It is an argument of the Baconians, and generally of the impugners of good Will’s authorship of the plays vulgarly attributed to him, that the advocates of William Shakspere, Gent, as author of the plays, differ like the Kilkenny cats among themselves on many points.  All do not believe, with Mr. J. C. Collins, that Will knew Sophocles, Euripides, and AEschylus (but not Aristophanes) as well as Mr. Swinburne did, or knew them at all—­for that matter.  Mr. Pollard differs very widely from Sir Sidney Lee on points concerning the First Folio and the Quartos:  my sympathies are with Mr. Pollard.  Few, if any, partisans of Will agree with Mrs. Stopes (herself no Baconian) about the history of the Stratford monument of the poet.  About Will’s authorship of Titus Andronicus, and Henry vi, Part I, the friends of Will, like the friends of Bacon, are at odds among themselves.  These and other divergencies of opinion cause the Baconians to laugh, as if they were a harmonious circle . . . !  For the Baconian camp is not less divided against itself than the camp of the “Stratfordians.”  Not all Baconians hold that Bacon was the legitimate son of “that Imperial votaress” Queen Elizabeth.  Not all believe in the Cryptogram of Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, or in any other cryptograms.  Not all maintain that Bacon, in the Sonnets, was inspired by a passion for the Earl of Essex, for Queen Elizabeth, or for an early miniature of himself.  Not all regard him as the author of the plays of Kit Marlowe.  Not all suppose him to be a Rosicrucian, who possibly died at the age of a hundred and six, or, perhaps, may be “still running.”  Not all aver that he wrote thirteen plays before 1593.  But one party holds that, in the main, Will was the author of the plays, while the other party votes for Bacon—­or for Bungay, a Great Unknown.  I use Bungay as an endearing term for the mysterious being who was the Author if Francis Bacon was not.  Friar Bungay was the rival of Friar Bacon, as the Unknown (if he was not Francis Bacon) is the rival of “the inventor of Inductive reasoning.”

I could never have expected that I should take a part in this controversy; but acquaintance with The Shakespeare Problem Restated (503 pp.), (1908), and later works of Mr. G. G. Greenwood, M.P., has tempted me to enter the lists.

Mr. Greenwood is worth fighting; he is cunning of fence, is learned (and I cannot conceal my opinion that Mr. Donnelly and Judge Holmes were rather ignorant).  He is not over “the threshold of Eld” (as were Judge Webb and Lord Penzance when they took up Shakespearean criticism).  His knowledge of Elizabethan literature is vastly superior to mine, for I speak merely, in Matthew Arnold’s words, as “a belletristic trifler.”