The Bacon- Shakespeare Folly 397 



But there are questions which even this ingen- 

 ious hypothesis fails to answer. Why should 

 Bacon have taken the time to write those thirty- 

 seven plays, two poems, and one hundred and fifty- 

 four sonnets, if they were never to be known as his 

 works ? Not for money, surely, for that grasping 

 Shakespeare seems to have got the money as well 

 as the fame ; Bacon died a poor man. His prin- 

 cipal aim in life was to construct a new system of 

 philosophy; on this noble undertaking he spent 

 such time as he could save from the exactions of 

 his public career as member of Parliament, chan- 

 cery lawyer, solicitor-general, attorney-general, lord 

 chancellor ; and he died with this work far from 

 finished. The volumes which he left behind him 

 were only fragments of the mighty structure which 

 he had planned. We may well ask, Where did 

 this overburdened writer find the time for doing 

 work of another kind voluminous enough to fill a 

 lifetime, and what motive had he for doing it with- 

 out recompense in either fame or money? Bacon- 

 izers find it strange that Shakespeare's will con- 

 tains no reference to his plays as literary property. 

 The omission is certainly interesting, since it seems 

 to indicate that he had parted with his pecuniary 

 interest in them, had perhaps sold it out to the 

 Globe Theatre. If this omission can be held to 



