Bacon's DictionaryAppendices

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The exhibits and miniatures of which are found in this section, are designed to assist the serious student and reader in following the path of the Authorship Controvesy that has been so laboriously persued by many authors and researchers during its commence.

These exhibits have been placed here as not to interrupt the flow of reading in the Baconian Dictionary sections, being a finding list of Bacon’s works, his history, his thoughts and his aims, which are a subject of study and discussion.

A Supposed Specimen of Shaksper’s Handwriting

By

James Spedding 1

Notes & Queries, September 21, 1872.

Mr. Richard Simpson’s note on this subject has not received so much attention from Shakespearian scholars as I expected. If there is in the British Museum an entire dramatic scene, filling three pages of fifty lines each, composed by Shakespeare when he was about twenty-five years old, and written out with his own hand, it is a “new fact” of much more value than all the new facts put together, which have caused from time to time so much hot controversy of late years.

As a curiosity, it would command a high price; but it is better than a curiosity. To know what kind of hand Shakespeare wrote would often help to discover what words he wrote. Is it possible that we have here a sample, not only of his handwriting, but of his handwriting under the heat and impulse of composition? This is Mr. Simpson’s question; and though he does not pretend to offer proof of the fact, he gives reasons for thinking it likely, which certainly deserves serious consideration.

A play on the subject of the life and death of Sir Thomas More, supposed on other grounds to have been the property of the company of players to which Shakespeare belonged, and to have been written about the year 1590, may still be read all but a scene or two in the shape in which it was originally submitted to the Master of the Revels for his license. 2

Large alterations have been made in it; whole scenes have been added or rewritten. The rewritten scenes are found on separate sheets of paper, and in different handwritings; and being also very different in style, may be supposed to have been contributed by their several authors in the state in which they are. One of them shows so marked a superiority to the rest, in every quality of dramatic composition, as to suggest the question: Who was there then living that could have written it?

Now it has always been supposed that one of Shakespeare’s employments, in the beginning of his theatrical career, was the revision and adaptation to the stage of other men’s compositions. In this case, the Master of the Revels had taken alarm at a scene representing a popular insurrection, and ordered it to be struck out. How it had been handled in the original copy we cannot tell; for the leaf which contained it has been removed, and we only know that it ended with the submission of the insurgents, after a speech from More, concluding with a promise to intercede for their pardon.

From the closing sentence (top of page 30, Dyce’s edition), it may be inferred that this speech was in prose; and if the argument was weakly handled as from the rest of the composition seems very likely the young Shakespeare may have been called in to mend and strengthen it. If the substituted scene was his answer to the call, no difficulty presents itself for explanation; for, though a very good specimen of his powers as a dramatic writer, we know that it was not beyond them. But if it was not his, there must have been somebody else then living who could write as well as he; and the difficulty is to name him. 3 These considerations are sufficient to make out a case for inquiry, and the questions to be asked are two:

1. Does the workmanship of this scene bear internal evidence that Shakespeare was the workman?
2. Does the penmanship bear internal evidence that the penman was the author?

The data for an answer to the first of these questions are within the reach of most people who think the matter worth a little trouble. The play has been printed by the Shakespeare Society; and though the condition of the manuscript as to handwriting is imperfectly explained, every reader may judge for himself whether it contains any scene or scenes implying a different and superior author to the rest, and how far they go to prove that that author was Shakespeare. What he has to do is only to read the whole play straight through with a free attention, and then to apply himself particularly to that part which begins near the top of p. 24 (Dyce’s edition), and end at the bottom of p. 29. If he finds nothing there but what might have been written by anybody, he need not trouble himself with any further inquiry.

For the second question will have no interest for him. But if he finds in it, as I do, a stronger resemblance to the acknowledged works of Shakespeare’s youth than to those of any other poet with whom he is acquainted, he will naturally wish to know whether the hand that wrote the lines belonged to the mind that invented them. For this, as the case now stands, he must have recourse to the original manuscript a condition which unfortunately excludes many persons otherwise well qualified to judge. For the manuscript can only be examined at the British Museum, and the character of the handwriting can only be understood by those who are familiar with the ordinary handwriting of the period. But those who are, and who can spare time for an attentive examination, will conclude, I think, that the penman was the author: for though the corrections are very few, they will see that those which do occur are not like corrections of mistakes made in copying, but like alterations introduced in the course of composition.

They will also see that it is a hand which answers to all we know about Shakespeare’s. It agrees with his signature; which is a simple one, written in the ordinary character of the time, and exactly such a one as would be expected from the writer of this scene, if his name was William Shakspere, and he wrote it in the same way. It agrees with the tradition, that his first occupation was that of a “Noverint,” a lawyer’s copying clerk: for in that case he must have acquired in early youth a hand of that type, which, when he left copying and took to original composition, would naturally grow into such a hand as we have here. It agrees also with the report of his first editors, that they had “received from him scarcely a blot in his writings,” he “flowed with such facility.” And it shows more than one instance of a fault which has caused much trouble to his later editors a fault incident to that very facility the occasional omission of a word in the eagerness of composition. There are at least two places in which the metre halts, though no irregularity can have been intended; doubtless from this cause. As for its appearance and character, that is a thing which can hardly be conveyed by description; but those who are possessed of Netherclift’s Handbook to Autographs will find, in the autograph of Edmund Spenser, a hand a good deal like it; the letters are formed upon the same model, and there is some resemblance in the execution.

These, however, are mere opinions, not entitled to any authority. The point will never be settled unless people can see the evidence for themselves. And to bring it within reach of the generality of readers, I would suggest the publication in facsimile of the whole scene in question; together with a line or two of each of the other hands contained in the manuscript (of which I make out five), by way of specimen, that the differences may be clearly shown. For Mr. Simpson takes both the scene immediately preceding, and the subsequent scenes from p. 39 to p. 53, to be in the same hand; whereas I take them to be certainly in another, as far at least as the twentieth line of p. 51, where a change occurs; the remainder of the dialogue having evidently been added by a different and very superior penman; though whether or not by the same who penned the insurrection scene, I should not like to say positively without taking the opinion of an expert. But any question which may arise on this point may be allowed to stand over. The inquiry will be much simpler if confined to the authorship and penmanship of the insurrection scene; the handwriting of which, though of the ordinary type, is far from ordinary in character, but might be easily recognized wherever met with, and (with the help of the proposed facsimile) identified. If the question should prove interesting enough to call for a reprint of Dyce’s edition of the whole play, it should be carefully collated: for, though generally very correct, I have noticed some errors and omissions.