THE MIND OF SHAKESPERE
though the admiring school have implied that Shakspere knew his own profundity, but carried the secret to his grave. The difficulty with that explanation is that it makes Shakspere practically omniscient. The Baconian heresy and other attempts to explain him, have been attempts to explain the author that Coleridge and the Germans found in the plays. Foolish as is the doctrine that Bacon could write and produce these dramas and have the secret kept for two centuries, it is really wiser than the belief that Shakspere could have been consciously omniscient, and yet keep the secret to himself—nay, even write a great many shallow things to hide the fact.
To be sure, almost every phase of earthly life is glanced at in the plays. Yet this does not prove that Shakspere thought about any of them; he merely observed them. For example, the fa-
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