"there is no good spirit but will think himself in darkness, if he be debarred . . . of access and approach to the sovereign." He also proposed a prosecution in the Star Chamber, and a heavy, irremissible fine. A proclamation to this effect was issued by the King. We also have the "charge of Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, His Majesty's Attorney-General, touching duels, upon an information in the Star Chamber against Priest and Wright." After commenting on his regret that the offenders were not greater personages, Bacon says:

Nay, I should think, my lords, that men of birth and quality will leave the practice, when it begins to be vilified, and come so low as to barbers, surgeons and butchers, and such base mechanical persons.

In the course of the charge he says:

It is a miserable effect when young men, full of towardness and hope, such as the poets call aurora filii, sons of the morning, in whom the comfort and expectations of their friends consisteth, shall be cast away and destroyed in such a vain manner. . . . So as your lordships see what a desperate evil this is; it troubleth peace, it disfurnisheth war, it bringeth calamity upon private men, peril upon the state, and contempt upon the law.

And in this charge we find Bacon using the same sort of argument used by Shakespeare in Othello.

Bacon says:

There was a combat of this kind performed by two persons of quality of the Turks, wherein one of them was slain; the other party was convented before the council of Bassaes. The manner of the reprehension was in these words:

How durst you undertake to fight one with the other? Are there not Christians enough to kill? Did you not know that whether of you should be slain, the loss would be the great Seigneour's?

The writer of Shakespeare evidently had this incident in his mind, and had also knowledge of the fact that the Turks did not permit duels, when he put into the mouth of Othello these words: Why, how now, ho! from whence ariseth this?

Are we turned Turks, and to ourselves do that
Which Heaven hath forbid the Ottomites?

For Christian shame! put by this barbarous brawl!1

Bacon secured the conviction of Priest and Wright, and prepared a decree of the Star Chamber, which was ordered read in every shire in the kingdom.

And we find the same idea and beliefs in Shakespeare which are contained in this decree, He says:

1 Othello, ii, 3.

And again:

If wrongs be evil, and enforce us kill,

What folly 'tis to hazard life for ill!!

Your words have took such pains, as if they labored
To bring manslaughter into form, set quarreling
Upon the head of valor; which, indeed,

Is valor misbegot, and came into the world

When sects and factions were but newly born.?

XVIII.

OTHER PURPOSES.

I might go on and give many other instances to show that the purposes revealed in the Plays are the same which governed Francis Bacon. I might point to Bacon's disapprobation of superstition, his essay on the subject, and the very effective way in which one kind of superstition is ridiculed in the case of the pretended blind man at St. Albans, in the play of Henry VI., exposed by the shrewdness of the Duke Humphrey.

3

I might further note that Bacon wrote an essay against popular prophecies; and Knight notes that the Fool in Lear ridicules these things, as in:

Says Knight:

Then comes the time, who lives to see 't,
When going shall be used with feet.4

Nor was the introduction of such a mock prophecy mere idle buffoonery. There can be no question, from the statutes that were directed against these stimulants to popular credulity, that they were considered of importance in Shakespeare's day. Bacon's essay Of Prophecies shows that the philosopher gravely denounced what our poet pleasantly ridiculed.

I might show how, in Love's Labor Lost, the absurd fashions of language then prevalent among the fastidious at court were mocked at and ridiculed in the very spirit of Bacon. I might note the fact that Bacon expressed his disapprobation of tobacco, and that no reference is had to it in all the Plays, although it is abundantly referred to in the writings of Ben Jonson and other dramatists of the period. I might refer to Bacon's disapprobation of the superstition connected with wedding-rings, and to the fact that no wedding-ring is ever referred to in the Plays. These are little things in themselves, but they are cumulative as matters of evidence.

1 Titus Andronicus, iii, 5. 2 Ibid.

3 Notes of act iii of Lear, p. 440. 4 Act iii, scene 2.

In conclusion, I would call attention to the fact that nowhere in the Plays is vice or wickedness made admirable. Even in the case of old Sir John Falstaff, whose wit was as keen, sententious and profound as Bacon's own Essays; even in his case we see him, in the close of 2d Henry IV., humiliated, disgraced and sent to prison; while the Chief Justice, representing the majesty of law and civilization, is lifted up from fear and danger to the greatest heights of dignity and honor. The old knight "dies of a sweat," and every one of his associates comes to a dishonored and shameful death.

Lamartine says:

It is as a moralist that Shakespeare excels. . . . His works cannot fail to elevate the mind by the purity of the morals they inculcate. They breathe so strong a belief in virtue, so steady an adherence to good principles, united to such a vigorous tone of honor as testifies to the author's excellence as a moralist; nay, as a Christian.

And everywhere in the Plays we see the cultured citizen of the schools and colleges striving to elevate and civilize a rude and barbarous age. The heart of the philosopher and philanthropist penetrates through wit and poetry and dramatic incident, in every act and scene from The Tempest to Cymbeline.

CHAPTER VII.

THE REASONS FOR CONCEALMENT.

Some dear cause

Will in concealment wrap me up awhile.

When I am known aright, you shall not grieve

Lending me this acquaintance.

Lear, iv, 3.

IF

F Bacon wrote the Plays, why did he not acknowledge them? This is the question that will be asked by many.

I. BACON'S SOCIAL POSITION.

What was Francis Bacon in social position? He was an aristocrat of the aristocrats. His grandfather had been the tutor of the King. His father had been for twenty years Lord Keeper of the Seal under Elizabeth. His uncle Burleigh was Lord Treasurer of the kingdom. His cousin Robert was Lord Secretary, and afterward became the Earl of Salisbury. He also "claims close cousinry with Elizabeth and Anne Russell (daughters of Lord John Russell) and with the witty and licentious race of Killigrews, and with the future statesman and diplomatist Sir Edward Hoby.”1

Francis aspired to be, like his father, Lord Chancellor of the kingdom. Says Hepworth Dixon:

Bacon seemed born to power. His kinsmen filled the highest posts. The sovereign liked him, for he had the bloom of cheek, the flame of wit, the weight of sense, which the great Queen sought in men who stood about her throne. His powers were ever ready, ever equal. Masters of eloquence and epigram praised him as one of them, or one above them, in their peculiar arts. Jonson tells us he commanded when he spoke, and had his judges pleased or angry at his will. Raleigh tells us he combined the most rare of gifts, for while Cecil could talk and not write, Howard write and not talk, he alone could both talk and write. Nor were these gifts all flash and foam. If no one at the court could match his tongue of fire, so no one in the House of Commons could breast him in the race of work. He put the dunce to flight, the drudge to shame. If he soared high above rivals in his most passionate play of speech, he never met a rival in the dull, dry task of ordinary toil. Raleigh, Hyde and Cecil had small chance against him in debate; in committee Yelverton and Coke had none. . . .

Hepworth Dixon, Personal History of Lord Bacon, p. 16.

He sought place, never man with more persistent haste; for his big brain beat with a victorious consciousness of parts; he hungered, as for food, to rule and bless mankind. . . . While men of far lower birth and claims got posts and honors, solicitorships, judgeships, embassies, portfolios, how came this strong man to pass the age of forty-six without gaining power or place?1

And remember, good reader, that it is precisely during this period, before Bacon was forty-six, and while, as I have shown, he was "poor and working for bread," that the Shakespeare Plays were produced; and that after he obtained place and wealth they ceased to appear; although Shakspere was still living in Stratford and continued to live there for ten years to come. Why was it that the fountain of Shakespeare's song closed as soon as Bacon's necessities ended? II. THE LAWYERS THEN THE PLAY-WRITERS.

Bacon took to the law. He was born to it. It was the only avenue open to him. Richard Grant White says-and, remember, he is no "Baconian":

There was no regular army in Elizabeth's time; and the younger sons of gentlemen not rich, and of well-to-do yeomen, flocked to the church and to the bar; and as the former had ceased to be a stepping-stone to power and wealth, while the latter was gaining in that regard, most of these young men became attorneys or barristers. But then, as now, the early years of professional life were seasons of sharp trial and bitter disappointment. Necessity pressed sorely or pleasure wooed resistlessly; and the slender purse wasted rapidly away while the young lawyer awaited the employment that did not come. He knew then, as now he knows, the heart-sickness that waits on hope deferred; nay, he felt, as now he sometimes feels, the tooth of hunger gnawing through the principles and firm resolves that partition a life of honor and self-respect from one darkened by conscious loss of rectitude, if not by open shame. Happy (yet, it may be, O unhappy) he who now in such a strait can wield the pen of a ready writer! For the press, perchance, may afford him a support which, though temporary and precarious, will hold him up until he can stand upon more stable ground. But in the reigns of Good Queen Bess and Gentle Jamie there was no press. There was, however, an incessant demand for new plays. Play-going was the chief intellectual recreation of that day for all classes, high and low. It is not extravagant to say that there were then more new plays produced in London in one month than there are now in both Great Britain and Ireland in a whole year. To play-writing, therefore, the needy and gifted young lawyer turned his hand at that day as he does now to journalism.

III.

THE LAW-COURTS AND THE PLAYS. "THE MISFORTUNES OF
ARTHUR."

And the connection between the lawyers and the players was, in some sense, a close one. It was the custom for the great lawschools to furnish dramatic representations for the entertainment

'Hepworth Dixon, Personal History of Lord Bacon.