after the Ode and not printed till 1641, some three or four years after
his death. These _Discoveries_ consist in the main of passages lifted
from Latin writers, notably Seneca the father (_Controversiæ_), and
entered promiscuously in Jonson’s Commonplace books. The borrowings are
often mutilated and always treated without ceremony. For our purpose it
is the application, not the accuracy of translation that matters. In
quoting from them I shall give italics and capital letters as they
appear in the slovenly print (1641), of which I have several copies, one
of which by the way is inscribed “J. P. Collier” on the title page. A
_Discovery_ concerning Poets, runs thus:
Nothing in our Age, I have observed, is more preposterous, than the
_running Judgments_ upon _Poetry_ and _Poets_; when we shall heare
those things ... cried up for the best writings, which a man would
scarce vouchsafe to wrap any wholesome drug in; he would never
light his _Tobacco_ with them.... There are never wanting, that
dare preferre the worst ... _Poets_:.... Nay, if it were put to the
question of the Water-rimers workes, against Spencer’s, I doubt not
but they [the Water-rimers’] would find more suffrages.
The next _Discovery_ is more to my purpose:
_Poetry_ in this latter Age, hath prov’d but a meane _Mistresse_ to
such as have wholly addicted themselves to her; or given their
names up to her family. They who have but saluted her on the by,
and now and then tendred their visits, shee hath done much for, and
advanced in the way of their owne professions (both the _Law_ and
the _Gospel_) beyond all they could have hoped or done for
themselves without her favour.
From this the reader will gather that under “Eliza and our James,”
lawyer-poets who masked their poems--“in a players hide,” perhaps--were
likely candidates for legal honours.
* * * * *
The next _Discovery_ but one runs thus:
_De Shakespeare nostrat._ I remember the players have often
mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in all his writing
(whatever he penned) hee never blotted out a line. My answer hath
beene, would he had blotted a thousand.... I had not told posterity
this, but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to
commend their friend by wherein he most faulted. And to justifie
mine owne candor, for I lov’d the man and doe honour his memory (on
this side idolatry) as much as any. He was indeed honest, and of an
open and free nature; had excellent phantasie; brave notions and
gentle expressions; wherein he flow’d with that facility that
sometime it was necessary he should be stop’d.... His wit was in
his owne power, would the rule of it had beene so too.... But he
redeemed his vices with his vertues.
Another _Discovery_ (p. 99)[49] censures “all the Essayists, even their
Master _Montaigne_.” The slur suggested by this censure upon Bacon is
significant. We were wont to believe that Bacon’s fame as a master of
English rested securely on his _Essays_, and perhaps among his
_acknowledged_ works no better foundation is discoverable. Jonson’s
estimate (to be quoted presently) of Bacon’s achievement “in our
tongue,” is at least as high as ours. Yet Jonson does not appreciate
Bacon’s _Essays_. The dilemma seems to be this: either Jonson was
writing at random, or he knew of unacknowledged Baconian work which he
was not free to disclose.
Another _Discovery_ treats _De claris Oratoribus_, and among them of
_Dominus Verulamius_[50] in these words:
There hapn’d in my time one noble _Speaker_, who was full of
gravity in his speaking. His language (where hee could spare or
passe by a jest) was nobly _censorious_.... No member of his speech
but consisted of his owne graces. His hearers could not cough, or
looke aside from him, without losse.... No man had their affections
more in his power. The feare of every man that heard him was lest
hee should make an end.
On the next page after an appreciative notice of the _De Augmentis
Scientiarum_, which was published almost simultaneously with the
Shakespeare Ode, Jonson over-praises and misreads the _Novum Organum_ in
these words:
Which though by most of superficiall men, who cannot get beyond the
Title of _Nominals_, it is not penetrated, nor understood; it
really openeth all defects of Learning whatsoever and is a Booke;
_Qui longum noto scriptori porriget ævum_.
My object in giving these two quotations is only to show that there is
nothing in them to lead up to the arresting praise of Bacon expressed in
my next quotation, which comes after a list of English writers or wits,
the elder _Wiat_, the _Earl of Surrey_, Sir _Philip Sidney_ (a “great
Master of wit,”) _Lord Egerton_, the Chancellor, and runs thus:
But his [the _his_ refers to L. C. Egerton] learned and able,
though unfortunate _Successor_, is he, who hath fill’d up all
numbers, and perform’d that in our tongue, which may be compar’d,
or preferr’d, either to insolent _Greece_, or haughty _Rome_. In
short, within his view, and about his times, were all the wits
borne, that could honour a language, or help study. Now things
daily fall; wits grow downe-ward, and _Eloquence_ growes back-ward:
So that hee may be nam’d, and stand as the _marke_ and _akme_ of
our language.[51]
In order to appreciate this passage, the reader should grasp (1) that
Jonson’s mind at the time was full of memories of Bacon; (2) that in a
subsequent Discovery--_De Poetica_--he distinguishes _Poetry_ from
oratory as “the most prevailing,” “most exalted” “Eloquence,” and
describes the Poet’s “skill or Craft of making” as the “Queene of Arts”;
(3) that Jonson, proud of his own _métier_ as poet, would never have
allowed, still less asserted, that Bacon had “filled up all numbers,”
had he not known that Bacon was a great poet. Where is this wonderful
poetry to be found? The answer is ready to hand. The famous writer who,
according to the _Discovery_, had “perform’d that in our tongue” which
neither Greece nor Rome could surpass, is the very man who, according to
the Ode, had achieved that in _English_ which defied “comparison” with
“all” that Greece or Rome, or the civilisations that succeeded Greece
and Rome, had given to the World. Bacon is that Man, and Shakespeare was
his pen-name.
This hypothesis--that Shakespeare was the pen-name of Bacon--will pilot
us through our difficulties. The disclaimer (in the Ode) for example, of
any intention to injure the august name need puzzle us no longer.
Bacon’s reputation was imperilled by publication of the great Book; for
if the Public once got wind that he had trafficked with “common players”
his name, already smirched by the verdict of the House of Peers, would
have been irreparably damaged. A passage from an anonymous Essay of mine
(_Bacon-Shakespeare_; projected 1884-5: published 1899), may be
tolerated here. The Essay, after having suggested that Greene’s allusion
to Shakespeare as having a “tiger’s heart wrapt in a player’s hide”
pointed to concealment behind an actor, proceeds:
John Davies ... characterises poetry (contemporaneous) as “a worke
of darkness,” in the sense of a secret work, not in disparagement:
Davies loved poetry and poets too well for that. The anonymous
author of _Wit’s Recreations_, in a kindly epigram “To Mr. William
Shake-speare,” says: “Shake-speare we must be silent in thy praise,
cause our encomions will but blast thy bayes.” ... Edward Bolton in
the ... sketch (or draft) of his _Hypercritica_, ... after having
mentioned “Shakespeare, Beaumont, and other writers for the stage”
thinks it necessary to remind himself that their names required to
be “tenderly used in this argument.” (accordingly) He ... excluded
the name of Shakespeare ... from the published version of his
_Hypercritica_.
To return again to the Ode. Its jests about shaking a stage (compare
Greene’s “Shakescene”), shaking a lance, and its ecstatic vision of
Shakespeare enthroned among the stars were no doubt intended to amuse
the two Earls, and other patrons of the famous Folio.
As for the sweeping accusation in the _Timber_ or _Discoveries_, that
Poetry had been a mean Mistress to openly professed as distinguished
from furtive or concealed poets, it would have been unpardonable had the
Stratford man been a poet; for William Shakspere, Esq., of New Place,
Stratford-on-Avon, spent his last years in the odour of prosperity.
Other testimony, quite independent of Jonson’s, to the existence of an
intimate relation between Bacon and the Muses, Apollo, Helicon,
Parnassus, is abundant enough. Here are a few samples: Thomas Randolph
shortly after Bacon’s death accuses Phœbus of being accessory to Bacon’s
death, lest the God himself should be dethroned and Bacon be crowned
king of the Muses.[52] George Herbert calls Bacon the colleague of
Apollo. Thomas Campion, addressing Bacon says: “Whether ... the Law, or
the Schools (in the sense of science or knowledge), or the sweet Muse
allure thee,” etc. At a somewhat later date, Waller said that Bacon and
Sidney were nightingales who sang only in the spring (the reference has
escaped me, and memory may possibly deceive me).[53] Coming to
comparatively recent times we find Shelley, an exceptional judge of
poetry, was of opinion that Bacon “was a poet.” It may possibly be
objected that Bacon’s versified Psalms (in English) are not
poetical.[54] But these Psalms belong to about 1624, when Bacon--_ex
hypothesi_--had turned his back on poetry for ever. What they prove, if
they prove anything, is that Bacon was a literary Proteus who could take
on any disguise that happened to suit his purpose, a faculty which no
student of Bacon would ever think of disputing.
Inferences drawn from Bacon’s reticence or extracted from his works have
yet to be weighed. In the nineties of the sixteenth century he can be
shown to have devoted much time and thought to the writing and
preparation of a species of dramatic entertainment known as _Devices_.
Even after he became Lord Chancellor, he risked injuring his health
rather than deny himself the pleasure of assisting at a dramatic
performance given by Gray’s Inn. As a student of human nature, moreover,
he had scarcely an equal (bar “Shakespeare.”) And yet he seems to have
been ignorant of the existence of any such person as Shakespeare,
although that name must have been bandied about and about in the London
of his day, especially among members of the various Inns of Court, his
own Gray’s in particular.
Neglecting Bacon’s poetical and interesting _Devices_, I confine my
observations to the _Advancement of Learning_ (1605), which though not
written in what Waller held to be the singing time of life, reveals
(while trying to conceal) the true bent of his genius. The Work was
expressly intended to embrace the totality of human knowledge then
garnered. Yet with the air of one who had no misgivings about the
propriety of his classification he divides his vast subject into three
categories, three only, and one of these is _Poesie_. The other two are
_History_ and _Philosophie_, the latter of which embraces “Natural
Science,” divided into “Phisicke” and “Metaphisicke,” “Mathematicke”
pure and mixt, anatomy, medicine, mental and moral science, and much
besides. The work teems with poetical quotations, similies, allusions.
Dealing with medicine the author gravely informs his readers that “the
poets did well to conjoin music and medicine in Apollo, because the
office of medicine is but to tune this curious harp of man’s body, and
reduce it to harmony.” He cannot refrain from telling us that the
pseudo-science of the alchemist was foretold and discredited by the
fable of Ixion and the Cloud. With him, what we mean by endowment of
research becomes provision for encouraging “experiments appertaining to
Vulcan and Dædalus,” etc. No wonder the Harveys, Napiers, and other
pioneers of 17th. century science did not join in that chorus of
admiration for Bacon, which seems to have included all 17th century men
of letters. Sir Henry Wotton (for example) will have it that Bacon had
“done a great and ever living benefit to all the children of Nature; and
to Nature herself in her uttermost extent ... who never before had so
noble nor so true an interpreter, or so inward a secretary of her
cabinet.” One can imagine the laughter with which Galileo would have
greeted this preposterous assertion.
Out of sight of philosophy, metaphysics, mathematics, etc., and in the
presence of poetry, the author is in his element and speaks with
authority. In handling the subject of mental culture--“Georgics of the
mind” is his phrase--he takes for granted that poets (with whom he
couples historians) are the best teachers of this science, for in them:
We may find painted forth, how affections are kindled and incited;
and how pacified and refrained; and how again contained from act
and further degree; how they disclose themselves; how they work;
how they vary; how they gather and fortify; how they are enwrapped
one within another; and how they do fight and encounter one with
another.
“Poesie,” he says elsewhere, is “for the most part restrained in measure
of words,” but in “other points extreamely licensed, and doth truly
refer to the imagination.” Its use, he goes on to say:
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; by reason whereof there
is agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more
exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in
the nature of things ... and therefore it 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.... In this third part of learning (or knowledge) which is
poesie, I can report no deficience. For being as a plant that
cometh of the lust of the earth, without formal seed, it hath
sprung up and spread abroad more than any other kind. But to
ascribe unto it that which is due; for the expressing of
affections, passions, corruptions, and customs, we are beholding to
poets more than to the philosophers’ works; and for wit and
eloquence, not much less than to orators’ harangues. But it is not
good to stay too long in the theatre.
Why, when he was enumerating the various kinds of poesie, did he eschew
the apt word _dramatic_, and choose the vague word _representative_
instead? Why hurry away from his subject (poetry) by reason of its
intimate connection with the _theatre_? The answer leaps to the eye. For
him, poetry, especially dramatic poetry, was like (the name)
Shakespeare, under taboo.
The Bacon hypothesis, it may be urged, solves a few riddles. But what of
the difficulties it involves? For example, it seems incredible that
Bacon should ever have resolved to disown his wonderful offspring;
except indeed on the impossible assumption that he, with his unrivalled
knowledge of human nature and command of all the arts of
expression--that he of all men was incapable of appreciating the
children of his brain. Here, once more, my anonymous Essay suggests
pertinent considerations:
The emotional chill, which rarely fails to accompany that creeping
illness, old age, was one of these considerations. Another was the
growth of a widespread feeling ... that English books would never
be “citizens of the world,” that Latin was the “universal language”
and Latin books the only books that “would live.” But there must
have been a “strain of rareness” about Shakespeare’s affection for
poetry, which nothing but a new and incompatible emotion could ever
have subdued.... With Bacon, affection for literature, especially
poetry, came (in time) long before affection for anything like
science. Among the various indications of this, not the least
interesting is a passage in the _De Augmentis Scientiarum_ (the
latinised version, 1623, of the more noteworthy _Advancement of
Learning_, 1605, already quoted):--“Poesy is at it were a dream of
learning; a thing sweet and varied and fain to be thought partly
divine, a quality which dreams also sometimes affect. But now it is
time for me to become fully awake, to lift myself up from the
earth, and to wing my way through the liquid ether of philosophy
and the sciences.” Of a certainty this beautiful passage was no
mere flourish.... It was a pathetic renunciation--the last possibly
of a series of more or less ineffectual renunciations--of poetry
and an ... aspiration after something else, neither poetry, nor
science, nor philosophy, which Bacon towards the close of life was
wont to regard, so Rawley informs us, as “his darling philosophy.”
In other words, the _Novum Organum_, the potent _New Instrument_ that
was to enlarge man’s dominion over every province of Nature, was Bacon’s
chief solace for an unparalleled renunciation. Posterity, he was
determined, should never know that the inventor of that _Instrument_ had
once revelled in the play of the imagination, lest men of science should
have it in their power to pooh-pooh it as the fabric of a brain that had
invented _A Midsummer-night’s Dream_, and _The Tempest_.
Bacon and his friends (moved by the fascination of the man, and pity for
his fall) would naturally destroy all tell-tale correspondence they
could lay hands on. Two private letters, and so far as we know, two
only, escaped the flames. One from a bosom friend, Sir T. Mathew to
Bacon (“Viscount St. Alban”), bears the following postscript: “The most
prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation ... is of your Lordship’s
name, though he be known by another.” This letter is given in Dr.
Birch’s _Letters, etc., of Francis Bacon_, 1763. Mathew himself made a
_Collection of Letters_ which included many of his own to Bacon, but
excluded the one just quoted, an exclusion dictated, I imagine, by
loyalty to his friend. Montague gives the letter in his _Bacon_, but I
have not found it in Spedding’s Work. The other escape was a letter of
Bacon’s to another of his friends, the poet Davies, written some twenty
years earlier than Mathew’s letter. In this letter (to Davies), after
commending himself to Davies’s “love,” and “the well using of my name
... if there be any biting or nibling at it, in that place” (the Royal
Court), Bacon concludes: “So desiring you to be good to concealed poets,
I continue,” etc. My quotation is from a copy dated 1657 (bound up with
Rawley’s _Resuscitatio_), in which “concealed poets” is in italics.
Spedding gives the words without the italics, and contents himself with
saying that he cannot explain them. For another letting out of the
secret we have to thank Aubrey’s notebooks, which inform us that Bacon
was “a good poet but concealed, as appears by his letters.” Lastly there
are the “Shakespeare” and “Bacon” scribbles on the half-burnt MS. of
Bacon’s “Device,” _A Conference of Pleasure_. Possibly the “letters”
referred to by Aubrey, or evidence more important, may yet be discovered
in libraries unexplored, or explored only by orthodox searchers intent
on proving their own case. A library in so unlikely a place as
Valladolid seems, about eighty years ago, to have possessed a First
Folio of Shakespeare which belonged to and was perhaps annotated by
Count Gondomar, a friend of Bacon’s last years.[55] If Spain held such
a treasure so recently what may not Great Britain still hold? Florence,
for whose Duke Sir T. Mathew had Bacon’s _Essays_ translated into
Italian, contained a copy of this translation not long ago. But my
searches there, and in Venice, Milan, Padua, were far too hurried to
justify any conclusion as to possible finds in Italy.
It is probably safe to take for granted that Bacon was acquainted with
Shakspere; that the relation between them began maybe as early as 1588,
and was concerned with playhouse property; that this property was held
by Shakspere on trust for Bacon; and that it was sold, perhaps to the
trustees, by Bacon’s orders some time before 1613.
The name of “Shakespeare” seems to have made its first public appearance
in print with _Venus and Adonis_,[56] a poem which was dedicated in
perfectly well-bred terms to an earl; licensed by an archbishop who had
once been Bacon’s tutor;[57] and expressed on its title page patrician
contempt for all things vulgar. By whose order was the name Shakespeare
printed at foot of its Dedication to the Earl of Southampton? In the
dearth of evidence the following guesses may pass muster. They are put
into an unhistorical present in order to show at a glance that they, or
most of them, are mere guess-work:--About 1592, Bacon makes up his mind
to publish _Venus and Adonis_. Publication in his own name is vetoed by
fear of offending powerful friends, his uncle Burghley in particular;
and he prefers pseudonymity to anonymity. What he wants is a temporary
mask which he fully expects to be able to throw off before long. In this
mood, he calls on Richard Field, a London printer hailing originally
from Stratford, and recommended to him by Sir John Harington, whose
_Orlando Furioso_ Field has just printed. Field happens to mention
Shakspere which he pronounces Shaxper. Bacon, already acquainted with
the young fellow of that name, decides that a fictitious person, whose
name he pronounces Shakespeare, shall be the putative father of his
Poem. Little dreams he, poet though he be, that he is thereby preparing
a human grave for that immortality of Fame (as poet) which he has begun
to anticipate for himself. The Poem appears in 1593; and is followed
next year by _Lucrece_, fathered by the same Shakespeare, and dedicated
to the same young Earl. Some years later, the name is stereotyped by
Meres’s _Commonwealth of Wits_, where Shakespeare is mentioned seven or
eight times--as the English Ovid; as one of our best tragic and best
comic poets; as one of our most “wittie” and accomplished writers, and
so forth.[58] A few years later still, Bacon begins to be perplexed what
to do with his Shakespeare copyright, and his perplexity rises with
every advance in his profession. Before succeeding to the
Attorney-Generalship he realises once for all that complications,
professional, social, and various, have made it impossible for him to
think of fathering even a selection of his poetical offspring. In
despair to escape from the impasse, he even talks of burning MSS. But
the threat is not carried out. Soon after his melancholy downfall
sympathetic and admiring friends, notably the two Earls of Pembroke and
Montgomery--Southampton probably stood aloof, memories of the Essex
affair still rankling in his mind--take counsel together, expostulate
with him, entreat him to let them bear all expenses and responsibilities
connected with publication, and to clinch their argument tell him that
they have sounded the literary dictator of the day, Ben Jonson, and got
his promise to undertake the work of editing, collecting, writing the
necessary prefatory matter, and so forth. Bacon yields consent on
certain conditions, the most embarrassing of which is that the true
authorship of the plays be for ever kept dark--by means of
“dissimulation,” if dissimulation will serve; if not, then by
“simulation,” i.e., the lie direct.[59] The conditions are accepted with
misgivings on Jonson’s part. He is aware that he will have no trouble
with Mr. Shakspere’s executors, their interest in the copyrights
involved being as negligible as their testator’s had been. And he knows
Heminge and Condell well enough to feel certain that they will not have
the smallest objection, either to being assigned prominent places in the
forthcoming Book, or to his putting into their mouths statements, etc.,
concerning Shakespeare, which he himself would shrink from uttering. But
even so, the task is no sinecure.
Here guess-work ends.
The famous Folio, with its apparatus of _Dedication_, prefatory
_Address, Ode_, to “my beloved the author,” etc., made its appearance in
1623. The _Dedication_ intimates (with ironical emphasis on the word
“trifles”) that the author of these “trifles” was dead, “he not having
the fate common with some to be exequutor to his owne writings.... We
have but collected them, and done an office to the dead, to procure his
Orphanes, Guardians: without ambition either of selfe-profit, or fame:
onely to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend and Fellow alive, as was
our Shakespeare.”