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The “True Shakespeare.”

If Bacon was the “true Shakespeare,” as Mr. Theobald calls him, the question naturally arises as to his motive in concealing the authorship of the plays and the poems. Baconians explain this extraordinary act of reticence on the ground that dramatic authorship was held in low esteem, and that the fact, if known, would have proved an obstacle to his advancement at Court. This contention, though fully borne out by Bacon’s cipher writings, is ridiculous in the extreme. In the first place, it was not the profession of dramatic authorship, but the calling of the actor that was held in low esteem. Furthermore, poetry was not under the ban that attached to the stage, and it cannot be denied that the acknowledged authorship of Venus and Adonis, of Lucrece, or of the Sonnets, would have won for Bacon more favour at Elizabeth’s Court than he ever secured by his philosophy. Poetry was held in high esteem; sonneteering was the vogue. Buckingham, in the next reign, wrote a play, The Rehearsal, and Essex had composed a masque. The publication of The Faerie Queene, in 1589, secured for Edmund Spenser an introduction to the Queen, who made him her poet laureate in the same year. Why should Bacon have persisted in devoting himself to a branch of literature which appears to have advanced his interests so little? Elizabeth was never impressed by his genius; she acknowledged his great wit and learning, but accounted him “not deep.” James criticised his philosophy with lofty captiousness, and compared his Novum Organum to “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.” It would be neither discreditable to his pride as a poet, nor contrary to the nature of the man, to believe that if he could safely have claimed the authorship of Lucrece and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he would not have hesitated for an hour in so doing. Venus and Adonis won for Shakespeare the favour of Elizabeth, while, under the sovereignty of her successor, Shakespeare’s company gave between forty and fifty performances at Court during the first five years of his reign. Is it not rather absurd to believe that Bacon should have remained quiescent while his unavowed work was being acclaimed as “immortal,” and the works published under his own name were either neglected, or treated to a contemptuous mot by the very person whose admiration he was feverishly striving to attract?

Yet the Baconians find no difficulty in accepting this explanation of secrecy – Mr. A. P. Sinnett regards the motive as perfectly intelligible. Bacon, he contends, was not writing his plays for fame, but for the money it brought him. Mr. Theobald contends that the plays could not have been written by Shakespeare because he was too busily employed in “carving his own fortune” … “filling his pockets” … “working for the present, not for the future,” to devote the necessary leisure to literary pursuits. Bacon himself, according to the bi-literal cipher discoveries of Mrs. Gallup, declares that so far from receiving remuneration for his plays, he paid “a sufficient reward in gold” to Shakespeare for the use of his name. “He was left quite without resources,” Mr. Sinnett explains, “and he took up dramatic writing for the sake of the money it earned him.” Before we are won over by this fallacious explanation, we would inquire how it was that Bacon, who was left without resources in 1577, did not produce his first play until 1591, and then paid for the luxury of concealing his indiscretion. Mr. Sinnett’s next sentence is instructive as a specimen of Baconian reasoning. “After Bacon obtained an office of profit at forty-six, no more Shakespeare plays appeared, though the reputed author lived for ten more years in dignified leisure at Stratford.” It may, of course, be regarded as a “shallow objection” to raise, but Bacon was fifty-one years of age when Shakespeare retired to Stratford. Moreover, Bacon obtained no office of profit in 1611. He was made Solicitor-General, and became a rich man, in 1607, but until his appointment to the Attorney-Generalship in 1613 he was continually suing for promotion and applying for a better paid office. It is, indeed, significant that Bacon was silent as a playwright from the time of Shakespeare’s retirement. When he was Chancellor, and enjoyed a yearly income equal to between £60,000 and £70,000 of our money, he continued to compose his scientific works, and he was still actively engaged in the task between 1621 and 1626 when he was again reduced to comparative penury, and the more remunerative employment of play-writing would have relieved his financial position without detriment to his political prospects. The source from whence he could have augmented his inadequate income was neglected while he employed himself in writing a Digest of the Laws of England, The History of Henry VII., Sylva Sylvarum, Augmentis Scientiarum, The Dialogue of the Holy War, some additional Essays, and the translation of “certain Psalms into English verse.” Bacon, according to Baconians, produced his plays during the busiest period of his political career, and in the days of his leisure and impecuniosity – “when Shakespeare was not present to shield him from the disgrace of possessing poetic and dramatic genius” – he produced his versification of the Psalms.

Mr. Sinnett, in common with Mr. Theobald and, indeed, all other upholders of the Baconian theory, has a distinctly original way of dealing with matters of fact. Mr. Theobald invents his facts to suit his argument; Mr. Sinnett ignores all facts that prove intractable. Thus Mr. Sinnett in The National Review: “All through the plays there is no allusion to Stratford.” And again: “While Bacon seems to have gone North to curry favour with James on his accession, Macbeth was written just after that event. Certainly there is no reason to suppose that Shakespeare ever went to Scotland.” What nonsense is all this! Although personalities are rare in the Plays, there are a number of literal references to Stratford, and Shakespeare’s native county, in The Taming of the Shrew; and local allusions are also to be found in the second part of Henry IV. and The Merry Wives of Windsor. In his Life of William Shakespeare, Mr. Lee enumerates several instances in point. “Barton Heath,” we read is, “Barton-on-the-Heath, the home of Shakespeare’s aunt, Edmund Lambert’s wife, and of her sons. The tinker, in The Taming of the Shrew, confesses that he has run up a score with Marian Hacket, the fat ale wife of Wincot. The references to Wincot and the Hackets are singularly precise. The name of the maid of the inn is given as Cicely Hacket, and the ale-house is described in the stage direction as ‘on a heath.’” Again, in Henry IV., the local reference to William Visor, of Woncot, and the allusions to the region of the Cotswold Hills, and the peculiar Cotswold custom of sowing “red lammas” wheat at an unusually early season of the agricultural year, are unmistakable. Mr. Sinnett’s assumptions that Bacon went to Scotland and that Shakespeare did not, are entirely arbitrary. In point of fact we may be quite sure that Bacon did not go to Scotland, and we have no reason to believe that Shakespeare was ever in Venice, or Sardis, or “a wood near Athens.” The author of the Letters from Hell was not under suspicion because he could not claim to have been ferried across the Styx to get his local colour.

If we are to accept the Baconian opinion of Shakespeare it is difficult to understand how Bacon came to allow him to make a successful application on behalf of his father, John Shakespeare, to the College of Heralds for a grant of arms in 1597. Bacon was an aristocrat and a firm believer in his order. If he knew Shakespeare to be a notoriously ill-educated actor, a man little better than a vagabond, an impostor, a villain with “some humour,” whom Bacon employed as the original model for Sir John Falstaffe and Sir Toe-be – as Mr. Harold Bayley states – why did he not prevent his intimate friend, the Earl of Essex, the Earl of Southampton, and William Camden, the great scholar and antiquary, from being hoaxed by this impudent rogue, and prevent the Shakespeares from obtaining the desired grant? These three friends of Shakespeare certainly facilitated the proceedings.

Mr. Theobald’s Parallels and Mr. Bayley’s Conclusions

When Mr. Theobald gets away from his biographical pabulum and plunges into the literary arguments for Bacon’s authorship of the plays, he has little that is original to reveal, but much that is new in the way of parallels and coincidences. In the first place, he takes it for granted that Shakespeare could not, by any possibility, have written the plays. He does not prove it, but —cela va sans dire. Then he proceeds, to the extent of some four hundred pages of matter, to demonstrate, by reference to the significant Baconian characteristics in the plays, and the still more significant parallels between the poetry of Shakespeare and the philosophy of Bacon, that Bacon must be the author of both. Bacon, for instance, appears to have had a “very curious habit” of striking himself on the breast when he wished to emphasise an argument. Brutus, Ophelia, Clarence’s little boy, and Claudio, are all represented as using a similar gesture. Some such lamentations as Bacon may be supposed to have uttered after his fall, are to be found in King Lear, and Lucrece’s self-condemnation of herself to death for an offence of which she is entirely innocent is, of course, inspired by Bacon’s behaviour in making a full and humble submission to the Lords in respect of offences which he never committed. The mere fact that Lucrece was published in 1594, and that Bacon’s downfall did not take place until 1621, is a point of no moment – we can readily agree with Mr. Theobald that “there is a very curious reflection of Bacon’s character and temperament in the poem of Lucrece.” Lucrece absolves herself in the reflection,

 
“The poison’d fountain clears itself again,
And why not I from this compelled stain?”
 

Everybody knows that Bacon, “for some time after his condemnation, expected to resume his ordinary functions as counsellor to Parliament, and adviser to the King” —ergo Lucrece was Bacon’s prototype – in petticoats. Moreover, in the Essays, Bacon affixes to a meditative reflection in one of his philosophical propositions the phrase, “I cannot tell.” The same phrase, scarcely remarkable in itself, occurs several times in the Plays. Mr. Theobald devotes a whole chapter of his book to emphasising this remarkable coincidence. He advances pages of historical parallels, and he remarks, almost enthusiastically, that both Shakespeare and Bacon have dilated with pitiless logic on “the uselessness of hope.”

But Mr. Theobald is most amusing when he compares Bacon’s Essay of Love with the treatment of Love in Shakespeare. We know Bacon’s opinion of love, as expressed in the Essay, and we find it difficult to reconcile it with the rhapsodies that we find in the Plays; we remember Romeo and Juliet, and the exquisite comment, “Imagine Juliet as the party, loved” – or, rather, we should do so, if Mr. Theobald was not at our elbow to explain the apparent contradiction in thought and term. Love, it would appear, has two sides. There is the “bosom” side, and the business side. Here we have a full and convincing explanation of the difference between the views of love as expressed in the Essay, and the Shakespearean application of the sentiment as displayed in his dramas. In the Plays, Bacon regarded love from the “bosom” point of view, while in the Essay, the “very brief, very aphoristic, very concentrated, never discoursive or rhetorical, but severely reflective and practical essay,” he was dealing with Juliet as a “business” detail – a contracting party, in short – “the party loved.” Nothing could be more convincing! It would almost lead us to entertain a greater admiration for Bacon than Spedding could hope for. He has not only voiced two such entirely contradictory views of love as we find in the Essay of Bacon and the plays of Shakespeare, but he has, with the aid of Mr. Theobald, showed that, “curiously enough,” the two conflicting expressions are “significantly identical.” There is surely no need to proceed further. Mr. Theobald has proved his contention, and we must perforce accept his conclusions that Shakespeare, the arch-impostor, the champion literary fraud of all time, was “either entirely uneducated, or very imperfectly educated; that his Latin was small, his Greek less, and his pure English least of all; that such handwriting as his could never have figured on a University examination paper – this is the opinion, it will be observed, of an M.A., and a former editor of The Bacon Journal– that his whole life was too full of business, too much devoted to money to leave any extensive opportunities for study, or for large, broad, world-covering experience.”

But if we make it a sine quâ non that the writer of the Plays was a man of leisure not devoted to mammon, “with ample opportunity for study, and of a broad-world covering experience” (whatever that may precisely mean), it is proof positive that he was not the man whom we know as Francis Bacon. Bacon’s whole life was devoted to business, and to the getting of money; he had no leisure, as he is for ever telling us, for his life’s work, and his experience of the world of men was so superficial and misleading that it sent Essex to the block, brought the King to loggerheads with his Parliament, and encompassed the utter downfall and disgrace of the cunning Chancellor. We need not be flustered by Mr. Theobald’s hysterical opinion that Shakespeare’s writing was “so execrably bad, so unmistakably rustic and plebean, that one may reasonably doubt whether his penmanship extended beyond the capacity of signing his name to a business document,” because we have Spedding’s statement that Shakespeare’s signature is simply characteristic of the caligraphy of the time, and we know by comparison that it is in advance, both in style and legibility, of that of Sir Nicholas Bacon, the father of the great Pretender.

Mr. Harold Bayley, the author of The Tragedy of Sir Francis Bacon, is, in the same degree, disdainful of facts. He declares that he will quote verbatim from Mr. Sidney Lee’s well-known Life of Shakespeare which would be most commendable in him if he did it – but he doesn’t. Rather he quotes the opinion of Richard Grant White, who says that “Shakespeare was the son of a Warwickshire peasant,” who “signed his name with a mark,” and that the Poet was “apprenticed to a butcher.” It is but waste of space to repeat that such assertions are palpably false. It may be true, as Mr. Bayley states, that Stratford, in 1595, was in an unsanitary condition, and that the Metropolitan theatres were the resort of undesirable persons – even that Shakespeare entered the play-house as a servitor, but all this proves nothing. It is also true that, up to the time that Shakespeare’s plays began to be produced, “there had been nothing in his career that would cause us to suppose he was a sublime genius,” but until Homer, or Michael Angelo, or Rudyard Kipling began to produce their masterpieces, we knew of nothing in them to make us accept them as heaven-born geniuses. Mr. Bayley assumes that Shakespeare left Stratford-upon-Avon in 1585 with “Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and, perhaps, Hamlet, in his pocket.” The reason for his assumption is not vouchsafed to us. True, our dramatist left Stratford in 1585, but Venus was not published until 1593, and it was not until 1602 that Hamlet was produced. The mere fact that “in the sixteenth century the provincial dialects were so marked that the county gentry … had difficulty in making themselves understood, except to their provincial neighbours,” proves that both these works were composed after Shakespeare had been for some time a resident in London, and indeed it is ridiculous to suppose that it took him eight years to find a publisher for Venus and Adonis. Donnelly deciphered the Bishop of Worcester’s opinion that Shakespeare was “a butcher’s rude and vulgar apprentice,” who “in our opinion was not likely to have writ them (the Plays).” “In our opinion” is scarcely evidence. Mr. Bayley’s contemptuous reference to Shakespeare’s handwriting as “five strange scrawls,” is combated by Spedding’s authoritative dictum, and his immediately succeeding conclusion that the classical allusions and references in the Plays prove the author to have been “a cultured aristocrat,” robs his entire argument of sapiency or merit.

Mr. Harold Bayley’s The Tragedy of Francis Bacon, is, in my opinion, an inconsequential contribution to the controversy. In the chapter on Papermarks, his contention that every fresh device necessitates a new mould (p. 38) is correct, but his deductions are senseless; the fact being that the paper is contributed from very many – mostly foreign – mills. Take one of Caxton’s books – say, The Golden Legend– and you will find 50 different water-marks in one volume; if all the copies could be examined, probably double or treble the number would be revealed. One hasn’t the patience to follow Mr. Bayley’s “reasoning”: he believes one of the paper-marks (No. 55) to be Rosicrucian – it is the Divine monogram, and traceable to the first century. No. 14, the “fool’s-cap,” gives the name to a size of paper still extant – so of the vase, or “pott.” The symbols are allusive, heraldic, or “canting,” mostly emblematic, or in rebus form. That is all. What more natural for the paper-maker Lile than to take the Fleur-de-lys for his trade symbol? With respect to printers’ headlines, tail-pieces, etc., they were (and are) simply fancy types used for decorative purposes. The oak, and its fruit the acorn – the rose, Tudor or otherwise, the lily, typifying our conquest of France, only erased from the Royal Arms temp. George III., would all, from a national standpoint, become the commonest form of ornament, and each, in its turn, lend itself to the fancy of the designer, who, Mr. Bayley would have us think, were all under the direction of Francis Bacon, who wove a wonderful story by this puerile means. As for the printers’ “hieroglyphics,” as Mr. Bayley calls them, they have been used almost from the invention of the art to the present time. Amongst publishers, too, they are common. The printer of The Tragedy of Sir Francis Bacon employs one: a lion supporting the trade symbol of Aldus. I have not consulted Mr. Whittingham, but (if he knows anything at all about it) he would probably say the device signifies that he is the English successor of the Venetian printer!

So far as Shakespeare’s handwriting is concerned, I do not propose at the present moment to go beyond the opinion of Spedding. It would profit nothing to enter into a discussion on the subject until one has something tangible in the way of evidence to offer. Shakespeare’s Will, for instance, has always been regarded as a witness for the Baconian case, but if the result of the investigations I am prosecuting confirm my suspicions, it will become a piece of important evidence for Shakespeare. The bona-fides of this Will have always appeared to be more than questionable, and I am hopeful of being in a position shortly to connect it with the great fraud which I am satisfied has been perpetrated by Bacon.

The Bi-Literal Cipher

The most interesting feature of the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy at the present moment is the alleged discovery by Mrs. Elizabeth Wells Gallup, of Detroit, U.S.A., of a bi-literal cipher by Bacon, which appears in no fewer than forty-five books, published between 1591 and 1628. Mrs. Gallup was assisting Dr. Orville W. Owen (also of Detroit, U.S.A.), in the preparation of the later books of his Sir Francis Bacon’s Cipher Story, and in the study of the “great word cipher,” discovered by Dr. Owen, when she became convinced that the very full explanation found in De Augmentis Scientiarum of the bi-literal method of cipher-writing, was something more than a mere treatise on the subject. She applied the rules given to the peculiarly italicised words, and “letters in two forms,” as they appear in the photographic facsimile of the 1623 folio edition of the Shakespeare plays. The surprising disclosures that resulted from the experiment, sent her to the original editions of Bacon’s known works, and from those to all the authors whose books Bacon claimed as his own. The bi-literal cipher, according to Mrs. Gallup, held true in every instance, and she is fully entitled to have her discovery thoroughly investigated before it is condemned as a “pure invention.” Mrs. Gallup solemnly declares her translation to be “absolutely veracious,” and until it is authoritatively declared that the bi-literal cipher does not exist in the works in which she professes to have traced it, I am not prepared to question her bonâ fides. Her conclusions are absurd, but her premises may be proved to be impregnable. She is convinced of the soundness of her discoveries, and she forthwith leaps to the conclusion that “the proofs are overwhelming and irresistible, that Bacon was the author of the delightful lines attributed to Spenser – the fantastic conceits of Peele and Greene – the historical romances of Marlowe – the immortal plays and poems put forth in Shakespeare’s name – as well as the Anatomy of Melancholy of Burton.” Mrs. Gallup shows scant appreciation of the illimitable genius she claims for Bacon in this sentence.

The inaccurately described bi-literal cipher, which Bacon, who claims to have invented it, explained with great elaboration in his De Augmentis Scientiarum, has nothing whatever to do with the composition or the wording of the works in which it is said to exist. It depends not on the author, but on the printer. It is altogether a matter of typography. One condition alone is necessary – control over the printing, so as to ensure its being done from specially marked manuscripts, or altered in proof. It shall, as Bacon says, be performed thus: – “First let all the letters of the alphabet, by transposition, be resolved into two letters only – hence bi-literal – for the transposition of two letters by five placings will be sufficient for 32 differences, much more than 24, which is the number of the alphabet. The example of such an alphabet is on this wise: —

For the purpose of introducing this alphabet into the book which is to contain the secret message, certain letters are taken to stand for “a’s” and others for “b’s.” In Bacon’s illustration, he employed two different founts of italic type, using the letters of fount “a” to stand for “a’s,” and the letters of fount “b” to stand for “b’s.” Bacon takes the word “fuge” to exhibit the application of the alphabet, thus: —

The word is enfolded, as an illustration, in the sentence Manere te volo donec venero, as follows: —

Manere te volo donec venero

A more ample example of the cipher is given on the page which is here reproduced from Mrs. Gallup’s book. The work in which the “interiour” letter is enfolded is the first Epistle of Cicero, and the cipher letter it contains is as follows:

All is lost. Mindarus is killed. The soldiers want food.

We can neither get hence nor stay longer here.

Cicero’s First Epistle

(Note) – This Translation from Spedding, Ellis & Heath Ed.

Bacon had a three-fold motive for putting his cipher into every book of merit that was published in his day. In the first place, it allowed him to claim the authorship of the book. In the second, in Mrs. Gallup’s own words, “it was the means of conveying to a future time the truth which was being concealed from the world concerning himself – his right to be King of England – secrets of State regarding Queen Elizabeth – his mother – and other prominent characters of that day – the correction of English history in important particulars, the exposure of the wrongs that had been put upon him;” and, equally important, thirdly, of publishing his version of the wrongs he had done to others, and to Essex in particular. Concerning the amazing diversity of style displayed in the many works, he says in his cipher: “I varied my stile to suit men, since no two shew the same taste and like imagination…” “When I have assum’d men’s names, th’ next step is to create for each a stile naturall to the man that yet should let my owne bee seene, as a thrid of warpe in my entire fabricke.” His explanation of the diversity of merit that is displayed in the works of Robert Greene and of Shakespeare, is not less interesting and instructive. “It shall bee noted in truth that some (plays) greatly exceede their fellowes in worth, and it is easily explained. Th’ theame varied, yet was alwayes a subject well selected to convey the secret message. Also the plays being given out as tho’gh written by the actor, to whom each had bin consign’d, turne one’s genius suddainlie many times to suit th’ new man.”

“In this actour that wee now emploie (the cipher appears in the 1611 quarto edition of Hamlet), is a wittie veyne different from any formerly employ’d. [Bacon appears to have forgotten that he employed the ‘masque’ of Shakespeare in the quarto editions of Richard II. (1598), Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice (1600), and of King Lear, Henry V. (1608), and Pericles (1609)]. In truth it suiteth well with a native spirrit, humourous and grave by turnes in ourself. Therefore, when wee create a part that hath him in minde, th’ play is correspondingly better therefor.”

In the cipher story which is found by Mrs. Gallup in Titus Andronicus, Bacon again recurs to the superior merit of the plays put forth in Shakespeare’s name, and he extols the merits of Shakespeare as an interpreter of these dramas: —

“We can win bayes, lawrell gyrlo’ds and renowne, and we can raise a shining monumente which shale not suffer the hardly wonne, supremest, crowning glory to fade. Nere shal the lofty and wide-reaching honor that such workes as these bro’t us bee lost whilst there may even a work bee found to afforde opportunity to actors – who may play those powerful parts which are now soe greeted with great acclayme – to winne such names and honours as Wil Shakespear, o’ The Glob’ so well did win, acting our dramas.

“That honour must to earth’s final morn yet follow him, but al fame won from th’ authorshippe (supposed) of our plays must in good time – after our owne worke, putting away its vayling disguises, standeth forth as you (the decipherer) only know it – bee yeelded to us.”

If Mr. Mallock reposes any confidence in his Bacon – according to Mrs. Gallup – he must at once withdraw his description of Shakespeare as a “notoriously ill-educated actor.” Bacon himself, in the foregoing, acknowledges that Will Shakespeare derived a well-won reputation and honours by acting in his dramas. At the same time Bacon is confident that the dramas will win for him, as author, “supremest, crowning, and unfading glory.”

Here, almost at the outset of these cipher revelations, we are met by a passage, plausible in itself, but which, read in the light of our knowledge of Bacon’s doubts upon the permanency of the English language, calls for careful consideration. Bacon rested his fame upon his Latin writings. He wrote always for the appreciation of posterity. As he advanced in years, he appears, says Abbott, to have been more and more impressed with the hopelessness of any expectations of lasting fame or usefulness based upon English books. He believed implicitly that posterity would not preserve works written in the modern languages – “for these modern languages will at one time or other play the bank-rowtes (bankrupts) with books.” Of his Latin translation of the Advancement of Learning, he said, “It is a book I think will live, and be a citizen of the world, as English books will not,” and he predicted that the Latin volume of his Essays would “last as long as books shall last.” So confident was he that his writings would achieve immortality, that he dedicated his Advancement of Learning to the King, in order that the virtues and mental qualities of his Majesty might be handed down to succeeding ages in “some solid work, fixed memorial, and immortal monument.” Bacon’s pride in his work was monumental, his “grasp on futurity” was conceived in a spirit of “magnificent audacity;” every scrap of his writings was jealously preserved and robed in the time-resisting garments of a dead language. Is it conceivable in this magnificent egoist that he should have displayed such gross carelessness, such wanton unconcern in his plays that, but for the labours of a couple of actors in collecting and arranging them, they would have been utterly lost? It is simply incredible that Bacon should have based his anticipation of immortality upon plays which for years were tossed about the world in pirated and mutilated editions, and in many instances, until the issue of the first folio in 1623, existed only in the form of the actor’s prompt books. The sixteen plays, in quarto, which were in print in 1616, were published without the co-operation of the author. They were to win for their author unfading glory, yet he was at no pains to collect them. The first folio was printed from the acting versions in use by the company with which Shakespeare had been associated, and the editorial duties were undertaken by two of Shakespeare’s friends and fellow actors, whose motives rather than their literary fitness for the task call for commendation. It was dedicated to two noblemen, with whom, so far as we know, Bacon had no social or political intercourse.

Mr. Theobald considers that Bacon’s “confident assurance of holding a lasting place in literature,” his anticipation of immortality, could only have been advanced by the man who voiced the same conviction in the Shakespeare Sonnets. The deduction is based on arbitrary conjecture, and a limited acquaintance with the literary conceits of the time. But Shakespeare claimed as his medium of immortality the language which Bacon predicted could not endure.