Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

Page 28 text:

Tfrentv-Four M A S M I D ' Great Lnknown who is yet to be discovered. Let us turn then to examine the evidence and weigh the arguments presented by some of these groups. We shall start with the Baconians, for they have gone farthest in the development of their thesis. Many distinguished men have taken up this theory, including Emerson, Gervinus, Disraeli, Hawthorne, Lowell, O. W. Holmes and Dickens. No other figure of the Elizabethan period com- bined so egregiously the various fields of learning manifested in the ' Shakespeare ' Works . He was all that the works required their writer to be. He was both philosopher and poet. Thus claim the Baconians. They base their contentions on three essential points. In the first place, a careful study of both authors shows that their minds coincide, that their geographical knowledge, political ideas and reli- gious sentiments were similar. Secondly, the many parallelisms between their works, the employment of similar expressions, quotations and errors indi- cates the same mind operating in both cases. Third- ly, there appear to be hidden in the Shakespeare works all sort of anagrams, cryptograms, and other concealed forms of expression which point to Fran- cis Bacon, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, Lcrd Chancellor of England as the writer of the works. As to the similarity in ideas and expression be- tween Bacon and Shakespeare, we may remain un- convinced of their identity. Two men of high and noble mind, living in the same generation, im- bibing the spirit and knowledge of their time, would inevitably show a certain similarity in their ideas and even, when discussing the same subject, a great similarity in the expression of those ideas. The hundreds of parallelisms which scholars have drawn up to prove this theory would have little validity if we remember that treatment of any given subject by two gifted men, trained in the concepts of the age, would have a certain likeness in approach, in choice of examples, and often in choice of language. The phase of proof that deals with the concealed testimony of Bacon ' s authorship, written into the works, is the most startling, the most interesting and the most precarious. From earliest times, hid- den forms of expression, known only to initiates who had gained in seme way the esoteric keys, were both a favorite pastime and a necessary vehicle for conveying information. Mystics from time immemorial have delighted in searching the Scriptures for hidden information of this sort. Sects have been founded whose secrets were recorded in well-ordered codes. The source of many of these codes has been the Cabala with its Gematria, or simple clock count, where A=l, B=2, C=3, etc., or the reverse count, where Z=1, Y=2, X=3, or the Kay count, where K= 1 0, L=11, etc. All these various methods were a part of the mystical literature for centuries before the Elizabethan Era. By a study of the records and writings of the Rosicrucian society, or the society of the Rose Cross, — Rose representing secrecy, and Cross rep- resenting salvation of humankind, — which flowered during the Elizabethan period, we find that Bacon was one of its prominent members, that it aimed at the advancement of human knowledge, that it employed the above-mentioned methods of con- cealed expression to keep its secrets sacred for the Sons of Sapience. Thus, we may be reasonably sure that Bacon was acquainted with the inweav- ing of special messages into the warp and woof of literary productions. Moreover, Bacon had declared, in the works we do credit to him, that advancement of humankind could be best effected by romance and poetry. This would explain the great moral lessons of the Shakespearian dramas. Let us pause to regard some instances of this hidden type of expression. Though there have been brought forward all sorts of cryptograms, ana- grams, and cabalistic arrangements proving Bacon to be the author, we shall glance at but a few. In Love ' s Labour ' s Lost Act V, Sc. I, we encounter the peculiar word, Hononficabilitudini- tatibus. This word seems to cry for some ex- planation. The Baconians come to the rescue and declare it to be an anagram which, when rearranged, contains the Latin sentence ... Hi

Page 27 text:

MASMII) Is there any wonder thai doubl should entei a iliniiiilitful mind thai thi versatile geniu of so wide ,i range ol human knowledge, linuld be this ordinary man? Moreover, .nunc the mi orthodox, this same almost omnisi ienl individual could barely scrawl an illegible, illiterate igna lure, besides nnl knowing I lie spelling I In ■ n name. This formidable array of evidence nm I cause us to pause and give ear. Can grapes grow on thorns? We have presented up to this point the general outline of the Anli-Stratfordian attack. Lei u now consider the validity of some of its conten- tions. The almost complete silence about Shakes peare by his contemporaries should not cause us any undue concern. We are dealing with the 1 6th and not with the 20th century. I daresay thai theatregoers of to-day rarely take the trouble to find out who the author of the play presented is, with the exception, of course, of certain popularly known dramatists. We know but a few dates of birth, death, entrance at school, college, and Inns of the Court, of many of Shakespeare ' s illustrious contemporaries. In this period, the characters and personalities of mere playwrights were not closely followed. Only such men were generally known as gained popularity by occupying public position, like Spenser, or by being active in court society, like Sydney ; or those who gained notoriety by writing about feuds and friendships, like Greene and Nash, by writing reminiscences and satires, like Ben Jonson, by killing anyone, like Ben Jon- son, by being killed, like Marlowe, or by being imprisoned with the danger of having nose and ears split, like Marston. The age was not very enthusiastic about mere dramatists. Thus silence obscures the life and personality of Kyd, Beau- mont, Fletcher, Dekker and others. Nor need we concede that the author of Shakespeare must have been a scholar of the first order. We find many instances in the works which point to a rather cursory acquaintance in the field of scholarship. In Troilus and Cressida the Greeks and Tro- jans cite Aristotle — a rather unscholarly anachron- ism. In The Winter ' s Tale he calls Delphi I )elpho . i onfu ing Delphi I ihui plat ing the I )elphii , ■■ Ic on an i land In thi play he make the arti • ' i mo ' 1 4 ' )I I »46) contemporary with the oracle ol (he Pyth- ian Apollo. I il likely thai i cholat would guns in Scotland three hundred yeai before the invention I artillery, i repre enl leopatra , liw; inn in thi comparatively modern game oi billiard ' How, ask the anti-Stratfordian . could tl n| uili ilhli-iritr p.ircnl With ' • little I r . • 1 1 1 1 r ■ . ■ written these plays? History furnishes us with countless example ( men ol lowly birth ri the highest pinnacles of genius. Thu . . .i shepherd boy; Leonardo da Vinci, the illegiti- mate son of a common notary; Wolsey ' s fath ' a butcher; Marlov . ' lemaker and Ben Jonson as a bricklayer; Burns was the son of a small farmer, and Keats was an apothecary ' s apprentice. A man who could hardly spell his own name, they insist, could not have indited such immortal verse. It is true that the signatures left to us of Shakespeare are spelt in different ways, but the spelling of surnames at the time was even more inconsistent than the spelling of ordinary words. For example, Sir Walter Raleigh is known .o have spelt his name in five different ways, viz., Rawley, Raleghe. Ralegh. Rawleigh, and Raw- leghe. Thus, the variation in spelling has no special significance. And as to the illegibility of the handwriting, it is a fault to which many of us may with perfect candor plead guilty. But. even if we grant that Shakespeare is not the author of the works that bear his name, who is? The Anti-Stratfordians are divided into many camps. For one. Bacon is Shakespeare. For an- other, Rutland is Shakespeare. For yet another Derby is Shakespeare, and for still another Oxford is Shakespeare. One group modifies the Baconian theory by designating Bacon, not as the individual author of the works, but as the editor and super- visor of a group of the eminent young dramatists of the time, who in collaboration wrote the plays. And another group designates the author as the

Page 29 text:

M ASM ID D ' ludi tuili sibi Fr. Bacono nati ( I hese plays, en- trusted to llieinselves, proceeded from Francis Ba- con). Now, a different form of the same word is found on a private document of Bacon. I here the word is honorificabihludino which, they say, is the anagram for . . . Initio hi ludi Fr. Bacono. (In the beginning these plays are from Francis Bacon). These anagrams have a strangely coin- cidental persistence, and it is little wonder that numbers of people stake their reputation in de- fence of this theory. On page 53 of the Shakespeare Folio Comedies, the name Bacon is introduced. And to render the Bacon-Shakespeare secret apparent, the number of words on page 53 is exactly I 77 which is the simple clock or Cabbala count for William Shakes- peare. The word honorificabilitudinitatibus , re- ferred to above, is by simple clock count 287, which is in turn the sum of F. Bacon-W . Shakes- peare by the Reverse Count. The sum of Fra Rosicrosse, the designation of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood, is 157 by the simple clock count. The sum of Bacon-W. Shakespeare is also 157 by the same count and the same number of letters is found in the garbled inscription from the Tempest on the Shakespeare monument in Westminster Abbey. In my opinion, there is no more effective refu- tation of this sort of manipulation of figures and letters than the cryptogram of S. James of Leeds who, by proper arrangement of the titles of several of the plays, proves that Bernard Shaw wrote Shakespeare. Mac Beth Oth £llo Comedy of ErRors Merch of Ve Vice Coriol Inus Mids Night DReam Merry Wiv. of Dsor Meas. for MeaSure Much Adoab NWing Anth. and CI. Atra. All ' s well .... Well I Ins reduclio ml abmrdum hould ($jv p our credence in acrostics, anagram , or imagined i iphei One of the caustic critics of this theory has said, The idea of robbing the world of SI pcare for such a stiff legal-headed old jackass as Bacon i ,i modern invention of fool Any reasonable person would object to the vio- lence of this denunciation. It is unfair to the scholars who have devoted years of their life in producing evidence in support of this theory. But belief in their sincerity should in no way restrain us from rigorous criticism as to the validity of their arguments. Defamation proves nothing. Reason may convince even avowed anti-Stratfordians. Il would be beyond the scope of this discussion to present in detail the other theories of the Shakes- pearian authorship. They are built largely on surmise, and the few proofs discovered to support their contention are of a shadowy nature. The Rutland theory depends mainly on the connection between Rutland ' s report of his embassy to Den- mark in I 603, and the references to Danish habits and customs in the 1604 Quarto of Hamlet. Since Shakespeare may have read the report or spoken to Rutland, the weight of this argument is negli- gible. Two other gentlemen, the sixth Earl of Derby and the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, have been offered as candidates for this enviable post. The evidence in support of these latter two is as limited as that of the Rutland theory. And we feel impelled to conclude that the Great Un- known , proposed by some critics as the author of the works, despite all the theories, might just as well have been William Shakespeare. In the field of literature, the mysteries are legion. Did a sightless bard chant thousands of years ago the story of the siege of Troy, and was that bard Homer? Or is he the innocent bearer of a fame that belongs to many? Were the gossamers of struggle and triumph and defeat that we know as the epic cycles of the Middle Ages the product of single geniuses, or are they merely the collec- tions of the labors of a group? Did an Ossian (Continued on page 53)