" The French politics,
in the play, are to send the daughter of a King of France (the
contemporary King Henri III was childless) to conduct a negotiation
about 200,000 ducats, at the Court, steeped in peace, of a King of
Navarre, a scholar who would fain be a recluse from women, in an
Academe of his own device. Such was not the Navarre of Henri in his
war with the Guises, and Henri did not shun the sex!
Such are the "contemporary foreign politics," the "French politics"
which the author knows--as intimately as Bacon might have known them.
They are not foreign politics, they are not French politics, they are
politics of fairy-land: with which Will was at least as familiar as
Bacon.
These, then, are the arguments in favour of Bacon, or the Great
Unknown, which are offered with perfect solemnity of assurance: and
the Baconians repeat them in their little books of popularisation and
propaganda. Quantula sapientia!
CHAPTER VII: CONTEMPORARY RECOGNITION OF WILL AS AUTHOR
It is absolutely impossible to prove that Will, or Bacon, or the Man
in the Moon, was the author of the Shakespearean plays and poems.
But it is easy to prove that Will was recognised as the author, by
Ben Jonson, Heywood, and Heminge and Condell the actors, to take the
best witnesses. Meanwhile we have received no hint that any man
except Will was ever suspected of being the author till 1856, when
the twin stars of Miss Delia Bacon and Mr.
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