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people are disporting at a neighboring theatre as Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. A more futile performance, in every possible point of view, probably was never given; and I believe the critical tribunals of the town have mostly stated this truth -in some cases with considerable virulence. Yet this performance draws crowded houses, and, no doubt, it will continue to draw them, here and all over the country.

"In the early days of The Black Crook, when it had become known to me, from the police, that one form of vice had been much increased, through the influence of that spectacle, in the neighborhood of Niblo's Theatre, I thought it was my duty (as the dramatic reviewer for the New York Tribune) to denounce that exhibition; and I did denounce it'in good set terms.' The consequence was an immediate and enormous increase in the public attendance, and my friend Henry D. Palmer, one of the managers of the Crook, addressed to me these grateful and expressive words: Go on, my boy; this is exactly what we

want

WE omitted to state, in our January issue, that Mr. W. H. Wyman ceased with our issue for December to contribute to these pages his invaluable" Bibliography of the Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy." Mr. Wyman thus brings his careful and conscientious work to an end, having adequately and completely covered just forty years of the history of this most memorable literary excitement, being the forty years of its nativity, infancy, childhood, youth, insistence, investigation, and collapse into cipher obscurity. Mr. Wyman, while himself never wavering in his Shakespearian loyalty, has, after all, been the best interpreter of the episode. To pass beyond the terminal he has chosen would doubtless be but to encourage further amateur discussion of a bootless question; or, as Iago put it, "to suckle fools and chronicle small beer."

Miscellany.

[Matter heretofore printed under "THE OPEN COURT" will hereafter be included in this department.]

AT Delmonico's on Saturday evening, March 30, Messrs. Augustin Daly and A. M. Palmer gave a supper to Edwin Booth and about eighty gentlemen who were invited to meet the tragedian. The supper was given as a mark of the esteem in which Mr. Booth is held by the managers, and also to express their appreciation of his magnificent present of a home to the Players' Club. A novelty in the arrangements for supper was the setting of the table in the form of a five-pointed star. Mr. Booth sat at the point immediately opposite the door, having Mr. Daly on his right and Mr. Palmer on his left. The centre of the table was adorned with the largest and most beautiful floral piece that could be constructed. After the supper, which began at midnight, Mr. Daly rose and made a brief speech welcoming Mr. Booth, who expressed his pleasure and thanks. Mr. Daly then surrendered the control of the subsequent proceedings to Mr. Palmer, and thereafter the speech-making continued until 5 A.M. Among the guests were Chauncey M. Depew, General Sherman, General Porter, Samuel L. Clemens, Warner Miller, Dion Boucicault, William Winter, ex-Mayor Grace, Judge Joseph F. Daly, M. Coquelin and his son, Judge C. P. Daly, Parke Godwin, T. B. Aldrich, George H. Boker, Lawrence Barrett, Horace Howard Furness, Appleton Morgan, Isaac H. Bailey, Thomas L. James, W. J. Florence, Henry C. Jarrett, Daniel Frohman, August St. Gaudens, John Gilbert, John Drew, Alexander Salvini, James Lewis, E. M. Holland, George Clarke, J. J. Holland, Herbert Kelcey, and other wellknown gentlemen. Mr. Boucicault spoke, as usual, to the point. Alluding to the early departure of M. Coquelin, he said: "When this gentleman reaches Paris he will find a home," and proceeded to demand that the American Stage have its Lyceum, its Academy, permanently organized.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

**Editions of Shakespeare sent to us are reviewed in leading articles under the title, "WHAT EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE SHALL I BUY?" Other volumes are noticed in numerical order of their receipt.

(14) THE RIVERSIDE SHAKESPEARE. Richard Grant White. Boston Houghton, Mifflin & Co. The Riverside Press. 6 vols., 8vo, cloth, pp. 1026.

(15) SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS. Richard Grant White. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 6 vols., 8vo, cloth, pp. each 500-560. (16) THE HENRY IRVING SHAKESPEARE. Vols. IV., V. Edited by Henry Irving and Frank A. Marshall; with Notes and Introductions, and Illustrations by Gordon Brown. New York: Scribner & Welford. Sq. 8vo, cloth, pp. 423-425. (17) CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY. Twenty-one volumes of Shakespeare's Plays. New York: Cassell & Co. With reprints of Sources of Plots. 16mo (Handy Volume style), paper, each pp. 190.

(18) DELIA BACON. A Biographical Sketch. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. The Riverside Press. 12mo, cloth, pp. 322.

(19) THE TRUE STORY OF HAMLET AND OPHELIA. By Frederica Beardsley Gilchrist. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 12mo, cloth, pp. 340.

(20) IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? Philadelphia: Henry B. Ashmead. 12mo, paper, pp. 192. Second edition enlarged. London: Field & Tuer. (21) ANNALS OF THE LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington. Cloth, 12mo, pp.

275.

(22) A HISTORY OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE (16601780). By Edmund Gosse, M.A. London and New York: Macmillan & Co. Cloth, pp. 400.

(23) SHAKESPEARE AS A DRAMATIC ARTIST. A Popular Illustration of the Principles of Scientific Criticism. By Richard G. Moulton, M.A. Second Edition Revised and Enlarged. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Cloth, pp. 368.

(24) WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. A Literary Biography. By Karl Elzé, Ph.D. Translated by L. Dora Schmitz. London: George Bell & Sons. Cloth, pp. 587.

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HE learned men who associated with Jonson and talked with Bacon could not fail to suspect what Jonson was doing in Bacon's study; and when any of these gentlemen witnessed a performance of one of Jonson's plays, and heard the warnings, in address or prologue, not to decipher the cipher, they appreciated the joke, and looked out for interesting revelations, for Jonson was continually warning his audiences not to believe there were any intentional allusions to any prominent personage, and, at the same time, was constantly making allusions which could scarcely be mistaken; precisely as Bacon wrote to Queen Elizabeth not to believe that he desired his friends to press his claims upon her attention, and, at the same time was urging those friends to redouble their exertions. (Letters and Life, I., 254-5-8.)

In The Silent Woman we shall find the references to Bacon repeated, while, in a later prologue to this play, Jonson repeats the warning, evidently "by request," that no one will be wicked enough to misinterpret them. Bacon appears in this play under the name of Sir John Daw, and Jonson here says of Daw what Queen Elizabeth said of Sir Francis Bacon; what Lord Burleigh said of him; what Sir Edward Coke said of him-that he was showy "but not deep."

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"The world reports him to be very learned," says Clerimont. To which Truewit replies: "I am sorry the world should so conspire to belie him." I have heard very good things come from him," persists Clerimont. "You may," responds Truewit, "there's none so desperately ignorant as to deny that; would they were his own."

The reader will remember that the Earl of Southampton was tried as an accomplice in Essex' insurrection; that the Earl of

Essex was beheaded, and that the Earl of Southampton was committed close prisoner to the Tower; and that Bacon, anxious to win the Queen's favor, betrayed every confidence in order to insure the conviction of his noble benefactor. After the death of Queen Elizabeth, one of the first acts of King James was to release Southampton from the Tower. Then a letter was written to the Earl by Bacon, a letter which thoroughly reveals his whole character. He says: "This great change hath wrought in me no other change towards your lordship than this, that I may safely be now that which I was truly before." (L. and L., III., 75-76.)

Now, in the play, we seem to perceive an allusion to this circumstance in the concluding words of a message sent to Sir John Daw,

"She will'd me in private to tell you, that she shall be able to do you more favors, and with more security now than before." (III., 1.)

It will also be remembered that Bacon was made Queen's Counsel Extraordinary by Elizabeth, and that Lord Campbell, in his Lives of the Lord Chancellors, assures us that this was the first appointment of the kind. Clerimont says of Sir John Daw:

"I wonder he is not called to the helm, and made a counsellor." To which Dauphine answers:

"He is one extraordinary." (II., 111.)

If we suspect a person of obtaining fame under false pretences, of assuming to be a philosopher, any independent statement of his upon a philosophical subject will tend to allay or confirm our impressions; and thus, if we could learn, aside from the works which Bacon is alleged to have written, what his independent statement was upon a question of this character, it would, at least, afford us satisfaction. Now it fortunately happens that we have a report from a trustworthy source, giving the substance of what Bacon once said to Prince Henry, the eldest son of James I.:

"His lordship presented to Prince Henry two triangular stones (as the first fruits of his philosophy) to imitate the sym

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