More Gammon of Bacon
The Speaker, March 15, 1902




THE PROBLEM OF THE SHAKESPEARE PLAYS. By George C. Bompas. London: Sampson Low. 3s. 6d. net.

For some reason not very easy to discover, books on the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy continue to be produced in great numbers and voluminous form, although the case for the Baconian cypher has been irremediably damaged by Mr. Sidney Lee's critique of Mrs. Gallup, and finally shattered to pieces by Mrs. Gallup's reply. I have read the mass of these works as they appeared down to the latest, The Problem of the Shakespeare Plays, by Mr. George C. Bompas, and the general impression produced upon my mind takes the form of an impassioned hope that I may never be tried for my life before a jury of Baconians. If the average judge or jury treated evidence as the Baconians treat it there is not one of us who might not be in hourly peril of being sent to prison for bigamy or embezzlement or piracy on the high seas. In order to show that any one of us was identical with some celebrated criminal nothing would be necessary except to show that we had once or twice used the same popular turns of expression. The most harmless householder in London might on the Baconian method be suddenly convicted of having committed the Whitechapel murders, and the evidence might be that one of his cousins was in the habit of calling him "Jack" and that some slangy friend of his had in an authenticated letter described him as "a ripper." Some people may fancy that this is an exaggerated parallel. Let me merely quote in answer one of the actual arguments of Mr. G. C. Bompas:

"The moon so constant in inconstancy."

-Bacon: Trans. Psalm civ.

"Oh, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon."

-Romeo and Juliet.

It is seriously argued that two men must be the same man because they both employ the expression "the inconstant moon." I suppose that all the poems in all the ages which contain the expression "rosy dawn" were all secretly written by the same man. If education is to be seriously remodelled and set upon larger foundations in our age, surely one branch of the mind to which more attention should be given is the power of valuing evidence. Almost every one of the books which have passed before me in this matter display an absolute inability to realise what is significant and what is insignificant in a human problem. There ought to be a series of text-books on evidence and arguments as to probability, in all the Board Schools. In the simpler text-books of Standard I. would be found the general principles of which the Baconians stand in need. For instance, children would be made to learn by heart the following rules:

I. To establish a connection between two persons, the points of resemblance must be not only common to the two individuals but must not be common to any large number of persons outside. Example: Thus it is no evidence of connection between Jones and Brown that they both put money on the Derby, or that they both at one particular period of London life said "There’s 'air."

II. Similarly it is no proof of the connection between two persons that they both do something which, though it may not actually be done by many people might at any moment be done by anybody. Example: Thus it is no proof of connection between Jones and Brown that they both sneezed twice on a Thursday morning, or that they both had a door-knocker carved with the head of a lion.

III. In order to establish a connection between two men it is necessary that the points of resemblance should be (a) characteristics having something of the actual colour of an individual's character, (b) things in themselves unusual or difficult or dependent on a particular conjunction of events, (c) things, generally speaking, which it is easier to imagine one man only at a particular time doing, or two men conspiring to do, than to imagine two or more men at that time independently and simultaneously doing. Example: Thus a connection would be established between Jones and Brown, though only to a limited extent, if Brown were the only Cabinet Minister in the same social circle with Jones, and Jones had learnt a Cabinet secret.

These rules of evidence are so simple and obvious that at first sight it may seem a waste of time to summarise them even briefiy. But if a reader will apply them steadily through the whole of one of the Baconian books such as that of Mr. Bompas, he will find it may be said without the least exaggeration that by the end of the process every vestige of the book has vanished.

To quote examples of this in full would be to quote the whole book. I may, however, give the following instances in order to show that I do not overstate the case:

"His purpose was to break the knot of the conspiracy."

-History of Henry V.

This sentence from Bacon is gravely paralleled with the line from The Merry Wives of Windsor:

"There's a knot, at gin, a conspiracy against me."

Again we have:

"Wretches have been able to stir up earthquakes by the murdering of princes."-Bacon's Charge Against Owen.
"Wherefore this ghastly looking. What’s the matter?
Oh! ’twas a din to fight a monster ear
To make an earthquake."-Tempest.
" "Ordinatis belli et pacis est absoluti imperii,' a principal flower of the crown. For if those flowers should wither and fall, the garland will not be worth the wearing."

—Report 606. Bacon.

-Catesby: " Till Richard wear the garland of the realm."

-Richard III.

And it is solemnly proposed that we should believe in a story more sensational than that of a fifth-rate historical novel upon such evidence as this, that Bacon and Shakespeare both called a conspiracy "a knot," that they both made an allusion to an earthquake, and both made an allusion to a garland. If anyone will bring me two books taken at random from a bookcase, I will undertake to find in them better internal evidence than this that they were both written by one man. The remainder of Mr. Bompas’s parallels may chiefly be grouped into two classes. The first class shows that Bacon and Shakespeare both alluded to old stories that they must both have read. The second class shows that Bacon and Shakespeare both alluded to theories and superstitions that everybody in that time must have known. Will it be seriously credited as an example of the first class that Mr. Bompas makes capital out of the fact that both Bacon and Shakespeare refer to so old and banal a story as that of Tarquin slashing off the heads of the poppies? Will it be believed as an example of the second class that he makes an argument out of the facts that Bacon refers to a toad having a jewel in its head? It does not seem to occur to him that Shakespeare's lines would be perfectly pointless if they did not allude to a commonly received story. Mr. Bompas might as well endeavour to establish a connection between all the people who ever said that it was unlucky to sit down thirteen to table. Most incredible of all is the fact that a man professing to write seriously about a problem of the sixteenth century points it out as a coincidence that Bacon and Shakespeare both compared seditions to "evil humours" in the body, the veriest catch-word of contemporary physiology. He might as well identify all the people who talk about "social decadence."

I have given a list of these quibbles because it is supremely necessary to realise with what kind of matter these immense volumes are padded; and it is not difficult to realise that where such arguments are used there is likely to be a dearth of better ones. Wherever Mr. Bompas uses a more general or vital argument it is vitiated with the same underlying evil, an absolute refusal to realise the spirit of the Elizabethan era. Let me take a single example. Mr. Bompas argues that if Shakespeare was in reality the author, it is extraordinary that all the natural history in the plays is taken from old books and stories, and none of it from the actual details of the country round Stratford. But does Mr. Bompas really know so little of the age about which he writes as to suppose that any poet in that time would have taken any notice of nature, in the modern sense, even if he had been surrounded by miles of pigs and primroses? To notice, in the Tennysonian manner, what colour a certain leaf turns in September, what note a certain bird utters in spring, would have been as impossible either to Shakespeare or Bacon as to write The Origin of Species. All their natural history was traditional; and if Shakespeare had been ten times a rustic, and had never been near London, he would have got his natural history from tradition: he would no more have written about the habits of the squirrel than Spenser wrote about the streets and shop-windows of London, where he was born. Not to realise this is to be incapable at the outset of understanding a problem of the Renascence.

Lastly, the general argument drawn from the historic personality of Shakespeare shows a failure to understand not only the time but the eternal conditions of the problem. Mr. Bompas cannot believe that Shakespeare, a common practical man who worked hard to better his position, who had several perfectly solid and temporal ambitions, who retired a rich man to Stratford and enjoyed the good things of this life, was really the author of so many miracles of thought and language. The author must have been, according to Mr. Bompas, a man like Bacon, a man who had travelled, who had seen strange countries, who had dealt with great matters, who had known violent reverses and terrible secrets of State. With this view I venture most profoundly to disagree. There is no clearer mark, I think, of the second-rate man of genius than that he goes out to look for the world as if it were a marvellous island far away. The first-rate man of genius, like Shakespeare, sees the world in his own front garden. There is no clearer mark of the second-rate philanthropist than that he goes out to look for humanity, as if it were a race of blue apes in Central Africa. To the true philanthropist, like Shakespeare, one village is enough to show the whole drama of creation and judgment. There is no clearer mark of the second-rate poet than that he despises business. The true poet, like Shakespeare, despises nothing. Buying and selling and building a house in Stratford seem very derogatory to Mr. Bompas; they did not seem so to Shakespeare; he knew that all points on the eternal circle are equidistant from the centre.