| Cryptographic Shakespeare |
The Vilifiers of Baconians
Samuel Schoenbaum (Shakespeare's Lives) is no friend of anti- Stratfordians, especially Baconians. When he
comes to a discussion of Freud's early Baconian conviction, he turns his own weapon of psychiatry upon him with
gusto:
In certain recurring features of anti-Stratfordian behavior we may discern a pattern of psychopathology. The
heretic's revulsion against the provincial and lowly; his exaltation of his hero (and, through identification, himself) by
furnishing him with an aristocratic, even royal, pedigree; his paranoid structures of thought, embracing the classic
paraphernalia of persecution: secrets, curses, conspiracies; the compulsion to dig in churches, castles, river beds and
tombs; the auto-hypnosis, spirit visitations, and other hallucinatory phenoma; the descent, in a few cases, into actual
madness -- all these manifestations of the uneasy psyche suggest that the movement calls not so much for the
expertise of the literary historian as for the insight of the phychiatrist. Dr. Freud (sic) beckons us.
So beware. Though the myopic followers of the Bard know almost nothing about his life, and then write thick
books about it, it is the doubters that are goofy.
Edward D. Johnson wrote (Baconiana, 1958):
In a letter which the biographer Sidney Lee wrote and which was published in The Times on 20th
December, 1901 he speaks of the Baconian theory as "a foolish craze," "morbid psychology", and "madhouse chatter".
He said, inter alia, that Baconians suffer from "epidemic disease," and are "unworthy of serious attention from any
but professed students of intellectual aberration." He also said that Baconians were "all ignorant, vain, and unable to
test evidence," "that they lack scholarly habits of mind," and "when narrowly examined have invariably exhibited a
tendency to monomania". Now this is very strong language when one considers that a great number of eminent and
intellectual men such as Sir Edwin Arnold, Mr. G. C. Bompas, Q.C, John Bright, S. T. Coleridge, Raiph Waldo
Emerson, Dr W. H. Furness, Lord Hamilton, O. W. Holmes, J. R. Lowell, Lord Palmerston, Lord Penzance, Judge
Webb, J. G. Whittier, Mark Twain, and many others, all expressed the opinion that Will Shakspere could hardly have
been the author of the plays. All these men, according to Lee, must have been deranged. It is submitted that the
opinion of these men, all of great ability and intelligence, can be accepted in preference to that of a man like Lee who
did not scruple to manipulate historical facts, and whose own vituperations laid him open to the charge of
"monomania".
Dear reader, if you harbor the smallest degree of skepticism, you are suffering from an extreme form of lunacy.
Richard Bentley wrote about this problem:
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.
All fit for the asylum, according to Prof. Schoenbaum.
THE VILIFIERS OF VERULAM
By HON. SIR JOHN A. COCKBURN, K.C.M.G., M.D.
During the life of Francis Bacon there was little said to his detriment. Hepworth Dixon remarks that "the lie
against nature in the name of Francis Bacon broke into high literary force with Pope. Before his day the scandal had
only oozed in the slime of Welden, Chamberlain and D'Ewes." Of these the last named is, from the position that he
occupied, the most noticeable; it is therefore important that the value of his testimony should be investigated. The
Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. II, 1846, contains a review of the Autobiography and correspondence of Sir Simonds
D'Ewes; therein it is stated that his opinions of the men with whom he occasionally came into contact is very often
not to be trusted, because, in the words of the reviewer," D'Ewes was a narrow-minded man, who looked with
strong prejudice upon everyone whose faith did not exactly square with his own, and in reference to such persons
was uncharitably willing to believe all kinds of nonsense. Hence his slanders against Lord Bacon and Sir Robert
Cotton, and his depreciation of Selden and many other persons."
The political enemies of Lord Verulam were astounded at the success of their infamous Cabal. It seemed
incredible that the great Chancellor, the glory of his age, should have been laid low so easily. They were not aware of
what had passed behind the scenes between the King and Buckingham and the wily prelate, John Williams, who
supplanted Bacon as Keeper of the Great Seal. His advice was to save the favourite and the Crown by a vicarious
sacrifice. Neither could it have been known that at His Majesty's entreaty Bacon abandoned his defence and
consented to offer himself as "an oblation [a charitable offering] to the King ." Possibly the dread of pressing the
fallen Lord Chancellor beyond the limits of human endurance sealed the lips of his adversaries. He might have been
driven to make recriminations. His peremptory demand to Buckingham for release as a prisoner from the Tower,"
Good My Lord, Procure the warrant for my discharge this day", may have acted as a salutary warning to the then
all-powerful favourite.
Next to Pope, whose brilliant line on Bacon as the"Wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind" has provided the
text for a host of libellers, comes Mrs. Catherine Macaulay as the foremost of Bacon's calumniators. Her name is now
almost forgotten, but for several generations she was regarded as a great and reliable historian. Pope's craving for
antithesis was irresistible. No attribute could have been more inappropriate to Bacon than meanness, for lavish
generosity was with him almost a weakness. But the poet required a dark background to set off the panegyric of the
other adjectives. No such excuse can be offered for Mrs. Macaulay. She seizes on the word "meanest" [Pope's
meaning was "humblest"] to sum up her delineation of Bacon's character and writings. She was a republican and a
radical, and naturally Bacon, as a wholehearted supporter of Monarchy, was obnoxious to her views. But no political
prejudice can serve as an excuse for the following shameful words as applied to the greatest of England's
philosophers and statesmen.
"Despicable in all the active part of life and only glorious in the contemplative, to him the rays of Science
served to embellish not to enlighten, and philosophy herself was degraded by a conjunction with his mean soul."
One would have thought that such intemperate language applied to him who is universally admitted to have
been the father of experimental philosophy would have put the writer out of court as a reliable historian. Yet Lecky
called her the ablest writer of the new radical school, and her History was by some preferred to that of Hume. Her
maiden name was Catherine Sawbridge, but she is known by the surname of her first husband, Dr. George
Macaulay. Her History of England was published in eight volumes from 1763 to 1783. It had a wide circulation and
was translated into French. It inspired Madame Roland with the ambition of being la Macaulay de son pays . Mrs
Macaulay visited Paris in 1775 and was received with great honour. In 1785 she was entertained for ten days at
Mount Vernon by General Washington. A white marble statue of her was placed within the altar rails of St. Stephens,
Walbrook, in which she was represented in the character of history. A vault was also constructed to receive her
remains. But the statue was afterwards removed and the vault was otherwise utilised. Many portraits of her were
painted and a medallion was struck in her honour. Pitt eulogised her History in the House of Commons. She was
noted, however, for her vituperative language and, being addicted to the use of rouge, Dr. Johnson remarked of her
that it was better that she should "redden her own cheeks" than blacken the character of others.
It is an ungrateful and repulsive task to say anything except what is good of the dead. But Bacon's counsels
have played so important a part in founding the British Empire, and obedience to them is so essential to its
maintenance, that the veracity of his vilifiers demands enquiry. They have known no restraint in their ghoulish
propensity to desecrate his memory, and in the interests of justice their own characters must be subject to
postmortem examination. In the Gentleman's Magazine, Part II, 1794, p. 685, the following quotation is given from
Isaac D'Israeli's Dissertation on Anecdotes. "I shall not dismiss this topic, without seizing the opportunity it affords
of disclosing to the public an anecdote which should not have been hitherto concealed from it. When some
Historians meet with information in favour of those personages whom they have chosen to execrate as it were
systematically, they employ forgeries, interpolations, or still more effectual villainies. Mrs. Macaulay, when she
consulted the MSS. at the British Museum, was accustomed in her historical researches, when she came to any
passage unfavourable to her party, or in favour of the Stuarts, to destroy the page of the MS. These dilapidations
were at length perceived, and she was watched. The Harleian MS. 7379 will go down to posterity as an eternal
testimony of her historical partiality. It is a collection of State letters; this MS. had three pages entirely torn out; and
it has a note, signed by the Principal Librarian, that on such a day the MS. was delivered to her; and the same day
the pages were found to be destroyed."
Mrs. Macaulay's second husband, Mr. Graham, wrote letters to Mr. D'Israeli containing such insults as proved
him to be an apt pupil of his wife's methods. Witnesses were reluctant to come forward to verify their previous
statements, but Mr. D'Israeli in the final letter of the correspondence sees no argument or fact in what was brought
forward to disprove the truth of the anecdote which he recorded. It would be interesting to know if Mrs. Macaulay
ever had access to the MSS. in the Lambeth Palace library. That would explain many things.
The following is from The Greatest of Literary Problems, James Phinney Baxter, 1915 p. 629.
As we have not related in our sketch of Bacon the calumnious stories of his enemies, ignorance of them may be
imputed to us, as it has been undeservedly to Spedding; since, with the exception of a salacious bit of court gossip
about Mary Fitton, which requires too great a strain upon the imagination to connect it with Bacon, they emanated
from men notoriously envious and malicious, like Wilson, Weldon and the self-righteous D'Ewes, who measured
others by his own insufficent standards.
The burden of testimony is all against them. Boener, his physician; Rawley, his chaplain; Bushell, his disciple;
Matthew, his alter ego; Pierre Amboise, Fuller, and a score of others all testify to his indefectible Christian character .
. . he cannot be harmed in the estimation of fair-minded men by the cryptic story of court gossip, or the unsupported
calumny of such men as we have named, many of whose other utterances have been discredited and condemned by
the best writers since their time.
Well may it be said of Francis Bacon, Virtus vincit invidiam.
Samuel Schoenbaum (Shakespeare's Lives) is no friend of anti- Stratfordians, especially Baconians. When he
comes to a discussion of Freud's early Baconian conviction, he turns his own weapon of psychiatry upon him with
gusto:
In certain recurring features of anti-Stratfordian behavior we may discern a pattern of psychopathology. The
heretic's revulsion against the provincial and lowly; his exaltation of his hero (and, through identification, himself) by
furnishing him with an aristocratic, even royal, pedigree; his paranoid structures of thought, embracing the classic
paraphernalia of persecution: secrets, curses, conspiracies; the compulsion to dig in churches, castles, river beds and
tombs; the auto-hypnosis, spirit visitations, and other hallucinatory phenoma; the descent, in a few cases, into actual
madness -- all these manifestations of the uneasy psyche suggest that the movement calls not so much for the
expertise of the literary historian as for the insight of the phychiatrist. Dr. Freud (sic) beckons us.
So beware. Though the myopic followers of the Bard know almost nothing about his life, and then write thick
books about it, it is the doubters that are goofy.
Edward D. Johnson wrote (Baconiana, 1958):
In a letter which the biographer Sidney Lee wrote and which was published in The Times on 20th
December, 1901 he speaks of the Baconian theory as "a foolish craze," "morbid psychology", and "madhouse chatter".
He said, inter alia, that Baconians suffer from "epidemic disease," and are "unworthy of serious attention from any
but professed students of intellectual aberration." He also said that Baconians were "all ignorant, vain, and unable to
test evidence," "that they lack scholarly habits of mind," and "when narrowly examined have invariably exhibited a
tendency to monomania". Now this is very strong language when one considers that a great number of eminent and
intellectual men such as Sir Edwin Arnold, Mr. G. C. Bompas, Q.C, John Bright, S. T. Coleridge, Raiph Waldo
Emerson, Dr W. H. Furness, Lord Hamilton, O. W. Holmes, J. R. Lowell, Lord Palmerston, Lord Penzance, Judge
Webb, J. G. Whittier, Mark Twain, and many others, all expressed the opinion that Will Shakspere could hardly have
been the author of the plays. All these men, according to Lee, must have been deranged. It is submitted that the
opinion of these men, all of great ability and intelligence, can be accepted in preference to that of a man like Lee who
did not scruple to manipulate historical facts, and whose own vituperations laid him open to the charge of
"monomania".
Dear reader, if you harbor the smallest degree of skepticism, you are suffering from an extreme form of lunacy.
Richard Bentley wrote about this problem:
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.
All fit for the asylum, according to Prof. Schoenbaum.
THE VILIFIERS OF VERULAM
By HON. SIR JOHN A. COCKBURN, K.C.M.G., M.D.
During the life of Francis Bacon there was little said to his detriment. Hepworth Dixon remarks that "the lie
against nature in the name of Francis Bacon broke into high literary force with Pope. Before his day the scandal had
only oozed in the slime of Welden, Chamberlain and D'Ewes." Of these the last named is, from the position that he
occupied, the most noticeable; it is therefore important that the value of his testimony should be investigated. The
Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. II, 1846, contains a review of the Autobiography and correspondence of Sir Simonds
D'Ewes; therein it is stated that his opinions of the men with whom he occasionally came into contact is very often
not to be trusted, because, in the words of the reviewer," D'Ewes was a narrow-minded man, who looked with
strong prejudice upon everyone whose faith did not exactly square with his own, and in reference to such persons
was uncharitably willing to believe all kinds of nonsense. Hence his slanders against Lord Bacon and Sir Robert
Cotton, and his depreciation of Selden and many other persons."
The political enemies of Lord Verulam were astounded at the success of their infamous Cabal. It seemed
incredible that the great Chancellor, the glory of his age, should have been laid low so easily. They were not aware of
what had passed behind the scenes between the King and Buckingham and the wily prelate, John Williams, who
supplanted Bacon as Keeper of the Great Seal. His advice was to save the favourite and the Crown by a vicarious
sacrifice. Neither could it have been known that at His Majesty's entreaty Bacon abandoned his defence and
consented to offer himself as "an oblation [a charitable offering] to the King ." Possibly the dread of pressing the
fallen Lord Chancellor beyond the limits of human endurance sealed the lips of his adversaries. He might have been
driven to make recriminations. His peremptory demand to Buckingham for release as a prisoner from the Tower,"
Good My Lord, Procure the warrant for my discharge this day", may have acted as a salutary warning to the then
all-powerful favourite.
Next to Pope, whose brilliant line on Bacon as the"Wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind" has provided the
text for a host of libellers, comes Mrs. Catherine Macaulay as the foremost of Bacon's calumniators. Her name is now
almost forgotten, but for several generations she was regarded as a great and reliable historian. Pope's craving for
antithesis was irresistible. No attribute could have been more inappropriate to Bacon than meanness, for lavish
generosity was with him almost a weakness. But the poet required a dark background to set off the panegyric of the
other adjectives. No such excuse can be offered for Mrs. Macaulay. She seizes on the word "meanest" [Pope's
meaning was "humblest"] to sum up her delineation of Bacon's character and writings. She was a republican and a
radical, and naturally Bacon, as a wholehearted supporter of Monarchy, was obnoxious to her views. But no political
prejudice can serve as an excuse for the following shameful words as applied to the greatest of England's
philosophers and statesmen.
"Despicable in all the active part of life and only glorious in the contemplative, to him the rays of Science
served to embellish not to enlighten, and philosophy herself was degraded by a conjunction with his mean soul."
One would have thought that such intemperate language applied to him who is universally admitted to have
been the father of experimental philosophy would have put the writer out of court as a reliable historian. Yet Lecky
called her the ablest writer of the new radical school, and her History was by some preferred to that of Hume. Her
maiden name was Catherine Sawbridge, but she is known by the surname of her first husband, Dr. George
Macaulay. Her History of England was published in eight volumes from 1763 to 1783. It had a wide circulation and
was translated into French. It inspired Madame Roland with the ambition of being la Macaulay de son pays . Mrs
Macaulay visited Paris in 1775 and was received with great honour. In 1785 she was entertained for ten days at
Mount Vernon by General Washington. A white marble statue of her was placed within the altar rails of St. Stephens,
Walbrook, in which she was represented in the character of history. A vault was also constructed to receive her
remains. But the statue was afterwards removed and the vault was otherwise utilised. Many portraits of her were
painted and a medallion was struck in her honour. Pitt eulogised her History in the House of Commons. She was
noted, however, for her vituperative language and, being addicted to the use of rouge, Dr. Johnson remarked of her
that it was better that she should "redden her own cheeks" than blacken the character of others.
It is an ungrateful and repulsive task to say anything except what is good of the dead. But Bacon's counsels
have played so important a part in founding the British Empire, and obedience to them is so essential to its
maintenance, that the veracity of his vilifiers demands enquiry. They have known no restraint in their ghoulish
propensity to desecrate his memory, and in the interests of justice their own characters must be subject to
postmortem examination. In the Gentleman's Magazine, Part II, 1794, p. 685, the following quotation is given from
Isaac D'Israeli's Dissertation on Anecdotes. "I shall not dismiss this topic, without seizing the opportunity it affords
of disclosing to the public an anecdote which should not have been hitherto concealed from it. When some
Historians meet with information in favour of those personages whom they have chosen to execrate as it were
systematically, they employ forgeries, interpolations, or still more effectual villainies. Mrs. Macaulay, when she
consulted the MSS. at the British Museum, was accustomed in her historical researches, when she came to any
passage unfavourable to her party, or in favour of the Stuarts, to destroy the page of the MS. These dilapidations
were at length perceived, and she was watched. The Harleian MS. 7379 will go down to posterity as an eternal
testimony of her historical partiality. It is a collection of State letters; this MS. had three pages entirely torn out; and
it has a note, signed by the Principal Librarian, that on such a day the MS. was delivered to her; and the same day
the pages were found to be destroyed."
Mrs. Macaulay's second husband, Mr. Graham, wrote letters to Mr. D'Israeli containing such insults as proved
him to be an apt pupil of his wife's methods. Witnesses were reluctant to come forward to verify their previous
statements, but Mr. D'Israeli in the final letter of the correspondence sees no argument or fact in what was brought
forward to disprove the truth of the anecdote which he recorded. It would be interesting to know if Mrs. Macaulay
ever had access to the MSS. in the Lambeth Palace library. That would explain many things.
The following is from The Greatest of Literary Problems, James Phinney Baxter, 1915 p. 629.
As we have not related in our sketch of Bacon the calumnious stories of his enemies, ignorance of them may be
imputed to us, as it has been undeservedly to Spedding; since, with the exception of a salacious bit of court gossip
about Mary Fitton, which requires too great a strain upon the imagination to connect it with Bacon, they emanated
from men notoriously envious and malicious, like Wilson, Weldon and the self-righteous D'Ewes, who measured
others by his own insufficent standards.
The burden of testimony is all against them. Boener, his physician; Rawley, his chaplain; Bushell, his disciple;
Matthew, his alter ego; Pierre Amboise, Fuller, and a score of others all testify to his indefectible Christian character .
. . he cannot be harmed in the estimation of fair-minded men by the cryptic story of court gossip, or the unsupported
calumny of such men as we have named, many of whose other utterances have been discredited and condemned by
the best writers since their time.
Well may it be said of Francis Bacon, Virtus vincit invidiam.
| Cryptographic Shakespeare |
 |
 |