Bacon and Shakespeare

Оглавление

Albert Frederick Calvert. Bacon and Shakespeare

Preface

Bacon, the Product of His Age

Bacon, the Friend of Essex and Cecil

Bacon as the Creature of Buckingham

Bacon and Shakespeare Contrasted

Baconian Fallacies Respecting Shakespeare

Mr. Theobald, a Baconian by Intuition

Was Shakespeare the “Upstart Crow?”

Wm. Shakespeare, Money Lender and Poet

The “True Shakespeare.”

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

The Bi-Literal Cipher

Bacon’s “Sterne and Tragicle History.”

Bacon, the Author of all Elizabethan-Jacobean Literature

Bacon and “Divine Aide.”

Shakespeare and Bacon in Collaboration

The Tragical Historie of our Late Brother Robert, Earl of Essex

Bacon, the Poet

“Did Shakespeare Write Bacon?”

The Case for Shakespeare

Were Shakespeare and Bacon Acquainted?

In Conclusion

Отрывок из книги

It is impossible to sympathise with, or even to regard seriously, the spirit in which a small, but growing section of the reading public of America, and of this country, has plunged into the controversy respecting the authorship of the so-called Shakespeare plays. The fantastic doubt which compelled individual scholars to investigate a theory of their own inventing, to lay, so to speak, the ghost they had themselves raised, has inspired distrust in the minds that had no beliefs, and generated scepticism in those where no faith was. The search for the truth has degenerated into a wild-goose chase; the seekers after some new thing have made the quest their own; ignorance has plagiarised from prejudice; the “grand old Bacon-Shakespeare controversy,” as Whistler said of Art, is upon the town – “to be chucked under the chin by the passing gallant – to be enticed within the gates of the householder – to be coaxed into company as a proof of culture and refinement.” The difficulties that such a controversy present to the tea-table oracles are both numerous, and exceeding obstinate. The people who read Shakespeare form a pitiably insignificant proportion of the community, but they are multitudinous compared with those who have the remotest acquaintance with the works of Francis Bacon. Bacon is known to some as Elizabeth’s little Lord Keeper, to others his name recalls the fact that he was James the First’s Lord Chancellor, but outside his Essays, and, perhaps, The New Atlantis, his great philosophical dissertations, the pride and treasure which he so carefully preserved in Latin, lest they should be lost in the decay of modern languages, are a sealed book to all, except a few odd scholars at the Universities. Bacon is an extinct volcano. The fact is not creditable to the culture of the age, but it is incontrovertible.

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 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.

.....