pen-name of Bacon’s this objection, like the last, would fall to the
ground, for the essential inadequacy of the _Advancement of Learning_ in
relation to poetry would explain itself as part of the “train of
secrecy.” But it may also be answered without resorting to the
hypothesis. In the _Advancement_, dramatic poesy, though recognised, is
deprived of its customary name, “dramatic,” and dubbed “representative,”
whilst lyric, elegiac, and several other kinds of poetry are
conspicuously ignored. The Latin version of the _Advancement_, however,
the _De Augmentis Scientiarum_, published some eighteen years after the
_Advancement_, not only restores to “representative poesy” its proper
name “dramatic,” but also mentions _elegias_, _odes_, _lyricos_, etc.
The objection, as I understand it, is founded on the assumption that, at
the date of the _Advancement_, Bacon had still to learn what poetry
essentially was, a defect which at the date of the _De Augmentis_ he had
contrived to supply by getting up the subject (poetry) much as a lawyer
will cram an unfamiliar subject in order to speak to his brief. But is
there warrant for so questionable an assumption? Not a scrap. To see its
absurdity, one has only to compare the _Advancement of Learning_ with
the _Apologie for Poetry_ by the “learned” Sir Philip Sidney (so the
author is described on the title page), a treatise which somehow or
other made its first appearance in 1595, and its second under a
different title and with slight additions in 1596.{26} One of the many
resemblances involved in the comparison is, not that Sidney and Bacon
appear to have read the same books, but that their literary preference
should have coincided so closely. Among classical authors, Plutarch was
manifestly the prime favourite of both. Next after Plutarch seem to have
come Virgil, Cicero, Seneca, and Ovid. The Bible, it is true, plays a
far more important part in the _Advancement_ than in the _Apologie_,
inevitably, considering the scope of the _Advancement_, and that it was
specially addressed to a theological king. In those days, however,
libraries were so scantily furnished that lovers of literature
necessarily became acquainted with what seems to be an unusually large
proportion of the same authors.{27} It may, therefore, be urged
that similarity of literary preference did not imply direct
intercommunication. I will not argue the point, not because it is
incontestable, but because there are other resemblances the cumulative
force of which is more than enough for my purpose. The production of a
sample half dozen of these will I hope be forgiven. (a) According to the
_Apologie for Poetrie_ geometry and arithmetic would seem to be the only
constituents of the science of mathematics. The _Advancement of
Learning_ appears to take the same view. (b) According to the _Apologie_
“knowledge of a man’s self” is the highest or “mistress” knowledge, and
her highest end is “well doing and not well knowing only.” The
_Advancement_ holds “the end and term of natural philosophy” is
“knowledge of ourselves” with a view to “active life” rather than to
contemplative. (c) According to the _Apologie_ “metaphysic” concerns
itself with “abstract notions,” builds upon “the depths of Nature” as
distinct from Matter. The _Advancement_ defines “metaphysic”--which
includes mathematics--as the science of “that which is abstracted and
fixed,” “physic” being the science of “that which is inherent in matter
and therefore transitory.” (d) The _Apologie_ censures philosophers for
reducing “true points of knowledge” into “method” and “school art.” In
the _Advancement_, Bacon condemns “the over early and peremptory
reduction of knowledge into acts and methods.” It is a theme on which
he is ever ready to descant. Indeed, the _Novum Organum_, a congeries of
aphorisms, was probably designed for a monumental warning against
premature systematisation. (e) The _Apologie_ contrasts the necessary
limitations of other artists{28} with the perfect freedom of the poet:
“only the poet ... goeth hand in hand with nature, not inclosed within
the narrow warrant of her gifts ... where with the force of a divine
breath he bringeth things forth for surpassing her doings, with no small
argument to the incredulous of the first accursed fall of Adam; sith our
erected wit maketh us know what perfection is.” The _Advancement_, in a
charming passage, instructs us that one of the chief uses of poetry
“hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in
those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being
in proportion inferior to the soul.... Therefore poesy was ever thought
to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and
erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the
mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind into the nature of
things.” (f) The _Apologie_ holds “that there are many mysteries
contained in poetry which of purpose were written darkly, lest by
profane wits it should be abused.” The _Advancement_ affirms that one of
the uses of poesy is to “retire and obscure ... that which is
delivered,” “that is when the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy,
and philosophy are involved in fables and parables.” (g) The author of
the _Apologie_ venerated learning--“the noble name of learning,” he
calls it--as if it were a sort of talisman. Bacon’s attitude towards
learning, the theme of the _Advancement_, probably differed but little,
if it differed at all from that of the Apologist. (h) The aims of the
two authors were to a large extent identical, for the first book of the
_Advancement_ was a vindication of the dignity and importance of Poetry
as one of the chief constituents of “learning.” Other resemblances, more
or less significant, will doubtless be picked up by any alert reader. So
numerous are they in the earlier portion of the _Advancement_ that
reading it one seems to be continually in touch with Sidney--assuming
him to have been author of the _Apologie_. The effect in my own case has
been such as to generate a conviction not indeed that Sidney and Bacon
were personally intimate--though that is quite possible--but that Bacon
when writing the _Advancement_ was thoroughly familiar with the
_Apologie_.
It appears then that the poetical defects or eccentricities of the
_Advancement_, to whatever cause they may have been due--and honest
dissimulation is the most likely cause--were not due to ignorance of
poetry. Consequently the last of the three objections fails of effect.
“But,” says one, “suppose for a moment that your precious theory is not
incoherent, what then? A dream is not less a dream because it happens to
hang together. So with your theory. Its value is of the smallest unless
it serve to harmonise or explain phenomena otherwise intractable. The
omission to apply this test is fatal to your pretensions.” I have no
fault to find with the criticism, except that it is founded on
misapprehension. It takes for granted that I have undertaken to
establish something, a Bacon theory to wit. That feat may be possible to
an able advocate, after a “harvest of new disclosures.” For my part, so
diffident am I of my power to do anything of the kind, that the thought
of attempting it here had not even occurred to me.
For the rest, on good cause shown my precious theory will be abandoned
without reserve and without a pang, though I shall hardly be able to
rise to that fullness of joy which according to M. Poincaré (Le Science
et l’Hypothèse) ought to be felt by the physicist who has just renounced
a favourite hypothesis because it has failed to satisfy a crucial test.
NOTES TO SHAKESPEARE--A THEORY
1: Note: The words philosopher, philosophy, philosophicals throughout
this paper mean what they meant in Bacon’s day. The word science, on
the other hand, when not in quotation, is to be understood in its
modern sense.
2: From Sidney’s _Apologie for Poetrie_ (of which more hereafter) we
learn that he was in the secret of some “_Queis meliore luto finxit
præcordia Titan_, and who are better content to suppress the outflowing
of their wit than by publishing it to be accounted knights of the same
order” as those “servile wits who think it enough to be rewarded of the
printer.” Similarly Puttenham, in his _Arte of English Poesie_ (1589),
writes: “I know very many notable Gentlemen in the Court that have
written commendably and suppressed it again, or else suffered it to be
publisht without their names to it.” The _Arte of English Poesie_ was
dedicated to Bacon’s uncle and _quasi_ guardian, Lord Burleigh. In this
connexion, a saying ascribed to Edmund Waller is worth notice: “Sidney
and Bacon were nightingales who sang only in the spring, it was the
diversion of their youth.”
3: From Mr. Shakespeare’s autographs one gathers that he was
indifferent as to the spelling of his name, and that if he had a
preference, it was for the form Shakspere rather than Shakespeare. For
my present purpose it is necessary to distinguish between the owner
of New Place, Stratford, and the author of Macbeth and Lear. For the
former, Shakspere would have been better than “Mr. Shakespeare.” But
having followed the Belvoir document so far, I shall continue to use
“Mr.” as the distinction between the two--without prejudice to the
question whether or not they were actually one and the same. [The
signatures show that the Stratford player wrote his name “Shakspere.”
He seems never to have made use of the form “Shakespeare,” which is, in
truth, a quite different name from that of “Shakspere,” or “Shaksper,”
or “Shaxpur,” and such like forms. Ed.]
4: Some will have it that Shakespeare was a kind of writing machine,
and look to Ben Jonson as their prophet. Yet Jonson’s testimony both
in the great Ode to Shakespeare and elsewhere--agreeing herein with
the internal evidence of several of the plays--negatives a mechanical
explanation.
5: In the case of something which apparently “grew from” himself,
dealt with the Deposing of Richard II, and “went about in other
men’s names,” pseudonymity seems to have failed to screen Bacon from
cross-examination and censure by Queen Elizabeth. (Bacon’s _Apologie in
certaine imputations concerning the late Earl of Essex_. 1604.)
6: Browning and others less eminent than he have questioned the
autobiographical value of the _Sonnets_. Even so they would be
serious _impedimenta_ to a Solicitor-General on his way to the
Attorney-Generalship, Privy Councillorship, and other conspicuous
offices.
7: It is obviously borrowed, _mutatis mutandis_, from Ovid’s
_Metamorphoses_. “Deeper than did ever plummet sound,” however, is not
from Ovid’s _Medea_, but it seems to me from Act III, Sc. 3, of _The
Tempest_ itself. Golding’s English version of the _Metamorphoses_ may
well have been in the writer’s mind along with the Latin original.
8: _Advancement of Learning._ “Art of Arts” was a favourite phrase of
his. Of “rational knowledges” he says in the same book: “These be truly
said to be the art of arts.”
9: The _idée mère_ of the _Sapientia Veterum_--allegorisation--is one
which I think no notable man of science among his contemporaries would
have attempted to press into the service of science as Bacon pressed
it. With contemporary men of letters, poets especially, it was in high
favour, partly I suppose as an exercise of ingenuity, partly as a
“talking point” wherewith to capture the vulgar, and partly of course
for higher reasons. Sir John Harington’s application of it to _Orlando
Furioso_ (1591), is a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the fashion.
10: Poetry for example!
11: The second book of the _Advancement_--where “rational knowledges”
or “arts intellectual” are being discussed--promises, “if God give
me leave, a disquisition, digested into two parts; whereof the one I
term _experientia literata_, and the other _interpretatio naturæ_, the
former being but a degree or rudiment of the latter.” What the latter
was in 1605 is matter of conjecture. Possibly _Valerius Terminus, Of
the Interpretation of Nature, with the Annotations of Hermes Stella_,
a curious essay, seemingly meant to be anonymous, or pseudonymous, may
enable us to measure its value. Concerning the former, _experientia
literata_, we may learn from the _De Augmentis Scientiarum_, the
authorised Latin version of the _Advancement of Learning_, quite as
much as any of us need wish to know.
It may be well to bear in mind that in addition to the above double
promise, the _Advancement of Learning_ contains other promises
including one, “if God give me leave,” of a legal work--_prudentia
activa_--digested into aphorisms.
12: The nebulous _Temporis Partus Maximus_, of very uncertain date,
was scarcely more serious, I suppose, than the eloquent eulogies of
“knowledge” or “philosophy” in Bacon’s “apparently unacknowledged”
_Conference of Pleasure_, 1592, and _Gesta Graiorum_, 1594, though
towards the close of his life he seems to have claimed for it a
somewhat higher value.
13: According to Professor Fowler (_Francis Bacon_, Macmillan) the
foundation of the Royal Society was due to the impulse given by Bacon
to experimental science. Dr. Abbott (_Francis Bacon_, Macmillan) is
struck by a different aspect of Bacon: “By a strange irony the great
depreciator of words seems destined to derive an immortal memory from
the rich variety of his style and the vastness of his too sanguine
expectations.” I cannot help doubting whether, if Bacon had died
before 1620 or thereabouts, he would have been held to have placed
experimental science under any obligation at all.
14: No student I suppose would willingly be without the volume here
quoted, “_Francis Bacon_”, by Edwin A. Abbott.
15: Rawley’s dedication, 1627, of the _Natural History_ to Charles the
First.
16: _Advancement of Learning._ Book I.
17: The art of prolonging life was, he thought, one of the most
desirable.
18: He “bequeathed” his soul and body to God. “For my name and memory I
leave it to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and to
the next ages.”
19: Rawley in the dedication of 1627 uses this expression as if it were
Bacon’s rather than his own.
20: I am not aware that in its integrity it is shared by anyone.
21: More easily by far than Mr. Shakespeare’s neglect of his supposed
poetical issue more especially after his retirement to Stratford. What
was there, what would there be in the Stratford of those days with its
Quineys, Harts, Sadlers, Walkers, and the rest, to interest a spirit so
finely touched as Shakespeare’s? But this is too large a question to be
discussed here.
22: James I is reported to have said of the _Novum Organum_: “It is
like the peace of God which passeth all understanding.”
23: Bacon’s tripartite division of knowledge--history with memory for
its organ, poetry with imagination, and philosophy with reason--is well
known. When he made this division the poetic use of the imagination
was one which few may have known better than he. That he was equally
well acquainted with the scientific use of the imagination is highly
improbable.
24: Sir P. Sidney seems to have arrived at a like conclusion, for he
speaks of an “honest dissimulation.”
25: Whether the absence of proof that Bacon, as Dr. Abbott observes,
“felt any pride in or set any value on his unique mastery of English”
should be similarly interpreted is a more difficult question. Possibly
admiration of his vernacular became nauseous to him as suggesting
something less than admiration of his philosophy. Of his Latin, the
Latin of the _Sapientia Veterum_, he writes to his friend: “They
tell me my Latin is turned silver and become current.” His apparent
indifference to vehicle or language therefore did not extend beyond his
mother tongue.
26: It must have circulated privately some years before 1595, for Sir
John Harington in his English version (1591) of Ariosto’s _Orlando
Furioso_, calls Sidney “our English Petrarke,” and refers to his
_Apologie for Poetry_ (along with the _Arte of English Poesie_,
1589, dedicated to Lord Burleigh) as handling sundry poetical
questions “right learnedly.” I may add that the motto to Sidney’s
_Apologie_--_odi profanum vulgus et arceo_--touches the motto to
Shakespeare’s _Venus and Adonis_; that _King Lear_ touches the
_Arcadia_; and generally that a complete enumeration of the apparent
contacts between Sidney and Shakespeare would probably fill many pages.
[Some have even ventured to doubt whether the poetry which goes in the
name of Sidney, who died at Zutphen in 1586, was really written by
Sidney at all. Ed.]
27: It is interesting to note in relation to Aristotle, who is cited
again and again in both _Advancement_ and _Apologie_, that the
_Apologie_ endorses his dramatic precept of “one place, one day.”
Another of the _Apologie’s_ references to Aristotle: “which reason
of his, as all his, is most full of reason,” gives one to think. The
_Advancement_ disapproves, it may be added, of tying modern tongues to
ancient measures: “In modern languages it seemeth to me as free to make
new measures of verses as of dances.”
28: Astronomy and metaphysic are there considered as _arts_, whilst
poetry ranks as a _science_.
BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE[44]
_Another exasperating lucubration on the Shakespeare problem! We have
the Plays themselves. Why disturb a venerable belief by hypotheses
incapable of proof, and neither venerable nor even respectable?_ To
answer offhand--Curiosity about the _How_ of remarkable events is not
likely to die out so long as intelligent beings continue to exist:
Without the aid of hypotheses, science were impossible: Astronomers
would still be expounding the once venerated doctrine of a stable Earth
and a revolving Sun, a doctrine daily corroborated by the testimony of
our eyes. Moreover, the “venerable belief” that Shakspere and
Shakespeare were one and the same is mainly founded on the hypothesis
that Ben Jonson’s famous Ode to Shakespeare (1623) is all to be taken at
face-value. Praise--splendid praise--is unquestionably its dominant
constituent; but other ingredients--enigma, jest, _make-believe_--are
commingled with the praise.
The exordium of this Ode consists of sixteen laborious lines:
To draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy Booke and Fame;
While I confesse thy writings to be such,
As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much.
Tis true, and all mens suffrage. But these wayes
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For seeliest Ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but eccho’s right;
Or blinde Affection, which doth ne’er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty Malice might pretend this praise,
And thinke to ruine, where it seem’d to raise.
These are, as some infamous Baud, or whore,
Should praise a Matron. What could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them, and indeed
Above th’ill fortune of them, or the need.
I, therefore, will begin, etc.
This emphatic disclaimer of any intention to draw envy, ill-will,
discredit, on the august name Shakespeare, had a deep meaning, or Jonson
would not have given it such prominence. It reads as if addressed to a
living person, and the subsequent apostrophe, “Thou art a Moniment,
without a tombe,” chimes with this suggestion. The root difficulty of
the passage lies in the obviously genuine conviction of the author that
Shakespeare was in danger of being hurt by praise, noble, sincere and
universally allowed to be just. As for the assertion that Shakespeare
was “indeed above” the reach of harm, it is only pretence. Having
dispatched this tiresome business, the eulogist lets himself go:
I therefore will begin, Soule of the Age!
The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage!
My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye
A little further, to make thee a roome,
Thou art a Moniment, without a tombe.
* * * * *
And though thou hadst small Latine, and lesse Greeke,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seeke
For names; but call forth thund’ring Aeschilus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life againe, to heare thy buskin tread,
And shake a Stage; Or, when thy Sockes were on,
Leave thee alone, for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britaine, thou hast one to showe,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When like Apollo he came forth to warme
Our eares, or like a Mercury to charme.
Nature herselfe was proud of his designes,
And joy’d to weare the dressing of his lines.
... Looke how the fathers face
Lives in his issue, even so, the race
Of Shakespeares minde, and manners brightly shines
In his well turned, and true-filed lines;
In each of which, he seems to shake a Lance,
As brandish’t at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon! What a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appeare,
And make those flights upon the bankes of Thames,
That so did take Eliza and our James.
But stay. I see thee in the Hemisphere
Advanc’d, and made a Constellation there.
Shine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage,
Or Influence, chide, or cheere the drooping Stage;
Which since thy flight fro’ hence, hath mourn’d like night,
And despaires day, but by thy Volumes Light.”
Passing by the half serious “Thou art a Moniment without a tombe”, we
are pulled up by the line: “And though thou hadst small Latine,” etc.
The internal evidence of his poems and plays proves that Shakespeare
must have had a regular education, as distinguished from mere
smatterings picked up in a village school of the sixteenth century. As
to Latin in particular, the etymological intelligence shown in the
handling of words derived from that language is almost conclusive. The
evidence of contemporaries tells the same tale. “W.C.,” for instance,
in _Polimanteia_ (c. 1595) intimates that Shakespeare was a “schollar,”
and a member of one of our “Universities.”[45] But there is no need to
labour the point of Shakespeare’s culture. Indeed the innuendo of “small
Latin” as applied to Shakespeare is sufficiently refuted by other
passages in the Ode itself. “All scenes of Europe,” classico-historical
as well as modern, owe him “homage.” He was another “Apollo”; each of
his “well turned and true-filed lines” was sufficient to enlighten
“ignorance.” What then are we to make of a jibe, apparently levelled at
Shakespeare, that he was a quite unlettered rustic? Some years after the
date of the Ode, and in order, as he says, to justify his “owne candor,”
Jonson told “posterity” (as we shall see) that Shakespeare wrote with a
“facility” so unbridled that he often blundered.[46] But even then,
though his mood in the interval had veered right round from eulogist to
candid critic, Jonson dropped no hint that Shakespeare lacked Latin or
Greek. The jibe therefore, did not fit Shakespeare, but must have been
made to the measure of some one else.
To continue our examination of the Ode. What can Jonson have meant by
interspersing it with trashy jests upon the two syllables of the name
(no longer august) Shakespeare? “Shake a stage”; “shake a lance, as
brandished at the eyes of ignorance.” Was there something irresistibly
funny about the name? Again, what sort of ignorance was threatened by
the beauty and finish of Shakespeare’s lines? The ignorance of persons
who for Shakespeare mistook a man untinctured with literature? The
“Sweet Swan of Avon” apostrophe suggests comparison with what, in his
_Masque of Owles_ (1626), Jonson wrote about “Warwick Muses.” These
charming creatures are there represented as inspired, not by “Pegasus,”
but by a “Hoby-horse.”[47] Was this sarcasm reminiscent of the
well-known lines which an Oxford graduate informs us were “ordered” by
the Stratford man “to be cut upon his tombstone”? Certainly Pegasus was
innocent of them. Here they are:
Good frend, for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare;
Bleste be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.
To return to the Ode. The lines which follow the “Sweet Swan” apostrophe
are deserving of notice, chiefly because they tell us that King James
(as well as Queen Elizabeth) was under the spell of Shakespeare. Then
comes the ejaculation: “But stay! I see thee in the hemisphere advanced,
and made a constellation there.” Is it possible that Jonson expected his
readers--such of them as were not in the secret--to follow him here? To
behold Shakespeare, _à_ la Berenice’s hair, translated into the
constellation Cygnus? Not he; that were an order too large for credulity
itself to honour. What Jonson had in his mind’s eye was not the starry
heaven, but the British House of Peers.[48] Such is this famous Ode. It
suffers from manœuvres, the object of which had to be kept dark; and
this I take to be the reason for its exclusion from the second volume
(1640) of Jonson’s Works, where it would have been quite at home amongst
the Odes, Sonnets, Elegies and so forth, which go to make up that
volume.