MR. SHAKESPEARE AGAIN.* TnE first thought that occurs to the
reviewer on opening these books is, what a tremendous amount of labour and heaviness and what complete singleness of heart has gone to the writing of both. In each case the book represents some twenty years' work on the problem of Shakespeare's personal identity which the rival author could not but regard as twenty years entirely wasted. In each case the book is the complete statement of a theory already proposed in a less advanced state in a previous volume. Mr. Woodward's previous volume was published in 1916 and we are informed of the hurry with which it was put through the press to startle the sluggish world, and read between the lines of the author's disappoint- ment at the intervention of events of catastrophic, but by comparison ephemeral, importance which interfered with the efficiency of the printing trade and diverted public interest from this all-important subject.
Mr. Woodward, author of Francis Bacon's Cipher Signatures,1 regards Shakespeare, the boorish actor from Stratford, as a person of no real importance at all except as the instrument and mask for the real Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans. Mr. Acheson, author of Shakespeare's Sonnet Story,' links up this Stratford clown, not only with the dramas and poems ascribed to him, but with notorious scandals in high society.
Our view will briefly be this, that though we cannot accept either theory as proved, we cannot, on the other hand, agree that those twenty years are in either case ill-spent. Most valuable work in a positive sense has been done by Mr. Acheson in investigating the notorious " Manningham " story, which credited Sir William D'avenant the poet with being a natural son of William Shakespeare, and in showing that the scandal most probably referred not to Jane D'avenant, Sir William's mother, a virtuous woman, but if it had any base at all to one Anne, first wife of Sir William D'avenant's father, the surly tavern-keeper of the Cross Inn, Oxford ; this Anne was dead, of course, several years before William D'avenant was born. Our reasons for differing from Mr.Acheson are many. Two occur at once. One is the identification of the Dark Lady of the Sonnets with this Anne D'avenant ; their ages do not correspond, as we could show in a lengthy argument. But a • (1) Flafleill Bacon's Cipher Siunaturu. By Frank Woodward. London Grafton and Co. 125s. net.]—(2) Shakespeare s Sonnet Story (1592-1598). By Arthur Acheson. London: Bernard Quarftch. [30s. net.] worse difficulty is the thread of evidence attempting to connect the Earl of Southampton with the youth of the Sonnets who carried off Shakespeare's mistress—i.e., this tavern-keeper's wife. We cannot follow this thread with any confidence, either through Mr. Acheson's conduct of the Willobie problem, or through his interpretation of the latest Sonnets. In spite of the extravagance of the Rape of Lucrece dedication, the possi bility of such an intimate menage a trois existing between a tavern-keeper's wife, a country-bred actor and a young and fashionable earl seems to us a very remote one.
On the other hand, we are anxious to accept Mr. Acheson's confirmation of Professor Nimmo's theory that the rival poet of the Sonnets was George Chapman, and very delighted indeed with his chapter on the " War between the Theatres," a very fine piece of work. Mr. Acheson's suggestion that it was Chapman's malevolence that kept Jonson and Marston so long joined in enmity against Shakespeare is a very'pertinent one, and that it was Chapman who commissioned Thorpe to pirate the Sonnets as an act of spite against Shakespeare is one of the most illuminating, suggestions we have read for many months.
Of Mr. Woodward's positive contribution it is more difficult to write appreciatively. His method is to count the words on the first page of each play in the that folio, the title-pages of the quartos, and the lyrics embodied in the dramas—the words, and in certain cases the letters of the words where these are printed in different type from their fellows, and then by de- ducting in some cases the words printed in italics, and in some cases those enclosed in brackets, and by various other worthy shifts, to get a constant NUMBER, or rather to get at least one of several selected NUMBERS which to the eye of faith may appear to represent various signatures of Bacon, or falling these, " seals " of the Rosicrucian fraternity, of which Bacon is assumed to have been an adept.
It is conceivable that the number 287 which Mr. Woodward constantly deduces one way or another from title-page or complimentary verse or such-like has a certain cipher signi- ficance, and it is even possible that it is a Rosicrucian cipher, though we would only accept this as a last resort. But the signature of Bacon, no 1 Whatever Hemynge and Condell were playing at, it was not Bacon's game. There is a remark- able and straightforward way of proving that though Bacon may have written Shakespeare, Shakespeare may be regarded on equally strong evidence to have tram slated the Psalms and to have signed his name to them in the Authorized Version : Shake-spear or Shakespere has four vowels and six consonants, giving the number 46. Take the forty-sixth Psalm and count forty-six words forward, where you fmd the word Shake, and then forty-six words from the end and get the word spear. Really you do, that is, if you disregard the word " Selah," which is not part of the text but a musical direction, as the omniscient Shake- speare must have known. In fact, we are sceptics about the whole business, particularly sceptical when we are asked to believe that the author of Shakespeare's loveliest lyrics in the plays sat down and counted up the letters and squeezed and pushed at the poem, acrostic fashion, until the magic number fitted in correctly ; even more sceptical when these lyrics are incorporated, we are told, by Bacon in dramas whose content is in no possible way linked up with his own didactic and legal mind, but which are apparently mere sound and fury signifying nothing in particular. Mr. Wood- ward is blind to the principles of the psychology of creative art, but his negative contribution to criticism cannot be over- estimated. He has raised up a costly monument, beautifully inscribed and ornamented, the labour of twenty odd years, not so much to the glory of the " Plays of Shakespeare," as he may have intended, as to the oppressiveness of the Shake- speare legend. Legend always breeds mystery, and mystery is painful, so that the common lack of psychological know- ledge about artistic creation and the relation of any poem to the context which gave it birth has for many years led students astray to find relief from the mystery in the most bizarre and self-contradictory solutions.
Francis Bacon's Cipher Signatures will be regarded by later historians as remarkable evidence of the nightmare that Victorian criticism had made of Shakespeare and his works and left as a legacy to the second Georgian era. Philo- sotlhers will welcome it -as illustration of the marvellous
ingenuity and industry of the human mind in achieving a solution of any sort, a temporary relief where mystery oppresses and the oracles of reason and of history are silent.
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