Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 March 1888 — AN IGNORANT PLAY-ACTOR. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

AN IGNORANT PLAY-ACTOR.

A Beer-Drinking Son of a Wool-Picker, a Fraud, and a Cheat Who Couldn’t Write. Such Is Ignatius Donnelly’s Very Blunt Opinion of the Bard of Avon. ! Chicago special.] Hon. Ignatius Donnelly lectured Monday night in Central Music Hall to an audience that was fair in point of size and fine in point of appearance and intelligence. The author of the cryptogram was introduced by ex-Gov. Bross, of the Chicago Tribune, in a few felicitous phrases, and Ignatius pitched into his topic. Following is a summary of his lecture: He did not doubt, Mr. Donnelly said, that many ot the audience came to listen to a crank, because it has come to be accepted that wnat.ever the bulk of mankind believes is always right and the few who differ are always wrong. But the reader of history will not agree with tfhis view, because he knows that the path of

Amman progress is marked by the tomb of the -dead opinions of the majority. No one will be poorer if it shall be proved that there is no foundation for the claims of the Shakspeareans. Shakspeare used a coat-of-arms and claimed gentle blood, but Hallowell Phillips, the highest authority on the subject, shows that he did both fraudulently, having no right to either. His father was a wool-picker in Stratford, and he was the only one of his race that could read or write, his father and mother and thoir fathers and mothers making crosses for their signatures, not became they were religious, but for the r. ason that that was as near as they could come to writing their namhs. Even Kichard Grant White, who said that the man who claimed that Shakspeare did not write the plays should be in a madhouse, conceded that the plays could not have been written without a great library, and could not be read without a great library. The plays bore evidence of thefact that their author was familiar with the literature of Italy, France, and Spain in the original, while books have been written bv lawyers to prove that this author must have been a profound lawyer. Lord Justice Campbell says that whenever a layman brings law Into his writings he is apt to fall into error, but that from Shakspeare’s law there is no appeal. There wasn’t an English grammar in existence until Shakspeare had finished his education. In the school at Stratford-upon-Avon even the English language was not taught. The first record of Shakspeare shows him figuring in a beer-drinking bout. Then he became ft poacher, was frequently arrested, and finally fled to London, alter marrying under discreditable circumstances a woman several years his senior, whom he had compromised". There wasn’t a book in his house ; and in Shakspeare's Will, while there are bequests of a bed, a sword, a goblet, and other things, there is not a bequest of a book or a ything else of a literary character. The family of Shakspeare held the original property until the beginning of the present century, but not a scrap of his writing has come down to the world except four signatures—three -on his will and one on a deed to some property. There isn’t a letter from him, and but one to him, and that was written by a fellow who wanted to borrow some money. There are manuscripts of plays in the British museum from a period 20u years before his time, but not •one from him. In contra-t to Shakspeare’s plebeian origin and alleged illiteracy, he argued that Bacon was a patrician and a scholar of gifts commensurate to the task of producing the plays, and -in conclusion assured the audience that his position was not a matter of belief, but one which he had proved, and which his book would -prove to the world, he was right in assuming.