Bacon and Shakespeare 11

Bacon and Shakespeare 11

The deciphered secret story, the “sterne and tragicle” history of

Bacon’s political wrongs commences in the first edition of Edmund

Spenser’s _Complaints_ (1590 and 1591); but it was not until the

_Faerie Queene_ was published (1596) that he appropriates the

authorship of Spenser’s works. His first care is to establish his claim

to the throne:

 

“Our name is Fr. Bacon, by adoption, yet it shall be different. Being

of blood roial (for the Queen, our sov’raigne, who married by a private

rite the Earle Leicester--and at a subseque’t time, also, as to make

surer thereby, without pompe, but i’ th’ presence o’ a suitable number

of witnesses, bound herselfe by those hymeneall bands againe--is our

mother, and wee were not base-born, or base-begot), we be Tudor, and

our stile shall be Francis First, in all proper cours of time, th’ King

of our realme.

 

“Early in our life, othe (oath)--or threat as binding in effect as

othe, we greatly doubt--was made by our wilful parent concerning

succession, and if this cannot bee chang’d, or be not in time

withdrawn, we know not how the kingdome shall be obtain’d. But ’tis

thus seene or shewn that it can bee noe other’s by true desce’t, then

is set down. To Francis First doth th’ crowne, th’ honor of our land

belong....”

 

[Illustration: GORHAMBURY, A.D. 1568.]

 

[Illustration: GORHAMBURY, A.D. 1795.]

 

[Illustration: GORHAMBURY, A.D. 1821.]

 

Thus Bacon states his case, and through the succeeding 368 pages of

Mrs. Gallup’s book he repeats the assertion _ad nauseam_. He makes no

attempt to prove his claim--he early allows it to be understood that he

is unable to verify his asseverations, nor does he explain how or why

his name should be Tuder, or Tidder. As the son of Lord Robert Dudley,

he would be a Dudley. The circumstantial evidence with which he

supports his case is interesting, but valueless; his conclusions are

unproven, his facts are something more than shaky. But let us pursue

the story:

 

“We, by men call’d Bacon, are sonne of the Sov’raigne, Queene

Elizabeth, who confin’d i’ th’ Tow’r, married Ro. D.”

 

Elizabeth, it appears, was once “so mad daring” as to dub Bacon, “as a

sonne of Follie,” to “th’ courageous men of our broadland.” But--

 

“No man hath claime to such pow’r as some shal se in mighty England,

after th’ decease of Virgin Queene E---- by dull, slow mortalls, farre

or near, loved, wooed like some gen’rously affected youth-loving

mayden, whylst she is both wife to th’ noble lord that was so sodainly

cut off in his full tide and vigour of life and mothe’--in such way as

th’ women of the world have groaninglie bro’t foorth, and must whilst

Nature doth raigne--of two noble sonnes, Earle of Essex, trained up by

Devereux, and he who doth speake to you, th’ foster sonne of two wel

fam’d frie’ds o’ th’ Que., Sir Nichola’ Bacon, her wo’thie adviser and

counsellor, and that partne’ of loving labor and dutie, my most loved

Lady Anne Bacon....”

 

“... My mother Elizabeth ... join’d herselfe in a union with Robert

Dudley whilst th’ oath sworne to one as belov’d yet bound him. I have

bene told hee aided in th’ removall of this obstructio’, when turni’g

on that narrowe treach’rous step, as is naturall, shee lightly leaned

upon th’ raile, fell on th’ bricks--th’ paving of a court--and so died.”

 

“In such a sonne,” Bacon proceeds, “th’ wisest our age thus farr

hath shewen--pardon, prithee, so u’seemly a phrase, I must speake it

heere--th’ mother should lose selfish vanitie, and be actuated only by

a desire for his advancement.”

 

Bacon is confident that the Queen would have acknowledged his claims

but for the advice of a “fox seen at our court in th’ form and outward

appearance of a man named Robbert Cecill, the hunchback,” who poisoned

Elizabeth’s mind against her “sonne of Follie.” Both “Francis Tudor”

(or Tidder), and his brother Essex, the “wrong’d enfan’s of a Queene,”

learned that their “royall aspirations” were to receive “a dampening, a

checke soe great, it co’vinc’d both, wee were hoping for advanceme’t we

might never attaine.”

 

The “royall aspirations” of the Earl of Essex were cut short by the

sentence of death that was passed upon him by “that _mère_ and my owne

counsel. Yet this truth must at some time be knowne; had not I allow’d

myselfe to give some countenance to th’ arraingement, a subsequent

triall, as wel as th’ sentence, I must have lost th’ life that I held

so pricelesse.” And Bacon, or Francis Tidder, solaces himself, and

condones his part in the deed with the reflection that, “Life to a

schola’ is but a pawne for mankind.”

 

Queen Elizabeth, Bacon tells us, though already wedded “secretly to th’

Earle, my father, at th’ Tower of London, was afterwards married at the

house of Lord P----....”

 

Briefly, then, we have it, on the authority of the cipher translation,

that “Bacon was the son of Elizabeth and Robert Dudley, who were

married in the Tower between 1554 and 1558. Leicester’s wife did not

meet with her fatal accident until 1560. Bacon was born in January,

1561. His parents were subsequently re-married, at a date not stated,

at the house of Lord P----.”

 

In 1611 (_Shepheard’s Calendar_) Bacon declares “Ended is now my great

desire to sit in British throne. Larger worke doth invite my hand than

majestie doth offer; to wield th’ penne dothe ever require a greater

minde then to sway the royall scepter. Ay, I cry to th’ Heavenly Ayde,

ruling ore all, ever to keepe my soule thus humbled and contente.” But

in 1613 (_Faerie Queene_), he says, that “in th’ secrecy o’ my owne

bosome, I do still hold to th’ faith that my heart has never wholly

surrendered, that truth shall come out of error, and my head be crowned

ere my line o’ life be sever’d. How many times this bright dreeme hath

found lodgement in my braine!... It were impossible, I am assurr’d,

since witnesses to th’ marriage, and to my birth (after a proper length

of time) are dead, and the papers certifying their presence being

destroyed, yet is it a wrong that will rise, and crye that none can

hush.” In 1620 (_Novum Organum_) he has lost his “feare, lest my secret

bee s’ented forth by some hound o’ Queen Elizabeth;” but “the jealousy

of the King is to be feared, and that more in dread of effecte on the

hearts of the people, then any feare of th’ presentation of my claime,

knowing as he doth, that all witnesses are dead, and the requir’d

documents destroy’d.”

 

Bacon, according to the cipher, was sixteen years of age when he

learned the truth of his parentage through the indiscretion of one “th’

ladies o’ her (the Queen’s) train, who foolish to rashnesse did babble

such gossip to him as she heard at the Court.” Bacon, it seems, taxed

the Queen forthwith with her motherhood of him, and Elizabeth, with

“much malicious hatred” and “in hastie indignation,” said:

 

“You are my own borne sonne, but you, though truly royall, of a fresh,

a masterlie spirit, shall rule not England, or your mother, nor reigne

on subjects yet t’ bee. I bar from succession forevermore my best

beloved first borne that bless’d my unio’ with--no, I’ll not name him,

nor need I yet disclose the sweete story conceal’d thus farre so well,

men only guesse it, nor know o’ a truth o’ th’ secret marriages, as

rightfull to guard the name o’ a Queene, as of a maid o’ this realm.

It would well beseeme you to make such tales sulk out of sight, but

this suiteth not t’ your kin’ly spirit. A sonne like mine lifteth hand

nere in aide to her who brought him foorth; hee’d rather uplift craven

maides who tattle thus whenere my face (aigre enow ev’r, they say)

turneth from them. What will this brave boy do? Tell a, b, c’s?”

 

“Weeping and sobbing sore,” Bacon hurries to Mistres Bacon’s chamber

and entreats her to assure him that he is “the sonne of herselfe and

her honored husband.... When, therefore, my sweet mother did, weeping

and lamenting, owne to me that I was in very truth th’ sonne o’ th’

Queene, I burst into maledictio’s ’gainst th’ Queene, my fate, life,

and all it yieldeth.... I besought her to speak my father’s name....

She said, ‘He is the Earle of Leicester.... I tooke a solemne oath not

to reveale your storie to you, but you may hear my unfinish’d tale to

th’ end and if you will, go to th’ midwife. Th’ doctor would be ready

also to give proofes of your just right to be named th’ Prince of this

realm, and heire-apparent to the throne. Nevertheless, Queen Bess did

likewise give her solemn oath of bald-faced deniall of her marriage to

Lord Leicester, as well as to her motherhood. Her oath, so broken, robs

me of a sonne. O Francis, Francis, breake not your mother’s hearte. I

cannot let you go forth after all the years you have beene the sonne

o’ my heart. But night is falling. To-day I cannot speak to you of

so weighty a matter. This hath mov’d you deeply, and though you now

drie your eyes, you have yet many teare marks upon your little cheeks.

Go now; do not give it place i’ thought or word; a brain-sick woman,

though she be a Queene, can take my sonne from me.’” So Bacon leaves

her, not to search for the midwife, or cross-question the doctor, but

to “dreame of golden scepters, prou’ courts, and by-and-bye a crowne

on mine innocent brow.”

 

All Bacon’s confessions, if true, prove him to have been a bastard,

but this logical and inevitable conclusion he repeatedly denies. He

claims his mother’s name, and for his father, a nobleman whose wife

was living at the time of his bigamous marriage with Elizabeth. If the

marriage was valid, why were Leicester and the Queen re-married at the

house of Lord P., and in what year did the second ceremony take place?

But although anti-Baconians maintain that Bacon was not a fool, and

therefore could not have seriously advanced such claims; that if he had

done so he would have made a more plausible story of his wrongs; that

he was not a dunce, and therefore could not have written the “maudlin

and illiterate drivel” attributed to him by Mrs. Gallup, it is still

inconceivable that this cipher story is a gigantic fraud. Mr. Andrew

Lang, who makes no doubt that Mrs. Gallup has honourably carried out

her immense task of deciphering, has arrived at the conclusion that

Bacon was obviously mad.

 

 

 

 

_Bacon, the Author of all Elizabethan-Jacobean Literature._

 

 

But interesting as it is to find in Bacon yet another and hitherto an

unsuspected pretender to the throne of England, his pretensions to the

authorship of Shakespeare’s plays is a feature of even more dazzling

interest. His reasons for denying the authorship while he lived have

hitherto demanded a great deal of speculative explanation. The general

theory of the Baconites is that Bacon concealed his authorship of the

plays because such writing was held in low esteem, or as Mr. Sinnett

puts it, Bacon “shrank from compromising his social reputation by

any open connection with the despised vocation of the playwright.”

The difficulty of accepting this assumption has hitherto been found

in the fact that there was no reason why Bacon should have confined

himself to the writing of plays. In the case of Shakespeare, it was

quite understandable, for he was an actor, and the stage was his

livelihood. Bacon, on the other hand, had no love for the theatre; he

looked upon play-acting as a toy, and masques as things unworthy of

serious observations. The tone of his comments is contemptuous, and his

criticism discloses a lack of knowledge and interest in the subject.

Why should this man, who regarded the stage with ill-concealed

repugnance, have written plays which he was ashamed to own, while

all imaginative literature was open to him. The stigma which it is

erroneously alleged was attached to play-writing was not associated

with poetry; if the playwright was under a ban, the poet was on the

pedestal. There must have been a more tangible reason for Bacon’s

concealment, but we have had to wait for Mrs. Gallup’s book to disclose

it. Bacon’s object in writing was to unfold the secrets of his birth

and to ventilate his wrongs; he chose plays as his medium because, like

Mr. George Bernard Shaw, he found blank verse easier to write than

prose. He employed the pseudonyms of Greene and Peele, and the pen name

of Marlowe ere taking that of Wm. Shakespeare as his masque or vizard,

“that we should remayne unknowne, inasmuch as wee, having worked in

drama, history that is most vig’rously supprest, have put ourselfe soe

greatly in dange’ that a word unto Queene Elizabeth, without doubt, would give us a sodaine horriblle end--an exit without re-entrance--for in truth she is authoress and preserve’ of this, our being.”