CHAPTER II: THE "SILENCE" ABOUT SHAKESPEARE



Before proceeding further to examine Mr. Greenwood's book, and the
Baconian theories, with the careful attention which they deserve, we
must clear the ground by explaining two points which appear to puzzle
Baconians, though, to be sure, they have their own solutions of the
problems.

The first question is: Why, considering that Shakespeare, by the
consent of the learned of most of the polite foreign nations, was one
of the world's very greatest poets, have we received so few and such
brief notices of him from the pens of his contemporaries?

"It is wonderful," exclaims Mr. Crouch-Batchelor, "that hundreds of
persons should not have left records of him. {27a} We know nearly as
much about the most insignificant writer of the period as we know of
him, but fifty times more about most of his contemporaries. It is
senseless to try to account for this otherwise than by recognising
that the man was not the author."

Mr. Crouch-Batchelor is too innocent. He sees the sixteenth century
in the colours of the twentieth. We know nothing, except a few dates
of birth, death, entrance at school, College, the Inns of Court, and
so forth, concerning several of Shakespeare's illustrious
contemporaries and successors in the art of dramatic poetry. The
Baconians do not quite understand, or, at least, keep steadily before
their minds, one immense difference between the Elizabethan age and
later times. In 1590-1630, there was no public excitement about the