No known person of the age but one, Bacon, was a genius, a legist, a
scholar, a great poet, and brilliant courtier, with all the other
qualifications so the author of the plays either was Francis Bacon--
or some person unknown, who was in all respects equally
distinguished, but kept his light under a bushel. Consequently the
name "William Shakespeare" is a pseudonym or "pen-name" wisely
adopted by Bacon (or the other man) as early as 1593, at a time when
William Shakspere was notoriously an actor in the company which
produced the plays of the genius styling himself "William
Shakespeare."
Let me repeat that, to the best of my powers of understanding and of
expression, and in my own words, so as to misquote nobody, I have now
summarised the views of the Baconians sans phrase, and of the more
cautious or more credulous "Anti-Willians," as I may style the party
who deny to Will the actor any share in the authorship of the plays,
but do not overtly assign it to Francis Bacon.
Beyond all comparison the best work on the Anti-Willian side of the
controversy is The Shakespeare Problem Restated, by Mr. G. G.
Greenwood (see my Introduction). To this volume I turn for the
exposition of the theory that "Will Shakspere" (with many other
spellings) is an actor from the country--a man of very scanty
education, in all probability, and wholly destitute of books; while
"William Shakespeare," or with the hyphen, "Shake-speare," is a "nom
de plume" adopted by the Great Unknown "concealed poet.
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