CHAPTER II.

HOW TO REACH THE TRUTH ABOUT THE PLAYS AND POEMS.

"Nay, it is ten times true; for truth is truth

To the end of reckoning."

-Measure for Measure, v, 1.

That the plays were called the Shakespeare plays raises a slight presumption in Shaksper's favor. It is, however, very slight indeed, because, first, as will hereafter be discussed and shown, the name used was not Shaksper's name; and because, secondly, everybody of literary taste knows that authors and poets very often conceal their names. Some of the best pieces of prose and poetry, which, if the authors were known, would have immortalized them, are anonymous gems. We do not know, so far as the real author's statements or admissions are concerned, who Junius was. When Waverley entranced the men and women of England, Sir Walter Scott was hiding behind the novel, and although book after book of war and love and knightly prowess came to the thirsty people as refreshing showers come to the parched earth, the glory of the authorship was not revealed; and the real writer was not the one whom the multitudes or the knowing critics and commentators honored; neither would Scott have been found out at all, had not the bankruptcy of his publishers compelled him to step before the curtain. Scott's reasons may seem peculiar to some, and yet they were rational enough. He says in his general preface: "Great anxiety was expressed to know the name of the author, but on this no authentic information could be

obtained. My original motive for publishing the work anonymously was the consciousness that it was an experiment on the public taste which might very probably fail," and again he says, "I am sorry I can give little satisfaction to the queries on this subject. I have already stated elsewhere that I can render little better reason for choosing to remain anonymous than by saying, with Shylock, that such was my humor. Another advantage was connected with the secrecy which I observed. I could appear or retreat from the stage at pleasure. In my own person also as a successful author in another department of literature I might have been charged with too frequent intrusions on the public patience; but the author of Waverley was in this respect as impassable to the critic as the ghost of Hamlet to the partisan of Marcellus."

I have said that a poor man, a bad man, a drunkard, or a debauchee may write good poetry, and a man who has not very much learning may likewise do so. Robert Burns, one of Britain's greatest poets, was not a scholar versed in the classics, and he could write of pretty maids, banks and braes, fireside scenes and simple, homely, heart-touching things, but he could not write of the great men and women, states and cities of antiquity, nor of the heroes and gods of mythology. They were strangers to him. John Bunyan was no great scholar, yet he produced a book which, without any trace of great learning therein, contains a display of the imaginative faculty so bewitching as to draw all scholarly men and women to the "Pilgrim's Progress" as a model of simplicity and clearness. Learning may be piled on genius and it will make the recipient a king, aye every inch a king; but learning can not be extracted out of genius by any human process;

and as for the supernatural in aid of a poet or historian or novelist, nothing very reliable can be expected from the ghosts of the departed.

The learned author of a book lately issued from the London press, entitled "Is it Shakespeare?" very aptly says as to genius, at page 126: "Genius can do much, but it is far from being able to make a man omnibus numeris absolutus or 'complete' in the sense that Shakespeare was. Genius alone can undoubtedly lift a man to a purer and a larger æther than ordinary mortals can breathe in. Instances are numerous enough in the annals of many a cottage home and lowly birthplace, but these self-same favored mortals, even if, as with Milton, they could hope to soar

'Above the flight of Pegasean wing,'

still would find that their wings of genius are sadly clipped, confined, and weakened unless they are taught to rise and fly by the knowledge that is in books and by the varied wisdom that has descended from the ages of the past. Without these helps they may indeed rise somewhat from the brute earth of ordinary humanity, but they will never be able to make those glorious circling swoops in the lofty circumambient air which are ever the wonder of the earthbound crowd below, the marvel of an admiring world."

The writers whose works will show a knowledge, grammatically set forth, of theology, history, medicine, geology, botany, philosophy, finance, or the languages, or all of them, must have been students. Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Byron, Wordsworth, Southey, Campbell, Scott, and Tennyson were all trained and educated men.

King Henry describes the complete man when, in Henry VIII, Act 1, Scene 2, he says of Buckingham:

"The gentleman is learned, and a most rare speaker; To nature none more bound; his training such, That he may furnish and instruct great teachers, And never seek for aid out of himself."

One of the best definitions of a poet is given by Thomas Dekker in his "Satiro-mastix":"True poets are with art and nature crowned." No one, I take it, but a scholar or coterie of scholars could have written the Shakespeare poems and plays.

Did William Shaksper write them? If not, who did? I think that every student and admirer of the plays and poems will agree with me that the proper way to arrive at the truth is, first of all, to discuss and settle the question of Shaksper's right to the authorship, without reference to the claims set up for any one else; and when it has been fairly shown to the world beyond a reasonable doubt that William Shaksper could not have written the works for which he has so long received credit, the other question as to who wrote them can be better and more easily solved.

I do not expect to please, persuade, or convince the prejudiced reader by my attempt to remove the idol, Shaksper, from his unmerited throne. As Hawthorne beautifully expressed it, the first feeling of every reader must be one of absolute repugnance toward the person who seeks to tear out of the Anglo-Saxon heart the name which for ages it has held dearest, and to substitute another name or names to which the settled belief of the world has long assigned a very different position. The

Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and the plays of Shakespeare so called, hold the first place in the affections of the English-speaking people; and although it is one thing to love a book and quite another to question its authorship, the multitude will not appreciate the distinction.

Another learned writer, who has thoroughly exposed the Shaksper fraud, expressed the common feeling when he wrote that "if an archangel from the Empyrean should write a book doubting the complete Shakespearean production of the Shakespeare plays, the book reviewers (and they are the best that money will secure) would say to a man that that archangel was a dolt and an idiot or at least ignorant, misguided, and beyond his depth."

When Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill before the Epicureans and Stoics, and boldly proclaimed the God who was unknown to the Athenians, and the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked and all disbelieved, except the woman Damaris and a few others. Paul, in his bold and resolute way, ran counter to the received and fashionable belief. But Damaris has many sympathizers with her now, and the Christian minister can say with Hamlet, of those learned philosophers, "Where be your gibes now?" Reformers and iconoclasts are cranks and maniacs in the eyes of conservatives and aristocrats. Much learning has made them mad. Men and women must not run counter to cherished dogmas. Nevertheless, the truth is not made by majorities. If that were so, Mohammed or Buddha might be the true Savior and Jesus an impostor. Universality of belief even does not consecrate a lie. If it did, our writers, teachers, and parents would restore to his lost place in history that