this man is in wide contrast, * Shakespeare is a voice merely-who this singer was, we know not." These "Historic Doubts" of Walpole, Malone's shade of uncertainty, brought out as a result of his researches and Emerson's unorthodox query, suggested by his failure to reconcile the life history of Shakespeare, with his work, as a result of which he was agnostic as to the man's work and preferred to take the poet's name as the mere synonym for the work that was known as his, may be said to represent the foundation for the mad quest of Miss Delia Bacon, who sought to demonstrate, in her "Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded, "20 that Lord Francis Bacon, rather than Shakespeare, was the author of the plays known as Shakespeare's. But about a year before Miss Bacon's book appeared, "a Mr. William Smith," in a privately published letter to Lord Ellesmere, published in London, in 1856,21 outlined his ideas concerning Shakespeare's inability to have written the plays accredited to him, and expressed his views as to Lord Bacon's excellent qualifications for the work. Miss Bacon had written a series of magazine articles preceding her book, however, and in the book she labors at some length to convince the public that she was the inventor of the Baconian theory, and Fiske22 and other historians seem willing to accord to her the doubtful credit of having originated the theory. The observations that gave rise to the "doubts"; the "doubts," upon which the later theory is founded and the analysis and growth of this theory, are not without interest. Published in 1857. "See interesting article by John H. Clifford, in Americana, Vol. XIV, tit. "Shakespeare, Authorship of." "Forty Years of Bacon-Shakespeare Folly," by John Fiske, in Atlantic Monthly, Nov. 1897, p. 636. Voltaire's Criticism The iconoclast M. de Voltaire, with of the Plays. his aptitude for historical investigation and analytical research, notwithstanding his known antagonism and unfairness toward English authors, never questioned Shakespeare's authorship of the plays, but his criticism was leveled at the grossness found mingled with the many evidences of genius in the plays. 23 He regrets that "We find so much more barbarism than real genius in the works of Shakespeare, "24 but again admits that "His genius pierced through the barbarous darkness of the times, as that of Lope de Vaga did in Spain. "25 In his "Ancient and Modern Tragedy," forgetting this barbarous period in which Shakespeare lived and wrote and that ghosts were commonly believed in at that time, this matter of fact Frenchman leveled this most extravagant criticism at Shakespeare, because he introduced the ghost into the play of Hamlet: "It seems as if nature took pleasure to unite in the head of Shakespeare all that we can imagine great and forcible, together with all that the grossest dullness could produce of everything that is most low and detestable." 26 Then admitting that the "ghost scene" has always had a most stirring effect on the English, in analyzing the plan of this tragedy, Voltaire suggests the quandary "How could so many wonderful things be generated in one head? For it must be acknowledged that all the plays of the divine Shakespeare are in the very same taste.''27 Thus, it will be seen, that notwithstanding his abuse of Shakespeare for combining in his plays the most uneven facts of science, literature, 23 But he did not fail to avail himself of Shakespeare's labors. See Prof. Lounsbury's "Shakespeare and Voltaire," pp. 143, 159. 24 Works of Voltaire, Vol. XXX, p. 59. 25 Ante idem. 26 Works of Voltaire, Vol. XXXVII, p. 137. "Tragedy of Hamlet, Voltaire's Works, Vol. XXXIX, p. 137. and the beauties of nature, along with the obscene and licentious and the superstitions of his age, the sceptic Voltaire, while berating him for many of the same traits that Voltaire himself possessed cannot resist the temptation to express a doubt as to his ability to produce the beauties, although willing to condemn him for the authorship of the base or ignoble found in the very same play. But this passing doubt or wonder on Voltaire's part did not even in his dubious mind arise to the dignity of a denial of Shakespeare's authorship of the plays, for in a following paragraph of the same study, he says: "The astonishment occasioned by the first wonder will cease entirely when it is known that Shakespeare has taken the subjects of all his tragedies from history or romances; and that he has done nothing more than turn into dialogues the romances of Claudius, Gertrude and Hamlet, written entirely by Saxo, the grammarian, to whom the whole glory of the performance is due. ''28 This unbeliever in miracles would thus reasonably account for the origin of the plays, by the author to whom they were accredited, rather than express a doubt as to Shakespeare's authorship, in the light of the known facts of history and contemporary testimony and by explanation of the seeming divine creation of the beautiful in the plays, he preferred to answer the claims of the Shakespearian Idolators by citing the known facts of history to demonstrate that he was a common purloiner of the works of his predecessors, instead of questioning his composition of the plays.29 But let us examine the character of the first witness to express any "doubts" as to the characters in the plays Ante idem. "As remarked by Thackeray (The Virginians, p. 495), the works of Shakespeare commenced to grow vastly more popular, in England, after M. de Voltaire attacked him, notwithstanding the many barbarisms that could not but shock a polite auditory. of Shakespeare, and then proceed to examine the "doubts" themselves, as history presents them. Walpole and His Horace Walpole, the first known prominent individual to doubt Shakespeare's characters, expressed his doubts about a century and a half after the plays were written. If he sought to express other than mere "doubts," upon the subject that he addressed himself to, his expressions would of course be incompetent, because purely hearsay, but the expressions of this first witness are but doubts," at best. But even if the witness knew facts, instead of mere "doubts" or dreams, the faith with which such doubts or dreams are to be received depends, in no small measure upon the character, for reliability of the "doubter" or dreamer, himself. A scholar of some attainments, Walpole was rather a traveled savant, and man of social distinction, than one of accurate information or reliable authority upon any subject. Living to a ripe old age his chief object was the erection and maintenance of his famous mansion, "Strawberry Hill" and his principal literary production was his "Letters," valuable only as interesting pictures of the social and fashionable gossip of his period, but admittedly marred by the palpable want of truthfulness running through them. Judged by an accurate and truthful measure of the man, his "doubts" upon such a subject are of but little value. Speaking of the man, Walpole, the historian Macaulay says: "The faults of Horace Walpole's head and heart are indeed sufficiently glaring. His writings, it is true, rank as high among the delicacies of intellectual epicures as the Strasburg pie, among the dishes described in Almanach des Gourmands. But as the pate de foie gras owes its excellency to the disease of the wretched animal which furnishes it, and would be good for nothing if it were not made of livers preternaturally swollen, so none but an unhealthy and disorganized mind could have produced such literary luxuries as the works of Walpole. The confirmation of his mind was such that whatever was little, seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little. Serious business was a trifle to him, and trifles were his serious business.' '30 In the preface to the second edition of his story, "The Castle of Otranto," Walpole apologizes for having "offered his work under the borrowed personage of a translator," in the first edition. He proceeds at length to answer Voltaire's criticism of Shakespeare-although entirely foreign to his subject-and asserts that "this great master of Nature, Shakespeare, was the model I copied." He also professes that "I had higher authority than my own opinion of this conduct" and closes his preface as follows: "The result of all I have said, is to shelter my own daring under the canon of the brightest genius this country, at least, has produced. I should be more proud of having imitated, however faintly, weakly, and at a distance, so masterly a pattern, than to enjoy the entire merit of invention, unless I could have marked my work with genius, as well as with originality." * In this preface Walpole does not express the slightest doubt of the authorship of the plays of Shakespeare. He defends the plays from the criticism of Voltaire, whom he classes as a genius, "but not of Shakespeare's magnitude." His modeling of his romance after Shakespeare's works was the explanation of the ideal that he had endeavored to approach in his work, as did Rowe, and other authors of the period, for an acquaintance with the plays produced veneration for the great "monarch of thought" and they adopted him as their standard. 31 "Macaulay's Essay, on Letters of Horace Walpole; Seely's Horace Walpole and his world; Dobson, Horace Walpole. "Johnson's Life of Rowe, 348, 350. |