Bacon and Shakespeare 2

Bacon and Shakespeare 2

It has, on this account, been found necessary for Baconians to describe

to their readers what manner of man this was whom they would perch

on Shakespeare’s pedestal, and they have accomplished their task in

the manner best calculated to lend plausibility to their theories.

Moreover, they have displayed a subtle appreciation of the magnitude

of their undertaking. The Shakespeare plays, in common with all great

works, reflect in some degree the personality of their creator. The

Baconian students cannot deny that there are many characteristics in

their candidate which only the most devout can reconcile with the

spirit of the plays. It, therefore, became further necessary to ring

the changes on their candidate; to employ the arguments of induction

and deduction as best suited the exigencies of the task. In creating

the idol of Bacon, much had to be read into the subject, and it would

seem that the simplest method by which they could advance the claims

of Bacon was by discrediting the claims of Shakespeare. In estimating

the character of Viscount St. Alban, we have the solid foundation of

fact for our guidance; the personal details of Shakespeare’s career may

be written upon a page of note paper. The original Baconians seized

upon these few details to distort them to their own ends, and their

followers have done their best to perpetuate the outrage.

 

In the scope of this volume it is not possible, nor is it necessary,

to attempt an intimate analysis of the characters of Bacon and

Shakespeare, but a resumé of the leading incidents in their lives, a

brief review for the purpose of making a comparison of their respective

temperaments, will not be out of place. In the following pages my

endeavour has been to arrange, as systematically as possible, the

reasons for my belief--for these I invite a courteous hearing; as for

the conclusions I have formed, I am content to abide by them.

 

My last desire in dealing with the career of Lord Bacon has been to

find reasons for supposing him to be the author of Shakespeare’s

plays. That endeavour has been made by his many champions with more

sanguinity than I could display, and I have carefully weighed every

argument and fact advanced in his favour. I have read, and re-read,

and argued against myself, the claims which have been put forward

with so much earnestness and evident conviction. But against these

I have had to set the bald facts that make the claim untenable. The

biographers of Bacon have been burdened with the ungrateful necessity

of finding excuses, and of making endless apologies for their hero.

Bacon’s greatest editor, the scholar who devoted some 30 years to the

work--who brought more knowledge, and disclosed more analytical acumen

and skilled judgment in his task than any editor ever brought to bear

upon the life and works of a single author--has stated his reasons

for his disbelief in the Baconian theory. When it is remembered that

Spedding’s knowledge of Shakespeare was “extensive and profound, and

his laborious and subtle criticism derived additional value from his

love of the stage,” his decision on the subject must be accepted, if

not as incontrovertible, at least, as the most damaging blow to the

Baconian theory we shall ever get.

 

A well-known writer, in declaring that a man’s morality has nothing to

do with his prose, perpetrated an aphorism which Baconians have adduced

to reconcile the psychological differences which we find between Bacon,

the man, and Bacon, the author of the plays traditionally attributed

to Shakespeare. The least erudite student of Shakespeare has felt the

magic of the dramatist’s boundless sympathy, his glowing imagination,

his gentleness, truth and simplicity. His mind, as Hazlitt recognised,

contained within itself the germs of all faculty and feeling, and

Mr. Sidney Lee, in his general estimate of Shakespeare’s genius, has

written, “In knowledge of human nature, in wealth of humour, in depth

of passion, in fertility of fancy, and in soundness of judgment, he

has not a rival.” Henry Chettle refers to “his uprightness of dealing

which argues his honesty,” the author of _The Return from Parnassus_

apostrophised him as “sweet Master Shakespeare,” and Ben Jonson, his

friend and fellow labourer, wrote of him, “I loved the man, and do

honour his memory, on this side idolatry as much as any. He was indeed

honest, and of an open and free nature.”

 

[Illustration: FRANCIS BACON.

 

AGED 18.

 

1578.

 

From a Miniature by Hilliard.]

 

An author’s morality, or rather his lack of it, may not detract from

the grace and clarity of his style, but it must inevitably leave its

mark in his matter. There is poetry that reveals only the brilliance

of the writer’s brain--if such can be termed poetry; there is prose

which lays bare the writer’s heart. In Shakespeare we have verse which

evidences the possession of both the mental and the temperamental

qualities in the highest perfection. There is Shakespeare the

genius, the artist, the creator, the master manipulator of theatrical

machinery. There is Shakespeare the man--the citizen of whom Jonson

wrote in terms of the warmest affection. In what degree do we find

these qualities which are inseparably associated with Shakespeare in

the character of Francis Bacon?

 

For every act of Bacon’s life we are met with apologies, explanations,

and extravagant defences. Lord Macaulay’s bitter and brilliant

analysis of the Lord Chancellor (a retaliatory treatise prompted by

the ingenuity and perversions of his enamoured champions), has been

robbed of its sting by the less brilliant, but more knowledgable and

judicious Spedding, who in his _Evenings with a Reviewer_, clearly and

dispassionately reduces Macaulay’s estimate to its correct biographical

and critical level. But there are acts in the life of Bacon that, shorn

of all the swaddling clothes of specious explanation, reveal the man in

a light which, in spite of valiant speculation and portentous argument,

in spite even of Bacon’s sworn word, render his claims to the mantle of

Shakespeare an absurdity--and an impertinence.

 

Francis Bacon, the youngest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper

of the Great Seal, by his second wife (Ann, daughter of Sir Anthony

Coke), was born on 22nd January, 1561. He was the product of the age

in which he lived. A politician by heredity, a student by nature, a

courtier and place-seeker by force of circumstances, he fulfilled his

inevitable destiny. In a court in which the politics were based on the

teachings of Machiavelli, in which intrigue was a sport and a fine art,

where flattery and lying were necessities, and personal advancement the

one incentive to every act, Bacon intrigued, supplicated, flattered,

cringed, and lied himself into prominence. Nor must the future Lord

Chancellor be judged too harshly on that account. He was only gambling

with the current coin of his environment. By nature, he was averse

to Jesuitry, but he was forced by circumstances and his ambitions to

employ it. “What the art of oratory was in democratic Athens,” Dr.

Edwin A. Abbott writes, “that the art of lying and flattery was for

a courtier in the latter part of the Elizabethan monarchy.” In this

atmosphere of falseness and deception Bacon, with good credentials, a

fine intellect, little money, many influential acquaintances, but few

true friends, had to battle for his own fortunes. It is evident that

he early recognised the exigencies of the warfare. He absorbed and

assimilated the poison of his surroundings; he was both malleable and

inventive. His frame of mind is best illustrated by two of his maxims.

Truth, he declares is noble, and falsehood is base; yet “mixture of

falsehood is like alloy in the coin of gold and silver, which may

make the metal work the better.” Again, “The best composition and

temperament is to have openness in fame and opinion, secrecy in habit,

dissimulation in seasonable use, and a power to feign if there be no

remedy.”

 

In the Elizabethan Court, the man who desired preferment had to plead

for it. At the age of 16, Francis Bacon, after leaving Cambridge, had

been admitted as “an ancient” of Gray’s Inn, and in the following

year was sent to Paris in the suite of Sir Amias Paulet, the English

Ambassador. Two years later, on the death of his father, he returned to

England, to find himself destitute of the patrimony he had expected to

inherit, and forced to select the alternative of immediate work or the

accumulation of debts. In this emergency he applied to his uncle, Lord

Burghley, for advancement, and attempted to win the favour of the Queen

by addressing to her a treatise entitled, _Advice to Queen Elizabeth_.

This letter is remarkable for its lofty tone, its statesmanship, and

boldness, but it is marred by the appendix, in which the author states

that he is bold to entertain his opinions, “till I think that you think

otherwise.” This fatal pliancy, this note of excessive obsequiousness,

lasted him through life.

 

The want of success, which attended his first efforts to gain official

recognition, caused Bacon to decide, once and for all, upon his

choice of a career. His path lay either in the way of politics, which

meant preferment, power, and wealth; or science, philosophy, and the

development of the arts and inventions that tend to civilise the life

of man. No work seemed to him so meritorious as the latter, and for

this he considered himself best adapted. “Whereas, I believe myself

born for the service of mankind,” he declared, in 1603, in the preface

to _The Interpretation of Nature_; and in a letter to Lord Treasurer

Burghley, “I have taken all knowledge to be my province.” Again, “I

found in my own nature a special adaptation for the contemplation of

truth.... Imposture in every shape I utterly detested.” But, as he

proceeds to explain, “my birth, my rearing, and education,” pointed

not towards philosophy, but towards “politics;” love of truth and

detestation of imposture was in his heart, but “the power to feign if

there be no remedy” was there engraved also; the practical value of

the “mixture of falsehood” was in his blood. And the want of money

influenced him in forming his decision. In 1621, when his public career

came to its disgraceful close, he declared that his greatest sin had

been his desertion of philosophy and his having allowed himself to

be diverted into politics. “Besides my innumerable sins,” he cries

out in his confession to the “Searcher of Souls,” “I confess before

Thee that I am debtor to Thee for the gracious talent of Thy gifts

and graces, which I have neither put into a napkin, nor put it as

I ought to exchangers, where it might have made most profit; but

misspent it in things for which I was least fit, so that I may truly

say, my soul has been a stranger in the course of my pilgrimage.” At

the beginning of his history, Bacon pleads his birth, his rearing and

education as excuses for his choice of a career, and at its close,

in _De Augmentis_, he throws the blame on “destiny” for carrying

him into a political vortex. Dr. Abbott sums up his life-story in a

phrase--_multum incola_; with it his public career began and ended.

 

 

 

 

_Bacon, the Friend of Essex and Cecil._

 

 

Having failed to secure the goodwill of Burghley, Bacon addressed

himself to the Earl of Essex, and when, in 1593, Francis came under

the Queen’s displeasure, Essex pleaded for his re-instatement in the

Royal favour. Bacon himself practised every abasement, and, ever

failing, debased himself to what he himself described as an exquisite

disgrace. From this time until the day when there were “none so poor

to do him reverence,” the Earl of Essex was Bacon’s warm friend,

patron, and benefactor. He tided him over his monetary difficulties,

made him his counsellor, and among other gifts presented him with

a piece of land worth between £7,000 and £8,000. Bacon repaid his

friendship with advice, which, it may be presumed, was well meant. But

Bacon, the alleged author of the plays which portray an unrivalled

knowledge of human nature, betrayed a singular and unaccountable lack

of intuition into character. His counsel was, in a large measure, sound

and sagacious, but it was utterly spoiled by the trickiness which

breathes through every precept. If Bacon had possessed the knowledge of

men that we find in Shakespeare, he would have known that his maxims

were peculiarly unfit for Essex, who was the last man in the world to

carry into effect such a scheme of systematic dissimulation. Dr. Abbott

considers that few things did the Earl more harm than that the friend

in whom he placed most trust gave him advice that was rather cunning

than wise. Indeed, Essex was following the counsel of Bacon when he

offered himself, in 1599, for the command in Ireland. From this command

he returned to England a disgraced man, and his downfall culminated in

his death two years later. And in the hour of his humiliation and dire

need, when the Royal disfavour kept all his friends from him, Bacon’s elder brother, Sir Anthony Bacon, and the author of the Sidney papers regarded Bacon as one of the active enemies of his former patron.