To come to his own, Shakespeare needed the environment of “the light people,” the crowd of wits living from hand to mouth by literature, like Greene and Nash; and he needed that pell-mell of the productions of their pens:  the novels, the poems, the pamphlets, and, above all, the plays, and the wine, the wild talk, the wit, the travellers’ tales, the seamen’s company, the vision of the Court, the gallants, the beauties; and he needed the People, of whom he does not speak in the terms of such a philanthropist as Bacon professedly was.  Not as an aristocrat, a courtier, but as a simple literary man, William does not like, though he thoroughly understands, the mob.  Like Alceste (in Le Misanthrope of Poquelin), he might say,

“L’Ami du genre humain n’est point du tout mon fait.”

In London, not in Stratford, he could and did find his mob.  This reminds one to ask, how did the Court-haunting, or the study-haunting, or law-court, and chamber of criminal examination-rooms haunting Bacon make acquaintance with Mrs. Quickly, and Doll Tearsheet, and drawers, and carters, and Bardolph, and Pistol, and copper captains, and all Shakespeare’s crowd of people hanging loose on the town?

It is much easier to discover how Shakespeare found the tone and manners of courtly society (which, by the way, are purely poetic and conventional), than to find out where Bacon got his immense knowledge of what is called “low life.”

If you reply, as regards Bacon, “his genius divined the Costards and Audreys, the Doll Tearsheets and tapsters, and drawers, and Bardolphs, and carters, from a hint or two, a glance,” I answer that Will had much better sources for them in his own experience of life, and had conventional poetic sources for his courtiers—­of whom, in the quick, he saw quite as much as Moliere did of his Marquis.

But one Baconian has found out a more excellent way of accounting for Bacon’s pictures of rude rustic life, and he is backed by Lord Penzance, that aged Judge.  The way is short.  These pictures of rural life and character were interpolated into the plays of Bacon by his collaborator, William Shakspere, actor, “who prepared the plays for the stage.”  This brilliant suggestion is borrowed from Mr. Appleton Morgan. {103a}

Thus have these two Baconians perceived that it is difficult to see how Bacon obtained his knowledge of certain worlds and aspects of character which he could scarcely draw “from the life.”  I am willing to ascribe miracles to the genius of Bacon; but the Baconians cited give the honour to the actor, “who prepared the plays for the stage.”

Take it as you please, my Baconian friends who do not believe as I believe in “Genius.”  Shakespeare and Moliere did not live in “Society,” though both rubbed shoulders with it, or looked at it over the invisible barrier between the actor and the great people in whose houses or palaces he takes the part of Entertainer.  The rest they divined, by genius.