturally occurs to me to mention the 

 "Promus," about which as much fuss has been 

 made as if it really furnished evidence in support 



