The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next 1)

“You did?” I replied, seeing if there was anything in the fridge that wasn’t a year past its sell-by date.

“Yeah. But they said you had to read a book or two.”

“It helps.”

There was a knock at the door and Buckett instinctively reached for his handgun. He was more on edge than I had thought.

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“Easy, Buckett. I’ll get it.”

He joined me at the door and released the safety from his pistol. I looked at him and he nodded back in reply.

“Who’s there?” I said without opening the door.

“Hello!” replied a voice. “My name’s Edmund Capillary. Have you ever stopped to wonder whether it was really William Shakespeare who penned all those wonderful plays?”

We both breathed a sigh of relief and Buckett put the safety back on his automatic, muttering under his breath:

“Bloody Baconians!”

“Steady,” I replied, “it’s not illegal.”

“More’s the pity.”

“Shh.”

I opened the door on the security chain and found a small man in a lumpy corduroy suit. He was holding a dog-eared ID for me to see and politely raised his hat with a nervous smile. The Baconians were quite mad but for the most part harmless. Their purpose in life was to prove that Francis Bacon and not Will Shakespeare had penned the greatest plays in the English language. Bacon, they believed, had not been given the recognition that he rightfully deserved and they campaigned tirelessly to redress this supposed injustice.

“Hello!” said the Baconian brightly. “Can I take a moment of your time?”

I answered slowly:

“If you expect me to believe that a lawyer wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I must be dafter than I look.”

The Baconian was not to be put off. He obviously liked fighting a poor argument; in real life he was most likely a personal accident barrister.

“Not as daft as supposing that a Warwickshire schoolboy with almost no education could write works that were not for an age but for all time.”

“There is no evidence that he was without formal education,” I returned evenly, suddenly enjoying myself. Buckett wanted me to get rid of him but I ignored his gesticulations.

“Agreed,” continued the Baconian, “but I would argue that the Shakespeare in Stratford was not the same man as the Shakespeare in London.”

It was an interesting approach. I paused and Edmund Capillary took the opportunity to pounce. He launched into his well-rehearsed patter almost automatically:

“The Shakespeare in Stratford was a wealthy grain trader and buying houses when the Shakespeare in London was being pursued by tax collectors for petty sums. The collectors traced him to Sussex on one occasion in 1600; yet why not take action against him in Stratford?”

“Search me.”

He was on a roll now.

“No one is recorded in Stratford as having any idea of his literary success. He was never known to have bought a book, written a letter or indeed done anything apart from being a purveyor of bagged commodities, grain and malt and so forth.”

The small man looked triumphant.

“So where does Bacon fit into all this?” I asked him.

“Francis Bacon was an Elizabethan writer who had been forced into becoming a lawyer and politician by his family. Since being associated with something like the theater would have been frowned upon, Bacon had to enlist the help of a poor actor named Shakespeare to act as his front man—history has mistakenly linked the two Shakespeares to give added validity to a story that otherwise has little substance.”