Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Religion
Shake-Speare:
Inevitably, Protestants and Catholics have each claimed Shake-Speare for their faith. But Shake-Speare himself offers only limited evidence on this question.
Of a number of clues which the Catholics have detected in his work, the three main ones are perhaps: (a) Shake-Speare displays, they argue, more sympathy for his Catholic priests, such as Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet and Abbess Emilia in The Comedy of Errors than for his Protestant clergy such as Sir Oliver Martext in As You Like It and Sir Nathaniel in Love's Labour's Lost. But there is no difficulty in regarding his treatment of clerics as dictated by the demands of his plots; also, the helpful friar was a convention of folktale; (b) Shake-Speare's King John was closely based on an earlier anonymous play, The Troublesome Reign of John King of England. That play was strongly anti-Catholic but Shake-Speare deleted most (though not quite all) of the bias. This however may be evidence of nothing more than religious tolerance; (c) Hamlet is claimed to contain strong expressions of Catholic feeling. I am not qualified to judge of this, but in any event Denmark was a Catholic country.
For the Anglicans, Rowse, op.cit, p. 43, argues that "We learn that to him there were only two sacraments, Baptism and Holy Communion [not the Catholic 7] ... not a trace of Catholic teaching...nor had he any knowledge of the Vulgate [the Catholic Bible in Latin]". One may add that the porter scene in Macbeth 2.3.8-11, jeers at Jesuit "equivocators". However, these lines which are an obvious reference to the trial of Father Garnet for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot, may be an interpolation. Besides, many Catholics even may have abhorred the traitors.
Probably Shake-Speare was Anglican. But the absence of any strong denomination posture in his work argues for religious tolerance in general.
Bacon:
Bacon was an orthodox but tolerant member of the Church of England, Anglican but not puritan. About 1590 he drafted a letter to a Secretary of France on the Queen's religious policy. In it he wrote of her Majesty "not liking to make windows into men's hearts and secret thoughts, except the abundance of them did overflow into overt and express acts and affirmations". This was always his own view (see his Essay on Unity in Religion). People should be allowed to worship privately as they pleased, provided they did not engage in open disaffection against the State. He had Catholic friends such as Tobie Mathew and the Earl of Southampton.
Will Shakspere of Stratford:
He was baptised, married and buried in the Anglican Church. So probably he was Anglican.
Since Bacon, Shake-Speare, and Shakspere probably shared the same religion, the point is neutral for purposes of the Authorship question, except that Bacon and Shake-Speare can be shown to have been tolerant. But the next post takes the matter further.
continued on the next post.
Religion
Shake-Speare:
Inevitably, Protestants and Catholics have each claimed Shake-Speare for their faith. But Shake-Speare himself offers only limited evidence on this question.
Of a number of clues which the Catholics have detected in his work, the three main ones are perhaps: (a) Shake-Speare displays, they argue, more sympathy for his Catholic priests, such as Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet and Abbess Emilia in The Comedy of Errors than for his Protestant clergy such as Sir Oliver Martext in As You Like It and Sir Nathaniel in Love's Labour's Lost. But there is no difficulty in regarding his treatment of clerics as dictated by the demands of his plots; also, the helpful friar was a convention of folktale; (b) Shake-Speare's King John was closely based on an earlier anonymous play, The Troublesome Reign of John King of England. That play was strongly anti-Catholic but Shake-Speare deleted most (though not quite all) of the bias. This however may be evidence of nothing more than religious tolerance; (c) Hamlet is claimed to contain strong expressions of Catholic feeling. I am not qualified to judge of this, but in any event Denmark was a Catholic country.
For the Anglicans, Rowse, op.cit, p. 43, argues that "We learn that to him there were only two sacraments, Baptism and Holy Communion [not the Catholic 7] ... not a trace of Catholic teaching...nor had he any knowledge of the Vulgate [the Catholic Bible in Latin]". One may add that the porter scene in Macbeth 2.3.8-11, jeers at Jesuit "equivocators". However, these lines which are an obvious reference to the trial of Father Garnet for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot, may be an interpolation. Besides, many Catholics even may have abhorred the traitors.
Probably Shake-Speare was Anglican. But the absence of any strong denomination posture in his work argues for religious tolerance in general.
Bacon:
Bacon was an orthodox but tolerant member of the Church of England, Anglican but not puritan. About 1590 he drafted a letter to a Secretary of France on the Queen's religious policy. In it he wrote of her Majesty "not liking to make windows into men's hearts and secret thoughts, except the abundance of them did overflow into overt and express acts and affirmations". This was always his own view (see his Essay on Unity in Religion). People should be allowed to worship privately as they pleased, provided they did not engage in open disaffection against the State. He had Catholic friends such as Tobie Mathew and the Earl of Southampton.
Will Shakspere of Stratford:
He was baptised, married and buried in the Anglican Church. So probably he was Anglican.
Since Bacon, Shake-Speare, and Shakspere probably shared the same religion, the point is neutral for purposes of the Authorship question, except that Bacon and Shake-Speare can be shown to have been tolerant. But the next post takes the matter further.
continued on the next post.
Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Shake-Speare's love of the Bible and Prayer Book
A.L. Rowse, op.cit, p. 41 (following R. Noble in his Shakespeare's Biblical Knowledge, 1935, p. 20) notes: "Of all Shakespeare's sources the Bible and Prayer Book come first and are the most constant. Altogether there are definite allusions to 42 Books of the Bible, including the Apocrypha...It has been estimated [by Edgar. I. Fripp in his Shakespeare Man and Artist] that his biblical range is five times that of Peele or Marlowe, far greater than that of any contemporary dramatist". There are also numerous allusions to the Prayer Book, especially to the Psalms. R. Noble, op.cit, p. 47, comments: "From first to last there is not a play in the Folio entirely free from a suggestion of a use of the Psalms. In two plays, 2 King Henry VI and King Henry VIII, the allusions to the Psalms run into the double figures. Even the Sonnets are not devoid of quotations from the Psalms". Noble put the total number of Psalms references in Shake-Speare at 150. Fripp, op.cit, Vol. 1, p. 98, writes: "The Poet's obligation to the Bible is deep. It is not upon the surface - a casual reader may easily overlook it - nor is it a mere inheritance from his school days. In youth and manhood he fed on God's word - on its tragic stories, its wealth of incident and experience, its sense of wickedness and intense self-consciousness, its searching, its veracity and its magnificent English".
This interest in the Bible and Prayer Book fits Bacon perfectly. He was brought up in an intensely religious household, his mother being a religious zealot. At Gray's Inn the students had to "keep their chapels" - there was daily chapel, morning and afternoon (see H.E. Duke in his The Story of Gray's Inn (1950), p. 14). Canon Rawley, Bacon's chaplain, wrote of him in his Resuscitatio (1657): "This lord was religious...He repaired frequently (when his health would permit him) to the services of the Church to hear sermons...and deal in the true faith, established in the Church of England". He also played a leading role in the revision of the Prayer Book. One of his biographers, Spedding, writes: "Since the Hampton Court Conference a new edition of the Book of Common Prayer had been put forth by authority [in 1604], with some alterations and explanations; and a confirmation of it by Act of Parliament was thought expedient...For the Book of Common Prayer a sub-committee (in the list of which Bacon's name stands first) was appointed to 'capitulate the alterations' and lay them before the Committee in writing 'together with their own opinion of the said book". One of Bacon's first works to be published was his Meditationes Sacrae (1597). His other prose works show a fondness for biblical and prayer book analogies. Fripp, op.cit, Vol. 1, p. 424, writes: "Of Elizabethan laymen Shakespeare and Bacon probably quote the Bible most frequently". And again (p. 101), "Only Francis Bacon among contemporary laymen knew the Bible so well [as Shakespeare]. Not the most subtle allusion in Shakespeare to Scripture would be lost on Bacon". At the end of his life Bacon translated 7 of the Psalms into rhyming verse. He had many friends in the Church, from Bishops down.
What of William Shakspere of Stratford? A.L/ Rowse surmises that most of his familiarity with the Bible and the Prayer Book (assuming that he was Shake-Speare the author) must have come from regular attendance at Church from childhood on. But we have seen that when Shakspere was aged about 14, his father ran into financial difficulties. And we know that in 1592 the Stratford authorities included John Shakespeare's name in a list of 9 residents of whom it was said that they "come not to Church for fear of process for debt" (which could be served on them at the Church) - see S. Schoenbaum's William Shakespeare, A Compact Documentary Life (1987), pp. 41-2. This shyness about going to Church had probably started with John's financial problems when William was about 14, so that thereafter there was no encouragement for the rest of the family to attend Church either, at least not more than once a month which was the law's minimum requirement. And after Shakspere joined the Bohemian world of the London Theatre, should one picture him as a regular Church-goer? The Theatre staged plays on Sunday afternoons which clashed with Evensong. Nor can all Shake-Speare's biblical knowledge have come from Church-going. For he was familiar not only with the authorized Bishop's Bible, but also with the Genevan Bible (including the revised 1595 version). There is one piece of evidence that he even knew the de Tournes' Testament printed at Lyons in 1551. In Chapter 7 [of Cockburn's book that this material is coming from], when discussing his knowledge of French, we saw that in Henry V, 3.7.65-6, the Dauphin quotes in French 2 Peter 2.22 as it appears in the de Tournes' testament. Noble, op.cit., p. 43, emphasizes that much of Shake-Speare's biblical knowledge could not have been acquired in Church: "He displays such familiarity with Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastics and in later years with Israel, as can only have been acquired by reading...[at p. 44] It is sufficiently clear that Shake-Speare read the Bible in adult life, and it may be that he did so fairly frequently". As to the Psalms, (p. 48), "Certainly his knowledge of the Psalms is greater than the ordinary layman might be expected to acquire by attendance at Church".
Noble also drew attention to alleged difference between Bacon and Shake-Speare in their treatment of the Scriptures. At p. 87 he wrote: "Unlike Bacon, who quoted the Vulgate frequently, sometimes inaccurately, Shakespeare did not use the Vulgate". The Vulgate was the Catholic Bible in Latin, and it is hardly surprising that Shake-Speare would be chary of quoting Latin in the public Theatre. More generally, at pp. 97-8, Noble wrote: "Canon Todd, generally admitted to be one of the most learned Biblical scholars in the Irish Church today, in commenting on an article by Dr. Caroline Spurgeon, wrote to me: 'Bacon often misinterpreted and misapplied Scripture, Shakespeare rarely". Since one does not know the Canon's evidence, it is difficult to comment on it. But it is grossly improbable that Bacon, who had been brought up on the Bible from his cradle, would have misunderstood it more often than Shakspere. Perhaps Bacon's alleged misinterpretations and misapplications were deliberate adaptation of Biblical texts to his own thoughts and needs. He was wont to do this with quotations of all sorts. He would change, invert, curtail or paraphrase at his pleasure. Noble himself recognized that Bacon was fond of paraphrasing. Most of Shake-Speare's biblical references are mere echoes of snatches of phraseology, so as to make it impossible to know whether or not he understood the full text from which they came. In the light of all the evidence it would be absurd to suppose Will Shakspere's knowledge of the Bible and Prayer Book approached that of Bacon and 'Shake-Speare'.
Shake-Speare's love of the Bible and Prayer Book
A.L. Rowse, op.cit, p. 41 (following R. Noble in his Shakespeare's Biblical Knowledge, 1935, p. 20) notes: "Of all Shakespeare's sources the Bible and Prayer Book come first and are the most constant. Altogether there are definite allusions to 42 Books of the Bible, including the Apocrypha...It has been estimated [by Edgar. I. Fripp in his Shakespeare Man and Artist] that his biblical range is five times that of Peele or Marlowe, far greater than that of any contemporary dramatist". There are also numerous allusions to the Prayer Book, especially to the Psalms. R. Noble, op.cit, p. 47, comments: "From first to last there is not a play in the Folio entirely free from a suggestion of a use of the Psalms. In two plays, 2 King Henry VI and King Henry VIII, the allusions to the Psalms run into the double figures. Even the Sonnets are not devoid of quotations from the Psalms". Noble put the total number of Psalms references in Shake-Speare at 150. Fripp, op.cit, Vol. 1, p. 98, writes: "The Poet's obligation to the Bible is deep. It is not upon the surface - a casual reader may easily overlook it - nor is it a mere inheritance from his school days. In youth and manhood he fed on God's word - on its tragic stories, its wealth of incident and experience, its sense of wickedness and intense self-consciousness, its searching, its veracity and its magnificent English".
This interest in the Bible and Prayer Book fits Bacon perfectly. He was brought up in an intensely religious household, his mother being a religious zealot. At Gray's Inn the students had to "keep their chapels" - there was daily chapel, morning and afternoon (see H.E. Duke in his The Story of Gray's Inn (1950), p. 14). Canon Rawley, Bacon's chaplain, wrote of him in his Resuscitatio (1657): "This lord was religious...He repaired frequently (when his health would permit him) to the services of the Church to hear sermons...and deal in the true faith, established in the Church of England". He also played a leading role in the revision of the Prayer Book. One of his biographers, Spedding, writes: "Since the Hampton Court Conference a new edition of the Book of Common Prayer had been put forth by authority [in 1604], with some alterations and explanations; and a confirmation of it by Act of Parliament was thought expedient...For the Book of Common Prayer a sub-committee (in the list of which Bacon's name stands first) was appointed to 'capitulate the alterations' and lay them before the Committee in writing 'together with their own opinion of the said book". One of Bacon's first works to be published was his Meditationes Sacrae (1597). His other prose works show a fondness for biblical and prayer book analogies. Fripp, op.cit, Vol. 1, p. 424, writes: "Of Elizabethan laymen Shakespeare and Bacon probably quote the Bible most frequently". And again (p. 101), "Only Francis Bacon among contemporary laymen knew the Bible so well [as Shakespeare]. Not the most subtle allusion in Shakespeare to Scripture would be lost on Bacon". At the end of his life Bacon translated 7 of the Psalms into rhyming verse. He had many friends in the Church, from Bishops down.
What of William Shakspere of Stratford? A.L/ Rowse surmises that most of his familiarity with the Bible and the Prayer Book (assuming that he was Shake-Speare the author) must have come from regular attendance at Church from childhood on. But we have seen that when Shakspere was aged about 14, his father ran into financial difficulties. And we know that in 1592 the Stratford authorities included John Shakespeare's name in a list of 9 residents of whom it was said that they "come not to Church for fear of process for debt" (which could be served on them at the Church) - see S. Schoenbaum's William Shakespeare, A Compact Documentary Life (1987), pp. 41-2. This shyness about going to Church had probably started with John's financial problems when William was about 14, so that thereafter there was no encouragement for the rest of the family to attend Church either, at least not more than once a month which was the law's minimum requirement. And after Shakspere joined the Bohemian world of the London Theatre, should one picture him as a regular Church-goer? The Theatre staged plays on Sunday afternoons which clashed with Evensong. Nor can all Shake-Speare's biblical knowledge have come from Church-going. For he was familiar not only with the authorized Bishop's Bible, but also with the Genevan Bible (including the revised 1595 version). There is one piece of evidence that he even knew the de Tournes' Testament printed at Lyons in 1551. In Chapter 7 [of Cockburn's book that this material is coming from], when discussing his knowledge of French, we saw that in Henry V, 3.7.65-6, the Dauphin quotes in French 2 Peter 2.22 as it appears in the de Tournes' testament. Noble, op.cit., p. 43, emphasizes that much of Shake-Speare's biblical knowledge could not have been acquired in Church: "He displays such familiarity with Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastics and in later years with Israel, as can only have been acquired by reading...[at p. 44] It is sufficiently clear that Shake-Speare read the Bible in adult life, and it may be that he did so fairly frequently". As to the Psalms, (p. 48), "Certainly his knowledge of the Psalms is greater than the ordinary layman might be expected to acquire by attendance at Church".
Noble also drew attention to alleged difference between Bacon and Shake-Speare in their treatment of the Scriptures. At p. 87 he wrote: "Unlike Bacon, who quoted the Vulgate frequently, sometimes inaccurately, Shakespeare did not use the Vulgate". The Vulgate was the Catholic Bible in Latin, and it is hardly surprising that Shake-Speare would be chary of quoting Latin in the public Theatre. More generally, at pp. 97-8, Noble wrote: "Canon Todd, generally admitted to be one of the most learned Biblical scholars in the Irish Church today, in commenting on an article by Dr. Caroline Spurgeon, wrote to me: 'Bacon often misinterpreted and misapplied Scripture, Shakespeare rarely". Since one does not know the Canon's evidence, it is difficult to comment on it. But it is grossly improbable that Bacon, who had been brought up on the Bible from his cradle, would have misunderstood it more often than Shakspere. Perhaps Bacon's alleged misinterpretations and misapplications were deliberate adaptation of Biblical texts to his own thoughts and needs. He was wont to do this with quotations of all sorts. He would change, invert, curtail or paraphrase at his pleasure. Noble himself recognized that Bacon was fond of paraphrasing. Most of Shake-Speare's biblical references are mere echoes of snatches of phraseology, so as to make it impossible to know whether or not he understood the full text from which they came. In the light of all the evidence it would be absurd to suppose Will Shakspere's knowledge of the Bible and Prayer Book approached that of Bacon and 'Shake-Speare'.
Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Philosophical Bent
A.L. Rowse, comparing Bacon and Shake-Speare in a newspaper article, wrote that Bacon was "a kindred spirit, though with a more intellectual cast of mind". For my part, I cannot see that Shake-Speare is any less intellectual than Bacon, when due allowance is made for the hugely different media their acknowledged works occupy. Obviously, intellectuality in overtly philosophical works will be far more concentrated than in plays and poetry. But one never ceases to be amazed by the intellectual density of the Shake-Speare works. He was as addicted to philosophizing as Bacon was. In Shake-Speare it mainly took the form of world-wise comments on the human condition. Such comments were fairly common in Elizabethan drama, but according to William Creizenach in his English Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (English translation, 1916), p. 127, "It was certainly the example of Shakespeare which led other dramatists to vie with one another in adorning the lines of their tragic hero with philosophic or would-be philosophic utterances." Even more remarkably, Shake-Speare's philosophizing was not limited to wise saws but extended to technical doctrines of philosophy and natural science, which are quite often dragged in for no dramatic purpose but simply because they were of interest to the author. An example is Hamlet 3.4.71-3. Hamlet is upbraiding his mother for marrying his uncle, and says to her: "Sense sure you have, / Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense / Is apoplex'd." These lines (which are in Quarto 2 but not in the Folio) were only introduced because, as the Arden editor notes: "It was an Aristotelian maxim that the external senses are necessarily present in all creatures which have the power of locomotion." Bacon refers to this doctrine in his The Advancement of Learning and in his Natural History. One is left with the impression that the philosophical and scientific side of Shake-Speare's work meant at least as much to him as the poetic.
Was William Shakspere of Stratford too "all sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought"? With the possible exception mentioned below, none of the stories about him, whether true or apocryphal, present him in his light. Nor can his Stratford upbringing or the hurly-burly of the London Theatre, have conduced to a habit of philosophical reflection.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here are some quotes from Shakespeare's Philosophy by Colin McGinn (2006). McGinn has taught philosophy at University College of London, Oxford, and Rutgers University, and is currently distinguished professor of philosophy at the university of Miami.
"If I were to award him [Shakespeare] a single label, it would be "naturalist." "
p. 15
"He has the curiosity of a scientist, the judgment of a philosopher, and the soul of a poet. ...He is a beady-eyed naturalist of raging human interiority and social collision. ...In both Montaigne's and Shakespeare's work, there is a kind of appalling, but exhilarating, candor. And some of that ruthlessness is philosophical: the determination to expose reality for what it is, to undermine dogma and complacency. In the end, of course, this is nothing other than a dedication to the truth".
p. 16
"Here we see Shakespeare the empirical naturalist, the proto-scientist."
p. 30
"He [Shakespeare] also approached the mind in the spirit of a scientist--he is interested in how it works, what the components are, and how they interact".
p. 164
"Shakespeare, as a dramatic naturalist, must give us a rendering of this part of nature."
p. 179
Some quotes regarding Bacon:
"He was poet, orator, naturalist, physician, historian, essayist, philosopher, statesman, and judge."
Edwin Reed
"If a man will begin with certainties, he will end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he will end in certainties." Bacon
"There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth."
Bacon
"For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of truth; as having a Mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the Resemblances of Things (which is the chief point) and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their Subtler Differences; as being gifted by Nature with Desire to seek, patience to Doubt, fondness to Meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of Imposture. So I thought my Nature had a kind of familiarity and Relationship with Truth." Bacon, On the Interpretation of Nature
And finally:
“For of all the strange things about this man William Shakespeare one of the most remarkable is the fact that he could contrive no scene so theatrical, no stage effect so comic or dialogue so nonsensical, as to protect himself from the insertion right in the midst of it of touches of nature scientific in their veracity. Such was the grip that truth seems to have had on him.”
The Meaning of Shakespeare, (1951) by Harold C. Goddard, vol. 1, p. 288
Philosophical Bent
A.L. Rowse, comparing Bacon and Shake-Speare in a newspaper article, wrote that Bacon was "a kindred spirit, though with a more intellectual cast of mind". For my part, I cannot see that Shake-Speare is any less intellectual than Bacon, when due allowance is made for the hugely different media their acknowledged works occupy. Obviously, intellectuality in overtly philosophical works will be far more concentrated than in plays and poetry. But one never ceases to be amazed by the intellectual density of the Shake-Speare works. He was as addicted to philosophizing as Bacon was. In Shake-Speare it mainly took the form of world-wise comments on the human condition. Such comments were fairly common in Elizabethan drama, but according to William Creizenach in his English Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (English translation, 1916), p. 127, "It was certainly the example of Shakespeare which led other dramatists to vie with one another in adorning the lines of their tragic hero with philosophic or would-be philosophic utterances." Even more remarkably, Shake-Speare's philosophizing was not limited to wise saws but extended to technical doctrines of philosophy and natural science, which are quite often dragged in for no dramatic purpose but simply because they were of interest to the author. An example is Hamlet 3.4.71-3. Hamlet is upbraiding his mother for marrying his uncle, and says to her: "Sense sure you have, / Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense / Is apoplex'd." These lines (which are in Quarto 2 but not in the Folio) were only introduced because, as the Arden editor notes: "It was an Aristotelian maxim that the external senses are necessarily present in all creatures which have the power of locomotion." Bacon refers to this doctrine in his The Advancement of Learning and in his Natural History. One is left with the impression that the philosophical and scientific side of Shake-Speare's work meant at least as much to him as the poetic.
Was William Shakspere of Stratford too "all sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought"? With the possible exception mentioned below, none of the stories about him, whether true or apocryphal, present him in his light. Nor can his Stratford upbringing or the hurly-burly of the London Theatre, have conduced to a habit of philosophical reflection.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here are some quotes from Shakespeare's Philosophy by Colin McGinn (2006). McGinn has taught philosophy at University College of London, Oxford, and Rutgers University, and is currently distinguished professor of philosophy at the university of Miami.
"If I were to award him [Shakespeare] a single label, it would be "naturalist." "
p. 15
"He has the curiosity of a scientist, the judgment of a philosopher, and the soul of a poet. ...He is a beady-eyed naturalist of raging human interiority and social collision. ...In both Montaigne's and Shakespeare's work, there is a kind of appalling, but exhilarating, candor. And some of that ruthlessness is philosophical: the determination to expose reality for what it is, to undermine dogma and complacency. In the end, of course, this is nothing other than a dedication to the truth".
p. 16
"Here we see Shakespeare the empirical naturalist, the proto-scientist."
p. 30
"He [Shakespeare] also approached the mind in the spirit of a scientist--he is interested in how it works, what the components are, and how they interact".
p. 164
"Shakespeare, as a dramatic naturalist, must give us a rendering of this part of nature."
p. 179
Some quotes regarding Bacon:
"He was poet, orator, naturalist, physician, historian, essayist, philosopher, statesman, and judge."
Edwin Reed
"If a man will begin with certainties, he will end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he will end in certainties." Bacon
"There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth."
Bacon
"For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of truth; as having a Mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the Resemblances of Things (which is the chief point) and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their Subtler Differences; as being gifted by Nature with Desire to seek, patience to Doubt, fondness to Meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of Imposture. So I thought my Nature had a kind of familiarity and Relationship with Truth." Bacon, On the Interpretation of Nature
And finally:
“For of all the strange things about this man William Shakespeare one of the most remarkable is the fact that he could contrive no scene so theatrical, no stage effect so comic or dialogue so nonsensical, as to protect himself from the insertion right in the midst of it of touches of nature scientific in their veracity. Such was the grip that truth seems to have had on him.”
The Meaning of Shakespeare, (1951) by Harold C. Goddard, vol. 1, p. 288
Moderation
Few would dispute that the Shake-Speare works are pervaded by a spirit of moderation and good sense. Indeed their insistent sanity of outlook is one of their most inspiring features. It is almost epitomized in Nerissa's comment in The Merchant of Venice 1.2.6-8: "It is no mean happiness to be seated in the mean".
That is where Bacon sat himself, in religion, politics, the regimen of health, everything; ever faithful to his family motto: In medio spatio mediocria firma locantur - the firm ground is in the middle. Canon Rawley in his Resuscitatio recorded that the King said of Bacon "That he ever dealt in business suavibus modis (agreeably moderate), which was the way that was most according to his heart". Or as David Lloyd put it in his The Statesmen and Favourites of England (1665), p. 600: "King James said that he [Bacon] knew the way of handling things after a mild and gentle manner". Bacon wrote to the King: "In general...you jump with me in keeping the mid way between the two extremes". In a speech in Parliament he said: "Fair and moderate courses are ever best in causes of estate [state]". Elsewhere he praised the "golden mediocrity".
Few would dispute that the Shake-Speare works are pervaded by a spirit of moderation and good sense. Indeed their insistent sanity of outlook is one of their most inspiring features. It is almost epitomized in Nerissa's comment in The Merchant of Venice 1.2.6-8: "It is no mean happiness to be seated in the mean".
That is where Bacon sat himself, in religion, politics, the regimen of health, everything; ever faithful to his family motto: In medio spatio mediocria firma locantur - the firm ground is in the middle. Canon Rawley in his Resuscitatio recorded that the King said of Bacon "That he ever dealt in business suavibus modis (agreeably moderate), which was the way that was most according to his heart". Or as David Lloyd put it in his The Statesmen and Favourites of England (1665), p. 600: "King James said that he [Bacon] knew the way of handling things after a mild and gentle manner". Bacon wrote to the King: "In general...you jump with me in keeping the mid way between the two extremes". In a speech in Parliament he said: "Fair and moderate courses are ever best in causes of estate [state]". Elsewhere he praised the "golden mediocrity".
Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Music
That Shake-Speare loved music is obvious from his work. "He used music more often and more effectively - more variously - than any other dramatic writer", wrote Peter Levi in his The Life and Times of William Shakespeare, p. 48. Bacon too was a music lover. In his Essay on Masques and Triumphs he enthuses about the musical element in Masques. And Aubrey tells us: "His Lordship would many times have music in the next room [to] where he meditated". In a letter to Robert Cecil in 1595 Bacon wrote: "In music I ever loved easy airs, that go full at all the parts together, and not these strange points of accord and discord".
In his Natural History he gives a great variety of experiments touching music. Among his comments on music in that work are: "The sweetest and best harmony is when every part or instrument is not heard by itself, but a conflation of them all, which requireth to stand some distance off, even as it is in the mixture of perfumes, or the taking of the smell of several flowers in the air". A comment in the French version (with a parallel in the English version) is: "I am convinced that music heightens any particular feeling that may possess one for the moment. In my own case, when i am feeling happy, music adds to my happiness of mind; and when I am feeling sorrowful or vexed, it makes me yet more so". he thought a musical note "falling from one tone to another" is "delightful" (Compare Twelfth Night 1.1.4): "That strain again, it had a dying fall"
. He suggested that "the division and quavering, which please so much in music, have an agreement with the glittering of light, as the moonbeams playing on a wave" (Remember that the man who wrote these things is alleged by many Stratfordians to have been "prosaic".
Music
That Shake-Speare loved music is obvious from his work. "He used music more often and more effectively - more variously - than any other dramatic writer", wrote Peter Levi in his The Life and Times of William Shakespeare, p. 48. Bacon too was a music lover. In his Essay on Masques and Triumphs he enthuses about the musical element in Masques. And Aubrey tells us: "His Lordship would many times have music in the next room [to] where he meditated". In a letter to Robert Cecil in 1595 Bacon wrote: "In music I ever loved easy airs, that go full at all the parts together, and not these strange points of accord and discord".
In his Natural History he gives a great variety of experiments touching music. Among his comments on music in that work are: "The sweetest and best harmony is when every part or instrument is not heard by itself, but a conflation of them all, which requireth to stand some distance off, even as it is in the mixture of perfumes, or the taking of the smell of several flowers in the air". A comment in the French version (with a parallel in the English version) is: "I am convinced that music heightens any particular feeling that may possess one for the moment. In my own case, when i am feeling happy, music adds to my happiness of mind; and when I am feeling sorrowful or vexed, it makes me yet more so". he thought a musical note "falling from one tone to another" is "delightful" (Compare Twelfth Night 1.1.4): "That strain again, it had a dying fall"
. He suggested that "the division and quavering, which please so much in music, have an agreement with the glittering of light, as the moonbeams playing on a wave" (Remember that the man who wrote these things is alleged by many Stratfordians to have been "prosaic".
Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Sympathetic and Sensitive Disposition Part 1 of 2
This manifests itself in Shake-Speare in a variety of ways. One is that he shows sympathy with the underdog - the poor and oppressed, prisoners, idiots, madmen, gypsies, beggars, peddlers and slaves.
There are signs of the same trait in Bacon. In the prayer which he composed after his impeachment he said: "The state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in mine eyes. I have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart. I have, though in a despised weed, procured [pursued] the good of all men". He often gave money to the poor. His household accounts for July-September 1618 (his only accounts which survive) record several such payments, including:
To Mr. Trowshaw, a poor man & late a prisoner in the
Compter, by your Lp [Lordship's] order 3.-6-0 [a designation of money]
To a poor pilgrim by your Lp. order 2-4-0
To a poor man at St. Albans by your Lp. order 2-6
Also note the parallel to Sonnet 76:
Why write I still alone, ever the same
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name
Shewing their birth and where they did proceed?
In 1620 he wrote to the King: "It is no great ill thing in a judge...that in causes before them the poor have advantage against the rich". In his Essay on Discourse he wrote that topics privileged from jest were "religion, matters of state and any case that deserveth pity". Canon Rawley tells us in his Resuscitatio that when Bacon was prosecuting in the course of his profession, "he looked upon the example with the eye of severity, but upon the person with the eye of pity and compassion". Bacon himself says this in his Essay on Judicature.
Shake-Speare's sympathies extended to animals in distress. This is practically unique among Elizabethan dramatists, and it is not the attitude one would expect from someone of Shakspere's rustic origins. To country people, callousness towards animals, for food, trade or sport, was a traditional and acceptable part of life. And Shakespere's father's trade as a glover required the slaughter of animals, even though the deed was not done on his own premises. Bacon as a Gray's Inn intellectual could afford to be more squeamish. In another post he'll be shown to have objected to the striking of a dog. And in the accounts just mentioned there is a reward of 5 shillings "To the Washwoman, for sending after the crane that flew into the Thames".
Shake-Speare and Bacon both seem to have been sensitive to air. In Macbeth 1.6.1-3, Shake-Speare wrote:
This castle hath a pleasant seat, the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
In a letter of 1617 to the Duke of Buckingham Bacon wrote: "I have changed from field air to Thames air", meaning that he had moved from his Chambers at Gray's Inn (which adjoined fields) to Dorset house on the river bank. In another letter to Buckingham of 1619 he wrote: "I hope to see him [the King] this summer at Gorhambury. There is sweet air as any is". To Prince Henry he wrote in 1621: "I am much beholding to your Highness's worthy servant Sir John Vaughan, the sweet air and loving usage of whose house hath already much revived my languishing spirits". In a petition to the House of Lords in the same year, begging to be allowed to return from Gorhambury to London, he pleaded: "Here I live upon the sword point of a sharp air". And in 1625 he wrote to a friend: "I thank God by means of the sweet air of the country, I have obtained some degree of health".
Canon Rawley tells us that when the moon was in eclipse, Bacon would faint. As Spedding observes, this indicates "the extreme delicacy of Bacon's temperament".
More on Shake-Speare's and Bacon's sympathetic and sensitive disposition in the next post
Sympathetic and Sensitive Disposition Part 1 of 2
This manifests itself in Shake-Speare in a variety of ways. One is that he shows sympathy with the underdog - the poor and oppressed, prisoners, idiots, madmen, gypsies, beggars, peddlers and slaves.
There are signs of the same trait in Bacon. In the prayer which he composed after his impeachment he said: "The state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in mine eyes. I have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart. I have, though in a despised weed, procured [pursued] the good of all men". He often gave money to the poor. His household accounts for July-September 1618 (his only accounts which survive) record several such payments, including:
To Mr. Trowshaw, a poor man & late a prisoner in the
Compter, by your Lp [Lordship's] order 3.-6-0 [a designation of money]
To a poor pilgrim by your Lp. order 2-4-0
To a poor man at St. Albans by your Lp. order 2-6
Also note the parallel to Sonnet 76:
Why write I still alone, ever the same
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name
Shewing their birth and where they did proceed?
In 1620 he wrote to the King: "It is no great ill thing in a judge...that in causes before them the poor have advantage against the rich". In his Essay on Discourse he wrote that topics privileged from jest were "religion, matters of state and any case that deserveth pity". Canon Rawley tells us in his Resuscitatio that when Bacon was prosecuting in the course of his profession, "he looked upon the example with the eye of severity, but upon the person with the eye of pity and compassion". Bacon himself says this in his Essay on Judicature.
Shake-Speare's sympathies extended to animals in distress. This is practically unique among Elizabethan dramatists, and it is not the attitude one would expect from someone of Shakspere's rustic origins. To country people, callousness towards animals, for food, trade or sport, was a traditional and acceptable part of life. And Shakespere's father's trade as a glover required the slaughter of animals, even though the deed was not done on his own premises. Bacon as a Gray's Inn intellectual could afford to be more squeamish. In another post he'll be shown to have objected to the striking of a dog. And in the accounts just mentioned there is a reward of 5 shillings "To the Washwoman, for sending after the crane that flew into the Thames".
Shake-Speare and Bacon both seem to have been sensitive to air. In Macbeth 1.6.1-3, Shake-Speare wrote:
This castle hath a pleasant seat, the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
In a letter of 1617 to the Duke of Buckingham Bacon wrote: "I have changed from field air to Thames air", meaning that he had moved from his Chambers at Gray's Inn (which adjoined fields) to Dorset house on the river bank. In another letter to Buckingham of 1619 he wrote: "I hope to see him [the King] this summer at Gorhambury. There is sweet air as any is". To Prince Henry he wrote in 1621: "I am much beholding to your Highness's worthy servant Sir John Vaughan, the sweet air and loving usage of whose house hath already much revived my languishing spirits". In a petition to the House of Lords in the same year, begging to be allowed to return from Gorhambury to London, he pleaded: "Here I live upon the sword point of a sharp air". And in 1625 he wrote to a friend: "I thank God by means of the sweet air of the country, I have obtained some degree of health".
Canon Rawley tells us that when the moon was in eclipse, Bacon would faint. As Spedding observes, this indicates "the extreme delicacy of Bacon's temperament".
More on Shake-Speare's and Bacon's sympathetic and sensitive disposition in the next post
Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Sympathetic and Sensitive Disposition Part 2 of 2
One illustration of Shake-Speare's sensibility is his evident dislike of drunkenness. A.L. Rowse rightly commented in his Shakespeare the Man (1973), p. 128: "We can tell from the plays that he had a dislike for drunkenness". Falstaff, for example, is "a great fool" and Sir Toby Belch a "toss-post".
In Othello 2.3.273-5 Cassio exclaims: "O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!" Bacon too, as one would expect, despised drunkenness. In Pierre Ambois's French version of Bacon's A Natural History Bacon writes: "A writer of the present century, when depicting the effects of drunkenness, has well observed that, properly speaking, a man under the power of drink was not a man at all until the following morning". This attitude was unusual in the Bohemian world of the Elizabethan Theatre. Certainly, Ben Jonson, Robert Greene and others relished their cups. One legend has Shakspere himself in a drunken stupor beneath a crab tree after a drinking contest. Another records that he died of a fever contracted at a drinking bout with Jonson and Michael Drayton. Though these stories are very probably apocryphal, they may be right in investing Shakspere with a far from ascetic personality.
Turning to the nasal organ, passages in Shake-Speare suggest that he was acutely sensitive to smell. As Caroline Spurgeon commented in her Shakespeare's Imagery (1935), p. 79, "He expresses the height of disgust and horror through the medium of revolting smells". Bacon too was fastidious about smell. Aubrey tells us in his Brief Lives: "None of his servants durst appear before him without Spanish leather boots, for he would smell the neats [ox] leather which offended him". He particularly abhorred human smells. In his Natural History he wrote: "These empoisonments of air are the more dangerous in meetings of people, because the much breath of people doth further the infection. Therefore, when any such thing is feared, it were good those public places were perfumed before the assemblies" (We'll later see a parallel post on Julius Caesar and the smell of the mob). Bacon was likewise sensitive to pleasant scents, which he often applauds. In his New Atlantis, his fantasy of an ideal world, he envisages "perfume houses". In his Essay on Gardens he writes that the scent of flowers in the air comes and goes like the warbling of music.
A corollary of Shake-Speare's sensitivity is that he is likely to have been thin-skinned. "Shakespeare, we often feel" wrote Trevor-Roper, "had a skin too few". This seems true of Bacon. When he had his row with Sir Edward Coke in the court of Exchequer he was deeply upset. In 1595, following his rejection for the post of Solicitor-General, he had written to Robert Cecil: "I was not an impudent man that could face out a disgrace".
Sympathetic and Sensitive Disposition Part 2 of 2
One illustration of Shake-Speare's sensibility is his evident dislike of drunkenness. A.L. Rowse rightly commented in his Shakespeare the Man (1973), p. 128: "We can tell from the plays that he had a dislike for drunkenness". Falstaff, for example, is "a great fool" and Sir Toby Belch a "toss-post".
In Othello 2.3.273-5 Cassio exclaims: "O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!" Bacon too, as one would expect, despised drunkenness. In Pierre Ambois's French version of Bacon's A Natural History Bacon writes: "A writer of the present century, when depicting the effects of drunkenness, has well observed that, properly speaking, a man under the power of drink was not a man at all until the following morning". This attitude was unusual in the Bohemian world of the Elizabethan Theatre. Certainly, Ben Jonson, Robert Greene and others relished their cups. One legend has Shakspere himself in a drunken stupor beneath a crab tree after a drinking contest. Another records that he died of a fever contracted at a drinking bout with Jonson and Michael Drayton. Though these stories are very probably apocryphal, they may be right in investing Shakspere with a far from ascetic personality.
Turning to the nasal organ, passages in Shake-Speare suggest that he was acutely sensitive to smell. As Caroline Spurgeon commented in her Shakespeare's Imagery (1935), p. 79, "He expresses the height of disgust and horror through the medium of revolting smells". Bacon too was fastidious about smell. Aubrey tells us in his Brief Lives: "None of his servants durst appear before him without Spanish leather boots, for he would smell the neats [ox] leather which offended him". He particularly abhorred human smells. In his Natural History he wrote: "These empoisonments of air are the more dangerous in meetings of people, because the much breath of people doth further the infection. Therefore, when any such thing is feared, it were good those public places were perfumed before the assemblies" (We'll later see a parallel post on Julius Caesar and the smell of the mob). Bacon was likewise sensitive to pleasant scents, which he often applauds. In his New Atlantis, his fantasy of an ideal world, he envisages "perfume houses". In his Essay on Gardens he writes that the scent of flowers in the air comes and goes like the warbling of music.
A corollary of Shake-Speare's sensitivity is that he is likely to have been thin-skinned. "Shakespeare, we often feel" wrote Trevor-Roper, "had a skin too few". This seems true of Bacon. When he had his row with Sir Edward Coke in the court of Exchequer he was deeply upset. In 1595, following his rejection for the post of Solicitor-General, he had written to Robert Cecil: "I was not an impudent man that could face out a disgrace".
Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Attitude to Love Part 1 of 2
Many Stratfordians see Bacon as a cold fish, incapable of love, who therefore (they argue) could not have written the many love scenes in Shake-Speare. They have attempted to make much of this, and some have proclaimed it as conclusive refutation by itself of the Baconian theory.
Since Bacon was at least predominantly homosexual (Cockburn believes), it is certainly unlikely that he was ever deeply in the throes of heterosexual love, though at the age of 45 he contracted a childless marriage to a girl of about 14, and had earlier contemplated marriage to Lady Hatton. He avouched the body's need for sexual intercourse. In a little known passage in Pierre Amboise's French version of Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum Bacon wrote: "It is certain that the moderate use of love is necessary to maintain the body's health, by soothing and releasing the spirits which otherwise in excess would heat and inflame the whole body. It is for this reason that physicians for certain maladies prescribe sexual intercourse for the patient who then discovers whether he would rather lose his life or his virginity". Canon Rawley omitted this passage from the English version of Sylva Sylvarum but includes a similar passage which begins: "Pleasure in the act of Venus is the greatest of the pleasures of the senses". And there is another similar passage in Bacon's History of Life and Death.
Nor was he blind to the merits of love on a higher plane. In the same work he wrote: "Love, if not unfortunate and too deeply wounding is a kind of joy". But he begins his Essay on Love:
"The Stage is more beholding to Love than the life of man. For as to the Stage, Love is ever matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies. But in life it doth much mischief: sometimes like a siren; sometimes like a fury. You may observe that amongst all the great and worthy persons (whereof the memory remaineth, either ancient or recent) there is not one that hath been transported to the mad degree of love; which shows that great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion".
So Bacon thought Man capable of higher things than "mad degree of love". But this would not preclude him from following the convention he recites and treating of love on the stage. In my view Shake-Speare handles his love scenes in a superficial and purely conventional way. But even if this criticism is unjust, homosexual writers have shown that they can handle heterosexual love scenes convincingly.
As to Shake-Speare's dramatis personae, they express whatever view of love their characters and the context require. Sometimes they enthuse over it; at other times they belittle it, in terms in keeping with Bacon's Essay. For example, in Measure For Measure 1.3.2, we have: "Believe not the dribbling dart of love/Can pierce a complete bosom". Bacon's sole fictional treatment of love in his acknowledged works - the speech in Praise of the Worthiest Affection which he wrote for the Device which the Earl of Essex presented before the Queen on 17 November 1595 - praises love because the context required that. Two of the sentiments in the speech are: "For love doth so fill and possess all the powers of the mind, as it sweetneth the harshness of all deformities"; and "Love is a pure gain and advancement in nature".
end of part 1 of 2
Attitude to Love Part 1 of 2
Many Stratfordians see Bacon as a cold fish, incapable of love, who therefore (they argue) could not have written the many love scenes in Shake-Speare. They have attempted to make much of this, and some have proclaimed it as conclusive refutation by itself of the Baconian theory.
Since Bacon was at least predominantly homosexual (Cockburn believes), it is certainly unlikely that he was ever deeply in the throes of heterosexual love, though at the age of 45 he contracted a childless marriage to a girl of about 14, and had earlier contemplated marriage to Lady Hatton. He avouched the body's need for sexual intercourse. In a little known passage in Pierre Amboise's French version of Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum Bacon wrote: "It is certain that the moderate use of love is necessary to maintain the body's health, by soothing and releasing the spirits which otherwise in excess would heat and inflame the whole body. It is for this reason that physicians for certain maladies prescribe sexual intercourse for the patient who then discovers whether he would rather lose his life or his virginity". Canon Rawley omitted this passage from the English version of Sylva Sylvarum but includes a similar passage which begins: "Pleasure in the act of Venus is the greatest of the pleasures of the senses". And there is another similar passage in Bacon's History of Life and Death.
Nor was he blind to the merits of love on a higher plane. In the same work he wrote: "Love, if not unfortunate and too deeply wounding is a kind of joy". But he begins his Essay on Love:
"The Stage is more beholding to Love than the life of man. For as to the Stage, Love is ever matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies. But in life it doth much mischief: sometimes like a siren; sometimes like a fury. You may observe that amongst all the great and worthy persons (whereof the memory remaineth, either ancient or recent) there is not one that hath been transported to the mad degree of love; which shows that great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion".
So Bacon thought Man capable of higher things than "mad degree of love". But this would not preclude him from following the convention he recites and treating of love on the stage. In my view Shake-Speare handles his love scenes in a superficial and purely conventional way. But even if this criticism is unjust, homosexual writers have shown that they can handle heterosexual love scenes convincingly.
As to Shake-Speare's dramatis personae, they express whatever view of love their characters and the context require. Sometimes they enthuse over it; at other times they belittle it, in terms in keeping with Bacon's Essay. For example, in Measure For Measure 1.3.2, we have: "Believe not the dribbling dart of love/Can pierce a complete bosom". Bacon's sole fictional treatment of love in his acknowledged works - the speech in Praise of the Worthiest Affection which he wrote for the Device which the Earl of Essex presented before the Queen on 17 November 1595 - praises love because the context required that. Two of the sentiments in the speech are: "For love doth so fill and possess all the powers of the mind, as it sweetneth the harshness of all deformities"; and "Love is a pure gain and advancement in nature".
end of part 1 of 2
Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Attitude to Love Part 2 of 2
I will now demonstrate that Shake-Speare and Bacon said many of the same things about love,
nearly all of them conventional more or less.
1. Shake-Speare: Love moderately; long love doth so
Bacon: Love me little; love me long
2. Shake-Speare: Why to love I can allege no cause
Bacon: He [Cupid, i.e. Love] is...without a cause
3. Shake-Speare: He's mad that trusts in...a boy's love
Bacon: A boy's love and a dog's health do not endure
4. Shake-Speare: I shall be loved when I am lacked
Bacon: When he is dead he will be loved
5. Shake-Speare: By love the young and tender wit is turned to folly
Bacon: Love is the child of folly
6. Shake-Speare: Love is merely a madness
Bacon: Transported to the mad degree of love
7. Shake-Speare: Love must creep in service where it cannot go
Bacon: Love must creep where it cannot go
8. Shake-Speare: To be wise and love exceeds man's might; that dwells with gods above
Bacon: It is not granted to man to love and be wise
9. Shake-Speare: We are soldiers, and may that soldier mere recreant prove that means not, hath not, or is not in love
...
A martial man to be soft fancy's slave!
Bacon: I know not how, but martial men are given to love
10. Shake-Speare: They here stand martyrs, slain in Cupid's wars
Bacon: Lovers never thought their profession sufficiently graced till they had compared it to a warfare
11. Shake-Speare: It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue in love to the Moor...she must change for youth
Bacon: Love is nourished in young flesh
12. Shake-Speare: Lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit
Bacon: A lover always commits some folly
13. Shake-Speare: O brawling love, O loving hate!
...
My only love sprung from my only hate
Bacon: Love as if you were some day likely to hate. Hate as if you were some day likely to love
14. Shake-Speare: Believe not the dribbling dart of love can pierce a complete bosom
Bacon: Great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion
15. Shake-Speare: Love is blind
Bacon: Blind love
16. Shake-Speare: She burnt with love, as straw with fire flameth; She burnt out love as soon as straw out-burneth
...
Do not give dalliance too much the rein: the strongest oaths are straw to the fire in the blood
Bacon: A woman's love is like the fire of? [?=unknown translation of 'essoupe']
17. Shake-Speare: A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon than love that would seem hid. Love's night is noon
Bacon: Love, a cough and an itch cannot be hidden
18. Shake-Speare: When I love thee not Chaos is come again
Bacon: Cupid...united with Chaos begat the gods and all things
[This was not a commonplace]
19. Shake-Speare: Love...with the motion of all elements
Bacon: It is motion therefore that animateth all things....the affections are the motions of the mind
[The working of this parallel with its emphasis on "motions" was not, I think, a commonplace]
20. Shake-Speare: Now for the love of Love and her soft hours....There's not a minute of our lives should stretch without some pleasure now
Bacon: Love is...a true purchase of pleasure
21. Shake-Speare: Prosperity's the very bond of love
...
Where nothing wants [in my beloved] that want itself doth seek
...
This spring of love...love's spring
Bacon: When we be in prosperity, when we want nothing, then is the season the opportunity and the spring of love
22. Shake-Speare: Speed: You never saw her since she was deformed
Valentine: How long hath she been deformed?
Speed: Ever since you loved her
Bacon: Love...sweeteneth the harshness of all deformities
[Speed humorously inverts Bacon's dictum]
23. Shake-Speare: Is not love a Hercules?
Bacon: Let no man fear the yoke of fortune that's in the yoke of love. What fortune can be such a Hercules as shall be able to overcome two? When two souls are joined in one, when one hath another to divide his fortune withal, no force can depress him
24. Shake-Speare: Thy love did read by Rote and could not spell
Bacon: Now therefore will I teach lovers to love that have all this while loved by Rote. I will give them the alphabet of love. I will show them how it is spelled
25. Shake-Speare: O flatter me, for love delights in praises
Bacon: There is no flatterer like to that of a lover
26. Shake-Speare: Love, first learned in a lady's eyes
...
It is engendered in the eyes with gazing fed
Bacon: To leave where love begineth, who discerneth not that the eye is the most affecting sense?...the eye is first contented in love
end of Attitude on Love part 2 of 2
Attitude to Love Part 2 of 2
I will now demonstrate that Shake-Speare and Bacon said many of the same things about love,
nearly all of them conventional more or less.
1. Shake-Speare: Love moderately; long love doth so
Bacon: Love me little; love me long
2. Shake-Speare: Why to love I can allege no cause
Bacon: He [Cupid, i.e. Love] is...without a cause
3. Shake-Speare: He's mad that trusts in...a boy's love
Bacon: A boy's love and a dog's health do not endure
4. Shake-Speare: I shall be loved when I am lacked
Bacon: When he is dead he will be loved
5. Shake-Speare: By love the young and tender wit is turned to folly
Bacon: Love is the child of folly
6. Shake-Speare: Love is merely a madness
Bacon: Transported to the mad degree of love
7. Shake-Speare: Love must creep in service where it cannot go
Bacon: Love must creep where it cannot go
8. Shake-Speare: To be wise and love exceeds man's might; that dwells with gods above
Bacon: It is not granted to man to love and be wise
9. Shake-Speare: We are soldiers, and may that soldier mere recreant prove that means not, hath not, or is not in love
...
A martial man to be soft fancy's slave!
Bacon: I know not how, but martial men are given to love
10. Shake-Speare: They here stand martyrs, slain in Cupid's wars
Bacon: Lovers never thought their profession sufficiently graced till they had compared it to a warfare
11. Shake-Speare: It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue in love to the Moor...she must change for youth
Bacon: Love is nourished in young flesh
12. Shake-Speare: Lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit
Bacon: A lover always commits some folly
13. Shake-Speare: O brawling love, O loving hate!
...
My only love sprung from my only hate
Bacon: Love as if you were some day likely to hate. Hate as if you were some day likely to love
14. Shake-Speare: Believe not the dribbling dart of love can pierce a complete bosom
Bacon: Great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion
15. Shake-Speare: Love is blind
Bacon: Blind love
16. Shake-Speare: She burnt with love, as straw with fire flameth; She burnt out love as soon as straw out-burneth
...
Do not give dalliance too much the rein: the strongest oaths are straw to the fire in the blood
Bacon: A woman's love is like the fire of? [?=unknown translation of 'essoupe']
17. Shake-Speare: A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon than love that would seem hid. Love's night is noon
Bacon: Love, a cough and an itch cannot be hidden
18. Shake-Speare: When I love thee not Chaos is come again
Bacon: Cupid...united with Chaos begat the gods and all things
[This was not a commonplace]
19. Shake-Speare: Love...with the motion of all elements
Bacon: It is motion therefore that animateth all things....the affections are the motions of the mind
[The working of this parallel with its emphasis on "motions" was not, I think, a commonplace]
20. Shake-Speare: Now for the love of Love and her soft hours....There's not a minute of our lives should stretch without some pleasure now
Bacon: Love is...a true purchase of pleasure
21. Shake-Speare: Prosperity's the very bond of love
...
Where nothing wants [in my beloved] that want itself doth seek
...
This spring of love...love's spring
Bacon: When we be in prosperity, when we want nothing, then is the season the opportunity and the spring of love
22. Shake-Speare: Speed: You never saw her since she was deformed
Valentine: How long hath she been deformed?
Speed: Ever since you loved her
Bacon: Love...sweeteneth the harshness of all deformities
[Speed humorously inverts Bacon's dictum]
23. Shake-Speare: Is not love a Hercules?
Bacon: Let no man fear the yoke of fortune that's in the yoke of love. What fortune can be such a Hercules as shall be able to overcome two? When two souls are joined in one, when one hath another to divide his fortune withal, no force can depress him
24. Shake-Speare: Thy love did read by Rote and could not spell
Bacon: Now therefore will I teach lovers to love that have all this while loved by Rote. I will give them the alphabet of love. I will show them how it is spelled
25. Shake-Speare: O flatter me, for love delights in praises
Bacon: There is no flatterer like to that of a lover
26. Shake-Speare: Love, first learned in a lady's eyes
...
It is engendered in the eyes with gazing fed
Bacon: To leave where love begineth, who discerneth not that the eye is the most affecting sense?...the eye is first contented in love
end of Attitude on Love part 2 of 2
Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Attitude to Money
When Shake-Speare's plays mention money, they express contempt for it, with lines such as: "How quickly nature falls into revolt / When gold becomes her object...the cankered heaps of strange achieved gold" (2 Henry IV, 4.5.65-6 & 71); and "There is thy gold - worse poison to man's soul" (Romeo and Juliet 5.1.80). And one surely gets the impression that these lines reflect the author's personal sentiments.
But Will Shakspere had a tooth for money. He can perhaps be described not unfairly as a wheeler-dealer, ever eager to make a penny. His biographers record his various property transactions that we know of. Money lending seems to have been one of his activities. In 1608 he sued for £6, being money lent at interest, and when the Defendant failed to pay (and was imprisoned till bailed) Shakspere sought payment from the surety. In 1598 his friend Richard Quinney asked him by letter for a loan of £30, and the letter's working (e.g. "If we bargain farther, you shall be the paymaster yourself" suggests, as Stratfordians agree, that it was a loan at interest. In his Groatsworth of Wit (1592) Robert Greene had accused actors as a class of lending at interest.
The dislike of moneylenders expressed in The Merchant of Venice seems to be authorial, not just adopted for dramatic reasons. So it seems a little odd, if Shakspere was Shake-Speare, that he should have been a money-lender himself. To explain this, H.N. Gibson in his The Shakespeare Claimants p. 39, fell back upon psychology - guilt may lead a man to condemn what he himself practices. But far more often a man justifies what he practices or keeps quiet about it. That Shakspere lent money at interest is not offered as a moral criticism. But it suggests a type of mind which seems difficult to reconcile with Shake-Speare's lofty and majestic spirit.
Bacon's attitude to money seems to have matched Shake-Speare's. Spedding wrote of Bacon that his "fault had always been too much carelessness about money" and that "though always too ready to borrow, to give, to lend and to spend, [he] had never been either a bargainer or a grasper or a hoarder". In a letter to the Queen in 1593 Bacon wrote truly: "My mind turns upon other wheels than profit" (speaking of self-advantage generally). In another letter to the Queen in 1599 he referred to "the contempt of the contemptible that measure a man by his estate". In his History of Henry VII he wrote of Henry: "Of nature assuredly he coveted to accumulate treasure; and was a little poor in admiring riches". In his Of the true Greatness of the Kingdom of Britain he referred to "the idolatry that is generally committed in these degenerate times to money, as it would do all things public and private". In the days of his affluence he was often recklessly extravagant and over-generous. James Howell in a letter to Dr. Prichard of 1626, published in Howell's Epistolae Ho-Elianae (1645), related that once, when the King sent Bacon a stag, the latter sent for the underkeeper and, having drunk the King's health to him in a great silver gilt bowl, gave it to him for his fee.
As to usury, Bacon regarded it as a necessary evil. In his Essay on Riches he wrote: "Usury is the certainest means of gain, though one of the worst". In his History of Henry VII he described it as "the bastard use of money". In his Essay on Seditions and Troubles he opined: "Money is like muck, not good, except it be spread". Will Shakspere, on the other hand, thought it best heaped.
Attitude to Money
When Shake-Speare's plays mention money, they express contempt for it, with lines such as: "How quickly nature falls into revolt / When gold becomes her object...the cankered heaps of strange achieved gold" (2 Henry IV, 4.5.65-6 & 71); and "There is thy gold - worse poison to man's soul" (Romeo and Juliet 5.1.80). And one surely gets the impression that these lines reflect the author's personal sentiments.
But Will Shakspere had a tooth for money. He can perhaps be described not unfairly as a wheeler-dealer, ever eager to make a penny. His biographers record his various property transactions that we know of. Money lending seems to have been one of his activities. In 1608 he sued for £6, being money lent at interest, and when the Defendant failed to pay (and was imprisoned till bailed) Shakspere sought payment from the surety. In 1598 his friend Richard Quinney asked him by letter for a loan of £30, and the letter's working (e.g. "If we bargain farther, you shall be the paymaster yourself"
suggests, as Stratfordians agree, that it was a loan at interest. In his Groatsworth of Wit (1592) Robert Greene had accused actors as a class of lending at interest.The dislike of moneylenders expressed in The Merchant of Venice seems to be authorial, not just adopted for dramatic reasons. So it seems a little odd, if Shakspere was Shake-Speare, that he should have been a money-lender himself. To explain this, H.N. Gibson in his The Shakespeare Claimants p. 39, fell back upon psychology - guilt may lead a man to condemn what he himself practices. But far more often a man justifies what he practices or keeps quiet about it. That Shakspere lent money at interest is not offered as a moral criticism. But it suggests a type of mind which seems difficult to reconcile with Shake-Speare's lofty and majestic spirit.
Bacon's attitude to money seems to have matched Shake-Speare's. Spedding wrote of Bacon that his "fault had always been too much carelessness about money" and that "though always too ready to borrow, to give, to lend and to spend, [he] had never been either a bargainer or a grasper or a hoarder". In a letter to the Queen in 1593 Bacon wrote truly: "My mind turns upon other wheels than profit" (speaking of self-advantage generally). In another letter to the Queen in 1599 he referred to "the contempt of the contemptible that measure a man by his estate". In his History of Henry VII he wrote of Henry: "Of nature assuredly he coveted to accumulate treasure; and was a little poor in admiring riches". In his Of the true Greatness of the Kingdom of Britain he referred to "the idolatry that is generally committed in these degenerate times to money, as it would do all things public and private". In the days of his affluence he was often recklessly extravagant and over-generous. James Howell in a letter to Dr. Prichard of 1626, published in Howell's Epistolae Ho-Elianae (1645), related that once, when the King sent Bacon a stag, the latter sent for the underkeeper and, having drunk the King's health to him in a great silver gilt bowl, gave it to him for his fee.
As to usury, Bacon regarded it as a necessary evil. In his Essay on Riches he wrote: "Usury is the certainest means of gain, though one of the worst". In his History of Henry VII he described it as "the bastard use of money". In his Essay on Seditions and Troubles he opined: "Money is like muck, not good, except it be spread". Will Shakspere, on the other hand, thought it best heaped.
Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Sense of Humor Part 1 of 2
Much of Shake-Speare's situation comedy is quite good. Such old standbys as the shrewish wife and mistaken identity, seldom fail a dramatist completely. But when Shake-Speare is trying to think of a funny line, his mind turns at once to double (or even triple) meanings. His characters pun relentlessly, whether they be of high class or low, educated or illiterate, male or female, adult or child; and whatever the type of scene. His addiction to word play is so acute as to blind him to the woefulness of many of his puns. They have been well described as an "ineradicable weed" in his work.
The question one has to ask is whether this style of comic dialogue is more likely to have been perpetrated by Bacon or by Will Shakspere of Stratford. Both men had reputations for wit during their lifetimes. One contemporary, John Davies of Hereford, credited Shakspere with "a raging wit", though it is not clear whether this was a tribute to extempore wit of William of Stratford or merely to the wit of the Shake-Speare works. No genuine example of his humour has come down to us. A few ascribed to him are almost certainly apocryphal.
Bacon never jokes in his prose works, except that his Apothegms is his collection of jokes by other people, with one or two of his own. But we know from Ben Jonson that Bacon was given to jesting in person:
"There happened in my time one noble speaker , who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded where he spoke and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end".--Ben Jonson, regarding Bacon's eloquence
He practiced wit, not only for its own sake, but also as an aid to persuasion. In his De Augmentis he wrote: "It is good in discourse ... to intermingle...jest with earnest"; in his private notebook, the Promus, he wrote "Good to be merry and wise". There are several contemporary or nearly contemporary tributes to his wit which seems to have been legendary in his day. Though in Elizabethan parlance "wit" had a meaning more akin to "cleverness", some of the tributes plainly refer to wit in our modern sense. Tobie Mathew in his The Conversion of Sir Tobie Mathew (1640), wrote of Bacon: "I passed my time with him in much gust; for there was no such company in the whole world". Thomas Campion in Book 1 of his Epigrams (1619), Epigram 190 addressed to Bacon, said "How well thou combinest merry wit with silent gravity!" James Howell in his letter of 1626 already referred to wrote: "He had a great wit". Arthur Wilson in his The History of Great Britain (1653) described him as "of a high-flying and lively wit, striving in some things to be rather admired than understood, yet so quick and easy where he would express himself...His wit was quick to the last". And David Lloyd in his The Statesmen and Favourites of England (1665), p. 600, wrote "so acute and ready his wit". Of the few of his witticisms which have come down to us, most are based on word play of one sort or another. One example is from January 1602 when the Queen made 11 new Sergeants-at-law. At the swearing in ceremony, as the name of one of them, Barker, was called out, Bacon quipped to a colleague: "Among so many biters, there should be one barker". Another example, comes from after his fall from being Lord Chancellor:
"... and his old friend, Lord Treasurer Mandeville, whose complaint that he was now being kicked upstairs to be President of the Council provoked the fallen Chancellor, an incurable punster, into exclaiming, 'Why, my Lord, they have made me an example and you a Precedent.'
Francis Bacon, The History of a Character Assassination by Nieves Mathews 1996
Word play is a penchant of the educated (or over-educated?). It might sound clever across the tables in Gray's Inn Hall, but it would surely be anathema to someone of Will Shakspere's upbringing. It is true that Shake-Speare had a precedent for it in the classical writers such as Aristophanes, Menander and Plautus, who likewise indulgent in word play. It is true also that it was common in Elizabethan drama. But was any other Elizabethan dramatist as obsessed with it as Shake-Speare is? Ben Jonson, who was perhaps closest to Shakspere in social background, bases much of the humor in his plays on satire about London life, not on sterile word play. One would have expected Shakspere too to find rich seams of living humor in his own social milieu.
end of part one
Sense of Humor Part 1 of 2
Much of Shake-Speare's situation comedy is quite good. Such old standbys as the shrewish wife and mistaken identity, seldom fail a dramatist completely. But when Shake-Speare is trying to think of a funny line, his mind turns at once to double (or even triple) meanings. His characters pun relentlessly, whether they be of high class or low, educated or illiterate, male or female, adult or child; and whatever the type of scene. His addiction to word play is so acute as to blind him to the woefulness of many of his puns. They have been well described as an "ineradicable weed" in his work.
The question one has to ask is whether this style of comic dialogue is more likely to have been perpetrated by Bacon or by Will Shakspere of Stratford. Both men had reputations for wit during their lifetimes. One contemporary, John Davies of Hereford, credited Shakspere with "a raging wit", though it is not clear whether this was a tribute to extempore wit of William of Stratford or merely to the wit of the Shake-Speare works. No genuine example of his humour has come down to us. A few ascribed to him are almost certainly apocryphal.
Bacon never jokes in his prose works, except that his Apothegms is his collection of jokes by other people, with one or two of his own. But we know from Ben Jonson that Bacon was given to jesting in person:
"There happened in my time one noble speaker , who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded where he spoke and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end".--Ben Jonson, regarding Bacon's eloquence
He practiced wit, not only for its own sake, but also as an aid to persuasion. In his De Augmentis he wrote: "It is good in discourse ... to intermingle...jest with earnest"; in his private notebook, the Promus, he wrote "Good to be merry and wise". There are several contemporary or nearly contemporary tributes to his wit which seems to have been legendary in his day. Though in Elizabethan parlance "wit" had a meaning more akin to "cleverness", some of the tributes plainly refer to wit in our modern sense. Tobie Mathew in his The Conversion of Sir Tobie Mathew (1640), wrote of Bacon: "I passed my time with him in much gust; for there was no such company in the whole world". Thomas Campion in Book 1 of his Epigrams (1619), Epigram 190 addressed to Bacon, said "How well thou combinest merry wit with silent gravity!" James Howell in his letter of 1626 already referred to wrote: "He had a great wit". Arthur Wilson in his The History of Great Britain (1653) described him as "of a high-flying and lively wit, striving in some things to be rather admired than understood, yet so quick and easy where he would express himself...His wit was quick to the last". And David Lloyd in his The Statesmen and Favourites of England (1665), p. 600, wrote "so acute and ready his wit". Of the few of his witticisms which have come down to us, most are based on word play of one sort or another. One example is from January 1602 when the Queen made 11 new Sergeants-at-law. At the swearing in ceremony, as the name of one of them, Barker, was called out, Bacon quipped to a colleague: "Among so many biters, there should be one barker". Another example, comes from after his fall from being Lord Chancellor:
"... and his old friend, Lord Treasurer Mandeville, whose complaint that he was now being kicked upstairs to be President of the Council provoked the fallen Chancellor, an incurable punster, into exclaiming, 'Why, my Lord, they have made me an example and you a Precedent.'
Francis Bacon, The History of a Character Assassination by Nieves Mathews 1996
Word play is a penchant of the educated (or over-educated?). It might sound clever across the tables in Gray's Inn Hall, but it would surely be anathema to someone of Will Shakspere's upbringing. It is true that Shake-Speare had a precedent for it in the classical writers such as Aristophanes, Menander and Plautus, who likewise indulgent in word play. It is true also that it was common in Elizabethan drama. But was any other Elizabethan dramatist as obsessed with it as Shake-Speare is? Ben Jonson, who was perhaps closest to Shakspere in social background, bases much of the humor in his plays on satire about London life, not on sterile word play. One would have expected Shakspere too to find rich seams of living humor in his own social milieu.
end of part one
Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Sense of Humor Part 2 of 2
There is one aspect of Shake-Speare's humor which many find difficult to reconcile with Bacon's authorship - his bawdy. Would not the great philosopher have spurned bawdy? The answer - for better or for worse - is that Bacon enjoyed dirty jokes. In Bacon's History of Henry VII he records: "There is a tradition of a dilemma that Bishop Morton (the Chancellor) used, to raise up Benevolences [taxes] to higher rates; and some called it his fork and some his crotch". In 1624 in notes of a speech he was to make in Parliament about a possible war with Spain, he jots down: "[There is a belief] that the Spaniard, where he once gets in, will seldom or never be got out again (and they give it an ill-favored simile which you will not name)". In his Promus we find Bacon himself devising several bawdy puns. Bawdy was a convention of both classical and Elizabethan drama. And it lends itself ideally to word play, the double entendre being to this day a traditional and effective comic device which only hints at the obscene. Where Shake-Speare inherits bawdy in plot or characterization from his source, he sometimes tones it down as he does in The Comedy of Errors. Individual pieces of bawdy may have been interpolated by Will Shakspere or others. For example, the clown Will Kempe is known to have put in his own jokes. A possible instance of interpolation is in Hamlet 4.7.165-174, where the Queen breaks the news of Ophelia's death to Laertes:
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver brook,
To stress that long purples had a ruder name was unseemly in the context and out of character for the Queen, and may well have been interpolated by someone intent on getting a laugh from the groundlings at any price. But I am not entirely sure that Bacon could not have written the line despite its intrusiveness. As an ardent naturalist he would have been interested in alternative names - especially perhaps if there was a genital connotation In his Parasceve he writes: "The power of exciting Venus is ascribed to the herb Satyrion because its root takes the shape of testicles". Satyrion was a type of orchis and "long purples" are thought to have been another type. Most members of that family have testicle-like tubers.
Quite apart from bawdy, a wider doubt sometimes expressed is whether Bacon could have created Shake-Speare's low comedy characters. But why not? Their humor is largely dependent on word play anyway. But here too there is likely to have been some interpolation with the aim of improving the original.
end of part 2 of 2
Sense of Humor Part 2 of 2
There is one aspect of Shake-Speare's humor which many find difficult to reconcile with Bacon's authorship - his bawdy. Would not the great philosopher have spurned bawdy? The answer - for better or for worse - is that Bacon enjoyed dirty jokes. In Bacon's History of Henry VII he records: "There is a tradition of a dilemma that Bishop Morton (the Chancellor) used, to raise up Benevolences [taxes] to higher rates; and some called it his fork and some his crotch". In 1624 in notes of a speech he was to make in Parliament about a possible war with Spain, he jots down: "[There is a belief] that the Spaniard, where he once gets in, will seldom or never be got out again (and they give it an ill-favored simile which you will not name)". In his Promus we find Bacon himself devising several bawdy puns. Bawdy was a convention of both classical and Elizabethan drama. And it lends itself ideally to word play, the double entendre being to this day a traditional and effective comic device which only hints at the obscene. Where Shake-Speare inherits bawdy in plot or characterization from his source, he sometimes tones it down as he does in The Comedy of Errors. Individual pieces of bawdy may have been interpolated by Will Shakspere or others. For example, the clown Will Kempe is known to have put in his own jokes. A possible instance of interpolation is in Hamlet 4.7.165-174, where the Queen breaks the news of Ophelia's death to Laertes:
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver brook,
To stress that long purples had a ruder name was unseemly in the context and out of character for the Queen, and may well have been interpolated by someone intent on getting a laugh from the groundlings at any price. But I am not entirely sure that Bacon could not have written the line despite its intrusiveness. As an ardent naturalist he would have been interested in alternative names - especially perhaps if there was a genital connotation In his Parasceve he writes: "The power of exciting Venus is ascribed to the herb Satyrion because its root takes the shape of testicles". Satyrion was a type of orchis and "long purples" are thought to have been another type. Most members of that family have testicle-like tubers.
Quite apart from bawdy, a wider doubt sometimes expressed is whether Bacon could have created Shake-Speare's low comedy characters. But why not? Their humor is largely dependent on word play anyway. But here too there is likely to have been some interpolation with the aim of improving the original.
end of part 2 of 2
Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Interest in Medicine
Shake-Speare's work teems with allusions, literal or metaphorical, to medical science, to surgical operations, to potions and poisons and their effects. Dr. John Charles Bucknill in his The Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare (1860), p.2, wrote: "It would be difficult to point to any great author, not himself a physician, in whose works the healing art is referred to more frequently and more respectfully than in those of Shakespeare; the sacred writings alone being excepted". At p. 12 he added: "[the medical allusions in Shake-Speare] appear to amount not merely to evidence but to proof that Shakespeare had read widely in medical literature"; at p. 290: "The great dramatist had, at least, been a diligent student of all the medical knowledge existing in his time"; at p. 292: "The cumulative evidence...[is] unanswerable proof that his mind was deeply imbued with the best medical knowledge of his age". In similar vein Herman Pomeranz in his Medicine in the Shakespeare Plays and Dickens Doctors (1936), p. 9, wrote: "The Elizabethan dramatists in general...had a hearty contempt of medical men. Shakespeare appears to have been the sole exception". At p. 210: "All in all there is more mention of medical botany in his plays than in all the other late Elizabethan or early Jamesian writers". At p. 206: "He had a deeper interest in herbs, medicinal or otherwise, than any contemporary dramatist or poet".
Bacon's interest in medicine was almost obsessive. In Amboise's French version of Bacon's Natural History Bacon wrote: "His own health ought to be the first study of every man". He was dogged by frail health from childhood and called it "my second original sin". He records that his doctors thought he would not reach 14. He would concoct potions of his own recipe for his health's relief. For example, in his private notebook Commentarius Solutus, compiled in the summer of 1608, there are jottings of remedies for indigestion, bowel troubles and "vicious humours". One of his more attractive self-prescriptions (to be found in his Medical Remains, is: "In the third hour after sun is risen, to take in air from some high and open place, with a ventilation of rose maschetae and fresh violets, and to stir the earth with infusion of wine and mint".
Lord Macauley in his Essay on Bacon wrote: "Of all the sciences, that which he regarded with the greatest interest was the science which, in Plato's opinion, would not be tolerated in a well-regulated community. To make a man perfect was no part of Bacon's plan. His humble aim was to make imperfect man comfortable...He appealed to the example of Christ, and reminded his readers that the great Physician of the soul did not disdain to be also the physician of the body".
Pomeranz, op.cit. p. 155, wrote: "Bacon was a deep student of the medical literature of past ages - of Hippocrates, Galen and Celsus in especial - and of the antics of the quacks of his own period". Francis Osborne (1593-1659) in his Advice to a Son (1658) Part 2, p. 67, related how he once heard Bacon "outcant [out-jargon] a London chirurgeon [surgeon]" in a discussion about surgical matters.
It seems improbable that William Shakspere of Stratford would have had such a profound interest in medical science, ancient and modern.
Interest in Medicine
Shake-Speare's work teems with allusions, literal or metaphorical, to medical science, to surgical operations, to potions and poisons and their effects. Dr. John Charles Bucknill in his The Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare (1860), p.2, wrote: "It would be difficult to point to any great author, not himself a physician, in whose works the healing art is referred to more frequently and more respectfully than in those of Shakespeare; the sacred writings alone being excepted". At p. 12 he added: "[the medical allusions in Shake-Speare] appear to amount not merely to evidence but to proof that Shakespeare had read widely in medical literature"; at p. 290: "The great dramatist had, at least, been a diligent student of all the medical knowledge existing in his time"; at p. 292: "The cumulative evidence...[is] unanswerable proof that his mind was deeply imbued with the best medical knowledge of his age". In similar vein Herman Pomeranz in his Medicine in the Shakespeare Plays and Dickens Doctors (1936), p. 9, wrote: "The Elizabethan dramatists in general...had a hearty contempt of medical men. Shakespeare appears to have been the sole exception". At p. 210: "All in all there is more mention of medical botany in his plays than in all the other late Elizabethan or early Jamesian writers". At p. 206: "He had a deeper interest in herbs, medicinal or otherwise, than any contemporary dramatist or poet".
Bacon's interest in medicine was almost obsessive. In Amboise's French version of Bacon's Natural History Bacon wrote: "His own health ought to be the first study of every man". He was dogged by frail health from childhood and called it "my second original sin". He records that his doctors thought he would not reach 14. He would concoct potions of his own recipe for his health's relief. For example, in his private notebook Commentarius Solutus, compiled in the summer of 1608, there are jottings of remedies for indigestion, bowel troubles and "vicious humours". One of his more attractive self-prescriptions (to be found in his Medical Remains, is: "In the third hour after sun is risen, to take in air from some high and open place, with a ventilation of rose maschetae and fresh violets, and to stir the earth with infusion of wine and mint".
Lord Macauley in his Essay on Bacon wrote: "Of all the sciences, that which he regarded with the greatest interest was the science which, in Plato's opinion, would not be tolerated in a well-regulated community. To make a man perfect was no part of Bacon's plan. His humble aim was to make imperfect man comfortable...He appealed to the example of Christ, and reminded his readers that the great Physician of the soul did not disdain to be also the physician of the body".
Pomeranz, op.cit. p. 155, wrote: "Bacon was a deep student of the medical literature of past ages - of Hippocrates, Galen and Celsus in especial - and of the antics of the quacks of his own period". Francis Osborne (1593-1659) in his Advice to a Son (1658) Part 2, p. 67, related how he once heard Bacon "outcant [out-jargon] a London chirurgeon [surgeon]" in a discussion about surgical matters.
It seems improbable that William Shakspere of Stratford would have had such a profound interest in medical science, ancient and modern.
Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Interest in Sports
The sports with which Shake-Speare seems to have been most familiar, to judge from the number of his (usually metaphorical) references to them, were hunting, falconry and bowls. These were sports of the nobility and squirearchy.
On hunting A.L. Rowse comments in his William Shakespeare, p. 51-2: "He knew all about hounds, down to points like 'the hound that runs counter and yet draws dry-foot well" (The Comedy of Errors 4.2.39). "Draw dry-foot well" means "tracks game by the mere scent of the foot".
As to falconry, an Act of Parliament allotted birds of prey to degrees and orders of men according to their rank and station. And as the Derbyite A.W. Titherley pointed out in his Shakespeare's Identity (1952), p. 5-6: "When Shakespeare refers to specific kinds of hawk, it is usually to the falcon or tercel (male); it is to birds restricted to the nobility; but only rarely to the goshawk, sparrow hawk or kestrel of the people".
As to bowls, Caroline F.E. Spurgeon in her Shakespeare's Imagery, p. 110, writes: "Of all the games and exercises Shakespeare mentions - tennis, football, bowls, fencing, tilting, wrestling - there can be no doubt that bowls was the one he himself played and loved best. He has 19 images from bowls, besides other references, or more than thrice as many as from any other game, and these all show close knowledge of the game and of the peculiar run of the bowl". She adds at p. 111: "In 11 other dramatists - 49 plays - we find, if we except Dekker, only one image from bowls". Like hunting and falconry, bowls was a sport of the upper classes. Playing of the game was prohibited by Act of Parliament, except that a gentleman whose land brought him in at least £100 per year might play on his own bowling green. The reason for this embargo was that public bowling alleys were often the scene of gambling and dissipation.
Shake-Speare makes less frequent references to sports of the common people. For example, he was not much interested in fishing. And he never mentions ninepins or skittles.
How comes it, then, if Will Shakspere was the playwright Shake-Speare, that he was apparently most familiar with sports not available to his class? He could not have participated in hunting or falconry. He might have been able to play bowls since the Act of Parliament was not wholly successful in stamping out public bowling alleys; but only if he was prepared to mix with gamblers and the dissolute, which would not have been the best way to climb the social ladder. By contrast, why so little interest in fishing? Did William Shakspere never fish in the river Avon?
With Bacon there is no problem. As a member of the upper classes, he would have been familiar with the sports in question. Francis Osborne wrote of Bacon: "So I have heard him entertain a country Lord in the proper terms relating to hawks and dogs". The physical recreations he himself enjoyed (as Canon Rawley tells us in the Latin version of his life of Bacon prefixed to Rawley's Resuscitatio (1658) were "gentle walking, coaching, slow riding, playing at bowls and such other like exercises". As to bowls, Bacon wrote in his De Augmentis: "Playing at bowls is good for diseases of the reins". In 1608 a bowling green was constructed at Gray's Inn, Bacon's law school. In notes Bacon made for a proposed conversation with the Duke of Buckingham in 1624 he wrote: "You bowl well if you do not horse the bowl an hand too much. You know the fine bowler is knee almost to the ground in delivery of the cast". It seems he hoped this advice in metaphor would induce Buckingham to show more restraint and humility ("knee almost to the ground". It is right to add that Bacon in his prose works only mentions bowls on two other occasions, namely in his Essay on Wisdom for a Man's Self and in his Essay on Studies, making 4 references in all, but there is still no difficulty in supposing that he would have made Shake-Speare's frequent metaphorical use of bowls.
Interest in Sports
The sports with which Shake-Speare seems to have been most familiar, to judge from the number of his (usually metaphorical) references to them, were hunting, falconry and bowls. These were sports of the nobility and squirearchy.
On hunting A.L. Rowse comments in his William Shakespeare, p. 51-2: "He knew all about hounds, down to points like 'the hound that runs counter and yet draws dry-foot well" (The Comedy of Errors 4.2.39). "Draw dry-foot well" means "tracks game by the mere scent of the foot".
As to falconry, an Act of Parliament allotted birds of prey to degrees and orders of men according to their rank and station. And as the Derbyite A.W. Titherley pointed out in his Shakespeare's Identity (1952), p. 5-6: "When Shakespeare refers to specific kinds of hawk, it is usually to the falcon or tercel (male); it is to birds restricted to the nobility; but only rarely to the goshawk, sparrow hawk or kestrel of the people".
As to bowls, Caroline F.E. Spurgeon in her Shakespeare's Imagery, p. 110, writes: "Of all the games and exercises Shakespeare mentions - tennis, football, bowls, fencing, tilting, wrestling - there can be no doubt that bowls was the one he himself played and loved best. He has 19 images from bowls, besides other references, or more than thrice as many as from any other game, and these all show close knowledge of the game and of the peculiar run of the bowl". She adds at p. 111: "In 11 other dramatists - 49 plays - we find, if we except Dekker, only one image from bowls". Like hunting and falconry, bowls was a sport of the upper classes. Playing of the game was prohibited by Act of Parliament, except that a gentleman whose land brought him in at least £100 per year might play on his own bowling green. The reason for this embargo was that public bowling alleys were often the scene of gambling and dissipation.
Shake-Speare makes less frequent references to sports of the common people. For example, he was not much interested in fishing. And he never mentions ninepins or skittles.
How comes it, then, if Will Shakspere was the playwright Shake-Speare, that he was apparently most familiar with sports not available to his class? He could not have participated in hunting or falconry. He might have been able to play bowls since the Act of Parliament was not wholly successful in stamping out public bowling alleys; but only if he was prepared to mix with gamblers and the dissolute, which would not have been the best way to climb the social ladder. By contrast, why so little interest in fishing? Did William Shakspere never fish in the river Avon?
With Bacon there is no problem. As a member of the upper classes, he would have been familiar with the sports in question. Francis Osborne wrote of Bacon: "So I have heard him entertain a country Lord in the proper terms relating to hawks and dogs". The physical recreations he himself enjoyed (as Canon Rawley tells us in the Latin version of his life of Bacon prefixed to Rawley's Resuscitatio (1658) were "gentle walking, coaching, slow riding, playing at bowls and such other like exercises". As to bowls, Bacon wrote in his De Augmentis: "Playing at bowls is good for diseases of the reins". In 1608 a bowling green was constructed at Gray's Inn, Bacon's law school. In notes Bacon made for a proposed conversation with the Duke of Buckingham in 1624 he wrote: "You bowl well if you do not horse the bowl an hand too much. You know the fine bowler is knee almost to the ground in delivery of the cast". It seems he hoped this advice in metaphor would induce Buckingham to show more restraint and humility ("knee almost to the ground"
. It is right to add that Bacon in his prose works only mentions bowls on two other occasions, namely in his Essay on Wisdom for a Man's Self and in his Essay on Studies, making 4 references in all, but there is still no difficulty in supposing that he would have made Shake-Speare's frequent metaphorical use of bowls.
Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Interest in Gardening
Caroline Spurgeon, in her Shakespeare's Imagery (1935), p. 86 writes: One occupation, one point of view, above all others, is naturally his [Shake-Speare's], that of a gardener; watching, preserving, tending and caring for growing things, especially flowers and fruit. All through his plays he thinks most easily and readily of human life and action in the terms of a gardener". "A devoted gardener", Lord Dacre calls him in his essay "What's in a Name", "only Francis Bacon compares with him here". Bacon begins his Essay on Gardens: "God almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures". Bacon delighted in making improvements to the gardens at Twickenham Lodge, Gorhambury and at Gray's Inn. Aubrey adds: "At every meal, according to the season of the year, he had his table strewed with sweet herbs and flowers, which he said did refresh his spirit and memory".
Will Shakspere can have had little or no opportunity for gardening till his retirement to Stratford around 1610-1613 after the plays had been written.
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Interest in the Weather
Lord Dacre, in the same essay mentioned, also commented that Shake-Speare "had a great eye for the weather and its nuances, for the seasons and their changes". Bacon's prose works offer little opportunity for comments on the weather, save his Historia Ventorum [History of the Winds] (1622) which is an encyclopedic 60-page analysis of winds. To quote a single sentence: "In a south wind the breath of men is more offensive, the appetite of animals is more depressed, pestilential diseases are more frequent, catarrhs common, and men are more dull and heavy; whereas in a north wind they are brisker, healthier, and have a better appetite". It is reasonable to infer that he had a similar interest in other aspects of the weather, which would only be one facet of his interest in nature generally.
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Interest in Animals, especially Birds
Shake-Speare had a fondness for animals generally, especially birds. Caroline Spurgeon, p. 48, writes: "Of the large animal group, the outstanding point is the great number drawn from birds. If we except the human body, its parts, movements and senses, Shake-Speare's images from birds form by far the largest section drawn from any single class of objects". Shake-Speare mentions 70 kinds of birds, including sea birds, in 600 allusions - see J.E. Harting, Birds of Shakespeare (1871).
Bacon too seems to have been an animal lover. At Gorhambury in the old House he installed windows on the glass of which were painted animals and plants - see Aubrey's Brief Lives. In his Historia Vitae et Mortis (History of Life and Death) he displays much knowledge of animals. And his special interest seems to have been in birds. Aubrey tells us that Bacon had an aviary built in the grounds of York House at a cost of £300. "The crane that flew into the Thames" (for sending after which the Washwoman was rewarded with 5 shillings) had probably escaped from the aviary. In 1624 in notes of a proposed conversation with the Duke of Buckingham Bacon jotted down: "I have somewhat of the French: I love birds, as the King doth, and have some childish [next word illegible] wherein we shall consent".
Interest in Gardening
Caroline Spurgeon, in her Shakespeare's Imagery (1935), p. 86 writes: One occupation, one point of view, above all others, is naturally his [Shake-Speare's], that of a gardener; watching, preserving, tending and caring for growing things, especially flowers and fruit. All through his plays he thinks most easily and readily of human life and action in the terms of a gardener". "A devoted gardener", Lord Dacre calls him in his essay "What's in a Name", "only Francis Bacon compares with him here". Bacon begins his Essay on Gardens: "God almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures". Bacon delighted in making improvements to the gardens at Twickenham Lodge, Gorhambury and at Gray's Inn. Aubrey adds: "At every meal, according to the season of the year, he had his table strewed with sweet herbs and flowers, which he said did refresh his spirit and memory".
Will Shakspere can have had little or no opportunity for gardening till his retirement to Stratford around 1610-1613 after the plays had been written.
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Interest in the Weather
Lord Dacre, in the same essay mentioned, also commented that Shake-Speare "had a great eye for the weather and its nuances, for the seasons and their changes". Bacon's prose works offer little opportunity for comments on the weather, save his Historia Ventorum [History of the Winds] (1622) which is an encyclopedic 60-page analysis of winds. To quote a single sentence: "In a south wind the breath of men is more offensive, the appetite of animals is more depressed, pestilential diseases are more frequent, catarrhs common, and men are more dull and heavy; whereas in a north wind they are brisker, healthier, and have a better appetite". It is reasonable to infer that he had a similar interest in other aspects of the weather, which would only be one facet of his interest in nature generally.
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Interest in Animals, especially Birds
Shake-Speare had a fondness for animals generally, especially birds. Caroline Spurgeon, p. 48, writes: "Of the large animal group, the outstanding point is the great number drawn from birds. If we except the human body, its parts, movements and senses, Shake-Speare's images from birds form by far the largest section drawn from any single class of objects". Shake-Speare mentions 70 kinds of birds, including sea birds, in 600 allusions - see J.E. Harting, Birds of Shakespeare (1871).
Bacon too seems to have been an animal lover. At Gorhambury in the old House he installed windows on the glass of which were painted animals and plants - see Aubrey's Brief Lives. In his Historia Vitae et Mortis (History of Life and Death) he displays much knowledge of animals. And his special interest seems to have been in birds. Aubrey tells us that Bacon had an aviary built in the grounds of York House at a cost of £300. "The crane that flew into the Thames" (for sending after which the Washwoman was rewarded with 5 shillings) had probably escaped from the aviary. In 1624 in notes of a proposed conversation with the Duke of Buckingham Bacon jotted down: "I have somewhat of the French: I love birds, as the King doth, and have some childish [next word illegible] wherein we shall consent".
**Note** This post was originally under the topic of "Some Baconian Evidence". It was moved here to keep related posts all together in the same topic.
Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Political Views
Shake-Speare was conservative par excellence. He approved the existing framework of society, revered tradition and abhorred mob rule. Further, as A. Hart pointed out in his Shakespeare and the Homilies (1934), p. 27: "Shakespeare outdoes every important dramatist of his time in the number and variety of the allusions made to the divine right of the reigning monarch, the duty of passive obedience, enjoined on subjects by God, and the misery and chaos resulting from civil war and rebellion". But he was too intelligent to be a blind conservative. He knew the shortcomings of the aristocracy. This has led a few Stratfordians to see in the Shake-Speare plays the ill-concealed contempt of a representative of the bourgeoisie for the effete old aristocracy. But this is not a correct inference from the Shake-Speare works as a whole.
Shake-Speare's political approach is in total accord with Bacon's. At the trial of the Earl of Essex for treason in 1601 Bacon declared: "By the common law of England, a Prince [sovereign] can do no wrong". Or as Shake-Speare put it in Pericles 1.1.104-5: "Kings are earth's gods; in vice their law's their will; And if Jove stray, who dares say Jove doth ill?". Our two authors shared contempt for the mob. And both thought it crucial that the hierarchy of society should be preserved. In his famous speech in Troilus and Cressida 1.3.109-10 Ulysses says: "Take but degree away, untune that string, / And hark what discord follows". In his The Advancement of Learning Bacon says: "Nothing doth derogate from the dignity of a state more than confusion of degrees". And in the same work he refers to "men, who are full of savage and unreclaimed desires of profit, of lust, of revenge; which as long as they give ear to precepts, to laws, to religion, sweetly touched with eloquence and persuasion of book, of sermons, of harangues, so long is society and peace maintained; but if these instruments be silent, or that sedition and tumult make them not audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion". Note that both authors describe the hierarchy as "degree", and that both use a very similar musical analogy by Shake-Speare, "untune that string", in Bacon "if these instruments be silent".
Will Shakspere of Stratford aspired to and achieved membership of the lesser gentry. So he too was probably conservative. But it is doubtful whether someone of his background would have been as emphatic as Bacon and Shake-Speare in their support for the divine right of Kings.
Shake-Speare's contempt for the mob is too well known to need illustration. But here are some more examples from Bacon's works. In his The Wisdom of the Ancients he wrote of the "innate depravity ad malignant disposition of the common people". In the same work he said: "The nature of the common people, always swelling with malice towards their rulers, and hatching revolution or sedition, is feminine". In his Certain Considerations Touching the Better Pacification and Edification of the Church of England he wrote of "multitudes who can never keep within the compass of any moderation".
Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Political Views
Shake-Speare was conservative par excellence. He approved the existing framework of society, revered tradition and abhorred mob rule. Further, as A. Hart pointed out in his Shakespeare and the Homilies (1934), p. 27: "Shakespeare outdoes every important dramatist of his time in the number and variety of the allusions made to the divine right of the reigning monarch, the duty of passive obedience, enjoined on subjects by God, and the misery and chaos resulting from civil war and rebellion". But he was too intelligent to be a blind conservative. He knew the shortcomings of the aristocracy. This has led a few Stratfordians to see in the Shake-Speare plays the ill-concealed contempt of a representative of the bourgeoisie for the effete old aristocracy. But this is not a correct inference from the Shake-Speare works as a whole.
Shake-Speare's political approach is in total accord with Bacon's. At the trial of the Earl of Essex for treason in 1601 Bacon declared: "By the common law of England, a Prince [sovereign] can do no wrong". Or as Shake-Speare put it in Pericles 1.1.104-5: "Kings are earth's gods; in vice their law's their will; And if Jove stray, who dares say Jove doth ill?". Our two authors shared contempt for the mob. And both thought it crucial that the hierarchy of society should be preserved. In his famous speech in Troilus and Cressida 1.3.109-10 Ulysses says: "Take but degree away, untune that string, / And hark what discord follows". In his The Advancement of Learning Bacon says: "Nothing doth derogate from the dignity of a state more than confusion of degrees". And in the same work he refers to "men, who are full of savage and unreclaimed desires of profit, of lust, of revenge; which as long as they give ear to precepts, to laws, to religion, sweetly touched with eloquence and persuasion of book, of sermons, of harangues, so long is society and peace maintained; but if these instruments be silent, or that sedition and tumult make them not audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion". Note that both authors describe the hierarchy as "degree", and that both use a very similar musical analogy by Shake-Speare, "untune that string", in Bacon "if these instruments be silent".
Will Shakspere of Stratford aspired to and achieved membership of the lesser gentry. So he too was probably conservative. But it is doubtful whether someone of his background would have been as emphatic as Bacon and Shake-Speare in their support for the divine right of Kings.
Shake-Speare's contempt for the mob is too well known to need illustration. But here are some more examples from Bacon's works. In his The Wisdom of the Ancients he wrote of the "innate depravity ad malignant disposition of the common people". In the same work he said: "The nature of the common people, always swelling with malice towards their rulers, and hatching revolution or sedition, is feminine". In his Certain Considerations Touching the Better Pacification and Edification of the Church of England he wrote of "multitudes who can never keep within the compass of any moderation".
Opinions, attitudes and interests of Shake-Speare and Bacon.
Aristocratic Settings of the Plays
An author is often advised to write about what he knows best, and the most do. So it is of some significance that for all but two of his plays Shake-Speare selected plots with aristocratic settings. They take place in courts and palaces, and the characters are Kings, Queens, dukes and other lofty personages. This is so whether the play is a history play, a romance, a fantasy or a comedy. True, plays of high life were popular with Elizabethan audiences and other playwrights penned them. But they also wrote plays with other settings. No other major playwright was so drawn as Shake-Speare to the aristocratic milieu. The two exceptions in his work are The Comedy of Errors and The Merchant of Venice, which are about the misfortunes of middle class merchants. One would expect Shakspere to have written quite a lot about life in contemporary London, both in inclination and because there was a market for plays of that genre. As Louis B. Wright wrote in his Middle Class Culture in Elizabethan England (1935), p. 631: "The non-satirical play dealing with domestic situations, based on the lives of ordinary people, found in the average citizen an eager spectator". Nearly all the playwrights of the period, such as Chapman, Middleton and Decker, were locating at least some of their plays in the contemporary London of their residence. One such play was Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday (1599) which presents an idealized picture of citizen life. Nor does one find in Shake-Speare's plays any trace of humble country pursuits such as practiced around Stratford or elsewhere - no village green, maypole, Fair, market, harvest, haymaking, reaping, fruit-picking.
Though Shake-Speare never wrote a play about lower class life anywhere, he did occasionally inject scenes of low life. Stratfordians argue that he handles these as well as his scenes of aristocratic life. But as Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) once wrote in an essay entitle "What's In a Name" in Realities (English Language Edition, Nov 1962): "The independent sub-noble world of artisans and craftsmen, if it exists for Shakespeare, exists only as his butt. Bottom, Quince, Snug, Dogberry and Verges - these poor imbeciles are used only to amuse the nobility by their clumsiness. Even the middle classes are scarcely better treated".
Aristocratic Settings of the Plays
An author is often advised to write about what he knows best, and the most do. So it is of some significance that for all but two of his plays Shake-Speare selected plots with aristocratic settings. They take place in courts and palaces, and the characters are Kings, Queens, dukes and other lofty personages. This is so whether the play is a history play, a romance, a fantasy or a comedy. True, plays of high life were popular with Elizabethan audiences and other playwrights penned them. But they also wrote plays with other settings. No other major playwright was so drawn as Shake-Speare to the aristocratic milieu. The two exceptions in his work are The Comedy of Errors and The Merchant of Venice, which are about the misfortunes of middle class merchants. One would expect Shakspere to have written quite a lot about life in contemporary London, both in inclination and because there was a market for plays of that genre. As Louis B. Wright wrote in his Middle Class Culture in Elizabethan England (1935), p. 631: "The non-satirical play dealing with domestic situations, based on the lives of ordinary people, found in the average citizen an eager spectator". Nearly all the playwrights of the period, such as Chapman, Middleton and Decker, were locating at least some of their plays in the contemporary London of their residence. One such play was Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday (1599) which presents an idealized picture of citizen life. Nor does one find in Shake-Speare's plays any trace of humble country pursuits such as practiced around Stratford or elsewhere - no village green, maypole, Fair, market, harvest, haymaking, reaping, fruit-picking.
Though Shake-Speare never wrote a play about lower class life anywhere, he did occasionally inject scenes of low life. Stratfordians argue that he handles these as well as his scenes of aristocratic life. But as Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) once wrote in an essay entitle "What's In a Name" in Realities (English Language Edition, Nov 1962): "The independent sub-noble world of artisans and craftsmen, if it exists for Shakespeare, exists only as his butt. Bottom, Quince, Snug, Dogberry and Verges - these poor imbeciles are used only to amuse the nobility by their clumsiness. Even the middle classes are scarcely better treated".
Both Shake-Speare and Bacon had a Patrician outlook.
Snobbery
It seems to have been Shake-Speare's personal view that a person of high birth was innately superior. One finds texts such as Troilus And Cressida "Do you know what a man is? Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?" One notes that "birth" is put first. It seems to have been the lynchpin of Shake-Speare's concept of the ideal man. That view was certainly shared by Bacon who wrote in his Essay on Praise: "For the common people understand not many excellent virtues: the lowest draw praise from them; the middle virtues work in them astonishment or admiration; but of the highest virtues they have no sense or perceiving at all".
Snobbery
It seems to have been Shake-Speare's personal view that a person of high birth was innately superior. One finds texts such as Troilus And Cressida "Do you know what a man is? Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?" One notes that "birth" is put first. It seems to have been the lynchpin of Shake-Speare's concept of the ideal man. That view was certainly shared by Bacon who wrote in his Essay on Praise: "For the common people understand not many excellent virtues: the lowest draw praise from them; the middle virtues work in them astonishment or admiration; but of the highest virtues they have no sense or perceiving at all".
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