In 1959 he contributed an article to the ABA Journal, The Lawyer's Magazine. It is so succinct and so eruditely persuasive that I have requested permission to reprint most of it, and have been given kindly leave to do so by that journal. The reader will notice that Mr. Bentley is not necessarily convinced that "Bacon done it," but he is certain that Shakespeare didn't.
"Who Was William Shake-Speare?"
By Richard Bentley
The scholars help us to understand Shakespearean language, to appreciate the content and structure of the writings and to learn the literary sources upon which the author drew. These are primarily literary questions and strictly within the sphere of scholars. But the question of the identity of the author is not purely a literary question; it is also a question of evidence. It is, therefore, properly within the province of lawyers to inquire as to the authorship and to judge of the competence and validity of the evidence.
The known facts are few. The first real biography of Shakespeare was published ninety-three years after his death and covered four pages. This and subsequent biographies are based largely upon inferences from the works and upon assumptions and guesswork. There is admittedly no direct proof of the authorship. We can arrive only at the most probable solution upon the preponderance of the evidence. And we should not reject a new conclusion merely because it may be different from an old one, long accepted.
Consider by analogy the classic belief that Richard III was an unmitigated villain. The Shakespeare play so portrays him. But research very recently has shown this reputation probably was undeserved and was politically inspired by his enemies of the House of Lancaster who doctored the evidence.
The Piltdown man was accepted as authentic for fifty years until it was proved, and later admitted, to be a hoax. Historians now know Betsy Ross did not design our flag, but tourists still pay admission to her house in Philadelphia to see the "Birthplace of Old Glory."
Let us, therefore, summarize the only contemporaneously recorded and substantiated facts, carefully reviewed and checked. Let us consider the question of the authorship of the Shakespeare works de novo in the light of what is now known, in order to reach our own individual solutions of the greatest literary "whodunit" of all time.
In what follows it seems appropriate to refer to the Stratford man as Shaksper, the name he himself used, and to refer to the author by the published name, Shakespeare. The problem is simply stated: Was Shakespeare the same man as Shaksper, and if not, who was he?
A William Shaksper (not Shakespeare) was baptized April 26, 1564, in Stratford, a town of 1,600, a squalid and "a bookless neighborhood." Like most of the inhabitants his parents were illiterate. Nothing whatever is known of him until he was 18, when a license was issued for his marriage to Anne Whateley of Temple Grafton. The next day a bond was filed for his marriage to Anne Hathwey (sic) of Shottery. No marriage to either Anne is recorded, but a daughter was baptized barely six months later, and two years later, twins.
By 1597, at 33, he had mysteriously become wealthy and contracted to buy perhaps the most pretentious residence in Stratford. In the earliest biography it is reported he received a large payment, the modern equivalent [in 1959] of some $20,000 from the Earl of Southampton to help him purchase some property, but no quid pro quo nor date is suggested.
The rest of the records in Stratford show activity in the grain and malt business, transactions in real estate and litigated matters in which he was usually the plaintiff, once suing for less than two pounds. He was godfather to an alderman's son. The only contemporary record of any conversation of his was about his proposed enclosure of common pasture-lands, to deprive the poor of their rights. The town of Stratford successfully opposed this.
He signed his will in three places in March, 1616, and died a month later. His will left to his wife his "second best bed with the furniture," and disposed in detail of various articles such as a sword, a bowl, jewelry, plate,etc. It mentioned no interest in a theater, no writings, no books, nor any literary property whatever.
No public mention was made of his death. His son-in-law wrote in his diary, "My father-in-law died on Thursday." These are all the known facts about his life in Stratford.
Records in London show that in 1612 he signed a deposition in a lawsuit between two men whom the court found to be low characters, with one of whom he had been a lodger in 1604. He and two others bought a house in London and he signed a deed and a mortgage. Two years later there was a lawsuit about the title. The three signatures just referred to and the three on his will are the only signatures ever known to have existed. All are written in a scrawled, unformed hand, all are spelled differently, but none is spelled "Shakespeare."
London records show him as a legatee of a small bequest, that he was put under a peace bond in 1596, and was a tax defaulter that year and the next.
These are all the known facts about Shaksper of Stratford. The name William Shakespeare does appear as an actor in 1598, 1603 and 1604, with no reference to any part he played. Nowhere apart from the works themselves was a Shaksper or Shakespeare referred to during his lifetime either as a playwright or a poet.
There is an anecdote, probably apocryphal, in the diary of a barrister of the Middle Temple in an entry for March 13, 1601. This tells that during a performance of Richard III, one of the audience became so enamored of the actor "Burbidge" (Burbadge), that she arranged for him to come to see her that night. It says, "Shakespeare overhearing their conclusion went before, was intertained, and at his game ere Burbidge came." When Burbadge arrived, Shakespeare sent him word that "William the Conqueror was before Rich. the 3." This Shakespeare is not identified further.
There is a doubtful record, of a William Shakespeare, unidentified, as receiving thirty-four shillings for work on a pictorial design.
Nothing whatever is known of the last years of Shaksper's life. The parish register in Stratford records the burial of "Will. Shaksper(e), gent."on April 25, 1616. . .
The above are all the established facts about the Stratford man who is considered the greatest literary mind of all time. In the words of Hamlet, "The rest is silence."
No contemporary historian mentions either Shaksper or Shakespeare. One antiquarian published in 1656 an engraving of a monument in the Stratford church with a bust of Shaksper. It showed a sad-eyed man with a drooping mustache and bald head holding a sack of grain in his lap. In 1747 this bust was replaced with the bust seen in the church today. In the new bust the face was wholly changed to look somewhat like the portrait in the First Folio, a pen was shown in his hand and a writing tablet on a tasseled cushion replaced the grain-sack. See versions of the bust
We find no external evidence to identify William Shaksper of Stratford, or Shakespeare the actor, as an author. What of the works themselves?
Two poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece , were published in 1593 and 1594 bearing the name "William Shake-Speare." This name had never previously been published anywhere. It appeared at the end of unauthorized dedications to Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton. The first referred to the work as "the first heir of my invention." Of the thirty-six plays attributed to Shakespeare,published in the First Folio of1623, seven years after the death of Shaksper, only fifteen, all quartos, were published during his lifetime. Of these only nine bore the name Shakespeare as the author, the other six being published anonymously. Only three plays published in that name during his lifetime were ever registered for copyright purposes. Some plays were produced and pirated earlier.
Between 1595 and 1611 eight other plays were published also in quarto form, some by the same publishers, with authorship attributed to Shakespeare. Seven of these eight are rejected by Shakespeare scholars as not having been written by him. The eighth is considered doubtful. The scholars thus accept as authentic six quarto plays never attributed to Shakespeare during his lifetime and reject as spurious seven quarto plays which were published under his name or initials. Clearly then they reject title-page evidence as the test of authenticity. Their test is comparison with other works they consider authentic. However, there is extant no manuscript nor any literature whatsoever proved to be Shakespeare's. There exists, therefore, no true basis for any such comparison, and this test of authenticity is necessarily a "boot-strap" operation, a syllogism with no major premise.
In 1599, a book of miscellaneous verse, much of which is rejected by Shakespeare scholars (called the Passionate Pilgrim), was published under the Shakespeare name. In 1609 SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS Never before Imprinted appeared containing 154 sonnets and also a poem which scholars reject as not by Shakespeare. The sonnets were dedicated to "Mr. W. H." It is generally thought by scholars that these are the reversed initials of Henry Wriothesley, the man to whom Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece were dedicated. The sonnets are regarded by scholars as autobiographical. They refer frequently to a fair youth and to a dark lady. The Earl of Southampton, who was nine years younger than Shaksper, is thought to be the fair youth. There is no agreement as to the identity of the dark lady, for whom apparently the author had a hopelessly passionate attachment, in spite of her faithlessness to him. The sonnets indicate the author's devotion to the fair youth. They suggest some scandal about him and that a turn of fortune bars the author from public honor. They express, however, a conviction that the lines will live and give immortality to the person about whom they are written.
There are a few references to the works in contemporary writings. During Shaksper's entire life, however, not one of his contemporaries ever referred to him personally as a writer. The only references to Shakespeare were to writings with which that name was connected, and none referred otherwise personally to a writer of that name. Thus neither in the writings themselves nor in their authorship is there anything whatsoever which identifies the Stratford man with the author of any of the works or identifies the two different names, Shaksper and Shakespeare, with each other.
The negative evidence is significant. There is no record that Shaksper ever attended school; none that he ever wrote anything. There are no early writings reflecting the development of his skill. Yet he was in his thirtieth year when the first publication appeared, with the literary style fully developed. Then after prolific publication of deathless writings the flow suddenly stopped and he spent his last years in utter obscurity. If he wrote the Shakespeare works, he did so without being paid; and he let them be pirated freely during his lifetime, although this same man was consistently penurious, frequently suing debtors for small sums. Though twenty of the thirty-six plays were unpublished when he died, his will which makes detailed disposition of his belongings, was silent as to any books.
It does not appear this man ever traveled abroad or could have become familiar with Latin, Greek or foreign languages. Yet the author's works show familiarity with foreign countries and languages, familiarity with Latin, especially Ovid; and he coined thousands of English words of Latin and Greek derivation. He had a vocabulary of 15,000 words, almost twice as many as the 8,000 words in the vocabulary of John Milton, the scholar.
Shaksper of Stratford did not frequent court circles so as to become closely familiar with court life and manners, chivalry, tournaments, falconry and sports of the nobility. If he was the author of the works, we cannot account for his intimate knowledge of these things and of the law; nor can we understand how one of his consistently materialistic interests could soar to the heights of sublime imagery found in the poetry.
The Shakespeare scholars say that this is all accounted for by his genius. The argument seems to run like this: Shakespeare for centuries has been regarded as the author of the works. The author of the works was a man of superlative genius. Therefore Shakespeare was a man of superlative genius, and for that reason must have been the author of the works. That is to say, the greater the ignorance and lack of preparation, the greater the genius, and hence the greater the likelihood that Shaksper was the author. This of course is nonsense. Macaulay said of Dryden: "Genius will not furnish a poet with a vocabulary; it will not teach what word exactly corresponds with his idea and will most surely convey it to others. Information and experience are necessary for strengthening the imagination."
Ben Jonson wrote, "a good poet's made, as well as born." One would expect scholars as well as lawyers to be among the first to recognize the necessity of education, training and preparation.
Shaksper lived unknown as a literary man, and died unnoticed. There was not even sufficient interest in him for anyone to have inquired about him of any of his children or of his grand-daughter, nor to write even a four page biography about him until almost a hundred years after his death. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I cannot marry the works to the life." Charles Dickens said, "The life of William Shakespeare is a fine mystery, and I tremble every day lest something should turn up." Others who are said to have doubted the authorship include persons of distinction in many fields: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lord Palmerston, Walt Whitman, Sir George Greenwood, Mark Twain, Prince Bismarck, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sigmund Freud, John Bright, Henry James, Lord Brighton, Lord Penzance and John Greenleaf Whittier.
It is noteworthy that (in 1769) within twenty-five years after the memorial bust in the Stratford church was changed to represent a literary man instead of a grain-dealer, the first book appeared seriously questioning the Shakespearean authorship.
The presence of legal allusions and the similarity of certain passages to writings of perhaps the greatest legal scholar and philosopher of the day prompted claims that Francis Bacon was the author.
The facts of Bacon's life are well known. He was born three years before Shaksper (1561) and died ten years after him (1626). Bacon was educated at Cambridge University (1574-6). He then went to Paris in the suite of the English Ambassador. After his return he studied law and was admitted to the Bar at the age of 21 years. He became a Bencher at Gray's Inn. He supported the Essex rebellion and was given a substantial estate by Essex, but shortly afterward acted as Queen's Counsel in prosecuting him.
[Bacon had supported Essex but was not aware that he planned an armed rebellion. He deserted him after he marched through London with 200 soldiers carrying weapons. It should be added here that Bacon very rarely practiced law. He was elected to Parliament in 1584 and served almost continuously until about 1615. There were many lapses of time between the sessions, and the duties of a member were light. At one period he received a small income from Queeen Elizabeth, but it is not known how he supported himself otherwise. Except for one small volume of his essays, he published nothing under his own name until 1605, The Advancement of Learning .]
Bacon came into royal favor with James I. He was knighted almost at once, became Solicitor General (in 1607), Attorney General (in 1613), Lord Keeper of the Great Seal (in 1617) and then (in 1618) Lord Chancellor. Within four years, however, he confessed to a charge of bribery and was imprisoned; but was released after a few days. Thereafter he devoted himself to literature, writing on jurisprudence, science and philosophy. His education, his breadth of learning, knowledge of law, familiarity with Court circles both abroad and in England, and his unusual literary ability made him the natural choice of those who were convinced the Shakespeare works must have been written by someone possessed of these advantages, and not by Shaksper of Stratford, who apparently had none of them.
The first book claiming Bacon as the author received comparatively little notice. But in 1848, the contention was renewed. A number of books appeared. Delia Bacon, an American girl, went to Stratford and, sitting up all night alone in the church, became convinced that Bacon was the author. She published a book The Philosophy of Shakespeare's Plays Unfolded (1857), for which Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the introduction. Since then hundreds of books have been written on the subject. The best known include a work by Ignatius Donnelly (called The Great Cryptogram --1887) and another (The Bi-Literal Cypher of Francis Bacon --1900) by Mrs. E. W. Gallup. These contend that cryptograms or ciphers in the works amount to concealed signatures of Francis Bacon, who himself had written a work on cryptography. But these ciphers either tend to cancel out each other or are so broad as to demonstrate that almost any works were written by Bacon . An Oxford scholar told me he once saw one of these ciphers applied to Milton's Paradise Lost and it showed that Bacon was its author. By analogy, in the 46th Psalm the 46th word from the beginning is "shake" and the 46th word from the end is "spear," but this hardly proves that Shakespeare wrote that psalm!
In 1916 one George Fabyan, of Geneva, Illinois, ingeniously succeeded in inducing the Circuit Court of Cook County to uphold the Baconian theory. He had William N. Selig, a film producer of Shakespeare plays, file a collusive suit to enjoin Fabyan from publishing material "tending to prove" that Bacon wrote Shakespeare. The Court, in an opinion by Judge Richard S. Tuthill, found that Bacon was the author of the works erroneously attributed to Shakespeare, and awarded Fabyan $5,000 damages for restraint of publication that Bacon was the true author. The Baconians hailed this decision. The executive committee of the court, however, later issued a statement that the question of authorship of the Shakespeare writings was not properly before the court .
It is asserted that Bacon's authorship has been accepted by a number of eminent persons, including our own Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Lord Penzance, distinguished English jurist. But many of the claims are so extravagant, particularly the ciphers and cryptograms, as to incur ridicule. This in turn has had the effect of discrediting all serious efforts to question the authorship of the Shakespeare Works.
In 1903 Henry James said:
"I am. . .haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practiced on a patient world. The more I turn him round and round the more he so affects me. . .I can only express my general sense by saying I find it almost as impossible to conceive that Bacon wrote the plays as to conceive that the man from Stratford, as we know the man from Stratford, did." [Bentley shows the following table of lifetimes]:
|<- Publication of the Plays ->|
1560 1570 1580 1590| 1600 1610 1620 |1626
|+|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++|
The Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603)
|+|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|++|
Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford (1550-1604)
<-|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++|
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
|+++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|++|
William Shaksper, of Stratford (1564-1616)
|+++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++|
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
|++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++++++|+++++|
[Here Richard Bentley concludes his remarks about Bacon, and I will omit his comments concerning any possible attribution of the Works to Marlowe or Edward De Vere; arguments in favor of their authorship are about to become moot. Bentley's article provoked a "torrent of letters" to the ABA Journal, many written by staunch Stratfordians. So, in the November 1959 issue, he replied to his detractors in a story entitled "Elizabethan Whodunit: Supplementary Notes." In that he explained that his original essay was severely condensed from a long manuscript (later to become a book) and in his reply he elaborated on his original theme. It will be condensed as follows]:
First we should agree if we can upon what sources of facts we can accept. The records as given in Sir Edmund K. Chambers' William Shakespeare: A study of Facts and Problems, published in 1930. . .seem to be acceptable to most Stratfordians. Those records of the facts themselves (not necessarily the conclusions drawn from them) are accordingly accepted for the purpose of these supplementary notes.
. . .The fundamental question simply stated is whether or not Shaksper and Shakespeare were the same man. Since the Stratfordians believe the man of Stratford and the author were the same man, they dislike this distinction, prefer to eliminate it, and with it to eliminate the fundamental question at issue.
All will agree that the name of the Stratford man was spelled in many different ways. In the Baptismal entry it is spelled "Shaksper" (with either a final "e" or the customary flourish following the Gothic letter "r"). In the entry of Nov. 27, 1582 of his license to marry Anne Whateley of Temple Grafton, the name is spelled "Shaxper," and in the Nov. 28, 1582 record of the marriage bond for his marriage to Anne Hathwey of Shottery it is spelled "Shagsper(e)." The burial record spells it "Shaksper(e)." In the body of the will, the scrivener spelled the name "Shackspeare." The letter from Abraham Sturley to Richard Quinej (usually written "Quiney") asked him to procure a loan from "Mr. Wm. Shak."
There are six signatures, the only ones ever known to have existed, all written in a shaky hand, some with blots and with some letters illegible. The earliest, on the deposition in the case of Belot v. Montjoy (1612), was spelled "Willn Shaks(blotted)p"; that on the conveyance (1613) was spelled "W(blotted)illiam Shakspe" (with a short flourish over the "e"); that on the mortgage (1613) was spelled "Wm Shakspr" (with what might have been intended as a small "a" over the "r"). The signatures on each of the three pages of the will (1616) are spelled respectively, "Willia(blotted)m Shakspere," "Willm (with a short flourish over the "m") Shakspere," and "William Shaksper" with either a final "e" or a flourish after the "r." Some read this last signature as "Shakspeare" but Chambers quotes an expert, Sir E. M. Thompson, to the effect that the last signature originally ended with a contraction, and that the last three letters were added later. An imaginative and resourceful Stratfordian--needless to say, not a lawyer--has suggested that the testator spelled his signature in different ways so as to make sure there could be no doubt about the identity of the testator!
Obviously Elizabethan spelling was diverse. However, it was phonetic, and "any spelling that fairly represented the sound of a word. . .was considered as correct as any other". Every one of the thirty odd spellings in the Stratford records of Christenings, marriages and burials of members of the family, with the one exception of the registration of Susanna's Christening, spelled the name in such a way as to require its pronunciation with a short "a" in the first syllable. These Stratford spellings, with the one exception noted, are quite inconsistent with the spelling and pronunciation of the published name of the author of the works. Sir Edmund K. Chambers collected eighty-three variations in the spelling of the name in England (whether or not related to the Stratford man), the large majority of which phonetically require the short "a." Not one of these eighty-three variations hyphenated the two syllables into the artificial looking name Shake-Speare, as the author's name originally appeared in the first published poems, in the sonnets and in a number of the quarto plays.
In the original article it was stated that Shaksper's parents were illiterate. The Stratfordian reply is that although his father, John Shaksper, always signed official and other papers with a mark, he might have been able to write his name. There is no evidence that he ever did so. They also reply that he held office as alderman, deputy chamberlain and bailiff (mayor) of Stratford, was a man of substance, and so might not have been illiterate. However, J. O. Halliwell-Phillips, the orthodox Shakespearean scholar, is authority for the positive statement that neither John Shaksper nor his colleagues in office could even write their names. Not more than one third of the aldermen and burgesses of Stratford during the latter half of the sixteenth century could write their names. An application was made for a grant of arms to John Shaksper, but the records about it are contradictory. There is no definite record that the grant ever issued, and William Dethick, "Garter principal King of Arms," who it is thought may have issued it in 1596 was later charged with accepting bribes for making grants of arms to "base persons" who were not entitled to them. . .As for John Shaksper's being a man of substance, although he apparently had some little business success earlier, he had a prison record, was convicted of having a pile of manure in front of his house, and in 1592 was recorded as one of nine persons in Stratford who ". . .coom not to churche for feare of process for debtte".
William Beeston, the actor, is reported to have said of Shaksper, "if invited to writ, he was in paine". His six known signatures appear to bear out this statement. But it is said that the appearance of a shaky, "scrawled and unformed" handwriting, as of one unaccustomed to holding a pen and "in paine" when he wrote, is due to his having written "in the old English script." There are, however, plenty of examples of that script available, including the three pages of the will itself. Shaksper's six signatures,all spelled differently and none spelled Shakespeare, compare unfavorably with almost every example we have seen. Many other examples of this script are beautifully written.
In answer to the statement "there is no indication that Shaksper ever attended school," Mr. Hauser's article agrees, but says "There is no reason to believe John Shakespeare did not send William to the school" in Stratford. This double negative statement seems hardly convincing as to Shaksper's schooling. Sir Edmund Chambers says that there was a grammar school in Stratford, that its actual curriculum is unknown, but that it was probably based upon that of other contemporary schools. These generally required an entrant to be able to read and write Latin and English. But we are given no suggestion as to how one of William Shaksper's background, or lack of it, could possibly have met such entrance requirements.
Orthodox scholars seem to take curiously inconsistent views of Shaksper's education and training. Questioners ask how one of his background and necessarily limited schooling, if any, (no one claims he could have had more than a few years of it, at the most) could have produced works exhibiting such familiarity with the classics, with foreign countries and languages, with Court life, with the law, etc. The reply is first that he cribbed some of his material from such sources as Holinshed's Chronicles, that he made many errors such as giving a sea-coast to Bohemia which they say was natural in view of his limited advantages, and that he showed little erudition. Then in almost the same breath they say that the grammar school at Stratford, which they simply assume he attended for a few years, gave him an excellent education. They appear to consider that sufficient to have enabled him to write the world's greatest literature, comprehending the widest range of contemporary human knowledge and thought. Stratfordians also take a third position, attributing the distinction of the writings entirely to genius, and saying that no education was necessary for one having such native talents. The weakness of this argument was pointed out in the original article. . .
We have yet to see any reasonable explanation as to how this man of Stratford, without exceptional education and background, no matter how great his genius, could possibly have mastered a vocabulary of 15,000 (some say 17,000 or even 20,000) words, by far the largest and most extraordinary ever possessed, and the most tellingly used by any writer of English literature. . .Chambers honestly sums up the problem of Shaksper's education, training and the first twenty-eight or thirty years of his life. He states: ". . .after all the careful scrutiny of clues and all the patient balancing of possibilities, the last word for a self-respecting scholarship can only be that of nescience." [something beyond natural explanation which the mind is incapable of understanding.]
The familiarity of the law exhibited by the author of the Shakespeare works has always interested scholars and lawyers alike. In fact the author's proficiency in the law was so clearly apparent that it presented a problem to orthodox Stratfordians. It was they who sought to reconcile it with Shaksper's authorship by evolving the theory that he was at one time an attorney's clerk, although there is not a scintilla of evidence to support that. Lord Campbell wrote his views on the subject about one hundred years ago. These were expressed in a letter to John Payne Collier, the Shakespeare scholar, critic and literary historian who, as librarian to the Duke of Devonshire, had access to rare collections of early English literature and was implicated in a number of forgeries of Shakespearean evidence including a forgery of Shakespeare's signature. Lord Campbell characterized the author's "legal acquirements" as "a deep technical knowledge of the law" and as exhibiting an "easy familiarity with some of the most abstruse proceedings in English jurisprudence." Since it seemed impossible to reconcile this with what is known of Shaksper of Stratford, doubt as to the authorship was confirmed. To the rescue came Charles C. Allen, a Boston lawyer, who wrote a chapter entitled Bad Law in Shakespeare, contending that Shakespeare made many errors in his legal allusions. To this replied Sir George Greenwood, English barrister and scholar and expert in Elizabethan law. In a small book, Shakespeare's Law, (1920) Sir George showed with conclusiveness that the "bad law" is in Allen's book and not in the Shakespeare works.
[Here I will interrupt Richard Bentley for some quotations. The following is from George C. Greenwood's The Shakespeare problem restated :] "It has been suggested that it was in attendance upon the courts in London that he picked up his legal vocabulary. But this supposition not only fails to account for Shakespeare's peculiar freedom and exactness in the use of that phraseology, it does not even place him in the way of learning those terms his use of which is most remarkable, which are not such as he would have heard at ordinary proceedings at nisi prius, but such as refer to the tenure or transfer of real property: "fine and recovery, statues merchant, purchase, indenture, tenure, double voucher, fee simple, fee farm, remainder, reversion, forfeiture," etc. This conveyancer's jargon could not have been picked up by hanging round the courts of law in London two hundred and fifty years ago, when suits as to the title of real property were comparatively rare." [Lord Penzance (Sir James Plaisted Wilde, Q. C.), who was one of the finest legal authorities of the mid-Eighteenth Century, should also be quoted:] "The mode in which this knowledge was pressed into service on all occasions to express his meaning and illustrate his thoughts was quite unexampled. As manifested in the plays, this legal knowledge and learning had therefore a special character which places it on a wholly different footing from the rest of the multifarious knowledge which is exhibited in page after page of the plays. At every turn and point at which the author required a metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned first to the law. He seems almost to have thought in legal phrases; the commonest of legal expressions were ever at the end of his pen in description or illustration. . .it protruded itself on all occasions, appropriate or inappropriate, and mingled itself with strains of thought widely divergent from forensic subjects." [We return now to Richard Bentley:]
But now the Stratfordian contention is that other contemporary writers used as many or more legal allusions, which display equal familiarity with legal terms]. To this effect they quote a book published in Baltimore in 1942, on references to the law of property in Shakespeare and other Elizabethan works. Other contemporary writers did indeed use legal terms. However, in many instances, such as in the examples taken by Mr. Hauser from Ben Jonson's The Staple of News and Epicoene, the use of such terms consisted in no more than the mere rattling off of a string of legal terms in gibberish mockery of lawyers.
It would seem that Lord Campbell, who wrote without reference to any question as to the authorship, who was consecutively Lord Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor of England, and who was particularly well versed in early English law, would have a deeper and more comprehensive knowledge of the subject than most of the other writers who have discussed it, and would be an unprejudiced witness. His conclusions as to the remarkable legal attainments of the author are substantially those of Edmond Malone, the Shakespeare scholar (also a barrister), of Sir George Greenwood, and of most other leading legal Shakespeare scholars.
It is hardly an answer to those conclusions to take a few isolated examples such as the word "tripartite" in Henry IV, Part 1, and to show that the term could have been cribbed from Holinshed's Chronicles. Nor is it an answer to compare without analysis the use of legal terms by other contemporary writers (such as Mr. Hauser's examples from Ben Jonson's plays) merely on a quantitative basis, without qualitative evaluation of their significance in showing the degree of legal knowledge required to use legal terms with pertinence as well as accuracy.
The Stratfordians urge that one reason there was no mention of literary property in the will of the Stratford man was that the Shakespeare plays were sold to the companies that produced them. However, we find no evidence whatever that this was so. On the contrary there are the detailed records kept by Philip Henslowe, who was a London theatrical producer. These records cover the period 1591 to 1609. Henslowe produced a number of the Shakespeare plays. His records show payments to actors and payments of royalties for dramatic works. Among the many names of persons to whom such payments were made are found the names of Ben Jonson, and of Chapman, Chettle, Day, Dekker, Drayton, Heywood, Marston, Middleton, Munday, Porter, Webster, Wilson, and the other leading playwrights of the time with their signatures and handwriting. But not once does the name Shaksper or Shakespeare appear.
Edward Alleyn was Henslowe's son-in-law and partner, and was himself one of the leading actors of the day. Alleyn, like his father-in-law, kept careful records. His papers and memoirs were published in 1841 and 1843. Sir George Greenwood wrote that these ". . .contain the names of all the notable actors and play-poets of Shaksper's time, as well as of every person who helped, directly or indirectly, or who paid out money or who received money in connection with the production of the many plays at the Blackfriars' Theatre, the Fortune, and other theatres. His accounts were minutely stated, and a careful perusal of the two volumes shows that there is not one mention of William Shaksper or Shakespeare in his list of actors, poets, and theatrical comrades."
Another reason given for the absence of any reference to literary property in Shaksper's will is that there was no copyright law at that time. It is true there was no statutory copyright; but there existed the so-called "common law copyright." This right to literary property at the very least protected an author with respect to his unpublished works. Authority for this statement is found in the case of Millar v. Taylor, decided by the Court of King's Bench and reported in 4 Burrows Reports, pages 2303 to 2417, in which it was held:
"That at common law an author of any book or literary composition had the sole right of first printing and publishing the same for sale, and might bring an action against any person who printed, published and sold the same without his consent." When Shaksper died, twenty of the Shakespeare plays were unpublished and thus protected, yet the will made no reference to such valuable property. Also, notwithstanding the legal protection, the Shakespeare plays were pirated ("stolne and surreptitious copies") during Shaksper's lifetime without objection from the man who repeatedly sued debtors for small sums of money. If Shaksper was the author of the works it is impossible to reconcile this utter disregard for valuable property, even prodigality, with his consistently avaricious record. . .The original article. . .stated: "Nowhere apart from the works themselves was a Shaksper or Shakespeare referred to during his lifetime either as a playwright or a poet. . ."
Some readers seem to have misunderstood what these words mean. As a result of assuming that the Stratford man was the writer, they have fallen into the easy error of construing any reference to Shakespeare or to the works as a reference to the Stratford man, or even as evidence that it was he who was the author. This is understandable and natural to all of us who were taught the orthodox tradition; but it is nonetheless an error. There are, of course, the works themselves, some of which were published during Shaksper's lifetime as having been written by Shake-Speare (Shakespeare). There are allusions in contemporary writings during Shaksper's lifetime to the Shakespeare works, and to a person who wrote them, without otherwise identifying him in any way. However, not one of these allusions during the lifetime of the man of Stratford referred to him in any way as a writer, or connected him with the writer, or made any allusion whatever to the writer to identify him even remotely with the man of Stratford. Accordingly none of those allusions has the slightest probative value as to the identity of the author. . .
All of the allusions during the Stratford man's lifetime to the works or to someone who wrote them are part of what the orthodox Stratfordians call the "documentary proof" of the authorship. But of what are they proof? Only of the fact that there was a writer who wrote magnificent poetry and plays under the name of William Shake-Speare (Shakespeare). On that point, however, there is and has been no disagreement whatsoever, anywhere. But to offer these allusions as proof of who the writer was, whether the man of Stratford or someone else, in another matter. On that point all of these allusions are, in legal jargon, "incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial," for not one of them even purports to identify the writer with anyone.
The contemporary allusions by others to the author's works are virtually unanimous in their lavish praise, but they reveal nothing about who the author was. The Shakespeare plays were immensely popular at the time. Yet Camden, the historian, made but one allusion to Shakespeare, placing him last in a list of ten poets but never mentioning one other fact about him or identifying him. In Camden's list of worthies of Stratford in 1605, there is no reference whatever to Shaksper or Shakespeare. Camden wrote 7000 words on the events of the year 1616, but never mentioned the death in that year of Shaksper or Shakespeare. Stowe in his Annals made no mention of Shaksper or Shakespeare whatever, nor, so far as has been discovered did any other contemporary historian.
Although eulogies were commonly written upon the occasion of the death of a well-known writer, not one word appeared even taking notice of the death of the man of Stratford.
The records in Stratford and in London during the lifetime of Shaksper are set forth and quoted at length in Appendix A--"Records" in Chambers' work. There are records of christenings, marriages and burials in the family of the Stratford man, and some two dozen contemporary records about him in real estate transactions, actions at law, wills, tax defaults, business activities, etc. There are two contemporary references (before 1616) to a William Shakespeare as an actor. These are briefly summarized in the original article. Examination of all these records, which, with Chambers' comments on them, cover the first 185 pages of Volume 2 of Chambers' work, reveals not one contemporary record to identify the man of Stratford or the actor as a writer.
Appendix C in the Chambers' work is called "The Shakespeare Mythos." It includes the various fanciful myths, fables, rumors and hearsay about the poet, which could not with honesty be included in Appendix A, "Records," or in Appendix B, "Contemporary Allusions." The earliest source quoted in Appendix C is dated 1625, almost ten years after Shaksper's death. Chambers has included all these legends apparently in the interest of omitting nothing; but he also points out wherein they are unreliable. For example, he quotes the account given by Thomas Plume (about 1657) which tells of Shaksper:
"He was a glover's son--Sir John Mennis saw once his old Father in his shop--a merry Cheekd old man--that said--Will was a good Honest Fellow, but he durst have crackt a jeast with him at any time." Chambers tells us that Shaksper's father died in September, 1601 and that Sir John Mennis was born in Kent, March 1, 1599, little over two and one-half years earlier. Sir George Greenwood characterized this account as the ". . .sweetly unsophisticated impression of the innocent little toddler, who at the age of two and one-half traveled with his nurse from Kent to Stratford for the purpose of interviewing Shaksper's father!"... It cannot be seriously contended, and Chambers himself does not appear to believe, that the contents of Appendix C constitute valid evidence ...
It has been shown that during the lifetime of Shaksper of Stratford, there was not one recorded word, nor any allusion to the writer nor to the actor nor to the Stratford man which identifies the writer with either of the others. Not until seven years after the Stratford man's death did any allusion appear to identify the author with the Stratford man, nor was there any recorded fact which would connect the Stratford man with the Shakespeare works. The First Folio appeared in 1623. Here, posthumously by seven years, appeared the first words which conceivably might purport to attribute authorship to the Stratford man. It is this posthumous publication which contains what the Stratfordians call the "documentary proof" that the man of Stratford was the author. Sir Edmund K. Chambers includes in his Appendix B--"Contemporary Allusions" the dedicatory epistles and the commendatory verses which appeared in the First Folio, as well as some other subsequent allusions by Basse, Taylor, Richardson, Walkley, Salisbury, Milton, Davenant and Benson, the last of which appeared in 1640. The other allusions dated after 1616 and prior to the Folio add nothing to enlighten us about the identity of the author. If the First Folio were eliminated, there would be no evidence whatever even remotely purporting to connect Shaksper, the man of Stratford, with Shakespeare, the author. The First Folio is crucial to the Stratfordian case and must be carefully scrutinized.
(Bentley is continued - hit here)
