From the Baconians we receive a plain straightforward theory, "Bacon
wrote Shakespeare," as one of their own prophets has said. {4a}
Since we have plenty of evidence for Bacon's life and occupations
during the period of Shakespearean poetic activity, we can compare
what he was doing as a man, a student, a Crown lawyer, a pleader in
the Courts, a political pamphleteer, essayist, courtier, active
member of Parliament, and so on, with what he is said to have been
doing--by the Baconians; namely, writing two dramas yearly.
But there is another "Anti-Willian" theory, which would dethrone Will
Shakspere, and put but a Shadow in his place. Conceive a "concealed
poet," of high social position, contemporary with Bacon and
Shakespeare. Let him be so fond of the Law that he cannot keep legal
"shop" out of his love Sonnets even. Make him a courtier; a
statesman; a philosopher; a scholar who does not blench even from the
difficult Latin of Ovid and Plautus. Let this almost omniscient
being possess supreme poetic genius, extensive classical attainments,
and a tendency to make false quantities. Then conceive him to live
through the reigns of "Eliza and our James," without leaving in
history, in science, in society, in law, in politics or scholarship,
a single trace of his existence. He left nothing but the poems and
plays usually attributed to Will.
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