UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 MAY TREAT MORRISON 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 ALEXANDER F MORRISON
 
 I
 
 BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 
 AN INQUIT?.Y TOUCHING 
 
 PLAYERS, PLAYHOUSES, AND PLAY-WRITERS 
 
 IN THE DAYS OF ELIZABETH. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM HENRY SMITH, ESQ. 
 
 •I 
 
 TO WHICH IS APPENDED AN ABSTRACT OF A MS. BESPECTING 
 
 TOBIE MATTHEW. 
 
 LOND ON: 
 
 JOHN RUSSELL SMITH, 
 
 36, SOHO SQUARE. 
 
 M.DCCC.IVII. 
 
 
 
 . . > i > ' 
 
 > • ' 1 1 y > 
 
 > « 4 J * *'
 
 London : 
 
 F. PiCKTON, PrINTEB, 
 
 Peeht's Place, 29, Oxfoed Street. 
 
 L c C C t. 
 
 c c cc c 
 
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 te tec 
 c t t t t I
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter I. — Introduction 1 
 
 II. — A Brief History of Shakespeare 2 
 
 III. — Bacon and Shakespeare . 3 
 
 rV. — Wit and Poetic Faculty of Bacon and 
 
 Shakespeare 13 
 
 V. — Bacon's Powers of Mind, in Youth and 
 
 ^ Advanced Tears 19 
 
 t^ VI. — Evidence in Favour of Shakespeare ... 25 
 
 g VII. — Parallel Passages, and Peculiar Plirases, in 
 
 Bacon and Sliakespeare 40 
 
 VIII.— Players 47 
 
 IX. — Playhouses 64 
 
 5 X.— Play-Writers 79 
 
 O XI. — AthencEum and other Objectors answered . . 90 
 
 XII. — Popidar Errors respecting Lord Southampton 
 
 and Shakespeare 110 
 
 yj XIII.— Tate, Kemble, &c., their Knowledge of 
 
 g Shakespeare 121 
 
 u- XIV. — An Epitome of what has gone before . . . 143 
 
 ^— Appendix. — A Brief Description of a curious MS.^ entitled 
 ^ A True Historicall Relation of the Con- 
 
 version of Sir Tobie Matthews .... 155 
 
 429440
 
 TO HIS READERS AND REVIEWERS. 
 
 By the Scotch Rc\dew, which bears the outward 
 semblance of Buchanan, we have been reviled as a 
 " Caviller" and a " Smith." The editor might 
 have reflected that our names and lineaments we 
 inherit, whilst our words and actions are our own. 
 If his pages were as full of wisdom as ours are 
 free from ca\il, the visage without his book, would 
 not be regarded as a mask, whose brains we vainly 
 seek within: and the Review might yet hope to 
 attain a fame coextensive with om' name — a name 
 which some wise, and many worthy men, have 
 borne — which, though not unique, is perfectly gen- 
 teel — and w^hich has, of late vears, become such a
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 tower of strength that, for it, a King of the French 
 was glad to forego his own high-sounding title. 
 
 In our little pamphlet (a letter to Lord Elles- 
 mere), it is written — " I purposely abstain from 
 any attempt to compare the writings of the author 
 I am about to mention, with the Plays which are 
 attributed to Shakespeare ; not merely because that 
 is a labour too vast to enter upon now, but more 
 particularly because it is essentially the province 
 of the literary student." 
 
 We did not, and do not, pretend to be equal to 
 a literary labour. We merely, to use an expression 
 of Bacon's, "have taken upon us to ring a bell, 
 to call other wits together, which is the meanest 
 office.'' But as, like unready servants, they stared 
 at the bell instead of answering it, we are com- 
 pelled to do our own errand, and reluctantly make 
 some further entrance into the subject.
 
 PREFACE. Vll 
 
 Though our faith is sincere, we feel that it wants 
 confirmation, and that we are constitutionally more 
 fit to form one of a congregation of old believers, 
 than to become the preacher of a new creed. 
 
 What Bacon says of his book on the Advance- 
 ment of Learning, we may say of our humble pro- 
 duction — " In which if I have in any point receded 
 from that which is commonly received, it hath been 
 with a purpose of proceeding in melius, and not in 
 aliud ; a mind of amendment and proficiency, and 
 not of change and difference. For I could not be 
 true and constant to the argument I handle, if I 
 were not willing to go beyond others, but yet not 
 more willing than to have others go beyond me 
 again : which may the better appear by this, that I 
 have propounded my opinions naked and unarmed, 
 not seeking to preoccupate the liberty of men^s 
 judgments by confutations."
 
 Vm PREFACE. 
 
 And we will conclude by quoting his paper on 
 the Pacification of the Church, where he says — 
 " Knowing in my conscience, whereto God beareth 
 witness, that the things which I shall speak spring 
 out of no vein of popularity, ostentation, desire of 
 novelty, partiality to either side, disposition to 
 intermeddle, or any such leaven : I may conceive 
 hope, that what I want in depth of judgment may 
 be countervailed in simplicity and sincerity of 
 affection." 
 
 THE AUTHOR.
 
 BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 The Author has been advised to 
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 the reissue of his Book with the following Letters : 
 
 Mr. Smith to Mr. Haivthorne. 
 Sir, 
 
 My attention has been called to the following 
 statement in the Literary Gazette of the 9th of 
 May. 
 
 " Miss Bacon^s book, a volume of imposing di- 
 mensions, is introduced by a preface from Mr. 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne, ^ho thus alludes to Mr. 
 Smith's appropriation of his countrywoman's la- 
 bours: — 'An English writer (in a letter to the 
 Earl of Ellesmere, published within a few months 
 back) has thought it not inconsistent with the fair 
 play upon which his country prides itself, to take 
 to himself this lady's theory, and favour the public 
 with it as his own original conception, without 
 allusion to the author's prior claim.' "
 
 I beg to assure you that I had never heard the 
 name of Miss Bacon until it was mentioned in the 
 review of my pamphlet in the Literary Gazette, 
 Sept. 1856. I had then great difficulty in ascer- 
 taining where Miss Bacon had written any thing 
 respecting the Shakespeare Plays. Having done so, 
 and read the article on " William Shakespeare and 
 his Plays," it seemed to me so preposterous for any 
 one to conclude that I had derived my theory from 
 thence, that I did not think the insinuation worthy 
 of notice. The association of your name, however, 
 gives the statement an importance and respectabi- 
 lity which the former insinuation in the Literary 
 Gazette did not possess, and therefore, although 
 as a "writer" indifferent to fame, as a "man" I 
 cannot allow such a calumny to pass unnoticed. 
 
 If it were necessary T could show, that for up- 
 wards of twenty years I have held the opinion that 
 Bacon was the author of the Shakespeare Plays, 
 but I trust that what I have written will be suf- 
 ficient to induce you to withdraw the offensive 
 imputation. 
 
 Waiting your reply, 
 
 I remain Sir, your obedient Servant, 
 
 William Henry Smith.
 
 Mr. Hawthorne's Reply. 
 
 Sir, Liverpool, June 5th, 1857. 
 
 In response to your note of 2nd instant, I beg 
 leave to say that I entirely accept your statement 
 as to the originality and early date of your own 
 convictions regarding the authorship of the Shake- 
 speare Plays, and likewise as to your ignorance of 
 Miss Bacon's prior publication on the subject. Of 
 course, my imputation of unfairness or discourtesy 
 on your part falls at once to the ground, and I' 
 regret that it was ever made. 
 
 My mistake was perhaps a natural one, although 
 unquestionably the treatment of the subject in 
 your Letter to the Earl of Ellesmere differs widely 
 from that adopted by Miss Bacon. But as I knew 
 that a rumour of her theory had been widely, though 
 vaguely circulated, for some years past, on both sides 
 of the Atlantic, and also that she had preceded you 
 in publication, it really never occurred to me to 
 doubt that, at least, some wandering seed had 
 alighted in your mind, and germinated into your 
 pamphlet. Under urgent circumstances, I had 
 taken upon myself to write a few prefatory and 
 explanatory words for my countrywoman's book. 
 It was impossible to avoid some allusion to your
 
 pamphlet; and I made such reference as seemed 
 due to an attempt to take an easy advantage of a 
 discovery (allowing it to be such) on which Miss 
 Bacon had staked the labour and happiness of her 
 life, and to develop which she had elaborated a 
 very remarkable work. 
 
 I now see that my remarks did you great in- 
 justice, and I trust that you will receive this ac- 
 knowledgment as the only reparation in my power. 
 
 Respectfully, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne.
 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Sir Francis Bacon notes^ amongst the impedi- 
 ments of knowledge, that 
 
 " He that delivereth knowledge, desireth to de- 
 liver it in such form as may be soonest believed, 
 and not as may easiliest be examined. 
 
 " He that receiveth knowledge, desireth rather 
 present satisfaction than expectant search, and so 
 rather not to doubt, than not to err. 
 
 " Glory maketh the author not to lay open his 
 Aveakness, and sloth maketh the disciple not to 
 know his strength."
 
 ' t C t I , 
 
 t J 4 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 A BRIEF HISTORY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 William Shakespeare's is indeed a negative 
 history. 
 
 Of his life, all that we positively know is the 
 period of his death. 
 
 We do not know when he was born, nor when, 
 nor where, he was educated. 
 
 We do not know when, or where, he was mar- 
 ried, nor when he came to London. 
 
 We do not know when, where, or in what order, 
 his plays were written or performed ; nor when he 
 left London. 
 
 He died April 23rd, 1616.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Towards the end of the sixteenth^ and at the 
 beginning of the seventeenth century, that is, 
 prior to the year 1611, a number of plays, tra- 
 gedies, comedies, and histories, of various degrees 
 of merit, were produced, of which William Shake- 
 speare was reported to be the author, and which 
 undoubtedly were, in some way, the property of 
 the company of actors of which he was an active 
 member. 
 
 No one single manuscript has ever been found 
 to identify Shakespeare as the author of these 
 productions; nor is there, among all the records 
 and traditions handed down to us, any statement 
 that he was ever seen writing or producing a manu- 
 script ; nor that he ever claimed as his own any of 
 the excellent, or repudiated (as unworthy of him) 
 any of the worthless, productions presented to the 
 public in his name.
 
 4 BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 He seems^ at no time^ to have had any personal 
 or peculiar interest in them ; both during and after 
 his life, they appear to have been the property of 
 the stage, and " published by the players, doubt- 
 less according to their notions of acceptability with 
 the visitants of the theatre." No Plays bearing 
 Shakespeare's name, were published between the 
 years 1609 and 1622; but in the year 1623 (seven 
 years after Shakespeare's death) a folio of thirty- 
 six plays was brought out as " The Workes of Mr. 
 William Shakespeare." 
 
 Of the numerous plays which had appeared and 
 been considered his during his life, thirteen only 
 were admitted into this folio, the rest being entirely 
 ignored ; but twenty-three other plays were added, 
 none of which had ever previously been published. 
 
 This volume contains what we now recognise as 
 " Shakespeare's Plays " — works of which it has 
 been said by competent judges, that "they are, 
 beyond comparison, the greatest productions which 
 man's intellect, not divinely inspired, has yet 
 achieved." 
 
 That the works now admitted into our editions 
 are all the productions of the same mind, no one 
 at the present day, dreams of disputing; but if 
 thev had descended to us without any tradition as
 
 BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. O 
 
 to the name of the author, and our only informa- 
 tion respecting them had been an exact knowledge 
 of the period at which they were written, that 
 we should in that case have attributed them to 
 William Shakespeare, is in the highest degree 
 doubtful. 
 
 To consider the probability of these plays having 
 been written by William Shakespeare, and to attack 
 the evidence by which the assertion that they were 
 is supported, is our present object. 
 
 Proof that they were written by some other 
 person, we do not yet hope to be able to adduce, 
 but merely such evidence of the probability of this 
 being the case, as may induce some active inquiry 
 in the direction indicated. 
 
 To acquaint ourselves with the qualifications 
 which Shakespeare must have possessed to have 
 enabled him to write these plays, we propose to 
 quote the observations of Pope and Coleridge; 
 then to give a brief outline of the lives of Shake- 
 speare and Bacon ; and then to note some of the 
 peculiarities of the genius of Bacon. 
 
 To begin then with Pope, he says:— "If ever 
 an author deserved the name of an original it was 
 Shakespeare. The poetry of Shakespeare was 
 inspiration indeed ; he is not so much an imitator
 
 6 BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 as an instrument of Nature; and ^tis not so just 
 to say, that he speaks from her as that she speaks 
 through him. His characters are so much Nature 
 herself, that ^tis a sort of injury to call them by so 
 distant a name as copies of her. The power over 
 our passions was never possessed in a more emi- 
 nent degree, or displayed in so different instances ; 
 yet all along, there is no labour, no pains to raise 
 them, no preparation to guide our guess to the 
 effect, or to be perceived to lead towards it ; but 
 the heart swells, and the tears burst out just at the 
 proper places. We are surprised the moment we 
 weep, and yet, upon reflection, find the passion so 
 just, that we should be surprised if we had not 
 wept, and wept at that very moment.^ The pas- 
 sions directly opposite to these are no less at his 
 command. Nor does he only excel in the passions : 
 in the coolness of reflection and reasoning he is 
 full as admirable. His sentiments are not only 
 in general the most pertinent and judicious upon 
 every subject ; but by a talent very peculiar, some- 
 thing between penetration and felicity, he hits 
 
 * Of Bacon, Jonson says in bis Discoveries — " His language 
 (when he could spare or pass by a jest) was nobly censorious. 
 He commanded when he spoke, and had his judges, angry and 
 pleased, at Ins devotion. No man had their affections more in 
 his power.
 
 BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. 7 
 
 upon that particular point on which the bent of 
 each argument turns^ or the force of each motive 
 depends. This is perfectly amazing from a man 
 of no education or experience in those great and 
 public scenes of life which are usually the subject 
 of his thoughts. So that he seems to have known 
 the world by intuition, to have looked through 
 human nature at one glance, and to be the only 
 author that gives ground for a very new opinion 
 — that the philosopher and even the man of the 
 world may be born, as well as the poet." 
 
 With regard to his learning, Pope says: — " There 
 is certainly a vast difference between learning and 
 languages. How far he was ignorant of the latter 
 I cannot determine ; but 'tis plain he had much 
 reading, at least, if they will not call it learning. 
 Nor is it any great matter, if a man has knowledge, 
 whether he has it from one language or another. 
 Nothing is more evident than that he had a taste 
 of natural history, mechanics, ancient and modern 
 history, poetical learning, and mythology. We find 
 him very knowing in the customs, rites, and man- 
 ners of antiquity. In Coriolanus and Julius C(ssar, 
 not only the spirit but manners of the Romans 
 are exactly drawn ; and still a nicer distinction is 
 shown between the manners of the Romans in the
 
 8 BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 time of the former and of the latter. The manners 
 of other nations in general^ the Egyptians, Vene- 
 tians, French, &c., are drawn with equal propriety. 
 Whatever object of nature or branch of science he 
 either speaks of or describes, it is always with 
 competent, if not extensive knowledge : his de- 
 scriptions are still exact, all his metaphors appro- 
 priated, and remarkably drawn from the true nature 
 and inherent qualities of each subject. When he 
 treats of ethics or politics, we may constantly 
 observe a wonderful justness of distinction, as well 
 as extent of comprehension. No one is more a 
 master of the poetical story, or has more frequent 
 allusions to the various parts of it. Mr. Waller 
 (who has been celebrated for this last particular) 
 has not shown more learning this way than Shake- 
 speare. We have translations from Ovid, published 
 in his name, among those poems which pass for 
 his. He appears also to have been conversant in 
 Plautus, from whom he has taken the plot of one 
 of his plays; he follows the Greek authors, and 
 particularly Dares Phrygius, in another (although 
 I will not pretend to say in what language he read 
 them) . The modern Italian writers of novels he 
 was manifestly acquainted with ; and we may 
 conclude him to be no less conversant with the
 
 BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. 9 
 
 ancients of his own country, from the use he has 
 made of Chaucer in Troilus and Cressida, and in 
 the Two Noble Kinsmen, if that play he his, as 
 there goes a tradition it was/' 
 
 We will now give a short extract from 
 Coleridge : — 
 
 " O, when I thinlc of the inexhaustible mine of 
 virgin wealth in our Shakespeare; that I have 
 Ijeen almost daily reading him since I was ten 
 years old ; that the thirty intervening years have 
 been uninterraittingly and not fruitlessly employed 
 in the study of the Greek, Latin, English, Italian", 
 Spanish, and German belle lettrists — the last fifteen 
 years, in addition, still more intensely, in the ana- 
 lysis of the laws of life and reason, as they exist in 
 man ; and that upon every step I have made for- 
 ward — in taste, in acquisition of facts from history 
 or my own observation — in knowledge of the dif- 
 ferent laws of being and their apparent exceptions 
 from accidental collision of disturbing forces — 
 that, at every new accession of information, after 
 every successful exercise of meditation, and every 
 fresh presentation of experience — I have unfailingly 
 discovered a proportionate increase of wisdom and 
 intuition in Shakespeare." 
 
 We propose now to consider the history — the
 
 10 BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 brief and admitted history'- of the man, to Avliom 
 the genius of Pope and the intellect of Coleridge 
 offer this homage. 
 
 There is reason to suppose that Shakespeare 
 was born in the year 1564. His father was a 
 humble tradesman at Stratford-upon-Avon, who at 
 one time had so much improved his position as to 
 attain to the office of bailiff of the borough. He 
 afterwards, however, became very much reduced 
 in circumstances. Any education that William 
 Shakespeare received, he most probably obtained 
 at the free school at Stratford ; that it was very 
 superficial, is now generally admitted. At about 
 the age of eighteen, he contracted or was inveigled 
 into a marriage with a woman eight years older 
 than himself; and about the year 1586, when he 
 was twenty-two years old, he left his wife and 
 family at Stratford, and came to London; and 
 very shortly afterwards was actively engaged in 
 the management of a theatre, and continued to be 
 so until about the year 1611, when, having made 
 a considerable fortune, he retired to Stratford- 
 upon-Avon, to enjoy the fruits of his active in- 
 dustry, and died there in 1616. 
 
 Francis Bacon was born in 1561. His father 
 was the famous Sir Nicholas, so many years Lord
 
 BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 11 
 
 Keeper. His mother was a very learned woman. 
 Francis Bacon was carefully brought up at home 
 until he was twelve years old. He then went to 
 Cambridge, and had completed his studies by the 
 time he was sixteen years old. 
 
 In 1576 he went abroad; and upon the death 
 of his father in 1579, returned to England; and, 
 finding: himself in straitened circumstances, un- 
 willingly took to the study of the laAv, and became 
 a member of Gray's Inn. 
 
 He seems to have had but little practice as a 
 barrister, and to have vainly solicited for Govern- 
 ment employment, and been in embarrassed cir- 
 cumstances during the whole of Queen Elizabeth's 
 reign. "With the accession of James in 1603, his 
 prospects improved ; he was appointed Solicitor- 
 General in 1607, and rapidly rose, until eventually 
 he became Lord Chancellor, from which office he 
 was removed, with disgrace, in 16.21, and died in 
 
 1626. 
 
 The object in stating these biographies is, to 
 show how identical were the periods in which these 
 two men flourished. If Shakespeare wrote these 
 plays, he most probably did so between the years 
 1586 and 1611 ; if Bacon wrote them, he most 
 probably did so between the years 1580 and 1607.
 
 13 BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Having stated what Pope and Coleridge predicate 
 of the qualifications of the author of these plays, 
 we should hardly expect to recognise in a person, 
 born and brought up as we have represented 
 Shakespeare to have been, the probable possessor 
 of such vast and varied acquirements.
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 WIT AND POETIC FACULTY OF BACON 
 AND SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 In the following extracts from that able essayist 
 Mr. IMacaulay^ anatomising and describing the 
 genius and character of Bacon, the reader wilt 
 recognise peculiarities bearing a strong affinity to 
 those which characterise these plays. The extent 
 and variety of Bacon^s knowledge are so Avell 
 known and universally admitted, that it is unne- 
 cessary to dwell upon that point, though the beau- 
 tiful language and imagery with which Mr. 
 Macaulay has illustrated it, might well excuse a 
 quotation. 
 
 Of his wit he says : — " In wit, if by wit be meant 
 the power of perceiving analogies between things 
 which appear to have nothing in common, he never 
 had an equal; not even Cowley — not even the 
 author of Hiulibras. Indeed he possessed this fa- 
 culty, or rather it possessed him, to a morbid degree.
 
 14 WIT AND POETIC FACULTY OF 
 
 When he abandoned himself to it without reserve, 
 the feats which he performed were not only ad- 
 mirable, but portentous and almost shocking. On 
 those occasions we marvel at him as clowns on a 
 fair-day marvel at a juggler, and can hardly help 
 thinking the devil must be in him. These, how- 
 ever, were feats in which his ingenuity now and 
 then wandered, with scarcely any other object 
 than to astonish and amuse. But it occasionally 
 happened, that when he was engaged in grave and 
 profound investigations, his wit obtained the mas- 
 tery over all his other faculties, and led him into 
 absurdities, into which no dull man could possibly 
 have fallen." After giving several instances, Mr. 
 Macaulay proceeds thus : — " The truth is, his mind 
 was wonderfully quick in perceiving analogies of 
 all sorts. But, like several eminent men whom we 
 could name, both li\ang and dead, he sometimes 
 appeared strangely deficient in the power of dis- 
 tinguishing rational from fanciful analogies — ana- 
 logies which are arguments, from analogies which 
 are mere illustrations." 
 
 After showing how this want of discrimination 
 has led to many strange political speculations, Mr. 
 Macaulay proceeds : — 
 
 " It is curious that Bacon has mentioned this
 
 BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. 15 
 
 very kind of delusion among the idola specus, and 
 has mentioned it in language which we are inclined 
 to think, shows that he knew himself to be subject 
 to it. It is the \ice, he tells us, of subtle minds to 
 attach too much importance to slight distinctions ; 
 it is the vice, on the other hand, of high and dis- 
 cursive intellects to attach too much importance to 
 slight resemblances ; and he adds, that when this 
 last propensity is indulged to excess, it leads men 
 to catch at shadows instead of substances. Yet 
 we cannot wish that Bacon's wit had been less 
 luxuriant; for, to say nothing of the pleasure it 
 affords, it was in the vast majority of cases em- 
 ployed for the purpose of making obscure truth 
 plain, of making repulsive truth attractive, of 
 fixing in the mind for ever, truth which might 
 othervrise have left but a transient impression.'' 
 
 To show the identity of this wit with that exhi- 
 bited in the plays attributed to Shakespeare, we 
 here insert the observations of M. Guizot upon 
 Shakespeare * : — 
 
 " The poet's (Shakespeare's) gaze embraced an 
 immense field, and his imagination, traversing it 
 with marvellous rapidity, perceived a thousand dis- 
 tant and singvilar relations between the objects 
 * Guizot's Shakespeare and his Times, page 115.
 
 16 WIT AND POETIC FACULTY OF 
 
 which met his view, and passed from one to ano- 
 ther by a multitude of abrupt and curious transi- 
 tions, which it afterwards imposed upon both the 
 personages of the drama and the spectators. Hence 
 arose the true and great fault of Shakespeare, the 
 only one which originated in himself, and which is 
 sometimes perceptible, even in his finest composi- 
 tions, and that is a defective appearance of labo- 
 rious research, which is occasioned, on the con- 
 trary, by the absence of labour. Accustomed by 
 the tasts of his age, frequently to connect ideas 
 and expressions by their most distant relations, he 
 contracted the habit of that learned subtlety which 
 perceives and assimilates everything, and leaves no 
 point of resemblance unnoticed." 
 
 Of Bacon's poetical faculty, Mr. Macaulay ob- 
 serves : — 
 
 " The poetical faculty was powerful in Bacon's 
 mind, but not, like his wit, so powerful as occa- 
 sionally to usurp the place of his reason, and to 
 tyrannise over the whole man. No imagination 
 was ever at once so strong and so throughly sub- 
 jugated. It never stirred but at a signal from 
 good sense ; it stopped at the first check of good 
 sense. Yet, though disciplined to such obedience, 
 it gave noble proofs of its vigour ; in truth, much
 
 BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. 17 
 
 of Bacon^s life was passed in a visionary world. 
 He loved to picture to himself the world as it 
 would be, when his philosophy should, in his own 
 noble phrase, ' have enlarged the bounds of human 
 empire.' 
 
 " We might refer to many instances, but we will 
 content ourselves with the strongest — the descrip- 
 tion of the house of Solomon in the New Atlantis. 
 By most of Bacon's contemporaries, and by some 
 people of our time, this remarkable passage would, 
 we doubt not, be considered as an ingenious rodo- 
 montade, a counterpart of the adventures of Sinbad 
 or Baron Munchausen. The truth is, that there is 
 not to be found in any human composition, a pas- 
 sage more eminently distinguished by profound and 
 serene wisdom. The boldness and orioinalitv of 
 the fiction are far less wonderful than the nice dis^ 
 cernment which carefully excluded from that long 
 list of prodigies, everything that can be proved to 
 lie beyond the mighty magic of induction and of 
 time. Already some parts, and not the least start- 
 ling parts, of this glorious prophecy have been 
 accomplished, even according to the letter; and 
 the whole, construed according to the spirit, is 
 daily accomplishing all around us." 
 
 Now, this is precisely that which we find in 
 
 2
 
 18 WIT AND POETIC FACULTY, ETC. 
 
 the plays under our consideration. As Schlegel 
 observes : — " This Prometheus not merely forms 
 men — he opens the gates of the magical world of 
 spirits, calls up the midnight ghost, exhibits before 
 us the witches with their unhallowed rites, peoples 
 the air with sportive fairies and sylphs ; and these 
 beings, though existing only in the imagination, 
 nevertheless possess such truth and consistency, 
 that, even with such misshapen abortions as Cali- 
 ban, he extorts the assenting conviction, that, were 
 there such beings, they ivould so conduct themselves. 
 In a word, as he carries a bold and pregnant fancy 
 into the kingdom of nature, on the other hand, he 
 carries nature into the regions of fancy, which lie 
 beyond the confines of reality. We are lost in 
 astonishment at the close intimacy he brings us 
 into with the extraordinary, the wonderful, and the 
 unheard of." 
 
 Thus we see that Bacon and Shakespeare both 
 flourished at the same time, and might, either of 
 them, have written these works, as far as dates are 
 concerned, and that Bacon not only had the requi- 
 site learning and experience, but also that his wit 
 and poetic faculty were exactly of that peculiar 
 character which we find exhibited in these plays.
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 BACON^S POWERS OF MIND, IN YOUTH 
 AND ADVANCED YEARS. 
 
 One of the most remarkable circumstances, says 
 Macaulay, in the history of Bacon^s mind, is the 
 order in which its powers expanded themselves. 
 With him the fruit came first, and remained till 
 the last ; the blossoms did not appear till late. In 
 general, the development of the fancy is to the 
 development of the judgment, what the growth of 
 a girl is to the growth of a boy. The fancy attains 
 at an early period to the perfection of its beauty, 
 its power, and its fruitfulness ; and as it is first to 
 ripen, it is also first to fade. It has generally lost 
 something of its bloom and freshness before the 
 sterner qualities have reached maturity, and is 
 commonly withered and barren, whilst those facul- 
 ties still retain all their enegies. It rarely happens 
 that the fancy and the judgment grow together. 
 It happens still more rarely, that the judgment 
 grows faster than the fancy ; this seems, however, 
 to have been the case with Bacon, His boyhood
 
 20 bacon's powers op mtnd, 
 
 and youth seem to have been singularly sedate. 
 His gigantic scheme of philosophical reform, is 
 said by some writers, to have been planned before 
 he was fifteen, and was undoubtedly planned while 
 he was still young. He observed as vigilantly, me- 
 ditated as deeply, and judged as temperately, when 
 he gave his first work to the world, as at the close 
 of his long career. 
 
 But in eloquence, in sweetness and variety of 
 expression, and in richness of illustration, his later 
 writings are far superior to those of his youth. We 
 will give very short specimens of Bacon's two styles. 
 In 1597, he wrote thus : — " Crafty men condemn 
 studies ; simple men admire them ; and wise men 
 use them : for they teach not their own use, that 
 is a wisdom without them, and won by observation. 
 Bead not to contradict, nor to believe, but to 
 weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, 
 others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed 
 and digested. Beading maketh a full man, con- 
 ference a ready man, and writing a correct man. 
 And therefore, if a man write little, he had need of 
 a great memory ; if he confer little, have present 
 wit ; and if he read little, have much cunning, to 
 seem to know that he doth not. Histories make 
 wise men ; poets, witty ; mathematicians, subtle ;
 
 IN YOUTH AND ADVANCED YEARS. 21 
 
 natural philosophy, deep ; morals_, grave ; logic and 
 rhetoric, able to contend/^ 
 
 The following passage, first published in 1625, 
 will show the extent of the change : — 
 
 "Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testa- 
 ment ; adversity is the blessing of the New, which 
 carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer 
 evidence of God^s favour. Yet even in the Old 
 Testament, if you listen to David^s harp, you will 
 hear as many hearse-like airs as carols ; and the 
 pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in 
 describing the afflictions of Job, than the felicities. 
 of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears 
 and distates, and adversity is not without comforts 
 and hopes. We see in needleworks and embroide- 
 ries, it is more pleasing to have a lively work on a 
 sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and 
 melancholy work upon a lightsome ground. Judge 
 therefore of the pleasures of the heart by the plea- 
 sure of the eye. Certainly virtue is like precious 
 odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or 
 crushed ; for prosperity doth best discover vice^ and 
 adversity doth best discover virtue." 
 
 The phenomenon which Mr. ]\Iacaulay remarks 
 upon is so peculiar, that it is clear that he can 
 hardly believe it himself. This seems, says he^ to
 
 22 BACON^S POWERS OF MIND, 
 
 have been the case with Bacon. That the fruit 
 should come first and remain till the last, and the 
 blossom not appear till late, is so contrary to na- 
 ture, that we may well pause and inquire whether 
 this was really the case, or did but seem to be so. 
 
 Upon the orange-tree we may observe the bud, 
 the blossom, and the fruit in every stage of ripeness, 
 all exhibited in one plant at the same time, although 
 each individually has, in its production, observed the 
 exact order prescribed by nature. But when the 
 plant is in this state, what hinders that the gardener 
 should not gather fruit and flower at the same time, 
 and appropriate each to its several use ? And how 
 diverse and remote may their several uses be ! 
 
 The stentorian orator in the City Forum, who, 
 restoring his voice with the luscious fruit, conti- 
 nues his harangue to the applauding multitude,little 
 reflects, that the delicate blossom which grew by 
 its side, and was gathered at the same time, de- 
 corates the fair brow of the fainting bride in the 
 far-off village church. Nature is always true to 
 herself: her order was not reversed in the case of 
 Bacon. The bud, the blossom, the flower, and the 
 fruit, each came in its proper and accustomed 
 order, and grew and flourished long together. But 
 what if, like a prudent husbandman, he sent each
 
 IN YOUTU AND ADVANCED YEARS. 23 
 
 to its appropriate market — the floA^ers of his fancy, 
 to the wits and the players ; the fruits of his judg- 
 ment, to the sages and statesmen of his day ? This 
 peculiarity, remarked upon by Mr. Macaulay, tends 
 greatly to confirm the probability of the theory we 
 are advocating. The theatre seems to have been 
 a necessity of Bacon's spiritual existence, as afford- 
 ing a safety-valve by which he was able to let off 
 the superfluous wit, which would otherwise, doubt- 
 less, have exploded in a manner totally destructive 
 to the reputation, which at that early period of his 
 life he was endeavouring to build up. 
 
 We attribute, then, the gravity of Bacon's early 
 style, to the nature of his position and the charac- 
 ter of the age. The times of Elizabeth and James 
 are often mentioned together, as though they were 
 identical, yet few proximate periods are more dis- 
 similar. The gloomy fanaticism of the Common- 
 wealth was scarcely more opposed to the gay licen- 
 tiousness of the Restoration, than the wisdom and 
 discretion of the days of Elizabeth to the pedantrj' 
 and folly of those of James. 
 
 In the former, learned men studied only how 
 best to employ their learning ; in the latter, men 
 equally learned, studied only how best to display 
 it. Events were so stirring in the days of Eliza-
 
 24 bacon's powers of mind, etc. 
 
 betli, that to tliose engaged in the busmess of the 
 state, feigned catastrophes might well seem imper- 
 tinent, and poetry be for the time disregarded. 
 The commoner sort of people doubtless had a keen 
 appreciation of it, and wise rulers have ever paid 
 some attention to popular feeling ; hence the tole- 
 ration of professed actors and a public playhouse. 
 
 But the writing of plays, as the acting of them, 
 was considered by the better sort " a toy,'' which 
 might be practised as a pastime and recreation, 
 but which conferred neither honour nor distinction 
 upon the maker or performer. 
 
 In that age, as Coleridge truly observes, the law, 
 the church, and the state, engrossed all honour and 
 respectability ; a degree of disgrace — levior quondam 
 infaniia macula — was attached to the publication 
 of poetry, and even to have sported with the muse 
 as a private relaxation, was supposed to be, a venial 
 fault indeed, but something beneath the gravity Ox 
 a wise man. The professed writers for the stage in 
 the days of Elizabeth,were all men of talent, most 
 of them members of the universities, and some 
 clergymen; but, with hardly an exception, they 
 were men of licentious lives, depraved habits, and 
 ruined characters — pests of society, shunned by all 
 the respectable portion of the community.
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 EVIDENCE IN FAVOUR OF 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 The main evidence in faA^our of Shakespeare having 
 been the author of these plays, is — 
 
 The fact of his name always having been attached 
 to and associated with them. 
 
 Mere's mention of him in Wifs Commo7noealth. 
 
 Basse's elegy the only one supposed to have been 
 written near the time of his decease. 
 
 The passage in the Return from Parnassus. 
 
 Ben Jonson's testimony in his Discoveries, and 
 his verses published with the folio of 16.23. 
 
 All the other testimonies are subsequent to the 
 publication of the collection of plays, and have 
 reference to them, and not to the individual man, 
 or else are worthless traditions, which, whether true 
 or false, would serve as incidents to eke out a life or 
 biography, but do nothing towards elucidating the 
 authorship of the plays. Hallam observes, "I laud 
 the labours of Mr. Collier, Mr. Hunter, and other
 
 26 EVIDENCE IN FAVOUR 
 
 collectors of such crumbs, though I am not sure 
 that we should not venerate Shakespeare as much 
 if thev had left him undisturbed in his obscuritv. 
 
 w 
 
 To be told that he played a trick to a brother 
 player in a licentious amour, or that he died of a 
 drunken frolic, as a stupid vicar of Stratford re- 
 counts (long after the time) in his diary, does not 
 exactly inform us of the man who wrote Lear. 
 If there was a Shakespeare of earth (as I suspect) , 
 there was also one of heaven ; and it is of him we 
 desire to know something." — 1842. 
 
 In fact, every accession of information we obtain 
 respecting the man Shakespeare, renders it more 
 and more difficult to detect in him the poet. 
 
 The evidence of Ben Jonson is so much more di- 
 rect than any to be derived from any other source, 
 that, as we intend to impugn it, we do not esteem 
 it necessary to grapple with the others. 
 
 In his Discoveries J oixson writes : — "I remember 
 the players have often mentioned it as an honour 
 to Shakespeare, that in his writings (whatsoever 
 he penned) he never blotted out a line. My 
 answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thou- 
 sand ! which they thought a malevolent speech. 
 I had not told posterity this but for their igno- 
 rance^ who chose that circumstance to commend
 
 OF SHAKESPEARE. 27 
 
 their friend by, -wherein he most faulted, and to 
 justify my own candour ; for I loved the man, and 
 do honour his memory on this "side idolatry, as 
 much as any. He was (indeed) honest, and of an 
 open and free nature ; had an excellent phantasy, 
 brave notions, and gentle expressions ; wherein he 
 flowed with that facility that sometimes it was 
 necessary that he should be stopped : Sufflami- 
 nandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius. His 
 wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had 
 been so to. Many times he fell into those things 
 could not escape laughter : as when he said, in the 
 person of Csesar, one speaking to him, * Csesar, thou 
 dost me wrong,' he replied, 'Ceesar did never 
 wrong but with just cause;' and such like, which 
 were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with 
 his virtues. There was ever more in him to be 
 praised than to be pardoned." 
 
 The edition of Jonson's works, published in 1616, 
 — a rare folio — does not contain the Discoveries : 
 they were first published in 1640, three years after 
 Jonson's death. The Discoveries are detached 
 thoughts and reflections, which appear to have 
 been dotted down or entered in a commonplace 
 book, without much regard to order, sequence, or 
 priority. It is hardly possible to imagine any man.
 
 28 EVIDENCE IN FAVOUR 
 
 who had read the collected plays of Shakespeare, 
 writing such a description of him as herein con- 
 tained, or, in the face of such evidence misquoting 
 a passage from one of these plays. The probability 
 is, that Jonson wrote this passage prior to 1623, 
 very likely soon after Shakespeare's death, and be- 
 fore he became so intimately acquainted with these 
 plays, as we shall presently endeavour to show that 
 he ultimately was. Pope surmises that his re- 
 mark on Julius C(Esar was made " upon no better 
 credit than some blunder of an actor in speaking 
 the verse." This doubtless was the fact; and 
 Jonson, having noted it down, and neglected to 
 destroy or expunge it, his executors found it after 
 his death, and published it with his other writings, 
 thus perpetuating a blunder which reflects ridicule, 
 not upon Shakespeare, but upon Jonson himself. 
 As we cannot believe that Jonson retained this 
 opinion after the publication of the foho, or would 
 have wished such a comment on Julius Casar to 
 have been published, so we may fairly infer that 
 his judgment with regard to Shakespeare would in 
 other respects also have been greatly changed. 
 
 This paragraph, therefore, has not the weight 
 and importance which at first sight it would seem 
 to possess.
 
 OF SHAKESPEARE. 29 
 
 Shakespeare's fame — the fame which he now and 
 ever will enjoy — is based upon the folio of 1623. 
 At its publication, it was ushered into the world 
 accompanied by verses written by Ben Jonson, and 
 Malone satisfactorily shows that the dedication and 
 preface, ascribed to Heminge and Condell, were also 
 most likely from his pen ; in fact, it probably w^ould 
 not be too much to say, that Ben Jonson was the 
 Editor of the Folio of 1623. 
 
 Now, at this time Ben Jonson was at the zenith 
 of his fame, and on terms of intimacy with Lord 
 Bacon, and perhaps the most competent living' 
 judge and discriminator of the works of his various 
 contemporaries. If then the lines which he wrote, 
 and which accompany this volume, celebrate and 
 identify the William Shakespeare who died in 
 1616 as the author of the plays therein written, 
 that evidence ought to be conclusive. The lines 
 are in many parts incomprehensible, and through- 
 out exhibit a mysterious vagueness quite at vari- 
 ance with the general character of Ben Jonson's 
 laudatory verses. The critic who Avould translate 
 them into plain prose, would not be ill employed ; 
 but, as Bacon observes, with commentators, " it is 
 ever usual to blanche the obscure places and dis- 
 course upon the plain."
 
 30 EVIDENCE IN FAVOUR 
 
 TO THE EEADER. 
 
 This Figure, that thou here seest put, 
 
 It was for gentle Shakespeare cut ; 
 
 Wherein the graver had a strife 
 
 with Nature, to out-doo the Hfe : 
 
 O, could he but have drawn his wit 
 
 As well in brasse, as he hath hit 
 
 His face ; the Print would then surpasse 
 
 All, that was ever writ in brasse. 
 
 But, since he cannot, Reader, looke 
 
 Not on his Picture, but his Booke. B. I. 
 
 To the Memory of my heloved, the Author ^ Ms. William 
 Shakespeaee : and what he hath left us. 
 To draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name. 
 
 Am I thus ample to thy Booke, and Fame : 
 While I confesse thy writings to be such, 
 
 As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much. 
 'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these wayes 
 
 Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise : 
 For seeliest Ignorance on these may light, 
 
 Which, when it soimds at best, but echoes right ; 
 Or blinde Affection, which doth ne're advance 
 
 The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance ; 
 Or crafty Malice, might pretend this praise. 
 
 And thinke to ruine, where it seem'd to raise. 
 These are, as some infamous Baud, or Whore, 
 
 Should praise a Matron. What could hurt her more ? 
 But thou art proofe against them, and indeed 
 
 Above th' ill fortune of them, or the need. 
 I, therefore wiU begin. Soule of the Age! 
 
 The applause ! delight ! the wonder of our Stage! 
 My Shakespeare, rise ; I will not lodge thee by 
 
 Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye 
 A little fm'ther, to make thee a roome : 
 
 Thou art a Moniment, without a Tombe, 
 Aud art alive still, while thy Booke doth live,
 
 OF SHAKESPEARE. 31 
 
 And we have wits to read, and praise to give. 
 That I not mixe tliee so, my braine excuses ; 
 
 I meane with great, but disproportion'd Muses : 
 For, if I thought my judgement were of yeeres, 
 I should commit thee surely with thy peeres, 
 And tell, how farre thou didst our Lily out-shine. 
 
 Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line. 
 And though thou hadst small Latine, and lesse Greeke, 
 
 From thence to honour thee, I would not seeke 
 For names ; but call forth thund'ring ^schilus, 
 
 Euripides, and Sophocles to us, 
 Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead. 
 
 To life againe, to heare thy Buskin tread, 
 And shake a Stage : Or, when thy Sockes were on, 
 
 Leave thee alone, for the comparison 
 Of all, that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome 
 
 Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. 
 Triumph, my Britaine, tho\i hast one to showe. 
 To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe. 
 He was not of an age, but for all time ! 
 
 And all the Muses still were in their prime, 
 When like Apollo he came forth to warme 
 Our eares, or like a Mercury to charme ! 
 Nature her selfe was proud of his desigues, 
 
 And joy'd to weare the dressing of his lines ! 
 Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, 
 As, since, she will vouchsafe no other Wit. 
 The meri'y Greeke, tart Aristophanes, 
 
 Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please ; 
 But antiquated, and deserted lye 
 
 As they were not of Nature's family. 
 Yet must I not give Nature all : Thy Art, 
 
 My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part. 
 For though the Poet's matter. Nature be, 
 
 His Art doth give the fashion. And, that lie, 
 Who casts to write a living line, must sweat, 
 (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
 
 32 EVIDENCE IN FAVOUR 
 
 Upon the Muses' auvile : turne the same, 
 
 (And himselfe with it) that he thinkes to frame ; 
 Or for the lawrell, he may gaine a scorne, 
 
 For a good Poet's made, as well as borne. 
 And such wert thou. Looke how the father's face 
 
 Lives in liis issvie, even so the race 
 Of Shakespeare's minde, and manners brightly shines 
 
 In his weU-turned, and true-filed lines : 
 In each of which, he seems to shake a Lance, 
 
 As brandish't at the eyes of Ignorance. 
 Sweet Swan of Avon ! what a sight it were 
 
 To see thee in our waters yet appeare, 
 And make those flights upon the baukes of Thames, 
 
 That so did take Ehza, and our James ! 
 But stay, I see thee in the Hemisphere 
 
 Advanc'd, and made a Constellation there ! 
 Shine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage, 
 
 Or influence, chide or cheere the drooping Stage ; 
 Wliich, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd hke niglit 
 
 And despaires day, but for thy Volimie's light. 
 
 Ben Ionson. 
 
 These lines appear to be capable of a double 
 meaning. We do not at all mean to contend that 
 they in any way prove that Bacon was the author 
 of these plays, but only that they do not afford 
 that direct evidence in favour of Shakespeare 
 which might be expected ; and that some of the 
 expressions are clearly susceptible of being applied 
 to Bacon. 
 
 Not to dilate upon the exordium, the early lines 
 of which appear to express something of an excuse 
 for praising the book rather than the individual.
 
 OF SHAKESPEARE. 33 
 
 we proceed at once to the invocation. That we 
 may not be charged with anything like special 
 pleading, or a desire to deceive, we admit that the 
 lines and phrases selected will be such as seem 
 best to favour the theory we are advocating. 
 
 Soul of the age ! 
 Th' applause, delight ! the wonder of our age, 
 My Shakespeare — rise ! 
 
 " Soul of the age " seems a term more appli- 
 cable to Bacon than to Shakespeare; whilst the 
 possessive pronoun " my," added to Shakespeare, 
 may serve to render his invocation applicable to 
 either the one or the other. 
 
 The lines, 
 
 Thou art a monument without a tomb. 
 And art alive still while thy book doth live. 
 And we have wits to read, and praise to give, 
 
 seem much, more applicable to a living than to a 
 deceased person. 
 
 / 
 
 V 
 
 And though thou hast small Latin and less Greek, 
 From thence to honour thee I would not seek 
 For names. 
 
 The first of these lines has been wrested in every 
 possible way, to make it applicable to William 
 Shakespeare, without success ; and though at first 
 sight it might seem even less applicable to Bacon, 
 
 3
 
 34 EVIDENCE IN FAVOUR 
 
 upon investigation the reverse will be found to be 
 the case. 
 
 There is reason to suppose that Bacon was not 
 greatly proficient in the Greek language, but that 
 he was well acquainted with Latin there can be 
 no doubt : he probably could speak it with fluency. 
 But in that age, when, as has been well observed, 
 Latin occupied the place which French now oc- 
 cupies, and every one who was educated at all, 
 must, of necessity, have been classically educated, 
 a man might have a very considerable knowledge 
 of Latin and Greek, and yet be pronounced by 
 so finished and critical a scholar as Ben Jonson 
 undoubtedly was, to have " small Latin and less 
 Greek," The observation, and the mode of intro- 
 ducing it in the midst of a panygeric, are highly 
 characteristic of Jonson ; and it is just such a hit 
 as he would delight to bestow upon a living great 
 man, whom he considered his inferior in scholar- 
 ship. That there is some truth in it, is confirmed 
 by contemporary statements ; for in Bacon's life 
 in the Biographia Britannica, there is this note : 
 — " Amelot, in his Memoir es Historiques, tom. i. 
 page 361, has asserted, upon the pretended autho- 
 rity of Casaubon, that Lord Bacon did not under- 
 stand Latin. This is as evident a falsehood as
 
 OF SHAKESPEARE. 35 
 
 any which is to be met with in Amelot's whole 
 book. If there be any truth in Casaubon having 
 said that Bacon did not understand Latin, he must 
 have meant that he did not understand it critically, 
 as he himself did.'^ This admission is all that we 
 require. We do not undertake to prove that 
 Bacon had " small Latin and less Greek," but 
 simply to suggest, that these lines might possibly 
 refer to him. Shaw, in his Outlines of General 
 Literature, says of Bacon : — "The Latin style is in 
 the highest degree, concise, vigorous, and accurate, 
 though by no means free from obscurity, and, of 
 course, in no way to be considered as a model of 
 pure Latinity." INIacaulay and others speak of 
 Bacon^s ^^crampt Latin." 
 
 Or when thy socks were on, 
 Leave thee alone for the comparison 
 Of all that insolent Grreece or haughty Rome 
 Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. 
 
 Ben Jonson, in his Discoveries, uses these very 
 words in reference to Bacon. Writing of the 
 able men of his day, he says : — " Sir Henry Saville, 
 grave and truly lettered; Sir Edwin Sandys, ex- 
 cellent in both ; Lord Egcrton, a grave and great 
 orator, and best when he was provoked. But his 
 learned and able (but unfortunate) successor, is he 
 that hath filled up all numbers, and performed that
 
 36 EVIDENCE IN FAVOUR 
 
 ill our tongue, which may be compared and pre- 
 ferred to insolent Greece and haughty Rome." 
 
 Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn, 
 For a good poet's made, as well as born ; 
 And such wert thou. 
 
 These lines are little applicable to Shakespeare, 
 whilst they are an exact description of Bacon. 
 Had he never written a line of verse, he would 
 still have been considered a poet, by all who were 
 acquainted with his writings. His poetry is essen- 
 tially that of a made, not a born poet. It is not 
 that poetry which is excited by the contemplation 
 of external objects; but having drank deep of 
 wisdom and knowledge, the rich flood bursts forth 
 from his full heart and teeming intellect, carrying 
 us along with it in its torrent of passion, whilst the 
 light spray of its exuberant fancy dances around 
 and glitters and gleams upon every object with 
 which it comes in contact. Such too is his wit : 
 it is not the result of animal spirits : no amount of 
 exhilaration would produce it; there is nothing 
 rollicking about it, except when he portrays a cha- 
 racter so exceptional as Mercutio, Sickness or 
 distress could not damp or destroy it. He had the 
 materials within him ; and his active fancy, roving 
 through the rich storehouse, loaded herself with
 
 OF SHAKESPEARE. 37 
 
 its treasures^ playfully bringing into juxtaposition 
 things apparently remote and discordant. 
 
 Look how the father's face 
 Lives in his issue ; even so the race 
 Of Shakespeare's mind and manners richly shines 
 In his well-turned and true-filed lines. 
 
 In illustration of these lines, we should be glad 
 to find that the lineaments of Francis Bacon^s face 
 resembled those of Sir Nicholas ; his form certainly 
 did not. That the mind and manners of the 
 courtly Bacon shine in his " well-turned and true- 
 filed lines," no one will for a moment deny; it 
 has been observed, there is " an odoiu* of the court 
 in his meanest characters.^' It is the aljsence of 
 all uproariousness, and that tone of high breeding 
 which pervades them, which renders it impossible 
 to believe that Shakespeare, even had he been all 
 that his fondest admirers represent him, could pos- 
 sibly have produced these plays. It is sympathy 
 with this which constitutes the excellence in read- 
 ing or performing these plays. We may often 
 hear the words delivered with great correctness of 
 tone and emphasis, so that it Avould be impossible 
 to say that they were badly delivered ; yet we feel 
 that there is just that deficiency, which, Avhen we 
 hear Holy Scripture read under similar circum- 
 stances, we characterise as want of devotion. 
 
 439440
 
 38 EVIDEN'CE IN FAVOUR 
 
 That Jonson could pen hearty and direct praise, 
 is evidenced by the following lines, which we ap- 
 prehend cannot by any ingenuity be construed to 
 allude to any other person. They are addressed 
 
 TO ME. EDWAED ALLEN. 
 
 If Rome so great, and in her wisest age, 
 Fear'd not to boast the glories of her stage; 
 As skilful Roscius, and grave ^sop, men 
 Yet crown'd w.Hli honours, as with riches then ; 
 Who had no less a trumpet of their name 
 Than Cicero, whose every breath was fame : 
 How can so great example die in me ? 
 That, Allen, I should pause to publish thee ; 
 Who both their graces in thyself hast more 
 Outstript, than they did all tliat went before. 
 And present worth in all dost so contract 
 As others speak, but only thou dost act. 
 Wear this renown — 'tis just that who did give 
 ■ So many poets life, by one should live. 
 
 There is a curious circumstance in connection 
 with the effigies or portrait published with the 
 folio of 1623. As no picture of Shakespeare was 
 then in existence, and as it does not resemble the 
 Stratford Monument, it must be considered an 
 original production — conceived, it may be, in the 
 same spirit as Ben Jonson's Verses ; so that the 
 lines of the engraver, and of the poet, alike shadow 
 forth Bacou, or Shakespeare, indifferently. This 
 supposition is strengthened by the fact that Bacon's
 
 OF SHAKESPEARE. 39 
 
 portrait^ taken when he was eighteen years of age, 
 an engraving of which is in Basil Montagu's edi- 
 tion of his works, is similar in form to the portrait 
 of Shakespeare published with the folio of 1623. 
 It is simply a head in an oval, and has this motto 
 round the margin : — 
 
 Si tabula daretur digua animum mallem ; 
 
 which may well be rendered in the words applied 
 to Shakespeare's portrait : — 
 
 O could he but have drawn his wit 
 As well in brass, as he hath hit 
 His face, the print would then surpass 
 All that was ever writ iu brass.
 
 CHAPTER \II. 
 
 PARALLEL PASSAGES, AND PECULIAR 
 
 PHRASES, FROM BACON AND 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Poetry and prose, plays and philosophical writings, 
 are generally considered so opposed and antago- 
 nistic, that it seems unreasonable to expect to find 
 in them similarity of ideas or coincidences of ex- 
 pression ; yet these are to be found in Bacon and 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 Thus, in the Advancement of Learning : — 
 
 Poetry is nothing else but feigned history. U' 
 
 Twelfth Night, act i. sc. 2 : — 
 
 Viola. 'Tis poetical. y 
 
 Olivia. It is the more likely to be feigned. 
 
 As You Like It, act iii. sc. 7 : — 
 
 The truest poety is the most feigning. >
 
 PARALLEL PASSAGES^ ETC. 41 
 
 Essay on Building : — 
 
 He that builds a fair house upon an ill seat committetli him- 
 self to prison ; nor do I reckon that an ill seat only, where the 
 air is unwholesome, but likewise where it is unequal. 
 
 Macbeth, act i. sc. 6 : — 
 
 This castle hath a pleasant seat — the air 
 I Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
 
 Unto our gentle senses. 
 
 Advancement of Learning : — 
 
 Behaviour seemeth to me a garment of the mind, and to have 
 the conditions of a garment. For it ought to be made in fashion, 
 it ought not to be too curious. 
 
 Hamlet, act i. sc. 3 : — 
 
 Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, 
 But not exprest in fancy. 
 
 Advancement of Learning : 
 
 Is not the opinion of Aristotle worthy to be regarded, where 
 he saith, that young men are not fit auditors o[ moral philosophy, 
 because they are not settled from the boiling heat of their affec-. 
 tions, nor attempered by time and experience. 
 
 Troilus and Cressida, act ii. sc. 3 : — 
 
 Not much 
 UnUke young men, whom Aristotle thought 
 Unfit to hear moral philosophy. 
 
 Aristotle quoted incorrectly in both these pas- 
 sages. He SQ,YS political, not moral philosophy.
 
 42 PARALLEL PASSAGES^ AND PECULIAR 
 
 Advancement of Learning : — 
 
 In the third place I set down reputation, because of the 
 peremptory tides and currents it hath, which, if they be not 
 taken in due time, are seldom recovered, it being extreme hard 
 to play an after-game of reputation. 
 
 Julius Casar, act iv. sc. 3 : — 
 
 There is a tide in the affairs of men 
 Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune : 
 Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
 Is bound in shallows and in miseries. 
 
 Apophthegms : — 
 
 Bacon relates that a fellow named Hog impor- 
 tuned Sir Nicholas to save his life on account of 
 the kindred between Hog and Bacon. 
 
 " Ay, but," replied the judge, " you and I cannot be kindred 
 except you be hanged : for Hog is not Bacon until it be well 
 hanged." 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, act iv. sc. L — 
 
 Evans. Hung — Hang — Hog. 
 
 D. Quickly. Hang Hog — is the Latin for Bacon. 
 
 On Cunning : — 
 
 For there be many wise men that have secret hearts, but 
 transparent countenances. 
 
 Henry IV. part 2, act i. sc. 1 : — 
 
 And the whiteness in thy cheek, 
 Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.
 
 PHRASES^ FROM BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. 43 
 
 Interpretation of Nature : — 
 
 Yet evermore it must be remembered, that the least part of 
 knowledge passed to man by this so large a charter from God — 
 must be subject to that use for which God hath granted it, which 
 is the benefit and relief of the state and society of man. 
 
 Measure for Measure, act i. sc. 2 : — 
 
 Nature never lends 
 The smallest scruple of her excellence ; 
 But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines 
 Herself the glory of a creditor, ^ 
 Both use and thanks. 
 
 :«»«"' 
 
 Note the peculiar use of the words, knee and* 
 chew. 
 
 Life of Henry VII. ; — # 
 
 As his victory gave him the knee, so his purposed marriage 
 with the Lady Elizabeth gave him the heart, so that both knee 
 and heart did truly bow before him. 
 
 Richard II. Show heaven the humbled heart and not the knee. 
 
 Hamlet. And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee. |J 
 
 On Studies ; — 
 
 Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some 
 few chewed and digested. C«»"' 
 
 Henry V. act ii. sc. 2. 
 
 How shall we stretch our eyes, > 
 
 When capital crimes, chewed, swallowed, and digested, ^^,,. 
 
 Appear before us.
 
 44 PARALLEL PASSAGES, AND PECULIAR 
 
 Letter to James I. : — 
 
 And therefore, in conclusion, he wished him not to shut the 
 gate of your Majestie's mercy against himself, by being obdurate 
 any longer. 
 
 Henry, act iii. sc. 3 : — 
 
 The gates of mercy shall be all shut up. 
 
 Henry VI. : — 
 
 Open the gate of mercy, gracious Lord. 
 
 ^' 
 
 I" 
 
 Trench says. Essays was a new word in Bacon^s 
 
 time, and his use of it quite novel. Bacon thus 
 
 writes of his Essays : — 
 
 Which I have called Essays. The word is late, though the 
 thing is ancient. 
 
 Mrs. Clark, in her Concordance, reports the 
 
 word Essays as occurring twice in Shakespeare, 
 
 which indeed is true of Knight's Shakespeare ; but 
 
 it only occurs once in the folio of 1 623, in relation 
 
 to Edgar's letter to Edmund, who says : — 
 
 I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an 
 essay or taste of my nature. 
 
 On Masques : — 
 
 It is better they should be graced with elegancy, than daubed 
 with cost. 
 
 Lear, act iv. sc 1 : — 
 JEdgar. Poor Tom 's a-cold ; I cannot daub it further.
 
 PHRASES, FROM BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. 45 
 
 Henry VIL .— 
 
 All was inned at last into the King's barn. 
 
 All's Well that Ends Well, act i. sc. 3 :— 
 
 He that ears my land, spares my team, 
 And gives me leave to inn my crop. 
 
 Of Adversity : — 
 
 It is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and 
 solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon" 
 a lightsome gi'ound. 
 
 Henry IV. act i. sc. 2 : — 
 
 Bright metals on a sullen ground 
 
 Will show more goodly, and attract more eyes, ^-^- ' 
 
 Than that which hath no foU to set it off. 
 
 Natural History : — 
 
 The flesh shrinketh, but the bone resisteth, whereby the cold 
 becometh more eager. 
 
 Hamlet, act i. sc. 4 : — 
 
 Sam. The air bites shrewdly — it is very cold ; 
 Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air. 
 
 We tried an experiment, but it sorted not. 
 
 Johnson quotes this observation of Bacon's, to 
 illustrate a line in Taming of the Shrew, act iv. 
 
 sc. 7 : — 
 
 And all my pains is sorted to no proof.
 
 46 PARALLEL PASSAGES^ AND PECULIAR 
 
 New Atlantis : — 
 
 Never heard of any the least inkling or glimpse of this island. 
 Coriolanus, act i. sc. 1 : — 
 
 They have had inkling, this fortnight, what we intend to do, 
 which now we'll show 'em in deeds. 
 
 Henry VIII. act ii. sc. 1 : — 
 
 Yet I can give you inkling 
 Of an ensuing evil. 
 
 Life of Henry VII. : — 
 
 He was a comely personage, a little above just stature, well j/^ 
 and straight limbed, but slender. 
 
 2 Henry IV. act iv. sc 1 : — 
 
 The prince is here at hand, pleaseth your lordships ly 
 To meet his grace, ^ms^ distance 'tween our armies. 
 
 Natural Hist. cent. ii. 136 : — 
 
 Por the sound will be greater or lesser, as the barrel is more 
 empty or more full. 
 
 Lear, act i : — 
 
 Nor are those empty hearted, whose low sound 
 Eeverbs no hoUowness. 
 
 Advancement of Learning -. — 
 
 Not unlike to that which amongst the Romans, was expressed 
 in the famiUar or household terms of Promus and Condus. 
 
 Henry V. act iv. sc. 3 : — 
 
 Familiar in their mouths as household words. 
 
 V
 
 PHRASES, FROM BACON AND SHAKESPEARE. 47 
 
 Natural Hist. cent. i. 98 : — 
 
 Like prospectives, which show things inwards when tliey are 
 but paintings. 
 
 Richard II. act ii. sc. 2 : — 
 
 Like perspectives, which rightly gazed upon 
 Show nothing but confusion — ey'd awry. 
 Distinguish form. —
 
 CHAPTER YIII. 
 PLAYERS. 
 
 StrypEj in his edition of Stow published in the year 
 1720, says: — "Acting plays for the diversion and 
 entertainment of the court, the gentry, and any 
 others, is become a calling whereby many get their 
 living. How lawfully, is another question. Players 
 in former times were retainers, and none had the 
 privilege to act plays but such. So, in Queen 
 Elizabeth's time, many of the great nobility had 
 tenants and retainers, who were players, and went 
 about getting their livelihood that way. 
 
 " The Lord Admiral had players, and so had the 
 Lord Strange, that played within the city of Lon- 
 don. It was not unusual then, upon any gentle- 
 man's complaint of them, for abuses or undecent 
 reflections practised in their plays, to have them 
 put down. Thus, once the Lord Treasurer signified
 
 PLAYERS. 49 
 
 to the Lord Mayor Hart, to have these players of 
 the Lord Admiral and Lord Strange prohibited, at 
 least for some time, because one Mr. Tilney had 
 utterly, for some reason, disliked them. Whereupon 
 the Mayor sent for both companies, and gave them 
 a strict charge, and required them in the Queen's 
 name, to forbear playing for some time, till further 
 order might be given for their allowance. 
 
 " The Lord Admiral's players o1)eyed ; but the 
 Lord Strange's, in a contentious manner, went away 
 to the Cross Keys, and played that afternoon, to 
 the great offence of the better sort, who knew they 
 were prohibited by order from the Lord Treasurer. 
 So the Mayor committed two of them to the 
 Counter, and prohibited all playing for the future, 
 till the Lord Treasurer's pleasure was further 
 known." 
 
 Seymour also, in his Survey of London and Wesi- 
 minster, after briefly noticing a play, a7ino 1391, 
 played by the Parish Clerks at the Skinners' Well 
 beside Smithfield, which continued three days to- 
 gether, the King, Queen, and nobles of the land, 
 being present; and another played in the year 
 1409, which lasted eight days, and was of matter 
 from the creation of the world, observes : — " Of 
 later times, instead of these stage plays, have been 
 
 4
 
 50 PLAYERS. 
 
 used comedies, tragedies, interludes, and histories 
 both true and fei'gned. For acting whereof certain 
 public places, as the Theatre, the Curtain, &c. were 
 erected. They played also in inns, as the Cross 
 Keys, the Bull, the Globe, &c. But this which was 
 once a recreation, and used therefor now and then 
 occasionally, afterwards by abuse became a trade 
 and calling, and so remains to this day. In those 
 former days, ingenious tradesmen, and gentlemen's 
 servants, would sometimes gather a company of 
 themselves and learn interludes, to expose vice, or 
 to represent the noble actions of our ancestors in 
 former times ; and these they played at certain 
 festival times, and in private houses at Aveddings, 
 or other splendid entertainments, for their own 
 profit, acted before such as were minded to divert 
 themselves at them." 
 
 From these passages, we learn the several stages 
 through which acting passed, previously to be- 
 coming a regular trade and calling. 
 
 For the recreation and diversion of the Queen, 
 the Students of the Inns of Court, and the Mem- 
 bers of the Universities, acted plays before her. 
 
 These were entirely complimentary. The Queen 
 paid nothing for witnessing, neither did the per- 
 formers receive anything for enacting them.
 
 FLAYERS. 51 
 
 Ingenious tradesmen, servants and retainers of 
 noblemen, citizens, and gentlemen, also gathered a 
 company of themselves together, and acted plays 
 for the amusement of their customers and em- 
 ployers. These entertainments were of the same 
 character, and dictated by the same feelings, as 
 those given by the lawyers and university men to 
 the Queen. 
 
 But, with the permission and license of the 
 noblemen with whom they were connected, these 
 servants and retainers sometimes acted plays at 
 certain festival times, and in private houses, " at 
 weddings and other splendid entertainments, for 
 their own profit." Here we have a slight change 
 in the nature of Play-acting ; for though the play is 
 still acted in a private house, and to a private au- 
 dience, it is clear that the Actors perform for gain. 
 Then — probably about the year 1570 — came the 
 final change, which has endured until the present 
 time. Play-acting became a trade and calling, and 
 certain persons devoted themselves exclusively to it 
 as a means of livelihood. They were engaged by 
 those who were minded to divert themselves at them, 
 or they themselves engaged some House, Inn, or 
 Yard, and admitted persons upon payment to 
 witness their performances.
 
 52 PLAYERS. 
 
 Shortly after this great change in the economy 
 of play-acting, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of 
 the city of London passed an act, which, after 
 enumerating the moral and physical evils which 
 resulted from " the inordinate haunting of great 
 numbers of people, especially youth, to plays^ in- 
 terludes, and shows,'' enacts, "to the intent that 
 such perils may be avoided, and the lawful, honest, 
 and comely use of plays, pastimes, and recreations 
 in good sort only be permitted," that " no play, 
 comedy, tragedy, interlude, nor show, shall be 
 openly played, wherein shall be allowed any words, 
 examples, or any doing of any unchastity, sedition, 
 nor such like unfit or unseemly matter, upon pain 
 of imprisonment for fourteen days, and a penalty 
 of £5 for every such offender." 
 
 This act also enacts, that every pla}'', &c., shall 
 be perused and allowed by a proper officer before 
 it is performed, and no additional matter inter- 
 laced, added, mingled, or altered, after it has been 
 so allowed, under a penalty. That no person shall 
 suffer any plays to be openly played, or take any 
 benefit or advantage from such performance, unless 
 with the license and permission of the Chamberlain 
 of the city of London. And after enacting that 
 all persons so licensed, shall make a certain con-
 
 PLAYERS. 53 
 
 tribution to the support of the hospitals or sick 
 poor of the city of Loudon, the act concludes 
 thus : — " Provided always, that this act, otherwise 
 than touching the publishing of unchaste, sedi- 
 tious, and unmeet matters, shall not extend to any 
 plays, interludes, comedies, tragedies, or shews, to be 
 played or shewed in the private house, dwelling, or 
 lodging of any Nobleman, Citizen, or Gentleman, 
 which shall or will then have the same there played 
 or shewed in his presence for the festivity of any 
 marriage, assembly of friends, or any like case, 
 without public or common collection of money of the 
 auditory or beholders thereof. Referring always to 
 the Lord Mayor and Aldermen for the time being 
 the judgment and construction according to equity, 
 what shall be counted such a playing and shewing 
 in a private place ; anything in this act to the con- 
 trary notwithstanding.'^ 
 
 From this act we learn that in 1573, the players 
 were in the habit of openly playing — that is, of 
 acting plays to which any person might resort at 
 different inns and taverns of the City. 
 
 These inns and taverns were of every variety of 
 consequence and respectability, in accordance with 
 the rank and character of the parties who resorted 
 to them ; and as the company varied, so doubtless
 
 54 PLAYERS. 
 
 did the nature and scale of the amusements thereat 
 provided. 
 
 We may well suppose that one tavern-keeper 
 would provide play-acting as part of the entertain- 
 ment of his guests, as private individuals did for 
 theirs. Another would allow actors to perform 
 before his guests, obtaining from them, for them- 
 selves, such gratuitous remuneration as they could 
 collect. Whilst another would let them the use 
 of his House or Yard, with permission to impose 
 a charge upon any person witnessing their per- 
 formance. 
 
 Now, all this is provided for in the act of Com- 
 mon Council passed in the 17th of Queen Eliza- 
 beth. The Lord Mayor and Aldermen do not at- 
 tempt to prevent plays being acted : their act only 
 affects them when openly played. " The public or 
 common collection of money of the auditory or 
 beholders thereof," would seem to be a notable 
 characteristic of open playing; but these wise 
 mayors and aldermen, seeing that is not conclusive 
 evidence, reserved to themselves "the judgment 
 or construction, according to equity, of Avhat shall 
 be considered an open playing, and what a playing 
 or shewing in a private place." 
 
 Against this act of Common Council, the Queen's
 
 PLAYERS. 55 
 
 poor players, as tliey called themselves, petitioned 
 the Lords of the Privy Council ; and, though they 
 were countenanced and supported by Leicester, 
 the act (or Remedies, as it was called) was not 
 interfered with ; and shortly afterwards the Privy 
 Council issued these rules for the regulation of 
 the players, (This was during a visitation of the 
 plague.) 
 
 " That they (the players) hold themselves con- 
 tent with playing at private houses, at weddings, 
 &c., without public assemblies. 
 
 " If more be thought good to be tolerated, that 
 they then be restrained to the orders of the act of 
 the Common Council — tempore Hawes. 
 
 " That they play not openly, till the whole deaths 
 in London have been come in twenty days unto 
 fifty a week, nor longer than it shall so continue. 
 
 " That no plays be on the sabbath-day. 
 
 " That no playing be on holidays, but after 
 evening prayer, nor any received into the auditory 
 until after evening prayer. 
 
 " That no playing be in the dark, nor continue 
 any such time but as any of the auditory may re- 
 turn to their dwellings in London before sunset, 
 or, at least, before it be dark. 
 
 "That the Queen's players only be tolerated,
 
 56 PLAYERS. 
 
 and of them their number and certain "^ names to 
 be notified in your lordship's letter to the Lord 
 Mayor, and to the justices of Middlesex and Surrey; 
 and those, her players, not to divide themselves 
 into several companies. 
 
 "That for breaking any of these orders, their 
 toleration cease." 
 
 "But notwithstanding," continues Strype, "these 
 orders were not duly observed, and the lewd 
 matters of plays increased ; and in the haunt unto 
 them were found many dangers, both for religion, 
 state, honesty of manners, unthriftiness of the poor, 
 danger of infection, &c.; and the preachers daily 
 crying out against them, suit was made, that they 
 might Ije ])anished the liberties of the City and 
 places adjoining." 
 
 This was accordingly done, and the players were 
 not allowed license or permission for any perform- 
 ance within the city of Loudon after the year 
 1575. To reconcile what took place in 1589 with 
 this total expulsion of the players in 1575, we 
 must believe, which we readily may, that during 
 some mayoralties the act of Common Council was 
 not so rigidly enforced as in others. Certain, 
 however, it is, that the City, as a body, were sadly 
 * Or, as we should now say, real names.
 
 PLAYERS. 57 
 
 inimical to the poor players, and no theatre, that 
 is, place for the exclusive performance of plays, was 
 ever allowed within its liberties. 
 
 We have taken some pains to investigate the 
 enmity the City authorities seem to have always 
 entertained against the poor players, and it appears 
 not to have been directed so much against plays 
 as such, as against open playing, that is, playing to 
 which the common people had access. 
 
 The word education,"^ in Bacon's time, was 
 almost exclusively used in relation to the body ; 
 learning was the word used to denote mental 
 culture. 
 
 The policy of the times of Elizabeth was to 
 educate or train the bodies of the people, and 
 render them strong and athletic, but to keep their 
 minds dull and ignorant. Bacon entertained a 
 contrary opinion : he thought learning could not 
 possibly do any one mischief. " It is manifest," 
 says he,t " that there is no danger at all in the 
 proportion or quantity of knowledge, how large so 
 ever, lest it should make it (man's mind) swell or 
 
 * " Certainly custom is most perfect, when it beginnetb iu 
 young years ; this we call edueatiou, which is, in effect, but an 
 early custom." — Bacon's Essays. 
 
 t Advancement of Learning.
 
 58 PLAYERS. 
 
 outcompass itself; no^ but it is merely the quality 
 of knowledge, which, be it more or less, if it be 
 taken without the true corrective thereof, hath 
 in it some nature of venom or malignity, and 
 some effects of that venom, which is ventositv or 
 swelling." 
 
 A fear that the people might learn to think, and 
 an unlucky tendency which the players had of ridi- 
 culing absurdity, had no small share in exciting 
 the apprehension and provoking the animosity 
 of the civic authorities. For we find it urged 
 against the playhouse that it took the people away 
 not only from the church, but also from the bear- 
 baiting ; whilst we find an alderman was even then 
 an ordinary butt for the wits. When discoursing 
 upon so grave a subject as Death, Bacon cannot 
 " spare or pass by a jest" at them, he says : — 
 
 " Death finds not a worse friend than an alder- 
 man, to whose door I never knew him welcome ; 
 but he is an importunate guest, and will not be 
 said nay. And though they themselves shall affirm, 
 that they are not within, yet the answer will not 
 be taken ; and that which heightens their fear, 
 is, that they know they are in danger to forfeit 
 their flesh, but are not wise of the payment day ; 
 which sickly uncertainty is the occasion that for
 
 PLAYERS. 59 
 
 the most part, they step out of the world un- 
 furnished for their general account, and, being all 
 unprovided, desire yet to hold their gravity, pre- 
 paring their souls to answer in scarlet." 
 
 The pretence under which the players were 
 banished the City, that is, as we understand it, for- 
 bidden to have any public performance within the 
 liberties, is stated to have been the many dangers 
 both for religion, state, honesty of manners, un- 
 thriftiness of the poor, danger of infection, &c. 
 The City authorities at last proceeded in a very 
 summary manner. Whilst the players were crafts- 
 men, servants, and retainers, they felt compelled 
 to give some show of reason for their conduct, 
 which, under these altered circumstances, they 
 appear to have considered much less necessary. 
 
 The principle upon which the City now pro- 
 ceeded, seems to have been — As they wont work, 
 they sha^nt play. It is hardly so correct to say, 
 play-acting became a trade and calling, as it is to 
 say, these persons ceased to be " men of any oc- 
 cupation." They qmtted their prenous callings, 
 and, as play-acting was not recognised as a craft, 
 they became in the eye of the law, rogues and 
 vagabonds — men with no obvious means of liveli- 
 hood, and, as such, liable to be taken up and
 
 GO PLAYERS. 
 
 puuislied by whipping, fine, or imprisonment. 
 Finding themselves in this pedicament, they ap- 
 plied to the Earl of Leicester, who obtained for 
 them a protecting license from the Queen, con- 
 tingent upon their good behaviour, and liable to 
 be taken away at any time. 
 
 Thus the Queen's Players became licensed Va- 
 gabonds, as the Queen's Bedesmen were licensed 
 Beggars. 
 
 It was to this class that William Shakespeare 
 belonged. 
 
 We do but draw an historical portrait, painting 
 it in black and white. We have no desire to dis- 
 parage the Thespian art ; in our Utopia, we should 
 rank Players as Preachers ; and we regret that our 
 reading has led us to the conclusion, that Plays are 
 not the legitimate descendants of the Mysteries, 
 but spring from quite a difierent stock. 
 
 The playhouse is the people's sermon-book with 
 pictures ; its object should be to amuse, delight, 
 instruct, exalt. 
 
 Whoever writes respecting the Theatre, feels 
 constrained to say something about the Greek 
 Drama and the E-oman Plays, and then proceed to 
 the ]\Iysteries and Moralities; but we think it 
 might easily be proved that the Mysteries and Mo-
 
 PLAYERS. 61 
 
 ralities liad as little to do with the British stage, 
 as the Greek drama or Roman plays. The Mys- 
 teries and Moralities were, we doubt not, first pro- 
 duced for the purpose of propagating religion ; they 
 were persevered in by the priests, to preserve their 
 power. There was so much of fiction and absur- 
 dity mixed up with religious truth, that the people 
 soon turned the tables upon the priests, and the 
 persecuted Devil and the Vice became the most 
 popular persons in the performance. 
 
 These Mysteries and Moralities were openly 
 played by the parish clerks and others connected 
 with the state religion, who thus endeavoured to 
 influence the people. The public preachings at 
 Paul's Cross and other places, the May meetings 
 at Exeter Hall, the outpourings at Surrey Chapel 
 or the Surrey Gardens, are their ligitimate issue. 
 The English drama had a much earlier and more 
 domestic origin : Private playings commenced long 
 before, and continued during, these public religious 
 exhibitions, until, as we shall presently demon- 
 strate, the theatre became an institution of the 
 country. The child's exclamation, "Let's play," is 
 the sesame to the English drama. We may daily 
 witness it on our domestic hearths. Your little boy 
 will be papa, your little girl mamma, and dolly
 
 62 PLAYERS. 
 
 shall be their child. Dolly is dandled, praised, and 
 punished ; her dress and her duties arranged and 
 rearranged, discussed and disputed over, till the 
 playmates quarrel, and seek their parents to adjust 
 their differences. 
 
 Here we have a domestic drama, representing 
 the cares, passions, pleasures, and anxieties of life, 
 and, as it were, carried on into a future of rewards 
 and punishments. 
 
 The highest reach of the drama is but an am- 
 plification of this ; and none is enduring which is 
 not founded on a basis as simple and natural. 
 
 Banish Hamlet from the precincts of the Court 
 of Denmark — strip him of his inky cloak — forget 
 the fine painting with the upturned eyes and the 
 skull in the left hand — dress him in a frock-coat 
 and plaid trousers — call him Mr. Brown or Mr. 
 Smith — and, placed in circumstances equally per- 
 plexing, you shall find that an ordinary man would 
 act, if not in a precisely, certainly in a proxi- 
 mately similar manner, to that pursued by the 
 Prince of Denmark. 
 
 Like a skilful artist, the poet draws the natural 
 figure, and then adds the appropriate drapery ; 
 others, like milliners and tailors exhibiting their 
 fabrics, make the outward semblance of a human
 
 PLAYERS. 63 
 
 being, which, when we come to examine, we find as 
 foreign to nature, as wire and whalebone are to 
 flesh and blood. 
 
 Hamlet is not a grand conception, as we vul- 
 garly count grandeur. It is more largely grand : 
 — it is grand in the truth and simplicity of 
 nature. —
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PLAYHOUSES. 
 
 BuBBAGE and his fellows ha\dng, through the 
 influence of Leicester, obtained a license from the 
 Queen in 1574, they took a house in Blackfriars 
 (which was then without the liberties of the City) , 
 and altered and fitted it up as a theatre in 1576. 
 
 The Theatre and the Curtain, two places in 
 Shoreditch where plays were performed, appear to 
 have been already in existence. Of these very lit- 
 tle is known ; and we are disposed to think the 
 theatre in Blackfriars the first 'public theatre; 
 though all the commentators and critics have 
 chosen to consider it, what tliev denominate, a 
 private theatre. 
 
 '' Our old theatres," says Collier, " were either 
 public or private." — "What," says Malonc, "were 
 the distinguishing marks of a private playhouse, 
 it is not easy to ascertain. We know only that it 
 was smaller than those Avhich were called public
 
 PLAYHOUSES. 65 
 
 theatres ; and that in the private theatres, plays 
 were usually presented by candlelight." 
 
 " From various authorities," says Collier, " I find 
 that there were seven distinguishing marks of a 
 private playhouse. 
 
 " 1. Private theatres were of smaller dimensions 
 than public theatres. 
 
 " 2. They were entirely roofed in from the wea- 
 ther, while public theatres were open to the sky, 
 excepting over the stage, and boxes or rooms. 
 
 " 3. The performances at private theatres were 
 by candle or torch light. 
 
 " 4. They had pits furnished with seats ; and 
 not yards, as they Avere called in public theatres, 
 where the spectators stood to behold the plays. 
 
 " 5. The audience at private theatres usually 
 consisted of a superior class of persons. 
 
 " 6. The visitors there had a right to sit upon 
 tlie stage during the performance. 
 
 " 7. The boxes or rooms of private theatres were 
 enclosed or locked." 
 
 Although agreeing with Mr. Tomlin, " that it 
 is with diffidence that any one should differ with 
 Mr. Collier in matters to which he has devoted 
 so much ability, so perseveringly, and with such 
 unusual advantages," yet it certainly would not be 
 
 5
 
 66 PLAYHOUSES. 
 
 difficult, " from various authorities/' to controvert 
 or explaiu away every one of these ''seven dis- 
 tinguisliing marks of a private playhouse." 
 
 Every one at all conversant with the subject, 
 knows that several of these "distinguishing marks" 
 were not peculiar to private playhouses ; and, even 
 if they were their usual characteristics, they, indi- 
 vidually and collectively, afford no sufficient reason 
 why such a theatre should be called private. 
 
 The w^ord public is definite and intelligible 
 enough. Private does not admit of so precise a 
 definition. Oxford Street is a public way wherein 
 we all may walk at all times. Lansdown Passage, 
 the narrow passage between the gardens of Devon- 
 shire and Lansdown Houses, is a private way ; so 
 is the road through Hyde Park : yet the former 
 is not discernible from a public way, except on 
 Sept. 1, when it is closed ; and the latter is essen- 
 tially a public way to every one who does not rise 
 before five in the morning, nor journey abroad 
 after ten at night. It w'ould be easy to enumerate 
 various other ways which are so strictly private 
 that few, or none, may walk therein. 
 
 In these cases, having defined what " public " is, 
 we may safely assert that " private " is anything 
 that is not public.
 
 PLAYHOUSES. 67 
 
 It has ever been held, that any place or theatre 
 to which payment alone entitles any person to the 
 right to enter, must be considered a public place or 
 theatre. 
 
 A theatre being public or private did not, nor 
 does not, depend upon its construction or the de- 
 portment of the auditory, but solely in the cir- 
 cumstances by which admission to it is obtained ; 
 and this is often so nice a question, that we see in 
 the act we recently referred to, the Mayor and 
 Aldermen wisely " reserved to themselves the judg- 
 ment and construction, according to equity, as to 
 what shall be counted such a playing or showing 
 in a private place." 
 
 If the definition of public and private which we 
 have endeavoured to establish, be correct, it will 
 tend to elucidate much that has hitherto been 
 obscure. Plays acted by students of the inns of 
 court, and the members of the universities, before 
 the Queen, and bv servants and retainers before 
 noblemen, citizens, and gentlemen, their employers, 
 not being accessible to everybody, are doubtless to 
 be considered private playings. But when these 
 noblemen gave their servants permission to perform 
 for their own profit, besides performing at private 
 houses, at weddings, and other splendid entertain-
 
 68 PLAYHOUSES. 
 
 meuts, they also played at inns and taverns. The 
 professed players must have done so, until they 
 obtained a theatre to themselves, and probably 
 continued to do so after that time. But in either 
 case the public playing did not depend upon 
 locality; but wherever a play was openly played, 
 that place was for the time being, whether a tavern 
 or a yard, a public theatre. 
 
 The Blackfriars Theatre being exclusively de- 
 voted to the acting of plays, was in a special sense 
 a public theatre, at which those persons who had 
 adopted play-acting as a trade or calling found a 
 local habitation, and carried on their occupation 
 for the purpose of obtaining a livelihood. 
 
 Some writers will insist that this theatre at 
 Blackfriars was the Drury Lane of the days of 
 Elizabeth, and that the license granted to the 
 players was equivalent to a modern patent. The 
 very reverse of this was the fact : the license was 
 not a mark of approbation, but of toleration; it 
 was not so much to secure them certain privi- 
 leges, as to confine them within due limits, and 
 render them more promptly amenable to the law. 
 Thus the last clause in the orders of the Privy 
 Council expressly states — " That for breaking any 
 of these orders, their toleration cease."
 
 PLAYHOUSES. 69 
 
 There is another sense in which the words pub- 
 lic and private are used, which may possibly have 
 misled Mr. Collier. Inns and taverns were called 
 in the days of Elizabeth, as indeed they are now, 
 public-houses; and when the actors performed at 
 the Blackfriars, the Cockpit, and Salisbury Court, 
 they called it playing at a private house ; and per- 
 forming at the Globe, the Cross Keys, or any inns 
 or taverns, they called playing at a public house. 
 
 So a public house was ordinarily a private thea- 
 tre, and the public theatre was a private house. 
 
 The following abstract from a pamphlet* in the 
 King's Library, British Museum, supports this view: 
 " Oppressed with many calamities, and languish- 
 ing to death under a long and (for ought we know) 
 an everlasting restraint, we, the comedians, trage- 
 dians, and actors of all sorts and sizes belonging 
 to the famous private and public houses within the 
 city of London and the suburbs thereof, to you 
 Great Phcebus, and you Sacred Sisters, the sole 
 patronesses of our distressed calling, do we in all 
 humility present this our humble and lamentable 
 complaint, by whose intercession to those powers 
 
 * The Actors' Romonstrance or Complaint for the Silencing 
 their Profession, and Banishment from their several IMayhouses. 
 London : Printed by Edw. Nicksou, Jan. 24, 1643.
 
 70 PLAYHOUSES. 
 
 who confined us to silence, we hope to be restored 
 to our pristine honour and employment. 
 
 " First, it is not unknown to all the audience that 
 have frequented the private houses of Blackfriars, 
 the Cockpit, and Salisbury Court, without auste- 
 rity, we have purged our stages from all obscene 
 and scurrilous jests; such as might either be guilty 
 of corrupting the manners or defaming the persons 
 of any men of note in the city or kingdome ; that 
 we have endeavoured, as much as in us lies, to 
 instruct one another in the true and genuine art of 
 acting, to repress brawling and railing, formerly in 
 great request, and for to suite our language and 
 action to the more gentile and natural garbe of the 
 times.^' 
 
 As our object is merely to point out the allusion 
 to public and private houses, we shall not proceed 
 with the quotation. The pamphlet will be found 
 interesting to any one wishing to make himself 
 acquainted with the quality of the public playhouse 
 of this period 
 
 The interior architectural arrangements of an 
 ancient theatre were much the same as those of 
 the present day. The gallery, or scaffold as it was 
 called, occupied three sides of the house, assuming, 
 according to the plan of the building, a square or
 
 PLAYHOUSES. 71 
 
 semicircular form. Beneath this were small di- 
 visions called rooms, answering in almost every 
 respect to our boxes ; these seem occasionally to 
 have been the property of private individuals, who 
 in that case kept them locked. The centre part, 
 which was then called the pit, had neither floor 
 nor benches. The common people standing here 
 to see the performances are therefore called in 
 Hamlet, '' groundlings " — a term repeated by 
 Decker, who speaks of " the groundling and gallery 
 commoner buying his sport by the penny. ^' The 
 pit was separated from the stage by a paling; 
 there was no intervening orchestra; the music, 
 consisting of one or more trumpets, cornets, haut- 
 boys, lutes, recorders, viols, or organs, was placed 
 in a raised balcony, nearly occupying the space of 
 the upper stage-box in our modern theatres. The 
 stage was elevated above the pit as at present, and 
 had an upper stage or gallery at the back, which 
 had curtains to draw in front. Part of the per- 
 formance was carried on in this upper stage, as 
 when the gctors were to speak from a window or 
 battlement, or to overhear what was going on, on 
 the lower stage. There were curtains sliding on 
 rings and rods in other parts of the lower stage, 
 through which the actors made their exits and en-
 
 73 PLAYHOUSES. 
 
 trances. It may with safety be affirmed that the 
 Blackfriars Theatre had originally no scenery. The 
 locality of the scene was indicated by a written 
 paper placed at the back of the stage ; the ima- 
 gination of the audience supplied the rest. 
 
 Sir Philip Sydney, describing the state of the 
 drama and the stage in his time, about 1583, says : 
 — " Now, you shall have three ladies walk to gather 
 flowers, and then you must believe the stage to be 
 a garden. By-and-by, we have news of a ship- 
 wreck in the same place ; then we are to blame if 
 we accept it not for a rock. Upon the back of 
 that comes out an hideous monster, with fire and 
 smoke, and the miserable beholders are bound to 
 take it for a cave ; while, in the mean time, two 
 armies fly in, represented with four swords and 
 bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive 
 it for a pitched field ? " 
 
 Hitherto the description of the theatre has 
 reference to its appearance during the reign of 
 Elizabeth. Decker mentions some other accom- 
 modation ; but his work. The Guls Home Book, 
 or Fashions to suit all Sorts of Guls, was not 
 published until 1G09; he says, that there were 
 private boxes on each side of the stage, " almost 
 smothered in darkness,^' and also that seats or
 
 PLAYHOUSES, 73 
 
 stools were allowed to be placed on the stage, which 
 Avere usually occupied by the wits, gallants, and 
 critics of the day. " For by sitting on the stage," 
 says he, " you have a signed patent to engross the 
 whole commodity of censure; may lawfully pre- 
 sume to be a girder, and stand at the helm and 
 steer the passage of scenes." 
 
 He enumerates other advantages appreciated by 
 the fast men of his day. 
 
 The prices of admission seem to have varied from 
 a penny up to a shilling, aud even two shillings, 
 upon some extraordinary occasions. 
 
 Prior to the commencement of the play, the 
 audience amused themselves with cards, smoking 
 tobacco, drinking ale, cracking nuts, and eating 
 fruit, which were regularly supplied by men attend- 
 ing the theatre, by whose vociferations and clamour, 
 as a writer of the time expresses it, "you were 
 made adder-deaf by pippin cry." The stage had 
 very little if any decoration ; it was sometimes hung 
 with black for tragedy ; Init the wardrobes are re- 
 ported to have been costly. This we can readily 
 suppose, as the actors performed upon all occasions 
 in the court-dress of the period; and as the clothes 
 of the nobility and gentry descended as heirlooms, 
 aud tinsel and tawdry as yet were not, much expense
 
 74 PLAYHOUSES. 
 
 must necessarily have been incurred in providing 
 dresses. Sir Henry Wotton alludes to their mag- 
 nificence in the letter to Sir Edmund Bacon, in 
 which he narrates the destruction of the Globe 
 Theatre, July 2nd, 1613 :— 
 
 " Now, to let matters of state sleep I will en- 
 tertain you with what hath happened this week at 
 the Bankside. 
 
 " The King's players had a new play, called All 
 is True, representing some principall pieces in the 
 reign of Henry VIII., which was set forth with 
 many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and 
 majesty, even to the matting of the stage, the 
 knights of the order, with their Georges and garter, 
 the guards with their embroidered coats, and the 
 like, sufficient in truth, within a while, to make 
 greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. 
 
 "Now, King Henry making a masque at the 
 Cardinal "Wolsev's house, and certain chambers 
 being shot off at the entry, some of the paper or 
 other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, 
 did light on the thatch, where, being thought at 
 first but an idle smoke, and their eyes more at- 
 tentive to the show, it kindled inwardly and ran 
 round like a train, consuming within less than an 
 hour the whole house to the very grounds. This
 
 PLAYHOUSES. 75 
 
 was the fatal period to that virtuous fabrique, 
 wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw 
 and a few forsaken cloaks ; only one man had his 
 breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broiled 
 him, if he had not, by the benefit of a provident 
 wit, put it out with bottle-ale." 
 
 From what has been already advanced respect- 
 ing players and theatres, we proceed to draw some 
 inferences. 
 
 We believe the Blackfriars to have been a public 
 theatre, and that the " common plaies," being ac- 
 cessible to every one who could command the small 
 sum charged for admission, were resorted to by the 
 very lowest of the people. We say the " common 
 plaies^' ; for discarding Mr. Collier's distinction of 
 public and private, and adopting the one suggested 
 in its stead, renders intelligible the words, common 
 plaies, which occur not unfrcquently. 
 
 The " common plaies" were, we apprehend, the 
 ordinary performances to which eveiy one could 
 obtain access upon payment; but occasionally noble- 
 men and others commanded a play, and secured the 
 house for themselves and their friends : thus the 
 Blackfriars Theatre was, as every theatre since has 
 been and is, both a public and a private theatre : 
 public, in that the proprietors were licensed or
 
 76 PLAYHOUSES. 
 
 allowed to take money and admit any one to see 
 the acting ; but private^ when it was secured or 
 engaged, which at any time it might be, for a 
 performance to which the general public were not 
 admitted. 
 
 That the Whitefriars Theatre could be so en- 
 gaged or " taken up," is evMenced by a letter 
 (without date) of Sir Henry Wotton to Sir Edmund 
 Bacon : — 
 
 " On Sunday last, at night, and no longer, some 
 sixteen apprentices (of what sort you may guess, 
 by the rest of the story) having secretly learnt a 
 a new play without book, intituled The Hog has 
 lost his Pearl, took up the White Fryers for their 
 theatre, and having invited thither (as it would 
 seem) rather their mistresses than their masters, 
 who were all to enter joer buletini, for a note of 
 distinction from ordinary comedians, towards the 
 end of the play the sherifl's (who by chance had 
 heard of it) came in (as they say) and carried some 
 six or seven of them to perform the last act of it 
 at Bridewell; the rest are fled. Now, it is strange 
 to hear how sharp-witted the City is ; for they will 
 needs have Sir Thomas Swinnerton, the Lord 
 Mayor, be meant by the Hog, and the late Lord 
 Treasurer, by the Pearl.^"
 
 PLAYHOUSES. 77 
 
 At this public theatre, to which every one coiikl 
 obtain access, and the lowest of the people ordi- 
 narily resorted, the ordinary performances doubt- 
 less were, as it might be expected they would be, 
 of the coarsest and most ordinary description. 
 Yet we are called upon to believe that it was here 
 that the wonderful works which we all so greatly 
 admire, and feel that we can only properly appre- 
 ciate by careful private study, were performed ; and 
 it was from the profit arising from this wretched 
 place of amusement that Shakespeare realised the 
 far from inconsiderable fortune with which he in a 
 few years retired to Stratford-upon-Avon. 
 
 Commentators say,We do not find that the plays 
 attributed to Shakespeare were ever performed at 
 any other theatre. They do not say, which they 
 might. We do not find that they were ever per- 
 formed at this. 
 
 We cannot but think that the best plays must 
 have been performed at the best, the most exclusive, 
 that is, the private theatres — the theatres held at 
 inns, taverns, &c., to which the most respectable 
 portion of the community resorted. 
 
 Of these the Rose seems to have been at that 
 time the most eminent. 
 
 It was here, and at similar places, before au- 
 diences capable of appreciating them, that these
 
 78 , PLAYHOUSES. 
 
 plays doubtless were performed in their integrity. 
 And Shakespeare's company made their money, 
 either by supplying the actors at these superior 
 theatres with dramas, or by performing them be- 
 fore those audiences themselves. 
 
 The only account we have of the performance 
 of Tioelfth Night is from the Table Book of John 
 Manningham, student of the Middle Temple, and 
 it confirms this idea : — 
 
 "February, 1601. — At our feast we had a play 
 called Twelfth Night, or What You Will, much like 
 the Comedy of Errors, or Menechmis in Plautus, 
 but more like or neare to that in Italian called 
 Inganni. A good practice in it, to make the 
 steward believe his lady widdowe was in love with 
 him, by counterfeiting a letter as from a lady, in 
 generall terms telling him what shee liked best in 
 him, and prescribing his gestures, inscribing his 
 apparaile, &c., and then, when he came to practise, 
 making him believe they took him to be mad." — 
 Knight's Cyclopusdia of London, from H arleian M S S . 
 
 That some of the plays may have been performed 
 as " common plaies" at Shakespeare's own theatre, 
 is very possible ; but if they were, they were doubt- 
 less altered, mutilated, and interpolated, to suit the 
 taste of that wretched audience.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 PLAY-WRITERS. 
 
 We have seen how Play-acting, " which was once 
 a recreation, and used therefor now and then occa- 
 sianally, afterwards by abuse, became a trade and 
 calling, and so remains to this day." 
 
 We have seen how plays, which were originally 
 performed in the open air, and then at inns and 
 taverns, had at length found a habitation of 
 their own, and the playhouse was a recognised 
 institution. 
 
 This state of things involved another and most 
 important change ; for, as plays were now conti- 
 nually being performed, in order that the actors 
 might procure their daily bread, it became essential 
 that there should be a continual supply of novelties 
 to stimulate the curiosity of the public, and attract 
 an audience. 
 
 It was of the first importance to the actors too, 
 that the authors should be men that would produce
 
 80 PLAY-WRTTERS. 
 
 matter congenial to the taste, and level with the 
 understandings^ of those who eame to hear it. The 
 profound wisdom and the noble language of the 
 writers of that time were ill suited for such a pur- 
 pose. This new demand, therefore, called into 
 existence an entirely new class of writers. 
 
 jNIen hitherto had written from the fulness of 
 their souls ; these latter were more actuated by the 
 emptiness of their stomachs. The editor of the 
 Illustrated London News (December 6th, 1856) 
 states : — " So far was the vocation of dramatist for 
 pecuniary profit from being attended with dis- 
 honour or fraught with detriment to a writer's 
 professional prospects, that Sackville, the Lord 
 Treasurer under the reigns of Elizabeth and James, 
 was a confessed dramatist." 
 
 The At hen mim (September 13th, 1856), says: — 
 " Connection with ' poets and players ' was no bar 
 to public employments, under either Elizabeth or 
 James. Sackville, the Lord Treasurer under both 
 reigns, was a poet and a dramatist. Sydney and 
 Raleigh, though occupying places at court, and 
 commanding armies and fleets, were poets. Some 
 of the strongest men of the time, such as Donne, 
 rose wholly by the tower of rhyme. The Shep- 
 herd's Calender made Spenser secretary to the
 
 PLAY-WRITERS. 81 
 
 Lord Deputy of Ireland. A weakness for verses 
 did not prevent Wotton from going as ambassador 
 to Venice. Nay, poetry was no obstacle to success 
 at the bar^ for Davis was eminent as a poet before 
 he was known as Irish Attorney- General or Speaker 
 of the Irish House of Commons. All these facts 
 help to prove that, if Bacon were the author of the 
 Shakespeare Plays, he had some other motive for 
 concealing the fact than the fears imagined by 
 Mr. Smith." 
 
 We cannot find the slightest trace that these 
 great men were either paid for writing, or obtained 
 any pecuniary advantage by so doing. We believe 
 that Bacon and others were, on the contrary, rather 
 impoverished by it. So far from seeking pecuniary 
 profit in the discharge of this self-imposed duty, 
 they had often a greater regard to the general good, 
 than to their own reputations. 
 
 "I have heard his lordship often say," writes 
 
 Rawlcy, in the Address which precedes the Sylva 
 
 Sylvarum, "that if he should have served the 
 
 glory of his own name, he had been better not to 
 
 have published this Natural History ; but that he 
 
 resolved to prefer the good of men, and that which 
 
 might secure it, before anything that might have 
 
 relation to himself." 
 
 G
 
 82 PLAY-WRITERS. 
 
 " I hold every man/' says Bacon, in his Preface 
 to the Elements of the Common Law, " a debtor to 
 his profession ; from which, as men of course do 
 seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought 
 they of duty to endeavour themselves, by way of 
 amends, to be a help and ornament thereunto ;" 
 and he adds : — " I have in all points, to the best 
 of my understanding and foresight, applied myself 
 not to that which might seem most for the osten- 
 tation of my own wit and knowledge, but to that 
 which may yield most use and profit to the students 
 and professors of the laws." 
 
 Hallam says of the learned men of that day : — 
 " They deemed themselves a distinct caste, a priest- 
 hood of the same altar, not ashamed of poverty and 
 the world's neglect, but content with the praise of 
 those whom themselves thought worthy of praise, 
 and hoping something more from posterity than 
 they obtained from their own age." 
 
 " I account," says Bacon, in his Dedication to 
 An Advertisement touching a Holy War, " the use 
 that a man should seek of the publishing of his 
 own writings before his death, to be but an un- 
 timely anticipation of that which is proper to follow 
 a man, and not to go along with him." 
 
 Ben Jonson says : — " Poetry^ in this latter age,
 
 PLAY-WRITERS. 83 
 
 hath proved but a mean mistress to such as have 
 wholly addicted themselves to her, or given their 
 names up to her family. They who have but 
 saluted her by-the-by, she hath done much for, 
 and advanced in the way of their own profession 
 (both the law and the gospel), beyond all they 
 could have hoped or done for themselves without 
 her favour." 
 
 A learned man * laments — " that scientific and 
 literary men have, with us, no recognised social 
 position. A man of science, who is perhaps making 
 the most wonderful discoveries, is obliged to obtain 
 the degree of doctor, and make use of his acade- 
 mical title, in order to claim a social position ; and 
 a literary man will get called to the bar, at which 
 he will never practise, in order to be somebody, 
 because, as a writer or a man of taste, he belongs 
 to no class, is therefore nobody, and he wants to 
 classify himself somewhere." Surely the Cardinal 
 does not state the case candidly. Wisdom and 
 learning have, with us, their fit and appropriate 
 rewards. He that exercises his talents in the 
 service of his country — who enrols himself a mem- 
 ber of the church, the law, and the state — is ho- 
 
 * Dr. Wiseman, in his Lecture on the Influence of Words or 
 Thought, and on Civilization.
 
 81- PLAY-WRITERS. 
 
 lioured for his devotion, and in most cases rewarded 
 in proportion to his merits. The man who uses 
 his learning solely for " lucre or profession/' falls 
 into quite a dift'erent position. 
 
 No self-conferred general name can distinguish 
 or give distinction to the literary or scientific man : 
 like mixed seed cast on the garden border, when 
 it is grown up, some will be strong by drawing 
 much nourishment to itself; some prized for the 
 beauty of its form or richness of its colour; or other 
 its individual excellences ; but none, simply because 
 it grew in the garden border. 
 
 When acting and authorship became " a trade 
 and calling," those who had acted gratuitously, and 
 the wise and noble who had published their lucu- 
 brations from the worthiest motives, looked down 
 upon these new men with the utmost contempt. 
 
 Though in this our day Ave can but rejoice at 
 an arrangement which has brought a Macaulay, a 
 Buhver, a Landor, a Carlyle, to be as it were, in 
 the pay of the public, we cannot wonder that at 
 the commencement of the system, the great men 
 of the day should vicAv this new order of writers 
 as virtuous women do their fallen sisters, and class 
 actors and authors in the category of courtezans. 
 
 Nor can it be denied, that learning lost much of
 
 PLAY-WUITEKS. 85 
 
 dignity, and language, power, by this decadency. 
 Independence of the censure of the reader, gives 
 freedom to the pen of the writer, and the desire to 
 convey the idea, and not cover the page, condenses 
 the style. We believe this is the secret of the 
 excellence of Elizabethan literature. Certainly 
 never since, has so much wisdom been written in 
 so few words. Books now are like unsafe banks : 
 the bullion is disproportionate to the issue of paper; 
 and matter which might be communicated in a 
 month, and condensed into a shilling, by a system 
 of Circumlocution, is made to maunder through 
 twenty months, to produce a pound. 
 
 Our conclusion is, that it would have been a 
 disgrace to the noble Bacon to have owned him- 
 self the literary hack of the part proprietor of a 
 paltry playhouse. 
 
 And here we may note that all the hireling 
 writers for the players were men of education, 
 members of the universities, and in some instances 
 ordained clergymen. Yet in none of their works 
 are there so frequent classical allusions as in the 
 Shakespeare Plays; and in these latter, the refer- 
 ences have not regard to what we may call school 
 classics, but to authors seldom perused but by 
 profound scholars. Nor is the classical knowledge
 
 86 fLAY-WRITERS. 
 
 exhibited of a superficial character; as Pope ob- 
 serves : — " We find him very knowing in the cus- 
 toms, rites, and manners of antiquity. In Corio- 
 /anus and Julius Casar, not only the spirit, but 
 manners, of the Romans are exactly drawn; and 
 still a nicer distinction is shown between the man- 
 ners of the Romans in the time of the former, and 
 of the latter. No one is more a master of the 
 poetical story, or has more frequent allusions to 
 the various parts of it : Mr. Waller (who has been 
 celebrated for this last particular) has not shown 
 more learning this way than Shakespeare.^' 
 
 " Without reviving the debated question of 
 Shakespeare's learning," says Hallam,* " I must 
 venture to think that he possessed rather more 
 acquaintance with the Latin language than many 
 believe. The phrases, unintelligible and improper, 
 except in the sense of their primitive roots, which 
 occur so copiously in his plays, seem to be unac- 
 countable on the supposition of absolute ignorance. 
 In the Midsummer Night's Dream these are much 
 less frequent than in his later dramas ; but here 
 we find several instances : thus, ' things base and 
 vile, holding no quantity,' for value; rivers, that 
 ' have overborn their continents/ the continents 
 * Literature of Evrope^ part ii. chap. vi. sec. 41.
 
 PLAY-WRITERS. 87 
 
 Hva of Horace ; 'comjoac/ of imagination'; 'some- 
 thing of great constancy/ for consistency; ' sweet 
 Pyraraus translated there ' ; ' the law of Athens, 
 which by no means we may extenuate.' I have 
 considerable doubts whether any of these expres- 
 sions would be found in the contemporary prose 
 of Elizabeth's reign, which was less overrun with 
 pedantry than that of her successor; but, could 
 authority be produced for Latinisms so forced, it 
 is still not very likely that one who did not under- 
 stand their proper meaning would have introduced 
 them into poetry." 
 
 Hallam adds in a note : — " The celebrated essay- 
 by Farmer, on the learning of Shakespeare, put an 
 end to such notions as we find in Warburton, and 
 many of the elder commentators, that he had 
 imitated Sophocles, and I know not how many 
 Greek authors. Those, indeed, that agree with 
 what I have said in a former chapter, as to the 
 state of learning under Elizabeth, will not think 
 it probable that Shakespeare could have acquired 
 any knowledge of Greek. It was not a part of 
 .luch education as he received. The case of Latin 
 is different : we know that he was at a grammar- 
 school, and could hardly have spent two or three 
 years there, without bringing away a certain por-
 
 88 PLAY-WRITERS. 
 
 tiou of the language." We knoiv that tlicrc Avas 
 a grammar-school at Stratford-upon-Avon; but, 
 with all deference to Mr. Hallam, that William 
 Shakespeare was at it, or any other school, is just 
 what we do not know. 
 
 In an age of bigotry and religious persecution, 
 we find Bacon and Shakespeare expressing a tole- 
 ration of all creeds and religions. We find the 
 ethics of the player and the philosopher to be 
 identical; and we find them uniting their efforts 
 to suppress and exterminate the fashionable, foolish, 
 and wicked practice of duels. 
 
 We can imagine the philosopher defining it as 
 "a fond and false disguise or puppetry of honour;"^" 
 the statesman denouncing it as " a desperate evil," 
 since " it troubleth peace, it disfurnishcth war, 
 it bringeth calamity upon private men, peril upon 
 the state, and contempt upon the law." f But we 
 may well be surprised, in that age, to find the 
 dramatist never once mentioning the private duel 
 with approval, but attacking the practice with the 
 keenest shafts of his ridicule, and both poet and 
 
 * The charge of Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, the Khig's At- 
 tomey-Greneral, touching duels, upon an information in tlie Star 
 Chamber against Priest and Wright, with the decree of the Star 
 Chamber m the same cause. 
 
 t Hid.
 
 PLAY -WRITERS. 89 
 
 politician rejoicing in the prospect of its speedy 
 extinction, since it cannot but be "that men of 
 birth and quality will leave the practice when it 
 begins to be vilified, and come so Ioav as to 
 barber-surgeons and butchers, and base mechanical 
 persons.""^ 
 
 " There is," says Archbishop Whateley, " an 
 ingenious and philosophical toy called a ' thauma- 
 trope,^ in which two objects painted on opposite 
 sides of a card — for instance, a man and a horse, 
 a bird and a cage, &c. — are, by a quick rotatory 
 motion, made so to impress the eye in combina- 
 tion, as to form one picture — of the man on the 
 horse's back, the bird in the cage, &c. As soon 
 as the card is allowed to remain at rest, the figvires 
 of course appear as they really are, separate and on 
 opposite sides/^ 
 
 Bacon and Shakespeare we know to be distinct 
 individuals, occupying positions as opposite as the 
 man and the horse — the bird and the cage ; yet, 
 when we come to agitate the question, the poet 
 appears so combined with the philosopher, and the 
 philosopher Avith the poet, we cannot but believe 
 them to be identical. 
 
 * Ibid. p. 88 ante.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 athenjEum and other objectors 
 answered. 
 
 Having candidly communicated and, we trust, 
 successfully combatted the main objection urged 
 by our adversary, we feel ourself at liberty to quote 
 the arguments he has adduced in our behalf. 
 
 " We believe," writes the editor of the Athenaum 
 (Sept. 13, 1856), "that a very plausible case could 
 be made against the assumed authorship of M'illiara 
 Shakespeare by any one with knowledge of the 
 times. There is, for example, the one great fact 
 to begin with — Shakespeare never claimed the 
 plays as his own. His poems he claimed, and his 
 sonnets he claimed ; and there is an undoubted 
 difficulty in understanding how a man who cared 
 about Lucrece and Venus and Adonis, could be 
 negligent about Hamlet and Othello. Yet Shake- 
 speare was unquestionably indifferent about the 
 dramas which were played in his name at the
 
 OBJECTORS ANSWERED. 91 
 
 theatres and at the court, and died without seeing 
 the most remarkable series of intellectual works 
 which ever issued from the brain of man, set in 
 the custody of type. In the second place, the 
 plays contain many lines which allude, or which 
 we fancy allude, to passing events — such as Cokeys 
 brutality on Ral eights trial, the three thou& so 
 keenly caricatured in Twelfth Night, and many 
 more; and it is natural to infer that these allusions 
 came from some one higher in station than a poor 
 player — from Bacon, who hated Coke, or from 
 Raleigh, who smarted under his insolence. In the 
 third place, some of the references of contempo- • 
 raries to Shakespeare admit of being tortured into 
 a charge, that he did not invent the dramas which 
 appeared under his name : — for example, when 
 Greene says, in his GroaV s-warth of Wit, — 'There 
 is an upstart crow beautified in our feathers, in his 
 own conceit the only Shakescene in a country,' 
 what more easy than to say that Shakespeare, in 
 the opinion of contemporary dramatists, was only 
 a borrower, an adapter of other men's work, like 
 some of the salaried poets of our present theatres, 
 whose qualifications are described as carpentry and 
 French ? In the fourth place, the legal references 
 in some of the plays are so numerous and so
 
 92 OBJECTORS ANSWERED. 
 
 minute, as to suggest, and almost infer, a legal ori- 
 gin for these particular dramas. Then, in the fifth 
 place, there is the very suspicious fact that Bacon 
 nowhere mentions Shakespeare. Bacon was rather 
 fond of speaking of his great contemporaries — of 
 quoting their wit and recording their sayings. In 
 his Apophthegms we find nearly all that is known 
 about Raleigh's power of repartee. How came 
 such a gatherer of wit, humours, and characters to 
 ignore the greatest man living ? Had he a reason 
 for his omission? It were idle to assume that 
 Bacon failed to see the greatness of Lear and 
 Macbeth. There must have been some reason for 
 his silence. What reason ? But the most striking: 
 difficulty, perhaps, lies in the descriptions of foreign 
 scenes, particularly of Italian scenes, and of sea- 
 life, interwoven with the texts of the plays — de- 
 scriptions so numerous and so marvellously accu- 
 rate, that it is almost impossible to believe they 
 were written by a man who lived in London and 
 Stratford, who never left this island, and who saw 
 the world only from a stroller's booth. Every 
 reader of the plays has felt this difficulty, and 
 theories have been formed of imaginary Shake- 
 speare travels, in order to account for the minute 
 local truth and the prevalence of local colour. It
 
 OBJECTORS ANSWERED. 93 
 
 is not easy to conceive the Merchant of Venice jis 
 coming from the brain of one who had never 
 strolled on the Rialto^ or sunned himself on the 
 slopes of Monte Bello. AVithont warrant of any 
 sort beyond the internal evidence of the play, Mr. 
 Brown and Mr. Halliwell have boldly adopted the 
 theory of an Italian journey; though when and 
 how it could have been performed, in the course of 
 a life so brief and so busy as Shakespeare's was, 
 between his marriage and his retirement from the 
 stage, is a mystery not more perplexing than the 
 
 local knowledge it would serve to explain 
 
 Out of a hundred points and arguments like these, 
 a theory might be framed — of course, a theory not 
 defensible against serious attack — but plausible 
 enough on paper. . . . Mr, Smith has scarcely 
 made the semblance of a case. His rcasonins: is 
 wholly inferential and hypothetical.'^ 
 
 Our reasoning, we admit, is " wholly inferential 
 and hypothetical"; and so is that which attributes 
 these productions to William Shakespeare. They 
 infer that they were written by him upon the 
 strength of the " hypothesis," that all works are 
 written bv the authors whose names arc attached 
 to them. They reject Pericles, the Two Kins- 
 men, &c., upon the hypothesis that the names of
 
 94 OBJECTORS ANSWERED. 
 
 superior writers are often attached to works of 
 inferior merit. They infer that he wrote the 
 superior works, because they can find no evidence 
 that he was capable of the inferior; and they 
 reject the inferior, upon the hypothesis that he 
 that can write well cannot write badly. 
 
 Surely no creed of man^s concocting ever re- 
 quired so great faith, was more contradictory or 
 more incomprehensible. 
 
 which to beUeve — 
 Must be a faith, that reason without miracle 
 Should never plant in me. Lear. 
 
 And is it true that Shakespeare "claimed the 
 poems and the sonnets " ? Archimedes is reported 
 to have said, boasting of the power of the lever, 
 " Give me a spot to stand on, and I will move 
 the world." So certain critics exclaim, " Grant 
 Shakespeare wrote the sonnets, and we will prove 
 he wrote the plays." Yet surely the question at 
 issue is none other than this : — Was William 
 Shakespeare a poet, or was he simply a player and 
 part proprietor of a paltry playhouse ? If he was a 
 poet, it is more than probable that he wrote the 
 plays ; if he wrote the plays, it is certain that he 
 was a poet. 
 
 AVe do not intend now critically to consider the
 
 OBJECTORS ANSWERED. 95 
 
 sonnets; we hope to do so at some futm^e time; 
 but we will briefly state our belief, that many of 
 the phases of Bacon's early life might be traced in 
 them. 
 
 Bacon owns to having written one sonnet. In 
 The Apology of Sir Frances Bacon in certain 
 Imputations concerning the late Earl of Essex, he 
 writes : — 
 
 " And as sometimes it cometh to pass that men's 
 inclinations are opened more in a toy than in a 
 serious matter, a little before that time, being 
 about the middle of Michaelmas term, her Majesty 
 had a purpose to dine at my lodge at Twickenham 
 Park; at which time I had, though I profess not to 
 be a poet, prepared a sonnet directly tending and 
 alluding to draw on her Majesty's reconcilement 
 
 to my Lord . This, though it be, as I said, 
 
 but a toy, yet it showeth plainly in what spirit I 
 proceeded." 
 
 Certainly, the allusion to "another's neck," in 
 Sonnet 131, might be much more readily construed 
 to apply to the Earl of Essex, than the " Hews," in 
 Sonnet 20, made to refer to Mr. William Hughes. 
 
 With regard to Tobie Matthew's 
 
 "Postc. — The most prodigious wit that ever I 
 knew of my nation, and of this side of the sea, is 
 of your lordship's name, though he be known by
 
 96 OBJECTORS ANSWERED. 
 
 another/' — tlie Athenaum observes : — " Mr. Smith 
 does not tell us what he infers from this expres- 
 sion of one of the reprobates about the court/' and 
 adds, — " We do not care to guess." 
 
 We paraphrase the passage thus : — " The most 
 prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation, and 
 of this side of the sea, is of the name of Bacon^ 
 though he is known by the name of Shakespeare." 
 
 The following is an extract from a letter, without 
 date or address, which is to be found in Tobie 
 Matthew's collection of letters; like the above 
 postscript, it is very mysterious : — 
 
 " I will not promise to return you weight for 
 weight, but Measure for Measure; and I must also 
 tell you beforehand, that you are not to expect any 
 other stuff from rne, than fustian and bombast, and 
 such wares as that. For there is no venturing in 
 richer commodities, and much less upon such as 
 are forbidden. Neither, indeed, do we know what is 
 forbidden and what not : for both the restraint and 
 the penalty are determined by the discretion of the 
 officers, and not by the letter of the law. And there 
 is a certain judge in the world,, who, in the midst 
 of his popularity towards the meaner sort of men, 
 would fain deprive the better sort of that happiness 
 which was generally done in that time, whereof
 
 OBJECTORS ANSWERED. 97 
 
 Tacitus wrote when he complained, that — " Memo- 
 riara ipsam cum voce perdidissimus. Si in nostra 
 potestate esset, tam oblivisei-quam tacere." 
 
 In the Address to the Reader which precedes this 
 collection of letters, Tobie Matthew writes . — 
 
 ''It will go near to pose any other nation of 
 Europe to muster out in any age four men, who, in 
 so many respects, should excel four such as we arc 
 able to show— Cardinal Wolsey, Sir Thomas More^ 
 Sir Philip Sidney, and Sir Francis Bacon. ^ 
 ■x- -x- * * -^ -J^- * 
 
 =p -^ * The fourth was a creature 
 
 of incomparable abilities of mind, — of a sharp and 
 catching apprehension, — large and faithful memory, 
 — plentiful and sprouting invention, — deep and 
 solid judgment for as much as might concern the 
 understanding part : — a man so rare in knowledge, 
 of so many several kinds, — indued with the facility 
 and felicity of expressing it all, in so elegant, 
 significant, — so abundant and yet so choice and 
 ravishing a way of words, of metaphors, and 
 allusions, — as perhaps the world has not seen since 
 it was a world. 
 
 " I know this may seem a great hyperbole and 
 strange kind of riotous excess of speech ; but the 
 best means of putting me to shame, will be for 
 
 7
 
 98 OBJECTORS ANSWERED. 
 
 you to place any man of yours, by this of 
 
 mine." 
 
 How was it tlie name of William Shakespeare — 
 a man equal, if not superior to Bacon, in the points 
 enumerated — did not occur to Sir Tobie Matthew ? 
 
 Mr. Francis Bacon, writing to this same Mr. 
 Tobie Matthew, says : — " Of this, when you were 
 here, I showed you some model; at what time, 
 methought, you were more willing to hear Julius 
 Caesar, than Queen Elizabeth commended." 
 
 These are but slight matters; but, as Bacon 
 observes, "You may see great objects through 
 small crannies or levels." 
 
 Tobie Matthew was not the reprobate the Athe- 
 ncBum represents him. Though the son of an arch- 
 bishop, he unfortunately became what we now call 
 a " pervert," and was banished the country. Like 
 
 Master Duck, 
 Whom Samuel Johnsou trod on, 
 Had be liy'd here 't 'ad been good hick, 
 For then we'd had an odd on'. 
 
 Rome's gain was England's loss ; for he would 
 doubtless have been to Bacon what Boswell was to 
 Johnson. They were very much attached, and 
 during the short time he was over here, he was 
 continually with Bacon.
 
 OBJECTORS ANSWERED. 99 
 
 John Charaberlayn, Esq., writes to Sir Dudley 
 Carleton : — 
 
 "London, May 24th, 1617.— Sir Toby Matthew 
 is come, and was last night at Mr. Secretary's, 
 who dealt earnestly with him to take the oath of 
 allegifince. It was lost labour, though he told 
 him, without doing it, the King would not endure 
 him here long, 
 
 "But, perhaps, he presumes upon the Lord 
 Keeper's favour, which indeed is very great now at 
 first, if it continues, for he lodgeth him at York 
 House, and carries him next week along with him 
 to his house at Gorhambury, near St. Alban's." — • 
 Again, in October, 1617, he writes, that "Tobie 
 Matthew has grown very gay or gaudy in his attire, 
 which I should not have expected of his years or 
 judgment." 
 
 Popery has not much credit in his conversion : 
 it commenced by an imposition, and was consum- 
 mated by wit and humour. The first impression 
 made upon him, he says, arose from the devout 
 l)ehaviour of the rustics in the churches abroad, 
 and from being convinced of the reality of the lique- 
 faction of the blood of St. Januarius at Naples ; 
 but that his complete conversion was reserved for 
 Father Parsons, Avho gave him to read Mr. William
 
 100 OBJECTORS ANSWERED. 
 
 Reynolds's Reprehension of Dr. WJdtaker, which 
 he esteemed the most valuable work on Wit and 
 Humour he had ever read. 
 
 Tobie Matthew, says his biographer, aflfected 
 the reputation of a man of universal genius, and 
 certainly possessed many accomplishments. 
 
 He was a poet, a painter* {quare), and a man 
 of gallantry. His excellent constitution required 
 but few hours' sleep, which he frequently took in 
 a great chair ; and rising by break of day, he used 
 to dip his head in cold water ; he was then fresh 
 as the morning and in spirits to write panegyrics 
 on Lady Carlisle, or to pursue whatever else was 
 started by his volatile fancy. 
 
 Hygeian literature has to deplore the loss of 
 his Treatise " On the Benefit of Washing the Head 
 every Morning." His Romish religion seems to 
 have been to him as his great chair and morning 
 bath. 
 
 Wearied with his little sins, he reposed in her 
 bosom; and dipping in the waters of absolution, 
 felt himself restored and free — to sin again. 
 
 By the kind permission of Dr. Neligan, we have 
 inserted in the Appendix " A Brief Description of 
 
 * Lord Orford says he painted a portrait of the Infanta, but 
 we can only find that he drew it " in words."
 
 OBJECTORS ANSWERED, 101 
 
 a curious Manuscript, entitled a true Historical 
 Relation of the Convereiorv.df^Sb'Tobi-fe'lMatthew 
 to the Holy Catholic Chiircli, with the Antecedents 
 and Consequents thereo|\'"^. • . : :* '..•:*•.: '-J ' .'•'' 
 
 The manuscript, could it now be traced, would 
 make an interesting volume, worthy of publication 
 by the Camden or any other Literary society. 
 
 Here we may as well reply to some other of our 
 friendly objectors : — " I fear," says one, " the edge 
 of Mr. Smith's argument is turned by the fact that 
 there are a greater number of blunders, especially 
 geographical and classical errors, in Shakespeare'^ 
 plays than Lord Bacon could have committed even 
 in his earliest youth. It is to be observed that in 
 all popular knowledge Shakespeare was a master. 
 He does not err in his illustrations drawn from 
 hunting and hawking and natural phenomena, or 
 in such natural history as is learnt from close ob- 
 servation of the habits of animals. He only blun- 
 ders in things which could only have been derived 
 from book learning, in which Bacon excelled." 
 
 The so-called ''blunders," we contend, are 
 "beauties" in strict accordance with Bacon's ex- 
 alted notions of poetry, " which, being not tied to 
 the laws of matter, may at pleasure join that which 
 nature hath severed, and sever that which nature
 
 102 OBJECTORS ANSWERED. 
 
 hath joined, and so make unlawful matches and 
 divorces' of things." -^-Adi-ancement of Learnmg. 
 
 Certain boldnesses of expression are no more 
 inaicatioiis' of ig-iorance'; than Bacon's Christian 
 Paradoxes are proofs of profaneness.* Each are 
 emanations of a mind superior to such suspicions. 
 
 And our objector surely can never have read 
 Bacon's Natural History, or the following observa- 
 tions in his contemporary, Osborne's, Advice to a 
 Son, part ii. sec. 24 : — 
 
 " And my memory neither doth (nor I believe 
 possibly ever can) direct me to an example more 
 splendid in this kind, than the Lord Bacon, Earl 
 of St. Alban's, who in all companies did appear a 
 good proficient, if not a master, in those arts en- 
 tertained for the subject of every one's discourse. 
 So as I dare maintain, without the least affectation 
 of flattery or hyperbole, that his most casual talk 
 deserveth to be written, as I have been told, his 
 
 * Lord Campbell says : — " Notwithstanding the stout denial 
 that he (Bacon) was the author of the Paradoxes, I cannot 
 doubt that the pubhcation is from his pen, and I cannot cha- 
 racterise it otherwise than as a profane attempt to ridicule the 
 Christian faith." — Lives of the Lord Chancellors, vol. ii. p. 430. 
 
 We have never yet met with a person who, having read " The 
 Characters of a Believing Christian, in Paradoxes or seeming 
 Contradictions," has concurred in the judgment pronounced by 
 the Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench.
 
 OBJECTORS ANSWERED. 103 
 
 first or foulest copies required no great labour to 
 render them competent for the nicest judgments : 
 high perfection, attainable only by use and treating 
 with every man in his respective profession, and 
 which he was most versed in. 
 
 " So as I have heard him entertain a country 
 lord in the proper terms relating to hawks and 
 dogs, and at another time out-cant a Loudon chi- 
 rurgeon. Thus he did not only learn himself, but 
 gratify such as taught him, who looked upon their 
 calling as honoured by his notice. Nor did an 
 easy falling into arguments (not unjustly taken for 
 a blemish in the most) appear less than an orna- 
 ment in him ; the ears of his hearers receiving 
 more gratification than trouble ; and no less sorry, 
 when he came to conclude, than displeased with 
 any that did interrupt him. Now, the general 
 knowledge he had in all things, husbanded by his 
 wit and dignified with so majestical a carriage he 
 was known to own, struck such an awful reverence 
 in those he questioned, that they durst not conceal 
 the most intrinsic part of their mysteries from 
 him, for fear of appearing ignorant or saucy. All 
 which rendered him no less necessary than ad- 
 mirable at the council-table, when in reference to 
 impositions, monopolies, &c., the meanest manu-
 
 101. OBJECTORS ANSWEKED. 
 
 factures were an usual argument ; and, as I have 
 heard, he did in this baffle the Earl of Middlesex, 
 who was born and bred a citizen, &c. Yet without 
 any great (if at all) interrupting his abler studies, 
 as is not hard to be imagined of a quick apprehen- 
 sion, in which he was admirable/^ 
 
 The Illustrated London News (Oct. 25, 1856) 
 thus epitomises our arguments: — "The sum of 
 Mr. Smith's argument may be expressed in a few 
 words. That these thirty-six plays should have 
 been written by the 'Warwickshire lad,' Shake- 
 speare, is a wonder ; that they should have been 
 written by Lord Bacon would have been none.'' 
 After quoting the Returne from Parnassus, Decker 
 and Meres, and Coleridge's observations on the 
 Poems and Sonnets, the editor proceeds : — " As to 
 his (Shakespeare's) general capacity, manifested 
 by his conversation with other great minds. Fuller 
 bears personal testimony. 'Many were the Wit 
 Combats,' says he, ' between Shakespeare and Ben 
 Jonson. I beheld them like a Spanish great galleon 
 and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson, like 
 the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, 
 but slow in his performances. Shakespeare — like 
 the latter, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing — 
 could turn with all tides, tack about, and take ad-
 
 OBJECTORS ANSWERED. 105 
 
 vantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit 
 and invention/ " 
 
 We pointed out to the editor, that Fuller was 
 only eight years old when Shakespeare died, and 
 therefore was not likely to have been an eyewit- 
 ness of these "Wit Combats." Moreover, the pas- 
 sage from Fuller is misquoted : he did not write, 
 " I beheld," but " I behold them "—that is, I 
 picture them to my mind. 
 
 It is these picturings and imaginings of circum- 
 stances which might have occurred, — and recording 
 them as events which did really happen, — that has 
 encumbered the life and works of Shakespeare with 
 such a mass of error. The keen desire to know 
 something has bred an easy willingness to believe 
 anything ; and Bacon's observation upon Poetry is 
 peculiarly applicable to the life of Shakespeare — 
 " because the acts and events of (his) true history 
 have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind 
 of man," Imagination " feigneth acts and events 
 greater and more heroical." 
 
 Fuller knew so little of, and inquired so little 
 after, Shakespeare, that the entry in his original 
 vvork stands thus : — " He died anno Domine 16 . ," 
 Nichols notes : — " It is a little remarkable, that 
 Dr. Fuller should not have been able to fill up this
 
 106 
 
 OBJECTORS ANSWERED. 
 
 blank, which I should have done silently (as I have 
 in numberless other instances) ; but that I think 
 it right to notice how little was then known of the 
 personal history of the sweet Swan of Avon— who 
 died April 23, 1G16/' 
 
 The essay on " Cavilling/' in Blackwood's Edin- 
 burgh Review— which we have briefly noticed in our 
 Preface— we have read right through, and find our- 
 selves neither wiser nor better from the perform- 
 ance of this penance. There is nothing to notice, 
 and but little to approve, in that prosy pro- 
 duction. 
 
 ''As I have only taken upon me to ring a bell 
 to call other wits together, which is the meanest 
 office," to repeat Bacon's words,^ " it cannot but 
 be consonant to my desire, to have that bell heard 
 as far as can be." We therefore heartily thank all 
 those who have in any way assisted our endeavour. 
 It is our theory — not ourselves — we wish to have 
 known and considered— content if our little book 
 
 but serves the public mind to wake, 
 As tlie small pebble stirs the peaceful lake. 
 
 As a recent writer (the Times, March 25, 1857) 
 observes :— " When questions are once stirred up, 
 the water must be muddy before it is clear again. 
 * Letter to Dr. Playfere.
 
 OBJECTORS ANSWERED. 107 
 
 This is almost a law of nature. Generally speaking, 
 the first result of what is called ' thinking over ' 
 any subject to yourself, is simply to puzzle your- 
 self; you are not only not benefited, you are con- 
 siderably worse off for your pains. You have left 
 the daylight of simple, natural common sense, and 
 got into a dark intellectual chamber of your own 
 making, in which you go groping about with the 
 help of small apertures and passage windows. 
 When you emerge out of this gloom, you are 
 sometimes indeed the gainer by your experience, 
 and regain your common sense, with the addition 
 of some clearness and accuracy : but it is not tru^ 
 tliat second thoughts are best. The proverb has 
 made a mistake in its arithmetic : it is not second 
 thoughts, but third thoughts, that are best. The 
 first and last states are good, the middle is bad. 
 Every important question should pass through the 
 stage of fermenting, after which the irrelevant mat- 
 ter settles and goes to the bottom, and the liquor is 
 clarified." 
 
 " If it be Truth,'' as Bacon writes, 
 
 "Non canimus surdis, respondent omnia sylvse, 
 
 ' the voice of nature will consent, whether the voice 
 of man do so or no.' " 
 
 We will conclude this portion of our subject by
 
 108 OBJECTORS ANSWERED, • 
 
 quoting a communication from a friendly corre- 
 spondent, which is well worthy of attention : — 
 
 "If in your Bacon-Shakespeare Inquiry," he 
 writes, " the purport of the following note has not 
 been anticipated, it may perhaps furnish you with 
 some hints for further argument. 
 
 "In Shakespeare's Plays there is a dramatic 
 series of historical events from the deposition of 
 Richard II. to the birth of Elizabeth, But in this 
 series there is one curious unaccounted-for hiatus 
 — 'The Poet,' as Charles Knight says, 'has not 
 chosen to exhibit the establishment of law and 
 order in the astute government of Henry VII.'^ 
 
 " In Bacon's works there are sundry fragments 
 of a History of England. They are but mere hints, 
 at once the token that the idea of a history had 
 been present in Lord Bacon's mind, and the evi- 
 dence that it had not been worked out upon paper 
 — at least in this way. But one reign is not a frag- 
 ment, it is a history — the History of Henry VII. 
 — the missing portion of the dramatic series ; and 
 the exhibition of the 'establishment of law and 
 order,' which a genial editor of Shakespeare sees 
 to be wanting to complete the unity of the dramatic 
 series, is wrought out in Lord Bacon's book, 
 * Pict. Shale. Histories, vol, ii. p. 92,
 
 OBJECTORS ANSWERED. 109 
 
 " The History of Henry VH., by Bacon, com- 
 pletes the series of the Shakespeare Histories from 
 Richard II. to Henry VIII. It takes the story 
 up, too, from the very place where, in Shakespeare, 
 it is dropped. Richard the Third ends with Bos- 
 worth Field, Avith the coronation of Richmond, 
 and the order for the decent interment of the 
 dead. Bacon's history begins with an ' After,' as 
 if it was a continuation. And so it is — a conti- 
 nuation of the drama, taking up the history ' Im- 
 mediately after the victory,' as Bacon writes in his 
 second sentence. Not a word about Henry VII. 
 as Earl of Richmond, nothing about the events- 
 which preceded the Battle of Bosworth — a story 
 without a beginning : the beginning of it is found 
 in the drama."
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 POPULAR ERRORS RESPECTING LORD 
 SOUTHAMPTON AND SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 The popular opinion appears to be that William 
 Shakespeare was the notoriety of his day. Part 
 proprietor of the principal playhouse, which was 
 the resort of the great and noble, he produced from 
 time to time, plays which were at once the wonder 
 and admiration of the town. Wise, witty, and 
 accomplished, he was the universal favourite — the 
 associate of the great and noble — the theme of 
 every one's discourse — the subject of every one's 
 admiration. 
 
 " From all the accounts of Shakespeare which 
 have come down to us," says Schlegcl, " it is clear 
 that his contemporaries knew well the treasure 
 they possessed in him; and that they felt and 
 understood him better than most of those who 
 succeeded him. It is extremely probable that the 
 poetical fame which in the progress of his career
 
 LORD SOUTHAMPTON AND SHAKESPEARE. Ill 
 
 he afterwards acquired, greatly contributed to en- 
 iioljle the stage, and to bring the player's profession 
 into better repute. That he was not admitted into 
 the society of persons of distinction, is altogether 
 incredible. Not to mention many others, he found 
 a liberal friend and kind patron in the Earl of 
 Southampton, the friend of the unfortunate Essex. 
 His pieces were not only the delight of the great 
 public, but also in great favour at court : the two 
 monarchs under whose reigns he wrote, were, ac- 
 cording to a contemporary, quite 'taken' with him. 
 Many were acted at court ; and Elizabeth appears 
 herself to have commanded the writing of more 
 than one to be acted at her court festivals. King 
 James, it is well known, honoured Shakespeare so 
 far as to write to him with his own hand," 
 
 Though probably, as an actor, not superior to the 
 court tragedian of the present day — adding to that 
 his excellency as an author — we think, by combining 
 the court favour now extended to the one and the 
 other, we can form some faint conception of the 
 honour he enjoyed iu the heartier days of the 
 Virgin Queen. Every thing theatrical participated, 
 we are told, in his exaltation; and the actors of that 
 era attained an eminence, personal and professional, 
 which has never since been equalled.
 
 112 LORD SOUTHAMPTON 
 
 Yet surely — if records are to be trusted— the very 
 reverse of this was the case. The Blackfriars Thea- 
 tre was essentially the People's Playhouse. When 
 the new craft of professed players was expelled the 
 City, the nobles and the citizens experienced no 
 let or hindrance of their enjoyments. The Queen 
 in her palace, the noble in his mansion, the lawyer 
 at his hall, the citizen at his tavern or inn, still 
 partook of their favourite pastimes. The measure 
 was directed against the populace. The commu- 
 nity, as a body, had no desire to interfere with, 
 but, on the contrary, were anxious to promote, their 
 pleasures and pastimes, in so far as they tended to 
 increase their bodily strength and activity ; bear- 
 baiting, wrestling, fighting, and pitching the bar, 
 they might freely practise : it was the awakening of 
 their minds that they dreaded. The Mysteries and 
 INIoralities, which were to have overawed and con- 
 trolled the multitude, had been already turned 
 against their originators ; and the little great men 
 of that day, like the little great men of every suc- 
 ceeding age, dreaded the result to them, if the 
 people should be educated. 
 
 Bacon alone stood forward as the advocate of 
 education, denouncing as ignorant those that were 
 opposed to the diffusion of knowledge. " I think
 
 AND SHAKESPEARE. '113 
 
 good/' says he, " to deliver it from the discredits 
 and disgraces wliicli it hath received — all from ig- 
 norance, but ignorance severally disguised — appear- 
 ing sometimes in the zeal and jealousy of divines; 
 sometimes in the severity and arrogancy of poli- 
 ticians; and sometimes in the errors and imper- 
 fections of learned men themselves.^' 
 
 The Stage had a powerful opponent in the fana- 
 tical religion of the Puritans ; but this was a fluc- 
 tuating feeling, acting with greater or less force 
 in individuals ; the other pervaded the whole of 
 the upper classes, and was expressed and acted upon 
 most vigorously by those who, from their proximity; 
 considered their province would be soonest invaded. 
 Thus the citizens were anxious to annihilate the pro- 
 fessed players ; whilst the nobles, seeing less danger 
 to themselves, were willing to be more indulgent to 
 the people, and content with vindicating their power, 
 by imposing rigorous restraints. 
 
 With regard to Shakespeare himself, though we 
 greatly admire and reluctantly differ from Schlegel, 
 we cannot but think his statement disingenuous 
 when he says, " Not to mention many others, he 
 found a liberal friend and kind patron in the Earl 
 of Southampton." He must have known that the 
 Earl of Southampton was the onhj noble name 
 
 8
 
 114 LORD SOUTHAMPTON 
 
 with which that of Shakespeare has ever been 
 associated. 
 
 In the present day, when the position of a noble- 
 man subjects him to the impertinence of being 
 addressed by any one,* it would be preposterous 
 thence to presume the existence of any intimacy ; 
 and though formerly such freedom might not have 
 been allowed, and the permission to dedicate prove 
 a degree of knowledge and approval, yet in every 
 case, it must be admitted, that a dedication seems to 
 intimate inferiority rather than to infer intimacy. 
 Few noblemen in that age of stern morality would 
 have permitted their name to have been associated 
 with a poem on such a subject as the Venus and 
 Adonis ; and the fact of Lord Southampton having 
 done so, seems to prove him to have been at least 
 as renowned in the annals of licentiousness as in 
 the arena of literature. In truth, he was no Macae- 
 uas, but something of a libertine, and every whit 
 a soldier — " sudden and quick in quarrel," " seek- 
 ing the bubble reputation e'en in the cannon's 
 mouth ." Banished from the court, he haunted the 
 playhouse ; addicted to duelling, and anxious to 
 avenge his private wrongs, he forsook the service of 
 
 * The author means this as an apology for having addressed 
 his letter to a noble earl.
 
 AND SHAKESPEARE. 115 
 
 his country, and forgot liis duty to his Queen. The 
 distinctions of society were then so marked, and 
 the distance between a nobleman and an actor, or 
 even a dramatic writer, so vast, that the existence 
 of a friendly intimacy is not to be unhesitatingly 
 believed unless indisputably proved. Most of the 
 facts recorded of Shakespeare were found or fabled 
 after the Restoration; and the only probability that 
 Queen Elizabeth ever saw, much less conversed with 
 him, — arises from the circumstance of Heminee's 
 company havhig perfoi'med before her, when pro- 
 bably he was one of the actors. 
 
 The story of the autograph letter of King James 
 seems to be quite apocryphal ; and " from the ac- 
 counts which have come down to us," we should 
 conclude that very few of Shakespeare's contempo- 
 raries knew anything at all of him. 
 
 " Several Englishmen," says Schlegel, " have 
 given it as their opinion that the players of the first 
 epoch were, in all likelihood, greatly superior to 
 those of the second— at least with the exception of 
 Garrick," 
 
 The quality of the audience is the best criterion 
 of the capacity of the actors : if the audience was 
 rude and uncultivated, it were hard to believe that 
 the actors were cultured and refined.
 
 IIG LORD SOUTHAMPTON 
 
 The witty and worthless writers for the stage 
 v,ere wonderfully prolific in their productions. 
 Heywood is reported to have written 220 pieces, 
 and several others nearly as many. Among the 
 numerous advantages arising from the absence of 
 scenery and costume, may be accounted the ready 
 access of authors to the stage, and the equal com- 
 petition to which they were subjected. No consi- 
 deration of expense deterred the acceptation of a 
 piece. In all ages, managers have been more ready 
 to tax the ingenuity of their companies to learn 
 new parts, than to tax their own pockets to pro^^de 
 new scenery and dresses. In this, too, they act 
 Avisely ; for how many avoid the theatre, because 
 they have '' seen the piece before," and how soon 
 scenery and dresses pall. 
 
 Amid such a profusion of plays, so much better 
 adapted to the taste of the multitude, it is impossi- 
 ble to believe that the small number attributed to 
 Shakespeare, which were published during his life- 
 time, could have made any great sensation. 
 
 The Shakespeare Plays were never more popular 
 nor better appreciated, than at the present day ; 
 because they are essentially addressed to the read- 
 ing public, which was never so extensive as now. 
 
 The collected plays in the folio of 1623, were
 
 AND SHAKESPEARE. 117 
 
 read and appreciated by the then small portion of 
 the community which constituted the reading 
 public ; and new editions, in folio, were published 
 to supply their libraries and studies, though there 
 is no suggestion or tradition that they were ever 
 performed for nearly one hundred years after the 
 supposed author's decease. 
 
 We have spoken disparagingly of the Blackfriars 
 Theatre, its plays and its actors ; but let us not be 
 misunderstood. The People's Playhouse is, and 
 ever must be, the foundation and support of Eng- 
 land's drama. What we contend is, that these 
 plays were beyond, and consequently not appre- 
 ciated by, the age in which they were written. 
 
 Mysteries, Moralities, and IMummerics had satis- 
 fied the people whilst the Bible was a scaled book ; 
 but when its truths were made known to them, 
 and the great charter of freedom from priestcraft 
 announced, that " whatever is not read therein, nor 
 may be proved thereby, is not required of any man 
 that it should be believed," they then served but 
 as subjects for merriment. 
 
 As the contest of creeds had provoked a better 
 knowledge of religion, so the contest of govern- 
 ments excited inquiry into civil affairs ; and under 
 the third of the Stuarts the masses had attained an
 
 118 LORD SOUTHAMPTON 
 
 intelligence wonderfully in advance of that which 
 they possessed under the last of the Tudors. It is 
 doubtful whether the closing of the theatre was 
 so great a privation to the Londoners as it might 
 seem ; the excitement of the times might compen- 
 sate their loss : the Royalists privately performing 
 pasquinades in ridicule of the Puritans, and these 
 latter, by attending preaching, supplying the ex- 
 citement they had heretofore sought at plays. 
 There can be no doubt, however, that this break 
 disturbed the natural growth of the British 
 Drama. 
 
 Upon the Restoration, the theatre was reopened 
 Tinder the managment of Sir William Davenant, 
 upon whom extensive privileges were conferred. 
 The decorations, costumes, and other arrangements 
 of the theatre, were after the most approved foreign 
 model. The pieces produced were in accordance 
 with the taste of the court, which was most licen- 
 tious and profligate. 
 
 As the practice of vice is more consonant to men 
 than habits of virtue, and as the extravagant in- 
 dulgence in all lawful or unlawful pleasures was 
 considered an evidence of loyalty, and in no way a 
 disgrace, it is no wonder that public and private 
 manners and theatrical entertainments exhibited a
 
 AND SHAKESPEARE. 119 
 
 grossness it is now hardly possible to credit. Some, 
 doubtless, simulated vices tbey neither adopted nor 
 approved, in order to be in the fashion; and many, 
 with regret, countenanced what they could not alter, 
 yet wished to see cured. 
 
 Thus the theatre continued to exist an exotic 
 foreign to the soil of England, cheered by the feeble 
 sunshine of tlie court, and sustained by the fickle 
 breath of fashion. But towards the middle of the 
 reign of Queen Anne, Betterton appeared at the 
 theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and personated the 
 characters of Othello, Brutus, and Hotspur. 
 
 It is an elegant passage of Guizot's, where he' 
 says : — " Imagine a man who has lived for a long- 
 time in rooms lighted only with wax-candles, chan- 
 deliers, or coloured glasses— who has only breathed 
 in the faint suffocating atmosphere of drawing- 
 rooms— who has seen only the cascades of the opera, 
 
 calico mountains, and garlands of artificial flowers 
 
 imagine such a man suddenly transported, one 
 magnificent July morning, to a region where he 
 could breathe the purest air, under the tranquil 
 and graceful chestnut-trees which fringe the waters 
 of Interlacken, and within view of the majestic 
 glaciers of the Oberland, and you will have a pretty 
 accurate idea of the moral position of one accus-
 
 120 LORD SOUTHAMPTON AND SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 toraed to the dramatic representations which for- 
 merly occupied our stage, when he unexpectedly 
 finds himself witnessing these, so simple, grand, 
 and natural beauties." 
 
 But the change from the artificial drama of 
 Charles II. to the natural of Shakespeare, or to 
 Shakespeare in its natural state, was not so sudden 
 or complete.
 
 CHAPTER Xni. 
 
 TATE, KEMBLE, &c., THEIR KNOW- 
 LEDGE OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 In the days of the Restoration, there lived a poet 
 upon the face of the earth, his name was Nahum 
 Tate.* If the number of editions his verses have 
 gone through, is a criterion of his excellence, we 
 have no hesitation in saying, Nahum Tate is the-. 
 greatest poet England ever produced. 
 
 * Kahum Tate was the son of Dr. Faithful Tate, and was born 
 in Dublin in 1652. At the age of sixteen, he was admit ted to the 
 college there. He succeeded Shadwell as Poet Laureate, and con- 
 tinued in tliat office uiitil his death, which happened on the 12th 
 of August, 1715, in the Mint, and was buried in St. George's 
 Church. He was remarkable for a downcast look, and had seldom 
 much to say for himself, but a free, good-natured, drinking com- 
 panion. His dramatic works are — Brutus of Alba, T., Ito, 1678. 
 The Loyal General, T., 4to, 1680. King Lear, T., altered from 
 Shakespeare, 4to, 1681. Richard II. ; or, the Sicilian JJserper, 
 Hist. Play, 4to, 1681 ; printed under the latter title, 4to, 1691. 
 The Ingratitude of a Commonwealth ; or, the Fall of Coriolanus, 
 4to, 1682. Cuckold's Haven ; or, an Alderman no Conjurer, 
 F., 4t.o, 1685. Duke and no Duke, F., 4to, 1685 ; taken fi-om Sir 
 Aston Cockayne's Trappolin. The Island Princess, Tragic CoAi., 
 4to, 1687. Injured Lore; or, the Cruel Ilushand, T., 4to, 1707. 
 Dido and ^neas, Op. — Oxberry's Edition oi Lear, byN.T.
 
 122 TATE, KEMBLE, ETC. 
 
 We have all sung " to the praise and glory of 
 God " and Nahum Tate. Now, Nahum Tate knew 
 not Shakespeare, and doubtless would have gone 
 to his grave in that happy ignorance ; but Nahum 
 Tate had a friend, who, as Bacon says, " redou- 
 bleth joys." 
 
 John Boteler, Esq., said unto Nahum Tate — 
 "Once upon a time there was a man called Shake- 
 speare, who wrote a thing called Lear -. a great ge- 
 nius such as you are, might make it into a play." 
 
 Now, Nahum Tate prided himself on play- 
 writing as much as Psalmody, so he determined to 
 do this very thing. When he had done it, he 
 wrote a private letter to John Boteler, Esq. In 
 those days of heavy postage, a single letter was a 
 chargeable affair, and one that contained anything 
 so heavy as Nahum Tate^s thoughts would have 
 been very expensive indeed. It was our habit, 
 therefore, in those days to enclose letters in books 
 and parcels. We believe it was felony to do so ; 
 few things in those days were not felony. A man 
 could hardly stir without rendering himself liable 
 to the penalty of hanging. However, few of the 
 age of forty can own themselves free from this 
 fault. Nahum Tate put his private letter into his 
 published book, and we have purloined it. We
 
 TATE, KEMBLE, ETC. 123 
 
 have done, as they ordinarily do at the Post-office — 
 taken it because we thought there was something 
 in it worth having ; and whatever penalty it may 
 have subjected us to, it will at least save the reader 
 tlie penalty of purchasing the book. 
 Here the letter is : — 
 
 "To my esteemed Friend, Thos. Boteler,Esq., 1681. 
 
 " Sir, — You have a natural right to this piece, 
 since by your advice I attempted the revival of it 
 with alterations. Nothing but the power of your 
 persuasion, and my zeal for all the remains of 
 Shakespeare could have wrought one to so bold an" 
 undertaking. I found that the new modelling of 
 this story would force me sometimes on the diffi- 
 cult task of making the chiefest persons speak 
 something like their characters, on matter whereof 
 I had no ground in my author. Lear's real, and 
 Edgar's pretended madness, have so much of ex- 
 travagant nature (I know not how else to express 
 it), as could never have started but from our 
 Shakespeare's creating fancy. The images and 
 language are so odd and surprising (and yet so 
 agreeable and proper), that whilst we grant that 
 none but Shakespeare could have formed such 
 conceptions, yet we are satisfied that they are the
 
 12-1 TATE, KEMBLK, ETC. 
 
 only things that ought to be said on such occa- 
 sions. I find the whole to answer your account of 
 it — a heap of jewels, unstrung and unpolished, 
 yet so dazzling in their disorder, that I soon per- 
 ceived that I had seized a treasure. // was my 
 good fortune to light on one expedient, to rectify 
 what was warding in the regularity and probability 
 of the tale, which was to run through the whole, 
 a love betwixt Edgar and Cordelia, that never 
 changed word with each other in the original. 
 This renders Cordelia's indifference, and her father's 
 passion, in the first scene probable. It likewise 
 gives countenance to Edgar's disguise; making that 
 a generous design that was before a poor shift to 
 save his life. The distress of the story is evidently 
 heightened by it ; and it particularly gave occasion 
 to a new scene or two, of more success (perhaps) 
 than merit. This method necessarily threw me 
 on making the tale conclude in a success to the 
 innocent distrest persons, otherwise I should have 
 encumbered the stage with dead bodies, which 
 conduct makes many tragedies conclude "with un- 
 seasonable jests. Yet was I rackt with no small 
 fears for so bold a change, till I found it well 
 received by the audience ; and if this will not 
 satisfy the reader, I can produce an authority
 
 TATE, KEMBLE, ETC. 125 
 
 which questionless will. [He then quotes Mr. 
 Dryden's Preface to the Spanish Friar.'] ' Neither 
 is it so trivial a matter to make a tragedy end 
 happily, for it is more difficult to save than to kill. 
 The dagger and cup of poison are always in readi- 
 ness ; but to bring the action to the last extremity, 
 and then by probable means to recover all, will 
 require the art and judgement of a writer, and cost 
 him many a pang in the performance.^ One thing 
 more I have to apologize for, which is, that I have 
 used less quaintness of expression, even in the 
 newest parts of this play. I confess ^twas design 
 in me partly to comply with my author's style, to 
 make the scenes of a piece, and partly to give it 
 some resemblance of the times and persons here 
 represented. 
 
 " Your obliged friend and huml)le servant, 
 
 " N. Tate." 
 
 Of course, Nahum Tate struck the Fool out of 
 the play. The Poet Laureate knew that fools were 
 not fit companions for kings. There have been 
 profane persons who have said, that there have 
 been kings who, when quite alone, had a fool to 
 their company; but Nahum Tate was not a pro- 
 fane person ; for, though given to drunkenness and
 
 126 TATE, KEMBLE, ETC. 
 
 debt, — he loved kings, and wrote psalms and 
 birthday odes. 
 
 The following is the title of Nalium Tate's pre- 
 cious production : — 
 
 THE HISTORY OF KING LEAR. 
 
 ACTED AT THE 
 
 QUEEN'S THEATRE. 
 
 Reviv'd, with Alterations, 
 
 By N. TATE. 
 
 London : 
 Printed by H. Hills, for Richd. Wellington, 
 at the Lute, in St. Paul's Churchyard; and 
 E. Rumbold, at the Post House, Covent 
 Garden; andsoldby Benj. Lintott, at the 
 Cross Keys, in St. Martin's Lane, 1699.
 
 TATE, KEMBLE, ETC. 127 
 
 We have raacle our extracts from the acting- 
 copy, because, though we cannot imagine any to 
 have read the play through, we must beheve many 
 to have sat out the performance.
 
 128 
 
 THE THING CALLED LIIAR, PUBLISHED IN 1623. 
 
 Actus Quartus, Scena Prima. 
 JSnter Edgae. 
 Yet better thus, and knowne to be contemu'd. 
 Than still contemn'd and flatter'd, to be worst : * 
 The lowest, most dejected thing of fortune, 
 Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear : 
 The lamentable change is from the hest. 
 The worst returnes to laughter. Welcome then, 
 Thou unsubstantiall ayre, that I embrace ! 
 The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst, 
 Owes nothing to thy blasts. 
 
 Enter GtLOUCESTEE and an Old Man. 
 
 But who comes here ? My father poorly led ? 
 World, world, world ! 
 
 But that thy strange mutations make us c hate "i thee, 
 'Life would not yield to age. \ ^"'^* i 
 
 Old Man. O my good lord, I have bene your tenant, 
 And your father's tenant, these fourscore ycares. 
 
 Glo. Away, get the away : good friend, begone ; 
 Thy comforts can do me no good at all, 
 Thee, they may hurt. 
 
 Old Man. You cannot see your way. 
 
 Glo. I have no way, and therefore want no eyes : 
 I stumbled when I saw. Full oft 'tis scene 
 
 * Theobald says this sentiment is so much akin to a passage 
 in Ovid, that it seems to be taken directly from it : — 
 
 Fortuna miserrima tula est 
 Nam timor eventus deterioris abest. 
 
 Jipist. ii. lib. 2, ex Ponto.
 
 129 
 NAHUM TATE'S NEW VEESTON. 
 
 Act ir. Scene 1. 
 
 Corn. I will have my revenge e'er I depart his house. 
 Eegan, see here, a plot upon our state ; 
 
 [^Oives her a letter. 
 'Tis Gloster's character, who has betray'd 
 His double trust, of subject and of host. 
 
 Seg. Then double be our vengeance ; this confirms 
 Th' intelligence that we but now receiv'd 
 That he hath been this night to seek the King. 
 But, who, sir, was t'le kind discoverer? 
 
 Corn. Our eagle, quick to spy, and fierce to seize. 
 Our trusty Eduumd, 
 
 Reg. 'Twas a noble service ; 
 O, Cornwall, take him to thy deepest trust, 
 And wear him as a jewel at thy heart. 
 
 Edm. Think, sir, how hard a fortune I sustain. 
 That makes me thus repent of serving you. 
 Oh, that this treason had not been, or I 
 Not the discoverer ! 
 
 Corn. Edmund, thou shalt find 
 A father in our love, and from this minute 
 We call thee Earl of Gloster ; but tiiere yet 
 Remains another justice to be done, 
 And that 's to punish this discarded traitor ; 
 But, lest thy tender nature should relent 
 At his just sufferings, nor brook the sight, 
 We wish thee to withdraw. 
 
 Reg. The grotto, sir, within the lower grove 
 Has privacy, to suit a mourner's thought. \_Asidc to kirn. 
 
 Edm. And there I may expect a comforter — 
 Ha, madam ? \_Aside to her. 
 
 Reg. What may happen, sir, I know not ; 
 But 'twas a friend's advice. {Aside to him.) [Exit Edmund. 
 Corn. Bring the traitor in. 
 
 ■ 9
 
 130 THE THING CALLED LEAR, PUBLISHED IN 1623. 
 
 Our meanes secure us ; and our meer defects 
 Prove our commodities. O dcare sonne Edgar, 
 The food of thy abused father's wrath ; 
 Might I but live to see thee in my touch,* 
 I'd say, I had eyes again. 
 
 Old Man. How now ? who 's there ? 
 Edg. O gods! who is't can say, I am at the worst ? 
 I am worse, than e'er I was. 
 
 Old Man. 'Tis poore mad Tom. 
 
 Edg. And worse I may be yet : the worst is not, 
 So long as we can say, this is the worst. 
 Old Man. Fellow, where goest ? 
 Olo. Is it a beggar man ? 
 Old Man. Madman, and beggar too. 
 Glo. He has some reason, else he could not beg. 
 I' th' last night's storr^e I such a fellow saw ; f 
 Which made me think a man, a worme. My sonne, 
 Came then into my minde, and yet my minde 
 Was then scarce friends with him, 
 (I've heard more since.) 
 As flies to wanton boyes, are we to th' gods ; 
 They kill us for tlieir sport. 
 
 Edg. How should this be ? 
 Bad is the trade that must play foole to sorrow, 
 Ang'ring itself and others — Bless thee, master. 
 Qlo. Is that the naked fellow ? 
 
 * " I cannot but take notice, that these boldnesses of expres- 
 sion are very infrequent in our English Poeti-y, though familiar 
 with the Greeks and Latins." — Theobald. 
 
 t We recollect an old blind organist who always used the ex- 
 pression, " I beg pardon, I did not see you at first."
 
 NAHUM TATE's NEW VERSION. 131 
 
 Enter Glosteb. 
 
 Bind fast his arms. 
 
 Glo. What mean your graces ? 
 You are my guests ; pray do me no foul play. 
 
 Corn. Bind him [they hind him], I say, hard, harder yet. 
 
 Beg. Now, traitor, thou shalt find 
 
 Corn. Speak, rebel, where hast thou sent the King ? 
 Whom, spite of our decree, thou saved'st last night. 
 
 Qlo. I'm tied to th' stake, and I must stand the course. 
 Reg. Say where and why, thou has conceal'd him, traitor. 
 Olo. Because I would not see thy cruel hands 
 Tear out his poor old eyes, nor the fierce sister 
 Carve his anointed flesh ; but I shall see 
 The swift-wing'd vengeance overtake such children. 
 
 Corn. Sees't thou shalt never; slaves, perform your work. 
 
 [Servants take Gloster oiit. 
 Out with those treacherous eyes ; dispatch, I say. 
 
 Glo. {within). He that will think to live 'till he be old, 
 Give me some help — O cruel ! oh ye gods ! 
 
 Edw. Hold, hold, my lord, I bar your cruelty ; 
 I cannot love your safety, and give way 
 To such inhuman practice. 
 Corn. Ah, my villain ! 
 
 Edw. I have been your servant from my infancy ; 
 But better service have I never done you. 
 Than with this boldness. 
 
 Corn. Take thy death, slave. 
 
 [Stals Edward, and puts up his dagger. 
 Edw. Nay, then, revenge, whilst yet my blood is warm ! 
 
 [Draws his sword, runs Cornwall through the body, 
 and is carried off by two guards, R. H. Corn- 
 wall is supported hy servants. 
 Reg. Help here — are you not hurt, my lord ? 
 Glo. {within). Edmund, enkindle all the sparks of nature 
 To quit this horrid act.
 
 ]32 THE THING CALLED LEAR, PUBLISHED IN 1623. 
 
 Old Man. Ay, my lord. 
 
 Olo. Get thee away : If for my sake, 
 Thou wilt oretake us hence a mile or twaine 
 I' th' way tow'rd Dover, do it for ancient love ; 
 And bring some covering for his naked soule, 
 "Whom I'll intreate to leade me. 
 
 Old Man. Alack, sir, he is mad. 
 
 Glo. 'Tis the time's plague 
 (When madmen leade the blind) : 
 Do as I bid, or rather do thy pleasure ; 
 Above the rest, be gone. 
 
 Old Man. V le bring him the best Parrel that I have. 
 Come on't what will. [^Exit. 
 
 Glo. Sirrah, naked fellow. 
 
 Edc/. Poor Tom's a-cold ; — I cannot daub it further. 
 
 Glo. Come hither, fellow. 
 
 JEdff. And yet I must ; 
 Blesse thy sweete eyes, they bleede. 
 
 Glo. Know'st thou the way to Dover ? 
 
 Jidff. Both style and gate, iiorseway, and footpath : poor Tom 
 hath been scar'd out of liis good wits. Blesse thee goodman's 
 sonne, from the foul fiend. 
 
 Glo. Here, take this purse, thou whom the heav'ns plagues 
 Have humbled to all strokes : That I am wretched. 
 Makes thee the happier : Heavens deale so still : 
 Let the superfluous, and lust-dieted raau, 
 That slaves your ordinance, that will not see 
 Because he do's not feele, feele your powre quickly : 
 So distribution should undoo excess, 
 And each man have enough. Dost thou know Dover? 
 
 Edj. Ay, master. 
 
 Glo. There is a cliflfe whose high and bending head
 
 NAHUM TATe's NEW VERSION. 133 
 
 ^eg. Out, treacherous villain, 
 Thou call'st on him that hates thee; it was he 
 That broach'd thy treason, show'd us tiiy dispatches ; 
 There — read, and save the Cambrian prince a labour, 
 
 \Throws the letter out to Aim. 
 
 Glo. (within). my folly! 
 Then Edgar was abused ; kind gods, forgive me that ! 
 
 Reg. How is 't my lord ? [7b Cornwall. 
 
 Corn. Turn out that eyeless villain, let him smell 
 His way to Cambray ; throw this slave upon a dunghill. 
 Began, I bleed apace ; give me your arm. 
 
 [^Exeunt Regan and Cornwall. 
 
 Enter Edgar in disguise. 
 
 Edg. The lowest and most abject thing of fortune 
 Stands still in hope, and is secure from fear. 
 The lamentable change is from the best, 
 The worst returns to better. Who comes here ? 
 
 \_Iietires a little up the stage. 
 
 Enter Glostee led by an Old Man. 
 
 My father poorly led ! deprived of sight. 
 
 The precious stones torn from their bleeding rings ! 
 
 When will the measure of my woes be full ? 
 
 Old Man. O, my good lord, I have been your tenant 
 And your father's tenant, these forcscore years. 
 
 Olo. Away, get thee away ; good friend, be gone ; 
 Thy comforts can do me no good at all ; 
 Thee they may hurt. 
 
 Old Man. You cannot sec your way. 
 
 Glo. I have no way, and therefore want no eyes ; 
 I stumbled when I saw : O dear son Edgar ! 
 The food of thy abused father's wrath. 
 Might I but live to sec thee in my touch, 
 I 'd say 1 had eyes again. 
 
 Edg. Alas! he 's sensible that I was wronged.
 
 134 THE THING CALLED LEAR, PUBLISHED IN 1623. 
 
 Looks fearfully in the confined deep : , 
 
 Bring me but to tlie very brimme of it, 
 And I'le repayre the misery thou do'st bear, 
 With something rich about me : from that place 
 I shall no leading neede. 
 
 Edg. Give me thy arme ; 
 Poore Tom shall leade thee. 
 
 Scena Secunda. 
 Enter Gonkhil, Bastabd, and Steward. 
 
 Gon. Welcome, my lord. I marvell, our mild husband 
 Not met us on the way. 
 Kovv, wliere 's your master ? 
 
 Stew. Madam, within ; but never man so chang'd ; 
 I told him of the army that was landed : 
 He smil'd at it. I told liim you were comming, 
 Hi3 answer was, the worse. Of Gloster's treachery, 
 And of tlie loyal service of his sonne 
 When I informed him, then he call'd me sot ; 
 And told me I had turn'd the wrong side out. 
 What most he should dislike, seems pleasant to him ; 
 What like, offensive. 
 
 Oon. Tlien shall you go no further. 
 It is the cowish terrour of his spirit, 
 That dares not undertake : he '11 not feele wrongs 
 Which tye him to an answer ; our wishes on the wav 
 May prove effects. Backe, Edmund, to my brother; 
 Hasten liis musters, and conduct his powres, 
 1 must change names at home, and give tlie distaff 
 Into my husband's hands. This trustie servant 
 Shall passe betweene us : e'er long you are like to heare 
 (If you dare venture in your owne behalfe)
 
 NAHITM TATe's new VERSION. 135 
 
 And sliould I own myself, his tender leart 
 
 Would break betwixt the extremes of grief and joy. [Aside. 
 
 Old Man. How now ? who 'a there ? 
 
 Edg. {advancing R. H. of Gloucester). A charity for poor 
 Tom. Play fair and defy the foul fiend. 
 
 gods! and must I still pursue this trade, 
 Trifling beneath such loads of misery? 
 
 Old Man. 'Tis poor mad Tom. 
 
 Olo. In the late storm I sucli a fellow saw, 
 Which made me think a man a worm. 
 Where is the lunatick ? 
 
 Old Man. Here, my lord. 
 
 Olo. Get thee now away ; if for my sake 
 Thou wilt o'ertake us hence a mile or two, 
 
 1 'th' way to Dover, do 't for ancient love. 
 And bring some cov'ring for this naked wretch. 
 Whom I '11 intreat to lead me. 
 
 Old Man. Alack, my lord, he 's mad. 
 
 Glo. 'Tis the times' plague, when madmen lead the blind ; 
 Do as I bid thee. 
 
 Old Man. I '11 bring him the best 'parel that I have, 
 Come on't what will. 
 
 Olo. Sirrah, naked fellow. 
 
 Edg. Poor Tom 's a-cold ; I cannot fool it longer ; \_Aside. 
 And yet I must. — Bless thy sweet eyes, they bleed ; 
 Believe 't, poor Tom ev'n weeps his blind to see 'em. 
 
 Olo. Knows't thou the way to Dover ? 
 
 Edg. Both stile and gate, horseway and footpath. 
 Poor Tom has been scared out of his good wits. Bless 
 Every true man's sou from the foul fiend. 
 
 Olo. Here, take this purse ; that I am wretched 
 Makes thee the happier. Heav'n deal so still ! 
 Thus let the griping usurer's hoard be scatter' d. 
 So distribution shall undo excess. 
 And each man have eno'igh. Dost thou know Dover? 
 Edg. Ay, master.
 
 136 TATE, KEMDLE, ETC. 
 
 A mistresses commantl. Wearo tliis ; spare speech ; 
 Decline your head. This kisse, if it durst speake, 
 Would stretch thy spirits up into the ayre : 
 Conceive, and fare the well. 
 
 Edm. Yours in the rankcs of death. lExit. 
 
 Gon. My most deare Glos'ter. 
 Oil the strange difference of man, and man, 
 To thee a woman's services are due, 
 My foole usurpes my body. 
 
 Then came the days of the Siddons. Shake- 
 speare was appreciated then. We have all heard 
 our fathers or grandfathers talk of John Philip 
 Kemble, and how great he was in Hamlet and 
 Coriolanus. Remembering, as we do, the reading 
 that was appreciated in the desk, and the oratory 
 that was popular in the pulpit, in our boyhood's 
 days, we doubt if John Kemble would be greatly 
 approved at the present time. John Philip Kem- 
 ble was esteemed a great actor, a scholar, and a 
 gentleman. 
 
 Young was the great tragedian of our early days. 
 Edmund Kean was a fine impersonator of certain 
 characters ; but Young^s reading, elocution, dress, 
 and deportment, was much more finished and 
 refined. Charles Kemble, in light comedy, was 
 clever ; he dressed as well as the Charles Mathews
 
 TATE, KEMBLE, ETC. 137 
 
 Olo. There is a cliff, whose high and bending head 
 Looks dreadfully down on the roaring deep ; 
 Bring me but to the very brink of it, 
 And I '11 repair the poverty thou bear'st 
 With something rich about me. From that place 
 I shall no leading need. 
 
 Edg. Give me thy arm ? poor Tom shall guide thee. 
 
 Olo. Soft, for I hear the tread of passengers. 
 
 Enter Kent in his own character, and Coedelia, L. H. 
 
 of the present clay ; but lie could never forget that 
 he was a handsome n^.an, and a favourite with the 
 ladies. When his daughter Fanny played Bel- 
 videra, in Venice Preserved, he took the part of 
 Pierre. Pierie had never been such a gay gallant 
 soldier before. He played the character well 
 though. Young had often performed it ; and 
 when he came to the line 
 
 Curse on this weakness, [ Weeps. 
 
 the refined and elegant Young used (we can't find 
 a better expression) to grub the tear out with his 
 knuckle. Try the action, reader, and you will/ee/ 
 its appropriateness. Charles Kemble, at the same 
 passage, drew out a cambric handkerchief, and 
 with an appropriate flourish, like the soldier in the 
 song who leant upon his sword, " he wiped away 
 a tear."
 
 138 TATE, KEMBLE, ETC. 
 
 The several actions were characteristic of the 
 two men. 
 
 We will admit that John Philip Kemhle was a 
 great actor, attaching our own meaning to that 
 word. The characters of a scholar and a gentle- 
 man we cannot award him, at present. He, like 
 Nahum Tate, had heard that a man called Shake- 
 speare had made a thing called the Tempest, and 
 he compiled a play out of it. It is called 
 
 THE TEMPEST; 
 
 OR 
 
 THE ENCHANTED ISLAND, 
 
 WRITTEN 
 
 BY SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 With Additions from Dryden, 
 
 as compiled, by 
 
 J. p. KEMBLE, 
 
 AND FIRST ACTED AT THE 
 
 THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY LANE, 
 October 13th, 1789. 
 
 London : — 
 
 Printed for J. Debrett, opposite Burlington 
 
 House, Piccadilly. 
 
 M.DCC.LXXXIX.
 
 TATE, KEMBLE, ETC. 13'J 
 
 We have extracted a scene or two : — 
 
 A.ct V. Scene 1. — A Wood. 
 Enter Peospeeo and Mieanda. 
 
 Pros. You beg in vain ; I cannot pardon him, 
 He has offended Heaven. 
 
 Mir. Then let Heav'n punish him. 
 
 Pros. It will, by me. 
 
 Mir. Grant him at least some respite for my sake. 
 
 Pros. I by deferring justice should incense 
 Tlie Deity against myself and you. 
 
 Mir. Yet I have heard you say the povi^'ra above 
 Are slow in punishing, and should not you 
 Resemble tliem ? 
 And can you be his judge and executioner. 
 
 Pros. I cannot force Gronzalo, or my brother. 
 Much less the father to destroy the son ; 
 It must be then the monster Caliban, 
 And he 's not hei-e ; but Ariel straight shall fetch him. 
 
 Ti'.nter Ariel. 
 
 Ariel. My potent lord, before thou call'st I come 
 To serve thy will. 
 
 Pros. Then, spirit, fetch me here my savage slave. 
 
 Ariel. My lord, it does not need. 
 
 Pros. Art thou then prone to mischief, wilt thou be ^ 
 
 Thyself the executioner ? 
 
 Ariel. Tliink better of thy airy minister. 
 Who, for thy sake, unbidden, this night has flown 
 O'er almost all tlie habitable world. 
 
 Pros. But to what purpose was thy diligence ? 
 
 Ariel. When I was cliiddcn by my mighty lord 
 ISov my neglect of young Hippolito, 
 I went to view liis body, and soon found 
 His soul was but retir'd, not sally'd out : 
 Then I collected
 
 140 
 
 TATE, KEMBLE, ETC, 
 
 Tlie best of simples underneath the moon, 
 The best of balms, and to the wound apply'd 
 The healing juice of vulnerary herbs. 
 His only danger was his loss of blood ; 
 But now he's wak'd, my lord, and just this hour 
 He must be dress'd again, as I have done it. 
 Anoint the sword which pierc'd him, with his weapon- 
 Salve, and wrap it close from air, till I have time to visit him again. 
 
 Pros. Thou art my faithful servant. 
 It shall be done ; be it your task, Miranda, 
 Because your sister is not present liere ; 
 While T go visit your dear Ferdinand, 
 From whom I will a while conceal this news, 
 That it may be more welcome. 
 
 Mir. I obey you, 
 And with a double duty, sir ; for now 
 You twice have given me life. \^Exit. 
 
 Pros. Now haste, untie the spell, and to me bring 
 The wretched Caliban, and liis companions. {^Exeunt severally. 
 
 Act V. Scene 2. — A Cave. 
 HlPPOLITO discovered on a couch, Doeinda by him. 
 
 Dor. How do you find yourself? 
 
 Bij^. I 'm somewhat cold. 
 
 Can you not draw me nearer to the sun ? 
 I am too weak to walk. 
 
 Dor. My love, I '11 try. 
 
 I thought you never would have walk'd again ; 
 They told me you were gone away to heaven ; 
 Have you been there ? 
 
 Hip. I know not where T was. 
 
 Dor. I will not leave you till you promise me 
 You will not die again. 
 
 Hip. Indeed I will not. 
 
 Dor. You must not go to heaven, unless we go together ; 
 But much I wonder what it is to die.
 
 TATE, KEMBLE, ETC. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Hip. Sure 'tis to dream a sort of breathless sleep, 
 AVhen once the soul 's gone out. 
 
 Dor. What is the toul ? 
 
 Hip. A small blue thing that runs about within us. 
 
 Dor. Then I have seen it of a frosty morning 
 Run smoaking from my mouth. 
 
 Hip. But, dear Dorinda, 
 What is become of him who fought with me? 
 
 Dor. Oh ! I can tell you joyful news of him : 
 My father moans to make liim die to-day. 
 For what he did to you. 
 
 Hip. That must not be, 
 My dear Dorinda, go and beg your father 
 He may not die ; it was my fault he hurt me, 
 I urg'd him to it first. 
 
 Dor. But if he live, lie '11 ne'er leave killing you. 
 
 Hip. My dear, go quickly, lest you come too late. 
 
 [Exit Dorinda. 
 
 Jotin Philip Kemble possibly was a scholar and 
 a gentleman— but he did not behave like a gentle- 
 man to Shakespeare, and he was not a Shakesperian 
 scholar. 
 
 At the end of the Taming of the Shrew, Johnson 
 remarks : — " From this play The Tatler formed a 
 story/' vol. iv. No. 131. After narrating the story 
 as it appears in the Tatler, he adds :— " It cannot 
 but seem strange that Shakespeare should be so 
 little known to the author of the Tatler, that ho 
 shoud suffer the Story to be obtruded upon him, 
 or so little known to the publick, that he should
 
 ]42 TATE, KEMBLE, ETC. 
 
 hope to make it pass upon his readers as a novel 
 narrative of a transaction in Lincolnshire ; yet it 
 is apparent that he was deceived, or intended to 
 deceive, that he knew not himself whence the story 
 was taken, or hoped he might rob so obscure a 
 writer without detection.^' 
 
 We might multiply instances proving how this 
 author has been travestied or ignored by those who 
 profess to idolise him. But having shown how the 
 great poet Tate, the great actor Kemble, and the 
 great essayist Steele, treated him, — we may well 
 leave it to the reader to conclude how he has been 
 used by lesser men.
 
 CHAPTER XIY. 
 
 AN EPITOME OF WHAT HAS GONE 
 BEFORE. 
 
 It would be a new, though certainly a very 
 promising feature in Shakesperian inquiry and 
 discussion, that the evidence adduced should be 
 required to have some little bearing upon the 
 point sought to be established. 
 
 Critics have debated the period at which Shake- 
 speare left school, without stopping to inquire when 
 he went there : the existence of a free school at 
 Stratford being abundant proof that he must have 
 been a scholar at it ; the existence of a hostelrie at 
 Stratford, would be as good proof that he was a 
 drunkard. 
 
 The lines. 
 
 There's a divinity doth shape our ends, 
 Rough how them as we will, 
 
 because skewers are made oi rough wood, and shaped 
 or pointed at the ends, arc assumed to prove that 
 Shakespeare's father was a butcher.
 
 144 AN EPITOME. 
 
 His journeys to Italy and Scotland are supported 
 by evidence of a similar kind. 
 
 And Mr. Charles Butler claims him as an 
 eminent Roman Catholic upon negative evidence, 
 which would just as well entitle him to be con- 
 sidered a Mahometan; therefore it is not for 
 editors, critics, and commentators who are versed 
 in Shakesperian lore, to object that the evidence is 
 not conclusive, or the argument not logical. 
 
 Not being worst, 
 Stands in some rank of praise ; 
 
 With such desultory discourse, volumes might 
 be filled ; and it would be agreeable to our humour 
 so to do, for it is a subject upon which we love to 
 dilate. We must, however, put some restriction 
 upon ourselves, out of regard to our readers. And 
 supposing them to have arrived at this point, we 
 will make a little chart of the wilderness whicli 
 they have passed through, and what we wished 
 them to learn in their wanderings. 
 
 Had we accompanied them, we should have 
 pointed out, that very little indeed is known of the 
 History of Shakespeare, and that that little in 
 no way connects him with these Plays — that the 
 writer of them must have possessed a vast variety 
 of talents, such as have been reported to have
 
 AN EPITOME. 145 
 
 been found in Francis Bacon, and in him alone; that 
 the wit and poetry are of a kind which was pecu- 
 liarly his— that William Shakespeare of Stratford- 
 upon-Avon connected himself Avith a class which 
 had only recently sprung into existence, and which 
 were held in the utmost contempt — that he was 
 neither eminent as an actor, nor as a writer, during 
 his lifetime, nor celebrated as such in the period 
 immediately succeeding his death — that there are 
 some remarkable coincidences of expression in 
 these plays and m the writings of Bacon, and that 
 the latter was ever careful to note anything like 
 a quotation — that the theatre with which Shake- 
 speare was connected was the Public Theatre — 
 the lowest place at which dramatic entertainments 
 were then represented — that literary labour was 
 not at that time ordinarily pursued for pecuniary 
 recompense, and the few that followed such an oc- 
 cupation were regarded with the utmost contempt 
 — that a play was hardly considered a literary 
 work, and ranked infinitely below a sonnet, and 
 that learned men would as little have prided them- 
 selves upon writing one, as upon uttering a bon 
 mo/~that the first collection of plays that as- 
 sumed anything like the appearance of a literary 
 work was Ben Jonson's splendid folio — that it was 
 
 10
 
 146 AN EPITOME. 
 
 after this was published that he became acquainted 
 with Bacon, and probably with the plays, many of 
 which certainly never were published, if in any 
 other way ever heard of, before the publication of 
 the folio of J 623 — that after that they did not 
 become popular as plays, and had a very limited 
 circulation — that they were hardly known at the 
 time of the Restoration, and so little appreciated, 
 that the most ignorant considered themselves able 
 to improve them — that they have become generally 
 popular through actors delineating characters, and 
 delivering speeches, which were either not written, 
 or not so appropriated by the poet ; whilst his true 
 admirers have ever been, and are still, that, — at 
 one time small, but rapidly increasing, — portion of 
 the community, the reading public ; these admire 
 him for beauties quite independent of the boards, 
 and which shine forth, in spite of the ill usage 
 which the hook has been subject to. 
 
 What with alterations of the text, perplexing 
 notes, and injudicious commentaries, we safely 
 assert, that with the exception (possibly) of Theo- 
 bald's, no edition of the Siiakespeare Plays has 
 been published, from that of Rowe down to the 
 beginning of the present century, that can at all 
 be relied on. We say nothing of editions pub-
 
 AN EPITOME. 147 
 
 lished by living authors; yet we canuot refrain 
 from remarking, that in this present year (1857) a 
 learned man, not content witli weakening passages 
 by altering words, has changed the very form of 
 the dialogue, and turned the nervous and expres- 
 sive lines addressed by Cassius to Casca, amidst 
 the thunder and lightning, in the first act of 
 Julius Casar, — 
 
 You are dull, Caska : 
 And those sparkes of life, that should be in a Roman, 
 You doe want, or else you use not. 
 You looke pale, and gaze, and put on feare. 
 And cast yourself in wonder. 
 To see the strange impatience of the heavens, — 
 
 into 
 
 You are dull, Casca ; and those sparks of life 
 That should be in a Roman you do want. 
 Or else you use not. You look pale, and gaze, 
 And put on fear, and cast yourself in wonder, 
 To see the strange impatience of the heavens : 
 
 and he prides himself upon improving the poetry 
 of the Dramatist. A Baden bath towel might 
 probably be ironed as smooth as a cambric ker- 
 chief, and look all the neater for the process, but 
 it would thereby lose both its character and its 
 peculiar excellence. 
 
 His Bible and his Shakespeare are books Pro- 
 testant Englishmen pride themselves upon possess-
 
 118 AN EPITOME. 
 
 iiig, and profess to peruse. Parts of each are 
 periodically brought under notice, and so incor- 
 porated in ordinary conversation, that without 
 much reading a man must know something of 
 them, and without much cunning, " may seem to 
 know that he doth not." Yet how few can con- 
 scientiously say of either the one or the other, that 
 " he has read it right through." How few, whilst 
 reading their editions, are aware of the vast dif- 
 ference betwixt them and " what he hath left us." 
 The Bible was long locked up in an unknown 
 tongue, and only known through the commen- 
 taries of the priests; the Shakespeare Plays are 
 similarly locked up in almost inaccessible libra- 
 ries, and similarly made known. The traditions 
 of the Church of Rome are hardly less true to the 
 former, than is the text of those self-constituted 
 priests to the latter. Surely it is time that the 
 laity should possess this volume in its integrity. 
 
 And here let me notice a belief that is growing 
 very general amongst Shakesperian students, in 
 which we are much disposed to concur. It is 
 urged on one side, that the folio editions are so 
 faulty and full of errors, textual and typographical, 
 that it is free to any one to make them just what 
 he pleases. It is urged, on the other hand, that
 
 AN EPITOME. 
 
 149 
 
 " as a typographical production, it is better exe- 
 cuted tliau the comraou ran of English popular 
 printing of that date." The opinion that is gain- 
 ing ground is, that the several volumes of the 
 same edition vary, parts and passages having been 
 altered as the printing proceeded. This would be 
 an interesting subject to investigate, but would 
 involve the necessity of looking out for the most 
 incorrect as well as the most perfected copy. But 
 certainly something would be gained if Shake- 
 sperians could be brought to agree upon any one 
 point. 
 
 We may here mention a fact which we have, 
 remarked, and have not seen noted by any com- 
 mentator — that every page in each of the three 
 first folio editions contains exactly the same amount 
 of matter; — the same word which begins or ends 
 the page in the 1623 edition, begins and ends the 
 page in the 1632 and 1664 editions : proving that 
 they were printed from one author, if not from 
 the same types. The 1685 edition is altogether 
 different. 
 
 Some things that we have written will doubtless 
 be attempted to be disproved, many will be dis- 
 torted ; and we shall be told that the sum of the 
 whole does not prove that Bacon wrote the plays
 
 150 A\ EPITOME. 
 
 attributed to Shakespeare. We have never said or 
 insinuated that we hoped or expected to prove any 
 such a thinj(. All we say is, that for 150 years an 
 arduous investigation has been carried on in a 
 clean contrary direction. Is it worth Avhile to 
 pursue it for 150 days, for 150 hours, in this? 
 We repeat what we wrote in an early page : " We 
 do but hope to adduce such evidence as may induce 
 some active inquiry in this direction." 
 
 And what is the use ? 
 
 Let Bacon answer : — 
 
 " The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making 
 or wooing of it ; the knowledge of truth, which is 
 tlie presence of it; the belief of truth, which is 
 the enjoying of it — is the sovereign good of 
 
 HUMAN NATURE." 
 
 But what is the practical use ? 
 
 Let Schlegel answer : — " The admiration of 
 Shakespeare remained unproductive for dramatic 
 poetry. Because he has been so much the object 
 of astonishment, as an unapproachable genius, who 
 owed everything to nature and nothing to art. 
 His success, it is thought, is without example, and 
 can never be repeated; nay, it is even forbidden 
 to enter into the same region. Had he been 
 considered more from an artistic point of view, it
 
 AN EPITOME. 151 
 
 would have led to an endeavour to understand the 
 principles which he followed in his practice, and 
 an attempt to master them. A meteor appears, 
 disappears, and leaves no trace behind ; the course 
 of a heaver.ly body ought however to be delineated 
 by the astronomer, for the sake of investigating 
 more accurately the laws of general mechanics." 
 
 "Whatever is done," says Bacon, "by virtue 
 and industry, seems to be done by a kind of habit 
 and art, and therefore open to be imitated and fol- 
 lowed ; whereas felicity is inimitable." 
 
 Hence men have been deterred from attempting, 
 by "virtue and industry," to compete with that 
 "felicity" which they believe to be "inimitable." 
 
 This we note to be an evil. 
 
 If, however, it should be proved that these plays 
 were written by Bacon, it would be inferred that 
 this branch of literature does not so much require 
 skill and practice in that part of poetry which, as 
 Bacon says, " respects words, and is but as a cha- 
 racter of stile," as extensive and varied knowledge, 
 feeling, reflection, and experience, which form the 
 poetic mind. 
 
 And when we consider how ready and powerful 
 a medium of communicating and diffusing know- 
 ledge the stage is, or might be, if it should appear
 
 152 AN EPITOME. 
 
 that the statesman, the philosopher, and the man 
 of the world, are the best qualified contributors to 
 it; how many rich thoughts and wise reflections 
 — which perhaps, after encumbering portfolios for 
 a time, have been consigned to the waste-paper 
 basket, may in future be worked up into a play — 
 and thus embalmed for the use and delight of 
 future ages. 
 
 Reader— a^< revoir.
 
 153 
 
 Go, little Book — our name is of uo note— our 
 recommendation will be of no use to you;— do 
 good service to us and our publisher, and we will 
 reward you with a red coat with gold facings, and 
 a portrait of the author. By that time our Govern- 
 ment, which loves to reward literary labour, will 
 have made us " Baron Bacon,'' — and we will issue 
 a new edition, with a coronet in the corner of each 
 leaf— for the American market— where lords are 
 lauded. 
 
 Go, little Book ; — weak natures must have re- 
 course to cunning : success salves every sin ; we 
 would not have you savour of a lie, much less be 
 detected in one. 
 
 You must not say tliat you came out from the 
 Egyptian Hall; but you may insinuate that you 
 Avere written by 
 
 A SMITH.
 
 »
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A BEIEF DESCRIPTION 
 
 OF A CURIOUS MANUSCRIPT 
 
 In the Collection of the Rev. Dr. Xeligan, with Extracts. 
 
 THE MANUSCEIPT IS ENTITLED 
 
 A TEUE HISTOEICALL RELATION 
 
 OF THE CONTEESION OP 
 
 SIR TOBIE MATTHEWS* 
 
 TO THE HOLIE CATHOLIC FATTH, 
 
 With the Antecedents and Consequents thereof, 
 To a deare Friend. 
 
 This highly curious Manuscript consists of three separate 
 treatises, and is dated 8th 7ber, 1640. f It is signed by 
 Sir Tobie Matthew himself in two places, viz., at the end 
 of the history of his conversion, where it also bears the 
 name of several witnesses in their own autographs ; and 
 again after the treatise called Posthumus, or the S/crvivour, 
 to which Sir T. Matthew has likewise affixed his seal in 
 red wax. In its very interesting pages will be found the 
 following : — 
 
 Page 2 — Kesolves to spend some years in Italy. 
 
 3 — Prays his parents "to give me leave to spend some 
 six months in France till the Parlement in England 
 (wlu'rein I had a place) should be recontinued." 
 
 4 — Charged by his father (the then Archbishop of York) 
 not to go into Spain or Italy — promises that lie 
 " woidd walk within the hmit wliich his father 
 prescribed." 
 
 • The name is in the autn^^rapli of Sir T. M., wlio was the eldest son of 
 Dr. Tobias Matthew, Archhisliop of York a.d 1G06— 1G27. 
 t Although dated 1640, it refers to occurrences prior to that period.
 
 156 APPENDIX. 
 
 Pago 5 — Has "been of 0(.)iuiou that his father lliought him 
 likelie enough to lay liold upon Catholick reh'gion, 
 if he should once fhid himself in a place where it 
 was punctually professed and practised." 
 
 6 — Sir T. Matthew leaves England and goes into Italy. 
 12 — Walks with Sir George Petre and j\ir. Robert Cansfield. 
 
 15, 16 — Apparent " liquefaction of the bloud of St. Janua- 
 rius," which it is pretended, was before as " hard as 
 a pummice-stone," witnessed by the Earl of Suifolk, 
 who relates it as true. 
 
 20, 21— On the of October, 1605, falls with his mule 
 
 over a bridge into a river near Naples — " one of 
 his spurres broken, but his body being made of a 
 softer metal," is miraculously preserved — meets the 
 "Bishop of Malta, and divers Cavalliers of that 
 Or.ler." 
 
 26 — -Arrival at Rome, and introduction to the celebrated 
 Jesuit Father Persons, or Parsons, with whom he 
 has many conferences. 
 
 34 — Introduction to, and conference with, Cardinal Piuelli 
 relative to Queen Mary, Elizabeth, &c. 
 
 64 — Libraries of St. Mark and St. Lawrence, in Florence. 
 
 77 — "Purposed lully to become a Roman Catholic." 
 
 79 — Fancies that he " was not as he then was in Florence, 
 but in London and in Prison," and that he " may 
 be carried to Tyburne, there to suffer death for the 
 confession and Profession of his Fayth." 
 
 80 — Allusion to the " Gunpowder Treason." 
 
 89 — Waits on Padi-e Lelio Ptolomei. 
 
 93 — " Conducted to the Inquisitour," by whom he is 
 " absolved " from what he terms " all his heresies" — 
 received into the Church of Rome, in the Annun- 
 ciata at Florence. 
 
 96, 97 — Returns to England — visits Canterburie, the 
 
 "Chay re of St. Thomas" (a Becket) — his prayer there. 
 
 100 to 103 — Takes lodgings at the east end of London — 
 
 confers with, and writes to, the celebrated Sir Francis 
 
 Bacon, " changes his lodgings into Fleet Sti'eet." 
 
 104 — A visit to Dr. Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury 
 — various conferences with him in the Pages fol- 
 lowing. 
 
 115 — Description of Bancroft's Library, " the most excel- 
 lent possessed by any one jingle subject in the 
 world," — the reason of this.
 
 APPENDIX. 157 
 
 Page 116 — Bancroft calls for his " Secretary and coraraandecl 
 him to make out a warrant for his commitment" 
 to prison. 
 119, 120 — Extraordinary copious draught of Archbishop 
 Bancroft, on the festival of SS. Peter and Paul, 
 " of a huge goblet or bowle of about a quart (one 
 of those wliich kings give to archbishops for their 
 New Year's Guift — of what was neither beere, nor 
 wine, nor ale, but a caudle, whicli shewed nutt- 
 megs and eggs," — the description of this scene is 
 very amusing. 
 123 — The Archhisliop sends for Sir Christopher Perkins 
 
 to confer with Sir Toby Matthew. 
 131 — " ilis Majestic one day asking the Bishop (Bancroft) 
 what became of me," he answered that he held me 
 for a kind of obstinate man — " whereupon the 
 King was pleased to directe him to put to me the 
 oatli with opinion, that by no means I would 
 refuse it. 
 132 — " Mr. Blackwell the arche-prieste taken" for refusing 
 the oath of allegiance, " and put out of his witts" 
 by " these subtill men of state" — It appears from 
 page 198, that Mr. Blackwell was in the Clinke 
 Prison or Precincts. 
 143— Sir T. M. committed to the Fleete Prison by the 
 
 Archbishop. 
 Ill, 145 — Visited by Sir Christopher Perkins and Doc- 
 tour Morton,* " who was made a bishop after- 
 wards," " nmch abused by his ih reports," Sir 
 T. M. speaks to him of the "falsifications with 
 which Fa. Persons had charged him with, and so 
 he grew to trouble me no more" — "tormci.t.d 
 much by Doctour Evansham." 
 146 — Visited in tiie Prison by Sir Maurice Barkley, Sir 
 Edwin Sandes, Sir Henry Goodyear, Mr. Richard 
 Martin, Mr. John Dunne, &c. 
 151 — Visited by Dr. Albericus Gentilis " the Doctour of 
 
 the Chayre in Oxford for Civil Law." 
 158, 189 — Long controversial discussion with Dr. Andrews, 
 
 Bishop of Chichester, occupying several pages. 
 168, 169— Dr. Eidke, &c. 
 
 * Perhaps Dr. Thomas Morton, Bishop of Chester, ad. 1G16, translated to 
 Litchfield, IGIS— Durham, 1632.
 
 J58 APPENDIX. 
 
 Page 189 — " Tiie Plague was then hott in London, and yet it 
 was in no power of mine to get released from that 
 prison." 
 
 190 — Sir Francis Bacon intercedes for him. 
 
 193, 194 — Oilers to make a present to tlie Bishop of Salis- 
 biirie, who declines accepting it without paying the 
 full value. 
 
 196 — Sir George Calvert, Sir Jolin Dackombe, &c. 
 
 204 — Disposes of his estate. 
 
 205—" Delivered out of the Fleete" Prison.— "My Lo. of 
 Salisburie kept a continual watch upon nie, to do 
 me all honour," 
 
 206 — Goes into France — makes "an acquaintance with 
 Mr. Villiers, who grew afterwards to be the King's 
 favourite and Duke of Buckingham." 
 
 207, 208 — who " resolved to press King James to perniitt 
 me to returne into my countrie, to which, after 
 great difficulties, his Majestie was content to give 
 way," thinking that he would take the oath of alle- 
 giance, which he still refused, "though with good 
 manners" — the King takes offence at his refusal. 
 
 " My Lo. of Bristol had so much good will and so 
 much power as to obtain my return home." 
 
 208 — " King James was pleased to put a visible marke of 
 particular honour upon me, at the instance of his 
 Majestie that now is," viz., Charles I., then Prince 
 of Wales. — His conference with the King — " King 
 James spoke very graciously to me." 
 
 209 — " L^pon this the honours and favours done me at 
 Court, iu the eye as it were of my parents, made 
 them grow apace in being good to me." — "Being 
 once at my father's house, it came out tiiat there 
 came by accident, if not by designe, a kinde of lustie 
 knott, if it might not rather goe for a little colledge 
 of certaine eminent Clergie-men, Archdeacons, Doc- 
 tours, and Chaplains, &c. &c." — with these he enters 
 into a Controversial Discussion, which occupies 
 several pages, and after expressing his opinions, he 
 says : — 
 
 215 — " It was strange to see how they ^vrung their hands, 
 and their whites of eyes were turned up, and their 
 devout sighes were sent abroad to testifie their grief 
 that I would utter myself alter that manner."
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 159 
 
 Page- 220 — " My father would ever choose to put some fitt 
 booke into ray hand, than to enter into anie express 
 discourse, though he told me what a crosse and 
 disadvantage it was to him tliat I sliould be of that 
 rehgion which I professed, and what a comfort it 
 would be if I returned to his ; my custom was to 
 excuse myself," &c. 
 
 222 — Thinks his father was inchned to embrace his beUefe. 
 
 223 — Deatli of his father "a matter of much grief to mv 
 hart." 
 
 223,232 — Interesting allusion to his "Mother, who was 
 much more fervent towards the Puritanicall Scrip- 
 ture way." 
 
 225—^3 motlier "went out of this world, calling for her 
 silkes and toys and trinketts, more like an ignorant 
 childe of foure years old, than like a talking Sci'ip- 
 turist of almost foure score." 
 
 226— End of " hi&toricall part." 
 
 232 — Conclusion of first treatise. 
 
 The following is in his own autograph, on page 232 : — 
 
 " I take God humbly to 
 wiLtness yt all this relation 
 aforesaid is intirely true. 
 
 " ToBiE Matthew. 
 " London, ye 8th of 
 7ber, 1(510." 
 
 Then follows the attestation by witnesses, in a different 
 
 writing, and their autograph signatures : — 
 
 "We hecr underwritten affirme that wee have heard Sir Tuby 
 Matthew declare, and take it upon liis soide, that botli the Relation 
 of his Conversion, wliich is seen sett down in this booke ; and also 
 the following short Discourse, which ho calls by the name of 
 Posthumus, or the Survivotir, are entyrely true, to the best of his 
 understanding and memory. Both whicli are signed by his owne 
 hand. He also holds the following Five-and-twenty Considera- 
 tions, in order to religion to be very considerable and sweet. 
 
 " Elizabeth Mordaunt. 
 " Anne Mordaunt. Elizabetli Petre. 
 
 George Wintour. Ffran. Petre. 
 
 Edward Gulyard. Edward Young." 
 
 Edward Guldeforde. 
 Thos. James.
 
 IGO APPENDIX, 
 
 Some of tlie above autographs are fine specimens of the 
 writing of the period. 
 
 We are then presented with Posthmnus, or the Survivour, 
 a treatise which occupies twenty-one pages ; and from 
 page 22 to the end, page 59, we have the "Five-and-twenty 
 Considerations" alhided to, dated 1641, and apparently 
 " signed, James Louth." At the end of Podhnmus, or the 
 Survivour, is the following, in the autograph of Sir Toby 
 Matthew, and an impression of his seal in red wax : — 
 
 " Signed by me in London, as in 
 ye presence of Almighty God, lor 
 most certainly and intirely 
 true ; upon ve 8th day of 7ber. 
 
 1640. 
 
 " ToBiE Matthew." 
 
 The seal bears a Lion Rampant in the first and fourth 
 quarters, and three Chevrons in the second and third. 
 
 N.B. — These extracts were selected hastily and at ran- 
 dom, and convey only a very imperfect idea of this curious 
 manuscript, containing, as it does, a great variety of enter- 
 taining conferences, with parties well known in the history 
 of the time, with several interesting historical facts, anec- 
 dotes, &c. &c. 
 
 It is in fine preservation, being as fresh and clean as 
 when first written, and was for many years in the posses- 
 sion of a highly respectable Roman Catholic family in Cork, 
 being, as is supposed, a sort of iicirlooni in the family.
 
 APPENDIX. 161 
 
 The MS. was most probably ^\Titten by some amanuensis 
 or secretary, but whenever the name of Sir T. M. occurs 
 it is in his own autograph, except in the above attestation. 
 Sir Toby Matthew was the author of some works men- 
 tioned by Lowndes, who tells us that " an account of him 
 will be found in Wood's Atlien. Oxon.," and that " several 
 of his letters are in the Cabala and the Scrinia Sacra." — 
 Vide Lowndes' Bibliographer's Manual, p. 1238. 
 
 Sir Tobie Matthew was well known in the literary, poli- 
 tical, and so-called religious world, and was, as before 
 stated, the eldest son of Dr. T. Matthew, Archbishop of 
 York. 
 
 Since the foregoing was in type, the following has been 
 extracted from a fine copy of Wood's Athenm Oxoniensis, 
 kindly lent from the valuable and extensive library of the 
 Yen. S. M. Kyle, LL.D., Archdeacon of Cork : — 
 
 " Tobie Matthew, the eldest son of Dr. Tobie Matthew, Arch- 
 bishop of York, by Frances his wife, daughter of WilUam Barlow, 
 some time Bishop of Chichester, was bom in Oxon. and matricu- 
 lated there in 1589. lie became a noted orator and disputant, 
 and taking his degree in Arts, travelled into various coimtries. 
 At his retiu-n he was taken into the acquaintance of Sir Francis 
 Bacon, and between them there passed divers letters, which, if 
 collected, might make a pretty volume. At length leaving the 
 Church of England by the persuasion of Father Parsons,* the 
 Jesuit, he entered into the society, but wliether he took orders, is 
 to me yet uncertain. Afterwards growing famous for his cmi- 
 nency in politics, he came into England upon invitation, and on 
 the 10th Oct., 1623, received the honour of knighthood from lii* 
 Majestie,t for his great zeal in carrying on the S[)anisli match to 
 be had with Prince Charles. At which time not only tlie King, 
 but the chief of liis nobility and others at Court, iiad a high value 
 for him — he was also highly valued by the Earl of Strafford, with 
 
 * See his conferences with Father Parsons, page 26, &c. 
 t Tliis must be what he meant by saying, page 208—" King James was 
 pleased to put a visible maikc of particular lionoiu' upon me." 
 
 11
 
 162^ .APPENDIX. 
 
 whom be went into Ireland, that his advice and counsel might 
 he used. He was greatly hated by the Presbyterians, and more 
 especially by Prynne, who said that he was sent into England by 
 Pope Urban VIII., with whom he was in much esteem, to re- 
 concile England to the Church of Rome, in which work he, as 
 they further say, received a pension * from Cardinal Barberini, 
 &c. &c. &c." 
 
 Then follows a list of his works, amongst which was one in 
 praise of Lucy Countess of Carlisle, for which Sir John Suckling 
 brought him into the poem called the Session or Court of Poets, 
 thus : — 
 
 " Toby Matthews what made him there ? 
 
 Was whispering nothing in somebody's ear, 
 Wlien he had the honoiu- to be named in Court, 
 But, Sir, you may thank my Lady Carleil for't." 
 
 He concluded his last day at Gaunt, in Flanders, on the 13th 
 Oct., 1655. On his coffin was a leaden plate, with this written 
 thereon : " Mic jacet D. Tobias Matthew." 
 
 Wood's Athen. Oxon., 1721, vol. ii. pages 194, 195. 
 
 * This he most strenuously denies in page 8, of Fostlmmons, stating, " I never 
 knew anie one in niy whole life who lived in obedience under this Crowne, who 
 receaved pension or profitt from anic foreign Prince in the world. And let God 
 be good to my soul wlien I shall dye, as he knows I speak nothing but truth." 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Y. PicKTON, Printer, Perry's Place, 29, Oxford Street.
 
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 A NEW LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE, including many par- 
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 This work contains upwards of forty documents respectino; Shakespeare and 
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 sonal liistory, by papers e.xhibiting him as selling Slalt, Stone, &c. Of the 
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 It is the only Life of Shakespeare to be bought separately from his works. 
 
 SHAKESPERIANA.— A Catalogue of the Early Editions of 
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 trative of his Works. By J. O. Halliwell. Svo, cloth. 3*. 
 Indispensable to everybody who wishes to carry on any inquiries connected 
 
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 SHAKESPEARE'S VERSIFICATION and its apparent Irre- 
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 The reader of Shakespeare would do well to make himself acquainted with 
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 copy of the folio, 1632. By the Rev. Alexander Dyce. Svo, cloth. 5,?. 
 Mr. Dyce's Notes are peculiarly delightful, from the stores of illustration with 
 
 which his extensive reading, not only among our writers, but among those of 
 
 other countries, especially of the Italian poets, has enabled him to enrich them. 
 
 All tliat he has recorded is valuable. We read his little volume witli pleasure, 
 
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 HUNTER'S (Rev. Jos.) Few Words in Reply to " Mr. Dyce's 
 
 Few Kotes." 8vj. \s. 
 
 A FEW REMARKS ON THE EMENDATION, "Who 
 smothers her with Painting," in the Play of Cymbeline, discovered by 
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 TRADITIONARY ANECDOTES OF SHAKESPEARE, 
 
 collected in Warwickshire, in 1693. 8vo. \s. 
 
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 simile, li". &d. 
 The Preface is both interesting and curious, from the additional information 
 
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 RIMBAULT'S (Dr. F. E.) WHO WAS JACK WILSON 
 
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 SHAKESPEARE STORY-TELLER.— Introductory Leaves ; 
 
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 WAS LORD BACON the AUTHOR of SHAKESPEARE'S 
 
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