“RECENT SHAKESPEAREAN RESEARCH.”
Sir,—In an article under the above heading in the October number of the Quarterly Review, Mr. C. R. Haines writes (p. 229): “There cannot be the smallest doubt that Shakespeare [i.e., William Shakspere, of Stratford] was possessed of books at his death. One of these, with his undoubted signature [my italics], ‘W. Shr.’ is still extant in the Bodleian Library.... A second, Florio’s version of Montaigne (1603), bears the signature ‘Wilm Shakspere,’ which is with some reason regarded as genuine.”
Now Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, who, I believe, is generally considered our foremost “paleographer,” has told us that the “Florio’s Montaigne” signature is an “undoubted forgery” (I have in my possession a letter of his addressed from the British Museum in 1904 to the late Sir Herbert Tree, and kindly forwarded by the latter to me, in which Sir Edward so states); and the same high authority writes in “Shakespeare’s England” (Vol. I, p. 308, n.): “Nor is it possible to give a higher character to the signature, ‘Wm She.’ (not ‘W. Shr,’ as Mr. Haines prints it) in the Aldine Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses,’ 1502, in the Bodleian Library.”
How in the face of this Mr. C. R. Haines can assert that the book referred to, in the Bodleian Library, bears Shakespeare’s “undoubted signature,” or that the “Florio” signature is with reason regarded as genuine, I am quite unable to understand.
A further question is suggested by the following passage in Mr. Haines’s article. Alluding to the suit of “Belott v. Mountjoy,” he writes: “From this suit we also learn an interesting by-fact, namely, that Belott and his wife, after quitting the Mountjoys, lived in the house of George Wilkins, the playwright, who had the honour of collaborating with Shakespeare in ‘Pericles,’ and possibly in ‘Timon.’” Here I would ask what particle of evidence is there that the “George Wilkins, Victualler,” mentioned in the action, was George Wilkins the pamphleteer and hack-dramatist? It is true Professor Wallace has told us that, although “we have known nothing about Wilkins personally before,” he thinks that “more than one reader with a livelier critical interest in these [Shakespearean] plays may be able to smell the victualler” (Harper’s Magazine, March, 1910, p. 509); but, really, we can hardly be expected to put implicit confidence in the deductions of Dr. Wallace’s olfactory organ. What warrant, then, has Mr. Haines to characterize as a “fact” that which is only guess-work and assumption? For my part, I can no more “smell the victualler” in the author of “The Miseries of Inforst Marriage” than I can “smell” (as did Professor Wallace) the French official Herald in Mountjoy of Muggle Street!
One more question and I have done, though many more occur to me. Mr. Haines invites our attention to “The Plume MSS., which gave us the only glimpse of John Shakespeare at his home, cracking jests with his famous son” (p. 241). May I respectfully ask him if it is not the fact that this pleasant picture of John Shakespeare rests upon the (alleged) statement of Sir John Mennes, and that Sir John Mennes was born on March 1st, 1599, whereas John Shakespeare died in September, 1601, so that the infant Mennes must, presumably, have been taken from his cradle in Kent, in his nurse’s arms, for the purpose of interviewing that “merry-cheeked old man,” of which interview he made a record from memory when he had learnt to write?
I trust Mr. Haines will enlighten a perplexed inquirer as to these matters in the second article, which, as I gather, he is to contribute to the Quarterly Review on the results of “Recent Shakespearean Research.”—Yours, &c.,
George Greenwood.
I turned, therefore, with some interest to Mr. Haines’s second article, but, alas, I found no enlightenment therein. He has treated my questions with a very discreet silence. Well, no doubt “silence is golden”—in some cases. But such is “Shakespearean” criticism at the present day, of which these articles are a very instructive and characteristic specimen. I am aware, of course, that if I were to offer a paper in reply to them, however conclusive that reply might be, and even if it were quite up to the literary standard of the Review in question, it would be at once returned to me by the editor—if not consigned to the “W.P.B.”—for the all-sufficient reason that the writer is guilty of vile and intolerable heresy (to wit that he shares the conviction of the late Henry James—and many others alive and dead—that the author of Hamlet and Lear and Othello was actually a well-educated man, of high position, and the representative of the highest culture of his day), and is therefore taboo to the editors of all decent journals. Id sane intolerandum! Indeed, with the exception of the editor of the National Review—to whom the thanks of all unprejudiced and liberal-minded men are most justly due—I know of no editor of an English quarterly or monthly magazine, since the lamented death of Mr. Wray Skilbeck, who does not maintain this boycott as though it were a matter of moral obligation, just as but a few years since they boycotted the Free-thinker and the Rationalist. They freely open their columns to attacks upon the “Anti-Stratfordian,” but on no account must he be allowed to reply.
Whether such an attitude redounds to the credit of English literature it is not for me, a “heretic,” to say. I would only venture to refer the reader to the observations of Professor Abel Lefranc—a scholar and critic of European reputation—upon this matter, in whose judgment it seems that such an attitude with regard to an extremely interesting literary problem is not only absurdly prejudiced and narrow-minded, but one which—I tremble as I say it—makes some of our literary highbrows not a little ridiculous in the eyes of men of common sense and unfettered judgment.[27]
The following extract from Mr. Smithson’s Article in The Nineteenth Century of November 1913, headed “Ben Jonson’s Pious Fraud,” may well stand as a preface to his now published Essay on Jonson’s Masque of Time Vindicated, which was written by him in the year 1919. The reader may also be referred to Chapters VI and VII of his Shakespeare-Bacon, published in 1899.
It is odd that we Baconians, differing as we do from our opponents in so many points, should agree with them so entirely on one—the supreme importance of the testimony of Ben Jonson. This paper is mainly concerned with two of his utterances, the Ode in the First Folio, and the Prince’s Masque. Both the one and the other belong in point of composition to the same period, 1622-3. We will begin with the Masque completed no doubt a few months earlier than the Ode. In my opinion they were vital parts of one great scheme of which Bacon, i.e., Bacon-Shakespeare, was the subject.
The genesis of the Prince’s Masque was probably on this wise: assuming that Bacon was bent on disowning his plays, the publication of them, however generous in intention, could at best be only a left-handed compliment to him. Consequently if the scheme was to yield any true satisfaction to its originators (or any suitable consolation to Bacon regarded as the victim of malicious if not disloyal persecution), it would have to give scope for some direct (ad virum) expression, in their own persons if possible, of love and admiration for their hero. A prince brought up in the court of James the First would be sure to decide that a Masque was the thing and Ben Jonson the man. As the audience would necessarily be select and discreet (Court influence being potent), the risk of disclosure was not serious; and even if it had been, Jonson’s skill would have been equal to the task of hoodwinking any probable audience. On this occasion luck helped cunning. In the nick of time, George Wither, a “prodigious pourer forth of rhime,” happened to publish a volume of Satirical Essays in rhyme, with a ridiculous dedication of the thing to himself as patron and protector. This I fancy gave Jonson just what he wanted—a red herring to draw across the scent.
The Prince’s Masque had another, and for our purpose far more significant title—Time Vindicated to Himself and His Honours. Time, no Time of long ago, but the age that was then passing, had been slandered, taxed with being mean and dull and sterile, and the intention of the Masque or Pageant was to refute these calumnies in presence, not of an inquisitive world, but of Time’s living ornaments (as well as himself). If report speak true, it was presented on the 19th of January, 1623—the Sunday in that memorable year which fell nearest to Bacon’s birthday—presented in circumstances of unprecedented splendour, “the Prince leading the Measures with the French embassador’s wife.” The Masque (as given in Jonson’s Works) is sub-divided into Antimasque and Masque proper.
Fame, the accredited mouthpiece of the author, is by far the most important personage in the Antimasque. Her first business is to proclaim that she has been sent to invite to that night’s “great spectacle,” not the many, but the few who alone were worthy to view it. An inquisitive mob nicknamed The Curious at once begins to heckle Fame. A thrasonical personage called Chronomastix, a caricature compounded in unequal proportions of George Wither and the Ovid Junior of Jonson’s Poetaster, then appears on the scene. Chronomastix, I may say in passing, seems to have deluded John Chamberlain, for he (J. C.) tells a correspondent that Jonson in the Prince’s Masque “runs a risk by impersonating George Withers as a whipper of the times, which is a dangerous jest.” At sight of Chronomastix The Curious jeer at Fame for not recognising their idol, while Chronomastix himself has the effrontery to call her his “mistress,” and tells her it is for her sake alone that he “revells so in rime.” Fame retorts (in effect): “Away thou wretched Impostor! My proclamation was not meant for thee or thy kind; goe revell with thine ignorant admirers. Let worthy names alone.” Chronomastix is furious, brags of his popularity, and appeals to The Curious to “come forth ... and now or never, spight of Fame, approve me.” The stage direction here runs: “At this, the Mutes come in.” The first Mute, an elephantine creature, meant of course for Jonson himself, is about to bring forth a “male-Poem ... that kicks at Time already.” (Jonson’s Ode to Shakespeare was probably ruminated, if not written, at the very time that this “male-Poem” was struggling to be born.) The second Mute, a quondam Justice—reminding one of Justice Clement in Jonson’s earliest comedy—is in the habit of carrying Chronomastix about “in his pocket” and crying “‘O happy man!’ to the wrong party, meaning the Poet, where he meant the subject.” (This I take for a hint at the confusion of mind that must have existed among lovers of the drama as to who Shakespeare really was.) The succeeding pair of Mutes are, the one a printer in disguise who conceals himself and “his presse in a hollow tree, and workes by glow-worm light, the moon’s too open”; the other a compositor who in “an angle inhabited by ants will sit curled whole days and nights, and work his eyes out for him.”[29] The fifth Mute is a learned man, a schoolmaster, who is turning the works of the caricature Chronomastix into Latine. (“Some good pens”—as we learn from his letters—were at this time engaged in turning Bacon’s Advancement of Learning into Latin, the “general language.”) The sixth and last Mute is a “Man of warre,” reminiscent of Gullio in the Return from Parnassus, who it may be remembered worships “sweet Mr. Shakspeare,” talks “nothing but Shakspeare,” etc. Not one of the Mutes ever opens his mouth, and all that the audience knows of them is told by The Curious, whose function is to connect the Antimasque with the Masque and act as nomenclators for the elephantine poet and his suite. The Mutes came, or seemed to come, at the bidding of Chronomastix, in order to snub Fame for having insulted him. But Chronomastix himself is the person actually snubbed by them, seeing that they ignore him utterly. As for Fame, she treats the Mutes very coolly, her only comment being “What a confederacy of Folly is here!”
Following hard on this observation (of Fame’s) comes a dance, in which The Curious adore Chronomastix and then carry him off in triumph. Afterwards The Curious come up again, and one of them, addressing Fame, asks: “Now, Fame, how like you this?” Another chimes in: “He scornes you, and defies you, has got a Fame of his owne, as well as a Faction.” A third adds: “And these will deify him, to despite you.” Fame answers: “I envie not the Apotheosis. ’Twill prove but deifying of a Pompion.” (If The Curious had scented what Fame was about, a retort like this would have been enough to let them into the secret. But this hint, as well as her previous taunt, “My hot inquisitors, what I am about is more than you understand,” was lost on them and they continue their futile cackle.) Fame gets rid of The Curious at last by means of the Cat and Fiddle, who, according to the stage direction, “make sport with and drive them away.”
Relieved of the presence of all who were unfit to view the “great Spectacle” now on the point of being exhibited “with all solemnity,” Fame at last lets herself go: “Commonly (says she) The Curious are ill-natured and, like flies, seek Time’s corrupted parts to blow upon, but may the sound ones live with fame and honour, free from the molestation of these insects.”
The stage direction here runs: “Loud musique. To which the whole scene opens, where Saturne sitting with Venus is discovered above, and certaine Votaries coming forth below, which are the Chorus.”
Addressing the King, Fame announces that Saturn (Time) urged by Venus (emblem of affection) had promised to set free “certaine glories of the Time,” which, though eminently fitted to “adorn that age,” had nevertheless for mysterious reasons been kept in “darknesse” by “Hecate (Queene of shades).” Venus puts in her word; assures Time that the liberation of the “glories” is a “worke (which) will prove his honour” as well as exceed “men’s hopes.” Saturn answers her gallantly and then addressing the Votaries says: “You shall not long expect: with ease the things come forth (that) are born to please. Looke, have you seene such lights as these?”
This is the very climax of the Masque. “The Masquers (so runs the stage direction) are discovered and that which obscured them vanisheth.” The Votaries exclaim with rapture: “These, these must sure some wonders be.... What grief, or envie had it beene, that these and such had not beene seene, but still obscured in shade! Who are the glories of the Time ... and for the light were made!”
(Who were these “glories” whom Fame, the Prince, Ben Jonson, and the rest had with difficulty rescued from the underworld, in whose behalf inquisitive intruders had been excluded, about whom absurd mistakes of identity had been made, and who according to Fame were destined to play parts in the “apotheosis” of a pumpkin?[30] The only answer that occurs to me is that the spectacle consisted essentially of a selection from among the dramatis personæ who were about to figure in the First Folio, especially characters out of the sixteen or twenty then unpublished plays.)
The Masque ends with an exhortation to charity, the final words being:
(Bearing in mind that Bacon was probably regarded by the audience as an ill-used man, this exhortation sorts well with what I take to be the true interpretation of the Masque. So does the motto with which it opens. In that motto Martial bids ill-natured censors to leave him alone and keep their venom for self-admirers, persons vain of their own achievements. From first to last, therefore, Time Vindicated seems to have been deliberately adjusted to Bacon.)
The second part of this quasi-national scheme for doing honour to Shakespeare-Bacon falls now to be considered. The First Folio was published, it would seem, towards the end of 1623. Though not entered on the Stationers’ Register till November, it may well have been on the stocks before that, for the difficulties of collecting, arranging with interested printers, editing, adapting (The Tempest for example), and so forth, must have been extraordinary. The volume is introduced by some doggerel, signed “B. I.,” which tells the reader:
Derision and mystification, twin motives or causes of the guy Chronomastix, are equally the motives of this grotesque “figure.” Whether this were also intended to parody the doggerel inscribed on Shakespeare’s gravestone in Stratford Church may be open to doubt. That inscription runs:
Warned by “B. I.” that laughter is in that air, we turn to the famous Ode itself which is signed “Ben: Ionson”(not “B. I.”) This Poem opens with a significant hint that the “name” Shakespeare, as distinct from his “book” and his “fame,” was a delicate subject to handle. After having assured himself with much ado that Shakespeare’s (true) name is now in no danger, Jonson proceeds to inform him that he (Shakesspeare) is alive still, “a moniment without a tombe.” Then comes the line: “And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,” which is generally mistaken for a categorical statement that Shakespeare lacked Latin, whereas it should be understood as equivalent to “Supposing thou hadst small Latin,” etc. The word “would” in the next sentence (“From thence to honour thee I would not seek”) shows this to be the reading.
Then come the triumphant verses in which, after having challenged “insolent Greece or haughtie Rome” to produce a greater than Shakespeare, Jonson exclaims:
(Compare this with what Jonson wrote of Bacon not many years later: Bacon “is he, who hath filled up all numbers; and performed that in our tongue, which may be compared or preferred, either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome. In short, within his view and about his times were all the wits born that could honour a language, or helpe study. Now things daily fall, wits grow downe-ward, and Eloquence growes back-ward. So that hee may be named, and stand as the marke and akme of our language.... Hee seemed to mee ever, by his worke, one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration that had beene in many Ages.” The similarity between the two eulogies strikes one the moment they are brought into juxtaposition, and this helps to explain the exclusion of the Ode from the collected Workes of Ben: Jonson: 1640-1.)
After this rapturous outburst the mood changes, and we are bored by a number of didactic lines about the need of toil and sweat as well as genius, “for the good poet’s made as well as born.” The passage is one among many symptoms of Jonson’s long-standing quarrel with Shakespeareolators—a quarrel which at a later date found expression in the Discoveries—for refusing to see that the carelessness of their idol was at times not less conspicuous than his genius. Satisfied with having vindicated his own consistency, Jonson goes on to declare that each “well-torned and true-filed” line of Shakespeare’s “seemes to shake a lance as brandished at the eyes of ignorance.” (Obviously, therefore, Jonson had in view a peculiar kind of ignorance, one which the mere technique displayed in the First Folio would, but for a misunderstanding, have put to flight. The quondam Justice of Time Vindicated who was wont to cry “O happy man! to the wrong party,” suggests the misunderstanding in question. What, moreover, are we to make of the “stage” shaking and “lance” shaking and brandishing? How reconcile this punning upon shake and spear with the opening lines of the Ode which breathe forth reverence for “thy name.” It had been difficult, short of direct statement, to give plainer indications that Jonson was out for a juggle with a pair of names, one of them an alias.)
On the heels of the lance-brandishing jest comes the passionate utterance: “Sweet Swan of Avon, what a sight it were to see thee in our waters yet appeare, and make those flights upon the bankes of Thames, that so did take Eliza and our James!” (Here suggestio falsi is carried to the verge of the lie. What Jonson would have us think he felt about Warwick and its Avon is one thing. What he actually thought may be gathered from a fragment of rather later date in which he jeers at “Warwick Muses” for choosing a “Hoby-horse” as their favourite mount—“the Pegasus that uses to waite on Warwick Muses,” etc. Be this as it may, the ethics of the case would cause him no uneasiness. A secret had to be kept in deference to the wishes of one whom Jonson regarded as almost the greatest and most admirable of men, one too whose right to an incognito no living man of letters was likely to dispute.)
Jonson’s yearning to see Shakespeare once more “upon the bankes of Thames” is suddenly arrested by a vision. Turning his poetic eye upwards and catching sight of the constellation Cygnus, he affects to be thrilled by the conceit that Shakespeare had been metamorphosed, “advanced” to a higher sphere—“the hemisphere” as he calls it. (The Ode belongs, as has been said, to 1622-23. Some ten or a dozen years earlier, Shakspere, preferring humdrum Stratford to London and poetry, had turned his back on the Capital. If this yearning had been uttered in 1612-13, instead of 1622-23, it might have been meant for the Stratford man. So with the vision and the thrill, if we could have referred them to 1616-17, they would have provoked no question. But as things stand, question is inevitable. Had the yearning been kept under since 1612, and why? The vision too and the thrill, what had they to do with the testator of 1616? What more likely than that Jonson had in his mind the social elevation of the wonderful man who long before 1623 had broken his magic wand, doffed his singing robes, and taken leave of the stage for ever?)
The Ode closes on a note akin to despair at the low estate of Poetry ever since Shakespeare had ceased to enrich and adorn it. A similar note, it will be remembered, marks the close of Jonson’s appreciation of Bacon: “Now things daily fall: wits grow downe-ward, and Eloquence growes back-ward” etc. Here again the thoughts of Jonson were evidently running on Shakespeare; for with Jonson Eloquence was Poetry, or rather—to speak by the book—Poetry was “the most prevailing Eloquence, and of the most exalted Charact.”
The contention of this article may be compressed into one sentence: The Prince’s Masque and the famous Ode to Shakespeare were a signal act of homage in two parts to one man, and that man Francis Bacon. The proposition does not admit of demonstrative proof. High probability is all that is claimed, and if the claim be rejected the fault is with the advocate.
Such being the Preface, let us now turn to the further Essay on the Masque of Time Vindicated, which Edward Smithson left for, alas, posthumous publication.
Proprietas denique illa inseparabilis, quae Tempus ipsum sequitur, ut veritatem indies parturiat. De Aug: Scientiarum, 1623.
The year 1623 was a memorable one for literature. First in order of date came a masterpiece of Ben Jonson’s, the Masque of Time Vindicated. This was followed by Bacon’s De Augmentis Scientiarum, an expanded version of his Advancement of Learning, written many years earlier. The finest gift of that year was the First Folio of Shakespeare.
Time Vindicated consists of two violently contrasted parts; jest and earnest, antimasque and masque proper. The most conspicuous figure in the farcical part is CHRONOMASTIX, an enigmatical creature, so greedy of publicity (for fame is denied him) that his only “end” is “to get himselfe a name,” to ingratiate himself with “rumor” (he would have said Fame) as an inspired poet or maker.[31] Chronomastix is escorted by a doting mob of inquisitive adorers, the Curious, who are obsessed by the expectation that they are about to assist at the deification of a great poet, their own incomparable Chronomastix as they fondly imagine. Fame, the mouthpiece of Jonson, derides the Curious at every turn, and when they tell her that Chronomastix “has got a Fame of his owne, as well as a Faction: and these will deifie him, to despite you,” Fame replies: “I envie not the Apotheosis. ’Twill prove but deifying of a Pompion.” The antimasque closes with the ignominious expulsion of Chronomastix and his votaries; obviously because the “great spectacle,” which Time intended that “night to exhibit with all solemnity,” was too august for prying eyes to see.
The Masque proper opens with an address to King James, the gist of which is that “certaine glories of the Time,” till then artificially concealed, were about to be freed “at Love’s suit” or intercession because admirably fitted “to adorne the age.” The climax of the Masque follows this address almost immediately. The stage direction runs: “The Masquers are discovered, and that which obscur’d them, vanisheth.” The Chorus of the Masque is delighted by the vision of the Masquers, and cries out: “What griefe, or envie had it beene, that these, and such (as these) had not beene seene, but still obscur’d in shade! Who are the glories of the Time, ... and for the light were made!”
The essential fiction of Time Vindicated, known also as The Prince’s Masque, is that Time had been reproached with incapacity to produce masterpieces comparable anyway with those of Greece and Rome; and that the revelation of these Masquers was a triumphant refutation of the calumny. To suppose that this result was achieved by the Prince and his companions would be to insult Ben Jonson, the Prince, and all concerned. The all-important feature of the revelation must have been the make-up of the Masquers.
For several months previous to 1623 Jonson’s mind had necessarily been concentrated on Shakespeare; collecting manuscripts; squaring rival publishers; appreciating contributions offered by admirers (Fletcher perhaps and Chapman among others); amending originals, Julius Cæsar for instance; acting as editor-in-chief of the great book; meditating his Ode to “Shakespeare,” the man he lov’d and honoured (on this side idolatry) as much as any. (See Discoveries, 1641, for this italicised passage).
There are many and various indications to justify the hypothesis that the Masque as a whole was a tribute of love and admiration for “Shakespeare.” Here are some of them. (1) Love is the incentive to the freeing of the “wonders”—the “glories”—that so charmed the Chorus of the Masque. Love for “Shakespeare” was probably Jonson’s leading motive for undertaking all the drudgery connected with the First Folio. (2) The mention of “envie” by the Chorus gives one to think. Deprecation of envy is the burden of the enigmatical and portentous exordium of Jonson’s Ode to Shakespeare. (3) For reasons unexplained by his accredited biographers, the plays of Shakespeare had long been held back or secluded, but were then on the eve of publication or disclosure; not indeed “cured and perfect of their limbes”—to quote the editorial figment in the First Folio—but certainly less damaged, and imperfect than even Jonson, at an earlier stage, can have expected. (4) The audience of Time Vindicated is given to understand that “the Bosse of Belinsgate,” a nickname for Jonson, “has a male-poem in her belly now, big as a colt, that kicks at Time already.” In my opinion this Time-defying poem was none other than the famous Ode to Shakespeare. These indications alone are sufficient to justify the above-mentioned hypothesis that the Masque as a whole was a tribute of love and admiration for “Shakespeare.” On no other hypothesis would the title, Time Vindicated, have been appropriate or even excusable. Whereas no other conceivable title would have been so absolutely appropriate, if “Shakespeare” were, as I believe he was, the hero of the Masque; in precisely the same sense, by the way, in which he was the hero of the Ode; the only Poet worthy to be compared, in the words of the Ode, with “all that insolent Greece or haughtie Rome sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.”
Another significant feature of the Masque is the display of anxiety to safeguard the spectacular revelation of the Masquers from the attentions of inquisitive observers, an anxiety which requires the drastic expulsion of the Curious. This anxiety, as I read it, betokened a secret intimately connected with the First Folio. Before developing this contention, it may be well to clear the ground, not only of Heminge and Condell, but also of the Stratford gentleman’s representatives. Heminge and Condell were probably mere dummies who gave Jonson carte blanche to say in their names anything whether strictly true or not, which he thought conducive to the end in view; the prefatory address ostensibly subscribed by them is too Jonsonian to admit of any doubt on this score. As for “Mr. Shakspere,” he had long been dead and buried, and his commonplace Will knows nothing of plays, manuscripts, books, or anything that matters. And as for his representatives—had they been consulted at all—they would have welcomed, rather than vetoed publicity.
The object of these precautions to secure secrecy must have been a persona grata to the King, Prince, and Court; this might go without saying. A significant conjuration against hunting “Mankind to death” suggests that he was also considered, by the Prince among others, a victim of malicious persecution. For other clues we have to go back to the Antimasque. The Curious have contrived to pick up several very useful items of information about the mysterious object in question. They know for instance that he is or has been served by printers and compositors so devoted to him, that they were quite content to “worke eyes out for him,” in dark holes and corners, the better to “conceale” them. They know too that a typical admirer of certain “poems,” which he was in the habit of carrying about “in his pocket,” made the ridiculous mistake of addressing his congratulations “to the wrong party”: to Chronomastix, the “subject” of the Antimasque, whom he mistook for the “Poet.” This blunder is crucial. The secret so ostentatiously safeguarded was a secret of pseudonymity. The Poet of the Masque (and of our quest)—the very antithesis of the blatant poetaster of the Antimasque—was a “maker” who concealed his personality behind a pen-name.
The evidence that Francis Bacon was a “concealed” poet is incontestable. A private letter of his is conclusive, though Aubrey’s corroborative evidence is by no means negligible. Moreover, Bacon, besides being a persona grata at Court, was probably regarded by many notabilities not as a criminal, but rather as a sufferer for the faults of his day and generation. Ben Jonson’s views may be gathered from his Discoveries (1641) where he tells that Bacon was “one of the greatest men ... that had beene in many Ages ... perform’d that in our tongue which may be compar’d or preferr’d to, either insolent Greece or haughtie Rome.... So that hee may be nam’d and stand as the marke and akme of our language.... In his adversity I ever prayed that God would give him strength: for Greatnesse he could not want.” Francis Bacon then was the mysterious poet of Time Vindicated. That Bacon was not the only concealed poet of those days is probably true. London might have teemed with concealed poets. But the only concealed poet who satisfies the many other conditions is Francis Bacon. Additional evidence that we are on the right track is supplied by the Antimasque. The “Nosed” ones among the Curious have smelt out apropos of Chronomastix that “a schoolmaster is turning all his workes into Latin.” Now it happens that about 1623 Bacon wrote to an intimate friend: “My labours are most set to have those works ... Advancement of Learning ... the Essays (etc), well translated into Latin by the help of some good pens that forsake me not.” The Advancement of Learning in Latin form, De Aug: Scientiarum, appeared in 1623, dedicated to Prince Charles the dedicatee of our Masque (and Camden, Jonson’s “reverend” master may have helped in the translation—but this is mere conjecture).[32]
The figure Chronomastix is not easy to range or class; for he is not a caricature proper. He salutes Fame with impudent assurance (in the Antimasque) as his “Deare Mistris” and tells her that “he revells so in rime” for no other “end” than “to serve Fame ... and get himselfe a name.” Fame, here as elsewhere, the mouthpiece of Jonson, browbeats the blatant creature: “Away, I know thee not, wretched Impostor, Creatire of glory, Mountebanke of witte, selfe-loving Braggart, ... Scorne of all the Muses, goe revell with thine ignorant admirers, let worthy names alone.” A little abashed by this rebuff, Chronomastix appeals to the Curious for sympathy; tells them that his “glorious front and word at large triumphs in print at my admirers charge”; and finishes his harangue by this invitation to his friends and admirers: “Come forth that love me, and now or never, spight of Fame, approve me.” Chronomastix therefore whatever he be, is the very antithesis of a self-effacing poet or maker. He belongs I think to the same genus as those fantastic portraits, Landru chez lui, etc., lately exhibited in Piccadilly by the National Portrait Society, partly to amuse the public and partly to puzzle quidnuncs. He was a freak in other words, and his function was to amuse outsiders and put curiosity off the scent.
Turn we now from the figure Chronomastix, to the “Figure” which mars the front page of the First Folio: the sorry “Figure ... wherein the Graver had a strife with Nature to out-doo the life”; as “B. J.” (Ben Jonson) significantly informs “the Reader.” “B. J.’s” innuendo does not stop here; he follows it up by explicitly warning all readers to “looke not on” the “picture,” but on the “Booke.” The warning seems almost superfluous; for the effigy cannot be identified with portrait or bust of any human being. Twin brother to Chronomastix, the thing is a freak expressly designed to prevent inquisitive persons, ourselves among others, from scrutinising the fiction then launched on the world.
Reverting once more to the Antimasque and the orgiastic dance at the end of which the Curious carry away their deity Chronomastix: one or other of the deluded adorers taunts Fame in these words: “He scornes you and defies you, h’as got a Fame on’s owne, as well as a Faction, and these will deifie him, to despite you.” Fame replies: “I envie not the Apotheosis. ’Twill prove but deifying of a Pompion.” When these words were spoken, it is quite possible that neither the figure, nor the Ode, nor the prefatory addresses had reached finality. But Jonson’s inside knowledge of the whole project would enable him to forecast important results. One of these results, in my opinion, was that a Pumpkin would be deified by posterity. In this forecast a note of misgiving is perceptible enough; but of spitefulness there is hardly a trace; for after all, the pumpkin is a deserving vegetable—the stress here is on the word deserving, since that is the epithet by which the surviving Burbages, in perfect good temper, described the deceased Shakspere. This apotheosis idea, I may add, is also prominent in the Shakespeare Ode at the point where Jonson pulls himself up: “But stay, I see thee to the hemisphere advanced and made a constellation there.” In the Ode however the apostrophe—half banter, half congratulation—is entirely free from regret or misgiving.
From the point of view of the privileged few who were in the secret, Time Vindicated and the Shakespeare Folio were, I consider, parts of a superlative Act of Homage to the greatest of modern poets. From Jonson’s special point of view they were a pious fraud, in which at the behest of disinterested love and admiration for Bacon, he consented to undertake the chief rôle. After the death of Bacon Jonson’s mood may have undergone some modification. Certain it is that the Ode, his finest poem, is excluded from the first edition, Vol. II, of his collected Works, and that in his Discoveries he tells “posterity” certain truths about Shakespeare which were not even suggested in the Ode.
Hitherto our thoughts have been preoccupied with Ben Jonson. They shall now be devoted more closely to Bacon and the state of his mind and feelings about 1623. In a pathetic letter of his to King James, Bacon comforts himself with the knowledge that his fall was not the “act” of his Sovereign, and then proceeds: “For now it is thus with me: I am a year and a half old in misery ... mine own means through mine own improvidence are poor and weak.... My dignities remain marks of your favour, but burdens of my present fortune. The poor remnants ... of my former fortunes in plate and jewels I have spread upon poor men unto whom I owed, scarcely leaving myself bread.... I have often been told by many of my Lords (of your Council), as it were in excusing the severity of the sentence, that they knew they left me in good hands.... Help me, dear Sovereign ... so far as I ... that desire to live to study, may not be driven to study to live.”
Here it is to be observed that the proceeds of sale of the Shakespeare Folio, “printed at his admirers’ charge,” would help towards relieving the fallen man’s pecuniary distress, whilst the august compliment conveyed by the Masque would tend to soothe his lacerated feelings.
The attitude of a concealed poet to his art is rarely explicit, or concealment would be next to impossible. In this connection I ask leave to quote from an Essay, Shakespeare-Bacon, by E. W. S., published many years ago.[33] The essayist, after having stated that Bacon’s qualifications for dramatic work were of a high order, and that some at least of his recognised Elizabethan output actually were dramatic, runs on: “Moreover, curious as is Bacon’s manner when treating of ‘poesie,’ his manner when dealing with dramatic poetry is more curious still. The Advancement of Learning though not published till the reign of her successor, belongs to the age of Queen Elizabeth, in conception, observation, reflection, and substance generally. In this work, after having mapped out the “globe” of human knowledge into three great continents of which poetry is one, he finds himself face to face with dramatic poetry. Compelled to give the thing a name, he rejects the almost inevitable word dramatic, in favour of the distant word representative. And what he permits himself to say about ‘representative’ poetry, in that the natural, and appropriate place for saying it, seems intended to suggest—what of course was absurdly untrue—that he was all but a stranger to anything in the nature of a dramatic performance. The suggestion too is strangely out of keeping with passages of unexpected occurrence in other parts of the book. For instance, in handling what he calls the ‘Georgics of the mind,’ he describes poetry (along with history) in terms which so admirably characterise the very best dramatic poetry of the age, that it is difficult to resist the conviction that he must have been thinking chiefly of the masterpieces of Shakespeare. ‘In poetry,’ says he, ‘we may find painted forth with great life, how affections are kindled and incited; and how pacified and refrained; and how again contained from act and further degree; how they disclose themselves, how they work, how they vary, how they gather and fortify, how they are inwrapped one with another, and how they do fight and encounter one with another ... how to set affection against affection, and to master one by another; even as we use to hunt beast with beast,’ etc. Another of these unexpected passages seems to imply that Bacon, writing at the close of the Elizabethan epoch, was so convinced of the paramount importance of dramatic poetry, as to have forgotten that there was any poetry at all, except what had to do with the theatre. In this passage Bacon has been claiming that ‘for expressing the affections, passions, corruptions, and customs, we are more beholding to the poets than to the philosophers’—at this point he suddenly breaks off with an ironical: ‘But it is not good to stay too long in the theatre.’[34]
A question that has probably been intriguing some of my readers is: Why did Bacon abandon the poet’s Crown to which his genius entitled him? From among the complex of conceivable reasons it will suffice to pick out three. (1) In dedicating the De Augmentis Scientiarum to Prince Charles, 1623, Bacon writes: “It is a book I think will live, and be a citizen of the world which English books are not.” Again, a letter, of about the same date, to an intimate friend contains this passage: “For these modern languages will play the bank-rowtes with books; and since I have lost much time with this age, I would be glad, as God shall give me leave, to recover it with posterity.” “Play the bank-rowtes” means, I suppose, put a stop to the currency; and “lost much time with this age” is probably an allusion to pseudonymous work. These and similar passages justify the conclusion that by this time Bacon had convinced himself that English as a literary language, was doomed to go under to Latin. (2) The poet in Bacon, as in Wordsworth and others, had expired with the passing of youth. (3) Bacon imagined himself the Discoverer of a New Instrument or method, by which human life would be so beatified that posterity would revere him as one of its greatest benefactors; if only men of science (such as Harvey) were for ever deprived of excuse for pooh-poohing the Novum Organum, merely because its inventor was none other than Shakespeare, sonneteer and dreamer of dreams.
[Note by the Editor]. There appears to be no doubt that in “Chronomastix” Jonson was lampooning George Wither, whose “Abuses Stript and Whipt, or Satiricall Essayes,” was published by Budge in 1622, (there had been an earlier edition in 1613) and was followed by a poem called “The Scourge.” In “Abuses Stript and Whipt” we find the following lines: