CHAPTER V.

PLAYWRIGHT AND POET-PHILOSOPHER.
" Playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature ; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and bod}7 of the time his form and pressure."
— Hamlet.
ABOUT the year 1592 Bacon wrote a device entitled The Conference of Pleasure* It was evidently prepared for some festive occasion, but whether or not it was ever performed in the shape in which it is seen in the existing manuscript, is not known.
The paper book which contained this device bore on its out- side leaf a list of its original contents, but the stitches which fastened the sheets together have given way, or were intentionally severed, and the central pages are gone — a great loss, when we know that these pages included copies of the plays of Richard II. and Richard III., of which it would have been interesting to have seen the manuscript.
The Conference of Pleasure represents four friends meeting for intellectual amusement, when each in turn delivers a speech in praise of whatever he holds " most worthy." This explains the not very significant title given to this work in the catalogue which is found upon the fly-leaf of the paper book : " Mr. Fr. Bacon Of Giving Tribute, or that which is due."
The speeches delivered by the four friends are described as The Praise of the Worthiest Virtue, or Fortitude, " The Worthiest Affection," — Love ; " The Worthiest Power," — Knowledge ; and the fourth and last, " The Worthiest Person." This is the came that was afterwards printed and published under the title of " Mr. Bacon in Praise of his Soveraigne." It bears many points of resemblance to Cranmer's speech in the last scene of
* This device was edited by Mr. Spedding (1867) from the manuscript, which he found amongst a quantity of paper belonging to the Duke of Northumberland.
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. Ill
Henry VIII.,* and is ostensibly a praise of Queen Elizabeth. Covertly it is a praise of Bacon's Sovereign Lady, the Crowned Truth. The editor of the Conference observes, as so many others have done, that there is in the style of this piece a certain affectation and rhetorical cadence, traceable in Bacon's other compositions of this kind, and agreeable to the taste of the time. He does not, however, follow other critics in saying that this courtly affectation was Bacon's style, or that the fact of his having written such a piece is sufficient to disprove him the author of other compositions written more naturally and easily. On the contrary, he describes this stilted language as so alien to his individual taste and natural manner, that there is no single feature by which his own style is more specially distinguished, wherever he speaks in his own person, whether formally or familiarly, whether in the way of narrative, argument, or oration, than the total absence of it.
The truth is that the style of Francis Bacon was the best method, whatever that might be, for conveying to men's minds the knowledge or ideas which he was desirous of imparting. There should, he says, be " a diversity of methods according to the subject or matter which is handled." This part of knowledge of method in writing he considers to have been so weakly inquired into as, in fact, to be deficient. He explains that there must be, in this " method of tradition," first the invention or idea of that which is to be imparted ; next, judgment upon the thing thought or imagined, and, lastly, delivery, or imparting of the thought or idea. Then he shows that knowledge is not only for present use, but also for its own advancement and increase. With regard especially to present use, he points out that there are times and seasons for knowledges, as for other things. How to begin, to insinuate knowledge, and how to refrain from seeming to attempt to teach ? " It is an inquiry of great wisdom, what kinds of wits and natures are most apt and proper for most sciences." He is actually speaking of the use of mathematics in steadying the mind, " if a child be bird- witted and hath not the faculty of attention " ; but he leads this
* Further on we shall have occasion to show how in many of Bacon's poems, sonnets, etc., where " the Queen " is praised, the allusion is ambiguous, referring chiefly, though covertly, to Bacon's Sovereign Mistress, Truth.
112 FRANCIS BACON
argument into another which again brings before us his ideas about the immense importance of the stage. " It is not amiss to observe, also, how small and mean faculties, gotten by education, yet when they fall into great men and great matters, do work great and important effects ; whereof we see a notable example in Tacitus, of two stage players, Percennius and Vibulenus, who, by their talent for acting, put the Pannonian armies into extreme tumult and combustion. For, there arising a mutiny amongst them upon the death of Augustus Caesar, Blsesas, the lieutenant, had committed some of the mutineers, which were suddenly rescued ; whereupon Vibulenus got to be heard speak — (and charged Blazsas, in pathetic terms, with having caused his brother to be murdered) — with which speech he put the army into an infinite fury and uproar ; whereas, truth was, he had no brother, neither was there any such matter ; but he played it merely as if he had been on the stage."
This anecdote is partly an illustration of what Bacon has previously been saying, that the duty of rhetoric is " to apply reason to imagination for the better moving of the will." Rhetoric, therefore, may be made an aid to the morality whose end is to persuade the affections and passions to obey reason. He shows that " the vulgar capacities " are not to be taught by the same scientific methods which are useful in the delivery of knowledge " as a thread to be spun upon, and which should, if possible, be insinuated" in the same method wherein it was invented. In short, matter, and not words, is the important thing ; for words are the images of cogitations, and proper thought will bring proper words. It may in some cases be well to speak like the vulgar and think like the wise. This was an art in which Bacon himself is recorded to have been especially skilful : he could imitate and adopt the language of the person with whom he was conversing and speak in any style. If so, could he not equally well write in any style which best suited the matter in hand, which would most readily convey his meaning to educated or uneducated ears, to minds prosaic or poetical, dull in spirit, and only to be impressed by plain and homely words, or not impressed at all, except the words were accompanied by gesture and action as if the speaker were " upon the stage " ?
And so Bacon was " content to tune the instruments of the
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 113
muses," that they should be fit to give out melodies and har- monies of any pitch, and suited to every frame of mind. In his acknowledged writings (which seem to be an ingenious map of, or clue to, his whole body of works) we find, as it were, samples of many and varied styles of writing which he desires to see studied and more perfectly used ; and although in his greatest productions he has 'built up a noble model of language which the least observant reader must recognise as Baconian, yet there are amongst his writings some so unlike what might be expected from his pen, and so very unlike each other, as to dispel the idea that his many-sided mind required, like ordinary men, merely a one-sided language and " style " in which to utter itself.
The manner of speaking or writing which pleases him best was plain and simple, " a method as wholesome as sweet." But, just as in the poems and plays which we attribute to him the styles are so various as to raise doubts, not only of the identity of the author, but even as to various portions of the same work, so the style of writing of the Gesta Grayorum or the Conference of Pleasure is totally unlike the New Atlantis or the Confes- sion of Faith. Neither is there, at first sight, anything which Avould cause the casual reader to identify the author of any of these with the Wisdom of the Ancients, or Life's a Bubble, or the History of the Winds, or the Essay of Friendship, or many more widely different works or portions of works known to have been written by Bacon. Because this is known, no one is so bold or so foolish as to point to the immense differences in style as proof that one man could not have written all. One man did write them ; no one can challenge the statement, and conse- quently no question has arisen about this particular group of works ; yet they differ amongst themselves more than, individu- ally, they differ with a vast number of works not yet generally acknowledged to be Bacon's. They differ more essentially from each other than do the works of many dramatists and poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their style is sometimes indistinguishable from treatises by various " authors." In short, nothing but a complete comparative anatomy of Bacon's writings at different periods and on different topics would enable any one (without evidence of some other sort) to assert of every work of Bacon's that it was or was not of his composition ; so varied is his style.
114 FRANCIS BACON
To return to the paper book. Besides the pieces which are still contained in it, eight more appear to have formed part of the contents of this and another small volume of the same kind, now lost. According to the list on the cover the lost sheets should contain :
1. The conclusion of Leycester's Commonwealth.
2. The speeches of the six councillors to the Prince of Pur- poole, at the Gray's Inn Revels, 1594. The exterior sheet of the book has in the list, Orations at Graifs Inn Revels.
3. Something of Mr. Frauncis Bacon's about the Queen's Mats.
4. Essaies by the same author.
, 5. Richard II. The editor calls these " Copies of Shakespeare's Plays." The list does not say so.
6. Richard III.
7. Asmund and Cornelia (a piece of which nothing is known).
8. A play called The Isle of Dogs. The induction and first act of this play are said to have been written by Thomas Nashe, and the rest by " the players." No copy has been found of The Isle of Dogs ; and after the title in the list appears the abbreviated word frmnt*
In a line beneath, " Thomas Nashe, inferior plaies." It is curious and interesting to observe the pains which are taken to explain away the simplest and most patent docu- mentary evidence which tends to prove Bacon's connection with plays or poetry. The following is an instance : Commenting upon the startling but undeniable fact of the two Shakespeare plays being found enumerated, with other plays not known, in a list of Bacon's works amongst his papers, the careful editor proceeds to make easy things difficult by explanation and commentary :
" That Richard II. and Richard III. are meant for the titles of Shakespeare's plays, so named, I infer from the fact — of which the evidence may be seen in the fac-simile — that, the list of contents being now complete, the writer (or, more probably, another into whose possession the volume passed) has amused
* This seems to have puzzled the editor, but can it mean more or less than " fragment " ?
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 115
himself with writing down promiscuously the names and phrases that most ran in his head ; and that among these the name of William Shakespeare was the most prominent, being written eight or nine times over for no other reason that can be discerned. That the name of Mr. Frauncis Bacon, which is alsp repeated several times, should have been used for the same kind of recreation, requires no explanation. . . In the upper corner . . . may be seen tfie words ne vile velis, the motto of the Nevilles, twice repeated, and there are other traces of the name of Neville. Other exercises of the same kind are merely repetitions of the titles which stand opposite, or ordinary words of compliment, familiar in the beginnings and endings of letters, with here and there a scrap of verse, such as :
Eevealing day through every cranie peepes, "Or,
Multis annis jam transactis, Nulla fides est in pactis, Mel in ore, verba lactis ; Fell in corde, fraus in factis.
"And most of the rest appear to be merely exercises in writing th or sh ; . . . but the only thing, so far as I can see, which requires any particular notice is the occurrence, in this way, of the name of William Shakespeare; and the value of that depends, in a great degree, upon the date of the writing, which, I fear, cannot be determined with any approach to exactness. All I can say is that I find nothing ... to indicate a date later than the reign of Elizabeth ; and if so, it is probably one of the earliest evidences of the growth of Shakspere's personal fame as a dramatic author, the beginning of which cannot be dated much earlier than 1598. It was not till 1597 that any of his plays appeared in print ; and though the earliest editions of Richard II., Richard III., and Romeo and Juliet all bear that date, his name is not on the title-page of any of them. They were set forth as plays which had been ' lately,' or ' publicly,' or ' often with great applause,' acted by the Lord Chamberlain's servants. Their title to favour was their popularity as acting- plays at the Globe ; and it was not till they came to be read as books, that it occurred to people unconnected with the theatre to ask who wrote them. It seems, however, that curiosity was speedily and effectually excited by the publication, for in the very next year a second edition of both the Richards appeared, with the name of William Shakespeare on the title-page ; and the practice was almost invariably followed by all publishers on like occasions afterwards. We may conclude, therefore, that it was about 1597 that play-goers and readers of plays began to talk about him, and that his name would naturally present
116 FRANCIS BACON
itself to an idle penman in want of something to use his pen upon. What other inferences will be drawn from its appearance on the cover of this manuscript by those who start with the conviction that Bacon, and not Shakespeare, was the real author of Richard II. and Richard III., I cannot say ; but to myself the fact which I have mentioned seems quite sufficient to account for the phenomenon." *
The phenomenon does not seem to require any explanation. Everything in the list, excepting the plays, is known to be Bacon's. Essays, orations, complimentary speeches for festivals, letters written for, and in the names of, the Earls of Arundel, Sussex, and Essex. Only the plays are called " copies," because in their second editions, when men first began to be curious as to the "concealed poet," and Hayward, or some other, was to be " racked to produce the author," the name Shakespeare was printed on the hitherto anonymous title-page. The practice was so common at that date as to cause much bewilderment and confusion to the literary historian ; and this confusion was, probably, the very effect which that cause was intended to produce.
It is worthy of note that in the writing-case, or portfolio, which belonged to Bacon (and which is in the possession of the Howard family at Arundel) a sheet is found similarly scribbled over with the name William Shakespeare. Consider- ing the amount of argument which has been expended upon the subject of the scribbled names on the fly-leaf of the Con- ference of Pleasure, it would appear too strange for credibility that this witness of Bacon's own portfolio should be ignored, were it not that we now have other and such strong proofs of a combination to suppress particulars of this kind.
Besides the name of Shakespeare, there are, on the outer leaf of the manuscript book, some other curious jottings which are to our point. The amanuensis, or whosoever he may have been, who beguiled an hour of waiting by trying his pen, scribbles, with the name Shakespeare, some allusions to other plays besides Richard II. and Richard III.
Love's Labour's Lost satirises "the diseases of style," and " errors and vanities," which Bacon complains were intermixed
* Introduction to the Conference of Pleasure, p. xxiv.
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 117
with the studies of learned men, and which " caused learning itself to be traduced." The utterances of Holofernes, Nathaniel, Biron, and Armado, respectively, illustrate the " vain affections, disputes, and imaginations, the effeminate and fantastical learning," which infected all the teaching and the books of the period.
Making fun of the pedantic talk of Holofernes and his friends, the pert page Moth declares that " they have been at a feast of languages and stolen the scraps."
Costard answers : " Oh ! they have lived long on the alms- basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word ; for thou art not so long by the head as Honorificabiii- tudinitatibus."
This alarming polysyllable was in the mind of the amanuensis, though his memory failed before he got through the thirteen articulations, and he curtails it to " Ilonorificabilitudino," yet cannot we doubt that this amenuensis had seen in or about the year 1592 the play of Loves Labour's Lost, which was not pub- lished or acted until 1598.
The scrap of English verse, in like manner, shows the amanuensis to have been acquainted with the poem of Lucrece, published for the first time in 1594, or two years after the sup- posed date of the scribble. Writing from memory, the copyist makes a misquotation. In the poem is the line :
" Revealing day through every cranie spies."
But he writes :
11 Revealing day through every cranie peepes."
A confusion, doubtless, between this line and one which follows, where the word peeping is used.
In Love's Labour s Lost, v. 2, the whole scene turns upon the ideas involved in the Latin lines which are also written on this communicative fly-leaf :
Mel in ore, verba lactis ; Fell in corde, fraiLS in factis.
Biron's way of talking is, throughout the scene, compared, for its ultra suavity, to honey and milk :
Biron. White-handed mistress, one sweet word with you. Princess. Honey and milk and sugar — there are three.
118 FRANCIS BACON
After a quibble or two on Biron's part, the Princess begs that the word which he wishes to have with her may not be sweet :
Biron. Thou griev'st my gall. Princess. Gall ? bitter.
Presently, in the same scene, the affectations of another young courtier are satirised, and he is called " Honey-tongued Boyet." Perhaps the scribe knew from whence his employer derived the metaphors of talk, as sweet, honied, sugared, and smoother than milky and, antithetically, the gall of bitter words*
There are many proofs that Bacon utilised his talents by writing speeches for his friends, to deliver on important occa- sions, and for public festivities.
"As Essex aspired to distinction in many ways, so Bacon studied many ways to help him, among the rest by contributing to those fanciful pageants or ' devices,' as they were called, with which it was the fashion of the time to entertain the Queen on festive occasions. On the anniversary of her coronation in 1595, we happen to know positively (though only by the concur- rence of two accidents) that certain speeches, unquestionably written by Bacon, were delivered in a device presented by Essex : and I strongly suspect that two of the most interesting among his smaller pieces were drawn up for some similar performance in the year 1592. I mean those which are entitled * Mr. Bacon in Praise of Knowledge,' and ' Mr. Bacon's Discourse in Praise of his Sovereign.' t
* It is observable that the name Shakespeare on the fly-leaf of the Conference, though written some dozen times, is invariably spelt as it was printed on the title-pages of the plays, and not as he, or any of his family, in any known instance, wrote it during his lifetime. The family of Shakspere, Shakspeyr, Shakspurre, Shakespere, or Shaxpeare never could make up their minds how to spell their names. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that their friends never could decide for them. There are at least fourteen different spellings, of which Shaxpeare is the most frequent, and appears sixty-nine times in the Stratford records. It seems as if the author of the plays must have made some compact with the family, which prevented them from adopting, till long after Shakspere's death, the spelling of the pseudonym. The doctrine of chances, one would think, must have caused one or more to hit upon the printed variety in some signature or register. See, for excellent information on this matter, " The Shakespeare Myth" p. 170, etc. — Appleton Morgan.
f These were found among the papers submitted to Stephens by Lord Oxford, and printed by Locker in the supplement to his second collection in 1734. The MSS. are still to be seen in the British Museum, fair copies in an old hand, with the titles given above, but no further explanation.
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 119
"My reason for suspecting they were composed, for some masque, or show, or other fictitious occasion, is partly that the speech in praise of knowledge professes to have been spoken in a Conference of Pleasure, and the speech in praise of Elizabeth appears by the opening sentence to have been preceded by three others, one of which was in praise of knowledge."
The writer goes on to saythat he has little doubt about this device having been written by Bacon for performance on the Queen's day, though, unfortunately, no detailed account remains of the celebration of that day in 1592 ; we only know that it was " more solemnised than ever, and that through my Lord of Essex his device."* The reporter Nicholas Faunt, "being a strict Puritan, and having no taste for devices," adds no particulars, but an incidental expression in a letter from Henry Gosnold, a young lawyer in Gray's Inn, tells us that Francis was at this time attending the court : — " Mr. Fr. Bacon is, maulgre the court, your kind brother and mine especial friend."
The Praise of Knowledge, which sums up many of Bacon's most daring philosophical speculations, as to the revival, spread, and ultimate catholicity of learning, — the happy match which shall be made between the mind of man and the nature of things, and the ultimate " mingling of heaven and earth," — is printed in Spedding's Letters and Life of Bacon,^ and should be read and considered by all who care to understand what Dr. Rawley describes as certain " grounds and notions within himself," or as it is elsewhere said, " fixed and universal ideas " which came to him in his youth, and abode with him to the end of his life.
This speech is succeeded by the far longer Discourse in Praise of the Queen — " an oration which for spirit, eloquence, and sub- stantial worth may bear a comparison with the greatest pane- gyrical orations of modern times."J The biographer explains that, although this oration seems too long and elaborate to have been used as part of a court entertainment, yet it might have
* Nich. Faunt to A. Bacon, Nov. 20, 1592— Lambeth MSS. 648, 176.
1 1. 123—126.
X See the remarks in Spedding, Letters and Life, I. 143, on this piece. The editor shows its fitness for the occasion when it was delivered. Yet we are convinced that it had a second and still more important aim than that which at first sight appears. There was no need to answer an invec- tive against the Government, when Bacon ordered the printing and publi- cation of this speech to be done after his death.
120 FRANCIS BACON
been (and probably was) worked upon and enlarged afterwards, and that the circumstances under which it was delivered caused it to be received as something of much greater importance than a mere court compliment.
Probably no one who has read the life and works of Bacon is so foolish and unsympathetic as to believe that such a man, in exalting the theatre, writing for it, interesting others in its behalf, had no higher aim than to amuse himself and his friends, still less to profit by it, or even to make himself a name as a mere playwight.
Considering merely the position which he held as a man of letters and a philosopher, it is impossible to conceive that for such purposes he would have risked his reputation and prospects — running in the face of public opinion, which was strong against stage-playing, and risking the displeasure of most of the mem- bers of his own Puritan family, some of whom would surely hear reports of what he was doing.
In 1594 Anthony Bacon, that " dearest brother," " Antonie my comforte," had lately returned from Italy and had joined Francis in Gray's Inn ; but he did not stay there long. Soon afterwards, to the alarm and displeasure of his mother, Lady Anne, he removed from these lodgings to a house in Bishop's Gate Street, close to the Bull Inn. Here there was a theatre at which several of the Shakespeare plays were performed, and from this date the plays of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and " twenty more such names and men as these " pour on to the stage of this and other theatres. What share had Anthony in the writing and "producing " of these plays.
The Christmas revels in which the studens of Gray's Inn had formerly prided themselves were for some cause intermitted for three of four years. In the winter of 1594 they resolved to re- deem the time by producing " something out of the common way." As usual, Francis Bacon is called in to assist in "re- covering the lost honour of Gray's Inn." The result was a device, or elaborate burlesque, which turned Gray's Inn into a mimic court for which a Prince of Purpoole and a Master of the Revels were chosen, and the sports were to last for twelve days.
The Prince, with all his state, proceeded to the Great Hall of Gray's Inn on December 20th, and the entertainment was so gorgeous, so skilfully managed, and so hit off the tastes of the
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 121
times, that the players were encouraged to enlarge their plan, and to raise their style. They resolved, therefore (besides all this court pomp, and their daily sport amongst themselves), to have certain "grand nights," in which something special should be performed for the entertainment of strangers. But the excite- ment produced on the first grand night, and the throng, which was beyond everything which had been expected, crowded the hall so that the actors were driven from the stage. They had to retire, and when the tumult partly subsided, they were obliged, in default of " those very good inventions and conceits " which had been intended, to content themselves with dancing and revelling, and when that was over, with A Comedy of Errors, like to Plautus his Menazchmus, which was played by the players. As this was, according to Dr. Delius, the first allusion to the Comedy of Ei*rors — in other words, since this comedy was, for the first time, heard of and acted in Gray's Inn, at the revels of December, 1594 — we may well suppose that this play was the very " invention and conceit " arranged by Francis Bacon for the occasion, and that, whilst the dancing went on, he took the opportunity of getting things set straight which were disordered by the unexpected throng of guests, after which the comedy was " played by the players," according to the original plan. This was on December 28th.
The next night was taken up with a mock-legal inquiry into the causes of these disorders, and after this, (which was a broad parody upon the administration of justice by the Crown in Coun- cil), they held a grand consultation for the recovery of their lost honour, which ended in a resolution " that the Prince's Council should be reformed, and some graver conceits should have their places." Again Bacon is to the front, and it is a striking proof of the rapidity with which he was able to devise and accomplish any new thing, that in four or five days he had written and " produced " an entertainment which is described as " one of the most elegant that was ever presented to an audience of statesmen and courtiers." It was performed on Friday, January 3, 1595, and was called The Order of the Helmet. This entertainment (which is in many ways suggestive of the Masonic ceremonies) includes nineteen articles, which the knights of the order vowed to keep ; they are written in Bacon's playful, satirical style, and full from beginning to end of his ideas, theories, doctrines,
i
122 FRANCIS BACON
antitheta, allusions, and metaphors. To these follow seven speeches. The first, by the Prince of Purpoole, gives a sly hit at other princes, who, like Prince Hal, " conclude their own ends out of their own humours," and abuse the wisdom of their counsellors to set them in the right way to the wrong place. The prince gives his subjects free leave to set before us " to what port, as it were, the ship of our government should be bounden."
" The first counsellor," then evidently having Bacon's notes on the subject ready to hand,* delivers a speech, " advising the exercise of war ; " the second counsellor extols the study of philosophy. This counsellor is very well read in Shakespeare. He describes witches, whose power is in destruction, not in preservation,^ and advises the Prince not to be like them or like some comet or blazing star J which should threaten and portend nothing but death and dearth, combustions and troubles of the world. He begs him to be not as a lamp that shineth not to others, and yet seeth not itself, but as the eye of the world, that both carrieth and useth light. To this purpose he commends to him the collecting of a perfect library of books, ancient and modern, and of MSS. in all languages ; of a spacious, wonderful garden (botanic and zoological gardens in one), "built about with rooms to stable all rare beasts and to cage all rare birds," and with lakes, salt and fresh, " for like variety of fishes. And so you may have in small compass a model of universal nature made private." § Thirdly, he proposes " a goodly huge cabinet," a museum of all the rarities and treasures of nature and art, wherein shall be collected " whatsoever singularity chance and the shuffle of things hath produced." The fourth " monument " whi^h is to perpetuate the fame of the Prince is to be "so furnished with mills, instruments, furnaces, and vessels as may be a palace fit for a philosopher's stone." Laboratories for experimental science are here indicated ; they are, we see, the
* See Spedding — Military arts compatible with learning, III. 269 ; pro- moted by it, III. 307—314 ; when just, successful, IV. 28, 29 ; warlike disposition the strength of a nation, V. 81 ; injured by the sedentary arts, V. 84 ; healthful, X. 85 ; the history of war, proposed, as deficient,