Not all maintain that Bacon, in the Sonnets, was
inspired by a passion for the Earl of Essex, for Queen Elizabeth, or
for an early miniature of himself. Not all regard him as the author
of the plays of Kit Marlowe. Not all suppose him to be a
Rosicrucian, who possibly died at the age of a hundred and six, or,
perhaps, may be "still running." Not all aver that he wrote thirteen
plays before 1593. But one party holds that, in the main, Will was
the author of the plays, while the other party votes for Bacon--or
for Bungay, a Great Unknown. I use Bungay as an endearing term for
the mysterious being who was the Author if Francis Bacon was not.
Friar Bungay was the rival of Friar Bacon, as the Unknown (if he was
not Francis Bacon) is the rival of "the inventor of Inductive
reasoning."
I could never have expected that I should take a part in this
controversy; but acquaintance with The Shakespeare Problem Restated
(503 pp.), (1908), and later works of Mr. G. G. Greenwood, M.P., has
tempted me to enter the lists.
Mr. Greenwood is worth fighting; he is cunning of fence, is learned
(and I cannot conceal my opinion that Mr. Donnelly and Judge Holmes
were rather ignorant). He is not over "the threshold of Eld" (as
were Judge Webb and Lord Penzance when they took up Shakespearean
criticism). His knowledge of Elizabethan literature is vastly
superior to mine, for I speak merely, in Matthew Arnold's words, as
"a belletristic trifler.
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