Читать книгу The True Story vs. Myth of Witchcraft - William Godwin - Страница 218

In Scene I., which takes place near Framlingham, in Suffolk, we find Prince Edward eloquently expatiating on the charms of the Fair Maid to an audience of his courtiers, one of whom advises him, if he would prove successful in his suit, to seek the assistance of Friar Bacon, a ‘brave necromancer,’ who ‘can make women of devils, and juggle cats into coster-mongers.’6 The Prince acts upon this advice.

Scene II. introduces us to Friar Bacon’s cell at Brasenose College, Oxford (an obvious anachronism, as the college was not founded until long after Bacon’s time). Enter Bacon and his poor scholar, Miles, with books under his arm; also three doctors of Oxford: Burden, Mason, and Clement.

Bacon. Miles, where are you?

Miles. Hic sum, doctissime et reverendissime Doctor. (Here I am, most learned and reverend Doctor.)

Bacon. Attulisti nostros libros meos de necromantia? (Hast thou brought my books of necromancy?)

Miles. Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum habitare libros in unum! (See how good and how pleasant it is to dwell among books together!)

Bacon. Now, masters of our academic state

That rule in Oxford, viceroys in your place,

Whose heads contain maps of the liberal arts,

Spending your time in depths of learnèd skill,

Why flock you thus to Bacon’s secret cell,

A friar newly stalled in Brazen-nose?

Say what’s your mind, that I may make reply.

Burden. Bacon, we hear that long we have suspect,

That thou art read in Magic’s mystery:

In pyromancy,7 to divine by flames; To tell by hydromancy, ebbs and tides; By aeromancy to discover doubts,— To plain out questions, as Apollo did.

Bacon. Well, Master Burden, what of all this?

Miles. Marry, sir, he doth but fulfil, by rehearsing of these names, the fable of the ‘Fox and the Grapes’: that which is above us pertains nothing to us.

Burd. I tell thee, Bacon, Oxford makes report,

Nay, England, and the Court of Henry says

Thou’rt making of a Brazen Head by art,

Which shall unfold strange doubts and aphorisms,

And read a lecture in philosophy:

And, by the help of devils and ghastly fiends,

Thou mean’st, ere many years or days be past,

To compass England with a wall of brass.

Bacon. And what of this?

Miles. What of this, master! why, he doth speak mystically; for he knows, if your skill fail to make a Brazen Head, yet Master Waters’ strong ale will fit his time to make him have a copper nose....

Bacon. Seeing you come as friends unto the friar,

Resolve you, doctors, Bacon can by books

Make storming Boreas thunder from his cave,

And dim fair Luna to a dark eclipse.

The great arch-ruler, potentate of hell,

Tumbles when Bacon bids him, or his fiends

Bow to the force of his pentageron.8 ... I have contrived and framed a head of brass (I made Belcephon hammer out the stuff), And that by art shall read philosophy: And I will strengthen England by my skill, That if ten Cæsars lived and reigned in Rome, With all the legions Europe doth contain, They should not touch a grass of English ground: The work that Ninus reared at Babylon, The brazen walls framed by Semiramis, Carved out like to the portal of the sun, Shall not be such as rings the English strand From Dover to the market-place of Rye.

In this patriotic resolution of the potent friar the reader will trace the influence of the national enthusiasm awakened, only a few years before Greene’s comedy was written and produced, by the menace of the Spanish Armada.

It is unnecessary to quote the remainder of this scene, in which Bacon proves his magical skill at the expense of the jealous Burden. Scene III. passes at Harleston Fair, and introduces Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, disguised as a rustic, and the comely Margaret. In Scene IV., at Hampton Court, Henry III. receives Elinor of Castile, who is betrothed to his son, Prince Edward, and arranges with her father, the Emperor, a competition between the great German magician, Jaques Vandermast, and Friar Bacon, ‘England’s only flower.’ In Scene V. we pass on to Oxford, where some comic incidents occur between Prince Edward (in disguise) and his courtiers; and in Scene VI. to Friar Bacon’s cell, where the friar shows the Prince in his ‘glass prospective,’ or magic mirror, the figures of Margaret, Friar Bungay, and Earl Lacy, and reveals the progress of Lacy’s suit to the rustic beauty. Bacon summons Bungay to Oxford—straddling on a devil’s back—and the scene then changes to the Regent-house, and degenerates into the rudest farce. At Fressingfield, in Scene VIII., we find Prince Edward threatening to slay Earl Lacy unless he gives up to him the Fair Maid of Fressingfield; but, after a struggle, his better nature prevails, and he retires from his suit, leaving Margaret to become the Countess of Lincoln. Scene IX. carries us back to Oxford, where Henry III., the Emperor, and a goodly company have assembled to witness the trial of skill between the English and the German magicians—the first international competition on record!—in which, of course, Vandermast is put to ridicule.

Passing over Scene X. as unimportant, we return, in Scene XI., to Bacon’s cell, where the great magician is lying on his bed, with a white wand in one hand, a book in the other, and beside him a lighted lamp. The Brazen Head is there, with Miles, armed, keeping watch over it. Here the dramatist closely follows the old story. The friar falls asleep; the head speaks once and twice, and Miles fails to wake his master. It speaks the third time. ‘A lightning flashes forth, and a hand appears that breaks down the head with a hammer.’ Bacon awakes to lament over the ruin of his work, and load the careless Miles with unavailing reproaches. But the whole scene is characteristic enough to merit transcription:

Scene XI.—Friar Bacon’s Cell.

Friar Bacon is discovered lying on a bed, with a white stick in one hand, a book in the other, and a lamp lighted beside him; and the Brazen Head, and Miles with weapons by him.

Bacon. Miles, where are you?

Miles. Here, sir.

Bacon. How chance you tarry so long?

Miles. Think you that the watching of the Brazen Head craves no furniture? I warrant you, sir, I have so armed myself that if all your devils come, I will not fear them an inch.

Bacon. Miles,

Thou know’st that I have divèd into hell,

And sought the darkest palaces of fiends;

That with my magic spells great Belcephon

Hath left his lodge and kneelèd at my cell;

The rafters of the earth rent from the poles,

And three-form’d Luna hid her silver looks,

Tumbling upon her concave continent,

When Bacon read upon his magic book.

With seven years’ tossing necromantic charms,

Poring upon dark Hecat’s principles,

I have framed out a monstrous head of brass,

That, by the enchanting forces of the devil,

Shall tell out strange and uncouth aphorisms,

And girt fair England with a wall of brass.

Bungay and I have watch’d these threescore days,

And now our vital spirits crave some rest:

If Argus lived and had his hundred eyes,

They could not over-watch Phobetor’s9 night. Now, Miles, in thee rests Friar Bacon’s weal: The honour and renown of all his life Hangs in the watching of this Brazen Head; Therefore I charge thee by the immortal God That holds the souls of men within his fist, This night thou watch; for ere the morning star Sends out his glorious glister on the north The Head will speak. Then, Miles, upon thy life Wake me; for then by magic art I’ll work To end my seven years’ task with excellence. If that a wink but shut thy watchful eye, Then farewell Bacon’s glory and his fame! Draw close the curtains, Miles: now, for thy life, Be watchful, and ... (Falls asleep.)

Miles. So; I thought you would talk yourself asleep anon; and ’tis no marvel, for Bungay on the days, and he on the nights, have watched just these ten and fifty days: now this is the night, and ’tis my task, and no more. Now, Jesus bless me, what a goodly head it is! and a nose! You talk of Nos10 autem glorificare; but here’s a nose that I warrant may be called Nos autem populare for the people of the parish. Well, I am furnished with weapons: now, sir, I will set me down by a post, and make it as good as a watchman to wake me, if I chance to slumber. I thought, Goodman Head, I would call you out of your memento.11 Passion o’ God, I have almost broke my pate! (A great noise.) Up, Miles, to your task; take your brown-bill in your hand; here’s some of your master’s hobgoblins abroad.

The Brazen Head (speaks). Time is.

Miles. Time is! Why, Master Brazen-Head, you have such a capital nose, and answer you with syllables, ‘Time is’? Is this my master’s cunning, to spend seven years’ study about ‘Time is’? Well, sir, it may be we shall have some better orations of it anon: well, I’ll watch you as narrowly as ever you were watched, and I’ll play with you as the nightingale with the glow-worm; I’ll set a prick against my breast.12 Now rest there, Miles. Lord have mercy upon me, I have almost killed myself. (A great noise.) Up, Miles; list how they rumble.

The Brazen Head (loquitur). Time was.

Miles. Well, Friar Bacon, you have spent your seven years’ study well, that can make your Head speak but two words at once, ‘Time was.’ Yea, marry, time was when my master was a wise man; but that was before he began to make the Brazen Head. You shall lie while you ache, an your head speak no better. Well, I will watch, and walk up and down, and be a peripatetian13 and a philosopher of Aristotle’s stamp. (A great noise.) What, a fresh noise? Take thy pistols in hand, Miles. (A lightning flashes forth, and a Hand appears that breaks down the Head with a hammer.) Master, master, up! Hell’s broken loose! Your Head speaks; and there’s such a thunder and lightning, that I warrant all Oxford is up in arms. Out of your bed, and take a brownbill in your hand; the latter day is come.

Bacon. Miles, I come. (Rises and comes forward.) O, passing warily watched! Bacon will make thee next himself in love. When spake the Head?

Miles. When spake the Head? Did you not say that he should tell strange principles of philosophy? Why, sir, it speaks but two words at a time.

Bacon. Why, villain, hath it spoken oft?

Miles. Oft! ay, marry hath it, thrice; but in all those three times it hath uttered but seven words.

Bacon. As how?

Miles. Marry, sir, the first time he said, ‘Time is,’ as if Fabius Commentator14 should have pronounced a sentence; then he said, ‘Time was;’ and the third time, with thunder and lightning, as in great choler, he said, ‘Time is past.’

Bacon. ’Tis past, indeed. Ah, villain! Time is past;

My life, my fame, my glory, are all past.

Bacon,

The turrets of thy hope are ruined down,

Thy seven years’ study lieth in the dust:

Thy Brazen Head lies broken through a slave

That watched, and would not when the Head did will.

What said the Head first?

Miles. Even, sir, ‘Time is.’

Bacon. Villain, if thou hadst called to Bacon then,

If thou hadst watched, and waked the sleepy friar,

The Brazen Head had uttered aphorisms,

And England had been circled round with brass:

But proud Asmenoth,15 ruler of the North, And Demogorgon,16 master of the Fates, Grudge that a mortal man should work so much. Hell trembled at my deep-commanding spells, Fiends frowned to see a man their over-match; Bacon might boast more than a man might boast; But now the braves17 of Bacon have an end, Europe’s conceit of Bacon hath an end, His seven years’ practice sorteth to ill end: And, villain, sith my glory hath an end, I will appoint thee to some fatal end.18 Villain, avoid! get thee from Bacon’s sight! Vagrant, go, roam and range about the world, And perish as a vagabond on earth!

Miles. Why, then, sir, you forbid me your service?

Bacon. My service, villain, with a fatal curse,

That direful plagues and mischief fall on thee.

Miles. ’Tis no matter, I am against you with the old proverb, ‘The more the fox is cursed, the better he fares.’ God be with you, sir: I’ll take but a book in my hand, a wide-sleeved gown on my back, and a crowned cap19 on my head, and see if I can merit promotion.

Bacon. Some fiend or ghost haunt on thy weary steps,

Until they do transport thee quick to Hell!

For Bacon shall have never any day,

To lose the fame and honour of his Head.

(Exeunt.

Scene XII. passes in King Henry’s Court, and the royal consent is given to Earl Lacy’s marriage with the Fair Maid, which is fixed to take place on the same day as Prince Edward’s marriage to the Princess Elinor. In Scene XIII. we again go back to Bacon’s cell. The friar is bewailing the destruction of his Brazen Head to Friar Bungay, when two young gentlemen, named Lambert and Sealsby, enter, in order to look into the ‘glass prospective,’ and see how their fathers are faring. Unhappily, at this very moment, the elder Lambert and Sealsby, having quarrelled, are engaged ‘in combat hard by Fressingfield,’ and stab each other to the death, whereupon their sons immediately come to blows, with a like fatal result. Bacon, deeply affected, breaks the magic crystal which has been the unwitting cause of so sad a catastrophe, expresses his regret that he ever dabbled in the unholy science, and announces his resolve to spend the remainder of his life ‘in pure devotion.’

At Fressingfield, in Scene XIV., the opportune arrival of Lacy and his friends prevents Margaret from carrying out her intention of retiring to the nunnery at Framlingham, and with obliging readiness she consents to marry the Earl. Scene XV. shifts to Bacon’s cell, where a devil complains that the friar hath raised him from the darkest deep to search about the world for Miles, his man, and torment him in punishment for his neglect of orders.

Miles makes his appearance, and after some comic dialogue, intended to tickle the ears of the groundlings, mounts astride the demon’s back, and goes off to ——! In Scene XVI., and last, we return to the Court, where royalty makes a splendid show, and the two brides—the Princess Elinor and the Countess Margaret—display their rival charms. Of course the redoubtable friar is present, and in his concluding speech leaps over a couple of centuries to make a glowing compliment to Queen Elizabeth, which seems worth quotation:

‘I find by deep prescience of mine art,

Which once I tempered in my secret cell,

That here where Brute did build his Troynovant,20 From forth the royal garden of a King Shall flourish out so rich and fair a bud, Whose brightness shall deface proud Phœbus’ flower, And overshadow Albion with her leaves. Till then Mars shall be master of the field, But then the stormy threats of war shall cease: The horse shall stamp as careless of the pike, Drums shall be turned to timbrels of delight; With wealthy favours Plenty shall enrich The strand that gladded wandering Brute to see, And peace from heaven shall harbour in these leaves That gorgeous beautify this matchless flower: Apollo’s heliotropian21 then shall stoop, And Venus’ hyacinth22 shall vail her top; Juno shall shut her gilliflowers up, And Pallas’ bay shall ’bash her brightest green; Ceres’ carnation, in consort with those, Shall stoop and wonder at Diana’s rose.’23

So much for Greene’s comedy of ‘Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay’—not, on the whole, a bad piece of work.

Among the earlier English alchemists I may next name, in chronological order, George Ripley, canon of Bridlington, who, in 1471, dedicated to King Edward III. his once celebrated ‘Compound of Alchemy; or, The Twelve Gates leading to the Discovery of the Philosopher’s Stone.’ These ‘gates,’ each of which he describes in detail, but with little enlightenment to the uninitiated reader, are:—1. Calcination; 2. Solution; 3. Separation; 4. Conjunction; 5. Putrefaction; 6. Congelation; 7. Cibation; 8. Sublimation; 9. Fermentation; 10. Exaltation; 11. Multiplication; and 12. Projection. In his old age Ripley learned wisdom, and frankly acknowledged that he had wasted his life upon an empty pursuit. He requested all men, if they met with any of the five-and-twenty treatises of which he was the author, to consign them to the flames as absolutely vain and worthless.

Yet there is a wild story that he actually discovered the ‘magisterium,’ and was thereby enabled to send a gift of £100,000 to the Knights of St. John, to assist them in their defence of Rhodes against the Turks.

Thomas Norton, of Bristol, was the author of ‘The Ordinall of Alchemy’ (printed in London in 1652). He is said to have been a pupil of Ripley, under whom (at the age of 28) he studied for forty days, and in that short time acquired a thorough knowledge of ‘the perfection of chemistry.’ Ripley, however, refused to instruct so young a man in the master-secret of the great science, and the process from ‘the white’ to ‘the red powder,’ so that Norton was compelled to rely on his own skill and industry. Twice in his labours a sad disappointment overtook him. On one occasion he had almost completed the tincture, when the servant whom he employed to look after the furnace decamped with it, supposing that it was fit for use. On another it was stolen by the wife of William Canning, Mayor of Bristol, who immediately sprang into immense wealth, and as some amends, I suppose, for his ill-gotten gains, built the beautiful steeple of the church of St. Mary, Redcliffe—the church afterwards connected with the sad story of Chatterton. As for Norton, he seems to have lived in poverty and died in poverty (1477).

The ‘Ordinall of Alchemy’ is a tedious panegyric of the science, interspersed with a good deal of the vague talk about white and red stones and the philosophical magnesia in which ‘the adepts’ delighted.

To Norton we owe our scanty knowledge of Thomas Dalton, who flourished about the middle of the fifteenth century. He had the reputation of being a devout Churchman until he was accused by a certain Debois of possessing the powder of projection. Debois roundly asserted that Norton had made him a thousand pounds of gold (lucky man!) in less than twelve hours. Whereupon Dalton simply said, ‘Sir, you are forsworn.’ His explanation was that he had received the powder from a canon of Lichfield, on undertaking not to use it until after the canon’s death; and that since he had been so troubled by his possession of it, that he had secretly destroyed it. One Thomas Herbert, a squire of King Edward, waylaid the unfortunate man, and shut him up in the castle of Gloucester, putting heavy pressure upon him to make the coveted tincture. But this Dalton would not and could not do; and after a captivity of four years, Herbert ordered him to be brought out and executed in his presence. He obeyed the harsh summons with great delight, exclaiming, ‘Blessed art Thou, Lord Jesus! I have been too long absent from Thee. The science Thou gavest me I have kept without ever abusing it; I have found no one fit to be my heir; wherefore, sweet Lord, I will restore Thy gift to Thee again.’

‘Then, after some devout prayer, with a smiling countenance he desired the executioner to proceed. Tears gushed from the eyes of Herbert when he beheld him so willing to die, and saw that no ingenuity could wrest his secret from him. He gave orders for his release. His imprisonment and threatened execution were contrived without the King’s knowledge to intimidate him into compliance. The iniquitous devices having failed, Herbert did not dare to take away his life. Dalton rose from the block with a heavy countenance, and returned to his abbey, much grieved at the further prolongation of his earthly sojourn. Herbert died shortly after this atrocious act of tyranny, and Debois also came to an untimely end. His father, Sir John Debois, was slain at the battle of Tewkesbury, May 4, 1471; and two days after, as recorded in Stow’s “Annales,” he himself (James Debois) was taken, with several others of the Lancastrian party, from a church where they had fled for sanctuary, and was beheaded on the spot.’