Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Graham Smith, Tapio Riikonen and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. [Illustration: Plate I From "Sylva Sylvarum," 1627] BACON IS SHAKE-SPEARE BY SIR EDWIN DURNING-LAWRENCE, BT. "Every hollow Idol is dethroned by skill, insinuation and regular approach." Together with a Reprint of Bacon's Promus of Formularies and Elegancies. Collated, with the Original MS. by the late F.B. BICKLEY, and revised by F.A. HERBERT, of the British Museum. MCMX TO THE READER The plays known as Shakespeare's are at the present time universally acknowledged to be the "Greatest birth of time," the grandest production of the human mind. Their author also is generally recognised as the greatest genius of all the ages. The more the marvellous plays are studied, the more wonderful they are seen to be. Classical scholars are amazed at the prodigious amount of knowledge of classical lore which they display. Lawyers declare that their author must take rank among the greatest of lawyers, and must have been learned not only in the theory of law, but also intimately acquainted with its forensic practice. In like manner, travellers feel certain that the author must have visited the foreign cities and countries which he so minutely and graphically describes. It is true that at a dark period for English literature certain critics denied the possibility of Bohemia being accurately described as by the sea, and pointed out the "manifest absurdity" of speaking of the "port" at Milan; but a wider knowledge of the actual facts has vindicated the author at the expense of his unfortunate critics. It is the same with respect to other matters referred to in the plays. The expert possessing special knowledge of any subject invariably discovers that the plays shew that their author was well acquainted with almost all that was known at the time about that particular subject. And the knowledge is so extensive and so varied that it is not too much to say that there is not a single living man capable of perceiving half of the learning involved in the production of the plays. One of the greatest students of law publicly declared, while he was editor of the _Law Times_, that although he thought that he knew something of law, yet he was not ashamed to confess that he had not sufficient legal knowledge or mental capacity to enable him to fully comprehend a quarter of the law contained in the plays. Of course, men of small learning, who know very little of classics and still less of law, do not experience any of these difficulties, because they are not able to perceive how great is the vast store of learning exhibited in the plays. There is also shewn in the plays the most perfect knowledge of Court etiquette, and of the manners and the methods of the greatest in the land, a knowledge which none but a courtier moving in the highest circles could by any possibility have acquired.