Numbers in bold brackets [] indicate original page numbers.
Chapter I
The Stratfordian View
Ex nihilo nihil fit
I
[11] IN spite of the efforts of orthodox Stratfordians to belittle the investigations that have been made into the question of the authorship of the Shakespeare dramas; perhaps indeed because of the very manner they have chosen to adopt, the number of Britons and Americans, to say nothing of the non-English speaking nationalities, who do not believe that William Shakspere of Stratford produced the literature with which he is credited is steadily on the increase. Outside the ranks of those who have deeply committed themselves in print it is indeed difficult nowadays to find any one in the enjoyment of a full and assured faith. At the same time the resort of the faithful few to contemptuous expressions in speaking of opponents is clearly indicative of uneasiness even amongst the most orthodox litterateurs.
The unfortunate "cryptogram" of Ignatius Donnelly, whilst tending to bring the enquiry into disrepute with minds disposed to serious research, has been unable altogether to nullify the effects of the negative criticism with which his work opens. The supplementing of this by writers of the calibre of Lord Penzance, Judge Webb, Sir George Greenwood, and Professor Lefranc has raised the problem to a level which will not permit of its being airily dismissed without thereby reflecting adversely on the capacity and [12] judgment of the controversialists who would thus persist in giving artifice instead of argument. That, however, is their concern. The common sense of the rank and file of Shakespeare students, when unhampered by past committals, leads irresistibly towards the rejection of the old idea of authorship; and only the doctors of the ancient literary cult hang in the rear.
Nevertheless, much remains to be done before the Stratfordian hypothesis will be sufficiently moribund to be neglected. And although this work is addressed mainly to those who are either in search of a more reasonable hypothesis, or, having become awakened to a sense of the existence of the "Shakespeare Problem" are willing to take the trouble to examine impartially what has already been written by others on the subject, the present argument would probably be incomplete without a more explicit treatment of the Stratfordian point of view than has been given in the main body of the treatise. At the same time it is impossible to present the anti-Stratfordian argument completely without adding enormously to the bulk of the work. Moreover, as we have a very definite positive argument to unfold we wish to avoid the dangers of diverting attention from it by giving an unnecessary prominence to the negative argument so ably treated by previous writers. That negative argument, like its present constructive counterpart, is cumulative; and, like every sound cumulative argument, each of these is receiving additional corroboration and confirmation with almost every new fact brought to light in respect to it. How much of this accumulated material it is necessary to present before the case can be considered amply and adequately stated must needs depend largely upon the preparedness and partialities of those addressed.
Although the thirty years which have passed since Ignatius Donnelly's work appeared have witnessed marked developments of the critical argument, the full force of the first hundred pages of his first volume has not yet been fully appreciated. To allow a justifiable repugnance to his [13] "cryptogram" work to stand in the way of a serious examination of the material he has brought together from untainted sources, like Halliwell-Phillipps and others of recognized capacity and integrity is to fall behind the times in the spirit of dispassionate scientific research. A few hours spent, therefore, in leisurely weighing the material contained in his opening chapters, notwithstanding its incompleteness, will probably convince most people that the Stratfordian hypothesis rests upon the most insecure foundations: differentiating it entirely from all other outstanding cases of English authorship in historic times, as for example, Chaucer, Spenser and Milton. The exceptional character of many of the facts he has collected, the multiplicity of the grounds for rejecting the hypothesis, and the general consistency of the various arguments, all combine to form a single justification for a negative attitude towards the conventional view. A mere repetition in these pages of what others have written will not add much to its force; to spend time in expounding its unity is to attempt to do for others what any reflecting mind pretending to judge the case ought to do for itself.
What is true of the case as presented by Ignatius Donnelly has probably still greater force as applied to the work of men who have treated this problem in more recent years. It would be perfectly gratuitous to insist upon the analytical acumen of Lord Penzance, and therefore scarcely short of an impertinence to brush aside lightly his opinions in matters involving the weighing of evidence. Consequently, when such new arguments as he advances, and the new bearings he is able to point out in former arguments, are marked by the same unity and lead to the same general conclusions as those of other capable writers both before and since his time, we may claim that a measure of what may be called authoritative research has been accomplished, liberating subsequent investigators from repeating all the particulars by means of which these general results have been reached. [14] In other words, a certain basis of authority has been established: not, of course, an absolute and infallible authority, but a relative, practical, working authority such as we are obliged to accept in the theoretical no less than in the active affairs of life.
When, for example, three eminent English lawyers tell us that the plays of Shakespeare display an expert knowledge of law such as William Shakspere could hardly be expected to possess, it would be extreme folly on the part of one who is not a lawyer to spend himself and use up space in putting together evidence to prove the same point. No amount of evidence which he might collect would have the same value as the authoritative statement of these men. He may, if he cares to, claim that the lawyers have not made good their point, or he may agree with the general conclusion, and dispute the theory that the author was an active member of the legal profession. But if he agrees with them on the main issue he cannot serve his cause in any way by traversing again the ground that these experts have already covered.
Again, when, in addition to these writers we have authorities of the opposite school agreeing that the author of the plays possessed a first-hand knowledge of the classics, including a knowledge of passages which would not come into a schoolboy's curriculum, it would be affectation upon the part of a writer laying no claim to expert knowledge of the classics to restate the particulars, or attempt to add to what has already been said some little fragment from his own scanty stores. In the same way we are now entitled to affirm, without adducing all the evidence upon which it has been determined, that the author of "Shakespeare's" plays and poems possessed a knowledge of idiomatic French, and most probably a reading familiarity with the Italian language, such as William Shakspere could not have learnt at Stratford: and, what is perhaps of as great importance as anything else, he employed as the habitual vehicle of his mind an [15] English of the highest educated type completely free from provincialism of any kind.
The "Shakespeare Problem," we maintain, has now reached a stage at which such summarized results may be placed before readers with the assurance that these conclusions have behind them the sanction of men of unquestioned probity and capacity: thus relieving the modern investigator from the labour of repeating all the particulars from which the conclusions are drawn. And although these compendious dogmatic statements cannot be expected to convince the man who claims to have studied the writers we have named and yet preserved his orthodoxy unshaken, they will probably suffice for the average or the generality of mankind. Orthodox faiths, however, are usually intrinsically weakest when most vehemently asserted; and the persistence of the Stratfordian faith has probably been due much less to its own inherent strength than to the want of a better to put in its place.
Those who have had occasion to study Shakespearean problems will, we believe, agree that the most trustworthy work for particulars respecting the life of William Shakspere of Stratford is Halliwell-Phillipps's "Outlines." Writing in 1882, six year's before the appearance of Donnelly's work, the problem of Shakespearean authorship seems never to have touched him; and therefore, undoubting Stratfordian though he was, he writes with perfect freedom and openness, glozing over nothing, and not shrinking from making admissions which some later Baconian or sceptic might use against the subject of his biography. Without wishing to imply anything against subsequent biographies, written in the refracting atmosphere of controversy, we may describe Halliwell-Phillipps's "Outlines" as the most honest biography of William Shakspere yet written.