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PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
  Tuesday, 01 September 2009
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Here I'll begin posting some research done by Barry Clarke, M.Sc. who has done much original research on the Shake-Speare authorship question.

The Tempest (1)

3.1 Preliminary

We examine the evidence supporting the current scholarly view that the main source for Shake-speare's The Tempest was a letter known as the True Reportory (TR) sent back from the newly established Virginia colony in 1610, about a year before the play's first known performance. It appears that this letter was restricted (Section 3.3) and that the actor William Shakespeare could not have had access to it, a thesis that scholars have not hitherto examined. Section 3.4 is dedicated to dating The Tempest and we find a new topical allusion that assists in dating the play to after 1610. This argues against the Earl of Oxford being the play's author since he died six years earlier. A propagandist version of the TR, known as the True Declaration (TD), was registered by the Virginia Company in November 1610. In support of its author being Sir Francis Bacon, we present a table of metaphorical parallels (Section 3.5) between the TD and Bacon's work, and show where these also correspond to the Shake-speare work.

3.2 New Virginia Colony
In 1606, the newly inaugurated Virginia Company published a Charter with the design of financing and promoting the inhabitation of the new Virginia colony in America. Eight names appear on the document who bought shares at £12 10s (£12.50) each. The Virginia Company's three ships set sail in December 1606, with 144 men and boys, and on 13 May 1607, the first settlers built a three-sided fort on the banks of the James at Jamestown Island. The early settlers attempted to make the venture profitable by producing glass, pitch, potash and tar, on the promise of land ownership after seven year service. Unfortunately, it was cheaper to buy them elsewhere.

On 23 May 1609, the Second Virginia Charter was issued signed by King James with the attached names of 52 Council members charged with governing the colony from London. Sir Francis Bacon, whom King James had promoted to Solicitor-General only two years earlier, was one of them but William Shakespeare was not.

An expedition of nine ships carrying some 600 passengers set sail from Plymouth to reinforce the colony on Friday evening 10 May 1609. On 23 July, while off Bermuda, one of the ships, the Sea Venture, carrying both the intended Deputy Governor, Sir Thomas Gates, and the Secretary, William Strachey, hit a severe storm which damaged their vessel. After furiously bailing out water for three days and four nights, the ship became wedged between two rocks off Bermuda and all 150 passengers astonishingly reached dry land. The rest of the fleet made it to Virginia only to encounter disease, starvation, and the inhospitable natives. Meanwhile, at Bermuda, despite several attempts at mutiny, the survivors built two small vessels from the remains of the Sea Venture, and on 10 May 1610 they continued to Jamestown. On reaching the colony on 23 May, they found that most of the emigrants had died of starvation the previous winter. The native Indians had prevented the settlers from hunting, fishing or gathering wood, and had eliminated those who ventured outside the fort to do so. So on 7 June, with food in short supply, the colonists abandoned the post for Newfoundland with the intention of returning home on the English fishing fleet but, after fortuitously rendezvousing with Sir Thomas West's (Lord De La Warre) approaching supply ships, they elected to re-inhabit the colony. Nevertheless, many were discouraged and later returned to England.

In the Shake-speare play The Tempest, which received its first known performance on 1 November 1611 at Whitehall, a fleet bound for Naples hits a storm and the ship carrying Alonso, King of Naples, becomes separated from the rest of the fleet who assume that Alonso has succumbed:

Ariel: "…and for the rest o' th' Fleet
(Which I dispers'd), they all have met again,
And are upon the Mediterranean Flote
Bound sadly home for Naples,
Supposing that they saw the King's ship wrackt,
And his great person perish".
(1610-11 The Tempest, 1.2.232-6)
14 years ago
·
#2966
The Tempest, (2)

3.3 True Reportory Secrecy

On 15 July 1610, having being relieved by Lord De La Warre, Gates left the colony and in September 1610 arrived back in England. In his possession was a 20,000-word report written by William Strachey, addressed to a noble lady connected with the Virginia Council, revealing the murders and insurrections in the new colony.

It was Henry Howard Furness (1892) who first noticed descriptive correspondences between this letter (TR) and passages in The Tempest suggesting that the letter had been used by Shake-speare as a source for the play. However, the letter was not published by the Virginia Council and was only discovered when Richard Hakluyt, one of the eight names on the First Virginia Charter (1606), died in 1616 and a copy was found among his papers. It was subsequently acquired by Samuel Purchas who published it in 1625 under the title A true reportory of the wracke, and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates Knight; vpon, and from the Ilands of the Bermudas: his comming to Virginia, and the estate of that Colonie then, and after, vnder the gouernment of the Lord La Warre, Iuly 15. 1610. written by William Strachey, Esquire. Appended to it was a selection of extracts from A True Declaration of the state of the Colony in Virginia with a confutation of such scandalous reports as have tended to the disgrace of so worthy an enterprise, a shorter and more sanitized version of events on the colony prior to July 1610, which had been entered in the Stationers Register by the Virginia Company on 8 November 1610.

Silvester Jourdain, who had been aboard the Sea Venture when it ran aground off Bermuda, also published his own account of the storm in A Discovery of the Bermudas, Otherwise Called the Isle of Devils which appeared on 3 October 1610 and ran to about 12 pages. There is also a short letter which also sourced the TD, signed by Lord De La Warre and dated 7 July 1610 which was sent from Jamestown to the Virginia Council in London.

We now consider the evidence that the TR travelled back to England with Sir Thomas Gates on 15 July 1610.

Our first observation is that Strachey appears to have been writing the letter as events unfolded:

“Here (worthy Lady) let mee haue a little your pardon, for hauing now a better heart, then when I first landed, I will briefely describe vnto you, the situation and forme of our Fort.”

The last event that it discusses is Sir Thomas Gates' departure for England accompanied by the native chief's son Kainta:

“And the fifteenth day of Iuly, in the Blessing, Captaine Adams brought them to Point Comfort, where at that time (as well to take his leaue of the Lieutenant Generall Sir Thomas Gates, now bound for England, as to dispatch the ships) the Lord Gouernour and Captaine Generall [both Lord De La Warre's titles] had pitched his Tent in Algernoone Fort. The Kings Sonne Kainta the Lord Gouernour and Captaine Generall, hath sent now into England, vntil the ships arriue here againe the next Spring.”

In other words, following instructions from England to kidnap native children, Lord De La Warre had sent the native chief's son Kainta to England. If the TR had missed this voyage, then the next opportunity for it to travel to England was in eight months time. When Gates left Jamestown, Strachey stayed behind and if the letter had stayed with him one might expect events after Gates' farewell to receive attention in the TR but they do not.
14 years ago
·
#2967
The Tempest, (3)

3.3 True Reportory Secrecy cont.

Gates had evidently been informed by De La Warre that he was required to report to the Virginia Council back in England.

According to Jourdain: “They [the Council] resolued to send for Sir Thomas Gates, who being come, they adiured him to deale plainely with them, and to make a true relation of those things which were presently to be had, or hereafter to be hoped for in Virginia”.

The TR, as its full title suggests, was a report about “Sir Thomas Gates Knight”, so the probability lies with William Strachey having prepared the report specifically for Gates' presentation to the Council.

The TD (registered 8 November 1610) states that it was intended to confute “such scandalous reports as have tended to the disgrace of so worthy an enterprise” and was intended to “wash away those spots, which foul mouths (to justify their own disloyalty) have cast upon so fruitful, so fertile, and so excellent a country”. In order to reassure potential settlers and investors who might have met with the unfavourable accounts of those accompanying Sir Thomas Gates back to England, it appears to re-frame certain events given in the TR. It opens by declaring its material to have been borrowed from the “secrets of the judicial council of Virginia, from the letters of the Lord La Ware, [and] from the mouth of Sir Thomas Gates”. Either the TR provided material for the TD or vice versa. For example, regarding the secret trading between certain mariners and the natives, the TR informs us:

“And I may truely say beside, so had our men abased, and to such a contempt, had they brought the value of our Copper, that a peece which would haue bought a bushell of their Corne in former time, would not now buy a little Cade or Basket of a Pottle”.

whereas the TD gives:

“whereby the Virginians [natives] were glutted with our trifles and enhanced the prices for their corn and victual. That Copper which before would have prouided a bushel, would not now obtaine so much as a Pottle”.

There is a passage that appears in both the TR and TD without mention in either De La Warre's letter or Jourdain's publication. Discussing the detriment to health of being situated on low marsh ground by a river rather than on a hill, the TR states:

“and some experience we haue to perswade our selues that it may be so; for of foure hundred and odde men, which were seated at the Fals the last yeere when the Fleete came in with fresh and yong able spirits, vnder the gouernment of Captain Francis West, and of one hundred to the Seawards (on the South side of our Riuer), in the Country of the Nansamundes, vnder the charge of Captaine Iohn Martin, there did not so much as one man miscarry, and but very few or none fall sicke, whereas at Iames Towne, the same time, and the same moneths, one hundred sickened, & halfe the number died”.

This story is repeated in the TD:

“we have an infallible proof of the temper of the country, for of an hundred and odd which were seated at the Falls under the government of Captain Francis West, and of an hundred to the seaward on the south side of the river, (in the country of Nansemonds) under the charge of Captain John Martin, of all these two hundred there did not so much as one man miscarry. When in Jamestown at the same time and in the same months, one hundred sickened, and half the number died”.
14 years ago
·
#2968
The Tempest, (4)

3.3 True Reportory Secrecy cont.

The causal evidence that the TD followed the TR as a reinterpretation is as follows. The TD claims:

“Our mutinous loiterers would not sow with providence … An incredible example of their idleness is the report of Sir Thomas Gates, who affirmeth that after coming thither he hath seen some of them eat their fish raw rather than they would go a stone’s cast to fetch wood and dress it”.

If the author of the TD had relied on the TR then he would have been aware that:

“Viewing the Fort, we found the Pallisadoes torne downe, the Ports open, the Gates from off the hinges, and emptie houses (which Owners death had taken from them) rent vp and burnt, rather then the dwellers would step into the Woods a stones cast off from them, to fetch other fire-wood: and it is true, the Indian killed as fast without, if our men stirred but beyond the bounds of their Blockhouse, as Famine and Pestilence did within”.

The common use of “stone's cast”, which appears neither in De La Warre nor Jourdain, suggests that he had. He would also have been aware from the TR that when the men gathered strawberries or fetched fresh water, the Indians:

“would assault and charge with their bows and arrows, in which manner they killed many of our men”.

Nevertheless, the author of the TD blames the settlers:

“They created the Indians our implacable enemies by some violence they had offered”.

The TD reports the slaughter of some 30 settlers and although admitting that “they were cruelly murdered and massacred” it is framed as the response of a provoked tribe of Indians who were “boiling with desire of revenge”. To account for why the settlers caught no fish before Gates' arrival from Bermuda the TR reports (without judgment) the absence of nets:

“nor was there at the Fort, as they whom we found related vnto vs, any meanes to take fish, neither sufficient Seine, nor other conuenient Net, and yet if there had, there was not one eye of Sturgeon yet come into the Riuer”.

This passage is almost identical to one sent in the De La Warre letter to the Virginia Council in England, dated 7 July 1610. The TR also informs us:

“Besides that the Indian thus euill intreated vs, the Riuer (which were wont before this time of the yeare to be plentifull of Sturgeon) had not now a Fish to be seene in it, and albeit we laboured, and hold our Net twenty times day and night, yet we tooke not so much as would content halfe the Fishermen”.

It is unclear whether or not the first eight words are introducing the next evil that the Indians had performed or are referring to the previous one, but if it is the former then the TR is suggesting that the Indians had taken all the fish from the river. Being loathe to dissuade potential investors by portraying the natives as a threat, the TD again blames the settlers:

there is great store of Fish in the Riuer, especially of Sturgeon; but our men prouided no more of them then for present necessitie, not barreling vp any store against that season the Sturgeon returned to the Sea. And not to dissemble their folly, they suffered fourteene nets (which was all they had) to rot and spoyle, which by orderly drying and mending might haue beene preserued: but being lost, all helpe of fishing perished”.

These “fourteene nets” are mentioned neither in Strachey's letter nor in De La Warre's.

The TD now ventures into fantasy by implying that the sturgeon are in such good supply as to be a profitable commodity:

“The merchant knows that ... sturgeon, which is brought from the east countries, can come but twice a year, and that not before the end of April or the beginning of May, which many times, in regard of the heat of those months, is tainted in the transportation, when from Virginia they may be brought to us in four and twenty days, and in all the cold seasons of the Year”.
14 years ago
·
#2969
The Tempest, (5)

3.3 True Reportory Secrecy - cont.

The TR reports Gates finally reaching Jamestown from Bermuda:

“it pleased our governor to make a speech unto the company … if he should not find it possible and easy to supply them with something from the country by the endeavours of his able men, he would make ready and transport them all into their native country … at which there was a …shout of joy”.

As we have learned, on 7 June 1610 the men actually abandoned the colony, and it was only Lord La Warre's approaching supply ships that encouraged them to turn back. Word of this PR disaster almost certainly got back to England and the TD cheerfully asks “Why those that were (eye witnesses) of the former supposed miseries do voluntarily return with joy and comfort?” One wonders if they did.

In The Cultural Life of the American Colonies, Louis Booker Wright states that the TR:

gives a discouraging picture of Jamestown, but it is significant that it had to wait fifteen years to see print, for the Virginia Company just at that time was subsidizing preachers and others to give glowing descriptions of Virginia and its prospects”.

Suffice it to say that if, in publishing the TD, the Virginia Council were so keen to attribute blame to the settlers, exaggerate the available resources, and reward preachers for spreading their propaganda, then they would have almost certainly kept the TR restricted. Item 27 of the governing Council’s instructions to Sir Thomas Gates before he set out for the colony supports this view:

You must take especial care what relacions [accounts] come into England and what lettres are written and that all thinges of that nature may be boxed up and sealed and sent to first of [sic] the Council here, …and that at the arrivall and retourne of every shippinge you endeavour to knowe all the particular passages and informacions given on both sides and to advise us accordingly”.

However, aware that the TR sourced The Tempest and being keen to uphold the candidacy of the actor William Shakespeare, The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare maintains that the TR was “circulated in manuscript” without mention of any restriction. Even though there is no evidence that Shakspere of Stratford ever met William Strachey, in the Arden Shakespeare edition of The Tempest, Kermode ventures to speculate that:

“there seems to have been an opportunity for Shakespeare to see the unpublished report, or even to have met Strachey”.

One is left with the impression that some benevolent Council member who had already risked his own investment in the colony, was happy to present a copy of the TR to his non-Council member friend William Shakespeare of the King's Men whose business was unashamedly public. If this had occurred it would have been the Virginia Company's worst nightmare, yet the absurdity of the proposition does not prevent it from being repeatedly and uncritically propagated in “scholarly” books.
14 years ago
·
#2970
The Tempest, (6)

3.4 Dating The Tempest

The Oxfordian researchers Kositsky and Stritmatter, seeing the problem that a 1610 dating of The Tempest would pose for the Earl of Oxford's authorship candidacy (he died in 1604), have objected to the view that Strachey's letter reached England with Sir Thomas Gates in September 1610 in time to source the play. Their argument is partly based on a letter dated 14 December 1610 from the Virginia Company secretary and prominent Council member Richard Martin to William Strachey in Virginia. Martin requests that:

“you would be pleased by the return of this ship [Hercules] to let me understand from you the nature & quality of the soil, & how it is like to serve you without help from hence, the manners of the people, how the Barbarians are content with your being there, but especially how our own people do brook their obedience how they endure labor, whether willingly or upon constraint, how they live in the exercise of religion, whether out of conscience or for fashion, and generally what ease you have in the government there”.

These points are covered in Strachey's letter and Martin would surely have seen it if it had arrived before December. The argument runs that the fact he is asking these questions means that it had not arrived by this date. The counter to this is that, as we have seen, the TD (registered 8 November 1610 by the Virginia Council) reports that Sir Thomas Gates was sent for by the Council, and Richard Martin would almost certainly have been privy to his report (which I suggest was the TR), would have had an opportunity to interrogate Gates, and had ample opportunity to have all his questions answered, not only by Gates by also by others who had returned. The implication is that Martin's questions to Strachey do not relate to information about the colony during Gates' tenure because he had already acquired this information and, given the uncertainty in Jamestown prior to 15 July 1610, he was instead requesting an update on the state of government there after Gates left Virginia and William Strachey behind.

Kermode [The Tempest, Arden Shakespeare (London, Methuen: 1958), pp.xxxii-xxxiii] and Bullough [Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Vol. 8, (1975), pp.334-9] have suggested that the TR is not necessarily a source for The Tempest since almost any account of a shipwreck prior to 1610 contains similar material. For example, at the start of The Tempest we have the following:

Boteswaine: Downe with the top-Maste…
(1610-11 The Tempest, 1.1.31)

The TR gives:
“we … had now purposed to have cut down the Maine Mast the more to lighten her”.

However, this could just as well have come from Erasmus’s Naufragium/The Shipwreck (1523):
“When he so said, he commanded al the ropes to be cut, and the Mainemaste to be sawen down close by the boxe”.
14 years ago
·
#2971
The Tempest, (7)

3.4 Dating The Tempest cont.

When the spirit Ariel reports to his master Prospero:

Ariel: I boorded the King’s ship: now on the Beake, Now in the Waste,
the Decke, in euery Cabyn, I flam’d amazement, sometime I’d diuide and
burne in many places; on the Top-mast, The Yardes and Bore-Spritt,
would I flame distinctly, Then meete and ioyne …
(1610-11 The Tempest, 1.2.196-201)

we are reminded of the following section in the TR:

“Sir George Somers … had an apparition of a little round light, like a faint star, trembling, and streaming along with a sparkling blaze, half the height upon the Maine Mast, and shooting sometimes from shroud to shroud, tempting to settle as it were upon any of the four Shrouds … The superstitious seamen make many constructions of this sea fire”.

We note that Eden’s The Decades of the New Worlde Or West India (1555) might also have been its inspiration:

“For there appeared in theyr shyppes certeyne flames of fyre burnynge very cleare, which they caul Saynt Helen and Saynt Nicholas. These appeared as thoughe they had byn uppon the masts of the shyppes, in such clearnesse that they tooke away theyr sight … I have here thought good to saye sumewhat of these straunge fyers which sum ignorant folks thynke to bee spirites or such other phantasies wheras they are but natural thunges proceadynge of naturall causes … Of the kynde of trewe fyer, is the fyer baul or starre commonly called Saynt Helen which is sumetyme seene abowte the mastes of shyppes … and is a token of drowning”.

While there might be alternative shipwreck sources to the TR, there are also non-shipwreck parallels between the TR and The Tempest connected with events on Bermuda and at Jamestown. Some of these are listed below.

Strachey Letter
Berries, whereof our men seething, straining, and letting stand some three or four days, made a kind of pleasant drink” (p.18)

The Tempest
Caliban is reminiscing about how kind Prospero had been to him.
Caliban: ” … would’st giue me water with berries in’t …” (1.2.333-4)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Strachey Letter
Animals mentioned are “Toade” (p.23), “black beetle” (p.23), “owls, and bats in great store” (p.30)

The Tempest
Caliban: “… Toades, Beetles, Battes light on you …” (1.2.340)
Ariel (singing): “ … There I cowch when Owles do crie, On the battes back I doe fly…” (5.1.90-1)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
14 years ago
·
#2972
The Tempest, (8)

3.4 Dating The Tempest cont.

Strachey Letter
Some rebels “by a mutual consent forsook their labour . . . and like outlawes betook them to the wild woods” after which they demanded “two suits of apparel” each from the Governor (pp.49, 50).

The Tempest
Ariel leads Stephano, Trinculo and Caliban to Prospero to trick them into stealing clothes
Ariel: “ … they my lowing follow’d, through Tooth’d briars, sharp furzes, prickin gosse, & thorns
Prospero “…The trumpery in my house goe bring it hither …”
Enter Ariel laden with glistering Apparell (4.1.179-80,186,193)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Strachey Letter
The Governor uncovered an insurrection “before the time was ripe for the execution thereof” following which “every man thenceforth commanded to wear his weapon . . . and every man advised to stand upon his guard” (p.47).

The Tempest
Sebastian and Antonio’s plot against the King is discovered.
Gonzalo: “ … I saw their weapons drawne: there was a noyse, That’s verily: ‘tis best we stand upon our guard; Or that we quit this place; let’s draw our weapons”. (2.1.318-20)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Strachey Letter
One of the plotters “was brought forth in manacles” (p.45)

The Tempest
Prospero (to Ferdinand): “ …I’ll manacle thy neck and feet together” (1.2.461)
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Strachey Letter
The Spaniard “Gonzalus Ferdinandus Oviedus,” who first described the Bermudas is mentioned (p.18).

The Tempest
Two of the characters in The Tempest are Gonzalo and Ferdinand.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Strachey Letter
At first Gates, refusing to respond in like manner to the barbarous native Indians, “…would not by any meanes be wrought to a violent proceeding against them, for all the practices of villainy, with which they daily endangered our men, thinking it possible, by a more tractable course, to win them to a better condition: but nowhe well perceived, how little a faire and noble intreaty workes upon a barbarous disposition, and therefore in some measure purposed to be revenged” (p.88)

The Tempest
Prospero’s hardening of attitude towards Caliban, after Caliban has attempted to rape Miranda, mirrors the Governor’s change towards the natives.
Miranda: “ … I pitied thee, Took paines to make thee speake, taught thee each hour, One thing or another: when thou didst not (Savage) Know thine own meaning … But thy wild race (Tho thou didst learn) had that in’t, Which good natures Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou Deservedly confin’d into this Rocke …(1.2.353-61)
14 years ago
·
#2973
The Tempest, (9)

3.4 Dating The Tempest cont.

Another point that must not be neglected is that the first known performance of The Tempest was before King James. Since the King had a strong commitment to the Virginia Colony any allusions to it in the play would have ensured his attention when he attended the 1611 performance at Whitehall. To illustrate this point about topical allusions, there was a rumour circulating King James’s court in December 1609, that Arabella Stuart, a first cousin of the King’s and a member of the Queen’s household, was secretly planning to wed Stephano Janiculo, a man of dubious character who was posing as the Prince of Moldavia. Two years later, The Tempest was performed before King James with two characters Stephano and Trinculo who form a double-act as servants to Alonso, the King of Naples. Joined together, these two names exhibit a remarkable similarity to Stephano Janiculo. One dramatist who certainly made use of the incident was Ben Jonson:

“... the Prince of Moldovia, and of his mistris, mistris Epicoene”.
(1610 Epicoene, 5.1)

There are several circumstances that conspire to make this a reasonable Shake-speare allusion. Stephano evidently sees himself as an aristocrat:

Stephano: “Monster, I will kill this man [Prospero]: his daughter and I will be king and queen ...” (3.2.102-3)

Caliban addresses Stephano as such with “Prithee, my King, be quiet” (4.1.214), and Prospero engages Stephano with:

Prospero: “You'ld be King o' the isle, sirrah”?
Stephano: “I should have been a sore one, then”. (5.1.287-8)

It is clear that Trinculo believes that Stephano does not deserve such a title:

Trinculo: “... They say there's but five upon this island: we are three of them; if th'other two be brained like us, the state totters”. (3.2.5-6)

Like Stephano Janiculo, Stephano has awarded himself an aristocratic title above his rank. The connection between Stephano Janiculo and Stephano and Trinculo might only register with an audience if the two names were mentioned in dialogue together and this actually occurs:

Trinculo: “Stephano! If thou beest Stephano, touch me, and speak to me; for I am Trinculo ...” (2.2.93-5)
14 years ago
·
#2974
The Tempest, (10)

3.4 Dating The Tempest cont.

This apparent topical allusion in The Tempest has not, to my knowledge, been pointed out hitherto. Within the space of two years we have this possible allusion (Stephano Janiculo), Strachey's TR letter, and the first known performance of The Tempest, so this weighs in favour of a 1610-11 dating.

With the letter arriving in England in September 1610, there was ample time to write a play. The first known performance was at Court on Hallowmas night, 1 November 1611, by the King’s Men, although it is unlikely that William Shakespeare was still acting with them at this time — he appeared with the King’s Men in neither The Foxe (1605), The Alchemist (1610), nor Cataline (1611). After The Comedy of Errors, The Tempest is the shortest of the Shake-speare plays, and since theatre plays were usually two hours long, it was an unsuitable length for these outdoor arenas.

The Goddess Ceres' promise of a life untouched by winter appears both in the masque in Act 4 of The Tempest and the St Valentine’s Day (14 February 1613) wedding of Princess Elizabeth and it has been suggested that on this basis The Tempest was performed there. Sir William Dugdale reports that Inns of Court actors were present at these festivities:

“In the 10th [year] of king James, the gentlemen of this house [Gray’s Inn] were (together with those of the other innes of court) actors in that great mask at Whitehall at the marriage of the king’s eldest daughter unto Frederick count palatine of the Rhene …”

This “great mask” involved horses, chariots, and an impressive light show all set on Thames barges, and Sir Francis Bacon produced it. We shall now examine the thesis that the TD was written by Sir Francis Bacon and we list some metaphorical parallels between the TD, Bacon's work, and the Shake-speare work.
14 years ago
·
#2975
The Tempest, (11)

3.5 Dating The True Declaration (TD)

William Strachey went on to write The History of Travel into Virginia Britannica, a book that avoided duplicating the details of the TR. First published in 1849 and edited by R.H. Major, three manuscript copies survive dedicated to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland; Sir William Apsley, Purveyor of his Majesty’s Navy Royal; and Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor. In the dedication to Bacon, which must have been composed after 1618, Strachey writes:

“Your Lordship ever approving himself a most noble fautor [supporter] of the Virginia Plantation, being from the beginning (with other lords and earls) of the principal counsel applied to propagate and guide it;”

This gives Bacon a prominent position on the Council. Hotson in his I, William Shakespeare Do Appoint Thomas Russell,Esquire (1937) has conjectured that Sir Dudley Digges, brother of Leonard Digges (who penned a eulogy for Shakespeare's First Folio), wrote the TD. However, we shall claim here that there is far more evidence for Sir Francis Bacon's hand. He certainly had an interest in the New World. In 1610, he was a founder member of the Newfoundland Fisheries Company and in 1618 was admitted a brother of the East India Company.

It is clear from the use of “I” that the TD has a single author:

“Now, I demand whether Sicilia, or Sardinia (sometimes the Barnes of Rome) could hope for increase without manuring”?

It also reveals that its author was privy to Sir Thomas Gates' report to the Council:

“An incredible example of their idlenesse, is the report of Sir Thomas Gates, who affirmeth, that after his first comming thither, he hath seene some of them eat their fish raw, rather then they would goe a stones cast to fetch wood and dresse it”.
14 years ago
·
#2976
The Tempest, (12)

3.5 Dating The True Declaration (TD)

We now compare an extract from the TD with one from Sir Francis Bacon's Advancement of Learning where we find a succession of quoted classical sources, a statement as to what each source observed, concluding with a Latin dictum. First, we examine an extract from the TD:

“The emulation of Casar and Pompey watered the plains of Pharsaly with blood and distracted the sinews of the Roman monarchy. The dissensions of the three besieged captains betrayed the city of Jerusalem to Vespasian. How much more easily might ambitious discord tear in pieces an infant colony, where no eminent and respected magistrates had authority to punish presumptuous disobedience? Tacitus has observed that when Nero sent his old trained soldiers to Tarantum and Autium, (but without their old captains and centurians) that they rather made a number than a Colony: every soldier secretly glided into some neighbor province and forsook their appointed places, which hatched this consequent mischief. The cities were uninhabited, and the emperor was frustrated. When therefore license, sedition, and fury are the fruits of a heady, daring, and unruly multitude, it is no wonder that so many in our colony perished; it is a wonder that all were not devoured. Omnis inordinatus animus sibi ipsi fit pana; every inordinate soul becomes his own punishment.”

Now compare this with a piece from Bacon's Advancement of Learning:

“So we may see in a letter of Cicero to Atticus, that Augustus Caesar, in his very entrance into affairs, when he was a darling of the senate, yet in his harangues to the people would swear, Ita parentis honores consequi liceat [in the hope of attaining his father's honours] (which was no less than the tyranny), save that, to help it, he would stretch forth his hand towards a statue of Caesar's that was erected in the place: and men laughed and wondered, and said, "Is it possible?" or, "Did you ever hear the like?" and yet thought he meant no hurt; he did it so handsomely and ingenuously. And all these were prosperous: whereas Pompey, who tended to the same ends, but in a more dark and dissembling manner as Tacitus saith of him, Occultior non melior [a more reserved but not a better character] wherein Sallust concurreth, Ore probo, animo inverecundo [of honest tongue and shameless mind] made it his design, by infinite secret engines, to cast the state into an absolute anarchy and confusion, that the state might cast itself into his arms for necessity and protection, and so the sovereign power be put upon him, and he never seen in it: and when he had brought it (as he thought) to that point when he was chosen consul alone, as never any was, yet he could make no great matter of it, because men understood him not; but was fain in the end to go the beaten track of getting arms into his hands, by colour of the doubt of Caesar's designs: so tedious, casual, and unfortunate are these deep dissimulations: whereof it seemeth Tacitus made this judgment, that they were a cunning of an inferior form in regard of true policy; attributing the one to Augustus, the other to Tiberius; where, speaking of Livia, he saith, Et cum artibus mariti simulatione filii bene compostia: [she was a match for the diplomacy of her husband and the dissimulation of her son] for surely the continual habit of dissimulation is but a weak and sluggish cunning, and not greatly politic.”

Aside from a common recourse to Tacitus, one of Bacon's favourite authors, there is the use of unlikely single, double, and triple collocations. We have the unusual “presumptuous disobedience” against “sluggish cunning”; “eminent and respected magistrates” against “dark and dissembling manner”; and “a heady, daring, and unruly multitude” against “so tedious, casual, and unfortunate are these deep dissimulations”.
14 years ago
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#2977
The Tempest, (13)

3.5 Dating The True Declaration (TD) cont.

Our second method of comparison takes the form of a table of various combinations of metaphorical parallels between (1) the TD, (2) Bacon's work and (3) the Shake-speare work.

— Fountain of thought —
(1) The next Fountaine of woes was secure negligence
(2) but to drink indeed of the true fountains of learning (Advancement of Learning, p.121)
(3) Thersites: Would the fountain of your mind were clear again,
that I might water an ass at it!
(1602-3 Troilus and Cressida, 3.3.305-6)

— Stream and strive —
(1) For if the country be barren or the situation contagious as famine and sickness destroy our nation, we strive against the stream of reason and make ourselves the subjects of scorn and derision.
(2) whereby divinity hath been reduced into an art, as into a cistern, and the streams of doctrine or positions fetched and derived from thence. (Advancement of Learning, p.293)
(3) Timon: ... Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth,
That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive,
And drown themselves in riot!
(1604-7 Timon of Athens, 4.1.26-8)
Lysander: ... scorn and derision never come in tears.
(1594-5 A Midsummer Night's Dream, 3.2.123)

— Sinews of power —
(1) The emulation of Caesar and Pompey watered the plains of Pharsaly with blood and distracted the sinews of the Roman monarchy.
(2) We will begin, therefore, with this precept, according to the ancient opinion, that the sinews of wisdom are slowness of belief and distrust.
(Advancement of Learning, p.273)
(3) Henry V. ... Now are we well resolved; and, by God's help,
And yours, the noble sinews of our power,
France being ours, we'll bend it to our awe,
Or break it all to pieces:
(1599 Henry V, 1.2.222-5)


— Distance between views —
(1) There is a great distance betwixt the vulgar opinion of men and the judicious apprehension of wise men.
(2) And if it come so to pass, in that distance of judgment, which is between man and man ... (Of Unity in Religion, p.346)
14 years ago
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#2978
The Tempest, (14)

3.5 Dating The True Declaration (TD) cont.

More metaphorical parallels between (1) the TD, (2) Bacon's work and (3) the Shake-speare work.

— Black envy and pale fear —
(1) Black envy and pale fear, being not able to produce any arguments why that should be lawful for France, which is in us unlawful
(3a) Buckingham: ... There cannot be those numberless offences
'Gainst me, that I cannot take peace with:
no black envy Shall mark my grave.
(1613 Henry VIII, 2.1.84-5)
(3b) And then in key-cold Lucrece' bleeding stream
He falls, and bathes the pale fear in his face,
(1594 The Rape of Lucrece, Stanza 254, 1774-5)

— Tempest of emotion —
(1) by the tempest of Dissention: euery man ouervaluing his owne worth, would be a Commander: euery man vnderprizing anothers value, denied to be commanded.
(2) But men, if they be in their own power, and do bear and sustain themselves, and be not carried away with a whirlwind or tempest of ambition (Advancement of Learning, p.285)
(3) Tamora: Come, come, sweet emperor; come, Andronicus;
Take up this good old man, and cheer the heart
That dies in tempest of thy angry frown.
(1590-1 Titus Andronicus, 1.1.456-8)

— Scum of men —
(1) that scumme of men that fayling in their Piracie
(2) It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people ...
to be the people with whom you plant (Of Plantations, p.407)
(3) Sir Humphrey Stafford: Rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of
Kent
, Mark'd for the gallows, lay your weapons down;
(1590-1 King Henry VI, Pt 2, 4.2.117-8)

— Golden sleep and sauce —
(1) It is but a golden slumber that dreams of any human felicity which is not sauced with some contingent misery.
(2) golden sleepe (Promus folio 112r)
(3a) First Gentleman: ... But I much marvel that your lordship, having
Rich tire about you, should at these early hours
Shake off the golden slumber of repose.
(1608-9 Pericles, 3.2.21-3)
(3b) Marcius: ... You shout me forth
In acclamations hyperbolical;
As if I loved my little should be dieted
In praises sauced with lies.
(1608 Coriolanus, 1.9.50-3)
14 years ago
·
#2979
The Tempest, (15)

3.5 Dating The True Declaration (TD) cont.

We can also present several metaphorical parallels between Bacon's work and The Tempest. So now we have: (2) Bacon's work and (3) the Shake-speare work. (These have been posted here elsewhere some time ago but they need to be included here too so as to round out the evidence in this topic.)

— Print of goodness —
(2) living or dying, the print of the goodness of King James may be in my heart (1624 Letter to King James)
(3) Miranda: Abhorred Slave
Which any print of goodnesse wilt not take,
Being capable of all ill: …
(1610-11 The Tempest, 1.2.351-3)

— Throat-bags from drinking —
(2) Snow water is held unwholesome; inasmuch as the people that dwell at the foot of the snow mountains, or otherwise upon ascent (especially the women) by drinking snow water have great bags under their throat. Natural History
(3) Gonzalo: ... When we were boys,
Who would believe that there were mountaineers,
Dewlapp'd(a) like bulls, whose throats had hanging at 'em,
Wallets of flesh
?
(1610-11 The Tempest, 3.3.43-6)
Key: (a) folds of skin

— Suits and overtopping —
(2a) To grant all suits were to undo yourself or your people; to deny all suits were to see never a contented face; as your Majesty hath of late won hearts by depressing, you should in this lose no hearts by advancing. (1620 Letter from Bacon to King)
(2b) There is use also of ambitious men, in pulling down the greatness of any subject that overtops; (Essay of Ambition, p.415)
(3) Prospero. Being once perfected how to grant suits,
How to deny them, who t'advance, and who
To trash for overtopping

(1610-11 The Tempest, 1.2.79-81)

— Winding ivy —
(2) It was ordained that this winding ivy of a Plantagenet should kill the tree itself. (History of Henry VII)
(3) Prospero. ... that now he was
The ivy which had hid my princely trunk,
And suck'd all verdure out on't.
(1610-11 The Tempest, 1.2.85-7)
14 years ago
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#2980
The Tempest, (16)

3.5 Dating The True Declaration (TD) cont.

Our final parallel is one between The Tempest and Bacon's History of Henry VII which was first pointed out by Edmund Malone and subsequently discussed by Cockburn. From a young age, a Flemish citizen by the name of Perkin Warbeck (1474-99) had been trained by Margaret, duchess dowager of Burgundy and Edward IV of England's sister, to play the part of Richard of Shrewsbury, who was the 1st Duke of York and the younger son of Edward IV. It seems that the real Duke had earlier been murdered in the Tower. In his History of Henry VII, Sir Francis Bacon relates that:

“[Warbeck] did in all things notably acquit himself; insomuch as it was
generally believed, as well as amongst great persons as amongst the
vulgar, that he was indeed Duke Richard. Nay, himself with long and
continual counterfeiting and with oft telling a lie, he was turned by habit
almost into the thing he seemed to be; and from a liar to a believer
.”

In The Tempest, Prospero tells Miranda about his brother the Duke of Milan:

Prospero: Like one
Who having into truth by telling of it,
Made such a sinner of his memory,
To credit his own lie, he did believe
He was indeed the duke; out o' th' substitution,
And executing the outward face of royalty,
With all prerogative;
(1610-11 The Tempest, 1.2.99-105)

The New Cambridge Shakespeare suggests that this piece is suffused with counterfeit-coining metaphors. The word “into” is to be read as “minted”, “telling” (a teller's occupation) becomes “counting it over”, “credit his own lie” is a financial metaphor, “out o' th' substitution” has the interpretation of “replacing with baser metal”, and “executing the outward face of royalty” refers to “stamping the head of the coin”. In the History of Henry VII, Bacon informs us that Sir William Warham, doctor of canon law, was sent to Flanders to argue for the censure of Perkins. Warham made the following speech:

“Now this country of all others should be the stage where a base [metal]
counterfeit should play the part of a King of England; not only to his
grace's disquiet and dishonour, but to the scorn and reproach of all
sovereign princes. To counterfeit the dead image of a King in his coin is
an high offence by all laws, but to counterfeit the living image of a King
in his person, exceedeth all falsifications”.

It is interesting that both Bacon and Shakespeare emphasize the counterfeiting aspect of this story.
14 years ago
·
#2981
The Tempest, (17)

3.6 Discussion

There is evidence that whoever wrote The Tempest had access to the TR, a point with which traditional scholars are in agreement. There are parallels between the TR and the TD suggesting that the intention of producing the latter was to re-frame the information about the poor conditions at Jamestown reported in the former (and other minor sources), so that the gossip of returning settlers did not jeopardize the recruitment of new investors and settlers. So the author of the TD had very likely seen a copy of the TR by November 1610, one year before the first known performance of The Tempest. At this point, Shakspere's supporters withdraw all interest, because in order to allow for the possibility that he wrote The Tempest, they must avoid the evidence that the TR was restricted. It also appears that the task of writing the Virginia Company's TD fell to Sir Francis Bacon who was Solicitor General, adviser to King James on plantations for the colony and, according to William Strachey, had a prominent position on the Council. The parallels between the TD and Bacon's work appear to confirm this. So it seems that both Shake-speare and Bacon were able to conduct a detailed consultation of the TR, a secret document that few Council members must have seen, and which sourced The Tempest. With the evidence here presented, even the most cynical judge cannot fail to conclude that Shake-speare the author must have been a prominent Council member of the Virginia Company and therefore was not the actor William Shakespeare. A fair-minded judge might draw a larger conclusion.

A reminder: the above posts on The Tempest were taken from the book The Shakespeare Puzzle (2008) by Barry Clarke, M.Sc.
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A note by Nigel Cockburn on Bacon’s main biographer James Spedding regarding the True Declaration:

“Spedding makes no mention of the True Declaration. In fact in the whole of his 14 volumes there is not the slightest mention (with two small exceptions) of Bacon’s interest in the New World – a remarkable oversight for a biographer. The two exceptions are that he prints without comment Bacon’s Essay on Plantations and also a speech by Bacon on 30 January 1621 in Parliament on the benefit of the King’s government”.
14 years ago
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#2982
Cockburn – on Spedding, 1 of 2

Doubters of Bacon's authorship of the Shakespeare works also at times point to his main biographer, James Spedding, who didn't believe he was Shakespeare. But N.B. Cockburn among others have shown the faults in Spedding's own thinking. Cockburn writes:

It is necessary to say a word about James Spedding, and this may be as a good a place as any at which to do it. When he was writing The Works of Francis Bacon, the main rebirth of the Baconian theory, after its Elizabethan origins, had not yet taken place. But in 1867 an American judge, Nathaniel Holmes, confronted Spedding with the suggestion that Bacon was Shake-Speare. In a reply dated 15 February of that year (which is printed in Holme's book The Authorship of Shakespeare (1886), Vol. 2, pp. 612-618 Spedding rejected the suggestion outright, declaring: "If there was any reason for supposing that the real author was someone else, I think I am in a condition to say that, whoever it was, it was not Francis Bacon". O fortunatam natam me consule Roman! (How fortunate for Rome that I am Consul!). Spedding's ipse dixit has exerted great influence, by reason of his reputation as Bacon's biographer.

But how reliable is he on this question? He performed an invaluable service, let it be said, in editing Bacon's works, letters and life, and without his great labours, which produced order out of chaos, study of Bacon would be a nightmare. On the other debit side, however, and despite his 14 volumes, his understanding of Bacon remained surprisingly incomplete. To give one example not connected with the Shake-Speare authorship dispute, he delivered himself of this pronouncement: 'All his life he [Bacon] had been studying to know and speak the truth; and I doubt whether there was ever any man whose evidence upon matters of fact may be more absolutely relied on, or who could more truly say with Kent in Lear 4.7.5-6:

All my reports go with the modest truth,
No more, nor clipp'd; but so.

Alas!, Bacon's statements were sometimes decidedly 'clipp'd' rather than 'so'. Certainly he was a relentless seeker after truth about men and nature. But to suppose that he was always a paragon of veracity in his own affairs, whether public or private, is a comical misjudgment. In his Essay on Dissimulation he openly advocates a degree of dissimulation; and in Chapter 4 [of Cockburn's book] we shall find him putting theory into practice by forging two letters. The Spedding misjudgment which is relevant to the present book is his failure to recognise Bacon's interest in poetry and the Theatre. The underlying reason for this failure is all too apparent from something he wrote when discussing Bacon's Psalm paraphrases: "The truth is that Bacon was not without the fine phrenzy of the poet; but the world into which it transported him was one which, upon express condition that fiction should be utterly prohibited and excluded. Had it taken the ordinary direction, I have little doubt that it would have carried him to a place among the great poets; but it was the study of his life to refrain his imagination and keep it within the modesty of truth; aspiring no higher than to be a faithful interpreter of nature, waiting for the day when the Kingdom of Man should come".

But there is absolutely no warrant for the assertion that it was "the study of Bacon's life to refrain his imagination". What Spedding should have said and thought is that it was the study of his life to refrain his imagination when searching for truth about men and nature. Any sensible person will be guided in such matters by the evidence, not by imagination. But it is a non sequitur to suppose that this debarred him from indulging his imagination to his leisure hours. In the next chapter we shall see many statements by Bacon of his enjoyment of poetry and the Theatre. He described poetry as "rather a pleasure or play of the imagination than a work or duty thereof"; and as "a thing sweet and varied that would be thought to have in it something divine".
14 years ago
·
#2983
Cockburn – on Spedding, 2 of 2

Spedding's false premise coloured all his thinking about Bacon as a poet, and gave him a blind spot. In his reply to Judge Holmes he made a number of points and I discuss (and reject) them all in the ensuing chapters, with or without reference to Spedding's name. But I will cite two at once: (1) In his letter to Holmes he gave as one of his reasons for rejecting the Baconian theory that Bacon "was never suspected [by his contemporaries] of wasting time in writing poetry". And in writing in the Works of Bacon's acknowledged poem The World's a Bubble and another poem ascribed to him, he described them as "the only verses certainly of Bacon's making that have come down to us, and probably, with one or two slight exceptions, the only verses he ever attempted". But quite apart from the intrinsic probability that Bacon wrote a good deal of verse, did Spedding not know of the evidence of Edmund Howes, Edmund Waller and John Aubrey? (2) In a footnote Spedding writes of some comments by Bacon in his De Augmentis on the public Theatre: "It is a curious fact that these remarks on the character of modern drama were probably written and were certainly first published in the same year which saw the first collection of Shakepeare's plays; of which, though they had been filling the theatre for the last 30 years, I very much doubt whether Bacon had ever heard". An astonishing suggestion! Assuming that Bacon was not himself Shake-Speare, it is inconceivable that he had never heard of the playwright and his plays. Shake-Speare certainly meant far less to his contemporaries than to us. But in the next chapter we shall see Bacon's interest in the Theatre, public and private.

At least one of the Shake-Speare plays, The Comedy Of Errors, was performed at Gray's Inn, Bacon's Inn, and as part of Christmas Revels for which Bacon himself, as Spedding agrees, did at least part of the writing. At least one play, Twelfth Night, was performed at the Middle Temple. Many were performed at Court, where Bacon was a courtier; others in great private houses owned by his friends, some of whom owned or patronised theatre companies. One Shake-Speare play, Richard II, Bacon certainly knew of. On the eve of the abortive Essex rebellion in 1601 some of the conspirators persuaded Shake-Speare's company to put on a performance of that play in the hope that its theme of the deposition of a King would incite the mob to join the rebellion. Afterwards, it fell to Bacon to draft a report on the trial for treason of Essex and his confederates. And in his report he mentioned the performance of the play. It had been published under Shakespeare's name in 1598 and its author must have been much in mind after the rebellion in case he got into trouble over it. Bacon also mentioned the play years later in his charge against Oliver St. John.

One can find partial excuse for Spedding's blindness in the circumstance that much of the evidence on which modern Baconians rely had not been unearthed or assessed in Spedding's day. For example, the significance of the Hall and Marston satires was not perceived till 1903. But the evidence known to Spedding was more than sufficient to put a reasonable person on enquiry as to the possibility of Bacon's authorship of the Shake-Speare works.
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