Numbers in bold brackets [] indicate original page numbers.
I
Character of the Problem*
[68] THE three greatest names in the world's literature are those of Homer, Dante and Shakespeare. The first belongs to the ancient world and the personality behind the name is lost beyond recall in the perished records of a remote antiquity. The two last belong to the modern world. The former of these belongs to Italy; and Italy is quite certain of the personality and cherishes every ascertained detail in the records of her most illustrious son. The last of the three and who will venture to say it is not the greatest of all belongs to England, and although nearer to us than Dante by three hundred years, the personality behind the name is to-day as problematic as that of Homer; his identity being a matter of dispute amongst men whose capacity and calmness of judgment are unquestionable.
The inquiry into the authorship of the Shakespeare plays has therefore long since earned a clear title to be regarded as something more than a crank problem to be classed with such vagaries as the "flat-earth -theory" or surmises respecting the "inhabitants of Mars." It is common in serious works on Elizabethan literature to take cognisance of the problem, thus making the authorship an open question still awaiting a decisive answer; and every theory advanced in regard to it either implies or affirms the mysteriousness of the whole business. Those who [69] maintain the orthodox view, that the plays and poems were written by the Stratford citizen, William Shakspere, are obliged to recognize the fact that a writer, the whole of whose circumstances and antecedents rendered the production of such a work as the Shakespeare plays one of the most extraordinary feats recorded in history, and who with the intelligence attributed to him must have seen that this would eventually raise doubts as to the genuineness of his claims, deliberately reduced to a minimum all that kind of evidence which might have placed his title beyond question. For, as we have seen, neither that part of his life prior to his appearance in the London theatre, nor that subsequent to his retirement from the stage, nor a single word in his will, shows any mark of those dominating literary interests to which the writings bear witness. In a word, though willing to enjoy the honour, and, maybe, the pecuniary advantages of authorship, he must have actually gone out of his way to remove the normal traces of his, literary pursuits; in this way casting about the production of his plays that kind of obscurity which belongs to anonymous rather than to acknowledged authorship.
Probably one of the most significant facts connected with this paucity of personal literary details, upon which we have so much insisted, has been the issue in modern times of literary series without volumes on Shakespeare. The original issue of "English Men of Letters," including Elizabethan writers, like Spenser and Sidney, appeared without a volume on the greatest of all. The omission continued through later editions, and was only made good at the extreme end of the series with the apparent purpose of removing an anomaly; adding to the series thereby, however, a most valuable work upon the Shakespeare literature, which yet admits frankly the meagreness of the material available for a real literary biography. In addition to this the long list of the "Great Writer" series is still without its volume on England's greatest writer. The explanation of all this seems to lie in the uncertainty of everything [70] connecting the Shakespeare literature with the personality behind it; thus exposing such scholarly works as Sir Sidney Lee's "Life of William Shakespeare" to criticism on the grounds of the supposititious character of much of the biographical details.
Whilst then the view of authorship hitherto current implies its mysteriousness, those who oppose that view postulate thereby an uncertain authorship. All therefore must agree that the whole business is a profound mystery. Only the Shakespeare tyro believes nowadays that William Shakspere's credentials stand on the same plane with those of Dante and Milton; and only the too old or too young are disposed to represent the sceptics as cranks and fanatics. Our last chapter has but outlined the arguments by which we claim the incredibility of the old belief has been established; other points will arise in the course of our discussion. What we do now is to assume an undecided authorship and attempt to lift the veil from this, the most stupendous mystery in the history of the world's literature.
The objection, though not so frequently raised as formerly, is still occasionally met with, that the enquiry is unnecessary; that the great dramatic masterpieces stand there, that we cannot be deprived of them, and that such being the case all we need to do is to say that the name "Shakespeare" stands for their writer, whoever he may have been, and that there the matter may be allowed to rest. Such indifference to the personality of the author is usually, however, but the counterpart to an indifference to the writings themselves. Those who appreciate some great good that they have received cannot remain indifferent to the personality of the one to whose labours they owe it. Such an attitude, moreover, would be unjust and ungrateful to the memory of our benefactors. And if it be urged that "Shakespeare" in leaving things as he did, showed that he wished to remain unknown, there is still the possibility that arrangements were made for ultimately disclosing his identity to posterity, [71] and that these arrangements have miscarried. Again, it is one thing for a benefactor of mankind to wish to remain unknown, it is quite another matter for others to acquiesce in this self-effacement. Then there is the possibility that the writer's effort to obliterate the memory of himself may not have succeeded, and that there may be current an incomplete, distorted and unjust conception of him, which can only be rectified by establishing his position as the author of the world's greatest dramas.
The discovery of the author and the establishing of his just claims to honour is therefore a duty which mankind owes to one of the most illustrious of men; a duty from which Englishmen, at any rate, can never be absolved, if by any means the task can be accomplished. He is the one Englishman of whom it can be most truly said that he belongs to the world; and in any Pantheon of Humanity that may one day be set up he is the one of our countrymen who is already assured of an eternal place. England's negligence to put his identity beyond question would therefore be a grave dereliction of national duty if by any means his identity could be fully established.
Accepting the duty thus laid upon us, our first task must be to define precisely the character of the problem that confronts us. Briefly it is this. We have before us a piece of human work of the most exceptional character, and the problem is to find the man who did it. Thus defined, it is not, as we have already remarked, strictly speaking a literary problem. Those who enter upon the search must obtain much of their data from literary men; they must rest a substantial part of their case upon the authority of literary men; and they must, in the long run, submit the result of their labours very largely to the judgment of literary men. But the most expert in literature may be unfitted for prosecuting such an investigation, whilst a mind constituted for this kind of enquiry may have had only an inferior preparation so far as purely literary matters are concerned. [72]
It is the kind of enquiry with which lawyers and juries are faced every day. They are called upon to examine questions involving highly technical matters with which they are not themselves conversant. Their method is naturally to separate what belongs to the specialist from what is matter of common sense and simple judgment; to rely upon the expert in purely technical matters, and to use their own discrimination in the sifting of evidence, at the same time allowing its full weight to any particular knowledge they may chance to possess in those things that pertain specially to the expert's domain. This is the course proper to the investigation before us. The question, for example, of what is, or is not Shakespearean; what are the distinguishing characteristics of Shakespeare's work; what were its relationships to contemporary literature; between what dates the plays appeared; when the various editions were published, are matters which may be left, in a general way, to the experts. As, however, there is a considerable amount of disagreement amongst the specialists (and even a consensus of expert opinion may sometimes be at fault): where it is necessary to differ from the experts - a thing which is more or less inevitable in the breaking of entirely new ground, and especially in presenting a new and potent factor - such differences ought to be clearly indicated and adequately discussed. Nevertheless the cumulative effect of all the evidence gathered together ought to be of such convincing weight as to be in a measure independent of such personal differences, and indeed strong enough to sustain an unavoidable admixture of errors and slips in matters of detail.
Our task being to discover the author of what is acknowledged generally to be Shakespeare's work, the exceptional character of that work ought, under normal conditions, to facilitate the enquiry. The more commonplace a piece of work may be the greater must be the proportion of men capable of doing it, and the greater the difficulty under [73] ordinary circumstances of placing one's hand on the man who did it. The more distinctive the work the more limited becomes the number of men capable of performing it, and the easier ought it, therefore, to be to discover its author. In this case, however, the work is of so unusual a character that every competent judge would say that the man who actually did it was the only man living at the time who was capable of doing it.
Notwithstanding this fact, after three hundred years the authorship seems more uncertain to-day than at any previous time. The natural inference is that special obstacles have intentionally and most carefully been laid in the way of the discovery. There is no mere accident in the obscurity which hangs round the authorship, and the very greatness of the work itself is a testimony to the thoroughness of the steps taken to avoid disclosure. This fact must be borne in mind throughout the enquiry. It is not merely a question of finding out the man who did a piece of work, but of circumventing a scheme of self-concealment devised by one of the most capable of intellects. We must not expect, therefore, to find that such a man, taking such a course, has somewhere or other gone back childishly upon his intentions, and purposely placed in his works some indications of his identity, in the form of a cryptogram or other device. If the concealment were intended to be temporary it would hardly be within the works themselves or in any document published at the same time that the disclosure would be made.
As it is not from intentional self-disclosure that we should expect to discover the author, but from more or less unconscious indications of himself in the writings, it is necessary to guard at the outset against certain theories as to the possibilities of genius which tend to vitiate all reasoning upon the subject. Upon hardly any other literary topic has so much that is misleading been written. There is a frequent assumption, that the possession of what we call genius renders [74] its owner capable of doing almost anything. Now William Shakspere is the one stock illustration of this contention. In all other cases, where the whole of the circumstances are well known, we may connect the achievements of a genius with what may be called the external accidents of his life. Though social environment is not the source of genius, it certainly has always determined the forms in which the faculty has clothed itself, and even the particular direction which its energies have taken: and in no other class of work are the products of genius so moulded by social pressure, and even by class relationships, as in works involving the artistic use of the mother tongue. To what extent the possession of abnormal powers may enable a man to triumph over circumstances no one can say; and if a given mind working under specified conditions is actually proved to have produced something totally unexpected and at variance with the conditions, we can only accept the phenomenon, however inexplicable it may appear. It is not thus, however, that genius usually manifests itself; and, failing conclusive proof, a vast disparity or incompatibility between the man and the work must always justify a measure of doubt as to the genuineness of his pretensions and make us cast about for a more likely agent.
Now no one is likely ever to question the reality or the vastness of "Shakespeare's" genius. If he had enjoyed every advantage of education, travel, leisure, social position and wealth, his plays would still remain for all time the testimony to his marvellous powers: though naturally not such stupendous powers as would have been required to produce the same results without the advantages. Consequently, if we regard the authorship as an open question we shall be much more disposed to look for the author amongst those who possessed some or all of those advantages than amongst those who possessed none of them. That is to say, we must go about the task of searching for the author in precisely the same way as we should seek for a man who had done some ordinary piece of work, [75] and not complicate the problem by the introduction of such incommensurables as are implied in current theories of genius.
If we find that a man knows a thing we must assume that he had it to learn. If he handles his knowledge readily and appropriately we must assume an intimacy born of an habitual interest, woven into the texture of his mind. If he shows himself skilful in doing something we must assume that he attained his skill by practice. And therefore, if he first comes before the world with a masterpiece in any art, exhibiting an easy familiarity with the technique of the craft and a large fund of precise information in any department, we may conclude that preceding all this there must have lain years of secret preparation, during which he was accumulating knowledge, and by practice in his art, gaining skill and strength for the decisive plunge; storing up, elaborating and perfecting his productions so as to make them in some degree worthy of that ideal which ever haunts the imagination of the supreme artist.
Most of the other poets differ from Shakespeare in that they furnish us with collections of their juvenile productions in which, though often enough poor stuff, we may trace the promise of their maturer genius. Apart from this value, much of it is hardly entitled to immortality. Amongst the work of Shakespeare the authorities, however, ascribe priority in time to "Love's Labour's Lost;" and what Englishman that knows his Shakespeare would care to part with this work? We could easily mention quite a number of Shakespearean plays of even high rank that would more willingly be parted with than this one. It would, however, be perfectly gratuitous to argue that this work is a masterpiece.
Masterpieces, however, are the fruits of matured powers. Dante was over fifty years of age before he finished his immortal work; Milton about fifty-five when he completed "Paradise Lost." Quite a long list might be made [76] out illustrating this principle in works of even the second order; Cervantes at sixty producing "Don Quixote," Scott at forty-three giving us the first of the Waverley Novels, Defoe at fifty-eight publishing "Robinson Crusoe"; Fielding at forty-two giving "Tom Jones," and Manzoni at forty "I Promessi Sposi." Or, if we turn to Shakespeare's own domain, the drama, we find that Moliere, after a lifetime of dramatic enthusiasm and production, gave forth his masterpieces between the ages of forty and fifty, his greatest work "Tartuffe" appearing just at the middle of that period (age forty-five), whilst Goethe's "Faust" was the outcome of a long literary lifetime, its final touches being given only a few months before his death at the age of eighty-two.
Drama, in its supreme manifestation, that is to say as a capable and artistic exposition of our many-sided human nature and not mere "inexplicable dumb-shows and noise," is an art in which, more than in others, mere precocity of talent will not suffice for the creation of masterpieces. In this case genius must be supplemented by a wide and intense experience of life and much practice in the technical work of staging plays. Poetic geniuses who have not had this experience, and have cast their work in dramatic form, may have produced great literature, but not great dramas,. Yet, with such a general experience as these few facts illustrate, we are asked to believe that a young man - William Shakspere was but twenty-six in the year 1590, which marks roughly the beginning of the Shakespearean period - began his career with the composition of masterpieces without any apparent preparation, and kept pouring out plays spontaneously at a most amazing rate. He appears before us at the age of twenty-nine as the author of a superb poem of no less than twelve hundred lines, and leaves no trace of those slight youthful effusions by means of which a poet learns his art and develops his powers. If, however, we can disabuse our minds of fantastic notions of genius, regard the Shakespearean dramas as anonymous, and look at them [77] with the eyes of common sense, we shall be inclined rather to view the outpouring of dramas from the year 1590 onwards as the work of a more matured man, who had had the requisite intellectual and dramatic preparation, and who was elaborating, finishing off and letting loose a flood of dramas that he had been accumulating and working at during many preceding years.
When in 1855 Walt Whitman gave to the world his "Leaves of Grass," Emerson greeted the work and its writer in these words: "I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed . . . I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere." This concluding surmise was merely common sense, and, as the world now knows, perfectly true. What is wanted is to apply the same principle and the same common sense to work of a higher order, and to recognize that if by the year 1592, by which time we are assured that the stream of Shakespearean drama was in full flood, Shakespeare was manifesting an exceptional facility in the production of works that were at once great literature and great stage plays, there had been "a long foreground somewhere."
The considerations we have been urging in this chapter are necessary for getting the problem into its right perspective and on the same plane of vision as the other problems and interests of life. We must free the problem from illogical entanglements and miraculous assumptions, and look for scientific relationship between cause and effect. This must be the first step towards its solution. It may appear, however, that if it is simply a question of searching for a particular man, according to the same methods which we would employ in any other case, that the man should have been discovered long before now, if the material for his discovery were really available; and that as he has not been discovered after three hundred years the necessary data do not exist, and his identity must remain for ever a mystery. It must [78] not be forgotten, however, that "Shakespeare" had to wait until the Nineteenth Century for his full literary appreciation; and this was essential to the mere raising of the problem. "Not until two centuries, had passed after his death," says Emerson, "did any criticism which we think adequate begin to appear." Recognition he had, no doubt, in abundance before that time. But that exact and critical appreciation which made it possible to distinguish the characteristics of his work; and begin to separate true Shakespearean work from spurious; that enabled a Shakespearean authority to condemn "Titus Andronicus" as "repulsive balderdash"; which has enabled us to say of "Timon of Athens" that it contains but "a fragment from the master hand"; that "Pericles" is "mainly from other hands" than Shakespeare's; that "Henry VIII" was completed by Fletcher; all this belongs to the last hundred years, and has only been preparing the way for raising the question of Shakespeare's identity.
Even up to the present day the problem has hardly passed definitely beyond the negative or sceptical stage of doubting what is called the Stratfordian view, the work of Sir George Greenwood being the first milestone in the process of scientific research. The Baconian view, though it has helped to popularize the negative side, and to bring into prominence certain contents of Shakespeare's works, has done little for the positive aspect except to institute a misleading method of enquiry: a kind of pick-and-try process leading to quite a number of rival candidates for Shakespeare honours, and setting up an inferior form of Shakespearean investigation, the " cryptogram." Amongst all the literature on the subject, we have so far been able to discover no attempt, starting from an assumed anonymity of the plays, to institute a systematic search for the author. Yet surely this is the point towards which the modern movement of Shakespearean study has been tending; and once instituted it must continue until either the author is discovered or the attempt abandoned as hopeless.
* Note. The work as originally written begins here. Only a few slight verbal adjustments to the preceding pages have been possible. back