Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/260

 produced not only Shakspeare, a miracle for one mind, but himself besides! It taxes the resource of miracle less sharply to refer the plays back again to Shakspeare.

For which shall we prefer? To accredit Bacon with the authorship because he knew all the law and science which the plays include; or to accredit Shakspeare with it because he possessed all the poetic flow, imagery, and plastic art, all the passion and humor, which the plays include? Of the two sets of endowments, which could have resulted in the plays? Not the first without the second. But the second, then, being absolutely essential, must make the first to be also an essential accessory, whether we can or cannot account for the possessorship of it by Shakspeare. Because we can, from the published writings of Bacon, derive the fact that, however poetic his prose may sometimes be, and fertile in apposite wit and fancy, it does not supply the peculiar imagination, and, least of all, the genial sense of humor, which reigns through all the plays. If the more important qualities be impossible to Bacon, a sufficient accessory acquaintance with terms of law, facts of science, and scraps of classic learning may not be impossible to Shakspeare.

Let us ask, too, would Bacon have taken the risk of writing for the theatre? His relations with the Queen, his desires for office and persistent struggles to attain it, his exigency to keep a clean record with the Cecils and his other jealous rivals, are supposed to have been the motives for concealing his authorship. The opinion