Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great Unknown

APPENDIX II

CHETTLE’S SUPPOSED ALLUSION TO WILL SHAKSPERE

In discussing contemporary allusions to William Shakspere or Shakespeare (or however you spell the name), I have not relied on Chettle’s remarks (in Kind-Hart’s Dreame, 1592) concerning Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit. Chettle speaks of it, saying, “in which a letter, written to divers play-makers, is offensively by one or two of them taken.” It appears that by “one or two” Chettle means two. “With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted” (at the time when he edited the Groatsworth), “and with one of them I care not if I never be.” We do not know who “the Gentlemen his Quondam acquaintance,” addressed by Greene, were. They are usually supposed to have been Marlowe, Peele, and Lodge, or Nash. We do not know which of the two who take offence is the man with whom Chettle did not care to be acquainted. Of “the other,” according to Chettle, “myself have seen his demeanour no less civil than he is excellent in the quality he professes” (that is, “in his profession,” as we say), “besides divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty; and his facetious grace in writing that approves his art.”

Speaking from his own observation, Chettle avers that the person of whom he speaks is civil in his demeanour, and (apparently) that he is “excellent in the quality he professes” – in his profession. Speaking on the evidence of “divers of worship,” the same man is said to possess “facetious grace in writing.” Had his writings been then published, Chettle, a bookish man, would have read them and formed his own opinion. Works of Lodge, Peele, and Marlowe had been published. Writing is not “the quality he professes,” is not the “profession” of the man to whom Chettle refers. On the other hand, the profession of Greene’s “Quondam acquaintance” was writing, “they spend their wits in making Plays.” Thus the man who wrote, but whose profession was not that of writing, does not, so far, appear to have been one of those addressed by Greene. It seems undeniable that Greene addresses gentlemen who are “playmakers,” who “spend their wits in making Plays,” and who are not actors; for Greene’s purpose is to warn them against the rich, ungrateful actors. If Greene’s friends, at the moment when he wrote, were, or if any one of them then was, by profession an actor, Greene’s warning to him against actors, directed to an actor, is not, to me, intelligible. But Mr. Greenwood writes, “As I have shown, George Peele was one of the playwrights addressed by Greene, and Peele was a successful player as well as playwright, and might quite truly have been alluded to both as having ‘facetious grace in writing,’ and being ‘excellent in the quality he professed,’ that is, as a professional actor.” 259

I confess that I did not know that George Peele, M.A., of Oxford, had ever been a player, and a successful player. But one may ask, – in 1592 did George Peele “profess the quality” of an actor; was he then a professional actor, and only an occasional playwright? If so, I am not apt to believe that Greene seriously advised him not to put faith in the members of his own profession. From them, as a successful member of their profession (a profession which, as Greene complains, “exploited” dramatic authors), Peele stood in no danger. Thus I do not see how Chettle’s professional actor, reported to have facetious grace in writing, can be identified with Peele. The identification seems to me impossible. Peele and Marlowe, in 1592, were literary gentlemen; Lodge, in 1592, was filibustering, though a literary man; he had not yet become a physician. In 1592, none of the three had any profession but that of literature, so far as I am aware. The man who had a special profession, and also wrote, was not one of these three; nor was he Tom Nash, a mere literary gentleman, pamphleteer and playwright.

I do not know the name of any one of the three to whom Greene addressed the Groatsworth, though the atheistic writer of tragedies seems meant, and disgracefully meant, for Marlowe. I only know that Chettle is expressing his regrets for Greene’s language to some one whom he applauded as to his exercise of his profession; and who, according to “divers of worship,” had also “facetious grace in writing.” “Myself have seen him no less civil than he is excellent in the quality he professes”; whether or not this means that Chettle has seen his excellence in his profession, I cannot tell for certain; but Chettle’s remark is, at least, contrasted with what he gives merely from report – “the facetious grace in writing” of the man in question. His writing is not part of his profession, so he is not, in 1592 (I conceive), Lodge, Peele, Marlowe, or Nash.

Who, then, is this mysterious personage? Malone, Dyce, Steevens, Collier, Halliwell-Phillipps, Knight, Sir Sidney Lee, Messrs. Gosse and Garnett, and Mr. J. C. Collins say that he is Will Shakspere. But Mr. Fleay and Mr. Castle, whose “mind” is “legal,” have pointed out that this weird being cannot be Shake-scene (or Shakspere, if Greene meant Shakspere), attacked by Greene. For Chettle says that in the Groatsworth of Wit “a letter, written to divers play-makers, is offensively by one or two of them taken.” The mysterious one is, therefore, one of the playwrights addressed by Greene. Consequently all the followers of Malone, who wrote before Messrs. Fleay and Castle, are mistaken; and what Mr. Greenwood has to say about Sir Sidney Lee, J. C. Collins, and Dr. Garnett, and Mr. Gosse, in the way of moral reprobation, may be read by the curious in his pages. 260

Meanwhile, if we take Chettle to have been a strict grammarian, by his words – “a letter, written to divers play-makers, is offensively by one or two of them taken,” Will is excluded; the letter was most assuredly not written to him. But I, whose mind is not legal, am not certain that Chettle does not mean that the letter, written to divers play-makers, was by one or two makers of plays offensively taken.

This opinion seems the less improbable, as the person to whom Chettle is most apologetic excels in a quality or profession, which is contrasted with, and is not identical with, “his facetious grace in writing” – a parergon, or “ bye-work,” in his case. Whoever this person was, he certainly was not Marlowe, Peele, Lodge, or Nash. We must look for some other person who had a profession, and also was reported to have facetious grace in writing.

If Chettle is to be held tight to grammar, Greene referred to some one unknown, some one who wrote for the stage, but had another profession. If Chettle is not to be thus tautly construed, I confess that to myself he seems to have had Shakspere, even Will, in his mind. For Will in 1592 had “a quality which he professed,” that of an actor; and also (I conceive) was reported to have “ facetious grace in writing.” But other gentlemen may have combined these attributes; wherefore I lay no stress on the statements of Chettle, as if they referred to our Will Shakspere.

1

E. J. Castle, Shakespeare, Bacon, Jonson, and Greene, pp. 194–195.

2

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 145.

3

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 340.

4

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 340, 341.

5

In Re Shakespeare, p. 54.

6

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 341.

7

Ibid., p. 470.

8

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 339.

9

The Vindicators of Shakespeare, pp. 115–116.

10

Ibid., p. 49.

11

The Vindicators of Shakespeare, p. 14.

12

Francis Bacon Wrote Shakespeare. By H. Crouch-Batchelor, 1912.

13

The Shakespere Problem Restated, p. 293.

14

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 31–37.

15

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 36–37.

16

Tue Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 20.

17

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 47–48.

18

Ibid., pp. 54–55.

19

Ibid., p. 54.

20

Ibid., p. 56.

21

Ibid., p. 59.

22

Ibid., p. 62.

23

Ibid., p. 193.

24

See his Vindicators of Shakespeare, p. 210.

25

Vindicators, p. 187.

26

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 223.

27

In Re Shakespeare, p. 54.

28

In a brief note of two pages (Cornhill Magazine, November 1911) he makes such reply as the space permits to a paper of my own, “Shakespeare or X?” in the September number. With my goodwill he might have written thirty-two pages to my sixteen, but I am not the Editor, and never heard of Mr. Greenwood’s note till May 1912.

He says that I had represented him as stating that the Unknown genius adopted the name of William Shake-speare or Shakespeare “as a good nom de guerre, without any reference to the fact that there was an actor in existence of the name of William Shakspere, whose name was sometimes written Shakespeare, and without the least idea that the works he published under this pseudonym would be fathered upon the actor.. ” (My meaning has obviously been too obscurely stated by me.)

Mr. Greenwood next writes that the confusion between the actor, and the unknown taking the name William Shakespeare, “did happen and was intended to happen.”

C’est là le miracle!

How could it happen if the actor were the bookless, ignorant man whom Mr. Greenwood describes? It could not happen: Will must have been unmasked in a day. The fact that a strange plot existed was only too obvious. The Unknown’s secret must have been tracked by the hounds of keenest nose in the packs of rival and jealous authors and of actors. None gives tongue.

29

Francis Bacon Wrote Shakespeare, p. 37.

30

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 333.

31

In the passage which I quoted, with notes of omission, from Mr. Greenwood (p. 333), he went on to say that the eulogies of the poet by “some cultured critics of that day,” “afford no proof that the author who published under the name of Shakespeare was in reality Shakspere the Stratford player.” That position I later contest.

32

See chap. XI, The First Folio.

33

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 305, 306.

34

Furness, Merchant of Venice, pp. 271, 272.

35

On this see Mr. Pollard’s Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, pp. 1–9.

36

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 202, 348, 349.

37

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 349.

38

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 356.

39

In Re Shakespeare, p. 88, note I.

40

Studies in Shakespeare, p. 15; Life of Shakespeare, by Malone, pp. 561–2, 564; Appendix, XI, xvi.

41

C. I. Elton, William Shakespeare, His Family and Friends, pp. 97, 98.

42

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 44.

43

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 39.

44

Vindicators of Shakespeare, p. 210.

45

Vindicators of Shakespeare, p. 187.

46

Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 223.

47

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 69.

48

See chapter X, The Traditional Shakespeare.

49

See C. I. Elton, William Shakespeare, His Family and Friends, pp. 48, 343–8.

50

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 207–9.

51

Chapter X, infra.

52

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 96.

53

See chapter X, The Traditional Shakespeare.

54

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 94–96.

55

Shakespeare, pp. 38–40.

56

Raleigh, Shakespeare, pp. 77, 78.

57

So he seems to me to do; but in Vindicators of Shakespeare, p. 135, he shows great caution: “I refer the reader to Mr. Collin’s essay, and ask him to judge for himself.”

58

Studies in Shakespeare, p. 15.

59

Studies in Shakespeare, p. 21.

60

Alcibiades, I, pp. 132, 133; Troilus, III, scene 3.

61

Studies in Shakespeare, p. 46.

62

Iliad, p. 63.

63

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 54, 55.

64

National Review, vol. xxxix., 1902.

65

The Pilot, Aug. 30, 1902, p. 220.

66

The oldest mention of a circulating library known to me is in Hull, in 1650, when Sir James Turner found it excellent.

67

In his Shakespeare (English Men of Letters), pp. 66, 67.

68

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 77, 78.

69

The Shakespearean Myth, p. 162.

70

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 76.

71

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 81, note I.

72

Penzance, The Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy, pp. 150, 151. Citing Appleton Morgan’s Shakespearean Myth, pp. 248, 298.

73

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 175.

74

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 457.

75

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 58.

76

Apology the Actors, 1612.

77

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 267.

78

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 267, 268.

79

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 50–52.

80

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 51.

81

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 51.

82

Ibid., p. 500, citing Mr. Reed’s Francis Bacon our Shake-speare, chap. ii. pp. 62, 63.

83

Ibid., pp. 500–520, chap xvi.

84

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 512.

85

Ibid., p. 514.

86

Ibid., p. 386, note I.

87

Ibid., p. 93.

88

Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. v. p. 126. Prof. G. P. Baker.

89

Furness, Love’s Labour’s Lost, pp. xiii., 348–350: cf. pp. 348, 349, for the four distinct styles of linguistic affectation of the period, at least as they are represented in literature.

90

Shakespeare Studies in Baconian Light, Appendix on Marlowe.

91

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 516.

92

Act i. Scene 2. Furness, Love’s Labour’s Lost, p. 45, note.

93

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 67, 68.

94

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 66.

95

Ibid., p. 67.

96

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 307.

97

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 308.

98

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 309.

99

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 310.

100

Ibid., pp. 310, 311.

101

Ibid., p. 311.

102

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 309.

103

Ibid., pp. 311, 312.

104

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 312, 313.

105

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 313.

106

See Appendix II, “Chettle’s supposed allusion to Will Shakspere.”

107

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 330.

108

The Vindicators of Shakespeare, pp. 115, 116, 211. See my Introduction, p. xxii.

109

The Vindicators of Shakespeare, p. 210.

110

Ibid., p. 136.

111

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 338.

112

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 346.

113

Cited in The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 353.

114

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 353.

115

Diary, pp. xxvii, xxviii.

116

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 367.

117

Ibid., pp. 368, 369.

118

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 354.

119

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 366.

120

Some Baconians say so!

121

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 181, 397.

122

Ibid., p. 186.

123

Some verses of Fletcher’s may, perhaps, refer to Beaumont’s death.

124

C. I. Elton, Shakespeare, His Family and Friends, pp. 246, 247.

125

As to the Aldine Ovid in the Bodleian, see Mr. Greenwood in The Vindicators of Shakespeare, pp. 191, 192. Of course he raises every objection, but I do not feel sure that either an affirmative or negative result can be attained by expertise. We are not told when or where the Bodleian obtained the book; nor what is the date of the handwriting of the inscription about W. Hall, a personage whom we are to meet later. A good deal of business is done in forging names in books.

126

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 196.

127

Ibid., p. 197.

128

See Frontispiece.

129

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 247, 248, note I.

130

National Review, June 1912, p. 903.

131

Pall Mall Gazette, November 1910.

132

Outlines, vol. i. p. 283.

133

P. 73, 1806.

134

Outlines, vol. i. p. 283.

135

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 247.

136

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 248–249.

137

C. I. Elton, William Shakespeare, His Family and Friends, pp. 236–237.

138

C. I. Elton, William Shakespeare, His Family and Friends, p. 228.

139

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 199.

140

C. I. Elton, William Shakespeare, His Family and Friends, pp. 332–333.

141

Ibid., p. 250.

142

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 199, note 1.

143

C. I. Elton, William Shakespeare, His Family and Friends, pp. 339, 342.

144

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 238.

145

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 214.

146

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 214, note 2.

147

C. I. Elton, William Shakespeare, His Family and Friends, p. 56.

148

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 28, 29.

149

Like Mr. Greenwood, I think that Ben was the penman.

150

Pollard, ut supra, p. 10.

151

Pollard, ut supra, pp. 64–80.

152

Pollard, ut supra, pp. 121–124.

153

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 287–288.

154

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 290–291.

155

Ibid., pp. 292, 293.

156

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 293.

157

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 489, 490.

158

Ibid., p. 491.

159

Studies in Shakespeare, p. 352.

160

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 293.

161

Ibid., p. 491.

162

Ibid., p. 293.

163

Ibid., p. 293.

164

The Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 297.