66 and the word "hand" substituted. In a letter to Mr. Spedding, Mr. Smith claims that this erasure and substitution prove that the draughtsman who prepared the Shakespeare Will, knowing that the testator could not write, did not suppose that he would sign his name, and so prepared it for the superimposition of his seal. "I know," says Mr. Smith, "that you will ingeniously observe that that might have been his belief, but that the fact could better have been proved if hand' had been erased and seale' inserted. 6 But Shakespeare, being proud of his writing, and, as this would probably be his last opportunity, insisted on exhibiting his hand."" According to Mr. Smith, therefore, Ben Jonson's speech about "never blotting out a line," was redundant. But, whether able to write, or, like his ancestors and descendants, signing with a mark, he clearly cared no more than they how people spelled his name. A Mr. George Wise, of Philadelphia, has been able to compile a chart exhibiting one thousand nine hundred and six ways of spelling the Stratford boy's name; A commentary on the efforts of Mr. Halliwell and others, to establish the canonical orthography, which might well reduce them to despair. The fact is, that there can no more be a canonical spelling of the name Shakespeare than there can be a canonical face of the boy William. The orthography of Shakespeare, as now accepted, and the face now accepted as belonging to William of that name, are both modern inventions. Even the 1 See third edition Holmes' "Authorship of Shakespeare," p. 627. 2 Philadelphia, 1868. See Essays on Shakespeare, Carl Elze; translated by Schmitz (London, Macmillan's 1874), note to p. 371. "best of that family" (according to the old clerk), William, when called to sign his own last will and testament (obliged by law to sign each of the three sheets upon which it was engrossed) three times, spelled his name a different way each time. His daughter Judith lived and died without being able to spell or write it at all; Milton, Spenser, Sidney, even Gower and Chaucer (whom even our own Artemus Ward pronounced "no speller"), had but one way of writing their own names-and never dreamed of one thousand nine hundred and six. The name is now supposed to have been simply "Jacques-Pierre" (James Peter), which had been mispronounced-as Englishmen mispronounce French-for unnumbered generations. This is the present mispronunciation of Jacques prevalent in Warwickshire. And, such being the true origin of the name, it is, of course, natural to find it as we do, written in two words "Shake-speare," in those days. It is not William Shakespeare's fault that he sprang from an illiterate family, but that—after growing so rich as to be able to enjoy an income of $25,000 a year, he should never send his children-especially his daughter Judith-to school, so that the poor girl, on being married, on the 11th day of February, 1616, should be obliged to sign her marriage bond with a mark, shows, we think, that he was not that immortal he would have been had he written the topmost literature 1" Thomas Jakes, of Wonersh' was one of the list of gentry of the shire 12 Henry IV., 1433. At the surrender of the Abbey of Kenilworth 26 Henry VIII., 1535, the abbot was Simon Jakes, who had the pension of £100 granted him." (Wilkes' "Shakespeare from an American Point of View." New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1877, p. 464.) of the world—the Shakespearean Drama! But, still, this most unsatisfactory person-this man who answers, like Mr. Carroll's skipper, to "hi, or to any loud cry " "To what-you-may-call-um or what-is-his-name or to whatever the nearest actor or scene-shifter may happen to hit on when he wants the poor little "supernumerary," and "Joannes Factotum "-actually lived to clamber astride of the most immortal birthright of his own or of any century, and has clung thereon like another old man of the sea on Sinbad's shoulders, and been carried down through these three hundred years, and is being carried yet, down or up, to an undeterminate immortality of fame that is the true estate of somebody else! For, not only has the world not yet gotten its eyes half open, but it contumaciously refuses to open them to the facts in the case, and prefers to hug as tightly as it ever did this stupendous hoax-(" Shakespearean" indeed, in that it has outlasted and outlived all the other hoaxes put together the witchcraft hoax, the Chatterton hoax, the Ossian hoax, the moon hoax, and all the rest of them); that has carried all sorts of parasite hoaxes, like Ireland's, Collier's, and Cunningham's upon its back, until their little day has been accomplished, and they have dropped off, just as, one of these days, the present hoax must drop off, and breathe its last, without a single mourner to stand by the coffin, and confess himself its disciple. PART IV. EXTRA SHAKESPEAREAN THEORIES: THE DELIA BACON THEORY. HERE is a legal maxim to the effect that he who destroys should be able to build up. The anti-Shakespeareans have not neglected to observe it. The days when William Shakespeare first appeared in London, happened to be the days when the Renaissance had reached England, and the drama which began then for the first time to be produced, was the English Renaissant Drama-just throwing off the crudities of the old miracle and mystery plays borrowed from the continent, and beginning to be English and original. Moreover, letters and learning, so long exclusively confined to the rich and gentle, began to find expressions in other ranks. "The mob of gentlemen who write with ease" were, one and all, beginning to use their pens. There were no village newspapers with their "Poet's Corners," and these writers sent their manuscripts through the only channel at hand-the green-room door. As these scores of manuscripts came in, William Shakespeare, of Stratford, now Mr. Manager Shakespeare of the Blackfriars, read them over; took out a scene here and an act there; scissored them as he pleased; made this "heavy" for the low comedian, and that for the "first old man;" adjusted the "love business," made "practical" for his boards all the nature and humor, and cut out all that came flat, stale, and unprofitable from the amateur's hand; even took a little of each to make a new one, if necessary, (thus retaining the indicia that this was written by a lawyer, that by a physician, this by a soldier, that by a chemist, etc., etc.). He did what Dumas, Boucicault and Daly do to-day; he was, in other words, the stage editor, not the author, of the Shakespearean drama; though, that it should be called by his name, is, perhaps, the least unusual thing about it. pens, the very Besides the gentlemen who used their recent dissolution of the monasteries had thrown multitudes of "learned clerks," (the "clerical" profession then including lawyers and physicians, and indeed all book-learned men) upon their own resources for daily bread, and there was only one depot for their work. Not three, but three thousand men there were, other things being equal, more competent by education at least, than William Shakespeare to write the Shakespearean drama. But other things, as we shall see, were not equal. It is suggested, on the one hand, that William Shakespeare wrote the plays; on the other hand, that Francis Bacon wrote them; and, again, that Sir Walter Raleigh wrote them. So far as mere dates go, any one of the three might have written them. They were all three in London, and on the ground when the plays appeared. The truth is perhaps somewhere among the three. Francis Bacon was the most learned man of his time. He could and did read Greek in the original, and he did have access to untranslated manuscripts, such as the "Menæchmi" of Plautus. He was a philosopher, and he did come nearer to a prescience of the philosophy of ages to be, than any man who |