Yet as he, Francis, has neither claimed it,
Or deserved it--he cannot have it!
His highness ‘Francis First,’ shall repose him
At the tower; fair, or not fair, I will
Consign my gracious brother thereunto.
Yes, he must die; he is much too noble
To conserve a life in base appliances.”...
Taken as poetry, or as logic, the effort is not a masterpiece; it
is, presumably, one of those portions in which “the necessities
for concealment” were so great as to make “artistic construction
impossible.” But it certainly explains, in a way, the reason of the
traitorous behaviour of Bacon towards Essex in the hour of the latter’s
adversity. The poetry improves again in the next scene. By misquoting
the words of Junius Brutus respecting Caius Marcus,
“All speak praise of him, and the bleared sights
Are spectacled to see him pass along,” &c.
(it is impossible to determine whether the inaccuracies in quotation
should be blamed upon Bacon or Dr. Owen), and adding thereto the
jealous Richard II.’s contemptuous reference to Bolingbroke:
“A brace of draymen did God-speed him well,
And had the tribute of his supple knee,” &c.
Bacon discloses Elizabeth’s mental attitude towards the recalcitrant
Earl. Directly Essex enters, however, the Queen promises him that he
will soon be known as Duke of York, and she meets his objection,
“My princely brother
Francis, your quondam son, tells me flatly
He is the only rightful Prince of Wales,”
with
“The proud jack! ’tis true, if it comes to that,
He is the Prince of Wales. But”....
Now Bacon must have known, as well as Elizabeth, that neither he, nor
Essex, nor anybody else would be Prince of Wales unless so created by
the reigning monarch. But Essex is so full of his Irish command that he
overlooks such trifles, and in the next scene he sends a captain to the
Queen for a thousand pounds, with the admonition,
“Be secret and away,
‘_To part the blessings of this happy day_.’”
In the third act, the Queen does the sleep-walking scene from
_Macbeth_. Essex returns to England, uttering the words used by Richard
II. on his own safe arrival from Ireland, to be upbraided by the Queen
in the Duke of York’s words to Bolingbroke:
“Why have those banished and forbidden legs? &c.”
A half-dozen lines of description (from _Coriolanus_) of Caius Marcus’
return to Rome, illustrate the reception that London tendered to the
disobedient Earl. Essex revolts, and fortifies himself in his house
in London. When ordered by the Chief Justice of England to surrender,
Essex replies in the magnificent curse which Mark Antony utters against
Rome over the corpse of the murdered Cæsar. The lack of enthusiasm
which the citizens of London display in the Essex rebellion is related
to the Earl in the report which Buckingham makes to the King, of
London’s reticence in rebellion (_Richard III._) commencing
“The citizens are mum, say not a word.”
And when the insurrection dies out for want of fuel, he finds solace
for his grief in quoting Richard II.’s lines--
... “Of comfort, no man speak,
Let’s talk of graves, of worms, of epitaphs,” &c.
The unsuccessful Essex in parley with Lord Lincoln employs the
passage between Northampton and the King in _Richard II._, and in the
subsequent Star Chamber trial, the Chief Justice dismisses Essex to
execution in the words that Henry V. applied to Scroop, Cambridge, and
Grey:
“Get you, therefore, hence
Poor miserable wretches, to your death,” &c.
But the marvel of inept plagiarism, of consummate wrongheadedness,
and ignorance in the bestowal of stolen property, is seen in the last
act of this marvellous play. Herein, Essex is discovered in a dungeon
in the tower. He is a man 34 years of age, and it is somewhat of a
surprise to find him declaring, in the (revised) language of little
Prince Arthur (_King John_):
“So I were out of prison and kept sheep,
I should be merry as the day is long;
And so I should be here, but that I doubt
That _Cecil_ practices more harm to me:
He is afraid of me, and I of him.”
But it is more than a surprise to learn that this hardy man of war is
to be compelled by Bacon (Shakespeare aiding) to play young Arthur to
the bitter end. After being surfeited with Francis Bacon’s choicest
philosophy, the Lord Keeper arrives with a commission to deliver Essex
to the jailers: “I will not reason what is meant thereby!”
It is impossible, without quoting the whole of this culminating
passage, to convey a correct impression of the ludicrousness of the
finale to this “marvel of literature,”--this play of “most thrilling
interest and historical value.”
[_Exit_ Keeper.]
_First Jailer._ Oh, he is bold, and blushes not at death.
_Essex._ Avaunt thou hateful villain, get thee gone!
_First Jailer._ There’s the great traitor.
_Second Jailer._ Ingrateful fox, ’tis he.
_First Jailer._ Bind fast his corky arms.
_Essex._ Help,--help,--help,--help!
Here’s a man would murder me. Help,--help,--help!
I will not struggle, I will stand stone still.
_First Jailer._ Bind him, I say.
_Second Jailer._ Hard, hard! O filthy traitor!
_First Jailer._ Give me the iron, I say, and bind him here:
To this chair bind him.
_Essex._ Let me not be bound:
Alas, why need you be so boistrous rough?
O I am undone, O I am undone!
Do me no foul play, friend!
_First Jailer._ Read here, traitor.
Can you not read it? Is it not writ fair?
_Essex._ How now, foolish rheume;
Must you, with hot irons, burn out both mine eyes?
O Heaven, that there were but a moth in yours,
A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wandering hair,
Any annoyance in that precious sense:
Then feeling what small things are boisterous there,
Your vile intents must needs seem horrible.
O spare mine eyes, though to no use but still to look on you!
Lo, by my troth, the instrument is cold,
And would not harm me--O men, if you will,
Cut out my tongue, so that I may still keep
Both mine eyes to see.
_First Jailer._ To see some mischief!
See shall thou never: (fellow, hold the chair:)
Upon these eyes of thine I’ll set my foot!
_Essex._ He that will think to live till he be old,
Give me some help! O save me,--save me!--help!
(_They tear out one of his eyes._)
Oh cruel! Oh God,--O God,--O God! my eyes are out!
Oh, I am slain!
_First Jailer._ My Lord, you have one eye left!
One side will mock another; th’ other too.
Out, vile jelly! where is thy lustre now?
(_They tear out the other eye._)
_Essex._ All dark and comfortless!--
O God, enkindle all the sparks of nature
To quit this horrid act.
_First Jailer._ Away with him; lead him to the block.
[_Exeunt Omnes._
In the epilogue, the two jailers blackmail Mr. Secretary Cecil as he
walks in his garden with his decipherer, and the book ends with the
following cryptic lines:
“This is the cruel man (Cecil) that was employed
To execute that execrable tragedy,
And you can witness with me this is true.”
(_Omnes_) “This is the strangest tale that e’er I heard.”
This amazing adaptation of a perfect piece of dramatic writing to the
exigencies of biography is, it may be assumed, without parallel in the
history of literature. Comment would be superfluous: imagine Mr. Daniel
Leno sustaining the part of Essex in a performance of the drama, and
the illusion is complete.
_Bacon, the Poet._
The whole of the new matter that we find in the play under notice is so
dissimilar from that of Shakespeare in style, language, and expression,
that it might be the work of any author, American or English, even--if
we accept the statement of Spedding--of Bacon himself. It is difficult
to form any correct estimate of Bacon’s talent as a poet, because,
apart from his own description of himself as a “concealed poet,”
and his versification of the Psalms, we have nothing to guide us.
Spedding doubtless had these Psalms in his mind when he pronounced
so emphatically upon the absence of similarity between the writings
of Shakespeare and Bacon. There is little extant verse of the period
which is so un-Shakespearean as this product of Bacon’s maturity, which
was dedicated to the pious and learned George Herbert, whose verses
on Bacon were printed in 1637. The publication is a proof that Bacon
thought well of his work--it is not on record that anybody else has
endorsed that opinion. Indeed, these seven Psalms give us all that we
have, or want, of Bacon’s poetry. The following is an extract from the
first psalm:
“He shall be like the fruitful tree,
Planted along a running spring,
Which, in due season, constantly
A goodly yield of fruit doth bring;
Whose leaves continue always green,
And are no prey to winter’s pow’r;
So shall that man not once be seen
Surprised with an evil hour.”
His rendering of the 90th psalm is not all as bald and discordant as
the following:
“Begin Thy work, O Lord, in this our age,
Shew it unto Thy servants that now live;
But to our children raise it many a stage,
That all the world to Thee may glory give.
Our handy-work likewise, as fruitful tree,
Let it, O Lord, blessed, not blasted be.”
The beautiful 14th and 15th verses of the 104th psalm are thus rendered
by our “concealed poet”:
“Causing the earth put forth the grass for beasts,
And garden herbs, served at the greatest feasts,
And bread that is all viands firmament,
And gives a firm and solid nourishment,
And wine, man’s spirits for to recreate,
And oil, his face for to exhilarate.”
[Illustration: SHAKESPEARE’S HOUSE.]
There can be no two opinions as to the merits of these metrical
efforts, which Bacon thought good enough to print and to dedicate to
his friend George Herbert. Spedding says of them, “In compositions upon
which a man would have thought it a culpable waste of time to bestow
any serious labour, it would be idle to seek either for indications
of his taste or for a measure of his powers.” And again, “of these
verses of Bacon’s, it has been usual to speak not only as a failure,
but as a ridiculous failure; a censure in which I cannot concur. An
unpractised versifier (fancy styling the author of the _Faerie Queene_
and _Adonis_, an ‘unpractised versifier!’)--who will not take time and
trouble about the work, must, of course, leave many bad verses; for
poetic feeling and imagination, though they will dislike a wrong word,
will not of themselves suggest a right one that will suit metre and
rhyme; and it would be easy to quote from the few pages, not only
many bad lines, but many poor stanzas.” Spedding concludes with the
comment: “Considering how little he cared to publish during the first
sixty years of his life, and how many things of weightier character
and more careful workmanship he had then by him in his cabinet, it
was somewhat remarkable that he should have given these Psalms to the
world.” Dr. Abbott, another friendly biographer and admirer of Bacon’s
“magnificent prose,” says:--“Some allowance must be made (no doubt) for
the fact that Bacon is translating, and not writing original verse.
Nevertheless a true poet, even of a low order, could hardly betray so
clearly the cramping influence of rhyme and metre. There is far less
beauty of diction and phrase in these verse translations than in any of
the prose works that are couched in an elevated style.... But I cannot
help coming to the conclusion that, although Bacon might have written
better verse on some subject of his own choosing, the chances are that
even his best would not have been very good.”
But despite the appalling evidence of poetical incapacity presented by
this versification of the Psalms, a staunch Baconian, by a train of
argument which is only equalled by that employed by Mr. Theobald, has
proved, to his own satisfaction, that Bacon was a poet, by locating
the position which the Plays occupy in the scheme of Bacon’s works.
This ingenious logician has discovered that the two most extraordinary
facts connected with Bacon’s philosophy are (_a_) that the most eminent
students have been unable to understand his “method of interpretation,”
and (_b_) that the last three parts of the _Instauratio Magna_ are
apparently wholly lost. Because Ellis and Spedding both declare that
“of his philosophy they can make nothing,” and that “he failed in the
very thing in which he was most bent,” therefore he must be a poet.
Because the last three books of the _Instauratio_ are “apparently
wholly lost”--which is the writer’s perversion of the indubitable fact
that they were never written--therefore the comedies, histories, and
tragedies of Shakespeare actually form the fourth, fifth, and sixth
books of “the great work.” Firstly (to present this argument fairly),
Bacon declared his intention to insinuate his philosophy into men’s
minds by a method which would provoke no controversy; secondly (this
is not exactly proved, but just stated as a fact), Bacon wrote the
works of Shakespeare; and thirdly, the Plays are the treasure house of
all art, science, and wisdom. The natural and inevitable deduction is
that they must form the missing--_i.e._, the unwritten--parts of the
_Instauratio Magna_.
I am afraid that we must decline to accept so ingenious a piece of
sophistry. Until it is proved that the Psalms are a forgery, or that
they have been erroneously attributed to Bacon, we have a gauge of his
poetical ability which is fatal to his pretensions to the authorship of
the Plays, of Spenser, or of any one of the books which we are asked to
believe emanated from his stupendous intellect.
“_Did Shakespeare Write Bacon?_”
Mr. Leslie Stephen, with amazing nerve and a fine sense of humour,
has carried the war of the rival claims into the enemies’ country,
and propounded the theory, with no little plausibility, that so far
from Bacon being the author of the Plays, Shakespeare was the real
writer of Bacon’s philosophical works. Mr. Theobald claims to prove
that Bacon had ample leisure in which to write all Shakespeare and his
own books as well. Mr. Stephen has come to the conclusion that his
time was so fully occupied with business, and political and financial
anxieties, that he never found the opportunity he was always seeking
to perfect his great philosophical reform. Up to the year of the
accession of James I., he had not been able to prepare any statement
of his philosophic ideas. His desire, as we know from his letters, was
to stand well with the King; his scruples, as we also gather from his
letters, did not make him hesitate to employ questionable practices
when he had his own interests to serve. If he had not time to write,
he could get a book written for him. He selected Shakespeare, who at
this period had a great reputation as the author of _Hamlet_, for the
purpose. Why Shakespeare, it may be asked? Because, says Mr. Stephen,
he knew Shakespeare through Ben Jonson; he knew Southampton as a
friend and patron of Shakespeare, and he therefore employed Shakespeare
through Southampton--the present of £1,000, which it is known was made
to Shakespeare by his youthful patron, being money paid by Bacon on
account, for the writing of the _Advancement of Learning_.
If the supposition that Shakespeare wrote this book for Bacon be
correct, argues Mr. Stephen, “he might naturally try to insert
some intimation of authorship to which he could appeal in case of
necessity.” Mr. Stephen sought for the intimation in the _Advancement_,
and he discovered it in the first 81 letters. The opening words are,
“There were under the law, excellent King, both daily sacrifices and
free will offerings the one pro” (ceeding, &c.) These letters (to the
end of pro) can be re-arranged to make the following: “Crede Will
Shakespeare, green innocent reader; he was the author of excellent
writing; F. B. N. fifth idol. lye.” For the assistance of any one who
cares to verify the cipher, Mr. Stephen explains that in both cases
(the original and the decipheration) A occurs in 4 places, B in 1, C in
3, D in 3, E in 15, F in 4, G in 2, H in 4, I in 6, K in 1, L in 6, N
in 6, O in 4, P in 1, R in 7, S in 3, T in 5, U in 1, W in 3, X in 1,
and Y in 1.
[Illustration: THE CHANCEL OF TRINITY CHURCH, STRATFORD-ON-AVON.]
Mr. Stephen assumes that Shakespeare explained this saucy little
anagram to Bacon when the work was published, and that Bacon retaliated
by “getting at” the printers of the folio after Shakespeare’s death,
and inserting a cryptogram claiming the authorship for himself. Bacon
is imagined to have said to himself, “If Shakespeare succeeds in
claiming my philosophy, I will take his plays in exchange.” “He had
become,” says our theorist, “demoralised to the point at which he could
cheat his conscience by such lamentable casuistry.” In 1608 Bacon
was Solicitor-General, and a rich man. He approached Shakespeare
a second time with the object of having his great philosophical work
continued. Three years afterwards, Shakespeare left the stage, and
retired to pass the last five years of his life at Stratford. Why did
he retire? “Because,” says Mr. Stephen, “Bacon had grown rich and could
make it worth his while to retire to a quiet place where he would
not be tempted to write plays, or drink at the ‘Mermaid,’ or make
indiscreet revelations.” If it should be asked what he was doing, the
answer is obvious. He was writing the _Novum Organum_. Baconians and
Mr. Leslie Stephen are agreed that the _Novum Organum_ is the work of
a poet, and that it was written by the author of the Plays. But if it
is conceded that Shakespeare wrote _Novum Organum_, it still remains a
mystery to Baconians as to who wrote Shakespeare. After Shakespeare’s
death, Bacon, in _De Augmentis_, wrote that “the theatre might be
useful either for corruption or for discipline; but in modern times
there is plenty of corruption on the stage, and no discipline.” Mr.
Stephen deduces from this that in order to aim a back-handed blow at
Shakespeare, Bacon would blaspheme the art of which he claimed to be
master--that he was, in fact, according to our other theorist, fouling
the fourth, fifth, and sixth books of his _Instauratio Magna_.
Neither of the theories we have just reviewed need be taken seriously.
We know that Bacon himself gave an account of the scheme of the
_Magna Instauratio_ in a section of the _Novum Organum_, called the
_Distributio Operis_. The fourth book was to have contained examples
of the “new method,” and of the results to which it led. The fifth was
to contain what Bacon had accomplished in Natural Philosophy without
the aid of his own method, and the sixth was to set forth the New
Philosophy--the results of the application of the new method, and all
the Phenomena of the Universe. Mr. Leslie Ellis tells us that Bacon
never hoped to complete the sixth part; he speaks of it as a thing _et
supra vires et ultra spes nostras collocata_. Mr. Leslie Stephen’s
whimsical retort to the _Instauratio_ theory may be regarded as a _jeu
d’esprit_.
_The Case for Shakespeare._
In propounding their theory that Bacon was the author of the plays
attributed to Shakespeare, the Baconians rely on two main arguments:
the plausibility of the idea that they should have emanated from the
man whom Macaulay declared to possess the “most exquisitely constructed
intellect that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of men,”
and the extraordinary unlikelihood that a man of Shakespeare’s origin
and antecedents should have written them. More recently, the disclosure
of the bi-literal and the “word” ciphers, running through certain
editions of the plays, and in Bacon’s works, have placed a new weapon
in the hands of Shakespeare’s traducers. Already some of the supporters
of Bacon’s claims have assumed a sceptical attitude towards the
“cipher speculations”--partly, I suspect, on account of their American
origin--and Mr. A. P. Sinnett, whilst claiming that if the bi-literal
cipher is substantiated, the Bacon case is demonstrated up to the
hilt, hedges himself behind the assertion that the curious allegations
now brought forward do not affect, one way or the other, the general
force of the literary argument that supports the Baconian idea. But,
unless a gigantic fraud is being attempted--which we have no reason to
suppose is the case--Mrs. Elizabeth Wells Gallup’s bi-literal cipher
can easily be substantiated. When this is accomplished, we only get to
the point that Bacon claims to have been the author of the plays put
forth by all his contemporaries, while the conviction still remains,
as it was expressed by Carlyle, that “Bacon could no more have written
_Hamlet_ than he could have made this planet.”
It is interesting in this connection to briefly sum up the concensus of
expert opinion that the leading scholars and students of Elizabethan
literature hold on the subject. Mr. Sidney Lee, whose _Life of
William Shakespeare_ has been called “the most useful, the most
judicious, and the most authoritative of all existing biographies of
the poet,” regards the theory as “fantastic.” The substance of Mr.
Lee’s conclusions is that “the abundance of the contemporary evidence
attesting Shakespeare’s responsibility for the works published under
his name, gives the Baconian theory no rational right to a hearing;
while such authentic examples of Bacon’s effort to write verse as
survive prove, beyond all possibility of contradiction, that great as
he was as a prose writer and a philosopher, he was incapable of penning
any of the poetry assigned to Shakespeare. Defective knowledge and
illogical, or casuistical, argument alone render any other conclusion
possible.”
[Illustration: Shakespeare Autographs
_Conveyance of House in Blackfriars, 10th. March, 1612._
_Mortgage of House in Blackfriars, 11th. March, 1612._
_The three signatures to the Will, 25th. March, 1616._]
Dr. N. H. Hudson, in his _Shakespeare: His Life, Art, and Character_,
has on the Baconian theory four things to say:--1. Bacon’s requital of
the Earl’s bounty (the Earl of Essex) was such a piece of ingratitude
as I can hardly conceive the author of _King Lear_ to have been guilty
of. 2. The author of Shakespeare’s plays, whatever he may have been,
certainly was not a scholar. He had certainly something far better than
learning, but he had not that. 3. Shakespeare never philosophises.
Bacon never does anything else. 4. Bacon’s mind, great as it was,
might have been cut out of Shakespeare’s without being missed.