rn books or pamphlets, and even on the
gravestones of our ancestors. Many of the more intelligent Baconians
themselves have no faith in this last form of evidence.
{214}
On the other hand, there are certain very weighty objections to Bacon
as author of the plays. In the first place, it is a miracle that one
man should produce either the works of Bacon or Shakespeare alone; it
is a miracle past all belief that the same man in one lifetime should
have written both. In the second place, the little verse which Bacon
is known to have written shows clearly how limited he was as a poet, no
matter how great in other directions. Moreover, his prose, though
splendid in its kind, is wholly unlike the prose of Shakespeare.
Finally, Bacon's contemptuous attitude toward woman and marriage was
diametrically opposed to that found in Shakespeare. To imagine that
the same man wrote both sets of writings is to assume that he was one
man one day and another the next.
The advocates of this strange theory vary greatly in fairmindedness and
ability, and it is not just to judge them all by the mad extremes of
some; but, nevertheless, their writings, taken as a whole, form one of
the strangest medleys of garbled facts and fallacious reasoning which
has ever imposed on an honest and intelligent but uninformed public.
On the _Shakespeare Apocrypha_, see C. F. Tucker Brooke's edition of
fourteen spurious plays, under this title, Oxford, University Press,
1908. On the forgeries and other questions, Appendix I of Mr. Lee's
_Life_ is the readiest place of reference.
{215}
INDEX
Aaron, 141.
_Abraham and Isaac_, 25.
_Adoration of the Wise Men_, 25.
AEschylus, 20
AEsop, 182.
Albright, V. E., 44, 50.
_All is True_, 207, 209.
Alleyn, E., 48, 49.
Allott, R., 124.
_All's Well that Ends Well_, 110, 121, _174-176_.
_Amphitruo_, 110, 148.
Amyot, J., 108.
Anders, H. R. D., 112.
Angelo, 176.
Antonio, 160.
_Antonius, Life of M._, 192, 195.
Antony, 178.
_Antony and Cleopatra_, 47, 75, 83, 102, 109, 121, _190-192_, 193.
Apemantus, 194.
_Apocrypha, Shakespeare_, 120, 210.
_Apollonius and Silla_, 171.
_Arcadia_, 111, 187.
_Arden of Feversham_, 211.
_Aren en Titus_, 142.
Ariel, 206.
Ariosto, 167.
Aristophanes, 20.
Aristotle, 30.
Arthur, Prince, 137.
Ashbies, 4, 16.
Aspley, W. A., 121, 124.
_As You Like It_, 102, 110, 121, _167-169_, 172.
Ayrer, J., 207.
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