Slnikcs/x nrtan Criticism. 



3 



and ideas, and committed gross anachronisms? Bacon left his repu- 

 tation to the vindication of posterity. Does any sane man suppose 

 he would uot have left behind him a declaration of his authorship of 

 these immortal works, if it had been his? Granting that he may 

 have been deterred from owning the plays in his life-time on account 

 of the disrepute of the occupation of a play-wright, this reason 

 could not have weighed after his death. Moreover, the ambitious 

 courtier would have been glad to read his plays to Elizabeth 

 as Shakespeare did, despite the unpopularity of the vocation. The 

 humorist of the New York Times says : " It is as easy to show the falsity 

 of the delusion as to the existence of the Chinese language as it was to 

 demonstrate the mythical character of the legends upon which the 

 Christian religion was founded." Upon reasoning similar to that on 

 which Archbishop Whately based his demonstration of the non-exis- 

 tence of Napoleon, James Freeman Clarke has jestingly proved that 

 Shakespeare not only never wrote, but never lived. He says: "How 

 can Shakespeare have been a real person when his very name is spelled 

 in at least two different ways in manuscripts professing to be his own 

 autograph ? And when it is found in the manuscripts of the period 

 spelled in every form and with every combination of letters which 

 express its sound or the semblance thereof ? One writer of his time 

 calls him Shakescene, showing plainly the mythical character of the 

 name. His wife's name has also a mythical character, and is probably 

 derived from his song commencing, ' Anne hath a way.' Again, if 

 he were a real person living at London in the midst of writers, poets, 

 actors and other eminent men, is it credible that no allusion should 

 have been made to him by most of them ? He was contemporary with 

 Raleigh, Spenser, Bacon, Coke, Burleigh, Hooker, Henry IV of 

 France, Montaigne, Tasso, Cervantes, Gallileo, Grotius; and not one 

 of them, although so many of them were voluminous writers, refers to 

 any such person, and no allusion to any of them appears in any of his 

 plays. He is referred to, to be sure, with excessive admiration by the 

 group of play-writers among whom he is supposed ,to have moved ; 



of them, we may presume that Shakespeare was a sort of nom de plume 

 to which all anonymous plays were referred — a sort of dramatic John 

 Doe. If such a man existed why did not others, out of this circle, 

 say something about his life and circumstances? Milton was eight 

 years old when Shakespeare died, and might have seen him, as he 

 took pains to go and see Gallileo, who was born in the same year with 

 Shakespeare. Oliver Cromwell was seventeen years old when Shakes- 

 peare died ; Descartes twenty years old ; Rubens, the painter, thirty- 



