Part 15 (1/2)

(6) Pp. 382, 383. ”Some of us” (some of whom?) ”have long looked upon it as axiomatic . . . that Jonson's 'small Latin and less Greek,' if meant to be taken seriously, can only be applicable to Shakspere of Stratford and not to Shakespeare,” that is, not to the Unknown author. Unluckily Ben, in 1623, is addressing the shade of the ”sweet Swan of Avon,” meaning Stratford-on-Avon.

(7) The next references in the laudable Index are to pp. 474, 475.

”Then follow these memorable words, which I have already discussed:

”'And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,'

words which those who see how singularly inappropriate they are to the author of the PLAYS and POEMS of Shakespeare have been at such infinite pains to explain away without impeaching the credit of the author, or a.s.suming that he is here indulging in a little Socratic irony.”

_I_ do not want to ”explain” Ben's words ”away”: I want to know how on earth Mr. Greenwood explains them away. My view is that Ben meant what he said, that Will, whose shade he is addressing, was no scholar (which he a.s.suredly was not). I diligently search Mr. Greenwood's scriptures, asking How does he explain Ben's ”memorable words” away?

On p. 106 of The Shakespeare Problem Restated I seem to catch a glimmer of his method. ”Once let the Stratfordians” (every human and non-Baconian person of education) ”admit that Jonson when he penned the words 'small Latin and less Greek' was really writing 'with his tongue in his cheek.' . . . ”

Once admit that vulgarism concerning a great English poet engaged on a poem of Pindaric flight, and of prophetic vision! No, we leave the admission to Mr. Greenwood and his allies.

To consider thus is to consider too seriously. The Baconians and Anti-Willians have ceased to deserve serious attention (if ever they did deserve it), and virtuous indignation, and all that kind of thing, when they ask people who care for poetry to ”admit” that Ben wrote his verses ”with his tongue in his cheek.” Elsewhere, {253a} in place of Ben's ”tongue in his cheek,” Mr. Greenwood prefers to suggest that Ben ”is here indulging in a little Socratic irony.”

Socrates ”with his tongue in his cheek”! Say ”talking through his throat,” if one may accept the evidence of the author of Raffles, as to the idioms of burglars.

To return to criticism, we are to admit that Jonson was really writing ”with his tongue in his cheek,” knowing that, as a fact, ”SHAKESPEARE” (the Great Unknown, the Bacon of the Baconians) ”had remarkable cla.s.sical attainments, and they, of course, open the door to the suggestion that the entire poem is capable of an ironical construction and esoteric interpretation.” {254a}

So this is Mr. Greenwood's method of ”explaining away” the memorable words. He seems to conjecture that Will was not SHAKESPEARE, not the author of the plays; that Jonson knew it; that his poem is, as a whole, addressed to Bacon, or to the Great Unknown, under his ”nom de plume” of ”William Shakespeare”; that the address to the ”Swan of Avon” is a mere blind; and that Ben only alludes to his ”Beloved,”

the Stratford actor, when he tells his Beloved that his Beloved has ”small Latin and less Greek.” All the praise is for Bacon, or the Great Unknown (Mr. Harris), the jeer is for ”his Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, And what he hath left Us.”

As far as I presume to understand this theory of the ”tongue in the cheek,” of the ”Socratic irony,” this is what Mr. Greenwood has to propose towards ”explaining away” the evidence of Ben Jonson, in his famous commendatory verses. When we can see through the dust of words we find that the ”esoteric interpretation” of the commendatory verses is merely a rea.s.sertion of the general theory: a man with small Latin and less Greek could not have written the plays and poems. Therefore when Ben explicitly states that his Beloved, Mr.

Shakespeare of Stratford, the Swan of Avon DID write the plays, and had small Latin and less Greek, Ben meant that he did NOT write them, that they were written by somebody else who had plenty of Greek and Latin. It is a strange logical method! Mr. Greenwood merely rea.s.serts his paradox, and proves it, like certain Biblical critics of more orthodoxy than sense, by aid of his private ”esoteric method of interpretation.” Ben, we say, about 1630, in prose and in cold blood, and in a humour of criticism without the old rancour and envy, or the transitory poetic enthusiasm, pens a note on Shakespeare in a volume styled ”Timber, or Discoveries, made upon men and Matter, as they have flowed out of his daily Readings; or had their reflux to his peculiar Notion of the Times.” Ben died in 1637; his MS.

collection of notes and brief essays, and reflections, was published in 1641. Bacon, of whom he wrote his impressions in this ma.n.u.script, had died in 1626. Ben was no longer young: he says, among these notes, that his memory, once unusually strong, after he was past forty ”is much decayed in me . . . It was wont to be faithful to me, but shaken with age now . . . (I copy the extract as given by Mr.

Greenwood. {255a}) He spoke sooth: he attributes to Orpheus, in ”Timber,” a line from Homer, and quotes from Homer what is not in that poet's ”works.”

In this ma.n.u.script occurs, then, a brief prose note, headed, De Shakespeare nostrati, on our countryman Shakespeare. It is an anecdote of the Players and their ignorance, with a few critical and personal remarks on Shakespeare. ”I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, 'Would he had blotted a thousand,' which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance who chose that circ.u.mstance to commend their friend by (that) wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped. 'Sufflaminandus erat,' as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too! Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, 'Caesar, thou dost me wrong.' He replied, 'Caesar did never wrong but with just cause'; and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.” Baconians actually maintain that Ben is here speaking of Bacon.

Of whom is Ben writing? Of the author of Julius Caesar,--certainly, from which, his memory failing, he misquotes a line. If Ben be in the great secret--that the author was Bacon, or Mr. Greenwood's Great Unknown, he is here no more enthusiastic about the Shadow or the Statesman, than about Shakespeare; no less cool and critical, whoever may be the subject of his comments. Whether, in the commendatory verses, he referred to the Actor-Author, or Bacon, or the s.h.i.+ning Shadow, or all of them at once, he is now in a mood very much more cool and critical. If to be so cool and critical is violently inconsistent in the case of the Stratford actor, it is not less so if Ben has Bacon or the Shadow in his mind. Meanwhile the person of whom he speaks IS HERE THE ACTOR-AUTHOR, whom the players, his friends, commended ”wherein he faulted,” namely, in not ”blotting”

where, in a thousand cases, Ben wishes that he HAD blotted. Can the most enthusiastic Baconian believe that when Ben wrote about the players' ignorant applause of Shakespeare's, of their friend's lack of care in correction, Ben had Bacon in his mind?

As for Mr. Greenwood, he says that in Ben's sentence about the players and their ignorant commendation, ”we have it on Jonson's testimony that the players looked upon William Shakspere the actor as the author of the plays and praised him for never blotting out a line.” We have it, and how is the critic to get over or round the fact? Thus, ”We know that this statement” (about the almost blotless lines) ”is ridiculous; that if the players had any unblotted ma.n.u.scripts in their hands (which is by no means probable) they were merely fair copies . . . ”

Perhaps, but the Baconians appear to a.s.sume that a ”fair copy” is not, and cannot be, a copy in the handwriting of the author.

As I have said before, the Players knew Will's handwriting, if he could write. If they received his copy in a hand not his own, and were not idiots, they could not praise him and his unerring speed and accuracy in penning his thoughts. If, on the other hand, Will could not write, in their long friends.h.i.+p with Will, the Players must have known the fact, and could not possibly believe, as they certainly did, ”on Jonson's testimony” in his authors.h.i.+p.

To finish Mr. Greenwood's observations, ”if they” (the players) ”really thought that the author of the plays wrote them off currente calamo, and never” (or ”hardly ever”) ”blotted a line, never revised, never made any alterations, they knew nothing whatever concerning the real Shakespeare.” {258a}

Nothing whatever? What they did not know was merely that Will gave them fair copies in his own hand, as, before the typewriting machine was invented, authors were wont to do. Within the last fortnight I heard the error attributed to the players made by an English scholar who is foremost in his own field of learning. He and I were looking at some of d.i.c.kens's MSS. They were full of erasions and corrections. I said, ”How unlike Scott!” whose first draft of his novels exactly answered to the players' description of Will's ”copy.”

My friend said, ”Browning scarcely made an erasion or change in writing his poems,” and referred to Mr. Browning's MSS. for the press, of which examples were lying near us. ”But Browning must have made clean copies for the press,” I said: which was as new an idea to my learned friend as it was undreamed of by the Players:- if what they received from him were his clean copies.

The Players' testimony, through Jonson, cannot be destroyed by the ”easy stratagem” of Mr. Greenwood.

Mr. Greenwood now nearly falls back on Bacon, though he constantly professes that he ”is not the advocate of Bacon's authors.h.i.+p.” The author was some great man, as like Bacon as one pea to another. Mr.