6 Francis Bacon (1561-1626) occupies a place apart among Bacon. the writers of the period, and is as important in the evolution of English prose as in that of English philosophy. The work of his which is now most widely read is one which he himself depreciated; for he tells his brother Antony that his Essays were but fragments of his conceits', and he apparently regrets that they were written in English, one of these modern languages' which will at one time or another play the bankrout with books'. The first edition of the Essays was published in 1597: between it and the third, and much fuller, edition which appeared in 1625, came the sequence of his philosophic works, the chief of which are The Advancement of Learning (1605), Novum Organum (1620), and De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623), which is the Advancement translated into Latin, with additions. This last work was written during his retirement at Gorhambury after his disgrace; and to the same period belong his History of Henry VII (1622) and the New Atlantis (1624), his picture of the ideal commonwealth which might, in his view, be realized through long and diligent investigation of natural law. The necessity for such investigation was the basis of his whole philosophy. The mind is the man,' he said, and knowledge mind: à man is but what he knoweth.' Nature, as embodied in her various forms' could be discovered and exhausted, were the right method once found the task was difficult, since the subtlety of Nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of argument'. There had, moreover, been many false guides, and not the least false had been Plato and Aristotle. Yet the matter was of supreme moment, for a complete discovery of Nature would not only perfect men in knowledge, but would help them towards creation. The right method was everything: it depended on the collection of a complete set of instances which might serve as the basis of a cautious and gradual induction. Nature must be followed. not anticipated: yet men were constantly kept from the sight of her by their own 'idols '-the prejudices of their race, individual idiosyncrasy, profession, or dogma. Bacon apparently believed himself to have been the originator of the inductive method which he so eloquently advocated. Though this belief is incorrect, it is his statement of that method, combined with his conception of science as a single whole, which constitute his philosophic greatness. His chief philosophical work is undoubtedly Novum Organum; but his vast and eager intellectual purpose is evident throughout The Advancement of Learning: Thus have I made, as it were, a small globe of the Intellectual World as truly and faithfully as I could discover: with a note and description of those parts which seem to me not constantly occupate or not well converted by the labour of man.' Bacon's early collection of essays was intended for himself Bacon's or for private circulation among his friends: a further edition, Essays. with additions, was issued in 1612; and the final edition of Jonson's coveries. Selden. 1625 was expanded into fifty-eight essays. This progression is accompanied by a growing elaboration and improvement of style consequent on his consciousness that he was now writing for the public, and even for posterity. The themes of the essays are various they range from Goodness to Gardens, and from Envy to Masques and Triumphs. It must be confessed that Bacon's wisdom, as expressed in his more abstract essays, is often acute and worldly rather than profound. His conceptions, both of Friendship and of Greatness, make rather disconcertingly for utility, and his rules of life seem often mere maxims of state-craft-maxims quite appropriate in his essays on Counsel and Cunning, but much less so when they are applied to the highest things. Yet when generalizing upon him thus, we may remember that he has written: the desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall: the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall: but in charity there is no excess ; neither can angel or man come in danger by it.' For a crowd is not company and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is no love." His later essays on concrete things, on Gardens and Building, have peculiar charm: 'God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures.' 'He that builds a fair house upon an ill seat committeth himself to prison.' The style of Bacon's essays is more curt and self-conscious than that of his philosophical works. Epigram is frequent, yet is always ordered judiciously and with measure. The expression is artificial, yet seldom ornate: there is none of the Euphuistic lavishness. Many of the images are homely, and are expressed with a cunning simplicity. Thus malignant men in other men's calamities are, as it were, in season, and are ever on the loading part : not so good as the dogs that licked Lazarus' sores, but like flies that are still buzzing upon anything that is raw. Such dispositions are the very errors of human nature; and yet they are the fittest timber to make great politiques of: like to kneetimber, that is good for ships that are ordained to be tossed, but not for building houses that shall stand firm.' The finish and balance of Bacon's style helped to give tradition to English prose, and prepared the way for Dryden. A broader and more virile sweep is to be found in the prose of Ben Jonson. The most notable example of this is the posthumously published Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter (1641). This, in substance, is Jonson's commonplace book, his collection of extracts from the writers of antiquity, altered and amplified till it assumes the form of an original work. Short though the collection is, it is quite sufficient to prove Jonson one of the great prose masters. It contains a famous appreciation-not depreciation, as has been sometimes asserted-of Shakespeare, together with much manly moralizing upon life. John Selden (1584-1654) was a great lawyer and a great scholar, whose erudition is perpetuated in his elaborate trea tises, Titles of Honour (1614) and History of Tithes (1618). Much more widely read is his famous Table Talk, posthumously published in 1689 by his whilom secretary, Richard Milward. These 'discourses' as their sub-title indicates, relate 'especially to Religion and State'; but they cover a variety of other subjects, and illustrate not only their author's learning and intellectual incisiveness, but his easy versatility and trenchant wit. CHAPTER XIII DRAMA: THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE Shakespeare's predecessors - Lyly, Nash, Peele, Kyd, Marlowe, Greene IN the preceding chapter upon early English drama we dealt with certain dramatic kinds, but encountered few independent personalities of the first order. In our present period, however, both the acting and the writing of plays are becoming regular and professional, instead of fitful and amateur; and with this change notable names at once appear. Among the first of these is that of the last regular dramatist Lyly. of the Court-John Lyly. He and the remaining playwrights now to be considered are commonly termed the University Wits a name which accurately represents their general attitude toward life and literature, but must not be taken as implying that it is possible to discover a common factor for their dramatic work. Lyly's career is interesting, as illustrating the growing connexion between the school stage and the public stage, and also as showing how the centre of dramatic interest was beginning to shift away from the Court. Shortly after leaving Oxford he had achieved fame and Court favour with his prose romance, Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit (1579). After this he becomes certainly the playwright, and possibly the Vicemaster, of the children of St. Paul's, and for performance by these writes the eight dramas which bear his name. These were produced in the first instance for the benefit of the Court, but according to the practice of the time, the boy company converted the period of rehearsal into a regular professional season in a playhouse at Blackfriars. This had been provided for Lyly by his patron, the Earl of Oxford; he had to retire from it for a period on the inhibition', or prohibition, of the children's companies in 1591. The Lyly's plays vary considerably in theme and manner. earliest and most charming of them, Campaspe (1580), is a free exercise in romantic dramatization, and portrays the love passage between the captive maiden and the painter, Apelles, who is eventually enabled to win her through the magnanimity His Place Drama. of Alexander the Great, himself a claimant for her heart. Mother Bombie (1590) is a brisk and realistic comedy of contemporary life, in which the Roman model is adapted to the humours of an English country town. Others of Lyly's plays, e. g. Sappho and Phao (1581), Endimion (1585), and Midas (1589), are allegories, whose classical themes embody reference to contemporary affairs of high public moment. The first two deal with the suits respectively paid to Elizabeth by d'Alençon and Leicester, and the third expresses the national hatred and scorn felt for Philip the Second of Spain. In the remaining three, Gallathea (1584), Lave's Metamorphosis, and The Woman in the Moon (1592), pastoral, romantic, and classical elements blend, and the allegorical element is in abeyance. The genius of Lyly opened new possibilities to English in English drama, and supplied it with fresh qualities of form and finish. As has been seen, the themes of his choice were varied, and so were the literary and dramatic kinds to which he turned for their development. His importance lies in the skill with which he smoothed and fashioned the material at his disposal into a rounded artistic whole, and in the delicate sensibility which enabled him to draw from each source, were it pastoral or mythological, early Roman or modern Italian, precisely that portion which would blend and harmonize with the rest. Nowhere is his skill more evident than in his handling of allegory, in his suffusion of it with poetry and fancy. In point of plot, he shows a greater fastidiousness than most of his predecessors, and carefully avoids the cruder elements of Senecan drama. He is equally an artist in dialogue, and especially in the form, comparatively new in English, of prose dialogue. His plays bear nearly all the main marks of his earlier Euphuism-wit, grace, antithesis, and a delicate artificiality which the youthful Shakespeare did not disdain to copy. Nash and To the same group of playwrights belong Thomas Nash (1567-1601) and George Peele (1558-1597 ?). Nash collaborated with Marlowe in the Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage1 (1591), and also wrote a comedy, now lost, entitled The Isle of Dogs. In the one surviving play which represents his undivided authorship, Summer's Last Will and Testament (1592), elements of the older Morality are blended with rude comedy. Nash's real strength, however, lies not in drama but in the novel and the pamphlet. More important, in relation to the drama, is George Peele (1558-1597), whose Arraignment of Paris (1582 ), composed while he was still a graduate in residence at Oxford, is a courtly allegory, written in verse of no mean charm and beauty. The subsequent career of Peele illustrates the growing importance of the public stage. Lyly, in spite of the grievous disappointment occasioned by his failure to attain This play is discussed later in this chapter, under the heading of Marlowe's dramas. the Mastership of the Revels, remained till the end a hanger-on of the Court, and did not seek to utilize the new means of profit opened to him by the rise of the public theatres. Peele, however, early turned to the popular stage, and for this wrote all his remaining dramas. These include the indifferent Chronicle play, Edward I (1590-91); The Battle of Alcazar (1591?), a drama whose hero is the remarkable contemporary adventurer, Thomas Stukeley; and The Old Wives Tale (1590 ?) which, like its greater successor, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, satirizes effectively the crude machinery of the dramatized romances. Peele's scriptural play, David and Bethsabe, has been already noticed. A much more important dramatic influence is Thomas Kyd Kyd. (1558-1594), who may be called the connecting link between the older Senecan drama and Shakespeare. The influence of Seneca is strongly evident in The Spanish Tragedy (circa 1587) and Soliman and Perseda (1592 ?). The Spanish Tragedy was written for the public stage, and enjoyed a vast and lasting popularity. It turns on the wooing of the fair Belimperia by the captured Balthazar, her rejection of him for Horatio, the son of the Knight-Marshal Hieronimo, Horatio's murder by Belimperia's villainous brother, Lorenzo, and the revenge taken for that deed by the crazed Hieronimo. The violent horrors of this play, and especially the revenge motive, are thoroughly Senecan in spirit, and inaugurate in English the Tragedy of Blood' of which Titus Andronicus is the type and Hamlet the apotheosis. The ghost and the chorus also appear, and so does the short antithetical Senecan dialogue of alternating lines. But to Kyd himself are due the lovepassages between Horatio and Belimperia, which carry a note of moving passion hitherto hardly heard in English drama. The careful elaboration of the plot was also a valuable reinforcement to the hitherto crude technique of the public stage; but above all things The Spanish Tragedy is important for the new force, constantly, indeed, passing into crudity and violence, which it introduced into the faltering beginnings of English tragedy. The play stormed and held the popular imagination, and the raving Hieronimo was beyond doubt the favourite figure on the Elizabethan stage. In 1601 and 1602 Jonson made some powerfully-written additions to the play to fit it for revival by Henslowe. The First Part of Hieronimo is a crude play written by some imitator of Kyd in order to exploit the popularity of his masterpiece. To Kyd must almost certainly be attributed the original play on the subject of Hamlet, commonly known as the UrHamlet', which was subsequently revised and elaborated by Shakespeare in two apparently separate and distinct versions. According to one theory, traces of this lost play have been preserved in a German drama on the subject of Hamlet, Der bestrafte Brudermord, which was first printed in 1781, but probably first performed in 1629. Even the Hamlet |