plays of the dramatist that are to be looked upon as presenting stories which are largely of his own invention. However, "The Tempest," though its main story was not entirely original,1 displays more thought-provoking inventiveness than any other play of Shakespeare. Caliban and Ariel were new and challenging creations.

It is clear that the manner in which he manipulates and supplements the material derived from his sources is a fundamental subject of study in estimating aright the genius of Shakespeare. This topic is especially interesting in the case of "As You Like It."

1 See the First Folio edition of the play, Crowell, 1908, 85-92.

SHAKESPEARE OR BACON?1

LET me say to begin with that I know nothing whatever about any cipher, any system of secret symbols, by which it may be thought to be proved that Bacon wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare. I shall not argue for or against Shakespeare's authorship of the plays by any method of ciphering. Those who sigh for a cipher must not apply to me.

My honored teacher Professor ten Brink used to say that, if any man would read attentively a page of Bacon's writing and then a page of Shakespeare's, he would realize that the man who wrote the first of these pages could not have written the second, not even if his life had been at stake. I suggest to any one that is interested that he read the fourth section of the Second Book of Bacon's work "The Advancement of Learning," that he read next some interesting scene from one of Shakespeare's plays, and then ask himself whether it is probable that the same mind produced both passages. Any intelligent person can make this test. I select this particular section from Bacon because I am to refer to it again later.

Bacon published in 1597, in a book containing also some other writings, twelve of his famous essays. Thirty years ago Professor Edward Arber brought out an interesting edition of Bacon's essays. Each one of these twelve is

2

1 Given as a radio talk from Mitchell Tower, The University of Chicago, on the evening of June 4, 1925. A few of the sentences appear again elsewhere in the book.

'Published by A. Constable and Co., 1895.

there printed in four columns. The first column reprints exactly the original text of 1597. The very slight changes made in the second edition of 1598 are indicated in footnotes. In the second column the same essay is printed from a manuscript believed to have been penned at some time between 1607 and 1612. The third column reprints the text as given in the third edition, that of 1612. In the fourth column appears the text of 1625, the last edition published during Bacon's life-time. In the footnotes are indicated all the significant departures from the final English form which are found in the translated Latin edition published in 1638. For Bacon was careful to have his works translated into Latin, which he looked upon as the universal and permanent language of scholars. Any one who will study carefully the intensely condensed language of these twelve esays, and the many changes and insertions made in the text over a period of nearly thirty years, will not easily believe that the same man who did this painstaking literary mosaic work, wrote also the facile, fluent, even wordy plays that we call Shakespeare's. While both men are very great, this comparison makes it clear that they are also very different.

Some have thought that Shakespeare was only an ignorant actor, and therefore could not have written these plays. Let us consider first the question of his ignorance.

Aubrey, a well-known antiquary of the latter part of the seventeenth century, says this of Shakespeare: "Though, as Ben Jonson says of him, that he knew but little Latin and less Greek, he understood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country." In the margin Aubrey indicates that his information came "from Mr. Beeston." William Beeston, whom Aubrey knew, was the son of Christopher Beeston,

who was a member of Shakespeare's company and knew him well. The latest and best life of Shakespeare, that of Professor Adams,1 accepts this statement of Aubrey as reliable. Stratford had an excellent school, one of the best in England. Shakespeare's father was an important man in Stratford, and would naturally wish to have his son educated. If Shakespeare was a school-teacher for a time, this would explain why in his plays words derived from the Latin are used with a vivid sense of their original Latin meaning. His early comedy "Love's Labour's Lost" makes fun of a pedantic schoolmaster who loves to quote Latin. His "Comedy of Errors," another early play, combines most skillfully telling features from two of the Latin comedies of Plautus, the "Menaechmi" and the "Amphitryon." These plays had not at that time been translated into English.

In Act IV, Scene i, of "The Merry Wives of Windsor," Shakespeare puts before us a Welsh schoolmaster who asks the little boy William to decline for him the Latin pronoun hic, haec, hoc. When William fails to remember the forms for the accusative case, the Welshman Evans prompts him, but mispronounces his hunc, hanc, hoc. He says: "I pray you, have your remembrance, child; accusativo, hung, hang, hog." The ignorant Mrs. Quickly, who is listening intently, comments: "Hang-hog' is Latin for bacon, I warrant you." Here the mystic word "bacon" is uttered plainly. This very funny scene has nothing to do with the rest of the play. A man must know Latin pretty well in order to play with it as the dramatist does throughout this scene. And there is no good reason why William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon might not know enough to write this scene and the plays that we call his. 1 Houghton Mifflin Co., 1923, pp. 90 ff.

Certainly the fact that Shakespeare was an actor, and therefore familiar with stage requirements, would help him greatly in writing plays if he were otherwise fitted for the task. Shakespeare's greatest rival in modern times as a writer of comedy is the Frenchman Molière, who was busy both as an actor and as a playwright all his days.

Ben Jonson was the most learned of all the Elizabethan playwrights. He was an intimate friend both of Shakespeare and of Bacon. If Shakespeare had not been capable of writing the plays attributed to him, Jonson would have known it. Jonson speaks of each of these two men in three different places. First he mentions them in his conversations with Drummond. Jonson went to Scotland on foot in 1618. He visited the Scotch poet Drummond, who made careful notes of the sayings of his famous English guest. These notes have come down to us and have often been printed. Shakespeare and Bacon are each mentioned twice in these conversations.

A second place where Jonson comments on these two friends is in a sort of notebook published after his death. This bears the odd title "Timber: or Discoveries: Made upon Men and Matter," etc. In this work, which I will call "Discoveries," Shakespeare is mentioned once and Bacon four times.

In the third place, Jonson wrote a complimentary poem to Lord Bacon on his sixtieth birthday; and he wrote two complimentary poems to Shakespeare. These appeared in the First Folio edition of the plays in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death.

Jonson's three prose references to Shakespeare are very critical. As Professor Herford puts it: "Both in the 'Conversations' and the 'Discoveries,' where high praise is given to others Jonson only notes in the case of Shake