Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 123
' often with great applause/ acted by the Lord Chamberlain's
servants. Their title to favour was their popularity as acting
plays at the Globe; and it was not till they came to be read as
books that it occurred to people unconnected with the theatre
to ask who wrote them. It seems, however, that curiosity was
speedily and effectually excited by the publication, for in the
very next year a second edition of both the Richards appeared,
with the name of William Shakespeare on the title page; and
the practice was almost invariably followed by all publishers on
like occasions afterwards. We may conclude, therefore, that it
was about 1597 that play-goers and readers of plays began to
talk about him, and that his name would naturally present
itself to an idle penman in want of something to use his pen
upon. What other inferences will be drawn from its appearance
on the cover of this manuscript by those who start with the
conviction that Bacon, and not Shakespeare, was the real author
of Richard II. and Richard III., I cannot say; but to myself
the fact which I have mentioned seems quite sufficient to account
for the phenomenon. " *
The phenomenon does not seem to require any explanation.
Everything in the list, excepting the plays, is known to be
Bacon's.
Essays, orations, complimentary speeches for festivals,
letters written for, and in the names of, the Earls of Arundel,
Sussex, and Essex. Only the plays are called " copies, " because
in their second editions, when men first began to be curious as
to the " concealed poet," and Hayward, or some other, was to
be " racked to produce the author," the name Shakespeare was
printed on the hitherto anonymous title-page. The practice
was so common at that date as to cause much bewilderment
and confusion to the literary historian; and this confusion was,
probably, the very effect which that cause was intended to
produce.
It is worthy of note that in the writing-case, or portfolio,
which belonged to Bacon (and which is in the possession of
the Howard family at Arundel) a sheet is found similarly
scribbled over with the name William Shakespeare. Considering
the amount of argument which has been expended upon
the subject of the scribbled names on the fly-leaf of the Conference
of Pleasure, it would appear too strange for credibility
1 Introduction to the Conference of Pleasure, p. xsiv.