Bacon and Shakespeare 8

Bacon and Shakespeare 8

When the sonneteering vogue reached England from Italy and France,

Shakespeare applied himself to the composition of sonnets, with all the

force of his poetic genius. Of the hundred and fifty-four sonnets that

survive, the greater number were probably composed in 1593 and 1594.

Many are so burdened with conceits and artificial quibbles that their

literary value is scarcely discernible; but the majority, on the other

hand, attain to supreme heights of poetic __EXPRESSION__, sweetness, and

imagery. They are of peculiar interest, as disclosing the relationship

that existed between Southampton and Shakespeare. No less than

twenty of the sonnets are undisguisedly addressed to the patron of

the poet’s verse: three of them are poetical transcriptions of the

devotion which he expressed to Southampton in his dedicatory preface to

_Lucrece_. The references are direct and unmistakable. In 1603, when

the accession of James I. opened the gates of Southampton’s prison,

Bacon was meekly writing to him: “I would have been very glad to have

presented my humble service to your Lordship by my attendance if I

could have foreseen that it should not have been unpleasing to you,”

and hypocritically assuring him, “How credible soever it may seem to

you at first, yet it is as true as a thing God knoweth, that this great

change (_i.e._, the release of Southampton, and his favour with the new

monarch, whose good-will Bacon ardently desired), hath wrought in me

no other change towards your Lordship than this, that I may safely be

now that which I was truly before.” The Earl of Southampton considered

these protestations of friendship so incredible, as coming from the

man who had consigned Essex, Bacon’s own friend and patron, to the

headsman, and sent Southampton himself to the Tower, that he appears

to have made no response to this letter, and twenty years afterwards

he materially contributed to the Lord Chancellor’s discomfiture. One

has only to compare this letter with the sonnet with which Shakespeare

saluted his patron on his release from the Tower, to recognise the

impossibility of regarding the two compositions as the work of the same

man.

 

 

 

 

_The “True Shakespeare.”_

 

 

If Bacon was the “true Shakespeare,” as Mr. Theobald calls him, the

question naturally arises as to his motive in concealing the authorship

of the plays and the poems. Baconians explain this extraordinary act

of reticence on the ground that dramatic authorship was held in low

esteem, and that the fact, if known, would have proved an obstacle to

his advancement at Court. This contention, though fully borne out by

Bacon’s cipher writings, is ridiculous in the extreme. In the first

place, it was not the profession of dramatic authorship, but the

calling of the actor that was held in low esteem. Furthermore, poetry

was not under the ban that attached to the stage, and it cannot be

denied that the acknowledged authorship of _Venus and Adonis_, of

_Lucrece_, or of the _Sonnets_, would have won for Bacon more favour

at Elizabeth’s Court than he ever secured by his philosophy. Poetry

was held in high esteem; sonneteering was the vogue. Buckingham, in

the next reign, wrote a play, _The Rehearsal_, and Essex had composed

a masque. The publication of _The Faerie Queene_, in 1589, secured for

Edmund Spenser an introduction to the Queen, who made him her poet

laureate in the same year. Why should Bacon have persisted in devoting

himself to a branch of literature which appears to have advanced his

interests so little? Elizabeth was never impressed by his genius;

she acknowledged his great wit and learning, but accounted him “not

deep.” James criticised his philosophy with lofty captiousness, and

compared his _Novum Organum_ to “the peace of God, which passeth all

understanding.” It would be neither discreditable to his pride as a

poet, nor contrary to the nature of the man, to believe that if he

could safely have claimed the authorship of _Lucrece_ and _A Midsummer

Night’s Dream_, he would not have hesitated for an hour in so doing.

_Venus and Adonis_ won for Shakespeare the favour of Elizabeth, while,

under the sovereignty of her successor, Shakespeare’s company gave

between forty and fifty performances at Court during the first five

years of his reign. Is it not rather absurd to believe that Bacon

should have remained quiescent while his unavowed work was being

acclaimed as “immortal,” and the works published under his own name

were either neglected, or treated to a contemptuous _mot_ by the very

person whose admiration he was feverishly striving to attract?

 

Yet the Baconians find no difficulty in accepting this explanation

of secrecy--Mr. A. P. Sinnett regards the motive as perfectly

intelligible. Bacon, he contends, was not writing his plays for

fame, but for the money it brought him. Mr. Theobald contends that

the plays could not have been written by Shakespeare because he was

too busily employed in “carving his own fortune” ... “filling his

pockets” ... “working for the present, not for the future,” to devote

the necessary leisure to literary pursuits. Bacon himself, according

to the bi-literal cipher discoveries of Mrs. Gallup, declares that so

far from receiving remuneration for his plays, he paid “a sufficient

reward in gold” to Shakespeare for the use of his name. “He was left

quite without resources,” Mr. Sinnett explains, “and he took up

dramatic writing for the sake of the money it earned him.” Before we

are won over by this fallacious explanation, we would inquire how

it was that Bacon, who was left without resources in 1577, did not

produce his first play until 1591, and then paid for the luxury of

concealing his indiscretion. Mr. Sinnett’s next sentence is instructive

as a specimen of Baconian reasoning. “After Bacon obtained an office

of profit at forty-six, no more Shakespeare plays appeared, though

the reputed author lived for ten more years in dignified leisure at

Stratford.” It may, of course, be regarded as a “shallow objection” to

raise, but Bacon was fifty-one years of age when Shakespeare retired

to Stratford. Moreover, Bacon obtained no office of profit in 1611.

He was made Solicitor-General, and became a rich man, in 1607, but

until his appointment to the Attorney-Generalship in 1613 he was

continually suing for promotion and applying for a better paid office.

It is, indeed, significant that Bacon was silent as a playwright from

the time of Shakespeare’s retirement. When he was Chancellor, and

enjoyed a yearly income equal to between £60,000 and £70,000 of our

money, he continued to compose his scientific works, and he was still

actively engaged in the task between 1621 and 1626 when he was again

reduced to comparative penury, and the more remunerative employment

of play-writing would have relieved his financial position without

detriment to his political prospects. The source from whence he could

have augmented his inadequate income was neglected while he employed

himself in writing a _Digest of the Laws of England_, _The History of

Henry VII._, _Sylva Sylvarum_, _Augmentis Scientiarum_, _The Dialogue

of the Holy War_, some additional _Essays_, and the translation of

“certain Psalms into English verse.” Bacon, according to Baconians,

produced his plays during the busiest period of his political

career, and in the days of his leisure and impecuniosity--“when

Shakespeare was not present to shield him from the disgrace of

possessing poetic and dramatic genius”--he produced his versification

of the Psalms.

 

[Illustration: ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF ESSEX. O.B. 1601.

 

From the original of Hilliard, in the collection of The Right Honble

the Earl of Verulam.]

 

Mr. Sinnett, in common with Mr. Theobald and, indeed, all other

upholders of the Baconian theory, has a distinctly original way of

dealing with matters of fact. Mr. Theobald invents his facts to suit

his argument; Mr. Sinnett ignores all facts that prove intractable.

Thus Mr. Sinnett in _The National Review_: “All through the plays there

is no allusion to Stratford.” And again: “While Bacon seems to have

gone North to curry favour with James on his accession, _Macbeth_ was

written just after that event. Certainly there is no reason to suppose

that Shakespeare ever went to Scotland.” What nonsense is all this!

Although personalities are rare in the Plays, there are a number of

literal references to Stratford, and Shakespeare’s native county, in

_The Taming of the Shrew_; and local allusions are also to be found in

the second part of _Henry IV._ and _The Merry Wives of Windsor_. In his

_Life of William Shakespeare_, Mr. Lee enumerates several instances

in point. “Barton Heath,” we read is, “Barton-on-the-Heath, the home

of Shakespeare’s aunt, Edmund Lambert’s wife, and of her sons. The

tinker, in _The Taming of the Shrew_, confesses that he has run up a

score with Marian Hacket, the fat ale wife of Wincot. The references to

Wincot and the Hackets are singularly precise. The name of the maid of

the inn is given as Cicely Hacket, and the ale-house is described in

the stage direction as ‘on a heath.’” Again, in _Henry IV._, the local

reference to William Visor, of Woncot, and the allusions to the region

of the Cotswold Hills, and the peculiar Cotswold custom of sowing “red

lammas” wheat at an unusually early season of the agricultural year,

are unmistakable. Mr. Sinnett’s assumptions that Bacon went to Scotland

and that Shakespeare did not, are entirely arbitrary. In point of fact

we may be quite sure that Bacon did not go to Scotland, and we have no

reason to believe that Shakespeare was ever in Venice, or Sardis, or “a

wood near Athens.” The author of the _Letters from Hell_ was not under

suspicion because he could not claim to have been ferried across the

Styx to get his local colour.

 

If we are to accept the Baconian opinion of Shakespeare it is difficult

to understand how Bacon came to allow him to make a successful

application on behalf of his father, John Shakespeare, to the College

of Heralds for a grant of arms in 1597. Bacon was an aristocrat and a

firm believer in his order. If he knew Shakespeare to be a notoriously

ill-educated actor, a man little better than a vagabond, an impostor, a

villain with “some humour,” whom Bacon employed as the original model

for Sir John Falstaffe and Sir Toe-be--as Mr. Harold Bayley states--why

did he not prevent his intimate friend, the Earl of Essex, the Earl

of Southampton, and William Camden, the great scholar and antiquary,

from being hoaxed by this impudent rogue, and prevent the Shakespeares

from obtaining the desired grant? These three friends of Shakespeare

certainly facilitated the proceedings.

 

 

 

 

_Mr. Theobald’s Parallels and Mr. Bayley’s Conclusions._

 

 

When Mr. Theobald gets away from his biographical pabulum and plunges

into the literary arguments for Bacon’s authorship of the plays, he has

little that is original to reveal, but much that is new in the way of

parallels and coincidences. In the first place, he takes it for granted

that Shakespeare could not, by any possibility, have written the plays.

He does not prove it, but--_cela va sans dire_. Then he proceeds,

to the extent of some four hundred pages of matter, to demonstrate,

by reference to the significant Baconian characteristics in the

plays, and the still more significant parallels between the poetry of

Shakespeare and the philosophy of Bacon, that Bacon must be the author

of both. Bacon, for instance, appears to have had a “very curious

habit” of striking himself on the breast when he wished to emphasise

an argument. Brutus, Ophelia, Clarence’s little boy, and Claudio, are

all represented as using a similar gesture. Some such lamentations as

Bacon may be supposed to have uttered after his fall, are to be found

in _King Lear_, and Lucrece’s self-condemnation of herself to death for

an offence of which she is entirely innocent is, of course, inspired

by Bacon’s behaviour in making a full and humble submission to the

Lords in respect of offences which he never committed. The mere fact

that _Lucrece_ was published in 1594, and that Bacon’s downfall did not

take place until 1621, is a point of no moment--we can readily agree

with Mr. Theobald that “there is a very curious reflection of Bacon’s

character and temperament in the poem of _Lucrece_.” Lucrece absolves herself in the reflection,