402 A Century of Science 



was sure to arise, Where did your Stratford boy 

 get all this abstruse scientific knowledge? The 

 keynote was perhaps first sounded by August von 

 Schlegel, who persuaded himself that Shakespeare 

 had mastered " all the things and relations of this 

 world," and then went on to declare that the 

 accepted account of his life must be a mere fable. 

 Thus we reach the point from which Delia Bacon 

 started. 



It may safely be said that all theories of Shake- 

 speare's plays which suppose them to be attempts 

 at teaching occult philosophical doctrines, or which 

 endow them with any other meanings than those 

 which their words directly and plainly convey, 

 are a delusion and a snare. Those plays were 

 written, not to teach philosophy, but to fill the 

 theatre and make money. They were written by 

 a practised actor and manager, the most consum- 

 mate master of dramatic effects that ever lived ; 

 a poet unsurpassed for fertility of invention, un- 

 equalled for melody of language, unapproached for 

 delicacy of fancy, inexhaustible in humour, pro- 

 foundest of moralists ; a man who knew human 

 nature by intuition, as Mozart knew counterpoint 

 or as Chopin knew harmony. The name of that 

 writer was none other than William Shakespeare 

 of Stratford-on-Avon. 



