commanding excellence under another's name, and among them probably Shakespeare's plays. According to the natural interpretation of Matthew's words, his ‘most prodigious wit’ was some Englishman named Bacon whom he had met abroad—probably a pseudonymous jesuit like most of Matthew's friends. Joseph C. Hart (U. S. Consul at Santa Cruz, d. 1855), in his ‘Romance of Yachting’ (1848), first raised doubts of Shakespeare's authorship, and there followed ‘Who wrote Shakespeare?’ in Chambers's ‘Journal,’ 7 Aug. 1852, and an article by Miss Delia Bacon in ‘Putnams' Monthly,’ January 1856. On the latter was based ‘The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare unfolded by Delia Bacon,’ with a neutral preface by Nathaniel Hawthorne, London and Boston, 1857. Miss Delia Bacon died insane on 2 Sept. 1859 (cf. Life by Theodore Bacon, London, 1888). Mr. William Henry Smith seems first to have suggested the Baconian hypothesis in ‘Was Lord Bacon the author of Shakespeare's plays? A letter to Lord Ellesmere,’ 1856, which was republished as ‘Bacon and Shakespeare,’ 1857. The most learned exponent of this strange theory was Nathaniel Holmes, an American lawyer, who published at New York in 1866 ‘The Authorship of the Plays attributed to Shakespeare,’ a monument of misapplied ingenuity (4th edit. 1886, 2 vols.). Bacon's ‘Promus of Formularies and Elegancies’ (London, 1883), edited by Mrs. Henry Pott, a voluminous advocate of the Baconian theory, presses the argument of parallelisms between Bacon and Shakespeare. A Bacon Society was founded in London in 1885 to develop and promulgate the theory, and it inaugurated a magazine (named since May 1893 ‘Baconiana’). A quarterly periodical also called ‘Baconiana,’ and issued in the same interest, was established at Chicago in 1892. ‘The Bibliography of the Shakespeare–Bacon Controversy’ by W. H. Wyman, Cincinnati, 1884, gives the titles of 255 books or pamphlets on both sides of the subject, published since 1848; the list was continued during 1886 in ‘Shakespeariana,’ a monthly journal published at Philadelphia, and might now be extended to twice the original figure. The Baconian theory has found its widest acceptance in America. There it was pressed to most extravagant limits by Ignatius Donnelly of Hastings, Minnesota, in ‘The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon's Cypher in the so-called Shakespeare Plays’ (Chicago and London, 1887, 2 vols.), and by Mrs. Gallup, of Detroit, in ‘The Bi-Literal Cypher of Francis Bacon,’ 1900. Both writers thought to detect cipher-statements in the Shakespeare First Folio categorically stating that Bacon was author of the plays. Many refutations have been published of Donnelly's and Mrs. Gallup's baseless contention (cf. Nineteenth Cent. May 1887.]
SHALDERS, GEORGE (1825?–1873), watercolour painter, born about 1825, began to exhibit in 1848, when he was resident at Portsmouth, contributing in that and subsequent years to both the Royal Academy and the Suffolk Street gallery. In 1863 he became an associate, and in 1865 a full member of the New Watercolour Society, at the exhibitions of which all his later works were shown. Shalders painted landscapes, chiefly views in Hampshire, Surrey, Yorkshire, Wales, and Ireland, which gained considerable admiration; he usually introduced cattle or sheep, which he painted with much skill. He died of paralysis, induced by overwork, on 27 Jan. 1873, at the age of forty-seven.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Art Journal, 1873; exhibition catalogues.]
SHANKS, JOHN (d. 1636), actor, was long a resident in St. Giles's, Cripplegate, in the parish registers of which are recorded the births and deaths of various children. He speaks of himself in 1635 as an old man, and affirms that he was originally in the company of Lord Pembroke, and afterwards in the companies of Queen Elizabeth, James I, and Charles I. This would place his first appearance in the sixteenth century. In a list of players transferred from Charles Howard, earl of Nottingham, to Prince Henry, in 1603 according to Collier, ‘more probably’ 1608 according to Fleay, he stands thirteenth on the list. When most of the men were taken, 4 Jan. 1613, into the service of the prince palatine of the Rhine, he remains thirteenth among fourteen players. When, presumably about 1619, he joined the king's company, shortly before the confirmation of their patent, his name is last. Shanks was one of the players who in 1624 made ‘humble submission’ to the master of the revels on account of having without permission acted in the ‘Spanish Viceroy.’ His name appears twelfth of some twenty-seven players to whom on 27 March 1625 a grant was made for cloaks in which to attend the king's funeral. In the 1623 Shakespeare folio list of the principal players it is last but one. Wright (Historia Histrionica) asserts that Shanks used to act Sir Roger (the Chaplain) in the ‘Scornful Lady’ of Beaumont and Fletcher, played at Blackfriars Theatre subsequently to 1609. He had a small part in the ‘Wild Goose Chace,’ of Beaumont and Fletcher, and a second in the ‘Prophetess’ of the same authors. In 1629 he was Hilario in Massinger's ‘Picture.’ In Sir Henry Herbert's ‘Register’ is an entry of a fee of 1l. from the king's company for Shanks's ‘Ordinary.’ On the strength of this, Malone mentions him as a dramatist. Collier
