rather of Bottom and his friends in A Midsummer Night's Dream, who, for fear the lion in their play should frighten the ladies, had a prologue to explain the lion was not truly a lion, but one Snug, a joiner. Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am A lion fell, nor else no lion's dam. In the next place, Judge Webb entirely forgets what he himself has told us in another part of his book, that the Sonnets were written and were circulated in MS. in 1598, eleven years before they were published under Shakespeare's name in 1609. How then can the 76th Sonnet, which was written in 1598, contain a disclaimer of the name Shakespeare, which was not put upon the title page till 1609 ? But we have only to read the Sonnet itself to see the To new-found methods and to compounds strange? And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my name, Showing their birth and where they did proceed? O know, sweet love, I always write of you, For as the sun is daily new and old, So is my love still telling what is told. The drift of this Sonnet is obvious. The poet admits the monotony of tone and sentiment that prevails in his Sonnets. The subject is always the same, the ideas are always the same, the form of the verse is always the same. So unvarying are they, both in matter and form, that anyone who has read the previous Sonnets can tell at once that a new one is from the same hand, and to those who know the author of the previous Sonnets, almost every word tells the name of him. who sends this new one. The lines Why write I still all one, even the same, have a clear reference to the form of the Sonnet. A "weed" B is a garb or dress; we use the word still in the phrase," a widow's weeds," and "to keep invention in a noted weed,” means to confine the efforts of the Muse within the well-known and familiar form of the Sonnet, which was the unvarying form in which the poet addressed the object of his devotion. But this plain interpretation, which gives a consistent sense to the whole sonnet, will not do Judge Webb at all. He says that " a noted weed" means an assumed name, and that the line in which it occurs means that "Shakspere was not really the name of the author, but was the noted weed in which he kept Invention" (p. 73). The lines, then, Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, With all must mean that the poet keeps using an assumed name; so that every word doth almost tell his real name. respect to the learned Judge, this seems very like nonsense. But whilst Judge Webb strains ingenuity over the verge of absurdity to wring out of the 76th Sonnet some sort of intimation that Shakespeare was not the real name of the author, he curiously forgets to tell his readers that the 135th and 136th Sonnets consist of a series of fanciful quips and puns upon the Christian name of the author, and that the name is Will." The 136th Sonnet ends with the couplet: Make but my name, thy love, and love that still; Judge Webb might surely have told us what meaning he puts upon these two lines; or he might, at least, have told his readers (some of whom may not be familiar with the Sonnets) that they are there. We do not say that those two lines are an absolute proof that the sonnets were written by Will Shakspere; that is sufficiently proved by exactly the same sort of evidence on which we believe that Milton and Wordsworth wrote their own sonnets. But imagine how much we should have heard of these two lines from Judge Webb and other Baconians if by any chance they had run thus: Love thou thy freedom: love not wealth nor rank "In February, 1601," says Judge Webb, "an event occurred which brought Essex and Southampton, Bacon and Shakspere into actual contact; and if ever there was an occasion on which the player's responsibility for the works which were published under the name of Shakespeare could have been attested, it was this" (p. 71). The event to which Judge Webb refers was the abortive attempt at rebellion of Essex and Southampton, and their subsequent trial for high treason. The attempted rising had been preceded by a performance of the play of Richard the Second, which the two Earls had engaged the Globe Company to produce, in the hope that the deposition scene might encourage their followers to rise against the Queen. This performance was laid as an overt act of treason on the trial of the two Earls, when Bacon acted as counsel for the prosecution. The Queen, and Coke, her Attorney-General, were most anxious, Judge Webb states, to punish the author of the play, but, strange to say, could not discover him. As the play had been published three years before, in 1598, with the name of William Shakespeare on the title page, one wonders how it was that Coke had not "the faintest idea that the Player was the author of Richard the Second," and that in Bacon's conversation with the Queen "the question of the authorship of the play must frequently have been discussed" (p. 72). But the solution of this mystery lies in the fact that Bacon, the real author of the play, was one of the counsel for the Crown, and that, knowing the Queen regarded the play as seditious and treasonable, and was thirsting for the author's blood, he ingenuously confessed that he himself was the man she was looking for. Coke, as we know, was Bacon's archenemy, and Judge Webb tells us that if Coke had known the author of the play "he would not have hesitated a moment to lay him by the heels." Bacon tells Coke that the Player whose name figured on the title-page had nothing to do with the authorship of the play, but that he himself was responsible for the seditious stuff; and yet, Bacon is not laid by the heels, but is employed to prosecute his friends for producing a seditious play which he himself had written. One can imagine the dialogue between the Queen, the Attorney-General, and Bacon, in which this astounding revelation was made, but it would require a Shakspere or a Scott to reproduce it. Coke might be pardoned a little natural, "I told you so" on such an occasion. "Your Majesty will graciously bear me out that I have always said that Master Bacon was neither a sound lawyer nor a safe politician, but certes, I never dreamed that he consorted with vagabond players, and was a writer of seditious plays." Bacon, by a miracle, escaped without punishment, but two other names, Queen Elizabeth and Coke, must be added to the long list of those who knew the secret of the authorship of Shakespeare, and went to their graves without disclosing it. It would be too tedious to follow Judge Webb through all the vagaries and perversities of his treatment of the evidence, and all his attempt to put upon the clearest statements a meaning which would never occur to any ordinary man of plain sense. But, as a specimen of his powers in this line, we commend to the special attention of our readers his comments upon Ben Jonson's verses prefixed to the First Folio (pp. 131135). It is hard to believe that Judge Webb is not laughing at his readers when he ventures upon comments such as the following: Ben Jonson writes Thou art a monument, without a tomb, And art alive still, while thy Book doth live, Here is Judge Webb's comment : And art alive still, words which could not possibly be applied to the dead Player; but, like the juggling fiend of Macbeth, Jonson again palters with us in a double sense, by adding "While thy Book doth live" (p. 133). This is good, but what follows is still better. Jonson writes: Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were To see thee in our waters yet appear, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, Here is Judge Webb's comment : If Shakspere was ever regarded as the Swan of Avon, he was in his grave; and though the song of the dying swan is a favourite fancy with the poets, no poet that ever lived would be mad enough to talk of a swan as yet appearing and resuming its flights upon the river some seven or eight years after it was dead" (p. 134). If Judge Webb is not here laughing at his readers his readers will certainly laugh at him. Was ever such a comment made before upon the natural aspiration of a dead poet's friend and admirer for "the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still"? We can remember only one instance to compare with it, and that is Charles Lamb's experience among a company of Scotchmen: "I was present not long since at a party of North Britons where a son of Burns was expected, and happened to drop a silly expression (in my South British way) that I wished it were the father instead of the son-when four of them started up at once to inform me that 'that was impossible because he was dead.' Judge Webb is not a Scotchman; but we can hardly believe that he is an Irishman. An Irishman is seldom so entirely matter-of-fact, and so wholly devoid of humour. His book shows that he has learning, industry, and ingenuity. It is a pity they should all be lost for want of a little saving salt of humour and COMMON SENSE. 1 Essays of Elia: On Imperfect Sympathies. |