Bacon is Shake-Speare: Together with a Reprint of Bacon's Promus of Formularies and EleganciesDurning-Lawrence, Edwin, Sir
History
Bacon is Shake-Speare: Together with a Reprint of Bacon's Promus of Formularies and Elegancies
Durning-Lawrence, Edwin, Sir
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Authorship -- Baconian theory
It may not be out of place here again to call our readers' attention to
the fact that law documents are required to be signed "in full," and
that if the very rapid and ready writer who wrote "Wilm Shaxp'r" were
indeed the Gentleman of Stratford it would have been quite easy for such
a good penman to have written his name in full; this the law writer has
not done because he did not desire to forge a signature to the document,
but desired only to indicate by an abbreviation that the dot or spot
below was the mark of William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Thus the question, whether William Shakespeare, of
Stratford-upon-Avon, Gentleman, could or could not write his name is
for ever settled in the negative, and there is no doubt, there can be
no doubt, upon this matter.
Dr. Wallace declares "I have had no theory to defend and no hypothesis
to propose." But as a matter of fact his whole article falsely assumes
that "William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, Gentleman," who is
referred to in the documents, is no other than the great Dramatist who
wrote the Immortal plays. And the writer can only express his unbounded
wonder and astonishment that even so ardent a Stratfordian as Dr.
Wallace, after studying the various documents which he discovered,
should have ventured to say:
"Shakespeare was the third witness examined.
Although, forsooth, the matter of his statements
is of no high literary quality and the manner is
lacking in imagination and style, as the Rev.
Joseph Green in 1747 complained of the will, we
feel none the less as we hear him talk that we
have for the first time met Shakespeare in the
flesh and that the acquaintance is good."
As a matter of fact none of the words of any of the deponents are their
own words, but they are the words of the lawyers who drew the Answers to
the Interrogatories. The present writer, when a pupil in the chambers of
a distinguished lawyer who afterwards became a Lord Justice, saw any
number of Interrogatories and Answers to Interrogatories, and even
assisted in their preparation. The last thing that any one of the pupils
thought of, was in what manner the client would desire to express his
own views. They drew the most plausible Answers they could imagine,
taking care that their words were sufficiently near to the actual facts
for the client to be able to swear to them.
The so-called signature "Wilm Shaxp'r," is written by the lawyer or law
clerk who wrote the lower part of Shakespeare's depositions, and this
same clerk also wrote the depositions above the name of another witness
who really _signs_ his own name, viz., "Daniell Nicholas." The only mark
William Shakespeare put to the document was the blot above which the
abbreviated name "Wilm Shaxp'r" was written by the lawyer or law clerk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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