represents our great dramatist in a less favorable light, as a human being with human infirmities, I may lament it, but I do not therefore feel myself at liberty to conceal and suppress the fact. The anecdote is this: 'Upon a time when Burbage played Rich. 3, there was a citizen grew so far in liking with him, that before she went from the play, she appointed him to come that night unto her, by the name of Rich. the 3. Shakespeare overhearing their conclusion, went before, was entertained, and at his game ere Burbage came. Then, message being brought that that Rich. the 3 was at the dore, Shakespeare caused returns to be made, that William the Conqueror was before Rich. the 3. Shakespeare's name Willm."" If this story be true, to say the very least, it presents the man Shaksper to us in a very unfavorable light. No comment is necessary. Next and last in order we have the traditional account of William Shaksper's last sickness and death. The diary of the Rev. John Ward contains the following undated paragraph: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merie meeting, and it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted." Here, then, we have four items of traditional evidence which, if we accept them as in the main reliable, show that William Shaksper was a person of limited education; that he was, while a young man, addicted to bad habits, and the associate of poachers and idlers; that in the middle of life, he was lewd and lascivious; and that his last sickness and death were caused by a drunken spree. If we connect these traditional statements with the known facts about his life, it will be very plainly seen that they correspond. His illiteracy is confirmed by his wretched handwriting and by his failure to educate his own children. If he had been a man of good habits and honest and straightforward in his dealings, he never would have attempted to perpetrate the fraud as to the grant of arms for his father. It he had been a virtuous gentleman, he would have treated his wife decently and would not have indulged in any illicit amours. And if he had been the exemplary, gentle, modest, and temperate man whom his admirers desire all mankind to worship, he never would have indulged in a wretched drinking bout with Ben Jonson or any one else. I do not wonder that Hallam says of the man whom he supposes to be the author of the plays that "to be told that he played a trick on a brother player in a licentious amour, or that he died of a drunken frolic, does not exactly inform us of the man who wrote Lear." Rowe, being unable to fit Shaksper's life to the plays, says that "the character of the man is best seen in his writings." The reader will agree with me that the character of the man would be of some importance if he had the ability to write the Shakespeare plays and poems. Shaksper may have been a pilferer, a usurer, a libertine, a drunkard, and prone to litigiosity, and yet with all these faults, he might have been a competent composer of plays and poems, if he had had the requisite education. Francis Bacon, to whom the plays have been ascribed by many, was a barrator, a fawning sycophant, an ingrate, and a persistent office-hunter, but he was a well-educated and trained scholar. The Shaksper biographers, acting on Rowe's suggestion, and finding nothing savory in Shaksper's life, have undertaken to manufacture long and learned biographies of the man, not from the facts, but from the writings wrongly attributed to him. All of them, except Farmer, have overlooked the disabling fact of Shaksper's ignorance. CHAPTER XVI. THE PLAYS WERE WRITTEN BY A PROTESTANT OR PROTESTANTS. "Art thou a churchman?" -Twelfth Night, iii, 1. No disinterested and observing person can read the Shakespeare plays without noticing that the author or authors were thoroughly Protestant. Hatred of Roman Catholicism appears in the plays, wherever it was thought necessary to allude to any form of religion. While there were occasional flings at Puritanism, they were slight and weak when contrasted with the heavy blows aimed in the plays at the pretensions of the Papacy. The writer or writers were ardent believers in the principles of the English reformers. A few examples will suffice to show not only that these exhibitions of detestation of Roman Catholicism were inserted in the plays to please the adherents of the Reformation, but also that they were the utterances of a Protestant zealot. In the play of "The Life and Death of King John," Act 3, Scene 1, Pandulph, the Pope's legate, is made to say: "Hail, you anointed deputies of heaven! To thee, King John, my holy errand is. Why thou against the church, our holy mother, Of Canterbury, from that holy see? This, in our 'foresaid holy father's name, K. John What earthy name to interrogatories To charge me to an answer, as the pope. Tell him this tale; and from the mouth of England But as we, under heaven, are supreme head, King Phi.— Brother of England, you blaspheme in this. Though you, and all the kings of Christendom Against the pope, and count his friends my foes.. Pand. Then, by the lawful power that I have, Thou shalt stand curs'd and excommunicate: |