[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Srn,—I have again to
thank your reviewer for pleasant words about my book : but he has made a slight mistake. He says he has given reasons against the Baconian authorship. May I tell him, so have I? I am not a Baconian; and, among other almost insuperable objections, I say in the book that I cannot imagine Bacon as the writer of Coriolanus. - The mentality revealed in that play is so repulsive, and so altogether foreign to Bacon's.
Your reviewer truly says that we know more about Shakespeare the actor than we know about Webster or Ford. That is just the trouble. If we knew no more about Shake- speare than we know about Webster, we should have less difficulty. It is what we do know about him that makes it difficult—for some of us impossible —to believe he wrote the great plays.—I am, Sir, &c., Willersey, Glos. GEORGE IIOOKIIAM.
Previous page
