rUDOR PROBLEMS PARKER WOODWARD :.?*!! i:^4t ^"-im}''rr #-i ^^^^HBtliiiKfuit ' " i TUDOR PROBLEMS !H~^f. oi- I'HANCIS AS A IJOV. Frontispioco. TUDOR PROBLEMS BEING ESSAYS ON THE HISTORICAL AND LITERARY CLAIMS CIPHERED AND OTHERWISE INDICATED BY FRANCIS BACON, WILLIAM RAWLEY, SIR WILLIAM DUGDALE, AND OTHERS, IN CERTAIN PRINTED BOOKS DURING THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES BY PARKER WOODWARD Truth can never be confirmed enough.^ Pericles SOME OF THESE ESSAYS HAVE BEEN PRivAljEX^" ; PKa^TED, BUT THE WHOLE WORK HAS BEEN EXTENSIVELY REVISEp.ftNH AVQMEN-ED LONDON GAY AND HANCOCK, LTD. 12 AND 13 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 1912 (\\ T ^ X^^' ,\ CONTENTS CHAPTER PREFACE . PROEMIAL . I. QUEEN ELIZABETH II. ERANCIS . III. ROBERT IV. MISADVENTURES . V. THE MASTER- VIZARD VI. VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS VII. 'FILUM LABYRINTHi' VIII. GOSSON s IX. LYLY X. WATSON . XI. PEELE XII. GREENE XIII. JLA-RLOWE . ^ XIV. SPENSER . ► XV. KYD XVI. NASH XVII. WHITNEY . XVIII. WEBBE XIX. ' THE ARTE ' V XX. DORRELL . XXI. BRIGHT . XXII. BURTON XXIII. SHAKSPERE XXIV. THE ALLEGORY XXV. EDUCATIONAL XXVI. THE PLAY FOLIO FAGB ix xi 1 19 32 45 54 63 69 75 83 100 109 119 132 138 164 172 185 189 193 201 205 213 216 226 229 238 73Syu VI TUDOR PROBLEMS CUAPTKR XXVII. ETERNIZING XXVIII. THE MAZE XXIX. SIDNEY XXX. PLAYS . XXXI. RE-ENTOMBED XXXII. THE LOVE TEST XXXIII. SEVEN reALMS . XXXIV. ROBERT, THIRD EARL XXXV. CIPHER HISTORY XXXVI. OTHER OBJECTIONS XXXVII. 'SONNETS' XXXVIII. PRAYERS BOOK REFERENCES INDEX FAOB 247 256 262 267 271 290 296 301 303 310 317 323 329 331 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS BUST OF FKANCIS AS A BOY QUEEN ELIZABETH FRANCIS AT THE AGE OF EIGHTEEN FRANCIS AT MIDDLE AGE EARL OF LEICESTER FRANCIS AT SIXTY THE MARSHALL WOODCUT, 1640 . FRANCIS AT SIXTY-ONE . FRANCIS AT THE AGE OF SIXTY-SIX THE STRATFORD MONUMENT THE STRATFORD MONUMENT THE STRATFORD MONUMENT MONUMENT OF FRANCIS BACON IN ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH TO FACE Frontispiece 1 19 63 119 213 216 238 267 271 280 288 290 ERRATA Page 14, line 1 , for ' Sydney ' read ' Sidney.' 22, line 8, ./"or ' Shake3i>eare ' read ' Shakspere.' 35, line 35, /or ' wosrt ' read 'worst.' 44, line 9, delete 'it.' 46, line 26, /or 'dedication ' reiul ' dedications. ' 73, lines 16 and 17, for 'The Hon. Judge Stotaenburg, in his recent clever book, asks,' rca^i, 'The late Judge Stotsen- burg, in his clever book, asked.' 105, line 25,/or ' 1617 ' read ' 1618.' 106, last line but one,//r ' presents ' read ' present.' 185, line '6, for ' Gabriel ' read ' Geoffrey.' 217, line 14, /or " SA^Aper ' read ' S/3. CHAPTER YI VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS His anomalous position as shown by the cipher story ex- tenuates, and partly explains, Francis Bacon's disastrous adventure as Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor. As a Prince he shared the Queen's love for the magni- ficent and costly. ' Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy.' His intense concentration upon literature was greatly to his disadvantage. Persons occupied in absorbing work or studies have little or no time to practise thrift or to learn the value of money. When Francis ran short in 1593 he borrowed right and left. Yet so little did he profit by his experience that in 1594 he spent the most part of a year's income in the purchase of a jewel wherewith to conciliate the Queen. She very properly declined to take it from him. Unlike the landed aristocrats with whom he associated, he had no estates. Until 1610 he did not even own Gorhambury House, and only possessed a few leases and reversions which the Queen had given him. He had for six years (July 25, 1607, to October 17, 1613) first the emoluments of Solicitor-General, and then the larger earnings as Attorney- General, but there was every indication that he was spending his income faster than it was made. In December, 1613, he insisted on bearing the whole cost (£2,000) of a Gray's Inn masque. At that date Cham- berlain remarked of him : ' He carries a great port as well 63 G4 TUDOR PROBLEMS in his train as in his apparel and otherwise, and lives at a great charge.' It was no kindness to advance him to the position of Lord Keeper (March 7, 1 61 G-7), particularly if (as Mr. Hepworth Dixon stated) he paid Lord Egerton £8,000 for giving up the office. It was an added misfortune for the King to proceed immediately to Scotland, leaving Francis head of the Council left in charge. His personal popularity was then very great, yet here and there he had his enemies, such as Coke and Secretary Winwood. The King's absence gave exceptional opportunity for the man who had for years and years yearned to sit on the English throne. For a few months he was virtually seated there. He took charge of the government of the country in his prompt, glorious, magnificent, and master- ful way. The King had left behind a proclamation directing the crowd of pleasure-seeking aristocrats who had centred upon London to go back to their counties. This desire seems to have become known, and, with the break-up of the Court, very many had gone as wished. Bacon, accordingly, decided to stop the issue of the pro- clamation as unnecessary. James I. was disturbed at this, and wrote sharply back to Winwood, desiring him to tell the Lord Keeper that ' obedience was better than sacrifice, and that he (James I. ) knoweth that he is King of England.' Francis seems to have reassured the nervous monarch. On May 7, when he rode in State to open the Courts at Westminster, Francis was magnificently attired in a purple satin gown, and accompanied by most of the Council and the nobility on horseback — a cavalcade of 200 horsemen — besides the judges and members of the Inns of Court. The ceremonial was a great one. At the close of the proceetlings the greater paii; of the company dined as his guests at a cost of .£700. We obtain another sidelight upon his })roceedings from a letter written by the jealous Winwood to the King in VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS 65 Scotland. Fortunately, the King had overcome his own fears, and only laughed at Win wood's despatch. But from the letter we learn that the Lord Keeper gave audience in the banqueting - house, and required the other members of the Council to attend his movements with the same state as the King used, and that if any of them sat a little too near him, they were desired to keep their distance ; indeed, the King (said Win- wood) had better come back, as his seat was already usurped. Francis, in his new position of Lord Keeper, was very arduous in his legal duties, and full of plans for the improvement of law and procedure. By the end of the year he had cleared all arrears and disposed of Court work at more than twice the rate of his predecessors. About this time he moved into York House, and his friends and some suitors took advantage of the occasion and of the New Year to send in presents to him of all kinds, including gifts of money. In his mother's time gifts of money, with a view to gain favour, even to the Queen herself, had been quite ordinary.'^ Lord Burleigh was not above receiving £100 from a Bishop. In the time of James I. these usages had not altered. That monarch created 300 baronets for a payment of £1,095 apiece, and accepted £4,000 as a gift from Yelverton for having made him Attorney- General. Here was Francis at the age of fifty-four attended by a staff of over seventy officials and servants, absorbed by the business of Chancery and State and his own literary pursuits. As to the money brought to him, whether as gifts or fees, he exercised very little over- sight. However much money came in, it was accepted ; he appears to have been always able to do with it, and there is reason to think he was systematically robbed by some of the people about him. Honours were still * See Quarterly Review, vol. xcv. Every subject who entertained the Queen had also to give her a purse of gold. 5 66 TUDOR PROBLEMS heaped upon him. He was created Baron of Verulani in 1618-19, and Viscount St. Albans in 1G20. It seems to have been grenerallv known that he was in debt, and that his revenue from land was not more than £500 per annum — quite insufficient to support a Viscounty. The wits of the period said he was very lame as an Earl, and all hones when made a Viscount. A crisis in his affairs was imminent, but the disturbance came from an unexpected quarter. A new House of Commons, very dissatisfied with the abuses surrounding the King and Court, was informed that even the Lord Chancellor had been accept- ing bribes to pervert justice. Bushell relates that it was a question with the King as to whether he should permit the favourite of his affection (Buckingham), or the oracle of his Council (Bacon), to sink in his service, and that the King chose the latter. For the moment their indicrnation was concentrated upon the unfortunate Francis. Resolutions were passed and evidence quickly collected, and Francis was called to account. The suddenness of the attack and the known hostility of Coke, the man leading it, made him ill, and resolved him to bend before the storm and make no defence. Nothing but complete submission ofl'ered any hope for his future. Before any particulars had been furnished to him, he wrote to the House of Lords (April 20) : ' I do ingenuously confess and acknowledge that, having understood the particulars of the charge, not formally from the House, but enough to inform my con- science and memory, I find matter sufficient and full both to move me to desert my defence and to move your Lord- ships to condemn and censure me.' The Lords, not being satisfied with this, delivered par- ticulars of twenty -seven charges brought by the Commons, and reijuired him to answer them severally. This he did on April 30, and from his answei's the case VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS 67 against him almost melted away, as the following summary will show : Fees received as arbitrator ... ... ... 3 Gifts from suitors after suit ended ... ... 13 Fee for commercial negotiation ... ... 1 Loans from persons then or afterwards suitors 3 Gift refused, but not taken away ... ... 1 Gift paid to clerk directed to be refunded ... 1 Exaction by subordinates without his know- ledge ... ... ... ... ... ... 1 Gift accepted after decree as to lands, but pending suit as to goods ... ... ... 1 Gift after cause sent for trial, but before the equities had been dealt with ... ... 1 Gift of £100 pending suit 1 Gift of £300 pending suit 1 27 The last two were the only serious charges of the twenty-seven tabled in the House of Commons, and it is curious that the persons who had openly brought these two sums were the first to complain to the House of Commons because decrees were not made in their favour. Although Francis, in answering the particulars, estab- lished that he had never accepted gifts as part of bargains to pervert the ends of justice, he was careful to insure his dismissal by entering two general admissions of corrup- tion. He evidently wanted the business closed, and to be back into private life. The position of magnificence which his notion of the Lord Chancellorship involved could not be supported. He had sat upon the Woolsack as a prince, with princely notions and aspirations, but, owing to the curious circumstances of his history, without the endowment of the essential princely fortune. For extenuation Francis himself drew attention to his person and estate. He also wrote : ' For that in all these particulars there are few or none that are not almost two years old, whereas those that have an habit of corruption do commonly wax worse.' This goes a long way to support Bacon's later assertion : 68 TUDOR PROBLEMS * And howsoever I acknowledge the sentence just and for reformation's sake fit, I was the justest Chancellor that hath been in the five changes since Sir Nicholas Bacon's time.' Manifestly the suitors and their advisers would soon find out, that whatever money was presented to the Chancellor on one excuse or another, in the hope of gain- ing his influence, he always decided his cases fairly and without being influenced by the gifts. Those who had confidence in their claims, and those who had not, soon found out that to make presents was only a waste of good money. It did not make a bad case good or a good case better. The practice of giving during the last two years of his Chancellorship seems to have died out. That Bacon would or would not have accepted a gift depended almost solely upon the moment's pressure of his finances ; but that he was not corrupt in the sense of accepting gifts to pervert justice, or of being bribed, as alleged, is proved not only by the absence of appeals from his decisions, but also by the evident discontinuance of suitors' gifts. Francis, in his play of ' Henry VIII.,' revised soon after his fall, and published in the Folio of 1623, put into beauti- ful verse a correct commentary upon his own unfortunate and unsupported incursion into the realm of Great Place : * I have venturetl, Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, This many summers in a sea of glory, But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride At length broke under me, and now has left me. Weary and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye.' Francis was frail, and partook of the abuses of his times. The special conjunction of his high birth, mag- nificent notions, and comparative poverty, contributed to his discomfiture. But ue was not corrupt. CHAPTER VII 'filum labyrinthi' Writing to King James in October, 1620, about the 'Novum Organum,' then being pubHshed, Bacon stated that the work, ' in what colours soever it may be set forth^ is no more but a new logic teaching to invent and judge by induction.' At an earlier date, possibly 1619, writing to Father Fulgentio, he stated, ' After these [works] shall follow the *' Novum Organum," to which a second, part is to be added which I have already comprised and measured in the idea of it.' This letter should be read."'- Mr. Ellis, who joined with Mr. Spedding in editing Bacon's works, remarks anent the ' Novum Organum ' : ' However this may be, it is certain that an attempt to determine what his method, taken as a whole, was, or would have been, must necessarily involve a conjectural or hypothetical element.' Again : 'It becomes impossible to justify or to understand Bacon's assertion that his method was absolutely new. . . . It need not be remarked that induction in itself was no novelty at all. The nature of the art of induction is as clearly stated by Aristotle as by any other writer. Bacon's design was surely much larger than it would thus appear to have been.' The ' Novum Organum ' was most probably a dissem- * Spedding has : ' I have already compassed and planned it out in my mind.' The Latin is : * Quam tamen animo iam complezus et metitus sum.' 69 70 TUDOR PROBLEMS bling of his real new method. The ' Novum Organum ' was to be in two parts ; and in what colours soever it might be set forth, it was (1) to teach men to invent, and (2) judge by induction. Let us see whether Bacon anywhere shows how men are to be taught to invent (to originate). In ' The Wisdom of the Ancients ' Bacon explains his favourite fable of Orpheus as representing the image of Philosophy, ' which busies herself about human objects, and by persua- sion and eloquence insinuating the love of virtue, equity, and concord in the minds of men, draws multitudes of people to a society, making them subject to laws, obedient to government, and forgetful of their unbridled affections, whilst they give ear to precepts, and submit themselves to discipline.' Philosophy, therefore, according to Bacon, operates by persuasion and insiniintion. In the * Advancement of Learning ' (printed 1G05) we are told : * Men generally taste well knowledges drenched in flesh and blood, civil history, morality, policy, about which men's affections, praises, fortunes do turn, and are conversant. . . . Again, if the affections in thejnselves were pliant and obedient to reason it were true there should be no great use of persuasion and insinuation to the will. . . . Another precept is that the mind is brought to anything better, and with more sweetness and happiness, if that whereunto you pretend be not first in the intention . . . impressions may be strongly made when the mind is influenced by passion.' But it is in ' Filum Labyrinthi,' a tract addressed in the MS. adfilios (in which he gave to his assistants the thread by which the labyrinth might be successfully entered and quitted), that we have the nearest approach to a full revelation of his methods. This tract was found among Bacon's MSS. at his death. To quote from it : * For this object he [Bacon] is preparing a work on nature which njay destroy errors irith the least harshness^ ' FILUM LABYEINTHI ' 71 and enter the senses of mankind without violence ; which would be easier from his not heanng himself as a leader, but bring- ing and scattering light from nature herself so that there may be no future need for a leader. . . . We ought to consider that the importunity of teaching doth ever by right belong to the im.pertinences of things. . . . But now which (thou wilt say) is that legitimate mode ? . . . Dismiss all art and circumstances, exhibit the matter naked to us, that we may be enabled to use our judgment. And would that you were in a condition, dearest son, to admit of this being done. Thinkest thou that when all the accesses and motions of all minds are besieged and obstructed by the obscurest idols, deeply rooted and branded in, the smooth and polished areas present themselves in the true and native rays of things ? A new method must be entered upon by which tee glide into minds the most obstructed. . . . In this universal insanity we must use moderation. ... It has a certain inherent and innate power of conciliating belief, and repelling the injuries of time so that knowledge thus delivered, like a plant full of life's freshness may spread daily and grow to maturity . . . that it will set apart for itself, and as it were, adopt a legitimate reader. And whether I shall have accomplished all this or not I appeal to future time.' Further on is written : ' Wherefore, duly meditating and contemplating the state both of nature and mind, we find the avenues to men's understandings harder of access than to things themselves, and the labour of communicating not much lighter than of excogitating ; and therefore, which is almost a new feature in the intellectual ivorld, we obey the humour of the time, and play the nurse both ivith our ovm thoughts and those of others. For every hollow idol is de- throned by skill, insinuation, and regular approaches. . . . Wherefore we return to this assertion, that the labour commenced by us [doubtless Bacon and his literary and play-writing staff] in paving the way, so far from being superfluous, is truly too little for difficulties so con- siderable.' Why was it only cdmost a new feature in the intellectual world ? The ' Filum Labyrinthi ' answers this : 72 TUDOR PROBLEMS * He thought also that knowledge is uttered to men in a form as ifeverything were finished . . . whereas antiquity used to deliver the Knowledge which the mind of man had gathered in observations , ai^hoiism-s, or short and dispersed sc7itences, or small tractates of some parts that they had dili- gently meditated and laboured, which did invite men both to ponder that which was invented, and to add and to supply further.' Probably enough has now been quoted to indicate that the ' almost new ' feature, or method, which Bacon elaborated was not so much the inductive system of reasoning (although that was a prominent part) as the in- sinuation of knowledges, a method once in use with the ancients, in which the real is masked by the seeming object. Over what period of years Bacon practised his great plan of playing the nurse, both with his own thoughts and those of others, is hardly the subject of this chapter. But the sowing of the seed was evidently a most extensive business, as Mr. Harold Bayley's book 'A Shakespeare Symphony ' makes apparent. The plays and other light literature in which the good things of knowledge were scattered with a lavish hand were, possibly, the works of the Alphabet {i.e., the ABC of his system of education), to which Bacon alludes in his letters to Toby Mathew. Mr. Fearon thought that the passage in a later letter to Mathew was a mere concealed way of telling Mathew that he (Bacon) was * putting the Alphabet in a frame ' — viz., preparing a selection of the well-stufled and garnished plays for folio production as the second part of his ' Novum Organum.' If this view is right, it follows that it was absolutely part of the system, that his authorship should he concealed. Disclosure could not be made initil many, many yeais after Bacon's death, so as to give the method long and patient trial. 'FILUM LABYRINTHI' 73 ' To speak the truth of myself,' said Bacon, ' I have often wittingty and willingly neglected the glory of my own name and learning (if any such thing be), both in the works I now publish and in those I contrive for hereafter, whilst I study to advance the good and profit of mankind.' ('Advancement of Learning,' book vii., chap, i.) Directly men were aware that the main purpose of the plays was not so much to entertain them as to put them to school, the New Method was certain to become a failure. Long and patient trial of the system could alone attain success. To disclose the author was to reveal the schoolmaster, whose work would then be resented and ignored as an impertinence by those for whom it was most fit. Few will deny the ' salting ' to be found in the Folio Shakespeare. The Hon. Judge Stotsenburg, in his recent clever book, asks : * Was there in England a concealed poet who wrote or revised the plays in part or all, or who inserted in all or part of them the magnificent and sparkling gems culled and gathered from art, from nature, from history, from philosophy, from science, and from ancient lore, which have always captivated and enchanted the reading world ?'■'•■* The late Mr. G. C. Bompas wrote : ' In all subjects treated of by Bacon, the human body, sound and light, heat and cold, germination and petrifica- tion, the history of winds, astronomy, meteorology and witchcraft, the plays and prose works closely correspond, and both exhibit a learning up to the time of the age.' f It is hardly necessary to show how fully this ' scatter- ing of light ' has been accomplished. Books have been written on the various ' knowledges ' contained in the Folio alone. For observations as to the law of the plays * 'An Impartial Study of the Shakespeare Title.' t 'Problem of the Shakespeare Plays.' 74 TUDOR PKOBLEMS go to Lord Campbell, for biblical references to Wads- worth, surgery and medicine to Bucknill, geology to Fullom, natural history and entomology to Patterson, emblems to Green, sports to Madden, delineations of the passions to Donnelly, Bradley, and others ; folk-lore, proverbs, natural phenomena, customs, and many other interesting things, to Dyer. We know the use made in it of Holinshed's Histories, of Plutarch, Pliny, Du Bartas, Montaigne, and classical authors generally. After nearly three hundred years we can report that Bacon's New Method has prospered and borne fruit. The brimstone has been so cleverly mixed with the treacle that the compound has been gulped down with universal satis- faction. His New Method has been a world-wide benefit, but not so far a personal success. This was the great secret as to which the brethren of the Bosy Cross were to remain silent for at least a hundred years, while the lessons of philosophy were being quietly sunk into the minds of men. This was the way that Francis Bacon 'laid great bases for eternity.' This was the scheme for the fruition of the mot of the gentle knights' impresa : ' Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci.' Philosophy was to reach the masses through the medium of the stage, whereon the mirror was held up to Nature. The plays of ' Shakespeare ' were only part of a galaxy of dramatic compositions issued at first under the vizards of Lyly, Greene, Marlowe, Peele, Nash, and Kyd, and afterwards issued from his school of writers, such as Massinger, Ford, Fletcher, Beaumont, Hey wood, and others, all gently inculcating the philosophy and aphorisms of the earlier plays. As Mr. Harold Bayley stated in his * Shakespeare Symphony,' the orchestra was large, and played in tune. CHAPTER YIII GOSSON EULES OF THE ROSICRUCIANS. 'All sworn to secrecy for 100 years.' ' To have secret names.' ' Works not to be published with the names of their authors.' ' Feigned names to be frequently changed.' A. E. Waite : Real History of the Rosicrucians. The writer of the 'Schoole of Abuse ' (1579), and a few other pamphlets and verses, was an exceptionally learned man. He indicated acquaintance (amongst many others) with the works of the classical poets : — Homer, Ovid, Simonides, Pindar, Virgil, Lucan, Ennius ; the theo- logians — Solomon and David ; the philosophers — Plato, Cicero, Maximus Tyrius, ^sop, Hesiodus, Pythagoras, Aurelius, Aristotle, and Demosthenes ; the historians — Sallust, Plutarch, Xenophon, Dion, Csesar, and Pliny ; and with the dramatists — Plautus, Seneca, Menander, and Euripides. He punned upon the name of the English poet. Whetstone. From an allusion on the second page of the * Schoole of Abuse' — viz., 'the vizard that Poets maske in' — he would seem to have considered it orthodox for writers of poetry or prose (both at that day being called poets) to conceal their individuality. The question proposed here to be considered is whether this little group of writings (1579 to 15 83) was the genuine work of Stephen Gosson, whose name is on the title- pages, or was he only the ' vizard ' for another person ? 75 76 TUDOR PROBLEMS Young Gossoii was not twenty-one when, having graduated B.A. in 1576, he proceeded to London. He is described as having become a player, and as having quitted that occupation to become a preacher. Eventu- ally by gift of the Queen in 1591 he became Hector of Wigborough. He died in 1624, Rector of St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, London, and was buried at night. It is very odd that a literary career commenced so brilliantly should (if his) have stopped abruptly in 1583. On the authority of the biliteral cipher story, Francis Bacon published his poetical and lighter writings under many vizards. That * Gosson ' was one of them has not been claimed specifically in the cipher story translated, but it makes a general allusion to the occasional use of other names than those specifically mentioned. That the Gosson family had good friends at Court, Stephen obtain- ing the Wigborough rectory (gift of the Queen), and William becoming Her Majesty's drum-player, sujjports the ' vizard ' assumption. The dates of the ' Gosson ' writings ofier further indication. Young Francis was in London in 1576, the date of the * Gosson ' poem at the end of Kerton's ' Mirror of Man's Life.' When the two poems at the end of * The Pleasant History of the Conquest of West India' (1578) were added, Francis would be back in London from abroad. The first poem is in a distinctly ' Spenserian ' vein. * Gosson ' was noted (according to Francis Meres) for his admirable penning of pastorals, though no Gosson pastorals have come down to us. Yet Francis as ' Immerito ' and * Peele ' was (while Gosson was still a player) writing pastoral verse and a pastoral play. The ' Schoole of Abuse ' is written very closely in the style of the ' Euphues ' of ' Lyly.* It is passing strange, if not inconceivable, that two writers in the same year, and in, as it were, the * first-fruits ' of their respective * inventions,' should independently possess and practise a GOSSON 77 new antithetical style, subsequently known as Euphuism. But if one author only was masking under two ' vizards,' the cause for wonder ends. We have the authority of the cipher story that * Greene ' was one of Bacon's ' vizards,' and the authority of Gabriel Harvey (Bacon's poetical adviser) that ' Greene,' ' Nash,' and ' Lyly ' were one and the same personality (see 'Pierce's Supererogation,' 1593). That being so, one can notice with less diffidence that in the title of the ' Schoole of Abuse,' counting from the first * f,' a sequence of letters will spell out ' Francis Bacon.' That this may not be entirely accidental is possibly indicated by the circumstance, that in the head of the ' Epistle Dedicatorie' (counting from the first 'f') we again obtain ' Francis,' and from the bunched-out words at the end of it (counting from the first * b ') we obtain ' Bacon.' Again, on the first page of the pamphlet in question it is suspicious to find references to ' Virgil's Gnat ' and to ' Dido,' the one shortly afterwards used by Bacon as title for a ' Spenser ' poem, the other for a ' Marlowe ' play. Later on in the ' Schoole,' p. 34, the author compares London to Bome and England to Italy, and says : ' You shall finde the theatres of the one, the abuses of the other to be rife among us. Experto crede, I have seene somewhat, and therefore I think may say the more.' This remark is explicable from young Francis after about three years' continental travel, 1576-9. At a later date we find Bacon printing under the * vizard ' of ' Kyd ' : ' The Italian Tragedians were so sharpe of wit That in one hour's meditation They would perform anything in action. Spanish Tragedy, IV. The late Mr. Bompas stated in his book on the Shake- speare problem that Italian players were settled in France from 1576 onwards. 78 TUDOR PROBLEMS In his scheme of vNTiting a literature in the English tongue, it will eventually be appreciated that Bacon made his various ' vizards ' refer to one another, so as to increase the impression that the writings were by several individuals instead of by one. Of course his literary Areopagus comprising Sidney, Greville, Dyer, and Harvey were in his secret. As proof of this, neither Greville nor Harvey ever mentioned ' Shakespeare,' although alive while the Shakespeare works were being produced. Writ- ing as 'Immerito,' on October 16, 1579, Bacon makes a sly reference to the ' Schoole of Abuse,' evidently with the object mentioned above. Francis and Sidney were, of course, hand and glove. The former at the beginning of the year 1579 dedicated his ' Shepheard's Kalendar ' to the latter. In August, 1579, he dedicated to him, writ- ing as * Gosson,' the ' Schoole of Abuse,' and in the following November the ' Ephemerides of Phialo.' In 1582 he dedicated 'Plays Confuted ' to Sidney's father- in-law, Sir Francis Walsingham. The suggestion that Sidney referred to ' Gosson ' in the ' Apologie for Poetrie ' has no foundation. Careful comparison of the works under this * vizai'd ' with those under other ' vizards ' confirms our theory as to the ' Gosson ' mask. For instances : 1. 'Was easier to be druwen to vanitie by wanton poets than to ^ood government by the fatherly counsel of grave senators. ' The right use of ancient Poetrie was too have the notable exploytes of worthy Captaines, the holesome councils of good fathers and the vertuous lives of prede- cessors set down in numbers and song to the Instrument at solemne feasts that the sound of the one might draw the hearers from kissing the cupp too often ; the sense of the other put them in minds of things past and chaulk out the way to do the like. After this manner were the Boeotians trained from rudeness to civilitie.' {' Schoole of Abuse.') GOSSON 79 If the above words were written by Gosson himself, and not by young Francis Bacon, then the latter was entirely anticipated in his notion of the true interpreta- tion of the Orpheus legend. Moreover, in the like event, to Gosson must be attributed the first encouragement to the revived pro- duction of history in dramatic form, a characteristic of subsequent Elizabethan plays. Also the methods of peaceful persuasion — chalking out lodgings for soldiers rather than hectoring invasion — to which Bacon clung so persistently. 2. ' Gosson ' is to be found to have Bacon's objection to duelling. ' The crafte of defence was first devised to save our- selves harmless. . . . Those days are now changed . . . the cunning of Fencers applied to quarrelling ; . . . these no men if not for stirring of a strawe they prove not their valure uppon some bodyes fieshe.' (' Schoole of Abuse.') Compare what Bacon wrote under another vizard : ' But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honor's at the stake.' Hamlet, IV. iv. In ' Gosson ': ' I have showed you loving countrymen ye corruption and inconveniences of your plaies as the sclenderness of my learninge woulde afforde, being pulde from ye univer- sitie before I was ripe and withered in the countrie for want of sappe.' ('Plays Confuted,' 1582.) 3. In ' Lyly ' we find a reference to the University : ' Wherein she played the nice mother in sending me into the countrie to nurse, where I tyred at a drie breast three yeares, and was at the last inforced to weane myself (Preface to * Euphues his England,' 1580.) 4. ' Gosson ' possessed Bacon's contempt for the then existing system of University studies. 80 TUDOR PROBLEMS * I cannot but blame those lither contemplators very much, which sit concluding sillogismes in a corner; which, in a close study in the University, coope themselves up fortie yeres together, studying all things and profits nothing.' (' Schoole of Abuse.') 5. ' Gosson,' like another of Bacon's vizards, ' Nash,' refers to the sepia fish : ' But the fish Sepia can trouble the water to shun the nettes that are shot to catch her. . . . Whether our Players be the spawnes of such fishes I know not well.' (Apology for the ' Schoole of Abuse.' Gosson. 1579.) ' They are the very spawnes of the fish Sepia ; where the streame is cleare and the Scriptures evidentlie dis- cover them, they vomit up ynke to trouble the waters.' ('Nash,' in 'Pasquil's Return to England.' Marprelate Pamphlet, 1589.) 6. * Gosson ' was a reformer. ' They that are greeved are Poets, Pipers and Players : the first thinke that I banish poetrie, wherein they dreeme ; the second judge that I condemn musique, wherein they dote ; the last proclaime that I forbid recreation to man, wherein you may see they are starke blinde. He that readeth with advise the booke which I wrote shall perceive that I touche but the abuses of all these.' So that, like Bacon under the vizard of ' Immerito,' he was concerned with the reformation of English poetry. Like him, he was interested in the harmonies of music and their true limitation ; like him, as manifested under other vizards, he laboured for a reformed drama. 7. At an early age he wrote ' Cataline's Conspiracies.' played at the ' Theatre.' ' The whole marke which I shot at in that worke was to showe the reward of traytors in Catalin and the necessary government of learned men in the person of Cicero which foresees every danger that is likely to happen and forestalls it continually ere it takes eifect.' GOSSON 81 There is much reason for believing that ' Catiline,' which made its first appearance in print, like ' Sejanus ' (also written by Bacon), amongst Ben Jonson's produc- tions, was one of Bacon's early plays. Jonson may have subsequently worked upon it, but his prefaces and dedi- cations make no specific claim to authorship. Like 'Julius Caesar,' and other 'Shakespeare' plays deaHng with Boman history, North's translation of ' Plutarch's Lives ' is freely drawn upon, the author in each case also correcting from the original Latin. Having regard to the date of its publication, and its curious reference to November 5 — the date of the Gunpowder Plot — it would seem to have been revised and published sub- sequent to the Guy Fawkes attempt in order to point the moral of the wickedness of conspiracies against the State. The problem of ' Gosson ' authorship seems only soluble on the assumption that Bacon was the author, and that Gosson the player, afterwards preacher, was only the ' vizard.' The preacher (if author) stopped writing at the age of twenty-seven, died at the age of sixty-nine, and made no claim to authorship. The ' Gosson ' writings comprise verse as good as ' Spenser's ' and prose as good as ' Lyly's.' The presumed author showed that he possessed a wide, and at that date rather exceptional, acquaintance with classical authors. He admitted authorship of three plays, of M^hich ' Cataline ' discloses like methods of composition to The ' Shakespeare ' Boman history plays. The ' Gosson ' opinions on certain subjects were the same as held by Bacon and other of his vizards. The author knew of the practice of poets to veil their utterances under vizards, and yet, if Gosson was really the writer, he did not follow the practice he approved. The circumstances and dates indicate that the young 82 TUDOR PROBLEMS player Gosson was only a mask for young Francis Bacon at the threshold of his efforts at the creation of an English literature and drama for the instruction and enlightenment of his race. Francis, from his association with the Queen and the Earl of Leicester, would be able to make use of young Gosson just as readily as he was able to utilize Spenser. CHAPTER IX LYLY We seek in this chapter to reopen the question of the authorship of the following Tudor writings : PROSE. PRINTED 1. 'Euphues' Anatomy of Wit' - - - 1579 2. 'Euphues and his England' - - - 1580 DRAMA. 3. ' Woman in the Moon ' .... 1597 4. 'Campaspe' ...... 1584 5. 'Gallathea' 1592 6. 'SaphoandPhao' 1584 7. 'Endimion' 1591 8. 'Midas' 1592 9. ' Mother B6mbie ' 1594 10. ' Love's Metamorphosis ' .... 1601 PAMPHLET. 11. ' Pappe with an Hatchet ' - - - . 1689 Of the above, Nos. 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 11, were first printed without any author's name. The second edition of No. 1, and the first edition of No. 2, were printed as by John Lyly, Master of Arts. No. 1 1 was attributed to Lyly by Gabriel Harvey, and Nos. 3 and 10 were first printed as by him in the years 1597 and 1601. The plays were all what are known as Court Comedies, and they were in each case first performed before the Queen by the children of her chapel. The boy actors 83 84 TUDOR PROBLEMS afterwards performed some of them at the Blackfriars Theatre, built in 1596. The years of performance are more diflScult to settle. Mr. Fleay has attempted solutions, but the probabilities are that, with the possible exceptions of * Midas,' which was either written or rewritten after the Spanish Armada had been defeated, and ' Love's Metamorphosis,' the plays were all written about the period 1580-85. Most of the plays are derived from classical history or legend, and, according to Mr. Crofts, familiarity is shown in them with passages from Ovid, Virgil, and Cicero. Messrs. Seccombe and Allen state that ' Campaspe ' was derived from Pliny's ' Natural History,' * Sapho ' and ' Gallathea ' from Ovid. They remark the originality of form and refinement of manner of the comedies. Mr. J. A. Symonds observed of four at least of the comedies that each was a studied panegyric of the Queen's virtue, beauty, chastity, and wisdom. ' Euphues and his England ' winds up with a similar panegyric, as does the anonymous play of ' The AiTaignment of Paris,' a pastoral performed by the same children before the Queen, also at a date before 1584. Professor Rushton stated that the Ephoebus passages of ' Euphues' Anatomy of Wit ' were almost entirely translated from Plutarch on Education. Anyone carefully reading the works attributed to * Lyly ' will find in them evidence of wide and copious reading combined with an exceptional memory. The author was familiar with Pliny, Plutarch, Plato, Ovid, Aristotle, Cicero, Pythagoras, and Anaxagoras. He had studied his Bible, and thought much upon religion. David and Solomon were favourite lives. He wrote of Tymon of Athens, Diogenes, the Labyrinth of Crete, of Apollo, Pan, Proteus, Orpheus, Venus, Vulcan, and other gods of ancient mythology. He had read of Homer and the Trojans, of Dido, Titus, Ca3sar, Cleopatra, Cornelia, Tarquin and Lucretia, Troilus and Cressida, Damon and Pithias, Hero and Leander, and the fable of the Phoenix. LYLY 85 He was familiar with falconry and hunting. He affirmed, ' Philosophy, Physic, Divinity, shall be my study.' M. Jusserand noticed in ' Euphues ' that conversations are there reported in which are found the tone of well- bred persons of the period. One of the earliest of the plays, * Campaspe,' gives evidence of a somewhat stoical purpose in the line, ' Be content to live unknown and die unfound.' A similar idea is to be found in the play of ' The Misfortunes of Arthur,' performed by the students of Gray's Inn in February, 1587-8 : ' Yet let my death and parture rest obscure. ' With the preparation of this play the unhonoured name of Francis Bacon was openly associated. We must make some demand upon the patience of the students of the literature of the Elizabethan period in asking them to follow the reasons which we are about to give for the belief that Francis Bacon, under the pen-name of ' John Lyly,' wrote the prose works of Euphues, and produced the Court Comedies, most of which were collected and reprinted in 1632 by Blount, who was one of the publishers of the Shakespeare Folio. In 1632 acknow- ledged works by Bacon were being prepared for the press. Blount wrote a short dedication to the 1632 collection. It contains a somewhat pregnant sentence : ' The spring is at hand, and therefore I present you a Lily growing in a Grove of Laurels* It is true that the biliteral cipher story of Francis Bacon (of the authenticity of which we are satisfied) makes no claim to the authorship of ' Euphues.' But it may have been intended to include it under the cipher story sentence : ' Several small works under no name won worthy praise.' As we have seen, the first part of * Euphues ' had no author's name to it. When ' John Lyly ' was 86 TUDOR PROBLEMS used it was probably as a pen-?iame only, as distinguished from the name of some actual and living sponsor, as the remainder of the cipher sentence is : ' Next, in Spenser's riame also they entered into an unknown world.' Here, we think, is the distinction drawn between the work ascribed to Lyly and Immerito (' Shepheard's Kalendar ') and other work put forth in the name of an actual person such as Spenser was. The biographers have been misled. Things are not always what they seem. Wood, compiling his * Ath. Oxon.' at a date (1691) many years after 1579, and finding from the records of Magdalen College that a scholar named John Lylie had matriculated there in 1571, formed the conclusion that this person was the author of ' Euphues.' The surname, according to Wood, was a common one at the college. This Lylie was, when matriculated, described as ' plebeii filius.' The material date of his entering college is unknown. In 1574 he petitioned Lord Burleigh to be made a Fellow. In 1575 he took his M.A., and in 1584 owed to the bursars of the college £1 3s. lOd. for his share of the college provisions, 'pro communis et batellis.' Messrs. Cooper, in their ' Athen. Cantab.,' writing at a still later date, assert that a certain John Lillie was M.P. for Hendon in 1589, Aylesbury in 1593, Appleby in 1597, and Aylesbury again in 1601. Mr. Arber, on probably good grounds, does not repeat this information. But he does set out a statement quoted by Mr. Collier from the register of St. Bartholomew, under date November 30, 1606, that 'John Lyllie, gent, was buried.' In view of the irregular methods of Mr. Collier, it is to be hoped that Mr. Arber satisfied himself as to this entry. The biographers have — which is the material point — entirely failed to connect either Lylie the ' plebeii filius ' of Magdalen College, Lillie the M.P., or Lyllie of the LYLY 87 burial register, with the works ascribed to ' Lyly ' — no point is made of the spelling. That being so, we must see what help may be gleaned from the works themselves, and the contemporary statements of Gabriel Harvey and others. In examining the ' Lyly ' works and imputing them to Francis Bacon, we bear in mind his aphorism, ' He who would be secret must be a dissembler in some degree.' We must also have regard to what Harvey wrote to Immerito in 1579 ('Two Letters') : 'For all your vowed and oft-experimented secrecie ' ; and to the statement in ' Campaspe' {circa 1582) : 'Be content to live unknown and die unfound.' Accordingly, we must not attach, as the biographers seem to have done, too much importance to the remark of Euphues, at p. 451 of his 'England': 'Touching whose life [Queen Mary] I can say very little, because I was scarce borne ' (1553-58). More especially as a little later on he had no hesitation on the score of infancy in commenting on what Elizabeth did in 1558 on coming to the throne. Again, in ' Euphues' Anatomy of Wit ' (1579), he complained of the disgraceful state of the Oxford and Cambridge Universities (p. 140). He con- tinues, ' But I can speake the lesse against themybr that I was never in them.' This statement does not quite conform with that in ' Euphues and his England ' (1580, p. 436), where he wrote of the same Universities: 'I was myself in either of them, and like them both so well.' Is this a cryptic reference to his having been educated at Cambridge ? In 1581 another edition of the 'Anatomy of Wit' was printed, with a dedication to Lord de la Warre, and an apology to the scholars of Oxford. In the apology Lyly regrets that some thought that in his article on the education of Ephcebus, ' Oxford was too much defamed.' Bear in mind, he does not apologize to Cambridge, though his remarks had applied equally to both Uni- 88 TUDOR PROBLEMS versities ! He added : ' If any fault be committed, impute it to " Euphues " who know you not, not to Lyly who hate you not/ In the same apology are some jocularities about his being sent into the country to nurse, ' where I tyred at a drie breast three yeares, and was at the last inforced to weane myself.' It is somewhat difficult to arrive at the significance of this passage. Francis Bacon was certainly three years at Cambridge, and, according to Rawley, his chaplain, he left dissatisfied with the un- fruitfulness of the philosophy of Aristotle. It may mean that Oxford was unkind to him because he was never there ! If we are to gather that the writer meant to infer that he was away from college three years before he published his first book, we seem to obtain some con- firmation of our assumption as to the real ' Lyly-' Francis Bacon, in September, 1576, left for France, in the care of Sir Amyas Paulet, the English Ambassador. He remained abroad until March 20, 1578-9. On the assumption of his parentage, the pen-name * Lyly ' for his first book was suitably chosen. He had just arrived from the land of the fleur-de-lis, an emblem also upon the English crown, and on the Royal Arms. The ' Anatomy of Wit ' was licensed December 2, 1578. In * Euphues and his England,' printed in 1580, * Lyly ' refers to the * Anatomy of Wit ' as being ' my first counterfaite,' and hints that it was mainly autobio- graphical ; ' that it was sent to a nobleman to nurse, and was hatched in the hard winter with the Alcyon.' We gather from this that Francis, while in Paris, pro- cured some noble friend of his in England to arrange for the publication, that he finished writing it (except per- haps for a few letters) in December, 1578, and that the book was finally published a short time after his return to England. This seems confirmed by a few words at the end of the first edition of ' Euphues' Anatomy of Wit.' LYLY 89 * I have now finished the first part of Euphues, whom now I left ready to cross the seas to England.' Ergo the writer wrote * Euphues ' on the other side of the seas. A further confirmation may be found in the letter * Euphues to Botonio,' which we take to be an ' open letter ' from Francis, as ' Euphues,' to Anthony Bacon, as ' Botonio. ' Anthony, for some reason or other, was in 1579 ordered abroad. Again, we rather infer that the person who required ' Lyly ' to apologize to Oxford was the Earl of Leicester, who was not only father to young Francis, but also Chancellor of the Oxford University. In the corrected (1581) edition of the 'Anatomy of Wit ' Lyly is described as ' Master of Art,' and whenever the name is subsequently used, it is followed by a like description. We cannot find him anywhere described as M.A. of Oxford. That the author alleges himself to be M.A, tells against the Francis Bacon theory, unless we can conclude one of two things : either that the 'M.A.' was merely part of the pen-name, or possibly that Bacon, under the pen-name of ' Lyly,' was, upon the popularity of the first edition in 1579, passed to the degree of M.A., by way of compliment from the authorities of Cambridge University, one of whom was his Trinity College tutor, Whitgift, the Queen's Chaplain. Whitgift was not long afterwards made Archbishop of Canterbury. Francis took up his M.A. in July, 1594. To follow in this chapter the internal evidence of the two parts of ' Euphues ' at any length is out of the question. M. Jusserand, on the authority of Dr. Land- mann, has shown that, besides using Plutarch, ' Lyly ' borrowed large passages from the Spanish writer Guevara, and he also points out that ' Euphues ' went to Athens (for which we may read ' Paris ') and to England to study men and Governments. This, in the light of the letter written to him by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1582, was precisely what Francis had been expected to do, and what we know from his biographer, Mr. Spedding, he 90 TUDOR PROBLEMS successfully did at a very early age. From the cipher story we learn that he returned from France refused in marriage by Marguerite of Navarre, whose favourite flower, the marigold, is referred to in ' Euphues and his England,' at p. 4Gl2. In view of this it is interesting to find Euphues urging the study of Philosophy or Law or Divinity, and the supplementing of such study by contemptuous meditations about women. ' Euphues ' presents himself to our view as an over-educated youth, whose brain was bursting to record itself on paper — a most necessary safety-valve. Mr. Crofts drew attention to the uncalled-for puns. To us moderns these puns seem poor frail things, but they bubble up in ' Lyly,' Spenser, Nash, Kyd, Greene, Peele, and even ' Shakespeare,' and are all of about the same average weakness. M. Jusserand and others remark the fondness of * Lyly ' for the gods of mythology. We remind them that Bacon was equally interested in the subject, as his ' Wisdom of the Ancients ' plainly shows. ' Lyly,' like Bacon, appreciated Atalanta, Orpheus, Vulcan, and many more of the ancient myths. In his epilogue to ' Sapho,' he refers to the Labyrinth of conceits, and wishes every one a thread to lead them out of it. Bacon in later life entitled one of his papers ' Filum Labyrinthi.' ' Lyly ' used the simile of the ensnaring with lyme- twigs that we also find in Nash, in Kyd, in Shakespeare, and in Bacon's letter to Greville (1594). In his prologue to ' Midas,' ' Lyly ' remarks : ' For plays no invention but breedeth satietie before noon.' Here we have the association of playwriting with invention. AVhen at a much later date Bacon wrote that his head was ' wholly employed about invention,' the use of the word in ' Midas ' may be some guide as to what he may have alluded. The • plebeii filius ' theory of authorship seems to break down before the very audacity of ' Eu])hueR.' He liad such a fine conceit of himself What ' plebeii tilius ' LYLY 91 in Tudor times dared have started his Hterary career by lecturing the Court ladies ? In 1871 Mr. W. L. Eushton published a valuable pamphlet called ' Shakespeare's Euphuism.' Another pamphlet may much more appropriately be written about Greene's Euphuism. Spenser, Greene, Peele, Marlowe, sold Bacon the use of their names, states the cipher story, and as nothing further appeared under the name Lyly until many years after 1579, it seems probable that Bacon preferred the protection of the name of a known person to the un- certainty of a mere nom de plume. That is the probable explanation of the style of Lyly being conspicuous in the prose works attributed to Greene. The absorbent sponge theory of Shakespeare's acqui- sition of knowledge has a great vogue. Yet Shake- speare, from his country associations, ought to have absorbed some valuable field knowledge of birds and animals. It is significant that he failed to do so, and that the natural history in ' Shakespeare ' is no better than it is in ' Lyly.' One feature, however, is constant to Bacon, Shakespeare, Peele, Lyly, Greene, and Mar- lowe — viz., the love of garden flowers. At p. 367 of 'Euphues and his England' Lyly writes of roses, violets, primroses, gilliflowers, carnations, and sweetjohns. At p. 455 he refers to bees making their hives in soldier's helmets, an idea afterwards developed in the beautiful poem written for the occasion of Sir Henry Lees' retirement (in 1590) from the position of Queen's Challenger at Tilt. This poem has been assigned to Peele and also to Marlowe, and begins : ' His golden locks time has to silver turned.' The second verse commences : * His helmet now shall make a hive for bees.' 92 TUDOR PROBLEMS * Endimion ' must have been an early play. It con- tains much to remind one of Bacon. For instance, it mentions the ebbing and flowing of the sea, and has the phrase 'love should creep,' which we find in Greene, in the 1623 Folio Shakespeare, and in one of Bacon's letters. One of the characters of * Endimion ' refers to himself as follows : ' I am an absolute microcosmus, a pettie world of myself.' This play, moreover, contains such aphoristic sentences as — ' Love knoweth neither friendship nor kindred.' ' Sleep is a binding of the senses, love a loosing.' ' Things past may be repented, not recalled.' Like Bacon, ' Lyly ' in ' Endimion ' alludes to the 'vulgar sort,' refers to 'swelling pride,' 'standing at a stay,' ' a thousand shivers,' ' an hundred eyes,' ' princely favours,' 'vainglorious.' He has the line, 'Always one, yet never the same,' absorbed by Shakespeare for his sonnet, ' Why write I still all one ever the same ?' ; also the phrase, * excellent and right like a woman,' which Shakespeare varied in ' King Lear ' : ' Her voice was soft, sweet, and low, An excellent thing in woman.' In all ' Lyly's ' work we have many examples of that triform construction of sentences common to Bacon, Greene, and Shakespeare. Here is one : * Virtue shall subdue affections, wisdom lust, friendship beauty.' In ' Midas ' was further material for the absorbent ' Shakespeare ' : ' Love ie a pastime for children, breeding nothing but folly,' is of kin with 'All friendship is feigning. All loving mere folly. LYLY 93 ' Though my soldiers be valiant, I must not therefore think my quarrels just,' is assumed to be material for ' Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrels just.' ' Woman in the Moon ' provided more Shakespearian raw material with ' AVhat makes my love to look so pale and wan V turned into * How pale and wan he looks !' Comedy of Errors, IV. iv. What if Bacon were deceiving, and these were only reforgings in his fine brain of the thoughts he recorded as ' Lyly ' ? No matter ; the pilgrimages of actor- managers and others to Stratford-on-Avon will probably last our day ! According to the cipher story, Bacon wrote : ' I have lost therein a present fame that I may out of any doubt recover it in our owne and other lands after manie a long yeare.' We fear the deceased Lord Chancellor was too sanguine. The mention of Lord Chancellor brings us to another feature of the ' Lyly ' works — that is to say, the use therein of legal terms, such as : ' Deed of gift,' ' statute merchant,' * bond,' ' withdraw the action,' ' accessory punished as principal,' ' conveyance,' 'join issue,' * arraigned as a riot because they clunged together in such clusters,' 'I refuse the executorship,' 'Liber tenens,' ' a freeholder.' Having assuredly tired our readers with these internal evidences, we pass to proofs of another kind. The Testimony of Gabriel Harvey and Others. In another chapter (* Spenser ') we give some account of the early association of Gabriel Harvey, the brilliant young Professor of Bhetoric, with young Bacon in 1579-80. 94 TUDOR PROBLEMS In 1589 a pamphlet was printed anonymously, entitled * Pappe with an Hatchet.' It concerned itself mainly with the Martin Marprelate dispute, but incidentally contained a rap at Harvey, then already engaged in an amusing skirmish with young Francis Bacon, battling under the names of Greene and Nash. Harvey, in the part of his 'Pierce's Supererogation' (1593) which is dated November, 1589, wrote : ' Pap-hatchet (for the name of thy good nature is pittyfully grovven out of request), thy old acquaintance in the Savoy when young Euphues hatched the eggs that his elder friends laid (surely Euphues was someway a pretty fellow : would God Lilly had always been Euphues and never Pap-hatchet) : that old acquaintance now somewhat straungely saluted with a new resem- blance is neither lullabied with thy sweet Papp nor scarre-crowed with thy sour hatchet.' In another part of ' Pierce's Supererogation,' dealing with the assaults upon him in the names of Greene, Lyly, and Nash, he lapses into verse : ' Aske not what Newes 1 that come to visit wood : My treasure is Three faces in one Hood : A chaungling Triangle : a turncoat rood. ♦ * ♦ * ♦ ' Three hedded Cerberus, wo be unto thee : Here lyes the onely Trey, and rule of Three : Of all Triplicities, the ABC Harvey goes on to say : ' Somebody oweth the three-shapen Geryon a greater duty in recognisance of his often promised curtesies ; and will not be found ungrateful at occasion. He were very simple that would feare a conjuring Hatchet, a rayling Greene, or a threatening Nash.' A little further on Harvey wrote : * These, these were the only men that I ever dreaded : especially that same odd man Triu Litteraru that for a linsey-woolsie wit and a cheverill conscience was A per se A.' LYLY 95 Keferring to this or a similar expression, ' Nash,' in * Pierce Pennilesse,' wrote : * A per se A. Passion of God ! how came I by that name ? My Godfather Gabriel gave it me, and I must not refuse it.' The name was originally given by Harvey to Bacon in the complimentary verses published in the ' Three Letters,' Harvey to Immerito, in 1580. We quote the line : ' Every one A per se A his terms and braveries in print,' Thus, the Harvey testimony very materially supports our view as to the true authorship of the ' Lyly ' works. Mr. Crawford, in the second volume of his ' Collec- tanea,' at p. 141, writing ironically about the ' Pappe with an Hatchet ' tract, states : ' Because the tract repeats over and over again the pet phrases and proverbs of John Lyly, and because its general style bears more than a passing resemblance to that author's, critics have assigned it to Lyly. Other circumstances seem to lend colour to the correctness of the attribution. But how easily the best men may err ! Things that seem are not the same (see Peele's " Old Wives' Tale "). The real author is Francis Bacon.' Many a true word has been spoken in a jest. Mr. Crawford only provides another instance. For he pro- ceeds to say that a — ' comparison of the pamphlet with Bacon's known work will yield evidence in his favour in abundance. For instance, Promus No. 909 (Bacon's " Promus ") : "The crowe of the belfry" ; and No. 536 reads, "Allow no swallow under thy roof." " Pappe with an Hatchet " dilates on both proverbs.' Again, that ' the tract quotes the Latin sentence, " Discite justitiam moniti et non temnere divos." This sentence,' writes Mr. Crawford, ' is from the " ^neid," vi. 620, and Bacon notes it, either fully or in part, three times in his "Promus," Nos. 58-436 and 1092.' Mr. 96 TUDOR PROBLEMS Crawford's comments may be supplemented by a few other indications of Bacon's authorship of the tract. The author was evidently a lawyer. This is betrayed by such sentences as ' Beware an action of the case,' ' Draw a conveyance' (deed), 'The common pleas at West- minster to take forfeitures.' Here, again, is a thoroughly Baconian sentence : * So well established, so wisely maintained, and so long prospering.' The author of ' Pappe with an Hatchet ' shared Bacon's love of apothegms. For he writes : ' Here is a fit time to squeeze them with an apothegm.' The author also held Bacon and Lyly's attitude towards atheism : ' What atheist more fool than says in his heart, "There is no God"?' Bacon's essay on Atheism has, ' The Scripture saith, " The foole hath said in his heart there is noe God." ' Henry Upchear (whoever he was), in verses prefixed to Greene's ' Menaphon ' (1589), wrote : ' Of all the flowers a Lillie one I loved, When labouring beauty brancht itself abroade, But now old age his glorie hath removed, And Greener objects are my eyes aboade.' The date of birth of the ' plebeii filius,' M.A., is guessed at 1554. He would resent the allegation of old age at thirty-five. The verse is quoted to show the association of Lyly and Greene in one compliment. In a chapter on ' Nash,' we seek to show how Bacon, writing under that name, discussed his method of mixing ' precepts of doctrine with delightful invention.' We find Lyly, as appears by the prologue to ' Campaspe,' when in later yeare (in or after 1596) performed by the boy actors at Blackfriars, actuated by the like intention : ' We have mixed mirth with counsell and description with delight.' To the devotees of Stratford-on-Avon we observe that Lyly in ' Campaspe,' like Spenser, Nash, and others, was familiar with the term, ' Shake the speare ' ; while in this LYLY 97 association it should be noted that correspondences between passages in ' Euphues ' and others in ' Hamlet ' are frequent. Mr. Rushton has pointed out several, such as the advice of Polonius to his son. We suggest that the man who wrote, 'When he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin,' had in mind the passage, ' Asiarchus spoyled himself with his own bodkin * (' Euphues,' First Part). Transcripts of two undated petitions of Lyly to Queen Elizabeth are of slight importance. They tell nothing inconsistent with Bacon's career as known to us, but we have no evidence that any such petitions were ever presented. They certainly show the Baconian charac- teristic of perseverance. The evidence of Ben Jonson as to the authorship of the ' Lyly ' works is necessarily slight. True, he said of Bacon that he had filled up all numbers and performed that in our tongue which may be compared or preferred either to insolent Greece or haughty Eome. His allusion to Lyly is in his verse prefixed to the Shakespeare Folio, 1623: ' Thou didst our Lilly outshine. Or sporting Kyd or Marlowe's mighty line.' Jonson would not have made an unfavourable com- parison between ' Shakespeare ' and any real author. It would have been unfair, and as it is not difficult to show that Kyd and Marlowe were other masks for Bacon, the true inference from Jonson's lines is that Bacon's dramatic development began as ' Lyly,' improved as * Kyd ' and 'Marlowe,' and reached its culmination as ' Shakespeare.' The dropping of the Lyly vizard was neatly accom- plished. At the end of ' Euphues, his England ' (1580), Euphues is mentioned as retiring to Silexedra (a stone seat). This we take to be a reference to Francis taking up his quarters, ' poor cell,' in that year at Gray's Inn. In 1586, under the vizard of Bright, Francis wrote 7 98 TUDOR PROBLEMS ' A Treatise of Melancholy.' In 1589 he wrote * Mena- phon ; or, Camillas Alarum to Slumbering Euphues in his Melancholie Cell at Silexedra ' (vizard Greene). The verses as to Lyly's old age have been quoted in a previous chapter. In 1590 a book published by Lodge was called ' Rosalynde : Euphues' Golden Legacy,' found after his death in his cell at Silexedra.' In 1591, under the vizard of Spenser, in 'Tears of the Muses,' is the line ' Our pleasant Willy, ah ! is dead of late.' It seems to be now tolerably certain that the Chapel children rehearsed the Lyly Court Comedies at a room within the walls of the dismantled Blackfriars Monastery, Avhere the various ' properties ' for use in the Court revels and interludes had been kept from the time of Edward VI. That Edward Vere Earl of Oxford, a poet, and * Lyly ' (doubtless a iiom de plume for Francis), had rooms at the monastery buildings, shows them to have been interested in the rehearsal of the performances. If this argument as to the Baconian authorship of the 'Lyly' works can be established, it shows the dramatic craftsman at the beijinnimj of his career Hard reading and study, methodical note-taking, continuous practice, continuous revision, indomitable industry from an early age, produced the genius which reached its highest point of expression in ' Shakespeare.' It also demon- strates another interesting fact — namely, that in Bacon's old age thoughts, registered in his brain during early manhood, came again to the surface. In his ' Life and Works of Bacon,' Mr. Spedding printed two short poems, which, after careful considera- tion, he accepted as having been written by Bacon towards the close of his life. The first contains the following lines : ' The world's a huhUe, and the life of a man Less lluin a sjum.' LYLY 99 The other poem ends • Good thoughts his only friends, his life a well-spent age, The earth his sober inn — a quiet joilgrimage.^ Bacon in his prayer in 1621 said : ' I have misspent my life in things for which I was least fit ; so as I may truly say my soul hath been a stranger in the courses of my pilgrimage. ' As 'Euphues' (First Part), at the age of twenty, Bacon had recorded : ' Our life is but a shadow, a warfare, a pil- grimage, a vapor, a bubble,' and that ' David said it is but a span long. See also : ' How brief the life of man Runs his erring pilgrimage, That the stretching of a span Buckles in his summe of age.' As You Like It, III. ii. CHAPTER X WATSON Let it be said at once that ' Thomas Watson ' is a bio- graphical myth. Nothing is known of him. His supposed biography has been compiled merely by inferences from the writings printed with his name as author. To these inferences the contents of two mare's-nests have been added. One, discovered by Mr. Hall and re- corded in the Athenceum for 1890, was that Watson was the same person as one '.Watsoon,' brother-in-law of Swift, a servant of a certain ' Cornwallis.' The assump- tion depended upon the correct reading of an old MS. letter to Burleigh of March 5, 1593, in which Mr. Hall thought he deciphered a statement that 'Watsoon' 'could derive twenty fictions and knaveries in a play which was his daily practyse and his living.' Mr. Ellis, in a letter to the Athenceum a few weeks later, pointed out that the word ' plott ' or ' plan ' had probably been misread as ' play,' inasmuch as no trace of a play by Thomas Watson had ever been found. The other probable mare's-nest is an entry said to have been discovered by that doubtful investigator, Mr. Collier, in the register of St. Bartholomew the Less — viz., * Sep- tember 26, 1592, Thomas Watson, gent, was buried.' It is suspicious that Collier found a similar entry in St. Bartholomew's register about Lyly — viz., ' 160G, 30th Novr. John Lyllie, gent, was buried.' The first 'Watson' publication was in 1581, and con- sisted of a translation from Greek into Latin of Sophocles' 100 WATSON 101 * Antigone,' together with a few Latin poems and four Themata. The first of the four Themata is written in Iambics, the second in Anapaestic Dimeters, the third in Sapphics, and the fourth in Choriambic asclepiadean verse. Surely here is presumptive evidence of a poet sStl practice. N-ext year (1582) came the 'Watson' publication, called f The Pas- sionate Century of Love,' in whidlithei -young- pljet exer- cised himself in expressing English verse in sonnet form. These sonnets numbered about one hundred in all ; eight of them are imitated from Petrarch, twelve from Serafina, four from Strozza, three from Firenzuola, and two each from Parabosco and Sylvius. What a range of careful reading in Italian poetical literature this betokens ! In addition he imitated four sonnets of the contemporary French poet Ronsard and two of Etienne Forcadel, another Frenchman also then living. In the glosse to the verses he indicates acquaintance with other poets — viz., the Italians Ariosto, Baptista Mantuanus, Poliziano ; the German Conradus Celtes ; and with the Greek writers Theocritus, Sophocles, Musseus, Aristotle, Homer, and ApoUonius. Of Latin authors, he quotes or borrows from Ovid, Cicero, Lucan, Seneca, Horace, Pliny, Martial, and Flaccus. One English poet had great attraction for him — namely, Chaucer. It is a suspicious circumstance that this old poet was also a great favourite with the writer of the * Spenser ' and ' Greene ' works claimed in the biliteral cipher to have been written by Bacon. In 1585 appeared, under the name 'Watson,' a trans- lation into Latin of Tasso's pastoral drama ' Amyntas.' Bacon's love of the pastoral form is shown in the ' Shep- heard's Kalendar ' (1580), in the ' Spenser ' ' Colin Clout ' (1595), in the pastoral play 'Arraignment of Paris,' and some of the Eglogues published in the name of Peele. In 1590 'Watson' used the pastoral form for an Eglogue upon the death of his friend Sir Francis Walsingham. 102 TUDOR PROBLEMS Another translation into Latin of Tasso's ' Aniyntas ' \vas made by ' Watson's ' friend Abraham P^'aunce, who was a barrister of Gray's Inn at the time Bacon was then resi- dent. This Fraunce had access to the ' Faerie Queene * two or three years before it was printed, as in his work called * Arcadian Rh<3torike ' (1588) are quotations from it. Od the assumption that Bacon's claim to authorship of the ' Faerie Queerie ' 'is true, this access was natural. Fraunce, moreover, like Bacon, was a close and intimate friend of the Sidney family. In 1586, in the name of ' Watson,' was published a translation into Latin of the short Greek poem by Coluthus called 'The Rape of Helen.* A lost translation of the same poem into English was, according to a Coxetian MS., attributed to ' Marlowe.' It will be remembered that in ' Marlowe's ' name was printed a translation from Lucan, and translations of Ovid's ' Amores,' and of the Hero and Leander poem of Musa3us, a long time after ' Marlowe's ' death. With Lucan, Ovid, and Mus^eus, * Watson ' was familiar. Of other classical poets well read by ' Watson ' we find Pliny drawn upon largely by ' Lyly,' Cicero by ' Greene,* * Homer,' and ' Virgil ' in the biliteral cipher — Virgil again in the ' Dido ' of ' Marlowe,' Seneca and others in the ' Shakespeare ' plays. In 1590 a number of Italian Madrigals were Englished by ' Watson ' and set to music by William Bird, who was a prominent Court musician. Tliat Bacon had a first-class knowledge of music is well shown in his acknowledged writings. The 'Tears of Fancie, or Love Disdained,' another series of sonnets, was the last effort attached to the name of ' Watson.' Mr. George Steevens, the Shakespeare Editor, thought the ' Watson ' better than the ' Shakespeare ' sonnets. Mr. Palgrave considered ' Watson ' a writer to whom fame has been singularly unjust. The year of publication of the 'Tears of Fancie' was 1592, and not 1593, as guessed by some critics. A later date is incon- WATSON 103 sistent with Bacon's decision to drop the name of 'Watson' and yet to retain the works in memory. On November 10, 1592, was entered in the register a book entitled ' Aminte Gaudea. Author Thorn. Watson. Londoniensi juris studioso.' It was prefaced by a Latin dedication to Sidney's sister, the Countess of Pembroke, by a writer printing the initials ' C. M.,' who deeply lamented 'Watson's' recent 'death.' This lament, which Bacon wrote as ' C. M.,' he followed up as ' Peele,' in honour of the Garter, 1593, with : ' To Watson, worthy many epitaphs. For his sweete poesie for Amintas teares.' Then as 'Nash' in 'Have with you the Saffron Walden ' he wrote, ' A Man he was that I dearly lov'd and honor'd, and for all things have left few his equals in England.' Bacon in this way perseveringly maintained attention to his ' Watson ' writings, which ceased to appear after the year 1592. Bacon's intimacy with the Sidney family was close and continuous. He lost a great friend and fellow-worker in Sir Philip. His panegyrics in the names of ' Spenser ' and ' Nash ' show this. Another great friend was Sir Francis Walsingham, Sidney's father-in-law, whose death was fitly lamented in the Watson Eglogue to Meliboeus, 1590. Sidney's sister Mary Countess of Pembroke, to whom the last Watson work was dedicated, was a talented writer and cousin of Francis. One can almost conjure up the friendly group of three ardent enthusiasts translating Garnier's plays, when published in collected form in French in 1586 : the Countess undertook 'Antony,' Abraham Fraunce ' Cleopatra,' and Bacon ' Cornelia ' (published in the name of ' Kyd'). The ' Shakespeare' Folio of 1623, comprising certain of Bacon's revised plays, was dedicated to the sons of the Countess. To return to the ' Watson ' writings. The biographers say that 'Watson' was in Paris in or before 1581, and that 104 TUDOR PROBLEMS he was educated at the University of Oxford. The first proposition depends upon a statement in the Eglogue to Walsingham, which runs : Tityrus (Thomas Walsingham) sings to Corydon (Wat- son) : ' Thy tunes have often pleas 'd mine eare of yore When milk-white swans did flock to heare thee sing Where Seane in Paris makes a double shore.' Francis was in Paris at various times during the periods 1576 to 1578-9 and 1582-3. Young Thomas Walsingham was heir to the family estates, and, compared to his uncle, Sir Francis Walsing- ham, was a rich man. He was twenty-one in 1589. If through his uncle's influence he was ever sent to Paris to learn French, he would have been a boy of sixteen, when young Francis was there in 1582-3. Young Thomas Wal- singham's friendship for Bacon seems tohavebeen exercised in another way — by his giving some refuge to Bacon's assistant, Marlowe, at the time he was being searched for under warrant from the Star Chamber in consequence of the libels on the wall of the Dutch cemetery. In addition to the references to the Sidney and Walsingham family in the * Watson ' works, there are references and dedications showing intimacy with Queen Elizabeth and her leading courtiers — the Earls of Essex, Arundel, Oxford, and Northumberland, Lord Chancellor Hatton and Lord Burleiofh. The relationship of Francis to the Queen and Robert Earl of Essex has already been discussed. Lords Burleigh, Arundel, and Oxford were high Ministers of State, and to the last-named Francis, in the name of ' Lyly,' had already dedicated one of his books. With regard to the allegation that ' Watson ' was educated at Oxford, it must be noticed that no person of that name has yet been identified as having belonged to any college there at a suitable date. The allegation is solely based upon the fact that a short Latin verse pre- WATSON 105 fixed to 'Tallies Love/ 1589 (a pamphlet published by Francis in the name of 'Greene'), is printed as by 'Thomas Watson, Oxon.' The use of the term ' Oxon ' was most probably owing to the fact that a Catholic Bishop of Lincoln, named Thomas Watson, educated at Cambridge, died in 1584 at Wisbeach Castle, where he had been in confinement for several years. This Bishop was author of several works, including a play called ' Absalom,' the MS. of which is or was in the possession of the Pembroke family at Penshurst. Bacon probably used the word ' Oxon ' to avoid any inference that Bishop Watson wrote the ' Watson ' poems. The internal evidence of the * Watson ' writings seems to confirm their Baconian origin. ' The Passionate Century of Love ' contains several distinctly Baconian phrases. Take one : ' But how bold soever I have been in turning out this my pettie poor stocke upon the open common of the wide world.' Take another : 'Homer in mentioning the swiftness of the winde maketh his verse to runne in posthaste all upon dactilus.' It will be remembered that Ben Jonson walked to Scotland about the year 1617, and in his conversations with the poet Drummond, of Hawthornden, is recorded that at his hither-coming Sir Francis Bacon had re- marked to Jonson, 'He loved not to see poesy go on other feet than poetical dactylus and spondeeus.' The following seems to be another : In one of the prefaces referred to, ' Watson ' wrote, 'Therefore if I rough-hewe my verse.' In Webster's Dictionary the example for ' rough-hewe ' is given from ' Shakespeare,' for ' rough-hewn ' from Bacon. We also find the word ' rough-hewe ' in the biliteral cipher story. 106 TUDOR PROBLEMS In the Ninth Sonnet of the * Passionate Century ' (1582) there is a reference to the ' marigold,' the favourite flower of Marguerite of Navarre. A similar reference is in Lyly's ' Euphues and his England,' and in the cipher story we learn of Bacon's unsuccessful love-affair with Marguerite, who was sister of the French King. The ' Passionate Century ' contains a number of sonnets on the subject of ' My Love is Past,' which would suitably follow the failure of the courtship by Francis of Marguerite in 1578. In the Fourth Sonnet is an exercise in the Greek figure of rhetoric, ' Anadiplosis,' one of those discussed in the 'Arte of English Poesie.' Mr. Rushton gives ex- amples of the use in * Shakespeare ' of twenty other of the figures of rhetoric explained in the 'Arte.' The Forty-seventh Sonnet is used bodily in the early play of ' The Spanish Tragedy/ written by Bacon, but fathered upon Kyd. The Fifty-third Sonnet deals with the subject of the Labyrinth of Crete, and the guiding thread by which it might be entered and quitted. Bacon, in several places in his acknowledged, and elsewhere in his ' vizard,' writings refers to this Labyrinth, which seems to have greatly impressed him. One of his unpublished tracts is entitled ' Filum Labyrinthi,' and it is evident that his scheme of literary production was upon Labyrinthine lines. In other places in the 'Watson' writings are to be found such Baconian expressions as ' winter's blast,' ' nipping frost,' ' swelling seas,' ' the vulgar sorte,' ' swell- ing pride,' ' sea of teares,' ' Titan,' ' hapless case,' 'extremest justice,' 'void of equity,' ' smokie sighs,' ' fickle fortune,' ' surging seas,' ' thousand cares.' ' The Tears of Fancie ' has the line, ' Go, idle rhymes, unpolished, rude and base,' which resembles the lines prefixed to the * Shepheard's Kalendar ' : ' Go little booke, thyself presents As one whose parent is unkent.' WATSON 107 In the •Arraignment of Paris' (1584), attributed to Peele, a variety of metres is employed. In the ' Shep- heard's Kalendar' Bacon (under the sobriquet of ' E. K.' in the glosse) mentions Theocritus, Virgil, Mantuanus, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Marot, Sanazasso, ' and also diverse other excellent, both Italian and French, poets, whose footing this author everywhere followeth.' 'Spenser' and ' Watson ' therefore adopted like methods of acquiring facility in verse-making. As Spenser was a ' vizard ' for Bacon, so it is fairly evident was 'Watson.' At an early stage in his development Bacon had mastered the mysteries of style. ' Style,' said he in the 'Arte of English Poesie,' 'is as the subject matter.' It is most interesting to see the early evidence in ' Watson ' of the readiness with which he could change his style. In the Eglogue to Walsingham we have : Corydon : ' But I must sorrow in a lower vaine, Not like to thee whose words have wings at will ; An humble style befits a simple swaine. My muse shall pipe but on an oaten quill.' In another place : ' But Tityeus enough, leave a while ; Stop mourning springs, drie up thy drearie line. And blithely entertain my altered stile.' The ' Watson ' writings are very evidently the work of Francis Bacon ; much of it early work, but none the less important. He and he alone was the law student of London who had at an early date visited Paris, and was the courtier whose association with the Queen and her chief Ministers was so close and intimate. He it was who had perfected himself in the literature of ancient Greece and Eome, of Italy, France, and England, and who had taken all knowledge for his providence. Suffering is considered by many necessary to the making of a truly great poet. That Francis suffered 108 TUDOR PROBLEMS and was baffled in his eflforts through life we know fuU weU. He was unhappy in his first love. He was refused due recognition as the eldest (because base begotten) son of the Queen. He had great difficulty in preserving his health, in maintaining a position for himself, and even in avoiding treachery and death. That he alternately desired and shunned death can be gleaned from his life history as it becomes more open to us. The Forty-fourth Sonnet in the ' Tears of Fancie,' published in the name of ' Watson,' has therefore significance : ' Long have I sued to fortune, death and love, But fortune, love nor death will deign to hear me. I fortune's frown, death's spite, love's horror prove, And must in love despairing live, I feare me.* CHAPTER XI PEELE Geoege Peele, born about 1558, was a free scholar of Christ's Hospital, of which his father was clerk. He was at Oxford from 1571 until 1579, when he graduated M.A. at Christ Church. In Michaelmas of that year he was in London. By 1581 he was married and settled there. In 1583 he arranged the production of two Latin plays. He died between 1596 and 1598. The biliteral cipher story states that Peele, for valuable consideration in money, sold to Bacon the use of his name as the supposed author of certain of Bacon's plays and verses. This notice will accordingly be confined to the plays and verses either published in Peele's name or at a subsequent date expressly ascribed to his authorship. They are : PLAYS. 1. 'The Arraignment of Paris: a Pastoral presented before the Queen's Majestie by the Children of her Chappell.' Imprinted (anonymously) 1584. 2. 'Edward I.' Printed in 1593, with the following words at the end : * Yours by George Peele, Master of Arts in Oxenford.' 3. ' The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe with the Tragedie of Absalom. As it hath been divers times plaied on the stage. Written by George Peele. 1599.' 4. • " The Old Wives' Tale." A pleasant conceited Comedie played by the Queen's Majestie's players. Written by G. P. 1595.' VERSES. 1. 'The Device of the Pageant borne before Woolstan Dixie, Lord Mayor, on 29th Oct., 1585. Done by George Peele, Master of Arts in Oxforde.' 109 no TUDOR PROBLEMS 2. ' The Device of the Pageant borne before Lord Mayor Webbe, 29th Oct., 1591, by G. Peele, Maister of Arts in Oxforde.' 3. ' Speeches to the Queen at Theobalds, 10th May, 1591 ' — initialed ' G. P.' at end of the MS. 4. ' A Farewell. Entituled to the famous and fortunate GeneralU of our English forces : Sir John Norris and Syr Francis Drake, Knights, and all theyr brave and resolute followers. Whereunto is annexed : A Tale of Troy . . . Doone by George Peele, Maister of Artes in Oxforde. 1589.' 5. ' An Eglogue Gratulatorie. Entituled to the right honorable and renowned Shepheard of Albion's Arcadia : Robert Earle of Essex and Ewe, for his welcome into England from Portugall. Done hy George Peele, Maister of Arts in Oxon. 1589.' 6. * Polyhymnia, describing the honorable Triumph at Tylt on the 17th of November last past , . . With Sir Henrie Lea his resignation of honour at Tylt '. . . 1590.' On the back of the title is : 'Polyh)nii- nia. Entituled with all duty to the Right Honorable Lord Compton of Compton. By George Peele, Maister of Artes in Oxforde.* 7. ' The Honor of the Garter. Displaied in a Poeme gratulatorie : Entituled to the worthie renowned Earle of Northumberland. . . . By George Peele, Maister of Artes in Oxenforde.' No date. 8. 'Anglorum Feriae. Englande's Hollydayes celebrated the 17th of Novemb. last 1595. ... By George Peele, Mr. of Arte in Oxforde.' Of the four plays ascribed to Peele, one Is a pastoral, another an early chronicle history, the third a more modern development of the religious play, and the fourth an interlude or farce. 'The Arraignment of Paris' (which was the pastoral play) was, according to Mr, Fleay, performed before the Queen, by the children of her Chappell, probably on February 5, 1581. As a pastoral, it seems in natural sequence to the * Shepheard s Kalendar,' published anonymously in 1579. It makes use of two of the names — Colin and Hobbinol — of personages in the ' Kalendar,' and w^as perhaps one of the first plays that Bacon wrote. Other two may have been the ' Woman in the Moon ' and 'Alexander and Campaspe,* both subsequently printed and ascribed to ' Lyly.' The ' Woman in the Moon ' seems to have been Bacon's first essay in blank verse. ' Alexander and Campaspe ' was reproduced at the PEELE 111 Blackfriars Theatre by the boy players in 1596 or later. In the prologue used at the Blackfriars Theatre the author declared his intention of ' mixing mirth with counsel and discipline ivith delight, thinking it not amisse m the same garden to soiv pot-herhs that we set Jiowers.' This is one of many indications that the * Lyly ' plays represent early dramatic efforts by Francis, written for performance by the boy actors, mostly those known as the ' children of Her Majesty's ChappelL' Concerning ' The Arraignment of Paris,' Professor Ward wrote that its versification was various and versatile. Mr. Bullen noted that ' rhymed lines of fourteen syllables and rhymed lines of ten syllables predominate ; but that there are passages — notably Paris^s oration before the Council of the Gods — which show that Peele wrote a more musical blank verse than had yet been written by any English poet.' Francis was evidently trying his hand at various forms of versification. The internal evidence of his authorship of this play is considerable. First, it is common ground that, whether or no Kyd, while copying law drafts, became an expert lawyer, and whether or no Shakespeare became equally conversant with law by occasional visits to the Stratford County Court and subsequent gossip with London barristers, no one has ever asserted that Peele was a lawyer. Yet ' The Arraignment ' bristles with legal jargon. Bead Mercury's speech in Act III., Scene ii., or the whole of Act IV., Scene i., in proof of this. In Act I., Scene i., are these lines : ' Why then Pomona with her fruit comes time enough I see, Come on awhile ; with country store, like friends we venter forth.* A correspondent of ' Baconiana ' (1904), with reference to the passage in the ' Epistle Dedicatorie ' of the First Folio Shakespeare (1623) — viz., 'Country hands reach foorth milke, creame, fruits or what they have ' — 112 TUDOR PROBLEMS noted a parallel phrase from a letter written by Bacon to Sir George Yilliers : ♦ And now, because I am in the country, I will send you some of my country fruits' (1616). According to Mr. Begley in ' Is it Shakespeare V at p. 113, the Folio passage referred to is taken from the dedicatory epistle to Vespasian, prefixed to Pliny's ' Natural History.* Messrs. Seccombe and Allen, in * The Age of Shakespeare,' affirm that ' Lyly ' drew his similes largely from Pliny's ' Natural History.' If ' Lyly ' was only a pen-name for young Francis, the Pliny dedi- cation would naturally become fixed on his mind at an impressionable age. Another indication of common authorship is to be found at Act I., Scene i., in the speech by Flora. Many of the favourite flowers which are named in Bacon's ' Essay of Gardens,' and in * Winter's Tale,' are also mentioned in Flora's speech. Nor must the significance of the eulogy of Queen Eliza- beth with which * The Arraignment ' concludes be omitted : * Long live the noble Phoenix of our age. Our Fair Eliza, our Zabet fair !' The fathering upon Peele of * The Arraignment ' by Bacon, writing in the name of ' Nash ' in the preface to ' Menaphon ' (1589), was in accordance with his scheme of dissimulation. The play of ' Edward L' is also ascribed to Peele. His name is placed at the end. It is one of the series of chronicle plays, which, in the words of Mr. J. A. Symonds (in * Shakespeare's Pre- decessors '), are peculiar to English history. Says Mr. Symonds : ' We know quite \vell that Shakespeare did not make, but found, the chronicle play in full existence. Yet he and his humbler fellow- workers together under- took the instruction of the people in their history.' It is one of the difficulties of the Shakes])eare authorshi]) cult PEELE 113 that, owing to Stratford considerations, the ' deserving man ' (as the Burbages called him) has to be dissociated from early states of the chronicle plays. The simpler course of accepting the fact that he was only one of several masks for Francis Bacon would enable the order of production of the chronicle plays to be the more readily arrived at. Professor Courthope has now concluded that the play of ' The Troublesome Reign of King John,' printed (1591) anonymously, was written by the same author who wrote the other great plays in the First Folio Shakespeare. This adds probability to the assumption that the same author wrote the ' Edward I.' (1593). But he never seems to have troubled to polish this play, and in subse- quent editions it was not materially altered. Mr. Symonds thought that ' Edward I.' marked a consider- able advance on ' The Troublesome Beign of King John, ' and that Marlowe s touch ' transfigured this department of the drama ' by the production of ' Edward 11. ' True, it was not entered in the Stationers' Register until July 6, 1593, Marlowe being then dead; but as it was title-paged to Marlowe w^hen printed in 1594, we are asked to accept it, not as the improved work of the more mature Francis Bacon, but as the inspiration of the genius of Marlowe in the year 1590. Over the anonymous play of * Edward III.,' printed in 1596, a glorious literary battle has raged. Ulrici and others have claimed it vigorously as the work of Shakespeare ; others as ener- getically have denied it. Mr. Symonds summed up the situation with the supposition that before 1596 there was another playwright superior to Greene, Peele, Nash, and Lodge, but not superior to Shakespeare and Marlowe — ' one, moreover, who had deliberately chosen for his model the Shakespearian style of lyricism in its passage through the influence of Marlowe.' shade of Francis Bacon ! This ' vowed and oft-experimented secrecie ' of yours has caused sore trouble to the literary critic ! 8 114 TUDOR PROBLEMS You as ' Nash ' in ' Piers Pennilesse ' (1592) commented with pride on your scheme of teaching history by the chronicle plays. As * Hey wood ' in 1G12, twenty years later, you reviewed the result and pronounced it good. We do not, O shade ! think it needful to hunt for much internal evidence of your authorship of ' Edward I., further than to notice your legal jokes and your facility in the language of Italy, both ancient and modern ; but we should like to know what was your little jeu d'effj^rit in Scene xii. We know that in ' Summer's Last Will and Testa- ment,' played in the autumn of 1592, you jested about ' Saint Francis,' a holy saint, and never had any money ; but why in 'Edward I.' (1593) do you drag in 'Saint Francis ' five times, and then allude to a breakfast of ' calf s head and bacon ' f ' David and Bethsahe ' (1599). This play may have been written during the early part of 1593, when Francis was nervous and afraid of dying from the plague, and when he wrote under the pen-name of ' Nash ' the religious homily, ' Christ's Tears over Jerusalem. ' Attention is drawn to the speeches of Solomon and David in Scene xv. of this play. ' It would content me, father, first to learn How the Eternal framed the firmament, Which bodies lend their influence by fire. And which are filled with hoary winter's ice, What sign is rainy and what star is fair.' Again : O Thou great God, ravish my earthly sprite, That for the time a more than human skill May feed the organons of all my sense.' 'David and Bethsabe ' was not printed until 1599, a period nearer the maturity of Bacon's literary power. It was conveniently fathered upon the then deceased Peele. PEELE 115 'Old Wives Tale' {U^^Y The 'Old Wives' Tale,' printed in 1595, appears to have been acted by the Queen's players. The date of production is put by Mr. Fleay at about 1590. Its title was a favourite expression with ' Lyly.' Its precise con- nection with Elizabethan drama may be ascertained some day. It brought upon the theatre stage some portion of the Harvey -Nash controversy. 'Nash,' in one of his anti-Harvey writings, uses and parodies two lines of Harvey's 'Encomium Lauri,' printed in 1580. In the ' Old Wives' Tale ' another hexameter is used : ' Oh that I might — but I may not, woe to my destiny therefore.' Bacon as ' Nash ' in the preface to ' Menaphon ' (1589) ridiculed certain verses by Dr. Stanyhurst. As ' Peele ' he did the same in this play. Mr. Fleay surmised that some of the outlandish names, such as Polemackero Placidus (Polly, make a rope, lass), were hits at the Harvey family and the father's trade of ropemaker. Mr. Dodsley drew attention to the fact that during all the Harvey-Nash controversy Peele was never men- tioned. We venture to infer that Harvey knew that ' Nash ' and ' Peele ' were merely different masks for his young friend Francis. The Poetical Works attributed to 'Peele.' Dealing now with the verses to which Peele's name is attached, we have no notion whether Peele himself was some sort of poet or not. Perhaps he was. Judging, however, by external evidence, it may be concluded that Francis, and not Peele, wrote the two Lord Mayor's Pageants. The ability of young Francis to turn out a masque or write speeches for a tilt-yard or other ceremony seems to have been taken for granted. These Lord Mayors were rich Aldermen, married to two sisters. 116 TUDOR PROBLEMS From the Dixie Pageant of 1589 is the line : ' The wrathful storm of winter's rage doth bide.' ' Winter's rage ' was rather a favourite expression with Francis. In the Webbe Pageant of 1591 are the following Hnes : 1. 'And made the silver moon and heaven's bright eye.' 2. ' Enrolled in register of eternal fame.' 3. ' As bright as is the burning lamp of heaven ' — which point to Baconian authorship. ' A Farewell to Sii' John Norris and Sir Francis Drake' (1589). This was doubtless written by Bacon. At the back of the title are the arms of Queen Elizabeth, which he would have permission to use on such an occasion. The dedication and the first three lines of the verse furnish good internal proof of his authorship. Bacon in his own name and those of his masks is to be trusted to use the term ' swelling ' in association with either seas or waves. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth lines are quite Shakespearian. They reminded Mr. Dyce of Othello's * Farewell to War.' They also recall part of the Hamlet soliloquy. Later on we once more have — 'The eternal lamp of heaven, lend us light.' The author concludes with another high-pitched tribute to the Queen. Francis knew two things : first, that he was financially supported by ' her princely liberality '; secondly, that in praise of the Queen he could not lay the paint on too thick to please the vain old autocrat. ' The Tale of Troy,' by parity of reasoning, must also have been written by Francis. It was claimed to be an early work, and bears internal evidence of composition at PEELE 117 the period when he was partly obsessed by the pastoral and Chaucerian style in which he wrote the ' Shepheard's Kalendar.' He shows the aristocratic familiarity with hawking, which Bacon, according to Osborn, most thoroughly possessed : ' As falcon wonts to stoop upon his prey.' ' An Eglogue Gratulatorie' (1589). The Earl of Essex had been to Lisbon on his own account, against the wish of the Queen, having preceded Norris and Drake. Elizabeth wrote to Knollys and Drake that if Essex had reached the fleet, they were to send him back safely (see Devereux, * Lives of the Earls of Essex '). Essex was assured of a friendly reception on his return. The ' Eglogue ' is also in the Chaucerian style, but begins with a line from Ovid's * Amores,' Book II., verse 1. Bacon as ' Marlowe ' translated the ' Amores ' of Ovid. His 'Venus and Adonis,' the first-fruits of 'Shake- speare's ' invention, was also prefaced by a line from the 'Amores,' book i., verse 15. The poet explains why he could not include Essex in the ' Farewell ' poem. As Essex was coming back in full favour with the Queen, Francis evidently thought it desirable to explain matters a little : ' But now returned to royalize his fame.' This gives indication of the hopes that Francis then had of Essex succeeding to the throne. He had the same hope in 1596 (see Spenser, 'View of Ireland '), in a refer- ence to Essex, upon whom ' our last hopes now rest. ' The last verse contains a line which is distinctly Baconian : ' And evening air is rheumatic and cold.' The Peele writings show that their author was acquainted with the works of Virgil, Pliny, Horace, 118 TUDOR PROBLEMS Juvenal, Cicero, Plautus, Ariosto, Du Bartas, Chaucer, Gower, and Holinshed. A careful comparison of the acts and life of Peele as known to us, with the plays and verses ascribed to him, and a study of the internal evidence, support the asser- tion of the cipher story that the works in Peele's name were written by Bacon. EARL OF LEICESTER. Oh. 1588, aged 55. To fiicc page 119. CHAPTER XII GREENE Until the life of Robert Greene, asserted to be written in cipher in certain printed works of Francis Bacon, is de- ciphered, attempts to identify the man under whose name Francis vizarded some of his earHer writings must neces- sarily be tentative only. In Queen Elizabeth's household accounts for the period 1558-69 mention is made of pay- ments to one Robert Greene, the Court Fool. It may have been a son of this man who was a choir-boy of St. Paul's, and who, in 1566-7, according to the ' Old Cheque-Book of the Chapel Royal ' {Camden Society's publications), was made one of the eight choristers of Her Majesty's Chapel. These youths were lodged at the Court, sang the services at Royal worship, and, as other part of their duties, acted in plays and interludes for the amusement of the Court. The plays appear to have been rehearsed in a room about 60 feet by 20 feet, forming part of the disused monastery of Blackfriars, outside the London walls. This monastery was very suitable for the purpose. It was protected by walls and four gates, and, moreover, being situate within the verge of the Court, was under the jurisdiction of the Lord Steward of the Royal House- hold. After the Friars were suppressed, and certainly during the reign of Edward VI., it was in charge of the Master of the Revels, and the apparel and furniture for the Court masques and revels were kept there. It seems to have been here that young Vere Earl of Oxford, and young Francis, under the incognito of *Lyly,' had rooms, 119 120 TUDOR PROBLEMS and where Francis could arrange and rehearse the per- formances ot" his early plays and Court comedies, prob- ably ' the studies of greater delight than the law,' to which his letter to Burleigh of September, 1580, refers. As the boys of the Chapel grew towards manhood they had, of course, to leave. When young Greene left on this account he appears to have joined St. John's College as a sizar in November, 1575, where, in return for his meals, board, and tuition, he would render the usual ser- vices required from sizars or serving-scholars. Francis was at Trinity College, Cambridge, at the same period, and would have seen the youth Greene at Court. Greene took his M.A. in 1583, the degree, however, being no evidence of scholarship. From the Chapel Royal records it appears that a Robert Greene, who seems to have been the same person, and by that date back in London, was made sub-dean. This would bring him into some position of authority over the boys of Her Majest3'^'s Chapel. Robert Greene first appeared in connection with litera- ture in 1583, when a tale, entitled ' Mamillia,' was pub- lished, with his name on the title-page. This tale was entered S.B. without author's name in 1580, when Francis was back from his tour abroad. The date of publication (1583) coincides with the year of return from his long second tour through the States of Europe. That Francis visited Italy and Spain, France, Germany, Poland, and Denmark, may be gathered from a work under the ' Robert Greene ' ascription, entitled, 'A Notable Discovery of Cozenage' (1591). Going back to the real Robert Greene, it may be premised that a University education, coupled with ability to sing the sacred services, was sufficient quali- fication for appointment to one of the many vicarages then available through the dis})OSsession of the Catholic priests. On June 19, 1584, one Robert Greene, no doubt our Greene, was given the Vicarage of ToUisbur}-, in Essex. This living was attached to estates given by the GREENE 121 Queen to Walter, first Earl of Essex, but which had again passed to her control. Greene's services to Francis would sufiiciently account for a method of reward in frequent use by the Queen. She once gave a vicarage to Tarlton, the jester. Greene resigned the living in February, 1584-5. His training as an actor may have occasioned a call for his services as one of the troop of actors of Leicester's company who went abroad in 1585. From 1583 to 1591 a series of tales, translations from Italian pamphlets, poems, and plays, were printed under the ascription 'Robert Greene.' In the company of actors abroad in 1585 and 1586 Greene is identified as the one called ' Robert the Parson.' A few years later a depreciated personal appearance may have accounted for his being called, in one of the Marprelate tracts, ' the red-nosed minister.* Many of the tales, pamphlets, and poems are included in the list attached to the chapter (hereafter) on ' Eternizing.' The tales, translations, and poems are mostly dedicated to lords and ladies of the Court, with whom Francis would be on terms of intimacy. Besides this wealth of elegant light literature, a group of serious tracts, known as the Repentance series, are title-paged to ' Greene,' and the name in one form or other has become associated with the following plays : FIRST PBINTED 1. 'Selimus' 1594 2. ' Orlando Furioso ' - 1594 3. ' Looking Glass for London ' - . - - 1594 4. 'Friar Bacon' ...--- 1594 5. ' Alphonsus, King of Arragon ' - - - 1597 6. 'James IV. of Scotland' - - - - 1598 7. ' Pinner of Wakefield ' - - - - - 1599 All the above were published after the actor Greene's death, and some were first printed anonymously. Let us note what some of the literary critics had to say of these plays. 122 TUDOR PROBLEMS Professor Brown affirmed that '"Orlando Furloso" pointed the way to "Lear" and "Hamlet;"' that ' Friar Bacon ' preceded Shakespeare's use of the super- natural ; that the fairy framework of * James IV. ' was followed by the ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' ; and that ' James IV.' is the finest Elizabethan historical play out- side Shakespeare, and worthy to be placed on a level with Shakespeare's earlier style. In style, again (thought Professor Brown), Greene is father of Shakespeare. Tieck, a German critic, considered the ' Pinner of Wakefield ' to be one of Shakespeare's juvenile produc- tions. The critics of style think they find Greene's handiwork in certain of the Shakespeare plays. Ulrici said that ' Pericles ' and ' Arden of Feversham ' were composed in Greene's style. R. G. White thought Greene part author of 'Taming of the Shrew.' T. W. White assigned to Greene the whole of ' Love's Labour's Lost ' and ' Comedy of Errors,' and parts of ' Henry VI.' and • Winter's Tale.' While the later style of the vizard ' Greene ' approx- imated to that still later writing which is ascribed to * Shakespeare,' so the earlier style approximated to that of the earlier vizard, ' Lyly.' Harvey called ' Greene ' ' The Ape of Euphues.' The Euphuism present in the earlier works ascribed to Shakespeare is to a still larger extent employed in the early works of ' Greene.' One can understand a great literary prodigy expressly de- veloping different styles of writing to suit his subject matter, but not that another person could acquire and use such styles by a mere effort of imitation. Shake- speare is assumed to have been able to imitate Greene, Marlowe, Lyly, Spenser, or Peele at will, which seems impossible. On the vizard question the researches and comments of other critics have a valuable bearing. Mr. Edmund Gosse in an essay in Grosart's ' Spenser ' wrote : GREENE 123 * It is pretty certain that Robert Greene had be- come acquainted with the bucohc romances of the Itahans while he was traveUing in the South of Europe. He was in Italy in 1583, and certainly under foreign influence in the composition of his " Morando." ' We now know that Francis, who used ' Greene ' as vizard, was in the South of Europe in 1582, and prob- ably in 1583. Again Mr. Gosse : ' Without it [Euphues] the novels of Greene would scarcely have existed. We reach the extreme confines of pastoral in "Penelope's Web" and " Ciceronis Amor." ' In his verse he is curiously at one with the " Shepheard's Kalendar." ' So we see that, according to this sound critic, ' Greene ' could write like both ' Lyly ' and * Spenser,' while other critics detect Greene's handiwork in certain ' Shakespeare ' plays. Wonderful, on any other assump- tion than that the writings were all by Francis, visored under these names ! Large as the literary production was, Francis was well aware that this splitting up of his writings under different names made the total look larger. In his acknowledged writings there is a passage as to the effects of subdivision, M. Jusserand, writing of Greene, states : ' Learned he was, versed in the Greek, Latin, French, and Italian tongues.' So was Francis Bacon. Mr. H. C. Hart, in Notes and Queries, remarked that ' Greene was a versatile genius.' So was Francis Bacon. ' Proverbial philsophy is unusually rampant in Greene's method,' says Mr. Hart. So it was in Bacons method. Mr. Hart shows that from Bowes' translation (1586) of Primaudaye's * French Academy,' * Greene ' made long excerpts. He says the chapter on ' Fortune ' (except one passage) is virtually annexed by Greene in ' Tritameron,' second part, 1587. Mr. Hart finds the excepted passage 124 TUDOR PROBLEMS used in the play of ' Tamlmrlaine,' printed anonymously in 1590, but posthumously ascribed to Marlowe. This points strongly to the use by one writer of different portions of the book for different purposes. That 'Greene' in 'Menaphon,' printed 1589, quoted from ' Tamburlaine,' not then printed, again points to single authorship. The writer of the 'Greene ' works was a lawyer. The following instances of legal phraseology go far to estab- lish this contention : ' Mark the words, 'tis a lease parol to have and to hold ' (' Looking Glass for England '). ' This lease, this manor, or this patent sealed ' (' James IV.'). ' I have left thee by my last Will and Testament only heir and sole executor of all my lands and movables, yet with this proviso.' ' Neither is the defendant overthrown at the first plea of the plantiff' (' Mamillla,' second part). ' The lawyers say the assumpsit is never good where the partie gives not something in consideration ' (' Never too Late'). Turning once again to the ' Cheque-Book of the Chapel Royal,' it will be found there recorded that Robert Greene, the sub-dean, died on July 10, 1592, at Abdye, an obscure vicarage in Norfolk. Francis, who had dropped his vizard of ' Watson ' in the early part of the year, conceived this to be an excel- lent opportunity of giving up his vizard of ' Greene.* The frequent changing of pen-names was a rule of the * Rosicrucian Brotherhood ' (formed some years later). Taking advantage of the obscurity of Greene's death, Francis proceeded to * die ' in amusing fashion. The pamphlets by which this was accomplished, ' Greene's Groatsworth of Wit,' ' Greene's Vision,' and the * Repentance of Robert Greene,' were all entered S. R. subsequent to July 10, 1592. GREENE 125 According to these pamphlets Greene makes himself out to have heen a licentious vagabond, and writes an elaborate apology for his life, urging others to take warning from his example, and improve their own conduct. We quote the words, putting in italics a few which seem equivocal : ' But however my life hath beene let my repentant end be a generall example to all the youth in England to obey their parentes to flie whoredome drunkenness swearing blaspheming contempt of the word and such grevous and grosse sinnes, least they bring their parents heads with sorrow to their graves and leaste (with mee) they be a blemish to their kindred and to their posteritie for ever.' Yet, when we examine the few contemporary descriptions of Greene, we find the witnesses as respectfully complimen- tary of him as Gabriel Harvey, the brilliant young Cam- bridge Lecturer, tuas oflmmerito (' Two Letters of Notable Contents ' ) . This is what Chettle said (' Kind Hearts Dream, 1592) : ' A man of indifferent yeares, of face amiable, of body well proportioned, his attire after the habit of a scholar- like gentleman only his hair was somewhat long.' In Greene's 'Funeralls' (1594), E. B. says: ' Greene pleased the eies of all that lookt upon him.* * * -;;- * * ' For judgment Jove for learning deepe he still Apollo seemde For fluent tongue for eloquence, men Mercury him deemde For curtesie suppose him' Guy or Guyons somewhat lesse His life and manners though I would I cannot halfe expresse Nor mouth nor mind nor Muse can halfe declare His life his love his laude so excellent they were.' Other things being equal, these encomiums would accord with a fair description of young Francis Bacon. What Harvey said to the contrary was only part of the collaborated joking in which Harvey took a full 126 TUDOR PROBLEMS share. Harvey pretended that he was ' altogether un- acquainted with the man.' That Francis Bacon decided in 1592 to drop light literature, and let his ' Greene ' vizard die dramatically in the public eye, has some support from his letter to Lord Burleigh, which Mr. Spedding ascribes to this date : * Lastly I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends, for I have taken all knowledge to be my province ; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous dis- putations, confutations, and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded con- clusions and profitable inventions and discoveries ; the best state of that province. This whether it be curiosity or vain glory, or nature or (if one take it favourably) philantrophia is so fixed in my mind as it cannot be removed. And I do easily see that place of any reason- able countenance doth bring commandment of more wits than of a mans own which is the thing I greatly affect. . . . And if your lordship cannot carry me on, I will not do as Anaxagoras did, who reduced himself with con- templation into voluntary poverty ; but this I will do : I will sell the inheritance that I have and purchase some lease of quick revenue, or some office of gain that shall be executed by deputy and so give over all care of service, and become some sorry bookmaker or a true pioneer in that mine of truth which (he said) lay so deep.' This piece of autobiography was followed up in September with the pamphlet 'Greene's Vision,' which gives us further insight into his state of mind, already much disturbed by the Plague then raging in London. In the ' Vision ' he proceeds to tell how in a discon- tented humour ' I sat me down upon my bedside and began to cal to remembrance what fond and wanton lines nad past my pen, how I had bent my course to a wrong snore, as GEEENE 127 beating my brains about such vanities as were little profitable, sowing my seed in the sand and so reaping nothing but thornes and thistles.' He then prints an * Ode of the Vanity of Wanton Writings.' Proceeding, he writes : ' After I had written this Ode a deeper insight of my follies did pearce into the center of my thoughtes, that I felt a passionate remorse, discovering such perticuler vanities as I had soothed up with all my forepassed humors, I began to consider that that Astrea, that virtue, that metaphisicall influence which maketh one man differ from an other in excellence being I meane come from the heavens, and was a thing infused into man from God, the abuse whereof I found to be as prejudicial as the right user thereof was profitable, that it ought to be employed to wit, not in setting out a goddesse but in setting out the praises of God ; not in discovering of beauty but in discovering of vertues ; not in laying out the platformes of love, nor in telling the deepe passions of fancy but in persuading men to honest and honorable actions which are the steps that lead to the true and perfect felicity : . . . These premises drive me into a maze especially when I considered that wee were borne to profit our country not only to pleasure ourselves : then the discommodities that grew from my vaine pamphlets, began to muster in my sight : then I cald to minde how many idle fancies I had made to passe the Presse, how I had pestered gentle- men's eyes and mindes with the infection of many fond passions rather infecting them with the allurements of some inchanted Aconiton than tempored their thought with any honest Antidote. . . .' Then follows a very beautiful prayer, concluding : * And so shadow me with the wings of thy grace, that my minde being free from all sinfull cogitations I may for ever keepe my soul an undefiled member of thy church, and in faith love feare humblenesse of heart, prayer and dutiful obedience shew myself regenerate and a reformed man from my former follies.' 128 TUDOR PROBLEMS This prayer is given in full in a later chapter. ' Greene ' next proceeds to describe a vision of a visit from the poets Chaucer and Gower. These poets discuss the merits of Greene's work, and after certain quotations, ' How saiest thou Gower quoth Chaucer to these sen- tences ? are they not worthie grave eares and necessary for younge mindes ? is there no profit in these pi-inciples ; is there not flowers amongst weedes and sweet aphorisms hidden amongst effeminate amours ? Are not these worthie to eternize a mans fame and to make the memorial of him lasting ?' After the introduction of one or two tales, Gower makes a speech, in the course of which he says : ' Then Greene give thyself to write either of humanity and as TuUie did set down thy minde de offciis, or els of Morall virtue and so be a profitable instructor of manners : doe as the Philosophers did, seeke to bring youth to virtue with setting down Axiomes of good livmg and doe not persuade young gentlemen to folly by the acquaint- ing themselves with thy idle workes. I tell thee bookes are companions and friends and counsailors, and therefore ought to bee civill honest and discreet least they corrupt with false doctrine rude manners and vicious livini; : Or els penne something of natural philosophie. Dive down into the Aphorismes of the Philosophers and see what nature hath done and with thy pen paint that out to the world : let them see in the creatures the mightinesse of the Creator, so shalt thou reape report worthy of memorie.' Next follows a vision of Solomon, who counsels the study of Divinity — the true wisdom. Greene winds up the pamphlet with the remark that he found he had been in a dream : ' Yet gentlemen when I entered into the consideration of the vision and called to minde not only the counsaile of Gower, but the persuasions of Solomon : a sudaine feare tainted every limme and I felt a horror in my con- science for the foUyes of my Penne : whereupon as in GREENE 129 my dreame, so awoke, I resolved peremptorilie to leave all thoughts of love and to apply my wits as neere as I could to seeke after wisdome so highly commended by Solomon.' Thus in the cases of Bacon and ' Greene ' the year 1592 sees them both embarked upon 'vast contemplative ends.' In working out Bacon's resolve to bury himself as Greene, Harvey collaborated. The fictitious autobiog- raphy and the pamphleteering arising out of the ' death ' of the pseudo-Greene are most amusing incidents in Elizabethan literature. From the autobiography and the pamphlets modern biographers and editors have evolved what they honestly supposed to have been correct details of Greene's life. How otherwise could they have passed by the obvious jest in the * Groatsworth of Wit' (1592), in which the supposed dying father remarks of his son, ' He is still Greene, and may grow straight ' ? They have also allowed themselves to be imposed upon by Harvey, who stated ('Four Letters') that Greene had a bastard son, ' Infortunatus Greene ' (why Greene ?). This surely was only a jibe by Harvey at Francis Bacon's fondness (in writing in the name of Greene) of the v/ord ' infortunate ' (see examples in Notes and Queries, by Mr. Hart, 1905, p. 81). Mr. J. P. Collier, always ready to go one better, professed to have found the following entry in the Parish Registry of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, under date August 11, 1593 : ' Fortunatus Green was buried the same day.' The name is not correct, and we have cause to distrust Mr. Collier. Gabriel Harvey is responsible for further mystification. According to the ' Repentance,' the following letter was written by Greene on his deathbed : 9 130 TUDOR PROBLEMS ' Sweet wife as ever there was any goodwill or friend- ship between thee and mee see this bearer (my host) satisfied of his debt : I owe him tenne pound and but for him I had perished in the streetes. Forget and forgive my wrongs done unto thee and Almighty-God have mercie on my soule. ' Farewell till we meet in heaven for on earth thou shalt never see me more. * This 2 of September. * Written by thy dying husband. Robert Greene.' Harvey, in his ' Four Letters/ states that he saw the hostess of the dying Greene, before September 8, and that Greene had given his host a bond for ten pounds, 07i which was written the following letter : ' Doll I charge thee by the love of our youth and by my soules rest that thou wilte see this man paid : for if he and his wife had not succoured me I had died in the streetes. Robert Greene.' There could hardly have been two letters, so that the Harvey-Immerito combination in this instance did not collaborate very well. Identities of expression are of course not conclusive, but the following are only open to the objection of possible copying by two persons from, one common source. 'Greene,' in * Mamillia,' Second Part, printed 1590, says : * I remember the saying of Dante that love cannot roughly be thrust out, but it must easily creep.' In 1619, not printed until after Bacon's death, a letter from him to King James has : ' Love must creep in service where it cannot go.' In 'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' not printed until 1623 — seven years after the ascribed author's death — there is the same sentiment : * Love will creep in service where it cannot go.' The writer of the works ascribed to Robert Greene indicates ac((uaintance with Homer, Virgil, Plato, Ovid, Cicero, Juvenal, ^Esop, Erasmus, Chaucer, Gower, Dante, GREENE 131 Arlosto, Tasso, Cinthio, Boccaccio, Sanazzaro, Monte- mayor, Guazza, Castiglione, and Macchiavelli. The list is by no means complete. The cipher claim that Bacon wrote the works ascribed to Greene will be borne out by unprejudiced investi- gation. CHAPTER XIII MARLOWE Christopher Marlowe, or Marley, was the son of a shoemaker, and born at Canterbury in February, 1563-4. He was at Cambridge as a sizar or serving scholar, and obtained his M.A. degree in 1587. He died at Depttbrd in June, 1593, being killed in a brawl. In a contem- porary ballad he is described as an actor. That he was a man of some individuality is apparent from two cir- cumstances — namely (I) that during a space of six 3'ears or less he got into trouble with the Star Chamber for publishing a libel, and for holding atheistic views ; (2) that Francis Bacon, his employer, wrote an account of him in cipher. A letter sent to the Star Chamber, about July, 1593, in the name of a fellow assistant, Thomas Kyd, contains the only other clue to the life and habits of Marlowe in the period 1587-93. From this letter we learn — 1. That for two or perhaps more years, before June, 1593, Kyd and Marlowe were in the service of a certain unnamed lord. 2. That they worked together in the same room. 3. That Marlowe was in Kyd's opinion intemperate, of a cruel heart, irreligious, and by some thought to be an atheist. 4. That Kyd's ' first acquaintance with this Marlowe rose upon A/x bcar'uKi name to serve my lord, although his 132 MAELOWE 133 lordship never knew his service hut in writing for his players, for never could my lord endure his sight when he had heard of his conditions.' Professor Boas, in his ' Life and Works of Kyd,' gives a facsimile of this letter, and tried to guess who was the lord referred to in the letter. Bawley, writing in 1657, may help us a little. In his ' Life of Bacon ' he refers to Bacon at Gray's Inn, ' where he erected that elegant pile or structure commonly known by the name of The Lord Bacons lodgings, which he inhabited by turns the most part of his life.' Of course, he was writing years after Bacon had been made a peer, and the common expression might have been the growth of only about thirty years. But having regard to the under- current of talk, that he was a high-born personage, he might in 1593 have been termed a lord by the ' humbler sort,' and particularly by his immediate entourage. Note in this connection that young Nash, who was another vizard for Francis, used in the preface to ' Pierce Pennilesse,' licensed August, 1592, the expression 'the feare of infection detained mee with my Lord in the Countrey.' Francis was spending that August at Twickenham. The Kyd letter looks very much as if it had been dictated by Francis. It contains some clever quotations from Cicero, and seems to have been intended more as a quiet notification to Lord Keeper Puckering and the Star Chamber that young Francis, although he had employed Marlowe and used his name in writing for his (really the Queen's) players, had never associated with the reprobate then in hiding at the house of Francis's friend, Tom Walsingham. The biliteral cipher story states that Francis, for reward, obtained the right to make use of Marlowe's name as assumed author of certain plays and poems. This is corroborated — 134 TUDOR PROBLEMS 1. By the fact that no play was printed with the ' Marlowe ' ascription until after Marlowe's death in 1593, whatever may have been done on the manuscripts of the actors' parts. 2. ' Tamburlaine ' was printed 1590, anon. 3. ' Edward 11. ' was published in the * Marlowe ' ascrip- tion in 1594. Numerous instances of identities of thought and ex- pression between this play and the acknowledged writings of Bacon are given by Mr. R. M. Theobald in ' Shake- speare Studies' (1901). 4. ' Massacre at Paris ' (1594), contains opinions antag- onistic to the views of a contemporary French Professor of Logic, Peter Ramus. The same antagonism is shown by Bacon in ' Temporis Partus Maximus,' and by ' Nash.' 5. 'Dido, Queen of Carthage,' when printed in 1594, has the name of ' Nash ' introduced as joint author. Mr Dyce could not determine what verses, if any, were by ' Nash.' The versification was the same throughout. One man alone wrote it — viz., Francis Bacon, behind two masks. 6. 'Dr. Faustus' (1604) contains references to the attempt of Dr. Lopez on the Queen's life, which attempt was made subsequent to Marlowe's death. \n 1616 it was in part rewritten by a hand as good as the first writer. 7. ' The Jew of Malta ' (1633). It is named for the first and only time in that part of the biliteral cipher story which was by Bacon's direction ciphered by his chaplain Rawley in the ' Sylva Sylvarum' of 1635. It was prob- ably printed as a vehicle for some portion of cipher history. 8. The * Hero and Leander ' verses, entered S. R. in September, 1593, were not printed until 1598, and then in two sestiads. In 1606 four sestiads were added, and the poem reprinted ' as begunne by Christopher Marloe and finished by George Chapman.' Mr. Theobald shows MARLOWE 135 that the two sestiads ascribed to Marlowe cannot be dis- tinguished from the four ascribed to Chapman, and that nothing in Chapman's other work is at all like the ' Hero ' sestiads. In the case of Kyd, both Charles Lamb and Coleridge could not find any similarity between the ascrihed Ben Jonson's * Additions ' to ' The Spanish Tragedy ' and Jonson's known writings. 9. The translation from 'Lucan' was printed in 1600. Could any printer, even presented with the manuscript, have expected to have made a profit by printing it ? A living author, particularly one so sensible of his otvn im- portance, as was Bacon, might have ventured. 10. The translation of Ovid's 'Elegies/ by C. M., is undated. Someone was at the expense of printing it in Middleburgh, in Holland. As the late Mr. Begley re- marked, it is odd that on the theory of Marlowe author- ship a few of the elegies by a deceased author should first be published and followed later by another edition with all of them. Bound in the booklet with the Ovid ' Elegies ' were certain epigrams written by J. D. (Sir John Davis) : ' Qu'allait il faire dans cette galere ]' Davis was not called to the Bar until two years after Marlowe's death. How could they have ever become associated ? But if we lift the Marlowe mask we find the face of Francis Bacon beneath. Davis was a personal friend of Bacon. On Davis going in 1603 as one of the party to conduct James I. from Scotland to England on his accession, Bacon wrote the letter in which he asked Davis * to be kind to concealed poets.' In the completed edition of the ' Elegies ' is included, next to the fifteenth elegy, an alternative translation by ' B. J.' This translation also appears in Jonson's play of 'The Poetaster,' performed 1601 and printed 1602. Ovid Junior, in the play, is told to give up poetry and get to his law-book. Mr. Begley was disposed to regard 136 TUDOR PROBLEMS this as a hit at Bacou. He gave other good grounds for thinking that at one period some sort of literary feud was waged between them. Except on the assumption that ' Marlowe ' was merely a name used by Bacon in putting forth the Ovid ' Elegies,* the association of Marlowe with Jonson is inexplicable. The completed series of the Ovid translations in undated, but it would be safe to fix the date as subsequent to the printing in 1602 of ' The Poetaster.' Bacon and Jonson were on most friendly terms in 1603, and the publication of the completed 'Elegies' with the alternative translations of the fifteenth elegy, whether the second one was written by Jonson or not, would be natural. Mr. Begley has given ample proof of knowledge by the literary men of the time that Bacon was a poet, but concealed. He has further reminded us that even Stowe, in his 'Annals' (1605), joins Sir Francis Bacon with Sir John Davis as two of the poets of Elizabeth's reign. Surely these two were the C. ]\I. and J. D. of the 'Elegies ' and ' Epigrams,' the fii'st edition of which was destroyed by order of the Archbishop of Canterbury dated June 1, 1599, only to be reprinted abroad, with additions, after a considerable interval of years. Bacon was the lurppy