Bacon is Shake-Speare

Bacon is Shake-Speare

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Title: Bacon is Shake-Speare
Author: Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9847] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 24,
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[Illustration: Plate I From "Sylva Sylvarum," 1627]
BACON IS SHAKE-SPEARE
BY
SIR EDWIN DURNING-LAWRENCE, BT.
"Every hollow Idol is dethroned by skill, insinuation and regular
approach."
Together with a Reprint of Bacon's Promus of Formularies and
Elegancies.
Collated, with the Original MS. by the late F.B. BICKLEY, and revised
by F.A. HERBERT, of the British Museum.
MCMX

TO THE READER
The plays known as Shakespeare's are at the present time universally
acknowledged to be the "Greatest birth of time," the grandest

production of the human mind. Their author also is generally
recognised as the greatest genius of all the ages. The more the
marvellous plays are studied, the more wonderful they are seen to be.
Classical scholars are amazed at the prodigious amount of knowledge
of classical lore which they display. Lawyers declare that their author
must take rank among the greatest of lawyers, and must have been
learned not only in the theory of law, but also intimately acquainted
with its forensic practice. In like manner, travellers feel certain that the
author must have visited the foreign cities and countries which he so
minutely and graphically describes.
It is true that at a dark period for English literature certain critics denied
the possibility of Bohemia being accurately described as by the sea, and
pointed out the "manifest absurdity" of speaking of the "port" at Milan;
but a wider knowledge of the actual facts has vindicated the author at
the expense of his unfortunate critics. It is the same with respect to
other matters referred to in the plays. The expert possessing special
knowledge of any subject invariably discovers that the plays shew that
their author was well acquainted with almost all that was known at the
time about that particular subject.
And the knowledge is so extensive and so varied that it is not too much
to say that there is not a single living man capable of perceiving half of
the learning involved in the production of the plays. One of the greatest
students of law publicly declared, while he was editor of the Law Times,
that although he thought that he knew something of law, yet he was not
ashamed to confess that he had not sufficient legal knowledge or
mental capacity to enable him to fully comprehend a quarter of the law
contained in the plays.
Of course, men of small learning, who know very little of classics and
still less of law, do not experience any of these difficulties, because
they are not able to perceive how great is the vast store of learning
exhibited in the plays.
There is also shewn in the plays the most perfect knowledge of Court
etiquette, and of the manners and the methods of the greatest in the land,

a knowledge which none but a courtier moving in the highest circles
could by any possibility have acquired.
In his diary, Wolfe Tone records that the French soldiers who invaded
Ireland behaved exactly like the French soldiers are described as
conducting themselves at Agincourt in the play of "Henry V," and he
exclaims, "It is marvellous!" (Wolfe Tone also adds that Shakespeare
could never have seen a French soldier, but we know that Bacon while
in Paris had had considerable experience of them.)
The mighty author of the immortal plays was gifted with the most
brilliant genius ever conferred upon man. He possessed an intimate and
accurate acquaintance, which could not have been artificially acquired,
with all the