Shakespeare and Dr Rowse
Sir: Absence in America prevented me from replying to the various letters about my Address as Presi- dent of the Shakespeare Club at Stratford, but really there was nothing to reply to.
One person could not see that the Sonnets are visibly addressed to a social superior, in fact to a peer: 'Lord of my love,' with Shakespeare's duty as poet to his patron thrice,. emphasised. Another had no idea of the secondary meaning of the word 'will' in Elizabethan English— meaning desire, or specifically the sexual organs. And thus he could not interpret the 'Will' references in Sonnets 135 and 136. He is not to be blamed, for most editors of the Sonnets have not been able to either.
But they are explained and made perfectly clear in my edition of the Sonnets (Macmillan), the purpose- of which was to modernise spell- ing and punctuation, provide a prose version of each sonnet, and so make the whole thing intellig- ible.
Perhaps I may briefly refer ques- tioners to that.
A. L. Rowse All Souls College, Oxford Sir: I must reject Mr Wiedberg's charge that I have failed to deal with the points he raised, and I would be most grateful if you would allow me space to correct his misconceptions.
I did not 'concede' that con- temporary references to the Bard were to the Stratford Man; except those of a derogatory nature, such as Greene's 'upstart crow'. Ben Jonson's earlier allusions were also derogatory, but later changed in tone. Honest Ben assisted Bacon to translate his Essays into Latin. It seems, therefore, that some time before that he had been let into the secret. If so, the expression 'Sweet Swan of Avon' would help to pull the wool over people's eyes, and it is significant that in his Discoveries (1640), printed post- humously, he gave exactly the same praise to Bacon, as he had given in the 1623 Folio to the author of the Shakespeare Plays: Leave thee alone for the comparison, Of all that insolent Greece and haughty Rome . . . Sent forth . . .
Surely Jonson was not so bank- rupt in ideas as to use the same phrase for two different writers.
There is no difficulty in suggest- ing reasons why Bacon could have concealed his identity under a nom de plume. To mention two, for a nobleman openly to have written plays in the Elizabethan period would have been unacceptable, particularly when they contained 'treasonable' matter, as in Richard the Second.
I am not responsible for book- lets sent to Mr Wiedberg by others, but if he cares to consult the very considerable literary and historical evidence available to the public at our headquarters, I hope that, in due course, he will agree that abuse is not a substitute for rational dis- cussion.
Noel Fermor Chairman, Francis Bacon Society, Canonbury Tower, Islington, London N1 Sir: Mr Noel Fermor, Chairman of the Francis Bacon Society, claims (7 November) that contemporary references to Shakespeare (pre- viously quoted by another corre- spondent) 'are obviously to the playwright', and that -'it is petitio principil to assume that the Strat- ford Man is meant'. Then perhaps Mr Fermor will tell us what exac- tly Ben Jonson meant when, in the memorial verses of the First Folio, he called the playwright the 'sweet swan of Avon', and'what Leonard Digges, another— contemporary, meant when, in the same context, he spoke of the Bard's 'Stratford Moniment'.
The truth is that, apart from Jonson and - Digges, a number of Elizabethans and Jacobeans made remarks clearly identifying the poet with the London actor William Shakespeare (or Shakspere) whom, as far as I know, the Baconians have always acknowledged as being identical with the man from Strat- ford. I am sure • Mr Fermor has heard of the satirical play The Re- turn, from Parnassus, performed in 1597. whose unknown author makes the Elizabethan players Kempe and Burbage talk about 'our fellow Shakespeare'; in the same play Shakespeare is. listed as a poet together with Chaucer and Spenser, and specifically quoted as the author of Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Further- more the players Ideminge and Condell, joint editors of the First Folio, declared that they had re- ceived, the manuscripts from the author—their fellow-actor William Shakespeare.
There is thus no substance in the theory that in Shakespeare's _days no one considered the author to-be identical with the actor. Shake- speare's contemporaries evidently took it for granted that the Strat- ford-born player was the Bard, and that the Bard was the player.
S. F. Kissin 36 Grosvenor Road, Caversham, Reading, Berks
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