878 DEUCALION, PROGENITOR OF THE HUMAN RACE From Shake-speare "Yet you must be saying, Marcius is proud; who in a cheap estimation is worth all your predecessors since Deucalion.". Coriolanus, ii. 1 (1623). From Bacon "The poets relate that when the inhabitants of the old world were utterly extinguished by the universal deluge, none remained except Deucalion and Pyrrha.". Wisdom of the Ancients (1609). Deucalion was thus, according to both authors, the common ancestor of the human race. What Shake-speare meant by "both worlds" is explained in Bacon. One of the latter's tracts is called 'A Description of the Intellectual Globe.' 880 EDUCATION OF THE DRAMATIST "Shallow. Sir, I dare say, my cousin William is become a good scholar. He is at Oxford still, is he not? Silence. Indeed, sir, to my cost. "This work I knew not to whom to dedicate rather than to the Society of Gray's Inn, the place whence my father was called to the highest place of justice, and Shallow. He must then to the inns of court shortly. The very same day did I fight with one Sampson Stockfish, a fruiterer, behind Gray's Inn.". 2 King Henry IV., iii. 2 (1600). where myself have lived."- Arguments of Law (1616). The course of study recommended by Justice Shallowfrom the Universities to the Inns of Court-was the one actually pursued by Bacon. And it was the one which the anonymous author of a book, entitled 'Polymanteia,' and published in Cambridge in 1595, tells us was also pursued by the poet who wrote the 'Venus and Adonis.' That the latter could by any possibility have been William Shakspere of Stratford will not be contended. No person by that name was ever matriculated at either of the universities or enrolled at one of the Inns of Court. And yet, as this contemporary in the book above-mentioned publicly assures us, the author of the poem, 'Venus and Adonis,' was so matriculated or so enrolled. Whoever he may have been, therefore, it is beyond all question that he was personally known by a pseudonym. And that pseudonym, as the writer of the book also tells us, was Shakespeare. |