Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown | Page 9

Problem Restated, pp. 293-295; a nom de plume called a
"pseudonym," pp. 307, 312; Shakespeare "a mask name," p. 328; a
"pseudonym," p. 330; "nom de plume," p. 335).
Now why was the "nom de plume" or "pseudonym" "William
Shakespeare" "an excellent nom de plume" for a concealed author,
courtier, lawyer, scholar, and so forth? If "Shakespeare" suggested
Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom and of many other things, and so
was appropriate, why add "William"?
In 1593, when the "pseudonym" first appears in Venus and Adonis, a
country actor whose name, in legal documents--presumably drawn up
by or for his friend, Francis Collyns at Stratford--is written "William
Shakespeare," was before the town as an actor in the leading company,
that of the Lord Chamberlain. This company produced the plays some
of which, by 1598, bear "W. Shakespere," or "William Shakespeare" on
their title-pages. Thus, even if the actor habitually spelled his name
"Shakspere," "William Shakespeare" was, practically (on the Baconian
theory), not only a pseudonym of one man, a poet, but also the real
name of another man, a well-known actor, who was NOT the
"concealed poet."
"William Shakespeare" or "Shakespere" was thus, in my view, the
ideally worst pseudonym which a poet who wished to be "concealed"
could possibly have had the fatuity to select. His plays and poems
would be, as they were, universally attributed to the actor, who is
represented as a person conspicuously incapable of writing them. With
Mr. Greenwood's arguments against the certainty of this attribution I

deal later.
Had the actor been a man of rare wit, and of good education and wide
reading, the choice of name might have been judicious. A "concealed
poet" of high social standing, with a strange fancy for rewriting the
plays of contemporary playwrights, might obtain the manuscript copies
from their owners, the Lord Chamberlain's Company, through that
knowledgeable, witty, and venal member of the company, Will
Shakspere. He might then rewrite and improve them, more or less, as it
was his whim to do. The actor might make fair copies in his own hand,
give them to his company, and say that the improved works were from
his own pen and genius. The lie might pass, but only if the actor, in his
life and witty talk, seemed very capable of doing what he pretended to
have done. But if the actor, according to some Baconians, could not
write even his own name, he was impossible as a mask for the poet. He
was also impossible, I think, if he were what Mr. Greenwood describes
him to be.
Mr. Greenwood, in his view of the actor as he was when he came to
London, does not deny to him the gift of being able to sign his name.
But, if he were educated at Stratford Free School (of which there is no
documentary record), according to Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps "he was
removed from school long before the usual age," "in all probability"
when "he was about thirteen" (an age at which some boys, later well
known, went up to their universities). If we send him to school at seven
or so, "it appears that he could only have enjoyed such advantages as it
may be supposed to have provided for a period of five or six years at
the outside. He was then withdrawn, and, as it seems, put to
calf-slaughtering." {16a}
What the advantages may have been we try to estimate later.
Mr. Greenwood, with Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, thinks that Will "could
have learned but little there. No doubt boys at Elizabethan grammar
schools, if they remained long enough, had a good deal of Latin driven
into them. Latin, indeed, was the one subject that was taught; and an
industrious boy who had gone through the course and attained to the
higher classes would generally be able to write fair Latin prose. But he

would learn very little else" (except to write fair Latin prose?). "What
we now call 'culture' certainly did not enter into the 'curriculum,' nor
'English,' nor modern languages, nor 'literature.'" {17a} Mr.
Halliwell-Phillipps says that "removed prematurely from school,
residing with illiterate relatives in a bookless neighbourhood, thrown
into the midst of occupations adverse to scholastic progress--it is
difficult to believe that when he first left Stratford he was not all but
destitute of polished accomplishments." {17b} Mr. Greenwood adds
the apprenticeship to a butcher or draper, but doubts the poaching, and
the frequent whippings and imprisonments, as in the story told by the
Rev. R. Davies in 1708. {17c}
That this promising young man, "when he came to London, spoke the
Warwickshire dialect or patois is, then, as certain as anything can be
that is incapable of mathematical proof." {17d} "Here is the young
Warwickshire provincial . . . " {17e} producing, apparently five or