ew all about law and lawyers. Also, that that man could not have been
the Stratford Shakespeare--and WASN'T.

Who did write these Works, then?

I wish I knew.

1. From Chapter XIII of THE SHAKESPEARE PROBLEM RESTATED. By
George G. Greenwood, M.P. John Lane Company, publishers.

IX

Did Francis Bacon write Shakespeare's Works? Nobody knows.

We cannot say we KNOW a thing when that thing has not been proved.
KNOW is too strong a word to use when the evidence is not final
and absolutely conclusive. We can infer, if we want to, like those
slaves.... No, I will not write that word, it is not kind, it is not
courteous. The upholders of the Stratford-Shakespeare superstition call
US the hardest names they can think of, and they keep doing it all the
time; very well, if they like to descend to that level, let them do it,
but I will not so undignify myself as to follow them. I cannot call them
harsh names; the most I can do is to indicate them by terms reflecting
my disapproval; and this without malice, without venom.

To resume. What I was about to say was, those thugs have built their
entire superstition upon INFERENCES, not upon known and established
facts. It is a weak method, and poor, and I am glad to be able to say
our side never resorts to it while there is anything else to resort to.

But when we must, we must; and we have now arrived at a place of that
sort.... Since the Stratford Shakespeare couldn't have written the
Works, we infer that somebody did. Who was it, then? This requires some
more inferring.

Ordinarily when an unsigned poem sweeps across the continent like a
tidal wave whose roar and boom and thunder are made up of admiration,
delight, and applause, a dozen obscure people rise up and claim the
authorship. Why a dozen, instead of only one or two? One reason is,
because there are a dozen that are recognizably competent to do that
poem. Do you remember "Beautiful Snow"? Do you remember "Rock Me to
Sleep, Mother, Rock Me to Sleep"? Do you remember "Backward, turn,
backward, O Time, in thy flight! Make me a child again just for
tonight"? I remember them very well. Their authorship was claimed
by most of the grown-up people who were alive at the time, and every
claimant had one plausible argument in his favor, at least--to wit, he
could have done the authoring; he was competent.

Have the Works been claimed by a dozen? They haven't. There was good
reason. The world knows there was but one