&stf
Tffi GREAT CRYPTOGRAM:
B FRANCtf BACONS CIPHER inTh?
SO-CALLED JHAKESPEARE PL/MM
B ByiGNATIU5 DONNELLY, Author
of 4AtIdJitiy:TheAntediIuvi2)Ji Worlds
"Ra^iajTokOTi? A£e of Fire ^ Grayer:
4Xn-d now Iwill vncl&spe&Jeeret booke
A^toyourquicke conceyuing Difcontents"
He re&deyou Mzviter, deeped daaigerouj,
Ar full of perill zsrJ zvduenturou/ Jpirit,
As to o'erwadke ^Current , roaring loudt
Onth*vnftedf<xft footing of ^jpe^e."
MHenrrlV, ActI,Jc3.
-Chicago,-
-Dew Ifork an£ Jfon<k>tl-
!R5iPeaIe& Company
18S0,
\)pj
COPYRIGHT, 1887,
By IGNATIUS DONNELLY
[all rights reserved.]
l'N/VER8fT
To [*IY Dear^
OQKs
^jjectionately
Ded'icated.
INTRODUCTION
THE question may be asked by some, Why divide your
book into two parts, an argument and a demonstration ?
If the Cipher is conclusive, why is any discussion of probabili-
ties necessary ?
In answer to this I would state that, for a long time before
I conceived the idea of the possibility of there being a Cipher
in the Shakespeare Plays, I had been at work collecting proofs,
from many sources, to establish the fact that Francis Bacon
was the real author of those great works. Much of the material
so amassed is new and curious, and well worthy of preserva-
tion. While the Cipher will be able to stand alone, these
facts will throw many valuable side-lights upon the story told
therein.
Moreover, that part of the book called " Parallelisms " will,
I hope, be interesting to scholars, even after Bacon's authorship
of the Plays is universally acknowledged, as showing how the
same great mind unconsciously cast itself forth in parallel lines,
in prose and poetry, in the two greatest sets of writings in the
world.
And I trust the essays on the geography, the politics, the
religion and the purposes of the Plays will possess an interest
apart from the question of authorship.
I have tried to establish every statement I have made by
abundant testimony, and to give due credit to each author
from whom I have borrowed.
For the shortcomings of the work I shall have to ask the
indulgence of the reader. It was written in the midst of many
interruptions and distractions ; and it lacks that perfection
which ampler leisure might possibly have given it.
As to the actuality of the Cipher there can be but one con-
clusion. A long, continuous narrative, running through many
pages, detailing historical events in a perfectly symmetrical.
vi INTRODUCTION.
rhetorical, grammatical manner, and always growing out of the
same numbers, employed in the same way, and counting from the
same, or similar, starting-points, cannot be otherwise than a pre-
arranged aritfwietical cipher.
Let those who would deny this proposition produce a single
page of a connected story, eliminated, by an arithmetical rule,
from any other work ; in fact, let them find five words that
will cohere, by accident, in due order, in any publication, where
they were not first placed with intent and aforethought. I
have never yet been able to find even three such. Regularity
does not grow out of chaos. There can be no intellectual
order without preexisting intellectual purpose. The fruits of
mind can only be found where mind is or has been.
It may be thought, by some, that I speak with too much
severity of Shakspere and his family ; but it must be remem-
bered that I am battling against the great high walls of public
prejudice and intrenched error. ''Fate," it is said, "obeys the
downright striker." I trust my earnestness will not be mistaken
for maliciousness.
In the concluding chapters I have tried to do justice to the
memory of Francis Bacon, and to the great minds that first an-
nounced to the world his claim to the authorship of the Plays.
I feel that it is a noble privilege to thus assist in lifting the
burden of injustice from the shoulders of long-suffering merit.
The key here turned, for the first time, in the secret wards
of the Cipher, will yet unlock a vast history, nearly as great in
bulk as the Plays themselves, and tell a mighty story of one of
the greatest and most momentous eras of human history, illu-
minated by the most gifted human being that ever dwelt upon
the earth.
I conclude by invoking, in behalf of my book, the kindly
judgment and good-will of all men. I. D.
THE TABLE OF CONTENTS.
BOOK I.— THE ARGUMENT.
PART I.
WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
Chapter I. — The Learning of the Plays, ----- 13
II. — Shakspere's .Education, ----- 27
III. — Shakspere's Real Character, - - - .44
IV. — The Lost Manuscripts and Library, ... 73
V. — The Author of the Plays a Lawyer, - - - IC2
PART II.
FRANCIS BACON THE REAL AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
Chapter I. — Francis Bacon a Poet, ..... I2r
II. — The Author of the Plays a Philosopher, - - 149
III. — The Geography of the Plays, - - - - :6i
IV. — The Politics of the Plays, - - - - 173
V. — The Religion of the Plays, ----- 196
VI. — The Purposes of the Plays, -.--•• 212
VII. — The Reasons for Concealment, - 246
VIII. — Corroborating Circumstances, - 259
PART III.
PA RA LLELISMS.
Chapter I. — Identical Expressions, - - - - 295
II. — Identical Metaphors, - 335
III. — Identical Opinions, .---.. 370
IV. — Identical Quotations, - - 397
V. — Identical Studies, - - - - - - 41^
VI. — Identical Errors, ------ 437
VII. — Identical Use of Unusual Words, - 444
VIII. — Identities of Character, - 462
IX. — Identities of Style, -.-... 481
vii
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
BOOK II.— THE DEMONSTRATION.
PART I.
THE CIPHER IN THE PLA VS.
Chapter I. — How I Came to Look for a Cipher, - - - 505
II. — How I Became Certain There Was a Cipher, - - 516
III. — A Vain Search in the Common Editions, - - 545
IV. — The Great Folio of 1623, - 548
V. — Lost in the Wilderness, 565
VI. — The Cipher Found, - .... 575
PART II.
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
Chapter I. — The Treasonable Play of Richard II., - - 619
II. — The Treasonable History of Henry IV., Written by Dr.
Hayward, ... ... 630
III. — The Cipher Explained, - - 639
IV. — Bacon Hears the Bad News, .... 670
V. — Cecil Tells the Story of Marlowe, .... 688
VI. — The Story of Shakspere's Youth, - - - 694
VII. — The Purposes of the Plays, - 702
VIII — The Queen Beats Hayward, ... - 709
IX. — Cecil Says Shakspere Did Not Write the Plays, - - 718
X. — Shakspere Incapable of Writing the Plays, - - 729
XL — Shakspere Wounded, ------ 732
XII. — Shakspere Carried to Prison, - 740
XIII. — The Youthful Shakspere Described, • - - 756
XIV. — The Bishop of Worcester and His Advice, - 762
XV. — Shakspere's Aristocratic Pretensions, - - - 770
XVI. — Shakspere's Sickness, ..... 784
XVII. — Shakspere the Model from which Bacon Drew the
Characters of Falstaff and Sir Tobie, - - 809
XVIII. — Sweet Ann Hathaway, ..... 826
XIX. — Bacon Overwhelmed, %- 844
XX. — The Queen's Orders to Find Shakspere, - - 854
XXI. — Fragments, .-.-.-- 870
XXI I.— A Word Personal, ...... 889
BOOK III.— CONCLUSIONS.
Chapter I.— Delia Bacon, - - .... 899
II. — William Henry Smith, - ... 9i6
III. — The Baconians, ..-...-- 923
IV. — Other Masks of Bacon, ----- 939
V. — Francis Bacon, - - - .... 975
ILLUSTRATIONS,
Francis Bacon — The True Shakespeare. After the portrait by Van Somer.
Frontispiece.
William Shakspere. Facsimile of the celebrated Droeshout portrait in the
1623 Folio, --------- 64
Ben Jonson. After the portrait by Oliver, - 96
Gorhambury. Bacon's residence, ----._ T60
Sir Robert Cecil. -------- 193
f ac-simile of a page from the author's copy of the great folio, - 566
Letter of Lord Chancellor Verulam (Francis Bacon) to the University
of Cambridge. Facsimile, ------- 6S0
Queen Elizabeth. After the portrait in the collection of the Marquis of
Salisbury, -------- 712
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. After the portrait in the collection of
the Earl of Verulam, - - 632
William Henry Smith, - . 920
William D. O'Connor, -------- 928
Nathaniel Holmes, ...... 936
Mrs. Constance M. Pott, - - - - - 944
Dr. William Thomson. ._.... 950
Prof. Thomas Davidson, - - - 958
IX
BOOK I.
THE ARGUMENT
"Nay; pray you come;
Or if thou wilt hold further document,
Do it in note/."
Much Ado about Abthing, 11,3.
•;T57T?
OF THE
i VNIYER81TY
PART I.
WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT
WRITE THE PLAYS.
CHAPTER I.
THE LEARNING REVEALED IN THE SHAKESPEARE
WRITINGS.
" From his cradle
He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one."
Henry VIII., iz\ 2.
IT was formerly the universal belief, entertained even among the
critical, that the writings which go by the name of William
Shakespeare were the work of an untaught, unlearned man.
Addison compared Shakspere1 to the agate in the ring of
Pyrrhus, which had the figure of Apollo and the nine Muses
pictured in the veins of the stone by the hand of Nature, without
any assistance from Art.
Voltaire regarded him as a " drunken savage."
Pope speaks of him as " a man of no education."
Richard Grant White says Shakspere was regarded, even
down to the time of Pope, as "this bewitching but untutored and
half-savage child of nature."
He was looked upon as a rustic-bred bard who sang as the
birds sing — a greater Burns, who, as Milton says, "warbled his
native wood-notes wild."
This view was in accordance with the declaration of Ben Jon-
son that he possessed " small Latin and less Greek," and the state-
1 Wherever reference is had in these pages to the man of Stratford the name will be spelled,
as he spelled it in his will, Shakspere. Wherever the reference is to the Plays, or to the real author
of the Plays, the name will be spelled Shakespeare, for that was the name on the title-pages of
quartos and folios.
13
i4 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
ment of old Fuller, in his Worthies, in 1622, that "his learning was
very little."
Fuller says:
Plautus was never any scholar, as doubtless our Shakespeare, if alive, would
confess himself.
Leonard Digges says:
The patterne of all wit,
Art without Art unparaleld as yet.
Next Nature onely helpt him, for looke thorow
This whole booke, thou shalt find he doth not borrow
One phrase from Greekes, nor Latines imitate,
Nor once from vulgar languages translate.
Rev. John Ward, Vicar of Stratford, writing forty-seven years
after Shakspere's death, and speaking the traditions of Stratford,
says:
I have heard that Mr. Shakespeare was a natural wit, tvithout any art at all.
Seventy odd years after Shakspere's death, Bentham, in his
State of the English Schools and Churches, says:
William Shakespeare was born at Stratford, in Warwickshire; his learning
was very little, and therefore it is more a matter for wonder that he should be a
very excellent poet.1
But in the last fifty years this view is completely changed.
The critical world is now substantially agreed that the man who
wrote the plays was one of the most learned men of the world, not
only in that learning which comes from observation and reflection,
but in book-lore, ancient and modern, and in the knowledge of
many languages.
I. His Classical Learning.
Grant White admits:
He had as much learning as he had occasion to use, and even more.2
It was at one time believed that the writer of the plays was
unable to read any of the Latin or Greek authors in the original
tongues, and that he depended altogether upon translations; but
such, it is now proved, was not the case.
The Comedy of Errors, which is little more than a repro-
duction of the Menoechmi of Plautus, first appeared at certain
1 Chap. 19. 2 White, Life and Genius of Shakespeare, p. 256.
THE LEARNING REVEALED IN THE PLAYS.
*5
Christmas revels given by Bacon and his fellow lawyers, at
Gray's Inn, in 1594; while, says Halliwell, " the Menoechmi of
Plautus was not translated into English, or rather no English
translation of it was printed, before 1595."
" The greater part of the story of Timon was taken from the
untranslated Greek of Lucian."1
" Shakespeare's plays," says White,2 " show forty per cent of
Romance or Latin words, which is probably a larger proportion
than is now used by our best writers; certainly larger than is
heard from those who speak their mother tongue with spon-
taneous, idiomatic correctness."
We find in Twelfth Night these lines:
Like the Egyptian thief, at point of death,
Kill what I love.3
This is an allusion to a story from Heliodorus' u'Ethiopics. I do
not know of any English translation of it in the time of Shakspere.
Holmes says:
The writer was a classical scholar. Rowe found traces in him of the Electra
of Sophocles; Colman, of Ovid; Pope, of Dares Phrygius, and other Greek
authors; Farmer, of Horace and Virgil; Malone, of Lucretius, Statius, Catullus,
Seneca, Sophocles, and Euripides; Stevens, of Plautus; Knight, of the Antig-
one of Sophocles; and White, of the Alcestis of Euripides.4
White says:
His very frequent use of Latin derivatives in their radical sense shows a
somewhat thoughtful and observant study of that language.5
White further says:
Where, even in Plutarch's pages, are the aristocratic republican tone and the
tough muscularity of mind, which characterized the Romans, so embodied as in
Shakespeare's Roman plays? Where, even in Homer's song, the subtle wisdom of
the crafty Ulysses, the sullen selfishness and conscious martial might of broad
Achilles; the blundering courage of thick-headed Ajax ; or the mingled gallantry
and foppery of Paris, so vividly portrayed as in Troilus and CreSsida ? 6
Knight says:
The marvelous accuracy, the real, substantial learning, of the three Roman
plays of Shakespeare present the most complete evidence to our minds that they
were the result of a profound study of the whole range of Roman history, in-
cluding the nicer details of Roman manners, not in those days to be acquired in «
compendious form, but to be brought out by diligent reading alone.7
1 Holmes, A uthorship of Shakespeare, p. 57. 5 Life and Genius cf Shakespeare, p. 31.
2 Life and Genius cf Shakespeare , p. 216. 6 Ibid., p. 257.
3 Act v, scene 1. 7 Knight's Shak. Biography, p. 528.
4 Authorship of Shakespeare, p. 57.
1 6 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
And again:
In his Roman plays he appears co-existent with his wonderful characters, and
to have read all the obscure pages of Roman history with a clearer eye than philosopher
or historian. When he employs Latinisms in the construction of his sentences,
and even in the creation of new words, he does so with singular facility and unerring
correctness.1
Appleton Morgan says:
In Antony and Cleopatra, Charmian suggests a game of billiards. But this
is not, as is supposed, an anachronism, for the human encyclopedia who wrote that
sentence appears to have known — what very few people know nowadays — that
the game of billiards is older than Cleopatra.2
Whately3 describes Shakespeare as possessed of " an amazing
genius which could pervade all nature at a glance, and to whom
nothing within the limits of the universe appears to be unknown."
A recent writer says, speaking of the resemblance between the
Eumenides of ^Eschylus and the Hamlet of Shakespeare:
The plot is so similar that we should certainly have credited the English poet
with copying it, if he could have read Greek. . . . The common elements are
indeed remarkable. Orestes and Hamlet have both to avenge a beloved father
who has fallen a victim to the guilty passion of an unfaithful wife; in each case the
adulterer has ascended the throne; and a claim of higher than mere mortal
authority demands his punishment; for the permitted return of Hamlet's father
from the world beyond the grave may be set beside the command of Apollo to
Orestes to become the executive of the wrath of Heaven.4
Knight5 sees evidence that Shakespeare was a close student of
the works of Plato.
Alexander Schmidt, in his lexicon, under the word Adonis, quotes
the following lines from Shakespeare:
Thy promises are like Adonis' gardens,
That one day bloomed and fruitful were the next.6
Upon which Schmidt comments:
Perhaps confounded with the garden of King Alcinous in the Odyssey?
Richard Grant White says:
No mention of any such garden in the classic writings of Greece and Rome is
known to scholars.
But the writer of the plays, who, we are told, was no scholar,
had penetrated more deeply into the lassie writings than his learned
critics; and a recent commentator, James D. Butler, has found out
the source of this allusion. He says:
1 Knight's Shak. Biography, p. 528. 6 Knight's Shak., note 6, act v, Merchant of Venice.
2 Some Shak. Commentators, p. 35. 6 1st Henry 17., i, 6.
8 Shah. Myth., p. 82. » vjj( 1I7_I26.
4 Julia Wedgewood.
THE LEARNING REVEALED IN THE PLAYS. 17
This couplet must have been suggested by Plato. (Phaedrus, p. 276.) The
translation is Jowett's — that I may not be suspected of warping the original to fit
my theory:
Would a husbandman, said Socrates, who is a man of sense, take the seeds,
which he values and which he wishes to be fruitful, and in sober earnest plant
them during the heat of summer, in some garden of Adonis, that he may rejoice
when he sees them in eight days appearing in beauty? Would he not do that, if
at all, to please the spectators at a festival? But the seeds about which he is in
earnest he sows in fitting soil, and practices husbandry, and is satisfied if in eight
months they arrive at perfection.1
Here we clearly have the original of the disputed passage:
Thy promises are like Adonis' gardens,
That one day bloomed and fruitful were the next.
Judge Holmes2 finds the original of the expression, "the mind's
eye," in Plato, who uses precisely the same phrase. He also thinks
the passage of Plato, —
While begetting and rearing children, and handing in succession from some to
others life like a torch, and even paying, according to law, worship to the gods, —
gave the hint for the following lines in Measure for Measure:
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for ourselves.
He also finds in Plato the original of Lear's phrase, " this same
Earned Theban."
Knight thinks the expression, —
Were she as rough
As the swelling Adriatic seas,3 —
was without doubt taken from Horace,4 "of whose odes there was no
translation in the sixteenth century."
The grand lines in Macbeth, —
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! —
are traced to Catullus. I give the translation of another:
Soles occidere et redire pos stint.
Nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux,
Nox est perpetuo una dor?nienda.
(The lights of heaven go out and return.
When once our brief candle goes out,
One night is to be perpetually slept.)
That beautiful thought in Hamlet, —
And from her unpolluted flesh
May violets spring, 5 —
1 Shakespeariana, May, 1886, p. 230. 3 Taming of the Shrew, i, 2. 5 Act v, scene 1.
2 A uthorship of Shakespeare, p. 396. 4 Ode xix, book iii.
1 8 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
seems to have had its original in the lines of Persius:
Nunc levior cippus non imprimit ossa,
Laudat posteritas, nunc non e manibus ittis,
Nunc non e tumulo fortunataque favilla
Nascuntur violce ? l —
which has been translated:
Will a less tomb, composed of smaller stones,
Press with less weight upon the under bones?
Posterity may praise them, why, what though?
Can yet their manes such a gift bestow
As to make violets from their ashes grow?
W. O. Follett (Sandusky, Ohio), in his pamphlet, Addendum
to Who Wrote Shakespeare, quotes2 a remark of the brothers
Langhorne in the preface to their translation of the Lives of Plu-
tarch, to this effect:
It is said by those who are not willing to allow Shakspere much learning, that
he availed himself of the last mentioned translation [of Plutarch, by Thomas
North]. But they seem to forget that, in order to support their arguments of this
kind, it is necessary for them to prove that Plato, too, was translated into English
at the same time; for the celebrated soliloquy, " To be or not to be," is taken
almost verbatim from that philosopher; yet we have never found that Plato was
translated in those times.
Mrs. Pott has shown in her great work3 that very many of the
Latin quotations found in Francis Bacon's sheets of notes and
memoranda, preserved in the British Museum, and called his Pro-
mus of Formularies and Elegancies, are either transferred bodily to
the plays or worked over in new forms. It follows, therefore, that
the writer of the Plays must have read the authors from whom
Bacon culled these sentences, or have had access to Bacon's manu-
script notes, or that he was Bacon himself.
In the Promus notes we find the proverb9 "Diluculo surgere sa/it-
berrimum."
Sir Toby Belch says to Sir Andrew Aguecheek:
Approach, Sir Andrew; not to be a-bed after midnight is to be up betimes,
and diluculo stirgere, thou knowest.4
Again:
Qui dissimulat liber non est. (He who dissembles is not free.)5
In Shakespeare we have:
The dissembler is a slave,6
1 Sat. i. 3 Promus, pp. 31-38. 5 Promus notes, folio 83 C.
4 Page 7. 4 Twelfth Night, ii, 3. 6 Pericles, i, 1.
THE LEARNING REVEALED IN THE PLAYS. 19
Again, in the Promus notes, we have:
Divitice impedimenta virtu tis. (The baggage of virtue.)
Bacon says:
I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue.
Shakespeare says:
If thou art rich, thou'rt poor;
For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey,
Till death unloads thee.1
Again:
Mors et fugacem persequitur virum. (Death pursues even the man that flies
from him.)
Shakespeare has:
Away! for death doth hold us in pursuit.2
And again:
Mors omnia solvit. (Death dissolves all things.)
Shakespeare has:
Let heaven dissolve my life.3
And again:
Hoc solum scio, quod nihil scio. (This only I know, that I know nothing.)
Shakespeare has:
The wise man knows himself to be a fool.4
Again:
Tela honoris tenerior. (The stuff of which honor is made is rather tender.)
Shakespeare has:
The tender honor of a maid.5
Again:
Tranquillo qui libet gubernator. — Eras. Ad. 4496. (Any one can be a pilot in
fine weather.)
Shakespeare says:
Nay, mother,
Where is your ancient courage? You were used
To say, extremity was the trier of spirits;
That common chances common men could bear;
That when the sea was calm all boats alike
Showed mastership in floating.6
1 Measure /or Measure, iii, i. 4 As You Like It, v, i.
13d Henry VI., ii, 5. 5 All's Well that Ends Well, iii, 5.
8 Antony and Cleopatra, iii, 2. 6 Coriolanus, iv, 1.
2o WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
Again:
In aliquibus manetur quia Hon datur rvgressus. (In some [places] one has
to remain because there is no getting back.) '
And in Shakespeare we find:
I am in blood
Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as easy as go o'er.'2
Again:
Frigus adurit. (Cold parches.)
And Shakespeare says:
Frost itself as actively doth burn.3
Again:
Anosce teipsiu. (Know thyself.)
Shakespeare has:
Mistress, know yourself.4
He knows nothing who knows not himself.5
That fool knows not himself.6
I could cite many other similar instances, but these will doubt-
less be sufficient to satisfy the reader.
II. His Knowledge of the Modern Languages.
It furthermore now appears that the writer of the plays was
versed in the languages and literature of France, Italy, and even
Spain; while he had some familiarity with the annals and tongues
of Northern Europe.
As to the French, whole pages of the plays are written in that
language.7
His knowledge of Italian is clearly proved.
The story of Othello was taken from the Italian of Cinthio's II Capitano More,
of which no translation is known to have existed; the tale of Cymbeline was drawn
from an Italian novel of Boccaccio, not known to have been translated into English,
and the like is true of other plays.8
Richard Grant White9 conclusively proves that the writer of
Othello had read the Orlando Furioso in the original Italian; that the
very words are borrowed as well as the thought; and that the
1 Promns notes, No. 1361. 6 Troilus and Cressida, ii, 1.
• Macbeth, iii, 4. Henry J'.
8 Hamlet, iii, 4. 8 Holmes, Authorship of Shakespeare, p. 58.
* As You Like It, iv, 1. 9 Life and Genius of Shakespeare, p. 35.
6 A IPs Well that Ends Well, ii, 4.
R8ITY
s
THE LEARNING RE VEALED IX THE PLA VS. 2 1
author adhered to the expressions in the Italian where the only
translation then in existence had departed from them. The
same high authority also shows that in the famous passage,
" Who steals my purse steals trash," etc., the writer of Othello
borrowed from the Orlando Innatnorato of Berni, "of which poem to
this day there is no English version.''
The plot of the comedy of Twelfth Night; oh\ What You Will, is
drawn from two Italian comedies, both having the same title,
GVInganni (The Cheats), both published before the date of Shake-
speare's play, and which Shakespeare must have read in the original
Italian, as there were, I believe, no English translations of them.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona is supposed to have been written
several years before 1598, the year when Bartholomew Yonge's
translation of the Diana of Jorge de Montemayor was published in
England; and Halliwell believes that there are similarities between
Shakespeare's play and Montemayor's romance "too minute to be
accidental." If this is the case we must conclude that Shakespeare
either read some translation of the romance in manuscript before
1598, or else that he read it in the original. Says Halliwell:
The absolute origin of the entire plot has possibly to be discovered in some
Italian novel. The error in the first folio of Padua for Milan, in act ii, scene 5, has
perhaps to be referred to some scene in the original novel. Tieck mentions an old
German play founded on a tale similar to The Two Gentlemen of Verona; but it has
not yet been made accessible to English students, and we have no means of
ascertaining how far the resemblance extends.
It further appears that Shakespeare found the original of The
Merchant of Venice in an untranslated Italian novel. Mr. Collier says:
In the novel II Pecorone of Giovanni Fiorentino, the lender of the money
(under very similar circumstances, and the wants of the Christian borrower arising
out of nearly the same events) is a Jew; and there also we have the
equal pound
Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken
In what part of your body pleaseth me.
The words in the Italian are lichel Giudeo gli potesse levare una libra di came
d'addosso di qualumque luogo e' voiesse," which are so nearly like those of
Shakespeare as to lead us to believe that he followed here some literal translation
of the novel in // Pecorone. None such has, however, reached our time, and the
version we have printed at the foot of the Italian was made and published
in 1765. !
Mrs. Pott, in her great work, calls attention to the following
1 Introduction to the Adventures of Gianetta, Shakespeare's Library, part i, vol. i, p. 315.
22 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLA VS.
Italian proverb, and the parallel passage in Lear. No one can doubt
that the former suggested the latter:
Non far cib che tu puoi;
Non spender cib che tu hai;
Non creder cib che tu odi;
Non dir cib che tu sat. '
(Do less than thou canst;
Spend less than thou hast;
Believe less than thou hearest;
Say less than thou knowest.)
While in Shakespeare we have:
Have more than thou showest,
Speak more than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest,
Ride more than thou goest,
Learn more than thou trowest.'2
And, again, the same author calls attention to the following
Italian proverb and parallel passage:
II savio fa della necessita virtu. (The wise man makes a virtue of necessity.) s
Shakespeare says:
Are you content to make a virtue of necessity ?4
The same author calls attention to numerous instances where
the author of the plays borrowed from Spanish proverbs. I select
one of the most striking:
Desque naci I lore ye cada dia nace porque. (When I was born I cried, and every
day shows why.)
Shakespeare has:
When we are born we cry, that we are come
To this great stage of fools.5
In Love's Labor Lost6 we find the author quoting part of an
Italian proverb:
Vinegia, Vinegia,
Chi non ti vede ei non ti pregia.
The proverb is:
Veaetia, Venetia, chi non tivede, non ti pregia ,
Ala chi t'ha troppo veduto ti dispregia.
The plot of Hamlet was taken from Saxo Grammaticus, the
Danish historian, of whom, says Whately, writing in 1748, "no
1 Protuus, p. 524. 3 Promus, p. 525. 5 Lear, iv, 6.
* Lear, i, 6. 4 T11J0 Grntlejuen of Verona x iv, 1. 6 Act iv, scene 2.
THE LEARNING REVEALED IN THE PLAYS. 23
translation hath yet been made."1 So that it would appear the
author of Hamlet must have read the Danish chronicle in the orig-
inal tongue.
Dr. Herman Brunnhofer, Dr. Benno Tschischwitz (in his Shake-
speare Forschungen) and Rev. Bovvechier Wrey Savile2 all unite in
believing that the writer of Hamlet was familiar with the works of
Giordano Bruno, who visited England, 1583 to 1586; and that the
words of Hamlet,3 " If the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being
a god kissing carrion," etc., are taken from Bruno's Spaccio delta
Bestia Trionfante. Furthermore, that the author of Hamlet was
familiar with " the atomic theory" of the ancients. And the Rev.
Bowechier Wrey Savile says:
Inasmuch as neither Bruno's Spaccio, nor the fragments of Parmenides' poem,
On Nature, which have come down to us, were known in an English dress at the
beginning of the seventeenth century (Toland's translation of Bruno's Spaccio did
not appear until 1713), it would seem to show that the author of Hamlet must have
been acquainted with both Greek and Italian, as was the case with the learned
Francis Bacon.
III. A Scholar Even in His Youth.
The evidences of scholarship mark the earliest as well as the
latest works of the great poet; in fact, they are more observable in
the works of his youth than in those of middle life. Even the
writers who have least doubt as to the Shaksperean authorship of
the plays admit this fact.
White says the early plays show "A mind fresh from academic
studies."4
Speaking of the early plays, Prof. Dowden finds among their
characteristics:
Frequency of classical allusions, frequency of puns and conceits, wit and image-
ry drawn out in detail to the point of exhaustion. ... In Love' s Labor Lost the
arrangement is too geometrical; the groupings are artificial, not organic or vital.
Coleridge was of opinion that
A young author's first work almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits.
And, hence, he concludes that
The habits of William Shakespeare had been scholastic and those of a student.
The scholarship of the writer of the plays and his familiarity
with the Latin language are also shown in the use of odd and
1 A u Inquiry into the Learning of Shakespeare. 3 Act ii, scene i.
2 Shakespcariana, Oct., 1884, p. 312. 4 White, Shakespeare" s Genius, p. 257.
24
WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NO T WRITE THE PLA VS.
extraordinary words, many of them coined by himself, and such
as would not naturally occur to an untaught genius, familiar with
no language but his own. I give a few specimens:
Rubrous, Twelfth Night, i, 4. Evitate, Merry Wives of Windsor, v, 5.
Pendulous, King Lear, iii, 4. Imbost, Antony and Cleopatra, iv, 3.
Abortive, Richard III, i, 2. Disnatured, King Tear, i, 4. [ii, 1.
Cautelous, Julius Cccsar, ii, I. Inaidable, All's Well That Ends Well,
Cautel, Hamlet, i, 3. Unsuppressive, Julitis Ccesar, ii, 1.
Deracinate, Troilus and Cressida, i, 3; Oppugnancy, Troilus and Cressida, i, 3.
Henry V., v, 2. Enskied, Measure for Measure, i, 5.
Surcease, Macbeth, i, 7. Legerity, Hemy V., iv, 1.
Recordation, id Henry IV., ii, 3. Propinquity, King Lear, i, 1.
En wheel, Othello, ii, 1. Credent, Hamlet, i, 3.
Armipotent, All's Well That Ends Well, Sluggardised, The Two Gentlemen of
iv, 3. Ve?'ona, i, I.
Knight says, speaking of the word expedient:1
Expedient. The word properly means, "that disengages itself from all entan-
glements." To set at liberty the foot which was held fast is exped-ire. Shakspere
always uses this word in strict accordance with its derivation, as, in truth, he does
most words that may be called learned}
Knight3 also notes the fact that he uses the word reduce in
the Latin sense, "to bring back."
IV. His Universal Learning.
The range of his studies was not confined to antique tongues
and foreign languages. He must have read all the books of travel
which grew out of that age of sea-voyages and explorations.
Dr. Brinton4 points out that the idea of Ariel having been
pegged in the knotty entrails of an oak until freed by Prospero
was borrowed from the mythology of the Yurucares, a South
American tribe of Indians, in which the first men were confined in
the heart of an enormous bole, until the god Tiri let them out by
cleaving it in twain. He further claims that Caliban is undoubt-
edly the word Carib, often spelt Caribani and Calibani in olden
writers; and his "dam's god, Setebvs," was the supreme deity of the
Patagonians, when first visited by Magellan.
In The Merchant of Venice we read:
Bring them, I pray thee, with imagined speed,
Unto the tranect, to the common ferry.5
1 King John, ii, 1. 2 Knight's Shak., i History, p. 24. 3 Richard III., v, 4.
4 Myths of the New World, p. 240, note. 5 Act iii, scene 5.
THE LEARNING REVEALED IN THE PLAYS. 25
Of this word Knight says:
No other example is found of the use of this word in English, and yet there is
little doubt that the word is correct. T7-anare and trainare are interpreted by
Florio not only as to draw \ which is the common acceptation, but as to pass or swim
over. Thus the tranect was most probably the tow-boat of the ferry. x
In King John we have:
Now, by my life, this day grows wondrous hot;
Some airy devil hovers in the sky,
And pours down mischief.2
Collier changed airy to fiery, "which, we may be sure," he says,
"was the word of the poet." But Knight turns to Burton and
shows that he described "aerial spirits or devils, who keep most
quarter in the air, and cause many tempests, thunder and light-
ning," etc. And he also referred to the fact that " Paul to the
Ephesians called them forms of the air.** Knight adds:
Shakspere knew this curious learning from the schoolmen, but the correctors
knew nothing about it.
We have another instance, in the following, where the great
poet knew a good deal more than his commentators.
In Romeo and Juliet he says:
Are you at leisure, holy Father, now;
Or shall I come to you at evening mass ? 3
Upon this Richard Grant White says:
If he became a member of the Church of Rome it must have been after he
wrote Romeo and Juliet, in which he speaks of " evening mass; " for the humblest
member of that church knows that there is no mass at vespers.4
But we have the authority of the learned Cardinal Bona that
the name mass was given to the morning and evening prayers
of the Christian soldiers. Salvazzio states that the name was
given to the lectures or lessons in matins. In the " Rule of
St. Aurelian " it is stated that at Christmas and on the Epiphany
six masses are to be read at matins, from the prophet Isaiah, and six
from the gospel; whilst on the festivals of martyrs the first mass is
to be read from the acts of the martyrs. In his rule for nuns the
same holy Bishop tells them that, as the nights are long, they may 1
recite three masses at the lectern. As the female sex could not
act as priests, it is plain that the word mass was formerly the
1 Knight's Shak. Com., p. 240. 3 Act iv, scene r.
2 Act iii, scene 2. 4 Life and Genius of Shak., p. 187.
26 WILLIAM SLLAKSPERE DLD NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
synonym for prayers, and did not mean, as nowadays, exclusively
the great sacrifice of the church; and therefore " evening mass "
simply means the evening service. In fact, as Bishop Clifford
shows, the word mass or, as it was written in Anglo-Saxon,
masse, came to be regarded as the synonym for feast ; hence,
Candlemas, lammas, Michaelmas, etc., are the feast of candles, the
feast of loaves, the feast of St. Michael, etc. " Moreover, mass
being the chief religious service of the Catholic Church, the word
came to be used in the sense of church service in general. Evening-
mass means evening service or vespers."
What a curious reaching-out for facts, in a day barren of
encyclopaedias, is shown in these lines:
Adrian. Widow Dido, said you? You make me study of that: she was of
Carthage, not of Tunis.
Gonzalo. This Tunis, sir, was Carthage.
Adrian. Carthage?
Gonzalo, I assure you, Carthage.1
V. Our Conclusion.
We commence our argument, therefore, with this proposition:
The author of the plays, whoever he may have been, was unques-
tionably a profound scholar and most laborious student. He had
read in their own tongues all the great, and some of the obscure
writers of antiquity; he was familiar with the languages of the
principal nations of Europe; his mind had compassed all the learn-
ing of his time and of preceding ages; he had pored over the
pages of French and Italian novelists; he had read the philosoph-
ical utterances of the great thinkers of Greece and Rome; and he
had closely considered the narrations of the explorers who were
just laying bare the secrets of new islands and continents. It has
been justly said that the plays could not have been written with-
out a library, and cannot, to-day, be studied without one. To
their proper elucidation the learning of the whole world is neces-
sary. Goethe says of the writer of the plays: "He drew a sponge
over the table of human knowledge."
We pass, then, to the question, Did William Shakspere possess
such a vast mass of information? — could he have possessed it?
1 Tempest, ii, i.
CHAPTER II.
THE EDUCATION OF WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.
Touchstone. Art thou learned ?
William. No, sir.
Touchstone. Then learn this of me : to have is to have.
As You Like It, v, i.
TT must not be forgotten that the world of three hundred years
ago was a very different world from that of to-day.
A young man, at the present time, can receive in the backwoods
of the United States, or Canada, or in the towns of Australia, an
education which Cambridge and Oxford could not have afforded
to the noblemen of England in the sixteenth century. That tre-
mendous educator, the daily press, had then no existence. Now
it comes to almost every door, bringing not only the news of the
whole world, but an abstract of the entire literary and scientific
knowledge of the age.
I. England in the Sixteenth Century.
Three hundred years ago the English-speaking population of the
world was confined almost altogether to the island of Great Britain,
and the refinement and culture of the island scarcely extended
beyond a few towns and the universities. London was the great
center, not only of politics, but of literature and courtly manners.
The agricultural population and the yeomanry of the smaller
towns were steeped to the lips in ignorance, rude and barbarous
in their manners, and brutal in their modes of life.
They did not even speak the same language. Goadby tells us
that, when the militia met from the different counties to organize
resistance to the invasion of the Spaniards,
It was hard to catch the words of command, so pronounced were the different
dialects.1
Simpson says :
If cattle-driving was to be interpreted as levying war, all England at harvest
tide was in a state of warfare. The disputes about tithes and boundaries were
1 Goadby, England of Shak., p. 83.
28 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
then usually settled by bands of armed men, and the records of the Star-Chamber
swarm with such cases.1
The cots or dwellings of the humble classes in Shakspere's time
were, as the haughty Spaniard wrote, in the retgn of Elizabeth's
sister, built "of sticks and dirt."
"People," says Richard Grant White, "corresponding in posi-
tion to those whose means and tastes would now insure them as
much comfort in their homes as a king has in his palace, and even
simple elegance beside, then lived in houses which in their best
estate would seem at the present day rude, cheerless and confined,
to any man not bred in poverty."2
II. Stratford in the Time of Shakspere.
The lives of the people were coarse, barren and filthy.
Thorold Rogers says:
In the absence of all winter roots and herbs, beyond a few onions, a diet of
salted provisions, extending over so long a period, would be sure to engender
disease; . . . and, as a matter of fact, scurvy and leprosy, the invariable results of
an unwholesome diet, were endemic, the latter malignant and infectious in
medieval England. The virulence of these diseases, due in the first instance to
unwholesome food, was aggravated by the inconceivably filthy habits of the people*
Richard Grant White says:
Stratford then contained about fifteen hundred inhabitants, who dwelt chiefly
in thatched cottages, which straggled over the ground, too near together for rural
beauty, too far apart to seem snug and neighborly; and scattered through the
gardens and orchards around the best of these were neglected stables, cow-yards
and sheep-cotes. Many of the meaner houses were without chimneys or glazed
windows. The streets were cumbered with logs and blocks, and foul with offal,
mud, muck-heaps and reeking stable refuse, the accumulation of which the town
ordinances and the infliction of fines could not prevent even before the doors of the
better sort of people. The very first we hear of John Shakespeare himself, in 1552,
is that he and a certain Humphrey Reynolds and Adrian Quiney " fecerunt
sterquinarium," in the quarter called Henley Street, against the order of the court;
for which dirty piece of business they were "in misericordiaf as they well
deserved. But the next year John Shakespeare and Adrian Quiney repeated the
unsavory offense, and this time in company with the bailiff himself.4
Halliwell-Phillipps says:
The sanitary condition of the thoroughfares of Stratford-on-Avon was, to our
present notions, simply terrible. Under-surface drainage of every kind was then
an unknown art in the district. There was a far greater amount of moisture in
the land than would now be thought possible, and streamlets of water-power suffi-
1 School of Shak., vol. i, p. 60. 3 Work and Wages, Thorold Rogers, p. 96.
2 Life and Genius ofShak., p. 17. 4 Life and Genius of S/iak., p. 21.
THE EDUCATION OE WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. 2g
cient for the operation of corn-mills meandered through the town. This general
humidity intensified the evils arising from the want of scavengers, or other effect-
ive appliances for the preservation of cleanliness. House-slops were recklessly
thrown into ill-kept channels that lined the sides of unmetaled roads; pigs and
geese too often reveled in the puddles and ruts, while here and there were small
middens, ever in the course of accumulation, the receptacles of offal and of every
species of nastiness. A regulation for the removal of these collections to certain
specified localities, interspersed through the borough and known as common
dung-hills, appears to have been the extent of the interference that the authorities
ventured or cared to exercise in such matters. Sometimes when the nuisance was
thought to be sufficiently flagrant, they made a raid on those inhabitants who had
suffered their refuse to accumulate largely in the highways. On one of these
occasions; in April, 1552, John Shakespeare was fined the sum of twelve pence for
having amassed what was no doubt a conspicuous sterquinarium before his house
in Henley Street, and under these unsavory circumstances does the history of the
poet's father commence in the records of England. It is sad to be compelled to
admit that there was little excuse for his negligence, one of the public stores of filth
being within a stone's throto of his residence. '
The people of Stratford were densely ignorant. At the time of
Shakspere's birth, only six aldermen of the town, out of nineteen,
could write their names; and of the thirteen who could not read or
write, Shakspere's father, John Shakspere, was one.
Knight says:
We were reluctant to yield our assent to Malone's assertion that Shakspere's
father had a mark to himself. The marks are not distinctly affixed to each name
in this document. But subsequent discoveries establish the fact that he used two
marks — one something like an open pair of compasses, the other the common cross.'2
III. Shakspere's Family Totally Uneducated.
Shakspere's whole family were illiterate. He was the first of
his race we know of who was able to read and write. His father and
mother, grandfathers and grandmothers, aunts and cousins — all
signed their names, on the few occasions when they were obliged
to sign them, with crosses. His daughter Judith could not read
or write. The whole population around him were in the same
condition.
The highest authority upon these questions says:
Exclusive of Bibles, church services, psalters and educational manuals, there
were certainly not more than two or three dozen oooks, if so many, in the whole
town.
The copy of the black-letter English History, so often depicted as well thumbed
by Shakespeare, in his father's parlor, never existed out of the imagination.3
1 Outlines Life ofShak., p. 18. 2 Knight's Skak. Biography, p. 17.
3 Halliwell-Phillipps, Life ofShak., p. 42.
3°
WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
Goadby says:
The common people were densely ignorant. They had to pick up their
mother tongue as best they could. The first English grammar was not published
until 1586. [This was after Shakspere had finished his education.] It is evident
that much schooling was impossible, for the necessary books did not exist. The
horn-book for teaching the alphabet would almost exhaust the resources of any common
day schools that might exist in the towns and villages. Little if any English was
TAUGHT EVEN IN THE LOWER CLASSES OF THE GRAMMAR SCHOOLS.1
Prof. Thorold Rogers says:
Sometimes perhaps, in the days after the Reformation, a more than ordinarily
opulent ecclesiastic, having no family ties, would train up some clever rustic child,
teach him and help him on to the university. But, as a rule, since that event,
there was no educated person in the parish beyond the parson, and he had the anxieties
of a narrow fortune and a numerous family.2
The Rev John Shaw, who was temporary chaplain in a village
in Lancashire in 1644, tells of an old man of sixty years of age,
whose whole knowledge of Jesus Christ had been derived from a
miracle play "'Oh, sir,' said he, 'I think I heard of that man
you speak of once in a play at Kendall called Corpus ChrisH
Play where there was a man on a tree and blood ran down.9 "
IV. The Universities of That Day.
Even the universities were not such schools as the name would
to-day imply.
The state of education was almost as unsettled as that of religion. The Uni-
versities of Cambridge and Oxford were thronged with poor scholars, and eminent
professors taught in the schools and colleges. But the Reformation had made sad
havoc with their buildings and libraries, and the spirit of amusement had affected
their studies.3
The students turned much more readily to dissipation than to
literature. In the year 1570, the scholars of Trinity College, Cam-
bridge, consumed 2,250 barrels of beer!4
The knowledge of Greek had sensibly declined, but Latin was still cultivated
with considerable success.5
The number of scholars of the university fit for schoolmasters was small.
"Whereas they make one scholar they n.arre ten," averred Peacham, who describes
one specimen as whipping his boys on a cold morning "for no other purpose than
to get himself a heate." 6
The country swarmed to such an extent with scholars of the
universities, who made a living as beggars, that Parliament had to
interfere against the nuisance. By the act of 14th Elizabeth, "all
1 Goadby, England of Slink. , p. 101. 3 Goadby, England, p. 97. 5 Ibid., p. 97.
2 Rogers, Work and linages, p. 85. * Ibid., p. 73. 6 Ibid., p. 99.
THE EDUCATION OF WILLIAM SUA K SP ERE. 31
scholars of the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge that go about
begging, not being authorized under the seal of said universities,"
are declared "vagabonds," and punishable as such.
V. "A Bookless Neighborhood."
If this was the condition of the two great "twins of learning,"
sole centers of light in the darkness of a barbarous age, we can
readily conceive what must have been the means of public educa-
tion in the dirty little hamlet of Stratford, with its fifteen hundred
untaught souls, its two hundred and fifty householders, and its
illiterate officials.
It was, as Halliwell-Phillipps has called it, "a bookless neigh-
borhood."
We have the inventory of the personal property of Robert
Arden, Shakspere's mother's father, and the inventory of the per-
sonal property of Agnes Arden, his widow, and the will of the
same Agnes Arden, and any number of other wills, but in them all,
in the midst of a plentiful array of "oxenne," "kyne," "sheepe,"
"pigges," "basons," "chafyng dyches," "toweles and dyepers,"
"shettes," "frying panes," "gredyerenes," "barrelles," "hansaws,"
"knedyng troghs," "poringers," "sawcers," "pott-hookes," and
"linkes," we do not find reference to a single book, not even to a
family Bible or a prayer-book. Everything speaks of a rude, coarse
and unintellectual people. Here is an extract from the will of
Agnes Arden, Shakspere's grandmother:
I geve to the said Jhon Hill my best platter of the best sort, and my best
platter of the second sorte, and j poringer, one sawcer and one best candlesticke.
And I also give to the said Jhon one paire of sheetes. I give to the said Jhon
my second pot, my best pan, . . . and one cow with the white rump.
"One John Shakspeare, of Budbrook, near Warwick, considered
it a sufficient mark of respect to his father-in-law to leave him 'his
best boots.' " 1
VI. A Gross Improbability.
It would indeed be a miracle if out of this vulgar, dirty, illiter-
ate family came the greatest genius, the profoundest thinker, the
broadest scholar that has adorned the annals of the human race.
It is possible. It is scarcely probable.
1 Outlines Life of Shak., p. 183.
32 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
Professor Grant Allen, writing in the Science Monthly of March
1882 (p. 591), and speaking of the life of Sir Charles Lyell, says:
Whence did he come? What conditions went to beget him? From what
stocks were his qualities derived, and why ? These are the questions that must
henceforth always be first asked when we have to deal with the life of any great
man. For we have now learned that a great man is no unaccountable accident, no
chance result of a toss-up on the part of nature, but simply the highest outcome
and final efflorescence of many long ancestral lines, converging at last toward a
single happy combination.
Herbert Spencer says:
If you assume that two European parents may produce a negro child, or that
from woolly-haired prognathous Papuans may come a fair, straight-haired infant
of Caucasian type, you may assume that the advent of the great man can occur
anywhere and under any circumstances. If, disregarding these accumulated
results of experience which current proverbs and the generalizations of psycholo-
gists alike express, you suppose that a Newton might be born in a Hottentot
family; that a Milton might spring up among the Andamanese; that a Howard or a
Clarkson might have Fiji parents: then you may proceed with facility to explain
social progress as caused by the actions of the great man. But if all biological
science, enforcing all popular belief, convinces you that by no possibility will an
Aristotle come from a father and mother with facial angles of fifty degrees; and
that out of a tribe of cannibals, whose chorus in preparation for a feast of human
flesh is a kind of rhythmical roaring, there is not the remotest chance of a
Beethoven arising: then you must admit that the genesis of the great man depends
on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he
appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown.
And it is to this social state, to this squalid village, that the
great thinker of the human race, after association, as we are told,
with courts and wits and scholars and princes, returned in middle
life. He left intellectual London, which was then the center of
mental activity, and the seat of whatever learning and refinement
were to be found in England, not to seek the peace of rural land-
scapes and breathe the sweet perfumes of gardens and hedge-rows,
but to sit down contentedly in the midst of pig-sties, and to inhale
the malarial odors from reeking streets and stinking ditches. To
show that this is no exaggeration, let me state a few facts.
Henry Smith, of Stratford, in 1605, is notified to "plucke downe
his pigges cote, which is built ner^ the chappie wall, and the house
of office there." And John Sadler, miller, is fined for bringing feed
and feeding his hogs in "chappie lane." In 1613 John Rogers, the
vicar, erected a pig-sty immediately opposite the back court of
Shakspere's residence. For one hundred and fifty years after
Shakspere's death, Chapel Ditch, which lay next to the New Place
THE EDUCATION OF WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE.
33
Garden, " was a receptacle for all manner of filth that any person
chose to put there."1 It was four or five feet wide and filled for
a foot deep with flowing filth. More than one hundred years
after Shakspere's death, to-wit, in 1734, the Court Leet of Strat-
ford presented Joseph Sawbridge, in Henley Street, " for not car-
ring in his muck before his door." 2
The houses were thatched with reeds.3
The streets were narrow, irregular and without sidewalks; full
of refuse, and lively with pigs, poultry and ravenous birds.4
The highways were "foule, long and cumbersome."5 Good
bridges were so rare that in some cases they were ascribed to the
devil. There was no mail service except between London and a
few principal points. The postage upon a letter from Lynn to
London was 26s. 8d., equal in value to about §30 of our money
to-day. The stage wagons moved at the rate o.f two miles an hour.
Places twelve miles apart were then practically farther removed
than towns would now be one hundred miles apart. There was
little or no intercourse among the common people. Men lived and
died where they were born.
There were no carriages. The Queen imported a Dutch coach
in 1564, the sight of which "put both man and horse in amaze-
ment," remarks Taylor, the water poet. "Some said it was a great
crab-shell, brought out of China, and some imagined it to be one
of the pagan temples, in which the cannibals adored the devil."
There were few chimneys; dining-room and kitchen were all one;
"each one made his fire against the reredrosse in the hall where he
dined and dressed his meat," says Harrison. The beds were of
straw, with wooden bolsters (like the Chinese); the people ate out
of wooden platters with wooden spoons. The churches were with-
out pews and full of fleas.6
VII. The EnCxLish People in the Sixteenth Century.
The people were fierce, jovial, rude, hearty, brutal and pugna-
cious. They were great eaters of beef and drinkers of beer. We
find them accurately described in the plays:
1 Outlines Life of Shak., p. 429. 3 Goadby's England of Shak., p. 16. 5 Ibid.
2 Ibid., p. 205. 4 Ibid. 6 Ibid., p. 75.
W/Y£R8fTY
34 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
The men do sympathise with the mastiffs, in robustious and rough coming-on,
leaving their wits with their wives; and then give them great meals of beef, and
iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils.1
They lived out of doors; they had few books, and, of course, no
newspapers. Their favorite amusements were bear-baitings, bull-
baitings, cock-fights, dog-fights, foot-ball and " rough-and-tumble
fighting."2 The cock, having crowed when Peter denied his Mas-
ter, was regarded as the devil's bird, and many clergymen enjoined
cock-throwing, or throwing of sticks at cocks, as a pious exercise
and agreeable to God.
There were few vegetables upon the tables, and these were largely
imported from Holland. The leaves of the turnip were used as a
salad. Vegetables were regarded as medicines. No forks were used
until 161 1, when the custom was imported from Italy. Tea came into
England in 1610, and coffee in 1652. Beer or wine was used with
all meals. Men and women went to the taverns and drank together.
The speech of the country people was a barbarous jargon: we
have some specimens of it in the plays.
Take, for instance, the following from Lear:
Stewart. Let go his own.
Edgar. Chill not go, zir,
Without vurther 'casion. . . .
Let poor volke passe: and chud ha' bin zwaggerd out of my life, 'twould not
ha' bin zo long as 'tis, by a vortnight. . . . Keepe out of che vor'ye or ice try
whither your Costard or my Ballow be the harder; chill be plaine with you.3
VIII. A Country School in Shakspere's Time.
Halliwell-Phillipps says, speaking of Shakspere's education in
"the horn-book and the A, B, C ":
There were few persons at that time at Stratford-on-Avon capable of initiating
him even into these preparatory accomplishments.4
What manner of school was it in which he received all the edu-
cation ever imparted to him ?
The following is Roger Ascham's description of schools and
schoolmasters in his day, as quoted by Appleton Morgan, in a
newspaper article:
It is pitie that commonly more care is had, yea, and that among verie wise
men, to find out rather a cunnynge man for their horse, than a cunnynge man for
1 Henry V., iii, 7. 3 Act iv, scene 6.
2 Goadby's England, p. 69. 4 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines Life of Shak., p. 24.
THE EDUCATION OF WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. 35
their children.1 . . . The master mostly being as ignorant as the child, what to
say properly and fitly to the matter.2 They for the most part so behave themselves
that their very name is hateful to the scholar, who trembleth at their coming-in,
rejoiceth at their absence, and looketh him returned in the face as his deadly
enemy.
Mr. Morgan continues:
To the charges of undue severity, says Drake, "we must add the accusation
of immorality and buffoonery. They were put on the stage along with the zany
and pantaloon, to be laughed at."3
As to school books, or other implements of instruction, except the following,
viz. (to cite them in the order in which they were prized and employed): First, the
birch rod; second, the church catechism; third, the horn-book or criss-cross row.
Drake says,4 the thirty-ninth injunction of Elizabeth enacted that every grammar
school "shall teach the grammar set forth by King Henry the VIII., of noble
memory, and continued in the reign of Edward the VI., and none other." This
was the Lily's Latin Grammar, and its study appears to have constituted the
difference between a "school" and a "grammar school." Drake adds, "There
was, however, another book which we may almost confidently affirm young
Shakspere to have studied under the tuition of the master of the free grammar
school at Stratford, the production of one Ockland, a panegyric on the characters
and government of the reign of Elizabeth and her ministers, which was enjoined
by authority to be read in every grammar school." Another text-book which may
have been extant was the one referred to by Ascham as follows: " I have formerly
seen Mr. Horman's book, who was a master of Eton school. The book itself could
be of no great use, for, as I remember, it was only a collection of single sentences
without order or method, put into Latin." But the rod was for long years the
principal instructor. Peter Mason, a pupil of Nicholas Udal, master of Eton,
says he used to receive fifty-three lashes in the course of one Latin exercise. At
that temple of learning, and from Dr. Busby's time downward, the authorities
agree in giving it the foremost place in English curriculums.
In The Compleat Gentleman, edition of 1634, the author says a country
school teacher "by no entreaty would teach any scholar further than his
(the scholar's) father had learned before him; as, if he had but only learned
to read English, the son, though he went with him seven years, should go
no further. His reason was that they would otherwise prove saucy rogues and
control their fathers. Yet these are they that have our hopeful gentry under
their charge."
Nay, in 1771, when Shakspere had been dead a century and a half, things
were about as he left them. John Britton, who attended the provincial
grammar school of Kingston, St. Nicholas parish, in Wilts, about 1771-80, says
that he was taught the "criss-cross row," imparted by the learned pedagogue
as follows:
Teacher — " Commether Billy Chubb, an' breng the horren book. Ge ma the
vester in the wendow, you Pat Came. What! be a sleepid? I'll wake ye! Now,
Billy, there's a good bway; ston still there, an' mind what I da za ta ye, an' whan
I da point na! Criss-cross girta little A, B, C. That's right, Billy; you'll zoon
lam criss-cross row; you'll zoon averg it, Bobby Jiffry! You'll zoon be a scoll-
ard ! A's a purty chubby bwoy, Lord love en! "
1 IVorA-s, Bennett's edition, p. 212. 3 Shak. and His Times, vol. i, p. 97.
2 Ibid., p. 12. * Ibid., p. 26.
36 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
IX. English not Taught in the Schools of That Day.
And it is very doubtful, as we have seen, whether English was
taught at all in that Stratford school. It certainly was not in
most of the grammar schools of England at that time. . Even White
is forced to admit this. He says:
For book instruction there was the free grammar school of Stratford, well
endowed by Thomas Jolyffe, in the reign of Edward IV., where, unless it differed
from all others of its kind, he could have learned Latin and some Greek. Some
English, too; but not much, for English was held in scorn by the scholars of those
days, and long after.1
It will readily be conceded that in such a town, among such a
people, and with such a school, Shakspere could have learned but
little, and that little of the rudest kind. And to this conclusion
even so stout a Shaksperean as Richard Grant White is driven.
He says, in a recent number of the Atlantic magazine:
Shakespeare was the son of a Warwickshire peasant, or very inferior yeoman,
by the daughter of a well-to-do farmer. Both his father and mother were so igno-
rant that they signed with a mark instead of writing their names. Few of their
friends could write theirs. Shakespeare probably had a little instruction in Latin
in the Stratford grammar school. When, at twenty-two years of age, he fled from
Stratford to London, we may be sure that he had never seen half a dozen books other
than his horn-book, his Latin accidence and a Bible. Probably there were not half a
dozen others in all Stratford. The notion that he was once an attorney's clerk is
blown to pieces.
Where, then, did he acquire the vast learning demonstrated by
the plays?
X. Shakspere's Youthful Habits.
There can be no doubt that the child is father to the man.
While little Francis Bacon's youthful associates were enjoying their
game of ball, the future philosopher wras at the end of a tunnel
experimenting in echoes. Pope "lisped in numbers, for the num-
bers came." At nine years of age Charles Dickens (a sort of lesser
Shakespeare) knew all about Falstaff, and the robbery at Gad's
Hill, and had established the hope in his heart that he might some
day own the handsome house in that place in which he afterward
resided. It was his habit to creep away to a garret in his father's
house, and there, enraptured, pore oyer the pages of Roderick Random,
Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, The Arabian Nights,
1 Life and Genius of Shak., p. 30.
THE EDUCATION OF WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.
37
The Vicar of Wakefield, and Robinso?i Crusoe. Dr. Glennie tells us of
Byron, that in his boyhood " his reading in history and poetry was
far beyond the usual standard of his age. . . . He was a great
reader and admirer of the Old Testament, and had read it through
and through before he was eight years old." At fifteen years of
age Robert Burns had read The Spectator, Pope's works, some of
Shakespeare's plays, Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, Allan
Ramsay's works, and a number of religious books, and "had
studied the English grammar and gained some knowledge of the
French."
Genius is a powerful predisposition, so strong that it overrules
a man's whole life, from boyhood to the grave. The greatness of
a mind is in proportion to its receptivity, its capacity to assimilate
a vast mass of food; it is an intellectual stomach that eliminates
not muscle but thought. Its power holds a due relation to its
greed — it is an eternal and insatiable hunger. In itself it is but
an instrument. It can work only upon external material.
The writer of the plays recognizes this truth. He says, speaking
of Cardinal Wolsey:
From his cradle
He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one,
Exceeding wise, fair-spoken and persuading.1
The commentators have tried to alter the punctuation of
this sentence. They have asked, "How could he be 'a scholar
from his cradle ' ? " What the poet meant was that the extraor-
dinary capacity to receive impressions and acquire knowledge,
which constitutes the basis of the education of the infant, con-
tinued with unabated force all through the life of the great church-
man. The retention of this youthful impressibility of the mind is
one of the essentials of greatness.
And again the poet says:
This morning, like the spirit of a youth
That means to be of note, begins betimes}
How did William Shakspere, the Stratford-on-Avon boy, " begin
betimes " ?
In his fourteenth year it is supposed he left school; but
there is really no proof that he ever attended school for an hour.
1 Henry VIII., iv, 2. 2 Antony and Cleopatra, iv, 2.
38 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLA VS.
White expresses the opinion that "William Shakespeare was
obliged to leave school early and earn his living."
At sixteen, tradition says, he was apprenticed to a butcher.
Aubrey says:
I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbors that when he was a
boy he exercised his father's trade; but when he killed a calf he would doe it in a
high style and make a speech.
Rowe, speaking for Betterton, says, " Upon his leaving school
he seems to have given entirely into that way of living which his
father proposed to him," that of a dealer in wool.
Neither the pursuit of butcher or wool-dealer could have been
very favorable to the acquisition of knowledge in a rude age and a
" bookless neighborhood."
But perhaps the boy was of a very studious nature and his
industry eked out the poor materials available ? Let us see:
There is a tradition of his youth setting forth that in the neigh-
boring village of Bidford there was a society — not a literary society,
not a debating club like that of which Robert Burns was a member
— but a brutal crew calling themselves " The Bidford Topers,"
whose boast was that they could drink more beer than the " topers "
of any of the adjoining intellectual villages. They challenged
Stratford, and among the gallant young men who accepted the chal-
lenge was William Shakspere. The " Bidford topers" were too
many for the Stratford " topers," and the latter attempted to
walk home again, but were so besotted that their legs gave out,
and they spent the night by the roadside under a large crab-tree,
which stands to this day and is known as " Shakspere's crab." As the
imagination sees him, stretched sodden and senseless, beneath the
crab-tree, we may apply to him the words of the real Shakespeare:
O monstrous beast ! — how like a swine he lies.1
The first appearance of the father is connected with a filth-
heap. The first recorded act of the son is this spirituelle contest.
The next incident in the life of Shakspere occurred when he
was nineteen years old. This was his marriage to a girl of twenty-
seven, that is to say, eight years older than himself. Six months
after the marriage their first child was born.
1 Taming of the Shrew.
THE EDUCATION OF WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.
39
But perhaps, after this inauspicious match, he settled down and
devoted himself to study ? Not at all.
The Reverend William Fulman, an antiquary, who died in
1688, bequeathed his manuscript biographical memoranda to
the Reverend Richard Davies, rector of Sapperton, in Gloucester-
shire, and archdeacon of Lichfield, who died in 1708. To a note
of Fulman's, which barely records Shakspere's birth, death
and occupation, Davies made brief additions, the principal of
which is that William Shakspere was " much given to all
unluckinesse in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from
Sir Lucy, who had him oft whipt and sometimes imprisoned,
and at last made him fly his native county, to his great ad-
vancement."
The man who wrote this was probably born within little more
than twenty-five years after Shakspere's death. The tradition
comes to us also from other sources.
The same story is told by Rowe, on the authority of Betterton,
who went down to Stratford to collect materials for a life of
Shakspere. Rowe says:
He had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill com-
pany, and amongst them some, that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing,
engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of
Charlecote, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman,
as he thought, somewhat too severely, and in order to revenge that ill-
usage he made a ballad upon him. And although this, probably the first
essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter that
it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree that he was obliged
to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some time and shelter
himself in London.
A pretended specimen of the ballad has come down to us, a
rude and vulgar thing:
A parliament member, a justice of peace,
At home a poor scare-crow, at London an asse.
If lowsie is Lucy, as some volke miscalle it,
Then Lucy is lowsie whatever befall it.
He thinks himself great,
Yet an ass is his state;
We allow by his ears but with asses to mate.
If Lucy is lowsie as some volke miscalle it,
Sing lowsie Lucy whatever befall it.
And touching this Sir Thomas Lucy, Richard Grant White,
after visiting Stratford and Charlecote, speaks as follows:
4o WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
This was a truly kindly nature, we may almost say a noble soul. I am with
Sir Thomas in this matter, and if Shakespeare suffered any discipline at his hands,
I believe that he deserved it.1
XI. Shakspere Goes to London.
He proceeded to London " somewhere about 1586 or 1587," say
his biographers. His twin children, Hamnet and Judith, had been
born in February, 1585.
We can readily conceive his condition. His father was bank-
rupt; his own family rapidly increasing — his wife had just been
delivered of twins; his home was dirty, bookless and miserable;
his companions degraded; his pursuits low; he had been whipped
and imprisoned, and he fled, probably penniless, to the great city.
As his admirer, Richard Grant White, says, " we may be sure he had
never seen half a dozen books other than his horn-book, his Latin
accidence, and a Bible." There is indeed no certainty that he had
ever seen even the last work, for neither father nor mother could
read or write, and had no use for, and do not seem to have pos-
sessed, a Bible.
Says Halliwell-Phillipps :
Removed prematurely from school; residing with illiterate relatives in a book-
less neighborhood; thrown into the midst of occupations adverse to scholastic prog-
ress, it is difficult to believe that when he left Stratford he was not all but destitute
of polished accomplishments. 2
To London fled all the adventurers, vagabonds and paupers of
the realm. They gathered around the play-houses. These were
rude structures, open to the heavens — sometimes the roofless yard
of a tavern served as the theater, and a rough scaffold as the stage.
Here the ruffians, the thieves, the vagabonds, the apprentices, the
pimps and the prostitutes assembled — a stormy, dirty, quarrelsome
multitude. Here William Shakspere came. He was, we will con-
cede, bright, keen and active, intent on getting ahead in the world,
fond of money, but poor as poverty and ignorant as barbarism.
What could he do?
XII. He Becomes a Horse-holder.
He took to the first thing that presented itself, holding horses
at the door of the play-house for the young gentlemen who came to
witness the performance. And this, tradition assures us, he did.
1 England Without and Within, p. 514. 2 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines Life o/Shak., p. 63.
THE EDUCATION OF WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. 4I
He proved trustworthy, and the youthful aristocrats would call, we
are told, for Will Shakspere to hold their horses. Then his busi-
ness faculty came into play, and he organized a band of assistants,
who were known then, and long afterward, as " Shakspere's boys."
Gradually he worked his way among the actors.
XIII. He Becomes a Call-boy, and then an Actor.
Betterton heard that " he was received into the company at first
in a very mean rank;" and the octogenarian parish clerk of Strat-
ford told Dowdall, in 1693, that he "was received into the play-
house as a serviture " — that is, as a servant, a supernumerary, or
"supe." Tradition says he was the prompter's call-boy, his duty
being to call the actors when it was time for them to go upon the
stage. In time he rose a step higher: he became an actor. He
never was a great actor, but performed, we are told, insignificant
parts. "He seems," says White, "never to have risen high in this
profession. The Ghost in Hamlet, and old Adam in As You Like It,
were the utmost of his achievements in this direction."
It must have taken him some time, say a year or two at the very
least, to work up from being a vagabond horse-holder to the career
of a regular actor. We will see, when we come to discuss the chro-
nology of the plays, that they began to appear almost as soon as he
reached London, if not before, although Shakspere's name was not
connected with them for some years thereafter. And the earliest
plays, as we shall see, were the most scholarly, breathing the very
atmosphere of the academy.
XIV. No Tradition Refers to Him as a Student or Scholar.
There was certainly nothing in his new surroundings in London
akin to Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish and Danish studies;
there was nothing akin to medical, musical and philosophical
researches.
And assuredly his life in Stratford, reckless, improvident, dissi-
pated, degraded, does not represent the studious youth who, in
some garret, would pore over the great masters, and fill his mind
with information, and his soul with high aspirations. There is not
a single tradition which points to any such element in his character.
Aubrey asserts that, from the time of leaving school until his
departure for Warwickshire, Shakspere was a schoolmaster. We
42 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
have seen that it did not require a very extensive stock of learning
to constitute a schoolmaster in that age; but even this, the only
tradition of his life which points to anything even akin to scholarly
accomplishments, must be abandoned.
Lord Campbell says:
Unfortunately, however, the pedagogical theory is not only quite unsupported
"by evidence, but it is not consistent with established facts. From the registration
of the baptism of Shakespeare's children, and other well authenticated circum-
stances, we know that he continued to dwell in Stratford, or the immediate neigh-
borhood, till he became a citizen of London: there was no other school in Stratford
except the endowed grammar school, where he had been a pupil; of this he cer-
tainly never was master, for the unbroken succession of masters from the reign
of Edward VI. till the reign of James I. is of record; . . . and there is no trace of
there having been any usher employed in this school.1
Only a miracle of studiousness could have acquired, in a few
years, upon a basis of total ignorance and bad habits, the culture
and refinement manifested in the earliest plays; and but a few
years elapsed between the time when he fled scourged from Strat-
ford and the time when the plays began to appear, in his name, in
London. Eut plays, now believed to have been written by the
same hand that wrote the Shakespeare plays, were on the boards
before he left Stratford. The twins, Judith and Hamnet, were born
in February, 1585, Shakspere being then not yet twenty-one years
of age, and we will see hereafter that Hainlet appeared for the first
time in 1585 or 1587. If he had shown, anywhere in his career, such
a trait of immense industry and scholarly research, some tradition
would have reached us concerning it. We have traditions that he
wras the father of another man's supposed son (Sir William Dave-
nant); and we are told of a licentious amour in which he outwitted
Burbage; and we hear of w<?/-combats in a tavern; but not one
word comes down to us of books, or study, or industry, or art.
XV. The "Venus and Adonis."
"The first heir of his invention," he tells us, was "the Venus and
Ado7iis" published in 1593; and many think that this means that he
wrote it before any of the plays, and even before he left Stratford.
Richard Grant White says:
In any case, we may be sure that the poem [ Venus and Adonis] was written
some years before it was printed; and it may have been brought by the young poet
1 Shakespeare' s Legal Acquirements, p. 19.
THE EDUCATION OF WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. 43
from Stratford in manuscript, and read by a select circle, according to the custom
of the time, before it was published.
But here is a difficulty that presents itself: the people of War-
wickshire did not speak the English of the London court, but a
patois almost as different from it as the Lowland Scotch of Burns is
to-day different from the English of Westminster.
To give the reader some idea of the kind of language used by
Shakspere during his youth, and by all the uneducated people of
his county, I select, at random, a few words from the Warwick-
shire dialect:
Tageous, troublesome; Fameled, starving;
Kiver, a butter tub; Brevet, to snuff, to sniff;
Grinsard, the turf; Unked, solitary;
Slammocks, untidy; Roomthy, spacious;
He's teddin, he's shaking up hay; Mulled, sleepy;
He do fash hisself, he troubles himself; Glir, to slide;
Cob, thick; Work, a row, a quarrel;
Gidding, thoughtless; Whittaw, a saddler;
jackbonnial, a tadpole; Still, respectable;
Cade, tame; Her's childing, she is with child;
A' done worritin me, stop teasing me; A' form, properly;
Let's gaig no', let's take a swing; Yawrups, stupid;
Franzy, passionate; etc.
Let any one read the Venus and Adonis, and he will find it
written in the purest and most cultured English of the age, without
a word in it of this Warwickshire patois.
Halliwell-Phillipps says:
It is extremely improbable that an epic so highly finished, and so completely
devoid of patois, could have been produced under the circumstances of his then
domestic surroundings.1
In fact, if we except the doggerel libel on Sir Thomas Lucy, with
its " volke " (and the authenticity of even this is denied by the com-
mentators), Shakspere never wrote a line impregnated with the
•dialect of the people among whom he lived from childhood to man-
hood. All attempts to show the peculiar phraseology of Warwick-
shire in his writings have failed. A few words have been found that
were used in Warwickshire, but investigation has shown that they
were also used in the dialects of other portions of England.
White says:
As long as two hundred years after that time the county of each member of
Parliament was betrayed by his tongue; but then the speech of the cultivated
1 Outlines Life of Shak., p. 71.
44
WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
people of Middlesex and vicinity had become for all England the undisputed stand-
ard. Northumberland, or Cornwall, or Lancashire, might have produced Shake-
speare's mind; but had he lived in any one of these counties, or in another, like
them remote in speech as in locality from London, and written for his rural neigh-
bors instead of the audiences of the Blackfriars and the Globe, the music of his
poetry would have been lost in sounds uncouth and barbarous to the general ear,
and the edge of his fine utterance would have been turned upon the stony rough-
ness of his rustic phraseology.1
White seems to forget that the jargon of Warwickshire was
well nigh as uncouth and barbarous as that of Northumberland
or Cornwall.
Appleton Morgan says:
Now, even if, in Stratford, the lad had mastered all the Latin and Greek
extant, this poem, dedicated to Southampton, coming from his pen, is a mystery, if
not a miracle. The genius of Robert Burns found its expression in the idiom of
his father and his mother, in the dialect he heard around him, and into which he
was born. When he came to London and tried to warble in urban English, his
genius dwindled into formal commonplace. But William Shakespeare, a peasant,
born in the heart of Warwickshire, without schooling or practice, pours forth the
purest and most sumptuous of English, unmixed with the faintest trace of that
Warwickshire patois that his neighbors and coetaneans spoke — the language of his
own fireside.2
And Shakespeare prefaced the Venus and Adonis with a Latin
quotation from the Amoves of Ovid. Halliwell-Phillipps, an earnest
Shaksperean, says:
It is hardly possible that the Amores of Ovid, whence he derived his earliest
motto, could have been one of his school books.3
No man can doubt that the Venus and Adonis was the work of a
scholar in whom the intellectual faculties vastly preponderated
over the animal. Coleridge notices —
The utter aloofness of the poet's own feelings from those of which he is at once
the painter and the analyst.
Says Dowden:
The subjects of these poems did not possess him and compel him to render
them into art. The poet sat himself down before each to accomplish an exhaustive
study of it.
Hazlitt says:
These poems appear to us like a couple of ice houses. They are about as hard,
as glittering and as cold.
It is not possible for the human mind to bring these beautiful
poems, written in such perfect English, so cold, so passionless, so
1 Life and Genius of Shah., p. 202. 2 The Shakespeare Myth, p. 41.
3 Outlines Life of Shah., p. 63.
THE EDUCATION OF WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.
45
cultured, so philosophical, so scholastic, into connection with the
first inventions of the boy we have seen lying out drunk in the
fields, poaching, rioting, whipped, imprisoned, and writing vulgar
doggerel, below the standard of the most ordinary intellect. Com-
pare for one instant:
A Parliament member, a justice of peace,
At home a poor scare-crow, at London an asse.
He thinks himself great, yet an ass is his state,
Condemned for his ears with asses to mate,
with —
Oh, what a sight it was wistly to view
How she came stealing to the wayward boy !
To note the fighting conflict of her hue !
How white and red each other did destroy !
But now her cheek was pale, and by and by
It flashed forth fire, as lightning from the sky.1
Can any one believe that these two passages were born in the
same soul and fashioned in the same mind ?
A rough but strong genius, coming even out of barbarian train-
ing, but thrown into daily contact with dramatic entertainments,
might have begun to imitate the works he was familiar with;
might gradually have drifted into play-making. But here we learn
that the first heir of his invention was an ambitious attempt at a
literary performance based on a classical fable, and redolent of the
air of the court and the schools. It is incomprehensible.
Even Hallam, years ago, was struck by the incongruity between
Shakspere's life and works. He says:
If we are not yet come to question his [Shakespeare's] unity, as we do that of
"the blind old man of Scio's rocky isle" — (an improvement in critical acuteness
doubtless reserved for a distant posterity), we as little feel the power of identifying
the young man who came up from Stratford, was afterwards an indifferent player
in a London theater, and retired to his native place in middle life, with the author
of Macbeth and Lear}
Emerson says:
Read the antique documents extricated, analyzed and compared, by the assidu-
ous Dyce and Collier; and now read one of those skiey sentences — aerolites —
which seem to have fallen out of heaven, . . . and tell me if they match.3
. . . The Egyptian verdict of the Shakesperean societies comes to mind, that
he was a jovial actor and manager. I cannot marry this fact to his verse. Other
admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought; but this
man in wide contrast. . . . This man of men, he who gave the science of mind a
new and larger subject than had ever existed, and planted the standard of humanity
1 Venus and Adonis. 2 Introduction to Literature of Europe. 3 Rep. Men, p. 205.
46 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE'DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
ity some furlongs forward in chaos — it must ever go into the world's history, that,
the best poet led an obscure and profane life, using his genius for the public amuse-
ment.1
Such a proposition cannot be accepted by any sane man.
Francis Bacon seems to have had these plays in his mind's eye
when he said:
If the sow with her snout should happen to imprint the letter A upon the
ground, wouldst thou therefore imagine that she could write out a whole tragedy as.
one letter ?2
1 Representative A/en, p. 215. a Interpretation of Nature.
\BRA
or THE
university
CHAPTER III.
THE REAL CHARACTER OF WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.
What a thrice-double ass
Was I, to take this drunkard for a god,
And worship this dull fool.
Tehtfest, v, i.
WE have seen that the Plays must have been written by a
scholar, a man of wide and various learning.
We have seen that William Shakspere, of Stratford-on-Avon,
could not have acquired such learning in his native village, and
that his pursuits and associates in London were not favorable to
its acquisition there ; and that there is no evidence from tradition
or history, or by the existence of any books or papers, or letters,
that he was of a studious turn of mind, or in anywise scholarly.
We have further seen that the families of his father and mother were,
and had been for generations, without exception, rude and bookless.
Now let us put together all the facts in our possession, and try
to get at some estimate of the true character of the man himself.
He was doubtless, as tradition says, "the best of that family."
His career shows that he was adventurous, and what we call in
America " smart." His financial success demonstrates this fact.
He had probably a good deal of mother wit and practical good
sense. It is not impossible that he may have been able to string
together barbaric rhymes, some of which have come down to us.
But conceding all this, and a vast gulf still separates him from the
colossal intellect made manifest in the Plays.
I. Shakspere was a Usurer.
The probabilities are that he was a usurer.
Richard Grant White (and it is a pleasure to quote against
Shakspere so earnest a Shaksperean — one who declares that
every man who believes Bacon wrote the Plays attributed to
Shakspere should be committed at once to a mad-house) — Rich-
ard Grant White says:
47
48 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
The following passage, in a tract called RatseVs Ghost, ot the Second Part of
his Mad Prankes and Robberies, of which only one copy is known to exist, plainly
refers, first to Burbadge and next to Shakespeare. This book is without date, but is
believed to have been printed before 1606. Gamaliel Ratsei, who speaks, is a
highwayman, who has paid some strollers forty shillings for playing for him, and
afterwards robbed them of their fee.1
The passage is as follows:
And for you, sirrah (says he to the chiefest of them), thou hast a good presence
upon a stage, methinks thou darkenest thy merit by playing in the country; get thee
to London, for if one man were dead they will have much need of such as thou art.
There would be none, in my opinion, fitter than thyself to play his parts; my
conceit is such of thee that I durst venture all the money in my purse on thy head
to play Hamlet with him for a wager. There thou shalt learn to be frugal (for play-
ers were never so thrifty as they are now about London), and to feed upon all men;
to let none feed upon thee; to make thy hand a stranger to thy pocket; thy heart slow
to perform thy tongue's promise; and when thou feelest thy purse well lined, buy
thee some place of lordship in the country; that growing weary of playing thy money
may there bring thee to dignity and reputation; then thou needest care for no man ;
no, not for them that before made thee proud with speaking THEIR words on the stage.
Sir, I thank you (quoth the player) for this good council. I promise you I will
make use of it, for I have heard, indeed, of some that have gone to London very
meanly, and have come in time to be exceeding wealthy.
This curious tract proves several things:
The Shakspereans agree that Ratsei, in the latter part of the
extract quoted, referred unquestionably to Shakspere. Ratsei, or
the writer of the tract, doubtless expressed the popular opinion
when he described Shakspere as a thrifty, money-making, unchari-
table, cold-hearted man, " feeding upon all men," to-wit, by lend-
ing money at usurious rates of interest, for there is nothing else
to which the words can apply. There can be no question that
he refers to Shakspere. He was an actor; he came to London
"very meanly; " /^ was not born there; he " lined his purse;" he
had " grown exceeding wealthy; " he " bought a place of lordship in
the country," where he lived "in dignity and reputation." And
doubtless Ratsei spoke but the popular report when he said that
some others " made him proud with speaking their words on the
stage."
Let us see if there is anything that confirms Ratsei's estimate
of Shakspere's character. Richard Grant White says:
The fact is somewhat striking in the life of a great poet that the only letter
directly addressed to Shakespeare, which is known to exist, is one which asks for
a loan of ^30. 2
1 Life and Genius of Shakespeare, p. 164. 2Ibid., p. 123.
THE REAL CHARACTER OF WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.
49
There is another letter extant from Master Abraham Sturley,
1595, to a friend in London, in reference to Shakspere lending
" some monei on some od yarde land or other att Shottri or neare
about us." And there is still another letter, dated November 4,
1598, from Abraham Sturley to Richard Ouiney, in which we are
told that our "countriman Mr. Wm. Shak. would procure us monei,
wc. I will like of." And these, be it remembered, are all the letters
extant addressed to, or referring to, Shakspere.
In 1598 he loaned Richard Quiney, of Stratford, ^30 upon
proper security.1
In 1600 he brought action against John Clayton, in London, for
j£jt and got judgment in his favor.
He also sued Philip Rogers, at Stratford, for two shillings
loaned.
In August, 1608, he prosecuted John Addenbroke to recover a
debt of £6, and then sued his surety, Horneby.
His lawyer, Thomas Greene, lived in his house.2
Halliwell-Phillips says:
The precepts, as appears from memoranda in the originals, were issued by
the poet's solicitor, Thomas Greene, who was then residing, under some unknown
conditions, at New Place.3
We, of course, only hear of those transactions in which the
debtor did not pay, and the loans became matters of court record.
We hear nothing of the more numerous instances where the money
was repaid without suit. But even these scraps of fact show that,
he carried on the business of money-lending both in London and at
Stratford. He kept an attorney in his house, probably for the better
facility of collecting the money due him.
No wonder Richard Grant White said, when such facts as these
came to light, voicing the disappointment of his heart:
These stories grate upon our feelings. . . . The pursuit of an impoverished!
man, for the sake of imprisoning him and depriving him, both of the power of pay-
ing his debt and supporting himself and his family, is an incident in Shakespeare's
life which it requires the utmost allowance and consideration for the practice of the
time and country to enable us to contemplate with equanimity — satisfaction is-
impossible. The biographer of Shakespeare must record these facts, because the
literary antiquaries have unearthed and brought them forward as new particulars
of the life of Shakespeare. We hunger, and we receive these husks; we open our
mouths for food, and we break our teeth against these stones."4
1 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines Life of Shak., p. 105. 3 Ibid., p. 147.
2 Ihid., p. 149. 4 Life and Genius of Shak., p. 146.
°' rM£ '
5o WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE TLA VS.
Is it possible that the man who described usurers as "bawds
between gold and want;" who drew, for all time, the typical and
dreadful character of Shylock; who wrote: —
I can compare our rich misers to nothing so fitly as to a whale, that plays and
tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and at last devours them at a mouthful.
Such whales I have heard of on land, who never leave gaping till they have swal-
lowed up a whole parish, church, steeple, bells and all.1 —
could, as described by White, have pursued the wretched to jail,
and by his purchase of the tithes of Stratford have threatened " the
whole parish, church, steeple, bells and all " ?
II. He Carried on Brewing in New Place.
Let us pass to another fact.
It is very probable that the alleged author of Hamlet carried on
the business of brewing beer in his residence at New Place.
He sued Philip Rogers in 1604, so the court records tell us, for
several bushels of " malt " sold him at various times, between March
27th and the end of May of that year, amounting in all to the
value of £1 i$s. lod.
Malt is barley or other grain steeped in water until it germinates, and then
dried in a kiln to evolve the saccharine principle. It is used in brewing.2
The business of beer-making was not unusual among his towns-
men.
George Perrye, besides his glover's trade, useth buying and selling of woll
[wool] and yorn [yarn] and making of malt. z
Robert Butler, besides his glover's occupation, usethe makinge of 'malt.*
Rychard Castell, Rother Market, useth his glover's occupation, his wiffe utter-
eth zueeklye by bruynge [brewing] ij strikes of malte.5
And we read of a Mr. Persons who for a "longe tyme used
makinge of mallte and bruyinge [brewing] to sell in his howse."6
There is, of course, nothing dishonorable in this humble occu-
pation; but it is a little surprising that a man whoin the Plays never
refers to tradesmen without a sneer, or to the common people
except as " mechanic slaves" " that made the air unwholesome"
throwing up "their stinking greasy caps," a "common cry of curs,"
or "the clusters," "the mutable, the rank-scented many," or " the
beastly plebeians;" and whose sympathies seem to have been always
1 Pericles, ii, i. 3 MS. dated 1595. 5 Ibid.
2 Webster's Dictionary. * Ibid. 8Ibid.
THE REAL CHARACTER OE WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.
5'
with the aristocracy, should convert the finest house in Stratford, .
built by Sir Hugh Clopton, into a brewery, and employ himself
peddling out malt to his neighbors, and suing them when they did
not pay promptly.
Think of the author of Hanilet and Lear brewing beer ! Verily,
"the dust of Alexander may come to stop the bung-hole of a beer-
barrel."
III. Shakspere's Hospitality.
And taken in connection with this sale of malt there is another
curious fact that throws some light upon the character of the man
and the household.
In the Chamberlain's accounts of Stratford1 we find a charge,
in 1614, for "on quart of sack and on quart of clarett wine geven to
a preacher at the New Place," Shakspere's house. What manner
of man must he have been who would require the town to pay for the
wine he furnished his guests ? And we may be sure the town would
not have paid for it unless first asked to do so. And the money
was accepted by Shakspere, or it would not stand charged in the
accounts of the town. And this was but two years before Shak-
spere's death, when he was in possession of an immense income.
Did ever any rich man, with the smallest instincts of a gentleman,
do a deed like this ? Would even the poorest of the poor do it ?
It was, in fact, a species of " going on the county " for help, — a
partial pauperism.
IV. He Attempts to Enter the Ranks of the Gentry by
False Representations.
Some one has said: "To be accounted a gentleman was the
chief desire of Shakspere's life."
Did he pursue this ambition, honorable enough in itself, in an
honorable manner?
In October, 1596, Shakspere, the actor, applied to the College
of Arms for a grant of coat-armor to his father, John Shakspere.
At this time Shakspere was beginning to make money. He
bought New Place, Stratford, in 1597. His profession as a "vassal
actor" prevented any hope of having a grant of arms made
1 White, Life and Genius of Shak.y p. 176.
52 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
directly to himself, and so he applied in the name of his father,
who not long before had been in prison, or hiding from the Sheriff.
White would have us believe that the coat-of-arms was granted;
but the latest and most complete authority on the subject, Halliwell-
Phillipps, says it was not:
Toward the close of the year 1599, a renewed attempt was made by the poet
to obtain a grant of coat-armor to his father. It was now proposed to impale the
arms of Shakespeare with those of Arden, and on each occasion ridiculous state-
ments were made respecting the claims of the two families. Both were really descended
from obscure country yeomen, but the heralds made out that the predecessors of
John Shakespeare were rewarded by the Crown for distinguished services, and
that his wife's ancestors were entitled to armorial bearings. Although the poet's
relatives, at a later date, assumed his right to the coat suggested for his father in
1596, it does not appear that either of the proposed grants was ratified by the college,
and certainly nothing more is heard of the Arden impalement.1
The application was made on the ground that John Shak-
spere's " parent and late antecessor, for his faithful and approved
service to the late most prudent prince, King Henry VII., of
famous memory, was advanced and rewarded with lands and tene-
ments given to him in those parts of Warwickshire, . . . and
that the said John had married the daughter and one of the heirs
of Robert Arden, of Wilmecote."
Now, these statements, as Halliwell-Phillipps says, were plainly
false.
John Shakspere's ancestors had not been advanced by King
Henry VII.; and they had not received lands in Warwickshire; and
his mother was not the daughter of one of the heirs of Robert
Arden, of Wilmecote, gentleman. They had been landless peasants
for generations; and John Shakspere was an illiterate farm-hand,
hired by Robert Arden, a plain farmer, as illiterate as himself, to
work by the month or year.
And William Shakspere, who made this application, knew per-
fectly well that all these representations were falsehoods. He was
trying to crawl up the battlements of respectability on a ladder of
lies — plain, palpable, notorious, ridiculous lies — lies that involved
the title to real property and the records of his county.
Would that grand and noble soul who really wrote the Plays
seek to be made a gentle?tian by such means ?
But the falsifications did not end here.
1 Outlines, p. 87.
THE REAL CHARACTER OE WILUAM SHAKSPERE.
53
"The delay of three years," says Richard Grant White, "in
granting these arms, must have been caused by some opposition to
the grant; the motto given with them, Non sans droict (not with-
out right), itself seems to assert a claim against a denial."
Doubtless the Lucys, and other respectable families of the neigh-
borhood, protested against the play-actor forcing himself into their
ranks by false pretenses.
If the reader who is curious in such matters will turn to the two
drafts of the application for the coat-of-arms, that of 1596, on page
573 of Halliwell-Phillipps' Outlines, and that of 1599, on page 589
of the same work, and examine the interlineations that were made
from time to time, and which are indicated by italics, he will see
how the applicant was driven from falsehood to falsehood, to meet
the objections made against his claim of gentility. In the first
application it was stated that it was John Shakspere's " parents
and late antecessors" who rendered valiant service to King Henry
VII. and were rewarded by him. This was not deemed sufficiently
explicit, and so it was interlined that the said John had " married
Mary, daughter and one of the heirs of Robert Arden, of Wilme-
cote, in the said county, gent." But in the proposed grant of 1599
it is stated that it was John Shakspere's ^^/-grandfather who ren-
dered these invaluable services to King Henry VII., and, being
driven to particulars, we are now told that this grandfather was
" advanced and rewarded with la /ides and tenement es given to him in
those partes of Warwickshire, where they have continued by some descents
in good reputacion and credit.'"
This is wholesale lying. There were no such lands, and they
had not descended by some descents in the family.
But this is not all. Finding his application opposed, the fertile
Shakspere falls back on a new falsehood, and declares that a coat-
of-arms had already been given his father twenty years before.
And he also produced this, his auncient cote-of-arms, heretofore assigned to him
whilst he was her Majestie's officer and baylefe of that town.
And White tells us that upon the margin of the draft of 1596, 1
John Shakspere
Sheweth a patent thereof under Clarence Cook's hands in oaper, twenty years
past.1
3 Life and Genius of Shakespeare^ p. 118.
54
WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DLL) NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
But this patent can no more be found than the land which Henry VII.
granted to John Shakspere* s great-grandfather for his approved and
faithful services.
The whole thing was a series of lies and forgeries, a tissue of
fraud from beginning to end ; — and William Shakspere had no
more title to his coat-of-arms than he has to the great dramas
which bear his name.
And living in New Place, brewing beer, selling malt and suing
his neighbors, the Shakspere family assumed to use this coat-of-
arms, never granted to them, and to set up for "gentry," in the midst
of the people who knew the hollowness of their pretensions.
And the same man, we are told, who was so anxious for this
kind of a promotion to the ranks of gentlemen, wrote as follows:
Fool. Prithee, nuncle, tell me whether a madman be a gentleman or a yeoman.
Lear. A king, a king !
Fool. No, he's a yeoman, that has a gentleman to his son; for he's a mad yeo-
man that sees his son a gentleman before him.1
And that the same man mocked at new-made gentility, in the
scene where the clown and the old shepherd were suddenly ele-
vated to rank by the king of Bohemia:
Shepherd. Come, boy; I am past more children, but thy sons and daughters
will all be gentlemen born.
Clown {to Autolycus). You are well met, sir; you denied to tight with me this
other day because I was no gentleman born. See you these clothes ? . . .
Autolycus. I know you are now, sir, a gentleman bojn.
Clown. Ay, and have been so any time these four hours.
Shepherd. And so have I, boy.
Clown. So you have. But I was a gentleman born before my father; for the
king's son took me by the hand and called me brother: . . . and so we wept: and
these were the first gentleman-like tears that ever we shed.'2
And that the same man wrote:
By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it: the age is
grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier
that he galls his kibe.3
And this is the man, we are told, who also wrote:
Let none presume
To wear an undeserved dignity.
Oh, that estates, degrees and offices
Were not derived corruptly ! and that clear honor
Were purchased by the merit of the wearer !
How many then should cover that stand bare;
1 Lear, iii, 6. 2 Winter's Tale, v, 3. 3 Hamlet, v, 1.
THE REAL CHARACTER OE WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. 55
How many be commanded that command;
How much low peasantry would then be gleaned
From the true seed of honor; and how much honor
Picked from the chaff and ruin of the times
To be new-varnish'd.1
Is there any man who loves the memory of the real Shake-
speare— gentle, thoughtful, learned, humane, benevolent, with a
mind loftier and wider than was ever before conferred on a child
of earth — who can believe that he would be guilty of such prac-
tices, even to obtain a shabby gentility in the dirty little village of
Stratford ?
All this may not perhaps strike an American with its full force.
In this country every well-dressed, well-behaved man is a gentle-
man. But in England in the sixteenth century it meant a great
deal more. It signified a man of gentle blood. A great and impass-
able gulf lay between "the quality," "the gentry," the hereditary
upper ciass, and the common herd who toiled for a living. It
required all the power of Christianity to faintly enforce the idea
that they were made by the same God and were of one flesh.
The distinction, in the England of 1596, between the yeoman and
the gentleman, was almost as wide as the difference to-day in
America between the white man and the black man; and the
mulatto who would try to pass himself off as a white man, and
would support his claim by lies and forgeries, will give us some
conception of the nature of this attempt made by William Shak-
spere in 1596.
V. The House ix Which he Was Borx.
As to this I will simply quote what Richard Grant White says
of it:
My heart sank within me as I looked around upon the rude, mean dwelling-
place of him who had filled the world with the splendor of his imaginings. It is
called a house, and any building intended for a dwelling-place is a house; but the
interior of this one is hardly that of a rustic cottage; it is almost that of a hovel —
poverty-stricken, squalid, kennel-like. A house so cheerless and comfortless I had
not seen in rural England. The poorest, meanest farm-house that I had ever 1
entered in New England or on Long Island was a more cheerful habitation. And
amid these sordid surroundings William Shakespeare grew to early manhood ! I
thought of stately Charlecote, the home of the Lucys, who were but simple country
gentlemen; and then for the first time I knew and felt from how low a condition of
1 Merchant of Venice, ii, 9.
56 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
life Shakespeare had arisen. For his family were not reduced to this; they had
risen to it. This was John Shakespeare's home in the days of his brief prosperity,
and, when I compared it with my memory of Charlecote, I knew that Shakespeare
himself must have felt what a sham was the pretension of gentry set up for his
father, when the coat-of-arms was asked and obtained by the actor's money from
the Heralds' College — that coat-of-arms which Shakespeare prized because it
made him "a gentleman" by birth! This it was, even more than the squalid
appearance of the place, that saddened me. For I felt that Shakespeare himself
must have known how well founded was the protest of the gentlemen who com-
plained that Clarencieux had made the man who lived in that house a gentleman
of coat-armor.1
VI. His Name.
The very name, Shakspere, was in that day considered the quin-
tessence of vulgarity. My friend William D. O'Connor, the author
of Hamlefs Note Book, calls my attention to a recent number of
The London Academy, in which a Mr. Lupton proves that in Eliza-
beth's time the name Shakspere was considered vile, just as Rams-
bottom, or Snooks, or Hogs flesh would be with us; and men who had
it got it changed by legislation. Mr. Lupton gives one case where
a man called Shakspere had his name altered by law to Saunders.
VII. He Combines with Others to Oppress and Impoverish
the People.
But there is one other feature of Shakspere's biography which
throws light upon his character.
• From remote antiquity in England the lower classes possessed
certain rights of common in tracts of land. Prof. Thorold Rogers
says:
The arable land of the manor was generally communal, i.e., each of the ten-
ants possessed a certain number of furrows in a common field, the several divis-
ions being separated by balks of unplowed ground, on which the grass was suf-
fered to grow. The system, which was almost universal in the thirteenth century,
has survived in certain districts up to living memory.2
This able writer shows that the condition of labor steadily
improved in England up to the reign of Henry VIII., and from that
period it steadily declined to recent times. He makes this remark-
able statement in the preface to his work:
I have attempted to show that the pauperism and the degradation of the
English laborer were the result of a series of acts of Parliament and acts of gov-
ernment, which were designed or adopted with the express purpose of compelling the
1 England Without and Within, p. 526. - Work and Wages, p. 88.
THE REAL CHARACTER OF WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.
57
laborer to ivork at the lowest rate of wages possible, and which succeeded al last in
effecting their purpose.1
Among these acts were those giving the Courts of Quarter
Sessions the right to fix the wages of laborers; and, hence, as Prof.
Rogers shows, while the inflowing gold and silver of Mexico and
Peru were swelling the value of all forms of property in England,
the value of labor did not rise in proportion; and the common
people fell into that awful era of poverty, wretchedness, degrada-
tion, crime, and Newgate-hanging by wholesale, which mark the
reigns of Henry VIII. and his children.
As part of the same scheme of oppression of the humble citi-
zens by those who wielded the power of government, a system of
inclosures of common lands by the landlords, without any com-
pensation to the tenants, was inaugurated, and aided greatly to
swell the general misery.
The benevolent soul of Francis Bacon took part against this
oppression. In his History of Henry VII. he said:
Another statute was made of singular policy for the population apparently,
and (if it be thoroughly considered) for the soldiery and military forces of the
realm. Inclosures at that time began to be more frequent, whereby arable land
(which could not be manured without people and families) was turned into pas-
ture, which was easily rid by a few herdsmen; and tenancies for years, lives and
at will (whereupon much of the yeomanry lived) were turned into demesnes. . . .
The ordinance was that, That all houses of husbandry that were used with twenty
acres of ground and upward should be maintained and kept up forever, together
with a competent proportion of land to be used and occupied with them, and in no
wise to be severed from them. . . . This did wonderfully concern the might and
mannerhood of the kingdom, to have farms as it were of a standard sufficient to
maintain an able body out of penury.
In 1597 Francis Bacon, then a member of Parliament, made a
speech, of which we have a very meager report:
Mr. Bacon made a motion against depopulation of towns and houses of hus-
bandry, and for the maintenance of husbandry and tillage. And to this purpose
he brought in two bills, as he termed it, not drawn with a polished pen, but with a
polished heart. . . . And though it may be thought ill and very prejudicial to
lords that have enclosed great grounds, and pulled down even whole towns, and
converted them to sheep pastures, yet, considering the increase of the people, and
the benefit of the commonwealth, I doubt not but every man will deem the revivali
of former moth-eaten laws in this point a praiseworthy thing. For in matters of
policy ill is not to be thought ill, which bringeth forth good. For enclosure of
grounds brings depopulation, which brings forth first, idleness; secondly, decay of
tillage; thirdly, subversion of homes, and decrease of charity and charge to th?
1 Work and Wages, Preface, p. 6.
58
WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
poor's maintenance; fourthly, the impoverishing the state of the realm. . . . And
I should be sorry to see within this kingdom that piece of Ovid's verse prove true,
Jam seges est ubi Troja fait; so in England, instead of a whole town full of people,
none but green fields, but a shepherd and a dog. The eye of experience is the
sure eye, but the eye of wisdom is the quick-sighted eye; and by experience we
daily see, Nemo putat Mud videri tvrpe quod sibi sit qucestuosum. And therefore
almost there is no conscience made in destroying the savour of our life, bread I
mean, for Pauls sapor vita;. And therefore a sharp and vigorous law had need be
made against these viperous natures who fulfill the proverb, Si non posse quod vult,
velle tarn en quod potest.1
Hepworth Dixon says:
The decay of tillage, the increase of sheep and deer are for the yeoman class,
and for the country of which they are the thew and sinew, dark events. ... He
[Bacon] makes a wide and sweeping study of this question of Pasturage versus Till-
age, of Deer versus Men, which convinces him of the cruelty and peril of depopu-
lating hamlets for the benefit of a few great lords. This study will produce, when
Parliament meets again, a memorable debate and an extraordinary change of law.-i
Bacon's bills became laws, after a fierce and bitter contest with
the peers; they are in the statute book of England, 39 Elizabeth, 1
and 2. They saved the English yeomanry from being reduced to
the present condition of the Irish peasantry.
They provide that no more land shall be cleared without special license; and
that all land turned into pasture since the Queen's accession, no less a period than
forty years, shall be taken from the deer and sheep within eighteen months, and
restored to the yeoman and the plow.3
These great, radical and sweeping measures should endear
Bacon's memory to every Englishman, and to every lover of his
kind, the world over. They saved England from depopulation.
They laid the foundation for the greatness of the nation. They
furnished the great middle class who fought and won at Waterloo.
And what a broad, noble, far-sighted philanthropy do they evi-
dence ! Here, indeed, "distribution did undo excess" that " each
man" might "have enough." Here, indeed, was the greed of the
few arrested for the benefit of the many.
While broad-minded and humane men took this view of the
policy of enclosures, let us see how William Shakspere regarded
it. I quote from Halliwell-Phillipps' Outlines:
In the autumn of the year 1614 there was great excitement at Stratford-on-Avon
respecting an attempted enclosure of a large portion of the neighboring common-
field — -not commons, as so many biographers have inadvertently stated. The
1 Life and Works of Francis Bacon, Spedding, Ellis and Heath, vol. iii, p. 81.
a Personal History of Lord Bacon, p. 87. 3 Ibid., p. 105.
THE REAL CHARACTER OF ll'ILL/AM SHAKSPERE.
59
design was resisted by the corporation under the natural impression that, if it were
realized, both the number of agricultural employes and the value of the tithes would
be seriously diminished. There is no doubt that this would have been the case,
and, as might be expected, William Combe, the squire of Welcombe, who origi-
nated the movement, encountered a determined, and, in the end, a successful
opposition. He spared, however, no exertions to accomplish the object, and, in
many instances, if we may believe contemporary allegations, tormented the poor
and coaxed the rich into an acquiescence with his views.1
Here was an opportunity for the pretended author of the Plays
to show the stuff that was in him. Did he stand forward as —
The village Hampden who, with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood ?
Did he pour forth an impassioned defense of popular rights,
whose eloquence would have forever ended all question as to the
authorship of the Plays ? It is claimed that he had written:
Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel;
That thou mayst shake the superfiux to them,
And show the heavens more just.-'
And again:
I love not to see wretchedness o'ercharged,
And duty in his service perishing.3
This is in the very spirit of Bacon's defense of the common
people against those "viperous natures" that had "pulled down
whole towns," or, as he expresses it in Pericles, had "swallowed up
a whole parish, church, steeple, bells and all."
See how touchingly the writer of the Plays makes the insubstan-
tial spirit, Ariel, non-human in its nature, sympathetic with the
sufferings of man; and Prospero (the image of the author) saysr
even in the midst of the remembrance of his wrongs:
Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling
Of their afflictions, and shall not I, myself,
One of their kind, that relish all as sharply,
Fashioned as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick,
Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury
Do I take part.4
Was William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon, — himself one of
the common people, "fashioned as they," — kindly "moved by their
1 Outlines Life of Shale., p. 197. 3 A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, v, 1.
2 Lear, Hi, 4. * Tempest, v, 1.
6o WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
afflictions;" and did he throw his wealth and influence into the
scale in their defense ? Not at all.
Knight says :
The enclosure would probably have improved his property, and especially
have increased the value of the tithes, of the moiety of which he held a lease.
The corporation of Stratford were opposed to the inclosure. They held that it
would be injurious to the poorer inhabitants, zvho were then deeply suffering from
the desolation of the fire. '
Let us resume Halliwell-Phillipps narrative of the transaction:
It appears most probable that Shakespeare was one of the latter who were
so influenced, and that, amongst perhaps other inducements , he was allured to the
unpopular side by Combe's agent, one Replingham, guaranteeing him from pros-
pective loss. However that may be, it is certain that the poet was in favor of the
enclosures, for, on December 23d, the corporation addressed a letter of remon-
strance to him on the subject, and another on the same day to a Mr. Mainwaring.
The latter, who had been practically bribed by some land arrangements at Welcombe,
undertook to protect the interests of Shakespeare, so there can be no doubt that
the three parties were acting in unison.2
Observe how tenderly the Shakspereans touch the wretched
record of their hero. Mr. Mainwaring " was practically bribed by
some land arrangements," but Mr. Shakspere, acting in concert
with Mainwaring and Combe, under agreements of indemnifica-
tion, was not bribed at all.
And that this agreement contemplated driving the people off
the land and pauperizing them, is plain from the terms of the
instrument, for Replingham contracts to indemnify Shackespeare
for any loss he may sustain in his tithes " by reason of any inclos-
ure or decay of tillage there mcnt and intended by the said William Rep-
lingham."
Three greedy cormorants combine to rob the people of their
ancient rights, and cause a decay of tillage, and one of the three is
the man who is supposed to have possessed the greatest mind and
most benevolent heart of his age; a heart so benevolent toward the
poor and suffering that he anticipated the broadest claims put
forth by the communists of to-day:
Here, take this purse, you whom the heaven's plagues
Have humbled to all strokes: that I am wretched
Makes thee the happier: — Heavens, deal so still!
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man,
That slaves your ordinance, that will not see
Because he does not feel, feel your power quickly;
3 Knight's Shak. Biography, p. 528. 2 Outlines y p. 168.
THE REAL CHARACTER OF WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. 61
So distribution should undo excess,
And each man have enough*
Do we not see in this attempt of Shakspere to rob the poor of
their rights, at the very time they had been impoverished by a
great fire, the same man described by Ratsei — the thrifty play-
actor, that fed on all men and permitted none to feed on him; who
made his hand a stranger to his pocket, and his heart slow to per-
form his tongue's promise ?
And all for what? To add a few acres more to his estate; a few
pounds more to his fortune, on which, as he fondly hoped,
through the heirs of his eldest daughter, he was to found a family
which should wear that fictitious coat-of-arms, based on those lands
which the King never conferred, for services which were never
rendered, and glorified by the immortal plays which he never wrote.
Was this the spirit of the real author of the plays? No, no;
listen to him:
Tell her my love, more noble than the world,
Prizes not quantity of dirty lands.2
And again he says:
Dost know this water-fly ? . . . 'tis a vice to know him. He hath much land
and fertile; let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king's
mess. Tis a chough; but, as I say, spacious in the possession of dirt.3
This fellow might be in 's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his
recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries; is this the fine of his
fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt?4
And again:
Hamlet. Is not parchment made of sheep-skins ?
Horatio. Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins, too.
Hamlet. They are sheep and calves which seek out assurances in that.
The real Shakespeare — Francis Bacon — said, "My mind turns
on other wheels than profit." He regarded money as valuable only
for the uses to which he put it, " the betterment of the state of
man;" he had no faculty to grasp money, especially from the
poor and oppressed; and as a consequence he died, leaving behind
him a bankrupt estate and the greatest memory in human history.
Is it possible that the true Shakespeare could have taken such
pains, as the Stratford man did, to entail his real-estate upon one
1 Lear, iv, i. 2 Twelfth Night, ii, 4. s Hamlet, v, 2. * Hamlet, v, 1.
6 2 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
of his children and her heirs, and forget totally to mention in his
will that grander, that immortal estate of the mind which his
genius had created, inconceivably more valuable than his "spa-
cious possessions of dirt"?
VIII. His Treatment of his Father's Memory.
Let us pass to one other incident in the career of the Shakspere
of Stratford.
We have seen that he strove to have his father made a gentle-
man. It will therefore scarcely be believed that, with an income
equal to $25,000 per year of our money, he left that same father,
and his mother, and his son Hamnet — his only son — without even
the humblest monument to mark their last resting-place.
Richard Grant White says:
Shakespeare seems to have set up no stone to tell us where his mother or
father lay, and the same is true as to his son Hamnet.'
It appears that he inherited some property from his father, cer-
tainly enough to pay for a headstone to mark the everlasting
resting-place of the father of the richest man in Stratford — the
father of the man who was "in judgment a Nestor, in genius a
Socrates, in art a Maro! "
And they would have us believe that he was the same man who
wrote:
I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor
The azured hare-bell, like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,
Out-sweetened not thy breath: the robin would
With charitable bill (O bill, sore-shaming
Those rich-left heirs that let their fathers lie
Without a monument !) bring thee all this.2
IX. His Daughter Judith.
But let us go a step farther, and ask ourselves, what kind of a
family was it that inhabited New Place during the latter years of
Shakspere's life ?
We have seen that the poet's father, mother and relatives
generally were grossly ignorant; that they could not even write
their own names, or read the Lord's Prayer in their native
1 Life and Genius of ' Shak., p. 144. 2 Cywbeline, iv, 2.
THE REAL CHARACTER OF WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. 63
tongue; and that they did not possess even a Bible in their
households.
But we now come face to face with a most astounding fact.
Shakspere had but two children who lived to maturity, his
daughters Susanna and Judith, and Judith could not read or write !
Here is a copy of the mark with which the daugh-
ter of Shakspere signed her name. It appears as that
of an attesting witness to a conveyance in 161 1, she
being then twenty-seven years of age.
Think of it ! The daughter of William Shakspere, the daughter
of the greatest intellect of his age, or of all ages, the profound
scholar, the master of Latin, Greek, Italian, French, Spanish,
Danish, the philosopher, the scientist, the politician, the statesman,
the physician, the musician, signs her name with a curley-queue
like a Pottawatomie Indian. And this girl was twenty-seven years
old, and no idiot; she was subsequently married to one of the lead-
ing citizens of the town, Thomas Quiney, vintner. She was raised
in the same town wherein was the same free-school in which, we
are assured, Shakspere received that magnificent education which
is manifested in the Plays.
Imagine William E. Gladstone, or Herbert Spencer, dwelling in
the same house with a daughter, in the full possession of all her
faculties, who signed her name with a pot-hook. Imagine the
father and daughter meeting every day and looking at each other !
And yet neither of these really great men is to be mentioned in
the same breath with the immortal genius who produced the Plays.
With what divine anathemas did the real Shakespeare scourge
ignorance !
He says:
Ignorance is the curse of God}
And again:
The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great revenue!
Heaven bless thee from a tutor and discipline come not near thee.2
And again:
There is no darkness but ignorance.3
He pelts it with adjectives:
Barbarous ignorance.4
1 2d Henry VI., iv, 7. 3 Twelfth Night, iv, 2.
2 Troihts and Cressida, ii, 3. 4 King John, iv, 2.
64 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE J' J. AYS.
Dull, unfeeling ignorance.1
Gross andSrriiserable ignorance.'2
Thou monster, ignorance. :!
Short-armed ignorance.1
Again, we read:
I held it ever,
Virtue and cunning [knowledge] were endowments greater
Than nobleness and riches; careless heirs
May the two latter darken and expend;
Kut immortality attends the former,
Making a man a god.5
And he found —
More content in course of true delight
Than to be thirsty after tottering honor,
Or tie my treasure up in silken bags,
To please the fool and death.6
Can it be conceived that the man who wrote these things would
try, by false representations, to secure a coat-of-arms for his family,
and seek by every means in his power to grasp the shillings and
pence of his poorer neighbors, and at the same time leave one of
his children in "barbarous, barren, gross and miserable ignorance " ?
With an income, as we have shown, equal to $25,000 yearly of
our money; with the country swarming with graduates of Oxford
and Cambridge, begging for bread and ready to act as tutors; living
in a quiet, rural neighborhood, where there were few things to
distract attention, William Shakspere permitted his daughter to
attain the ripe age of twenty-seven years, unable to read the
immortal quartos which had made her father famous and wealthy.
We will not — we cannot — believe it. /
X. Some of the Educated Women of that Age.
But it may be said that it was the fault of the age.
It must be remembered, however, that the writer of the Plays
was an exceptional man. He possessed a mind of vast and endless
activity, which ranged into every department of human thought;
he eagerly absorbed all learning.
Such another natural scholar we find in Sir Anthony Cook, tutor
to King Edward IV., grandfather of Francis Bacon and Robert CeciL
1 Richard II., i, 3. 3 Love's Labor Lost, iv, 2. 5 Pericles, iii, 2.
2 2d Henry 17., iv, 2. * Troilus and Cressida, ii, 3. 6 Ibid.
I
• . WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.
FRANCIS BACON'S MASK.
Facsimile of the Frontispiece in the Folio of 1623.
Facing this portrait In the Folio are presented Ben Jonson's famous lines:
This Figure, that thou here seest put O, could he but have drawn his wit
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut; As well in brasse, as he hath hit
Wherein the Graver had a strife His face, the Print would then surpasse
With nature, to out-doo the life: All that was ever writ in brasse.
But since he cannot, Reader, looke
Not on his Picture, but his Booke.
or the r
VWIVERS/TY
THE REAL CHARACTER OE WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. 65
Like Shakspere of Stratford, his family consisted of girls, and
he was not by any means as wealthy as Shakspere. Did he leave
his daughters to sign their names with hieroglyphics ? No.
Macaulay says:
Katherine, who became Lady Killigrew, wrote Latin hexameters and pentam-
eters which would appear with credit in the Musa Etonenses. Mildred, the wife
of Lord Burleigh, was described by Roger Ascham as the best Greek scholar
among the young women of England, Lady Jane Grey always excepted. Anne,
the mother of Francis Bacon, was distinguished both as a linguist and a theologian.
She corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewell, and translated his Apologia from
the Latin so correctly that neither he nor Archbishop Parker could suggest a single
alteration. She also translated a series of sermons on fate and free will from the
Tuscan of Bernardo Ochino.1
They were not alone. There were learned and scholarly women
in England in those days, and many of them, as there have been in
all ages since.
Macaulay says:
The fair pupils of Ascham and Aylmer who compared, over their embroidery,
the styles of Isocrates and Lysias, and who, while the horns were sounding and
the dogs in full cry, sat in the lonely oriel with eyes riveted to that immortal page
which tells how meekly and bravely the first great martyr of intellectual liberty
took the cup from his weeping jailer.2
It is not surprising that William Shakspere, poacher, fugitive,
vagabond, actor, manager, brewer, money-lender, land-grabber,
should permit one of his two children to grow up in gross ignor-
ance, but it is beyond the compass of the human mind to believe
that the author of Haynlet and Lear could have done so. He indi-
cates in one of his plays how a child should be trained. Speaking
of King Leonatus, in Cymbeline, he says:
Put him to all the learnings that his time
Could make him receiver of ; which he took
As we do air, fast as 'twas ministered, and
In his spring became a harvest.3
If Judith had been the child of the author of the Plays, and had
" something of Shakespeare in her," she would have resented and
struggled out of her shameful condition ; her mind would have
sought the light as the young oak forces its way upward through
the brush-wood of the forest. She would have replied to her neg-
lectful father as Portia did:
1 Macaulay's Essays, Bacon, p. 246. 2 Ibid., p. 247. 3 Cymbeline, i, 1.
\J
66 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE FLAYS.
But the full sum of me
Is sum of nothing, which to term in gross
Is an unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpracticed ;
Happy in this, she is not yet so old
But she may learn ; happier than this,
She is not bred so dull but she can learn ;
Happiest of all, is, that her gentle spirit
Commits itself to yours to be directed,
As from her lord, her governor, her king.1
But if she was the natural outcome of ages of ignorance,
developed in a coarse and rude state of society, and the daughter
of a cold-blooded man, who had no instinct but to make money,
we can readily understand how, in the midst of wealth, and under
the shadow of the school-house, she grew up so grossly ignorant.
XI. Shakspere's Family.
There seems to have been something wrong about the whole
breed.
In 1613, Shakspere being yet alive, Dr. Hall, his son-in-law,
husband of his daughter Susanna, brought suit in the ecclesiastical
court against one John Lane, for reporting that his wife " had the
runninge of the raynes, and had bin naught with Rafe Smith and
John Palmer." Halliwell-Phillipps says:
The case was heard at Worcester on July the 15th, 1613, and appears to have
been conducted somewhat mysteriously, the deposition of Robert Whatcot, the poet's
intimate friend, being the only evidence recorded, and throwing no substantial light
on the merits of the dispute}
Nevertheless, the defendant was excommunicated.
This being the case of the oldest daughter, the other, the pot-
hook heiress, does not seem to have been above suspicion. Judith's
marriage with Thomas Quiney was a mysterious and hurried one.
Phillipps says:
There appears to have been some reason for accelerating this event, for they
were married without a license, and were summoned a few weeks afterward to the
ecclesiastical court at Worcester to atone for the offense.3
Ignorance, viciousness, vulgarity and false pretenses seem to
have taken possession of New Place.
Not a glimpse of anything that might tell a different story
escapes the ravages of time.
1 Merchant of Venice, Hi, 2. 2 Outlines Life of Shak., p. 166.
3 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines Life ofShak., p. 182.
THE REAL CHARACTER OR WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE. 67
Appleton Morgan says:
It is simply impossible to turn one's researches into any channel that leads
into the vicinity of Stratford without noticing the fact that the Shakspere family
left in the neighborhood where it flourished one unmistakable trace, familiar in all
cases of vulgar and illiterate families, namely, the fact that they never knew or
cared, or made an effort to know, of what vowels or consonants their own name
was composed, or even to prepare the skeleton of its pronunciation. They
answered — and made their marks — indifferently to Saxpir, or Chaksper, or
to any other of the thirty forms given by Mr. Grant White, or the fifty-five forms
which another gentleman has been able to collect.1
Even the very tombs of the different members of the family pre-
sent different renderings of the name. Under the bust it is Shak-
speare, while he signed the will as Shakspere; over the grave of
Susanna it is Shakspere; over the other members of the family
it is Shakespeare.
In short, the name was nothing. They
Answered to "Hi!"
Or any loud cry.
XII. The Origin of the Name.
We have been taught to believe that the name was Shakespeare,
and it has been suggested that this was a reminiscence of that
" late antecessor " who rendered such valuable services to the late
King Henry VII.; that he shook a speare in defense of the King so
potently that he was ever after known as Shakespeare. It is in this
way the name is printed in all the publications put forth in Shak-
spere's lifetime. But it is no less certain that this name is another
imposture. There never was a " shake " to it; and possibly never
a " speare." The name was Shakspeare, or speer, or spur, or p/erre,
the first syllable rhyming to back and not to bake. Shakespeare was
doubtless an invention of the man who assumed the name at a
later date as a mask, and he wanted something that would
" heroically sound." The fictitious speare passed to the fraud-
ulent coat-of-arms.
In the bond given to enable William to marry, he is called
''William Shagspere." In the bill of complaint of 1589 of John
Shakspere in connection with the Wilmecote property, his son is
alluded to as " William Shackespere." The father signs his cross
to a deed to Robert Webb, in which he is described as " John Shax-
1 The Shakespeare Myth, p. 160.
68 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE TILE PLAYS.
pere;" and his mother makes her mark as " Marye Shaksper."
His father is mentioned in the will of John Webbe, in 1573,
as "John Schackspere." In 1567 he is alluded to in the town
records as "Mr. Shakspyr," and when elected high bailiff, in 1568^
he is referred to as "Mr. John Shakysper." The only letter
extant addressed to Shakspere was written October 25, 1598, by
Richard Quiney, his townsman, and it is addressed to "Mr. Wm..
Shackespere." In 1594-5 he is referred to in the court record
as "Shaxberd." In 1598 he is referred to in the corporation
records of Stratford as selling them a load of stone: "Paid to
Mr. Shaxpere for on lod of ston x d." In his will the attorney
writes it "Schackspeare," and the man himself signed his name
Shakspere.
Hallam says:
The poet and his family- spelt their name Shakspere, and to this spelling there
are no exceptions in his own autographs.
The name is spelled by his townsman, Master Abraham Sturley,
in 1599, S/iakspere, and in 1598 he alludes to him as "Mr. William
Shak." And when he himself petitioned the court in chancery in
161 2, in reference to his tithes, he described himself as "William
Schackspeare."
White says:
In the irregular, phonographic spelling of antiquity, the name appears some-
times as Chacksper and Shaxpur. It is possible that Shakespeare is a corruption
of some name of a more peaceful meaning, and therefore perhaps of humbler
derivation.1
It has been suggested, and with a good deal of probability,
that the original name was Jacques-Pierre, pronounced Chacks-
pere, or Shaks-pere.
The French Jacques (James) seems, by some mutation, to have
been transformed in England into " a nickname or diminutive for
John."2
Thus it may be that the original progenitor of this grandilo-
quent, martial cognomen, which " doth like himself heroically
sound," may have been, in the first instance, a peasant without a
family name, and known as plain Jack-Peter.
1 White, Life and Genius of Shak., p. 5.
2 See Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, p. 722, the word J-ack.
THE REAL CHARACTER OF WILLIAM SHAKSTERE. 69
XIII. His Humiliation.
Despite his wealth, his position in his native town could not have
been a very pleasant one. In 1602, and again in 16 12, the very year
in which we are told Shakspere returned to Stratford to spend the
rest of his life, the most stringent measures were taken by the corpo-
ration to prevent the performance of plays. The pursuit in which he
had made his money was thus stamped by his fellow townsmen as
something shameful and degrading. Even this dirty little village
repudiated it. The neighboring aristocracy must have turned up
their noses and laughed long and loudat the plebeian's son setting up
a coat-of-arms. By profession he was, by the statutes of his country,
a ''vagabond," and had, in the past, only escaped arrest as such by
entering himself as a servitor, or servant, to some nobleman.
The vagabond, according to the statutes, was to "be stripped
naked, from the middle upwards, and to be whipped until his
body was bloody, and to be sent from parish to parish, the next
straight way, to the place of his birth." '
He was buried in the chancel of the church, not as recogni-
tion of his greatness, but because that locality was " the legal and
customary burial-place for the owners of the tithes." 2
XIV. His Handwriting.
The very signature of Shakspere has provoked discussion.
The fact that the will as originally drawn read, "witness my seal," y
and that the "seal" was erased and "hand" written in, has been
cited to prove that the lawyer who drew the will believed that the
testator could not read or write. In an article in The Quarterly
Review in 187 1, we read:
If Shakspere's handwriting was at all like his signature, it was by no means easy
to decipher. If we may speak dogmatically upon such slender proofs as we now pos-
sess, he learnt to write after the old German text-hand then in use at the grammar
school of Stratford. It was in this respect fifty years behindhand, as any one may see
by comparing Shakspere's signature with that of Sir Thomas Lucy, Lord Bacon,
or John Lilly. The wonder is how with such a hand he could have written so much.
1
Mr. William Henry Burr, of Washington, D. C, has written an
interesting pamphlet, to prove that Shakspere could not read or
write, but simply traced his name from a copy set him; and that,
1 Knight's Illust. Shaks., Trag., i, p. 442. 2 Outlines Life of Stiak., p. 171.
7o WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
as the copy furnished him at different times was written by differ-
ent hands, there is a great difference in the shape of the letters
composing his name.
Certain it is his autographs do not look like the work of a schol-
arly man. The following cut is a representation of all the signatures
known, beyond question, to have been written by Shakspere:
&fy*S'rf
The first is from Malone's facsimile of a mortgage deed which
has been lost; the second is from a conveyance in the possession of
the corporation of London; the other thsee are from the three
sheets of paper constituting his will.
Compare the foregoing scrawls with the clear and scholarly
writing of Ben Jonson, affixed in 1604-5 to a copy of his Mask of
Blackness, and now preserved in the British Museum:
Or compare them with the handwriting of the famous and
popular John Lyly, the author of Euphues, written about 1580:
THE REAL CHARACTER OF WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.
7*
Or compare them with the following signature of Francis
Bacon:
J- L^2 il^vv^ -f^s^j^
y
Or compare them with the signature of the famous Inigo Jones,
who assisted in getting up the scenery and contrivances for masks
at court:
XV. His Death.
Let us pass to another point.
We saw that the first recorded fact in reference to the Stratford
boy was a drunken bout in which he lost consciousness, and layout
in the fields all night. The history of his life terminates with a sim-
ilar event.
Halliwell-Phillipps thus gives the tradition:
It is recorded that the party was a jovial one, and, according to a somewhat
late but apparently reliable tradition, when the great dramatist was returning to
New Place in the evening, he had taken more wine than was. conducive to pedestrian
accuracy. Shortly or immediately afterwards, he was seized by the lamentable
fever which terminated fatally on Friday, April 23. The cause of the malady, then
attributed to undue festivity, would now be readily discernible in the wretched san-
itary conditions surrounding his residence. If truth, and not romance, is to be
invoked, were there the woodbine and the sweet honeysuckle within reach of the
poet's death-bed, their fragrance would have been neutralized by their vicinity to
middens, fetid water-courses, mud-walls and piggeries.1
'Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines Life of Shak., p. 170.
J
72 WILLIAM SUA A" SEE RE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
And from such a cause, and in the midst of such surroundings,
we are told, died the greatest man of his race; leaving behind him
not a single tradition or memorial that points to learning, culture,
refinement, generosity, elevation of soul or love of humanity.
If he be in truth the author of the Plays, then indeed is it one
of the most inexplicable marvels in the history of mankind. As
Emerson says, " I cannot marry the facts to his verse."
T
CHAPTER IV.
THE LOST LIBRARY AND MANUSCRIPTS.
Come, and take choice of all my library,
And so beguile thy sorrow.
Titus A ndronicus, iv, r.
HE whole life of Shakspere is shrouded in mystery.
Richard Grant White says:
We do not know positively the date of Shakespeare's birth, or the house in
-which he first saw the light, or a single act of his life from the day of his baptism to
the month of his obscure and suspicious marriage. We are equally ignorant of the
date of that event, and of all else that befell him from its occurrence until we find
him in London; and when he went there we are not sure, or when he finally
returned to Stratford. . . . Hardly a word that he spoke has reached us, and not
a familiar line from his hand, or the record of one interview at which he was
present.1
And, again, the same writer says:
From early manhood to maturity he lived and labored and throve in the chief
■city of a prosperous and peaceful country, at a period of high intellectual and
moral development. His life was passed before the public in days when the pen
recorded scandal in the diary, and when the press, though the daily newspaper did
not yet exist, teemed with personality. Yet of Dante, driven in haughty wretched-
ness from city to city, and singing his immortal hate of his pursuers as he fled, we
know more than we do of Shakespeare, the paucity of whose personal memorials
is so extreme that he has shared with the almost mythical Homer the fortune of
having the works which made his name immortal pronounced medleys, in the com-
position of which he was but indirectly and partially concerned.'2
Hallam says:
Of William Shakespeare it may be truly said we know scarcely anything. . . .
While I laud the labors of Mr. Collier, Mr. Hunter and other collectors of such
crumbs, I am not sure that we should not venerate Shakespeare as much if they
had left him undisturbed in his obscurity. To be told that he played a trick on a
brother player in a licentious amour, or that he died of a drunken frolic, does not
exactly inform us of the man who wrote Lear. If there was a Shakespeare of
earth there was also one of heaven, and it is of him that we desire to know some-
thing.3
This is certainly extraordinary.
It was an age of great men.
1 White, Life and Genius of Shak., p. 4. 2 Ibid., p. 1. 3 Introduction to Literature of Europe.
73
74 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
Richard Grant White says:
Unlike Dante, unlike Milton, unlike Goethe, unlike the great poets and trage-
dians of Greece and Rome, Shakespeare left no trace upon the political, or even
the social life of his era. Of his eminent countrymen, Raleigh, Sidney, Spenser,
Bacon, Cecil, Walsingham, Coke, Camden, Hooker, Drake, Hobbes, Inigo Jones,
Herbert of Cherbury, Laud, Pym, Hampden, Selden, Walton, Wotton and Donne
may be properly reckoned as his contemporaries; and yet there is no proof what-
ever that he was personally known to either of these men, or to any others of less
note among the statesmen, scholars, soldiers and artists of his day, except the few
of his fellow craftsmen whose acquaintance with him has been heretofore men-
tioned.1
It was an age of pamphlets. Priests, politicians and players all
vented their grievances, or set forth their views, in pamphlets, but
in none of these is there one word from or about Shakspere.
I, Where are his Letters ?
It was an age of correspondence. The letters which have come
down to us from that period would fill a large library, but in no
one of them is there any reference to Shakspere.
The man of Stratford passed through the world without leaving
the slightest mark upon the politics or the society of his teeming
and active age.
Emerson says:
If it need wit to know wit, according to the proverb, Shakespeare's time should
be capable of recognizing it. Sir Henry Wotton was born four years after Shake-
speare, and died twenty-three years after him, and I find among his correspondents
and acquaintances the following persons: Theodore Beza, Isaac Casaubon, Sir
Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Milton, Sir
Henry Vane, Isaac Walton, Dr. Donne, Abraham Cowley, Bellarmine, Charles
Cotton, John Pym, John Hales, Kepler, Vieta, Albericus Gentilis, Paul Sarpi,
Arminius — with all of whom exists some token of his having communicated, with-
out enumerating many others whom doubtless he (Wotton) saw — Shakspeare,
Spenser, Jonson, Beaumont, Massinger, two Herberts, Marlowe, Chapman and
the rest. Since the constellation of great men who appeared in Greece in the time
of Pericles, there was never any such society; yet their genius failed them to find
out the best head in the universe. Our poet's mask was impenetrable.2
We read in a sonnet attributed to his pen that he highly valued
Spenser; and we find Spenser, it is claimed, alluding to the author
of the Plays; the dedications of the Venus and Adonis and the Rafe
of Lucrece are supposed to imply close social relationship with the
Earl of Southampton; we are told Elizabeth conversed with him
and King James wrote him a letter; we have pictures of him sur-
1 Lift and Genius o/Skak., p. 185. - Representative Men, p. 200.
THE LOST LIBRARY AXD MANUSCRIPTS, 75
rounded by a circle of friends, consisting of the wisest and wittiest
of the age; and yet there has been found no scrap of writing from
him or to him; no record of any dinner or festival at which he met
any of his associates. In the greatest age of English literature the
greatest man of his species lives in London for nearly thirty years,
and no man takes any note of his presence.
Contrast the little we know of Shakspere with the great deal we
know of his contemporary Ben Jonson. We are acquainted some-
what with the career even of Ben's father; we know that Ben
attended school in London, and was afterward at Cambridge; —
there is no evidence that Shakspere ever was a day at school in his
life. We know that Jonson enlisted and served as a young man in
the wars in the Low Countries. Shakspere's biography, from the
time he left Stratford, in 1585-7, until he appears in London as a
writer of plays, is an utter blank, except the legend that he held
horses at the door of the theater. We know all about Jonson's
return home; his marriage; his duel with Gabriel Spencer. We
are certain of the date of the first representation of each of his plays;
there is a whole volume of matter touching the quarrels between
himself and other writers. He published his own works in 16 16.
and received a pension from James I. We have letters extant
describing the suppers he gave, his manners, weaknesses, appear-
ance, etc.
But with Shakspere all this is different. Where are the letters
he must have received during the thirty years he was in London,
if he was the man of active mind given out by the Plays ? If he had
received but ten a year, they would make a considerable volume,
and what! a world of light they would throw upon his pursuits and
character.
But two letters are extant — those to which I have already
referred : one addressed to him soliciting a loan of money; an-
other addressed to a third party, in which he is referred to in the
same connection; but there is not one word as to studies, or art,
or literature, or politics, or science, or religion; and yet the mind
that wrote the Plays embraced all these subjects, and had thought
profoundly on all of them. He loved the art of poetry passionately:
he speaks of " the elegance, facility and golden cadence of poetry; " *
1 Lace's Labor Lost, iv, 2. ___—■____
CTTrT
or TMC '
7 6 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
he aspired to a " muse of fire that would ascend the highest heaven
•of invention; " he struggled for perfection. Had he no intercourse
with the poets of his time ? Was there no mutual coming-together
of men of kindred tastes and pursuits?
Is it not most extraordinary that he should leave behind him
this vast body of plays, the glory and the wonder of which fills the
world, and not a scrap of paper except five signatures, three of
which were affixed to his will, and the others to some legal docu-
ments ?
On the one side we have the Plays — vast, voluminous, immortal,
covering and ranging through every department of human thought.
These are the works of Shakespeare.
On the other hand, these five signatures are the sum total of the
life-labors of Shakspere which have come down to us.
In these rude, illiterate scrawls we stand face to face with the
man of Stratford. What an abyss separates them from the majestic,
the god-like Plays ?
It is a curious fact that all the writings were put forth in the
name of Shakespeare, very often printed with a hyphen, as I have
given it above, Shakespeare ; while in every one of the five cases
where the man's signature has come down to us, he spells his name
Shakspere.
In this work, wherever I allude to the mythical writer, I designate
him as Shakespeare; whenever I refer to the man of Stratford, I give
him the name he gave himself — Shakspere.
The history of mankind will be searched in vain for another
instance where a great man uniformly spelled his name one way on
the title-pages of his works, and another way in the important
legal documents which he was called upon to sign. Can such a
fact be explained ?
But passing from this theme we come to another question:
II. Where are his Books?
We have seen that the author of the Plays was a man of large
learning; that he had read and studied Homer, Plato, Heliodorus,
Sophocles, Euripides, Dares Phrygius, Horace, Virgil, Lucretius,
Statius, Catullus, Seneca, Ovid, Plautus, Plutarch, Boccaccio, Berni
and an innumerable array of French novelists and Spanish and
THE LOST LIBRARY AND MANUSCRIPTS. 77
Danish writers. The books which have left their traces in the Plays
wTould of themselves have constituted a large library.
What became of them ?
There were no public libraries in that day to which the student
could resort. The man who wrote the Plays must have gathered
around him a vast literary store, commensurate with his own intel-
lectual activity.
Did William Shakspere, of Stratford-on-Avon, possess such a
library ?
J If he did, there is not the slightest reference to it in his will.
The man who wrote the Plays would have loved his library; he
would have remembered it in his last hours. He could not have
forgotten Montaigne, Holinshed, Plutarch, Ovid, Plato, Horace, the
French and Italian romances, to remember his "brod silver and
gilt bole," his "sword," his "wearing apparel," and his "second
best bed with the furniture."
The man of Stratford forgot Homer and Plato, but his mind
dwelt lovingly, at the edge of the grave, on his old breeches and
the second-hand bed-clothes.
Compare his will with that of one who was his contemporary,
Robert Burton, the author of The Anatomy of Melancholy. I quote a
few items from it.
After leaving certain sums of money to Christ Church, Oxford,
to buy books w/th, and to Brasennose Library, he says:
If I have any books the University Library hath not, let them take them. If I
have any books our own library hath not, let them take them. I give to Mrs. Fell
all my English Books of Husbandry one excepted. ... To Mrs. lies my Gerard's
Herbal. To Mrs. Morris my Country Farm, translated out of French, 4, and all
my English Physick Books to Mr. Whistler, the Recorder of Oxford. ... To
all my fellow students, Mrs. of Arts, a book in Folio or two apiece. . . . To
Master Morris my Atlas Geografer and Ortelius Theatrum Mond. . . . To Doctor
lies, his son, Student Salauntch on Paurrhelia and Lucian's Works in 4 tomes.
If any books be left let my executors dispose of them with all such Books
as are written with my own hands, and half my Melancholy copy, for Crips hath
the other half.
This will was made in 1639, twenty-three years after Shakspere's
death, and shows how a scholar tenderly remembers his library
when he comes to bid farewell to the earth. ,
The inventory of Shakspere's personal property has never been^
found. Halliwell-Phillipps says:
7 8 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
If the inventory ever comes to light, it can hardly fail to be of surpassing
interest, especially if it contains a list of the books preserved at New Place. These
must have been very limited in number, for there is no allusion to such luxuries in the
-mill. Anything like a private library, even of the smallest dimensions, was then
of the rarest occurrence, and that Shakespeare ever owned one, at any time of his
life, is exceedingly improbable}
But surely the man who could write as follows could not have
lived without his books:
Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; . . . his intellect
is not replenished; he is only an animal; only sensible in the duller parts.2
There is no evidence that Shakspere possessed a single book.
It was supposed for some time that the world had a copy of a work
from his library, the Essays of Montaigne, but it is now conceded
that the signature on the title-leaf is a forgery. The very forgery
showed the instinctive feeling which possessed intelligent men that
the author of Hamlet must have owned a library, and would have lov-
ingly inscribed his name in his favorite books.
III. Where is the Debris of his Work-shop.
It was an age of commonplace-books.
Halliwell-Phillipps calls the era of Shakspere "those days of
commonplace-books."
Shakespeare himself presented a commonplace-book to some
friend, and wrote this sonnet, probably on the fly-leaf:
Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,
Thy dial how thy precious moments waste;
The vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear,
And of this book this learning mayst thou taste.
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;
Thou by the dial's shady stealth mayst know
Time's thievish progress to eternity.
Look, what thy memory cannot contain,
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
These children nursed, delivered from thy brain
To take a nezo acquaintance of thy mind.
These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.3
That distinguished scholar, Prof. Thomas Davidson, expresses
the opinion that this word offices may be identical with the Promus
of Bacon, some leaves of which are now in the British Museum.
1 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines Life of Shak., p. 186. * Love1 s L^abor Lost, iv, 2.
3 Sonnet lxxvii.
THE LOST LIBRARY AND MANUSCRIPTS.
79
The sonnet describes just such a commonplace-book as Bacon's
Promus is; and Prof. Davidson adds:
Promus is the Latin for offices, that is, larder. Offices here has always seemed
a strange word. Its significance appears to have been overlooked. The German
translations omit it.
The real author of the Plays was a laborious student; we will
see hereafter how he wrote and re-wrote his works. This sonnet
shows that he must have kept commonplace-books, in which he
noted down the thoughts and facts which he feared his memory
could not contain, to subsequently " enrich his book" with them.
With such habits he must have accumulated during his life-time a
vast mass of material, the debris, the chips of the work-shop, hewn
off in shaping the stately statues of his thought.
What became of them ?
IV. Where are the Original Copies of the Plays?
Let the reader write off one page of any one of the Shakespeare
Plays, and he can then form some conception of the huge mass of
manuscripts which must have been in the hands of the author.
But as there is evidence that some of the Plays were re-written more
than once, and "enlarged to as much again," there must have been,
in the hands of the author, not only these original or imperfect
manuscript copies, but the final ones as well. Moreover, there had
been seventy-two quarto editions of the Plays. These, even if
imperfect and pirated, as it is claimed, were
His children, nursed, delivered of his brain;
and if the Stratford man was really the father of the Plays, and
believed that
Not marble,
Nor the gilded monuments of princes,
Should outlive this powerful rhyme,
what would be more natural than that he should take with him to
Stratford copies of these quarto editions? Can we conceive of a
great writer withdrawing to his country residence, to live out the
remainder of his life, without a single copy of the works which had
given him wealth, fame and standing as a gentleman ?
And if he possessed such books, commonplace-books and man-
uscripts, why did he not,
Dying, mention them within his will,
8o WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
as the real author says the Roman citizen would a hair from the
head of the dead Caesar? For all the dust of all the Caesars would
not compare in interest for mankind with these original manu-
scripts and note-books; and the man who wrote the Plays knew it,
and announced it with sublime audacity:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou goest.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Appleton Morgan says:
More than a century and a half of vigorous and exhaustive research, bounded
only by the limits of Great Britain, have failed to unearth a single scrap of memo-
randa or manuscript notes in William Shakespeare's handwriting, as preparation
for any one or any portion of these plays or poems.
But it will be said that this utter disappearance of the original
copies, note-books, memoranda, letters, quarto editions and library
is due to the destruction and waste of years.
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion.
But certain things are to be remembered.
It must be remembered that Shakspere was the one great man
of his race and blood. He had lifted his family from obscurity
to fame, from poverty to wealth, from the condition of yeomanry
to that of pretended gentry; all their claims to consideration rested
upon him; and this greatness he had achieved for them not by
the sword, or in trade, but by his intellectual genius. Hence,
they represented him, in his monument, with pen in hand, in
the act of writing; hence, they placed below the monument a
declaration in Latin that he was, 'In judgment, a Nestor — in
genius, a Socrates — in art, a Maro," and an English inscription
which says that
All that he hath writ
Leaves living art but page to serve his wit.
His daughter Susanna was buried with these lines upon her
tomb:
Witty above her sex, but that's not all,
Wise to salvation was good Mistress Hall;
Something of Shakespeare was in that, but this
Wholly of him with whom she's now in bliss.
■■ -HI . ^
'VER8fTy J
THE LOST LIBRARY AND MANUSCRIPTS. 81
His genius was more or less the subject of comment even while
he lived and soon after his death.
We are told, in the preface to the quarto edition of Troilus
and Cressida, published in 1609, that Shakespeare's Plays are equal
to the best comedy in Terence or Plautus.
And, believe this, that when he is gone and his Comedies out of sale, you will
scramble for them, and set up a new English Inquisition.
In 1662, forty-six years after his death, and eight years before
the death of his grand-daughter Elizabeth, wife of Sir John Bar-
nard, the vicar of Stratford proceeded to note down the traditions
about him.
How comes it, then, that this family — thus made great by the
genius of one man, by his literary genius; conscious of his great-
ness; aware that the world was interested in the details of his
character and history — should have preserved no scrap of his
writing; no manuscript copy of any of his works; no quarto edition
of the Plays; no copy of the great Folio of 1623; no book that had
formed part of his library; no communication addressed to him by
any one on any subject; no incident or anecdote that would have
illustrated his character and genius ? They had become people of
some note; they lived in the great house of the town. One son-in-
law was a physician, who had preserved a written record of the
diseases that came under his observation; his grand-daughter
Elizabeth, in 1643, entertained Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of
King Charles, the reigning monarch, and daughter of the great
King Henry IV. of France. The Queen remained in Shakspere's
house, New Place, for three weeks, on her progress to join King
Charles at Oxford. The Plays of Shakespeare were the delight of
King Charles' court. We are assured by Dryden that Shakespeare
was greatly popular with "the last King's court" — that of King
James — and that Sir John Suckling, and the greater part of the
courtiers, rated him "our Shakespeare," far above Ben Jonson,
" even when his (Jonson's) reputation was at the highest."
Could it be possible that the Queen and courtiers would find
themselves in the house of the author of Hamlet and The Merry
Wives of Windsor, and yet ask no questions about him ? And if
they did, what more natural than for his grand-daughter to produce
the relics she possessed of the great man — the letter of compliment
82 WILLIAM SFIAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
which King James,. the King's father, had written him, as tradition
affirms. Kings' letters were not found on every bush in Stratford.
And such memorials, once presented to the inspection of the curious,
would never again be forgotten.
Would not a sweet and gentle and cultured nature have left
behind him, in the bosom of his family, a multitude of pleasant
anecdotes, redolent of the wit and humor that sparkle in the Plays?
And, once uttered, the world would never permit them to die.
No accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world has ever lost.
We are told, by Oldys, that when his brother, in his latter years,
visited London, he was beset with questions by the actors touching
his illustrious relative, held by them in the highest veneration; but
he could tell them nothing. Would not similar questions be pro-
pounded to his family? His nephew, the son of his sister, was an
actor in London for years, but he, too, seems to have had nothing
to tell. We know that Leonard Digges, seven years after his death,
refers to the "Stratford monument." Interest in him was active.
Dr. Hall's diary of the patients he visited, and the diary of law-
yer Green, Shakspere's cousin, concerning his petty law business,
are both extant, and are pored over by rapturous students; but
where are Shakspere's diary and note-books?
Neither is there any reason why his personal effects should dis-
appear through carelessness. Dr. Hall was a man of education.
He must have known the value of Shakspere's papers. His own
and his father-in-law's personal property continued in the hands of
Shakspere's heirs down to the beginning of the present century, having
passed by will from Lady Barnard in 1670 to the heirs of Joan
Hart, Shakspere's sister. This was long after the great Garrick
Jubilee had been held at Stratford, and long after the world had
grown intensely curious about everything that concerned its most
famous man. Surely the memorials of one who was believed by his
heirs to be the rival of Socrates in genius and of Maro in art would
not be permitted to be destroyed by a family of even ordinary intel-
ligence. See how the papers of Bacon — of Bacon who left no chil-
dren, and probably an unfaithful wife — have come down to us:
the MSS. of his books; great piles of letters, written, most of them,
not when he was Lord Chancellor, but when he was plain Master
THE LOST LIBRARY AND MANUSCRIPTS. 83
Francis Bacon. Even his commonplace-books have found their
way into the British Museum, and the very scraps of paper upon
which his amanuensis tried his pen. Remember how Spedding
found the origina* packages of the private letters of Lord Bur-
leigh, just as they were tied up by the great Lord Treasurer's own
hand, never opened or disturbed for nigh three hundred years !
In the British Museum they have the original manuscript copies
of religious plays written in the reign of Henry VI., two hundred
years before the time of Shakspere; but that marvelous collection
has not a line of any of the plays written by the author of Lear and
Ha??ilet.
V. The Money Value of the Plays.
Nothing is clearer than that Shakspere was a money-getting
man. He achieved a very large fortune in a pursuit in which most
men died paupers. He had a keen eye to profit. He was ready to
sue his neighbor for a few shillings loaned. I have shown that he
must have carried on the business of brewing in New Place. He
entered into a conspiracy to wrest the right of common from the
poor people of the town, for his own profit.
Now, the Plays represented certain values; not alone their
value on the stage, but the profits which came from their publica-
tion. They were popular.
Appleton Morgan says:
Although constantly pirated during his lifetime, it is impossible to discover
that anybody, or any legal representative of anybody, named Shakespeare, ever set
up any claim to proprietorship in any of these works — works which beyond any
literary production of that age were (as their repeatedly being subjects of piracy
and of registration on the Stationers' books proves them to have been) of the largest
market value.
Why should the man who sued his neighbors for petty sums
like two shillings pass by, in his will, these sources of emolument?
Butrit may be said he had already sold the plays and poems to
others. This answer might suffice as to those already printed, but
there were seventeen plays that never saw the light until they
appeared in the Folio edition of 1623, published seven years after
his death. He must have owned these. Why did he make no pro-
vision in his will for their publication — if not for glory, for gain? It
may be said that John Heminge and Henry Cundell, who appear to
have put forth the Folio of 1623, are mentioned in his will, and that
84 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
they acted therein as his literary executors. But they are not
named as executors. His sole executors are Dr. John Hall, his son-
in-law, and Susanna, his daughter, with Thomas Russell, Esq., and
Francis Collins, gent, as overseers. None of these parties appear
to have had any connection with the great Folio. It was a large
and costly work, and, even though eventually profitable, must have
required the advance of a large sum to print it. Where did this
money come from ? Is it probable that a couple of poor actors,
like Heminge and Condell, would have undertaken such an outlay
and risk while the children of Shakspere were alive and exceed-
ingly wealthy ? I do not suppose that a work of the magnitude of
the Folio of 1623 could have been printed for a less sum than the
equivalent of $5,000 of our money. But at the back of the Folio
we find this entry:
Printed at the charges of W. Jaggard, Ed. Blount, I. Smithweeke and W.
Aspley, 1623.
On the title-page we read:
Printed by Isaac Jaggard and Ed. Blount, 1623.
So that it appears that three men, W. Jaggard, I. Smithweeke
and W. Aspley, paid the expenses of the publication, while only one
man, Ed. Blount, was concerned in printing and expense both.
So that it appears that neither Heminge and Condell, nor
Dr. John Hall, nor Shakspere's daughter Susanna, nor Thomas
Russell, nor Francis Collins, nor anybody else who represented
Shakspere's blood or estate, had anything to do with the expense
of publishing the complete edition of Shakespeare's Plays, including
seventeen that had never before been printed,
VI. A Mysterious Matter.
But there is still another curious feature of this mysterious
business.
I quote again from Appleton Morgan:
It is not remarkable, perhaps, that we find no copyright entries on the Station-
ers' books in the name of Jonson, Marlowe, or other of the contemporary poets
and dramatists, for these were continually in straitened circumstances. But,
William Shakespeare being an exceedingly wealthy and independent gentleman
(if, besides, one of the largest owners of literary property of his time), it is remark-
able that the only legal method of securing literary matter, and putting it in shape
to alienate, was never taken by him, or in his name. The silence of his will as to
THE LOST LIBRARY AND MANUSCRIPTS. 85
any literary property whatever is explained by the commentators by supposing
that Shakespeare sold all his plays to the Globe or other theaters on retiring, and
that the Globe Theater was destroyed by fire. If so, let it be shown from the only
place where the legal transfer could have been made — the books of the Stationers'
Company, which were not destroyed by fire, but are still extant.
Other commentators — equally oblivious of such trifling obstacles as the laws
of England — urge that, being unmentioned in the will, the Plays went by course of
probate to Dr. Hall, the executor.
But even more, in that case, certain entries and transfers at Stationers' Hall would
have been necessary. Moreover, the copyright, being not by statute, was perpetual,
.and could not have lapsed. In the preface to their first folio Heminge and Con-
dell announced that all other copies of Shakespeare's plays are " stolen and surrep-
titious." But on consulting the Stationers' books it appears that the quarto edi-
tions were mostly regularly copyrighted according to law, whereas the first folio
was not. Nor were the plays already copyrighted ever transferred to Heminge and
Condell or to their publishers.
What legal rights in England ever centered in this great first folio, except as to
the plays which appeared therein for the first time (which Blount and Jaggard did
copyright), must always remain a mystery. If "stolen and surreptitious copies" ex-
isted, therefore, they were the folio, not the quarto copies.
And again, in another publication, Mr. Morgan says:
Heminge and Condell asserted, in 1623, that all the editions of the plays called
Shakespeare, except their own, were "stolen and surreptitious copies." If the laws
of England in those days are of the slightest consequence in this investigation, it
must appear that it was actually these very men, Heminge and Condell, and not
the other publishers, who were utterers of "stolen and surreptitious copies." For,
whereas all other printers of Shakespeare's plays observed the laws and entered
them for copyright, Heminge and Condell appear never to have heard of any legal
obligations of the sort. Unless they stole them, it certainly passes man's under-
standing to conceive how they got hold of them. For, whatever property could be
legally alienated in those days without a record, literary property certainly could
not be so alienated. The record of alienation could have been made in but one place,
and it tvas never made there.
It may be said that Heminge and Condell, being merely play-
actors, were unfamiliar with the copyright system and law, and,
hence, failed to properly enter the work. But Heminge and Con-
dell, it appears by the first Folio itself, were not the men who put
their money into the venture, but Messrs. "W. Jaggard, Ed. Blount,
I. Smithweeke and W. Aspley." Why did they not secure a title to
the work in which they were venturing $5,000 ? They were busi-
ness men, not actors.
As the Folio of 1623 declares that the previous quarto editions
were "stolen and surreptitious copies " of the Plays, "maimed and
deformed by the frauds and stealths of injurious impostors that
exposed them," and that they now present them "cured and perfect
of their limbs, and all the rest, absolute in their numbers as he con-
86 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
ceived them," etc., it follows that in 1623 Heminge and Condell
must have had the original manuscripts in the handwriting of "the
poet." And they assert this:
And what he thought he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce
received a blot in his papers.
Now, as Heminge and Condell possessed Shakspere's original
copies in 1623, they could not have been burned in the Globe
Theater in 1613.
A very large box would be required to contain them. What
became of these fairly written, unblotted manuscripts ? Did his
" pious fellowes," who so loved the memory of their associate that
they compiled and published in huge and costly folio his com-
pleted works, care nothing for these memorials, in the very hand-
writing of him whom Ben Jonson pronounced, in the same volume
and edition, the
Soul of the age,
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage;
who "was not for an age, but for all time," and in comparison with
whom " all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome " had produced
was as nothing ?
Those manuscripts have never been found, never been heard of;
no tradition refers to them; no scrap, rag, remnant or fragment of
them survives.
Why did not the men who so eagerly questioned his brother,
and who, we are told, so carefully preserved the Chandos portrait,
secure some part of these invaluable documents, which would to-day
be worth many times their weight in gold ?
VII. Another Mystery.
But another mystery attaches to these manuscripts.
The first appearance of Troilus and Cressida was in quarto form
in 1609, and the book contains a very curious preface, in which we
are told that the play had never been played, " never clapper-clawed
with the palms of the vulgar/' " never sullied with the smoky breath
of the multitude," and we find also this remarkable statement:
And believe this, that when he is gone and his comedies out of sale, you will
scramble for them and set up a new English Inquisition. Take this for a warning
and at the peril of your pleasures' loss and judgments refuse not, nor like this the
less for not being sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude; but thank for-
THE LOST LIBRARY AND MANUSCRIPTS. 87
tune for the 'scape it hath made among you, since by the grand possessors' wills I
believe vote should have prayed for them rather than been prayed.
Here two remarkable facts present themselves:
1. That Shakspere, who was supposed to have written his
plays for the stage, for the profit to be drawn from their represent-
ation to the swarming multitudes, writes a play which never is
acted, but printed, so that any other company of players may pre-
sent it. And this play is one of the profoundest productions of his
great genius, full of utterances upon statecraft that are a million
miles above the heads of the rag-tag-and-bobtail who " thunder at
the play-house and fight for bitten apples." '
2. That the original copies of this play and his other come-
dies— some or all of them — have passed out of his hands, and are
now possessed by some grand persons not named. For, note the
language: The writer of the preface speaks of Shakespeare's " com-
edies" in the plural; then of the particular comedy of Troilus and
Cressida; then of the " 'scape it hath made amongst you," that is,
its escape out of the "grand possessors'" hands, who were unwill-
ing to have it "'scape." In other words, we are told that these
"grand possessors' wills " were opposed to letting them — the com-
edies— be published.
Charles Knight says:
It is difficult to understand this clearly, but we learn that the copy had an
escape from some powerful possessors. It appears to us that these possessors were
powerful enough to prevent a single copy of any one of the plays which Shakspere
produced in his "noon of fame," with the exception of the Troilus and Cressida
and Lear, being printed till after his death; and that between his death, in 1616,
and the publication of the Folio, in 1623, they continued the exercise of their power,
so as to allow only one edition of one play which had not been printed in his life-
time (Othello) to appear. The clear deduction from this statement of facts is, that
the original publication of the fourteen plays published in Shakspere's lifetime
was, with the exceptions we have pointed out, authorized by some power having the
right to prevent the publication ; that, after 1603, till the publication of the Folio,
that right was not infringed or contested, except in three instances.2
Knight thinks that these "grand possessors " were Shakspere's
fellow actors, to whom he had assigned the Plays; but this diffi-
culty presents itself: Would the man who wrote the preface to the
Troilus and Cressida of 1609, and who evidently looked with con-
tempt upon the players and the play-house, and who boasts that
» Henry VIII., v, 3. 2 Shak., History, vol. i, p. 314.
88 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
the play in question had never been "clapper-clawed with the
palms of the vulgar," or "sullied with the smoky breath of the
multitude " — would he speak of the actors who made their humble
living before this vulgar multitude, the "vassal actors," the "legal
vagabonds," as "grand possessors"? Do not the words imply
some persons of higher social standing?
And then comes this further difficulty: If the actors owned
Troilus and Cressida, why would they not have played it, and gotten
all the pennies and shillings out of it possible ? Or why, if written
by an actor for actors, should it have been written so transcend-
ently above the heads of the multitude that it could not be acted ?
And why, if it was worth anything as a play, would the actors
have allowed it to " 'scape " into the hands of a publisher who sends
it forth with a sneer at the audiences who frequent their places of
amusement. And why, if they owned all the Plays, does not their
ownership appear somewhere on the books of copyright? And
why, if they owned them, would they destroy their own monopoly
by publishing them in folio in 1623, thus throwing open the doors
to all the players of the world to act them ? And why would they
not even copyright the book when they did so publish it? And
why, if they did so publish it, does it appear, by the book itself,
that they were not at the charge of publishing it, but that it was
sent forth at the cost of four men, not actors, therein named ?
Thus, in whatever direction we penetrate into this subject, inex-
plicable mysteries meet us face to face.
VIII. Pregnant Questions.
Why should the wealthy Shakspere permit the Plays, written
while he was wealthy, to pass into the hands of certain "grand
possessors " ? And if these men were not actors, but bought the
Plays of Shakspere, why should they make no attempt, during
twenty years, to get their money back by publishing them ? And
could they have procured them of the money-making Shakspere, if
he wrote them, without paying for them ? And what business
would "grand" men, not actors, not publishers, not speculators for
profit, have with the Plays anyway? And why should they stand
guard over them and keep them from the public for twenty years,
and then put them all out at once, and not copyright them, thus
THE LOST LIBRARY AND MANUSCRIPTS. 89
making them a present to the public? And when they did publish
them, why should they place the papers in the hands of two play-
actors, Heminge and Condell, who pretend that they are putting
them forth out of love for the memory of that good fellow, Will
Shakspere? Were not Heminge and Condell a mere mask and
cover for the "grand possessors" of the unblotted manuscripts?
And if the man who sued Philip Rogers for jQi 19s. lod. for
malt sold, and for two shillings money loaned, had any ownership
in any of these plays, can we believe he would not have enforced it
to the uttermost farthing ? Would not he and his (for they were
all litigious) have chased the stray shillings that came from their
publication, through court after court, and thus placed the question
of authorship forever beyond question ?
We are forced to conclude:
1. Shakspere did not own the Plays and never had owned
them.
2. They were in the hands of and owned by some " grand"
person or persons.
3. This " grand " person or persons cared nothing for the
interests of the players and made them public property; therefore,
Heminge and Condell did not represent the players.
4. This " grand " person or persons cared nothing for the
money to be derived from their sale, and took out no copyright,
but presented them freely to the world; and this was not in the
interest of Shakspere's heirs, if he had any claim to them.
5. And this "grand" person or persons cared nothing for
the money to be made out of them, or he or they would, in
the period of twenty years, between 1603 and 1623, have printed
and reprinted them in quarto form, and made a profit out of
them.
But there is another striking fact in connection with the ques-
tion of the manuscripts.
IX. Another Mystery.
The whole publication of the Folio of 1623 is based on a fraudulent
statement.
Heminge and Condell, in their preface, addressed " to the great
variety of readers," say:
9o WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthy to have been wished that the
author himself had lived to have set forth, and overseen his own writings.
But since it hath bin ordained otherwise, and he by death departed from that
right, we pray you do not envy his friends the office of their care and paine.
to have collected and publish'd them; and so to have publish'd them as where
(before) you were abus'd with diverse stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed
and deformed by the frauds and steal thes of injurious impostors, that exposed
them, even those are now offered to your view cur'd and perfect of their
limbs, and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them. Who,
as he was a happie imitator of nature, was a most gentle expresser of it.
His mind and his hand went together. And what he thought he uttered
with that easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot in his
papers.
And on the title-page of the Folio we read: "Mr. William Shake-
speare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. Published according
to the true originall copies." We have also a list of "the principal
actors in all these plays," prefaced by these words:
The works of William Shakespeare, containing all his Comedies, Histories and
Tragedies: Truely set forth according to their first originall.
Here we find four things asserted:
i. That the Folio was printed from the original copies.
2. That Heminge and Condell had "collected" these copies
and published them in the Folio.
3. That the quarto editions were " stolne and surreptitious
copies, maimed and deformed."
4. That what Shakespeare wrote was poured from him, as if
by inspiration, so that he made no corrections, and " never blotted
a line," as Ben Jonson said.
These statements are met by the following facts:
I. Some of the finest thoughts and expressions, distinctively
Shakespearean, and preeminently so, are found in the quarto edi-
tions, and not in the Folio.
For instance, in the play of Hamlet, nearly all of scene iv, act 4,
is found in the quarto and not in the Folio. In the quarto copy
we find the following passages:
What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed ? A beast, no more.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused.
THE LOST LIBRARY AND MANUSCRIPTS. 91
And again:
Rightly to be great
Is, not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw,
When honor's at the stake.
No one can doubt that these passages came from the mind
we are accustomed to call Shakespeare. Hundreds of other
admirable sentences can be quoted which appear in the quartos,
but not in the Folio. It follows, then, that Heminge and Condell
did not have "the true original copies," or they would have con-
tained these passages. It follows, also, that there must have been
some reason why portions of the quarto text were omitted from the
Folio. It follows, also, that, in some respects, the "stolne and
surreptitious " copies of the quarto are more correct than the Folio,
and that but for the quartos we would have lost some of the finest
gems of thought and expression which go by the name of
Shakespeare.
II. The statement that Shakespeare worked without art, that
he improvised his great productions, that there was scarce "a blot
in his papers," in the sense that he made no corrections, is not
only incompatible with what we know of all great works of
art, but is contradicted on the next page but one of the Folio,
by Ben Jonson, in his introductory verses. «
He says:
Yet must I not give Nature all. Thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the Poet's matter Nature be,
His Art doth give the fashion. And that he
Who casts to write a living line must sweat
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muse's an vile, turn the same
(And himself with it) that he thinks to frame,
Or for the laurel he may gain a scorne;
For a good Poet's made, as well as borne.
And such ivcrt thou. Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue; even so the race
Of Shakespeare's^mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-torned and true-filed lines.
Here, then, we have the two play-actors, and friends of Shake-
speare, Heminge and Condell, squarely contradicted by another
friend and play-actor, Ben Jonson. One asserts that Shakespeare
wrote without art; the other, that he sweat over his "true-
1 1 a r7>s
Of rOJ* )
y~/VERs
try
WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DLD NOT WRITE TILE FLA VS.
filed lines" and turned them time and again on the "Muse's
anvile."
Several of the plays exist in two forms: — first, a brief form,
suitable for acting; secondly, an enlarged form, double the size of
the former. This is true of Romeo and Juliet, Henry V.y The Merry-
Wives of Windsor and Hamlet.
For instance, the first edition of Henry V. contains 1,800 lines;
the enlarged edition has 3,500 lines. Knight says:
In this elaboration the old materials are very carefully used up; but they
are so thoroughly refitted and dovetailed with what is new, that the operation
can only be compared to the work of a skillful architect, who, having an
ancient mansion to enlarge and beautify, with a strict regard to its original
character, preserves every feature of the structure, under other combinations,
with such marvelous skill, that no unity of principle is violated, and the whole
has the effect of a restoration in which the new and the old are undistinguish-
able.1
Knight gives a specimen of this work, taken from the quarto
Henry V. of 1608 and the Folio of 1623. We print in the second
column, in italics, those parts of the text derived from the quarto,
and which reappear in the Folio:
Quarto 1608.
King. Sure we thank you; and, good
my lord, proceed
Why the law Salique, which they have
in France,
Or should or should not stop us in our
claim:
And God forbid, my wise and learned
lord,
That you should fashion, frame or wrest
the same.
For God doth know how many now in
health
Shall drop their blood, in approbation
Of what your reverence shall incite us to.
Therefore, take heed how you impawn
our person;
How you awake the sleeping sword of
war:
We charge you in the name of God take
heed.
After this conjuration speak, my lord;
A*.nd we will judge, note and believe in
heart
Folio 1623.
King. Sure, we thank you.
My learned lord, I pray you to proceed
And justly and religiously unfold
Why the lazv Salique, that they have in
France,
Or should or should not bar us in our
claim.
And God forbid, my dear and faithful
lord,
That you should fashion, wrest or bow
your reading,
Or nicely charge your understanding
soul
With opening titles miscreate, whose
right
Suits not in native colors with the truth
For God doth know hozv many now in
health
Shall drop their blood, in approbation
Of what your i-everence shall incite us to :
Therefore, take heed how you impawn our
person ;
L low you' awake the sleeping sword of war;
Charles Knight, Ptct. Shak., Histories, vol. i, p. ^10.
THE LOST LIBRARY AND MANUSCRIPTS. 93
That what you speak is washed as pure We charge you in the name of God take
As sin in baptism. heed.
For never two such kingdoms did con-
tend
Without much fall of blood, whose guilt-
less drops
Are every one a woe, a sore complaint,
'Gainst him whose wrongs give edge
unto the swords
That make such waste in brief mortality.
Under this conjuration speak, my lord ;
And 7ve will hear, note and believe in
heart, ■
That what you speak is, in your con-
science, washed
As pure as sin with baptism.
Now Heminge and Condell claim, in the Folio, that the play of
Henry V. was printed from the "true original " copy, and that it
came from the mind of Shakspere without a blot; while here is
proof conclusive that it was not printed from the first original
copy; and that it did not come, heaven-born, from the soul of the
creator; but that the writer, whoever he might be, was certainly
a man of vast industry and immense adroitness, nimbleness and
subtlety of mind.
False in one thing, false in all. Heminge and Condell did not
have the author's original manuscripts, with all the interlineations;
and corrections, before them to print from, but a fair copy from
some other pen. They do not seem to have known that there was
that 1608 edition of the play. In fact, they do not even seem to know
how to spell their own names. At the end of the introduction,,
from which I have quoted, they sign themselves, " John Heminge "'
and " Henrie Condell," while in the list of actors, published by
themselves, they appear as "John Hemmings " and " Henry Con-
dell;" and Shakspere calls them, in his will, "John Hemynge" and
" Henry Cundell."
If the play-actor editors thus falsified the truth, or were them-
selves the victims of an imposition, what confidence is to be placed
in any other statement they make ? What assurance have we that
they had collected the original manuscript copies; that they ever
saw them; in short, that they were the work of Shakspere or in his
handwriting ? What assurance have we that the whole introduction
and dedication to which their names are appended were not written
94
WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
by some one else, and that they were but a mask for those "grand
possessors" who, seven years before Shakspere's death, owned the
play of Troihis and Cressida ?
In fact, a skeptical mind can see, even in the verses which face
the portrait of Shakspere in the Folio of 1623, the undercurrent of
a double meaning. They commence:
The figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut.
Is the -\Yord gentle here, a covert allusion to Shakspere's
ridiculous and fraudulent pretensions to "gentle" blood, and to
that bogus coat-of-arms which we are told he had engraved in
stone over the door of New Place in Stratford ?
Wherein the graver had a strife '
With Nature to out-doo the life.
No one can look at that picture and suppose that B. I. (Ben
Jonson) was serious in this compliment to the artist.
Appleton Morgan says:
In this picture the head of the subject is represented as rising out of an
horizontal plane of collar appalling to behold. The hair is straight, combed down
the sides of the face and bunched over the ears; the forehead is disproportionately
high; the top of the head bald; the face has the wooden expression familiar in the
Scotchmen and Indians used as signs for tobacconists' shops, accompanied by an
idiotic stare that would be but a sorry advertisement for the humblest establish-
ment in that trade.
If this picture "out-does the life," what sort of a creature must
the original have been ?
O, could he but have drawn his wit
As well in brass as he hath hit
His face, the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in brass.
This thought of "drawing his wit" is singularly enough taken
from an inscription around another portrait — not that of Shak-
spere, but of Francis Bacon. On the margin of a miniature
of Bacon, painted by Hilliard in 1578, when he was in his
eighteenth year, are found these words, "the natural ejaculation,
probably," says Spedding, "of the artist's own emotion": Si
tabula daretur digna, animum mallem — if one could but paint his
mind!2
• The Shak. Myth, p. 95. 2 Life and Works 0/ Bacon, Spedding, Ellis, etc., vol. i, p. 7.
THE LOST LIBRARY AND MANUSCRIPTS.
95
Let us read again those lines:
O, could he but have drawn his wit
As well in brass as he hath hit
His face, the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ — in brass !
That is to say, his wit drawn in brass would surpass, in brass, all
that was ever written. Is not this another way of intimating that
only a brazen-faced man, like Shakspere, would have had the impu-
dence to claim the authorship of plays which were not written by
him ?
And that this is not a forced construction we can see by turning
to the Plays, where we will find the words brass and brazen used in
the same sense as equivalents for impudence.
Can any face of brass hold longer out?1
Well said, brazen-ia.ce.'
A brazen-faced valet.3
It seems to me there is even a double meaning to some of the
introductory verses of the Folio of 1623, signed Ben Jonson. The
verses are inscribed —
To the memory of my beloved — the Author — Mr. William Shakespeare —
and — what he hath left us.
What does this mean: "what he hath left us"? Does it mean
his works ? How could Ben Jonson inscribe verses to the memory
of works — plays? We speak of the memory of persons, not of
productions; of that which has passed away and perished, not of
that which is but beginning to live; not of the
Soul of the age !
The applause ! delight ! the wonder of our stage !
In the same volume, on the next page, we are told,
For though his line of life went soon about,
The life yet of his lines will never out.
Could Ben Jonson inscribe his verses to the memory of works
which, he assures us in the same breath, were not "for an age, but
for all time " ? Can you erect a memorial monument over immortal
life?
What did William Shakspere leave behind him that held any
:onnection with the Plays ? Was it the real author — Francis Bacon ?
1 Love's Labor Lost, v, 2. 2 Merry Wives 0/ Windsor, iv, 2. 3 Lear, ii, 2.
96 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
And this thought seems to pervade the verses. Jonson says:
Thou art alive still — while thy book doth live.
And again:
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza and our James.
That is to say, Ben Jonson expresses to the dead Shakspere
the hope that he would reappear and make some more dramatic
" flights" — that is, write some more plays. Such a wish would be
absurd, if applied to the dead man, but would be very significant, if
the writer knew that the real author was still alive and capable of
new flights. And the closing words of the verses sound like an
adjuration to Bacon to resume his pen:
Shine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage
Or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage,
Which, since thy flight from thence, hath mourned like night,
And despaires day, but for thy volumes' light.
The play-houses had the manuscript copies of the Plays, and
had been regularly acting them; it needed not, therefore, the pub-
lication of the Folio in 1623 to enable the poet to shine forth.
If the "drooping stage" "mourned like night," it was not for
the Plays which appear in the Folio, for it possessed them; it had
been acting them for twenty years; but it was because the supply
of new plays had given out. Hugh Holland says on the next page:
Dry'd is that vein, dry'd is the Thespian spring.
How comes it, then, that Ben Jonson expresses the hope that
the author would reappear, and write new plays, and cheer the
drooping stage, and shine forth again, if he referred to the man
whose mouldering relics had been lying in the Stratford church for
seven years?
X. Ben Jonson's Testimony.
It must not be forgotten that Ben Jonson was in the employ-
ment of Francis Bacon; he was one of his "good pens ;" he helped
him to translate his philosophical works into Latin. If there was a
secret in connection with the authorship of the Plays, Ben Jonson,
as Bacon's friend, as play-actor and play-writer, doubtless knew it.
And it is very significant that at different periods, far apart, he
employed precisely the same words in describing the genius of
fa
:0,
THE LOST LIBRARY AXD MANUSCRIPTS. 97
William Shakspere and the genius of Francis Bacon. In these
verses, from which I have been quoting, he says, speaking ostensi-
bly of Shakspere:
Or when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone, for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Jonson died in 1637. His memoranda, entitled Ben Jonsoris
Discoveries, were printed in 1640. One of these refers to the emi-
nent men of his own and the preceding era. After speaking of Sir
Thomas More, the Earl of Surrey, Challoner, the elder Wyatt, Sir
Nicholas Bacon, Sir Philip Sydney, the Earl of Essex and Sir Wal-
ter Raleigh, he says:
Lord Egerton, a grave and great orator, and best when he was provoked; but
his learned and able but unfortunate successor (Sir Francis Bacon) is he that hath
filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue which may be compared or,
preferred either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome.
What a significant statement is this !
Francis Bacon had " filled up all numbers." That is to say, he
had compassed all forms of poetical composition. Webster defines
" numbers " thus:
That which is regulated by count; poetic measure, as divisions of time or
number of syllables; hence, poetry, verse — chiefly used in the plural.
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. — Pope.
Yet should the muses bid my numbers roll. — Pope.
In Love's Labor Lost, Longaville says, speaking of some love
verses he had written:
I fear these stubborn lines lack power to move;
O sweet Maria, empress of my love,
These numbers will I tear, and write in prose. x
But when Ben Jonson, who had helped translate some of
Bacon's prose works, comes to sum up the elements of his patron's
greatness, he passes by his claims as a philosopher, a scholar, a
lawyer, an orator and a statesman; and the one thing that stands
out vividly before his mind's eye, that looms up above all other
considerations, is that Francis Bacon is 3. poet — a great poet — a
poet who has written in all measures, " has filled up all numbers "
— the sonnet, the madrigal, rhyming verse, blank verse. And what
had he written ? Was it the translation of a few psalms in his old
1 Act iv, scene 3.
98 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
age, the only specimens of his poetry that have come down to us,
in his acknowledged works ? No; it was something great, some-
thing overwhelming; something that is to be "compared or pre-
ferred either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome."
And what was it that "insolent Greece and haughty Rome"
had accomplished to which these "numbers" of Bacon could
be preferred ? We turn to Jonson's verses in the Shakespeare
Folio and we read:
And though thou hadst small Latine and less Greek,
From thence to honor thee I would not seeke
For names, but call forth thundering ^Eschilus,
Euripides and Sophocles to us,
Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread,
And shake a stage; or, when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone, for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
The "numbers" of Bacon are to be compared or preferred either
to insolent Greece or haughty Rome — that is to say, to the best
poetical compositions of those nations. And when Ben Jonson
uses this expression we learn, from the verses in the Folio, what
kind of Greek and Roman literary work he had in his mind; it was
not the writings of Homer or Virgil, but of iEschylus, Euripides,
Sophocles, etc. — that is to say, the dramatic writers. Is it not extraor-
dinary that Jonson should 'not only assert that Bacon had pro-
duced poetical compositions that would challenge comparison with
the best works of Greece and Rome, but that he should use the
same adjectives, and in the same order, that he had used in the Folio
verses, viz.: insolent Greece and haughty Rome? It was not haughty
Greece and insolent Rome, or powerful Rome and able Greece,
or any other concatenation of words; but he employs precisely
the same phrases in precisely the same order. How comes it
that when his mind was dwelling on the great poetical and
secret works of Bacon — for they must have been secret — he
reverted to the very expressions he had used years before in
reference to the Shakespeare Plays ?
And it is upon Ben Jonson's testimony that the claims of Will-
iam Shakspere, of Stratford, to the authorship of the Plays, princi-
pally rest.
THE LOST LIBRARY AND MANUSCRIPTS. 99
If the Plays are not Shakspere's then the whole make-up of the
Folio of 1623 is a fraud, and the dedication and the introduction
are probably both from the pen of Bacon.
Mr. J. T. Cobb calls attention to a striking parallelism between
a passage in the dedication of the Folio and an expression of Bacon:
Country hands reach forthe milk, cream and fruits, or what they have.1
Bacon writes to Villiers:
And now, because I am in the country, I will send you some of my country
fruits, which with me are goocl meditations, which when I am in the city are choked
with business.*2
And in the " discourse touching the plantation in Ireland," he
asks his majesty to accept "the like poor field-fruits."
We can even imagine that in the line,
And though thou hadst small Latine and less Greek,
Ben Jonson has his jest at the man who had employed him to
write these verses. For Jonson, it will be remembered, was an
accurate classical scholar, while Bacon was not. The latter was
like Montaigne, who declared he could never thoroughly acquire any
language but his own. Dr. Abbott, head master of the City of
London school, in his introduction to Mrs. Pott's great work,3 refers
to "several errors which will make Latin and Greek scholars feel
uneasy. For these in part Bacon himself, or Bacon's amanuensis, is
responsible ; and many of the apparent Latin solecisms or mis-
spellings arise . . . from the manuscripts of the Promus" He adds
in a foot-note:
I understand that it is the opinion of Mr. Maude Thompson, of the British
Museum manuscript department, that all entries, except some of the French prov-
erbs, are in Bacon's handwriting ; so that no amanuensis can bear the blame of
the numerous errors in the Latin quotations.
How "rare old Ben" must have enjoyed whacking Bacon over
Shakespeare's shoulders, in verses written at the request of Bacon !
XI. A Greater Question.
When the crushing blow of shame and humiliation fell upon
Francis Bacon in 162 1, and he expected to die under it, he hurriedly
drew a short will. It does not much exceed in length one page of
Spedding's book, and yet in this brief document he found time to say:
x Dedication, Folio 1623. 2 Montagu, iii, p. 20. 3 Promus, p. 13.
ioo WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
My compositions unpublished, or the fragments of them, I require my servant
Harris to deliver to my brother Constable, to the end that if any of these be fit, in
his judgment, to be published, he may accordingly dispose of them. And in partic-
ular I wish the Elogium I wrote, In felicem memoriam Regince Elizabethce, may be
published. And to my brother Constable I give all my books; and to my servant
Harris for this his service and care fifty pieces in gold, pursed up.
He disposed of all his real property in five lines, for the pay-
ment of his debts.
And when Bacon came to draw his last will and testament,1 he
devoted a large part of it to the preservation of his writings. He
says:
For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to for-
eign nations, and the next ages. But as to the durable part of my memory, which
consisteth ef my works and writings, I desire my executors, and especially Sir John
Constable, and my very good friend Mr. Bosvile, to take care that of all my writings,
both of English and of Latin, there may be books fair bound and placed in the
King's library, and in the library of the University of Cambridge, and in the
library of Trinity College, where myself was bred, and in the library of the
University of Oxonford, and in the library of my lord of Canterbury, and in
the library of Eaton.
Then he bequeaths his register books of orations and letters to
the Bishop of Lincoln; and he further directs his executors to
" take into their hands all my papers whatsoever, which are either
in cabinets, boxes or presses, and them to seal up until they may at
their leisure peruse them."
We are asked to believe that William Shakspere was, neces-
sarily, as the author of the Plays, a man of vast learning, the owner
of many books, and that he left behind him, unpublished at the
time of his death, such marvelous and mighty works as The
Tempest, Macbeth, Julius Ccesar, Timon of Athens, Coriolanus, Henry
VII T. and many more; and that, while he carefully bequeathed
his old clothes and disposed of his second-best bed, he made
no provision for the publication of his works, " the durable part
of his memory."
Is it reasonable? Is it probable ? Is it not grossly improbable ?
What man capable of writing Macbeth and Julius Ccesar, and know-
ing their value to mankind — knowing that they lay in his house, in
some "cabinet, box or press," probably in but one manuscript copy
each, and that they might perish in the hands of his illiterate family
and "bookless" neighbors — would, while carefully remembering
1 Life and Works, vol. vii, p. 539.
THE LOST LIBRARY AND MANUSCRIPTS. 101
so much of the litter and refuse of the world, have died and made
no provision for their publication ?
But it may be said he did not own them; he may have sold
them. It seems not, for Heminge and Condell, in their intro-
duction to the first Folio, say that they received the original copies
which they published from Shakespeare himself:
And what he thought he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce received
from him a blot in his papers.
And again:
It has been a thing, we confess, worthy to have been wished, that the author
himself had lived to have set forth and overseen his own writings.
What right would he have had to set them forth if they
belonged to some one else ?
But since it hath been ordained otherwise, and he by death departed from that
right, we pray you do not envy his friends the office of their care.
If this introduction means anything, it means that Shakspere
owned these Plays; that he would have had the right to publish
them if death had not interfered; that his friends and fellow-actors,
Heminge and Condell, had, " to keep the memory of so worthy a
friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare," assumed the task
of publishing them; that they had received the original manu-
scripts from him — that is, from his family — free from blot, and that
they published from them, as all the quarto copies were "stolne
and surreptitious, maimed and deformed by the frauds and
stealthes of injurious impostors."
And yet these Plays, which belonged to Shakspere's wealthy
family, as the heirs of the author, which were printed by his " fel-
lows" to sell to make money — for they say in their introduction:
The fate of all books depends upon your capacities: and not of your heads
alone but of your purses. . . . Read and censure. Do so, but buy first.
— these Plays were not published or paid for by Shakspere's
family, but, as the Folio itself tells us, were
Printed at the charges of W. Jaggard, Ed. Blount, I. Smithweeke, and W.
Aspley, 1623.
CHAPTER V.
THE WRITER OF THE PLAYS A LAWYER.
Why may that not be the skull of a lawyer ?
Hamlet, v, /.
NOTHING is more conclusively established than that the
author of the Plays was a lawyer.
Several works have been written in England and America to
demonstrate this. I quote a few extracts:
Franklin Fiske Heard says:
The Comedy of Errors shows that Shakespeare was very familiar with some of
the most refined of the principles of the science of special pleading, a science
which contains the quintessence of the law. . . . In the second part of Henry IV.,
act v, scene 5, Pistol uses the term absque hoc, which is technical in the last degree.
This was a species of traverse, used by special pleaders when the record was in
Latin, known by the denomination of a special traverse. The subtlety of its texture,
and the total dearth of explanation in all the reports and treatises extant in the
time of Shakespeare with respect to its principle, seem to justify the conclusion
that he must have attained a knozvledge of it from actual practice}
Senator Davis says:
We seem to have here something more than a sciolist's temerity of indulgence
in the terms of an unfamiliar art. No legal solecisms will he found. The abstrusest
elements of the common law are impressed into a disciplined service with every
evidence of the right and knowledge of commanding. Over and over again,
where such knowledge is unexampled in writers unlearned in the law, Shakespeare
appears in perfect possession of it. In the law of real property, its rules of tenure
and descents, its entails, its fines and recoveries, and their vouchers and double
vouchers; in the procedure of the courts, the method of bringing suits and of arrests;
the nature of actions, the rules of pleading, the law of escapes and of contempt of
court; in the principles of evidence, both technical and philosophical; in the dis-
tinction between the temporal and spiritual tribunals; in the law of attainder and
forfeiture; in the requisites of a valid marriage; in the presumption of legitimacy;
in the learning of the law of prerogative; in the inalienable character of the crown,
this mastership appears with surprising authority.'2
And again the same writer says:
I know of no writer who has so impressed into his service the terms of any
science or art. They come from the mouth of every personage: from the Queen;
from the child; from the merry wives of Windsor; from the Egyptian fervor of
Cleopatra; from the lovesick Paphian goddess; from violated Lucrece; from Lear;
1 Shakespeare as a Lawyer, pp. 43, 48. 2 The Law in Shakespeare, p. 4.
102
THE WRITER OF THE PLAYS A LAWYER.
°3
Hamlet and Othello; from Shakespeare himself, soliloquizing in his sonnets; from
Dogberry and Prospero; from riotous 'Falstaff and melancholy Jacques. Shake-
speare utters them at all times as standard coin, no matter when or in what mint
stamped. These emblems of his industry are woven into his style like the bees
into the imperial purple of Napoleon's coronation robes.1
Lord Chief Justice Campbell sees the clearest evidences in the
Plays that the writer was learned in the law. I quote a few of his
expressions:
These jests cannot be supposed to arise from anything in the laws or customs
of Syracuse; but they show the author to be very familiar with some of the most
abstruse proceedings in English jurisprudence.'1
Quoting the description of the arrest of Dromio in The Comedy
of Errors, he says:
Here we have a most circumstantial and graphic account of an English arrest
on mesne process [" before judgment "] in an action on the case.3
In act iii, scene 1 (of As You Like It) a deep technical knowledge of the law is
displayed.*
It is likewise remarkable that Cleomenes and Dion ( The Winter's Tale, Act iii,
scene 2), the messenger who brought back the response from the oracle of Delphi,
to be given in evidence, are sworn to the genuineness of the document they pro-
duce almost m the very words now used by the Lord Chancellor when an officer
presents at the bar of the House of Lords the copy of a record of a court of justice:
You here shall swear. . . .
That you, Cleomenes and Dion, have
Been both at Delphos; and from thence have brought
The sealed-up oracle, by the hand delivered
Of great Apollo's priest; and that since then
You have not dared to break the holy seal
Nor read the secrets in't. 5
And again, Lord Chief Justice Campbell says:
We find in several of the Histories Shakespeare's fondness for law terms;
and it is still more remarkable that whenever lie indulges this propensity he uniformly
lays down good la70.6
While novelists and dramatists are constantly making mistakes as to the law
of marriage, of wills and of inheritance, to Shakespeare's law, lavishly as he pro-
pounds it, there can neither be demurrer, nor bill of exception, nor writ of error.7
If Lord Eldon could be supposed to have written the play, I do not see how he
would be chargeable with having forgotten any of his law while writing it.8
The indictment in which Lord Say was arraigned, in act iv, scene 7 (2d Henry
VI.), seems drawn by no inexperienced hand. . . . How acquired I know not, but
it is quite certain that the drawer of this indictment must have had some acquaint-
ance with The Crown Circuit Companion, and must have had a full and accurate
1 The Law in Shak., p. 51. 3 Ibid., p. 39. 5 Ibid., p. 60. " Ibid., p. 108.
tShak. Legal Acquirements, p. 38. 4 Ibid., p. 42. 6 Ibid., p. 61. 8 Ibid., p. 73.
104 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
knowledge of that rather obscure and intricate subject — " Felony and Benefit of
Clergy." ■
Speaking of Gloster's language in Lear? Lord Campbell says:
In forensic discussions respecting legitimacy the question is put, whether the
individual whose status is to be determined is "capable," i.e., capable of inheriting;
but it is only a lawyer who could express the idea of legitimizing a natural son by
simply saying:
I'll work the means
To make him capable.
Speaking of Ifa?nlet, his Lordship says:
Earlier in the play3 Marcellus inquires what was the cause of the warlike
preparations in Denmark:
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war?
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Doth not divide the Sunday from the week ?
Such confidence has there been in Shakespeare's accuracy that this passage
has been quoted, both by text-writers and by judges on the bench, as an authority
upon the legality of the press-gang, and upon the debated question whether
shipwrights as well as common seamen are liable to be pressed into the service
of the royal navy.4
Lord Campbell quotes sonnet xlvi, of which he says:
I need not go farther than this sonnet, which is so intensely legal in its language
and imagery that without a considerable knowledge of English forensic procedure it
cannot be fully understood.
Sonnet XLVI.
Mine Eye and Heart are at a mortal war
How to divide the conquest of thy sight;
Mine Eye my Heart thy picture's sight would bar,
My Heart mine Eye the freedom of that right.
My Heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie
(A closet never pierced with crystal eyes),
But the Defendant doth that plea deny,
And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
To 'cide this title is impaneled
A quest of Thoughts, all tenants of the Heart;
And by their verdict is determined
The clear Eye's moiety, and the dear Heart's part;
As thus: mine Eyes' due is thine outward part,
And my Heart's right, thine inward love of heart.
One is reminded, in reading this, of Brownell's humorous lines:
The Lawyer's Invocation to Spring.
Whereas on certain boughs and sprays
Now divers birds are heard to sing;
And sundry flowers their heads upraise,
Hail to the coming on of spring!
1 Shak. Legal Acquirements, p. 75. 3 Hamlet, i, 1.
2 Act ii, scene 1. 4 Shak. Legal Acquirements, p. 83.
THE WRITER OF THE PLAYS A LAWYER. 105
The songs of those said birds arouse
The memory of our youthful hours,
As green as those said sprays and boughs,
As fresh and sweet as those said flowers.
The birds aforesaid — happy pairs ! —
Love, 'mid the aforesaid boughs, inshrines
In freehold nests; themselves their heirs,
Administrators and assigns.
Oh, busiest term of Cupid's court,
Where tender plaintiffs actions bring;
Season of frolic and of sport,
Hail — as aforesaid — coming spring !
Lord Campbell says:
In Antony and Cleopatra,1 Lepidus, in trying to palliate the bad qualities and
misdeeds of Antony, uses the language of a conveyancer's chambers in Lincoln's
Inn:
His faults, in him, seem as the spots of heaven,
More fiery by night's blackness; hereditary
Rather than purchased.
That is to say, they are taken by descent, not by purchase. Lay gents (viz., all
except lawyers) understand by purchase buying for a sum of money, called the
price, but lawyers consider that purchase is opposed to descent; that all things
come to the owner either by descent or by purchase, and that whatever does not
come through operation of law by descent is purchased, although it may be the free
gift of a donor. Thus, if land be devised by will to A in fee, he takes by pur-
chase; or to B for life, remainder to A and his heirs (B being a stranger to A), A
takes by purchase; but upon the death of A, his eldest son would take by descent}
Appleton Morgan says:
But most wonderful of all is the dialogue in the graveyard scene.
In the quarto the two grave-diggers are wondering whether Ophelia, having
committed suicide, is to be buried in consecrated ground, instead of at a cross-
road with a stake driven through her body, and clumsily allude to the probability
that, having been of noble birth, a pretext will be found to avoid the law.
It happens that in the first volume of Plowden's Reports there is a case (Hales
vs. Petit, I. PI. 253) of which the facts bore a wonderful resemblance to the story
of Ophelia.
Sir James Hales was a judge of the Common Pleas, who had prominently con-
cerned himself in opposing the succession of Mary the Bloody. When Mary
ascended the throne, he expected decapitation, and was actually imprisoned, but
by some influence released. His brain, however, became affected by his vicissi-
tudes, and he finally committed suicide by throwing himself into a water-course.
Suicide was felony, and his estates became escheated to the crown. The crown in
turn granted them to one Petit. But Lady Hales, instructed that the escheat
might be attacked, brought ejectment against Petit, the crown tenant. The point
was as to whether the forfeiture could be considered as having taken place in the
lifetime of Sir James; for, if not, the plaintiff took the estate by survivorship.
In other words, could Sir James be visited with the penalty for plunging into a
*Act 1, scene 4. 2 Shak. Legal Acquirements, p. 94.
106 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLA VS.
stream of water? For that was all he did actually do. The suicide was only the
result of his act, and can a man die during his life? Precisely the point in
Ophelia's case as to her burial in consecrated ground. If Ophelia only threw her
self into the water, she was only a suicide by consequence, non constat that she-
proposed to die in the aforesaid water. So the case was argued, and the debate of
the momentous questions — whether a man who commits suicide dies during his
own life or only begins to die; whether he drowns himself, or only goes into the
water; whether going into water is a felony, or only part of a felony, and whether
a subject can be attainted and his lands escheated for only part of a felony — is so
rich in serious absurdity, and the grave-diggers' dialogue over Ophelia's proposed
interment in holy ground so literal a travesty, that the humor of the dialogue —
entirely the unconscious humor of the learned counsel in Hales vs. Petit — can
hardly be anything but proof that, admitting William Shakespeare to have written
that graveyard scene, William Shakespeare was a practicing lawyer.
Especially since it is to be remembered that Plowderi 's report was then, as it is
to-day, accessible in Norman Latin law jargon and black-letter type, utterly unintelli-
gible to anybody but an expert antiquarian, and utterly uninviting to anybody. Law
Norman or law Latin was just as unattractive to laymen in Elizabeth's day as it is
to lawyers in ours; if possible, more so.
The decision in Hales vs. Petit — on account of the standing of parties-plain-
tiff— might have been town-talk for a day or two; but that the wearying, and, to
us, ridiculous dialectics of the argument and decision were town-talk, seems the
suggestion of a very simple or of a very bold ignorance as to town life and
manners.
Besides, nobody sets the composition of Hamlet earlier than Nash's mention
of "whole Hamlets" in 1587 or 1589 — and every commentator of standing puts it
about ten years later. That the hair-splitting of a handful of counsel would
remain town-talk for twenty-five or thirty-six years is preposterous to suppose.
Reference to the arguments in that. case could only have been had from Plowden's
report.
My friend Senator Davis1 points out another curious fact, viz.:
that a comparison of the Hamlet of the quarto of 1603, with the
Folio of 1623, shows that part of the text was re-written, to make it
more correct in a legal point of view. In the quarto we read:
Who by a sealed compact, well ratified by law
And heraldrie, did forfeit with his life all those
His lands, which he stood seized of, to the conqueror,
Against the which a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king.
But to state this in legal form there is appended, when Hamlet
comes to be printed in the Folio:
— which had returned
To the inheritance of Fortinbras
Had he bin Vanquisher, as by the same cov'nant
The carriage of the article designed,
His fell to Hamlet*
1 The Law in Shakespeare. a I famlct, i, 1.
THE WRITER OE THE FLAYS A LAWYER.
107
What poet, not a lawyer, would have stated the agreement in
such legal phraseology; and what poet, not a lawyer, would have
subsequently added the lines given, to show the consideration mov-
ing to Fortinbras for the contract ? And this for the benefit of such
an audience as commonly frequented the Globe !
Richard Grant White says:
No dramatist of the time, not even Beaumont, who was a younger son of a
judge of the Common Pleas, and who, after studying in the inns of court, aban-
doned law for the drama, used legal phrases with Shakespeare's readiness and
exactness. And the significance of this fact is heightened by another, that it is
only to the language of the law that he exhibits this inclination. The phrases
peculiar to other occupations serve him on rare occasions by way of description,
comparison or illustration, generally when something in the scene suggests them;
but legal phrases flow from his pen as part of his vocabulary and parcel of his
thought. The word purchase, for instance, which in ordinary use meant, as
now it means, to acquire by giving value, applies in law to all legal modes of
obtaining property, except inheritance or descent. And in this peculiar sense the
word occurs five times in Shakespeare's thirty-four plays, but only in a single
passage in the fifty-four plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. And in the first scene
of the Midsummer Nighfs Dream the father of Hermia begs the ancient privilege
of Athens, that he may dispose of his daughter either to Demetrius or to death,
According to our law
Immediately provided in that case.
He pleads the statute; and the words run off his tongue in heroic verse, as if he
was reading them from a paper.
As the courts of law in Shakespeare's time occupied public attention much
more than they do now, it has been suggested that it was in attendance upon them
that he picked up his legal vocabulary. But this supposition not only fails to
account for Shakespeare's peculiar freedom and exactness in the use of that phras-
eology— it does not even place him in the way of learning those terms, his use of
which is most remarkable, which are not such as he would have heard at ordinary
proceedings at nisi prius, but such as refer to the tenure or transfer of real property
— " fine and recovery," "statutes merchant," " purchase," " indenture," " tenure,"
"double voucher," " fee simple," "fee farm," "remainder," "reversion," " fdr-
feiture," etc. This conveyancer's jargon could not have been picked up by hang-
ing around the courts of law in London 250 years ago, when suits as to the title to
real property were comparatively so rare. And besides, Shakespeare uses his law
just as freely in his early plays, written in his first London years, as in those pro-
duced at a later period. Just as exactly, too; for the correctness and propriety
with which these terms are introduced have compelled the admiration of a chief
justice and a lord chancellor.1
And again Mr. White says:
Genius, although it reveals general truth and facilitates all acquirement, does
not impart facts or acquaintance with general terms; how then can we account for
the fact that, in an age when it was the common practice for young lawyers to write
plays, one playwright left upon his plays a stronger, a sharper legal stamp than
1 R. G. White, Life and Genius of Shak., p. 74.
io8 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
appears upon those of any of his contemporaries, and that the characters of this
stamp are those of the complicated law of real property.1
And the same man who wrote this, and who still believed the
deer-stealer wrote the Plays, said, shortly before his death, in the
Atlantic Magazine:
The notion that he was once an attorney's clerk is blown to pieces.
The first to suggest that Shakspere might, at some time, have
been a lawyer's clerk, was Malone, who, in 1790, said:
His knowledge of legal terms is not merely such as might be acquired by the
casual observation of even his all-comprehending mind; it has the appearance of
technical skill, and he is so fond of displaying it on all occasions, that I suspect he
was early initiated in at least the forms of law, and was employed, while he yet
remained at Stratford, in the office of some country attorney, who was at the same
time a petty conveyancer, and perhaps also the seneschal of some manor court.
But even Lord Chief Justice Campbell, who, as we have seen,
asserts that the writer of the Plays was familiar with the abstrusest
parts of the law, is forced to abandon this theory. He says, writing
to J. Payne Collier, who favored the law-clerk theory:
Resuming the judge, however, I must lay down that your opponents are not
called upon to prove a negative, and that the onus probandi rests upon you. You
must likewise remember that you require us implicitly to believe a fact, which, were
it true, positive and irrefragable evidence, in Shakespeare's own handwriting, might
have been forthcoming to establish it. Not having been actually enrolled as an
attorney, neither the records of the local court at Stratford, nor of the superior
courts at Westminster, would present his name, as being concerned in any suits as
an attorney; but it might have been reasonably expected that there would have been
deeds or wills witnessed by him still extant; and, after a very diligent search, none
such can be discovered. Nor can this consideration be disregarded, that between
Nash's Epistle, in the end of the sixteenth century, and Chalmers' suggestion, more
than two hundred years afterwards, there is no hint, by his foes or his friends, of
Shakespeare having consumed pens, paper, ink and pounce in an attorney's office
at Stratford.2
The Nash Epistle here referred to was an " Epistle to the Gen-
tlemen Students of the Two Universities, by Thomas Nash," pre-
fixed to the first edition of Robert Green's Menaphon, published,
according to the title-page, in 1589. In it Nash says:
It is a common practice now-a-days, amongst a sort of shifting companions
that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of noverint,
whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the endeavors of art, that
could scarcely Latinize their neck verse if they should have need; yet English
Seneca, read by candle-light, yields many good sentences, as Blood is a beggar, and
so forth ; and if you entreat him fair, in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole
Hamlets ; I should say handfuls of tragical speeches.
1 Life and Genius o/Shak., p. 76. 2 S/iak. Legal Acquit "tents, p. no.
THE WRITER OF THE PLAYS A LAWYER. lQg
This epistle has been cited to prove that Shakspere was a law-
yer. In Elizabeth's reign deeds were in the Latin tongue; and all
deeds poll, and many other papers, began with the words: "Nover-
int unirersi per presentes" — "Be it known to all men by these
presents;" — and hence the business of an attorney was known as
" the trade of noverint"
But here are the difficulties that attend this matter: In the first
place Nash charges that the party he has in view, " the shifting
companion " who could afford whole Hamlets, was not only a lawyer,
but bom a lawyer; — "the trade of noverint whereto they were born."
In other words, that the party who wrote Hamlet had inherited the
trade of lawyer. We say of one "he was born a gentleman," and
we mean, thereby, that his father before him was a gentleman.
Now, it is within the possibilities that Shakespeare might have
studied for a few months, or a year or two, in some lawyer's
office, but assuredly his father was not a lawyer; he could not
even write his own name; he was a glover, wool-dealer or butcher.
But the description applies precisely to Bacon, whose father had
been an eminent lawyer, and who was therefore born a noverint.
But there is another mystery about this Nash Epistle.
It is universally conceded, by all the biographers and commen-
tators, that Shakespeare did not begin to write for the stage until
1592. Our highest and most recent authority, J. O. Halliwell-Phil-
lipps,1 fixes the date of the appearance of Shakespeare's first play as
the third of March, 1592, when Henry VI. was put on the boards
for the first time; and this same Nash tells us that between March
3d, 1592, and the beginning of July, it had been witnessed by
"ten thousand spectators at least." And yet we are asked to
believe that when Nash, in 1589, or, as some will have it, in 1587,
wrote his epistle, and mocked at some lawyer who had written
Hamlet, he referred to the butcher's apprentice, who did not com-
mence to write until three or five years subsequently !
And there are not wanting proofs, as we will see hereafter, that
Hamlet appeared in 1585, the very year Shakspere's wife was
delivered of the twins, Hamnet and Judith; the very year probably,
when Shakspere, aged twenty-one, whipped, scourged and im-
prisoned for poaching, fled from Stratford to London.
^Outlines of the Life of Shak., p. 64.
no WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
We can conceive the possibility of a rude and ignorant peasant-
boy coming to London, and, conscious of his defects and possess-
ing great powers, applying himself with superhuman industry to
study and self-cultivation; but we will find that Hamlet, that most
thoughtful and scholarly production, was on the boards in 1587, if
not in 1585; and Venus and Adonis, the "first heir of his invention,"
must have antedated even this.
Richard Grant White says:
It has most unaccountably been assumed that this passage [in Nash's Epistle]
refers to Shakespeare. . . . That Shakespeare had written this tragedy in 1586,
when he was but twenty-two years old, is improbable to the verge of im-
possibility.1
Halliwell-Phillipps says:
The preceding notices may fairly authorize us to infer that the ancient play of
Hamlet was written either by an attorney or an attorney's clerk.2
The Shakspereans, to avoid the logical conclusions that flow
from this Epistle of Nash, are forced to suggest that there must
have been an older play of Hamlet, written by some one else — "the
ancient Hamlet," to which Halliwell-Phillipps alludes. But there
is no evidence that any other playwright wrote a play of Hamlet.
It is not probable.
The essence of a new play is its novelty. We find Augustine
Phillips, one of the members of Shakspere's company, objecting to
playing Richard II, in 1600, for the entertainment of the followers
of Essex, because it was an old play, and would not draw an audi-
ence, and thereupon Sir Gilly Merrick pays him forty shillings
extra to induce him to present it.
The name of a new play has sometimes as much to do with its
success as the name of a new novel. Is it probable that a play-
wright, having written a new play and desirous to draw a crowd and
make money, would affix to it the name of some old play, written by
some one else, which had been on the boards for ten years or more,
and had been worn threadbare ? Fancy Dickens publishing a new
novel and calling it Roderick Random. Or Boucicault bringing out
a new drama under the name of Othello. The theory is absurd.
We have now two forms of the play of Hamlet, published within
a year of each other, both with Shakespeare's name on the title-
1 Life and Genius of Shak., p. 71. 2 Outlines Life of Shak., p. 270.
THE WRITER OE THE PLAYS A LAWYER. m
page; and one is the crude, first form of the play, and the other is
its perfected form, "enlarged to almost twice as much again." Is
this first form "the ancient Hamlet" to which Nash alluded in
1589? or is it the successor of some still earlier edition? Bacon
said of himself: " I never alter but I add." He re-wrote his Essays,
we are told, thirty times. Says his chaplain, Rawley:
I have myself at least twelve copies of his Lnstauration, revised year after year,
one after another, and every year altered and amended in the frame thereof, till at
last it came to that model in which it was committed to the press, as many living
creatures do lick their young ones till they bring them to the strength of their limbs.
Why is it not probable that the young noverint, " born a law-
yer," Francis Bacon, of age in 1582, may, in 1585, when twenty-three
years of age, having been "put to all the learning that his time
could make him master of," have written a play for the stage,
called Hamlet, at a time when William Shakspere, three years his
junior in age, and fifty years his junior in opportunities, was lying
drunk under the crab-tree, or howling under the whips of the
beadles ?
Hamlet, then, was written by a lawyer; and Shakspere never
was a lawyer.
This fact must also not be forgotten, that the knowledge of the
law shown in the Plays is not such as could be acquired during a
few months spent in a lawyer's office in the youth of the poet, and
which would constitute such a species of learning as might be
recalled upon questioning. It is evident that the man who wrote
the Plays was a thorough lawyer, a learned lawyer, a lawyer
steeped in and impregnated with the associations of his profession,
and who bubbled over with its language whenever he opened his
mouth. For he did not use law terms only when speaking upon
legal subjects: the phraseology of the courts rose to his lips even
in describing love scenes. He makes the fair Maria, in Love's Labor
Lost, pun upon a subtle distinction of the law:
Boyct. So you grant pasture for me.
Offering to kiss her.
Maria. Not so, gentle beast:
My lips are no common though several they be.
Boyet. Belonging to whom ? *
Maria. To my fortunes and me.1
1 Act ii, scene t.
,12 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
Grant White gives this explanation:
Maria's meaning and her first pun are plain enough; the second has been hith-
erto explained by the statement that the several or severall in England was a part
of the common, set apart for some particular person or purpose, and that the town
bull had equal rights of pasture in common and several. It seems to me, however,
that we have here another exhibition of Shakespeare's familiarity with the law,
and that the allusion is to tenancy in common by several (i.e., divided, distinct)
title. Thus: " Tenants in Common are they which have Lands or Tenements in
Fee-simple, fee-taile, or for terme of life, &c, and they have such Lands or Tene-
ments by severall Titles and not by a joynt Title, and none of them know by this
his severall, but they ought by the Law to occupie' these Lands or Tenements in
common and pro indiviso, to take the profits in common." ' . . . Maria's lips were
several, as being two, and (as she says in the next line) as belonging in common
to her fortunes and to herself, but they were no common pasturage. -
There was no propriety in placing puns on law phrases in the
mouth of a young lady, and still less in representing a French lady
as familiar with English laws and customs as to the pasturage of
the town-bull. These phrases found their way to the fair lips of
Maria because the author was brimming full of legal phraseology.
Take another instance. We read of —
A contract of eternal bond of love,
Confirmed by mutual joinder of your /rands,
Attested 'by the holy close of lips,
Strengthened by interchangement of your rings;
And all the ceremony of this compact
Sealed in my function by my testimony. ,a
To be so saturated with the law the writer must have been in
daily practice of the law, and in hourly converse with men of the
same profession. He did not seek these legal phrases; they burst
from him involuntarily and on all occasions.
Gerald Massey well says:
The worst of it, for the theory of his having been an attorney's clerk, is that it
will not account for his insight into law. His knowledge is not office-sweepings,
but ripe fruits, mature, as though he had spent his life in their growth.*
But it is said that a really learned lawyer could not have writ-
ten the Plays, because the law put forth in the great trial scene of
The Merchant of Venice is not good law.
Lord Chief Justice Campbell, however, reviews the proceedings
in the case, and declares that " the trial is duly conducted accord-
ing to the strict forms of legal procedure. . . . Antonio is made to
1 Co. Litt., lib. iii, cap. 4, sec. 292. 3 Twelfth Night, v, 1.
9 Shakespeare, vol. iii, p. 453. * Shakespeare 's Sonnets, p. 504.
THE WRITER OF- THE PLAYS A LAWYER.
H3
confess that Shylock is entitled to the pound of flesh . . . accord-
ing to the rigid strictness of the common law of England."
It is claimed that Shylock could not enforce the penalty of his
bond, but was entitled only to the sum loaned and legal interest ;
and that Antonio should have applied for an injunction to restrain
Shylock from cutting off the pound of flesh.
Imagine the play so reformed. The audience are looking for-
ward with feelings of delight to the great trial scene, with its mar-
velous alternations of hope and despair ; with Portia's immortal
appeal for mercy while the Jew whets his knife; and anticipating
the final triumph of virtue and the overthrow of cruelty. The cur-
tain rolls up, and a dapper lawyer's-clerk steps forward to the foot-
lights to inform the expectant audience that Antonio has procured
an injunction, with proper sureties, from the Court of Equity, and
that they will find the whole thing duly set forth in the next num-
ber of the Law Reporter!
In the first place, it is absurd to try a Venetian lawsuit by the
antique and barbarous code of England.
In the next place, it is not clear that, even by the rules of the
Court of Equity of England, Antonio could have been relieved of
the penalty without good cause shown.
There seems to be a distinction taken in equity between penalties and forfeit-
ures. ... In the latter, although compensation can be made, relief is not always
given.1
In the case of Antonio, the pound of flesh was to be forfeited.
If you repay me not on such a day,
In such a place, such sum or sums as are
Expressed in the condition, let the forfeit
Be nominated for an equal pound
Of your fair flesh.2
And in the court scene Shylock says :
My <
The
And Portia says
My deeds upon my head ! I crave the law,
The penalty and forfeit of my bond.3
Why, this bond is forfeit.
Certain it is, Bacon, a thorough lawyer, did not understand that
he could escape the penalty of a bond, even under the laws of Eng-
1 3 Daniel's Chan. Plead, and Prac, p. 1946; 2 Story's Equity Jur.^ § 1321, etc.
2 Act i, scene 3. 3 Act iv, scene 1.
ii4
WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
land, by simply paying the debt and interest. In July, 1603, he
was arrested at the suit of a Jew (the original probably of Shylock),
and thrown into a sponging-house, and we have his letter to his
cousin Robert, Lord Cecil, Secretary of State, begging him to use
his power to prevent his creditors from " taking any part of the
penalty [of his bond] but principal, interest and costs."
The Judge says:
There is no power in Venice
Can alter a decree established.
' Twill be recorded for a precedent,
And many an error by the same example
Will rush into the state.
Before a writ of error can be taken from Portia's ruling, it must
be shown by some precedent, or "decree established," of the Venetian
chancery, that Antonio had the right to avoid the forfeiture by ten-
dering the amount received and simple interest; and as no such man
as Shylock ever lived, and no such case as that in question was ever
tried, it will puzzle the critics to know just how far back to go to
establish the priority of such a decision.
Again, the point is made that, if Shylock was entitled to his
pound of flesh, he was entitled to the blood that would necessarily
flow in. cutting it; upon the principle, it is said, that if I own a
piece of land I have the right to a necessary roadway over another
man's land to reach it. True. But in case I can only reach my
land by committing murder (for that was what Shylock was under-
taking), my lesser property right must be subordinated to the
greater natural right of the other man to his life.
But all this reasoning, if it be intended to show that the writer
of the play was but partially learned in the law, must give way to
the fact that Shylock vs. Anto?iio is a dramatic representation, for
popular entertainment, and not a veritable law-suit. The plot of
The Merchant of Venice was taken from the Italian romance II
Pccorone, of Giovanni Fiorentino, written in 1378; and there we
have the decision of the judge, that the Jew must cut a precise
pound of flesh, neither more nor less, and that, if he draw a drop of
Christian blood in so doing, he must die for it.
It would be absurd to suppose that a dramatic writer, even
though a lawyer, would be obliged to leave out these striking
incidents, and substitute a tamer something, in accordance with
THE WRITER OF THE PLAYS A LAWYER. nj
that barbarous jumble of justice and injustice called law in
England.
But the question after all is to be decided by Venetian, not
English precedents. The scene is laid in Venice.
John T. Doyle, Esq., of California, writes a letter to Lawrence
Barrett, Esq., the celebrated actor, which has been published in the
Overland Monthly, in which he discusses "The Case of Shylock."
He says:
The trial scene in The Merchant of Venice has, however, always seemed
inconsistent with his [Bacon's] supposed legal learning, for the proceedings in it
are such as never could have occurred in any court administering English law.
Lord Campbell, in his letter to Payne Collyer, has attempted to gloss over the
difficulty, but to all common lawyers the attempt is a failure. Save in the fact
that the scene presents a plaintiff, a defendant and a judge — characters essential
to litigation under any system of procedure — there is no resemblance in the pro-
ceedings on the stage to anything that could possibly occur in an English court, or
any court administering English law. No jury is impaneled to determine the
facts, no witnesses called by either side; on the contrary, when the court opens,
the duke who presides is already fully informed of the facts, and has even com-
municated them, in writing, to Bellario, a learned doctor of Padua, and invited
him to come and render judgment in the case.
Mr. Doyle then proceeds to give his experience of a lawsuit he
had in the Spanish-American republic of Nicaragua in 185 1-2.
After describing the verbal summons he received from the alguazil
to the alcalde in his court, Mr. Doyle says:
Proceedings of some sort were going on at the moment, but the alcalde sus-
pended them, received me very courteously, and directed some one present to go
and call Don Dolores Bermudez, the plaintiff, into court. The substance of Mr.
Bermudez' complaint against the company was then stated to me, and I was
asked for my answer to it. I sent for my counsel, and the company's defense was
stated orally. The contract out of which the controversy arose was produced, and
perhaps a witness or two examined, and some oral discussion followed; those
details I forget, for there was nothing in them that struck me as strange. There
was, in fact, little, if any, dispute about the facts of the case, the real controversy
being as to the company's liability and its extent. We were finally informed that
on a given day we should be expected to attend again, when the judge would be
prepared with his decision.
At the appointed time we attended accordingly, and the judge read a paper in
which all the facts were stated, at the conclusion of which he announced to us that
he proposed to submit the question of law involved to Don Buenaventura Silva, a
practicing lawyer of Granada, as a "jurisconsult." unless some competent objec-
tions were made to him. I learned then that I could challenge the proposed ju-
risconsult for consanguinity, affinity or favor, just as we challenge a juror. I knew
of no cause of challenge against him; my counsel said he was an unexceptionable
person; and so he was chosen, and the case was referred to him. Some days
after, he returned the papers to the alcalde with his opinion, which was in my
favor, and the plaintiff's case was dismissed.
n6 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE TLA VS.
In the course of the same afternoon, or next day, I received an intimation;
that Don Buenaventura expected from me a gratification — the name in that coun-
try for what we call a gratuity — and I think the sum of $200 was named. This
did not harmonize with my crude notions of the administration of justice, and I
asked for explanations. They were given in the stereotyped form used to explain
every other anomaly in that queer country, "Costumbre del pais." I thought it a
custom more honored in the breach than the observance.
Here we find that the writer of the Plays followed, in all proba-
bility, the exact course of procedure usual in Venice, and in all
countries subject to the civil law. We even have, as in Portia's
case, the expectation that the judge should be rewarded with a
gratuity.
The only difference between the writer of the Plays and his
critics is, that he knew what he was talking about, and they did not.
My friend Senator Davis, of Minnesota, as a crowning proof
that Francis Bacon did not write the Plays, says:
. . . Again, Bacon was actively engaged in the court of chancery many years
before he became Lord Chancellor. It was then that the memorable war of juris-
diction was waged between Ellesmere and Coke — and yet there is not in Shake-
speare a single phrase, word or application of any principle peculiar to the
chancery.1
To this my friend John A. Wilstach, Esq., the learned translator
of Virgil,2 and an eminent lawyer, says in a letter addressed to me:
In the English courts, ancient and modern — as even laymen know — the
practice at common law and in chancery were and are severed, although the bar-
riers between the two are now, by the gradual adoption of chancery rules in com-
mon law practice, largely broken down. In the time of Bacon and Shakespeare
the division was distinct : the common-law lawyer was not a chancery practitioner;
the chancery practitioner was not a practitioner in the courts of common law.
But the general language of both branches of the profession was necessarily (for
in history and method they intertwined), if even superficially, known to the fol-
lowers of both, and the probability is that a practitioner of the one would easily
use the current verbiage of the other; indeed it would be strange if either should
hold away from the other. A Lord Coke, in the wide scope of literature, would
relax his common-law exclusiveness and enlarge the narrow circuit of his pro-
fessional prepossessions. A Lord Bacon, a student or a judge in chancery,
would delight to turn aside from the roses and lilies of equity — some of them
exotic plants — and become, for the time, a gratified wanderer in an historic com-
mon of pasture, among the butterflies and bees of an indigenous jurisprudence.
Hence my suggestion, opposed to that of the learned jurist, is, that this very scope
and freedom of law in literature is what the writer of the Shakespeare Plays has
given himself. And I find in the rambling pasture of the common law, according
to his own outgivings, he has met, besides its attractive features, other and repel-
ling ones — thorns, quagmires and serpents. I find that, on a close examination of
1 Law in Shakespeare. 'Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1884.
THE WRITER OF THE PLAYS A LAWYER. II7
the Shakespeare Plays, the averment of the learned jurist as to the want of chan-
cery features therein is not proven. I find that there are passages wherein, in the
most evident manner, chancery principles and the equity practice are recognized
and extolled; and, further yet, that among passages tolerant or praiseful of the
common law are also found passages wherein its principles and practice are held
up to derision and even to scorn. And while it is true that phrases are not proofs,
but only grounds whence inferences may be drawn, yet the citations I shall
offer will be of as high a grade as those which are offered to support the
propositions which I contest. Nor is the argument weakened in its application
to the Baconian question by the establishment of the fact that the participation
in the production of the Shakespeare Plays on the part of Bacon was the work
of his early manhood. Coleridge well formulates the general experience when
he says that "a young author's first work almost always bespeaks his recent
pursuit."
He is, at this early age, too, more conversant with the literature of his art; is
more recently from the books and sometimes is observed to carry a head inflated
with pride in that branch of the profession which his bent of mind has led him to
favor. First let me recall some of those passages wherein derision and censure
are visited upon the common law — the "biting" severity of its principles, the
"hideous " deformity of its practice.
The most superficial reader of these dramas will need no reminder of the
satires conveyed in the conversation of Justices Dogberry and Shallow, Constable
Elbow and the clowns in Twelfth Night, and the more dignified broadsides of
Wolsey and Queen Katharine, and Hamlet and Portia, and their interlocutors.
As my reading goes, puerility, pedantry, corruption and chicanery, in legal
practice, have found in all literature no denunciations so severe, no ridicule so
effective.
In rst Llenry IV., i, 2, the derision takes, in the mouth of Falstaff, the form of
" the rusty curb of old Father Antic, the Law," the metaphor being that of a super-
annuated clown who, with rusty methods, methods old and lacking polish, cheats
.the people out of the attainment of their cherished desires.
When law can do no right,
Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong.1
Since law itself is perfect wrong,
How can the law forbid my tongue to curse ?*
The state of law is bond-slave to the law. 3
But in these nice, sharp quillets of the law, etc.4
The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power,
Have checked theft.5
The bloody book of law, etc."
Crack the lawyer's voice,
That he may nevermore false title plead. :
My head to my good man's hat,
These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn.8
Parolles, the lawyer in All's Well that Ends Well, uses contemptuously
the legal machinery applicable to English estates in describing how Dumain
would convey away a title in fee-simple to his salvation; and, with the same
contemptuous reference to the same machinery, Mrs. Page describes the devil's
titles to Falstaff.
Now let us take up the praises of chancery.
\
1 King John, iii, i. 2 Ibid., iii, i. s Richard II., ii, I.
4 jst Henry VI., ii, 4. 5 Timon of Athens, iv, 3. 6 Othello, iii, 1.
7 Timon of Athens, v, 3. 8 Lome's Labor Lost, i, 1.
n8 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
And, first, I cite a passage which the learned jurist himself quotes. My
italics will indicate my impression that, in his bent for common law, he has.
failed to give emphasis to the most important feature of the passage.
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offense's gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but 'tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature, and we ourselves compel! d
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence.1
And, to pass to others :
Ah, gracious lord, these days are dangerous;
Virtue is choked with foul ambition,
And charity chased hence by rancor's hand,
Fell subornation is predominant,
And equity exiled your highness' land.2
What a trinity is here: Virtue, Charity, Equity! Opposed, too, to the hellish
trio of ambition, rancor and subornation.
A larger definition of equity jurisprudence could not well be had than that it is
"strong authority looking into the blots and stains of right."
King John. From whom hast thou this great commission,
To draw mine answer from thine articles ?
King Philip. From that supernal judge that stirs good thoughts
In any breast of strong authority,
To look into the blots and stains of right.
That judge hath made me guardian to this boy:
Under whose warrant I impeach thy wrong,
And by whose help I mean to chastise it.
' This passage is also cited by the learned jurist, but it is only to remark upon
the words warrant and impeach. It contains, as I have observed, the very definition
of chancery jurisprudence, and besides employs terms technical in chancery prac-
tice, commission articles and answer.
Themes which, in an especial manner, engage the intellect and the heart of the
student and practitioner of chancery principles are "Charity," "Mercy," "Con-
science."
In contrast with the evasions and chicanery which are, in the Shakespeare Plays
and elsewhere, the reproach of the practice at common law, chancery decides from
considerations of what is right and just between man and man, ex cequo et bono.
Chancery jurisdiction enters the breast of the party himself, and there sets up its
forum in his conscience. The interrogatories authorized by the chancery practice
arraign and search that conscience, and, upon an oath binding upon it, " compel""
the reluctant litigant, "even to the teeth and forehead of his faults, to give in evi-
dence."
Every man's conscience is a thousand swords.3
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues.4
The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul ! 5
Well, believe this,
No ceremony that to great ones 'longs
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge" s robe,
Becomes them with one-half so good a grace
As mercy does.6
1 Hamlet, iii, 3. 3 Richard 111., v, 2. 5 Ibid., i, 3.
* 2nd Henry VI., iii, 1. * Ibid., v, 3. • Measure /or Measure, ii, 2„
THE WRITER OP THE PLAYS A LAWYER.
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice.1
In addition to these citations, touching Shakespeare's use of the
terms of the equity courts, I would quote the following from Judge
Holmes:
Indeed, it is clear that Portia's knowledge extended even to chancery practice,
and continued to the end of the piece:
Portia. Let us go in
And charge us there upon int'rogatories,
And we will answer all things faithfully.'2
The terms of chancery practice, charges, interrogatories and answer,
are dragged in by the heels despite the protests of the refractory
meter.
But passing from this point, I will add a few more extracts
which bespeak the lawyer:
Sir, for a quart d'ecu he will sell the fee-simple of his salvation, the inherit-
ance of it; and cut the entail for all remainder.3
And again:
If the devil have him not in fee-simple, with fine and recovery, he will never, I
think, in the way of waste, attempt us again.4
And again:
Time stays still with lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term and
term.5
Judge Holmes says:6
Mr. Rushton cites the statute 16 Richard II., which was leveled against the
Pope's usurpations of sovereignty in England, and enacted that " if any do bring
any translation, process, sentence of excommunication, bulls, instruments, etc.,
within the realm, or receive them, they shall be put out of the King's protection, and
their lands, tenements, goods and chattels forfeited to the King," and compares it with
the speech of Suffolk in the play of Henry J'LLL., thus:
Suff. Lord Cardinal, the King's further pleasure is,
Because all those things you have done of late
By your power legatine within this kingdom,
Fall into the compass of a praemunire,
That therefore such a writ be sued against you:
To forfeit all your goods, lands, tenements,
Chattels and whatsoever, and to be
Out of the King ' s protection. This is my charge.7
1 Merchant of Venice, iv, i. 4 Merry Wives of Windsor, iv, 2.
2 A uthorship of Shak., 3d ed., p. 637. b As \ 'on Like It, iii, 2.
3 A it's Well that Ends Well, iv, 3. 6 A uthorship of Shak., 3d ed., p. 630.
7 Henry VIII., iii, 2.
I2o WILLIAM SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLAYS.
It is manifest here, as Mr. Rushton thinks, that the author of
the Plays was exactly acquainted with the very language of this old
statute.
This, then, is the syllogism which faces the Shakspereans:
i. The man who wrote the Plays was a lawyer.
2. William Shakspere was not a lawyer.
3. Therefore, William Shakspere did not write the Plays.
But if they shift their ground, and fall back upon the supposition
that Shakspere might have been a lawyer's clerk during his pre-
London residence in Stratford, they encounter these difficulties:
1. There is not the slightest proof of this fact; and if it was
true, proof could not fail to be forthcoming.
2. There is not a scrap of tradition that points to it.
3. Granting it to be possible, it would not explain away the
difficulty. It would not have been sufficient for Shakspere to have
passed a few months in a lawyer's office in Stratford in his youth.
The man who wrote the Plays must have lived and breathed in
an atmosphere of the law, which so completely filled his whole
being that he could not speak of war or of peace, of business or of
love, of sorrow or of pleasure, without scintillating forth legal
expressions; and these he placed indifferently in the mouths of
young and old, learned and unlearned, Greeks, Romans, Italians,
Frenchmen, Scotchmen and Englishmen.
Having, as I hope, demonstrated to the satisfaction of my read-
ers that William Shakspere could not have written the Plays which
go abroad in his name, we come to the second branch of my argu-
ment, to-wit: that Francis Bacon, of St. Albans, son of Queen
Elizabeth's Lord Keeper, Nicholas Bacon, was their real author.
PART II,
FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF
THE PLAYS.
CHAPTER I.
FRAXCIS BACON WAS A POET.
Mount, eagle, to thy palace crystalline.
Cymbeline, t, 4.
WE come now to an important branch of this inquiry.
It will be said: Granted that Francis Bacon possessed a
great and mighty genius; granted that he was master of the vast
learning revealed in the Plays; granted that he had the laborious
industry necessary for their preparation; granted that they reveal
a character and disposition, political, social and religious views,
studies and investigations, identical with his own; granted that we
are able to marshal a vast array of parallel thoughts, beliefs,
expressions and even errors: the great question still remains, Was
Francis Bacon a poet ? Did he possess the imagination, the fancy,
the sense of the beautiful — in other words, the divine faculty, the
fine phrensy, the capacity to "give to airy nothing a local habita-
tion and a name " ? Was he not merely a philosopher, a dry and
patient investigator of nature, a student of things, not words; of
the useful, not the beautiful ?
I. The Universal Mtnd.
Ralph Waldo Emerson grasped the whole answer to this ques-
tion when he said: "The true poet and the true philosopher are
one." The complete mind (and we are reminded of Ulysses' appli-
cation of the word to Achilles, "thou great and co?nplete man")
enfolds in its orb all the realms of thought; it perceives not alone
j 22 FRANC 7 S BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE FLAYS.
the nature of things, but the subtle light of beauty which irradiates
them; it is able not only to trace the roots of facts into the dead,
dull, material earth, but to follow the plant as it rises into the air
and find in the flower thoughts too deep for tears. The purpose
of things, the wherefore of things and the glory of things are all
one to the God who made them, and to the great broad brain to
which He has given power enough to comprehend them. But
such minds are rare. Science tells us that the capacity of memory
underlies those portions of the brain that perceive, but only a
small share of them, and that if you excise a part of the brain, but
not all of any particular department, the surrounding territory,
which theretofore lay dormant, will now develop the faculty which
was formerly exercised by the part removed. So it would seem that
in all brains there is the capacity for universal intelligence, but there
is lacking some power which forces it into action. The intellect lies
like a mass of coals, heated, alive, but dormant; it needs the blow-
pipe of genius to oxygenate and bring it to a white heat; and it
rarely happens, in the history of mankind, that the whole brain is
equally active, and the whole broad temple of the soul lighted up
in every part. The world is full of men whose minds glow in
spots. The hereditary blood-force, or power of nutrition, or pur-
pose of God, or whatever it may be, is directed to a section of the
intelligence, and it blazes forth in music, or poetry, or painting, or
philosophy, or action, or oratory. And the world, as it cannot
always behold the full orb of the sun, is delighted to look upon
these stars, points of intense brilliancy, glorious with a fraction of
the universal fire.
II. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
But occasionally there is born into the world a sun-like soul, the
orb of whose brain, as Bacon says, "is concentric with the uni-
verse."
One of these was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the great spirit
of German literature. Like Bacon, he sprang from the common
people; but, like him, not directly from them. His father was an
imperial councilor, his mother was the daughter of the chief
magistrate of the city. Like Bacon, he was thoroughly educated.
Like him, his intellectual activity manifested itself in his early
FRANCIS HA COX WAS A POET.
23
years. " Before he was ten years of age he wrote several languages,
meditated poems, invented stories and had considerable familiarity
with works of art." He began to write verse while yet at college.'
He associated with actors, free-thinkers and jovial companions.
When twenty-three years of age he published his first play, Gotz von
Berlichingen y two years later he wrote The Sorrows of Wcrther,
and ClavigO) a drama. He also projected a drama on Mohammed
and another on Prometheus, and began to revolve in his mind his
greatest work, Faust. At the same time, while he was astonishing
the world with his poetical and dramatic genius, he was engaged
in a profound study of natural science. When forty-three years of
age, he published his Beitr&ge zur Optik, and his FarbcnleJue, in the
latter of which he questioned the correctness of the Newtonian
theory of colors. " He wrote also on the metamorphosis of plants,,
and on topics of comparative anatomy. In all these he displayed
remarkable penetration and sagacity, and his remarks on the mor-
phology of plants are now reckoned among the earlier enunciations
of the theory of evolution." Faust was not finished until he was
fifty-six years old.
We see here, as in the case of Bacon, a vivacious, active youth,
full of emotion and poetry; the dramatic faculty forcing itself out
in great dramas; wide learning; some capacity for affairs of state
(he was privy councilor of legation at the court of the .Duke of
Saxe-Weimar); and, running through all, profound studies in phil-
osophy and natural science. Goethe was always in easy circum-
stances. We have only to imagine him living in poverty, forced to
maintain appearances, and yet to earn his living by his pen, with no
avenue open to him but the play-house, and we have all the condi-
tions, with added genius and philanthropic purposes, to make a
Bacon.
If the poetical works of Goethe had been published anony-
mously, or in the name of some friend, it would have been difficult to
persuade the world, in after years, that the philosopher and the poet
were one.
III. Had Bacon the Poetic Temperament ?
First, let us inquire whether Bacon possessed the poetic tem-
perament.
124
FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
Bacon says:
For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of
truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of
things.1
But, it may be asked, had he that fine sensibility which accom-
panies genius; did he possess those delicate chords from which
time and chance and nature draw their most exquisite melodies —
those chords which, as Burns says,
Vibrate sweetest pleasure,
-and
Thrill the deepest notes of woe ?
The answer is plain.
Macaulay speaks of Bacon's mind as
The most exquisitely constructed intellect that has ever been bestowed on any
of the children of men.2
Montagu says:
His invagination was fruitful and vivid. He was of a temperament of the most
delicate sensibility: so excitable as to be affected by the slightest alterations in the
atmosphere.3
And remember that neither Macaulay nor Montagu dreamed
of the possibility of Bacon being the author of the Shakespeare
Plays.
Emerson calls the writer of the Plays, as revealed therein, "the
most susceptible of human beings."
Bacon's chaplain and biographer, Dr. Rawley, says:
It may seem the moon had some principal place in the figure of his nativity, for
the moon was never in her passion or eclipsed but he was surprised with a sudden
fit of fainting; and that though he observed not nor took any previous knowledge
of the eclipse thereof; and as soon as the eclipse ceased he was restored to his
former strength agair.
IV. Was he a Lover of Poetry ?
Many things might be quoted from his writings to show his
love of poetry and his profound study of it. He says it " elevates
the mind from the dungeon of the body to the enjoying of its own
divine essence."
He even contemplated the improvement of poetry by the inven-
tion of new measures or meters. He says:
1 Preface to The Interpretation of Nature. 2 Essays, Bacon, p. 263.
3 Montagu's Life of Bacon.
FRANCIS BACON WAS A POET. 125
For though men with learned tongues do tie themselves to the ancient meas-
ures, yet in modern languages it seemeth to me as free to make new measures of
verses as of dances; for a dance is a measured pace, as a verse is a measured
speech.1
The basis of Bacon's mind was the imagination. This is the
eye of the soul. By it the spirit sees into the relations of objects.
This it is gives penetration, for it surveys things as the eagle
does — from above. And this is Bacon's metaphor. He says:
Some writings have more of the eagle in them than others.2
It was this descending sight, commanding the whole landscape,
that enabled him to make all knowledge his province, and out of
this vast scope of view grew his philosophy. It was but a higher
poetry. Montaigne says:
Philosophy is no other than a falsified poesie. . . . Plato is but a poet unript.
All superhuman sciences make use of the poetic style.
V. The Character of Bacon's Mind.
Alfred H. Welsh says of Bacon:
He belongs to the realm of the imagination, of eloquence, of history, of jurispru-
dence, of ethics, of metaphysics; the investigation of the powers and operations of
the human mind. His writings have the gravity of prose, with the fervor and
vividness of poetry. . . . Shakespeare, with greater variety, contains no more vig-
orous or expressive condensations.
Edmund Burke says:
Who is there that, hearing the name of Bacon, does not instantly recognize
everything of genius the most profound, of literature the most extensive, of dis-
covery the most penetrating, of observation of human life the most distinguishing
and refined ?
Macaulay says:
The poetical faculty was powerful in Bacon's mind, but not, like his wit, so
powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of his reason, and to tyrannize over the
whole man. No imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly subju-
gated. It never stirred but at a signal from good sense; it stopped at the first
check of good sense. Yet, though disciplined to such obedience, it gave noble
proofs of its vigor. In truth, much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world,
amidst things as strange as any that are described in the Arabian tales.3
Montagu says:
His mind, like the sun, had both light and agility; it knew no rest but in
motion, no quiet but in activity; it did not so properly apprehend as irradiate the
object. ... His understanding could almost pierce into future contingents, his
1 Advancement 0/ Learning, book ii. 2 Ibid. 3 Essays, Bacen, p. 285.
l/
I26 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
conjectures improving even to prophecy; he saw consequences yet dormant in
their principles, and effects yet unborn in the womb of their causes.1
Macaulay speaks of his
• Compactness of expression and richness of fancy.'2
Addison said of his prayer, composed in the midst of his afflic-
tions, in 1621:
For elevation of thought and greatness of expression, it seems rather the
devotion of an angel than a man.3
Fowler says:
His utterances are not infrequently marked with a grandeur and solemnity of
tone, a majesty of diction, which renders it impossible to forget, and difficult even
to criticise them. . . . There is no author, unless it be Shakespeare, who is so
easily remembered or so frequently quoted. . . . The terse and burning words
issuing from the lips of an irresistible commander.4
R. W. Church speaks of
The bright torch of his incorrigible imaginativeness/' . . . He was a genius
second only to Shakespeare. . . . He liked to enter into the humors of a court;
to devote brilliant imagination and affluence of invention to devising a pageant
which should throw all others into the shade.6.
That he was master of the dramatic faculty will be made plain
to any one who reads that interesting dialogue entitled An Adver-
tisement Touching an Holy War, and observes the skill with which
the conversation is carried on, and the separate characters of the
parties maintained.
VI. Did Bacon Claim to be a Poet ?
Let us next ask ourselves this question: Did Bacon claim to
be a poet ?
Certainly. We have among his acknowledged works a series of
translations, the Psalms of David, made in his old age, and com-
posed upon a sick-bed.
Mr. Spedding says of these translations:
It has been usual to speak of them as a ridiculous failure; a censure in which I
cannot concur. ... I should myself infer from this sample that Bacon had all the
natural faculties which a poet wants: a fine ear for meter, a fine feeling for imagi-
native effect in words, and a vein of poetic passion. . . . The thought could not
well be fitted with imagery, words and rhythm more apt and imaginative; and
there is a tenderness of expression which comes manifestly out of a heart in sensi-
tive sympathy with nature. The heroic couplet could hardly do its work better in
1 Montagu's Life of Bacon. '■' Fowler's Bacon, p. 57. r> Francis Bacon, p. 208.
- Essays ) Bacon, p. 249. ' Ibid., p. 202. 6Ibid., p. 214.
FRANCIS BACON WAS A POET. 127
the hands of Dryden. The truth is that Bacon was not without the fine phrensy of
the poet.1
I quote a few passages from these Psalms, selected at random:
There do the stately ships plough up the floods;
The greater navies look like walking woods.
This reminds us of the walking wood in Macbeth :
As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
I looked toward Birnam, and, anon, methought,
The wood began to move.'-
He speaks of
The sappy cedars, tall like stately towers.
Again:
The vales their hollow bosoms opened plain,
The streams ran trembling down the vales again.
He speaks of the birds —
Stroking the gentle air with pleasant notes.
He describes life as
This bubble light, this vapor of our breath.
He says
Again:
So that, with present griefs and future fears,
Our eyes burst forth into a stream of tears.
Why should there be such turmoil and such strife,
To spin in length this feeble line of life?
It must be remembered, in extenuation of any defects in these
translations, that they were the work of sickness and old age, when
his powers were shrunken. They were written in his sixty-fifth
year — one year before his death. We will see that they are not
equal in scope and vigor even to his prose writings. He himself
noted this difference between youth and age.
He says:
There is a youth in thoughts as well as in age; and yet the invention of young
men is more lively than that of old, and imaginations stream into their minds better,
and as it were more divinely.*
VII. The Exaltations of Genius.
Neither can we judge what great things genius can do in
the blessed moments of its highest exaltation by the beggarly
dregs of daily life. Lord Byron said, in a letter to Tom
Moore:
1 Works, vii, 269. ■ Macbeth, v, 4. 3 Essay Of Vout/i and Age.
i28 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
A man's poetry has no more to do with the every-day individual than the inspi-
ration with the Pythoness, when removed from the tripod.
Richard Grant White ridicules "the great inherent absurdity —
the unlikeness of Bacon's mind and style to those of the writer of
the Plays," to which William D. O'Connor well replies:
Of all fudge ever written this is the sheerest. Methinks I see a critic with his
sagacious right eye fixed upon the long loping alexandrines of Richelieu, and his
sagacious left eye fixed upon Richelieu's Maxims of State, oracularly deciding from
the unlikeness of mind and style that the great Cardinal could not have written the
tragi-comedy of Mirame ! Could he inform us (I will offer the most favorable
instance possible) what likeness of "mind and style" he could detect between Sir
William Blackstone's charming verses, A Lawyer's Farewell to his Muse, and the
same Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries? What likeness of "mind and style"
could he establish between the famous treatise by Grotius, on The Rights of Peace
and War, and the stately tragedy by Grotius entitled Adam in Exile? Where is the
identity of "mind and style" between Sir Walter Raleigh's dry-as-dust Cabinet
Council and Sir Walter Raleigh's magnificent and ringing poem, The Soul's Errand?
What likeness of "mind and style" could he find between Coleridge's Aids to Re-
flection and the unearthly melody and magian imagery of Coleridge's Kubla Khan?
What likeness of "mind and style" exists between the exquisite riant grace, light-
ness and Watteau-color of Milton's Allegro, the gracious andante movement and
sweet cloistral imagery of Milton's Penserosa, and the Tetrachordon, or the Areo-
pagitica of the same John Milton? Are the solemn, rolling harmonies of Paradise
Lost one in "mind and style" with the trip-hammer crash of the reply to Salmasius
by Cromwell's Latin secretary? Could the most astute reviewer discover likeness
of " mind and style" between Peregrine Pickle or Roderick Random and the noble
and majestic passion of the Ode to Independence ? —
Thy spirit, Independence, let me share,
Lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye !
Thy steps I'll follow with my bosom bare,
Nor heed the storm that howls along the sky.1
VIII. Bacon's Court Mask.
Let us go a step farther and prove that Bacon wrote verse, and
mastered the difficulties of rhythm and rhyme, in other productions
besides the translation of a few psalms.
Messrs. Spedding and Dixon brought to light, in their re-
searches, two fragments of a court mask which is believed to be
unquestionably Bacon's, and in it, as an oracle, occur these
verses, spoken of a blind Indian boy. The queen, of course,
is Elizabeth:
Seated between the Old World and the New,
A land there is no other land may touch,
Where reigns a queen in peace and honor true;
Stories or fables do describe no such.
1 Hamlet's Note Book, p. 56, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York.
FRANCIS BACON WAS A POET. I2g
Never did Atlas such a burden bear,
As she in holding up the world opprest;
Supplying with her virtue everywhere
Weakness of friends, errors of servants best.
No nation breeds a warmer blood for war,
And yet she calms them by her majesty;
No age hath ever wits refined so far,
And yet she calms them by her policy:
To her thy son must make his sacrifice
If he will have the morning of his eyes.
Certainly this exhibits full possession of the powers requisite in
metrical composition, while the closing expression for restoration
from blindness, " the morning of his eyes," is eminently poetical.
IX. Other Verses by Bacon.
There are also some other verses which go under the name of
Bacon. They are worthy of the pen that wrote Shakespeare:
Mr. Spedding publishes in his great edition of Bacon's Works,1
a poem, which he calls "a remarkable performance." It is a para-
phrase of a Greek epigram, attributed by some to Poseidippus, by
others to Plato, the comic poet, and by others to Crates, the cynic.
In 1629, only three years after Bacon's death, Thomas Farnaby, a
contemporary and scholar, published a collection of Greek epigrams.
After giving the epigram in question, with its Latin translation on
the opposite page, he adds: " Hue elegantem V. C. L. Do7nini Verulamii
xapwdiav adjicere adlubuit" and then prints the English lines below
(the only English in the book), with a translation of his own oppo-
site in rhyming Greek. A copy of the English lines was also found
among Sir Henry Wotton's papers, with the name Francis Lord
Bacon at the bottom. Spedding says, " Farnaby's evidence is direct
and strong," and he expresses the opinion that the internal evi-
dence is in favor of the poem being the work of Bacon. Spedding
says:
The English lines which follow are not meant for a translation, and can hardly
be called a paraphrase. They are rather another poem on the same subject and
with the same sentiment; and though the topics are mostly the same, the treatment
of them is very different. The merit of the original consists almost entirely in its
compactness; there being no special felicity in the expression, or music in the
meter. In the English, compactness is not aimed at, and a tone of plaintive
melody is imparted, which is due chiefly to the metrical arrangement, and has
something very pathetic in it to the ear.
1 Vol. xiv, p. 115, Boston ed.
I3o FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
The world's a bubble, and the life of man
Less than a span;
In his conception wretched, from the womb
So to the tomb;
Cursed from his cradle and brought up to years
With cares and fears:
Who, then, to frail mortality shall trust,
But limns the water, or but writes in dust.
Yet, whilst with sorrow here we live opprest,
What life is best?
Courts are but only superficial schools,
To dandle fools;
The rural parts are turned into a den
Of savage men;
And where's the city from foul vice so free
But may be termed the worst of all the three ?
Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed,
Or pains his head.
Those that live single take it for a curse,
Or do things worse.
Some would have children; those that have them moan,
Or wish them gone.
What is it, then, to have or have no wife,
But single thraldom or a double strife?
Our own affections still at home to please
Is a disease:
To cross the seas to any foreign soil,
Perils and toil.
Wars with their noise affright us; when they cease,
We're worse in peace.
What then remains, but that we still should cry
Not to be born, or, being born, to die?
I differ with Mr. Spedding. These verses are exceedingly terse
and compact. They exhibit a complete mastery over rhythm and
rhyme. Those two lines, —
Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
But limns the water, or but writes in dust, —
are worthy of any writer in the language. We are reminded of the
pathetic utterance of poor Keats, who requested that his friends
should place upon his tomb the words:
Here lies one whose name was writ in water.
Mr. Spedding also gives us ' the following lines, inferior to the
above, found in a volume of manuscript collections now in the
British Museum:
1 Vol. xiv,p. 114.
FRANCIS BACON WAS A POET. 131
Verses Made by Mr. Francis Bacon.
The man of life upright, whose guiltless heart is free
From all dishonest deeds and thoughts of vanity;
The man whose silent days in harmless joys are spent,
Whom hopes cannot delude, nor fortune discontent:
That man needs neither towers, nor armor for defense,
Nor secret vaults to fly from thunder's violence;
He only can behold with unaffrighted eyes
The horrors of the deep and terrors of the skies;
Thus scorning all the care that Fate or Fortune brings,
He makes the Heaven his book, his wisdom heavenly things;
Good thoughts his only friends, his life a well-spent age,
The earth his sober inn, — a quiet pilgrimage.
Mrs. Pott1 quotes a poem entitled The Retired Courtier, from
Dowland's First Book of Songs, published 1600; and she gives many
very good reasons for believing that it was from the pen of Bacon.
Certain it is that the verses are of extraordinary excellence, and
were claimed by no one else, and they afford numerous parallels
with the Plays:
The Retired Courtier.
1.
His golden locks hath Time to silver turned;
O time too swift ! O swiftness never ceasing !
His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurned,
But spurned in vain; youth waneth by increasing.
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen,
Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.
II.
His helmet now shall make a hive for bees,
And lovers' sonnets turn to holy psalms.
A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees,
And feed on prayers which are age's alms;
But though from court to cottage he depart,
His saint is sure of his unspotted heart.
in.
And when he saddest sits in homely cell,
He'll teach his swains this carol for a song:
Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well !
Curst be the soul that thinks her any wrong !
Goddess, allow this aged man his right,
To be your beadsman now that was your knight.
What a beautiful and poetical conception is that:
His helmet now shall make a hive for bees J
1 Promus, appendix D, p. 528.
I32 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
If Bacon did not write this, who was the unknown poet te»
whom it can be ascribed ?
His saint is sure of his unspotted heart,
says the poem.
A pure, unspotted heart,
says Shakespeare.1
Allow this aged man his right
To be your beadsman now.
Says Bacon to Lord Burleigh (1597):
I will still be your beadsman.
X. Bacon's Concealed Writings.
Let us next inquire: Were these extracts all of Bacon's poeticar
works ? Is there any evidence that he was the author of any con-
cealed writings ?
Yes. Mrs. Pott says:
There are times noted by Mr. Spedding when Bacon wrote with closed doors
and when the subject of his studies is doubtful; and there is one long vacation of
which the same careful biographer remarks that he cannot tell what work the inde-
fatigable student produced during those months, for that he knows of none
whose date corresponds with the period. Perhaps it was at such a time Bacon
took recreation in the form in which he recommended it to others, not by
idleness, but by bending the bow in an opposite direction; for he says: " I have
found now twice, upon amendment of my fortunes, disposition to melancholy and
distaste, especially the same happening against the long vacation, when company
failed and business both." The same distaste to what he in a letter calls the
"dead vacation" is seen in As You Like It, act iii, scene 2;
Who stays it [time] still withal?
With lawyers in the vacation.
Bacon says in a letter to Tobie Matthew:
I have sent you some copies of my book of the Advancement, which you
desired ; and a little work of my recreation, which you desired not. My Instauration
I reserve for conference; it sleeps not. Those works of the alphabet are in my
opinion of less use to you where you now are than at Paris. [1607-9.]
Mr. Spedding cannot guess what those works of the alphabet
may have been, unless they referred to Bacon's experiments at
cipher-writing.
When he has become Sir Francis, Bacon writes to Tobie Matthew:
I send my desire to you in this letter that you will take care not to leave the writing
which I left with you last with any man so long that he may be able to take a copy of it.
And that this was evidently some composition of his own ap-
pears by the fact that he asks his friend's criticism upon it, and to*
list Henry VI.. v, 4.
FRANCIS BACON WAS A POET.
133
" point out where I do perhaps indormiscere, or where I do in-
dulgere genio; or where, in fine, I give any manner of disadvantage
to myself."
Does this mean that he fears he will reveal himself by his
style ?
Again, he writes to the same friend:
You conceive aright, that in this and the other, you have commission to impart
and communicate them to others, according to your discretion; other matters I
write not of}
What was the meaning of all this mystery ?
Bacon refers to some unnamed work which he sends to his
friend as " a work of his recreation." And in The Advancement of
Learning"1 he says :
As for poesy, it is rather a pleasure or play of the imagination than a work or
duty thereof.
And in Macbeth we have:
The labor we delight in physics pain.1
And in Antony and Cleopatra we have:
The business that we love, we rise betimes
And go to it with delight.4
Bacon in his Apology says:
It happened, a little before that time, that her Majesty had a purpose to dine
at Twickenham Park, at which time I had (although I profess not to be a poet)
prepared a sonnet directly tending and alluding to draw on her Majesty's recon-
cilement to my Lord, which I remember I also showed to a great person.
Mr. William Thompson 5 calls attention to the fact that this
sonnet has never been found among Bacon's papers, or elsewhere,
and suggests that this is one of the sonnets that go under the name
of Shakespeare.
When James I., after the death of Elizabeth, was about to come
to England, to assume the crown, Master John Davis, afterward
Sir John Davis, the poet and courtier, went to meet him, where-
upon Bacon sent after him this significant letter:
Master Davis:
Though you went on the sudden, yet you could not go before you had spoken
with yourself to the purpose which I will now write. And, therefore, I know it
shall be altogether needless, save that I meant to show you that I was not asleep.
1 Letter to Tobie Matthew, 1609. , 2 Book ii. 3 Act ii, scene 3. 4 Act iv, scene 4.
* The Renascene Drama; or, History Made Visible. By William Thompson, F.R.C.S., F.L.S.
Melbourne, 1880.
i34
FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
Briefly, I commend myself to your love and the well-using of my name, as well in
repressing and answering for me, if there be any biting or nibbling at it, in that
place; as by imprinting a good conceit and opinion of me, chiefly in the King (of
whose favor I make myself comfortable assurance), and otherwise in that court.
And, not only so, but generally to perform to me all the good offices which the
vivacity of your wit can suggest to your mind, to be performed to one with whose
affection you have so great sympathy, and in whose fortune you have so great
interest. So desiring you to be good to all concealed poets % I continue, etc.
This letter is very significant. It is addressed to a poet; it
anticipates that there will be "biting and nibbling" at his good
name; it begs the friendly services of Davis; and it concludes by
asking him to be good "to all concealed poets.'" This plainly refers to
himself. The whole context shows it. We know that Bacon was a
poet. Here he admits that he is a concealed poet. That is to say,
that he was the author of poetical writings which he does not
acknowledge — " which go about in others' names.''
This pregnant admission half proves my case; for if the "con-
cealed" poetical writings were not the Shakespeare Plays, what
were they ? Are there any other poetical writings in that age
whose authorship is questioned ? If so, what are they ?
And we have another proof of this in a letter of Sir Tobie
Matthew to Bacon, which, being addressed to him as the Viscount
St. Albans, must necessarily have been written subsequent to the
27th January, 162 1, when his Lordship was invested with that title.
Judge Holmes says:
It appears to be in answer to a letter from Lord Bacon, dated "the 9th of
April " (year not given), accompanying some great and noble token of his " Lord-
ship's favor," which was in all probability a newly printed book; for Bacon, as we
know from the letters, was in the habit of sending to Mr. Matthew a copy of his
books as they were published. . . . Neither is there anything in the way of the
supposition that this date may actually have been the 9th of April, 1623; and there
was no publication of any work of Bacon, during that spring, which he would be
sending to Mr. Matthew unless it were precisely this Folio of 1623. !
The postscript is as follows:
P. S. The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation, and of this side
of the sea, is of your Lordship's name, THOUGH HE BE known hy another.
If we suppose that "the great and noble token " was the Shake-
speare Folio of 1623, we can understand this. If Tobie Matthew,
Bacon's intimate friend and correspondent, his "other self" as he
calls him, to whom he wrote about the mysterious works of the
1 Authorship of Shah., p. 172.
FRANCIS BACON WAS A POET.
*35
alphabet, and to whom he sent "the works of his recreation" (not to
be left where any one could take a copy of them) — if Tobie Mat-
thew knew that "the great and noble token " was written by "the
concealed poet," Bacon, and if he desired, as part of his thanks, to
compliment him upon the mighty genius manifested in it, what is
more natural than that he should allude to the hidden secret in the
way he does? He says, in effect, waiting from abroad: "Thanks
for the Folio. Your Lordship is the greatest wit of our nation,
and of this side of the sea (that is, in all Europe), though your
noblest work is published under another name."
In another letter Tobie Matthew writes him:
I shall give you " Measure for Measure '."
He was familiar with the Plays of Shakespeare. After Shake-
speare's death, he wrote a letter, in which he refers to Falstaff as
the author of a speech which he quotes. And in 1598 he writes to
Dudley Carleton, again quoting from Falstaff: "Well, honour
pricks them on, and the world thinckes that honour will quickly
prick them off againe."
That there were concealed poets in London among the gentlemen
scholars, and the lawyers in the inns of court, we know in another
way: In Webb's Discourse of Poetry, published in 1586, after enumer-
ating the writers of the day, Whetstone, Munday, etc., he adds:
I am humbly to desire pardon of the learned company of gentlemen scJiolars and
students of the universities and inns of 'court, if I omit their several commenda-
tions in this place, which I know a great number of them have worthily deserved,
in many rare devices and singular inventions of poetry; for neither hath it been my
good hap to have seen all which I have heard of, neither is my abiding in such
place where I can with facility get knowledge of their works.1
In Spenser's Tcares of the Muses, printed in 1591, there is a pass-
age beginning:
And he the man whom Nature's self had made
To mock her selfe and Truth to imitate,
With kindly counter under mimic shade,
Our pleasant Willy, ah, is dead of late !
This has been held to refer to Shakspere, chiefly, it would
seem, because of the name Willy. "But," says Richard Grant
White,2 "' Willy,' like 'shepherd,' was not uncommonly used
merely to mean a poet, and was distinctly applied to Sir Philip
1 Knight, Shak. Biography, p. 328. 2 Life and Genius of Shale., p. 95.
136 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
Sidney, in an eclogue preserved in Davidson's Poetical Rhapsody,
published in 1602. And The Teares of the Muses had certainly been
written before 1590, when Shakspere could not have arisen to
the position assigned, by the first poet of the age, to the subject of
this passage, and probably before 1580, when Shakspere was a boy
of sixteen at Stratford."
And if these lines referred to Shakspere, what is meant by the
words, "with kindly counter under mimic shade"? Certainly
Shakspere never appeared under any mimic shade or disguise;
while, if the lines referred to Bacon, old enough even in 1580 to be
a poet and a friend of Spenser, there might be an allusion here to
his use of some play-actor's name as a disguise for his productions,
just as we find him in the sonnets referring to himself as
Keeping invention in a noted weed
Till every word does almost speak my name.
But I shall discuss this matter more at length hereafter.
And Bacon, in a prayer made while Lord Chancellor, refers to
the same weed or disguise:
The state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in mine
eyes; I have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart. I have, though in a despised
weed, procured the good of all men.
We will see hereafter that the purpose of the Plays was the
good of all men.
And we find in the following sentence proof that Bacon used
the word weed to signify a disguise:
This fellow, when Perkin took sanctuary, chose rather to take a holy habit
than a holy place, and clad himself like a hermit, and in that weed wandered about
the country until he was discovered and taken.1
We find many evidences that Bacon's pursuits were poetical.
He writes to the Earl of Essex on one occasion:
Desiring your good Lordship, nevertheless, not to conceive out of this my dili-
gence in soliciting this matter, that I am either much in appetite or much in hope.
For, as for appetite, the -waters of Parnassus are not like the waters of the Spa,
that give a stomach, but rather they quench appetite and desires.
And when, after Essex was released from confinement in 1600,
Bacon wrote him a congratulatory letter, Essex replied, evidently
somewhat angry at him, as follows:
1 History of Henry VII.
FRANCIS BACON WAS A POET. 137
I can neither expound nor censure your late actions, being ignorant of them all
save one, and having directed my sight inward only to examine myself. ... I am
a stranger to all poetical conceits, or else / should say somewhat of your poetical
example}
And we have many proofs that Bacon was engaged in some
studies which absorbed him to the exclusion of law and politics.
He says:
I do confess, since I was of any understanding, my mind hath, in effect, been
absent from that I have done, and in absence errors are committed, which I do
willingly acknowledge; and amongst the rest this great one which led the rest: that
knowing myself by inward calling to be fitter to hold a book than to play a part, I
have led my life in civil causes, for which I was not very fit by nature, and more
unfit by the preoccupation of my mind.2
And he makes this apology for the failure of his life:
This I speak to posterity, not out of ostentation, but because I judge it may
somewhat import the dignity of learning, to have a man born for letters rather than
anything else, who should by a certain fatality, and against the bent of his own
genius, be compelled into active life.3
•
XI. The Imagination Revealed in Bacon's Acknowledged
Writings.
But, after all, the best evidence of the fact that Bacon possessed
the imagination, the fancy and the wit necessary for the pro-
duction of the Plays, must be found in his acknowledged writings.
I assert, first, that he had all the fancy, vivacity and sprightli-
ness of mind necessary for the task.
Let me give a few proofs of this. He says:
Extreme self-lovers will set a man's house on fire, though it were but to roast
their eggs.4
Money is like muck, not good unless it be spread.5
You have built an ark to save learning from deluge.6
He calls the great conquerors of history " the troublers of the
world; " he speaks of " the tempest of human life."
He says:
A full heart is like a full pen; it can hardly make any distinguished work.1
He says:
For as statues and pictures are dumb histories, so histories are speaking pict-
1 Letter from Essex to Bacon, 1600. 5 Essay Of Seditions.
2 Letter to Sir Thomas Bodley. fi Letter to Sir Thomas Bodlev.
3 Advancement of Learning, viii, 3. 7 Letter to the King.
4 Coll. Sene. 8 Letter to the Chancellor.
I38 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
In so grave and abstract a matter as the dedication of The
Arguments of Law, he says:
For the reasons of municipal laws, severed from the grounds of nature, man-
ners and policy, are like wall-flowers, which, though they grow high upon the
crests of states, yet have no deep roots.
How figurative, how poetical is this! Not only the municipal
laws are compared to wall-flowers, but they grow upon the crests
of states !
He says also:
Fame hath swift swings, especially that which hath black feathers.1
Meaning, by black feathers, slanders.
He also says:
For, though your Lordship's fortunes be above the thunder and storms of
inferior regions, yet, nevertheless, to hear the wind and not to feel it, will make
one sleep the better.2
He says:
Myself have ridden at anchor all your Grace's absence, and my cables are now
quite worn.3
We also find this:
The great labor was to get entrance into the business; but now the portcullis
is drawn up.4
He says:
Hereupon presently came forth swarms and volleys of libels, which are the
gusts of liberty of speech restrained, and the females of sedition, containing bitter
invectives and slanders.5
Again:
I shall perhaps, before my death, have rendered the age a light unto posterity,,
by kindling this new torch amid the darkness of philosophy.6
Again:
Time, like a river, hath brought down all that was light and inflated, and hath
sunk what was weighty and solid.7
Again:
I ask for a full pardon, that I may die out of a cloud*
Again:
As for gestures, they are as transitory hieroglyphics.9
1 Letter to Sir George Villiers, 1615. 5 History 0/ Henry VII.
2 Letter to Buckingham, April, 1623. « Letter to King James.
3 Letter to Buckingham, October 12, 1623. 7 Preface to Great Instauration.
4 Letter to Buckingham, i6iq. « Letter to Buckingham, November 25, 1623.
• Advancement of Learnings book ii.
FRANCIS BACON WAS A POET. T 39
He says:
Words are the footsteps and prints of reason.1
Again:
Hope is a leaf-joy, which may be beaten out to a great extension, like gold.2
Again:
The reason of this omission I suppose to be that hidden rock whereupon both
this and many other barks of knowledge have been cast away.3
Again he speaks of
The Georgics of the mind, concerning the husbandry and tillage thereof.4
Again:
Such men are, as it were, the very suitors and lovers of fables.5
This reminds us of Shakespeare:
The very beadle to a humorous sigh.6
Speaking of the then recent voyages in which the earth was
circumnavigated, he uses this poetical expression:
Memorable voyages, after the manner of heaven, about the globe of the earth.7
Did ever grave geographer use such a simile as this ?
He says:
Industrious persons ... do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of
time.8
Also:
Remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.9
Again:
Times answerable, like waters after a tempest, full of working and swelling.1"
He says:
The corrupter sort of politicians . . . thrust themselves into the center of the
world, as if all lines should meet in them and their fortunes; never caring, in all
tempests, what becomes of the ship of state, so they may save themselves in the
cock-boat of their own fortune. n
Again:
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set. H
He says:
If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the
world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that
joins to them.13
1 Advancement of Learning, book ii. 7 Advancement of Learning, book ii.
3 History of Life and Death. 8 Ibid.
3 Advancement of Learning, book ii. 8 Ibid.
* Ibid. 10 Ibid., book ii.
6 Novum Organum, book ii. u Ibid., book i.
* Love's Labor Lost, iii, i. 12 Essay Of Beauty.
13 Essay Of Goodness.
14o FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
He says:
It is sport to see a bold fellow out of countenance, for that puts his face into a
most shrunken and wooden posture.1
Again:
Suspicions among thoughts are like bats among birds — they ever fly by twi-
light.2
Again:
Some men's behavior is like a verse, wherein every syllable is measured.3
He says:
Certainly there be whose fortunes are like Homer's verses, that have a slide
and an easiness more than the verses of other poets.4
Speaking of those studies that come home to the hearts of
men, or, to use his phrase, " their business and bosoms," he says:
So men generally take well knowledges that are drenched in flesh and blood.5
He says:
Duty, though my state lie buried in the sands, and my favors be cast upon the
waters, and my honors be committed to the wind, yet standeth surely built upon
the rock, and hath been, and ever shall be, unforced and unattempted.6
Speaking of the Perkin Warbeck conspiracy, Bacon says:
After such time . . . she began to cast with herself from what coast this blazing
star should first appear, and at what time it must be upon the horizon of Ireland, for
there had been the like meteor strong influence before. The time of the apparition to
be when the King should be engaged into a war with France.7
Again he says:
Honor that is gained and broken upon another hath the quickest reflection,
like diamonds cut tvith facets .8
Again:
In fame of learning the flight will be slow without some feathers of ostenta-
tion.9
Again:
Pope Alexander . . . was desirous to trouble the waters in Italy, that he might
fish the better; casting the net not out of St. Peter's, but out of Borgia's bark.10
He uses this expression:
Their preposterous, fantastic and hypothetical philosophies which have led
1 Essay Of Goodness. « Letter written in Essex' name to the Queen, 1600.
2 Essay Of Suspicion. 1 History of Henry VII.
3 Essay Of Praise. * Essay Of Honor and Reputation.
* Essay Of Fortune. » Essay Of Vain Glory.
5 A d?'ancetncnt of Learning-, book ii. 10 History of Henry VII.
'* Novum Organum.
IRA NCI S BACON WAS A POET. I4I
Speaking again of the Perkin Warbeck conspiracy, he expresses
it in this most figurative manner:
At this time the King began to be haunted with spirits, by the magic and curi-
ous arts of the Lady Margaret, who raised up the ghost of Richard, Duke of York,
second son to King Edward the Fourth, to walk and vex the King.1
Again:
Every giddy-headed humor keeps, in a manner, revel-rout in false religions. ?
Again:
It is the extremity of evil when mercy is not suffered to have commerce with
misery.3
When he would say that the circumstances were favorable for
the inauguration of the Perkin Warbeck conspiracy, he puts it thus:
Now did the sign reign, and the constellation was come, under which Perkin
should appear.4
[We find the Duke telling Viola:
I know thy constellation is right apt
For this affair.5]
And again:
But all this upon the French King's part was but a trick, the better to bow
King Henry to peace. And therefore upon the first grain of incense that was sac-
rificed upon the altar of peace, at Boloign, Perkin was smoked away.6
When Bacon would say that King Henry VII. used his wars as
a means and excuse to fill his treasury, he expresses it in this pict-
uresque fashion:
His wars were always to him as a mine of treasure of a strange kind of ore;
iron at the top and gold and silver at the bottom.7
Again he says:
And Perkin, for a perfume before him as ne went, caused to be published a
proclamation.8
Again:
So certainly, if a man meditate much upon the universal frame of nature, the
earth with men upon it (the divineness of souls except) will not seem much other
than an ant-hill, where, as some ants carry corn, and some carry their young, and
some go empty, and all — to and fro — a little heap of dust.9
He uses this expression after his downfall:
Here I live upon the sword-point of a sharp air.10
1 History of Henry J 'II. • History of Henry VII.
- J J 'isdom of the A ncients — Dionysius. ' Ibid.
3 Ibid.— Diomedes. 8 Ibid.
4 History of Henry J 'II. 9 A dvancement of Learning, book i.
5 Twelfth Night, i, 4. I0 Petition to the House of Lords.
i42 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE FLAYS.
Alluding to Perkin Warbeck, he says:
But it was ordained that this winding-ivy of a Plantagenet should kill the true
tree itself.1
Again:
It was a race often dipped in their own blood.2
Speaking of the crowds of rabble who followed Perkin Warbeck
after his capture, to mock and deride him, Bacon uses this poetical
figure:
They flocked about him as he went along: that one might know afar off where
the owl was by the flight of birds.3
After his downfall he writes:
I desire to do, for the little time God shall send me life, like the merchants of
London, which, when they give over trade, lay out their money upon land. So
being freed from civil business, I lay forth my poor talent upon those things which
may be perpetual.4
Again:
And as in the tides of people once up, there want not commonly stirring winds
to make them more rough.5
Speaking of Henry VII., after he had overcome the rebellions
of Simnell and Warbeck, Bacon says:
This year also, though the King was no more haunted with sprites, for that by
the sprinkling, partly of blood, and partly of water, he had chased them away.6
Again he says:
As if one were to employ himself poring over the dissection of the dead car-
cass of nature, rather than to set himself to ascertain the powers and properties of
living nature.1
He says:
Nothing appears omitted for preparing the senses to inform the understand-
ing, and we shall no longer dance, as it were, within the narrow circles of the
enchanter, but extend our march around the confines of the world itself.8
Again:
A fellow that thinks with his magistrality and goosequill to give laws and
menages to crowns and scepters.9
This is rather a long list of examples to prove that Bacon pos-
sessed in a preeminent degree fancy, vivacity and imagination, but
I feel that no man can say his time is wasted in reading such a
catalogue of gems.
1 History of Henry VII. * Letter to the King, Oct. 8, 1621. 7 Nature of Things.
2 Ibid. ° History of Henry VII. » Exper. History.
3 Ibid. "Ibid. 9 Charge against Talbot.
FRANCIS BACON WAS A POET. 143
XII. Had he the Higher Genius?
We come now to another question. Granted that he had these
humbler qualities of a vivacious mind, did he possess the loftier
features of the imagination, those touches where heart and soul
and sense of melody are fused together as in the great Plays ?
Undoubtedly an affirmative answer must be given to this ques-
tion. But as in the doings of daily life he was, as Byron says, "off the
tripod," it is only when he is, as Prospero has it, "touched to the
quick," by some great emotion, that he forgets the philosophical and
political restraints he has imposed upon himself, and pours forth his
heart in words. One of these occasions was his downfall, in utter
disgrace, fined, imprisoned, exiled from the court. In his petition
to the House of Lords he cries out from the depths of his soul:
I am old, weak, ruined, in want, a very subject of pity.
We seem to hear the voice of Lear:
A poor, infirm, weak and despised old man.1
And, still speaking of himself, he continues with this noble
thought:
It may be you will do posterity good, if out of the carcass of dead and rotten
greatness, as out of Samson's lion, there may be honey gathered for the use of
future times.2
What a noble, what a splendid image is this ! How the meta-
phor is interwoven, Shakespeare-wise, not as a distinct comparison,
but into the entire body of the thought. He is appealing for
mercy, for time to finish his great works; he is himself already
"dead and rotten greatness," but withal majestic greatness; he is
Samson's lion, but in the carcass the bees have made their hive
and hoarded honey for posterity. And what a soul ! That in the
hour of ruin and humiliation, sacrificed, as I believe, to save a dis-
honest King and a degraded favorite, he could still love humanity
and look forward to its welfare.
Could that expression have come from any other source than
the mind that wrote Shakespeare ? The image was not unfamiliar
to the writer of the Plays:
Tis seldom when the bee doth leave her comb
In the dead carrion.3
»
1 Lear, iii, 2. 2 Petition to the House of Lords. 3 2d Henry II'., iv, 4.
I44 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE TLA YS.
Take another instance. Bacon speaks of
The ocean, the solitary handmaid of eternity.1
If that thought was found in the Plays, would it not be on the
tongues of all men as a magnificent image?
And what poetry is there in this ?
But men must learn that in this theater of man's life it is reserved only for
God and the angels to be lookers-on.2
If Shakespeare had written a prose essay, should we not expect
him to speak something after this fashion ?
But the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from
the wrong of time and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to
be called images, because they generate still and cast their seeds in the minds of
others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages; so
that if the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and
commodities from place to place and consociateth the most remote regions in par-
ticipation of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as
ships, pass through the vast seas of time and make ages so distant to participate of
the wisdom, illuminations and inventions, the one of the other.3
How poetical is the following:
Her royal clemency which as a sovereign and precious balm continually distil-
leth from her fair hands, and falleth into the wounds of many that have incurred
the offense of the law.4
Again we have :
Sure I am that the treasure that cometh from you to her Majesty is but as a
vapor which riseth from the earth and gathereth into a cloud and stayeth not there
long, but upon the same earth it falleth again. It is like a sweet odor of honor and
reputation to our nation throughout the world.5
We are reminded of Portia's :
The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath.6
And also of the following:
The heavens rain odors on you.7
How beautiful is this expression of Bacon:
A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a
tinkling cymbal where there is no love.8
1 The Nature of Things. 6 Bacon's Speech in Parliament, 1597-8, vol.
2 Advancement of Learning, book ii. ii, p. 86.
8 Ibid., book i. " Merchant of J'enice, iv, 1.
♦Discourse in Praise ofthe Queen; Life 7 Twelfth Night, iii, 1. •
and Works, vol. i, p. 129. 8 Essay Of Friendship.
r FRANCIS BACON WAS A POET. I45
How figurative is this:
The King slept out the sobs of his subjects until he was awakened with the
thunderbolt of a Parliament.1
What poet has written in prose anything more poetical than this ?
The unfortunate destinies of hopeful young men, who, like the sons of Aurora,
puffed up with the glittering show of vanity and ostentation, attempt actions above
their strength. . . . For among all the disasters that can happen to mortals, there
is none so lamentable, and so powerful to move compassion, as the flower of virtue
cropped with too sudden a mischance. . . . Lamentation and mourning flutter around
their obsequies like those funereal birds.*
How fine is this expression :
He took, as it were, the picture of words from the life of reason.3
There is a rhythm in this:
Bred in the cells of gross and solitary monks.4
How poetical is his conception when he speaks 5 of the prepara-
tion for the grand Armada and the Spanish invasion of England,
as being "like the travail of an elephant." And again, when he
speaks of one of the Popes, who, by his labors, prevented the
Mohammedanizing of the white race, as one who had "put a ring
in the snout of the Ottoman boar" whereby he was prevented from
rooting up and ravaging the fair field of Europe. The words
draw a picture for us which the memory cannot forget.
What a command of language does he exhibit ! Take these
sentences:
Words that come from wasted spirits and an oppressed mind are more safe in
being deposited in a noble construction.6
Neither doth the wind, as far as it carrieth a voice, with a motion thereof, con-
found any of the delicate and figurative articulations of the air, in variety of words.7
Who taught the bee to sail through such a vast sea of air? 8
The first of these expeditions invasive was achieved with great felicity, ravished
a strong and famous port in the lap and bosom of their high countries.9
Whilst I live, my affection to do you service shall remain quick under the ashes
of my fortune.10
He speaks of Catiline as
A very fury of lust and blood.11
1 Report of Spanish Grievances. 7 Natural History, cent, ii, §125.
8 Wisdom o/the A ncients — Memnon. 8 Advancement 0/ Learning, book ii.
* Advancement 0/ Learning, book i. 'Bacon's Speech in Parliament, 39 Eliz. (1597),
* Ibid., book ii. Life and Works, ii, 88.
6 In Praise of the Queen. 10 Letter to Earl of Bristol.
* His Submission to Parliament. u Advancement 0/ Learning, book ii.
i46 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE TLA VS. •
Take these sentences:
Religion sweetly touched with eloquence.1
The admirable and exquisite subtility of nature.2
Have you never seen a fly in amber more beautifully entombed than an Egyptian
monarch?
When it has at last been clearly seen what results are to be expected from the
nature of things and the nature of the mind, we consider that we shall have pre-
pared and adorned a nuptial couch for the mind and the universe, the Divine
Goodness being our bridesmaid.
The blustering affection of a wild and naked people.3
Sweet, ravishing music. . . .
The melody and delicate touch of an instrument.4
But these blossoms of unripe marriages were but friendly wishes and the airs
of loving entertainments.5
To dig up the sepulchers of buried and forgotten impositions.6
But the King did much to overcast his fortunes, which proved for many years
together full of broken seas, tides and tempests.7
Neither was the song of the sirens plain and single, but consisting of such a
variety of melodious tunes, so fitting and delighting the ears that heard them, as
that it ravished and betrayed all passengers.8
We might make a book of such citations.
Mr. John H. Stotsenburg, of New Albany, Indiana, has put
together, in a newspaper article, a number of extracts from Bacon,
and arranged them as if they were blank verse, I give a few of
these. It is surprising to observe how much, in this shape, they
resemble the poetry of the Shakespeare Plays, and how readily
they would deceive an ordinary reader:
Truth may come, perhaps,
To a pearl's value that shows best by day,
But rise it will not to a diamond's price
That showeth always best in varied lights.
Yet it is not death man fears,
But only the stroke of death.
Virtue walks not in the highway
Though she go heavenward.
Why should we love our fetters, though of gold ?
When resting in security, man is dead;
His soul is buried within him
And his good angel either forsakes his guard or sleeps.
1 . 1 dvancement of Learnings book i. 5 History of Henry VII.
2 Novum Organum, book ii. « Speech in Parliament, 39 Elizabeth, 1597.
3 History 0/ Henry VII. 1 History of Henry VII.
4 Wisdom 0/ the A ncients. » Wisdom 0/ the A ncients —Sirens.
• FRANCIS BACON WAS A POET. I47
There is nothing under heaven
To which the heart can lean, save a true friend.
Why mourn, then, for the end which must be
Or spend one wish to have a minute added
To the uncertain date which marks our years ?
Death exempts not man from being,
But marks an alteration only.
He is a guest unwelcome and importunate
And he will not, must not be said nay.
Death arrives gracious only
To such as sit in darkness
Or lie heavy-burdened with grief and irons.
To the poor. Christian that sits slave-bound
In the galleys;
To despairful widows, pensive pensioners and deposed kings;
To them whose fortune runneth backward
And whose spirits mutiny:
Unto such death is a redeemer,
And the grave a place of retiredness and rest.
These wait upon the shore, and waft to him
To draw near, wishing to see his star
That they may be led to him,
And wooing the remorseless sisters
To wind down the watch of life
And break them off before the hour.
It is as natural to die
As to be born.
In many of these there are scarcely any changes, except in
arranging them as blank verse instead of in the form of prose; and
they have been taken as prose simply because Bacon so first
wrote them.
No man, I think, can have followed me thus far in this
argument without conceding that Bacon was a poet. If a poet,
*;the greatest of mankind" would be the greatest poet of man-
kind. Whatever such a mind strove to accomplish would be of
the highest. Nothing commonplace could dwell in such a
temple.
We must admit that he possessed everything needed for the
preparation of the Shakespeare Plays. Learning, industry, am-
bition for immortality; command of language in all its heights and
depths; the power of compressing thought into condensed sen-
tences; wit, fancy, imagination, feeling and the temperament of
genius.
I48 FA' A * C/S BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE9 PLAYS.
XIII. His Wit.
But it will be said, Was he not lacking in the sense of humor ?
By no means. It was the defect of his public speeches that his;
wit led him aside from the path of dignity. Ben Jonson says his
oratory was " nobly censorious when he could spare or pass by a
jest." Sir Robert Naunton says, " He was abundantly facetious,
which took much with the Queen." The Queen said, "He hath a
great wit." "I wish your Lordship a good Easter," says the
Spanish Jew, Gondomar, about to cross the Channel. " I wish you
a good Pass-over," replied Bacon. Queen Elizabeth asked Bacon
whether he had found anything that smacked of treason in a certain
book. " No," said Bacon, "but I have found much felony." " How
is that?" asked the Queen. "The author." said Bacon, "has stolen
many of his conceits from Cornelius Tacitus."
In the midst even of his miseries, after his downfall, he writes
(1625) to the Duke of Buckingham:
I marvel that your Grace should think to pull down the monarchy of Spain
without my good help. Your Grace will give me leave to be merry, however the tvorld'
goeth with me.
I have just quoted Macaulay's declaration that Bacon's sense
of wit and humor was so powerful that it oftentimes usurped the
place of reason and tyrannized over the whole man.
We find in the author of the Shakespeare Plays the same ina-
bility to restrain his wit.
Says Carlyle:
In no point does Shakespeare exaggerate but only in laughter. Fiery objurga-
tions, words that pierce and burn, are to be found in Shakespeare; yet he is always
in measure here, never what Johnson would remark as a specially "good hater."
But his laughter seems to pour from him in floods, . . . Not at mere weakness, at
misery or poverty, never.
or rME Y
CHAPTER II.
THE WRITER OE THE PLA YS A PHILOSOPHER.
First, let me talk with this philosopher.
Lear, lit, 4.
IN the attempt to establish identity I have shown that Bacon
was a poet as well as a philosopher. I shall now try to estab-
lish that the writer of the Plays was a philosopher as well as a
poet. In this way we will come very near getting the two heads
under one hat.
The poet is not necessarily a philosopher; the philosopher is not
necessarily a poet. One may be possessed of marvelous imagina-
tive powers, with but a small share of the reasoning faculty.
Another may penetrate into the secrets of nature with a brain as
dry as grave-dust.
The crude belief about Shakespeare is that he was an inspired
plow-boy, a native genius, a Cornish diamond, without polishing; a
poet, and nothing but a poet. I propose to show that his mind
was as broad as it was lofty; that he was a philosopher, and more
than that, a natural philosopher; and more than that, that he held
precisely the same views which Bacon held.
Let us see what some of the great thinkers have had to say
upon this subject:
Carlyle makes this most significant speech:
There is an understanding manifested in the construction of Shakespeare's
Plays equal to that in Bacon's Novum Organum.
Hazlitt has struck upon the same pregnant comparison:
The wisdom displayed in Shakespeare was equal in profoundness to the great
.Lord Bacon's Arovum Organum.
Coleridge said:
He was not only a great poet, but a great philosopher.
. Richard Grant White calls him
The greatest philosopher and the worldly-wisest man of modern times.
149
I5o FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
Says Emerson:
He was inconceivably wise. The others conceivably.1
Barry Cornwall says:
He was not a mere poet in the vulgar sense of the term. ... On the con-
trary, he was a man eminently acute, logical and philosophical. His reasoning
faculty was on a par with his imagination and pervaded all his works completely.*
Landor calls Shakespeare
The wisest of men, as well as the greatest of poets.
Pope calls Bacon
The wisest of mankind.
Jeffrey says of Shakespeare:
He was more full of wisdom and sagacity than all the moralists and satirists
that ever lived.
Coleridge says:
Shakespeare's judgment equaled, if it did not surpass, his creative faculty.
Dr. Johnson says:
From his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence
Swinburne calls Shakespeare:
The wisest and mightiest mind that ever was informed with the spirit or genius
of creative poetry.
Richard Grant White says of Shakespeare:
He was the most observant of men.
On the other hand, Edmund Burke said of Bacon:
He possessed the most distinguished and refined observation of human life.
Alfred H. Welsh says of Bacon:
Never was observation at once more recondite, better-natured and more care-
fully sifted.
Surely these two men, if we can call them such, ran in closely
parallel lines.
And it must be remembered that these witnesses are not advo-
cates of the Baconian authorship of the Plays. Many of them never
heard of it.
I. Bacon's Philosophy.
But there are two kinds of philosophy — the transcendental and
the practical. Naturally, the first has most relation to the imagin-
ation; the latter tends to drag down the mind to the base details
1 Representative Men, p. 209. 2 Preface to Works of Ben fonson.
THE WRITER OR THE PLAYS A PHILOSOPHER. i5I
of life. The mind must be peculiarly constructed that can at the
same time grapple with the earth and soar in the clouds. It was
the striking peculiarity of Bacon's system of philosophy that it
tended to make great things little and little things great.
It was the reverse of that old-time philosophy to which Shake-
speare sneeringly alluded when he said:
We have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar things super-
natural and causeless.1
Says Macaulay:
Some people may think the object of the Baconian philosophy a low object.2
And again he observes:
This persuasion that nothing can be too insignificant for the attention of the
wisest which is not too insignificant to give pleasure or pain to the meanest, is the
essential spirit of the Baconian philosophy.3
Bacon cared nothing for the grand abstrusenesses: he labored
for the "betterment of men's bread and wine" — the improvement
of the condition of mankind in their worldly estate. This was the
gospel he preached. Like Socrates, he "dragged down philosophy
from the clouds." He said:
The evil, however, has been wonderfully increased by an opinion, or inveterate
conceit, which is both vainglorious and prejudicial, namely, that the dignity of the
human mind is lowered by long and frequent intercourse with experiments and
particulars, which are the objects of sense and confined to matter, especially since
such matters are mean subjects for meditation.4
And again, in his Experimental Natural History, he says:
We briefly urge as a precept, that there be admitted into this (natural) history:
i. The most common matters, such as one might think it superfluous to insert,
from their being well known; 2. Base, illiberal and filthy matters, and also those
which are trifling and puerile, . . . nor ought their worth to be measured by their
intrinsic value, but by their application to other points and their influence on phil-
osophy.
And again:
This was a false estimation that it should be a diminution to the mind of man
to be much conversant in experiences and particulars, subject to sense and bound
in matter, and which are laborious to search, ignoble to meditate, harsh to deliver,
illiberal to practice, infinite as is supposed in number, and noways accommodate
to the glory of arts.5
And, strange to say, when we turn to Shakespeare we find
embalmed in poetry, where one would think there would be the
> All's Well that Ends Well, ii, 3. 3 Ibid., p. 272. ■ Filum Labyrintki.
a Essay Bacon, p. 278. 4 Novum Organum, book i.
l52 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
least chance to find it, and with which it would seem to have no
natural kindred or coherence, this novel philosophy.
Shakespeare says:
Some kinds of baseness
Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters
Point to rich ends}
And again:
Nature, what things there are,
Most abject in regard and dear in use !
What things again most dear in the esteem
And poor in worth! 2
This is the very doctrine taught by Bacon, which I have just
quoted:
Base, illiberal and filthy matters, and also those which are trifling and puerile,
. . . nor ought their worth to be measured by their intrinsic value, but by their
application to other points and their influence on philosophy.
Why did not Bacon quote that sentence from the Tempest?
Some kinds of baseness
Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters
Point to rich ends.
No wonder Birch is reminded of Bacon when he reads Shake-
speare. He says:
Glendower is very angry at the incredulity of Hotspur, and reiterates again
and again the signs that he thought marked him extraordinary. Hotspur not only
replies with badinage, but ascribes, with Baconian induction, all that Glendower
thought miraculous and providential to nature and the earth.3
Dowden describes the philosophy of Shakespeare in words that
fully fit the philosophy of Bacon. He says:
The noble positivism of Shakespeare. . . . Energy , devotion to the fact, self-gov-
ernment, tolerance, ... an indifference to externals in comparison with that
which is of the invisible life, and a resolution to judge of all things from a purely
human standpoint}
The same writer says:
The Elizabethan drama is essentially mundane. To it all that is upon this
earth is real, and it does not concern itself greatly about the reality of other
things. Of heaven or hell it has no power to sing. It finds such and such facts
here and now, and does not invent or discover supernatural causes to explain these
frets/'
Richard Grant White says:
For although of all poets he is most profoundly psychological, as well as most
fanciful and most imaginative, yet with him philosophy, fancy and imagination
1 Tempest, mil, i. 3 Birch, Plains, and Relig. of Shak., p. 238. 5Ibid., p. 23.
2 Troilus and Cress/da, Hi, 3. 4 Dowden, Shak. Mind and Art, p. 34.
THE WRITER OE THE PLAYS A PHILOSOPHER. ^3
are penetrated with the spirit of that unwritten law of reason which we speak of as
if it were a faculty — common sense. His philosophy is practical and his poetical
views are fused with philosophy and poetry. He is withal the sage and the oracle of
this world. . . . There is in him the constant presence and rule of reason in his
most exalted flights.1
Jeffrey says:
When the object requires it he is always keen and worldly and practical, and
yet, without changing his hand or stopping his course, he scatters around him as
he goes all sounds and shapes of sweetness.
It needs no further argument to demonstrate:
1. That the writer of the Plays was a philosopher.
2. That he was a practical philosopher.
I shall now go farther, and seek to show that, like Bacon, he
was a natural philosopher, a student of nature, a materialist.
Bacon says:
Divine omnipotence was required to create anything out of nothing, so also is
that omnipotence to make anything lapse into nothing.2
The writer of the Plays had grasped the same thought:
O anything of nothing first created.3
Bacon says:
Nothing proceeds from nothing.4
Shakespeare says:
Nothing will come of nothing.5
Nothing can be made out of nothing.6
Are see the natural philosopher also in those reflections as to
the indestructibility of matter and its transmutations in these
verses:
Full fadom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
These are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.'1
Hamlet's meditations run in the same practical direction. He
perceives that the matter of which Alexander was composed was
indestructible:
Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returned to dust; the dust
is earth, of earth we make loam, and why of that loam (whereto he was converted)
might they not stop a beer barrel?
1 Life and Genius of S/iak., p. 293. s Romeo andjtiliet, i, 1. 5 Lear, i, 1.
1 Thoughts on the Nature 0/ Things. * Novum Organum, book ii. 8 Ibid., i, &..
7 Tempest, i, 2.
j$4 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE FT A VS. '
Illustrious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
And when we turn again to Bacon we find him considering how
All things pass through an appointed circuit and succession of transformations.
. . . All things change; nothing really perishes.1
And again Bacon says:
For there is nothing in nature more true . . . than that nothing is reduced to
nothing.2
Henry IV. delivers what Birch calls "an episode proper to a
geological inquirer, and savoring of the theory of the materialist
with regard to the natural and not providential alteration of the
globe," when he says:
O Heaven! that one might read the book of fate
And see the revolution of the times;
Make mountains level, and the continent
(Weary of solid firmness) melt itself
Into the sea ! and other times to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean,
Too wide for Neptune's hips; how chances, mocks
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors.3
Birch adds:
When he returns to politics, and makes them a consequence, as it were, of the
preceding philosophical reflections, we do not see the connection, except in that
materialistic view of things, and necessitarian way of thinking, in which Shake-
speare frequently indulges, and which involved all alike, physical and human
effects, in the causes and operations of nature. We either see the unavoidable ten-
dency of Shakespeare's mind to drag in some of his own thoughts at the expense
of situation or probability, or we must admit them so mixed up in his philosophy
as not to be divided.4
We find the man of Stratford (if we are to believe he wrote the
Plays), while failing to teach his daughter to read and write, urging
that the sciences should be taught in England!
Even so our houses, and ourselves, and children,
Have lost, or do not learn, for want of time,
The sciences that should become our country.5
We see the natural philosopher also in Shakespeare's reflections.
in Measure for Measure :
Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust.6
1 Thoughts on the Nature of Things. * Birch, Philosophy a!l't Religion of Shah., p. 249.
2 Novum Organum, book ii. * Henry V., v, 2.
* Henry IV., iii, 1. "Act iii, scene 1.
THE WRITER OE THE PLAYS A PHILOSOPHER. I55
Here we find the same mind, that traced the transmutations of
the dust of Alexander and Caesar, following, in reverse order, the
path of matter from the inorganic dust into the organic plant,
thence into fruit or grain, thence into the body, blood and brain of
man. Man is not himself; he is simply a congeries of atoms,
brought together by a power beyond himself.
And Shakespeare says:
It is as easy to count atomies as to resolve the propositions of a lover.1
The natural philosopher is shown also in that wise and merciful
reflection:
For the poor beetle that we tread upon
In corporal sufferance finds as great a pang
As when a giant dies.-i
And we turn to Bacon, and we find him indulging in a similar
thought:
But all violence to the organization of animals is accompanied with a sense of
pain, according to their different kinds and peculiar natures, owing to that sentient
essence which pervades their frames.3
Observe the careful student of nature also in this:
Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some, and yet all different.
O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones and their true qualities:
For naught so vile that on the earth doth live,
But to the earth some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good, but, strained from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.4
Here, again, we see the Baconian idea that the humble things
of earth, even the vilest, have their noble purposes and uses.
And the same study of plants is found in the following:
Checks and disasters
Grow in the veins of actions highest reared;
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound pine, and divert his grain
Tortive and errant from his course and growth.5
And in the very direction of Bacon's curious investigations into
life is this reference to the common belief of the time, that a horse-
hair, left in the water, turns into a living thing:
1 As You Like It, iii, 2. • The Nature 0/ Tilings. 8 Troilus and Cressida. 1. . - ,
- Measure for Measure, iii, 1. ' Ronteo and Juliet, ii, 3.
I56 FRANCIS BACOX THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
Much is breeding
Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life,
And not a serpent's poison.1
It has even been noted by others that in that famous descrip-
tion of the hair, "standing on end like quills upon the fretful por-
cupine," the writer hints at the fact that the quills of that animal
are really modified hairs.2
And when Lady Macbeth says:
I know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn,
As you have done to this3 —
we perceive that the writer had thought it out that the teeth are
but modified bones.
The student of natural phenomena is also shown in these sen-
tences:
Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth.4
Can I go forward when my heart is here ?
Turn back, dull earth, and find thy center out !5
I will find
Where truth is hid, though it were hid, indeed,
Within the center.6
While Bacon, seeming to anticipate the Newtonian specula-
tions, says:
Heavy and ponderous bodies tend toward the center of the earth by their
peculiar formation. . . . Solid bodies are borne toward the center of the earth.7
And here we perceive that the poet and the play-writer had
even considered the force of the sun's heat in producing agitations
of the atmosphere.
He says:
Which shipmen do the hurricano call,
Constringed in mass by the almighty sun.8
Bacon observed that
All kind of heat dilates and extends the air, . . . which produces this breeze
as the sun goes forward . . . and thence thunders and lightnings and storms.9
1 A ntony and Cleopatra, i Romeo and Juliet, ii, i.
'2 American Cyclopedia, vol. viii, p. 384. * Hamlet, ii, 2.
3 Macbeth, i, 7. 7 Novum Organutn, book ii.
4 Sonnet cxlvi. 8 Troilus and Cressida, v, 2.
'•' . Xuthor. 0/ Shak., p. 310.
THE WRITER OF THE PLAYS A PHILOSOPHER. ,
57
And Judge Holmes calls attention to the following parallel
thought in Shakespeare:
As whence the sun 'gins his reflection,
Ship-wrecking storms and direful thunders break.1
And that all-powerful preponderance of the sun in the affairs of
the planet, which modern science has established, was realized by
the author of the Plays, when he speaks, in the foregoing, of " the
almighty sun," " constringing " the air and producing the hurri-
cane. It is no wonder that Richard Grant White exclaims:
The entire range of human knowledge must be laid under contribution to
illustrate his writings.2
And the natural philosopher is shown in the question of Lear
(for Shakespeare's lunatics ask many questions that wise men can-
not answer) :
Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?3
In his Natural History, we find Bacon occupying himself with
kindred thoughts. He discusses the casting-off of the shell of the
lobster, crab, era-fish, the snail, the tortoise, etc., and the making
of a new shell:
The cause of the casting of the skin and shell should seem to be the great
quantity of matter that is in those creatures that is fit to make skin or shell*
And again says Lear:
First let me talk with this philosopher:
What is the cause of thunder?5
And Bacon had considered this question also. He says:
We see that among the Greeks those who first disclosed the natural causes of
thunder and storms, to the yet untrained ears of man, were condemned as guilty
of impiety towards the gods.6
Shakespeare says:
And do but see his vice;
'Tis to his virtue a just equinox,
The one as long as the other.7
In this we have another observation of a natural phenomenon..
And here is another:
Know you not
The fire, that mounts the liquor till it run o'er,
In seeming to augment it, wastes it.8
1 Macbeth, i, i. * Century viii, § 732. 7 Othello, ii, 3.
xShak. Genius, p. 252. 5 Lear, Hi, 4. 8 Henry VIII., i, 1.
3 L<\ir, i, 5. % Novum Organuw, book i.
,5X FRANCIS HA COX THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
The poet had also studied the causes of malaria.
He says:
All the infections that the sun sucks up
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him
By inch-meal a disease.1
And again:
Infect her beauty,
Yon fen-sucked fogs, drawn by the powerful sun,
To fall and blast her pride. -
And in the following the natural philosopher is clearly ap-
parent:
The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea; the moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.
The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears; the earth's a thief
That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen
From general excrement/5
I shall hereafter show, in the chapter on " Identical Compari-
sons," that both Bacon and Shakespeare compared man to a species
of deputy God, a lesser Providence, with a power over nature that
approximated in kind, but not in degree, to the creative power of
the Almighty. He says in one place:
For in things artificial nature takes orders from man and works under his
authority; without man such things would never have been made. But by the
help and ministry of man a new force of bodies, another universe, or theater of
things, comes into view.
And in Shakespeare we have the following kindred reflections:
Perdita. For I have heard it said,
There is an art which, in their piedness, shares
With great creating nature.
Pol. Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean; so o'er that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we ma^ry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock,
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race: this is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is nature.4
1 Tempest, ii, 2. 2 Lear, ii, 4. '■' Titus Andronicus, iv, 3. * Winter's Tale, iv, 3.
THE WRITER OF THE PLAYS A PHILOSOPHER. lc<)
And again:
'Tis often seen
Adoption strives with nature; and choice breeds
A native slip to us from foreign seeds.1
And we have a glimpse in the following of the doctrine that
nature abhors a vacuum.
The air, which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra, too,
And made a gap in nature.2
And here we find them, again, thinking the same thought, based
on the same observation. Bacon says:
As for the inequality of the pressure of the parts, it appeareth manifestly in
this, that if you take a body of stone or iron, and another of wood, of the same
magnitude and shape, and throw them with equal force, you cannot possibly throw
the wood so far as the stone or the iron.3
And we find the same thought in Shakespeare:
The thing that's heavy in itself,
Upon enforcement flies with greatest speed.4
And here is a remarkable parallelism. Shakespeare says:
There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick, or snuff, that will abate it.5
Bacon says:
Take an arrow and hold it in flame for the space of ten pulses, and when it
cometh forth you shall find those parts of the arrow which were on the outside of
the flame more burned, blackened, and turned almost to a coal, whereas that in the
midst of the flame will be as if the fire had scarce touched it. This . . . showeth
manifestly that flame burneth more violently towards the sides than in the midst.6
And here is another equally striking. Bacon says:
Besides snow hath in it a secret warmth; as the monk proved out of the text:
" Qui dat nivem sicut lanam, gelu sicut cineres spargit." Whereby he did infer that
snow did warm like wool, and frost did fret like ashes.7
Shakespeare says:
Since frost itself as actively doth burn.8
Bacon anticipated the discovery of the power of one mind over
another which we call mesmerism; and we find in Shakespeare
Ariel saying to the shipwrecked men:
If you could hurt,
Your swords are now too massy for your strengths,
And will not be tiplifted.'*
* All's Well that Ends Well, i, 3. x 2d Henry IV., i, 1. 7 Natural History, §788.
2 A ntony and Cleopatra, ii, 2. • Hamlet, iv, 7. 8 Hamlet, iii, 4.
3 Natural History, §791. fi Natural History, §32. 9 Tempest, iii, 3.
f6o FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
I conclude this chapter with the following citations, each of
which shows the profound natural philosopher:
That man, how dearly ever parted,
How much in having, or without or in,
Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,
Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection;
As when his virtues shining upon others
Heat them, and they retort that heat again
To the first giver. '
Again:
Again:
Again:
The beauty that is borne here in the face,
The bearer knows not, but commends itself
To others' eyes; nor doth the eye itself,
That most pure spirit of sense, behold itself,
Not going from itself.2
No man is the lord of any thing,
Though in and of him there be much consisting,
Till he communicate his parts to others.3
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for ourselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues, nor Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Both thanks and use.4
1 Troilus and Cressida, hi, 3. 2 Ibid. s Ibid. * Measure for Measure, i, t.
GORHAMBURY
I. A. D. 1821. 2. A. D. 1795- 3- A. D. 1568.
CHAPTER III.
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE PLA VS.
Dear earth ! I do salute thee with my hand.
Richard II., Hi, 2.
GENIUS, though its branches reach to the heavens and cover
the continents, yet has its roots in the earth; and its leaves,
its fruit, its flowers, its texture and its fibers, bespeak the soil in
which it was nurtured. Hence in the writings of every great mas-
ter we find more or less association with the scenes in which his
youth and manhood were passed — reflections, as it were, on the
camera of the imagination of those landscapes with which destiny
had surrounded him.
In the work of the peasant-poet, Robert Burns, we cannot sepa-
rate his writings from the localities in which he lived. Take away
" Bonnie Doon; "
" Auld Alloway's witch-haunted kirk ; "
" Ye banks and braes and streams around,
The castle of Montgomery;"
11 Auld Ayr, which ne'er a town surpasses
For honest men and bonny lasses; "
11 Sweet Afton,
Amid its green braes,"
and the thousand and one other references to localities with which
his life was associated, and there is very little left which bears the
impress of his genius.
If we turn to Byron, we find the same thing to be true. We
have his "Elegy on Newstead Abbey;" his poem "On Leaving
Newstead Abbey;" his lines on " Lachin y Gair " in the Highlands,
where "my footsteps in infancy wandered;" his verses upon
"Movren of Snow;" his "Lines written beneath an Elm in the
Churchyard of Harrow on the Hill;" his verses "On Revisiting
Harrow," and his poem addressed "To an Oak at Newstead;"
while " Childe Harold " is full of allusions to scenes with which
his life-history was associated.
161
t62 FRANCIS B A COX THE AUTHOR OF THE TLA VS.
The same is true, to a greater or less extent, of all great writers
who deal with the emotions of the human heart.
I. Stratford-on-Avon is not Named in the Plays.
In view of these things it will scarcely be believed that in all the
voluminous writings of Shakespeare there is not a single allusion to
Stratford, or to the river Avon. His failure to remember the dirty
little town of his birth might be excused, but it would seem most
natural that in some place, in some way, in drama or sonnet or
fugitive poem, he should remember the beautiful and romantic river,
along whose banks he had wandered so often in his youth, and whose
natural beauties must have entered deeply into his soul, if he was
indeed the poet who wrote the Plays. He does, it is true, refer to
Stony-Stratford,1 a village in the County of Bucks, and this makes the
omission of his own Stratford of Warwickshire the more surprising.
II. St. Albans Referred to Many Times.
On the other hand, we find repeated references to St. Albans,
Bacon's home, a village of not much more consequence, so far as
numbers were concerned, than Stratford.
Falstaff says:
There's but a shirt and a half in all my company; . . . and the shirt, to say
the truth, stolen from my host of Saint Albans.'2
In the 2d Henry IV. we have this reference:
Prince Henry. This Doll Tear-sheet should be some road.
Poins. I warrant you, as common as the road between Saint Albans and
London.3
In The Contention between the Two Famous Houses of York and Lan-
caster, which is conceded to be the original form of some of the
Shakespeare Plays, we have:
For now the King is riding to Saint Albans.*
My lord, I pray you let me go post unto the King,
Unto Saint Albans, to tell this news.5
Come, uncle Gloster, now let's have our horse,
For we will to Saint Albans presently.6
In the same scene (in The Contention), of the miracle at Saint
Albans :
1 Richard III., ii, 4. s 2d Henry IV., ii, 2. 5 Ibid., ii, 3.
2 1st Henry IV., iv, 3. 4 1st Part of Contention, i, 2. 6 Ibid.
THE GEOGRAPHY OP THE PLAYS.
163
Come, my lords, this night we'll lodge in Saint Albans}
In the play of Richard 1 1 J . we have this allusion to Bacon's
country seat:
Was not your husband
In Margaret's battle at Saint Albans slain ?'-'
We have numerous references to St. Albans in the 2d Henry VI. :
Messenger. My Lord Protector, 'tis his Highness' pleasure
You do prepare to ride unto Saint Albans,*
And again:
Duchess. It is enough; I'll think upon the questions:
When from Saint Albans we do make return.4
And again:
York. The King is now in progress toward Saint Albans.-'
III. Three Scenes in the Plays Laid at St. Albans.
Scene 1, act ii, 2d Henry VI., is laid at Saint Albans ; scene 2, act
v, of the same is also laid at Saint Albans ; scene 3, act v, is laid in
Fields, near Saint Albans.
Note the following:
Forsooth, a blind man at Saint Albania shrine,
Within this half-hour hath received his sight.6
Enter the Mayor of Saint Albans.
Being called
A hundred times and oftener, in my sleep
By good Saint A /ban.1
Again:
Again:
Again:
Glos. Yet thou seest not well.
Simpcox. Yes, master, clear as day; I thank God and Saint Albany
Again:
Gloster. My lord, Saint A/ban here hath done a miracle.''
Gloster. My masters of Saint Albans, have you not beadles in your town?111
And again:
For underneath an alehouse' paltry sign.
The castle in Saint Albans, Somerset
Hath made the wizard famous in his death."
1 1st Contention, ii, i.
4 2d Henry VI., i, ->.
- Ibid.
, ii, 1.
10 Ibid., ii, 1.
» Richard III., i, 3.
5 Ibid., i, 3.
sIbid.
, ii, 1.
1 1 2d Henry VI. , v, 2,
3 2d Henry VI., i, 2.
"Ibid., ii, 1.
9 Ibid.
. ii, 1.
164
FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
Now by my hand, lords, 'twas a glorious day,
Saint Albans battle, won by famous York,
Shall be eternized in all age to come.1
In the 3d Henry VI. we find St. Albans referred to as follows z
Marched toward Saint Albans to intercept the Queen.2
Again:
Again
Again
Short tale to make — we at Saint Albans met.3
When you and I met at Saint Albans last.4
Brother of Gloster, at Saint Albans field
This lady's husband, Sir John Grey, was slain.5
Here is St. Albans referred to in the Shakespeare Plays twenty -three
times, and Stratford not once !
Is not this extraordinary? What tie connected the Stratford
man with the little village of Hertfordshire, that he should drag it
into his writings so often ?
We are told that he loved the village of Stratford, and returned,
when rich and famous, to end his days there. We have glowing
pictures, in the books of the enthusiastic commentators, of his wan-
derings along the banks of the lovely Avon. Why did he utterly
blot them both out of his writings ?
IV. Warwickshire Ignored in the Plays.
But he ignored the county of Warwickshire — his own beautiful
county of Warwickshire — in like fashion.
Michael Drayton, poet and dramatist, a contemporary of Shak-
spere, was, like him, born in Warwickshire, but he did not forget
his native shire. He thus invocates the place of his birth:
My native country, then, which so brave spirits hath bred,
If there be virtues yet remaining in thy earth,
Or any good of thine thou bred'st into my birth,
Accept it as thine own, whilst now I sing of thee,
Of all thy later brood th' unworthiest though I be.
The county of Warwickshire is only referred to once in the
Plays (1st Henry IV., iv, 2), and " the lord of Warwickshire" is
mentioned twice. The only reference that I know of to localities
in Warwickshire is in the introduction to The Taming of the Shrew,
where Wincot is named. It is assumed that this is Wilmecote, three
1 2d Henry /"/., v, 2. ^jd Henry /'/.. ii, 1. :iTbid. * Ibid., ii, 2. '"Ibid., iii, 3.
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE PI. A VS.
65
miles distant from Stratford-on-Avon. But of this there is no cer-
tainty.
There is a Woncot mentioned in 2d Henry IV, —
William Visor of VVoncott; ' —
and so eager have the Shakspereans been to sustain the War-
wickshire origin of the Plays that they have converted this into
Wincot. As, however, Master Robert Shallow, Esquire, dwelt in
Gloucestershire —
[He through Gloucestershire, and there will I visit Master Robert Shallow Es-
quire,]—
and William Visor was one of his tenants or underlings, this Won-
cot could not have been Wincot, near Stratford, in Warwickshire.
V. St. Albans the Central Point of the Historical Plays.
Mrs. Pott has pointed out how much of the action of the Shake-
speare Plays finds its turning-point and center in St. Albans:
To any one who sees in it one of the inciting causes for the composition of the
historical plays called Shakespeare's, and especially the second part of Henry VI.
and Richard III., St. Albans and its neighborhood are in the highest degree sug-
gestive and instructive. Gorhambury was one of the boyish homes of Francis
Bacon. When, at the age of nineteen, he was recalled from his gay life at the
•court of the French embassador on account of the sudden death of his father, it was
to Gorhambury that he retired with his widowed mother. Thus he found himself
on the very scene of the main events which form the plot of the second part of
Henry VI. . . . The play culminates in the great.battle of St. Albans, which took
place in a field about one and a half miles from Gorhambury. As a boy, Francis
must have heard the battle described by old men whose fathers may even have
witnessed it. He must frequently have passed " the alehouse' paltry sign " beneath
which Somerset was killed by Richard Plantagenet (2d Henry VI, v, 2). He must
have trodden the Key Field where the battle was fought, and in which the last
scene of the play is laid. It was a scene not likely to be forgotten. The Lancas-
trians lost five thousand men, including the detested Duke of Somerset and other
nobles, and the poor, weak King, Henry VI., was taken prisoner by the Yorkists.
Considering the mildness and moderation which was invariably exercised by the
Duke of York, and the violent and bloodthirsty course pursued by Queen Marga-
ret, it is no wonder that this, the first Yorkist victory of the Wars of the Roses,
should be kept green on the spot where it took place.
'Twas a glorious day.
Saint Albans' battle, won by famous York,
Shall be eterniz'd in all age to come.
Before entering the abbey, let the visitor glance around. To the north of the
town stands the old church of St. Peter, and in its graveyard lie the bodies of many
of those who were slain in the great battles between the rival houses of York and
Lancaster. To the left is Bernard's heath, the scene of the second battle of St.
1 Act v, scene 1.
^6 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
Albans, where the Yorkist army was defeated, as related in jd Henry VI., ii, I.
In the distance may be seen Hatfield house, the noble residence of the Marquis of
Salisbury, but formerly the property of William of Hatfield, second son of Edward
III. {2d Henry VI., ii, 2). Within a short distance is King's Langley, the birth-
place and burial place of the "famous Edmund Langley, Duke of York" {1st
Henry /.'/., ii, 5), and, as we are further told, " fifth son " of Edward III. {2d Henry
VI, ii, 2). On the east of the town lay Key Field, the arena of the first battle of
St. Albans. Across it may be seen the ancient manor-house, formerly inhabited
by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. To the right is Sopwell nunnery, where Henry
VIII. married Anne Boleyn. The history of the monastery to which the abbey
was attached is intimately associated with English history. To go back no farther
than the fourteenth century, there Edward I. held his court; there Edward II. was
a frequent visitor; thither, after the battle of Poictiers, Edward III. and the Black
Prince brought the French King captive. After the insurrection of Wat Tyler and
Jack Straw, Richard II. and his Chief Justice came in person and tried the rioters.
A conspiracy to dethrone Richard began at the dinner table of the Abbot, when
Gloucester and the Prior of Westminster were his guests. This Gloucester was
"Thomas of Woodstock," described in 2d Henry VI, ii, 2, as "the sixth son of
Edward the Third." At a subsequent meeting of members of the conspiracy, the
Duke of Gloucester, "Henry of Hereford, Lancaster and Derby" {Richard II, i,
3), the Earl Marshal (ibid.), Scroop, Archbishop of Canterbury {Richard II, iii, 2),
the Abbot of St. Albans and the Prior of Westminster {Richard II, iv, 1) were
present, and the perpetual imprisonment of the King was agreed upon. In the
play of Richard II every name mentioned in the old manuscript which records
this meeting is included, except one — namely, the Abbot of St. Albans; and yet in
the old records priority over Westminster is always given to him. It is conject-
ured that the omission was intentional, and that the author did not wish by fre-
quent repetition to give prominence to a name which would draw attention to the
neighborhood of his own home. At the monastery of St. Albans rested the body
of John, Duke of Lancaster {1st Henry IV., vol. 4), on the way to London for
interment. His son Henry, afterward Cardinal Beaufort {1st Henry VI, i, 3, etc.),
performed the exequies. Richard II. lodged at St. Albans on his way to the
Tower, whence, having been forced to resign his throne to Bolingbroke, he
was taken to Pomfret, imprisoned and murdered. Meanwhile, the resignation of
the King being read in the House, the Bishop of Carlisle arose from his seat
and stoutly defended the cause of the King. Upon this the Duke of Lancaster
commanded that they should seize the Bishop and carry him off to prison at
St. Albans. He was afterward brought before Parliament as a prisoner, but
the King, to gratify the pontiff, bestowed on him the living of Tottenham.
These events are faithfully rendered or alluded to in the Plays, the only notable
omission being, as before, any single allusion to the Abbot of St. Albans (See
Richard II, vol. vi, 22-29).
Passing over many similar points of interest, let us enter the Abbey church by
its door on the south side. There the visitor finds himself close to the shrine
erected over the bones of the martyred saint. To this shrine, after the defeat of
the Lancastrians, at the first battle of St. Albans, the miserable King, having been
discovered at the house of a tanner, was conducted, previous to his removal as a
prisoner to London. In the shrine is seen the niche in which handkerchiefs and
other garments used to be put, in order that the miraculous powers attributed to
the saint should be imparted to the sick and diseased who prayed at his shrine,
and thereby hangs a tale. Close by the shrine is the tomb of good Duke Hum-
phrey of Gloucester, who plays such a prominent part in Henry VI The inscrip-
THE GEOGRAPHY OE THE PLAYS.
167
tion on his tomb is not such as most persons might expect to find as an epitaph on
the proud and pugnacious, but popular warrior. No hint is conveyed of his strug-
gles with the Duke of Burgundy, or of his warlike contests for the possession of
Holland and Brabant. Three points are noted concerning him: That he was pro-
tector to Henry VI.; that he "exposed the impostor who pretended to have been
born blind," and that he founded a school of divinity at Oxford. The story of the
pretended blind man is the subject of 2d Henry VI, ii, 8, where it is introduced
with much detail. Sir Thomas More quoted the incident as an instance of Duke
Humphrey's acuteness of judgment, but the circumstance which seems to connect
the epitaph not only with the play, but with Francis Bacon himself, is that it was
not written immediately after the death of the Duke, but tardily, as the inscription
hints, and it is believed to be the composition of John Westerham, head-master of
the St. Albans grammar school in 1625 — namely, during the lifetime of Bacon,
and at a date when Gorhambury was his residence. A phrase in the inscription
applies to Margaret of Anjou, Henry's "proud, insulting queen," whose tomb,
with her device of "Marguerites," or daisies, is not far from the shrine of
St. Alban. It was by the intrigues of Margaret and her partisans that Duke
Humphrey was arrested at Bury. The following night he was found dead in
his bed — slain, as some old writers record, by the hand of Pole, Duke of
Suffolk. {2d Henry VI, iii, 1; 223-281, ii, 1, 1-202.) Not far from these tombs
are two more of peculiar interest to students of Shakespeare. One is the
resting-place of Sir Anthony de Grey, grandson of Henry Percy, Earl of
Northumberland. The inscription says that he married "the fourth sister to our
sovraine lady, the queen;" that is, Elizabeth Woodville, queen of Edward IV.
She had been formerly married.
At St. Albans' field
This lady's husband, Sir John Grey, was slain,
0 His lands then seized on by the conqueror.1
Her suit to Edward to restore her confiscated property, and her subsequent
marriage with him, form a prominent portion of the plot of the third part of
Henry VI.
Last, but not least, let us not overlook the mausoleum of "the Nevils' noble
race," the family of the great Earl of Warwick, the "king-maker." In 2d Henry
IV., v, 2, Warwick swears by his
Father's badge, old Nevil's crest,
The rampant bear chained to the ragged staff.
The passage is vividly brought to the mind by the sight of a row of rampant
bears, each chained to his ragged staff, and surmounting the monument erected
over the grave of that great family of warriors.
In fact, St. Albans seems to be the very center from which the
eye surveys, circling around it, the grand panorama of the histor-
ical Plays; while far away to the north lies the dirty little village
of Stratford-on-Avon, holding not the slightest relation with any-
thing in those Plays, save the one fact that the man who is said to
have written them dwelt there.
l3d Henry VI., Hi, 2.
T68 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
VI. York Place.
There was one other spot in England tenderly associated in
Bacon's heart with loving memories; that was the royal palace of
''York Place," in London, in which he was born. In the day of
his success he purchased it, and it was at last, after his downfall,
torn from his reluctant grasp by the base Buckingham. Bacon
says of it:
York House is the house wherein my father died, and where I first breathed,
and there will I yield my last breath, if so please God.1
We turn to the play of Henry VIII., and we find York Place
depicted as the scene where Cardinal Wolsey entertains the King and his
companions, masked as shepherds, with "good company, good wine,
good welcome."
And farther on in the play we find it again referred to, and
something of its history given:
jd Gentleman. So she parted,
And with the same full state paced back again
To Yorke-Place, where the feast is held.
ist Gentleman. You must no more call it Yorke-Place, that's past;
For since the Cardinal fell that title's lost;
'Tis now the King's, and called White-hall.
jd Gentleman. I know it;
But 'tis so lately altered, that the old name
Is fresh about me.2
How lovingly the author of the Plays dwells on the history of
the place!
VII. Kent.
Bacon's father was born in Chislehurst; and we find many
touches in the Plays which show that the writer, while he
had not one good word to say for Warwickshire, turned lov-
ingly to Kent and her people. He makes the double-dealing
Say remark:
Say. You men of Kent.
Dick. What say you, Kent ?
Say. Nothing but this: 'tis bona terra, mala gens. . . .
Kent, in the Commentaries Caesar writ,
Is termed the civil'st place of all this isle:
Sweet is the country, because full of riches;
The people liberal, valiant, active, wealthy.3
1 Letter to the Duke of Lenox, i6ai. - Henry VIII., iv, i. 3 2d Henry TV., iv, 7.
Of r
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE PLAYS. 169
What made the Warwickshire man forget his own county and
remember Caesar's praise of Kent? What tie bound William
Shakspere to Kent ?
And again, in another play, he comes back to this theme
The Kentishmen will willingly rise.
In them I trust: for they are soldiers,
Witty, courteous, liberal, full of spirit.'
The first scene of act iv of 2d Henry VI. is laid upon the sea-
shore of Kent.
It is in Kent that much of the scene of the play of King Lea?' is
laid. Here we have that famous cliff of Dover, to the brow of
which Edgar leads Gloucester:
Come on, sir:
Here's the place; stand still: how fearful
And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low.
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Shew scarce so gross as beetles. Half way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire: dreadful trade:
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.
The fishermen that walked upon the beach
Appear like mice: and yon tall anchoring bark
Diminished to her cocke; her cocke a buoy
Almost too small for sight.
"Jack Cade, the clothier," who proposed to dress the common-
wealth and put new nap upon it, was a Kentishman. The insur-
rection was a Kentish outbreak. The play of 2d Henry VI. largelv
turns upon this famous rebellion.
Many of the towns of Kent are referred to in the Plays, and
Goodwin Sands appears even in the Italian play of The Merchant
4>f Venice, as the scene of the loss of one of Antonio's ships.
VIII. The Writer of the Plays had Visited Scotland.
There is some reason to believe that the author of Macbeth
visited Scotland. The chronicler Holinshead narrates that Mac-
beth and Banquo, before they met the witches, " went sporting by
the way together without other company, passing through the
woods and fields, when suddenly, in the midst of a laund, there
met them three women in strange and wild apparel." " This de-
scription," says Knight, " presents to us the idea of a pleasant and
* 3d Henry VI.. i, 3.
I7o FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
fertile place." But the poet makes the meeting with the witches
" on the blasted heath." Knight tells us that " the country around
Forres is wild moorland. . . . We thus see that, whether Macbeth
met the weird sisters to the east or west of Forres, there was
in each place that desolation which was best fitted for such
an event, and not the woods and fields and launds of the
chronicler."
This departure from Holinshead's narrative would strongly
indicate that the poet had actually visited the scene of the play.
Again, it is claimed that the disposal of the portal " at the south
entry " of the castle of Inverness is strictly in accordance with the
facts, and could not have been derived from the chronicle. Even
the pronunciation of Dunsinane, with the accent on the last sylla-
ble, is shown to have been in accordance with the custom of the
peasantry.
Macbeth was evidently written after the accession of James I.,
and we find that Bacon paid a visit to King James before he came
to London and probably while he was still in Scotland. In Sped-
ding's Life and Letters1 we find a letter from Bacon to the Earl of
Northumberland, without date, referring to this visit. Spedding
says:
Meanwhile the news which Bacon received from his friends in the Scotch cour/
appears to have been favorable: sufficiently so, at least, to encourage him to seek
a personal interview with the King. I cannot find the exact date, but it will be
seen from the next letter that, before the King arrived in London, he had gone to
meet him, carrying a dispatch from the Earl of Northumberland; and that he had
been admitted to his presence.
The letter speaks as follows:
// may please your good Lordship:
I would not have lost this journey, and yet I have not that for which I
went. For I have had no private conference to any purpose with the King;
and no more hath almost any other English. For the speech his Majesty
admitteth with some noblemen is rather matter of grace than of business. With
the attorney he spake, being urged by the Treasurer of Scotland, but yet no more
than needs must. . . .
I would infer that this interview was held in Scotland. The
fact that the Treasurer of Scotland was present and that the En-
glish could not obtain private audience with the King would indi-
cate this.
J Volume iii, p. 76.
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE PLAYS. ,-,
IX. The Writer of the Plays had been in Italy.
There are many reasons to believe that the writer of the Plavs
had visited Italy. In a note upon the passage,
Unto the tranect to the common ferry
Which trades to Venice,1
Knight remarks:
If Shakspere had been at Venice (which, from the extraordinary keeping of the
play, appears the most natural supposition), he must surely have had some situa-
tion in his eye for Belmont. There is a common ferry at two places — Fusina and
Mestre.
In the same play the poet says:
This night methinks is but the daylight sick.
It looks a little paler; 'tis a day
Such as the day is when the sun is hid.-
Whereupon Knight says:
The light of the moon and stars (in Italy) is almost as yellow as the sunlight
in England. . . . Two hours after sunset, on the night of a new moon, we have
seen so far over the lagunes that the night seemed only a paler day — " a little paler."
Mr. Brown, the author of Shakespeare s Autobiographical Plays.
strenuously maintained the opinion that Shakespeare must have
visited Italy:
His descriptions of Italian scenes and manners are more minute and accurate
than if he had derived his information wholly from books.
Mr. Knight, speaking of The Taming of the Shrew, says:
It is difficult for those who have explored the city [of Padua] to resist the per-
suasion that the poet himself had been one of the travelers who had come from
afar to look upon its seats of learning, if not to partake of its " ingenious studies."
There is a pure Paduan atmosphere hanging about this play.
Bacon, it is known, visited France, and it is believed he traveled
in Italy.
X. The Writer of the Plays had been at Sea.
One other point, and I pass from this branch of the subject.
Richard Grant White says:
Of all negative facts in regard to his life, none, perhaps, is surer than that he
never was at sea; yet in Henry VIII., describing the outburst of admiration and
loyalty of the multitude at sight of Anne Bullen, he says, as if he had spent his life
on shipboard:
Such a noise arose
As the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest;
As loud, and to as many tunes. '?
1 Merchant of Venice, Hi, 4. ■ Act v. scene 1. 3 Life and Genius 0/ Shakespeare, p. 259.
•I72 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
More than this, we are told that this man, who had never been
at sea, wrote the play of The Tempest, which contains a very accu-
rate description of the management of a vessel in a storm.
The second Lord Mulgrave gives, in Boswell's edition, a com-
munication showing that
Shakespeare's technical knowledge of seamanship must have been the result of
the most accurate personal observation, or, what is perhaps more difficult, of the
power of combining and applying the information derived from others.
But no books had then been published on the subject. Dr.
Johnson says:
His naval dialogue is, perhaps, the first example of sailor's language exhibited
on the stage.
Lord Mulgrave continues:
The succession of events is strictly observed in the natural progress of the distress
described; the expedients adopted are the most proper that could be devised for a
chance of safety. . . . The words of command are strictly proper. . . . He has shown
a knowledge of the new improvements, as well as the doubtful points of seamanship.
Capt. Glascock, R. N., says:
The Boatswain, in The Tempest, delivers himself in the true vernacular of the
forecastle.
All this would, indeed, be most extraordinary in a man who had
never been at sea. Bacon, on the other hand, we know to have
made two voyages to France; we know how close and accurate
were his powers of observation; and in The Natural History of the
Winds ' he gives, at. great length, a description of the masts and
sails of a vessel, with the dimensions of each sail, the mode of
handling them, and the necessary measures to be taken in a storm.
XI. Conclusions.
It seems, then, to my mind, most clear, that there is not a single
passage in the Plays which unquestionably points to any locality
associated with the life of the man of Stratford, while, on the
other hand, there are numerous allusions to scenes identified with
the biography of Bacon; and, more than this, that the place of Bacon's
birth and the place of his residence are both made the subjects of
scenes in the Plays, and nearly all the historical Plays turn about
St. Albans as a common center.
The geography of the Plays would all indicate that Francis
Bacon wrote them.
1 Section 29.
CHAPTER IV.
THE POLITICS OF THE PIA VS.
I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes;
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause, and aves vehement,
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion
That does affect it.
Measure for Measure, i\ i.
WE know what ought to have been the politics of William
Shakspere, of Stratford.
He came of generations of peasants; he belonged to the class
which was at the bottom of the social scale. If he were a true man,
with a burning love of justice, he would have sympathized with his
kind. Like Burns, he would have poured forth bis soul in protests
against the inequalities and injustice of society; he would have
asserted the great doctrine of the brotherhood of man; he would
have anticipated that noble utterance:
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gold for a' that.
If he painted, as the writer of the Plays did, an insurrection of
the peasants, of his own class, he would have set forth their cause in
the most attractive light, instead of burlesquing them. Such a
genius as is revealed in the Plays, if he really came from the com-
mon people and was rilled with their spirit, would have prefigured
that great social revolution which broke out twenty years after his
death, and which brought a king's head to the block. We should
have had, on every page, passages breathing love of equality, of
liberty; and other passages of the mockery of the aristocracy that
would have burned like fire. He would have anticipated Pym.
Hampden and Milton.
A man of an ignorant, a low, a base mind may refuse to sym-
pathize with his own caste, because it is oppressed and down-
trodden, and put himself in posture of cringe and conciliation to
those whose whips descend upon his shoulders; but a really great
173
I74 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
and noble soul, a really broad and comprehensive mind, never would
dissociate himself from his brethren in the hour of their affliction.
No nobler soul, no broader mind ever existed than that revealed in
the Plays. Do the utterances of the writer of those Plays indicate
that he came of the common people ? Not at all.
I. The Writer of the Plays was an Aristocrat.
Appleton Morgan says:
He was a constitutional aristocrat who believed in the established order of
things, and wasted not a word of all his splendid eulogy upon any human right
not in his day already guaranteed by charters or by thrones.
Swinburne says-
With him the people once risen in revolt, for any just or unjust cause, is
always the mob, the unwashed rabble, the swinish multitude.1
And again:
For the drovers, who guide and misguide at will the turbulent flocks of their
mutinous cattle, his store of bitter words is inexhaustible; it is a treasure-house of
obloquy which can never be drained dry.2
Walt Whitman says:
Shakespeare is incarnated, uncompromising feudalism in literature.3
Richard Grant White says:
He always represents the laborer and the artisan in a degraded position, and
often makes his ignorance and his uncouthness the butt of ridicule.4
Dowden says:
Shakspere is not democratic. When the people are seen in masses in his Plays
they are nearly always shown as factious, fickle and irrational.5
Walter Bagehot says:
Shakespeare had two predominant feelings in his mind. First, the feeling of
loyalty to the ancient polity of this country, not because it was good, but because
it existed. The second peculiar tenet is a disbelief in the middle classes. We fear
he had no opinion of traders. You will generally find that when "a citizen" is
mentioned he does or says something absurd. . . . The author of Coriolanus never
believed in a mob, and did something towards preventing anybody else from doing so.
We turn to Bacon and we find that he entertained precisely the
same feelings.
Dean Church says:
Bacon had no sympathy with popular wants and claims; of popularity, of all
that was called popular, he had the deepest suspicion and dislike; the opinions and
1 Swinburne, Study of S/iak., p. 54. 3 Democratic Vistas, p. 81.
a Ibid., p. 54 4 White's Genius of Shak., p. 298.
*Shak. Mind and Art, p. 284.
THE POLITICS OF THE PLAYS. ,—
the judgment of average men he despised, as a thinker, a politician and a courtier;
the "malignity of the people" he thought great. " I do not love," he said, "the
word people." But he had a high idea of what was worthy of a king.
II. He Despised the Class to which Shakspere Belonged.
Shakespeare calls the laboring people:
Mechanic slaves.1
The fool multitude that choose by showr,
Not learning, more than the fond eye doth teach.2
The inundation of mistempered humor.'
The rude multitude.*
The multitude of hinds and peasants.5
The base vulgar. •
O base and obscure vulgar.7
Base peasants.8
A habitation giddy and unsure
Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.1
A sort of vagabonds, rascals and run-aways,
A scum of Bretagnes, and base lackey peasants."1
The blunt monster with uncounted heads.
The still discordant, wavering multitude.11
We shall see hereafter that nearly every one of the Shakespeare
Plays was written to inculcate some special moral argument; to
preach a lesson to the people that might advantage them. Coriolanus
seems to have been written to create a wall and barrier of public
opinion against that movement towards popular government which
not long after his death plunged England into a long and bloody civil
wrar. The whole argument of the play is the unfitness of a mob to
govern a state. Hence all through the play we find such expressions
as these:
The plebeian multitude. ,a
You common cry of curs.18
The mutable, rank-scented many.14
You are they
That made the air unwholesome, when you cast
Your stinking, greasy caps, in hooting at
Coriolanus' exile.15
^■Antony and Cleopatra, v, 2. 6 Loves Labor Lost, i, 2. n 2d Henry IV., Ind.
2 Merchant of Venice, ii, 9. ' Ibid., iv, 1. 12 Coriolanus, ii, 1.
3 King John, v, 1. B 2d Henry VI., iv, 8. 13 Ibid., iii, 3.
4 2d Henry VI. iii, 2. 9 2d Henry IV., i, 3. u Ibid., iv, 8.
5 Ibid., iv, 4. 10 Richard III., v, 3. 1S Coriolanus. iv, 6.
OF THE
*iVER8nry
\ or
I76 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
Again he alludes to the plebeians as "those measles" whose
contact would " tetter" him.
III. He Despises Tradesmen of All Kinds.
Hut this contempt of the writer of the Plays was not confined
to the mob. It extended to all trades-people. He says:
Let me have no lying; it becomes none but tradesmen.1
We turn to Bacon, and we find him referring to the common
people as a scum. The same word is used in Shakespeare. Bacon
speaks of
The vulgar, to whom nothing moderate is grateful.3
This is the same thought we find in Shakespeare :
What would you have, you curs,
That like nor peace nor war?3
Who deserves greatness,
Deserves your hate; and your affections are
A sick man's appetite, who desires most that
Which would increase his evil.4
Again Bacon says:
The ignorant and rude multitude.5
If fame be from the common people, it is commonly false and naught.6
This is very much the thought expressed in Shakespeare:
The fool multitude that choose by show,
Not learning, more than the fond eye doth teach.7
And also in
He's loved of the distracted multitude,
Who like not in their judgments, but their eyes.8
Bacon says:
For in all times, in the opinion of the multitude, witches and old women and
impostors have had a competition with physicians.9
And again he says:
The envious and malignant disposition of the vulgar, for when fortune's favor-
ites and great potentates come to ruin, then do the common people rejoice, setting,
as it were, a crown upon the head of revenge.10
1 Winter s Tale, iv, 3. 6 Essay Of Praise.
3 Wisdom 0/ the Ancients — Diomedes. ' Merchant of Venice, ii, 9.
3 Coriolanus, i, 1. * Hamlet, iv, 3.
4 Ibid., i, 1. 9 Advancement 0/ Learning, book ii.
6 Wisdom 0/ the A ncients. 10 Wisdom 0/ the A ncients — Nemesis.
THE POLITICS OF THE PLAYS. ,77
And again he says:
The nature of the vulgar, always swollen and malignant, still broaching new
scandals against superiors; . . . the same natural disposition of the people still
leaning to the viler sort, being impatient of peace and tranquillity.1
Says Shakespeare:
That like not peace nor war.'2
And Bacon says again:
He would, never endure that the base multitude should frustrate the authority
of Parliament.3
See how the same words are employed by both. Bacon says-
The base multitude.
Shakespeare says:
The rude multitude — the base vulgar.4
And the word malignant is a favorite with both. Shakespeare
says:
Thou liest, malignant thing !
Malignant death.5
A malignant and turbaned Turk.6
Bacon says:
The envious and malignant disposition.
The vulgar always swollen and malignant.
Shakespeare says:
The swollen surge.7
Such swollen and hot discourse.8
But it must be remembered that Bacon was brought up as an
aristocrat — connected by blood with the greatest men of the king-
dom; born in a royal palace, York Place; son of Elizabeth's Lord
Chancellor. And it must not be forgotten that the populace of
London of that day had but lately emerged from barbarism;
they were untaught in habits of self-government; worshiping the
court, sycophantic to everything above them; unlettered, rude,
and barbarous; and were, indeed, very different from the popu-
lace of the civilized world to-day. They doubtless deserved
much of the unlimited contempt which Bacon showered upon
them.
1 Wisdom of the Ancients. 4 Tempest, i, 2. 7 Tempest, ii, 1-
2 Coriolanus, i, 1. 5 Richard III., ii, a 8 Troilus and Cressiu^. .. 3.
3 History of Henry VII. « Othello, v, 2.
j78 FRANCIS HA COX THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
IV. Hk was \i the Same Time a Philanthropist.
But while the writer of the Plays feared the mob and despised
the trades-people, with the inborn contempt of an aristocrat, he had a
broad philanthropy which took in the whole human family, and his
heart went out with infinite pity to the wretched and the suffering.
Swinburne says:
In Lear we have evidence of a sympathy with the mass of social misery more
wide and deep and direct and bitter and tender than Shakespeare has shown else-
where. ... A poet of revolution he is not, as none of his country in that genera-
ation could have been ; but as surely as the author of Julius Ccesar has approved
himself in the best and highest sense of the word at least potentially a republican,
so surely has the author of King Lear avowed himself, in the only good and
rational sense of the word, a spiritual if not a political democrat and socialist.1
While Bacon's intellect would have revolted from such a hell-
dance of the furies as the French Reign of Terror, whose excesses
were not due to anything inherent in self-government, but to the
degeneration of mankind, caused by ages of royal despotism; and
while he abominated the acrid bigotry of the men of his own age,
with whom liberty meant the right to burn those who differed from
them: his sympathies were nevertheless upon the side of an orderly,
well-regulated, intelligent freedom, and strongly upon the side of
everything that would lift man out of his miseries.
Says Swinburne:
Brutus is the very noblest figure of a typical and ideal republican in all the
literature of the world. -
Bacon was ready to stand up against the whole power of Queen
Elizabeth, and, as a member of Parliament, defended the rights of
that great body, even to the detriment of his own fortunes; but he
did not believe, as he says in his History of Henry VII., that " the
base multitude should control Parliament " any more than the
Queen. And he gives us the same sentiment in Coriolanus. Men-
enius Agrippa, after telling the incensed Roman populace the fable
of The Belly and the Members, draws this moral:
The senators of Rome are this good belly,
And you the mutinous members. . . .
You shall find
No public benefit which you receive
But it proceeds, or comes, from them to you,
I nd no way from yourselves. 3
1 Swinburne, A Stwx of Shak., p. 175. > Ibid., p. 1 59. 3 Coriotanus, i, 1.
THE POLITICS OF THE PLAYS. 179
And he teaches us an immortal lesson in Troilus and Cressida;
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite:
And appetite, an universal wolf.
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last, eat up itself.
And in Hamlet he says:
By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken notice of it; the age is
grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier
that he galls his kibe.1
Here we have one of Bacon's premonitions of the coming tem-
pest which so soon broke over England; or, as he expresses it in
Richard III.:
Before the days of change, still it is so;
By a divine instinct, men's minds mistrust
Ensuing danger; as, by proof, we see
The water swell before a boisterous storm. ■
And again:
And in such indexes, although small pricks
To their subsequent volumes, there is seen
The baby figure of the giant mass
Of things to come at large.3
Here, then, was indeed a strange compound: — an aristocrat
that despised the mob and the work-people, but who, nevertheless,
loved liberty; who admired the free oligarchy of Rome, and hated
the plebeians who asked for the same liberty their masters en-
joyed; and who, while despising the populace, grieved over their
miseries and would have relieved them. We read in Lear:
Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel:
So may st thou shake the super jlux to them,
And show the heavens more just.
And again:
Heavens, deal so still !
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man,
That slaves your ordinance, that will not see
Because he does not feel, feel your power quickly; •
So distribution should undo excess.
And each man have enough.
And we turn to Bacon, and we find that through his whole life
the one great controlling thought which directed all his labors was
1 Hamlet, v, i. 2 Richard III., ii, 3. 3 Troilus and Cressida, i, 3.
180 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
a belief that God had created him to help his fellow-men U>
greater comfort and happiness.
He says:
Believing that 1 was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of
the commonwealth as a kind of common property, which, like the air and water,
belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best
served.*
Again he says:
This work, which is for the bettering of men's bread and wine, which are the
characters of temporal blessings and sacraments of eternal, I hope, by God's holy
providence, may be ripened by Caesar's star.2
Again he says:
The state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in mine
eyes: I have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart.3
And in one of his prayers he says:
To God the Father, God the Word, God the Holy Ghost, I address my most
humble and ardent prayers, that, mindful of the miseries of man, and of this pil-
grimage of life, of which the days are few and evil, they would open up yet new
sources of refreshment from the fountains of good for the alleviation of our
sorrows.*
He also says that any man who " kindleth a light in nature,"
by new thoughts or studies, " seems to me to be a propagator of
the empire of man over the universe, a defender of liberty, a con-
queror of necessities." 5
It would be indeed strange if two men in the same age should
hold precisely the same political views, with all these peculiar
shadings and modifications. It would be indeed strange if the
butcher's apprentice of Stratford should be filled with the most
aristocratic prejudices against the common people; if the "vassal
actor," who was legally a vagabond, and liable to the stocks and
to branding and imprisonment, unless he practiced his degraded
calling under the shadow of some nobleman's name, should bubble
over with contempt for the tradesmen who were socially his
superiors. And it would be still stranger if this butcher's appren-
tice, while cringing to a class he did not belong to, and insulting
the class he did belong to, would be so filled with pity for the
wretchedness of the many, that he was ready to advocate a redis-
1 Preface to The Interpretation of Nature. 4 The Masculine Birth of Time.
2 Letter to the King. 5 The Interpretation of Nature.
3 Prayer while Lord Chancellor.
THE POLITICS OF THE PLAYS. !8T
tribution of the goods of the world, so that each man might have
enough!
V. The Writer of the Plays Belonged, like Bacon, to the
Essex Faction.
But we go a step farther. While we find this complete identity
between the views of Bacon and the writer of the Plays as to the
generalities of political thought, we will see that they both belonged
to the same political faction in the state.
It is well known that Bacon was an adherent of the Essex party
and opposed to the party of his uncle Burleigh, who had suppressed
him all through the reign of Elizabeth. These two factions
divided the politics of the latter portion of Elizabeth's reign.
The first gathered to itself all the discontented elements of
the kingdom, the young men, the able, the adventurous, who flocked
to Essex as to the cave of Adullam. They were in favor of brilliant
courses, of wars, of adventures; as opposed to " the canker of a calm
world and a long peace," advocated by the great Lord Treasurer.
Bacon was undoubtedly for years the brains of this party.
The writer of the Plays belonged to this party also. He was a
member of the Lord Chamberlain's company of actors. The Lord
Chamberlain's theater represented the aristocratic side of public
questions; the Lord Admiral's company (Henslowe's) the plebeian
side: the one was patronized by the young bloods, the gallants; the
other by the tradesmen and 'prentices. It was a time when, in the
words of Simpson,
The civil and military elements were pleading for precedence at the national
bar: the one advocating age and wisdom in council and industry and obedience in
the nation; the other crying out for youthful counsel, a dashing policy, a military
organization and an offensive war. The one was the party of the Cecils, the other
that of the Earl of Essex. '
Riimelin argues that
Shakespeare wrote f or the jeunesse dore'e of the Elizabethan theater, and that he
already saw the Royalist and Roundhead parties in process of formation, and was
opposed to the Puritan bourgeoisie. Shakespeare was a pure Royalist, and an
adherent of the purest water to the court party and the nobles.
The relations of Shakespeare to Essex, as manifested in the
Plays, were as close as those of Bacon. Simpson says of the play
1 School of Sh a k.. vol. i, p. 155.
!82 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
of Sir Thomas Stuckley, which he believes to have been an early
work of Shakspere:
The play is a glorification of Stuckley as an idol of the military or Essex party,
to which Shakspere is known to have leant. . . . The character of Lord Sycophant,
contained therein, is a stinging satire on Essex ' (Shakspere's hero and patron) great
enemy, Lord Cobham.1
Speaking of the Plays which appeared at Shakspere's theater,
Simpson says:
When we regard them as a whole, those of the Lord Chamberlain's company
are characterized by common sense, moderation, naturalness, and the absence of
bombast, and by a great artistic liberty of form, of matter and of criticism; at the
same time they favor liberty in politics and toleration in religion, and are consist-
ently opposed to the Cecilian ideal in policy, while they as consistently favor that
school to which Essex is attached. 2
And it must not be forgotten that these striking admissions are
made by one who had not a doubt that Shakspere was Shake-
speare.
When we turn to the Plays we find a distinct attempt to glorify
Essex. Camden says:
About the end of March (1599) the Earl of Essex set forward for Ireland, and
was accompanied out of London with a fine appearance of nobility and gentry,
and the most cheerful huzzas of the common people.
Essex returned to London on the 28th of September of the
same year; and in the meantime appeared the play of Henry V.r
and in the chorus of the fifth act we have these words:
But now behold,
In the quick forge and working-house of thought,
How London doth pour out her citizens !
The mayor and all his brethren, in best sort —
Like to the senators of antique Rome,
With the plebeians swarming at their heels —
Go forth and fetch their conquering Caesar in:
As, by a lower but by loving likelihood,
Were now the general of our gracious empress,
(As in good time he may), from Ireland coming,
Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit
To welcome him ?
The play of 2d Henry IV. and that of Henry V. constitute a deifi-
cation of military greatness; and the representation of that splen-
did English victory, Agincourt — the Waterloo of the olden age —
was meant to fire the blood of the London audiences with admira-
1 School 0/ S/iak., vol. i, p. 10. 3Ibid., vol. i, p. 19.
THE TO LI TICS Of THE TLA VS.
83
tion for that spirit of military adventure of which Essex was the
type and representative.
Neither must it be forgotten that it was Southampton, the
bosom friend of Essex, who shared with him in his conspiracy to
seize the person of the Queen, and who nearly shared the block
with him, remaining in the Tower until after the death of Eliza-
beth. And it was to Southampton that Shakespeare dedicated
Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Bacon was the inti-
mate friend and correspondent of Southampton ; they were both
members of the law-school of Gray's Inn, and Shakespeare dedi-
cated his poems to him.
VI. The Writer of the Plays, like Bacon, Hated Coke.
If there was any one man whom, above all others, Bacon despised
and disliked it was that great but brutal lawyer, Coke. And in the
Plays we find a distinct reference to Coke:
Sir Toby. Go write it in a martial hand, be curst and brief; . . . taunt him
with the license of ink: if thou thou st him some thrice it shall not be amiss. . . .
Let there be gall enough in thy ink though thou write with a goose pen, no matter.1
Theobald and Knight, and all the other commentators, agree
that this is an allusion to Coke's virulent speech against Sir Walter
Raleigh, on the trial for treason. The Attorney-General exclaimed
to Sir Walter:
All he did was by thy instigation, thou viper; for I thou thee, thou traitor.
Here is the thou thrice used. Theobald says it shows Shake-
speare's "detestation of Coke."
Let us pass to another consideration.
VII. The Writer of the Plays, like Bacon, Disliked Lord
Cobham.
Lord Cobham was one of the chief enemies of Essex. Spedding
says:
About the same time another quarrel arose upon the appointment of the ward-
enship of the Cinque Ports, vacant by the death of Lord Cobham, whose eldest
son, an enemy of the Earl, was one of the competitors. Essex wished Sir Robert
Sydney to have the place, but, finding the Queen resolute in favor of the new Lord
Cobham, and " seeing he is likely to carry it away, I mean (said the Earl) resolutely
to stand for it myself against him. . . . My Lord Treasurer is come to court, and
»
1 Twelfth Xight, iii, 1.
!84 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
we sat in council this afternoon in his chamber. I made it known unto them
that I had just cause to hate the Lord Cobham, for his villainous dealing and abus-
ing of me; that he hath been my chief persecutor most unjustly; that in him there
is no worth." '
This was in the year 1597.
And when we turn to the Plays we find that the writer sought
to cover the family of Lord Cobham with disgrace and ridicule.
Halliwell-Phillipps says:
The first part of Henry IV., the appearance of which on the stage may be con-
fidently assigned to the spring of the year 1397, was followed immediately, or a few
months afterward, by the composition of the second part. It is recorded that both
these plays were very favorably received by Elizabeth; the Queen especially relish-
ing the character of Falstaff, and they were most probably amongst the dramas
represented before that sovereign in the Christmas holidays of 1597-8. At this
time, or then very recently, the renowned hero of the Boar's Head Tavern had
been introduced as Sir John Oldcastle, but the Queen ordered Shakespeare to alter
the name of the character. This step was taken in consequence of the representa-
tions of some member or members of the Cobham family, who had taken offense at
their illustrious ancestor, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, the Protestant martyr,
being disparagingly introduced on the stage; and, accordingly, in or before the Feb-
ruary of the following year, Falstaff took the place of Oldcastle, the former being
probably one of the few names invented by Shakespeare. . . . The subject, how-
ever, was viewed by the Cobhams in a very serious light. This is clearly shown,
not merely by the action taken by the Queen, but by the anxiety exhibited by
Shakespeare, in the Epilogue to the second part, to place the matter beyond all
doubt, by the explicit declaration that there was in Falstaff no kind of association,
satirical or otherwise, with the martyr Oldcastle.2
The language of the Epilogue is:
One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat,
our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you
merry with fair Katharine of France, where, for anything I know, Falstaff shall
die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle
died a martyr, and this is not the man.
And yet, there seems to have been a purpose, despite this
retraction, to affix the stigma of Falstaff's disreputable career to
the ancestor of the Cobham family; for in the first part of Henry
IV. we find this expression:
Falstaff. Thou say'st true, lad. And is not my hostess of the tavern a most
sweet wench?
Prince Henry. As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the Castle.3
Says Knight, as a foot-note upon this sentence:
The passage in the text has given rise to the notion that Sir John Oldcastle
was pointed at in the character of Falstaff.
1 Letters and Life, vol. ii, p. 48. 2 Outlines Life 0/ Shak., p. 98. 3 Act ii, scene 2.
THE POLITICS OF THE PLAYS.
185
Oldvs remarks:
Upon whom does the horsing of a dead corpse on Falstaff's back reflect?
Whose honor suffers, in his being forced, by the unexpected surprise of his armed
plunderers, to surrender his treasure? Whose policy is impeached by his creeping
into a bucking basket to avoid the storms of a jealous husband?
Fuller says, in his Church History:
Stage-poets have themselves been very bold with, and others very merry at,
the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, whom they have fancied a boon companion,
a jovial royster, and a coward to boot. The best is, Sir John Falstaff hath
relieved the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, and of late is substituted buffoon
in his place.
It seems to me, there can be no doubt that the author of the
Plays disliked the Cobham family, and sought to degrade them, by-
bringing their ancestor on the stage, in the guise of a disreputable,
thieving, cowardly old rascal, who is thumped, beaten and cast
into the Thames "like a litter of blind puppies." And even when
compelled by the Queen to change the name of the character, the
writer of the Plays puts into the mouth of Prince Hal the expres-
sion, "My old lad of the castle," to intimate to the multitude that
Falstaff was still, despite his change of name, Sir John Oldcastle,
the ancestor of the enemy of Bacon's great friend and patron, the
Earl of Essex.
VIII. The Writer of the Plays was Hostile to Queen
Elizabeth.
Let us turn to another point.
We have seen that the writer of the Plays was, by his family
traditions and alliances, and his political surroundings, a Protest-
ant. Being such, it would follow that he would be an admirer
of Elizabeth, the representative and bulwark of Protestantism in
England and on the continent. But we find that, for some
reason, this Protestant did not love Elizabeth; and although he
sugars her over with compliments in Henry VIII., just as Bacon
did in his letters, and probably in his sonnets, yet there was
beneath this fair show of flattery a purpose to deal her most
deadly blows.
If the divorce of Henry VIII. was based on vicious and adulter-
ous motives, the marriage of the King with Anne Boleyn was dis-
creditable, to say the least. And remembering this we find that
,86 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
the play represents Anne as a frivolous person to whom the King
was drawn by his passions.
We read:
Suffolk. How is the King employed ?
Chamberlain. I left him private,
Full of sad thoughts and troubles.
Norfolk. What's the cause ?
Chamberlain. It seems, the marriage with his brother's wife
Has crept too near his conscience.
Suffolk. No, his conscience
Has crept too near another lady.
Norfolk. Tis so;
This is the Cardinal's doing.1
Birch says:
The scene between the Old Lady and Anne Boleyn seems introduced to make
people laugh at the hypocrisy and Protestant conscience of Anne, mixed up with
the indecency abjured in the prologue.2
The Old Lady says:
And so would you
For all this spice of your hypocrisy:
You that have so fair parts of woman on you,
Have too a woman's heart; which ever yet
Affected eminence, wealth, sovereignty;
Which, to say sooth, are blessings; and which gifts,
(Saving your mincing), the capacity
Of your soft cheveril conscience would receive
If you might please to stretch it.3
Knight argues that the play could not have been produced dur-
ing the reign of Elizabeth. He says:
The memory of Henry VIII., perhaps, was not cherished by her with any deep
affection; but would she, who in her dying hour is reported to have said, "My
seat has been the seat of kings," allow the frailties, and even the peculiarities of her
father, to be made a public spectacle? Would she have borne that his passion for
her mother should have been put forward in the strongest way by the poet — that
is, in the sequence of the dramatic action — as the impelling motive for the divorce
from Katharine? Would she have endured that her father . . . should be repre-
sented in the depth of his hypocrisy gloating over his projected divorce with —
But conscience, conscience, —
Oh! 'tis a tender place, and I must leave her?
Would she have been pleased with the jests of the Old Lady to Anne, upon her
approaching elevation — her title — her "thousand pound a year" — and all to be
instantly succeeded by the trial-scene — that magnificent exhibition of the purity,
the constancy, the fortitude, the grandeur of soul, the self-possession of the "most
poor woman and a stranger" that her mother had supplanted ?
' Act ii, scene 2. 3 Philosophy and Religion 0/ Shah., p. 346. * Henry I 7/7., ii, 3.
THE POLITICS OF THE PLA VS.
187
Nothing could be grander than the light in which Katharine is
set. Henry himself says:
Thou art, alone,
(If thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness,
Thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government —
Obeying in commanding — and thy parts
Sovereign and pious else, could speak thee out),
The queen of earthly queens.1
Anne is made to say of her:
Here's the pang that pinches.
His highness having lived so long with her; and she
So good a lady, that no tongue could ever
Pronounce dishonor of her — by my life
She never knew harm-doing . . . after this process
To give her the avaunt ! it is a pity
Would move a monster?
And then we have that scene, declared by Dr. Johnson to
be the grandest Shakespeare ever wrote, in which angels come
upon the stage, and, in the midst of heavenly music, crown
Katharine with a garland of saintship, the angelic visitors bow-
ing to her:
Katharine. Saw you not, even now, a blessed troupe
Invite me to a banquet, whose bright faces
Cast thousand beams upon me like the sun ?
They promised me eternal happiness,
And brought me garlands, Griffith, which I feel
I am not worthy yet to wear; I shall
Assuredly.3
In the epilogue Shakespeare says:
I fear
All the expected good we're like to hear
For this play at this time, is only in
The merciful construction of good women,
For such a one we showed them.
Upon this Birch says:
This was honest in Shakespeare. He did not put the success of the play upon
the flattery of the great or of Protestant prejudices, but upon the exhibition of one
good woman, of the opposite party, a Roman Catholic, a Spaniard, and the
mother of bloody Mary.
In fact, Shakespeare, strange to say, introduces into the play
high praise of this same " bloody Mary," long after she was dead
and her sect powerless. He puts it in the mouth of Queen Kath-
1 Henry VIII.. ii, 4. 2 Ibid., ii, 3. :I Act iv, scene 2.
i88 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PE4YS.
arine, who, telling Capucius the contents of her last letter to the
King, says:
In which I have commended to his goodness
The model of our chaste loves, his young daughter:
The dews of heaven fall thick in blessings on her !
Beseeching him to give her virtuous breeding;
(She is young and of a noble, modest nature;
I hope she will deserve well); and a little
To love her for her mother's sake, that loved him
Heaven knows how dearly.
The words of praise of Mary are not found in the letter which
Katharine actually sent to the King: they are an interpolation of the
poet !
If Henry put away his true wife, not for any real scruples of
conscience, but simply from an unbridled, lustful desire to possess
the young and beautiful but frivolous Anne; and if to reach this end
he overrode the limitations of the church to which he belonged,
then, indeed, Elizabeth was little more than the bastard which her
enemies gave her out. A play written to make a saint of Katharine,
and a sensual brute of Henry, could certainly bring only shame
and disgrace to Anne and her daughter.
What motive could the man of Stratford have to thus contrive
debasement for Elizabeth's memory? Why should he follow her
beyond the grave for revenge ? What wrongs had she inflicted on
him? He came to London a poor outcast; during her reign he
had risen to wealth and respectability. If tradition is to be
believed, she had noticed and honored him. What grievance
could he carry away with him to Stratford ? Why should it be
noticed by contemporaries that when Elizabeth died the muse of
Shakespeare breathed not one mournful note of divine praise over
her tomb ? Chettle, in his England's Mourning Garment, thus re-
proaches Shakespeare that his verse had not bewailed his own and
England's loss:
Nor doth the silver-tongued Melicert
Drop from his honied muse one sable tear,
To mourn her death that graced his desert,
And to his lines opened her royal eare.
Shepherd, remember our Elizabeth,
And sing her rape, done by the Tarquin, Death.
But as soon as the Tarquin Death had taken Elizabeth, Shake-
speare proceeded to show that she was conceived in lust and born
THE POLITICS OF THE PLA VS.
89
in injustice; that her father was a powerful and hypocritical brute;
her mother an ambitious worldling; and that the woman she had
supplanted was a saint, who passed, upon the wings of cherishing
angels, directly to the portals of eternal bliss.
And it will be noted that, although Bacon wrote an essay called
The Felicities of Queen Elizabeth, it was rather, as its name implies,
a description of the happy circumstances that conjoined to make
her reign great and prosperous, than a eulogy of her character as
admirable or beautiful. He mentions the fact that she
Was very willing to be courted, wooed and to have sonnets made in her com-
mendation, and that she continued this longer than was decent for her years.
And he says, in anticipation of such a criticism as I make:
Now, if any man shall allege that against me, which was once said to Caesar,,
"we see what we may admire, but we would fain see what we could commend;"
certainly, for my part, I hold true admiration to be the highest degree of com-
mendation.
But he did not commend her.
And if we turn to the career of Bacon, we shall find that he had
ample cause to hate Elizabeth.
Macaulay says:
To her it was owing that, while younger men, not superior to him in extrac-
tion, and far inferior to him in every kind of personal merit, were filling the high-
est offices of the state, adding manor to manor, rearing palace after palace, he was
lying at a sponging-house for a debt of three hundred pounds '
So long as Elizabeth lived, Bacon was systematically repressed
and kept in the most pitiful poverty. The base old woman, know-
ing his condition, would see him embarrass himself still further
with costly gifts, given her on her birthdays, and rewarded him
with empty honors that could not keep bread in his mouth, or the
constable from his door. Beneath the poor man's placid exterior
of philosophical self-control, there was a very volcano of wrath and
hate ready to burst forth.
Dean Church says:
But she still refused him promotion. He was without an official position in
the Queen's service, and he never was allowed to have it.2
And again:
Burleigh had been strangely niggardly in what he did to help his brilliant
nephew But it is plain that he [his son] early made up his mind to keep
1 Macaulay1 s Essays, Bacon, p. 254. 2 Bacon, p. 52.
,9o FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
Bacon in the background. . . . Nothing can account for Bacon's strange
failure for so long a time to reach his due place in the public service, but the secret
hostility, whatever may be the cause, of Cecil.1
This adverse influence kept Bacon in poverty and out of place
as long as Cecil lived, which was for some years after the death of
Elizabeth. Bacon writes to the King upon Cecil's death a letter,
of which Dean Church says:
Bacon was in a bitter mood, and the letter reveals, for the first time, what was
really in Bacon's heart about "the great subject and great servant," of whom he
had just written so respectfully, and with whom he had been so closely connected
for most of his life. The fierceness which had been gathering for years of neglect
and hindrance, under that placid and patient exterior, broke out.2
How savagely does Bacon's pent-up wrath burst from him when
writing to King James about his cousin's death:
I protest to God, though I be not superstitious, when I saw your Majesty's
book against Vorstius and Arminius, and noted your zeal to deliver the majesty of
God from the vain and indign comprehensions of heresy and degenerate philos-
ophy, as you had by your pen formerly endeavored to deliver kings from the
usurpations of Rome, perculsit illico anitnum that God would set shortly upon you
some visible favor, and let me not live if I thought not of the taking away of that
man.z
The Cecils ruled Elizabeth, and we may judge from this
passionate outburst how deeply and bitterly, for many years,
Bacon hated the Virgin Queen and her advisers; how much more
bitterly and deeply because his wretched poverty had constrained
him to cringe and fawn upon the objects of his contempt
and wrath. He expressed his own inmost feelings when he put
into the mouth of Hamlet as the strongest of provocations to
suicide:
The law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes.
How bitterly does he break forth in Lear :
Behold the great image of authority ! A dogs obeyed in office !
And again, in Measure for Measure .«
Man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
. . . Like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep.
1 Ibid., p. 59. 2 Ibid., p. 90. » Letter to the King, 1612.
Of THE
VN/YERSJTy
]FQ**\h*S THE POLITICS OF THE PLAYS.
191
And we seem to hear the cry of his own long disappointed heart
in the words of Wolsey:
O, how wretched
Is that poor man, that hangs on princes' favors!
There is, between that smile he would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have.
And Hamlet, his alter ego, expresses the self-loathing with which
he contemplated the abasements of genius to power:
No; let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,
Where thrift may follow fawning.
These words never came from the smooth surface of a prosper-
ous life: they were the bitter outgrowth of a turbulent and suffering
heart. When you would find words that sting like adders — exple-
tives of immortal wrath and hate — you must seek them in the
depths of an outraged soul.
What was there in the life of the Stratford man to justify such
expressions ? He had his bogus coat-of-arms to make him respect-
able; he owned the great house of Stratford, and could brew beer
in it, and sue his neighbors, to his heart's content. He fled away
from the ambitions of the court to the odorous muck-heaps and
the pyramidal dung-hills of Stratford; and if any grief settled upon
his soul he could (as tradition tells us) get drunk for three days at
a time to assuage it.
IX. Richard III. Represented Robert Cecil.
There is another very significant fact.
The arch-enemy of Bacon and of Essex was Sir Robert Cecil,
Bacon's first cousin, the child of his mother's sister. He was the
chief means of eventually bringing Essex' head to the block. We
have just seen how intensely Bacon hated him, and with what good
reason.
He was a man of extraordinary mental power, derived, in part,
from the same stock (the stock of Sir Anthony Cook, tutor to King
Edward IV.) from which Bacon had inherited much of his ability.
But, in his case, the blood of Sir Anthony had been crossed by the
shrewd, cunning, foxy, cold-blooded, selfish, persistent stock of his
father, Sir William Burleigh, Elizabeth's Lord Treasurer; and
,92 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
hence, instead of a great poet and philosopher, as in Bacon's case,
the outcome was a statesman and courtier of extraordinary keen-
ness and ability, and a very sleuth-hound of dissembling persist-
ency and cunning.
He had the upper hand of Bacon, and he kept it. He sat on his
neck as long as he lived. Even after the death of Elizabeth and
the coming-in of the new King, he held that mighty genius in the
mire. He seemed to have possessed some secret concerning Bacon,
discreditable to him, which he imparted to King James, and this
hindered his advancement after the death of the Queen, notwith-
standing the fact that Bacon had belonged to the faction which,
prior to Elizabeth's death, was in favor of James as her successor.
This is intimated by Dean Church; he says:
Cecil had, indeed, but little claim on Bacon's gratitude; he had spoken him fair
in public, and no doubt in secret distrusted and thwarted him. But to the last Bacon
did not choose to acknowledge this. Had James disclosed something of his dead servant
[Cecil], who left some strange secrets behind him, which showed his hostility to Bacon ? l
Was it for this that Bacon rejoiced over his death? Was the
secret an intimation to King James that Bacon was the real author
of the Plays that went about in the name of Shakespeare ? What-
ever it was, there was something potent enough to suppress Bacon
and hold him down, even for some time after Cecil's death.
Dean Church says:
He was still kept out of the inner circle of the council, but from the moment
of Salisbury's [Cecil's] death, he became a much more important person. He still
sued for advancement, and still met with disappointment; the "mean men" still
rose above him. . . . But Bacon's hand and counsel appear more and more in
important matters.2
Now it is known that Cecil was a man of infirm health, and
that he was a hump-back.
We turn to the Shakespeare Plays, and we ask: What is the
most awful character, the most absolutely repulsive and detestable
character, the character without a single redeeming, or beautify-
ing, or humanizing trait, in all the range of the Plays ? And the
answer is: The crook-backed monster, Richard III.
Richard III. was a satire on Bacon s cousin^ Robert Cecil.
To make the character more dreadful, the poet has drawn it in
colors even darker than historical truth would justify.
1 Bacon, p. 02. 2 Ibid., p. 93.
THE POLITICS OF THE TLA VS. , 93
Like Cecil, Richard is able, shrewd, masterful, unscrupulous,
ambitious; determined, rightly or wrongly, to rule the kingdom.
Like Cecil, he can crawl and cringe and dissemble, when it is neces-
sary, and rule with a rod of iron when he possesses the power.
Here we have a portrait of Cecil.
Sir Robert Cecil.
Was the expression of that face in Bacon's mind when he wrote
those lines, which I have just quoted ?
Man, proud man,
I) rest in a little brief authority,
. . . like an angry ape.
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep.
The expression of Cecil's countenance is, to my mind, actually
ape-like.
The man who has about him any personal deformity never ceases
to be conscious of it. Byron could not forget his club-foot. What a
terrible revenge it was when Bacon, under the disguise of the irre-
sponsible play-actor, Shakspere, set on the boards of the Curtain The-
ater the all-powerful courtier and minister, Sir Robert Cecil, in the
character of that other hump-back, the bloody and loathsome Duke
of Gloster? How the adherents of Essex must have whispered it
among the multitude, as the crippled Duke, with his hump upon his
1 94
FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
shoulder, came upon the stage — "That's Cecil!" And how they
must have applied Richard's words of self-description to another?
I that am curtailed of this fair proportion.
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature.
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them —
Why I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,
And descant on mine own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair, well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain,
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
And these last lines express the very thought with which Bacon
opens his essay On Deformity.
Deformed persons are commonly even with nature; for as nature hath done ill
by them, so do they by nature, being for the most part (as the Scripture saith) " void
of natural affection; " and so they*have their revenge of nature.
And we seem to see the finger of Bacon pointing toward his
cousin, in these words:
Whoever hath any thing fixed in his person that doth induce contempt, hath
also a perpetual spur in himself to rescue and deliver himself from scorn; therefore
all deformed persons are extreme bold, first, as in their own defense, as being
exposed to scorn, but in process of time by a general habit. Also it stirreth in
them industry, and especially of this kind, to watch and observe the weaknesses of
others, that they may have somewhat to repay. Again, in their superiors it
quencheth jealousy towards them, as persons that they think they may at pleasure
despise; and it layeth their competitors and emulators asleep, as never believing
they should be in possibility of advancement till they see them in possession, so
that upon the matter, in a great wit, deformity is an advantage to rising,
Speaking of the death of Cecil, Hepworth Dixon says:
And when Cecil passes to his rest, a new edition of the Essays, under cover of
a treatise on Deformity, paints in true and bold lines, but without one harsh touch,
the genius of the man. . . . Every one knows the portrait; yet no one can pro-
nounce this picture of a small, shrewd man of the world, a clerk in soul, without
a spark of fire, a dart of generosity in his nature, unfair or even unkind,1
One can conceive how bitterly the dissembling, self-controlled
Cecil must have writhed under the knowledge that the Essex party,
in the Essex theater, occupied by the Essex company of actors, and
filled daily with the adherents of Essex, had placed him on the
1 Personal History of Lord Baron, pp. 193, 204.
THE POLITICS OF THE PLAYS.
*95
boards, with all his deformity upon his back, and made him the object
of the ribald laughter of the swarming multitude, "the scum" of
London. As we will find hereafter Queen Elizabeth saying, " Know
ye not I am Richard the Second?" so we may conceive Cecil say-
ing to the Queen: "Know ye not that I am Richard the Third?"
And if he knew, or shrewdly suspected, that his cousin, Francis
Bacon, was the real author of the Plays, and the man who had so
terribly mocked his physical defects, we can understand why he
used all his powers, as long as he lived, to hold him down; and, as
Church suspects, even blackened him in the King's esteem, so that his
revenge might transcend the limits of his own frail life. And we can
understand the exultation of Bacon when, at last, death loosened
from his throat the fangs of his powerful and unforgiving adversary.
In conclusion and recapitulation I would say that I find the
political identities between Bacon and the writer of the Plays to be
as follows:
Both were aristocrats.
Both despised the mob.
Both contemned tradesmen.
Both loved liberty.
Both loved feudalism.
Both pitied the miseries of the people.
Both desired the welfare of the people.
Both foresaw and dreaded an uprising of the lower classes.
Both belonged to the military party.
Both hated Lord Cobham.
Both were adherents of Essex.
Both tried to popularize Essex.
Both were friends of Southampton.
Both hated Coke.
Both, although Protestant, had some strong antipathy against
Queen Elizabeth.
Both refused to eulogize her character after death.
Both, though aristocratic, were out of power and bitter against
those in authority.
Both hated Robert Cecil.
Surely, surely, we are getting the two heads under one hat —
and that the hat of the great philosopher of Verulam.
CHAPTER V.
THE RELIGION OE THE PLA VS.
I sometimes do believe, and sometimes do not.
A s You Like It, v, 4,
THE religious world of Elizabeth was divided into two great
and antagonistic sects: Catholics and Protestants; and the
latter were, in turn, separated into the followers of the state relig-
ion and various forms of dissent.
Religion in that day was an earnest, palpable reality: society
was set against itself in hostile classes; politics, place, government,
legislation — all hinged upon religion. In this age of doubt and
indifference, we can hardly realize the feelings of a people to whom:
the next world was as real as this world, and who were ready to die
agonizing deaths, in the flames of Smithfield, for their convictions
upon questions of theology.
We are told that William Shakspere of Stratford died a Catholic.
We have this upon the authority of Rev. Mr. Davies, who says, writ-
ing after 1688, " he died a Papist." Upon the question of the politics
of a great man, the leader of either one of the political parties of his
neighborhood is likely to be well informed; it is in the line of his
interests and thoughts. Upon the question of the religion of the one
great man of Stratford, we may trust the testimony of the clergyman
of the parish. He could hardly be mistaken. There Can be little
doubt that William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon died a Catholic.
But of what religion was the man who wrote the Plays ?
This question has provoked very considerable discussion. He
has been claimed alike by Protestants and Catholics.
To my mind it is very clear that the writer of the Plays was a
Protestant. And this is the view of Dowden. He says:
Shakespeare has been proved to belong to each communion to the satisfaction of
contending theological zealots. . . . But, tolerant as his spirit is, it is certain that
the spirit of Protestantism animates and breathes through his writings.1
What are the proofs ?
1 Dowden, Shah. Mind and Art, p. 33.
196
THE RELIGION OE I'HE PLA VS. I97
I. He is Opposed to the Papal Supremacy.
The play of King John turns largely upon the question of patri-
otic resistance to the temporal power of the Pope; and this is not
a necessary incident of the events of the time, for the poet, to point
his moral, antedates the great quarrel between John and the Pope
by six years.
He represents King John, upon Ascension Day, yielding up his
crown to Pandulph, the Pope's legate, and receiving it back, with
these words:
Take again
From this, my hand, as holding of the Pope,
Your sovereign greatness and authority.1
In scene 3 of act iii, he makes Pandulph demand of the King
why he keeps Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, out of
his see; and King John replies:
What earthly name to interrogatories
Can task the free breath of a sacred king?
Thou canst not, Cardinal, devise a name
So slight, unworthy and ridiculous,
To charge me to an answer, as the Pope.
Tell him this tale; and from the mouth of England
Add this much more: That no Italian priest
Shall tithe or toll in our dominions;
But as we under heaven are supreme head,
So under him, that great supremacy,
Where we do reign, we will alone uphold,
Without the assistance of a mortal hand:
So tell the Pope; all reverence set apart,
To him and his usurped authority.
King Philip. Brother of England, you blaspheme in this.
King John. Though you, and all the kings of Christendom,
Are led so grossly by this meddling priest,
Dreading the curse that money may buy out;
And, by the merit of vile gold, dross, dust,
Purchase corrupted pardon of a man,
Who, in that sale,' sells pardon from himself;
Though you, and all the rest, so grossly led,
This juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish;
Yet I, alone, alone do me oppose,
Against the Pope, and count his friends my foes.
It is scarcely to be believed that a Catholic could have written
-these lines.
1
1 King John, v, i.
,98 FRANCIS, BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
And it must be remembered that King John is depicted in the
play as a most despicable creature; and his eventual submission of
the liberties of the crown and the country, to the domination of a
foreign power, is represented as one of the chief ingredients in
making up his shameful character.
It is needless to say that Bacon had very strong views upon this
question of the Pope's sovereignty over England. He says in the
Charge against Talbot :
Nay all princes of both religions, for it is a common cause, do stand, at this
day [in peril], by the spreading and enforcing of this furious and pernicious opinion
of the Pope's temporal power.
II. He Honored and Respected Cranmer.
But it is in the play of Henry VIII. that the religious leanings
of the writer are most clearly manifested.
It is to be remembered that it was in this reign that Protestant-
ism was established in England, and the man who above all others
was instrumental in bringing about the great change was Thomas
Cranmer, the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury. He,
above all other men, was hated by the Catholics. He it was who
had sanctioned the divorce of Henry from Katharine; he it was who
had delivered the crown to Anne upon the coronation; he had sup-
ported the suppression of the monasteries; he had persecuted the
Catholic prelates and people, sending numbers to the stake; and
when the Catholics returned to power, under Mary, one of the first
acts of the government was to burn him alive opposite Baliol Col-
lege. It is impossible that a Catholic writer of the next reign could
have gone out of his way to defend and praise Cranmer, to repre-
sent him as a good and holy man, and even as an inspired prophet.
And yet all this we find in the play of Henry VIII. ; the play is, in
fact, in large part, an apotheosis of Cranmer.
In act fifth we find the King sending for him. He assures hin.
that he is his friend, but that grave charges have been made against
him, and that he must go before the council for trial, and he gives
him his ring, to be used in an appeal, in case the council find him
guilty. The King says:
Look, the good man weeps !
He's honest on mine honor. God's blest mother!
I swear he is true-hearted; and a soul
None better in my kingdom.
THE RELIGION OF THE PLA VS. , q()
The council proceed to place Cranmer under arrest, with intent
to send him to the Tower, when he exhibits the King's ring and
makes his appeal. The King enters frowning, rebukes the perse-
cutors of Cranmer, and says to him:
Good man, sit down. Now let me see the proudest,
He that dares most, but wag his finger at thee. . . .
Was it discretion, lords, to let this man,
This good man (few of you deserve that title),
This honest man, wait like a lousy foot-boy
At chamber-door? . . .
Well, well, my lords, respect him.
Take him and use him well, he's worthy of it.
I will say thus much for him, if a prince
May be beholden to a subject, I
Am, for his love and service, so to him.
All this has no necessary coherence with the plot of the play,
but is dragged in to the filling up of two scenes.
And, in the last scene of the play, Cranmer baptizes the Princess
Elizabeth, and is inspired by Heaven to prophesy:
Let me speak, sir,
For Heaven now bids me.
And he proceeds to foretell her future long life and greatness.
He says:
In her days, every man shall eat in safety,
Under his own vine, what he plants; and sing
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbors;
God shall be truly known.
It is not conceivable that one who was a Catholic, who regarded
with disapproval the establishment of the new religion, and who
looked upon Cranmer as an arch-heretic, worthy of the stake and
of hell, could have written such scenes, when there was nothing in
the plot of the play itself which required it.
The passages in the play which relate to Cranmer are drawn
from Fox's Book of Martyrs, and the prose version is followed
almost literally in the drama; but, strange to say, there is in the
historical work no place wherein the King speaks of Cranmer as a
"good " man. All this is interpolated by the dramatist. We have in
the play:
Good man, sit down.
This good man.
This honest man.
Good man, those joyful tears show thy true heart. Etc.
200 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
There is not in Fox's narrative one word of indorsement, by
the King, of Cranmer's goodness or honesty.
A Catholic writing a play based on Protestant histories might
have followed the text, even against his own prejudices, but it is
not to be believed that he would alter the text, and inject words of
compliment of a man who held the relations to the Catholics of
England that Cranmer did.
We cannot help but believe that the man who did this was a
Protestant, educated to believe that the Reformation was right
and necessary, and that Cranmer was a good and holy man, the
inspired instrument of Heaven in a great work.
The family of Bacon was Protestant. They rose out of the
ranks, on the wave of the Reformation. His father was an officer
of Henry VIII.; his grandfather was tutor to the Protestant King
Edward. During the reign of Mary, the Bacons lived in retire-
ment; they conformed to the Catholic Church and heard mass
daily; but, upon the coming in of Elizabeth, they emerged from
their hiding-place, and Bacon's father and uncle, Burleigh, were at
the head of the Protestant party of England during the rest of
their lives. All the traditions of the family clustered around the
Reformation. They faithfully believed that "God was truly
known " in the religion of Elizabeth, and they were as violently
opposed to the Papal supremacy as King John or the Bastard.
It is a curious fact that Bacon alludes, in his prose works, to
the reign of Elizabeth, in words very similar to those placed in the
mouth of Cranmer. He says:
This part of the island never had forty-five years of better times. . . . For if
there be considered of the one side the truth of religion established, the constant
peace and security, the good administration of justice, etc.1
III. The Writer of the Plays was Tolerant of Catholicity.
But how does it come to pass that in the face of such evidence
it has been claimed that the writer of the Plays was a Catholic ?
Because, in an age of violent religious hatreds, when the Cath-
olics were helpless, suspected and persecuted, the author of the
Plays never uttered a word, however pleasing it might be to the
court and the time-serving multitude, to fan the flame of animosity
1 Advancement of ' J, earning, book i.
THE RELIGION OE THE PLA VS. 201
against the Catholics. On the other hand, whenever a Catholic
priest is introduced on the scene, he is represented as honest,
benevolent and venerable.
"His friars," says one of his commentators, "are all wise, holy
and in every respect estimable men. Instance Friar Lawrence, in
Romeo and Juliet, and the friar in Much Ado About Nothing."
When we turn to the writings of Bacon, we find the same
broad spirit of religious liberality, as contradistinguished from the
bigotry of the age.
Bacon's mind was too great to be illiberal. Bigotry is a burst
of strong light, through the crevice of a narrow mind, lighting only
<me face of its object and throwing all the rest into hideous and
grotesque shadows. Bacon's mind, like the sun in the tropics,
illuminated all sides of the object upon which it shone, with a
comprehensive and vivifying light.
Macaulay says of him:
In what he wrote on church government, he showed, as far as he dared, a tol-
erant and charitable spirit. . . . He was in power at the time of the Synod of
Dort, and must for months have been deafened with talk about election, reproba-
tion and final perseverance. Yet we do not remember a line in his works from
which it can be inferred that he was either a Calvinist or an Armenian.1
Speaking of Shakespeare, White says:
Nowhere does he show leaning toward any form of church government, or
toward any theological tenet or dogma. No church can claim him.2
Bacon looked with pity upon the differences that distracted the
religious world of his time. He says, speaking of a conspiracy
against the crown, organized by Catholics:
Thirdly, the great calamity it bringeth upon Papists themselves, of which the
more moderate sort, as men misled, are to be pitied.
Again he says:
A man that is of judgment and understanding shall sometimes hear ignorant
men differ, and know well within himself that those which so differ mean one
thing, and yet they themselves would never agree. And if it came to pass in that
distance of judgment which is between man and man, shall we not think that
God above, that knows the heart, doth not discern that frail men, in some of their
contradictions, intend the same thing, and accepteth of both.3
He turned with abhorrence from the burnings of men for con-
science' sake. He said:
1 Essays, Bacon, p. 280. 2 Life and Genius 0/ S/tak., p. 188. 3 Essay Of Unity in Religion.
202 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
We may not take up the third sword, which is Mahomet's sword, or like unto
it, that is, to propagate religion by wars, or by sanguinary persecutions to force con-
sciences: . . . much less to authorize conspiracies and rebellions; to put the sword
into the people's hands, and the like, tending to the subversion of all government.1
And we find the same sentiment in Shakespeare:
It is an heretic that makes the fire,
Not she which burns in it.2
IV. The Writer of the Plays Disliked the Puritans.
In both writers we find a profound dislike of the Puritans.
"Shakespeare," says one of his commentators, " never omits an
opportunity of ridiculing the Puritan sect."
He says:
There is but one Puritan among them, and he sings songs to hornpipe :;
Sir Andrew Aguecheek says:
I would as lief be a Brownist as a politician.4
And again:
Though honesty be no Puritan, yet it will do no hurt.''
The mocking Falstaff tells the Chief Justice that he lost his
voice " singing of anthems."
Says one commentator:
In the introduction of Sir Oliver Mar-text our poet indulges in a sly hit against
the Puritan and itinerant ministers, whom he appears to have regarded with
aversion.
The play of Measure for Measure is an attempt to burlesque the
virtue-loving principles of the Puritans; and in the cross-gartered
Malvolio of Twelfth Night we have the
Sharp, cross-gartered man,
Whom their loud laugh may nickname Puritan.
And the immortal question,
Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes
and ale?
is universally accepted as a sneer at the asceticism of that grave
sect.
Wherever Shakespeare introduces a Dissenting preacher he
makes him an ignoramus or a mountebank.
i Essay Of Unity in Religion. ■ Ibid., iv, i. 6 All's Well thai Ends Well, i, 3-
3 Winter's Tale, ii, 3. 4 Twelfth Night, iii, 2.
THE RELIGION OE THE PLAYS. 203
Similar views we find in Bacon. He says:
For as the temporal sword is to be drawn with great circumspection in cases of
religion, so it is a thing monstrous to put it into the hands of the common people;
let that be left unto the Anabaptists and other furies}
In another place he says:
Besides the Roman Catholics, there is a generation of sectaries, the Anabap-
tists, Brownists and others of their kinds; they have been several times very busy
in this kingdom under the color of zeal for reformation of religion; the King your
master knows their disposition very well; a small touch will put him in mind of
them; he had experience of them in Scotland. I hope he will beware of them in
England; a little countenance or connivancy sets them on fire.'2
And, like Shakespeare, he ridicules the manners of the Puritans.
He says:
There is a master of scoffing that in his catalogue of books of a feigned library sets
down this title of a book, The Morris-Dance of the Heretics; for, indeed, every sect
of them hath a diverse posture, or cringe, by themselves, which cannot but move
derision in worldlings and depraved politics, who are apt to contemn holy things. :i
Bacon looked with the profoundest apprehension upon the
growing numbers and power of that grave, sour, serious sect,
with its strong anti-royal tendencies and its anti-social feelings.
" They love no plays, as you do, Anthony." They threatened, in
his view, by their malignant intolerance, the very existence of
civilization. He says:
Nor am I discouraged from it because I see signs in the times of the decline
and overthrow of that knowledge and erudition which is now in use. . . . But the
civil wars which may be expected, I think (judging from certain fashions which
have come in of late), to spread through many countries, together with the malig-
nity of sects, . . . seem to portend for literature and the sciences a tempest not less
fatal, and one against which the printing-office will be no effectual security.4
He clearly foresaw the coming revolution which broke out, not
long after his death, under the lead of Cromwell. He wrote the
King, when he had been overthrown by the agitations in Parlia-
ment, that —
Those who strike at your Chancellor will yet strike at your crown. ... I wish
that, as I am the first, so I may be the last of sacrifices in your times.
Wise as he was, he could not see beyond the tempest which he
felt was coming, but he feared that the literature of England would
perish in the storm; and he was of course unable to do justice to
1 Essay Of Unity in Religion. 3 Essay Of I Tnity in Religion.
2 Advice to George Villiers. 4 Preface to Interpretation of X at are.
■204 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
the real merits of the sect to whom England owes so much of Par-
liamentary liberty and moral greatness.
His premonitions of the immediate effects of the religious revo-
lution were well founded. Birch says:
The Bacons and the Shakespeares, the philosophers and scoffers, as well as the
Papists, were extinguished by the Puritans. The theater gave way to the pulpit,
the actor and dramatist to the preacher. The philosophical and political school of
infidelity had no chance against the fanaticism of Cromwell, at the head of the
religious spirit of the age.1
V. The Writer of the Plays a Free-Thinker.
But there was a deeper reason for the indifference of the real
author of the Plays to the passions and quarrels of Catholics and
Protestants. It was this: he did not believe in the doctrines of the
Christian religion. This fact has not escaped the notice of com
mentators.
Swinburne says:
That Shakespeare was in the genuine sense — that is, in the best and highest
and widest meaning of the term — a free-thinker, this otherwise practically and
avowedly superfluous effusion of all inmost thought appears to me to supply full
and sufficient evidence for the conviction of every candid and rational man.2
DowTden says:
Thus all through the play he wanders between materialism and spiritualism,
between belief in immortality and disbelief, between reliance upon Providence and
a bowing under fate. In presence of the ghost, a sense of his own spiritual exist-
ence and the immortal life of the soul grows strong within him. In presence of a
spirit he is himself a spirit:
I do not set my life at a pin's fee;
And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?
When left to his private thoughts, he wavers uncertainly to and fro; death is a
sleep — a sleep, it may be, troubled with dreams. In the graveyard, in the presence
of human dust, the base affinities of our bodily nature prove irresistibly attractive
to the curiosity of Hamlet's imagination; and he cannot choose but pursue the his-
tory of human dust through all its series of hideous metamorphoses.3
West says:
Though there is no reason to think that there was any paganism in Shake-
speare's creed, yet we cannot help feeling that the spirit of his art is in many
respects pagan. In his great tragedies he traces the workings of noble or lovely
human characters on to the point — and no farther — where they disappear into the
darkness of death, and ends with a look back, never on toward anything beyond.4
1 Philosophy and Religion oj Shah., p. 9. * E, B. West, Browning as a Preacher, Dark
8 A Study of Shah., p. 165. Blue Magazine, Oct. and Nov., 1871.
3 Shah. Mind and Art, p. 118.
THE RELIGIOX OF THE FLA VS.
205
He seems to have been a fatalist. Take these passages as
proof:
But, O vain boast '
Who can control his fate?1
Our wills and fates do so contrary run.
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.2
Whom destiny
That hath to instrument this lower world
And what is in it.3
All unavoided is the doom of destiny.4
'Tis destiny unshunnable, like death.5
But apart from this predestinarian bent there does not seem to
be in the Plays any theological preference or purpose. All the
plays which preceded the Shakespearean era were of a religious
character — they were miracle plays, or moralities, in which Judas
an4 the devil and the several vices shone conspicuously. Some of
these plays continued, side by side with the Shakespeare Plays,
down- to the end of the sixteenth century, and into the beginning of
the seventeenth. In Lupton's " moral and pitiful comedy," All for
Money\ the catastrophe represents Judas "like a damned soul in
black, painted with flames of fire and a fearful visard, followed by
Dives, 'with such like apparel as Judas hath,' while Damnation
(another of the dramatis persona) , pursuing them, drives them before
him, and they pass away, 'making a pitiful noise,' into perdition."
The mouth of hell, painted to represent flames of fire, was a very
common scene at the back of the stage.
Birch says:
What a transition to the Plays of Shakespeare, while these miracle and moral
plays were fresh in the recollection of the people, and might still be seen. These
supernatural, historical and allegorical personages superseded by a material and
philosophical explanation of things /6
VI. The Causes of Infidelity in that Age.
The "malignity of sects" drove many men to infidelity. They
saw in religion only monstrous and cruel forces, which lighted hor-
rible fires in the midst of great cities, and filled the air with the
stench of burning flesh and the shrieks of the dying victims. They
1 Othello, v, 2. 3 Tempest, iv, 3. 3 Othello, iii, 3.
• Hamlet, iii, 2. 4 Richard III., iv, 4 * Birch, Philosophy and Religion of Shah., p. 11.
206 FRANCIS B A CO IV THE A U Til OK OF THE EI A VS.
held religion to account for those excesses of fanaticism in a semi-
barbarous age, and they doubted the existence of a God who could
permit such horrors. They were ready to exclaim with Macduff,
when told that "the hell-kite," Macbeth, had killed all his family,
"all his pretty ones," at one fell swoop:
Did heaven look on,
And would not take their part?
They came to conceive of God as a cruel monster who relished
the sufferings of his creatures. Shakespeare puts this thought into
the mouth of Lear:
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods:
They kill us for their sport.1
Mankind could only endure this divine injustice:
Arming myself with patience,
To stay the providence of some high powers
That govern us below.2
But, whatever conclusions men might reach on these questions,
it was perilous to express them. The stake and the scaffold
awaited the skeptical. If their thoughts were to reach the light
it must be through the mouths of madmen, like Lear or Hamlet;
and to fall, as Bacon said, like seeds, that, by their growth in the
minds of generations to come, would mitigate the wrath of sects
and prepare the way for an age of toleration.
Birch says:
The spectacle of Brownists, among the Protestants, and of Papists, suffering
capital punishment for opinion's sake, alternately presented to the eyes of the pub-
lic, would create a party hostile to all religion; whilst an occasional atheist burnt
would teach the irreligious to keep their opinions to themselves, or caution them in
administering infidelity as " medicinable."3
However strongly we may be convinced of the great and funda-
mental truths of religion, it must be conceded that freedom of con-
science and governmental toleration are largely the outgrowth of
unbelief and indifference.
In an age that realized, without doubt or question, that life was
but a tortured hour between two eternities; a thread of time across
a boundless abyss; that hell and heaven lay so close up to this
breathing world that a step would, in an instant, carry us over the
shadowy line into an ocean of flame or a paradise of endless de-
1 Lear iv, i 2 Julius Cwsar, V, t. > Birch, Philosophy and Religion of Shak., p. 8.
THE RELIGION OF THE PLA VS. 20y
lights, it followed, as a logical sequence, that it was an act of the
greatest kindness and humanity to force the skeptical, by any tor-
ture inflicted upon them during this temporary and wretched exist-
ence, to avoid an eternal hell and obtain an eternal heaven. But
so soon as doubt began to enter the minds of men; so soon as they
said to one another, "Perchance these things may not be exactly
as we have been taught; perchance the other world may be but a
dream of hope; perchance this existence is all there is of it," the
fervor of fanaticism commenced to abate. Not absolutely positive
in their own minds as to spiritual things, they were ready to make
some allowance for the doubts of others. Thus unbelief tamed the
fervor even of those who still believed, and modified, in time, public
opinion and public law.
But in Bacon's era every thoughtful soul that loved his fellow-
man, and sought to advance his material welfare, would instinct-
ively turn away from a system of belief which produced such holo-
causts of martyrs, and covered the face of the earth with such cruel
and bloody wars.
I have no doubt that Bacon in his youth was a total disbeliever
in Christianity. He himself said:
A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy
bringeth men's minds about to religion.
There was found among his writings a curious essay, called
The Characters of a Believing Christian, in Paradoxes and Seeming Con-
tradictions. It is a wholesale burlesque of Christianity, so cunningly
put together that it may be read as a commendation of Christians.
I give a few extracts:
1. A Christian is one that believes things his reason cannot comprehend; he
hopes for things which neither he nor any man alive ever saw; he labors for that
which he knoweth he shall never obtain; yet, in the issue, his belief appears not to
be false; his hopes make him not ashamed; his labor is not in vain.
2. He believes three to be one and one to be three; a father not to be elder
than his son; a son to be equal with his father, and one proceeding from both to
be equal with both; he believing three persons in one nature and two natures in
one person. . . .
ii. ... He knoweth if he please men he cannot be the servant of Christ, yet
for Christ's sake he pleaseth all men in all things. He is a peace-maker, yet is a
continual fighter, and an irreconcilable enemy.
18. . . . He professeth he can do nothing, yet as truly professeth he can do
all things; he knoweth that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, yet
belie veth he shall go to heaven, both body and soul.
208 FRANCIS PA CON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
1Q>. ... He knovveth he shall not be saved by or for his good works, yet he
doth all the good works he can.
21. ... He believes beforehand that God hath purposed what he shall be
and that nothing can make him alter his purpose; yet prays and endeavors as if
he would force God to save him forever.
24. ... He is often tossed and shaken, yet is as Mount Zion; he is a serpent
and a dove, a lamb and a lion, a reed and a cedar. He is sometimes so troubled
that he thinks nothing to be true in religion, yet if he did think so he could not at
all be troubled.
We turn to Shakespeare and we find in Richard II. a similar
unbelieving playing upon seeming contradictions in Christianity.
It reads like a continuation of the foregoing put into blank verse-
Richard is in prison. He says:
I have been studying how to compare
This prison, where I live, unto the world:
And, for because the world is populous,
And here is not a creature but myself
I cannot do it: yet I'll hammer 't out.
My braine, I'll prove the female to my soul,
My soul, the Father: and these two beget
A generation of still breeding thoughts;
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humors, like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented. The better sort,
As thoughts of things divine, are intermixt
With scruples, and do set the Faith itself
Against the Faith:
As thus — "Come, little ones;" and then again,
" It is as hard to come as for a camel
To thread the postern of a needle's eye."
No one can doubt that these thoughts, showing the same irre-
ligious belief, and the same subtle way of propounding it, came
from the same mind. And observe the covert sarcasm of this,
among many similar utterances of Bacon:
For those bloody quarrels for religion were unknown to the ancients, the
heathen gods not having so much as a touch of that jealousy which is an attribute
of the true God.2
Through all the Shakespeare Plays we find the poet, by the
mouths of all sorts of people, representing death as the end of alL
things. Macbeth says:
Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Can touch him further.
1 Richard //., v, 5. - // 'isdom of the A ncients — Diomedes.
THE RELIGION OF THE PLAYS.
209
Titus Andronicus thus speaks of the grave:
Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells;
Here grow no damned grudges, here no storms;
No noise, but silence and eternal sleep.
In the sonnets, Shakespeare speaks of
Death's dateless night.
We are also told in the sonnets that we leave "this vile world"
"with vilest worms to dwell." In The Tempest we are reminded
that "our little life is rounded by a sleep"; that is to say, we are
surrounded on all sides by total oblivion and nothingness. Iachimo
sees in sleep only "the ape of death."
The Duke says, in Measure for Measure:
Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provok'st, yet grossly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more.
Dr. Johnson says:
I cannot, without indignation, find Shakespeare saying that death is only
sleep, lengthening out his exhortation by a sentence which in the friar is impious, in
the reasoner is foolish, and in the poet trite and vulgar.
In the same play the writer mocks at the idea of an immortal
soul:
But man, proud man !
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he s most assured.
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep.1
In this same play of Measure for Measure, while he gives us the
pagan conception of the future of the soul, he directly slaps in the
face the Christian belief in hell. Speaking of death, he says:
The delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round above
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling/'2
This is not the language of one who believed that God had said:
"Depart from me, ye accursed, into everlasting fire ! "
1 Measure for Measure, ii, 2. 2 Ibid., iii, 1.
2ro FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE FLAYS.
And, we find the mocking Falstaff talking, in a jesting fashion,
about the "primrose way to the everlasting bonfire !"
No wonder Birch says, speaking of Measure for Measure :
There are passages of infidelity in this play that staggered Warburton, made
Johnson indignant, and confounded Coleridge and Knight.1
VII. Conclusions.
Thus, then, I decipher the religion of the Plays:
i. They were written by a man of Protestant training, who
believed in the political changes brought about by Cranmer and
the Reformation. Such a man was Bacon.
2. They were written by one who was opposed to the temporal
power of the Pope in England. As I have shown, this was Bacon's
feeling.
3. They were written by one who, while a Protestant in poli-
tics, did not feel bitterly toward the Catholics, and had no desire
to mock or persecute them. We have seen that Bacon advocated
the most liberal treatment of the followers of the old faith; he was
opposed to the marriage of the clergy; he labored for the unity of
all Christians.
4. They were written by one whom the world in that age would
have called "an infidel." Such a man, we have reason to believe,
was Bacon.
I shall not say that as he advanced in life his views did not
change, and that depth of philosophy did not, to use his own
phrase, "bring his mind about to religion," even to the belief
in the great tenets of Christianity. Certain it is that no man ever
possessed a profounder realization of the existence of God in the
universe. How sublime, how unanswerable is his expression:
I would rather believe all the fables in the Ta Imud and the Koran than that
this universal frame is without a mind !
Being himself a mighty spirit, he saw through " the muddy
vesture of decay " which darkly hems in ruder minds, and beheld
the shadowy outlines of that tremendous Spirit of which he was
himself, with all created things, but an expression.
He believed that God not only was, but was all-powerful, and
all -merciful; and that he had it in his everlasting purposes to
Philosophy and Religion 0/ Shah., p. 353.
THE RELIGION OF THE PLAYS. 211
lift up man to a state of perfection and happiness on earth; and (as
I have shown) he believed that he had created him — even him,
Francis Bacon — as an instrument to that end; and to accomplish
that end he toiled and labored almost from the cradle to the grave.
He was — in the great sense of the words — a priest and
prophet of God, filled with the divine impulses of good. If he
erred in his conceptions of truth, who shall stand between the
Maker and his great child, and take either to account ?
We breathe an air rendered sweeter by his genius; we live in a
world made brighter by his philosophy; his contributions to the
mental as well as to the material happiness of mankind have been
simply incalculable. Let us, then, thank God that he sent him to
us on this earth; let. us draw tenderly the mantle of charity over his
weaknesses, if any such are disclosed by the unpitying hand of his-
tory; let us exult that one has been born among the children of
men who has removed, on every side for a thousand miles, the
posts that experience had set up as the limitations of human
capacity.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PURPOSES OF THE PLAYS.
i have, though in a despised weed, procured the good of all men.
Bacon.
THE first question asked by every thoughtful mind, touching
the things of sense, is: Who made this marvelous world?
The second is: Why did He make it ?
The purpose of the thing must always be greater than the thing
itself : it encloses, permeates and maintains it. The result is but
a small part of the preexistent intention. All things must stand or
fall by their purposes, and every great work must necessarily be
the outgrowth of a great purpose.
Were these wonderful, these oceanic Shakespeare Plays the
unconscious outpourings of an untutored genius, uttered with no-
more method than the song of a bird; or were they the production
of a wise, thoughtful and profound man, who wrote them with
certain well-defined objects in view?
I. Bacon's Aims and Objects.
We are first to ask ourselves, If Francis Bacon wrote the Plays,,
what were the purposes of his life ? For, as the Plays constitute a
great part of his life-work, the purposes of his life must envelop
and pervade them.
No man ever lived upon earth who possessed nobler aims than
Francis Bacon. He stands at the portal of the opening civilization
of modern times, a sublime figure — his heart full of love for man,
his busy brain teeming with devices for the benefit of man; with
uplifted hands praying God to bless his work, the most far-extend-
ing human work ever set afoot on the planet.
He says:
I am a servant of posterity; for these things require some ages for the ripen-
ing of them.1
1 Letter to Father Fulgentio, the Venetian.
21-2
THE PURPOSES OE THE PLAYS. 2I3
Again he says, speaking of himself:
Always desiring, with extreme fervency (such as we are confident God puts into
the minds of men), to have that which was never yet attempted, now to be not
attempted in vain, to-wit: to release men out of their necessities and miseries.1
Again he says:
This work [the Novum Organuni] is for the bettering of men's bread and wine,
which are the characters of temporal blessings and sacraments of eternal.2
Macaulay says:
The end which Bacon purposed to himself was the multiplying of human
enjoyments and the mitigating of human sufferings. . . . This was the object of
his speculations in every department of science — in natural philosophy, in legisla-
tion, in politics, in morals.3
And, knowing the greatness of God and the littleness of man,
he prays the source of all goodness for aid:
God, the maker, preserver and renewer of the universe, guide and protect this
work, both in its ascent to his own glory, and in its descent to the good of man,
through his good will toward man, by his only begotten son, God with us.4
And, speaking of his own philosophy, he says:
I am thus persuaded because of its infinite usefulness ; for which reason it may
be ascribed to divine encouragement.5
He speaks of himself as "a servant of God." He seems to have
had some thought of founding, not a new religion, but a new sys-
tem of philosophy, which should do for the improvement of man's
condition in this world what religion strove to do for the improve-
ment of his condition in the next world.
And Birch says of Shakespeare:
He had a system, which may be drawn from his works, which he contrasts
with the notions of mankind taken from Revelation, and which he represents as
doing what revelation and a future state purpose to do for the benefit of mankind,
and which he thinks sufficient to supply its place.6
In his prayer, written at the time of his downfall, Bacon says:
Remember, O Lord, how thy servant hath walked before thee, remember what
I have first sought, and what hath been principal in mine intentions. . . . The
state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in mine eyes: I have
hated all cruelty and hardness of heart; I have, though in a despistd weed, procured
the good of all men.7
How did he "at first" (that is to say in his youth) seek and pro-
cure the good of all men? And what was the "despised weed" ?
1 Exper. History. * Exper. History.
2 Letter to King James, October 19, 1620. 5 Letter to Father Fulgentio.
* Essays, Bacon, p. 370. • Philosophy and Religion of Shak., p. 10.
7 Life and Works, Spedding, etc., vol. vii, p. 229.
2i4 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
II. Did he Regard the Drama as a Possible Instrumental-
ity eor Good?
Do we find any indications that Bacon, with this intent in
his heart to benefit mankind, regarded the stage as a possible
instrumentality to that end ? That it was capable of being so
used — in fact was so used — there can be no doubt. Simpson
says:
During its palmy days the English stage was the most important instrument
for making opinions heard, its literature the most popular literature of the age, and
on that account it was used by the greatest writers for making their comments on
public doings and public persons. As an American critic says, "it was news-
paper, magazine, novel — all in one."1
A recent English writer, W. F. C. Wigston, says:
Sir Philip Sidney, in his Defense of Poesy, maintains that the old philosophers
disguised or embodied their entire cosmogonies in their poetry, as, for example,
Thales, Empedocles, Parmenides, Pythagoras, and Phocyclides, who were poets and
Philosophers at once."1
But did Bacon entertain any such views ? Unquestionably. He
says:
Dramatic Poesy is as History made visible ; for it represents actions as if they
were present, whereas History represents them as past. Parabolical Poesy is
typical History, by which ideas that are objects of the intellect are represented in
forms that are objects of the sense. . . .
Dramatic Poesy, which has the theater for its world, would be of excellent use
if well directed. For the stage is capable of no small influence, both of discipline
and of corruption. Now, of corruptions in this kind we have enough; but the dis-
cipline has, in our times, been plainly neglected. And though in modern states
play-acting is esteemed but as a toy, except when it is too satirical and biting; yet
among the ancients it was used as a means of educating mens minds to virtue.
Nay, it has been regarded by learned men and great philosophers as a kind of
musician's bow by which mens minds may be played upon. And certainly it is
true, and one of the great secrets of nature, that the minds of men are more
open to impressions and affections when many are gathered together than when
they are alone.3
The reader will note some suggestive phrases in the above:
"dramatic poesy, which has the theater for its world." We are
reminded of Shakespeare's " All the world's a stage." "A kind of
musician's bow, by which men's minds may be played upon."
This recalls to us Hamlet's :
Why, do you think that I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what
instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon »ie.A
1 School of Shak., vol. i, p. xviii. 8 De Augment is, book ii, chap. 13.
a A New Study of Shak., p. 42. * Hamtet, iii, 2.
THE PURPOSES OF THE PLAYS. 215
III. Was he Associated with Plays and Players?
But it may be said: These are the utterances of a philosopher
who contemplates these things with an aloofness, and Bacon may
have taken no interest in play-houses or plays.
Let us see.
His loving and religious mother, writing of her sons, Anthony
and Francis, in 1594, says:
I trust they will not mum, nor mask, nor sinfully revel.1
In 1594 his brother Anthony had removed from Gray's Inn to a
house in Bishopsgate Street, "much to his mother's distress," says
Spedding, "who feared the neighborhood of the Bull Inn, where
plays and interludes were acted."'
Bacon took part in the preparation of many plays and masks,
for the -entertainment of the court, some of which were acted by
Shakspere s company of players.
The Queen seemed to have some suspicion of Bacon being a
poet or writer of plays. The Earl of Essex writes him, May 18,
1594 — the Earl then urging Bacon for some law office in the gift of
the crown:
And she did acknowledge you had a great wit, and an excellent gift of speech,
and much other good learning. But in law she rather thought you could make
show to the uttermost of your knowledge, than that you were deep.3
And Bacon himself acknowledges that his mind is diverted
from his legal studies to some contemplations of a different sort,
and more agreeable to his nature. He says, in a letter to Essex:
Your Lordship shall in this beg my life of the Queen; for I see well the bar will
be my bier.
And he writes to his uncle, Lord Burleigh, in 1594:
To speak plainly, though perhaps vainly, I do not think that the ordinary
practice of the law will be admitted for a good account of the poor talent that God
hath given me.4
Montagu says:
Forced by the narrowness of his fortune into business, conscious of his own
powers, aware of the peculiar quality of his mind, and disliking his pursuits, his
heart was often in his study, while he lent his person to the robes of office.5
1 Spedding's Life and Letters, vol. i, p. 326. * Letter to Burleigh, 1594.
%Life and Works, vol. i, p. 314. 6 Montagu, Life and Works, vol. i, p. 117.
3 Life and Works, Spedding, vol. i, p. 297.
216 FN AX CIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
If, then, it is conceded that Bacon had great purposes for the
benefit of mankind, purposes to be achieved by him, not by the
sword or by the powers which flow from high positions, but by
the pen, by working on "the minds of men;" and if it is con-
ceded, as it must be, that he recognized the stage as an instru-
mentality that could be made of great force for that end, by
which the minds of men could "be played upon;" and if it is con-
ceded that he was the author of masks and the getter-up of
other dramatic representations; and that his mind was not de-
voted to the dry details of his profession; and if it is conceded,
as I think it must be, that he had the genius, the imagination,
the wit and the industry to have prepared the Shakespeare Plays,
what is there to negative the conclusion that he did so prepare
them ?
And does he not seem to be pointing at the stage, in these
words, when, speaking of the obstructions to the reception of truth
caused by the ignorance and bigotry of the age, he says, in The
Masculine Birth of Time:
"And what," you will say, "is this legitimate method? Have done with
artifice and circumlocution; show me the naked truth of your design, that I may
be able to form a judgment for myself." I would, my dearest son, that matters
were in such a state with you as to render this possible. Do you suppose that,
when all the entrances and passages to the mind of all men are infested and
obstructed with the darkest idols, and these seated and burned in, as it were, into
their substance, that clear and smooth places can be found for receiving the true
and natural rays of objects? A new process must be instituted by which to insinu-
ate ourselves into minds so entirely obstructed. For, as the delusions of the insane
are removed by art and ingenuity, but aggravated by opposition, so must we adapt
ourselves to the universal insanity.
And again he says:
So men generally taste well knowledges that are drenched in flesh and blood,
civil history, morality, policy about which men's affections, praises, fortunes do
turn and are conversant.1
He not only discusses in his philosophical works dramatic litera-
ture and the influence of the stage, but he urges in the translation of
the second book of the Advancement of Learning (but not in the
English copy), "that the art of acting (actio theatralis) should be
made a part of the education of youth."2 "The Jesuits," he says,
"do not despise it; " and he thinks they are right, for, "though it
1 Advancement of Learning, book li. 9 Works of Bacon, vol. vi, p. 307.
THE PURPOSES OF THE PLAYS. 2Iy
be of ill repute as a profession, yet as a part of discipline it is of
excellent use."
Spedding adds:
In Bacon's time, when masks acted by young gentlemen of the universities
or inns of court were the favorite entertainment of princes, these things were
probably better attended to than they are now.
And Bacon seemed to feel that there ought to be some great
writings to show the affections and passions of mankind. He says:
And here again I find it strange that Aristotle should have written divers
volumes of ethics and never handled the affections, which is the principal subject
thereof. . . . But the poets and writers of histories are the best doctors of this
knowledge: where we may find painted forth, with great life, how affections are
kindled and incited, and how pacified and refrained; and how again contained
from act and further degree; how they disclose themselves; how they work; how
they vary; how they gather and fortify; how they are inwrapped, one within
another, and how they do fight and encounter one with another, and other like
particulars.1
And Barry Cornwall says, as if in echo of these sentiments:
If Bacon educated the reason, Shakespeare educated the heart.
The one work was the complement of the other, and both came
out of the same great mind. They were flowers growing from the
stalk of the same tremendous purpose.
IV. His Poverty.
But the reader may be fencing the truth out of his mind with
the thought that BacOn was a rich man's son, and had not the in-
centive to literary labor. Richard Grant White puts this argument
in the following form. Speaking of the humble, not to say vile,
circumstances which surrounded Shakspere in his youth, he says:
If Shakespeare had been born at Charlecote, he would probably have had a
seat in Parliament, not improbably a peerage; but we should have had no plays,
only a few formal poems and sonnets, most likely, and possibly some essays, with
all of Bacon's wisdom, set forth in a style more splendid than Bacon's, but hardly
-so incisive.
It is curious how the critical mind can hardly think of Shake-
speare without being reminded of Bacon.
But was Bacon above the reach of poverty? Was he above the
necessity of striving to eke out his income with his pen ? No.
Hepworth Dixon says:
1 Advancement of Learning, book ii.
2l8 FRANCIS HA COX THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
Lady Anne and her sons are poor. Anthony, the loving and beloved, with
whom Francis had been bred at Cambridge and in France, has now come home.
. . . The two young fellows have little money and expensive ways. . . . Lady
Anne starves herself at Gorhambury that she may send to Gray's Inn ale from the
cellar, pigeons from her dove-cote, fowls from her farm-yard — gifts which she sea-
sons with a good deal of motherly love, and not a little of her best motherly
advice.1
In 1612 Bacon writes King James:
My good old mistress [Queen Elizabeth] was wont to call me her watch-candle,
because it pleased her to say I did continually burn (and yet she suffered me to
ivciste almost to nothing), so I much more owe like duty to your Majesty.2
In a letter to Villiers, Bacon says:
Countenance, encourage and advance able men. For in the time of the Cecils,
the father and son, able men were by design and of purpose suppressed.
The same story runs through all the years during which the
Shakespeare Plays were written. Spedding says:
Michaelmas term [1593] passed, and still no solicitor appointed. Meanwhile,
the burden of debt and the difficulty of obtaining necessary supplies was daily
increasing. Anthony's correspondence during this autumn is full of urgent appli-
cations to various friends for loans of money, and the following memorandum
shows that much of his own necessity arose from his anxiety to supply the necessi-
ties of his brother.3
Here Mr. Spedding inserts the memorandum, showing ^5
loaned Francis September 12, 1593; £1 loaned him October 23,
1593; £$ loaned him November 19, 1593, with other loans of ;£io,
^20 and ;£ioo.
Falstaff expressed Bacon's own experience when he said:
I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse: borrowing only
lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable.4
In the year 1594 Bacon describes himself, in a letter, as "poor
and sick , working for bread."
In 1597 it is the same story. Spedding says:
Bacon's fortunes are still as they were, only with this difference: that as the
calls on his income are increasing, in the shape of interest for borrowed money, the
income itself is diminishing through the sale of lands and leases.5
His grief and perplexity are so great that he cries out in a letter
to his uncle, the Lord Treasurer, written in that year:
I stand indifferent whether God call me or her Majesty.
1 Personal History of Lord Bacon, p. 32. 4 2d Henry IV. , i, 2.
2 Letter to King James, May 31, 1612. » Spedding, Life and Works, vol. ii, p. 53.
3 Spedding, Life and Works, vol. i, p. 321.
THE PURPOSES OF THE PLAYS. 219
In 1598 he is arrested for debt by Sympson, the goldsmith; in
1603 he is again in trouble and petitions the Secretary, Cecil, to-
intercede and prevent his creditors taking more than the principal
of his bond, for, he adds, "a Jew can take no more."
He was constantly annoyed and pestered by his creditors. He
writes Mr. Michael Hicks, January 21, 1600, that he proposes to
clear himself from "the discontent, speech or danger of others" of
his creditors. "Some of my debts, of most clamor and importunity,
I have paid."
Again he says: "I do use to pay my debts in time" — not in
money.
July 3, 1603, he writes his cousin Robert, Lord Cecil:
I shall not be able to pay the money within the time by your Lordship under-
taken, which was a fortnight. Nay, money I find so hard to come by at this time,
as I thought to have become an humble suitor to your Honor to have sustained me,
. . . with taking up three hundred pounds till I can put away some land.
He hopes, by selling off "the skirts of my living in Hertford-
shire," to have enough left to yield him three hundred pounds per
annum income.
V. The Profit of Play-writing.
The price paid for a new play was from ^5 to ,£20. This,
reduced to dollars, is $25 to $100. But money, it is agreed, pos-
sessed a purchasing power then equal to twelve times what it
has now; so that Bacon, for writing a new play, would receive
what would be the equivalent of from $300 to $1,200 to-day. But
in addition to this the author was entitled to all the receipts taken
in, above expenses, on the second or third day of the play,1 and
this, in -the case of a successful play, might be a considerable sum.
And probably in the case of plays as popular as were the Shake-
speare Plays, special arrangements were made as to the division of
the profits. It was doubtless from dividing with Bacon these sums
that Shakspere acquired his large fortune.
Such sums as these to a man who was borrowing one pound at
a time from his necessitous brother, Anthony, and who was more
than once arrested and put in sponging-houses for debt, were a
matter of no small moment.
' See Collier's Annah of the Stage, vol. iii, pp. 224, 229, 230, etc.
220 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE FLAYS.
He seems, from a letter to Essex, to have had some secret means
of making money. He says:
For means I value that most: and the rather because I am purposed not to fol-
low the practice of the law; . . . and my reason is only because it drinketh too
much time, which I have dedicated to better purposes. But, even for that point of
estate and means, I partly lean to Thales' opinion, " that a philosopher may be rich
if he will"
This is very significant. Even Spedding perceives the traces of
a mystery. He says:
So enormous were the results which Bacon anticipated from such a renovation
of philosophy as he had conceived the possibility of, that the reluctance which he
felt to devote his life to the ordinary practice of a lawyer cannot be wondered at.
It is easier to understand why he was resolved not to do that, than what other plan
he had to clear himself of the difficulties which were accumulating upon him, and to
obtain means of living and -working. . . . What course he betook himself to at the
crisis at which he had now arrived, I cannot positively say. I do not find any
letter of his which can be probably assigned to the winter of 1596; nor have I met
among his brother's papers anything which indicates what he zvas about. . . .
I presume, however, that he betook himself to his studies.1
In the last years of the sixteenth century and the first of the
seventeenth Bacon seems to have given up all hope of rising to
office in the state. He was under some cloud. He says:
My ambition is quenched. . . . My ambition now I shall only put upon my pen,
whereby I shall be able to maintain memory and merit of the times succeeding.'2
He was hopeless; he was powerless; he was poor. He had felt
The whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the poor man's contumely,
. . . the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes.
He wrote to the Queen that he had suffered
The contempt of the contemptible, that measure a man by his estate.3
What could he make money at ? There was no great novel-
reading public, as at present. There were no newspapers to
employ ready and able pens. There was little sale for the weight-
ier works of literature. There was but one avenue open to him —
the play-house.
Did he combine the more sordid and pressing necessity for
money with those great, kindly, benevolent purposes toward man-
1 Spedding, Works of Bacon — Letters and Life, vol. ii, p. 1.
2 Letter to R. Cecil, July 3, 1603.
3 Letter to the Queen, 1 599-1 600 — Life and Works, vol. ii, p. 166.
THE PURPOSES OF THE PLAYS. 221
kind which filled his heart ? Did he try to use the play-house as a
school of virtue and ethics ? Let us see.
VI. Great Moral Lessons.
In the first place, the Plays are great sermons against great
evils. They are moral epics.
What lesson does Macbeth leave upon the mind ? It teaches
every man who reads it, or sees it acted, the horrors of an unscru-
pulous ambition. It depicts, in the first place, a brave soldier and
patriot, defending his country at the risk of his life. Then it shows
the agents of evil approaching and suggesting dark thoughts to
his brain. Then if shows us, as Bacon says, speaking of the passions
as delineated by the poets and writers of histories:
Painted forth, with great life, how affections (passions) are kindled and incited;
and how pacified and refrained; and how again contained from act and further
degree; how they disclose themselves; how they work; how they vary; how they
gather and fortify; how they are inwrapped one within another; and how they do
fight and encounter one with another.
All this is revealed in Macbeth. We see the seed of ambition
taking root; we see it "disclosed;" we see self-love and the sense
of right warring with each other. We see his fiendish wife driving
him forward to crime against the promptings of his better nature.
It depicts, with unexampled dramatic power, a cruel and treacherous
murder. Then it shows how crime begets the necessity for crime:
To be thus is nothing,
But to be safely thus.
It shows one horror treading fast upon another's heels: the
usurper troubled with the horrible dreams that " shake him
nightly;" the mind of the ambitious woman giving way under the
strain her terrible will had put upon it, until we see her seeking peace
in suicide; while Macbeth falls at last, overthrown and slaughtered.
Have all the pulpits of all the preachers given out a more ter-
rible exposition and arraignment of ambition ? Think of the
uncountable millions who, in the past three hundred years, have
witnessed this play ! Think of the illimitable numbers who will
behold it during the next thousand years !
What an awful picture of the workings of a guilty conscience is
that exhibited when Macbeth sees, even at the festal board, the
blood-boltered Banquo rising up and regarding him with glaring
2 22 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
and soulless eyes. And how like the pitiful cry of a lost soul is this
utterance ?
I have lived long enough: my way of life
Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf:
And that which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.
Call the roll of all your pulpit orators ! Where is there one
that has ever preached such a sermon as that ? Where is there one
that has ever had such an audience — such an unending succession
of. million-large audiences — as this man, who, in a " despised
weed, sought the good of all men"?
And, remember, that it was not the virtuous alone, the church-
goers, the elect, who came to hear this marvelous sermon, but the
high, the low; the educated, the ignorant; the young, the old; the
good, the vicious; the titled lord, the poor 'prentice; the high-born
dame, the wretched waste and wreck of womankind.
A sermon preached almost nightly for nigh three hundred
years ! Not preached with robe or gown, or any pretense of vir-
tue, but in those living pictures, "that history made visible," of the
mighty philanthropist. Not coming with the ostentation and
parade of holiness, with swinging censer and rolling organ, but
conveyed into the minds of the audience insensibly, insinuated
into them, through the instrumentality of a lot of poor players.
Precisely as we have seen Bacon suggesting that, by " a new process,"
truth should be insinuated into minds obstructed and infested — a
process " drenched in flesh and blood" as surely Macbeth is; a process
that the ancients used to "educate men's minds to virtue;" by which
the minds of men might be "played upon," as if with a "musician's
bow," with the greater force because (as he had observed a thou-
sand times in the Curtain Theater) the minds of men are more acted
upon when they are gathered in numbers than when alone.
VII. Ingratitude.
Turn to Lear. What is its text? Ingratitude. Another mighty
sermon.
The grand old man who gave all, with his heart in it. The
viciousness of two women; the nobleness of a third — for the gentle
THE PURPOSES OF THE PLAYS. 22,
heart of the poet would not allow him to paint mankind altogether
bad; he saw always 'the soul of goodness in things evil." And
mark the moral of the story. The overthrow of the wicked, who
yet drag down the good and noble in their downfall.
VIII. Jealousy and Intemperance.
Turn to Othello. What is the text here? The evils of jealousy
and the power for wrong of one altogether iniquitous. The
overthrow of a noble nature by falsehood; the destruction of
a pure and gentle woman to satisfy the motiveless hate of a
villain. And there is within this another moral. The play is
a grand plea for temperance, expressed with jewels of thought
set in arabesques of speech. Can all the reformers match that
expression :
0 thou invisible spirit of wine ! If thou hast no name to be known by, let us
call thee devil !
The plot of the play turns largely on Cassio's drunkenness; for
it is Desdemona's intercession for poor Cassio that arouses Othel-
lo's suspicions. And how pitiful are Cassio's exclamations:
Oh, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains !
that we should, with joy, pleasance, revel and applause, transform ourselves into
beasts. . . . To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast !
O strange '. Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil.
It is impossible to sum up a stronger appeal in behalf of a tem-
perate use of the good things of this world than these words con-
tain. And, remember, they were written, not in the nineteenth
century, but in an age of universal drunkenness, practiced by both
men and women; and uttered at first to audiences nine-tenths of
whom probably had more ale and sack in them than was good for
them, even while they witnessed the play.
And we find the great teacher always preaching the same lesson
of temperance to the people, and in much the same phrases. He
says :
When he is best, he is little worse than a man; and when he is worst he is
little better than a beast.1
And again he says:
A howling monster; a drunken monster.2
1 Merry Wives of Windsor, i, 2. ' Tempest, iii, 2.
224 FkANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS. .
And in the introduction to The Taming of the Shrew, his Lord-
ship, looking at the drunken Christopher Sly, says:
Oh, monstrous beast! how like a swine he lies.
IX. Timon of Athens.
In this play, the moral is the baseness of sycophants and mam-
mon-worshipers. Its bitterness and wrath came from Bacon's
own oppressed heart, in the day of his calamities; when he had felt
all "the contempt of the contemptible, who measure a man by his
estate."
Mr. Hallam says:
There seems to have been a period of Shakespeare's life when his heart was ill
at ease, and ill content with the world or his own conscience; the memory of hours
mis-spent, the pang of affection misplaced or unrequited, the experience of man's
worser nature, which intercourse with ill-chosen associates by choice or circum-
stance peculiarly teaches; — these, as they sank down into the depths of his great
mind, seem not only to have inspired into it the conception of Lear and Timon,
but that of one primary character, the censurer of mankind.1
X. Shylock the Usurer.
In 1594 Bacon was the victim of a Jew money-lender. In 1595
appeared The Merchant of Venice, in which, says Mrs. Pott:
Shylock immortalizes the hard Jew who persecuted Bacon; and Antonius the
generous brother Anthony who sacrificed himself and taxed his credit in order to
relieve Francis. Antonio in Twelfth Night is of the same generous character.
And it will be observed that both Bacon and the writer of the
Plays were opposed to usury.
Says Bacon:
It is against nature for money to breed money.2
And again he speaks of
The devouring trade of usury.3
While in Shakespeare we have the conversation between
Shylock and Antonio, the former justifying the taking of interest
on money by the case of Jacob, who "grazed his uncle Laban's
sheep" and took "all the yearlings which were streaked and pied."
Says Antonio:
Was this inserted to make interest good ?
Or is your gold and silver ewes and rams?
Shylock. I cannot tell. I make it breed as fast.
1 Literature of Europe, vol. iii, p. 508. 2 Essay Of Usury. 3 Essay Of Seditions.
THE PURPOSES OF THE PLAYS. ' 225
And again we have the same idea of money breeding money,
used by Bacon, repeated in this conversation. Antonio says:
I am as like to call thee so again.
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee, too.
If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not
As to thy friends; for when did friendship take
A breed of barren metal from his friend?
And it will be remembered that the whole play turns on the sub-
ject of usury. The provocation which Antonio first gave Shylock
was that
He lends out money gratis, and brings down
The rate of usance here with us in Venice.
And again:
Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my monies and my usances.
The purpose of the play was to stigmatize the selfishness mani-
fested in the taking of excessive interest; which is, indeed, to the
poor debtor, many a time the cutting-out of the very heart. And
hence the mighty genius has, in the name of Shylock, created a
synonym for usurer, and has made in the Jew money-lender the
most terrible picture of greed, inhumanity and wickedness in all
literature.
Bacon saw the necessity for borrowing and lending, and hence of
moderate compensation for the use of money. But he pointed out,
in his essay Of Usury, the great evils which resulted from the prac-
tice. He contended that if the owners of money could not lend it
out, they would have to employ it themselves in business; and hence,
instead of the "lazy trade of usury," there would be enterprises of
all kinds, and employment for labor, and increased revenues to the
kingdom. And his profound wisdom was shown in this utterance:
It [usury] bringeth the treasures of a realm or state into a few hands; for the
usurer being at certainties, and others at uncertainties, at the end of the game
most of the money will be in his box; and ever a state flourisheth most when
wealth is more equally spread.
XI. MOBOCRACY.
The moral of Coriolanus is that the untutored multitude, as it
existed in Bacon's day, the mere mob, was not capable of self-gov-
ernment. The play was written, probably, because of the many
indications which Bacon saw that "the foot of the peasant was
226 FRANCIS BACOX THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
treading close on the kibe of the courtier," as Hamlet says; and
that a religious war, accompanied by an uprising of the lower
classes, was at hand, which would, as he feared, sweep away all
learning and civility in a deluge of blood. The deluge came
shortly after his death, but the greatness and self-control of the
English race saved it from ultimate anarchy. At the same time
Bacon, in his delineation of the patriot Brutus, showed that he was
not adverse to a republican government of intelligent citizens.
XII. The Deficiencies of the Man of Thought.
Hamlet is autobiographical. It is Bacon himself. It is the man
of thought, the philosopher, the poet, placed in the midst of the
necessities of a rude age.
Bacon said:
I am better fitted to hold a book than to play a part.
He is overweighted with the thought-producing faculty: in his
case the cerebrum overbalances the cerebellum. He laments in his
old age that, being adapted to contemplation and study, his for-
tune forced him into parts for which he was not fitted. He makes
this his apology to posterity:
This I speak to posterity, not out of ostentation, but because I judge it may
somewhat import the dignity of learning, to have a man born for letters rather than
anything else, who should, by a certain fatality, and against the bent of his own
genius, be compelled into active life}
This is Hamlet. He comes in with book in hand, speculating
where he should act. He is " holding a book " where he should
" play a part."
Schlegel says of Hamlet ;
The whole is intended to show that a calculating consideration, which exhausts
all the relations and possible consequences of a deed, must cripple the power of
acting.
Coleridge says of Hamlet :
We see a great, an enormous intellectual activity, and a proportionate aver-
sion to real action consequent upon it.
Dowden says:
When the play opens he has reached the age of thirty years — the age, it has
been said, when the ideality of youth ought to become one with and inform the
practical tendencies of manhood — and he has received culture of every kind
1 Advancement of Learning, book viii, p. 3.
THE PURPOSES OF THE PLAYS.
U"'^*8/T,
227
except the culture of active life. He has slipped on into years of full manhood still a
haunter of the university, a student of philosophies, an amateur in art, a ponderer on
the things of life and death, who has never formed a resolution or executed a deed.
These descriptions fit Bacon's case precisely. His ambition
drags him into the midst of the activities of the court; his natural
predisposition carries him away to St. Albans or Twickenham
Park, to indulge in his secret " contemplations; " and to compose
the "works of his recreation" and "the works of the alphabet."
He was, as it were, two men bound in one. He aspired to rule
England and to give' a new philosophy to mankind. He would
rival Cecil and Aristotle at the same time.
And this play seems to be autobiographical in another sense.
Hamlet was robbed of his rights by a relative — his uncle. He
" lacked advancement." Bacon, who might naturally hope to rise to
a place in Elizabeth's court similar to that held by his father, "lacks
advancement;" and it is his uncle Burleigh and his uncle's son who
hold him down. Hamlet is a philosopher. So is Bacon. Hamlet
writes verses to Ophelia. Bacon is a poet. Hamlet writes a play,
or part of one, for the stage. So, we assert, did Bacon. Hamlet
puts forth the play as the work of another. So, we think, did
Bacon. Hamlet cries out:
The play's the thing
Wherewith I'll catch the conscience of the King.
And it is our theory that Bacon sought with his plays to
catch the conscience of mankind. Hamlet has one true, trusted
friend, Horatio, to whom he opens the secrets of his heart, and to
whom he utters a magnificent essay on friendship. Bacon has an-
other such trusted friend, Sir Tobie Matthew, to whom he opened
his heart, and for whom, we are told, he wrote his prose essay Of
Friendship. Hamlet is supposed to be crazy. Bacon is charged
by his enemies with being a little daft — with having "a bee in his
head " — and each herein, perhaps, illustrates the old truth, that
Great minds to madness are quite close allied,
And thin partitions do the bounds divide.
XIII. The Tempest.
The great drama of The Tempest contains another personal story.
This has, in part, been perceived by others. Mr. Campbell says:
The Tempest has a sort of sacredness as the last work of a mighty workman.
Shakespeare, as if conscious that it would be his last, and as if inspired to typify
228 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
himself, has made his hero a natural, a dignified and benevolent magician, who'
could conjure up spirits from the vasty deep, and command supernatural agency
by the most seemingly natural and simple means. . . . Here Shakespeare himself
is Prospero, or rather the superior genius who commands both Prospero and Ariel,
But the time was approaching when the potent sorcerer was to break his staff, and
bury it fathoms in the ocean,
Deeper than did ever plummet sound.1
What is the plot of the play ?
Prospero was born to greatness, was a "prince of power."
Bacon was born in the royal palace of York Place, and expected
to inherit the greatness of his father, Elizabeth's Lord Chancellor.
"Bacon," says Hepworth Dixon,2 "seemed born to power."
Prospero was cast down from his high place. So was Bacon.
Who did it? His uncle Burleigh. And in The Tempest, as in
Hamlet, an uncle is the evil genius of the play. Prospero says to
his daughter Miranda:
Thy false uncle ■ — ...
Being once perfected how to grant suits,
How to deny them; whom to advance, and whom
To trash for over-topping — new created
The creatures that were mine, I say, or changed them,
Or else new formed them; having both the key
Of officer and office, set all hearts i' th' state
To what tune pleased his ear.
This might be taken to describe, very aptly, the kind of arts by
which Bacon's uncle, Burleigh, reached and held power. Bacon
wrote to King James:
In the time of Elizabeth the Cecils purposely oppressed all men of ability.
And why did Prospero lose power ? Because he was a student.
He neglected the arts of statecraft and politics, and devoted him-
self to nobler pursuits. He says:
I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated
To closeness and the bettering of my mind.
.... me, poor man ! my library
Was dukedom large enough !
"The bettering of my mind" is very Baconian. But where
have we the slightest evidence that the man of Stratford ever
strove to improve his mind ?
And the labors of Prospero were devoted to the liberal arts and
to secret studies. So were Bacon's. Prospero says:
1 Knight's Shakespeare, introductory notice to Tempest.
8 Personal History of Lor J Bacon, p. 7.
THE PURPOSES OF THE PLAYS. 229
And Prospero, the prime duke, being so reputed
In dignity; and for the liberal arts
Without a parallel; those being all my study,
The government I cast upon my brother,
And to my state grew stranger, being transported
And rapt in secret studies.
What happened ? Prospero was dethroned, and with his little
daughter, Miranda, was seized upon:
In few, they hurried us aboard a bark;
Bore us some leagues to sea, where they prepared
A rotten carcase of a butt, not rigged,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
Instinctively had quit it.
This was the rotten butt of Bacon's fortunes, when they were
at their lowest; when his friends deserted him, like the rats, and
when he wrote Timon of Athens.
Miranda asks:
How came we ashore?
Prospero replies:
By Providence divine
Some food we had, and some fresh water, that
A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,
Out of his charity, (who being then appointed
Master of this design), did give us, with
Rich garments, linens, stuffs and necessaries
Which since have steaded much; so of his gentleness,
Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me,
From mine own library, with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom.
How fully is all this in accord with the character of Francis
Bacon: — the man who had " taken all knowledge for his province; "
the "concealed poet;" the philanthropist; the student; the lover
of books ! How little is it in accordance with what we know of
Shakspere, who does not seem to have possessed a library, or a
single book — not even a quarto copy of one of the Plays.
But who was Miranda?
The name signifies wonderful tilings. Does it mean these won-
derful Plays? She was Bacon's child — the offspring of his brain.
And we find, as I have shown, in sonnet lxxvii these lines, evidently
written in the front of a commonplace-book:
Look what thy memory cannot contain,
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain.
To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
230 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
Was Miranda the wonderful product of Bacon's brain — the
child of the concealed poet ?
When Ferdinand sees Miranda, he plays upon the name:
My prime request,
Which I do last pronounce, is, O! you wonder !
If you be maid or no ?
And it will be noted that Miranda was in existence before Pros-
pero's downfall; and the Plays had begun to appear in Bacon's
youth and before his reverses.
And we are further told that when Prospero and his daughter
were carried to the island, the love he bore Miranda was the one
thing that preserved him from destruction:
Miranda. Alack! what trouble
Was I then to you ?
Prospero. O! a cherubin
Thou wast that did preserve me ! Thou didst smile,
Infused with a fortitude from heaven,
When I have decked the sea with drops full salt,
Under my burthen groaned; which raised in me
An undergoing stomach, to bear up
Against what should ensue.
That is to say, in the days of Bacon's miseries, his love for divine
poetry saved him from utter dejection and wretchedness. And in
some large sense, therefore, his troubles were well for him; and for
ourselves, for without them we should not have the Plays. And hence
we read:
Miranda. O, the Heavens !
What foul play had we, that we came from thence ?
Or blessed was't we did ?
Prospero. Both, both, my girl;
By foul play, as thou sayst, were we heaved thence;
But blessedly holp hither.
And the leisure of the retirement to which Bacon was driven
enabled him to perfect the Plays, whereas success would have ab-
sorbed him in the trivialities of court life. And so Prospero says to
Miranda:
Sit still, and hear the last of our sea-sorrow.
Here in this island we arrived; and here
Have I, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit
Than other princes can, that have more time
For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful.
And on the island is Ariel. Who is Ariel ? It is a tricksy
spirit, a singer of sweet songs, "which give delight and hurt not; "
THE PURPOSES OE THE PLAYS. 2,]
a maker of delicious music; a secretive spirit, given much to hiding
in invisibility while it achieves wondrous external results. It is
Prospero's instrumentality in his magic; his servant. And withal it
is humane, gentle and loving, like the soul of the benevolent philos-
opher himself. If Pro-sper-o is Shake-^r, or, as Campbell says,
" the superior genius who commands both Prospero and Ariel," then
Ariel is the genius of poetry, the constructive intellectual power of
the drama-maker, which he found pegged in the knotty entrails of
an oak, uttering the harsh, discordant sounds of the old moralities,
until he released it and gave it wings and power. And, like the
maker of the Plays, it sings sweet songs, of which Ferdinand says:
This is no mortal business, nor no sound
That the earth owns.
And, like the poet, it creates masks to work upon the senses of
its audience — it is a play-maker.
And there is one other inhabitant of the island — Caliban —
A freckled whelp, hag-born.
Who is Caliban ? Is he the real Shakspere ? He claims the
ownership of the island. Was the island the stage, — the play-
house,— to which Bacon had recourse for the means of life, when
his fortune failed him; to which he came in the rotten butt of his
fortunes, with his child Miranda, — the early plays?
Shakspere, be it remembered, was at the play-house before
Bacon came to it. Prospero found Caliban on the island. Caliban
claimed the ownership of it. He says, "This island's mine."
When thou earnest first,
Thou strok'dst me, and made much of me;
Would give me water with berries in't; and teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night; and then I loved thee,
And showed thee all the qualities of the isle,
The fresh springs, brine springs, barren place and fertile.
That is to say, Shakspere gave Bacon the use of his knowledge
of the stage and play-acting, and showed him the fertile places
from which money could be extracted.
And do these lines represent Bacon's opinion of Shakspere?
Abhorred slave,
Which any print of goodness will not take,
Being capable of all ill ! I pitied thee,
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour
232 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage,
Know thine own meaning, but would gabble like
A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes
With words that made them known.
And again he says — and it will be remembered Shakspere was
alive when The Tempest was written :
A devil, a born devil, on whose nature
Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains,
Humanly taken, all, all lost, quite lost;
And as, with age, his body uglier grows,
So his mind cankers.
Prospero has lost his kingdom. He has had the leisure in the
solitude of his "full poor cell" to bring Mira?ida to the perfection
of mature beauty. The Plays are finished.
[Bacon, after his downfall, in 1623, applied for the place of Pro-
vost of Eaton; he says, " it was a pretty cell for my fortune."]
When Miranda was grown to womanhood an accident threw
Prospero's enemies in his power. A most propitious star shone
upon his fortunes. His enemies were upon the sea near him.
With the help of Ariel he raised a mighty tempest and shipwrecked
those who had deprived him of his kingdom, and brought them
wretched and half-drowned to his feet. He had always wished to
leave the island and recover his kingdom; and, his enemies being
in his power, he forced them to restore him to his rights.
Is there anything in Bacon's life which parallels this story?
There is.
Bacon, like Prospero, had been cast- down. He desired to rise
again in the state. And there came a time when he brought his
enemies to his feet, in the midst of a tempest of the state, which he
probably helped to create. And this very word tempest, so applied,
is a favorite one with Bacon. He said, at the time of his downfall:
When I enter into myself, I find not the materials for such a tempest as is now
come upon me.
In June, 1606, Francis Bacon was out of place and without in-
fluence with the court, but he wielded great power in Parliament,
of which he was a member, as a noble orator and born ruler of men.
He had hoped that this influence would have secured him prefer-
ment in the state. He was disappointed. Hepworth Dixon shows
that, upon the death of Sir Francis Gawdy and Coke's promotion
THE PURPOSES OF THE PLAYS. 233
to the bench, Bacon expected to be made Attorney-General. But
his malign cousin, Cecil, again defeated his just and reasonable
hopes; and the great man, after all his years of patient waiting,
had to step aside once more to make place for some small creature.
But there is trouble in the land. King James of Scotland came
down to rule England, and hordes of his countrymen came with, or
followed after him, to improve their fortunes in the fat land of
which their countryman was monarch. King James desired Parlia-
ment to pass the bill of Union, to unite the Scots and English on
terms of equality. His heart was set on this measure. But the
English disliked the Scots.
Hepworth Dixon says:
Under such crosses the bill on Union fares but ill. Fuller, the bilious repre-
sentative of London, flies at the Scots. The Scots in London are in the highest
degree unpopular. Lax in morals and in taste, they will take the highest place at
table, they will drink out of anybody's can, they will kiss the hostess, or her
buxom maid, without saying "by your leave." '
We have reason to think that Ariel is at work, invisibly, behind
the scenes raising the Tempest. Dixon continues:
Brawls fret the taverns which they haunt; pasqnins hiss against them from the
stage. . . . Three great poets, Jonson, Chapman and Jfarston, go to jail for a harmless
jest against these Scots. Such acts of rigor make the name of Union hateful to the
public ear.
Let Hepworth Dixon tell the rest of the story:
When Parliament meets in November to discuss the bill on Union, Bacon
stands back. The King has chosen his attorney; let the new attorney fight the
King's battle. The adversaries to be met are bold and many. . . . Beyond the
Tweed, too, people are mutinous to the point of ivar% for the countrymen of
Andrew Melville begin to suspect the King of a design against the Kirk. . . .
Melville is clapped into the Tower. . . . Hobart (the new Attorney-General) goes
to the wall. James now sees that the battle is not to the weak, nor the race to the
slow. Bacon has only to hold his tongue and make his terms.2
Prospero has only to wait for the Tempest to wash his enemies
to his feet.
Alarmed lest the bill of Union may be rejected by an overwhelming vote,
Cecil suddenly adjourns the House. He must get strength. . . . Pressed on all
sides, here by the Lord Chancellor, there by a mutinous House of Commons,
Cecil at length yields to his cousin's claim; Sir John Doderidge bows his neck, and
when Parliament meets, after the Christmas holidays, Bacon holds in his pocket
a written engagement for the Solicitor's place.
1 Personal History 9/ Lord Bacon, p. 184. 2 Ibid., p. 1S3.
234 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
The Tempest is past; the Duke of Milan has recovered hts
kingdom; the poor scholar leaves his cell, at forty-six years of age,
and steps into a place worth ^6,000 a year, or $30,000 of our
money, equal to probably $300,000 per annum to-day. There is no
longer any necessity for the magician to remain upon his poor
desert island, with Caliban, and write plays for a living. He dis-
misses Ariel. The Plays cease to appear.
But Prospero, when he leaves the island, takes Miranda with
him. She will be well cared for. We will see hereafter that " the
works of the alphabet " will be "set in a frame," at heavy cost,,
and wedded to immortality.
The triumphant statesman leaves Caliban in possession of the
island! He has crawled out from his temporary shelter:
I hid me under the dead moon-calf's gaberdine, for fear of the storm.
He will devote the remainder of his life to statecraft and phil-
osophy. He will write no more poetry,
For at his age
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble
And waits upon the judgment.
But Prospero will not be idle. Like Bacon, he has great
projects in his head. He says:
Welcome, sir;
This cell's my court; here have I few attendants
And subjects none abroad: pray you, look in.
My dukedom since you have given me again,
I will requite you with as good a thing;
At least bring forth a wonder to content ye,
As much as me my dukedom.
That is to say, relieved of the necessities of life, possessed of
power and fortune he will give the world the Novum Organum, the
new philosophy, which is to revolutionize the earth and lift up
mankind.
And yet, turning, as he does, to these mighty works of his
mature years, he cannot part, without a sigh, from the labors of
his youth; from the sweet and gentle spirit of the imagination — his
"chick," his genius, his "delicate Ariel ":
Why, that's my dainty Ariel: I shall miss thee ;
But yet thou shalt have freedom.
And then, casting his eyes backward, he exults over his mighty
work:
THE PURPOSES OF THE FLA VS. 235
Graves, at my command,
Have waked their sleepers; op'd, and let them forth
By my so potent art.
Indeed, a long and mighty procession ! Lear, Titus Andronicus,
Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Marc Antony, Cleo-
patra, Augustus Csesar, Timon of Athens, Cymbeline, Alcibiades.
Pericles, Macbeth, Duncan, Hamlet, King John, Arthur, Richard II.,
John of Gaunt, Henry IV., Hotspur, Henry V., Henry VI., Richard
III., Clarence, Henry VIII., Wolsey, Cranmer, Queen Katharine,
and Anne Boleyn.
But this rough magic
I here abjure: and, when I have required
Some heavenly music (which even now I do) —
[that is to say, he retains his magic power a little longer to write
one more play, this farewell drama, The Tempest] —
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And, deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.
What does this mean ? Certainly that the magician had ended
his work; that his rough magic was no longer necessary; that he
would no longer call up the mighty dead from their graves. And
he dismisses even the poor players through whom he has wrought
his charm; they also are but spirits, to do his bidding:
Our revels new are ended: these our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces.
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
And this play of The Tempest is placed at the very beginning
of the great Folio of 1623, as an introduction to the other mighty
Plays.
And if this be not the true explanation of this play, where are
we to find it? If Prosper is Shake-sper (as seems to be conceded),
or the one for (pro) whom Shake-sper stood, what is the meaning
236 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
of his "abjuring his magic," giving up his work and "drowning
his book?" And what is that "wonder" he — the man of Strat-
ford— is to bring forth after he has drowned his book: — some-
thing more wonderful than Miranda — (the wonderful things) — and
with which the dismissed Ariel is to have nothing to do ? And
why should Shakspere drown his book and retire to Stratford, and
write no more plays, thus abjuring his magic? Do you imagine
that the man who would sue a neighbor for two shillings loaned;
or who would sell a load of stone to the town for ten pence; or
who would charge his guest's wine-bill to the parish, would, if he
had the capacity to produce an unlimited succession of Hamlets,
Lears and Macbeths, worth thousands of pounds, have drowned his
book, and gone home and brewed beer and sucked his thumbs for
several years, until drunkenness and death came to his relief?
And is there any likeness between the princely, benevolent and
magnanimous character of Prospero and that of the man of Strat-
ford ?
XIV. Kingcraft.
Bacon believed in a monarchy, but in a constitutional mon-
archy, restrained by a liberty-loving aristocracy, with justice and
fair play for the humbler classes.
He, however, was utterly opposed to all royal despotism. He
showed, as the leader of the people in the House of Commons,
that he was ready to use the power of Parliament to restrain the
unlimited arrogance of the crown. He saw that one great obsta-
cle to liberty was the popular idea of the divine right of kings.
We can hardly appreciate to-day the full force of that sentiment
as it then existed. Hence, in the Plays, he labors to reduce the
king to the level of other men, or below it. He represents John as a
cowardly knave, a truckler to a foreign power, a would-be murderer,
and an altogether worthless creature. Richard II. is little better —
a frivolous, weak-witted, corrupt, sordid, dishonest fool.
He puts into his mouth the old-time opinion of the heaven-dele-
gated powers of a king:
Not all the water of the rough, rude sea
Can wash the balm from an anointed king:
The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord:
THE PURPOSES OF THE PLAYS. 237
For every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd,
To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown,
Heaven for his Richard hath in heavenly pay
A glorious angel ! then, if angels fight.
Weak men must fall, for Heaven still guards the right !
And then the poet proceeds to show that this is all nonsense:
that the " breath of worldly men " can, and that it in fact does
depose him; and that not an angel stirs in all the vasty courts of
heaven to defend his cause.
And then he perforates the whole theory still further by making
the King himself exclaim:
Let's choose executors and talk of wills;
And yet not so; for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death;
And that small model of the barren earth,
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For Heaven's sake let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been depos'd, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd;
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping killed,
All murder'd. For within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Death keeps his court; and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit;
As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable: and humored thus,
Comes at the last, and, with a little pin,
Bores through his castle walls, and, — farewell, king!
Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence; throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief,
Need friends. Subjected thus,
How can you say to me — I am a king !
Surely this must have sounded strangely in the ears of a Lon-
don audience of the sixteenth century, who had been taught to
regard the king as anointed of Heaven and the actual viceregent of
God on earth, whose very touch was capable of working miracles
in the cure of disease, possessing therein a power exercised on
238 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
earth aforetime only by the Savior and his saints. And the play
concludes with the murder of Richard.
And then comes Henry IV., usurper, murderer; and the poet
makes him frankly confess his villainy:
Come hither, Harry, sit thou by my bed;
And hear, I think, the very latest counsel
That ever I shall breathe. Heaven knows, my son,
By what by-paths and indirect, crooked ways
I met this crown.
And yet he lives to a ripe old age, and establishes a dynasty on
the corner-stone of the murder of Richard II.
And we have the same lesson of contempt for kings taught in
Lear:
They told me I was everything. But when the rain came to wet me once, and
the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at my bidding,
there I found them, there I smelt them out.1
And in The Tempest we have this expression:
What care these roarers for the name of king?'
Is not the moral plain: — that kings are nothing more than men;
that Heaven did not ordain them, and does not protect them; and
that a king has no right to hold his place any longer than he
behaves himself?
His son, Henry V., is the best of the lot — he is the hero-king;
but even he rises out of a shameful youth; he is the associate of
the most degraded; the companion of profligate men and women,
of highwaymen and pick-pockets. And even in his mouth the
poet puts the same declaration of the hollowness of royal preten-
sions. King Henry V. says, while in disguise:
I think the King is but a man as I am; the violet smells to him as it
doth to me; the element shews to him as it doth to me; all his senses have
but human conditions; his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears
but a man/'
We turn to Henry VI., and we find him a shallow, empty imbe-
cile, below the measure even of contempt.
In Richard III. we have a horrible monster; a wild beast; a liar,
perjurer, murderer; a remorseless, bloody, man-eating tiger of the
jungles.
1 Lear, iv, 6. s Tempest, i, i. 3 Henry V., iv. i.
THE PURPOSES OE THE FLA VS. 239
In Henry VIII. we have a king divorcing a sainted angel,
as we are told, under the plea of conscience, to marry a
frivolous woman, in obedience to the incitements of sensual
passion.
And this is the whole catalogue of royal representatives
brought on the stage by Shakespeare !
And these Plays educated the English people, and prepared the
way for the day when Charles I. was brought to trial and the
scaffold.
If Bacon intended to strike deadly blows at the idea of divine
right, and irresponsible royal authority, in England, certainly he
accomplished his object in these "Histories" of English kings. It
may be that the Reform he had intended graduated into the Revo-
lution which he had not intended. He could not foresee Cromwell
and the Independents; and yet, that storm being past, England is
enjoying the results of his purposes, in its wise constitutional mon-
archy:— the spirit of liberty wedded to the conservative forms of
antiquity.
XV. Teaching History.
But there is another motive in these Plays. They are teachers
of history. It is probable that the series of historical dramas
began with William the Conqueror, for we find Shakspere, in an
obscene anecdote, which tradition records, referring to himself as
William the Conqueror, and to Burbadge as Richard III. Then we
have Shakespeare's King John. In Marlowe we have the play of
Edward II Among the doubtful plays ascribed to the pen of
Shakespeare is the play of 'Edward III. Then follows Richard II.;
then, in due and consecutive order, Henry IV., first and second
parts; then Henry V; then Henry VI, first, second and third parts;
then Richard III; there is no play of Henry VII. {but Bacon writes
a history of He?iry VII, taking up the story just where the play
of Richard III leaves it); then the series of plays ends with
Henry VIII,; and the cipher narrative probably gives us the whole
history of the reign of Elizabeth.
All these plays tended to make history familiar to the common
people, and we find testimony to that effect in the writings of the
day.
X. *>- Or
24o FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
XVI. Patriotism.
But there is another purpose transparently revealed in the Plays.
It was to infuse the people with a sense of devotion to their native
land. Speaking of national patriotism, Swinburne says:
Assuredly, no poet ever had more than he (Shakespeare); not even the king of
men and poets who fought at Marathon and sang at Salamis; much less had any
or has any one of our own, from Milton on to Campbell and from Campbell to
Tennyson. In the mightiest chorus of King Henry V. we hear the pealing ring of
the same great English trumpet that was yet to sound over the battle of the Baltic.1
And the same writer speaks of
The national side of Shakespeare's genius, the heroic vein of patriotism that runs,
like a thread of living fire, through the world-wide range of his omnipresent spirit. J
We turn to Bacon, and we find the same great patriotic inspira-
tions. His mind took in all mankind, but the love of his heart
centered on England. His thoughts were bent to increase her
glory and add to her security from foreign foes. To do this he
saw that it was necessary to keep up the military spirit of the
people. He says:
But above all, for empire and greatness, it importeth most that a nation do
profess arms as their principal honor, study and occupation. ... No nation which
doth not directly profess arms may look to have greatness fall into their mouths;
and, on the other side, it is a most certain oracle of time that those nations that
continue long in that profession (as the Romans and Turks principally have done)
do wonders; and those that have professed arms but for an age have, notwith-
standing, commonly attained that greatness in that age which maintaineth them
long after, when the profession and exercise of arms hath grown to decay.3
And again he says:
Walled towns, stored arsenals and armories, goodly races of horse, chariots of
war, elephants, ordnance, artillery and the like; all this but a sheep in a lion's
skin, except the dreed and disposition of the people be stout and war-like.4
We turn to Shakespeare, and we find him referring to English-
men as
Feared for their breed and famous by their birth.
Here is the whole sentence. How exultantly does he depict his
own country — " that little body with a mighty heart," as he calls
it elsewhere:
This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
1 Swinburne, Study of Shak., p. 113. 3 Essay xxix, The True Greatness of Kingdoms.
'Ibid., p. 73- "Ibid.
THE PURPOSES OE THE PLA VS.
Against infection and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd for their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home
(For Christian service and true chivalry),
As is the sepulcher in stubborn Jewry
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son;
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world.1
And again he speaks of England as
Hedged in with the main,
That water-walled bulwark, still secure
And confident from foreign purposes.'2
And again he says:
Let us be back'd with God, and with the seas,
Which he has given for fence impregnable.3
And again he says:
Which stands
As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in
With rocks unscalable and roaring waters,4
241
And again:
And again:
Britain is
A world by itself.5
I' the wrorld's volume,
Our Britain is as of it, but not in it;
In a great pool, a swan's nest.6
And, while Shakespeare alludes to the sea as England's " water-
walled bulwark," Bacon speaks of ships as the "walls" of Eng-
land. And he says:
To be master of the sea is an abridgment of a monarchy.7
And he further says:
No man can by care-taking (as the Scripture saith) " add a cubit to his stature "
in this little model of a man's body, but in the great fame of kingdoms and com-
monwealths it is in the power of princes, or estates, to add amplitude and great-
ness to their kingdoms; for by introducing such ordinances, constitutions and
customs as we have now touched, they may sow greatness to their posterity and suc-
cession; but these things are commonly not observed, but left to take their chance. s
1 Richard II., ii, 1.
4 Cymbeline, iii, 1.
7 Essay, True Greatness 0/ Kingdoms.
- King John, ii, 1.
6 Ibid., iii, 1.
8 Ibid.
s jd Henry VI. , iv, 1.
8 Ibid., iii, 4.
242
FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
And was he not, in these appeals to national heroism, "sowing
greatness to posterity" and helping to create, or maintain, that warlike
"breed" which has since carried the banners of conquest over a
great part of the earth's surface? One can imagine how the eyes
of those swarming audiences at the Fortune and the Curtain must
have snapped with delight at the pictures of English valor on the
field of Agincourt, as depicted in Henry V.; or at the representation
of that tremendous soldier Talbot, in Henry VI. , dying like a lion
at bay, with his noble boy by his side. How the 'prentices must
have roared ! How the mob must have raved ! How even the
gentlemen must have drawn deep breaths of patriotic inspiration
from such scenes ! Imagine the London of to-day going wild over
the work of some great genius, depicting, in the midst of splendid
poetry, Wellington and Nelson !
But there are many other purposes revealed in these Plays.
XVII. Dueling.
The writer of the Plays was opposed to the practice of dueling.
One commentator (H. T.), in a note to the play of Twelfth
Night, says:
It was the plainly evident intention of Shakespeare, in this play, to place the
practice of dueling in a ridiculous light. Dueling was in high fashion at this
period — a perfect rage for it existed, and a man was distinguished or valued in
the select circles of society in proportion to his skill and courage in this savage
and murderous practice. Our poet well knew the power of ridicule often exceeded
that of the law, and in the combat between the valiant Sir Andrew Aguecheek and
the disguised Viola, he has placed the custom in an eminently absurd situation.
Mr. Chalmers supposes that his attention was drawn to it by an edict of James I.,
issued in the year 1613. From his remarks we quote the following:
In Twelfth Night Shakespeare tried to effect by ridicule what the state was
unable to perform by legislation. The duels which were so incorrigibly frequent
in that age were thrown into a ridiculous light by the affair between Viola and
Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Sir Francis Bacon had lamented, in the House of Com-
mons, on the 3d of March, 1609-10, the great difficulty of redressing the evil of
duels, owing to the corruption of man's nature. King James tried to effect what
the Parliament had despaired of effecting, and in 1613 he issued "An edict and
censure against private combats," which was conceived with great vigor, and
expressed with decisive force; but whether with the help of Bacon or not I am
unable to ascertain.
There can be no question that the Proposition for the Repressing
of Singular Co?nbats or Duels, in 1613, came from the hand of Bacon.
We find it given as his in Spedding's Life and Works.1 He pro-
posed to exclude all duelists from the King's presence, because
1 Vol. iv., p. 397.
THE PURPOSES OF THE PLA VS. 243
"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, irremiss-
ible fine. A proclamation to this effect was issued by the King.
We also have the "charge of Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, His Maj-
esty'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 poefs call aurora filii, sons of the morning, in whom the comfort and expecta-
tions 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 argu-
ment 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 Chris-
tians enough to kill? Did you not know that whether of you should be slain, the
Joss 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 ! '
Bacon secured the conviction of Priest and Wright, and pre-
pared 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-
o44 MAX CIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
If wrongs be evil, and enforce us kill,
What folly 'tis to hazard life for ill ! '
And again:
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.2
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 Fran-
cis Bacon. I might point to Bacon's disapprobation of supersti-
tion, 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.
I might further note that Bacon wrote an essay against popular
prophecies; and Knight notes3 that the Fool in Lear ridicules these
things, as in:
Then comes the time, who lives to see 't,
When going shall be used with feet.4
Says Knight:
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 stimu-
lants to popular credulity, that they were considered of importance in Shake-
speare'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.
THE PURPOSES OP THE PLA VS. 245
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 ele-
vate 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 vig-
orous 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.
1
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, /V,j>.
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 aristo-
crat 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 after-
ward 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 or
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. . . .
1 Hepworth Dixon, Personal History of Lord Bacon, p. 16.
246
THE RE A SOX S FOR CONCEALMENT. 247
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 con-
tinued to live there for ten years to come. Why was it that the fount-
ain 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 gen-
tlemen 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 law-
schools to furnish dramatic representations for the entertainment
1 Hepworth Dixon, Personal History of Lord Bacon:
248 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
of the court and the nobility. Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, as I
have shown, made its first appearance, not on the stage of the
Curtain or the Fortune theater, but in an entertainment given
by the students of Gray's Inn (Bacon's law-school); and Shake-
speare's comedy of Twelfth Night was first acted before the
"benchers" of the Middle Temple, who employed professional
players to act before them every year. We know these facts, as
to the two plays named, almost by accident. How many more of
the so-called Shakespeare Plays first saw the light on the boards
of those law students, at their great entertainments, we do not
know.1
We find in Dodslefs Old Plays a play called The Misfortunes of
Arthur. The title-leaf says:
Certaine Devises and Shews presented to her Majestie by the Gentlemen of
Grave's-Inne, at her Highnesse Court in Greenewich, the twenty-eighth day of
February, in the thirtieth year of her Majestie's most happy Raigne. At London.
Printed by Robert Robinson. 1587.'2
Mr. Collier wrote a preface to it, in which he says:
It appears that eight persons, members of the Society of Gray's Inn, were
engaged in the production of The Misfortunes of Arthur, for the entertainment of
Queen Elizabeth, at Greenwich, on the 28th day of February, 1587-8, viz.:
Thomas Hughes, the author of the whole body of the tragedy; William Fullbecke,
who wrote two speeches substituted on the representation and appended to the old
printed copy; Nicholas Trotte, who furnished the introduction; Francis Flower,
who penned choruses for the first and second acts; Christopher Yelverton, Francis
Bacon, and John Lancaster, who devised the dumb-show, then usually accompany-
ing such performances; and a person of the name of Penruddock, who, assisted
by Flower and Lancaster, directed the proceedings at court. Regarding Hughes
and Trotte no information has survived. . . . The " Maister Francis Bacon"
spoken of at the conclusion of the piece was, of course, no other than (the great)
Bacon; and it is a new feature in his biography, though not, perhaps, very promi-
nent nor important, that he was so nearly concerned in the preparation of a play at
court. In February, 1587-8, he had just commenced his twenty-eighth year. . . .
The Misfortunes of Arthur is a dramatic composition only known to exist in
the Garrick Collection. Judging from internal evidence, it seems to have been
printed with unusual care, tinder the superintendence of the principal author. . . .
The mere rarity of this unique drama would not have recommended it to our
notice; but it is not likely that such a man as Bacon would have lent 'his aid
to the production of a piece which was not intrinsically good; and, unless we
much mistake, there is a richer and nobler vein of poetry running through it
than is to be found in any previous work of the kind. ... It forms a sort of
connecting link between such pieces of unimpassioned formality as Ferrex and
Porrex, and rule-rejecting historical plays, as Shakespeare found them and left
them.
» Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines Li/e 0/ Shak.. p. 128. 9 Hazlitt, vol. iv, p. 249.
THE REASONS FOR CONCEALMENT. 249
I will discuss this play and its merits at more length hereafter,
and will make but one or two observations upon it at this time.
1. It does not seem to me probable, if eight young lawyers
were preparing a play for the court, and one of them was Francis
Bacon, with his ready pen and unlimited command of language,
that he would confine himself to "the dumb-show." It will be
remembered that he wrote the words of certain masks that were
acted before the court.
And if it be true that this youthful performance reveals poetry
of a higher order than anything that had preceded, is it more
natural to suppose it the product of the mightiest genius of his
age, who was, by his own confession, "a concealed poet," or the
work of one Thomas Hughes, who never, in the remainder of his life,
produced anything worth remembering? And we will see, here-
after, that the poetry of this play is most strikingly Shakespearean.
2. Collier says he knows nothing of Thomas Hughes and Nich-
olas Trotte. Can Thomas Hughes, the companion of Bacon in
Gray's Inn, and his co-laborer in preparing this play, be the same
Hughes referred to in that line in one of the Shakespeare sonnets
which has so perplexed the commentators —
A man in hue, all hues in his controlling; —
and which has been supposed by many to refer to some man of
the name of Hughes?
3. As to the identity of Nicholas Trotte there can be no ques-
tion. He is the same Nicholas Trotte with whom Bacon carried
on a long correspondence on the subject of money loaned by him
to Bacon at divers and sundry times.
But this is not the place to discuss the play of The Misfortunes
of Arthur. I refer to it now only to show how naturally Bacon
might drift into writing for the stage. As:
1. Bacon is poor and in need of money.
2. Bacon assists in getting up a play for his law-school, Gray's
Inn, if he does not write the greater part of it.
3. The Comedy of Errors appears at Gray's Inn for the first time,
acted by Shakspere's company.
4. It was customary for impecunious lawyers in that age to turn
an honest penny by writing for the stage.
250 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
Here, then, we have the man, the ability, the necessity, the cus-
tom, the opportunity. Bacon and Shakspere both on the boards
of Gray's Inn at the same time — one directing, the other acting.
If The Misfortunes of Art Jutr was really Bacon's work, and if it
was a success on the stage, how natural that he should go farther
in the same direction. Poetry is, as Bacon tells us, a "lust of the
earth" — a something that springs up from the mind like the rank
growths of vegetation from the ground; it is, as Shakespeare says:
A gum which oozes
From whence 'tis nourished.
We see a picture of the poet at this age in the description of
Hepworth Dixon; it is not a description of a philosopher:
Like the ways of all deep dreamers, his habits are odd, and vex Lady Anne's
affectionate and methodical heart. The boy sits up late at night, drinks his ale-
posset to make him sleep, starts out of bed ere it is light, or, may be, as the
whimsy takes him, lolls and dreams till noon, musing, says the good lady, with
loving pity, on — she knows not what!1
IV. Why he Seeks a Disguise.
But if the poetical, the dramatical, the creative instinct is upon
him, shall he venture to put forth the plays he produces in his own
name ? No: there are many reasons say him nay. In the first place,
he knows they are youthful and immature performances. In the
second place, it will grieve his good, pious mother to know that he
doth "mum and mask and sinfully revel." In the third place, the
reputation of a poet will not materially assist him up those long,
steep stairs that lead to the seat his great father occupied. And,
therefore, so he says, "I profess not to be a poet." Therefore will he
put forth his attempts in the name of Thomas Hughes, or any
other friend; or of Marlowe, or of Shakspere, or of any other con-
venient mask. Hath he it not in his mind to be a great reformer;
to reconstruct the laws of the kingdom, and to recast the philoso-
phy of mankind, hurling down Aristotle and the schoolmen from
their disputatious pedestals, and erecting a system that shall make
men better because happier, and happier because wiser in the
knowledge of the nature which surrounds them ? Poetry is but a
"work of his recreation" — a something he cannot help but yield to,
1 Personal History 0/ Lord Bacon, p. 35.
THE REASONS EOR CONCEALMENT. 25 1
but of which he is half-ashamed. He will write it because he is
forced to sing, as the bird sings; because his soul is full; because
he is obeying the purpose for which he was created. But publish his
productions? No. And therefore he "professes" not to be a poet.
And, moreover, he is naturally given to secretiveness. There-
was a strong tendency in the man to subterranean methods. We
find him writing letters in the name of Essex and in the name of
his brother Anthony. He went so far, in a letter written by him.
in the name of his brother, to Essex, to refer back to himself as
followrs (the letter and Essex's reply, also written by hi?n, being
intended for the Queen's eye):
And to this purpose I do assure your Lordship that my brother, Francis Bacon,
who is too wise (I think) to be abused, and too honest to abuse, though he be more
reserved in all particulars than is needful, yet, etc.-
And we positively know, from his letter to Sir John Davies, in
which he speaks of himself as "a concealed poet," that he was the
author of poetical compositions, of some kind, which he did not
acknowledge, and which must certainly have gone about in the
names of other men. And he says himself that, with a purpose to
help Essex regain the good graces of the Queen, he wrote a sonnet
which he passed off upon the Queen as the work of Essex.
We remember that Walter Scott resorted to a similar system of
secretiveness. After he had established for himself a reputation as
a successful poet, he made up his mind to venture upon the com-
position of prose romances; and fearing that a failure in the new
field of effort might compromise his character as a man of genius,
already established by his poems, he put forth his first novel,
Waverly, without any name on the title-page; and then issued a
series of novels as by "the author of Waverly." And in his day
there were books written to show by parallel thoughts and expres-
sions that Scott was really the author of those romances, just as
books are now written on the Bacon-Shakespeare question.
And who does not remember that the author of The Letters of
Junius died and made no sign of confession ?
Bacon doubtless found a great advantage in writing thus under
a mask. The man who sets forth his thoughts in his own name
knows that the public will constantly strive to connect his utter-
ances with his personal character; to trace home his opinions to
2$2
FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
his personal history and circumstances; and he is therefore neces-
sarily always on his guard not to say anything, even in a work of
fiction, that he would not be willing to father as part of his own
natural reflections.
Richard Grant White says:
Shakespeare's freedom in the use of words was but a part of that conscious
irresponsibility to critical rule which had such an important influence upon the
development of his whole dramatic style. To the workings of his genius under
this entire unconsciousness of restraint we owe the grandest and the most delicate
beauties of his poetry, his poignant expressions of emotion, and his richest and
subtlest passages of humor. For the superiority of his work is just in proportion
to his carelessness of literary criticism. . . . His plays were mere entertainments
for the general public, written not to be read, but to be spoken; written as busi-
ness, just as Rogers wrote money circulars, or as Bryant writes leading articles.
This freedom was suited to the unparalleled richness and spontaneousness of his
thought, of which it was, in fact, partly the result, and itself partly the condition.1
The Anatomy of Melancholy was first published, not in the name
of the alleged author, Robert Burton, but under the nom de plume of
"Democritus, Junior," and in the address to the reader the author
says:
Gentle reader, I presume thou wilt be very inquisitive to know wh?4 ar***c ,r
personate actor this is that so insolently intrudes upon this common theater, to the
world's view, arrogating another man's name. ... I would not willingly be
known. . . . 'Tis for no such respect I shroud myself under his name; but in an
unknown habit to assume a little more liberty and freedom of speech.
We will see hereafter that there are strong reasons for believing
that Francis Bacon wrote The Anatomy of Melancholy, and that in
these words we have his own explanation of one of the many rea-
sons for his many disguises.
V. Low State of the Dramatic Art.
But there was another reason why an ambitious young aristo-
crat, and lawyer, and would-be Lord-Chancellor, should hesitate to
avow that he was a writer of plays.
Halliwell-Phillipps says:
It must be borne in mind that actors occupied an inferior position in society,
and that even the vocation of a dramatic writer was considered scarcely respectable}
The first theater ever erected in England, or, so far as I am
aware, in any country, in modern times, was built in London in
1 Life and Genius of Shak., p. 220. » Halliwell-Phillipps. Outlines Life of Shak., p. 6.
THE REASONS FOR CONCEALMENT. 253
1575 — five years before Bacon returned from the court of France,
and six years before he reached the age of twenty-one years. The
man and the instrumentality came together. A writer upon the
subject says:
The public authorities, more especially those who were inclined to Puritanism.,
exerted themselves in every possible way to repress the performance of plays and
interludes. They fined and imprisoned the players, even stocked them, and har-
assed and restrained them to the utmost of their ability. ... In 1575 the players
were interdicted from the practice of their art (or rather their calling, for it was not
yet an art), within the limits of the city.
The legal status of actors was the lowest in the country.
The act of 14th Elizabeth, "for the punishment of vagabonds,"
included under that name "all fencers, bearwards, common players in
interludes, and minstrels, not belonging to any baron of this realm."
They traveled the country on foot, with packs on their backs,
and were fed in the "buttery " of the great houses they visited.
I quote:
Thus in Greene's Never Too Late, in the interview between the player and
Robert {i.e., Greene), on the latter asking how the player proposed to mend Rob-
ert's fortune:
" Why, easily," quoth he, "and greatly to your benefit; for men of my profes-
sion get by scholars their whole living."
" What is your profession?" said Roberto.
" Truly, sir," said he, " I am a player."
"A player!" quoth Roberto; "I took you rather for a gentleman of great
living; for if by outward habit men should be answered [judged], I tell you, you
would be taken for a substantial man."
"So am I, where I dwell," quoth the player, "reported able at my proper
cost to build a wind-mill. "
He then proceeds to say that at his outset in life he was fain to carry his
" playing fardel," that is, his bundle of stage properties, " a foot back; " but now
his show of "playing apparel" would sell for more than ^200. In the end he
offers to engage Greene to write plays for him, "for which you will be well paidr
if you will take the pains."
If the actors did not engage themselves as the servants of some
great man, as "the Lord Chamberlain's servants," or "the Lord
Admiral's servants," or " the Earl of Worcester's servants," they
were liable under the law, as Edgar says in Lear,1 to be "whipped
from tything to tything, and stocked, punished and imprisoned; "
for by the statute of 39 Elizabeth (1597) and 1st of James I. (1604),
as I have shown, the vagabond's punishment was to be "stripped
naked from the middle upward, and to be whipped until his body
1 Act lii, scene 4.
254 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
was bloody, and to be sent from parish to parish the next straight
way to the place of his birth."
Halliwell-Phillipps says:
Actors were regarded at court in the light of menials, and classed by the pub-
lic with jugglers and buffoons.'
The play-houses were inconceivably low and rude. The Lord
Mayor of London, in 1597, describes the theaters as :
Ordinary places for vagrant persons, maisterless men, thieves, horse-stealers,
whoremongers, cozeners, cony-catchers, contrivers of treason, and other idele and
dangerous persons. -
Taine says of Shakspere:
He was a comedian, one of "His Majesty's poor players" — a sad trade,
degraded in all ages by the contrasts and the falsehoods which it allows: still more
degraded then by the brutalities of the crowd, who not seldom would stone the
actors; and by the severities of the magistrates, who would sometimes condemn
them to lose their ears.3
Edmund Gayton says, describing the play-houses:
If it be on a holiday, when sailors, watermen, shoemakers, butchers and
apprentices are at leisure, then it is good policy to amaze those violent spirits with
some tearing tragedy, full of fights and skirmishes, as The Guelphs and Ghibelines,
Greeks and Trojans, or The Three London Apprentices, which commonly ends in six
acts, the spectators frequently mounting the stage and making a more bloody
catastrophe among themselves than the players did. I have known, upon one of
these festivals, . . . where the players have been appointed, notwithstanding their
bills to the contrary, to act what the major part of the company had a mind to;
sometimes Tamburlanc, sometimes Jugurth, sometimes The Jeiu of Malta, and
sometimes parts of all these; and at last, none of the three taking, they were
forced to undress, and put off their tragic habits, and conclude the day with
The Merry Milkmaid. And unless this were done, and the popular humor
satisfied, as sometimes it so fortuned that the players were refractory, the benches,
the tiles, the laths, the stones, oranges, apples, nuts flew about most liberally;
and as there were mechanics of all professions, who fell every one to his own
trade, and dissolved an house in an instant and made a ruin of a stately
fabric.4
Taine thus describes the play-houses of Shakspere's time:
Great and rude contrivances, awkward in their construction, barbarous in their
appointments; but a fervid imagination supplied all that they lacked, and hardy
bodies endured all inconveniences without difficulty. On a "dirty site, on the banks
of the Thames, rose the principal theater, the Globe, a sort of hexagonal tower,
surrounded by a muddy ditch, on which was hoisted a red flag. The common
people could enter as well as the rich; there were six-penny, two-penny, even
1 Outlines Life of Shaft., p. 256. a City 0/ London MS. Outlines, p. 214.
3 History of English Literature, book ii, chap, iv, p. 205.
* Festivous Notes on Don Quixote, 1654, p. 271.
THE REASONS FOR CONCEALMENT. 255
penny seats; but they could not see it without money. If it rained, and it often
rains in London, the people in the pit — butchers, mercers, bakers, sailors, appren-
tices— received the streaming rain upon their heads. I suppose they did not trouble
themselves about it; it was not so long since they began to pave the streets of
London, and when men, like these, have had experience of sewers and puddles,
they are not afraid of catching cold.
While waiting for the piece, they amuse themselves after their fashion, drink
beer, crack nuts, eat fruits, howl, and now and then resort to their fists; they have
been known to fall upon the actors, and turn the theater upside down. At other
times, when they were dissatisfied, they went to the tavern, to give the poet a hid-
ing, or toss him in a blanket. . . . When the beer took effect, there was a great
upturned barrel in the pit, a peculiar receptacle for general use. The smell rises,
and then comes the cry, " Burn the juniper !" They burn some in a plate on the
stage, and the heavy smoke fills the air. Certainly the folk there assembled could
scarcely get disgusted at anything, and cannot have had sensitive noses. In the
time of Rabelais there was not much cleanliness to speak of. Remember that
they were hardly out of the Middle Ages, and that in the Middle Ages man lived
on a dung-hill.
Above them, on the stage, were the spectators able to pay a shilling, the ele-
gant people, the gentlefolk. These were sheltered from the rain, and, if they
chose to pay an extra shilling, could have a stool. To this were reduced the pre-
rogatives of rank and the devices of comfort; it often happened that there were
not stools enough; then they lie down on the ground; this was not a time to be
dainty. They play cards, smoke, insult the pit, who give it them back without
stinting, and throw apples at them into the bargain.
The reader can readily conceive that the man must indeed have
been exceedingly ambitious of fame who would have insisted on
asserting his title to the authorship of plays acted in such theaters
before such audiences. Imagine that aristocratic young gentle-
man, Francis Bacon, born in the royal palace of York Place; an ex-
attache of the English legation at the French court ; the son of a
Lord Chancellor; the nephew of a Lord Treasurer; the offspring of
the virtuous, pious and learned Lady Anne Bacon; with his head
full of great plans for the reformation of philosophy, law and
government; and with his eye fixed on the chair his father had
occupied for twenty years: — imagine him, I say, insisting that
his name should appear on the play-bills as the poet who wrote
Mucedorus, Tamburlaiie, The Jew of Malta, Titus Andronicus. Fair
Em, Sir John Oldcastle, or The Merry Devil of Edmonton! Imagine
the drunken, howling mob of Calibans hunting through Gray's
Inn to find the son of the Lord Chancellor, in the midst
of his noble friends, to whip him, or toss him in a blanket,
because, forsooth, his last play had not pleased their royal
fancies!
256 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
VI. Sharing in the Profits of the Play-House.
But suppose behind all this there was another and a more ter-
rible consideration.
Suppose this young nobleman had eked out his miserable
income by writing plays to sell to the theaters. Suppose it was known
that he had his " second " and ii third nights; " that he put into his
pocket the sweaty pennies of that stinking mob of hoodlums,
sailors, 'prentices, thieves, rowdies and prostitutes; and that
he had used the funds so obtained to enable him to keep up his
standing with my Lord of Southampton, and my Earl of Essex, and
their associates, as a gentleman among gentlemen. Think of it !
And this in England, three hundred years ago, when the line of
caste was almost as deep and black between the gentlemen and
" the mutable, rank-scented many," as it is to-day in India between
the Brahmin and the Pariah. Why, to this hour, I am told, there is
an almost impassable gulf between the nobleman and the trades-
man of great Britain. Then, as Burton says in The Anatomy of
Melancholy, " idleness was the mark of nobility." To earn money
in any kind of trade was despicable. To have earned it by sharing
in the pennies and shillings taken in at the door, or on the stage of
the play-house, would have been utterly damnable in any gentle-
man. It would have involved a loss of social position worse than
death. One will have to read Thackeray's story of Miss Shunt's
Husband to find a parallel for it.
VII. Political Considerations.
But we have seen that the hiring of actors of Shakspere's com-
pany to perform the play of Richard II. , by the followers of the
Earl of Essex, the day before the attempt to " rase the city " and
seize the person of the Queen (even as Monmouth seized the person
of Richard II.), and compel a deposition by like means, was one of
the counts in the indictment against Essex, which cost him his
head. In other words, the intent of the play was treasonable, and
was so understood at the time. " Know you not," said Queen
Elizabeth, "that/ am Richard II.?" And I have shown good
reason to believe that all the historical Plays, to say nothing of
Julius Ccesar, were written with intent to popularize rebellion
against tyrants.
THE REASONS FOR CONCEALMENT. 257
"The poor player," Will Shakspere, might have written such
plays solely for the pence and shillings there were in them, for he had
nothing to do with politics: — he was a legal vagabond, a "vassal
actor," a social outcast; but if Francis Bacon, the able and ambitious
Francis Bacon, the rival of Cecil, the friend of Southampton and
Essex; the lawyer, politician, member of Parliament, courtier, be-
longing to the party that desired to bring in the Scotch King and
drive the aged Queen from the throne — if he had acknowledged the
authorship of the Plays, the inference would have been irresistible in
the mind of the court, that these horrible burlesques and travesties
of royalty were written with malice and settled intent to bring mon-
archy into contempt and justify the aristocracy in revolution.
VIII. Another Reason.
But it must be further remembered that while Bacon lived the
Shakespeare Plays were not esteemed as they are now. Then they
were simply successful dramas; they drew great audiences; they
filled the pockets of manager and actors. Leonard Digges, in the
verses prefixed to the edition of 1640, says that when Jonson's
"Fox and Subtle Alchymist"
Have scarce defrayed the sea-coal fire
And door-keepers: when, let but Falstaff come,
Hal, Poins, the rest — you scarce shall have room,
All is so pestered: let but Beatrice
And Benedick be seen, lo ! in a trice
The cock-pit, galleries, boxes, all are full,
To hear Malvolio, that cross-gartered gull.
There was no man in that age, except the author of them, who
rated the Shakespeare Plays at their true value. They were admired
for "the facetious grace of the writing," but the world had not yet
advanced far enough in culture and civilization to recognize them
as the great store-houses of the world's thought. Hence there was
not then the same incentive to acknowledge them that there would
be to-day.
IX. Still Another Reason.
If Francis Bacon had died full of years and honors, I can con-
ceive how, from the height of preeminent success, he might have
fronted the prejudices of the age, and acknowledged these children
of his brain.
258 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
But the last years of his life were years of dishonor. He had
been cast down from the place of Lord Chancellor for bribery, for
selling justice for money. He had been sentenced to prison; he
held his liberty by the King's grace. He was denied access to the
•court. He was a ruined man, " a very subject of pity," as he says
himself.
For a man thus living under a cloud to have said, " In my
youth I wrote plays for the stage; I wrote them for money; I used
Shakspere as a mask; I divided with him the money taken in at
the gate of the play-houses from the scum and refuse of London,"
would only have invited upon his head greater ignominy and dis-
grace. He had a wife; he had relatives, a proud and aristocratic
breed. He sought to be the Aristotle of a new philosophy. Such
an avowal would have smirched the Novum Organum and the Ad-
vancement of Learning; it would have blotted and blurred the bright
and dancing light of that torch which he had kindled for posterity.
He would have had to explain his, no doubt countless, denials
made years before, that he had had anything to do with the Plays.
And why should he acknowledge them? He left his fame and
good name to his "own countrymen after some time be past ;" he
believed the cipher, which he had so laboriously inserted in the
Plays, would be found out. He would obtain all the glory for his
name in that distant future when he would not hear the re-
proaches of caste; when, as pure spirit, he might look down from
space, and see the winged-goodness which he had created, passing,
on pinions of persistent purpose, through all the world, from gener-
ation to generation. In that age, when his body was dust; when
cousins and kin were ashes; when Shakspere had moldered into
nothingness, beneath the protection of his own barbarous curse;
when not a trace could be found of the bones of Elizabeth or
James, or even of the stones of the Curtain or the Blackfriars:
then, in a new world, a brighter world, a greater world, a better
world, — to which his own age would be but as a faint and per-
turbed remembrance, — he would be married anew to his immortal
works. He would live again, triumphant, over Burleigh and Cecil,
over Coke and Buckingham; over parasites and courtiers, over
tricksters and panderers: — the magnificent victory of genius over
power; of mind over time. And so living, he would live forever.
CHAPTER VIII.
CORROBORA TING CIRCUMSTANCES.
Lapped in proof,
Confronted him with self-comparisons.
Macbeth, f, 2.
WE sometimes call, in law, an instrument between two parties
an indenture. Why ? Because it was once the custom to
write a deed or contract in duplicate, on a long sheet of paper or
parchment, and then cut them apart upon an irregular or indented
line. If, thereafter, any dispute arose as to whether one was the
equivalent of the other, the edges, where they were divided, were
put together to see if they precisely matched. If they did not, it
followed that some fraud had somewhere been practiced.
Truth, in like manner, is serrated, and its indentations fit into
all other truth. If two alleged truths do not thus dovetail into
each other, along the line where they approximate, then one of
them is not the truth, but an error or a fraud.
Let us see, therefore, if, upon a multitude of minor points, the
allegation that Francis Bacon wrote the Shakespeare Plays fits its
indentations — its teeth — precisely into what we know of Bacon
and Shakspere.
In treating these questions, I shall necessarily have to be as
brief as possible.
I. The Question of Time.
Does the biography of Bacon accord with the chronology of
the Plays?
Bacon was born in York House, or Palace, on the Strand, Janu-
ary 22, 1 56 1. William Shakspere was born at Stratford-on-Avon,
April 23, 1564. Bacon died in the spring of 1626. Shakspere in the
spring of 16 16. The lives of the two men were therefore parallel; but
Bacon was three years the elder, and survived Shakspere ten years.
Bacon's mental activity began at an early age. He was study-
ing the nature of echoes at a time when other children are playing.
259
26o FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
At twelve he outstripped his home tutors and was sent to join his
brother Anthony, two years his senior, at Trinity College, Cam-
bridge. At eighteen Hilliard paints his portrait and inscribes
upon it, "if one could but paint his mind." We will hereafter see
reasons to believe that there is extant a whole body of compositions
written before he was twenty-one years of age. At about twenty
he summarizes the political condition of Europe with the hand of
a statesman.
II. Plays before Shakspere Comes to London.
The Plays antedate the time of the coming of Shakspere to
London, which it is generally agreed was in 1587.
That high authority, Richard Simpson, in his School of Shake-
speare? in his article, " The Early Authorship of Shakespeare2 " and
in Notes and Queries? shows that the Shakespeare Plays commenced
to appear in iffy ! That is to say, while Shakspere was still living in
Stratford — in the year the twins were born ! We are therefore to
believe that in that "bookless neighborhood" the butcher's ap-
prentice was, between his whippings, writing plays for the stage !
Here are miracles indeed.
In 1585 Robert Greene both registered and published his Plane-
tomachia, and in this work he denounces M some avaricious player,
. . . who, not content with his own province [of acting], should
dare to intrude into the field of authorship, which ought to belong
solely to the professed scholars" — like Greene himself. And from
that time forward Greene continued to gibe at this same some-
body, who was writing plays for the stage. He speaks of "gentle-
men poets" in 1588, who set "the end of scholarism in an English
blank verse; ... it is the humor of a novice that tickles them with
self-love."
Thomas Nash says, in an epistle prefixed to Greene's Arcadia,
published, according to Mr. Dyce, in 1587:
It is a common practice, now-a-days, amongst a sort of shifting companions,
that run through every art and thrive at none, to leave the trade of noverint [lawyer],
whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the endeavors of art, that could
scarcely Latinize their neck-verse, if they should have need. Yet English Seneca,
read by candle-light, yields many good sentences, as "blood is a beggar," and
so forth; and if you entreat him fair, in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole
Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches.
1 Vol. ii, p. 342. " North British Review, vol. lii. '•' 4th scries, vol. viii.
CORROBORATING CIRCUMSTANCES. 26i
Here it appears that in 1587, the very year when Shakspere
came to London, and while he was probably holding horses at the
front door of the theater, the play of Hamlet, Shakespeare's own
play of Hamlet^ was being acted; and was believed by other play-
wrights to have been composed by some lawyer, who was born a
lawyer.
And did not Nash's words, "if you entreat him fair of a frosty
morning," allude to that early morning scene "of a frosty morning,"
where Hamlet meets the Ghost, for the first time, on the platform
of the castle:
Hamlet. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
Horatio. It is a nipping and an eager air.
But this lawyer, who was born a lawyer, to whom allusion is
made by Nash, so far from being a mere-horse-holder, was some-
thing of a scholar, for Nash continues:
But . . . what's that will last always ? Seneca let blood line by line and
page by page, at length must die to our stage, which makes his [Seneca's] fam-
ished followers . . . leap into a new occupation and translate two-penny pamphlets
from the Italian without any knowledge even of its articles.1
We have seen that several of the so-called Shakespeare comedies
were founded on untranslated Italian novels. Will the men who
argue that Shakspere stood at the door of the play-house and held
horses, and at the same time wrote the magnificent and scholarly
periods of Hamlet, go farther and ask us to believe that the
butcher's apprentice, the deer-stealer, the beer-guzzler, " oft-
whipped and imprisoned," had, in the filthy, bookless village of
Stratford, acquired even an imperfect knowledge of the Italian ?
But Nash goes farther. He says:
Sundry other sweet gentlemen I do know, that we [sic] have vaunted their pens
in private-devices and tricked tip a company of taffaty fools with their feathers, whose
beauty, if our poets had not pecked, with the supply of their perriwigs, they might
have anticked it until this time, up and down the country with The King of
Fairies and dined every day at the pease-poridge ordinary with Delfrigius.
What does all this mean ? Why, that there were poets who
were not actors, "sweet gentlemen*'' (and that word meant a good
deal in 1587), who had written "private devices," as we know-
Bacon to have written "masks" for private entertainments; and
these gentlemen were rich enough to have furnished out a company'
1 School of SJiak., vol. ii. p. 35S.
262 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
of actors with feathers and periwigs, to take part in these private
theatricals; and if the " gentlemen " had not pecked (objected?)
the players would have anticked it, that is, played in this finery, all
over the country.
Hamlet says to Horatio, after he has written the play and had
it acted and thereby "touched the conscience of the King: "
Would not this, sir, and a f orest of feathers (if the rest of my fortunes turn
Turk with me), with two provincial roses on my ragged shoes, get me a fellowship
in a cry of players ?
And three years after Nash wrote the above, Robert Greene
refers to Shakspere as the only " Shake-scene in the country," and as
"an upstart crow beautified with our feathers."
III. A Pretended Play-Writer who Cannot Write
English.
Simpson believes that Fair Em was written by Shakspere in
1587.
In 1587 Greene wrote his Farewell to Folly, published in 1591, in
which he criticises the play of Fair Em and positively states that it
was written by some gentleman of position, who put it forth in the
name of a play-actor who was almost wholly uneducated. He
says:
Others will flout and over-read every line with a frump, and say 'tis scurvy,
when they themselves are such scabbed lads that they are like to die of the fazion;*
but if they come to write or publish anything in print, it is either distilled out of
ballads, or borrowed of theological poets, which, for their calling and gravity
being loth to have any profane pamphlets pass tinder their hand, get some other Batil-
lus to set his name to their verses. Thus is the ass made proud by this underhand
brokery. And he that cannot ivrile true English without the help of clerks of parish
churches, will needs make himself the father of interludes. O, 'tis a jolly matter
when a man hath a familiar style, and can endite a whole year and not be behold-
ing to art ! But to bring Scripture to prove anything he says, and kill it dead with
the text in a trifling subject of love, I tell you is no small piece of cunning. As,
for example, two lovers on the stage arguing one another of unkindness, his mis-
tress runs over him with this canonical sentence, "A man's conscience is a thou-
sand witnesses;" and her knight again excuseth himself with that saying of the
apostle, " Love covereth a multitude of sins."2
The two lines here quoted are from Fair Em:
Thy conscience is a thousand witnesses.3
Yet love, that covers multitude of sins.4
1 A disease of horses, like glanders. 3 Sc. xvii, 1. 1308.
■ School of Shak., chap, xi, p. 377. 4 Ibid., 1. 1271.
CORK OB OKA 1 'IX G CIK C UMS 1 A XCE S. 263
What does this prove ? That it was the belief of Greene, who
was himself a playwright, that Fair Em was not written by the
man in whose name it was put forth, but by some one of " calling
and gravity," who had made use of another as a mask. And that
this latter person was an ignorant man, who could not write true
English without the help of the clerks of parish churches. But
Simpson and many others are satisfied that Fair Em was written
by the same mind which produced the Shakespeare Plays ! But
as the Farewell to Folly was written in 1587, and it is generally con-
ceded that Shakspere did not commence to write until 1592, live
years afterward, and as Shakspere wTas in 1587 hanging about the
play-house either as a horse-holder or a " servitor," these words
could not apply to him. We will see reason hereafter to conclude
that they applied to Marlowe. But if they did apply to Shakspere,
then we have the significant fact, as Simpson says,
That Greene here pretends that Shakespeare could not have written the play
himself; it was written by some theological poet, and fathered by him.
And Simpson, be it remembered, is no Baconian. It has been
urged, as a strong point in favor of William Shakspere's author-
ship of the Plays, that his right to them was never questioned
during his lifetime. If he wrote plays in 1587, then Greene did
question the reality of his authorship, and boldly charged that he
was an ignorant man, and the cover for some one else. If he did
not write plays before 1592, — and a series of plays appeared between
1585 and 1592 which the highest critics contend were produced by
the same mind which created the Shakespeare Plays, — then the
whole series could not have been produced by the man of Stratford-
on-Avon; and if the first of the series of identical works was not
written by him, the last of the series could not have been. The advo-
cates of Shakspere can take either horn of the dilemma they please.
Simpson thus sums up Greene's conclusions about Shakspere:
That he appropriated and refurbished other men's plays; that he was a lack-
latin, who had no acquaintance with any foreign language, except, perhaps,
French, and lived from the translator's trencher, and such like. Throughout we
see Greene s determination not to recognize Shakspere as a man capable of doing any-
thing by himself. At first, Greene simply fathers some composition of his upon
"two gentlemen poets," because he, in Greene's opinion, was incapable of writing
anything. Then as to Fair Em, it is either distilled out of ballads, or it is written
by some theological poet, who is ashamed to set his own name to it. It could not
have been written by one who cannot -write English without the aid of a parish
264 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
clerk. Then, at last, Greene owns that his rival might have written a speech or
two, might have interpreted for the puppets, have indited a moral, or might be
-yen capable of penning The Windmill — The Millers Daughter — without help,
for so I interpret the words before quoted, "reputed able at my proper cost to
build a windmill," but Greene will not own that the man is capable of having really
done that which passes for his.
And it seems to me the words, ''reputed able at my proper cost
to build a windmill," do not refer to the play, but to the wealth of
the player.
IV. He Writes for Other Companies besides Shakspere's.
We turn now to another curious fact, quite incompatible with
the theory that the man of Stratford wrote the Plays.
What do we know of him ? That when he fled to London he
acted at first, as tradition tells us, as a horse-holder, and was then
admitted to the play-house as a servant. And the tradition of his
being a horse-holder is curiously confirmed by the fact that when
Greene alludes to him as "the only Shake-scene in the country," he
advises his fellow-playwrights to prepare no more dramas for the
actors, because of the predominance of that "Johannes-factotum,"
Shake-scene, and adds:
Seek you better masters; for it is a pity men of such rare wits should be sub-
ject to the pleasure of such rude grooms.
Certainly the man who had been recently taking charge of
horses might very properly be referred to as a groom.
But here we stumble upon another difficulty. Not only did
plays which are now attributed to Shakspere make their appearance
on the London stage while he was still living in Stratford, whipped
and persecuted by Sir Thomas Lucy, and subsequently, while
he was acting as groom for the visitors to the play-house, but at this
very time, we are told, he not only supplied his own theater with
plays, but, with extraordinary fecundity, he furnished plays to every
company of actors in London! Tradition tells us that during his early
years in the great city he was " received into the play-house as a
serviture." Is it possible that while so employed — a servant, a
menial, a call-boy — in one company, he could furnish plays to
other and rival companies? Would his profits not have lifted
him above the necessity of acting as groom or call-boy ? Simpson
says:
CORROBORA TIXG CIRCUM STANCES.
265
Other prominent companies were those of the Earl of Sussex (1589), the Earl
of Worcester (1590), and the Earl of Pembroke (1592). For all these Shakspere can
be shown to have written during the first part of his career. According to the well-
known epistle annexed to Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, Shakspere, by 1592, had
become so absolute a Johannes factotum, for the actors of the day generally, that
the man who considered himself the chief of the scholastic school of dramatists
not only determined for his own part to abandon play-writing, but urged his com-
panions to do the same. ... It is clear that before ijq3 Shakspere must have
been prodigiously active, and that plays wholly or partly from his pen must have
been in the possession of many of the actors and companies. For the fruits of
this activity we are not to look in his recognized works. Those, with few exceptions,
are the plays he wrote for the Lord Chamberlain s men. . . . There are two kinds of
Shaksperean remains which may be recorded, or rather assigned, to their real
original author, by the critic and historian. First, the dramas prior to 1592,
which are not included in his works; and secondly, the dramas over the production
of which he presided, or with which he was connected as editor, reviser or
adviser.1
And again Simpson says:
The recognized works of Shakspere contain scarcely any plays bat those
which he produced for the Lord Chamberlain's or King's company of actors. But
in 1592 Greene tells us he had almost a monopoly of dramatic production, and had
made himself necessary, not to one company, but to the players in general. It may
be proved that he wrote for the Lord Strange's men, and for those of the Earl of
Pembroke and the Earl of Sussex. -
But while this distinguished scholar tells us that Shakspere was
" prodigiously active prior to 1592," and supplied all the different
companies with plays, we turn to the other commentators and
biographers, and they unite in assuring us that Shakspere did not
appear as an author until 1592 ! Halliwell-Phillipps fixes the exact
date as March 3d, 1592, when a new drama was brought out by
Lord Strange's servants, to-wit, Henry Vf.t"in all probability his
earliest complete dramatic work."
Here, then, is our dilemma:
1. It is proved that Shakespeare did not begin to write until
*592-
2. It is proved that there is a whole body of compositions
written by the mind which we call Shakespeare, and which were
acted on the stage before 1592.
3. It is proved that Shakspere was a servant in or about one
play-house.
4. It is proved that while so engaged he furnished plays to rival
play-houses.
1 School of Shak.% vol. i, p. 20— Introduction. 2 Ibid., vol. i, p. S.
266 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
Is all this conceivable ? Would the proprietor of one theater per-
mit his servant to give to other theaters the means of drawing the
crowd from his own doors and the shillings from his own pocket?
V. The Plays Cease to Appear Long before Shakspere's
Death.
The poet Dryden stated, in 1680, that Othello was Shakespeare's
last play.
Dryden was born only fifteen years after Shakspere's death.
He was himself a play-writer; a frequenter of play-houses; the
associate of actors; he wrote the statement quoted only sixty-
four years after Shakspere died; he doubtless spoke the tradition
common among the actors of London.
Now, it is well known that Othello was in existence in 1605,
eleven years before Shakspere's death. Malone says, " We know it
was acted in 1604."
Knight says:
Mr. Peter Cunningham confirms this, by having found an entry in the Revels
at Court of a performance of Othello in 1604. '
We can conceive that it may have been the last of the great
Shakespearean tragedies, The TemJ>estbeing the last of the comedies.
Certain it is, however, that the Plays ceased to appear about
the time Bacon rose to high and lucrative employment in the state,
and several years before the death of their putative author.
All the Plays seem to have originated in that period of time
during which Bacon was poor and unemployed. Take even those
which are conceded to belong to Shakespeare's "later period."
Halliwell-Phillipps says:
Macbeth, in some form, had been introduced on the English stage as early as
1600, for Kempe, the actor, in his " Nine Daies' Wonder performed in a Daunce
from London to Norwich," alludes to a play of Macdoel, or Macdobeth, or Afac-
somewhaty for I am sure a Mac it was, though I never had the maw to see it.2
Hamlet, we have seen, first appeared, probably in some imperfect
form, in 1585. Lear was acted before King James at Whitehall in
the year 1606.
Halliwell-Phillipps says:
The four years and a half that intervened between the performance of The
Tempest in 161 1, and the author's death, could not have been one of his periods of
' Knight, introd. notice Othello. 2 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines Life of Shak., p. 291.
CO Kit OB OKA TIA rG C 'lit C CMS TA A rCE S.
267
great literary activity. So many of his plays are known to have been in existence
at the former date, it follows that there are only six which could by any possi-
bility have been written after that time; and it is not likely that the whole of
those belong to so late an era. These facts lead irresistibly to the conclusion
that the post abandoned literary occupation a considerable period before his
decease.1
Knight says:
But when the days of pleasure arrived, is it reasonable to believe that the
greatest of intellects would suddenly sink to the condition of an every -day man —
cherishing no high plans for the future, looking back with no desire to equal and
excel the work of the past? At the period of life when Chaucer began to write the
Canterbury Tales, Shakspere, according to his biographers, was suddenly and
utterly to cease to write. We cannot believe it. Is there a parallel case in the
career of any great artist who had won for himself competence and fame?'2
Here, therefore, is another inexplicable fact: Not only did
Shakspere, as we are told, write plays for the London stage
before he went to London; but after he had returned to Stratford,
with ample leisure and the incentive to make money, the man who
sued his neighbor for a few shillings, for malt sold, and who was,
we are asked to believe, the most fecund of human intelligences,
remained idly in his native village, writing nothing, doing nothing.
Was there ever heard, before or since, of such a vast and laborious
and creative mind, retiring thus into itself, into nothingness, — and
locking the door and throwing away the key, — and vegetating, for
from five to ten years, amid muck-heaps and filthy ditches ? Would
the author of Lear and Hamlet — the profound, the scholarly phil-
osopher— be capable of such mental suicide; such death in life;
such absorption of brain in flesh; such crawling into the innermost
recesses of self-oblivion ? Five or ten years of nothingness ! Not a
play; not a letter; not a syllable; nothing but three ignorant-look-
ing signatures to a will, which appears to have been drawn by a
lawyer who thought the testator could not write his name.
VI. The Sonnets.
And in the so-called " Shakespeare Sonnets " we find a whole
congeries of mysteries. The critical world has racked all its brains
to determine who W. H. was — "the onlie begetter of these insuing
sonnets;" and how any other man could "beget" them if they
were Shakespeare's. Some one speaks of that collection of sonnets,
1 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines Life of Shak., p. 155. 2 Knight's Shak. Biography, p. 525.
2(,8 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
published in 1609, as "one of the most singular volumes ever
issued from the press." Let us point at a few of its singu-
larities:
Sonnet lxxvi says:
Why is my verse so barren of new pride ?
So far from variation or quick change ?
Why, with the time, do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange ?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed;
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed ?
What is the meaning of this ? Clearly that the writer was
hidden in a weed, a disguise; and we have already seen that Bacon
employed the word weed to signify a disguise. But it is more than
a disguise — it is a noted disguise. Surely the name Shakespeare was
noted enough. And the writer, covered by this disguise, fears that
every word he writes doth betray him; — doth " almost tell his
name," their birth and where they came from. This is all very
remarkable if Shakspere was Shakespeare. Then there was no
weed, no disguise and no danger of the secret authorship being
revealed.
But we find Francis Bacon, as I have shown, also referring to a
-weed.
The state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in mine
eyes. I have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart. I have, though in a despised
weed, procured the good of all men.
Marvelous, indeed, is it to find Shakespeare's sonnets referring
to "a noted weed," and Bacon referring to "a despised weed" ! —
that is to say, Shakespeare admits that the writer has kept inven-
tion in a disguise; and Bacon claims that he himself, under a dis-
guise, has procured the good of all men; and that this disguise was
a despised one, as the name of a play-actor like Shakspere would
necessarily be.
But there is another incompatibility in these sonnets with
the belief that William Shakspere wrote them. In Sonnet ex
we read:
Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear.
' CORROBORATIXG CIRCUMSTANCES, 269-
And in the next sonnet we have:
#
Oh, for my sake do you with fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
. That did not better for my life provide
Than public means, which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.
These lines have been interpreted to "refer to the bitter feeling
of personal degradation allowed by Shakespeare to result from his
connection with the stage."
But Halliwell-Phillipps says:
Is it conceivable that a man who encouraged a sentiment of this nature, one
which must have been accompanied with a distaste and contempt for his profession,
would have remained an actor years and years after any real necessity for such a
course had expired ? By the spring of 1602 at the latest, if not previously, he had
acquired a secure and definite competence, independently of his emoluments as a
dramatist, and yet eight years afterward, in 1610, he is discovered playing in com-
pany with Burbadge and Heminge at the Blackfriars Theater.1
It is impossible that so transcendent a genius — a statesman, a
historian, a lawyer, a philosopher, a linguist, a courtier, a natural
aristocrat; holding the " many-headed mob " and " the base mechan-
ical fellows" in absolute contempt; with wealth enough to free
him from the pinch of poverty — should have remained, almost
to the very last, a "vassal actor," liable to be pelted with decayed
vegetables, or tossed in a blanket, and ranked in legal estimation
with vagabonds and prostitutes. It is impossible that he should
have continued for so many years to have acted subordinate parts
of ghosts and old men, in unroofed enclosures, amid the foul
exhalations of a mob, which could onlv be covered by the burning
of juniper branches. 'Surely such a man, in such an age of unrest,
when humble but ambitious adventurers rose to high places, would
have carved out for himself some nobler position in life; or would,
at least, have left behind him some evidence that he tried to do so.
Neither can we conceive how one who commenced life as a
peasant, and worked at the trade of a butcher, and who had fled
to London to escape public whipping and imprisonment, could
feel that his name " received a brand " by associating with Bur-
badge and Nathaniel Field and the other actors. Was it not, in
1 Outlines Life of Sfrak., p. no.
27o FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE /'LAVS.
every sense, an elevation for him ? And if he felt ashamed of his
connection with the stage, why did he, in his last act on earth, the
drawing of his will, refer to his "fellows," Heminge and Condell,
and leave them presents of rings ?
But all this feeling of humiliation here pictured would be
most natural to Francis Bacon. The guilty goddess of his
harmful deeds had, indeed, not provided him the necessaries
of life, and he had been forced to have recourse to " public
means," to-wit, play-writing; and thereby his name had been
" branded," and his nature had been degraded to the level of
the actors.
We turn now to another point.
VII. The Early Marks of Age.
There are many evidences that the person who wrote the son-
nets began to show the marks of age at an early period. The
138th sonnet was published in 1599, in The Passionate Pilgrim,
when William Shakspere was thirty-five years of age; and yet in it
the writer speaks of himself as old:
Although she knows my days are past the best . . .
And wherefore say not I, that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
And again he says in the 22d sonnet:
My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date.
Again, in the 62d sonnet, he speaks of himself as
Bated and chopped with tanned antiquity.
And in the 73d sonnet he says:
That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare, ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
Now, all this would be unusual language for a man of thirty-
five to apply to himself; but it agrees well with what we know of
Francis Bacon in this respect.
John Campbell says:
The marks of age were prematurely impressed upon him.
CORROBORA TIXG CIRCl TMS TA XCES. 2 j T
He writes to his uncle Burleigh in 1591:
I am now somewhat ancient; one and thirty years is a great deal of sand in
the hour-glass.1
And again he says, about the same time:
I would be sorry she [the Queen] should estrange in my last years, for so I
account them reckoning by health, not by age.-'
VIII. The Writer's Life Threatened.
Then there is another passage in the sonnets which does not, so
far as we know, fit into the career of the wealthy burgher of Strat-
ford, but accords admirably with an incident in the life of Bacon.
In the 74th sonnet we read:
But be contented: when that fell arrest
Without all bail shall carry me away,
My life hath in this line some interest,
Which for memorial still with thee shall stay. . . .
The earth can have but earth, which is his due;
My spirit is thine, the better part of me:
So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,
The prey of worms, my body being dea '»;
The coward conquest of a wretch's knife,
Too base of thee to be remembered.
And again in the 90th sonnet we read:
Then hate me if thou wilt, if ever now;
■ while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow
And do not drop in for an after-loss:
Ah ! do not, when my heart hath scaped this sorrow.
Come in the rearward of a conquered woe.
It seems to me the explanation of these lines is to be found in
the fact that, after the downfall of Essex, Bacon was bitterly hated
and denounced by the adherents of the Earl, and his life was even
in danger from their rage. He writes to Queen Elizabeth in 1599:
My life has been threatened and my name libeled, which I count an honor.3
Again he says to Cecil:
As for any violence to be offered to me, wherewith my friends tell me I am
threatened, I thank God I have the privy coat of a good conscience.
He also wrote to Lord Howard:
For my part I have deserved better than to have my name objected to envy or
my life to a ruffian's violence.
1 Letter to Burleigh. * Letter to Sir Robert Cecil.
3 Letter to Queen Elizabeth, 1599 — Lift and Works, vol. ii, p. 160.
2-; FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
IX. A Period of Gloom.
We find, too, in the sonnets, reference to a period of gloom in
the life of the writer that is not to be explained by anything we
know of in the history of William Shakspere. He had all the world
could give him; he had wealth, the finest house in Stratford, lands,
tithes, and malt to sell; to say nothing of that bogus coat-of-arms
which assured him gentility. But the writer of the sonnets (see
sonnet xxxvii) speaks of himself as unfortunate, as " made lame by
fortune's dearest spite," as "lame, poor and despised. " He is
overwhelmed with some great shame:
When in disgrace urith fortune and wen's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate. }
And the writer had experienced some great disappointment.
He says:
Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest cloud to ride,
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace;
Even so my sun one early morn did shine,
With all triumphant splendor on my brow;
But out ! alack ! he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath masked him from me now*
And the writer is utterly cast down with his disappointment
He cries out in sonnet lxvi:
Tired of all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honor shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully- disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And capli?'e Good attending captain III —
Tired with all these, from these I would be gone,
Save that to die I leave my love alone.
1 Sonnet xxix. 2 Sonnet xxxiii.
CORROBORATING CIRCUMSTANCES. 273
All these words seem to me to fit into Bacon's case. He was in
disgrace with fortune and men's eyes. He writes to Essex in
1594:
And I must confess this very delay has gone so near me as it hath almost
overthrown my health. ... I cannot but conclude that no man ever read a more
exquisite disgrace.1
He proposed to travel abroad; he hopes her Majesty will not
force him
To pine here with melancholy, for though mine heart be good, yet mine eyes
will be sore. ... I am not an impudent man that would face out a disgrace.2
The bright morning sun of hope had ceased to shine upon his
brow. He "lacked advancement," like Hamlet; he had been over-
ridden by the Queen. He despaired. He writes: "I care not
whether God or her Majesty call me." In the sonnet he says:
Tired of all these, for restful death I cry.
And the grounds of his lamentation are those a courtier might
entertain, but scarcely a play-actor. He beholds " desert " a beggar.
Surely this was not Shakspere's case. He sees nothingness elevated
to power; strength swayed by limping weakness; himself with all
his greatness overruled by the cripple Cecil. He sees the state
and religion tying the tongue of art and shutting the mouth of free
thought. He sees evil triumphant in the world; " captive Good
attending captain 111." And may not the " maiden virtue rudely
strumpeted " be a reflection on her of whom so many scandals
were whispered; who, it was said, had kept Leicester's bed-
chamber next to her own; who had for so many years suppressed
Bacon, and for whom, on her death, "the honey-tongued Melicert '*
dropped not one pitying tear?
X. An Incomprehensible Fact.
Francis Bacon was greedy for knowledge. He ranged the
whole amphitheater of human learning. From Greece, from Rome,
from Italy, from France, from Spain, from the early English
writers, he gathered facts and thoughts. He had his Promus, his
commonplace-book, so to speak, of "formularies and elegancies" of
speech. His acknowledged writings teem with quotations from the
poets. And yet not once does he refer to William Shakspere or
1 Letter to Essex, March 30, 1594. '2 Letter to Essex.
^74
FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
the Shakespeare writings ! The man of Stratford acted in one of
the Plays which go by his name, and on the same night, in the
same place, was presented a " mask " written by Bacon. We
thus have the two men under the same roof, at the same time,
engaged in the same kind of work. Shakespeare, the play-writer,
and Bacon, the mask-Writer, thus rub elbows; but neither seems
to have known the other.
Landor says:
Bacon little knew or suspected that there was then existing (the only one that
ever did exist) his superior in intellectual power.
Bacon was ravaging all time and searching the face of the
whole earth for gems of thought and expression, and here in these
Plays was a veritable Golconda of jewels, under his very nose, and
he seems not to have known it.
XI. Bacon's Love of Plays.
But it may be said that Shakspere moved in a lower sphere
of thought, beneath the notice of the great philosopher. This
cannot be true; for we have seen that Bacon certainly wrote
" masks," which were a kind of smaller plays, and that he united
with seven other young lawyers of Gray's Inn to prepare a veritable
stage-play, The Misfortwies of Arthur; but, more than that, he was
very fond of theatricals.
Mrs. Pott says, speaking of the year 1594:
The Calvinistic strictness of Lady Anne Bacon's principles receive a severe
shock from the repeated and open proofs which Francis gives of his taste for stage
performances. Anthony, about this time, leaves his brother and goes to live in
Bishopsgate Street, near "Bull" Inn, where ten or twelve of the "Shakespeare"
Plays were acted. Lady Anne "trusts that they will not mum, nor mask, nor
sinfully revel at Gray's Inn."
*Bacon's acknowledged writings overflow with expressions show-
ing how much his thoughts ran on play-houses and stage-plays. I
quote a few expressions, at random, to prove this:
Therefore we see that there be certain " pantomimi " that will represent the
voices of players of interludes so to life, as if you see them not you would think
they were those players themselves.1
Alluding to "the prompter," or "book-holder," as he was then
called, Bacon says of himself:
1 Natural History ', §240.
CORKOBORA TING CIRCUMSTANCES. 275
Knowing myself to be fitter to hold a book than to play a part.'
Speaking of Essex' successes, he says:
Neither do I judge the whole play by the first act.9
He writes Lord Burleigh that
There are a dozen young gentlemen of Gray's Inn, that . . . will be ready to
furnish a mask, wishing it were in their power to perform it according to their minds.
In the De Aug mentis he speaks of " the play-books of philosophical
systems" and "the play-books of this philosophical theater."'*
He calls the world of art "a universe or theater of things."4
Speaking of the priest Simonds instructing Simnell to per-
sonate Lord Edward Plantagenet, Bacon says:
This priest, being utterly unacquainted with the true person, should think it pos-
sible to instruct his player either in gesture or fashions. . . . None could hold the
book so well to prompt and instruct this stage play as he could. . . . He thought
good, after the manner of scenes in stage plays and masks, to show it afar off.5
Referring to the degradation of the royal pretender, Lambert
Simnell, to a position in the kitchen of the King, Bacon says:
So that in a kind of " matticina" of human force, he turned a broach who had
worn a crown; whereas fortune does not commonly bring in a comedy or farce
after a tragedy. 6
Speaking of Warbeck's conspiracy, Bacon says:
It was one of the longest plays of that kind that hath been in memory.7
And here I group together several similar expressions:
Therefore, now, like the end of a play, a great many came upon the stage at once.'*
He [Perkin Warbeck] had contrived with himself a vast and tragical plot.9
I have given the rule where a man cannot fitly play his own part, if he have
not a friend he may quit the stage.™
But men must know that in this theater of man s life, it is reserved only for
God and the angels to be lookers-on.11
As if they would make you like a king in a play, who, when one would think
he standeth in great majesty and felicity, is troubled to say his part. )%
With which speech he put the army into an infinite fury and uproar, whereas
trutli was he had no brother; neither was there any such matter, but he played it
merely as if he had been upon the staged3
Those friends whom I accounted no stage friends, but private friends.14
1 Letter to Sir Thomas Bodley. 8 Ibid.
2 Letter to Essex, Oct. 4, 1596. » Ibid.
3 lxi, lxii. 1° Essay Of Friendship.
4 History of Henry VII. M Advancement of Learning, book ii.
5 Ibid. ,a Gesta Grayorum — Life and Works, vol. i, p. 339.
* Ibid. 18 Advancement of Learning, book ii.
7 Ibid. l* Letter to Tobie Matthew.
276 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE FLAYS.
All that would be but a play upon the stage, if justice went not on in the right
course.1
Zeno and Socrates . . . placed felicity in virtue; . . . the Cyrenaics and Epi-
curians placed it in pleasure, and made virtue (as it is used in some comedies of
errors, wherein the mistress and maid change habits) to be but as a servant.'2
We regard all the systems of philosophy hitherto received or imagined as so-
many plays brought out and performed, creating fictitious and theatrical worlds?
The plot of this our theater resembles those of the poetical, where the plots
which are invented for the stage are more consistent, elegant and pleasurable than
those taken from real history.4
I might continue these examples indefinitely, for Bacon's whole
writings bubble and sparkle with comparisons drawn from plays,
play-houses and actors; and yet, marvelous to relate, he never
notices the existence of the greatest dramatic writings the world
had ever known, which he must have witnessed on the stage a
thousand times. He takes Ben Jonson into his house as an amanu-
ensis, but the mightiest mind of all time, if Shakspere was Shake-
speare, he never notices, even when he is uttering thoughts and
preaching a philosophy identical with his own ! How can all this-
be explained ?
Mrs. Pott calls attention to the following:
Beaumont and Fletcher dedicated to Bacon the mask which was designed to*
celebrate the marriage of the Count Palatine with the Princess Elizabeth, February
14, 1612-13. The dedication of this mask begins with an acknowledgment that
Bacon, with the gentlemen of Gray's Inn, and the Inner Temple, had "spared no
pains nor travail in the setting forth, ordering and furnishing of this mask . . .
and you, Sir Francis Bacon, especially, as you did then by your countenance and
loving affection advance it, so let your good word grace it, which is able to add
value to the greatest and least matters." "On Tuesday," says Chamberlain, writ-
ing on the i8thof February, 1612-13," it came to Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple's
turn to come with their mask, %v hereof Sir Francis Bacon was the chief contriver."
{Court and Times of James I., vol. i, p. 227; see Spedding, vol. iv, p. 344.) 5
And we find Bacon writing an essay on Masques, in which he
gave directions as to scenery, music, colors and trappings, and even
speaks of the necessity of sweet odors " to drown the steam and
heat " of the audience !
And he philosophizes, as I have shown, upon the drama, its
usefulness, its purposes for good, its characteristics; and describes
how, in a play, the different passions may be represented, and how
1 Letter to Buckingham, 1619. 3 Novum Organum.
a Advancement of Learning, book ii. 4 Ibid.
5 Did J •')■ a nc is Bacon Write" Shakespeare" 7 part i, p. 8.
COKROBORATIXG CIRCUMSTANCES. 277
the growth and development of any special feeling or passion may
be shown; and Macaulay writes (as if it were a foot-note to the
passage) this in reference to the Shakespeare Plays:
In a piece which may be read in three hours, we see a character gradually
unfold all its recesses to us; we see it change with the change of circum-
stances. The petulant youth rises into the politic and war-like sovereign.
The profuse and courteous philanthropist soars into a hater and scorner of his
kind. The tyrant is altered by the chastisement of affliction into a pensive
moralist.
And this student of the drama, this frequenter of the play-
houses, this writer of plays and masks, this sovereign and pene-
trating intellect could not perceive that there stood at his elbow
(the associate, " the fellow of his clerk, Jonson) the vastest genius
the human race had ever produced ! This philosopher of prose
could not recognize the philosopher of poetry; this writer of prose
histories did not know the writer of dramatical histories; this
writer of sonnets, this "concealed poet," this "greatest wit" of
the world (although known by another name), took no notice of
that other mighty intellect, splendid wit and sweet poet, who acted
on the boards of his own law school of Gray's Inn ! It is incom-
prehensible. It is incredible.
And, be it further remembered, Shakespeare dedicated both the
/ renus and Adonis and The Rape of Luercce to the Earl of South-
ampton, and the Earl was Bacon's particular friend and associate,
and a member of his law school of Grays Inn ; and yet, while Shake-
speare dedicates his poems to the Earl, he seems not to have
known his friend and fellow, Francis Bacon. On the other hand,
in the fact that Southampton was a student in Gray's Inn, we see
the reason why the Shakespeare poems were inscribed to him,
under the cover of the play-actor's name.
I have faith enough in the magnanimity of mind of Francis
Bacon to believe that if he had really found, in humble life, a man
•of the extraordinary genius revealed in the Shakespeare Plays (sup-
posing for an instant that they were not Bacon's work), he would have
stooped down and taken him by the hand; he would have intro-
duced him to his friends; he would have quoted from him in his
writings, and we should have found among his papers numbers of
letters to and from him. Their lives would have impinged on each
other; they would have discussed poetry and philosophy in speech
278 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
and in correspondence. Bacon would have visited Stratford, and
Shakspere St. Albans. " Poets," said Ben Jonson, "are rarer births
than kings;" and the man who wrote the Plays was the king of
poets. Was Francis Bacon — "the wisest of mankind" — so blind
or so shallow as to be unaware tff the greatness of the Shakespeare
Plays? Who will believe it?
XII. Certain Incompatibilities with Shakspere.
Let me touch passingly on some passages in the Plays which
it would seem that the man of Stratford could not have written.
Who can believe that William Shakspere, whose father followed
the trade of a butcher, and who was himself, as tradition assures us,
apprenticed to the same humble calling, could have written these
lines in speaking of Wolsey?
This butcher' s cur is venom-mouthed, and I
Have not the power to muzzle him; therefore best
Not wake him in his slumber. A beggar's book
Outworths a noble's blood.1
Richard Grant White says:
Shakespeare's works are full of passages, to write which, if he had loved his
wife and honored her, would have been gall and wormwood to his soul; nay,
which, if he had loved and honored her, he could not have written. The nature of
the subject forbids the marshaling of this terrible array; but did the "flax-wench"
whom he uses for the most degrading of comparisons ( Winter s Tale, i, 2) do
more, "before her troth-plight," than the woman who bore his name and whom
his children called mother?2
But Grant White fails to see that it is not a question as to-
whether Shakspere loved and honored his wife or not. Even if he
had not loved and honored her, he would, if a sensitive and high-
spirited man, for his own sake and the sake of his family, have
avoided the subject as if it carried the contagion of a pestilence.
Again we are told, in all the biographies, that Shakspere was
cruelly persecuted and punished by Sir Thomas Lucy, and "forced
to fly the country," and that for revenge he wrote a bitter ballad
against the Knight; and that subsequently, in The Merry Wives of
Windsor, he made Sir Thomas the object of his ridicule in the
character of Justice Shallow. But if this be true, why did the
writer of the Plays in the 1st Henry VI. bring upon the stage the
ancestor of this same Sir Thomas Lucy, Sir William Lucy, and
1 Henry 1 '///., i. 1. * Life ami Genius of Shak., p. 51.
CORROBORATING CIRCUMSTANCES. 279
paint him in honorable colors as a brave soldier and true patriot
for the admiration of the public and posterity? But the son of
Shakspere's Lucy, Sir Thomas Lucy, was the intimate friend and
correspondent of Francis Bacon.
k
XIII. Shakspere was Falstaff.
But there follows another question. It is evident that Justice
Shallow was intended to personate Sir Thomas Lucy, and the play
of The Merry Wives of Windsor opens with an allusion to the steal-
ing of his deer. I quote the beginning of the act:
Shallow. Sir Hugh, persuade me not; I will make a Star Chamber matter of
it; if he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow,
Esquire. . . .
Slender. . . . They may give the dozen white luces in their coat.
The coat-of-arms of the Lucy family was three luces, and from this
the name was derived. So that herein it is placed beyond question
that Justice Shallow is intended to represent Sir Thomas Lucy.
This is conceded by all the commentators. It is also conceded
that the deer which in this scene Sir John Falstaff is alleged to have
killed were the same deer which Shakspere had slain in his youth.
Shallow. It is a riot. . . .
Page. I am glad to see your worships well; I thank you for my venison,
Master Shallow.
Shallow. Master Page, I am glad to see you; much good do it your good
heart. I wished your venison better; it was ill killed. . . .
Enter Falstaff.
Falstaff. Now, Master Shallow; you'll complain of me to the King?
Shallow. Knight, you have beaten my men, killed my deer and broken open
my lodge.
Falstaff. Rut not kissed your keeper's daughter.
Therefore it follows that if Shallow was Sir Thomas Lucy, and
if the deer that were killed were the deer Shakspere killed, then
Shakspere was Falstaff !
And if Shakspere wrote the Plays, he deliberately represented
himself in the character of Falstaff. And what was the character
of Falstaff as delineated in that very play ? It was that of a gross,
sensual, sordid old liar and thief. The whole play turns on his
sensuality united to sordidness. He makes love to Page's wife
because "the report goes she has all the rule of her husband's
purse; he hath a legion of angels." And Falstaff is also represented
S*\\ BRA 47
or THE
^
28o FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
as sharing in the thefts of his followers, as witness the following
dialogue:
Falstaff. I will not lend thee a penny.
Pistol. Why, then, the world's mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open.
Falstaff. Not a penny. I have been content, sir, you should lay my counte-
nance to pawn: I have grated upon my good friends for three reprieves for you
and your coach-fellow, Nym; or else you had looked through the grate like a
geminy of baboons. I am damned in hell for swearing to gentlemen, my friends,
you were good soldiers and tall fellows: and when Mistress Bridget lost the handle
of her fan, I took 't upon mine honor thou hadst it not.
Pistol. Didst not thou share? Hadst thou not fifteen pence?
Falstaff. Reason, you rogue, reason: think'st thou I'll endanger my soul gratis ?
Is it conceivable that the great man, the scholar, the philosopher,
the tender-souled, ambitious, sensitive man who wrote the sonnets
would deliberately represent himself as Falstaff?
But if some one else wrote the Plays, then this whole scene con-
cerning the deer-stealing contains, probably, a cipher narrative of
the early life of Shakspere; for it is in the same play, as we shall
see hereafter, that we find the cipher words William, Shakes,
peere, and Francisco Bacon. And when we read the obscene anec-
dotes which tradition has delivered down to us, touching Shak-
spere's sensuality and mother-wit, and then look at the gross face
represented in the monument in the Stratford church, we can
realize that William Shakspere may have been the original of Fal-
staff, and that it was not by accident he was represented as having
killed the deer of that Justice Shallow who had the twelve white
luces on his coat-of-arms.
Richard Grant White, earnest anti-Baconian as he is, says of
that bust:
The monument is ugly; the staring, painted, figure-head-like bust hideous.1
It is the face of Falstaff.
XIV. A Curious Fact.
I proceed now to call the attention of the reader to a curious
fact, revealed by a study of the copies of legal documents found in
Halliwell-Phillipps' Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare.
Shakspere purchased a house and lot in London, on the ioth
day of March, 1612, "within the precinct of the late Black Fryers."
1 England Without and Within, p. 521.
CORROBORATING CIRCUMSTANCES. 281
It has puzzled his biographers to tell what he wanted this property
for. All his other purchases were in Stratford or vicinity. He did
not need it for a home, for before this time he had retired to Strat-
ford to live in his great house, New Place; and in the deed of pur-
chase of the Blackfriars property he is described as " of Stratford-on-
Avon, gentleman." The house and lot were close to the Blackfriars
Theater, and property was falling in the neighborhood because of
that proximity. Shakspere rented it to one John Robinson.
But there are three curious features in connection with this
purchase:
1. Shakspere, although very rich at the time, did not pay down
all the purchase-money, but left ^60 standing upon mortgage,
which was not extinguished until after his death.
2. Shakspere bought the property from Henry Walker, minstrel,
for ^140, while Walker in 1604 had bought it for ^£"100. This repre-
sented an increase equal to §2,400 to-day. And yet we find the peo-
ple of that vicinity petitioning in 1618-19 to have the theater closed,
because of the great injury it did to property-holders around it.
3. Walker's grantor was Matthew Bacon, of Grays Inn, in the
county of Middlesex, gentleman, and included in the purchase was
the following:
And also all that plott of ground on the west side of the same tenement, which
was lately inclosed with boordes, on two sides thereof, by Anne Bacon, widow, so
farre and in such sorte as the same was inclosed by the said Anne Bacon and not
otherwise.
Was this "Anne Bacon, widow," the mother of Francis Bacon?
Her name wras Anne. And who was Matthew Bacon, of Gray's
Inn? Was he one of Francis Bacon's family? And is it not
strange to find the names of Bacon and Shakspere coming together
thus in a business transaction ? And does it not look as if Shak-
spere had paid a debt to some one by buying a piece of property
for $2,400 more than it was worth, and giving a mortgage for £60,
equal to $3,600 of our money at the present time?
XV. The Northumberland House Manuscript.
There is one other instance where the name of Shakspere is
found associated with that of Francis Bacon.
In 1867 there was discovered in the library of Northumberland
House, in London, a remarkable MS., containing copies of several
282 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
papers written by Francis Bacon. It was found in a box of old
papers which had long remained undisturbed. There is a title-
page, which embraces a table of contents of the volume, and this
contains not only the names of writings unquestionably Bacon's,
but also the names of plays which are supposed to have been
written by Shakespeare. But only part of the manuscript volume
remains, and the portions lost embrace the following pieces enu-
merated on the title-leaf:
Orations at Graie's Inns revells
.... Queen's Mats ....
By Mr. Frauncis Bacon
Essaies by the same author.
Richard the Second.
Richard the Third.
Asmund and Cornelia.
Isle of Dogs frmnt.
By Thomas Nashe, inferior places. x
How comes it that the Shakespeare plays, RicJuird J I. and
Richard III., should be mixed up in a volume of Bacon's manu-
scripts with his own letters and essays and a mask written by him
in 1592 ? Judge Holmes says :
And then, the blank space at the side and between the titles is scribbled all
over with various words, letters, phrases and scraps of verse in English and Latin,
as if the copyist were merely trying his pen, and writing down whatever first came
into his head. Among these scribblings, beside the name of Francis Bacon
several times, the name of William Shakespeare is written eight or nine times over.
A line from The Rape of Lucrece is written thus: "Revealing day through every
crannie peeps and," the writer taking peeps from the next couplet instead of
spies. Three others are Anthony comfrt. and consort and honorificabilitudino
and plaies [plays]. . . . The word konorificabilitudino is not found in any dic-
tionary that I know of, but in Love's Labor s Lost}
Costard, the clown, bandying Latin with the tall schoolmaster
and curate (who "had been at a great feast of languages and
stolen the scraps"), exclaims:
Oh ! they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master
hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou art not so long by the head as honorifca-
bilitudinatibus?
Let those who are disposed to study this discovery turn to
Judge Holmes' work. It is sufficient for me to note here, that
in a collection of Bacon's papers, made undoubtedly by his aman-
1 Holmes' Authorship of Shakcsfieare, vol. ii, p. 658, ed. 1886. s Ibid., 658-682.
2 Act v, scene 1.
CORR OB OR A TIXG CIR C UMS TA NCE S. 2 8 3
uensis, plays that are recognized to be Shakespeare's are em-
braced; and the name of Francis Bacon and the name of William
Shakespeare (spelled as it was spelled in the published quartos,
but not as the man himself spelled it) are scribbled all over
this manuscript collection, and at the same time sentences and
words are quoted from the Shakespeare Plays and Poems.
And, while we find this association of the two names in Bacon's
library and private papers, there is not one word in his published
writings or his correspondence to show that he knew that such a
being as William Shakspere ever existed.
" Tis strange ; 'tis passing strange."
XVI. Another Singular Fact.
Edmund Spenser visited London in 1590, and in 1591 he pub-
lished his poem, The Tears of the Muses, in which Thalia, the
muse of poetry, laments that a change has come over the play-
houses ; that
The sweet delights of learning* s treasure ^
That wont with comic sock to beautify
The painted theaters, and fill with pleasure
The listeners' eyes and ears with melody,
are " all gone."
And all that goodly glee
Which wont to be the glory of gay wits,
Is laid a-bed;
and in lieu thereof " ugly barbarism and brutish ignorance " fill
the stage,
And with vain joys the vulgar entertain.
Instead thereof scoffing Scurrility
And scornful Folly with Contempt is crept,
Rolling in rhymes of shameless ribaldry
Without regard or due decorum kept.
And Spenser laments that the author, who formerly delighted with
" goodly glee" and "learning's treasure," has withdrawn — is tempo-
rarily dead.
And he, the man whom Nature's self had made
To mock herself and Truth to imitate,
With kindly counter under mimic shade,
Our pleasant Willy, ah ! is dead of late;
With whom all joy and jolly merriment
Is also deaded and in dolor drent.
284 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE FLAYS.
But that this was not an actual death, but simply a retirement
from the degenerate stage, is shown in the next verse but one:
But that same gentle spirit from whose pen
Large streams of honey and sweet nectar flow,
Scorning the boldness of such base-born men
Which dare their follies forth so rashly throw,
Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell
Than so himself to mockery to sell.
It is conceded by all the commentators that these lines refer
to the writer of the Shakespeare Plays: there was no one else to
whom they could refer. But there are many points in which
they are incompatible with the young man William Shakspere, of
Stratford.
In the first place, they throw back the date of his labors, as I
have shown in a former instance, long anterior to the year 1592, at
which time it is conceded Shakespeare first began to write for the
stage. In 1590, the writer referred to by Spenser had not only
written one, but many plays; and had had possession of the stage
long enough to give it a cast and character, until driven out by
the rage for vulgar satires and personal abuse. White says:
The Tears of the Muses had certainly been written before 1590, when Shake-
speare could not have risen to the position assigned by the first poet of the age to
the subject of this passage; and probably in 1580, when Shakespeare was a boy of
sixteen, in Stratford.
In the next place, the man referred to by Spenser was a gentle-
man. The word gentle in these lines is clearly contradistin-
guished from base-born.
That same gentle spirit . . .
Scorning the folly of such base-born men.
No one will pretend that the Stratford fugitive was in 1590 "a
gentleman."
Shakspere, we are told, produced his dramas to make money;
"for gain, not glory, he winged his roving flight.1' Young, poor,
just risen from the rank of horse-holder or call-boy, if not actually
occupying it, it is not likely he could have resisted the clamors of
his fellows for productions suitable to the degraded taste of the
hour. But the man referred to by Spenser was a gentleman, a man
of " learning," a man of refinement, and he
Rather chose to sit in idle cell
Than so himself to mockery to sell.
COKROBORA TING CIRCUMS TA X( A'.S. 2 g r
The comparison of the poet to the refined student in his "cell "
is a very inapplicable one to apply to an actor, be he Marlowe or
Shakspere, daily appearing on the boards in humble characters,
and helping to present to vulgar audiences the very obscenities and
scurrilities of which Spenser complained.
Again, if we examine that often-quoted verse:
And he, the man whom Nature's self had made
To mock herself and Truth to imitate,
With kindly counter, under mimic shade,
Our pleasant Willy, ah ! is dead of late.
The word counter is not known to our dictionaries in any sense
that is consonant with the meaning of these lines. I take it to be a
poetical abbreviation of " counterfeit," and this view is confirmed
by the further statement that this gentle-born playwright, who
despised the base-born play-makers, imitated truth under a shade
or disguise; and this disguise was a mimic one, to-wit, that of a
mime — an actor.
The name Willy in that day, as I have shown heretofore, was
generally applied to all poets.
XVII. Another Extraordinary Fact.
It is sometimes said: How can you undertake to deny Shak-
spere the honor of his own writings, when the Plays were printed
during his life-time with his name on the title-page of each and
every one of them ?
This is a mistake. According to the list of editions printed in
Halliwell-Phillipps' Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, p. 533 (and
there is no better authority), it seems that the name of Shakespeare
did not appear upon the title-page of any of the Plays until 1598.
The Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece contained, it is true,
dedicatory letters signed by Shakespeare; but the first play, Titus
Andronicus, published in 1594, was without his name; the First Part
of the Contention of the two Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, published
in 1594; the Tragedy of Richard, Duke of Yorke, published in 1595;
Romeo and Juliet, published in 1597; Richard LL., published in 1597,
and Richard LLL., printed in 1597, were all without the name of
Shakspere or any one else upon the title-page. It was not until the
publication of Love's Labor Lost, in 1598, that we find him set forth.
286 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
as having any connection with the play; and he does not then
claim to be the author of it. The title-page reads:
As it was presented before her Highness this last Christmas. Newly corrected
and augmented by IV. Shakespere.
In the same year the tragedy of Richard II. is published, and
the name of "William Shake-speare " appears as the author.
It thus appears that during the six years from 1592 to 1598 eight
editions of plays which now go by the name of Shakespeare were
published without his name or any other name upon the title-page.
In other words, not only did the Shakespeare Plays commence
to appear while Shakspere was still in Stratford, and were captiva-
ting the town while the author was holding horses or acting as call-
boy; but for six years after the Plays which are distinctively
known as his, and which are embraced in the Folio of 1623, had
won great fame and profit on the stage, they were published in
numerous quarto editions without his name or any other name
on the title-page. This is mystery on mystery's head accumulate.
XVIII. When were the Plays Written ?
But it will be argued by some that Francis Bacon had not the
time to write the Shakespeare Plays; that he was too busy with
politics, philosophy, law and statesmanship; that there was no time
in his life when these productions could have been produced; and
that it is absurd to think that he could act as Lord Chancellor and
write plays for the stage at the same time.
In the first place, it must be remembered that Francis Bacon
was a man of extraordinary and phenomenal industry. One has
but to look at the twenty volumes of his acknowledged writings to
concede this. In illustration of his industry, we are told that he
re-wrote his Essays thirty times ! His chaplain and biographer, Dr.
Rawley, says:
I myself have seen at the least twelve copies of the Instauration [meaning, says
Spedding,1 the Novum Qrganuni\, revised year by year, one after another, and
every year altered and amended in the frame thereof, till at last it came to that
model in which it was committed to the press; as many living creatures do lick
their young ones, till they bring them to the strength of their limbs. . . . He
would suffer no moment of time to slip from him without some present improve-
ment.
1 JVorks, vol. i, p. 47, Boston ed.
CORROBORA TING CIRCUMSTANCES.
287
As the Novum Organum embraces about three hundred and fifty
octavo pages of the Boston edition, the reader can conceive the
labor required to re-write this twelve times. Let these things be
remembered when we come to consider the vastly laborious cipher-
story written into the Plays.
But an examination of Bacon's biography will show that he
had ample leisure to have written the Plays.
In the spring of 1579, Bacon, then eighteen years of age, returned
from Paris, in consequence of the death of his father. He resided
for a year or more at St. Albans. In 1581, then twenty years old,
he ''begins to keep terms at Gray's Inn." In 1582 he is called to
the bar. For three years we know nothing of what he is doing.
In 1585 he writes a sketch of his philosophy, entitled The Greatest
Birth of Time, which, it is supposed, was afterwards broadened out
into The Advancement of Learning. In 1585 the Contention between the
two Houses of York and Lancaster is supposed to have appeared. In
1586 he is made a bencher. He is "/// umbra and not in public or
frequent action." "His seclusion is commented on." In this year,
according to Malone, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen
of Verona and Love 's Labor Lost appear, probably in imperfect forms,
like the first of those thirty copies of the Essays. In 1587 (the
year Shakspere is supposed to have come to London), Bacon helps
in getting up a play, for the Gray's Inn revels, called The Misfor-
tunes of Arthur. He also assists in some masks to be played before
Elizabeth. Here certainly we have the leisure, the disposition and
the kindred employment. In 1588 he becomes a member of Par-
liament for Liverpool. He writes a short paper called an Adver-
tisement Touching the Controversies of the Church. To this year
Dr. Delius attributes Venus and Adonis and Mr. Furnival Love's L^abor
Lost. Shakspere is, at this time, either holding horses at the door
of the play-house or acting as call-boy, or in some other subordinate
capacity about the play-house. In 1589-90 Bacon puts forth a letter
to Walsingham, on The Government and the Papists. No one can
tell what he is working at; and yet, knowing his industry and
energy, we may be sure he is not idle; for in the next year he
writes to his uncle Burleigh:
I account my ordinary course of study and meditation to be more painful than
most parts of action are.
288 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
And again he says in the same letter:
If your Lordship will not carry me on, ... I will sell the inheritance 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
book-maker, or a true pioneer in that mine of truth which, Anaxagoras said, lay so
deep.
In 1591 the Queen visits him at his brother's place at Twicken-
ham, and he writes a sonnet in her honor.
Mrs. Pott says:
To 1 591 is attributed 1st Henry VI., of which the scene is laid in the same
provinces of France which formed Bacon's sole experience of that country. Also
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (probably in its present form), which reflects
Anthony's sojourn in Italy. Henceforth the "Shakespeare" Comedies continue
to exhibit the combined influence of Anthony's letters from abroad, with Francis'
studies in Gray's Inn.1
This 1st Henry VI. is the play referred to by Halliwell-Phillipps,
as acted for the first time March 3, 1592, and as the first of the
Shakespeare Plays.
In 1592 Francis is in debt, borrowing one pound at a time, and cast
into a sponging-house by a "hard " Jew or Lombard on account of
a bond. His brother, Anthony, comes to his relief. Soon after
appears The Merchant of Venice, in which Antonio relieves Bas-
sanio. Does this last name contain a hint of Bacon, after the ana-
grammatic fashion of the times?
Dr. Delius attributes Romeo and Juliet to this date.
In 1593 Bacon composes for some festive occasion a device, or
mask, called A Conference of Pleasure.
During all these years Bacon lives very much retired. He says,
in 1594, he is "poor and sick and working for bread." What at ?
He says, at another time, " The bar will be my bier." He writes his
uncle Burleigh in 1595:
It is true, my life hath been so private as I have no means to do your Lordship
service.
The Venus and Adonis appears in 1593, with a dedication from
William Shakespeare to the Earl of Southampton, Bacon's fellow
in Gray's Inn. When the fortunes of Bacon and Southampton
afterward separate, because of Southampton's connection with the
Essex treason, the poem is re-published without the dedication.
1 Did Francis Bacon Write Shakespeare ? p. 14.
CORROBORATING CIRCUMSTANCES. 289
In 1594 Lady Anne, Bacon's mother, is distressed about his de-
votion to plays and play-houses. In 1590 she had written to Anthony,
complaining of his brother's irregular hours and poet-like habits:
I verily think your brother's weak stomach to digest hath been much caused
and confirmed by untimely going to bed. and then musing nescio quid when he
should sleep, and then, in consequence, by late rising and long lying in bed,
whereby his men are made slothful and himself sickly.1
In 1594 Bacon begins his P ramus of Formularies and Elegancies,
which has been so ably edited by Mrs. Pott, of London,2 which
fairly bristles with thoughts, expressions and quotations found in
the Shakespeare Plays. It is clearly the work of a poet who is
studying the elegancies of speech, with a view to increase his capac-
ity for the expression of beautiful thoughts. It is not the kind of
work in which a mere philosopher would engage.
In this year 1594 "Shakespeare's" Comedy of Errors appears
(for the first time), at Bacon's law school, Gray's Inn. In the same
year Lucrece is published. In the same year Bacon writes a Device,
or mask, which Essex presents to her Majesty on the "Queen's
Day/' called The Device of an Indian Prince. In this year, also,
Bacon is defeated by Cecil for the place of Attorney or Solicitor-
General, and, as Dr. Delius thinks, the play of Richard III., in
which the hump-backed tyrant is held up to the detestation of
mankind, appears the same year !
In 1604 Bacon writes to Sir Tobie Matthew, speaking of some
important matter, that he cannot recall what passed, "my head
being then wholly employed upon invention" a word which he uses
for works of the imagination.
Here, then, we have the proof that the Plays appeared during
Bacon's unemployed youth. No one pretends that he wrote plays
while he was holding great and lucrative offices in the state.
XIX. Some Secret Means of Income.
And we have evidences in Bacon's letters — although they seem
to have been gone over carefully and excised and garbled — that
he had some secret means of support.
In 1595 he writes Essex:
I am purposed not to follow the practice of the law, and my reason is only
because it drinketh too much time, which I have dedicated to better purposes.
1 Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon, May 24, 1590 — Li'fe and Works, vol. 1, p. 114.
■ Bacon's Promns, by Mrs. Henry Pott. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
290 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE FLAYS.
Mr. Spedding says:
It is easier to understand why Bacon was resolved not to devote his life to the
ordinary practice of a lawyer, than what plan he had to clear himself of the diffi-
culties which were now accumulating upon him, and to obtain means of living and
working. What course he betook himself to at the crisis which had now arrived,
I cannot possibly say. I do not find any letter of his which can possibly be assigned
to the winter of 1596, nor have I met among his brother's papers with any tiling
which indicates tvhat he was about.
And two years before, in April, 1593, we find Bacon writing to
the Earl of Essex thus:
I did almost conjecture, by your silence and countenance, a distaste in the
course I imparted to your Lordship touching mine own fortune. . . . And for the
free and loving advice your Lordship hath given me, I cannot correspond to the
same with greater duty than by assuring your Lordship that I will not dispose of
myself without your allowance. . . . But notwithstanding I know it will be pleas-
ing to your good Lordship that I use my liberty of replying, and I do almost
assure myself that your Lordship will rest persuaded by the answer of those rea-
sons which your Lordship vouchsafed to open. They were two; the one that I
should include. . . .
Mr. Spedding says:
Here our light goes suddenly out, just as we are going to see how Bacon had
resolved to dispose of himself at this juncture.1
Is it not very remarkable that this letter should be clipped off
just at this point ? We are forced to ask, first, what was the course
which he intended to take " touching mine own fortune ; " and
secondly, if there was no mystery behind his life, why was this
letter so emasculated ?
And it seems he intimated to his mother that he had some
secret means of obtaining money. Lady Bacon writes to Anthony
at the same time, and in the same month and year:
Besides, your brother told me before you twice, then, that he intended not to
part with Markes [an estate], and the rather because Mr. Mylls would lend him
^900; and, as I remember, I asked him how he was to come out of debt. His
answer was that means would be made without that?
Remember that it was not until January, 1598, that Bacon pub-
lished the first of his acknowledged formal works, his Essays. And
these were not the forty long essays we now have, but ten short,
condensed compositions, which occupied but thirteen double pages
of the original quarto edition. These, with a few brief papers, are
the only acknowledged fruits we have to represent the nineteen years
1 Life and Works, vol. i, p. 235. 'Ibid., p. 244.
CORROBORATING CIRCUMSTANCES. 291
between the date of his return from Paris, in IS7<?, a?id the publication
of his ten brief essays in January, Jjp<¥.
What was that most fecund, prolific, laborious writer doing
during these nearly twenty years? He was brimful of energy,
industry, genius, mirth and humor: how did he expend it? What
was that painful course of study and meditation which he under-
went daily, as he told his uncle Burleigh ?
Read what Hepworth Dixon says of him at the age of twenty-four:
How he appears in outward grace and aspect among these courtly and martial
contemporaries, the miniature by Hilyard helps us to conceive. Slight in build,
rosy and round in flesh, dight in sumptuous suit; the head well set, erect, and
framed in a thick, starched fence of frill; a bloom of study and of travel on the fat.
girlish face, which looks far younger than his years; the hat and feather tossed aside
from the broad, white brow, over which crisps and curls a mane of dark, soft hair;
an English nose — firm, open, straight; mouth delicate and small — a lady's or a
jester's mouth — a thousand pranks and humors, quibbles, ivhims and laughters lurking
in its twinkling, tremulous lines. Such is Francis Bacon at the age of twenty-four.1
Is this the description of a dry-as-dust philosopher ? Is it not
rather the picture of the youthful scholar, the gentleman, the wit,
the poet, " fresh from academic studies." who wrote The Two
Gentlemen of Verona and Lore's Labor Lost I
In brief, the Shakespeare Plays are the fruits of Bacon's youth;
for it is in youth he tells us that the imagination streams with
divine felicity into the mind; while his philosophical works are the
product of middle life. It is not until 1603, when Bacon was forty-
two years of age, that he published the first of his scientific works,
entitled Valerius Terminus; or, the Interpretation of Nature : with the
Annotations of Hermes Stella. And who, we ask passingly, was
"Hermes Stella"? Was Bacon, with his usual secretiveness, seek-
ing another weed — another Shakspere ? Mrs. Pott says:
There is something so mysterious about this strange title, and in the obscurity of
the text itself as well as in the meaning of the astronomical and astrological sym-
bols written on the blank outside of the volume, that Mr. Ellis and Mr.fSpedding
comment upon them, but can throw no real light upon them.
XX. Another Mystery.
W. A. A. Watts, in a paper read before the Bacon Society of
London while this work is going through the press,2 calls attention
to the striking fact that Ben Jonson, besides stating that Bacon
1 Dixon's Personal History of Lord Bacon, p. 25.
3 Journal 0/ the Baconian Society, Aug., 1887, p. 130.
292 FRANCIS BACON THE AUTHOR OF THE PLAYS.
had "filled all numbers' and was "the mark and acme of our lan-
guage," in a poem entitled "Underwoods," addressed to Bacon on
his birthday, says:
In the midst,
Thou stand'st as though a mystery thou didst.
This is certainly extraordinary. What was the mystery? Was
it in connection with those "numbers" which excelled anything in
Greek or Roman dramatic literature, and which were "the mark
and acme of our language"? If not, what did Ben mean?
XXI. Coke's Insults.
We find all through that period of Bacon's life, between 1597
and his accession to the place of Lord Chancellor, that he was the
subject of a great many slanders. But while he alludes to the
slanders, he is careful not to tell us what they were. Did they refer
to the Shakespeare Plays ? Did they charge that he paid his debts
with money taken in at the door of the play-house ? For we may
be sure that among the actors there were whisperings which it
would be difficult to keep from spreading abroad; and
Thus comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thus my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.
But there has come down to us a letter of Bacon which gives
us some account of the insults he was subjected to. In it Bacon
complains, in 1601, to his cousin, Lord Secretary Cecil, that his
arch-enemy, Mr. Attorney-General Coke, had publicly insulted him
in the Exchequer. He tells that he moved for the reseizure of the
lands of one George Moore, a relapsed recusant, fugitive and traitor
He says:
Mr. Attorney kindled at it and said: " Mr. Bacon, if you have any tooth against
me pluck it out, for it will do you more hurt than all the teeth in your head will do
you good." I answered coldly, in these very words: "Mr. Attorney, I respect
you; I fear you not; and the less you speak of your own greatness the more will I
think of it."
He replied: " I think scorn to stand upon terms of greatness toward you, who
are less than little; less than the least;" and other such strange light terms he gave
me, with such insulting which cannot be expressed. Herewith I stirred, yet I said
no more but this: " Mr. Attorney, do not depress me so far; for I have been your
better, and may be again, when it please the Queen." With this he spake, neither
I nor himself could tell what, as if he had been born Attorney-General; and in the
end bade me not meddle with the Queen's business, but mine own. . . . Then he
said it were good to clap a capias utlegatum upon my back ! To which I only said he
could not, and that he was at fault; for he hunted upon an old sent.
CORROBORA TING CIRCUMSTANCES.
293
He gave me a number of disgraceful words besides, which I answered with
silence.1
And Bacon writes Cecil, evidently with intent to have him
silence Coke.
I will ask the reader to remember this letter when we come to
the Cipher Narrative. It shows, it seems to me, that Cecil knew
of something to Bacon's discredit, and that Coke, Cecil's follower,
had heard of it and blurted it out in his rage in open court, and
threatened Bacon with arrest; and Bacon writes to his cousin for
protection against Coke's tongue. Spedding says the threat of the
capias utlegatum may possibly have referred to a debt that Bacon
owed in 1598; but what right would Coke have to arrest Bacon for
a debt due to a third party, and which must have been paid three
years before? And why should Bacon say "he was at fault." If
Coke referred to the debt he was not " at fault," for Bacon cer-
tainly had owed it.
XXII. Conclusion.
In conclusion I would say that I have in the foregoing pages
shown that, if we treat the real author of the Plays, and Francis
Bacon, as two men, they belonged to the same station in society,
to the same profession — -the law; to the same political party and
to the same faction in the state; that they held the same religious
views, the same philosophical tenets and the same purposes in life.
That each was a poet and a philosopher, a writer of dramatic com-
positions, and a play-goer. That Bacon had the genius, the oppor-
tunity, the time and the necessity to write the Plays, and ample
reasons to conceal his authorship.
I proceed now to another branch of my argument. I shall
attempt to show that these two men, if we may still call them such,
pursued the same studies, read the same books, possessed the same
tastes, enjoyed the same opinions, used the same expressions, em-
ployed the same unusual words, cited the same quotations and fell
into the same errors.
If all this does not bring the brain of the poet under the hat of
the philosopher, what will you have?
1 Spedding, Life and W'erks, vol. iii. p. 2. London : Longmans.
PART III.
PARALLELISMS.
CHAPTER I.
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS.
As near as the extremest ends
Of parallels.
Troilus and Cressida, /, J.
^I^HO does not remember that curious word used by Hamlet,
» » to describe the coldness of the air, upon the platform where
he awaits the Ghost:
It is very cold.
It is a nipping and an eager air.1
We turn to Bacon, and we find this very word used in the same
sense:
Whereby the cold becomes more eager.'1
There is another strange word used by Shakespeare:
Light thickens,
And the crow makes wing to the rocky wood."5
We turn again to Bacon, and we find the origin of this singular
expression:
For the over-moisture of the brain doth thicken the spirits visual.4
In the same connection we have in Bacon this expression:
The cause of dimness of sight is the expense of spirits.1'
We turn to Shakespeare's sonnets, and we find precisely the
same arrangement of words:
Tti expense of spirit in a waste of shame.
1 Hamlet, i, 4. " Macbeth, iii, 2. 5 Ibid.
2 Natural History, § 688. 4 Natural History, § 693.
2Q5
296 PARALLELISMS.
One of the most striking parallelisms of thought and expression
occurs in the following. Bacon says:
Some noises help sleep, as . . . soft singing. The cause is, for that they
move in the spirits a gentle attention.*
In Shakespeare we have:
I am never merry when I hear sweet music,
The reason is, your spirits are attentive?
Here we have the same words applied in the same sense to the same
thing, the effect of music; and in each case the philosopher stops to
give the reason — "the cause is," "the reason is."
Both are very fond of the expressions, "parts inward" and
" parts outward," to describe the interior and exterior of the body.
Bacon says:
Mineral medicines have been extolled that they are safer for the outward than
the inward parts. %
And again:
While the life-
nbers trembled
Shakespeare has it
While the life-blood of Spain went inward to the heart, the outward limbs and
members trembled and could not resist.4
I see men's judgments are
A parcel of their fortunes; and things outward
Do draw the inward quality after them,
To suffer all alike.5
Falstaff tells us:
But the sherris warms it and makes it course from the inwards to the parts
extreme*
Bacon says:
Infinite variations. '
Shakespeare says:
Nor custom stale
Her infinite variety*
The word infinite is a favorite with both writers.
Bacon has:
Occasions are infinite?
Infinite honor.10
The infinite flight of birds.11
1 Natural History, § 745. * 2d Henry IV., iv, 3.
2 Merchant 0/ Venice, v, 1. 7 Advancement of Learning, book ii.
3 Advancement of Learning, book \\. 8 Antony and Cleopatra, ii, 2.
4 Speech in Parliment, 39 Elizabeth (1597-8) ■ Wisdom of the Ancients — Achelous .
— Life and Works, vol. ii, p. 80. 10 Speech.
• A ntony and Cleopatra, iii, 2. ' ' New . I tlantis.
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS. 297
Shakespeare has:
Conclusion infinite of easy ways to die.1
Fellows of infinite tongue. -
A fellow of infinite jest.8
Infinite in faculties.4
Nature's infinite book of secrecy.5
Bacon says: *
Man in his mansion, sleep, exercise, passions, hath infinite variations; . . .
the facilities of the soul.6
Shakespeare says:
How infinite in faculties?
Bacon speaks of
That gigantic state of mind which possesseth the troublers of the -world, such as
was Lucius Sylla.8
This is a very peculiar and unusual expression; we turn to
Shakespeare, and we find Queen Margaret cursing the bloody
Duke of Gloster, in the play of Richard f II., in these words:
If heaven have any grievous plague in store,
Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee.
Oh, let them keep it, till thy sins be ripe,
And then hurl down their indignation
On thee, the troubler of tJie poor world's peace.9
In Shakespeare we find:
Which is to bring Signor Benedick and the Lady Beatrice into a mountain of
-affection, the one with the other.1"
This was regarded as such a strange and unusual comparison
that some of the commentators proposed to change it into " a moot-
ing of affection." But we turn to Bacon and we find the same
simile:
Perkin sought to corrupt the servants of the lieutenant of the Tower by moun-
tains of prom ises. ! '
Bacon says:
To fall from a discord, or harsh accord, upon a concord of sweet accord. '-
1 Antony and Cleopatra, v, 2. ''Hamlet, ii, 2.
2 Henry V., v, 2. 8 Advancement 0/ Learning.
3 Hamlet, v, 1. 9 Richard III., i, 3.
4 Ibid., ii, 2. I0 Much Ado about Nothing, ii, 2.
5 A ntony a nd Cleopatra , i , 2 . ' 1 History of Hen ry I VI.
8 Advancement 0/ Learning, book ii. l* Advancement 0/ Learning.
298
PARALLELISMS.
Shakespeare says:
That is not moved with concord of siveet sounds.1
Here we have three words used in the same order and sense by
both writers.
We find in Shakespeare this well-known but curious expression:.
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.2
This word occurs only once in the Plays. George Stevens says:
Dr. Farmer informs me that these words are merely technical. A woolman,
butcher and dealer in skewers lately observed to him that his nephew (an idle lad)
could only assist him in making them. "He could rough-hew them, but I was
obliged to shape their ends." Whoever recollects the profession of Shakspere's
father will admit that his son might be no stranger to such terms. / have fre-
quently seen packages of wool pinri d up xvith sketvers.
This is the sort of proof we have had that Shakspere wrote the
Plays. It is very evident that the sentence means, that while we
may hew out roughly the outlines of our careers, the ends we reach
are shaped by some all-controlling Providence. And when we turn
to Bacon we find the very word used by him, to indicate carved
out roughly:
A nmgh-hewn seaman.3
And we find again in Shakespeare the same idea, that while we
may shape our careers in part, the results to be attained are beyond
our Control:
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.4
Bacon says:
Instruct yourself in all things between heaven and earth which may tend to
virtue, wisdom and honor.5
Shakespeare has:
Crawling between heaven and earth.*
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.1
Bacon refers to
The particular remedies which learning doth minister to all the diseases of the
mind.
Shakespeare says:
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased ?*
1 Merchant of Venice, v, 1, a Hamlet, v, 2. ■ Apophthegms. * Hamlet, iii, 2.
5 Bacon's Letter to the Earl of Rutland, written in the name of the Earl of Essex— Life and
Works, vol. ii, p. 18. '''Hamlet, iii, 1. 7 Hamlet, i, 5. * Macbeth, V, 3.
ID EX TIC A I EX PRE SSIONS.
299
Here the parallelism is complete. In each case it refers to
remedies for mental disease, and in each case the word minister is
used, and the " diseases of the mind" of the one finds its counter-
part in u mind diseased" of the other, a change made necessary by
the rhythm.
Surely the doctrine of accidental coincidences will not explain
this.
Bacon says:
Men have their time, and die many times, in desire of some things which they
principally take to heart.1
Shakespeare says:
Cowards die many times before their deaths.*
Bacon says:
The even carriage between two factions proceedeth not always of moderation,
but of a tracness to a man s self, with end to make use of both.*
And again he says:
Be so true to thyself as thou be not false to others*
Shakespeare says:
To thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.5
Bacon says:
The ripeness or unripeness of the occasion must ever be well weighed. *
Shakespeare says:
Ripeness is all.7
In Shakespeare we have this singular expression:
O Heaven ! a beast, that wants discourse of reason >
Would have mourned longer.8
This expression "discourse of reason" is a very unusual one.
Massinger has:
It adds to my calamity that I have
Discourse and reason.
Gifford thought that Shakespeare had written "discourse and
reason," and that the of was a typographical error; but Knight, in
discussing the question, refers to the lines in Hamlet:
'Essay O/Fr tends hi '/>. 3 Essay Of Fact ion. ■ Hamlet, i, 3. 7 Lear, v, 2.
"Julius Ctrsar, ii, 2. * Essay Of Wisdom. 'Essay Of Delays. '•Hamlet, i, 2.
300 PA RA L LEU SMS.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused.1
But when we turn to Bacon we find this expression, which has
puzzled the commentators, repeatedly used. For instance:
Martin Luther but in discourse of reason, finding, etc/2
Also:
God hath done great things by her [Queen Elizabeth] past discourse of reason. 3
And again:
True fortitude is not given to man by nature, but must grow out of discourse of
.reason.*
Bacon has:
But men ... if they be not carried away with a whirlwind or tempest of
ambition.5
Shakespeare has:
For in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of your
passion.6
Here we have not only the figure of a wind-storm used to repre-
sent great mental emotions, but the same word, nay, the same
words, tempest and whirlwind, used in the same metaphorical sense
by both.
Mr. James T. Cobb calls my attention, while this work is going
through the press, to the following parallelism.
Macbeth says:
Life's but a walking shadow?
Bacon writes to King James:
Let me live <.o serve you, else life is but the shadow of death to your Majesty's
most devoted servant.
And, again, Mr. Cobb notes this.
Bacon says:
It is nothing else but words, which rather sound than signify anything.
1 Act iv, scene 4. ^Advancement of Learning, book i.
3 History of Squires' Conspiracy — Life and Works, vol. ii, p. 116.
4 Bacon's Letter to the Earl of Rutland, written in the name of the Earl of Essex— L ife and
Works, vol. ii, p. 12. • Advancement of Learning, book ii. 6 Hamlet, iii, 2. ''Macbeth, v, 5.
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS. Q1,
Shakespeare makes Macbeth say of human life:
'Tis a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fiery,
Signifying nothing}
A. J. Duffield, of Delaware Mine, Michigan, calls my attention
to the following parallelism.
Shakespeare:
What a piece of work is man ! . . . The paragon of animals; the beauty of
the world?
While Bacon has:
The souls of the living are the beauty of the world.3
Both writers use the physical eye as a type or symbol of the^
intellectual faculty of perception.
Bacon says:
The eyes of his understanding?
For everything depends on fixing the mind's eye steadily.6
Illuminate the eyes of our mind.'''
While in Shakespeare we have:
Hamlet. My father,— methinks I see my father.
Horatio. Oh, where, my lord?
Hamlet. In my mind's eye, Horatio.
And again:
Mine eye is my mind.T
Bacon says:
Pirates and impostors . . . are. the common enemies of mankind.*
Shakespeare says:
And mine eternal jewel
Given to the common enemy of man
To make them kings.9
Shakespeare also says:
Consider, he's an enemy to mankind.™
Thou common whore of man kind. "
Mrs. Pott12 points out a very striking parallelism.
1 Act v, scene 5. ' Sonnet.
2 Hamlet, ii, 2. 8 History of Henry VIT.
3 Essay Pan. * Macbeth, iii, 1.
4 History of Squires' Conspiracy — Life and Works, vol. ii, p. 113. 10 Twelfth Night, iii. 4.
5 Introduction to Novum Organum. n Timon of Athens, iv, 3
6 Prayer. ia Prom its, p. 24.
302 PARALLELISMS.
In Bacon's letter to King James, which accompanied the sending
of a portion of The History of Great Britain, he says:
This being but a leaf or two, I pray your pardon if I send it for your recrea-
tion, considering that love must creep wh ere it cannot go.
We have the same thought in the same words in TJie Two Gen-
tlemen of Verona, in this manner:
Ay, gentle Thurio; for you know that love
Must creep in service ivhere it cannot go. ]
We have in Bacon the word varnish used as a synonym for adorn,
precisely as in Shakespeare.
Bacon:
But my intent is, without varnish or amplification, justly to weigh the dignity
of knowledge.2
Shakespeare has:
I will a round, unvarnished tale deliver.3
And set a double varnish on the fame.4
Beauty doth varnish age.5
J. T. Cobb calls attention to the following parallelism. Bacon,
in his letter of expostulation to Coke, says:
The arising to honor is arduous, the standing slippery, the descent headlong.
Shakespeare says:
Which, when they fall, as being slippery standers,
The love that leaned on them as slippery, too,
Do one pluck down another, and together
Die in the fall.6
The image of passion devouring the body of the man is common
to both.
Bacon says:
It causeth the spirit to feed upon the juices of the body.1
Envy f 'cede th upon the spirits.8
Shakespeare says:
If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.9
The thing that feeds their fury.'0
1 Act iv, scene 2. 6 Troitus and Cressida, iii, 3.
2 Advancement of Learning, book i. 7 History 0/ Life and Death.
3 Othetto, i, 3. 8j bid.
4 //amtet, iv, 7. " Merchant of Venice, iii, 1.
•"' Love's Labor Lost, iv, 3. ,0 Taming of the Shrew, ii, 1.
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS. 303
Feed ivA. the ancient grudge.1
Advantage feeds him fat.'-
To feed contention in a lingering act.3
J. T. Cobb points out this parallelism.
Shakespeare:
Assume a virtue if you have it not.4
Bacon says:
All wise men, to decline the envy of their own virtues, use to ascribe them to
Providence and Fortune; for so they may the better assume them.5
Bacon speaks of
The accidents of life.6
The accidents of time.7
Shakespeare says:
As place, riches, favor,
Prizes of accident as oft as merits
With mortal accidents opprest.q
The shot of accident, the dart of chance.1"
Bacon says:
And I do extremely desire there may be a full cry from all sorts of people. n
Macbeth says:
And I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of peopled
Here we have the same collocation of words.
Bacon says:
Not only that it may be done, but that it may be well done.13
If that be done which I hope by this time is done, and that other matter shall
be done which we wish may be done.14
Shakespeare says:
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly.15
What's done cannot be undone.1*
1 Merchant of Venice, i, 3. ,0 Othello, iv, 1.
* 1st Henry IV., iii, 2. " Letter to Villiers, June 12, 1616.
3 2d Henry IV., i, i. 12 Macbeth, i, 7.
4 flamlet, iii, 4. 13 Letter to Lord Chancellor.
5 Essay Of Fortune. 14 Letter to Sir John Stanhope — Life and
6 Letter to Sir R. Cecil. Works, vol. ii, p. 50.
7 Letter to Villiers, June 3, 1616. ,s Macbeth, i, 7.
8 Troilus and Cressida, iii, 3. 16 Ibid., v, I.
9 Cymbeline, v, 4.
°r rue r\.
3o4 PARALLELISMS.
Bacon says:
Hut I will pray for you to the last gasp.1
Shakespeare says:
I will follow thee
To the last gasp}
Fight till the last gasp}
Here is another identical collocation of words.
Bacon says:
The new company and the old company are but the sons of Adam to rae.-
Shakespeare says:
Adam's sons are my brethren.5
Bacon says:
The common lot of mankind.6
Shakespeare has:
The common curse of mankind.7
Bacon:
The infirmity of the human understanding.8
Shakespeare:
The infirmity of sense.9
A friend should bear his friend's infirmities.
And Mr. J. T. Cobb has called my attention to this parallelism.
Bacon says:
All those who have in some measure committed themselves to the waters of
experience, seeing they were infirm of purpose, etc.11
While in Shakespeare we have:
Infirm of purpose. Give me the daggers.12
Bacon:
Every tangible body contains an invisible and intangible spirit.™
Shakespeare:
O, thou invisible spirit of wine.14
1 Letter to King James, 1621. 9 Measure for Measure, v, 1.
2 As You Like It, li, 3. 10 Julius Ceesar, iv, 3.
3 /st Henry VI., i, 1. u The Interpretation of Nature, Montagu
4 Letter to Villiers. ed., vol. ii, p. 550.
* Much Ado about Nothing, ii, 1. 1S Macbeth* ii,2.
6 Introduction to Great Instauration. 13 Novum Organum, book ii.
7 Troilus and Cressida, ii, 3. 14 Othello, ii, 3.
8 Novum Organum, book ii.
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS. 305
Bacon:
Flame, at the moment of its generation, is mild and gentle }
Shakespeare:
As mild and gentle as the cradled babe.5
He was gentle, mild and virtuous.3
I will be mild and gentle in my words.4
Bacon:
Custom . . . an ape of nature}
Shakespeare:
This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice.6
O sleep, thou ape of death."
Bacon says:
Another precept of this knowledge is to imitate nature, which doth nothing in
vain.8
In artificial works we should certainly prefer those which approach the nearest
to an imitation of nature*
We find the same expression in Shakespeare:
I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made
them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.10
And in the preface to the Folio of 1623, which was probably-
written by the author of the Plays, we read:
He was a happy imitator of nature.
Bacon speaks of a
Medicine . . . of secret malignity and disagreement toward man's body ; . . .
it worketh either by corrosion or by a secret malignity and enmity to nature.11
Shakespeare describes the drug which Hamlet's uncle poured
into his father's ear as
Holding such enmity with blood of man.
And again we have:
A lingering dram, that should not work
MaliHously like poison.12
Though parting be a fretful corrosive,
It is applied to a deathful wound.13
1 Novum Organum, book ii. 8 Advancement of Learning, book ii.
2 Henry VI., iii, 2. 9 Novum Organum, book ii.
3 Richard III., i, 2. 10 Hamlet, iii, 2.
* Ibid., iv, 4. u Natural History, cent, i, §36.
8 Advancement of Learning, book ii. I2 Winter's Tale, i, 2.
• Love's Labor Lost, v, 2. ,s 2d Henry VI., iii, 2.
7 Cymbeline, ii, 2.
306
PARALLELISMS.
Bacon says:
Of all substances which nature has produced, man's body is the most extremely
compounded, 1
Shakespeare says:
The brain of this foolish compounded clay, man.2 "
And Bacon, speaking of man, says:
Certain particles were taken from divers living creatures, and mixed and tem-
pered with that clayic mass.3
Bacon says:
The heavens turn about and . . . make an excellent music*
Shakespeare says, in Hamlet:
And there is much music, excellent voice in this little organ; yet cannot you
make it speak.
Bacon says:
The nature of sounds in general hath been superficially observed. It is one of
the subtilest pieces of nature.1'
Shakespeare has this precise collocation of words:
A ruined piece of nature}
We also find:
When nature framed this piece}
Thy mother was a piece of virtue}
As pretty a piece of flesh}
Oh, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth}0
Bacon also says:
The noblest piece of justice.11
While Shakespeare says:
What a piece of work is man ;
How noble in reason.12
Bacon says:
A miracle of time.13
Shakespeare says:
O miracle of men.14
1 Wisdom of the Ancients— Prometheus. 8 Tempest, i, 2.
2 2d Henry IV., i, 2. 9 Much Ado about Nothings iv, 2.
3 Natural History, cent. ii. 10 Julius Ccesar, Hi, 1.
* Ibid. n Charge against St. John,
s Ibid. 12 Hamlet, ii, 2.
6 Lear, iv, 6. 13 Of a War with Spain.
7 Pericles, iv, 3. 14 2d Henry IV., ii, 3.
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS. 307
Bacon:
The fire maketh them soft and tender}
Shakespeare:
The soft and tender fork of a poor worm.'
Beneath your soft and tender breeding.3
As soft and tender flattery.4
Here again it is identity not alone of a word, but of a phrase.
Bacon says:
Where a rainbow seemeth to hang over or to touch, there breatheth forth a
sweet smell.5
Shakespeare says:
Breathing to his breathless excellence
The incense of a vow.6
'Tis her breathing
That perfumes the chamber thus."
We find both Shakespeare and Bacon using the unusual word
disclose for hatch.
Bacon says:
The ostrich layeth her eggs under the sand, where the heat of the sun discloseth
them.8
Shakespeare:
Anon, as patient as the female dove,
When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
His silence will sit brooding.9
Bacon speaks of
The elements and their conjugations, the influences of heaven.10
While Shakespeare speaks of
All the skiey influences}1
Bacon says:
For those smells do . . . rather 7000 the sense than satiate it.12
While Shakespeare says:
The air smells wooingly here.13
* Natural History, § 630. 6 King J oh «, i v, 3. 10 Natural History, § 835.
* Measure for Measure, iii, 1. 7 Cymbeline, ii, 2. n Measure for Measure, iii, 1.
3 Twelfth Night, v, 1. 8 Natural History, §856. ia Natural History, §833. ,
4 Pericles, iv, 4. 9 Hamlet, v, 1. 13 Macbeth, i, 6.
5 Natural History, § 832.
3o8
PARALLELISMS.
Speaking of the smell where the rainbow rests, Bacon says:
But none are so delicate as the dew of the rainbow.1
Shakespeare says:
I have observed the air is delicate*
We also have:
A delicate odor.8
Delicate Ariel.4
The gentle dew.h
The gentle rain."''
Bacon speaks of
Shakespeare, of
The word fantastical is a favorite with both.
Bacon says:
Shakespeare says:
Bacon says:
Shakespeare says:
Which showeth a fantastical spirit.1
Fantastical learning/
High fantastical. '•'
A mad, fantastical trick.10
A fantastical knave. • '
Telling her fantastical lies.1
A malign aspect and influence.13
Malevolent to you in all aspects.1*
Bacon says:
So as your wit
11 have the crea
Shakespeare says:
So as your wit shall be whetted with conversing with many great wits, and you
shall have the cream and quintessence of every one of theirs.15
What is this quintessence of dust ?16
The quintessence of every sprite.17
1 Natural History , § 832.
* Macbeth, i, 6.
* Pericles, iii, 2.
4 Tempest, i, 2.
6 Natural History, § 832.
* Merchant of Venice, iv, 1.
7 Civil Conv.
8 Advancement of Learning, book i.
9 Twelfth Night, i, 1.
10 Measure for Measure, iii, 2.
11 As You Like It, iii, 3.
™ Othello, ii, 1.
13 Advancement of Learning, book ii.
14 1st Henry IV., i, 2.
15 Bacon's Letter to the Earl of Rutland,
written in the name of the Earl of Essex.
Life and Works, vol. ii, p. 13.
18 Hamlet, ii, 2.
17 As You Like It, iii, 2.
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS. i 309
Bacon says:
I find envy beating so strongly upon me.1
This public envy seemeth to beat chiefly upon principal officers or ministers.1*
Shakespeare says:
Nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world. :!
Bacon says:
To choose time is to save time; and an unseasonable motion is but beating the
tir.4
Shakespeare says:
Didst thou beat heaven with blessings.5
Speaking of witchcrafts, dreams and divinations, Bacon says:
Your Majesty hath . . . with the two clear eyes of religion and natural phil-
>sophy looked deeply and wisely into these shadows*
And again he says:
All whatsoever you have or can say in answer hereof are but shadows.'1
' While Shakespeare has:
A dream itself is but a shadow.4
To worship shadows and adore false shapes.9
Shadows to-night have struck more terror to the soul of Richard.10
Hence, horrible shadow.™
Life's but a walking shadow.™
Bacon enters in his commonplace-book:
The Mineral wytts, strong poison yf they be not corrected.13
Shakespeare has:
The thought doth, like a poisonous mineral, gnaw my inwards.14
Bacon says:
Fullness and swellings of the heart.15
Bacon to Queen Elizabeth — Life 8 Hamlet, \\, 2.
and Works, vol. ii, p. 160. 9 Two Gentlemen 0/ Verona, iv, 2,
2 Essay Of Envy. 10 Richard III. , v, 3.
3 Henry V.,'\\,\. u Macbeth, iii, 4.
4 Essay Of Despatch. 12 Ibid., v, 5.
5 2d Henry IV., i, 3. ls Promus, § 1403, p. 454.
* Advancement of Learning, book ii. I4 Othello, ii, 1.
7 Speech at Trial of Essex. 10 Essay Of Friendship.
? j o PA RA LLELISMS.
Shakespeare says:
Malice of thy swelling heart. '
Their swelling griefs.2
The swelling act of the imperial scene.3
Bacon says:
The most base, bloody and envious persons.4
Shakespeare says:
Of base and bloody insurrection.5
Bacon:
Matters of no use or moment.*
Shakespeare:
Enterprises of great pith and moment.'1
In both we have the word sovereign applied to medicines.
Bacon:
Sovereign medicines for the mind.8
Shakespeare:
The sovereign' st thing on earth
Was parmaceti for an inward bruise.9
In his letter of submission to Parliament, Bacon says:
This is the beginning of -a golden world.
Shakespeare, in The Tempest, says:
I would with such perfection govern, sir,
To excel the golden age.10
In former golden days."
Golden times.12
Bacon says:
This passion [love], which loseth not only other things, but itself1*
Shakespeare says:
A loan oft loseth both itself and friend.14
Bacon:
A kindly and pleasant sleep.15
Shakespeare:
Frosty but kindly. xi
1 jst Henry VI. % Hi, i. 9 ist Henry IV., i, 3.
?■ 3d Henry VI., iv, 8. 10Act ii, scene 1.
3 Macbeth, i, 3. n 3d Henry VI., iii, 3.
4 Advancement of Learning, book i. ,2 2d Henry IV., v, 3.
:' id Henry IV., iv, 1. ,3 Essay Of Love.
6 Advancement of Learning, book i. 14 Hamlet, i, 3.
''Hamlet, iii, 1. 15 Adz'ancement of Learning, book ii.
8 Advancement of Learning, book i. 16 As You Like It, ii, 3.
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS. 3TI
Bacon says:
The quality of health and strength.1
Shakespeare says:
The quality of mercy is not strained.2
The quality of the flesh."'
The quality of her passion.4
Bacon says:
The states of Italy be like little quillets of freehold.5
And he speaks of
A quiddity of the common law.6
Hamlet says:
Where be his quiddcts now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures.'
Bacon speaks of having one's mind
Concentric with the orb of the universe.
Shakespeare says:
His fame folds in this orb o' the earth.8
Bacon refers to
The top of . . . workmanship.9
The top of human desires.10
The top of all worldly bliss.11
Shakespeare refers to
The top of sovereignty.12
The top of judgment.13
The top of all design.14
On the other hand, Bacon says:
He might have known the bottom of his danger}*
Shakespeare says:
The bottom of my place.™
1 Bacon's Letter to the Earl of Rutland, 8 Coriolanus, v, 5.
written in the name of the Earl of 9 Prayer.
Essex — Life and Works, vol. it, p. 16. •• Advancement of Learning.
2 Merchant of Venice, iv, 1. ll History of Henry I'll.
3 Timon of Athens, iv, 3. ^Macbeth, iv, 1.
4 A ntony and Cleopatra, v. 1. 13 Measure for Measure, ii, 2.
5 Discourse in Praise of the Queen— " Antony and Cleopatra, v, 1.
Life and Works. I5 History of Henry VII.
* Arraignment. ,6 Measure for Measurey\.y 1.
''Hamlet, v, 1.
- x 2 PA RALLELISMS.
The bottom of your purpose}
The very bottom of my soul."-
Searches to the bottom of the worst.3
Bacon has:
Actions of great peril and motion.4
Shakespeare has:
Enterprises of great pith and moment.5
Bacon speaks of
The abuses of the times.*
Shakespeare speaks of
The poor abuses of the times."1
Here the identity is not in a word, but in a series of words.
Bacon says:
I will shoot my fool's bolt since you will have it so.8
Shakespeare says:
A fool's bolt is soon shot.9
According to the fool's bolt, sir.10
Bacon expresses the idea of the mind being in a state of rest or
peace by the words, " The mind is free" as contradistinguished
from "the mind is agitated."11
Shakespeare uses the same expression:
When the mind's free
The body's delicate.1'2
The doctor refers to Lady Macbeth's mental agony, expressed
even in sleep, as "this slumbery agitation."
Bacon says:
In the midst of the greatest wilderness of waters. n
Shakespeare has:
Environed with a wilderness of sea.*4
1 Air s Well that Ends Well, iii, 7. 8 Letter to the Earl of Essex, 1598.
2 Henry V., ii, 2. 9 Henry V., iii, 7.
3 Troilus and Cress/da, ii, 2. 10 As You Like It, v, 4.
4 Speech in Parliament, 39 Elizabeth. ll Novum Organum.
6 Hamlet, iii, 1. 12 Lear, iii, 4.
• Letter to the King. 1 3 New A tlantis.
7 1st Henry IV., 1, 2. 14 Titus Andronicus, iii, 1.
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS. 3^
And again:
A ^wilderness of monkeys.1
A wilderness of tigers*
Bacon says, in a speech in Parliament:
This cloud still hangs over the House*
Shakespeare has:
And all the clouds that lowered upon our House.
Bacon speaks of
Any expert minister of nature.4
Shakespeare says:
Angels and ministers of grace.5
That familiar but curious expression used by Mark Antony in
his speech over the dead body of Caesar can also be traced back to
Bacon:
Lend me your ears.6
Bacon, describing Orpheus' power over the wild beasts, paints
them as
Standing all at a gaze about him, and lend their ears to his music.7
Again Bacon says, referring to the power of music:
Orpheus drew the woods and moved the very stones to come.8
Shakespeare, referring to the power of eloquence, says that it
Should move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.9
Bacon says:
The nature of the vulgar is always swollen and malignant}9
Shakespeare speaks of
The malice of my swelling heart.11
Bacon says:
With an undaunted and bold spirit}'1
Shakespeare speaks of an
Undaunted spirit in a dying breast. "
1 Merchant of I 'enice, iii, i. 8 Ibid.
- Titus Andronicus, iii, i. 9 Julius Cczsar, iii, 2.
3 Speech about Undertakers. 10 Wisdom of the A ncients.
4 Wisdom of the Ancients— Proteus. n Titus Andronicus, v, 3.
5 Hamlet :, 1, 4. IS Wisdom of the A ncients — Sphynx,
B Julius Ccesar, iii, 2. 13 1st Henry IT., iii, 2.
7 Wisdom of the Ancients.
3 1 4 PA A' A LLELIS. M S.
The phrase " mortal men" is a favorite with both. Bacon says:
Ravish and rap mortal men}
Shakespeare says:
Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men}
O momentary grace of mortal men*
Bacon says:
The state of man.4,
Shakespeare says:
The state of matt}
Bacon speaks of
The vapors of ambition.6
Shakespeare speaks of
The vapor of our valor.7
The vapor of my glory.8
Bacon says:
She was most affectionate of her kindred, even unto faction*
Shakespeare says:
And drove great Mars to faction }{)
We find Bacon using the word engine for a device, a stratagem.
Speaking of the Lambert Simnell conspiracy to dethrone King
Henry VII., he says:
And. thus delivered of this so strange an engine, and new invention of fortune.1 J
Iago says to Roderigo:
Take me from this world with treachery and devise engines for my life.12
Bacon says:
Whereupon the meaner sort routed together.13
Shakespeare says:
Choked with ambition of the meaner sort}*
Cheering a rout of rebels.15
All is on the rout}'1'
1 Wisdom of the A ncients — Sfihynx. 9 History of Henry VII.
2 ist Henry IF., iv. 2. 10 Troilus and Cressida, Hi, 3.
3 Richard III., Hi, 4. ' l History of Henry VII.
4 Wisdom of the Ancients — Prom. ,a Othello, iv, 2.
hfulius Casar, ii, 1. 13 History of Henry VII.
* History of Henry VII. 14 ist Henry VI., ii, 5.
''Henry V., iv, 2. 16 2d Henry IV., iv, 2.
6 Richard III. , i i i , 7 . • 6 2d Henry VI., v , 2.
ID EN TIC A L EXP RE SSIONS.
3*5
Bacon says:
And such superficial speculations they have; like prospectives \ that show things
inward, when they are but paintings. x
The same figure occurs in Shakespeare:
Divides one thing entire to twenty objects,
Like perspectives, which rightly gazed upon
Show nothing but confusion ; eyed awry
Distinguish form.-2
And Bacon, in describing a rebellion in Scotland against King
James III., tells that the rebels captured the King's son — Prince
James — and used him
To shadow their rebellion, and to be the titular and painted head of those
arms.3
This is a very peculiar expression, and reminds us of Lady Mac-
beth's words:
'Tis the eye of childhood
That fears a, painted devil.4
And again Shakespeare says:
Men are but gilded loam or painted clay. s
Than is the deed to my most painted word.6
Bacon says:
He raised up the ghost of Richard . . . to walk and vex the King.7
Shakespeare says:
Thy father's spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night.8
Spirits oft walk in death.9
Bacon says;
The news the
ce of York was
Shakespeare says:
The news thereof came blazing and thundering over into England, that the
Duke of York was sure alive.10
What act
That roars so loud and thunders in the index?11
He came in thunder; his celestial breath
Was sulphurous to smell.1'2
Hast thou not spoke like thunder on my side?13
» Sylva Sylvarum. " Hamlet, iii, 1. 10 History of Henry VII.
2 Richard II., ii, 2. ' History 0/ Henry I 71. ' l Hamlet, iii, 4.
3 History of Henry 1 77. B Hamlet, i, 5. 12 Cymbelinc, v, 4.
4 Macbeth, ii, 2. 9 Ibid., i, 1. 13 Kingfohn, iii, 1.
5 Richard II., i, 1.
3 1 6 PA RA LLELISMS,
The fierce blaze of riot.1
The blaze of youth.2
Every blazing star.3
Bacon says:
A spice of madness.4
Shakespeare says:
This spice of your hypocrisy.5
Bacon speaks of
Our sea-walls and good shipping.*
Shakespeare describes England as
Our sea-walled garden.7
The word pregna?it, signifying full of consequence or meaning,
l is a common one with both writers. Bacon says:
Many circumstances did feed the ambition of Charles with pregnant and appar-
ent hopes of success.8
Shakespeare says:
Crook the pregnant hinges of the knee.9
Pregnant instruments of wealth.10
Were very pregnant and potential spurs.11
Bacon says:
His people were hot upon the business. x%
Shakespeare says:
It is a business of some heat.]S
Bacon says, speaking of old age:
He promised himself money, honor, friends and peace in the end.'4
Shakespeare says:
And that which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have.15
1 Richard 1 'I., ii, i. 6 Speech on Subsidy. 11 Lear, ii, i.
» All's Well that Etuis Well, v, 3. 7 Richard 17., iii, 4. 12 History of Henry VII.
3 Ibid., i. 3. 8 History of Henry VII. 13 Othello, i, 2.
* Of War with Spain. » Hamlet, iii, 2. 14 History of Henry VII.
* Henry VIII. , ii, 3. ,0 Pericles, iv, Gower. 15 Macbeth, v, 3.
:>'7
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS.
Bacon says:
This bred a decay of people.1
Shakespeare speaks of
Decayed men.'
Bacon says:
Divers things that were predominant in the King's nature?
Macbeth says to the murderers:
Do you find
Your patience so predominant in your nature?*
Bacon says:
As if he had heard the news of some strange and fearful prodigy*"
Shakespeare says:
A prodigy of fear and a portent
Of broached mischief to the unborn times.6
Now hath my soul brought forth her prodigy.'1
Bacon says:
Turned law and justice into wormwood*
Shakespeare says:
Weed this tvornnvood irom your fruitful brain.*
Bacon says:
His ambition was so exorbitant and unbounded.™
And again:
Being a man of stomach, and hardened by his former troubles, he refused to
pay a mite.11
God seeth that we have unbridled stomachs.™
While in Shakespeare we have the vastly ambitious Wolsey
referred to as
A man of unbounded stomach. u
Bacon says:
As for her memory, it hath gotten such life, in the mouths and hearts of men.
as that envy, being put out by her death, etc.14
1 History of Henry VII. 6 ist Henry IV., V, i. J1Ibid.
2 Comedy of Errors, iv, 3. 7 Richard II., ii, 2. 12 Letter to Lord Coke.
3 History of Henry VII. % History of Henry VII. 33 Henry VIII., iv, 2.
4 Macbeth, iii, 1. 9 Love's Labor Lost, v, 2. 14 Felic. Queen Rlizabetrk.
6 History of Henry VII. 10 History of Henry VII.
3i8
PARALLELISMS.
Shakespeare says:
So shalt thou live — such power hath my pen —
Where breath most breathes, even in the months of men.1
Bacon says:
Vain pomp and outward shows of power. -
Shakespeare says:
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye.*
In both the thought of retirement is expressed in the word cell
— referring to the monastic cells.
Bacon says:
The cells of gross and solitary monks.4
Again:
For it was time for me to go to a cell.*
It were a pretty cell for my fortune.6
In Shakespeare we have:
Nor that I am much better
Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,
And thy no greater father.7
O proud death!
What feast is forward in thine eternal cell}
Bacon says:
The spark that first kindled such fire and combustion?
And again he says:
The King chose rather not to satisfy than to kindle coals.10
Shakespeare has:
Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars.11
Constance would not cease
Till she had kindled France and all the world.'2
For kindling such combustion in the state.18
As dry combustions matter is to fire.14
Bacon says:
If the rules and maxims of law, in the first raising of tenures in capite, be
weakened, this nips the flower in the bud.n
1 Sonnet. » History of Henry VII.
2 Char. Julius Ca-sar. 1° Ibid.
3 Henry VIII.. iii, 2. n King John, v, 2.
4 Advancement 0/ Learning. ,2 Ibid., i, 1.
5 Letter. ™ Henry VIII., v, 3.
8 Ibid. 14 Venus and Adonis.
7 Tempest, i, 2. 15 Argument, Law's Case of Tenures.
8 Hamlet, v, 2.
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS. ^o
Shakespeare says:
Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love.1
Nips his root.'-'
Bacon, after his downfall, speaks of
This base court of adversity, where scarce any will be seen stirring.
Shakespeare puts the same expression into the mouth of Rich-
ard II. after his downfall:
In the base court? Base court, where kings grow base,
To come at traitors' calls and do them grace.
In the base court, come down.3
Bacon says:
He strikes terror.*
Shakespeare says:
And strike such terror to his enemies.5 ,
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard.6
Bacon says:
It is greatness in a man to be the care of the higher powers. }
In Shakespeare we have:
Arming myself with patience
To stay the providence of some high powers
That govern us below.8
In his letter to Sir Humphrey May, 1625, speaking of his not
having received his pardon, Bacon says:
I deserve not to be the only outcast.
While Shakespeare has:
I all alone bewail my outcast state.9
Bacon says:
And successions to great place will wax vile; and then his Majesty's preroga-
tive goeth down the -wind.™
1 Love's Labor Lost, v, 2. 6 Richard III., v, 2.
2 Henry VIII., iii, 2. 7 Essay Of Fortune.
3 Richard II., iii, 3. 8 Julius Casar, v, 1.
4 Bacon's Letter to Sir Foulke Greville 9 Sonnet.
— Life and Works, vol. ii, p. 24. I0 Letter relating to Lord Coke.
5 1st Henry VI., ii, 3.
320 PARALLELISMS.
Othello says:
If I do prove her haggard,
Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings,
I'd whistle her off, and let her down the wind,
To prey at fortune.1
And here we have a singular parallelism occurring in connection
with the same sentence.
Bacon says:
For in consent, where tongue-strings and not heart-strings make the music that
harmony may end in discord.
Shakespeare has:
Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings*
Also:
He grieves my very heart-strings. %
Shakespeare says:
My love
Was builded far from accident*
Mr. J. T. Cobb points a similar expression in Bacon:
Another precept of this knowledge is not to engage a man's self too peremp-
torily in anything, though it seem not liable to accident*
The wheel was, curiously enough, a favorite image with both.
Bacon says:
My mind doth not move on the wheels of profit.6
The wheels of his mind keep away with the wheels of his fortune.7
Shakespeare says:
Then can I set the world on 7vheels.s
Let go thy hold, when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck
with following it; but the great one that goes up the hill, let him draw thee after.9
Bacon says:
It is a rule, that whatsoever science is not consonant to presuppositions, must
pray in aid of similitudes.10
Shakespeare says:
A conqueror that will pray in aid for kindness,
Where he for grace is kneeled to.11
1 Othello, iii, 3, 7 Essay Of Fortune.
3 Ibid., iii, 2. 8 Two Gentlemen of Verona, iii, 1.
3 Two Gentlenten of Verona, iv, 2. 9 Lear, ii, 4.
4 Sonnet cxxiv. ' ° A dvancement of Learning.
5 Advancement of Learning. ' 1 A ntony and Cleopatra, v, 2.
6 Letter.
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS.
321
Franklin Fiske Heard says:
Praying in aid is a law term, used for a petition made in a court of justice for
the calling in of help from another, that hath an interest in the cause in question.1
How came the non-lawyer, Shakspere, to put this English law
phrase into a Roman play ?
J. T. Cobb draws attention to this parallelism.
Bacon says:
For the poets feigned that Orpheus . . . did call and assemble the beasts and
birds ... to stand about him, as in a theater; and soon after called likewise the
stones and woods to remove.2
Shakespeare says:
Therefore the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods.3
Bacon says:
Let him commend his inventions, not ambitiously or spitefully, but first in a
manner most vivid and fresh, that is most fortified against the injuries of time. ,4
Shakespeare says, in one of the sonnets:
Injurious time, blunt thou the lion's paws.
Bacon says:
A man that hath no virtue in himself.5
Shakespeare says:
The man that hath no music in his soul.6
Here the resemblance is not in the words, but in the rhythm
and balance of the sentence.
Bacon speaks of
Justice mixed with mercy?
Says Shakespeare:
Let mercy season justice.9.
Bacon says:
These winds of rumors could not be commanded down.9
Shakespeare says:
Thou god of this great vast, rebuke these surges,
Which wash both heaven and hell; and thou that hast
Upon the winds command, bind them in brass.10
1 Shakespeare as a Lawyer, p. 82. 6 Merchant of Venice, V, 1.
a The Plantation of Ireland. 7 Proceedings York House.
3 Merchant 0/ Venice, v, 1. 8 Merchant 0/ Venice.
4 Interpretation of Nature. 9 Letter in name of Anthony Bacon to Essex, i6cc
6 Essay Of Envy. 10 Pericles, iii, 1.
322
PARALLELISMS.
But it may be urged, by the unbeliever, that there is a vast body
of the Shakespearean writings, and a still vaster body of Bacon's
productions; and that it is easy for an ingenious mind, having
these ample fields to range over, to find a multitude of similarities.
In reply to this, I will cite a number of quotations from Bacon's
essay Of Death, the shorter essay on that subject, not published
until after his death, and which is found in the first volume of Basil
Montagu's edition of Bacon s Works, on pages 131, 132 and 133. It
is a small essay, comprising about two pages of large type, and does
not exceed in all fifteen hundred words. And yet I find hundreds
of instances, in this short space, where the expressions in this essay
are paralleled in the Plays. Let me give you a few of the most
striking examples.
Bacon, arguing that men should be content to die, says:
And as others have given place to us, so we must in the end give place to
others.
Shakespeare says, speaking of death:
Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home,
I quickly were dissolved from my hive,
To give some laborers room}
We find a kindred thought in Hamlet:
But, you must know, your father lost a father,
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound,
In filial obligation, for some term
To do obsequious sorrow.2
Bacon says:
God sends men into this wretched theater, where being arrived, their first lan-
guage is that of mourning.
This comparison of life and the world to a theater, and a
melancholy theater, runs all through Shakespeare:
This wide and universal theater
Presents more woeful pageants.3
I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
A stage where every man must play his part,
And mine a sad one.4
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.5
1 All 's Well that Ends Welt, i, a. 3 As You Like It, ii, 7. 6 A s You Like It, i:, 7.
9 Hamlet, i, 2. * Merchant of Venice, \, 1.
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS. 323
But let us look a little farther into this expression of Bacon.
God sends men headlong into this wretched theater, where being arrived, their
Jirst language is that of mourning.
In Shakespeare we have precisely the same thought:
When we are born we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools.1
Thou knowest the first time that we smell the air
We wawl and cry.2
We came crying hither.3
The word wretched, here applied by Bacon to the theater, is a
favorite one with Shakespeare:
A -wretched soul bruised with adversity.4
Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,
And fear'st to die ? 5
To see wretchedness o'ercharged."
Bacon says:
I compare men to the Indian fig-tree, which, being ripened to his full height, is
said to decline his branches down to the earth.
Says Shakespeare:
They are not kind;
And nature, as it grows again towards earth,
Is fashioned for the journey, dull and heavy.1
Bacon says:
Man is made ripe for death.
We turn to Shakespeare and we have:
So from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour we rot and rot.8
Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither;
Ripeness is all.9
Bacon continues:
He is sowed again in his mother the earth.
Shakespeare says:
Where is this young gallant that is so desirous to lie with his mother earth ?xo
1 Lear, iv, 6. 5 Romeo and Juliet, v, i. * As You Like It, ii, 7.
2 Ibid. 6 Midsummer Night's Dream, v, 1. 9 Lear, v, 2.
3 Ibid. 7 Titus Andronicus, ii, 2. 10 As You Like It, 1, 2.
4 Comedy 0/ Errors, ii, 1.
324 PA RA LLELISMS.
Bacon says:
So man, having derived his being from the earth, first lives the life of a tree,
drawing his nourishment as a plant.
We have a kindred, but not identical, thought in Shakespeare:
Pericles. How durst thy tongue move anger to our face ?
Helicanus. How dare the plants look up to heaven, from whence
They have their nourishment?
The eighth paragraph of the essay Of Death is so beautiful,,
pathetic and poetical, and has withal so much of the true Shake-
spearean ring about it, that I quote it entire, notwithstanding the
fact that I have made use of part of it heretofore:
Death arrives gracious only to such as sit in darkness, or lie heavy-burdened
with grief and irons; to the poor Christian that sits bound in the galley; to de-
spairful widows, pensive prisoners and deposed kings; to them whose fortunes run
back and whose spirits mutiny: unto such death is a redeemer, and the grave a
place for retiredness and rest.
These wait upon the shore of Death and waft unto him to draw near, wishing
above all others to see his star, that they might be led to his place, wooing the
remorseless sisters to wind down the watch of their life, and to break them off
before the hour.
What a mass of metaphors is here ! Fortune running backward,
spirits mutinying; despairful widows and deposed kings waiting on
the shores of death, beckoning to him, watching for his star, wooing
the remorseless sisters to wind down the watch of their life, and
break them off before the hour ? And how many suggestions are in
all this of Shakespeare ? In the word gracious we are reminded of:
There was not such a gracious creature born.1
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.'2
The association of sitting with sorrow is common in Shake-
speare:
Wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss,
But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.3
Sitting on a bank,
Weeping against the king, my father's, loss.4
Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,
And to the nightingale's complaining notes
Tune my distresses, and record my woes.5
Let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings —
How some have been deposed, some slain in war.6
1 King John, iii, 4. 3 jd Henry VI., v, 4. 6 Two Gentlemen 0/ Verona, V, 4.
3 Hamlet, i, 1. 4 Tempest, i, 2. « Richard //., iii, 2.
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS. 325
AW thee down, sorrow^
Woe doth the heavier sit
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.2
And when we find Queen Constance, in King John,
Oppressed with wrongs, and therefore full of fears;
A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;
A woman naturally born to fears,3
crying out in her despair:
Here I and sorrows sit;
Here is my throne, let kings come bow to it,
we seem to read again the words of Bacon:
Death arrives gracious only to such as sit in darkness, ... to despairful
widows, pensive prisoners and deposed kings.
And in Shakespeare we have another deposed king saying:
Let's talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs,
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes,
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.4
And another, a deposed queen, wafts to Death to come and take
.her away, and cries out:
Where art thou, Death?
Come hither, come ! come, come, and take a queen
Worth many babes and beggars.5
Says Bacon:
To them whose fortunes run back.
Shakespeare says:
The fated sky
Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.'
My fortune runs against the bias.7
Says Bacon:
Whose spirits mutiny.
This peculiar metaphor is common in Shakespeare:
Where wrill doth mutiny with wit's regard.8
There is a mutiny in his mind.9
That should move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny. 10
My very hairs do mutiny. ,n
1 Love's Labor Lost, i, i. 5 A ntony and Cleopatra, v, 2. 9 Henry I 'III.., iii, 2.
'2 Richard II., i, 3. ■ Julius Ca-sar, i, 2. 10 Julius Ca-sar, iii, 2.
3 King John, iii, 1. 7 Richard II., iii, 4. ' ■ A ntony and Cleopatra, iii, a.
* Richard II., iii. 2. - Ibid., II, t.
326 PA PA LLELISMS.
Bacon says:
Unto such death is a redeemer.
The sick King Edward IV., nigh unto death, says:
I every day expect an embassage
From my Redeemer to redeem me hence.'
Bacon says:
And the grave a place of re tiredness and rest.
Shakespeare says:
That their souls
May make a peaceful and a sweet retire.*
Again:
His new kingdom of perpetual rest.3
Oh, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest.4
Says Bacon:
Wooing the remorseless sisters to wind down the watch of their life, and to
break them off before the hour.
Wooing is a favorite word with Shakespeare, and applied, as
here, in a peculiar sense.
That wodd the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by.5
More inconstant than the wind which woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the north.6
The heavens' breath
Smells wooingly here.7
Says Bacon:
To wind down the watch of their life.
Says Shakespeare:
He is winding up the watch of his wit.8
This is indeed an odd comparison — the watch of his life, the
watch of his wit.
Bacon says:
But death is a doleful messenger to a usurer, and fate untimely cuts their
thread.
Shakespeare has:
Let not Bardolph's vital thread be cut}
1 Richard II 'I., ii, 1. 4 Romeo and Juliet, v, 3. ''Macbeth, i, 6.
9 Henry V., iv, 3. * Ibid., i, 4. 8 Tempest, ii, 1.
3 Richard III., ii, 2. 8 Romeo and Juliet, i, 4. !' Henry V., iii, 6.
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS. 327
Had not churchmen prayed,
His thread of life had not so soon decayed.1
Till the destinies do cut his thread of life.0
In the same paragraph Bacon alludes to the remorseless sisters,
and here we have:
O fates ! come, come,
Cut thread and thrum . . .
Oh, sisters three,
Come, come, to me,
With hands as pale as milk;
Lay them in gore,
Since you have shore,
With shears, his thread oi silk.3
Here we not only have the three weird sisters of destiny alluded
to by both writers, but in connection therewith the same expres-
sion, of cutting the thread of life.
Bacon says, speaking of death:
But I consent with Caesar, that the suddenest passage is easiest.
We are reminded of Cleopatra's studies:
She hath pursued conclusions infinite
Of easy ways to die.4
Says Bacon:
Nothing more
nee.
We are reminded of Wolsey:
Nothing more awakens our resolve and readiness to die than the quieted con-
science.
And again:
I feel within me
A peace above all earthly dignities,
A still and quiet conscience .5
O my Wolsey,
The quiet of my wounded conscience.6
Says Bacon:
Our readiness to die.
Hamlet associates the same word readiness with death:
If it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.1
Says Bacon:
My ambition is not to fore flow the tide.
1 1st Henry VI., i, i. 4 A ntony and Cleopatra, v, 2. • Ibid., ii, 2.
3 Pericles, i, 2. 5 Henry VIII., iii, 2. 7 Hamlet, v, 2.
4 Midsummer Night 's Dream, v, 1.
328 PARALLELISMS.
Shakespeare says:
For we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.1
Bacon says:
So much of our life as we have already discovered is already dead, ... for
we die daily.
In Shakespeare we have:
The Queen that bore thee,
Oftener upon her knees than on her feet,
Died every day she lived?
Bacon says:
Until we return to our grandmother \ the earth.
Shakespeare speaks of the earth in the same way:
At your birth
Our grandam, earth, having this distemperature,
In passion shook.3
Bacon says:
Art thou drotvned in security ?
Shakespeare says:
He hath a sin that often drowns him.4
Bacon says:
There is nothing under heaven, saving a true friend, who cannot be counted
within the number of moveables.
This is a'strange phrase. We turn to Shakespeare, and we find
a similar thought:
Katharine. I knew you at the first.
You were a moveable.
Petruchio. Why, what's a movable?
Katharine. A joint stool.6
And again:
Love is not love
Which alters where it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove*
Bacon says:
They desired to be excused from Death's banquet.
^Julius Ccesar, iv, 3. 3 1st Henry IV., iii, 1. 5 Taming 0/ the Shrew, ii,i.
a Macbeth, iv, 3. * Timon of Athens, til, 5. « Sonnet cxvi.
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS. 329
Shakespeare says:
O proud death,
What feast is forward in thine eternal cell ? l
And again:
O malignant and ill-boding stars !
Now thou art come unto a feast of death.'1
This is certainly an extraordinary thought — that Death devours
and feasts upon the living.
Speaking of death, Bacon further says:
Looking at the blessings, not the hand that enlarged them.
This is a peculiar expression — that death enlarges and liber-
ates. We find precisely the same thought in Shakespeare:
Just death, kind umpire of men's miseries,
With sweet enlargement doth dismiss me hence.3
Bacon says:
The soul having shaken off her flesh.
Shakespeare has it:
O you mighty gods !
This world I do renounce; and in your sights
Shake patiently my great affliction off}
And again:
What dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.5
Bacon continues:
The soul . . . shows what finger hath enforced her.
Here is a strange and unusual expression as applied to God.
We turn to Shakespeare and we find it repeated:
The fingers of the powers above do tune
The harmony of this peace.6
And we find the word finger repeatedly used by Shakespeare in
a figurative sense:
How the devil luxury, with his potato finger, tickles these two together.7
No man's pie is freed
From his ambitious finger.*
1 Hamlet, V, 2. 4 Lear, iv, 6. 7 Trotlus and Cressida. v, -, ,
12 1st Henry VI., iv, 5. 5 Hamlet, iii, 1. 8 Henry I'll!., i, 1. «
3 Ibid., ii, 5. 6 Cymbeline, v, 5.
330 PARALLELISMS.
They are not as a pipe for fortune's finger,
To sound what stop she please.1
He shall not knit a knot in his fortunes with the finger of my substance.2
And the word utter^ as applied to the putting out of music, is
also found in the same scene:
These cannot I command to any utterance of harmony:
I have not the skill.3
Bacon says that the soul
Sometimes takes soil in an imperfect body, and so is slackened from showing
her wonders; like an excellent musician which cannot titter himself upon a defective
instrument.
This thought is very poetical. Shakespeare has a similar con-
ception:
How sour sweet music is
When time is broke, and no proportion kept !
So is it in the music of our lives.*
The comparison of a man to a musical instrument lies at the
base of the great scene in Hamlet :
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play
upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of
my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass;
and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot you make
it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played upon than a pipe ?5
Says Bacon:
Nor desire any greater place than the front of good opinion.
Shakespeare has:
The very head and front of my offending
Hath this extent, no more.6
Says Bacon:
I should not be earnest to see the evening of my age; that extremity of itself
being a disease, and a mere return unto infancy.
Speaking in sonnet lxxiii of his own age, Shakespeare says:
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away.
Bacon says:
The extremity of age.
1 Hamlet, iii, 2. * Hamlet, iii, 2. * Hamlet, iii, 2.
9 Merry Wives 0/ Windsor, ii, 1. * Richard II., v, 5. fi Othello, i, 3.
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS. 33,
Shakespeare has it, speaking of old age:
Oh! time's extremity,
Hast thou so cracked and splitted my poor tongue.1
And again he says:
The middle of youth thou never knowest, but the extremity of both ends.-2
Says Bacon:
A mere return unto infancy.
Shakespeare says:
Last scene of all,
That ends this strange, eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion.3
Says Bacon:
Mine eyes begin to discharge their watch.
Shakespeare says:
Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye.4
Says Bacon:
For a time of perpetual rest.
Says Shakespeare:
Like obedient subjects, follow him
To his new kingdom of perpetual rest}
I. Conclusions.
This is certainly a most remarkable series of coincidences of
thought and expressions; and, as I said before, they occur not in
the ordinary words of our language, the common bases of speech,
without which we cannot construct sentences or communicate with
each other, but in unusual, metaphorical, poetical thoughts; or in
ordinary words employed in extraordinary and figurative senses.
Thus it is nothing to find Bacon and Shakespeare using such
words as day and dead, but it is very significant when we find both
writers using them in connection with the same curious and
abstruse thought, to-wit: that individuals metaphorically die daily.
So the use of the word blood by both proves nothing, for they could
scarcely have written for any length of time without employing it;
but when we find it used by both authors in the sense of the
1 Comedy of Errors, v, i. 4 Romeo and Juliet, ii, 3.
8 Timoti 0/ Athens, iv, 3. s Richard III.% ii, 2.
8 A s You Like It, ii, 7.
.33*
PARALLELISMS.
essential principle of a thing, as the blood of virtue, the blood of
malice, it is more than a verbal coincidence: it proves an identity
in the mode of thinking. So the occurrence in both of the words
death and banquet means nothing; but the expression, a banquet of
death, a feast of death, is a poetical conception of an unusual char-
acter. The words soul and shake, and even shuffle, might be found
in the writings of all Bacon's contemporaries, but we will look in
vain in any of them, except Shakespeare, for a description of death
as the shaking off of the flesh, or the shuffling off of the mortal coil,
to-wit, the flesh.
To my mind there is even more in these resemblances of modes
of thought, which indicate the same construction and constitution
of the mind, and the same way of receiving and digesting and put-
ting forth a fact, not as a mere bare, dead fact, but enrobed and
enfleshed in a vital metaphor, than in the similarity of thoughts,
such as our crying when we come into the world, and the return of
man in old age to mere infancy and second childishness; for these
are things which, if once heard from the stage, might have been
perpetuated in such a mind as that of Bacon.
This essay Of Death is entirely Shakespearean. There is the
same interfusing of original and profound thought with fancy; the
same welding together of the thing itself and the metaphor for it;
the same affluence and crowding of ideas; the same compactness and
condensation of expression; the same forcing of common words into
new meanings; and above all, the same sense of beauty and poetry.
Observe, for instance, that comparison of the soul shut up in an
imperfect body, trying, like an excellent musician, to utter itself
upon a defective instrument. What could be more beautiful ? See
the picture of the despairful widows, deposed kings and pensive
prisoners, who sit in darkness, burdened with grief and irons, on
the shore of Death, waving their hands to the grim tyrant to draw
near, watching for the coming of his star, as the wise men looked for
the coming of the star of Bethlehem, and wooing the remorseless
sisters three to break them off before the hour. Or note the pathos
of that comparison (bearing most melancholy application to Bacon's
own fate) where he says:
Who can see worse days than he that, while yet living, doth follow at the
funeral of his own reputation?
IDENTICAL EXPRESSIONS. 333
And in the craving for a period of ik perpetual rest," which
shows itself all through this essay, we catch a glimpse of the
melancholy which overwhelmed the soul of him who cried outr,
through the mouth of Hamlet:
Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew !
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter.
All through the essay it seems to be more than prose. From
beginning to end it is a mass of imagery: it is poetry without
rhythm. Like a great bird which as it starts to fly runs for a space
along the ground, beating the air with its wings and the earth with
its feet, so in this essay we seem to see the pinions of the poet
constantly striving to lift him above the barren limitations of
prose into the blue ether of untrammeled expression. It comes to
us like the rude block out of which he had carved an exquisite
statue full of life and grace, to be inserted perchance in some
drama, even as we find another marvelous essay on death inter-
jected into Measure for Measure.1
II. The Style of a Barren Mind.
As a means of comparison and as an illustration of the wide
difference between human brains, I insert the following letter from
Lord Coke, who lived in the same age as Bacon, and was, like him,
a lawyer, a statesman, a courtier and a politician.
Bacon's language overruns with flowers and verdure: it is liter-
ally buried, obscured and darkened by the very efflorescence of
his fancy and his imagination. Coke speaks the same English
tongue in the same period of development, but his thoughts are as
bare, as hard, as soulless and as homely as an English work-house,
in the midst of a squalid village-common, a mile distant from a
flower or a blade of grass. When we read the utterances of the
two men we are' reminded of that amusing scene, depicted by the
humorous pen of Mark Twain, where Scotty Briggs and the village
parson carry on a conversation in which neither can understand
a word the other says, though both speak the same tongue; illus-
trating that in the same language there may be many dialects
1 Act iii, scene 1.
j 34 PARALLELISMS.
separated as widely from each other as French from German, and
depending for their character on the mental constitution of the
men who use them. The speech of an English "navvy" does not
differ more from the language of Tennyson's Morte d1 Arthur than
do the writings of Coke from those of Bacon. It will puzzle our
readers to find a single Shakespeareanism of thought or expression
in a whole volume of Coke's productions.
The Humble and Direct Answer to the Last Question Arising upon Bagg's
Case.
It was resolved, that to this court of the King's bench belongeth authority not
only to correct errors in judicial proceedings, but other errors and misdemeanors
tending to the breach of the peace, or oppression of the subjects, or to the raising
of faction or other misgovernment: so that no wrong or injury, either public or
private, can be done, but it shall be reformed and punished by law.
Being commanded to explain myself concerning these words, and principally
concerning this word, "misgovernment," —
I answer that the subject-matter of that case concerned the misgovernment of
the mayors and other the magistrates of Plymouth.
And I intended for the persons the misgovernment of such inferior magistrates
for the matters in committing wrong or injury, either public or private, punishable
bylaw, and therefore the last clause was added, "and so no wrong or injury,
either public or private, can be dene, but it shall be reformed and punished by
law;" and the rule is: " verba inteliigenda sunt secundum subjectam materiam."
And that they and other corporations might know, that factions and other mis-
governments amongst them, either by oppression, bribery, unjust disfranchise-
ments, or other wrong or injury, public or private, are to be redressed and punished
by law, it was so reported.
But if any scruple remains to clear it, these words may be added, " by inferior
magistrates," and so the sense shall be by faction or misgovernment of inferior
magistrates, so as no wrong or injury, etc.
All which I most humbly submit to your Majesty's princely judgment.
Edw. Coke.
Now it may be objected that this paper is upon a dry and grave
subject, and that Bacon would have written it in much the same
style. But if the reader will look back at the quotations I have
made from Bacon, in the foregoing pages, he will find that many
of them are taken from his law papers and court charges, and his
weighty philosophical writings, and yet they are fairly alive with
fancy, metaphor and poetry.
CHAPTER II.
1 1) EX TIC A L ME TA PHORS.
Touchstone. For ail your writers do consent, that ipse is he;
Now you are not ipse, for I am he.
William. Which he, sir? A* You Like ft, v, I.
BOTH Bacon and Shakespeare reasoned by analogy. When-
ever their thoughts encountered an abstruse subject, they
compared it with one plain and familiar; whenever they sought to
explain mental and spiritual phenomena, they paralleled them with
physical phenomena; whenever they would render clear the lofty
and great, they called up before the mind's vision the humble and
the insignificant. All thoughts ran in parallel lines; no thought
stood alone. Hence the writings of both are a mass of similes and
comparisons,
I. Humble and Base Things Used as Comparisons.
We have seen that Bacon and his double were both philoso-
phers, and especially natural philosophers, whose observation took
in " the hyssop on the wall, as well as the cedar of Libanus; " and
when we come to consider their identity of comparisons, we shall
find in both a tendency to use humble and even disgusting things
as a basis of metaphor.
We shall see that Bacon was always " puttering in physic," and
we find Shakespeare constantly using medical terms and facts in
his poetry.
We find, for instance, that both compared the driving-out of
evil influences, in the state or mind, to the effect of purgative medi-
cines.
Bacon says:
The King . . . thought ... to proceed with severity against some of the
principal conspirators here within the realm; thereby to purge the ill humors in
Flngland.1
And again:
Some of the garrison observing this, and having not their minds purged of the
late ill blood of hostility.2
tory of Henry VII. '2 Ibid.
335
3^6 PARALLELISMS.
And again:
But as in bodies very corrupt the medicine rather stirreth and exasperateth
the humor than pitrgeth it, so some turbulent spirits laid hold of this proceeding
toward my lord, etc.1
While Shakespeare says:
I
Do come with words as medicinal as true;
Honest as either; to purge him of that humor
That presses him from sleep.2
And again:
And again:
And again:
Bacon says:
Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time,
Ere human statute pureed the gentle weal.3
Would purge the land of these drones.4
And, for the day, confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature,
Are burnt and purged away.5
Sometimes opening the obstructions*
Shakespeare says:
Purge the obstructions."1
And the same thought occurs in different language.
Bacon says:
And so this traitor Essex made his color the scouring of some noblemen and
counselors from her Majesty's favor.
In Shakespeare we have:
What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug
Will scour these English hence?8
The comparison of men and things to bodily sores is common
in both — an unusual trait of expression in an elevated mind and a
poet; but it was part of Bacon's philosophy " that most poor things
point to rich ends."
Bacon says:
Augustus Csesar, out of great indignation against his two daughters and Posthu-
mus Agrippa, his grandchild, whereof the first two were infamous, and the last
'Report of Judicial Proceed- 3 Macbeth, iv, 3. * History of Henry I'll.
ings at York House. 4 Pericles, ii, 1. 7 zd Henry IV. , iv, 1.
2 Winter's Tale, ii, 3. 6 Hamlet, i, 5. 8 Macbeth, v, 3.
IDENTICAL METAPHORS. 337
otherwise unworthy, would say " that they were not his seed, but some imposthumes
that had broken from him."1
And again he says:
Should a man have them to be slain by his vassals, as the posthumus of Alex-
ander the Great was ? Or to call them his imposlhumes, as Augustus Caesar called
his?'2
While in Shakespeare we have:
This is the impost hume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
Why the man dies.5
And we find precisely the same thought in Bacon:
He that turneth the humors back and maketh the wound bleed inwards, ingen-
dereth malign ulcers and pernicious i mposthumations .x
We have a whole body of comparisons of things governmental
to these ulcers, in their different stages of healing.
Bacon says:
We are here to search the wounds of the realm, not to skin them over.5
Spain having lately, with much difficulty, rather smoothed and skinned over
than healed and extinguished the commotion of Aragon.6
Shakespeare says:
A kind of medicine in itself
That skins the vice o' the top.1
Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place ;
While rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen.8
And even this curious word mining we find in Bacon used in the
same figurative sense:
To search and mint into that which is not revealed.9
And we find this same inward infection referred to in Bacon:
A profound kind of fallacies, ... the force whereof is such as it . . . doth
more generally and inwardly infect and corrupt.10
And then we have in both the use of the word canker or cancer
as a source of comparison:
1 Apophthegms. « Observations on a Libel — Life and
2 Discourse in Praise of the Queen — Life Works, vol. i, p. 162.
and Works, vol. i, p. 140. 7 Measure for Measure, ii, 2.
3 Hamlet, iv, 4. e Hamlet, iii, 4.
4 Essay Of Sedition. 9 Advancement of Learning, book i.
6 Speech in Parliament. 10 Ibid., book ii.
338 PA RA LLELISMS.
Bacon:
Shakespeare:
The canker of epitomes.1
The cankers of a calm world and a long peace.2
Banish the canker of ambitious thoughts. :!
This canker of our nature.4
This canker, Bolingbroke.5
Out of this tendency to dwell upon physical ills, and the cure of
them, we find both coining a new verb, medicining, or to medicine.
Bacon:
The medicining of the mind.6
Again :
Let the balm distill everywhere, from your sovereign hands to the medicining
of any part that complaineth.1
Shakespeare says:
Great griefs, I see, medicine the less.8
Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy sirups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep,
Which thou owedst yesterday.9
We find the same tendency in both to compare physical ills
with mental ills, the thing tangible with the thing intangible.
Bacon:
We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the
body; and it is not much otherwise in the mind: you may take sarsa to open the
liver, steel to open the spleen, flour of sulphur for the lungs, castareum for the
brain; but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart
griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels and whatsoever lieth upon the heart
to oppress it. 10
You shall know what disease your mind is aptest to fall into.11
Good Lord, Madam, how wisely and aptly you can speak and discern of physic
ministered to the body, and consider not that there is the like occasion of physic
ministered to the mind.n
We turn to Shakespeare, and we find him indulging in the same
kind of comparisons. In Macbeth we have:
1 Advancement of Learning, book ii. 8 Cymbeline, iv, 2.
2 ist Henry IV., iv, 2. 9 Othelto, Hi, 3.
3 2d Henry VI., i, 2. • 10 Essay Of Friendship.
* Hamlet, v, 2. IJ Bacon's Letter to the Earl of Rutland, written
3 ist Henry IV., i, 3. in the name of the Earl of Essex — Life and
6 Advancement of Learning, book ii. Works, vol. ii, p. 9.
7 Gesta Grayorum — Life and 12 Apology.
Works, vol. i, p. 339.
IDENTICAL METAPHORS. 339
Macbeth. How does your patient, doctor?
Doctor. Not so sick, my lord.
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies
That keep her from her rest.
Macbeth. Cure her of that:
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased.
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow.
Raze out the written troubles of the brain;
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart f
Doctor. Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.1
In both these extracts the stoppages and "suffocations" of the
body are compared to the stuffed condition of the mind and heart;
in both the heart is thus oppressed by that which lies upon it; in both
we are told that there is no medicine that can relieve the over-
charged spirit.
Malcolm says:
Be comforted.
Let's make us tued'eines of our great revenge,
To cure this deadly grief.'2
II. The Organs of the Body Used as a Basis of Com-
parison.
We turn to another class of comparisons. In both writers we find
the organs of the body used as a basis of metaphor, just as we have
seen the " medicining" of the body applied to the state of the
mind.
Every reader of Shakespeare remembers that strange expression
in Richard III.:
Thus far into the bowels of the land
Have we marched without impediment/1
We find the same comparison often repeated:
Into the bowels of the battle.4
The bowels of ungrateful Rome.5
The fatal bowels of the deep.6
And we find Bacon employing the same strange metaphor:
This fable is wise and seems to be taken out of the bowels of morality."
1 Macbeth, V, 3. 3 Richard III., v, 2. 5 Coriolanns, iv, 5.
2 Ibid., iv, 3. */st Henry VI.y i, 1. 6 Richard III., iii, 4.
7 Wisdom of the Ancients — Juno's Suitor.
340
PARALLELISMS.
If any state be yet free from his factions, erected in the bowels thereof.1
Speaking of the fact that earthquakes affecting a small area
reach but a short distance into the earth. Bacon observes that,
where they agitate a wider area,
We are to suppose that their bases and primitive seats enter deeper into the
bowels of the earth}
This is precisely the expression used by Hotspur:
Villainous saltpeter dug out of the bowels of the harmless earth}
And this comparison of the earth to the stomach, and of an
earthquake to something which disturbs it, we find in Shakespeare:
Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions: oft the teeming earth
Is with a kind of colic pinched and vexed
By the imprisoning of unruly wind
Within her womb.4
And we find the processes of the stomach, in both sets of
writings, applied to mental operations:
Shakespeare says:
How shall we stretch our eye
When capital crimes, chewed, swallowed and digested,
Appear before us?5
Bacon says:
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be
chewed and digested}
In both we find the human body compared to a musical instru-
ment.
Bacon says:
The office of medicine is to tune this curious harp of man's body and reduce it
to harmony.7
In Shakespeare, Pericles tells the Princess:
You're a fair viol, and your sense the strings,
Who, fingered to make man his lawful music,
Would draw heaven down and all the gods to hearken. *
And the strings of the harp furnish another series of compari-
sons to both. Bacon says:
They did strike upon a string that was more dangerous.9
1 Discourse in Praise of the Queen — Life 5 Henry V„ ii, 2.
and Works, vol. i, p. 137. « Essay Of Studies.
2 Nature of Things. 7 Advancement of Learning, book ii.
3 1st Henry IV., i, 3. ° Pericles, i, 1.
4 Ibid., iii, 1. ^History of Henry I 'II.
IDENTICAL METAPHORS. 34I
And again
The King was much moved, . . . because it struck upon that string which even
he most feared.1
And Shakespeare says:
Harp not on that string, madam.'2
And again:
I would 'twere something that would fret the string,
The master-cord on 's heart.3
And the word harping is a favorite with both. Bacon says:
This string you cannot harp upon too much.4
And again:
Harping upon that which should follow."1
And in Shakespeare we have:
Still harping on my daughter.6
Harping on what I am,
Not what he knew I was.7
Thou hast harped my fear aright."
We have the disorders of the body of man also made a source
of comparison for the disorders of the mind, in the following
instance.
Bacon:
High conceits do sometimes come streaming into the minds and imaginations
of base persons, especially when they are drunk with news, and talk of the people.9
Shakespeare:
Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself?1"
What ! drunk with choler?11
Hath our intelligence been drunk?1*
Here we have drunkenness applied to the affections and emo-
tions— to the mind in the one case, to the intelligence in the other;
to the imagination in the first instance, to the hope and the temper
in the last.
We have the joints of the body used by both to express the con-
dition of public affairs.
1 History of Henry VII. 7 A ntony and Cleopatra, Hi, 3.
3 Richard III., iv, 4. ■ Macbeth, iv, 1.
3 Henry I'll I. , iii, 2. 9 History of Henry I 'II.
4 Letter to Essex, Oct. 4, 1596. I0 Macbeth, i, 7.
5 Civil Con?: u 1st Henry IV., i, 3.
■ Hamlet, ii. 2. 12 King John, iv, 2.
:>4-
PARALLEL] SMS.
Bacon says:
We do plainly see in the most countries of Christendom so unsound and
shaken an estate, as desireth the help of some great person, to set together and
join again the pieces asunder and out of joint}
In Shakespeare we have Hamlet's exclamation, also applied to
the condition of the country:
The time is out of joint — Oh, cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right.2
We have the body of man made the basis of another compari-
son.
Bacon says:
The very springs and sinews of industry.3
We should intercept his [the King of Spain's] treasure, whereby we shall cut
his sinews*
While Shakespeare says:
The portion and sinew of her fortune.5
Nay, patience, or we break the sinews of our plot.6
The noble sinews of our power,7
We have the same comparison applied to the blood-vessels of
the body.
Bacon:
He could not endure to have trade sick, nor any obstruction to continue in the
gate-vein which disperseth that blood.8
Shakespeare:
The natural gates and alleys of the body.9
We have in both the comparison of the body of man to a taber-
nacle or temple in which the soul or mind dwells.
Bacon says:
Thus much for the body, which is but the tabernacle of the mind.10
Shakespeare says:
Nothing vile can dwell in such a temple. n
1 Of the State of Europe. 7 Henry /"., i, 2.
8 Hamlet, i, 5. 8 History 0/ Henry I 'II.
8 Novum Organum , book i. ' Hamlet, i, 5.
* Letter to Essex, June, 1596. 10 Advancement of Learning book ii.
6 Measure for Measure, iii, j. n Tempest, i, 2.
• Twelfth Night, il, 5.
IDENTICAL METAPHORS. 343
And again:
For nature, crescent, does not grow alone
In thews and bulk; but, as this temple waxes,
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withal.1
Oh, that deceit should dwell
In such a gorgeous palace}
Even the clothing which covers the body becomes a medium of
comparison in both.
Bacon:
Behavior seemeth to me as a garment of the mind.*
This curious idea, of robing the mind in something which shall
cover or adorn it, is used by Shakespeare:
With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
Of wisdom.4
And dressed myself in such humility*
Was the hope drunk wherein you dressed yourself?6
And the same thought occurs in the following:
The garment of rebellion.7
Dashing the garment of this peace.8
Part of the raiment of the body is used by both as a comparison
for great things.
Bacon:
The motion of the air in great circles, such as are under the girdle of the 7vorld.*
Shakespeare says:
Puck. I'll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes.10
We have said that both writers were prone to use humble and
familiar things as a basis of comparison for immaterial and great
things. We find some instances in the following extracts.
The blacksmith's shop was well known to both. Bacon says:
There is shaped a tale in London's forge that beateth apace at this time.'1
1 Hamlet, i, 3. • Macbeth, i, 7.
2 Romeo and Juliet, iii, 2. 7 1st Henry IV., v, 1.
8 Advancement of Learning, book ii. 8 Henry VIII, i, 1.
4 Merchant of Venice, i, 1. 9 Natural History, § 398.
6 1st Henry IV., iii, 2. 10 Midsummer Night's Drcavi, ii, 2.
11 Letter to Lord Howard.
344
PA KA LLEL1SM S.
Shakespeare:
Mrs. Page. Come, to the forge with it, then; shape it. I would not have
things cool.1
Here we have in the one case a tale shaped in the forge ; in the
other a plan is to be shaped in the forge.
And again we have in Shakespeare:
In the quick forge and working-house of thought*
I should make very forges of my cheeks,
That would to cinders burn up modesty.3
Again we find in Bacon:
Though it be my fortune to be the anvil upon which these good effects are
beaten and wrought.4
Speaking of Robert Cecil, Bacon says:
He loved to have all business under the hammer*
And this:
He stayed for a better hour till the hammer had wrought and beat the party
of Britain more pliant.6
While in Shakespeare we have:
I cannot do it, yet I'll hammer it out
Of my brain.7
Whereupon this month I have been hammering*
The refuse left at the bottom of a wine-cask is used by both
metaphorically.
Bacon:
That the [Scotch] King, being in amity with him, and noways provoked, should
so burn in hatred towards him as to drink the lees and dregs of Perkin's intoxication,
who was everywhere else detected and discarded.9
And again Bacon says:
The memory of King Richard lay like lees in the bottom of men's hearts; and if
the vessel was but stirred it would come up.10
And Bacon speaks of
The dregs of this age.11
We turn to Shakespeare and we find:
He, like a puling cuckold, would drink up
The lees and dregs of a flat, tamed piece.12
1 Merry Wives of Windsor, iv, 2. 7 Richard II., v, 5.
2 Henry V., v, cho. 8 Two Gentlemen of Verona, i, 3.
3 Othello, iv, 2. » History of Henry VII.
4 Letter to the Lords. 10 Ibid.
5 Letter to King James, 1612. n Bacon to Queen Elizabeth — Life and
6 History of Henry I'll. Works, vol, ii, p. 160.
12 Troilus and Cress i da. iv, 1.
Again:
Again:
Again:
I DEN TIC A L ME T. 1 PHORS.
All is but toys; renown and grace is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.1
Some certain dregs of conscience.''
The dregs of the storm be past.'
345
And the floating refuse which rises to the top of a vessel is also
used in the same sense by both.
Bacon speaks of
The scum of the people.4
Again :
A rabble and scum of desperate people.5
While Shakespeare says :
A scum of Bretagnes and base knaves.6
Again:
The tilth and scum ot Kent.7
Again:
Froth and scum, thou liest.8
Another instance of the use of humble and physical things as a
basis of comparison in the treatment of things intellectual is found
in the following curious metaphor:
Bacon:
He that seeketh victory over his nature, let him not set himself too great or too
small tasks, . . . and at the first let him practice with helps, as swimmers do with
bladders.9'
While Shakespeare has:
I have ventured,
Like little wanton boys, that swim on bladders,
This many summers in a sea of glory.10
The people are compared by both to mastiffs.
Bacon :
The blood of so many innocents slain within their own harbors and nests by
the scum of the people, who, like so many mastiffs, were let loose, and heartened
and even set upon them by the state.11
1 Macbeth, ii, 3. 5 History 0/ Henry VII. 9 Essay Of Nature in Men.
2 Richard III, i, 4. 8 Richard III., v, 2. »° Henry VIII., iii, 2.
3 Tempest, ii, 2. 7 2d Henry VI., iv, 2. " Felic. Queen Elisabeth.
4 Felic. Queen Elizabeth. 8 Merry Wives of Windsor , i, 1.
346 PARALLELISMS.
While Shakespeare says:
The men do sympathize with their mastiffs, in robustious and rough coming-on.F
We will see hereafter how much Bacon loved the pursuit of
gardening.
He says:
He entered into due consideration how to weed out the partakers of the former
rebellion.2
Again:
A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds; therefore let him seasonably
water the one and destroy the other.3
While Shakespeare has:
So one by one we'll weed them all at last.4
And again:
The caterpillars of the commonwealth.
Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away.5
The mirror is a favorite comparison in both sets of writings, as
usual the thing familiar and physical illustrating the thing
abstruse and intellectual.
Bacon says:
God hath framed the mind of man as a mirror or glass capable of the image of
the universal world.6
Shakespeare:
Now all the youth of England are on fire, . .
Following the mirror of all Christian kings.7
Bacon
That which I have propounded to myself is ... to shoiu you your true shape
in a glass.9,
Shakespeare says of play-acting:
Whose end both at the first, and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror
up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very
age and body of the time his form and pressure.9
Bacon says:
If there be a mirror in the world worthy to hold men's eyes, it is that country."
1 Henry V., iii, 7. * Advancement 0/ Learning, book i.
3 History 0/ Henry VII. » Henry V., ii. cho.
3 Essay Of Nature in Men, 6 Letter to Coke.
* 2d Henry VI., i, 3. 9 Hamlet, iii , 2.
• Richard II., ii, 3. J0 New Atlantis.
WYEXStTY
try J
IDENTICAL METAPHORS. 347
Shakespeare says:
The mirror of all courtesy.1
He was, indeed, the glass
Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.2
Here is another humble comparison.
Bacon:
He thought it [the outbreak] but a rag or remnant of Bosworth-field.3
Shakespeare says:
Away ! thou rag; thou quantity, thou remnant.*
Here we have both words, rag and remnant, used figuratively,,
and used in the same order.
Again:
Thou rag of honor.5
Not a rag of money.6
Both writers use the humble habitation of the hog as a medium
of comparison.
Bacon: •
Styed up in the schools and scholastic cells.7
Shakespeare:
And here you sty me
On this hard rock.8
Here is a comparison based on the same familiar 'facts.
Bacon speaks of
The wisdom of rats that will be sure to leave a house somewhat before it fall . *
Shakespeare says:
A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigged,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast ; the very rats
Instinctively have quit it.10
The habits of birds are called into requisition by both writers.
Bacon says:
In her withdrawing-chamber the conspiracy against King Richard the Third
had been hatched.™
Shakespeare says:
Dire combustion and confused events
New hatched to the woeful time.1'2
1 Henry VIII., ii, 1. • Richard Iff, i, 3. 9 Essay Of Wisdom.
1 2d Henry IV., ii, 3. K Comedy 0/ Errors, iv, 4. ,0 Tempest, i, 2.
3 History of Henry VII. 7 Xatural History. u History of Henry VII-
4 Taming of the Shrew, iv, 3. " Tempest, i, 2. ,a Macbeth, ii, 3.
348 PARALLELISMS.
And again
Such things become the hatch and brood of time.1
Bacon says:
Will you be as a standing pool, that spendeth and choketh his spring within
itself?2
Shakespeare says:
There are a sort of men whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond."
Even the humble wagon forms a basis of comparison.
Bacon says:
This is the axle-tree whereupon I have turned and shall turn.4
And again Bacon says:
The poles or axle-tree of heaven, upon which the conversion is accomplished.5
Shakespeare has:
A bond of air strong as the axle-tree
On which heaven rides.6
In the following another comparison is drawn from an humble
source; and here, as in rag and remnant, not only is the same word
used in both, but the same combination of words occurs.
Bacon says:
To reduce learning to certain empty and barren generalities; being but the
very husks and shells of sciences.7
Shakespeare says:
But the shales and husks of men.8
Strewed with the husks
And formless ruin of oblivion.9
Who can forget Hamlet's exquisite description of the heavens:
This majestic roof fretted with golden fire.10
Few have stopped to ask themselves the meaning of the word
fretted. We turn to the dictionary and we find no explanation that
satisfies us. We go to Bacon, to the mind that conceived the
thought, and we find that it means ornamented by fret-work.
1 2ci Henry IV., iii, i. 6 Troilus and Cress/da, i, 3.
,J Gesta Grayomm — Life and II 'or As, vol. i, p. 339. 7 . idvancement of Learning, book ii.
3 Merchant of J'enice, i, 1. s Henry I'., iv, 2.
4 Letter to Earl of Essex, 1600. '•' Troilus and Cressida, iv, 5.
* Advancement of Learning, book ii. ,8 Hamlet, ii, :;.
I DEN TIC A L ME 1 A PIJOK S.
349
For if that great Work-master had been of a human disposition, he would have
cast the stars into some pleasant and beautiful works and orders, like the frets in
the roofs of houses.1
Here we have a double identity: first, the heavens are compared
to the roof of a house, or, more properly, the ceiling of a room; and
secondly, the stars are compared to the fret-work which adorns
such a ceiling.
It would be very surprising if all this came out of two separate
minds.
In the following we have another instance of two words used
together in the same comparison.
- Bacon:
We set j/aot/j and seals of our own images upon God's creatures and works. -
Shakespeare makes the nurse say to the black Aaron, bringing
him his child:
The empress sends it thee, thy stamp, thy seal,
And bids thee christen it with thy dagger's point.3
And again:
Nay, he is your brother by the surer side,
Although my seal he. stamped upon his face.4
Here we have precisely the same thought: Aaron had set "the
stamp and seal of his own image " on his offspring.
We find in both the mind of man compared to a fountain.
Bacon says:
When the books of hearts shall be opened, I hope I shall not be found to have
the troubled fountain of a corrupt heart*
Again :
He [the King of Spain] hath by all means projected to trouble the waters here/'
And again:
One judicial and exemplar iniquity doth trouble the fountains of justice more
than many particular injuries passed over by connivance.7
Pope Alexander . . . was desirous to trouble the waters in Italy.8
Shakespeare says:
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled*
» Advancement of Learning, book ii. * Report on Dr. Lopez' Treason— Li/i
* Exfier. History. and Works, vol. i, p. 275.
3 Titus A ndronictis, iv, 2. 7 Advancement of Learnings book ii..
4 Ibid. 8 History of Henry Irff.
6 Letter to the King. • Taming of the Skrew, \\ 2.
350 PARALLELISMS.
My mind is troubled like a fountain stirred.'
But if he start,
It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.1'1
In both we find the thoughts and emotions of a man compared
to the coals which continue to live, although overwhelmed by mis-
fortunes which cover them like ashes.
Bacon says:
Whilst I live my affection to do you service shall remain quick under the ashes
of my fortune.3
And again:
So that the sparks of my affection shall ever rest quick, under the ashes of my
fortune, to do you service.4
Shakespeare says:
Pr'ythee go hence,
Or I shall show the cinders of my spirits,
Through the ashes of my chance.5
Again :
Again :
The breath of heaven hath blown his spirit out,
And strew'd repentant ashes on his head.6
This late dissension, grown betwixt the peers,
Burns under feigned ashes of forged love,
And will at last break out into aflame."1
And the expression in the above quotation from Bacon:
The sparks of my affection,
is paralleled in Shakespeare:
Sparks of honor.8
Sparks of life.9
Sparks of nature.10
We find in both the state or kingdom compared to a ship, and
the king or ruler to a steersman.
Bacon says:
Statesmen and such as sit at the helms of great kingdoms."
In Shakespeare we find Suffolk promising Queen Margaret the
control of the kingdom in these words:
1 Troilus and Cressida, iii, 3. 6 King John, iv, 1.
5 Merry Wives of Windsor, v, 5. 7 1st Henry VI., iii, 1.
1 Letter to the Earl of Bristol. e Richard II., vx 6.
4 Letter to Lord Viscount Falkland. ' Julius Cczsar, i, 3.
* Antony and Cleopatra, v, 2. 10 Cymbeline, iii, 3; Lear, iii, 7.
n/'/7/r. Queen Elizabeth,
And again:
And again :
IDENTICAL METAPHORS,
So, one by one, we'll weed them all at last,
And you yourself shall steer the happy helm}
God and King Henry govern England's helm.'1
A rarer spirit never
Did steer humanitv.3
35
We have seen Bacon speaking, in a speech in Parliament, of
those "viperous natures " that would drive out the people from the
lands and leave " nothing but a shepherd and his dog."
We find the same comparison, used in the same sense, in Shake-
speare:
Where is this viper '
That would depopulate the city,
And be every man himself?4
The overwhelming influence of music on the soul is compared
by both to a rape or ravishment.
Bacon says:
Melodious tunes, so fitting and delighting the ears that heard them, as that it
ravished and betrayed all passengers. . . . Winged enticements to ravish and
rape mortal men.5
While Shakespeare says:
Bv this divine air, now is his soul ravished.*
And again;
And again:
When we,
Almost with ravished listening, could not find
His hour of speech a minute.7
One whom the music of his own vain tongue
Doth ravish like enchanting harmony.8
We have in both the great power of circumstances compared to
the rush of a flood of water.
Bacon:
In this great deluge of danger.9
Shakespeare:
Thy deed inhuman and unnatural
Provokes this deluge most unnatural.1"
1 2d Henry VI., i, 3. " Much Ado about Nothing, ii, 5.
^ Ibid., ii, 3. ''Henry VIII., i, 2.
3 Antony and Cleopatra, v, 1. H Love's Labor Lost, i, 1.
4 Coriolanus, iii, 1. 9 Felic. Queen Elizabeth.
8 Wisdom 0/ the Ancients — The Sirens. 10 Richard ///., i, 2.
35 2
Again:
Again:
Again:
PARALLELISMS.
Thisy5W/of fortune.1
And such a flood of greatness fell.2
This great flood of visitors."
In their effort to express great quantity we have both refer-
ring to the ocean for their metaphors.
Bacon has:
He came with such a sea of multitude upon Italy.4
A sea of air.5
Shakespeare has precisely the same curious expression:
A sea of air.*
Bacon also has:
Vast seas of time.'
A sea of quicksilver.8
Again Bacon says:
Will turn a sea of baser metal into gold.9
In Shakespeare the same "large composition" of the mind
drives him to seek in the greatest of terrestrial objects a means of
comparison with the huge subjects which fill his thoughts:
A sea of joys.10
A sea of care.11
Shed seas of tears.12
A sea of glory.13
That sea of blood.14
A sea of woes.15
We also find in Hamlet :
A sea of troubles.16
This word, thus employed, has been regarded as so peculiar and
unusual that the commentators for a long time insisted that it was
a misprint. Even Pope, himself a poet, altered it to read " a siege
of troubles;" others would have it "assail of troubles." But we
1 Twelfth Night, iv, 3. 6 Timon of Athens, iv, 2. n Henry VIII., iii, 2.
2 1st Henry IV., v, 1. 7 Advancement of Learn- 12 Rape of Lucrece.
8 Timon of Athens, i, 1. ing, book i. 1S 1st Henry VI., iv, 7.
* Apophthegms. 8 Ibid., book ii. 14 3d Henry VI., ii, 5.
6 Advancement of Learn- 9 Natural History, § 326. " Timon of Athens, i, 1.
ing, book ii. 10 Pericles, v, 1. 1B Hamlet, iii, 1.
IDENTICAL METAPHORS. 353
see that it was a common expression with both Bacon and
Shakespeare.
Bacon has also:
The ocean of philosophy.1
The ocean of history.2
Shakespeare has:
An ocean of his tears.3
An ocean of salt tears.4
In the same way the tides of the ocean became the source of
numerous comparisons.
The most striking was pointed out some time since by Montagu
and Judge Holmes. Not only is the tide used as a metaphor, but
it enforces precisely the same idea.
Bacon:
In the third place, I set down reputation, because of the peremptory tides
and currents it hath; which, if they be not taken in their due time, are seldom
recovered.5
Shakespeare says:
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.6
Bacon and Shakespeare recur very often to this image of the
tides:
My Lord Coke floweth according to his own tides, and not according to the
tides of business.7
Here "tides of business" is the same thought as "tides of
affairs " in the foregoing quotation from Shakespeare.
Bacon again says:
The tide of any opportunity, . . . the periods and tides of estates.8
And again:
Besides the open aids from the Duchess of Burgundy, there wanted not some
secret tides from Maximilian and Charles.9
1 Exper. History. s Advancement 0/ Learning, book ii.
2 Great Instauration. 6 Julius Ccesar, iv, 3.
3 Two Gentlemen 0/ Verona, ii, 7. 7 Letter to the King, February 25, 1615.
* 3d Henry VI., iii, 2. 8 Letter to Sir Robert Cecil. I
9 History 0/ Henry I 'II.
354 PARALLELISMS.
And again:
The tides and currents of received errors.1
■ •
Shakespeare says:
The tide of blood in me
Hath proudly flowed in vanity till now;
Now doth it turn and ebb back to the sea;
Where it shall mingle with the state of floods,
And flow henceforth in formal majesty.2
And it will be observed that the curious fact is not that both
should employ the word "tide" for that was of course a common
word in the daily speech of all men, but that they should both
employ it in a metaphorical sense; as the "tide of affairs," "the
tide of business," "the tide of errors," "the tide of blood," etc.
And not only the ocean itself and the tides, but the swelling of
the waters by distant storms is an image constantly in the minds of
both.
Bacon says:
There was an unusual swelling in the state, the forerunner of greater troubles. 8
And again:
Likewise it is everywhere taken notice of that waters do somewhat S7vell and
rise before tempests,*
While in Shakespeare we have the same comparison applied in
the same way:
Before the days of change, still is it so;
By a divine instinct, men's minds mistrust
Ensuing danger; as, by proof, we see
The waters swell before a boisterous storm. 5
And here we have this precise thought in Bacon:
As there are certain hollow blasts of wind and secret swelling of seas before a
tempest, so are there in stales/'
Can any man believe this exact repetition, not only of thought,
but of the mode of representing it by a figure of speech, was acci-
dental ?
And from this rising of the water both coin an adjective.
Bacon says:
Such a swelling season,1
meaning thereby one full of events and dangers.
1 Statutes of Uses. 3 Fclic. Queen Elizabeth. " Richard 11/., ii, 3.
8 2d Henry II'., V, 2. * Natural History of Winds. 8 Kssay Of Sedition.
'' History of Henry VII,
I DEN TIC A L ME 7 'A P HOR S. , - -
While Shakespeare uses the adjective in the same peculiar
sense:
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme.1
Again:
The swelling difference. -
Again :
Behold the swelling scene.3
Again :
Noble, swelling spirits.4
The clouds, in both writers, furnish similes for overhanging
troubles.
Bacon says:
Xevertheless, since 1 do perceive that this cloud hangs over the House.1
And again Bacon says:
The King, . . . willing to leave a cloud upon him, . . . produced him
openly to plead his pardon /;
Shakespeare says:
And all the clouds that lowered upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.7
And again Bacon says :
But the cloud of so great a rebellion hanging over his head, made him work
sure.8 ,
Shakespeare says :
How is it that the clouds still hang on you ?'
Bacon says:
The King had a careful eye where this wandering cloud would break.10
Shakespeare:
Can such things be,
And overcome us like a summer's cloud,
Without our special wonder?11
Bacon says:
He had the image and superscription upon him of the Pope, in his honor of Car-
dinal.1'
This thought is developed in Shakespeare into the well known
comparison:
A fellow by the hand of nature marked,
Quoted and signed to do a deed of shame.13
1 Macbeth, i, 3. 5 Speech. s Hamlet, i, 2.
2 Richard II., i, 1. • History of Henry VII. 10 History of Henry III.
3 Henry V., i, cho. » Richard III., i, 1. » Macbeth, iii, 4.
4 Othello, ii, 3. 8 History of Henry VII. l8 History of Henry VII.
13 King John, iv, 2.
356
PARALLELISMS.
In the one case the superscription of the Pope marks the Cardinal
for honor; in the other the hand of nature has signed its signature
upon the man to show that he is fit for a deed of shame.
And Bacon uses the word signature in the following:
Some immortal monument bearing a character and signature both of the
power, etc.1
Bacon says:
Meaning thereby to harrow his people.2
Shakespeare says:
Let the Volsces
Plow Rome and harrow Italy.3
And again:
Whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul.4
Bacon says:
Intending the discretion of behavior is a great thief of meditation*
Shakespeare says:
You thief of love *
And again:
A very little thief of occasion.'
Bacon says:
It was not long but Perkin, who was make of quicksilver, which is hard to hold
or imprison, began to stir.8
While Shakespeare says:
The rogue fled from me like quicksilver*
And again:
That, swift as quicksilver, it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body.10
Here Perkin is compared to quicksilver by Bacon; and the
volatile Pistol is compared to quicksilver by Shakespeare.
Bacon says:
They were executed ... at divers places upon the sea-coast of Kent, Sussex
and Norfolk, for sea-marks or light-houses, to teach Perkin's people to avoid the
coast.11
1 Advancement of Learning, book i. * Midsummer Night's Dream, iii, 2.
2 History of Henry VII. 7 Coriolanus, ii, 1.
8 Coriolanus, v, 3. * History of Henry I'll.
* Hamlet, i, 5. 9 Hamlet, i, 5.
6 Advancement of Learning, book ii. 10 2/ Henry II '., ii, 4-
11 History of Henry I'll.
IDENTICAL METAPHORS. 35;
Shakespeare uses the same comparison:
The very sea-mark of my utmost sail.1
In both cases the words are used in a figurative sense.
Bacon says:
The King being lost in a 7vood of suspicion, and not knowing whom to trust.*
Shakespeare:
And I — like one lost in a thorny wood,
That rents the thorns, and is rent with the thorns,
Seeking a way, and straying from the way;
Not knowing how to find the open air,
But toiling desperately to find it out.3
Speaking of the Perkin Warbeck conspiracy, Bacon says:
This was a finer counterfeit stone than Lambert Simnel; being better done and
worn upon greater hands; being graced after with the wearing of a King of
France.4
And again:
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set}
In Shakespeare, Richmond describes Richard III. as
A base, foul stone, made precious by the foil
Of England's chair, where he is falsely set.*
Here Bacon represents Warbeck as a "counterfeit stone;"
Shakespeare represents Richard III. as "a foul stone." One is
graced by a King's wearing; the other is made precious by being
"set" in the royal chair of England.
Bacon says:
Neither the excellence of wit, however great, nor the die of experience, how-
ever frequently east, can overcome such disadvantages.7
And again Bacon says:
Determined to put it to the hazard. %
Shakespeare says:
I have set my life upon a cast,
And I will stand the hazard of the die.9
The singular thought that ships are walls to the land occurs in
Bacon:
1 Othello, v, 2. 6 Essay Of Beauty.
2 History of Henry I 'II. 8 Richard III., v, 3.
3 3d Henry VI., iii, 2. 7 Preface to Great Instantiation.
4 History of Henry I'll. s Wisdom of the A ncients — Sphynx.
» Richard III., v, 4.
^^ PA RA L LEI ISM S.
And for the timber of this realm ... it is the matter for our walls, walls nor
only for our houses, but for our island}
Shakespeare speaks of the sea itself as a wall:
This precious stone set in a silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall}
Here again we see Bacon's "Virtue is like a rich slone,best plain
set"
And again Shakespeare says:
When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds.3
Bacon says;
To speak and to trumpet out your commendations.4
Shakespeare says:
Will plead like angels, ^r#w/><?/-tongued.5
Bacon says:
This lure she cast abroad, thinking that this fame and belief . . . would draw
at one time or other some birds to strike upon it.6
Shakespeare employs the same comparison.
Petruchio says of Katharine:
My falcon now is sharp and passing empty:
And, till she stoop, she must not be full-gorged,
For then she never looks upon her lure.1
Bacon has:
W'hose leisurely and snail-like pace*
Shakespeare has:
Snail-paced beggary.9
Bacon says:
But touching the reannexing of the duchy of Britain, . . . the embassador
bare aloof from it as if it 7vas a rock}0
In the play of Henry VIII., Norfolk sees Wolsey coming, and
says to Buckingham :
Lo, where comes that rock
That I advise your shunning."
1 Case of Impeachment of Waste. 6 History of Henry I'll.
8 Richard II., ii, i. 7 Faming of the Shrew, iv,
8 Ibid., iii, 4. B History of Henry VII.
4 Letter to Villiers, June 12, 1616. ■ Richard III., iv, 3.
6 Macbeth, \, 7. 10 History of Henry VII.
"Henry VIII., i, 1.
IDENTICAL METAPHORS. 359
Both use the tempering of wax as a metaphor.
Bacon :
The King would not take his [Lambert's] life, taking him but as an image of
wax that others had tempered and molded.1
Falstaff says :
There I will visit Master Robert Shallow, Esquire. I have him already temper-
ing between my finger and my thumb, and shortly I will seal with him.2
Bacon says :
With long and continual counterfeiting, and with oft telling a lie, he was
turned by habit almost into the thing he seemed to be; and from a liar to a
believer?
Shakespeare says:
Like one
Who having unto truth, by telling of it,
Made such a sinner of his memory
To credit his own lie.4
Bacon says:
Fortune is of a woman's nature, and will sooner follow by slighting than by
too much wooing.5
Shakespeare :
Well, if fortune be a woman, she's a good wench for this gear.6
Bacon:
The Queen had endured a strange eclipse by the King's flight.7
Shakespeare:
I take my leave of thee, fair son,
Born to eclipse thy life this afternoon.8
Bacon says:
The King saw plainly that the kingdom must again be put to the stake, and that
he must Jight for it.9
Shakespeare says:
They have tied me to the stake ; I cannot fly,
But, bear-like, I must fight the course.10
And again:
Have you not set mine honor at the stake? "
Again:
I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the course.18
1 History of Henry VII. 5 Letter to Vilhers, 1616. 9 History of Henry VII.
2 2d Henry IV, iv, 3. * Merchant of Venice, ii, 2. 10 Twelfth Night, iii, 1.
3 History of Henry VII. 7 History of Henry VII. ' ' Macbeth, v, 7.
* Tempest, i, 2. 8 1st Henry VI., iv, 5. I2 Lear, iii, 7.
360 PARALLELISMS.
Speaking of the rebellion of Lambert Simnell, Bacon says:
But their snow-ball did not gather as it went.
Shakespeare says:
If but a dozen French
Were there in arms, they would be as a call
To train ten thousand English to their side;
Or, as a little snow, tumbled about,
Anon becomes a mountain.1
Both conceive of truth as something buried deep and only to be
gotten out by digging.
Bacon says:
As we can dig truth out of the mine.2
Shakespeare says:
I will find
Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed
Within the center.3
Both compare human life to a pilgrimage.
Bacon:
In this progress and pilgrimage of human life.4
Shakespeare:
How brief the life of man
Runs his erring pilgrimage ;
That the stretching of a span
Buckles in his sum of age.5
Both use the comparison of drowning to express overwhelmed
or lost.
Bacon:
Truth drowned in the depths of obscurity.6
Shakespeare says:
While heart is drowned in cares.1
I drowned these news in tears.8
Bacon says:
But men are wanting to themselves in laying this gift of the gods upon the
back of a silly, slow-paced ass.9
1 King John, iv, 4. 6 As You Like It, iii, 2.
* History 0/ Henry VII. « Wisdom of the A ncients — Prometheus.
8 Hamlet, i, 2. 7 2(i Henry VI., iii, 1.
4 Wisdom of the A ncients — Sfhynx. 8 3d Henry VI., ii, 1.
9 Wisdom of the A ncients Prometheus.
IDENTICAL METAPHORS. 36i
Shakespeare:
If thou art rich thou art poor,
For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows.
Thou bear' st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee.1
In both we find the strange and unchristian thought that the
heavenly powers use men as a means of amusement; and both
express it with the same word, sport.
Bacon says:
As if it were a custom that no mortal man should be admitted to the table of
the gods, but for sport.*
Shakespeare says:
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods:
They kill us for their sport.1
Bacon says:
Your life is nothing but a continual acting on the stage*
While Shakespeare has:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.5
We find Bacon making this comparison in the address of the
Sixth Counselor to the Prince:
I assure your Excellency, their lessons were so cumbersome, as if they would
make you a king in a play, who, when one would think he standeth in great
majesty and felicity, is troubled to say his part.6
And we find Shakespeare making use of the same comparison
in sonnet xxiii:
As an imperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put beside his part.
Bacon says:
The maintaining of the laws, which is the hedge and fence about the liberty of
the subject.7
* Shakespeare uses the same comparison:
There's such divinity doth hedge a king.8
Bacon says:
The place I have in reversion, as it standeth now unto me. is like another
1 Measure/or Measure, iii, i. % As You Like It, ii, 7.
'-1 Wisdom of the A ncients — Nemesis. * Gesta Grayorum — Life and M 'orks, vol. i, p.
3 Lear, iv, 1. 7 Charge against St. John.
4 Mask for Essex. ' ffam/et, iv, 5.
362 PARALLELISMS.
man's ground reaching upon my house, which may mend my prospect, but doth;
not fill my barn.1
While Shakespeare indulges in a parallel thought:
Falstaff. Of what quality was your love, then?
Ford. Like a fair house built on another man's ground; so that I have lost
my edifice by mistaking the place where I erected it.2
Bacon says:
Duty, though my state lie buried in the sands, and my favors be cast upon the
waters, and my honors be committed to the wind, yet standeth surely built upon
the rock, and hath been and ever shall be unforced and unattempted.3
And Shakespeare says:
Yet my duty,
As does a rock against the chiding flood,
Should the approach of this wild river break
And stand unshaken yours.4
Bacon, speaking of popular prophecies, says:
My judgment is that 1
ter talk by the fireside}
Shakespeare says;
My judgment is that they ought all to be despised and ought but to serve for
winter talk by the fireside}
Oh, these flaws and starts
(Impostors to true fear) would well become
A woman's story by a winter- s fire,
Authorized by her grandam.6
In the Advertisement Touching an Holy War, Bacon uses the com-
parison of a fan, separating the good from the bad by the wind
thereof. Speaking of the extirpation of the Moors of Valencia, one
of the parties to the dialogue, Zebedous, says:
Make not hasty judgment, Gamaliel, of that great action, which was as
Christ's fan in those countries.
And in Troilus and Cressida we have the same comparison:
Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,
Puffing at all, winnows the light away.7
Bacon says:
Though the deaf adder will not hear, yet is he charmed that he doth not hiss.
Shakespeare says in the sonnets:
My adder sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped is.
1 Letter to the Lord Keeper. 4 Henry Fill., iii, 2.
2 Merry Wives of Windsor, ii, 2. 5 Essay Of Prophecies,
3 Letter written for Essex. • Macbeth, iii, 4.
7 Troilus and Cressida i. 3.
IDE. Y TIC A L ME 7V / / flOR S.
363
Another very odd and unusual comparison is used by both:
Bacon, referring to the rebellion of Cornwall and the pretensions
of Perkin Warbeck to the crown, says:
But now these bubbles began to meet as they use to do upon the top of the
water.* *
And again:
The action in Ireland was but a bubble?
Shakespeare says, speaking of the witches in Macbeth :
The earth hath bubbles as the water has,
And these are of them.3
And again:
Seeking the bubble, reputation,
Even in the cannon's mouth.4
And do but blow them to their trials, the bubbles are out.
Bacon says:
But it was ord;
itself.6
Shakespeare says:
But it was ordained that this winding-/^ of a Plantagenet should kill the true
tree itself.6
That now he was
The ivy which had hid my princely trunk
And suck'd my virtue out on 't.7
Here it is not a reference merely to the ivy, but to the ivy as the
destroyer of the tree, and in both cases applied metaphorically.
Bacon says:
Upon the first
oign, Perkin w;
Shakespeare:
Upon the first grain of incense that was sacrificed upon the altar of peace at
Boloign, Perkin was smoked away.8
Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,
The gods themselves throw incense}
Here is a curious parallelism:
Bacon:
The last words of those that suffer death for religion, like the songs of dying
swans, do wonderfully work upon the minds of men, and strike and remain a long
time in their senses and memories.10
1 History of Henry VII. * As You Like It, ii, 7. 7 Tempest, i, 2.
* Ibid. 5 Hamlet, v, 2. 8 History of Henry VII.
3 Macbeth* i, 3. 6 History of Henry I'll. 9 Lear, v, 3.
10 Wisdom of the Ancients — Diomedes.
364 PARALLELISMS.
Shakespeare says:
And again:
And again:
The tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony.1
Then if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,
Fading in music.2
'Tis strange that death should sing.
I am the cygnet to this pale, faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death?
Here we have in both not only the comparison of the words
of dying men to the song of dying swans; but the fact is noted
that the words of such men " enforce attention " and " strike and
remain a long time " in the minds and memories of men.
In both, the liming of bushes to catch birds is used as a meta-
phor. Bacon says:
Whatever service I do to her Majesty, it shall be thought to be but servitium
viscatum, lime-twigs and fetches to place myself.4
Shakespeare says:
They are limed with the twigs}
Myself have limed a. bush for her.6
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free.'
Like lime- twigs set.8
Mere fetches, the images of revolt.9
In both, sickness and death are compared to an arrest by an
officer.
Bacon says, alluding to his sickness at Huntingdon:
This present arrest of me by his Divine Majesty.
Shakespeare says:
This fell sergeant, Death,
Is strict in his arrest.™
And in sonnet lxxiv Shakespeare says, speaking of his death:
But be contented; when that fell arrest,
Without all bail, shall carry me away.
» Richard II. , ii, 1. 5 AlTs Well that Ends Well, iii, 5.
5 Merchant of Venice, iii, 2. * 2d Henry VI., i, 3.
3 King John, v, 7. 7 Hamlet, iii, 3.
4 Letter to F. Greville — Life and Works, 8 2d Henry VI., iii, 3.
vol. i, p. 359. 9 Lear, ii, 4.
'• Hamlet, v, 2.
3^5
I DEN TIC A L ME TA PHOR S.
Bacon speaks of
The hour-glass of one man's life?
Shakespeare says:
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass.'2
In Bacon we have the odor of flowers compared to music:
The breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes liks
the warbling of music) than in the hand.3
Shakespeare reverses the figure, and compares the sounds of
music to the odor of flowers:
That strain again; — it had a dying fall;
Oh, it came o'er my soul like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odor.4
Bacon says:
That repose of the mind which only rides at anchor upon hope.*
Shakespeare says:
See, Posthumus anchors upon Imogen/
Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,
Anchors on Isabel.7
Bacon says:
The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall*
Shakespeare says:
I charge thee fling away ambition:
By that sin fell the angels?
We have in Bacon the following curious expression:
These things did he [King Henry] wisely foresee, . . . whereby all things fe/J
into his lap as he desired.10
Shakespeare says:
Now the time is come
That France must veil her lofty plumed crest,
And let her head fall into England's lap?1
1 Advancement of Learning, book ii. 6 Cymbeline, v. 5.
2 Henry V., prologue. 7 Measure for Measure, ii, 4^
3 Essay 0/ Gardens. 6 Essay Of Goodness.
« Twelfth Night, i, 1. ■ Henry I III., iii, 2.
5 Med. Sacra— Of Earthly Hope. 10 History of Henry I '//.
11 Henry 7 Y., v, 2.
°r I'M r ^V
366
PARALLELISMS.
We all remember Keats' touching epitaph:
Here lies one whose name was writ in water.
We find the original of this thought in Shakespeare:
Noble madam,
Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water.1
And if we follow back the pedigree of the thought we find it in
Bacon's
High treason is not "written in ice.'1
And this reappears in Shakespeare thus:
This weak impress of love is as a figure
TrencJid in ice, which with an hour's heat
Dissolves to water, and does lose his form.3
Bacon:
Your beadsman therefore addresseth himself to your Majesty.4
Shakespeare:
Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers,
For I will be thy beadsman, Valentine.5
In the following we have a striking parallelism. Bacon says:
In this theater of man's life it is reserved, etc.fi
Shakespeare says:
This wide and universal theater
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play.1
And we have the same thought presented in another form.
Bacon says:
Your life is nothing but a continual acting upon a stage.9,
Shakespeare says:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.''
Bacon says:
For this giant bestrideth the sea; and I would take and snare him by the foot on
this side.'0
1 Henry VIII. , IT, 2. • Advancement of Learning.
* Coll. Sent. 7 As You Like It, ii, 6.
8 Two Gentlemen of Verona, iii, 2. 8 Mask.
4 Letter to the King. 9 As You Like It. ii, 7.
* Two Gentlemen of Verona, i, i. l0 Duels.
ID EN TIC A L ME TA PHORS.
367
Shakespeare says:
His legs bestrid the ocean}
And again :
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus. -
Bacon says
Many were glad that these fears and uncertainties were overblown, and that the
die was cast.3
Shakespeare says:
The ague-tit of fear is overblown*
Again:
At 'scapes and perils overblown*
Bacon says:
Religion, justice, counsel and treasure are the four pillars of government*
Shakespeare says:
Brave peers of England, pillars of the state."
The triple pillar of the world.5
These shoulders, these ruined///. 'ars. *
I charge you by the law,
Whereof you are a well-deserving pillar}"
The seeds of plants furnish a favorite subject of comparison
with both writers.
Bacon speaks of ideas that
Cast their seeds in the minds of others.11
He also refers to
The secret seeds of diseases. 1-
Again he says:
There has been covered in my mind a long time a seed of affection and zeal
loward your Lordship.13
Shakespeare says:
There is a history in all men's lives
Figuring the nature of the times deceased;
1 Antony and Cleopatra, v, ». 7 2d Henry I'/., i, i.
2 Julius Ccesar, i, 2. 8 Antony and Cleopatra, i, 1.
3 Begin. History 0/ Great Britain. 9 Henry I'll I., iii, 2.
4 Richard II., iii, 2. 10 Merchant of J'enice, iv, 1.
5 Taming- of the Shrew, v. . ' l Advancement of Learning, book i.
* Essay Of Seditions. » 2 Essay Of Despatch .
12 Letter to Carl of Northumberland.
368
PARALLELISMS.
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet to come to life; which in their seeds
And weak beginnings lie intreasured.1
He also speaks of
The seed of honor.2
The seeds of time.
Bacon compares himself to a torch:
I shall, perhaps, before my death have rendered the age a light unto posterity,
by kindling this new torch amid the darkness of philosophy.4
Again he says:
Matters should receive success by combat and emulation, and not hang upon
any one mans sparkling and shaking torch. h
Shakespeare says:
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not.6
Speaking of Fortune, Shakespeare says:
The wise and fool, the artist and unread,
The hard and soft, seem all affin'd and kin:
But fn the wind and tempest of her frown,
Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,
Puffing at all, winnows the light away;
And what hath mass or matter, by itself
Lies, rich in virtue and unmingled?
And in Bacon we have the same comparison of the winnowing
fan separating the light from the heavy. He says, speaking of
church matters:
And what are mingled but as the chaff and the corn, which need but a fan to
sift and sever them.8
Shakespeare says:
Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France.9
Bacon, describing Essex' expedition against Cadiz, said:
This journey was like lightning. For in the space of fourteen hours the King
of Spain's navy was destroyed and the town of Cales taken.10
1 2d Henry 1 V. , iii , i . 5 Wisdom of the A ncieuts — Prometheus.
2 Merchant of Venice \ ii, 9. 8 Measure for Measure, i, 1.
3 Macbeth, i, 3. 7 Troilus and Cress ida, i, 3.
4 Letter to King James, prefaced to Great 8 The Pacification of the Church.
Jnstauration. ° Kingfohn, i, 1.
10 Consid. touching War with Spain.
IDENTICAL METAPHORS. 360
Bacon called one of his great philosophical works
The scaling-ladder of the intelligence.
Shakespeare has:
Northumberland, thou ladder, wherewithal
The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne.1
Bacon says:
It is the wisdom of crocodiles that shed tears when they would devour.'2
Shakespeare says:
Gloster's show
Beguiles him, as the mournful crocodile
With sorrow snares relenting passengers.3
Says Bacon:
The axe should be put to the root of the tree.4
Says Shakespeare:
We set the axe to thy usurping root.5
But the field of labor in this direction is simply boundless.
One whose memory is stored with the expressions found in the two
sets of writings cannot open either one without being vividly
reminded of the other. Both writers, if we are to consider them,
for the sake of argument, as two persons, thought in the same way:
the cast of mind in each was figurative and metaphorical; both
vivified the driest details with the electricity of the imagination,
weaving it through them like lightning among the clouds; and
each, as I have shown, was very much in the habit of repeating
himself, and thus reiterated the same figures of speech time and
again.
1 Richard II., v, i. 3 2d Henry VI., Hi, 1.
a Essay Of Wisdom for a Man's Self. 4 Proceedings at York House.
6 3d Henry VI., ii, 2.
CHAPTER III.
IDENTICAL OPINIONS.
A plague of opinion ! A man may wear it on both sides like a leather jerkin.
Troilus and Cressida, Hi, 3.
WE come now to another group of parallelisms — those of
thoughts, opinions or beliefs, where the identity is not in
the expression, but in the underlying conception.
We find that both writers had great purposes or intentions of
working for immortality; the one figuring his works as "banks or
mounts," great earthworks, as it were; the other as great
foundations or "bases" on which the future might build.
Bacon says:
I resolved to spend my time wholly in writing, and to put forth that poor
talent or half talent, or what it is, that God hath given me, not, as hereto-
fore, to particular exchanges, but to banks or mounts of perpetuity, which will not
break.1
Shakespeare says:
Were it aught to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honoring,
Or laid great bases for eternity,
Which prove more short than waste or ruining.2
Here the same idea runs through both expressions — "banks of
perpetuity" and "bases for eternity."
Both believed that a wise government should be omniscient.
Bacon says:
So unto princes and states, especially towards wise senators and councils, the
natures and dispositions of the people, their conditions and necessities, their fac-
tions and combinations, their animosities and discontents, ought to be, in regard
to the variety of their intelligence, the wisdom of their observations and the height
of their station where they keep sentinel, in great part clear and transparent.3
Shakespeare says:
The providence that's in a watchful state
Knows almost every grain of Plutus' gold;
Finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps;
1 Touching a Holy War, 2 Sonnet cxxv. 3 Advancement 0/ Learning, bookii.
370
IDENTICAL OPINIONS. 37i
Keeps place with thought, and, almost like the gods,
Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.
There is a mystery (with whom relation
Durst never meddle) in the soul of state;
Which hath an operation more divine
Than breath, or pen, can give expression to.1
Both had noted that envy eats into the spirits and the very body
of a man.
Bacon says:
Love and envy do make a man pine, which other affections do not, because
they are not so continual.'
Such men in other men's calamities are, as it were, in season, and are ever on
the loading part.3
Envy is the worst of all passions, and feedeth upon the spirits, and they again
upon the body.4
Shakespeare says:
Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look: . . .
Such men as he be never at heart's ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves.5
Both speak of hope as a medicine of the mind. Bacon says:
To make hope the antidote of human diseases."5
And again:
And as Aristotle saith, "That young men may be happy, but not otherwise
but by hope.'" "
Shakespeare says:
The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope.*
Both had observed the shriveling of parchment in heat. Bacon
says:
The parts of wood split and contract, shins become shriveled, and not only
that, but if the spirit be emitted suddenly by the heat of the fire, become so hastily
contracted as to twist and roll themselves up.9
Shakespeare uses the same fact as the basis of a striking com-
parison, as to King John, dying of poison:
There is so hot a summer in my bosom,
That all my bowels crumble up to dust:
I am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen
Upon a parchment; and against this fire
Do I shrink up.10
1 Troilus and Cressida, iii, 3. 4 History o/Life and Death. 7 Advancement 0/ Learning.
8 Essay Of Envy . * Julius Caesar, i, 2. B Measure for Measure, iii, 1. ,
3 Essay Of Goodness. • Med. Sacra. • Novum Organunt, book ii.
•• King John, v, 7.
372
PARALLELISMS.
We find both dwelling upon the fact that a shrewd mind will
turn even disadvantages to use. Bacon says:
Excellent wits will make use of every little thing}
Falstaff says:
It is no matter if I do halt; I have the wars for my color, and my pension
shall seem the more reasonable. A good wit will make use of anything. I will
turn diseases to commodity.'2
Both had observed that sounds are heard better at night than
by day. Bacon says:
Sounds are better heard, and farther off, in the evening or in the night, than at
the noon or in the day. . . . But when the air is more thick, as in the night, the
sound spendeth and spreadeth. As for the night, it is true also that the general
silence helpeth.3
Shakespeare says:
Soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.4
And again:
Nerissa. It is your music, madam, of the house.
Portia. Nothing is good, I see, without respect;
Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.5
In the following it appears that the same observation had
occurred to both in another instance.
Bacon says:
Anger suppressed is also a kind of vexation, and causeth the spirit to feed
upon the juices of the body; but let loose and breaking forth it helpeth.6
Shakespeare says:
And again:
The grief that will not speak
Whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break. '
The heart hath treble wrong
When it is barred the aidance of the tongue.8
Both allude to the same curious belief. Bacon says:
The heavens turn about in a most rapid motion, without noise to us perceived;
though in some dreams they have been said to make an excellent music.9
1 Bacon's letter to Sir Foulke Greville, written in the name of the Earl of Essex — Life and'
Works, vol. ii, p. 23.
2 2d Henry IV., i, 2. 8 History of Life and Death.
3 Natural History, cent, ii, §143. 7 Macbeth, iv, 3.
4 Merchant of Venice, v, t. * Poems.
6 Ibid. • Natural History cent. ii.
IDENTICAL OPIXIOXS. 373
Shakespeare idealizes dreams thus:
There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims.1
And here we find both drawing the same distinction between
the approbation of the wise and the foolish.
Hamlet says to the players:
Now this, overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh,
cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must, in your
allowance, o'er-weigh a whole theater of others."
Bacon says:
So it may be said of ostentation, " Boldly sound your own praises, and some of
it will stick." It will stick in the more ignorant and the populace, though men of
wisdom may smile at it; and the reputation won with many will amply countervail
the disdain of a few.3
This conclusion is, of course, ironical.
Bacon compares the earth to an ant-hill, with the men.
Like ants, crawKug up and down. Some carry corn and some carry their
young, and some go empty, and all — to and fro — a little heap of dust*
And we find the same thought in Hamlet:
What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven.5
Here the word crawling expresses the thought of something
vermin-like, insect-like, and the comparison of the whole ant-hill of
the crawling world to "a little heap of dust" was in Bacon's mind
when he wrote:
What a piece of work is man! . . . And yet to me what is this quintessence of
dust ?
Both had noticed the servility of the creatures that fawn on
power. Bacon says:
Such instruments as are never failing about princes, which spy into their
humors and conceits and second them; and not only second them, but in second-
ing increase them; yea, and many times without their knowledge pursue them
farther than themselves would.6
Shakespeare puts these words into the mouth of King John:
It is the curse of kings to be attended
By slaves that take their humor for a warrant
To break within the bloody house of life;
1 Merchant of Venice, v, i. 4 Advancement of Learning, book i.
* Hamlet, iii, 2. 5 Hamlet, iii. 1.
3 De Attgrneniis, book \ iii, p. 281. 6 Letter to Essex, Oct. 4, 1596.
374 PARA LLELISMS.
And, on the winking of authority,
To understand a law; to know the meaning
Of dangerous majesty, when, perchance, it frowns
More upon humor than advised respect.1
Here the same thought is followed out to the same after-
thought: that the creature exceeds the purpose of the king, in his
superserviceable zeal.
Bacon says:
He prays and labors for that which he knows he shall be no less happy with-
out; ... he believes his prayers are heard, even when they are denied, and gives
thanks for that which he prays against. -
Shakespeare says:
We, ignorant of ourselves,
Beg often our own harm, which the wise powers
Deny us for our good; so find we profit
. By losing of our prayers.3
The Rev. H. L. Singleton, of Maryland, calls my attention to
the following parallelism.
Bacon says:
And, therefore, it is no wonder that art hath not the power to conquer nature,
and by pact or law of conquest to kill her; but on the contrary, it turns out that art
becomes subject to nature, and yields obedience as wife to husband.4
And we find in Shakespeare the same philosophy that nature is
superior to the very art which seeks to change her. He says:
Perdita. For I have heard it said,
There is an art which, in their piedness, shares
With great creating nature.
Polixenes. Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean
But nature makes that mean; so, over that art
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes.5
Again Shakespeare says:
Nature's above art.6
Compare this with Bacon's expression, above:
Art becomes subject to nature.
And Bacon says in The New Atlantis :
We make by art, in the same orchards and gardens, trees and flowers to come
1 King John, iv, 2. 4 Atalanta or Gain,
2 Character of a Believing Christian, § 22. ;' Winter's Tale, iv, 3.
» A ntony and Cleopatra. * Lear, iv, 6.
IDENTICAL OPINIONS. ^1$
earlier or later than their seasons, and to come up and bear more speedily than by
their natural course they do. We make them also by their art greater than their
nature.1
This is the same thought that we find in the verses above
quoted:
That art
Which, you say, adds to nature.
Mr. J. T. Cobb calls attention to the following parallelism of
thought. In book ii, Advancement of Learning, Bacon says:
These three, as in the body so in the mind, seldom meet and commonly sever;
. . . and sometimes two of them meet, and rarely all three. -'
While in the Shakespeare sonnets we have:
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords,
Fair, kind and true, have often lived alone,
Which three, till now, never did meet in one.:;
Both regarded rather the fact than the expression of it.
Bacon says:
Here, therefore, is the first distemper of learning, when men study words, and
not matter.4
We seem to hear Hamlet's mocking utterance
What read you, my lord ?
Words, words, words.5
Miss Delia Bacon notea that both held the same view as to the
dependence of men on events.
Shakespeare says:
So our virtues
Lie in the interpretation of the times. 6
While Bacon says:
The times, in many cases, give great light to true interpretations.
Mrs. Pott calls attention to the following parallelism. In
Bacon's Promus, No. 972, we have :
Always let losers have their words.
And Shakespeare echoes this as follows:
Losers will have leave
To ease their stomachs with their bitter words."1
1 New Atlantis. 4 Advancement of Learning, book i.
* 1 Montagu, p. 228. ~° Hamlet, ii, 2.
8 Sonnet cv. , * Coriolanus, iv, 7.
7 Titus Andronicus. iii, 1.
376 PARALLELISMS.
Also:
And well such losers may have leave to speak.1
Bacon says:
For protestations, and professions, and apologies, I never found them very
fortunate; but they rather increase suspicion than clear it..8
In Shakespeare we have:
Hamlet. Madam, how like you this play?
Queen. The lady protests too much, methinks.3
Both even used and believed in the same drug.
Bacon says:
For opening, I commend beads or pieces of carduus benedictus.4
In Much Ado about Nothing we have :
Get you some of this distilled carduus benedictus and lay it to your heart; it is
the only thing for a qualm.5
Both believed that murders were brought to light by the opera-
tion of God. Bacon speaks of the belief in the wounds of the mur-
dered man bleeding afresh at the approach of the murderer, and
says:
It may be that this participateth of a miracle, by God's judgment, zvho usually
bringeth murders to light.
Macbeth says :
It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood;.
Stones have been known to move and trees to speak
Augurs, and understood relations have
By magot-spies, and choughs and rooks, brought forth
The secretest man of blood.6
Bacon speaks of
The instant occasion flying away irreconcilably.'1
Shakespeare says:
The. flighty purpose never is d ertook
Unless the act go with it.8
Church speaks of Bacon's
Great idea of the reality and boundless worth of knowledge . . . which
had taken possession of his whole nature.9
1 2d Henry VI., iii, i. 5 Much Ado about Nothings iii, 4.
2 Speech about Undertakers. 6 Macbeth, iii, 4.
3 Hamlet, iii, 2. " Speech as Lord Chancellor.
* Natural History, cent, x, §963. 8 Macbeth, iv, 1.
IDENTICAL OPINIONS. 377
Shakespeare says:
There is no darkness but ignorance.'
Oh, thou monster, ignorance ! -
Bacon says:
There is no prison to the prison of the thoughts."
Shakespeare has the same thought:
Hamlet. Denmark's a prison.
Rosencrantz. Then is the world one.
Hani. A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons;
Denmark being one of the worst.
Ros. We think not so, my lord. ^
Ham. Why, then./tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad but
thinking makes it so; to me it is a prison.4
As this book is going through the press Mr. James T. Cobb calls
my attention to the following parallelism.
Bacon, in the Novum Organum, referring to the effect of opiates,
says :
The same opiates, when taken in moderation, do strengthen the spirits, render
them more robust, and check the useless and inflammatory motion.5
Falstaff, describing the effect of wine on the system, says, speak-
ing of the "demure boys," like Prince John:
They are generally fools and cowards; which some of us should be, too, but
f o r infla m m at ion}
This word inflammation is uncommon: this is the only occasion
on which it appears in the Plays.
Shakespeare speaks of
Sermons in stones and good in everything.
Bacon says:
There is found in every thing a. double nature oi good?
And here we have a curious parallelism. Bacon says:
It is more than a philosopher morally can digest; but, without any such high
conceit, I esteem it like the pulling out of an aching tooth, which I remember,
when I was a child and had little philosophy, I was glad of when it was done.®
1 Twelfth Night, iv, 2. 4 Hamlet, ii, 2. ' Advancement of Learning
2 Lozie's Labor Lost, iv, 2. 5 Novum Organum, book ii. book ii.
3 Mask for Earl of Essex. 6 id Henry I\\, iv. •. * Letter to Essex.
378
PARALLELISMS.
While Shakespeare links the philosopher and the tooth-ache
together thus:
For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the tooth-ache patiently;
However, they have writ the style of gods,
And made a pish at chance and sufferance.1
The various modes in which fortunes are obtained had occurred
to both writers. Bacon says:
Fortunes are not obtained without all this ado; for I know they come tumbling
into some men's laps; and a number obtain good fortunes by diligence in a plain
way.2
Shakespeare says:
Some men are born great; some achieve greatness; and some have greatness
thrust upon them.3
That is to say, greatness " tumbles into their laps."
And to both had come the thought that while fortune gave with
one hand she stinted with the other.
Bacon says:
It is easy to observe that many have strength of wit and courage, but have
neither help from perturbations, nor any beauty or decency in their doings; some
again have an elegancy and fineness of carriage, which have neither soundness of
honesty nor substance of sufficiency; and some, again, have honest and reformed
minds and can neither become themselves or manage business; and sometimes
two of them meet, and rarely all three.4
Shakespeare says:
Will fortune never come with both hands full ? . . .
She either gives a stomach and no food —
Such are the poor in health; or else a feast,
And takes away the stomach — such are the rich
That have abundance and enjoy it not.5
Bacon says:
It is not good to look too long upon these turning wheels of vicissitude, lest
we become giddy.6
Shakespeare has:
Fortune, good-night; smile again,
Turn thy wheel?
Again:
Giddy Fortune 's furious fickle wheel.*
1 Much Ado about Nothing, v. i. B 2d Henry J I '., iv. 4,.
2 Advancement of Learning, book ii. fi History 0/ Life and Death.
* Twelfth Night, iii, 5. • Lear, ii, 2.
4 Advancement of L earning, book ii. 8 Henry /". iii, 6.
IDENTICAL OPINIONS, 37o
Again:
Consider it not so deeply,
That way madness lies.1
We find that both writers realized the wonderfully complex
character of the human creature.
Bacon says:
Of all things comprehended within the compass of the universe, man is a thing
most mixed and compounded, insomuch that he was well termed by the ancients
a little world. ... It is furnished with most admirable virtues and faculties. %
And again:
Of all the substances which nature hath produced, man's body is most extremely
compounded: ... in his mansion, sleep, exercise, passions, man hath infinite
variations.*
The Plays were written, in part, to illustrate the characteristics
of that wonderfully compounded creature, man. And in them we
find:
What a piece of work is man ! How noble in reason ! How infinite in faculty!
In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel ! In
apprehension how like a god ! The beauty of the world ! The paragon of animals !4
These are the admirable faculties referred to by Bacon; and
" the little world " of the ancients, the microcosm, reappears in Shake-
speare:
If you see this in the map of my microcosm, follows it that I am known well
enough too?5
And in the play of Richard II. we find the very expression.
"little world," applied to the human being:
My brain 1*11 prove the female to my soul;
My soul the father: and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world;
In humors like the people of this world/'
Bacon has the following thought :
Xo doubt in him, as in all men, and most of all in kings, his fortune wrought
upon his nature, and his nature upon his fortune.7
The same thought occurs in Shakespeare:
I grow to what I work in.
Like the dver's hand.8
1 Macbeth, ii, 2. 5 Coriolanus, ii, t.
2 Wisdom of the A ncients — Prometheus. 8 Richard II., v, 4.
3 Advancement 0/ Learning, book ii. 7 History 0/ Henry VII.
* Hamlet, ii. 2. a Sonnet.
°r rut +
380 PARALLELISMS.
And both concurred in another curious belief.
Bacon says:
And therefore whatsoever want a man hath, he must see that he pretend the
virtue that shadoweth it.1
Shakespeare says:
Assume a virtue if you have it not.2
Bacon says:
Envy makes greatness the mark and accusation the game.
Shakespeare says:
That thou art blarhed shall not be thy defect,
For slander's mark was ever yet the fair;
The ornament of beauty is suspect,
A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.;;
Something of the same thought is found in Bacon's Promus,
No. 41:
Dat veniam corvis vexat censura columbas. (Censure pardons crows, but bears
hard on doves.)
" Slander's mark was ever yet the fair." The beautiful dove falls
readily under suspicion; but censure pardons " the crow that flies
in heaven's sweetest air."
Bacon says:
Health consisteth in an unmovable constancy and a freedom from passions,
which are indeed the sicknesses of the mind*
Macbeth asks the physician:
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?1
Bacon says:
For reverence is that wherewith princes are girt from God.6
And again:
For God hath imprinted such a majesty in the face of a prince that no private
man dare approach the person of his sovereign with a traitorous intent.7 ■
Shakespeare surrounds the king with a hedge — a divine hedge
— which girts him:
There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.8
1 Advancement of Learning, book ii.
^ Hamlet, iii, 4.
3 Sonnet lxx.
4 Letter to Earl of Rutland, written
in the name of the Earl of Essex.
6 Macbeth, v, 3.
6 Essay Of Seditions.
" Speech on the Trial of Essex.
h Hamlet, iv, 5.
38i
IDENTICAL OPINIONS.
Says Bacon:
This princess having the spirit of a man and malice of a woman.1
Shakespeare has a similar antithesis:
I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.2
The indestructibility of thought as compared with the tempo-
rary nature of material things had occurred to both. Bacon says:
For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years, with-
out the loss of a syllable or a letter, during which time infinite palaces, temples,
castles, cities have been decayed and demolished.3
And Shakespeare, in a magnificent burst of egotism, possible
only under a mask, cries out:
Xot marble,
Nor the gilded monuments of princes,
Shall outlive this powerful rhyme.4
Bacon has this thought:
For opportunity makes the thief.5
Shakespeare says:
And even thence thou wilt be stolen, 1 fear,
For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.6
And again:
Rich preys make true men thieves.7
And again:
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds
Makes ill deeds done.8
Bacon tells us that King Henry VII. sent his commissioners to
inspect the Queen of Naples with a view to matrimony, and desired
them
To report as to her " complexion, favor, feature, stature, health, age, customs,
behavior, condition and estate," as if he meant to find all things in one woman.*
And in Shakespeare we find Benedick soliloquizing:
One woman is fair; yet I am well: another is wise; yet I am well: another vir-
tuous; yet I am well; but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come
in mv grace.10
1 History of Henry I'/t. 6 Sonnet xlviii.
' Julius Ccesar, ii, 4. 7 Venus and Adonis.
3 Advancement of Learning, book i. 8 King John, iv, 2.
4 Sonnet. 9 History of Henry 17/.
5 Letter to Essex, 1598. 10 Much Ado about Nothing, ii, 2,
^ 8 2 PA RA L LELISMS.
Bacon says:
The corruption of the best things is the worst.1
Shakespeare has the same thought:
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.*2
Bacon speaks of
The mind of man drawn over and clouded with the sable pavilion of the body.1
And Bacon also says:
So differing a harmony there is between the spirit of man and the spirit of
nature.4
While Shakespeare says:
Such harmony is in mortal souls;
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.5
Bacon says:
A king is a mortal god on earth*
Shakespeare says:
True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings,
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.1
Again:
Kipgs are earth's gods; in vice their law's their will.8
Again:
He is their god; he leads them like a thing
Made by some other deity than Nature.9
Bacon says:
A beautiful face is a silent commendation.™
Shakespeare says:
The beauty that is borne here in the face
The bearer knows not, but commends itseif
To others' eyes.11
We find a curious parallelism in the following. Bacon says:
For we die daily; and as others have given place to us, so we must in the end
give way to others.12
1 History of Henry VII. * New Atlantis. 8 Pericles, i, i.
'2 Sonnet. 6 Merchant of Venice, v, i. 9 Coriolanus, iv, 6.
3 Advancement of Learn- *TL8&a.yOfaKing: 10 Orna. Rati.
ing, book ii. 7 Richard III., v, 2. n Troilits and Cressida, iii, 3.
"Essay Of Death.
I DEN TIC A L OP IX IONS.
Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Orlando these words;
38:
Only in the world I fill up a place, which may be better supplied when I have
made it empty.1
Bacon says:
The expectation [of death] brings terror, and that exceeds the evil.2
Shakespeare says:
Dost thou fear to die ?
The sense of death is most in apprehension/1
Bacon says:
Art thou drowned in security ? Then say thou art perfectly dead.
Shakespeare says:
You all know, security
Is mortal's chiefest enemy.4
Hamlet discusses the length of time a body will last in the
earth. And Bacon had studied the same curious subject, and he
notes the fact that
In churchyards where they bury much, the earth will consume the corpse in far
shorter time than other earth will.8
Bacon says:
The green caterpillar breedeth in the inward parts of roses, especially not
blown, where the dew sticketh.6
Shakespeare says:
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek.7
H. L. Haydel, of St. Louis, calls my attention to the following
parallelism noted by Rev. Henry N. Hudson, in his note upon a
passage in Hamlet, i, 4.
Mr. Hudson gives the passage, in his edition of the Plays, as fol-
lows:
Their virtues else — be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo —
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault; the dram of leaven
Doth all the noble substance of 'em sour
To his own scandal.
Hudson says in his foot-note:
The meaning is that the dram of leaven sours all the noble substance of their
1 As ] 'on Like It, i, 2. * Macbeth, iii, 5. • Ibid, § 728.
2 Essay Of Death. 3 Natural History, § 330. 7 Twelfth Night, ii, 4. '
:i Measure for Measure, iii, 1.
384 PARALLELISMS.
virtues. . . . And so in Bacon's History of Henry I'll.: "And as a little leaven of
new distaste doth commonly sour the whole lump of former merits."
Here again we find the critics reading the obscure passages in
Shakespeare by the light of Bacon's utterances.
Both writers felt a profound contempt for the authority of books
alone. In Shakespeare this was most remarkable. A mere poet,
with no new philosophy to introduce, seeking in the writings of
preceding ages only for the beautiful, could have had no motive
for thus attacking existing opinions. And yet we find him
saying:
Study is like the heavens' glorious sun,
That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks;
Small have continual plodders ever won,
Save base authority, from others' books.1
In Bacon we find the same opinion and the reason for it. His
whole life was a protest against the accepted conclusions of his
age; his system could only rise upon the overthrow of that of Aris-
totle. He protested against
The first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter.2
Again he says:
In the universities of Europe men learn nothing but to believe; first to believe
that others know that which they know not; and after, themselves to believe that
they know that which they know not.3
And again:
Are we richer by one poor invention by reason of all the learning that hath
been these many hundred years.4
And again he says:
Neither let him embrace the license of contradicting or the servitude of
authority}
This is the very expression of Shakespeare:
Small have continual plodders ever won,
Save base authority.
And again Bacon says:
To make judgment wholly by their rules [studies] is the humor of a scholar.
Crafty men contemn them, simple men admire them, and wise men use them.
1 Love's Labor Lost, i, 1. 4 Ibid.
2 Advancement of Learning, book i. 5 Interpretation 0/ Nature.
3 In Praise 0/ Knowledge. 6 Essay Of Studies.
IDENTICAL OPINIONS. 385
And Shakespeare says:
Why universal plodding prisons up
The nimble spirits in the arteries.1
And in this connection we have the following opinion of Bacon:
It seems to me that Pygmalion's frenzy is a good emblem or portraiture of this
vanity, for words are but the images of matter; and, except they have life of
reason and invention, to fall in love with them is all one to fall in love with a
picture.
We hear the echo of this thought in Hamlet's contemptuous
iteration:
Words, 7cords, ivords.
And Bacon's very thought is found again in the following:
Idle words, servants to shallow fools.
Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators !
Busy yourselves in skull-contending schools;
Debate, where leisure serves, with dull debaters.2
Both writers regarded the lusts or passions of the mind with
contempt, and perceived their unsatisfying nature. Bacon says:
And they all know, who have paid dear for serving and obeying their lusts,
that whether it be honor, or riches, or delight, or glory, or knowledge, or anything
else which they seek after, yet are they but things cast off, and by divers men in
all ages, after experience had utterly rejected and loathed.3
And we find the same thought in Shakespeare:
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof — and proved a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.4
And again:
If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of
sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most pre-
posterous conclusions.5
Both believed that the influences of evil were more persistent in
the world than those of goodness.
1 Love 's Labor Lost '; iv, 3. -Poems. 3 Wisdojn of the Ancients — Dionysius.i
4 Sonnet exxix. h Othello, i. %.
3 86 PARALLELISMS.
Bacon says:
Those that bring honor into their family are commonly more worthy than most
that succeed; . . . for ill to man's nature (as it stands perverted) hath a natural
motion strongest in continuance; but good, as a forced motion, strongest at first.1
Shakespeare says:
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones.'2
And again:
Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water.3
Neither writer assented to the belief of the age (since by scien-
tific tests made a verity) that the condition of the patient's health
was shown by the appearance of his urine.
Bacon says:
Those advertisements which your Lordship imputed to me I hold to be no
more certain to make judgment upon than a patient's water to a physician.4
In Shakespeare we find the following:
Falstaff. Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water?
Page. He said, sir, the water itself was a good, healthy water; but for the
party that owned it, he might have more diseases than he knew for.
Both believed that too long a continuance of peace caused the
people to degenerate. Bacon argued that, as the body of man
could not remain in health without exercise, the body of a state
needed exercise also in the shape of foreign wars. He says:
If it seem strange that I account no state flourishing but that which hath
neither civil wars nor too long peace, I answer that politic bodies are like our natur-
al bodies, and must as well have some natural exercise to spend their humors, as
to be kept from too violent or continual outrages which spend their best spirits.5
And we find the same thought, of the necessity of expelling the
humors of the body by the exercise of war, in Shakespeare:
This is the impost hume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
Why the man dies.6
Again Bacon says:
This want of learning hath been in good countries ruined by civil wars, or in
states corrupted through wealth or too great length of peace.1,
1 Essay. the name of the Earl of Essex — Life
2 Julius Ccesar, iii, 2. and Works, vol. ii, p. 12.
3 Henry VIII., iv, 2. B Ilam/et, iv, 4.
4 Letter to Essex concerning Earl of 7 Letter to the Earl of Rutland, written in
Tyrone. the name of the Earl of Essex — Life
6 Letter to the Earl of Rutland, written in and Works, vol. ii, p. 12.
WEN TIL 'A L OP IX 10 XS.
!»7
And in the foregoing we have the very collocation of wealth and
peace used by Hamlet, and the same thought of corruption at work
in both cases.
Shakespeare says:
This peace is nothing but to rust iron, increase tailors and breed ballad-
makers.1
And again:
Discarded, unjust servingmen, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted
tapsters, and ostlers trade-fallen; the cankers of a calm world and a long peace}
Both writers regarded the period of youth as one of great
danger.
Bacon says:
For. those persons which are of a turbulent nature or appetite do commonly
pass their youth in many errors; and about their middle, and then and not before,
they show forth their perfections.3
And again:
He passed that dangerous time of his youth in the highest fortune, and in a
vigorous state of health.4
Shakespeare makes the same observation:
Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days.
Either not assailed, or victor, being charged.5
And this word ambush, then an unusual one, is also found in
Bacon's writings: he speaks6 of the Sphynx "lying in ambush for
travelers."
We find a group of identities in reference to the use of intoxi-
cating drinks. These I have already given in the chapter on "The
Purposes of the Plays."
But while both condemned drunkenness they agreed in believ-
ing that, within reasonable limits, the use of intoxicating liquors
strengthened and elevated the race.
Bacon says:
• The use of wine in dry and consumed bodies is hurtful: in moist and full bodies
it is good. The cause is, for that the spirits of the wine do prey upon the dew or
radical moisture, as they call it, of the body, and so deceive the animal spirits.
But where there is moisture enough or superfluous, there wine helpeth to digest, and
desiccate the moisture."
I
1 Coriolamts, iv, 5. * In Praise 0/ Henry Prince of Wales.
2 rst Henry IV. , iv. 2. 5 Sonnet lxx.
3 Civil Character of A ugustus Ccesar. 6 Wisdom of the A ncients — Sphynx. <
1 Natural History \ § 727.
388 PARALLELISMS.
And again:
I see France, Italy or Spain have not taken into use beer or ale; which, per-
haps if they did, would better both their healths and their complexions}
And Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Falstaff, who was
" moist and full" enough, in a state of ''constant dissolution and
thaw," as he said himself, the same opinion:
A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the
brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapors which environ it. . . .
It illuminateth the face; which, as a beacon, gives warning to all the rest of this
little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital commoners, the inland petty spirits,
muster me all to their captain, the heart, who, great and puffed up with this reti-
nue, doth any deed of courage.2
Here we have the same belief as to the virtues of wine, and the
same reason, the drying or desiccating of the superfluous humors;
and in both cases we have the belief that the spirits of the man are
acted upon by the wine — a belief we shall touch upon hereafter.
And in Bacon we will find another reference to this ascending of
the spirits into the head. .He says:
The vapors which were gathered by sitting fly more up into the head.3
But the identity of belief upon this point goes still farther.
Each writer held to the opinion that the children of drunken men
were more likely to be females than males. Bacon says:
It hath been observed by the ancients, and is yet believed, that the sperm of
drunken men is unfruitful. The cause is, for that it is over-moistened and
wanteth spissitude; and we have a merry saying, that they that go drunk to bed
get daughters .4
Shakespeare says:
There's never any of these demure boys come to any proof; for their drink
doth so overcool their blood, and making many fish-meals, that they fall into a
kind of male green-sickness; and then, when they marry, they get wenches. . . .
If I had a thousand sons, the first principle I would teach them should be, to for-
swear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.5
And again:
He was gotten in drink. Is not the humor conceited ?
His mind is not heroic, and there's the humor of it.6
And we find the same thought, that great vigor and vitality
causes the offspring to be masculine in gender, in Macbeth's
exclamation to Lady Macbeth:
1 Natural History, % 705. 3 Natural History, % 734. 6 2d Henry IV., iv, 3.
2 2d Henry IV. , iv, 3. 4 Ibid., § 723. fi Merry Wives of H'indsor, i, 2..
IDENTICAL OPINIONS. 389
Bring forth men-children only,
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males.1
Both writers recognize the vast superiority of the intellectual
forces over the bodily.
Bacon says:
The mind is the man. ... A man is but what he knoweth.2
Shakespeare has the same thought:
In nature there's no blemish, but the mind,*
'Tis the mind that makes the body rich.4
I saw Othello's visage in his mind,1
Bacon says:
Pain and danger be great only by opinion.6
Shakespeare says:
For there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.7
The discrimination which we find in Shakespeare between appe-
tite and digestion, and their relations one to another, reappears in
Bacon.
Macbeth says:
Now good digestion wait on appetite,
And health on both.8
Bacon speaks of
Appetite, which is the spur of digestion.9
Both writers believed that the strict course of justice should be
moderated by mercy.
Bacon says:
He [the King] must always resemble Him whose great name he beareth . . .
in manifesting the sweet influence of his mercy on the severe stroke of his justice.10
And again:
In causes of life and death, judges ought (as far as the law permitteth) in justice
to remember mercy, and to cast a severe eye upon the example, but a merciful eye
upon the person.11
1 Macbeth, i, 7. 8 Letter to the Earl of Rutland, written in
a Praise of Knoiuledge. the name of the Earl of Essex.
3 Twelfth Night, iii, 4. 7 Hamlet, ii, 2.
4 Taming of the Shrew, iv, 3. ■ Macbeth, iii, 4.
* Othello, i, 3. » History of Life and Death.
10 Essay Of a King.
11 Essay Of fudicature.
39°
PARALLELISMS.
The same humane spirit is manifested in the Shakespeare
writings:
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.1
And again:
Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods ?
Draw near them, then, in being merciful. -
And again:
Alas, alas !
Why, all the souls that are were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy: How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? Oh, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips
Like man new made.3
Both were keenly alive to the purity and sweetness of the
atmosphere.
In his History of Life and Death 4 Bacon discusses " the healthful-
ness of the air" and the modes of testing its purity, as by exposing
a lock of wool or a piece of flesh, etc.
He says in another place:
At Gorhambury there is sweet air if any is.5
And again:
The discovery of the disposition of the air is good . . . for the choice of
places to dwell in; at the least for lodges and retiring-places for health.6
And in the same chapter in which he discusses the purity of the
air in dwelling-houses and the mode of ascertaining- it, he refers to
birds:
Which use to change countries at certain seasons, if they come earlier, do show
the temperature of weather according to that country whence they came.7
For prognostics of weather from living creatures, it is to be noted, that
creatures that live in the open air, sub dio, must needs have a quicker impression
from the air than men that live most within doors; and especially birds, that live
in the air freest and clearest.8
And again he notes that
Kites flying aloft show fair and dry weather, . . . for that they mount most
into the air of that temper wherein they delight.9
1 Merchant of I 'cuke, iv, i. 4 §29, etc. 7 Ibid., §816.
2 Titus Andronicus, i, 2. 5 Letter to Buckingham, 1619. 8 Ibid., §822.
* Measure for Measure, ii, 2. • Natural History, §808. 9 Ibid., §824.
IDENTICAL OPINIONS. 39I
And we have the same set of thoughts — the sweetness of the
air in special places, and the delight of birds in pure air — in the
famous words uttered by Duncan and Banquo:
Daman. This castle hath a pleasant seat: the air
Nimbly and gently recommends itself
Unto our senses.
Banquo. This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coigne of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle:
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed
The air is delicate.1
Both refer to the effect of terror upon the rising of the hair.
Bacon says:
The passions of the mind work upon the body the impressions following: fear
causeth paleness, trembling, the standing of the hair upright, starting and shriek-
ing.'1
Shakespeare says:
The time has been, my senses would have cooled
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir
As life were in 't.3
Both, while to some extent fatalists, believed that a man pos-
sesses to a large extent the control over his own fortune.
Bacon says:
Chiefly the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands.4
And again:
It is not good to fetch fortune from the stars.'0
While Shakespeare says:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.6
And curiously enough, both drew the same conclusions as to
reading character by personal appearance, while they held that,
as Shakespeare says:
There's no art
To read the mind's construction in the face.7
1 Macbeth, i, 6. s Macbeth, v, 5. 5 History of Henry I II.
2 Natural History, § 713. 4 Essay Of Fortune. 6 Julius Ccesar, i, 2.
7 Macbeth, i, 1.
392
PA RA LLELISMS.
And again :
No more can you distinguish of a man
Than of his outward show, which, God he knows,
Seldom, or never, jumpeth with the heart.1
And Bacon argued :
Neither let that be feared which is said, Fronti nulla fides: which is meant of
a general outward behavior, and not of the private and subtle motions and labors
of the countenance and gesture. '-
And this distinction, between the revelations made by the mere
cast or shape or controlled attitudes of the face, and the expres-
sions of the face or motions of the body, appears in Shakespeare:
There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gestures.3
Again we find it in Ulysses' wonderful description of Cressida:
Fie, fie upon her !
There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,
Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive [motion ?] of her body.4
And we find Bacon observing:
For every passion doth cause, in the eyes, face and gesture, certain indecent
and ill-seeming, apish and deformed motions.5
And again he says:
So in all physiognomy the lineaments of the body will discover those natural
inclinations of the mind which dissimulation will conceal or discipline will
suppress.6
And we find Shakespeare putting into the mouth of King John
these words, descriptive of Hubert:
Hadst thou not been by,
A fellow by the hand of nature marked,
Quoted and signed to do a deed of shame.7
And Bacon says:
For Aristotle hath very ingeniously and diligently handled the features of the
body, but not the gestures of the body, which are no less comprehensible by art,
and of greater use and advantage. For the lineaments of the body do disclose the
disposition and inclination of the mind in general, but the motions of the counte-
nance and parts do not only so, but do further disclose the present humor and state
of the mind and will.8
And in this connection we find another parallelism. Bacon
says:
It is necessary to use a steadfast countenance, not wavering with action, as in
1 Richard III., iii, I, 5 Wisdom of the Ancients — Dionysiiis.
2 Advancement of Learning, book ii. 6 Natural History, cent. ix.
3 Winter's Tale, v, 2. 7 Kingfohn, iv, 2.
4 Troilus and Cressida, iv, 5. 8 Advancement of Learning, book ii.
IDENTICAL OPINIONS. ^
moving the head or hand too much, which showeth a fantastical, light and fickle
spirit.1 •
And Hamlet, in his instructions to the players, says:
Nor do not saw the air too much — your hand thus; but use all gently.2
Both had the same high admiration for the capacity to bear
misfortunes with patience and self-control.
Bacon says:
Yet it is a greater dignity of mind to bear evils by fortitude and judgment than
by a kind of absenting and alienation of the mind from things present to things
future, for that it is to hope. ... I do judge a state of mind which in all doubtful
expectations is settled and fioateth not, and doth this out of good government
and composition of the affections, to be one of the principal supporters of man's
life; but that assurance and repose of the mind which only rides at anchor itpori
hope, I do reject as wavering and weak.3
Shakespeare says:
For thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Has ta'en with equal thanks; and blessed are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please.4
And the expression of Bacon quoted above, " the mind which
only rides at anchor upon hope," is paralleled in Shakespeare:
If eyes, corrupt by over-partial looks,
Be anchored in the bay where all men ride.5
Both believed in the universal presence and power of goodness.
Ba-on said:
The inclination to goodness is deeply implanted in the nature of man; inso-
much, that if it issue not toward man it will take unto other living creatures.6
And again:
There is formed in everything a double nature of good.7
And again:
For the affections themselves carry ever an appetite to good, as reason doth.-
Shakespeare has:
There is some soul of goodness in things evil
Would men observingly distill it out.9
1 Civil Conversations. 5 Sonnet cxxxvii.
5 Hamlet, iii, 2. 6 Essay 0/ Goodness.
3 Med. SacrcB — Of Earthly Hope. ''Advancement 0/ Learning, book ii.
-* Hamlet, iii, 2. 8 Ibid. »
9 Henry J'., iv, 1.
394 PARALLELISMS,
And again:
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.^
Bacon says:
And we willingly place the history of arts among the species of natural history,
because there have obtained a now inveterate mode of speaking and notion, as if
art were something different from nature, so that things artificial ought to be dis-
criminated from things natural, as if wholly and generically distinct. . . . And
there has insinuated into men's minds a still subtler error, namely this, that art is
conceived to be a sort of addition to nature, the proper effect of which is mere words
and rhetorical ornament.2
Shakespeare has the following:
Perdita. For I have heard it said,
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature.
Polixenes. Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean; so o'er that art,
Which you say adds to nature, is an art that nature makes.
Here we have, in the same words, a reference to an opinion,
held by others, that art is an addition to nature, and a dissent from it
by the writer, in each case.
And that other thought, that man's art shares with God the
creative force and faculty, Judge Holmes shows had also occurred
to Bacon:
Art or man is added to the universe; and it must almost necessarily be con-
cluded that the human soul is endowed with providence, not without the example,
intention and authority of the greater providence.3
That is to say, that man is a sort of a deputy of God to carry
forward the work of creation.
And we find Shakespeare alluding, in the same spirit, to "the
providence that's in a watchful state,"4 as if "the human soul," gov-
erning the state, "was endowed with providence."
And we find the same thought, that man is a species of lesser
God, to whom the creative force has been delegated, expressed
again in these lines:
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion.5
1 As You Like It, ii, i. 3 Authorship of Shak., p. 5x2^
2 Intell. Globe, chapter iii. 4 Troilus ami Cressida, iii, 3.
8 Midsummer Night's Dream, i, 2.
IDENTICAL OPINIONS. 395
Both believed that sickness or weakness left the mind open
to the influence of external spirits. Bacon says:
So much more in impressions from mind to mind, or from spirit to spirit, the
impression taketh, but is encountered and overcome by the mind and spirit.
. . . And, therefore, they work most upon weak minds and spirits, as those of
women, sick persons, superstitious and fearful persons.1
Shakespeare makes Hamlet say:
The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil; and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps,
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
(As he is very potent with such spirits),
Abuses me to damn me.2
Here we have precisely the same idea.
The author of A New Study of Shakespeare •, Mr. W. F. C. Wigston,
calls attention to the following parallelism.
Bacon says:
It is evident that the dullness of men is such, and so infelicitous, that when
things are put before their feet, they do not see them, unless admonished, but
pass on.
Shakespeare says:
The jewel that we find we stoop and take it,
Because we see it; but what we do not see
We tread upon, and never think of it.3
Both had observed the fear that men have of making their wills
until the last moment.
Bacon says:
When their will is made they think themselves nearer the grave than before.4
In Shakespeare we find the following:
Slender. Now, good Mistress Anne.
Anne. What is your will ?
Slender. My will? Ods-hart-lings, that's a pretty jest indeed. I ne'er made
my will yet, I thank Heaven: I am not such a sickly creature, I give Heaven
praise.5
Mrs. Pott calls attention to the following parallelism.
Bacon has in his Protnus this note:
It is in action as it is in ways; commonly the nearest is the foulest.6
1 Xatural History, §901. * Essay Of Death.
2 Hamlet, ii, 2. . 5 Merry Wives of Windsor, iii, 4.
3 Measure for Measure, ii, 1. * Protnus, No. 532.
396
PA HA LLELISMS.
Shakespeare has it:
[Your heart] is too full of the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way.1
That is, the foul way of murder, which was the nearest way to
the crown.
I might continue this chapter to greater length; but I think I
have given enough to show that the same wonderful parallelism
which exists between the forms of expression in the two sets of
writings extends also to the opinions and beliefs set forth therein.
It will, of course, be easy for a dishonest mind to treat these
parallelisms as Richard Grant White did those in Mrs. Pott's
Promus — that is, ignore the strongest ones, and select the least
striking and put them forth as the strongest. But in the long run
truth is not to be arrested by such tricks, nor can a great argument
be conducted by men who are mean enough to resort to them.
1 Macbeth, i, 2.
CHAPTER IV.
IDENTICAL QUOTA TIOXS,
And these same thoughts people this little world.
Richard II., v,j.
IF the two minds were one, if they thought the same thoughts,,
and employed the same comparisons and expressions, it might
be that we would find them quoting the same things from the
same books.
I remember a few instances of this kind, and many more might
be found by a diligent examination of the two sets of writings.
Bacon says:
In this they fall into the error described in the ancient fable, in which the
other parts of the body did suppose the stomach had been idle, because it neither
performed the office of motion, as the limbs do, nor of sense, as the head doth; but
yet, notwithstanding, it is the stomach that digesteth and distributeth to all the
rest.1
In Shakespeare we have the following:
There was a time when all the body's members
Rebelled against the belly; thus accused it:
That only like a gulf it did remain
I' the midst o' the body, idle and unactive,
Still cupboarding the viands, never bearing
Like labor with the rest; where the other instruments
Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel,
And mutually participate; did minister
Unto the appetite and affection common
Of the whole body. The belly answered, . . .
"' True it is, my incorporate friends," quoth he,
" That I receive the general food at first,
Which you do live upon: and fit it is;
Because I am the storehouse and the shop
Of the whole body. But, if you do remember,
I send it through the rivers of your blood
Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o' the brain,.
And through the cranks and offices of man :
The strongest nerves, and small inferior veins,
From me receive that natural competency
Whereby they live."2
1 Advancement of Learning, book ii. 2 Coriolanus, i, i.
397
398 PARALLELISMS.
And here I would refer to the anecdote which Bacon tells in his
Apophthegms :
Sir Nicholas Bacon, being appointed a judge for the northern circuit, . . . was,
by one of the malefactors, mightily importuned to save his life, which, when nothing
that he had said did avail, at length desired his mercy on the account of kindred.
" Prythee," said my lord Judge, " how came that in ?" " Why, if it please you, my
lord, your name is Bacon »and mine is Hog, and in all ages hog and bacon have
been so near kindred that they are not to be separated." " Ay, but," replied Judge
Bacon, " you and I cannot be kindred except you be hanged, for hog is not bacon
until it be well hanged."
Shakespeare has this:
Evans. I pray you, have remembrance, child: Accusativo, hung, hang, hog.
Quickly. Hang hog is Latin for Bacon, I warrant you.1
Bacon says:
Such 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.2
Shakespeare says:
Ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth; where the glutton's dogs licked his
sores.3
Bacon says:
Philo Judaeus saith that the sense is like the sun; for the sun seals up the
globe of heaven [the stars] and opens the globe of earth; so the sense doth obscure
heavenly things and reveals earthly things.4
When Lorenzo contemplates the heavens by night, thick ''inlaid
with patines of bright gold," he speaks of the music of the spheres,
and adds:
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.5
Bacon says:
For of lions it is a received belief that their fury and fierceness ceaseth toward
anything that yieldeth and prostrateth itself.6
Shakespeare has the following:
Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you,
And again
Which better fits a lion than a man.7
For 'tis the nature of that noble beast
To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.
1 Merry Wives of Windsor, iv, 1. •' Merchant of Venice, v, 1.
3 Essay Of Goodness. 6 Med. Sacra— Exaltation of Charity.
3 1st Henry IV., iv, 2. » Troilus and Cressida, v, 3.
4 Apophthegms. 'As You Like It, iv, 3.
IDENTIC A I. QUOTA TIO XS. 399
Bacon says:
But these three are the true stages of knowledge, which, to those that are puffed
up with their own knowledge and rebellious against God, are indeed no better than
the giant's three hills:
" Ter sunt coiiatl imponere Pelio Ossatn,
Scilicet atque Ossce frondosum involvere Olympum."
[Mountain on mountain thrice they strove to heap:
Olympus, Ossa, piled on Pclioii s steep.] l
And we find Shakespeare employing the same quotation:
Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead;
Till of this flat a mountain you have made,
To o'ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head
Of old Olympus, . . .
Till our ground,
Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
Make Ossa like a wart.'2
Here we have the three mountains named in the quotation —
Olympus, Pelion, Ossa — and the comparison in both cases is that
of piling one on top of the other.
Describing the chameleon, Bacon says:
He feedeth not only upon the air, though that be his principal sustenance.3
Again:
And so feed her [the Queen] with expectation.4
We turn to Shakespeare, and we find the following:
King. How fares our cousin Hamlet?
Ham. Excellent, i' faith; of the chameleon s dish: I eat the air, promise-
crammed. You cannot feed capons so.5
Bacon says:
And therefore
fess their secre
Shakespeare says:
And therefore the poet doth elegantly call passions tortures, that urge men to
confess their secrets.
Better be with the dead,
Whom we. to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstacy.6
Bacon has the following:
It was both pleasantly and wiSely said ... by a Pope's nuncio, returning
from a certain nation where he served as lieger; whose opinion being asked touch-
1 De A ugmentis, book iii. * Letter to Essex, October 4, 1596.
2 Hamtet, v, 1. 5 Hamlet, iii, 2.
3 Natural History, % 360. 6 Macbeth, iii, 2.
400 PARALLELISMS.
ing the appointment of one to go in his place, he wished that in any case they did
not send one that was too wise; because no very wise man would even imagine
what they in that country were like to do.1
While Shakespeare puts the same quotation thus:
Hamlet. Ay, many, why was he sent into England ?
jst Clown. Why, because he was mad; he shall recover his wits there; or, if
he do not, it is no great matter there.
Hamlet. Why ?
ist Clown. 'Twill not be seen in him; there the men are as mad as he.5
In The Wisdom of the Ancietits Bacon quotes the fable of Orpheus,
and says:
So great was the power and alluring force of this harmony, that he drew the
woods and moved the very stones to come and place themselves in an orderly and
decent fashion about him.
Shakespeare says:
Therefore, the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods;
Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage
But music for a time doth change his nature.3
For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews,
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones.4
Judge Holmes calls attention to the following instance.
In Plutarch's Life of Antony is told the story of Timon's tree.
North's translation reads as follows:
Ye men of Athens, in a court-yard belonging to my house grows a large
fig-tree, on which many an honest citizen has been pleased to hang himself: now,
as I have thought of building upon that spot, I could not omit giving you this pub-
lic notice, to the end that if any more among you have a mind to make the same
use of my tree, they may do it speedily before it is destroyed.
Bacon alludes to this story as follows, in his essay Of Goodness ;
Misanthropi that make it their practice to bring men to the bough, and yet
have never a tree for the purpose in their gardens, as Timon had.
While Shakespeare, in the play of Timon of Athens? says:
Timon. I have a tree which grows here in my close,
That mine own use invites me to cut down,
And shortly must I sell it. Tell my friends,
Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree,
From high to low throughout, that whoso please
To stop affliction, let him take his haste,
Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe,
And hang himself.
1 Advancement of Learning, book ii. 3 Merchant of Venice, v, i.
2 Hamlet, v, i. 4 Two Gentlemen of Verona, iii, -z.
6 Act iv, scene i.
IDENTICAL QUOTATIONS. 401
Henry Lewis, in his Essays of Bacon, points out an instance
where the two writers refer to the same incident. Bacon, in his
essay Of Prophecies, says:
Henry VI. of England said of Henry VII., when he was a lad, and gave him
water, " This is the lad shall enjoy the crown for which we strive."
In Shakespeare we find the same event thus alluded to:
Come hither, England's hope. If secret powers
Suggest but truth to my divining thoughts,
This pretty lad will prove our country's bliss, . . .
Likely, in time, to bless a regal throne.1
The same author also calls attention to this parallelism. In the
same essay Of Prophecies Bacon refers to
A phantasm that appeared to M. Brutus in his tent, and said to him, Philippus
interum vie videbis — (Thou shalt see me again at Philippi).
Shakespeare, in Julius Casar, has:
Brutus. Speak to me what thou art.
Ghost. Thy evil spirit, Brutus.
Brutus. Why comest thou ?
Ghost. To tell thee, thou shalt see me at Philippi.'2
Aristotle says :
Usury is merely money bom of money; so that of all means of money-making
this is the most contrary to nature.
Bacon quotes this; he says:
It is against nature for money to beget money.3
Shakespeare also quotes it :
When did friendship take
A breed of barren metal of his friend?4
Bacon says:
There is an observation among country people, that years of store of haws
and hips do commonly portend cold winters; and they ascribe it to God's provi-
dence, that, as the Scripture saith, reacheth even to the falling of a sparroiv.h
Shakespeare says:
There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow*
And again:
He that doth the ravens feed, '
Yea, providently caters for the sparrow.7
Bacon says:
The wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.8
1 3d Henry VI., iv, 6. 3 Essay Of Usury. 5 Natural History, §737.
8 Julius Ccesar, iv, 3. 4 Merchant 0/ Venice, i, 3. 6 Hamlet, v, 2. ,
7 As You Like It, ii, 3. 8 Essay Of Wisdom.
4o2 PARALLELISMS.
Shakespeare says:
As the mournful crocodile
With sorrow snares relenting passengers.1
Bacon, referring to a popular belief, says:
This was the end of this little cockatrice of a king [Perkin Warbeck], that was
able to destroy those that did not espy him first.2
Shakespeare alludes to the same superstition:
They will kill one another by the look, like cockatrices?
Shall poison more
Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice \4
A cockatrice hast thou hatched to the world,
Whose unavoided eye is murtherous?5
Bacon says:
The parable of Pythagoras is dark but true. Cor ue edito — (eat not tne
heart).6
Shakespeare says:
/ sup upon myself,
And so shall starve with feeding?
The canker gnaw thy heart}
Bacon says:
Princes many times make themselves desires and set their hearts upon a toy,
... as Nero for playing on the harp.9
Shakespeare says:
Plantagenet, I will; and like thee, Nero,
Play on the lute, beholding the towns burn.10
Bacon tells this story:
Periander, being consulted with how to preserve a tyranny newly usurped, bid
the messenger attend and report what he saw him do; and went into his garden
and topped all the highest flowers, signifying that it consisted in the cutting off and
keeping low of the nobility and grandees.11
Shakespeare plainly alludes to the same story in the following:
Go thou, and, like an executioner,
Cut off the head of too-fast-growing sprays,
That look too lofty in our commonwealth:
All must be even in our government.12
l2d Henry VI.,'\\\,\. • Richard ///., iv, i. 9 Essay Of Empire.
2 History of Henry VII. 8 Essay Of Friendship. 10 ist Henry VI., i, 4.
8 Twelfth Night, iii. 4. 7 Coriolanus, iv, 2. u Advancement of Learning, book ii.
4 Romeo and Juliet, iii, 2. 8 Timon of Athens, iv, 3. 12 Richard II., iii, 4.
IDENTICAL QUOTATIONS. 4o3
Bacon quotes:
It is not granted to man to love and be wise.1
And again:
Therefore it was well said " that it is impossible to love and be wise.2
Shakespeare says:
To be wise and love, exceeds man's might. :{
Bacon says:
For, aspiring to be like God in power, the angels transgressed and fell.4
And again:
For from the desire of power the angels fell.*
Shakespeare says:
By that sin fell the angels.6
Bacon uses this quotation:
Cardinal Wolsey said that if he had pleased God as he pleased the King, he
had not been ruined.7
Shakespeare puts into the mouth of the same Cardinal Wolsey
these words:
O Cromwell, Cromwell,
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my King, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.8
Mr. R. M. Theobald, in the August, 1887, number of the. Journal
of the Bacon Society of London, page 157, gives us the following
extraordinary parallelism, where both writers clearly refer to the
same terrible story
Bacon, in the De Augmentis, says :
What a proof of patience is displayed in the story told of Anaxarchus, who,
when questioned under torture, bit out his own tongue (the only hope of informa-
tion), and spat it into the face of the tyrant.
While in Shakespeare we find the same story alluded to. In
Richard II., i, 1, Bolingbroke, being invited by the King to recon-
cile himself to Mowbray, and throw down Mowbray's gage of bat-
tle which he had picked up, replies :
1 Advancement of Learning, book ii. 5 Preface to Great Instauration.
2 Essay Of Love. • Henry VIII., iii, 2.
* Troilus and Cressida, iii, 2. 7 Letter to King James, September 5, 1621.
4 Advancement of Learning, book ii. 8 Henry Fill., iii, 4.
4°4 PARALLELISMS.
O God, defend my soul from such foul sin !
. . . Ere my tongue
Shall wound mine honor with such feeble wrong,
Or sound so base a parle, my teeth shall tear
The slavish motive of recanting fear,
And spit it bleeding, in his high disgrace,
Where shame doth harbor, even in Mowbray s face.
The play of Richard II was published in 1597, and Bacon's Der
Augme?itis in 1623; consequently Shakespeare did not borrow from
Bacon. Mr. Theobald says:
The story is derived from Diogenes Laertius; Bacon's version is taken from
Pliny or Valerius Maximus. . . . Where did Shakspere pick up the allusion?
Perhaps Pliny and Valerius Maximus and Diogenes Laertius were text-books at
the grammar school of Stratford-on-Avon !
Bacon, in his Natural History, says:
There was an Egyptian soothsayer that made Antonius believe that his genius,
which otherwise was brave and confident, was, in the presence of Octavius Caesar,
poor and cowardly; and therefore he advised him to absent himself as much as
he could, and remove far from him. This soothsayer was thought to be suborned
by Cleopatra, to make him live in Egypt and other remote places from home.1
And the same fact is referred to in Shakespeare. Macbeth says,
speaking of Banquo:
There is none but he
Whose being I do fear: and under him
My genius is rebuked; as, it is said,
Mark Antony's was by Caesar.
And in Antony and Cleopatra we have the very Egyptian sooth-
sayer referred to :
Antony. Say to me,
Whose fortune shall rise higher, Caesar's or mine?
Soothsayer. Caesar's.
Therefore, O Antony, stay not by his side:
Thy daemon (that's thy spirit which keeps thee) is
Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable,
Where Caesar's is not; but near him thy angel
Becomes a Fear, as being overpowered; therefore
Make space enough between you.2
Bacon says:
What new hope hath made them return to their Sinon's note, in teaching Troy
how to save itself.3
Shakespeare alludes to the same fact, thus:
And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.4
1 Natural History, cent, x, §940. s Speech in Parliament.
2 Antony and CIeoj>atra, ii, 3. 4 3d Henry /'/., iii, 2.
IDENTICAL QUOTATIONS. 405
Bacon says:
Aristotle dogmatically assigned the cause of generation to the sun.
Shakespeare has it:
If the sun breed maggots out of a dead dog. Have you a daughter? . . . Let
her not walk in the sun. Conception is a blessing. Etc.1
Bacon speaks of
The ancient opinion that man was a microcosmns, an abstract or model of the
world.2
And Shakespeare alludes to the same thing:
You will see it in the map of my microcosm*
Bacon says:
Report has much prevailed of a stone bred in the head of an old and great
toad.4
Shakespeare says:
Like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Bears yet a precious jewel in its head.5
Bacon speaks of taking the advantage of opportunity in the fol-
lowing words:
For occasion (as it is in the common verse) turneth a bald noddle after she has
presented her locks in front, and no hold taken.6
Shakespeare says:
Let's take the instant by the forward top — for we are old.1
Bacon says:
For although Aristotle, as though he had been of the race of the Ottomans,
thought he could not reign unless he killed off all his brethren*
Shakespeare puts into the mouth of King Henry V. this address
to his brothers :
This is the English, not the Turkish court;
Not Amurah an Amurah succeeds,
But Harry, Harry.9
Bacon in his Apophthegms tells this story:
The Queen of Henry IV. of France was great with child; Count Soissons, that
1 Hamlet, ii, 2. 5 As Vote Like It, ii, 1.
"■ Advancement of Learning, book ii. * Essay Of Delays.
3 Coriolanus, ii, 1. ' All's Well that Ends Well, v. 3.
4 Inquisition of the Conversion of Bodies. 8 Advancement of Learning, book ii.
9 3d Henry II., v, 2.
406 PARALLELISMS.
had his expectation upon the crown, when it was twice or thrice thought that the
Queen was with child before, said to some of his friends "that it was but with a
pillow," etc.
Shakespeare must have had this story in his mind when, in
describing Doll Tearsheet being taken to be whipped, he speaks as
follows:
Hostess. Oh that Sir John were come, he would make this a bloody day to
somebody. But I would the fruit of her womb might miscarry.
Officer. If it do, you shall have a dozen cushions; you have but eleven now.1
Bacon says:
Question was asked of Demosthenes what was the chief part of an orator? He
answered, Action. What next? Action. What next, again? Action. A strange
thing that that part of an orator which is but superficial, and rather the virtue of a
player, should be placed so high above those other noble parts of invention, elocu-
tion, and the rest; nay, almost alone, as if it were all in all. But the reason is
plain. There is in human nature, generally, more of the fool than the wise; and
therefore those faculties by which the foolish part of men's minds is taken are
most potent.2
Shakespeare refers to the same story and gives the same ex-
planation in the following:
For in such business
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant
More learned than their ears.8
In Henry V. the Bishop of Exeter makes a comparison of gov-
ernment to the subordination and harmony of parts in music:
For government, though high and low and lower,
Put into parts, doth keep in one consent,
Congruing in a full and natural close
Like music.
Some have sought to find the origin of this simile in Cicero,
De Republica, but that book was lost to literature and unknown,
except by name, until Angelo Mai discovered it upon a palimpsest
in the Vatican in 1822.
Its real source is in the apophthegm repeatedly quoted by
Bacon as to Nero:
Vespasian asked of Apollonius what was the cause of Nero's ruin. Who
answered: " Nero could tune the harp well, but in government he did always
wind up the strings too high or let them down too low."4
1 2d Henry IV., v, 4. s Coriolanus, iii, 2.
a Essay Of Boldness. 4 Apophthegm 51.
IDENTICAL QUOTATIONS. 407
Bacon has this story:
Queen Isabella of Spain used to say: "Whosoever hath a good presence and a
good fashion carries letters of 'recommendation." x
Shakespeare says:
The beauty that is borne here in the face
The bearer knows not, but commends itself
To others' eyes}
Bacon has two anecdotes about the Salic law of France.3 He
says in one of .them:
There was a French gentleman, speaking with an English of the law Salique :
that women were excluded from inheriting the crown of France. The English
said: "Yes; but that was meant of the women themselves, not of such males as
claimed by women," etc.
And in the play of Henry V. we find Shakespeare discussing the
same Salic law, at great length, and giving many instances to
show that it did not exclude those who "claimed by women," one
of which instances is:
Besides their writers say
King Pepin, which deposed Childerike,
Did as their general, being descended
Of Blithild, which was daughter to King Clothair,
Make claim and title to the crown of France.4
The writer of the Plays had evidently studied the history of this
law of another country in all its details; — a thing natural enough
in a lawyer, extraordinary in a play-actor or stage manager.
Bacon refers to the story of Ulysses' wife thus :
Aristippus said : That those who studied particular sciences and neglected
philosophy, were like Penelope's wooers, that made love to the waiting- women. 5
Shakespeare also refers to Penelope :
You would be another Penelope; yet they say all the yarn she spun in Ulysses'
absence did but fill Ithaca with moths.6
Bacon quotes the story of Icarus:
I was ever sorry that your Lordship should fly with waxen wings, doubting
Icarus' fortune.7
Shakespeare has the following allusion to the same story:
Then follow thou thy desperate sire of Crete,
Thou Icarus.8
1 Apophthegm 99. 5 Apophthegm 189.
* Troilus and Cressi'da, iii, 3. 8 Corz'o/anus, i, 3.
8 Apophthegms 184 and 185. 7 Letter to Essex, 1600.
4 Henry \\ i, 1. B 1st Henry VI., iv, 6.
408
PARALLELISMS,
And again:
And in that sea of blood my boy did drench
His over-mounting spirit; and there died
My Icarus, my blossom, in his pride.1
And again:
I, Daedalus; my poor boy, Icarus;
Thy father Minos, that denied our course;
The sun that seared the wings of my sweet boy.2
Bacon says:
Frascatorius invented a remedy for apoplectic fits, by placing a heated pan at
some distance around the head, for by this means the spirits that were suffocated
and congealed in the cells of the brain, and oppressed by the humors, were dilated,
excited and revived.3
And Falstaff seemed to hold the same view, that the disease was
a torpidity that needed to be roused. He says :
This apoplexie is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, a sleeping of the blood.4
And Bacon, in a letter to the King, at the time of his downfall,
after describing a violent pain in the back of his head, says :
And then the little physic [medical learning] I had told me that it must either
grow to a congelation, and so to a lethargy, and break, and so to a mortal fever or
sudden death.
Bacon and Shakespeare both refer to the same fact in connec-
tion with the assassination of Julius Caesar. Bacon says:
With Julius Caesar, Decimus Brutus had obtained that interest, as he set him
down in his testament for heir in remainder after his nephew; and this was the
man that had power with him to draw him forth to his death: for when Caesar
would have discharged the Senate, in regard of some ill presages, and specially a
dream of Calpurnia, this man lifted him gently by the arm out of his chair, telling
him he hoped he would not dismiss the Senate till his wife had dreamed a better
dream.
In Shakespeare we have Decimus Brutus saying to Caesar:
Besides, it were a mock
Apt to be rendered, for some one to say:
Break up the Senate, till another time,
When Caesar's wife shall meet with better dreams.
And is it not to the soldier Decimus Junius Brutus, and not to
the great Marcus Junius Brutus, that the poet makes Mark Antony
1 1st Henry VI., iv, 7. 3 Historia Dens, ct Rari.
* 3d Henry I V., v, 6. * 2d Henry II ' i, 3.
IDENTICAL QUOTATIONS. 409
allude (echoing Bacon's astonishment that the heir of Coesar could
have participated in his murder) in the following?
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed,
And as he plucked his cursed steel away,
Mark how the blood of Caesar followed it;
As rushing out of doors, to be resolved
If Brutus so unkindly knocked or no:
For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel.
Judge, O ye gods, how dearly Caesar loved him.
And we find in another historical instance the minds of both
writers, if I may use the expression, dwelling on the same fact.
Bacon says, in a letter to King James, February 11, 1614:
And I put the case of the Duke of Buckingham, who said that if the King
caused him to be arrested of treason he would stab him.
The King here alluded to was Henry VIII., and we find the
incident thus described in Shakespeare's play of that name. Buck-
ingham's surveyor is giving testimony against his master. He
says:
//"(quoth he) I for this had been committed,
As to the Tower, I thought, I would have played
The part my father meant to act upon
The usurper Richard; who, being at Salisbury,
Made suit to come in 's presence, which if granted,
(As he made semblance of his duty), would
Have put his knife into him}
Bacon makes this quotation:
The kingdom of France ... is now fallen into those calamities, that, as the
prophet saith, From the crown of the head to the sole of the foot there is no whole
place. -
Shakespeare uses the same quotation:
Don Pedro. I will only be bold with Benedick for his company; for from the
crown of his head to the sole of his foot he is all mirth.3
I feel confident that, had I the time and did space permit, I
could increase this list of identical quotations many-fold.
It is certain that these two writers not only held the same
views, employed the same comparisons, used the same expressions,
• Henry VIII., i, 2.
a Observations on a Libel — Life and Works, vol. i, p. 160.
3 Much Ado about Nothing, iii, 2.
41 o PARALLELISMS.
pursued the same studies and read the same books, but that their
minds were constructed so exactly alike that the same things, out
of their reading, lodged in them, and were reproduced for the same
purposes.
And these mental twins — these intellectual identities — did not
seem to know, or even to have ever heard of each other !
CHAPTER V.
IDENTICAL STUDIES.
Biron. What is the end of study ?
King. Why, that to know, which else we should not know.
Biron. Things hid and barred, you mean, from common sense ?
King. Ay, that is study's god-like recompense.
Love's Labor Lost, i, /.
MANY men study nothing. They are content with the stock of
ideas, right or wrong, borrowed from others, with which
they start into manhood. But of those who seek to penetrate
beyond their preconceptions into knowledge, no two follow the
same path and pursue the same subjects. The themes of study
are as infinitely varied as the construction of human intellects.
And herein, as in everything else, is manifested the wisdom of the
great architect, who for every space in the edifice of life has carved
a stone which fits it precisely. Many, it is true, are the mere rubble
that fills up the interspaces; others are parts of the frieze orna-
mented with bass-reliefs of gnomes or angels; others, again, are the
massive, hidden, humble foundation-blocks on which rests the
weight of the whole structure. But in God's edifice nothing is
little, and little can be said to be great.
And so in life: one man will devote his existence to a study of
the motions of the heavenly bodies through their incalculable
spaces; another will give up his whole life to a microscopic investi-
gation of the wings and limbs of insects. One will soar, on golden
pinions through the magical realms of music; another will pursue
the dry details of mathematics into their ultimate possibilities:
a third will sail gloriously, like a painted nautilus, over the liquid
and shining bosom of poetry: while still another will study
The doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,
With weary lawyers of endless tongues.
The purpose of life seems to be put upon the creature even
before creation, and
Necessity sits on humanity
Like to the world on Atlas' neck.
411
412
PARALLELISMS.
And when we turn to consider what subjects were studied, at.
the same time, by the writer of the Shakespeare Plays and Francis
Bacon, we shall find that identity which could not exist between
two really distinct intellects.
In the first place, we are struck with the universality of thought,
observation and study discoverable in both. Bacon " took all
knowledge for his province," and the Shakespeare Plays embrace
every theme of reflection possible to man: — religion, philosophy,
science, history, human character, human passions and affections,
music, poetry, medicine, law, statecraft, politics, worldly wisdom,
wit, humor — everything. They are oceanic. Every year some
new explorer drops his dredge a thousand fathoms deep into their
unconsidered depths, and brings up strange and marvelous forms
of life where we had looked only for silence and death.
And when we descend to particulars we find precise identity in
almost everything.
I. Music.
Take the subject of music. This is a theme which compara-
tively few study, even to-day; and in that almost rude age of Eliz-
abeth the number must have been greatly less. Neither does it
necessarily follow that all great men love music and investigate it.
In fact, the opinion of Shakespeare, that the man who "had no
music in his soul" was not to be trusted, has provoked a perfect
storm of adverse criticism.1
But Bacon's love of music was great. Sir John Hawkins says:
Lord Bacon, in his Natural History, has given a great variety of experiments
touching music, that show him to have not been barely a philosopher, an inquirer
into the phenomena of sound, but a master of the science of harmony, and very
intimately acquainted with the precepts of musical education.2
And Sir John quotes the following from Bacon:
The sweetest and best harmony is when every part or instrument is not heard
by itself, but a conflation of them all, which requireth to stand some distance off,
even as it is in the mixtures of perfumes, or the taking of the smells of several
flowers in the air.
On the other hand Richard Grant White says:
Shakespeare seems to have been a proficient in the art of music.3
1 Knight's Shal:., note 7, act v, Merchant of Venice.
2 History of Music. 3 Life and Genius of Shah., p. 259.
IDENTICAL STUDIES. 4I3
The commentators say that Balthazar, a musician in the service
of Prince John, in Much Ado about Nothing? was probably thus
named from the celebrated Balthazarini, an Italian performer on
the violin, who was in great favor at the court of Henry II., of
France, in 1577. In 1577 William Shakspere was probably going
to the grammar school in Stratford, aged thirteen years. How
could he know anything about a distinguished musician at the
court of France, between which and Stratford there was then less
intercourse than there is now between Moscow and Australia. But
Francis Bacon was sent to Paris in 1576, and remained there for
three years; and doubtless, for he was a lover of music, knew Bal-
thazarini well, and sought in this way to perpetuate his memory.
Or it may be that the cipher narrative in Much Ado about Nothing
tells some story in which Balthazarini is referred to.
Bacon devoted many pages in his Natura/ History'2 to experi-
ments in music. He noted that a musical note "falling from one
tone to another" is "delightful," reminding us of
That strain again ! it hath a dying fall.*
And he further notes that " the division and quavering, which
please so much in music, have an agreement with the glittering of
light, as the moonbeams playing on a wave." 4
Who can fail to believe that the same mind which originated
this poetical image wrote the following ?
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank !
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.5
And the following lines — giving the reason of things as a
philosopher and scholar — are in the very vein of Bacon:
The cause why music was ordained;
Was it not to refresh the mind of man,
After his studies, or his usual pain ?
Then give me leave to read philosophy,
And, while I pause, serve in your harmony.6
Bacon says:
Voices or consorts of music do make a harmony by mixture. . . . The sweetest
1 Act ii, scene 3. 3 Twelfth Night, i, 1. 3 Merchant 0/ Venice, v, 1.
3 Century ii. 4 Natural History, cent, ii, §113. * Taming 0/ the Shrew, iii, 1.-
414
PARALLELISMS.
and best harmony is, when every part or instrument is not heard by itself, but a
conflation of them all. . . . But sounds do disturb and alter the one the other;
sometimes the one drowning the other and making it not heard; sometimes the
one jarring with the other and making a confusion ; sometimes the one mingling
with the other and making a harmony. . . . Where echoes come from several
parts at the same distance, they must needs make, as it were, a choir of echoes. . . .
There be many places where you shall hear a number of echoes one after another:
and it is where there is a variety of kills and ivoods, some nearer, some farther off.1
Now turn to the following magnificent specimen of word-paint-
ing, from the Midsummer Night's Dream:
We will, fair Queen, up to the mountain's top,
And mark the musical confusion
Of hounds and echo in conjunction.
I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear,
With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear
Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seemed all one mutual cry. I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.2
It may, of course, be said that Bacon's statement of fact in the
above is bare and barren, compared with the exquisite melody of
the description given us in the play; but it must be remembered
that the one is prose and the other poetry; and that the prose of
the Plays is as much prose as is the prose of the Natural History.
But no man, however perfect his perception of beauty may have
been, could have given us the description in the Midsummer Night's
Dream unless he had the analytic power to see that the delightful
effects which his ear realized were caused by a " musical confu-
sion " of the hounds and the echoes; the groves, skies, fountains
and everything around flinging back echo upon echo, until the
whole scene "seemed all one mutual cry," until, in fact, there was
produced, as Bacon says, "a choir of echoes." And the very words,
"a choir of echoes," are poetical; they picture the harmonious ming-
ling of echoes, like the voices of singers, and remind us of the son-
net, where the poet speaks of the trees, deadened by the winter, as
Bare, ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
It seems to me we have here the evidence not only that both
writers loved music and had studied it, but that they had noted the
same effects from the same cause; for surely Bacon's description of
1 Natural History, cent. iii. '2 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, iv, r.
IDENTICAL STL' DIES. _p5
the "choir of echoes" from "a variety of hills and woods" must
have been based on some such hunting scene as the poet gives us
with such melodious detail.
II. Gardening.
Francis Bacon and the writer of the Plays both were filled with
a great love for gardening.
Bacon calls it " the purest of all human pleasures."
Shakespeare, as Mrs. Pott has shown, refers to thirty-live dif-
ferent flowers:
Anemone, carnation, columbine, cornflower, cowslip, crown-imperial, crow-
rlower, daffodil, daisy, eglantine, flower-de-luce, fumitory, gilly-flower, hare-bell,
honeysuckle, ladies' smocks, lavender, lilies, long purples, marigold, marjorum,
myrtle, oxlips, pansies or love in idleness, peony, pimpernal, pink, primrose, rose
"may," rose "must," rose "damask," rosemary, thyme, violet, woodbine.1
Mrs. Pott says:
These thirty-five flowers are all noted or studied by Bacon, with the exception
of the columbine, pansy and long-purples. The hare-bell may be considered as
included in the "bell-flowers," which he describes. Twenty-one of these same
thirty-five Shakespearean flowers are enumerated by Bacon in his essay Of Gardens.
And this coincidence is the more remarkable when it is remem-
bered that these flowers were but a small part of those well-known
in the days of Shakespeare and Bacon. In all the notes on garden-
ing, in Bacon's writings, there are only five flowers which are not
named by Shakespeare, while of Ben Jonson's list of flowers only
half are ever alluded to by Bacon.
Mrs. Pott points out that Bacon was the first writer that ever
distinguished flowers by the season of their blooming; and Shake-
speare follows this order precisely and never brings the flowers of
one season into another, as Jonson and other poets do. In the
midst of exquisite poetry he accurately associates the flower with
the month to which it belongs. He says:
Daffodils that come before the swallow dares
And take the winds of March with beauty. -
Says Bacon:
For March there come violets, especially the single blue, which are the earliest.3
» Shakespeariana. May, 1885, p. 241. 2 Winter s Tale, iv. 3. 3 Essay Of Gardens.
4 1 6 PARA LLELISMS.
And again:
Thy banks with peonies and lilies brims,
Which spongy April at thy hest betrims.1
And again the poet says:
O rose of May, dear maid, kind sister.
In all this the poet shows the precision of the natural philos-
opher.
The whole article here quoted, from the pen of Mrs. Pott, can
be read with advantage and pleasure.
Bacon studied gardening in all its details. His love for flowers
was great. Even in his old age, when, broken in health and fortune,
and oppressed with cares and debts, we find him writing the Lord
Treasurer Cranfield that he proposes to visit him at Chiswick,
he adds:
I hope to wait on your Lordship and gather some violets in your garden.
He says in The New Atlantis :
In these we practice likewise all conclusions of grafting and inoculating, as
well of wild trees as fruit trees, which produceth many effects.
While Shakespeare says:
You see, sweet maid,
We tfiarry a gentle scion to the wildest stock,
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race. This is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather; but
The art itself is nature.2
And we find the same thought again:
Our scions, put in wild and savage stocks,
Spirt up so suddenly into the clouds.3
Shakespeare has that curious and strange comparison:
If you can look into the seeds of time
And say which grain will grow and which will not.4
And, in the same vein, we find Bacon devoting pages to the
study of the nature of seeds, and of the mode of testing them, to
see whether they wi41 grow or not. He says:
And therefore skillful gardeners make trial of the seeds before they buy them,
whether they be good or no, by putting them into water gently boiled; and if they
be good they will sprout within half an hour.5
1 Tempest, iv, i. 2 Winter's Tale, iv, 3. 3 Henry V., iii, 5.
4 Macbeth, i, 3. s Natural History, § 520.
IDENTICAL STUDIES. 4Iy
And again:
If any one investigate the vegetation of plants he should observe from the first
sowing of any seed how and when the seed begins to swell and break, and be filled,
as it were, with spirit.1
And here is a curious parallelism. Bacon says:
There be certain corn-flotuers, which come seldom or never in other places
unless they be set, but only amongst corny as the blue-bottle, a kind of yellow
marigold, wild poppy and fumitory. ... So it would seem that it is the corn that
qualifieth the earth and prepareth it for their growth.'2
Shakespeare's attention had also been drawn to these humble
corn-flowers, and he had reached the same conclusion, that the
earth was prepared to' receive these flowers by the presence of the
corn. He describes Lear:
Crowned with rank fumitor, and furrow weeds,
With hardock, hemlocks, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel and all the idle weeds that grow-
In our sustaining corn.3
Bacon writes an essay Of Gardens, and Shakespeare is full of
comparisons and reflections based upon gardens. For instance:
Virtue? a fig ! 'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our
gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant nettles or
sow lettuce; set hyssop, and weed up thyme; supply it with one gender of herbs or
distract it with many; either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with indus-
try: why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our own wills.4
And again:
Our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up.5
And again:
What rub, or what impediment there is,
Why that the naked, poor and mangled peace,
Dear nurse of arts, plenties and joyful births,
Should not, in this best garden of the world,
Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage? . . ,
The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,
Conceives by idleness; and nothing teems
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burrs.
And the closeness with which both studied the nature of plants
1 Novum Organum, book ii. 3 Lear, iv, 4. 5 Richard II., iii, 4.
2 Natural History, § 482. 4 Othello, i, 3. 6 Henry I'., v, 2.
41 8 PARALLELISMS.
and their modes of growth is shown in the following remarkable
parallel.
In that most curious and philosophical of the Plays, Troilus and
Cressida, we find this singular comparison:
Checks and disasters
Grow in the veins of actions highest reared;
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound pine, and divert his grain,
Tortive and errant from his course of growth.1
And we find that Bacon had, in like manner, studied the effect
of sap upon the growth of the tree:
The cause whereof is, for that the sap ascendeth unequally, and doth, as it
were, tire and stop by the way. And it seemeth they have some closeness and
hardness in their stalk, which hindereth the sap from going up, until it hath gath-
ered into a knot, and so is more urged to put forth.2
Here we find the poet setting forth that the knots are caused
by " the conflux of the meeting sap," while the philosopher tells us
that when the sap is arrested it " gathereth into a knot." And so
it seems that both were studying the same subject and arriving at
the same conclusions; and both thought that not only were the
knots caused by the stoppage of the ascending sap, but that the
knots produced the new branches: " so," says Bacon, "it is more
urged to put forth." The knots, says Shakespeare, divert the
grain from the straight, upright course of growth, to-wit, by
making it put forth new branches. Can any man believe that
Bacon and Shakspere were engaged at the same time in this same
curious study, and reached independently these same remarkable
conclusions ?
And we see the gardener again in Richard II.:
All superfluous branches
We lop away, that bearing boughs may live.3
Again:
A violet in the youth of primy Nature.4
The thoughts of both ran upon flowers. Bacon says:
We commend the odor of plants growing, and not plucked, taken in the open
air; the principal of that kind are violets, gilliflowers, pinks, bean-flowers, lime-
tree blossoms, vine buds, honeysuckles, yellow wall-flowers, musk roses, straw-
berry leaves, etc. . . . Therefore to walk or sit near the breath of these plants
should not be neglected.5
' Troilus and Cressida, i, 3. 2 Natural History, % 589. 3 Richard II., iii, 4.
4 Hamlet, i, 3. 5 History 0/ Life and Death.
IDENTICAL STUDIES. 419
And again he says:
The daintiest smells of flowers are out of those plants whose leaves smell not,
as violets, roses, wall-flowers, gilliflowers, pinks, woodbines, vine-flowers, apple-
blooms, bean-blossoms, etc.1
The same admiration for flowers is shown by Shakespeare. He
speaks of
Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phcebus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one.'2
I might fill pages with further evidence that both Bacon and
the writer of the Plays loved flowers and practiced gardening.
III. Thk Study of Medicine.
Bacon says of himself:
I have been puddering in physic all my life.
Shakespeare says:
'Tis known I ever
Have studied physic'
Bacon writes to Sir Robert Cecil:
I ever liked the Galenists, that deal with good compositions, and not the Para-
celsians, that deal with these fine separations.4
Shakespeare says:
Lafeau. To be relinquished of the artists.
Parolles. So I say, both of Galen and Paracelsus.
Lafeau. Of all the learned and authentic fellows.5
Macaulay says, speaking of Bacon:
Of all the sciences, that which he regarded with the greatest interest was the
science which, in Plato's opinion, would not be tolerated in a well-regulated com-
munity. To make men perfect was no part of Bacon's plan. His humble aim
was to make imperfect men comfortable. ... He appealed to the example of
Christ, and reminded his readers that the great Physician of the soul did not dis-
dain to be also the physician of the body.6
1 Natural History, §389. ''Pericles, iii, 2. 5 All's Well that Ends Well, ii, 3.
2 Winter's Tale, iv, 3. 4 Letter to Sir Robert Cecil. * Essay Bacon, p. 276.
420
PARALLELISMS.
On the other hand, the celebrated surgeon Bell says:
My readers will smile, perhaps, lo see me quoting Shakespeare among physi-
cians and theologians, but not one of all their tribe, populous though it be, could
describe so exquisitely the marks of apoplexy, conspiring with the struggles for
life, and the agonies of suffocation, to deform the countenance of the dead; so
curiously does our poet present to our conception all the signs from which it might
be inferred that the good Duke Humphrey had died a violent death.1
Dr. O. A. Kellogg, Assistant Professor of the State Lunatic
Asylum at Utica, N. Y., says:
The extent and accuracy of the medical, physiological and psychological
knowledge displayed in the dramas of William Shakespeare, like the knowledge that
is manifested on all matters upon which the rays of his mighty genius fell, have
excited the wonder and astonishment of all men, who, since his time, have investi-
gated those subjects upon which so much light is shed by the researches of modern
science.
Speaking of Bacon, Osborne, his contemporary, said:
I have heard him outcant a London chirurgeon, —
meaning thereby, excel him in the technical knowledge of his own
profession.
His marvelous delineations of the different shades of insanity in
Lear, Ophelia, Hamlet, etc., are to be read in the light of the fact
that Francis Bacon's mother died of insanity; and Bacon, with his
knowledge of the hereditary transmissibility of disease, must have
made the subject one of close and thorough study. There are
instances in his biography which show that he was himself the
victim of melancholy; and there are reasons to think, as will be
shown hereafter, that he is the real author of a great medical work
on that subject which passes now in the name of another.
He seems to have anticipated Harvey's discovery of the circula-
tion of the blood. Harvey, in 1628, demonstrated that "the blood
which passed out from the heart, by the arteries, returned to the
heart by the veins."
But Shakespeare, long before that time, had said:
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart,- —
indicating that he knew that the blood returned to the heart.
I find the following interesting passage in Disraeli's Curiosities
of Literature :
lBell'« Principles of Surgery ', 1815, vol. ii, p. 557. "Julius Casar, ii, t.
IDENTICAL STUDIES. 42i
Dr. William Hunter has said that after the discovery of the valves in the veins,
which Harvey learned while in Italy from his master, Fabricius ab Aquapendente,
the remaining step might easily have been made by any person of common
abilities. " This discovery," he observes, " set Harvey to work upon the use of
the heart and vascular system in animals; and in the course of some years he was
so happy as to discover, and to prove beyond all possibility of doubt, the circulation
of the blood." He afterwards expresses his astonishment that this discovery
should have been left for Harvey, though he acknowledges it occupied "a course
of years ;"' adding that " Providence meant to reserve it for him, and would not let
men see zvhat was before them nor understand what they read. It is remarkable that
when great discoveries are effected, their simplicity always seems to detract from
their originality; on these occasions we are reminded of the egg of Columbus.1
But it seems that the author of the Shakespeare Plays, years
before Harvey made his discovery, had also read of the observations
•of Fabricius ab Aquapendente, and understood that there were
valves in the veins and arteries. And this he could only have done
in the original Italian — certainly not in English. And he refers to
these valves as " gates " in the following lines:
And in the porches of mine ears did pour
The leperous distilment; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man,
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body:
And with a sudden vigor it doth posset
And curd, like aigre droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood.2
IV. Shakespeare's Physicians.
And it is a remarkable fact that, while the art of medicine was
in that age at a very low ebb, and doctors were little better than
quacks, Shakespeare represents, on two occasions, the physician in
a light that would do no discredit to the profession in this advanced
age. Let me give a few facts to show how reasonable and civilized
was the medical treatment of the physicians in Lear and Macbeth,
compared with that of the highest in skill in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.
Sir Theodore Mayern, Baron Aulbone, was born in France in
1573. He was the great doctor of his day. Among his patients
were Henry IV. and Louis XIII., of France, and James I., Charles I.
and Charles II., of England.
He administered calomel in scruple doses; he mixed sugar of
1 Disraeli, Curiosities 0/ Literature, p. 4T2. 2 Hamlet, i. 5.
422 PAHA LLELISMS.
lead in his conserves; but his principal reliance was in pulverized
human bones and " raspings of a human skull unburied." His
sweetest compound was his balsam of bats, strongly recommended
for hypochondriacal persons, into which entered adders, bats,
sucking whelps, earth-worms, hogs' grease, the marrow of a stag
and the thigh-bone of an ox ! He died in 1655. He ought to
have died earlier.
Another of these learned physicians of Elizabeth's time was
Doctor William Bulleyn, who was of kin to the Queen. He died in
1576. His prescription for a child suffering from nervousness was
" a smal yonge mouse, rosted."
And this state of ignorance continued for more than a century
after Bacon's death. In 1739 the English Parliament passed an act
to pay Joanna Stephens, a vulgar adventuress, ,£5,000, to induce
her to make public her great remedy for all diseases. The medi-
cines turned out to be, when revealed, a powder, a decoction and
pills, made up principally of egg-shells, snails, soap, honey and
swine-cresses !
Now, bearing all this mountebank business in mind, let us turn
to the scene where the Doctor appears in Macbeth. We read:
Doctor. I have two nights watched with you, but can perceive no truth in
your reports. When was it she last walked?
Gentlewoman. Since his Majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from
her bed, throw her night-gown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold
it, write upon 't, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this
while in a most fast sleep.
Doctor. A great perturbation in nature ! to receive at once the benefit of sleep
and do the effects of watching. In this slumbery agitation, besides her walking
and other actual performances, what, at any time, have you heard her say ?
Gentlewoman. That which I will not report after her.
Doctor. You may, to me; and 'tis most meet you should.
Gentlewoman, Neither to you nor any one; having no witness to confirm my
speech.
Enter Lady Macbeth with taper.
Lady Macbeth. Wash your hands, put on your night-gown; look not so pale
— I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he cannot come out on 's grave.
Doctor. Even. so. . . . Will she go now to bed ?
Gentlewoman. Directly.
Doctor. Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles. Infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.
More needs she the divine than the physician.
God, God, forgive us all ! Look after her;
IDENTICAL STUDIES. 423
Remove from her the means of all annoyance,
And still keep eyes upon her: So, good night;
My mind she has mated, and amazed my sight:
I think, but dare not speak.
And farther on in the tragedy we have:
Macbeth. How does your patient, doctor?
Doctor. Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies,
That keep her from her rest.
Macbeth. Cure her of that.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain;
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
Doctor. Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.
Macbeth. Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it.
How courteous and dignified and altogether modern is this
physician ? There is here nothing of the quack, the pretender, or
the impostor. We hear nothing about recipes of human bones, or
small roast mice, or snails, or swine-cresses.
And this declaration, of the inadequacy of drugs to relieve the
heart, reminds us of what Bacon says:
You may take sarsa to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flower of sul-
phur for the lungs, castareum for the brain, but no receipt openeth the heart but a
true friend.1
In Lear we have another doctor. He is called in to care for the
poor insane King, and we have the following conversation:
Cordelia. What can man's wisdom do
In the restoring of his bereaved sense?
He that helps him, take all my outward worth.
Physician. There is means, madam;
Our foster-nurse of nature is repose,
The which he lacks; that to provoke in him,
Are many simples operative, whose power
Will close the eyes of anguish.
Cord. All bless'd secrets,
All you unpublished virtues of the earth,
Spring with my tears ! be aidant and remediate
In the good man's distress.'2
And how Baconian is this reference to the " unpublished virtues
«
1 Essay Of Friendship. * Lear iv, 4.
424
PARALLELISMS.
of the earth " ? It was the very essence of Bacon's philosophy to
make those virtues known as "aidant and remediate" of the good
of man. He sought, by a knowledge of the secrets of nature, to
lift men out of their miseries and necessities.
And again, after the Doctor has, by his simples operative, produced
sleep, and Lear is about to waken, we have the following:
Cordelia. How does the King?
Physician. Madam, he sleeps still.
... So please your Majesty,
That we may wake the King? He hath slept long. «
Cord. Be governed by your knowledge and proceed,
F the sway of your own will.
Phys. Be by, good madam, when we do awake him;
I doubt not of his temperance.
Cord. Very well.
• Phys. Please you, draw near. — Louder the music there. . . .
Cord. He wakes; speak to him.
Phys. Madam, do you; 'tis fittest.
Cord. How does my royal Lord? How fares your Majesty?
Lear. You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave. , . .
Cord. Sir, do you know me ?
Lear. You are a spirit, I know. When did you die ?
Cord. Still, still, far wide.
Phys. He's scarce awake: let him alone a while.1
Surely there is nothing here, either in the mode of treatment or
the manner of speech, that the modern physician could improve
upon. The passage contains Bacon's forecasting of what the doc-
tor should be — of what he has come to be in these latter times.
V. The Medicinal Virtues of Sleep.
And how well did both Bacon and the writer of the Plays know
the virtue of those
Simples operative, whose power
Will close the eyes of anguish.
Bacon in his Natural History, §738, discussing all the drugs that
"inebriate and provoke sleep," speaks of "the tear of poppy" of
u henbane-seed" and of "mandrake."
While Shakespeare is familiar with the same medicines. He
says:
Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever minister thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou ow'dst once.2
1 Lear, iv, 4. * Othello, iii, 3.
IDENTICAL STUDIES. 425
And again:
With juice of cursed kebenon in a vial.1
And when the doctor in Lear says that "the foster-nurse of
nature is repose," he speaks a great truth, but faintly recognized in
that age, and not even fully understood in this. And yet in that
unscientific, crude era both Bacon and the writer of the Plays
clearly perceived the curative power of sleep.
Shakespeare calls it
Great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast. -
And this curious idea of the nourishing power of sleep is often
found in Bacon. He says:
Sleep doth supply somewhat to nourishment.*
Sleep nourishethy or, at least, preserveth bodies a long time without other
nourishment.*
Sleep doth nourish much, for the spirits do less spend the nourishment in
sleep than when living creatures are awake.'1
And Shakespeare says:
The innocent sleep:
Sleep, that knits up the ravel'd sleeve of care;
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds.0
And again:
0 sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature's soft nurse.7
And Bacon has something of that same idea of knitting up
the raveled sleeve of care. He says:
I have compounded an ointment: . . . the use of it should be between sleeps,
for in the latter sleep the parts assimilate chiefly*
That is, they become knitted together. Bacon and the writer of
the Plays seem both to have perceived that the wear of life frayed
the nervous fiber,
Shakespeare says of sleep:
Please you, sir,
Do not omit the heavy offer of it:
It seldom visits sorrow; when it doth
It is a comforter.9
1 Hamlet, i, 5. * Natural History, § 746. 7 2d Henry II'., iii, 1.
■ Macleth, ii,2. 5 Ibid., cent, i, § 57. * Xatural History, cent, i, § 59. I
3 History of Life and Death. ''Macbeth, ii, 2. 9 Tempest, ii, 1.
42o PARALLELISMS.
Bacon says:
Such is the force of sleep to restrain all vital consumption.'
And again:
Sleep is nothing else but a reception and retirement of the living spirit into
itself."2
It would almost seem as if spirit was so incompatible with its
enfoldment of matter that the union could only continue at the
price of periods of oblivion, or semi-death; during which the con-
scious spirit, half-parted from its tenement, sinks back into the
abyss of God, and returns rejuvenated, and freshly charged with
vital force for the duties of life. But for centuries after Bacon's
time there were thousands, even among the most enlightened of
their age, who regarded sleep as the enemy of man, to be curtailed
by all possible means. It is therefore a striking proof of identity
when two writers, of that period, are found united in anticipating
the conclusions of modern thought on this important subject. In
the medicinal science of to-day sleep is indeed " sore labor's bath,"
and above all " the balm of hurt minds."
VI. Use of Medical Terms.
But the Shakespeare writings bubble over with evidences that
the writer was, like Bacon, a student of medicine.
Bacon says:
For opening, I commend beads or pieces of the roots of carduus benedictus?
And Shakespeare says:
Get you some of this distilled carduus bmtdiclus; ... it is the only thing for
a qualm.4
It would be extraordinary indeed if two distinct men not only
used the same expressions, thought the same thoughts, cited the
same quotations and pursued the same studies, but even recom-
mended the same medicines !
Bacon says:
Extreme hitter as in coloq uinti\..< .
Shakespeare says:
The food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be to him shortly as-
bitter as coloquintida*
' History of Life and Death. « Much Ado about Nothing; iii. 4.
2 Ibid. 5 Natural History, cent, i, § 36.
3 Natural History, % 963. " Othello, i. 3.
IDENTICAL STUDIES. 427
Here we have the writer of the Plays and Francis Bacon dwell-
ing upon another medicine, and describing it in the same terms.
Shakespeare speaks in Lear of " the hysterica passio." He also
knew about the vascular membrane lining the brain:
These are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pin
mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion.1
He also says:
What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug
Will scour these English hence.?'2
Again:
Dangerous conceits are, in their natures, poisons,
Which at first are scarce found to distaste;
But with a little act upon the blood,
Burn like the mines of sulphur.3
And again:
And nothing is at a like goodness still;
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
Dies in his own too-much.4
And again:
And I will through and through
Cleanse the foul body of the infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medicine.-'
No wonder some have argued that the writer of the Plays was
a physician.
In 1st Henry IV. " he refers to the midriff ; in 2d Henry IV. and
Othello and Macbeth he describes accurately the effect of intoxicat-
ing liquor on the system; in 2d Henry IV' he refers to aconite :
in The Merry Wives of Windsor he drags in the name of Esculapius.
In King John he says:
Before the curing of a strong disease,
Even in the instant of repair and health.
The fit is strongest; evils that take leave.
On their departure most of all show evil.8
In Coriolanus he says:
Sir, these cold ways,
That seem like prudent helps, are very poisonous
Where the disease is violent.9
In Lear he says:
Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once
That make ungrateful man.10
1 Loves Labor Lost, iv, 2. h As Von Like It. 8 King John, iii, 4.
2 Macbeth, v, 3. 8 Act iii, scene 3. 9 Coriolanus iii, 1.
3 Othello, iii, 3. T Act iv, scene 4. 10 Lear, iii. 2,
4 Hamlet, iv, 7.
42cS PARALLELISMS.
In Julius Ccesar1 he describes correctly the symptoms of epi-
lepsy. In Timon of Athens" he gives us the mode of treatment of a
still more formidable disease.
In Henry V. he furnishes us with a minute description of Fal-
staff's death:
A' parted even just between twelve and one, e'en at the turning of the tide,
for after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon
his finger-ends, I knew there was but one way, for his nose was as sharp as a pen,
and a' babbled of green fields. ... So he bade me lay more clothes on his feet.
I put my hand into the bed, and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone.3
And it is a curious fact that Francis Bacon studied the signs of
death, as he studied everything else, with the utmost particularity
and minuteness, and he has put them on record. He says:
The immediate preceding signs of death are, great unquietness and tossing in
the bed, fumbling with the hands [" I saw him fumble with the sheets," says Dame
Quickly], catching and grasping hard, gnashing with the teeth, speaking hollow,
trembling of the nether lip, paleness of the face, the memory confused ["a' babbled
-of green fields," says Dame Quickly], speechless, cold sweats, the body shooting
in length, lifting up the white of the eye, changing of the whole visage, as the nose
sharp ["his nose was as sharp as a pen," says Dame Quickly], eyes hollow, cheeks
fallen, contraction and doubling of the coldness in the extreme parts of the body
["his feet were as cold as any stone," says Dame Quickly].4
Here we have the same symptoms, and in the same order. Who
is there can believe that these descriptions of death came out of
two different minds ?
VII. The Same Historical Studies.
Shakespeare wrote a group of historical plays extending from
Richard II. to Henry VIII., with a single break — the reign of
Henry VII. And Bacon completed the series by writing a history of
Henry VII. .'
Shakespeare wrote a play turning upon Scotch history — Mac-
beth. Bacon had studied the history of Scotland. He says:
The kingdom of Scotland hath passed through no small troubles, and remain-
eth full of boiling and swelling tumors/'
Shakespeare wrote a play concerning Danish history — Hamlet.
Bacon had carefuMy studied Scandinavian history. He says:
1 Act i, scene z. 4 History of Life and Death, div. x, § 30.
2 Act iv, scene 3. B Observations on a Libel — Life and
3 Henry /'., ii, 3. Works, vol. i, p. 161.
IDENTICAL STUDIES. 429
The kingdom of Swedeland, besides their foreign wars upon their confines,
the Muscovites and the Danes, hath also been subject to divers intestine tumults
and mutations, as their stories do record}
Shakespeare wrote a play of Julius Ccesar; Bacon wrote a biog-
raphy or character of Julius Casar.
Shakespeare wrote a play, Antony and Cleopatra, in which Augus-
tus Caesar is a principal character. Bacon wrote a biography of
Augustus Ccesar. And he discusses, in his essay Of Love, Mark
Antony, " the half-partner of the empire of Rome, a voluptuous
man and inordinate, whose great business did not keep out love."
And this is the very element of the great Roman's character on
which the play of Antony and Cleopatra turns.
Shakespeare wrote a play of Timon of Athens, the misanthrope-
Bacon speaks of " misanthropi, that make it their practice to bring
men to the bough, and yet have never a tree in their garden for the
purpose, as Timon had."2
VIII. Julius CiESAR in the Plays.
Shakespeare manifests the highest admiration for Julius Caesar.
He calls him " the foremost man of all this world."
In Cytnbcline he says:
There is no more such Caesars; other of them may have crooked noses; but to
own such straight arms, none.3
In Hamlet he refers to him as "the mighty Julius." He says:
A little ere the mighty Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.4
In 2d Henry VI. he says:
For Brutus' bastard hand stabbed Julius Caesar.5
On the other hand, Bacon shows a like admiration for Caesar.
He says:
Machiavel says if Caesar had been overthrown "he would have been more
odlbus than ever was Catiline ;" as if there had been no difference, but in fortune,
between a very fury of lust and blood and the most excellent spirit (his ambitiorn
reserved) of the world.'1'
1 Observations on a Libel — Life and 4 Hamlet, i, i.
Works, vol. i, p. 162. 5 2d Henry IV. t iv, 1.
2 Essay Of Goodness. 6 Advancement of Learning, book ii..
3 Cymbeline, iii, 1.
43o PARA LULU SMS.
This is but another way of saying: " The foremost man of all
this world." He also refers to Caesar's letters and apophthegms,
" which excel all men's else." '
Shakespeare says:
Kent, in the commentaries Caesar writ,
Is termed the civil'st place of all this isle.'-'
Bacon refers to Caesar's Commentaries, and pronounces them
"the best history of the world." 3
In the play of Julius Ccesar we see the conspirators coming to-
gether at the house of Brutus. In The Advancement of Learning,
book ii, we find Bacon describing the supper given by M. Brutus
and Cassius to "certain whose opinions they meant to feci whether
they were fit to be made their associates " in the killing of Caesar.
Bacon says of Julius Caesar:
He referred all things to himself, and was the true and perfect center of all his
actions. By which means, being so fast tied to his ends, he was still prosperous
and prevailed in his purposes, insomuch that neither country, nor religion, nor
good turns done him, nor kindred, nor friendship diverted his appetite nor bridled
him from pursuing his own ends.4
In the play we find the same characteristic brought into view.
Just before the assassination Cassius falls at Caesar's feet to beg
the enfranchisement of Publius Cimber. Caesar replies:
I could be well moved if I were as you;
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me.
But I am constant as the northern star
Of whose true-fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks,
They are all fire, and every one doth shine;
But there is one in all doth hold his place:
So, in the world: 'tis furnished well with men,
And men are flesh and blood and apprehensive;
Yet, in the number, I do know but one
That unassailable holds on his rank,
Unshaked of motion, and that I am he-
Let me a little show it.5
Here we see the same man described by Bacon, whom " neither
country, nor good turns done him, nor kindred, nor friendship
diverted . . . from pursuing his own ends."
1 Advancement of Learning, book ii. 4 Character of Julius Ccesar.
* ad Henry VI., iv, 7. ■ Julius Ccesar, iii, 1.
• Advancement of Learning, book ii.
IDENTICAL STUDIES.
43 ^
In Julius Ccesar we find Shakespeare suggesting the different
temperaments and mental states that accompany particular con-
ditions of the body:
Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights.
Yond' Cassius hath a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much : such men are dangerous.1
And in Bacon's Catalogue of Particular Histories , to be studied,
we find this:
52. A history of different habits of body, of fat and lean, of complexions (as they
are called), etc.
IX. Studies of Mortality.
Shakespeare tells us that Cleopatra had pursued
Conclusions infinite
Of easy ways to die.
And she speaks of the asp as the " baby at my breast that sucks
the nurse to sleep."
Bacon had made the same subject a matter of study. He says:
The death that is most without pain hath been noted to be upon the taking of
the potion of hemlock, which in humanity was the form of execution of capital
offenders in Athens. The poison of the asp, that Cleopatra used, hath some affinity
-with it*
Marvelous! marvelous! how the heads of these two men — if
you will insist on calling them such — were stored with the same
facts and gave birth to the same thoughts !
Both had studied the condition of the human body after death.
Bacon says:
I find in Plutarch and others that when Augustus Caesar visited the sepulcher
of Alexander the Great in Alexandria, he found the body to keep its dimensions,
but withal, that notwithstanding all the embalming, which no doubt was the best,
the body was so tender, as Caesar touching but the nose defaced it.3
And, on the other hand, we find Shakespeare's mind dwelling
upon the dust of this same Alexander, and tracing it, in his imagin-
ation, through many transmutations, until he finds it "stopping the
bung-hole of a beer-barrel."4
We observe the mind of the poet pursuing some very curious
and ghastly, not to say unpoetical, inquiries. In Hamlet we have:
1 Julius Ccesar, i, 2. 2 Natural History, % 643. 3 Ibid., § 771. * Hamlet, v, 1.
432
PARALLELISMS.
Hamlet. How long will a man lie i' the earth ere he rot?
Clown. Faith, if he be not rotten before he die '(as we have many pocky corses
now-a-days, that will scarce hold the laying in), he will last you some eight year,
or nine year: a tanner will last you nine year.
Hamlet. Why he more than another?
Clown. Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade that he will keep out
water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead
body.1
And Bacon's mind had turned to similar studies. He says:
It is strange, and well to be noted, how long carcasses have continued uncor-
rupt, and in their former dimensions, as appeareth in the mummies of Egypt;
having lasted, as is conceived, some of them three thousand years. -
X. Oratory.
Both Bacon and the writer of the Shakespeare Plays were prac-
tical orators and students of oratory.
As to the first, we have Ben Jonson's testimony:
There happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his
speaking. His language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly cen-
sorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suf-
fered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech
but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from
him without loss. He commanded where he spoke and had his judges angry and
pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear
of every man who heard him was lest he should make an end.
Howell, another contemporary, says of him : " He was the elo-
quentest man that was born in this island."3
Let us turn now to the great oration which Shakespeare puts
into the mouth of Mark Antony, as delivered over the dead body of
Julius Caesar.
Well did Archbishop Whately say of Shakespeare:
The first of dramatists, he might easily have been the first of orators.
Only an orator, accustomed to public speech, and holding " the
affections of his hearers in his power," and capable of working upon
the passions of men, and making them " angry or pleased " as he
chose, could have conceived that great oration. It is climactic in
its construction. Mark Antony begins in all humility and deep
sorrow, asking only pity and sympathy for the poor bleeding
corpse :
I come to bury Csesar, not to praise him.
1 Hamlet, v, i. 2 Natural History, § 771. s Holmes, A uthorship o/Shak., vol. ii, p. 600.
IDENTICAL STUDIES. 433
He is most deferential to "the honorable men" who had assas-
sinated Caesar:
Here, under leave of Brutus, and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honorable man, —
So are they all, all honorable men),
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
And he gives the humble reason:
He was my friend, faithful and just to me.
And then how cunningly he interjects appeals to the feelings of
the mob:
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.
And how adroitly, and with an ad captandum vulgus argument^
he answers the charge that Caesar was ambitious:
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.
And then, protesting that he will not read Caesar's will, he per-
mits the multitude to know that they are his heirs.
And what a world of admiration, in the writer, for Caesar him-
self, lies behind these words:
Let but the commons hear this testament,
(Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read),
And they would go and kiss dead Caesar's wounds,
And dip their napkins in his sacred blood;
Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,
And dying, mention it within their wills,
Bequeathing it, as a rich legacy,
Unto their issue.
Then he pretends to draw back.
Citizens. Read the will; we'll hear it, Antony; you shall read us the will —
Caesar's will.
Antony. Will you be patient? Will you stay a while? I have o'ershot myself
to tell you of it.
And then, at last, encouraged by the voices and cries of the
multitude, he snarls out:
I fear I wrong the honorable men
434
PA RA LLELISMS.
But before reading the will he descends to uncover the dead
body of the great commander; the multitude pressing, with fiery
Italian eyes, around him, and glaring over each others' shoulders
at the corpse.
But first he brings back the memory of Caesar's magnificent
victories:
You all do know this mantle: I remember
The first time ever Caesar put it on;
'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent,
That day he overcame the Arervii.
Then he plucks away the garment and reveals the hacked and
mangled corpse,
Marred, as you see, by traitors.
And thereupon he gives the details of the assassination, points
out and identifies each wound, "poor, poor dumb mouths;" and
at last reads the will, and sends the mob forth, raging for
revenge, to let slip the dogs of war.
Beside this funeral oration all other efforts of human speech are
weak, feeble, poverty-stricken and commonplace. Call up your
Demosthenes, your Cicero, your Burke, your Chatham, your Grat-
tan, your Webster, — and what are their noblest and loftiest utter-
ances compared with this magnificent production ? It is the most
consummate eloquence, wedded to the highest poetry, breathing the
profoundest philosophy, and sweeping the whole register of the
human heart, as if it were the strings of some grand musical instru-
ment, capable of giving forth all forms of sound, from the sob of
pity to the howl of fury. It lifts the head of human possibility a
whole shoulder-height above the range of ordinary human achieve-
ment.
We find Bacon writing a letter, in 1608-9, *° Sir Tobie Matthew,
in which he refers back to the time of the death of Elizabeth (1603),
and, alluding to a rough draft of his essay, The Felicity of Quee?i
Elizabeth, which Bacon had shown to Sir Tobie, he says :
At that time methought you were more willing to hear Julius Ccesar than
Elizabeth commended.
Bacon, it is known, submitted his acknowledged writings to the
criticism of his friend, Sir Tobie ; and we can imagine him reading
to Sir Tobie, in secret, this grand oration, with all the heat and fer-
vor with which it came from his own mind. And we can imagine
IDENTICAL STUDIES. 435
Sir Tobie's delight, touched upon and referred to cunningly in the
foregoing playful allusion.
What a picture for a great artist that would make : Bacon and
Sir Tobie alone in the chamber of Gray's Inn, with the door
locked ; and Bacon reading, with flashing eyes, to his enraptured
auditor, Mark Antony's oration over the dead body of Julius Caesar.
XI. Other Studies.
But, in whatever direction we turn, we find the writer of the
Plays and Francis Bacon devoting themselves to the same pursuits.
Bacon in The New Atlantis discusses the possibility of there
being discovered in the future "some perpetual motions" — a curi-
ous thought and a curious study for that age.
Shakespeare makes Falstaff say to the Chief Justice:
I were better to be eaten to death with rust, than to be scoured to nothing
with perpetual motion}
Bacon says:
Snow-water is held unwholesome; inasmuch as the people that dwell at the
foot of the snow mountains, or otherwise upon the ascent, especially the women,
by drinking snow-water have great bags hanging under their throats. '-
Shakespeare says:
When we were boys,
Who would believe that there were mountaineers
Dew-lapped like bulls, whose throats had hanging at them
Wallets of flesh?3
Shakespeare was familiar with the works of Machiavel, and
alludes to him in The Merry Wives of Windsor, in 1st Henry Vl.
and in 3d Henry VI.
Bacon had studied his writings, and refers to him in The
Advancement of Learning, book ii, and in many other places.
Shakespeare was a great observer of the purity of the air. He
says in Macbeth :
This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
And Bacon says:
I would wish you to observe the climate and the temperature of the air ; for so
you shall judge of the healthfulness of the place.4
1 2d Henry IJ\, i, 2. 2 Natural History, § 396. 3 Tempest, iii, 3.
4 Letter to the Earl of Rutland, written in the name of the Earl of Essex — Life ami Works,
vol. ii, p. ig.
436 PARALLELISMS.
Bacon also says:
The heart receiveth benefit or harm most from the air we breathe, from vapors
and from the affections.1
One has only to read the works of Francis Bacon to see that
they abound in quotations from and references to the Bible. He
had evidently made the Scriptures the subject of close and thor-
ough study.
On the other hand, the Rev. Charles Wordsworth says:
Take the entire range of English literature, put together our best authors who
have written upon subjects professedly not religious or theological, and we shall
not find, I believe, in all united, so much evidence of the Bible having been read
and used as we have found in Shakespeare alone.
We have already seen that both the author of the Plays and
Francis Bacon had studied law, and had read even the obscure
law-reports of Plowden, printed in the still more obscure black-
letter and Norman French.
In fact, I might swell this chapter beyond all reasonable bounds
by citing instance after instance, to show that the writer of the
Plays studied precisely the same books that Francis Bacon did;
and, in the chapter on Identical Quotations, I have shown that he
took out of those books exactly the same particular facts and
thoughts which had adhered to the memory of Francis Bacon. It
is difficult in this world to find two men who agree in devoting
themselves not to one, but to a multitude of the same studies; and
rarer still to find two men who will be impressed alike with the
same particulars in those studies.
But let us move forward a step farther in the argument.
1 History of Life and Death.
CHAPTER VI.
IDEXTICAL ERRORS.
Lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold.
Hamlet, i,j.
THE list of coincident errors must necessarily be brief. We
can not include the errors common to all men in that age,
for those would prove nothing. And the mistakes of so accurate
and profound a man as Francis Bacon are necessarily few in
number. But if we find any errors peculiar to Francis Bacon
repeated in Shakespeare, it will go far to settle the question of
identity. For different men may read the same books and think
the same thoughts, but it is unusual, in fact, extraordinary, if they
fall into the same mistakes.
I. Both Misquote Aristotle.
Mr. Spedding noticed the fact that Bacon in The Advancement of
Learning had erroneously quoted Aristotle as saying " that young
men are no fit auditors of moral philosophy," because "they are
not settled from the boiling heat of their affections, nor attem-
pered with time and experience"; while, in truth, Aristotle speaks,
in the passage referred to by Bacon, of "political philosophy."
Mr. Spedding further noted that this precise error of confound-
ing moral with political philosophy had been followed by Shakespeare.
In Troilus and Cressida the two "young men," Paris and Troilus,
had given their opinion that the Trojans should keep possession of
the fair Helen. To which Hector replies:
Paris and Troilus, you have both said well;
And on the cause and question now in hand
Have glozed — but superficially; not much
Unlike young men whom Aristotle thought
Unfit to hear moral philosophy.'
And what reason did Bacon give why young men were not fit
to hear moral philosophy ? Because " they are not settled from the
' Troilus and Cressida, ii, 2.
437
438 PARALLELISMS.
boiling heat of their affections, nor attempered with time and
experience." And why does Hector think young men are " unfit
to hear moral philosophy" ? Because :
The reasons you allege do more conduce
To the hot passions of distempered blood,
Than to make up a free determination
'Twixt right and wrong; for pleasure and revenge
Have ears more deaf than adders, to the voice
Of any true decision.
II. An Error in Natural Philosophy.
Shakespeare had a curious theory about fire: it was that each
fire was an entity, as much so as a stick of wood; and that one
flame could push aside or drive out another flame, just as one stick
might push aside or expel another. This of course was an error.
He says:
Even as one heat another heat expels,
Or as one nail by strength drives out another,
So the remembrance of my former love
Is by a newer object quite forgotten.1
And the same thought is repeated in Coriolanus :
One fire drives out another ; one nail, one nail.'2
We turn to Bacon's Promus of Formularies and Elegancies, now
preserved in the British Museum, and, in his own handwriting, we
have, as one of the entries:
Clavum clavo pellere — (To drive out a nail with a nail).
This is precisely the expression given above:
One nail by strength drives out another.
One fire drives out another; one nail, one nail.
But behind this was a peculiar and erroneous theory held by
Bacon, concerning heat, which he records in the Sylva Sylvarum?
He held that heat was a substance; some of his favorite fallacies
were that "one flame within another quencheth not," and that
"flame doth not mingle with flame, but remaineth contiguous."
He speaks of one heat being "mixed with another," of its being
"pushed farther," — as if so much matter. This is precisely the
erroneous theory which was held by the writer of the Plays.
1 Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii, 4. 2 Coriolanus, iv, 7. 3 Vol. i, p. 32.
IDENTICAL ERRORS.
439
Mrs. Pott says:
Knowing, as we now do, that these theories were as mistaken as they appear
to have been original, it seems almost past belief that any two men should, at pre-
cisely the same period, have independently conceived the same theories and made
the same mistakes.1
III. Spirits of Animate and Inanimate Nature.
Bacon had another peculiar theory which the world has refused
to accept, at least in its broad significance.
He believed that there is a living spirit, or life principle, in
every thing in the created universe, which conserves its substance
and holds it together, and thus that, in some sense, the stones and
the clods of the earth possess souls; that without some such spirit-
ual force, differing in kinds, there could be no difference in sub-
stances. For why should the arrangement of the molecules of
foam, for instance, differ from that of the molecules of iron, if some
external force has not been imposed upon them to hold them in
their peculiar relation to each other, and thus constitute the differ-
ence between the light froth and the dense metal ?
This theory is akin to the expression which Shakespeare puts
into the mouth of the Duke, in As You Like It:
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks.
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.2
And Prince Arthur says:
My uncle's spirit is in these stones.3
Bacon says:
All tangible bodies contain a spirit enveloped with the grosser body. There is
no known body in the upper part of the earth without its spirit. The spirit which
exists in all living bodies keeps all the parts in due subjection; when it escapes the
body decomposes, or the similar parts unite — as metals rust, fluids turn sour.
And Bacon sees a relationship between the spirit within the ani-
mal and the spirit of the objects, even inanimate, which act upon
the senses of the animal; and he strikes out the curious thought
that
There might be as many senses in animals as there are points of agreement
with inanimate bodies if the animated body were perforated, so as to allow the spirit
to have access to the limb properly disposed for action, as a fit organ.4
That is to say, the spirit of the universe pervades all created
t
1 Promus, p. 33. *As You Like It, ii, 1. 3 King John, iv. 3. 4 Novum Organum, book ii.
44o PARALLELISMS.
things, animate and inanimate, but the intelligence of man and ani-
mal only takes cognizance of the spirits of other things around them
through the perforations of the senses; the eyes, ears, touch, taste
and smell being, as it were, holes, through which the external uni-
versal vitality reaches into our vitality and stirs it to recognition.
A solemn thought, doubtless true, and which should teach us mod-
esty; for it would follow that we see not all God's works, but only
those limited areas which come within the range of the peep-holes
of our few senses. In other words, the space around us may be
filled with forms, animate and inanimate, which hold "no points of
agreement " with our senses, and of which, therefore, we can have
no knowledge. And thus the dream of the schoolman of old may
be true, that the space around us is filled as thick with spirits as the
snow-storm is filled with snow-flakes.
This doctrine of spirits runs through all Bacon's writings. He
says in one place:
All bodies have spirits and pneumatical parts within them. . . . But the
spirits of things inanimate are shut in and cut off by the tangible parts.1
That is to say, they have no holes of the senses, through which
the spirit of the inanimate object can communicate with us; any
more than we could communicate with a human spirit, locked up
in a body devoid of all the senses.
Again he says:
Spirits are nothing else but a natural body rarified to a proportion, and
included in the tangible parts of bodies as in an integument ; . . . and they are in
all tangible bodies whatsoever, more or less.2
And again speaking of the superstition of '' the evil eye," he
says:
Besides, at such times [times of glory and triumph], the spirits of the persons
envied do come forth most into the outward parts, and so meet the blow.3
Bacon does not speak, as we would, of the spirit in a man, but of
the spirits, as if there were a multitude of them in each individual,
occupying every part of the body. For instance:
Great joys attenuate the spirits; familiar cheerfulness strengthens the spirits
by calling them forth.4
Again:
In bashfulness the spirits do a little go and come.5
1 Natural History, § 601. 3 Essay Of R>i7>y. ■ Essay Of Goodness y
2 I bid ., § 92. 4 History of L ife and Death .
IDENTICAL ERRORS. 44r
And again:
The spirits of the wine oppress the spirits animal. '
And in Shakespeare we find this same theory of the spirits. He
*says:
Fair daughter ! you do draw my spirits from me,
With new lamenting ancient oversights.2
And again:
Forth at jour eyes your spirits wildly peep.3
And again:
I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
The reason is, your spirits are attentive.4
And again:
Your spirits shine through you.5
Young gentleman, your spirits are too bold for your years.6
My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up.7
My spirits are nimble.8
Heaven give your spirits comfort.9
Summon up your dearest spirits.10
The nimble spirits in the arteries.11
Their great guilt,
Like poison given to work a great time after,
Now 'gins to bite the spirits.*-
Spirits are not finely touched but to fine issues.13
Thus in the Shakespeare Plays we find the reflection of one of
Bacon's most peculiar philosophical beliefs.
IV. Spontaneous Generation.
Bacon fell into another error in natural philosophy which reap-
pears in the Plays. This was a belief, which continued down to
our own times, in spontaneous generation ; that is to say, that life
could come out of non-life. We now realize that that marvelous
and inexplicable thing we call life ascends by an unbroken pedi-
gree, through all time, back to the central Source of Force in the
universe, by whatever name we may call it. But Bacon believed
that life could come out of conditions of inorganic matter. He
says :
1 Xatural History, §726. 6 As You Like It, i, 2. ,0 Love's Labor Lost, ii, 1.
*2d Henry IV., ii, 3. 7 Tempest, i, 2. " Ibid., iv, 3.
3 Hamlet, iii, 4. ■ Ibid., ii, 1. ^Tempest, iii, 3.
* Merchant of Venice, v. \. 9 Measure for Measure, iv, 2. ■• Measure for Measure, 1, 1.
-"' Macbeth, iii, 1.
442 PARALLELISMS.
The first beginnings and rudiments or effects of life in animalculae spring from
putrefaction, as in the eggs of ants, worms, mosses, frogs after rain, etc.1
Again he says.
The excrements of living creatures do not only heed insecta when they are
exerned, but also while they are in the body.2
We find that the poet Shakespeare had thought much upon this
same very unpoetical subject. He says:
And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements.
Starts up and stands on end.3
Bacon says:
For all putrefaction, if it dissolve not in arefaction, will in the end issue into
plants, or living creatures bred of putrefaction.4
And again he speaks of
Living creatures bred of putrefaction. ft
And in Shakespeare we have Hamlet saying:
For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion.6
And in all this we see, also, the natural philosopher, who
believed that " most base things tend to rich ends."
V. Other Errors.
Both believed that there was a precious stone in the head of a
toad. Bacon says:
Query. If the stone taken out of a toad's head be not of the like virtue; for
the toad loveth shade and coolness.7
Shakespeare says :
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly und venomous,
Wears yet a piecious jewel in his head.8
Both thought the liver was the seat of sensuality. Bacon in
The Advancement of Learning, book ii, refers to Plato's opinion to>
that effect. And in Shakespeare we have:
This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity;
A green goose, a goddess.9
1 Novum Organum, book ii. * Natural History, § 605. 7 Natural History, cent, x, § 967.
5 Natural History, % 696. 6 Ibid., § 328. 8 A s You Like It, ii, 1.
3 Hamlet, iii, 4. 8 Hamlet, ii, 2. * Love's Labor Lost, iv, 3.
IDENTICAL ERRORS.
443
Both believed, despite the discoveries of Galileo, that the earth
was the center of the universe, and that the heavens revolved
around it. Later in his life Bacon seemed to accept the new theo-
ries, but at the time the Plays were written he repudiated them.
He says:
Who would not smile at the astronomers, I mean not these new carmen which
drive the earth about.1
Again he says:
It is a poor center of a man's actions, himself. It is right earth, for that only-
stands fast upon his own center; whereas all things that have affinity with the
heavens move upon the center of another, which they benefit. -
While Shakespeare also rejected the new theories. He says in
Hamlet :
Doubt thou the stars are lire.
Doubt that the sun doth move?
Again he says:
The heavens themselves, the planets ana this center,
Observe degree, priority and place.4
And in the same play he says:
But the strong base and building of ray love
Is as the very center of the earth.
Drawing all things to it.5
1 Essay In Praise of Knowledge, 1590 3 Hamlet, ii, 2.
— Life and Works, vol. i, p. 124. * Troilus and Cressida, i, 3.
3 Essay Of Wisdom. * Ibid., iv, 2.
CHAPTER VII.
THE IDENTICAL USE OE UNUSUAL WORDS.
Letter for letter ! Why, this is the very same : the very hand : the very words.
Merry Wives of Windsor \ ii, i.
I HAVE already shown, in the first chapter of Book I., the
tendency manifested in the Plays to use unusual words,
especially those derived from or constructed out of the Latin. I
may add to the list already given the following instances:
And all things rare
That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.'
Cowards and men cautelous }
No soil or cautel."
Through all the world's vastidity*
Such cxsufflicate and blown surmises.5
His pendant bed and procreant cradle.6
Thou vinew'dst leaven.7
Rend and deracinate*
Thou cacadamon}
We have a very crowding of words, unusual in poetry, into the
following lines :
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound pine and divert his grain
Tortive and errant from his course of growth.1"
All these things bespeak the scholar, overflowing with Roman
learning and eager to enrich his mother-tongue by the coinage of
new words. It is not too much to say that Bacon has doubled the
capacity of the English language. He was aware of this fact him-
self, and in his Discourse in Praise of Queen Elizabeth he says that
the tongue of England " has been infinitely polished since her
happy times."
' Sonnet xxi. 5 Othello, iii, 3. "Ibid., i, 3.
2 Julius Caesar, ii, 1. * Macbeth, i, 6. 9 Richard III., i, 3.
3 Hamlet, i, 3. 7 Troilus and Cressida, ii, 1. 10 Troilus and Cressida, i, 3.
4 Measure for Measure, iii, 1.
444
THE IDENTICAL USE OF UNUSUAL WORDS.
445
We find in Bacon's prose works the same tendency to coin or
transfer words bodily from the Latin. I give a few examples:
"Coarctation," " percutient," " mordication," " carnosities," " the ingurgita-
tion of wine," "incomprehensions," " arefaction," " flexuous courses of nature,"
" exulcerations," " reluctation," "embarred," "digladiation," " vermiculate ques-
tions," " morigeration," " redargution," "maniable," " ventosity."
But we will also find, in both sets of writings, a disposition to
use quaint, odd and unusual words, borrowed, many of them, from
that part of common speech which rarely finds its way into print, —
the colloquialisms of the shop and the street, — and we will find
many of them that are used in the same sense by both Bacon and
Shakespeare.
Macbeth says :
I pull in resolution, and begin
To doubt the equivocation of the fiend,
That lies like truth.1
The commentators have been puzzled with this word, but we:
have it also in Bacon :
Those smells are all strong, and do /////and vellicate the sense.2
To vellicate is to twitch convulsively.
We find in Hamlet the strange word pall ;
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well
When our dear plots do pall. ■
We turn to Bacon and we find him using the same word:
The beer or wine hath not been palled or deaded at all.4
And again:
The refreshing or quickening of drink palled or dead.5
In Bacon we have :
For if they go forth right to a place, they must needs have sight.6
Shakespeare says :
Step aside from the direct forth right.'
Through forth rights and meanders.8
Bacon says:
I have been juddering in physic all my life.
' Macbeth, v, 4. 4 Xatural History \ §385. 7 Troilus and Cress/Wa, iii, 3;.
2 Natural History ,§835. * Ibid., §314. • Ttm&est, iii, 3.
* Hamlet, v, 1. « Ibid. , 1 698.
446 PARALLELISMS.
Shakespeare says :
The gods that keep such a pudder o'er our heads.1
This word occurs but on this occasion in the Plays. It means
bother.
There is a word in Henry F.2 — imbar — which has excited con-
siderable controversy among the commentators. It occurs in the
discussion of the Salic law of France:
So that as clear as is the summer's sun,
King Pepin's title, and Hugh Capet's claim,
King Lewis his satisfaction, all appear
To hold in right and title of the female;
So do the kings of France unto this day:
Howbeit they would hold up this Salic law,
To bar your Highness claiming from the female;
And rather choose to hide them in a net,
Than amply to imbar their crooked titles
Usurped from you and your progenitors.
I quote Knight's foot-note upon this word:
Imbar. The Folio gives this word imbarre, which modern editors, upon the
authority of Theobald, have changed into imbare. Rowe, somewhat more boldly,
reads make bare. There can be no doubt, we think, that imbar is the right word.
It might be taken as placed in opposition to bar. To bar is to obstruct; to imbar
is to bar in, to secure. They would hold up the Salic law "to bar your High-
ness," hiding "their crooked titles" in a net rather than amply defending them.
But it has been suggested to us that imbar is here used for " to set at the bar " — to
place their crooked titles before a proper tribunal. This is ingenious and plausible.
I quote these comments to show that the word is a rare and
obscure one. The two words, bar and imbar, seem to me to mean
substantially the same thing; as we find plead and implead, personate
and impersonate, plant and implant. If there is any difference, it con-
sists in :he fact that bar means, as suggested by Knight, to shut
out, and imbar to shut in. In the sentence under consideration it
seems that both the title of the reigning French King and the
claim of King Henry V. came through the female line, and the
Archbishop of Canterbury shows that the French, while their King
holds in contravention of the Salic law, yet set it up as a bar to
the claim of the English King, also holding through the female
line, and thus involve themselves in a net or tangle of contradic-
tions, instead of amply, fully, and on other and substantial grounds,
1 Lear, iii, a. 2 Act i, scene 2.
THE IDENTICAL USE OE UNUSUAL WORDS. 447
imbarring their titles, inclosing them and defending them from the
world.
And here again, where we would find the explanation of obscure
words in Shakespeare, we are driven to Bacon.
Tn his History of Henry VII. he says:
The King forthwith banished all Flemings . . . out of his kingdom; com-
manding his subjects likewise, and by name his merchants adventurers, which had
a reisance in Antwerp, to return; translating the mart, which commonly followed
the English cloth, unto Calais; and emban-ed also all further trade for the future.
Here we get at the meaning of the word. He not only drove
the Flemish merchants out of his country and recalled his own
merchants resident in Flanders, and changed the foreign mart, but
he also embarred all further trade — that is, denied the Flemish
commerce access to his people.
And it is a curious fact that in our great American dictionary
( Webster s Unabridged} the two words, embarred and i/nbare, are
given — the first with the above quotation from Bacon, and the
other with the example of the word from Henry V., with a meaning
attached, created to suit the emergency, 4k to lay bare, to uncover,
to expose." So that, to attempt to read Shakespeare without
Bacon, the commentators are driven to coin new words "which
never were, and no man ever saw."
We read in Shakespeare:
How cam'st thou to be the siege of this mooncalf .' '
J. O. Halliwell says in a foot-note upon this passage:
A mooncalf is an imperfectly-developed foetus, here metaphorically applied to a
misshapen monster.
But we turn to Bacon, and there we find the real explanation:
It may be that children and young cattle that are brought forth in the full of the
moon are stronger and laigcr than those which are brought forth in the wane; and
those, also, which are begotten in the full of the moon [are stronger and larger].2
So that the term was applied to Caliban with reference to his
gross proportions.
The curious word startitig-hole occurs but once in the
Plays, in Falstaff's interview with the Prince,3 after the robbery on
Gads-hill; and it is so rare that it is made the foundation of a foot-
I Tempest, ii, 2. 2 Natural ///story § 897. 3 rst Henry //'., ii, 4.
448 PARALLELISMS.
note. We turn to Bacon, and we find it used by him in the same
sense:
He [Lopez] thought to provide himself with as many starting-holes and eva-
sions as he could devise.1
Bacon says:
So with marvelous consent and applause.'2
Shakespeare says:
The rogues are marvelous poor.3
Marvelous foul linen.4
Bacon speaks of
Incredible affection.5
This word is found but once in the Plays:
I tell you, 'tis incredible to believe
How much she loves me.6
Bacon says:
The people entertained this airy body ox phantasm."
Shakespeare says:
A fanatical phantasm/
This is a rare word; it occurs but twice in the Plays; the word
phantasma once.
Bacon says:
It [Ireland] was a ticklish and unsettled state.9
Shakespeare says:
And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts
To every ticklish reader.10
This word occurs but once in the Plays, the instance given.
Bacon says:
The embassador did so magnify the King and Queen, as was enough to glut the
hearers.11
This odd word occurs only once in the Plays, in The Tempest,
and is considered so unusual as to be the subject of a foot-note:
1 The Lopez Conspiracy — Life and Works, • Taming of the Shrew, ii, i.
vol. i, p. 283. 7 History of Henry VII.
2 History of Henry VII. 8 Love's Labor Lost, v, t.
8 AWs Well that Ends Well, iv, 3. » History of Henry II.
*2d Henry IV., v, 1. 10 Troilus and Cressida, iv, 5.
6 History of Henry VII. ll History of Henry VII.
THE IDENTICAL USE OF UNUSUAL WORDS. 449
Though every drop of water swear against it
And gape at widest to glut him.1
We find the word inoculate but once in the Plays:
For virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it.5
Bacon uses the same rare word:
Grafting and *" noculating wild trees.3
Imogen says to the entranced Ioachimo:
What, dear sir,
Thus raps you ? Are you well ? 4
And Knight has a foot-note:
Raps you — transports you. We are familiar with the participle rapt, but this
form of the verb is uncommon.
We turn to Bacon and we find him using the same uncommon
form :
Winged enticements that ravish and rap mortal men.5
We find in the Plays a very curious expression. Ajax calls
Thersites:
A vinew'dst leaven}
We turn to Bacon and we find him applying the same word to
human beings :
A leaven of men.7
A core of people.8
Thou core of envy.9
Dregs of the northern people.10
Dregs of the storm.11
Dregs of conscience. Ia
Bacon says:
Shakespeare :
Bacon:
Shakespeare :
Bacon says:
I doubt not but in the university you shall find choice of many excellent wits,
and in things wherein they have waded, many of good understanding.13
1 Tempest, i, i. 8 Ibid.
2 Hamlet, iii, i. 9 Troilus and Cressida, v, i.
3 New A tlantis. ' ° History of Henry VII.
* Cymbeline, i, 7. u Tempest, ii, 2.
6 Wisdom 0/ the A ncients — Sphynx, 12 Richard III., i, 4.
* Troilus and Cressida, ii, 1. 13 Letter to Sir Foulke Greville — Life and
1 History of Henry VII. Works, vol. ii, p. 25.
45°
PARALLELISMS.
And again:
But if I should wade further into this Queen's praises.1
Shakespeare says:
For their joy waded in tears.2
I am in blood
Stepped in so far, that should I zvade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.3
Bacon says:
He was wholly compounded of frauds and deceits.4
Shakespeare says:
This foolish compounded clay, man.5
In the large composition of this man.6
We might compound & boy, half French, half English.7
And she, of all compounded,
Outsells them all.8
The word slobber is referred to by the commentators as a strange
and unusual word. It is probably the same word as slubber? It is
used in The Merchant of Venice, ii, 8:
Slubber not on the business for my sake, Bassanio.
Bacon10 speaks of "slubbering on the lute," to illustrate his "cau-
tioning exercise, as to beware lest by evil doing, as all beginners do
weakly, a man grow to be inveterate in a bad habit." Slubbering on
the lute means, therefore, practicing in a slovenly manner.
And this word inveterate is a favorite one with Shakespeare:
The inveterate canker.11
Inveterate malice.19
Inveterate hate.13
In Shakespeare we find:
Tea, all which it inherit shall dissolve;
And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
1 Felic. Queen Elizabeth.
2 Winter's Tale, v. 2.
3 Macbeth, iii, 4.
4 Character of Julius Ccesar.
3 2d Henry IV., i, 2.
8 King John, i, 1.
7 Henry V., v, 2.
8 Cymbeline, iii, 5.
9 Shakespeariana, May, 1884, p. 185 — Article
by J. Lauglin.
10 Discourse Concerning Help for the Intellect-
ual Powers.
11 King John, v, 2.
>2 Richard II., i, 1.
18 Corioianus, ii, 3.
THE IDENTICAL USE OF UNUSUAL WORDS. 451
This word rack has led to great controversy, and as an emenda-
tion the word wreck was suggested, but the true explanation was
found in Bacon.1 He says:
The winds in the upper regions, which move the clouds above, which we call
the rack, and are not perceived below, pass without noise. -
Hence the rack evidently means the light, fleecy, upper clouds, a
tine image for unsubstantiality.
And we have another curious instance wherein Shakespeare is
only to be explained by Bacon. In 2d Henry IF., ii, 2, Poins says
of Falstaff, speaking to Bardolph:
And how doth the Martlemas, your master.
The commentators explain this as meaning the feast of St. Mar-
tin, the nth of November.
Poins calls Falstaff the Martlemas because his year of life is running out.:
But we turn to Bacon's Natural History. We find
That that is dry is unapt to putrefy; and therefore smoke preserveth flesh, as
we see in bacon, and neat's tongues and Martlemas beef, etc.4
This is a much more natural explanation. Poins refers to the
aged but gross Falstaff as a beef, dried and smoked by time.
Bacon says:
The breath in man's microcosmos and in other animals do very well agree.5
Shakespeare says :
If you see this in the map of my microcosm, follows it 1 am known well
enough too.6
Bacon says:
But sure it could not be that pelting matter.1
Shakespeare says:
Every pelting, petty officer.8
Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes.9
Shakespeare says:
Do cream and mantle like a standing pool.10
1 Knight's Shak., note B, vol. ii, p. 429. * Coriolanus, ii, 1.
2 Natural History, cent, ii, § 115. ' Letter to Buckingham.
3 Knight. 8 Measure for Measure, ii, 2.
4 Natural History, cent. iv. 9 Lear, ii, 3.
5 Xatur at History of Winds. 10 Merchant of Venice, i, 1.
452 PARALLELISMS.
Their rising senses
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
Their clearer reason.1
Bacon says:
It [the beer] drinketh fresh, flowereth and mantleth exceedingly.2'
Bacon says:
If there be any biting or nibbling at my name.3
Shakespeare says:
And as pigeons bill, so wedlock would be nibbling.*'
Bacon says:
I have lived hitherto upon the scraps of my former fortunes.5
Shakespeare says:
He hath been at a feast of languages
And stolen the scraps*
Those scraps are good deeds past.7
We find the rare word graveled in both sets of writings. I can-
recall only one other instance, in all our literature, where this
strange word has been employed; that is in John Hay's Banty Tim.
Bacon says :
Her Majesty was somewhat graveled upon the offense she took at my speech
in Parliament.8
Shakespeare says :
O gravel heart.9
And when you were graveled for lack of matter, you might take occasion to
kiss.10
The word perturbation was a favorite with both.
Bacon has:
The Epicureans placed felicity in serenity of mind and freedom from per-
turbation }x
And they be the clouds of error which descend in the storms of passions and
perturbations }%
Is it not knowledge that doth alone clear the mind of all perturbations? . . .
These be the clouds of error that turn into the storms of perturbation.™
1 Tempest, v, i. 8 Letter to Lord Burleigh, June, 1595.
2 Natural History, cent, i, § 46. 9 Measure for Measure, iv, 3.
3 Letter to Mr. Davis. l0As You Like It, iv, 1.
* As You Like It, iii, 2. ll Advancement of Learning, book ii.
'Letter to Buckingham, Sept. 5, 1621. 12 Ibid., book 1.
« Love's Labor Lost, v, 1 . ' 3 In Praise ,f Knowledge.
7 Troilus and Cressida, iii, 3.
THE IDENTICAL USE OF UNUSUAL WORDS. 453
Shakespeare has:
O polished perturbation ! golden care.1
A great perturbation in nature.'1
From much grief, from study and perturbation of the brain.3
Bacon says :
She had no props, or supports of her government, but those that were of her own
making.4
Shakespeare says :
The boy was the very staff of my age, my very prop.5
See where his Grace stands 'tween two clergymen.
Two props of virtue for a Christian prince.6
Bacon also says:
There was also made a shoaring or underpropping act for the benevolence.7
Shakespeare says:
What penny hath Rome borne,
What men provided, what munition sent,
To underprop this action ? 8
Here am I left to underprop his land.9
Extirpate occurs but once in the Plays. Prosper says his
brother proposed " to extirpate me and mine." Bacon uses this then
unusual word in the same sense:
But for extirpating of the roots and cause of the like commotions.10
Bacon says:
This depressing of the house of York did rankle and fester the affections of
his people.11
Shakespeare says:
His venom tooth will rankle to the death. '-
They fester 'gainst ingratitude.13
Bacon says:
He saith that towards his latter time that closeness did impair and a little
perish his understanding.14
1 2d Henry IV. , iv, 5. 8 Richard III. , iii, 7. ll Ibid .
" Macbeth, v, 1. 7 History of Henry VII. l2 Richard III., i, 3.
3 2d Henry IV., i, 2. 8 King John, v, 2. l3 Coriolanus, i, 9. I
* Felic. Queen Elizabeth. 9 Richard II, ii, 2. 14 Essay Of Friendship.
5 Merchant 0/ Venice, ii, 2. 10 History of Henry VI F.
454 PARALLELISMS.
Henry Lewis says:
The use of the verb thus as transitive is rare.1
But rare as it is, we find it in Shakespeare:
Because thy flinty heart, more hard than they,
Might in thy palace perish Margaret.2
Bacon says:
I do esteem whatsoever I have or may have in this world but as trash in com-
parison.3
And again:
It shows he weighs men's minds and not their trash. A
Shakespeare says:
Who steals my purse steals trash}
Wrung
From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash}
Bacon speaks of
A shrunken and wooden posture.'
Shakespeare speaks of
The wooden dialogue.8
Bacon says:
Young men puffed up with the glittering show of vanity.9
Shakespeare says:
The sea. puffed up with winds.10
The heart, puffed up with-this retinue, doth any deed of courage.11
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit, by divine ambition puffed,
Makes mouths at the invisible event w
Bacon says:
To make hope the antidote of human diseases.13
Shakespeare says:
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom.14
1 Essay, Bacon, p. 161. " Troilus and Cressida, i, 3.
2 2d Henry VI., iii, 2. 9 Wisdom of the Ancients — Memnon..
3 Letter to the Earl of Salisbury. l0 Taming of the Shrew, i, 2.
4 Essay Of Goodness. ' 1 2d Henry IV., iv, 3.
6 Othello, iii, 2. ia Hamlet, iv, 4.
"fulius Ccesar, iv, 3. 13 Med. Sacra.
7 Essay Of Boldness. u Macbeth, v, 3.
THE IDENTICAL USE OF UX USUAL WORDS.
455
Trust not the physician: his antidotes are poisons.1
The word was an unusual one, and occurs but twice in the Plays.
Bacon, in his essay Of Masks, speaking of the decorations of the
stage, refers to "oes or spangs," meaning, as I should take it, round,
shining spots or spangles, like eyes, which, " as they are of no great
cost, so are they of most glory." And in Shakespeare this figure
repeatedly appears:
All you fiery oes and eyes of light.'2
And he speaks in the prologue to Henry V. of the play-house as
" this wooden O."
And he uses the same root in another odd word, ceiliads —
glances of the eye:
Judicious ceiliads.3
She gave strange ceiliads.4
Bacon says:
Pyonner in the myne of truth."
A picneer in the mine of truth/
Shakespeare says:
Canst work in the earth so fast;
A worthy pioneer."1
The general camp, pioneers and all.8
This rare word occurs but three times in the Plays.
And in Shakespeare we have, as a parallel to Bacon's " mine of
truth ":
O, Antony, thou mine of bounty?
Bacon speaks of
Such natural philosophy as shall not vanish in the fume of subtle and delecta-
ble speculation.10
While in Shakespeare we have:
Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs."
Bacon says:
Neither did they observe so much as the half-face of justice, in proceeding by
indictment.12
1 Timon of Athens, iv, 3. 7 Hamlet, i, 5.
2 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, iii, 2. 8 Othello, iii, 3.
3 Merry Wives 0/ Windsor, i, 3. 9 A ntony and Cleopatra, iv, 6.
* Lear, iv, 5. '• Advancement 0/ Learning, book ii.
5 Prom us, §1395, p. 451. n Borneo and Juliet, i, 1.
* Letter to Burleigh. ] 2 History 0/ Henry I 'If.
45 6 PARALLELISMS.
Shakespeare says:
Out upon this half-faced fellowship. '
This same half-faced fellow, Shadow.2
Because he hath a half-face, like my father,
With that half -face would he have all my land.3
They both use another very rare word.
Bacon says:
Seditions and wars arise: in the midst of which hurly -bur lies laws are silent.4
Shakespeare says:
When the hurly-burly 's done.5
The news of hurly-burly innovation.6
This word occurs but twice in the Plays. We will see hereafter
that the last syllable is the cipher synonym for Burleigh, — the
Lord Treasurer, — Bacon's uncle.
Bacon speaks of
This jumping or flying to generalities.7
Shakespeare says:
We'd jump the life to come.8
In some sort it jumps with my humor.9
Jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass.10
We remember the use of a peculiar word in the mouth of
Othello, when he makes his confession to the Venetian senate:
Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.
We find the same word in Bacon :
Disgracing your actions, extenuating and blasting of your merit."
Also :
How far a defense might extenuate the offense.15
Also:
In excusing, extenuating or ingenious confession.^
It is a favorite word with both; it occurs eight times in the Plays.
' ist Henry IV., i, 3. 8 Macbeth, i, 7.
2 2d Henry IV, iii, 2. 9 ist Henry IV., i, 2.
3 King John, i, 1. ™ Henry /'., i, cho.
4 Wisdom of the A ncients— Orpheus. u Letter to Essex, Oct. 4, 1596.
« Macbeth, i, 1. 12 Letter to the Lords.
6 ist Henry IV., v, 1 . 13 Letter to the King.
7 Novum Organum.
THE IDENTICAL USE OE UNUSUAL WORDS.
We recall another very peculiar word in Lear:
Oh, how this mother swells up toward my heart.1
We turn to Bacon and we read:
The stench of feathers, or the like, they cure the rising of the mother.*
In Bacon we find :
The skirts of my living in Hertfordshire.3
In Shakespeare:
Here, in the skirts of the forest.4
The skirts of this wild wood.5
Young Fortinbras
Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,
Sharked up a list of landless resolutes.6
Bacon says:
Folds and knots of nature.7
Shakespeare says :
This knot intrinsicate of life untie.8
Motives, those strong knots of love.9
This knot of amity.10
Bacon says:
Then there budded forth some probable hopes of succession.11
Shakespeare says:
This is the state of man : to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms.12
457
And again:
Bacon:
Buckingham. Every man,
. . . Not consulting, broke
Into a general prophecy, that this tempest,
Dashing the garment of this peace, aboded
The sudden breach on't.
Norfolk. Which is budded out. Vi
And after he had not a little bemoaned himself.1
1 Lear, ii, 4. 8 A ntony and Cleopatra, v, 2.
■2 Natural History, cent, i, § 63. » Macbeth, iv, 3.
3 Letter to Robert Cecil, 1603. 10 1st Henry VI.
4 As You Like It, iii, 2. u Felic. Queen Elizabeth.
5 Ibid., v, 4. 12 Henry VIII., iii, 2.
•HamletiUx. 13 Ibid., i, 1.
7 Preface to Great Instauration. 14 History of Henry VII.
45 8 PA KALLELISMS.
Shakespeare:
I all alone bemoan my outcast state.1
He so bemoaned his son.2
This word occurs only twice in the Plays.
Bacon speaks of
The meeting-point and rendezvous of all my thoughts.3
Shakespeare has:
A comfort of retirement lives in this,
A rendezvous, a home to fly unto.4
And again:
And when I cannot live any longer I will do as I may; that is my rest, that is
the rendezvous of it.5
Bacon speaks of
A compacted strength.6
Shakespeare says:
Of imagination all compact?
My heart is now compact of flint.8
Bacon says:
Suspicions that the mind itself gathers are but buzzes?
Shakespeare says:
Each buz, each fancy, each complaint.10
I hear a buzzing of a separation.11
Bacon:
There is a lively, jocund, and, as I may say, a dancing age.12
Shakespeare:
The jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain top.13
The quotation from Bacon gives us the complete image that
was in the mind of the poet: — the dawn was dancing on the moun-
tain top.
Bacon says:
For it is a dull thing to tire, and, as we say, to jade anything too far,14
1 Sonnet, 8 Titus A ndronicus, v, 3.
2 3d Henry VI., ii, 5. 9 Essay Of Suspicion.
3 Letter to Lord Burleigh, 1580. ™ Lear, i, 4.
* 1st Henry IV., iv, 1. •' Henry VIII., ii, 1.
6 Henry V., ii, 1. 12 Wisdom of the A ncients — Pan.
* Advancement of Learning, book ii. >• Romeo and Juliet, iii, 5.
7 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, v, 1. '4 Essay Of Discourse.
THE IDENTICAL USE OE UNUSUAL WORDS. 459
Shakespeare says:
To let imagination jade me.1
Speaking of a young man overthrown and dying, Bacon says:
The flower of virtue cropped with sudden chance.'-2
Shakespeare speaks of
A fresh, xxneropped flower?
Comparing her son to the violets that "strew the green lap of
the spring," the Duchess says to him:
Well, bear you well in this new spring of time,
Lest you be cropped before you come to prime.4
Speaking of the history of an event, Bacon says:
The King hath so muffled it."
Shakespeare says:
Muffle your false love.6
Love whose view is muffled still.1
Bacon says:
The King resolved to make this business of Naples as a wrench and means of
peace.8
Shakespeare says:
A noble nature
May catch a wrench.91
Wrenching the true cause the false way.10
Bacon says:
The corruption and ambition of the times d'\d prick him forward.11
Our fear of Spain, which hath been the spur to this rigor.1'2
Shakespeare says:
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent.1"
My duty pricks me on.14
Honor pricks me on. Yea. but how if honor prick me off when I come on.15
1 Twelfth Night, ii, 5. ft Timon of Athens, ii, 2.
2 Wisdotn of the Ancients — Memnon. 10 2d Henry II'., ii, 1.
3 A Ws U 'ell that Ends Well, v, 3. il Character offulins Cetsar.
4 Richard II., v, 1. 12 Felic. Queen Elizabeth.
5 History of Henry VII. ■ 3 Macbeth, i, 7.
6 Comedy of Errors, ii, 2. 14 Two Gentlemen of Verona, iii, 1.
7 Romeo andfuliet, i, 1. 15 1st Henry IV., v, 1.
8 History of Henry VII,
46o PA RA L LEU SMS.
Falstaff complains on the battle-field that his bowels are "as
hot as molten lead." Bacon, speaking of the horror of Essex when
he found that the city would not sustain his attempted insurrec-
tion, graphically says:
So, as being extremely appalled, as divers that happened to see him then
might visibly perceive in his face and countenance, and almost molten with sweat,
though without any cause of bodily labor, but only by the perplexity and horror of
his mind.1
What a dramatical command of language does this sentence
exhibit!
While my book is being printed, Mr. J. G. Bronson, of Chicago,
calls my attention to the following parallelism.
In a letter of "Sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary, to Monsieur
Critoy, Secretary of France," said by Mr. Spedding to have been
written by Bacon, we find:
But contrariwise her Majesty, not liking to make windows into men s hearts and
secret thoughts, except the abundance of them did overflow into overt and express
acts or affirmations, etc.
While in the Shakespeare sonnets we have this precisely parallel
thought:
For through the painter must you see his skill,
To find where your true image pictur'd lies,
Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.
Now, see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
Are windows to my breast, wherethrough the sun
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee:
Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art;
They draw but what they see, know not the heart.'-
Here we have not only the same thought, but the same conclu-
sion: that the heart can only be read by its acts.
Bacon says:
And there used to shuffle up a summary proceeding, by examination.3
Whatsoever singularity, chance and the shuffle of things has produced.4
Shakespeare says:
I am fain to shuffle, to hedge and to lurch.5
'Tis not so above:
There is no shuffling.'''
1 A Declaration of the Treasons. ' Gesta Grayorum — Life and Works, vol. i, p. 335.
2 Sonnet xxiv. * Merry Wives 0/ Windsor, ii, 2.
:i History of Henry VII. ,! Hamlet, iii, 3.
THE IDENTICAL USE OF UNUSUAL WORDS. 461
Your life, good master,
Must shuffle for itself.1
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.2
Shuffle her away.3
And here, as illustrating the scholarly acquirements of the
writer of the Plays, and his tendency to enrich the English language
by the creation of new words> I would refer to two instances,
which, — although I have observed no parallels for them in Bacon's
writings, — are curious enough to be noted here:
Dost thou infamonize me among potentates.4
As he had been incorpscd and demi-natured*
And here we have a very unusual word used by both — used
only once, I think, by either of them.
Bacon:
To win fame and to eternize your name.6
Shakespeare:
Eternized in all ages.7
Bacon:
The vain and indign comprehensions of heresy.8
Shakespeare:
All indign and base adversities.9
I could give many more instances of this use in the two bodies
of writings of the same quaint and unusual words, did I not fear to
offend the patience of the reader and extend this book beyond all
reasonable proportions.
I regret that I am not where I could have access to authorities
which would show how many of these strange words appeared for
the first time, in the history of our language, in the Bacon and
Shakespeare writings. But this will constitute a work for scholars
hereafter.
1 Cymbeline, v, 5. 8 Gesta Grayorunt — Life and Works, vol. i,
2 Hamlet, iii, 1. p. 336.
3 Merry Wives of Windsor, ii, 2. T 2d Henry VI., v, 3.
4 Love's Labor Lost, v, 2. 8 Letter to the King, 1612.
6 Hamlet, iv, 7. * Othello, i, 3.
wo. Of
CHAPTER VIII.
IDENTITIES OE CHARACTER.
I saw Othello's visage in his mind.
Othello, /, .?.
CHARACTER, after all, constitutes the man. I do not mean
thereby reputation, — for that concerns the opinions of others,
and they may or may not be deserved; but those infinite shades of
disposition which separate one man from all other men. And as
there were never in the world two men who possessed heads of
precisely the same shape, so there cannot be two men having pre-
cisely the same character. The Creator has a thousand elements
which go to make man, and he never puts all of them in any one
man; nor does he ever mix a part of them, in his alembic, in the
same proportions, for any two men. " In the catalogue we all go
for men." Anything, with the human osseous system and flesh on
it, is, perforce, a man; but the difference between one man and
another may be as wide as that between the primordial cell and
the regenerated soul.
The writer of the Plays had thought this thought, as he seems
to have thought all other thoughts, and he exclaims:
Oh, the difference of man and man ! '
When we seek, however, to institute a comparison between
Francis Bacon and the writer of the Plays, we are met by this
difficulty: We know, accurately enough, what was the character
of Francis Bacon — his life reveals it; — but if we turn to the author
of certain dramatic compositions, we are at a loss to know when
the man himself speaks and when the character he has created
speaks. We are more apt to see the inner nature of the writer in
the general frame, moral and purpose of the piece, and in those
utterances which burst from him unawares, and which have no
necessary connection with the plot or the characters of the play,
than in the acts performed in the course of the drama, or in the
1 Lear, iv, 2.
462
IDENTITIES OF CHARACTER. 463
sentiments put into the mouths of the men who perform them, and
which are parts of the acts and parcel of the plots.
But, notwithstanding these difficulties, we can perceive clearly
enough that the writer of the Plays possessed essentially the same
traits of character which we know to have belonged to Francis
Bacon.
The reader has seen already that both personages, if we may
call them such, possessed the philosophical and poetical cast of
mind; that they were persons of unequaled genius, command of
language, elevation of mind and loftiness of moral purpose. Let
us go a step farther.
I. Industry.
I have shown on page 92, ante, that the writer of the Plays was
a man of vast industry, and that he elaborated his work with the
utmost skill and pains. Knight says:
The whole of this scene,1 in the Folio, exhibits the greatest care in remodeling
the text of the quarto.
But let us turn to another play.
A comparison of that part of the text of The Merry Wives of
Windsor which embraces the scene at Hemes' oak, in the edition of
1602, with the text of the Folio of 1623, will show how elaborately
the writer revised and improved his text. I place the new parts of
the Folio in italics, and where it repeats the words of the edition
of 1602 they are given in quotation marks. In this way the changes
are made more conspicuous.
In the edition of 1602 we have:
Quickly. You fairies that do haunt these shady groves,
Look round about the woods if you espy
A mortal that doth haunt our sacred round:
If such a one you can espy, give him his due,
And leave not till you pinch him black and blue.
Give them their charge, Puck, ere they part away.
In the Folio of 1623 we have this thus amplified:
Quickly. " Fairies," black, gray, green and white ;
You moonshine revelers and shades of night,
You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,
Attend your office and your quality.
Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes.
1 Henry V., ii, 1.
464 PARALLELISMS.
Here there is only one word — fairies — repeated from the par-
allel passage in the edition of 1602.
The 1602 version continues:
Sir Hugh. Come hither, Pead, go to the country houses,
And when you find a slut that lies asleep,
And all her dishes foul and room unswept,
" With your long nails pinch her till she cry
And swear to mend her sluttish housewifery.
In the Folio this speech is put in the mouth of Pistol, but
greatly changed in language:
Pistol. Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys.
Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap:
Where fires thou find' st utiraked, and hearths "unswept,"
There " pinch " the maids as blue as bilberry:
Our radiant queen hates "sluts " and sluttery.
Here there are but three words that occur in the edition of 1602.
In the 1602 copy there is added after this speech:
Fairy. I warrant you I will perform your will.
This line is lacking in the Folio, and instead of it Falstaff says:.
They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die:
I'll wink and couch: no man their works must eye.
The 1602 edition gives the next speech as follows:
Sir Hugh. Where is Pead ? Go you and see where brokers sleep,
And fox-eyed Serjeants, with their mace,
Go lay the proctors in the street,
And pinch the lousy Serjeant's face:
Spare none of these when they are a-bed,
But such whose nose looks plue and red.
In the Folio we have this speech rendered as follows:
Evans. " Where's Bead ? Go you, and " where you find a maid,
That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayer's said,
Rein up the organs of her fantasy,
Sleep she as sound as careless infancy;
But those as " sleep " and think not on their sins,
" Pinch" them, arms, leks, backs, shoulders, sides and shins.
But I have given enough to prove that the play, as it appears in
the Folio of 1623, was practically re-written, and I might add that
in every case the changes were for the better. For instance, in the
1602 edition we have:
Go straight, and do as I command,
And take a taper in your hand,
And set it to his finger ends,
And if you see it him offends,
IDENTITIES OE CHARACTER. 465
And that he starteth at the flame,
Then he is mortal, know his name;
If with an F it doth begin,
Why, then, be sure, he's full of sin.
This doggerel is transformed in the Folio into the following:
With trial-fire touch me his finger end:
If he be chaste, the flame will back descend
And turn him to no pain; but if he start,
It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.
Speaking of King Henry V.} Romeo and Juliet, The Merry Wives
of Windsor and Hamlet, Swinburne says:
Of these four plays the two tragedies at least were thoroughly re-cast and re-
written from end to end. the pirated editions giving us a transcript, more or less per-
fect or imperfect, accurate or corrupt, of the text as it first came from the poet's
hand, a text to be afterwards indefinitely modified and incalculably improved. . . . But
Xing Henry V., we may fairly say, is hardly less than transformed. Not that ithas
been re-cast after the fashion of Hamlet, or even re-written after the fashion of
Romeo and Juliet; but the corruptions and imperfections of the pirated text are
here more flagrant than in any other instance, while the general revision of style,
by which it is at once purified and fortified, extends to every nook and corner of
the restored and renovated building. Even had we, however, a perfect and trust-
worthy transcript of Shakespeare's original sketch for this play, there can be little
doubt that the rough draft would still prove almost as different from the final
masterpiece as is the soiled and ragged canvas now before us, on which we trace
the outline of figures so strangely disfigured, made subject to such rude extremities
of defacement and defeature.1
Is it reasonable to suppose that the author who took such pains to
perfect his work would have made no provision for its preservation,
but would die and leave one-half of the great Plays in manuscript ?
He knew that the work of his youth was not equal to the work
of his manhood, and he labored conscientiously to improve his
crude designs. Dowden says:
It is the opinion of Dyce, of Grant White and of others that Shakespeare began
to work upon Romeo and Juliet not later than about 1591, that is, almost at the
moment when he began to write for the stage, and, that having occupied him for
a series of years, the tragedy assumed its present form about 1595-7. If this be the
case, and if, as there is reason to believe, Shakespeare was also during many years
interested in the subject of Hamlet, we discover that he accepted the knowledge
that his powers were undeveloped and acted upon it, and waited until he believed
himself competent to do justice to his conceptions.2
De Quincey says of the Plays:
The further on we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of
design and self-supporting arrangement, where the careless eye has seen nothing
but accident.
1 A Study of Shak., p. 104. 2 Dowden, Shak. Mind and Art, p. 51.
466 PARALLELISMS.
Swinburne illustrates this question of the industry of Shake-
speare by the following excellent remarks:
That priceless waif of piratical salvage, which we owe to the happy rapacity of
a hungry publisher, is, of course, more accurately definable as the first play of
Hamlet than as the first edition of the play. . . . The deeper complexities of the
subject are merely indicated; simple and trenchant outlines of character are yet to
be supplanted by features of subtler suggestion and infinite interfusion. Hamlet
himself is almost more of a satirist than a philosopher. . . . The Queen, whose
finished figure is now something of a riddle, stands out simply enough in the first
sketch as confidant of Horatio, if not as accomplice of Hamlet. . . . This minor
transformation of style in the inner play, made solely with the evident view of
marking the distinction between its duly artificial forms of speech and the natural
forms of speech passing between the spectators, is but one among innumerable
indications, which only a purblind perversity of prepossession can overlook, of the
especial store set by Shakespeare himself on this favorite work; and the excep-
tional pains taken by him to preserve it for aftertime in such fullness of finished
form as might make it worthiest of profound and perpetual study by the light of far
other lamps than illuminate the stage.
Of all vulgar errors, the most wanton, the most willful, and the most resolutely
tenacious of life, is that belief bequeathed from the days of Pope, in which it was
pardonable, to the days of Mr. Carlyle, in which it is not excusable, to the effect
that Shakespeare threw off Hamlet as an eagle may moult a feather or a fool may
break a jest; that he dropped his work as a bird may drop an egg, or a sophist a
fallacy; that he wrote "for gain, not glory," or that, having written Hamlet, he
thought it nothing very wonderful to have written. For himself to have written,
he possibly, nay, probably, did not think it anything miraculous; but that he was
in the fullest degree conscious of its wonderful positive worth to all men for all
time, we have the best evidence possible — his own; and that not by mere word of
mouth, but by actual stroke of hand. . . . Scene by scene, line for line, stroke
upon stroke and touch after touch, he went over all the old labored ground again;
and not only to insure success in his own day, and fill his pockets with contem-
porary pence, but merely and wholly with a purpose to make it worthy of himself
and his future students. . . .
Every change in the text of Hamlet has impaired its fitness for the stage, and
increased its value for the closet, in exact and perfect proportion. . . . Even in
Shakespeare's time the actors threw out his additions; they throw out these very
same additions in our time. The one especial speech, if any one such
especial speech there be, in which the personal genius of Shakespeare soars
up to the very highest of its height, and strikes down to the very deepest of
its depth, is passed over by modern actors; it was cut away by Heminge and
Condell.1
It seems to me that in the face of these facts there can be no
question that the writer of the Plays was a man of intense and
enormous industry.
We turn to Francis Bacon, and we find, as I have suggested
heretofore, that he was, perhaps, the most laborious man that ever
lived on the planet. Church says of him:
1 Swinburne-, . / Study of Shak., p. 164.
IDENTITIES OF CHARACTER. 467
In all these things he was as industrious, as laborious, as calmly per-
severing and tenacious as he was in his pursuit of his philosophical specula-
tions.1
He re-wrote the Essays, we are told, thirty times. His chaplain
tells us that he had " twelve times transcribed the Novum Organum
with his own hand."
Bacon himself says:
My great work goeth forward, and, after my manner, I alter even when I add,
so that nothing is finished until all is finished.2
Bacon's P ramus of Formularies and Elegancies takes us into the
workshop of the great artist. There we see him with his blouse on,
among his pots and brushes. We see him studying the quality of
his canvas and grinding his own paints. These daubs upon the
wall are part of his experiments in the contrasts of colors; these
rude lines, traced here and there, with charcoal or chalk, are his
tirst crude conceptions of figures and faces and attitudes which are
to reappear hereafter, perfected in his immortal works.
Here we can trace the genesis of thought, the pedigree of ideas,
the ancestry of expressions. We look around us and realize that
genius is neither more nor less than great powers conjoined with
extraordinary industry.
It is better, for humanity's future, that the statue at Stratford-
upon-Avon should be taken down from its pedestal. It represents a
fraud and a delusion: — a fraud in authorship, and a delusion in
philosophy, still more destructive, to-wit: that ignorance, idleness
and dissipation can achieve results which mankind will worship
through all ages; that anything worth having can come out of
nothing.
For, in truth, the universe is industry. We are appalled when
we think of the intense, persistent, laborious, incalculable, awful
force, constantly exerted, to keep the vast whole in motion —
from the suns to the bacilli. God might be fitly described as the
Great Worker: — a worker without a task-master — who never
pauses, never wearies, and never sleeps.
No man should shrink from labor. Energy is God's glorious
stamp set on his creatures. He who has it not is a drone in the
hive, and unworthy the notice of his Great Master. And it has
3 Bacon, p. 57. 2 Letter to Tobie Matthew, 1610.
4 68 PARALLELISMS.
been a shameful and poisonous thing, to the human mind, that all
these hundreds of years the world has been taught that the most
marvelous of human works were produced by accident, without
effort, by a slouching, shiftless, lazy, indifferent creature, who had
not even force enough to provide for their perpetuation.
Let it be known hereafter, and for all time to come, that the
greatest of men was the most industrious of men.
The notes in the Promus show that Bacon was studying the
elegancies, the niceties of language, especially of colloquial expres-
sion, noting down not only thoughts, but peculiar and strong
phrases and odd and forcible words. And surely there was no
necessity for all this in his philosophical works. He makes a study
not only of courteous salutations, but of the continuances of speech.
Take, for instance:
It is like, sir, etc., (putting a man agayne into his tale interrupted).1
Or:
The rather bycause (contynuing another's speech).'2
Or:
To the end, saving that, whereas, yet, (contynuances of all kynds).3
Would one who contemplated works of philosophy alone, which
were to be translated into the Latin language, for the use of pos-
terity, devote such study to the refinements of dialogue ? And
where do we find any of these elegancies of speech in Bacon's
acknowledged writings ?
II. COMMONPLACE-BOOKS.
Both writers possessed that characteristic habit of studious and
industrious men, the noting down of thoughts and quotations in
commonplace-books. The Promus is one of these. Bacon repeat-
edly recommends the use of such helps to composition. He says:
I hold the entry of commonplaces to be a matter of great use and essence in
studying, as that which assureth " copia " of invention and contracteth judgment
to a strength.4
And again — discussing how to "procure the ready use of
knowledge" — he says:
1 Promus, § 1385, p. 449. 8 Ibid., § 1379, p. 447.
2 Ibid., § 1378, p. 447. * Advancement of Learning, book ii.
IDENTITIES OF CHARACTER. 469
The other part of invention, which I term suggestion, doth assign and direct
us to certain marks or places, which may excite our mind to return and pro-
duce such knowledge as it hath formerly collected, to the end we may make
use thereof.1
And again he says:
It is of great service in studies to bestow diligence in setting down common-
places.2
On the other hand, we turn to the writer of the Plays, and we
find him, as I have shown on page 78, ante, recommending the use
of commonplace-books in very much the same language. He says,
in the 76th sonnet:
Look, what thy memory cannot contain
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
These children nursed, delivered of thy brain,
To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
This is in the very spirit of Bacon's
Certain marks or places, which may excite our mind to return and produce
such knowledge as it hath formerly collected.
And we think we can see the personal habits of the writer of
the Plays reflected in the words of his alter ego, Hamlet:
My tables: — meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile and smile and be a villain.3
And again, in The Merry Wives :
I will make a brief of it in my note-book.4
III. A Thorough Student.
Not only was the writer of the Plays, like Francis Bacon, vastly
industrious, but it was the industry of a scholar: he was a student.
He combined a life of retirement and contemplation with knowl-
edge of affairs, as Bacon did. He realized Goethe's axiom :
Es bildet ein 'Talent sic// in der Slille,
Sick ein Ckarakter in dent Strom der Welt.
The early plays all bespeak the student; they breathe the atmos-
phere of the university.
Proteus complains:
Thou, Julia, hast metamorphosed me;
Made me neglect my studies, lose my time.
1 Advancement of Learning, book ii. * Hamlet, i, 5.
2 Ibid. ' Merry Wi^es of Windsor, i, 1.
470 PARALLELISMS.
Love's Labor Lost is full of allusions to studies:
Biron. What is the end of study ?
King. Why, that to know which else we should not know.
Biron. Things hid and barred, you mean, from common sense?
King. Ay, that is study's god-like recompense.1
And, like Bacon, the writer of the Plays believed that books
were a means, not an end; and that original thought was a thou-
sand times to be preferred to the repetition of the ideas of other
men. He says:
Study is like the heavens' glorious sun,
That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks;
Small have continual plodders ever won,
Save base authority, from others' books.2
We seem to hear in this the voice of Bacon. In his essay Of
Studies he says:
To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for orna-
ment, is affectation; to make judgment zvholly by their rules, is the humor of a
scholar.
And how Baconian are these utterances:
Mi perdonate, gentle master mine,
lam in all affected as yourself;
Glad that you thus continue your resolve,
To suck the S7veels of sweet philosophy.
Only, good master, while we do admire
This virtue, and this moral discipline,
Let's be no stoicks, nor no stocks, I pray.
Or so devote to Aristotle' s checks,
As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured:
Balk logic with acquaintance that you have,
And practice rhetoric with your common talk:
Music and poetry use to quicken you;
The mathematics, and the metaphysics,
Fall to them, as you find your stomach serves you:
No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en;
In short, sir, study what you most affect.3
Here we find allusions to Bacon's love of philosophy, his dis-
like for Aristotle, his contempt for logic, and his studies of music
and poetry. And we note, also, the didactic and educational tone
of the essay, natural to the man who was always laboring to
instruct and improve his fellow-men.
1 Love's Labor Lost. i. i . 2 Ibid. s Tamingof the Shrew, i, i.
IDENTITIES QE CHARACTER.
47
IV. His Wisdom.
We know it is conceded that Bacon was the wisest man of his
time, or of all time. And wisdom is not knowledge merely of
things. It means an accurate acquaintance with the springs of
human nature, and a capacity to adapt actions to events. And the
same trait has been many times noted in the writer of the Plays.
Henry Hallam says:
The philosophy of Shakespeare — his intimate searching out of the human
heart, whether in the gnomic form of sentence or in the dramatic exhibition of
character — is a gift peculiarly his own.
Henry Giles says of Shakespeare's genius:
It has the power of practical intellect. Under a careless guise it implies
serious judgment, and in the vesture of motley it pronounces many a recondite
decision. . . . Out from its mockeries and waggeries there could be collected a
philosophy of common sense by which the gravest might be instructed.
I have already quoted (page 150, ante) the expression of Emer-
son, applied to Shakespeare:
He was inconceivably wise; the others conceivably.
And of Landor:
The wisest of men, as well as the greatest of poets.
V. The Universality of his Mind.
We know that Bacon's mind ranged through all created nature,
and his learning levied tribute on everything underneath the sun.
He had "taken all knowledge for his province."
Osborne, a contemporary, called Bacon
The most universal genius I have ever seen or was like to sec
While, on the other hand, De Quincey says :
Shakespeare thought more finely and more extensively than all the other poets
combined.
Professor Dowden says of Shakespeare :
This vast and varied mass of information he assimilated and made his own.
... He was a center for the drifting capital of knowledge. His whole power of
thought increased steadily as the years went by, both in sure grasp of the known
and in brooding intensity of gaze upon the unknown.1
And the same writer continues:
Now, what does extraordinary growth imply ? It implies capacity for obtain-
ing the materials of growth; in this case materials for the growth of intellect, of
imagination, of the will, of the emotions. It means, therefore, capacity for seeing
1 Shak. Mind and Art, p. 39.
472 PARALLELISMS.
many facts, of meditating, of feeling deeply, and of controlling such feeling. . . .
It implies a power in the organism to fit its movements to meet numerous external
coexistences and sequences. In a word, it brings us back once again to Shake-
speare's resolute fidelity to the fact}
And surely "resolute fidelity to the fact" was the distinguishing
trait of Bacon's philosophy.
VI. Powers of Observation.
Macaulay says of Bacon :
y
In keenness of observation he has been equaled, though perhaps never sur-
passed. But the largeness of his mind was all his own.'2
And the great Scotsman makes this fine comparison touching
Bacon's mind:
With great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude of comprehension,
such as has never yet been vouchsafed to any other person. The small, fine mind
of Labruyere had not a more delicate tact than the large intellect of Bacon. . . .
His understanding resembled the tent which the fairy Parabanon gave to Prince
Ahmed. Fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a lady; spread it, and the
armies of powerful sultans might repose beneath its shade.3
While, on the other hand, Sir William Hamilton calls Shake-
speare
The greatest known observer of human nature.
And Richard Grant White calls him
The most observant of men.
VII. His Secretiveness.
We have seen Bacon admitting that he was "a concealed poet."
Spedding concedes that a letter written in the name of the Earl
of Essex to Sir Foulke Greville, about the year 1596, was written
by Bacon.'
There has been attributed to Bacon a work called An Historical
Account of the Alienation Office, published in 1590, in the name of
William Lambarde.
Spedding finds 5 that the letters which purported to have been
written by the Earl of Essex to the Earl of Rutland, who was about
to travel on the continent, containing advice as to his course of
studies, were unquestionably the work of Bacon.
1 Shak. Mind and Art, p. 41. * See vol. 2, Life and Works, p. 21.
2 Macaulay's Essays Bacon, \ ■> Letters and Life of Bacon, vol. ii, p. 5.
3 Ibid.
IDENTITIES OF CHARACTER. 473
Mr. Spedding says:
At another time he [Bacon] tries to disguise himself under a style of
assumed superiority, quite unlike his natural style; as in the Tetnporis Partus
Mas cuius, where again the very same argument is set forth in a spirit of scornful
invective, poured out upon all the popular reputations in the annals of philosophy.1
We have seen him writing letters to Essex as from his brother
Anthony, in which Anthony is made to refer back to himself, and
then writing a reply from Essex, the whole to be shown to the
Queen.
We have seen Ben Jonson alluding to him in some birthday
verses:
As if a mystery thou didst.
And in all this we see the man who under a mask could put forth
the Plays to the world; and who, inside the Plays, could, in turn,
conceal a cipher.
VIII. Splendid Tastes.
Emerson says of Shakespeare:
What trait of his private mind has he hidden in his dramas ? One can discern
in his ample pictures of the gentleman and the king what forms and humanities
pleased him; his delight in troops of friends, in large hospitality, in cheerful
giving. Let Timon, let Warwick, let Antonio the merchant, answer for his great
heart.
When we read this the magnificence of Bacon occurs to our
remembrance — his splendid marriage, his princely residence at
St. Albans, his noble presents.
Hepworth Dixon thus describes his wedding:
Feathers and lace light up the rooms in the Strand. Cecil has been warmly
urged to come over from Salisbury House. Three of his gentlemen, Sir Walter
Cope, Sir Baptist Hicks and Sir Hugh Beeston, hard drinkers and men about
town, strut over in his stead, flaunting in their swords and plumes; yet the prodigal
bridegroom, sumptuous in his tastes as in his genius, clad in a suit of Genoese
velvet, purple from cap to shoe, outbraves them all. The bride, too, is richly
dight, her whole dowry seeming to be piled up on her in cloth of silver and orna-
ments of gold.2
The author of Aulicus Coquinaria, speaking of Bacon after his
downfall, says:
And let me give this light to his better character, from an observation of the
late King, then Prince. Returning from hunting, he espied a coach attended with
a goodly troop of horsemen, who, it seems, were gathered together to wait upon
the Chancellor to his house at Gorhambury, at the time of his declension. At
1 Preface- t!> part i:i. vol. iii. Works, p. 171. '2 Personal History 0/ Lord Bacon, p. 181.
474 PARALLELISMS.
which the Prince smiled: "Well, do we what we can,'' said he, "this man scorns
to go out like a snuff."
Nay, master King! And he will not go out like a snuff; — not
till the civilization of the world is snuffed out. And the time will
come when even thou, — O King, — wilt be remembered simply
because thou didst live in the same age with him.
IX. His Splendid Egotism.
There was about Bacon a magnificent self-assertion.
Dean Church says:
He [Bacon] never affected to conceal from himself his superiority to other
men, in his aims and in the grasp of his intelligence.1
He recognized his own greatness, in an impersonal sort of way,
as he might have perceived the magnitude of a mountain. Hence
we find him beginning one of his great works in the following
lordly manner:
Francis of Verulam thought thus, and such is the method which he within
himself pursued, which he thought it concerned both the living and posterity to
become acquainted zvith?
And again he says:
Francis Bacon thought in this manner*
We turn to Shakespeare, and we find him, in the sonnets, indulg-
ing in the same bold and extraordinary, although justifiable, ego-
tism. He says:
Not marble,
Nor the gilded monuments of princes,
Shall outlive this powerful rhyme.
And again:
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou goest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.4
And again he says:
Oh, 'tis the first; 'tis flattery in my seeing,
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up.h
If these were the utterances of the man of Stratford, why did
he not assert himself, as Bacon did, in the affairs of his age ? Would
1 Bacon, p. 58. 3 Filunt Labyrinth i. 5 Sonnet cxiv.
2 Introduction to Great Instauration. 4 Sonnet xviii.
IDENTITIES OF CHARACTER.
475
a man with this consciousness of supreme greatness crawl away to
Stratford, to brew beer and lend money? No; he would have
fought for recognition, as Bacon did, to the last gasp.
X. His Toleration.
I have already shown that Bacon and the writer of the Plays
were tolerant in the midst of the religious passions of the time.
William Henry Smith says:
In an age of bigotry and religious persecution we find Bacon and Shakespeare
expressing a toleration of all creeds and religions.1
Hepworth Dixon says, alluding to the appropriations for wTar
expenses:
James takes this money, not without joy and wonder; but when they ask him
to banish recusants from London, to put down masses in embassadors' houses, to
disarm all the Papists, to prevent priests and Jesuits from going abroad, he will
not do it. In this resistance to a new persecution, his tolerant Chancellor stands
at his back and bears the odium of his refusal. Bacon, who thinks the penal laws
too harsh already, will not consent to inflame the country, at such a time, by a
new proclamation; the penalties are strong, and in the hands of the magistrates;
he sees no need to spur their zeal by royal proclamations or the enactment of more
savage laws. Here is a chance for Coke. Raving for gibbets and pillories in a
style to quicken the pulse of Brownists, men wrho are wild with news from Heidel-
berg or Prague believe in his sincerity and partake of his heat. To be mild now.
many good men think, is to be weak. In a state of war, philosophy and tolerance
go to the wall; when guns are pounding in the gates, even justice can be only done
at the drumhead. -
Bacon's downfall, as we shall see hereafter, was largely due to
this refusal to persecute the helpless at the bidding of the fanatical,
led on by the brutal and sordid Coke.
XI. His Benevolence.
And in the same spirit he at all times preached mercy and gen-
erosity, in both his acknowledged works and in the Plays.
Bacon, in his essay Of Discourse, enumerates, among the things
which ought to be privileged from jest, " religion, matters of state,
and any case that descrvetJi pity."
While Carlyle says of Shakespeare:
His laughter seems to pour forth in floods. . . . Not at mere weakness — at
misery or poverty never.
Bacon says:
The state and bread of the poor have always been dear to my heart.
J Bacon and Shak., p. 88. 2 Personal History of Lord Bacon, p. 325.
476 PARALLELISMS.
He labors
To lift men out of their necessities and miseries.
He seeks, " in a despised weed, the good of all men."
Bacon describes one of the fathers of " Solomon's House," in
The New Atlantis, and says:
He had an aspect as if he pitied men.
We turn to Shakespeare and we find the same great traits of
character.
Charles Knight speaks of
Shakespeare's unvarying kindness toward wretched and oppressed humanity,
in however low a shape.
Gerald Massey says:
He has infinite pity for the suffering and struggling and wounded by the way.
The most powerful and pathetic pleadings on behalf of Christian charity, out of the.
New Testament, have been spoken by Shakespeare. He takes to his large, warm
heart much that the world usually casts out to perish in the cold. There is nothing
too poor or mean to be embraced within the circle of his sympathies.1
Barry Cornwall refers to " the extensive charity which Shake-
speare inculcates."
Birch says:
He has, more than any other author, exalted the love of humanity. However
he may indulge in invective against the artificial systems of religion, and be found
even speaking against Christianity, yet in his material and natural speculations he
endeavors to give philosophical consolation to mankind, to inculcate submission to
inevitable circumstances and encourage scientific investigation into the nature of
things}
The reader will probably pause to see whether I have not mis-
placed this quotation, so completely does it fit the character and
purposes of Francis Bacon. But no; it was written by an English
clergyman, in an essay upon the religion of Shakespeare; and the
author probably never heard of the theory that Bacon wrote the
Plays.
I append a few illustrative extracts from the Plays, in corrobo-
ration of these opinions:
'Tis a cruelty
To load a falling man."
Neither in our hearts nor outward eyes,
Envy the great nor do the low despise.4
1 Sonnets of Sliak., p. 549. 3 Henry 1 '///., V, 2.
* Philosophy and Religion of Shah., p. 10. 4 Pericles, ii, 3.
IDENTITIES OE CHARACTER. 477
There is a soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distill it out.1
Oh, I have ta'en
Too little care of this ! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel;
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them
And show the heavens more just.-
XII. His Command Over the Emotions.
Ben Jonson says of Bacon:
He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry or pleased at hi?
devotion. No man had their affections [passions] more in his power.
Pope says of Shakespeare:
The power over our passions was never possessed in a more eminent degree,
or displayed in so different instances. . . . We are surprised the moment we
weep, and yet, upon reflection, find the passion so just, that we should be sur-
prised if we had not wept, and wept at that very moment.3
XIII. His Wit.
Basil Montagu says of Bacon:
His wit was brilliant, and when it flashed upon any subject it was never with
ill-nature, which, like the crackling of thorns, ending in sudden darkness, is only
fit for the fool's laughter. The sparkling of his wit was that of the precious dia-
mond, valuable for its worth and weight, denoting the riches of the mine.4
And Macaulay, a severe critic, and in many things, so far as
Bacon was concerned, an unjust one, says of his wit:
The best jest-book in the world is that which he dictated from memory, with-
out referring to any book, on a day on which illness had rendered him incapable of
serious study.5
And again he says:
But it occasionally happened that, when he was engaged in grave and pro-
found investigations, his wit obtained the mastery over all his other faculties, and
led him into absurdities into which no dull man could possibly have fallen.6
And again Macaulay says:
In wit, if by wit be meant the power of perceiving analogies between things
which appear to have nothing in common, he never had an equal — not even Cowley,
not even the author of Hudibras, Indeed he possessed this faculty, or this faculty
possessed him, to a morbid degree. When he abandoned himself to it, without re-
serve, as he did in the Sapientia Veterum, and at the end of the second book of the
De Augmentis, the feats which he performed were not merely admirable, but portent-
ous and almost shocking. On those occasions we marvel at him as clowns on a fair
day marvel at a juggler, and can hardly help thinking that the devil must be in him.'
1 Henry V., iv, i. 5 Macaulay's Essays — Bacon, p. 270.
2 Lear, iii, 4. 6 Ibid., p. 285.
3 William H. Smith, Bacon and Shak., p. 6. 7 Ibid., p. 285.
4 Works 0/ Lord Bacon, vol. i, p. 116.
478
PARALLELISMS.
And Ben Jonson says of Bacon:
His language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious.
I need not cite many authorities to prove that the writer of the
Shakespeare Plays was not only a great wit, but that his wit some-
times overmastered his judgment.
Hudson says of Falstaff:
I must add that, with Shallow and Silence for his theme, Falstaff's wit fairly
grows gigantic, and this, too, without any abatement of its frolicsome agility.
The strain of humorous exaggeration with which he pursues the theme is indeed
almost sublime. Yet in some of his reflections thereon, we have a clear though
brief view of the profound philosopher underlying the profligate humorist and make-
sport, for he there discovers a breadth and sharpness of observation and a depth of
practical sagacity such as might have placed him [Shakespeare] in the front rank of
statesmen and sages. !
XIV. Great Aims.
We know the grand objects Bacon kept continually before his
mind's eye.
The writer of the Plays declares, in sonnet exxv, that he had
Laid great bases for eternity.
What were they ? What " great bases for eternity " had the
Stratford man built or attempted to build ?
Francis Bacon wrote The New Atlantis, an attempt to show to
what perfections of civilization developed mankind might attain
in a new land, an island; and we find Shakespeare also planning
an improved commonwealth upon another island — the island that
was the scene of The Tempest. And we find him borrowing therein
from Montaigne.
Gonzalo says in the play:
Had I plantation of this isle, my lord, . . .
I' the commonwealth, I would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none:
No use of metal, corn, or wine or oil:
No occupation; all men idle, all —
And women, too; but innocent and pure.
No sovereignty:
All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavor; treason, felony,
1 Shak. Life and Art, vol. ii, p. 94.
IDENTITIES OE CHARACTER. 479
Sword, pike, knife, gun or need of any engine,
Would I not have, but nature should bring forth,
Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people.'
Here, as in The New Atlantis, we see the philosopher-poet devis-
ing schemes to lift men out of their miseries — to "feed the inno-
cent people."
XV. His Goodness.
Coleridge says:
Observe the fine humanity of Shakespeare, in that his sneerers are all villains.
Gerald Massey says of Shakespeare:
There is nothing rotten at the root, nothing insidious in the suggestion. Vice
never walks abroad in the mental twilight wearing the garb of virtue. -
Coleridge says:
There is not one really vicious passage in all Shakespeare.
We know that Bacon, in his acknowledged works, said nothing
that could impair the power of goodness in the world.
XVI. Another Curious Fact.
While the last pages of this work are going through the press,
my friend Professor Thomas Davidson sends me a letter addressed
to him by a correspondent (M. Le B. G.), in which occur these words:
Please look at the 6th chapter of Peter Bayne's new Life of Luther, if you
have not already read it. It is called The Century of Luther and Shakespeare. It
is a glorification of Shakespeare, but, curiously enough, quotes from Brewer,
about the correspondence in altitude between Bacon and Luther; and then goes on
to show that Shakespeare was perfectly familiar not only with the Bible but with
Luther's thought, and with special incidents of his history.
Bayne says that all the main points in the theology of the Reformation could
be pieced together from the dramas of Shakespeare. One would not naturally
look in a Life of Luther for any testimony on the " Baconian Theory," so please
(if it seems worth while to you) to call Mr. Donnelly's attention to this rather cur-
ious chapter.
I quote this with pleasure, although a little out of place in this
chapter, as another case where the indentations of the Baconian
theory fit into all other related facts and, as an additional evidence
that the Plays were not pumped out of ignorance by the handle of
genius, under the pressure of a play-actor's necessities, but were
the works of a broadly-learned man, who was fully abreast of all
1 Tempest, it, 2. * Sonnets 0/ Shakespeare, p.
4<So
PARALLELISMS.
the affairs of his day, and who had read everything that was acces-
sible in that age, in every field of thought.
In short, each new addition to our information requires us to
widen the shelves of the library of the man who wrote the Plays.
XVII. Conclusions.
When, therefore, we institute a comparison between the per-
sonal character and mental disposition of Francis Bacon and that
of the man who wrote the Plays, we find that:
i. Both were poetical.
2. Both were philosophical.
3. Both were vastly industrious.
4. Both were students.
5. Both were profoundly wise.
6. Both possessed a universal grasp of knowledge.
7. Both had splendid tastes.
8. Both were tolerant of religious differences of opinion.
9. Both were benevolent.
10. Both were wits.
11. Both were possessed of great aims for the good of man.
12. Both were morally admirable.
I cannot better conclude this chapter than with a comparison
extracted from the work of Mr. William Henry Smith, the patri-
arch of the Baconian discussion in England. Mr. Smith quotes
Archbishop Whately as follows:
There is an ingenious and philosophical toy called " a thaumatrope," in which
two objects painted on opposite sides of a card — for instance, a man and a horse,
a bird and a cage, etc. — are, by a quick rotary motion, made so to impress the eye
in combination as to form one picture — of the man on the horse's back, the bird
in the cage, etc. As soon as the card is allowed to remain at rest, the figures, of
course, appear as they really are, separate and on opposite sides.1
Mr. Smith continues:
Bacon and Shakespeare we know to be distinct individuals, occupying posi-
tions as opposite as the man and the horse, the bird and the cage; yet, when we
come to agitate the question, the poet appears so combined with the philosopher,
and the philosopher with the poet, we cannot but believe them to be identical.
1 Bacon and Shak., p. 89.
CHAPTER IX.
/ D A'- VT1 TIE S OF STYL E .
I replied. "Nay, Madam, rack him not; . . . rack his Btylc" — Bacon.
WE come now to an interesting branch of our subject, to-wit:
Is there any resemblance between the style of Francis
Bacon and that of the writer of the Plays ?
I. The Genius of Shakespeark.
And first let us ask ourselves, what are the distinguishing feat-
ures of the writings which go by the name of Shakespeare ? In
other words, what is his style?
It might be described as the excess of every great faculty of
the soul. Reason, the widest and most profound; imagination, the
most florid and tropical; vivacity, the most sprightly and untiring;
passion, the most burning and vehement; feeling, the most earnest
and intense.
In other words, it is a human intellect, multiplied many hun-
dred-fold beyond the natural standard. Behind the style and the
works we see the man: — a marvelous, many-sided, gigantic soul; a
monster among thinkers; — standing with one foot upon the bare
rocks of reason, and the other buried ankle-deep in the flowers of
the imagination; spanning time and accomplishing immortality.
Behind the tremendous works is a tremendous personality.
Xot from a weak or shallow thought
His mighty Jove young Phidias wrought.
His was a ponderous, comprehensive, extraordinary intelligence,,
inflamed as never man's was, before or since, by genius; and filled
with instincts and purposes which we cannot but regard as divine.
Every part of his mind was at white heat — \t flamed. He has left
all mankind to repeat his expressions, because never before did
any one so captivate and capture words, or crush them into sub-
jection, as he did. The operations of his mind — its greed, its
spring, its grasp, its domination — were, so to speak, ferocious. It
481
482 PARALLELISMS.
is no wonder that his body showed the marks of premature age; it
is a surprise that this immense, vehement and bounding spirit did
not tear the flesh into disorganization long before his allotted time.
And yet, high aloft in the charioteer's seat, above the plunging,
rebellious, furious Passions, sat the magnificent Reason of the man;
curbing, with iron muscles, their vehemence into measured pace,
their motion into orderly progression.
Hear what the great Frenchman, H. A. Taine, says of Shake-
speare:
I am about to describe an extraordinary species of mind, perplexing to all the
French modes of analysis and reasoning, all-powerful, excessive, master of the
sublime as well as of the base; the most creative mind that ever engaged in the
exact copy of the details of actual existence, in the dazzling caprice of fancy, in the
profound complications of superhuman passions; a nature poetical, immortal,
inspired, superior to reason by the sudden revelations of its seer's madness; so
extreme in joy and grief, so abrupt of gait, so agitated and impetuous in its trans-
ports, that this great age alone could have cradled such a child.1
And, speaking of the imagination of the great poet, Taine says:
Shakespeare imagines with copiousness and excess; he scatters metaphors
profusely over all he writes; every instant abstract ideas are changed into images;
it is a series of paintings which is unfolded in his mind.2
And the same writer says:
This exuberant fecundity intensifies qualities already in excess, and multiplies
a hundred-fold the luxuriance of metaphor, the incoherence of style, and the
unbridled vehemence of expression.3
And Richard Grant White speaks to much the same purpose:
Akin to this power in Shakespeare is that of pushing hyperbole to the verge
of absurdity; of mingling heterogeneous metaphors and similes which, coldly
examined, seem discordant; in short, of apparently setting at naught the rules of
rhetoric.4
And again White says:
Never did intellectual wealth equal in degree the boundless riches of Shake-
speare's fancy. He compelled all nature and all art, all that God had revealed,
and all that man had discovered, to contribute materials to enrich his style and
enforce his thought; so that the entire range of human knowledge must be laid
under contribution to illustrate his writings. This inexhaustible mine of fancy,
furnishing metaphor, comparison, illustration, impersonation, in ceaseless alterna-
tion, often intermingled, so that the one cannot be severed from the other, . . .
is the great distinctive intellectual trait of Shakespeare's style. In his use of
simile, imagery and impersonation he exhibits a power to which that of any other
1 Taine's History of English L^iterature, 3 Ibid., p. 213.
pp. 204 and 205. 4 Life and Genius of Shak., p. 229.
2 Ibid., p. 211.
IDENTITIES OF ST VIE
4*3
poet in this respect cannot be compared, even in the way of derogation, for it is not
only superior to but unlike any other.1
When we turn to Bacon, we find the formal, decorous, world-
respecting side of the man's character. Under the disguise of the
player of Stratford he could give free vent to all the passions and
enormities of his soul. In the first capacity he was a philosopher,
courtier and statesman; in the latter he was simply a poet and
play-writer. In the one he was forced to maintain appearances
before court, bar and society; in the other, behind his mask, he
was utterly irresponsible and could turn out his very soul, with
none to question him.
Hence we must look for the characteristics of the poet in a
modified form in those of the philosopher. He is "off the tripod."'
But even then we shall find the traces of the constitution of the
mind which distinguished Shakespeare.
I have just cited Taine's description of Shakespeare; let us see
what he has to say of Bacon:
In this band of scholars, dreamers and inquirers, appears the most comprehen-
sive, sensitive, originative of the minds of the age, Francis Bacon; a great and
luminous intellect, one of the finest of this poetic progeny, who, like his predecessors,
was naturally disposed to clothe his ideas in the most splendid dress: in this age a
thought did not seem complete until it had assumed form and color. But what
distinguishes him from the others is, that with him an image only serves to con-
centrate meditation. He reflected long, stamped on his mind all the parts and
relations of his subject; he is master of it, and then, instead of exposing this com-
plete idea in a graduated chain of reasoning, he embodies it in a comparison so
expressive, exact, lucid, that behind the figure we perceive all the details of the
idea, like liquor in a fine crystal vase.1
And a writer in the Encyclop<.edia Britannica, speaking of Bacon,
says:
A sentence from the Essays can rarely be mistaken for the production of any
other writer. The short, pithy sayings,
Jewels, five words long,
That on the stretched forefinger of all time
Sparkle forever,
have become popular mottoes and household words. The style is quaint, original,
abounding in allusions and witticisms, and rich, even to gorgeousness, with piled-up
analogies and metaphors.
Alexander Smith says of Bacon's Essays:
He seems to have written his Essays with the pen of Shakespeare.
1 Lift and Genius of Shak., p. 252. 2 Taine's History 0/ English Literature, p. 153.
484 PARALLELISMS.
E. P. Whipple says of them:
They combine the greatest brevity with the greatest beauty of expression.
A. F. Blaisdell says:
Notice, also, the poetry of his style. So far as is known, he wrote but one
poem, but all his literary works are instinct with poetry \ in the wider sense of the
word. Sometimes it is seen in a beautiful simile or a felicitous phrase; sometimes
in a touch of pathos, more often in the rhythmical cadence of a sentence which
clings to the memory as only poetry can.
Even the passion and vehemence which we have found to be such
distinguishing traits of Shakespeare's genius are found in Bacon.
The laborious, but incredulous, Spedding remarks:
Bacon's mind, with its fullness and eagerness of thong/it, was at all times apt to
outrun his powers of grammatical expression, but also of the history of the English
language, then gradually finding its powers and settling, but not settled, into form.1
This outrunning the powers of grammatical expression is the
very trait which has been observed in Shakespeare; — as when he
makes Mark Antony say of the wound inflicted upon Caesar by the
dagger of Brutus:
This was the most unkindest cut of all.2
And here we are reminded of Bacon's theory that the English
grammar should be reorganized; that he thought of making a
grammar for himself.
And Spedding says of the Natural History, a most dry subject:
The addresses to the reader are full of weighty thought and passionate elo-
quence?
But there was one man who knew Francis Bacon better than
any and all others of his age; that was his " other self," Sir Tobie
Matthew. He was in the heart of all Bacon's secrets; he knew just
what Bacon had written, because his compositions were all sub-
mitted to him in the first instance, hot from the mint of the
author's great mind. He knew Bacon's acknowledged writings,
and he knew, also, those "concealed" writings which constituted
him, in his judgment, "the greatest wit of our country, . . .
though he be known by another name." And Sir Tobie was a
scholar and an author, and an eminently conscientious and
righteous man; who had suffered exile from his native land, and
had sacrificed all the victories of life for his religious convictions;
1 Life and Works, vol. i, p. 145. 3 Life and Works, vol. vii, p. 381.
^fulius Ccesar, iii, 2.
IDENTITIES OF STYLE.
485
and the man who does that, whatever may be his creed or his
dogmas, is worthy of all praise and honor. And Sir Tobie, with
all this knowledge of Bacon, spoke of him, long after his death, in
terms which are extravagant if applied to Bacon's acknowledged
writings, but which fit precisely into the characteristics of the
Shakespeare Plays. He said:
... A man so rare in knowledge, of so many several kinds, endued with the
facility and felicity of expressing it all in so elegant, significant, so abundant, and
yet so choice and ravishing a way of words, of inelaphors, of allusions, as perhaps
the world hath not seen since it was a world.1
II. A Startling Revelation.
And even as this book is being printed, a writer in the Chicago
Tribune calls attention to the surprising fact that the New English Dic-
tionary, now being published in England, on a magnificent scale, and
in which is given the time when and the place where each English
word made its first appearance, proves that in the first two hundred
pages of the work there are one hundred and forty-six words, now in
common use, which were invented, or formed out of the rawT mate-
rial of his own and other languages, by the man who wrote the
Shakespeare Plays. And the writer shows that, at this rate, our
total indebtedness to the man we call Shakespeare, for additions
to the vocabulary of the English tongue, cannot be less than five
thousand words. I quote:
Rome owed only one word to Julius Caesar. The nature of our debt will be
more apparent if we examine some of these hundred and a half of Shakespearean
words, all so near the beginning of the alphabet that the last one of them is air.
We owe the poet the first use of the word air itself in one of its senses as a noun,
and in three as a verb or participle. He first said air-drawn and airless. He
added a new signification to airy and aerial. Nobody before him had written
aired, and more than a tithe of the verbal gifts now in view were such perfect
participles. Well-nigh as many were adverbs. In no previous writer have Dr.
Murray's argus eyes detected accidentally, nor any of the following: Abjectly,
acutely, admiringly, adoptedly, adversely. How our fathers could exist so long
without some of these vocables must move our special wonder. To absolutely,
accordingly, actively and affectionately Shakespeare added a new sense. It is
not a little surprising that the word abreast was never printed before the
couplet:
My soul shall thine keep company to heaven:
Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast.
Of the 146 words and meanings first given us by Shakespeare at least two-thirds
are of classical origin. . . . The strangest thing seems to be that so few of Shake-
' Address to tin- Reader, prefixed to Collection of English Letters, 1660.
486 PARALLELISMS.
speare's innovations — not so much as one-fifth — have become obsolete. He gave
them not only life, but immortality.
Is anybody shallow enough to believe that the play-actor of
Stratford — selling malt and suing his neighbors — had the brain,
the capacity or the purpose to thus create a language ?
I say a language, for it is to be remembered that the ordi-
nary peasant or navvy of England has but about three hundred words
in his vocabulary. And here was one man who, we are told, added
to the English tongue probably seventeen times the number of words
used by the inhabitants of Stratford in that age.
And when we turn to Bacon's Promus, or storehouse of sug-
gestions for elegancies of speech, we find him in the very work of
manufacturing words to enrich the English tongue. We see him, in
Promus notes 12 14 and 12 15, playing on the words "Abedd — ro(u)se
you — owtbed": and then we find him developing this into uprouse,
a word never seen before in the world; and, as Mrs. Pott has shown,
this reappears in the play of Romeo and Juliet in connection with
golden sleep (which is also found in the Promus notes1) thus:
But where unbruised youth with unstuffed brain
Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign:
Therefore thy earliness doth me assure
Thou art uprotised by some distemperature.2
And, close at hand, in these Promus notes, we find the word
rome, which may have been a hint jotted down for the name of
Romeo. And we find that Bacon, in these Promus notes, coined
and used for the first time barajar {ior shuffle), real, brazed, per ad-
venture, etc.
In other words, we learn now that the writer of the Plays added
five thousand new words to the English language. We look into
Bacon's work-shop and we find the great artist at work manu-
facturing words. We peep into the kitchen of New Place, Strat-
ford, and we see the occupant brewing beer ! Who wrote the plays ?
And Bacon notes that the English language has been greatly
enriched during Elizabeth's reign !
More than this, Mrs. Pott has shown in her great work3 that
Bacon, anxious to humanize his race and civilize his age, created
and introduced into our speech those pleasant conventionalities
1 Promus, note 1207. v Romeo and Juliet, ii, 3. s Promus, p. 61.
IDENTITIES OE STY IK. 487
and sweet courtesies with which we now salute each other; as
"good-morrow," ''good-night," etc.; and that he is found jotting
them down in his Promus notes, from which they reappear in the
Shakespeare Plays, for the first time in English literature. And all
this goes to confirm my view, hereinbefore expressed, of the great
purposes which lie behind the Plays: for in it all, with the creation
of the five thousand new words, we see the soul of the philan-
thropist, who, "in a despised weed, had procured the good of all
men." Mighty soul ! We are but beginning to catch glimpses of
thy vast proportions ! Shame on the purblind ages that have
failed to recognize thy light.
And in connection with all this we must remember Bacon's
modest remark, that during the reign of Elizabeth the powers of
the English language had been vastly increased.
Why, this man overshadows the world ! He has not only revo-
lutionized our philosophy, delighted our eyes, enraptured our ears
and educated our hearts, but he has even armed our tongues with
new resources and fitted our English speech to become, as it will
in time, the universal language of the globe.
III. Other Details of Style.
The great Scotch essayist, Mackintosh, said of Bacon:
No man ever united a more poetical style to a less poetical philosophy. One great
end of his discipline is to prevent mysticism and fanaticism from obstructing the
pursuit of truth. With a less brilliant fancy he would have had a mind less quali-
fied for philosophical inquiry. His fancy gave him that power of illustrative meta-
phor, by which he seemed to have invented again the part of language which
respects philosophy; and it rendered new truths more distinctly visible even to his
own eye, in their bright clothing of imagery.,
And, again, the same writer says:
But that in which he most excelled all other men was the range and compass
of his intellectual view, and the power of contemplating many and distant objects
together without indistinctness or confusion, which he himself has called the "dis-
cursive" or "comprehensive" understanding. This wide-ranging intellect was
illuminated by the brightest fancy that ever contented itself with the office of only min-
istering to Reason: and from this singular relation of the two grand faculties of man
it has resulted that his philosophy, though illustrated still more than adorned by
the utmost splendor of imagery, continues still subject to the undivided supremacy of
Intellect. In the midst of all the prodigality of an imagination which, had
it been independent, would have been poetical, his opinions remained severely
rational.2
1 The Modern British Essayists— Mackintosh, p. 18. * Ibid., p. 17.
j 88 /J- / RA LLELISMS.
And, on the other hand, as matching this utterance, Mr. T. B.
Shaw finds in both Bacon and Shakespeare the same combination
of reason and imagination. He says, speaking of Bacon:
In his style there is the same quality which is applauded in Shakespeare, a com-
bination of the intellectual and the imaginative, the closest reasoning in the boldest
metaphor.
And Taine says of Bacon:
Like the poets, he peoples nature with instincts and desires; attributes to bodies
an actual voracity; to the atmosphere a thirst for light, sounds, odors, vapors,
which it drinks in; to metals a sort of haste to be incorporated with acids.1
The same trait of impersonation is found in Shakespeare car-
ried to the greatest excess. The echo becomes
The babbling gossip of the air.2
The wind becomes " the wanton wind; " "the bawdy wind, that
kisses all it meets; " "the scolding wind;" "the posting wind," etc.
In short, every quality of nature becomes a living individuality.
He puts a spirit of life in everything,
Till wanton nature laughs and leaps with him.
IV. Pleonasms.
Speaking of the affluence and superabundance of Shakespeare's
genius, Taine says:
These vehement expressions, so natural in their upwelling, instead of follow-
ing one after the other slowly and with effort, are hurled out by hundreds with an
impetuous ease and abundance like the bubbling waves from a welling spring,
which are heaped together, rise one above another, and find nowhere room enough
to spread and exhaust themselves? You may find in Romeo and Juliet a score of
examples of this inexhaustible inspiration. The two lovers pile up an infinite
mass of metaphors, impassioned exaggerations, clenches, contorted phrases,
amorous extravagances.3
This trait leads in both writers to that use of redundant words
known in rhetoric as pleonasm. It marks a trait of mind which can-
not be satisfied with a bare statement of fact, but in its prodigal
richness heaps adjective on adjective and phrase on phrase.
Take this instance from Bacon:
Everything has been abandoned either to the mists of tradition, the whirl and
confusion of argument, or the waves and /nazes of chance, and desultory, ill-com-
bined experiments.4
1 Taine's History of English Literature^ 3Taine's History of English Literature,
P- 155- P- 2I3-
2 Twelfth Night, i, 5. * Novum Organum, book 1.
IDENTITIES OF STYLE. 489
Again he says:
Those acts which axe. permanent and perpetual?
And here we see the piling-on of adjectives often observed in
Shakespeare, what Swinburne calls "an effusion or effervescence of
words ":
It is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrefy and dissolve into a
number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and, I may term them, vermiculate questions.2
And again he speaks of
The flowing and watery vein of Osorius, the Portugal bishop.
And again:
Was esteemed and accounted a more pernicious engine."
All things dissolve into anarchy and confusion. 4
The emulation and provocation of their example have much quickened and
strengthened the state of learning.5
And again:
All things may be endowed and adorned with speeches, but knowledge itself is
more beautiful than any apparel of words that can be put upon it.*
We turn to Shakespeare, and we find Grant White noting the
same tendency. He says:
Shakespeare mingles words of native and foreign origin which are synonymous
so closely as to subject him to the charge of pleonasm; ... he has, for instance,
in King John, "infinite and boundless reach;" in Measure for Measure, "rebate
and blunt his natural edge ;*' and in Othello, "to such exsujticate and blown sur-
mises." 7
Let me give some further examples of this inherent tendency of
Shakespeare to pour words in superabundance over thoughts:
I am one
Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world
Have so incensed.8
Hugged and embraced by the strumpet wind.11
Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of Avar.'"
Of hinds and peasants, rude and merciless.™
That it may grow and sprout as high as heaven.1*2
Hath given them heart and courage to proceed.13
1 Advancement of Learnings book i. • Macbeth, i:i, 1.
a Ibid. 9 Merchant of I 'enice, ii, 6.
3 Ibid . '* 2d Henry II '. , i v , i .
4 Ibid. ' ' 2d Henry l'I., iv, 4.
s Ibid. l**d Henry IV., ii, 3.
*; In Praise of Knowledge. I3 2d Henry VI., iv, 4.
7 Life and Genius of S/iak., p. 219.
49°
PARALLELISMS,
Within the book and volume of my brain.1 "*v^',^ '.'",
If that rebellion
Came like itself in base and abject routs. "2
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity."
As broad and general as the casing air.4
Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful}
What trash is Rome,
What rubbish and 70 hat offal}
Led by a delicate and tender prince.7
Tortive and errant from his course of growth.8
Things base and vile, holding no quantity.9
Hast thou so cracked and splitted my poor tongue.10
And I will stoop and humble my intents.11
An unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpracticed.12
Garnished and decked in modest compliment.13
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture.14
1 might heap up many more examples to demonstrate the unity
of style in the two sets of writings in this particular, but it seems
to me that it is not necessary. I will close this branch of the sub-
ject with a quotation from Mark Antony's speech over the dead
body of Caesar:
Oh, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers .
Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips,
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue !
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use.u
1 Hamlet, i, 5. '•' Midsummer Nigh?* Dream, \% i»
2 2d Henry IV., iv, i . lfl Comedy of Errors, v, 1.
3 Cymbeline, i, 4. n 2d Henry IV., v. 2.
4 Macbeth, iii, 4. 12 Merchant of Venice, iii, 2.
6 Ibid., iv, 3. * Henry V., ii, 2.
''Julius Ccesar, 1, 3. I4 Troilus and Cressida, i, 3.
''Hamlet, iv, 4. " Julius Casar, iii, 1.
8 Troilus and Cresstda, i, 3.
IDEXTl TIES OF STYLE.
491
It is no wonder that the precise and single-minded Hume
thought that both Bacon and Shakespeare showed
A want of simplicity and purity of diction, with defective taste and elegance.
Certainly no other men in the world ever wasted such an afflu-
ence of words, thoughts, images and metaphors in their writings.
V. Condensation of Style.
Another marked feature of the style of both sets of writings is
their marvelous compactness and condensation. Macaulay says
of Bacon:
He had a wonderful faculty for packing thought close and rendering it portable.1
We need only turn to Bacon's Essays to find ample confirmation
of this statement.
Take one instance, from one of his letters, which might serve to
pass into a proverb:
A timorous man is everybody's, and a covetous man is his own.'2
Neither is it necessary to use any argument to demonstrate that
Shakespeare possessed in an exceptional degree this faculty of " pack-
ing thought close and rendering it portable." Take an example:
Who steals my purse steals trash;
1 Twos /nine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands.
Here is an essay stated in two lines. And here we have another:
Let the end try the man.3
Again:
Let proof speak.4
Again :
Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.5
Take this instance:
We defy augury; there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it
be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet
it will come; the readiness is all.6
It requires an analytical mind to follow the thought here
through the closely-packed and compressed sentences.
But the faculty is the same in both. Taine says of Bacon:
Shakespeare and the seers do not contain more vigorous or expressive con-
densations of thought, more resembling inspiration; and in Bacon they are to be
found everywhere. :
1 Essays — Bacon, p. 285. 5 Troilus and Cressida, \, 2.
2 Letter to the Lord Keeper, April 5, 1594. * Hamlet, v, 2.
3 2d Henry IV., ii, 2. "' History of English Literature, p. 154.
4 Cytr.beline, iii, 1.
492
PARALLELISMS.
\\. The Tendency to Aphorisms,
One of the most marked characteristics of both sets of writings
is the tendency to rise from particulars to principles; to see in a
mass of facts simply the foundation for a generalization; to indulge
in aphorisms.
Taine says of Bacon:
On the whole, his process is not that of the creators: it is intuition, not reason-
ing. When he has laid up his store of facts, the greatest possible, on some vast
subject, on some entire province of the mind, on the whole anterior philosophy,
on the general condition of the sciences, on the power and limits of human reason,
he casts over all this a comprehensive view, as it were, a great net, brings up
a universal idea, condenses his idea into a maxim, and hands it to us with the words,
"Verify and profit by it." . . . Nothing more; no proof, no effort to convince:
he affirms, and does nothing more; he has thought in the manner of artists and
poets, and he speaks after the manner of prophets and seers. Cogitata et Visa, this title
of one of his books might be the title of all. The most admirable, the Novum
Organum, is a string of aphorisms — a collection, as it were, of scientific decrees,
as of an oracle, who foresees the future and reveals the truth. And to make the
resemblance complete he expresses them by poetical figures, by enigmatic abbrevi-
ations, almost in Sibyllene verses. Idola speeds, Idola tribus, Idola fori, Idola
theatri ; every one will recall these strange names by which he signifies the four
kinds of illusions to which man is subject.1
The words which Taine applies to Bacon's Novum Organum, " a
string of aphorisms," might with equal appropriateness be used to
describe the Shakespeare Plays. We can hardly quote from them
an elevated passage which does not enunciate some general princi-
ple. Hence his utterances cling to the tongues of men like prov-
erbs. He takes a mass of facts, as the chemist takes the crude
bark of the Peruvian tree, and distills out of it, in the marvelous
alembic of his mind, a concentrated essence, which, while it holds
an infinitesimal relation to the quantity of the original substance,
yet contains all its essential virtues.
Let me give a few instances of this trait. Shakespeare says:
His rash, fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
(i) For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
(2) Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
(3) He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
(4) With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder;
(5) Like vanity, insatiate cormorant,
Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.'2
One would scarcely believe that these five aphorisms, contained
in seven lines, stood in this connected order in the play. It would
1 Taine s History of English Literature, p. 154. 2 Richard //., ii, 1.
IDENTITIES OF STYLE. 493
naturally be thought that they had been selected from a wide
range. The tendency to form generalizations might almost be
called a disease of style in both writers.
Shakespeare can hardly touch a particular fact without rising
from it to a principle. He says:
Take up this mangled matter at the best;
Men do their broken weapons rather use
Than their bare hands.1
Again :
Again:
Again:
Again:
(i) Our indiscretions sometimes serve us well,
When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us,
(2) There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.'
Thev sav best men are molded out of faults.3
(1) The evil that men do lives after them;
(2) The good is oft interred with their bones.4
(1) Men's evil manners live in brass; (2) their virtues
We write in water.1
This last sentence reminds one of Bacon's u but limns the watet
and but writes in dust."
And again:
Thieves for their robbery have authority
When judges steal themselves.
We turn to Bacon, and we might fill pages with similar aphor-
isms. Here are a few examples:
Extreme self-lovers will set a man's house afire to roast their own eggs.
The best part of beauty is that which a picture cannot express.
Riches are the baggage of virtue; they cannot be spared nor left behind, but
they hinder the march.
That envy is most malignant which is like Cain's, who envied his brother
because his sacrifice was better accepted — when there was nobody but God to
look on.
Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.
This reminds us of Shakespeare's parallel thought:
The better part of valor is discretion.
1 Othello, i, 3. 3 Measure for Measure, v, i. ''Henry I'///., iv, 2.
2 Havtlet, v, 2. * Julius Ccesar, iii. .
494
PARALLELISMS.
And again Bacon says:
Fortune is like a market, where, many times, if you stay a little, the price will
fall.
A faculty of wise interrogating is half a knowledge.
Observe, too, how Bacon, like Shakespeare, always reasons by
analogy — the great by the small, the mind by the body. He says,
speaking of natural philosophy:
Do not imagine that such inquiries question the immortality of the soul, or
derogate from its sovereignty over the body. The infant in its mother's womb
partakes of the accidents to its mother, but is separable in due season.
What a thought is this ! The body carries the soul in it as the
mother's womb carries the child; but the child is separable at birth
and becomes a distinct entity — so does the soul at death. To care
for the mother does not derogate from the child; justice to the
conditions of the body, growing out of knowledge, cannot be
injurious to the tenant of the body, or detract from its dignity.
What a mind, that can thus pack comprehensive theories in a
paragraph !
VII. The Tendency to Triple Forms.
We find in Bacon a disposition, growing out of his sense of
harmony, to run his sentences into triplicate forms, and we will
observe the same characteristic in Shakespeare.
Compare, for instance, the two following sentences. I mark
the triplicate form by inserting numbers.
Shakespeare says, in Maria's letter to Malvolio:
(i) Some are born great, (2) some achieve greatness, and (3) some have great-
ness thrust upon them.1
Bacon says, in his essay Of Studies:
(1) Some books are to be tasted, (2) others are to be swallowed, (3) and some
few to be chewed and digested.
Can any man doubt that these utterances came out of the same
mind? There is the same condensation; the same packing of
thought into close space; the same original and profound way of
looking into things; and the same rhythmical balance into triplicate
forms.
But, lest the reader may think that I have selected two phrases
accidentally alike, I give the sentences in which they are found.
^Twelfth Night, ii, 5.
IDENTITIES OF STYLE. 495
Maria says to Malvolio:
Be not afraid of greatness, (i) Some are born great, (2) some achieve great-
ness, and (3) some have greatness thrust upon them. ... (1) Be opposite with a
kinsman, surly with servants; (2) let thy tongue tang arguments of state; (3) put
thyself into the trick of singularity. ... If not, let me see thee (i) a steward still,
(2) the fellow of servants, and (3) not worthy to touch Fortune's fingers.
And here is a larger extract from Bacon's essay Of Studies:
Studies serve (1) for delight, (2) for ornament, and (3) for ability. . . . (1) To
spend too much time in them is sloth; (2) to use them too much for ornament is
affectation; (3) to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar.
. . . (1) Crafty men contemn them, (2) simple men admire them, (3) and wise
men use them. . . . (1) Read not to contradict and confute, (2) nor to believe and
take for granted, (3) nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. (1)
Some books are to be tasted, (2) others to be swallowed, (3) and some few to be
chewed and digested. . . . (1) Reading maketh a full man, (2) conference a ready
man, (3) and writing an exact man. And therefore (1) if a man write little he had
need to have a great memory; (2) if he confer little, he had need have a present
wit; (3) and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that
he doth not.1
We find this triplicate form all through Bacon's writings. He
says :
He can disclose and bring forward, therefore, things which neither (1) the
vicissitudes of nature, (2) nor the industry of experiment, (3) nor chance itself
would ever have brought about, and which would forever have escaped man's
thoughts.2
And again:
What is (1) constant, (2) eternal and (3) universal in nature ?s
And again:
Every interpretation of nature sets out from the senses, and leads by a (1)
regular, (2) fixed and (3) well-established road.4
And again:
Letters are good (1) when a man would draw an answer by letter back again;
(2) or when it may serve for a man's justification afterward, or (3) where there may
be danger to be interrupted or heard by pieces.-'
And again:
A (1) brief, (2) bare and (3) simple enumeration.''
And again:
Nature is (1) often hidden, (2) sometimes overcome, (3) seldom extinguished.'1
And again:
The (1) crudities, (2) impurities and (3) leprosities of metals.8
5 Essay Of Studies. 4 Ibid., book i. 7 Essay Of Nature in Men.
* Novum Organum, book ii. 5 Essay Of Negotiating. 8 Natural History, % 326.
3 Ibid. fi Novum Organum, book i.
496
PARALLELISMS.
And again:
Whether it be (i) honor, or (2) riches, or (3) delight, or (1) glory, or (2) knowl-
edge, or (3) anything else which they seek after.1
And again:
To (1) assail, (2) sap, and (3) work into the constancy of Sir Robert Clifford.2
We turn to Shakespeare, and we find the same tendency. How
precisely in the style of Bacon's Essays are the disquisitions of
Falstaff:
Yea, but how if honor prick me off when I come on; how then? (1) Can honor
set a leg? No. (2) Or an arm? No. (3) Or take away the grief of a wound?
No. Honor has no skill in surgery, then? No. (1) What is honor? A word.
(2) What is that word? Honor. (3) What is that honor? Air. A trim reckoning.
Who hath it? He that died Wednesday. (1) Doth he feel it? No. (2) Doth he
hear it ? No. (3) Is it insensible, then ? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live
with the living? No. Detraction will not suffer it.3
And, speaking of the effect of good wine, Falstaff says:
It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the (1) foolish, (2) and dull, (3)
and crudy vapors which environ it: makes it (1) apprehensive, (2) quick, (3) for-
getive; full of (1) nimble, (2) fiery and (3) delectable shapes. . . . The cold blood
he did naturally inherit from his father, he hath, like (1) lean, (2) sterile and (3) bare
land, (1) manured, (2) husbanded and (3) tilled.4
But this trait is not confined to the utterances of Falstaff, We
find it all through the Plays. Take the following instances:
For I have neither (1) wit, (2) nor words, (3) nor worth,
(1) Action, (2) nor utterance, (3) nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood.5
Again:
(1) Romans, (2) countrymen and (3) lovers. . . . (1) As Caesar loved me, I
weep for him; (2) as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; (3) as he was valiant, I honor
him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. . . . (1) Who is here so base that
would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. (2) Who is here so
rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. (3)
Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I
offended. I pause for a reply.6
Again:
(1) Thou art most rich being poor;
(2) Most choice, forsaken; (3) and most loved, despised.7
Again:
Alas, poor Romeo ! he is already dead; (1) stabbed with a white wench's black
eye; (2) shot through the ear with a love-song; (3) the very pin of his heart cleft
with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft.8
1 Wisdom of the Ancients 3 1st Henry II'., v, 1. 6 Ibid.
— Dionysins. 4 2d Henry \ IV, % iv, 3. ""Lear, i, 1.
2 History 0/ Henry I'll. • Julius Ctrsar, iii, /., 8 Romeo and Juliet, ii, 4.
IDENTITIES OF STYLE. 497
Again
Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown !
(1) The courtier's, (2) soldier's, (3) scholar's (1) eye, (2) tongue, (3) sword.
Again:
I am myself indifferent honest: but yet I could accuse me of such things, that
it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very (1) proud, (2) revengeful,
(3) ambitious; with more offenses at my beck than I have (1) thoughts to put them
in, (2) imagination to give them shape, or (3) time to act them in.1
Again:
'Tis slander,
(1) Whose edge is sharper than the sword; (2) whose tongue
Outvenoms all the worms of Nile; (3) whose breath
Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie
All corners of the world: (1) kings, (2) queens and (3) states,
(1) Maids, (2) matrons, nay, (3) the secrets of the grave,
This viperous slander enters.2
Again:
This peace is nothing but (1) to rust iron, (2) increase tailors and (3) breed
ballad-makers.3
Again:
Live loathed and long,
Most (1) smiling, (2) smooth, (3) detested parasites,
(1) Courteous destroyers, (2) affable wolves, (3) meek bears,
(1) You fools of fortune, (2) trencher fiends, (3) time's flies,
(1) Cap-and-knee slaves, (2) vapors, and (3) minute jacks.4
Again :
Must I needs forego
(1) So good, (2) so noble and (3) so true a master.8
And again :
(1) Her father loved me; (2) oft invited me;
(3) Still questioned me the story of my life,
From year to year; the (1) battles, (2) sieges, (3) fortunes
That I have passed.6
Again :
It would be (1) argument for a week, (2) laughter for a month, and (3) a good
jest forever.7
Again:
(1) Wooing, (2) wedding and (3) repenting are as (1) a Scotch jig, (2) a measure,
and (3) a cinque pace: (1) the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full
as fantastical; (2) the wedding mannerly, modest, as a measure full of state and
ancientry; and (3) then comes repentance, and, with his bad legs, falls into the
cinque pace faster and faster, until he sinks into his grave.8
1 Hamlet* iii, 1. 4 Titus Adronicus, ii, 6. 7 ist Henry IK, ii, 2.
2 Cymbeline, iii, 4. 6 Henry VIII., ii, 2. 8 Much Ado about Nothing, iii, 1.
3 Coriolanus, iv, 5. 6 Othello* i, 3.
49*S PARALLELISMS.
Again:
Oh, that I were a god, to shoot forth thunder
Upon these (i) paltry, (2) servile, (3) abject drudges.1
Not only, Mistress Ford, in the simple office of love, but in all (1) accoutrement,
(2) complement (3) and ceremony of it.2
Again;
Not onl;
:omplem
Again :
How could (1) communities,
(2) Degrees in schools and (3) brotherhood in cities,
(1) Peaceful commerce from divided shores,
(2) The primogeniture and due of birth,
(3) Prerogative of age, (1) crowns, (2) scepters, (3) laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?3
Again:
But (1) manhood is melted into courtesies, (2) valor into compliment, and (3)
men are turned into tongues, and trim ones, too.4
Again:
Again:
Again:
Again:
Again:
Again:
For she is (1) lumpish, (2) heavy, (3) melancholy.
Say that upon the altar of her beauty
You sacrifice (1) your tears, (2) your sighs, (3) your heart.6
Had I power I should
(1) Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,
(2) Uproar the universal peace, (3) confound
All unity on earth.1
To be directed
As from her (1) lord, (2) her governor, (3) her king/
To wound (1) thy lord, (2) thy king, (3) thy governor.
Is fit for (1) treasons, (2) stratagems and (3) spoils.10
I might continue these examples at much greater length, but I
think I have given enough to prove that both Bacon and the writer
of the Plays possessed, as a characteristic of style, a tendency to
balance their sentences in triplicate forms. This trait grew out of
the sense of harmony in the ear; it was an unconscious arrange-
ment of thoughts in obedience to a peculiar inward instinct, and it
goes far to establish identity.
1 2d Henry VI., iv, 1. 6 Ibid.
- Merry Wives of Windsor, iv, 2. 7 Macbeth, iv, 3.
3 Troilus and Cressida, i, 3. 8 Merchant 0/ Venice, iii, 2.
4 Much Ado about Nothing, iv, t. 9 Taming 0/ the Shrew, v, 2.
8 Two Gentlemen of Verona, iii, 2. l0 Merchant of Venice, v, 1.
**§/<*. IDENTITIES OF STYLE. 499
^^H^^^^ VIII. Catalogues of Words.
The man who thinks in concrete forms solidifies words into
ideas. He who has trained himself to observe as a natural philoso-
pher, builds in numerical order bases for his thought. He erects
the poem on a foundation of facts. He collects materials before
he builds.
This trait is very marked in Bacon. He was the most observant
of men. No point or fact escaped him. Hence he runs to the
habit of stringing together catalogues of words.
For instance, he says in The Experimental History:
There are doubtless in Europe many capable, free, sublimed, subtile, solid,
constant wits.
Again he speaks of
Servile, blind, dull, vague and abrupt experiments.1
Again he says:
Let anti-masques not be long; they have been commonly of fools, satyrs
baboons, wild men, antics, beasts, spirits, witches, Ethiopes, pigmies, turquets,
nymphs, rustics, cupids, statues moving, and the like.8
Bacon also says:
Such are gold in weight, iron in hardness, the whale in size, the dog in smell,
the flame of gunpowder in rapid expansion, and others of like nature.3
We turn to Lear, and we hear the same voice speaking of
False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in
greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey.4
Again Shakespeare says:
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends.5
And here is another instance of the tendency to make catalogues
of words:
Beauty, wit,
High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.6
Again we have, in the same play — the most philosophical of
all the Plays — these lines:
All our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes,
Severals and generals of grace exact,
Achievements, plots, orders, preventions.
Excitements to the field, or speech for truce.
1 Great histauration. 3 Novum Orguuum, book ii. 5 Macbeth , v, 2.
- Essay Of Masks. 4 Lear, iii, 4. 8 Troilns and Cressida, iii, 3.
5 oo PA RA LL ELI SMS.
Success or loss, what is, or what is not, serves
As stuff for these two to make paradoxes.1
And in the famous description of the horse, in Venus and Adonis,
we see the same closely-observing eye of the naturalist:
Round-hoofed, short- jointed, fetlocks shag and long.
Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide.
Prof. Dowden says:
This passage has been much admired; but is it poetry or a paragraph from an
advertisement of a horse-sale ?'
And here, in a more poetical passage, we observe the same ten-
dency to the enumeration of facts:
My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So fiew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-kneed and dew-lapped, like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth-like bells,
Each under each.3
And in the same vein of close and accurate observation of
details, "the contracting of the eye of the mind," as Bacon calls it,
is the following description of a murdered man:
But see, his face is black and full of blood;
His eye-balls further out than when he lived,
Staring full-ghastly like a strangled man;
His hair upreared, his nostrils stretched with struggling;
His hands abroad displayed, as one that grasped
And tugged for life, and was by strength subdued.
Look, on the sheets his hair, you see, is sticking;
His well-proportioned beard made rough and rugged,
Like to the summer's corn by tempests lodged.4
IX. The Euphonic Test.
Tn Mr. Wilkes' book, Shakespeare from an American Point of View,
there is contained an essay (p. 430) by Professor J. W. Taverner, of
New York, in which he attempts to show that Bacon could not
have written the Shakespeare Plays, because of the Euphonic Test.
And yet he says:
Upon examination of the limited poetry which we have from the pen of Bacon,
I find nothing to criticise. Like unto Shakespeare, he takes good note of any
deficiency of syllabic pulsation, and imparts the value- of but one syllable to the
1 Troilus and Cressida, i, 3. 3 Midsummer Nigkfs Dream, iv, '.
" ^hak. Mind and A ri, p. 45. * 2d Henry 1 '/., iii, 2.
IDENTITIES OF STYLE. 50I
dissyllables heaven, wearest, many, even, goeth; and to glittering and chariot but the
value of two, precisely as Shakespeare would.
But he tries to show that Bacon could not have written the
Plays because it was his custom to run his sentences, as I have
shown, into triplets. He says:
Bacon, in this feature of the rhythmical adjustment of clauses, attaches to
those sentences of his which are composed of triple clauses of equal dimensions, and
which possess such regularity which he never seeks to disturb, etc.
And he gives in addition to the instances I have quoted from
Bacon the following, among others:
A man cannot speak (i) to his son but as a father, (2) to his wife but as a hus-
band, and (3) to his enemy but upon terms.
Judges ought to be (1) more learned than witty, (2) more reverent than plausi-
ble, and (3) more advised than confident.
And he argues that Shakespeare
Does not object to four or more clauses, but he does to three.
And therefore Bacon did not write the Plays. Such arguments
are fully answered by the pages of examples I have just given from
the Shakespeare Plays, showing that the poet is even more prone
to fall into the triple form of expression than Bacon — more prone,
because there is more tendency to harmonious and balanced ex-
pressions in poetry than in prose.
But the Professor admits that there "is a kind of melody of
speech that belongs to Bacon," and that his ear is exact, "and
counts its seconds like the pendulum of a clock."
In truth, if any man would take the pains to print the prose
disquisitions and monologues of Shakespeare, intermixed with
extracts from as nearly similar productions of Bacon as may be,
the ordinary reader would scarcely be able to tell which was which..
If such a reader was handed this passage, and asked to name
the author, I think the probabilities are great that he would say it
was from the pen of Francis Bacon:
Novelty is only in request; and it is dangerous to be aged in any kind of
course, as it is virtuous to be constant in any undertaking. There is scarce truth
enough alive to make societies secure, but security enough to make fellowship
accursed: much upon this riddle runs the wisdom of the world.
We have here the same condensed, pithy sentences which mark
the great philosopher, together with the same antithetical way of
balancing thought against thought.
5 o 2 PA RA L LEL ISMS.
Yet this is from Shakespeare. It will be found in Measure for
Measure. '
And we can conceive that the following passage might have
been written by Shakespeare — the very extravagance of hyperbole
sounds like him:
Contrary is it with hypocrites and impostors, for they, in the church and before
the people, set themselves on fire, and are carried, as it were, out of themselves, and,
becoming as men inspired with holy furies, they set heaven and earth together. }
There is not a great stride from this to the poet's eye in a fine
phrensy rolling from earth to heaven, from heaven to earth; and
the madman seeing more devils than vast hell could hold.
In short, the resemblance between the two bodies of compo-
sitions is as close as could be reasonably expected, where one is
almost exclusively prose, and the greatness of the other consists in
the elevated flights of poetry. In the one case it is the lammer-
geyer sitting among the stones; in the other it is the great bird
balanced on majestic pinions in the blue vault of heaven, far above
the mountain-top and the emulous shafts of man.
'Act, iii, scene 2. *Meditationet Sacra' — Of Impostors.
HP-
BOOK II.
THE DEMONSTRATION
"Come hither, Jpirit,
Jet Caliban ass hi/ Compsjiionr free:
Untie the Jpell"
Tempejt, V,L
PART !.
THE CIPHER IN THE PLAYS.
CHAPTER I.
HOW I CAME TO LOOK FOR A CIPHER.
I will a round, unvarnished tale deliver.
Othello, /,.,•.
I HAVE given, in the foregoing pages, something of the reason-
ing— and yet but a little part of it — which led me up to the con-
clusion that Francis Bacon was the author of the so-called Shake-
speare Plays.
But one consideration greatly troubled me, to-wit: Would the
writer of such immortal works sever them from himself and cast
them off forever ?
All the world knows that the parental instinct attaches as
strongly to the productions of the mind as to the productions of the
body. An author glories in his books, even as much as he does
in his children. The writer of the Plays realized this fact, for he
speaks in one of the sonnets of " these children of the brain:'' They
were the offspring of the better part of him.
But, it may be urged, he did not know the value of them.
This is not the fact. He understood their merits better than all
the men of his age; for, while they were complimenting him on "his
facetious grace in writing," he foresaw that these compositions
would endure while civilized humanity occupied the globe. The
sonnets show this. In sonnet cvii he says:
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since spite of him I'll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes :
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.
And in sonnet lxxxi he says:
:>°5
506 THE CIPHER JX THE PLA VS.
The earth can' yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read;
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse,
When all the breathers of this world are dead;
You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen),
WThere breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
And in sonnet lv he says:
Not marble, not the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.
Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity,
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity,
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.
There was, as it seems to me, no doubt: i. That Bacon wrote
the Plays; 2. That he loved them as the children of his brain; 3.
That he estimated them at their full great value.
The question then arose, How was it possible that he would dis-
own them with no hope or purpose of ever reclaiming them ? How
could he consent that the immortal honors which belonged to him-
self should be heaped upon an unworthy impostor? How could he
divest Bacon of this great world-outliving glory to give it to
Shakspere ?
This thought recurred to me constantly, and greatly perplexed
me.
One day 1 chanced to open a book, belonging to one of my chil-
dren, called Every Boy's Book, published in London, by George
Routledge & Sons, 1868; a very complete and interesting work of
its kind, containing over eight hundred pages. On page 674 I
found a chapter devoted to " Cryptography," or cipher-writing, and
in it I chanced upon this sentence:
The most famous and complex cipher perhaps ever written was by Lord Bacon.
It was arranged in the following manner:
aaaaa stands for a. abaaa stands for i and j. baaaa stands for r.
aaaab ' '
" b.
abaab ' '
" k.
baaab
" s.
aaaba ' '
c.
ababa ' '
" 1.
baaba ' '
" t.
aaabb ' '
" d.
ababb "
" m.
baabb ' '
" u and v.
HOW I CAME TO LOOK FOR A CIPHER. 507
aabaa stands for e. abbaa stands for n. babaa stands for w.
aabab " " f. abbab " " o. babab " " x.
aabba " " g. abbba " " p. babba " " y.
aabbb " " h. abbbb " " q. babbb " " z.
Now suppose you want to inform some one that "All is well." First place
down the letters separately according to the above alphabet:
aaaaa ababa ababa abaaa baaab babaa aabaa ababa ababa
Then take a sentence five times the length in letters of " All is well " — say it
is, " We were sorry to have heard that you have been so unwell."
Then fit this sentence to the cipher above, like this:
aaaaaababaababaabaaabaaabbabaaaabaaababaababa
we were so rrytofiav <'hea/d t h^y^uhav <?bee«sounwe/l
Marking with a dash every letter that comes under a b. Then put the sen-
tence down on your paper, printing all marked letters in italics and the others in
the ordinary way, thus:
We were sorry to /mve hea;d that you haw been so unwell.
The person who receives the cipher puts it down and writes an a under ever)
letter except those in italics: these he puts a b under; he then divides the cipher
obtained into periods of five letters, looks at his alphabet, and finds the meaning to
be: " All is well."
And on page 681 of the same chapter I found another allusion
to Bacon:
Most of the examples given will only enable one to decipher the most simple
kind, such as are generally found in magazines, etc.; for if that intricate cipher of
Lord Bacon's were put in a book for boys it would be a waste of paper, as we will
venture to say that not one in a thousand would be able to find it out.
Here was indeed a pregnant association of ideas:
1. Lord Bacon wrote the Plays.
2. Lord Bacon loved them; and could not desire to dissociate
himself from them.
3. Lord Bacon knew their inestimable greatness; and
4. Lord Bacon dealt in ciphers; he invented ciphers, and
ciphers of exquisite subtlety and cunning.
Then followed, like a flash, this thought:
5. Could Lord Bacon have put a cipher in the Plays?
The first thing to do was to see what Lord Bacon had said on
the subject of ciphers. I remembered that Basil Montagu in his
Life of Bacon had said, speaking of his youth and before he came
of age:
After the appointment of Sir Amias Paulett's successor, Bacon traveled into
the French provinces and spent some time at Poictiers. He prepared a work upon,
ciphers, which he afterward published.1
1 Works of Lord Bacon, vol. i.
5o8 THE CIPHER IN THE PLA VS.
I turned to the De Augment's, and there I found what is practi-
cally an essay on ciphers. The statement of Montagu is some-
what of an error, for no separate essay was ever published by
Bacon on that subject.
Bacon says:
As for writing, it is to be performed either by the common alphabet (which is
used by everybody) or by a secret and private one, agreed upon by particular per-
sons, which they call ciphers.1
Now I had noted that, in his letters to Sir Tobie Matthew, he
spoke of certain writings as the works of the alphabet. The reader
will observe how often in this essay the word alphabet is used in
connection with cipher-writing. In the sentence just quoted he
tells us that writing may be performed in a secret and private
alphabet "which they call ciphers'* Was the reverse true? Could
cipher-writings be called " works of the alphabet " ? There is some-
thing very mysterious about these "works of his recreation " — these
"works of the alphabet" — which no one was to be "allowed to
copy."
Bacon continues:
Let us proceed, then, to ciphers. Of these there are many kinds : simple
ciphers, ciphers mixed with non-significant characters, ciphers containing two differ-
ent letters in one character, wheel ciphers, key ciphers, word ciphers, and the like.
But the virtues required in them are three : that they be easy and not laborious to
write; that they be safe and be impossible to be deciphered, and lastly, that they
be, if possible, stick as not to raise suspicion. For if letters fall into the hands of
those who have power either over the writers or over those to whom they are
addressed, although the cipher itself may be safe and impossible to decipher, yet
the matter comes under examination and question, unless the cipher be such as
either to raise no suspicion or to elude inquiry. Now for this elusion of inquiry,
there is a new and useful contrivance for it, which, as I have it by me, why should I set
it down among the desiderata, instead of propounding the thing itself? It is this :
Let a man have two alphabets, one of true letters, the other of non-significants;
and let him infold in them two letters at once, one carrying the secret, the other
such a letter as the writer would have been likely to send, and yet without anything
dangerous. Then if any one be strictly examined as to the cipher let him offer
the alphabet of non-significants for the true letters, and the alphabet of true letters
for the non-significants. Thus the examiner will fall upon the exterior letter, which
finding probable, he will not suspect anything of another letter within.
How subtle and cunning is all this ! Note the use of the word
alphabet. Note, too, the excuse that he gives for discussing the
cipher: " he has it by him " — lest anyone might suppose he was
* Works of Francis Bacon, vol. ix, p. 115.
HO W I CAME TO LOOK FOR A CIPHER.
5°9
furnishing a key to some other writings. Observe his rule, that
the cipher "must not raise suspicion" as to its existence; it must
be "infolded" in something else; so that the reader, falling upon
the exterior writing, will not suspect another writing within.
He continues:
But for avoiding suspicion altogether, I will add another contrivance which I
devised myself when I was at Paris in my early youth, and which I still think
worthy of preservation. For it has the perfection of a cipher, which is to make
anything signify anything; subject, however, to this condition, that the infolding
writing shall contain at least five times as many letters as the writing infolded : no
other restriction or condition whatever is required. The way to do it is this :
First let all the letters of the alphabet be resolved into transpositions of two
letters only. For the transposition of two letters through five places will yield
thirty-two differences, much more twenty-four, which is the number of letters in
our alphabet. Here is an example of such an alphabet.
Here follows the alphabet I have already quoted from the Every
Boys Book.
He continues:
Nor is it a slight thing which is thus by the way effected. For hence we see
how thoughts may be communicated at any distance of place by means of any
objects perceptible either to the eye or ear, provided only that those objects are
capable of two differences; as by bells, trumpets, torches, gun-shots, and the like.
Herein he anticipated the telegraphic alphabet.
But to proceed with our business : When you prepare to write, you must
reduce the interior epistle to this biliteral alphabet. Let the interior epistle be —
Fly.
Example of reduction.
FLY
aabab ababa babba
Have by you at the same time another alphabet in two forms — I mean one in
which each of the letters of the common alphabet, both capital and small, is
exhibited in two different forms — any forms that you find convenient.
Example of an alphabet in two forms:
A
B
A
B
A
B
A
B
A
B
A
B
\
A
a
B
B
b
»
C
c
C
C
D
D
(1
,/
E
E
e
F
F
f
f
G
G
g
g
II
II
h
//
I
I
i
i
K
K
k
k
L
I
1
/
M
M
m
in
N
N
n
n
()
o
o
0
P
P
P
P
0
Q
q
q
R
X
r
r
s
S
s
s
T
T
t
U
u
u
u
Y
V
V
V
W
W
w
u'
X
z
X
z
:
X
i
Y
Y
y
y
5io THE CIPHER IX THE J' J. A VS.
Then take your interior epistle, reduced to the biliteral shape, and adapt to it
letter by letter your exterior epistle in the biform character; and then write it out.
Let the exterior epistle be:
DO NOT GO TILL I COME.
Example of adaptation.
FLY
aa bab ab abab a bba
Do not go till I come.
I add another large example of the same cipher — of the writing of anything by
anything.
The interior epistle, for which I have selected the Spartan dispatch, formerly
sent in the Scytale :
All is lost. Mindarus is killed. The soldiers want food. We ean neither get
hence nor stay longer here.
The exterior epistle, taken from Cicero's first letter and containing the Spartan
dispatch within it:
In all duly or rather piety tozvards you I satisfy everybody except myself. Myself
I never satisfy. Eor so gj-eat are the services which you have rendered me, that, seeing
you did not rest in your endeavors on my behalf till the thing was done, I feel as if my
life had lost ALL its sweetness, because I cannot do as much in this cause of yours.
The occasions are these : Ammonius the king's ambassador openly besieges us with
money, the, business IS carried on through the same creditors who were employed in it
when you were here, etc.
I have here capitalized the words all and is, supposing them to
be part of the sentence, "All is lost/' but I am not sure that I am
right in doing so. The sentence ends as above and leaves us in
the dark. Bacon continues:
This doctrine of ciphers carries along with it another doctrine which is its rela-
tive. This is the doctrine of deciphering, or of detecting ciphers, though one be
quite ignorant of the alphabet used or the private understanding between the
parties : a thing requiring both labor and ingenuity, and dedicated, as the other
likewise is, to the secrets of princes. By skillful precaution indeed it may be made
useless; though, as things are, it is of very great use. For if good and safe
ciphers were introduced, there are very many of them which altogether elude and
exclude the decipherer, and yet are sufficiently convenient and ready to read
and write. But such is the rawness and unskillfulness of secretaries and clerks in
the courts of kings, that the greatest matters are commonly trusted to weak and
futile ciphers.
I said to myself: What is there unreasonable in the thought
that this man, who dwelt with such interest upon the\ subject of
ciphers, who had invented ciphers, even ciphers within ciphers —
that this subtle and most laborious intellect might have 1 rjected a
cipher narrative, an "interior epistle," into the Shakespeare Plays,
in which he would assert his authorship of the same, and reclaim
for all time those " children of his brain " who had been placed, for
good and sufficient reasons, under the fosterage of another?
HOW I CAME TO LOOK FOR A CIPHER. 51 r
I knew also that Bacon had all his life much to do with ciphers.
Spedding says:
In both France and Scotland Essex had correspondents, in his intercourse with
whom Anthony Bacon appears to have served him in a capacity very like that of a
modern under-secretary of state, receiving all letters, which were mostly in cipher,
in the first instance, forwarding them (generally through his brother Francis'
hands) to the Earl deciphered, and accompanied with their joint suggestions.1
But Bacon also referred again to the subject of ciphers in the
second book of The Advancement of Learnings where he briefly treats
of the same theories. He says:
The highest degree whereof is to write omnia per omnia, which is undoubtedly
possible, with a proportion quintuple at most of the writing infolding to the writing
infolded, and no other restraint whatsoever.
In his enumeration of the different kinds of ciphers,2 he names,
as I have shown, "word ciphers." These are ciphers where the
word is infolded in other words, and where the cipher is not one of
representatives of the alphabetical signs. This seems to be the
meaning of the example given of the Spartan dispatch, although,
as I have said, he seems to leave the subject purposely obscure.
Speaking of Dr. Lopez' conspiracy to poison the Queen, Bacon
refers to certain letters —
Written in a cipher, not of alphabet, but of words, such as mought, if it were
opened, impart no vehement suspicion."
In the Second Book of The Advancement of Learning Bacon says:
But there yet remains another use of Poesy Parabolical, opposite to the former,
wherein it serves, as I said, for an infoldment; for such things, I mean, the dignity
whereof requires that they should be seen, as it were, through a veil; that is, when
the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy and philosophy are involved in fables
or parables.4
Note here the significant use of the word infoldment.
And in this connection I quote the following from the Valerius
Terminus:
That the discretion anciently observed, though by the precedent of many vain
persons and deceivers abused, of publishing part and reserving part to a private suc-
cession, and publishing in such a manner whereby it may not be to the taste or
capacity of all, but shall, as it were, single and adopt his reader, is not to be laid aside,
both for the avoiding of abuse in the excluded, and the strengthening of affection
in the admitted.5
1 Spedding, Life and Works, vol. i, p. 250. 3 Life and Works, vol. i, p. 282.
3 Advancement 0/ Learning, vol. ix, p. 116. 4 De A ugnientis, vol. viii, p. 442.
5 Pe Augment/*, chap. 18.
$12 THE CIPHER JX THE J' LAYS.
And again:
To ascend further by scale I do forbear, partly because it would draw on the
example to an over-great length, but chiefly because it would open that which in
this 7vork I determine to reserve}
And again he says:
And as Alexander Borgia was wont to say of the expedition of the French for
Naples, that they came with chalk in their hands, to mark up their lodgings, and
not with weapons to fight; so I like better that entry of truth which cometh peace-
ably with chalk, to mark up those minds which are eapable to lodge and harbor it, than
that which cometh with pugnacity and contention.
And again he says, in the same work:
Another diversity of method there is [he is speaking of the different methods of
"tradition," i.e., of communicating and transmitting knowledge], which hath some
affinity with the former, tised in some eases by the discretion of the ancients, but dis-
graced since by the imposture of many vain persons, who have made it as a false
light for their counterfeit merchandises; and that is, enigmatical and disclosed. The
pretense thereof [that is, of the enigmatical method] is to remove the vulgar capac-
ities from being admitted to the secrets of knowledge, and to reserve them to selected
auditors, or wits of such sharpness as can pierce the veil. 2
And he also says in the Second Book of the De Augmentis:
Now, whether any mystic meaning be concealed beneath the fables of the
ancient poets is a matter of some doubt. For my part, I am inclined to think a
mystery is involved in no small number of them.
Spedding says:
The question is whether the reserve Bacon contemplated can be justly com-
pared with that practiced by the alchemists and others, who concealed their discov-
eries as " treasures of which the value would be decreased if others were allowed to
share it." ... It is true that in both of these extracts Bacon intimates an intention
to reserve the communication of one part of his philosophy — "formula ipsa interpre-
tationis et inventa per eande/u" — to certain fit and chosen persons. . . . The fruits
which he anticipated from his philosophy were not only intended for the benefit of
all mankind, but were to be gathered in another generation?
Of course all this is expressed obscurely by Bacon, although no
man was more capable of expressing it clearly, had he desired so to
do. But, putting all these things together, I drew the inference
that Bacon proposed to reserve some part of his teaching for another
generation, for the benefit of mankind; that this was to be behind a
veil, which keen wits might pierce; and he believed that the great
writers of antiquity had, in like manner, buried certain mysteries in
their works, the keys to which are now lost.
1 De Augmenttf, chap. 2. 2 Works, Boston, vol. i, p. 185. 3 Ibid.
HOW I CAME TO LOOK FOR A CIPHER. 513
And says Speckling:
Thus I conceive that six out of the ten passages under consideration must be
set aside as not bearing at all upon the question at issue. Of the four that remain,
two must be set aside in like manner, because, though they directly allude to the prac-
tice of transmitting knowledge as a secret from hand to hand, they contain no evidence
that Bacon approved of it.
And it is most remarkable that in the next chapter after that in
which we find the lengthy discourse about ciphers, already quoted,
Bacon proceeds to discuss " the Handing on of the Lamp, or Method
of Delivery to Posterity," and repeats himself again. He says there
are two ways to transmit knowledge:
For both methods agree in aiming to separate the vulgar among the auditors
from the select; but then they are opposed in this, that the former makes use of a
way of delivery more open than the common; the latter (of which I am now going
to speak), of one more secret. Let the one, then, be distinguished as the Exoteric
method, the other as the Acroamatic; a. distinction observed by the ancients princi-
pally in the publication of books, but which I transfer to the method of delivery.
Indeed this acroamatic or enigmatical method was itself used among the ancients,
and employed with judgment and discretion. But in later times it has been dis-
graced by many, who have made it a false and deceitful light to put forward their
counterfeit merchandise. The intention of it, however, seems to be by obscurity of
delivery to exclude the vulgar (that is the profane vulgar) from the secrets of knowl-
edge, and to admit those only who have either received the interpretation of the
enigmas through the hands of the teachers, or have wits of such sharpness and dis-
cernment as can pierce the veil.1
Is it not significant that immediately after the discussion of
ciphers, in which he said that there were two kinds of writing,
" either by the common alphabet or by a private and secret one,"
he should proceed to tell us that there are two ways of handing
on the lamp to posterity, both of which exclude the vulgar, but one
of them is more secret than the other, used formerly among the
ancients [he has just given us an example in the Spartan Scytale] —
an acroamatic or enigmatical method, the " veil " of whose
" obscure delivery *J can only be penetrated by those who have been
let into the secret, or who have wits sharp enough to pierce it.
Delia Bacon says of the Elizabethan period:
It was a time when the cipher, in which one could write "omnia per omnia,"
was in request; when even " wheel ciphers " and doubles were thought not unwor-
thy of philosophic notice . . . with philosophic secrets that opened down into the
bottom of a tomb, that opened into the Tower, that opened on the scaffold and the
block.2
1 De A ugmentis, book vi. 2 Philosophy of S/iak. Plays I Tnfotded, p. 10.
514 THE CIPHER IN THE PLAYS.
Ben Jonson, in his Epigrams, says, speaking of the young states-
men of London:
They all get Porta for -the sundry ways
To write in cipher, and the several keys
To ope the character.1
Porta was the famous Neapolitan, Johannes Baptista Porta. He
died in 1615.
Says W. F. C. Wigston:
It is difficult for us in this free age to understand all this. . . . For the neces-
sity that arose for secrecy, and the intimacy of religion, politics and poetry cannot
be fully grasped in an age where they have neither necessity nor interest to be in
any way inter-related or inter-dependent.2
And that Bacon expected that in the future he would have an
increase of fame or a justification of his life, seems to be intimated
in the first draft of his will:
I leave my memory to the next ages and foreign nations, and to my own coun-
trymen after some time be passed.
And in the last copy of his will he changes this phraseology, and
says:
For my name and memory I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to for-
eign nations, and to the next ages.
Did he omit the words in italics because they might be too sig-
nificant ?
He always looked over the heads of the generation in which he
lived, and fastened his eyes upon posterity. He anticipated the
great religious and political revolution which soon after his death
swept over England. He believed that the world was on the eve of
great civil convulsions, growing out of religious fanaticism, in
which it was possible civilization might perish, despite the art of
printing. He says:
Nor is my resolution diminished by foreseeing the state of these times, a sort of
declination and ruin of the learning which is now in use; for although I dread not
the incursions of barbarians (unless, perhaps, the empire of Spain should strengthen
itself, and oppress and debilitate others by arms, itself by the burden), yet from
civil wars (which, on account of certain manners, not long ago introduced, seem to
me about to visit many countries), and the malignity of sects, and from these com-
pendiary artifices and cautions which have crept into the place of learning, no less
a tempest seems to impend over letters and science. Nor can the shop of the
typographer avail for these evils.3
1 Epigram xcii. The New City. 2 A New Story of S/iak., p. 193.
;i On the Interpretation 0/ Nature.
HOW I CAME TO LOOK FOR A CIPHER. 515
What more natural than that he, the cipher-maker, being the
author of the Plays, should place in the Plays a cipher story, to be
read when the tempest that was about to assail civilization had
passed away, — the Plays surviving, for they were, he tells us, to
live when " marble and the gilded monuments of princes " had
perished — even to the general judgment. If he was right; if the
Plays were indeed as imperishable as the verses of Homer, they
must necessarily be the subject of close study by generations of
critics and commentators; and sooner or later some one would
" pierce the veil " and read the acroamatic and enigmatical story
infolded in them. Then would he be justified to the world by that
internal narrative, reflecting on kings, princes, prelates and peers,
and not to be published in his own day; not to be uttered with-
out serious' penalties to his kinsfolk, his family, his very body in
the grave. Then, when his corpse was dust, his blood extinct, or
diluted to nothingness in the course of generations; then, when all
vanities of rank and state and profession and family were obliter-
ated; when his memory and name were as a sublimated spirit; then,
"in the next ages," "when some time had been passed," he would,
through the cipher narrative, rise anew from the grave.
So the life that died with shame
Would live in death with glorious fame.1
" His eye," says Montagu, "pierced into future contingents."
That can not be called improbable which has happened. If I
had not fallen upon the cipher, some one else would. It was a mere
question of time, with all time in which to answer it.
And this material and practical view sets aside that other and
profounder conception, in which the operations of the minds of men
are but the shadowings of an eternal purpose, and all history
and all nature but the cunningly adjusted parts of a great exter-
nal spiritual design.
Much Ado About Nothing, ii, 3.
CHAPTER IT.
HOW J BECAME CERTAIN THERE IV AS A CIPHER.
A book where men may read strange matters.
Macbeth^ t\j.
IN the winter of 1878-9 I said to myself: I will re-read the Shake-
speare Plays, not, as heretofore, for the delight which they would
give me, but with my eyes directed singly to discover whether there
is or' is not in them any indication of a cipher.
And I reasoned thus: If there is a cipher in the Plays, it will
probably be in the form of a brief statement, that " I, Francis
Bacon, of St. Albans, son of Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the
Great Seal of England, wrote these Plays, which go by the name of
William Shakespeare."
The things then to be on the look-out for, in my reading, were
the words Francis, Bacon, Nicholas, Bacon, and such combinations
of Shake and speare, or Shakes and peer, as would make the word
Shakespeare.
I possessed no Concordance at the time, or I might have saved
myself much unnecessary trouble.
The first thing that struck me was the occurrence in The Merry
Wives of Windsor1 of the word Bacon. The whole scene is an
intrusion into the play. The play turns upon Sir John Falstaffs
making love to two dames of Windsor at the same time, and the
shames and humiliations he suffered therefrom. And this scene
has nothing whatever to do with the plot of the play. Mistress
Page, one of the Merry Wives, accompanied by her boy William,
meets with Sir Hugh Evans, the Welsh parson and schoolmaster, —
old Dame Quickly being by; — and Mistress Page tells the school-
master that her husband says the boy William " profits nothing at
his book;" and she requests him to " ask him some questions in his
accidence." In the first place, it is something of a surprise to find
the wife of a yeoman, or man of the middle class, who is able to>
1 Act iv, scene i.
516
HO W I BECAME CERTAIN THERE WAS A CIPHER. 517
tell whether or not the boy correctly answers the Latin questions
put to him. But what, in the name of all that is reasonable, has
the boy's proficiency in Latin to do with Sir John Falstaff s love-
making ? And why take up a whole scene to introduce it ? The
box William nowhere appears in the playy except in that scene. He is
called up from the depths of the author's consciousness, to recite a
school lesson; and he is dismissed at the end of it into nothingness,
never to appear again in this world. Is not this extraordinary ?
We have also the older form of the play, which is only half the
size of the present, and there is no William in it, and no such scene.
That first form was written to play, and it has everything in it of
action and plot necessary to make it a successful stage play, and
tradition tells us that it was successful. But what was this
enlarged form of the play written for, if the old form answered all
the purposes of a. play? And why insert in it this useless scene ?
Richard Grant White calls it "that very superfluous scene in
The Merry Wires of Windsor." He acknowledges that "it has
nothing whatever to do with the plot." '
Speaking of the contemporaries of Shakspere, Swinburne says:
There is not one of them whom we can reasonably imagine capable of the
patience and self-respect which induced Shakespeare to re-write the triumphantly-
popular parts of Romeo, of Falstaff and of Hamlet, with an eye to the literary per-
fection and performance of work, which, in its first outline, had won the crowning
suffrage of immediate and spectacular applause.*2
But while these reasons might possibly account for the re-writing
of the parts of Romeo, Falstaff and Hamlet, there is no literary per-
fection about The Merry Wives of Windsor to explain the doubling
of it in size; there is very little blank verse in the comedy, and still
less of anything that can aspire to be called poetry. Why, then,
was it re-written ? And why, when re-written, was this superfluous
scene injected into it? That the reader may be the better able to
judge of it, I quote the scene entire, just as it appears on pages 53
and 54 of the Folio of 1623:
Actus Quartus. Sc-kxa Prima.
Enter Mistris Page, Quickly, William, Evans.
Mist. Pag. Is he at M. Fords already think'st thou?
Qui . Sure he is by this; or will be presently; but truely he is very couragious
mad, about his throwing into the water. Mistris Ford desires you to come sodainely.
1 Genius of Shak., p. 283, - Thomas Middleton, Shakespeariana, vol. iii, No. 26, p. 61.
5i8 THE CIPHER IN THE PLAYS.
Mist. Pag. He be with her by and by: He but bring my yong-man here to
Schoole : looke where his Master comes; 'tis a playing day I see; how now Sir
Hugh, no Schoole to-day?
Eva. No : Master Slender is let the Boyes leave to play.
Qui. 'Blessing of his heart.
Mist. Pag. Sir Hugh, my husband saies my sonne profits nothing in the
world at his Booke: I pray you aske him some questions in his Accidence.
Ev. Come hither William; hold up your head; come.
Mist. Pag. Come-on, Sirha; hold up your head; answere your Master; be
not afraid.
Eva. William, how many numbers is in Nownes ?
Will. Two.
Qui. Truely, I thought there had bin one Number more, because they say
od's-Nownes.
Eva. Peace, your tatlings. What is (Faire) William?
Will. Pulcher.
Qu, Powlcats? There are fairer things than Powlcats, sure.
Eva. You are a very simplicity o'man : I pray you peace. What is (Lapis)r
William ?
Will. A Stone.
Eva. And what is a Stone ( William ?)
Will. A Peeble.
Eva. No, it is Jjipis: I pray you remember in your praine.
Will. Lapis.
Eva, That is a good William: what is he ( William) that do's lend articles.
Will. Articles are borrowed of the Pronoune, and be thus declined. Singu-
lar iter nominativo hie, hae, hoc.
Eva, Nominativo hig, hag, hog: pray, you marke: genitivo huius. Well.
what is your Accusative-case?
Will. Accusativo hinc.
Eva. I pray you have your remembrance (childe) Accusativo hing, hang, hog.
Qu. Hang-hog, is latten for Bacon, I warrant you.
Eva. Leave your prables (o'man). What is the Focative case ( William ?)
Wilt. O, Vocativo, O.
Eva. Remember William, Focative, is caret.
Qui. And that's a good roote.
Eva. O'man, forbeare.
Mist. Page. Peace.
Eva. What is your Genitive case phi nil I ( // 'illiam /)
Will. Genitive case?
Eva. I.
Will. Genitive horum, ha rum, horum.
Qu. 'Vengeance of Ginyes case; fie on her; never name her (childe) if she be-
a whore.
Eva. For shame o'man.
Qu. You do ill to teach the childe such words; hee teaches him to hie, and to
hac; which they'll do fast enough of themselves, and to call horum ; fie upon you.
Evans. O'man, art thou Lunatics ? Hast thou no understandings for thy
Cases & the number of the Genders? Thou art as foolish Christian creatures, as
I would desires.
Mi. Page, Pre'thee hold thy peace.
Ev, Shew me now ( William) some declensions of your Pronounes.
I/O IV / BECAME CERTAIN THERE WAS A CIPHER, 519
Will. Forsooth, I have forgot.
Ev. It is Qui, que, quod; if you forget your Quies, your Ours and your Quods
you must be preeches : Go your waies and play, go.
M. Pag. He is a better scholler then I thought he was.
Ev. He is a good sprag-memory : Farewel Mis. Page.
Mis. Page. Adieu good Sir Hugh : Get you home, boy, Come we stay too
long. Exeunt.
I will ask the reader, after a while, to recur to this scene, and
note the unusual, the extraordinary way in which the words are
bracketed and hyphenated.
It is very evident that there is nothing in this scene which has
the slightest relation to the play of The Merry Wives. It is simply
a schoolmaster, who speaks broken English, hearing a boy his
lesson. There is no wit in the scene, and what attempts at wit
there are seem to me very forced.
It was written and inserted simply to enable the author to
reiterate the name William eleven times, and to bring in the
word Bacon. The whole scene is built up, created, constructed
and forced into the play to find an opportunity to use the word
Bacon without arousing suspicion.
" Hang-hog is the Latin for Bacon," says Dame Quickly, and we
know just where the pun came from. I have already quoted the
anecdote in a former chapter, but I repeat it here. It was inserted
by the publisher of the third edition of the Resuscitatio, 1671, to-
gether with fifteen other anecdotes:
Sir Nicholas Bacon, being appointed a judge for the northern circuit, and
having brought his trials that came before him to such a pass, as the passing of
sentence on malefactors, he was by one of the malefactors mightily importuned to
save his life; which, when nothing that he had said did avail, he at length desired
his mercy on account of kindred. "Prithee," said my lord judge, " how car e
that in?" "Why, if it please you, my lord, your name is Bacon and mine is
Hog, and in all ages Hog and Bacon have been so near kindred that they
are not to be separated." "Ay; but," replied Judge Bacon, "you and I cannot
be kindred except you be hanged; for Hog is not Bacon until it be well hanged."
Here we have precisely the idea played upon by Dame Quickly.
" Hang-hog is the Latin for Bacon," says the old woman. " Hog is
not Bacon until it be well hanged," says Sir Nicholas.
Here, then, we have not only a scene forced into the play, to
introduce a jest with the word Bacon in it; but we find that
jest connected with Sir Francis, because it related to an incident in
the life of his father.
/
520 THE CIPHER JX THE PLAYS.
All this is most remarkable. But, having found- William repeated
eleven times, I asked myself, Where is the rest of the name, Shakes-
peare, if there is really a cipher here, and the recurrence of Willia?n
and the occurrence of Bacon are not accidents ? I soon found it.
On the same page and column on which the scene I have just
quoted terminates, page 54, in the next scene, Mistress Page, speak-
ing of Ford's jealousy, says:
Why, woman, your husband is in his olde lines againe: he so takes on yonder
with my husband; so railes against all married mankinde; so curses all Eves
daughters of what complexion soever; and so buffettes himself on the forehead,
crying peere-ovA., peere-oxxt, that any madnesse I ever yet beheld, etc.
Here we have the last part of Shakespeare's name, and we will see
hereafter that, in the cipher rule, the hyphenated words are, at times,
counted as two separate words. It seemed to me very unnatural
that any jealous man would beat his forehead and tell it to peer out;
or even tell his brain to peer out. Men usually employ their eyes for
purposes of watchfulness. All that Ford needed was the evidence
of his eyes to satisfy his jealousy. It was not a case of intellectual
eyesight — of the brain peering into some complicated mental
puzzle. It seemed to me, again, as if this was forced into the text.
But where was the first part of Shakespeare's name ? As the
last syllable was pecre, the first syllable — to give the full sound
— ■ would have to be shakes^ and not shake. I found it on the next
page but one, page 56, in the sentence which describes the ghost
of Heme the hunter, in the Windsor forest:
Mist. Page. There is an old tale goes that Heme, the
Hunter (sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest),
Doth all the winter time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an Oake, with great rag'd horns,
And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle,
And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner.
I turned to the original Merry Wives of Windsor, which I find
published in Hazlitfs Shakespeare Library, " as it hath bene divers
times acted by the right Honorable my Lord Chamberlaines ser-
vants, both before her Maiestie, and elsewhere; " and I found the
original of this passage in the following crude and brief form:
Oft have you heard since Home, the hunter, dyed,
That women, to affright their little children,
Ses that he walks in shape of a great stagge.
HO W J BECAME CERT A IX /HERE WAS A CIPHER* 521
Here there is nothing of "shakes a chain." Neither is there any-
thing of the " peere-out, peere-out," in the other sentence. The
original is :
Mrs. Page. Mistress Ford, why, woman, your husband is in his old vaine
again, hee's coming to search for your sweet heart, but I am glad he is not here.
Now as I had / 7 'illiani Shakes-peere and Bacon, I said to myself,
Is there anything of Bacon's first name ?
There is no Francis in the play; but we have Frank and
Francisco. In act ii, scene i, Mistress Ford says to her husband:
How now (sweet prank), why art thou melancholy?
Everywhere else in the play he appears as Master Ford; as, for
instance, his wife says:
Mis. Ford. You use me well, Master Ford, do you ?
Is it not singular that when a Frank was needed to complete the
name, it should crop out in this unnecessary way, once only and
no more ?
Again, the Host of the Tavern says, speaking of the duel between
Dr. Caius and Sir Hugh Evans:
To see thee fight, to see thee foigne, to see thee traverse, to see thee here, to see
thee there, to see thee pass thy puncto, thy stock, thy reverse, thy distance, thy
montant. Is he dead, my Ethiopian? Is he dead, my Francisco? Ha, bully ! what
says my Esculapius ? etc.
As there is no Francisco present or anywhere in the play, this is
all rambling nonsense, and the word is dragged in for a purpose.
In the same way I observed Pranctsco to make its appearance
in the enlarged edition of Hamlet, while it did not occur in the orig-
inal. In the copy of 1603, "as it hath been diverse times acted by
His Highness' servants in the Cittie of London," the play opens
thus:
Enter Two Centinels.
Their names are not given, and their speeches are marked 1 and
2; but in the copy of 1604, " newly imprinted and enlarged to almost
as much again as it was, according to the true and perfect coppie,"
we find:
Enter Barnardo and Francisco, two Centinels.
And the scene opens thus:
Bar. Whose there ?
Fran. Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourselfe.
Bar. Long live the king.
522 THE CIPHER IN THE /'LAYS.
Fran, fiarnardo.
Bar. Hee.
Fran. You come most carefully upon your hour.
Bar. 'Tis now struck twelve, get thee to bed, Francisco.
And then Francisco disappears to his bed and never again reap-
pears in the play, any more than William does in the Merry Wives,
after he has recited that interesting Latin lesson. Now why were the
sentinels named at all ? There might be some excuse for giving
Barnardo a cognomen, as he continues in the scene to converse with
Horatio and Marcellus. But what importance was a name to the man
who was instantly swallowed up in oblivion and the bed-clothes ?
But it was in the first part of King Henry IV. that I found the
most startling proofs of the existence of a cipher.
In act ii, scene i, we have a stable scene, with the two " carriers "
and an hostler; it is night, or rather early morning — two o'clock —
it is the morning of the Gadshill robbery; the carriers are feeding
their horses and getting ready for the day's journey; and in the dia-
logue they speak as follows:
/ Car. What Ostler, come away and be hanged; come away.
2 Car. I have a gammon of Bacon, and two razes of Ginger, to be delivered
as far as Charing-crosse.
This occurs on page 53 of the Histories ; we have seen that the
other word Bacon occurs on page 53 of the Comedies. As these are
the only instances in which the word Bacon occurs alone and not
hyphenated with any other word, in all these voluminous plays,
occupying nearly a thousand pages, is it not remarkable that both
should be found on the same numbered page?
We have the original of this robbery scene in another old play,
entitled The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth. In each case the
men robbed were bearing money to the King's treasury; and in
each case they called upon the Prince after the robbery for restitu-
tion. In the old play, Dericke, the carrier, who is robbed by the
Prince's man, says:
Oh, maisters, stay there; nay, let's never belie the man; for he hath not beaten
and wounded me also, but he hath beaten and wounded my packe, and hath taken
the great rase of Ginger that bouncing Bess . . . should have had.
But there is no bacon in his pack. That was added, as in tin/
other instances, when the play was re-written, doubled in size, and
the cipher inserted.
HOW I BECAME CERTAJX THERE WAS A CIPHER. 523
I said that Bacon, in making any claim to the authorship of the
Plays, would probably seek to identify himself (as centuries might
elapse before the discovery of the cipher) by giving the name of
his father, the celebrated Sir Nicholas, Queen Elizabeth's Lord
Keeper ; and here, in the same scene, on page 53, appears his
father's name.
The chamberlain enters the stable; also Gadshill, "the setter"
of the thieves, as Poins calls him; that is, the one who points the
game for them. The chamberlain says:
Cham. Good-morrow, Master Gads-Hill; it holds current that I told you yester-
night. There's a Franklin in the wilde of Kent hath brought three hundred marks
with him in gold. I heard him tell it to one of his company last night at supper;
a kinde of auditor, one that hath abundance of charge, too (God knows what); they
are up already and call for egges and butter. They will away presently.
Gad. Sirra, if they meete not with S. Nicholas Clarks, He give thee this necke.
Cham. No; He none of it. I prithee, keep that for the hangman, for I know
thou worship'st S. Nicholas as truly as a man of falshood may.
First, I would observe the unnecessary presence of the word
Kent. Why was the county from which the man came mentioned ?
Because Kent was the birthplace of Sir Nicholas Bacon, and in any
cipher narrative it was very natural to speak of Sir Nicholas Bacon
born in Kent.
But observe how Saint Nicholas is dragged in. He is repre-
sented as the patron saint of thieves, when in fact he was nothing
of the kind. Saint Anthony, I believe, is entitled to that honor. But,
ingenious as Bacon was, he could see no other way to get Nicholas
into that stable scene, and into the talk of thieves and carriers,
except by such an allusion as the foregoing; and he made it even
at the violation of the saintly attributes. Saint Nicholas, Bishop
of Myra, was born in Patara, Lycia, and died about 340. " He is
invoked as the patron of sailors, merchants, travelers and captives,
and the guardian of school-boys, girls and children." He is the
original of the Santa-Klaus of the nursery.
And in the same scene on the same column we have;
If I hang, old Sir John hangs with mee.
This gives us the knightly prefix to Nicholas Bacon's name.
And it appeared to me there was something here about the
Exchequer of the Commonwealth of England; for all these words-
drop out in the same connection. Only a few lines below the word
524
THE CIPHER IN THE PLAYS.
Nicholas y the word Commonwealth is twice dragged in, in most
absurd fashion.
Describing the thieves, Gadshill says:
And drink sooner than pray; and yet I lie, for they pray continually to their
saint the Commonwealth ; or rather not pray to her but prey on her, for they ride
up and down on her, and make her their Bootes.
Cham. What, the Commonwealth their Bootes? Will she hold out water in
— a foul way ?
The complicated exigencies of the cipher compelled Bacon to
talk nonsense. Who ever heard of a Saint Commonwealth ? And
who ever heard of converting a saint into boots to keep out water ?
And on the next page we have the word exchequer twice
repeated:
Pal. I will not bear mine own flesh so far afoot again for all the coin in thy
father's exchequer.
Again:
Bardolph, Case ye, case ye; on with your vizards, there's money of the King
coming down the hill, 'tis going to the King's exchequer.
Pal. You lie, you rogue, 'tis going to the King's tavern.
And a little further on we have:
When I am King of England}
And as the Court of Exchequer was formerly a court of equity,
in the same scene we find that word:
Pal. If the Prince and Poynes be not two arrant cowards, there's no equity
stirring.
Here again the language is forced; this is not a natural expres-
sion.
All this is in the second act of the play, and in the first act we
have:
As well as waiting in the court}
O, rare I'll be a brave judge?
For obtaining of suits.*
And then we have master of the great seal —
Good-morrow, Master Gads-hill.5
We'll but seal, and then to horse.6
For they have great charge.7
'Act ii, scene 4. *fst Henry II'., i, 2. 3 Ibid., i, 2. 4 Ibid., i, a.
. & Ibid., ii. 1. "Ibid., iii, .. Mbid., ii, r.
HO IV I BECAME CERT A EX THERE WAS A CITHER. 525
All this is singular: Sir — Nicholas — Bacon — of Kent — Master
of the — great — seal of the Commonwealth of England.
And again: Judge of the court of the exchequer — equity.
It is true that this might all be the result of accident. But I g0'
a step further.
On the next page, 54, and in the next scene, I found the follow-
ing extraordinary sentences:
Enter Travellers.
Trav. Come Neighbor; the boy shall leade our Horses downe the hill: Wee'll
walk a-foot awhile, and ease our legges.
Thieves. Stay.
Trav. Iesu bless us.
Falstaff. Strike: down with them, cut the villains throats; a whorson Caterpil-
lars; Bacon-fed knaves, they hate us, youth; downe with them, fleece them.
Trav. O, we are undone, both we and ours for ever.
Falstaff. Hang ye gorbellied knaves, are you undone? No ye fat Chuffes, I
would your store were here. On Bacons, on, what, ye knaves ? Yong men.
must live, you are Grand Iurers, are ye? Wee'll iure ye i'faith.
Heere they rob them and binde them.
Let us examine this.
The word Bacon is an unusual word in literary work. It
describes, in its commonly accepted sense, an humble article o£
food. It occurs but four times in all these Plays of Shakespeare,.
viz.:
1. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, in the instance I have given,
page 53 of the Comedies, " Hang-hog is the Latin for Bacon.'1''
2. In the \st Henry IV., act ii, scene 1, "a gammon of Bacon/'
page 53 of the Histories.
3. In these two instances last above given, on page 54 of the
Histories.
So that out of four instances in the Plays in which it is used
this significant word is employed three times on two successive
pages of the same play in the same act !
I undertake to say that the reader cannot find in any work of
prose or poetry, not a biography of Bacon, in that age, or any
subsequent age, where no reference was intended to be made to the
man Bacon, another such collocation of Nicholas — Bacon — Bacon-
fed — Bacons. I challenge the skeptical to undertake the task.
And why does Falstaff stop in the full tide of robbery to partic-
ularize the kind of food on which his victims feed? Who ever
526 THE CIPHER JX TffE PLAYS.
heard, in all the annals of Newgate, of such superfluous and absurd
abuse ? Robbery is a work for hands, not tongues. And it is out
of all nature that Falstaff, committing a crime the penalty of
which was death, should stop to think of bacon, or greens, or beef-
steak, or anything else of the kind.
I« it intended as a term of reproach ? No; the bacon-fed man
in that day was the well-fed man. I quote again from the famous
Victories of Henry V.
John, the cobbler, and Dericke, the carrier, converse; Dericke
proposes to go and live with the cobbler. He says:
I am none of these great slouching fellows that devoure these great pieces of
beefe and brewes; alas, a trifle serves me, a woodcccke, a chicken, or a capons
legge, or any such little thing serves me.
John. A capon ! Why, man, I cannot get a capon once a yeare, except it be
at Christmas, at some other man's house, for we cobblers be glad of a dish of rootes.
Falstaff might fling a term of reproach at his victims, but
scarcely a term of compliment.
But Falstaff calls the travelers Bacons ! Think of it. If he had
called them hogs, I could understand it, but to call them by the
name of a piece of smoked meat ! I can imagine a man calling
another a bull, an ox, a beef; but never a tenderloin. Moreover,
why should Falstaff say, "On, Bacons, on !" unless he was chasing
the travelers away ? But he was trying to detain them, to hold on
to them, for the stage direction says: "Here they rob them and
binde them,"
When I read that phrase, "On, Bacons, on ! " I said to myself:
Beyond question there is a cipher in this play.
And on the same page, in the same scene, I found:
Falstaff. I prithee, good Prince Hal, help me to my horse, good King's sonne.
Here the last words were unnecessary — Falstaff s request was
complete without it. But suppose it followed the word Bacons in
the cipher — then we would have Sir Nicholas Bacon s son.
And on page 55, the next page of the Folio, I found the fol-
lowing :
Sc.KNA QUARTA.
Enter Prince' and Poines.
Prin. Ned, prithee come out of that fat room, and lend me thy hand to laugh
a little.
Poines. Where hast been. Hall '
HOW / BECAME CERTAIN THE. RE WAS A CIPHER, 527
Priii. With three or four logger-heads, amongst three or four score Hogs-
heads. I have sounded the very base string of humility. Sirra, I am sworn,
brother, to a leash of Drawers, and can call them by their names, as Torn, Dicke
and Francis.
Why Tom, Dick and Francis?. The common expression, here
alluded to, is, as every one knows, " Tom, Dick and Harry." Why
was Harry thrown out and Francis substituted ? Why ? Because
the cipher required it; because it gives us:
Francis — Bacon — Nicholas — Bacon s — sonne.
But this isn't all. On the next page, 56, we have a continuation
of this conversation between the Prince and Poins; and in it this
occurs (I print it precisely as it stands in the Folio):
Prince. . . . But Ned, to drive away time till Falslaffe come, I prythee do thou
stand in some by-roome, while I question my puny Drawer, to what end he gave
me the Sugar, and do never leave calling Francis, that his tale to me may be
nothing but, Anon: step aside and He shew thee a President.
Poincs. Frajicis.
Prince. Thou art perfect.
Fain. Francis.
Enter Drawer.
Fran. Anon, anon, sir; look down into the Pomgarnet, Ralfe.
Prince. Come hither Francis.
Fran. My Lord.
Prin. How long hast thou to serve, Francis ?
Fran. Forsooth five years, and as much as to
Poin. Francis.
Fran. Anon, anon sir.
Prin. Five years. Berlady, a long Lease for the clinking of Pewter. But
Francis, darest thou be so valiant, as to play the coward with thy Indenture, &
shew it a faire paire of heeles, and run from it ?
Fran. O Lord sir, He be sworne upon all the Books in England, I could find
in my heart.
Poin. Francis.
Fran. Anon, anon sir.
Prin. How old art thou* Francis?
Fran. Let me see, about Michaelmas next I shalbe
Poin. Francis.
Fran. Anon sir; pray you stay a little, my Lord.
Prin. Nay, but harke you Francis, for the sugar thou gav'st me, 'twas a peny-
worth, was't not?
Fran. O Lord sir, I wish it had bene two.
Prin. I will give thee for it a thousand pound : Aske me when thou wilt, and
thou shalt have it.
Poin. Francis.
Fran. Anon, anon.
Prin. Anon Francis? No Francis, but to-morrow Francis; or Francis, on
thursday: or indeed Francis when thou wilt. But Francis.
Fran. My Lord.
528 THE CIPHER IN THE PLAYS.
Erin. Wilt thou rob this Leatherne Ierkin, Christall button, Not-pated, Agat
ring, Puke stocking, Caddice garter, Smooth tongue, Spanish pouch.
Iran. O Lord sir, who do you meane?
Erin. Why then your browne Bastard is your onely drinke : for looke you.
Francis, your white Canvas doublet will sulley. In Barbary sir, it cannot come to
so much.
Fran. What sir?
Foin. Francis.
Prin. Away you Rogue. Dost thou heare them call?
What was the purpose of this nonsensical scene, which, as some
one has said, is about on a par with the wit of a negro-minstrel
show ? What had it to do with the plot of the play ? Nothing.
But it enabled the author to bring in the name of Francis
twenty times in less than a column. And observe how curiously
the words Francis are printed: five times it is given in italics
and fifteen times in Roman type.
And are not these twenty Francises on page 56 of the Histories,
and the Shakes on page 56 of the Comedies, and the peere on page
54 of the Comedies, and the Bacon-fed and Bacons on page 54 of the
Histories, and the Bacon on page 53 of the Comedies, and the Nicho-
las and Bacon on page 53 of the Histories, and the William eleven
times repeated on page 53 of the Comedies, all linked together, and
simply so many extended fingers pointing the attention of the
sleepy-eyed world to the fact that there is something more here
than appears on the surface ? These are the indices, the exclamation
points, that Bacon believed would, sooner or later, fall under the
attention of some reader of the plays.
But go a step farther. On page 67 of the same play in which
all this Nicholas-Bacon-Francis-Bacon-Bacons is found, we find the
name of Bacon's country-seat, St. Albans.
No point of the earth's surface was more closely identified with
Francis Bacon than St. Albans. It was his father's home, his moth-
er's residence; the place where he spent his leisure, where probably
he produced many of these very plays; the place from which he
took his knightly title, Viscount St. Albans, when he rose to great-
ness. I have shown how the name is peppered all over several of
the plays, while there is no mention of Stratford-on-Avon from
cover to cover of the volume. On page 67 we have Falstaff's cele-
brated description of his ragged company. It concludes as fol-
lows:
HOW I BECAME CERTAIN THERE WAS A CIPHER. 529
There's not a Shirt and a halfe in all my company, and the halfe Shirt is two
Napkins tackt together, andthrowne over the shoulders like a Heralds coat, without
sleeves: and the Shirt, to say the truth, stolne from my host of S. Alboncs, or the
Red-Nose Inne-keeper of Davintry. But that's all one, they'le finde Linnen
enough on every Hedge.
This might pass well enough so long as one's suspicions were not
aroused as to the existence of a cipher. But the critical would then
ask, Why St. Albans ? There were hundreds of little villages in
England of equal magnitude. Why should the man of Stratford,
who is supposed to have had no more connection with St. Albans
than he had with Harrow, Barnet, Chesham, Watford, Hatfield,
Amersham, Stevenage, or any other of the villages near St. Albans,
why should he select the residence of Francis Bacon as the scene of
the theft of the shirt ?
But in 2d Henry IV., act ii, scene 2, page 81 of the Folio, we find
St. Albans again, under equally suspicious circumstances. Prince
Hal asks Bardolph, Falstaff's servant, where his master sups, and
vhat company he has.
Prin. Sup any women with him ?
Page. None my Lord, but old Mistris Quickly and M. Doll Teare-sheet.
Prin. What Pagan may that be ?
Page. A proper Gentlewoman, Sir, and a Kinswoman of my Masters.
Here we are asked to believe that Prince Hal, the constant com-
panion of Falstaff (for Falstaff and his men are called his ''contin-
ual followers "), did not even know the name of the woman who
held the relations to Falstaff which Doll Tearsheet sustained. But
we will see that this surprising ignorance was necessary for the
question he was about to ask :
Prin. . . . This Doll Teare-sheet should be some Rode ?
Poins. I warrant you, as common as the way betweene S. Albans and London. '
We can see the process of construction going on before our very
eyes, and leading up to that word St. A/bans; just as we saw the
school-boy's lesson in The Merry Wives culminating in the word
Bacon.
The prince asks where Falstaff sups — who is with him ? Doll
Teare-sheet. Who is she? She must be some road — some com-
mon path? Yes; as common as the way between St. Albans and
London.
1 2d Henry IV., 71, 2.
530 THE CIPHER IX THE PLA VS.
Why St. Albans ? All roads in England lead to London. Why
not the road to York ? Or to Stratford ? Or to Warwick ? Or to
Coventry ? Or to Kenilworth ? Why, out of all the multitude of
towns and cities of all sizes and degrees in England, does the writer
again pick out the residence of the man who was Francis — Bacon
— Nicholas — Bacons — sonnc, — and whose name so mysteriously
appears on pages 53, 54 and 56 of the Comedies and Histories ?
There was another spot in England with which Francis Bacon
wTas closely identified — Gray's Inn, London. Here he received his
law education; here he was lecturer, or "double-reader;" here he
gave costly entertainments, masques and plays to the court; here he
built his famous lodge; here he retired in his old age. And this
word, too — a few pages from the St, Albans I have just quoted —
appears in the play. Speaking to his cousin Silence about Sir John
Falstaff, Robert Shallow, justice of the peace, says:
Shal. The same Sir John, the very same. I saw him break Scoggan's head
at the Court-gate, w*hen he was a crack not this high; and the very same day did I
fight with one Sampson Stock-fish, a Fruiterer, behinde Greyes-Inn}
As Shallow and his fight, and Sampson Stock-fish the fruiterer,
and the whole play, were the work of the imagination and never
had any real existence, why locate the battle, which has nothing
to do with the play, or with Falstaff, or with anything else,
behind Francis Bacon's law school? What had the man of
Stratford to do with Gray's Inn, that he should thus drag it into
his play, neck and heels, when there was not the slightest necessity
for it ?
And then again, right in this same scene, and a few lines prior to
the words I have just quoted, I found another mysterious William
who bobs up into the text of the play without the least particle of
connection with the plot, and then settles down again forever under
the waters of time, just as the boy William did in The Merry Wives.
Silence and Shallow are cousinsj Silence is in commission with
Shallow as justice of the peace. The scene opens with a conver-
sation between them.
Shallow. By yea and nay, Sir, I dare say my cousin William is become a
good Scholleg he is at Oxford still, is he not?
Silence. Indeed, sir, to my cost.
* 2d Henry IV. y iii, .
HOW 1 BECAME CERTAIN THERE WAS A CIPHER. 53'
What has this got to do with the play ? Why should Shallow
be so ignorant of the whereabouts of his cousin ? Are there any
other plays in the world where characters appear for an instant and
disappear in this extraordinary fashion, saying nothing and doing
nothing; but remaining, like Chevy Slyme, in Martin Chuzzlewit,
perpetually out of sight around a corner?
But there are a great many other Williams that thus float for an
instant before our eyes and vanish. In act v, scene i of this same
2d Henry 71'., we have three in the space of half a column. Shal-
low is talking to his man-of-all-work, Davy :
Shallow. Davy, Davy, Davy, let me see (Davy), let me see; William Cooke,
bid him come hither. . . .
Davy. And again, sir, shall we sowe the head-land with Wheate?
Shallow. With red Wheate Davy. But for William Cooke . are thereno young
Pigeons?
Davy. Yes Sir.
William the Cook does not "come hither." And a little fur....
on Shallow again refers to him:
Shallow, Some pigeons Davy, a eouple of short-legged Hennes: a ioynt of
Mutton, and any pretty little tine Kickshawes, tell William Cooke.
And so William Cook goes off the scene into oblivion.
And then there is another William.
Davy. Sir, a new link to the bucket must needs be had. And, sir, do you
mean to stop any of William's wages, about the sack he lost the other day at
Hinckley Fair?
And still a third William flashes upon us for an instant, like a
dissolving view.
Davy. I beseech you, sir, to countenance William Visor, of Woncot, against
Clement Perkes of the hill.
Hut Visor, like the rest, disappears in vacuum.
And in As You Like If1 another William comes in, to go off
again. He has no. necessary coherence with the play; the plot
would proceed without him. He proposes to marry Audrey, but
the clown scares him off, and, after having fretted his brief five
minutes on the stage, he wishes the clown *k God rest you, merry
sir : " and steps out into the darkness. He is a temporary fool, and
he answers no purpose save to bring in the word William.
1 Ac t v. scene t.
5$2 THE CIPHER IN the pla vs.
Will. Good even Audrey.
And. God ye good Even William.
Clown. Is thy name William?
Will. William, sir.
Clown. A fair name. Wast borne i' th Forrest here?
Will. I, sir, I thank God.
I found also that the combinations, Shake and speare, or "sphere.
or Shakes and peer, or spur, or spare, occur in all the plays. The word
Shake or Shakes is found in every play in the Folio, and in Pericles, which
7i<as not printed in the Folio.
In manv cases the word Shake or Shakes is evidently forced into
the text.
In All's Well that Ends Well we have:
Clown. Marry you are the wiser man: for many a man's tongue shakes out his
master's undoing.1
Again:
Again:
Again:
Again :
But I must shake fair weather.2
And like the tyrannous breathing of the north
Shakes all our buds from growing. :;
First, Marcus Brutus, will I shake with you.4
Servant. If you did wear a beard upon your chin
I'd shake it in this quarrel.
And, again, the voluble old nurse in Romeo and Juliet refers to-
an earthquake that occurred when she was weaning Juliet:
When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool!
To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug.
Shake, quoth the dove-house.5
And observe how singularly, in such a master of rhythm and
language, the word shake is forced into this speech of Hamlet,
when he is swearing Horatio and Marcellus:
As I, perchance, hereafter may think meet
To put an antic disposition on —
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall
With arms encumber'd thus, or thus head shake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, etc.,;
1 Act ii, scene 4. 3 Cymbeline, i, 4. " Romeo and Juliet, i, 3.
2 2d Henry VI. , v, 1. * Julius Ceetar, iii, 1. ■ Hamlet, i, 5.
110 IV I BECAME CERTAIN THERE WAS A CITHER. $33
In the 2d Henry IV., when the swaggering Pistol is below
and asks to come up, Dame Quickly protests against it, but Falstaff
reassures her, that he is not a swaggerer, but a cheater :
Cheater call you him? I will bar no honest man my house, nor no cheater;
but I do not love swaggering. I am the worse when one says, swagger : Feele
masters how I shake.
And this is the same Dame Quickly who, a little before, in the
same play, threatens to throw the ponderous Falstaff into the
channel, and who "cares nothing for his thrust " if she "can but
close with him! " Any one can see that her act, in turning to Fal-
staff and the servant, and asking them to "feel how she shakes," is
forced and unreasonable.
Clifford says to Cade's followers:
Who loves the king, and will embrace his pardon,
Fling up his cap and say — God save his majesty !
Who hateth him, and honors not his father,
Henry the Fifth, that made all France to quake,
Shake he his weapon at us, and pass by.1
Is not this a forced and unnatural expression ? Would it not
have been sufficient to have taken the affirmative vote on the ques-
tion, or, if he put the negative, to have required some more natural
sign ?
And again, Iago says of poor Cassio, after he has made him
drunk:
I fear the trust Othello puts in him,
On' some odd time of his infirmity,
Will shake this island.'2
And when we turn to the last syllable of Shakespeare's name we
find evidence that it too is forced into the text.
In 1st Henry TV.* facing that page $$ which we have found so
pregnant, these lines stand out as if in connection with the Bacon
and the Nicholas Bacon opposite them:
War. Peace, cousin, say no more.
And now / will unclasp a secret book,
And to your quick conceiving discontents
I'll read you matter, deep and dangerous,
As full of peril and adventurous spirit
As to o'er-walk a current, roaring loud
On the unsteadfast footing of a Speare.
1 2d Henry 17., iv, 8. * Othello, ii, 3. 'Act i, scone 3, on page 5*.
534
THE CIPHER IN THE PLA VS.
As a spear did not usually exceed ten feet in length, we are
forced to ask ourselves, What kind of a stream could that have been
which it was used to bridge ? One could more readily leap it by the
aid of the spear, than cross on such a frail and bending structure.
Again, after Falstaff has been exposed by Prince Hal and
Poins, in his prodigious lying about the battle which he pretended
to have fought, to retain the plunder they had taken from the trav-
elers, his knavish followers, Peto and Bardolph, as soon as his back
was turned, proceed to testify against him:
Prin. Tell me now in earnest how came Falstaff's sword so hacked ?
Peto. Why he hacked it with his dagger; and said he would swear truth out of
England but he would make you believe it was done in fight, and persuaded us to
do the like.
Hard. Yea, and to tickle our noses with sfear-gTass, to make them bleed, and
then to beslobber our garments with it.
This is ingenious; but would not blades of grass have done as
well without particularizing the species of grass ?
Again, in 2d Henry VI., York says, speaking to the King, of
himself and the crown:
That gold must round engirt these brows of mine;
Whose smile and power, like to Achilles' spear,
Is able with the change to kill and cure.1
This comparison of a man to a spear, and a medicinal spear at
that, is not natural.
I had observed that the word beacon in that day was pro-
nounced the same as bacon. This is shown in an anagram quoted
by Judge Holmes, from a volume of poems of the same Sir John
Davies to whom Bacon wrote the letter already quoted, in which he
referred to himself as a concealed poet:
To the Right Honorable Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, Lord High Chancellor of
England:
Anagr* [ Heacone
) Beacon
Thy virtuous Name and Office joyne with Fate,
To make thee the bright Beacon of the state.
In fact, it is well known that the English of Shakespeare's day
was spoken as the peasants of Ireland now speak that tongue.
Elizabeth's court were delighted to hear that
A baste without discoorse of ray son
Would have morned longer.
*Act v. seme ,.
The Irish obtained the English 'tongue just as the aristocracy of
that age spoke it, and, with the conservatism of a province, retained
it unchanged; and so it happens that the despised brogue of the
sister island represents to-day, Hke a living fossil, the classic speech
of England's greatest era.
The spelling of the Folio of 1623 gives us the pronunciation of
a great many words. I note a few.
Ugly is spelled ougly ;l hoard is spelled hoord, ~ retreat is spelled
retrait;'' aboard is Spelled aboard;1 murderer is spelled murtherer ;'
second is spelled sucond;6 earth is spelled earte;1 grant is spelled
graunt?
As a rule the e had the a sound; 'thus beacon became bacon; and
even beckon had the same sound, and both were used in the cipher
as the equivalent for Bacon. Hence I think the words in Hamlet —
It beckons you to go away with it 9 —
are the sequel to Francisco.
And again:
lago beckons me.10
In Troilus and Cressida we have:
The wound of peace is surety,
Surety secure; but modest doubt is called
The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches
To the bottom of the worst."
This is very forced. Modest doubt becomes a blazing signal fire,
and this again becomes a probe to search a wound! And this in a
master of expression, who never lacked words to set forth his real
meaning.
In Lear, Kent speaks of the sun as
The beacon to this under globe.
The commentators could not understand that the part of the
earth on which the sun shone could be "the under globe;" and so
they inserted in the margin: "looking up to the moon.'" The neces-
sities of the cipher constrained the sentence.
In a great many instances the word Bacon seems to have been
made by combining Bay with con, or can, which in that day was pro-
1 2d Henry IV..\v.i. 2Ibid., iv, i. 3 Ibid., iii, 2.
4 Tempest, i, 1. 5 Richard II. , v, 6, • 1st Henry IV. , v. .
7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., v, 3. • Hamlet, i, 3. (
™ Othello, iv. i. M Troilus and Cressida, ii, 3.
536
THE CIPHER IN THE J' LA VS.
nounced with the broad sound like con, as it is even yet in England
and parts of America.
In such a desperate bay of death.1
The other day a bay courser.2
To ride on a bay trotting horse.3
I'd give bay curtail.4
He seems to have been fond of the bay color in a horse.
Why, it hath bay windows.5
The bay-trees all are withered.6
Brutus, bay me not.7
And then we have:
Ba, pueritia, witti horn added. £a.s
Proof will make me cry ba.9
Ana when we come to the con, it is still more forced.
Thy horse will sooner con an oration.10
The cipher pressed him hard when he wrote such a sentence as
this: It is not the horse will deliver an oration, or the horse will
study an oration, but the horse will con it.
And again:
But I con him no thanks for it."
Yet, thanks, I must you con. 12
This is sheer nonsense.
Then several curious facts presented themselves. We seem to
have many references in a cipher narrative to different plays and
poems. I have already called attention to that instance of the word
Adonis, —
Thy promises are like Adonis'1 gardens,13 —
and the difficulty the commentators had to discover what it meant.
In the same play, in the same act, scene 2, I found the word
Venus:
Bright star of Venus, fallen down.
This gives us the two words of the name of the poem of Venus
and Adonis, the "first heir of the poet's invention."
1 Richard III., iv, 2. ''Julius Ca-sar, iv, 3.
- Timon of 'Athens, i, 2. 8 Love's Labor Lost, v, \.
• Lear, iii, 4. 9 Two Gentlemen of Verona, i, 1.
4 AlPs Well that Ends Well, ii, 3. 10 Troilus and Cressida, U, 1.
5 Twelfth Night, iv, 2. " All's Well that Ends Well, iv, 3.
* Richard 11., ii, 4. 32 Timon of Athens, iv. |.
™ 1st Henry IV., i, 6.
HOW I BECAME CERT A IX THERE WAS A CIPHER. 537
In Titus Andronicus* we have all the words necessary to con-
struct the name of his second poem, The Rape of Lucrete.
The words of the name of Marlowe's play, Dido, Queen of Car-
thage, all appear in The Merchant of Venice.
The name of Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus appears in The
Merry Wives of Windsor, Faustus being in the possessive case,
"Doctor Faustuses.""'
The name of Marlowe's great play Tamburlaine appears in The
Merry Wives of Windsor very ingeniously concealed. The Welsh-
man says, in his broken English,
The tevil and his tain.
Again:
What wouldst thou have, boor?1*
And it is to be observed that this word boor occurs nowhere else
in the Plays; neither does tarn. The word boors, in the plural, is
found once, and once only, in The Winter s Tale;* but even that
would not make the second syllable of Tamburlaine.
The last syllable was probably formed by a combination of lay
and /'//.
When the court lay at Windsor.6
The ins, of course, are numerous in the play.
Richard Simpson, in his valuable work, The School of Shahspere,7
has an interesting discussion upon the play of Histriotnastix, which
he supposes to be written by Marston. In it the author introduces
Troilus and Cressida, and Troilus makes a burlesque speech in which
this line occurs:
And when he shakes his furious speare.
This Mr. Simpson believes to be an "allusion to Shakespeare."
And strange to say, while Shakespeare seems to be alluded to in
the Histriotnastix in this burlesque Troilus and Cressida, in the
real Troilus and Cressida the Histriomastix is plainly referred to.
While Marston mocks Shakespeare in his play, the real Shake-
speare probably tells, in cipher, something significant about the
Histriomastix in his play; for it is conceded that there was a battle
of wits at this time, participated in by Jonson, Marston and
others.
Act i\\ settles
r and 2.
9 Merry Wives, iv, 5.
»Ibid., i
i, 1.
Ibid., iv, 5.
6 Act v, scene 2.
7 Vol. ii, p. j.
"Ibid., i
i, .!,
-538 THE CIPHER JX THE PLAYS.
In Troilus and Cressida the word try occurs only once:
Let me go and try?
The first part of this word Histriomastix could be easily con-
structed of his-try-o. The his and 0 occur repeatedly:
0 when degree is shaked.'-
The last part of the word mastix is given as ma stick.
Speak, Prince of Ithaca, and be't of less expect
That matter needless, of importless burden,
Divide thy lips, than we are confident,
When rank Thersites opes his /unstick jaws,
We shall hear music, wit and oracle. :{
In the first place "the rank Thersites" has no place here. He
is not in the scene. The debate is between Ulysses and Agamem-
non. Ulysses asks Agamemnon to "hear what Ulysses speaks/*
and Agamemnon replies as above. But what is " mastick " ? There
is no such word in the language. It is printed in the Folio with a
capital initial, "as marking something emphatic," says Knight. In
some editions the word had been changed into mastive, simply
because the commentators did not know what it meant. But
both Simpson and Knight, although they had no idea of a cipher,
thought that it was an allusion to the play of Histriomastix.
The Massacre of Paris, another of Marlowe's plays, may be
alluded to in the 1st Henry VI. : •
The general wreck and massacre.*
This word is found only in three of the Plays, and in two of
these the word Paris occurs. In 1st Henry VI. it occurs in the
same scene with massacre.
Orleans, Paris, Guysors, Poictiers.5
In Richard III. we have:
Destruction, blood and massacre}
In the same play we have:
Crowned in Paris.1
George Peele's play, lite Arraignment of Paris, seems to be
referred to in Hamlet:
Our person to arraign in ear and ear."
1 Troilus and Cressida, iii, 2. * rst Henry /"/., i, 1, "■ Ibid., ii. 3.
9 Ibid., i, 1. 6 Ibid., ii. 8 Hamlet !V,
8 I hid., j, 3. f> Richard 11 7„ ii, 4.
HOW / BECAME CERTAIN THERE WAS A CIPHER.
539
Will he tell us what this show meant.
First what Danskers are in Pi
(ins.
This is the only time the word Paris is used in Hamlet.
Ben Jonson's play of Cynthia's Revels seems to be referred to in
Romeo and Juliet and in Pericles. It is remarkable that Cynthia
appears only twice in the Plays, and each time in the same play we
find the word Revels.
The pale reflex of Cynthia s brow.;;'
With this night's revels.* ■
This is the only occasion revels appears in Romeo and Juliet.
In Perieles we have:
By the eye of Cynthia hath. '
And again :
Which looks for other revets.*
This is the only time the word revels appears in Perieles.
Marlowe wrote the poem of Hero and Leander. In the Shake-
speare Plays Leander occurs in but three plays. The Two Gentlemen
of Verona. Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It, and in each
of these flays the name of Hero occurs, and only once in any other
play, to-wit, Romeo and Juliet ! This is certainly remarkable, that
out of all the Plays Leander should occur in but three and Hero in
but four; and in three out of four it matches Leander :
In The Two Gentlemen of Verona we have:
Scale another Hero's tower.7
And again:
Young Leander.9
In Much Ado we have:
It is proved, my lady /Era.9
And again:
Leander, the good swimmer.1"
In As You dike It we have:
Though Hero had turned nun."
And again:
Leander, he would have lived.18
In the last four instances the words occur in the same act an J
teene.
1 Hamlet, iii. . " Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii, i.
2 Ibid., ii. i. *Ibid., i. i.
1 Romeo and Juliet, iii, 5. ■ Much Ado. About Nothing, v, 2.
4 Ibid., i. 4. 10Ibid.
* Pericles, ii. 4- llAs You Like It. iv. 1.
•Ibid., ii. . '2 Ibid.
54°
THE CIPHER IN THE FLA VS.
Marlowe also translated the Elegies of Ovid, and we find the
words translate, Elegies, Ovid, all in As You Like It :
Make thee away, translate thy life.1
And elegies on brambles.*2
Honest Ovid:''
And in Love's Labor Lost we have again translation and Ovidius.
A translation of hypocrisy.4
Ovidius Naso was the man.5
This is the only time translation and Ovidius occur in the entire
Shakespeare Plays, and, strange to say, we find them in the same play !
The words Edward the Second, another of Marlowe's plays, appear
in The Merry Wives of Windsor \ Henry VLLL., Richard LL., 2d Henry
IV., 1st Henry VI. , etc.
It thus appears that we find embalmed in the Shakespeare Plays
the names of every one of Marlowe's plays or poems except The Jew
of Malta, and even in this instance the name of the principal char-
acter of the play, the bloody and murderous Jew, Barabbas, is found
in The Merchant of Venice; and the words Jew and malt (combined
by a hyphen with "malt-worms") occur in 1st Henry IV. It would
need but an a to complete the name. And both the Jew and the
malt are found in the same act.
The full name of Christopher Marlowe appears in The Taming of
the Shrew. Thus:
Christopher Sly.6
I did not bid you mar it. "'
A low, submissive reverence/
In none of the other plays is such a combination found, for the
word Christopher occurs in no other play.
The combination Mar and low appears in The Tempest, The Two
Gentlemen of Verona and The Winter s Tale, while Mar and lo will
be found in several others.
The name of Bacon's beautiful home at St. Albans — Gorhams-
frury — appears in Romeo and Juliet, thus:
In blood, all in gore blood.'-'
A man to bow in the ha///s.U)
And badest me bury love.11
1 . \s You Like It, v, t. 5 Ibid., iv, 2. " Act ill, scene 2.
"■'Ibid., iii, j. e Taming of the Shrew, Induction. "'Act ii, scene 4.
• Ibid., iii, 2. 7 Ibid., iv, ;. " Act ii, scene ;.
* Love** Labor Lost, v, 2. e Ibid., Induction.
HOW I BECAME CERTAIN THERE HAS A CIPHER. 541
In Hamlet we have the name of Bacon's dear friend Bettenham,
pronounced Battenham, to whom he erected a monument at Gray's
Inn :
To batten on this moor.1 -9
Together with most weak hams.'-
I observed also the name Rawley (the name of his chaplain) in
Henry V.:
Their children rawly left3 —
while the combination Sir Walter Raleigh thus appears in Richard
III.:
Sir Walter Herbert.4
The air is Raw and cold."'
A book of prayers on their pillow /ay.''
And again in Trailus and Cressida, thus:
Cold palsies, raw eyes.1
Drink up the tees and dregs. s
While the combination raw and lay is found in The Merry Wives
of Windsor, Love's Labor Lost and five other plays.
The name of Bacon's uncle, Burleigh, is found in
The /w/r-boned clown.'1
Xow the huT\y~6urly 's done.'"
The news of hurly-iurly innovation."
I observed another curious fact, that the name of the play Meas-
ure for Measure seemed to be very often referred to in the dramas;
and in many cases the words ran in couples. Thus the word meas-
ure appears in the Merry Wives of Windsor only twice:
To measure our weapons.1-'
To guide our measure round about.13
In Twelfth Night it likewise appears only twice:
In a good tripping measure }x
After a passy measure. ,18
In Measure for Measure itself the play seems to be referred to..
in the cipher narrative, thus:
No sinister measure.™
And measure still for measure. n
1 Act iii, scene 4. 7 Act v, scene 1. n Act v, scene 5.
2 Act ii, scene 2. ■ Act iv, scene 1. ' ' Act v, scene 1.
3 Act iv, scene 1. • 2d Henry J'/., iv, 10. >■ Act v, scene 1.
4 Act v, scene 3 — Act iv, scene 5. 10 Macbeth, i, 1. ,a Act iii. scene 2-
■ Act v, scene 3. n 1st Henry //'., v, 1. 17 Act v, scene 1..
'' Act iv, scene 3. 12 Act i, scene 4.
-42 THE CIPHER IN THE PI, A VS.
la A Winter's Talc the word also -occurs twice, and only
twice:
Measure me.1
The measure of the court.9
In The Comedy of Errors it also appears twice only:
Not measure her from hip to hip.;{
Took measure of my body.4
In Macbeth we find the same dualism:
Anon we'll drink a measure.''
We will perform in measure.*
In Troilus and Cress/da we have the same word twice:
By measure of their observant toil.7
Fair denies in all fair measure*
In King Lear also it appears in this double form:
If you will measure your lubber's length.'*
And every measure fail me.10
In Othello we have it again twice, the last time in the possessive
case, as if he was speaking of Measure for Measure's success, thus:
Would fain have a ?neasure to the health.11
Nor for measures of lawn.12
If the reader will examine the subject he will find that the word
measure runs in couples all through the other plays. It is either
matched with itself in the same play, as in As You Like It, where it
occurs in three couples; in Love's Labor Lost, where there are also
three couples; in Richard II.% where there are two couples; in jd
Henry VI, where there are also two couples, and in Antony and Cleo-
patra, where there are also two couples; or it is found in the end
of one play, matching with the same word in the beginning of the
next play in the Folio, for the cipher narrative is oftentimes contin-
uous from play to play.
The name of the plays now generally attributed to Shakespeare,
the first and second parts of The Contention of the Houses of York and
Lancaster, is found in the ist and 2d Henry IV., thus:
1
1 Act ii, scene 1. » 6 Act iii, scene 4. 9 Act i, scene 4.
8 Act iv, scene 3. ' Act v, scene 7. 10 Act iv, scene 7.
3 Act iii, scene 2. ' Act i, scene 3. J ' Act ii, scene 3.
4 Act iv, scene . " Act iii, scene t. l8 Act iv, scene 3.
HOW 1 BECAME CERTAIN THERE WAS A CIPHER
543
In the very heat
And pride of their contention}
And dialls the signs of leaping-// <;//.sv.v.-'
As oft as Lancaster doth speak.3
His uncle York.*
The name reappears, abbreviated, in the beginning of 1st Henry
IV.:
The times are wild, Contention like a horse.''
Between the royal field of Shrewsbury.6
The gentle archbishop of York is up.7
Under the conduct of young Lancaster}
And the entire name, as it appears upon the title-page of the
original quarto, is given in 3d Henry IV., "The Contention of the two
Famous Houses of York and Lancaster." Thus:
No quarrel, but a slight contention.'-'
Would buy two hours' life.1"
Were he as fa/nous and as bold."
The colors of our striving houses}'1
m Strengthening mis-proud York}9
O Lancaster, I fear thy overthrow."
The word contention is an unusual one and appears in but four
other plays, viz.: Henry I'., Troilus and Cressida, Cymbeline and
Othello, and in each case I think it has reference, in cipher, to the
play of The Contention of York and Lancaster, one of the earliest of
the author's writings. It is not found at all in thirty of the plays.
And how strained and unnatural is the use of this word
contention? It is plainly dragged into the text. As thus:
Contention (like a horse
Full of high feeding) madly hath broke loose.18
And let the world no longer be a stage
To feed contention in a lingering act.
The genius of the author drags a thread of sense through these
sentences, but it is exceedingly attenuated and gossamery.
The name of Bacon's early philosophical work, The Masculine
Birth of Time, appears in three of the plays. The word masculine
1 Act i, scene i.
* Act i, scene 2.
;i Act iii, scene :
1 Act i, scene 3.
8 Act i, scene 1.
r" Act i. scene 1.
7 Act i, scene 2.
8 Act i, scene 2.
9 Act i, scene 2.
10 Act ii, scene 6.
11 Act ii, scene 1.
12 Act ii, scene 5.
13 Act ii, scene 6.
14 Act ii, scene 6.
18 2d Henry IV., ii, a.
544
THE CIPHER JX THE PL. 1 J "S.
is an unusual word in poetry; it occurs but three times in the entire
Folio, and each time the words birth and time accompany it,
either in the same scene or close at hand. For instance, in Twelfth
Nighty in act v, in the same scene (scene i) we have all three of the
words, masculine, birth, time. In ist Henry VI., masculine is in act
ii, scene i, while birth and time occur in act ii, scene iv. In
Troilus and Cressida they appear in act v, scene i, and act iv, scene 4.
The Advancement of Learning, the name of one of Bacon's great
Works, is found in The Tempest, 2d Henry IV. and Hamlet. The
words Scaling Ladders of the Intelligence are all found in Coriolanus.
With these and many other similar observations, I became satis-
fied that there was a cipher narrative interwoven into the body and
texture of the Plays. Any one of the instances I have given would
by itself have proved nothing, but the multitude of such curious,
coincidences was cumulative and convincing.
Granted there was a cipher, how was I to lind it?
CHAPTER III.
A VAIN SEARCH IN THE COMMON EDITIONS
He apprehends a world of figures here,
But not the form of what he should attend.
ist Henry IV. , /,j.
IF there was a cipher in the Plays, written by Francis Bacon, why
should it not be Bacon's cipher, to-wit: a cipher of words
infolded in other words, " the writing infolding holding a quintuple
proportion to the writing infolded " ?
And if I was to find it out, why not begin on those words,
Francis, Bacon, Nicholas, Bacon's, son, in the ist Henry IV., act ii ?
I did so, using an ordinary edition of the Plays. For days and
weeks and months I toiled over those pages. I tried in every pos-
sible way to establish some arithmetical relation between these
significant words. It was all in vain. I tried all the words on
page 53, on page 54, on page 55. I took every fifth word, every
tenth word, every twentieth word, every fiftieth word, every hun-
dredth word. But still the result was incoherent nonsense. I
counted from the top of the pages down, from the bottom up,
from the beginning of acts and scenes and from the ends of acts
and scenes, across the pages, and hop, skip and jump in every
direction; still, it produced nothing but dire nonsense.
Since it was announced in the daily press of the United States
that I claimed to have discovered a cipher in the Shakespeare
Plays, there have been some who have declared that it was easy
enough to make any kind of a sentence out of any work. I grant
that if no respect is paid to arithmetical rules this can easily be
done. If the decipherer is allowed to select the words he needs at
random, wherever he finds them, he can make, as Bacon says,
"anything out of anything; " he could prove in this way that the
Apostle Paul wrote Cicero's orations. But I insist that, wherever
any arithmetical proportion is preserved between the words
selected, it is impossible to find five words that will cohere in
545
546 THE CIPHER IN THE PLA VS.
sense, grammar or rhetoric; in fact, it is very rarely that three can
be found to agree together in proper order.
To prove this, let me take this very page 53 of 1st Henry //'.. on
which Nicholas Bacon is found, and try the tenth, twentieth,
fiftieth and hundredth words:
The tenth words are:
To, — it, — bids, — a, — can, — ana7, — found, — how, — looks, — on, — /, —
ripe, — /o(\ — once, — bearc, — 7c>e,— thrive, — short, — Heigh, etc.
The twentieth words are:
It, — a, — and, — how, — on, — ripe, — once, — we, — short, — hanged, —
Tom, — of, — give, — since, — in, — in, — a, — away, etc.
The fiftieth words are:
Can, — on, — beare, — hanged, — as, — in, — -your, — never, — /, — go, —
picking, — of, — //, — me, — mad, — pray, etc.
The hundredth words are:
O n, — hanged, — ///, — never, — He, — wild, — //, — then, etc.
The liveliest imagination and the vastest ingenuity can make
nothing of such sentences as these, twist them how you will. The
presence of order, and the coherence of things in the visible uni-
verse, prove the Creator. The existence of a regular, rhetorical,
grammatical, reasonable sentence, occurring at stated and unvary-
ing intervals in the texture of a work, proves conclusively that
some mind so prearranged it. The man who would believe
otherwise has just cause of complaint against the God who so mis-
erably equipped him for the duties of life. He would be ready to
believe, as Bacon himself has said, and as I have quoted elsewhere,
that you could write the separate letters of the alphabet on a vast
number of slips of paper, and then, by mixing and jumbling them
together, they would accidentally assume the shape of Homer's
Iliad!
A consecutive thought demonstrates a brain behind it.
If this prove false,
The pillared firmament is rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble.
After many weary months of this self-imposed toil, trying every
kind and combination of numbers that I could think of, I gave it
up in despair. T did not for one instant doubt that there was a
cipher in the Plays. I simply could not find it.
A VAIN SEARCH IN THE COMMON EDITIONS. 547
I wrote my books Atlantis and Ragnarok. After these were
off my hands, my mind kept recurring to the problem of the cipher.
At length this thought came to me:
The common editions of the Plays have been doctored, altered,
corrected by the commentators. What evidence have I that the
words on these pages are in anything like their original order?
The change of a word, of a hyphen, would throw out the whole
count.
I must get a copy of the play as it was originally pub-
lished. I knew there were facsimile copies of the great Folio of
1623. I must procure one. At first I bought a copy, octavo form,
reduced, published by Chatto & Windus. But I found the type
was too small for the kind of work I proposed. I at length, July
1, 1882, procured a facsimile copy, folio size, made by photo-litho-
graphic process, and, therefore, an exact reproduction of type,
pages, punctuation and everything else. It is one of those "exe-
cuted under the superintendence of H. Staunton," and published in
1S66 by Day & Son, London.
CHAPTER IV.
THE GREA T FOLIO EDITION OF 1623,
Look, Lucius, here's the bonk I sought for.
Julius Casar, ivtj.
IN 1623 Shakspcre had been dead seven years; Elizabeth had
long before gone to her account; James was king; the Plays
had ceased to appear more than twelve years before. In that time
Bacon had mounted to the highest station in the kingdom. But a
great tempest was arising — a tempest that was to sweep England,
Ireland and Scotland, and bring mighty men to the surface; and
its first wild gusts had hurled the great Lord Chancellor in shame
and dishonor from his chair.
In 1623 Bacon, amid the wreck of his fortune, was settling up
his accounts with his own age and getting ready for posterity.
He said, in a letter to Tobie Matthew:
It is true my labors are most set to have those works, which I formerly pub-
lished, as that of Advancement of Learnings that of Henry V ' 1 'I., that of the Essays,
being retractate, and made more perfect, well translated into Latin by the help
of some good pens, which forsake me not. For these modern languages will, at
one time or another, play the bankrupt with books; and since I have lost much
time with this age, I would be glad, as God shall give me leave, to recover it
with posterity.
After speaking, in a letter to the Bishop of Winchester, of the
examples afforded him by Demosthenes, Cicero and Seneca, in the
times of their banishment, he proceeds:
These examples confirmed me much in a resolution, whereunto I was other-
wise inclined, to spend my time wholly in writing, and to put forth that poor
talent, or half talent, or what it is, that God has given me, not, as heretofore, to
particular exchanges, but to banks or mounts of perpetuity, which will not break.
The De Augmentis was published at the same time, in the same
year, as the Folio, and in it, as I have shown, is contained the
chapter on ciphers, and a description of that best of all ciphers —
omnia per omnia, where one writing is infolded in another. Thus
the cipher narrative and the key to it went out together in the
same year.
r ;•
THE GREA 7' FOLIO EDITION OF 1623. 549
The Novum Organum was published, incomplete, in the autumn
of 1620; and he gave as a reason for sending it forth unfinished
that " he numbered his days and would have it saved."
In the same way he desired to save Macbeth, Julius Ctesar, Henry
17//., Cymbcliuc, The Winter's Tafe, etc., from the oblivion that
would fall upon them unless he published them; for the man in
whose name they were to be given out had taken no steps to secure
their rescue from the waters of Lethe.
And he speaks of them, as I take it, enigmatically in the fol-
lowing:
As for my Essays, and some other particulars of that nature, I count them but as
the recreation of my other studies, and in that sort I propose to continue them, though
I am not ignorant that those kind of writings would, with less pains and embrace-
ment, perhaps yield more luster and reputation to my name than those other which
I have in hand. But I count the use that a man should seek of the publishing of
his own writings, before his death, to be but an untimely anticipation of that which
is proper to follow a man, not to go along with him.1
We have seen him describing poetry as a recreation, as some-
thing that "slipped" from one like gum from the tree; and we
have seen him, in his letters to Tobie Matthew, referring to certain
" works of his recreation," which no one was to be allowed to
copy, and to unnamed "works of the alphabet." And now he says
that he proposes to publish these works, and "continue them"
down to posterity. And he believes that these works would yield
more luster and reputation to his name than those which he has in
hand, to-wit, his philosophical and prose works. Surely the Essays
and the acknowledged fragments he left behind would not yield
more " luster and reputation" than the Novum Organum and the
De Augmentis. He must refer, then, to some great works. And
how purposely obscure is that last sentence!
I count the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings
before his death to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to fol-
low a man, not to go along with him.
He is taking the utmost pains to publish his writings before his
death, "remembering his days, and that they must be saved," and
yet he tells us that this is an untimely anticipation of what must
follow him. That is, if the works are not published they will be
lost; and it is better they should be lost; and then the glory of
1 Letter to the Bishop of Winchester.
550 THE CIPHER IN THE PLAYS.
them will follow the author's death! Bacon is never obscure
unless he intends to be so. And in this I think he means as fol-
lows:
... As for my Essays and the Shakespeare Plays, I will continue them — pre-
serve them for posterity. I am aware that those plays would give more luster and
reputation to my name, if I acknowledged them, than my philosophical writings;
but I think there is a certain glory which should follow a man, by rising up long
after his death, rather than accompany him by being published in his own name
before his death.
If he does not hint at this, what does he mean ? Surely there is
no great distinction between a man publishing his writings a year
before his death, and having his executors publish them a year after
his death; and why should the one be an " untimely anticipation of
the other" ? And just about this period Bacon writes to Sir Tobie
that "it is time to put the alphabet in a frame ; " and we will see
that the cipher depends on the paging of the great Folio, and the
paging is as a frame to the text.
And side by side with the Novum Organum and the De Augmen-
tis, mighty pillars of his glory, appears, at the same time, this noble
Folio, which, as Collier says, " does credit to the age, even as a speci-
men of typography."1
And at the same time Lord Bacon sends some " great and noble
token " to Sir Tobie Matthew, and Sir Tobie does not dare to name
the work in his letter of thanks, but, in the obscure way common to
the correspondence of these men, says: " The most prodigious wit
that ever I knew, of my nation and of this side of the sea, is of your
lordship's name, though he be known by another." That is to say,
Sir Tobie, writing probably from Madrid, says: "Your lordship is
the first of wits — you are the greatest wit I have ever known,
either in England, i my nation,' or Europe, ' on this side of the sea,'
though you have disguised your greatness under an assumed
name."
And " a great and noble token," indeed, is this Folio. The world
has never seen, will never see such another. It is more lustrous
than those other immortal books, the Novum Organum and the
De Augmentis, and its columnar light will shine through all the
ages. It is another Homer — more vast, more civilized, more
varied, more complicated; multiplied in all forms and powers a
1 English Dramatic Poetry, vol. iii, p. 313.
THE GREAT FOLIO EDITION OF 1623. 551
thousand-fold. And no other name than Homer is worthy to be
mentioned beside it.
Collier says of the Folio:
As a specimen of typography it is on the whole remarkably accurate; and so
desirous were the editors and printers of correctness that they introduced changes
for the better even while the sheets were in progress through the press.1
Even to-day it must be a subject of admiration. Its ponderous
size, its clear, large type, its careful punctuation, its substantial
paper, its thousand pages, all testify that in its day it was a work
of great cost and labor.
I had read somewhere that it was very irregularly paged, and
when I procured my facsimile copy I turned first to this point.
I found the volume was divided, as the index showed, into three
divisions, Comedies, Histories and Tragedies; and that the paging
followed these divisions, commencing at page 1 in each instance.
This was not unreasonable or extraordinary. In some cases there
are errors of the printer, plainly discernible as such. For instance,
page 153 of the Comedies is printed 151, but the next page is marked
with the correct number, 154; page 59 of the Comedies is printed
page 51; page 89 of the Histories is printed 91; 90 is printed 92, etc.
But as a whole the Comedies are printed very regularly. In each
case the first page of a play follows precisely the number of the
last page of the preceding play. Between Twelfth Night and The
Winter' 's Talc there is a blank page, but even this is taken into
account, although it is not numbered. The last page of Twelfth
Night is 275, then comes the blank page, which should be 276, and
the first page of The Winter s Tale is 277. I call attention to this
particularly, because it goes to prove that the great changes in the
numbering of pages of some of the Plays, in the Histories, are not
likely to have been the result of negligence.
The Histories begin with King John, on page 1, and the
pages proceed in regular order to page 37, in the play of Richard II.,
which is misprinted 39. Richard II. ends on page 45; the next play,
1st Henry IV., begins on page 46; then pages 47 and 48 are missing,
and the next page is 49; and after this the paging proceeds in due
order, with the exception of the apparent typographical errors on
pages 89, 91, etc., already referred to, to the end of the 2d Henry IF.,
1 English Dramatic Pcetry% vol. iii, p. 313.
552 THE CIPHER IN THE PLAYS.
which terminates on page ioo. Then there is an Epilogue^ which
occupies an unnumbered page, which would be, if numbered, 101;
then another unnumbered page is devoted to the names of the
characters in the play; this should be page 102. The next page is
the opening of the play of Henry V.f but, instead of being page 103,
it is numbered 69 !
If, after this number, 69, the pages had proceeded again, 104, 105,
106, etc., in regular order, yve might suppose that the 69 was a typo-
graphical error. But no; the paging runs 70, 71, 72, 73, in perfect
order, to 95, the last page of the play, and the next play, 1st Henry
IV., begins on page 96; and so the paging continues, in due order,
with one or two slight mistakes, which are immediately corrected,
to the end of Henry VIII., on page 232. ■
Here again we have a surprise :
The next page, unnumbered, is the prologue to Troilus and Cres-
sida. It should be page 233; the next, on which the play opens,
is also unnumbered, but should be page 234; the next page is
numbered, but instead of page 235 it is page 79 ! The next is
80, and all the rest of the pages of Troilus and Cressida are left
unnumbered 7
Now, when it is remembered that some of the typographical
errors first referred to (such as calling 153, 151, but making the rest
of the paging before and after it correct) are in some of the copies
of the Folio printed with the proper page numbers, showing, as Mr.
Collier says, that the printers were so desirous of accuracy that
they stopped the press to make necessary corrections, it is inexpli-
cable that they should permit such a break to remain as that
between 2d Henry IV. and Henry V., where the count fell off thirty-
three pages. But it may be said the mistake occurred without their
noticing it. If pages wrere numbered as we number manuscript
copy, this might be possible, for, making a mistake in the true num-
ber in one instance, we may naturally enough continue the mistake
in the subsequent pages. But how the same printers who stopped
the press to correct minor errors could have allowed this great
error to stand, I cannot comprehend.
But this is not all. How could they possibly fail to observe the
fact that a great number of pages in Troilus and Cressida //ad no
numbers at all?
THE GREAT FOLIO EDITION OF 1623. 553
It is said that Troilus and Cressida was inserted as an after-
thought, and this is confirmed by the fact that it does not appear
in the Table of Contents, and therefore it was not paged. But it
is paged so far as two pages are concerned, 79 and 80. If it had
been inserted all unpaged, or all paged to correspond with Henry
VIII. , we could understand it. But where did those numbers 79
and 80 come from ? There is no place in the volume where there
is any break at page 78; we cannot therefore suppose that it was
shifted from its proper place, and carried some of its paging with it.
But I found still another instance where the first page of a play
does not follow the number of the preceding play. In the Trage-
dies, Timon of Athens ends with page 98; then follows a list of the
characters in the play, which occupies a page; this, if numbered,
would be page 99. Then comes a blank page, which we will call
too; then Julius Cwsar opens with page 109 ! It is correctly paged
to the end of the play. Why this break of eight pages ?
The paging is also broken in upon to make Timon of Athens
begin with page 80. The preceding play is Romeo and Juliet ; it
begins on page 53, and the pages are regularly numbered until we
reach the last page, which, instead of being 77, is 79. Then Timon
opens on page 80, and the paging runs along to 81 and 82, and
then repeats itself: 81, 82. If we will correct 79 to 77, we will find
that the second 81 and 82 are exactly right. But why was the cor-
rection not made on the first page instead of the fourth ?
It seemed to me that these repeated instances of Henry /'.,
Troilus and Cressida, Julius Cwsar and Timon of Athens proved con-
clusively that there was some secret depending upon the paging of
the Folio, and that these plays had been written upon the basis of
a cipher which did not correspond with the natural paging of the
Folio; and that this paging had to be forcibly departed from in this
way, and continued, per order, even when the printers were cor-
recting minor errors.
I was the more confirmed in this by a study of the "signa-
tures " or " tokens " of the printers.
The signatures, as shown by the token numbers at the bottom
of the pages, run in groups of twelve pages, thus: a, a blank;
a2, a blank; aj (sometimes af)} and then six blanks, making %
twelve pages or six leaves in all. Now, where 2d Henry //'. joins
554 THE CIPHER IN THE PLAYS.
on to Henry V. the signatures ran: gg} a blank; gg2} a blank; ggj, a
blank ; ggj, a blank, and then eight pages blanks, or four more than
the regular number; then the first page of Henry V. is marked h, then
a blank, then I12, then a blank, then hj, then six blanks, and then
i, etc. It, therefore, appears that the printers had to piece out Henry
IV. by the insertion of four pages additional; and certainly all this
doctoring could not have been accomplished without the printers
observing that the last page of 2d Henry IV. was paged ioo, and the
first page of Henry V. numbered 69. And as the signature of Henry V.
is //, following gg} when properly it should have been h/i, it would
seem as if the Henry V. was paged and tokened separately. This
could only have been done under specific directions; and this would
look as if the Plays were printed in separate parcels.
It also appears that the Troilus and Crcssida must have been
printed separately. All the tokens of the other plays are alphabeti-
cal, as a> b, c, etc., aa, bb, cc, etc. But in the Troilus and Cressida
the signatures are all composed of the printers' sign for a para-
graph, «[, mixed with g, thus: g, f 2, gj, f f, Jg2, ^gj, and the
last page of the play is marked TTITj tnen a blank leaf, and then
the Tragedies open with aa. But as the twelve pages of the signa-
ture x, which composed the last part of Henry VIII., would have
properly extended over into two pages of Troilus and Cressida, it is
evident that there must have been more doctoring here. A printer
will see at once that Troilus and Cressida must have been set up by
itself, and marked by different tokens, so as not to conflict with the
rest of the work, which therefore was not finished; and conse-
quently that it would have been most natural for the printer to
have paged it regularly from page 1 to the end, or made the paging
correspond with the last page of Henry VIII, or not paged it at all.
There is no reason for paging two leaves 79 and 80, and leaving
the rest blank. And there is no reason why, when the pressmen
stopped the press to correct the accidental errors in the paging in
other instances, they should have left these errors standing. It
seemed to me beyond a question that these inconsistencies in the
paging were made to order.
Roberts, the actor, asserted that Henry Condell was a printer
by trade;1 and it is very possible that the Folio cf 1623 may have
1 Collier's Eng, Dram. Poetry^ iii.
THE GREAT FOLIO EDITION OF 1623. 555
been set up under his immediate supervision, and hence these
irregularities perpetuated by his orders.
Being satisfied that there was a cipher in the Plays, and that it
probably had some connection with the paging of the Folio, I
turned to page 53 of the Histories, where the line occurs:
I have a gammon of Bacon and two razes of ginger.1
I commenced and counted from the top of the column down-
ward, word by word, counting only the spoken words, until I
reached the word Bacon, and I found it was the 371st word.
I then divided that number, 371, by fifty-three, the number oi
the page, and the quotient was seven! That is, the number of the
page multiplied by seven produces the number of the word Bacon.
Thus:
53
_7
37i
This I regarded as extraordinary. There are 938 words on the
page, and there was, therefore, only one chance out of 938 that any
particular word on the page would match the number of the page.
But where did that seven come from which, multiplying 53,
produced 371 = Bacon} I found there were seven italic words
on the first column of page 53, to-wit: (1) Mortimer, (2) Glen-
dower ', (3) Mortimer, (4) Douglas, (5) Charles, (6) IVaine, (7) Robin.
If the reader will turn to the facsimile, given herewith, he may
verify these statements.
There are 459 words on this column, and there was, therefore,
only one chance out of 459 that the number of italic words would
agree with the quotient obtained by dividing 371 by 53.
For it will be seen that if Charles Waine had been united by a
hyphen, or if waine, being the name of a thing, a wagon, had been
printed in Roman letters, the count would not have agreed.
Again, if the word Heigh-ho (the 190th word) had not been
hyphenated, or if Chamber-lye had been printed as two words,
the word Bacon would not have been the 371st word. Or if
the nineteenth word, infaith, had been printed as two words,
the count would have been thrown out. If our selves (the
sixty-fourth and sixty-fifth words) had been run together as one
s]
-s(j THE CIPHER JX THE PLA VS.
word, as they often are, the word Bacon would have been the 370th
word, and would not have matched with the page. Where sc
many minute points had to be considered, a change of any one of
which would have thrown the count out, I regarded it as very
remarkable that the significant word Bacon should be precisely
seven times the number of the page.
Still, standing alone, this might have happened accidentally.
I remembered, then, that other significant word, Saint Albans,
In act iv, scene 2, page 67, column 1.
And the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host of S. Albones.
I counted the words on that column, and the word S. Albones
was the 402d word. I again divided this total by the number of
the page, 67, and the quotient was precisely 6.
67
6
402 = " S, Albones."
I counted up the italic words on this column, and I found there
were just six, to- wit: (1) Bardolph, (2) Pete, (3) Lazarus, (4) Jack,
(5) Hal, (6) John.
This was certainly extraordinary.
There were on that page 890 words. There was, therefore, but
one chance out of 890 that the significant word S. Albones would
precisely match the page. But there was only one chance in
many thousands that the two significant words Bacon and
S. Albones would both agree precisely with the pages they were on;
and not one chance in a hundred thousand that, in eac_h case, the
number of italics on the first column of the page would, when mul-
tiplied by the page, produce in each case numbers equivalent to
the rare and significant words Bacon and S. Albones.
On the first column of page 67 there are a great many words
united by hyphens and counting as one word each, to- wit: Sut-
ton-cop-hill, souced-gurnet, mis-used, house-holders, a struckfoolc (fowl),
wild-duck, dis-cardcd, trade-fallen, dis-honorable, old-faced, swine-keeping,
skare-crows. Here are thirteen hyphens. If there had been eleven,
or twelve, or fourteen, the count would not have matched. Some
of these combinations are natural enough, as swine -keeping, skare-
crows, etc., but some of the others are very forced. Why print
dishonorable, misused and discarded as two words each ? Why not
THE GREAT EOLIO EDITION OF 1623.
00/
Sution-cop hill? Why link together all three of these words ? Does
it not look like an ingenious cramming of words together so as to
make the word S. Albones the 402d word ?
And as there was but one chance in 890 that the significant
word S. Albones would be the multiple of the page, so, as a
change of any one of these thirteen hyphens would have thrown
out the count, there is but one chance out of thirteen times 890, or
one out of eleven thousand five hundred and seventy, that this could
be the result of accident!
I returned to page 53. I counted from the top of the first col-
umn to the bottom, and there were 459 words; then from the top
of the second column downward, and the first Nicholas was
the 189th word; total, 648 words. I found that 648 was the precise
result of multiplying 54, the next page, by 12:
459
54
12
648
io8
54
648 = '
1 Nicholas.'
Now, if the reader will turn to the facsimile he will observe-
that there are exactly t7velve words in italics on the first column of
page 54 !
As seven times page 53 yielded the 371st word, Bacon} so I
found that six times page 53 made 318; and that if I commenced
to count from the top of the second subdivision of column one of
page 55, that from there to the bottom of the column there are
255 words, which, deducted from 318, leaves 62; and from the
beginning of scene iv, 2d column, page 55, downward, the 62d
word is the word Francis.
Now, if you turn to page 54 and begin to count at the top of
the subdivision of the scene, on the first column, caused by " Enter
Gads-hill" counting in the first word, you will find there are to the
top of the column 396 words; if, then, you count down to the word
Bacons, you will find it the 198th word, — total, 594; and 594 is
precisely eleven times 54:
396 54
K)8 11
594 54
?4 . *
594 =" Bacons."
55<S THE CIPHER IN THE PLAYS.
And the facsimile will show that there are precisely eleven
words in italics from the top of the first column down to " Enter
Gads-hill."
And if we commence to count from the end of scene 2, col-
umn 2, page 54, backward and up the first column of the same,
the 477th word is the word son, and 477 is precisely nine times 53.
And so I had:
53 X 6= 318= Francis — 2nd column, page 55.
53 X 7 = 371 = Bacon — 1st column, page 53.
54 X 12 = 648 = Nicholas — 2nd column, page 53.
54 X 11 = 594= Bacon's — 2nd column, page 54.
53 X 9 = 477 = Son — 1st column, page 54.
All these things tended to make me more and more certain that
there was a cipher in the Plays, and that it depended upon the
paging of the Folio.
I had observed, on page 67, how adroitly thirteen words were
hyphenated to make S. Albones the exact multiple of the page.
I began to study the hyphenation of words, and the way in which
bracket sentences were formed in the body of the text, as I judged,
to enable the author to make his cipher-count match. That this
was the purpose I found many proofs. It is well understood that
a parenthesis in brackets is a subordinate sentence, explanatory of
the main sentence, but not essential to it. That is to say, the main
sentence will read and make sense just as well without it as with
it. If I say:
At this time (the weather being pleasant), John came to see me,
I have formed a correct sentence, which can be read with or
without the parenthesis. But if I write:
At this time, the weather (being pleasant), John came to see me,
I have formed a sentence which without the words in brackets
makes nonsense.
If the reader will turn to the exact reprint of act iv, scene 1 of
The Merry Wives of Windsor, he will find the following curious
instances of bracketing wTords:
What is (Faire), William ?
What is {Lapis), William ?
What is a stone ( William) ■
What is the Focative case ( William)?
Never name her (childe).
Leave your prables Voman). Etc.
THE GREAT EOLIO EDITION OF 1623. 559
In the first two instances the sentence, without the words in
brackets, has no meaning. In the other, there is no reason in "the
world why the name, or designation of the person addressed,
should be embraced in brackets.
Again, on the first column of the same page, Falstaff says:
Adieu! you shall have her (Master Broome); Master Broome, you shall cuck-
old Ford.
Now, if there was any typographical reason for putting one of
these Master Broomes in brackets, why was not the other simi-
larly treated ?
Multitudinous instances of the same kind can be found in the
Folio.
If the use of brackets was uniform, we might consider it a habit
of the writer, or a vice of the printers of that era; but such is not
the case.
It is well known that the 2d Henry IV. is but a continuation of
the 1st Henry IV. The latter ends with the death of Hotspur on
the field of Shrewsbury; the other opens with Hotspur's father
receiving the news of his death. The characters in the two plays
are the same; the plot is the same; the two are practically one.
Yet we find in the 1st Henry IV. the brackets used very sparingly,
while in the 2d Henry IV. the pages are literally peppered with
them. There are nine pages in the 1st Henry IV. that do not con-
tain a bracket word, to-wit, pages 54, 57, 61, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 72;
while there is not one page in the 2d Henry IV. which does not
contain words in brackets. In the last ten pages of the 1st Henry
IV. there are but seven words in brackets, while in the first ten
pages of 2d Henry IV. there are three hundred and fifty-nine!
Take the following sentence, in the speech of the King, on page
85 of 2d Henry IV., and observe the ridiculous extent to which
brackets are used, where there was really no necessity for them:
But which of you was by,
(You cousin Nevil, as I may remember),
When Richard, with his eye brim-full of Teares,
(Then checked and rated by Northumberland)
Did speak these words (now prov'd a prophecy):
Northumberland thou Ladder, by the which
My cousin Bullingbrooke ascends my Throne:
(Though then, Heaven knows, I had no such intent,
But that necessitv so bowed the State
560 THE CIPHER IN THE PLA VS.
That I and Greatnesse were compelled to kisse:)
The Time shall come (thus did hee follow it),
The Time will come that foul Sinne gathering head
Shall breake into Corruption.
Here we have a sentence, containing ninety-three words, of
which forty-six are in brackets, and forty-seven not in brackets !
And scarcely one of these bracketings is necessary.
Now when you remember that there are nine pages in the ist
Hairy IV. without a bracket word, and ten consecutive pages with
but seven, is it natural or reasonable to find here, in a continuation
of the same play, forty-six bracket words out of a total of ninety-
three ? Must there not' have been some reason for it ?
Compare these totals:
Total bracket words. Total hyphenated words.
ist Henry IV. ill 224
2d Henry IV 898 307
Why should there be more than eight times as many bracket
words in the second part of what is practically one play as there is
in the first part ?
Now all these evidences were, as I have said before, cumulative;
they all pointed in the same direction. If I find in the sand the
tracks of many feet, directed to all points of the compass, I cannot
predicate what direction the multitude took, or meant to take.
But if I come across numerous tracks all pointing in the same
direction, I can reasonably conclude that those who owned those
feet moved toward the point so indicated; and if I find the tracks
of a vast multitude, with every foot pointed to the north, and the
ground trampled and cut by artillery wheels, and the herbage
crushed, and the limbs of the very trees torn down, I should be a
fool indeed if I doubted my own senses, and failed to conclude that
an army had passed there and was marching northward.
And so this accumulation of testimonies forced me, in despite
of all doubts and hesitations, to the fixed and positive belief that
the text of some of the Shakespeare Plays, perhaps all of them,
contained cipher-work.
To be sure, it took me some time to reason out how the book
coulpl have been printed so as to make the paging match with the
cipher story; and the conclusion I reached was this: That Bacon,
when he resolved to tell, in this secret manner, the history of
THE GREAT EOLIO EDITION OF 1623. 561
his life and his era, and had selected his own short acting plays, in
their first brief form, for the web into which he would weave his
story (for we find The Merry Wives, Henry V., Romeo and Juliet, Ham-
let and other plays still existing in that original form, without the
significant cipher words), determined that some day he would
publish his cipher-plays in folio volume; and the cipher was con-
structed altogether with that end in view. To insert the cipher he
had to double the size of the original plays; and this is the reason
we have them " enlarged to as much again," as is stated in the pre-
face to some of the quarto editions.
Now then, Richard II. having ended on page 45 (and probably
Richard II. and King John constitute jointly a cipher narrative,
united, just as we will see hereafter that the 1st and 2d Henry IV.
are united), he then made his calculation that the 1st Henry IV.
would occupy twenty-eight pages and this would make the first
page of 2d Henry IV. page 74. Upon this basis he worked; for it
is my impression that those coincidences I have just shown, of
Francis — Bacon — Nicholas — Bacon's — son, are either parts of a
cipher different from that which I have worked out, or that they
have no relation to the cipher proper, but were put there to lead
some subsequent investigator along to the conviction that there
was a cipher in the Plays. And I should conclude that Bacon
made a mistake in his estimate, and that the 1st Henry IV., when
finished, contained but twenty-six pages. Hence he was driven
to the expedient of dropping two pages, or one leaf, out of the
count; and, hence, in the Folio, page 49 follows page 46.
But, having settled upon page 74, he begins his work. lie
writes his text on the basis of the equivalent in words of what he
thinks each column of the Folio, when printed, will contain, using
either large sheets or two sheets bearing the same number. For
instance, the first column of page 74 contains 294 words. These
could be readily written on one sheet of paper; and the same is
true of the second column, which contains 270 words. When he
comes to page 75, the first column of which contains 468 words
and the second 541, if he had not single sheets large enough for
these he used two or more, giving them the same paging, as, for
instance, 751 or 75 s, etc. The number of words on a column was
largely dependent on the necessities of the cipher; hence, we will
562 THE CIPHER IN THE PLA VS.
find three hundred and odd words on one column, and six hundred
and odd on another. Let the reader turn to our facsimiles, and
compare the second column of page 76 with the second column of
page 80. Both are in prose, and each contains one break in the
narrative, caused by the entrance of characters. Yet the first has
615 words, while the other contains 553 words. And, to get the
615 words into the second column of page 76, the type had to be
crowded together very closely, and we have the words, " Doth not
the King lack subjects?" printed (as the reader will see, by look-
ing near the bottom of the column) thus:
Doth not the K. lack subjects?
On the second column of page 64 of 1st Henry IV., all in prose,
and containing also one break, there are but 472 words; while on
the first column of page 62 of the same play, all in prose, with
three interruptions, there are but 375 words. There could as well
have been 500 words printed on that column as 375. But we will
see, as we proceed, that the necessity the cryptologist was under
to use the same significant words more than once (counting from
the bottom of the column up, as well as from the top of the col-
umn down) determined the number of the words on the column;
even though he had to print King as simply K.y to get them all in,
in the one case; or to put in such phrases as the following, heavily
leaded, in the other case, as on page 64:
Enter the Prince marchings and Ealstaffe meets
him playing on his Trunchion
like a Fife.
Compare this with the first column of page 79, where a similar
stage direction has not even a separate line given it, but is crowded
in at the end of a sentence, thus:
Page. Away you Scullion, you Ram pall ion, you Fustil-
lirian: He tucke your Catastrophe. Enter Ch. Justice.
Here the writer did not allow even room enough to print the
word Chief in full.
Now, having the Plays written on sheets, and so paged as to
correspond with a prospective Folio, Bacon was in this dilemma:
If he did not print the Plays during Shakspere's life-time, with the
cipher in them, and Shakspere's name on the title-page, men would
THE GREAT EOLIO EDITION OF 1623. 563
•say in the future, as they have said recently, that the Plays were
really Shakspere's, and that he (Bacon) had stolen them and inter-
jected a cipher claiming them. And so he published some of them
in quarto. But as the paging of the quarto would begin with page
1, while the cipher was founded on page 74, or page 69 (as in
Henry V.), or page 79 (as in Troilus and Cressida), it was absolutely
impossible to decipher the inner story. But, to make assurance
doubly sure, Bacon cut out of the quarto whole sentences that
were in the Folio sheets, and set into the text of the quarto sen-
tences and whole scenes that were not in the Folio; so that the
most astute decipherer could have made nothing out of it, how-
ever cunningly he might have worked. And this is the explana-
tion of the fact that while the editors of the Folio of 1623 assure
the public that it is printed from " the true originall copies," and
that all previous quarto editions were " stolne and surreptitious
copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injuri-
ous impostors that expos'd them;" and that the Folio copies were
"perfect of their limbs and absolute in their numbers, as he (Shake-
speare) conceived them," nevertheless, the publisher of Shake-
speare to-day has to go to these same very much denounced quartos
for many of the finest passages which go by the name of the great
poet.
And here is another curious fact: Bacon was not content to
publish the Plays during the life of Elizabeth and his keen-eyed
cousin, Cecil, with a different paging; but where the word Bacon
occurred, in the quartos, it is printed with a small b, so as not
to arouse suspicion, instead of with a capital £, as in the Folio !
And most of those curious bracketings and hyphenations which so
mar the text of the great Folio, like "smooth-comforts-false" etc., are
not to be found in the quartos.
One can fancy Francis Bacon sitting at the play — in the
background — with his hat over his eyes — watching Elizabeth
and Cecil, seated, as was the custom, on the stage, enjoying
and laughing over some merry comedy, little dreaming that the
internal fabric of the play told, in immortal words, all the dark-
est passages of their own dark lives — embalmed in the midst of
wit and rollicking laughter, for the entertainment of all future
ages. And so the long-suffering and much abused genius enjoyed
564 THE CIPHER IN THE PLAYS.
his revenge, even under the very nose of power; so he rose
superior to
The law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
Which patient merit of the unworthy takes.
And when the time came to "put the alphabet in a frame" all
he had to do was to have Condell and Heminge contract with the
printers to print the Folio in columns, precisely as ordered, Bacon
himself secretly correcting the proofs. Or Bacon may have bought
the type and had it printed at Gray's Inn, or St. Albans, or at the
house of Condell or Heminge. If printers were told to follow copy
precisely, and put exactly as many words on a column as there
were on a sheet of the original manuscript, they would, of course,
do so; and only in this way can the extraordinary features of the
Folio of 1623 be accounted for. And if the printers needed a reason,
to allay suspicion, it could be given in the pretended reverence of
the actor-editors for the work of " their worthy friend and fellow,
Shakespeare;" for it follows, of course, that Heminge and Condell,
or one, at least, of them, was in the secret of the real authorship.
And this also explains why one-half the Plays were not pub-
lished until 1623, and why for nearly twenty years so few were put
forth. The author could never know how far suspicion might be
aroused by the curiously garbled state of the text. But in 1623
the generation that had witnessed the production of the Plays was
mostly dead; Burleigh and Cecil and the Queen were all gone; and
Bacon himself was nearing the last mile-stone of his wonderful
career. There was but little risk of discovery in the few years that
remained to him between 1623 and the grave.
The great Folio was the culmination of Bacon's life-work as re-
garded one portion of his mighty intellect; even as the De Augmcn-
tis and the Novum O rganum were the culmination of his life-work
as to the other side — his philosophy. And side by side, at the
same time, he erected these great pillars, the one as worthy, as
enduring, as world-sustaining as the other.
CHAPTER V.
LOST IN THE WILDERNESS.
Polonius. What do you read, my lord ?
Hamlet. Words, words, words.
Hamlet, it, 2.
HAVING satisfied myself, in this way, that, beyond question,
there was a cipher narrative in the Shakespeare Plays, I
•commenced the task of deciphering it. It has been an incalcula-
ble labor, reaching through many weary years.
I had but one clue: that the cipher words were to some extent y
the multiples of the pages on which they occur. But the problem
was, In what order do they follow each other ? What is the
sequence of arrangement ?
My first conception of the cipher narrative was that of a brief
statement of the fact that Francis Bacon was the real author of the
Plays. The words constituting this sentence might, I thought, be
widely scattered, and but two or three to a play. On page 84 I
found the word William.
I dare say my cousin William is become a good Scholler.1
In the subdivision above this, in the same column, being the end
of act iii* scene 2, there were three hyphenated words, and thirty- / f
five words in brackets. If you deduct 3 from 86 it leaves 83, and
on page 83 we find:
Feele, Masters, how I shake. 2
If you deduct 35 from 87, the next column, it leaves 52, and on
page 52 we have :
The uncertain footing of a Speare.
Here, I thought, I have a clue: — William Shakespeare. But,
unfortunately, the rule would carry me no farther.
Then I was perplexed as to the true mode of counting. Was I
to analyze words into their meaning and count them accordingly?
"Was whafs, as in "what's the matter," one word or two words,
1 2d Henry IV., iii, 2. * 2d Henry IV. , ii, 4. <
565
/
566 THE CIPHER IN THE PLA VS.
"what is"? Was o'tti clock, one word, two words or three words?
Was tli other to be counted as two words, as "the other," or as one
word, "t'other" ? Were the figures ioo to be counted as one word,
or as "one hundred," two words?
As I was working in the dark, it was a long time before I
arrived at Bacon's purpose, and then I found that he adopted the
natural rule, that the typographical consideration governed, and a
word was a group of letters, separated by spaces from the rest of
the text, whether it meant one, or two, or a dozen objects. The
only exception seems to be where the word is merely slurred to
preserve the rhythm of the blank verse, as in:
Had three times slain th' appearance of the king.1
Here the tti is counted as a separate word. At different stages I
was led, by coincidences, to adopt one theory and then the other, and
I recounted and numbered the words from time to time, until the
text was almost obliterated with the repeated markings. I give
herewith one page, page 79, of 2d Henry IV.? which will show the
defaced condition of my facsimile, and at the same time give some
idea of the difficulty of the work.
Many times I struck upon clues which held out for two or
three points and then failed me. I was often reminded of our
Western story of the lost traveler, whose highway changed into
a wagon-road, his wagon-road disappeared in a bridle-path, his
bridle-path merged into a cow-path, and his cow-path at last de-
generated into a squirrel track, which ran up a tree ! So my hopes
came to naught, many a time, against the hard face of inflexible
arithmetic.
I invented hundreds of ciphers in trying to solve this one.
Many times I was in despair. Once I gave up the whole task for
two days. But I said to myself: There is certainly a cipher here;
and what the ingenuity of man has made, the ingenuity of man
ought to be able to unravel.
My own preconceptions often misled me. Believing that each
cipher word belonged to the page on which it was found, I did not
look beyond the page.
At last, in my experimentations, I came across the word vol-
ume.
1 2d Henry II'., ii, i; 2d col., p. 75, Folio. a Act ii, scene 1.
LOST IN THE WILDERNESS. 567
Yea, this man's brow, like to a Title-leafe,
Fore-tels the nature of a Tragicke Volume.*
I said to myself, if Bacon tells the story of the authorship of
the Plays, he would be very likely to refer to this volume, or a volume.
I counted the words. Volume was the 208th word on the first
column counting from the top. I could not make 208 in any way
the multiple of the page, 75. At a venture I added the total
number of words on the preceding column, 248, to it, making
456. This, also, would not fit to page 74 or 75. Again I experi-
mented. I added the total on the first column of page 74, 284
words. The sum then stood:
On the first column of page 74 284
On the second column of page 74 248
On the first column of page 75 208
Total 740= " volume. '
I divided 740 by seventy-four, the number of the page on which
the count commenced, and I had exactly ten !
74X10=740.
And there were ten words in brackets on the first column of
page 74!
Here was a revelation. I noticed the significant word mask
in the same context with volume:
Northumberland. Yea, this man's brow, like to a Title-leafe,
Fore-tels the Nature of a Tragicke Volume:
So lookes the Strond when the Imperious Flood
Hath left a witnest Usurpation.
Say, Morton, didst thou come from Shrewsbury?
Morton. I ran from Shrewsbury (my Noble Lord),
Where hateful death put on his ugliest Maske
To fright our party.
Note the artificial character of the language, " a witnessed
usurpation " — why 7i'lt//essed ? Again: Why would death put on a
mask? Is not the bare death's-head terrible enough? A mask
would subdue its horrors.
I labored over mask. I said to myself, Shakespeare was Bacon's
mask. I could not match it with 74 or 75. At length, after
much experimentation, this question occurred to me: Why
might not the cipher run /// the columns as well as down? I
1 2d Henry IV., i, t.
568
THE CIPHER IN THE PLA VS.
shrank from the proposition, as I did from every suggestion which
increased the complexity of the work; but at length I went to
experimenting.
I first discovered a curious fact, that while the tenth word
from the top of a column was, of course, the tenth word, you
could not obtain the tenth word from the bottom of a column
by deducting ten from the total of words on that column. If
the reader will turn to the facsimile, given herewith, on page
75, he will see that there are 447 words on the first column.
If now he deducts ten from 447, the result is 437, to-wit, the
word doing; but this is really not the tenth word from the
bottom, for if he starts to count each word (skipping the two
words in brackets), he will find that the tenth word is me, the
next subsequent word to doing. Thus: (1) gainsaid, (2) be,
(3) to, (4) great, (5) too, (6) are, (7) you, (8) wrong, (9) such,
(10) me. The reader will therefore find, in accordance with
this rule, that wherever I count up a column in these pages, I
deduct the number from the total of the column and add one,
thus:
447
10
437+1 = 438
If now we apply this rule, and add together the words on the
two columns of page 74, viz., 284-1-248 = 532, and deduct 532 from
740, we have left 208. We have seen that the 208th word from the
top was the word volume. Now let us count 208 words up the
same column:
447
208
239+ 1 = 240
The 240th word is mask! If the reader doubts my accuracy, let
him count up the column for himself.
This might be a coincidence, but repeated experimentations
(proved that it was not, and that the cipher goes up as well as
down the columns.
Now, if we regard the first word of the first column of the first
page as the starting-point of these words, we have the words vol-
ume and mask radiating out from that first word and going
forward, the one down, the other up the column. Now let us start
LOST IN THE WILDERNESS. 569
from this same first word, and count backward until we reach the
740th word:
On second column of page 73 there are 237 words
On first column of page 73 there are 169 "
Total on page 406 ' '
If we deduct 406 from 740 the remainder is 334. The 334th
word on the next column (second of page 72) is therefore. If we
count up the column we have:
Total words on column 588
Deduct. , 334
254+1 = 255
The 255th word is image.
Now let us commence again at the top of the first column of
page 74, and count down that column, and backward, until we
reach the 740th word. We have:
First column of page 74 284 words
Second column of page 73 237 "
First column of page 73 169
690 "
If we deduct this 690 from 740 the remainder is 50. The fiftieth
word down the next column is but. Let us count the fiftieth word
up the column, thus:
Total 588
Deduct 50
538+1 = 539
The 539th word is own.
If we commence at the top of the first column of page 75 we
have :
10x74 =••• 740
On first column, page 75 447
Remainder . . 293
The 293d word is his. Up the column it is the 2i5~i6th word,
greatest. We found that the words mask and volume were the 208th
words on that column. The 208th word on the first column of
page 74 is wrath.
After a long time, by a great deal of experimentation, I discov-
ered that the count runs not only from the beginnings and ends of
acts, scenes and columns, but also from the beginnings and ends
of such subdivisions of scenes as are caused by the stage direc-
tions, such as "Enter Morton," " Enter Falstaff," "A retreat is,
sounded," " Exit Worcester and Vernon," " Falstaff riseth up," etc.
57o THE CIPHER IN THE PLAYS.
If now we count the first subdivision of the first column of page
75, we will find it contains 193 words. If we start at the last word
of the 193 and count upward and down the next column, we will
lack thirty-nine of 740, thus:
In subdivision first column, page 75 193 words.
Second column, page 75 508 "
70T "
Remainder 39 ' '
740 "
The thirty-ninth word from the top of the second column of
page 75 is the word a. Now let us count thirty-nine up the next
column (first column of page 76), thus:
498
39
459 + 1 = 460
The 460th word is said.
We have seen that after counting the whole of page 74 (532),
we needed 208 to make up 740, and that the 208th words yielded
volume, mask and wrath. If we take that remainder, 208,
and commence to count forward from the beginning of scene 4,
page 73, column 1, we will find that the 208th word is shown, the
129th word on the 2d column of page 73. Again, if we com-
mence at the same starting-point — the beginning of scene 4 — and
count up, we find ninety words, which, deducted from 208, leaves
118; if now we count down the next column (2 of 72), we find that
the 118th word is a, while, if we count up, from the top of the
second subdivision in the column (171st word), the 11 8th word is
(53-)- 1 z= 54) the word hide; while if we count down from the same
point, the beginning of scene 4, page 73, there are 79 words; these
being deducted from 208, it leaves 129: and the 129th word,
counted down from the same 171st word, makes 300, the word
prove; and up from the bottom of the next subdivision, 346, it
makes (217-f-i = 218) the word counterfeit, which was used in
that age for picture. Thus Bassanio says, on opening the casket,,
and finding therein Portia's miniature:
What find I here?
Fair Portia's counterfeit? What demi-god
Hath come so near creation?1
1 Merchant of Venice, iii, 2.
LOST IN THE WILDERNESS.
571
If we again take that remainder, 208, and begin to count from
the top of the fourth scene, 1st column of page 73, then we have
208 — 90= 1 18, as before; and this, carried up the next column, yields
588 — 118 = 470-)- 1=471, Percy.
If we now arrange these words together in some kind of
order, we have Percy — said — in — greatest — wrath — prove — image
st.oum — upon — his — volume — but — a — counterfeit — mask — hide
my — own.
But near the word volume, as I have shown, is the word title-leaf
and near the but is the word face (57th word, 2d column of page
72), so that we can imagine a sentence reading something like this:
Percy said he was in a state (134 — 2, 75) of the greatest wrath, and
would prove that the counterfeit image shown upon the title-leaf of his
volume is but a mash to hide my own face. ^
I said to myself: Although this interpretation may not be cor-
rect, it is certainly surprising that such a concatenation of signifi-
cant words should all be_produced by finding the 740th word
frorn__pojnts of departure clearly related and coherent; for in every
case Jth£.xau-n L is from the beginning or end of page 74.
Then I observed that if we multiplied 74 by 12 instead
of 10, the result was 888; and if we commenced to count from
the top of the first column of page 72, the result was 494,
total on first column of page 72; this, deducted from 888, leaves 394,
which is the very significant word plays. Then I said to myself,
Volume of plays. Do the multipliers of 74 alternate?
This led to making a series of tables of all the words produced
by multiplying 74, 75 and 76, the three pages embraced in scene 1
of act i of 2d Henry IV, and a comparison of these revealed the
following startling facts, which forever put an end to any doubts
that might still linger in my mind as to the existence of a cipher
in the Plays.
If we multiply the last page in the scene, page 76, by 11, the
number of bracket words on the first column of page 74 (count-
ing the hyphenated word post-horse as two words), the result
is, 76X 11 = 836.
Now, if we commence at the beginning of column 1, page 74,
and count forward to the 836th word, excluding bracket words and
counting hyphenated words as one word, we have:
/
572 THE CIPHER IN THE PLAYS.
On page 74 532
In first column page 75 304
Total 836
The 304th word in the first column of page 75 is the word
found.
If now we start from the top of the next page, page 75, and
again count to the 836th word, in the same way, excluding the
bracket words and counting the hyphenated words as single words;
we have the following:
On first column page 75 447
On second column page 75 389
Total 836
The 389th word is out.
Here we have the combination " found out " — by the same count
from the beginning of two consecutive pages. This is remarkable; but
it might be accidental. But here comes the astonishing feature of
the discovery, which could not be accidental:
If you multiply 75, the number of the second page of the scene,
by 12, the number of words in italics on the first column of page
74, the result is 900.
We found that the 304th word, found, on the first column of
page 75, was the 836th word from the beginning of page 74, exclud-
ing the bracket words and counting the hyphenated words as
single words. How would it be if we counted in the bracket words
and counted the hyphenated words as separate words? Let us see:
The word found is the 836th word.
Bracket words, first column, page 74 10
Bracket words, second column, page 74 22
Bracket words, first column, page 75, preceding found 13 — 45 words.
Hyphenated words, additional, first column, page 74 8
Hyphenated words, additional, second column, page 74 . . . 2
Hyphenated words, first column, page 75, preceding found. 9 — 19 words.
900
That is to say "found" is the 836th word (11X76 = 836) from
the beginning of page 74, exclusive of the bracket words and the
hyphenated words counted as single words; and it is the 900th
word (12X75=900) counting in the bracketed words and the
hyphenated words as separate words !
LOST IN THE WILDERNESS. $jy
Again: we found that the 389th word, on the second column of
page 75, was also the 836th word.
The word out 836 words.
Bracket words, on first column, page 75 21
Bracket words, on second column, page 75, preceding out. . 30 — 51 words..
Hyphenated words, first column, page 75 9
Hyphenated words, second column, page 75, preceding out. 4 — 13 words.
y 900
And again we find that the word "out" is the 836th word
(11X76 = 836) from the beginning of page 75, less the bracketed
words, and counting the hyphenated words as one word each; and
it is the 900th word (12X75 = 900), counting in the bracketed words
and the hyphenated words double !
In other words:
The sum total of bracket words and hyphens, between the top
of the first column of page 74 and the word " found," is 64, and
this is precisely the difference between 836 and 900!
And the sum total of bracket words and hyphens between the
top of the first column of page 75 and the word " out " is again
64; and this is precisely the difference between 836 and 900 !
How is this result obtained ? By the most careful and delicate
adjustment of the words, like the elements of a profound puzzle.
The difference between 836 = found out, and 900 = found out, is, I
say, the precise number of the bracketed and hyphenated words in
each case. If these had varied one word in the four columns, it
would have thrown the count out ! And it is easy to see how the
text was forced to get in the precise number of these words. At
the bottom of the first column of page 74 we have:
From Rumours tongues,
They bring smooth-Comforts-false worse than True- wrongs.
Who ever heard of "smooth-comforts-false" being run together
into one word ? Only the necessities of the cipher could have
justified such a violation of sense. And what a pounding together
of meaning was required to make "true-wrongs"! Again, we
have, — as the 181st word, — first column, page 75 :
That had stolne
The horse he rode-on.
"Rode on " are as clearly two words as "the horse."
Again we have, 244th word, first column, page 74:
574
THE CIPHER IN THE PIA VS.
This worm-eaten-Hole of ragged stone.
"Worm-eaten" might be hyphenated, but surely not "worm-
eaten-hole."
The bracketings are totally unnecessary in every case. We have,
second column, page 74:
I spake with one (my Lord) that came from thence.
What human necessity was there to place " my lord " in brackets ?
Again (column 1, page 75):
I ran from Shrewsbury (my noble Lord).
Again (column 2, page 75):
From whence (with life) he never more sprang up.
And yet if a single one of these extraordinary bracketings and
hyphenations had failed, the count would have broken down. And
that this whole thing is forced and unnatural is shown by the
further fact that we have here one hundred and twenty-eight bracket
and hyphenated words on the two pages, 74 and 75, preceding
these words found out; while on the preceding pages, 72 and 73,
there are but three bracket words and four hyphenated words !
In short, there is not one chance in many hundred millions that
this coordination of 836 and 900, upon the same words, could have
occurred by accident.
What does it prove ?
That the plays — or this play at least — is a most carefully con-
structed piece of mosaic work, most cunningly dovetailed together,
with marvelous precision and microscopic accuracy. That there is
not one cipher, but many ciphers in it. That it is a miracle of
industry and ingenuity. And that these are the works to which
Bacon alluded when he said:
For there is some danger, lest the understanding should be astonished and
chained down, and as it were bewitched, by such works of art as appear to be the
very summit and pinnacle of human industry, so as not to become familiar with
them; but rather to suppose that nothing of the kind can he accomplished, unless
the same means be employed, with perhaps a little more diligence and accurate
preparation.1
1 Novum Organum. book ii.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CIPHER FOUND.
If circumstances lead me, I will find
Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed
Within the center.
Hamlet, ii. 2.
WHILE such evidences as the foregoing satisfied me of the
existence of a cipher, I was still but at the .beginning of
my task.
What words followed found out? Found out what? Who found
out? WTas I to look on the next column, the next page, the next
scene, or the next play ?
The creator of the cipher was master of his work, and could
throw the sequent words where he pleased. He might match a
play in the Histories with one in the Comedies, and thus the
words would be separated by hundreds of pages. Nothing was
impossible to the ingenuity manifested in that checker-work of
found out. All I knew was that the cipher words held an arith-
metical relation to the numbers of the pages on which, or near
which, they occurred, but beyond that all was conjecture. I was
as if one had taken me into a vast forest, and told me that, on cer-
tain leaves of certain trees, was written a narrative of incalculable
importance to mankind; and had given me a clew to know the ,
especial trees on which the words were to be found. If I had
climbed into and searched the branches of these trees, and col-
lected, with infinite care, the words upon them, I was still at my
wits' end. How was I to arrange them ? As I did not know
a single sentence of the story, nor the rule by which it was con-
structed, I might have the very words I needed before me and
would not recognize them.
It seems to me that the labors of Champollion le Jeune and
Thomas Young, in working out the Egyptian hieroglyphics from
the tri-lingual inscription on the Rosetta stone, were simple com-
pared with the task I had undertaken. They had before them a ♦
575
576
THE CIPHER IN THE PLA VS.
stone with an inscription in three alphabets — the hieroglyphic,
the demotic and the Greek; and the Greek version stated that the
three inscriptions signified the same thing. The problem was to
translate the unknown by the known. It was observed that a cer-
tain oval ring, inclosing a group of hieroglyphic phonetic signs,
stood in a corresponding place with the name of Ptolemy in the
Greek; and the same group was found, often repeated, over sitting
figures of the temple of Karnak. The conclusion was inevitable,
therefore, that that group signified Ptolemy. Furthermore, the
word king occurred twenty-nine times in the Greek version of the
Rosetta inscription, and a group holding corresponding positions
was repeated twenty-nine times in the demotic. Another stone
gave the phonetic elements which constituted the Word Cleopatra.
Champollion and Young thus had acquired the knowledge of
numerous alphabetical signs, with the sounds belonging to them,
and the rest of the work of translation was easy, for the Egyptian
language still survived in a modified form in the mouths of the
Coptic peasants.
But in my case I knew neither the rule nor the story. I tried
to obtain a clue by putting together the words which constituted
the name of the old play, The Contention between York and Lancas-
ter, as found in the end of 1st Henry IV. and the beginning of
2d Henry IV.; but, unfortunately, Contention occurs twice (73d word,
second column, page 74, 2d Henry IV., act i, scene 2, and the 496th
word, second column, page 75), while York and Lancaster are
repeated many times.
Even when I had progressed so far, by countless experimenta-
tions, as to guess at something of the story that was being told, I
could not be certain that I had the real sense of it. For instance,
let the reader write out a sentence like this:
And then the infuriated man struck wildly at the dog, -and the mad animal
sprang upon him and seized him by the throat.
Then let him cut the paper to pieces, so that each slip contains
a word, jumble them together, and ask a friend, who has never seen
the original sentence, to reconstruct it. He can clearly perceive
that it is a description of a contest between a man and a dog, but
beyond this he can be sure of nothing. Was the dog mad or the
man ? Which was infuriated? Did the dog spring on the man, or
THE CIPHER FOUND,
577
the man on the dog? Which was seized by the throat? Did the
man strike wildly at the dog, or the dog spring wildly at the man?
Every word in the sentence is a new element of perplexity. In
fact, if you had handed your friend three slips of paper, containing
the three words, struck, Tom, John, it would have been impossible
for him to decide, without some rule of arrangement, whether Tom
struck John or John struck Tom; and the great question, like that
of the blow inflicted on Mr. William Patterson, would remain for-
ever unsettled.
My problem was to find out, by means of a cipher rule of
which I knew little, a cipher story of which I knew less. A more
brain-racking problem was never submitted to the intellect of man.
It was translating into the vernacular an inscription written in an
unknown language, with an unknown alphabet, without a single
clue, however slight, to the meaning of either. I do not wonder
that Bacon said that there are some ciphers which exclude the
decipherer. He certainly thought he had constructed one in these
Plays.
I. The Heart of the Mystery.
The central point upon which the cipher turns is the dividing
line between the two plays, the first part of Henry IV., and the second
part of Henry IV.; and the essentials of the rule are found on the
last page of the former play and the first page of the latter play.
Observe how cunning this is.
Here was a puzzle the solution of which depended upon putting
together the two ends of two plays. Neither alone would give the
rule or solve the problem.
And Bacon published Part i of Henry IV. in 1598 and Part 2 /
in 1600. Why ? Because he was not sure that the artificial character
of the text might not arouse suspicion in that age of ciphers, and he
desired to test it. He submitted, it with curious interest to the .
public. But if it had aroused suspicion; if "Francis" "bacon"
(printed with a small b), " Nicholas " " bacons " (also with a small
^"),"son," "St. Albans," etc., etc., had caught the suspicious eyes
of any of Cecil's superserviceable followers, then he would have
held back the second part, and it would have been simply impos- ,
sible for any person to have worked out the cipher story; because
578 THE CIPHER IN THE PLA VS.
it turned upon pages 73 and 74 of an intended folio, while the
quarto copy of the play began with page 1.
The original sheets of the author's manuscript, arranged in
pages, as we have them in the great Folio of 1623, which paging
alone could have revealed the treasonable story, were doubtless
inclosed in some box or coffer, and carefully buried at St. Albans or
Gray's Inn; for in that age of absolute power no man's private
papers or desks were safe from a visitation of the myrmidons of
the law. We will see that when Nash, the actor, was arrested for
writing a seditious play, the Council ordered his papers to be at
once examined.
Delia Bacon said:
We know that this was an age in which not the books of the learned only were
subjected to "the press and torture which expulsed from them all those particulars
that point to action " — action, at least, in which the common weal of men is most
concerned; that it was a time when the private manuscript was subjected to that
same censorship and question, and corrected with those same instruments and
engines which made them a regular part of the machinery of the press; when the
most secret cabinet of the statesman and the man of letters must be kept in order
for that revision; when his most confidential correspondence, his private note-book
and diary, must be composed under these restrictions; when in the church not the
pulpit only, but the secrets of the study, were explored for proofs of opposition to
the power then predominant; when the private desk and drawers of the poor,
obscure country clergyman were ransacked, and his half-formed studies of ser-
mons, his rude sketches and hypothetical notes of sermons yet to be — put down
for private purposes, perhaps, and never intended to be preached — were produced
by government as an excuse for subjecting him to indignities and cruelties to
which those practiced upon the Earl of Kent and the Earl of Gloster in the play
[of Lear'] formed no parallel.1
And in 1600, after the first part of the play of Henry IV. had
stood the test of two years of criticism, and the watchful eyes and
ears of Francis Bacon could see or hear no sign or sound to indicate
that his secret was suspected, he ventured to put forth the second
part of the play. But this, like the other, began with page 1, and
detection was almost impossible.
And for twenty years scarcely any of the Plays known by
the name of Shakespeare were put forth, because to the keen eyes
of the author they were peppered all over with suspicious words
and twistings of the text, which might arouse suspicion and betray
the fact that they were cipher-work. And when at last all the
Plays were published in the great Folio, in 1623, arranged in their
1 The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded, p. 568.
THE CIPHER FOUND. 579
due order, there was, as I have heretofore said, little risk of dis-
covery. And in this Folio all the Plays were matched together, as
I infer, just as these two parts of Henry IV. are; that is, the cipher
of each group of two plays depended upon the last page of one and
the first page of the other. Thus there was but little risk in put-
ting out Othello alone, or Troilus and Cressida by itself, not only
because the paging of the quarto was not the same as that of the
Folio, but because these plays were not accompanied by their
cipher-mates, so to speak. They were like those curious writings
we have read of in romances, where the paper was cut in half and
each half secreted by itself, the writing not to be read and the
secret revealed until they were put together.
II. The Diagram on which the Cipher Depends.
If the reader will study the facsimiles of pages 73 and 74 of the
Folio of 1623, herewith given, he will find that the following
diagram gives the skeleton, or construction, of the pages and
columns, without the words. And as the entire cipher-story in the
two plays, the first and second parts of Henry IV., radiates out from
this diagram and extends right and left to the beginning of the First
Part and the last word of the Second Part, it will be well for the
reader to consider it closely.
The figures in the middle of the parts of the diagram give the
number of words in each subdivision. The figures on the margin
give the number of words from one point of departure to
another. The abbreviation " hy," in this diagram, means hyphen-
ated: it indicates that there are double words in the text, like
ill-spirited, which are to be counted as one word or as two
words, according to the requirements of the cipher rule. The sign
" (3)" signifies that, in addition to the regular number of words in
the text, there are three additional words in brackets : like "(as
we heare)," in the second column of page 73.
Throughout the cipher story, the abbreviations h and b will be
used to save printing in full " hyphenated words " and " words in
brackets/' respectively.
580
THE CIPHER IN THE TLA VS.
f i
+J
4, ^
Page 73.
End of J st Henry IV.
1st Column. 2nd Column,
Page 74.
Beginning of 2nd Henry IV.
A
27
A
28
A
03
A
209 (3)
Scsena Quarta.
79 1 hy.
V
[The End of the Play.]
Total on Page: 406 (3) 1 hy.
The Second Part of
Henry the Fourth.
1st Column. 2nd Column.
Actus Primus. Scaena Prima.
Induction.
Serena Secunda.
284
(10) 7 hy.
(1 hy)
M
V
168
(21) 1 hy.
A
30 (1) 1 hy.
4»H
ss !
h
«!
1 1 A.
1 1 '
A
; j$
k
't**
;
Here we observe that the first column of page 73 is broken into
three parts: first by the words "A retreat is sounded" and secondly
by the words u Sccena Quarta." The first subdivision contains 27
words, the second 6$ words, the last 79 words. Now if we count
from the top of the column to the end of the first subdivision, we
have 27 words; but if we count to and include the first word of the
next subdivision, there are 28 words. If we count from the top of
the column to the bottom we have 169 words; but if we count from
the top of the second subdivision to the bottom of the column, we
have, exclusive of the first word, 141 words; and from the end of
the first subdivision, and including the first word of the second sub-
division, we have 142 words.
Again: if we count from the top of the column to the break
caused by the words " Sccena Quarta" we have 90 words; and to
the top of the second subdivision, and including the first word of
the .same, we have 91 words. And if we count from the end of the
first subdivision to the words "Sccena Quarta" we have 63 words;
or, from the top of the second subdivision, excluding the first word,
we have, to the end of the scene, 62 words.
Again: if we count from the end of the second subdivision, the
90th word, to the bottom of the column, we have 79 words; but
from the 91st word down we have but 78 words. But there is a
THE CIPHER FOUND. 58i
hyphenated word in that subdivision, to-wit, the word ill-spirited,
the 97th word in the column; if this is counted in, that is, if it is
counted as two words instead of one, then the 79 words become 80
words, and the 78 words become 79 words.
I would here explain that in the cipher the words spoken by the
characters are alone counted : the "stage directions," and the names
of the characters speaking, are excluded from the count; so also
are the numbers of the acts and scenes.
Here, then, we have in the first column of page 73 these numbers:
Words in first subdivision 27
Words in second subdivision 63
Words in third subdivision 79
Words in the column 169
Words from 27th word to bottom of column 142
Words from 27th word to the end of second subdivision 63
Words from 28th word to the end of column 141
Words from 28th word to the end of second subdivision 62
Words from the top of column to the end of second subdivision 90
Words from the top of column to the beginning of third subdivision 91
Words from the beginning of third subdivision to end of column 79
Words from the beginning of third subdivision, plus one hyphen 80
. Now, all these numbers, in their due and regular order, become
modifiers of the root-numbers whereby the cipher story is worked
out.
But there is another set of modifying numbers in the second
column of page 73.
There are two subdivisions of this column, caused by the break
in the narrative where the words of the stage-direction occur:
Exit Worcester and Vernon.
The first subdivision contains 28 words, the second 209 words;
the column contains 237 words, besides three words in brackets,
" (as we heare)," on the seventh line from the bottom. If these are
counted in, then the column contains 240 words, and the second
subdivision contains 212 words. This column, then, gives us these
modifying numbers :
Words in first subdivision 28
Words in second subdivision 209
Words in second subdivision, plus the bracket words 212
Words in column ; 237
Words in column, plus the words in brackets 240
Words from end of first subdivision to end of column 209
Words from beginning of second subdivision to end of column 208
Words from beginning of second subdivision, plus bracket words 211
582 THE CIPHER IN THE PLA VS.
But it will be found hereafter that the modifying numbers
found on page 73 are not used in the cipher narrative until the
same has been first modified by the numbers obtained, in the same
way, on page 74. That is, page 74 is used before page 73. We
therefore turn to that page.
The first column of page 74 contains no breaks or subdivisions.
There are 284 words in the text, besides 10 words in brackets, 7
hyphenated words, and 1 hyphenated word inside a bracket — the
word post-horse, on the fourth line. This gives us, therefore, the
following numbers:
Total words in column 284
Total words in column, plus words in brackets 294
Total words in column, plus hyphenated words 291
Total words in column, plus hyphenated and bracket words 301
Total words in column, plus all the hyphenated and bracket words in the
column 302
We pass now to the second column. Here, as in the first col-
umn of page 73, we have three subdivisions; and these two col-
umns— the first of 73 and the second of 74 — constitute the
magical frame on which the cipher principally turns, and it is
from the marvelous interplay of the numbers found therein that
the cipher narrative is wrought out.
The first subdivision of the second column of page 74 con-
tains 50 words; the second, 168; the third, 30; and the reader will
observe hereafter how those figures, 50 and 30, play backward
and forward through the cipher story; and he will see how the
whole story of Shakspere's life, as well as Marlowe's, radiates out
from that central subdivision, containing 168 words, or 167, exclu-
sive of the first word.
The second column of page 74 gives us, then, these figures:
Number of words in first subdivision 50
Number of words in second subdivision 168
Number of words in third subdivision ' » 30
Number of words from top of column to beginning of second subdivision .... 51
Number of words from beginning of second subdivision to end of same 167
Number of words from beginning of column to end of second subdivision. . . . 218
Number of words from beginning of column to beginning of third subdivision . . 219
Number of words from beginning of column to end of column 248
Number of words from beginning of third subdivision to end of column , 29
Number of words from end of second subdivision to end of column 30
Number of words from end of first subdivision to end of column 198
Number of words from end of column to beginning of second subdivision. . . . 197
THE CIPHER EOUND. 583
But there are in this column 22 words in brackets and 2
hyphenated words. These are in the second and third subdivis-
ions, and modify them accordingly. That is to say, there are 21
words in brackets in the second subdivision and 1 in the third; and
there is 1 hyphenated word in the second subdivision and 1 in the
third. Hence we have these additional numbers:
Number of words in second subdivision 168
Number of words in second subdivision, plus 21 bracket words 189
Number of words in second subdivision, plus 1 hyphenated word 169
Number of words in second subdivision, plus 22 bracket and hyphenated words 190
Number of words in third subdivision 30
Number of words in third subdivision, plus 1 bracket word 31
Number of words in third subdivision, plus 2 bracket and hyphenated words. . 32
The multipliers which produce the root-numbers are found in
the first column of page 74. They are: 10 (the number of bracket
words); 7 (the number of hyphenated words); n (the number
of bracket words, plus the one hyphenated word, post-horse,
included in the bracket); and 18 (the total of bracketed and
hyphenated words in the column).
We have here, then, the machinery of Bacon's great cipher; and,
as we proceed with the explanation of its workings, the wonder of
the reader will more and more increase, that any human brain
could be capable of compassing the construction of such a mighty
and subtle work.
The cipher story I shall work out in the following pages is but
a small part of the entire narrative in these two plays. I break, as
it were, into the midst of the tale, like one who overhears the mid-
dle of a conversation between two men: he has not got it all, but
from what he gleans he can surmise something of what must have
preceded and of what will probably follow it.
The root-numbers out of which the story grows are as follows:
505< 506, 513, 516, 523. +> .?
These are the keys that unlock this part of the cipher story,
in the two plays, 1st and 2d Henry IV. They do not unlock it all;
nor would they apply to any other plays. They are the product of
multiplying certain figures in the first column of page 74 by cer-
tain other figures. The explanation of the way in which they are
obtained I reserve for the present, intending in the future to work
5^4
THE CIPHER IN THE PLA VS.
out the remainder of the narrative in these two plays, which I here
leave unfinished. It may, of course, be possible that some keen mind
may be able to discover how those numbers are obtained and antici-
pate me in the work. I have to take the risk of that. My publishers
concur with me in the belief that the copyright laws of the United
States will not give me any exclusive right to the publication of
that part of the cipher narrative in the plays which is not worked
out by myself. I shall therefore have worked for years for the
benefit of others, unless in this way I am able to protect myself.
" The laborer is worthy of his hire," and if such a discovery as this
could have been anticipated by the framers of our copyright laws,
they would certainly have provided for it. For if a man is entitled
to gather all the benefits which flow from a new application of
electricity, as in the telegraph or the telephone, to the amount of
millions of dollars, certainly there should be some protection for
one who by years of diligent labor has lighted a new light in litera-
ture and opened a new gate in history.
Neither do I think any reasonable man will object to my reserv-
ing this part of the cipher. My friend Judge Shellabarger, of
Washington, said in an address, in 1885, before a literary society of
that city:
If any man proves to me that in any writing the tenth word is our, the twen-
tieth word Father, the thirtieth word who, the fortieth word art, the fiftieth word in,
the sixtieth word heaven, and so on through the whole of the Lord's Prayer, we
must confess, however astonished we may be, that such a result could not have
occurred by accident; but that these words must have been ingeniously woven into
the text by some one, at those regular and stated intervals.
And if this be true when the cipher word is every tenth word,
would it not be equally true if the Lord's Prayer occurred in the
text at intervals represented by the following figures?
10th word.
1 8th word.
27th word.
10th word.
1 8th word.
27th word.
Our
Father,
who
art
in
heaven,
10th word.
18th word.
27th word.
10th word.
1 8th word.
27th word.
hallowed
be
thy
name:
thy
kingdom
10th word.
1 8th word.
27th word.
10th word.
1 8th word.
27th word.
come;
thy
will
be
done
on
10th word.
1 8th word.
27th word.
10th word.
1 8th word.
27th word.
earth
as
it
is
in
heaven.
THE CIPHER FOUND. 585
That is to say, if the cipher narrative moves through the text
not 10, 10, 10, etc., but 10, 18, 27; 10, 18, 27; 10, 18, 27, etc.
And if this be true of a short writing, like the Lord's Prayer,
does it not amount to an absolute demonstration if this series of
numbers, or any other series of numbers, extends through many
pages of narrative, from the beginning of one play to the end of
another?
Instead of the cipher story in these Plays being, as some have
supposed,. a mere hop-skip-and-jump collocation of words, it will be
found to be as purely arithmetical, and as precisely regular, as
either of the examples given above.
4<f
The Firil: Part of Henry tke Fourth,
with the Life and Death of HENRY
SirnamedHOT.SPVRRE.
<ttf Bus Trimw* Scocna Trima.
ggtif&lKiftg.LoYdfekti ofLtocaperjzgrle
Ki»gs
;0 fhaien as we a re; fo wan with car e\
iFjndc we a time for frighted Peace to panr*
Vnd breath i7;ortwmdcdaccentsof new broils
jjTo be comracne'd if* Strond* a^rarre remote :
No ffiDRtbe th t ! fty en 1 1 a n cc c-f th i s Soi fej
Shall daube her iippes with her ownc cnildrerrs biaod i
No mo re fhajl trenching Warre channell her fields,
N&rbruife her FJowrets witrtthe Armed hoofes
Of hofl^e faces. Thofeoppofcd eye*,
Which like rhc Meteors of a troubled Heauerij
Ml of one Nature, of one Subftancc bred,
P d lately meete intheinteftinelhacke*,
And furious cloze of ciuill Butchery,
Shall now m rnutuall weU-bcfcernmg rankes
March all one way, and be no more oppo* u
Agamft Acquaintance, Kindrcd.and Allies..
The edge o£. Warre, like an ilUfheathed knife,
No more /Hall cut his Matter. Therefore Friends,
As farreas to theSepulchcc of Cnrift,
Whofe Souldier now vndcr whofe blcffeiCrorTe
We arc imprefted and irtgagdro fight*
Forthwith a power of Eoglifh fhall we leuie*
Whofe ar mes were moulded in their Mothers wornbe,
To chacerliefc Pagans in thofe holy Fields,
Ouer wliofe Acres walk'd thofe blcflcd fecte
Which fouueene hundred yearcs ago were natl'd
Forouraduantagc on thebittci CrniTe.
Bttcthis ourpur pofe is a tweluemonth ohf,
And bootlefTe 'tis to tcllyou we will go ;
Therefore we mcetenctnow. Then letmehearc
Of you my gentle Coufin Weftmerhnd
Whatycfternightour Councell did decree.
ia forwarding this deere expedience*
/ Weft* My Liege jTlii.hjfte was hot ioqucftion,
And many limits of the Charge fet downe
Bfltycfternighti when all athwart there came
APoftfromWalesjloaiienwithheauyNcwes;
Whofe woi ft was, That the Noble CMmmtr^
wading the mfcnofHerefordfhirc to fight
Agiinft the irregular and wildc Clendower^
Was by ih$ rude bands ofthat Welftunan takers
ftfliaillQufawci ofhis people butchered ;
Vpon whofe dead corpes there was fuckjjiifuie$
SuchbeaftlyjiliameltiVerransforfMfjonv
By thofe WcHhwomen done, as may not be
(Without much flume) re told or fpoken of.
King _ It fecmes then, that thetidings of thiibroif^
Brake crTourbufindTc for the H«Iy land*
Wefa This roatcht with other Me,my gracious Ldj&
Farre more vneucrt and vnwelcome Ncwct '
Camefrom the North. aiulthusJcdid report 8
On Holy-roode day, the gallant Hoiffmne chut*
Young harry Percy* and braue zslrchtbald,
That euer.vaiiant and approoued Scot,
At Holmtden mer, where they did fpend
A fad and bloody boure ;
As by difebarge of their Artillcrle,
Anafliapeofhkcly-hoodihejicweswastolds
For he that brought them, in the very heate
And pride of their contention, did take horfe>
Vucet taine of the iflue any way.
Kt*g Hcerc is a deere and true induftrious fnen J^
Sh Walter 2?//*»r,new lighted from his Horfd
StrainM with the variation of each l'oy!e4
Betwixt that Holmtden ^x\A this Seat of ours :
And he hath brought ys fmooth and svelcomes newes;
The Earlc oiDowglas is difcoiiifitedj
Ten thoufand bold Scots, two and twenty Knight!
Balk'd in their owneblood did S\t Walter (te
On Holntedons PJaines, Of Prifoners, Hotftmr$ tooic
Mordakq Earle of Fife, and eldeft fonne
Jo beaten ^Dow^Us and tbe Earle ofj4(foBM
QtMttrrjt esfngtuflnA Merit e it h.
And is nouhisan honourable fpoy[c>
A gallant prire ? Ha Coiin,is it not?Infaith hi**
Weft. AConqueftforaPrincetoboaftof.
Ki»i, Yea, there thou mak'ft me fad, & mak*ft fllfi fift
lncnuy,thatmy Lord Not thumberland
Should be the Father of fo Weft a Sonne :
ASonne,whois the Theame of Honors tongue;
Among'it a Groue, the very ftraigbtefl PJan^
Who is fwect Fortunes Minion,and her Pride:
Whil'ft I by looking on the praife of him.
See Ryot and Difhonor ftaine the brow
Ofmyyong iiforry. O that it could be prou'd, *
That fomeNight-tripping-Faiery, had exchanged
In Cradle»dothe $, our Children where they lay,
And ealfd mine Percy -, his Plmtttm i
5°
The Firfl ^Pari o/IQng Henry the Fourth.
Telnet. Good morrow fweet Hal. What faics Mon-
fieur Remorfe 1 ? Whar fayes Sir Iohn Sacke and Sugar :
lackef? How agrees the Dwell and thec about thy Soule,
that ihou foldeft him on Good-Friday laft, for a Cup of*
Madera,and a cold Capons leggc?
Prin. Sir Iohn ftands to his word, thediuel (hall haue
his bargaine,ror he was neucryer a Breaker oFProuerbs:
He xpiHgitte the ditteKbis due.
poht.Then art thou damn'd For keeping thy word with
the diuell.
Brin. Elfc he bad damn'd for cozeningthe diuell.
Foy. But my lads., my Lada/to morrow morning,l>y
fours a clocke early at Gads hill, there are Pilgrimes go-
ing to Canterbury with rich Offerings, and Traders ri-
ding to London with fat Purfes. I haue vizards for you
all ; you haue horfes for your felucs : Gads-hill lyes to
night in Rochcfter, I haue befpoke Supper to morrow in
Eaficheapcj we may doe it as fecurc as fleepc: if you will
go,IwillftufTe your Purfes full of Cfownes : if you will
pot, tarry at home and be hang'd.
TaL Heare ye Ycdward,if I tarry at home and go not,
lie hang you for going,
foy. You will chops.
'Fal. Hal, wilt thou make one?
Pnn. Who,Irob?IaTheefc?NotI.
F^/.ITherc's neither hoaefty, marihood,norgocd fel-
low fhrp in tbee. nor thou eam*(t not of theblood-royall,
if thou dal*ft not (land foi ren (hillings.
Writ** Well then.once in my dayes lie be a mad-cap.
W*(* Why;that*s well faid.
Pritt. Well; come what will, He tarry at home.
Fal. lie be a Traitor then, when thou art King. •
£>r/».;T care not.
¥ojn. Sir fob*,! prytheeleaue the Prince 8f me alone,
I will lay him downc fuch reafons for this aduemure,that
he fliall go.
Fal. Well, maift thou haue the Spirit of-perfwafion ;
and he the eares of profiting, ithat what thou fpeakeft ,
may moue ; and what he heares may be beleeucd.that the
true Piince,roay(for recreation fakc)proue a falfe thecfe j
for the pooreabufes ofihetime,wanr countenance. Far-
well.you (hall findc meinEaftcheape.
1 Prin. Farwellthelattei Soring.. FarewellAlholIown
Summer.
Poj. Now, my g©ed fweet Hony Lord, ride with vs
to raorrow.Tl haue a left to execute, that I cannot rr.an-
nage alone. Falftaffe; Harvey. Rt>J[iit,md'q*dt-hiRt fhall
robbethofe men that wcehpue aheady way-laydc, your
fclfc andl, wil not be thererand when ihey haue the boo-
ty, if you and I do not iobthcm^ cut rhis head from tny
fhoulders.
/V/w.But how fhal w* part with rhem in fecting forth?
Poyn. Why,we wil fet forth before or after them. and
appoint them a place of n ceting, wherin it is at our plea-
fure to faile \ and then will they aduenturc ,vppon the ex-
ploit rhemfelucs, which they fhall haue no fooner atchie-
ued, but wce'l fet vpon them.
Prin. Jjbiittis like that they will know vs by our
horfes.by ourh3bits,and by euery other appointment to
beoui felues. ,
Toy. Tut our hotfes they fhall not fee, He tyc them in
the wood, our vizards wee will change aftei wee leaue
them : and firrah, 1 haue Cafes of Buckram for the nonce,
to imrnaske our noted outward garments.
Prin. But! doubt they will be too hat d for vs.
fein, Well,for two of them, I know them to bee as
true bred Cowards as euer turn'd backc.and for the third
if he fight longer then he feesreafon,Ileibrfwear Armes,
The vertue of chisleft will be, the incomprehenfible lyes
that tbisfat Rogue will tell vs,when we meeieatSUf pcri
how thirty at leaf* he fought with, what Wardes, vvbai
blowes, what extremities he cndured;and in thercproofe
of this, lyes the ieft.
Trin. Well, He goe with thee, prouide vs all thing,
neceffary, and meete roe tomorrow night m EaftcheapL
there He fup. Farewell. n>
Poyn. Farewelhmy Lord. ExitPmr*
Prin. I know you all, and will a-while yphold
The vnyoak'd humor of your idleneflc :
Yechecrein will I imitate the Sunne,
Who doth permit the bafe contagious cloudes
To fmothet vp his Beauty from the world,
That when he pleafe agame to be himfcife,
Being wantcd,hemay be more wondred ar,
By breaking through the foule and vgly mifts
Of vapours, that did feeme to liranglchim.
If all the ycarc were playing holidaics,
To fport, would be as tedious as to worke j
J But when they lcldome come, they wiflu-for come,
{ And nothing pleafeth but rare accidents.
So when this loofe behauiour I throw off,
And pay the debt 1 neuer proroiied ;'
By how much better then my word I am.
By fo much fliall 1 falfifie mens hopes,
And like bright Mettail on a Allien ground ;
My reformation glittering o're my fault,
Shall fhew more goodly, and attract mor* eyes^
Then that which hath no foyle to fet it off.
lie fo offend, to make offence a skill,
Redeeming time^when men thinke lead I will.
Sccena Tertia.
Enter the IGngyNorthfimkr/andjrorceJ}er^Hotjparrea
Sir Walter 72 lu*t, and others.
King* My blood hath beene coo cold and temperate^
Vnapt to ftirre at the fc indignities,
And you haue found me ; for accordingly,
You tread vpon my patience : But be fure,
I will from henceforth rather be my Selfe,
Mighty, and to befear'd, then my condition
Which hath beene fmooth as Oyfc^fofc as yortgDowne,
And therefore loft thatTitle efrefpedt,
Which the proud foule ne're payes,but to the proud,
Wor. Our houfe (my Soueraigne Licge)little dsfcruei
The fcourge of greatneffe to be vfed on it,
And that fame greatneffe too, which our ownehandi
Haue holpe to make fo portly.
Nor. My Lord.
King. Wor cefter get thec gone : for I do fee
Danger and difobedience in thine eye.
O fir, your prefenceis too bold and peremptory*
And Maieftie might neuct yet endure
The moody Frontier of a feruant brow,
You haue good Ieauetolcaue vs. When we need
Your vfe and counfell,we fhall lend for you.
You were about to fpeake.
North, Yea, my good Lord.
1 & Thofe
J*
TheFirft TartofKjngHemy tbeFourth.
Hot. JBut&rft Ipray you j did King Riehardtthen
Prodaime my brother Aiortimtf,
Heyrexo the Crowned ,
' "iW. HedidjOiyfeifedidhcareir.
//<?/. Nay then 1 cannot blame his CoufinKIng,
That wifh d him on tbeDarren Mountaines ftaru'd.
But fhall tt be, that you-that let the Crowne _
Vpon the head of this forge t-full man,
And foch'rs fakc,wore the^detefted blot
Of murtherous lubornatioiT? Shall it be,
That you a world of carles vndergoe,
Being the Agents, or bafe fecb'nd mcanes,
The Cords, tbe Ladder, or the Hangman rather ?
O pardon, if that I defcend ib low,
To ftiew the Line, and the Predicament
Wherein you range vnder this fubtill King.
Shall it for Qiame^be fpoken in thefc dayes,
Or fill vp Chronicles in time-to come,
That men of your Nobility and Power,
Did gage them both in an vniuft behalfe v
(As Both ofyoiijGod pardon it, haue done)
To put -down? RtcbarJt that fweetloucly Rofe,
And plant this Thome, this Canker "2>«#/»£&w%?
And fhall it in more fhame be further fpoken,
That you arefool'd, difcardcd.and fhookeoft
By him, for whom thefe Thames ye vnderwent ?
No : yet time femes, wherein you may redeeme
Your baaim'd Honors, and rcftore your felues
Into the good Thoughts of the world againe.
Reuenge the geering and difdain'd contempt
Of this proud King, who ftudies day and night
To anfwer all the Debt he owes vnto you,
Euen with the bloody Payment ofyoui deaths :
Therefore I fay <
Wat-. Peace Coufin . fay no more.
And now 1 will vncfaspe 2 Secret booke,
And to your quicke conceyuing Difcontcnts,
He reads you Matter, deepe and dangerous.
As full ofperill andaduenturoui Spine,
As to o*re-\valke a Current, roaring loud
On the vnftedfaft footing of a Spcare.
Hot. It he fall in, good night, or 'hnke or fwimme:
Send danger from the Ealt vnto the Welt,
So Honor crofle it from the North to South,
And let them grapple : The blood more ltirres
Torowzea Lyon,then to ftart a Hare.
Nor Imagination offome great exploit,
Drhies him beyond the bounds of Patience.
Hot. Byheiuen, me thinkes it were an eafie leap,
To plucke bright Honor from the pale-fac d Moone,
Or diue into the bottome oi ihe deepe,
Where"Fadome-line could neuer touch-the ground,
And plucke vp drowned Honor by the Lockes :
So hexhat'doth redeerneber thence, might wcare
Without Co-riuall, alfher Dignities:
But out vpon this halfe-'inc d Eellowfhip.
IFcr. Kc'apprehetids a World of Figures here,
But not the forme oi whathefhould attend :
Good Coufin gule me audience for a-while,
And lift to me.
Hoi. T cry you mercy.
V/ly. Thole fame Noble Stottes
That are your Ptifoners,
.. Hoi. illc keepe them all.
By heauen, ne fhall pot haue a Scot of them:' \
Noiif a Scot would hue his Soule,hc fhallnot.' '
Ilckccpe them, by this Hand.
War. You (tart away,
And lend no eare vnto my purpofes.
Thofe Prifoners you fhall keepe.
Hot. Nay, I will j that's flat:
He faid, he would not ranfome Morumer;
Forbad my tongue to fpeakeot',*/orr?wrr.
But I will findc him when he lyes afleepe,
And in his eare, lie holla Mortimer.
Nay, He haue a Starlirfg fhall be taught to fpcake
Nothing but Morttmer> and giueit him,
To keepe his anger ftili in motion.
Wnr. HeareyouCoufia:aword.
Hot, All ftudies heere I folemnly defie,
Saue how to gall and pinch this Buftitigkrooke,
And that fame Sword and Buckler Prince of Wales.
But that I thinkchis Father loues him not,
And would be gbd he met with fome mif chance*
I would hauepoyfon'd him with a pot of Ale,
War. Farewell Kinfinan : He talketo you
When you arebetter tempctd to attends
Nor.\ Why what a Wafpe-tongu'd & impatient foole
Art thou, to breakeinto this Womans mood,
Tying thine care to no tongue but thine owneT
Hot. Why look you, I am whipt & fcourg'd witbrods,
Netted, and ftung with Pifmires,whcn I heare
Of this vile Politician BuRingbreoke.
VaRjchArds time : What de'ye call the place ?•
A plague vpon't, it is in Glouftcrihire :
'Twas, where the madcap Duke bis Vnde kept,
HisVndeYorke,Viherelfirflbow'dmykncc
Vnto this King of Smiles, this BtiRingfocske:
When you and he came backe fcom' RaaenfpurgH.
Nor, AtBarkleyCaftle,
Hot. You fay true r
Why wh3t a caudie dcale of curteHe,
This-fawning Grey hound then did proffer me,
Looke when his infant Fortune came to age,
And gentle Harry "Percy, and kinde Ccufiu :
O, the Diuell take fuch Couzcners,God forgiucme,
Good Vnde tell your tale, for 1 haue done.
Wor. N3y, if you haue not, too't againe,
WeeTftay your leyfure.
Hot. I haue done infooth.
TVor. Then once more toyour Scottifh Prifoners.
Deliuer them vp w'thout their ranfome ftraight,
And make the Dowglas fonne your onely meane
For powr.es in Scotland : which for diuers reifons
Which I Qiall fend you written,be aflur'd
Will eafily be granted you, my Lord.
Your Sonne in Scotland being thus imp 1 y'd»
Shall fecrctly into the bofome creepe
Of that fame noble Prelate^ well bclou'dj
TheArchbifhop.
Hot. OfYorke,is'tnot?
Wor. True, who besres hard „
His Brothers death at Briftovr, the Lord Scrooge,
I fpeakenot this in eftimation, .
As what I thinke might be, but what 1 know
Is ruminated,plotted-and fet downe,
And onely ftayes but to behold the face
Of that occafion that /hall bring it on.
Hot. Jimcllit:
Vpon my life, ;t will do wond*rous well.
Nor. Before the game's a-foot, thou ftilllef ft flip.
Hot. Why,it cannot choofe but be aNoblc plot,
And
And then fbcpowcr ofScotland;and ofV orkc
n
TCoioync with Mortimer* Hi.
Wen And fo they fhall.
IteU Infaiih it is exceedingly well aym'd.r
VTir* And 'tis no little rcafon bidi vs fpeed,
lofaue our heads, by raifingofaHead :
Fb^ beare oisr fcluer*$.#uc»f » we canr
TJbfjKiftg wiiltflwayce thinke himinoar debt£
Xrtd ihinkc,we thinke ourfclucs vuGtisficd,
Tillhehath found a tirocMapay »s home.
Artdftf^OJJkdyjiioW be doth beginne
To iflai»tffl»ngera~to his lookcs of lout,
KtU He docsjie does; weel be rcucng?<j;On him.
W<mt Coj$r),fafeWelU No further go in this>
Then I by tetters fnall foxtSk your courfe
Wrientlmelstipe, which will be fodainlyi
JltftealetoG/rtw/anxrr and ioe, Moriimerx
VVticre you,and Dowglas ,i\na our powjes sroncc,
RaXwill fafhion it, (hall happily mecte,
TTobeare out fortunes in out owne ftrong armes,
WhiCfi now wChold ataiuch vneertatnty^
ffhn Farewell good Brother, we ftiaiIthfiue,Ttruft.
Jfof* Vncle.adieu : O Jet thehoures be fhort,
Tillfieldsjand blowes,and grones,applaud our (fan.JUS0
MlusSccundus, Scena^Prima,
Enter a Carrier with a hanterne in his handf
% .Car. Heigh-ho,an'tbenot fouteby the day,IIe be
hang'd. Charles waine is ouer the new Chimney, and yec
oUthorfenotpackt, WhatOftler?
Oft, Anon.anon.
XJCar. I prethee Tom, beate Cuts Saddle, put a few
Hockcs in the point; the poore lade is wrung in the wi-
)&crsjputofallceiTc.
Enter another Carrier*
4.Car. tpeafe andBeanes arenas dankehcte as a Dog,
and this is the next way to giue poore lades thf Bortes :
This houfc is turned vpfide downe fince T^phia the Qftler
dyed;
3+Car, Poore fellow neuer ioy'd fince the price of oats
WfC/H was the death of him.
4. Car, I thinke this is the mofl villanous houfc In al
Condon rode for Fleas: I am Rung like a Tench;
i,£V. Like a Tench? There is ne're a King in Chri-
ftendome, could be better bit,then I hauebeene fince the
hrftCoclcc.
a.Car. Why, you will allow vs ne're a] lourden, and
then we leake in your Chimney : and yout Chamber -lye
breeds Fleas like a Loach.
I ,Car, What Oftle^comc away,and be hangd:come
away.
*.Car> 1 haue a Gammon of Bacon, tand two razes of
Ginger,tobc deliuered as farre as Charing-croffe.
XtCar. TheTurkiesinmy Pannier are i^aite ftarued.
WrracOftler? A plague on thee,haft thou nctseran eye in
thy head PCan'ft not heare ? And t'were not as good a
deed as drinke, to break thepate oftiieej am a very Vil-
hine. Come and bchang'd,haft no faith in the? ?
Enter Gadt-htlt<
(jad. Good-morrow Carriers. Whatsacloctcf
Cat* I thinke icbe two a clocke.
CaL I prethee lend me thy Lanthoriie to fee my Gel-
ding in the ft able.
I .Car, Nay (oft J pray ye, I know a crick worth two
of that.
Cad. I prethee lend me thine.
t.Car. I,whcn, canft tell f Lend mee thy Lanthorne
(quoth.a) marry lie fee thee hangd fitft*
Cad. Sirra Carrier ; What time do you mean to come
to London?
tlCar, Time enough to goc to bed with a Candle, 1
warrant thee. Come neighbour CHugges. wee'JLcallvp
the Gentlemen, they wilWong with company/for they
hauc great charge. JExvmt
Enter Chamhertaint.
Gad. Whatho,ChamberIaine?
Cham. At hand quoth Pick-put fe.
Gad. That's cuen as faire,as at hand quoth the Chanv
berlaine : For thou varieft no more from pickhtg'of Por-
fes, then g'ming direction, doth from labouring . Thou
lay ft the plot, how.
Cham. Good morrow Maftet Gads- Hill, it holds cur-
rant that I told you yefternight. There's a Franklin in the
wildc of Kent, hath brought three hundred Markes with
him inGolJ:I heard nimtell it to one of his company Iaft
night at Supper; a kindeof Auditor, one that hath abun-
dance of char ge too (God knowes what) they are vp air
ready, and call for Eggcs and Butter. They will away
prefently,
Gad, Sirra, if they meete not with S .Nicholas Clarks,
He giue thee this necke.
iham* No, He none of it : I pry thee keep that for the
Hangman, for I know thouwoifhipftS.Nicholas as tr«*
ly as a man of falfhood may.
Gad. What talkeft thou to me of the Hangman? If I
hang, lie make a fat payrc of Gallowes. JFor, if I.hang*
old Sir John hangs with mee, and thou know'ft bee's no
Starueling* Tut, there arc other Troians that ^ drearn'rl
not of, the which (for fport fake) are content to doc the
Profeffion lbme grace ; that would (if matters fhould bee
look'd into) for their owne Credit fake, make all Whole.
1 am ioyned with no Foot-laiid-Rakers, no Long-ftaffe
fix-penny ltrikers,noneofthefcmad Muftachio-purplc-
hu'd-Maltvvormcs, but with Nobility, and Tranquiliiic;
Bourgomaftcrs, and great Oneycrs, luch as can holdc in,
fuch as will ftrikc fooner then fpeake ; and fpeake fbonei
then drinke. and drin^c fooner then pray : and yet 1 fy«?j
for they pray continually vnto their Sainnhc Common-
wealth ; or rather, not to pray to her, but prey on hertfor
they ride vp & downe on hcr,and make hir their Boots.
Cham. What,thc Commonwealth their Bootes* Witt
(he hold out water in foulc way ?
Gad. She wil^fhe will; luftice hath liquor'd her. We
(teak as in a Caftlccockfurc-: we haue the rcceit of Fern-
fccde,we walke inuifiblc.
Cham, Nay , I thmlic ratber^au are more beholding
to the Night, then tothcFernfeed,foryour walking in-
uifible.
Cad. Giue roe thy hand.
Thou fhalt haue a fhare in our purpofe,
As I am a rrue man.
Cham, Nay,ratherletmeehauelt,asyoii«eafalfe
Theefc.
Gad, Goetoo : Homo is a common name to all men,
Bid the Oftler bring tfie Gelding out of the ftable. Fare-
well^yc criuddy Knaue, Exeunt,
e 2 Seen a
54
TheFirjl'Part ofK^ng Henry the Fmrtk
SctfnaSeemda,
Sifit 'PjtneeiPojws/md Peto.
Points. Come flielter,fhelter, I haue remoued Fdlfiafs
florfe,andfi<iftelfslvke a gum d Vduet.
frm* Standttofe.
E*ierf*ljteffe.,
'Yak ToineSyPoineSyznA be kang'd Power.
Prin. Peace ye fat-kidney *d Rafcall, what a brawling
doflthoulcccpe.
Fal. What femes. Hal},
Prit>m He is walk'd vj* to the top of the hill,llc go feek
him. .
F^. lam aecurft to rob mthatTheefe company: that
Rafcall hath remoued my Hdrfe.and tied htm I know not
where.' If I trautllbut foure foot by the fquire further"*
footeaI ftiall breake my winde. Well, I doubt not but
to dye a fatre death for all this, if I fcape hanging for kil-
ling that Rogue, I haue forfwotne his company hourely
any time this two and twenty yeare,©7 yet rambewitcht
with theRogues company. Jf the Rafcall haue norghien
trie medicines to makeme lottehim^lebchaog d;it could
fiotbetlfe si hauc dr'unkc Medicines. Poms, Halt a
Efagueypon you \>Qth.\Bardolphi'Petg : lie ftarue ere I
rob a foote further.' And 'twere not as good a decdeasto
drfrike, to turneTrue-Tnafo,and to leaue theft Rogues, I
aratbeverieflt Varlet that euer chewed with a Tooth.
Eight yards of vneuen ground, is thrtefcore & ten miles
afoot with me : and tbe ftony-hearred Viflaines kr.owe it
will enough. A plague ypon'^when Theeues cannot be
twe one to another. ThejWhtftle.
Whew :a plague light yponyoH&U.Giue my Horfe you
Rogues :giue me my Horfc.and'be hang'd;
;JV*».7peaceyefarguttes,' lye downe, Jay thine car*
clofe to the ground, and lift if thou can hcarc the aead of
Trauclkrs.
T*F. Haue you aay leauers to lift roe vp agajn^belng
downe? He not bearemine owne flefli fo far afoot again,
for all the coine in thy Fathers Exchequer. What a plague
meaneyeto colt me thus ?
Ptix.Thou ly'fhthou art not colted,thou art vncoIteiL
Fal. -I prethee good Prince H<?/,hcip me t o my horfc,
good Kings Tonne.
Triri. OutyouRogue^fhalllbeyourOfller?
Fal. Go hang chy felfe in thine bwneheire-apparanta*
Garters : If I be tanc, He peach for this: andl haue not
Ballsds made on all, and fung to filthy tunes, let a Cup of
Sackebemy poyXon : when a left is fo forward. Si 2 foots
foOjIhaseit. *
MtntGadfJiil?
Gad. Standi
Fall $0 1 do^agairift myvi'iih
foh.s Q 'tis our Setter, Tknow his voyce :
£ardolft,yih&t ne wes ?
3?*i, Cafe ye^afeye ;*>rr withyour Vizards^, there"*
roonyiifrlfeRWsxomniing^owne the hill, 'tis] going
tojthSKingsBxchequcr-,
JKtf^u^eyoirtoguey*^
75^;Thier^!ffaugh t^makev* a!12
"Waft Ttrhehan^,:
Prirt. You foure mall front them in the narrow Lane*
Ned andl,wiU walke lower? if they fcape from'youi ini
counter,then they light on vs.'
Veto/ But how many be of them ?
Cad. Some e i ght or teny
Fal. Will they not rob vs?
Pr'm ' What, a Coward Sir Teh Paunch
Fal.; Indeed I am ttotlohnof Gaunt your Grandfatheri
b ut y et no Coward, Hal.
Pritt^ Wec'l leaue thatto the proof**
Poor. Sirra Iacke, thy borfe ftands behfnde the hedgj
when thon needft him, there thou (halt finde him. Fare*
welhand ftandfaft.'
Fal. .Now cannot I ftrike him.if I fhouldbe hangM,
J?nnS:Ned, where are our difguifes f
Pom. Hecrc hard by : Stand dofe>
Fal. Now my Matters, happy man be his dole, fay I
eucry man to his bufineflV
Billet Trauelltrs.
Tra. Come Neighbor: the boy (hall leade out Rorfes
dowhe the! hill : Wee*l walke a-foot a while;and cafe our
Legges,
Theeues. Stay.
7V<.,lc(ublelTevs.
JEal. Strile. down with them, cut the villains throats;
a whorfon Caterpillars : Bacon fed Knaues * they hate vs
I youth ; downe with them.fleece them,'1
Tra. 0,we are vndonejaoth we and ours for cuer — •
Fal. Hang ye gorbcllied knaues,areyou vndone ? Nii
yeFatChurTe»,I would your More '.were heere^. On Ba-
con s. on, what yeknaues?Yong men muft hue, yotfare
Grand Iurers,areye . Wee'l iure ye ifaith;
Heere theyyob themtaad binde them. Snter the
Prince and Pomes.
T'WiCTheTheeues haue bound the Truc-men : Now
could thou and I rob theTheeuej,a!id gomerily to Loni
don, it would be argument for : a Weeke, Laughter foi 1
Moncth,anda good iell for euer,
Paynes. Stand clofe. I hcarc them comming.
MnterTheettes againe.
Fal. Come my Mailers, let vs fhare,and then toborlff
befoce day : and the Prince and Poyncs bee not two ar*
rand Cowards, there's no equity {tirritig. There's no mot
valour in that Poyncs,than 111 a wrlde Dueke«
Jurist* Your money
Pwr^iyilfaines;
iAsihej arefharingftieVtmcz and Poynea \fet ivpon-ttie&&
They xHrtiHaxAjJeaniiig the booty behind theati
frinct!. Got With much eafc. Now merrily ctf tftftfti
!TheThfecue*are fcastrcd,and poltcftwiih fear fafti |dW»
!y, eh at they dare not meet each other : each takes his tw>
|ow for aft OfficcrrAway good Uedr jFalJlajfe fweitesto
death.and Lards the lea ne earth as he walkes along;weKI
not for laughing^l (hould pittyrhTm*
'JPoSttflfom the Rogue^bat'di, ?xchhi±
SwruiTertia.
MmerHotfjtttrrefoltujreadiHgaLetttr. %
TButfor mine owne part ;mf Lord, JconldbetweSemttitrtdU
it tbirc^in refyeft ofthctml beareyottrhoufe.
He
XbePirfiTartofKmgHettrytbeFmth,
55
He could be contented : Why is he nor thcaPiarerp.cdt.of
the loue he besres our houfc. ' He (he w es in chis',he loucs
hisowne Barne better then he loues our houfc. Lee me
fipcibmc more*, i The pnrpofeyoji ; vndertake isj&angttgttt*
Why that's certainc i'Tis dangerous to takeaColde, to
flrcpe, to drinkc : but t tell you.(my Lord foole) out 'of
thisNettle^Dangeri we pluckethis Flower^ Safety. Tbf
mrpofeyott undertake is dangerous, the Friends- jottJiaue no*
uudvnctrtaine>tUeTmcit felfevnforted^amA jqw^ypholt
Plot too light, t for ike counterpoize of fo great am Oppofttion.
Say you Jo, fayyou fo : I fay vncoyou. againej, you are a
(hallow cowardly Hinde^andyonXye., What.a.lackc-
brainc is this? 1 prolcrt, our plot U as good a plor as cuer
v/as laid j our Friend true and coriftant :. A good Plotic,
goodFricnds.andfuUofexpeclation: An excellent plot*
yciy good Friends* What a Frofty-ipitUcd rogue is this?
Why, my Lord of Yorke commends the plot v and the
generallcourfc of the action; By this hand.if 1 were now
by.thisRafcalLlcouldbraine him with his Ladies Fan,
Is there not my Father; my .Ynckle, and my Sclfe, Lord
Edmund Moriimertmy Lord of TorketmA Owen Cjlendou'r}
Is there not b.efides, the Dowglast Haue I not all their let*
tersjtomeetemeinArmesby the ninth of the next Mo-
ncth ? and ore they not (ome of them fct forward already?.
What a Pagan Raltall is this? AnlnfideMHai you (nail
ieen.ow in very (inccrity of Feare and Cold hcart.-willhc
to the King,;and lay open all our proceedings* 0,1 could
diuide my fclfe, and go to buffets*, for moiling fucha di(h
«f skinrd Milk with fo honourable an Action. Hang him.
lethim tell the King wcare prepared. I will fet.totwards
tOflighr.
Enter his Lady,
How now Kate,lmuft leaue you within thefc two hours.
La, O.my good Lord* why /arc you thus alone /
For what offence haue J this fortnight bin
A banifiYd woman from my Harries bed ?
Tell me (fwcer Lord) what is't that takes from thee
Thy ftomacke^pleafure.and thy golden deepe?
Why doft thou bend thine eyes vpotvthe earth ?
A.ad (tart fo often when thou fitt'ft alone ? -
Why haft thou loft the fre(h blood in thy cheekc* ?
And glucn my Treafures andmy rights of thee,
To thicke-ey 'd.mufing, andeurft.meUncholiy ?
In my faint-flumbers, 1 by theehaue watcht,
Andnesrdthce^rourmorexales of Iron Warre* :
Speake tcarrnes ofmana ge to thy bounding Steed, •
Cry courage to the field.. - And thou baft talk'd
OfSaUies^and.RetircsiTrenches.TcntSi
0 fPalizadoes, Frontiers ,PaMpets^
OfBafiliskesjOf Canon, Culucrinii
OfPrifonersianfome, andof Souldiera flafnCi
AudaU.thecuttent of a headdy fight; ,
thy Ipir'u within thee hath beene fo at' Warre,
And thus hatbib beftirr'd thee lathy IkepCi
That beds offweate hath ftood vpon thy Brow,
like bubbles in a late-diftutbed Streamer
And in thy face Grange motions baue appcar'd_
Suchas we fee when men rcftraine their breath
Onfome great. (o'daine hatt.iQw.haf portents. are thefe?
Some hcauiebulincflc hath my Lord in hand,
Aodl rouft know it : clfe helctueamenot.
Her. > What ho ;_Is GiUiams with the Packer gone t
St n He is my Lord.an honre.agorle. ..
-iHtt.Hath ^w/fr/brought thofeJiorlelJ&QibeSheiifrer
Ser. One horfc,myXord,he brought eucn.no w»
HotZ WhatHoilc ? AJRoanc,a crop carc.is it not.
Set. It is my Lord,
Hot.. That Roane Aall be myTbwne; Well, twill
backc htm ftraight. Ejperaace+bid Butler lead him. lorth
into the Parke.
La.. Bui hear cyoujny Lord.
Hoi* What fay'ft thou my Lady $
La. What is it carries you away 1
Hot. Why,myhorfe(my touc)myhor(e»
La~. Out' you mad-headed A pej. a WcazelLbatraiof
fuch a dcale of Spleene^ as y ou are.tou\ withi In.footh lie
know your bufineflc Harry* than I wjuY tfcare my Bro^
chet Montmtr doth ttirreabout his Title; and hath lent
foryou to line his enterprizci \ But if you go-— —
Hot. Sofarre a fooi/ ( (ball beOTcary, Loue^
LA Come.come.you Paraquito, anfwer me directly
vnto this queftion that I fluU^kcA Judcede: He brcake
thylittlc finger Harrjjf thou wilt not.tel me true.
Hot. Away .away you trifler :.Loue.IIouethcenor^
T carenotforthee Kate.: this is no world
To pGy with Mamrncts.andto tilt with Yipsi
We muft haue bloodie Nofes.and crack'd Grownes^
And pafle them currant too. .Gods me,myhor(e.
W hat fav'ft thou Kate} what woid'ft thourhauc withine. ?
Irn., Do y p not loue me? Do yenot indeed ?,
Well, donor; then, .For fince you loue menofi
Twill not loue my felfc. Do yew not loue nae2
Nay.tell mc if thou, (peak'ft in ieft»or no*
Hot. Cd*me> wilt thou fee meridc?
And when lam a horfebacke. I will fweare
I loue thee infinitely. But hcarke you Kate,
I m'u ft not haue you hencerorth^queftion mc,
Whether I go : nor reafon whereabout:*
Whether I muft, 1 muft: and to conclude,
This Eucning muft I leaue thee,gcmje Kate.
Ilino.wyouwife.but yet no'furthct wife
Then HarryPeraes wife. Coriftant you are,
But yet a woman ; and for fecrecic,?
No Lady clofer^ForlTWill belceuc
T nou wilt not vtter what thou do' ft not kno w»
And fa farre wiltl truft thee,gentl«Katev>
(4. Howlofarrc?
/JVr.Nofcan inch furtheri .Bntbarkc you Kmet,
Whither T go, thither (hall you go top :
To day will I fct forth, ro morrow you*
Will this rontenr you Kate I
Let. Itmuft offorce.
SxtHMt
Scmtii Quarts
Enter Prince and Poiniti^
Prim 7\T^,prethec come out of that iatropmej?: lend
mc Uw hand to laugh a little.
fo'weu Wherehaft bencHalll
SM&r. With.threeorfoureLoggw-he3ds,-amongft3.
orfourefcoreHoglheads. I haue foundcd.the vcrie bafe
firing of humility. Sirrajam fworn brother to a lea(h of
Drawers .andean call them by their names.as T^.i)/^,
and Francis. Thcy.takeitalteadv vpontheirconfidenceV
that thoughl be but Prince of Wales, ycryl.am tfee King
of GuTtefic^ellingrae flatly I am no proud lack like Fat-
ftaffejovi a Corinthians lad oFmcttlc.-a good boy,' and
when 1 am King of England,! (hall command al toe good
Laddcs in Eaft-chcape. They calldrinking dcepet . dy-
ongScaTletrj and whcDyoubreath myouiwaming^thcn
e z tbey
56
TheFirft Tart of Ring Henry the Fourth.
|thcycryhem,and bid you play it off. To conclude, lam \
i'o good a proficient ia one quarter of an houre,tbat I C3n
drinjie with any Tinker in his owne Language duringmy
life. I tell thee AW,thcu haft loft much honor, that thou
wer't nor wi:h me in this action : but fwcet Nedtto fwee-
ten which name o{Ned,l giue thee this peniworth of Su-
gar, clapteuen now into my hand by an vndcr Skinker,
one that neuerfpake other Englifn in his life, then Eight
fallings andjix pence, and, Ton are welcome : with this fhril
addition, ts4non, ssfmnjir, Score a Pint of 'Bayard in the
Halfe Moone,oi to. But Ned, to driue away time till Yd-
fiaffe come, I pry thee doc thou Hand in fomeby-roome.
while I queftion my puny Drawer, to what end hee gaue
me the Sugar, and do neuer leaue calling Francts, that his
Taleto me may be nothing but, Anon : ftcp afide, and He
fhewtheeaPrefident.
Poines. Francis.
Pun* Thou art perfect.
Poin. Francis.
Enter Drawer.
Fran. Anon,anon fir ; lookc downe 'into the Pomgar-
nct.Ralfi:
Prince, Come hither Francis.
Fran. My Lord.
Trin. How long haft thou toferuc, Francis?
Fran, Forfooih fiuc ycares,and as much at to— — —
Pom. Francif.
Fran. Anon,anon fir.
Prin. Fine yeares f Bcrlady a long Leafe tax the din-
king of Pewter. But Francis, dareft thou be fo valiant, as
to play the coward with thy Indenture, & fhew it 3 faire
paire of heeles,and run from it?
Fran. O Lord fir, He be fworne vpon all the Books in
England, I could finde in my heart.
Pain. Francis.
Fran, Ano^anop fir.
Prin, How old att x\\ou,FravcU ?
Fran. Let me fee, about Michaelmas nextl/halbe—
Poin. Francis.
Fran. Anon fir, pray you flay alittle.my Lord.-
Prin. Nay but harke you Francis, for the Sugar thou
gaueft me/twas a peny worth,was't not >
Fran. O Lord fir, I would it had bene two.
Prin. I will giue tbee for it a thoufand pound : Askc
me when thou wilt,and thou (halt haue it.
Poin. Francis.
Fran. Anon, anon.
Prw.Anon Francis? No Francis.but to morrow Fran-
cis : or Fraficis,on thurfday:or indeed Francis whentho"
wilt. But Francis.
FWr My Lord.
Prin. Wilt thou rob this Leathetne Ierkin, Chriftall
button, Not-pated, Agat ring, Puke flocking, Caddice
g3ricr, Smooth tongue,Spaniih pouch.
Fran. O Lord fir,who do you mcane f
, Prttt. \Vhy then youcbrowne Baftardis youronefy
drinke : for looke you Francis,your white Canuas doub-
let will fulley. In Barbary fir,it cannot cometo fo much.
Fran. What fir?
Poin. Francis.
Prm. Away youRogue,doftthouhcar« them call?
Jfearethey both call him, the Drawer ftands amazed,
nuihnoming which way to go.
■ Enter Vintner
Vitf* .Whatyftand'il thou ftill,and hear'ft fuch a Cal-
ling PLookctotheGutfts within. My Lord, oldeSir
Ichn with halfe a dozen more,are at the doote : ihall I let
them in?
Pri». Let than alone awhile4and then open the doore,
Poines.
Enter Poines.
Poin. ;»non,anon fir.
Prin. Sirra, Falfiaffe and the reft of the Thecues,areat
the doore,fhall we be merry t
Poin. As mcrrie as Crickets my Lad. But harke yee,
W7hat cunning match haue you made with this ieft ofthe
Drawer? ComCjWhat's the i flue?
Prin.l am now of all humors,that haue (hewed them:
felucs humors, fincc the old dayes of goodman Adam, to
the pupill age of this prefent twelue a clock at midnight.
What's a clocke Francis?
Iran. Anon,anonfir.
Prin, That euer this Fellow fhould haue fewer words
then a Parrer, and yet thefonneofaWoman. Hisindu-
firy is vp-ftaires and down-ftaires, his eloquence the par-
cell ora reckoning. I am not yet ofFercies mind,the Hot-
Ipurre ofthe North, he that killes me fome fixe or feauen
dozen of Scots at a Breakfaft, waihes his hands,and faies
to his wife ; Fie vpon this quiet life, I want worke. O my
fweet Hxrry fayes (he, how many haft thou kill'd to day?
Gtuc my Roane horfe a drench (fayes hee) and anfweres,
fome fourtcene,an houre after : a trifle,a trifle I prethee
call in F*//?*/f*, lie play /V^, and that damn'd Brawne
fhall play Dame ^Mortimer his wife./tow/ayes the drun-
kard. Call Id Ribs,call in Tallow.
Enter Falfiaffe.
Poin. ' Welcome Iackc,where haft thou beene?
Fal. A plague of all Cowards I fay,iand a Vengeance
too, marry and Amen. Giue me a cup of Sackc Boy. Ere
I leade this lifelong, He fowc nether ftoc';es, and mend
them too. A plagueofall cowards. Giue me aCop of
Saclce, Rogue. Is tbeteno Vcrtue extant :
Prin. Didtfthou>Bciier fee Titan kiflc a d.fh of Butter,
pittifuli hearted Titsnthar melted at the fweete Taleof
the Sunne ? If tboiididftythenjbehold that compound.
Fal. You Rogue, heere's Lime in thisSacke too:there
is nothing butRoguery to be found in Villanous man;yet
a Coward is worfe then a Cup of Sack with lime. A vil-
lanous Coward, go thywayes old Iacke, die when thou
wiltyfmanhood.good manhood be not forgot vpon the
face ofthe earth,thenaml a fhotten HenTng : there lines
not three good men vnhang'd in England, & one of them
isfat,andgrowcsold,GodhelpethewhiIe,abadworIdl
fay. I would I were a Weauer,I couldfing all manner of
fongs. A plague ofalLCowards,I fay ftill.
Prin. Hownow Woolfacke,what mntter you ?
Fal. AKings Sonne? Ifl do notbeate thee out ofthy*
Kingdorne with a dagger: of Lath, and driue all thy Sub-
ie£ts afore thee like a flocke of Wilde-geefe, lie neuer
wearehaireon my face more. You Prince of Walet?
Prin, Why you horfon round man?what*s the matter?
pal. Are you not a Coward? Anfwer me to that,aod
Poines there?.'
Prin. Ye fatch paunch, and yeccallmeeCowardVlfe
flab thee.
Fa/. I call thec Coward ? He fee thee damn'd ere I caul
the Coward: burl would giue a thoufand pound Icould
runasfaftasthotfeanft. Youareflraight enough hi the
fhoulders, yon care not who fees your backe : Call you
. that
The FirjlTart of Betrry the Fourth;
57
that hacking of your friends? a plague vpon fuch, bac-
king; glue mc them thai will face me. GiuemeaCup
of Sjskrl anva Rogue if I drunketo day.
_ Pftna. O Villaine, thy Li£pea ae fcarce wip'd> fincc
jnourcTrunk'ilIafb
Falfi. All's one for tba*. HkArivket.
Aplague of all Cowards ftill,fay I,
Princa What's the matter ? ;
Palfi What's the matter? here be foure of vs, haue
ta'ne a thoufand pound thisJMoming,
prince. Where is hjac^i where is it ?
Jpalft, Where is ic ? taken from ys, it is: a hundred
vpoopoorc foure of vs.
Prince* What, a hundred, man"?
palfLl am aRogue,if I were not atbalfe Sword with
a dozen of them two houres together. 1 haue fcaped by
miracle. lam eight timet thruft through the Doublet,
foure through the Hofe, my Buckler cue through, and
tnrough, my Sword backt likeaHand~faw,«r* ftgnum.
I neucr dealt better fined was a man: all would not doe.
A plag»c of all Cowards: let them fpcake; if they fpeake
more or lefie then truth^they are villaines, and the fonnss
of darknclTc.
Prince. Speake firs,how was it?
Gad. We fourc fet vpon fornc dozen.
pat/?. Sixtccne,at icaft.my Lord.
Cad. And bound them.
Pets. No,no,they were not bound,
V*lfl. You Rogue, they were bound, euery man of
them, or I am a lew elfe,an Ebrew lew;
Cad, As wc were (haring,fome fixe or feuen frefn men
fet vpon vs.
palji.. And vnbound the reft, and then come in the
other.
Prince. What,fbught yee with them all ?'
JFdji. All ? I know not what yee call, all : but if I
fought not with fiftic of them, 1 am a bunch of Radifn :
if there were not two or three and fiftie vpon poore olde.
lackey then am I no two-legg'd Creature.
Pom. Pray Heaucn, you haue not murtherecT fome of
them. .
palfl. Nay, tbat's paft praying for, I haue pepper'd
two of them : Two I am fure 1 haue payed, two Rogues
inBuckrom Sutes. I tell thee what, Hal, if I tell thee a
Lye,fpit in my facc,caH me Horfc; thou knoweft my olde
word: here I lay.and thus Ubore my point; fourc Rogues
in Buckrom let driuc at me.
Prince, Whatjfoure? thou fayd'ft but two.cuen now.
palfl* Foure /£«/, I told thecfouren
pom. I,I,hefaid foure.
Palfi. Thefe foure came all a-front,and mainely thruft
at me ; I made no more adoe, but tooke all their feuen
points in my Targuet,thus.
Prince. Scucn i why there were but foure.cuen now.
palfl k InBuckrom.
Pom. I,foure,in Buckrom Sutes.
falfl. Seucn,by thefe Hilts,or I am a Villaine elfc* .
Prin. Prethee let him aione,we (hall haue more anon.
Podfl. Doeft thou hearc mttHal I
Prin. Land marke thee tooj lack^.
palfl. Doe fo,forit is worth the liftningtoo: thefe
nine in Buckrotn,tbatI told thee of.
W». So,two more alreadie.
Ftlfl. Their Points bring broken-*
Poin. Downc fell his Hofe,
Jfalfl. Began to giueme ground : but I followed tne
i
elofcjCiime in foot and handjand with a thought,feucn of
thee'eucnlpa/d,
Prin. Ojr.onftrous! eleuen Buckrom men grawnc
out of two o
Palfl* Eat as SbeDeuill would haue it, three mif-bc-
gotcenKnaues,in Kendall Greene, came at my Back, and
lecdriue at mejfot it was fo.datke3fcfe/,thai thou could'ft
not fe£ thy Hand.
Frm. Thefe Lyes are like the Father that begets them,
gtolTc as a Mountaine,open,palpabIe. Why thou Clay-
bray n'd Gutssthou Knotty-pat ed Foolc,thou Horfon ob
fecne gi'catte Tallow Catch *
Falfl, ^Whatjart thou mad? art thou mad ? Is not :he
truth,thc truth >
Prim Why, how could'ft thou know thefe men in
"Kendall Greene, when it was fo darke,thou could'ft not
fee thy Hand i Come.tell vs your reafon: what fay 'ft thou
to this ?
Pom. Come,youi reafor. hct^ your re.afon<
Falfl.'. WhatjVpon compulsion ? No : were I at the
Strappado, or all the Racks in the World, I, would not
tell you on compulfion.lGi'ue you a reafon on compulfi-
o\\ ? If Reafons were as plentse as Black-beme$sI would
giuc noman a Reafon vponcompulfion,!*
Prin. lie beno JongCLguiltieofthisfinne. This fan-
guineCoward.thts Be*? ^refler^this Horkbacli-breaker,
this huge Hill of Flefli*
^Falfl. AwayyouScarnelingjyouElfe-slciniyou dried
Neats tongue, Bulles-psiTtll, you ftockc-fiftuO for breth
to vtter. What is like thee? You Tailorsy ard,y ou ftieath
you Bow-cafe,you vile ftanding tucke.
Prin. Well, breath a-while,and then to't againe : and
when thou haft tyr'd thy fclfe in bafe comoarifons, heare
me fpcake but thus*
Poin. Marke lacke*
Prin. Wc two,faw yon foure fet on foure and bound
them,and were Matters of their Wealth : mark now how
a plaineTale fhall put you downe. Then did we two, fet
on you foure,and with a word, outfae'd you from your
prize,and haue it : yea,and can fhew it you in the Hoofc .
And FAlfiaffeyyo\x caried your Guts away as nimbly /*vith
as quickc dexteritie,and roared for mercy, and ftill rannc
and roar'd, as euerl heard Bull-Calfe. What a Slaucart
thou, to hacks thy fword as thou haft done, and then fay
it was in fighr. What trick? what deuiccJ? what ftarting
hole canft thou now findout-to hide thee from this open
and apparant fhame >
Poines. Come, let's heare Iacke : What tricke haft
thou now?
Fal. I knew ye as well as he that made ye. Why heare
ye my Matters, was it for me to kill the Heire apparant ?
Should I turne vpon the true Prince? Why , thou knoweft
I amas valiant as Hercules : but bewate Inftincl, the Lion
will not touch the true Prince : Inftl..# is a great matter.
I was a Coward &n Inftind. I fhali thinkethe besser of
my felfe, and thee, during my life : I, foi a valiaRe Lion,
and thou for a true Prince. But Lads, I am glad you haue
th*Mony. Hoftcfle,clap to the doores; watch to night,
pray to morrow. Gallants, Lads,Boyes, Harts of Geld,
all the good Titles of Fellowship come to you . What,
{hail we be merry? ftiali we haue a P!sy extempory.
Prin. Content,and the argument (hall be, thy runitig
away.
pal. A,no more of that Halltznd thou loueft me.
Enter Hoftejfe.
Hofi, My Lord, the Pxincc ?
Priii,
58
The Firft&MofJfyng Hem the Fourth.
Prin^ How nm ray Lady she Hoftefle * whac fay*ff
.thou to me?
hojtejfe* M»ry,rrjy lord, there isa Noble man of the
Court at doore would fpeake with you : bee fay es,hce
comes from your Father.
Prw. Giue him as much as will make him a Royall
m3rf,and fend him backe againe to m.y Mother.
Faljt. Whatmannerofmanisb.ee?
Hoftetfe. An old man.
F*//?.What doth Grauitic out of his Bed at Midnight?
Shall I giuehimhis anfwere'?
Frin.. Prethee doe lac fc*
Taljl. 'Faitb,and lie fend him packing. Exit*\
Prince* Now Sirs: you fought fiurc; To did you
Ptto9 fo did yoviSardtl: you are Lyons too, you ranne
away vpon inftinft i you will not couch the true Prince;-
no, fie.
Bard. 'Faith ,T ratine when I faw Others runne.
Frin. Tell mee now in earneft, how came Faljlajfes
Sword fohackt?
Peto. Why,he hackt itvlth his Dagger, and faid,hee
would iwcare truth out of England.but hee would make
youbelecue it was done in fight,andperf waded vs to doc
the like.
; IJBard* Yea^nd to tickle out Nofes with Spear-gratTe,
to make them bleed, and then to beflubbcr our garments
with it, and (weave it was the blood of true men. I did
snatl did not this feuen yteres before, 1 blufht to heare
his monftrous deuiees.
frin. O Wlaine, thou ftoJcft a Cup of Sicke cigh-
teeneyeeres agoe, and wcrt taken with the banner, and
cuer fin ce thou haft bluftt extempore: thou hadft fire
and fword on thy fide, and yet thou ranft away ; what
inltinft hadft thou for it ?
'Bard. My Lord, doe you fee thefe Meteors ? doe you
behold thefe Exhalations ?
Prin. I doe.
'Bard* What thinke you they portend?
?rin» Hot Liucrs,and cold Purfes.
M Choler,my Lord,if rightly taken,
Trin. No,if rightly taken, Halter.
Bnler Faljlaffe.
Hcere comes leane&cfoheere corncs Bare-bone. How
now my fweet Creature of Bombaft, how long is't agoe,
lack* face thou faw'ft thine owne Knee ?
Falft, My owne Knee ? When I was about thy yeeres
{Hal) I was not an Eagles Talent in the Wafte, 1 could
haue crept into any AldermansThumbe-Ring : a plague
of fighing and griefe, it blovves a man vp like aBIadder.
There's villanous Newes abroad : heere was Sir lohtt
Ytralj from your Father ; you muft *goc to theCourt in
the Morning. The fame mad fellow of the North tPercj ;
and hee of Wales, that gaue tAmamon the Baftinado,
and made Lucifcr Cuckold, and fworetheDeuill his true
Liege-man vpon the Croilc of a Wclchihookc j what a
plaguccallyouhim?
Peitt. OyG/endower,
Taljl. OveetitOwtn ; the fame, and his Sonne in taw
tMortimeriZnti o\& Northumberland, zn& the fprightly
Scot of Scots, Dowglasy that runnes a Horfe-backe vp a
Hill perpendicular.
Prm. Hee that rides at high ipeede.and with a Piftoll
kills a Sparrow Pying.'
Taljl. You h?ue hit it.
JPrin. So did he neuer the Sparrow.
jaljt. Well, that Rafcall hath good xfiettai] In Krai
hee will not tunne.
JPrfa Why,whac a Rafcail art thou then.toprayfe him
fo for running?
FalA A Horfe-backc (yeCuckoc) bui a foot hee will
not budge a foot.
?tia. 1Yes/4cJ^vponinftinc"t«
Palft* I grant ye,vpon inftinft: Well,hce is there too,
andonecJ*/wvfe&,and a thoufaad blew-Cappes more.
mrcelicr\%&Q\nc away by Night : thy Fathers Beard is
turn'd white with the Newes ; you may boy Land now
as chcape as (linking MackrelL
PntfJThm 'tis Iike,if there come ahot Sunne^d this
cluill buffetting hold, wee {hall buy Maiden-heads aa
they buy Hob-naylcs,by the Hundred?.
Falfi, 3y the Mafle Lad.thou fay'ft truest is like wee
(hall haue good trading that way. But tell me Hal, art
not thou horrible afcar'd ? thou being Heire apparanfc
could the World pickc thee out three fuch Encmyes al
gaine.asthat Fiend Dewglas, that Spirit Percy, and that
Deuill Gtendmerf Art not thou horrible afraid ? Doth
not thy blood thtH at it ?
Prirt. Not a whit : I lacke fomc of thy inftineT.
Faffi. Well thou wilt be horrible chidde to morrow,
when thou commeft to thy Father ; if thou doe loue me,
pra&il'e an anfwere.
Frin, Doethou ftand formy Fathcr,and examine met
vpon the particulars of my Life.
Talfi* Shall 1? content: This Ch3yre (hall- bee mj
State* this Dagger my Scepter, and this Culhion my
Crownc.
P.rin. Thy State is taken for a Ioyn'd-Stoole,thy Gol-
den Scepter for a Leaden Dagger, a/id thy precious rich
Crowne.tor a pittifull bald Crowne.
Fatfl, Well,andiheflre of Grace be not quite out of
thee now fhalt thou be moued. Giue me a Cup of Satke
to make mine eyes looke redde, that it may be though* I
haue wept, for 1 muft fpeakc in pallion, and I will doe it
in King Cam&yfes vaine.
Prw. WelljhecrcismyLegge.
FalSl. And hcere is my fptech: ftand afideNobilitie.
Ecfleffe. This is excellent fport,yfaith.
Falfi. Weepc not, fweet Qucene , for trickling tearea
arevaine.
Hoflcjfe. O thcFatherihowheeholdc&his counte-
nance?
FalftXot Gods fake Lords,conuey my truftfulIQuccoi
Forteares doe {top thefioud-gatesof her eyes*.
hoflefe. O rare,he doth it as like one of thefe harfoisjl
Players^aseuerlfee.
Taljl, Peace good Pinr*p©r,pcacegoodTicSle.braum
Harry, I doe not onely maruell where thou fpended tfiy
time; but alio, how thou art accompanied: Forthou^
the Camomile ,thc more it is tfodcn,tlie faftcr it gtowesj
yet Youth, the more it is wafted, the fooner it wearcsij
1 hou arrmy Sonne : I haue partly thy Mothers Word,
partly my Opinion j but chiefely.a villanous tricks of
thine Eyesand a fooiilh hanging of thy nether Lippe, fiat
doth warrant me. If then thou be Sonne to mee, hcure
lycththeifosnt : why, being Sonne to me, art thou fa
poyntedat^ Shall the bleiTed Sonne of Heauen prouea
Micher, and eate Black-berry es?1 aqueftion noc to bee
askt. Shall the Sonne of England proue a Thcefe* and
take Purfes ? aqueftion CO be askt. There is a thing,
Harr/f which thoii hait often heard of and it isknowne to
many
66
TheFirJl *P art offing Henry the Fourth.
Jtfejf. His Letters beares his mindc,not I his mindc.
jyor. J prethee tell me,doth he keepe. bis Bed ? •
, Meff. He did,my Lo.d/oure dayes ere.I fct forth.s
And at-the time of my departure thcnccv
He was much fear'd by his Phyfician.
ff#r. ;I would the [rate of time had (lift beenewhole,
Ere he by (lcknefle had beene vifited :
His health .waspeuer better worth then now.
Hotjp.Sicke now? qroope now?'this fieknes doth infect
The very Life- blood of our Enrerprife,
Tis carcbinghithcr,euento our Campe.
He writes" me here,thacinward ficknefle,
And that his friends by .depuration
Could not fo foonebe drawne: nor did he thinke it meet,
To lay fo dangerous and dears a trult
On any Souls remou'd,but on his owne:
Yet. doth he giue vs bold aduertifementi
Thai with our fmall coniunition wefiiould ona
To fee how Fortune is diiposk'd to v s *
For,as he writes.thcre i* no quailing now,
Becaui'e the King is cettainely poffeft
Of allourpurpoiesaWhaciayyouioit ?
War, Youi Fathers fkknefie is a mayme to vs.
Hat$. A pcrilluiKGafh.a very Limine loptofEs
And ycr,m;&ith,icjs jrmthis preient wana
Seemes more then weJhall firiaeit.
\\' ere it good;ro fet't-ht exa£t wcalch of altour ftatca
All at oneCafl i To fet-fo rich s mayne
On the nicehazard of one doubtfull houre,
It were not good : for therein (haul d we reade
The very Bottome,and the SouleoOiope,
TheWy Lift,the very srtmofl Bound
Of all our fortunes.
Doxvg. Faith,andfv -wee {houfd".
Where, now remaincsitfwcet. reuerfion.
We may boldly fpettf3,vp;otivthe hope
Of vth a u's to come in :
A comfort of retyrementliues in this.
Hotjp'.. A TUhacuaqs,a.Home.to flyervino,
IF that the Dcuilf and Mifchance looke bjgge
Vpon the Maydenhcad of our Affaires.
\?f'br/ JZHtyci I would your EatherLtiajtbccne. here;
fhe O lilicic and Hcire of? our Attempt
Brookes no dioludtn lcwIlLbe thought a
By fome,that know norwhy he is away,
That wifedomc'loyaltieisnd mecre difhke
Of our proceedings.kepuhe Earle from hence.
Andxhinke,'howfuch.an:spprehenfion
May turnethetydcof fcarefull Fa&ion,
And breedcakindeof quettionin ourcaufe:
For <*cil .you know.wce of the offring fide,
Mr.ft keepe aloof'e h" om ihiCi arbitrement,
And (top ill fight". ftolcs,euery loope/rom whence
I he eve of rcafou may prie in vpon vs :
Ttiis sbfence nf your f-ather drawes a Curtain^
That ihcvves^he.igtioranta kinde of fearc,
£ e fo r ejvorjjr cam t.i>f«
UoiR; "YoUitraynetoo firre.
Xtatacroflns ab fence make thisvfe;
klena&a l.ultre.ai'ui more great Opinion,
Ajif.n-ct'D.areto yonr great Enterprise,
Tlrc.ii.rtl'-c E»rk were'here : for men mutt thinke^
lFv.:.c.ivii1io'j:bishclpe,canmakeaHead
'1:0 ;2.ujh.agamil thcKingdomc.; with his helpc,
WcTKiII 'o.'re-turne it topfic.-turuy downe :
Y.ct .all '"goes w.cll,yet'aU-our,ioynts are whole.
Vcwg*. A3 heart can thinke :
There is noxfuch a. word lpokeo£in Scotland,
AuhiiDreame of Feare. •
Zn ter Sir Richard Veram.
Ho(§ My Cou fin r«ww,weIcome by my Soul©,
Vera. Pray God my newes be worth a wclcome,Loid,
The Earle of. Weftmcrland,feuen thoufand ftrong,
Is marching hither-wards, with Prince labn.
Holjft, Noharrae: what more?
Vi m. And further, I haue learn'd,
1 The Kinghimfelfe in pcrfon hath fir forth,
Or hither-wards intended Ipecdily,
With ftrong and mightie precaution:
Hoi [p. He fhall be v/clcome too.
Where is his Sonne,
The mmble-footed Mad-CapJPrinceof WaleS>
And his Cumrades.thatdaftthe World afide,
Andbid.it pafic?
Vem, AlfmrnifhrtalllnArmes; *
Afl.plumV.. like Eilridgesj that with the Windc
Bayted like Eagles,hauing lately bath'd,
Glittering inGoiden Co'ares.likc Jmage*,
As full of fpirit as the Moneth of May,
And gorgeouins theSunncat.Mid-fummefj.
Wanton asyouthfull Goates,wildc as youngBulIs*
J faw young Harry with his Beuer on»
His Cullies on his thfghe?,gallantly arnvd1,
Ri(e from the ground jike/eathercd;c^ww7,
And vaultcdwith fuch.eafe into his Sear,
As if an Angcll dropt downc fronithe.Cloucls,
To turnf ^rid windc a fierie Vegafui
And wi cch the World with Noble Hojiemanihipi,
Hotfp l^Ja more, no more',.
Wortc then tne bunne ijaMarckf
This prayfc dotKnourifli Agues .? lelthemcome.
Theyicome like Sacrifices an their^rimrrw;,
And to the fire-ey'd Maid ofJmoakle.Vl^rre,
Al! hoi,and bleeding^wlllwee^fTcribeau
Incimzylz&iMars lliallon his Aitatu'i&jt
Vp,td the care5 in blood. I am on fiire^-
To hearetbis rfch reprizalLtisfpnighi
And yet not ourst Come',! t me takcmyiHorfe,
Who is to'bearesrac.Ukf'aThun.deribolt/
Againft jh'e.bofome-of -the, Prince ofs Wales'*
/^^U.o;tori7,fh3li4ioiffyrfetQHoife.
MefiejandneTretpaajtiliixnc drop do.vvn.eACSoarfejf
Oh,that:(7/r^i?£r„w£re;c.ome<
VsKi, TherejsmoTe neA'cs 9
I learned in Worce(ter,as I.rode along,
Htfcarinot tlraw.his Kdwti^his four'et«;enerda.ye«.
IW£. That.'s the,worlt:Tidings,t;that> J he3relOI
ye«
tVor. Ihy.rtfy, faith.that bearcs a frofty. foilhdv,
ffoijjn What 'roaythc, Kings whoiedbatcaile rcacft
vnro >
Vtri To thirty tfioiirand*
Hot. Forty let it be?
My Father and GU»dorverhtx\\ghoCn aw?y*
Th* powres ofvs,may 'lerucfo great a day,
Come.letvstake a mufter fpeedily i
Doojnefday :s neere; dye all,dye merrily*
Vow. 'Talke not or flying Iamoutoffeare
Of death,or deaths handy ot this prjchalfey care.
gxtrntOmnefll
Seen*
The Ftrft, Tart ofKjng Henry the Fourth
67
Selena Secmda*
Enter Fa/flafe and ' Bardolpb.
Falfl. 'Bardolph^t thee before to Couentry, fill me a
Bottle of Sack.our Souldicrs (hall march through; wce'lc
wSutton-cop-hill to Night.
'Bard. Will you giuc me Money, Captains*
Tal^i. Lay out,lay out.
"Bard. This Bottle makes an Angel!.
Falfl. And if icdoe, take it for thy labour : and if it
make twentie , take chera all , He an'fwere the Coynage.
Sid my Lieutenant /Wmcece me at the Townes end.
'Bard. 1 will Captaine : farewell. Exit.
F*lft. If I be not afharnM of my Souldiers, I am a
fowc't-Curnet : I hauemif-vs'd the Kings Preffe dam-
nably. I haue got, in exchange of a hundred and fiftie
Soufdiers, three hundred and odde Pounds. I preffe me
none but good Houfe-holders,Yeomcns Sonnesrenquirc
me out contracted Batchelers, fuch as had beene ask'd
twice on thcBanes: fuch a Commoditic of warme flaues,
as had as lieue heare the Dcuill, as a Drumme ; fuch as
feare the reporr of a Calmer, worfe then a ftruck-Foole,
bra hurt wilde-Ducke. 1 prcft oie none but fuch Toftes
and Butter. with Hearts in their Bellyes no bigger then
Pinncs heads, and" they haue bought out their feruices:
And now, my whole Charge confifts of Ancients, Cor-
norals^Lieutenants/jentlcroen of Companies, Slaues as
ragged as Lazaru* in the painted Cloth,where the Glut-
tons Dogges licked his Sores; and fuch, as indeed were
neuer Souldicrs, but dif-carded vniuft Seruingmen,youn-
gerSonnes to younger Srothers, reuolted tapfters and
Oftlcrs,Tradc-falne, the Cankers of a calme World.and
long Peace , tenne times more dis-honorablc ragged,
then an old-fae'd Ancient; and fuch haue I to fill vp the
roomes of them that haue bought out their feruices: that
you would thinke, that i had a hundred and fiftie totter'd
Prodigalls,lately come from Swinerkeeping,from eating
DraffcandHuskes, A mad fellow met mo on the way,
and told me.I had vnloaded all the Gibbets,and preftthe
dead bodyes. No eye hath feene fuch skar-Crowes: He
not march through Couentry withthcm,that's flat. Nay,
and the Villaincs march wide betwixt the Legges, as if
they had Gyues on ; for indeede, I had the motfof them
out of Prifon. There's not a Shirt and a halfe in all my
Company ; and the halfe Shirt is two Napkins tackt to-
gether, and throwne ouerthe (houldcrs like a Heralds
CoatjWithout fleeucs: and the Shirt, to fay the truth,
ftolne from my Hoft of S. Albones , or the Red-Nofc
Inne-keeper of Dauintry But that's all onc,thcy*lc finde
Linnen enough on euery Hedge.
Enter the Prince %and the Lord efWeftmerland.
Prince. How now blowne IackJ how now Quilt t
Falfl. What Hall How no*y mad Wag.whataDeuill
do'ilthouinWarwjckfhire? My good Lord of Wcft-
raerland J'cry you mercy, I thought yourHonour had al-
ready beene at Shrewsbury.
Wr/£ 'PaithiSirjfofof/tismore then time thar I were
mere, and you too; but my Powers are there alreadie.
The King,i can tell you, lookes for ?s all : wc mufj away
*U to Night.
Falfl. Tut,ncuer feare me,I am as vigilant as a Cat,to
fteale Creame.
Prince. I thinke to fteale Creame indeed,for thy theft
hath alreadie made thee Butter : buc tell me,/*^, whole
fellowes are thefe that come after ?
Falfl. Mine,//4/,mine.
Prince. 1 did neuer fee fuch pittifull Rafcals.
Falfl. Tut,tut,good enough to tofTe: foode for Pow-
der, foode for Powder; they'le fill a Pit,as well as better:
tufh man.mortall mcn.mortall men.
fVeflm. I, but S ir tohn, me thinkes-they arc exceeding
poore and barc,too beggarly.
F alft. Faith.for their pouertie,I know not where they
had that 5 and for their barenefle , J am furc they neuer
lcarn'd that of me.
Prince. No,l\z be fwor:.c,vnlciTe you call three fingers
on thcRibbes bare.But fii.a^makchafte,!'^ is already
in the field.
Falfl. What, is the King encamp'd 1
Weftm. Hce is. Sir John, I feare wee (ball flay coo
long.
Falfl. WelI,to the latter end of a Fray, and the b egin-
ning of a Feaft, fits a dull fighter, and a kecne Gueft.
Extant.
Scoena Tertia.
Enter Hot fttir ^trailer Jlewglatjuid
potfr. WeeMe fight with him to Night.
Ware. It may not be.
Dowg. You giue him then aduantage.
Vern. Not a whit.
Tb$. Why Cxyy ou fo r lookes he not for fiipply?
Vern. So doe wee.
Hotjp. His it cercaine,ours is doubtfull.
Wore. Good Coufin be aduis'd^ftirrc not tonight*
Vera, Doe not,my Lord.
Dowg. You doenot counfaile well :
You fpeake it out of feare,and cold heart.
Vent. Doe me no flandcr,Do)»»^.* by my Life,
And I dare well maintaine it with my Life,
If well-rcfpecled Honor bid m? on,
1 hold as little counfaile with weake feare,
A* you,my Lord,or any Scotthac this day liucy«
Let it be feene to morrow in the Battel!,
Which of vs fcares.
Dorvg. Yea,or to nighti
Vern. Content.
hotjp. Tonight,fayI.
Vern. Come,come,rt may not be.
I wonder much,being me of fuch great leading a* youare
That you fore-fee not what impediment j
Drag backc our expedition : certaine Horfc
Gf my Coufin Kernons are not yet come yp,
Your Vnckle Warceflers Horfe came bnt to day,
And now their pridcand mettall isaflcepej
Their courage with hard labour tame and dull,
That not a Horfc is halfe the halfe of himfelfe,,
Hotjp. So arethe Horfes of the'Enemie
In gcnerall iourncy batcd,and brought Iov» :
The better part of ours are fuU of reft.
f 5 War. The
6% ^heFk^an^K^n^HmrytbeFtm^k
Were. The number of the King crceetieth our; s
For Gods fakerCoufin.ftay till all come in.
The Trufiqet founds i Party. Enter Sir
WatterBlunt,
'Blunt. 1 come'With gracious offers from she liing,
If you vouchfafe mc hearing,and refpe&.
Hotjp. Welcomc.Sir Walter'Blmt:
And would ro God you were of our determination.
Some of vs loue you well i and eucn thofe fomc
Enuie your great deferuings,and good nam?,
Beeaufe you are not of our qualitie,
But (tend againft vs like an Enemie.
j3/*»r.And Heauen defend,but ftill I Should ftand fo,
So long as out of Limit, and true Rule, >
You ftand againft anoynted Maieftie*
But to my Charge.
The King hath lent tolcnow
The nature ofyourGriefes.and whereupon
You coniure from the Breftof Ciuill Peace,
Such bold Hoftilitie, teaching his dutious Land
Audacious Crueltie. If that the King '-
Haue any way your good Deferts forgot,
Which htconfeffeth to be mangold,
He bids you nameyour Gricfes,and with all fpeed
You fball haue your defiresjwith intereft j
And Pardon abfolute for your felfe, and thefe,
Herein mis-led,by your fuggeftion.
&at(]>. The King is kinde :
And well wee know, the King
Knowes at what timt to promife,when to pay.
My Fathcr,roy Vnckle.and my felfe,
Did giuc him that fame Royaltic he wcares :
And when he was not fixe and twentie ftrong,
Sicke in the Worlds regard,wretched,and low,
Apoore vnminded Out-law, fneaking home,
My Father gaue him welcome to the (Lore:
And when he heard him fwearcand vow to God^
He csme bu: to be Duke of Lancafter,
To fue bis Ltueric,and begge his Peace,
With teares of Innccencie,and tcarmes of Zeale;
My Father,m kinde heart and pitty mou'd,
Swore him affiflance,and perform'd it too.
Now.when the Lords and Barons of th^lealme.
Perceiu'd Northumberland did leane to him.
The more and Iclle came in with Cap and Knee,
Met him in Boroughs,C<tics, Villages,
Attended him on Bridges,(tood in Lanes,
Layd Gifts before him,proffer'd him their Oathes,
Gaue him their Heires,as Pages followed him,
Eucn at the hecles.in golden multitudes.
He prefently.as Greatneffe knowes it felfe,
Steps mc a little higher then his Vow
Made to my Fathcr.whilehis blood waspooret
Vpon the naked fiiore at Rauenfpurgh :
And now(forfooth) takes on him toreforme
Some cevtaine Edicls.and iomeftrait Decrees,
That lay too'headic on the Common-wealth;
Cryes out vpon abufes3lcemcs to weepc
Oucr his Countries Wrongs: and by this Face^
This fcemingBrowof lufiice.did h.ewinnc
The hearts of all that hce did angle for.
Proceeded furthcr,cut mc off the Heads
Of all the Fauoritcs,that the abfent King
In deputation left bchinde hiro hecre,
Wnen bee was perfonail in the Iri(h Warre.
„ 'Blunt. Tut,I came not so hcare this.
Hotjp. Then to the point, ,
In ftiort time after, hec depos'd the King*
Soone after that,depriu'd him of his Life :
And in the neck of that.task c the whole State*
To make that worfe,fuffet'd hi* Kinfman fJHarck^
Who i8,ifeuery Owner were plac'd,
Tndeedc his King,to be engag d in Wales,
There,without Ranforae,tolye forfeited ;
Bifgrac'd me in my happic Vi&ories,/
Sought to intrap me by intelligence,
Rated my Vnckle from the Councell-Boord,
In rage difmifs'd my Father from the Court,
Broke Oath on Oath,committed Wrong on Wrong,
And in conclufion,droue vs to fceke out *
This Head of fafctie; and witlulUoprie
Into his Title: the which wee finde
Too indirect, for long continuance.
"Blunt. Sham.returnethisanfwertQtheKin^?
Hotjp. Notfo,SirW4/ttr.
Wee'Ie with-draw a Awhile :
Goe to the King,and let there beimpawn'd
Some furetie for a fafe returne againe,
And in the Morning early dial! my Vnckle
Bring himour purpofc : and fo farewell.
Blunt. I Would you would accept of Grace and Loue,
Hotjp. And't may bejbwee (hall. „
Blunt. Pray Heauen you doe. Exeunt.
Scena Quartet.
Enter the Arch.Bi(ko$ ofrarfawcL Sir MkheB.
vftr£.Hie,good Sir Aftche!ltbcate this fealedBrkfc
Withwingedhaftctothe Lord Marfhall,
This to my Coufin Scroope, and all the reft
To whom they arc directed.
If you knew how much they doe import,
You would makehafie.
Sir Mich. My good Lord,I guefle their tcacr*
Jirch. Like enough you doe,
Tomorrow,good Sir Michelljs a day,
Wherein the fortune often thoufand men
Muft bide the touch. For Sir,at Shrewsbury,
As I am truly giuen to vnderftand,'
The Kmg.with mightie and quick-rayfed Power,
Meetes with Lord Harry : and 1 fcare,Sir Michelle
Wh3t with the fickneffe of Northumberland*
Whofe Power was in the firft proportion ;
And what with Owen Gleudaners abfence thence, '
Who with them was rated firmely too,
And comes not in,ouer-rui'd by Prophecies,
I fcare the Power of Percy is too weakc,
To wage an inftant tryall with the King.
Sir Mich. Why yvay good Lord,you need not fear**
There is 2W£/«**,and Lord KMortimer.
Arch. No,LMQrtimer\s not there.
Sir mc .But there is Mordake^ernon, lord Harry T#i
And there is my Lord of Worccfter,
And a Head of gallant Warriors,
Noble Gentlemen
Arnh^
The Firjl Tart of Kjng Henry the Fcurth.
69
50
100
t/frch. And fo there is* but yet the King hath drawne
The fpccisll head of all the Land together :
The Prince of Wales, Lord foknot Lancafter,
The Noble Wsftmerland, and warlike 'Blunt ;
And many moc Corriuals1ancTa'eare men
Of cftimation, and command in Armes.
*Sir M. Doubt not my Lord, he fhall be well opposed
esfrch. I hope no IclTe? Yet n«3iull 'tis to feare,
And to preiient the worft, Sir -^^OJpeed ;
For if Lord Percy thriuc not, ereTrjeT^ne
Difmifle his power, he meancsto vifit vs :
For he hath heard of our Confederacies
AndjTTs but Wifedometo make ftrong againft him :
Therefore make haft, I mu^, go write againe
To other Friends : and fo fatewell,Sir MickrlL Exeunt.
120
ABus Qmnitts. Scena Trima.
150
Enier the King, Prince of Wales, Lord John ofLancafler,
hurls oftVefimerland,Sir waiter Bl»nty
andFalJlzfe.
King. How bloodily rhcSunnc begins topecrc
Aboueyon husky hill; the day lookespale
At his diftemperature,
PriM. The Southernc winde
Doth play the Trumpet to hi3 purpofes,
And by his hollow whittling in the Leaues,
Fortetsa Tempe(x„and a'bluft ring day.
King . Then with the lofers kt it fympathize.
For nothingcan feeme foule to thofe tnatwrnT^
The Trumpet founds.
Enter Worcester.
King, How now my Lord of Worfter? 'Tis not well
That you and 1 fhould meet vpon fuch tearmes.
200 Asnowwejmeet. Youhaue deceiu'dour truft,
And made vs doffe our eafie Robes of Peace,
To crufh our oldljjgjj^ in vngentlc Steele :
This is not well^my Lordjtjj^is not well.
What fay you to it ? Will you againe vnknit
1 h This churlifh knot of all-abhorred Warre?
- And nioue in that obedient Orbc agr.j'ne,
Where you did giue^afaire and naturall light,
And be no more an c(jngTJjd-Meteor,
Aprodigic of Feare, and a Portent
Ofbroachcd Mifchcefe, to the vnbtirne Timss?
Worl Hcare me,my Liege :
%r,mine owne part, I could be well content
; [ To entertaine the Lagge-end of my life
With quiet houres : For l$o protcft,
Ihaue not fought the day of rj^diflike.
King, You haue nor fought it : how comes it then?
Fal. Rebellion lay in his way,anu he found it<
Prin. Peace,Chewet. peace.
350 fror- Itpleas'd your rvisicfty,to turneyour looker
Of Fauour, from my Sclfd, and all our Houfc ; *"
A"d yet I muft remember youmy Lord,
Weweret]iejirft,and deareftofyourFricnds :
For you, mvftaffe of Office did I breake
In Rtcbards'tlmc, andpoafleddav and night
Toraectc youoaihe.w^aj^ kifleyour haudj
400
L
When yet you were in place, and in account
Nothing fo ftrong and fortunate, as I •
it was my Selfc, my Brother, and his Sonne,
That brought youhome,and boldly did out-d*re
The danger of the time. Y ou fwore to vs,
Andyou did fweare that Oath at LJoncafter,
That you did nothing of purpofe 'gatnlt thc-State,
Norclaime no further, then your new-fa!ne.ri«hcj
The feate of £?*?««? ,..Dukedume.of Lancafrer,
To this, wcTware our aide; But in fiiort fpace>
It rain'd downe Fortune ihowring onyour head,
And fuch a floud of Grcatneffe fellonyou',
What with our helpc,whac with theabfenc King,
What with the injuries ofwanton time,
Thcfeeming fufTcranccs that you had borne,
And the contranous VYindes thar held the King
So long in the vnlucky Irifh Warre v"
That all in England did repute him dead* :
^nTTTronvthisfwarme of faire advantages'.
You tookeoccaiion to be quickly woo'd^
To gripe thegenerallfway into your handj
ForcotyourOath toys at Donca(tert
And being fed byvs, you vs'd vs fo,
AstnatvngentlegulitheCuckoweiBircL,
Vfcth the Sparrow, dicvopprelTe our Neil,
Grew by our Feeding, to fo greats bulke,
T hat euen our Loue durft not come neerc your fight
For feare of fwallowing : But with nimble wing
We were infore'd for fafety fike,toflye
Out ofyour light, anS raifc this prefent Head,
Whereby we ftand oppolcd by fuch mcanei
Asyou your felfe, haue forg'd-againftyour lelfc,
Bv vnkinde vfage, dangerous; countenance,
And violation of all faith and troth?
S worneto vs tnyonger encerprize*
Kin. TheCe things indeedc you haue artkuTaeed,
Proclaim'd atMarket iJroUes read in Churches,
To face the Garment of Rebellion
With fome fine colour, that may pleafc the eye
Offickle Changelings, and poore Difcontcnts^
Which gape, and rub the Elbow at the newe»
Of hurly burly Innouation :
And neuer yet did Infurre£lion wane
Such water- colours, to impaint nTfeaufc 2
Nor moody Bcpgars,(taruing for a tkac
Of pell-mell hauocke,and confufion-i
Prim In bothour Armies, thereis many a foule
Shall pay fidlaearely for this enco&irer,
1 f once they loyne in trial!. Tell your Nephew,
The*Prince of Wales ciotn ioyne with all the world
In ptaife of Henry Percie : By my Hopes,
This prefent enterprize fecoffhisliead.
1 donot thinke a brauer Gentleman,
More a£tiue,yali'ant,or more valiant yong,
More daring.or more bold,is.now aliue«
To grace this latter Age with Noble deeds.
For my party! may fpeake it to my fharae,
I haue a Truant beene roChiualry,
Andfo I heare, he doth account me too :
Yet this before my Fathers Maicfty,
I am content that he fliall take the oddes
Of his great name and eftimation,
And willjto faue the blood on either fide,
Try fortune with h"im, in a Single Fight.
King And Princeof Vv^ales.foaarevgg YeillCf t&ee>
Albeit, confidetacions infinite "J
403 -(0)- 2h
504- (0)- 4 h.
jo The Firft Tart o/^mgHenry the Fourth.
Do make againft tct No good Worftcr,no,
We louc our people well • euen thofe we roue
That are miGed vpon your Coufins pare :
And will they xake the offer of our Grace s
Both he, and they, and you ; yea,euery man
Shall be my Friend againe, and lie be his.
So tellyour Coufin.and bring me wbrd.j
What he * ill do/ But if he will not yeeld,
Rebuke and dread correction waite on vs*
And they (hall do their Office. So bee gone*
We will not now be troubled with reply.
We offer faire^tafee it aduifcdly.
Exit iVorcefter.
Priit. It will not be accepted.on my life,
The DMgfaand the Hotffntrre both together,
Are confident againft the world in Armes.
King. Hence therefore, euery Leader to his charge,,
For on rheir anfwet will we fet on them ;
And God befriend e», as our caufc is iuft. txeunt,
Manet Prince and Faljlaffe.
Tai. Hal, if thou fee me downe in the battell,
And beftride me, fo; Vis a point of friendfnip.
TV/w.Notbing but a CololTus can do thee that frendfhip
Say thy prayers, and farewell.
Fal. I would it were bed time /iW,and all well4
frin. Why.thou ow'itheauen a death.
Falfi* Tis lot due yet : I would bee loath to pay him
before his day. What neede \ bee fo forward with him,
that call's not on rre ? Vv*eTT, 'tis no mawe^Honor prickes
me on. But how if Honour pricke me off when I come
on ? How then? Can Honour fet too a leggc? No : 01 an
arme ? No : Or take away the greefe of a wound ?TSTo.
Honour hath no skill in Surgerie,then ? No.What is Ho-
nour ? A word. What is that word Honour ? A yre : A
trim reckoning. Who hath it ? He that dy'de a Wednef-
day. Doth he feelc it? No. Doth hee hears it? No. Is it
infcnfible then? yea, co the dead- But wil it not liue who
the liuing? No, Why ? Detr3c*tion wil not (after ir,ther-
fore lie none of it*' Honour is a meert Scutcheon, and fo
endsmyCatcclnTine. JExti.
Scena Secunda*
Enter Wercejfery andStr 7{[cbard Vjcrncn.
IVor- O no.my Nephew muit not know,Sir Richard,
The liberall kinde offer of theKing„
""Vtr. 'Twere beft he did.
Wor* Thenweareaflvndone.
It is nor poffible, it cannot be,
The King would Jccepe his word iD Iouing vs,
He will fufpect vs ftill and findc a time
TopuniPn th'rs offencein others faults :
SnppofitiorjjaH out hues, fhall be ftucke full of eyes ;
ForTreafon is bi'trrufted like theFoxe,
Who ne're fo tame, fo cherj(ht,and lock'd vp,
Will haue awildcmcfce of his Anceftors :
lookc how He can, or facTor merrily,
Interpretation will mifquote our lookes.
And we (hall feede like Oxen at a flail,
The better chcriflit, SHI the nearer death.
My Nephewes trefpafle may dTwcII forgot,
Ithath the excufc ofyouth,and heate of bloody
And an adopted name of Ptiuilcdge,
Ahaire-brain'd Hetjjmrre, gouern'd by aSplceno
All his oflfences liue vpon my head,
And on his Fathers, ' We did rraine him on
And his corruption being tane from vs,
We as the Spring of all, (hall pay for all :
Therefore good Coufin, ler not Harry know
In any cafe, the offer of the King,
Ver, Deliuer what you wilLjle (ay 'tis. Co,
Heere comes your Cofin.
Emer Hotjpmre^
Hot. MyVnklcisr«urn*d,
Deliuer vp my Lord ofWeftmerland*
Vnkie, whSFnewe- ?
War. The King will bid you battell prefently,
©w.Dcfiehim by the Lord of Weftmerland.
Hot, Lord Dowglas : Go you and tell him fo.
Do*, Marry and (hall.and verie willingly.
Exa Doxtght,
IVor. There is no feeming mercy in thcKing.
Hot, Did you begge any?God forbid.
War. I told him gently of our greeuance-,
Of his Oath-breaking : which he mended thus,
By now forfwearing that he is forfwornc,
He cals vs Rebels, Traitors , and will fcourgs
With haughty armes, this hatefull name in vs.
Enter Dowglat.
2)ovp. Arrae Gentlemen, to Armes, for I haue thrown
Abraue defiance in KlngHenrtes teeth :
And Weftmerland th3t was ingag'd did bcare ir,
Which cannot choofc but bring him quickly on.
War. The Princcof Wales, ftept tonh before the king,
And Nephew, chaileng'd you to (ingle fight.
Hot. O, would the quarrel! lay vpon our heads,
And that no man might draw (horc breath to cfay ~
But I and Harry Monmouth. Tell mCjtell mee,
How (hew'd his Talking ?Scem'd it in contempt ?
*Ver. No, by my Soule : I neuer in my life
Did heare a Challenge vrg'd more modeitly,
Vnleffv: a Biotherfhoul J a Brother dare
To gentle exercife, and proofe of Armes.
He gaue you all the Duties ofa Man,
Trimm'd vp your rrailes with a Princely tongue.
Spoke your defcruings like aChronicle4
Making you euer better thcnhlspraHe^
By ftill difpraifingpraife, valcw'd with you :
And which became him like a Prince indeed^
He made a blufhiag cirall ofhirofelfe,
And chid his Trewanr youth with fuch a Grace,
As if he maitred there a double fpiric
Of teaching, and of learning inftantly :
There did he paufe. " But let me tell the World,
If he ont-Iiue the enuie of this dayf
England did neuer owefo fweet a hope,
So much mifconftrued in his WantonnciTe.
Hot. Coufin, I thinke thou art enamored
On his Follies : neuer did I heare
Of any Prince fo wilde at Liberty.
But be he as he will, yel once ere night,
I will imbrace him with a Souldiers arme,
That he (hall (hrinke vnder my curtefie.
Arme,armc with fpeed. And FeIlow's,Soldiers,Friend$,
Better cenfider what you haue to do,
That I that haue not well she gift of Tongue,
Can
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Thet Firji Tart of Kjng Henry tbefmrtL
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Can life your blood vp with perfwafion.
Enter a (Jlfejfenger,
Mtf. My Lord,heere arc Lettersioryou.
Hot, I cannot reade them now
OGentlemem the time of life is (hort ;
Xofpend that fhoTtncffcbafcIy,wcre too long.
If life did ride vpon a Dials poinr,
Still aiding attltcarnuali of an houre,
And if we Hue, we Hue to treade on Kings:
irdye;braue death.when PrinceFoye with vs.
Now for our Confciences, the Ara.es is faire,
Wncn the intent for bearing them is mft.
Enter another (Jltefengcr.
ftfef. My Lord prepare, the King-comes on space*
liar. I thanke htm . that hectics me from my yj.ei
For I profeffer.ot calking: QneTyThis,
Let each nun do his beft. Andneere 1 draw a Sword,
VVhofe worthy temper 1 intend to fta"ifie
With the beft blood that I can mectc withall,
[n the aducnture of this perilious day.
Now EfpcranceP^rj, and fee on :
Sound all the lofty I nit rumen ts of Warre,
Andby that Muficke, let v sail imbrace :
Porheauen to earth,fomc of vs neuer fnail,
Afccond time do fuch a curtefie.
The ensvracejbeTrumj/etsfoUKd, the King entereth
with his power, alarum vnto the battel!. 7 hen enter
t>owg'as%ar.dSti Walter 'Blunt.
2?/«,Whac t thy namcAth3t in battel thus y croficft me?
What honor do ft thou feeke vpon my head?
rDow. Know then my nameis Dowglas,
And I do haunt thee in the battell thus,
Becatife fome tell me, that thou art a King,
Blunt. TheyTell thee true.
Bow. The Lord of Sta^ord deere to day hath bought
ThvlikcneiTe -.for irrfled of thee King Harry,
This Sword hath ended him, fo fhafl it thee,
Vnlefle thou yecld thee as a Prifoner.
$ Blu. I was not borne to yeeld,thou haughty Scot,
And thou fhalv finde a King that wjlreucnge
Cords Staffords death.
F ioht , Blunt if (lainefhen enters Flotjp.'ir,
Hot. O Dowglas ,hadft thou fought at Hcimedon thus
F ncuer had triumphed ore a Scot. ,
Dow. All's doncall's won,here breathlcs lies rhe king
Hot. Where f"
Dew. Heerc.
Hot. Th\rDon>gUs} No,I know this fa.ee fail well :
A gallantKnight he was, his name was Blunt y
Scmblably furnifli'd like the King himfelfc.
Dow, Ah foole : go with thy fouje whether it goes,
A borrowed Title haft thou bought too dcere.
Why didft thou tell me, that thou wer taJCing -
Hot. The King hath many marching in his Coats.
ZW. bjow by my 5 word ,1 will kijrall his Coates,
He murder all nis Wardrobe?peece by pecce,
Yntilll meet the King.
Hou Vp^andaway,
,0«r Souldiers ftand full rakely for tVe day. ' Exeunt
alarum, and enter Fal/Iaffe foltts.
Fal. Though I could, fcapc (hor-frce at LpgdonJ fear
tne (hot hecre : here's nofcoring,but vpon the pate.Soft
who»are you ? Sir Walter 'Blunt f there's Honour for you ;
here's no vanity, I am as hot as molten Lcad^aod as he*,
uy toojheauenkecpe Lead out of mee, Ioeexiencj more
weight theammc ownefiowelles. 1 haue ted m* ra« of
Muffins where they are peppei'd : there's notthree of my
150. left aliue^and they for the Townes end, to beg du-
ring life. Bu t who comes heeref
Enter the Prince,
Pr#.\Vhat,(tand'ft thou idleherePLend me thv fword,
Many a Nobleman likes ftarkc 3nd ftiffe
Vnder the hooucs oTvaunting enemies,
Whole deaths are vnrcueng d. Prethy lend me thy fword
"" Fat 0//«/,J pretheegiucmcleauc to breath awhile:
Tuikc Gregory ncuer did fuch deeds in Armcs as I haue
done this day, I haue paid Percy ,1 haui made him lure.
wr*7rin. He is indced,3nd liuing to kill thee ; "™
Iprethee lend me thy fword*
"■ FaI'}. Nay Hal if Percy bee aliue, thou getft not my
Sword but take my PiftoHif thou wilt.
Prin. Giue it me :!WrTat, is it in the Cafe :
till. I Halt 'tis hot : There's that will Sacke 3 City
TbeVrsnce drawes oM a bottle of Sacke-.
Prut. What, is it a timc.toicftanddally now. Exit.
"Tbrowes it at him.
FaI. If Percy be aliue, He pierce him: ifhedocomein
myway/o^fhedonotjiflcoTicinhis (willingly) let
him make a Carbonado of me: Ilskenoc fuch grinning
honour as Sir Walter hath : Giue mee life, which if I can
faue, foufnordioaour comes vniook'd for, and therY an
end. Exit
t^larmrjexcurftons^nter the King,the Prince^
LqrJIobnofLancafter, and Ear It
ofWefimerlund,
King I prethee Harry withdraw thy fclfc, thcu blcc-
deft too much: Lord lohn ofLancajler.pi you with hjr|Z
*j£.M. NotI,my Lord,vnlefle I did bleed too«
Prin 1 befecch your Maiefty make vp*
Leaft you retirement do amaze your friends.
King. I will do lot
My Lord of Weftmetland leade him tohis.Tenr.
Weft. Come my Lord, lie leade yoiuo your Tent.
Pr'w. Lc-d me my Lord? I Jb not need your helpej
And heaucu forbid a fnallow {cratch fliouldclriug
TheprinceofWalesfromfuchafi^asthi^
Where ftain d Nobility lyes trouen on,
And RebeW Armcs triumph in maflacres.
I0I1. We breath too long: Come cofin We.li-erland,
Our doty this way lics/or heaueas fale come
Prin By heauen thou haft deceiu d me Lancifter^
I did not think e thec Lord of fuch a lpint .
Before, 1 lou'd thee as a Brother, lohn ; %
But now. Idorefoecl thec as my Soule.
King. I faw mmnold Lord Percy at the point,
With luftier maintenance then Hid looke for
Offuch an yngrowng Warriour.
Prin. 6 this Boy, lends-mettall to vs all.
Enter Dowglas.
Dow. Another Kiog?They gtow like Hydra's heads*
I am the Dowglas, fatall to all thofe
Thai* weare thofe colours on them. What artthou
Jhat countexfeit'ft the perfon of a King?
KitifrTkc Kiaghimfelfe ;. who Dw^Uu gticues at hilt
So
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1 yz The Firft&artoflQng Henry the Fourth.
Sqmany of his fcadowes tbotf haft mcrt
And not thevery King. I haue two Boyes
Seekef^rqandth? felfe about the Field :
But feeing thou fall'ft onrnefd luckily,
I will affay thee : fo defend thv felfe*
'Dew, I feare chouart anoraer counterfeit :
And yet infaithtfrou bear'(l thee like a King:
Bat mine I am lute thou art,whoere thou be,
And thus I win thee. Tbeyfiiht^ the K.beingm danger ,
titter Prmce.
tiint. Hold vp they head viIeScof,ot thou artlikc
Keoer to hold it vp againe : the4Spirits
Of valiant Sberlj.SiajfbrdfBltoitjtc in my ArratfJ
It is the Prince of Wales that threatens thee,
WEo neuer promifechjbut he meaner to pay.
Thty PtghtfDowgtaifytth.
Cheerely My Lord : how fare's your Grace ?
Sir Nicholas Gavrfey hath for fuccourfent,
And fo hath Clifton : He to Clifton ftraight*
~"l&wjr. Stay,and breath awhile.
Thou haft redeemed thy loft opinion,
And fhew'd thou mak'ft fome tender of my life
In this faire tefcug thou haft brought to race,
Prin. O heauen, they did me too much iniury*
That euer faid 1 hcarkned to your death.
If it were Co, I might haue let ajfiflS,
The infulting hand of DmgUs ouer you^
Which would haue bene as fpeedy in your end,
As ali the poyfonousPotions in the world,
And fau'd the Treacherous labour o£your Sonne.
K, Make vp to Chftm^\t to Sir Wcholas GaHJey. Qcit
£nter Hatfyttr. """
Hot. If I miftake not, thou art Harry Monmouth.
Prin, Thou fpeak'ft as if I would deny my name.
Hot* My name is Harris Percie.
frin.'Wbj then I fee a very valiant, rebel ofthatname*
I am the Prince of Wales.and tbinke not Tercy j
To Gsare with me in fclory any more ;
Two Starrcs keepe not their motion in qne.Sphere,
Nor can one England brookc a double xeigne,
Qf Harry Percy ^dt the Prince of Waler.
Hot* Not (hall \iHarry> for the hourc is come
To end the ojjc_of vs; and wouLUohcauen,
Thy ttamein Armes; were now as grcatas mme.
Prin. lie make it greatcr.ete 1 part from thee/
And all the budding Honors on thy Creft,
He crop,tomake a Garland for my head, '
Hot. I can no longer brooEe thy VankieS- &£*>
Enter Faljtafe.
Pal. Well faid 7f*/,to it Hat. Nay you (hall finde no
Boyes play heere.J can tell you.
Enter Dowglas he fight smth Falftaffewbofah dowtt
tit tfhfxvere dead. The frwce'kiHeth Percie.
Hot. OhMnryjtJiojihafTrob'd me of my youth:
I better brookc t£g Ioflc of brittle life,
Then thofe proud Titles thou jjaJi wonne of me,
They wound my thoghts worfe,then ttafword my fle(h;
But thought's the flaue of Life,ajii LifeVTimcs foole;
And Time, that takes iuruey of aiithe world,
Mnfthaueaftop. O. T could Pronhefie.
But that the Earth,and the cold hand of death.
Lyes on my Tongue : No /V*7,thou att duft
And food for— — — -
Prin, Fox Worme*,braue/V?T7 .Farewell greatheart:
Ikweau) d, h mbmon.how much art thou fhrunke?.
that this bodic did conuine a ipirit,
AKingdomefor it was too fmall a bound ;
But now two pace? of the vilcft Earthl
Is rcomc sneugh. This Earth that bearec ths dcac^
Beares notaTTueTo ftouta Gentleman.
If thou wer'tfenftEle of curtcfle,
Ifhould not make fo great a (hew of Zcale.
But let my fauours hide thy mangled face,
JSnd euen in thy behalfe,lle thanke my felfc
Fordoing tnefefavrc Rites of Tenderneflc.
Adicu,and take thy'praife with thee to heauen,
Thy ignomy (lecpe with thee intne grauca
But not Kmembred in thy Epitaph.
What?01d Acquaintance? Could not all thisflefli
Ketpe in a little life^Poore facTe",farewell ;
I could haue better fpai^d a bettetman.
0,1 (houldhauea heauy miiTeof tljee,
XfjL were much in loue with Vanity.
Death hathnot ftgucke fo fat a Deere to day,
Though manyo'carer in this bloody Fray s
Imbo weird wiiTTTee thee by and by*
Till then,in blood,by tfobftpereie Ivc. Exit*
Talftaferifetbvp. '
PaIJI* Imbowell'd? If thou imbowel! Rice to dayjlc
giue youlegue to powder me,and eat me too to morow,
'Twai t-me to counterfet, or thathotte Termagant^wj)
had paid me fcot and lot too.Counterfei i? I am no coun.
ccrfeit; to dye, is to be a counterfeit, for bee bbut tfec
counterfeit of a man.who hathnot the life oft man s Bui
to counterfeit dying^yvhen a manthcr cby liu«h,is to hi
no counterfeit,but thctrue and perfect image of life ijj«
deede. Thebettcrpart of Valour, is Difcrenon; in the
which Better parrTl haue faued my life. I ana atlcaide of
this Gun-powcfer Percy though he i>c dead. How if hee
fhould counterfeit too, and lift? \ am afraid bee would
prouc the better counterfcit:thereforclle make him lure.'
yea.and llefwearelkiP/dhioi. Why may not bee rife as
well as I :Nothing confutes mebut eyes, anjj no-oTdie
fees me.Thrrefore firra^with a new wound in your thigh
come you along me. Trt%* Hotfinrre on bu iecke*
Evur Prince and lohn-ofLanc^fier.
Prin. Come Brother lohn% full brauely haftthouflelht
thy Maiden fwcrd.
hhn. Butfoft.whohaueweheeret*
Did you not tell mc this Fatman was dead ?
Prin. I did, I faw himoTad,
BreachieCfc and bleeding on the ground: Art thou aliue?
Or u it fantafir that playes vpmrour cye-figb.t l
I ^retheefpeskc.we wili not truft oureyes"
Without our earcs. Thou art not what thou feern'ft.
Pal. No, that's certaine ; I am not a double man ; bfit
if 1 be not lacfa Fatjlaffe^htn ami a lacks : There is Per*
ryj£yout Fathet will do me any Konor,fo: ifno^tjet hhw
kill the next P<rrw himfelfc. I looketo bccitherEarleojf
Duke,Ican affurcyou.
Print Whv.P^ra I kill'd my fclfe, and faw thee dead»
Pal. Did ftthou?LordXord. how the world is giuen
to Lying? I grauntyou I was downe. and cue ofpreatb,
and fo was he, but we rofe both at ajjinftant.and fought
alonghoureby Shrewsburie clocke. jyflmay beebelee-
ued /o • if not,let them t^aftfhould reward Valour^beare
the finne vpon their owne heads. He take'r on my death
I gaue him this wound in the Thigh : if the man #?crea-
liuejand would deny it, J would make him cate a p«ce
o£my fword.
hhn. This is the ftrangeft Tale that e'r?j^ieapd.
Prin,, This is the ftrangeftTcHow,Brother hhn.
Come
~^~
588-(0) -37i
The Firjl Tart ofI\ing Henry the Fourth.
Come bring y.our luggage Nobly on your backc
For my partjif a Iyc may Ao thee grace,
He yitfl it with the happieft tcatraes I hauc. »• 27
*sf Retreat u founded,
TftS Trumpets found Rctrcat.thc day is ours :
Come Brother, lei's to the higheft of the field,
» fee what Friends are Iujmg» who are dead . Exeunt
FaJ. lie follow as thcyTayT'fot Reward. Bee that re-
wards IPC,' -einen reward bim, Ifldogrow great again.
fie grow Icffe? For Itepurgc, and leaue Sackc andliue
cleanly^s a Nobleman fhouIdcJoT-- 90— ^xit
11
Scma Qmrta.
The TrutttpersfoKtfdi.
Enter tbeKing, Prince oftfates, Lord Iobn efLtnatfteri
Earle cfwejfmerland, Mtb Worccflcr&
Vernon Pnjbners.
King. Thus euerdid Rebellion finMe Rebuke.
IIMpirited Worcefter.did wc not fend Grace*
Pardon ,and tcarmes ofLoueTB all of you I
And would'ft thou turne our ofrcTs contrary >
Mifufe chc tenor of thy Kiofmans truft?
Three Knights vpon our party flame to day,
ANob!eEarIe!,andmany;a creature elfe,
Kad beene aliuc this houre,
If like a Chriftian thou had ft rruly borne
Betwixt out Armies, true Intelligence.
Wor, What I hane donc,myFa!ttyvrg d me to,
1GD - (0) -17*
And I embrace this fortunspaiicntly,
Smcenoc to beauoyded, it fals on mee.
King, Beare'Worcefter to dczih,zn£2Jernm too ;
Other Offenders we will paufespon,
Exit mrcefter and Vernon.
How goes trie Field?
Prin. "The Noble Scot Lord DmgUsk when bee Can
The fortune of the day quite turn'd from him, Tmm
The Noble Percy flaine.and allhis men,
^pon the foot of feare.fied with the reft 5
And rallingTrom a hill, he was fo bruia'd
That the purfuersTooke him. At my Tenc
The Vmglas is, and I bcleecb your Grace,
1 may difpofeofhim.
King. With allmy hearts
Prin. ThenBrothern?5»ofLanc3?er,
To you this honourable bounty fhall belong 1
Go to the DmglAS,in& deliuer him
if Vp to his pleafUre, ranfomlcfle and free :
Tits Valour fhewne vpon cur Grefts to day,
Hath taught vs how fSTnenfh fuch high deeds,
Eucn in the bof ome of our /Lduerfaries.
King, Then this rcmaincs i tnal We" diuidc our Power.
You Sonne lobn.&nd my Coufin Weftmerland
Towards Yorke fhall bend you.withyour deereft fpeed
To meet Norihumbei land, arTffthe Prelate Stroopc>
Who(as wc heare)arc bufily in Armes.
My Selfe, and jTou Sonne Harry will toward* Wales,
To fight with UTendmer.iDd iheEarle ofMarcb.
Rebellion in this Land iHOTofehisway?
Meeting the Checkc ofTucTi another day :
And fince this BuSnctfe fo faire is done,
let vs not leaue till all our owne be wonne. Exam,
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FINIS.
"*
74
The Second Part of Henry the Fourth;
Containing his Death : and the Coronation.
of King Henry the Fift.
edftus Primus, SccenaTrirna*
I
NDVCTION,
Enter 'Rumour.
Penyour Ear es ;For whiekof you will ftop
f he ventof H«ari»g,whcr>»loud &w«r fpeakes?
t , from the Orient, to the drooping Weft
(Making "the winde my Poit-horfe) ftill vnfold
The A6fo commcncedonchls Ball of Earth.
Vpon my Tongue, coniftnuall Slan lersride>
The which, in euery J- angU3gc> J pronounce,
Stuffing the Eares of china with falfe Reports :
I fpeakc cTF Peace, while couertEnmitic
( Vnder the fmile of Safety)woundsr thcWorid :
And who but Rumour, who but onely I
Makefearfull MITfVers, and prepar'd Defence,
Whil'ft the biggeyeare; fwolnc with Tome other gtiefes,
Is thought with childe, by the fierne TyrantiWarrc,
And no fssch matter? IXumor.r^ is a Pipe
Biowne by Surjnifes, ieloufics, Conie&urcsj
And of fo eafie, and fo j^am'ea (lop,
That the blunt Monftcr, with viTcountad heads,
The ftill difcordant, wauering Multitude,
Can play vpon it. But what ncedel thus
My well-knowncBody to Anathomize
Among my hou^old ? Why is £w»w heere ?
I run before King Harriet vi&oty,
Who in a bloodie field by Shrewsburie
ffatrTbeaten downe yong Hotjpttrre ,aud bis TrOcpes^
Quenching the flame of hold Rebellion,
Euen with cheRebels blood. But what meane I
To fpcake fo true at firft ? My Office is
15 novfc abroad, that Harry CMonMomb fell
Vnoar the Wrath of Noble Hotjptirres Sword:
Jtfd that the King, beJorcthe DcwglM Rage
Stocp'd his Annointed head, as low as death.
This haue I rumout'd through the peafant-Townes*
Bejwecnc the Royall Field of Shrewsburie,
Aadthis Worme-eaten-Hole of ragged Stone,
Where Hot flumes Father, old Northumberland,
Lyes crafty fake. The Pofles come tyring on,
And not a man of them brings other newes
Then they haue learn d of Me. 'From Rumurt Tongues,
They bring fmooth-Comforti-fa'.fe, wc:fc then True-
wrongs. Exit
* 10) -8fc
Siena Secunda,
Enter Lord eBardotfeyand the Porter*
L/Bar, Who kcepes the Gate heere hoi ?
Where is the Earle?
For. What.flulJ I fay you are i*
Bar. Tell thou the Earle
That the Lord Baxdolfe doth attend hint heere.
Per. His Lordfbip is walk'd forth into the Orchard
Pleafe it your Honor, knocke buti&cfaeGtoj,
And he himfelfe.wHl ahfwer.
Enter Northumberland,
L ."Bar. HeelC comes the Earle.
Nor. What newes Lord Bardolfe> Eu'ry minute now
Should be the Father of fame Strat3gem;
The Times are wilde : Contention (liki a Horfe
Full oFhigh Feeding) madly hath b;oke loofc,
And bcares downe all before dim*
L.Bar. Noble Earie,
I bring you certaine newes from Shrewsbury.
Nor. Good,andheauenwi!l.
L.Bar. As good as heart can wifh :
The King is almoin wouno'ed to the death :
And in the Fortune of my Lord your^ohne,
prince Hank flaine out-right : and both the Blmtt
Kill'd by cho hand ofDowglas, Yong Prince Iok;t
And WeGmerland, andStafrbrd,fled the Field.
And Harrie Monmouth1 s BTawne (the Hulke Sir tokt)
Is prifonerra your Sonne* O/uchaDay,
(So foughtrio follow'd, and lb faireiy wonnc)
Came not, till now, to dignific theft" imes
Since Cafars Fortunes.
Nor. How is this dertu'd?
Saw you the Field? Came you from Shrewsbury ? ,
L.Bar. I fpake with one (my L.)that came frdthen^
A Gentleman well bred,and of good name,
That freely rendet'd me thefe newes for true.
Nor, Heere comes my Seruant Tranert tYihom I fen*
OnTuefday laft, to liften after Newes.
EnterTratteru
LJBar, My LordJ oucr-rod him on the way*
And he is furnilli'd with no certainties,
More then he (haply)may retaile from me.
Nor J$ow Trover*, what good tidings cornefftiSyc i
.)IO ft*:
TbeficondTart of King Henry the Fourth.
75
Tr<t..My Lox^Sit lohtt .VmfrtuiKiuxxx d me b'acke
With ioyiul fydingsi; and (being better hors'd)
Out-rod me. After him,, came fpun ing head
^Gentleman (alrooit fore-fpent with ipecd)
That ftopp'd by mc, to breath his bloodied b&£$A
He ask d the way to Chefter t And of him
tdid-demand what Ncwcs from Shrewsbury:
He told me, thatRebcllion had 111 Iucke,
And that yong Harry Perries Spurre was cold.
With that he gaue his able Horfe the head,
And bending for wards ftrooKe his abiehceies
Agsinft ths panting fides or his poore lade
Vp to the Rowcll head* and flatting fo,
He feem'd in running, to dejuiuj&Ehe way,
Staying no longer queftion.
North. Ha?Againei
Saidiieyong H^me Percyes Spurre was cold «>
(Of /^f-5p*rrff,cold-Spurrc?) chat Rebellion,
Hadmecillluckc?
{,$ar> My lord: He tell you what,
If njy yong Lord your Sonnc,haue not the day,
Vpon mine Honor, for a fiiken point
jle giuc my Barony. Neuer talkc of it.
Nor. Why fliould the Gentleman that rude hgXraiters
Giuerheniuch inftances ofLoflcf
L.Var. Who,hc?
rjc'was Tome hicldingPelloWj that nad folnej
TheHorfcherodc-on ; and fpon my lite
Speakeataduencurc. Loake,hexexomes more-Ncwes,
JEntff'lMmat*
93
Nor* Yes, this mans trow, like to iTitle-leafe^
Fore-iels the Nature of a Tragtcke Volume :
Solookes. the.Strond, when the Imperious flood.
Hath leftawitneft Vfurpation.,
Say Morton% did'ft thou come from Shrewsbury },
Mou I ran fronrShrewsbuiy (my Noble Lor J)
Where hatefull death" put on his. vglicitMaikc.
To fright our party.
North. Howc.othTRySonne,and brother?
Thou trembl'it; and the whitcneflc in thy Cheeke
Is apter then thy Tongue, to tell thy Errand.
Eucn fuch amafij fo faint,fo fpiritleffc,
So dull, fo dead ullooke>fo w,oe-be-gone>
Drew PrUms Curtaineiin- the dead ofnight,
And would baue told him,Kalfe his Troy w^buro'd.
But Priam found the Fircere he his Tfliigue:
And I, my Perries death, ere thou repor t'ft it.
This, thou would'ft fay : Your Sonne didthus,and thus :
£oui Brother, thus . So fought the Noble Z?03g/<*/,
Stopping my greedy earejWith their bold deeds.
But in the end (to <\op mine Eare indeed)
Thou haft a Sigh, to blow away thisPraife,
Ending wjiJi Brother, Sonne,and all are dead.
Mor. 'Doivglas is huing,ajicj jour Brother,yec2
But for my Lord, your Sonne.
North. \^hy he is dead.
Sec what a ready tongue Sufpitionuatji ;
Hcthat but feares the thing,hc would not know,
Hath by Inftin6t,knovyledge from others Eyes,
That what he feard, is'chanc'd. Yet fpeake(Mra>»)
Tell thou thy Earlc,hisDiuination Lies,
And 1 will take i c, as a fwcec Difgrace,
And make thec rich, for doing me fuch wrong.
Mar^ You are too great, to be (by mc) gainfaid :
Your Spirit js too true, your Feares too ccrtaine.
North. Yctfor all thrs,fay not that Perries dead.
I fee a ftrange Confeflion In thine Eye :
Thou fhak'ft thy head, and hold'ft it Fearc, or Sinne,
To fpcakea UUj£> If he be flaine,fay fo :
TheTongue offends afit, that reports his deash ;
And he doth finne that doth belye the dead ;
Not he,which fayes the dead is not aliue:
Yet the fitft bringcr of vnwekome Newes
Uasjh but a loofmg Office : andhis Tonguea
Sounds cuer after as a fullen Bell
Rcmcmbred, knolling a departing Friend.
It.'Bar. I cannot thinkef my Lord)your (on is dead.
Mor. I am forty, I fliould force you to bclceue
That, which 1 would tjaheaucn,Ihad not feenc.
But thefc mine cyes,faw.him in bloody ftate>
Rend'ring faint quittancc/Lwearied,and ou t-breath'd)
To Henrie Monmwth%vi\\Qk fwift wrath b»ate downc
The neuer-daunted Perrie to tjjjc. earth,
From wbence(with life)he neuer more iprung ?p,
I" &&» his death (whofc fpirit lent a fire,
Euen to the dulleftPeazant in his Campe)
Being bruited oncs/tooke fire and heate ajaajfc
From chebeft temper a Courage in his Troopes.
For fjoro his Mettle, was his Party fteel'd ;
Which once.inliinjL abated, all the reft
Turn'd on themfelues, like dull ajiclheauy Lead i
And as the Thing, that's heauy in it/elfc,
Vponenforcement,flyes_with grcateft fpeedc,
So did our Mcn,heauy in H. ■ pirns loffe,
Lend to this weight, {ucbjightncflc with their Feare,
That Arrowes fled not Twiftcr towtarjitheir ayme,
Then did our Soldiers ( ayming at their fafety)
Fly from the rlsUi* Then was that Noble Worceflcr
Too fooneta'ne prifoner : ani.that furious Scot,
(The bloody Eowglai) whofc well-labouring fwor J
Had three times flaine th'appearance of the King,
Gan vailehis ftomackc, and did grace the fliame
Of thofethat turn'd their bacitex: and in his flight,
Stumbling in Fcare,was tookc. The furnme ofall,
Is, that the King hath wonnc : and hath ^ent out
A fpeedy power, to encounter you my^Lord,
Vnder the Conduct of yong Lancafter
And Weflmerlarid. TliiSJs the Newes at full.
North. For this,I ftiallhaue time enough to rnoufO£
In Poy fon .there is. Phy ficke : ?ni this new*
(Hauing beenc wcll)that would haue made me ficke,
Being ficjj&haue in fome meafure,madc me well-
And as the Wretcb.whofe Feaucr-weakned ioynt^
Like ftrengthleflc Hindges,bucklc vnder liftj
Impatient of hi^Fit, breakes like a fire
Out af his keepers armes : Euenio, my Limbes
( Weak'ned with greefe) being now inrag'dwith greefej
Arc thrice themfelues. Hence therefore thou nice au^h*
A fcalie Gauntlet nov^with ioynts of Steele .
Muft glouxthishand. And hence thou fickiy Quoife^
Thou arta.guard too wanton for the head,
Which PrinceSjflelh'd with Conqueft,ayme to bit*
Now biode my Browcs with Iron.and approach
The ragged'ft hoore,that Time and Spigbt da?ebiing
Tofrowne vpon thenrag'd Northumberland.
Let Hcaucn kiflc Earth : now let not Natures hand
SCeepe the w ildc Flood confin'd : Let Ordei dye,
frnd let the world no longer be a ttage
To feede Contention in a lipg'ring A<51 ;i
But let one fpirit of the Hrft-borne C/unt 50S
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y 6 The fecondTart of J^ingHenry the Fourth.
Reigoe in all bofomes, that each heart being fee
On bloody Courfcs, the rude Scene may end*
And darknelTebe the buricr of the dead. (Flonor.
LlBar Sweet EarIc,dmorce not wifedom from your
Mor. The Hues ofall your lotting Complices
Leane-on your health, the which if you giuCrO re
To ftormv PalTion, rouft perforce decay*
YoiLcafl ithcuen: ofWartefmv Noble Lord)
And fumm'd the accomptof Chance,beforeyou laid
Let gs make head : It was your prefurmize,
Thftrinfjhe dole of blowes,your Son might drop.
You knew he walk'd o're perils, on an edge
MorclikelyToiall i°> ™en to get o're :
You were aduis'd his flefh was capeable
Of Wounds, and Scarres ; and that his forward Spirit
Would lift him, where moft trade of danger rang'd.
Yet did you fay go forth : and none of this
(Though ftrongly apprehended) could reftratna
The ftfffc-borne Action : What hath then befalne>
Or what hath this bold entcrprize bring forth,
More then djit Being, which was like to be ?
L.Bar. We all that are engaged to this lofle,
Knew that we ventur'd on fuch dangerous Seas,
That if we wrought out life,was ten to one :
And yet we venturd for the gaine proposed,
Choak'd the refpe& of likely pcrill fear'd,
And fince we are o're-iet,vcnture againe.
Come, we will all put forth; Body,and Goods,
TWer.'Tis more then time : And (my moft Noble Lord)
I heare for certaine, and do fpeake the truth :
The gentle Arch-bifhop of Yorke is vp
With well appointed Powres : he is a man
Who with a double Surety binde'shis Followers.
My Lord (your Sonne)had onely but the Corpei,
But fhadowes.andthe fhewes of men to fight..
For that fame wordfRebdlionl) did diuide
The a&ion of their bodies, from their foulesr
And they did fight with queafincfle, conftrain'd
As men drinke Potions; that their Weapons only
Seem'd on our fide : bu^for their Spirits and Soules,
This word (RebelIion)7t had froze them vp,
As Fifh are in a Pond. But now tbeBifhop
Turnes Insurrection to Religion,
Suppos'd fincerc.and holy in his Thoughts :
He's follow'd botn with Body,and with Mindc :
And doth enlarge his Rifing, with the blood
OjTaireKing Richard, fcrap'd from Pomfiet ilones,
Deriues from heaucn>his Quatrell.and his Caufe i
Tels thcm,he doth beftride a bleeding Land,
Gafping for life, vndcr gxcax.Btttimgbrookey
And rnorc?and Icffe.do Bocketo follow him.
jtforih. I knewof this before- But to fpeake truth,
This prefent greefe had wip'd it from my ra'mde.
Go in with me^and councell euery man
The apteft way for fafety, and reucnge :
Get Pofts,and.Letters,anamake Friend's with fptfed,
Neuer Co few,nor neuer yet more need. 4.48 — Exeunt.
Scena Tenia. (14)~'u~
Enter Fat [I aft, and Page.
fVi/.SirtaA'ou gianr,what laics the Doc7t.ro my water?
Pag. He laid fir,the water it klfewasagood healthy
watenbut for the party that ow d it,he might haue more
difeafes then h* ^i?w for.
Fat. Men of all forts take a pride to gird at mee : the
498 -(14) - S&
braine of this foolim compounded Clay-man, is not able
jo, inuent any thing that tends to laughter, t more then t
inuenr,orisinuentedonme. J am not onclft witty in my
felfe^but the caufe that witja in other men, I doe heerc
walkc before thee,likfia Sow, that hath o'rewhelm'd all
her Litter, but ojje^ If the Prince put thee into my Ser-
uice for any other reafon, then to fct mce off, why then!
haue no iudgement. Thou horfon Mandrake, thou art
fitter to be woroe in my cap, then to wait at jypjj heeles. I
was neuer mann d with an Agot till now ; but I will fette
you neyther in Gold, norSiluer, but in trilde apparell,and
fend you backe againe j£ your Mafter. for a Iewcll. The
Tuuenali (the Prince your Matter) whofe Chin i« nor yCt
fiedg'd, I will fooncr haue a beard grow.in the Palme of
1 my hand, then he (Kail get oce on hischeeke : yet he will
not fttcke to fay, his Face is a Facc-Royall. Heauen may
finifh it wn"en he will, it is not a haire anjifTc yet : he may
♦keepeTt ftill at a Face-Royall , for^Barbei fhall n-iJer
earne fix pence out of it; fjaiyet he will be crowing, as if
he had writ man euer fince his Father was a Batcbcllou?,
He may keepe his owne Grace, but he is almoft out jj£
mine, I canaffurehim. What faid Vi.T)ombledon% about
the Sattenfor my fhortCloalcc,and Slops. ?
Pag. He laid fir .you fliould procure him better AfTu
rance,then!5W^.' he wold not take his Bond & yours*
he lik'd not the Security.
Pal. Tet him bee damn'd like the Glutton, may hii
Tongue be hotter,a horfon Achitopbel; a Rafcally-yea-
fprfooth-knaue^Jjcare a Gentleman in hand, and then
ftand vpon Seen! . The horfon fmooth-pates doe now
weare nothing butTiigh fhoes» and bunches of Keycs at
their girdles : and if a,man is through with them in ho*
heS Taking-vp, thenthey muft ftawd vpon Securitie
had as liefe they would put Rats-bane in my mouth, _.
offer to ftoppe it with Security. I look'd hee fiiould haue
fent me two anTtwenty yards of Satten (as I am true
Knight) and he fends me Security. WeH,he may fleep in
Security, for he hath the home of Abundance : and the
lightneffc of his Wifelnines through it, and yet cannot
he fec.though he haue his owne LanthOrnc to light him,
Where's 'Barfotfel
Pag. He's gone into Smithfield £o buy your worfhip
a horfe.
Fat. 1 bought him in Paules,and hec'l buy mee a horfe
in Smithfield. Ifl could get niee a wife in the Stewes, I
"were Mann'd.Hors'djand Wiu'd.' — 457™
Snttr Chiefe Itt^ice^ndSeruant.
Tag. Sir, heere comes the Nobleman that committed
the Prince for flriking hirr,,about ,'Bardolfe.
Fat. Wait clofe.I will not fee him.
Ch.Iufi. What's he that goes there?
Ser. Fa/Jtajft^ntSTpleik your Lordfhip.
Ifift. He that was in queftion for the Robbery )
Ser. He my Lord,but he hath fince done good ferufce
at Shrewsbury: and(a7Tneare}iisnow going with fome
Cbarge,to the Lord lohnofLancafttr.
luh. What to Yorkerfcall him backe againe,
Ser. Sir Ioh» Falftaffe.
Fat. Boy,teIl him.I am deafe. '
Pag. You muft fpeake lowdcrjny Mafter is deafe.
/«/?» I am fure hejs^to the hearing of any thing good.
Go pluckeJiiniby the Elbow,! muft fpeake with him.
Ser. Sir Iohn.
iW. What fa yong knaue and beg?Is there not wj£S?l3
there not imp'-oyment.-'Doth not the K.l3ckfi>bjefis? Do
pot the Rebels want Soldiers?Though it be afhamcto be
. Ofc' on
5«
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TkefecondTm t offing Henry the Fourth.
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on any fide but one, it is vvorfe flume to bcgge,; then to
be on the worft fidc,were it worle therftbe name of Re-
bellion can tell how to rna'flkis.
$er. YoumiftakemcSir*
Fd. Why fit? Did 1 fay you were an honeft manPSet-
tlng my Knight-hood,"and my Souidierlhip afide, 1 had
Jyrdin my throat, if I had laid fo.
Ser. I pray youT^Sir) then fct your Knighthood and
your Souldicr-fliip afidc, and giuc mcc Jcaoe to tell you,
you lye in your throat, tf you (ay i am any otherthen an
honeft man.
Fal. IgjuctheeleauetotcIImcfo? Hay a-fide thai
which growes ro me? Ifchou gec'ft any Ieaueofme,hang
me : if thou tak'ft Ieauc,thou vvcr't better be hanjfd :you
Hunt-counter,hence : Auant.
Sir. Sir,my Lord would fpe&kc with you,
Jh(1. Sir lahn Fatftaffe,* word with you*
FaUMy good Lord:giueyour LcraThTp good time of
theday lam glad tofeeyour Lorcifhip abroad : I heard
{ay your loidfrSipwasficke. i hope your LordfhTp goes
abroad by aduife Your Lordir.ip (though not clean paft
yout youth)hath vet fomc ^nsck ot'age in you: fome r el-
lilh of the faltncfle of Time, and I rocfi humbly befcech
your LorduHip.to haue a reuerend care of ynurhealeh.
hfi. Skfokn, TTentyoa befotcyour Expedition, to
Sfucwsburie.
Fal. Jfitpleafcyour Lordfhip,] hearehis Male file is
Miurn d with ibmcTIiTcomfort from Wales.
hft. 1 talke not oliiis Maicfty : yoa would not come
whenlfentforyo'j?
Fal. And 1 hcare moreouar.hls Highneflfeis falne into
this fame whotfaiAj>oplexie. (ycu-
A^.Welljhcauen mend him. T pray let me fpe->.k with
Fal. This Apoplexic isf as I take it)a kind of Letnarl
£ic, a fleeping of the blood, a hoi fen Tingling.
J*JF. What tell y ou mc of it r be it as it is.
Fal. It hath korigirtaTl from much greefc; from fl-ndy
indperturbaiion'of the brainc. ] hauercad thecaufc of
bis effects in Galtn. It is a kinde of deafened
/*j?.;jth"inkeyouarc falne into the dileafc; Foryeu
dcare not what I lay to y ou.
Fal. Vety wcll(my Lord )verywell : rather gn'tplcafc
you) itisthcdifeafeofnotLiftning, the malady©? not
Marking, that 1 am troubled withall.. ""*
foil. Topunifliyoubytheheclcs, would amend the
Ktentiongfyour earej,8c I care not if I be your Phylitian
F«l. lam as pooreas I'o&, my lordjbuc not fo Patient:
your Lord/hip may minifler the Potion of imprifonment
to me jn rcfpe£l of Pouertic : but how Hliould bee your
Paticnt,to follow your prefcriptions, trie wife may make
fome dram of a fcrupIe,or indeede,afcrupleit lelfe.
t*ft. I fent for you (when there were matters againft
pou foi your life) to come fpeakc with me.
Pal. As I was then aduiied by my learned CounceUn
ibelawes of this La.nd-feniice, I did not come.
/«/?. Wel^thc truth is(fir M»)you Hue in great infamy
Fal.tic that buckles him in my belt,canot line in letic.
/«/?.Youf Meanes is very flender,and your wa [Threat.
Fal. I wouldit/were otherwife : 1 would my Meanes
SJEJgreatcr, and my watte flenderer.
tuft. You haue mi (led the youthfull Prune;
Val. The ypng Prince hath milled mec. lamtheFel-
ow with the great bcliy,and he my Dogge.
/w/fiWclljIarolothto gall ancw-heald woundryour
dales feruice at Shrewsbury, hath a little gilded ouei
your Nights exploit on Gads-hill. You may thanke the
vnquiet time, for your quiet o 're-polling that Action.
Fal. My Lord j (Wolfe.
/«/?.But linceall is wcl.keep it fo: wake no: a llcepiug
FzL To wake a Wolfe, is as bad as to froelTa Fox,
/«.What?you areas a candle,"!r)ebetter part burnt out
Fal. A Waflell-Canaic, my Lord; all TaiJow : if I did
fay ofwax4my growth would approue me truth.
Iufi* There is not a white haue on your face, but. (hold
bane his cfredr of grauity.
Fal. - His effecToTgfauy, grauy, grauy.
Inft You follow the yong Prince vp and downe, like
his cuil'I Angelk
Fal. Not fo (my Lord) your ill 'A^gell is light : but I
hopchethatlookes vpon mcc, ; will take mce without;
weighing: and y^e?.:n fome refpefts [grant,! cannot go j
I cannot tell.Vertue is of fo little regard in thefc Coftor>
rnon^crs,that true valor is turn'd Beare-heard, Prcgnan?
cicismadcaTapfter, and hath his ciuicke wit wolVed in
giuing RccFnings: all the other gifts appertinent to man
\as the inancc a this Agc'fhapesthcm) arc not woortha
Goofcberry. You that arc old , confider not the capaci-
ties of vs that arcyong : you mcafcre tnc heat of our Li-
ueTsjwith me binemei ofycur gals: & we thatareinthe
vaward of our youth,I muft confcfle,are'wagges too,
Itifi. DoyoufctdownTyout name in the lcrowleof
youtn,that are written downc old, with all the Charrac-
tcrs ofagc?h3ueyou not a mouTcyc ? a dry handP.3 yel-
low cheeke?a white besidi; a decrcafing leg? an increfing
belly? 3 s not your voice broken/'yout winde fhortPyour
wit (ingle? ancTeuery part about you blafled with Anti-
quity ?and wilyou cal your fclfc yongPFy.fy^y, fir Iohh.
,Fd, My Lotd.l was borne with, a whire head, ec fom-
thu?g ground bcily.Formy voice,l haue iou it withhsl-
lowingand finging of Ant hemes. To approue my youth
farther A will not: the truth is, I am oneiy olde in iudge-
ment and vnderltandmg: and lie that will caper-withmee
for a thoufand Markes,lei him lend methe luony, g^ haue
at him. For the boxc of th'eare that tbeTrincc gaueyou,
he gaue it like a rude Prince.a'ndyou tookeit like a fenfr-
ble Lord. TlTaue check t him tor it , ?- d the yong 1 ion re*
pents : Marry not in allies and fad :-clos:n7TSut innew
Silke.atjd-oidSacke,
Inft. Wel.heauen fend the Prince a better companion.
FaI. Heauen fend the Companion a better Prince : 1
cannot rid my hands of him*
lu/fc WelLthe King hath fcucr'd you and Prince -H«r-
r/,I h?*are ynu are going with Lord hhn of Lancafter, a-
gainft the AwrhlTTDbop^and the Earle of Northumberland
Fal. Yes,I thanke your pretty Tweet witfot it ibut
looke you pray, (all you that kifiemy Ladie Peace, at
home)that our Armies ioyn not in a hot day: for if I take
but two {hirts out with me,and I meanc ngt to Fweat ex-
traordinarily : if itbee a hot day, if I brandilh any thing
but my Bottle, would I might neuer fpit white againe :
There is not a dacngcrous Action canpeepc out his head,
but lam thruft vnonit. W*H,I cannot laft euer. • .■
laft. Wcllabe honehVUe honeft,and bcauen bletTeyout
Expedition.
Fal. Will your Xordftrip lend mee a thoufand pound,
to furnifh me forth ^
/«/?. Not a peny, nc« a peny : you are too impatient
to beare croltcs . Fate you well. Commend mee to my
Corm Weftmerland. \
- Fal. If I do.hliop me with a three-man-BeetJk* A TOM
can no more feparatc Age and Couetoufoefle^thfin be can
part yong Umbcs and Ictchery : bLtthe Gowi'gallcs |hjr
577 -(24) -lh,
610-(19)-G7i
jS ^hefecondTartofK^ingHenrythe Fourth^
onc,and the pox pinches the other ; and fo bothihe De-
grees pteue&t my curfes. Boy ?
P/tge. Sir.
Fal. What money \fm my pur re ?
PAge. Seuen groats:and twopence.
Tat, IcaDgetnoremedy3gainftthis ConfumptTon of
thepurfe. Borrowing onely lingers,! and lingers it out,
butthedifeafcisincureablc. Gobearcthis letter tomy
Lord of Lancafter. this to the Prince, this to the Earlc of
WcQmerland, end this to old Miftris Vrfala, whomc I
haue weekly fworne to marry, fincelpcrceiud the firft
white haire on my chin. About it : you know where to
findeme. ApoxofthisGowtj or aGowtofthisPoxe:
for the one or th'other playes the rogue with my great
toe : It is no matter, if I do halt,lhaue the warres for my
colour,and my Peniion fhall fceme the more reafonable.
A good wit will make vfe of any thing : 1 will turne dif-
cafes to commodity. 1G2 — Exeunt
Scena Quarta.
Enter zArchbithop,Hafti»gsi\JMmbrayi and
LordHardolft.
Ar.Thus hauc you heard our caufcs.& kno our Means :
And my moft noble Friends, I pray you all
Speake plainly your opinions of our hopes;
Andfiift(Lord MarfluH)what fay you to it ?
Mow. I well allow the cccafion ©four Artnes,
But gladly would be better (atisfied,
How (in our Meanest we fhould aduance our felues
Tolooke withforhead boW and big enough
Vpon the Power and puifance ofrjjp King.
Haft. Our prefent Muftcrs grow vpon thcFile
To fiue and twenty thoufand men of choice :
And our Supplies, liue .largely in the hope ■
Of great Northumberland ,whofe bo'lbme burnes
With an incenfed Fire of Injuries.
L.Bar.Thc qucflion then(Lord HdttiKgs)i\m&& thus.
Whether out prefent fine and twenty thoufand
May hold-vp-hcad,without Northumberland:
JIaff,' With him,we may.
ZjfBur. I marry ^here's the point:
But if without him we be thought to feeble,
My iudgement is,wc fJhould not ftep too farrc
Till we had his Afsiftance by the hand.
For ina Thcame fo bloody fac'd,as this,
ConiciSlure, Expe£tation,and Surmife
Of Aydfes incertaine^fliould not be admitted
-Arch. 'Tis very tiuj Lord Tardolfefor indeed
It was yong Hotfpurres cafe, at Shrewsbury.
L.Bar. It was(my Lord)who lin'd himfelfwith hope.
Eating the ayre, on promifc of Supply,
Flatt'ringhimfelfc withProiecTofa power,
Much fimllcr, then the fmalleftofhis Thoughts,
And fo with great imagination
(Proffer to mad men") led his Powers to death,
And (winking) leap'd into deltru&ionv ,
* Haft. But (by .your Icaue)it neuer yet didh--rT
To lay downe likely-hoods,and formes of hope.
L.Bar. Yes, if.this prefent quality of warre,
Indeed the infant acTion: a caufe on foot,
Liues fo in hope : As in an early Spring,
Wc iceth'appearingbuds,which to proue frulte,
Hope giucs not fo much warrant, as Difpaire
TijatFrofts will bite thcrrt. When wemcane to build,
Wpfitft furucy the P16t,thcn draw the Modcll,
i And when we fee the figure of the home
/ Then muft wc rate the coft of the Erection,
Which if we finde out-weighes Ability,
What do we then, but draw a-ne w the Model!
In fewer offices i Or at leaft, defift
To buildc at all ? Much more, in this great worke,
(Which is (almoft) to plucke a Kingdome downe
And fet another vp)fhould we furuey
Theplot of Situation,and the Modell ;
Confent vpon a furc Foundation :
Queftion Surueyors, know our owne eflate,
How able fuch a Worke to vndergo,
To weigh againft his Oppofite? Or elfe,
We fortih'e in Paper,and in Figures,
Vfing the Names of men, inftead of men :
Like one,that drawes the Modell ofa houfe
Beyond his power to builde it ; who(halfe through)
Giues o're, and leaues his part-created Coft
A naked fubiedl to the Weeping Clouds,
And wafte,for churlifh Winters tyranny.
Haft. Grant that our hopes(yet likely of faire byrth)
Should be ftill-borne . and that we now polTcft
The vtmoft man ofcxpeelation :
Ithinkc we area Body ftrong enough
(Eben as we are) to equal! with the King,
£.2?,*r.vVhat is the Kingbut fiue & twenty thoufand?
Haft.- To vs no more : nay not fo much Lord Hardslfc
For his diuifions (as the Times do braul)
Ate in three Heads : one Power againft the French,
And one 3gainft Glendower: Perforce a third
Muft take vp vs : So is the vnfirme King
In three diuided : and his Coffers found
With hollow Ppuerty,and Emptincfle.
e^r.That he fhould draw his fet&rall ftrengtbi tegitbej
And come againft vs in full puiflance
Need not be dreaded
Haft. Ifheilvoulddofo,
He leaues his backe vnarm'd, theFrencn.and Welch
Baying him at the hecles : neuer feare that.
L,Binr. Who is it like fhould lead his Forces hither.
Haft. The Duke of Lancafter,and Weftmerland :
Againft the Wei {ft hi mf elfe, and Har/ie Monmonth.
But who is fubftitused 'gainft the French,
1 haue no certaine notice.
tAnh. Letvson:
And publifh the occafion of our AXT£.;.
The Common-wealth is ficke of their owne Choice^
Their ouer-grecdy loue hath r,ufetied :
An habitation giddy, and vnfure
Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.
O thou fond Many, with what loud applaufe
Did'ft thou beatc heauen with bkfling 'Btttiingbrookfi
Before he was,what thou would'ft haue him be ?
And being now trimnVd in thine owne defircs,
Thou (beaftly Feedcr)art fo full of him,
That thou prouok'ft thy felfe to caft him vp
So,foj(thou common Dogge) did'ft thou difgorgC
Thy glutcon-bofomc of the Royall Richard,
And now thou would'ft eate thy dead vomit vp.
And howl ft^o finde it. What tmftis in thefe Times?
They ,that When Richard liu'd,would haue him dye,
Are now become enamour'd on his grat!<°
Thou that threw'ft duft ?p6n his goodly I )
When through proud London he camefighingon,
After th^dmired hecles ofBaRiugbrooke,
Cri'ft now, O Earth, yecld vs that King agine, j
And
±i
-~tn
4fii-(^)-n:
5;
50
00
50
TbefecondTart of %jff> Henry the Fourth.
79
And rake thou this (O thoughts of men accurt 'J)
"J>afttAndto Comtifeemes beft\ things Prefentjeorft.
Move. Shall we go draw ournumbers,andfex.ori?
Haft.We artTimes fubie&s.and Time bXcIs,bc gon*>
ffimSccundtis. SccemTrima.
Jinter Hojhjfe ,mrb two Ojficers.Fangy^and Snarl
jKellefft. Mr.F^,haueyou entrcd the A&ion ?
Fang- It is enter'd.
Hoihjfe. "Whet'i your Yeomantls IU luffy yeoman?.
Will he Hand toil?
''Tang. Sirrah, whzrc s Snare c
'Hosltfe. I J,goodM..$Mre.,
£narer Heere^nccre. .
Fang.Snare^e: muQ ArrcflSir hhtt Fatfiaft,
'Heft. I good Nl.S*are,l hauc enter d hinyandall.,
5».It may chance coft fome of vs cur ljucsirve vvil ftab
Hojicjfe^ Alas thr day: take heed of him : he fhbd me
in mine owne houfc, and that moft beaftly^ he cares not
what mifchrcfe he doth, ifhjs weapon be out._Hce will
foynelikeanydiuclhhcwillfpate ncithcrman, wornjnj
norchilJe.
Fang. If I can clofe with him,! care not for (us thrufl.
Hoftfjfe. Mo,nor I neither ; 1 ic be ar your elbow
Fang. Jflbutfift himonce:ifhccomcbut_wuhinmv'
Vice. . " T
.Hoft. I am vndone with his going:I warrantee is an
infiBitiucthingvponmyfcore. Good M.Eaw^holdhim
fure:good M. Snare let him not fcape, he comes conrinu-
acdyto Py-Corner(fauing your manTioods)to buy a fad-
die, and hee is indited to dinner to the I.ubbars head in
Lomb.-rdftrecr,to M.Smcotbes the Silkm3n.I pra'ye,(ince
my~Exion is enter'd,and my Cafe fo openly known tothe
wnrld.let him be brought in to his anfwer: A lOO.Marke
is along one,for a poore lene woman to bearc: & I haue
borne,and borne,and borne, and hauc bin fub'doff. and
fub d-offj from this day to that day, that ic is aXhamc.to
be thought on.Tnere is no honefty in fucb dealing, vnlcs
a woman fhould be made an Affc and a Beaft, to beare e-
ueiy Knaues wrong. Enter Falfiafe and 3ardolfe.
Yonder he comes, andthatarrant Malmcfey-Nofe Bar-
dolfe with himX)o your Officcs.doyour omces:M.F.iw£,
& M.Snare}do me.do me^do me your Offices.
F4/.How now.?whofe Mare's dead? what's the matter ?
Fang. Sir/^Iarreftyou,atthcfuitofMift.^V^/r,
falft. AwayVarlets.draw^ri?/^ : Cut me oft the
Villaineshcad: throw theQueane in the Channel.
#ejP.Throwrneinthechannell?Ile throw thee there.;
Wilt thou?wilc thour'thou baftardly rogue.Murder,mur-
der,Q^thouHony.fuckle villaine3wilt tkou kill Gods of*
r»cers,and the Kings? O thou hony-fecd Rogne,thou art
4honyfeed,aMan-queHer,and a woroan-queller.
Falft Keep thernoff,o\«'*fc//*'. Fang. A rcfcu,a refcu,
Hoft. Good people bring a refcu.Thou wilt not?thou
to Ojwilt not? Do,do thou Roguc.-Do thou Hempfccd
P*ge. Away you S cullion, you Rampalhan, you FuftiJ-
hrian: Tie tucke your Cataltrophc. Enter. Cb.Iuftic*.
J»ji. What's the matter? Kccpe the Peace here, hoa. r
Hoft. Good my Lord he good to mcc* IbefeechyoU
^.3nd to rr.e.
£Aj*/?.How now fir /<?&»? What areyoubrauling here?
Doth this become your place,your time>snd buhneflc ?
You fhould hauc bene well on your way to Yorke*
Stand from him Fellow i wherefore hang.'ft vporthim*
Lj(
00
Heft.. Ohmy moft worfhiptull Lord^andltpleafeyour
Grace,! am a pooicjwiddow.of Eaffcheap>and heis arre-
ted at my fuit, Ch. luftSnr what: FumrneT
Ik/Otis motetbtn &r^5me(myJ.ord)itisfora]Itali
Ihaue,h^hath eaten meiDurofhouleandhomeiheehath
put all my fubftancelntothatfatbelly ofhis r burXwiIl
haue (Toms of it out agalne^^iIwULrideJfrieea'Nighrs,
like the Mare, L
Falft, I thinkclamaslike-iande rae Marej iQhaue
any vantage*oTground,toi gervp.
Ch: Itift^JrloYi ^ comes th»s,Sir/^» i Fy,.whatarnaaof
good temrier would endure tbi«empeft,ot exclamation ?
Are you not afbam'd to inforcea poore* Widdcwe. taib
rough a courie.to comeby hecowne^
Falft. _ Whar is the grofle furaRe that i owe thee?
.Hoft.' Marry (if thou wet t ant!%eit man)thy felfe^cV
themonycoo. Thoudidftfvvcatltomce vponaparccll
gilt Goblet, iuuiig in my Dolphin-chamber at the round
uble,by a fca-colc fire^on Wednefday in Whklorcvveek.
when the Princebrokc thy headfot Iik'ning him to a(Tn>
gingman ofWindfor;Thoa.dldft.(Wearetomethen(asJ
was wafhing thy wound)tamarry me.and make meamy
hady thy wifes^inftj deny it ? Did not- good wife Keech
the Butchers wife come in then,and cal me gcflip^g/^-
lj} comming in to borrow a mefle of Vinegar: telhngvs,
(he had a good dim of Prawnes-wbcreby ^ didft Jefire"te
eat (ome ^whereby I told thee they were ill for a greene
wound? And didft not thou (wh*nfhewas gone downe
ltaires)dc(ire me to be no more familiar with fuch poore
pcople,faying.i[iat ere long they (hould call me Madam?
And did'A^notkiffe me,andlbidmee fetch thee 50^ J
put thee now to thy Book-oath.denv it \i ihoucanff^
TaIJ My Lord^his is a poorcmad ig^tand fhe (ayes
vp & downe the town^that hej^eldcft foa is likeyoukShc
hath bin in gpod ca(e.& the tram is, pouerty hath diffra-
cted her : b,uctor thefc roolifli Officers, I befecch you^ 1
may ba.u£ redrcfle againft them.
'Iuft. Sir IobnSxrlchn.1 am well acquainted with your
maner of wrenching the true caufe,the falfc way.lc is not
a confident brow, nor the throDg of wordes,, that come
with fuch (more then impudent)fawcines from jt^u, can
thruff me from a leuell confidcration,! know tyou ha'pra-
Cti/d vpon the cafie-yeelding fpiritof this woman,
w Hoft.. Yp in troth rny Lord -
Iuft. Prethec peace:pay her the-4gbj; ;you owe her, and
vnpay the villany you haue doj\e her:th'e one you may do
with rtarling mony,&,the other with currant repentance5.
Fal. My Lor^l, I will nor mdergo this fneape without
reply You call honorable Boldnes,impudcntSawcinefle
If a man wil curt'fie,and fay nothing,he is vertuous : Nci
my Lord(your humble duty remcbred)I wiIInotb«X£»JI
futor.I fay to you,I defire deliu'ranc- from theCc Officer*
being vpon hafty employment in the Kings Affaires-
luft. YQufpeakc,ashauingpowertodowrongj But
anfwer \\\ the effect of* youc Reputation, and fatisne^he
poore womaii*
Falft. Come hither Hoffefle. Suter 7H.V»wor
Ch.iHf}, Now Mafter Gower; What newes ?
Gov, .The King(my Lord) and Henrie Prince of Wales
Are neere at hand; TJji reft the Paper icllcJ.
lalfl. As I am a Gentleman^
Hoft. Nay,you faid fo before.
Fal. As I am aGcntleman.Cam£»rio more wordiefit
Hoft. By this Heauenly ground I tread on, 1 muff be
faine to pawncbothmy Plate,and tncTapiftry ofmydy-
nine Chambers.
r Ftp
518-C8) — 7/j.
598-(29)-4A.
go
he fecondTart o0gng Henry the Fourth.
'; Fat. Glattes,glafles, isthe onelydrioking ; and for
thy walks a pretcy flight Drollery, ortnc Srorie ofth^
Prodjgall, or'thc Germane hunting in W aterworke,-i$
worinathouland ofthefe Bed-hangings, and thefe Fly-
bitten TapHSnes. Lee it be tenne pound (ifthoucanft.)
Come, if k wejtt not for tny hurnors, there is not a better
Wench in England. Go.wafhthy face, and draw thy
A&ion: Come,' thou muftnotbee in this humour with
me, come, I knowihou was-t feUoii tothis.
Hofl. Pjetbec (SirXfcwjkt it be but twenty Nobles,
I loath to pawne my Platcin good eameft la.
'&/.' Letit alohe; He make^therflrift -;yoa'l bra fool
Ml .
If oft. Well, you fhall haue if although I frawnemy
Gowne. Ihope you'l come to Supper; You'l pay me al-
together?
F*/,iWiUIliue:'Gowthfar,withher : hooke.on,
hooke-on.
Hoft* Willyou haucDogTVtfrg-^/mectyoiratfup-
$tr?\ -
F4//N0 more words. Let's haueher.
£$./##. '^hauc heard bitter ncwes.
¥d • What's the newes (my good Lord?)
£hjn.\ Whetelay theKtng laft night ?
Mef. At Bafingftoke my Lord.
TEah I hope (my Lord jai^'a weU.r' What lithe toewes »
my Lord?
CbJ*ftJ Corns all his. Forces backe?
Mef' No- FiftecncliundredFootjfiuernnjctrecTHojfe
Ate marched vp to my Lord of Lancaster,
Againft Notthumbcrland.an"d the Archbifhu p,
■fid I Comes thc.King bactcefrom Wales;my noble L?
• XkJitft. '• You (hall haue Lcttcr^of m-eprefcntly «
Come.go-along with. meJ(«cod M. Gomt.
pal. My Lord.
CbJuft* -What's tig matter?
Pal. : Mailer Gomef, {ball i cntreate you with mec to
dinner?
Gow? I tnuft waite vpon my good Lord heere.
jUhartkeyou,good S\rleh».
Ch.Iafi; Sir /^vyouloyterbfieie too long beingyou
are to take Souldi.cts yp, ia Countries as you go.
pal.'- Will you fup with mc^s^Si Gowrei
iChJttft. What foohfh Maftet taught you thefe-.inan-
ner.Sj S\t Tobn?
FaL Matter Gower\ if they become meenot,.heewa^a
Foolethat taught them mee . This is the right Fencing
grace (my Lord) tap for tap,and fo part faire.
^Chjttfi: NowiL.ctd lighten thee, thou aft a great
EobleT x Exeunt
-338-(ia)-5^
Scena.Secunda.
Enter Pmce'Hem, PoMz,t ftftlolfc,
and P Age,
^fo.s2jru(tQifi;Iam exceeding weary.
%&#* Isitcometothat?Xhad thought wearlnesdurit
notb^ueatrach'd one of fa high blood.
y^ag^tfdotnfne:<(houghltdifcolotirs the complexion
cFrttji<5reaiBeffe;toaclaiowledgeit . Doth it not'fliew
VilcTelf imtwytc^defire fmall Beere ?
; Jftsiiu Why^PjiaB&ouldnotbefoloofely fiudicd,
3«.)6
(12) 5ft
as to rememberftyweake aCompofition.
Prince* Belikethen, my Appetite was hot Princely
got? for (in troth) I do now remember the poore Crcai
ture, Small Beere. But indeede thefe humble tonfidera-
"ijon^makc meoutoflouewithn.yGreatnefle. Whata
diigrace is it to me, to remember thy name ? Or to kno w
thy.face to morrow ?Orto tike note how^Tny pairec
Silk ftockings ^ baft? (Viz.thefe,and thofe that-wcre thy
peach-coloupd ones:) Orjpbeare the Inuentorieof thy
fhirts,.as one for fupcrflnity, and oneotberifj^rvfe. But
that the Tennis-Court-keepcr knowes better thenl, for
it is a low ebbc of Linnen: w jth thee, when thou kcpt'ft
notHacket there, as thou haft not done a great while,bcv
caufe the r^jft of thyLow Countries;haue made a fhift to
eate^p thy Holland.
Poin. How ill it followes, after you haue labour'd fQ
hard,you fhould talkc fo idlely?Te!l mrhow many good
yong Piinces would do fo, their Fathers lying fo fickc: as
yours is?
JPrw. Shall I tell tji^e one thing, point* ?
Poin. Yes : and let it be an excellent good thing.
Prin. It ihaltferue among wittes of no higher breej
ing then thine.
toin. Go to ; I ftand thepufl^. ojyouronc thing, that
you'l tell.
,Prin. Why, I tell tfae.lt Is not meet, that 1 fiiould be
fad ujay my Father -is ficke:-albeit I could tell to rhee(at
to one it plcafes me.for fault pt abetter,to call my friend)
J could be fa<f,artd.£ad indeed too* ^
Poini :-< Very hardlv voon filch afubTe£r.
Prin7< Thtfu*ink^n?e as'farre.nj ;thcDiuefs Booke, as
• thousand F^^-fbr-obctaracicanifperffftencie. Let the
end try the man;.- But Ite^l thee, my hart'bleeds inward,
ly, that my Fache/ is jg ilekeiihd I keeping fuch vild com-
pany as thou art jljatji in rcafon taken from me, aH'often-
tat'on of foyrow.
Poin? The reafon?
T'r/w.Wha&W'OuTd'lt thoutriinlcofme.ifnhold weep?
Potn. I wou*d thinke thee a moft Princely hypocrite.
Ptin.. if would be cuery mans thought :* and thou art
a blefied FelloWito thinke as cuery man thinkes rneuer a
Bjajis thought-ill the-w.ojld,keepes the Rodc-way better
then tjiinjc : euery man would thinke me an Hypocriteis-
dee'ffe.7 And ^hjt accitesyour moft worftnpful thoughlf
to thinke fo?
Poin?Why, }&££%& you haue beeneibTewde, and &
much ingraflFed to Falfttffe*
Prin. And to thee.
Teintx,. Nay, I am welffpolccn ft£ I can heare it with
mine owneeares:thevS£flifl that they can fay ofmeiSjthat
lamaiecond Brother, and that I am a proper FfHnw,e of
my handsr rand thofe two things I confeflcj^canoc helpe.
Looke,looke,hcre comes Tardolfe.
Prince:* And theBoy thatl gaue Falfiafe, he nadhim
from me ^bjjiJian^and fee it thefat villain hauenot trans,
form'dhjjpji&pc,
Enter Bardo/fe.
'Bar, Saue your Grace*
Prin, Attdyours^oft Noble llArAolfe*
Poin. jCafljcyoupernitiausAflre,youbafiifulI Foolei
muft you bcblufliing? Wherefore blulh you nowf what
a Maidenly man at^JUXUtf are you become ? Is it futh*
matter: to gjgt apottle-pots Maiden-head ?
Page. He callM me euen now (my Lord)througl\ared
Latcice;andl could difcemenopart of bis face from the"
window-
52?-(28)-G/i
5<
li
i;
10
TbefecondTart ofE^ngHenrythe Fourth.
Si
.10
00
.10
window : a: laft I fpy'd his eyes, and mer'koughchc had?
made two bolgsjn the Aic- vviucs new Petticoat, & pec--
ped through,
Prtn. Hath no: the boy profited ?
2for, Away,you horfon ypright Rabbct,away
Page- A way,ycu rafcally jilt heat dreame.away.
Prim Inttruct va Boy t what dreame, Boy f" "
page. Marry.(my. Lozdl^thhea dream d, Hie was de-
tiuer'doiaF irebrand,and therefore I call hininV dream,
Urince* AcrCrownes-worcrfofgojisd Interpretation •
There it is. Boy.
Torn. O that this good Blcflofne could bee" kept from
Cankers: WeUsehcrc ufixperfcetoprefci'.uethee. ""
'Bard. Iftyou do not make lumb« hingM^mon* yoa>
chegallowcs (hall be wrong'd.
'""prince. And how doth thy Matter, Bardolpb ?
'*Bar. Well,my good Lord : he heard of your Gr:crt
ctorningtoTawoe. There's a Letter for you.
• P«». L)eHucr*d with good rcfpccl: And how doth ihe .
Martlemas^your Matter?
fBard* In bodily health Sir.
Pain. ! Marry, the immorrail paYt neectes a PbynYian.*
birtthatmouesnat him : though that bee fkke, it dyes
nor.
[Prince/- I'do allowthte Wen \o bee as. familiar with
rae.as my dogge': andhe holds his place, :1olfooke you
he writes.'
Pettt.Letter. John Fafftaffe Knight : (Euery man f mutt
know that,as- oft .as" beeihath occaliontonamcMmfelfe:)
Euert like thofc thai; arekinneto the King; for thcyncuer
pricketneir finger, but they fay,there is lorn of the kings
blood fpilt. How comes that ( fayes he) that takes vpoti
him not to concei'ie ? the anfwer is as ready ajj a borvow-
e3 cap : I am the Kings pooie Cofin,Sir.
■Prince. Nay, they will be kiu to vsjtjii* thevwil fetch
ittYorn Faphst.y Buttw the Letter: i ~— Sir John Falftaffit.
Knight- to the Sonne of the King; necreflhU Father, Harrii
Prince of [Tales, greeting;' s
'pfm. Why this !s£ Certificate.
fPrin. Peace.
fpftH imitate the honourable Romainesin heHitie<
$oi», Sure he meanc* breuity in breath:fhort-Wmded.
I commend %g to thes^ I commend thee. and I leme thee. , Ee£
not too familiar with Pointz, for hecmijitfestbj Fauottrsfo
mcht ihathefweares thou art to marrtcf^ Sijler Nell, Re*
fetit at idle times as than vr^ayjl^^fo farewell.
Tbinejbyjea andno ; which is; as much as to fay, as thoti
vfefi him. \ Iacke PaTftafrc m'th. my Familiars.1
lohn with mj-^ret hers andSifter-jtrSir-.
Iohn, with all Etswpe.
My Lord, I will' ftcepethis Letter in Sack, and make htm
eajeit. ~
Pfin, ThatVto make him eate twenty of his Words.
But do you vie me thus Med.} Muft I marrvvour Sifter?
/Pd/»J M3y the Wench haue no worle Fortune.. Bjjrl
Mtterfgidfo.,
JPiimSW.<t% thus we play theFooIes with the time &
^efpirits-ofthe wife^intheclouds.andmocke ys S Is
ybttrMafterheerein London t
~yBarcL Yes my Lcrd.
_ /V«r, Where fuppesh'e? Doth the old Sore, feedeln
•theoldFranke?,
'Bard.hi the ©Jo* place my Lord, in Eatt-cheape.
Tritt. What Company?
Page. Ephcfiansmy Lord.oftheold Church.
Prtn. Sup any women with him ?
Fag&. NonemyLord,bm oldMiftris i^w^andM
DolTeare-fkeet:
mmmPrin. What Pagan may that be ?
Page' A proper,GentIewoman,Sir, and aKinfwoman
of my Matters.
firhh Euen fuch Kin, as the Parifii Hcyfors are to the
Towne-Bull ?
Shall we fteaic vpon them (Ned) atSupper?
.Poiiu \ am your rhadow,my Lord, He follow you.
Prtn.' Sirrah,you boy, and Twdolph, no word to vour
Matter that I amyet in Towne.
There^ for your filence.
Baft 1 baue no tonguc,lir.
Page, And for mine Sir, I will gouerne it.
Prin. FareyTwellrgo,
This VoJlTeare fheet fliouTditt fome Rode.
Poin. I warrant yousas common as the way between!
S^Alhans,and London*
Prtn. How might we fee Faljlajfe beftow. himfelfe to
night, "n his true colours,and not cur felues befeenej'
P~Aa Put ontwo Leather lerldns, and Aprons,- and
wa cevponnimzt his Tabie,hke Drawers. .
Pritt. Ffom a God, to^ Bui!? A heaure^decten/ion : It
wasloues cafe. From a_Prince,toa Prcncicc,iioWtran£.
formation, that Giall be mine: for ineucry th»ng,'thepur-
pofc muftweigh with the foUy. Follow me Aftihl! Exeunt
"""l85 (n 3fe
100
150
Scena Tenia.
"Enter KarthumherlandhisLadie^ndHarrie
PercieiLadte.
TJarth. I prethec louing Wife, jncj gentle Daughter,
Giuc an euen way vnto my rough Affaires:;
Put net you on the Vif3ge«f the Times,
And be like tbemtoPercie,'troublefome*
Wife. 1 haue giuen puer; I will fpeak noTtrore,
Do what you will :vour Wiledome, be your guide,
Marth, Afas (fwcet WJfc)myHoaor is atpawne.
And t^ut my going, nothing can redecmeit,^
La. Oh yetjfor hcauens fake.go not to thefe Warrs j
TheTime was(Father) when you brokcyour wordA
When you were more endeer'd to itjthennow, ;
\Vhenyourowne Percy j^jhj^ my heart-decre-7/4?7/^
Threw many a Northward lookejto fee hj^Fathcr:
Bring vp his Powres r bucrre'didlongjo vaine,.
Who then perfw^aded you to ftay at home?
There were t Wo Honors lott; Yours, and yourSonnef*
For Yours, may heaucnlyalofy brightest :
For His, it Aucke jrvojiiitni,3Sthe Sonne
Iuthe ptav VGutfof He3uen :and by hisLight
Did all the Cheualrie of Ejj^Ja^d moue
.To do braue A cts. He was (indeed)the Glafle
WhereintheNobre^Youth did dreffe themffcSues,
He had no Legges, jhjrpraclic'dnothis Gate:" ^ ,
'And fpeaking thicke Cwhicb Nature madehis blernifh)
Rcramgthc Accents of the Valiant".
For thofethar could fpeake low jfld tardily,
Would turne their ownePerfcdtion.toAbufe,
Tn feeme tike him. So that in Speech,inGatc,
In Diet^ in Affections of delight,
In Militarie Rules- Humors.of BJaojL,
23o-(9)-3^. _5c
1/i
\h
(1)
50
200
(2)
250
(1)
2h
300
350
(1)
l/i
(5)
400
480 -yd) -Ih .
420-UOj-OTi.
lh (3)
U
50|
1/
[4)101
150
!0(
82 ThefecondTart ofKjn^ Henry the FowtL
250
lh
lh
He vrat the Marke,andGl*u>, Coppy^and Book*.
That faflnon'd otheri.. And him, O wondrous! hitrij
Ottiraclc of Men L Him did you Ieaue
(Second t0ddne) yrr-feeonded by you,
To lookcypon the hideous God of Warre,
In dif.a3uaQtage,co abide a field,
Where nothing but tfietound ofHotjpurs Name
Did fceine defeofiblc ; fo you left him*
Neuer,0 ntuer doe his Ghoft the wrong,
To hold ycTGTHonor more prccifc 8nd nice
With others,then witblnm. Let them alone ;
The Marfhall and the Arch-biflbop areltrong.
Had my fweet Harry had but halfc their Number*,
To day might I (hanging on Hotftmrs Nccke)
Haue talk"3 of tJMotwioath *G.raue.
Worth* Belhrcwyout heart,
(Faire Daughter) you doc draw my Spirits from mc,
With new lamenting ancient Ouer.fights.
But I rauft goe,an d meet with Danger there.
Or it will fceke me in another place,
And finde me worfe prouided.
WifeTXi fiye to Scotland,
Till that theNobles.and the armed Commons,
Haue of tKetr Puiffancc made a littletafte.
Lady* If they get grouhd.and vantage of the King,
Then ioyne y on with them, like a Ribbc ofS teele,
To make Strength ftrongcr. Bucfor alfour loucs,
Firft let them trye.tnemfelues. So did your Sonne,
He was fo fuffer'd ; fo came I a Widow ;
Andneuer (hall haue length of Life enough,
TBfSine vpon Remembrance with mine Eyes,
That it maf fFow^and fprowt,as high as Hcauen,
For Recordation to my NoBTe Husband.
i\7i)«6.Come,come,go in with mci'tis with my Minde
As with theTydc/well'dvp vnto his height,
That makes a ftill-ftand,running neythcr way.
FSTffie would I ffoeto meet the A.rch-biu»op1
But many thoufand Reafons hold me backe.
Twill refoluc for Scotland: there ami,
TillTime and Vantage crauc my company,
Selena Ouarta.
.h 300
lh
lh
LA 35C
lh
400
JLxshw.
Enter tmDr avers,
1, ffrasnt. What haft thou brought there? Apple.
lohns ? Thou know 'ft Sir Iohn calitiot craJurc an Applc-
Tohn .
iiDraw. Thou fay'ft crus : the Prince once feraDifh
of Apple.Iohns before him, and told him there were fine
more Sir Johns': and,puttingoff hi*H«,faid,I will now
cake my leaue of thefe frxe drie, round, old-wither'd
Knights. It angerM him to the heart : but hee nl^fof-
gotthat.
xYDr<#»\ Why then couev* and fct theiu downc : an£
fe? if thrmicanft finde out Sneakes Noy fc ; Miftris Tearc?_
Jheavroul&fomc haue feme Mufique.
"T;Z)r^Hf. Sirrhajheerewill be the Prince, and Maftcr
2>W«rx,anom and they will put on two of our lerkins,
and Aprouu, and Sir lohn muft not know of it : JBardotpb
ha:h brought word,
I . Draw. Then here will be old Vtu : . itwill bearrex-
eellem. ftratagem,;
% . Draw, lie fee if I can finde out Sheakg* Exit.
, S»xtrHofiep> and T)ol%
1
Heft. Sweer-hean, me thinkes now you are in an ex-
cellent good temperalitre : your Pulfidge beates as ex-
traordinan^as heart woultftSSfire 5 and your Colouf
(Iwarrantyou) is as red as anyRofc : But you haue,
drankc too much Canaries, and that's a maruellous feat*
ching Wine ; and r perfumes the blood, ere wee can fay
;what*« rhlsTHow doe you now >
""TftCBtHm then I wa » : Hem.
fToft. Why that was welffaia : A good heart 5 worth
Gold. Lookc,hcrc comes Sir hhn.
EntirFaljlaffe.
' Talf}. When Arthur pr^ tn Oarr— (emptie the Jordan)
andwM a worthy King : How nowMiftris Doll
R6s~i> SickofaCalme:yea.good-footh.
F«M. SSTs all her Seel: if they be once in a Calcic,
they are fick,
Dal. Tou muddie Rafcall,ls that all the comfort yat»
giue me ?
Talft, You make fat RafcaJIs.Miftris rDol:
DoL I make them ? Gluttonie and. Diieafes make
them, I make thetflllcTr.
Falft. I* the Cooke make the Gluttonieiyouhelpe to
make fhc Dlfcafes (7>el) we catch of you (Dd) we catch
of you*: Grant that. my poore Vertue, grant that*
!7><?/. I mafry.our Chaynes^nd Our lewelsfc
Falft. Your BrooehFs, %.ea"rles, and O wches 1 For tO
lerue braucly,is to come hahing off: you know,to come
off the Breach,with his Pike bent brauely, and toSiirge-
rie brauely ; to venture vpon the charg*iI-Cha"mber$
braucly.
Ho/r. Why this is the olde fathion : you two neuer
mecte,butyou fall to fomc difcord : you are both (in
good trotF) as Rhcumatikc as two drie Tories, you can-
not one bcate with'^andthcrs Confirmities. What tht
good-yere ? One mufiBearc7and that muft bee you
you are the weaker Veffelj • as they lay, the emptier
Veffell, ■ ,
Do!. Canaweake emptieVefiVlI bcare fuch a huge
full Hogs-head ? There's a whole Marchants Venture
of Buideuv-Scuffeinhims you haue not fccneaHul!ce
Better ftufft in the Hold. Come, He be friends with thee
faat>f: ^ Thou art going to theWarres, and whether I
{hall euer fee thee againc , or no, there is no body
cares.
£nter7)rawer.
Drawer, Sir, Ancient fiftoU is below, and would
(peake with you.
\Dot. Hang him, fwaggering Rafcall , let him net
come hither : it is the foule-mouth'dft Rogue in Eng-
land.
Hoftt If hec fwagger, let him not come here : 1 mtfft
liue amonglt tfiy Neighbors, He no Swaggerers; I am
in good nafie,and fame* with the very belt : (hut the
doore, there comes no Swaggerers heere : I haue not
hu'd all this* while, to haue iwaggcring now : ihut th*
doore, I pray you,
halsl. Do'fl thou heare,Ho(TeiTe ?
, ,/J*j?.'Pray you pacifie yourfclfe(Sir 2oh»)thctc romes
no Swaggerers hecrc,
b& TalflVo'*
(0) -llh
425 - (13) - 7h
TheJecondcPartofl\w!g Henry the Fourth,
%
Ftlfi. D o'ft tho u hear e? ic is mine Ancient,
Hoft . Tilly-falty(Sir M^neuerjejl me, your ancient
Swaggerer comes noc in my dooresjl was before Maftcr
Tiftck, the neputie, the other day ; and as hec faid to me3
it was no longer a<;oe then Wednefday laft : Neighbour
jjguicklj (fayes rice-) Msfter jDombeyo\K Minifter^wa^ by
then : Neighbour ®*ickly (fayes hee ) receiue thole that
areCiuill; forffaytrt hee) you are in an illNamc : now
hce faidipj can tell whereupon : for(fayes hee} you arc
i* honcft Woman, and well thought on 5 therefore take
heede whatSucClsj^u receiue: Receiue (fayes hee) no
daggering Compsmons.Thcre comes noneheere, XsiP
would blefie you to hearc. what hee faid. No^ i\e no
Swaggerers,
Falft. Hee's no Swaggerer(Ho{tefie:)a tame Cheater,
hee: you may Broakc l.ii;i as gently, as a Puppie Grey-
hound :,-hee will not lwaggW-WttrfftBatbgric Hcnne, if
ber feathers turns backs Uttsuyjhcm of Ecfiftancc. Call
him vp (Drawer.}
Hoft. Cheater, call you him ? I will barre no honeft
man my houfe>uor no (theater : out I doe noifoue fwag-
gering ; I amibc worfewhertonc fayes, fwaggcr : Feele
MaficrSjhow I fiiake: looke-yau,I warrant you.
Dol. £0 you doe,Hofteflc.
• Haft. Doe I ? y ea,in very troth doe I,if k were an A -
pcnLeafe : T cartnnr sh^eSwfl-pgererg.
£n:er PiftoljmcL Tfarda/pb andhii Boy,
Tift. 'Saue you, Sir lohHi
Falft, Welcome hads^Piftol. Hzre(PJJ?oQlchkrgc
you with a Cup of Sackes doc you difchar^c vpon mine
Hofteffe.
Pift. 1 will difchargevpon bet (Sir /*£») with two
Bullets.
Fatft. She If PiaoII-ptoofc^SiO y°" fnall hardly of-
fend her.
Hoft Game: Iie-drinke no Ptoofes,nor no Bullets : J
willdiiake no more then will doe me good, for no jjQafls
pleafurc, I.
Pift. Then to you (Miftris Dorothie) Iwili charge
you,
Del. CJjaxggme? Ilcorhe you (fcuruie Companion}
what ?you poore; bafe. rafcallv. cheating. lacke-Linnen-
Mate: awayyoumouldicRoguejawayi iammeatiflr
yourMafter*
Pift. Iknowyou,MiftrisZ)«rtfrfaA
T>oL Away you rur.pnrfr Rafc3ll, you filthy Bung,
•way : By this Wiueylle tjjjjtfjtmy Knife m your mouldic
Chappes,if you play the fawcieCuttle with me. Away
youBoulc-AleRafcall..youfiaikfifaittItfl3leIug/er,you.
Since when, 1 pray yoUjSir ? jaJiat4 with two Points on
your moulder ? much.
Pift. I will rnurt^r your Ruffe,Fo*r this*
Hoft, NOjgood Gaptaine Piftot .♦ not h^ere. fweete
Captaine.
Dol. Captaine?. thou abhominabtedamn'd Cheater*
artthcuafiiafham'd co be call'd Captaine? If Captaines
were of my minde, they would trunchibn you out,for ta-
king their Names vpon you.before you haueearn'd them.
You a CajnaiaePyou fiauejForwhat ? for rearing a poore
Whores Bj^inaBawdy-foa-fe? H"ce aCaptaine? hang
hJmRogutiiige liuesvpoitmouldie fteW'd-Pruines,, and
dry'deCakes.rA Captaine.? XhdieViUaines.will mafce
the word Captaine odious : Therefore Captaines haa
needelooketoir.
Bard. 'Pray thee goc downe,good Ancknr.
Falft. Hcarke thee hithcrj^ifilis Bel
Pift. Not I ; I rclljjicewnar* Corporal! rBardrf$h\\
could teare her : He be reueng'd on her.
Page. 'Pray thee goc downe.
Pift. Ilefeeherdaran'dfM: 10 Pluroysfam$ A Lake,
to the InfernaliDeepc, where Erebus and Tortures vilde
alfo. Hold Hooke and Line, fay I ; Downe: downe
Pogges.Howne Fates: h'aue wee not /:&*.-» here?
Hoft. Good Captainei P/^/fi be quiet, it is very late.:
I befeeke you,Baw,3ggrauate your Choler.
Pift. Thciebe good Humors indcede. Sha?I Pack,
jisrjjcs, and hollow-pampered lades of Aiia,which can- 1 h
not goc burjfcittic miles a day, compare with Cs/ir, and \ 1 . ,>
with Caniballsgjad Trcirn Greekes ? nay, rather damne
them with King Cerbern^^ Ice the Welkin roate: fliall
wee fall foule forToyes ?
Hoft. By my troth Captaincy thefe are very bititt
words.
i 'Bard, .fiegsne, good Ancient: this will, grow toa.
BrawJganon.
Pift, Die men,l;keDoggcs;giue Crownes IikcPinnes:
Hauejge not Hiren here?
Hoft. Onmyword(CapMiDe)theresnoneruchJiej;ei (1)
What the go od-yere^oey outhinke 1 woul i denye^a ? 1 h
I pray be quiet.
Pitt. Then feed.and be far (env faire /alipoles.) Came. Wj
gtue me fomcSack,5/^n«wnw«' tormeitte/tyertipmecon- 200
tente. Feare wee broad-fides ? No,l« the Fiend gjflgfire; 1 h
GiuemefomeSack: and Sweet-heart lye thou th^rp ; \h
Come wee to full Paints here . and are *t ^eterds no-
thing ?
Fal. Piftol,\ would beqntet
?;i?. Sweet Knight^,|^rfjy^Mf!e:wIjat?weehH«
feenc the feuen Starres.
Dol. yhrufl him downe (layres,! carmiit endure iucli
a FuftianEaltall.
Pift. Thruft him downe ftayres.? knawwc not Gallo-
way Nagges ?
Fal. i3tUfiit him downe {Bardolph) likeafiioae-groac
fiiilling: nav.if heeikje nothing but foeakenotbing;3)iec
fball be nothing here.
'Bard. £flme,get you downe ftayres.
pift. What? (hall wee hauelncifton? j&aJIwce.e»«
brew'? then Death rockc me afleepe,abridgemywdoleii»ll
dayes: why then let gricuous, gaftly, gaping Wounds,
vntwin djhe Sifters three: Come jltropoiJ.-fay.
HiSi'. Hcrc's-goodftufretflMUKl.
Fal. GiuememyRapier,Boy.
Dol., A prestee Pack,-, J pf*,t1lp<' doeoot draw.
FaL Gety*srdowneftayres»
Hoft. Here's a^flfidfer tumult: He forfweare keeping
houfe,before lie bcinrJidCe tirr»ts,and frights. SotMur.
ther I warrant now. Alas.aks, pucvp your naked Wea.
pons,putvp your naked VKeac.onj. 1
VaL I prcthce lack&e quiet^ thcRafcallis gone i- &,
you whorfoji litdevaliant Villaine,yoor
Heft. Areyairoociutfr 1 th' Groyne? me thought nee
made alhrewdThtufiar your Belly.
Ftd. Haue you turn'd him out of doores i
/feri^XcsSir: cheRafcall'sdrunke: you liauc ^urt
him (Sir) inibe-lhouldef.
Fal. ARa&alltobrauemei,
TtiL Ah^oafwcerUttlcRogacvyorr-; &la$,poore Aper
howtrjoafweattt? Come^kcmewipethyFacetCoiae
on,you whorfon Chopfi J& Rogae,lIouc »hce : Thou
art)
250
(1) 1
500
350
400
(1)
450
4>H-(§2J-10/i
"465 - (uj^mr
84 Thefecond^PartofKjngHenrytheFourth.
5<*
17*
17*
1001
(2)
150
200
U
250|
2fr
300
lh
3501
lA
400
arc as valorous as Heeler of Troy,worth fine of Agt
nons an J tenne times betcer then the nine Worthies : ah
Villaine.
Fal, Arafcally Slaue,Iwill toffe the Rogue ina Blan-
ket.
Del. Doe,if thou darft for thy heart : if thou doo'ft,
lie sanuas thee bet weenc a paire of ShectesT
Enter dfojique.
Page, The Mufique is come,Sir.
Fal. Let them play : play Sir*. Sit on my Knee; Del.
A Rafc3ll,bragging Slaue : cheTEogue fled from mc like
Quick-filuer.
Dot, And thou followd'ft him like a Church: thou
whorfon little tydic 3artbolmewT3ore-pigge,Y»hejiwilc
thou leaue 6ghting on dayes,and foy ning on nights, and
begin to patch vp thine old Body for Hcauen?
Enter the Prince and Tomes disgnifd.
Fal. Peace (good Dol) doe not fpeake UkeaDeaths-
head : doe nor. bid me remember mine end,
Dol, Sirrh3, what humor is the Prince of?
Fal. A good (hallow young fellow : hee would haue
made a good Pander, hee would haue chipp'd Bread
wetT
Dol. They, fay poines hath a good Wit.
Fal. Hee a good Wi|_f hang him B'aboonchis Wit is
asthicke as TewksburieMuftard : there is no more con-
ceit in him,then is in a Mallet.
Dol. Why dolli the- Prince louc him fa t-hen ?
Fal. Beca-jfe their Legges arc both ofa bigneffc: and
hee playesat Q^oirs well,and eates Conger and FenneTT^*
and drinkes off Candles ends for Flap.diagons,and rides
thewildcMarc with the Boycs,and iumpes vpon Ioyn'd-
ftooles.and fweares with a good grace, and weares His
Boot very fmoothdike vnto the Signe of the Legge; and
brecdes nobate with telling of difcreete ftorics: and fuch
other Gambol! Faculties hee hath, that (hew a weake
Minde,and anjiblc Body,for the which the Prince admits
him ; fot the Prince himfelfe is fuch another : the
weight oFanhayre will turne the Scales betvveenc their
Flabcr-de-pois.
Prince. Would njy; this Naueof aWheele haue his
Eares cut oj£?
Fain, Let vs beat him before his Whore.
Vrince, ; Looke,if tjjfcwithcr'd Elder hath not his Poll
claw'd like a Parrot.
Poin. Is it not ftrange, that Defire fhould Co many
veetes ont-liue performance ?
Fat. Kifle me Dol.
Prince. Saturne and Vena* this veerc, in ConiuncUon ?
Whar. fayes the Almanack to that ?
?<>;«. And looke whether the ficrie Trtvon. his Man,
benotlifping tojns Mafters eld Tablcs^hisNotc-Booke,
his Counccll.kecper ?
Fal. Thou 4o_ft giue mc flatt'ring Buffer
Dol. Naytruely, I kifle thee with a moft conftant
heart.
Fats I am olde, I am y?ifc.
Dol, I louc tbee betcer. then T loue ere a fcujujj young
Boy of them all*
Fat. What Stuffe wilt thou haue aKirtle of ? I (hall
recciue Money on Thurfday: tjjgj^ lhalt baueaCappe
to morrow, A merrie Song, ccjafi ; it gtowes Jate,
wee will to Bed. Thou wilt forget roe* when \ aru
gone.
Dol. Thou wilt fee me a weeping, if thou fay*f| Cat
pioue that euer I dreffe my fel'fe Iiandfomc, till thy m
turne : well,hearken the end.
Fal. Some $&ck,Fratic*t,
'Prm.Pein. Anon,anon,Sir*
¥al. Ha? a Baftard Sonne of the Kings? And ttt not
thou Poines^is Brother ?
Prince . Why thou Globe of finfull Continentr^'whai
a Life do'ft thou lead fmm
Fal. Abetter then thou; IamaGentleman3thouart
aDrawefT
Prince. Very true, Sit : and I come to draw you out
by the Eares.
Hofi, Oh, the Lord preferuethy good Grace: We!
come to London. Now Heauen blefle that fwecte Face
of thine : what,arc you come from Wales?
Fal. Thou whorfon mad Compound of Maieftle t by
this light Flcfluand corrupt Blood.ttfou art welcome*
Dol. How? you fat Foole.l fcorne you.
Poin, My Lord, hee will driue you out of your re
uengc, and turne all to a merryment, if you takenot thfc
heat.
Prince, You whorfon Candle-myne you, howvildly
did you fpeake of me euen now, before this honetl,m-
tuouifcciuill Gentlewoman ?
Hofi* 'BlciTmgon your good heart, and fo Lee is b|
mytroth*
Fal. Didftthotfheareme?
frmce. Yes: andyouknewmfcaas you did when ycik
ranne away by Gads-hill : youknew 1 wai atyour back,
and (poke it on purpofe,to trie my patience.
Fat. No,no,no : not fo ; 1 did not thinke, thou wall
within hearing.
prince. I (hall driue you then to confeffe the wilrjil
abufc, and then I know now to handle you,
FaU No abufe {Hall) on mi«e Honor,no abufe,
PrinceTtiot to difprayfc me? anc^cail mc Pantlcr«iHid
Bread-chopper, and I know not.wnare
Fal. Noabufe(tt«/J
Poith No abufe?
Fal, No abufe (Ne£) in the World: honcft Nedawt
I difprays'd him before t%e W.icked, tjjaj the Wicked
might not fall in louc with him: Inwhichdoing, I haue
done the part of a carefuIlFriend.an5 a true Subiec>,and
thy Father is t£giue me thankes for it* No afo\ifc{ffalt)
none (Ned) none; no Boyes,none,
Prince. See now whether pure Feare,and entire Qowj
ardife. doth not make thee wrong this vertuous Gentle-
woman,to clofe with vs? Is (hee of the Wicked ? Is thine
Hoftclfe heereTof the Wicked ? Or is the Boy of tj£
Wicked ? Or honeft Bardohb (whofe Zealc burne* in his
Nofc) of the Wicked?
Voiir. Anfwcre thou dead Elme.anfwerc,
Fal. The Fiend hath priclct downe "Bardofyb irrecoue*
rable,and his Face hZuerferj Priuy-Kitchin,whcrehee
doth notEing but roft Mault.Wormc* : for the Boyj
there is a good AngeU about him>but the Deuili out*
bids him too*
Prince. FoTtJjfcWmnen?
Fal, For one of them, (hee is in Hell ajreadit.liDa
burnes poore Soules : for the other, I owe
ney ; and whether (hee bee damn'd for thap, I
not.
Heft. No,l warrant you*
F**AN?o.
I .IHI|IMI»
443 -(2)- il/»
465 -(ID - 7/*
The fecondTart ofK^ingHmry the Fourth.
85
)0
50
I)
00
I'd. No,I clunkc chou arc not : J thinkc thou att quit
forthbr. Marry, there is another Indictment vpon thec,
tor fuffcring 'fleiu to bee eaten io thy houfe, contrary to
the Law, :or the which I think e thou wile howlc.
tfaSli All Viduallers'doe Co s WEai'is a Ioyntjjf
Jtluuon,oc rw o,in a whol c Lent ?
Fnnce. YoUjGentlewoman.
(DoL What fayes yoorGracc?
FJfc . His tiracefayes diat# wblchbis fleih rcbells
Mptafi*
Jlofi. Wholcnocks fo lowd at doore? lookctothe
dcose there, transit 2
Eater Fen.
Trim. Ptf#,h<w now? what ncwes ?
Fett. The King,your Eather,is at Weftminfter,
And cherTaFe twentie weake and wearied Poftes,
Come from tber^orth ^and as I came along,
lrnel^and ouer-tooke a dozen Captaincs,
Jkre*hcaded,fv?cati&g,knocking at the^I auernes,
Jtad asking euery one for Sir lohn Falfiajfe,
Prince, By Heauen (Fairies)! fecle me much to blame,
»oidlytoprophane the precious time, """
kVhenTempcltof Commotion,likc the South,
Jgome with black Vapour, doth begin to melt,
An3 drop vpon our bare vnarmed heads.
Cine me my S word,and Liloake :
Fdfiaf e.good night. Exit,
FaUI. Now comes in the fweeteft Morfcll of the
eight, and wee muft hence, and leaue irvnpickt. More
knocking atthe doore? How now ?.. what's the mat-
ter? "
ZBard. Yon muft away to Court,Sir,prefent!y,
&. dozen Captaines itay at doore for you.
Eiljr. Pay the Mufitians.Sirrha: farewell Hoftefle,
fr.rewcll Dol. You fee (my good Wenches) how rrien of
Merit atsTought after : the vndefcruer .mayilecpe^vhen
the man of Action is calTaon. Farewell good Wenches:
if I be not lent awaypofle> 1 will fee youagainc, ere I
goe.
Hoi. I cannot fpeake : if my heart bee not readie
to burlfc— Well (faecce lacks) haue a care of thy
felreT"
Tdjl. Farewell, farewell. Exit,
Hosl. Well, fare thee well : I haue knowne thee
thefe twentie nine.yecres» come Pcfcod-time : but an
honefter^and truer-hearted man-— Weil, fare thee
well,
Bard.'' Miftris Teare-Jheeu
Hoft. What's the matter?
Bard. Bid Miftris Tcare-frset come to my Matter.
Bofi. Ohjunnc !/>«/» ranne: runnc.goodpg/.
Exeunt,
;50
Aflus.Tertius. Scena Trim a,
Enter the K.teg,mth a "Page,
Kt'«£.Goe.call the EarlesofSurrcy,and of Warwick:
fat ere they come.bid them ore-reade theie Letters,
andwell confidcr of them : make good fpeed. Exit.
How many thouland of my poorcfl Subiecls
Arc 3t this holvre afleepe ? O Sleepe, O gentle Stcepe,
NaturcTfoft Nurfe,how haue 1 frighted thee,
That thou no cnors'wiit weigh my eye-lids downe,
And fteepe mySences in For-gctfulnefTe ?
Why rather (Sleepe) ly eftthoa in finoakie Cribs,
Vpon vneafie Pallads ftretching thee,
And huifhc with bulling Night, flyes tathyflumbert
Then in the perfum'd Chambers of the Great ?
Vnder the Canopies of coftly Sc~ee,
And I'ull'd with founds of fweeteft Melodie ?
O thou dullGod,why fyeftrhouwith the vilde,
In loathfome Bcds,and Ieau'ft the Kingly Couch-
A Warch«cafe,or a common Larum-Bell ?
Wilt thcu.vpon the high and giddie Maft,
Sealevp the Ship!b"oyes Eyes.and rock his Braincs,
In Cradle of the rude imperious Surge,
And in the vification of the Wmdes,
Who take ^hc Ruffian Billowesbv the top.
Curling their monftrous heads .and hanging them
With deaffning Clamors in theUipp'ry Clouds,'
That with the hurley.Dcath it felfe awakes ?
Canft thou (O parti all Sleepe) eju^ thy Repofc*
To the wet Sea-Boy ,in an hourejo rude:
And in the calmeft,and moft rtilleit Nighr,
With all appliances, and meanes to boote,
beny it to^ King ? Then happy LoweJye downe,
Vneafie Ives the Head.that weares a Crowne.
Enter warwich and Surrey.
War, Many good-morrowes to your Maieftie,
King. Ts it good-morrow, Lords >
War. 'Tis One a Clock, and pa ft.
■K/flg'.Why then good-morrow to you: all(my Lords:)
Haue y ou read o're the Letters that I fent you i ,
Wat. We haue (my Liege.)
King. Then you pcrceiue the Body of our Kingdoms,
How foule it is : what ranke Difeafcs grow,
And with what danger, neere the Heart of it ?
War. Trithiirata P.odv vet diftempcr'd.
Which to his former ftrength may be reftor'd*
With good ad«iice,and little Medicine :
My Lord Northumberland will foonc be cool'd.
King.OU Heauen,that one might readthe Book of Fare,
And fee the reuolution of the Times
Make Mountaincs leuell- and the Continent
(Wearic of folide firmenefle)melt it felfe
Into the Sea: and other Times, to fee
The beachie G irdle of tj^Occan
Too wide for Neptmes hippes ; how Chances mocks
And Changes fill the Cuppe of Alteration
With diuers Liquors. 'Tis not tenne yeeresgone,
Since Richard,and Norifwmberland, great fjufifldj,
Did feaft together ; and in two yeeres after, f
Were they at Warres. It is but eight yeerci fince,
This Terete was the man,neereft my Soule,
Who,like a Brother, toyl'd in my Affaires,
And layd his Louc and L^£g vnder my foot:
Yea,for my fake,euen to tiifieyes of 'Flcbard
Gauc him defiance. But which of jtfiu was b/
(You Coufin Nentsi I may remember)
When Rich*rd,*i\ih his Eye,brim-full of Tfilttlf
(Then check'd.and rated by North#mberl«nd)
Did fpeake thefe word? (nowprou'daProphccie:)
NortbHmkerlandjhou. Laddcr,by the wiiisa
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$6 ThefecondTart of Kjw Henry the Fourth.
My Coufin ^Bnllingbrooke afcends my Throne :
(Though tticn,Heauen knowes,! had no fuch intent,
But that necefiitic fo bow'd the State,
That land Grestnefle were compcll*d to kiflc:)
TheTimc (hail come (thus did hee follow it)
TheTimc will come that foule Sinne gathering head,
Shall breake into Corruption : fo went on,
Fore-telling this fame Times Condition,
And the diuifion of our Ami tic.
War. There isjj Hiftoric in all mens Liues,
Figuring the nature of the Times deceas'd:
The which obferu d, a man may prophecic
With a neere avme,ofthc mainc chance of things,
As yet not coracto Life,which in their Scedes
A*nd weake beginnings lye entreafurca :
Such things become the Hatch and Brood of Time J
And by the nccelTarie forme of Tins,
King Richardm'ight creates perfect gucfle,
That great Northumberland* then falfe to him,
Would of xTTaTSeec^gro^tf jo a greater falfcnefle,
Which (hould not finde a ground to roote vpon,
Vnleflc on you.
King. Arc thefe things then NecefTities ?
Then let vs meete them like NecelTiciesj"*"
And that fame word.cuen now cryesout onrs:
They fay .ThTBifhop and Northumberland
Are fifue th"oufand ftrong.
War. It cannot be (my Lord:)
Rumor doth doubhTjhke the Voice,and Eccho,
The numbers of the feared. Pkafe it your Grace
To goe to brd, vpon my Life (my Lord)
The Pow'rs that you alrcadie haue fent forth,
Shall bring this Prize in my canTy.
To comfort you themorej haue rcceiu'u
A"*ccttalne inftancc,that Clendourh dead.
Your MaieBreKath beene this fortnight ill,
And thefc vnfcafon'd howrcs perforce muft addc ,
Vnto'your SicknefTe,
Ktng. 1 will take your counfaile :
And were thefe inward Warres once out of hand.
Wee would (deare Lards) ynto the Holy-Land.
2GO-(35)-37i Extmt'
Scena Secunda.
tnter Shallow and Silence : with Mouldie shadow 3
Wart% Feeble , "Buil-calfe.
Sbal. Come-on,come-on. come-on : giuc mee your
Hand,Sft; giuc mee your Hand-, Sir : an early ftirrcr,by
the Rood. And how doth my good Coufin Silence I
SiL Good-morrow,good Coufin Shallow.
Shal. And how doth my Coufin, your Bcd-fcllow ?
and your faireft Daughter, and mine, my God-Daughter
Ellen I
SiL Alas,a blacke C^eU (Coufin Shallow.)
Shal. By yea and nay ,Sir, I dare fay my Coufin William
is become a good Scholler ? hee is at Oxfqut full, is hee
not?
SiL Indcede Sir,to my coft.
Shal. ijje muft then to the lnnes of Court Ihortly : I
was once of Clemems Inne j where (I ihinke) they will
talkc of mad Shallow yet.
SiL You were call'd luftie Shallow then(Coufin)
Shal. I was call'd any thing r and 1 would haue done
any thing indecde too,and roundly too. There was I and
little lobn Doit of StTftotdmire, and blacke George'Bare
and Vrancu Pick^bons^ndWjIl Scjuele a Cot-fal-man, you
hadnotfoure fuch Swtndge-bucklcrs in all the lnnes of
Court 3gainc : And I may fay to you> wee knew where
the tBona-rRobas were, and had the belt of them all at
commandemenr. Thcnwas lac^e Fal/lajfe(nov{ Sit lohn)
afeoy, and Page to Thomai ^Mowbray y Duke of Nor
folke.
SiL This Sir lohn (Coufinj that comes hither anon a-
bout Souldicrs ?
"~~Uhal. The fame Sir lohn} the very fame : 1 faw him
breake Scoggant Head at the Court-Gate, whennce was
aCr3ck,not thus high : and the very fame day did I fijjrit
With one Sampfon-Stocl^fijk, a Fruiterer, bjHm'de Grcyes-
Innc. Oh the mad dayes that I haue fpentT°and to fee
how many of mine olde Acquaintance arc dcaifl
SiL Wee fhall all follow (Coufin.)
ShaL Certaine: 'tis certaine: very fure, very furc:
Death is certaine to all, all (hall dye. How a good Yoke
of Sullocki at Stamford Fayre ?
SiL 1 ruly Coufinj was nor there.
ShaL Death is ccrtaine. Is old Double of yourTowne
liuing yet ?
SU. Dead,Sir.
ShaL Dead i Sec,fee : hec drew a good Bow : and
dead? hec fhocj* finelhoote. Iohn of. Gaunt loued
him well, and betted muchMoney on his head. Dead?
hec would haucclajjc inthcCiowratTwelue-fcorejand
carryrd you a forehand Shaft at foureteenc, find foure-
teencand ahallcTtnat it would haiie done a mans heart
good to fee. How a (core of Ewes now ?
SiL Thereafter as they be : a fcore of good Ewes
maybe worth tenne pounds.
ShaL And is olde Double dead ?294- (6 V" 10 h
JLnzerrBardol$h and his Boj0
SiL Heere come rwo of Sir Iohn Falftaffes Men (as I
thinkc.)
ShaL Good-morrow,honeit Gentlemen.
'Bard. I befcech you,which is lufticc Shallow ?
ShaL 3 am £c£m5WW(Sir)apooreEfquircofthis
Countie, and one of the Kings Iufticcs of the Peace:
What is your good pleafure with roc ?
Bard. My Captainc (Sir) commends him to yoo :
my Captame,Sir lohn Taljlajfe : a tall Gentleman, and a
mod gallant Leader.
Shal. Hee grcetes me well . ( Sir) I knew him a
good Back-S word-man. How doth fjje good Knight ?
may I askchow my Lady his Wife doth ?
Bard. Sir,pardon : a Souldier is better accommoda*
ted.then witha Wife
ShaL Ttls well faid Sir; and ids well faid, indecde,
too: Better accommodated? it isgood,^ca indecde is
it : good phrafes arc furcly,and eucrv where very com-
mendable. Accommodated , it comes of Accommedo',
very goodj good Phrafc.
*B.vrd. Pardon, Sir, 1 haue heard tnc word. Phrafc
call you it ? by this Day, 1 know not the Phrafc : but
I will maintains the Word with mv Sword, to bec a
Souldier.like Word , and a Word of exceeding good
Command. Accommodated : that is, when a man is
(as they fay) accommodated : or, when a man is, being
whereby
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ThefecondcPart ofKjngHenry the Fourth.
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hereby he thought to be accommodated , -which As an
excellcnuhing.
Enter Falfiajfe.
Shal. It is vcrv .hi ft : Lookc, heere comer good Sir
fohii. Giucmcycur hand, g'memeyout Wor-fliipsgood
hand :Truft mc.you Iooke well : and beare your, yeares
very well.- Wckomcgood Sir Mar,
FaL I an) glad co/cc you well, good M . Robert Shal-
low. Matter Sure'EarJas I thinke c
Shal, No KrJohnj it is my Colin Silence ; in Commifli-
onwithmee.
FaL GoadM.Sttene^it well befits you {hould be of
ihc peace*
Sit. Your good Worfhip. is. welcome.
f^.Fye, this is hot weather (Gentlemen) haueyou
prouided gje hecrc halfe adozen of fufficientmen?,
ShaL Marry hauc we fir 1 Will yo"u fie ?
FaL Let me fee themjlbefcecb.you.
ShaL Where's theRollf Where s the Roll? Where's
thcRoll ? Lermeiec, letmc fee,lct me fee ; fo,fo,fo,fo :
yea marry Sir> Raphe Mouldie:\ct them appeare as I call:
lit them do fo, let them do fo : Let raee fee, Where is
jMtoftfr?
Mod. Hcere.if itpleafe you.
Shot, What thinke you (Sir lohn) a good Urob'd fel-
low: yong.ftrong, and of good friends,
Fal. Is thy name Monldie ?
fJHtnl. Yea.ifitpleafeyou.
Tat. Jis the more time thou wert vs'd.
Sha_L. Ha.ha.ha, moft exccHenc.Things that are moul-
diejlackcv fe • very lingular good. Well faide Sir lehnx
very well faid.
J*/.. Pricke him.
MohL.1 was prickt well enough before, ifyou could
hauc let me alone: my old Dame will be vndone now/or
onctodoehjgr Husbandry, and her Drudgery 5 you need
nottohaucprickjme, there are other men fitter to goe
out.thenl.
FaL Go too: peace Monttie,yo\\ iKall goe. (JHouldic^
it istimeyouLwcrc (pent,
"Mont. Spent?
5Wfow._Peace,feIIow,peace; ftandafide : Know you
where you "arc? For the otherfii lohm Let me izv.Simon
Shadore.
'JFaL I marry, let me hauc hirxua nt vnder : iw s like to
be a cold foul dier.
Shal* Where s Shadow}
Shad. Heere fir.
fal. Shadow, whofe fonne art thou £
Shad. My Mothers fonne, Sir.
Falfi. Thy Mothers fonne : like enough, and thy Fa-
piers (hadow : fo the fonne oftheFemale. is the fhadow
of the Male ; it is often fo indeede, but novof the Fathers
fubftancc.
ShaL Do you like him,iir lohrt f
falfi. Shadow wilt ierue for Summer : pnekchim : For
weehaue anumber of (hadowes to fill vppc the Muftei-
Booke.
Shal. Thomas Wars?
^.".Where's he?
Wart, Heere fir.
f«lfl* Is thv name Wan X
Ww.'.Yeafir.
F*l, Thou art a very ragged Warr.
410 - (3) - 2h
Shal. .Shalll pricke him downe^
$\rl&h*$ ■
Falfi* Itwere fupcrfluous: for his apparrel is built vp-
onhis backe, and the whole frame ftands vponpins:prick
him no more.
ShaL. Ha,ha,ha, you can do it fir ; you caadoe it; ; 1 1
commend you well,
Francis Feeble.
Feeble. Heere fir;
Shal. What Trade arr thou Feeble?
Jeeble. XWomans Taylor fir*
ShaL Shall I pricke himdlr }
FaL You may;
But if hehad beene a mans Taylorjhe would haue prick" d
you. Wilt thou make as many holes in aiv enemies Bat-
taile,as thou haft done in a Womans petticoce ?
Feeble, . I will doe my good will fir, you can hauc no
more,.
Falfi. Well fatd,good Womans Taiiour: Wellfayde
Couragious Feeble: thou wilt bee as valiant as the wrafh-
full Doue,or moft magnanimous Moufe. Pricke the wo-
mans Taylour well Matter «#^W, dcepe Maifter Sfia&
law.
Feeble: X would war/ might haue gone lir..<
FaL I would thou wert a mans Tailor,tbat y might'ft
mend him, and make him fit ro goe. Lcannot put him to
apriuate fouldier; that is the Leader ofib many thoit-
fands. Let that fuffice,moft Forcible Feeble f
Feeble. ItfliaHfufrTce--.
Falfi, lam bound to thce» reuerend .Feeble. Who is
thenexc ?
Shal. Peter Bnlcalfe of the Greene.
Falfi. Yea marry, letvs fee Ttulctlfe.
Ml. Heere fir
FaL Truft mc,a likelyFcIlow. Come.prickeme *BnU
calfe till he roarc againe.
*Bnl. Oh.good my Lord Captaine.
Fat. Whar?do'ft thouroare before th art prickr^
But. Oh fir,I am a difeafed man.
Tal. What difeafe haft thou ?
BhL A whorfon cold fir, a cough fir, which I caoght
with Ringing in the Kings affayres, vpon his Coronation
day,fir.
Fat. Come^houihaltgototheWarresinaGowne:
we wilf haue away thy Coltf, and I will take fuch order,
that thy friends ftiall ring for thee. Is hcertall 7
Shal. There is two more called then y out number J
you muft hauebutfoure heere fir^andfo Iprayyou goin.
with me to dinner.
FaL Come, I will goe drinke with you, but I cannot
tarry dinner. I am glad to feeyou in good troth. Mallei
ShalUw,
ShaL O foloha, doe you remember fince wee lay all
night in the Windcmilhin S Georges Field.
jaifiajfe. No more ot that good Maftcr Shatiob: No
more of that.
Shal. Haf it was a merry nighr. And is hne Kight-
..srior&ealiue?
FaL She liucs,M.5W/f»';
Shal. She neucr couldjyvay with me#
FaL Ncuer,ncuer : ftie would al way e$ fay ihee could
not abide M.Shallow.
ShaL I could anger her to theheart : ihee was tnea ^
Bona-Roba. Doth fhe hold her ownc well.
FaL Old.old, M. Shallow.
ShaL Nay,{he muft be old, (be cannot ichoofcJmt.be
, gg
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88 The ficond 'Tart of I\ing Henry the Fodrtk
old : certaine (hee's o,ld : and had Robin Nigbt-worke , by
ol d Nigbt-worke, before I came to Clements nne.
Si/. That's fiftie fiue yeercs agoe. j
Sbd, Hah, Coufin5//ww, that ihou hajift fccne that,
that this Knight and I haue feene : hah, Sir /«&» , faid I
well?
" Falft? ■ Wee haue beard the Chymes at mid-ni ght ,M a,
fter£6«&»*.
5JW. Tharwee haue.that wee haue ; in faith,Sir lahn,
wee haue : our watch-word was,Hem-Boyes. Come,
let's to Dinner ; come.lct's co Dinner : Oh the daye* thar
wee haue feene. Comc,comc.
BkI, Good Matter Corporate 'Bardolfh* fland my
fritnd, and heere is fourc Harry tenne (hillings in French
Qrowncs foi you : in very tn:th,fii,l had as lief behang'd
(ir,as goc : -and yet,for mine owne part.fir,! do not care ;
but rather, becaufe 1 amvnwllling, and for mine owne
partjhaueardefir'e to flay with my friends* filfe>.fa- 1 did
jiot care/or mine owne part,fo much*
.,Bard. Go-too; ftand afide.
Mould. And good Matter CorporaIlCaptalne,for my
Aid Dames fake, ftand my friend : thee hath no body to
doe any thing about hcr,v\ hen I am gone \ and (he is old*
and cannot helpe her fclre : you (bill haue. fortie/rf.
' "Sard. Go-too : ftand afide.
Feeble. I care not, a man can die bur once : wee owe A
death. I will neuer bcarc a bafc minde : if it be my defti-
>nie,fo:if itbenot.fo: no'rnanistoogood to feruehis
Prince : and let ir goc which way it will,he that did this
yccrc,te quit for the next. .
*" Bard. Well faid,thou art a good fellow.
feeble. Nay J will beare no bale minde.
Faijt. Come fir,whiehmen (hall I haue }
SbaL Foure of which you pleafe.
, JSurd. Sir,a word with you; 1 haue three pound. to
free CMauldiC and fall-calfe*
Falfi. Go-too: well,
SbaL Cocie,fir M», winch fourc will you haue ?
Waifi* Doe you chufe forme.
Shot* Marry then , tJMealdie, BkR-calfct feeblel and
shadow.
Falfi. Matildie^sA "BttS-CAlfr: for you Mouldie,lhy
at home,tilI you arc part fcruicc ; and for your pait,2?»//-
r^.grow tul you come vnto it : 1 will noneof you.
SbaL Sir lobn$\x Ubtt^oc not your felfe wrong,they
are your Ukdycftimen^and I would haue you feru'd with
thebefl.
Falj}. Will you tell me (M after SU&m) how to chufc
amant* Care I fortheLJmbe,tlieThewes, ihe ftature,
buike^ and bi£gc afiemblance of a man ? giue mec the
ipirk (Mattel SbaRew.) Where's tVartl you fee what
a ragged appearance it is : hee fhall charge you, and
difcharge you, with the motion of a Pewtcrers Ham.
tact : come oft andon, fwifcer then hce that gibbets on
i&eBrcwersSSuckier. And this fame halfe-fac'd fellow,
jShmsmgiVK me tbie man : hec prcfents no marke to the
EneiSic the fbc.man may with as great ayme leuell ac
the edge of a Pen-knife j and for a Rctrait, how fwiftly
will this fetSle, the Womans Taylor, runne onv O, giuc
me the fpare area, and fpare me the great ones. Puunc a
Calyuer imcf 9*n* hmd,Bardotpb.
Fard. Hold J*W,Traucrfe:thus,thus,thuj.
Fdlft. Come,manage me your Calyncr : fo; very well,
go-roo.very good,cxceeding good. O.giue mealwayes
?£«little,leane,old,cnopt,bald Shot. Well faid tvarrjhov
arta goodScab s hold^here it a Tetter for thee.
Shit. Hee is not his Craftumafter, hee doth not doe
itfight. 1 rcmen.berac Mile^end.Greenc4wbcm Lry
at Clements I hue. J was then $\trDag<met in es&tfavf
Show : there was a little quiuer fellow, and hecwocid
manage you his Pccce thus : and hce would about*
and about, and come you inland come you in * Ral/
tah, tab, would hee fay, Bownce would hce fay, aa^
away ogainc would hec goc,&nd againe would he coins:
J (hall ncucr fee fucKa fellow.
fdlfi. Thefe fellowes will doe well, Mafic* Sbtltv.
Farewell M afi cr Silence^ I will not vfe many wordes with
you: fare you welt, Gentlemen both: I thanta yoilj
I murt a dozen mile to night/^Wu^giue the Soul<Keri
Coates.'
SbaL JSir /^»,Heauen blefle you, and ptolper your
Affaires, and fend vs Peace. As you returne, vifit
my houfe. Let our old acquaintance be renewed s pe r-
aducnture I will with you to the Court
Falft. I would you would,Maffer 5£wiflw.
SbaL Go-too : I haue (poke at a word* Fare tou
well. Mx*.\
FtilJI. Fare you well 4 gentle Gentlemen. On'2fo.
dotph> leade the men tway. As I returne, I will fetch otf
thefe Iuftices : ldoe fee the batrome-of Iuffice$kfc
low. How fubied wee old men are to this vice of iy*
ing? This fameftaru'd lullice hatridone nothing but
prate to me of the wildenefle of hit Youth, ana the
Fcatci hce hath done about Turnball-ftrecr, and euery
third word a Lye, ducr pay'd to the hearer, then the
Turkcs Tribute. I doe remember him at Ciementtlxm.%
like a man made after Supper,of a Cheefe.paring, Wnea
hee was naked, hee was, forall the, world, lilce a forked
Radifh, with a Head fantaftically caru'd vpon it With t
Knife. Hce was fo forlorne,that3ii* DimenHons (itt
any thickc fight) were inuincible.1 Hce was the wry
Genius of Famine : hce came cuer in the rere-wartlof
the Fafliion : And now is this Vices Dagger become a
Squire, and talkcs as- familiarly of tohtt of GauntiaS if
hce had beene fworne Brother co him t and He be fworne
hee neuer faw him but once in the Tilt-yard,and then he
butft his Head, for crowding among tbeMarfhals men.
I faw it, and told John of Gaunt, hce beat hts owne
Name, for you might haue trufs'd him and all his Ap^,
parrcll into an Eele-'skinne.: the Cafe of a Treble Hoc-
boy was a Manfion for him : a Court : and now hath
hec Land,and Eceu.es. Well, 1 will be acquainted with
him, if I returne : and it (hall goe hard, but I will make
him a Philofophers two Stones to me. J If the young
Dace be a Bayc forthcold Pike, I fee no reafon.inthe
Law of Nature, but / may fnap ac him. Let tfmclhape,
and there an end. Exemt^
ActusQmrtus. Scem^Prima.
Enter the *4rch*biff/opt {Jftiowbra-jjla&inglj
tVeflmerland, Coliude*
"£//&. >Wbat is this Forreft call'd ?
Hafi, Tis Gualtrce Forrefl, and't flUJ plealeyBar
Grace "
Tifb.Hetc fland(my Lords)and fend difcoucrcrs farsh,
To know the numbers of our Enemies.
PART II.
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
CHAPTER I.
THE TREASONABLE PE4Y OF RICHARD IE
A most contagious treason come to light.
Henry V., iv, 8.
AFTER the Table of Contents of this book, especially that part
of it which relates to the Cipher narrative, had been published,
the remark was made, by some writers for the press: "Why, history
knows nothing of the events therein referred to." And by this it
was meant to imply that if the history of Elizabeth's reign did
not give us these particulars they could not be true. The man
who uttered this did not stop to think that it would have been a
piece of folly for Francis Bacon, or any other man, to have labori-
ously inclosed in a play a Cipher narrative regarding things that
were already known to all the world. The reply of the critics
would have been, in the words of Horatio:
There needs no ghost, my Lord, come from the grave,
To tell us this.
A cipher story implies a secret story, and a secret story can not
be one already blazoned on the pages of history.
But it is indeed a shallow thought to suppose that the historian,
even in our own time, tells the world all that occurs in any age pr
country. As Richelieu says:
History preserves only the fieshless bones
Of what we were; and by the mocking skull
The would-be wise pretend to guess the features.
Without the roundness and the glow of life,
How hideous is the skeleton !
619
620 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
But, at the same time, I admit that the Cipher narrative, to be
true, must be one that coheres, in its general outlines, with the
well-known facts of the age of Elizabeth; and this I shall now
attempt to prove that it does.
The Cipher story tells us of a great court excitement over the
so-called Shakespeare play of Richard II.; of an attempt on the
part of the Queen to find out who was the real author of the play;
of her belief, impressed upon her by the reasoning of Robert Cecil,
Francis Bacon's cousin, that the purpose of the play was treason-
able, and that the representation on the stage of the deposition and
murder of the unfortunate Richard was intended to incite to civil
war, and lead to her own deposition and murder. The Cipher also
tells us that she sent out posts to find and arrest Shakspere, intend-
ing to put him to the torture, — or " the question," as it was called in
that day, — and compel him to reveal the name of the man for
whom, as Cecil alleged, he was but a mask; and it also tells how
this result was avoided by getting Shakspere out of the country
and beyond the seas.
What proofs have we that the Queen did regard the play of
Richard II. as treasonable ?
They are most conclusive.
I. The Play.
If the reader will turn to Knight's Biography of Shakspere, p.
414, he will find the following:
The Queen's sensitiveness on this head was most remarkable. There is a very
curious record existing of "that which passed from the Excellent Majestie of
Queen Elizabeth, in her Privie Chamber at East Greenwich, 40 Augusti, 1601, 430
Reg. sui, towards William Lambarde," which recounts his presenting the Queen
his Pandecta of historical documents to be placed in the Tower; which the
Queen read over, making observations and receiving explanations. The following
dialogue then takes place:
William Lambarde. He likewise expounded these all according to their original
diversities, which she took in gracious and full satisfaction; so her Majesty fell
upon the reign of King Richard II., saying: "I am Richard II., know ye not
that?"
IT. L. [Lambarde]. Such a wicked imagination was determined and attempted
by the most unkind gentleman, the most adorned creature that ever your Majesty
made.
Her Majesty. He that will forget God will also forget his benefactors: this
tragedy was played forty times in open streets and houses. . . .
The " wicked imagination " that Elizabeth was Richard II. is fixed upon Essex
by the reply of Lambarde, and the rejoinder of the Queen makes it clear that the
" wicked imagination" was attempted through the performance of tne tragedy of
THE TREASONABLE PLAY OF RICHARD II. 621
The Deposition of Richard II. " This tragedy was played forty times in open
streets and houses." The Queen is speaking shL.months after the outbreak ol
Essex, and it is not improbable that the outdated play — that performance which in
the previous February the players " should have loss in playing" — had been ren-
dered popular through the partisans of Essex after his fall, and had been got up in
open streets and houses with a dangerous avidity.
But this is not all.
It will be remembered that Essex had returned from Ireland,
having patched up what was regarded by Elizabeth as an unreason-
able and unjustifiable peace with' the rebel O'Neill, whom he had
been sent to subdue. He was placed under arrest.
I again quote from Knight's Biography of Shakspcre, pp. 413
and 414:
Essex was released from custody in the August of i6oo1 but an illegal sentence
had been passed upon him by commissioners, that he should not execute the offices
of a Privy Councilor, or of Earl Marshal, or of Master of the Ordnance. The
Queen signified to him that he was not to come to court without leave. He was a
marked and a degraded man. The wily Cecil, who at this very period was carry-
ing on a correspondence with James of Scotland, that might have cost him his
head, was laying every snare for the ruin of Essex. He desired to do what he
ultimately effected, to goad his fiery spirit into madness. Essex was surrounded by
warm but imprudent friends. They relied upon his unbounded popularity, not
only as a shield against arbitrary power, but as a weapon to beat down the strong
arm of authority. During the six months which elapsed between the release of
Essex and the fatal outbreak of 1601, Essex House saw many changing scenes,
which marked the fitful temper and the wavering counsels of its unhappy owner.
Within a month after he had been discharged from custody the Queen refused to
renew a valuable patent to Essex, saying that " to manage an ungovernable beast
he must be stinted in his provender." On the other hand, rash words that had
been held to fall from the lips of Essex were reported to the Queen. He was made
to say, " She was now grown an old woman, and was as crooked within as with-
out." The door of reconciliation was almost closed forever. Essex House had
been strictly private during its master's detention at the Lord Keeper's. Its gates
were now opened, not only to his numerous friends and adherents, but to men of
all persuasions, who had injuries to redress or complaints to prefer. Essex ' \
always professed a noble spirit of toleration, far in advance of his age; and he now
received with a willing ear the complaints of all those who were persecuted by the
government for religious opinions, whether Roman Catholics or Puritans. He
was in communication with James of Scotland, urging him to some open assertion
of his presumptive title to the crown of England. It was altogether a season of
restlessness and intrigue, of bitter mortifications and rash hopes. Between the
closing of the Globe Theater and the opening of the Blackfriars, Shakspere was, in
all likelihood, tranquil amidst his family at Stratford.
The winter comes, and then even the players are mixed up with the dangerous
events of the time. Sir Gilly Merrick, one of the adherents of Essex, was accused,
amongst other acts of treason, with " having procured the outdated tragedy of The
Deposition of Richard If. to be publicly acted at his own charge, for the entertain-
ment of the conspirators."
622 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
In the "Declaration of the Treasons of the late Earl of Essex and his Com-
plices," which Bacon acknowledges to have been written by him at the Queen's
command, there is the following statement: "The afternoon before the rebellion,
Merrick, with a great company of others, that afterwards were all in action, had
procured to be played before them the play of deposing King Richard II.; when it
was told him by one of the players, that the play was old and they should have loss
in playing it, because few would come to it, there was forty shillings extraordinary
given to play, and so thereupon played it was."
In the State Trials this matter is somewhat differently mentioned: "The
story of Henry IV. being set forth in the play, and in that play there being set
forth the killing of the King upon a stage; the Friday before, Sir Gilly Merrick
and some others of the Earl's train having an humor to see a play, they must needs
have the play of Henry IV, The players told them that was stale, they could get
nothing by playing that; but no play else would serve, and Sir Gilly Merrick gives
forty shillings to Phillips, the player, to play this, besides whatsoever he could
get."
Augustine Phillips was one of Shakspere's company, and yet it is perfectly
evident that it was not Shakspere's Richard II. nor Shakspere's Henry IV. that
was acted on this occasion. In his Henry IV. there is no "killing of the King
upon a stage." His Richard II., which was published in 1597, was certainly not
an out-dated play in 1601.
But Knight fails to observe that he has just quoted from Bacon's
official declaration, written with all the proofs before him, that it
was "the play of deposing King Richard I/." And the very fact
that there is no killing of a king in the play of Henry IV., while
there is such a scene in the play of Richard II., shows that the
writer of the State Trials had fallen into an error.
Neither is Knight correct in supposing that a play published in
1597 could not have been an outdated play in 1601. It does not
follow that because the play was first printed in 1597 it was first pre-
sented on the stage in that year. Some of the Shakespeare Plays
were not printed for twenty years after they first appeared, and a
good many plays of that era were not printed at all. And a play
may be outdated in a year — yes, in a month. And, moreover, the
canny players would be ready enough with any excuse that would
bring forty shillings into their pockets, whether it was true or not.
Knight continues:
A second edition of it [the play of Richard II] had appeared in 1598, and it
was no doubt highly popular as an acting-play. But if any object was to be gained
by the conspirators in the stage representation of "deposing King Richard II.,"
Shakespeare's play would not assist that object. The editions of 1597 and 1598 do
not contain the deposition scene. That portion of this noble history which con-
tains the scene of Richard's surrender of the crown was not printed till 1608, and
the edition in which it appears bears in the title the following intimation of its
novelty: " The Tragedie of King Richard the Second, with neio additions of the
THE TREASONABLE PLAY OF RL CHARD LL.
623
Parliament Sceane, and the deposing of King Richard. As it hath been lately acted
by the Kinge's servantes, at the Globe. By William Shake-speare."
But Richard Grant White argues that, as there appear, in the
quartos of 1597 and 1598, the words, "A woeful pageant have we
here beheld," the deposition scene, which precedes these words in
the play, must have been already written, but left out in the printed
copies. For, says White, if the Abbot had not witnessed the depo-
sition, he had not beheld "a woeful pageant." Therefore, the new
additions, referred to in the title of the quarto of 1608, were addi-
tions to the former printed quartos, not to the play itself.
And if the original play, before it was printed, contained the
deposition scene, why would it not have been acted ? The play
was made to act ; the scene was written to act. So that it is plain,
beyond a question, that it was Shakespeare's play of Richard II.
which was mixed up in the treasonable events that marked the
closing years of Elizabeth's reign. Around this mimic tragedy the
living tragedy, in which Essex played the principal part, revolved.
And Knight makes this further remark:
In Shakespeare's Parliament scene our sympathies are wholly with King
Richard. This, even if the scene were acted in 1601, would not have forwarded
the views of Sir Gilly Merrick, if his purpose were really to hold up to the people
an example of a monarch's dethronement. But, nevertheless, it may be doubted
whether such a subject could be safely played at all by the Lord Chamberlain's
players during this stormy period of the reign of Elizabeth.
But it must be remembered that no man would dare, in that age,
or in any other age under a monarchy, to openly advocate or justify
the murder of kings; and hence the writer of the play puts many fine
utterances therein, touching the divine right of kings. But the
ignorant are taught, as Bacon said, more by their eyes than their
judgment; and what they saw in the play was a worthless king, who
had misgoverned his country, deposed and slain. A very suggestive
lesson, it might be, to a large body of worthy people who thought
Elizabeth had also misgoverned her country, and had lived too*
long already, and who hoped great things for themselves from the
coming in of King James.
Now, we will see in the next chapter that a certain Dr. Hay-
ward had put forth a pamphlet history, in prose, of this same depo-
sition, and had dedicated it to Essex, and that he had been arrested
and was threatened with torture.
624 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
If, then, Elizabeth believed, as I have shown she did, that the
play of King Richard II. was treasonable; that she was represented
therein by the character of King Richard II., and that his fate was
to be her fate if the conspirators triumphed, what more natural than
that she should seek to have Shakspere arrested and locked up, and
submitted to the same heroic course of treatment she contemplated
for Dr. Hayward? For certainly the offense of the scholar, who
merely wrote a sober prose history of Richard's life, for the perusal
of scholars, was infinitely less than the crime of the man who
had set those events forth, in gorgeous colors, upon a public
stage, and had represented the deposition and killing of a king,
night after night, before the very eyes of swarming and exulting
thousands.
And if, as we will show, the Queen thought that Hayward
was not the real writer of his history, but that he was simply the
cover for some one else, why may she not have conceived the same
idea about Shakspere and his play ?
Why was Shakspere not arrested ? The Cipher story tells the
reason.
And here we note a curious fact. Judge Holmes says:
So far as we have any positive knowledge, the second edition of the Richard II.,
which was printed in 1598, with the scene of deposing King Richard left out, was
the first one that bore the name of William Shakespeare on the title-page; and there
may have been some special reasons as well for the publication of it at that time
as for a close concealment of the real author's name.1
Why should Shakespeare's name first appear, as the author of
any one of the Plays, upon the title-leaf of a play which was mixed
up with matters regarded as seditious and treasonable? And why
was the deposition scene left out, unless the writer of the play knew
that it was seditious? And if so, why was such a dangerous play
published at all? And observe the name of the author is given in
this first play that bears his name as " Shakespeare" not as the
man of Stratford always signed his name, "Shakspere" Was it
because of the treasonable nature of the work that the real author
allowed Shakspere this hole to retreat into ? Was it that he might
be able to say : "/ never wrote the Plays ; that is not my name.
My name is Shakspere, not Shakespeare" ?
1 The Authorship of Shak., vol. i, p. 135.
THE TREASONABLE PLAY OF RICHARD II.
625
There are many things here the Cipher narrative will have to
explain, when it is all unraveled. Certain it is that there are mys-
teries involved in all this business. It was an age of plots and
counter-plots.
Knight well says:
In her conversation with Lambarde Elizabeth uttered a great truth, which
might not be unmingled with a retrospect of the fate of Essex. Speaking of the
days of her ancestors, she said: "In those days force and arms did prevail,
but now the wit of the fox is everywhere on foot so as hardly a faithful or virtuous
man may be found." ]
And, curiously enough, we here find that not only was one of
the Shakespeare Plays mixed up with the events which caused
Essex to lose his head and sent Southampton to the Tower, but we
will see that Francis Bacon was also in some way connected with
the play.
And if we will concede that there is a probability that the Queen
might have ordered the arrest of Shakspere, as she ordered the
arrest of Dr. Hayward, the question is, Why was he not arrested ?
If he remained in England, surely he would have been arrested if
the Queen had so ordered. And if he had been arrested, we should
have had some tradition of it, or some record of it, in the proceed-
ings of courts or council. And if he was not arrested with
Hayward, then he must have fled. How did he fly ? Who
told him to fly? Who warned him in time to get out of the
country?
All this the Cipher tells.
Let me put the argument clearly:
1. Hayward wrote a pamphlet history of the deposition
of King Richard II. Hayward was thrown into the Tower
and threatened with torture to make him reveal the real
author.
2. Shakspere was the reputed author of a treasonable play,
representing the deposition and killing of Richard II. ; a play which
was regarded as so objectionable that the hiring of the actors to
play it was made one of the charges against Essex which brought
his head to the block.
3. Why, therefore, was Shakspere not arrested ?
1 Knight 's Pictorial Shak. — Biography, p. 415.
626 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
II. Bacon Assigned to Prosecute Essex for Having Had
Shakspere's Play Acted.
But this is not all.
When the Qeeen came to prosecute Essex for his treasons, the
Council assigned to Francis Bacon, as his part, that very hiring of
the actors to enact the deposition and murder of King Richard II.
And what was Bacon's reply ?
I quote from Judge Holmes:
Nor was this all. But when the informal inquiry came on before the Lords
Commissioners, in the summer of 1600, Bacon, in a letter to the Queen, desired
to be spared from taking any part in it as Queen's Counsel, out of consideration of
his personal obligations to his former patron and friend. But the Queen would
listen to no excuse, and his request was peremptorily refused. It will be borne in
mind that the Queen's object in this inquiry was to vindicate her own course and
the honor of the crown without subjecting Essex to the dangers of a formal trial
for high treason, and that her intention then was to check and reprove him, but not
io ruin his fortunes. Bacon made up his mind at once to meet the issues thus
intentionally forced upon him, and he resolved to show to her, as he says, that he
" knew the degrees of duties;" that he could discharge the highest duty of the
subject to the sovereign, against all obligations of private friendship toward an
erring friend; wherein, says Fuller, very justly, "he was not the worse friend for
being the better subject; " and that if he must renounce either, it should be Essex,
rather than the Queen, who had been, on the whole, personally, perhaps, the better
friend of the two to him : — well knowing, doubtless, that conduct is oftentimes ex-
plained equally well by the basest as by the loftiest motives, and that the latter are
generally the most difficult of appreciation. The next thing he heard was, that
the Lords, in making distribution of the parts, had assigned to him, "by the con-
clusion binding upon the Queen's pleasure directly, nolens vo/ens," that part of the
charges which related to this same "seditious prelude"; at which he was very
much annoyed. And they determined, he says, "That I should set forth some
undutiful carriage of my lord, in giving occasion and countenance to a seditious
pamphlet, as it was termed, which was dedicated unto him, which was the book
before mentioned of King Henry IV. Whereupon I replied to that allotment, and
said to their lordships that it was an old matter, and had no manner of coherence
with the rest of the charge, being matters of Ireland, and thereupon that /, having
been wronged by bruits before, this would expose me to them more; and it would be
said I gave in evidence mine own tales." What bruits? What tales? The Lords,
evidently relishing the joke, insisted that this part was fittest for him, as "all the
rest was matter of charge and accusation," but this only "matter of caveat and
admonition": wherewith he was but "little satisfied," as he adds, "because I
knew well a man were better to be charged with some faults, than admonished of
some others." Evidently, here was an admonition which he did not like, and it is
plain that he took it as personal to himself. Nevertheless he did actually swallow
this pill; for we learn from other history that on the hearing before the Lords
Commissioners "the second part of Master Bacon's accusation was, that a certain
dangerous seditious pamphlet was of late put forth into print concerning the first
year of the reign of Henry IV., but indeed the end of Richard II., and that my
lord of Essex, who thought fit to be patron of that book, after the book had been
THE TREASONABLE PLAY OF RL CHARD LL.
627
out a week, wrote a cold, formal letter to my lord of Canterbury to call it in again,
knowing belike that forbidden things are most sought after."1
But he who reads the proceedings of this trial will see that the
play of Richard II. filled a much more conspicuous place than Dr.
Hayward's pamphlet, and that it was to this, probably, that Bacon
really alluded when he said he had been "the subject of bruits,"
and that the public would say " he gave in evidence his own tales."
Does it not occur to every intelligent reader that Bacon, in this
covert way, really says: "It has been reported that I am the real
author of that play of Richard II.; and now if I prosecute Essex
for having had it played, it will be said that I am using my own
composition for the overthrow of my friend"?
And it seems to me that when the whole of the Cipher story is
worked out, we shall find that Bacon was completely in the power
of Cecil; that he (Cecil) knew that Bacon was the author of the play;
that therefore he knew that Bacon had shared in the conspiracy;
and that Bacon had to choose between taking this degrading work
on his hands or going to the scaffold with Essex. If such was the
case, it was the climax of Cecil's revenge on the man who had
represented him on the stage as Richard III. It was humiliation
bitterer than death.
III. "The Isle of Dogs."
And we turn now to another curious fact, illustrative of how
greatly the Plays were mixed up in public affairs, and showing the
spirit of sedition which at this time pervaded the very air.
J. Payne Collier, in his Annals of the Stage, shows that in the
year 1597 an order was given by the Queen's Council to tear down
and destroy all the theaters of London, because one Nash, a play-writer,
had, in a play called The Isle of Dogs, brought matters of state upon
the stage; and Nash himself was thrown into prison, and lay there
until the August following.
What the seditious matter was that rendered The Isle of Dogs so
objectionable to the government, we do not know; it must have
been something very offensive, to cause a Queen who loved theat-
ricals as much as Elizabeth did to decree the destruction of all the
theaters of London. But all the details will probably be found
1 Holmes, The Authorship o/Shak., pp. 255-7.
628 THE CIPHER NARRA 'FIVE.
hereafter in the Cipher story, together with an explanation of the
causes which induced the Queen to revoke her order.
Collier says:
We find Nash, in May, 1597, writing for the Lord Admiral's players, then under
Philip Henslowe, and producing for them a play called The Isle of Dogs, which is
connected with an important circumstance in the history of the stage, viz., the
temporary silencing of that company, in consequence of the very piece of which
Nash was the author. The following singular particulars are extracted from the
Diary kept by Henslowe, which is still, though in an imperfect and mutilated state,
preserved at Dulwich College. Malone published none of them:
Pd 14 of May, 1597, to Edw Jube, upon a notte from Nashe, twentye shellinges
more for the Iylle of Dogges, which he is wrytinge for the companey.
Pd this 23 of August, 1597, to Henerey Porter to cary to T. Nashe, nowe att
this tyme in the flete for wrytinge of the Eylle of Dogges, ten shellinges, to be
payde agen to me wen he cann. I saye ten shillinges.
Pd to M. Blunsones, the Mr. of the Revelles man, this 27 of August, 1597,
ten shellinges, for newes of the restraynt beying recaled by the lordes of the
Queene's Counsell.
Here we see that in the spring of 1597, Nash was employed upon the play, and,
like his brother dramatists of that day, who wrote for Henslowe's company,
received money on account. The Isle of Dogs was produced prior to the 10th of
August, 1597, because, in another memorandum by Henslowe (which Malone has
quoted, though with some omissions and mistakes), he refers to the restraint at
that date put upon the Lord Admiral's players.
On the 23d of the same month, Nash was confined in the Fleet prison, in con-
sequence of his play, when Henry Porter, also a poet, carried him ten shillings
from Henslowe, who took care to register that it was not a gift; and on the 27th of
August "the restraint was recalled" by the Privy Council. We may conclude
also, perhaps, that Nash was about the same time discharged from custody.
In reference to this important theatrical transaction, we meet with the following
memorandum in the Registers of the Privy Council. It has never before been
printed or mentioned:
A Letter to Richard Topclyfe, Thomas Foivler and Ric. Skevington, Esqs., Doctour
Fletcher and Air. Wilbraham.
Uppon information given us of a lewd plaie that was plaied in one of the plaie
howses on the Bancke side, contayninge very seditious and sclaunderous matter,
wee caused some of the players to be apprehended and corny tted to pryson;
whereof one of them was not only an actor, but a maker of parte of the said plaie.
For as muche as yt ys thought meete that the rest of the players or actours in that
matter shal be apprehended to receave soche punyshment as their lewde and
mutynous behavior doth deserve; these shalbe, therefore, to require you to
examine those of the plaiers that are comytted, whose names are knoune to yow,
Mr. Topclyfe; what ys become of the rest of theire fellowes that either had their
partes in the devysinge of that sedytious matter, or that were actours or plaiers in
the same, what copies they have given forth of the said playe, and to whome, and
such other pointes as you shall thincke meete to be demaunded of them; wherein
you shall require them to deale trulie, as they will looke to receave anie favour.
Wee praie you also to peruse soch papers as were founde in Nash his lodgings,
which Ferrys, a messenger of the chamber, shall delyver unto you, and to certifie
us the examynations you take. So, etc.
Greenwich, 15th August, 1597.
There is also another entry at page 327, dated 28 July, 1597, addressed to
the Justices of the Peace of Middlesex and Surrey, directing that, in consequence
of great disorders committed in common play-houses, and lewd matters handled on
THE TREASONABLE PLA Y OF RICHARD II. 629
the stages, the Curtain Theater and the theater near Shoreditch should be dis-
mantled, and no more plays suffered to be played therein; and a like order to be
taken with the play-houses on the Bankside, in Southwark, or elsewhere in Surrey,
within three miles of London. In February, 1597-8, about six months before the
death of Lord Burghley, are to be observed the first obvious indications of a dispo-
sition on the part of the government of Elizabeth permanently to restrain theatrical
representations. At that date, licenses had been granted to two companies of
players only — those of the Lord Admiral and of the Lord Chamberlain — "to use
and practise stage playes " in order that they might be the better qualified to appear
before the Queen. A third company, not named, had, however, played "by way
of intrusion," and the Privy Council, on the 19th February, 1597-8, sent orders to
the Master of the Revels and to the Justices of the Peace of Middlesex and Surrey
for its suppression.1
IV. The Date of the Cipher Story.
I am unable to fix with precision the date of the events nar-
rated in the Cipher narrative. They may have been in the spring
of 1597, at the same time the destruction of the theaters was ordered:
they may have been later. I fall, as it were, into the middle of the
story. Neither can we be sure of the year in which the first part of
Henry IV. was really printed by the date upon it. We know that
in the case of the great Folio of 1623 there have been copies found
bearing the date of 1622, and one, I think, of 1624. It would be
very easy to insert an erroneous date upon the title-leaf of the
quarto of the 1st Henry IV, and we have no contemporary record
to show what was the actual date of publication.
But I think I have established that the years 1597, 1598 and 1599
were full of plots and conspiracies against the Queen and Cecil,
and in favor of King James and Essex; and that the play of
Richard II. was used as an instrumentality to play upon the minds
of men and prepare them for revolution. I have also shown that
the Queen and the court were aware of these facts; that the
arrest of Shakspere as the reputed author of the treasonable play
must have accompanied the arrest of Dr. Hayward, unless some
cause prevented it — and that cause the Cipher narrative gives us.
It follows that the events set forth in the Cipher story are all*
within the reasonable probabilities of history.
» The History of English Dramatic Poetry and A titials of the Stage, by J. Payne Collier, Esq., (
F. S. A., pp. 294-8.
CHAPTER II.
THE TREASONABLE HISTORY OF HENRY IV., WRITTEN BY
DR. HA YWARD.
My breast can better brook thy dagger's point
Than can my ears thy tragic history.
jd Henry VI. , z/, 6.
JUDGE HOLMES gives the following interesting account of
the pamphlet supposed to have been written by Dr. John Hay-
ward, with, it was claimed, an intent to incite the Essex faction to
the overthrow of Queen Elizabeth:
Her disposition toward Essex had been kindly and forgiving, but she was
doubtful of him, and kept a watchful eye upon his courses. As afterward it became
evident enough, all his movements had reference to a scheme already formed in
his mind to depose the Queen by the help of the Catholic party and the Irish rebels.
He goes to Ireland in March, 1599, an(l after various doubtful proceedings and a
treasonable truce with Tyrone, he suddenly returns to London, in October follow-
ing, with a select body of friends, without the command, and to the great surprise
and indignation of the Queen; and a few days afterward finds himself under arrest,
and a quasi-prisoner in the house of the Lord Keeper. During this year Dr. Hay-
ward's pamphlet appeared. It was nothing more than a history of the deposing of
King Richard II., says Malone. It was dedicated to the Earl of Essex, without
the author's name on the title-page; but that of John Hay ward was signed to the
dedication. This Hayward was a Doctor of Civil Law, a scholar, and a distin-
guished historian of that age, who afterward held an office in Chancery under
Bacon. This pamphlet followed on the heels of the play, and it may have been
suggested by the popularity of the play on the stage, or by the suppression of the
deposing scene in the printed copy.
According to Mr. Dixon, "it was a singular and mendacious tract, which,
under ancient names and dates, gives a false and disloyal account of things and
persons in his o^n age; the childless sovereign; the association of defense; the
heavy burden of taxation; the levy of double subsidies; the prosecution of an Irish
war, ending in a general discontent; the outbreak of blood; the solemn deposition
and final murder of the Prince." Bolingbroke is the hero of the tale, and the exist-
ence of a title to the throne superior to that of the Queen is openly affirmed in it.
A second edition of the Richard IT. had been printed in 1598, under the name of
Shakespeare, but with the obnoxious scene still omitted; and it is not until 1608, in
the established quiet of the next reign, that the omitted scene is restored in print.
It is plain that during the reign of Elizabeth it would have been dangerous to have
printed it in full; nevertheless, it had a great run on the stage during these years.
Now, Camden speaks of both the book of Hayward and the tragedy of Richard
II. He states that, on the first informal inquiry, held at the Lord Keeper's house,
in June, 1600, concerning the conduct of Essex, besides the general charges of dis-
630
THE TREASONABLE HISTORY OF HENRY IV. 631
obedience and contempt, "they likewise charged him with some heads and articles
taken out of a certain book, dedicated to him, about the deposing Richard II."
This was doubtless Hayward's book. But in his account of the trial of Merrick
(commander at Essex' house), he says he was indicted also, among other things,
" for having procured the outdated tragedy of Richard II to be publicly acted
at his own charge, for the entertainment of the conspirators, on the day before the
attack on the Queen's palace." " This," he continues, " the lawyers construed as
done by him with a design to intimate that they were now giving the representa-
tion of a scene, upon the stage, which was the next day to be acted in reality upon
the person of the Queen. And the same judgment they passed upon a book
which had been written some time before by one Hay ward, a man of sense and
learning, and dedicated to the Earl of Essex, viz.: that it was penned on purpose
as a copy and an encouragement for deposing the Queen." He further informs us
that the judges in their opinion "produced likewise several instances from the
Chronicles of England, as of Edward II. and Richard II., who, being once be-
trayed into the hands of their subjects, were soon deposed and murdered." And
when Southampton asked the Attorney-General, on his trial, what he supposed
they intended to do with the Queen when they should have seized her, Coke
replied: "The same that Henry of Lancaster did with Richard II.: . . . when he
had once got the King in his clutches, he robbed him of his crown and life." This
account of Camden may be considered the more reliable in that, as we know from
manuscript copy of his Annals, which (according to Mr. Spedding) still remain in
the Cottonian Library, containing additions and corrections in the handwriting of
Bacon, it had certainly passed under his critical revision before it was printed in
1627. And this may help us to a more certain understanding of the allusions
which Bacon himself makes to those same matters in his Apology and in his
account of the trial of Merrick; for, while in the latter he expressly names the
tragedy of Richard II, in the former, as also in the Apophthegms, the book of Dr.
Hayward only is mentioned by name, and there is, at the same time, a covert
(yet very palpable) allusion in them both to the tragedy also, and to his personal
connection with it.1
And we find Bacon referring again to this same book of Dr.
Hayward, in his Apology. After telling' how he wrote a sonnet in
the name of Essex, and presented it to the Queen, with a view to
bringing about a reconciliation with the great offender, he adds:
But I could never prevail with her, though I am persuaded she saw plainly
whereat I leveled; and she plainly had me in jealousy, that I was not hers entirely,
but still had inward and deep respect toward my Lord, more than stood at that time
with her will and pleasure. About the same time I remember an answer of mine
in a matter which had some affinity with my Lord's cause, which, though it grew
from me, went after about in others' names. For her Majesty being mightily
incensed with that book which was dedicated to my Lord of Essex, being a story *
of the first year of King Henry IV. ; thinking it a seditious prelude to put into the
people's heads boldness and faction, said she had an opinion that there was treason
in it, and asked me if I could not find any places in it which might be drawn
within case of treason. Whereto I answered: For treason, surely I found none;
but for felony, very many. And when her Majesty hastily asked me wherein, I
told her the author had committed very apparent theft; for he had taken most of
1 The Ajdhorship of Shakespeare — Holrr.CF. vol. i, pp. 243-6.
632
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
the sentences of Cornelius Tacitus and translated them into English, and put them
into his text.1
Judge Holmes shows that this jest did not apply to Dr. Hay-
ward's book, but that it does apply to the play of Richard II, which
is full of suggestions from Tacitus. But Bacon did not want to
touch too closely upon the play; although one can readily see
that if the Queen was thus moved against a mere pamphlet, she
must have been much more incensed against that popular dramatic
representation, which had been acted "more than forty times in
houses and the public streets," as she told Lambarde, and which
showed, in living pictures, the actual deposition and murder of
her prototype, Richard II.
Judge Holmes seems to think that the words, "a matter which
had some affinity with my Lord's cause, which, though it grew from
me, went after about in others' names," meant that the pamphlet or
play "grew from him;" but Mr. Spedding claims that it was the
"answer" which "grew from him and went after about in others'
names," and the sentence seems to be more reasonably subject to
this construction. Bacon would hardly have dared to thus boldly
avow that he wrote the pamphlet or play, although as a pregnant jest
he may have constructed a sentence that could be read either way.
Judge Holmes continues:
So capital a joke did this piece of wit of his appear to Bacon, that he could not
spare to record it among his Apophthegms, thus:
58. The book of deposing King Richard II. and the coming in of Henry IV.,
supposed to be written by Dr. Hayward, who was committed to the Tower for it,
had much incensed Queen Elizabeth, and she asked Mr. Bacon, being of her
learned counsel, whether there was any treason contained in it? Mr. Bacon,
intending to do him a pleasure, and to take off the Queen's bitterness with a merry
conceit, answered, " No, Madam, for treason I cannot deliver an opinion that there
is any, but very much felony. 'I The Queen, apprehending it, gladly asked, How?
and wherein? Mr. Bacon answered, "Because he hath stolen many of his sen-
tences and conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus."
The designation here given to the book comes much nearer to a correct naming
of the play than it does to the title of Dr. Hayward's pamphlet, and the suggestion
that the Doctor was committed to the Tower for only being supposed to be the
author, and that he, in his answer, intended to do the Doctor a pleasure, looks very
much like an attempt at a cover; and is, to say the least, a little curious in itself.
That Dr. Hayward had translated out of Tacitus was, of course, a mere pretense;
but that the play drew largely upon the "sentences and conceits of Cornelius
Tacitus," will be shown to be quite certain.2
And Bacon alludes to this matter again, in his Apology, as follows:
1 Holmes, The A uthorship o/Shak., p. 250. 2 Ibid., p. 252.
ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF ESSEX.
or THt
UNIVERSITY
THE TREASONABLE HISTORY OE HENRY IV. 633
And another time, when the Queen could not be persuaded that it was his
writing whose name was to it, but that it had some more mischievous author; and
said, with great indignation, that she would have him racked to produce his author,
I replied: " Nay, Madam, he is a doctor, never rack his person, but rack his style;
let him have pen, ink and paper, and help of books, and be enjoined to continue
the story where it breaketh off, and I will undertake, by collating the styles, to
judge whether he were the author or no."
Now, all these things go to show that there was a storm in the
court; that there were suspicions of treasonable motives on the
part of some man or men in writing what were, on their face,
harmless pamphlets or plays; that the Queen was enraged, and
wanted to know who were the real authors.
So much does history (or a few brief glimpses of history in the
trial of Essex and the Apophthegms of Bacon) afford us; and the
Cipher narrative takes up the story where history leaves it. But it
will be seen that that narrative is perfectly consistent in all its parts
with these historical events.
II. The Capias Utlagatum.
But, it will be said, did Shakspere ever fly the country ? Could
he have done so without the fact being known to us ? Would he
not have been arrested on his return ? Could he have ended his
days peacefully at Stratford, if he had committed any offense
against the laws ?
I grant you that if he had been proclaimed as a fugitive from
justice, we should have heard of it, either from the court records or
tradition. But if he, an obscure actor, had wandered away and
after a time had come back again, it is not likely any notice would
have been taken of it that would have reached us. The man was,
in the eyes of his contemporaries, exceedingly insignificant; and
hence the absence of all allusions to his comings or goings. Hence
we have his biographers arguing that he must have gone with his
company to Scotland, and even Germany, while there is not the
slightest testimony that he did or did not. In fact, his whole life
is veiled in the densest obscurity. As William Henry Smith says, the
only fact about him of which we are positive is the date of his death.
But suppose that Shakspere and the play of Richard II. and
Francis Bacon were all simply incidents of a furious contest
between the Cecil faction and the Essex faction to rule England;
suppose they were mere pawns on the great checker-board of court
634 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
ambition. Then we can understand that at one stage of the game
Essex' star may have been obscured and Cecil's in the ascendant;
and Cecil may have filled the ears of the Queen with just such rep-
resentations as are set forth in the Cipher story; and in her rage the
Queen may have sent out posts to arrest Shakspere and his fol-
lowers; and the Council may at the same time have issued the
order, quoted in the last chapter, to tear down all the play-houses
in London.
But Essex was the Queen's favorite; he was young and hand-
some, and she loved young and handsome men; in the last years of
her life she enriched one young man simply because he was hand-
some. Their quarrel may have been made up, and Essex may, in
the rosy light of renewed confidence, have made light of Cecil's
charges; and the Queen may have relented and revoked the order
for the destruction of the Curtain and the Fortune, and agreed to
let Shakspere return unmolested.
Or, facts may have come out which showed that Bacon was the
real author of the Plays; there may have been a scene and a con-
fession; he may have apologized and denied any treasonable intent,
for it was difficult to prove treason in a play which simply repeated
historical events, larded with platitudes of loyalty; and he may
have been forgiven, and yet never again fully trusted by the Queen.
He may have described his own condition in the words which he
puts into the mouth of Worcester, in the play of ist Henry IV.:
It is not possible, it cannot be,
The King would keep his word in loving us,
He will suspect us still, and find a time
To punish this offense in others' faults.
Suspicion all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes;
For treason is but trusted as the fox,
Who, ne'er so tame, so cherished and locked up,
,Will have a wild trick of his ancestors.
Look how we can, or sad or merrily,
Interpretation will misquote our looks.1
Certain it is there was some cause that kept Francis Bacon
down for many years despite all his ambition and ability.
When the entire Cipher story is worked out we shall doubtless
have the explanation of many facts in Bacon's life which now seem
inexplicable.
1 Jst Henry VI., v, 2.
THE TREASONABLE HISTORY OE HENRY IV. 635
But we have a piece of historical evidence which goes far to con-
firm the internal narrative in the Plays.
If the reader will turn back to page 292 of this work, he will
find a copy of a letter addressed by Bacon to his cousin Robert
Cecil, in 1601, complaining of some insults put upon him in open
court by his old enemy, Mr. Attorney-General Coke. I quote from
the letter the following:
Mr. Attorney kindled at it and said: "Mr. Bacon, if you have any tooth
against me pluck it out, for it will do you more hurt than all the teeth in your
head will do you good." I answered coldly, in these very words. " Mr. Attorney,
I respect you; I fear you not; and the less you speak of your own greatness, the
more will I think of it."
He replied: " I think scorn to stand upon terms of greatness toward you, who
are less than little, less than the least; " and other such strange light terms he gave me,
with such insulting which cannot be expressed. Herewith stirred, yet I said no
more but this: " Mr. Attorney, do not depress me so far; for I have been your
better, and may be again, when it please the Queen." With this he spake, neitner
I nor himself could tell what, as if he had been born Attorney-General, and in
the end bade me not meddle with the Queen's business, but mine own. . . .
Then he said it were good to clap a capias utlegatum upon my back ! To which I only
said he could not, and that he was at fault; for he limited up an old scent.
He gave me a number of disgraceful words besides, which I answered with silence.1
Upon reading this, I said to myself, What is a capias utlegatum ?
Wherein does it differ from any ordinary writ? And I proceeded
to investigate the question. I found that the old law authorities
spell the word a little differently from Mr. Spedding: he has it, in
the letter, "utkgatum; " the proper spelling seems to have been
"utlegatum."
What does it mean?
It is derived from the Saxon utlaghe, the same root from which
comes the word outlaw.
Jacobs says:
Outlaw. Saxon, utlaghe; Latin, utlagatus. One deprived of the benefit of the
law, and out of the King's protection. When a person is restored to the King's
protection he is inlawed again. -
And what is outlawry. It means that the person has refused to,
appear when process was issued against him; that he has secreted
himself or fled the country. I quote again from Jacobs:
Outlawry. Utlagaria. The being put out of the lata. The loss of the benefit of
a subject, that is, of the King's protection. Outlawry is a punishment inflicted
] Spedding's Life and Works, vol. iii, 2 Jacobs' Law Dictionary, vol. iv, p. 454.
p. 2. London : Longmans.
636 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
for a contempt in refusing to be amenable to the justice of that court which hath
authority to call a defendant before them; and as this is a crime of the highest
nature, being an act of rebellion against that state or community of which he is a
member, so it subjects the party to forfeitures and disabilities, for he loses his
liberam legem, is out of the King's protection, etc.]
And the capias utlagatum was issued where a party who had thus
refused to appear — who had fled or secreted himself — returned to
his domicile.
I again quote from Jacobs' Law Dictionary:
Capias Utlagatum. Is a writ that lies against a person who is outlawed in any
action, by which the sheriff is commanded to apprehend the body of the party out-
lawed, for not appearing upon the exigent, and keep hini in safe custody till the day
of return, and then present him to the court, there to be dealt with for his con-
tempt; who, in the Common Pleas, was in former times to be committed to the
Fleet, there to remain till he had sued out the King's pardon and appeared to the
action. And by a special capias utlagatum (against the body, lands and goods in
the same writ) the sheriff is commanded to seize all the defendant's lands, goods
and chattels, for the contempt to the King; and the plaintiff (after an inquisition
taken thereupon, and returned into the exchequer) may have the lands ex-
tended and a grant of the goods, etc., whereby to compel the defendant to appear;
which, when he doth, if he reverse the outlawry, the same shall be restored
to him.2
Now, then, when the Attorney-General, Coke, threatened Bacon
with a capias utlagatum, he practically charged him with being an
outlaw; with having refused to appear in some proceeding when
called upon by the government's law officers; with being, in short,
out of the Queen's protection; with having forfeited all his goods
and chattels.
But we know that Bacon never fled the country; that he always
had real estate which could have been seized upon if he had done
so. What, then, did Coke mean ? It was a serious charge for one
respectable attorney to make against another.
Anciently outlawry was looked upon as so horrid a crime that any one
might as lawfully kill a person outlawed as he might a wolf or other noxious
animal.3
But suppose A employs B to commit some act in the nature of
a crime, but evidence cannot be obtained against A unless B is
taken and compelled to testify against A; and suppose, under these
circumstances, A induces B to fly the country. Now, if it can be
shown that there was some connection between A and the flight
of B, would not the outlawry of B attach to A, his principal?
1 Jacobs' Law Dictionary, vol. iv, p. 454. 2 Ibid., pp. 394, 395. 3 Ibid., p. 455.
THE TREASONABLE HISTORY OF HENRY IV. 637
Jacobs says:
4thly. That it seems the better opinion that where there are more than one
principal, the exigent shall not issue till all of them are arraigned; and herein it is
said by Hale that if A and B be indicted as principals in felony, and C as acces-
sory to them both, the exigent against the accessory shall stay till both be attainted
by outlawry or plea; for that it is said if one be acquitted the accessory is dis-
charged, because indicted as accessory to both, therefore shall not he be put to answer
till both be attaint; but hereof he adds a dubitatur, because, though C be access-
ory to both, he might have been indicted as accessory to one, because the felonies
are in law several; but if he be indicted as accessory to both, he must be proved so.
2 Hawk. P. C, c. 27, § 132 — 2 Hale1:, History P. C, 200-201. If one exigent be
awarded against the principal and accessory together, it is error only as to the
latter. / Term Rep. K. B., 521. In treason all are principals; therefore, process
of outlawry may go against him who receives, at the same time, as against him
that did the fact. / Hales History P. C, 238. !
Now, then, if Shakspere fled the country to escape arrest on
the charge of writing a treasonable play, and Bacon was the prin-
cipal in the offense, Bacon could not have been proceeded against,
under these rulings, until Shakspere was arraigned: hence, in some
sense, it might be claimed by Coke that Bacon was an outlaw by
the act of his accessory. And thus we can understand Coke's
threat to issue a capias utlagatum against Bacon.
And it will be observed that Bacon understands what Coke
referred to. There was no surprise expressed by him. He knew
there was some past event which gave color to Coke's threat, but
he defied him. His answer was:
To which I only said he could not, and that he was at fault; for he hunted up an
old scent.
And Bacon tells us Coke gave him " a number of disgraceful
words besides," but he is careful not to tell what they were. And
it will be observed that while Bacon very often refers in his letters
to bruits and scandals which attack his good name, he never stops
to explain the nature of them. Did they refer to the Shakespeare
Plays ?
And observe, too, how he lays this matter before Cecil. I reaW
between the lines of the letter something like this:
You know the agreement and understanding was that my connection with the
Plays was to be kept secret, and here you have told it, or some one has told it, all
to my mortal enemy, Coke; and he is blurting it all out in open court. I appeal
to you for protection; you must stop him.
1 Jacobs' Law Dictionary, vol. iv, p. no.
638 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
If this be not the correct interpretation of the letter, why should
Bacon complain to his enemy, Cecil, about something his other
enemy, Coke, said against him concerning some threat to dig up an
old matter and clap a writ of outlawry on his back ?
It seems to me, however, that all these historical facts form a
very solid basis for the Cipher narrative which follows.
CHAPTER III.
THE CIPHER EXPLAINED.
Give me the ocular proof.
Othello, ///, j.
I AM aware that nine-tenths of those who read this book will
turn at once to that part of it which proves the existence of a
Cipher in the Shakespeare Plays. That is the all-important ques-
tion: that is the essence and material part of the work.
Is there or is there not a Cipher in the Plays ? A vast gulf sepa-
rates these two conclusions. Are the Plays simply what they are
given out to be by Heminge and Condell, untutored outpourings
of a great rustic genius; or are they a marvelously complicated
padding around a wonderful internal narrative ?
I am sorry to see that some persons seem to think that this
whole question merely concerns myself, and that it is to be an-
swered by sneers and personal abuse. I am the least part, the most
insignificant part, of this whole matter.
The question is really this: Is the voice of Francis Bacon again
speaking in the world ? Has the tongue, which has been stilled for
two hundred and sixty years, again been loosened, and is it about
to fill the astonished globe with eloquence and melody?
If it were announced to-morrow that from the grave at Stratford
there were proceeding articulated utterances, — muffled, if you
please, but telling, even in fragments, a mighty and wonderful
story, — how the millions would swarm until all the streets and lanes
and fields and farms of Stratford were overflowed with an excited
multitude; how the foremost ranks would sink upon their kneesj
around the privileged persons who were at the open tomb; how
every word would be repeated backward, from man to man, with
reverent mien and bated breath, to be, at last, flashed on the
wings of the lightning to all the islands and continents; to every
habitation of civilized man on earth.
639
640
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
I ask all just-minded men to approach this revelation in the
same spirit. Abuse and insults may wound the individual: they
cannot help the untruth nor hurt the truth.
I. The Cipher a Reality.
That the Cipher is there; that I have found it out; that the nar-
rative given is real, no man can doubt who reads this book to
the end. There may be faults in my workmanship; there are none
in the Cipher itself. All that I give is reality; but I may not give all
there is. The difficulties are such as arise from the wonderful com-
plexity of the Cipher, and the almost impossibility of the brain
holding all the interlocking threads of the root-numbers in their
order. Some more mathematical head than mine may be able to
do it.
I would call the attention of those who may think that the
results are accidental to the fact that each scene, and, in fact, each
column and page, tells a different part of the same continuous story.
In one place, it is the rage of the Queen; in another, the flight of
the actors; in another, Bacon's despair; in another, the village
doctor; in another, the description of the sick Shakspere; in
another, the supper, etc. — all derived from the same series of num-
bers used in the same order.
II. The Nicknames of the Actors.
In the Cipher narrative, the actors are often represented by
nicknames, probably derived from the characters they usually played.
And Henry Percy is sometimes called Hotspur, because that was
the title given to the great Henry Percy, of Henry IV. 's time.
It is an historical fact that Francis Bacon had a servant by the
name of Henry Percy. His mother alludes to him, in one of her
letters, as, "that bloody Percy." His relations to Bacon were very
close. He seems to have had charge of all Bacon's manuscripts at
the time of his death. It is possible Bacon may have intended, at
one time, to authorize the publication of an avowal of his author-
ship of the Plays. He said in the first draft of his will:
But toward the durable part of memory, which consisteth in my writings, I re-
quire my servant Henry Percy to deliver to my brother Constable all my manu-
THE CIPHER EXPLAINED. 641
script compositions, and the fragments also of such as are not finished; to the end
that if any of them be fit to be published, he may accordingly dispose of them.
And herein I desire him to take the advice of Mr. Selden, and Mr. Herbert, of the
Inner Temple, and to publish or suppress what shall be thought fit}
It is also evident that Bacon held Henry Percy in high respect.
In his last will he says:
I give to Mr. Henry Percy one hundred pounds.2
He was not a mere servant; he was "Master Henry Percy."
Did this tender and respectful feeling represent Bacon's gratitude
to Henry Percy for invaluable services in a great crisis of his life ?
We see exemplified the habit of the actors in assuming the names
of the characters they acted on the stage, in Shakspere's remark in
the traditional jest that has come down to us: " William the Con-
queror comes before Richard III.;" representing himself as Wil-
liam the Conqueror, and Burbage by the name of his favorite role,
the bloody Duke of Gloster.
As illustrating still further how the names of the actors became
identified with the names of the characters they impersonated, I
would call attention to the following fact:
Bishop Corbet, writing in the reign of Charles I., and giving a description of
the battle of Bosworth, as narrated to him on the field by a provincial tavern-
keeper, tells us that when the perspicuous guide
Would have said, King Richard died,
And called, a horse ! a horse ! he Burbage cried.3
III. Queen Elizabeth's Violence.
It may be objected by some that the scene in which the Queen
beats Hayward was undignified and improbable; but he who reads
the history of that reign will find that Queen Elizabeth was a
woman of the most violent and man -like temper. We find it
recorded that she boxed Essex' ears, and that he half-drew his
sword upon her, and swore " he would not take such treatment
from Henry VIII. himself, if he were alive." And Rowland White
records:
The Queen hath of late used the fair Mrs. Bridges with words and blows of
anger.
1 Spedding, Life and Works, vol. vii, p. 540. 3 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, p. 96.
2 Ibid., p. 542.
642
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
Mrs. Bridges was one of the Queen's maids-of-honor who had
offended her.
IV. The Language of the Period.
I would touch upon one other preliminary point before coming
to the Cipher story. Some persons may think that the sentences
which I give as parts of the internal narrative sound strangely, and
are strained in their construction; but it must be remembered that
the English of the sixteenth century was not the English of the
nineteenth century. The powers of our tongue have been vastly
increased. It is curious to note how many words, now in daily use,
cannot be found at all in the Shakespeare Plays. Here are some of
them:
Actually,
Dejection,
Mob,
Admission,
Despicable,
Occupied,
Alternate,
Director,
Pauper,
Alternately,
Disappointment,
Petitioning,
Amuse,
Disappoint,
Pledged,
Amusement.
Disgust,
Popularity,
Amusing,
Earnings,
Position,
Announce,
Effort,
Precarious,
Announcement,
Efforts,
Production,
Apologize,
Entitled,
Prominent,
Artful,
Era,
Promote,
Assert,
Exclusively,
Rapid,
Assort,
Exertions,
Rapidly,
Attack,
Exhausted,
Rebuff,
Aware,
Exorbitant,
Recent,
Brutal,
Failure,
Reduce,
Cargo,
Fatigue,
Ridicule,
Clenches,
Farce,
Risk,
Completely,
Fees,
Series,
Concede,
Fiendish,
Shrubbery,
Concession,
Flog,
Starvation,
Coffee,
Flogged,
State (meaning to declare).
Confinement,
Fun,
Statement,
Conflagration,
Funny,
Stating,
Connect,
Grasping,
Surround,
Connected,
Humiliation
Surrounding,
Connection,
Inability,
Tea,
Considerable
Income,
Tobacco,
Constructed,
Indebtedness,
Treated,
Correctly,
Intense,
Treatment,
Decided,
Interfere,
Valuable,
Declaration,
Interference,
Various.
Degradation,
Lineage,
THE CIPHER EXPLAINED. 643
To illustrate the difference in the style of expression, between
that day i,nd this, let us take this brief letter, written by Bacon in
1620:
I went to Kew for pleasure, but I met with pain. But neither pleasure nor
pain can withdraw my mind from thinking of his Majesty's service. And because
his Majesty shall see how I was occupied at Kew, I send him these papers of Rules
for the Star-Chamber, wherein his Majesty shall erect one of the noblest and dur-
ablest pillars for the justice of this kingdom in perpetuity that can be; after by his
own wisdom and the advice of his Lords he shall have revised them, and estab-
lished them. The manner and circumstances I refer to my attending his Majesty.
The rules are not all set down, but I will do the rest within two or three days.
Or take this sentence from a letter written by Bacon, in 1594, to
the Lord Keeper Puckering:
I was wished to be here ready in expectation of some good effect; and therefore
I commend my fortune to your Lordship's kind and honorable furtherance. My
affection inclineth me to be much your Lordship's; and my course and way, in all
reason and policy for myself, leadeth me to the same dependence; hereunto if
there shall be joined your Lordship's obligation in dealing strongly for me as you
have begun, no man can be more yours.
I need not say that no person to-day would write English in that
fashion. And that we do not so write it is partly due to Bacon him-
self, because, not only in the Plays, but in his great philosophical
works, he has infinitely polished and perfected our language. He
studied, in the Promus, the "elegancies" of speech; in the Plays he
elaborated "the golden cadence of poesy;" ' and in The Advancement
of Learning he gave us many passages that are perfectly modern in
their exquisite smoothness and rhythm.
If the Cipher sentences are quaint and angular, the reader will
therefore remember that he is reading a dialect three hundred years
old.
V. Our Fac-similes.
Since the discussion arose about my discovery of the Cipher in
the Plays, one of those luminous intellects which occasionally
adorn all lands with their presence, and which, I am happy to say,
especially abound in America, has made the profound observation
that probably I had doctored the Plays of Shakespeare, and changed
the phraseology, so as to work in a pretended Cipher !
That rasping old Thersites of literature, Carlyle, said, in his
lLoTes Labor Lost, iv, 2.
644 THE CIFHER NARRA TIVE.
acrid and bowie-knife style: " England contains twenty-seven mil-
lions of people, — mostly fools" Now, while I have, as we say in the
law, "no knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief" as
to the truth or falsity of this observation, touching the English peo-
ple, I can vouch for it that, to some extent, Carlyle's remark applies
with great force to my native country. And, therefore, to meet the
observation of the luminous intellect first referred to, and prevent it
being taken up and echoed and re-echoed by multitudinous other
luminous intellects, as is their wont, I have requested my publishers
to procure facsimiles of the pages of the Folio under consideration
in my book, copied by the sun itself, from the pages of one of those
invaluable copies of the original Folio of 1623 which still exist among
us. And consequently Messrs. Peale & Co. proceeded to New York,
and, upon application to Columbia College, which possesses the most
complete copy, I am informed, in the United States, they were per-
mitted, through the kindness and courtesy of the officers of the Col-
lege, to photograph the original pages, (pages that might have been
at one time in the hands of Francis Bacon himself), directly onto the
plates on which they were engraved. The great volume was
sent every day, in the care of an officer of the College, to the ar-
tists' rooms, and the custodian was instructed never to permit it to
be taken out of his sight for a single instant, so precious is it
esteemed. And we have the certificate of Mr. Melvil Dewey,
Chief Librarian of Columbia College, to the fidelity of the fac-
similes now presented in this volume. They are, of course, re-
duced in size, to bring them within the compass of my book, but
otherwise they are exact and faithful reproductions of the original.
The numbers given on their margins, and the underscoring in
red ink of every tenth word, were printed on them subsequently,
to enable the critical to satisfy themselves that the words actually
occupy the numerical places on the pages which I assert they do.
Here is the certificate referred to:
THE CIPHER EXPLAINED.
645
Columbia College Library
Meivn. Dkwey. Chief Libn. Madison Ay. t 49* St.
-<JJ2^p
New York. -<J*4d /"J
7
VU lA^U^O COO A Out/ /d^vvUyt^Aj / Jryirv^ tm>
S?UL p (ULC4 >V£/U/ ^%JtU^yaJ>^ tsy^dbdls
Certificate of the Librarian of Columbia College.
646 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
VI. Another Brilliant Suggestion.
But another of those luminous intellects (whose existence is a
subject of perpetual perplexity to those who reverence God) has
made the further suggestion that, granted there is a Cipher in the
Flays, Bacon put it there to cheat Shakspere out of his just rights
and honors ! Bacon, — says this profound man, — was a scoundrel;
he was locked up in the Tower for bribery (the same Tower in
which Mr. Jefferson Brick insisted Queen Victoria, always resided,
and ate breakfast with her crown on); and being in Caesar's Tower,
and having nothing else to do, this industrious villain took Shak-
spere's Plays and re-wrote them, and inserted the Cipher in them,
in which he feloniously claimed them for himself.
But as Bacon was only in the Tower one night, the perform-
ance of such a work would be a greater feat of wonder than any-
thing his admirers have ever yet claimed for him.
But if any answer is needed to this shallowness, it is found in
the fact that the original forms of the Shakespeare Plays, where
they have come down to us, as in the case of the first copy of The
Merry Wives, Hamlet, Henry V., etc., as they existed before they
were doubled in size and the Cipher injected into them, are very
meager and barren performances; and that it is in the Plays, after
Bacon had inserted the Cipher story in them (that night in the Tower),
that the real Shakespearean genius is manifested.
And if any further answer were needed it will be found in the
revelations of the Cipher itself. It will be seen that in many places
almost every word is a Cipher word. If I might be permitted, in so
grave a work as this, to recur to the style of the rostrum, I would
cite an anecdote:
A father had a very troublesome son, — not to say vicious, but
very vivacious. The boy was taken sick. A doctor was sent for.
The doctor applied a mustard-plaster. The father held a light
for him.
" Doctor," said the fond parent, " while you are at it, could you
not put a plaster on this young gentleman that would draw the
d 1 out of him ? "
The doctor, who knew the boy well, replied, " I fear, my dear
sir, if I did so, there would be nothing left of the boy."
THE CIPHER EXPLAINED. 647
•
And so I would say that, if you take out of the Plays the Bacon-
ian Cipher, there will be nothing left for the man of Stratford to
lay claim to.
And here I would remark that it is sorrowful — nay, pitiful —
nay, shameful — to read the fearful abuse which in sewer-rivers
has deluged the fair memory of Francis Bacon in the last few
months, in these United States, since this discussion arose; — let loose
by men who know nothing of Bacon's life except what they have
learned from Macaulay's slanderous essay. If Bacon had been a
common malefactor, guilty of all the crimes in the calendar, and
was still alive, and still persecuting mankind, they could scarcely
have attacked him more brutally, viciously, savagely or vindictively.
It teaches us all a great lesson: — that no man should ever here-
after complain of slanders and unjust abuse, when such torrents of
obloquy can be poured, without stint, by human beings, over the good
name of one of the greatest benefactors of the human race. And
it suggests that if the Darwinian theory be true, that we are
descended from the monkeys, then it would appear that, in some
respects, we have not improved upon our progenitors, but possess
traits of baseness peculiarly and exclusively human.
VII. The Method of the Cipher.
I have stated that there are live root-numbers for this part of
the narrative. These are 505, 506, 513, 516, 523. These are all nwdi-
ficatipns of one number.
I have also stated that these numbers are modified by certain
other numbers, which appear on page 73 and page 74, to-wit: on
the last page of the first part of King Henry IV., and the first page
of the second part of King Henry IV. These numbers I have
given on pages 581, etc., ante.
In the working out of the Cipher, 505 and 523 cooperate with 1
each other: that is, at first part of the story is told by 505; then it,
interlocks with 523; or a number due to 523 alternates with a
number due to 505. The number 506, as will be shown, is separ-
ately treated. The numbers 513 and 516 go together, just as 505
and 523 do. Afterwards a number which is a product, we will say,
of 505, goes forward, separating from the 523 products, and is put
648 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
•
through its own modifications, as will be explained hereafter, and
the same is true of the products of 523.
In the order of the narrative the words growing out of 513 and
516 precede the words growing out of 505 and 523.
The first "modifiers" used are 218 and 219, and 197 and 198; then
follow 30 and 50. These are the modifiers found in the second
column of page 74; then follow the modifiers found on page 73.
iWhere the count begins from the beginning of a scene, it also
runs from the end of the same scene. \Where it begins to run from
a scene in the midst of an act, it is carried to the beginnings and
ends of that scene and of all the other scenes in that act. I Where it
\y begins from a page alone, it is confined to that page, or to the
column next but one thereafter, and moves only in one direction.
Where the Cipher runs from the beginning of a scene and goes for-
ward, it will also to a certain extent move backward.
The numbers acquired by working one page become root-num-
bers, and are carried forward or backward to other pages.
Thus, if we commence with the root-number 505, in the first
column of page 75, we find two subdivisions in that column, due to
the break in the narrative caused by the words of the stage direc-
tion: "Enter Morton" There are 193 words in the upper subdi-
vision, and 253 in the lower. If we deduct these from 505 and 523,
for instance, we have these results:
5o5 5o5 523 S23
193 ^53 193 253
312 252 330 270
Now, these numbers, we will see, are carried forward and back-
ward, in due order, and yield, according to the page or column
to which they are applied, different parts of the Cipher story. But
as these numbers would soon exhaust the number of pages, col-
umns, scenes and fragments of scenes to which they could be ap-
plied, they are in turn modified again, as already stated, by the
modifiers on pages 73 and 74. Thus, 30 and 50 deducted from 312
make the new root-numbers 282 and 262; treated the same way, 523
produces the root-numbers 300 and '280; and these new root-num-
bers, like the others, are carried entirely through both the first and
second parts of Henry IV.
THE CIPHER EXPLAINED.
649
And the reader will observe that the order in which these num-
bers progress is regular and orderly. For instance, the above
numbers, 282, 262, 300, 280, will work out an entirely different part
of the story from the numbers derived by deducting the first col-
umn of page 74, with its modifications, from 505 and 523. And the
order is in the historical order of the narrative.
For instance, if we commence on the first column of page 75,
and work forward, the story that comes out is about the Queen
sending out the soldiers to find Shakspere and his fellows, and the
flight of the terrified actors. This is all produced by 505, 506, 513,
516, 523, modified first by those two fragments of that first column
of page 75, to-wit, 193 and 253; and these, in turn, modified by the
modifying numbers in the second column of page 74, to-wit, 50, 30,
218, 198, or 49, 29, 219 and 197, accordingly as we count from the
last word of one fragment or the first word of the next. •
And this story, so told, it will be seen, is different from and sub-
sequent in order to the story told by commencing to work from the
last column of page 74, instead of the first column of page 75, which
relates to the Queen's rage, the beating of Hayward, etc. While, if
we commence at the first column of page 74, the story told is about
the bringing of the news to Bacon.
VIII. The Story Reduced to Diagrams.
For instance, let me represent the flow of the story, from the
fountain of one column into the pool of another, by diagrams; the
reader remembering that the story always grows out of those same
root-numbers, 505, 506, 513, 516, 523, modified always, in the same
order, by the same modifiers, 30, 50, 198, 218, 27, 62, 90, 79, etc.
1 st col., p.74.
2d C0l., p.74.
2d col., p.74.
ist col., p. 75.
The count
The story
The count
The Queen's
originating
of Bacon
originating
rage, her
on this
receiving
here tells
beating
Column
the news.
f
the story
Hayward,
tells -
of-
etc.
650
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
1 st col., p. 75.
2d col., p. 75.
2d col., p. 75.
1 st col., p. 76.
The count
Sending for
The count
How Bacon
originating
Shakspere,
originating
was
here tells
the flight
here tells
overwhelmed
the story
of the
the story
with the
of-
actors, etc.
of-
news, etc.
1st col., p.76.
2d col., p.76.
2d col., p.76.
1 st col., p. 77.
The count
The bringing
The count
The doctor's
originating
of Bacon's
originating
treatment
here tells
body home,
here tells
of the
the story
and sending
the story
case, etc.
of-
for the
doctor.
of-
But it will be said that we have a break here, between Bacon be-
ing overwhelmed with the bad news, and the carrying home of his
body after he had taken poison. Yes, but the missing part of the
story is told by going backward instead of forward in the same due
and regular order.
That is to say, we take the root-numbers produced by modifying
5°5, 5o6> 5T3> 5l6 and 523 by J93 and 253 (first column of page 75),
and we carry those root-numbers backward to the first column of
page 73, and we work out the directions of the Queen as to how
Shakspere was to be treated when arrested, how he was to be of-
fered rewards to reveal the real author of the Plays, etc.; and it
also tells how the Queen expressed her disbelief in Bacon's guilt,
and denounced his cousin Cecil for his lies and slanders concerning
him.
And when we take the root-numbers produced by the modifying
numbers found in the first column of page 74, and which told of how
the news was brought to Bacon, the same numbers so produced
are carried backward to the next page, and, working backward
THE CIPHER EXPLAINED.
651
and forward, they tell that which follows in due order, to-wit,
the conversation between Bacon and his brother Anthony, in which
Anthony urges him to fly. Thus:
1 st col., p. 74.
The Queen's
orders as to
Shakspere's
treatment,
etc.
And again
1 st col., p. 75.
The numbers
originating
here, carried
back, would
. tell - /
1st col., p-73- 2d col., p. 73.
The
conversation
of the
brothers.
*-«*.
1st col., p. 74.
The numbers
originating
here arei£
carried
backward
and tell—.
While Bacon's taking the poison is told partly on page 76 and
partly on page 72, the finding of the body is told in the second
column of page 72, and carried by tke root-numbers so created
forward to page 76. The same rule applies to all the narrative
which I have worked out: the story radiates from that common 1
center, which I have called " The Heart of the Mystery, " the dividing
line between the first and second parts of the play of Henry IV.
Many have supposed that the Cipher story was made by jump-
ing about from post to pillar, picking out a word here and a word
there; but the above diagrams will show that it is nothing of the ^/
kind. It moves with the utmost precision and the most microscopic
accuracy, from one point of departure to another, carrying the num-
bers created by that point of departure with it. And the cunning
652 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
with which the infolding play is adjusted to the requirements of
the infolded story is something marvelous beyond all parallel in the
achievements of the human mind. One of the difficulties I found
in tracing it out was this very exactness: the difference of a column
would make the greatest difference in the story told, and hence, if I
was not very careful, I would have two different parts of the narra-
tive running into each other.
IX. A Cipher of Words, not Letters.
One thing that must be understood is this, that the Cipher is
not one of letters, but of words. This renders it, in one sense, the
more simple. There is no translating of alphabetical signs into
aaaab, abbaa, abaaby etc., as in Bacon's biliteral cipher, which Mr.
Black and Mr. Clarke sought to apply to the inscription on Shak-
spere's tombstone. The words come out by the count, and all of
them.
To illustrate the Cipher in this respect, we will suppose the
reader was to find in an article, referring to the cipher-writings of
the middle ages, a sentence like this :
For there can be no doubt whatever, that if it be examined closely, there is
reason to believe that a cunningly adjusted and concealed cipher story, and one
not of alphabetical signs, but of words, may be found hidden, not only in books,
but letters of those ages, of which the very intricate key is lost. It may be re-
vealed by some laborious student in the future, but for the present age all the great
stories told therein, in cryptogram, are hopelessly buried.
Now, the reader might suppose this sentence to be just what it
appears to be on its surface. But if we arrange the words numer-
ically, placing the proper number over each word, and then pick
out every fifth word, we will find that they form together this sen-
tence:
No ; it is a cipher of 7vords, not letters, which is revealed in The Great Crypto-
gram.
Now, the Cipher in the Plays is on the same principle, only more
complicated: — the internal words hold an arithmetical relation to
the external sentence, and you have but to count the words to elim-
inate the story. But, instead of the number being, as in the above
sentence, 5, it is one which is the product of multiplying a certain
number in the first column of page 74 with another: this number
being in turn put through various modifications.
THE CIPHER EXPLAINED. 653
X. How the Cipher was Made.
But it may be asked: In what way was the Cipher narrative
inserted in the Plays?
Bacon, as I suppose, first wrote out his internal story. Then he
determined upon the mechanism of the Cipher. It was necessary to \/
use some words many times over; but it would not do to pepper the
text with significant words. Hence, such words as shake and speare
and plays and volume and suspicion had to be so placed that they would
sometimes fit the Cipher counting down the column, and sometimes
fit it counting up the column ; and the necessities of this work
determined the number of words in a column or subdivision of a
column; and hence the fact, which I have already pointed out,
that some columns contain nearly twice as many words as others.
And here I would note that the word please, in Elizabeth's time,
was pronounced as the Irish peasant pronounces it to-day, that is to
say, as place; and it will be seen that Bacon uses please to represent
plays. And very wisely, since the word plays, recurring constantly,
would certainly have aroused suspicion. The word her was then
pronounced like hair, even as the Irish brogue would now give it ;
and, to avoid the constant use of her, in referring to Queen Eliza-
beth, as her Grace, her Majesty, etc., Bacon uses the word here, which
also had the sound of hair. This is shown in the pun made by
Falstaff, in the first part of Henry IV., act i, scene 2, where, speak-
ing to Prince Hal, he says:
That were it here apparent, that thou art heir apparent.
In fact it may be assumed that in that age in England the
vowels had what might be called the continental sound, that is to
say, the a had the broad sound of ah, and the e the sound of a.
Thus, reason was pronounced ray son, as we see in another of Fal-
staff's puns, which would be unintelligible with the present pro-
nunciation of the word:
»
Give you a reason on compulsion ? If reasons were as plenty as blackberries, I
would give no man a reason on compulsion.1
Here Falstaff antagonizes raisins with blackberries.
In fact, the Cipher will give us, for the entertainment of the
1 1st Henry IV., ii, 3.
654 THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
curious, so to speak, a photograph, or rather phonograph, of the
exact sound of the speech of Elizabeth's age.
But, having written his internal story and decided upon the
mechanism of his Cipher, Bacon had to arrange his modifiers so
that they would enable him to use the same words more than
once. And it will be seen hereafter that the 50 on the second col-
umn of page 74 is duplicated by the 50 at the bottom of column
1 of page 76, so that such words as lift him up, and wipe his face,
etc., may be used in describing the keepers caring for the body of
the wounded Shakspere, and also of the lifting up of the body of
Bacon after he had taken the poison.
Now, having constructed his Cipher story, he applies his mechan-
ism to it, and he determines that in column 2, we will say, of
page 75, the word ?nen shall be the 221st word down the column, and
the word turned the 221st word up the column; then, in their
proper places, he puts the words turned, their, backs, and, fled, in, the,
greatest, fear, swifter, than, arrows, fly, toward, their, aim; and then he
constructs that part of the play so that it will naturally bring in
these words. But as the Cipher words are very numerous, he is
constrained to describe something in the play kindred to the story
told by the Cipher. Thus, this flight of the actors is couched in a
narrative of the flight of Hotspur's soldiers from the battle-field of
Shrewsbury, after he was slain. And, as Hotspur was Harry Percy
and Harry Percy was Bacon's servant, whenever there is a necessity
to name the servant in the interior story, the name of the Earl of
Northumberland's heroic and fiery son appears in the external
story. So when the doctor appears, in column 1 of page 77, to
prescribe for Bacon, after he took the poison, we have Falstaff tell-
ing the Chief Justice all the symptoms of apoplexy.
This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, a sleeping of the blood, a hor-
son tingling. ... It hath its original from much grief, from study and per-
turbation of the brain.1
And a little further down the same column we have disease, physi-
cian, minister, potion, patient, prescriptions, dram, scruple; all of which
words, as we will see in the Cipher story, besides sick, and belly, and dis-
comfort, axi& grows, in the same column, and hotter, and ratsbane, and
1 2d Henry fl\, i, 3.
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE. 655
mouth, in the preceding column, are used to tell the story of Bacon's
sickness and his treatment by the physician.
In the same way, when Percy visits Stratford and labors with
Shakspere to induce him to fly to Scotland until the dangers of
the time are past, Shakspere's wife and daughter being present,
one aiding Percy and the other opposing him, the story is told in
scene 3 of act ii of the second part of Henry IV., page 81 of the
Folio; and this short scene is an account of the effort of Northum-
berland's wife and daughter to persuade him to fly to Scotland, un-
til the dangers of the time are past. It must have been very diffi-
cult to construct this scene, for the shorter the scene the more the
Cipher words are packed into it, until almost every word is used
both in the play narrative and the Cipher narrative.
In the same way it has been noted recently, by some one, that
the names of the characters in Loves Labor Lost, the scene of which
is laid in France, are the names of the generals who conducted
tlie_great war raging in France during Bacon's visit to that country;
and no doubt there is a Cipher story in this play, relating to these
historical events, as Bacon perhaps witnessed them, in which it was
necessary to use the names of these generals; and by this cunning
device Bacon was able to do so repeatedly without arousing suspi-
cion. And the name of Armado, the Spaniard, in the same play,
was doubtless a cover for references to the great Spanish Armada.
And, as a corroboration of this, we find the word Spain's, rare word
in the Plays, used twice in Love's Labor Lost, and the word Spaniard
also used twice in this play, while it occurs but four times in all the
other plays in the Folio. And the word great, which would natur-
ally be associated with Armada, which was spoken of usually as the
Great Armada, occurs in Love's Labor Lost twenty-four times, while in
the comedy of The Two Gentlemen of Verona it occurs but seven
times; in The Merchant of Venice but seven times; and in All's J Veil
that Ends Well but four times. »
XI. How the Cipher is Worked Out.
If the reader will turn to page 76 of the fac-si?niles, being page
76 of the original Folio, and the third page of the second part of
King Henry IV., and commence to count at the bottom of the scene,
656
THE CIPHER EXPLAINED.
to-wit, scene second, and count upward, he will find that there are
just 448 words (exclusive of the bracketed words, and counting the
hyphenated words as single words) in that fragment of scene second
in that column. Now, then, if we deduct 448 from 505, the remaind-
er is 57, and if he will count down the next column, forward, (second
of page 76), the reader will find that the 57th word is the word
her. That is to say, the word her is the 505th word from the end
of scene second; and the reader will remember that 505 is one of
the Cipher root-numbers.
Now, I have stated that one of the modifying numbers was 30.
Let us take 505 again and deduct 30; the remainder is 475. If,
instead of starting to count from the end of the second scene in
the first column of page 76 we count from the end of the first sub-
division of the corresponding column (one page backward), to-wit,
the first column of page 75, we will find thatin that first subdivision
there are 193 words; and that number deducted from 505 leaves as
a remainder 282. Now, if the reader will count down the next col-
umn forward, just as we did in the former case, he will find that
the 282d word is Grace; the two countings together making the
combination " her Grace" Thus:
1 st col., p. 75^
/
/ '
l
1
1
5°5
30
1
475
iQ3- .'
193
282
^ 2 d col
,P-75-
\
\
■¥
282 =
Grace
1 st col., p. 76. ^-
-2d col., p. 76.
V
57 - Her
Now let us go a step farther. We have seen that Grace was
produced by deducting from 505 the modifying number 30. The
other modifying number, in this connection, is 50, to-wit, the num-
ber of words in the first subdivision of column 2 of page 74 • as
30 represents the number of words in the last subdivision of the
same column. We have seen that her was the fifty-seventh word
in the second column of page 76. Now let us deduct 50 from
THE CIPHER EXPLAINED.
657
505, and again start from the same point of departure, the end of
scene second, second column of page 76: 505 less 50 leaves 455.
If we deduct from 455 the 448 words in that fragment of the scene,
we have as a remainder 7; and if we again, as in the former instance,
count down the next column, we find that the seventh word is the
word is. (The same result is reached by deducting 50 from that fifty-
seventh word, her, the remainder being 7.) Now we have: Her Grace
is. Her grace is what ?
Let us go back again to the former starting-point, that 193d
word in the first column of page 75. We again use the root-num-
ber 505, but this time we deduct 50 from it, as in the last instance,
instead of 30, and again we have 455. Now, if we deduct 193 from
455> or> in other words, if we count the 193 words, the remainder to
make up 455 is 262; and if we again count down the next column
forward, the 262d word is the word furious. "Her Grace is furious.''
Thus :
Here it will be observed that the difference between 57 and 7 is
50, and the difference between 282 and 262 is 20, the difference be-
tween 30 and 50.
But if her Grace is furious, what has she done ?
We have seen that her was the 505th word from the end of the
scene; and grace the 605th word from the beginning of the second 1
subdivision of column 1 of page 75, counting upwards; and is the
505th word from the end of the scene, less 50; and furious the 505th
word from the beginning of the second subdivision of column 1 of
page 75, counting upwrards again, less 50. But what is the 505th
word from the same last-named starting-point ? There are 193 words
658 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
in column 1 of page 75 above the said second subdivision: if there-
fore we deduct 193 from 505, the remainder is 312; that is to say,
the 312th word in the second column of page 75 is the 505th from
the top of the second subdivision of column 1 of page 75. What
is the 312th word ? Turn to Xhe facsimile of page 75, and you will
see that the 312th word is sent, in the sentence " and hath sent
out." But where is the out, which is necessary to make the
phrase sent out? Again we deduct 50 from 312, and we have left
262: — 262, you will remember, was, — counting down column 2 of
page 75, — the word furious. Now let us count 262 words upward
from the end of scene 2d, just as we did to obtain the words her
and is; and we will find that the 262d word is the 187th word, to-
wit: out. But there are two words lacking to complete the sen-
tence,— " Her grace is furious and hath sent out." Where are these?
If we will again take 312, and count upward from the end of the
scene, we will find that the 312th word is the 137th word, and;
and now take the same common root, 505, which has produced
all these words, but, instead of counting from the beginning of the
second subdivision of column 1 of page 75 upward, count from
that point downward: there are 254 words in this second subdivis-
ion of column 1; this deducted from 505 leaves 251. Now sup-
pose we go again to that end of scene 2, from which we
derived her, is, and and out, but count downward instead of upward,
just as we did to get that remainder 251, and the result will be
that after counting the 50 words in that fragment of scene 3 in
the first column of page 76, we will have 201 words left, and if we
go up the preceding column (2d of page 75), we will find that the
251st word is the word hath, — the 308th word in the second
column of page 75. Here, then, we have, all growing out of 505, alter-
nating regularly:
"Her Grace is furious and hath sent out"
Can any one believe that this is the result of accident? If so, let
them try to create a similar sentence, in the same way, with num-
bers not cipher numbers. Take the number 500, for instance, and
count from the same points of departure, in the same order that
we have used in the previous instance, and they will have as a result,
instead of the above coherent sentence, the words:
Sow — vail — of — soon — restrain — sent — king — one.
THE CIPHER EXPLAINED. 659
Now let the reader, by the exercise of his ingenuity, try to make
a sensible sentence out of these words, twisting them how he will.
I do not at this time give the regular narrative, but simply
some specimens to explain the way in which the Cipher moves.
The narrative will be given in subsequent chapters.
Let me give another specimen, growing, in part, out of the same
starting-points, and being in itself part of the same story. We
have seen that 505 less 30, one of the modifiers, was 475, and that
475 less 193, the upper subdivision of column 1 of page 75, pro-
duced 282, the word grace. Now let us try the same 475, but count
down the said first column of page 75, from the same starting-point,
instead of up. There are 254 words in the second subdivision of
page 75; 254 deducted from 475 leaves 221, and the 221st word in
the next column (second of 75) is the word men; and if we count
up the column it is turned, the 288th word; thus:
508
221
2~87 + 1 = 288.
But if we recur to the upper subdivision again, that is, if we
deduct from 475, 193 instead of 245, we have the same 282 which
produced grace. But here we come upon another feature of the
rule which runs all through the Cipher: If the reader will look at
column 1 of page 75, he will see that in the upper subdivision
there are ten words in brackets and five hyphenated words. Now,
there are four ways of counting the words of the text: (1) Count-
ing the words of the text, exclusive of the bracket-words, and
regarding the hyphenated words or double words as one word; (2)
counting all the words of the text, including the bracket words, and
treating the hyphenated word as two or three words, as the case
may be; (3) counting in the bracket-words without the hyphenated
words, and (4) the hyphenated words without the bracket-words.
The first two modes of counting were exemplified in the instance
which I gave in chapter V., page 571, ante, where the words found
and out were reached by counting first 836 words, in the first
mode of counting, and then 900 words by the second mode of
counting; the count departing, as in these instances, from two
different pages, succeeding each other, to-wit: pages 74 and 75;
while here it is pages 75 and 76.
66o
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
If, now, we start with any Cipher number, say, 475, which is
505 less 30, from the beginning of the second subdivision of the first
column of page 75, and count upward, we will find that there are to
the top of the column 193 words, plus to words in brackets and 5
words hyphenated, making a total of 208; and this deducted from
475 leaves a remainder of 267, instead of 282. And we will find
that the 267th word, counting down the second column of page 75,
is the word had. Here we have: "men had turned." But if we
carry that 267 up that column we have
508
267
241-1-1 = 242.
But there are in this count three hyphenated words; if we count
these in, then the 267th word is the 245th word on the column,
our. Now we have: u our men had turned."
Let us recur again to 505 and again deduct 30, and again we
have 475 as a remainder; then deduct 193 from it, as before, and
the remainder is again 282; now let us go to the beginning of the
next scene, in the first column of page 76; that scene begins with
the 449th word, and if we count the number of words below that
word, we will find there are 49; we deduct 49 from 282 and we have
left 233, and the 233d word, going down the same column, in
which all the other words have been found, is the word their. And
if we recur to the alternating number 221 and go up the same
column again, but count in the hyphenated words, we have as the
221st word, the 290th word, backs.
Here, then, we have the following:
505-30=475—193=282—15 b & /*=267 up the column + h =245
505—30=475—254=221 down
505—30=475—193=282—15 b & /fc=267 up
505—30=475—254=221 down
505—30=475—193=282—49 up
505—30=475—254=221 down
505—30=475—193=282 up
It will be observed that our, the first word above, was obtained
by counting in the hyphenated words in the column, as we passed
over them in the count; this is expressed by the sign " -4- h;n and
Word.
Page and
Column.
h =245
75:2 Our
=221
75:2 men
=267
75:2 had
=288
75:2 turned
=233
75:2 their
h =290
75:2 backs
h =280
75:2 and
THE CIPHER EXPLAINED.
661
the word backs was obtained, also, in the same way; and the word
ana7 was obtained in like manner, and in each case we have this
represented, as above, by the sign " -f- /i." I would here explain
that "245 75:2 — our," in the above table, signifies that our is the
245th word in the second column of page 75; in this way the reader
can count every word and identify it for himself.
Observe how regularly the root-numbers alternate, as to their
movement after leaving the original point of departure, every other
word going up from the first word of the second subdivision of page
75, while the intervening words move downward; thus, we have 193
— 254 — 193 — 254 — 193 — 254 — 193; and hence, counting from these
points of departure, we have the alternations of up, down, up, down,
up, down, up. And every word of the sentence begins in the first
column of page 75 and is found in the second column of page 75;
and observe also how the numbers of the words alternate: 282 —
221 — 282 — 221 — 282 — 221 — 282; the sentence is perfectly sym-
metrical throughout; and every word is the 475th word from pre-
cisely the same point of departure.
Can any one believe that this is the result of accident? If ,so,
let them produce something like it in some composition where no
cipher has been placed.
The above table, presented in a diagram, will appear something
like this:
A
2nd col., p. 75.
st col., p. 76.
XII. Another Proof of the Cipher.
And here I would pause for a moment, to call attention to a fact
which shows the wonderfully complex nature of the Cipher, and
which deserves to be remembered with that instance, given in
662 THE CIPHER NARRA 'FIVE.
Chapter V. of Book II., where the same words found and out
were used, in two different stories, by two different sets of cipher-
numbers, to-wit: ii X 76 = 836 and 12X75 = 900; the same words be-
ing 836 from two points of departure by excluding the bracketed
words and counting the hyphenated words as single words, and 900
from the same points of departure by counting in the bracketed
words and counting the hyphenated words as double words.
Now, in the second column of page 75 the 262d word is furious.
This is a word repeatedly used to describe the rage of the Queen,
and hence we find the number of words in the column and the
number of bracketed and hyphenated words cunningly adjusted
to produce it by several different counts. Thus: 505 — 50=455;
this, less 193 (the number of words above the second subdivision of
column 1 of page 75), makes 262 — furious. But now, if we
deduct from 262 the 15 bracket and hyphenated words in those 193.
words — in other words, if we count them in — as we have done
in the other instances given above — we have 247 ; and 247 down the
page is a very significant word, in connection with the Queen being
furious, the word fly; but if we count up the column, the 247th
word is again the same 202d word, furious! And if we take
another root-number, 516, and deduct 254 from it, that is, count
down from the top of that same second subdivision in column 1
of page 75, we again have 262, the same word furious. And if
we go up the column, instead of down, the 262d word is again that
significant word, fly. And if we take still another root-number,
513, and deduct 254 from it, as above, we have as a remainder 259,
and if we carry this down the column we reach the significant word
prisoner, and if we go up the column, counting in the bracketed
and hyphenated words, we find that the 259th word is again the
same 262d word, furious.
Let the incredulous reader verify these countings, and he will
begin to realize the tremendous nature of the Cipher, its immen-
sity and the incalculable difficulty of unraveling it; and he will be
rather disposed to thank me for the work I have performed, and to
help me to perfect it, where that work is imperfect, than to meet
me, as I have been met, with insults and denunciation.
THE CIPHER EXPLAINED. 663
XIII. Why Bacon Made the Cipher.
But the astonished world may ask: Why would any man per-
form the vast labor involved in the construction of such a Cipher?
Why, I answer, have men in all ages performed great intellectual
feats ? What is poetry but fine thoughts invested in a sort of
cipher-work of words? To obtain the precise balance of rhythm,
the exact enumeration of syllables and the accurate accordance of
rhyme, implies an ingenuity and adaptiveness of mind very much
like that required to form a cipher; so that, in one sense, a cipher
work, like the Plays, is a higher form of poetry. And nature itself
may be said to be a sort of Cipher of which we have not as yet
found the key. Montaigne says: "Nature is a species of enig-
matic poesy." But I may go a step farther, and argue that all
excessive mental activity, such as Bacon exhibited, even in his
acknowledged works, is abnormal, and in some respects a depart-
ure from the sane standard. The normal man is a happy well-
conditioned creature, with good muscles and a sound stomach,
whose purpose in life is to eat, sleep and raise children, and who
doesn't care a farthing what anybody may think of him a thousand
years after his death. Anything above and beyond this is imposed
on man by the Creator, for his own wise ends. The great geniuses
of mankind have been simply a long line of heavily-burdened,
sweating, toiling porters, who bore God's precious gifts to man
from the spiritual world to the material shore.
And like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy burden but a journey,
Till death unloads thee.
But, on the other hand, Bacon probably enjoyed the exercise of
his own vast ingenuity, just as children enjoy the working-out of
riddles; just as the musician takes pleasure in the sound of his own
instrument; just as the athlete delights in the magnificent play of his
own muscles. And he probably had the Shakespeare Cipher in his
mind when he said,
The labor we delight in physics pain;
and
To business that we love we rise betime,
And go to *t with delight.
664 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
We can imagine him, shut up in the hermitage of St. Albans,
poor, downcast, powerless; annoyed by debts; the whole force of
the reigning powers in the state bent to his suppression; with
every door of possibility apparently closed in his face forever; his
heart raging within him the while like a caged lion. We can im-
agine him, I say, rising betimes to go to the task he loved, the
preparation of the inner history of his times, in cipher, and the crea-
tion of an intellectual work which, apart from the merits of poetry
or drama, must, he knew, live forever, when once revealed, as one of
the supreme triumphs of the human mind; as one of the wonders of
the world.
XIV. The Cipher Continued.
We have worked out the sentence, Our men turned their backs and.
Let us proceed.
We have heretofore, in counting down column i, page 75, de-
ducted 254 words, that being the number of words below the 193d
word, the end of the first subdivision in the column. But if we
count from the first word of the second subdivision there are, below
that wordy in the column, 253 words. We shall see hereafter that
this subtle distinction, as to the starting-points to count from, runs
all through the Cipher. Now, if we again take that root-number
505, and deduct 253, we have as a remainder 252; but if we count
in the bracket and hyphenated words in that subdivision, (15), we
will have as a remainder 237; and the 237th word in column 2 of
page 75 is the word fled, which completes the sentence, Our men
turned their backs and fled.
We saw, in the first instance, that her Grace is furious and hath sent
out; we come now to finish that sentence. What was it she sent
out? As we have counted downward all the words below the first
word of the second subdivision of column 1 of page 75, so we count
upwards all the words above the last word in the first subdivision.
There are in that first subdivision 193 words; hence 192, the num-
ber of the words above the last word, becomes, in the progress of
the Cipher, a modifier, just as we have seen 253 to be. Let us
again take the root-number 505, from which we have worked out
thus far all the words given, and after deducting from it the modi-
fier 50, we have left 455, which, it will be remembered, produced the
THE CIPHER EXPLAIXED.
665
words furious, is, hath and out. If from 455 we deduct 192, we have
as a remainder 263, and if we carry this up the next column (2d of
75), we find that the 263d word is the 246th word, soldiers. Her
Grace is furious and hath sent out soldiers.
But what kind of soldiers ? Up to this point every word has
flowed out of 505; now, the Cipher changes to 523, the root-num-
ber which I have said, under certain conditions, alternated with
505. Again we deduct the number 192, (which produced soldiers),
from 523, and we have as a remainder 331; we carry this up the
next column, as usual, and the 331st word is the 178th word, troops.
Again we take 505 and go down the column, instead of up, that is,
we deduct 254, as in the former instances, and we have as a re-
mainder 251; or if we count in the bracket and hyphenated words,
236; we go up the second column of page 75, and the 236th word is
of, the 273d word in the column. Here, then, we have: Her Grace is
furious and hath sent out troops of soldiers, and Our men turned their
backs and fled.
Now we turn again to the interlocking number 523, and, after de-
ducting the modifier 50, which leaves 473, counting up the column,
we have as a remainder 280, or, counting in the bracketed and hy-
phenated words, which formerly produced hath {hath turned), and the
265th word is the word well, the first part of the hyphenated word
well-laboring j but as the 265th was obtained by counting in the
hyphenated words in 193, we therefore count the hyphenated words
separately, and that gives us well. Now, if we count 505 from the
beginning of scene 3, column 1, page 76, down the 50 words in
that fragment of scene, and forward and down the next column,
we find the 505th word to be the 455th word in the second column
of page 86, to-wit, the word horsed. Here, then, we have sent out
troops of soldiers well horsed. In that day they used the word horsed
where we would employ the expression mounted; thus, Macbeth
speaks of *
Pity, like a naked, new-born babe,
Horsed on the sightless couriers of the air.
And at the top of the first column of page 75 we have:
My lord, Sir John Umfreville turned me back
With joyful tidings; and (being better horsed)
Out-rode me.
666 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
But how did our men fly ? We have seen that 505 minus 30 pro-
duced 475, and this minus 254 left 221, and that 221, down the sec-
ond column of page 75, was men, and up the same column was
turned (our men turned their backs). Now let us carry 221 up the same
column again, but count in the bracketed and hyphenated words
in the space we pass over, and we will find that the 221st word is
the 296th word, in. Again let us take 505, deduct 193, and we have
left 312; now let us go again to the beginning of the next scene,
as we did to find the word their, and deduct, as before, 49, carry-
ing the remainder (263) up the second column of page 75, but
counting in the three additional hyphenated words, and we will
find the 263d word to be the 249th word from the top, the. Again
let us recur to 505, and, counting down the same first column of
page 75, from the usual starting-point, 254 words, we have left as
before 251 words; or, counting in the bracketed and hyphenated
words, 236; and if we count down the next column, counting in
the bracketed words, the 236th word is the 216th word, greatest.
And if we again take 505, and count up from the end of the first
subdivision of the first column of page 75, counting in the brack-
eted and hyphenated words, as we did in the last instance, we
have 297, which carried down the next column produces the word
fear.
505—30=475—254=221. 508—221+6 & h on col.—
505— 193— 312— 49=263— 508— 263+/*=
505 254=251—15 b & /z=236— 20 3=216.
505 193=312—15 b & /;=297.
Observe again the symmetry of this sentence: it all grows out
of 505; it is all found in the second column of page 75; the count
all begins at the same point in the first column of page 75, and it
regularly alternates: 254 — 193 — 254 — 193; — 2*21 — 312 — 251 —
312; two words go up the column together, and two words go
down the column together. Can any one believe that this is the
result of accident ?
We now have : Our men turned their backs and fled in the greatest fear.
We go a step farther. We recur to the interlocking number
523 and again deduct from it the modifier 30, which leaves 493; we
count down from the beginning of the second subdivision, to-wit,
Page and
Word.
Column.
296
75:2 in
249
75:2 the
216
75:2 greatest
297
75:2 fear
THE CIPHER EXPLAINED. 667
deduct 254, and we have 239 left; and the 239th word in the next
column is swifter. We take 523 again, but deduct this time the
other modifier, 50, instead of 30, and we have 473 left. We count
up the column, this time, instead of down, and, deducting 193 from
473, we have 280 left, or, counting in the 15 bracketed and hyphen-
ated words in that first subdivision, we have 265 left (the same
number that produced we//); and this, carried down the next col-
umn, counting in the bracketed and hyphenated words, produces
the word then, the 243d word in the second column of page 75. And
the reader will observe that in the text then is constantly used for
than. Here, in column 2 of page 74, we have:
That arrows fled not swifter toward their aim
Then did our soldiers (aiming at their safety)
Fly from the field.
We recur again to 505, and, counting down the column, — that is,
deducting 254, — we have 251 left, and counting in the 15 bracketed
and hyphenated words, we have 236 words left; we go down the
next column, and we find that the 236th word is arrows. Again
we take 505, and deduct the modifier 50, leaving 455, and, alter-
nating the movement, we go up from the beginning of the second
subdivision, that is, we deduct 193 from 455, and we have left 262,
(the number which produced furious). We carry this up the next
column, and the 262d word is the word fly. And if we again take
the root-number 523, and count down the first column of page 75,
that is, deduct 254, we have 269 left; and if we count up the next
column, this brings us to the word toward, the 240th word. We
take the root-number 523 again, and, counting up the column, we
deduct 193, which leaves 330; we carry this down the first column
of page 76, counting in 18 bracketed and hyphenated words, and
the 330th word is the 312th word, their. And this illustrates the ex-
quisite cunning of the adjustment of the brackets and hyphens to
the necessities of the Cipher: this same 312th word was the word
their which became part of turned their backs; it resulted from de-
ducting 193 from the root-number 505, which left 312; now we find
that 193 deducted from another root-number, 523, leaves 330, and as
there are precisely 18 bracketed and hyphenated words above it in
the column, the 330th word lights upon the same 312th word their.
Thus:
1 w
VNr
668 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
505—193=312 down column 1, page 76 312 76:1 their
523— 193=330— 18 b & h " " " " " 312 76:1 their
One has but to compare this with the marvelous adjustments
shown on pages 571, 572 and 573, ante, whereby the same words,
found Bind out, are made to do double duty, by two different modes
of counting, (the difference between 836 and 900, the two root-num-
bers employed, being precisely equal, as in this case, to the number
of bracketed and hyphenated words in the text, between the
words themselves and the starting-point of the count), to realize
the extraordinary nature of the compositions we call the Shake-
speare Plays.
And observe again, in this last group of words, how regularly
254 and 193 alternate: 254—193 — 254 — 193 — 254 — 193; and
two groups of 523 each alternate with two groups of 505 each,
thus: 523, 523, 505, 505, 523, 523, 505.
But to continue: We recur to 505 again; deduct from it again
the modifier 30; this leaves us 475; deduct from this 193 plus the
bracketed and hyphenated words inclosed in the 193 words, and we
have left 267; we advance up the next column, and the 267th word
is the 242d word, aim.
Here, then, we have the sentence:
Our men turned their backs and fled in the greatest fear, swifter than
arrows fly toward their aim.
I might go on and fill out the rest of the narrative, but that will
be done in a subsequent chapter. This at least will explain the
mode in which the Cipher is worked out.
While it may be objected that I have not the different para-
graphs in their due and exact order in the sentences I have given,
or may give, hereafter, no reasonable man will, I think, doubt that
these results are not due to accident; that there is a Cipher in the
Plays, and a Cipher of wonderful complexity. And I shall hope
that the ingenuity of the world will perfect any particulars in
which my own work may be imperfect; even as the complete work-
ing-out of the Egyptian hieroglyphics was not the work of any
one man, or of any half-dozen men, or of any one year, or of any
ten years.
There is, of course, a species of incredulity which will claim
that all this wonderful concatenation of coherent words is the
THE CIPHER EXPLAINED. 669
result of chance; just as there was a generation, a century or two
ago, which, when the fossil forms of plants and animals were first
noticed in the rocks, (misled by a preconceived notion as to the age
of the earth), declared that they were all the work of chance; that
the plastic material of nature took these manifold shapes by a series
of curious accidents. And when they were driven, after a time,
from this position, the skeptics fell back on the theory that God
had made these exact imitations of the forms of living things, and
placed them in the rocks, to perplex and deceive men, and rebuke
their strivings after knowledge.
With many men the belief in the Stratford player is a species of
religion. They imbibed it in their youth, with their mother's milk,
and they would just as soon take the flesh off their bones as the
prejudices out of their brains. Ask them for any reason, apart
from the Plays and Sonnets, (the very matters in controversy), why
they worship Shakspere; ask them what he ever did as a man that
endears him to them; what he ever said, in his individual capacity,
that was lofty, or noble, or lovable; and they are utterly at loss for
an answer; there is none. Nevertheless they are ready to die for
him, if need be, and to insult, traduce and vilify every one who
does not agree with them in their unreasoning fetish worship. It
reminds me of an observation of Montaigne:
How many have been seen patiently to suffer themselves to be burnt and
roasted for opinions taken upon trust from others, and by them not at all under-
stood. I have known a hundred and a hundred women (for Gascony has a certain
prerogative for obstinacy) whom you might sooner have made eat fire than forsake
an opinion they had conceived in anger.
And a remarkable feature, not to be overlooked, is, that not
only do a few numbers produce some of the twenty-nine words in
these sentences, b u t_the^prjQ d u c e them all. Thus nearly all come
out of 505, towards the last intermixed with 523; and we derive
from 312 sent, out, soldiers, fly, furious, fear, their; while from 221 we
get men, turned, backs, in; and 251 gives greatest, arrows, etc. It
seems to me that if the reader were to write down these words, just
as I have given them, and submit them to any clear-headed person,
and tell him they were parts of a story, he would say that they evi-
dently all related to some narrative in which soldiers were sent out,
that somebody was furious, and some other parties were in the
greatest fear and had turned their backs to fly.
CHAPTER IV.
BACON HEARS THE BAD NEWS.
Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office; and his tongue
Sounds ever after as a sullen bell
Remembered knolling a departing friend.
2d Henry IV.y f, 2.
THE Cipher grows out of a series of root-numbers. Before we
reach that part of the story which is told by the root-numbers
5°5> 513> 5J6 and 523, there is a long narrative which leads up
to it, and which is told by another series of numbers, which grow
in due and regular order out of the primal root-number, which is
the parent of 505, 513, 516 and 523. They start at "The Heart of
the Mystery" the dividing line between the first and second parts of
Henry IV. and progress in regular order, forward and backward,
moving steadily away from that center, as the narrative proceeds,
until they exhaust themselves on the first page of the first part
and the last page of the second part of the play. Then the primal
number is put through another arithmetical progression, and we
reach the numbers I have named, 505, 513, 516 and 523, and
these give us that part of the story which is now being worked out.
And to tell that story we begin, properly, with the very beginning,
at " The Heart of the Mystery" in the first column of the second
part of the play of King Henry IV.
And here I would observe that as the Cipher flows out of the first
column of page 74 its mode of progression is different from the
Cipher referred to in the last chapter, for that grew out of the first
column of page 75, which is broken into two parts by the stage
direction "Enter Morton;" and hence the root-numbers were mod-
ified at one time by subtracting the upper half, and at another time
by subtracting the lower half; that is to say, by counting up from
670
BACON HEARS THE BAD NEWS.
671
"Enter Morton" or counting down. But the first column of page
74 has no such break in it; it is solid; and hence the root-numbers
sooner exhaust themselves. And this perhaps was rendered neces-
sary by the fact that there are but 248 words in the second column
of page 74, while there are 508 words in the second column of page
75. There would have been great difficulty in packing as many
Cipher words into 248 words as into 508 words. Hence the dif-
ferent Cipher numbers interlock with each other more frequently,
and in a short space we find all the Cipher numbers (except 506,
which has a treatment peculiar to itself and apart from the others)
brought into requisition.
The former Cipher numbers, to which I have alluded, ended
with some brief declaration from Harry Percy of the evil tidings;
and the first words spoken by Bacon are based on the hope that
there may be some mistake, that the news may not be authentic.
He inquires: " Saw you the Earl '? How is this derived?" "The Earl,"
of course, means the Earl of Essex, and the head of the conspiracy.
And here I would also explain, that just as we sometimes modified
505 and 523, in the examples given in the last chapter, by counting
the words above the first word of the second subdivision of column 1
of page 75, to-wit, 193; and sometimes the words above the last word
of the first subdivision, to-wit, 192: so with this first column of page
74, if we count down the column there are 284 words, exclusive of
bracketed and the additional hyphenated words, but if we count up
the column we will find that the number of words above the last word
of the column is but 283, exclusive of bracketed words and the ad-
ditional hyphenated words. And this the reader will perceive is a
necessary distinction, otherwise counting up and down the column
would produce the same results; and as the Cipher runs from the begin-
nings and ends of scenes, and as the "Induction" is in the nature of a first
scene (for the next scene is called "Scena Secunda "), it follows that
we must adopt the same rule already shown to exist as to 193, 254,
etc., and which we will see hereafter runs all through the Cipher,
in both plays. And these subtle distinctions not only show the
microscopic accuracy of the work, but illustrate at the same time
the difficulty of deciphering it.
I place at the head of the column the root-numbers and their
672 THE CIPHER NA RKA TI VE.
modifications; and the reader will note that every word of the co-
herent narrative which follows is derived from one or the other of
these numbers, modified by the same modifiers, 30 and 50, which
we found so effective on page 75, together with the other modifiers,
197, 198, 218 and 219, which are also found, as we have already ex-
plained, in the second column of page 74.
I would also call attention to the fact that just as we, in the pre-
ceding chapter, sometimes counted in the bracketed and additional
hyphenated words in the subdivisions of column 1 of page 75, and
sometimes did not: so in this case, sometimes we count in the brack-
eted and additional hyphenated words in column 1 of page 74, and
sometimes we do not. And as in the former instance we indicated
it by the marks " — 15 b&h," there being 15 bracketed and hyphen-
ated words in both those subdivisions, so in the following examples
we indicate it by the marks " — 18 b &h," there being 18 bracketed
and additional hyphenated words in column 1 of page 74. Where
the figures '* 21 b" or " 22 b & h" occur, they refer to the brack-
eted words or the bracketed and additional hyphenated words in
the same column in which the words are found.
I would call attention to the significant words in the narrative
that flow out of the modifiers; for instance, 523 — 284 = 239, from;
less 50= iSg, gentleman; less 30= 209 — 21 b== 188, a; less 30=158,
whom; 505 — 284 = 221, I; less 50=171, derived; less 30=191, bred;
505 — 284 = 221 — 21 b in column = 200, these; 523 — 284=239 —
21 b in column = 2i8, news; while 523 — 283 = 240, me; — 50 =
190, well; — 30=210, /. Here in two root-numbers, alternated
with the modifiers 50 and 30, we produce the significant words:
/, derived, these, news, from, a, well, bred, gentleman, whom, I. Surely,
all this cannot be accidental?
Suppose instead of these root-numbers, 505 and 523, we take
any other numbers, say 500 and 450, and apply them in the same
way, and in £he same order, as in the above sentence; and we will
have as a result the following words: came, the, a, name, listen, you,
fortunes, Monmouth, the, that, after. Not only do these words make
no sense arranged in the same order as in the above coherent sen-
tence, but it is impossible to make sense out of them, arrange them
how you will. You might put together: after that Monmouth ca?ne;
BACO-N HEARS THE BAD NEWS.
673
but the remaining words will puzzle the greatest ingenuity; and
then comes the question: Who is Monmouth, and what has he to
do with any story that precedes or follows this? But 505, 523,
etc., not only produce a coherent narrative on this page, but on
all the other pages examined, and the story on one page- is a part of
the story on all the other pages.
I. The Narrative.
523
284
239
523
516
284
240
232
516
283
233
513
284
229
513
283
230
505
284
221
505
283
222
Page and
Word. Column.
523— 284=239— 51=188— 20 £& £=168. 168 74:2 How
505— 284=221— 51=170-1 £=169. 169 74:2 is
523— 284=239— 50=189— 19 £=1 70. 170 74:2 this
505—284=221—50=171. 171 74:2 derived?
523— 283=240— 18 b & £=222— 50=172. 172 74:2 Saw
505—283=222—30=192—19=173. 173 74:2 you
523—283=240. 248—240=8+1=9. 9 74:2 the
505—284=221—167=54. 54 74:2 Earl?
523— 284=239— 7 h (74: 1)=232. 232 74:2 No,
505—284=221. 221 74:2 I
523—284=239—18 b & h (74:1)=221— 50=171. 171 74:2 derived
505—284=221—21 £=200. 200 74:2 these
523—284=239—21 £=218. 218 74:2 news
505—284=221—219=2. 248—2=246+1=247. 247 74:2 from
523—284=239—30=209—21 £=188. 188 74:2 a
523-283=240—50=190. 190 74:2 well
505—284=221—30=191. 191 74:2 bred
523—284=239—50=189. 189 74:2 gentleman
505—283=222—29=193. 193 74:2 of
523—284=239—18 b & £=221—50=171. 248—171=
77+1=78+15=93. 93 74:2 good
505—284=221—167=54. 248—54=194+1=195 195 74:2 name
523—284=239—30=209. 209 74:2 whom
505—284=221—18 b & £=203—19 £=184. (184) 74:2 my
523— 284=239^18 b& £=221— 1 £=220. 220 74:2 lord
505—284=221—218=3. 3 74:2 the
523—284=239. 248—239=9+1=10. 10 74:2 Earl
516— 284=232— 21 £=211. 211 74:2 sent
513—283=230—50=180—19=161. 161 74:2 to
516—284=232. 248—232=16+1=17. 17 74:2 tell
523—283=240. 248—240=8+1=9+30=39. 39 74:2 your
523—284=239. 248—239=9+1=10+30=40. 40 74:2 Honor
505—284=221—168=53. 53 74:2 the
674
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
This 168 is the middle subdivision of column 2 of page 74. It runs from 50 to
218, as is shown in the diagram, on page 580, ante; it contains 21 bracketed words
and one additional hyphenated word; its modifications will appear further on. From
50 to 218 there are 168 words; from 51 to 218 there are 167.
505—283=222—21 £—201.
516—584=232—30=202. 248—202=46+1=47.
513=284=229.
505—283=222—198=24—4 £ +/z=20.
513—284=229—22 £ & /*=207.
The word servant had anciently the sense of follower or subordinate. Hora-
tio, although a gentleman, and a scholar with Hamlet at Wittenberg, called him-
self the servant of Hamlet:
Hamlet. Horatio, or do I forget myself ?
Horatio. The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.
Hamlet. Sir, my good friend,
I'll change that name with you.
Word.
201
Page and
Column.
74:2
news.
47
74:2
He
229
74:2
is
20
75:1
a
207
74:2
servant
516— 284=232— 18 b & /*=214— 21 £=193.
505—284=221—30=191. 193—191=2+1=3.
193
3
74:2
75:1
of
Sir
4
75:1
John
161
75:1
Travers,
24
75:1
by
Here the Cipher, as it begins to exhaust the possibilities of column 2 of page
74, overflows upon the next column through the channel of the subdivisions of 74:2.
That is to say, instead of counting 221 down that column, we commence to count
at the bottom of the second subdivision. This gives us to the bottom of the column
thirty words, which, deducted from the 221, leaves us 191, and this, carried up from
the bottom of the first subdivision of the next column, gives us the word Sir.
523—283=240—50=190. 193—190=3+1=4.
505—284=221—30=191—30=161.
505—283=222—198=24.
The 198 here is one of the modifiers in the second column of page 74; that is
to say, from the top of the second subdivision of the column to the top of the col-
umn there are 50 words, and from the bottom of the first subdivision to the bottom
of the column there are 198 words; and from the top of the second column to the
bottom of the column there are 197 words.
516— 284=232— 18 £&/*=214. 248—214=34+1=35. 35 74:2 the
516— 284=232— 30=202— 7 /fc=195. 195 74:2 name
516—284=233—50=183. 248—183=60. 66 74:2 of
523—284=239—50=189. 193—189=4+1=5. 5 75:1 Umfreville.
This 189 is the middle subdivision 168 plus the 21 bracketed words contained
therein, making together 189.
513—283=230—2 /fc=228.
513—284=229.
513—273=230.
516—284=232—30=202—20 b & /fr=182.
516—283=233—50=183. 248—183=65+1=
66+15 £=81
228
74:2
He
229
74:2
is
230
74:2
furnished
182
74:2
with
81
74:2
all
BACON HEARS THE BAD NEWS.
675
Word.
516—283=233—50=183—19 4—174. 174
516—283=233 233
516—283=233—30=203. 248—203=45+1=46 46
516—283=233—30=203—50=153. 248—153=95+1= 96
513—284=229—30=199. 248—199=49 + 1=50. 50
516—284=232—30= 202 202
516— 283=233— 30=203— 248— 203=43+ 1=46+2 h= 48
516—284=232—30=202—197=5. 18 4 & h —5=
13+1=14. 14
Page and
Column.
84:2
the
74:2
certainties,
74:2
and
74:2
will
74:2
answer
74:2
for
74:2
himself,
74:1
when
This last count needs a little explanation. In the former instances there was
always, after counting in all the words in column 1 of page 74, a remainder
which was carried over to the next column, or, through the subdivision in the
second column of page 74, overflowed into the first column of page 75. But sup-
pose there is, after deducting the modifier, no remainder to be thus carried to the next
column, then we must look for the word in the first column of page 74, by moving
up or down that column. And this is what is done in this instance. I might state
the matter thus: 516 — 30=486 — 197=289. Now, we are about to carry 289 up the
first column of page 74; but there are 18 4 & h in that column, which added to 284
makes a total in the column of words of all kinds of 302; — now, if we deduct 288
from 302 we have i3 + i=i4=w^«. We find the same course pursued to obtain
the word of on the eighth line below.
505—283=222—198=24. 193—24=169+1=170.
505—284=221. 248— 221=27+1=28+24 4+/&=52.
505—284=221. 248—221=27+1=28.
523—284=239—218=21. 248—21=227+1=228.
513—284=229—198=31.
505—283=222—198=24+4 4+/fc=20.
523—284=239—218=21.
516—284=232—30=202—18 4+ /*=184— 198=14.
284—14=270—1+3 4=274.
516—284=232—30=202=197=5. 248—5=243+1=
516—284=232—30=202—7 // (74:1)=195.
505—283=222—30=192.
505—284=221—168=53. 248—53=195+1=196+14=
505—284=221—168=53—248—53=195+1=196
+2 4+/&=198.
523—283=240.
505—283=222—22 4+/&=200.
523—283=240—22 4+//=218.
505—284=221—167=54—7 h 284=47. 248—47=
201 + 1=202.
505—284=221—18 4 & /^=203.
505—283=222—197=25. 193—25=168+1=
505—283=222—197=25. 193+25=218.
=169.
170
75:1
he
52
74:2
comes
28
74:2
here.
328
74:2
He
31
74:2
is
20
75:1
a
21
74:2
gentleman
274
74:1
of
244
74:2
good
195
74:2
name,
192
74:2
and
=197
74:2
freely
198
74:2
rendered
240
74:2
me
200
64:2
these
218
74:2
news
202
74:2
for
203
74:2
true.
169
75:1
He
218
75:1
left
We have just seen that the root-number was carried upward from the top of
the second subdivision in column 2 of page 74 and thence to the next column.
Here we see that the root-number is also carried downward from the same point,
by deducting 197, the number of words from that point to the bottom of the column.
676
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Word.
Page and
Column.
214
75:1
the
212
75:1
Strand
15
75:1
after
25
75:1
me,
246
75:1
but,
(13)
75:1
being
523—284=239—218=21. 193+21=214.
523—284=239—218=21. 193+21=214—2 A— 312.
523—284=239—30=209—30=179. 193—179=
14+1=15.
505—283=222—197=25.
505—284=221—18 4 & 7^=203—50=153+193=246.
505—284=221—30=191. 193— 191=2+1=3+4=
Here we come to an example that is often found in the Cipher, where the count
ends in a word in a bracketed sentence. It is difficult to explain in figures the re-
sult; the critical reader will have to count for himself up or down the column, as
the case may be, and he will ascertain that my count is correct. Where the
number of the word is inclosed in brackets, as in the above " (13) 75:1," it signi-
fies that it is not the 13th word by the ordinary count, but the 13th word counting
in the words in a bracketed sentence, and that the word itself is in such a sentence.
523-283=240—50=190. 193—190=3+1=4+4= (14) 75:1 better
The accuracy of this count can only be demonstrated by counting from 193,
inclusive, upwards, counting in the bracketed words, but not the hyphenated words;
and the 190th word will be found to be, by actual count, the word better.
523—284=239-
505—283=222.
505—284=221—
505—284=221
523—284=239
523—284=239—
505—284=221
523—284=239
1=55.
505—284=221
523—283=240
505—284=221—:
505—284=221
505—284=221—
3 b & 1 h exc
50=189. 193—189=4+1=5+4=
224&/fc=199.
168=53— 7 7*=46.
218=21—4=17.
218=21—3 4=18.
198=23—4 4 & 7/=19.
50=189—50=139. 193—139=54+
50=171. 193—171=22+1=23.
50=190—30=160.
219=2. 447— 2+/fc=(446).
50=171. 193—171=22+1=23+3 b-
50=171. 193—171=22+1=23+
=27.
(15)
75:1
horsed,
222
74:2
over-rode
199
74:2
me.
46
74:2
He
17
75:1
came
18
75:1
spurring
19
75:1
head,
55
75:1
and
23
75:1
stopped
160
75:1
by
(446)
75:1
me
= 26
75:1
to
27
75:1 breathe
Here we count in the bracketed words and the additional hyphenated words
not included in bracket sentences. This is indicated by the sign " 4 & /i exc," mean-
ing, count in the bracket words and the hyphenated words exclusive of those in
brackets. The expression "came spurring head" means came spurring with
headlong speed. It was the customary expression of the day and is found in the
text.
505—283=222—50=172. 193—172=21 + 1=22+
6 4 & /&— 28.
523—284=239—30=209—30=179.
516—283=233—50=183.
516—283=233—50=183+193=376.
513—283=230—30=200—15 b & 7z=185.
51 3— 283=230— 50=180.
523—283=240—30=210.
28
75:1
his
179
75:1
horse.
183
75:1
Upon
376
75:1
my
185
75:1
life
180
75:1
he
210
75:1
looks
BACON HEARS THE BAD NEWS.
'677
505—283=222—30=192.
523—283=240— 30=210— 10 0+2 h exc.=198.
505—283=222—50=172.
505—284=221—18 b & ^=203—30=173.
523—284=239—219=20. 193—20=173+1=174.
516—284=232—50=182—14 b & /;==168.
523—283=240— 50=190— 14 b & /&=176.
505—284=221—30=191—14 b & A— 177.
51 6—283=233—30=203
523—284=239—50=189 —10 £-179.
523—283=240—50=190 —10 £=180.
505—284=221—30=191 —10 0=181.
516—283=233—30=203—30=173—10 0=163.
523—283=240—30=210 —10 0=200.
505—283=222—198=24 —3 0=21 .
523—283=239—30=209—30=179—10 0=169.
Observe here how a whole series of words has in each case the mark "io0,"
showing that the brackets have been counted in in every instance; while above it is
a group of words marked ** 14 0 & h," where both the bracketed words and the
additional hyphenated words have in each case been counted in. The 10 b is only
varied, in the first series, once, where it becomes " 3 0," because there are but
three bracketed words before the Cipher word is reached, while in the other cases
there are 10.
Word.
Page and
Column.
192
75:1
more
198
75:1
like
172
75:1
some
173
174
75:1
75:1
hilding
fellow
168
75:1
who
176
75:1
had
177
75:1
stolen
203
75:1
the
179
75:1
horse
180
75:1
he
181
75:1
rode-on
163
75:1
than
200
75:1
a
21
169
75:1
75:1
gentleman;
he
516—284=232—30=202. 447—202=245+1=246. 246
523—284=239—50=189. 189
523—284=239—30=209. 209
513—284=229—50=179. 447—179=268+1=269+8 0 277
516—283=233—30=203—30=173. 447—173=274+
1=275. 275
75:1
doth
75:1
look
75:1
so
75:1
dull,
75:1 spiritless
I would here call attention to another curious fact. We see in the above that
173, counting down the column, is hilding (or skulking — hiding), while up the
column it is spiritless, — the 275th word; — and if we count in the bracket words it
is tvoe-begone. While we will find hereafter that when we take 523 and count from
the top of the second column of page 74, downwards, 248 words, we have 275 words
left, and the 275th word is the same word, spiritless, and if we go up the column it
is the same word, hilding. This is another of the many proofs, like ilfound-out,,f
that the words are many times cunningly adjusted to do double duty.
513—283=230—30=200—30=170. 193+170=363. 363 75:1 and
516—283=233—30=203—30=173. 447—173=274+ 1
=275+80=283.
523—284=239—30=209—30=1 79—1 //=1 78.
513—284=229—50=179.
523—283=240—30=210—30=180.
523—284=239—30=209—50=159.
523—284=239—50=189—50=139.
523—284=239—50=189—50=139. 193—139= 54
+ 1=55+6 0 & //=61 61 75:1 was
283
75:1
woe-begone.
178
75:1
The
179
75:1
horse
180
75:1
he
159
75:1
rode
139
75:1
upon
297
75:1
half
383
75:1
dead
45
75:1
from
- 18
75:1
spurring.
130
75:1
My
403
75:1
instinct
202
75:1
tells
438
75:1
me
172
75:1
some
396
75:1
thing
382
75:1
is
678 1 HE CIPHER NA RRA TI VE.
Page and
Word. Column,
523— 284=239— 30=209— 30=179. 193—179=14+
1=15+8 £=(23). (23) 75.1 sore-spent
523—284=239—50=189—50 (74:2)— 139. 193—139=
54+1—66. 55 75:1 and
523—283=240—30=210—30=180. 193—180=13+
1=14+8 £=(22). (22) 75:1 almost
523—284=239—30=209—50=159. 447—159=288+
1=289+8 £—297.
523—283=240—50=190. 193+190=383.
513—284=229—50=179—30=149. " 193—149=
44+1=45.
516—283=233—50=183. 193—183=10+1=11+7 b-
523—283=240—50=190—50=140—10 £— 1 30.
523—284=239—30=209. 194+209=403.
513—284=229—218=11. 193+11=204—2 /&=202.
513—283=230—198=32—22=10. 447—10=437 + 1=
516—284=232—50=182—10 £=172.
516—283=233—30=203. 193+203=396.
523—284=239—50=189. 193+189=382.
513—283=230—198=32—22 £—10. 447—10=437+
1=438+2 £=440. 440 75:1 wrong.
Here the " 22 £ " represents the 22 bracketed words in the 198; that is, from the
end of the first subdivision of column 2 of page 74 to the bottom of the column there
are 22 words in brackets.
513—283=230—30=200—30=170. 170 75:1 He
513—283=230—198=32. 32 75:1 asked
513—283=230—218=12. 447—12=435+1=436+
2 £=438. 438 75:1 me
513—283=230—30=200—30=170—14 b & 7^=156+
1=157. 157 75:1 the
523— 284=239— 198=41— 7 £=34. 34 75:1 way
523—283=240—50=190. 190 75:1 here;
513—283=230—218=12. 12 75:1 and
505—283=222—198=24. 447—24=423 + 1=424. 424 75:1 I
Here we begin to call into requisition the modifiers in the first column of page
73; heretofore, the modifiers we have used have been altogether those in the second
column of page 74; hereafter, in this part of the story, we will find those of the
first column of page 73 coming more and more into use, until all the words grow
out of 505, 523, 516 and 513, less 284, modified by the modifying numbers in col-
umn 1 of page 73, to-wit, 28, 62, 90, 142 and 79.
The reader is asked to observe that every one of the last seventy-five words is
found in the first column of page 75, while the preceding part of the story was all
found in the second column of page 74; and the reader can see for himself that this
part of the story follows the other in natural historical order.
523—284=239—198=41—9 b & A— 83. 32
516—283=233—50=183—28=155. 193—155=38+1= 39
513—283=230—30=200. 193+200=393— 8 £=385. 385
513—283=230—50=180. 180
523—284=239—50=189. 447—189=258+1=259. 259
75:1
asked
75:1
him
75:1
what
75:1
he
75:1
is
BACON HEARS THE BAD NEWS.
679
Word.
Page and
Column.
437
190
75:1
75:1
doing
here,
12
75:1
and
385
75:1
what
373
75:1
are
=101
75:1
the
11
407
75:1
75:1
tidings
from
51 3—284=229—218=1 1 . 447—1 1=436 + 1=437.
513—283=230—30=200—10 £=190.
516—284=232—50=182. 193—182=11 + 1=12.
505—283=222—30=192. 193+192=385
513—283=230—50=180. 193+180=373.
516—283=233—50=183—90=93. 193—93=100+1=
513—284=229—218=11.
523—284=239—198=41. 447—41=406+ 1=407.
523—283=240—50=190—90=100. 447—100=347+
1=348. 348 75:1 the
505— 283=222— ,50=172. 447—172=275+1=276+
10£&/*=286. 286 75:1 Curtain?
The "Curtain Play-house" was probably the meeting-place of Harry Percy,
Umfreville and the other young men. To Percy it must have been a regular resort,
for it is probable he was the intermediary between Bacon and Shakspere.
505—284=221—50=171—90=81—50=31. 31 75:1 He
516—284=232—30=202—50=152. 193—152=41 +
1=42+6 />& //=48. 48 75:1 told
516—284=232—30=202. 193—202=6 + 1=7. 7 75:1 me
This needs a little explanation: it is difficult to state it in figures in the same
way as the other examples. We have 202 to carry up the first subdivision of 75:1,
but there are only 193 words in that subdivision, which would leave a remainder of
9; but suppose we add in the b & h words, we then have in the subdivision not 193
but 193 + 15=208; now if we deduct 202 from 208, we have: 208 — 202=6+1=7.
75:1, vie, as above.
523—284=239—50=189—62=127. 127 75:1 that
505—283=222—50=172—90=82=30—52. 193+
52=245—2=243.
505—284=221—50=171—90=81—30=51. 193+51=
513— 284=229— 50=179— 50=129— 10 £=119.
51 6—284=232—50=182—62=1 20.
505—284=221—50=171—50=121.
505—283=222—50=172—50=122.
505—283=222—50=172—50=122. 193—122=71+1=
505—284=221—50=171—1 A— 170.
513—284=229—50=179—50=129. 193—129=64+
1=65+1/^=66. 66 75:1 gave
505— 283=222— 50=1 72. 1 93—1 72=21 + 1=22 +
3 £=25.
523—283=240—30=210—198=12. 193+12=205—2 h.
516—283=233—30=203—10 6=193.
We return now to the second column of page 74, and we learn what the news
was that Percy received from Umfreville. And here we have a testimony to the
reality of the Cipher which should satisfy the most incredulous.
The reader will remember that I gave on page 580, ante, a diagram of what I
called The Heart of the Mystery, in which I showed that this part of the Cipher
originated out of certain root-numbers, 505, 506, 513, 516, 523, modified, first by the
243
75:1
our
=244
75:1
party
119
75:1
had
120
75:1
met
121
75:1
ill
122
75:1
luck;
■ 72
75:1
and
170
75:1
he
25
75:1
me
203
75:1
the
193
75:1
news,
68o THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
fragments of the scene in the second column of page 74; and, afterward, by the
fragments in the first column of page 73. And up to this point in the Cipher
story all the modifications (with two or three exceptions at the end of the narra-
tive) grow out of those modifiers which are found in the second column of page
74, to-wit, 50, 30, 218, 198, etc. Now we come to the modifiers in the first column
of page 73, to-wit, 27 or 28, 62 or 63, 89 or 90, 78 or 79, 141 or 142, etc. If what
I have given was the result of accident, the probabilities are that the application of
these modifiers would bring out words that could not be fitted at all into the story
produced by the modifiers on page 74, and that would have no relation whatever to
the news brought by Umfreville.
And here I would ask the incredulous to write down a sentence of their own
construction upon any subject, however simple, so that it contains a dozen or more
words, and then try to find those words in any column of the Shakespeare Plays.
The chances are nine out of ten they will not succeed. Take these last eleven words,
which, without premeditation, I have just written down: the chances are nine out
of ten they will not succeed; turn to the first column of page 75 and try to find them.
There is no chances in the column; it occurs but twice in the whole play, and the
nearest instance is on page 85 of the Folio, twenty columns distant. There is no
nine in the column, it occurs but once in the whole play, on page 84 of the Folio,
eighteen columns away. Even the simple little word they cannot be found in that
column. Neither can ten; it appears on page 76, two columns distant. The word
succeed is not found in the entire play. The nearest approach to it is succeeds, on
page 97 of the Folio, forty-four columns distant. If the reader will experiment
with any other sentence he will be satisfied of the truth of my statement. You
may sometimes examine a whole column and not find in it such a common word
as it or or or were. In fact, there are 114,000 words in the English language, and
the chances, therefore, of finding the precise words you need for any given sen-
tence, upon a single page of any work, are very slight indeed; for the page can at
most contain but a few hundred words out of that vast total; and, if we reduce the
vocabulary from 114,000 to 14,000, the same difficulty will to a large extent still
present itself. Therefore, even though it may be claimed that I have not reduced
the Cipher story to that perfect symmetry which greater labor might secure, I
think it will be conceded by every intelligent mind that the results I have shown
could not have come about by accident, but that there is a Cipher in the Plays.
To resume : We saw by the Cipher words given in the last chapter that the
Queen was furious and had sent out soldiers to arrest somebody, and that the
play-actors had taken fright and run away ; and we will see hereafter that the
Queen had beaten some one savagely and nearly killed him. Now, we have just
learned how the news was brought to Bacon ; how Harry Percy (for I will show
hereafter that it was Harry Percy) had been over-ridden by a messenger from the
Earl (of Essex) who had told him the news. Now, if there was no Cipher in this
text, the next series of modifications, to-wit, those of the first column of page 73,
would not bring out any words holding any coherence with this narrative, but a
haphazard lot of stuff having no more to do with it than the man in the moon.
But what are the facts ?
Let us, for the purpose of making the explanation clearer, confine ourselves to
505 and 523. Now, I showed that if we commenced at the beginning of column
1 of page 74 — that is, if we deducted 284 down the column, and 283 up the column
— we would have as a result certain root-numbers, thus:
505—284=221. 523—284=239.
505—283=222. 523—283=240.
i+*n 1> S f~lhr {yCvui Ji**, ^J^ JL±u-yHYm6 -VCLU-
n
premium, cuurt . Hfvtfir e^«y iT^/u* V^o l^c^rycs i/tx>
Cutk ha/vertrYi . 'TWt u&> nwutcrtr^ quod r~c;iCL~
OX SocovnorwYK pyrouvtw Cu-cnv^t j[ -Mia u*3 town
Sum Omjfast hfppoz : ^rioonij swUcet . V^Jam. fubff
CTUerCo j)ej zt Zxv&n iwtujL t^wt^ oLtOctu^
won (jwe^ntvy^ \ Jit eatbzw^ oU> Zj^vC^tivHci
I:
Letter from the Lord Chancellor Verulam (Francis Bacon) to the University of Cambridge,
upon sending to their library his Novum Organum. (Reduced facsimile )
BA CON HE A R S THE BA D NE WS. 6 8 1
And I showed that if we modified these numbers, so obtained, by 30 and 50, the
modifiers in the second column of page 74, we would have these results:
221—50=171.
239—50=189.
222—50=172.
240—50=190.
221—30=191.
239—30=209.
222—30=192.
240—30=210.
And I showed that these root-numbers produced, alternately counting and not
counting the bracketed and additional hyphenated words, the sentence I have
given: — " I derived these news from one whom I spake with on the way here, a well-
bred gentleman whom my Lord the Earl sent to tell your Honor the news."
Now, let us take these same root-numbers and deduct from them the modifiers
in the first column of page 73, and see what the news was that Umfreville brought
from Essex.
We have 505 — 283=222. Let us deduct the words below the first word of the
last subdivision of column 1, page 73, to-wit, 78, from 222: 222 — 78=144. The
144th word in the second column of page 74, counting in the one hyphenated
word,- is Field, the 143d word, printed in the Folio with a capital F. Now,
Richard Field, son of Henry Field, of Stratford, was a printer in London. In
1593 he printed Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, and the work was published and
sold, Halliwell-Phillipps tells us, at the White Greyhound, St. Paul's Churchyard,
by his friend John Harrison, publisher.1 In 1594 Field printed the Rape of Lucrece.
How he came into this business is not clear. Or the Field here, and so often
referred to in the Cipher narrative, may have been Nathan Field, the player, who
was one of the principal actors of the day. It is true that Collier thinks Nathan
Field was the son of the Puritan preacher John Field, and if so he would have
been too young in 1597 or 1598 for the part suggested; but Collier may have made
a mistake. Nathan Field was more likely a Stratford man.
Now, let us take the root-number 523, deduct 284, and we have 239 ; let us
deduct from this another of the modifiers in the first column of page 73, to-wit: 90,
being the nnmber of words above the first word of the third subdivision, and the
remainder is 149 ; now, let us count down the second column of page 74, again count-
ing in the one additional hyphenated word, and we find that the 149th word becomes
the 148th word — is. Now, take again the same root-number, 222; modify it
by deducting one of the numbers of the second column of page 74 (for thus the
modifiers of pages 73 and 74 interlock with each other), to-wit: 50; we have
left 172 ; now, again deduct the modifier 78, which we have seen produced the
word Field, and we have left 94 ; we carry 94 up the second column of page 74
and we reach the word a, the 155th word. We return again to the root-number
239, which produced the word is, and again deduct the same modifier, 90, and we
have : 239 — 90=149, and the 149th word, in the second column of page 74, is
prisoner. Here we have: Field is a prisoner^ thus expressed:
Page and
Word. Column.
505—283=222—78=144—1 A— 148. 143 74:2 Field
523—284=239—90=149—1 /^=148. 148 74:2 is
505—283=222—50=172—78=94. 248—94=154+
1=155. 155 74:2 a
523—284=239—90=149. 149 74:2 prisoner,
But let us go on with the story. The 28 used hereafter is the number from
1 Outlines Life of Shakspere, p. 70.
682
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
the top of the column i of page 73 to the top word of the second subdivision,
inclusive ; the " 17 b & h" means that in carrying the number up the column we
count in the bracketed and additional hyphenated words in the column, in the
space passed over.
Word.
144
Page and
Column.
74:2
and
248—161=87+
105
r4:2
505—283=222—78=144.
523—284=239—50=189— 28=161
1=88+17 b & ,£=105.
505—283=222—78=144. 248—144=104+1=
105+2 A— 107.
523—284=239—78=161.
505—283=222—79=143. 143—30=113.
523—284=239—50=189—79=110.
505—284=221—30=191—90=101—7 3=94.
523—284=239—188 (167+21 3)=51— 27 (73:1)=24.
505—284=221—30=191—79 (73:1)=112— 7 A— 105.
523—283=240—18 b & 3=222— 62 (73:1)=160.
505—283=222—79=143. 248—143=105 + 1=106.
523—284=239—50=189—90=99.
505—283=222—50=172—79=93.
523—283=240—90=150. 248—1 : 0=98+1=99.
505—283=222—79=143—50=93 + 193=286—7 b & 3= i
523—284=239—50=189—62=127. 248+127=121 +
1=128.
523—283=240—50=190—62=128.
505—284=221—30=191—63=128. 248—128=120+
1=121+2 3=123.
505—284=221—30=191—62=129.
523—284=239— 50=189— 79=110— 7 3=103.
505—284=221—90=131.
523—284=239—90=149. 248—149=99+1=100+
15 3=
505—284=221—79=142.
523—167=356—90=266—15 b & 3=251.
505—283=222—79=143—50=93—7 3=86.
" Bardolfe " was probably a nickname for Dr. Hay ward; — we will see him
described hereafter as anything but a gentleman in appearance. I have shown, on
page 30, ante, that the country so swarmed, at that time, with graduates of the uni-
versities of Oxford and Cambridge, who made their living as beggars, that Parlia-
ment had to interfere to abate the nuisance.
Here we have the excited Percy telling the news. It will be observed that
through twenty-nine instances the root-numbers 505 and 523 alternate without a
break; and it will also be observed that through thirteen instances the numbers
505 — 283 222 alternate regularly with 523 — 284=239; and that every word of this
connected story grows out of these root-numbers, modified by the modifiers 30 and
50, belonging to the second column of page 74, or go and 89, or 28, or 79 and 78, or
62 and 63, the modifiers found in the first column of page~73. Can any one believe
that order can thus come out of a chaos of words by a coherent rule if there is no "
Cipher here ? If I had the time to do more accurate work, all the above passages
could be reduced to perfect symmetry, as could every word of the Cipher narrative.
107
74:2
wounded
161
74:2
to
113
74:2
the
110
74:2
death;
94
74:2
and
24
74:2
Bardolfe
105
74:2
is
160
74:2
now
106
74:2
almost
99
74:2
as
93
74:2
good
99
74:2
as
279
75:1
dead;
122
74:2
slain;
128
74:2
killed
123
74:2
out-right
129
74:2
by
103
74:2
the
131
74:2
hand
115
74:2
of
142
74:2
the
251
74:1
old
86
75:1
jade.
BACON HEARS THE BAD NEWS. 683
The faults rest upon the neglect of certain subtle distinctions. For instance, the modi-
fier 50 becomes, when counted upward from the last word of the first subdivision of
column 2 of page 74, 49; just as we see that 79 becomes 78, in the first column of
page 73, if we count from the beginning of the third subdivision, instead of the end
of the second; just as we saw, in column 1 of page 76, that there were 50 words from
the end of scene 2 downward, but 49 words from the beginning of scene 3 downward.
In the same way there are 30 words from the end of the second subdivision of column
2 of page 74, but only 29 from the beginning of the third subdivision; and we will
find this 29 playing an important part hereafter in the Cipher. Now, if we use 49
or 29, where I have employed 50 or 30, we may thereby alter the root-number from
240 to 239, or from 221 to 222, and thus restore the harmony of the movement of
the root-numbers. But it would require another year of patient labor to bring this
about. And it is these subtle differences which make the work so microscopic in
its character; and if they are not attended to closely, they break up the symmetri-
cal appearance of the narrative. But the reader will find, as he proceeds, that
these distinctious are not invented by me to meet the exigencies of this part of my
work; but that they prevail all through the Cipher story. Thus the evidences of
the reality of the Cipher are cumulative; and where one page does not carry con-
viction to the reader, another may; and where both fail, a dozen surely cannot fail
to satisfy him.
And the reader will observe that twenty-six words of the twenty-nine in the
above example all originate in the first column of page 74, and are found in the
second column of the same. One might just as well suppose that the complicated
movements of the heavenly bodies resulted from chance, as to believe that these
twenty-six words, together with all the other seventy-nine words given in the
beginning of this chapter, could have occurred, in the second column of page ^4, by
accident, and at the same time match precisely with the same root-numbers which
we have seen producing coherent sentences on page 75, and which we will find
hereafter to produce coherent sentences on all the pages of these two Plays, so far
as I have examined them. In other words, to deny the existence of the Cipher,
the incredulous reader will have to assert that one hundred and Jive words out of the
two hundred and forty-eight in that column, did, by accident, cohere arithmetically
with each other, and with certain root-numbers, to make the connected story I have
given ! It will require a vaster credulity to believe this than to believe in the
Cipher.
Where the word dead is found in the above example the Cipher story overflows
into the next column, just as it did to produce the narrative of Umfreville stopping
his weary horse near Percy, on the road to St. Albans. And the reader will
observe that the same number, — 93, — which produces dead, down from the top of
the second subdivision in column 1 of page 75, produces also the word jade down
from the top of the first subdivision.
The word old requires some explanation. We have seen that the modifiers in
the second column of page 74 grow out of three subdivisions, the first containing
50 words, the second 167, the third 30. Now, we have seen that in the other
words of this story we start either from the top of column 2 of page 74, or from
the 50 or the 30, etc., and we carry this back practically to the first column of page
73, deduct from it one of the modifiers in that column, return to the top of the first
column of page 74, pass through that column, and the remainder over finds the
Cipher word in the next column forward. But suppose we have deducted a num-
ber from the root-number so large that after going to column 1 of page 73, and
being modified by one of the modifiers there, the remainder is not so great a num-
ber as 284, then, when we try to deduct from it the 284 words on column 1 of
684 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
page 74, there is nothing left to carry over to the next column forward, and the re-
sult is we must find the Cipher word in the first column of page 74, where the count
gives out, instead of in the second. This is just what occurs in the case of the
word o Id. Let me give a parallel instance: — let us take the word as; strictly
speaking, we find it in this way:
523— 50 (74:2)=473— 90 (73:1)=383— 284 (74:1)=99. 99 74:2 as
Let us put the word old through the same formula, and we have it thus
expressed:
523—167 (74:2)=356— 90 (73:1)=266(74:1)— 15 b & //= 251 74:1 old
I. More of the Cipher Story.
But this is not all of the Cipher story that is found in this second column of
page 75; but as it begins to run, as I have shown, from the first column of page 73,
so the root-numbers produced therefrom commence to apply themselves to other
columns besides the second of page 74; for it follows of course that the Cipher can-
not always cling to that column, or it would soon be exhausted; you cannot insert
a story of 2,000 words in a column of 248 words. Hence we will find the Cipher
beginning to radiate, right and left, from column 1 of page 73, to the next column
forward and the next column backward; and even through the fragments of these
columns it will be found to overflow into the next columns, just as we found it
overflowing through the fragments of column 2 of page 74 into column 1 of page
75. Thus the reader will perceive that there is order even in apparent disorder,
and that a symmetrical theory runs all through the Cipher work.
Here we have, following the preceding statement, and in the same order, the
words being alternately derived from 505 and 523, modified by the modifiers in the
last column of page 74, and the firstcolumn of page 73, the following statement. And
the identification of the writer of the internal narrative with Francis Bacon is here
established. It will be seen that it is "your cousin " that is in authority and that
sends out the posts, or mounted men who ride post, to bring Bacon into court to
answer the charges which assail his good name; and we know that Bacon's uncle,
Burleigh, and his cousin, Robert Cecil, really controlled England at that time. And
we will see hereafter that this " cousin " of the Cipher story is this same Cecil —
represented in the Cipher as "Sees-ill," or "Seas-ill," or even "Says-ill;" for the
name had in that day the broad sound of the e, even as the peasant of Ireland still
calls the sea the say. And this is one of the proofs of the reality of my work: the
teller of the story does not say, in a formal manner: "/, Francis Bacon, wrote the
Shakespeare Plays;" but we stumble upon the middle of a long narrative, in which,
possibly, the authorship of the Plays was but a minor consideration.
I would also add that the Fortune and the Curtain were the two leading play-
houses of that day, at which most of the Shakespeare Plays were first produced;
and it will be seen how completely this statement that they were in the hands of
the soldiers accords with the order of the Council stated on page 628, ante, in which
the Queen directed all the theaters to be dismantled, because the actors had brought
matters of state on the stage.
Page and
Word. Column.
523—283=240—142=98. 248—98=150+1=151. 151 74:2 Your
505—284=221—30=191—27=164. 164 73:2 cousin
523—284=239—50=189. 248—189=59+1=60 + 15^=75 74:2 hath
Page and
Column.
Word.
144
73:2
even
211
74:2
sent
123
74:2
out
173
74:1
his
257
74:1
posts
161
74:2
to
87
74:2
bring
177
74:2
you
112
74:2
in.
142
74:2
The
=114
74:2
Fortune
124
74:2
and
130
74:2
the
286
75:1
Curtain
71
74:2
are
125
74:2
both
160
74:2
now
(77).
74:2
full
115
74:2
of
28
75:1
his
174
74:1
troops.
BACON HEARS THE BAD NEWS. 685
505—283=222—78=144.
523—283=240—28=212—1 //=211.
505—284=221—90=131—8 b & //=123.
523—30=493—218=275—90=185—12 b & A— 178.
505—30=475—218=257.
523—284=239—78=161.
505—284=221—30=191—27=164. 248—164=84
+ 1=85+2 //=87.
523—284=239—62=177.
505—284=221—30=191—79=112.
505—284=221—79=142.
523—283=240—90=150. 248—150=98+1=99+15 b=
505—284=221—90=131—7 /;=124.
523— 283=240— 30=210— 79=131— 1//=130.
505—284=221—78=143—50=93. 193+93=286.
523—283=240—62=178. 248—178=70+1=71.
505—284=221—89=132—7 3—125.
523—284=239—79=160.
505—284=221—27=194. 248— 194=54 +1=55+ />=
523—284=239—90=149. 248— 149=99 +1=100 +£=
505—284=221. 79—50=29—1 ,4—28.
523—30=493—219=274—90=184—1 0 />=1 74.
But even this does not exhaust the possibilities of this little column of 248
words in the hands of the magical cryptographist. I stated that 505 and 523 alter-
nated with each other, and that 516 and 513 ran in couples. Much that I have
worked out came from 523 and 505; let us now turn to the other numbers. And
here we have a typical sentence:
516—284=232—30=202. 248—202=46+1=47+22/;= 69
513—284=229—50=179. 248—179=69+1= 70
516—284=232—30=202. 248—202=46+1=47+
24 b & A— 71
513—284=229—50=179. 248—179=69+1=70+2 h= 72
Observe the perfect symmetry of this sentence. Take it in columns: — the
figures of the first column are 516 — 513 — 516 — 513; those of the second column are
284 — 284 — 284 — 284; those of the third column are 232 — 229 — 232 — 229; those of
the fourth column are 30 — 50—30 — 50; those of the fifth column are 202 — 179 — 202
— 179; those of the sixth column, 248 — 248 — 248 — 248; those of the seventh column,
202 — 179 — 202 — 179; and they produce in regular order the 6gth, 701/1, 71st, and
j 2d words, to-wit: the times are wild. And every one of these words is obtained
by going tip the same column. And even in the application of the bracket and
hyphenated words the reader will perceive, as he goes on, a regular system and
sequence.
And here I would call the attention of the reader to the fact that this expres-
sion, " the times are wild" was used in that age where we to-day would say the
times are disturbed or dangerous. We see the expression in this very column:
What news, Lord Bardolfe ? . . .
The times are wild.
74:2
The
74:2
times
74:2
are
74:2
wild.
686
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
One such Cipher sentence as the above is by itself enough to demonstrate the
existence of a Cipher in the Shakespeare Plays. And I think the reader will be
ready to take it for granted that any imperfections which may exist in other sen-
tences are due to my imperfect work, and not to the Cipher itself.
But this sentence does not stand alone: — the proofs are cumulative. He will
find flowing right out of the same roots, varied only by the fact that the ground
gone over becomes exhausted, and the Cipher numbers have therefore to apply
themselves in contiguous columns, a continuous story. And here I would say that
the Earl of Shrewsbury herein referred to was one of the Cecil or anti-Essex
party. He was one of the Commissioners to try Essex on the preliminary charges
preferred against him, and afterwards sat as one of the jury of peers who tried
him for his life.1 He was an acquaintance of Bacon, for we find him on the 15th of
October, 1601. writing the Earl a letter, asking "to borrow a horse and armor for
a public show " of some kind, probably "the joint mask of the four Inns of
Court."2 He was one of the Cecil courtiers, and very likely to have been sent out
by Cecil for the purpose indicated.
516—284=232—18 b & h- 214.
513—284=229—50= 179.
Word.
248-214=34+1=35. 35
248-179=69+1=70+
15 /;=85
516—283=233—50= 183. 248—183=65+1=66. 66
513—284=229—50=179. 179
513—284=229. 229
513—283=230—50= 180— 20 b & /fc=160. 160
516—284=232—21 £=211. 211
513—283=230—50= 180—50=130—7 />=123. 123
=233— 18£&/*=215. 215
51 3— 284=229— 50=1 79 . 248—1 79=69 + 1=70 +
llb&A= 87
513—50=483—217=266. 266
516—283=233—50= 183. 248—183=65+1=66
+15 J— 81
516—28-1=232—50=182. 248—182=66+1=67+15/;= 82
513—284=229—18 b & //=21 1—30=181. 248—181=
Page and
Column.
74:2
The
74:2 Earl
74:2 of
74:2 Shrewsbury
74:2
74:2
84:2
74:2
74:2
67+1=68 + 15 /;=83.
516—283=233-30=203. 248—203=45+1=46.
513—284=229—50=179—50=129.
516—284=232—50=182. 248—182=66+1=67.
513—284=229—18 b & A=21 1—30=181. 248—181=
67+1=68.
516—284=232—217=15. 447—15=432+1=433.
51 3—50=463—1 97=266.
516—284=232—217=15 .
513—218=295—10 £=285—284=1.
516—284=232—2 //=230.
513—283=230—30=200.
83
46
129
68
433
226
15
1
230
200
516—284=232—18=214. 248—214=34+1=35+2 //= 37
74:2
74:1
74:2
74:2
74:2
74:2
74:2
74:2
74:2
75:1
74:1
74:2
74:2
74:2
74:2
74:2
is
now
sent
out
to
bring
them
all
before
him
and
by
some
stratagem
make
them
say
who
furnished
these
plays.
But this is not all the story originating from the first column of page 74, and
1 Spedding, Life and Works, vol. 2, pp. 173 and 283. 'Ibid., p. 370.
BACON HEARS THE BAD NEWS. 68 7
found in the second column of page 74 and the first column of page 75. For
instance, in the first column of page 75 we have the conversation between Percy
and Umfreville, and a description of how Percy " struck the rowell of his spur
against the panting sides of his horse " and rode ahead to St. Albans to tell the
news. And in the second column of page 74 we have the directions from Bacon
to the servant " who keeps the gate" to take Umfreville into the orchard, where
Bacon followed him and had a secret conversation with him, in which he tells him
all the news which is related in the following chapters. To work out all this
fully would take more space and time than I can afford; but if the reader will
employ the root-numbers I have given above, and modify them as I have shown
in the above examples, he will be able to elaborate this part of the Cipher story for
himself.
I am aware that Collier ' claims that the Fortune play-house was built origi-
nally in 1599-1600, by Phillip Henslow and Edward Allen, while I suppose the
narrative to refer to 1597; but this, in all probability, was a re-building or enlarge-
ment; for Maitland called the Fortune "the oldest theater in London," and Sir
John Chamberlain spoke of it as "the first play-house in this town." It would be
very natural on such re-building or enlargement to use the old name, which already
had a trade value; and we know that the Fortune play-house was burned down in
1621 and re-erected with the same name; and if this was done in 1621, it may also
have been done in 1599-1600.
1 English DratJiatic Poetry, vol. iii, p. 114.
CHAPTER V.
CECIL TELLS THE STORY OF MARLOWE.
Let them tell thee tales
Of woeful ages long ago betid.
Richard //., z>, /.
UMFREVILLE tells Bacon what Cecil told the Queen. Cecil
is trying to show that Shakspere did not write the Plays, and
incidentally he tells the story of Marlowe. The words more-low
doubtless give the broad pronunciation which attached to the name
Marlowe in that age; and for the better hiding of the Cipher it was
necessary to use words having the same sound, but a different
spelling.
The facts stated in the Cipher narrative accord substantially
with what we know of the biography of Marlowe.
The dagger of Francis Archer averted one trouble which was hanging omin-
ously over his victim's head. A very few days before the poet's death a "note"
of his " damnable opinions and judgment of religion and God's work had been laid
before Elizabeth's council, with a view to the institution of proceedings against
him." J
And, singularly enough, when we turn to the original paper now
in the British Museum (MS. Harl. 6853, folio 320), in which the in-
former, Richard Bame, made those charges against Marlowe, after
giving many of the poet's irreligious and anti-Christian utterances,
the document concludes with the following:
He sayeth, moreover, that he hath coated [quoted] a number of contrarieties out
of the Scriptures, which he hath geeven to some great ??ien, who in convenient tyme
shal be named. When these things shall be called in question, the witnesses shall be
produced.2
It would almost seem as if there was a knot of young men,
among whom was Bacon, of an irreligious turn of mind; and
1 The Works of Marlowe, Chatto & Wind us, p. 20. 2Ibid., note B, page 370.
688
CECIL TELLS THE STORY OF MARLOWE. 689
Marlowe had inconsiderately repeated in public some of the cur-
rent expressions which he had heard among them; and the " contra-
rieties out of the Scriptures" might have been the very Characters of
a Believing Christian in Paradoxes, which Bacon may have read
over to his Bohemian associates. And we can here see that who-
ever had this " note" of the informer's statements laid before the
council, knew that there were "some great men" connected, in
some way, with Marlowe, whom it was probably desirous to get at.
And all this strikingly confirms the Cipher story.
And here I would note that heretofore the Cipher has advanced
from one column to the next; but as we now reach the beginning
of the second scene, it not only flows forward to the next column,
but it moves backward and forward from the end of the same
scene second, and also from the beginning and end of the preceding
scene, called the Induction. And it will be observed that, having in
this way more points of departure, the root-numbers do not alternate
as in the simpler instances already given, but a great deal more of
the story flows out of one number.
And I would further note that heretofore the outside play bore
some resemblance to the internal story, because the Cipher words
were all packed in a small compass; but here we come to a part of
the work where the Cipher narrative, being more widely scattered,
has no resemblance to the tale told in the play; and yet out of
the same root-numbers is eliminated a narrative as coherent and
rhetorical as that already given.
It will be observed that the following sentence alternates regu-
larly between 523 and 505, and that in each instance the starting-
point is from the top of the third subdivision of column 2 of page
74. From and including the word my, at the beginning of the
sentence, " My Lord, I over-rode him on the way," to the top of the
column, there are 219 words. And the reader will perceive that
each word starts from this point, so that we have, in this long sen-
tence of twenty words, 523 alternated with 505, in each case 219
being deducted; and each word is either the 304th word or the
286th word. But in the space comprising those 219 words there
are twenty-one bracket words. These constitute the "21 o" which,
the reader will see, are deducted from both 304 and 286. The 15
690
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
b & // refers, as shown previously, to the 15 bracketed and hyphen-
ated words comprised in the upper or lower subdivisions of col-
umn 1 of page 75, the count moving through these to reach the
next column.
523—219=304—254=50. 248—50=198+1=199+1 £=
505—219=286—50=236. 248-236=12+1=13+
24 £ & 4=37.
523—219=304—218=86. 447—86=361+1=362+3 b-
50 5— 21 9=286— 50=236.
523—219=304—21 £=283. 283—193=90. 284—
90=194+1=195+6 4=201.
505—219=286—21 £=265. 447—265=182+1=
183+4 4=187.
523—219=304—21 £=283. 283—193=90. 284—
90=194+1=195.
505—219=286—21 £=265. 447—265=182+1=183.
523—219=304—50=254.
505—219=286—254=32—15 b & 4=17. 508—17=
491 + 1=492+1A=493. 493 75:1 stage
This sentence is perfectly symmetrical. Observe the arrangement of the lines:
(1) 523—505—523—505—523—505—523—505—523—505; (2) 219—219—219—219—
219— 219— 219— 219— 219— 219; (3) 304—286—304—286—304—286—304—286—
304 — 286.
505—219=286—30=256.
523—219=304—21 £=283—218=65.
505—197=308—254=54. 248—54=194+1=195.
523—219=304—22 b & 4=282. 447—282=165 + 1=
505—219=286—30=256. 447—256=191 + 1=192.
523—219=304—21 £=283. 283—218=65. 284—65=
219+1=220+6 4=226.
505—219=286—254=32—15 £ & k— 17. 508—17
491 + 1=492
523—219=304—21 £=283.
505—21 9=286—1 93=93.
523—219=304—30=274. 447—274=173+1=174.
Page and
Column.
Word.
=200
74:2
These
37
74:2
plays
=365
75:1
are
236
75:1
put
201
74:1
abroad
187
75:1
at
195
74:1
first
183
75:1
upon
254
75:1
the
256
75:1
in
65
74:1
the
195
74:2
name
166
75:1
of
192
75:1
More
226
74:1
low,
492
75:2 a
283
75:1 woe-begone,
93
75:2 sullen
174
75:1
fellow.
Here the Cipher numbers change from 523 and 505 to 516 and 513.
51 6—167=349—30=319—254=65.
516—167=349—30=319.
516—167=349—21 £=328. 498—328=170+1=171.
513—167=346—30=316—193=123—15=108. 448—
108=340+1=341.
513—167=346—254=92.
513—167=346—254=92—15 £ & 4=77. 448—77=
371 + 1=372.
513—167=346—254=92. 448—92=356+1=357.
65
319
171
75:2
76:1
76:1
He
had
engaged
341
92
76:1
75:2
in
a
372
357
76:1
76:1
quarrel
with
CECIL TELLS THE STORY OF MARLOWE.
691
89
433
359
Word.
513—167=346— 1 4=345— 30=315. 498—315=183+
1=184+8 £—198. 192
513—167=346— 22 £ & 4=324—30=294—50 (76.1.)=
244—4 4=240. 240
516—167=349—50=299. 448—299=149+1=150. 150
513—167=346—254=92. 92
516— 167=349— 22 £ & A— 327— 284— 48. 248—43=205
+ 1=206+1 £=207. 207
516—167=349—50=299—49 (76:1)=250. 250
516—167=349—22 £ & 4=327—30=297—50=247—
193=54—15=39.
513—167=346—254=92—15 b & A— 77. 508—77=
431 + 1=432 + 1 4=433.
513—167=346—254=92. 447—92=355+1=356 +-
3 £=359.
516— 167=349— 49 (76:1)=300. 508—300=208+1= 209
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327. 327
516—167=349—30=319—197 (74:2) =122. 284—
122=162+1=163. 163
513—167=346—1 4=345— 30=315— 10 b & 4=305. 305
516— 167=349— 22 b& 4=327. 498—327=171 + 1= 172
516—167=349—50=299. 603—299=304+1=305. 305
513—167=346—22 b & 4=324—30=294. 294
516—167=349—49 (76:1)=300. 603—300=303+1= 304
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327— 254=73. 508—73=
435+l=436+l/*=437.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—50=277—7 b & 4=
516—167=349. 448—349=99+1=100+11 £=111.
516—167=349—30=319—49 (176.1) =270.
513—167=346—22 b & 4=324—248=76. 284—76=
208+1=209+6 4=215.
516—167=346—30=319. 447—319=128+1=129+
16 £ & 4=145.
513—167=346—22 b & 4=324— 248=76. 2°4— 76=
208+1=209.
513—167=346—22 b & 4=324— 248=76.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327— 30=297— 284=1 3—
10£(74:1)=3. 237—3=234+1=235.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—248 (74:2)=79. 284—
79=205+1=206+6 A— 212.
513— 167=346— 22 £& 4=324— 248 (74:2)=76— 1 4=
516—167=349—22 b & k— 827— 248— 79.
513—167=346—22 b & 4=324—248=76—9 b & 4=67.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—248=79—8 b & 4 exc.=
516—1 67=349—22 b & 4=327—248=79—7 £=72.
513—167=346—22 b & 4=324— 50=274— 248=26.
513—167=346—22 b & 4=324—50=274— 248=26.
513—167=346—22 b & 4=324—248=76.
513—167=346— 248=98—24 b & 4 (74:2)
=74—10 £=64. 64
437
270
111
270
215
145
209
76
235
Page and
Column.
76:1
76:1
76:1
75:2
74:2
76.2
75:2
75:2
75:1
75:2
76:1
74:1
76:2
76:1
76:2
76:1
76:2
75:2
76:2
76:1
75:2
74:1
75:1
74:1
75:1
73:2
one
Arch 1
or, \
a
servant,
about
wanton,
ending
in
a
bloody
hand
to
hand
fight,
in
which
he
was
slain.
The
point
of
his
J12
74:1
sword
75
75:1
struck
79
75:1
against
67
75:1
his
71
75:1
head
72
75:1
and
26
75:2
eye,
26
74:1
making
76
74:1
fearful
74:1 wounds.
6g?.
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
This account of Marlowe's death agrees exactly with the records and traditions
which have come down to us. The parish register of Debtford, the village to which
he had fled, records " Christopher Marlowe, slaine by ffrancis Archer, the I of
June, 1593." His biographer says:
In the last week of May, 1593, he was carousing at Debtford, in — to say the
least — very doubtful company; and, taking offense at some real or supposed insult
to himself or his female companion, he unsheathed his dagger to avenge it, and,
in the scuffle which ensued, received a mortal wound in the head from his own
weapon.
And in a contemporary ballad,
death is thus told:
The Atheist 's Tragedie, the story of Marlowe's
His lust was lawless as his life,
And brought about his death,
For, in a deadlie mortal strife,
Striving to stop the breath
Of one who was his rival foe,
With his own dagger slaine,
He groaned and word spake never moe,
Pierced through the eye and braine.
The reader will observe the exquisite cunning with which the name of Archer
is concealed in the text. The first syllable is the first syllable of Arch-bishop, sepa-
rated from bishop by a hyphen. Arch comes from 513 — 167 — 30, and or from 516
— 167 — 50: here we have the two common modifiers 30 and 50. But to obtain the
first syllable, we count in the brackets and hyphens in 167; in the other case we do
not; and, in the first instance, we begin at the end of scene 2, descend to the bot-
tom of the column, and, returning to the top of the column, go downward; in the
other case, we begin at the same point of departure and go up the column.
But there is even more of the story about Marlowe. We have references to
these very proceedings against him for blasphemy.
523
167
356
50
356
30
356
21
356
22 b & h
356
306
326
335
334
Word.
523—167=356—50=306—193=113. 508—113=395
+ 1=396. 396
523—167=356—284=72—7 h (74:1)=65. 65
523—167=356—50=306—13 £=293. 293
523—167=356—192=164. 508—164=344+1=345. 345
523—167=356—21 b (167)=335— 192=143— 15 b & h
=128. 498—128=370+1=371. 371
523—167=356—21 b (167)=335— 192=143. 143
523—167=356—248=108. 193+108=301—7 b & h= 294
523—167=356—248=108. 193+108=301. 301
523—167=356—50=306. 448—306=143. 143
523—167=356—193=163. 458—163=295+1=296. 296
523— 1 67=356— 193=1 63. 458—1 63=295 + 1=296 +
3 /;=299. 299
Page and
Column.
75:2 My
74:2 father
75:1 would,
75:2 in
523—167=356—30=326—254=72.
72
76:1
75:2
75:1
75:1
76:1
76:2
76:2
75:2
his
wrath,
have
burned
the
horson
rascally-
yea-
forsooth-
knave
alive
CECIL TELLS THE STORY OF MARLOWE.
693
Word.
Page and
Column.
97
75:1 in
143
76:1 the
306
75:1 fire
128
76:1 of
441
76:2 Smithfield
461
76:2
the
58
75:2
sin
501
76:2
he
502
76:2
hath
464
76:2
committed
523—167=356. 447—356=91 + 1=92+5 £=97.
523—167=356. 498—356=142+1=143.
523—167=356—50=306.
523—167=356—21 £=335—192=143—15 b & £=128.
523—167=356—193=163. 603—163=440+1=441.
523—167=356—193=163—50=113. 603—113=490+
1^491 + 3 £=494. 494 76:2 for
523—167=356—21 b (167)=335— 192=143. 603—
143=460+1=461.
523—167=356—50=306—248=58.
523—167=356—253=103. 603—103=500+ 1=501 .
523—167=356—254=102. 603—102=501+1=502.
523—167=356—21 b (167)=335— 192=143. 603—
143=460 + 1=461 + 3 £=464.
Here the Cipher root-number changes, by one degree, from 523 — 167=356 to
516—167=349.
516— 167=349— 22 b& £=327— 248=79. 79 75;1 against
516—167=349—22 b & £=327—248=79.
369 + 1=370.
516—167=349—22 b & £=327—248=79— ,
516—167=349—22 b & £=327—30=297. 498—297=
201 + 1=202. 202 76:1 the
516— 167=349— 22 b& £=327— 193=134. 134 75:2 state.
The reader will observe here another of those extraordinary hyphenations,
which, of themselves, ought to go far to prove the artificial and unnatural charac-
ter of the text of the Plays: rascally-yea-forsooth-knave. Here are four words
united into one word by hyphens ! I doubt if another such example can be found
in the literature of the last two hundred and fifty years.
Smithfield, the reader is aware, is that part of London where offenders against
religion were burned alive. It was there John Rogers suffered in 1555.
If there is no Cipher here, is it not remarkable that Smithfield should occur in
the text just where it is wanted so as to cohere arithmetically with burned, alive and
fire. And we will see hereafter, in the chapter on the Purposes of the Plays, that
the same 163 (523 — 167=356 — 193=163) which, carried up the second column of
page 76, brings us to Smithfield, carried up the first column of the same page brings
us to religion, the 336th word in the column. A very pregnant association of ideas
in that age: Smithfield and religion ! For we will see that Cecil charges that the
Plays, not only under the name of Shakespeare, but also under that of Marlowe,
were written by Bacon with intent to bring the religious opinions of the day into
contempt.
448—79=
370
76:1
Heaven
7 b=72.
72
75:1
and
""'VARSITY)
CHAPTER VI.
THE STORY OE SHAKSPERE'S YOUTH.
long
To hear the story of your life, which must
Take the ear strangely.
Tempest, v, I.
HERETOFORE the story has flowed mainly from the first col-
umn of page 74, or, as in the last chapter, from the last sub-
division of column 2 of page 74. We come now to a part of the story
which is derived altogether from the middle subdivision of column
2 of page 74, and which flows forward and backward, after this
fashion:
Page 74.
Col.i.^,Col.2.
/ r~
\ V /
1 1
1 (
4f=
1 ' '
(i 1
t
— *-
1
Itl
i||
*j \
l s^
Page 75.
Col. 1. X0I.2.
\ /
\
V |
V
y
\
A \
Page 76.
Col. 1. -Col. 2,
/
1 1
1 /
\ —
j
l\
That is to say: starting from that middle subdivision of column
2 of page 74, the count is carried up and down the next column,,
forward and backward, and through these, or their subdivisions, to
the contiguous columns. And the count (as indicated by the con-
tinuous line) is carried forward to the end of the same scene in
which that second subdivision is found, and thence radiates up and
down, right and left, as shown in the diagram. It is also carried
backward to the beginning of the preceding scene, and of the scene
preceding that, and from these points of departure radiates up and
694
THE STORY OF SHAKSPERE'S YOUTH. 695
down, backward and forward, until all the possibilities are ex-
hausted.
And even the incredulous reader will be forced to observe that
these numbers, so applied, bring out a body of words totally
different from those which told of the flight of the actors or the bring-
ing of the news to St. Albans; and these words describe the events
of Shakspere's youth, and could scarcely be twisted into describing
anything else.
And every word is produced by one of the following root-
numbers, used directly or subjected to the ordinary modifications,
to-wit: 356, 338, 349 and 346. And these numbers are thus ob-
tained:
523 505 516 513
167 167 167 167
356 338 349 346
This 167 is, of course, the number of words in that middle sub-
division of 74:2; that is to say, from 51, the first word of the middle
subdivision, to 318, the last word of the same, counting in that last
word, there are just 167 words.
But the above numbers are first modified by the counting in of
the bracketed words and additional hyphenated words in that sec-
ond subdivision of column 2 of page 74, to-wit, 22. This gives us,
applied to the above root-numbers, the following results:
356 338 349 346
22 22 22 22
334 316 327 324
And these, in turn, are modified by the modifiers on pages 74 and
73, as in the former chapters. And here again, as in the former
instances, for a time the 523 alternates with the 505, and the 516
with the 513, and then the story is all told by a single number.
But these numbers are also modified by the counting in of the
21 bracket words alone in that second subdivision, exclusive of the
one additional hyphenated word; and also by counting in the one
hyphenated word alone exclusive of the 21 bracket words; and this
gives us the following results:
Counting in the bracketed words alone —
696 THE CIPHER NAUR A TIVE.
356 338 327 346
21 21 21 21
335 317 306 325
Counting in the hyphenated word alone —
356 338 327 346
1111
355 337 326 345
And it will be observed hereafter that these numbers are cun-
ningly adjusted so as to use the same words in different sentences,
the external play, as well as the internal story, being twisted to con-
form thereto. And hence peculiarities of expression may some-
times be accounted for by the necessities of this Cipher story inter-
locking with itself.
I do not give the story in its regular order, but in fragments, se-
lecting first those examples which are simplest, and therefore more
easily capable of demonstration. Describing Shakspere's revenge
on Sir Thomas Lucy, the Cipher story furnishes us the following
statements. The 145 and 146 relate to the second subdivision of
the second column of page 76; there being 145 words from the top
of the subdivision inclusive and 146 words from the end word in-
clusive of the first subdivision. There are also three words in
brackets in this subdivision, and these, when counted in, increase
the 145 to 148, and the 146 to 149. The 254 and 193, used below,
are, of course, the same 193 and 254 which produced the story of the
flight of the actors; that is to say, they represent the two subdi-
visions of column 1 of page 75.
505—167=338—284=54—7 //=47.
523—167=356—22 b & //=334— 145=189— 8 b & A—
505—167=338—146=192.
523—167=356—50=306—145=1 61.
505—167=338—145=193.
523—167=356—22 b & 7^=334—50=284—254=30.
448—30=418+1=419.
505—167=338—145=193—3 £—190.
523—167=356—22 b & //=334— 254=80— 15 b & /*=
505—167=338—22 b & ^=316—30=286. 457—286=
171 + 1=172.
523—167=356—22 b & /z=334— 145=189. 448—189=
259+1=260.
Word.
Page and
Column.
47
74:2
He
181
77:1
goes
192
76:1
one
161
77:1
day
193
76:1
and
419
76:1
with
190
76:1
ten
65
76:1
of
172
76:2
his
260
76:1
followers
THE STORY OF SHAA'SPERE'S YOUTH.
697
505—167=338—22=316—30=286—5 /;=281.
523—167=356—30=326. 448—326=122+1=123.
505—167=338—50=288—145=143.
523—167=356—30=326—50=276—254=22+
448=470.
505—167=338—50=288—284=4.
523—167=356. 356—146=210—6 *— 204.
505—167=338—22=316—145=171—3 *— 168. 448—
168=330+1=331.
523—167=356—22 b & //=334— 30=304— 30=274—
145=128—3 £=125. 448—125=323+1=324.
505—167=338—22=316—145=171. 498—171=328.
523—167=356—22=334—193=141—15=126—49=77
505— 167=338— 22=316— 50=C66.
523—167=356—30=326—193=133. 508—133=375 -+
1=376.
505— 1 67=338— 30=308— 1 93=1 15 .
505—167=338—5 /z=335
523—167=356—30=326—145=181—3 £=177—9 b & b
505—167=338—50=288—145=143.
523—167=356—22=334—50=284—254=30—15 £ & h
=15+448=463.
505—1 67=338—145=193—6 £=187.
523—166=357—50=306—145=161. 448—161=
287+1=288.
523—167=356—22=334—50=284—193=91 . 448—
91=357+1=358.
505—167=338—50=288—22=266—145=121. 448—
121=327+1=328.
523—167=356—22=334—14 £=320.
505— 167=338— 22=316— 145=171— 3 £=168.
523—167=356—145=211. 448—211=237+1=238.
505—167=338—14 £=324.
523—167=356—50=306—284=22. 248—22=226+ 1
505—167=338—11 £ & //=327.
523—167=356—50=306—284=22.
505—167=338—284=54—18 £ & //=36.
Word.
Page and
Column.
281
76:1
did
123
76:1
lift
143
76:1
the
470
76:1
water
4
204
74:1
76:1
gate
of
331
r6:l
the
324
76:1
fish
328
76:1
pond
77
76:2
off
266
76:1
the
376
75:2
hinges
115
76:1
and
335
76:1
turns
=168
76:1
all
143
76:1
the
463
76:1
water
187
76:1
out
288
76:1
from
358
76:1
the
328
76:1
pond,
320
76:1
froze
168
76:1
all
238
76:1
the
324
76:1
fish,
227
74:2
and
327
76:2
girdles
22
74:2
the
36
74:2
orchard.
There may, of course, be flaws discovered in the workmanship of the above;
but I'think the candid man will concede that these significant words could not all
have come together through the same root-numbers, by accident. They will be
found nowhere else in the same order. In fact, pond is not found in any other
place in these two plays, and but four other times in all the Shakespeare Plays,
and froze occurs but this one time in both these plays, and but three other times in
all the Shakespeare Plays; while fish occurs but once in 2d Henry IV. But here
we have fish, pond and froze and turns all coming together in the same paragraph;
and in the next paragraph water, and in the same column nearly all the words out
of which the above sentence is constructed. The word hinges is rare; it occurs but
one other time in all the Plays, and the word hinge but twice. It would be little
less than a miracle if these unusual words should all come together in one spot,
698
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
just where they are needed, to tell the story of Shakspere's youth. And the story
that is here told, be it observed, while consistent with the traditions of Stratford
that there had been a riot (the same riot alluded to in The Merry Wives of Windsor),
in which the young men of the town took part with Shakspere as their leader,
against Sir Thomas Lucy, is, at the same time, not a statement of anything which
had already come down to us.
And to show that this story is not forced, observe how markedly the significant
words grow out of the root-numbers. For instance, 505 less 167 is 338; the 338th
word is sincere, which, as we will see hereafter, refers to Shakspere's father; but,
if we count in the five hyphenated words, then the 338th word is the 333d
word, turns— turns the water out of the pond. But if we count in the fourteen
bracketed words, then the 338th word is the 324th word, fish. And if we take 523
and deduct 167, we have 356, which is rising; or, counting in the 22 bracketed and
hyphenated words contained in the 167 words, we have 334, which is insurrection,
referring, with rising, to the riot inaugurated by the boys of Stratford; and, if we
count in the 14 bracketed words in the column, we have 320, froze.
But let us go a step further and find 356 in the first column of page 75, and the
word is away, referring to the running away of the young men; while 334 (356 less
the 22 b & // words) is fought; and up the column it is spur, the latter part of Shak-
spere's name; and if we take 356 and modify it by deducting the modifier 30, we
have 326, and if we take from this 193, the first subdivision of column 1 of page 75,
the remainder is 133, the word bloody; and if we take 505 — 167=338 and deduct
from this the modifier 50, we have 288, and if we carry this down the first column
of page 76, counting in the twelve bracketed words, we find that the 288th word is
the 276th word, fight. So that we see that not only do these roots, even subjected
to the simplest treatment, yield the story I have given in detail about the destruction
of the fish-pond, but the same roots also tell the story of how Shak-spur fought a
bloody fight. But all this I shall give with more detail hereafter.
What I claim is, that the existence of the Cipher is not only proved by the fact
that certain root-numbers, applied to a particular column, yield a consistent nar-
rative peculiar to that column, and which could not be found anywhere else; but
that these same root-numbers applied to other contiguous columns, produce other
parts of that same story, each part being consistent with the rest and forming
together a continuous narrative.
For instance, these root-numbers, so applied, give us the following narrative of
the battle between the young men of Stratford and Sir Thomas Lucy's game-
keepers:
505—167=338—22=316—30=286—15 b & //=271.
523—167=356—22 b & 7^=334—50=284.
505—167=338—30=308—5 /^=303.
523—167=356—22 b & //=334— 30=304.
505—167=338—30=308—193=115.
523— 167=350—22 b A //=334.
505—1 67=338—22 b & //=316— 193=123. 508—123=
885+1— 886+1 >&— 887 '
523—167=356—30=326. 326—193=133.
505—167=338—50=288—12^=276.
505—167=338—22 b & A— 316— 5 ,4—811
505—167=338—50=288—193=95,
Word.
271
284
Page and
Column.
74:1
75:1
They
drew
303
76:1
their
304
115
76:1
76:1
weapons
and
334
76:1
fought
387
75:2
a
133
276
311
75:2
76:1
76:1
bloody
fight
for
95
76:1
an
218
75:1
left
238
75:1
his
85
75:1
poor
131
75:1
young
86
75:1
jade
THE STORY OF SHAKSPERE'S YOUTH. 699
Page and
Word. Column.
505—167=338—30=308—254=54. 508—54=454+1 455 75:1 hour,
505— 167=338— 22 £ & // — 316 — 50=266— 4 £=262. 262 74:1 not
505—167=338. 338 75:1 stopping
505—167=338—30=308—193=115. 508—115=
393+1=394. 394 75:2 even
505—167=338—30=308. 498—308=190+1=191. 191 76:1 to
523—167=356—22 £ & £=334—248=86—50=36—
9 bh A— 27. 27 75:1 breathe.
The reader will note the constant recurrence of the numbers 316, 334, 308, etc.
And here we have a statement which accords well with what we know, by
tradition, of Shakspere's hurried departure for London:
505—167=338—30=308. 308 75:1 He
505—167=338—50=288—50 (76:1)=238. 447-238
=209+1=210+8 £—218.
505—167=338—50=288—50 (76:1)=238.
523— 167=356— 22 b & £=334— 248=86— 1 £=85.
505— 167=338— 193=145— 14 b & A— 131.
523—167=356—22 b & £=334— 248=86.
505—167=338—22 b & £=316— 30=286— 1 93=93—
10 £=85. 83 74:1 big
523— 167=356— C 2 b & £=334—248=86—22 £ (74:2)=
64— 1£=63. 63 75:1 with
505— 167=338— 22 £& £=316— 30=289— 193=93. 93 74:1 child.
Observe that there is a difference of precisely ten words between big and child:
— big is 83, child is 93; and there are precisely ten bracketed words in the column
above the 83 and 93. The evidences of arithmetical adjustment are found every-
where.
And here, in the same connection, I would call the attention of the critical
reader to the marvelous evidences of the artificial character of the text shown in
that word jade. It is often used in the narrative in connection with the word old —
"the old jade" — to describe the Queen. It would, of course, have provoked
suspicion if the Plays had been dotted all over with the word qtceen; and hence, as
Bacon had repeated cause to refer to her in his internal narrative, he had to do so
in some indirect way; and one of his favorite expressions was "the old jade."
But it would not have been safe to use even these words too often, and therefore,
when they were employed, the scenes and fragments of scenes had to be so
adjusted that they would fit to them by the different counts of the Cipher, so that
they might be used over and over again, in the progress of the story.
For instance:
(1.) We have here seen that 523, less all the words in the second subdivision
of 74:2, is 334. If now we commence to count from the beginning of column 74:2,
the 334th word is the 86th word in the next column, jade. (2.) But if we take 523
again, and deduct from it the same second subdivision, exclusive of the words in
brackets and the additional hyphenated words, we have 356; and if again we com-
mence to count from the top of column 74:2, but count in the words in brackets
and carry the remainder over to the next column, again the count lights on the
same 86th word — jade. (3.) And if we again take the first count above, 334, and
modify it by deducting the modifier 30, we have left 304, and if we begin to count
yoo THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
from the bottom of the second subdivision of 74:2, counting up and forward, the
304th word is the same 86th word — jade. (4.) And if we take 505 and commence
to count from the end of the first subdivision of the same 74:2, and count down-
ward, we have left 307; if we carry this to the middle of the next column, 75:1, and
count upwards from the beginning of the second subdivision, we have 114 left, and
this carried up from the end of the first subdivision, 75:1, counting in the bracketed
words and additional hyphenated words, again brings us to the same word, jade.
(5.) And if we go back to the second example above (523 — 167=356), and again
begin at the top of 74:2, and count down, we have left 108; and this carried up the
next column from the bottom of the first subdivision, not counting in the bracketed
and hyphenated words, again brings us to the 86th word, jade. (6.) And if we take
505 and count from the top of the third subdivision of 74:2 upward, we have 286
left; and this, less 193, is 93, and this, carried down column 1 of page 75, count-
ing in the words in brackets, falls again on the same 86th word, jade. (7.) And
if we take 505 and deduct 167, we have left 338; modify this by deducting the modi-
fier 50, and we have 288 left; carry this up through the first subdivision of column
1 of page 75, and we have 95 left; descend again down column 1 of page 75, but
counting in this time the additional hyphenated as well as the bracketed words, and
again we come to the 86th word, jade. There are other counts which produce the
same result, but they are with root-numbers with which the reader is not so familiar
as with the above.
Here, then, are seven times where the same word, jade, is reached by seven
different countings, used in seven different parts of the same Cipher narrative.
One can conceive from this the careful adjustments to each other of pages, scenes,
fragments of scenes, words, brackets and hyphens which were necessary to perfect
this delicate piece of skeleton work, before Bacon set pen to paper to manipulate
the external padding into a coherent play. And one can perceive, also, the extent
of a Cipher narrative in which the Queen is so often referred to. The truth is, I
give but fragments of the story.
If the reader thinks that this is also accident, let him take some other numbers
and see if he can make this word match with them. It is doubtful if he can find
a single number (not a Cipher number) which can be made to agree, from the
starting-point of any of these pages or subdivisions, with this word, jade, so as to
cohere precisely. I have tried it with many numbers without success. And it
must be remembered that the seven numbers here used, and which do match with
jade, hold an infinitesimally small proportion to all the combinations of figures
which are possible even in groups of three each. It would be an Ossa of marvels
piled on a Pelion of miracles if these seven figures should, by accident, be so pre-
cisely adjusted to the size of the pages, scenes and fragments of scenes, and to the
exact number of bracketed and hyphenated words therein, as to produce, by all
these different countings, the same word jade.
And when we turn to the word old, which accompanies the word jade when
applied to the Queen, we find the same significant adjustments; but not so numer-
ous, for we have seen the word jade once applied to Shakspere's wife, and it is also
applied in the Cipher story to a horse.
(1.) If, for instance, we take 505 and deduct 254, the second subdivision of 75:1,
we have left 251, a root-number which we shall find to be extensively used; we turn
to 74:1, and the 251st word is old. (2.) If we take 505 and deduct 167, we have
338; if we count in the 22 bracket and hyphenated words, this becomes 316; this,
modified by deducting 50, becomes 266; and if we carry this down the first column
of page 74, counting in the bracketed and hyphenated words, the 266th word is
THE STORY OE SHAKSPERE'S YOUTH.
701
the 251st word, the same word old. (3.) If, again, we take 523 and deduct 218,
(from 30 upward 74:2), we have 305 left; deduct the modifier 50, and we have 255
left; this carried down 74:1, counting in the hyphenated words, brings us again to
old. (4.) If we take 523 and deduct 167, we have 356, and, less the b & h words,
334; and, less the modifier 30, it becomes 304: if we count down the 74:2 column,
counting in the bracketed words, we have a remainder of 34, which, carried up the
next column forward, brings us again to the same word, old. (5.) If we take 505
and deduct 198, (50, 74:2 downward), we have 307; or, less the 22 bracket words,
285; carry this again through 74:2 and we have a remainder of 37, which, carried
up the next column forward, 74:1, counting in the hyphenated words, again brings
us to the same word old.
Let me put these remarkable results in regular order:
505—254=251.
505—167=338—22 4 & 4=316— 50=266— 15 b & 4=
523—218=305—50=255—4 b^ 251.
523—167=356—22 4 & 4=334— 30=304— 248=.:0—
224=34. 284—34=250+1=251.
505—198=307—22 b & 4=285— 248=37. 284—37=
247+1=248+3 4=251.
523—167=356—22 b & 4=334— 248=86.
523—167=356—248=108—22 b (74:2)=86.
523— 167=356— 22 b & 4=334—30=304—218=86.
505—198=307—193=114 193—114=79+1=80+
64 & 4=86.
523—167=356—248=108. 193—108=85+1=86.
505—219=286—193=93—7 4=86.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95—9 b & 4=86.
And that these results are not accidental the reader can satisfy himself by ob-
serving that every one of these olds and Jades comes out of 505 and 523; not one is
derived from the other root-numbers 516 and 513. This shows that it is in the
part of the story told by 505 and 523 the Queen is referred to as ''the old jade."
And see how completely some of these accord, the same root-number producing
both words:
523—167=356—22 b & 4=334— 30=304— 248=56—
22 4=34. 284—34=250+1=251
523—167=356—22 b & 4=334—30=304—!
Again:
505—198=307—22 b & 4=285—248=37.
247+1=248+3 4=251.
505—198=307—22 b & 4=285—198=87-
Page and
Column.
Word.
251
74:1
old
251
74:1
old
251
74:1
old
251
74:1
old
251
74:1
old
86
75:1
jade
86
75:1
jade
86
75:1
jade
86
75:1
jade
86
75:1
jade
86
75:1
jade
86
75:1
jade
251
74:1
old
218=86.
86
75:1
jade
284—37=
251
74:1
old
1=86.
86
75:1
jade
CHAPTER VII.
TJ1K PURPOSES OF THE PLA VS.
Now I see
The bottom of your purpose.
AUys Well that Ends Well, ///, 7.
CECIL tells the Queen that, having heard that the Essex party
were representing the deposition and murder of Richard II.
on the stage, and cheering uproariously at every "hit," even as the
liberty-loving German students in a later age applauded every preg-
nant sentence in Schiller's play of The Robbers, he sent a friend
to ascertain the facts, who returned with the statement that the
reports were all true. And we have the following sentence, descrip-
tive of the scene on the death of the King, who was murdered at
Pomfret by Sir Pierce of Exton, as represented in the last act of
the play of Richard II.:
523
167
356
356—22 b & 4=334— 193=141
356—50=306—284=22+ 193=
356—22 b & 4=334— 248=86-
356—254=102—15 b & /ft— 87.
356—22 b & 4=334— 248=86.
356—22 b & //=334— 248=86. 284—86=198 + 1
199+6 4=205.
356 356
356
21 * (167) 1/4(167)
22 b & 4 (167)
335 355
334
Word.
Page and
Column.
1—15 b & 4=126.
126
75:2
But
=215—2 4=213.
213
75:1
when
-1 4=85.
85
75:1
poor
, 448—87=361 + 1=
362
76:1
King
448—86=362+1=
303
76:1
Richard
205
.4:1
fell
356—30=326—193=133—15 b & 4 =118. 498—118=
380+1=381.
356—22 b & 4=334—50=284—17 b & A— 287.
356-30=326—50=276. 447—276=171 + 1=172+
15 b & 4=187.
356—30=326—193=133. 498—133=365+1=366.
356—1 4=355—248=107—22 b (74:2)— 85. 284—85=
199+1=200+6 4=206.
356—22 b & 4=334—193=1.41—15 b & 4=126.
356—22 b & 4=334—248=86—3 />=83.
381
76:1
a
267
76:1
corpse
187
75:1
at
366
76:1
Pomfret,
206
74:1
under
126
74:1
uncounted
83
76:1
blows,
702
THE PURPOSES OF THE PLA VS.
703
Word.
356—22 b & £=334—50=284—248=36—22 b (74:2)=
271
75
358
126
76
14. 284—14=270+1=271.
356—1 £=335—248=107—22 £ (74:2)=85— 10 £=75
356—22 b & £=334—193=141. 498—141=357+1=
356—22 b & £=334—193=141—15 b& h— 196.
356—21 £=335—248=87—11 b & h— 76.
356—1 £=355—248=107—22 £=85. 284—85=199
+ 1=200.
356—248=108.
356— 30=326— 50=276— 15 b & A— 261.
356—22 b & £=334—248=86. 193—86=107+1=
356—22=326—284=42. 193—42=151 + 1=152+1 £=153
.356—21 £=335—284=51—18 b & £=33 + 50=83—
7 £= 76.
356—21 £=335—284=51—18 £ & A— 88.
356—22 £ & £=334—248=86. 498—86=412+1=
356—50=306.
356—22 £ & £=334—193=141—15 £ & £=126. 448—
126=322+1=323. 323
356— 22. b & £=334—193=141. 508—141=367+1
65=128 + 1=129 129
356—30=326—50=276—248=28—22 £=6. 284—
6=278+1=279. 279
356—50=306—13 £=293. 293
356—30=326—50=276—253=23—15 £ & £=8. 448—
8=440+1=441. 441
356—30=326—50=276. 284—276=8+1=9. 9
200
108
261
108
76
33
413
306
Page and
Column.
74:1
75:1
76:1
76:1
74:1
74:1
75:1
74:1
75:1
75:1
74:2
74:2
76:1
76:1
76:1
75:1
74:1
75:1
76:1
74:1
they
make
the
most
fearful
noise;
again
and
again
it
broke
forth;
it
seemed
they
would
never
stop.
The reader will note that every word here is the 356th word; and the figures at
the beginning of the chapter show how that number is obtained. He will further
observe the constant recurrence of the same terminal numbers, 86, 133, 108, 141,
276, and their modifications. It would require some art, in any other writing, to pick
out the words of such a coherent sentence without any arithmetical limitations what-
ever, simply taking a word here and there where you find it; but when you obtain
every word of such a sentence as the above in arithmetical order, each one being
the 356th from certain points of departure, it surely cannot be accident.
But Cecil goes on still further to give his views of the purposes of the play of
Richard II And here we still have the same original root-number, and we find the
same terminal numbers constantly recurring, to-wit, 108, 141, 133, etc., and again
they work out a coherent narrative which holds due relation to the whole Cipher
story.
356—248=108. 193—108=85+1=86+3 £=89.
356—30=326—192=134.
356— 22 £& £=334—50=284—12 £=272.
356—248=108—7 £=101.
356—22 £ & £=334—193=141—15 £ & £=126. 284—
126=158+1=159.
356—1 £=355—248=107. 284—107=177 + 1=178.
356— 1 £=355— 248=107. 284—107=177+1=178+
6 £=184. 184 74:1 rebels
89
75:1
The
134
74:1
play
272
76:1
shows
101
75:1
the
159
74:1
victory
178
74:1
of
7°4
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Word.
Page and
Column.
92
76:1
o'er
95
76:1
an
223
74:1
anointed
97
74:1
tyrant;
434
74:1
and
108
74:1
by
153
76:1
this
106
74:1
pipe
65
75:2
he
80
75:2
hath
107
74:1
blown
183
74:1
the
177
74:1
flame
178
74:1
of
180
74:1
rebellion
248
76:1
almost
34
74.2
into
1
74:1
open
98
74:1
war.
356—1 7/=355— 50=305— 193=112— 15 £ & h=97—
ob&h=92.
356—50=306—193=113—15/; & 7/=98— 3 £=95.
356—30=326—193=133—15 b & ^=118—50=68. 284
—68=216+1=217+6 7*=223.
356—248=108—11 b & /&— 97.
356—22 b & ^=334—254=80—15 b & 7;=65. 498—65
=433+1=434.
356—248=108.
356—50=306. 448— 306=1 42 + 1=143+10 b & A—
356—248=108—2 h (74:2)=106.
356—22 b & 7*=334— 254=80— 15 b & /fc=65.
356—22 b & /;=334— 254=80.
356—1 7^=355— 248=107.
356—248=108. 284—108=176+ 1=177+6 /fc=183.
356—248=108. 284—108=176+1=177.
356—1 7*=355— 248=107. 284—107=177+1=178.
356—1 7/=355— 248=107— 2 h (74:2)=105. 284—
105=179+1=180.
356—22 b & //=334— 30=304— 49=255— 7 b & h=24S.
356—1 A— 855— 30=325— 284=41— 7 h (74:1)=34.
356—22 b & 7^=334— 50=284. 284—284=0 + 1=1 .
356—248=108—10 £=98.
It may be asked why the root-number (523 — 167=) 356 is here continuous,
while in some of our former examples it alternated with (505 — 167=) 338; but it
would appear, from my researches, that it is only at the beginning that this alterna-
tion exists; and that, as the Cipher progresses, it diverges, and follows out one of
the root-numbers after another to its ramifications: thus 338 will be found, after a
time, to produce a story different from, but connected with, that told by 356. The
process might be compared to a nimble squirrel on two branches of a tree, grow-
ing out of the same portion of the trunk. For a time it leaps from branch to
branch; then, as they widen out, it follows the ramifications of one branch to the
end.
The reader will also note that all the story we have thus far given is derived
from three pages, 74, 75 and 76; and most of it is from pages 74 and 75; and it will
be found, as we proceed, that we have not exhausted one-tenth of the possibilities
of these pages. It would be marvelous if we had been able to make such con-
nected grammatical and historical sentences out of a dozen pages; it is still more
marvelous that they have been found in two or three. We have on these three
pages not only the names of Marloive, and Archer and Cecil and Shak'st-spicr, Hay-
ward and the old jade, but the name of King Richard and Potnfret and King John,
and, as we will see, the Contention of York and Lancaster, and a number of other
tvpical words, which, if there is no Cipher, could only have coincided here by a species
of miracle. I am aware that the hypercritical will say, as has been intimated already,
that the foregoing results are due to my " ingenuity; " but ingenuity cannot create
the very significant words which are shown to exist in the text, on these pages 74,
75 and 76, together with Bacon, Bacons, St. Albans, Grays Inn, etc., which ap-
pear near at hand. Those words were there two hundred years before I was born.
We have seen that 356, modified by carrying it through column 74:2, produced
the statement that Bacon had used the play of Richard II. as a pipe wherewith to
THE PURPOSES OF THE PLA VS.
7°5
blow the flame of rebellion almost into open war. Now let us take the very next
portion of the text which follows column 74:2, to-wit, the first subdivision of 75:1,
and we have results running in the same direction of thought, viz.: that Bacon
had also been trying to poison the mind of the multitude with irreligious views.
Surely, such connected thoughts could not, by accident, run out of the same root-
numbers, counting, in the one instance, from the top of one column, and, in the
other instance, from the top or middle of the next column.
And it will also be observed that the statements here made agree precisely with
what I have shown, in the first part of this book, as to Bacon's early religious
views, and the treasonable purposes of some of the plays; and also with the facts
revealed on the trial of Essex as to the conspirators hiring the actors to enact this
very play of Richard II, so that they might gloat their eyes with the sight of a
tragedy on the mimic stage which they hoped to bring into effect very soon upon
the stage of the world. It follows that partisans and conspirators, assembled for
such a purpose, would act very much as the Cipher story describes.
356—21 £=335—284=51. 248—51=197+1=198 +
2 £ & /;=200.
356—21 £=335—193=142. 284—142=142+1=143.
356—30=326—284=42—7 h (74:lj=37.
356—193=163—15 £ & A=U8. 508—148=360+1=
356—30=326—193=133—15 b & /;=118. 508—118=
390+1=391 + 3 £=394.
356—193=163—15 b & A=U8. 508—148=360+1=
361+4 b & 7;=365.
356—50=306—146 (76:2) =160.
356—30=326—50 (76:1)=276— 145=131— 5 b & k—
356—1 h (74:2)=355— 50=305— 146=159. 498—159=
339+1=340.
356—30=326—145=131. 577—131=446+1=447+
11£&/;=461.
356—30=326—145=131—3 £=128.
356—193=163. 498—163=335 + 1=336.
356—1 ^=355—30=325—193=132— 15 £&/fc=117.
356—30=326—146=180—3 b (146)=177— 9 b & h=
356—50=306—146=160—3 b (146)=157.
356—30=326—146=180—3 b (146)=177. 448—177=
271 + 1=272+2 £=274.
356— 30=326— 193=133— 15 £& ^=118+162 (78:1)=
356—30=326.
356—50=306—145=161. 498—161=337+1=338.
356—50=306. 498—306=192+1=193+10 £ & h=
356—30=326—193=133. 456 + 133=590.
356—30=326—193=133.
356—30=326—50=276—193=83—15 £ & /z=68—
50 (76:1)=18— 1/^=17.
356—193=163. 448—163=285+1=286.
356—30=326—193=133—15=118—50 (76:1) =
68. 508—68=440+1 + 1 ^=442.
356—193=163.
Page and
Word. Column.
200 74:2 These
143 74:1 well-known
37 74:2 plays
361 76:2 have
394 75:2 even
365
75:2
made
160
77:1
the
126
76:1
most
340
76:1
holy
(461)
77:1
matters
128
76:1
of
336
76:1
religion,
117
75:2
which
168
76:1
all
157
77:1
good
274
76:1
men
280
78:1
hold
326
76:1
in
338
76:1
sincere
203
76:1
respect,
590
76:2
subjects
133
76:2
for
17
76:2
laughter;
286
76:1
their
442
75:2
aim
163
75:2
being,
706
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
Word.
Page and
Column.
318
76:1
it
348
75:2
is
337
103
7:61
76:1
supposed,
to
141
74:1
thus
346
122
75:2
74:1
poison
the
351
76:1
mind
113
74:1
of
358
75:2
the
129
74:1
still
130
74:1
discordant,
131
132
74:1
74:1
wavering
multitude.
356—30=326—50 (76:1)=276— 145=-131 . 448—
131=317+1=318.
356—193=163. 508—163=345+2 4=347.
356—19 bhk-* 887.
356—253=103.
356—22 4 & 4=334—193=141.
356—193=163. 508—163=345+1=346.
356—193=163. 284—163=121 + 1=122.
356—193=163—15 b & 4=148^ 498—148=350+1=
356—193=163—50 (74:2)— 118.
356—22 b & 4=334— 193=141 . 498—1 41=357 + 1=
356—193=163. 284—163=121 + 1=122+7 //=! 29.
356—22 b& 4=334—193=141— 11 b & 4=130.
356—21 4=335—193=142—11 b & A— 181.
356—21 4=335—193=142—10 4=132.
The reader will here observe that every word of the above sentence is the 356th
word from certain well-defined starting-points; just as every word of the last sen-
tence was also derived, in the same way, from 356. He will also observe that 356
— 248=108, and, as 108 produced so many of the words touching the blowing of
the flame of rebellion into open war, so here 356 — 193=163 and 356 — 193=163 —
15 b & 4=148 produce the significant words being, poison, mind, religion, etc. And
what is the difference between these numbers 108 and 163? Simply this, — that
108 is 356 less the second column of page 74; and 163 is 356 less the next subdi-
vision of the text — the first subdivision of column 1 of page 75; so that the ends
of these two fragments, which produce these two coherent parts of the same state-
ment, as to the purposes of the Plays, touch each other.
And it will be remembered, as I have shown heretofore, that Measure for Meas-
ure contained many irreligious utterances; and that the character of Sir John Old-
castle was regarded, by the court, as a reflection on Protestantism, and the author
of the play was compelled to change the name of the character to Sir John Falstaff.
But the significant utterances growing out of the same root-number (356), and
the same parts of the same columns, do not end here. The purposes of the Plays
are still further discussed by Cecil, and he makes an assertion as to the intents of
the conspirators which is amply confirmed by the subsequent insurrection which
cost Essex his head.
356—50=306—146=160—3 b (146)— 157. 448—157=
291 + 1=292.
356—253=103. 284—103=181 + 1=182+6 4=188.
356—248=108. 448—108=340+1=341.
356—22 b & 4=334—50=284—193=91. 498—91=
407+1=408.
356—30=326—254=72—10 4=62.
356—253=103—1 4=102.
356—253=103. 498—103=395 + 1=396.
356—146=210. 284—210=74+1=75.
356—30=326—193=133—15=118. 498—118=380+
1=381.
356.
356—50=306—146=160. 498—160=338+1=339.
292
76:1
They
188
74:1
mean
341
76:1
in
408
76:1
this
62
74:1
covert
102
75:1
way
396
76:1
to
75
74:1
make
381
76:1
a
356
76:1
rising
339
76:1
and
THE PURPOSES OF THE PLA VS.
707
356—22 b & 4=334— 254=80— 50 (76:1)=30. 508—
30=478+1=479+1 4=480.
356—22 b & 4=334—50=284—193=91. 498—91=
407+1=408.
356—253=103—15 b & 4=88. 448—88=360+1=
356—22 b & 4=334—253=81—15 b & 4=66. 448—
66=482+1=483.
356—254=102. 448—102=346+1=347.
356—21 ^=335—50=285—145=140. 498—140=
358—9=359.
Word.
480
Page and
Column.
flood
408
76:1
this
361
76:1
fair
483
76:1
land
347
76:1
with
359
"6:1 blood,
The text will show the reader that the word rising was the usual expression in
that day for insurrection.
But Cecil thinks the writer of the Plays intends not only to make rebels, but
infidels, of those who witness the representation of them on the stage; and we have
this significant utterance:
356—30=326—193=133—15 b & 4=118. 508—118=
390+1=391+4 b& 4=395. 395 75:2 so
356— 50 (76:1 )=306— 146=160. 160 76:1 that
356— 22 b& 4=334—254=80—50 ( 76:1 )=30— 14=29. 29 76:2 not
356— 22 £ & 4=334— 254=80— 50 (76:1)=30. 30 76:2 only
356—50=306—146=160. 448—160=288+1=289. 289 76:1 their
356—193=163. 448—163=285+1=286+14=287. 287 76:1 bodies,
356— 22/; & 4=334—253=81. 81 75:2 but
356—193=163. 448—163=285+1=286. 286 76:1 their
356—50=306—146=160. 448—160=288+1=289
+1 4=290. 290 76:1 souls,
356— 253=103— 15 b & 4=88— 2 4=86. 86 76:1 might
356—30=326— 50(76 :1)=276— 145=131. 131 77:1 be
356—30=326. 603—326=277—1=278—8^=286. 286 76:2 damned.
Observe here how the root-numbers bring out the words: 356 carried forward
through the second subdivision of 76:2 (146) and brought back and carried up the
column 76:1 yields their, and, counting in the one hyphenated word, souls; while
the same 356 carried through the first subdivision of 75:2 (193) and taken up the
same column 76:1 produces their, and, counting in that same one hyphenated
word, produces bodies.
And then we have this further sentence, showing that Essex was supposed to
be represented on the stage in the popular character of Harry Monmouth, Prince
of Wales, in the Plays of 1st and 2d Henry IV.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—30=297—145=
152— 3 b (145)=149. 284—149=135+1=136. 136
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—30=297—145=
152—3 b (145)=149— 1 4=148. • 148
516— 167=349— 22 b& 4=327—50=277—145 (76:2)
=132—3 b (145)=129— 11 b & 4=118. 118
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327— 248=79— 22=57— 7 b= 50
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—284=43. ?48 -43
=205+1=206. 206
74:1
It
74:2
is
74:1
plain
75:1
that
74:2
708
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Page and
Column.
73:2
Lord
73:1
the
73:2
Earl
Word
516—167=349—22 b & ^=327—284=43—7 h (284)=36. 36
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327— 284=43. 43
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—284=43—7 h (284)=
36. 237—36=201 + 1=202. 202
516— 167=349— 22 <$& 7=327— 219 (74:2)=108— 21 b
(219)=87. 284—87=197+1=198.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327— 193=134.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—193=134—15 b & 7=
119. 248—119=129+1=130—15^=145.
516— 167=349— 22 £ & 7=327— 219 (74:2(=108—
21 b (219)=87. 284—87=197+1=198+6 7=
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—50=277—145 (76:2)
=132— 3 £=129. 248—129=119+1=120.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—284=43.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—284=43. 237—43=
194+1=195.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—193=134—15 b & 7=
119. 248—119=129+1=130.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—30=297—145 (76:2)
=152—28=124. 588—124=464+1=465.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—193=134. 248—134
=114+1=115.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—193=134—15 b & 7=
119. 248— 119=129+1=130+16 b& 7=146.
516—167=349—22 b & ^=327—30=297—145 (76:2)= 152
It will be observed here that every word grows out of the same root-number,
327 (516 — 167=349 — 22 b & 7=327). Here is certainly a most astonishing array of
words to occur accidentally.
The reader may say to himself, that such curious words as are found in these
three pages of this play occur in all writings; but this is not the fact. For the pur-
pose of testing the question I turned to Lord Byron's great drama, Manfred. It is
the work of a lofty genius, as the Plays are; it contains much exquisite poetry, as
do the Plays; it is made up altogether of conversations between the characters,
as are the Plays. Yet I failed to find in it all a single shake — spur — jade —cur-
tain— play — stage — scene — act — contention, or any other of the significant words
out of which such a narrative as the above could be constructed.
198
74:1
is
134
74:2
young
145
74:2
Harry
204
74:1
Monmouth,
120
74:2
Prince
43
73:2
of
195
73:2
Wales,
130
74:2
the
465
72:2
Duke
115
74:2
of
146
74:2
Monmouth's
152
74:2
son.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE QUEEN BE A TS HA YWARD.
Thou vinew'dst leaven, speak !
I will beat thee into handsomeness.
Troilus and Cresszda, ii, /.
IN the following examples I think the critical reader will see con-
clusive evidence of the existence of a Cipher. The root-num-
bers go out from the beginning and end of that middle subdivision
of 74:2 which we have already seen producing the story of Marlowe
and of Shakspere's youth: that is to say, if we go down from the
top of that subdivision we have 198 words to the bottom of the
column; if we go up from the bottom of that subdivision, or, strictly
speaking, from the top of the third subdivision, we have 219 words;
and all this story which follows grows out of 523 and 505 modified
by deducting 198 or 219, and moving forward to the next column,
and backward or forward from the end of the scene.
And when we come to observe how every word that goes out of
these roots is utilized in the Cipher story, and also to note how the
same numbers produce so many significant words, it seems to me
that all incredulity must disappear. Take, for instance, the root-
number 505 — 219 = 286 — 193 = 93; the number 93 gives us (75:2
■down) sullen; (76:1 up) rising; (75:1 down) starting; (75:2 up) joints;
(75:1 up) blow; (75:1 down) plus the bracket words, jade; (75:1 up
from 193) plus the b & h words, Ha, the first part of the name of
Hay ward; (75:1 down from 193) Curtain, the name of the play-house;
plus the bracket words, woe-be-gone, describing Hayward's appear-
ance. In the same way the root-number 505 — 198=307 produces
{up 75:2) crutch and (up 75:1) end; while 286 — 50 = 236 from the end
of the scene forward and backward yield us steeled; and down 75:2
it produces friend, alluding to Hayward. In fact, if the reader will
carefully study the examples that follow he must conclude that not
only is there a Cipher here, but that the rule is as stated, with the
709
710
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
ford.
Page and
Column.
10
74:1
The
93
75:2
sullen
251
74:1
old
86
75:1
jade
57
75:2
doth
216
74:2
432
75:2
listen
exception perhaps of the position of some of the minor words, which
may be displaced. In fact, the words that flow out of these
root-numbers tell the story I have given, and could scarcely be
made to tell anything else.
Hayward has evidently been imprisoned for some time when
brought before the Queen; he attempts to defend his dedication of
the Life of Henry IV. to Essex by praising the latter. This in-
furiates the Queen, and the scene follows which is described:
523— 219=304— 22 £=282. 284—282=2+1=3+7//=
505—219=286—193=93.
523—219=304—22 £ & //=282— 248=34. 284—34=
250—1=251.
505—219=286—193=93—7 £=86.
505—219=286—21 6=265—193=72—15 b & 7^=57.
523—219=304—254=50—15 b & A— 85. 248—35=
213+1=214+2 b & //=216.
523—219=304—50=254—193=61 . 508—61=447+
1=448 + 1/^=449.
505—198=307—193=114. 193—114=79+1=80.
523—219=304—50=254—193=61—15 b & A=46
-r 193—989.
523—219=304—50=254—193=61—15 b & A— 46.
508—46=462+1=463.
523—219=304—50=254—193—61—15 b & /z=46.
508—46=462+1=463+1 /&=464.
505—219=286—21 £=265— 193=72— 15 b& //=57.
523—219=304—50=254—193=61—15 b & .4=46+
193=239—5 b & /fc=234.
523—219=304—50=254—193=61. 508—61=447+1=
505—219=286—193=93—15 b & //=78. 508—78=
430+1=431 + 1 //=432.
505—219=286—193=93—50 (76:1)=43. 508—43=
465+1=466.
505—198=307—193=114.
505—219=286—193=93. 498—93=405+1=406.
505—198=307—193=114—15 b & //=99. 284—99=
185+1=186.
505—219=286—193=93. 448—93=355—1=356.
523—219=304—50=254—10 £=244.
505— 219=286— 19c=93— 15 b & //=78. 498—78=
420+1=421.
505—219=280-193=93.
523—198=325—2 b (74:2)=323-^48=75— 1 //=74.
505— 219=286— 50=236— 50=186— 20 £=166.
505—219=286—193=93. 193—93=100+1=101 +
6 £ & /U=107.
523—198=325—193=132. 448—132=316+1=317.
449
80
75:2
75:1
with
the
239
75:1
ugliest
463
75:2
frown
464
57
75:2
76:2
upon
her
234
=448
75:1
75:2
hateful
brows,
too
466
75:2
enraged
114
75:2
to
406
76:1
speak;
189
74:1
but,
356
76:1
rising
244
76:1
up
421
76:1
and
93
75:1
starting
74
75:1
forwards,
166
'75:2
took
107
75:1
Ha >
317
76:1
word \
THE QUEEN BE A TS HA YWARD.
7ii
293
78
92
171
Word
505—219=286—50=236—193=43. 603—43=560+1=561
505—219=286—193=93—15 b & /fc=78. 448—78=
370+1=371. 371
505—219=286—50=236—146=90—3 £ (146)=87. 87
505—219=286—193=93—15 b & /fc=78. 498—78=
420+1=421. 421
505—219=286—30=256. 448—256=192+1=193+
8 £=201.
523—198=325—254=71+458=529—3 £=526.
523— 198=325— 193=132— 15 b & 7;=117— 7 £=110.
505—219=286—21 £=265—49 (76:1)=216. 508—216=
292+1=293+6 £=299.
523—219=304—218 (74:2)=86. 284—86=198+1=
505—219=286—21 £=265—49 (76:1)=216. 508—
216=292+1=293.
523—198=325—193=132—15 £ & /fc=117. 193—
117=76+1=77+1 7/=78.
505—198=307—193=114—15 £ & A=W— 7 £=92.
523—219=304—22 £ & 7^=282. 447—282=165+
16 £& 7*=171.
505—198=307—193=114—15 £ & /fc=99. 193—99=
94+1=95+3 £=98.
523—198=325—248=77.
523—198=325—193=132.
505—198=307—193=114—15 £ & /z=99. 193—99=
944- 1=95+6 £&/;=101.
505—219=286—21 £=265—49 (76:1)=216.
505— 198=307— 50=257— 193=64— 15 £& 7*=49+
193=242.
523—198=325—248=77. 447— 77=370 +1=371 +3=£
505—219=286—30=256.
505—219=286—30=256—4 7/=251
523—219=304—218 (74:2)=86.
523—198=325—2 h (198)=323— 248=75.
505—198=307—193=114. 508—114=394+1=395
+ l//=396.
523—219=304—218 (74:2)=86— 1 *— 85.
523— 219=304— 193=111 .
505—198=307—193=114—15 £ & 7;=99.
523—198=325—50=275—193=82.
523—219=304—218 (74-2)=86— 10 £=76.
505—219=286—193=93. 447—93=354+1=355.
523—219=304—218 (74:2)=86.
523—198=325—193=132—15 £ & ^=117. 193—117
=76+1=77+3 £=80.
505—219=286—50=236—50 (76:1)=186.
505—198=307—193=114—15 £ & 7;=99. 447—99=
348+1=349. '
523—198=325—193=132—15 £ & 7z=117. 193—117=
76+1=77+6 b& 7^=83.
Page and
Column.
76:2
76:1
77:1
76:1
75:2
75:1
75-1
75:1
by
his
throat
and
201
76:1
choked
526
76:2
him.
110
75:1
He
299
75:2
took
199
74:1
to
his
heels
and
98
75:1
running
77
76:2
off
132
75:2
in
101
75:1
the
216
75:2
greatest
242
75:1
fright,
=374
75:1
but
256
74:1
the
251
74:1
old
86
75:1
jade
75
75:1
struck
396
75:2
my
85
75:1
poor
11
75:1
young
99
75:2
friend
82
75:2
a
76
74:1
fearful
355
75:1
blow
86
74:1
with
80
75:1
the
186
75:2
steeled
349
75:1
end
83
75:1
of
7I2
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Word.
254
388
410
108
92
108
523—219=304—50=254.
523—219-304—193=111. 498—111=387+1=388.
505—198=307—193=114—15 £ & /*=99. 508—99=
409—1=310.
523—198=325—193=132—15 b & A— 117. 117—9=
505—219=286—193=93—1 A=92.
523—219=304—218 (74:2)=86. 193— 86=107 -hl=
523—219=304—193=111. 193—111=82+1=83+1 /;=84
523—198=307—2 b (198)=305— 193=112. 508—112=
396+1=397. 397
523—218=304—193=111. 508—111=397+1=398. 398
523—218=304—193=111
+1 /z=399.
505—198=307—193=114
505—198=307—193=114
+3 £—(398).
505—219=286—50=236—193=43. 603—43=560
+ 1=551.
523—219=304—1 h (2 19)=303— 146=157. 577—157
=420+1=421. 421
523—219=304—193=111. Ill
505—198=307—2 b (198)=305— 193=1 12. 508—112
508—111=397+1=398.
508—111=397+1=398
508-114=394+1=395.
508—114=394+ 1=395
399
395
(398)
561
(397)
193—99
457— 117=
=396+1 +£=(397).
505—198=307—193=114—15 b & A— 99.
=94+1=95.
505—198=307—193=114—10 £=104.
523—198=325—254=71 .
523—198=325—248=77—9 b & /*=68.
523—219=304—50=254—13 £=241.
523—198=325—193=132—15 £ & A— 117
340+1+1 /&=342.
505—219=286—50=236.
505+198=307—193=114—2 £=112.
523—198=325—248=77.
523—219=304—193=111. 193—111=82+1=83+
6 £ & /;=89.
523—219=304—218 (74:2)=86— 3 £=83.
505—219=286—50=236—2 /fc=234.
523—198=325—193=132. 508—132=376+1=377.
505—219=304—22 £ & /*=282. 447—282=165+1=
523— 198=325— 2 h ( 74:2)=323— 193=130. 508—130
=378+1=379+4 £& //=383.
505—219=286—193=93. 508—93=415+1=416.
523—198=325—248=87—2 £=75—9 £ & /z=66. 66
505—219=286—193=93. 193— 93=100+1=101 + 1 //— 102
523— 198=325— 2 £ (74 :2)=323— 193=130. 508—130
=378+1=379. . 379
523—198=325—145=180—49 (76:1)— 181. 131
505—219=286—30=256. 448—256=192+1=193. 193
505—219=286—50=236—146=90—3 £=87. 577—
87=490+1=491. 491
95
104
71
68
241
342
236
112
77
89
83
234
377
166
416
Page and
Column.
75:1
76:1
the
great
75:2 crutch,
75:1 again
75:1 and
75:1 again.
75:1 His
75:2
75:2
75:2
75:2
limbs
being
now
so
75:2 weakened
76:2
by
77:1 imprisonment
74:2 and
75:2
75:1
74:1
75:2
75:1
75:1
76:2
76:1
75:2
75:2
75:1
76:1
74:1
75:2
75:1
75:2
75:2
75:1
75:1
75:2
75:2
grief,
he
is
not
able
to
stand
the
force
of
the
blows;
the
hinges
of
his
joints
gave
way
under
him;
and
he
QUEEN ELIZABETH,
THE QUEEN BE A TS HA YWARD.
713
523—219=304—218 (74:2)=86. 284—86=198+1=
199+6/^=205.
523—198=325—193=132—15 b & //=117. 498—117
=331+1=382.
505—198=307.
523—198=325—248=77—7 £=70.
523—198=325—193=132. 498—132=366+1=367.
Page and
Word. Column.
205
r4:l
fell
382
76:1
bleeding
307
76:1
on
70
75:1
the
367
76:1
stones.
I am not proceeding in the historical order of the narrative. We first have the
account of Hayward being brought before the Queen. It is in the orchard of the
royal palace. The Queen and Cecil assail him fiercely about the dedication of his
History of Henry IV. to Essex. The name of Cecil is thus formed:
523— 198 (74:2)=325. 498—325=173+1=
505—198 (74 :2)=307— 254=53.
474+8 b-
182
53
76:1
75:1
Seas
ill
These are the same root-numbers, 325 and 307, which we saw running together
in the previous examples; and the primary root-numbers, 523 and 505, are the same
which we have seen alternating together through whole columns of examples. The
point of departure is the same, to-wit, from the end of the first subdivision of 74:2,
at the 50th word; there are 248 words in the column, and 50 from 248 leaves 198.
In the first instance the root-number 325 is carried to the bottom of column 1 of
page 75 and up the column; in the other instance it is taken to the middle of 75:1,
thence dozen, thence returning down the same column.
And we find then this sentence:
-2 h-
264—193=71-
264.
264—248 (74:2)=16.
=264—30=234. 44&— 234=
498—264=234+1=
498—264=234—
447—71=
505—219=286—22 b & h-
505—219=286—22 b & h
505—219=286—22 b & h
505—219=286—22 b & h
214+1=215.
505—219=286—22 b & //=264.
505—219=286—22 b & //=264.
50=184+1=185 + 2 /;=187.
505—219=286—22 b & //=264— 193=71
376+1=377+3^=380.
505—219=286—22 b & 7^=264— 30=234— 10 b-
505—219=286—22 b & //=264— 13 £=251 .
505—219=286—22 b & /z=264— 50=214. 447
233+1=234+2 //=236.
505—219=286—22 b & //=264— 50=214.
505—219=286—22 b & /;=264— 193=71— 15 b & k—
56. 248— 56=192+1=193+2 b & /*=195.
505—219=286—22 b & //=264— 193=71— 15 b & h=
56. 248—56=192+1=193.
505—219=286—22 b & /;=264. 447—264=183+1=
505—219=286—22 b & /*=264— 193=71 . 447—71=
376+1=377.
505—219=286—22 b & ^=264—193=71—1 /;=70.
505—219=286—22 b & //=264— 254=10.
=224.
214=
264
16
215
235
187
380
224
251
236
214
195
76:1
75:1
75:1
76:1
76:1
76:1
75:1
75:1
75:1
75:1
75:1
74:2
said
to
him:
Come,
speak
out.
Why
didst
thou
put
the
193
74:2
of
184
75:1
my
377
75:1
Lord
70
75:1
the
10
74:2
Earl
75:1
upon
75:1
the
75:1
title-leaf
74:2
of
75:1
this
75:1
volume ?
714 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Page and
Word. Column.
505—219=286—22 b & ^=264—193=71—15 b & h=56.
193—56=137+1=138+1 /fc=138. 138
505—219=286—22 b & ^=264—193=71—15 b & /fc=56.
447—56=391 + 1=392+3^=395. 395
505—219=286—22 b & /z=264— 50=214— 13 b & h exc.
=201. 201
505—219=286—22 b & ^=264—193=71—15 b & h=
56. 248—56=192+1=193. 193
505—219=286—22 /; & /fc=264. 447—264=183+1=
184+11 £=195. 195
505—219=286—22 b & ^=264—248=16+194=210—
2 7^=208. 208
The reader will observe that we have here a sentence of twenty-three words,
which not only cohere with each other grammatically and rhetorically, but accord
with the history of events as they have come down to us. We have just seen that
the Queen beat Hayward. What was his offense? History tells us that it was
because of the dedication of his book to the Earl of Essex. And here, without our
looking for it, the root-number 505 — 219=286 — 22 b & ^=264 brings out the ques-
tion of Cecil: said to him: Come, speak out. Why didst thou put the name of my
Lord the Earl upon the title-leaf of this volume ? And of these twenty-three words
every one originates from 505 — 219, counting in the bracketed and hyphenated
words in 219, to-wit, 22, which gives us the formula as above: 505 — 219 — 22 b&h
=264. And out of these twenty-three words fifteen are found in the same column of
page 73, within a few inches of space; and the other four are found in the next pre-
ceding column. Surely never before did accident pack so much reason, history,
grammar, rhetoric and sense into so small a compass. And what a marvelous
piece of composition is this, where we find the names of Marlowe, Archer, Hayward,
Shakspere, Cecil, Henslow, the old jade, the Contention of York and Lancaster, King
fohn, the Fortune, the Curtain, act, scene, stage, and such sentences as the above, all
grouped together on three pages. And so arranged that many of the words are used
over and over again.
Take the words which constitute the name of Cecil — I say nothing of other
pages, but speak only of these three, or, strictly speaking, these two and a half
pages, containing about 2,000 words. The word ill, the terminal syllable of Cecil,
occurs in the plays, either alone or hyphenated with other words, about 250 times.
It occurs in the entire Bible, including the Old and New Testament, but eleven
times ! And yet, as the equivalent of evil, we would expect to find it used many
times in writings having such relation to moral wrong-doing as the Scriptures.
The word ill occurs in the second part of Henry LV. eighteen times standing alone;
it does not occur once alone in the first part of Henry LV. But it is cunningly con-
cealed in " z7/-sheathed knife," "z7/-weaved ambition" and " z7/-spirited Worcester;"
and also in hill, pronounced in those good old days, " 'ill. " This word hill, unusual
in dramatic poetry or elevated composition, occurs seven times in the first part of
Henry IV. and only once in the second part. Why these differences? Because, as
I have shown, the first part was first published, to run the gauntlet of suspicion,
and Bacon took especial care to exclude all words that might look like Cipher
work; and assuredly, if Cecil suspected a Cipher narrative, or had any intimation
of such, he would be on the lookout for such words as might, compounded, consti-
tute his own name.
Page and
Wo
Column.
67
75:2
says
67
75:2
says
67
75:2
says
67
75:2
says
182
76:1
seas
182
76:1
seas
182
76:1
seas
53
75:1
ill
THE Q UEEM BE A TS HA Y WA RD. 7 1 5
On these three pages the word ill occurs twice, both times in the first subdi-
vision of 75:1.
He told me that Rebellion had ill hick.
Said he . . . Rebellion
Had met ill luck.
And just as we found the position of the words and the dimensions of the
pages, columns, scenes and subdivisions of scenes adjusted to each other to pro-
duce old jade, etc., so we find these words seas ill and says ill holding curious rela-
tions to the text. For instance
523—248=275—193=82-15 b & k=67.
523—198=325—193=132—15 £ & /*=117— 50 (76:1)=
523—193=325—50=275—193=82—15 b & k=ffl.
523—193=325—254=71—4 h (254)=67.
523—193=325. 498—325=173+1=174+8 £=182.
523—193=325—50=275. 448—275=173+1=174+
8 £=182.
516—167=349—22 b & /z=327— 146 (76:2)=182.
523—198=325—248=77—24 b & h (248)=53.
523—167=356—22 b & h (167)=334— 193=141. 193—
141=52+1=53. 53 75:1 ill
516—167=349—193=156—15 b & A— 141. 193—141=
52+1=53. 53 75:1 ill
516—50=466—50 (76:1)=416. 447—416=31 +
21 b& /;=53. 53 75:1 ill
516—167=349—22 b & h (167)=327. 447—327=
120+1=121. 121 75:1 ill
505—167=338. 447— 338=109+1=110+11 £=121. 121 75:1 ill
513+167=346—248=98—24 b & h=U. 193—74=
119+1=120+1^=121. 121 75:1 ill
I here give seven seas or says and seven ills; but this does not begin to exhaust
the possibilities. The reader will observe that Cecil is especially referred to in
that part of the narrative which grows out of 523 — 198=325, and 516 — 167=349.
In answer to Cecil's question, Hayward is foolish enough to praise Essex as a
great and good man and the first among princes, (505 — 219=286 — 22 £&/z=264 —
193=71. 508 — 71=437 + 1=438, 75:2, princes), and then we have, preceding the
sentence given in the first part of this chapter, the words following, describing the
Queen's rage:
505—219=286—22 b & 7^=264—4 /;=260. 260
523—219=304—22 b & /^=282. 284—282=2+1=3+
10 £=13. 13
523—219=304—22 b & 7^=282—193=89. 508—89=
419+1=420+1 A— 421. 421
505—219=286—193=93—15 £ & /z=78. 78
505—219=286—193=93. 447—93=354+1=355+
3 £=358. 358
523— 219=304—22 £ & 7/=282— 193=89. 448—89=
359+1=360. 360
74:1
On
74:1
hearing
75:2
this
/5:2
unwelcome
75:2
praise
76:1
of
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
Word.
505—219=286—22 b & //=264— 193=71 . 193—71=
122+1=123. 123
523—219=304—50 (76:1)=254. 254
505—219=286+22 b & k=2Q4— 193=71. 193—71=
122+1=123+1/^=124. 124
505—219=286—21 £=265—193=72—15 b & A— 57. 57
523—219=304—22 b & /z=282. 282
523— 219=304— 193=111+193=304— 4 b col.=300. 300
505—219=286—22 b & ^=264—193=71. 71
523—219=304—218 (74:2)=86— 9 b & k— 77. 77
505—219=286—22 b & //=264. 264
505—198=307. 448—307=141 + 1=142. 142
523—198=325—253=72—15=57. 57
505—198=307—254=53—2 /;=51 . 51
505—219=286—22 b & ^=264—193=71—1 /*=70. 70
523—219=304—22 b & //=282— 193=89. 193—89=
104+1=105. 105
Page and
Column.
75:1
75:2
75:1
76:2
75:2
75:1
75:2
75:1
75:1
76:1
76:2
76:1
76:1
75:1
my
noble
Lord
her
Grace
was
not
able
to
restrain
her
passion
any
longer.
Then follows the description of the beating of Hayward already given.
We learn from Bacon's anecdote that the Queen did not believe that Hayward
was the real author of the pamphlet history of the deposition of Richard II., but
suspected that some greater person was behind him. And the Cipher tells us that
she tried to frighten him into telling who this person was. She threatens him with
the —
75:1
loss
75:1
of
75:1
his
74:1
ears.
523—219=304—22 b & /z=282— 254=28. 193—28=
165 + 1=166+1 //=167. 167
523— 219=304— 22 b& //=282. 447—282=165+1= 166
523—219=304—22 b & /*=282— 254=28. 28
523—219=304—22 b & /;=282. 284—282=2+1=3. 3
Observe the symmetry of this sentence. Every word grows out of the same
root-numbers, (523 — 219=304 — 22 b & ^=282); loss is the 28th word up from the
bottom of the second subdivision of 75:1, and his is the 28th word up from the bot-
tom of the second subdivision of 75:1; while of is the 282d word up the same 75:1
and ears the 282d word up the corresponding column of the next preceding page, to-
wit: 74:1. In every case the bracketed and hyphenated words are not counted in.
While if we carry the same 282 through the second column of page 74 and up the
preceding column it brings us to old, (the old jade); or, counting in the three
bracketed words in the lower part of 74:1, to the word crafty.
The Queen denounces Hayward. She speaks of —
505—219=286—22 b & /*=264— 198=66 +193=259—
2 £=257. 257
505—219=286—22 b & /*=264— 30=234. 234
505—219=286—22 b & //=264— 50=214— 4 /;=210. 210
And says:
505—219=286—22 b & /*=264— 197=67— 2 h (197>=
05 + 193=258—5 b & //=253. 253
505—219=286—22 b & ^=264—50=214. (74:2) 214
75:1
Thy
75:1
hateful
75:1
looks;
r5:1
?5:1
and
the
Word.
Page and
Column.
255
75:1
whiteness
256
75:1
in
262
75:1
thy
258
259
260
75:1
75:1
75:1
cheek
is
apter
261
75:1
then
257
75:1
thy
263
264
265
75:1
75:1
75:1
tongue
to
tell
262
214
75:1
75:1
thy
nature.
THE Q UEEN BE A TS HA Y WARD. 7 i ;
505—219=286—22 b & /;=264— 197 (74:2)=67+193
260—5 b & /i— 255.
505—219=286—22 b & ^=264—198=66+193=259—
3 £—256.
505—219=286—22 b & £—264—193—71. 193+71=
264—2 /&=262.
505—219=286—22 b & //=264— 197=67 + 193=260—
2 A— 368.
505—219=286—22 b & //=264— 198=66. 193—66= S
505—219=286—22 b & /;=264— 197=67+193=260.
505—219=286—22 b & //=264— 193=71. 193+71=
264—3 £=261.
505—219=286—22 b & ^=264—197=67+193=260—
3 £=257.
505—219=286—22 b & //=264— 193=71 +194=265—
2 /;=263.
505— 219=286— 22 b & /;=264— 193=71 + 193=264.
505—219=286=22 b & /;=264— 193=71. 194—71=
505—219=286—22 b & ^=264—193=71 + 194=265-
3 £=262.
505—219=286—22 b & h=26±— 50=214— 10 b col. =
Every one of these eighteen words comes out of the same root-number (505 —
219=286 — 22 b & ^=264) which produced the sentence of twenty-three words
recently given, and all these forty-one words cohere in meaning. And what is still
more remarkable, every one of the eighteen words in the above sentence is found
in the same column of the same page, and all of them in the compass of nine lines;
and thirteen out of the eighteen are found in two lines! If this be accident, it is
certainly something astounding. Observe also that we have here four thys.
There is not a single thy on the whole of the preceding page, 74; nor on the whole
of the succeeding page, 76. Why is this difference ? Because here the Queen is
talking fiercely to an inferior, Hayward, and is thouing him. There are three
thys in these two lines, and every one of them is used by the root-numbers in the
aoove sentence; and one is used twice. And it is only possible to thus use thirteen
words out of two lines containing seventeen zvords, by the subtle adjustment of the
bracketed and hyphenated words; and six of the above words are the 71st word
from the end of the first subdivision of 75:1, or the beginning of the second subdi-
vision of the same; while five are the 67th word and three the 66th word from
the same points of departure.
I am aware that it may be objected that it is claimed that Hayward was not
arrested until 1599, and that the first part of Henry IV. (interlocking through the
Cipher with this second part) was published in 1598. But the date of Hayward's
arrest is obscure and by no means certain; and if it were certain, it does not fol-
low that because a quarto edition of the play of 1st Henry IV. has been found,
with the date 1598 on the title-page, it is therefore certain that it was published in
that year. It would be but a small trick for the mind that invented such a com-
plicated cipher to put an incorrect date on the title-leaf of a quarto to avoid suspi-
cion, for who would look for a cryptogram, describing events that occurred in 1599,
in a book which purported to have been published in 1598?
CHAPTER IX.
CECIL SA YS SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLA VS.
Your suspicion is not without wit or judgment.
Othello >, iv, 2.
WE come now to an interesting part of the narrative — the
declaration of Cecil's belief that neither Marlowe nor Shak-
spere was the real author of the Plays which were put forth in
their names.
And it will be noticed by the reader how marvelously the whole
narrative flows out of one root-number. That is to say, the third
number, 516, is modified by having deducted from it 167, to-wit:
the number of words after the first word of the second subdivision
of column 2 of page 74, down to and including the last word of the
subdivision. And the reader cannot fail to notice what a large part
of the Cipher narrative of Shakspere and Marlowe flows from this
second subdivision.
And the reader will also observe that in this second subdivision
there are 2t words in brackets and one additional hyphenated
word — or 22 in all; these added to the 167 make 189; and 189
deducted from 516 leaves 327. Or, the same result is obtained by
first deducting from 516 the 167, and then deducting from the
remainder 22 for the bracketed and hyphenated words. I express
the formula thus:
5I6— 167=349— 22 b &//=327.
Every word of all the sentences in the following chapter grows out
of the number 327:
„ Page and
Word. Column.
516—167=349—22 b & h— 827. 498—327=171+1=
172+10/; & 4=182. 182 76:1 Seas 1
516— 167=349— 22 /> & 4=327. 447—327=120+1= 121 75:1 ill \
516— 167=349— 22 /> & 4=327— 30=297— 50(76:1)= 247 76:2 said
718
S1IAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE TLA VS.
719
Observe, here, how precisely the same number brings out .was and ill: compare
the numbers in groups; — 516 — 516; — 167 — 167; — 349 — 349; — 22 b& h — 22b & h\ —
327 — 327; — and going up the first column of page 76 with 327, we find seas; while
going up the first column of page 75 with 327 brings us to ill.
516—167=349— 22 b & 7;=327— 284=43. 447—43
=404+1=405+3 /;=408.
516—167=349—22 b & 7v=327— 254=73— 15 b & //=
58. 448—58=390+1=391.
516—167=349—22 b & 7;=327— 50=277— 50 (74:2)
=227—1 7/=226.
516—167=349—22 b & 7;=327— 254=73— 50 (76:1)
=23—1 k— 22.
516—167=349—22 b & 7^=327—30=297—254=43
— 15J&//=28.
516—167=349—22 b & 7^=327—248=79. 193—79
=114+1=115+ b&h=(121).
516— 167=349— 22 b & 7;=327— 254=73— 15 b &h =
58. 498—58=440+1=441.
516—167=349—22 b & 7^=327—50=227—7 b & k—
516—167=349—22 b & 7^=327.
516—167=349—22 b & A— 827— 146 (76:2)=182.
498—182=316+1=317.
516—167=349—22 b & 7/=327— 193=134. 248—
134=114+1=115.
516— 167=349— 22 £ & 7^=327—254=73—15 b & h
=58—5 /;=53.
Word.
Page and
Column.
408
75:1
that
391
76:1
More \
226
74:1
low ;
22
76:1
or
28
75:2
Shak'st
(121)
75:1
spur
441
76.1
never
220
76:2
writ
327
76:1
a
317
76:1
word
115
74:2
of
53
74:1
them.
I will ask the skeptical reader to examine the foregoing three remarkable com-
binations of words : seas-ill (Cecil), nwre-low (Marlowe), and shak'st-spur (Shak-
spere). Remember they are all derived from the same root-number, and the same modi-
fication of the same root-number: 516 — 167=349 — 22 b & h (i67)=327; — and that they
are all found in four columns ! Are there four other columns, on three other con-
secutive pages, in the world, where six such significant words can be discovered?
And, if there are, is it possible to combine them as in the foregoing instances, not
only by the same root-number, but by the same modification of the same root-num-
ber ? If you can indeed do this in a text where no cipher has been placed, then the
age of miracles is not yet past.
And here, confirmatory of this opinion, thus bluntly expressed by Cecil, as to
the authorship of the Shakespeare and Marlowe Plays, we have — growing out of
precisely the same root-number and the same modification of the same root-number —
still other significant words-
516—167=349—22 b & 7*=327— 198=129. 447—129
=318+1=319. 319 75:1 It
516—167=349—22 b & 7?=327— 237 (73:2)=90. 90 74:1 is
516—167=349—22 b & 7^=327—198 (74:2)=129—
11 /; & 7/=118. 118 74:1 plain
516—167=349—22 b & 7^=327—198 (74:2)=129—
90(73:1)=39. 39 73:2 he
720 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Page and
Word. Column.
516—167=349—22 b & 7;=327— 193=134. 284—134
=150+1=151. 151 74:1 is
516—167=349—22 b & 7/=327— 30=297— 248=49. 49 74:1 stuffing
516—167=349—22 b & 7;=327— 90 (73:1)=237— 3 b= 234 73:2 our
516—167=349—22 b & h=327— 248=79— 22 b (248;
=57—6 b & A— 61. 51 74:1 ears
516— 167=349— 22 b & /*=327— 219=108— 22 0=86. 86 74:1 with
516—167=349—22 b & 7^=327— 248=79— 24 b&h (248)=55 74 : 1 false
516—167=349—22 b & h=327— 30=297— 219 (74:2>=
78—22 b (219)=56. 56 74.1 reports
516—167=349—22 b & 7z=327— 30=297— 248=49+
90(73:1)=139— 1 7;=138. 138 73.1 and
516—167=349—22 b & 7^=327—30=297—29 (74:2)=
268—15 b & //=253. 253 74:1 lies
516—167—349—22 b & 7^=327—30=297— 219 (74:2)=
78— 22 b (219)=56. 284—56=228+1=229. 229 74:1 this
516—167=349—22 b & 7*=327— 30=297— 248=49.
90(73:1)+49=139. 139 73:1 many
516—167=349—22 b & 7^=327—198 (74:2)=129—
10 0=119. 119 74:1 a
516—167=349—22 b & 7;=327— 90 (73:1)=237— 29
(73:2)=208. 284— 208=76+1=77+7 7^=84. 84 74.1 year.
The reader will observe how marvelously the fragments of the scene on 74*2
are adjusted to 516 — 167=349 — 22 b & h (i67)=327, to produce on 74:1 nearly all
the above coherent words. And every word here given arises out of the same
root-number and the same modification of the same root-number, to-wit: 516 — 167
=349 — 22 b & h (i6j)=32j. And of the seventeen words in the above sentence,
thirteen are found on 74:1 — a short column of 302 words I
Let me explain this a little more fully. As we have foun(d the root-number,
516 — 167=349 — 22 ° & ^=327, it is natural that we should carry it to the beginning
of column 2 of page 74, which is the beginning of the second scene; and that, as
is the rule with the Cipher, we should deduct the number of words in that column,
248, and thus obtain a new subordinate root-number to carry elsewhere. We have
therefore 327 — 248=79. If we turn to the preceding column, 74:1, we find that
the 79th word is prepared, which we will see used directly in connection with the
preparation of the Plays ! And if we carry 79 up the column, it brings us to tinder,
the 206th word: — prepared under the name, etc. But if we modify 79 by deducting
the usual modifier, 30, we have 49, which, down the column, gives us stuffing,
( "stuffing our ears," etc.), and up the column it gives us betzveen, which we will
see directly to be used in the significant group of words: Contention between York
and Lancaster, the name of one of Bacon's early plays. If we modify 79 by
deducting the other usual modifier, 50, we have left 29, the very significant word
acts. And, as we obtained 79 by deducting 248 from 327, — if we go back and
count in the bracket words in the 248, we reduce the 79 to 57 (79 — 22 b (74:2)=57);
and that gives us, counting in the bracketed and hyphenated words, the word
ears — "stuffing our ears" But if we also deduct the hyphenated words in
248, as well as the bracketed words, we have 55 (79 — 24 b & h (74:2)=55), which
gives us false. And then observe how ingeniously the mechanism of 74:2 is
adapted to the work required of it ! If, instead of counting from the bottom of the
SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE TLA YS. 721
column (74:2), we count from the beginning of the last subdivision of the column
(219), this brings us the words with — reports — this (" stuffing our ears with false
reports"); while if we go down from the same point on 74:2, counting in the 29
words, and back as before, we land first upon the word other, which we will see
used directly, in connection with " other plays," and then, counting in the brack-
eted and hyphenated words, upon the word lies, which fits in very naturally with
" false reports" and both with Cecil's declaration that Marlowe and Shakspere did
not write the plays attributed to them. And then, if we take the same root-
number, 327, and begin to count from the end of the first subdivision downward,
we have 198 words, which deducted from 327 leaves 129, and this carried down
74:1, counting in the bracketed and hyphenated words, brings us to the 118th word,
plain — " it is plain" — in the foregoing sentence, and this 129, less 50, brings us
again to the 79th word, the significant word prepared; and up the column again
it brings us again to the word under, which goes with it. Here we see increasing
proofs of the marvelously ingenious nature of the Cipher, and of the superhuman
genius required to fold an external narrative around this mathematical frame-work
or skeleton so cunningly that it would escape suspicion for two hundred and fifty
years.
And just as the root-number, 327, was carried to the beginning of scene 2d of
2d Henry IV., so the remainders-over, the root-numbers so obtained, are carried to
the beginning of the next preceding scene, The Induction; and thence, in the prog-
ress of the Cipher, they are carried to the beginning of the next scene preceding
this, to-wit: the last scene of the first part of Henry IV., and, returning thence,
just as we saw they did in the chapter relative to Bacon receiving the news, they
determine the position of the Cipher words in column 1 of page 74.
Thus the reader will perceive the movements of the root-numbers through the
text are not invented by me to meet the exigencies of an accidental collocation of
words in one particular chapter, but they continue unbroken all through the Cipher
narrative.
But if we take the same root-numbers obtained by modifying 327 (516 — 167=
349 — 22 b & 7=327), by deducting therefrom the modifying numbers in column 2 of
page 74, to-wit: 219, 29, 198, 50, or 218, 30, 197, 49, (according as we count from
the beginnings or ends of the subdivisions), and we reach some additional sen-
tences, all cohering with those already given.
For instance, Cecil tells the Queen, speaking of Shakspere:
516—167=349—22 b &7=327— 197=130. 193—130
=63+1=64.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—193=134. 284—134
• =150+1=151.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—198=129—24 b & 7=
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—219=108—22 b & h=
86—1 7=85.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—50 (74:2)=277.
516—167=349—22 b& 7=327—30=297—284=13—
7 7 (284)=6+91=97.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—219=108. 447—108
=339 + 1=340.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—50=277—248=29.
169—29=140+1=141.
Word.
Page and
Column.
' 64
75:1
He
151
74:1
is
105
74:1
a
85
75:1
poor,
277
75:1
dull,
97
73:1
ill-spirited,
340
75:1
greedy
141
73:1
creature,
722
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327— 50=277. 447—277=
170 + 1=171 + 11 4=182.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—198=129—24 4 & 4=
105. 284—105=179 + 1=180+6 4=186.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—198=129. 284—129
=155 + 1=156+6 4=162.
516—167=349—22 4 & 4=327—50=277.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—30=297—284=13.
174&4 exc— 13=4.
516— 167=349— 22 4 & 4=327—219=108—21 b (218)=
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—30=297—284=13—
7 4 (284)=6. 508—6=502+1=503.
516 -167=349—22 b & 4=327—284=43—10 /=33.
90+33=143—1 4=142.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—248=79—11 bat h—
516— 167=349— 22 4 & 4=327—198=129—10 4=119.
516—167=349—22 4 & 4=327—198=129—22 4=1 07.
516—1 67=349—22 4 & 4=327—219=108—21 4 (219) =
516—167=349—22 4 & 4=327—219=108. 284—108
=176+1=177-16 4=183
516—167=349—22 4 & 4=327—219=108. 284—108
=176+1=177.
516—167=349—224 & 4=327—198=129—22 4-=107,
284—107=177+1=178.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—198=129—24 b & 4
(74:2)=105. 284—105=179+1=180.
516—167=349—22 4 & 4=327—248=79—24 4 & 4 (248)
=55+51 (74:2)=106.
516—167=349—22 4 & 4—327—218—109. 447—109
=338+1=339+8 4=347.
516—167=349—22 4 & 4=327—219=108—22 4 & 4 =
86. 284—86=198+1=199.
51 6—167=349—22 4 & 4 = 327—219=108—10 4=98.
,516—167=349—22 4 & 4=327—248=79.
5 1 (5—167=349—22 4 & 4=327—197=130—50=80.
447—80=367+1=368+3 4=371.
516 - 1 67=349— 22 4 & 4=327—30=297—284=13+
90 (73:1)=103.
516-1 67=349—22 4 & 4=327—90=237—10 4=227.
51 6—1 67=349— 22 4 & 4=327—30=297—248=49—
24 4 & 4=25. 284—25=259 + 1=260 + 3 4=263.
516—167=349—22 4 & 4=327—79 ( 73: 1 )=248— 10 4=
516—167=349—22 4 & 4=327—219=108—11 4 & 4=
Word.
Page and
Column.
182
75:1
and
186
74:1
but
162
74:1
a
277
75:2
veil
4
74:1
for
87
74:1
some
503
one
142
73:1
else,
68
74:1
who
119
75:1
had
107
74:1
blown
87
75:1
up
183
74:1
the
177
74:1
flame
178
74:1
of
180
74:1
rebellion
106
74:2
almost
347
75:1
in
199
74:1
to
98
74:1
war
79
75:1
against
371
75.1
your
103
73:1
Grace
227
74:1
as
263
74:1
a
238
74:1
royal
97
74:1
tyrant.
It would seem as if Cecil had information that the stage-manager met every
night, perhaps in some dark alley of unlighted London, some party, and gave him
a share of the proceeds of the Plays. The performances at that time were during
the day.
The reader will again observe that every word of the foregoing and following
sentences is the 327 th from certain well-defined points of departure. If he thinks he
or ***- r
SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PIA VS.
723
can construct similar sentences, per hazard, with any number not a Cipher-
number, let him try the experiment.
And observe how cunningly the text is adjusted so as to bring out the words, —
"blown t lie flame of rebellion into war" — by the root-number, 516 — 167=349 — 22
b & ,4—327; and also by the root-number, 523 — 267=356, as shown in Chapter VII.,
" The Purposes of the Plays." And how is this accomplished? Because the dif-
ference between 327 and 356 is 29; and the difference between 248, the total
number of words on column 2 of page 74, and 219, the total number of words from
the top of the same column to the beginning of the last subdivision of that column,
is also 29; and hence the words fit to both counts. It is absurd to suppose that all
this dedicate adjustment of the Cipher root-numbers to the frame-work of 74:2,
" The Heart of the Mystery," came about by chance.
But Cecil continues:
516— 117=349— 22 b & 4=327— 30 (74:2)=297— 284=
516— 16.= ;49— 22 b & A— 327— 218 (74:2)— 100— 50—
59. 193—59=134 + 1=135.
516-167=349—22 b& 4=327—248=79^193=272—
2 4=270.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—218 (74:2)=109-50=
59. 447—59=388+1=389.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—248=79—22 b (74:2)==
57—7 *— 50.
516—167=349—22 b & //=327— 284=43. 248— 43_
205+1=206.
516-167=349—22 b & 4=327— 284=43— 7 4 (284)=
36+90=126—1 4=125.
516—167=349—22 /; & £— 827— 284— 48. 248—43=
205 + 1=206+1 4=207.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—248=79—22 b (248)—
516—167=349—22 b & 4—327— 218(74:2)— 109— 5<>
=59—1 4=58.
516—167=349—22 b & A— 327— 248— 79— 27 (73:1)—
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—50=277. 447— 2T7
=170+1=171.
516—167=349—22 b ft 4=327— 248=79— 7 *— 70.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327— 29(73 :2)=278— 14
b ft h exc.=264.
516-167=349—22 b & 4=327—219=108—22 £=86.
284—86=198+1=199.
516-167=349—22 b & 4=327—50=277—237(73:2)
=40. 248—40=208 + 1=209.
516-167=349—22 b & 4=327—30=297—284=13.
248-13=235+1=236.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—198 (74:2)— 129.
193—129=64+1=65+1 4=66.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—218 (74:2)— 109— 50—
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—30=297—6 4=291.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—283=44.
516—167=349—22 b ft 4=327—30=297.
516—167=349—22 b ft 4=327—218 (74:2)— 109-50—
Word.
13
135
270
389
50
206
125
207
57
58
171
70
264
199
209
236
Page and
Column.
74:2
75:1
75:1
75:1
75:1
74:2
73:1
74:2
75:1
75:1
73:2
75:1
75:1
74:1
74:1
74:2
74:2
have
a
suspicion
that
my
kinsman's
servant,
young
Harry
Percy,
was
the
to
whom
he
66
75:1
gave
59
74:2
every
291
75:1
night
44
74:2
the
297
75:1
half
59
74:1
of
724
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
516—167=349—22 b & 7/=327— 284=43.
516—167=349—22 b & 7/=327— 198=129— 90=39.
516—167=349—22 b & 7;=327— 198=129— 79=50+29=
516—167=349—22 b & k— 327— 219— 58. 284—58=
226+1=227+6 //— 233.
516—167=349—22 b & 7^=327— 198=129— 79=50,
516—167=349—22 b & A— 327— 248— 79— 22 0—57.
193—57=136+1=137+1 /*— 138.
516—167=349—22 b & k— 327— 284— 48.
516—167=349—22 b & 7^=327— 248=79— 22 0—57.
193—57=136+1=137.
516—167=349—22 b & //=327— 29 (73:2)— 298— 284
=14—10 0—4.
The Curtain play-house was surrounded by a muddy ditch to keep off the rab-
ble, and doubtless the money paid to see the performances was collected at a gate
at the drawbridge.
And then we have this striking statement:
Word.
43
39
=79
Page and
Column.
75:1
73:2
73:2
what
he
took
233
50
74:1
73:2
through
the
138
43
75:1
74:2
day
at
137
75:1
the
4
74:2
gate.
516—167=349—22 b & 7^=327—30=297—248=49+
90 (73:1)=139.
516—167=349—22 b & A— 327— 50— 277.
516—167=349—22 b & /&— 827— 30— 297— 50— 247—
219=28—22 0—6. 447—6=441 + 1=442.
516—167=349—22 b & 0=327—284=43—18 b & h
(284)=25. 248—25=223+1=224.
516—167=349—22 b & 0=327— 254=73— 50(74:2)=
516—167=349—22 b & 0=327—29 (73:2)=278.
516—167=349—22 b & 0=327—50=277—237=40.
284—40=244+1=245.
516—167=349—22 b & 0= 327— 248— 79— 50— 29+
28 (78:2)— 57.
516—167=349—22 b & 0=327—248=79—22 b (248)=
57—7 £=50.
516—167=349—22 b & 0=327— 284=43. 248—43=
205+1=206.
516—167=349—22 b & 0=327—248=79—2 h (248)=
77. 237—77=160+1=161 + 3 0—164.
516— 167=349— 22 b& 0=327— 284=43— 18 b & 0
(284)=25+50 (74:2)=75.
516—167=349—22 b & 0=327—248=79.
516—167=349—22 b & h— 327— 254— 73— 15 b & 7;=
58—50 (76:1)— 8.
516—167=349—22 0 & *— 827— 254— 73.
516—167=349—22 0 & 0=327—30=297—248=49—
22 £—27—2 b=27.
516—167=349—22 0 & 4—827—254 (75:1)— 78.
516—167=349—22 b & 0=327—30=297—248=49.
284—49=235+1=236.
516—167=349—22 b & 0=327—193=134—15 b & 0=
119—50=69. 457 (76: 2) +69=526— 3 0—523.
139
277
442
73:1
74:1
75:1
Many
rumors
224
23
278
74:2
74:1
/4:1
on
the
tongues
245
74:1
of
57
73:2
men
50
75:1
that
206
74:2
my
164
73:2
cousin
75
79
74:2
74:1
hath
prepared
8
73
76:2
74:1
not
only
[27]
73
74:1
74:2
the
Contention
236
74:1
between
523
76:1
York
SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE PLA VS.
725
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—254=73—15 b & 7=
58. 508— 58=450 +1=4" 1.
516—167=349—22 b & >&— 327— 145 (76:2)=182.
508—182=326+1=327.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327— 248=79— 7 £=72.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327— 193=134. 284—134
=150+1=151 + 6 A— 157.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—193=134—49 (76:1)
=85. 603—85=518+1=519.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—30=297—248=49—
22 7=27. 284-27=257+1=258+3 7=261.
516—167=349—22 b 6 7=327—193=134. 448—134
=314+1=315+1 7=316.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—193=134.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327— 248=79— 10 /;=69.
516—167=349—22/; & 7=327—29 (73:2)=278— 10 b=
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—283 (74:1 up)=44—
7 h (283)=37.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—254=73. 508—73=
,135 + 1=436+17=437.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327— 27 (73:1)=300— 284=
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—284=43. 43+193=
516—167=349—22/^ & 7=327— 284=43— 10 /=33.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—284=43.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—237 (78:2)— 00. 284
—90=194+1=195.
516—167=349 -22b& 7=327—248=79. 284—79=
205+1=206.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—219 (74:2)— 108.
193— 108=85+1=86+3 £=89.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—284=43—18 b & h
(284)=25. 219—25=194+1=195.
516—167=349—22/; & 7=327—50=277—218=59.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—28 (73:2)=299— 284
=15. 248—15=233+1=234.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—50=277—218=59.
284—59=225+1=226.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—237 (73:2)=9C, 169
—90=79 + 1=80.
516—167=349—22 b & A— 827— 284— 43— 15 b & 7
(284)— 25+218— 243— 2** 7=241.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—30=297—169 (73:1)
=128. 237— 128=109+1=110 + 3 /;=113.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—237 (73:2)— 90. 284
—90=194+1=195+6 7=201.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—50=277—219=58.
284—58=226+1=227.
516— 167=349— 22 b & 7=327—237 (73:1)— 90-
11b & 7=79.
Word.
Page and
Column.
451
75:2
and
327
72
75:2
75:1
Lancaster
and
157
74:1
King
519
76:2
John
261
74:1
and
316
134
69
268
76:1
74:1
74:1
74:1
this
play,
but
other
37
74:2
plays
437
16
236
33
43
75:2
74:2
75:1
74:2
74:2
which
are
put
forth
at
195
74:1
first
206
74:1
under
89
75:1
the
195
59
74:2
74:1
name
of
234
74:2
More \
226
74:1
low )
80
73:1
and
241
74:2
now
113
73:2
go
201
74:1
abroad
227
74:1
as
79
74:1
prepared
726 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Page and
Word. Column.
516—167=349—22 b & /;=327— 30=297— 248=49.
447—49=398+1=399+3^=402. 402 75:1 by
516—167=349—22/; & //=327— 30=297— 254=43—
15 b & h (254)=28. 28 75:2 Shak'st
516—167=349-22/; & A— 827— 210 (74:2)— 108— [
22/;&//=86. 193— 86=107 + 1=108+6 b& //= 114 75:1 spurred
And here let us pause, and — if any doubt still lingers in the mind of the reader
as to existence of a Cipher narrative infolded in the words of this text — let us con-
sider the words shak'st and spurre, and observe how precisely they are adjusted to
the pages, scenes, and fragments of scenes; just as we found the words old
jade and seas-ill to match by various processes of counting with the root-
numbers.
We have shak'st but once in many pages. It would not do to use it too
often — it would arouse suspicion; hence, we will soon find Jack substituted for it,
which, no doubt, was pronounced, in that day, something like shock or shack. I
have heard old-fashioned people give it the shock sound, even in this country,
where our sounds of a are commonly narrower and more nasal than the English.
The word shak'st is found on the fourth line of column 2 of page 75 of the Folio:
Thou shak'st thy head and hold'st it Feare or Sinne, etc.
While the spurns are many times repeated in the first column of page 75, thus:
He told me that Rebellion had ill luck
And that yong Harry Percies Spurre was cold.
And eight lines below we have it again:
Said he yong Harry Percyes Spurre was cold?
(Of Hot-Spurre, co'ld- Sp u'r re ?) that Rebellion
Had met ill lucke?
Here in twelve lines the word spurre occurs four times, and it does not occur
again until near the end of the play.
Now let us see how these words match with the Cipher numbers. If we take
505 and deduct the modifier 30, we have 475 left; if we count forward from the top
of column 2 of page 75, the 475th word is shak'st; that is, leaving out the bracketed
and hyphenated words. But if we again take 505 and count from the same point,
plusb& h, the 505th word is again shak'st. Why? Because there are just 30 brack
eted and hyphenated words in column 1 of page 75, and these precisely balance the
30 words of the modifier in 74:2. But if we take 505 again, and deduct 29, the num-
ber of words in the last section of 74:2, we have left 476; and if we start to count
from the end of scene 2 on 76:1, and count up and back and down, the 476th word
is the same word shak'st; and if we take the root-number 506 and deduct 30 and
count in the same way again, the count ends on the same word, shak'st.
And here, to save space, I condense some of the other identities. The reader
will observe the recurrence of the very root-numbers we have been using:
505—219=286—50=236—193=43—15 b & h (193)= 28
505—284=221—193=28. 28
505— 219=286— 193=93— 15 £ & h (193)=78— 50 (76:1)=28
505—30=475—254 (75 :1)=221— 193=28. 28
75:2
shak'st
75:2
shak'st
75:2
shak'st
75:2
shak'st
SHAKSPERE DID NOT WRITE THE TLA VS.
727
Word.
Page and
Column.
1
28
To: 2
shak'st
28
75:2
shak'st
)
28
75:2
shak'st
28
75:2
shak'st
28
75:2
shak'st
28
75:2
shak'st
505— 193=312— 15 £ &/i (193)=297— 254=43— 15 b & h
(193)— 28.
505—30=475—193=282—254=28.
516—167=349—22 b & /;=327— 30=297— 254=43— 15
b & h (254)=28.
516—167=349—22 b & A— 827— 50— 277— 146 (76:2)=
131_3=128— 50=78— 50=28.
505—50=455—219 (74:2)=236— 193=43— 15 b ft h
(193)— 28.
505—29=476—218=258—22 b & h (218)— 236— 193—
43— 15/, & //(193)=28.
And there are still others !
Can any man pretend this came about by accident ? No; for be it observed that
every number which produces the word shale st in the above examples, counting from
the beginning or end of pages or fragments of pages, is a Cipher number. And
this concordance exists not once only, but fourteen times !
And as the internal narrative must bring in some reference to Shakspere every
one of these fourteen times, by these fourteen different counts, the reader can
begin to realize the magnitude of the story that is hidden under the face of this
harmless-looking text. And then, be it also observed, eleven of these fourteen
references grow out of that part of the story which comes from the root-number
505; the word shak'st does not match once, nor can it be twisted into matching with
523 or 513. Why? Because Bacon only occasionally refers to Shakspere; his
story drifts into other and larger matters than his relations to the man of Stratford.
The only time when 523 touches upon Shakspere is when it alternates with 505, thus:
505—167=338—22 b & h (167)— 316-30— 286— 50 (74:2)
—236—193—43—15 b ft h (193)— 28.
523—167=356—22 b & h (167)— 334. 447—334=113
+ 1—114.
But let us turn to the word spurre. We have:
505—167—338—254—84—15 b ft A— 69— 9 b ft //— 60.
516—167=349—22 b & //— 327— 50— 277— 193=84—
15 b & h= 69— 9 b & h— 60.
505—198 (74:2)— 307— 218 (74:2)— 89— 22 b ft h (218)=
67—7 £—60.
505—197 (74:2)— 308— 248— 60.
505—167 (74:2)— 888— 1 h (167)— 337— 248=89— 22 b
(248)— 67— 7 0— 60.
505—198 (74:2 =307— 193=1 14.
523—167=356—22 b & A— 334. 447—334=113+1=
523—167=3:6—22 b & /— 334— 248— 86. 193—86=
107+1—108+6 b & h=A 14.
505—193=312—198 (74:2)— 114.
505—167—338—1 h (167)=337— 254— 83. 193—83—
110+1—111 + 3^—114.
516—167—349. 447—349—98+1—99—6 A— 105.
516—219=297—193=104—15 b & h— 89. 193—89
=104+5—2 b & A— 107. (107)
28
75:2
shak'st
114
75:1
spurre
60
75:1
spurre
60
75:1
spurre
60
75:1
spurre
60
75:1
spurre
60
75:1
spurre
114
75:1
spurre
114
75:1
spurre
114
75:1
spurre
114
75:1
spurre
114
75:1
spurre
(105)
75:1
spurre
lo:l
spurre
7 2 8 THE CIPHER NA RRA TI VE.
Page and
Word. Column.
516—167 349—22 b & ^=327— 237=90— 3 b (237)
=87 193—87=106+1=107. (107) 75:1 spurre
516- -167=349—22 b & //=327— 193=134— 15 b & h= (119) 75:1 spurre
Here are fourteen spurres to match the fourteen shak'sls.
I have not the space to summarize the number of instances wherein more and
low are similarly made to harmonize with the root-numbers and the scenes and
fragments of scenes. I have already given two such instances.
Then let the reader observe that extraordinary collocation of words: The Con-
tention between York and Lancaster, King John, and other plays; all growing out of
the same Cipher number, 327. If there is no Cipher in the text, surely these pages,
74, 75 and 76, are the most marvelous ever seen in the world; for they contain not
only the names of the old jade, Cecil, Marlowe, Shakspere many times repeated, but
Archer, the Contention between York and Lancaster, King John, and all the many
pregnant and significant words which go to bind thsse in coherent sentences — not
a syllable lacking. While it may stagger the credulity of men to believe that any
person could or would impose upon himself the task of constructing such an
unparalleled piece of work, it is still more incomprehensible that such a net-work
of coincidences could exist by accident.
But it may be said these curious words would naturally occur in the text of any
writings. Let us see: There is the Bible; equally voluminous with the Plays,
translated in the same era, and dealing, like the Plays, with biography, history and
poetry. The word shake occurs in the Plays 112 times; in the Bible it occurs but
35 times. There is no reason, apart from the Cipher, why it should occur more
than three times as often in the Plays as in the Bible. The word play occurs in the
Plays more than 300 times; in the Bible it occurs 14 times ! And remember that
the word play in the Plays very seldom refers to a dramatic performance. Played
is found in the Plays 52 times; in the Bible 7 times. Player occurs in the Plays 29
times; in the Bible 3 times. Jade is found 24 times in the Plays and not once in the
Bible. Stage occurs 22 times in the Plays and not once in the Bible. Scene occurs
40 times in the Plays; not once in the Bible.
But it may be said that dramatical compositions would naturally refer more to
play and plays and scene, etc. , than a religious work. But in the Plays themselves
there are the widest differences in this respect. In King John, for instance, the
word please (pronounced plays) occurs but once; in Henry VIII. it is found 28
times ! Play occurs but twice in the Comedy of Errors, but in 1st Henry IV. we
find it 12 times; in Henry VIII. 14 times, and in Hamlet 35 times ! Shake occurs
but once each in Much Ado, 1st Henry VI, in The Alerchant of Venice, Measure
for Measure, the Meny Wives, and the Two Gentlemen of Verona; while in Julius
Ccesar we find it seven times, in Macbeth 8 times, in Lear 8 times, and in Othello
7 times.
These differences are caused by the fact that in some of the Plays the Cipher
narrative dwells more upon Shakspere than in others. But shake is found in every
one of the Plays, and it is therefore probable that the Stratford man entered very
largely into Bacon's secret life and thought, and consequently into the story he
tells. It will be a marvelous story when it is all told, and we find out what the
wrong was that Caliban tried to work upon Miranda.
But we go still farther with Cecil's reasons for believing that Shakspere did not
write the Plays, and we carry the same root-number with us into another chapter.
CHAPTER X.
SHAKSPERE INCAPABLE OF WRITING THE PL A VS.
A very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow.
Measure for Measure, iii, 2.
EVERY Cipher word in this chapter also is the 327 th word from the
same points of departure which have given us all the Cipher story
which has preceded it.
We have this further statement from Cecil to the Queen:
516
167 (74:2)
349
349
22 £ & 4
327
327
50
277
516—167=349—22 £ & h— 327— 50^-277— 50— 227.
603— 227=376+ 1=377.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327— 30=297— 193=104.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327— 30=297— 193=104—
50=54—50 (76:1)— 4. 508—4=504+1=505+1 4=
516— 167=349— 22 £ & 4=327— 30=297— 193=
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—30=297—193=104—
15 b & 4=89. 448—89=359+1=360.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—50=277—50 (76:1)=
516— 167=349— 22 £ & 4=327— 49 (76:2)=85.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—146 (76:2)— 181—
9 4 & £=(172).
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—30=297—49 (76:1)=
248—248=0+1=1.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327— 50=277— 146=131 .
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—30=297—193=104.
448—104=344+1=345.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—50=277—145=132-
10 £=122.
516—167=349—22 b& 4=327—193=134—5 4 (193)
=129—2 4=127.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—50=277—193=84—
15 £& 4=69— 10 £=59.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—30=297—193=104—
15 b& 4=89. 508—89=419+1=420.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—50=277. 284—277=
7+1=8+18 £&4=(26).
729
327
30
297
Word.
Page and
Column.
377
76:2
He
104
74:1
is
=506
75:2
the
104
75:2
son
360
76:1
of
227
76:2
a
85
75:1
poor
(172)
peasant
1
74:2
who
131
76:1
yet
345
76:1
followed
122
74:1
the
127
76:1
trade
59
74:1
of
420
75:2
glove
(26)
74:1
making
73°
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
516—167=349—22 b & //=327— 30=297— 193=104
—33—101.
516—167=349—22 4 & /i=327— 30=297— 248=49—
22 4=(27).
516— 167=349— 22 £ & 4=327— 30=297— 49 (76:1)=
248—44=244.
516— 167=349— 224 & 4=327— 30=297— 49 (74:2)=
516— 167=349— 22 b & 4=327— 30=297— 193=104—
50=54. 603—54=549+1=550.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—50=277. 447—277=
170 + 1=171.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—30=297—146 (76:2)
=151—3 4=148—3 A— 145.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—30=297— 193=104—
10 b (193)=94.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—254=73—15 b & h—
58. 248—58=190+1=191.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—30=297—30=267.
448—267=181+1=182+10 4& 4=192.
516—167=349—22-4 & 4=327— 30=297— 50=247.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—50=277—248=29—
2 h (248)=27.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327— 30=297— 50=247—
12 b & 4=235.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327— 50=277— 145=132.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—30=297. 447—297
=150+1=151+5 A— 156.
516— 167=349— 22 b & 4=327—30=297— 248=49—
24 b & 4 (248)=25.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327— 50=277. 447—277-=
170 + 1=171 + 11 4=182.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327— 254=73— 51 (448)=
22. 603—22=581 + 1=582.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—193=134-10 b (19 5)
=124. 448—124=324+1=325.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—30=297—193=104.
284—104=180+1=181.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—50=277.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—50=277—145 (76:2)
=132—11 b & h— 121.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327—50=277—145=132
—7 4=125.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327— 50=277. 284—277
=7+1=8.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327-193=134—15 b & h
=119. 284—119=165+1=166+6 4=172.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327— 50=277— 49 (76:2)=
228—44=224.
516—167=349—22 b & 4=327— 248=79. 447—79=
368+1=369+3 4=372.
Word.
Page and
Column.
101
76:1
in
(27)
74:1
the
244
74:1
hole
248
74:1
where
550
76:2
he
171
75:1
was
K5
76:1
born
94
74:2
and
191
74:2
bred,
192
76:1
one
247
74:1
of
27
74:1
the
235
132
74:1 peasant-towns
74:2 of
156
75:1
the
25
74:1
West.
182
75:1
And
582
76:1
there
325
76:1
are
181
277
74:1
74:1
even
rumors
121
74:1
that
125
74:2
both
8
74:1
Will
172
74:1
and
224
76:2
his
372
75:2
brother
SHAKSPERE INCAPABLE OF WRITIXG THE PLA VS.
731
-145 (76:2)=
-193=104.
Word.
= 132
Page and
Column.
76:1
did
-50=247—
405
75:2
themselves
-193=104
397
76:1
follow
496+6 7*=
-145 (76:2)
-193=84—
202
127
74:1
76:1
that
trade
-145=152.
69
76:2
for
=443.
-50 (76:1)=
-145(76:2)
1=156.
-5 7=292.
248—73
443
227
156
292
77:1
76:1
74:1
76:1
some
time
before
they
-145=132.
176
74:2
came
153
74:1
here.
516—167—349—22 b & 7=327—50=277-
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—30=297-
508—104=404—5=405.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—30=297-
145=102. 498—102=396+1=397
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—30=297-
— 15 b & 7=89. 284—89=195+1=
516—167=349—22 b ft 7=327—50=277-
=132—5 b ft 7=127.
516—167=319—22 b & 7=327—50=277-
15 b ft 7=69.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—30=297-
577—152=425 + 1=426+17 b & 7=
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—50=277-
516—167=349—22 b ft 7=327—50=277-
=132—3 £=129. 284—129=155+
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—30=297-
516—167=349—22 b ft 7=327—254=73.
=175+1=176.
516—167=349—22 b & 7=327—50=277-
284—132=152+1=153.
Here are fifty-six more words, growing out of the same root-number: 516 — 167
=349 — 22 b & 7=327, modified by 30 or 50, which gave us whole pages of narrative
in the last chapter. We will see hereafter that we advance in order, from the more
complex to the more simple; that is, the above root-number 327, obtained bv count-
ing in the 22 bracketed and hyphenated words in the second subdivision of column
2 of page 74, is followed by 516 — 167=349, where we leave out of the count the
22 bracketed and hyphenated words. And this is cunningly contrived, because
one trying to unravel the Cipher would first undertake the more simple and obvious
forms, and would scarcely think of obtaining a root-number by counting in the
bracketed and hyphenated words in the second subdivision of column 2 of page 74,
or any similar subdivision.
The "brother" here referred to was Shakspere's brother Gilbert, born in
1566, two years after Shakspere's birth. If Shakspere came to London in 1587,
Gilbert was then twenty-one years of age. Very little is known of him. Halli-
well-Phillipps thinks he was in later life a haberdasher in London.1
But as his name does not. occur in the subsidy lists of the period, it is not
unlikely that he was either a partner with, or assistant to, some other tradesman
of the same occupation.
The fact that he is found in London accords with the intimation in the Cipher
narrative, that he came there with his brother, and probably was at first also a
hanger-on about the play-houses.
The reader will here observe how the words glove making growT out of the
same root-number; one being 327 minus 30, the other 327 minus 50. Observe also
how the terminal number 104 produces is, the, son, of, followed, glove, in, he, and,
themselves, and that: while 277 gives us he, a, vet, the, of, making, teas, the, rumors
that, both, Will, his, did, trade, for, time, and before.
If there is no Cipher here, how could glove and making and all these other
words grow out of 327 modified by 50 and 30?
Outlines, pp. 23 and 24.
CHAPTER XI.
SHAKSPERE WOUNDED.
This morning, like the spirit of a youth
That means to be of note, begins betimes.
A utony and Cleopatra, iv, 2.
EVERY Cipher word in this chapter is the 338th word from the same
points of departure as in the previous chapters.
I gave in Chapter VI., page 694 ante, something of the story
of Shakspere's youth, and yet but a fragment of it. I am of the
opinion that it runs out, with the utmost detail and particularity,
on the line of the root-number 338 [505 — 167 (74:2)=338] to the
end of 2d Henry 1 7., and, possibly, to the beginning of 1st Henry
IV. I gave in Chapter IV. the statement that Shakspere —
Goes one day and with ten of his followers did lift the xvater-gate of- the fish pond
off the hinges, and turns all the water out from the pond, froze all t lie fish, and girdles
the orchard.
And also:
They drew their weapons and fought a bloody fight, never stopping even to
breathe.
And further, that when he ran away from home —
He left his poor young jade big with child.
Now between the description of the destruction of the fish-pond
and the account of the fight there comes in another fragment of the
story.
The narrative seems to be a confession, made by Field. Hence
its particularity. It is believed that Richard Field, the printer, was
a Stratford man. In 1592 Shakspere's father, with two others, was
appointed to value the goods of " Henry Feelde, of Stratford,
tanner," supposed to have been the father of Richard Field the
printer."1 Halliwell-Phillipps asserts positively that he was his
father.2 Richard Field was also, as I have shown, the first printer
of Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.
'- Collier's English Dramatic Poetry, iii, 439. 2 Outlines, p. 69.
732
SHAKSPERE WOUNDED.
733
505—167=338—284=54.
505—167=338—248=90—24 b & h (248)=66— 5 b—
505—167=338—49 (74:2)=289. 498—289=209^1=
505—167=338—50 (76:1)=288. 498—288=210 + 1=
505—167=338—6 //=332.
505—167=338—284=54. 237—54=183+1=184.
505—167=338. 498—338=160+1=161+10 b & //=
505— 167=338— 284=54+28 (73:2)=82.
505—167=338—284=54—18 b& h (284)=36.
505—167=338—284=54.
505—167=338—145 (76:2)=193— 4 h col. =189.
505—167=338—50=288—146 (76:2)— 143— 8 b (146)=
505—167=338—145 (76:2)=193— 3 b (145)=190.
448—190=258+1=259.
505—167=338—145 (76:2)=193. 448-193=255+1
=256+4 £=260.
505—167=338—50=288. 498—288=210+1=21 1
+1 A— 212.
505— 167=338— :0 (74:2)=288— 193=95— 50 (76:1)
=45. 508—45=463+1=464.
-6—167=338—50=288—22 b & 7^=266— 50=216—
145=71.
Word.
Page and
Column.
54
73:2
And
61
74:1
while
214
76:1
we
211
76:1
are
332
75:1
thus
184
73:2
busily
171
76:1
engaged
82
73:2
my
36
73:2
Lord
54
73:2
and
189
77:1
some
139
76:1
of
259
76:1
his
260
76:1
followers
212
76:1
set
464
75:2
upon
71
76:1
us.
The reader will observe that every word of this sentence is derived from the
same root-number (505 — 167=338), and he will also note how often the terminal
root-number, 54, is used.
Then follows the description of the "bloody fight" given in Chapter VI.
The story of Shakspere's deer-killing is found in the latter part of 1st Henry IV.
We take the same root-number, 505 — 167=338, and, commencing on the first
column of page 73 (part of " The Heart of the Mystery"), we find that, by inter-
mingling the terminal fragments of the second scene of 2d Henry IV. with the
terminal fragments of the last scene of 2d Henry IV., we get these words:
505—167=338—50=288—49 (76:1)=239— 79 (73:1)=
160. 588—160=428+1=429. 429
505—167=338—30=308—193=115—1// col.— 114. 114
505—167=338—50=288—169 (73:1)— 119— 1 h
(169)— 118. 346—118=228+1=229. 229
505—167=338—50=288—142 (78:1)— 146— 1 h (142)
=145+170=315—1 h col.— 814. 314
505—167=338—50=288—49 (76:1)=239— 90 (73:1)= 149
505—167=338—50=288—169 (73:1)— 119— 1 h (169)= 118
505—167—338—50=288—142 (73:1)— 146— 1 h (142)= 145
72:2
r5:l
72:1
Jack I
spur *
hath
72:2
killed
72:2
many
72:2
a
72:2
deer.
As I have before noted, Jack had probably in that day the sound of shack, for
the word, being derived from the French, retained the sh or zh sound. We find
this given by Webster to Jacquerie. The word Jack will be found repeatedly used,
in the Cipher, for the first syllable of the name of Shakspere. It will be noted in
this example that out of seven words all are derived from 338 — 50=288, except
one, which is 33S — 30; two are derived from 288 — 169=119; two from 288 — 49
231
72:2
the
145
72:2
deer
237
73
73:2
was
258
72-2
indeed
734 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
(76:i)=239, and two are derived from 288 — 142=146. This recurrence of terminal
root-numbers is very significant. I would explain that 142 is the number of words
from the end of the first subdivision of 73:1 to the bottom of the column; and 79
and 90 are, of course, the two other principal subdivisions of that column. And
the reader will observe that to obtain 338 — 169 we have deducted the number of
words from the top of the first subdivision of 73:1 down the column; while when
we have 338 — 142 we hr.ve the number of words from the bottom of that same sub-
division down the same column. It will thus be seen that there is a relation and
an order in the formation of the sentence; that it moves from the two ends of the
same subdivision.
It seems that Shakspere and "our party" had killed a deer, made a fire and
had the body " half eaten: "
Page and
Word. Column.
505—167=338—141 (78:1)— 197. 237—197=40+1= 41 73:2 The
505— 167=338— 30 (74:2)=308— 50 (76:1)=258. 588
—258=330+1=331 + 1/^=332. 332 72:2 body
505—167=338—30 (74:2)=308— 50 (76:1)=258. 284
—258=26+1=27+7 h col. =34. 34 74:1 of
505—167=338—30 (74:2)=308— 50 (76:1)=258— 27
(73:1)=231.
505—167=338—193 (75:1)=145.
505—167=338—169 (73:1)=169— 1 h (169)=168.
—168=69+1=70+3 b col. =73.
505— 167=338— 30 (74:2)=308— 50=258.
505—167=338—30=308—198 (74 :2)=1 10+ 194=304
— 7 b&h col. =297. 297 ?5:1 half
505—167=338—30 (74:2)=308— 50 (76:1)=258— 13
b&h col.=245. 24?) 74:1 eaten.
If the reader will count down from the top of 74:1 he will find the word eaten
cunningly hidden in the middle of the hyphenated word worm-eaten-hole,
505—167=338—30=308—198=110.
505— 167=338— 30=308— 198 (74:2)=110-
505—167=338—30=308—141 (73 :1)=167.
167=3+1=4.
505— 167=338— 193=145+346 (72:2)=491—
505— 167=338— 30=308— 141 (73:1)=167.
505—167=338—141=197. 237—197=40+1=41
+ 3 b col.=44. 44 73:2 the
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—79=179
— 1 h (79)=178. 237—178=59+1=60. 60 73:2 foot
505— 167=338— 28 (73:1)=310. 588—310=278+1= 279 72:2 of
505—167=338—30=308—141 (73:1)=167. 588—
167=421+1=422. 422 72:2 a
505—167=338—30=308—141=167. 237—167
=70+1=71. 71 73:2 hill.
Let the reader consider for an instant how different are the words that are
here the 338th from certain clearly established points of departure, as compared
with the words produced by 523 — 167=356; or as compared with those which came
out from 505 and 523 minus the subdivisions of 75:1. Compare: Shakspere had
110
75:1
He
194=304.
304
75:1
found
170—
4
72:2
it
-1 A col.=
= 490
72:2
lying
167
72:2
by
513
72:2
fought
=337
72:2
a
197
72:2
hot
310
72:2
and
153
72:2
bloody
197
7o:2
fight.
SHAKSPERE WOUNDED. y35
killed many a deer; . . . the body of the deer ivas half eaten. He found it lying by
t 'he foot of a hill; with: How is this derived? Saw you the Earl? etc.; or: Her
Grace is furious and hath sent out, etc. ; or: With this pipe he hath blown the fame of
rebellion almost into open war, etc. In every case the character of the words is
totally different.
The Cipher story proceeds to tell how Sir Thomas Lucy and his son came upon
the scene — they had a fight with the poachers and drove them off. We have:
Page and
Word. Column.
505—167=338—30=308-50 (76:1)=258— 27 (73:1)
=231 + 170 (72 :2)=401. 401 72:2 We
505—167=338—30=308—142 (73:1)=166. 347
(72:2)+ 166— 513.
505—167=338—30=308—141 (73:1)=167+170 (72:2)=
505—167=338—141 (73:1)=197.
505—167=338—28 (78:1)— 310.
505—167=338—142 (73:1)— 196. 346—196=150+1
—151+2 h col — 158.
505—167=338—141 (73:1)— 197.
Certainly, if all this is accident, it is extraordinary that the accident on one page
should precisely accord with the accident on all other pages; that is to say — 505
— 167=338, minus 30 and 50, tells us the story of the last "bloody fight," when
the boys of Stratford destroyed Sir Thomas Lucy's fish-pond, and here we have the
account (by the same 505 — 167=338 — 30 and 50) of a previous "hot and bloody
fight," when Sir Thomas found them devouring the body of a deer. And it was
in revenge for punishment inflicted for the first fray —
[505—167=388—142 (73:1 )=196. 347 (72:2)— 196=
151+1--152+2 h col.— 154. 154 72:2 fray]—
that the yourg desperadoes organized the riot to destroy the fish-pond. And in
this latter fight Shakspere was badly wounded, shot by a pistol in the hands of Sir
Thomas Lucy. The story is too long to give here in detail. Every letter from my
publishers is 1 cry of despair about the increasing size of this work; and some of
my malignant and ungenerous critics are clamoring that my book will never
appear. I cm therefore only give extracts from the story. It runs through a great
part of page ]2 of 1st Henry IV. My Lord, for he was lord of the barony, and his
son, are mounted and armed. And here we have the word barony, the 149th word of
the 75:1 obtained from the same root-number, thus:
505— 167=-!8— 50 (74:2)=288— 49 (76:1)=239— 90
(78:1>-149. 149 75:1 barony
They Qome with all their household:
505—167^338—50=288—49 (76:1)— 289— 79 (73:1)
=160. 284—160=124+1=125. 125 74:1 with
505— 1C~^338— 50=288— 49 (76:1)=239— 90 (73:1)= 149 74:1 household;
a great multitude; and to find multitude, we repeat the last count but one, adding
in, however, the hyphenated words, thus: ■
505— 16~— 338— 50— 288— 49 (76:1)— 239— 79 (73:1)
-=160. 284— 160— 124+1— 125+7 h col.— 182. 132 74:1 multitude
736
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
And here we have great:
505—167=338—237=101—3 b (237)=98. 169— {
=71 + 1=72.
Page and
Word. Column.
72
73:1
great
The number 90 represents the end of scene 3 on 73:1; and the number 79 that
part of the next scene in the same column. See how the same number, 149, pro-
duces barony and household; while the corresponding number, 160, produces with
and multitude.
And here we find the story running on, and the same terminal numbers, 149,
160, etc., continuing to produce significant words. We can see the philosophy of
every word; they come either from deducting the whole of the first column of page
73 or the whole of the second column, or the fragments of each. We have had the
body of the half-eaten deer — found lying by the foot of the hill — the hot and bloody
fight — the lord of the barony coming with a great multitude of his household. And
Shakspere ran away, and —
505-
59
78
(160)
249
73:2
74:2
74:2
75:1
The
pursuers
followed
and
79
73:2
took
119
73:2
him
149
74:2
prisoner.
471
72:2
Percy
467=338—30=308—79=179. 237—179=58
+ 1=59.
505— 167=338— 50=288— 49 (76:1)=239— 79=160.
237—160=77+1=78.
505—167=338—50=288—49 (76:1)=239— 79 (73:1)=
505—167=338—30=308—49=259—198 (74:2)=
61 + 193=254—5 b & h col. =249.
505— 167=338— 50=288— 49 (76:1)=239— 79=160-
1 h (79)=159. 237—159=78+1=79.
505— 167=338— 50=288— 169 (73:1)=119.
505—167=338—50=288—49=239—90=149.
505—167=338—50=288—169=119—1 h (169)=118.
588—118=470+1=471.
505—167=338—50=288—49=239—79=160. 170+
160=330.
505—167=338—30=308—50 (76:1)=258— 79 (73:1)=
505—167=338—50=288—50 (76:1)=238— 63 (27 to 91)
=175. 237—175=62+1=63+3 b col.=66.
505— 167=338— 50=288— 50(76 :1)=238— 90=148.
505— 167=338— 50=288— 49(76 :1)=239— 90=149.
505—167=338—30=308—49 (76:1)=259— 78 (79 d)
=181. 237—181=56+1=57.
505— 167=338— 30=308— 50=258— 79(73 :1)=179—
1 ;2(79)=i78. 237— 178=59+ 1=60+ 3/; col. =63.
I do not pretend, for the reason stated, to give the whole account of this first
raid of the Stratford boys, but simply to call attention to the fact that this page 73
is as full of arithmetical adjustments, with 505 — 167=338, as we found it to be in
Chapter IV. with 505 — 284, and 523 — 284, etc.
In the presence of Percy in this story we probably have the explanation of the
original relationship of Bacon with Shakspere. Percy was Bacon's servant; he
was, it seems, from Stratford, and he was Shakspere's friend; hence when Bacon,
after Marlowe's death, needed another mask, Percy, Bacon's confidant, doubtless
suggested Shakspere.
And here we have the account of how Sir Thomas charged on the insurgents,
who were destroying the fish-pond:
330
72:2
and
179
73:2
the
66
73:2
rest
148
73:2
of
149
73:2
our
57
73:2
men
63
73:2
fled.
SHAKSPERE WOUNDED.
737
505—167=338—30=308—50 (76:1)=258— 248 (74:1)
=10. 193—10=183 + 1=184.
505—167=338—50 (74:2)— 288— 50 (76:1)=238— 50
(74 :2)=188+ 193=381— 4 A col.=377.
505—167=338—254 (75:1)=84 — 9^&/^ col.— 75.
505—167=338—30 (74 :2)=308— 198=110. 193—110
=83+1=84.
505— 167=338— 30=308— 50(76 :1)=258— 198=60.
505—167=338—30=308—198=110. 193—110=83+
1=84+3 £ col.— 87.
505—167=338—30=308—219=89—1 k col.=88.
505—167=338—50=288—248=40—7 b col— 33.
505—167=338—248=90.
505—167=338—30=308—219 (74:2)=89.
505—1 67=338—30=308—248=60 + 1 94=254.
505—167=338—248=90—9 b & h col.— 81,
505—167=338—30=308—219=89—7 b col.— 82.
505-1 67=338—248=90—7 b col.— 83.
505—167=338—254 (75:1)— 84.
505—167=338—50=288—219 (74:2)=69.
505— 167=338— 30=308— 50 (76:1)— 258— 198— 60
+ 193—253.
505—167—338—49 (76:1)— 289. 447—289—158+1—
505—167—338—30=308—50 (76:1;— 258— 219 (74:2;=
505—167—338—193—145.
Word.
Page and
Column.
184
75:1
My
377
75:1
Lord
75
75:1
struck
84
75:1
his
60
75:1
spur
87
88
75:1
75:1
up
to
33
75:1
the
90
75:1
rowell
89
254
75:1
75:1
against
the
81
82
75:1
75:1
panting
sides
83
75:1
of
84
75:1
his
69
75:1
horse
253
75:1
and
159
75:1
rode
39
75:1
him
145
75:2
down.
Here are twenty words, all originating out of the same number, which has been
telling the story of Shakspere's youth for many pages past, to-wit: 505 — 167—338;
and all but one of the twenty are found in the first column of page 75; and the
greater part, 16 out of 20, are found in the first subdivision of that column. If
this be accident, certainly there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world.
And Sir Thomas shoots Shakspere, leaving a scar that marked him for life.
Prof. John S. Hart thought he saw the traces of such a scar in the Dusseldorf death-
mask. And Bacon, to still better carry out the delusion, that Shakspere was Shake-
speare, wrote in one of the sonnets — the 112th:
Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow.
The story, I have said, goes back to the beginning of scene 3, act v, page 71,
of 1st Henry IV., and the pistol is found in 71:2, as will appear below.
We are told:
505— 167=338— 30— 308— 50(76:1)— 258— 193— 65.
193—65—128+1—129+1 k— 180.
505— 167=338— 30=308— 50(74:2)— 258.
505—167—338—30—308—247 (74:2 up)— 61.
505—167—338—50 (76:1)— 288— 26 b& h col=262.
505—167—338—30—308.
505—1 67—338—248—90 + 1 94—284.
505—167—338—50 (74:2)=288— 50 (76:1)— 238.
130
75:1
My
258
71:2
Lord
61
75:1
was
262
75:1
furious,
308
75:1
He
284
75:1
drew
238
75:1
his
73*
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
505—167=338—49 (76:1>=289— 169 (73:1)=120.
505—1 67=338—30=308—50 (76 : 1)=258— 1 98=60
+ 193=253.
505—167=338—30=308—49 (76:1)=259— 213 (71:2)
=46—1 h (213)=45. 458—45=413+1=414.
505—167=338—49 (76:1)=289— 248=41— 22 b (248)=
19—3 b col.=16.
505—167=338—30=308—49 (76:1)=259— 198 (74:2)
=61—24 b & // (198)=37.
505—167=338—30=308—248 (74:2)=60. 284-69
=224+1=225.
505—167=338—30 (74:2)=308— 219 (76:1)=89. 193
—89=114+1=115+6 b& 6=121.
505—167=338—284=54.
505—167=338—30=308—193=115—15 b & h (193)
=100+193=293.
505—167=338—30=308—248 (74:2)=60. 193—60
=133+1=134+1 h col.=135.
505—167=338—49 (76:1)=289. 433—289=144+1=
505— 167=338— 50=288— 218 (74 :2)=70.
505—167=338—30=308—248 (74:2)=60— 22 b (248)
=38—5 b col.=33.
505— 167=338— 30=308— 50 (76:1)=258— 193=65.
508—65=443+1=444.
505—167=338—30=308—49 (76:1)=259— 198 (74:2)
=61—22 b (198)=39.
505—167 338—30=308—248 (74:2)=60— 24 b&h
(248)=36— 5 b col— 81.
505—167=338—30=308—50 (76:1)=258— 248 (74:2)=
505—167=338—30=308—50 (76 :1)=258— 50=208—
146=62+162=224—5 b col =219.
505—167=338—30=308—254=54. 284—54=230+
1=231+5 h col.=236.
505—167=338—30=308—50 (76:1)=258— 248 (74:2)
=10+193=203.
505—167=338—49 (76:1)=289— 248 (74:2)=41
447—41=406+1=407.
Word.
Page and
Column.
120
71:2
pistol
253
75:1
and
414
71:1
shot
16
75:1
him,
37
75:1
and,
225
74:1
as
121
75:1
ill
54
75:1
luck
293
75:1
would
135
75:1
have
145
71:1
it,
70
75:1
the
33
74:1
ball
444
75:2
hit
39
75:1
him
31
74:1
on
10
74:1
the
219
78:1
forehead,
236
74:1
between
203
75:1
the
407
75:1
eyes.
Observe here the recurrence of remarkable words, fitting precisely to 505 — 167
=338 : drew — pistol — shot — ball — hit — forehead — between — eyes; — with all the
other words descriptive of a heady conflict: hot and bloody fight — struck — spur —
up — to — rowel — against — panting — sides — horse — rode him down; — My Lord,
furious, etc., etc. After a while we will find this same 505 — 167=338 describing
Shakspere's ailments and Ann Hathaway's appearance, and selecting out of the body
of the text, as if with the wand of a magician, an entirely different series of words.
And I will ask the reader to note that ball occurs but once in 2d Henry IV.y
and shot but once in 1st Henry IV.; pistol, as the name of a weapon, does not
occur once in 2d Henry IF., and but twice in 1st Henry IV.; hit occurs but
once in 2d Henry IV.; forehead occurs but this one time in both of the plays;
rowel occurs but this one time in both these plays, and but once more in all the
SHAKSPERE WOUNDED.
739
Plays. And yet here we find all these rare words coming together in the text, and
in a short space; and all of them tied together by the root-number, 505 — 167=338.
What kind of a cyclone of a miracle was it that swept them all in here in a bunch
together, and made each the 338th word from a clearly defined point of departure ?
But the marvel does not end here: 505 — 167=338 has many more coherent
and marvelous stories to unravel before we have done with it.
CHAPTER XII.
SHAKSPERE CARRIED TO PRISON.
Away with him to prison.
Measure for Measure, v, I.
T~* VERY Cipher word in this chapter grows out of the root-number
-*-* 505— 167=338-
At first it was thought that Shakspere was killed outright. We
read:
505—167=338—50 (76:1)=288— 248— 40— 9 b & h— 81
505—167=338—50 (76:1)=288— 193=95— 15 b & h
(193)=80. 284—80=204+1=205.
505-167=338—49 (76:1)=289— 248 (74:2)=41—
5d col.— 86.
505—167=338—49 (76:1)=289— 254 (75:1)=35—
15b&/i (254)=20.
505-167=338—49 (76:1)=289— 248 (74:2)=41—
6b & A col.— 85.
505—167=338—49 (76:1)— 289— 10 £ col.— 279.
505—167=338—49 (76:1)=289— 198 (74:2)=91.
505—167=338—49 (76:1)=289— 198 (74:2)— 91.
284—91=193+1=194.
505—167=338—50 (76:1)=288— 198 (74:2)=90.
284—90=194+1=195.
505—167=338—49 (76:1)=289— 248 (74:2)— 41—
22£(248)=19.
505—167=338—50 (74:2)— 288— 49 (76:1)=239.
508—239=269+1=270+8 b col.— 278.
505—167=338—49 (76:1)=289— 24£ col.— (265).
505—167—338—50 (76:1)— 288— 49 (76:1)— 239.
508— 239— 269+1=270+2 h col.— 272.
505— 167=338— 30— 308— 50(76:1)— 258— 193=
65+193=258—5 b & h col.— 258.
505—167=338—30=308—50 (76:1)— 258— 4 7/ col.—
505— 167— 338— 30— 308— 50(76:1)— 258— 193=65.
193+65=258—3 b col —255.
505— 167=338— 30=308— 50(76:1)— 258— 193— 65.
193+65—258—2 7/ col. =256.
740
Word.
Page and
Column.
. 31
75:1
He
205
74:1
fell
36
74:1
upon
20
74:1
the
35
74:1
earth.
279
74:1
They
91
74:1
thought
194
74:1
at
195
74:1
first,
19
74:1
from
278
75:2
his
(265)
75:2
bloody
272
75:2 appearance
253
75:1
and
254
75:1
the
255
75:1
whiteness
256
75:1
in
SHAKSPERE CARRIED TO PRISON.
741
505—167=338—30=308—50 (76:1)— 258— 197 (74:2)
=61—24 b&h (198)=37— 9 b & h col.— 28.
505— 167=338— 30=308— 50 (76:1)=258— 193=65.
193+65=258.
505— 167=338— 30=308— 50(76 :1)=258— 193=65—
15* ft A (198)— 60.
505— 167=338— 30=308— 50 (76:1)=258— 193=65.
505—167=338—50 (76:1)— 288. 447—288=159+1
=160+113 col.— 171.
505— 167=338— 30=308— 50(76 :1)=258— 193=65.
447—65=382+1=383.
505—167—338—49 (76:1)=289— 218 (74:2)=71—
1 h col.— 70.
505—167—338—30—308—49 (76:1)— 260. 284—
259—25+1—26+7/* col.=33.
505—167=338—193=145. 508—145=363+1=364
+l>i— 365.
505—167—338—50—288—49 (76:1)=239. 447—239
=208 + 1=209 + 2 A— 21 1 .
505— 167^=338— 50=288— 49 (76:1)— 239.
505—167=338—30=308—49 (76:1)=259— 13 3 & h—
505—167=338—50 (76:1)=288— 198 (74:2)=90. 193
+90=283—3 b col.— 280.
505—167—338—50 (76:1)— 288— 197 (74:2)=91— 22 £
(197)— 69. 284—69—215+1—216+6 //— 222.
505—167=338—30=308—50 (76:1)— 258. 447—258
—189+1=190+13 3—203.
505—167—338—49 (76:1)— 289— 218 (74:2)— 71.
505—167—338—30 (74:2;— 308— 49 (76:1)— 259— 219
(74:2)— 40.
505—167—338—50—288—49 (76:1)— 239— 237 (73:2)
=2 + 90—92.
505—167=338—193=145—15 b & A— 130.
Word.
Page and
Column!
28
75:1
his
258
75:1
cheek,
50
75.1
that
65
75:1
he
171
75:1
was
383
75:1
dead.
70
75:1
The
33
74:1
ball
365
75:2
made
211
75:1
the
239
75:1
ugliest
246
74:1
hole
280
75:1
in
222
74:1
his
203
75:1
fore
71
75:1
head
40
92
130
75:1
73:1
75:2
ever
saw.
Observe how cunningly the length of column 1 of page 74 is adjusted to the
word ball so that the root-number 505 — 167=338 brings it out the first time going
down the column and again going up the column. Observe, also, the matchless
ingenuity of the work. We have seen worm-eaten-hole furnish the world eaten, as
descriptive of the half-consumed deer; now we find it giving us the word hole; and
anon we shall see it used as a whole — worm-eaten-hole — to describe the prison to
which Shakspere was taken. In the above example it is difficult to express in fig-
ures the way in which we get the word hole, but if the reader will count down the
column (74:1), counting in the bracketed and hyphenated words, he will find that
the 259th word is, as I state, the word hole. The same is true of the word fore,
the first part of fore-head; it is the 258th word by actual count up 75:1 counting in
the bracketed words, although it is difficult to express the formula in figures. And
how marvelous is it that we not only find the word forehead, (which only occurs
once in these two plays), as given in the last chapter, cohering with 338, but here
we have again the elements to constitute the word, and each of the two words is
again the 338th word. And if fore-tells had not been separated, in the Folio, into
742
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
two words — a very unusual course — by a hyphen, this result would have been
impossible; as well as that curious combination found-out, and half the cipher
work given in the preceding pages. The reader will thus perceive the small
details upon which the whole matter turns; and how impossible it is that 148
bracketed and hyphenated words could be scattered through these three pages,
by accident, in such positions as to bring out this wonderful story. Such a thing
can only be believed by those who think that man is the result of a fortuitous
conglomeration of atoms, and that all the thousand delicate adjustments revealed
in his frame came there by chance.
Observe, also, that in the foregoing examples the count for the words, fell upon
the earth; they thought at first from, originates in each instance from the fragment
of scene 2, on 76:1; and the words are all found on 74:1; and that every word of
the whole long sentence of thirty-six words, with two exceptions, originated in the
same fragment of a scene, the 49 or 50 words at the bottom of 76:1'; and that out
of the thirty-six words thirty-one are found on 74:1 or 75:1.
505—167=338—30 (74:2)=308— 49 (76:1)— 259— 219
(74:2)=40— 9 £ & /; col.=31. 31 75:1 He
505—167=338—49 (76:1)=289— 254 (75:1)— 85. 284
—35=249 + 1=250+3 A col.— 253. 253 74:1 lies
505—167=338—50 (76:1)=288— 218 (74:2)— 70—
24£&/i=46. 46 73:2 quite
505—167=338—30 (74:2)=308— 49 (76:1)=259. 284
—259=25+1=26.
505—167=338—30=308—49=259.
505—167=338. 448 (76:1)— 338=110+1=111 +
3 h col.— 114.
505—167=338—50=288. 498 (76:1)— 288=210+1=
505—167=338—30=308. 448 (76:1)— 308=140+1=
141+3// col. =144.
505—167=338—50 (76:1)— 288.
505—167=338—50 (76:1)=288— 5 h col.— 283.
505— 167— 338— 49(76:1)— 289— 218 (74:2)— 71— 9 b & h-
Here, again, every word is 505 — 167=338, minus 30 or 50; every one begins
on 76:1, and all but one of the last seven are found on 76:1.
We have the whole story of the fight told with the utmost detail. I am not
giving it in any chronological order. Shakspere, before Sir Thomas shot him,
had not been idle. Sir Walter Scott was right when he supposed, in Kenilworth,
that William was a good hand at singlestick. We read:
505—167—338—30—308—49=259—90=169. 237
—169— 68+1— 69+3 £ col.— 72. 72 73:2 He
505—167=338—30—308—50 (76 :2)=258— 90=168
—50 (74:2)— 118. 284—118=166+1=167. 167 74:2 hath
505—167=338—30—308—50—258—90—168. 168 74:1 beaten
505— 167=338— 30=308— 50=258— 63 (79)=195—
8 k col.— 192. 192 76:1 one
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—79=179—49
(76:1)— 130. 508— 130— 378+1— 379+3 £—382. 382 76:1 of
505— 167— 338— 50— 288— 49— 239— 90(73:1)— 149
— 7 £ col.— 142. 142 74:2 the
26
74:1
still.
259
76:1
His
114
76:1
wounds
211
76:1
are
144
76:1
stiff
288
76:1
from
283
76:1
the
=62
75:1
cold.
SHAKSPERE CARRIED TO PRISON.
743
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—90=168—50
(76:1)— 118. 508—118=390+1=391 + 1 4=392.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95—3 b col.=92
305—167=338—49=289—254=35—15 b & 4=20.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95—15 b & h col.=80
— 9 b & h col. =71.
505—107=338—30=308—193=115. 193—115=78
+ 1— 79+3 £ col.— 82.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—79=179—50
(76:1) — 129 — 1 h col.— 128.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95. 508—95=413
+ 1=414+1 4=415.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95+193=288.
505—167=338—30=308—49=259—90=169. 284
—169=115+1=116+7 Acol.— 123.
505—167=338—193=145—49 (71 :)=96.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—90=168—49
(76:1)— 119. 508—119=389+1=390.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—90=168—50
(76:!)— 118. 508—118=390+1=391.
505—167=338—30=308—49 (79:1)— 259— 90 (73:1)=
505— 167=338— 30=308— 50=258— 79(73 :1)— 179
—20 b & h col. =159.
505—167=338—30=308—49=259—79=180.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—79=179—1 h (79)
=178—50=128. 508—128=380 + 1=381 +4 b & 4=
505—167=338—49=289—254=35.
505—167=338—30=308—49=259—90=169. 193—
169=24+1=25+6 b & 4=31.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95—15 b & 4=80.
284—80=204+1=205.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—63=195—50
(76:1)— 145.
505—167=338—30=308—49=259—90=169—145
=24. 577—24=553+1=554.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95—15 b & 4 (193)=
505—167=338—49=289 -254 (75:2)— 85.
505—167=338—30=308—49=259—79=180—50
(76:1)— 130. 508—130=378+1=379.
505—167=338—49=289—254=35—15 b & 4=20.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—28 (73:1)=230
—22 b & 4=208.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—28 (73:1)=
230—1 4=229.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—28 (73:1)=230
—145=85—3 b (145)— 82.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—90=168—
7 b col. =161.
Word.
392
92
20
390
Page and
Column.
75:2
76:1
74:1
75:1
75:2
keepers
o'er
the
head.
82
75:1
sides
258
77:1
and
128
76:1
back,
415
75:2
with
288
75:1
the
123
74:1
blunt
96
76:1
edge
of
391
75:2
his
169
76:2
stick,
159
74:2
till
180
76:2
it
=385
75:2
breaks;
35
75:2
or
31
75:1
he
205
74:1
fell
145
75:2
down
554
77:1
to
80
75:1
the
35
74:1
earth
379
75:2
under
20
74:1
the
208
75:1
heavy
229
75:1
weight
82
76:1
of
161
75:1
his
744
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
505— 1 67=338— 30=308— 50=258— 28 (73 : 1)=230
—145=85—2 //col. =83.
Word.
S8
Page and
Column.
76:1
blows.
It was then that Sir Thomas put spurs to his horse and charged on Shakspere,
as narrated in the last chapter, and shot him.
One of the men looked at Shakspere and said :
505—167=338—50=288—198=90—22 b (198)=68.
447—68=379+1=380.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95.
505—167=338—50=288—198=90. 447—90=357+1=
505—167=338—50=288—198=90—22 £—68. 447
—68=379+1=380+3 £=383.
505—167=338—30=308—49=259—79=180—50
(76:1)— 130. 508— L30=378+ 1=379+4 h col.—
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—90 (73:1)— 168
—49=119. 603—119=484+1=485+3 b col.—
505—167=338—50=288—193=95—15 b & /i=S0— 49
(76:1)— 81. 193—31=162+1=163.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95—15 b & //— 80—
50 (76:1)— 30— -7 b col.— 23.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95—15 b & //=80—
50=30. 447—30=417+1=418+2 £=420.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95—15/; & /;=80— 50=
505—167=338—50=288—193=95—15 b & /i=S0
—49 (76:1)— 31.
505—167=338—30=308—198=110—1 h col.— 109.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95—15 b & A=S0
_49 (76:1)— 31.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95—15 £ & /*— 80.
447—80=367+1=368.
505—167=338—50=288—198=90—24 £ & h (198)
=66+193=259—3 £ col. =256.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95—15 b & /i=80
4-193=273—3 b col.— 270.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95—15 b & //=80+
193=273.
505—167=338—30=308—49 (76:1)=259— 90 (731)=
505— 167=338— 30=308— 49(76 :1)=259— 90=169.
505—167=338—30=308—49=259—143 (73:1)— 116.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95—50 (76 : 1 )=45
+193=238—2 /*=236.
505-167=338—50=288—193=95—15 b & h— 80.
447—80=367+1=368+3 £=371.
505—167=338—30=308—193=115. 447—115=
332+1=333+8 b col.— 841.
505—167=338—30=308—193=115. 193—115=
78+1=79.
505— 167— 338— 30— 308— 49— 259— 90(73 :1)=1G9.
193—169—24+1—25+3 b col. =28.
380
95
=358
75:1
75:1
75:1
Why,
he
is
383
75:1
dead.
383
75:2
His
488
76:2
Lordship
163
75:1
then
23
75:1
stopped
420
: 30
75:1
75:1
his
horse
31
109
75:2
75:1
and
said:
31
75:1
He
368
75:1
is
256
75:1
in
270
75:1
a
273
169
169
116
75:1
73:2
74:1
74.1
faint.
Bend
down
and
236
75:1
put
371
75:1
your
341
75:1
ear
79
75:1
against
28
75:1
his
SHAKSPERE CARRIED TO PRISON.
745
Word.
505—167=338—50=288—49 (76:1)=239— 90=149.
248—149=99+1=100. 100
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—145 (76:1)— 113. 113
505—167=338—49=289—254=35—15 b & A— 20. 20
505— 167— 338— 50=288— 198=90— <>4 b ft h (198)=
66. 193—66=127+1=128+1 A— 129. 129
505—167=338—30=308—198=110. 110
505—167=338—50=288—193=95—15 b ft A— 80.
447—80=367+1=368. 368
505—167=338—30=308—49=259—90=169—
4 b col. =165. 165
505—167=338—30=308—49=259—79=180+193
=373—4 // col. =369. 369
Page and
Column.
75:1
75:1
75:1
76:1
75:1
heart,
to
see
if
he
is
yet
living.
Here we have still more pages upon pages, growing out of that same number,
505 — 167=338. And note the unusual words: beaten — keepers — blunt — edge — stick
— breaks; — earth — under — heavy — weight — blows; — bend — down — put — r ear —
against — heart — faint — living, etc. The word stick occurs only one other time in
these two plays; the word keepers appears only on this occasion; the word keeper is
found, however, once in this play.
505—167=338—30=308—49=259.
505—167=338—30=308—49=259—28 (73:1)— 281
—10/^ col. =221.
505—167=338—30=308—49=259—143 (73:1)=
116. 284—110=168+1=169.
505- 167=338—49=289—254=35. 248—35=213
+1—214+1 £—215.
505—167=338—49=289—254=35. 248—35=213
+ 1=214+2 b & A— 216.
505—1 67=338—30=308—49=259— 143=1 1 6 .
505—167=338—30=308—198=110. 194+110=304.
505—167=338—30=308—193=115—15 b ft //— 100
—50 (76:1)— 50.
505—167=338—49=289—254=35—7 b col =28.
505—167=338—30=308—193=115—15 b ft //— 100.
505—167=338—209 (73:2)— 129.
505— 167=338— 49 (76:1)=289— 145=144.
505—167=338—30=308—193=115—15 b & A— 100
—49=51. 448—51=397+1=398.
505—167=338—30=308—49—259—145—114—
6 b ft //— 108.
505—167=338—146 (76:1)— 192. 237—192=45+1=
505—167=338—30=308—49=259. 284—259=25 + 1=
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—28 (73:1)— 230—
218 (76:1)— 12. 447—12=435 + 1=436.
505—167=338—30—308—193=115—10 b col. =105.
505—167=338—30 (74:2)— 308— 193— 115— 15 b & h
=100—7 b col. =93.
505—167=338—30—308—49—259—193=66—5 b col.-
259
76:2
He
221
74:1
stooped
169
74:1
down
215
74:2
to
216
74:2
listen
116
74:1
and
304
75:1
found
50
75:1
that
28
75:1
his
100
74:1
heart
129
74:1
still
144
75:2
beat.
398
76:1
He
108
77:1
lay
46
73:2
quite
26
74:1
still
436
75:1
for
105
74:1
a
93
74:2
good
=61
74:1
while;
[ VNIVER8ITY J
746
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Word.
Page and
Column.
99
76:2
at
214
74:2
last
213
75:1
the
246
74:1
ragged
170
74:1
young
371
75:2
wretch
284
75:1
drew
39
75:2
a
226
74:1
low
=353
75:1
sigh
12
75:1
and
30
74:1 commenced
384
277
76:1
61:1
gasping
for
27
75:2
breath.
505—167=338—30=308—193=115—15 b & h=100
—1 h col.=99.
505—167=338—49 (76 :1)=289— 254=35. 248—35
=213+1=214.
505-167=338—49=289—254=35—15 b & /i=20
+ 193=213.
505—167=388—49 (76:t)=289— 248=41— 2 // (248)
=39. 284—39=245 + 1=246.
505-167=338—30=308—193=115. 284—115=
169 + 1=170.
505—167=338-145 (76:2)=193— 50 (76:1)=143.
508—143=355+1=356+5 b & /;=371.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95+193=288—4 //=
505—167=338—30=308—254=54—15 b=39.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—193=65. 284—
65=219+1=220+6 //=226.
505—1 67=338—50=288—1 93=95. 447—95=352 + 1=
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—28 (73:1)=230
—219=12.
505—167=338—49=289—254=35—5 b col. =30.
505—167=338—50=288—193=115. 498—115=
383+1=384.
505—167=338—49=289—12 b col. =277.
505—167=338—50=288—254=34—7 b col. =27.
Those who may insist that there is no Cipher here will have to explain the con-
currence of all this remarkable array of words: ragged — young — ivretch; —
stooped — dozvn; — listen — heart — beat; — low — sigh; — commenced — gasping —
Ireaih, etc. It might be possible to work out a pretended Cipher story, consisting
mainly of small words — the its, the thes and the ands; but here in these four
pages we have had every word necessary to tell not only the story of the kill-
ing of the deer, and the destruction of the fish-pond, but the subsequent fight; the
•charge of Sir Thomas Lucy on horseback, the pistol shot, the fall of two wounded
men, the apparent death of Shakspere, Sir Thomas stopping his horse, the exam-
ination for the signs of life, the low sigh of returning animation, and even the
gasping for breath, as the injured Shakspere regains consciousness. Surely, if
there is no Cipher here we can say of the text, as was said of Othello's hand-
kerchief: "There's magic in the web of it."
But the miracle does not end here; we will see, hereafter, this same root-
number going on to tell a wonderful story, which connects itself regularly and
naturally with all that we have given in these pages.
Take the following sentence. Here every word, as the reader will see, comes
out of the same corner of the text, by the same root-number, to-wit: 338 minus 50
or 30, as heretofore; while the count originates either from the end of the second
scene or the beginning of the third, in 76:1, the two being separated only by the
title of the scene.
505—167=338—50 (74:2)=288— 49 (76:1)=239—
4:b col. =245. 245 76:2 But
505—167=338—49 (76:1)=289— 162 (78:1)=127—
ll^col.=116. 116 78:2 it
SHAKSPERE CARRIED TO PRISON.
747
Page and
Word. Column.
505—167=338—49 (76 :1)=289— 145=144. 448—
144=304+1=305+1 h col.=306. 306 76:1 seemed
■505—167=338—49 (76:1)=289— 161 (78:1)— 128.
498—128=370 + 1=371. 371 76:1 his
505— 167=338— 50 (76:1)=288— 30=258— 146=112
— 3 ^(146)=1 09 +162=271— 5 b col.=266. 266 78:1 injuries
,505—167=338—50 (76:1)=288— 30=258— 146 (76:2)
=112—5 b & // col.=107. 107 76:1 were
505—167=338—49 (76 :1)=289— 145=144. 448—
144=304+1=305. 305 76:1 only
505— 167=338— 49 (76:1)=289— 30=259— 146=113
_3 b (146)=110. 110 76:1 flesh
505—167=338—49 (76:1)=289— 30=259— 145=114. 114 76:1 r^ wounds.
And observe how in connection with all the words already given, descriptive of
a bloody fight, and " gasping for breath," come in these words: seemed — injuries
— were — only — flesh — wounds. This is the only time flesh occurs in this act;
and the only time wound occurs in this scene; and this is the only time injuries is
found in this act. Yet here they are all bound together by the same number.
And here I would note, in further illustration of the actuality of the Cipher,
that no ingenuity can cause 505 — 167=338 to tell the same story that is told by
505 — 193=312, or by any other Cipher number. One Cipher number brings out
one set of words, which are necessary to one part of the narrative, while another
number brings out, even when going over the same text, an entirely different set of
words. This will be made more apparent as we proceed.
But what did Shakspere's associates do when he went down before his Lord-
ship's pistol? They did just what might have been expected — they ran away; and
the Cipher tells the story. And here we still build the story around that same frag-
ment of 49 words on 76:1 (intermixed with the first and last fragments, 50 and 30,
on 74:2) which has given us so much of the recent narrative; assisted, also, by the
next fragment of a scene, in the next column, — 145 or 146, 76:2. The first sub-
division of the next column ends at the 457th word; the second begins at the 458th
word. And to the end of the column there are 145 or 146 words, as we count down
from 457 or 458.
505—167=338—145=193—1 h col. =192.
505—167=338—49 (76:1)=289. 508—289=219+1=
505—167=338—50 (74.2)=288. 508— 288=220 +1=
505—167=338—50 (74:2)=288— 50 (76:1)=238—
20£col.=218.
505—167=338—50 (76:1)=288— 30 (74:2)=258—
1 h col. =257.
505—167=338—30 (74:2)=308. 508—308=200 + 1
=201+3 //col. =204.
505— 167=338-30=308— 29 (73:2)=279.
505— 167=338— 49=289— 30=259— 79(79 :1)=180
_50(76:1)=130.
505— 167=338— 49=289— 30=259— 146=113—
3/;(146)=110.
505—167=338—49=289—30 (74:2)=259— 10 /> col.—
505—167=338. 448—338=110+1=111.
192
75:2
All
220
75:2
our
221
75:2
men,
218
75:2
so
257
75:2
soon
204
75:2
as
279
74:1
they
130
r5:2
110
77:1
that
249
76:1
he
111
76:1
was
748
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Page and
Column.
75:2
75:2
76:1
75:2
75:2
75:2
75:2
75:2
Word.
505—167=338—50 (76:l)=288-30 (74:2)=258. 258
505—167=338—49 (76:1) 289—30 (74:2)=259. 259
505- -167=338—30=308—146=162—3 b (146)=159
— 96 & h col.— 150. 150
505—167=338—49=289—50=239. 508-239=
269+1=270. 270
505—167=338-49 (76:1)=289. 508—289=219
+ 1=220 + 3/; col. =223. 223
505—167=338—50 (74:2)=288— 24 b col. =(264). (264)
505—167=338—50 (76:1)=288— 50 (74:2)=238—
22 b & h col. =216. 216
505—167=338—50 (74:2)=288. 508—288=220+1
=221 + 13^ col.=234. 234
505—167=338—50 (76:1)=288— 50 (74:2) =238.
508— 238=270+1=271+2 h col.=273. 273
505—167=338—50 (76:1)=288. 448—288=160+1= 161
505—167=338—50 (76:1)=288-145 (76:1)=143. (143)
505—167=338—50 (74:2)=288. 288
505—167=338—145=193. 193
505—167=338—50 (74:2)=288— 50 (76:1)=238—
1 h col.=237. 237 75:2
505—167=338—146 (76:2)=192— 22 b & h col.=170. 170 75:2
505—167=338. 508—338=170+1=171. 171 75:2
505—167=338—145=193. 193 75:2
505—167=338—30 (74:2)=308— 49=259. 508—
259=249+1=250. 250 75:2
505—167=338—49=289—30=259—193=66. 66 76:2
505—1 67=338—30=308—254=54—50(76 : 1)=4 + 457=461 76 :2
505— 167=338— 30=308— 49=259— 79(73 :1)=180.
448—180=268+1=269. 269 76:2
505— 167=338— 30 (74:2)=308— 13^ col.=295. 295 76:1
505—167=338—30 (74:2)=308. 508—308=200+
1=201 + 16 b & h col.=217. 217 75:2
505— 167=338— 49 (76:1)=289— 50 (74:2)=239. ' 239 75:2
505—167=338—30 (74:2)=308— 50 (76: 1)=258. 508
—258=250+1=251. 251 75:2
505—167=338—50 (76:1)=288— 50 (74:2)=238. 508
-238=270+1=271. 271 75:2
505—167=338—50 (74:2)=288— 49 (76:1)=239— 22
b & h col. =21 7. 217 75:2
505—167=338—30 (74:2)=308— 50 (76:1)=258— 145= 113 76-1
505—167=338—30 (74:2,=308— 50 (76:1)=258— 22
b & h col.=236. 236 75:2
taken
prisoner
or
slaine,.
in
the
greatest
fear
75:2 of
76:1 being
76:1 apprehended,,
75:2 turned
76:1 and
fled
away
from
the
field,
into
the
shadows,
with
speed
swifter
than
the
speed
of
Here is another sentence of thirty-four words, growing out of 505 — 167=338;:
every word found on 75:2 or 76:1. Observe how those remarkable words taken —
prisoner — fear — slaine — appreliended — fled — speed — swifter — arrows — all come
out together, at the summons of the same root-number, cohering arithmetically
with absolute precision; and found — not scattered over a hundred pages, or ten
pages — but compacted together in two columns of 1,003 words! If this stood?
SHAKSPERE CARRIED TO PRISON. 749
alone it should settle the question of the existence of a Cipher in the Shakespeare
Plays; — but it is only one of hundreds of other sentences already given, or yet to
come, bbserve how those typical words speed — swifter — than — speed — arrows
— all come out of the same number and the same modifications. Speed is 338 less
30 up the column phis b & h; swifter is 338 less 50 down the column; than is 338 less
50 up the column; speed (the same word) is 338 less 50 down the column,///^ b &
A; arrows is 338 less 30 down the column, plus b & h. See how the same word
speed is so adjusted as to be 338 less 30 up the column and 338 less 50 down the
column!
But if further evidence is needed to satisfy the incredulous reader of the
presence of the most careful design and accurate adjustment of the words of the
text to the columns, and parts of columns, of the Folio, let me bring together three
parallel parts of the same story, existing far apart in the narrative, it is true, but
joined here by textual contiguity. We will see that some of the same words are
used thrice over to tell, first of the flight of the actors on hearing that they were
likely to be arrested for treason; secondly, the flight of Hens/070, the theater man-
ager, with his hoarded wealth; and thirdly, the story of the flight of the young men
of Stratford, when interrupted by Sir Thomas Lucy and his followers in the work
of the destruction of his fish-pond. Now a colossal prejudice might insist that the
story I have just given could come about by accident, — so as to precisely fit to
that fragment of a scene at the bottom of 76:1, and that other fragment of a scene
on 74:2, marshaled by the key-note, 505 — 167=338; but I shall now proceed to
show that the text of the% Folio has been so arranged and exquisitely manipulated,
that these very same words are made to match to the subdivisions of another
column, 75:1, by the key-note of two other and totally different Cipher numbers,
to-wit: 505 and 513; making a sort of treble-barreled miracle, so extraordinary and
incomprehensible, that I think the Shakspereolators will have to conclude that if
there is not a Cipher in these Plays there ought to have been one.
To get the three narratives side by side, into the narrow compass of a page, I
shall have to abbreviate the explanatory signs and figures; but I have already given
so many instances of these that I think the reader will understand what is meant
without them. I print in italic type those words which are duplicated in two or three
columns. To save space I do not give the column and page before each word,
because they are all found on 75:2, or 76:1, or 74:1. I therefore insert simply the
figures 5, 6 or 4 before the words* — 5 meaning 75:2, and 6, 76:1, and 4, 74:1. I
place the root-numbers which work out the story at the top of each column. The
15 b & h means, of course, the 15 bracketed and hyphenated words in 193 or 254,
the upper and lower subdivisions of 75:1. Where other figures are added or
deducted they refer to the bracketed and hyphenated words above or below the
Cipher word, as the case may be, in the same column. Where only the bracketed
words or the hyphenated words are counted by themselves I indicate it by b or //.
I do not pretend to give the words of these sentences, at this time, in their
exact order, but simply to show howT the same words are brought out, from different
starting-points, by different root-numbers; a result which would only be possible
through the most careful double and triple pre-arrangement and adjustment of the
root-numbers to the number of words in the text, and the number of bracketed
and hyphenated words in the columns, creating thereby a marvelous parallelism,
which it seems to me utterly excludes the thought that the results obtained have
occurred by chance.
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SHAKSPERE CARRIED TO PRISON. 75 *
Here the reader will perceive that the same words: men — turned — backs —
Jled — swifter — than — arrows — greatest — fear, are used, some of them in twor
some of them in three separate narratives, descriptive of three different flights;
mingled of course with words, in each instance, which do not occur in the others.
But this is not all. Observe how carefully the hyphens and brackets in column
75:2 are adjusted to the necessities of the Cipher. For instance, the root-number
505 — 30=475 — 254 gives us 221; and this carried down the column gives us men/
and up the column it brings us to 288, turned; but, if we count in the two hyphen-
ated words, it gives us backs — " turned their backs." On the other hand, 513 —
30=483 — 193 gives us 290; it will be noticed that we have here the same 30; and
the 193, the upper subdivision of 75:1, takes the place of 254, the lower subdi-
vision of the same. Now if we carry this 290 down the column it brings us to the
same word, backs, which we have just obtained by going up the column with 221.
But there are also two hyphenated words above 290 as well as below it, or four in
all in the column, exclusive of the bracketed words; and if we count these in, as
we did before with 221, the count falls again on turned — "turned their backs."
Now, if there had been five hyphenated words in that column this could not have
been accomplished; or if three of the four hyphens had been above 288 and 290 the
count would also have failed.
If Francis Bacon did not put a Cipher in this play, what Puck — what Robin
Goodfellow — what playful genius was it, — come out of chaos, — that brought
forth all this regularity ?
Now it may be objected that Bacon would not have used the comparison of
great speed to a flight of arrows twice; but observe the difference: 505 gives us
Jled . . . swifter than arrows fly toward their aim; while 338 gives us fled away
with speed szuifter than the speed of the arrows. And it must be remembered that,
although the words for these two comparisons are found in the same column, the
stories spring from different roots, and probably stand hundreds of pages apart in
the Cipher narrative itself. And then, as we find Bacon constrained, by the neces-
sities of the Cipher, to depart in the text of the Plays in many instances from both
grammar and sense, as in:
Or what hath this bold enterprise bring forth ?
76:1; or: " Therefore, sirra, with a new wound in your thigh come you along [sic]
me," 72:2; or:
Hold up they head, vile Scot,
72:1; or: "This earth that bears the \sic\ dead," 72:2, etc.: so, without doubt, he
was compelled, in such a complicated piece of work as the Cipher, to use the
same words, — for instance, swifter than arrows, — twice, or oftener, when it was
arithmetically easier to use them than to avoid using them. And what an infinite
skill does it imply, that he had so adapted the length and breadth of the different
parts of the Cipher narrative to each other, that the story of the three flights given
above could be brought around so as to fit into column 2 of page 75, and avoid the
necessity of recurring, in different other pages and columns, to the same words —
turned — backs — fled — swifter — arrows, etc.! And backs, be it observed, does
not occur again anywhere else in either of these two plays. And the word backs is
found only six times in all the Historical Plays, and in every instance we find the
word turn, or turned, or turning, in the same act, and, in four cases out of the six,
in the same scene with backs. And arrows is found but nine times in all the Shake-
speare Plays.
But it may be thought by some that any numbers would lead to these same
752
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
words. Let the reader experiment. The numbers 523 and 516 will produce some
of them, as I shall show hereafter; but 523 and 516 are Cipher numbers. Let us
take, however, a number not a Cipher number — for instance, 500 — and put it
through the same changes as the above; and it will yield us such incoherent words
as was — lead — with — from — with — King — well — laboring — and — gan — in —
three, etc. I do not think that any other numbers but the Cipher numbers can be
made to evolve even portions of any of the significant sentences found in this
three-fold example.
Let me give one more extraordinary proof of this exquisite adjustment of the
text to the Cipher; and I again place it in parallel columns that it may the more
clearly strike the eye of the reader. We have the same words, fear of being appre-
hended, used in two different portions of the narrative. Now the combination,
being apprehended, is one not likely to occur by chance; apprehended is found but nine
times in all the Plays ! And but this one time in this play. And being, (signifying
condition), but seven times in all the Plays ! And only this once in this play. The
reader will now see how these rare words come together twice, at the summons of
two different Cipher numbers:
513.
505—167=338.
513
513
483
338 288
193
30
193
50 (74:2) 145
320
483
290
288 143
513—449=34.
34 75:2
Fear
508—288=220+
290—5 h col.—
448—290=158+
1=159+2 h=
448—320=128+
285 76:1
161 76:1
of
being
1=221 + 13/;= 234 75:2
288—50=238.
508— 238+2//=273 75:2
448—288=160+
1=161. 161 76:1
Fear
of
being
1=129+11 £= (143) 76:1 apprehended. 288— 145 (76:)=(143) 76:1 apprehended.
Here we start from the initial word of scene 2 of 76:1 of the Folio, and 513
brings us to fear; the same less 193 (75:1) and less 50 (76:1) carried down the same
column gives us of; the same up the column, plus the hyphens, gives us being; and
the same 513 less 193, up the same column, gives us apprehended. The formula of
this last word cannot be clearly stated in figures, but actual count will satisfy the
reader that apprehended is the 320th word plus the brackets, counting up from 448.
Again, 505 — 167=338; 338 less 50 (74:2) gives us 2SS=fea?y this 288 carried
through the fragment at the bottom of 76:1 and up the next column gives us of;
and 288, the same number, up the column (76:1) gives us being; and the same
number, 288, carried through the adjoining subdivision (145, 76:2) gives us 143;
and actual count will demonstrate that apprehended is the 143d word down the
column, not counting in the bracketed and hyphenated words above it.
But to resume our narrative:
505— 167=338— 50=288— 248=40+ 193=233+ b*
505-167=338—49 (76 :1)=289— 248=41. 194+
41=235—^=235.
505— 167=338— 49=289— 218 (74:2)=71.
505—167=338—219 (74:2)=119.
Word.
(233)
(235)
71
119
Page and
Column.
75:1
75:1
74:1
75:1
My
Lord,
who
had.
SHAKSPERE CARRIED TO PRISON.
753
505—167=338—50 (74:2)===288— 49=239— 50 (74:2)=
505—167=338—50=288—50=238—50=188—
12 b & h col.=176.
505— 167=338— 50=288— 50 (76:1)=238— 50=188.
505— 167=338— 50=308— 50=258— 90(73 :1)=168.
508—168=340+1=341.
505—167=338—30=308—193=115—15 b & //=100.
248—100=148+1=149+3=160.
505—167=338—50 (74:2)=288— 50 (76:1)=238— 193
=45. 447—45=402+1=403+3 b col.=406.
505—167=338—49=289—248=41—24 b & k— 17.
505— 167=338-30=308— 198=1 10 ; 83 + 1=84
+3 3 col. 87.
505—167=338—30=308—198=110.
505—167=338—30=308—49=259-248=11+193=
204—2 ^=202.
505—167=338—49=289—248=41—22 b & /&— 19,
284—19=265+1=266.
505—167=338—30=308—193=115. 248—115=
133+1=134+16 b & h col.
505—167=338—49 (76:1)=289— 248=41— 24 3 & h
(248)=17. 447—15=432+1=433.
505—167=338—50 (74:2)=288— 248=40— 1 h col.—
505—167=338—49=289—248=41—22 b & /i— 19.
447—19=428+1=429.
505—167=338—30 (74:2)=308— 193=115— 15 b & h
=100. 248—100=148 + 1=149.
Word.
289
Page and
Column.
75:2
in
176
188
74:1
74:1
the
mean
341
76:1
time,
(160)
74:2
followed
the
406
17
75:1
751
others,
came
87
110
75:1
75:1
up.
He
202
75:1
tells
266
74:1
them
150
74:2
to
433
39
75:1
75:1
make
him
429
75:1
a
149
74:2
prisoner.
It seems that the rioters had also kindled a fire to light their destructive work.
For we have:
505— 167=338— 50=288— 248=40— 243 & h (248)=
16—1 A— 15.
505—167=338—30=308—198=110. 284—110=
174+5=175.
505—167=338—50=288—198=90—22— b (198)=68.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—90=168—1
h col. =167.
505— 167=338— 30=308— 198=110— 9 b& //=101.
505—167=338—50 (74:2)=288— 49" (76:1)— 239— 50
(74:2)=189— 12 b & h col. =177.
505— 167=338— 50=288— 50 (76:1)=238— 298=40.
284—40=244+1=245.
505—167=338—50=288—198=90—24 b& h (193)=66.
505—167=338—30=308—198=110. 284—110=174
+1— 175+6 h col.— 181.
505—167=338—50 (74:2)=288— 50 (76:1)=238— 50
(74:2)=188+ 193=381—8 3=373
505—167=338—30=308—198=110+194=304—
3 3 col— 301.
15
175
167
101
177
75:1
75:2
75:1
74:1
After
74:1 quenching
75:2 the
fire,
the
flames
245
74:1
of
66
75:2
which
181
74:1
even
373
75:1
yet
301
75:1
burned.
754- THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
The word quenching only occurs one other time in all the thousand pages of
the Plays; and here it coheres arithmetically with flame, fire and burned; and this
is the only time when flame occurs in these two plays of ist and 2d Henry 1 V '. ; and
this is the only occasion when burned \s found in 2d Henry IV.; and it occurs but
once in ist Henry IV.
And here the narrative changes slightly its root-number; heretofore we have
elaborated this part of the story by 505 — 167=338; but in that 167 (74:2) there are
twenty-one bracketed words and one hyphenated word; if we count these in, then
the 167 becomes 189; and 189 deducted from the root-number, 505, leaves, not 338,
but 316. Hence, for a long narrative, hereafter, 316 becomes the root-number. We
have seen a similar change take place on page 718, ante, where a whole chapter
grows out of 516 — 167=349 — 22 b&/i (i67)=327.
We read:
Page and
Column.
Word.
261
76:1
my
262
76:1
Lord
58
76:2
litter
253
75:1
and
123
76:1
lift
266
76:1
the
267
73:1
corpse
505—167=338—22 b & 4=316—50=266—5 4=261.
505—167=338—22 b & 4=316—49=267—5 4=262.
505—167=338—22 b & 4=316—193 (75:1)— 128. 498
—123=375+1=376. 379 76:1 tells
505— 167=338— 223 & 4=3 16— 193=123. 457—123
=334+1=335. 335 76:2 them
505—167=338—22 b & 4=316— 193=123— 15 b & A—
108— 5b& 4 col =103. 103 76:1 to
505—167=338—22 b & 4=-316— 50 (74:2)=266— 49
(76:1)=217— 145=72. 72 76:1 make
505—167=338—22 b & 4=316—193=123. 449=
123=326+1=327. 327 76:1 a
505—167=338—22 b & 4=316— 193=123— 15 b & k—>
108—50 (76:1)=58.
505—167=338—22/; & 4=316—50=266—13 3=253.
505—167=338—22 b & 4=316—193=123.
505— 167=338— 22 3 & 4=316—50=266.
505—167=338—22 b & 4=316—49 (76:1)=267.
505—167=338—22 b & 4=316—50=266. 603—266
=337+1=338. 338 76:2 up.
The exquisite art of the work is shown in that word litter. We have already
(505 — 448=57) used the 57th word, her, {her Grace is furious, etc.); here we use the
58th word, litter; and after a while we shall find the word derzvhelmed, the 55th word,
used to describe Bacon's feelings when he heard the dreadful news that Shakspere
was to be arrested and put to the torture to make him disclose the author of the
Plays. Now the Cipher story brought the words overwhelmed — her — Utter into jux-
taposition. How was Bacon to use these words in the external play? There-
upon, his fertile mind invented that grotesque image, wherein the corpulent Fal-
staff says to his diminutive page:
I do here walk before thee, like a sow that hath overwhelmed all her litter but
one.
It will be found that we owe many of the finest gems of thought in the Plays
to the dire necessities of the great cryptologist, who, driven to straits by the Cipher,
fell back on the vast resources of his crowded mind, and invented sentences that
would bring the patch-work of words before him into coherent order. Take that
beautiful expression :
SHAK'SPERE CARRIED TO PRISON. 755
O Westmoreland, thou art a summer bird,
Which ever, in the haunch of winter, sings
The lifting up of day.1
It will be found that summer, haunch, winter, sings and lifting are all Cipher
words, the tail ends of various stories, and the genius of the poet linked them to-
gether in this exquisite fashion. There was, to the ordinary mind, no connection
between haunch, a haunch of venison, and summer, winter and sings, but in an
instant the poet, with a touch, converted the haunch into the hindmost part of the
winter. It is no wonder that Bacon said of himself that he found he had "a
nimble and fertile mind."
1 2d Henry IV., iv, 2.
OfTHC
vW/VER8/Ty
CHAPTER XIII.
THE YOUTHFUL SHAKSPERE DESCRIBED.
We will draw the curtain and show you the picture.
Twelfth Night, i, J.
WHEN "my Lord" (as the peasants called him) — Sir
Thomas — captured one of the marauders and destroyers of
his property, he was of course curious to know who it was. And
so by the same root-number (playing between the end of scene
second, 76:1, and the subdivisions of 75:1) we find the following
words coming out:
505— 167=338— 50=288— 193 (75:1)=95.
505— 167=338— 30=308— 50=258— 28 (73:1)=230—
145=85. 448—85=363+1=364.
505—167=338—30=308—49=259—90=169—145=
24. 448—24=424+1=425.
505— 167=338— 30=308— 50=258-63 (73: 1)=195—
10 £=185.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95. 447—95=352
+1—853+3 b col.— 856.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—28 (73 : 1)=230—
145=85. 498—85=413 + 1=414.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—79=179—49='
130. 508—130=378+1=379+4 b & h col.—
505—167=338-30=308—49=259—79 (73 : 1)— 180—
\b col.=176.
Word.
Page and
Column.
95
75:1
He
364
76:1
scraped
425
76:1
the
185
74:1
blood
356
75:1
away
414
76:1
from
383
176
75:2
76:1
his
face.
And when the blood was scraped away from the face of the wounded man, he
recognized " William Shagspere, one thone partie." Little did Sir Thomas think,
as he gazed upon him, that the poor wounded wretch was to be, for centuries, the
subject of the world's adoration, as the greatest, profoundest, most brilliant and
most philosophical of mankind. The whole thing makes history a mockery. It
is enough, in itself, to cast a doubt upon all the established opinions of the world.
I would note the fact that the word scraped occurs in but two other places in
all the Plays !
505—167=338—30=308—49=259—90=169. 169 75:1 He
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—63 (73 :l)— 195—
50=145—50=95. 95 75:2 remembered
756
THE YOUTHFUL SHAKSPERE DESCRIBED.
757
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—90=168—145=
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—90=168. 458—
168=290+1=291+8 £ & h col. =299.
505— 167=338— 30=308— 50=258— 63(73:1)— 195—
50=145. 508— 145=363 + 1=364+3^ col. =
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—90=168. 508—
168=340+1=341+6 b col =347.
505— 167=338— 30=308— 50=258— 28 (73:1)=230—
145=85. 193—85=108+1=109+6 b & £—115.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—90=168.
505—167=338—50=288—193=95. 248—95=153+
1 h col.— 155.
505—167=338—30=308—49=259—90=169—145=
24— 3 3(145)— 21.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—28 (73 :1)=230—
145=85.
505—167=338—30=308—50=258—248=10.
505— 167=338— 50=288— 193=95— 50 (76:1)=45.
193—45=148 + 1=149.
Vord.
Page and
Column.
23
77:1
the
299
76:2
rascally
knave
367
75:2
well;
347
75:2
there
115
75:1
was
168
76:1
not
155
74:2
a
21
77:1
worse
85
77:1
in
10
74:1
the
149
75:1
barony.
And here follows the description of the youthful Shakspere, as he appeared
on his native heath: — one of the half-civilized boys of "the bookless neighbor-
hood" of Stratford; the very individual referred to in the traditions of beer-drink-
ing, poaching and rioting which have come down to us.
To save work for the printers I will hereafter, instead of printing 505 — 167=
338, in each line, content myself with commencing each line with 338.
X
338—30 (74:2)=308— 145=163— 3 b (145)=160.
338—30=308—146=162. 457—162=295+1=296.
338—30=308—146=162—3 b (146)=159. 457—159
=298+1=299.
338—30=308—145=163.
338—30=308—146=162—9 b & h col. =153.
338—30=308—145=163—5 b & h col.=148.
338—30=308—50=258—50 (76:1)=208. 457—208
=249+1=250.
338—163=175.
338—49 (76:1)=289— 146=143— 3 b (146)=140. 457
—140=317+1=318.
338—30=308—49=259.
338—29 (74:2))=309. 456—309=148+1=149.
338—50=288—146=192—3 b (146)=189— 4 b col.—
338—49=289—146=193—3 b (146)=190— 4 b col.—
338—49 (76 :2)=289— 146=143— 1 h col.=142,
338—49 (76 :2)=289— 146=143.
338—49 (76:2)=289— 161=128+457=585— 3 b col —
338—193=145—5 b & h col.— 140.
338— 193=145— 43 col.— 141.
160
77:1
The
296
76:2
horson
299
76:2
knave
163
76:1
was,
at
153
76:1
this
148
76:1
time,
250
76:2
about
175
78:2
twenty;
318
76:2
but
259
76:1
his
149
76:2
beard
185
76:2
is
186
76:2
not
142
76:2
yet
143
76:2
fledged;
582
76:2
there
140
76:2
is
141
76:2
not
758
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
338—50 (74:2)— 288— 146=142.
338—30=308—145=163. 457—163=294+1=295.
338—145 (76:2)=193— 3 b (146)— 190— 2 h col =188.
338—29 (74:2)=309.
338—30=308—145=163.
338—50 (74:2)=288— 50 (76:1 )=238— 146=142
—3 b (146)— 189.
338—49 (76:1)=289— 146=143. 577—143=434+1
=435+17 b& h— 452.
338—30=308—50=258—15 b & h col.— 348.
338—193=145. 457—145=312+1=313.
338—30=308—49=259. 603—259=344+ 1=345+
2 h col. =347.
338—30=308—146=162—3 b (146)=159— 4 b col.—
338—30=308—145=163—3 £(145)=160— 4 b col.—
338—30=308—49=259.
338—30=308—49=259—145=114—3 b 'col.— 111.
338—50=288—50 (76:1)— 288.
338—50=288—162 (78:1)— 126.
338—50=288—50 (76:1)— 238— 7 £ col.=231.
338—49 (76:1)— 289— 161=128. 610—128=482+1—
338—30=308—49=259—3 h col. =256
338—49 (76:1)— 289— 162=127— 32 (79:1)— 95
—11 b col.— 84.
338—50=288—162 (78:1)=126— 58 (80:1)=66.
338—162=176—49 (76:1)— 127. 603—127=476 + 1—
477+3 b col. =480
338—162—176—49 (76:1)— 127. 458+127=585.
338—50 (74:2)— 288. 603—288=315+1=316.
338—49 (76:1)— 289. 603—289—314+1=315+2 /z—
338—50 (74:2)— 288. 603—288=315+1=316+
2 /z— 318.
338—30=308—145=163. 457—163=294 + 1=295.
338—30=308—162=146—50=96—1 /z col. =95.
338—50=288—57 (79:1)— 231.
338—30—308—162—146. 458—146—312+1—313+
7 b& /z— 320.
338—50 (74:2)— 288— 49 (76:1)— 289.
338—49 (76:1)— 289. 603—289—314+1—315+
10 b & /z— 325.
338—50=288.
338—145—193. 577—193—384+1=385.
338—30—308—49—259—4 b col.— 255.
338—30—308—50 (76:1)— 258.
338—50=288—162 (78:1)— 126. 498—126=372+1=
33*8— 145=193— 161— 32— 1 A— 81.
338—145=193—3 * (145)— 190.
338—304 (78:1)— 34. 462—34—428+1—429.
338—50—288—49 (76:1)=239— lb & £ col. =232.
338—49—289—162=127—50=77. 603—77=526+1=
Word.
Page and
Column.
142
76:2
yet
295
76:2
a
188
76:2
haire
309
76:2
on
163
76:2
his
139
76:2
chin;
452
77:1
it
243
76:1
is
313
76:2
smooth
347
76:2
as
155
76:2
my
156
76:2
hand.
259
76:2
He
111
76:1
was
238
76:2
almost
126
78:2
naked;
231
78:1
without
483
77:2
shirts,
256
76:2
cloak
84
78:2
or
66
80:2
stockings,
480
76:2
He
585
76:2
doth
316
76:2
weare
317
76:2
nothing
318
76:2
but
295
76:2
a
95
76:2
cap;
231
76:2
his
320
76:2
shoes
239
76:2
out
325
76:2
at
288
76:2
the
385
77:1
heels,
255
76:2
short
258
76:2
slops,
373 '
76:1
and
31
78:2
a
190
76:2
smock
429
78:2
on
232
76:2
his
= 527
76:2
back,
THE YOUTHFUL SHAKSFERE DESCRIBED.
759
338—145=193—3 b (145)— 190— 3 h col.— 187.
338—317 (79:1)— 21.
338—49 (76:1)— 289— 162— 127+31 (79:1)— 158.
338—50=288—162=126—32=94—3 h col.— 91.
338—50=288—162=126—58 (80:1)=66. 523—66=
457+1=458.
338-162 (78:1)=176— 32 (79:1)— 144. 462—144=
318+1— 319+2 yfc— 321.
338— 145=193— 3 /> (145)— 190— lb col.— 189.
338—145=193—3 b (145)— 190. 577—190—387+1=
338—50 (74:2)=288— 49 (76:1)— 239— 145=94. 577
—94=483+1=484.
338—50 (74.2)— 288— 50 (76 :1)=238— 145=93, 577
—93—484+1=485.
338—30—308—49 (76:1)— 289.
338—50 (74:2)=288— 50 (76:1)— 238— 163— 75— 32
(79:1)— 43. 462—43=419+1—420.
338—50 (74:2)=288— 50 (76:1)=238— 163=75— 32
(79:1)— 48.
338—162=176—32=144. 468—144=324+1=325
+ 1 h col.—
338—30=308-145=163—5 b & h col.— 158,
338—50 (74.2)— 288— 49 (76 :1)=239— 145=94. 577—
94—483+1= 484+5 b & /;— 389.
338-50 (74:2)=288— 50(76:1)— 238— 145=93. 577
—93=384+1=385+5 b & /*— 390.
Word.
Page and
Column.
187
76:1
out
21
79:2
at
158
79:1
elbow,
91
78:2
and
458
484
80:2
77:1
not
321
78:2
over
(189)
77:1
clean
388
77:1
The
truth
485
77:1
is,
259
76:2
he
420
78:2
lived,
43
78:2
at
326
78:1
this
158
77:1
time,
in
389
77:1
great
390
77:1*
infamy,
Here we have, brought out by the same root-number (338), a whole wardrobe:
cap — shirts — cloak — stockings — shoes — smock; together with out — at — heels —
on — back — out — at — elbo7vs; and also horson — knave — weare — nothing —
almost — naked. Why — if this is the work of chance — did not some of these words,
descriptive of clothing, come out by the other root-numbers, or by this same root-
number, when applied to other pages ?
Smock occurs but once in this play and but six other times in all the Plays;
elbow is found but once in this act and but twice in this play; shirts occurs but
this once in this act; slops is found only this one time in this play, and b nt one
other time in all the Plays; this is the only time stockings is found in the play, and
it occurs but eight times besides in all the Plays; this is the only time shoes is found
in this play; and this is the only time cap occurs in this act; and this is the only time
infamy is found in this play. Can any one believe that all these rare words came
together, in so small a compass, by chance; and that, by another chance, they were
each of them made the 338th word from some one of a few clearly defined points of
departure in counting?
Observe those words almost naked. Each is derived from 33S; nay, each is
derived from 338 minus 50=288. We commence with 288 at the end of scene 2
and go forward to the next column, and we have almost; we take 2S8 again, and
commence at the end of the next scene and go forward again to the next column,
and we have naked I This alone would be curious; but taken in connection with all
the other words in this sentence, which cohere arithmetically and in sense and
760 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
meaning, with almost naked — no shifts or stockings — doth wear nothing but a cap,
and shoes out at the heels, and a smock out at the elboza, not over clean, it amounts to a
demonstration.
The word slops signified breeches. We have in the Plays: "A German, from
the waist downward all slops."* We also find, in the text under consideration,
Falstaff speaking of "the satin for my short cloak and slops." The word smack
signified a rough blouse, such as is worn by peasants and laborers.'2 In the text
the word smock is disguised in smack, which was pronounced smock in that age.
Some explanation of the figures used as modifiers in the Cipher-work are
necessary. We are advancing, as Bacon would say, "into the bowels of the"
play.
Page 77 is solid; — that is to say, there is no break in it by stage directions or
new scenes. The first column of page 78 contains two fragments; one of 162
words, being the end of scene third; the other the first part of Sccena Quarta, con-
taining 306 words, with 17 bracketed words and 3 hyphenated words besides. If
we count from the end word of scene third upward, exclusive of that word, as we
have done in other instances, we have 161 words; if we count from the beginning
of scene fourth we have 162 words. In this fragment the words, "th'other," on
the 14th line, are counted as one word — " t'other." From the end word of scene
third downward there are 306 words; from the first word of scene fourth downward
there are 305 words. The next column of page 78 is unbroken. When we reach
the next column (79:1; we have a complicated state of things. The column is
broken into four fragments. The first of 31 words, with 5 words in brackets, con-
stitutes the end of scene fourth. Then we enter act second. The .first break is
caused by the stage direction, Enter Ealstaffe and Bardolfe, and ends with the
317th word from the top of the column; being the 286th word from the end of the
last act, or 285 from the beginning of act second, or 284, excluding the first and
last word. This gives us the modifier 286 or 285, or 284. And to the bottom of
the column there are 199 or 200 words.
The next break in the text is caused by the stage direction, Enter Ch. Justice,
ending with the 461st word, and containing 143 or 144 words, accordingly as
we count from the beginning of that subdivision or the end of the preceding
one; and the fourth fragment runs from the 461st word to the end of the column,
and contains 57 or 58 words. The second column of page 79 is broken by the
stage direction, Enter M. Gower. The first contains 533 words; the second con-
tains 64 or 65 words; and there are 534 words from the first word of the second
subdivision, inclusive, to the top of the column. This page gives us therefore these
modifiers:
31 — 32; — 317 — 318; — 284 — 285 — 286; — 199 — 200; — 461 — 462; — 143 — 144; —
57—58; — 533—534; —64—65.
And when we turn to the next column (78:1) the remainder of the scene, scene
1, act 2, gives us 338 words, with 12 b & 5 h words additional; and the fragment of
scene second, act 2 (78:1), gives us 57 or 58 words, as we count from the beginning
of scene second or the end of scene first. And the next column gives us two frag-
ments, yielding 461-2 and 61-2.
And here I would call the attention of the reader to the curious manner in
which the stage directions are packed into the corners of lines on page 79, as
compared with column 1 of page 75, where the words, Enter Morton, axe given
about half an inch space; or on page 64, where one stage direction is assigned
1 Much Ado about Nothing, ii, 2.
2 See Webster s Dictionary, " Sinock""1 and "Smock-frock."
THE YOUTHFUL SHAKSPERE DESCRIBED. 761
three-quarters of an inch space; or page 62, where three stage directions have
nearly an inch and a half space, while three others, on this page, 79, have
not even a separate line given them. The crowding of matter on some
pages, as compared with others, is also shown by contrasting the small
space allowed for the title of Actus Secundus, Sccena Prima, on 79:1, with
the heading, not of an act, but a scene, on the next column (So:i). In the one
case the space from spoken word to spoken word is five-eighths of an inch, in the
other it is an inch and one-sixteenth. And that this is not accidental is shown
also in the abbreviations used on page 79: Chief is printed 67/./ remembered is
printed remebred; a hundred is printed a 100; 6° is constantly used for and; M. is
used repeatedly for Master; Mistress is printed Mist.; thou is repeatedly printed "!!;"
twenty shillings is printed 20 s. And observe how Lombard street and silk man
(79:1, 29th line) are run together into one word each, where anywhere else
we should at least have had a hyphen between their parts. And that these things
were deliberately done is shown in the case of the word remembered (79:2, 16 lines
from end); if it had been simply printed remebred we might suppose it was a typo-
graphical error, but the printer was particular to put the sign " over the e to show
that there had been an elision of part of the word. Now it took just as long to put
in that mark as it would have taken to insert the /;/ and the additional e between
the b and e. (Did the ordinary fonts of type of that age use this elision sign? Or
were these types made to order ?)
A still more striking fact is, that while by uniform custom each speaker in the
text of the Plays is allowed his line to himself, yet in two instances, on page 79,
the words uttered by an interlocutor are crowded in as part of the line belonging to
another speaker. Thus we have (79:1, 12th line from end) this line:
Falsi. Keep them off, Bardolfe. Fang. A rescue, a rescue.
And again (79:2, 3d line):
I am a poor widow of Eastcheap and he is arre-
sted at my suit. Ch. Just. For what summe ?
Here we see that the printer has not even room to print in full the words Chief
Justice, but condensed them into Ch. Just.
Now every printer will tell you that unless there had been some special and
emphatic order to crowd the text in this extraordinary fashion, it would not have
been done; but a dozen lines or more of page 79 would have been run over onto page
80, where, as we have seen, there is plenty of room for them. Compare 79:1 or 79:2
with 80:1. There are in So:i no abbreviations in spelling; no contractions, with
the single exception of one M. for Master; there is no & for and; no using of figures
for words, although we have " fifteen hundred foot, five hundred horse;" no running
of the speeches of two characters together in one line. And there are 631 words on
79:2 and only 403 words on 80: 1 ! And yet each is a column, the one following the
other. Why should one column contain 228 words more than the other, or one-
third more words than the other ? There is on page 79 matter enough to constitute
two pages and a half, printed as column 1 of page 80 or as column 1 of page 62
is printed.
But the exigencies of the Cipher required that column 79:2 should contain 228
words more than column 80:1; and the carrying of a single word over from the one
to the other would have destroyed the Cipher on both pages; and hence all this
packing and crowding of matter, which one cannot fail to observe by simply glanc-
ing at the page, as given herewith in facsimile.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE BISHOP OF WORCESTER AND HIS ADVICE.
The curses he shall have, the tortures he shall feel, will break the back of a man, the heart of
a monster. Winter's Tale, ii',3.
505—167=338.
Page and
Word. Column.
338—30=308—50=258—49=209. 603—209=394+1=395 76:2 The
338—30=308—49=259. 498—259=239+1=240. 240 76:1 Bishop
338—30=308—50=258—49=209—148=63. 63 77:1 said.
Who was the Bishop? It was his Lordship Sir John Babington, Bishop of
Worcester — " the right reverend father in God, Lord John, Bushop of Worcester " —
of the diocese in which Stratford was situated, — for whose protection was executed
that famous bond, dated November 28, 1582, to enable "William Shagspere, one
thone partie, and Anne Hathwey of Stratford, in the dioces of Worcester, maiden,"
to marry with " once asking of the bannes of matrimony between them." ] We
know that the Bishop belonged to the Cecil faction, and when Essex was arrested
for treason, and he thought he could do so safely, he took advantage of the oppor-
tunity to attack him. Hepworth Dixon says:
Babington, Bishop of Worcester, glances at him [Essex] cautiously in a court
sermon; but when sent for by the angry Queen he denies that he pointed to the
Earl.2
The Bishop belonged to the Cecil faction; he was Sir Robert's superserviceable
friend, and the very man, of all others, to tell him all about Shakspere's youth; and
we will see hereafter that ' ' Anne Hathwey " had dragged the future play-actor before
Sir John, as Bishop of the diocese; and that Sir John had compelled Shakspere to
marry her. So the Bishop knew all about him. And herein we find an explana-
tion of the bond just referred to; and the hurried marriage; and the baptism tread-
ing fast upon the heels of the bridal.
And it was the Bishop of Worcester who gave Cecil the description of Shak-
spere's appearance in his youthful days which we copied into the last chapter.
And there is a great deal in the Cipher story about the Bishop of Worcester.
When Cecil became suspicious of the Plays, he gave Sir John the plays of Richard
II. and Measure for Measure to examine, or, as Bacon was wont to say, to anato-
mize — ( The Anatomy of Wit, The Anatomy of Melancholy, etc.) The Bishop found
1 Halliwell-Phillipps' Outlines, p. 569. 8 Personal History of Lord Bacon, p. 123.
762
THE BISHOP OF WORCESTER AXD HIS ADVICE. 763
the same strain of infidelity in Measure for Measure which, centuries afterwards,
shocked the piety of Dr. Johnson; and he then told Cecil the story of Shakspere's
life, and expressed his opinion that the ragged urchin who had been dragged before
him, at eighteen years of age, and constrained, perforce, to accept the responsi-
bilities of matrimony, never wrote the play of Measure for Measure or Richard II.
The .Bishop of Worcester is also referred to in that part of the Cipher narra-
tive which grows out of the root-number 523, modified by commencing to count at
the end of the second subdivision of 74:2, the same subdivision which gives us all
the 33S story; but instead of counting only to the beginning of the subdivision,
(167), we go to the top of the column, which gives us 218 words as a modifier. We
then have:
523—218=305.
And if we again modify this by deducting 193 (upper 75:2), we have left 112;
or, if we deduct 254 (lower 75:2), we have 51 left; and if we deduct 50 at the end
of scene second (76:1) we have 255 left. And this last number, 255, gives us the
words Bishop and Worcester. Thus: if the reader will commence at the top of 76:1,
and count down the column, counting in all the words, bracketed and hyphenated,
he will find that the 255th word is the end word of the 240th compound word Arch-
bishop; and if he will carry his 255th number down the next preceding column, but
not counting in the bracketed and hyphenated words, he will find that the 255th
word is the word Worcester; so that the 255th word, 76:1, is Bishop, and the 255th
word, 75:2, is Worcester. And observe the exquisite cunning of the work. If the
reader will look at the opening of this chapter he will see that that same last word
of Arch-bishop was used in the 338 narrative. That is to say, 33S minus 30 (the
modifier on 74:2) equals 308, and this, commencing at the beginning of scene third
(76:1), and carried down the column, leaves 259; and 259, carried up the column,
counting in the hyphenated words, brings us to the same word to//c/ — the last
word of arch-bishop. And some time since we saw the arch of that word arch-
bishop used to give us the first syllable of the name of the man Archer, who slew
Marlowe !
But lest it should bt thought that this coming together of Bishop and Worcester,
by the same number, 255, was another accident, I pause here, and, leaving the story
growing out of 338 alone for a while, I give a part of the narrative in which these
words Bishop of Worcester occur. And here I would ask the reader to observe that
you cannot dip into this text, at any point, with any of these primal root-numbers,
505, 513, 516 or 523, without unearthing a story which coheres perfectly with the
narrative told by the other numbers. And this has been one cause of the delay in
publishing my book. I have been tempted to go on and on, working out the mar-
velous tale; and I have heaps of fragments which I have not now time to put into
shape for publication. I have been like Aladdin in the garden: I turn from one
jewel-laden tree to another, scarce knowing which to plunder, while my publishers
are calling down the mouth of the cave for me to hurry up.
Cecil says to the Queen:
523—218=305.
Word.
Page and
Column.
305—50 (76:1)=255— 145=110— 3 ^ (145)=107.
107
77:1
I
305—50=255
255
77:1
sent
305—50=255.
255
76:1
a
305—50=255.
255
76:2
short
764
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
305—146 (76:2)=159— 1 b col.— 158.
305—50=255—32 (79:1)— 223.
305—146=159—4// col. =155.
305—50=255—7 b col. =248.
305—50=255. 449—255=194+1=195+2 A— 197.
305—193=112—50 (76:1)— 62. 603—62=541 + 1=542.
305—193=112—49 (76:1)— 63.
305—193=112. 457+112=569.
305—193=112—50=62+457=519.
305—193=112—50=62.
305—50=255. 508—255=253+1=254.
305—193=112—15 b & h (193)— 97. 448—97=351 + 1=
305—49 (76:1)— 256— 146— 111. 577—111=466+1
=467+3 b (145)— 470.
305—50=255—14 £ & 4 col.— 241.
305—193=112—50=62. 458—62=396+1=397.
305—50=255.
305—49=256—5 h col. =251.
305—145=160—3 b (145)— 157.
305—193=112. 449—112=337+1=338.
305—146=159. 449—159=290+1=291.
305—146=159. 498—159=339+1=340.
305—50=255—49 (76:1)=206— 32=174— 5 3 (32)=
169—2 b col.— 167.
305—254=51. 508—51=457+1=458.
305—193 112. 457—112=345+1=346.
305—193=112—15 b & h (193)— 97.
305—50=255—11 3 & A col.— 244.
305—50=255—10 £ col. =245.
305—254=51. 448—51=397+1=398.
305—50=255—162 (78:1)— 93.
305—32 (79:1)— 273. 468—273=195+1=196.
305—50=255. 610—255=355+1=356+9 b col.—
305—49=256. 610—256—354+1=355.
305—50=255—32 (79:1)— 223+162— 385— 9 £—276.
305—50—255—32 (79:1)— 223.
Word.
Page and
Column.
158
77:1
time
223
76:2
since,
155
248
197
77:1
77:1
76:1
your
Majesty,
for
542
(63)
76:2
76:1
my
Lord
569
76:2
Sir
519
62
76:2'
76:2
John,
the
254
75:2
noble
=352
76:1
and
470
77:1
learned
241
397
76:1
76:2
Bishop
of
255
75:2
Worcester,
251
76:1
a
157
338
77:1
76:1
good,
sincere
291
76:1
and
346
76:1
holy
167
77:2
man;
458
75:2
and
346
76:2
had
97
75:2
a
244
77:1
talk
245
76:1
with
398
76:1
him;
93
77:2
and
196
78:1
I
365
355
77:2
77:2
gave
him
276
78:1
the
223
77:2
scroll.
Cecil had sent a short-hand writer to the play-house, who had taken down the
play of Richard II.
The reader will observe that 305, in this example, moves either from the lower
subdivision of 76:1, or the upper or lower subdivision of 75:1; 255 yields 1 — sent —
a — short — since — for — noble — Bishop — Worcester — talk — with — and — gave —
scroll; while 112 (305 — 193—1 12) yields my — Loi'd — Sir — John — the1— of — had —
a. Let the reader look at the words Sir John; they both count from the end word of
the first subdivision of 76:2, counting downward, and each is the 112th word, but
while Stria 112 words from 457, John is modified by deducting 50; that is, instead
of commencing to count with 112, from 457, we begin at the beginning of scene
third, count in the 50 words therein, and then carry the remainder to 457, and
thence down as before, And my Lord is much the same; my is again 112 less 50
(from the end of scene second downward), carried up 76:2; and lord is 112 less 49,
THE BISHOP OF WORCESTER AND HIS ADVICE. 765
from the beginning of scene third, carried down 76:1. Surely all this cannot
be accident.
And the Bishop advised Cecil that Shakspere should be taken and put to the tor-
ture and compelled to tell who wrote the Plays. And here I would call the attention
of the reader to one or two other points which prove the existence of the Cipher,
and show the marvelous nature of the text.
We have seen that 523 minus 218 equals 305, and that 305 less 193 (upper sub-
division 75:1) makes 112. Now if we go down 75:2 the 112th word is force, while
up the same column the 112th word is limbs (put his limbs to the question and force
him to tell), while in the next column the 112th word down the column is capable.
And if we apply this 112 to the next column, we find it giving us the word sincere
(sincere and holy), counting upward from the top of scene third; while upward from
the end of scene second it yields supposed (the Plays it is supposed Shakspere was not
capable of writing); and down the same column the 112th word is that very word,
capable; while carried forward to the next column it yields Sir John, and from the
same column, 76:1, and the next, 76:2, it gives us my lord. And observe how cun-
ningly supposed and sincere are brought together, the one being the 112th word
from the end of scene 2, the other the 112th word from the beginning of scene
3; and note, too, the forced construction of the sentence:
Turns insurrection to religion,
Supposed sincere and holy in his thoughts.
Of course there is a clue of meaning running through this, but every word is a
Cipher word, and the words are packed together very closely; turns is "turns the
water out of the fish-pond," given in Chapter VI., page 697, ante; insurrection is
used three times in the Cipher story; religion was used in telling the purpose of the
Plays, as given in Chapter VII., page 705, ante; and we will find it used again and
again; and here in this chapter we have supposed, sincere and holy employed in the
Cipher narrative.
And Cecil expressed to the Bishop his opinion that Shakspere did not write the
Plays. He said:
Page and
Word. Column.
305— 50=255— 145=110— 3 b (145)=107. 107 77:1 I
305—50=255. 448—255=193+1=194+2 h col.= 196 76:1 ventured
305—50=255—161=94. 498—94=404+1=405. 405 76:1 to
305—50=255—145=110—3 b (145)=107— 3 b&h col.=104 77:1 tell
305— 50=255— 32 (79. 1)=223. 223 74:2 him
305—50=255—146=109. 577—109=468+1=469. 469 77:1 my
305—50=255—50=205—146=59. 447—59=388+1=389 75:1 suspicion
305—50=255—50=205—146—59. 447—59=388+
1=389+3^=392. 392 75:1 that
305—50=255—32=223. 223 79:1 Master
305— 50=255— 32 (79:1)=223— 145=78— 50 (76:1)= 28 75:2 Shak'st )
305— 50=255— 50 (76: 1)=205— 145=60. 60 75:1 spur )
305—50=255—50=205. 508—205=303+1=304. 304 75:2 is
305— 50=255— 31=224— 145=79— 50 (76:1)=29. 29 76:2 not
305—50=255—32=223. 248—223=25+1=26+
22 £ col. =48. 48 74:2 himself
305—193=112. 112 76:1 capable
305— 50=255— 32 (79: 1)=223. 223 78:1 enough,
766
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
305—50=255—32 (79:1)=223— 5 b (32)=218— 50
(76:1)— 168.
305—50=255—32 (79 :1)=223— 146=77— 30=47.
447-47=400+1=401.
305—50=255—32 (79:1 =223-5/; (32)=218— 50=
305—50=255—32=223—146=77—30=47. 447—47
=400+1=401 + 3 £—404.
305—50=255—32=223—5/; (32)=218— 49 (76:1)=
169. 508—169=339+1=340+2/; col.— 342.
305—50=255—31=224. 498—224=274+1=275.
305—50=255—31=224—5 b (31)— 219— 50 (76:1)=
169. 508—169=339 + 1=340.
305—50=255—32 (79:1)=223— 3// col.— 220.
305—50—255—32 (79:1)— 223. 317(79:1)— 223— 94+1
305-50—255—49 (76:1)=206— 161 (78:1)— 45.
305— 50=255— 49=206— 161— 45— 32 (79:1)— 13.
462—13=449+1—450.
305— 50— 255— 31=224— 145— 79— 50(76:1)=29+
457=486.
305—50—255—31=224—146=78.
305—50=255. 449—255=194+1—195.
305—50=255—50=205—32—173—5 b (32)— 168.
305—50—255—49—206—161—45—32—13.
305—50—255—146=1 09—3 b (146)— 106.
305—161 (78:1)— 144. 457—144—313+1—314+5 b col-
305—50—255—146—109. 498—109—388+1—390.
305—49 (76:1)— 256— 145— 111.
305—50—255—32 (79:1)— 223— 50=173— 3 h col.—
305—193—112. 448—112=336+1=337.
305—50—255—31—224—5 b (31)=219— 50— 169— 49
(76:1)— 120.
305—50—255—162—93—50 (76:1)=43.
305—193—112. 284—112—172+1—173.
305—50—255—50=205—146—59. 448—59—389 + 1=
305—50—255—31—224—5 b (31)— 219— 50=169— 50
—119— 2 b col.— 117.
305—50=255—32=223—146=77. 610—77—533+1
—534+2// col. —536.
305—50—255—31 (79:1)— 224.
305—50—255—50=205.
305—50—255—50=205—145=60—3 b (145)— 57.
284—57—227+1=228.
305—50—255—32 (79:1)=223— 146=77— 30 (74:2)=
47—9 b & h col. 38.
305—50—255—50=205—146—59. 449—59—390+1=
305—50=255—50—205—146—59. 284—59—225+1=
305—50—255—50—205—146—59. 193—59=134+1=
305—145—160. 508-160—348+1—349+5 b & h=
305— 50— 255— 31— 224— hb (31)— 219.
305— 50=255— 31=224— 4 h col.— 220.
Word.
Page and
Column.
168
75:2
and
401
75:1
hath
168
76:2
not
404
450
117
228
75:1 knowledge
342
75:2
enough,
275
76:1
to
340
75:2
have
220
76:2
writ
=95
79:1
the
45
78:2
much
(5:2
74:1
admired
486
76:2
plays
78
76:1
that
195
76:1
we
168
76:1
all
13
78:2-
rate
106
77:1
so
=319
79:2
high,
390
76:1
and
111
'77:1
which
170
76:1
are
337
76:1
supposed
120
75:2
to
43
75:2
be
173
74:1
his;
=390
76:1
and
which
536
77:2
ever
224
76:2
since
205
75:2
the
death
38
75:1
of
=301
76:1
More j
=226
74:1
low )
=135
75:2
have
(354)
75:2
been
219
76:1
put
220
76:1
forth
THE BISHOP OF WORCESTER AND HIS ADVICE.
767
305—50=255—31=224—145=79.
305—50=255—32=223—146=7;.
305—50=255—31=224—5 b (31) — 219 — 50=169— 145=
305—50=255—162=93.
305—50=255—20 b col.— 335.
305— 50=255— 32=223— 146=77— 3 b col.— 74.
305—50=255—32=223—1 46=77—50 (76:1)— 27.
603—27=576+1=577.
305—50=255—50=205—146=59. 284—59=225+1
—226+6 h col.— 282.
305—50=255—50=205—146=59.
305—50=255—50=205—146=59.
305—50=255—50=205—145=60.
305—50=255—50=205—146=59.
305—50=255—50=205—146=59—6 b & h col. =53.
305—50=255—32=223—146=77—2 h col.— 75.
305—50=255—31 (79:1)=224— 145=79.
305—50=255—31=224—145=79. 284—79=205+1=
305—50=255—32=223—5 b (82)— 218— 50— 168.
458—168=290+1=291.
305—50=255—50=205—146=59—3 b (146)— 56.
248—56=192+1=193+2/; & A— 195.
305— 50=255— 31=224— 145=79— 30 (74:2)=49.
447—49=398 +1=399 + 3=402.
305—193=112—15 b & /i=91—10b col =87.
305—50=255—50=205—145=60. 248—60=188+1=
305—50=255—49 (76:1)— 206. 603—206=397+1=
305— 146— 159— 3 £ (146)— 156.
305—49 (76:1)— 256— 145— 111. 577—111—466+1—
305— 50=255— 145=1 10.
305—50—255—50=20.").
305—50=255—32 (79:1)— 223— 50 (76:1)— 173.
305—50—255—49 (76:1)— 206.
305—50—255. 449—255—194+1—195.
305—162—143—2 h col. =141.
305—50=255—31=224—5 b (31)— 219— 4 h col.—
305—50=255—162=93. 577—93=484+ 1—485.
305—50—255—49=206—162—44. 610—44=566+1
567+2 A col:— 569.
305—50—255—32 (79:1)— 223— 146— 77— 5 b & h col.=
305—50=255—50=205—32=173. 603—173=430+1=
305—49=256—30=226—50 (76:1)— 176— 1 h col.—
305—193=112. 248—112=136+1=137+12 b & h col.=
305—50=255—32=223. 610—223=387+1—388.
305—49=256—145—111. 457—111—346+1=347.
305—50—255. 508— 255— 253+1— 254— 3 h col.—
305— 50=255— 32— (79:1)— 223— 7 b & h col.— 216.
305—50—255—162=93—3 b col.— 90.
305—50=255—32=223. 518—223=295+1—296.
305—162—143.
Word.
Page and
Column.
79
76:1
in
77
77:2
his
= 24
77:1
name.
93
77:2
And
235
75:2
that
74
76:1
it
291
195
r6:2
232
74:1
rumoured
59
75:2
that
59
74:2
every
60
76:2
one
59
74:1
of
53
74:1
them
75
76:1
was
79
74:1
prepared
=206
74:1
under
76:2
W\
his
402
75 1
by
87
74:1
some
=189
75:1
gentleman.
398
76:2
His
156
77:1
Lordship
467
77:1
advised
110
77:1
that
205
75:2
the
173
75:2
best
206
75:2
thing
195
76:1
we
141
76:1
could
215
77:2
do
485
77:1
is
569
77:2
to
= 72
76:1
make
=431
76:2
him
175
76:2
a
=149
74:1
prisoner,
388
77:2
and,
347
76:2
as
257
75:2
soon
216
76:2
as
90
76:1
he
296
79:1
is
(143)
73:1
apprehendec
768
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
305—193=112—49 (76:1)— 63. 508—63=445+1=
305—50=255—32=223—146=77- 50 (76:1)— 27.
457—27=430+1=431.
305—50=255—50=205—145=60. 508—60=448+1=
31)5—50=255—50=205—145=60. 508—60=448
+ 1=449+1 *— 450.
305—50=255—146=109. 498—109=389+1=390.
305—146=159—3 b (146)— 156.
305—50=255—50=205—31 (79 : 1 )=1 74. 457—1 74=
283+1=284.
305—193=112—15 b & 7^=97—49=48.
305—50=255—31=224. 610—224=386+1=387+
2 A— 389.
305—50=255—32 (79 :1)=223— 146=77. 498—77=
421 + 1=422.
305—193^112. 248—112=136+1=137.
305—50=255—31 (79:1)=224. 610—224=386+1=
305—193=112. 248—112=136+1=137+11 b col.—
305—50=255—31 (79:1)— 224. 448—224=224+1=
305—50=255—32 (79:1)— 223. 448—223=225 + 1=
305—50=255—50=205.
305—50=255—32=223—5 b (32)— 218. 448—218=
230+1=231 + 5 b & £=236.
305—146=159. 457—159=298+1=299.
305—50=255—32=223—162=61.
305—50=255—162=93. 498—93=405+1=406.
305—50=255—50=205—31=174—5 b & A— 169.
610—169=441 + 1=442+9 b col. =451.
305—49=256—162=94. 577—94=483+1=484.
305—50=255—32=223. 610—223=387+1=388.
305—50=255—145=110— 3 <H145)=107— 3 b & h col.=
305—50=255—31 (79:1)— 224. 284—224=60+1=61
+ l/i col. =68.
305—50=255—31 (79:1)=224— 4 b col.=220.
805—50—2 55. 32 + 255=287 .
305—50=255—32 (79:1)— 223. 457—223=234
+ 1=235.
305— 50=255— 146=109— 3 £(146)— 106. 577—106
—471 + 1—472.
305—50—255—50—205—146=59—2 h col. =57.
305—50—255—49 (76:1)— 206— 145— 61— 3 b (145)—
305—50=255—32—223. 498—223—275+1=276+
2 b col.— 278.
305—50—255—32 (79:1)— 223— 5 b (32)— 218.
305—50=255—50 (76:1) — 205— 145=60— 3 b (145)—
57—1 h col.— 56.
305—50—255—31 (79:1)— 224— 5 b (31)— 219. 457—
219=238+1—239+11 b & £—250.
305—193=112—1 h col. —111.
305—193—112—10 b col =102.
305—50=255—31 (79:1)— 224— 5 b (31)— 219.
Word.
Page and
Column.
446
75:2
bind
431
76:2
him
=449
75:2
with
450
75:2
iron,
390
76:1
and
156
76:1
bring
284
76:2
him
48
?6:2
before
389
235
56
77:2
76:2
77:1
the
422
76:1
Council;
137
74:2
and
387
77:2
it
148
74:2
is
225
76:1
more
226
76:1
than
205
76:1
likely
236
76:1
the
299
76:2
knave
61
77:2
would
406
76:1
speak
451
77:2
the
484
77:1
truth,
388
77:2
and
104
77:1
tell
68
74:1
who
220
76:2
writ
287
79:1
it.
But
472
77:1
in
57
76:1
the
58
76:1
event
278
76:1
that
218
76:2
he
lied
250
76:2
about
111
75:1
the
102
74:1
matter
219
77:2
your
Word.
Page and
Column.
234
76:2
Grace
111
75:2
should
410
76:2
have
109
76:1
his
397
75:2
limbs
351
76:2
put
275
76:1
to
=230
236
76:1
the
= 493
76:2
question
61
76:1
and
112
75:2
force
398
76:1
him
49
76:1
to
211
77:2
confess
42
77:2
the
THE BISHOP OF WORCESTER AND HIS ADVICE. 769
305—50=255—31 (79:1)— 224. 457—224=233+1=
305—49 (70 :1)=256— 145=111.
305—193=112—15 b & ,4=97— 49 (76:1)=48. 45"
48=409+1=410.
305—193=112—3 b col.=109.
305—193=112. 508—112=396^1=397.
305—193=112. 457— 112=345 +1=346+ 5 £ col.=
305—50=255—50=205—31 (79*1)— 174. 448—174
=274+1=275.
305—50=255—32=224—5 b (82)— 219. 449—219=
+ 1=231 + 5 b & //=236.
305—49 (76 :1)=256— 145=111. 603—111=492 + 1=
305—50=255—49 (76:1)— 206— 145— 61.
305—193=112.
305—254=51. 448—51=397+1=398.
305—254=51—2 h col. =49.
305—50=255—31 (79:1)=224— 13 b & h col.— 211.
305—50=255—50=205—162=43—1 h col. =42.
305—50=255—32=223—5 b (32)=218. 449—218=
231 + 1=232+5 b & //=237. 237 76:1 truth.
Here, it will be observed, we have two more instances where Shakst-spur and
More-lozv come into the Cipher narrative by countings different from those already-
given. And if all this be accident, then surely we have a wonderful array of words
growing out of 305. Take that last sentence: Your Grace should have his limbs
put to the question and force him to con/ess the truth; here every word is the 305th
word, and they are all found in four columns, 75:2, 76:1, 76:2 and 77:2. Confess
only occurs two other times in this play; limbs occurs but two other times in this
play, and force but three other times in this play. I think an examination will
show that wherever limbs, force and confess are found in the Plays the word question
is near at hand.
"Alas I erShakspere" was used in that day where we would say "A/isterShakspere."
And observe that every word of Master Shakst-spur is the 255th word [523 — 21S
(74:2) — 305 — 50 (76:i)=255]. Master and Shakst are each 255 minus 32, the frag-
ment at the top of 79:1, and Shakst and spur are both taken through the second
section of 76:2 and then carried backward.
As a curious illustration of the adjustment of the length of columns to the
necessities of the Cipher I would call attention to the first column of page 74, the
first of the play. If the reader will turn back to pages 724 and 725 he will find
that the same words, prepared (79 — 74:1) and under (206 — 74:1), which are used in
the foregoing narrative, were there used as growing out of a different Cipher num-
ber, to-wit, 516; thus: 516 — 167=349 — 22 b & //=327 — 248=79. Now if we go dozen
the column (74:1) the 79th word is prepared; and if we go up the column the 79th
word is under (" prepared under the name of," etc.) But we have just seen that
305 minus 50 leaves 255, and this minus 49 (76:1) leaves 206; now if we carry 206
down that same column (74:1), it gives us again the same word under; and if we
carry it up the column it gives us again that same word prepared. So that the
reader can perceive that the number of words in the column between 79 and 206 was
fixed, and therefore the length of the whole column, by the necessity of making
prepared the 79th word from the top and the 206th word from the bottom, and under
the 79th word from the bottom and the 206th word from the top ! Was anything
more ingenious than this ever seen in the world?
CHAPTER XV.
SHAKSPERE' S ARISTOCRA TIC PRETENSIONS.
Autolycus. I know you are now, sir, a gentleman born.
Clown. Ay, and have been so any time these four hours.
Winter's Tale, v^3.
EVERY Cipher word in this chapter grows out of the root-number
$2j — 2iS'=j0j; and all but the first four commence from the
end of scene 4, act i, or the beginning of act ii, scene 1.
I have given but part of the story in the foregoing chapter.
The Bishop goes on to tell Cecil his reasons for thinking that Shak-
spere, if arrested, will tell who wrote the Plays. He says that
Shakspere is no longer in poverty:
305—50=255—31 (79:1)=224.
Word.
224
Page and
Column.
78:2
Poverty
174
76:1
loss
193
78:2
heads
223
76:1
goods
And that neither he nor his men will risk the loss of their heads or their goods
to shield the real writer of the Plays:
305—50=255—50=205—31 (79:1)=174.
305—50=255—31=224—31 b & k— 193.
305—50=255—32=223
And the Bishop tells Cecil that, though Shakspere —
305—31=274—30 (74:2)=244— 199 (79:1)— 46. 468
—45=423+1=424. 424 78:1 lives
305— 31=274— 50=224— 5 3(31 )=21 9—4 h col. — 215 78:2 in
305—31=274—50=224—5 b (32)=219. 219—146=
73— 3 3(146)=70. 577—70=507+1=508+2//= 510 77:1 great
305—31=274—50=224. 224 78:2 poverty
305— 31=274— 30=244— 5 b (32)=239. 239 78:2 in
305— 31=274— 50=224— 5 b (32)=21 9. 219 78:2 his
305—31=274—50=224. 610—224=386+1=387+
3 //col. =390. 390 79:2 young
305—32=273—50=223—5 b (32)=218— 50=168— 146
=22-3 3(146)=19. 577— 19=558 +1=559 +l//=560 77:1 days,
he is now wealthy, and that his coffers are full. In that age there were no banks,
and a man's money was contained in his coffers. We are told that when the
father of Pope retired from business, as a merchant in London, he carried home
770
Word.
Page and
Column.
274
78:2
His
220
78:2
coffers
190
78:2
are
240
78:2
full.
SUA ASF ERE' S A RIS TO CRA TIC PRE TENSIONS. 7 7 l
with him $100,000 in a chest, and when he needed money he went to his chest
and took it out. There was no drawing of checks in that day.
And here I would ask the reader to note the evidences of the Cipher connected
with that word coffers. The root-number we are working with is 305 [523 — 218
(74:2)=305]; now, there is at the top of column 1 of page 79 a fragment of scene
4, act i, containing 31 words; this deducted from 305 leaves 274, and if we count
down the next column forward (78:2), that is, if we return into the scene which gave
us the 31 words, the 274th word in the column, and the 305th from the end of the scene,
is the word his (" should lead his forces hither"). But if we deduct 50 — the com-
mon modifier of 74:2 — from 274, we have 224, and the 224th word is poverty, just
given in the preceding sentence; but if we count in the four hyphens in the column,
the 224th word is then the 220th word, coffers; and if we deduct 30 — the other com-
mon modifier of 74:2 — from 224, and count down the same column, we have 194.
And if we again count in the four hyphenated words, this makes the 194th word
the 190th word, are; and if we take 274 again and deduct 30 from that we have 244;
and if we again go down the same column and again count in the same four
hyphenated words, the 244th word becomes the 240th word, full. Here then we
have, in regular order, his coffers are full; thus:
305—31=274.
305—31=274—50 (74:2)=224— 4 h col.=220.
305—31=274—50 (74:2)=224— 30=194— 4 h col.—
305—31=274—30=244—4/^ col.— 240.
Here every word is the 274th, and is found in the same column, and the last
three are produced by counting in the same four hyphenated words.
And the Bishop goes on, by the same root-number, 274, to tell how Shakspere
got so much money. And here are some striking evidences of the Cipher. We
have the sentence "divided in three divisions,'" referring to the distribution of the
money made out of the Plays; — one part to the theater, one to the actors and one
to the ostensible author, Shakspere, who, in turn, divided with the real author,
Bacon. Now, the word divisions is very rare in the Plays; it occurs but twice in
this play, and not once besides in all the other nine Histories ! Yet here we find it
co-related arithmetically with divided and three; and this is the only time divided
occurs in this play ! And it is found but seven other times in all the Histories.
We saw that 305 — 31 (79:1)^274 — 30 (74:2)=244, and that 244, minus the
hyphenated words, was full. But if we deduct from 244 the 27 bracketed words
in the same column (78:2) we have left 217, and the 217th word in the same col-
umn is divided. Now we saw that 305 — 31=274 carried down the column produced
his ("his coffers "); but if we carry it up the same column it gives us as the 189th word
that rare word divisions, the only word of the kind, with one exception, in all the
ten Historical Plays; and as we saw that counting in the hyphens produced the
words coffers are full, so, if we count in the hyphens in that last example, we
have as the 274th word up the column, not divisions, but three; "divided three
divisions;" and if we deduct the common modifier, 198 (74:2)» from 274, and go up
the next preceding column with the remainder, 76, we have the 393d word, into; —
" divided into three divisions." But to make the division of the profits a fair one
the shares ought to have been equal; and here we have it: 305 — 31=274; and if we
deduct from 274, 79, the common modifier of 73:1, we have left 195; and if we count
in the 31 bracketed and hyphenated words we have the 164th word, equal. But
if from 274 we deduct the common modifier of 74:2, 50, we have 224 left, and if
772
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
we deduct from 224 the same 79 (73:1) we have 145, and the 145th word down
the column is and, but carried into the bracket sentence it is fair. And put
together we have this sentence:
305—31=274—30 (74:2)— 244— 197 (74:2)=47. 462—
47=4154-1=416.
305—31=274—30 (74:2)=244— 27 b col.— 217.
305—31=274. 462—274=1884-1=189+8 b & //—
305—31=274—5 b (31)=269. 610—269=341 + 1=
342+9 b col.— 351.
305—31=274—198 (74:2)=76. 468—76=392 + 1=393.
305—31=274. 462—274=188+1=189+3 h col.—
305—31=274—50=224—79=145.
305—31=274—50=224—79=145.
305—31=274—79 (73:2)=195— 31 b & h col.=164.
305—31=274. 462—274=188+1=189.
305—31=274—50=224—50=174.
305—31=274—50=224—5 b (31)=219.
305—31=274—50=224—79=145. 462—145=317+1=
805— 81— 274— 3 h col.— 371.
305—31=274—50=224—30=194. 462—194=268+1=
305—31=274—50=224—79 (73:2)=145— 22 b col.—
305—31=274—50=224+31=255—3 b col.— 252.
305—31=274—5 b (31)— 269. 610—269=341+1=
342+3 h col.=345.
305—31=274—50=224—30 (74:2)=194— 79 (73:1)
=115. 462—115=347+1=348+6 b & k col.—
305—31=274—50=224—79=145. 462—145=317+
1=318+5=323.
305—31=274—50=224—50 (76:1)— 174. 603—174
=429+1=430.
305—31=274—218=56.
305—31=274—30 (74:2)=244— 219 (74:2)— 25. 462
—25=437+1=438.
305—31=274—5 b (31)=269— 197 (74:2)=72.
305—31=274—198=76. 76—57=19. 523—19=
504+1=505.
305— 50=255— 32=223— 30=193— 161=32 + /z— 32
305—32=273—30=243—198 (74:2)=45— 22 b (198)=
23. 518—23=495+1=496.
305—31=274. 598—274=324+1=325.
305—286 (31 to 317, 79:1)— 19. 462—19=443+1=
305—31=274—50=224—50 (76:1)— 174.
305—31=274—50=224—79=145. 32+145=177.
305—31=274—218=56—2 /&— 54.
305—31=274—219—55 .
305—31=274. 598—274=324+1=325+1 h col.—
305—31=274—218=56—2 //=54.
305—32—273—30=243—13 h & £—230.
305—31=274—162=112—2 h col.=110.
Word.
Page and
Column.
416
217
78:2
78:2
They
divided
197
78:2
the
351
393
77:2
78:2
money
into
192
78:2
three
[145]
145
78:2
78:2
fair
and
164
189
78:2
78:2
equal
divisions,
174
78:2
and
219
78:2
his
=318
78:2
own
371
=269
77:2
78:2
part
is
123
78:2
five
252
79:1
hundred
345
77:2
marks.
354
78:2
He
323
78:2
hath
430
76:2
bought
(56)
78:2
a
438
78:2
goodly
72
78:2
estate
505
80:2
called
32
78:1
New
496
79:1
Place,
325
79:2
and
444
78:2
he
174
76:2
is
177
79:1
going
(54)
78:2
to
(55)
78:2
pluck
326
79:2
down
54
78:2
the
230
77:2
old
110
78:2
house,
SHAKSPERE'S ARISTOCRA TIC PRETEXSIONS.
773
305—286 (31 to 317, 79:l)=19.
305—31=274—50=224—50=174.
305—31=274—5 b (31)=269. 533
265+^=271.
305—31=274—50=224—50 (76:1)=
305—31=274—218 (74:2)— 56— 2 h col.
305—31=274—5 b (31)=269. 462—269=193+1=
194+5 b col.=199.
305—31=274—30 (74:2)=244— 5 b (31)=239— 197
(74:2)=42.
305— 3 1=2 74—50=224 +31=255 .
305—31=274—50=224+162=386—2 h col. =384.
305—31=274—5 b (31)=269. 462—269=193+1=
305—31=274—5 b (31)=269+ 163=432—3 b col.—
305—31=274—50=224—50=174—4 h col. =170.
305—31=274—5 b (3 1)=269+ 163=432.
305—31=274—146 (76:2)=128— 3 b (146)— 125. 508
—125=383+1=384.
305— 31=274— 50=224. 498—224=274 + 1=275 +
2 b col. =277.
305—31=274—198=76.
305—31=274—50=224—30=194 -145=49. 577—49
=528+1=529+2// col.— 581.
305—31=274+162=436—20/; & h col. =416.
305—31=274—50=224—162=62—2 h col.— 60.
305—31=274—30 (74:2)=244— 162=82— 14 b & A—
305—31=274—50=224—50 (76:1)— 174. 498—174=
324+1=325.
305— 31=274— 197 (74:2)=77— 65(79 :2)=12— 2 b (65)
=10. 338—10=328+1=329.
305—31=274—50=224—50 (76:1)— 174 —3 b col.—
305—31=274—50=224—50=174—145=29 449—29
=420+1=421.
Word.
Page and
Column.
19
78:2
which
174
70:2
is
269=264+1=
(271)
79:2
gone
174—4 b col.—
170
76:2
to
col.— 54.
54
76:1
decay,
199
384
325
305—31=274—197 (74
305—31=274—197 (74
305—31=274—197 (74:
305—31=274—198 (74
12=326+1=327.
305—31=274—30=244—5=239—31 b & h col
2)— 77.
2)— 77— 11 £—66.
2)=77— 65 (79:1)= 12— 2 b (64)=
2 =76— 64 (79:1)— 12. 338—
r8:2
and
42
78:2
build
255
79:1
a
384
7+.1
great
194
78:2
one
429
78:1
in
170
78:2
the
432
78:1
spring
fit
277
76:1
for
76
78:2
a
531
77:1
prince.
416
78:1
Indeed,
60
78:2
the
68
78:2
surveyors
r6:l
329
80:1
now-
171
76:1
engaged
421
76:1
and
77
79:1
the
66
78:2
foundation
= 10
80:1
walls
327
80:1
part
208
78:2
up.
Architects were in that age called surveyors; this is shown in the text where the
word is used.
Foundation occurs only eight times in all the Plays, only three times in the
Historical Plays, and only this one time in this play. Walls occurs but this time
in this play ! And here we have these two rare words coming together, one on page
78:2, and the other on page 80, that is to say, in two contiguous scenes, and linked
together by the same root-number and the same modification of the same root-num-
ber, to-wit: 305 — 31=274 — 197 (74:2)=77; and in each case the bracket words are
counted in to place the terminal number. And the same remnant, 12, which gives
us, carried down 80:1 {minus the brackets in 65), walls, gives US, carried up from the
end of the scene, fiart(li walls part up "); and, modified by deducting the brackets, it
774
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
gives us the word now; while the 12th word in the same column is pretty, which
alludes to Shakspere's daughter Susanna:
305—31=274—162=112.
305—31=274—50=224—145=79—65 (79:2)=14— 2 b
(65)— 12.
305— 31=274— 50=224— 5 £ (32)=219. 420—219
=201+1=202.
305—31=274—197 (74 :2)=77+ 162=239.
305—31=274—197=77.
305— 31=274— 162=1 12+ 185=297.
305—31=274—30=244—6 b & h col. =238.
305—31=274—30=244—197=47—2 b col. =45.
305—31=274—3 h col. =271.
And the Bishop, who had an eye for the beautiful,
Susanna more particularly, and tells that she has —
Page and
Column.
Word.
112
78:2
His
12
80:1
pretty-
202
81:2
daughter,
239
78:1
to
77
78:1
whom
297
81:1
he
238
81:2
is
45
78:2
much
271
81:2
endeered.
proceeds to describe
305—31=274. 420—274=146+1=147.
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239— 3 h col.—
305—31=274—50=224. 420—224=196+1=197+
9 b col. =206.
And has been well taught:
305—31=274—50=224—50 (76:1)— 1 74—146=28.
577—28=549+1=550.
305—31=274—30=244—197=47.
1=293+2 4=295.
339—47=292+
147
(236)
206
550
295
81:2
81:2
81:2
77:1
a
sweet
visage,
well
80:1 taught.
Which the Bishop regards as foolish in a man in Shakspere's station in life:
305—31=274—30=244—197=47. 339—47=292+1=293 80:1 foolish.
And the Bishop proceeds to tell that Shakspere not only sought to "bear
arms " as a gentleman, but that he was trying to have his father, John Shakspere,
knighted ! This statement will appear astounding, but I have already shown (p. 51,
ante, et set/.) that he tried to obtain a coat-of-arms for his father by false representa-
tions; and he might have hoped that, through the influence of his friends in London
and about the court, he could accomplish the other and greater object; or it may
have been but a rumor obtaining among the aristocracy of the neighborhood, who
were indignant at the rich plebeian setting up for a gentleman. It was in October,
1596, that the application was made to the College of Arms for a grant of coat-
armor to John Shakspere. Halliwell-Phillipps says:
It may be safely inferred from the unprosperous circumstances of the grantee
that this attempt to confer gentility on the family was made at the poet's expense.
This is the first evidence we have of his rising pecuniary fortunes, and of his deter-
mination to advance in social position.1
And Grant White, it seems, shrewdly and correctly guessed 2 that there must
have been some protest against the granting of the coat-of-arms and that this
caused the delay from 1596, when the first application was made, to 1599, when it
was renewed with sundry alterations. And here we are told that Sir Thomas
1 Outlines, p. 87.
2 See page 53, ante.
SHAKSPERE S ARISTOCRA TIC PRETENSIONS.
775
Word.
27
269
=507
Page and
Column.
79:2
78:2
80:1
It
is
the
101
80:1
earnest
385
80:1
desire
37
437
78:1
78:2
of
his
337
401
78:2
78:1
heart
to
Lucy was the one who blighted the actor's hopes. The Bishop tells Cecil, speaking
of Shakspere and his daughter Susanna, that —
305—31=274—50=224—197 (74:2)— 27.
305—31=274—5 b (31)=269.
305—31=274—50=224—197=27. 533—27=506+ 1=
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239. 339—239=
100+1=101.
305—31=274—198 (74:2)=76— 64 (79:2)— 12. 396—
12=384+1=385.
305—31=274—145 (76:2)=129— 3 />=126. 162—126
=36+1=37.
305—31=274—50=224—198=26. 462—26=436+1=
305—31=274—145 (76:2)=129— 3 b (145)=126. 462
—126=336 -+-1=337.
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239+ 162=401.
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239. 338—239
=99+1=100+7 b col. =107.
305—31=274—50=224—30=194. 534—194=340
+1=341+8 b & h col. =349.
305—31=274—50=224—197=27. 186—27=159
+1=160.
305—32=273—50=223—16 b & h col.— 207.
305— 31=27*— 50=224— 198=26.
305—31=274—5 b (31)=269— 218=51 + 162=213.
305—31=274—50=224-30=194 + 162=356.
305—31=274—30=244—58 (80:1)=186.
305—31=274—197=77.
305— 31=274— 198 (74:2)=76+ 162=238.
305—31=274—218 (74:2)=56.
305—31=274—30=244—197=47. 598—47=551
+ 1=552.
305—31=274—218 (74:2)=56. 468—56=412+1=
The word file was used in that age where we would say list or catalogue or mem-
bership. Thus in Macbeth we have:
10;
349
80:1
make
her
160
81:2
a
207
79:2
lady
26
78:1
and
213
78:1
advance
356
78:1
himself
186
80:1
among
77
79:2
the
238
78:1
file
56
78:2
of
552
79:2
the
413
78:1
quality.
In Henry V., iv,
and in Lear, v, 3, we
I have a. file of all the gentry.1
The word quality was the old expression for aristocracy.
8, we have the phrase, "gentlemen of blood and quality;
have: " Any man of quality or degree."
And here I would note that Halliwell-Phillipps*2 shows that New Place had been
so named before Shakspere bought it; and that forty-eight years before his pur-
chase, to-wit, in 1549, it was " m great ruyne and decay and unrepayryd;" after
that it was owned by different parties before coming into Shakspere's hands.
And here, it seems to me, we have an instance of Bacon's profound prevision.
I have noted elsewhere how passages were injected into the quartos to break up
the count, so that, should any one attempt to get on the track of the Cipher, he
would be thrown off the scent; for a few words added upon one page might destroy
1 Macbeth, v, 2.
2 Outlines, p. 395.
776 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
the Cipher for half-a-dozen pages. And I have also noted that sometimes these
additions contained very significant words, the better to attract and mislead the
investigator. And in this instance we find that, in act ii, scene 2, in Prince Henry's
speech, commencing " Belike, then, my appetite was not princely got," such an
additional paragraph was thrown into the text, and that it contained the word
ruins: — " bawl out the ruins of thy linen." Linen is preserved in the Folio, but
the rest of the sentence is omitted. Now if any one had imagined, in 159S, that he
perceived in all this : botight — estate — pluck — down — old — house — foundation —
walls — build — surveyors — new — place — decay, etc., a Cipher reference to Shak-
spere's home at Stratford, he would naturally fasten on that word, ruin s, as a part
of the story, and would spend his acumen on it; and thus "the non-significants,"
as Bacon calls them, would have diverted his attention from the significants.
And I would here say that a mark or marc was equal to 13s. 4d., which would
be about ^380, or $1,900; but as money had then, we are told, twelve times its
present purchasing power, this would be equal to ^4,560, or $22,800 to-day. This
did not represent probably any particular division of the profits, but the amount
with which Shakspere returned to Stratford about 1595 or 1596. We find by the
records that he paid ^"60 for New Place; in 1598 he loaned ^30 to Richard Quiney;
in 1602 he bought 107 acres of land near Stratford from the Combes for ^320; and in
1605 he purchased a moiety of a lease of the tithes of Stratford, Welcombe, etc., for
^■440. So that of the ^380 which he had in 1597-8, according to the Bishop, we can
account for ^90, expended near that time, besides the amount which he expended in
repairing and reconstructing New Place. And here I would note that Halliwell-
Phillipps1 quotes Theobald, who was told, by Sir Hugh Clopton, that when Shak-
spere purchased New Place he "repaired and modell'd it to his own mind;" and
Halliwell-Phillipps thinks that " the poet made very extensive alterations, perhaps
nearly rebuilding it." And he surmises that these alterations were made in 1598,
because in that year Shakspere sold a load of stone to the corporation of Strat-
ford for rod. ; but it does not follow that the repairs were finished in the same year
they were begun, or that the surplus material was sold at once.
And the Bishop goes on to speak very contemptuously of Shakspere's aspira-
tions. The conflict between the play-actor and his neighbors represented the
world-old battle between money and blood; between mortgages and pedigrees;
between the new-rich and the old-respectable; and the position of Shakspere and
his family could not have been a very pleasant one.
The Bishop says of Shakspere:
Page and
Word. Column.
305—31=274—30=244. 610—244=366 + 1=367. 367 77:2 He
will
305— 31=274— 30=244— 197=47+162=209— 2 £ col=207 78:1 be
305—31=274—30=244—197=47+162=209. 209 78:1 satisfied
305— 31=274— 218 (74:2)=56+ 162=218. 218 78:1 with
305—31=274— 50=224— 30=194— 50(76 :1)=144.
458—144=314+1=315+2 b col. =317. 317 76:2 nothing
305—31=274—197=77. 577—77=500+1=501. 501 77:1 less
305—31=274—50=224. 449—224=225+1=226. 226 76:1 than
305—31=274—50=224—30=194—145=49. 49 77:1 knighthood
305—31=274—218=56. 577—56=521 + 1=522. 522 77:1 and
305— 31=274. 577— 274=303+1=304+16 £ & ^ col .=320 77:1 the
1 Outlines, p. 231 .
Word.
Page and
Column.
319
80:1
right
78
78:2
to
301
70:2
bear
SUA K SEE RE' S A RIS TO CRA TIC PRE TEA'S J OXS. 777
505—30=275—197=78. 396—78=318+1=319
305—30=275—197=78.
305. 603—305=298+1=299 + 2 h col =301.
305—31=274—5 b (31)=269. 468—269=199+1=
200+3 h co). =203. 203 78:1 arms.
And the Bishop says that Shakspere's attempts excited the indignation of Sir
Thomas Lucy.
305— 31=274— 50=224— 7 b col.=217. 217 77:1 Sir
305—31=274—50=224—30=194—145=49. 49 76:1 To )
305-31=274— 30=244— 5 £(31)=239— 50(76:1)= 189 76:2 amiss )
305—31=274—50=224—50 (76:1)=174. 248—174=
74+1=75+2 fccol— 77. 77 74:2 Loose
305-31=274—50=224—30=194. 194+194=388—
4/t col. =384. 384 75:1
I
This To-amiss for Thomas may appear forced; but I give it as it stands, because
more than once I have found it appearing in the Cipher to represent Thomas. I
• find that Webster1 says there was formerly to the long sound of o, as in old, hoe,
etc., what he calls a vanishing or diphthongal sound like oo; and I have myself
heard the first syllable of the word Thomas pronounced so as to rhyme with Rome.
Webster thinks the dropping of the diphthongal sound of o in such words as bolt,
most, only, etc. , is an American provincialism. Thackeray represents ' ' the cockney' '
of London as saying Turn' -as. Thomas appears very often in 2d Henry IV. (and
not once in 1st Henry IV.), and Bacon could not use it too liberally without arous-
ing suspicion; hence this subterfuge. It must be remembered, too, that the pro-
nunciation of o was longer and softer then than now. For instance, the word
Ro?ne, in Bacon's time, was, it is well known, pronounced Room. We see this in
the expression in Julius Casar, i, 2:
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough
When there is in it but one only man.
We have modified it from room to Rome, and, if our posterity progress in the
same direction, the year 2000 may see the city of the Caesars called Rom or Rum.
And the neighbors are very much disturbed over Shakspere's pretensions.
They —
305— 31=274— 219 (74:2)=55+162=217. 217 78:1 look
305—31=274—162=112. 112 77:2 upon
305—31=274. 468—274=194+1=195. 195 78:1 it
305—31=274—50=224—50 (76:1)=174. 248—174
=74+1=75+22 b=97. 97 74:2 as
305—31=274—198=76. 76 78.2 a
305— 145=160— G?> col. =154. 154 76:1 bold
305—31=274—219 (74:2)=55. 55 78:2 plot
to force himself into their ranks.
305—31=274—50=224—198 (74:2)=26. 462—26=
436+1=437. 437 78:2 His
1 Unabridged Dictionary, p. xlii.
778
THE CIPHER NARK A TTVE.
305—31=274—50=224—162 (78:1)=62. 610—62
548+1=549.
305—31=274—61 (80:2)=213. 489—213=276+1=
277+2 // col.=279.
305—3 1 =274—50=224—146=78—3 b (146)=75. oy
_ 75=502 +1=503 +2 h col. =505.
305—31=274—30 (74:2)=244— 197=47— 2 h col.—
305—32=273—50=223—5 b (32)— 218. 468—218=
250+1=251 + 12 3=263.
305—31=274—50=224—50=174—162=12! 610—12
=598+1=599.
305—31=274—145=129—3 b (145)=126. 577—126
=451 + 1=452+3 h col.=455.
305—31=274—219=55. 163—55=108 + 1=109.
305—31=274—219=55.
305—31=274—50=224—30=194—1 62=32.
305— 32=273— 30=243+162=405— 15 3 & //=390.
305—31=274—30=244—50=194+186=380—3 h col
305—31=274—197=77. 163—77=86+ 1=87.
305—31=274—50=224—30=194—5 b (31)=189—
22 3col.=167.
305—31=274.
305—31=274—53 (31)=269. 468—269=199+1=
200+3// col.=203.
305—31=274—31 b & h col.=243.
305—31=274—30=244. 489—244=245 + 1=246.
305—31=274—50=224—162=62.
305—31=274—50=224—49 (76:1)=175— 90 (73:1)=
305—31=274. 468—274=194+1=195+3// col.—
305—31=274—4// col.=270.
Shakspere's application for coat-armor for his father, in 1596, was made to
" William Dethick, alias Garter, principal King of Arms." See how cunningly the
name is concealed in Death-thick. And observe how the first word goes out from
the beginning of one scene (79:1) and the other from the end of the preceding
scene; and each word is found by the same root-number and the same modifica-
tion of the same root-number: death is 305, less 32, less 30, carried one scene
backward to the beginning of scene 4, act i (78:1); while thick is 305, less 31, less
30, less 50, carried two scenes forward to the beginning of scene 3 of act ii (81:2).
And this word thick is comparatively rare in the Plays. It occurs but three other
times in id Henry IV.; but once in King John; not at all in Richard II, 1st Henry
IV., Henry V., or the first and second parts of Henry VI. Yet here we find it, just
where it is needed to make the name of the " King of Arms," in connection with the
story of Shakspere trying to procure a coat-of-arms. If this be accident, it is
extraordinary.
And Sir Thomas reads Shakspere's pedigree to the King of Arms of England.
Referring to his father, he says:
Word.
Page and
Column.
549
77:2
Lordship
279
81:1
is
71
505
77:1
very
45
78:2
much
263
>
78:1
incensed;
599
77:2
he
455
77:1
sent
109
78:1
a
55
78:1
letter
32
77:2
to
390
78:1
Death j
=377
81:2
thick, S
87
78:1
the
167
78:2
King;
274
81:1
of
203
78:1
Arms,
243
78:2
not
246
81:1
to
62
78:2
consent
85
78:2
or
198
78:1
allow
270
78:2
it.
305—31=274—30=244—50=194—50 (76:1)=144. 144 76:2
305— 31=274-30=244— 50=194— 50(76 :1)=144—
11 b &h col. =133. 133 74:1
I
SHAKSPERES ARISTOCRA TIC PRETENSIONS.
779
Page and
Word.
Column.
244
76:2
assure
-50=194.
191
77:1
you
- 50=194. 458—194=264+
270
76:2
he
=269. 577—269=308+1=
309
77:1
hath
284— 26=258+1=259+
262
74:1
not
-50=194.
194
77:2
the
78:1 smallest
87
240
239
76:1
76-2
76:1
drop
of
gentle
359
76:1
blood
488
77:1
in
355
144
76:1
74:1
his
body.
305—31=274—30=244.
305—31=274—30=244-
305—31=274- -30=24 1-
1—265+5 £—270.
305—31=274—5 b (31)=
305—31=274—248=26.
3 h col. =262.
305—31=274—30=244-
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31 )=239— 146=93.
468—93=375+1=376+1 k col. =377.
305—31=274—30=244—5 £=239—146=93—3 b (146)
=90— 3 b col. =87.
305—31=274—30=244—4 b col. =240.
305—31=274—30=244—5 £=239.
305—31=274—30=244—5 £=239— 146=93— 3 b (146)
=90. 448—90=358+1=359.
305—31=274—30=244—5 £=239—146=93—3 (146)
. =90. 577—90=487+1=488.
305— 31=274— 50=224— 30=194— 50 (76:1)=144.
498—144=354+1=355.
305— 31=274— 50=224— 30=194— 50 (76:1)=144.
I would ask the reader to observe this sentence carefully. Take those words,
' ' smallest drop of gentle blood. " This is the only ' 'gentle " in the first act of this play;
and this is the only ' 'drop " in that act. And drop only occurs one other time in the whole
play. And this is the only time the word blood is found in scene 2 of act i of the Folio;
and this is the only time smallest occurs in this entire play. And body is only found
once in the Induction, where we find the word used above; and only twice in scene
second. How comes it, if there is no Cipher here, that out of many thousands of
words, this array of significant and rare words should all concur in the same
vicinity, held together by the same number? For it will be observed that every
word here, except two, is from the root 305 — 31=274 — 30=244; and those two are
words carried to the beginning of new scenes or pages (74:1 and 77:1); and many of
the words are number 244, modified by deducting the 5 bracketed words in the 31 at
the top of 79:1, making 239. Gentle is the 239th word from the top of 76:1; drop is
again the 239th word carried through the second section of 76:2 (146), leaving 90, and
the 90th word, including the brackets, down 76:1, is drop; and the 90th word up the
same column, from the end of scene second, is blood; and in the next sentence the
90th word up the next preceding column is gluve.
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239— 7 b & h col.— 232 76:2 His
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)— 239. 457—239=
218+1=219 + 6 h col. =225. 225 76:2 father
305—31=274—30=244—7 b & h col. =237. 237 76:2 is
305— 31=274— 30=244— 50 (76:1)=194. 498—194=
304+1=305. 305 76:1 only
305—31=274—30=244. 498—244=254+1=255. 255 76:1 a
305—31=274 (74:2)— 30=244— 50 (74:2)=194— 50
(76:1)=144— 4 b & h col. =140. 140
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239— 146=93-
3 b (146;=90— 5 b & /z=85. 85 76:1
coster-
•2 monger's
780
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
305—31=274—248 (74:2)=26. 193—26=167+1=
305—31=274—30=244—145=99.
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239— 146=93—
3 b (146)=90. 498—90=408 + 1=409.
305-31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239— 50— 189—
3 h col.=186.
305—31=274—30=244—50=194.
305—31=274—30=244—10 b col =234.
305-31=274—145=129—2 h col =127.
305-31=274—5 b (31)=269— 4 h col.— 265.
305—31=274—30=244—5 £=239—146=93—3 b
(146)=90. 508—90=418+1=419+1 //= 420.
305—31=274—248 (74:2)=26.
305-31=274—50=224. 284—224=60+1=61.
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239-146=93-
3 b (146)=90. 468—90=378 + 1=379.
305— 31=-274— 10 b col.=264.
305—31=274—30=244—7 b & /;=237.
305—31=274—248=26. 193+26=219.
305—31=274—5 b (31)=269— 15 b & h col. =254.
305—31=274. 447—274=173+1=174.
305—31=274—50=224. 284— 224=60+1=61 + 7 h col
305—31=274. 284—274=10+1=11+18 b & h col.—
Word.
Page and
Column.
168
75:2
who
99
76:2
at
409
-248=26—22 b (248)— 4.
-254=20
-145=129—50=79. 44^
305-31=274-
305—31=274-
305—31=274—145=129—50=79. 447—79=368+1
=369.
305—31=274—50=224.
305—31=274—5 b (31)— 269— 248— 21. 193+21—
305—31=274—50=224—193=31—15 b & h (193)—
16. 508—16=492+1=493.
493
76:1
present
186
76:1
wrought
194
74:1
at
234
74:1
the
127
76:1
trade
265
74:1
of
420
75:2
glove
(26)
74:1
making;
61
74:1
while
379
78:1
his
(264)
76:1
son
237
76:2
is
219
75:1
a
254
74:1
crafty-
174
75:1
fellow,
=68
74:2
who
29
74:1
acts
4
74:1
for
20
75:1
a
369
75:1
living
224
74:2
on
214
75:2
the
75:2
stage.
The reader will here observe t^at the whole of act i of this play of ad Henry
IV. is used as a basis for this wonderful Cipher, and the two ends of the act act
and react on each other. Thus we find the fragments of 74:2, the beginning of
scene second, as 50, 30, 198, 218, etc., used to modify the primal root-number, 523,
thus: 523 — 218—305; and when we carry this 305 to the end of the act, in 79:1,
and deduct the fragment of scene at the top of the column, containing 31 words,
we get the 274 which has been telling the Cipher story through several pages. But
this is not all. We take that 274, and again modify it by the fragments of 74:2, to
obtain the 224 and 244, etc. (274 — 50=224 and 274 — 30=244), which so abundantly
occur in the foregoing pages; and this again is modified by deducting the frag-
ment of 76:1 (50), the beginning of the third scene of the act, producing the 174 and
194 seen so often above. But even this does not end the marvelous interlocking
of the beginning and the end of the act under the spell of the Cipher, for we see the
count starting from the end of the act (305 — 31—274), carried back to the beginning
of the act; and there taken up the column to yield us acts, and taken through 74:2,
to yield us making (" glove-making"); and up 75:1 it gives us fellow, and down 74:1
(274 — 5 b (31)— 269) it produces crafty; while 224 (274 — 50—224), carried through
the first section of 75:1, brings us to stage.
Word.
Page and
Column.
420
75:2
glove |
I
(26)
74:1
making J
SUA KSPERE S A RIS TO CRA TIC PRE TENSIONS. 7 8 1
If the reader will turn back to page 729 he will find those words glove making
produced thus:
516—167=349—22 b & //=327— 30=297— 193=104
—15 b & /&— 89. 508—89=419+1=420.
516—167=349—22 b & //=327— 50=277. 284—277
—7+1—8+18* * h col.=26.
Now compare this with the example just given. Observe how an entirely dif-
ferent primal number, modified by being carried to the end instead of the beginning
of the act, is brought back to the same place and brings out the same words:
523—218=305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239—
146=93— 3 /> (146)— 90. 508—90=418+1=419
+ 1 h col.— 420. 420 75:2 glove j
523-218=305— 31=274— 248 (74:2)=26. (26) 74:1 making \
Now consider how exquisitely the skeleton of the text must have been adjusted
to bring about these results: — in the first instance, the count goes forward to pro-
duce the word glovet and the one hyphen is not counted in; in the second case, the
count comes from the end of the act and moves backward y and the one hyphen is
counted in. The word making is obtained, in the one case, by going up column 1
of page 74, and counting in all the bracketed and hyphenated words; in the other
case, the root-number comes from the end of the act, passes through 74:2, and goes
down 74:1. Thus making fits to 274 down the column and to 277 up the column.
But some one may think that glove and making are to be found everywhere, all
through these Plays, and that therefore it is no trick at all to produce these wonder-
ful arithmetical coordinations. My answer is that this is the only time "glove" is
found in this play ! And this is the only time " making" is found in this act. It is
found but once besides in the play, in the fourth act, and once in the Epilogue. In
other words, the gentlemen who may think all this to be accident would have to go
thirty-six columns forward from 74:1 before they would find another making to
match \\\z.\x glove, to produce the designation of the recognized trade of Shakspere's
father.
It is impossible to deny the accuracy of my arithmetic (occasional typograph-
ical errors, of course, excepted), and it is impossible to deny that the facsimiles
given herewith are faithful copies of the Folio of 1623; and it seems to me that
all this hundred-fold accumulation of evidences must convince even the most skep-
tical that there is a Cipher in the Shakespeare Plays. I am aware that my workman-
ship is not complete, but it is approximately so; and my excuse will be, to all just-
minded men, the incalculable difficulties of the work. But it was fit and proper
that the Cipher made by the greatest intellect that ever existed, and embodied in
the greatest writings possessed by mankind, should be as marvelous as the source
from which it came, or the vehicle in which it is carried.
But this is not all — nor a tithe of all. The Bishop says that the aristocracy
of the neighborhood fear that Shakspere's friends in London will secure him his
coat-of-arms.
305—31=274—50=224—163 (78:1)=61. 498—61=
437+1=438. 438 76:1 friends
305— 31=274— 5/>(31)=269+185(81:l)=454— 2 /* col. =452 81:1 London
And here I would call the reader's attention to the microscopic accuracy of this
782
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
work. If he looks at column i of page 81 he would say it was solid: — he will see
no stage directions of exits or entrances. But if he will look very closely at the
185th word he will find this following it:
Poin. Letter. John Falstaffe Knight.
Poin. is the abbreviation of the name of Poins or Pointz, one of the characters;
and " Sir John Falstaffe" is the opening part of the letter from Falstaff to the
Prince; — for we read a little below, " Sir John Falstaffe Knight, to the son of the
King .... greeting," etc. But what is letter? It is not part of the letter. Nor
does Poins speak the word, for it is put in italics. It is a stage direction, meaning
that Poins reads the letter. And on this little hook the author hangs his Cipher,
for it breaks the column into two fragments.
And they fear the "villain's" influence with the Queen because of the Plays
he has written. And hence we have:
Page and
Word. Column.
305—31=274—50=224—79 (73:1)=145. 518—145=
373+1=374. 374 79:1
305—31=274—50=224—79 (73:i)=145. 518—145=
373+1=374+4 //col. =378. 378 79:1 Queen
villain's
Here is another cunning piece of work. The Queen is disguised in Queane, —
"a woman, a wench":
Cut me off the villain's head; throw the Queane in the channel.
And so they go on to tell the King of Arms that Shakspere never writ them:
that he has not the wit or the imagination:
305—31=274—30=244—5 b '31)=239. 458—239=
219 + 1=220.
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239— 146=93— 3 b
(146)=90— 50=40— 1 h col.=39.
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239— 146=93.
468—93=375+1=376.
305—31=274—30=244—5 /;=239— 146=93. 468—93
=375+1=376+8/; col. =384.
305—31=274—30=244—5 ^=239—146=93. 468—93
=375+1=376+9/; & h col.=385.
And they express the opinion of Shakspere that —
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239— 3 h col.—
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239. 458—239=
219+1=220.
305—31=274—30=244—5 /; (31)=239— 50=189.
489—189=309+1=310.
305—31=274—30=244—50=194. 508—194=314
+ 1=315+8 /> & h col. =323.
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239— 146=93— 3 b
(146)=90. 284—90=194+1=195.
305— 31=274— 5 b (31)=269— 193=76.
305— 31=274— 30=244— 50=194— 22^ & h col. =172.
220
76:2
Writ.
39
76:1
Wit.
376
78:1
The
384
78:1
great
385
78:1
imaginatio
236
76:2
He
220
76:1
was
310
76:1
but
323
75:2
the
195
74:1
first
76
75:2
bringer
172
75:2
of
Word.
Page and
Column.
377
76:1
them
239
76:2
out
94
76:1
on
20
74:1
the
269
81:1
Nearest
274
81:1
of
194
81:1
kin
SHAKSPERE'S ARISTOCRA TIC PRE TENSIONS. 783
305— 31=274— 5 b (31 )=269— 50=219— 146=73. 449
*-73— 376+1— 877.
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239.
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)— 239— 145— 94.
305—31=274—254 (75:1)=20.
305—31=274—254=20—4 h (254)— 16. 508—16=492
+ 1=493. 493 75:2 stage.
I have not the time or space to work it all out. The aristocracy jest over poor
Shakspere's pretensions of relationship to the blue blood of the county, and Sir
Thomas says, in his letter to Sir William Dethick, that he is only connected with
them through Japhet !
305—31=274—5 b (81)— 269
305—31=274.
305—31=274—30=244—50=194.
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)— 239. 489- -239=
250+1=251. 251 81:1 fetch
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)— 239. 489—239
=250+1=251+2 /h=253. 253 81:1 from
305— 31— 274— 20 b & h col.— 254. 254 81:1 Japhet.
I do not pretend to work out the sentence, but simply to jot down from my
notes some of the principal words. If I followed the root-numbers into all their
ramifications each chapter would grow into a book.
And' here I would call attention to another proof of the arithmetical adjustment
of the text. I have just given the words, ' first bringer," thus:
305—31=274—30—244—5 b (31)=239— 146=93— 3 b
(146)— 90. 284—90—194+1—195. 195 74:1 First
305— 31— 274— 5 b (31)— 269— 193— 76. 76 75:2 bringer.
But after a while we will find Bacon expressing his fears that if Shakspere is
taken prisoner he will say that he was not the author of the Plays, but simply the
first bringer of them out upon the stage. And the words come out from the primal
root-number, 523. If we commence at the end of scene 2 (76:1) and count
upward and then go backward and down the column, the 523d word is first; and if
we commence again with 523 at the top of column 1 of page 75, and go down the
column and down the next column, the 523d word is bringer ! Thus:
523— 448— {backward) 75 75:2 First
523— 447— {forward) 76 75:2 bringer.
And it will be seen that the two words " first bringer " follow each other in the
text. It would have been difficult to have placed first and bringer in the same vicinity
without connecting them; hence the length of column 1 of page 75 and the length of
the fragment of scene on 76:1 had to be exactly adjusted to bring the two required \
words side by side. If there had been 448 words in 75:1, instead of 447, or 449
words on 76:1, instead of 448, both counts would have fallen on the same words 1
I pity the man who can think all this was accidental.
CHAPTER XVI.
SHAKSPERE'S SICKNESS.
Why, thou globe of sinful continents, what a life dost thou lead !
2d Henry IV., it, 4.
EVERY word of the first part of this chapter grows out of the root-
number 323 — 2 18=303 , modified by deducting 31 or 32, to-wit, the
number of words in yp:i from the top of the column to the end of scene 4y
act i, or to the beginning of scene I, act ii. The remainder of the chapter
is derived from 304 — 167=338, and shows hoiv substantially the same
story comes out of the same text by two different root-numbers.
My publishers advise me that there are already 850 pages in
type, and that I must condense the remainder of the Cipher story.
I shall therefore be as brief as possible, and instead of giving a con-
tinuous narrative I shall only give fragments of the story.
We have two descriptions of Shakspere's sickness, one given
by the Bishop of Worcester to Cecil, the other the narrative of
Bacon himself, interjected into the story; the former is the briefer
of the two. The first grows out of the root-number used in the
last chapter, 523 — 2i8==305; the other from the root-number 505 —
167=338, which gave us the story of Shakspere's youth, his quar-
rel with Sir Thomas Lucy, the fight, etc.
The Bishop says to Cecil, after describing Shakspere's intended
house, his "plate" (591 79:2, 96 80:1); his " tapistry" (594 79:2,
37 80:1); his " bed-hangins " (33 80:1), etc., that he will not live to
enjoy his grandeur; that he will —
Page and
Word. Column.
305— 31=274— 5/;(31)=269— 4/fc=col.=265. 265 78:2 never
305—31=274—50=224. 462 -224=238+ 1=239+
8 A col.— 242. 242 78:2 need
305—31=274—4/^=270. 270 78:2 it
305—31=274—50=224+32=256. 256 79:1 long.
305—31=274—50=224—5 3=219—49 (76:1)=170—
4£col.=166. 166 76:2 He
784
S//.I K'SPERE'S S/CA'.YESS.
785
Word.
174
209
230
Page and
Column.
76:2
T7'9
hear,
305—31=274—50=224—50 (76:1)— 174.
805—81—274—50—224—54 (31)=219— 10 0 col.—
305—31=274—50=224—5 b (31)— 219. 448—219=
229+1*280.
305—285 (31 79:1)=20— 2 h (285)=18. 468—18=
450+1=451.
305—193=112. 162+112=274.
305—50=255—32=223. 577—223=354+1=355.
305-50=255.
305-31=274—27 (78:1)— 347.
305—31=274—50 (79:1)=224— 5 b (31) 219. 610—
219=391 + 1=392.
305—31=274—50=224—5 0 (31)— 219. 610-219=
391 + 1=392+3=395.
305—31=274—50=224. 610—224=386+1=387+
\\b & /*=398.
305— 31=274— 50=224— 5 b (31)=219. 610—219=
391 + 1=392+110 & A— 408.
305—31=274—50=224. 610—224=386+1=387+9 b=
305—31=274—50=224.
305— 32=273— 50=223— 54—218— 50=168— 162=
6. 610—6=604+1=605.
305—31=274—50=224.
305—32=273—50=223—5 *— 21 8—50—1 68. 458—
168=290+1=291.
305—31=274—50=224. 610—224=386 + 1=387+
3 h col. =390.
305—32=273—50=223—5 0=218—50=168—146=
22— 3 0 (146)— 19. 577—19=558+1=559 + 1 A—
The reader will observe how singularly the words match with the count. The
root-number 305 — 31 (79:1)^274 — 5o(74:2>=224, carried up the column (77:2), count-
ing in the bracketed words, yields ashes; but counting in both the bracketed and
hyphenated words, it gives us sack-cloth. But if we count in, in that 31, the five words
in brackets, then we have: 305 — 50=255 — 31=224 — 5 b (3i)=2i9; and 219 taken up
the same column gives us repents, and counting in the three hyphenated words
alone it gives us in, and counting both the bracketed and hyphenated words it
gives us and. Here we have repents in sack-cloth and ashes. But this is not all.
The same root-number 224 carried up the same column, counting in the three
hyphenated words, yields the word young; and the same root-number 255 modified
by deducting 32 gives us, less 5 b (32), 218, and this carried to the beginning of the
scene and brought backward and up 77:1 gives us days: — voting days.
And observe that the word lechery occurs only this once in this play, and not
again in all the ten Histories. A.nd this is the only time repents is found in this
play, and it does not appear again in all the Histories. And this is the only time sack-
cloth occurs in this play, and it is found but once more in all (he Plays ! I mention
these facts for the benefit of those shallow intellects that think all words neces-
sary for all sentences can be found anywhere.
And then the Bishop goes on to speak again of Shakspere's wealth:
305—50=255—32—223—5 b (31)— 218— 50— 168. 458
—168=290+1=291. 291 76:2 His
451
78:1
at
274
78:1
present
355
77:1
very
255
74:1
sick;
247
78:2
he
392
77:2
repents,
395
77:2
in
398
77:2
sack-cloth
403
77:2
and
= 396
77:2
ashes,
253
78:1
the
605
77:2
lechery
224
77:2
of
291
76:2
his
390
77:2
young
560
77:1
days.
;86
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Word.
305—31=274—50=224—5 4—219—50=169—146= 23
305—31=274—50—224—5=219—50=169—146=23.
318—23=295+1=290. 296
305—31=274—50=224—50=174—146=28. 477—
28=449+1=450. 450
305—32=273—50=223-30=193+162=355. 355
305—32=273—50=223—193 (75:1)— 30. 448—30=
418+1=419. 419
305—31=274—193=81—15 4 & A— 66— 49— 17. 603
—17=586+1=587. 587
305—32=273—50=223—5 4=218—50=168—50
(76:1)— 118. 118
305— 32=273— 30=243— 5 4=238— 145=93—
3 4 col.— 90. 90
305—31=274—193=81. 448—81=367+1=368. 368
305—31=274—50=224—193=31. 31
305—32=273—50=223—5 4=218—146=72+163=
235—5 b col. =230. 230
305—32=273—50=223—5 4=218—50=168—50=
118. 603—118=485+1=486. 486
The Bishop admits they are popular:
31=274—50=224—5 4=219—50=169—146= 23
32=273—50=223—5 4=218—50=168—50= 118
31=274—50=224—50=174—145=29—5 4 col.— 24
305
305
305
305—31=274—50=224—5 4=219—50=169—146
=23. 468—23=445+1=446.
305- 31=274—50=224—50=1 74—1 61=13
13=449+1=450.
305—31=274—50=224.
305—32=273—50=223—30=193—162=31-
305—32=273—50=223—50=173.
305— 32=273— 50=223— 5 4=218— 50=16S
22—3 4 (146)— 19.
305—32=273—50—223—5=218—146=72.
305—32—273—50—223—5 4—218—50—168—163—5
462—5=457+1=458.
305—32=273—50=223—50=173—50 (76:1)— 123.
305—31—274—193=81—15 4 & h (193)— 66. 458—
60=392+1=393.
305—31=274—50=224—5=219—50=169+162=
305—31—274—50—224—50—174—146—28. 468—
28=440+1—441.
305— 31= 274— 193= 81— 49 (76:1)— 32.
305—31—274—30—244. 468— 244— 224+ 1=225.
305—31—274—30=244+162—406.
305—32—273—50=223—5 b & 4—218—50(70:1)—
168—145=23 + 163—186.
305—31—274—50—224—50—1 74—146—28—3 4 (146)
446
462—
450
224
-1 h col.— 30
173
—146—
19
72
458
123
393
331
441
32
225
406
186
= 9.S
Page and
Column.
78:1
79:1
77.1
78:1
76:1
76:2
76:2
76:1
76:1
76:1
78:1
76:2
r8:l
78:2
78:1
purse
is
well
lined
with.
the
gold
he
derives.
from
the
Plays.
77:1 The
78:1 Plays-
79:1 are
much
78:2 admired,.
79:2 and
78:2, draw
78:1 great
79:1 numbers,
77:1 and
yield
great
76:2 abundance.
78:1 of
78:1 fruit,
76:2 in
78:1 the
78:1 forms
78:1
78:1
of
groats
SHA KSPERKS SICKNESS.
787
305—50=255—31=224—5=219—145=74—3 b (145)
=71. 577—71=506+1=507.
305—50=255—31=224—50=174—146=28.
Word.
507
28
Page and
Column.
:1 and
\:\ pence.
Observe here how plays comes out twice by the same number, once as please
(plase), 118 up 76:2, and the second time as plays, 118 down 78:1. And note how
cunningly the word is worked in the second time: " For the one or the other plays
the rogue with my great toe."
Observe also how the same numbers bring out purse — gold — abundance —
groats — pence — much — admired — dra7c> — great — numbers, etc., just as we saw
another number bringing out of these same pages shoes, stockings, cloak, slopsf
smock, cap; in fact, a whole wardrobe. This is the only time groats occurs in this
play. It is found but four other times in all the Plays. And this is the only time
pence occurs in this play. It is found but five other times in all the Plays. Purse
occurs but four times in this play. T»his is the only time admired appears in either
/st or 2d Henry IV.; and this is the only time numbers is found in this act.
Abundance occurs but twice in this play, and but eight other times in all the Plays.
I should be sorry, for the credit of human intelligence, that any man could be
found who would think that all these unusual words — rare on a thousand pages —
have concurred arithmetically on two or three pages by accident.
And the aristocracy are in dread of the wealthy parvenu absorbing the territory
around him. The Bishop says:
305—50=255—31=224. 610—224=386+1=387.
305—50=225—31=224—5 b (31 )=2 19- 50=1 69-
146=23. 318—23=295 + 1=296.
305— 50=255—31=224—50=174—146=28—3 b
(148)— 26. 318—25=293+1=294
305—50=255—32=223—5 b=2 1 8—50=1 68—50
(76:1)=118. 603—118=485+1=486+3 b col.
305—50=255—32=223—5 /;=218— 50=1 68—146=
22—3 b (146)=19+31=50.
305—50=255—32=223-5 /; (32)=218— 50 (76:1)=
168. 603—168=435+1=436.
305— 50=255— 32=223— 5=218— 50=16S— 146=
22— 3 b (146)=19+ 162=181. .
305—32=273. 610-273=337+1=338 + 12 b & h=
305—31=274—193=81—15 b & h=66. 448-66=
382+1=383.
305—50=255—31=224—5 b (31)=219— 49 (76:1)=
170—5 b & //=165.
305— 50=255— 31=224— ob (31)=219-49 (76)=
305—50=255—31=224—5 b (31)=219. 610—219=
391 + 1=392+9 b col. =401.
305— 50=255— 31=224— 5 <*(31)=219— 50 (76:1)=
169—146=23. 518—23=495+1=496.
387
77:2
It
296
79:1
1ST
294
79:1
thought
489
76:2
he
50
79:1
will
436
76:2
buy-
181
78:1
all
350
77:2
the
383
165
170
496
76:1
land
77:2 appertinent
76:2 to
r9:l
New
Place.
And note this group of words : buy — all — land — appertinent — to — A"e'o Place,
How lawyer-like is the language. Appertinent occurs but once in this play and but
twice besides in all the Plays ! Yet here it coheres arithmetically with buy — land —
Nezv Place. And this is the only time buy and land are found in this act, and buy
788
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Word.
Page and
Column.
311
78:1
We
69
78:2
know
402
81:2
him
31
77:2
as
22
81:2
a
219
78:2
butcher's
372
72:2
rude
140
78:1
and
386
78:2
vulgar
164
224
81:2
78:2
'prentice,
and
occurs but once besides in the whole play. And this is the first time place appears
in eighteen columns of the Folio — since ist Henry IV., act 5, scene 1.
And the Bishop expresses the opinion of his friends, the gentlemen around
Stratford, that the village boy they had known so well as a poacher could not have
written these " much admired plays."
305—32=273—50=223—5 4=218—50 (76:1)=168.
468—168=300 + 1=301 + 10 4 col.=311.
305— 31=274— 30=244— 162=82— 13 b & h col.—
305—32=273—50=223—5 4=218—50=168—146=
22-3 /> (146)=19. 420—19=401 + 1-402.
305— 32=273— 50=223— 30=193— 162=31.
305—32=273—50=223—5 4=21 8—50=1 68—146=
305—31=274—50=224—5 4=219.
305—31=274—30=244—5 4=239. 610—239=371
+ 1=372.
305—31=274—50=224—5 4=219—50 (76:1)=169—
146=23. 162—23=139+1=140.
305—31=274—30=244—162=82. 462—82=380+
1=381+5 4 col. =386.
305—32=273—50=223—5 4=218—50 (76:1)=168— 4
4 & h col. =164.
305—31=274—50=224.
305—32=273—50=223—5 4=218—50=168—50=
118. 162—118=44+1=45.
305—32=273—50=223—50=173—50=123. 468—
123=345+1=346.
305—31=274—193=81—49 (76:1)=32.
305—31=274—50=224—5 4=219—50 (76:1)=
169—146=23—5 4 col.=18.
305—31=274—50=224—5 4=219—50=169—146=
23+162=185.
305—32=273—50=223—50=173+ 162=335.
305—31=274—30=244+162=406—2 k col =404.
305—32=273—50=223—193 (75:1)=30. 462—30
. 432+1=433.
305—31=274—193=81—49 (76:1)=32. 457+32=
305—31=274—50=224—4 4 col. =220.
305—32=273—50=223—5 4=218—146=72. 448—
72=376+1=377.
305—31=274—193 (75:1)=81— 50 (76:1)=31. 458+
31=489.
305—31=274—254 (75:1)=20.
305—32=273—50=223—5 4=218—50=168—51=117
—1 h col. =116.
305—31=274—1 93=81—50=31.
305—31=274—254=20—15 4 & 4=5. 448—5=443+1=
305—31=274-50=224—5=219—50=169—50(76:1)
=119. 577—119=458+1=459+11 4=470.
305—32=273—50=223.
305—31=274—30=244—50=194—162=32.
45
346
32
18
78:1
78:1
76:2
79:1
was,
in
our
185
78:1
opinion!
335
78:1
not
404
78:1
likely
433
78:2
that
489
76:2
he
220
76:2
writ
r6:l
them;
489
76:2
he
20
78:1
is
116
76:2
neither
31
76.2
witty
444
76:1
nor
470
77:1
learned
223
78:1
enough.
32
78:2
The
SUA KSPERE S SICKNE SS.
789
305—31=274—50=224—50=174—145=29—3 £ (145)=
305— 31=274— 50=224— 5 £=219—145=74.
305—32=273—50=223—5 £=218—58 (80:1)=160.
468—160=308 + 1=309.
305—32=273—162=111.
305—31=274—162=112.
305—31=274—50=224—5 £=219—50 (76:1)=169
—145=24.
305— 32=273— 50=223— 5 £=218— 50=168— 50=118
—2 h col. =11 6.
305—31=274—50=224—5 £=219—50 (rJ6:l)=169—
146=23. 318—23=295+1=296.
305—31=274—50=224—50=174—146=28—1 h col.=
305—31=274—50=224—50=174—146=28—3 £ (146)
=25. 317—25=292+1=293.
305—31=274—30=244—50=194—162=32+32=
305—32=273—50=223—5 £=218—50=168. 489—
168=321 + 1=322+1 h col =323.
305— 31=274— 50=224— 50—1 74— 146=28+317=
305—31=274—30=244—50=194—162=32. 610—
32=578+1=579.
305— 31=274— 50=224— 5 £=219— 50=169— 145=
305—31=274—5 £=269—162=107. •
305— 32=273— 50=223— 38 (80 :1)=185.
305—31=274—30=244—50=194.
Word.
= 26
74
Page and
Column.
79:1
79:1
subjects
are
309
111
112
78:1
78:2
78:2
far
beyond
his
24
78:2
ability.
116
78:2
It
296
■ 27
79:1
81:2
is
even
293
64
79:1
79:1
thought
here
323
345
81:1
79:1
that
your
579
24
107
185
194
77:2
81:2
81:2
81:1
82:1
cousin
of
St. Albans
writes
them.
This is the only time cousin appears in this act, and the only time St. Albans is
found in this play; and this is the only time writes occurs in this play; and writ is
found but twice in this play; yet here in the same sentence we have writ and writes,
cousin and St. Albans, all united by the same number. This is also the only time
witty occurs in this play; it is found but fourteen times besides in all the Plays.
It does not appear in King John, Richard II, 1st Henry IV., or Henry V. The last
time it appears, previously to this instance, is in the Comedy of Errors, iii, 1, 289
pages or 57S columns distant ! learned is found' but two other times in this play.
Opinions appears but once besides in this play, and but ten times in all the Plays.
And this is the only time that either butcher or vulgar or 'prentice occurs in this
play; and 'prentice is only found three times in the thousand pages of the ] olio; and
both butcher and vulgar are comparatively rare words in the Plays. And butcher
is 305 — 31=274 — 50=224 — 5=219; and 'prentice is 305 — 32=273 — 50=223— 5 £=
218 less 50. That is to say, one commences to count from the last word of the first
section of 79:1, and the other from the first word of the next section. And this
is the only time ability is found in this play, or in all the ten Histories; and it only
occurs nine times besides in all the Plays.
If all this be accident, surely it is the most marvelous piece of accidental work »
in the world.
And then the Bishop recurs to Shakspere's health. He thinks that if Shakspere
is brought before the Council to answer for his offense, he is so enfeebled by disease
that the fear of the rack will compel him to tell all he knows about the authorship
of the Plavs.
305—31=274—30=244—50=194—162=32. 457+32=489
rG:
He
79°
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
305— 31=274— 145=129— 2 £ col.
305—31=274—50=224—146=78
=533+2// col —535.
305— 31=274— 5 £=269. 518—269=249+1
6 h col. =256.
Word.
Page and
Column.
=127. 127
77:2
cannot
610—78=532^1
535
77:2
last
=250+
256
r9:l
long.
Observe how cunningly long is made the 224th word from the beginning of act
ii, scene 1, and the 274th word from the end of the same column:
305—31=274—50=224+32=256. 256 79:1 long
305—31=274—5 b (31 =269. 518—269=249^-1=
250+6// col. =256. 256 79:1 long
And this 250 is answer — brought to answer before the Council. And here is
Council:
305—31=274—50=224—50=174—146=28. 449—
28=421 + 1=422.
305- 31=274—50=224—146=78. 448—78=370
+ 1=371.
305-32=273—50=223—7 h col.=216.
305—32=273-50=223—146=77—3 b (146)=74.
577—74=503+1=504.
305—32=273—50=223—145=78—3 b (145;=75.
577—75=502+1=503+2// col. =505. ,
305—32=273—50=223—50 (76:1)=173. 577—173
404+1=405.
305—31=274—50=224—145=79—5 b & h col.=74.
305—32=273—162 (78:1)— 111.
305—32=273—50=223—50 (76:1)=173, 577—173
=404+1=405+3 h col.=408.
305—31=274—50=224—145=79—2 // col.=77.
305 -32=273—50=223—145=78.
305—31=274—162=112.
305—31=274—30=244—5 £=239—146=93. 577—
93=484+1=485.
305—31=274.
305—32=273—50=223—5 £=218.
305—31=274—254 (75:1)=20— 15 b& h (254)=5.
305—32=273—50=223—5 b (32)=218. 462—218=
244+1=245.
305—31=274—50=224. 577—224=353+1=354+
11 b col —365.
305—31=274—50=224. 610—224=386+1=387 +
2 //=389.
305—31=274—162 (78:1)=112.
305—31=274—162=112. 318—112=206+1=207
+ 1 //=208.
305—31=274—145=129—3 b (145)=126.
305—31=274—162=112. 162—112=50+1=51.
305—32=273—50=223—5 b (32)=218. 577—218=
359+1=360+11 b col. =371.
422
371
216
504
505
405
74
111
408
77
78
112
485
274
218
5
245
389
112
208
126
51
76:1 Council.
76:1
77:1
77:1
77:1
77:1
76:1
76:1
77:1
76:1
76:1
79:1
77:1
77:2
78:1
76:1
78:2
77:1
77:2
78:1
79:1
76:1
78:1
His
health
very-
poor;
it
was
my
presurmise
that
he
is
blasted
with
that
dreaded
disease,
the
a
most
incurable
77:1 malady.
SUA KSPERK S SICKNE SS.
791
.-305—31=274—30=244—5 4=239—145=94. 448-
94=354 + 1=355.
305—32=273—162=1 1 1 .
305— 31=274— 50=224— 50 (76:1 )=1 74— 145=29.
468—29=439+1=440.
305-31=274—50=224. 610—224=386+1=387.
Word.
355
111
440
387
Page and
Column.
76:1
77:2
78:1
77:2
His
looks
prove
it.
Observe the cunning of this workmanship. The name of Shakspere's disease
is the 112th word down the fragment of scene 3, in 78:1, and incurable is the 112th
word up the same. After a while we will see this reversed, incurable answering to
a Cipher number (51) down the column, and the other word answering to the same
number up from the end of the scene. Let the reader try the experiment, and he
will see herein another of the ten thousand evidences of arithmetical adjustment
in the text.
This is the only time incurable occurs in this play, and it is found but three
■other times in all the Plays ! And this is the only time malady appears in this
play; and it occurs but twice besides in all the ten Histories, and but eight other
times in all the Plays !
305—31=274—30=244—5 £—239—57 (80:1)=182
—11 b col =171. 171 90:2 One
305—31=274—162=112. 610—112=498+1=499. 499 77:2 day
505— 32=273— 50=223— 5=218— 58 (80:1)=160. 160 80:1 I
305— 31=274— 50=224— 5 4=219— 162=57— 2 4col.= 55 77:2 did
305—31=274—30=244—5 4=239. 317—239=78+
1=79 + 5 b & 4=84. 84 79:1 chance
305— 31=274— 50=224+185=409— 16 4 col. =393. 393 81:1 to
505—32=273—50=223—5 4=218—58 (80:1)=160—
10 b & h col.=150. 150 80:1 meet
305—31=274—30=244—5 4=239. 317—239=78
+1=79. 79 79:1 him,
305-31=274— 30=244— 50=194— 58 (80:1)=136.
461—136=325 + 1=326. 326 80:1 and,
305—31=274—50=224—5 4=219. 338—219=119
+ 1=120. 120 80:1 although
305—31=274-30=244. 598—244=354+1=355. 355 79:2 I
305—31=274—30=244—5 h (31)=239. 598—239=
359+1=360+9 4 col. =369. 369 79:2 am
305—32=273—30=243—5 /;=238. 598—238=360
+ 1=361+9 4 col. =370. 370 79:2 well
305-32=273—30=243—5 //=238. 598—238=360
+ 1=361 + 10 4 &//=371. 371 79:2 acquainted
305—31=274—30=244—145=99. 448—99=349+1=350 76:1 with
305—31=274—30=244. 244 79:1 him,
305—31=274—50=224 + 185=409. 409 81:1 I
305— 31=274— 50=224— 58(80 :1)=166— 10 4=156 156 80:2 would
305—32=273—30=243. 243 78:2 not
305—31=274—30=244—5 4 (31)=239. 598—239=
359 + 1=360. 360 79:2 have
305—31=274—30=244-5 4 (31)=239 239 79:1 known
305—31=274—162=112+31=143. 143 79:1 him,
792
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
305—31=274—50=224—5 £=219. 598—219=379
+ 1=380.
305—32=273—50=223—5 £=218—50=168—1 £=
305—32=273—50=223—5 £=218—58 (80:1)=160—
4 £ & /I— 166.
305—31=274—30=244-162=82. 462—82=380+
1+4 £& /&— 385.
305—31=274—30=244—5=239—234 (81:2)=5— 3 h
(234)=2. 338-2=336 + 1=337.
Page and
Word. Column.
380 79:2 the
167 81=2 transformation
156 81:2 was
385 78:2 so
337 80:1 great.
This is the only time transformation appears in this play, and it is found but
six other times in all the Plays.
Then the Bishop goes on to tell the conversation he had with Shakspere. He
beseeches his "worshipful Lordship" to go to his father's house, to see his
father, who was lying sick.
305—32=273—50=223—5 £=218—58 (80:1)=
305—32=273—50=223—5 £=218—58 (80:1)=160—
50=110.
305—31=274—50=224—58=166.
305—31=274—50=224—5 £=219—58=161.
305—31=274—50=224—58=166-3 h col =163.
160
1:2
father's
110
78:2
house
166
80:2
is
161
80:2
lying
163
80:2
sick.
John Shakspere died about four years after the events here related.
I give these fragments because I have not the space to tell the whole story,
and I give the more significant words to show the reader that I am not drawing on
my imagination.
And the Bishop is invited to supper. Shakspere says:
305—32=273—50 (74:2)=223— 5 £ (32)=218— 50 (76:1)
=168. 396—168=228+1=229. 229
305—31=274—30=244-50=194. 194
305—32=273—50=223—5=218—50=168. 396—
168=228+1=229+2 £ col. =231. °31
305—32=273—30=243—57 (80:1)=186. 186
305— 32=273-30=243— 5 £ (31)=238— 145 (76:2)=93.
338—93=245 + 1=246. 246
305—32=273—30=243—5 £=238—145=93—57 (80:1)
=36. 523— 36=487+ 1=488+4 £ & h col .= 492
305—31=274—30=244. 338—244=94+ 1=95. 95
305—31=274—30=244. 396—244=152+1=153. 153
305—32=273—30=243—5 £=238—145=93. 338—
93=245+ 1=246+2 £ col =248. 248
305—32=273—30=243—5 £=238—145=93—3 £ (145)
=90. 338—90=248+1=249. 249
305—32=273—50=223—5 £=218—58 (80:1 =160. 160
305—31=274—30=244—50=194. 338-194=144+1=145
305—32=273-30=243—50=193. 193
305—32=273—30=243-50=193. 338-193=145+1=146
305—31=274—30:
305—31=274—30=
=244-
=244-
-50=194.
-50=194— 14 £&
h col.=
194
180
80:1
80:2
80:1
81:2
80:1
80:1
80 si
80:1
80:1
81:2
80:1
81:2
80:1
Come,
go
along,
I
entreat
you,
to
supper
with
me;
I
will
give
you
an
excellent
SUA KSPERE' S SICKNESS.
793
305—33=273—50=223—5 0—218—50 (76:1)— 168—
62 (80:2)— 103. 489—100=383+1=384.
305— 32=273— 30=243— 50=193— 13 £ & h col.—
305—32=273—50=223—5 ^ — 218 — 58 (80:1)— 160.
523—160=363+1=364.
305—31=274-30=244—50=194. 396—194=202+
1=203+2* col. =205.
Word.
384
(180)
364
205
Page and
Column.
81:1
80:1
80:2
80:1
sack,
my
worshipful
Lord.
And the Bishop and Shakspere hold a conversation during supper.
305—31=274—50=224—185 (81:1)— 89.
305—32=273—50=223—5 4=218—58=160—14 b & h
col. =146.
305—31=274—30=244—3// col.— 241
305—31=274—30=244—50=194—10 b col. =184.
305—31=274—30=244.
305— 32=273— 30=243— 5^=238—145=93— 57
(80:1)— 86— 2J col.— 84.
305—31=274—30=244—5=239—145=94—3 b (145)
=91. 489—91=398+1=399.
305—32=273—30=243. 523—243=280+1=281.
305—32=273—30=243—58 (80:1)— 185. 462—185
=277+1=278.
39
81:2
We
146
80:2
talk
241
80:2
upon
181
80:1
the
244
80:2
subject
34
399
281
278
80:2
81:1
80:2
80:2
of
his
sick
father.
blessed
hypocrite
Entreat appears but twice in this play — here and in the Epilogue. Supper
occurs four other times in this play — where Percy describes the supper at Shak-
spere's house. This is the only time excellent appears in this scene. It is not found
at all in King John or Richard II. This is the only time subject occurs in this act.
Worshipful is found but five other times in all the Plays. This is the only time
talk occurs in this act.
I need hardly explain that sack was a kind of Spanish wine, something like our
sherry.
And Shakspere professes great love for his father; but the Bishop thinks he is
a blessed hypocrite:
305—31=274—30=244—50=194. 523—194=329+1=330
305 -31—274—50—224—5 /;— 219— 50 (76:1)— 169.
523— 169— '354+1=355+2 b col.— 357. 357
And that he is trying to make use of him, the Bishop:
305—31—274—30=244—57=187. 523—187=336+1=
305—31=274—50=224+185=409—16 b col =393.
305—31=274—50=224—5 4=219+185 (81:1)— 404
—16/; col. =388.
305—31=274—50=224—5=219+185—404.
305—31=274—30=244—5=239—57—182. 598—
182=416+1=417.
305—32=273- -30=243—5 4=238—145=93—3 b (145)
=90-58 (80:1)— 32.
And that he has taken advantage of his father's sickness to ingratiate himself
with him, the Bishop, in the hope of making his way among the aristocracy. And
the Bishop concludes he will let him think so:
=337
80:2
Think:
393
81:1
to
388
81:1
make
404
81:1
use
417
32
'9:2
80:2
of
me.
794 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Page and
Word. Column.
305—31=274. 610— 274=336+1=337+9 £ col. = 346 77:2 Let
305— 31=274— 30=244— 5 /;=239— 18/. col. 221 81:1 him
305—31=274—30=244—50=194. 523—194=329+
1=330+3 h col —333. 333 80:2 think
305— 31=274— 30=244— 5 /;=239 + 185 (81 :1)=424. 424 81:1 so.
And Shakspere assures the Bishop that he himself stands high as a gentleman-
305-31=274—30=244—50=194—57=1 37. 523—
137=386+1=387+4 b&h col. =391. 391 80:2 I
305—31=274—30=244—50=194—57=137. 523—
137=386+1=387. 387 80:2 am
305—32=273—30=243—50=193—57=136. 523—
136=387+1=388. 388 80:2 well
305—31=274+30=244—50=194—57=137. 523—
137=386+1=387+2^=389. 389 80:2 spoken
305—32=273—30=243—50=193—57=136. 523—
136=387+1=388+2 /=390. 390 80:2 of.
And the Bishop gives a rapturous description of the sweet looks and good breed-
ing of Shakspere's daughter, Susanna; her low curtesy and her gentle accents; but we
will find this hereafter given more fully by another party — by Percy when he visits
Stratford.
And the Bishop examines Shakspere during this interview and thus describes
his appearance:
305—31=274—30=244—162=82. 462—82=380 + 1=
305—32=273—30=243—5^=238—27 b col.— 211.
305—31=274—30=244—5 £—239.
305—32=273—50=223—5 £=218—58 (80:1)=160—
5 b col. =155.
305—31=274.
305—32=273—30=243—5 b (32)— 238. 534—238=
296 + 1=297+2 h col.— 299.
305—32=273-30=243—27 b col. =216.
Shakspere was born about April 23d, 1564; consequently in 1597, which I sup-
pose to be the date of the events described in the Cipher story, he was just thirty-
three years old. Observe that this three is a different one from the three employed to
tell of the division of the profits of the Plays into three parts: this three is the 216th
word in 78:2; while the other was the io,2d word in the same column. There are
only three threes in act i of the Folio, — in sixteen columns, — and here we have two
of them within four lines of each other. Thirty occurs but eleven times in all the
Histories, and three times in this play; and this is the first time we come across it
in this play, and we will have to go eight columns forward, or twenty-four back-
ward, before we find it again. If there is no Cipher "here, surely it is marvelous
to find the words necessary to tell Shakspere's age coming together, separated only
by one column, and each one growing out of the same formula: 305 — 32=273 —
30=243.
305—31=274—50=224—5 *— 219— 50— 169-4 b col. =165 76:2 yet
305—31=274—30=244. 610—244=366+1=367. 367 77:2 he
305—32=273—5 /;=268— 10 b col.— 258. 258 77:2 is.
=381
211
239
78:2
78:2
77:2
He
is
not
155
274
80:1
81:2
more
than
299
216
79:2
78:2
thirty
three,
SHAA'SPEAE' S S/CA'ATESS.
795
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239.
305—31=274.
305—32=273—30=243—5 ^ — 238 — 13 b & £—225.
305—32=273—30=243—5 b (32)=238— 10 b col.—
305—31=274—30=244—5 £=239—10 b col. =229.
305—32=273—30=243—13 b & k— col.— 230.
305— 31=274— 30=244— 13* & h col =231.
305—3 1 =274—50=224—5=219—58 (80 : 1 )=1 61 .
305—31=274—50=224—50=174—4 h col. =170.
305—31=274—30=244—10 b col. =234.
305—31=274—50=224.
305—31=274—30=244—5 4=239—3 k col. =236.
305—32=273—50=223—50=173—1 h col.— 172.
■305—32=273—50=223—5=218—50 (76:1 )=1 68—
4 b col. =164.
305—31=274—50=224—50 (76:1)— 174.
305—31=274—50=224—5 *=°19— 145=74— 3 b (145)
=71—2// col. =69.
.305—32=273—50=223—5 /;— 218— 50=1 68—
5b & k— 163.
305—31=274—13 b & k col =261.
.305—32=273—50=223.
305—31=274—50 (76:1 )— 224.
305—32=273—28 (73:1)— 246.
505—81—274—30—244.
305—31=274—30=244—146=98—2 h col.=96.
305—32=273—50=223—5 />— 218— 146— 72— 2 h col.=
305—31=274—30=244—5 *=239— 145=94— 3 b (145)
=91. 420—91—329+1—330+7 b& h col. =337.
305—31=274—30=244—5 £— 239— 145— 94. 420—
94=326+1=327.
305—32=273—30=243—79 (73:1) — 1 64+ 162=326
—9b & h<— 317.
S05— 31— 274— 50— 224— 5 £—219—50 (76:1)— 169.
468—169=299+1=300.
305—31=274—50=224—5 £—219—50 (76:1)— 169.
;305— 31=274— 30=244— 5 ^=239—145=94. 448—
94=354+1=355.
305— 31— 274— 50— 224— 5*— 219— 146— 73.
305—32=273—50=223—10 b col. =213.
305—32=273—30=243—5=238—145=93—3 b (145)
=90. 420—90=330+1=331 + 1 h col. =332
:305— 32=273— 30=243— 5=238— 145=93— 3 b (145)=
305—31=274—30=244—5 b (31)=239— 145=94— 3
b (145)— 91.
Word.
Page and
Column.
239
78:2
in
274
78:2
his
225
77:2
youth,
228
77:2
written
229
77:2
down
230
77:2
old
231
77:2
with
161
77:2
all
170
78:2
the
234
77:2
characters
224
77:2
of
23G
77:2
age.
172
76:2
His
164
76:2
cheek
174
7Q:2
is
69
f7:2
white,
163
76:2
his
261
77:2
voice
223
78:2
hollow,
224
76:2
his
245
77:2
hand
244
77:2
dry,
06
77:2
his
- 70
77:2
hair
337
81:2
grey,
327
81:2
his
317
78:1
step
300
78:1
feeble;
169
78:1
and
355
76:1
his
73
76:1
head
213
77:2
wags
332
81:2
as
. 90
76:1
he
91
76:1
walked.
I regret to set forth these facts concerning Shakspere's sickness. They are
much worse than even the most earnest Baconian had suspected. And yet this
statement is not in itself improbable. If any class were especially liable to the
dreaded social scourge it would appear to be the poor actors of that age, who, by
^fct'1/ /.?«« Kll
796 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
law, were " vassals" and " vagabonds," and who were necessarily surrounded by all
the temptations incident to their mode of life; their theaters being the favorite re-
sort for all the vicious of both sexes in the great city. I have already quoted what
Taine says:
It was a sad trade, degraded in all ages by the contrasts and the falsehoods
which it allows.
Only in the justice and sweetness of our modern civilization has it risen to the
dignity which it deserves; and the future will accord it an even higher standing, for
the pleasure and the benefit which it can afford to mankind. As an instrument of
good it has, as yet, been but partially developed.
We know, also, that Shakspere's contemporary, George Peele, actor and play-
writer, died of that same "shameful disease."1 And we can see in the Cipher
statement an explanation of Shakspere's early death. He left the world at the age
of fifty-two; at a time when he should have been in the meridian of his mental and
the perfection of his physical powers. This will also explain his early retirement to
Stratford, and the little we know of his personal history, it being probable that he
spent much of his^time, in the latter part of his life, in Warwickshire. In 1604 we
find him suing Philip Rogers at Stratford for £\. 15s. iod. for malt sold. In 1608
he is sponsor for William Walker, at Stratford. In 1609 he sues John Adden-
brooke, at Stratford. It is also probable that Bacon desired to keep Shakspere out
of sight, and therefore out of London, as much as possible, so as to avoid the keen
eyes of his critical enemies: — for "he had been wronged by bruits before; "
and the Cipher shows that it was shrewdly suspected that the man of Stratford had
not the ability to write the Plays.
And this may also explain why it was that Shakspere acted parts that required
no particular action, such as the Ghost in Hamlet, or the old man, Adam, in As
You Like It. One of his younger brothers, according to Oldys, ■ described him as:
Acting a part in one of his own comedies, wherein, being to personate a
decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak, that he was forced
to be supported and carried by another person to a table.
And the reader cannot help but note this wonderful array of words descriptive
of sickness brought out by the same modifications of the same root-number.
Observe how the bracketed and hyphenated words in 77:2 are employed, in con-
junction with the five bracketed words in 31, 79:1, to bring out the striking sen-
tence: "He is written down old with all the characters of age." We have also the
word his repeated six times, and always making its appearance in the proper place
in the text. There are whole columns of the play where his cannot be found, but
here they are in abundance when required. Characters appears but once in this play,
and but twice besides in all the ten Histories; written occurs but once in this play,
and but four times besides in all the ten Histories. Hollow is found but three times
in this play and but once in this act Wags occurs but this time in this play, and
but twice besides in all the Plays ! This is the only time step appears in this play.
And this is the only time feeble (not used as a man's name) is found in this play;
and the same is true of grey.
And here I would say that, if the reader is curious in such matters, he might
turn to Mrs. Clarke's Concordance of Shakespeare, p. 187, and observe how often:
the words disease and diseases occur in this play of 2d Henry IV. as compared with
the other Plays. They are found tivelve times; this, with the Cipher system of
using the same word over many times, probably implies thirty-six different refer-
ences, nearly all, I take it, to Shakspere's diseases. As against twelve times in this
1 Fleay's Skaktpere Manual, p. 5. a Outlines, p. 123.
SHAKSPERES SICKNESS.
797
play, these words are not found once in the p'.ay of ist Henry IV., which precedes it,
•or in Henry I \ , which follows it. Neither are either of them found in Love's Labor Lost,
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Richard II., the
third part of King Henry VI. , Richard III., Titus Andronieus, Romeo and Juliet,
Julius Cccsar, Othello, or Cymbeline. These words are found, in fact, as often in this
one play of 2d Henry IV. as they are in all the following plays put together: The
Tempest, The Merry Wires, Much Ado About Nothing, Midsummer Night's Dream,
The Merchant of Venice, Antony and Cleopatra, Pericles, Hamlet, King John, and 2d
Henry VI. Now the play of 2d Henry IV. has no more to do with diseases than
any other of these Plays; the plot does not in any wise turn upon any disease; the
references to it are all apparently incidental in the play, but are really caused by
the necessities of the internal Cipher narrative. And all this tends to show the
-artificial character of the text of these Plays. It is a curious study to examine the
Shakespeare Concordance and observe how strangely some plays are crowded with
a particular word which is altogether absent from others. Note the words glove
and please (plays), for instance. Please occurs once in King John, twice in Romeo
-and Juliet, three times in ist Henry I]'., fourteen times in 2d Henry IV., and
twenty-eight times in Henry VIII. ! And yet as a colloquialism — "please you, my
Lord," etc. — it might be expected to occur as often in one play as another.
And the Bishop continues with the description of Shakspere's appearance:
305—32=273—50=223—5 /, (3C)=218— 50 (76:1)=
168. 297— 168=129- 1=1 30
305— 31=274— 30=244— 50=194— 50 (76:1 )=144—
=4 b col.— 140.
305—32=273—50=223—5 0— 218—30= 188— 9 b col.-
305— 32=273— 162=111 .
305— 32=273— 50=223— 5 /;=21 8— 50=168— 145=
23—3 b (145)— 20. 577—20=557-1=558.
305—32=273—50=223—5 0—218—50—168—145—
23. 577 — 23=554 - 1=555 — 2 A— 557.
305—31=274—5 b (31 )=209— 162=107. 468—107=
361 + 1=362. '
305— 32=273— 50=223— 5 /'=218— 50=168— 145=
305—31=274—162 (78:1)— 112— 8 0 col. =109.
305—32=273—30=243—162=81—2 h col. =79.
305—32=273—30=243—162=81.
305—32=273—162=111—6 b & // col.
305—31=274—5 b (31)=269— 162=107. 462—107=
355+1=356.
305—32=273—162=111. 318—111=207+1=208.
305—3 1 =274—30=244—5 i =239— 145=94 - 1 62=
305—32=273—50=223—5 0—218—50 (76.1)— 168
—2 0—166.
305—32=273—30=243—1-15=98-13 b ft // col.—
305- 32=273—50=223—5 0—2 1 8— 50=1 08— 1 45=
23. 577—23=554-1=
305—31=274—30=244—145=99—3 // col. =96.
305—31=274—5 /;=269— 162=107. 610—107=503
+ 1=504.
305—32=273—30=243—145=98—3 b (14~)=95.
Word.
130
140
=179
111
Page and
Column.
82:1
76:2
82:1
79:1
77:1
There
is
a
beastly
wound
77:1 new-healed
362
78:1
on
23
77:1
the
109
77:1
side
79
77:2
of
81
77:2
his
105
82:1
neck,
356
78:2
and
208
79:1
a
256
78:1
gre?t
166
81:1
wen
85
78:2
or
0")
77:1
gall,
96
81:2
some
504
77:2
thing
95
77:2
like
798
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
=244-
=89.
=111
S b (31)=239— 145=94— 3 b
111=407+1=408+
518-
Word.
Page and
Column.
89
77:2
the
411
97
79:1
77:2
King's
Evil,
111
77:1
which
423
99
112
76:1
82:1
77:1
every
day
grows
521
77:1 greater,
326
80:2
and
219
78:2
his
185
82:1
strength
572
79:2
more
300
78:1
feeble.
305—31=274—30=
(145)=91— 2 h
305—32=273-162
8 h col.— 411.
305—31=274-30=244—145=99—2 h col. =97.
305—32=273—1 62= 111.
305—31=274—50=224—145=79—3 b (145)=76.
498—76=422+1=423.
305—31=274—30=244—145=99.
305—31=274—162=1 1 2.
305—31=274—50=224—5 4=219—162=57. 577-
57=520+1=521.
305— 31=274— 30=244— 50=194— 57 v80:l)=137.
462—137=325+1=326.
305—31=274—50=224—5 4=219.
305—31=274—162=112. 296—112=184+1=185
305— 32=273— 50=223— 50=1 73— 146=27. 598-
27=571 + 1=572.
305—31=274—50=224—5 4=219—50 (76:1)=169.
468—169=299+1=300.
It is hardly necessary for me to explain that " the King's Evil " was the old-time
name for scrofula, because it was believed by our wise ancestors that the touch of the
king's hand would cure it; nor is it necessary to add that scrofula is generally accom-
panied by glandular ulcerations on the sides of the throat — precisely as described
in the Cipher story. King is a common word in the Plays, but kings is compara-
tively rare. This is the only strength in this act, and this is the only greater.
litis is the only " win" in all the Shakespeare Plays ! And yet here it appears,
just where it is wanted, to describe poor Shakspere's scrofulous condition. And
observe that gall and ivcn are both derived from precisely the same terminal root-
number 168 [305 — 32=273 — 50=223 — 5 4 (32)=2i8— 50 (76:i)=i68]. And this is
the only time gall appears in this play ! And it is found but four other times in all
the Histories !
And the Bishop says that Shakspere is full of hope that he
305—31=274—30—244—146=98—3 4 (146)=95— 5
b & h col. =90.
305—31=274. 318—274=44+1=45.
305— 31 =274— 162=1 12. 468— 1 12=356+ 1=357 +
4 & h =366.
305—32=273—30=243—50=193+163=356.
305—31=274—162=112. 468—112=356+1=
305—31=274—30=244+185=429.
305—32=273—1 62=1 1 1 . 468—1 1 1 =357 + 1=
305—31=274-50=224—5 4=219—50 (76:1)=169—
145=24. 457—24=433+1=434.
305—32=273— 50=223— 5 4=218—50 (76:1)— 168+
162=330— 2 h col. =328.
305—31=274. 610—274=336+1=337.
305—32=273—30=243—50=193—162=31 . 577—
31=546+1=547.
e that
he will n
^cover:
90
76:1
He
45
79:1
is
366
78:1
flattering
356
78:1
himself
357
78:1
with
429
81:1
the
358
78:1
hope
434
328
337
547
76:2
and
78:1 expectation
77:2 that
77:1 he
SHAHS FERE'S SICK AT ESS.
799
305— 32=273. 610—273=337+1=338.
305—32=273—30=243—50=193—162=31.
305—32=273—50=223. 577—223=354+1=355
+3/* col. =358.
Word.
Page and
Column.
338
77:2
will
31
78:1
get
358
:1
well.
Flattering occurs but once besides in this play, and but eight times in all the
Histories. Expectation is found but twice in this act, and but eleven times in all
the Histories.
And Shakspere thinks he is yet young and his case not so bad:
305—31=274—30=244—50=194 + 162=356—9 b & /;= 347 78:1 young;
305—31=274—30=244—50=194+162=356—7/;= 349 78:1 case
305— 31=274— 50=224— 50 (76 : 1)=1 74 + 163=337—
2 £=335. 335 78:1 not
305—32=273—30=243—162=81. 462—81=381 + 1
=382+4 b & £=386. 386 78:2 so
305—32=273—30=243—50=193—162=31—1 £= 30 77:2 bad.
But the Bishop feels certain that he cannot recover from his terrible disease.
It is, he says, —
305—32=273—50=223—5 £=218— 50=168— 50=118.
468—118=350+1=351+8/; col. =359.
305-31=274—50=224—50=174—145=29.
305—31=274—30=244—163=81.
305—32=273—50=223—9 6 col. =214
He cannot escape the grave:
305—31=274—30=244—162=82. 577—82=495+1
=496+2 //col. =498. 498 77:1
305— 32=273— 50=223— 5£=218—50(76:l)=168+32=200 79:1
305—31=274—30=244—50=194—162=32. 32 78:2
305-31=274—30=244—50=194—162=32. 462—
32=430+1=431. 431 78:2
359
78:1
Eating
29
81:1
away
81
77:2
his
214
82:1
life.
Cannot
'scape
the
grave.
Here, with all these words descriptive of disease and weakness, we find the
inevitable grave. And this is the only time grave is found in this act.
505 — 167=338.
But I shall now go farther and show that these words descrip-
tive of Shakspere's sickness not only come out at the bidding of 523
— 218=305 — 31 or 32, but that they are called forth Irom the same
text by an entirely different Cipher number, to-wit: 505 — 167=338 — f
to which we now return. This must demonstrate beyond cavil the
most exquisite adjustment of the words of the play to certain arith-
metical requirements. I shall have to-be brief, for the story is an
endless one and the temptation is almost irresistible to follow it
out into its ramifications.
8oo
THE CITHER NARRATIVE.
It must be remembered that, though these two stories are here
brought together on the same pages, they are probably separated by
hundreds of pages in the Cipher narrative.
Neither must it be forgotten that I have worked out but a tithe
of the story growing out of 523 — 218=305. I have given part of
that which flows from 305 minus 31 or 32, at the top of 79:1; but
305 is also modified by deducting the other fragments of 79:1, as
284 and 285 (31 or 32 to 317), 57 or 58, the last section in the column,
and 199 or 200 (318 to 518), etc.
In the following statement Bacon speaks himself:
338—31=307—30—277. 396—277=119+1=120.
338—57 (79:1)=281— 30=251.
338—31=307—163=144.
338—32=306—5 £=301 + 163=464—20 b & h col.=
338—31=307—5 £=302—30=272—145=127—3 b (145)
=124—4 b & h col.=120.
338—32=306—5 b (32)=301— 2 h col. =299.
338—31=307—5 £=302—50=252. 462—252=210+
1=211 + 5/; col.=216.
338—31=307—50=257—4 h col. =253.
338—57 (79:1)=281— 27 b col. =254.
338— 31=307— 5 £=302— 50=252. 462—252=210+1=
338—57 (79:1)— 281— 50 (76:1) — 231 — 10 £=221.
338—57=281—50=231 .
338—57=281—49 (76:1)=232— 162=70.
338—32=306—50=256—50=206—145=61 .
338—57 (79 :1)=281— 30=251.
338—58 (79:1) — 280 — 30=250— 50.
338—31 (79:1)=307— 162=145.
338—57=261—50=231—162=69.
338—31=307—5 £ (31)— 302— 30=272— 162=110.
610—110=500+1=501 + 2// col.
338—57 (79:1)=281— 50=231— 31 £ & h col. =200.
338— 31=307— 50=257— 7 £ col. =250.
338—31 =307—30=277—1 62=1 15.
338—31=307-50=257—50=207—145=62—50(7!
=12+457=469.
338— 31=307— 145=162+162=324— 9£ & h col.=
338—58 (79 :1)=280— 27=253.
338—31=307—30=277—162=115—4 £ & h col.—
388—32=306—50=256—50=206.
338— 32=306— 9 £ & h col.— 297.
338—31=307—50=257—162=95.
338— 162= 171 i.
Page and
Word.
Column.
120
80:1
Although
251
78:2
he
144
77:2
is
444
78:1
not
)
120
77:2
yet
299
79:2
thirty
216
78:2
three,
253
78:2
his
254
78:2
back
=211
78:2
is
221
74:1
stooped
and
231
78:2
his
70
77:2
hair
61
76:1
and
251
77:2
beard
200
80:1
are
145
77:2
turned
69
77:2
white.
503
77:2
Any
200
78:2
one
250
77:1
would
115
77:2
take
469
76:2
him
315
78:1
by
253
78:2
his
111
77:2
looks
206
79:1
to
297
78:1
be
95
76:1
an
176
77:2
old
SHA KSPERE' S SIC AWE SS.
801
A'ord.
Page and
Column.
252
76:1
man.
112
79:1
He
62
77:1
had
:;ss
great
338—31=307—5 b (32)=302— 50=252.
338—31=307— 50=257— 145=1 12.
33S_31=307— 50=257— 50=207— 145=62.
338— 32=306— 50=256— 50(76: 1)=206— 145=61.
448— 61— 387-<-l— 888.
338—32=306—102=144. 458—144=314^-1=315+
1b & //col. =322.
338—161=177. 577—177=400+1=401+3 A— 404.
338—31=307—30=277—50=227—5 b col.— 282.
338—32=306—50=256—5 £— 251— 162— 89. 598—
89=509+1=510^-2 £=512.
338—32=306—50=256.
338—31=307—145=162.
338—31=307—50=257—145=112.
338— 31=307— 50=257— 50=207— 145=62— 3 £=59
—2 h col. =57.
338—31=307—50=257—145=112—3 h col.— 109.
338—31=307—50=257—50=207—145=62—3 b (145)
=59—2 h col.— 57.
338—32=306—146=160+162=322—9 b & h col.—
338—31=307—50=257—50=207—145=62—3 b (145)= I
338—32=306—50=256—50=206—145=61.
338— 31=307— 50=257— 50 (76:1)=207— 145=62.
448—62=386+1=387.
338—31=307—50=257—4 b col. =253.
338—32=306—162=144—5 b & h col.— 189.
Here, instead of 7oen and gall, we have bunches; and throat instead of neck.
And observe how the same significant words, thirty three, are brought out by
totally different numbers.
338—161=177.
338—162=176—5 £ & £ col.— 171.
338—162=176—4 £= 172.
338—32=306—50=256. 610—256=354+1=355+
12 b & h= 867.
338—162=176—1 b col.— 175.
338—32=306—5 £=301—30=271—50=221. 577—
221=356+1=357.
338—162=176.
338—31=307—50=257. 598—257=341 + 1=342.
338—32=306—50=256—50=206—145=61—4 b & *—
338—32=306—5 £=301—50=251. 610-251=359
+ 1=360.
338—31=307—30=277—57 (79:1)— 220.
338—31=307—5 £ (31)=302— 50=252 + 162=414.
338—162=176—27 £ col.
338—161=177. 577—177=400+1=401.
Physician is comparatively a rare word in the Plays, — it is not found in more
than half the Plays; — yet it occurs in this play three times. Observe how 338 —
161 up the column is physician, while 338 — 162=176 down the column is sick.
822
76:2
bunches
404
77:1
as
222
78:1
big
512
79:2
as
256
80:1
my
162
79:1
fist
112
77:2
upon
57
76:1
the
109
77:1
side
57
77.2
of
313
78:1
his
■ 59
27:1
throat
61
76:1
and
387
76:1
under
253
78:2
his
139
76:2
chin.
177
77:1
I
171
77:1
heard
172
77:1
say
367
77:2
he
175
77:1
was
357
77:1
very
176
77:1
sick
342
79:2
and
57
77:1
in
360
77:2
the
220
77:1
care
414
78:1
of
149
78:2
a
401
77:1
physicia:
802
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
338—32 (79:1)— 306— 50=256-162=94— 11 b col.=
338—32=306—50=256—162=94—50 (76: 1)— 44—
1 h col. =43.
338—31=307—50=257. 462—257=205 + 1=206+
5 b col.— 211.
338— 32=306— 50=256— 30=226— {
338—31=307—7 b col.=300.
338—31=307—162 (78:1)— 145.
338—57 (59:1)— 281 -50=231.
338—31=307.
333— 31=307— 49 (76:1)— 258. 462-
205+8 6 & *— 218.
338—32=306—197=109.
338—31=307—50=257—30=227—50=177. 468—
177=291 + 1=292+11 b &h col.— 303.
338—31 (79:1)=307— 50=257— 57— (79:1) 200.
577—200=377+1—378.
338—31=307—13 b & h col.— 294.
338—57 (79 : 1)— 281— 50=231 . 462—231—231 + 1—
338—57=28 1—50=23 1—50=181
338—32=306—146—160.
338—30—308—57—251.
338—284—54—2 b & h= 52.
3 38—49—289—162=127.
338 -50=288—162=126,
338—284 (79:1)=54— 5 b & //— 49. 162—49=113+1=
338— 2S4 (79:1)— 54. 162—54=108+1=109.
338—31=307—218 (74:2)=89.
338—32=306—5 b (32)— 301— 30— 271— 146— 125—
13 b * A— 112.
338—32=306—50=256—50—206—145—61 . 448—
61=387+1=388.
338—31=307—218 (74:2)=89. 162—89=73+1=74.
338—30=308—32 (79:1)— 276.
338—31=307—197 (74:2)— 110. 610—110—500+1—
338—32—306—5 0 (32)— 301— 30— 271— 11 3 & h col.-
338—31—307—5 £ (31)— 302— 30— 272— 11 * & A col.-
338—31—307—5 b (31)— 302— 30— 272— 161— 111—
2 /;— 109.
338-31—307—5 b (31)— 302— 30— 272. 577—272—
305+1—306+3 h col.— 309.
338—31=307—5 b (31)— 302— 30— 272— 7 * col —
338—32—306—5 b (32)— 301— 30=271— 5 h col.—
338— 57— 281— 50— 231— 50— 181 - 145=36.
Word.
83
43
Page and
Column.
78:2
76:1
His
health
211
78:2
is
)— 176+163—
339
78:1
very
300
78:1
feeble
145
78:2
and
231
78:2
his
307
78:1
step
■258—204+1=
213
78:2
unfirm.
109
77:2
He
303
378
77:1
troubled
294
77:2
with
232
78:2
several
181
76:1
dangerous
160
78:1
diseases;
251
78:2
he
[52]
78:2
is
127
78:2'
subject
126
79:2
to
114
79:1
the
109
79:1
gout
89
78:2
in
112
109
309
265
266
36
78:2
his
388
76:1
great
74
78:1
toe;
276
78:1
and
501
77:2
I
=260
77:1
hear
=261
77:1
moreover
77:2
77:1
77:1
77:1
he
hath
fallen
into
78:1 consumption.
Consumption occurs but once in this play, and but four other times in all the
Plays. Yet here we have it cohering with gout and the shameful disorder. And
gout also appears here twice together and but three other times in all the Plays !
And toe appears but this time in this play and but twelve times besides in all the
thousand pages of the Plays.
SNA KSPERE S SICKNE SS.
803
338— 32=306— 30=2 70 .
338-31=307—5 b (31)=302— 30=272. 577—272—
305+1—806.
338— 32=306— 5—301— 30=271. 577—271=306+1=
338—31—807—94 & h col. =298.
338—284=54—5 b & h (284)=49.
338—3 1=307—50=257. 402—257=205 + 1=206.
338—31=307—50=257. 396—257=139+1=140+
7 4 col.— 147.
338—50=288—50 (79:1)— 231— 4 h col. =227.
338— 32(79:1)— 306— 30— 276— 31 b & h col. =245.
338—284 (32 to 316, 79:1)— 54— 54 & h (284)— 49.
338—57 (79:1)— 281— 10/; col.— 271.
338—31=307—50=257. 534—257=277+1—278+
74 col.— 285.
338—31=307.
338—31—307—50=257.
338—284 (79:1)=54— 3 b (284)— 51. 162—51=111 + 1=
338—284 (32 to 316, 79:1)— 54— 3 b (284)— 51.
338—31=307—50=257. 462—257=205-1=206+
54(31)— 211.
338—284 (32 to 316, 79:1)— 54— 50— 4 3 b (284)=1.
338—30=308—200 (318</)= 108.
338—284 (32 to 316, 79:1)— 54.
338—285=53—50—3.
33S— 284=54— 3 b (284)— 51.
338—50=288—284 (32 to 316, 79:1)— 4. 598—4=
594+1—595.
338—57 (79:1)=281— 50. 231—50=181.
338—50—288—284 (31 to 316, 79:1)— 4. 163—4=
159+1=160.
338—30=308—50=258—162=96. 610—96=514+ 1=
338— 285 (79:1)— 53. 533—53=480+1=481.
338— 31=307— 218 (74:2)=89+ 163=252.
338—32=306—30=276—50=226—162=64.
338—31=307—50=257—64 (79:2)— 193.
338—31=307—50=257—63 (79:2)=194— 161 (78:1)=
338—31=307—50=257. 598—257=341+1=342+
94 col.— 851.
338—162=176—49=127—11/; col.— 116.
338—31=307—5 4—302—30—272. 577—272=305+1=
338—32—306—284 (79:1)=22— 3 b (284)— 19.
338—31—307. 610—307—303+1—304+124 & h=
33s— 31=307— 50=257— 27 4 col.— 880.
338—32=306—50—256—50=206—162—44.
338—31=307—50=257—162=95.
338—284 (33 to 317, 79:1)=54.
338— 31— 307— 50— 257— 50 (76:1)— 207.
338—32—306—50—256—162—94.
338— 31— 307— 50— 257— 57 (79:1)— 200.
Page and
Column.
Word.
272
78:1
And
306
77:1
it
=307
77:1
is
298
78:1
thought
49
79:2
he
206
78:2
must
147
80:1
have
227
78:2
that
245
78:2
dreaded
49
78:1
disease
271
74:1
they
285
79:2
call
307
78:2
the
257
78:2
French
=112
78:1
(51)
78:2
which
211
78:2
is
1
78:1
one
108
78:2
of
54
78:2
the
3
79:2
most
51
78:1
incurable
595
79:2
of
181
78:1
all
160
78:1
diseases;
=515
77:2
there
481
79:2
is,
252
78:1
in
64
77:2
truth,
193
80:1
no
33
78:1
remedy
351
79:2
for
116
78:2
it.
=306
77:1
It
19
79:1
seems
316
77:2
to
230
78:2
draw
44
78:2
all
95
78:2
the
54
79:2
substance
207
76:2
out
94
78:2
of
200
79:2
one,
804
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
338— 31 =307— 49— 258.
338—31=307—5 b (31 )=302— 50=252.
338—284 (79:1) =54— 49 (76:1)=5.
338— 31=307— 50=257— 31 b & h col. =226.
338—32=306—50=256—31 b & h col. =225.
338—32=306—50=256—50=206—162=44. 396—
44=352+1=353.
338—284=54—30=24.
338—32=306-30=276—50 (76:1)=226.
338—31=307—145=62. 577—62=515 + 1=516.
338—31=307. 610—307=303+1=304+3// col .=
338—284 (32 to 316)=54— 50=4+162=166.
338—31=307—50=257—63 (79:2)=194— 2£ (63)=
338—31=307—30=277—3 1=246.
338—32=306—30=276 .
462—277=185 + 1=186+
146—145 (76:2)— 1.
•162=114. 339-114=225
338—31=307—30=277.
5* col =191.
338—32=306—50=256.
338—31=307—161=146
338—32=306—30=276-
+ 1=226.
338—50=288—284=4—2 h— 2. 462—2=460+1=
338—50=288—31 (791:1)=257. 462—257=205+1=
338- 163 (78:1)=175. 462—175=287+1=288.
338— 31=307— 1 6 1=146— 145=1 . 498—1=497 + 1=
338—58 (79:1)=280— 58 (80:1)=222.
338—32=306—30=276—50=226.
338—57=281. 598—281=317+1=318+9 b col.—
338—57 (79:1)=281— 7 b col.=274.
338—31 (79:1)=307— 162=145. 518—145=373 + 1=
374+4 // col. =378.
338—50=288—31 (79)=257— 5 b & h col. =252.
338—144 (317 d 79:1)=194.
338—31=307 (74:2)— 50=257— 5 b (31)=252.
338—57 (79:1)=281.
338—31=307—50=257—63 (79:2)=194.
338—31=307—30=277. 462—277=185+ 1=186+
5 b col.— 191.
338—284=54—5 b & h (284)=49. 162—49=113+1=
338—284 (32 to 316, 79:1)=54. 463—54=414+1 =
338—32=306—30=276—50=226. 462—226=236 + 1
338—31=307—30=277.
338—57=281—50=231—64 (79:2)=167. 462—167
=295+1=296.
338—284 (32 to 316, 79:1)==54. 163+54=217—3 b
(284)=214.
338—30=308—162=146. 339—146=193+1=194
+2 b col. =196.
338—50=288—10 b col. =278.
338—31—307—30=277. 317 (79:1)— 277=40+1=
Word.
258
252
5
226
225
353
24
226
516
307
166
192
246
276
191
256
1
226
461
206
288
498
222
226
327
274
378
252
194
252
281
194
191
114
415
=237
277
296
214
196
278
41
Page and
Column.
78:2
78:2
80:1
78:2
78:2
80:1
79:2
76:2
77:1
77:2
78:1
78:1
79:1
78:1
78:2
78:2
76:1
80:1
78:2
79:1
78:1
80:1
80:1
78 f2
80:1
and
leaves
only
emptiness
and
weariness.
It
was,
I
have
heard
say,
brought
hither
in
the
reign
King
Harry,
the
father
of
the
present
Queen,
in
fifteen
hundred
and
fifteen.
78:2 In
78:1 the
78:1 war
78:2 against
78:2 the
78:2 French
78:1 our
80:1 foot
80:1 soldiers
79:1 entered
SHAKSPERE S SICKNESS.
805
338—144 (317 d 79:1)=194— 58 (80:1)=136— 3 h col
338— 32=306— 30=276— 50=226-27 // col.=199.
338—144=194.
338—144=194—57=137—14 b & h col.=123.
338—57 (79:1)— 281.
The story of the war is told with great detail.
338-31=307—50=257.
338—32=306—218 (74:2)=88.
338— 32=306— 50=256— 50(76 :1)=206—1 h col.=
338—32=306—50=256—50=206. 533—206=327+
338—32=306—50=256—15 b & //=col.=241.
338—32=306—30=276
338—32=306—30=276—50=226+185=411—
3 // col =408.
338— 57=231— 50=231— 161=70.
338—32=306—31 b & A— 375.
33^—32=306—50=256. 462—256=206+1=207.
338—32=306—218 (74:2)=88.
333—145 (317 to 462)=193— 5 // (145 )=188— 50=11
338—284 (33 to 317)=54.
338-U5 (317 to 462, 79:l)=i93— 50=143.
338—32=306—30=276.
And then we are told:
338—32=306—50=256—50=206 . 468 —206=262 +
1=263+10 £ col. =273.
388—32=306—197=109—11 b col. =98.
338—32=306—50=256—5^=251—50=201 + 186=
387—9=378.
338—32 (79 :1)=306— 50=256.
338—32=306—30—276—2 h col. =2 74.
338—32=306—30=276—50=226—4 h col. =222.
338—32=306—30=276—50 (10:1)=226. 508—226=
382+1=383.
338— 145=193— 186 (81 :2)=7— 4 £ & h 3. 489—3
=486+1=487.
338—32=306—50=256—50=206.
338—32=306—30=276—162=114.
338—32=306—50=256—50=206—186=20. 489—
20=469+1=470+1 4—471.
And contracted the dreadful disorder. We then read:
338—32=306—30=276. 276
338—57=281. 588— 281— 252+1— 258+15 b & A— 268
33^—32=306— 30=276— 50=226— 15 b & h col. =211. 211
338—32=306—30=276—50=226. 396—226=170+1=171
338—57=281—50=231—64=167—22 b & A— 145. 145
338—57 (79:1)— 281— 50=231. ■ 231
338—32=306—50=256—50=206. 396—206=190+1=191
338—200 (218 to 518, 79:1)=138. 338—138=200+1=201
Page and
Column.
Word.
.= 133
80:2
Holland
199
78:2
and
194
78:1
the
123
80:2
Low
281
80:1
Countries,
We read of the French that —
257
79:2
They
88
78:2
fortify
205
76:1
the
-1=328
79:2
town
241
76:1
of
276
75:2
Gan- \
408
81:2
Gate. ^
70
7+2
Our
275
78:2
forces
207
78:2
take
88
80:1
it
38. 138
80:2
after
54
80:1
a
143
80:2
hard
276
76:1
fight.
273
78:2
Our
98
78:2 '
men
378
81:2
became
256
75:2
too
274
79:2
familiar
222
78:2
with
383
487
206
114
471
75:2
81:1
80:1
78:1
81:1
78:1
79:2
80:1
80:1
78:2
78:2
80:1
80:1
the
women
of
the
place —
And
when
the
King
and
his
forces
marched
8o6
THE CIPHER NARKA rfVE.
338—50=288—31 (79:1)=257— 63 (79:2)— 194— 2 b
(68)— 192.
338—31 (79:1)— 307— 50— 257— 63 (79:2)— 194.
338—57 (79:1)— 281. 338—281=57+1=58.
338—57—281—30 (74:2)— 251. 533— 251=282+1—
338— 31— 307— 5 A— 30 .'—30—272—50—222, 461—
222—239+1=240+6 //— 246.
338—284 (79:1)— 54. 462—54—408+1=409.
338—50 (74:2)— 288— 57 (79:1)— 231.
338— 30— 308— 162— 146— 3&— 114. 462—114—348
+ 1=349+1/;— 350.
338—31—307—5 0—302—285 (79:1)— 17— 2 h (285)—
15. 468—15—453+1—454.
And then we are told of the ravages of the dreadful disorder.
IVord.
Page and
Column.
192
80:1
back
194
78:1
to
58
80:1
England
283
79:2
they
246
79:1
brought
409
78:2
it
231
80:1
along
350
78:2
with
454
78:1
them.
338—57 (79:1)— 281. 396— 281— 115+1— 116+8 h col.
338—31—307—5 0 (31)— 302— 50— 252. 598—252—
346+1—347.
338—144—194—57—137—11 b col —126.
338—58—280—58—222—3 h col.— 219.
338—57—281—50—231 + 163=394.
=119
It
-50=
57—57 (80:1)=200— 14 0 & // col.
347
79:2
hath
126
80:2
made
219
80:2
sad
394
78:1
destruction
486
80:2
among
184
80:1
the
318
79:2
poor
375
80:2
lewd
278
79:2
people
226
80:1
of
61
75:8
this
=328
79:2
town.
338—31—307-
338—144—194—10 0 col. =184.
338—57 (79:1)— 281. 598—281—317 + 1—318.
338—32—306—50—256—50—206—57—149. 523—
149—374+1—375.
338—58 (79:1)— 280— 2 A col.— 278.
338—32—306—30—276—50—226.
338— 32— 306— 50— 256— 50(76:1)— 206— 145— 61.
338—56—281. 598—281—317+1—318+100 & h col.
The reader will observe that the same root-number produces very significant
words. For instance, 338 minus 284 (284 is the number of words in the first sub-
division of 79:1 above the terminal word 317) leaves a remainder of 54; but in the
284 there are three words in brackets and two hyphenated words; these give us 54,
52, 51 and 49 (54 — 2 h= 52; 54 — 3 0=51; 54 — 5 b & A— 49). And if we turn to the
text we find that the 51st word (79:1) is incurable ; and the 49th is disease; while the
51st word up from the end of scene third (79:1) is ; the 54th is gout, and the 49th
up is the. But if we deduct 284 from 288 (338 — 50—288) instead of 338, then,
instead of a remainder of 54, we have a remainder of 4, and 4 down 79:1 is again
; while up from the beginning of scene fourth inclusive it is diseases, and down
it is //card.
And observe, also, that 338 minus 31, the top section of 79:1, equals 307, and
307 down 78:1 is step, and plus the brackets it is feeble, and plus both brackets and
hyphens it is thought. And 307 produces big — fist — upon — side — throat — Trench.
But before we get to this it tells another story: 307, 78:2, is publish; and 307, 79:2,
is book. But this I will show hereafter.
This is the only time fif 'teen appears in this play; and this is the only time Hol-
land occurs in this play, and it is found but twice in all the Plays. And note how
ingeniously Low-Countries, the then name of the Netherlands, is worked in ! This
is the only time countries appears in this play; and it is found but six other times in
SHAKSPERE'S SICKNESS. 807
all ike Plays ! Yet here it is cohering with Loiv — Holland — French — war — foot —
soldiers — entered — Gan-gate — fight — fifteen hundred and fifteen — reign — King
Harry, and all the other words appearing in these sentences. Queen is concealed in
Quean, which occurs but three times in all the Plays ! And emptiness appears also
but three times in all the Plays ! ! And weariness occurs but three times in all the
Plays !!!
If there is not a Cipher here, what miracle was it brought all these extraordi-
nary words together just where they were needed ?
After reading these sentences in the Cipher, I turned to the history of the
period and found that Henry VIII., father of Queen Elizabeth, led a large army
into France in 1513, and captured Therouanne and Tournay, (the latter town is in
"the Low Countries,") and beat the French at the Battle of the Spurs, at Guine-
gate; " made peace in 15 14," and " returned home with most of his forces." What
time the troops got back I have not been able to determine; but Bacon, writing
eighty-three years afterwards, may or may not have correctly stated the time as
1515; it may have been 1514. The reality of the Cipher, however, is demonstrated
in the fact that I did not know that Henry VIII. ever invaded France, and capt-
ured a town called Guinegate, until I found this statement brought out by the
number 338 radiating from column 1 of page 79, and applied to the pages and frag-
ments of pages of the text, as set forth above. The Cipher statement is valuable
for another reason: that it helps to settle the mooted question among scientists
whether that "dreaded disease" did or did not exist in Europe prior to the discov-
ery of America. There has been considerable discussion upon this point, but the
better opinion, among physicians, seems to be that it was imported into Spain from
the West Indies by the sailors of Columbus; from there it spread into France and
the Netherlands; and in 1515, according to the Cipher story, given above, it was
brought into England by the returning foot-soldiers of King Henry. And the fact
that Bacon could stop in the midst of his Cipher narrative to give these details as
to a shameful but most destructive disorder, is characteristic of the man who, in
his prose 'history of Henry VII., paused to describe the great plague which deci-
mated London in that reign; and even gave for the benefit of posterity the accepted
mode of treatment, so that, should it return, the people might have the benefit of a
knowledge of the remedies found useful in the past. And even here Bacon goes
on to tell the mode of treatment for the shameful disease in question, the princi-
pal of which, it seems, was the sweating it out of the system. We have Falstaff
saying, near the end of 77:2: "For if I take but two shirts out with me, and I
mean not to sweat extraordinarily."
338—57 (lower section 79:1)=281— 162 (78:1)=119.
610—119=491 + 1=492. 492 77:2 sweat.
But I have not the time or the space to work out the narrative.
I will conclude this chapter by calling the attention of the reader to the wonder-
ful manner in which the words descriptive of Shakspere's disease are so arranged
as to be used in two narratives by two different numbers, very much like the double
cipher which Bacon gives in the De Augmentis, where one cipher phrase is inclosed
inside of another, and both hidden in a harmless-looking sentence.
And let the reader examine the facsimile pages, given herewith, and he will
see that this task was only accomplished by the most extraordinary manipulation of
the text. Turn to page 78. Observe these unnecessary bracketings and hyphena-
tions in the first column:
And first (Lord Marshall) what say you to it ?
808 THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
And again:
But gladly would be better satisfied,
How (in our means) we should advance ourselves.
Then again we have:
The question then (Lord Hastings) standeth thus.
And in the same column Hastings says to Lord Bardolfe:
'Tis very true Lord Bardolfe, for indeed, etc.
Here there is a comma after Bardolfe. Why was not Lord Bardolfe embraced
in brackets as well as Lord Hastings ? They are only eleven lines apart.
Then note this line:
May hold-up-head without Northumberland.
Why were these three words compounded into one, like three-man-beetle in the
preceding column ?
Then look at these lines:
And so with great imagination
(Proper to mad men) led his Powers to death,
And (winking) leaped into destruction
But (by your leave) it never yet did hurt, etc.
No compositor would print these words in this fashion unless instructed to do
so. Compare this column with pages 70, 71 and 72 of 1st Henry IV.
But here is the crowning wonder of all this extraordinary bracketing: it is near
the top of 78:2:
Or at least desist
To build at all ? Much more in this great worke,
(Which is (almost) to pluck a kingdom down,
And set another up) must we survey, etc.
Here we have a totally unnecessary bracket sentence of eleven words, and in
the heart of it another bracket word ! A bracket in a bracket ! Was anything ever
seen like it in all the wonders of typography ?
CHAPTER XVII.
SHAKSPERE THE ORIGINAL FALSTAFF.
Prince Hal. Wherein is he good but to taste sacke, and drink it ? Wherein neat and cleanly,
but to carve a capon, and eat it ? Wherein cunning but in craft ? Wherein crafty but in villainy ?
Wherein villainous but in all things? Wherein worthy, but in nothing?
1st Henry II'., ii, 4.
THE very labor of preparing this work for the press has in-
creased the perfection of my workmanship, and I ask my
critics to consider the following, especially the first sentences. Here
is complete symmetry. Every word is the 338th word [505 — 167
(74:2)=338]. But more than that: every word is the 338th word,
mi nits 31 or 32 (top 79:1); and the 31 and 32 regularly alternate
throughout the sentence. And not only is every word 505 — 167=338,
minus 31 or 32, but every 306 or 307 so obtained is modified by
counting in the five bracket words found in that fragment of 31 or
^2 words at the top of 79:1; and the product 301 or 302 alternates
regularly throughout the example. And every word is 505 — 167=338
— 31 or 32, minus the 5 bracket words in 31 or ^2, itself, or less 30 or
50, the modifiers on 74:2; and these again are modified by deduct-
ing the fragments, 146 (76:2) or 162 (78:1), the nearest fragments of
scenes to 77:2 or 78:1, in which most of the words occur.
And observe those words, caper — it — about — halloing — and — singing. Caper
is 302 minus 30 = 272 tip the column (77:2); about is 302 minus 30 = 272 down the
same column; while it is 301 minus 50 tip the column. And 302 down the column is
belly, and 301 up the column, counting from the clue-word one (78:1), is halloing,
and 301 from the bottom of the column, plus the hyphenated words, is singing !
And 302 gives the intervening and. And just as we saw the length of 74:1
determined by the necessity to use the words prepared and under by two different
counts, from the beginning and the end of the column, so here the necessity of
bringing caper and halloing, and singing, and belly, in their proper places from the two
ends of 77:2, by the numbers 301 and 302, determined that that column should con-
tain 610 words, no more and no less. A single additional word would have thrown
the count out. If, for instance, the Lord Chief Justice, where he says (284th word,
77:2) fy — fy — fy, had simply said fy once, or even twice, it would have destroyed
the Cipher. If the words three man beetle (587th) had not been united into one
word, thus, three-man-beetle, or if it had been printed "three-man beetle," the
809
8io
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
Cipher would have failed. Or if the Folio had contained the words which were
inserted in the Quarto, in Falstaff's speech, some eight lines in length, the count
would not have matched. Or if where Falstaff says (289th word, 77:2), " My Lord,
I was born with a white head," etc., the Folio had contained the words which are
found in the Quarto, "My Lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon,
with a white head," etc., it would have destroyed the Cipher. We can see there-
fore why these words were inserted in the Quarto by Bacon, to break up the count,
in case decipherers got on the track of his secret; and why they were taken out again
when he was preparing the Folio for posterity. And we can see also how false is
the pretense of the actors, Heminge and Condell, that they had published the Plays
from the true original copies, " perfect in their limbs," etc. And it is to be noted
that the eight-line passage left out in Falstaff's speech deserves for its intrinsic
merits to have been perpetuated in the Folio:
It was always yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing,
to make it too common. ... It were better to be eaten to death with rust than to
be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.
In fact, these additions in the Quarto, being freed from the clogs and restraints
of the Cipher, are usually written with great force and freedom. We see the genius
of the author at its best.
The Bishop of Worcester is speaking in the following:
338—31=307—5 £ (31)=302— 30=272. 610—272
338+1=339+3 h col. =342.
338—32=306—5 £ (32)=301— 30=271— 162=109-
2 £—107.
338—31=307—5 b (31)=302— 50=252— 30=222—
338—32=306—5 £=301—30=271—145=126—4 b
col.— 122.
338—31=307—5 £=302—30=272—79 (78:1)— 198
145=48. 462—48=414+1=415.
338—32=306—5 b (32)=301— 30=271— 146=125.
338—31=307—5 b (31)=302— 30=272— 146=126.
603—126=477+1=478.
338-32=306—5 b (32)=301— 30=271— 50=221.
338—31=307—5 b (31)=302— 30=272— 146=126.
508—126=382+1=383.
338— 32=306— 5 b (32)=301. 610—301=309+1=
310+9 col. =319.
338—31=307—5 b (31)=302— 30=272. 610—272=
338+1=339.
338— 32=306— 5 b (32)=301— 50=251. 610—251=
359+ 1=360+9 £=369.
338—31=307—5 b (31)=302— 30=272.
338—32=306—5 b (31)=301 . 610—301=309+1=
338-31=307—5 b (32)=302— 30=272— 146=126.
508— 126=382+1=383+4 b & £=387.
338—32=306—5 b (32)=301— 50=251— 146=105.
338-31=307—5 b (31)=302— 30=272— 146=126.
462—126=336+1=337
338—32=306—5 £=301. 611—301=310+1=311,
Word.
Page and
Column.
342
77:2
For
107
77:2
I
146= 76
77:2
have
& h
122
77:2
some
415
78:2
times
125
75:2
seen
478
76:2
him
221
77:2
in
383
75:2
his
319
' 77:2
youth
339
77:2
caper
369
77:2
it
272
77:2
about
310
77:2
with
387
75:2
a
105
77:2
light
337
78:2
heart,
311
77:2
halloing
SHAKSPERE THE ORIGINAL FALSTAFF.
811
610—302=308+1=309+
301. 610—301=309+1=
338—31=307—5 £=302.
3/*=312,
338—32=306—5 £ (31)=
310+3 £=313.
338—31=307—5 b (31)=302— 30=272— 50=222—
146=70. 468— 76=392 +1=393 +3 £=
338—32=306—5 b (32)=301— 30=271 .
=252—146=105-
Word.
312
313
(396)
271
338—32=306—5 b (32) — 301 —50=
50 (76:1)=55. 508—55=453 + 1 —454+1 £= 455
338-32=306—5 b (32)=301— 30=271— 50=221. 221
338—31=307—5 b (31)— 302— 50— 252. 252
338—32=306—5 b (32)— 301— 50 (76 1)— 251. 251
338—31=307—5 b (32)=302— 50=252— 146=106—
50 (76:1 1— 56. 508—56=452 + 1=453+1 h col .= 454
338—32=306—5 h (32)— 301— 30=271— 146=125— 1 A— 124
338—31=307—5 b (31)— 302— 30=272— 50=222.
468—222=246+1=247.
338—32=306—5 b (32)=301— 30=271— 50 (76:1)=
221. 458—221=237+1=238.
338—31=307—5 b (31)=302— 30=272— 146=126.
raggedest
apparel,
and
almost
naked.
Here we have again the expression almost naked, growing out of 505 — 167=
338, but by different terminal numbers. In the former case it was:
505— 167=338— 50=288— 50(76 :1)=238. 238 76:2 almost
505— 167=338— 50=288— 162 (78:1)— 126. 126 78:2 naked.
Here we have it:
247
238
126
Page and
Column.
77:2
77:2
78:1
76:1
75:2
78:1
78:1
76:2
75:2
76:2
78:1
76:2
78:2
and
singing
by
the
hour,
and
in
the
505— 167— 338— 32— 306— 5*— 301— 30— 271
221. 458—221=237+1=238.
505— 167=338— 31=307— 5 £=302—30=272—146=
50=
238 76:2 almost ,
126 78:2 naked. )
This is the only time naked occurs in this act, and it is found but twice besides
in this play. And this is the only time almost occurs in that scene. This is the
only occasion when eaper appears in this play; and it occurs but eight times besides
in all the other Plays ! And halloing or hallowing is so rare a word that it is found
only thrice besides in all the Plays. And singing is a comparatively rare word; it
is found but twelve other times in all the Plays. This is the only time apparel is
found in two acts of this play, and it appears but three times in all the play. And
this is the only time " raggedest" occurs in all the Plays !
I mention these facts to show how improbable it is that all these words, de-
scriptive of Shakspere's youth, with all the others descriptive of his sickness, etc ,
should have come together here by accident, and be so placed as to cohere arith-
metically.
And then we read (pursuing the same rules, the same roots and the same alter-
nations) that Shakspere was —
338— 32=306— 5 £—301— 50=251 251 76:1 A
338—31=307—5 £=302— 50=252. 468—252=216+
1—217+3 h coi =.220. 220 78:1 bold,
338—32=306—5=301—30=271—146=125—
5 b & h col. =120. 120 76:1 forward
812
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
338—31=307—5 £=302. 610—302=308+1=309
+3 A— 812.
338—32=306—5 £=301- -30=27 1—145=126.
338—31=307—5 £=302—30=272—145=127. 462-
127=335 + 1=336.
338— 32=306— 5 £=301— 30=271— 146=125— 50=
75. 457+75=532.
And here, the formula changing as we work, we have
Bacon of Shakspere as he grew older. We hav
338—32=306—5 £=301
338—32=306—5 £=301
338—31=307—30=277-
338—32=30 3—50=256-
338—32=306 -50=256-
44=294+1=295.
338—31=307—5 £=302
518—126=392+1=
333— 32 =306—50=256-
1=369+4 £ & h col
338—32=306—50=256-
338—32 =306—50=256-
8*8—31—807—50—257-
338—32=307—30=277-
338—32=306—50=256-
1=369 + 2=371.
338—32=306—56=256
30=271—162=109.
—162=139.
-162=115—58 (79:1)=57.
-162=94.
-162=94—50=44. 338—
—30=272—146 (76:2)— 126.
393+4 h col.— 397.
-162=94 462—94=368+
.=373.
-162=94.
-162=94. 448—94=354+1^
-162=95. 462—95=367+1
-162=115—5 b col.— 110.
-162=94. 462—94=368+
Word.
Page and
Column.
312
77.2
and
126
76:1
most
336
78:2
vulgar
532
76:2
boy.
j have
a descript
ion given by
follow
ing:
109
78:2
A
139
79:2
gross,
57
79:2
fat,
94
76:1
on \
295
80:1
taught )
397
79:1
rogue,
373
78:2
full
94
79:2
of
=355
76:1
his
=368
78:2
own
110
79:1
most
(371)
79:2
beastly
= 569
78:2
desires.
—162=94. 462—94=363+1^
Taught is found but twice in this play; both times in act ii, scene i, with only
two lines between them. We have seen it used already to refer to Susanna's edu-
cation, and now we see it employed to describe Shakspere. Beastly is compara-
tively a rare word; it is found but twice in this play, and but twice besides in all
the Historical Plays. Desires is found but twice in this play, and but twelve times
in all the Histories. Gross occurs but twice in this play.
Observe also that all of these last five words are produced by precisely the
same root-number and the same terminal number, 94, while 115 is the same root-
number put through the same formula, except that 30 is the modifier instead of 50.
And then we have, coming out of the same root-numbers (for the difference
between 94 and 144 is just 50), the following:
338— 31=307— 5 £ (31)=302— 50=252. 252 77:2 A
338—32=306—5 £ (32) - 301—30=271—50=221—145=
76— 3 £(145)=73. 462— 73=389+1=390+1 h col. =391 78:2 glutton,
3^8—31=307—5 £ (31)=302— 30=272— 50=222.
577— 222=355+1=356+3 // col. =339. 339 77:1 rather
338—32 306—162=144. 461—144=317+1=318
+2//=320. 320 78:2 over-greedy
338—32=306—162=144—50=94. 468—94=374+1=375 78:1 than
318—32=306—162=144. 462—144=318+1=319. 319 78:2 choice.
Here again the alternations, 31, 32, etc., are preserved.
And here observe an astonishing fact: — the word glutton occurs but twice in all
SHAKSPERE THE ORIGINAL PAL STAFF. 813
the thousand pages of the Flays, and both times it is found in this play, and in this act;
and both times it is used to describe Shakspere; and both times it grows out of 505
— /6yz=jjSf If the reader will turn back to 76:1 and take the number 338, and
count from the first word of scene third, downward and forward, he will find that
the 33Sth word is glutton. Thus:
Page and
Word. Column.
338—49 ( 76 :1;=289. 289 76:2 glutton.
And here we have it again occurring in 78:2, and again it is the 338th word;
and these are the only occasions when the word is found in all the Shakespeare Plays !
And if we turn backward with this root-number we stumble again upon the story
of Shakspere's fight with the game-keepers and the flight of his companions, for
288 ^333 — 50=288) carried down the preceding column is turned (288, 75:2); and
289 (33S — 49==2Sg) is their; and 2S9 up the preceding column is our, and 2S8 is men;
and 2S8 up the same, plus b & h, is fled; and 289 — 50=239 down the same column is
swifter; and 289 up the same column plus the bracket words is arro-ws; and 239
down the same column plus the b & h is speed. Here, with a touch, as it were, we
have the elements of the sentence, Our men turned their backs and fled swifter than
the speed of arrows. But if we use the modifier 30, instead of 50, we have 289 — 30
=259, and 259 down the same column is prisoner; and plus one hyphen word it is
ta en (taken); and//«.c both b & h it is again fled; and 259 up the same column is
Field (" fled the field"); and plus the bracket words it is again prisoner; and plus
both b & h it is furious ! And 258 (288 — 30=258) down the column is to1 en, and
up the column it supplies the then for "swifter than the speed," etc. In short,
everywhere we turn with the magical Cipher numbers, marvelous arithmetical
adjustments present themselves.
And then we have this description of Shakspere, coming, it will be observed,
out of that same 33S minus 31 or 32, counting in the five bracket words in the 31
or 32:
338—31=307—5 b (31)= 302- -30=272—50=222.
338—32=306—5 b (32)=301— 145=156— 2 b col.—
338—31=307—5 b (31)=302— 145— 157— 2 b col.—
338—32=306—5 b (32)=301— 30=271— 4 h col.—
338—31=307—5 b (31)=302— 30=272— 146=126.
498—126=372+1=373.
338—32=306—5 (32)=301— 145=156— 2 £=154.
338—31 • 307—5 * (31)=302— 30=272— 50=222.
338— 32=306— 5 A32)=301— 30=271— 14 b & //=
Here we have the same regular alternatives, 31, 32; 31, 32; 31, 32; 31, 32. And
it stands to reason that to have carried on the deception as to the authorship of
the Plays in such wise as to escape suspicion, Shakspere must have been a man of
remarkable shrewdness and some natural ability. And we will find hereafter that he
was much like Sir John Falstaff in his characteristics.
But if (when we advance a step farther in the Cipher), instead of using 505 —
167=338 as the root-number, we count in the 22 b & h words in that 167, we obtain
still more interesting portions of the story. The formula now is 505 — 167=338 —
11b & /*=3i6; and to save labor to printers and readers I will use in the following
example only that terminal number, 316:
505—167=338—22 b & /;=316.
316— 32=284— 162=122— ±b &h col. =118. 118 77:2 Weighing
222
78:2
With
154
77:2
his
155
77:2
quick
267
77:2
wit
373
76:1
and
154
77:2
his
222
78:1
big
257
77:2
belly.
814
THE CIPHER NARK A TIVE.
316—32=284—50=234. 603—234=369+1=
316—32=284—50=234—30 (76:1)— 204. 396—204
192+1=193+2/; col.— 195.
316—32=284—50=234—30=204—145=59. 610—
59=551 + 1=552 + 2// col.— 554.
Word.
370
195
554
Page and
Column.
76:2
80:1
two
hundred
pound.
Observe the accuracy of this. Weighing occurs but this one time in this play,
and but four times besides in all the Plays ! Yet here it is, with all the other words
descriptive of Shakspere's Falstaffian proportions before sickness broke him
down. Hundred occurs but three times in this play; and pound but once in this
act. Here every word is 505 — 167=338 — 22 b & //=3i6 — 32=284 — 50=234. Think
how many figures there are that might have applied themselves to that 505 to
modify it; and yet into this labyrinth of numbers we see the same terminal root-
number, reached through all these transmutations, picking out the coherent words,
as in the above sentence.
The reader will perceive, by looking at the text, that pound was used for pounds
in that day: — "Will your Lordship lend me a thousand pound?"
And now, marvelous to tell, Bacon refers to Shakspere, even as the Bishop
of Worcester did, as a glutton; and still more marvelous, the text is so adjusted
that again for the third time that same word glutton is used:
316—49=267—145=122. 448—122=326+1=327. 327 76:1 A
316—30=286—163=123. 123 78:1 great
316—30=286—50=236—163=73. 462—73=389+
1=390+1 h col— 391. 391 78:2 glutton.
Now compare this with the manner in which glutton was just obtained:
338—32=306—5 b (32)=301— 30=271— 50=221— 145
=76—3 b (145)— 73. 462—73=389+1=390+
1 h col. =391. 391 78:2 glutton
Here it will be observed that the difference between 145 and 162 is 17, and this,
plus the 5 b in 31 (79:1), makes 22, the number of b & h words in 165, and thus the
two counts are so equalized as to fall on the same word. But what a miracle of
arithmetical adjustments does all this imply !
And then the description of the play-actor of Stratford goes on. We are told
he is, besides being a glutton, a drunkard. Or, as it is expressed, that —
316—49 (76:1)=267— 146=121. 498—121=377+1=378
316—50 (74:2)=266— 162=104. 104
316— 50(74:2=266— 145=121— db (145)— 118. 610—
118=492+1=493. 493
316— 30 (74:2)=286— 163 (78:1)— 128. 462—123=
339+1=340. 340
316—30 (74:2)— 286. 468—286=182+1=183+
dh col. =186. 186
316— 49 (76:1)=267— 162=105. 577—105=472+1= 473
316—50 (74:2)=266— 162=104. 610—104=506+1=507
The word extraordinarily is a very rare word in the Plays. It is found but twice
in all the Plays ; and both times in this play ! And this is the only time fond appears
in all this play; and this is the only time bottle appears in all this play ! And fond
occurs but twelve other times in all the Historical Plays; and bottle but four other
76:1
He
77:2
is
77:2 «
extraordinarily
78:2
fond
78:1
of
77:1
the
77:2
bottle.
SHAKSPERE THE ORIGINAL I- A 1ST A IF.
8l5
times ! Yet here they are linked together by the same root-number, with the
naturally coherent words: big — belly — weighing — two — hundred — pound — great
— glutton, etc. And glutton does not, I have shown, appear in any other of the
Shakespeare Plays ! Surely the blindest and most perverse must concede that all this
cannot be accidental.
And then we have the following important statement;
316—161=155—57=98—12 b & h col.=86.
316—161=155. 610—155=455+1=456.
316—49 (76:1)=267— 57=210.
316—162=154—57 (80:1)— 97. 523—97=426+1=
427-2 £=429.
=296.
=345
Word.
86
456
210
429
296
316—50 (74: 2)=266+ 32 (79:1)=298— 2 h col.-
316—30=286—162=124. 468—124=344+1=
+th— 846. 346
316—49=267—145=122. 122
316—50=266. 339—266=73+1=74. 74
316—30=286. 339— 286=53+ 1=54+ 3 £=57. 57
316—50=266—50=216. 468—216=252^-1=253. 253
316—30=286—161=125—57 (80:1)— 68. 523—68=
455+1=456. 456
316—31=285—30=255—4// col. =251. 251
316—161 (78:1)— 155— 2 b col =153. 153
816— 161— 155— §bh h— 150. 150
316—161 (18:1)— 155. 155
316—49=267. ' 267
316—31=285—50=235. 235
316—5 b & h col.— 311. 311
316—50=266—50=216. 468—216=252+1=253+
3* col.— 256. 256
316—49=267—10 b col. =257. 257
316—31=285—145=140—3 £=137. 162—137=25+1=26
316—30=286—161=125. 468—125=343+1=344. 344
327
267
149
153
224
284
215+3/4—218
316
314
100
304
413
428
284
311
61
610—284=326+1=327
316—32=284,
316—49=267.
316— 163=153— 4 £ & £ col. =149.
316. 468—316=152+1=153.
316— 32=284— 50=234— 10 b col.=224.
316—32=284.
316—30=286—32=254. 268—254=214+1
316.
316—2 £=314.
316—32=284— 50=234— 65=169— 58 (80:1)=111—
ll£col.=100.
316. 610—316=294+ 1=295+9 b col.=304.
316—32=284—50=234—65 (79:2)=169— 58 (80:1)=
111. 523—111=412+1=413.
316—50=266+162=428.
316-32=284.
316-49=267. 577—267=310+1=311.
316— 32=284— 50=234— 162=72— 11 />=61.
Page and
Column.
80:2
77-9
80:2
79:1
78:1
78:2
80:1
80:1
78:1
80:2
78:2
T7:2
77:2
77:2
77:2
78:2
79-1
78:1
77:2
78:1
78:1
77:2
77:2
78:1
77:2
78:1
78:1
78:1
78:1
80:2
77:2
80:1
78:1
78:2
77:1
But
I
must
confess
there
was
some
humor
in
the
villain;
he
hath
a
quick
wit,
and
a
great
belly;
and,
indeed,
I
made
use
of
him,
with
the
assistance
of
my
brother,
as
the
original
model
8t6 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Page and
Word. Column.
81&-32— 284— 46 * h col.— 280. 280 79:1 from
316—32=284-5 b (32)=279+ 162=441—3 h col.— 438 78:1 which
816— 81— 285. 285 78:1 we
816— 82— 284— 50— 284— 4 h col.— 286. 230 78:2 draw
316. 316 78:1 the
316—32=284—50=234. 234 77:2 characters
316. 316 78:2 of
316—30=286—161=125—50 (76:1)— 75. 603—75=
528+1=529. 529 76:2 Sir
316—32=284—50=234. 598—234=364+1=365. 365 79:2 John
316—32=284—161=123—50=73. 603—73=530+1=531 76:2 Falstaffe
316—30=286—162=124. 610—124=486+1=487. 487 77:2 and
316—31=285—50=235. 598—235=363+1=364. 364 79:2 Sir
316—30=286—162=124. 124 78:1 Toe )
316— 32=284— 146=138— 3£ (146)=135+162= 297 78:1 be. f
It will be remembered that the characters of Sir John Falstaff and Sir Toby,
in Twelfth Night, have many points of similarity: both are corpulent, sordid,
gluttonous, sensual, wine-drinking and dishonest; indeed, very much such characters
as Bacon describes Shakspere to have been.
Note how many significant words come out of the same root-number: 234 is
characters ; it is also draw {draw characters); it is also, minus 162, model {model to
draw characters); it is also, up the next column forward, John; and 284 (234+50=
284) is, minus 161, Falstaffe; and 284 is from; and 234 again is brother. And
observe, also, the number 316, out of which 234 is drawn by deducting 32 (79:1):
316 from the top of scene fourth (78:1), carried backward to the next column and
down it, is made; and 316 from the end of column 78:1 upward is use {made use);
and 316 carried down the next column (78:2), is of {made useof); and 316, commenc-
ing at the end of the same scene and carried down 78:1, is him {made use of him).
And this revelation supplies an answer to a question which has puzzled the com-
mentators: Where did the author of the Plays find the character of Falstaff?
There was nothing like it in literature. Knight cannot discover ' " the very slight-
est similarity" to Sir John Oldcastle in the old play entitled The Famous Victories
of King Henry V. The name was borrowed, as I have shown, but not the char-
acter Ritson thinks the name was taken " without the slightest hint of the char-
acter." We have the explanation. The fat knight was Shakspere.
The character of Falstaff is often referred to in the Cipher story. The com-
bination Fall-staff is found in eighteen of the Plays; and wherever staff appears in
the text, in every case "fall" is near at hand! In The Tempest both occur in act
v, scene 1 ; in Much Ado both are found in act v, scene 1 ; in Richard II. both
appear in act ii, scene 2; in 2d Henry VI. both occur in act ii, scene 3; in jd Henry
VI. both are found in act ii, scene 1; and in Hamlet both appear in act iv, scene 5;
while in every other instance they are found near together.
The Cipher statement that Bacon had the assistance of his brother Anthony in
preparing some of the Plays is just what we might expect. This will account for
the familiarity with Italian scenes and names manifested in them; for Anthony had
resided for years in Italy. We can imagine the two brothers, alike in many traits
of mind, working together at St. Albans, or in their chambers at Gray's Inn;
J Introductory Notice to Henry IV., p. 166, vol. i of Histories.
SHAKSPERE THE ORIGINAL FALSTAFF.
817
Francis pulling the laboring oar, and the sick Anthony making valuable sugges-
tions as to plots and characters. And one cannot help but imagine how the brothers
must have enjoyed the rollicking scene of the fat Shakspere, leaping and singing
about on the stage, enacting his own shameful character in the disguise of Fal-
staff ! It was capping the climax of the ludicrous. It was a farce inside of a
comedy.
I am aware it will be thought by some that I had read the foregoing passage in
the Cipher story before I wrote that part of the Argument of this book wherein I
suggested ' that Shakspere was Falstaff. But I beg to assure the reader that all
the Argument was in type before I worked out this portion of the Cipher narrative.
In fact, the first suggestion that Falstaff might be Shakspere was made to me two
or three years ago by my wife.
And the multitude also enjoyed the sight, which must have entertained Francis
and Anthony so much.
316.
316—145=171—5 b & h col. =166. [316—146=170-
3/;=107— 163=4, 78:2, see].
316—49=267. 610—267=343+1=344+3// col.—
316—32=284. 610-284=326+1=327 + 12/; & h col.
316—32=284-30=254. 468—254=214+1=215-
3 h col =218,
316-32=284—50=234. 457—234=223 + 1=224.
316—50=266—50=216. 468—216=252+1=253+
3/, col. =256.
316— 15/;& .// col. =301.
316—49=267—10/^ col =257.
Word.
316
166
347
=339
218
224
256
301
9IW
Page and
Column.
77:1
77:2
77-9
78:1
76:2
78:1
77:2
77-9
To
see
him
caper
with
his
great
round
belly.
The curious reader will note that belly appears five times in acts i and ii of this
play, and twice in act iv, or seven times in all in this play; while it is altogether
absent from one-half the Plays, and appears but once in each of eight of the Plays.
Why? Because of the descriptions, here given, of Shakspere's corpulence, and
the story of the effect of the poison on the stomach of Francis Bacon, which will
hereafter appear.
And then Bacon goes on to tell of the wonderful success of the part of Sir
John Falstaff:
310-32=284—50=234+162=396.
316— 49(76: l)=267— 162=105.
316—32=284—50 (76:1)=234.
316—32=284—14 b col. =2 70.
316—32=284—30=254. 468—254=214+1=215+
15 b & h col. =230.
316—31=285—162=123—61 (80:2)=62. 489—62=
427+1—428.
316—31=285—162=123—13/; & k col. =110.
316—32=284—50=234—146=88—3 b (146)=85.
4.-,:— 85=372 + 1=373.
316—50=266. 534—266=268+1=269 7£col.=
396
78:2
It
105
78:2
draws
234
78:2
together,
270
79:1
to
230
428
110
373
276
78:1
81:1
78:2
76:2
79:2
the
play I
house )
yards,
such
See p. 279, ante.
f Of THE >t
( VNIYERSITY J
Page and
Word.
Column.
884
78:1
great
234
78:1
musters
229
78:1
of
278
79:2
people,
309
78:1
far
111
78:2
beyond
186
79:1
my
141
78:2
hopes
247
78:1
and
154
78:2 •
expectation,
139
78:2 '
that
349
76:2
they
376
77:2
took
473
77:2
in
354
77:2
at
39
78:2
least
277
78:1
twenty
344
77:2
thousand
345
77:2
marks.
Si 8 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
316—32=284—50=234—146=88—3 b (146)=85
468—85=383+1=384.
316—32=284—50=234.
316—32=284—50=234—5 b col.— 229.
316—50=266. 534—266=268+1=269+9 b & h col— - ;
316—7^=309.
316-32=284—162=122—11 b col.— 111.
316—162=154+32 (79:1)=186.
316—162=154—13 /;=141.
316—32=284—50=234. 468—234=234+ 1=235+
120 col. =247.
316—162=154.
316—32=284—145=139.
316— 3 1=285— 30=255. 603—255=348+ 1=349.
316—31=285—50=235. 610—235=375+1=376.
316—32=284—146=138. 610—138=472+1=473.
316—50=266. 610—266=344+1=345+9 b col.—
316— 32=284— 50=234— 163=71— 32 (79:1)=39.
316—32=284—7/; col. =277.
316—49=267. 610—267=343+1=344.
316—50=266. 610—266=344+1=345.
The word yard is peculiar; it meant what was called the pit, fifty years ago,,,
and what is now designated as the parquette; it was the roofless body of the play-
house. Collier says, speaking of the Globe theater:
It had rails to prevent spectators in the yard from intruding on the stage. *
And again Collier says:
W. Fennor in his Description, 1616, speaks with great contempt of that part
of the audience in a public theater which occupied the yard . . . He adds:
But leave we these, who for their just reward
Shall gape and gaze among the fools in the yard. 2
Yard occurs but four times in all the Plays; this is the only time draws is found
in this play; and this is the only time musters appears in this scene. Musters sig-
nified gatherings of people. "Defense, musters, preparations" (Henry V., ii, 4);
and "make fearful musters and prepared defense" (1st Henry IV , Induction).
Expectation is found five times in this play, and but six times in all the other nine
Historical Plays ! Even the common word far is found but once in act i, and but
four times more in all this play; and least occurs but twice in this play; and marks
but this one time in this play; and even hopes is found but twice in this act and
scene, and four times in all the play.
And it seems the tradition was right which said Queen Elizabeth was especially-
pleased with the character of Sir John Falstaff. We read:
316—32=284—57=227—14 b & h col. =21 3.
316—31=285—50 (76:1)=235.
316—32=284—50=234—65 (79:2)=169— 10
316—31=285—50 (76:1)— 286.
1 English Dramatic Poetry, vol. iii, p. no.
213
79:1
It
235
80:2
pleases
\ col.— 159
80:1
her
235
77:1
Majesty
2 Ibid., vol. iii, p. :
'43*
SHAKSPERE THE ORIGINAL FALSTAFF.
19
Page and
Column.
Word.
446
78:1
much
180
78:2
more
339
76:2
than
118
77:1
any
156
78:1
thing
86
78:2
else
176
79:1
in
35
80:1
these
118
78:1
Plays.
45
78:1
It
9
79:1
seems
416
78:1
indeed
381
78:2
to
235
77:2
grow
138
77:2
in
137
77:2
regard
270
77:2
every
286
79:1
day.
316—32=284+162=446.
316—32=284—50 (74:2)=234— 50 (73:1)=184—
4 h col =180.
316—50=266. 603—266=337+1=338+1 h col.=
316—50=266—145=121—3 b (145)=118
316. 468—316=152+1=153+3 h col =156.
316—32=284—50=234—146=88—2 h col =86.
316—31=285—50=235—57=178—2 h col.=176.
316. 338— 316=22+ 1=23+ 12 £ col.=35.
316—50=266—145=121—3 b (145)=118.
And then we are told that the part of Sir John continued to increase in popu-
larity:
316—50=266—145=121—3 b (145)=118. 162—118=
44+1=45.
316—145=171—162=9.
316—32=284—30=254 + 162=416.
316—32=284—50=234—146=88—3 b (146)=85.
462—85=377+1=378+3/; col. =381.
316—31=285—50=235.
316—32=284—146=138.
316—31=285—146=139—2 b col. =137.
316-31=285—154 & h col. =270.
316—30=286.
And then we are told that the popularity of Sir John with the swarming multi-
tudes helped Bacon somewhat out of the necessities which his biographers tell us
pressed so sorely upon him:
3 1 6—3 J=28 1—50=234. 61 0—234=376 +1=377.
316—32=284—30=254-5 b col =249.
316—32=284—146=138
316— 49=267+162=429— Mb col. =412.
316—57 (80:1)=259— 62 (80:2)=197.
316—32=284—145=139—3 b (146)=136. 610—136
=474+1=475+2 h col. =477.
316—32=284—146=138. 577—138=439 + 1=440+
3/,col.=443.
316—32=284—145=139- -3 b (145)=136.
316—32=284—30=254. 255—50=205—4 h col.=
Bacon was unable to take care of his gains; but the thrifty Shakspere turned
his share to good account. We read:
315—32=284—146=138—3 4 (146)=135— 5 b col.—
316—32=284—50=234—50=184+162=346.
316—32=284—146=138. 577—138=439+1=440.
316— 32=284— 50=234— 50=184— 22 b & h col. =162.
316—31=285—30=255—50=205—146=59+162=
221— 6 4 col.— 216.
316—32=284—162 (78:1)— 122— 58 (80:1)— 64. 523—
64=459^1=460+2 4 col.=462.
377
77:2
It
249
78:1
supplies
138
77:1
my
412
78:1
present
197
81:1
needs
477
77:2
for
443
77:1
some
136
77:2
little
201
77:1
time.
130
79:1
He
346
78:1
was
440
77:2
wise
162
78:2
enough
216
462
78:1
80:2
to
820
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
Word.
316. 577—316=261 + 1=262. 262
316—32=284—146=138. 162—138=24+1=25 25
316—32=284—50=234—50=184. 462—184=278+
1=279+8 b & /fr=287. 287
316— 32=284— 50=234— 162=72— 50 (76:1)=22.
457-22=435+1=436. 436
316—32=284—146=138. 462—138=324+1=325. 325
316— 32=284— 50=234— 162=72. 72
316—32=284—146=138. 468—138=330+1=331 331
316—32=284—50=234—50=184—4 h col— 180. 180
Page and
Column.
77:1
78:1
78:2
76:2
78:2
78:2
78:1
77:1
his
groats
and
buy
an
estate
of
lordship.
And then the Cipher tells us something altogether new, that will be interesting
to all lovers of the Plays, and especially to the great German race. Bacon says:
3 16— 50=266— 58=208.
316—145=171.
316—32=284—58=226—11 b col.— 215.
316—30=286. 598—286=312+1=313.
316— 2 /i col. =314.
316—32=284—50=234. 577—234=343+1=344.
316. 338—316=22+1=23.
316—144 (317 to 461 79:1)— 172. 577—172=405+
1=406+11 /.col. =41 7.
316—31=285—30=255.
•316—31=285. 598—285=313—1=314+9 b col .=
316—57 (80:1)=259.
;316— 30=286— 57=229— 14 bah col =2l5.
.316— 31=285— 50=235. 338—235=103+1=104.
316—32=284—14 b col. =(270).
316— 30=286— 57 (80:1)— 229. 598—229=369+1=
316. 338—316=22+1=23+5 h col.— 28.
316—30=286—57 (80:1)=229.
316—31=285—57=228. 523—228=295+1=296.
316—58 (80:1)— 268. 523—258=265+1=266.
316—57=259. 588— 259— 274+1— 275 + 7 J coi.—
316—32=284—57=227. 598—227=371 + 1=372+
10 b & /z=382.
316—30=286—57 (80:1)— 229.
31 6— 32=284. 338—284=54+ 1=55+3 /*— 58.
316—31=285—30=255. 338—255=83 + 1=84.
316—145=171—5 b & h col.— 166.
316-32=284. 598—284=314+1=315.
.316—31=285—162=123.
316—32—284—50=234—50 (76:1)=184. 462—184=
278+1=279.
316—31=285—30=255. 338— 255=83+1=84 -i
3 h col.— (87).
316—32=284—30=254. 888—254—84+1—85+
3/; col. =(88).
316-31=285-50=235. 339-235=104+1=105.
316—31=285. 338—285=53+1=54 + 3 h col.=57.
208
171
215
313
314
344
23
417
255
323
259
215
104
(270)
370
28
229
296
366
282
229
58
84
166
315
123
279
(87)
(88)
105
57
80:2
77:1
80:2
79:2
79:2
77:1
80:1
77:1
79:2
79:2
.79:2
80:2
80:1
79:2
79:2
80:1
79:2
S0;2
80:^5
79:2
79:2
80:2
80:1
80:1
77:1
79:2
78:2
78:2
80:1
80:1
80:1
80:1
I
heard
that
my
Lord
the
German
Minister
told
Says j
ill \
that
it
was
well
worth
coming
all
the
long
way
to
England
to
see
this,
part
of
Sir
John
alone,
in
Word.
Page and
Column.
315
79:2
this
428
81:1
play
325
79:2
and
255
78:2
The
329
81:1
Merry
19
81:1
Wives
235
77:2
of
193
79:2
Windsor.
SHAKSPERE THE ORIGINAL FALSTAFF. 821
316—32=284. 598—284=314+1=315.
316—30=286—162 (78:1) — 124 — 62 (80:1)— 62. 489
— 62=427 +1=428.
316—32=284. 598—284=314+1=315+10 b & h=
316—31=285—30=255.
316— 32=284— 57=227— 62=165— 4£ & h (62)=161.
489—161=328+1=329.
316— 32=284— 145=139— 58 (80:1)=81— 62=19.
316—31=285—50=235.
316—64 (79:2)— 252— 57 (80:1)— 195— 2 h col.— 193.
Here the word merry is disguised in marry, which represented the pronuncia-
tion of the word in that age. Mr. F. G. Fleay, in his Shakespeare Manual, p. 66,
shows that e was then usually pronounced like "a in m^re," and "rarely as e in
eve;" and merry was therefore pronounced marry or m'ary. After awhile we
shall see Merry Wives of Windsor used again, with the word merry as found
in the same act, scene fourth, "A merry song, come; it grows late." And how
cunningly is wives disguised in ale-wive' s (19, 81:1). And yet the work is
strained. The line is: " He had made two holes in the ale-wive's new petticoat."
It should be alt-wife's; but -wife's would not have given us the Merry Wives of
Windsor, and hence the woman had to be turned into a plural. And see how
Windsor is dragged in: " The prince broke thy head for likening him to a singing
man of Windsor." Why a singing man of Windsor and not of some other town?
And what was a " singing man of Windsor" ? Let the curious examine the Con-
cordance for the relations between the words merry wives and Windsor, or the dis-
guise Wind-sir, in the different Plays.
And what is "the German hunting in water-worke " ? The commentators can
make nothing of it? And we will see that as German is the 316th word from the
last word of scene 1, so hunting is the 316th word from the beginning of the next
scene, and that it describes Shakspere's rabbit-hunting as a boy:
316—161 (78:1)=155— 57(80:1 =98— 61 (80:2)— 37—
4/; & //(61)=33. 33 81:1 rabbit )
316. 339—316=23—1=24. 24 80:1 hunting \
and that 98 (155 — 57=98) is low (80:2), and that 37 [155 — 57=98 — 61 (8o:2)=37] is
rascally; and that the same 234 (316 — 32=284 — 50=234) which produced draw,
characters and so many other important words, carried through that same 57, and
up from the end of the first section of the next column, plus 1 hyphen, yields 286,
80:2, company; and so we have: rabbit — hunting — rascally — low — company!
It would seem, I say, as if German admiration of the great genius revealed in
the Plays began at an early period; and the pride with which Bacon refers to this
approbation of a distinguished foreigner is characteristic of the man who left
" his memory to the next ages and to foreign nations" He felt the inadequacy of
the development of his own people at that time.
It may be objected that I gave in the beginning of the chapter a long sentence
where 31 and 32 regularly alternated; but that in the foregoing, and in some pas-
sages that follow, we have 316 used by itself as a root-number, and sometimes alter-
nated with 30, 50, 31 and 32. The answer is that in these latter instances the top
fragment of 79:1 is not used as a starting-point, as in the former case, but that the
number 316 plays backward and forward between the beginning of scene third and
the end of scene fourth; and that 316 is the real root-number.
822
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
Word.
Page and
Column.
=325
81:1
swears
92
77:2
up
175
80:2
and
94
77:2
down
283
79:2
they
521
77:2
can
53
80:1
not
164
78:2
equal
104
80:1
it
92
78:2
in
374
81:1
all
375
81:1
Europe,
And we also have given at length, in the Cipher narrative, the conversation
between Cecil and the German Minister. And the Minister —
316—32=284—57=227—62=165. 489—165=324 + 1=
316—32=284—30=254—162=92.
316—31=285—50=235—57=178—3 h col.— 175.
316— 30=286— 30=256— 1 62=94.
316. 598-316=282+1=283.
316— 32=284— : 0=254— 162=92. 610—92=518+1
—519+2 h col.— 521.
316—30=286. 338—286=52+1=53. .
316—30=286—50=236—50=186—22 b col.— 164.
316—31=285—50=235. 338—235=103+ 1=104.
316—32^ 284—30=254—162=92.
316—31=285—50=235—57 (80:1)— 178— 62 (80:2)=
116. 489—116=373+1=374.
316—32=284—50=234—57=177—62=115. 489—
115=374+1=375.
These are rare words. Europe occurs but ten times in all the Plays; minister
but twice in this play, and but eleven other times in all the Historical Plays. Ger-
man is found but this one time in this play, and but nine times in all the Plays.
And observe the additional multitudinous proofs of the Cipher: While 316, up
from the end of scene 1, act ii, is German, 316, up the same column, but counting
in the five hyphens in the column, is worth; and 316 less 30 is 286, and this, less 57
(the section at the end of 80:1), is 229; and 229, carried down the preceding column,
is coming {worth coming); and 229 down the next column forward is to; and 229 up
the same column is well {well zvorth coming to); and 316 — 32=284, and this carried
again up from the end of scene 1, as in the case of German and worth, produces,
plus the hyphens, England {well -worth coming to England); and 284 again less
57 is 227, and 227 carried again up the preceding column, + b <& h, yields way;
and 316 less the same 57 produces long {well zvorth coming all the long way to Eng-
land).
I gave a great many instances, on page 715, ante, where says and ill or seas
and ill were matched together to produce Cecil (pronounced Sacil), and here we
have another; and we shall see still others as we progress.
Then the German Minister grows enthusiastic over the dramatic delineation
of the character of Sir John Falstaff . In his conversation with Cecil —
316—32=284—50=234—57=177—62=115. 115
316—32=284—30=254—186=68. 489—68=421 +
1=422+1 //=423.
316—30=286—57=229—3 h col.=226.
316—50=266—57=209.
316—49 (76:1)— 287— 57— 210.
316—50=266—57=209—61 (80:2)=148— 4 b&h col.
316—31=285—57=228—11 b col.=217.
316—57=259—186 (81 :2)=73.
316—32=284—57—227.
316—30=286—62 (80:2)=224.
316—57=259. 534—259=275 + 1=276.
316—31=285. 338—285=53+1=54.
81:1
He
423
81:1
said:
226
80:2
I •
209
80:2
tell
210
80:2
thee,
=144
81:1
the
217
80:2
man
73
81:1
that
227
80:2
could
224
81:1
conceive
276
79:2
such
54
80:1
a
SHAKSPERE THE ORIGINAL FALSTAFE.
823
Word.
Page and
Column.
146
81:1
part
173
81:1
as
73
80:1
this,
63
80:1
and
64
80:1
draw
104
80:1
it
=162
80:2
so
425
81:1
well,
217
80:2
should
168
81:1
be
145
81:1
immortal.
316—50 (76:1)=266— 57=209— 61 (80:1)=148—
2 6 col. =146.
316—31=285—49=235—62=173.
316—50=266. 338—266=72 + 1=73.
316—31=285. 338—285=53+1=54+9 6 col.— 63.
316—32=284. 338— 284=54 +1=55+9 £ col. =64.
316—31=285—50=235. 338-23"= 103+1— 104.
316— 32=284— 50=234— 58 (80:1)— 176— 14* & h col ■
316—32=284—30=254—185 (81:2)— 69. 489—09=
420—1+4* & h (185)— 435.
316—31=285—57=228—11 * col. =217.
316—30=286—57=229—61 (80:2)— 168.
316—50=266—57=209—62 (80:1)— 147— 26 col.—
This is the only time immortal occurs in this play, and it is found but twice
besides in all the Historical Plays. And this is the only time conceive appears in
this play; and it is found but three times besides in all the Historical Plays.
Observe the word part in the Concordance: — how often it occurs in some plays
and how rarely in others. It is found but five times in Mac6eth, while we dis-
cover it twenty-four times in Hamlet; and play occurs 6ut four times in Macbeth;
while/*// and plays are found thirty-Jive times in Hamlet/ This is because the
Cipher story in the latter play tells us a great deal about the Plays and players, and
acting, etc., while in Macbeth those subjects are but little referred to. And where
flays are alluded to in the internal narrative, it is natural to speak of such and such
a part in the play, or of the first, second or third part of some of the Historical
Plays.
And it further appears (departing a little from our root-number 316) that — as I
had supposed — Shakspere was a usurer in the full sense of the term. We are told
by this same root-number, 338, that he acquired a great part of his wealth by this
practice, and is clad in —
538—32=306—5 * (32)=301— 30=271— 146— 125—
1 A— 124.
338—31— 307— 5 * (32)— 302— 30=272— 146— 126.
508—126=382+1=383 + 1=384.
338—32=306—5 * (32)=301— 30— 271— 50=221— 146
=75. 508—75=433+1=434.
538—31=307—5 * (31)=302.
338—32=306—5 * (32)=301— 30=271— 145=126.
610—126—484+1=485. 485 77:2 prince;
124
76:2
apparel
384
75:2
fit
434
75:2
for
302
76:2
a
That instead of being half-naked he is arrayed —
338—32=306—5 *=301— 50=271— 50=221. 221
338—31=307—5 * (31)=302— 30=272— 49=223.
610—223=387+1—388+14 * & //— 402. 402
538—32=306—5 *=301— 50=251— 50=201. 603—
201=402+1—403. 403
538—31=307— 5 *=302— 50 (76:1)— 252. 252
Very different from the rags he wore when he —
338—31=307—5 *— 302— 30=272. 508—272=236+1=237
77:2
in
77:2
silk
76:2
and
76:2
satin.
75:2
fled
824
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
338—32=306—5 ^—301 — 145 — 166.
338—31=307—285 (79:1, 32 to 317)=22— 2 h (285)=
20. 462—20=442+1=443.
338—32=306—5 £=301—50=251—145=106—3 b
(145)— 108.
338—31=307—5 £=302—30=272. 461—272=189+
1=1904 10 b& £=200.
Word.
166
443
103
200
338— 32=306— 5 b-
338—31=307—5 b=
420 -r 1=421.
=301-
=302-
-49 (76:1)=252— 11 b & h col.=241
Page and
Column.
77:2
78:2
77:1
79:1
77-1
to
London
to
'scape
from
-145=157.
(7—157=
421
77:1 imprisonment.
And that a large part of his wealth was derived not alone from —
-32 (79:1)=306— 5 b (312)=301— 162=139. 139 77:2
338—31 (79:1)=307— 5 £(31)=302— 30=272.
272
these
shows:
But from the lending of money at a high rate and by usurious practices. (The
reader will note the precision and regularity of the above sentences. Every word is
the 338th minus 31 or 32, alternated, minus the 5 bracketed words in 31 or 32).
We read that he doth —
338—31=307—50 (74:2)=257— 50 (76:1)=207— 146=
61. 610—61=549+1=550. 550
338—32=306—162=144. 162—144=18+1=19. 19
338—31=307—162=145. 610—145=465+^ col.— (475)
338—32=306—49=257—30=227. 227
338— 31=307— 50=257— 30=227- 5 b col. =222. 222
338—32=306—50=256—30=226—50=176—163=13. 13
2 h col.—
162—
598—
338—31=307—50=257—30=227—162=65-
338—32=307—50=257—50=207—145=61.
61=101+1=102.
338—31=307. 468—307=161+1=162.
338—32=306-50=256—50=206.
338—31=307—50=257—50=207—161=46.
46=552+1=553.
338—32=306—50=256—50=206—145=61 + 162=
223—5 b col. =218.
338—31=307—50=257—30=227—162=65.
338—32=306—49 (76 :1)=257— 30=227. 603—227=
376+1=377+3 b col. =380.
338—31=307—50=257—50=207—146=61 + 162=
63
102
162
206
553
218
65
77:2
78:1
77:2
76:2
78:1
78:2
78:2
78:1
78:1
77:2
79:2
78:1
78:2
lend
money
at
a
big
rate
upon
commodity
of
paper,
with
sure
380 76:2 security
223 78:1 enough.
Observe the regularity with which the Cipher moves in the foregoing: 31 — 32
— 31 — 32 — 31 — 32 — 31 — 32, etc. And note how all the words that are not due
directly to 306 or 307 are derived from 306 or 307, minus 30 or 50. Commodity is
a rare word; this is the only time it occurs in this play. It is found in King John
quite often, where it tells, probably, the story of Bacon's own money necessities;
it is found twice in 1st Henry IV., and but ten times besides in all the Plays. In
Measure for Measure, iv, 3, we find the " commodity of paper" alluded to. The
clown, describing the occupants of the prison, says:
First, here's Master Rash; he's in for a commodity of brown paper and old
ginger, ninescore and seventeen pounds.
Whereupon Knight says in a foot-note:
SHAKSPERE THE ORIGINAL FAL STAFF. 825
The old comedies are full of the practice of the usurer — so notorious as to
acquire him the name of the brown paper merchant — of stipulating to make his
advances partly in money and partly in goods, which goods were sometimes little
more than packages of brown paper.
The practice is alluded to in 1st Henry IV., and there we have even the
word brown. It is dragged into the wild and senseless talk of the Prince to
Francis (ii, 4), the drawer: " Your brown bastard is your only wear." In act i,
scene 2, we have a commodity of warm slaves; and in act ii, scene 4, again, we have
"nothing but papers , my Lord." It would be curious to find how often commodity
— brown — paper appear together in the same vicinity in the different Plays; but I
have not the time or space to pursue the subject.
I will conclude this chapter by remarking that it adds very much to our knowl-
edge of Shakspere, his character and appearance. It tells us he was gross and
coarse in his nature and his life; that he was not devoid, however, of a certain
ready wit; a glutton in his diet and fond of the bottle. That he had many of the
characteristics of Falstaff , and that he was the model from which the characters of
Sir John and Sir Tobie were drawn. It also tells us that Bacon was assisted, to
some extent, in the construction of the Plays by his brother Anthony. It tells us
further that before Shakspere's health was broken down by his evil courses he
acted the part of Falstaff on the stage. It also tells us that the Plays drew great
crowds of delighted people, and greatly enriched all concerned in their production.
And this is confirmed from historical sources. Nash records that in a short space
of about three months, in the summer of 1592, the play of Henry VI. was witnessed
by "ten thousand spectators at least;"1 and we are told that Romeo and Juliet, in
1596, " took the metropolis by storm."-2 And this chapter further confirms the
tradition of Elizabeth's admiration of the character of the fat knight; and it gives
us further the enthusiastic admiration of the German Minister. And beyond all
this it tells us that Shakspere had enriched himself by usurious practices, corrob-
orating the evidence of the numerous suits brought by him against different parties
to recover money loaned, and the fact that the only letter extant addressed to him
was touching a loan of money.
1 Halhwell-Phillipps, Outlines, p. 64. 2 Ibid., p. 85.
Note. The numbering in column 2 of page 7S in the facsimile is slightly
wrong; each number below the 51st should be moved backwards one. The error
is due to the fact that the word almost, line 7, enclosed in the bracket sentence of
eleven words, is not counted in as part of the bracket sentence, but as part of the
text; hence the first word, should, after the bracket sentence, is the 52d word in-
stead of the 51st, and all the succeeding numbers in the column have to be moved
backward to correspond. The Publishers.
CHAPTER XVIII.
SWEET ANN HA THA WA Y.
One woman is fair; yet I am well: another is wise; yet I am well: another virtuous; yet I am
well: but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace.
Much A do, Hi. 2.
WE pass to another part of our story: the history of Shak-
spere's marriage.
I have already quoted one or two lines as to his rabbit-hunting.
The Bishop of Worcester says:
338—30=308—49=259—161=98. 457—98=359+1
=360+5 b col. =365. 365 76:2 He
338—30=308. 533— 308=225+ 1=226+13 £ col. = 239 79:2 had
338—50=288—49=239. 577- 239=338+1=339+
3//col.=342. 342 77:1 fallen
338— 30=308— 31 (79:1)=277— 162=115— 49(76:1)= 66 76:2 into
338— 30=308— 50=258— 50=20^— 162=46— 2// col.= 44 78:2 all
338—30 (74:2)=288— 50 (76:1)=238— 31 (79:1)=207
—50 (76:1)=157— 145=12— 3 b (145)=9. 498—9
=489+1=490. 490 76:1 sorts
338-30=308—49=259—162=97+457=554. 554 76:2 of
338—30=308—49=259—162=97. 97 77:2 evil
333—50 (74:2)=288— 50 (76:1)=238— 31 (79:1)=207
— 145 (76:2)=62— 50 (76:1)=12. 12 76:1 courses
338—30=308—49=259—162=97. 457—97=360+1=361 76:2 with
338— 30=308— 50=258— 162=96— 32 (79:1)=64—
58(80:1.)=6. 6 80:1 drinking
338=30—308-50=258-49=209—162=47. 47 77:2 wassail
338—31=307—50=257. 257 76:2 and
338-49=289. 289 76:2 gluttony.
Then we are told how he annoyed Sir Thomas Lucy, " an upright and worship-
ful man."
888— 22 d & //=316— 161=155— 59=98— 61 (80:2)=37
_5/;col.=32. 32
338—22/; & /z=316-161=155— 57=98. 98
338—22 b & /i=316— 161=155— 57=98. 461—98=
363 + 1=364. 364
81:1
79:1
Upright
and
80:2 worshipful.
And we are told that he did-
826
S WEE T ANN HA THA WA Y.
827
Page and
Column.
79:1
kill
80:2
79:1
many
a
81:2
deer.
77:2
hare
77:2
and
81:1
rabbit
80:1
hunting
79:2
o'nights
80:1
in
80:2
vile,
80:2
low,
81:1
rascally
80:2
company.
Word.
:338— 30=308— 161=147— 32=115. 518—115=403
+ 1=404+2 k col.=406. 406
338—30=308—50=258—162=96—32=64—2 b col.— 62
338—30=308—50=258 -162=96. 518—96=422+1=423
338—30=308—49=259—162=97+186 (81:1)= 283
And observe how cunningly that word deer, spelled deere, is concealed in the
triple-hyphenated word, heart-deere- Harry : It is not spelled dear, as it is elsewhere,
but deere. See deare Lord, end scene 1, act Hi, p. 86, Folio. Deare was one thing
and deere another, and here the Cipher required deere.
And we are told that he spent his time —
:316— 32=284— 50=234— 162=72— 2 // col. =70. 70
316—31=285—162=123—4/; & h col. =119. 119
316—161=155—57=98-61 (80:2)==37— 4 b & h (61)= 33
-316. 339—316^23 + 1=24. 24
■ 316— 32=284— 146=138— 3 £ (146)=135— 58 (80:1)
=77— 2 b col. =75. 75
316— 31=285— 5 //col =280. 280
316-32=284—50=234—57=177. 461—177=284+1=285
316—161=155—57=98. 98
4316—161=155—57=98—61 (80:2)=37. 37
•316-32=284—50=234—57=177. 461—177=284+1
=285 + 1 h col . =286. 286
Observe that rabbit occurs but four times in all the thousand pages of the Plays,
and but once in this play, and /uniting- is found but fifteen times in all the Plays,
and but once in this play. And here is another evidence of the Cipher in the
Plays: — rascally is found in but six plays out of thirty-seven; and \t is found once
in The Merry Wives, where Shakspere's story is talked about in Cipher, and four
times in this play, where he is also dealt with. That is to say, rascally appears
but eleven times in all the Plays, and five of these are where Shakspere is spoken
•of in the Cipher narrative ! This illustrates that all words are not found on all
pages, but that each subject begets its own vocabu'ary.
We are told that —
:338— 30=308— 162=146-32=114. 396—114=282+1
=--283+2/^ col.=285.
;338— 30=308— 163=145.
:338-30=308— 49=259— 162=97— 50=47. 457—47
=410+1=411.
•338—30=308—162=146—31 (79:1)=115. 523—115
=408+1=409+4/; & /^413.
338— 30=308— 49=252— 162=97— 32 (791)=65.
339—65=274+1=275. 275
338—30=308—162=146-31=115—5^=110—58
(80:1)=52. 462—52=410 + 1=411.
: 338—30=308—49=259—162=97—32=65—2 <^=63
. 33$— 30=308— 162=146— 3 1=1 15.
4338—30=308— 162=146— 31=115— 58(81 :1)=57.
523—57=466+1=467. 467 80:2 most
285
80:1
Will
145
78:2
and
411
76:2
his
413
80:2
brother
411
80:2
a
. 63
80:2
pair
115
79:2
of
828 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Page and
Word. Column.
338—30=308—162=146—31=115—5 b (31)— 110—
58(80:1)=52. 523—52=471 + 1=472. 472 80:2 pernicious
338—30=308—163=145. 518— 145— 373 -t-1— 374 79:1 villains.
The reader will observe here that every word grows out of 308 (338 — 30=308),
and that in every case but one the 308 is modified by deducting 162 from it; that is
to say, by carrying 'the 30S to the end of scene third (78:1) and counting upwards;
while in the case of the one exception referred to, we commence to count one word
further down, to-wit: from the beginning of scene fourth, instead of from the end
of scene third. And every one of these 308 minus 162 or 163 is carried again
through the last fragment of scene fourth, containing 31 words, or 32 if we count
from the first word of the next scene (act ii, scene 1) inclusive.
And he will observe that the modifications are made by 49, 162, 31 or 32,
and 57 or 58. Now 49 is the first fragment of scene j, and 162 is the last fragment
of scene j; and 31 or 32 represents the last fragment of scene 4; and 57 or 58, the
first fragment of scene 2, act ii; and 308 put through these changes yields the remark-
able sentence above given.
And then comes the story of his trouble with Ann Hathaway. Here we have
the name:
338— 200 (79:1 )=1 38. 462-138=324+1=325. 325 78:2 Ann
338—200 (79:1)— 138— 5 // (200)— 183. 462—133=
329+1—330 330 78:2 Hathl
338— 200 (79:1)— 138— 13 ^ col. =125. 125 78:2 a [
338—31 (79:1)=307— 30=277— 50=227. 598—227
=371 + 1=372+10^ & h col.— 382. 382 79:2 way.
Here it will be observed Ann hath a are all derived from 338 — 200=138; these
came from the fragment of 79:1 below the end of the second subdivision of the
column, to the bottom of the column (318 + 200=518, number of words on page);
while the last word comes from the fraction above the first word of that same sub-
division to the top of the column. And we will see that same number 277 yielding
a great many other significant words, as 277, 78:1, twenty (Ann was twentv-five); and
up 79:2, less 1 hyphen, it is she, etc.
And it seems she was a widow and her legal name was Whatley, but she was
generally called by her maiden name. And here we have it again:
338—32 (79:1)— 306— 30— 276— 5 b (32)— 271 + 162=433
— 3 A col.— 430 78:1 Ann
838— 200(79:1)— 188— %b col.— 136. 136 79:2 What \
338-31 (79:1)— 307— 30— 277— 50— 227— 57 (80:1)— t
170. 338—170—168+1—169. 169 79:1 lay. )
And there is a long narrative here about Ann and her troubles. By the same
root-number 338, modified by deducting the 22b & h in 167, as heretofore, we have
another reference to her:
605—167—338—22 b&h (167)
316— 31=285— 2 h col.— 283.
316—31—286.
316—49 (76:1)=267+ 163—430.
316—50 (76:1)— 266— 199 (79:1)=67— 5 b (199— 62.
598—62—536+1—537. 00 i iv.a wnat >
316— 49=267— 200(79:1)— 67. 468—67=401 + 1— 402 78:1 lay. v
=316.
283
285
430
79:2
79:2
78:1
They
call
Ann
537
402
79:2
78:1
What
lay.
SWEE T ANN HA THA WA V. 829
Observe the adroitness with which the same Ann, or, as it is disguised, An (430,
78:1), is made to do double duty once by the root-number 338, and then by the
modified root-number 338 — 22 b & £—316, both counts falling on the same word
from the same starting-point. And the same is true of the word a (125, 78:2).
And she was a widow !
Word.
Page and
Column.
125
78:2
A
125
79:2
widow.
338—50=288—163=125.
838—50=288—103=125.
In the Consistory Court at Worcester, in the marriage register, there is an
entry in these terms: " 15S2, Nov. 27, William Shaxpere and Anne Whately of
Temple Grafton." The next day, November 28, 15S2, a bond is given to the
Bishop of Worcester to hold him harmless for '"licensing," etc., the marriage of
William Shagspere and Anne Hathwey . The Shakspereolators have always ignored
the license entry; and although there was no record of a license to Shakspere to
wed Ann Hathaway, they would have none of the Whately woman. And Knight
even goes so far as to give us a picture of the old church at Hampton Lucy,1 and
would have us believe that Shakspere and the " sweet Anne " were married in it,
although there is not a shred of evidence to sustain the belief; and we have a
delightful rural picture of the " ribands, rosemary and bay," the "roundels," the
" wheaten garlands," the "bride cup" and the bridal banquet; all constructed, as
most of the Shakspere biography has been, out of the vivid imagination of the
writer, who sought, in this way, from the beggarly materials afforded him, to create
a man that would fit into the requirements of the Plays.
Halliwell-Phillipps is said, in an article in the London Telegraphy ' to be of the
opinion that Ann Hathaway never lived in the Hathaway cottage; that is, that she
was not a daughter of Richard Hathaway, alias Gardner, of Stratford, who died in
15S2. Mr. Rolfe'2 concurs in this view. Richard Hathaway's will names seven
children, and Anne was not one of them. The London Telegraph says:
It is deplorable to have doubts started as to whether the Shakespeare Museum
contains a single genuine relic; whether Anne Hathaway's cottage is not, after all,
a simple fraud; and Mary Arden's farm a disreputably unhistorical building. . . . But
will they care to go to the shrine of the great poet if a cloud of doubt surrounds
some of its most cherished monuments? If everything at Stratford were shown as
being only doubtfully connected with the Bard ? For example, instead of the
guide-post pointing the way to Anne Hathaway's cottage, it might be sadly truth-
ful to say, "To the reputed cottage of Anne Hathaway." Mary Arden's farm-
house ought to be ticketed as an " uncertain " building, and Shakespeare's tomb in
the church would have to be pointed out as the tomb "either of Shakespeare or
somebody else. "
A. Hall, in a letter to the London Athencrum, 1886, suggests that Richard Hath-
away, alias Gardner, may have married a widow named Whately, from Temple
Grafton, and that she might have taken the nam ; of Hathaway as his step-
daughter.
But here in the Cipher is the explanation of the mystery: Ann had bean mar-
ried to one Whatley; and when the bride herself gave her name, Nov. 27, 1582, for s
the marriage license, she gave it correctly, and she was married by that name; but
the next day, when her farmer friends were called upon to furnish the bond to
indemnify the Bishop, they gave the lawyer who drew the bond the name by
which, in the careless fashion of such people, she was generally known.
1 Biography, p. 223. * SAafo/eariana, Sept., 1886, pp. 430, 431.
2 Literary World, Boston, Jan. 23, 18S6, p. 30.
S3o
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
De Quincey says of the marriage bond:
Trepidation and anxiety are written upon its face. . . . Economy, which
retards the marriage, is here evidently in collision with some opposite principle
which precipitates it. How is all this to be explained? Neither do we like the
spectacle of a mature young woman, five years past her majority, wearing the sem-
blance of having been led astray by a boy who had still two years and a half to
run of his minority.
And we are told that —
316—31 (79:1)=285— 16 0 & h col. =269.
316—50=266—162=104.
316—7 0 col. =309.
316—31 (79:1)— 285— 14 0 col =271.
816—50=266—162=104.
316—163=153—6 0 & h col. =147.
This the only time the word pregnancy appears in all the goo,ooo words of the
Plays ! And it appears just where it is needed to tell the story of Shakspere's
marriage; and it is found side by side with Ann — Hath — a — way, and Ann —
What — lay (by two different counts); and other still more significant words that
are to follow. I weary of asking the question: — can all this be accident?
And then we have this description of her:
Word.
Page and
Column.
(269)
78:2
She
104
77:2
is
309
78:1
far
(271)
79:2
gone
104
79:1
in
147
77:2
pregnancy.
330
78:2
hath
29
80:1
a
459
77:2
pretty
62
80:1
face
450
77:2
and
473
79:2
a
338—30=308—31=277. 598—277=321 + 1=322. 322 79:2
338—50=288—146=142—3 b (146)=139. 462—139=
323+1=324+6 0 & h col =330.
338-32=306—50=256—162=94—65=29.
S38— 30=308— 145=163. 610—163=447+1=448+
11 0& /;=459.
338—50=288—162=126—64 (79:2)=62.
338—30=308—145=163. 610—163=447+1=448+
2h col.— 460.
338—50=288—162=126. 598—120=472+1=473.
338—50=288—162=126—57 (79:1)=69. 396-69=
327+1=328. 328 80:1
338—50=288— 162=126— 30=96— 64 (79:2)=32+
338=370 370
338—199=139. 139 80:1
338—50=288—162=126—65 (79:2)— 61. 396—61=
335+1=336. 336 80
338—30=308—285=23+338=361. 361 90
338— 199(318^79:1;— 139. 139 78
338—30=308—285=23. 162—23=139+1=140. 140 78
338—50=288-161=127. 396—127=269+1=270+
2 b col. =272. 272 80:1
338—50=288—161=127—57 '79:1)— 70— 57 (80:1)=13.
523—13=510+1=511. 511 80:2
338—200 (79:1, 317 d)= 138— 65 (79:2)— 73. 162—
73=89+1=90. 90 78:1
She
fair
80:1 complexion,
with
a
high
color
and
long
red
hair.
This is the only time red appears in this act; it is found but twice besides irt
this play. And this is the only time color occurs in this act. And this is the only
time complexion appears in this play, and it is found but four other times in the ten
S WEE T ANN HA THA WA Y.
831
Historical Plays. And it is dragged in here by the heels: " It discolors the com-
plexion of my greatness," says Prince Hal, "to acknowledge that I am weary !'*
And note how it is matched with fair (" fair complexion"). Each is 505 — i67=33&
— 50—288 — 162 (78:i)-=i26; and both words are found in the same column, the one
carried through the last subdivision of 79:1, the other through the last subdivision
of 79:2.
And this statement about Ann's appearance confirms the tradition recorded by
Oldys, that she was quite handsome; but —
338—30=308-31 (79:1)— 377. 598—277=321+1=
396—88=308 + 1=309.
=109.
188+1=189.
462—133=329 + 1=
■50-
598—69=
338—200=138—50:
338—199=139—30:
338—199=139.
338— 58(79 :1)=280. 468—280
338—200=138—5 h (200)— 133.
330+6/. & h— 886.
338—57 (79 :1)=281— 162=119-
529+1=530.
338—162=176—50=126. 462— 126=336+l=337i
5 b col. =342.
338—200=138—50=88. 518—88=430+1=431.
338—199=139—30=109.
338—162=176—50=126. 462—126=336+1=337.
333—31=307—30=277—50=227—50=177+163=
340—2 h col. =338.
338—161=177. 177+163=340.
338—200=138—50=88—58 (79:1 )=30— 1 h col.—
338—200=138—50=88. 88—57 (79:1)— 31. 598—
—31=567+1=568.
338—163=175—50=125. 462—125=337+1=338
+6£ & h col.— 814.
338—199=139—30=109. 185—109=76+1=77.
Ford.
Page and
Column.
322
79:2
She
309
80:1
was
109
78:2
a
139
79:2
gross
189
78:1
and
336
338—161=177—49 (76:1)=128.
338—200 (79:1)=138— 30=108-
43=295 + 1=296 + 2=298.
-65 (79:2)=43. 338-
338—31=307. 533— 307=226+1=927.
338—31=307—200 (79:1)=107. 338— 107=231 -t-l=
338—199=139—30=1 09.
338—57=281.
338—32=306—200=1 06.
338—199=139—30=109—2 // col.
=107.
338— 32 (79:1)=306— 30=276+162=438.
338—200 (79:1) — 138 — 50=88— 58 (79:1)=
338—200=1 38—50=88. 162—88=74+1=
338—32=306. 533—306=227+1=228.
30.
=75.
568
344
77
128
298
227
232
109
281
106
107
438
30
75
228
r8:2
79:2
78:2
81:2
79:2
80:1
79:2
80:1
78:2
78:1
78:2
78:2
78:2
78:2
78:1
79:2
vulgar
530
79:2
woman;
342
78:2
with
431
79:1
a
109
79:2
good
337
78:2
heart,
338
78:1
'tis
340
78: 'l
true.
29
78:2
but
loud
tongue
and
rough
manners;
a
gossip
with
a
giddy
head,
the
model
from
which
I
draw
Mistress
Quickley.
And the Bishop says:
832
THE CIPHER NAKRA TIVE.
Word.
338—50=288—49 (76:1)=239. 239
338—144 (79:1, 317 to 461)=194— 57=137. 137
335—31=307—5 /,=302— 285 (79:1)— 17— 2 h (285)=15.
462—15=447+1=448. 448
338—31=307—5 ^=302—285 (79:1^=17—3 b (285)= 14
338—31=307—5 £=302—285 (79.1) — 17 — 5 b & h (285)
=12. 462—12=450+1=451. 451
338—200=138—5 h (200)=133— 3 k col. =130. 130
338—31 (79:1)=307— 5 £=302-285=17. 17
239—31=307—5 /;=302— 285 (79:1)— 17. 462—17=
445+1=446. • 446
338—200=138—5 h (200)=133— 32 (79:1)— 101. 533
—101=432+1=433. 433
338-200=138— 5// (200)=1 33. 133
338—31=307—30=277+162=439—3// col.=430. 436
338—31=307—30=277—50=227—50=177+162= 339
338— 31=307— 30=277— 50=227— 5 b col.=222. 222
Page and
Column.
79:2
80:2
78:2
78:1
She
follows
after
my
Appearing is a rare word; it is found but six times in all
but three times in this play and but once in this scene; weepi
this play; big is found but once in this act.
And she brought her captive lover along with her; she —
78:2 heels
78:2 weeping
78:2 and
78:2 sighing-;
79:2 her
78:2 waste
78:1 appearing
78:1 very
78:1 big.
the Plays; waste occurs
ng appears but twice in
338—200=138. 338—138=200+1=201.
338—50=288—27=261 .
338—199=139. 338—139=199+1=200+2 b col.—
Marched occurs but nine times in all the Plays,
out. There was —
201 80:1 Marched
261 78:2 him
202 80:1 up.
But all Stratford had turned
A
great
throng
of
people
singing.
338— 32=306— 50=256— 57 (30:1)=199— 10/ & //= 189 79:2
338—284=54—3 £—51—2 h col =49. 49 78:2
338—32=306—30=276—58 (c0:l)— 218. 5C8— 218=
380+1=381 + 10/- & /i col. =391. 391 79:2
338—31=307—50=257—57 (80:1)=200— 8 b col =192 :
338—32=306—50=256. 533—256=277 + 1=278. *78 79:2
338— 31=307— 50—257—57=200— 10/ &h col. = 190 79:2
The villagers were having a merry time over poor Ann's misfortunes.
In the last chapter I asked: — Why — if there is no Cipher — did we have "the
singing man of Windsor?" But the Cipher then explained the appearance of
Windsor, and now we see the reason why the unknown man of Windsor was a
singing man.
The Bishop complains that he was just sitting down to dinner —
338—200=138—50=88. 338—88=250+1=251. 251 80:1 dinner—
when the rabble broke in upon him.
She asked the Bishop to grant her redress:
3^8— 200 (79:1)— 138.
338—31 (79 :1)=307— 50=257.
338—32 (79:1)— 306— 58 (80:1)
+1—851+104 * A— 361. 361 79:2 redress.
The reluctant lover had tried to escape the bonds of matrimony:
138
78:2
Grant
396—257=139+1=
140
80:1
her
=248. 598—248=350
SWEET ANN HA THA IV A V.
833
Word.
338—57=281. 598— 281=317+1=318+9 b col. — 327
338— 200=138— 3// col. =135. 135
338— 199=139— 30=109— 50=59— 2 b col.=57. 57
338—200=138—64=74—2 b (64)=72. 518—72=446
+ 1=447. 447
Page and
Column.
79:2
The
78
churlish,
79:2
fat
rogue
And then we are told, the root-number changing, as heretofore, from 505 — 167
=338, to 505—167=338—32 b & // (i67)=3i6, that Shakspere fled. He—
316—31=285—50=235. G10— 235=375+1=376.
316—284 (79:1)— 82.
316—56 (79:1^=260—50=210. 462—210=252+1=
316—50=266—64 (79:2)=202. 462—202=260+1=
261+8 h col.— 264.
37G
77:2
took
32
77:2
to
253
78:2
his
264
heels.
256
285
229
254
212
78:2
7ft -9.
79:2
78:2
78:2
the
Welsh.
Coming
back,
the
354
78:1
officers
207
78:2
take
284 '
78:1
him.
And hid himself among the Welsh, — for Wales was near at hand:
316—50=266—59 (79:1)=207. 462—207=255+1=
316—31 (79:1)— 285.
But he grew homesick, and —
316—50=266—32 (79:1)— 234— 6 b (82)— 229.
316—30=286—32=254.
316—30=286—32=254. 462—254=208+1=209+
3 )t col. =212.
316—30=286—32=254. 598—254=344+1=345+
9 b col. =354.
316—50=266—32 (79:1)=234— 27/; col. =207.
316—32=284.
Even the details of the arrest and the struggle of Shakspere are given (by 316)
with great particularity. The reader will find them embalmed in the latter part of
column 1, page 79, disguised in the arrest of Falstaff by Dame Quickley. Indeed,
the fragments into which page 79 is divided are so many, and the brackets and
hyphens are so numerous, that almost every word of the text, in some places, is
used in the Cipher story. And hence, to accomplish this result, the external story
was made to tell of the arrest of Sir John Falstaff by Dame Quickley, because of
money loaned him, with complaints that he had promised to marry her; while the
internal story tells how Shakspere had borrowed money from Ann Hathaway under
similar promises, and how she finally settled her claim by marrying her dissolute,
eighteen-year-old debtor. It is no wonder that he left her, in his last will, his
" second-best bed." A marriage so made could hardly have been a happy one.
But the question maybe asked: Why does the Cipher rule in some of the fol-
lowing instances differ from that found in the preceding chapters ? There the words
moved right and left from a common center. Here they are found in clusters, all
in the same column; and the text, the hyphens and brackets are so arranged as to
bring out sentences almost identical with those found in the text. The answer is,
that it is only the terminal root-numbers, created by deducting the ends of scenes
or acts, that become new factors to be carried in all directions, to other scenes and
acts; but where the fragments are inside of, and parts of, scenes, like 284 and 285,
57 and 58, 64 and 65, the work they perform is confined to the contiguous columns.
In the description of the arrest we learn that Will was taken by surprise as he
was loitering about the streets of Stratford. We are told that —
834
316—31=285.
316—31=285—161=124
316—31=285—30 (74:2)=255.
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
Page and
Word.
Column.
285
80:1
Will,
396—124=272+1= 273
80:1
being
=255. 255
78:2
unarmed,
is, after a hard fight, at length taken prisoner. Had he been armed they would have
found him a dangerous person to handle:
316—32=284—30=254—162=92. 610—92=518+1=519
But, being unarmed, they are able to take him up:
316—31=285—30=255—162=93. 396—93=303+1
316—32=284—162=122. 396—122=274+1=275.
316—31=285—161=124—50=74.
77:2 dangerous.
316—31=285—162=
2d col. =276.
316—32=284—162=
2 b col.— 277.
316—31=285—30=
=123.
=122.
396—12^
f3 + 1=274—
396—122=274+1=275+
462—255=207+1=208.
And they take him on —
316—31=285—162=123—30=93. 610—93=517+1=
316—31=285+162=447.
316—161=155+163=318.
316—1 62=154—50=104, 533—104=429+1=430.
316—65 (79:2)=251— 4/> & h col.=247.
316—31=285—30=255.
316—31=285—30=255—162=93. 610—93=517+1
=518+2 h col =520.
316—31=285—30=255.
316—162=154—4// col. =150.
316—65 (79:2)=251— 30=221— 32=189^ 162=351—
2//col.=349.
=304
80:1
They
275
80:1
are
74
78:2
able
276
80:1
to
277
80:1
take
him
208
78:2
up.
=518
77:2
A
447
78:1
warrant
318
78:1
for
430
79:2
debt
247
79:1
in
255
77:2
an
520
77:2
action
255
80:1
upon
150
78:2
the
349
78:1
Observe how all the law phrases come out by the same root-number — warrant
— debt — action — case. And directly we will see arrested at my suit. Warrant is
found but once in each of the plays of Macbeth, Midsu?nmer Nigh? 's Dream, Love's
Labor Lost, Merchant of Venice, All's Well, and jd Hen ry VI., and not at all in
Julius Caisar; but it occurs eleven times in The Merry Wives (where Shakspere's
story is also told), and four times in act ii of this play, and once in the last scene
of act i ; or six times altogether in this play. This is the only time debt occurs in
this play. It is found, however, once in the Epilogue.
And Ann tells the Bishop, astonished at such a scene of love-making, that —
338—285=53—30 (74:2)=23— 5 b & h (285)=18.
338—284=54—30 (74:2)=24— 5 b & h (285)=19.
338—285=53—30 (74:2)=23— 3 b (285)=20.
338—284=54—30 (74:2)=24— 3 b (285)=21.
338—285=53—30 (74:2)=24— 2h (285)=22.
338—285=53—30 (74:2)=23.
338—284=54—30 (74:2)=24.
338—285=53—30 (74:2)=23. 598—23=575+1=
18
79:2
He
19
79:2
is
20
79:2
arrested
21
79:2
at
22
79:2
my
23
79:2
suit,
24
79:2
for
i76
79:2
by
S WEE T A NN HA THA IV A Y.
835
Page and
Word. Column.
338—284=54—30 (74:2)=24. 598—24=574+1=575
+2 h (284)— 577. 577 79:2 this
338—285=53—30 (74:2)=23. 598—23=575 + 1=576
+2 h (285)— 578. 578 79:2 heavenly
338—285=53-30 (74:2)=23. 598—23=575 + 1=576
+3* (285)— 579. 579 79:2 ground
338—284=54—30 (74:2)=24. 598—24=574+1=575
+5 b & h (284)=580. 580 79:2 I
:338 — 285=53— 30 (74:2)=23. 598-23=575+1=576
+5 b & h (285)— 581. 581 79:2 tread.
Here it will be perceived that 23 and 24 down the column (79:2), modified by
the brackets and hyphens in 284 and 285, produce the upper part of the sentence;
and 23 and 24 carried up the same column, modified in the same way, produce the
latter part of the sentence; and the words flow in regular sequence from 18 to 24,
and again from 576 to 581. And it will be observed that the oath taken by Ann
Whatley, "by this heavenly ground I tread," is much more appropriate to her than
to Dame Quickley; for Ann was at the Bishop's house, while Dame Quickley had
Falstaff arrested in the open street, which, certainly, was not "heavenly ground."
But the sentence flows right on. What does Ann call the " heavenlv ground"
to witness ?
338—284=54—50 (76:1 )=4— 3 b (284)— 1.
338—285=53—49 (76:1=4—2 h (284)— 2.
338—284=54—49 (76:1)— 5— 2 h (284)— 8.
338—285=53—49 (76:1)— 4.
338—284=54—49 (76:1)— 5.
Here we have perfect regularity; and the words produced are the 1st, 2d, 3d,
4th and 5th of the text. And when we increase the root-number by 50 (4+50=54)
we have another similar series, showing the accurate adjustment of the text to the
Cipher. And observe what good service 338 minus 284=- 54 and 338 minus 285=
53 perform in this story. We have just seen that 53 and 54 minus the common
modifier, 30, produced "He is arrested at my suit, for by this heavenly ground I
tread;" and minus the other common modifier, 50, we have just got the words, Oh
my most worshipful Lord; and now we turn to 53 and 54 themselves, unmodified,
and we have the following sentence:
338—284 (79:1)— 54r— 56 & h (284)— 49.
338—285 (79:1)— 53— 3 b (285)— 50.
338—284 (79:1)— 54— 3 b (285)— 51.
333—284=54—2 h col. (285)— 52.
338—285=53
338—284=54
Here again the words follow in the regular order of the text, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53
and 54. And when we have exhausted the root-number 338, carried through the
second subdivision of 79:1 (284 and 285), we fall back on the first subdivision of the
same column, containing 31 and 32 words, (as we count from the end of one scene
or the beginning of another), with the following results, which hitch onto the sen-
tence worked out by the second subdivision:
338—32=307—50—256—199 (79:1)— 57— 2 b col.— 55. 79:1 into
1
79:2
Oh
2
79:2
my
3
79:2
most
4
79:2
worshipful
5
79:2
Lord,
49
79:2
he
50
79:2
hath
51
79:2
put
52
79:2
all
53
79:2
my
54
74:2
substance
338—31=307—50—257—199 (79:1)— 58— 2 b col.
56
79:1
that
836
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Page and
Column.
Word.
57
79:1
fat
58
79:1
belly.
43
79:2
me
44
79:2
out
45
79:2
of
46
79:2
house
47
79:2
and
48
79:2
home.
338—32=306—50=256—199 (79:1)— 57.
338—31 (79:1)— 807— 50— 257— 199 (79:1)— 68.
Here again the words follow in their regular order; the last sentence ended
with 54; this begins at 55 and runs regularly to 58.
And the widow further complains that the " divine William" hath —
338—32=306—162=144—50 (74:2)=94— 50 (76:1)=44
— 3d col.— 42. 42 79:2 eaten
338—31=307—162=145—50=95—50=45—
2 b col. =43.
338—32=306—162=144—50=94—50=44.
338—31=307—162=145—50=95—50=45.
338— 285=53— 5 b &h (284)=48— 2 b col.=46.
338—284=54—5 b & h (284)=49— 2 b col.— 47.
338— 285=53— ob & /*(284)— 48.
Here again the words follow the regular sequence of the text, 42, 43, 44, 45,
46, 47 and 48.
Surely if all this is accident it is the most miraculous series of accidents ever
seen in the world.
And the widow also says that the young spendthrift has borrowed and spent
all her money, and has come back from Wales in the ragged and woe-begone con-
dition which the Bishop described to Cecil: without shirts, stockings, cloak, etc.
And she grieves over the loss of her money; it is a case of " Oh my ducats ! Oh
my daughter ! "
338—65=273. 518—273=245+1=246.
338—64=274. 518—274=2444 1=245+6/; col—
338—65=273. 518—273=245+1=246+6 h col—
338— 64=274— 50=224+32=256— Zb col =253.
3o8— 64=274— 2 b (64)=272— 50=222+32=254.
338—65=273—50=223 + 32=255.
338—64=274—50=224+32=256.
338—65=274—49 (70 :1)=225+ 32=257.
The young scamp had wasted the widow's dower in riotous living, while she
was enamored of his youth and good looks. And she continues the plaintive
story of her wrongs:
338—57=281—50=231. 598—231=367+1=368.
338—64=274.
338—65=273—3 b col. =270.
338—64=274—1 h col. =273.
338— 65=273— 2 £ (65)=271— 3 b col.— 268.
338—64=274—3 b col.— 271.
338—65=273—1 h col.— 272.
338—50=288 (79:2)— 64=224.
338—50=288—65 (79:2)=223.
338—50—28^-64 (79:1)— 224.
295+2 £ (64)=297. 297
338—50=288—65 (79:1)— 223.
296+2 £ (64)=298. 298
246
79:1
For
251
79:1
a
252
79:1
100
253
79:1
mark
254
79:1
is
255
79:1
a
256
79:1
long
257
79:1
one.
518—224=294+1=
518—223=295+1=
518—224—294+1 =
518—223=295+1=
368
79:2
I
274
79:1
have
270
79:1
borne
273
79:1
and
268
79:1
borne
271
79:1
and
272
79:1
borne;
295
79:1
there
296
79:1
is
79:1
79:1 honesty
SWEET ANN II A THA WA Y.
837
Word.
Page and
Column.
299
79:1
in
300
79:1
such
301
79:1
dealing.
266
79:1
I
267
79:1
have
275
79:1
bin
276
79:1
fubbed
277
79:1
off
=278
79:1
and
280
r9:l
from
338—64=274—49=225. 518—225=293+1=294+
5// col. =299.
338—64=274—50=224. 518—224=294+1=295+
5 h col. =300.
338—65=273—50=223. 518—223=295+1=296+
5/; col. =301.
338—64=274—8 b col. =266.
338— 65=273— 2 b (65)=271— 4 b & h col. =267.
338—64=274—30=244. 518—244=274+ 1=275.
338—65=273—30=243. 518—243=275+1=276.
338—64=274—30=244—2 b (64)=242. 518—242=
276 + 1=277.
338—65=273—30=243—2 £—241. 518—241—277+
338—64=274—30=244. 518—244—274+ 1—275 -
5 h col. =280.
338—65=273—30=243. 518—243=275 +1—276 +
X>h col. =281.
338—64=274—30=244—2 b (64)=242. 518—242=
276+1=277+5 h col. 282.
338—65=273—30=243—2 b (65)— 241. 518—241=
+ 1=278+5 h col. =283.
338—30=308—50=258+31=289—5^ & h col. =284
338— 30=308— 50=258+32=290— 5 4 & h col. =285.
Observe the exquisite adjustment of the foregoing; the alternations are regular:
274, 273, 274, 273, 274, 273, 274, 273; and every word is 338 minus 64 or 65, minus
30. If there had not been those two bracketed words in 64 or 65 the words would
not have matched as they do. If there had not been the five hyphenated words in
the lower part of the column the sentence would have been imperfect. If the
second " fubbed off" had not been uniced into one word by a hyphen the Cipher
would have failed. And why are those words, "fubbed off," printed once with a
hyphen, and, two words above, printed again without a hyphen? And here we
have the very Warwickshire dialect the critics have been talking so much about: —
the cultured English spoken by " sweet Ann Hathaway." And observe another
detail: Some of the Cipher words given in previous sentences depended upon a
sixth hyphen in that second " fubbed-off." But if that hyphen instead of being there
had been, say, on the next line, between thought on, our sentence would have been
ruined. It is these delicate adjustments of means to ends that must carry convic-
tion to even the most skeptical.
And the fair Ann demands satisfaction, since —
277
281
79:1
this
282
7
79:1
day
•
283
79:1
to
284
79:1
that
285
79:1
day.
338— 65=273— 30=243— Sb col.— 285.
338—64=274—30=244—8 4 col.— 286.
338—65=273—30=243—2 b (65)— 241— 9 b & h col.
338—65=273—30 243—2 b (64)=241— 3 b col.—
338—64—274—30—244—2 b (64)— 242— 3 b col.—
338—65—273—30—243—3 b col.— 240.
338—65—273—30—243—2 b (64)— 241.
338—64=274—30=244—2 b (64)=242.
And she wants to have him indicted:
338—64 (79:2)— 274— 2 b (64)— 272— 50— 222.
235
236
232
238
239
240
241
242
222
79:1
79:1
79:1
79:1
79:1
79:1
79:1
79:1
79:1
My
case
is
openly
known
to
the
world.
To
^
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
338— 64(79:2)— 274.
338—64 (79:2)— 274— 30=244.
338— 64=274— 50—824— 2 b (64)=
=222—9 b & A col.
Page anJ
Word. Column.
274 79:1 have
244 79:1 him
213 79:1 indicted.
The word indicted does not appear anywhere in its proper form in the Plays.
In this instance it is given as indited (probably in obedience to the requirements of
the Cipher, as it may be used in the sense of " written," in some other part of the
story); and it is also found in Othello, iii, 4, spelled again indited. But only twice,
in any form of spelling, meaning indicted, is it found in all the Plays. Yet here it
is with arrested, suit, warrant, etc., just where the Cipher narrative needs it.
The " poet" " deniges " the soft impeachment and tries to brave it out, some-
what as Falstaff does in the play. Whereupon Ann replies, in the words of
Mistress Quickley: Didst thou not —
338—31=307. 598—307=291 + 1=292.
338—32=306. 598— 306=292 +1=293.
338—31=307. 598— 307=291 + 1=292 +2 A col.—
338—32=306—50=256—58 (80:1)=198— 2 h col.—
338—65=273—2 b (65)— 271— 57 (80:1)— 214—
Ub& A col. =200.
338—64=274—2 b (64)=272— 57 (80:1)— 215—
14 b & A col. =201.
338—65=273—2 b (65)=271— 57 (80:1)= 214—
12 b col.=202.
338—32=306—5 b (32)— 801.
338—31=307—5 b (31)— 302.
338—31=307. 598—307=291 + 1=292+11 b & A=
338—32=306—2/; col. =304.
338—31=307—2// col. =305.
338—32=306.
338—31=307.
338—31=307—30=277—50=227. 534—227=307+ U
338—32=306—30=276—50=226. 534-226=308+1=
338-49=289. 598—289=309+1=310.
338-50=288. 598—288=310+1=311.
338—50=288. 598—288=310+1=311 + 1 A col.—
338—64=274—2 b (64)=272— 57 (80:1)— 215—
12 b col. =203.
338—65=273—2 b (65)=271— 57 (80:1)=214.
338—64=274—2 b (64)=272— 57 (80:1)=215.
338—65=273—57 (80:1)— 216.
338—64=274—57 (80:1)— 217.
338—49=289—57=232—14 £—218.
338—65=273—2 b (65)— 271— 50=221— 2 A col.— 219.
338— 64=274— 2 b (64)=272— 50=222— 2 A col.— 220.
338-65—273—2 b (65)— 271 .
338—64=274—2 b (64)— 272— 50=222.
338—65 (79:2)— 273— 50— 228.
338—64=274—50—244
338—22 b & //— 316— 32=284— 50— 234— 2 A col.—
338— 22 £ & £—316—31—285—50—235—2 A col.—
292
79:2
kiss
293
79:2
me
294
79:2
and
196
79:2
swear
200
79:2
to
201
79:2
marry
202
79:2
me ?
301
79:2
I
302
79:2
put
303
79:2
thee
304
79:2
now
305
79:2
to
306
79:2
thy
307
79:2
Book-oath;
=308
79:2
deny
=309
79:2
it
310
79:2
if
311
79:2
thou
312
79:2
canst.
203
79:2
And
214
79:2
did
215
79:2
not
216
79:2
goodwife
217
79:2
Keech,
218
79:2
the
219
79:2
butcher's
220
79:2
wife,
271
79:2
come
222
79:2
in
223
79:2
then
244
79:2
and
232
79:2
borrow
233
79:2
a
SWEET ANN HA THA WA Y.
839
533—285=248+1=
533—284=249+1=
533—285=248+1=
533—284=249 + 1=
534-285=249+1=
251
252
338—22 3 & 3=316—32=284—50=234.
388—22 b & 3=316—31=285—50=235.
338—32=306— 5 b (32)=3()1— 57=244— 2 h col.
338— 31=307— 5 b (32)=302— 57=245— 2 3 col.-
338—32=306—5 b (32)=301— 57=244.
338— 32=307— 5 £ (31)=302— 57=245.
338—32=306—58 (80:1)=248— 2 3 col. =246.
338—32=306—57 (80:1)=249— 2 3 col. =247.
338—32=506—58=248.
338—223 & 3=316—31=285.
338— 22 3 & 3=316—32=284.
338—22 b & 3=316—31=285.
249+2 3 col. =251.
338—22 b & 3=316—32=284.
250+2 3 col. =252.
338—223 & 3=316—31=285.
250+1=251+2 3 col.=253.
338—65=273—14 b col.=259— 23(65)=257— 2 3 col.-
338—64=274— 14 3 col. =260— 23 (64)=258— 2 3 col..
338—65=273—14 3 col.=259— 23 (65)=257.
338—64=274—14 b col.=260— 2 3 (64)=258.
338—65=273—143 col —259.
338—64=274—143 col. =260.
338—31=307—30=277—143 col.=263— 2 3 col.=
338—32=306—30=276—143 col.=262.
338—31=307—30=277—14 3 col.=263.
And then Ann tells how Will desired her to —
338—65=273—2 3 (65)=271.
338—64=274—2 3 (64)=272.
338—65=273.
338—64=274.
338—31=307—30=277—2 3 col.=275.
338—32=306—30=276.
338—31=307—30=277.
338—32=306—50=256. 533—256=277+1=
338—57 (79:1)=281— 2 h col.— 379.
338—56 (79:1)=282— 2 3 col.=280.
338—57=281.
338—56=282.
338—65=273—2 3 (65)=271— 14 3=257.
338—32=306—22 b& h col =284.
338—31=307—22 3 & 3=285.
338—32=306—20 3 col. =286.
338—31=307—20 b col.— 887.
And observe another evidence of the adjustment of the
eted and hyphenated words to the necessities of tl
found the word call with the root-number 316 [338
Page and
Column.
Word.
234
79:2
mess
235
79:2
of
242
79:2
a
243
79:2
dish
244
79:2
of
245
79:2
prawns,
246
79:2
whereby
247
79:2
thou
248
79:2
didst
249
79:2
desire
250
79:2
to
:9:\
79:2
eat
253
79:2
I
^255
79:2
told
=256
79:2
thee
257
79:2
they
258
79:2
were
279
79:2
ill
260
79:2
for
261
79:2
a
262
79:2
green
263
79:2
wound.
271
79:2
Be
272
79:2
no
273
79:2
more
274
79:2
familiar
275
79:2
with
276
79:2 •
such
277
79:2
poor
278
79:2
people,
279
79:2
saying
280
79:2
that
281
79:2
ere
282
79:2
long
257
79:2
they
284
79:2
should
285
79:2
call
286
79:2
me
287
79:2
madam.
Df the
number
of the brack-
ipher.
A little
while ago we
lb & h (i67)=3i
6] thus:
316—31=285.
285
79:2
call.
840 THE CIPHER NAUR A TIVE.
And now we have the same word call coming out again at the touch of 338.
Why ? Because there are precisely 22 bracketed and hyphenated words in the
column (79:2) above the word call; and the 22 b & A in the column exactly equalize
the 22 b & A in the 167 in 74:2 ! Hence we have this result:
Word.
285
Page and
Column.
79:2
call
285
79:2
call
505—167=338—22 b & A (167) — 316 — 31=285.
505—167=338—31=307—22 b & A in col.— 285.
Another conundrum for the men who believe the sun is an accidental bonfire,
and man a fortuitous congregation of atoms !
There are a few points I will ask the reader to note: First, the many sAes and
hers in this story. We could not have found these in the Cipher story in act i,
for that entire act of four scenes does not contain a single she and but one her.
And this illustrates that we cannot make everything out of anything. Again, I
would note the great many a's: "a 100," "tfdish," "a green wound," "a widow,"
"a pretty face," "a fair complexion," "a high color," "a gross and vulgar
woman," '* a loud tongue," etc. We find nothing like this in the preceding chap-
ters, but where it was needed we have it.
Some of the words used in the foregoing sentences are quite rare. TArong is
found bat twice in this play, and but seven times besides in all the Historical Plays.
People occurs but three times in this play. Arrested appears but this time in this
play, and but ten times in all the Plays. Suit is found but four times in this play.
Heavenly occurs but twice in this play, and this is the only time tread is found in
this play. And thus we see that even so little a matter as Ann Hathaway's oath
could not be constructed without bringing together this array of unusual words.
It may be objected that the wife of Shakspere would not be called madam under
any circumstances; but it must be remembered that Shakspere's father had been the
chief officer of the town; and Shakspere's effort to obtain a coat-of-arms shows
that he had a lively sense of all the dignities belonging to his family, — and even
of some that did not belong to it. In 1571, Shakspere's father was made chief
alderman, and therefore he is entered on the parish records as "magistri Shak-
spere," and thereafter he is no longer " Johannis Shakspere," but " Mr. John Shak-
spere." Indeed, a writer on Shakspere's life has remarked that it must have been
quite an elevation for Ann Hathaway to have married "the high-bailiff's son."
And Will's father, John Shakspere, is indignant at the whole business. He
thinks his son has been entrapped by the widow, and that she "is no better than
she should be." And he calls his son sundry pet names:
338—31=307—30=277+32=309. 309 79:1 ass
338. 338 80:1 fool
He says:
338—30=308—31 (79:. ,=277. 598—277=321 + 1
=322.
338—162=176—1 4=175.
338—30=308—31=277.
338—161=177—4// col. =173.
And that she was the —
338—30=308-31 (79:1)— 277. 598—277=321 + 1=
322+9/; col =331. 331 79:2 eldest
322
79:2
She
175
77:1
was
277
78:1
twenty-
173
78:2
five;
SWEET ANN HA THA WA Y.
841
338—30=308—285 (70:1)— 28. 598—23=575+1=
Word.
576
Page and
Column.
79:2
by
338_30=308—284 (79:1)— 24.
24
78:1
seven
338—50=288—162=126. 523— 12C— 397+ 1—398
398
80:1
years.
Is it not remarkable, — if this is all accident, — that we have here the very words
to tell the real age of Shakspere's wife, at the time of her marriage, and the pre-
cise number of years' difference between her age and that of her husband? And
this is the only time "eldest" occitrs in this play? And it occurs just where it is
needed. And seven is found but twice in this play. Years is disguised in the word
'ears, the pronunciation of the period slurring thejj' where it began a word.
And the matter was much laughed over among the neighbors. It was —
338-49=289—161=128. 462—128=334+1= 335
338—50=288—162=126. 126
338—200=138. 468—138=330+1=331. 331
338—50=288—161=127. 462—127=335+1=336+
5/; col. =341. 341 78:2 many
78:2
the
78:2
subject
78:1
of
128
330
ie
472
79:2 rough
78:1 surmise.
78:1
77:2
boy.
not
338—49=289—161=128.
338—199 (79:1)=139. 468—139=329+1=330.
For he was but a boy:
338—32=306—285 (79:1)=21— 5 6 & h (285)=16.
And, in the opinions of the neighbors, it did —
338—199=139. 610—139=471+1=472.
338—31=307—285 (79:1)=22— 3 £(285)=19. 162—19
=143+ 1=144.
338— 32=306— 285 (79:1)=21— 5 £ (285)=16. 162—16=
338—58 (80:1)=280.
he
338—30=308—31=277—5 b (31)=272.
338—30=308—31=277—4 h col. =273.
her from the
538—161=177. 523—177=346+1=347.
of
338— 199=139— 5 h (199)=134— 2 b col. =132. 132 77:2 virtue.
This is the only time reasonable is found in this play, and this is the only time
virtue occurs in this act; and the same is true of seem; this is the only time surmise
is found in this play; and this is the only time road-way appears in all the Plays !
But debt was a serious business in that day, for it meant imprisonment for years,
with, oftentimes, no food provided for the unhappy wretches, who had to depend for
life upon the charity of such passers-by as might be good enough to fill the basket
lowered to them from the prison window. And so, with that threat hanging over
him, " the bard of Avon " accepted the sweet bonds of matrimony. The Bishop —
338—22 b & /;=316— 32-=284— 5 b (32)— 279— 4 h col.=275 78:2 forces
338— 22 £ & //=316— 32=284— 50=234— 32 b & h col.—
202. 461—202=259+1=260. 260 78:2 him
338— 22 £ & //=316— 32=284— 50=234— 31 b & h col.=203 78:2 perforce
144
78:1
seem
=146
78:1
reasonable
280
79:2
that
272
78:1
should
273
78:2
lead
347
80:2
road-way
842
THE CIPHER NARK A TIVE.
to marry; no great hardship, perhaps, for he had, we are told,
338—22// & /;=316— 31=285— 5=280— 199 (79:1)=
338—22 b & A— 816— 32— 884— 5 ^=279—199 (79:1)=
338— 22 £ & /;=316— 31=285— 5 £-=280—199=81.
162—81=81 + 1=82.
338— 22 b & //=316— 32=284— 5 /;=279— 199 (79:1)=
80. 162—80=82+1=83.
338- 22 b & h— 816— 81— 885— 5 £=280—50=230—58
(80:1)— 172. 598— 172=426 +1=427+ 6 £ col.—
ford.
Page and
Column.
81
78:1
sworn
80 .
78:1
weekly
82
83
78:1
:8:1
to
marry
433
»:2
her.
And observe here an astonishing fact: this is the only time the word " weekly"
appears in all the nine hundred thousand words of the Plays ! And sworn appears
but this once in twenty-nine columns of this play, and but two other times in all
the play. And see how precisely they move together. To even construct so
simple a phrase of five words as the foregoing, the cryptologist had to import
one word never used before or afterward in the Plays, and another word used but
three times in this play. And then observe that sentence, " sworn weekly to
marry her." Every word is 505 — 167=338 — 22b & ^=316 — 31 or 32 (regularly
alternated) minus the 5 b in 31 or 32. And four of the words are found in that
same fragment of a scene at the top of 78:1, and two of them are 80 and 81 down
from the top of the fragment, and two of them are 80 and 81 up from the end of
the fragment !
And then we have the whole story of the precipitate marriage. It must take
place at once, or " the divine William " might fly again to Wales; but it was neces-
sary to publish a notice of the bans three times in advance of the marriage:
505—167=338—50 (74:2)— 288— 31 (79:1)— 257.
462—25 7—205 + 1 =206.
505—167=338—32 (79:1)— 306.
505— 167— 338— 50=288— 32(79 :1)=256.
505—167=338—32 (79:1)— 306— 5 b (32)— 301.
505—167=338-50—288—31 (79:1)=257— 5 b (31)—
252. 462—252=210+1—211+5 b col.— 216.
505—167=338—30—308—32 (79:1)— 276. 462—276
=186+1—187+/;=
505—167=338—162=176.
505— 167— 33 S— 50=288— 32 (79:1)— 256. 468—256
—212 + 1=213.
206
78:2
Must
306
78:2
publish
256
78:2
the
301
78:2
notice
216
(187)
176
78:2
78:2
79:2
three
times
in
213
78:1 advance.
The word publish is quite rare: itis found but eight times in all the Plays,,
and but once in this play; and notice is comparatively rare: it occurs but ten times
in all the Histories, and but once in this play; and advance is also a rare word: it is
found but twelve times in all the Histories, and but this time in this play ! Here,
then, are three words, publish — notice — advance — (together with the compara-
tively rare words three — times) — not found anywhere else among all the many thou-
sand words of this play; and yet all brought together on the same page (page 78),,
and all tied together in a bunch by the same number:
338—31=
338—32=
338—32=
338—31—
78:2
Must
78:2
publish
78:2
the
78:2
notice
Page and
Column.
78:2
three
78:2
times
78:2
advance.
S WEE T ANN HA THA WA Y. 843
338—31=
338—32=
338—32=
And, more than all this, these significant words are thus bunched together,
just where we have found all the other significant words that tell the story of Shak-
spere's marriage ! And, historically, we know that the marriage was peculiar, to
say the least; and that a bond had to be given to avoid the necessity of calling the
bans more than once.
And we have here, also, the whole story of the bond. Here is the bond:
338— 146=192— 3 /> (146)=189. 457—189=268+
1=269+6 h col. =275. 275 76:2 bond
John Shakspere offered to go upon it, but he was not considered sufficient, and
at last two friends of the family are found; and sweet Ann Hathaway enters into
history, to be sung by poets and idealized by fools.
CHAPTER XIX.
BA CON 0 VER WHELMED.
News fitting to the night,
Black, fearful, comfortless and horrible.
King John, v, 6.
MY publishers write me that the book now contains over 900
pages, and that the edition de luxe " looks like a Chicago Direct-
ory ! " And, therefore, fascinating as the story is to me, I must con-
dense the remainder of it into the smallest possible compass. I regret
to leave the history of Shakspere unfinished. I have worked out frag-
ments of it all the way through to the end of 2d Henry IV. It gives
in detail his conversations with his father, his dread of being
hanged, his flight to London, the poverty of his wife and children,
his own wretchedness and distress in the metropolis, his begging
on the streets in mid-winter with the tears frozen on his face; his
being relieved by Henslow. I will try to give fragments from
these narratives, if I have time and space after finishing the story
announced in the prospectus of my publishers; if not, the particu-
lars will have to go into some future work.
We turn back to the beginning of scene third (76:1), and we
have to use now a Cipher-number different from that 505 — 167=
338 which has given us so much of the foregoing narrative; but
even with so different a number we shall find the text responding
with sentences just as significant as those already given. And the
reader will note that, although we go over the same ground which
gave us the Shakspere story, derived from 33%, we flush always an
entirely different covey of game, in the shape of Cipher words.
Bacon says:
COS— 29 (74:2)=476— 457=19— 9 b col.=10.
505—449=56—5 h (449)=51 . 603—51=552 + 1=
505—146 (76:2)=359. 498—359=139+1=140.
844
Page and
Column.
Word.
10
76:1
On
553
76:2
hearing
140
76:1
this
BACON OVERWHELMED
845
Word.
Page and
Column.
208
r5:2 heavy
505—161=344—30 (74:2)— 314. 508—314=194+1=
195+13 £=208.
505—161=344—284=60—10 b (284)=50. 248—50
=198+1=199+2 b & h col.— 801.
505—449=56—50=6. 457—6=451 +1=452.
505—49=456—146=310. 498—310=188+1=189.
505—449=56—1 h col.— 55.
505—49 (76:1)— 456— 162 (78:1)— 294.
505—449=56—5 h (440)— 51.
505—29 (74:2)=476— 447=29. 508—29=479+1=
505—29 (74:2)=476. 498—476=22+ 1= 23.
505—449=56—50=6.
505—49=456—1 46=31 0—50 (76 : 1)— 260 .
505—49 (76:1)=456— 448 (76:1)— 8— 5 h (448)— 3.
603—3=600+1=601.
505—146=359—305 (78:1)— 54.
505— 49(76:1)— 456. 456—284 (74:1)— 172.
505—50=455—146—309—3 b (146)=306. 468—306
=162+1=163+20 b & b col.— 183.
505—449—56.
506—449—56. 508—56=452+1=453.
505—146=359. 448—359=89+1=90+3 h col. =93.
505—146—359—49=310. 448—310—138+1—139.
505—146=359—161=198. 610—198=412+1—413
+11 h & A— 424.
505—49—450—30=426. 462—426—36+1=37+
21 b col. =58.
This is the only time overwhelmed appears in this play; it is found but four
other times in all the Plays ! Flood occurs but three times in this play; plainly
appears but twice in this play, and but six times besides in all the Histories.
Perils is found but twice in this play, and but once besides in all the Histories;
and but four times besides in all the Plays ! And this is the only time "situation "
is found in all the Plays !
505—146=359. 577—359—218+1=219.
505—145—360. 448—360—88—1—89.
505—145—360—3 b (145)— 357.
505—146=359—3 b (145)— 356.
505—49=456.
505—145—360—305=55—2 h col. =53.
505— £0=475— 447 (75:1)— 28.
505— 30=475— 161— 314- -247 (74:2)— 67— 7 b col.—
505—145=360—50=31 ). 498—310—188+1—189.
505—146=359. 498—359—139+1=140.
Here we have another combination of Shakst-spur, besides the fourteen given
elsewhere; and here we have another mode of counting, besides the ones already
given, whereby apprehended is reached. And this is the only time apprehended appears
in this play, while Shak'st is found but twice: once here, and once in The Winter' s
Tale, iv, 3; and while the Concordance gives the word very properly in both
instances, as shakest, the Folio gives it in both instances as shak'st; because shak'st
201
74:2
news
452
76:2
I
189
76:1
■was
55
76:2
o'erwhelmed
294
77:2
with
51
76:2
a
480
75:2
flood
23
76:1
of
6
75:2
fears
260
75:2
and
601
76:2
shame.
54
77:2
I
172
74:2
saw
183
78:1
plainly
56
76:2
all
453
75:2
the
93
76:1
perils
139
76:1
of
424
77:2
my
56
78:2
situation.
219
77:1
I
89
77:1
knew
357
77:1
very
356
77:1
well
456
75:2
that
53
77:2
if
28
75:2
Shak'st I
60
75:1
spur \
189
76:1
was
(140)
76:1 a
pprehendec
846
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
could be combined here with spur, and with the same word spur in The Winter's
Tale (iv, i) to give the sound of Shakespere's name, while shakest could not ! Thus
we find everywhere evidences of the Cipher.
505—146=359. 448—359=89+1=90.
505—145=360—193=167.
505—449=56—50 (74:2)=6— 5 h (449)=1. 603—1=
602+1=603.
505—146=359—50=309—4 h col.=305.
505—449=56—50=6.
505—449=56. 162—56=106+1=
505—146=359.
505—146=359—305=54—2 h col. =52.
505—146=359—3 b (146)=356— 30=326.
505—146=359—161=198—10 b col.=188.
; 05—146=359—16 :=197. 610—197=418+1=414
+-11 ^ & h col. =425.
505—145=360. 498—360=138+1=139.
:.05— 145=360— 30=330. 498—330=168+1=169.
.1 05—146=359—30=329—50=279—248=31 . 284—
31=253+1=254.
505—146=359—304 (78:1)=55— 20 b & h (304)=35.
505—146=359—304 (78:1)=55— 20 b & h (304)=35.
610—35=575+1=576+2 h col.=578.
505—146=359—305 (78:1)=54— 20 b & h (305)=34.
610—34=576+1=577+2 h col.=579.
505—146=359-29 (74:2)=330— 3 b (146)— 827.
498—327=171 + 1=172+10 b & h col. =182.
505— 49=456— 50=406— 304 (78 :2)=102.
What contempt for the corpulent "bard of Avon" is expressed in that phrase,
"he would be as clay, — or rather tallow, — in the hands of," etc.! This is the only
time fox occurs in this play; and this is the only time crafty is found in this play;
and this is the only time tallozu is found in this play, and it occurs but five other
times in all the Plays ! And this is the only time clay appears in this play. And
this is the only time seas is found in this play. So that in this short sentence there
are five words found nowhere else in this play; in other words, this sentence could
not be constructed anywhere else in this play; nor would all these words come out
at the summons of any other number. And herein we have also still another com-
bination forming the name of Cecil.
The story proceeds:
Page and
Word.
Column.
90
76:1
he
167
76:2
will
603
76:2
be
305
77:1
as
6
76:2
clay,
107
78:1
or
359
77:1
rather
52
77:2
tallow,
326
76:1
in
188
77:2
the
425
77:2
hands
139
76:1
of
169
76:1
that
254
74:1
crafty
35
77:2
fox,
578
77:2
my
579
77:2
cousin
182
76:1
Seas \
102
77:2
ill. S
505—146=359—3 b (146)=356— 50=306.
505—145=360—50=310. 498—310=188+1
.1 ( ) 5—1 46=359—50=309
189.
498—309=189+1=190.
505—145=360—50=310. 498—310=188+1=189+
2/i col. =191.
505—146=359—50=309. 498—309=189+1=190
+2 h col. =192.
505—145=360—50=310—50 (76:1)=260. 508—260
=248+1=249.
306
189
190
191
192
249
77:1
76:1
76:1
76:1
76:1
75:2
It
was
ten
to
the
BA CON O VER WHELMED.
847
505—146=359—50=309. 577—309=268+1=269.
505—146=359—50=309—10 b & h col. =299.
505—146=359—3 b (146)=356— 193 (75:1)=163— 49
=114— l/;col.=113.
505—146=359-50=309—11 b col.=298.
505—146=359—30=329—162=167. 603—167=436
+ 1=437+3 b col. =440.
505—30=475—193=282—49=233—22 b & // col.—
505— 145=360— 248=112— 22 £ (248)=90— 10 b col.=
505—145=360—50=310—4 b col.— 306.
505— 145=360— 3 b (146)=357. 603—357=246+1=
247+6 //col. =253.
505—145=360—248=112. 284—112=172+1=173.
505—146=359—3 b (146)=356— 161=195. 603—195
=408+1=409+3 b coi =412.
505— 145=360— 50=310 .
505— 146=359— 163=196— 13 b & h col.=183.
503—146=359—161=198—10 b col. =188.
503—146=359—193=166—15 b & A— 151. 284—151
=133+1=134.
505—146=359—163=196.
505—146=359—162 (78:1)=197— 10 b col.=187.
505—146=359—3 b (146)=356.
505—146=359—193 (75:1)=166— 15 £ & h (198)— 151.
508—151=357+1=358+6^ col. =364.
Word.
Page and
Column.
269
77:1
whorson
299
76:2
knave
113
76:2
will
298
77:1
tell
440
76:2
in
211
75:2
self
80
74:1
defence
306
76:2
and
253
76:2
for
173
74:1
his
412
76:2
own
310
76:2
security
183
77:2
that
188
77:2
the
134
74:1
play
196
77:2
of
187
77:^
Measure
356
77:2
for
364
i5:2 Measure —
187
77:2
Measure
35
79:2
for
364
75:2
Measure.
See how precisely these words come out by the same root-number.
This play of Measure for Measure, and its irreligious tendencies, are alluded to
in another part of the Cipher narrative, growing out of 505 — 167=338. I have
stated on page 762, ante, that Cecil gave this play, and the play of Richard II.,
to the Bishop of Worcester to " anatomize." And here we have the name of the
play again by a different root-number from the above:
338— 30=308— 50=258— 57 (79:1 )=201— 14
14 b & A col. =187.
338— 30=308— 50=258— 163=95— 58(79 :1)=37—
2 b col. =35.
338—30=308—163=145. 508—145=363+1=364.
Consider the careful adjustment that was necessary to make these words come
out by these two different kinds of counting from the same starting-point ! Notice
that 197 down 77:2 produces Measure, and 201 down the same column, by the
arrangement of brackets and hyphens, produces the same word Measure; and 151
up 75:2 produces Measure, and 145 up the same column produces the same word,
Measure. If there had been a single bracket or hyphen more or less in either one
of these four countings, the Cipher would have failed to produce, two different
times, by two different numbers, the name of the play Measure for Measure !
And the Bishop said, — speaking of this last Measure for Measure and Richard
the Second, — that he believed there were utterances in both hostile to the Christian
religion. I have shown, on pages 208 and 209, ante, what those utterances were.
And here we have the name of Richard the Second, growing, like the last Measure
for Measure, out of 505 — 167=338. The Bishop speaks of —
848
THE CIPHER NAKRA TIVE.
Page and
Word. Column.
338—30=308—49=259—162=97—32=65—58 (80:1)= 7 77:2
338—30=308—49=259—162=97—32=65—58=7+
461=468. 468 80:2 noble
338—30=308—49=259—162=97—32=65—58=7. 7 80:2 composition,
338—30=308—49=259—161=98—31=67—5 b (31)=
62—2 h col. =60.
338—30=308-49 259—161=98—31=67—5 *— 62.
489—62=427+1=428.
338—30=308—49=259—162 97—31=66.
338-30=308+162=470—468 (col. 78:1)=2. 462—2
—460+1—461.
338—30=308—163=145—31=114—5 b (31)=109—
65 (79:2)=44. 462—44=418+1=419.
338—30=308—49=259—162=97—2 h col =95.
338—30=308—163=145—31=114. 523—114=409 +
1—410+2 £—412.
And the Bishop says, after reading these Plays, that he (I) —
338—50=288—49 (76:1)=239— 162=77. 162—77=
85+1=86. 86 78:1
338—50=288—49 (76:1)=239— 162=77— 32=45. 45 78:2
338—50=288—50 (76:1)=238— 162=76— 62 (80:1)=14.
468
7
60
428
66
461
78:2
81:1
79:2
78:2
that
the
play
of
King
419
78:2
Richard
95
78:2
the
412
80:2
Second,
perceived
much
173
295
186—14=172+1=173.
338— 50=288— 49 (76:1)=239— 162=77— 32=45.
339—45=294+1=295.
338—50=288—49=239—162=77—32=45. 162—45
=117+1=118.
338— 50=288— 49=239— 162=77— 4 b & A col. =73.
333—50=288—49=239—162=77—31=46. 163+46=1
338—50=288—50=238—162=76—31=45—2 b col.—
338—50=288—49=239—162=77. 32+77=109.
338—50=288—49=239—162=77.
338—50=288—50=238—162=76—62 (80:2)=14— 4
£&/;(62)=10. 186—10=176+1=177. 177
338—49=289—30=259—162=97. 610—97=513+
1=514+2 /z=516.
338—50=288—49=239—162=77—57 (80:1)=20+185=
338—50=288—50=238—162=76. 468—76=392+1
=393+1 /,=394.
338—50=288—49=239. 77—32=45.
338—30=308—49=259—162=97—2 h col. =95.
338—50=288—49 (76 :1)=239— 163=76. 523—76=
447+1=448+2/5 col. =450.
338—30=308—163=145—31=114. 449—114=335
+ 1=336.
81:2
these
118
78:1
plays
73
81:1
that
=209
78-1
satisfied
43
79:2
me
109
79:1
that
77
77:2
his
81:2 purpose
516
77:2
is
=205
81:2
the
394
78:1
destruction
45
79:2
of
95
78:2
the
450
80:2
Christian
336
76:1
religion.
And the Bishop came to the conclusion that these —
338—1 h (167)=337— 30=307— 49=258— 31 (79:1)=
227— 5 b (31)=222+ 162=384. 384
338— l=337r-30=307— 49=258— 31=227. 227
76:1
78:1
great
and
BACON OVERWHELMED.
849
338—1=337—30=307—49=258—31 (79:1)=227— 5 b
(31)=222. 162+222=384—11 b & h col. =373.
338—1 (76:2)=337— 304 (78:1)=33— 20 b & h (304)=
13. 462—13=449+1=450.
338— 1(76:2)=337— 50=28"— 49=238— 161=77— 49
=28+458=486.
are the work of a gentleman who is at heart a pagan:
338—50=288—49=239—162=77.
338—30=308—50=258—162=96—56 (79:l)-=40.
598—40=558 + 1=559.
338—50=288—49=239—163=76—62 (80:2)=14
—1 h col. =13.
Word.
Page and
Column.
373
78:1
much
450
78:2
admired
486
76:2
Plays
77
559
13
78:2
work
(9:2 gentleman
81:2
pagan
Observe how many significant words come out of the same numbers: 77, or
its alternate, 76, produces perceived — much — in — these — plays — that satisfied me
that his put pose — destruction — of — Christian — work — pagan; while 96 and 97,
which are just 20 more than 76 and 77, due to the fact that between the common
modifiers, 30 and 50, there is a difference of 20, produced — noble — composition
— gentleman.
And observe the remarkable character of the words growing out of these roots.
Composition is a rare word; it is found but once in this play, and but fourteen times
besides in all the Plays. Perceived is found but once in this play, and but twelve
times besides in all the Plays. And satisfied appears but once in this play, and but
thirteen times besides in all the Histories. And destruction is found but once in
this play, and but thirteen times besides in all the Histories. And this is the only
time pagan is found in this play, and it is found but eight, times besides in all the
Plays. And Christian is found but twice in this play. And this is the only time
religion is found in this play. Let the reader compare the number of times the
word second appears in this play with the number of times it is found in Much Ado,
Love's Labor Lost, Twelfth Night, etc. It is not found at all in several of the
Plays. And this is the only time admired occurs in this play, and it is found but
twice besides in all the Histories. And Measure occurs but once in this play
besides the cwo instances given above. And not only do these remarkable
words grow out of the same primary root-number, but out of the same modification
of the primary root-number, and even out of the same terminal Cipher-number!
And almost every word is found nowhere else in this play, and rarely anywhere
else in all the Plays !
And the Bishop praises the literary merit of the Plays highly. He says the
language is most choice —
338—50=288-49=239. 284—239=45+1=46. 46 74:1 Language
338— 30=308— 163=145— 31=114— 57 (80:1)=57.
523—57=466+1=467. 467 80:2 most
338—50=288—50=238. 468—238=230+1=231 +
15 b & // col.=246. 246 78:1 choice.
And that in this particular they have had —
338—31=307—143 (318 d 79:1)=164. 462—164=298
+1=299
338—31=307-
•143=164.
299
164
78:2
78:2
No
equal
85o
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Word.
338—49=289—30=259—162=97. 462—97=365+1=366
338—50=288—49=239—162=77. 420—77=343+1
—844+64 col.— 350. 350
338—50=288—49=239—162=77—64 '79:2)=13—
1 h col. =12. 12
338—50=288—49=239—162=77. 77
338—50=288—49=239—162=77 + 185=262—
2/; col. =260. 260
338—50=288—49=239—162=77—32=45. 45
338—50=288—49=239—162=77—32=45—5 b (32)=
40. 339—40=299+1=300+2=302. 302
Page and
Column.
78:2
81:2 England
77:1
79:2
81:2
79:2
80:1
since
the
time
of
Gower.
Observe again how many significant words here grow out of 77, besides the
long catalogue already produced by it.
It must be remembered that in 1597 the literature of England, in its own
tongue, was very limited. The poet alluded to, John Gower, was born in York-
shire about 1325, and died in 1408. His Confessio Amantis was written in English
in eight books, it is said, at the request of Richard II. Hallam says of him: " He
is always sensible, polished, perspicuous, and not prosaic, in the worst sense of the
word." He seems to have been a favorite of the Bishop. And the Bishop reit-
erates his conviction, after reading these Plays, that Shakspere has not the power
of brain to have produced them :
505—167=338—49=289-32=257. 468-257=210
+ 1=211 + 12/; col. =223. 223 78:1 enough
505—167=338—49=289—32=257. 577—257=320
+ 1=321. 321 77:1 brain
505— 167=338— 49=289— 3!i=258. 468—258=210
+ 1=211 + 15^ & h col. =226. 226 78:1 power.
Observe how precisely these significant words match; they come out of the
same number; except that 31 and 32 alternate, as in other examples given hereto-
fore.
And the Bishop also reads the play of Richard the Third. Here we have it:
338—50=288—50=238. 468—238=230+1=
338—50=288—50=238—31 (79:1)=207— 163=44.
462—44=418+1=419.
338—50=288—50=238.
338—50=288—30=258. 462—258=204+1=205.
231
78.1
King
419
78:2
Richard
238
76:1
the
205
78:2
Third.
But let us recur to the story of Bacon's feelings when he heard the bad news.
He says he knew that if Shakspere was taken and he confessed the truth (as he
believed he would), he was a ruined man. In that event —
505—50=455—31=424. 462— 424=38 + 1=39 +
5 h col. =44. 44 78:2 All
505—30=475—146=329. 447—329=118+1=119+
Mb col. =130. 130 75:1 my
505—30=475—146=329—3 b (146)=326. 462—326
=136+1=137+4 // col.— 141. 141 78:2 hopes
BACON OVERWHELMED.
851
Word.
505—145=360. 498—360=138+1=139. 139
505—146=359—3 b (146)— 856. 356
505—31=474. 603—474=129 + 1=130. 130
505—49=456—161=295. 603—295=308+1=309+
10£a h col.— 819. 319
505— 30=475— 50 (76:1 )=425. 508—425=83+1=84. 84
505—449=56—14 b (449)=42- 1 4—41 . 41
505— 146=359— 3 b (146)— 356. 498—356=142+1= 143
505—161=344—31 b& h col.— 318. 313
505—146=359—3 £(146)— 356. 448—356=92+1=
93+14 b&/i col. =107. 107
505—146=359—32 (79:1)=327— 3 b (146)=324— 50= 274
Page and
Column.
76:1
76:1
76:2
76:2
75:2
76:2
76:1
78:2
r6:l
of
rising
to
high
office
in
the
Common-
wealth
were
blasted.
And again observe how rare some of these words are: This is the only time
rising is found in this play, and it occurs but thirteen times besides in all the Plays !
Commonwealth is lound three times in this play, and but nine times in all the Com-
edies, and but four times in all the Tragedies. Blasted appears but once in this
play, and but nine times besides in all the Plays ! Hopes is found but three other
times in this play.
And Bacon says:
505—31=474. 474 76:2 I
505— 30=475— 58 (80:1)— 417. 417 80:2 am
505—30=475—58=417. 523— 41 7=106+. =107. 107 80:2 not
505-32=473—58—415. 498—415=83+1=84+
• 11/; col. =95. 95 76:1 an
505— 81— 474— 4 h col.— 470. 470 79:2 impudent
505—31=474. 474 79:2 man
505—82=473—58=415. 415 80:2 that
505—30=475. . 475 79:2 will
505—49=456—50—406. 603—406—197+1—198. 198 76:2 face
505—32—473—50=423—58 (80 : 1)— 365 . 603—365
—288+1—239. 239 76:2 out
505—49—456. 603—456—147+1—148. 148 76:2 a
505— 58 (80:1)— 447. 462—447—15+1=16+24=40. 40 80:2 disgrace
505— 31=474— 27/; & A col. =447. 447 79:2 with
505—32=473—30=443—57—386—30 b & h col.— 356. 356 80:2 an
505— 32=473— 50=423— 23 b col.— 400. (400) 79:2 impudent
505— 49=456. 603— 456— 147+1— 148+16 £ & h col— 164 76:2 cheek,
505—31—474—50=424—26 b & h col. =398. 398 79:2 sauciness
505—32=473—162=311. 311 77:2 and
505— 32=473— 4// col. =469. 469 79:2 boldness.
And here Bacon repeats the very language he used in 1594 in a letter to Essex
(see page 273, ante): 'T am not an impudent man that would face out a disgrace."
And these are the only times impudent occurs in 2d Henry IV., and it is found
but seven times besides in all the Plays ! And these are the only occasions when
sauciness is found in this play, and it occurs but four times besides in all the Plays.
Yet here both are found repeated twice in the compass of a few lines. And the
word disgrace is found but twice in this play.
*5*
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
And Bacon grieves at the disgrace his exposure will bring upon the memory
of his father. He says it —
Page and
Word. Column.
Ill
29
423
160
442
258
363
468
49
421
79:2
80:2
79:2
80:2
78:2
78:2
80:2
79:2
80:2
79:2
would
humble
my
father's
proud
and
most
honorable
name
505-50=455—32=423. 533—423=110+1=111.
505— 30=475— 50=425— 396 (80 :1)=29.
505—50=455—32=423.
505—30=475—50=425—58 (80:1)=367. 523—367=
156+1=157+3// col.=160.
505— 31=474— 32 b col. =442.
505—31=474—50=424—162=262—4 // col.=258.
505-31=474—50=424—57=367—4 h col.=363.
505— 32-473— 5 £(32)=46S.
505—30=475. 523—475=48+1=49.
505—30=475—50=425—4// col.=421.
505—31=474—50=424. 534—424=110+1=111 +
27 b col. =138.
505—31=474—39 b & // col. =435.
505—32=473—30=443—57 (80:1)=386— 4// col.—
505—30=475—50=425—10/' col.=415.
505—31=474. 533—474=59+1=60.
505—31=474. 598—474=124+1=125.
505— 31=474— 27 b & h col.=447.
505—31= 474. 598—474=124+1=125+4 // col.—
505—31=474—50=424—162=262.
505—162=344—7 // col. =337.
505—30=475—396 (80:1)— 79. 461-79=382+1=
505—31=474—9 b col. =465.
505— 32=473— 30=443— bb (31)=438— 7 h col =431
And what is it that would so distress the widow
we have seen, was preeminently a religious lady ?
505—30=475—50=425—396 (80:1)=29. 523—29=
494+1=495+4/; & // col. =499. 499 80:2 to
505—31=474—50=424—57=367. 367 80:2 think
505— 30=475— 58(80:1)=417. 417 78:2 that
505— 31=474— 58=416. 416 80:2 I
505—31=474—50=424—30=394—58=336—
26/>col.=310. 310 80:2 should
505— 31=474— 62(80:2)=412— 1ft /• coi. =394. 394 81:1 make
505— 32=473— 50=423— 58 (80:1 W365—.G/; col. = 339 80:2 a
505— 57 (80:1)=448— 3 // col. =445. 445 81:1 mock
505— 30=475— 58 (80:1)=417. 417 79:2 of
505—32=473—50=423. 533 -423— 1 1 0 + 1=111 +
27 b col.=138. 138 79:2 the
505-31=474—396 (80:1)=78. 523—78=445+1=
446+4£ &// col. =450. 450 80:2 Christian
505— 146=359— Zb (146)=356— 193=163. 498—163
=335+1=336. . 336 76:1 religion.
It was certainly enough to shock the pious Lady Ann to know that her son had
written, in Measure for Measure, of the conception of the Christian religion as to
the eternal condition of the wicked, in these startling words:
138 79:2 the
435 78:2 dust
382 80:2 and
415 77:2 send
60 79:2 his
125 79:2 widow
447 79:2 with
129 79:2 a
262 77:2 broken
337 78:2 heart
383 80:2 to
465 76:2 the ■
. 431 78:2 grave.
of Sir Nicholas Bacon, who, as
Here is the statement:
BACON OVERWHELMED.
853
Or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling.
And Bacon tells what he feared: — that he would be —
Word.
Page and
Column.
132
77:1
hanged
271
78:2
like
51
76:2
a
(389)
78:2
dog
79
80:2
for
60
505—31=474—5 b (31)— 469. 577—469=108+1=
109+23 b col.— 132.
505—146=359—162=197. 462—197=265+1=266
+5b col.— 271.
505— 31=474— 50- =424. 457—424=33+1=34+17
b & h col. =51.
505—30=475—49 (76:1)=426— 31=395— Qh col.—
505—30=475—396 (80:1)— 79.
505—31=474-50=424. 462—424=38+1=39 +
21 b col.— 60.
505—30=475—396 (80:1)=79— 17 b & h (396)=62.
489—62=427+1=428.
505—31=474—49=425—4 h col.— 421.
505—146=359—162=197—26 b&h col.— 171.
505— 31=474— 49 (76:1)=425— 30=395.
505—146=359—162=197.
505— 31=474— 58(80:1)=416— 4 h col. =412.
Observe the symmetry of these words of King Richard the Second,
— 31=474 — 49 alternates with 505 — 146=359 — 162.
And here we have Richard the Second by another and a different
the
428
81:1
play
421
80:2
of
171
78:2
King
395
78:2
Richard
197
78:2
the
412
80:2
Second.
hard
the Second,
see how 505
and
a different 1
-oot-number.
CHAPTER XX.
THE QUEEN'S ORDERS TO FIND SHAKSPERE.
Wheresoe'er he is,
Seek him with candle; bring him dead or living.
As You Like It, z*z7, /.
ITURa< to another part of the Cipher story, or rather I recur to
it, because I have already referred to it in a previous chapter.
I can do no more now than give a few words, here and there, to
show that the Cipher story runs through all these pages, and is
called forth by the same root-numbers.
505—448=57.
505—193=312—30=282.
505—448=57—50=7.
505—193=312—50=262.
505—193=312. 448—312=136+1=137.
505—254=251—50=201. 508—201=307+1=
505— 198_312.
505—193=312—50=262. 448—262=186+1=
505—193=312—31 (79 :1)=281— 50=231. 462—231
=231 + 1=232.
505— 254=251— 5 k col.=246.
505—50=455.
505—193=312=30 (79:1)=282— 27 b col.=255.
505—248=257.
505—248=257—50=207. 447—207=240+1=
505—193=312—237 (73:2)=75. 169—75=94+1=
505—254=251—30=221—193=28.
505—197 (74:2)=308— 248=60.
505— 254=251— 15 b & h (254)=236— 49 (76:2)=187.
508—187=321 + 1=322.
505—248=257—50=207.
505—254=251—30=221—31 (79:1)=190. 462—190
=272+1=273.
505—254=251—10 4 col. =241.
505—193=312—237=75 + 90=1 65 .
505— 193=3 12— 50=262.
505—193=312—50=262. 498—262=236+1=237+
4 4 col— 241.
505—354=251—10 b col. =241.
854
Page and
Word.
Column.
57
76:2
Her
282
75:2
Grace
7
76:2
is
262
75:2
furious
137
76:1
and
308
75:2
hath
312
75:2
sent
187
76:1
out
232
78:2
several
246
76:1
well
455
76:2
horsed,
255
78:2
unarmed
257
74:1
posts
241
75:1
to
95
73:1
find
28
75:2
Shak'st \
60
75:1
spur, S
322
75:2
under
207
74:1
the
273
78:2
lead
241
76:1
of
165
73:1
my
262
76:1
Lord
241
76:1
of
241
76*. 1 Shrewsbury.
THE QUEEN'S ORDERS TO EIND SNA A' SEE RE. 855
This accords with the statement on page 686, ante, that the forces sent out to
find Shakspere and the rest of the players were under the direction of the Earl
of Shrewsbury. And there was no necessity of sending armed troops to arrest a
party of poor actors. The object was secrecy; hence, no tradition has come down
to us of the attempt to arrest Shakspere. If armed soldiers had gone to Stratford
looking for him, it would have made such an impression on the minds of the vil-
lagers that, in all probability, it would have been remembered, and we should have
heard something of it. And yet the matter was important enough to require
prompt action under a prominent, reliable and discreet leader; for it was not
merely the offense of playing seditious plays that was in question, but the fact that
this had been done as an incentive to rebellion; and no one could tell in that
troubled age how far the attempt had succeeded, or how soon civil war might
break forth. The object was to quietly gain possession of the actors and probe
the thing to the bottom.
And the reader will observe how the beginning of scene 1, act i, interlocks
with the end of the same act, in the words several — well — horsed — unarmed — posts
— under — lead, etc. With ampler leisure I could reduce this to a precise, mathe-
matical, continuous system.
And Cecil proposed —
Page and
Word. Column.
505—254=251. 498— 251=197+1=198+2/; col.= 200 76:1 proposed —
that the Earl should divide his forces into three divisions and send them in differ-
ent directions wherever the actors were likely to be.
505—193=312—30=282. 448—282=216+1=217. 217 76:1 Will
505—193=312—30=282. 282 76:1 divide
505—254=251—30=221—32=189. 462—189=273
+ 1=274. 274 78:2 his
505— 193=312— 32 (79:1)=280— 5 £ (32)=275. 275 78:2 forces
505—193=312—32=280—5 h (32)=275. 462—275=
187 + 1=188+3 /,col.=191. 191 78:2 in
505—193=312—31=281—5 6 (31)=276. 462—276=
186+1=187+5 4 col.=192. 192 78:2 three
505— 254=251— 30=221— 32 (79:1)=189. 189 78:2 divisions.
Here it will be observed that the same words, three — divisions, which came out
at the summons of 523 — 218 (7-i:2)=305 — 31 (7g:i)=274 (see page 772, ante), and
which were then used to describe the allotment of the money made by the Plays,
between actors and author, are again employed at the call of 505 — 193=312 — 31
and 505 — 254 — 32; that is to say, 505, less the upper section of 75:1, produces, car-
ried to the end of act i, three; and 505 less the lower section of 75:1, carried to
the beginning of act ii, gives us divisions. And 305 (523 — 218=305) — 31=274, car-
ried up 78:2, plus the hyphens, produces the same word three; and the same 305
— 31=274, carried up the same 78:2, not counting in the hyphens, produces the
same word divisions. Surely, no one will believe that all this delicate adjustment
of the text and its brackets and hyphens, to two different numbers, could come
about by accident. If it stood alone it would be enough to stagger incredulity;
but, as it is, it is only one of thousands of other and similar instances.
But the Queen, while taking these steps, does not fully believe that Francis
Bacon could have written the treasonable play of Richard IE And she rebukes
Ce~.il for making such a charge against him. And the Queen says to Cecil:
856
THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
505—193=312—30=282—29 (73:2)=253. 284—253
=31 + 1=32.
505—193=312—30=282—29 (73:2)— 253+ 193=
505—193=312—29 (73 :2)=283— 193=90. 508—90
=418+1=419.
505—193=312—29 (73:2)=283. 284—283=1 + 1=2
+7// col.=9.
505—193=312—50=262—208 (73:2)=54. 284—54=
230+1=231+5// col.=236.
505—193=312—50=262—15/; & //=247— 237=10—
3 b (237)— 7.
505— 1 93=312— 30=282— 29 (73:2)=253.
505—193=312—29 (73:2)=283. 284—283=1 + 1=
505— 193=312— 30=282— 28 (73:2)=254.
505—193=312—30=282—248 (74:2)=34. 284—34=
=250 + 1=251.
505—193=312—30=282—28 (73:1)=254— 4 h col.—
505— 193=312— 50=262— 208 (73:1)— 54.
505— 193=312— 50=262— 90 (73:1)— 172.
505—193=312—50=262—15 b & //— 247— 237=10—
3 b (237)— 7. 284—7=277+1=278+3 h coL—
505—193=312—50—262—154 & 7^=247— 237=10—
3 4=7. 284—7=277+1=278.
505— 193=312— 50=262— 50=212— 78(73:1)— 134.
237— 134=103+1— 104+3 4 col.— 107.
505— 193=312— 50=262— 79(73:1)— 183.
Here it will be observed that every word grows out of 505 minus 193, the upper
section of 75:1; we will have directly a sentence that grows out of 505 minus 254,
the lower section of the same column and page. The above sentence is produced
by counting from the beginnings and ends of the subdivisions of the preceding col-
umn, 73:2; the next sentence will be derived by counting from the beginnings and
ends of 74:1 or 74:2. Thus the reader will perceive that there is not only regularity
in the results, but a method and system in the work.
But the sentence goes on:
505—254—251—15 4 & h (254)=236. 284—236=48+1—49
505— 248=257— 2 h (248)=255. 284—255—29+1=
30+7// col. =37. 37
505—254—251—248—3. 3
505—248—257—51 (74:2)=206. 284—206=78+1=
79+7// col.— 86. 86
505—254—251. 284— 251— 33+1— 34+5 b col.— 39
505—248=257—4 h col.— 253. 253
505—254=251—156 & h (254)=236— 50=186. 284—
186=98+1=99. 99
505—248=257—22 4=235. 284—235=49+1=50+5 £—55
505—254=251—15 b & 4=236. 284—236—48+1=49
+ 7 //col. —56. 56 74:1 reports
Observe the perfect symmetry of this: 505 — 254 (75:1)— 251 is regularly alter-
nated with 505 — 248(74:2)— 257. And all the words are in column 1 of page 74!
Word.
Page and
Column.
32
74:1
This
446
75:1
thing
419
75:2
must
9
74:1
stop.
236
74:1
Between
7
253
74:1
75:1
you
and
2
254
74:1
74:1
your
crafty
251
74:1
old
250
74:1
father,
54
74:1
with
172
73:2
your
281
74:1
smooth.
278
74:1
tongues,
197
183
73:2
73:2
you
are
74:1 stuffing
74:1
my
74:1
ears
74:1
with
74:1
continual
74:1
lies
74:1
and
74:1
false
THE QUEEN'S ORDERS TO FIXD SHAKSPERE.
857
tt'ord.
Page and
Column.
222
78:2
this
139
78:1
many
263
74:1
a
84
74:1
year.
And what a concatenation of words: stuffing my ears with continual lies and false
report*! And we know that Cecil desired to keep Bacon out of office and power,
and we can surmise that this would be the very means he would resort to. And
the coarse-minded, crafty old Queen, even if she suspected Bacon, would be very
apt to talk in this way to Cecil, for we have historical testimony that she would
assault "this little man " (as she called him) with bitter vituperation.
505— 193— 312— 90— 222.
505—248—257—208 1 73:2)— 49+90— 189.
505— 193=312— 30=282— 15 3 & *— 267— 4* col.
505—254—251—50—201. 284—201—83+1—84.
And here I would ask the reader to turn to pages 719 and 720, ante, and note
how the same words stuffing — ears — false — reports — lies — this — many — a — year,
which here come out at the summons of 505 carried through 74:2 and the upper
and lower subdivisions of 75:1, were also brought out, by an entirely different mode
of counting, by the root-number 516 — 167=349 — 22 b & // (i67)=327 ! For instance,
327 — 30, carried through 74.2 and down 74:1, yields stuffing, while 505 — 254=251
— 15 b & h (254)=236, carried up 74:1, yields the same word, stuffing; and the same
number 236, plus the hyphens, up the same column, yields reports; while the same
number 327, again less 30, again carried through 74:2 and again carried down 74:1.
yields the same word, reports. And so with the other words. The adjustments here
are as delicate and as manifold as in the works of a watch; and the one is just as
likely to have come together jy chance as the other.
And the Queen was in a —
505—193=312—30=2*2—15 b & A— 267— 29 (73:2)— 238
50.5—193=312—30=282—50 (74:2)— 282— 12 b
col. =220. 220
and commenced to rebuke Cecil severelv:
505—193=312—50=202. 284—262—22+1—28+
col. =30.
505—193—312—284—28—10 b col. =18.
505—193=312—237 (73:2)— 75. 169—75=94-1=95
+1 h col.— 96.
505—193=312—209 (73:2)— 103. 169—103=66 + 1=
505—193=312—15 3 & h (193)— 297— 24S» 10 56 col..
505— 193=312— 10 b & h (193)— 197— 30=267— 28
(73:2)— 239. 284—239=45-1=46.
505—193=312—15 b & A— 297— 30— 267— 28 (73:2)=
239. 284—239—45+1—46+50—96.
505—254-251—208—43. 284— 43=241-1=242.
505— 193=312— 15 b ft *— 897— 30— 267— 28 (73:2)=
239. 284— 239— 45+1— 46+30.J76.
505—193—312—50—202 -15 b & A— 247. 2*4—247=
37+I— 88+5* col.— 43.
505—254=251—30=221. 284—221=63-1=64.
505—193=312—30=282. 284—282=2-1=3+7// col.
505—193=312—30=282. 284—282—2 - 1=3.
505—254=251. 284-251=33 + 1=34.
74:1 royal
'4:1 rage,
30
74:1
Commenced
18
73:2
to
96
73:1
rebuke
67
73:1
him
=44
74:1
in
46
74:1
language
96
74:1
stern
242
74:1
and
76
74:1
fearful,
43
74:1
which
64
74:1
wounds
=10
74:1
the
3
74:1
ears
84
74:1
of
s5s
7 VIE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
505—193—312—30=282—50 (74:2)=232. 284—232
=52+1=53.
505—254=251—30=221. 284—221=63+1=64+
7// col. =71.
505— 193=312— 15 b & ^=297—30=267—29 (73:2)=
288—224* h col.— 216.
505— 193=312— 50=262-50=212— 79(73 :1)=1 33.
505—193=312—248=64—2 h (248)=62— 50.
505—153=252—248=4.
505—193=312—49=263.
505—193=312—30=282.
505—193=312—50=262—15/; & /=247. 284—247=
37+1=38. 38
505—193=312—50=262—248=14—2/2 (248)=12. 237
—12=225 + 1=226.
505—193=312—50=262.
505—193=312—284=28.
505—193=312—248 (74:2)=64— 22^ (248)=42.
505—193=312—50=162. 284—162=22+1=23+
12£&//=35. 35
Word.
Page and
Column.
53
74:1
them
71
74:1
who
216
74:2
listen
133
73:2
to
12
73:2
it;
4
74:1
for
263
74:1
a
262
74:1
worse
74:1 tongue
226
73:2
is
262
74:1
not
28
73:2
upon
42
74:1
the
74:1
earth.
Observe how regularly this sentence moves. It accords with historical truth,
so far as it concerns Elizabeth's violent temper and abusive tongue; and it accords
with the probabilities that the Queen would not, without conclusive proof, believe
that Sir Nicholas Bacon's son could engage in treasonable practices. Nearly all
the words grow out of 505 — 193=312; or, where they do not come from the 505
minus the upper section of 75:1, they come from 505 minus the lower section of
75:1, and they are nearly all found on 74:1, except where fragments left after deduct-
ing 74:1 or 74:2 are carried backward to the last page or forward to the next page.
And the Queen tells Cecil that he has been unfair to Bacon; that he has —
505—254=251—30=221 .
505—254=251—50=201—30=171. 284—171=
505—254=251—15 £=236—10 b col. =226.
as to assail Bacon —
221
74:1
stooped
=113+1=114
74:1
so
226
74:1
low,
161
f4:l
505— 254=251— 50=201— 30=171— 10 h col —161.
505—193=312—248=64—2// (248)=62. 284—62
=222+1=223+6// col. =229.
505—193=312—248=64—2 h (248)=62.
505—193=312—30=282—248=34.
505— 254=251— 15 b & h (254)=236. 284—236=48
+1=49+12 b & h col. =61.
505—248=257—208 (73:2)=49— 3 b (208)=46. 169
—46=123+1=124.
505—193=312—30=282—237 (73:2)=45. 169—45
=124 + 1=125.
505— "248— 257— 2 h (248)=255.
And in her "royal rage " she tells Cecil that, if he does not find Shakspere,
and prove his charge against Bacon to be true, he shall lose his office:
229
74:1
this
62
74:1
covert
34
75:1
way,
61
74:1
while
124
73:1
thy
125
73:1
kinsman's
255
74:1
sick.
THE QUEEN'S ORDERS TO EIND SHAKSPERE.
859
-505—193=312—284 (74:1)— 28. 237—28=209+1=
505—248=257—50=207—10 b col.=197.
And the Queen tells the posts —
505—248=257—50=207. 447—207=240+1=241.
505—254=251. 284—251=33+1=34+7/; col.—
505—193=312—248=64.
505—248=257-22 b (248)=235. 284—235=49+1=
505—193=312—248=64. 237—64=173+1.
£05— 254=251. 284—251=33+1=34.
505—248=257—22 (248)=235. 284—235=49+1=
505—193=312—30=282—15* & h (193)=267. 284—
267=17 + 1=18+10*=(28).
505— 248=257— 24 b & A— 333.
505—248=257—237 (73:2)=20+90=110.
505—193=312—30=282. 284—282=2+1=3+"/; col.
505—248=257—22* (248)— 285.
505—248=257—24 * & h (248)=233. 284—233=51 + 1 -
505—193=312—50=262. 284—262=22+1=23.
505— 193=312— 30=282— 15 £ & h (193)=267. 284—
267=17+1=18+7 h col. =25.
Page and
Word.
Column.
210
73:2
lose
197
74:1
office.
241
75:1
To
41
74:1
ride
64
73:2
with
50
74:2
the
174
73:2
speed
34
74:1
of
50
74:1
the
28
74:1
wind
233
74:1
through
110
73:1
all
=10
74:1
the
235
74:1 peasant-towns
=52
74:1
of
23
74:1
the
25
(4:1
West.
Observe here the recurrence of the same root-numbers: 505 carried through
74:2, containing 248 words, leaves a remainder of 257; 257 taken down the pre-
ceding column, 74:1, brings us to posts; but less the bracket words in 74:2 it produces
peasant-towns; and less both the oracketed and hyphenated words it gives us
through {posts through peasant-towns); and up the column it is stuffing, slanders, of,
•etc. And note how 505 — 193=312 produces speed — wind — West, etc.
And the Queen tells them to give large rewards to the man who finds the
•actors.
505—193=312—237 (78:2)— 75.
505—193=312—237 (73:2j=75— 3/; (287)— 72
501— 193=312— 284=28+90 (73:1)— 118.
505—193=312—28 (73:2)— 284— 10* col. =274.
505—193=312—284=28. 90—28=62+1=63.
505—193=312—50=262—237=25. 170 (72:2)— 25
=145+1=146.
505—193=312—50=262—237=25.
505—193=312—50—262—237=25. 346 + 25=37 1 .
505—193=312—50—262—208 (73:1)=54— 3* (208)=
505—193=312—30=282—15* & h col. =267.
505— 193=312— 50=262— 209 (73:2)=53.
505—193=312—30=282—29 (73:2)=253. 284—253
—31+1—32+126 & h col.— 44.
505—1 93=31 2—50=262 —209 (73:2)— 58 .
505—193—312—50=262—237=25+170(72:2)=
505—193=312—50=262—237=25. 169—25=144+1=145
Some of my readers may have thought that the marvelous revelations of the
foregoing pages were merely coincidences. But here we are invading another
play, the play of 1st Henry IV. , with cipher numbers derived from 2d Henry IV.,
75
74:1
Make
72
73:1
great
118
73:1
offers
274
74:1
of
63
73:1
rewards
146
72:2
to
25
72:2
the
371
72:2
man
51
73:1
who
267
74:1
brings
53
74:1
them
44
74:1
in,
53
73:1
dead
195
72:2
or
=145
73:2
alive.
86o
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
and we find the words of the story coming out in regular order as in the above sen-
tence. And how completely does this fit into the story already told., We have
had the narrative of the Queen's rage, the flight of the actors, the despair of Bacon,
the order to send out posts to find Shakspere and his fellows, the separation of the
soldiers into three divisions; and here we have the offer of great rewards to the man
who brings them in dead or alive. If this is accident, then the world is an acci-
dent.
And the Queen says she does not believe that this woe-begone, hateful, fat
creature, Shakspere, had been a mask for her brilliant friend, whom she has known
since a child:
Page and
Column.
75:1 This
75:1 woe-begone >
75:1
72:2
73:1
73:1
73:1
73:1
75:1
74:1
hateful,
fat
creature
had
been
mask
known
Word.
505—193=312—30=282—29 (73:2)=253. 447—253=
194+1=195. 195
505— 193— 312— 29(73:2)— 283. 283
505—193=312—50=262—28 (73:2)=234. 234
505— 193=312— 50=262— 29 (73:2)=233— 90 (73. iw 143
505— 193=312— 50=262— 208 (73:2)=54— 3 b (208)=
51 + 90=141. 141
505—193=312—50=262—209 (73 :2)=53+ 90=143. 143
505—193=312—50=262—208 (73:2)=54+90=144. 144
505—193=312—50=262—209 (73:2)=53— 3 b (209)=
50+90=140. 140
505-193=312—30=282—29 (73:2)=253— 13 b col.— 240
for the son of her old friend; for she had —
505—193=312—50=262—90=172—28=144. 144
505—193=312—209 (73 :2)=103— 79=24. 588—24=
564+1=565+1 h 565 (79)=566.
505—193=312—91 (73:1)— 221.
505—193=312—30=282—29 (73:2)=253. 447—253
=194+1=195+11 b col. =206.
505—193=312—91 (73:1)— 221— 29 (78:2)— 192. 284—
192=92+1=93.
And the Queen had all the incredulity of the Shakspereolators of the nine-
teenth century, and she says: I pronounce this story the strangest tale in the world,
and not to be believed, and a lot of lies.
505—193=312—209 (73:2)— 103— 90— 13. 588—13=
575 + 1=576. 576
505—193=312—209 <73:2)= 103— 91=12. 588—12=
576+1=577. 577
505—193=312—50=262—28 (73:2)=234— 169 (73:1)
=65. 170-65=105+1=106. 106
505—193=312—28 (73 :2)=284— 79=205. 588—205
-383+1—884. 384
505—193=312—50=262—15 b & A— 247— 28 (73:2)=
219. 284—219=65+1=66. 66
505—193=312—29 (73 :2)=283— 90=193. 193
505— 193— 812— 28(73:2)— 284— 27 (73:1)— 257+171— 428
505—193=312—50=262—28 (73:2):==234— 169 (73:1)=
65. 588—65=523+1=524. 524
566
72:2
him
221
73:2
since
206
75:1
a
93
74:1
child.
72:2
Strangest
72:2
tale
72:2
in
72:2
the
74:1
world;
not
72:2
to
72:2
be
72:2
believed.
Page and
Word.
Column.
346—205
144
72:2
a
205
72:2
lot
) b (237)=
42
73:1
of
253
74:1
lies.
THE QUEEN* S ORDERS TO FIXD SHAKSPERE. 86 1
And the Queen says Cecil has been telling her —
505— 193=312— 28 ( 73 :2)=284— 79=205.
^141 + 1=142+2 h col.— 144.
505—193=312—28 (78:2)— 284— 79— 205.
505— 193=312— 30=282— 237 (73 :2)=45-
505—193=312—30=282—29=253.
And here again we have the combination — it is found more than twenty times
in these two plays — giving the name of Bacon's cousin:
505—193=312—28 (73:2)=284— 27 (73:1)=257. 588—
257=331+1=332. 332 72:2 Sees
505—193=312—30=282—208 (73:2)=74. 169—74=
95+1=96+1 *— 97. 97 73:1 ill
And here we have it again:
505—193=312—30=282—28 (73:2)=254— 90=164+
170_ 884—2 h col.— 882. 332 72:2 Sees
505—193=312—30=282—209 (73:2)=73. 169-73=
96+1=97. 97 73:1 ill
In this last instance it will be observed that the two words move in paralle.
lines: 505 — 193=312 — 30=282; and the first word, sees, starts from the end of the
first subdivision on 73:2, and goes upward and to the end of the scene on 73:1, and
up again and backward and down from the end of the second section of 72:2. The
other word, ///, starts from the same point of departure, the end of the first section,
but moves downward through the column and backward and up the preceding
column to the word ill. And in the first instance the count departs in the same
way from the same starting-point and moves up through 28 and down through 208
in the same order.
And right here, in connection with the elements of the pame of Cecil, we have
kinsman's and your cousin. We saw that 164 (505—193 (75:1)— 312 — 30 (74:2)=2S2
— 2S (73:2)=254 — 90 (73:i)=i64) produced sees; but it also produces cousin:
505— 193=312— 50=262— 90=172. 172 73:2 your
505—193=312—30=282—28=254—90=164. 164 73:2 cousin.
And that same 282, which, modified by carrying it through the first section of
73:2, produced sees and ill and cousin, also, carried through all of 73:2, produces
kinsman's:
505— 193=312— 208 (73:2)=104— 27 (73:2)=77. 77 72:2 thy
505—193=312—30=282—237=45. 169—45=124+1=125 72:2 kinsman's
And the "old termagant" goes on to say that if Cecil can prove that Bacon
Avrote the Plays she will have him executed. I have not time to work this out in
detail, but I call the attention of the critical to the way in which the same num-
bers, which have already done such good service, respond again with most signing
cant words. Here we have:
505—1 93=3 1 2—50=262—208 (73 :2)=54— 3 b (208)— 51 .
90—51=39 + 1=40. 40 73:1 the
505—193=312-209=103—3 b (209)— 100— 27— 73.
170—73—97-hl—98. 98 72:2 old
505—193=312—50=262—208 (73:2)— 54— 27 (73:1 )=
27+171=198. 1^ 72:2 termagant
862 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
And let us pause and observe the manner in which this word termagant is so>
placed that like Seas-ill, ShaJc st-spur, old jade, etc , it can be repeatedly used in
referring to the Queen. It is accompanied by the word old — " the old termagant. "
Let us take the combination with which we are already familiar, 505 — 167=
338 — 50=288. If we commence to count at the end of scene third (73:1), and
count up that fragment of a column and down the preceding column, we have:
Page and
Word. Column.
505— 167=338— 50=288— 90(73 :2)=198. 198 72:2 termagant
Take 516-167=349 — 22 b ft li=32j — 50=277. If we commence to count at
the same point of departure as in the last instance, but count downward through
73:1, and then again down the next column as before, we again reach termagant >
thus:
516— 167=349- 22/; &//=327— 50=277— 79(73:2)= 198 72:2 termagant
Or let us take still another root-number, to-wit: 513 — 29 (74:2), and we have,
going through the same 90 used in the first instance:
513—29 (74:2)=484— 90 (78:1)— 894 588—394=194
+ 1=195+3 h col.=198. 198 72:2 termagant
Here we perceive that 484 — 90=394. Let the reader turn to the fac-simile and
he will find that 394 in the same column with termagant is plays !
513—29 (74 :2)=484— 90=394. 394 72:2 plays
Surely a very significant combination; for the old termagant and the plays rep-
resented very important subjects in Bacon's life and thoughts. We noted how
plays was brought in in 78:1: — " for one or t'other plays the rogue with my great
toe;" and here we have:
Art thou alive,
Or is it fantasy that plays upon our eye-sight ?
We can see the Cipher in the very process of construction. And if I had time
and space I could show that nearly every word in that sentence, nay, in all these
columns, is a Cipher wore1 But to resume:
We have seen that the text was so arranged as to bring out the word termagant
in response to the summons of 505, 516 and 513: — here we have the fourth primal
root-number, 523. We have just reached termagantby deducting 29, the lower sec-
tion of 74:2, from 513; we now deduct the upper section of 74:2 from 523, and we have:
523—50 (74:2)=473— 79 (73:1)=394. 588—394=194
+ 1=195+3 h col. =198. 198 72:2 termagant
Here again we have the terminal number, 394; but how? We obtained it in the
last instance by deducting from 513 ( — 29=484) the upper section of 73:2, to-wit, 90 ;
now we obtain it by deducting from 523 ( — 50=473; the loiver section of 73:2, to-wit,
79. And again the 394 produces the word plays ! But think of the exquisite ad-
justments that were necessary to bring this about. The cryptologist could not use
the word termagant (even though applied, as in the text, to a man !), or the word
plays, very often, without exciting suspicion; and he tells us in the Be Augment is that
one of the first requirements of a cipher is that it "be such as not to raise suspicion." '
Therefore he so adjusted the fragments of 73:1 that, counting upward from the end
of the scene, with the number 513 — 29, it would yield 394, which gives us both
l Bacon's Works, vol. ix, p. 115.
THE QUEEN' S ORDERS TO FIND SHAKSPERE. 863.
termagant and pl&ys; while counting downward, from the same point, with 523 — 50,
would again give us 394 and the same words, termagant and plays !
But this is not all. Turn back to the two immediately preceding instances,
and we have the same process repeated, but with different elements. Thus:
Page and
Word. Column.
505—167=338—50=288—90=198. 198 72:2 termagant
516— 167=349— 22/; & A— 327— 50=277— 79=198. 198 72:2 termagant
Here we have the same process of cunning adjustment: — Again we count up
from the end of the scene to produce 19S — termagant; and again we count down
from the same point to produce 19S — termagant ! And observe these numbers are
not accidental: they are produced in the same way:
505—167 (74:2)=338— 50=288.
516=167 (74:2)=349— 50=299— 22 <$ &/z=277.
And the difference between 288 and 277 is eleven; and the difference between
79 and 90 is eleven !
But even this is not all. Let us take the fifth primal number, 506, and deduct
50, and we have 456. Now we have seen that in the middle section of 73:1, be-
tween 28 and 90, there are 62 words. Let us deduct this fragment, just as we
deducted 79 and 90 before, and we have:
506—50=456—62=394. 394 72:2 plays
506—50=456-62=394. 588—394=194+1=195+
3/;col.=198. 198 72:2 termagant
Or let us take the first primal number again, 505, and deduct the fragment at
the top of 74:2, from 50 upwards, to-wit, 49, and we have the same result :
505—49=456—62=394.
505—49=456—62=394. 588—394=194+1=195+
3// col. =198.
But even this does not end the use of the word tt
505—193 (75:1) — 312— 284 (74 :1)=28+ 170=198.
But there is still more. When the brothers, Francis and Anthony Bacon, are
discussing the bad news, the Cipher (with a root-number carried back from 74:2)
refers again to the old termagant; thus:
523— 30(74:2=493— 254 (75:1)=239— 141 (73:1)= 98 72:2 old
523—30=493—254=239—90=149. 346—149=197
+ 1=198. 198 72:2 termagant
Let the critical reader study this. Here we have the same formula, 523 — 30
=493 — 254=239. But how do the terminals vary ? Old'is obtained by counting 239 *
words from the beginning of the second section of 73:1 to the end of the column;
now, as between 28 and 169 there are 141 words, we deduct 141 from 239, and we
have 98 left; and the 98th word on the next preceding column is old. But to find the
word termagant we commence at the top of the first section 73:1, instead of the
second, and instead of going to the end of the column we go to the end of the scene;
this gives us 90 words; and 90 deducted from 239 leaves 149, and this, taken to the
394
72:2 plays
198
72:2 termagant
'rmagant.
We have :
198
72:2 termagant
86±
THE CIPHER NAKRA TIVE.
end of the second section of 72:2, and carried upward, yields termagant.
put this in the form of a diagram:
Let
Col. 2, p. 72./
Col. 1, p. 73.
I think it is probable that a full investigation of the Cipher will show that these
words — old termagant — are used at least a score of times in the internal nar-
rative. Here are some instances of the word old:
If we commence with the root-number 505, to count from the end of 73:2 and
count upward and forward, counting in the whole of page 73, containing 406
words, and also the one hyphenated word, the 505th word is the 98th word, old;
thus:
505-407=<
Word.
98
Page and
Column.
72:2
We also have, matching the termagant already cited, the following:
old
old
523-29 (74:2)=494) 588— 494=94 +1=95 +3 h col. = 98 72:2
523—50 (74:3)— 473— 79— 894. 588—394=194+1=
195+3 A col.— 198: 198 72:2 termagant
Observe the precision of this: the only difference is this, that the first word
comes out of 523 less the last section of 74:2; the other, out of the first section of
74:2; and that in the first case we commence to count, really, from the end of the
third section of 73:1, and in the other case from the beginning of the same.
And here we have another duplication:
505-167=338— 237 (73:2)=101— 3/; (237)=98. 98 72:2 old
505— 107=338— 50=288— 90(73 :1)=19 3. 198 72:2 termagant
Here the count runs first from the end of scene 4, act v, 1st Henry IV., then
from the beginning of it.
And here is still another:
505—30 (74:2)=475— 50=425— 237 (73:2)=188
—90(73:1^=98 98 72:2 old
505—49 (74:2)— 466— 62 (73:1)=394. 588—394=194
+ 1—195+3//— 198. 198 72:2 termagant
But away and beyond all these adjustments the word termagant is used by the
large root-numbers, which I have shown to lie at the very beginning of the Cipher
narrative, and of which 505, 506, 513, 516 and 523 are but modifications. Thus,
THE QUEEN'S ORDERS TO FIND SHAKSPERE. 865
there are twelve italic words in column 1 of page 74; let us multiply 74, the num-
ber of the page, by this number 12, and we have 888. Now commence to count
at the top of 72:1 and count downward, and go forward to the next column and down-
ward again, and we have plays, and counting downward and forward as before,
but upward, counting in the hyphens on 73:2, we have termagant. Thus:
Paare end
Word. Column.
74x12=888— 494 (72:1)=394. 394 72:2 plays
74X12=888—494=394. 588—394=194+1=195+
3/;col.=198. 198 72:2 termagant
Here, then, I have shown that not only does termagant come out at the call of
every one of our Cipher numbers, 505, 506, 513, 516 and 523, but even at the sum-
mons of one, at least, of the higher numbers which precede these in the order of
the narrative.
In short, every act, scene, fragment of scene, page, column, word, bracket
and hyphen, in all the pages of these two plays, and, as I believe, of all the Plays,
has been the subject of the most patient, painstaking prevision and arithmetical
calculation and adjustment, to a degree that is almost inconceivable. These His-
tories are, indeed, histories in a double sense; these Comedies may be the mask for
inner tragedies; and, perhaps, — with a fine touch of humor, — the Tragedies them-
selves may be but the cover for comedies of real life.
The man was sublime: — he played with words ; he made the grandest and pro-
foundest thoughts of which the brain is capable the strings of his exquisite puz-
zle; he made a jest of mankind, by setting up a stock and stone for their worship;
and he dealt at once and forever a deadly blow to all absolute belief in the teach-
ings of history.
I should not dare to utter these opinions save in the presence of so many
marvelous proofs. But there is no imagination in the multiplication table; no self-
deception can invade the precincts of addition and subtraction; two and two are
four, everywhere, to the end of the chapter.
But to resume our narrative:
And Cecil tells them when they find Shakspere and his men to offer them
immunity for their past misdeeds, if they will make a clean breast of it and tell
who really prepared the dangerous play of Richard II. Observe how remarkably
the significant words come out from the terminal root-number, 312.
505-193 (75:1)=312.
312—237 (73:2)=75— 50 (73:2)=25.
312—208 (73:2)=104— 90 (73:1)=14.
312—209 (73:2)=103.
312—208 (73:2)=104.
312—90=222—30=192—3 b col —189.
312—208 (73:2)=104. 169—104=65+1=66.
312—237=75—30 (74:2)=45.
312—27 (73:1)=285— 237=48.
312—208 (73:2)=104— 27 (73:1)=77. 588—77=511+1=512
312—79 (73:1)=233.
312—237=75—30 (74:2)=45— 3 b (237)=42.
312— 50=262— 79=183+ 346 (72:2)=529.
312—142 (73: 1)=170— 30 (74:2)=140. 588—140=
448+1=449.
312— 28(73:1)=284.
25
73:1
Terms
14
72:2
of
103
73:1
grace,
104
73:1
pardon
189
73:2
and
66
73:1
reward
45
73:1
to
48
74:2
himself
=512
72:2
and
233
73:2
all
42
73:2
of
529
72:2
them
449
72:2
if
284
72-2
he
866
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
312—79=233+170=403—1 h col. =402.
312—90=222. 588—222=366—1=367.
312—208 (73:2)=104— 27 (78:1)— 77.
312—90=222—27 (73:1)— 196.
312—79=233.
312— 90=222— 169 (73:1)— 53+170— 223.
312—50=262—27 (78:1)— 385.
312—50=262—208=104—90=14+346=360.
312—27 (73:1)— 285— 29 (74:2)=256— 237=19. 248-
19=229+1=230.
312—90=222—30 (74:2)— 192. 237—192=45 + 1=
46+3 £ col.— 49.
312—27 (73:1)— 285— 29 (74:2)— 256— 237=19. 248
—19—229+1—230+1 b col.— 231.
312—90 (73:1)— 222.
312—90—222—50=172—28 (73:2)— 144— 10 b col.—
312— 79— 233— 30— 203— 3 £ col.— 200.
312—237—75—27 (73:1)— 48— 29 (73:")— 19.
312—90—222—50—172. 237—172=65+1—66.
312—237—75—27 (73:1)— 48.
312—209—103. 171-103—68+1—69.
312—90=222—27 (73:1)— 195. 588—195—393+1—
312— 90= J" 22.
312—90—222— 50— 172.
312 -79=233— 27 (73 :1)= 206. 588—206=382+1—
312—284 (74:1)— 28.
312—284—28+91=119.
512—143 (73:1)— 169. 237—169=68+1—69+3 b col.
312—28 (73:1)=284— 171 (72:2)— 118.
312—29 (73:2)— 283— 90— 193.
312—142 (78:1)— 170.
312—29 (73:2)— 283— 90— 193— 170.
312—90—222+171 (72:2)— 393— 2 h col.— 391.
312—29 (73:2)— 283— 79— 204.
312—28 (73:1)— 284— 171 (72:2)— 113. 494—113—
381 + 1=382.
312—208—104—79—25.
312—79 (73:1)— 233— 170= 63. 494—03—431+1—
432+1 h col.— 433.
312—90 (73:1)— 222— 208 (73:2)— 14. 284—14—
270+1=271.
312—29 (73:2)=283— 90— 193. 346—193—153+1=
154+2/4 col.— 156.
312—209—103—30 (74:2)— 73+90— 163.
312—29 (73 :2)=283— 90=193.
312—90=222. 237—222=15+1=16.
312—90—222. 237—222—15+1=16+28 (73:1)=
312—90=222—169 (78:1)— 58. 588—53—535+1—
312—90—222—169=53—1 h (169)— 52. 588—52=
036+1—537
Page and
Column.
Word.
402
72:2
will
367
72:2
tell
77
73:2
the
195
74:2
name
233
72:2
of
223
72:2
the
235
72:2
man
360
72:2
who
230
74:2
furnished
49
73:2
him
231
74:2
with
222
73:2
this
134
74:1
play
200
73:2
and
19
74:2
the
66
73:2
rest
48
72:2
of
69
72:2
these
394
72:2
Plays.
222
72:2 .
But
172
72:2
if,
383
72:2
on
28
73:1
the
119
73:1
contrary,
=72
73:2
he
113
72:2
means
193
72:2
to
170
72:2
lie
23
72:1
about
391
72:2
it
204
72:2 •
and
382
72:1
play
25
72:2
the
433
72:1
fool,
271
74:1
they
156
72:2
will
163
73:1
have
193
72:2
to
16
73:2
bear
44
73:2
the
536
72:2
sin
537
72:2
upon
THE QUEEN'S ORDERS TO FIND SHAKSPERE.
867
Word.
538
539
540
Page and
Column.
72;2
72:2
72:2
their
own
heads,
143
72:2
Fat
586
72:2
fellow.
312—29 (73 :2)=283— 90=193+346=539— 1// col.—
312—29 (73:2)=283— 90=193+346=539.
312—29 (73:2)=283— 90=193+347=540.
And Cecil refers to Shakspere as " the fat fellow '
312— 169 (73:1)=1 43.
312—169 (73:1)=143— 50 (74:2)=93— 90 (73:1)=3.
588—3=585+1=586.
Thus confirming the statements found on pages 78 and 79 of the Folio.
And Cecil tells the Earl that the Queen is in a great rage. And here, again, it
is not safe to say in the text Queen or her Majesty, or to have more than one terma-
gant in several pages, and so the Queen is alluded to as " the royal maiden."
312—28 (73:1)=284— 237=47. 284—47=237+1=
312—79 (73:1)=233. 588—233=355+1=356.
312—90=222+170=392—2// col.=390.
312—142=170+ 170=340.
312— 90=222. 346—222=124+1=125.
312—208 (73:2)=104— 29 (74:2)=75— 3 b (208)— 72.
312— 208(73:2)=104— 30 (74:2)— 74-8 b (208)— 71.
284— 71=213+1— 214+6 h col. =220.
238
74:1
Royal
356
72:2
maiden
390
72:2
is
340
72:2
in
125
72:2
a
72
73:1
great
220
74:1
rage.
And the Queen doth swear:
312.
312
that every man engaged in the production of the play of Richard II. on the stage,
unless they give up the real author, —
312—237=75—27 (73:1)— 48. 170—48=122+1= 123
312—237=75—30—45—3 b (287)— 42+171=213. 213
312— 90=222— 169 (73: 1)=53. 170—53=117 + 1= 118
312_9o=222— 28 (73:1)=194. 346—194=152+1= 153
312—90=222. 237—222—15+1=16+3 b col.— 19. 19
72:2
should
72:2
die
72:2
a
72:2
bloody
73:2
death.
And Cecil says she told him to —
312— 28(73:1)=284+170— 454— 3 //col =451. 451 72:2 let
312—27 (73:1)=285— 29 (74:2)— 256— 237=19. 284—
19=265+1=266. 266 74:1 them
312— 27(73 :1)=285. 285 72:2 be
312—90=222—28 (73:1)— 194. 346—194—152+1=
153+2// col.— 155. 155 72:2 imbowelled.
And as for Shakspere, if he does not confess the truth, she will —
312—29 (73:2)— 283. 588—283=305+1—306.
312—237=75—30=45+90=135.
312—29 (73:2) 283—30=253. 433—253=180+1=
312—79—233—30=203.
312—209 (73:2)— 103. 169—103—66+1—67.
But if he will reveal a'l he knows he will be spared:
306
72:2
make
135
73:1
a
181
71:2
carbonado
203
73:2
of
67
73:1
him.
868 THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
Word.
Page and
Column.
312—79 (73:1)— 888.
346—233=113+1=114+
3 h col. =117.
117
72:2
spared;
and not only spared, but favors shown him by the court:
312— 90=222— 169 (73:1)=53. 53 72:2 favors.
And the officers are directed to say nothing to any one about their mission, lest
the actors fly the country. And when they arrest Shakspere they are at first to
treat him kindly, and ask him why he should try to injure the Queen, who had
never harmed him; and appeal to his better feelings; and urge him to confess, to
save his own life and fortune.
312— 79 (73:1)=233. 433(71:2)— 233=200+1=201. 201 71:2 Save
312— 27 (78:1)— 285— 50— 285. 235 73:2 own
312—90=222—30=192. 213 (71:2)— 192=21 + 1=22
+ 1=23. 23 71:2 life
312—79=233. 237—233=4+1=5. 5 73:2 fortune.
And they are to say to him that he must not hold back the information he has
as to the treasonable play; that there is —
312— 27— 285— 170(72:2)— 115. 494—115=379+1= 380 72:1 No
312—90=222—30=192. 192 72:2 time
312— 169(73:1)=143. 346+143=489. 489 72:2 to
312-29 (73:2)=283. 433—283=150+1=151. 151 71:2 dally.
In short, the crafty Cecil directed the officers that when they found Shakspere
they were to work upon him in every way possible — by appeals to his cupidity, his
ambition, and his terror of being burned alive — to tell the real author of the Plays,
especially of that dangerous play which represented the deposition and murder of
an unpopular King, and the execution of those councilors who stood to him in
the same relation in which Cecil stood to the Queen.
The reader will observe that every word of the story, for the last few pages,
grows out of the same terminal root-number, ji2, and nothing else. And that all the
modifications of this number arise out of the fragments of the scenes in columns
i and 2 of the same page, 73. A few words are carried backward to the begin-
ning of the third scene, page 71, column 2; just as we saw the Cipher carried for-
ward to the ends or the beginnings of acts and scenes in 2d Henry IV. So
that not only do we find the same capacity of the text to produce a coherent narra-
tive in these pages of 1st Henry IV., which we found to exist in 2d Henry IV., but
the story coheres with the narrative produced by the same root-number, 312,
in 2d Henry IV. For instance, we saw that 505, counting from the end of the first
section of 75:1 forward and down the next column, produced sent out:
505—193=312. 312 75:2 Sent
505—193=312. 498—312=186+1=187. 187 76:1 out
505— 248 (74:2)— 257. 257 74:1 posts
505—193=312—237=75. 169—75=194-1 1=195. 195 73:1 find
505—30 (74:2)— 475— 447— 28. 28 75:2 Shak'st i
505—197=308—248=60. 60 75:1 spur. \
»
But here the very 312 which produced sent out and find tells the story of
THE QUEEN'S ORDERS TO FIND SHAKSPERE. 869
what the posts were to do when they did find Shakspere; how they were to offer
him pardon and grace if he would make a confession as to who was the real author
of the Plays; and if he would not, that they were to threaten all the players who
had taken part in the presentation of the deposition scene of Richard II. with a
bloody death, that they should be imbowelled, etc. ; and we have even the fierce threat
of the savage old termagant, that of Shakspere himself she would make a carbonado
— a bon-fire — for the insults to the Christian religion contained in Measure for
Measure, of which he was the alleged author.
And observe how the fragments of 312 carried over from the first column of
page 74 produce so many significant words: 312 — 284 (74:i)=28; and 28 up the
the next column (73:2) is lose (lose his office), addressed by the Queen to Cecil, if
he did not find Shakspere and prove his story against Bacon to be true. And 28
up from the end of scene third (73:1) is rewards; and 28 down from the same point
is offers ("offers of rewards ") :
iVord.
Page and
Column.
63
73:1
rewards
118
73:1
offers
312—284=28. 90—28=62+1=63.
312—284=28. 90+28=118.
Or take 312 again less the second column of page 74 instead of the first; we have
312 — 248=64; now d^down 73:2 is with; and 64 /// 73:2 is speed; and 312 — 50 (74:2)
=262, and this carried up 74:1 lands us in the midst of the first bracket sentence
on the word wind (ride with the speed of the wind); and while 64 up 73:2 produces
speed, the 174th word, if we add the modifier 30 it gives us march (174+30=204);
thus:
312— 248=64— 30 (74:2)=34. 237—34=203+1= 204 73:2 march;
and march, applied to the movements of the "well-horsed posts," is cunningly
disguised in the name of " the Earl of March."
I repeat that we cannot penetrate the text of these two plays, at any point,
without perceiving that, apart from any rule, the Cipher numbers call out words
that cohere in meaning and purpose, in a way that no other text in the world is
capable of.
CHAPTER XXL
FRAGMENTS.
And the hand of time
Shall draw this brief into as huge a volume.
King John, it, i.
I AM constrained by the great size of my book to leave out much
that I had intended to insert. I have worked out the story of
Bacon attempting suicide by taking ratsbane:
Page and
Word. Column.
505—50 (74:2)=455— 50 (76:1)=405— 145 (76:2)=260
— 50 (76:1)=210. 508—210=298+1=299. 299 75:2 Took
505—50 (74:2)=455— 50 (76:1)=405— 145 (76:2)=260.
603— 260=343+1=344+8 <$ col =352. 352 76:2 ratsbane.
Preceding this we have, originating from pages 72 and 73 and their subdivi-
sions, a full account of his griefs, his intense feelings, his desire to shield the mem-
ory of his father, Sir Nicholas, from the ignominy which would fall upon it if it
was known that his son had shared with such a low creature as Shakspere the
profits of the Plays. Observe how the number 505 brings out ignominy:
505. 588—505=83+1=84. 84 72:2 ignominy.
And here we have his father's name:
505—27 (73:1)=478— 212 (71:2)=266. 494—266=
228+1=229. 229 72:1 Sir
505—169 (73:1)=336-212 (71.2)=124. 124 72:1 Nicholas.
Observe this: the Sir is 505 commencing at the end of the first section of 73:1,
at the 27th word, and counting upward; the remainder is then taken to the end of
the third scene (71:2), and carried up and brought back into the scene and down
the column. The Nicholas is the same root-number, 505, carried through precisely
the same process, save that we begin to count with 505 from the top of the same
first section of 73:1, instead of the bottom, and we go down 73:1, instead of up;
and when we return from the beginning of scene 3 (71:2) we go up the column in-
stead of down.
And here observe that the same number 478 (505 — 27 (73:1)— 478), which car-
ried to the end of the scene and brought back gave us Sir, if carried up 72:2 gives
us Tack; and this, with sphere, —
Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere, —
gives us another form of the word Shakspere.
870
FRAGMENTS. 871
Word.
Page and
Column.
Ill
72:2
■ 291
72:1
505—27=478. 588—478=110+1=111. Ill 72:2 Jack |
505— 80=425— 221 (71 :2)=204. 494—204=290+1= 291 72:1 sphere. \
Here again we see the systematic arrangement: 505 — 27 (the first section 73:1)
is alternated with 80, the number of words from the end of the second section of
73:1 to end of the column. But when the remainder is carried to the beginning
of scene 3, 71:2, it is taken down the column through 221 words, instead of up the
column through 212 words.
And here we have Sir Nicholas again, — repeated in the progress of the inner
story:
505— 169 (73:1)=336— 1 h (169)=335— 212 (71:2)= 123 72:1 Sir
505— 63(73 :1>=442— 212 (71 :2)=230. 230 72:1 Nicholas.
\
Here, it will be observed, the words flow again from the same corner of 73:1:
that is, for Sir we commence to count from the top of the first section of 73:1,
and count down the column, as we did to obtain Nicholas before ; but now we count
in the one hyphenated word in the column, and we get Sir. And the next Nicholas
is a different word from the one we used last : that was 124, 72:1 ; this is 230, 72:1.
We obtained that word by beginning to count, with 505, from the beginning of the
first section of 73:1 and going through the whole column; we procure this Nich-
olas by starting with the same number, 505, but, instead of going through the whole
column, we stop at the end of scene third; this gives us 63 words. (27 to 90=63.)
And here again we note the beautiful adjustments of the text to the Cipher; for, start-
ing from substantially the same place, with the same root-number, we produce Sir
Nicholas twice and Shakspere once ! And the 442 (505 — 63=442) which gave us
the last Aricholas, carried down 72:2 gives us, as the 442d word, father (my father,
Sir Nicholas) !
And Bacon refers to the ignominy his exposure would bring upon his ancestors,
" those proud spirits," Sir Anthony Cooke, his grandfather; his father, Sir Nicholas,
and others of whom we know little or nothing, who had "won great titles in the
world."
It is a pitiful and terrible story, told with great detail. Bacon sacrificed him-
self, or intended to do so, to save his family and the good name of his ancestors
from the ignominy of his trial and execution at Smithfield as a traitor and an
infidel.
And then we have the terrible story of his sufferings: He lost consciousness
for a time and fell in the orchard and cut his head on the stones. He thought, in
' is dreadful mental excitement and torture, — for he knew what it was •
Upon the tortures of the mind to lie
In restless ecstacy, —
that the spirits of his dead ancestors appeared and urged him to die ! Then came
a young gentleman who was visiting at the house, St. Albans; he walked forth into
the orchard; he stumbled over Bacon's body; he thought at first it was a dead
deer: —
523— 79 (73:1)=444. 588—444=144+1=145. 145 72:2 deer.
When he found it was a man, he drew his sword, in great terror, and asked who it
was, and what he was doing there, and finally ran to the house and returned, fol-
lowed by Harry Percy and the whole household, who came running. Then we have
Bacon resolving to keep quiet and counterfeit death, so as to allow the deadly drug,
87 2 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
" which like a poisonous mineral doth gnaw the inwards," to do its complete work;
rejoicing to think that in a little while he will be beyond the reach of Cecil's envy
and the Queen's fury. Then we have the recognition, by Percy, that it is "our
young master; " and the lifting up of the body, and the carrying of it to the house
and to his room:
Page and
Word. Column.
505—79=426—1 h (79)— 425— 406=19. 19 72:2 room.
Then follows the wiping the blood from his face; the undressing of him, —
taking off " his satin cloak and silken slops; " the sending for the doctor, —
505—50=455. 455 76:1 doctor,—
who was the village apothecary, a Mr. Moore; then the discussion of the family
as to what was the matter, some thinking he had fought a duel, others that he had
been assailed by ruffians, for he was too gentle, it was said, to quarrel with any
one. Then we have the refusal of the doctor to come, because the young man
owed him a large bill for previous services, which had been standing for some time
and not paid; and he demanded payment.
And, strange to say, we find this very doctor's bill referred to in a letter of
Lady Bacon to her son Anthony, given by Hepworth Dixon.1 She says, under
date of June 15, 1596:
Paying Mr. Moore's bill for my physic, I asked him whether you did owe any-
thing for physic ? He said he had not reckoned with you since Michaelmas last.
Alas ! Why so long? say I. I think I said further it can be muted, for he hath
his confections from strangers; and to tell you truly, I bade him secretly send his
bill, which he seemed loth, but at my pressing, when I saw it came to above xv /.
or xvj /. If it had been but vij or viij, I would have made some shift to pay. I
told him I would say nothing to you because he was so unwilling. It may be he
would take half willingly, because " ready money made always a cunning apothe-
cary," said covetous Morgan, as his proverb.
We can imagine that the apothecary was incensed, because after his bill had
been presented, at the request of Lady Ann Bacon, it had not been paid; and
that months had rolled by, from June, 1596, until the events occurred which are nar-
rated in the Cipher — that is to say, until as I suppose, the spring of 1597; and
hence the heat of the man of drugs and his refusal to attend. The apothecary was
probably the only substitute for a doctor possessed by the village of St. Albans
at that time.
And here we have another little illustration of the cunning of the work.
Where the doctor said that they "owed" him money, the text is twisted to get in
the word thus : Falstaff says to the page:
Sirra, you giant, what says the doctor to my water ?
Page. He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water; but for the
party that owned it, he might have more diseases than he knew for.
This is the way it is found in the standard editions; but if the reader will turn
to my facsimiles he will find the word 07vned printed owd. In this way, Bacon
got in the doctor's statement in the Cipher story, by misspelling a word in the
text.
But Bacon's aunt, Lady Burleigh, sister to his mother, and mother of his per-
secutor, Cecil, overheard the servants report that the doctor would not come unless
1 Personal History of Lord Bacon, page 391.
FRAGMENTS. 873
his bill was paid, and she secretly gave the servant the money to pay it. And
observe, again, how cunningly the word aunt is hidden in the text:
Page and
Word. Column.
505— 145 (76:2)=360. 360 77:1 aunt
But it is not spelled aunt, but ant, to-wit, and it.
Now, if the reader will examine the text of the play, he will find that and it is
usually printed, where it is condensed into one word, asand't. See the 485th word,
76:2. '
And Essex had arrived to warn Bacon of his danger, and he observed that the
doctor did not come when he was first sent for, and he rebuked him fiercely, and
threatened to have his ears cut off; and the doctor answered with considerable spirit,
under cover of the retorts of Falstaff to the Chief Justice's servants. See upper
part of 77:1.
Then we have the voluble doctor's declaration that Bacon's troubles were due
to overstudy and perturbation of the brain, and were in the nature of an apoplectic
fit; and he prescribed for him. In the meantime, Bacon suffered terribly from the
effects of the poison, and, as he had taken a double dose, his stomach rejected it,
and his life was thereby saved.
Then we have the story of Harry Percy being sent in disguise to Stratford. I
have worked out enough of it to make a story as long as all the Cipher narrative thus
far given in these pages.
Percy's rapid journey, his arrival, his demand to speak at once with Shakspere;
the difficulties in the way. At last, he is shown up into the bed-room; the windows
are all closed, according to the medical treatment of that age; and Shakspere is
sweltering in a fur-trimmed cloak. Here we have a full and painful and precise
description of his appearance, very much emaciated from the terrible disorder
which possessed him. Percy told him the news and urged him to fly. Shakspere
refused. Percy saw that Shakspere intended to promptly confess and deliver up
" Master Francis," and save himself. Percy was prepared for such a contingency,
and told him that the man who was the ostensible author would suffer death with the
real author; and he asks him : Did you not share in the profits ; did you not strut about
London and claim the Plays as yours, and did you not instruct the actor who played
Richard II. to imitate the peculiarities of gesture and speech of the Queen, so as to
point the moral of the play: that she was as deserving of deposition as King Richard ?
(" Know you not, ' ' said the Queen to Lambarde, * ' that I am Richard the Second ! ' ')
And do you think, said Percy, that the man who did all this can escape punish-
ment? When Shakspere saw, as he thought, that he could not save himself by
betraying Bacon, he at last consented to fly. Then followed a stormy scene. Mrs.
Shakspere hung upon her husband's neck and wept; his sister, Mrs. Hart, bawled;
her children howled, and the brother Gilbert, who was drunk, commenced an assault
on Harry Percy, and drew a rusty old sword on him. Harry picked up a bung-
mallet, and knocked him down, and threw him down stairs into the malt cellar.
Then bedlam was let loose. In the midst of the uproar entered Susannah, who at
once calmed the tempest. Harry was astonished at her beauty and good sense.
He wonders how " so sweet a blossom could grow from so corrupt a root." We
have a long description of her. She put the children to bed, and when she had
heard Percy's story she advised her father to fly. He commenced to talk about
his family, and how well he stood with his neighbors, for that question of gentility
was his weak point. She replied, very sensibly, that they owed their neighbors
no obligations, and need care nothing for what they said or thought. And
874 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Percy advised that they tell the neighbors that the Queen had sent for him
to prepare a play for some approaching marriage at court. Mrs. Shakspere
still wept and clung to him, and said she would " never see her dear hus-
band again;" that he was too sick to travel, etc. To all this Percy replied that
a sea- voyage and change of scene and air were the best remedies for his sickness;
that they would go to Holland and from there to France, and that " Master Fran-
cis" was acquainted with the family of De la Montaigne, and they could visit there;
and in the meantime that Essex would, as soon as the Queen's rage had subsided,
intercede for him, and he would thus be able to come back improved in health to
the enjoyment of his wealth; while if he stayed he would forfeit both life and fortune.
And Percy said he had a friend, a Captain Grant, who was about to marry a rela-
tive of his; his ship was then unloading at London, and they would have time to
get to London before it was ready to sail. They would go twenty miles a day
across the country, and hide in the vicinity of St. Albans, with some friends of
Percy's, and thence work their way to London in the night; that when the posts
found he had fled they would naturally think he had gone northward to Wales or
Scotland; they would not look for him near St. Albans or London. And Percy
suggested that Shakspere tell Captain Grant, to account for his secret flight, that
he was an unmarried man, and that he had fallen into some trouble with a young
woman; that a child was about to be born and that he was leaving the country on
that account. The night was stormy and dark, and the roads muddy, and there
would be none abroad to notice their flight.
Convinced by all these arguments, Shakspere told his wife to get some supper
ready and to bring him an old suit of leather jerkins, etc., which he had worn when
a butcher's 'prentice, and he proceeded to array himself in these.
Then follows, with great detail, a description of the supper, served by the
handsome Susannah; and every article of food is given, much of it coarse and in
poor condition; and Percy is vehement in his description and denunciation of the
very poor quality of the wine, which was far inferior to the kind that wras served
at his spendthrift master's table.
I only touch upon the salient points of the narrative. We have all the conver-
sations given in detail, and with the graphic power that might be expected from
such a writer.
I have progressed far enough beyond this point to see that Shakspere went
to sea. Turn to page 85 of the facsimiles, and in the first column we have tempest,
commotion, vapor, captains, etc., while in the second column of the same page the
reader will find high and giddy mast, ship, surge, winds, monstrous billows, slippery,
clouds, hurley, sea, sea, ocean, Neptutie; while on page 82, column 2, we have vessel*
vessel, vessel, marchanfs venture, Burdeaux-stuff, hold (of a ship), hogs-head, etc.;
in 83:2 we have Captain, several times repeated, and in 82:2 we have grant,
two or three times. The story of the brawl is told on pages 83 and 84; in
85:1 we have Percy's description of how he overtook and outrode the scouts,"
concealed in the lines:
I met and over-tooke a dozen captains,
Bare-headed, sweating, knocking at the taverns
And asking every one for Sir John Falstaffe.
For the description of the supper, we have (82:1) dish, apple-Johns; (82:2) cana-
ries — wine — pike — dry toasts; (83 : 1) ancient — mouldy — dried — cakes; stezaed-
prunes — bottle-ale — cup — sack; (84 : 1 ) bread — m ustard; (84 : 2) bread — kitchen — roast
— fat; (85:1) joint of mutton. Here are all the essentials of a supper, and yet
there is no supper described in the text. And we have just seen that we have
FRAGMENTS. 875
(85:1, 85:2 and 82:2) all the words to describe a sea-voyage and a tempest on the
ocean, and yet there is no sea-scene in the play.
And here is another evidence of the Cipher, and of the microscopic character
of the work. I showed some time since that on page 83 the 184th word was
shake, and that it is forced into the text; because Dame Quickly, who had, in a pre-
ceding scene in the same act, threatened to throw the corpulent Sir John Falstaff into
the channel, and who did not fear his thrust, is now so terrified, by the mere
approach of a swaggerer, that she says, " Feel, masters, how I shake." This is
the first part of the name of Shakspere. Where is the rest of the name? It is on
the same page, in the next column, and yet it will puzzle my readers to find it.
Let them attempt it. And here I would observe that Bacon avoids putting Shake
and jr/d'ar near each other, lest it might create suspicion. Hence, where we have
shak' st, we find near at hand spur; where we have sphere (pronounced then spere)
we have close at hand not Shake but Jack, pronounced shack. And so here, where
we have shake, the last syllable is most cunningly concealed in the Italian quota-
tion of Pistol: Si fortune me tormente, sperato me contente. Now, in the Folio there
is a hair space between sper and ato; and this gives us the necessary syllable to
make the " Shake" Shake-sper. But the distinction is so minute that when Lionel
Booth made his literal copy of the Folio of 1623, the printers, while they faithfully
followed every detail of capitalization, spelling, pronunciation, etc., of the original
Folio, missed this point and printed the word as sperato. And in the very last scene
of the play, page 100, Pistol repeats his quotation, in a different form: Si fort una
me tormento sper a me contento. Here again we have sper separated from a. And
note the different spelling: in the first instance fortune serves in the Cipher story
for fortune, the name of the Fortune theater; tormente is used for torment; and con-
tente ior content; but m the. other instance, we have "fortune," "torments," and
"contents," because the Cipher grew less intricate as the end of the play
approached, and there was no necessity for the words to do double duty, as in the
former instance.
And here I would note another point. Falstaff says, "Throw the quean in the
channel;" and some of the commentators have changed this word, because there was
no channel a.t or near London, and the scene of Falstaff 's arrest is clearly placed in
London. What does it mean? The Cipher is telling something about the English
Channel; and hence this violation of the geographical unities. In the same way it
will be found that the sea-coast of Bohemia, Machiavel, in 1st and jd Henry J' I.,
and Aristotle, in Troilus and Cressida, are to be accounted for: they were necessi-
ties of the Cipher narrative, and the congruities of time and p>ace had to give way
to its requirements. The correctness of the inside story was more important, in
the mind of the author, than -the proprieties of the external play.
If the reader will turn to page 56 he will see how adroitly the name of the
Spanish city of Cadiz, the scene of an English invasion, is worked into the text.
The Prince is talking nonsense to the drawer, Francis, and he says:
Wilt thou rob this Leatherne-jerkin, Christall button, Not-plated, Agat ring,
Puke stocking, Caddice garter, Smooth tongue, Spanish pouch ? ,
And the boy very naturally exclaims: " O Lord, sir, who do you mean ?"
Yet here, in this rambling nonsense, Caddice conceals Cadiz, and four words
distant we have Spanish — and Cadiz was a Spanish town. In that incoherent "^
jumble of words were probably grouped together the tail-ends of half a dozen dif-
ferent parts of the Cipher story. The wonder of the world will never cease when
all this Cipher narrative is worked out; it will be indeed —
876 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
" The life-long wonder and astonishment "
of mankind for thousands of years to come.
It is not, of course, possible for me to prove the truth of my statements as to
the foregoing Cipher narrative in this volume; but I hope to follow this work
with another, in which I shall give the story in detail, and even follow the sick
Shakspere across the sea. While Cecil could not prove his case against Bacon
without the testimony of Shakspere, it must have been apparent to the Queen that
the actor had received warning of his danger from some one about the court; and
it might have been that facts enough came out to satisfy the Queen of Bacon's
guilt; and hence his inability to rise to any office of great trust during Elizabeth's
reign.
But I will give one little specimen which is most significant, and may be clearer
to the reader because of its simplicity. In most cases the scenes are divided up
into fragments by the stage directions, and these fragments complicate the working
of the Cipher; but here the entire scene is but a column in length, about one-half
of it being in 81:2, and the remainder in the next column, 82:1. The sentence I
give is: Harry at length persuaded him to fly. This significant collocation of words
refers to Harry Percy, after a long discussion, persuading Shakspere to fly the
country — the very flight referred to by Coke, in his allusion to clapping a capias
utlagatum on Bacon's back, some years afterward.
The Cipher number is 505. It commences to count from the upper section of
73:2, containing 2g words; therefore, 505 — 29=476; and the number here used is
476. And here we perceive the subtlety of the Cipher: If any one thought he
saw on pages 81 and 82 traces of a Cipher, he would naturally look for the key-
number on or near those pages; he would not think of going back to the end of a
preceding play, 1st Henry IV. , to find the first modifier of a number obtained from
the first page of 2d Henry IV. But here we have the Cipher contained on pages
•81 and 82 revealed by a number growing out of pages 73 and 74, eight or nine
pages distant.
Now this little scene of one column (scene 3, act ii, 2d Henry IV.) is literally
packed with Cipher words. I give only a fragment.
First we have :
505—29=476.
But I stated in the chapters in which I explained the Cipher rule that the
second group of modifiers was found in 73:1, and that they consisted of 27 or 28,
62 or 63, 90 and 79, and 141 or 142. Here we have in this brief sentence of seven
words these modifiers : 28 — 62 — 90.
If we deduct 28 from 476 we have 448; if we deduct from it 62 we have 414;
if we deduct from it 90, we have 386. Now, if these numbers, carried to a part of
the play eight pages distant from where they are obtained, produce a perfectly
coherent sentence, no one but an individual lacking in the ordinary faculties of the
human mind can believe that it is accidental.
Here, then, we have the sentence:
476—28=448—234 (81:2)=214.
83+9 b & *— 93.
476—62=414—134 (82:1)=280.
476—28=448—234 (81:2)=214.
476—62=414—296 (82:1)=118.
476—90=386—296 (82:1)=90.
296—214=82+1=
Word.
Page and
Column.
420—280=140+1=
92
141
82:1
81:2
Harry
at
186+118=304.
420—90=330+1=
214
304
331
82:1
81:2
81:2
length
persuaded
him
FRAGMENTS.
877
Word .
Page and
Column.
118
81:2
to
145
82:1
fly.
476-62=414—296 (82:1)=118.
476—90=386—234 (81 :2)=1 52 . 296—1 52=144 + 1=
And note that the first formula above, 476 — 28=448 — 234, carried up from the
end of the scene, gives us the 83d word (82:1), which is Marshal, and here is its
associate, Knight — the " Knight Marshal " was one of the officers of the court:
476— 28=448— 186 (81 :2)=262. 262
476— 28=448— 234 (81 :2)=214. 296—214=82+1= 83
81:2 Knight
82:1 Marshal.
But to make the first sentence plainer I give the following diagram, showing
the precise and regular movement of the four words — Harry at length persuaded:
Col. 2, p. 81 ,
^_Col._i, p.\82
'ix \ I
1 Harry \ \
1 f \ 1
S ' 1 V J
1 / len^
8* 1 1
\/
^ 1
A
"E Scene 4
i J
T '
V /
Or take the words Knight Marshal:
Col. 1, p. 81. ^ — .x Col. 2, p. 81
p. 82.
IMarshal
I
I
I
/
Scene 4
Those words — Harry at length persuaded -
of a Cipher in the Plays.
They stand thus:
476—28=
476—62=
476—28=
476—62=
But observe the movement of them:
ought alone to settle the question
Harry
at
length
persuaded.
^ Of TMt
*T
^HlVERS^y
or
878 THE CIPHER NA RRA TIVE.
476 — 28. Commence beginning scene 3, down, Harry
476 — 62 " end scene 3, «/, at
476 — 28 " beginning scene 3, dozun, iength
476 — 62 " end scene 3, up, persuaded.
But everywhere you touch with these numbers in this vicinity you bring out
significant words. For instance, 476 — 90 gave us 386 (which yielded him and fly).
But the same go (386 — 296=90), which, carried up 81:2, gave us him, carried down
the same column gives us go (90, 81:2), a word naturally connected with "per-
suaded him to fly; " and carried up from the end of the break in the same column
the same 90 gives us rode; and the same 476 — 28=448, carried through that same
first section of 81:2, leaves 262, and this, carried through the second section of 82:1
and down 82:2, plus the brackets, gives us muddy (" muddy roads "); and the same
90 taken downward from the end of first section of 81:2 yields vow (the road is now
muddy); and if we deduct from 476, instead of 90, its co-modifier, 79, we have left
397; and if we commence at the beginning of scene third, as before, and count
down and then up from the end of the scene, as in the other instances, we get the
word seek (the Knight Marshal comes to seek you):
Page and
Word. Column.
476—79=397—234=163. 296—163=133+1=134 134. 82:1 seek.
And this same 163, down tew, plus the brackets, is armed (the armed soldiers
with the Knight Marshal).
And here we have the drunken brother alluded to. We saw that 505 — 29=476
— 28=448 produced, less the fragments in 81:2, Harry, length, muddy, etc. Now,
if, instead of counting from the beginning of scene third downward, through 234
words, we count upward, through 186 words, counting in that first word (for this
part of the narrative belongs to the third scene), we have the following:
476—28=448—186=262. 262 82:1 A
476—28=448—234=214—133 (82:1)=81. 425—81=
344+ 1^345. 345 82:2 swaggering
476—28=448—186=262—134 (82:1)=128— 5 k (134)= 123 82:2 rascal.
Here the 214 which produces swaggering is the same root-number that produced
length — " Harry at length persuaded," etc. And here we have the statement that
he was drunk, growing out of the same 414 which gave us persuaded:
476— 62=414— 234=180— 134 (82:1)=46— 5 // (134)= 41 82:2 drunk.
And so I might go on for another volume.
Here we have Shakspere's sister alluded to: Mistress Hart — see word 136, 82:2,
and word 78, 82:2; and again in Hart-de ere -Harry, 282, 81.2; and just as we
found the dear in this triple hyphenation spelled deere, because in the Cipher story
it referred to a deer, so we even have heart misspelled, to give us the correct spell-
ing of Shakspere's sister's name. Here we have it: 273, 80:2, hart !
And here, growing out of the same root-number, 448, we have St. Albans:
476— 28=448— 134 (82:1)=314. 420—314=106+1= 107 81:2 St. Albans.
And if we count in the nine brackets in the column below St. Albans, we have
the word bestow; and if we count in both brackets and hyphens we have night;
and if we take 414 (476 — 62=414), which we have seen to alternate with 448, up
82:1, plus the brackets, it brings us to second; thus:
476— 28=448— 297 (82:1)— 151. 151 82:2 The
FRAGMENTS.
879
476—62=414. 430 (82:1) — 414=16+1=17+9 b col.
476—28=448—134=314. 420 (81 :2)— 314=106 + 1=
107+12 b& h=119.
And here we have:
Word.
= 26
119
169
Page and
Column.
82:1
81:2
81:2
8^:1
81:2
second
night
shall
bestow
at
82:1 St. Albans.
476—28=448—430 (82:1)=18. 186—18=168+1=
476—28=448—134 (82:1)=314. 420-314=106+1=
107+9 <5col.=116. 116
The second night we shall bestow ourselves at St. Albans.
476—28=448—297 (82:1)=151— 9/. (297)=142-
\b col. =141. 141
476— 28=448— 134 (82: 1)=314. 420—314=106+1= 107
Here the number 448 parts at the stage direction in 82:1, and carried up, back-
ward and down, it produces at, while carried down, backward and up, it produces
St. Albans .'
And observe how cunningly that at is made to do double duty, first in the sen-
tence, Harry at length persuaded, etc., and then in the above:
476— 62=414— 134 (82:1)=280. 420—280=140+1= 141 81:2 at
476—28=448—297 (82:1)=151— 9 b (297)=142—
l^col.=141. 141 81:2 at
Think of the infinite adjustments in every part of this text, any one of which
failing would destroy much of the Cipher narrative !
And here, again, we have, out of the same root-numbers, The Merry Wives of
Windsor:
476—62=414—26 (85:l>=388+50 (84:1)=438.
476—28=448—186 (81 :2)=262— 57=205— 186 (81:2)
=19— l/zcol.=18.
476—62=414—186 (81:2)=228— 31 (79:1)=197—
±b& h col. =193.
438
84:1
Merry
18
81:1
Wives
193
79:2
Windsor.
And here we have:
476—62=414—234(81:2)
—123=62+1=63.
476—28=448—186 (81 :2)=262.
+1=72+12 £ & h col.=84
180—57 (80:1)=123. 185
333 (85:1)— 262=71
84
81:2
85:1
Master
Francis.
The word Francis occurs in the Folio fifteen times; Francisco twice; Francois
once; and Frank ten times; or twenty-eight in all. It is probable that Bacon often
refers to himself under the disguise of France-is. France fills up nearly three col-
umns of Mrs. Clarke's Concordance, and is found in twenty of the Plays; even in
plays like The Merry Wives, the Merchant of Venice, the Comedy of Errors, and
Hamlet, where we would not naturally expect to meet it.
iii, scene 1, the word Francis is dragged in very oddly:
In Love's Labor Lost, act
Armado. Sirra Costard, I will infranchise thee.
Clown. O marry me to one Francis. I smell some Lenvoy, some goose in this.
Here infranchise is introduced to make a foundation for a pun on Francis.
But, as Costard is a man, he could not marry a man, and the word should be
880 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
Frances, and so it is printed in the ordinary editions of to-day; but in the Folio of
1623 it is Francis ! And in the same play we have, act v, scene 1:
Pedant. Pa, pueritia, with a horn added.
Page. Ba, most seely sheepe, with a horn.
There is little meaning and no wit in this; but the word can added to Ba, with
the broad pronunciation of that age, would give us, with the misspelled Frances,
the whole name: Francis Ba-con.
But let us pass away from these examples and this part of 2d Henry IV., and
go backward, twenty-six columns, to act v, scene 1, of 1st Hetuy IV., and see if
the text there also responds to the magical influence of these same Cipher num-
bers. Some may say that I have shown nothing in the Cipher narrative that asserts
that Francis Bacon wrote the Plays. True; and that is one of the proofs of the
reality of the work I have performed. If I had wrought out only such sentences
as I desired, I would probably in the beginning have constructed a sentence directly
making the claim that " /, Francis Bacon, of St. Albans, son of the late Lord Chan-
cellor Nicholas Bacon, wrote the so-called Shakespeare Plays." But I could not find
what is not in the text; and I doubt if any such direct and distinct assertion of
authorship is made; nor would it be natural, when one thinks it over, that it should
be made; for if Bacon proceeds to give, in a long narrative, the history of his life,
he would advance, step by step, from his youth upward; we should hear of his
first essays in poetry; then of his first attempts at dramatic writing; then of his
acquaintance with Shakspere; then the history of a particular play; and so the
narrative would advance without any sign-board declaration of the kind supposed
above. But I have shown enough to satisfy any one that Shakspere did not write
the Plays; and I have also shown that the man who did write them was a certain
Master Francis, a cousin of Cecil, and that his father's name was Sir Nicholas; that
he resided at St. Albans. But here we have a reference to my uncle Burly, which
still further serves to identify the mysterious voice which is talking to us out of
these arithmetical adjustments, as the voice of the great Francis Bacon. And it
comes from another part of the text, showing that the Cipher is everywhere; and
it responds, not to 505, like the sentences I have just been giving, but to another
Cipher number, 523.
Let us commence with 523 at the beginning of scene 2, act i, 1st Henry IV.,
page 70, column 1. From the first word, inclusive, of the scene, upward, we have
in the column 341 words: deduct 341 from 523. and we have 182 left; carry this up
the preceding column, and it brings us to the word burly:
Which gape and rub the elbow at the news
Of hurly burly innovation.
Why are these words not united by a hyphen, as are water-coloiirs, two lines
below them ?
Now, if we take that root-number 523 again, and commence at the same point,
but count down the column, instead of up, as in the last sentence, we pass through
138 words; and theee deducted from 523 leave 385; now deduct the common modi-
ifier, 30(74:2), and we have 355. Now, instead of going up 69:2, let us carry this
355 to the end of the first section of scene 1, act i, 69:1, and go upward; there are
179 words* from the end of that section to the top of the column; 179 deducted
from 355 leaves 176, and 176 carried down the preceding column (68:2) is uncle.
But if we count from the top of the second section of act i, scene r, we have 180
words, and this deducted from 355 leaves 175, which gives us the word my. Here
we have the words my uncle; and, growing out of precisely the same root-number^
we have the word Burly, by a different count from that just given:
Page and
Column.
Word.
175
68:2
My
176
68:2
uncle
323
69:2
Burly.
FRAGMENTS. 88 1
523—138 (70:1)=385— 30 (74:2)=355— 180 (69:1)=
523—138=385—30=355—1 79 (69 : 1 )= 1 76.
523— 138=385— 60 (2d § 79:1)=325— 2 h col.—
Or, to give the word Burly, as at first stated, we have:
23-341=182. 504—182=322+1=323. 323 69:2 Burly.
Here the length of column 2 of page 69 was adjusted to the fragments of 70:1,
so that 523 would produce the word Burly both up and down the column !
And observe how singularly this word uncle appears in the Plays. It is found but
once in each of the following plays: Merchant of Venice, All's Well, Comedy of
Errors and Cymbeline j but twice in each of the following plays: Tempest, Merry
Wives, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Othello; while it is altogether absent
from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Measure for Measure, Love s Labor Lost, Mid-
summer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, The Winters
Tale, Henry VIII. , Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Julius Ciesar, Lear and Anthony
and Cleopatra. On the other hand, it is found eight times in King John, twenty
times in Richard II., ten times in 1st Henry 1 V., seventeen times in Richard III., and
eleven times in Troilus and Cressida. But while found ten times in 1st Henry IV. and
eight times in Henry V., it does not occur at all in the play between these, — 2d Henry
IV. ! There is no reason why uncle should appear eleven times in the Greek play
of Troilus and Cressida, and not at all in that other Greek play of Timon of Athens,
or in the Roman plays of Coriolanus and Julius Cesar, or why it should be found
twenty times in Richard II. and not at all in Henry VIII! The explanation will
be found to be, that in some plays Bacon is telling the history of his youth, with
which his uncle Burleigh had a great deal to do, while Lear, Timon of Athens, the
Roman plays, Hen?yVIII, etc., were written after his uncle's death, and the inter-
nal story does not relate to him, while the more youthful and joyoms plays, like The
Two Gentlemen of Verona and Love's Labor Lost, were composed before the dark
shadow of his kinsman's hostility fell upon his life.
And here is another significant fact. The difference between the first Burly
and the last is the difference of deducting the modifier 30. Now let us take the
last Burly and deduct the other modifier 50, that is, go down the column 50 words,
a~d what do we find ? Burly is the 323d word, 69:2, counting up the column; add
50 to 323 and we have 373, 69:2, and the 373d word is nephew ; and Bacon was
Burleigh's nephew ! Now take that same 186 and carry it through the first section of
scene 1, act i, 69:1 ; we have 122 or 123 left, accordingly as we count from the 179th
or 180th word; and we get the following words:
523—341=182—59=123. 123 69:2 Had
202 (68:2)— 122=80+1= 81 68:2 sought
202(68:2)— 123=79 -fl
82 68:2 to
202 (68:2)— 122=80+1
=81+2 //=83. 83 68:2 intrap
523— 341=182— 6 =422, 203 (68:2)— 122=81 + 1
=82 + 2/^=84. 84 68:2 me.
How? By excessive and extravagant praises of the Plays, hoping that in his
pride Bacon would admit the authorship. The accomplice of Burleigh and Cecil
in this work was Sir Walter (Raleigh), and Sir Walter is often referred to in the
text. Here we have him:
523-
-341=
=182-
-60=
=122.
523-
-341=
=182-
-59=
=123.
=80+2 h=
=82.
523—431=
=182-
-60=
=122.
Word.
Page and
Column.
205
68:2
Sir
-201
34
68:1
Walter.
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
523—138 (70:l)=3o5— 180 (69:1)— 205.
523—138 (70:1)=385— 30=355— 120 (69:1)=235-
(68:2)=34.
And here is the word praise:
523—138=385. 385 69:2 praise.
And the play they especially praised was The Famous Victories, one of the
early plays, here alluded to simply as the Victories. And the same root-num-
ber, 123, that produced sought to intrap vie, produces also Victories, thus :
523—341 (70:1)— 182— 66 (69:1)=123. 202—123=79+1=80. 68:2 Victories.
And note again, that while 523 — 138 (7o:i)=385, and this, counting from the
beginning of the second section of 69:1, produced sir, and from the top of the first
section of 69:1 produced Walter, that from the end of the first section of 69:1 it
leaves 206, and this less the modifier 30 is 176, and 176 is again uncle.
523—138=385—179=206—30=176. 176 68:2 uncle.
And I could go on and on ad infinitum, and show how 176 up from the end of scene
third (68:2) produces King; and I might then point to the word Richard's, 387, 69:1;
deposed, 25, 68:2; dtp rived, 31, 68:2; life, 35, 68:2; purpose, 180, 68:2; council-board,
92, 68:2; insurrection, 329, 69:2; rebellion, 296, 69:2; Sir Walter, 147-8, 68:2, and a
whole host of most significant words, every one of which has its Cipher arithmet-
ical arrangements. And here, too, is told the story of the sending of Percy to
Shakspere's home. There are 283 words in scene 1, act i, in column 1, page 69:
505— 193 (75 :1)=312— 283=29. 29 69:2 home.
And here we have the word strait growing out of precisely the same root as
home:
505— 193(75:1)=312— 59 (first section, act v, scene 1)
=253—191 (68:2)=62. 458—62=396+1—397. 397 68:1 strait.
And we saw that 29, carried forward to 69:2, made the word home, but carried
backward to 68:2 and down from the end of scene third, it gives us directed, thus:
505—193=312—288=29+202=231. 231 68:2 directed.
While counting in the four hyphens in 283 and in the column gives us 227, to;
and 312 — 120 (from top of act v to top of column)=i92, and the ig2d word, 69:2, is
bird, a rare word; the sentence is: directed him to go as straight as a bird flies to his
home; and 312—59 again =253, less the two hyphens in the column, gives us 251
(69:2), as; and 312 — 179 (from end section 1, scene 1, act v, up to top of column)
gives us 133; and 133 up the next preceding column (68:2) gives the 261st word,
a {straight as a bird); and then we have the word indirect: Percy is to go not by the
indirect ways, but straight as a bird flies, etc.
312—179=133. 133 68:2 indirect.
And 312 — 180 (from the top of second section, act v, scene 1, upward) = 132,
and this minus 50(74:2) leaves 82, and this carried to the beginning of scene 4(68:2)
and downward gives us understand (82 + 202=284, 68:2), while 83 (312 — 179=
133 — 50=83) carried up from the same point yields the 120th word, safety: to let
Shakspcre understand that his own safety requires him to fly. And so I might go
on and work out another volume of the story right here.
FRAGMENTS.
S83
And now let us turn to some other fragments, for I desire to show that all the
Cipher numbers, 505, 506, 513, 516 and 523, applied in all parts of the text, pro-
duce coherent narratives, which I have now neither the space nor time to work out
in full.
Take the root-number 516 and deduct the 167 words in the second section of
74:2, and wre have 349; now deduct the 22 b & // in 167, and we have 327.
And here we have a fragment of the statement of Cecil to the Queen, to-wit,
that, suspecting the real authorship of the Plays, the Earl of Shrewsbury went to the
Curtain (286, 75:1) Play-house to see Shakspere act:
516— 167=340— 22 b & h (167)=~327.
Page and
Word. Column.
-284 (74:1)=43— 10 b (284)=33.
-50=277—248=29. 447—29=
73— 175+1-
448—73=375
349—22 b ft A— 827-
349—22 b & /^=327-
418+1=419.
349—22 b & //=327— 284 (74:1)— 48.
349—22 b & A— 827— 254— 73. 248-
176+3=179.
349—22 b a //— 327— 254 (75:1)— 73.
+ 1=376.
349—22 b & A— 327— 50— 277— 248— 29 — 22 b (248)—
349—22 /,& /&— 327— 50— 277— 248— 29+440— 478.
349— 22/; & A— 327— 50— 277— 145— 182— 2 £—180.
349—22 b& //=327— 30=297— 50 (76:1)— 247— 146
(76:2) —101. 498—101=397+1=398.
349—22 b & h— 327— 49 (76:1)— 278— 254 24—
15 /, & /,=9. 508—9=499+1=500.
349_22 b ft A— 327— 49— 278.
349_22 b ft A— 827— 30— 297— 50— 247.
349—22 b & A— 827— 254 ( 75 :2 h- 78. 248—73=175
.4-1=1.76+4/; ft //— 180.
349—22 b ft A— 827— 80— 297— 50— 247— 3 *— 248.
349—22 b & *— 827— 50— 277— 248— 29— 22 b (248)=
349—22/^ & A— 827— 50— 277.
349—22 b & //=327— 50=277— 248=29. 447—29=
418+1=419+2 *— 421.
349—22 b ft //— 327— 193=134. 284—134=150+1=
349—224 ft A— 327— 50— 277— 145(76:2)— 132—
8 b & //=124.
33
419
43
179
376
478
130
398
78:2
75:1
73:2
The
Earl
of
r4:2 Shrewsbury
76:1
75:1
76:1
75:2
76:1
tells
me
he
saw
him
500
75:2
act.
278
76:2
He
247
76:2
said,
180
74:2
I
243
76:2
assure
7
74:1
you
277
76:2
your
421
75:1
divination
151
74:1
is
124
"4:2
right.
And he goes on to say that he —
349_22 b ft 7^=327— 50=277— 219 (74:2)— 58.
498—58=440+1=441. 441 76:1 never
349—22 b ft A— 827— 50— 277— 248— 29+193— 222
2 //=220. 220 75:1 witnessed
such a performance; that he had to stuff his quoife (his cap) into his mouth to keep
from laughing out loud. Shakspere was acting the part of Hotspur, and the Earl
says: " He speaks the rude tongue of the peasant-towns of the West ever since the
Conquest," and —
349-22 b & *— 827— 49 (76:1)— 278. 278 75:2 his
884
THE CIPHER NARRA T1VE.
Word.
Pagre and
Column.
349—22 b & £=327— 30=297— 50=247-
-146=101—3
=98—50=48—1 A— 47.
47
76:2
walk
is grotesque and laughable.
And Cecil then gives in detail Shakspere's history after he first came to Lon-
don, when he was —
349—22 £ & 4=327—30=297.
349—22 £ & 4=327—50=277. 448—277=171 + 1=
349—22 b & 4=327—30=297—50 (76:1)— 247.
because Sir Thomas was furious: My —
349-22 b & 4=327— 30=297— 193=104 +£=104.
349—22 b & 4=327—50=277. 477—277=170+1
=171.
349—22 b & 4=327—30=297—50 (76:1)=247.
508—247=261 + 1=262.
And Shakspere would have been —
349—22 b & 4=327—50=277—145=132.
349—22 b & 4=327—50=277.
349—22 b & 4=327—30=297—193=104—15 b & 4=
89— 50 (76:1)=39 +457=496. 496 76:2 robbery.
And Cecil's friend Morton —
349—254 (75:1)=95.
349_146 (76:2)=203. 448—203=245+1=246.
349—146 (76:2)=203— 22 £=181.
349—50 (76: 1)=299— 27 £=272.
349—254=95—15 ^ & //=80+50 (74:2)=130.
-,49—253=96. 284—96=188+1=189 + 6 4=195.
349—145=204— 3 b (145)=201.
349—22 b & 4=327—50=277—49 (76:1)=228.
3^_22 b & 4=327—30=297—193=104—15 b & 4=
349— 22 £ & 4=327—50=277—145=132—2 £=130.
349—22 £ & 4=327— 30=297— 50 (76:1 )=247— 146=
101. 498—101=397+1=398. 398 76:1
297
172
247
76:1
76:1
76:1
constrained
to
fly
104
75:2
Lord
171
75:1
was
262
75:2
furious.
132
277
77:1
76:1
hanged
for
95
75:2
remembered
246
76:1
well
181
75:2
his
272
75:2
appearance
130
74:2
the
195
74:1
first
201
77:1
time
228
74:2
he
89
75:2
ever
130
75:2
saw
him.
And here we have again, growing out of this root-number, 349, the name of
Marlowe:
349— 193(75:1)=! 56.
349—254 (75:1)=95— 30=
+ 6£&4 col. =226.
=65. 284—65=219+1=220
156
226
75:2
74:1
More
low.
And he describes Shakspere running about the inn-yards, with lanthorn in
hand, ready to run an errand or hold a horse. Then he says he was a servant of
Henslow, corroborating the tradition which said he entered the play-house first " as
a serviture," or servant.
349— 22 £ & 4=327—254=73-
+ 1=206+1 £ col.=207.
-30=43. 248—43=205
207
74:2 servant.
And here we have the name of Philip Henslow:
FRAGMENTS. 885
Page and
Word. Column.
349—22 b & A— 327— 50 (74:2)— 277— 50(76:1)=227— 31
(79:1)— 196— j b (31)— 191— 162— 29. 610—29=
581+2 >&— 583. 583 77:2 Philip
349—22 £& 4=327— 30=297— 193 (75:1)— 104*
508—104=404+1=405+14=406. 406 75:2 Hence \
349— 22 4 & 4=327—50=277—218 (74:2 >=59. 284— [
59=225^1=226. 226 74:1 low. J
Observe how craftily Philip is hidden in the text. Falstaff says: "If I do
Jillop me with a three-man-beetle."
The whole thing is forced. A Jillop with a beetle swung by three men is
absurd; and why are three man beetle all hyphenated? Because if they were not
this count would not match ! And note, too, how the same number, 516—167=
349 — 22 b& 4—327 produces low in More-4?7c and Hence/c^', reaching the same
word low {22b, 74:1) up the same column by 65 and 59. Why ? Because there are
six hyphenated words at the end of column 1, page 74: " peasant-towns," " worm-
eaten-hole," "smooth-comforts-false," and " true wrongs ;" all in eight lines and
all below low; so that 59 without these extraordinary hyphenations produces low;
and 65 with these extraordinary hyphenations produces the same word low. So that
to produce these two sets of words, More-low and Philip Hence-low, here given,
thirteen words had to be pounded together, by hyphenating them, so as to count as
Jive words ! Was ever anything like it seen in the annals of literature ?
But how was Shakspere serving Henslow ? He was —
349—22 b & k— 327— 60— 277— 26 b & /,— 25 1 . 251 75:2 then
349—22 b & 4=327— 30— 2fJ7— 49 (76: 1 ;=248. 508
—248=260+1=261 +6 4— 267. 267 75:2 laboring
for him; he was in his service :
349—22 b&h= 827— 30— 297— 50— 247— 146 (76:2)
—101. 577—101=476+1=477. 477 77:1 service
He was acting first in the capacity of call-boy, to summon the actors, when
their time came, to go upon the stage. Here we have it :
349—22 b & 4=327— 50=277— 193=84— 10 b (193)=
349—22 b & A— 327— 50— 277— 193— 84.
349—22 b & 4—327— 30=297— 50=247— 7 b & 4—
349—22 b ft A— 827— 193— 134— 5 A (193)— 129— 50
(76:1)— 79. 603—79=524+1=525. 525 76:2 call
349—22 b ft 4=327— 50—277— 193=84— 10 b (173)—
74. 458+74—532. 532 76:2 boy.
And then we have the whole story of Bacon's trouble at the death of Marlowe;
for although in one sense he was glad that so blatant and dangerous a fellow was
not to be brought before the Council to be questioned as to the authorship of his
Plays, yet Bacon found himself without a mask. He consulted Harry Percy,
who recommended Shakspere as a shrewd, prudent, cunning, close-mouthed man,
not likely to fall into the troubles which had overtaken Marlowe. And we have, in
the Cipher narrative, the whole story of Bacon sending Percy to interview Shak-
spere, whom he found not, as he did later, in silken apparel:
523—167 (74:2)— 356— 22 b & h (167)— 334. 603-334=
269+1—270. 270 76:2 He
74
75:2
The
84
75:2
office
240
76:2
of
886
THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
523—167=356—22 b & 4=334—30=304.
523—167=356—22 b & 4=334—50=284.
523—167=356—22 b & 4=234— 50=284— 4 b col.—
523—167=356—22 I & 4=334—30=304.
523—167=356—22 b & h— 334— 80— 804. 447—304
=143+1=144.
523—167=356—22 b & 4=334. 457-334=123+
1=124.
523—167=356—22 b & 4=334.
523—167=356—22 b & 4=334—50 (74:2)=284— 163
(78:1)— 121— 1 h col.— 120.
523—167=356—22 b & 4=334—50=284—50 (76:1)=
234—146=88—3 b (146)— 85. 577—85=492+1=
523—167=356—22 b & 4=334—50=284—50=234—
146=88—3 b (146)— 85.
523—167=356—22 b & 4=334—50=284—49 (76:1)=
235— 3 4 col.— 232.
523—167—356—22 b & 4= 334— 50=284. 603—284
=319+1—320.
Word.
Page and
Column.
304
75:1
found
284
76:1
him
280
76:2
not
304
76:1
in
144
75:1
silken
124
334
76:2
76:2
apparel,
with
120
76:2
silver
493
77:1
buckles
85
77:1
in
232
76:2
his
320
76:2
shoes.
And here we have the very picture of hoi
at the Curtain:
Percy drew him aside one night
523— 167— 356— 22 b & 7;— 334— 50— 284. 284 75:1 drew
523—167—356—22 b & 4=334—30=304—50 (76:1)=
254— 145 (76:2)— 109. 109 77:2 aside
523— 167=356— 22 4 & 4=334—30=304— 13 b col. = 291 75:1 night
and made him an offer of one-half of all that might be earned by the Plays if he
would father them. But I must stay my hand and reserve all this for the future.
But here is another fragment, and the last, which I will throw into the hopper.
When the wounded Shakspere, after his fight with the gamekeepers, was bailed out
and taken to his father's bouse, the village doctor, an apothecary, was sent for; and
he told Shakspere's father that the young man had better fly; that, though his wounds
were not dangerous, he had but a slender chance for his life, because of the wrath
of Sir Thomas. He —
505— 167=338— 22 6 m A=316.
316—50=266—50 (76:1)=216— 9 b & 4=207. 207
316—50=266. 448—266=182+1=183. 183
316—50=266—49=217—145=72—49=23+457= 480
316—193=123. 123
316—50 (74:2)=266— 50(76:1)— 216. 284—216=68+1=69
316—49=267—145=122. 448—122=326+1=327. 327
316—49=267—50=217—145=72. 577—72=505+1=506
316—50=206—50=216—145=71—5 b & 4=66. 66
316—49=267—145=122. 577—122=455+1=456. 456
316—49=267—145=122—3 /;(145)=119. 119
316—253=63. 448—63—385+1=386. 386
76:1
feared
76:1
that
76:2
he
75:2
had
74:1
but
76:1
a
77:1
slender
76:1
chance
77:1
for
76:1
his
76:1
life.
And he advised:
FRA GA
IENTS.
316— 193=123— 15 b & h (193)— 108.
that —
S87
316—49=267. 457— 267=190+ 1=191.
316—50=266—3 /fc=263.
316-49=267— 145=122— 3 b (145)=119.
316—49=267. 457—267=190+1=191+5 £=196.
316— 50=266— 50=216— 50=166— 1/;=165.
And he proceeds to tell the gossip of the village:
316—193=123—15 b & h (193) — 1 08— 50=58. 603—
58=545+1=546.
316—145=171.
316—145=171.
316—145=171. 448—171=277+1=278.
316—50=266—145=121—2 //= 119.
316—145=171—3 b (145)=168.
316—248=68.
316—30=286—49 (76:1)— 287.
316—49=267—5 b col.— 262.
316—49=267. 603—267=336+1=337.
316—49=267—15/; & //=252.
316—145=171—3 b (145)— 168. 577—168=409+1=
316—30=286—145=141.
316—30=286—50=236. 603—236=367+1=368+
8 £=376.
316— 145=171— 3 b (145)— 168. 577—168=409+1=
410+3/^=413.
316—50=266—145=121—3 b (145)— 118. 577—118
=459+1=460+3/^ col.— 463.
316—145 (76:2)— 171. 577—171—406+1=407.
316—30—286—49=237. 457—237=220+1=221 +
5 b col.— 226.
316—193—123—15 b & /*— 108. 448—108—340+1—
316—50 (74:2)— 266— 49(76:1)— 217. 603—217—386
+ 1=387+33(145)— 390.
316— 50(74:2)— 266— 50 (76:1)=216.
316—50 (74:2)— 266— 50 (76:1)— 216— 145— 71. 284—
71=213+1=214+6 /;=220.
316—50=266—146=120—3 b col. =117.
316—49=267—7 h & £=260.
316—50=266—145=121. 498—121=377+1=378.
316— 146=170— 3 b (146)— 167. 508—167=341 + 1=
342+6=348.
316—193=123—15 b & h (193)— 108— 50=58+457=
515— 3 £=512.
316—193=123—49 (76:1)— 74.
316—49 (76:1 )— 267— 145=122.
316—145 (76:2)=171— 145=26. 448—26=322+1=
316— 49 (76:1) =267— 15 b & h col. =252.
316-248 (74:2)— 68.
Word.
Page and
Column.
108
76:1
advised
191
76:2
he
263
76:2
should
119
77:1
leave
196
76:2
at
165
75:2
once.
546
76:2
I
171
77:1
heard
171
278
76:2
76:1
say
that
119
76:1
his
168
68
76:1
74:1
Lordship
who
237
76:2
is
262
78:1
an
337
76:2
honest
252
76:1
man,
410
77:1
but
141
76:1
not
376
76:2
as
413
77:1
patient
463
77:1
as
407
77:1
Job,
226
76:2
was
341
76:1
in
390
76:2
the
216
75:2
greatest
220
117
74:1
76:1
rage,
and
260
76:2
said
378
76:1
he
348
r5:2
512
76:2
going
74
76:2
to
122
77:1
hang
323
76:1
every
252
7'-:l
mm
68
74:1
who
Word.
Page and
Column.
61
75:1
was
171
76:1
engaged
256
75:1
in
358
76:1
the
394
78:1
destruction
113
76:1
of
154
77:2
his
324
76:1
fish
328
76:1
pond.
888 7 HE CIPHER NA RKA 7 7 1 rE.
316—248 (74:2)=68— 7 b col.=61.
316— 145(76:2)=171.
316—248=68+193=261—5 b & h col.=256.
31 6— 30=286— 145=141 . 498—141=357 +1=358 .
316—50=266—32 (79:2)— 384+102— 896— 2 h col .=
316— 50=266— 145 (76:2)— 121— 3 b (145)=118—
! 5 b ft h col.=113.
316—162 (78:1)— 154.
316—30=286—161 (78:1)— 125. 448—125=323+1=
316—145 (76:2)— 171. 498—171=327+1=328.
And Shakspere's father tells him that many a man had been hanged for a
less offense; and that Sir Thomas would not scruple to give him the full extent of
the law; and that it did not take much in that day to send a man to the gallows, and
that he had better fly. And he sends him off with his parental blessing and a very
little money.
And here, before closing the Cipher narrative, I would say that it may be
objected that I have not given in detail much of the story set forth in the pros-
pectus and preliminary notice of my book, as to Bacon's attempted suicide and
Percy's visit to Stratford. This is true, but I have given much that I did not
promise, such as Shakspere's marriage and the description of Ann Hathaway.
And instead of furnishing the reader with a book of seven hundred pages, as
promised, I submit to him a book of nearly one thousand pages.
And the question may be asked, " Did Shakspere know there was a cipher in
the Plays asserting Bacon's authorship and exposing his own pretensions ? " I
think he did. I think that famous visit of Ben Jonson to Stratford, shortly before
his death, conveyed to him the intelligence, and that he requested Bacon to write
an inscription for his tombstone that would prevent his bones being cast out
when the exposure came. But he took a still further and most remarkable pre-
caution.
There has been found recently (1884) in the Bodleian Library an old letter from
a certain William Hall, a Queen's College man, who took his B. A. degree in
October, 1694, to Edward Thwaites, of Queen's College, a well-known Anglo-
Saxon scholar. Halliwell-Phillipps pronounces the letter genuine, and has printed
it for private circulation, with a preface, in which he* shows that it was probably
written in December, 1694, seventy-eight years after Shakspere's death. Mr.
Hall was visiting Stratford and wrote to his " dear Neddy." He quotes the famous
lines on the tombstone, and adds, " The little learning these verses contain would
be a very strong argument of the want of it in the author." He says that Shak-
spere ordered those four lines to be cut on his tombstone during his life-time, and
that he did so because he feared his bones might some day be removed; and he
further says that they buried him " full seventeen feet deep; deep enough to secure
him ! "
And so, seventeen feet below the surface, and with those famous lines above
him:
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones,
Shakspere awaits the revelation of the Cipher.
CHAPTER XXII.
A WORD PERSONAL.
Report me and my causes right
To the unsatisfied. Hamlet, p, j.
I BEGAN this book with an apology; I end it with another.
No one can be more conscious of its defects than I am. So
great a subject demanded the utmost care, deliberation and per-
fection; while my work has, on the other hand, been performed with
the utmost haste and under many adverse circumstances.
It was my misfortune to have announced, in 1884, that I believed
I had found a Cipher in the Plays. From the time I put forth that
claim until the copy was placed in the hands of the publishers, I
made no effort to advertise my book. But the assertion was so
startling, and concerned writings of such universal interest, that it
could not be suffered to fall unnoticed. I felt, at the same time,
that I owed some duties to the nineteenth century, as well as to the
sixteenth, and hence my work was greatly broken in upon by
public affairs. After a time the reading world became clamorous
for the proofs of my surprising assertion; and many were not slow
to say that I was either an impostor or a lunatic. Goaded by these
taunts, I made arrangements to publish before I was really ready to
do so; and then set to work, under the greatest strain and the
highest possible pressure, to try to keep my engagements with my
publishers. But the reader can readily conceive how slowly such a
Cipher work as this must have advanced, when every word was a
sum in arithmetic, and had to be counted and verified again and
again. In the meantime upon my poor devoted head was let loose <
a perfect flood-tide of denunciation, ridicule and. misrepresentation
from three-fourths of the newspapers of America and England. I
could not pause in my work to defend myself, but had to sit, in the
midst of an arctic winter, and patiently endure it all, while working
889
89c THE CIPHER NARRA TIVE.
from ten to twelve hours every day, at a kind of mental toil the
most exhausting the human mind is capable of.
These facts will, I trust, be my excuse for all the crudeness,
roughness, repetitions and errors apparent in these pages.
In the Patent Office they require the inventor to state clearly
what he claims. I will follow that precedent.
I admit, as I have said before, that my workmanship in the
elaboration of the Cipher is not perfect. There are one or two
essential points of the Cipher rule that I have not fully worked
out. I think that I see the complete rule, but I need more leisure
to elaborate and verify it abundantly, and reduce my workmanship
to mathematical exactness.
But I claim that, beyond a doubt, there is a Cipher in the so-called
Shakespeare Plays.
The proofs are cumulative. I have shown a thousand of them.
No honest man can, I think, read this book through and say
that there is nothing extraordinary, unusual and artificial in the
construction of the text of 1st and 2d Henry IV. No honest man
will, I think, deny the multitudinous evidences I present that the
text; words, brackets and hyphens have been adjusted arithmet-
ically to the necessity of matching the ends of scenes and fragments
of scenes with certain root-numbers of a Cipher. No man can pre-
tend that such words and phrases as the following could come in
this, or any other book, by accident, held together in every case
by the same Cipher numbers:
The Names of Plays.
1. Measure for Measure, three times repeated.
2. Contention of York and Lancaster, three times repeated.
3. The Merry Wives of Windsor, twice repeated.
4. Richard the Second, twice repeated.
5. Richard the Third, given once.
6. King John, twice repeated.
The Names of Persons.
1. Shakspere, repeated about twenty times.
2. Marlowe, repeated several times.
3. Archer, used once.
4. Philip Hensloiv, used once in full, and twice without first name.
5. Field, several times repeated.
6. Cecil, many times repeated.
7. The Earl of Shrewsbury, two or three times repeated.
■\
A WORD PERSONAL. 891
8. Sir Thomas Lucy, twice repeated.
.9. Hayward.
10. Harry Percy, many times repeated.
1 1 . Master Francis.
12. My Uncle Burleigh, twice repeated.
13. My Lord John, the Bishop of Worcester, used twice.
14. Del hick, King of Arms. *
15. Ann Hathaway.
16. Ann Whatley, twice repeated. *
17. King Harry \ father of the present Queen.
18. Sir Nicholas^ twice repeated.
19. Sir Walter.
Names of Places.
1. St. Albans, twice repeated.
2. The Fortune Play-house.
3. The Curtain Play-house.
4. Nexv-Place.
5. Gui negate.
6. The Fire of Smith field.
7. Holland.
S. The Low Countries.
9. The fish pond, twice repeated.
Significant Phrases.
1. The old jade, many times repeated.
2. The old termagant, many times repeated.
3. My cousin, many times repeated.
4 . The roi 'a 1 1\ 'rant.
5. The royal maiden.
6. The rascally knave.
7. A butcher s 'prentice.
8. Glove-making, two or three times repeated.
9. The King's evil.
10. Fifteen hundred and fifteen.
Now I submit to all fair-minded men whether this is not an
astonishing array of words to find in about a dozen pages of the
text of two plays; and whether there is any other writing on earth
in which, in the same space, these words can be duplicated. I can-
not believe there is. But remember that not only are these sig-
nificant and most necessary words found in this brief compass, but
they fit exactly into sentences every word of which grows out of
the same determinate Cipher number. But, in addition to all this,
remember the dense packing of some columns, and the sparse con-
dition of the adjoining columns; remember how heart is spelled
hart where it refers to Shakspere's sister; remember how and it is
Sg2 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
spelled an't, and not and't, where allusion is had to Bacon's aunt;
remember how dear is spelt deere when it refers to deer; remember
how sperato is separated by a hair space into sper ato, so as to give
the terminal syllable of Shake-sper ; remember how the rare word
rabbit is found in the text precisely cohering, arithmetically, with
hunting. Then turn to the Cipher story on page 79 of the Folio,
where not only scattered words come out, but where whole long
series of words are so adjusted, with the aid of the brackets and
hyphens, as to follow precisely the order of the words in the play !
Then remember how every part of this Cipher story fits precisely
into what we know historically to be true; and, although much
of it is new, that part is, in itself, probable and reasonable.
The world will either have to admit that there is a Cipher in the
Plays, or that in the construction of this narrative I have manifested
an ingenuity as boundless as that which I have attributed to Bacon.
But I make no such claim. No ingenuity could create the words
necessary to tell this extraordinary story, unless they were in the
text. Take Bulwer's Richelieu, or Byron's Ma?ifred, or Goldsmith's
She Stoops to Conquer, or any other dramatic composition of the last
hundred years, and you will seek in vain for even one-tenth of
the significant words found herein; and as to making any of these
modern plays tell a coherent, historical tale, by counting with the
same number from the ends of scenes and fragments of scenes, it
would be altogether and absolutely impossible.
I do not blame any man for having declared a priori against the
possibility of there being a Cipher in the Plays. On the face of it
such a claim is improbable, and, viewed from our nineteenth century
standpoint, and in the light of our free age, almost absurd. I
could not, in the first instance, have believed it myself. I advanced
to the conception slowly and reluctantly. I expected to find only
a brief assertion of authorship, a word or two to a column. If any
man had told me five years ago that these two plays were such an
exquisite and intricate piece of microscopic mosaic-work as the facts
show them to be, I should have turned from him with contempt. I
could not have believed that any man would involve himself in
such incalculable labor as is implied in the construction of such a
Cipher. We may say the brain was abnormal that created it. But
A WORD PERSONAL. 893
how, after all, can we judge such an intellect by the ordinary
standard of mankind ? If he sought immortality he certainly
has achieved it, for, once the human family grasps the entirety of
this inconceivable work, it will be drowned in an ocean of wonder.
The Plays may lose their charm; the English language may perish;
but tens of thousands of years from now, if the world and civilization
endure, mankind will be talking about this extraordinary welding
together of fact and fiction; this tale within a tale; this sublime and
supreme triumph of the human intellect. Beside it the Iliad will be
but as the rude song of wandering barbarians, and Paradise Lost a.
temporary offshoot of Judaism.
I trust no honest man will feel constrained, for consistency's sake,
because he has judged my book unheard, to condemn it heard. It
will avail nothing to assail me. I am not at issue. And you cannot
pound the life out of a fact with your fists. A truth has the inde-
structibility of matter. It is part of God: the threads of continu-
ity tie it to the throne of the Everlasting.
Edmund Burke said in a debate in Parliament about the popu-
lation of the American colonies: "While we are disputing they
grow to it." And so, even while the critics are writing their essays,
to demonstrate that all I have revealed is a fortuitous combination
of coincidence, keen and able minds will be taking up my imperfect
clues and reducing the Cipher rule to such perfection that it will be
as useless to deny the presence of the sun in the heavens as to deny
the existence of the inner story in the Plays.
And what a volume of historical truths will roll out of the text
of this great volume ! The inner life of kings and queens, the high-
est, perhaps the basest, of their kind; the struggles of factions in the
courts; the interior view of the birth of religions; the first coloniza-
tion of the American continent, in which Bacon took an active part,
and something of which is hidden in The Tempest; the death of Mary
Queen of Scots; the Spanish Armada, told in Loves Labor Lost; the
religious wars on thecontinent; the story of Henry of Navarre; the real
biography of Essex; the real story of Bacon's career; his defense of his
life, hidden in Henry VIII. , his own downfall, in cipher, being told
in the external story of the downfall of Wolsey. What historical
facts may we not expect, of which that account of the introduction
894 THE CIPHER NARRATIVE.
of " the dreaded and incurable malady " into England is a specimen;
what philosophical reflections; what disquisitions on religion; what
profound and unrestrained meditations ! It will be, in short, the
inner story of the most important era in human history, told by the
keenest observer and most powerful writer that has ever lived. And
then think of the light that will be thrown upon the Plays them-
selves; their purposes, their history, their meaning ! A great light
bursting from a tomb, and covering with its royal effulgence the
very cradle of English Literature.
And so I trust my long-promised book to the tender mercies of
my fellow-men, saying to them in the language of the old rhyme:
Be to its faults a little blind,
And to its virtues very kind.
BOOK III.
•CONCLU/iORT
"Delayed,
But nothing altered. What I was, I zsm?
WnferJr7afe,/K3.
BOOK III.
CONCLUSIONS
CHAPTER I.
DELIA BACON.
Patience and sorrow strove
Which should express her goodliest.
King Lear, ivyj.
NO work in regard to the Baconian theory would be complete
without some reference to Miss Delia Bacon, who first an-
nounced to the world the belief that Francis Bacon was the real
author of the Plays.
America should especially cherish the memory of this distin-
guished lady. Our literature has been, to too great an extent, a col-
onial imitation, oftentimes diluted, of English originals. But here
is a case where one of our own transplanted race, out of the depths of
her own consciousness, marshaled to her conclusions by her pro-
found knowledge, advanced to a great and original conception.
I. '. ; ; Bacon's Biography.
I am indebted to Mr. W. H. Wyman1 for the following notes of
Miss Bacon's biography:
Delia Bacon was born in Tallmadge, Ohio, February 2, 181 1. She was the
daughter of Rev. David Bacon, one of the early Western missionaries, and sister
of the late Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon. She was educated at Miss Catharine E.
Beecher's school, in Hartford, and is described as a woman of rare intellect and
attainments. Her profession was that of a teacher and lecturer: the first woman,
1 Bacon-Shakespeare Bibliography.
899
9°° CONCL USIONS.
Mrs. Farrar says, whom she had ever known to speak in public. At this time
she resided in Boston. Having conceived the idea of the Baconian authorship,
she became a monomaniac on the subject. Visiting England, in 1853, m search of
proofs for her theory, she spent five years there; first at St. Albans, where she sup-
posed Bacon to have written the Plays; then at London, where she wrote The Philoso-
phy of Shakespeare Unfolded, and subsequently at Stratford-on-Avon. Here, after
the publication and non-success of her book, she lost her reason wholly and
entirely. She was returned to her friends' in Hartford, in April, 1858, and died
there, September 2, 1859.
Mrs. John Farrar, in her interesting little book, Recollections of
Seventy Years, (pp. 319, etc.), gives the following account of Miss
Bacon's first appearance as a lecturer:
The first lady whom I ever heard deliver a public lecture was Miss Delia
Bacon, who opened her career in Boston, as teacher of history, by giving a pre-
liminary discourse describing her method, and urging upon her hearers the impor-
tance of the study.
I had called on her that day for the first time, and found her very nervous and
anxious about her first appearance in public. She interested me at once, and I
resolved to hear her speak.
Her person was tall and commanding, her finely-shaped head was well set on
her shoulders, her face was handsome and full of expression, and she moved with
grace and dignity. The hall in which she spoke was so crowded that I could not
get a seat, but she spoke so well that I felt no fatigue from standing. She was at
first a little embarrassed, but soon became so engaged in recommending the study
of history to all present, that she became eloquent.
Her course of oral lessons or lectures on history interested her class of ladies
so much that she was induced to repeat them, and I heard several who attended
them speak in the highest terms of them. She not only spoke but read well, and
when on the subject of Roman history she delighted her audience by giving them,
with great effect, some of Macaulay's Lays.
I persuaded her to give her lessons in Cambridge, and she had a very appre-
ciative class, assembled in the large parlor of the Brattle House. She spoke with-
out notes, entirely from her own well-stored memory; and she would so group her
facts as to present to us historical pictures calculated to make a lasting impression.
She was so much admired and liked in Cambridge, that a lady there invited her to
spend the winter with her as her guest, and I gave her the use of my parlor for
another course of lectures. In these she brought down her history to the time of
the birth of Christ, and I can never forget how clear she made it to us that the
world was only then made fit for the advent of Jesus. She ended with a fine cli-
max that was quite thrilling.
In her Cambridge course she had maps, charts, models, pictures, and every-
thing she needed to illustrate her subject. This added much to her pleasure and
ours. All who saw her then must remember how handsome she was, and how
gracefully she used her wand in pointing to the illustrations of her subject. I used
to be reminded by her of Raphael's sibyls, and she often spoke like an oracle.
She and a few of her class would often stay after the lesson and take tea with
me, and then she would talk delightfully for the rest of the evening. It was very
inconsiderate in us to allow her to do so, and when her course ended she was half
dead with fatigue.
DELIA BACON. 901
II. Her Love Affair.
Delia Bacon's life was one of many sorrows. It would almost
seem as if there is some great law of compensation running through
human lives, so that those who are to be happy in immortal fame
too often pay for it by unhappy careers on earth. It is difficult
to conceive of a more wretched life than was that of Francis Bacon.
For a few short years only he rode the waves of triumphant suc-
cess; but his youth was enshrouded in poverty, and his age cov-
ered with dishonor. Even the great philosophical works, which the
world now holds as priceless, were received with general ridicule
and contempt; but his fame is to-day the greatest on earth, and will
so continue as long as our civilization endures.
And we seem to see the same great law of compensation run-
ning through the life of poor, unhappy Delia Bacon. Filled with a
divine enthusiasm for truth, her ideas were received by an ignorant
and bigoted generation with shouts of mockery. Nay, more, as if
fortune had not done its worst in this, her very heart was lacerated
and her womanly pride wounded, by a creature in the shape of a
man — a Reverend ( !) Alexander McWhorter.
A writer in the Philadelphia Times of December 26th, 1886,
gives the following account of this extraordinary affair:
Four young men were smoking in a chamber at a hotel in New Haven. It is
not to be assumed that they were drinking as well as smoking ; for at least one of
them had been a theological student in the Yale Divinity School, who was then a
resident licentiate of the university; and another was a nephew of a professor in
the theological department of that institution. Although they were so near to the
" cloth," they were a set of " jolly dogs," these young men, and so not averse to
a good cigar . Indeed, the resident licentiate, in whose room they were gathered,
was not only a good fellow, but a very rich young man. Presently, a waiter en-
tered and delivered a note to the host. It was couched in the following words:
Miss Delia Bacon will be happy to see Mr. at the rooms at the
Hotel this evening, or at any time that may be convenient to him.
Delia Bacon was the daughter of a Michigan missionary, and when she came
east in her girlhood, it was to qualify herself as a teacher. At school she made
rapid progress in everything except in English composition, to excel in which shei
most aspired, and, later on, it was conceded that her learning was not only unus-
ual, but extraordinary, in a woman. She was, indeed, from the outset of her
career as an instructor, a sibyl in aspect, as in fact; and her classes at New Haven
and Hartford, when she succeeded in establishing them, soon became the fashion.
Her lectures, for such her lessons really were, were attended by the most culti-
vated ladies of the two chief cities of Connecticut, the wives of the governors of
the State, the judges of the courts, the professors in the colleges, and other
go 2 CONCL USIONS.
dignitaries, who came to her to learn wisdom. It was her custom to give receptions
at her parlors, and, as she was admitted to be particular and discriminating in her
invitations, it was esteemed an honor, especially by young men, to receive them.
This accounts for the peculiar phraseology of the letter quoted above, and it would
deprive her invitation to the resident licentiate of any indelicacy, although he had
not been formally presented to her, if she had reason to know that he desired to
call upon her.
Such was the case.
The young theologian lived at the same hotel, and had sought an introduction.
He was ten years her junior. He was well known, and was a young man of good
repute. He and Miss Bacon met daily at the same table. She had no objection
to the introduction, but the person who it was proposed should make it was ob-
jectionable to her. She therefore considered the request for an introduction as
equivalent to the ceremony, and asked the young man to call. Had the resident
licentiate been a gentleman who was offended at the informal character of the
invitation, he would simply have put the letter into the fire and said nothing about
it. The young theologian, from a want of that delicacy he affected to find absent
in another, chose to adopt a different course. He read the note to his companions.
He and they considered the invitation a gross violation of propriety in the lady.
It was with them the subject of uproarious mirth ; but the resident licentiate
accepted the invitation all the same, and, after making the call, wrote a ludicrous
account of the affair for the amusement of one of his classmates, a clergyman,
already ordained and ministering to a charge. But his first visit was not his last.
He was more than pleased with Delia Bacon's intellectual attainments — he was
interested in her personal attractions. He called upon her frequently. He showed
her marked attention. He acted as her escort in public. He professed for her a
profound and lasting affection, and would not take "no" for an answer. He even
followed her to a watering-place, with no other excuse than to be near her. These
two — the learned lady of New Haven, always busy and already impressed with
the notion that she had " the world's work " to perform, and the resident licentiate,
idle, because he was rich, and living near the university for years after he should
have been caring for souls — were lovers. She had allowed him to ensnare her
affections, notwithstanding the discrepancy in their years. He was completely
fascinated by the brilliant talk of a refined and cultivated woman, to whom the
whole field of belles leitres was a familiar garden. They read and studied to-
gether, and, with two such natures, it was only natural that their talk should be
more of books than of love. She even confided to him her favorite theory that
was afterwards to take complete possession of her, that Shakspere was not the
author of Shakespeare's Plays, and that they were written in cipher in order to
conceal for a time a profound system of political philosophy which it was her mis-
sion to reveal. He approved these ideas and encouraged the delusion in its inci-
pient stages. Then, when he tired of the flirtation, as all men do who fall in love
with women older than themselves, he turned viciously upon his uncomplaining
victim and contemptuously characterized an affair, that had begun with baseness
on his part, a literary intimacy. . . . Indeed, the very person to whom objection
was made by the lady became from the very outset the confidant of her admirer,
and either saw or heard or read everything she subsequently wrote to him. Besides
exposing her correspondence, the resident licentiate, while he was paying devout
court to the lady, was, also, at all times, secretly holding her up to ridicule among
his friends, and, when it was reported he was engaged to marry her, he indig-
nantly declared his surprise that any one who knew him should think him such a
fool. . . .
DELIA BACON. 9-
The matter grew, after a time, into a scandal, and eventuated
in a trial before a council of the Congregational Church.
The clerical Lothario asserted in his own behalf that he had never made a
declaration of affection — that, so far as he was concerned, there had been no sen-
timent— not a thimbleful. In disproof of this, Miss Bacon's mother and brother
testified that they had seen a letter from her suitor to her that was " a real love
letter." This letter contained an account of the progress of the affection of the
gay young cleric for the tall sibyl. In it were such expressions as, " Then I loved
you," " I have loved you purely, fervently," " Though you should hate me, my
sentiment for you would remain unchanged." He said he would retain this senti-
ment through life, in death, and after death. . . . The toothsome gossip once begun,
it went from pious tongue to pious ear and from pious ear to pious tongue, until
it had spread all over the State of Connecticut, and even penetrated New York and
Boston. Not only were the old Professor and his family concerned in the circula-
tion of the story almost from the outset, but his house became the resort of those
who wished to hear it. Day after day his reception-room was thronged with those
who came to listen to the tale of wonder. As we have seen, other clergymen and
professors repeated the story everywhere on pretense of defending their clerical
brother. It was in this way that " the facts in the case" reached the ears of Miss
Bacon's friends.
" From village to village, from city to city, the marvel spread," wrote Cather-
ine Beecher afterwards, "till almost every village in New England was agitated
with it. No tale of private scandal had ever before been known to create so exten-
sive an excitement."
It is scarcely surprising that as the tale was told the wonder grew. The story
of a literary lady of five and thirty angling for a clergyman of twenty-five, and
ensnaring his unsophisticated affections, — it was always told with his share in the
courtship carefully excluded, — could not fail to prove grateful to the ears of good
people to whom society scandal and sensations were a boon not often afforded.
No one can read all this without thrills of indignation at the
base wretch who could thus, for the amusement of his friends,
trifle with the affections of a great and noble-hearted woman. And
it is not difficult to realize what must have been the feelings of the
eloquent scholar to find herself the talk of all New England, and
to have the tenderest emotions of her heart laid bare, and made the
subject of discussion by a public Congregational Church council.
The whole thing is horrible. And the writer in the Philadelphia
Times intimates that this great trial of her heart and pride had
something to do with the final overthrow of the poor lady's reason^
III. The Putnam's Magazine Article.
It would seem that the thought that Shakspere did not write
the Plays was conceived by Miss Bacon as far back as 1845 ; but it
was not until 1856 that she announced her belief to the world.
904 CONCLUSIONS,
This announcement was made in Putnam s Magazine of January,
1856, in the first article of that number. The editor was careful to
accompany the essay by a disavowal of any belief on his part in
the truth of the theory. He said :
In commencing the publication of these bold, original, and most ingenious and
interesting speculations upon the real authorship of Shakespeare's Plays, it is proper
for the editor of Putnam's Monthly, in disclaiming all responsibility for their start-
ling view of the question, to say that they are the result of long and conscientious
investigation on the part of the learned and eloquent scholar, their author; and that
the editor has reason to hope that they will be continued through some future num-
bers of the magazine.
But they were not continued. I have been told that Miss
Bacon's friends interfered to prevent the publication of any more
such startling and radical ideas. Mrs. Farrar gives a different
explanation. Be that as it may, this essay is the only one that
appeared from her pen in any American publication; and it is the
one thing that will save Putnam's Magazine from being forgotten.
Much has been said about Miss Bacon's insanity, as if it had
some necessary connection with the Baconian heresy and grew out
of it. And every one who has denied that the poacher of Stratford
wrote the Plays has been met with the reminder that Miss Bacon
died in a mad-house. It seems to have been forgotten that a great
many worthy people have died in mad-houses who believed that
Shakspere himself wrote the Plays; and a great many others have
ended their lives there who never heard of either Shakspere or
Bacon. And for one to go out of his mind implies that he has
some mind to go out of, and hence Miss Bacon's critics have spoken
from the assurance of positive safety. The truth is, insanity does
not com.e from opinions or theories, but it is a purely physical
disease, implying degeneration of the substance-matter of the brain.
A theory should stand or fall by itself, on its own merits, upon the
facts that can be adduced in its support; not by reference to
the personal careers of its advocates. If this were not so, what
religion on earth could not, in this way, be proved false? For the
insane asylums are full of people whose mania is some form or
other of religious belief. And the poet tells us, that
From Marlborough's eyes the tears of dotage flow,
And Swift expires a driveler and a show.
DELIA BACON. 905
But does it follow that Marlborough was not one of the greatest
and most successful military leaders that ever lived; or that Swift
was not a powerful and incisive writer and thinker ?
The injustice and absurdity of all such arguments is further
shown in the fact that the first book ever written, in defense of
Shakspere, against the assaults of Delia Bacon and William Henry
Smith, was the work of one Geo. H. Townsend, of London, pub-
lished in 1857; and the author of it subsequently became crazy and
committed suicide. But no Baconian ever argued therefrom that
every man who believed Shakspere wrote the Plays was necessarily
a lunatic and would end by self-murder, unless sent, as Grant
White suggested, to the insane asylum. The Shakspereans have
been insolent because they were cowardly. They felt that the uni-
versal prejudice and ignorance sustained them; inasmuch as the
clear-seeing and original thinkers are necessarily in the minority in
all generations. In all ages it has been the multitude who were
wrong, and the few who were right.
IV. Her Visit to England.
Mrs. Farrar gives the following account of Delia Bacon's visit to
England:
She expressed a great desire to go to England, and I told her she could go
and pay all her expenses by her historical lessons. Belonging to a religious sect
in which her family held a distinguished place, she would be well received by the
same denomination in England, and have the best of assistance in obtaining classes.
After talking this up for some time, I perceived that I was talking in vain. She
had no notion of going to England to teach history; all she wanted to go for was to
obtain proof of the truth of her theory, that Shakspere did not write the Plays
attributed to him, but that Lord Bacon did. This was sufficient to prevent my
ever again encouraging her going to England, or talking with her about Shak-
spere. The lady whom she was visiting put her copy of his works out of sight,
and never allowed her to converse with her on this, her favorite subject. We
considered it dangerous for Miss Bacon to dwell on this fancy, and thought that,
if indulged, it might become a monomania, which it subsequently did.
She went from Cambridge to Northampton, and spent the summer on Round
Hill, as a boarder, at a hydropathic establishment. Separated from all who knew
her, and were interested in her, she gave herself up to her favorite theme. She*
believed that the Plays called Shakespeare's contained a double meaning, and that
a whole system of philosophy was hidden in them, which the world at that time
was not prepared to receive, and therefore Lord Bacon had left it to posterity thus
disguised. At Round Hill she spent whole days and weeks in her chamber, took
no exercise, and ate scarcely any food, till she became seriously ill. After much
suffering she recovered and went to New York. To pay her expenses she was
906 CONCL USIONS.
obliged to give a course of lessons in history; but her heart was not in them — she
was meditating a flight to England. Her old friends and her relations would not,
of course, furnish her with the means of doing what they highly disapproved; but
some new acquaintances in New York believed in her theory, and were but too
happy to aid her in making known her grand discovery. A handsome wardrobe
and ample means were freely bestowed upon her, and kind friends attended her to
the vessel which was to carry her to England on her Quixotic expedition. Her
mind was so devoted to the genius of Lord Bacon that her first pilgrimage was to
St. Albans, where he had lived when in retirement, and where she supposed he
had written all those Plays attributed to Shakespeare. She lived there a year, and
then came to London, all alone and unknown, to seek a home there. She
thus describes her search after lodgings:
On a dark December day, about one o'clock, I came into this metropolis,
intending, with the aid of Providence, to select, between that and nightfall, a res-
idence in it. I had copied from the Times several advertisements of lodging-houses,
but none of them suited me. The cab-driver, perceiving what I was in search of,
began to make suggestions of his own, and, finding that he was a man equal to the
emergency, and knowing that his acquaintance with the subject was larger than
mine, I put the business into his hands. I told him to stop at the first good house
which he thought would suit me, and he brought me to this door, where I have
been ever since. Any one who thinks this is not equal to Elijah and his raven,
and Daniel in the lion's den, does not know what it is for a lady, and a stranger,
to live for a year in London, without any money to speak of, maintaining all the
time the position of a lady, and a distinguished lady, too; and above all, such a
one cannot be acquainted with the nature of cab-drivers and lodging-house
keepers in general.
V. A Noble Londoner.
And in marked contrast with the treatment she received from
her friends and relatives, who refused to give her money or encour-
agement, is the course of this poor lodging-house keeper in London.
His memory should be perpetuated for the honor of our common
humanity. She continues in her letter:
The one with whom I lodge has behaved to me like an absolute gentleman.
No one could have shown more courtesy and delicacy. For six months at a time
he has never sent me a bill; before this I had always paid him weekly, and I believe
that is customary. When after waiting six months I sent him ten pounds, and he
knew that it was all I had, he wrote a note to me, which I preserve as a curiosity,
to say that he would entirely prefer that I should keep it. I have lived upon this
man's confidence in me for a year, and this comparatively pleasant and comfortable
home is one that I owe to the judgment and taste of a cab-driver. . . . Your ten
pounds was brought me two or three hours after your letter came, and I sent
it immediately to Mr. Walker, and now I am entirely relieved of that most painful
feeling of the impropriety of depending upon him in this way, which it has re-
quired all my faith and philosophy to endure, because he can now very well wait
for the rest, and perceive that the postponement is not an indefinite one. Your
letter has warmed my heart, and that was -chat had suffered most. I would have
frozen into a Niobe before I would have asked any help for myself, and would sell
gingerbread and apples at the corner of a street for the rest of my days before I
could stoop, for myself, to such humiliations as I have borne in behalf of my work —
and I knew that I had a right to demand aid for it.
VI. Her Interview with Carlyle.
In her first interview with Carlyle she told him of her great discovery in regard
DELIA BACON. 9oy
to Shakespeare's Plays, so-called, and he appeared to be interested in her, if not
in her hypothesis; but he treated that with respect, and advised her to put her
thoughts on paper. She accordingly accepted an arrangement kindly made for her
by Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson with the editors of a Boston magazine, worked very
hard, and soon sent off eighty pages. A part of this was published, and she re-
ceived eighteen pounds for it. Had this contract been carried out, the money
made by it would have supported her comfortably in London, but there arose some
misunderstanding between her and the editors, owing, perhaps, to her want oi
method and ignorance of business. She considered herself very ill-used, and would
have nothing more to do with them.
VII. Her Sanity.
We are struck here by the fact that while Thomas Carlyle and
Ralph Waldo Emerson not only believed in the possibility of her
theory being correct, and were ready to aid her to obtain a public
hearing; and while she was living upon the bounty of poor Mr.
Walker, and the contributions of Mrs. Farrar and other literary
acquaintances, her own family and immediate friends seem to have
abandoned her to starvation in London. It could not have been
upon any question of her sanity, for the Putnam's Magazine article
gives no indication of lunacy; it is an exceedingly lucid and able
essay; and certainly Carlyle and Emerson were better fitted to judge
of her mental condition than any coterie of the McWhorter stripe
could possibly be; and those eminent men, it seems, believed her to
be sane enough to be entitled to a full publication of her views. It
may have been that the mere theory that Francis Bacon wrote the
Shakespeare Plays was, in that day, regarded, by the average mind
in New England, as sufficient proof of lunacy, without any other
act or acts on the part of the unhappy individual who possessed it.
And even Mr. Nathaniel Hawthorne — another distinguished
writer of that day — held out his hand and helped her. His course
throughout was courteous and generous, and should be remem-
bered to his everlasting honor.
VIII. The Publication of Her Book.
Mrs. Farrar says :
She now found an excellent and powerful friend in Mr. Hawthorne. He kindly
undertook to make an agreement with a publisher, and promised her that her
9o8 CONCL USIONS.
book should be printed if she would write it. Deprived of her expected endow-
ment from writing articles for a periodical, she was much distressed for want of
funds, and suffered many privations during the time that she was writing her book.
She lived on ike poorest food, and was often without the means of having a fire in
her chamber. She told me that she wrote a great part of her large octavo volume
sitting up in bed to keep warm.
There is scarcely a more tragical story in the whole history of
literature. This noble, learned woman, with a mind that penetrated
far beyond her contemporaries, suffering for want of food in Lon-
don, and writing her great work wrapped in the bed-clothes, for
lack of a fire in her chamber.
Is it any wonder that her mind finally gave way? Where is
the brain that could long stand such a strain ? Poverty, hunger,
cold, intense and long-continued mental labor, the estrangement
from friends, the cruel indifference of relatives, the contempt of
the world, the sneers of the shallow and the abuse of the base.
And does any one believe she would have had to endure such
sufferings if she had been writing a sentimental, shallow book to
illustrate the heroic career and magnificent virtues of that illus-
trious money-grabber of Stratford ? No. All New England would
have come to her relief. She suffered because she proclaimed a
belief that the ignorant age regarded as improbable. She was
scourged into the mad-house by men who called themselves crit-
ics. And to the honor of England be it remembered that when
she was denied a hearing in America, and was abandoned by her
own kith and kin, she found friends and a publisher in London.
Mrs. Farrar continues:
It was when her work was about half done that she wrote to me the letter from
which I have made the foregoing extract. Her life of privation and seclusion was
very injurious to both body and mind. How great that seclusion was is seen in
the following passage from another of her letters to me :
I am glad to know that you are still alive and on this side of that wide sea
which parts me from so many that were once so near, for I have lived here much
like a departed spirit, looking back on the joys and sorrows of a world in which I
have no longer any place. I have been more than a year in this house, and have
had but three visitors in all that time, and paid but one visit myself, and that was
to Carlyle, after he had taken the trouble to come all the way from Chelsea to
invite me ; and though he has since written to invite me, I have not been able to
accept his kindness. T have had calls from Mr. Grote and Mr. Monckton Milnes;
and Mr. Buchanan came to see me, though I had not delivered my letter to him.
All the fine spirits who knew Miss Bacon found in her what pleased and inter-
ested them, and, had not that one engrossing idea possessed her, she might have
had a brilliant career among the literary society of London.
DELIA BACON. 909
Yes; it was her dissent from the common opinion of mankind
that ruined everything.
One dark winter evening, after writing all day in her bed, she rose, threw on
some clothes, and walked out to take* the air. Her lodgings were at the West End
of London, near to Sussex Gardens, and not far from where my mother lived. She
needed my address, and suddenly resolved to go to the house of Mrs. R for it.
She sent in her request, and while standing in the doorway she had a glimpse of
the interior. It looked warm, cheerful and inviting, and she had a strong desire
to see my mother; so she readily accepted an invitation to walk in, and found the
old lady with her daughter and a friend just sitting down to tea. Happily, my
sister remembered that a Miss Bacon had been favorably mentioned in my letters
from Cambridge, so she had no hesitation in asking her to take tea with them.
The stranger's dress was such an extraordinary deshabille that nothing but her
lady-like manners and conversation could have convinced the family that she was
the person she pretended to be. She told me how much ashamed she was of her
appearance that evening; she had intended going only to the door, but could
not resist the inclination to enter and sit down at that cheerful tea-table, which
looked so like mine in Cambridge.
IX. Her Journey to Stratford.
Poor soul ! In rags and wretchedness she clung to the task
which she believed God had assigned to her.
The next summer I was living in London. The death of a dear friend had
just occurred in my house; the relatives were collected there, and all were feeling
very sad, when I was told by my servant that a lady wished to see me. I sent
word that there was death in the house, and I could see no one that night. The
servant returned, saying, " She will not go away, ma'am, and she will not give
her name."
On hearing this I went to the door, and there stood Delia Bncon, pale and
sad. I took her in my arms and pressed her to my bosom; she gasped for breath
and could not speak. We went into a vacant room and sat down together. She
was faint, but recovered on drinking a glass of port wine, and then she told me
that her book was finished and in the hands of Mr. Hawthorne, and now she was
ready to go to Stratford-upon-Avon. There she expected to verify her hypothesis,
by opening the tomb of Shakspere, where she felt sure of finding papers that
would disclose the real authorship of the Plays. I tried in vain to dissuade her
from this insane project; she was resolved, and only wished for my aid in winding
up her affairs in London and setting her off for Stratford. This aid I gave with
many a sad misgiving as to the result. She looked so ill when I took leave of her
in the railroad carriage that I blamed myself for not having accompanied her to
Stratford, and was only put at ease by a very cheerful letter from her, received a
few days after her departure.
On arriving at Stratford she was so exhausted that she could only creep up to
bed at the inn, and when she inquired about lodgings it was doubtful to herself,
and all who saw her, whether she would live to need any. One person expressed
this to her, but her brave heart and strong will carried her out the next day in
search of a home, and here as in London she fell into good hands. She entered a
very pretty cottage, the door of which stood open, found no one in it, but sat down
9IO CONCLUSIONS.
and waited for some one to appear. Presently the woman entered, an elderly
lady, living on her income, with only one servant. She had never taken any
lodger, but she would not send Miss Bacon away, because she was a stranger and
ill; and she remembered, she said, that Abraham had entertained angels unawares.
So she made her lie down on her sofa, and covered her up, and went off to prepare
some dinner for her. Miss Bacon says, in her letter to me:
There I was, at the same hour when I left you, the day before, looking out
upon the trees that skirt the Avon, and that church and spire only a few yards
from me, but so weak that I did not expect ever to go there. I know that I have
been very near death. If anything can restore me, it will be the motherly treat-
ment I have here.
These incidents cannot fail to exalt our ideas of the noble, gen-
erous English character. Twice had this poor castaway found in
total strangers the kindest and most hospitable treatment; twice
had they opened their hearts and homes to one who seemed almost
abandoned by the world. Mrs. Farrar continues:
A few weeks after this I received a very cheerful letter from her on the subject
of the publisher of her book. She writes :
I want you to help me ; help me bear this new kind of burden which I am so
little used to. The editor of Frasers Magazine, Parker, the very best publisher in
England, is going to publish my book immediately, in such haste that they cannot
stay to send me the proofs. That was the piece of news which came with your
letter. How I wished it had been yourself instead, that you might share it with me
on the instant. It was a relief to me to be assured that your generous heart was so
near to be gladdened with it. Patience has had its perfect work. For the sake of
those who have loved and trusted* me, for the sake of those who have borne my
burden with me, how I rejoice !
Mr. Bennock writes to me for the title, and says this has been suggested,
"The Shakespeare Problem Solved by Delia Bacon;'' but I am afraid that the
name sounds too boastful. I have thought of suggesting "The Shakespeare
Problem, by Delia Bacon, " leaving the reader to infer the rest. I have also
thought of calling it "The Baconian Philosophy in Prose and Verse, by Delia
Bacon;" or the "Fables of the Baconian Philosophy." But the publishers are the
best judges of such things.
That the book should be published under such agreeable auspices was the
crowning blessing of her arduous labors, and it is a comfort to her friends that this
gleam of sunshine illumined her path before the clouds settled down more darkly
than ever on her fine mind.
She remained for several months in Stratford, but I believe she never attempted
to open the tomb of Shakspere; and when she left that place, she returned home
to die in the bosom of her family. Thus ends the history of a highly gifted and
noble-minded woman.
Thus ends Mrs. Farrar's melancholy story — the story of a life
which was sacrificed for an idea as truly as ever were the mar-
tyrs of old who suffered in flame for their religious convictions.
For what death at the stake, with its few moments of agony, can be
compared with those long years of hardship, want, hunger, cold,
neglect and obloquy?
DELIA BACON. -911
It has been the habit to speak of her book as an insane produc-
tion. Doubtless the shadow of the coming mental aberration may
hang over parts of it, and obscure the style, but there is a great
deal in it ^hat is clear, cogent and forceful. As it may interest
the reader who cannot readily procure a copy of the original work,
I copy a few extracts. The work is called The Philosophy of the
Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded:
X. The Art of the Play-writer.
Certainly, at the time when it was written, it was not the kind of learning and
the kind of philosophy that the world was used to. Nobody had ever heard of
such a thing. The memory of man could not go far enough to produce any
parallel to it in letters. It was manifest that this was nature, the living nature,
the thing itself. None could perceive the tint of the school on its robust creations;
no eye could detect in its sturdy compositions the stuff that books were made of;
and it required no effort of faith, therefore, to believe that it was not that. It was
enough to believe, and men were glad, on the whole, to believe that it was not
that — that it was not learning or philosophy — but something just as far from that,
as completely its opposite, as could well be conceived of.
How could men suspect, as yet, that this was the new scholasticism, the New
Philosophy? Was it strange that they should mistake it for rude nature herself,
in her unschooled, spontaneous strength, when it had not yet pubJicly transpired
that something had come at last upon the stage of human development, which was
stooping to nature and learning of her, and stealing her secret, and unwinding the
clue to the heart of her mystery?
How could men know that this was the subtlest philosophy, the ripest scho-
lasticism, the last proof of all human learning, when it was still a secret that the
school of nature and her laws, that the school of natural history and natural
philosophy, too, through all its lengths and breadths and depths, was open; and
that "the schools" — the schools of old chimeras and notions — the schools where
the jangle of the monkish abstractions and the "fifes and the trumpets of the
Greeks " were sounding — were going to get shut up with it.
How should they know that the teacher of the New Philosophy was Poet also —
must be, by that same anointing, a singer, mighty as the sons of song who brought
their harmonies of old into the savage earth — a singer able to sing down antiqui-
ties with his new gift, able to sing in new eras ?
But these have no clue as yet to track him with; they cannot collect or thread
his thick-showered meanings. He does not care through how many mouths he
draws the lines of his philosophic purpose. He does not care from what long dis-
tances his meanings look toward each other. But these interpreters are not aware
of that. They have not been informed of that particular. On the contrary, they
have been put wholly off their guard. Their heads have been turned, deliberately,
in just the opposite direction. They have no faintest hint beforehand of the depths
in which the philosophic unities of the piece are hidden; it is not strange, therefore,
that these unities should have escaped their notice, and that they should take it for
granted that there were none in it. It is not the mere play-reader who is ever going
to see them. It will take the philosophic student, with all his clues, to master
9 r 2 CONCL USIONS.
them. It will take the student of the New School and the New Ages, with the torch
of Natural Science in his hand, to track them to their center.
XI. The Age of Elizabeth.
We all know what age in the history of the immemorial liberties and dignities
of a race — what age in the history of its recovered liberties, rescued from oppres-
sion and recognized and confirmed by statute, this was. We know it was an age
in which the decisions of the Bench were prescribed to it by a power that had " the
laws of England at its commandment," that it was an age in which Parliament, and
the press, and the pulpit, were gagged, and in which that same justice had charge,
diligent charge " of amusements also, and of those who only played at working."
That this was a time when the play-house itself, — in that same year, too, in which
these philosophical plays began first to attract attention, and again and again, — was
warned off by express ordinances from the whole ground of " the forbidden ques-
tions." . . .
To the genius of a race in whose nature development, speculation and action
were for the first time systematically united, in the intensities of that great histori-
cal impersonation which signalizes its first entrance upon the stage of human
affairs, stimulated into premature activity by that very opposition which would have
shut it out from its legitimate fields, and shut it up within those impossible, insuf-
ferable limits that the will of the one man prescribed to it then, — to that many-
sided genius, bent on playing well its part even under these conditions, all the
more determined on it by that very opposition — kept in mind of its manliness all
he time by that all-comprehending prohibition on manhood, that took charge of
every act — irritated all the time into a protesting human dignity by the perpetual
meannesses prescribed to it, instructed in the doctrine of human nature and its
nobility in the school of that sovereignty which was keeping such a costly crib here
then ; " Let a beast be lord of beasts," says Hamlet, " and your crib shall stand at
the king's mess; " " Would you have me false to my nature?''' says another, " rather
say I play the man I am;" to that so conscious man, playing his part under these
hard conditions, on a stage so high; knowing all the time what theater that was he
played it in, how " far" those long-drawn aisles extended; what " far-off" crowd-
ing ages filled them, watching his slightest movements; who knew that he was act-
ing " even in the eyes of all posterity that wear this world out to the ending doom: "
to such a one studying out his part beforehand, under such conditions, it was not
one disguise only, it was not one secret literary instrumentality only, that sufficed
for the plot of it. That toy stage which he seized and converted so effectually to his
ends, with all its masks did not suffice for the exigencies of this speaker's speech,
"who came prepared to speak well" and "to give to his speech a grace by action."1
XII. Miss Bacon's Persecutors.
I take pleasure in giving the following very interesting letter
from William D. O'Connor. I need not say that Miss Elizabeth P.
Peabody, of Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts, referred to in it, is well
and honorably known as the friend of Emerson and Hawthorne
1 Delia Bacon, The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded, pp. 285-7.
DELIA BACON. 913
and all the really great men of New England. Always a woman of
remarkable mental powers, she has attained a vast age with un-
clouded intellect.
Washington, D. C, Life-Saving Service, October io-n 1887.
My Dear Friend:
I have your note about the suppression of Miss Bacon's MS. I had the story
from Miss Peabody more than twenty-five years ago, and lately again, when I sa-
her at Jamaica Plains.
Her second version differs from the first only in this: — She now does not
think it was a life of Raleigh; but she told me it was when I first talked with her:
and her memory was nearer the event; and I am sure that the extracts from the
" Life of Raleigh," which you will see in the early part of Miss Bacon's book, are
her attempt to recall from memory some fragments of the lost MS., which, I re-
member Miss Peabody told me long ago, had cost twelve years' labor, and the loss
of which was a staggering blow to its author.
The tale ran thus: Emerson was powerfully impressed with Miss Bacon's
theory, and stood her friend in it from first to last. He was instrumental in send-
ing her to England, to prosecute her studies on the subject there; and gave her
letters of introduction to many people, and got her material aid. Before sailing, it
was arranged that the continuation to the Putnam's Magazine article in 1856
should appear in the same magazine, and she went off flushed with hope and con-
fidence.
Now came the beginning of disaster. Richard Grant White and some other
Shaksperioloters tore down to Putnam's; howled over the profanation like
cayotes, and finally scared him into discontinuing the publication.
Then Emerson had to write to Miss Bacon that her MS. was rejected, and
she in turn wrote back to have it sent to her in England for publication there, prob-
ably in her book, which she was then projecting.
The MS. (which I believe to have been a Life of Raleigh and a sort of a key to
the theory, dwelling, as I have been told it did, on the nature of Raleigh's School),
was sent to one of Emerson's brothers, William Emerson, at New York, for safe
keeping. In some way, and for some reason, which I cannot gather, it was passed
over to the care of Miss P R , at Staten Island.
When Miss Bacon's request to have the MS. sent to her in England was
received, Miss R was asked to have it brought over to New York to William
Emerson.
The story goes that she got into a close carriage with the package, at her resi-
dence on Staten Island, with the intention of driving to the ferry, crossing over to
New York, and delivering it in person to William Emerson. It was in the dark
twilight of an autumn evening, the roads were miry and full of hollows, and the
carriage swayed and joggled as it rolled. In one of these vehicular convulsions,
the package rolled from Miss R 's lap into the straw-covered bottom of the
carriage. Miss R put her hand down in search of it, and, not coming upon
it, reflected that it was perfectly safe in the close interior, and would be better found
when the carriage arrived at the ferry, where its motions would cease, and light
would aid in the search. Presently the terminus was reached, but the MS. could
not be found, though a rigorous investigation was made. I was told that it was
advertised for, but nothing was ever heard of it.
Was ever any occurrence more unexplainable, or more sinister ? I do not like
9I4 CONCLUSIONS.^
to suspect Miss R of complicity with any foul play, for I have always heard
that she was a high-minded lady; but how can this loss be explained under the cir-
cumstances ? When you bring to mind the nature of a coach interior, you will see
that the MS. could not be bounced out or jolted out by any possibility. It is an
utter mystery.
However, the MS. was lost, and it is said that Miss Bacon went wild when she
got the next letter from Emerson, telling her the bad news.
Whatever may be the explanation of this incident, I think there
can be little doubt that Delia Bacon was persecuted by the Grant
Whites of that era, denied a hearing in her own country, and driven
to a foreign land to find a publisher. The treatment of the poor
woman from first to last was simply shameful. She was persecuted
into the mad-house and the grave by men who called themselves
scholars and gentlemen. Their asinine hoofs beat upon the great
sensitive brain of the shrinking woman, and every blow was an-
swered by a shriek. And when, at last, they had, by their on-
slaughts, destroyed her intellect, the braying crew wagged their
prodigious ears, and in stentorian chorus clamored that her insan-
ity was indubitable proof of the falsehood of her theory, and of the
wisdom which lay concealed in their admirable and learned hoofs.
XIII. Delia Bacon's Portrait.
It is with deep regret that I find myself unable to fulfill the
promises made by my publishers, in their advertisements, to give
the public in this work, a copy of Delia Bacon's portrait. They
applied some months since to her nephew, the Rev. Leonard W.
Bacon, of Savannah, Georgia, and he referred them to his brother,
Theodore Bacon, a lawyer, in Rochester, N. Y. He replied that
he possessed a picture of Delia Bacon, an old daguerreotype, but
that the dress was peculiar and not fitted for publication. My
publishers then offered to send an artist to Rochester to copy the
features, and that they would give in the book simply an engraving
of the face and head. A representative of the firm even went to
Rochester, in connection with the matter, but failed to find Mr.
Bacon. After considerable correspondence a family council was at
last held upon this grave subject, and "the family" refused to fur-
nish my publishers with a copy of the picture, or permit them to
copy it themselves.
DELIA BACON. 9I5
It is difficult to account for such action. I know of no pre-
cedent for it. The world is entitled to look upon the features of
its illustrious characters; and I cannot understand how any
""family" has a right to monopolize them. Suppose there was but
one picture of Francis Bacon in the world, and that was in the
hands of the family of one of his nephews, and they refused to
permit the world to look at it ! In this case the sun painted the
picture, and it would seem especially to belong to mankind. But
poor Delia's ill fate pursues her even beyond the grave: — she was
suppressed, by her family, living, and she is suppressed by them
dead.
If the authors of books had been clamoring, for years past, for
Delia Bacon's picture, the case might be different; but this is the
first work ever published which seeks to defend the poor, misused
woman, and to honor her by giving her features to the world, — and
it is refused permission to do so ! If the picture itself was utterly
unfit to be seen by human eyes, it might be different; but I am told
that copies are being circulated in private hands.
It is to be regretted that some of the tender solicitude now
shown toward the picture of Delia Bacon, by her family, wTas not
manifested for the poor woman herself when she was starving and
shivering and living on the charity of strangers in London. But,
Seven cities claimed immortal Homer dead, *
Through which the living Homer begged for bread.
I am shocked to hear, since writing the above, that there is rea-
son to believe that "the family" refuse to permit Delia Bacon's por-
trait to appear in this book because they do not want her identified
with the theory that Francis Bacon wrote the Shakespeare Plays !
Alas ! and alas ! As if Delia Bacon had any other claim upon
immortality than the fact that she originated that very theory!
And as if there was any chance of any of her " family " escaping
utter oblivion, in a generation or two, except by their connection
with her, and through her with that very theory. It is incompre-
hensible.
CHAPTER II.
WILLIAM HENR Y SMITH.
Here's Nestor, —
Instructed by the antiquary times,
He must, he is, he cannot but be wise.
Troilus and Cressida, ii, 3.
WE turn to the Nestor of the Baconian question — the distin-
guished William Henry Smith, who will always be remem-
bered as the first of Francis Bacon's countrymen who saw through
the Shakespearean myth, and announced the real authorship of the
Plays.
It is a gratification to know that this distinguished gentleman is
still alive, in hale old age, to witness the overthrow of the delusion
which he challenged in 1856. His portrait, which we here present,,
represents a jovial, clear-headed, kindly-hearted man.
I. Mr. Smith Described.
A Baconian correspondent, writing to Shakespeartana, de-
scribes Mr. Smith as follows:
He is an old gentleman, seventy-five or seventy-six years of age, I think, with
the brightest of eyes and the most energetic, kind manner that you can imagine.
His interest in the Baconian subject is still so great that he can hardly allow him-
self to speak upon it, it excites him too much; and on this account he has never
attended any of our meetings, although he comes here after them to hear the news.
He considers that we have got quite past him, and he will never again be dragged
into controversy. But no one is better up than he is, both in Bacon and
Shakespeare. As a young man his education seems to have been peculiar. He
was thrown very much upon himself and upon a few books, which he has evident-
ly read until he has them at his fingers' ends. A few choice classics, Burton's
Anatomy of Melancholy and The Pilgrim's Progress for his theology; Bacon for his
solid reading, Shakespeare for his lighter studies. It was the persistent reading of
these two groups of works which brought him to perceive the identity of their tone,
their field of knowledge, and finally of their author. He had no preconceived ideas,
but the conviction grew upon him. He belonged to a young men's debating
916
/ / ILLIA M HENR Y SMI TH. 9^7
club. One day, a subject for debate being lacking, he proposed that it should be
debated whether Bacon or Shakespeare had the better claim to the authorship of
the Plays. The subject was considered, at first, too monstrous to be discussed;
but John Stuart Mill, being one of the members, spoke strongly in favor of giving
Mr. Smith a hearing. A paper was accordingly read, and produced such a sensa-
tion that Mr. Smith was requested to print it in the form of a letter to Lord Elles-
mere, the then head of the Shakespearean Society. Of course it was virulently
assailed by the Shakspereans, who tned by caricature and ridicule to annihilate
Mr. Smith and his notions. He then wrote a fuller statement and published it in a
little two-shilling-sixpence volume, and having done this he retired from the
scene. He did not care, he said, to have literary mud cast at him; the truth would
come out some day. Great domestic troubles overtook him, and for a while he
lost interest in everything, even in the fate of his book, living a very recluse life,
sometimes in London, but more often in a little country estate in Sussex. He is a
highly entertaining old gentleman, always ready with his joke and his apt quota-
tion, and with a laugh of infectious jollity. He had, he says, no desire to live, but
now he certainly would like to abide the publication of Mr. Donnelly's book, and
see how the learned Shakspereans are going to wriggle out of their very decided
statements.
II. The Charge of Plagiarism.
Mr. W. H. Wyman, in his Bacon-Shakespeare Bibliography, has the
following remarks:
A question of precedence as to the Baconian advocacy arose between Mr.
Smith and Miss Bacon's friends. Hawthorne, in his preface to Miss Bacon's book,
animadverted upon Mr. Smith for "taking to himself this lady's theory," result-
ing in the correspondence published in Smith's book. In his letter Mr. Smith
claimed that he had never seen Miss Bacon's Putnam 's Monthly article until after
his pamphlet was published, and also that he had held these opinions for twenty
years previously. But as Miss Bacon's article was published eight months pre-
vious to his pamphlet, and reviewed in the Athenceum in the meantime, his want
of knowledge was certainly very singular, and the precedence must be awarded to
her.
It seems to me that any one who reads this famous pamphlet of
1856 will come to the conclusion that these animadversions are not
just. There is no resemblance in the mode of thought between.
Miss Bacon's argument and that of Mr. Smith. Miss Bacon dealt*
in the large, general, comprehensive propositions involved in the
question; Mr. Smith's essay is sharp, keen and bristling with
points. Both show wonderful penetration, but it is of a different
kind. Miss Bacon's is the penetration of a philosopher; Mr. Smith's
that of a lawyer,
Neither should it be a matter of surprise that two different
minds should arrive at the same conclusions, at the same time, en
9 1 8 CONCL USIONS.
this question: the only wonder is that the whole world did not
reach the same views simultaneously with them.
III. Mr. Hawthorne's Charge.
Concerning this question of originality in the discussion of the
question, Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his Preface to Miss Bacon's
book, had this to say:
Another evil followed. An English writer, (in a " Letter to the Earl of Elles-
mere," published within a few months past), has thought it not inconsistent with the
fair play on which his country prides itself, to take to himself this lady's theory,
and favor the public with it as his own original conception, without allusion to
the author's prior claim. In reference to this pamphlet, she (Miss Bacon) gener-
ously says:
This has not been a selfish enterprise. It is not a personal concern. It is a
discovery which belongs not to an individual, and not to a people. Its fields are
wide enough and rich enough for us all; and he that has no work, and whoso will,
let him come and labor in them. The field is the world's; and the world's work
henceforth is in it. So that it be known in its real comprehension, in its true rela-
tions to the weal of the world, what matter is it? So that the truth, which is
dearer than all the rest — which abides with us when all others leave us, dearest
then — so that the truth, which is neither yours nor mine, but yours and mine, be
known, loved, honored, emancipated, mitered, crowned, adorned — "who loses any-
thing, that does not find it?" And what matters it? says the philosophic wisdom,
speaking in the abstract, what name it is proclaimed in, and what letters of the
alphabet we know it by? — What matter is it, so that they spell the name that is
good for all, and good for each ? — for that is the real name here ?
Speaking on the author's behalf, however, I am not entitled to imitate her
magnanimity; and, therefore, hope that the writer of the pamphlet will disclaim
any purpose of assuming to himself, on the ground of a slight and superficial per-
formance, the results which she has attained at the cost of many toils and sacrifices.
IV. Mr. Smith Exonerated by Mr. Hawthorne.
In 1857 Mr. Smith published his book: Bacon and Shake-
speare: An Inquiry touching Players, Play-houses and Play-writers in
the days of Elizabeth. By William Henry Smith. London: John
Russell Smith, 36 Soho Square; and he prefaced it with copies of
a correspondence between Mr. Hawthorne and himself. In this
correspondence Mr. Smith assured Mr. Hawthorne:
I had never heard the name of Miss Bacon until it was mentioned in the re-
view of my pamphlet in the Literary Gazette, September, 1856. . . . If it were
necessary I could show that for upwards of twenty years I have had the opinion
that Bacon was the author of the Shakespeare Plays.
To which Mr. Hawthorne replies, June 5, i887/ as follows:
I beg leave to say that I entirely accept your statement as to the originality and
early date of your own convictions regarding the authorship of the Shakespeare
WILLI A M HENR Y SMITH. 9 1 9
Plays, and likewise as to your ignorance of Miss Bacon's prior publication on the
subject. Of course my imputation of unfairness or discourtesy on your part falls
at once to the ground, and I regret that it was ever made.
My mistake was perhaps a natural one, although, unquestionably, the treat-
ment of the subject in your "Letter to the Earl of Ellesmere" differs widely from that
adopted by Miss Bacon. ... I now see that my remarks did you great in-
justice, and I trust that you will receive this acknowledgment as the only repara-
tion in my power.
V. The Conversion of Lord Palmerston.
One of the first and greatest converts to the Baconian theory
was made by Mr. Smith's book, namely, the famous Premier of
England, Lord Palmerston. Mr. Wyman quotes the following
from an article in Frasers Magazine for November, 1865:
Literature was the fashion of Lord Palmerston's early days, when, (as Syd-
ney Smith remarked), a false quantity in a man was pretty nearly the same as a
faux pas in a woman. He was tolerably well up in the chief Latin and English
classics; but he entertained one of the most extraordinary paradoxes, touching the
greatest of them, that was ever broached by a man of his intellectual caliber. He
maintained that the Plays of Shakespeare were really written by Bacon, who passed
them off under the name of an actor, for fear of compromising his professional
prospects and philosophic gravity. Only last year, when this subject was dis-
cussed at Broadlands, Lord Palmerston suddenly left the room, and speedily
returned with a small volume of dramatic criticisms, in which the same theory
(originally started by an American lady) was supported by supposed analogies of
thought and expression. "There," he said, "read that, and you will come to my
opinion." When the positive testimony of Ben Jonson, in the verses prefixed to
the edition of 1623, was adduced, he remarked, " Oh, these fellows always stand up
for one another, or he may have been deceived like the rest." The argument had
struck Lord Palmerston by its originality, and he wanted leisure for a searching
exposure of its groundlessness.
The volume alluded to was Smith's Bacon and Shakespeare.^
The truth was that the comprehensive mind of the great states-
man, who had ruled the British Empire for so many years, needed
but a statement of the outlines of the argument to leap at once to
the conclusion that there was no coherence between the life of the
man of Stratford and the mighty works which go by his name.
In America we have a gentleman who, for breadth of mind,
knowledge of affairs, keenness of observation and depth of penetra-
tion, deserves to be named in the same breath with Lord Palmer-^
ston. I refer to the celebrated Benjamin F. Butler, whose genius
has adorned alike the walks of peace and the fields of war. General
1 Bacon-Shakespeare Bibliog., p. 26.
920
CONCL USIONS.
Butler, like Lord Palmerston, needed but the presentation of
the argument to reach the conclusion that Francis Bacon wrote the
Plays; and that opinion he has maintained inflexibly during a
period of thirty years.
When such large and trained intelligences accept the theory of
the Baconian authorship, as not only reasonable, but conclusive, it
is amusing to see small creatures, who have never been known out-
side of their own bailiwicks, protesting, with their noses high in
the air, that the theory is utterly absurd and ridiculous; and that it
is an insult to their brain-pans to be even asked to consider it.
VI. A Wonderful Fact Brought Out.
Mr. Smith's book, already referred to, is a very able and
original performance. It contained, for the first time, many of the
arguments that have since been used by all the writers on the sub-
ject. It is evident that his observation is very keen. I find, for
instance, this paragraph, which has a curious bearing on the Cipher
in the Plays:
We may here mention a fact which we have remarked, and have not seen
noted by any commentator — that every page in each of the three first folio edi-
tions contains exactly the sa?ne amount of matter: — the same word xvhich begins or
ends the page in the 1623 edition, begins and ends the page in the 1632 and 1664 edi-
tions; proving that they were printed from one another, if not from the same
types. The 1685 edition is altogether different.
This is a very remarkable fact. The curious paging of the 1623
edition must have been precisely followed in the edition printed
nine years later, and again in the edition printed forty-one years
later. Now, there were no stereotype or electrotype plates in those
days; and the type could not have been kept standing for forty-one
years. There are but two explanations: The first is, that some per-
son of means, we will say the author of the Plays, solicitous to
secure the perpetuation of the Folio from the waste and ravages
of "devouring time," had had printed in 1623 other editions, dated,
on the title-pages, 1632 and 1664, and left them to be brought out
by friends at those dates. The second explanation is that some
man or men had been left behind, — some friends of Bacon, — or
some secret society, if you please, like the Rosicrncians, — who,
knowing that there was a cipher in the Plays, and that it depended
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WILLIAM HENRY SMITH. 92*
•on the arrangement of the matter on the pages of that first Folio of
1623, took pains to see that the printers, in reprinting the Plays,
copied the exact arrangement of the text found in that Folio of 1623.
It is not within the human possibilities that any printer, unless p
peremptorily instructed so to do, would or could repeat the
arrangement of the matter found in the first Folio: — with three
hundred words in one column and six hundred in another; with
the stage directions, as I have shown, in one case taking up two or
three inches of space, and in another crowded into the corner of a
speech of one of the characters.
And on either supposition — that all the editions were really
printed in 1623, from the same type; or that the printing of the edi-
tions of 1632 and 1664 was supervised and directed by some intel-
ligent person with a purpose; — on either supposition, I say, it shows
there was some mystery about that first Folio. Surely Heminge
and Condell would not print copies of the Folio in 1623 to be put
forth forty-one years thereafter; and surely no person in 1632 or
1664 would insist on repeating the exact arrangement of type in
the edition of 1623, if he did not know that there was something
of importance attached to and depending on that arrangement.
But, after the edition of 1664, that directing intelligence had
passed away, and the Plays were left to take their natural course;
and hence the folio edition of 1685 departed altogether from the
standard set by the 1623 Folio; and ever after, until we reach the
modern era of facsimiles, the arrangement of every edition as to
paging, etc., has been utterly unlike that of the first Folio.
Francis Bacon was determined that his name and writings should
not perish from the face of the earth; hence in his will he left espe-
cial directions that copies of his philosophical works should be pre-
sented to all the great libraries then in existence; and with the same
profound prevision he may have arranged with Sir Thomas Meutis,
Harry Percy, Sir Tobie Matthew and other friends, who were doubt-
less in the secret of the Cipher, that editions should be put forth
after his death, with the same arrangement of the text, on which
the Cipher depended, so as to increase the chances of the work con-
tinuing to exist and of the Cipher being found out.
9 2 2 CONCL USIONS.
VII. In Conclusion.
But it must be a source of gratification to the countrymen of
Francis Bacon, if the wreath of immortal glory is to be taken front
the head of Shakspere and placed on the brow of another, that
there was one Englishman with sagacity enough to look through
the illusions so cunningly constructed around the subject, and per-
ceive the hidden truth, as early as any other; and that for the
first steps of this great revelation they are not altogether indebted
to foreigners. It must be the hope of all men that this patriarch
may long live, in hale old age, to enjoy the honors justly belong-
ing to him.
It was my intention to have given, in this work, Miss Bacon's
famous Putnam's Magazine article in full and also Mr. Smith's orig-
inal letter to the Earl of Ellesmere, but I find my book already too
large, and I am reluctantly constrained to omit them. I would say
in conclusion that I possess copies of the original essays, and I con-
sider them worth a good deal more than their weight in gold.
CHAPTER III.
THE BACONIANS.
I count myself in nothing else so happy
As in a soul remembering my good friends;
And as my fortune ripens with my love
It shall be still my true love's recompense.
Richard II., ii, 3.
I AM sure that if the spirit of Francis Bacon could stand at ray-
side and speak, it would say:
11 In the day of my rehabilitation let not those who have main-
tained my cause be forgotten; do you justice to the clear heads and
kind hearts that have labored to bring me to the possession of my
own. They have endured abuse and mockery for my sake: let
them be set right in the eyes of mankind."
In this spirit I have given the two preceding chapters; in this
spirit I shall briefly refer to a few of the leading advocates of the
theory that Francis Bacon wrote the Plays.
I. William D. O'Connor.
The first book ever published, subsequent to the utterances of
Delia Bacon and William Henry Smith, in which the Baconian the-
ory was- advocated, was a work published in i860, entitled Har-
rington: A Story of True Love. By William D. O'Connor. Boston:
Thayer and Eldridge. i2mo, pp. 558.
I quote from Mr. Wyman's Bibliography'1 the following extracts,
descriptive of this book:
Hawthorne, in his Recollections of a Gifted Woman (title 27), says of Miss
Bacon's book:
I believe it has been the fate of this remarkable book never to have had more
than a single reader. But since my return to America, a young man of genius and
1 Bacon-Shakespeare Bibliog., p. 23.
923
924 CONCL USIONS.
•enthusiasm has assured me that he has positively read the book from beginning to
end, and is completely a convert to its doctrines.
It belongs to him, therefore, and not to me — whom, in almost the last letter
that I received from her, she declared unworthy to meddle with her work — it be-
longs surely to this one individual, who has done her so much justice as to know
what she wrote, to place Miss Bacon in her due position before the public and pos-
terity.
The " young man " referred to (in 1863) is the author of this novel. The story
itself is of the times of the Fugitive Slave Law. Mr. O'Connor introduces his own
Baconian theories through the dialogue of his title-hero, Harrington.
He also renders an acknowledgment to Miss Bacon as their source, in a note
at the end of the book:
The reader of the twelfth chapter of this book may already have observed
that Harrington, if he had lived, would have been a believer in the theory regard-
ing the origin and purpose of the Shakespearean drama, as developed in the admir-
able work by Miss Delia Bacon, entitled, The Philosophy of Shakespeare 's Plays Un-
folded, in which belief I should certainly agree with Harrington.
I wish it were in my power to do even the smallest justice to that mighty and
eloquent volume, whose masterly comprehension and insight, though they could
not save it from being trampled upon by the brutal bison of the English press, yet.
lift it to the dignity, whatever may be its faults, of being the best work ever com-
posed upon the Baconian or Shakespearean writings. It has been scouted by the
critics as the product of a distempered ideal. Perhaps it is.
" But there is a prudent wisdom," says Goethe, " and there is a wisdom that
does not remind us of prudence;" and, in like manner, I may say that there is a
sane sense, and there is a sense that does not remind us of sanity. At all events,
I am assured that the candid and ingenuous reader Miss Bacon wishes for, will
find it more to his profit to be insane with her, on the subject of Shakespeare, than
sane with Dr. Johnson.
A personal friend of Mr. O'Connor has, at my request, written
for me the following interesting account of his life:
William Douglas O'Connor has long been known as one of the most ear-
nest and determined of the Baconians. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts,
in 1833. His earliest aspiration was to be an artist, and several years of his youth
were devoted to the life of the studio. Finding, at length, his projected art career
impracticable, he applied himself to business occupations for a living, keeping an
eye meanwhile on literature as a possible profession, and maintaining the habit of
an omnivorous reader. His early days witnessed the memorable deepening of the
anti-slavery struggle, and he was one of many who threw themselves into the gal-
lant movement of resistance to the Slave Power, which then shook th£ Northern
centers, and had a notable arena in his native city. In 1851 he became associate
editor of the Free Soil newspaper in Boston, 71ie Commonwealth, and took an
active personal part in the stirring scenes of the place and period, such as the ren-
dition of Burns. The eventual suspension of The Commonwealth caused his mi-
gration to Philadelphia, where from 1854 to i860 he was connected editorially with
a weekly journal of large circulation, The Saturday Evening Post. In 1861 he
became Corresponding Clerk of the Lighthouse Board at Washington, of which in
1873 he became Chief Clerk. He resigned in 1874 and became Librarian of the
Treasury. A year later he entered the Life-Saving Service, then extremely con-
tracted in its functions, and an appendage of the Bureau of Revenue Marine.
Under the able management of Mr. Sumner J. Kimball, it gradually expanded,
until in 1878 it was formally organized by law as a separate establishment, thus
entering upon the career of splendid usefulness which is known to the whole
country; and Mr. O'Connor was promoted to the responsible position of its Assist-
THE BACONIANS. 925
•ant Chief, which he has since continued to occupy with distinction. The elaborate
historical and descriptive articles on the Service in Appleton's and Johnson's
■Cyclopedias are from his hand.
It is known to his friends that the extent and arduousness of his official occu-
pations have prevented him from doing the work in the field of literature of which
he is widely thought capable, although it is understood that his preparations toward
this end have been considerable. For several years following 1856 he published a
number of tales, which were popular at the time, such as The Sword of Manley,
What Cheer, The Carpenter, etc., and also several poems, among which To Athos,
Resiirge'nnis, To Fanny, etc., are still sometimes remembered. In i860 he pub-
lished Harrington, an anti-slavery romance, characterized by great picturesqueness
and fervor, the scene of which was laid in Boston, in the Fugitive Slave Law kid-
napping days. In 1866 the illustrious poet Walt WhitrrTan, having been ignomini-
ously ejected by the then Secretary, the Hon. James Harlan, from a position in
the Interior Department, on account of his book, published ten years before, Mr.
O'Connor came out in an impassioned pamphlet entitled The Good Gray Poet, not-
able for its range of literary learning and its eloquence, and chastised the outrage
with a cogency and vigor which turned the tide in the venerable poet's favor, and
started the strong movement in his behalf which has continued to this day both in
Europe and this country. It was this pamphlet that the Hon. Henry J. Raymond
termed editorially, in the New York Times, " the most brilliant monograph in Ameri-
can literature." In 1867 one of Mr. O'Connor's early magazine tales, The Ghost,
was published in book form in New York, with illustrations by Nast; and the story
was afterwards reproduced in the Little Classic series. In 1883 Dr. R. M. Bucke,
of Ontario, Canada, put forth an admirable memoir of Walt Whitman, in which
he published The Good Gray Poet, and to preface this Mr. O'Connor contributed a
long introduction, mainly tributary to the old bard, and armed, like a scythed
chariot, with a flashing plenitude of excoriation for his detractors and defamers.
In 1882-3 tne Massachusetts District Attorney for Suffolk County, Oliver Stevens,
aided by the Massachusetts Attorney-General, John Marston, the notorious An-
thony Comstock being also darkly apparent in the transaction, made an attempt to
legally crush by prosecution Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, a new edition of
which had just been published by Osgood & Co. of Boston ; and on this occasion
Mr. O'Connor won signal distinction by several rousing letters in the New York
Tribune, so effective in their fulminations that they alarmed the assailants, and
broke the hostile movement down. In 1886, he published Hamlet's Note-Book, a
work which completely vindicated from the aspersions of Richard Grant White
the powerful and valid presentment of the Baconian case made by Mrs. Constance
M. Pott in her edition of Lord Bacon's Promas. Besides the special vindication,
the work has many points of value to the student of the Bacon-Shakspere con-
troversy, chief among which is the striking contrast instituted between the respec-
tive characters and lives of the two men — a contrast which tells heavily against
Shakspere. It is a tribute to the force of the book, that, despite the prevalent
Shakspere bias, it was received with general commendation. %
Mr. O'Connor is entitled to rank with the original Baconians. He gave his
ardent adhesion to Miss Delia Bacon's general theory immediately after the publi-
cation of her first paper in Putnam's Magazine in 1856, and in several journals of
that period he repeatedly championed her cause in uncompromising letters and
•editorials.
... In the printed letter prefacing The Good Gray Poet, in Dr. Bucke's mem-
oir of Walt Whitman, he has several weighty pages on Lord Bacon, as the author
926 CONCLUSIONS.
of the Shakespeare drama. His special plea in Hamlet 's Note-Book has already
been referred to. He has considerable celebrity in certain private circles for his
powers in conversation and as a letter-writer, and it is said that on many occa-
sions, when the Bacon-Shakspere subject was the theme, he has made impres-
sions in various quarters which have become wide-spread and ineffaceable, and
brought many converts into the fold.
I have had the pleasure of knowing Mr. O'Connor personally,
and I have found him, as his friend says, a person of rare conversa-
tional powers, and possessed of a world of curious information.
The Celtic blood, implied in his name, gives him a combative,
chivalric spirit, which, however, is only aroused in defense of some
person to whom he thinks injustice has been done. Hence, when
Miss Bacon was universally denounced, he sprang to her defense;
when "the good gray poet," Walt Whitman, was persecuted by
shallow hypocrites, he entered the lists as his champion; and when
Richard Grant White assailed Mrs. Pott's Promus, in most virulent
and unmanly fashion, he wrote a book which is one of the brightest,
keenest and most vitriolic in our literature. Mr. O'Connor is of an
unselfish nature, unfitted to do much for himself, but very potent as
the defender of the oppressed. His heart permeates his intellect,
and his sympathy is greater than his ambition. A kindly, gener-
ous, admirable nature.
II. Hon. Nathaniel Holmes.
Among the pioneers of this grcc t argument — and one who 1 as-
done perhaps more complete and comprehensive work than any
other — is Hon. Nathaniel Holmes. Mr. Wyman calls him "the
apostle of Baconianism, " and gives the following as the theorem
of his book:
This work [T/ie Authorship of Shakespeare, by Nathaniel Holmes] undertakes
to demonstrate, not only that William Shakspere did not, but that Francis
Bacon did write the Plays and poems. It presents a critical view of the personal
history of the two men, their education, learning, attainments, surroundings and
associates, the contemporaneousness of the writings in question, in prose and
verse, an account of the earlier plays and editions, the spurious plays, and "the
true original copies." It gives some evidence that Bacon was known to be the
author by some of his contemporaries. It shows in what manner William Shak-
spere came to have the reputation of being the writer. It exhibits a variety of facts
and circumstances which are strongly suggestive of Bacon as the real author. A
comparison of the writings of contemporary authors in prose and verse proves-
that no other writer of that age, but Bacon, can come into any competition for the
authorship. It sifts out a chronological order of the production of the Plays, and
THE BACONIANS. 927
of the several writings of Bacon, ascertaining the exact dates, whenever possible,
and shows that the more significant parallelisms run in the same order, and are of
such a nature, both by their dates and their own character, as absolutely to pre-
clude all possibility of borrowing, otherwise than as Bacon borrowed of himself.
It is amply demonstrated that mere common usage, or the ordinary practice of
writers, can furnish no satisfactory explanation of these parallelisms and identi-
ties. There is a continuous presentation of parallel or identical passages through-
out the work, with such commentary as was deemed necessary or advisable, in
order to bring out their full force and significance; and twenty pages of minor
parallelisms are given in one body, without commentary.
It gives some extensive proofs that Bacon was a poet, and suggests some
reasons for his concealment of his poetical authorship. There is some indication
of the object and purpose the author had in view in writing these Plays. It is
shown that the tenor of their teaching is in keeping with Bacon's ideas upon the
subjects treated in them. The latter half of the book presents more especially the
parallelisms in scientific and philosophical thought, with a view to show the identity
of the Plays and the writings of Bacon, in respect to their philosophy and standard
of criticism; and in this there is an endeavor to show that the character and drift
of the philosophy of Bacon (as well as that of the Plays) was substantially identical
Avith the realistic idealism of the more modern as of the more ancient writers on
the subject.
It is recognized that the evidences drawn from historical facts and biographical
circumstances are not in themselves alone entirely conclusive of the matter, how-
ever suggestive and significant, as clearing the way for more decisive proofs, or as
raising a high degree of probability; and it is conceded that, in the absence of
more direct evidence, the most decisive proof attainable is to be found in a critical
and thorough comparison of the writings themselves, and that such a comparison
will clearly establish the identity of the author as no other than Francis Bacon.
Judge Holmes was born July 2, 1814, at Peterborough, New
Hampshire; he graduated from Harvard University in 1837; was in
the Harvard Law School during 1838-39, and was admitted to the
bar, in Boston, in 1839. He practiced law at St. Louis from 1839 to
1865; was one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Missouri
from 1865 to 1868, and Professor of Law in Harvard University
from 1868 to 1872; he resumed the practice of the law in St. Louis in
1872, and continued it until 1883, when he retired from business and
returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he now resides. At St.
Louis, Judge Holmes was Corresponding Secretary of the Academy
of Science from 1857 to 1883, except when absent at Cambridge;
and he has been a Fellow of the Academy of Arts and Sciences at
Boston since 1870.
His great work, The. Authorship of Shakespeare, was first pub-
lished in 1866 by Hurd & Houghton, of New York (now Houghton,
Mifflin & Co., of Boston and New York); the third edition of the
book appeared in 1875, with an Appendix, containing ninety-two
928 CONCL USIONS.
pages of additional matters; and the last edition, published in 1886,,
has grown into two volumes, and contains a supplement of one
hundred and twenty pages of new matter.
When in college Judge Holmes' studies had more tendency to
metaphysics than to literature, merely as such. He read the
Shakespeare Plays, as he says, "to find out what great poetry was.""
He read, in 1856, Delia Bacon's celebrated Putnam s Magazine
article, and thereupon, he says, " I set to work to make a more
thorough study and comparison of the two sets of writings, and
soon found matter for surprise. Within a year I had convinced
myself of the identity of the author." He says:
My method was to read Bacon, and when I came across anything that was.
particularly Shakespearean to set the passage down in one column, and when I
found anything in the Plays that was particularly Baconian, I set it down in the
opposite column. Thus the context, thought and word were brought into com-
parison.
Another and very important part of the method was, to ascertain, as exactly
as possible, the date of the first known appearance of each play, or of such as had
appeared before the Folio of 1623 was published, and of each one of Bacon's
acknowledged writings; and the result was that the stronger resemblances in thought,
matter and word were pretty sure to appear in both writings if they were of nearly
the same date of composition. With these dates fixed in my memory, I was very
sure to go, at once, to the right work in which to find some exhibition of the same
matter, thought and expression.
I need scarcely add that Judge Holmes' work is exceedingly
able; it is and has been, since it was published, the standard author-
ity of the Baconians; and it is markedly fair and judicial in its tone.
One has but to look at the portrait of Judge Holmes, which we pre-
sent herewith, to read the character of the man — plain, straight-
forward, honest and capable. In fact, I might here observe that it
seems to me that all the portraits of the original Baconians presented
in this volume are remarkable for the intellectual power manifested
in them. A finer collection of faces never adorned the advocacy of
any theory. Instead of being, as the light-headed have charged, a
set of visionaries, their portraits show them to be people of pene-
trating, original, practical minds, who differ from their fellows sim-
ply in their power to think more deeply, and in their greater cour-
age to express their convictions.
III. Dr. William Thomson.
The next important contribution to the Baconian argument, in
'cam or.
THE BACOXIAXS.
929
order of time, was made by Dr. William Thomson, of Melbourne,
Australia, in his work. The Political Purpose of the Renascence
Drama: The Key of the Argument, an Svo pamphlet of 57 pages,
published at Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, in 1878, by George
Robertson.
I have not been able to procure copies of any of Dr. Thomson's
publications. I learn from Mr. Wyman's Bibliography that Dr.
Thomson was a practicing physician at Melbourne, Australia. Mr.
Wyman says:
He was evidently a fine scholar and an intense Baconian. He died during the
past year (1884), at the age of sixty-three.
Mr. Wyman sends me the following extract from a private letter
received by him from Melbourne:
The Baconian theory of Shakespeare's writings was an intense hobby with Dr.
Thomson; and even the day before he died he sent for some books on the subject:
the ruling passion strong in death. . . . His usefulnesses a member of society
was somewhat marred by his quarrelsome disposition. He was ever ready to put
on the literary war-paint, and raised up numerous enemies thereby.
From my knowledge of this end of the nineteenth century I
should interpret this last sentence to signify that Dr. Thomson was
persecuted and hounded by the advocates of "the divine Williams,"
as the Frenchman called him; and that because he maintained his
convictions, — his intelligent convictions, — and would not agree
to think as the unreasoning multitude around him, he was re-
garded as a belligerent savage, ready at all times to don the war-
paint. The man who in this world undertakes to think his own
thoughts, and express them, will find the angles of ten thousand
elbows grinding his ribs continually. The fool who has no opinions,,
and the coward who conceals what he has, are always in rapport
with the streaming, shouting, happy-go-lucky multitude; but woe
unto the strong man who does his own thinking, and will not be
bullied into silence !
Mrs. Pott writes me, recently:
I have had a long and pleasant correspondence with Dr. Thomson, and I felt ,
his death very much. He was a very clever man. His friends, (some of whom
have been to see me), and his relations, claim for him that he was the originator of
the germ theories attributed to Koch. He illustrated the fact that phthisis is infec-
tious and communicable by germs in the air, and proved that it was unknown in
Australia until introduced in a definite manner by consumptive people from Eng-
land. He was a man to be remembered.
93© CONCLUSIONS.
I regret that I cannot speak more fully concerning this able and
resolute gentleman, who held up the torch of the new doctrine in
the midst of an unbelieving generation, in the far-away antipodes.
In 1880 he published at Melbourne, Australia, a book entitled:
Our Renascence Drama; or. History made Visible. Sands and McDou-
gal. 8vo., pp. 359.
In 1881 he put forth a continuation of this work: William Shake-
speare in Romance and Reality. By William Thomson. Melbourne:
Sands and McDougall. 8vo, pp. 95.
In the same year he published at Melbourne a pamphlet of
sixteen pages entitled, Bacon and Shakespeare; also another pamphlet
of thirty-nine pages, entitled, Bacon, not Shakespeare, on Vivisection.
In 1882 he published another pamphlet of forty-six pages, entitled,
The Political Allegories in the Renascence Drama of Francis Bacon. In
1883 he put forth a pamphlet of twenty-four pages, entitled, A
Minute among the Amenities, in which he replies to certain pro-Shak-
spere critics in leading Australian periodicals; claiming that he was
denied a hearing by the papers that had attacked him, and was
forced to defend himself and his doctrines in a pamphlet. This
was the last of his utterances.
IV. Mrs. Henry Pott.
In 1883 appeared one of the most important contributions yet
made to the discussion of the Baconian question: The Fromus of
Formularies and Elegancies, (being Private Notes, circ. 1594, hitherto
unpublished), by Francis Bacon. Illustrated and elucidated by pass-
ages from Shakespeare. By Mrs. Henry Pott. With Preface by
E. A. Abbott, D.D., Head Master of the City of London School.
1883. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 8vo, pp. 628.
Mr. Wyman says:
The MSS. known as the Promus form a part of the Harleian collection in the
British Museum. . . . They consist of fifty sheets or folios, nearly all in the hand-
writing of Bacon, containing 1655 different entries or memoranda. The whole
seems to have been kept by Bacon as a sort of commonplace-book, in which he
entered at different times brief forms of expression, phrases, proverbs, verses from
the Bible, and quotations from Seneca, Horace, Virgil, Erasmus, and many other
writers. These are in various languages — English, French, Italian, etc.
Mrs. Pott's great work — and it is indeed a monument of in-
dustry and learning — has for its object to show that, while hundreds
THE BACONIANS. 93 T
of these entries have borne no fruit in the preparation of Bacon's
acknowledged works, they reappear with wonderful distinctness in
the Shakespeare Plays. With phenomenal patience Mrs. Pott has
worked out thousands of these identities in her book. I have al-
ready made many citations from it. !f ome idea may be formed of
the marvelous industry of this remarkable lady when I state that,
to prove that we are indebted to Bacon for having enriched the
English language, through the Plays, with those beautiful courte-
sies of speech, " Good morrow," " Good day," etc., she carefully
examined six thousand works anterior to or conte?nporary with Bacon.
Mrs. Pott resides in London. She is nearing the fiftieth mile-
stone of her life. She comes of the best blood of England and
Scotland; of a long line of clergymen and lawyers. Judge Hali-
burton, of Nova Scotia, celebrated as the writer of the "Sam Slick "
papers, was a cousin of her mother. Her uncle, James Haliburton,
was the first Englishman to attempt to investigate the Pyramids of
Egypt. He lived among the Arabs and mastered their language,
as well as the hieroglyphics on the ancient monuments. The first
collection of mummies in the British Museum was presented by
him, and bears his name. It is claimed that Sir Gardiner Wilkin-
son appropriated his papers and labors without acknowledgment.
Sir Walter Scott was a Haliburton. Mrs. Pott's father, John Peter
Fearon, was a lawyer. " He came," says Mrs. Pott, in answer to
my questions, " of a long line of Sussex clergy and country gentle-
men. They seem, like the oaks, to have been indigenous to this soil."
Among the acquaintances of Mrs. Pott's youth were the celebrated
Stephensons and " dear old Professor Faraday." Mrs. Pott writes
me a charming account of her early years, from which I take the
liberty to quote a few sentences:
Things in general fell to me to do. To ride, to botanize and analyze with
my father; and to take notes for him at the Royal Institution lectures, which we
attended thrice a week during the season, from the time I was nine until I was
nineteen. We had an immense deal of company to entertain and cater for, and I
was dubbed " chief of the folly and decoration department; " and looking back, in
these days of high schools and cram, I cannot think how I got my education —
certainly not in the ordinary way. We had an extremely clever and original
governess, who had lived for sixteen years at Oxford in the family of the Dean of
Christ Church. She came to us overflowing with university ideas, knowledge of
books, etc.; and she impenetrated my imagination with a desire to know all sorts
of .hings which were considered to be far beyond the reaches of small souls; so
93 2 CONCL USIONS.
that I remember steolitjg learned volumes from my father's shelves, hiding them
like a guilty thing, and glorying in the feeling that I did understand them, and
that if I had known the authors I could have talked to them to our mutual pleasure.
And somewhat in this way I made Bacon's acquaintance. One day, (I was ten or
eleven years old), an aunt took me to pay some visits. Whilst she and her friends
prosed drearily on, so to me it seemed, I improved the dismal hour by taking a
tour round the big drawing-room table, adorned with books radiating from the
center. Soon I found one with short pieces in good print, and read: " What is
truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not wait for an answer." I was delighted
with this new view of the subject, and the mixture of gravity and fun made me feel
at home with the author, for it was like my father. I read on, and I found it to be
a very nice book; so I looked at the title-page, and afterwards asked at home if
there were any books by a man called Francis Bacon, for I wished to read them.
It was not my father that I asked, and I was told that if was a conceited and ridi-
culous thing for a little girl to pretend to understand Bacon, who by all accounts
was too wise for any one to understand. That fixed him in my mind as a thing to
be seen into at the earliest opportunity; and somehow I must have got possessed
of the Essays, for my old governess told me a few years ago that when I was thir-
teen years of age we were speculating on the joys of heaven, and I said, to the
great surprise of the audience, that my idea would be to walk about and talk to
Francis Bacon. Of this I have no recollection; but I do remember the violent
repulsion which I felt at having to say " How d'ye do " to Lord Macaulay, because,
in my secret heart, I thought him a villain for having written such an essay about
Bacon. When I married, at the age of twenty, a friend asked me to name some-
thing which I would like him to give me. I said, "Bacon's Essays;" and that
little well-bound volume, (containing also the New Atlantis, The Wisdom of the
Ancients, and The History of Henry VIE), was the proximate cause of present
effects. It used to be on the table by which I sat whilst I had my daily cup of
five o'clock tea. As time went on, and in my happy little country home annual
babies were added to the household, they were always with me at this hour, whilst
the nurse was having her more important meal. Whilst they played and rolled
about (five under six years of age), I could not do much, but I could catch a few
refreshing ideas from my favorite author. I got to know the Essays through and
through, and was not long in perceiving the resemblances of thought between pass-
ages there and in Shakespeare. In the long damp evenings, before my husband
came home, I used to amuse myself by hunting out in the Plays the lines which I
thought I remembered. I began by trying to find out how much Bacon owes to
Plato, and soon found that Shakespeare owed as much. This was before the days
of a Shakespearean Concordance, at least I never heard of any; but in the search
for passages after my own fashion, I continually stumbled upon fresh resemblances
of thought and diction so surprising, that, at last, I said one day to our learned
old clergyman, the Rev. John Thomas Austen, that I felt sure that Bacon must
have taken the youthful Shakespeare by the hand and coached him, or in some
definite way helped him with his works. Mr. Austen said that others had thought
the same thing, but that experts, the Shakespearean Society and others, had in-
quired into the subject, which had been duly weighed and found wanting. I spoke
to others on the same topic, but found that it was held to be ridiculous, or even
offensive, to touch upon it. So, for a while, I said no more, but kept on scribbling
notes on the margins of my books, until my own mind grew confirmed and auda-
cious. I said to Mr. Austen that I had altered my ideas. Bacon did not help
Shakespeare, but he wrote all the Plays himself. Then Mr. Austen laughed at me
THE BACONIANS. 933
kindly, and said I ought to have known Lord Palmerston, who to his dying day
maintained the same thing. I asked what were Lord Palmerston' s views. Mr. Aus-
ten said that he did not know; that he had some vaporous notions which the cir-
cumstances of the men's lives did not warrant. I said that if the idea savored of
" inane," I should be happy to be a fool in such good company as Lord Palmer-
ston's; and privately continued my researches. In 1874 we were in London, and
I casually met with Fraser s Magazine, July or August, containing that remarkably
fair> calm article which has now become almost classic. It summed up all that
had been published on the subject, and brought forward the names of Miss Delia
Bacon, and Mr. W. H. Smith, and Judge Holmes, of not one of whom had I ever
before heard. I was enchanted to find that there was nothing which upset the
theories which had been building themselves up about Bacon. I told Archdeacon
Pott, my husband's cousin, what I thought, and that the only scientific way of get-
ting at the truth was to take, separately, every branch of Bacon's learning, every
subject of his studies and researches, placing them under headings as in a
cyclopaedia, and comparing them with Shakespeare's utterances. I proposed to
begin with concrete substantives, to prove (what I already knew was a fact) that
Bacon and Shakespeare talked of the same things; then I would collect all the pass-
ages which showed their thoughts on those same things; and then, again, the
actual words which they used to express their thoughts. My cousin thought that
the task would be Herculean, and require an army of able workers, but no aid
was then to be had. " The learned " did not like my notions, and fought shy of
discussing them. " The unlearned " were useless; and the small amount of work
which I paid for was done in a perfunctory or uncomprehending way which ren-
dered it valueless. So I remembered my father's dictum that Time and Force
are convertible terms; and I recollected also a mushroom which, in a day and a night,
heaved up a great threshold stone at our garden door; and I thought that by small,
persistent efforts I would be even with that mushroom. So I began systematically
on the simplest subjects — Horticulture, Agriculture, etc.; arranging each detail
under a heading, and writing on the right half of the sheet what Bacon said, and
on the left what Shakespeare said. After doing Horticulture, Natural History,
Medicine, Metallurgy, Chemistry, Meteorology, Astronomy, Astrology, -Light,
Heat, Sound, Man, Metaphysics, Life, Death, etc., I proceeded to Politics; the
State, Kings, Seditions, etc.; Law, in all its branches; Mythology, Religion; the
Bible, Superstitions, Witchcraft or Demonology, etc. Then History, Ancient and
Modern, Geography, allusions to Classical Lore, Fiction, Arts, the Theater,
Music, Poetry, Painting, Cosmetics, Dress, Furniture, Domestic Affairs. Trades,
Professions; in short, everything. Then for the Grammar, (by aid of Dr. Abbott's
Shakespearean Grammar), and the Philology, by an exhaustive process of com-
parison, and by Pro?nns notes. Then I wrote a sketch of Bacon's life, consisting
of twenty-nine or thirty chapters, wherein, as I believed, I traced his history,
written in the Plays. Fortunately I made no attempt to publish this. Mean-
while I began another dictionary, which was well advanced when I broke down in
health. Having taken out all the metaphors, similes and figurative turns of speech
from the prose works, I compared them as before with the same sort of thing in
the Plays. I made about 3,000 headings, illustrated by about 30,000 passages.
This extraordinary mental activity and industry is quite Bacon-
ian; it
O'er-informs its tenement of clay,
And frets the pigmy body to decay.
934
CONCL USIONS.
It is the spirit mastering the flesh; and it reminds one of the
expression used by one of the great French generals of the eight-
eenth century, who found himself trembling, as he was going into
battle: " Thou tremblest, O body of mine! Thou wouldst trem-
ble still more if thou knewest where I am going to take thee
to-day ! "
And this marvelous mental labor has been carried on in the
midst of the demands of a large family and the exactions of many
and high social duties. I was amused to find Mrs. Pott saying in
a recent letter, — in which she was discussing some very grave ques-
tions,— "But I must stop; for I have to give one of the children a
lesson on the violin."
Mrs. Pott is one of the most comprehensive and penetrating
minds ever born on English soil, and her nation will yet recognize
her as such; and she is, withal, a generous, modest and unpretend-
ing lady. It is an auspicious sign for the future of the human race
when women, who in the olden time were the slaves or the play-
things of men, prove that their more delicate nervous organization
is not at all incompatible with the greatest mental labors or the pro-
foundest and most original conceptions. And if it be a fact — as
all creeds believe — that our intelligences are plastic in the hands of
the external spiritual influences, then we may naturally expect that
woman — purer, higher, nobler and more sensitive than man —
will in the future lead the race up many of the great sun-crowned
heights of progress, where thicker-brained man can only follow
in her footsteps.
I owe Mrs. Pott an apology for venturing to quote so exten-
sively, as I have done, from her private letters, but I trust the
pleasure it will give the public will plead my excuse.
V. Other Advocates of Bacon.
Besides these distinguished laborers in the field of this great dis-
cussion, as advocates of Francis Bacon, there have been many
humbler, but no less gallant defenders of his cause, who, in
pamphlet, magazine, or newspaper, have set forth the reasons for
the faith that was in them; and who deserve now to be remembered
for their sagacity and courage. Among these I would mention.
THE BACONIANS. 935
Francis Fearon, a brother of Mrs. Pott, whose able lecture,
recently, upon the question of Bacon's authorship of the Plays, has
been read by millions of people in England and America; the un-
known writer of the article which appeared in Frasers Magazine,
London, November, 1855; Richard J. Hinton, of Washington, D. C,
who published an able three-column article in the Round Table, of
New York, November 17, 1866, and has subsequently done yeoman
service in the cause; Rev. A. B. Bradford, of Enon, Pennsylvania,
who printed, in the Golden Age, May 30, 1834, and in the Argus and
Radical, of Beaver, Pennsylvania, December 29, 1875, a report of a
six-column lecture on the same theme; J. V. B. Prichard, who wrote
a ten-page article for Frascr's Magazine, London, August, 1874
(which was reproduced in LittelVs Living Age, October, 1874, and
attracted marked attention); the Ven. Archdeacon William T. Leach,
LL.D.. of McGill College and University, Montreal, Canada, who
delivered a lecture before the College on Bacon and Shakespeare,
November 13, 1879, an<^ warmly espoused the side of Francis
Bacon as the author of the Plays. In addition to these I would
also mention: George Stronach, M.A., who advocated the Baconian
theory in The Hornet, London, August 11, 1875; M. J. Villemain,
who published two articles, in L* Instruction Publiqtie: Revue des
Lettres, Science et Arts, Paris, August 31 and September 7, 1878.
Also my friend O. Follett, Esq., of Sandusky, Ohio, who printed a
pamphlet of forty-seven pages, May, 1879, and another May, i88i,of
twelve pages, and has contributed a strong communication to the
Register, of Sandusky, Ohio, April 5, 1883, in answer to Richard
Grant White's "Bacon-Shakespeare Craze." Mr. Follett has, I un-
derstand, ready for the press a larger work on the Baconian author-
ship, which I hope will soon see the light. I would also refer to
Henry G. Atkinson, F.G.S., who, in the Spiritualist, London, July
4, 1879, and m many other periodicals, has advocated the Baconian
theory; also to O. C. Strouder, author of an article in the Witten-
berger Magazine, of Springfield, Ohio, November, 1880; also to
William W. Ferrier, of Angola, Indiana, who contributed num-
erous able articles on the subject to the Herald of that town in
the year 1881; also to E. W. Tullidge, editor of Tullidge s Quarterly
Magazine, Salt Lake City, Utah, who has written several strong
936
CONCLUSIONS.
\
articles in advocacy of Bacon's authorship of the Plays; also to
John W. Bell, of Toledo, Ohio, who has written several newspaper
articles of the same tenor; also to Robert M. Theobald, of London,
England, one of the officers of the Bacon Society of London,
and an able and earnest advocate of Baconianism in leading
English journals. I would also mention the names of Edward
Fillebrown, of Brookline, Massachusetts, and the late Hon. Geo. B.
Smith, at one time a leading lawyer of the State of Wisconsin,
whom I had the pleasure of knowing. I would also refer to the
unknown writer of an able article in defense of Bacon's authorship
of the Plays, in the Allgemeine Zeitung, Stuttgart and Munich, March
i, 1883, four columns in length. I would also refer to the labors of
two of my friends, William Henry Burr, of Washington, D. C, a
powerful controversialist upon the question; and to Hon. J. H.
Stotsenburg, of New Albany, Indiana, the author of a very interest-
ing series of articles in an Indianapolis newspaper, entitled "An
Indian in Indiana."
VI. Appleton Morgan.
I regret that I cannot include in this catalogue of Baconians
Mr. Appleton Morgan, the author of The Shakespearean Myth, pub-
lished in 1881, by Robert Clarke & Co., of Cincinnati, Ohio (8vo,
pp. 342); but Mr. Morgan writes me recently that he is not a
Baconian. This is the more to be regretted because his book is
a powerful assault upon Shakspere's authorship: and it seems to
me that if Shakspere did not write the Plays there is no one left
to dispute the palm with Francis Bacon. Certainly there could
not have been half a dozen Shakespeares lying around loose in
London just at that time. Nature does not breed her monsters
in litters. While Mr. Morgan gives us in his work few new facts,
not already contained in the writings of Miss Bacon, William Henry
Smith and Judge Holmes, he arrays the argument in the case with
the skill of a trained lawyer, and brings out his conclusions in a
forcible manner. But I regret to see evidences, in some of Mr.
Morgan's recent utterances, which lead me to fear that he has re-
canted the opinions expressed in The Myth, and that he thinks the
man of Stratford may, after all, have written the Plays !
THE BACONIAN H.
VII. Professor Thomas Davidsoi
I take pleasure in presenting to the public the features of one
of the most accomplished scholars in America, who, while not an
avowed Baconian, has been largely identified with the presentation
of this book to the public, and therefore deserves to be mentioned
in it. Professor Davidson was sent to my home by the New York
World, in August, 1887, to examine the proof-sheets of this work.
He came believing that William Shakspere was undoubtedly the
writer of the Plays; he left convinced that this was almost impos-
sible; and since then, in numerous newspaper articles, he has pre-
sented most powerful arguments in support of his views. Only a
great man could thus overcome, in a few hours, the prejudices of a
life-time; only an honest man would dare avow the change. Prof.
Davidson is both.
He comes of the great race of Burns and Scott, and Hume and
Mackintosh; — a race whose part in the world has been altogether
out of proportion to the dimensions of their stormy little land; a
land which sits with the fair fields of England at her knees, and the
everlasting clouds upon her mountain brows.
Professor Davidson was born October 25, 1840, at Deer, Aber-
deenshire. He graduated as the first in his class at Aberdeen in
i860. He has traveled in Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Canada,
the United States, etc. From 1875 to 1877 he was a member of the
Harvard University Visiting Committee. He has written for all
the leading magazines and reviews of England and America. His
lingual acquirements and his universal learning are such that he
has been aptly termed " the Admirable Crichton of recent times."
But intellect and learning are cheap in these latter ages; they
are produced in superabundance. Professor Davidson has that,
however, which is better than a thoroughly-stored brain, to-wit: a
kind, broad heart, which feels for the miseries of his fellow-men.
The acquisitions of the memory cannot be expected to be perpetu- ,
ated beyond the disintegration of the brain which holds them; but
the impulses for good come from the Divine Essence, and will live
when all the universities are but little heaps of dust.
VIII. James T. Cobb.
And here I would note the labors of an humble and unostentatious
938
CO JVC L USIONS.
gentleman, who, while he has himself, I believe, published nothing
touching the Baconian controversy, has contributed not a little to
the elucidation of many remarkable parallelisms of thought and
expression between Bacon's acknowledged writings and the Shake-
speare Plays. Some of these have been used by Judge Holmes and
others by myself. Mr. James T. Cobb, of Salt Lake City, Utah,
school-teacher, born in Boston, graduated in 1855 from Dartmouth
College, resided in different Western States, and finally removed
to the great Salt Lake Basin. Mr. Cobb's verbal knowledge of the
Baconian and Shakespeare writings is equaled only by his pene-
tration into the spirit of the great mind which produced both.
IX. W. H. Wyman.
I cannot close this chapter without some reference to one who,
while not a Baconian, has yet materially contributed to the discus-
sion of the question. I refer to Mr. W. H. Wyman, of Cincinnati,
Ohio, author of TJie BibliograpJiy of tJie Bacon-SJiakespeare Contro-
versy, with Notes and Extracts, published in 1884 by Cox & Co., Cin-
cinnati, Ohio — a reasonably fair and well arranged compilation.
It is singular, indeed, that one who believed the Baconian theory
was a delusion and a snare should be at so much pains to collect
every detail of the controversy, amounting in all, in 1884, to 255
titles of books, pamphlets, essays and newspaper articles. So far
back as 1882 we find Mr Wyman publishing in a Wisconsin paper
a partial bibliographical list (25 titles); this grew in the same year
to a small book of 63 titles and eight pages; this in 1884 to the
work referred to of 255 titles and 119 pages; and I am informed
Mr. Wyman has now the material on hand for a large volume, which
will, I trust, soon be published.
Mr. Wyman was born in Canton, New York, July 21st, 1831.
In 1838 he removed with the rest of his family to Madison, Wiscon-
sin, then almost a wilderness. His father was publisher of a news-
paper there, and Mr. Wyman received most of his education in the
printing-office. He has been in the service of the JEtna Insurance
Company for thirty-two years, and now holds the responsible place
of Assistant General Agent for that corporation in the State of
Ohio.
CHAPTER IV.
OTHER MASKS OF FRANCIS BACON.
Xo more yet of this,
For 'tis a chronicle of day by day,
Not- a relation for a breakfast, nor
Befitting this first meeting.
Tempest^ r, /.
" I ^HE Cipher establishes that Francis Bacon wrote the Shake-
•*■ speare Plays; but it proves much more than^this to the reason-
ing mind.
The first of the Plays, we are told by Halliwell-Phillipps, (the
highest authority on the subject), appeared March 3, 1592. But
Bacon was born January 22, 1561; so that he was thirty-one years
of age when the first Shakespeare play was placed on the stage.
Can any one believe that the vastly active intellect of Francis
Bacon lay fallow from youth until he was thirty-one years of age?
The Rev. Mr. Newman, in his funeral oration over the son of
Senator Stanford, of California, collated many instances, going to
show how early the greatness of the mind manifests itself in men
of exceptional ability. He says:
In all this early intellectual superiority he reminds us that the history of heroes
is the history of youth. At eleven, Bacon was speculating on the Laws of the
Imagination; at twelve, a student at Cambridge; at sixteen, expressing his dis-
like for the philosophy of Aristotle; at twenty, the author of a paper on the defects
of universities; at twenty-one, admitted to the bar; at twenty-eight, appointed
Queen's Counsel Extraordinary. He reminds us of the tender and eloquent Pas-
cal, who, at the age of sixteen, published a Treatise on Conic Sections; at sev-
enteen, suggested the hydraulic press; at twenty, anticipated by his inventions
the works of Galileo and Descartes, and at twenty-four was an authority in higher
mathematics. He reminds us of Grotius, who entered the University of Leyden
at twelve; at fourteen, published an edition of Martianus Capella, which dis-
closed his acquaintance with Cicero, Aristotle, Pliny, Euclid, Strabo, and other
great writers; at fifteen, was an attache of a Dutch embassy to Henry IV.; at six-
teen, was admitted to practice; at twenty-four, was Advocate-General of the Treas-
sury of Holland, and at twenty-five was an authority on international law. He
939
940 CONCLUSIONS.
recalls to us Gibbon, who was in his Latin at seven; a student at Oxford at fifteen;
a lover of Locke and Grotius and Pascal at seventeen, and at twenty-five had
acquired the scholarship, gathered the materials, and formed the plan of that great
history which has given immortality to his name. He brings to mind our own
Hamilton, who entered college at fifteen; was an orator at seventeen; a political
writer at eighteen; at twenty, was on Washington's staff; at twenty-four, was a
legislator, and at thirty-two was Secretary of the Treasury of the United States.
Nay, more; his mental promise was like that of Washington, of Pitt, of Whitfield,
of Raphael, of Agassiz, in their early manhood.
And yet, up to 1592, when Bacon was thirty-one years of age,
he had published nothing but a pamphlet on a religious topic, and
a brief letter on governmental questions. What was he doing be-
fore he assumed the mask of Shakespeare ?
I. Early Plays.
He had, before " William Shagsper of thone part " appeared on
the scene, created a whole literature. That mighty renaissance of
English genius and reconstruction of the drama, which marks the
years between 1580 and 161 1, had begun while the beadles were
still amusing themselves and exercising their muscles over the raw
back of Shagsper; and when Shake-speare appeared in 1592, as an
author, he simply inherited a style of workmanship and a form of
expression already created. Swinburne says:
In his early plays the style of Shakespeare was not for the most part distinctively
his own. It was that of a crew, a knot of young writers, among whom he found at
once both leaders and followers, to be guided and to guide.1
The young lawyer, Francis Bacon, being possessed of the crea-
tive, poetical instinct, and having discovered that there was in the
theaters a veritable mine of money, and that " a philosopher may
be rich, if he will," and still be a philosopher, poured forth, between
the year 158T, when he was twenty years of age, and 1592, when
he assumed the Shake-speare mask, a whole body of plays. They
were not perfected or elaborated; they were youthful and immature
experiments; many of them, most of them, have perished; they
were dashed off to meet some temporary money necessity; just as
we are told the original play of The Merry Wives of Windsor
was written in fourteen days; and Bacon's chaplain, Rawley, notes
the rapidity with which he composed his writings. The very names
of many of these plays are lost; some we have in glimpses; three
1 Swinburne, A Study of Shak., p. 243.
OTHER MASKS OF FRANCIS BACON.
941
years before Shakespeare began to write, in 1589, Peele addressed a
farewell to the Earl of Essex, Norris and Drake on their expedition
to Cadiz, in which he says:
Bid theater and proud tragedians,
Bid Mahomet, Scipio and mighty Tumburlain,
King Charlemagne, Tom Stucley and the rest
Adieu. To arms, etc.1
Now, we know that there is a play of Tamburlaine^ attributed to
Marlowe, and a play of Tom Stuckley, the author of which is un-
known; hence we may reasonably infer that Mahomet, Scipio and
King Charlemagne were also plays, then being acted on the stage.
And the names imply that they were kindred in substance to Tam-
burlaine and Doctor Faustus; that is to say, they dealt with vast
characters and huge events, which naturally would fascinate the wild
imagination of a young man of genius; and they touched upon
subjects which might be reasonably expected to catch the attention
of one fresh from his academical studies. Tamburlaine ruled a
great part of the world; so did Mahomet; so did Charlemagne; while
the career of Scipio Africanus and his mighty victories was as
extraordinary as the powers which Doctor Faustus, through his
compact with the evil one, gained over the forces of nature, over
life and the tenants of the grave.
And in addition to these lost plays there are fifteen other
dramas that have survived the chances of time, and have been
attributed by many commentators to the pen which wrote the
Shakespeare Plays, to-wit: The Arraignment of Paris, Arden of
Ferersham, George-a- Greene, Locrine, King Edward III., Mucedorus,
Sir John Oldcastle, Thomas Lord Cromwell, The Merry Devil of Ed-
monton, The London Prodigal, The Puritan (or the Widow of Watling
Street), A Yorkshire Tragedy, Fair £m, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and
The Birth of Merlin. Many of these are now printed in all com-
plete editions of Shakespeare's works. In addition to these,
Pericles, Prince of Tyre, which was not inserted by Heminge and «
Condell in the great Folio, was published in quarto in 1609, with
the name of William Shakespeare on the title-page, and was played
at Shakespeare's play-house. It is now generally conceded to be
the work of Shakespeare. There was also a play called Love's
1 School of Shak., vol. i, p. 153.
942 CONCL US/ON S.
Labors Won, named by Meres in 1598 as the work of Shakespeare,
which is either lost, or has survived under some other name. There
was also another play entitled Duke Humphrey, attributed to
Shakespeare during his lifetime, which was destroyed by the care-
lessness of a servant of Warburton, in the early part of the last
century.
Now, it must be remembered that all of the list of fifteen plays
given above, except The Merry Devil of Edmonton and The Two Noble
Kinsmen, were published during Shakspere' s life-time, in nearly every
instance with the ?iame of William Shakespeare, or his initials, on the
titlepage, and The Merry Devil of Edmonton was announced as the
joint work of Shakespeare and Rowley, and The Two Noble Kins-
men as having been written by Shakespeare and Fletcher.1 So that
we have just as good authority for assigning most of these plays to
Shakespeare as we have for attributing to him those that go by his
name. Besides, the critical acumen of learned commentators has
discovered abundant evidence that they all emanated from the
same mind which produced Hamlet and Lear.
I regret that the limitations of space in this book, already too
bulky, prevent me from going fully into all these matters; but
they are " not a relation for a breakfast," but a subject that may
be recurred to hereafter.
The great German critics have, it seems to me, taken juster
views upon these " doubtful plays," as they are called, than the
English. Tieck refers to them in his Alt-Englisches Theater, oder Sup-
ple mente zum Shakspere, as follows:
Those dramas which Shakspere produced in his youth, and which Englishmen,
through a misjudging criticism, and a tenderness for his fame (as they thought) have
refused to recognize.
Tieck is speaking of George-a-Greene. He also, from internal
evidences, attributes Fair Em, The Birth of Merlin, The Merry
Devil of Edmonton, Edward III., and Arden of Eeversham, to Shake-
speare; while Schlegel says that Sir John Oldcastle, Thomas Lord
Cromwell, and The Yorkshire Tragedy, are " unquestionably Shake-
speare's."
The Yorkshire Tragedy appeared in 1608 with Shakespeare's name
on the title page; The Puritan, or the Widow of Wailing Street, was
1 Morgan, Shakespearean Myth, p. 286.
OTHER MASKS OF FRANCIS BACON. 943
published in 1607, as "written by W. S.;" The London Prodigal was
published in 1605, as " by William Shakespeare;" the play of Thomas
Lord Cro?nweIl was published in 1613, "written by W. S.;" Locrine
was published in 1595 as "newly set forth, overseene and corrected
by W. S.;" The Life of Sir John Oldcastle was published 1600 with
the initials "W. S." on the title-leaf. Speaking of Arden of Fever-
sham, Swinburne says:
Either this play is the young Shakespeare's first tragic masterpiece, or there
was a writer unknown to us then alive, and at work for the stage, who excelled him
as a tragic dramatist not less, to say the very least, than he was excelled by Marlowe
as a tragic poet.
He adds that Goethe is said to have believed that Shakespeare
wrote this play.1
Here, then, is a whole body of literature, Shakespearean in its
characteristics, and yet discarded by Heminge and Condell from the
first complete edition of Shakespeare's works, printed from the "true
original copies." And, if I had the space for the inquiry, I could
show that these plays are full of Baconianisms, if I may coin a word.
For instance, Bacon had returned from the higher civilization of
France, (nearer geographically to the surviving Roman culture),
full of all the arts — music, poetry and painting. We see many refer-
ences to the art of painting in the Shakespeare Plays; it was still a
foreign art; and Swinburne says, speaking of Arden of Fever sham:
I cannot remember, in the whole radiant range of the Elizabethan drama, more
than one parallel tribute paid in this play by an English poet to the yet foreign art
of painting.2
And it is a curious fact that the words, —
Come, make him stand upon this mole-hill here
That raught at mountains with outstretched arms,
Yet parted but the shadow with his hand, —
which we find in The Third Part of King Henry VI., are taken
bodily from The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York, a play not
published as Shakespeare's.
And Swinburne finds still another play, The Spanish Tragedy, •
which he believes to be the work of Shakespeare. He says:
I still adhere to Coleridge's verdict, . . . that those magnificent passages,
well-nigh overcharged at every point with passion and subtlety, sincerity and
lA Study 0/ Shakespeare, p. 135. 2-^ Study of Shakespeare, p. 141.
944 CONCL USIONS.
instinct of pathetic truth, are no less like Shakespeare's work than unlike John-
son's.1
In short, the genius we call Shakespeare's is found dissociated
from the man Shakspere, and covering a vast array of matter which
the play-actor had nothing to do with: for Fair Em appeared
in 1587, while Shakspere was holding horses at the door f the play-
house; and some others of the plays, above named, now believed
to have been written by the Shakespeare pen, were never associated
with Shakspere's name during his lifetime, nor long afterwards.
And all this is compatible with the theory that a scholar of vast
intellectual precocity, like Bacon, and of immense fecundity, flooded
the stages of London with plays — to make money — for years before
Shakspere left Stratford; but it is utterly incompatible with the
belief that the man who left nothing behind him to show any
mental activity (except, of course, his alleged plays), and who dwelt
during the last years of his life at Stratford in utter torpidity of
mind, could have produced this array of unclaimed dramas. And
the reader will note that most of these plays were printed, for the first
time, between 1607 and 1613, just at the time Bacon was drawing to
the close of his poetical productiveness. It was as if he was trying
to preserve to posterity the history of the growth of his own mind
from its first crude, youthful beginnings to its perfect culmination;
from Stuckley and Fair E?n to Othello and Lear.
Besides these earlier plays there were a number which, it is
claimed, Shakespeare used and enlarged, and which are supposed
by the critics to have been written by other men, but which were in
reality Bacon's first essays upon those subjects. For it is not proba-
<' ble that any dramatic writer would re-cast and improve and glorify
another man's work. We can conceive of Charles Dickens, for in-
stance, taking up an immature sketch of his youth, and enlarging it
into David Copperfield or Bleak House; but we cannot imagine him
taking a story written by Thackeray and re-writing it and publish-
ing it under his own name. There, for instance, is the Contention
between the Houses of York and Lancaster, the early King Jolm, the
Famous Victories, and that Hamlet which it is claimed was first
played in 1585. And here is another instance of the same kind.
Swinburne says:
JA Study 0/ Shakespeare, p. 144.
ftf^UHL. U~t- f/? 2>-(Ay S-HvCo>~<Uy
OTHER MASKS OF FRANCIS BACON
945
The refined instinct, artistic judgment and consummate taste of Shakespeare
were never perhaps so wonderfully shown as in his recast of another man's work
— a man of real if rough genius for comedy — which we get in The Taming of the
Shrew. Only the collation of scene with scene, then of speech with speech, then
of line with line, will show how much may be borrowed from a stranger's material,
and how much may be added to it by the same stroke of a single hand. All the
force and humor alike of character and situation belong to Shakespeare 's eclipsed
and forhrn precursor; he has added nothing, he has tempered and enriched every-
thing. The luckless author of the first sketch is like to remain a man as name-
less as the deed of the witches in Macbeth, unless some chance or caprice of
accident should suddenly flash favoring light on his now impersonal and indiscov-
erable individuality. ... On the other hand, he is, of all the Pre-Shakespeareans
known to us, incomparably the truest, the richest, the most powerful and original
humorist; one, indeed, without a second on that ground, for the rest are nowhere.1
And how comes it that the world was, just at that time, so full
of mighty but unknown geniuses? It seems to have rained Shake-
speares.
Then there is The Warning for Fair Women, arising out of a
murder in 1573, supposed to have been written before 1590, and
published in 1599. Mr. Collier2 gives excellent reasons for believing
that it was written by the man who wrote Shakespeare; and says
the identities of language and thought are so great that it is aut
Shakespeare aut diabolus. And Collier3 cites the names of a number
of other plays, "domestic tragedies" he calls them, which, like The
Yorkshire Tragedy and Arden of Feversham, were founded upon events
of the day; there is, for instance, Two Tragedies in One, based upon
the assassination of a merchant of London, The Fair Maid of Bris-
tol, The Stepmother s Tragedy, The Tragedy of John Cox of Collumpto?i,
The Tragedy of Page of Plymouth, Black Bateman of the North, etc.,
all founded on actual occurrences which attracted public attention,
and which were seized upon by some fertile mind as subjects on
which to dash off short plays that would draw the multitude, and
fill the pockets of actors and author. Many of these "domestic
tragedies " are lost, but nearly all those that have been accidentally
preserved are deemed by our best critics, English and German, to
bear traces of the Shakespearean mind. And nearly all these ante-
date the time when Shakespeare appeared as a play-writer.
II. The Play of "Edward III."
It is generally supposed that Shakespeare originated that form
1 A Study of Shak., p. 124. 3 Ibid., p. 437.
1 History of Dram. Poetry, vol. ii, p. 440.
946
CONCL US IONS.
of drama known as the historical play. This is not true. Marlowe
preceded him with Edward II, and an unknown writer with
Edward III Here we see that the purpose of teaching the multi-
tude the history of their own country in plays, descriptive of the
great events of different reigns, began before Shakspere appeared
on the scene, probably before he left Stratford.
Of the author of this play of Edward III. Swinburne says:
He could write, at times, very much after the fashion of the adolescent Shake-
speare.1
This play was first printed in 1596, and ran through several
anonymous editions. Collier speaks of it as undoubtedly Shake-
speare's.2 Capell published it in 1760, as " thought to be writ by
Shakespeare." Knight says "there was no known author capable
of such a play."3 Ulrici is positive that Shakespeare wrote it.
There is a curious fact about this play. It contains the following
line:
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
And this line is precisely repeated in Shakespeare's 94th sonnet:
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
Either the unknown author stole this line bodily from Shake-
speare, or Shakespeare stole it bodily from him: for in neither case
were there any marks to show that it was a quotation. Public pur-
loining of whole lines is very unusual in any age; but it would be
most natural for an author to copy a few expressions from himself,
with intent to preserve them.
The writer of the play puts this speech into the mouth of the
Countess of Salisbury:
As easy may my intellectual soul
Be lent away and yet my body live,
As lend my body, palace to my soul,
Away from her, and yet retain my soul.
My body is her bower, her court, her abbey,
And she an angel pure, divine, unspotted;
If I should lend her house, my lord, to thee,
I kill my poor soul, and my poor soul me.
"This last couplet," says Swinburne, "is very much in the style
of Shakespeare's sonnets; nor is it wholly unlike even the dramatic
1 A Study of Shak., p. 235. 3 Knight's Doubtful Plays, p. 279.
2 History of Dram. Poetry, vol. iii, p. 311
OTHER MASKS OF FRANCIS BACON. 947
style of Shakespeare in his youth."1 He might have added that
the whole passage is decidedly Shakespearean.
The "angel, pure, divine, unspotted" reminds us of the descrip-
tion in Henry VIII., v, 4, of Queen Katharine as "a most unspotted
lily."
I quoted on page 534, ante, from 2d Henry VI., v, 1, the lines:
These brows of mine
Whose smile and power, like to Achilles' spear,
Is able with the change to kill and cure.
And in this play of Edward III. I find these lines:
The poets write that great Achilles' spear
Could heal the wound it made.
I could fill many pages with parallel passages, but that I have
not the space. There can be no doubt that Edward III. was written
by the same pen that wrote the Shakespeare Plays; and if Shakspere
was Shake-speare, why was it published anonymously; why did the
thrifty player permit it to be sold without the pennies going into
his own pocket ?
III. The Play of "Stuckley."
There was an English adventurer, Sir Thomas Stuckley, who was
first cousin to Sir Amias Paulet, the English Minister at the court
of France while Bacon was an attache of the legation. He was a
famous character during Bacon's youth — bold, warlike, chivalrous,
unfortunate; the very character to captivate a youthful imagina-
tion. He was killed at the battle of Alcazar, in Africa, August 4,
1578, about the time that Bacon returned to England from Paris,
and commenced the study of the law. His relationship to Sir
Amias Paulet must have made this dashing adventurer the sub-
jecc of a great deal of conversation among the members of the
English legation in Paris; and what more natural than that Francis
Bacon, if he had the dramatic instinct, should choose this interest-
ing theme as the subject of one of his first plays. Stuckley raises a
company of soldiers to fight in Ireland; he quarrels with the Cecils;
goes to Spain; is imprisoned by the Governor of Cadiz; enters the
service of Philip II.; the Pope makes him Marquis of Ireland, for
3 A Study of Shak., p. 253.
948 CONCLUSIONS.
which country he sets sail; he lands in Portugal; joins a Portuguese
expedition to Barbary, and is there slain — a wild, romantic, rash
and unreasoning career.
The play is evidently written by a lawyer; for he drags in law-
studies and law books, neck and heels, and to do so makes Stuckley
a law-student, when the fact was Stuckley never studied law.
Old Stuckley. I had as lief you'd seen him in the Temple walk,
Conferring with some learned counselor,
Or at the moot upon a point of law.1
When he sees the array of swords, daggers and bucklers in his
son's room the old man exclaims:
Be these your master's books?
For Littleton, Stanford and Brooke
Here's long sword, short sword and buckler,
But all's for the bar; yet I meant to have my son
A Barrister, not a Barrator.2
And Tom is made to express the disgust of a young law studentr
Nay, hark you, father, I pray you be content:
I have done my goodwill, but it will not do.
John a Nokes and John a Style and I cannot cotton.
Oh, this law-French is worse than buttered-mackerell,
Full o' bones, full o' bones. It sticks here, it will not down.
And this reminds us of the young man who said, " The bar will
be my bier."
Mr. Simpson sees evidence that this play was an early produc-
tion of Shakspere; but what had the boy of Stratford to do with
law-books ? And how did he acquire the intimate knowledge of
Stuckley's biography manifested in this play, and which astonishes-
the antiquarians?
And why should Shakspere drag into this play an allusion to
Bacon's home, at St. Albans, just as we have seen the same village
forced twenty odd times into the text of the Shakespeare Plays ?
It appears thus in the play of Tom Stuckley:
Vernon. Some conference with these gentlemen my friends
Made me neglect mine hour; but when you please
I now am ready to attend on you.
Harbart. It is well done, we will away forthwith.
St. Albans, though the day were further spent,
We may well reach to bed to-night.3
1 Act i, scene i. 2 Ibid. 3Acti.
OTHER MASKS OF FRANCIS BACOX. 949
Now, St. Albans had nothing to do with the action of the piece;
we hear no more of it; Harbart does not go there, that we know of.
Why did the Stratford boy, if this play is, as Simpson thinks, one
of his early productions, without any necessity thus introduce the
place of Bacon's residence into his play? What thread of con-
nection, geographical, political, poetical or biographical, was there
between Stratford and St. Albans ?
I have only space to give two or three extracts to show the re-
semblance between Tom Stuckley and the Shakespeare writings.
In Stuckley we have:
Mix not my forward summer with sharp breath;
Nor intercept my purpose, being good.
Compare this with Shakespeare's:
Here stands the spring whom you have stained with mud}
This goodly summer with your winter mixed}
In Stuckley we have:
He soonest loseth that despairs to win.
This is the embryo of the thought:
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might gain„
By fearing to attempt.2 .
In Stuckley we find:
Nay, if you look but on his mind,
Much more occasion shall ye find to love him_
Compare this with Shakespeare's 69th sonnet:
They look into the beauty of the mind.
In Stuckley we have:
You muddy slave.
In Shakespeare we have:
You muddy rascal.3
In Stuckley we have:
And that which in mean men would seem a fault,
As leaning to ambition, or such like,
Is in a king but well beseeming him.
1 Titus Andronicus, V, 2.
2 Measure for Measure, i, 5. %sd Jienry 7F., ii, 4.
9 5 o CONCL USIONS.
In Shakespeare we have:
That in the captain's but a choleric word,
Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy. '
And we catch a glimpse of the date of this composition by the
following allusion:
Will you so much annoy your vital powers
As to oppress them with the prison stink ?
Mr. Simpson calls attention to the following extract from Bacon's
Natural History:
The most pernicious infection, next the plague, is the smell of the jail, when
prisoners have been long and close and nastily kept; whereof we have had in our
time experience twice or thrice; when both the judges that sat upon the jail, and
numbers of those that attended the business, or were present, sickened upon it or
died.2
This allusion in the play to " the prison stink" probably refers
to " the black assizes " at Oxford, in 1577, or at Exeter, in 1586; and
the probability is that the play of Stuckley was written by Francis
Bacon, soon after the death of Stuckley, and subsequent to his return
to England; and that reference was therein had to " the black assizes "
at Oxford, in 1577.
I would close by calling attention to the Shakespearean ring in
these lines from Stuckley 's address to King Philip of Spain:
Right high and mighty, if to kings, installed
And sacredly anointed, it belong
To minister true justice, and relieve
The poor oppressed stranger, then from thee,
Renowned Philip, that by birth of place
Upholds the scepter of a royal king.
Stuckley, a soldier and a gentleman, —
But neither like a soldier nor a man
Of some of thy unworthy subjects handled, -»-
Doth challenge justice at thy sacred hands.
IV. Christopher Marlowe.
We see it intimated in the Cipher that the plays of Christopher
Marlowe were written by Francis Bacon; that he was Bacon's first
mask or cover. Is this statement improbable or unreasonable ?
In the first place, let us inquire who Marlowe was. Christopher
Marlowe, or Marlin, as the name was often spelled, was born in
1 Measure for Measure, ii,2. 2 Natural History, cent, x, No. Q14.
Dr. WILLIAM THOMSON,
OF MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA; AUTHOR OF "THE RENASCENCE DRAMA.
O THER MA SKS OF FRANCIS BA CON. 95 1
Canterbury precisely two months before the birth of Shakspere.
His father was " clarke of St. Marie's." Marlowe was educated at the
King's School, in his native town, and at Benet College, Cambridge,
Soon after coming of age, it is supposed, he followed the soldiers
to the wars in the Low Countries. The next we hear of him is as
an actor in London, and the author of Tamburlaine in 1587, when
twenty-three years of age.
We find the same incompatibilities between the work and the
life of Marlowe which exist in the case of Shakspere. While his
biography tells us that he was a drunken, licentious, depraved
creature, who was about to be arrested for blasphemy, and es-
caped the gallows or the stake by being killed in a drunken brawl,
"stabbed to death by a bawdy servingman rival of his in his lewd
love; M| at the same time he appears by his writings to have been
an exquisite poet who actually revolutionized English literature.
The Encyclopedia Britannica* says:
He is the greatest discoverer, the most daring and inspired pioneer, in all our
poetic literature. Before him there zvas neither genuine blank verse nor a genuine
tragedy in our language. After his arrival the way was prepared, the paths were
made straight for Shakespeare.
And the same high authority says, speaking of Tamburlaine:
It is the first poem ever written in English blank verse, as distinguished from
mere rhymeless decasyllables; and it contains one of the noblest passages, perhaps,
indeed, the noblest, in the literature of the world, ever written by one of the great-
est masters of poetry.
And it is a curious fact that Shakespeare steps upon the boards,
as a dramatic writer, just as Marlowe steps off. Marlowe was slain
June 1, 1593; and Halliwell-Phillipps says the first appearance of a
Shakespeare play was March 3, 1592 — the play of Henry VI. But
there are high authorities who claim that the play of Henry VI. was
written by Marlowe !
Swinburne3 finds that the opening lines of the second part of
Henry VI. are aut Christophorus Marlowe aut diabolus. He says:
I
It is inconceivable that any imitator, but one, should have had the power to
catch the very trick of his hand, the very note of his voice, and incredible that the
one who might would have set himself to do so; for, if this be not indeed the voice
and this the hand of Marlowe, then what we find in these verses is not the fidelity
of a follower but the servility of a copyist. ... He [Shakespeare] had much at
1 Sir William Vaughan, Golden Grote, 1600. 2 Vol. xv, p. 558. ? A Study o/Shak., p. 51.
j
952 CONCLUSIONS.
starting to learn of Marlowe, and he did learn much; in his earlier plays, and,
above all, in his earliest historic plays, the influence of the earlier poet, the echo of
his style, the iteration of his manner, may be perpetually traced.
The Encyclopedia Britannica1 says:
It is as nearly certain as anything can be which depends chiefly upon cumula-
tive and collateral evidence, that the better part of what is best in the serious
scenes of King Henry VI. is mainly the work of Marlowe.
There are a group of plays which have been claimed alternately
for both M^arlowe and Shakespeare. The writings of the two men,
at the beginning of Shakespeare's career, overlap and run into each
other.
The same writer in the British Encyclopaedia thinks The Con-
tention between the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster, now
usually attributed to Shakespeare, was written by Marlowe.
Halliwell-Phillipps says:
There are a few striking coincidences of language, especially in the passage
respecting the wild O'Neil, to be traced in Marlowe's Edward II., and the
Contention plays of 1594 and 1595; and also that a line from the Jew of Malta is
found in the Third Part of Henry the Sixth, but not in the True Tragedy}
And here is another borrowed line :
Marlowe says, in Doctor Faustus* speaking of Helen of Troy:
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ?
While in Shakespeare we have Troilus referring to this same
Helen in these words :
She is a pearl,
Whose price hath launched above a thousand ships,
And turned crowned kings to merchants.4
And the genius and style exhibited in the early plays of Shake-
speare and the later plays of Marlowe are almost identical.
Cunningham says5 of a passage in Tamburlaine, " One could
almost fancy that it flowed from the pen of Shakespeare himself."
Hallam6 says The Jew of Malta is " more rigorously conceived,
both as to character and circumstances, than any other Elizabethan
play, except those of Shakespeare." Mr. Collier7 thinks that if Mar-
lowe had written The Jew of Malta with a little more pains, "he
1 Vol. xv, p. 557. 5 Introduction to Works of Marlowe, p. xii.
2 Halliwell-Phillipps' Outlines of Life 6 Introduc. to Hist, and Lit. of Europe, vol ii,
of Skak., p. 220. p. 270.
3 Act v, scene 4. ''Hist. Drain. Poetry , vol. iii, 135.
4 Troilus and Cressida. ii, 2.
OTHER MASKS OF FRANCIS BACON. 953
^would not only have drawn a Jew fit to be matched against Shy-
lock, but have written a play not much inferior to The Merchant of
Venice." Hazlitt pronounces one scene in Edward II. "cer-
tainly superior " to a parallel scene, in Shakespeare's Richard II.
Charles Lamb said " the death scene of Marlowe's King moves pity
and terror beyond any scene ancient or modern." And of the play
of Doctor Faustus the writer in the Encyclopedia Britannica1 says:
Few masterpieces of any age, in any language, can stand beside this tragic
poem, for the qualities of terror and splendor, for intensity of purpose and sublim-
ity of note.
And we have seen the critics speculating whether Marlowe, if he
had not been prematurely cut off, in his twenty-ninth year, would not
hare been in time as great a poet as Shakespeare !
As if bountiful Nature, after waiting for five thousand years to
produce a Shakespeare, had been delivered of twins in that year of
grace, 1564 ! And we are asked to believe that, if it had not been for
Marlowe's drunken brawl, the two intellectual monsters would have
existed side by side for thirty years or so, corruscating Tambur-
laines, Lears, Doctor Faustuses and Hamlets to the end of the chapter;
to the infinite delight of the pyrotechnically astounded multitude,
who couldn't have told the productions of one from the other.
But it was a sad fact that one of these brilliant suns was not able to
rise until the other had set; and unfortunate that both at last
•declined their glorious orbs into a sea of strong drink, while "the
god of the machine " was behind the scenes delivering immortal
sermons in behalf of temperance.
V. Still Other Writers.
We are in the presence of an unbounded intellectual activity —
a Proteus that sought as many disguises as nature itself. We see
the appearance of the country changing: the soft earth of the forest
begins to give place to stretches of sand and gravel; there are larger
patches of light through the tree-tops; we hear a mighty voice 1
murmuring in the distance. We are approaching the ocean. We
are coming nearer to a great revelation.
Mrs. Pott expresses the opinion, in a private letter, — and I have
great confidence in her penetration and judgment, — that she sees
1 Vol. xv, p. 557.
954 CONCLUSIONS.
the signs of the Promus notes, and other Baconianisms of thought
and expression, not only in the plays of Marlowe, but in the writings,
of Marston, Massinger, Middleton, Greene, Shirley and Webster.
She also believes that Bacon was the author of the poems which
appeared in that age, signed "Ignoto;" and that he must have helped
to edit the great book on Ciphers published in Holland in 1623. And
she adds:
He must have been at the bottom of the partly fictitious works about his own
society of the Rosicrucians, published in Holland 1603 et seq.
A friend calls my attention to the fact that Massinger denied the
divine right of kings; and I have shown that one of the purposes,
of the Shakespeare Plays was to assail this destructive superstition.
It will be said that no man could find the time for such vast
labors; but it must be remembered that apart from the Shakespeare
Plays we have very little that represents the first forty years of
Bacon's life; and the capacities of time depend on the man that
uses them. Napoleon said that great battles were won in the
" quarters of hours;" and we have heard of men, like the "Learned
Blacksmith," who acquired a new language by giving a half hour
every day to it for a year. Now, between 1581, when Bacon was
twenty, and 161 1, when his poverty terminated, there are thirty
years ! A man like Bacon could do an immense amount of work in
thirty years. If he dashed off a short play every two weeks, as
he did, we are told, The Merry Wives of Windsor, he could in that
time, if he had nothing else to do, produce seven hundred and eighty
plays ! Certainly he could have written one-eighth part of this, say
one hundred plays; and this number would probably cover all that
Mrs. Pott attributes to his pen; and he would still have had ample
time left for philosophy and politics. We can imagine him, when
his pockets grew empty, hurriedly scribbling off a farce or an after-
piece, or a blood-and-thunder tragedy, on any subject of popular
interest at the time, and giving it to Harry Percy to sell to some
of the roistering playwrights, to produce as his own. The man
who was borrowing five dollars at a time from his brother Anthony
would find such a field of labor very inviting; and those who
availed themselves of his genius would have every reason to keep-
his secret.
OTHER MASKS OF FRANCIS BACON. 955
VI. Montaigne's Essays.
The reader will start. What, — he will say, — is this man about
to claim that the Englishman, Francis Bacon, wrote the greatest
essays ever produced in France? This is midsummer madness!
But wait a moment. Let us suppose a case. Let us suppose an
Englishman, of a skeptical and, in some sense, irreligious turn of
mind; a believer in God and the immortality of the soul, to be sure,
but disgusted with the fierce and bloody religious wars of the period,
and with the persecutions practiced by the members of the different
Christian sects upon each other; for, in the name of the gentle
Nazarene, they ravaged the continent of Europe and burned each
other by hundreds at the stake. But suppose him living in a country
where the slightest irreligious utterance was treated as blasphemy,
and punished with death. Now suppose that he believed that only
skepticism could mollify the dreadful earnestness of the contending
sectarians; and he desired therefore to plant the seeds of doubt in
the minds of men, that they might grow, through many generations,
and produce a harvest of gentleness, toleration and freedom of
conscience. And suppose he wrote a series of essays with these
objects in view, with many covert utterances that would "insin-
uate," as Bacon said, these things into men's thoughts; that would
enter those houses where the white mark on the door, to use Bacon's
comparison, showed they were welcome; that would "select their
audience " of those that could " pierce through the veil." Now sup-
pose he — visiting France — found a friend in that country, of some
literary taste, who was willing to father these utterances, and trans-
late them into French, and put them forth in his own name as his
own work. Then, you perceive, the original English essays might
be published in England, with all their ear-marks upon them, as
translations of the French essays; and, coming in the guise of a
distinguished foreign work, they would not provoke that scrutiny
which would be given to the productions of an Englishman. For
who could blame the translator, or the publisher, if, in these
French essays, there were expressions capable of a double mean-
ing ? They did not make them, or the translation might not be
correct. And who would say that England should be deprived
of the opportunity to read great foreign works in the English
.
956 CONCLUSIONS.
tongue, because certain passages therein could be read in amerent
ways ?
And here I would first give Mrs. Pott's reasons for believing that
Bacon wrote the Essays of Montaigne. I quote from a recent letter:
I will try to tell you my grounds of belief:
i. Having examined "Florio's translation" 1603, I find it contains all the
metaphors, similes, etc., of Bacon's early period. No other metaphors, etc., but
certain Promns notes.
2. Having examined "Cotton's translation," published 1688, I rind it to be
very much enlarged, passages altered, paraphrased, etc., new passages introduced,
and old opinions negatived.
3. The metaphors and similes now include a number of Bacon's later period,
whereas in " Florio's" there is hardly a metaphor which cannot be found in plays
and works prior to the date of The Merry Wives. In Cotton there are other forms
introduced after Hamlet.
4. The French original cannot be made to match with both of these transla-
tions. If the French uses a metaphor thus: "A man should be careful how he
repeats a tale lest he get out of the road and lose his way in the wood," Florio
may translate it thus, but in Cotton you will find it changed to this extent, "he
should be careful, etc., lest he lose his way and fall into the l?'aps of his enemies."
{I have not the books, but quote from memory.) Such alterations are frequent.
Who made them ? How did Florio, the Italian master in the Duke of Bedford's
family, get employed to translate a volume of French essays into English? And
how did he manage so completely to master the peculiarities of Bacon's style, that
he could make it his own throughout the Essays?
5. And why is it that there is, in Montaigne's letters to friends, etc., bound up
in the same volume with the Essays, not one Baconism of thought or diction?
As to circumstantial evidence, we may observe:
6. That Montaigne was Mayor of Bourdeaux during the three years of Ba-
con's sojourn in those parts, when Bacon was known to be writing and studying.
7. Francis Bacon kept up the acquaintance which he formed with Montaigne
by means of his brother, Anthony Bacon, who is recorded to have visited Montaigne,
fro?7i England, after Anthony's return home. Montaigne also visited Francis Bacon
in England. I think that in the Cipher the name Montaigne will be found ren-
dered by Mountain, a word sometimes apparently hauled in somewhat irrele-
vantly. . . .
Montaigne's Essays, when one comes to dissect them, are only diffuse editions
of Bacon's mature and condensed utterances in the Essays, The Advancement of
learning, and other works; mixed up with observations, scientific, medical, physio-
logical and psychical, which are noted chiefly in the Sylva.
The object, as I take it, of his concealing the authorship of the early editions
of this remarkable book was that he might utter, under the mask of old age and of
French license of speech, opinions which would have been condemned as utterly
unbecoming for a younger man, an Englishman, and of Puritan family.
But there are other reasons: If the reader will turn to the En-
cyclopedia Britannica ' he will find that Montaigne never published
anything, except the translation into French of a Spanish work,
1 Vol. xvi, pp. 768, etc.
OTHER MASKS OF FRANCIS BACON. 957
until 1580, when he was forty-seven years of age; and that he never
wrote anything but these Essays. It is true that a journal was
found in the chateau of Montaigne, two hundred years after his
death, giving an account of a journey he took, and which purported
to be his work; but it is a vastly inferior performance to the Essays,
""superfluous to a medical reader and disgusting to any other; "
and his "last and best editors, MM. Courbet and Royar," do not
accept it as "authentic."
Like Shakspere, little can be found out about him. The Ency-
clopaedia Britannica says:
Not much is known of him in these latter years, and, indeed, despite the labor-
ious researches of many biographers, of whom one, Dr. Payen, has never been
excelled in persevering devotion, it cannot be said that the amount of available
information about Montaigne is large at any time of his life.
And while the Essays are deistical, Montaigne died a devoted
Catholic. He had the mass served in his bed-room just before his
-death.
We find, on page 242 of Montaigne, a curious commentary on
the thought that the name is nothing, kindred to Shakespeare's
" what's in a name ?" He says:
Let us . . . examine upon what foundation we erect this glory and reputation,
for which the world is turned topsy-turvy: wherein do we place this renown that
we hunt after with so great flagrancy, and through so many impediments, and so
much trouble ? // is, in conclusion, Peter or William that carries it, takes it into his
possession, and whom it only concerns. . . . Nature has given us this passion for a
pretty toy to play withal. And this Peter or William, what is it but a sound when
■all is done ?
Now, as the French for Peter is Pierre, we have " this William
or Pierre that carries away this glory and takes it into his posses-
sion;" and William-Pierre comes singularly close to William Shakes-
Pierre.
And not many pages anterior to this utterance, and in the same
chapter and train of thought, Montaigne says, on page 225:
All other things are communicable and fall into commerce; we lend our goods
and stake our lives for the necessity and service of our friend; but to communicate
a mans honor and to robe another with a man s 07on glory is rarely seen.
But he reflects, as above, what is glory, anyhow? William or
Pierre takes it and carries it away, and it concerns him only.
And remember this translation was published long after Bacon's
death; just as we have seen editions of the Folio published in
958 CONCLUSIONS.
1632 and 1664 that agreed precisely in the arrangement of the type
with that of 1623. And Mrs. Pott has shown that the translation
does not adhere to the original; and we have a striking illustration
of this on page 271, where the translator (an unheard-of thing)
actually interjects into Montaigne quotations from Ben Jonson
not found in the original. He says:
According to that of Mr. Jonson, which, without offense to Monsieur Montaigne,
/ will here pre 'sume to insert !
And is it not a little singular to find the Italian teacher quoting
the play-writer Ben Jonson ?
And again on page 259 he interpolates a poem from Plutarch,,
not in the original — an extraordinary liberty in any translator.
And we see the author, as a young man, asserting himself on
page 281:
For my part I believe our souls are adult at twenty, such as they are ever like
to be, and as capable then as ever. A soul that has not by that time given earnest
of its force and virtue, will never after come to proof. Natural parts and excel-
lences produce that they have of vigorous and fine, within that term, or never.
Surely no man who had written his first book at forty-seven
would be likely to give birth to that radical and unfounded utter-
ance; he would be more inclined to the belief of him of old, that
"young men think old men to be fools, but old men know young
men to be such."
And we find Montaigne expressing the exact root and ground-
work of Bacon's philosophy in this extraordinary sentence (page
469):
The senses are the beginning and the end of human knowledge.
This was the very point where the philosophy of modern times*
diverged from that of antiquity: the latter turned for light to the
operations of the human mind; the former to the facts of external
nature, as revealed by the senses.
In fact, in reading these Essays we see the Novum Organum in
its first forms, as they presented themselves to the youthful mind
of Bacon. Montaigne says (page 50):
He cannot avoid owning, that the senses are the sovereign lords of his knowledge;
but they are uncertain and falsifiable in all circumstances. ' Tis there that he is to
fight it out to the last.
or thc r
{ VNIVER8ITY
OTHER MASKS OF FRANCIS BACON. )$)
The purpose of the Baconian philosophy was to found knowledge
on the observations of the senses, after clearing the mind of its idols,
or preconceptions and errors; and it was on this line Bacon fought
it out to the last.
And we have this thought of the idols also in Montaigne. He
says (page 89):
To say the truth, by reason that we suck it in with our milk, and that the face
of the world presents itself in this position to our first sight, it seems as if we were
born upon condition to pursue this practice; and the common fancies that we find
in repute everywhere about us, and infused into our minds with the seed of our
fathers, appear to be most universal and genuine.
And here follows a thought that is as true to-day as it was in
1592:
From whence it comes to pass, that whatever is off the hinges of custom, is
believed to be also off the hinges of reason.
Bacon writes a speculative work, entitled The New Atlantis > and
in another place he discusses the probability of the truth of Plato's
story; and Montaigne (page 166) refers to the destruction of At-
lantis/ and speculates at length whether or not the West Indies
could be part of the ancient island.
And we see the spirit of Bacon's subtle and paradoxical Charac-
ters of a Believing Christian in the following utterance of Montaigne
(page 417):
To meet with an incredible thing is an occasion to a Christian to believe,
and it is so much the more according to reason, by how much it is against human
reason.
And Bacon says:
A Christian is one that believes things his reason cannot comprehend.1
And when we remember that Bacon did not dare to publish these
Taradoxes during his life-time, we can see why the same thoughts,
more fully elaborated, were put forth in the name of a foreigner,
for I have no doubt the Paradoxes as well as the Montaigne Essays
were the work of Bacon's unbelieving youth.
And here we have a thought worthy of Bacon's finest and highest
inspiration. Speaking of life, Montaigne says (p. 442):
For why do we from this instant derive the title of being, which is but a flash
i?i the infinite course of an eternal night?
1 Characters of a Believing Christian.
960
CONCL USIONS.
I regret that I have not space to quote the thousands of magnifi-
cent and profound and Baconian thoughts that throng the pages
of these Essays. It is a veritable mine of gems.
And the very thought of Bacon that the senses were the holes
which communicated with the locked-up spirit, and that if we had
more holes through matter, more senses, we would apprehend
things in nature now hidden from us, appears in Montaigne. He
says (pages 479-499):
Who knows whether to us also one, two or three, or many other senses may not
be wanting? . . . Let an understanding man imagine human nature originally pro-
duced without the sense of hearing, and consider what ignorance and trouble such
a defect would bring upon him, what a darkness and blindness in the soul; he will
then see by that, of how great importance to the knowledge of truth the privation
of another such sense, or of two or three, should we be so deprived, would be.
.... Who knows whether all human kind commit not the like absurdity, for want
of some sense, and that through this default the greater part of the face of things is
concealed from us ?
And in the above quotation we see the embryo of the thought
expressed by Shakespeare:
There is no darkness but ignorance.
In short, we are brought face to face with this dilemma: either
Francis Bacon wrote the Essays of Montaigne, or Francis Bacon
stole a great many of his noblest thoughts, and the whole scheme
of his philosophy, from Montaigne. But Bacon was a complete
man; he expanded into a hundred fields of mental labor. Montaigne
did nothing of any consequence to the world but publish these
Essays; ergo: the great thoughts came not from Montaigne to
Bacon, but from Bacon to Montaigne.
And the writer of Montaigne was a poet. He says (page 78):
I am one of those who are most sensible to the power of the imagination;
every one is justled, and some are overthrown by it. It has a very great impress-
ion upon me; and I make it my business to avoid wanting force to resist it.
And again he says (page 100):
The poetic raptures and those prodigious flights of fancy that ravish and trans-
port the author out of himself, why should we not attribute them to his good for-
tune, since the poet himself confesses they exceed his sufficiency and force, and
acknowledges them to proceed from something else than himself?
Here we have the same thought expressed by Bacon, as to
divine influences in his work, and are reminded of his chaplain's-
OTHER MASKS OF FRANCIS BACOX.
96 r
statement that he got his thoughts from something within him,
apart from himself.
And he says (page 536), speaking of "poesy": "I love it in-
finitely."
And on page 142 he says:
I would have things so exceed and wholly possess the imagination of him that
hears that he should have something else to do than to think of words.
Here we are reminded of Hamlet's contempt for "words, words,
words."
And Montaigne had also the dramatic instinct. He says (page
597):
How oft have I, as I passed along the streets, had a good mind to write a farce y
to revenge the poor boys whom I have seen flayed, knocked down, and miserably
abused by some father or mother.
And the profound admiration of Julius Caesar, which we have
seen in Bacon and Shakespeare, reappears in Montaigne. He says
(page 612):
This sole vice (ambition) spoiled in him the most rich and beautiful nature that
ever was.
This is. precisely the thought of Bacon, who calls Julius Caesar
The most excellent spirit (his ambition reserved) of the world.'
Montaigne continues (page 610):
In earnest it troubles me when I consider the greatness of the man.
Here we see Bacon's intellect striving to match itself with that
of "the foremost man of all this world." And we see in Mon-
taigne the original of another thought which is found in Shake-
speare. Cassius says in reference to Caesar:
And that tongue of his, that bade the Romans
Mark him, and write his speeches in their books.
Montaigne says (page 615):
His [Cesar's] military eloquence was in his own time so highly reputed, that
many of his army writ down his harangues as he spoke them, by which means
there were volumes of them collected, that continued a long time after him.
And we see in Montaigne another curious conception which
appears in Shakespeare. Mark Antony moves the mob of Rome
with the exhibition of the dead Caesar's robe:
1 Advancement of Learning, book ii.
1
962
CONCLUSIONS.
You all do know this mantle; I remember
The first time ever Caesar put it on. . . .
Look in this place ran Cassius' dagger through;
See what a rent the envious Casca made;
Through this, etc.
And Montaigne says.
The sight of Caesar's robe troubled all Rome, which was more than his death
had done.
And in the Montaigne Essays we seem to see sundry references
to William Shakspere. He says (page 655):
How should I hate the reputation of being a pretty fellow at writing, and an
ass and a sot in everything else. ... Or do learned writings proceed from a man of
so weak conversation ? Who talks at a very ordinary rate and writes rarely: is to
say that his capacity is borrowed and not his own. A learned man is not learned
in all things; but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout ', even to ignorance
itself.
And we might even infer that there was a suspicion in Mon-
taigne's own neighborhood that he could not have written the
Essays. He says (page 672):
In my country of Gascony they look upon it as a drollery to see me in print.
The farther off I am read from my own home the better I am esteemed. I am
fain to purchase printers in Guienne; elsewhere they purchase me.
And when we come to identities of thought and expression I
could fill a book as large as this with extracts that are perfectly
paralleled in Bacon's acknowledged writings and in the Shakespeare
Plays. Let me give a few instances, not perhaps the strongest, but
those that first occur to me.
Montaigne says, speaking of death:
Give place to others, as others have given place to you}
Bacon says:
And as others have given place to us, so must we in the end give place to others}
This is not parallelism; it is identity.
That strange word eternizing, found both in Bacon and Shake-
speare, and applied to making a man's memory perpetual on earth,
(a very significant thought in connection with the man who com-
posed the Cipher), is found in Montaigne (page 129), used with the
same meaning, " the eternizing of our names."
1 Montaigne's Essays, Ward, Locke & Tyler's ed., p. 75. 2 Essay Of Death.
OTHER MASKS OF FRANCIS BACON. 06 ,
And here is a striking parallelism: Hamlet tells his mother:
Leave wringing of your hands, peace, sit you down.
And let me wring your /cart.
Montaigne says (page 635):
And provided the courage be undaunted, and the expressions not sounding of
despair, let her be satisfied What makes matter for the wringing of our hands, if
we do not wring our thoughts.
Montaigne says:
For pedants plunder knowledge from books, and carry it on the tip of their
lips, just as birds carry seeds wherewith to feed their young.
And in Shakespeare we have, applied to a pedant:
He has been at a feast of learning and stoleti the scraps.
Montaigne says (page 296):
Death comes all to one, whether a man gives himself his end or stays to receive
it of some other means; whether he pays before his day \ or stays till his day of pay-
ment comes.
And in Shakespeare we have the following, just before the battle
of Shrewsbury:
Falstaff. I would it were bed-time, Hal, and all well.
Prince. Why, thou owest Heaven a death.
Falstaff. 'Tis not due yet; I would be loth to pay him defore his day. What
need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? '
Speaking of the grave,. Montaigne says of the dead:
But they are none of them come back to tell us the news.
This is the embryo of Hamlet's reference to the grave as
That undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns.
Montaigne speaks of the stars as " the eternal light of those
tapers that roll over his head;" while Shakespeare has:
Night's candles are burned out.
Montaigne says (page 884):
I, who but crawl upon the earth.
Shakespeare says:
Crawling between earth and heaven.9
Montaigne says:
The heart and life of a great and triumphant emperor is the breakfast of a little,
contemptible worm.
1 1st Henry IV. , v, i. 2 Hamlet, iii. 1.
964 CONCL U SIGNS.
In Hamlet we have:
King. At supper? Where ?
"Hamlet. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten;
A certain convocation of worms are e'en at him.
Your worm is your only emperor for diet.
4 Montaigne says:
To what a degree, then, does this ridiculous diversion molest the soul, when all
her faculties shall be summoned together upon this trivial account.
And Shakspeare says in the sonnets:
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past.
We are all familiar with that curious expression in Hamlet's
soliloquy:
When he himself may his quietus make
With a bare bodkin;
and some have wondered why a man should discard daggers and
swords and assassinate himself with a bodkin. We turn to Mon-
taigne and find, I think, the original of the thought. He says
(page 217):
A maid in Picardy, to manifest the ardor of her constancy, gave herself, with
a bodkin she wore in her hair, four or five good lusty stabs into the arm, till the
blood gushed out to some purpose.
Shakespeare speaks in Richard III. of "the bowels of the land;"
Montaigne (page 94) speaks of "the bowels of a man's own country."
Both used those strange words graveled and quintessence. . Mon-
taigne despised the mob. He speaks like Bacon and Shakespeare
of "the brutality and facility natural to the common people."
We find Shakespeare speaking of God thus:
O thou eternal mover of the heavens.
And we find in Montaigne these lines (page 47):
Th' eternal mover has, in shades of night,
Future events concealed from human sight.
Montaigne says (page 227):
We commend a horse for his strength and sureness of foot, . . . and not for
his rich caparisons; a greyhound for his share of heels, not for his fine collar; a hawk
for her wings, not for her gesses and bells. Why in like manner do we not value a
man for what is properly his own? He has a great train, a beautiful place, so
much credit, so many thousand pounds a year, and all these are about him, but not
in him.
OTHER MASKS OF FRANCIS BACON. 965
In Shakespeare we have the same thought thus expressed-
And not a man for being simply man
Hath any honor; but honor for those honors
That are without him, as place, riches and favor,
Prizes of accident as oft as merit.1
I assure the reader that I have to stay my hand, — out of respect
for my publishers, — or I should fill pages with similar proofs and
parallelisms.
VII. "The Anatomy of Melancholy."
I cannot do more than touch upon a few of the reasons that lead
me to believe that Francis Bacon was the real author of The Anatomy
of Melancholy, which was published in 162 1, in the name of " Robert
Burton, of Leicestershire." Mr. Wharton says: " It was written, as
I conjecture, about the year 1600." It first appeared under a nom
de plume, that of "Democritus Junior." When it was first attributed
to Burton I do not know. Burton, like Montaigne, never wrote
anything but this one production; and, like Montaigne and Shak-
spere, very little is known of his life. His will, written by himself,
is a crude performance, and has no resemblance to the style of the
Anatomy. His elder brother, William Burton, was a student at the
Inner Temple in 1593, and afterwards a barrister and reporter
at the Court of Common Pleas, London. It is very probable
he was an acquaintance of Francis Bacon, being in the same
pursuit, in the same town, at the very time the Plays were being
written.
The Anatomy of Melancholy is a wonderful work: — wonderful for
its learning, its vast array of quotations from the classical writings,
in which it resembles the Montaigne Essays, the profundity of its
thoughts, its originality, and its Baconianisms. Dr. Johnson said
it was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours
sooner than he wished to rise. We might infer that the Montaigne
Essays were the production of a sensitive, buoyant, jubilant, happy,
vivacious, youthful genius; the Anatomy, the work of the same
mind, older, overwhelmed with misfortunes, and steeped to the
lips in misery and gloom. The one represents the man who wrote
The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Love's Labor Lost; the other, the
1 Troilus and Cress/da, iii, 3.
966 CONCLUSIONS.
author of Timon of Athens and Hamlet. In fact, in many things it
is a prose Timon of Athens.
We have seen that about 1600 Bacon's fortunes were at their
blackest; his disgust with the world was absolute; he was sick,
poor, without hope, and plunged into excessive melancholy. He
himself refers, subsequently, to this dreadful period in his life, and
to the consequent failure of his health. We are told that the
author of the Anatomy wrote that work to overcome his despair and
divert his mind from its sorrows. We can imagine the laborious
Francis Bacon, with the same purpose, with the help of his "good
pens," collating a vast commonplace-book on the subject of "Mel-
ancholy," and the best modes of medical treatment to relieve it;
and this is just what the Anatomy is: it is a commonplace-book
with the citations strung together by a thread of original re-
flection; and it is full of identities with the writings of Bacon.
Let me give one instance, which is most striking.
Coffee, at the time the Anatomy was published, had not yet been
introduced into England; the first coffee-house was opened in Eng-
land, in Oxford, in 1651, by a Jew; and the second in London, by a
Greek servant of a Turkey merchant, in 1652. Bacon, we know,
was collecting the facts for his Natural History for years; Montagu
says some of them were drawn from observations made when he
was sixteen years of age; and as one of the curious facts, in that
compendium of facts, we find this entry:
They have in Turkey a drink called coffa, made of a berry of the same name,
as black as soot, and of a strong scent, but not aromatical; which they take,
beaten into powder, in water, as hot as they can drink it, and sit at it, in their
coffa-houses, which are like our taverns. This drink comforteth the heart and
brain, and helpeth digestion.1
We turn to Burton, and we find him saying:
The Turks have a drink called coffee (for they use no wine), so named of a berry
as black as soot, and as bitter, (like that black drink which was in use among the
Lacedamonians, and perhaps the same), which they sip still of and sup as warm as
they can suffer; they spend much time in those coffee-hotises, which are somewhat
like our ale-houses or taverns, and there they sit chatting and drinking to drive
away the time, and to be merry together, because they find by experience that
that kind of drink, so used, helpeth digestion and procureth alacrity.2
I italicise the words used by Bacon which are also used by Bur-
ton. Bacon's Natural History was not published until 1627, so that
1 Sylva Sylvarum, cent, viii, § 738. 2 Anatomy 9/ Melancholy \ v. 1. ii, p. 398.
OTHER MASKS OF FRANCIS BACOX. 967
Burton could not have borrowed from it, and it is not probable
that Bacon would have borrowed from Burton without giving him
due credit therefor. And yet we find both writers treating of the
same subject, in the same language, with the same ideas, and even
falling into the same error, that is, to say that the coffee berry is
"as black as soot."
On page 129 of Volume I., Burton refers to details which show
the writer to have been intimately acquainted wTith old Verulam,
in which St. Albans was situated, and with its antiquities.
B. Atwater of old, or, as some will, Henry I., made a channel from Trent to
Lincoln, navigable; which now, saith Mr. Camden, is decayed, and much mention
is made of anchors, and such like monuments, found about old Verulamium.
And at the bottom of the page, as a foot-note to this passage,
we have this curious and inexplicable remark:
Near S. Albans, which must not now be whispered in the ear.
One would almost suspect that the name of St. Albans was
dragged in, in this singular fashion, to meet the requirements of a
cipher narrative; and there are many other things in the Anatomy
which point in the same direction. Certain it is that the finding of
ancient anchors, in the meadows of Old Verulam, would be much
more likely to be known to Bacon, who was raised there and had,
as a boy, rambled all over those fields, than to Burton, born at
Lindley, in Leicestershire, and whose residence, nearly all his life,
seems to have been at Oxford. But, in any event, why was not
the name of St. Albans to be " whispered in the ear " ?
Burton avows the singular belief that England was formerly
more densely populated than it was in his time in the seventeenth
century; and in the year 1607 Bacon, in a speech in Parliament, ex-
pressed the same unusual conviction.1
We turn to another remarkable evidence of identity.
It is well known that Bacon wrote a work called The New At-
lantis. It was an attempt to represent an Utopia. It was published ^
in 1627. The name was a singular one for such a purpose. The
island of Atlantis, Plato tells us, was sunk in the ocean because of
the iniquities of its people. Why, then, employ a new Atlantis to
show the human race regenerated ? But this was Bacon's fancy.
1 Works, vol. V, p. 352.
968 CONCLUSIONS.
And, strange to say, we find Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Mel
ancholy falling into the same fancy, and declaring in 1600, or 1621 :
I will yet, to satisfy and please myself, make an Utopia of mine own, a new
Atlantis, a poetical commonwealth of mine own, in which I will freely domineer,
build cities, make laws, statutes, as I list myself. And why may I not?5
And then he proceeds through some dozen pages to work out
his fable, very much as Bacon did in The New Atlantis, but not, of
course, as completely or philosophically; and evidently the New At-
lantis of Burton is but the rude sketch of The New Atlantis of Bacon.
Says Burton:
I will have certain ships sent out for new discoveries every yea. ... to ob-
serve what artificial inventions and good laws are in other countries.2
While Bacon3 details how, under the orders of the ancient King
Solomono, two ships were sent out every twelve years, from his New
Atlantis, to visit all parts of the earth, and acquire new knowledge
as to science, arts, manufactures and inventions.
Burton has his officers all paid out of the public treasury, " no
fees to be given or taken on pain of losing their places; " while
Bacon represents the officials of his New Atlantis as refusing any
fees, with the exclamation, " What, twice-paid !"
Burton says that in his Utopia
He that invents anything for public good, in any art or science, writes a treat-
ise, or performs any noble exploit, shall be accordingly enriched, honored and pre-
ferred.
While Bacon describes4 the great galleries of his Utopia filled
with " the statues of all principal inventors" including Columbus,
the monk that made gunpowder, the inventors of music, of letters,
of silk, etc. He adds:
For upon every invention of value, we erect a statue to the inventor, and give
him a liberal and honorable reward.
In short, we see the seeds of Bacon's New Atlantis in Burton's
New Atlantis; and no one can doubt that they came out of the same
mind.
And I could fill pages, did space permit, with the startling iden-
tities of speech and thought which I have found to exist between
1 Anatcmy of Melancholy, vol. i, p. 131. 3 The New Atlantis, vol. i, p. 262, Montagu's ed.
'2 Page 137. 4 Ibid., vol. i, p. 209.
OTHER MASKS OF FRANCIS BACON.
969
the Anatomy and Bacon's acknowledged writings and the Shake-
speare Plays.
And in the Anatomy we see the vastness of those medical studies
which crop out in the Shakespeare Plays.
Indeed, the world will hereafter have to study the great Plays
by the wondrous light of the Essays of Montaigne and The Anatomy
of Melancholy of Burton. Here is the man himself revealed, in
youth and maturity. We see here the profound learning, the in-
exhaustible industry, the scope and grasp of mind, which have
glinted through the interstices of the Plays like the red light of the
dawning sun through the tangled leaves of a forest. We see, in
short, the tremendous preparations of that wondrously stored mind,
whose very drippings have astounded mankind in the disguise of
the untaught player of Stratford.
VIII. The Cipher.
And, incredible as it may seem, I think it will be found that
Bacon put the stamp of his Cipher upon nearly all his works,
with intent some day to have them all reclaimed. And why do I
say this ? Because nearly everywhere I find not only the words
Bacon, and St. Albans, and Francis, and Nicholas, and Shake, and
spur and speere, scattered over these unacknowledged works, but
because I can see those curious twistings of the sentences
which so puzzled commentators in the Plays, and which mark
the strain to bring in the Cipher narrative. The discussion of
this matter would fill a book; I can now but touch upon a few
proofs.
Take the Marlowe plays. Some of them exist, like some of the
Shakespeare Plays, in two forms: a brief form, and a larger form.
I found in the Doctor Faustus* that, when the Doctor is demanding
some exhibition of demoniacal power, Cornelius says:
Then haste thee to some solitary grove
And bear wise Bacon's and Albanus' works, 1
The Hebrew Psalter and New Testament,
And whatsoever else is requisite.
Here we have not only the name of Bacon, but Albanus. The latter
word the commentators changed to Albertus, and says one critic:
* Act i, scene 2.
97o
CONCL USIONS.
Cornelius saddled Faustus with a heavy burden; the works of Albertus Magnus
fill twenty-one thick folios, and those of Roger Bacon are asserted to have been
one hundred and one in number.
It is evident that the order of Cornelius to bring along this
vast library was merely an excuse to drag in the significant
cipher words.
And again the name of Bacon appears in the same play:
I am Gluttony; my parents are all dead, and the devil a penny they have left
me but a small pension; and that buys me thirty meals a day and ten bevers; a
small trifle to suffice nature. I come of a royal pedigree; my father was a Gammon
of Bacon, and my mother was a hogshead of claret wine.1
This is the same old "Gammon of Bacon" which the carrier
had in his panniers, and which did such good service, in ist
Henry IV."
And in The Jew of Malta Barabas and Ithamore are about to
strangle a friar. Ithamore says:
Oh, how I long to see him shake his heels.3
And when they have strangled the friar Ithamore says:
' Tis neatly done, here's no print at all. . . . Nay, master, be ruled by me a
little {stands up the body); so let him lean upon his staff; excellent, he stands as if
he were begging of Bacon.
The great artist had not yet acquired the cunning in handling
his suspicious words which is shown in the Plays. All this is very
forced: "shake his heels," " here's no print at all," "as if begging of
Bacon."
It seems to me these two plays go together in the cipher
work, and we have spheres in Doctor Faustus matching this shake in
The Jew of Malta. In Dido, Queen of Carthage, I find allusions to
Elizabeth, Burleigh, etc. And in all these plays there is a great deal
about Aristotle, and the Organon, and books, and libraries, and printing
and poets; and the singular word eternized appears in almost every
one of the Marlowe plays, just as we have found it in the Shake-
speare Plays, Montaigne's Essays, and The Anatomy of Melancholy ;
as if, in every one of them, Bacon, in the internal cipher story,
was repeating his purpose to do that which, in one of his acknowl-
edged masks, he advised the King to do, to-wit: to eternize his
name on earth.
1 Doctor Faustus, ii, 2. a Act ii, scene 1. 3 Act iv, scene 2.
O THER MA SKS OF FRANCIS BA COX. 9 7 1
And in Montaigne's Essays we have (page 878):
Whoever shall cure a child of an obstinate aversion to brown bread, bacon or
garlic, will cure him of all kind of delicacy
The substance bacon was considered in that age a diet fit for
nobles; — the peasants could not get enough of it. Why should a
child have an aversion for it? It is all forced.
And the text of Montaigne is in some places fairly peppered
with the words Francis and Francisco. On page 42 we have " King
Francis the First," on the next line, "Fra ncisco Taverna, the ambas-
sador of Francisco Sforza;" in the next sentence, " King Francis"
again; on the same page " Signor Francisco;" on the next page
" King Francis" and on the next line "King Francis" again. On
page 46 we have: "Which makes the example of Francis, Marquis
of Saluzzo, who, being lieutenant to King Francis the First," etc.
On page 44 we have " King Francis" again. And we have Nicholas,
William, Williams, shake, and spur and speare many times repeated;
together with a great many allusions to England and Scotland, Mary
Queen of Scots (page 61), the Duke of Suffolk, the English, the White
Rose, King Henry the Seventh of England (page 36), Bullen; all of
which seem rather out of place in a French work not a history of
or dealing with English affairs. And there is a great deal also in
the text about plays, players, actors, tragedies, comedies, etc. And
we find the most absurd sentences dragged into the text to meet,
as I suppose, the requirements of a cipher story. Take for in-
stance this sentence (page 31):
What causes the misadventures that befall us do we not invent ? . . . Those
beautiful tresses, young lady, you may so liberally tear off, are in no way guilty,
nor is it the whiteness of those delicate breasts you so unmercifully beat, that with
an unlucky bullet has slain your beloved brother.
Who is the young lady ? There is nothing more about her in
the text. And is it the white breasts that have slain her brother?
Or did the young lady slay him? And where did the bullet come,
from? Was it from the white breasts? It is all nonsense and has
no connection with the text. And there are hundreds of such
passages.
And Montaigne ends one of his chapters with this singular dec-
laration (page 37):
y72 CONCLUSIONS.
For my part I shall take care, if I can, that my death discover nothing that my
life has not first openly manifested and publicly declared.
I think Mrs. Pott is right in supposing that Montaigne is often
referred to in the Cipher story in the Shakespeare Plays in the
name of Mountaine; for instance, we find Pistol in The Merry Wives
calling Evans " thou Mountain* forreyner;" and in the same play
Falstaff alludes to himself as "a mountaine of mummy." And
both of these Mountaine s or Montaignes are cunningly accompanied
by the de and la, making the de la Montaigne. It would puzzle a
simple-minded man to know how Bacon, in an English play, could
work in twice the French words de la. But this is how he does it:
He has a French doctor in the play, Dr. Cuius, and his broken
English furnishes the de. In act i, scene 4, we have the Doctor ex-
claiming:
What shall de honest man do in my closet ?
And a few lines above this we have:
0 Diable, Diable, vat is in my closet ?
Villanie Za-roone: Rugby my rapier.
These adroit subtleties provide for the first Mountaine. The
other is as follows. In the same scene, a few lines further along,
we have:
1 wii! cut his throat in de park.
And in the first scene of the first act we have Shallow indulging
in the old-woman phrase:
I thank you always with my heart, la.
And in the next column we have " thou Mountaine forreyner."
And when we turn to the play of 2d Henry IV. we again
have De la Mountaine still more cunningly concealed, for there is
no Frenchman in that play to change the into de. In act ii, scene 4,
we have: "The weight of an hair will not turn the scales be-
tween the Haber-dfc-pois." Here we have the de; and in the same
act, scene 1, we find Dame Quickly saying:
Prithee, Sir John, let it be but twenty nobles, I loath to pawne my plate, in
good earnest, la.
And we turn to the next act, scene 1, and on the next page
after that on which the de is found we have:
And see the revolution of the times
Make Mountaines level.
OTHER MASKS OF FRANCIS BACON. 973
De and la are very unusual in English plays, in fact they are
not English words; yet here we find them accompanying, in three
instances, the word Mountain; and the probabilities are that inves-
tigation will show this singular concordance to exist in some of the
other plays.
And, it seems to me, we have repeated references to The Anat-
omy of Melancholy in the Cipher story of the Shakespeare Plays.
In Romeo and Juliet we have:
What vile part of this anatomy.1
And again:
Melancholy bells.2
In the Comedy of Errors we have:
A mere anatomy, a mountebank.3
And again:
But moody and dull melancholy.*
Here both words are in the same act and scene.
In King John the words occur in the same act, separated in the
Folio by only about one column of matter:
From sleep that fell anatomy. h
Or if that surly spirit Melancholy}
In Twelfth Night we have, separated by a page only:
I'll eat the rest of the anatomy.'
Being addicted to melancholy*
In 1st and 2d Henry IV. we seem to have the name of the book
and the ostensible author, Robert Burton:
Master Robert Shallow.9
North from Burton here.10
And in 2d Henry IV., v, 4, we have:
Thou atomy thou.
This needs but an an to make it anatomy.
And we also have:
Musing and cursed melancholy. n
1 Romeo and Juliet, iii, 3. 5 King John. iii, 3. 9 2d Henry IV., V, 5.
2 Ibid., iv, 5. 6 Ibid., iii, 2. 10 1st Henry IV., iii, 1.
3 Comedy 0/ Errors, v, 1. 7 Twelfth Night, iii, 2. " It* Henry IV.. ii. 3.
« Ibid., v.i. 8 ibid., ii. 5.
9 7 4 CONCL USIONS.
And in the Itiduction to the Taming of the Shrewwe have:
Old Sly's son of Burton-heath.
In conclusion, I would say, we find Bacon once in The Merry
Wives of Windsor; we find Bacon twice in the first part of King
Henry IV.; we find Bacons once in the same play; we find Bacon in
The Jew of Malta; and we find Bacon twice in the play of Doctor
Faustus. In Thomas Lord Cromwell we have:
Well, Joan, he'll come this way; and by God's dickers I'll tell him roundly of
it, an if he were ten lords; a shall know that I had not my cheese and my Bacon
for nothing." '
We find Bacon in Montaigne's Essays; and we find Bacon many
times repeated in The Anatomy of Mela?icholy.
We find St. Albans twenty odd times in the Shakespeare Plays;
we find St. Albans two or three times in the Contention between York
and Lancaster; we find St. Albans in the play of Tom Stuckley; we
find Albanus in Doctor Faustus and Albanum in Locrine; and we find
St. Albans in The Anatomy of Melancholy.
Can any one believe that all this is the result of accident ? Re-
member that bacon, in its common acceptation, is a word having no
relation to poetry or elevated literature; and St. Albans is a little
village, illustrious only through having been at one time the place
of residence of Francis Bacon. I do not think a study of the
dramas or poems of the next century, or of the present age, will
reveal any such liberal use of these words; in fact, I doubt if they
can be found therein at all, except where Francis Bacon and his
residence are distinctly referred to.
1 Act iv, scene 2.
CHAPTER V.
FRANCIS BACON.
He was not born to shame !
Upon h's brow shame is ashamed to sit;
For 'tis a throne where honor may be crowned,
Sole monarch of the universal earth.
Rom jo and Juliet, Hi, 2
LET us consider, as briefly as the importance of the subject will
permit, some of the assaults which have been made upon the
good name of Francis Bacon.
I. His Life as a Courtier.
First, it has been charged, with much bitterness, that he was a
courtier, truckling to power — an obsequious sycoohant to the
crown.
It is sufficient answer to this to refer to the fact that, as a
member of Parliament, he stood forth, in the face of Queen Eliza-
beth and all her power, and spoke in defense of the rights of the
House of Commons and the people; and that, although this act
injured seriously his chances of promotion, he resolutely refused to
recant a single sentiment of the views he had enunciated. It is
something in this age, when power is divided among many hands,
for the ambitious man to defy the frown of authority; but in that
era, when all power rested in the crown, opposition to the govern-
ment was political suicide. There was no public opinion outside
of the court; there were no newspapers; and Parliament itself was,
as a rule, the creature of the royal will. Surely no man who was
a mere truckler for place would thus have arrayed himself against
the powers of the state; or, if he had unwittingly stumbled into such
a position of antagonism, he would have hastened to repair the
damage by proper and profuse apologies and recantations.
It is true Bacon was ambitious, and he was a courtier because
9/5
976 CONCL USIONS.
he was ambitious. There was no other avenue to preferment. He
had to seek the favor of the court or sink into absolute nothingness,
so far as position in the state was concerned.
He says:
Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care
of the commonwealth as a kind of common property, which, like the air and
water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might
be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.1
And again he says:
But power to do good is the true and lawful end of aspiring; for good thoughts,
(though God accept them), yet towards man are little better than good dreams,
except they be put in act; and that cannot be ivithout power and place, as the vantage
and commanding ground. 8
These two utterances constitute, I think, the very key-note to
Bacon's whole public career. He sought place as the vantage-
ground from which to benefit mankind. He knew how little respect
there is for genius in rags. He says:
The learned pate
Ducks to the golden fool. All is oblique;
There's nothing level in our cursed natures
But direct villainy.3
He had noted that
A dog's obeyed in office.4
And who shall say he was wrong ? Who shall say how far the
title of Lord Verulam, or Viscount St. Albans, has cast a halo of
dignity and acceptability over his philosophy? It is too often the
position that commends the utterance. The h ;rn of the hunter,
ringing far and wide from the mountain top, reaches an audience
which the same note, muffled in the thick depths of the valley, could
not obtain. And if this be true in the enlarged, capacious and
cultivated age of to-day, how much more must it have been the
case in that wretched era, when, as Bacon said:
Courts are but only superficial schools
To dandle fools;
The rural parts are turned into a den
Of savage men.
And remember mankind had not receded to these conditions;
1 Proem Int. Nat. 3 Titus Andronicus, iv, 3.
2 Essay Of Great Place. * Lear, iv, 6.
FRA NCIS BA CON. 977
it had advanced to them. The people of Western Europe were just
emerging from' the most profound brutality and barbarism. The
courts were the only centers of light and culture. Was it a crime
for the greatest intellect of the age to adapt itself to its pitiful
environment ?
So our virtues
Lie in the interpretation of the times.1
Was it an offense for the ablest man of the age to seek place as
a stepping-stone to the opportunity for good ? "The times were
out of joint," and he believed he was born to "set them right;" and
he craved power as the Archimedes fulcrum from which he was to
move the world.
Moreover, he was poor — poor with many wants — a gentleman
with the income of a yeoman. The path to fortune as well as
power lay through the portals of the court. Can he be blamed for
treading it?
II. His Alleged Ingratitude to Essex.
But it is urged that Bacon was ungrateful to Essex. Wherein ?
Why, — it is said, — Essex gave him a piece of land worth about
^£i,8oo, and Bacon afterwards took part in his prosecution for
treason.
Why did Essex give this land ? Because he was under many
obligations to Bacon and his brother Anthony, for years of faithful,
patient and valuable services, not only as political allies, but as
secretaries, laboring to advance his fortunes. Bacon had written
masks for his entertainments; he had written sonnets in his name,
to advance his interests with the Queen; he had popularized him in
the Plays; he had penned letters as if from himself to aid his for-
tunes; he had carried on his correspondence with all parts of Europe;
he had translated his ciphers; he had been his guide in politics; he
had used all his vast genius and industry for his advancement.
Bacon said in a letter, in 1600, to Lord Henry Howard, — Esse*
being still alive:
For my Lord cf Essex, I am not servile to him, having regard to my superior
duty. I have been much bound unto him; on the other side, / have spent more time
and jtiore thoughts about his well-doing than ever I did about mine own.
' ' Coriolamts, iv, 7.
978 CONCL USIONS.
Essex had tried, in return for these services, to secure Bacon the
place of Solicitor, and had failed. Then he came to him and said:
You have spent your time and thoughts in my matters; I die if I do not some-
what towards your fortune.
That is to say, he could not live under the sense of this unre-
quited obligation. The Twickenham property was not a gift; it was
the payment of a debt.
But Bacon knew the rash and uncontrolable nature of his
patron, and he accepted the property with a distinct intimation,
at the time, that he should not follow him into any reckless enter-
prises. He said to him, as he himself records, in his "Apology ":
My Lord, I see I must be your homager, and hold land of your gift; but do you
know the manner of doing homage in law ? Always it is with a saving of his faith
to the King and his other lords.
That is to say, his devotion as a friend must be limited by his
obligations and duties as a citizen.
Was this wrong ? Should he, because of a gift of a piece of land,
have followed the Earl into the foolish and treasonable practices
which culminated on the scaffold ? It is true that " a friend should
bear a friend's infirmities;" but should he therefore participate in
his crimes ?
And though it be admitted that Bacon had been engaged in a
conspiracy with Essex, in 1597, to create public opinion against
the Cecils, and even, perhaps, to bring about the deposition of the
Queen, by profound and far-reaching means, — does it therefore fol-
low that he should have gone with the Earl in his wild and unrea-
sonable attempt to raise the city and seize the person of the Queen?
There are few things more utterly abominable than the man who,
with talents hardly up to the requirements of private life, insists
on rushing into the management of great public affairs, and is
caught at last, like Essex, molten with terror, " betwixt the dread
extremes of mighty opposites." And one has but to look at the
picture of the unpleasant face of Essex, given herewith, to see that
he was a commonplace, vulgar soul, made great by the accident of
birth. Surely, that portrait does not represent the man for whom
the greatest intellect of the human race should have died on the
scaffold.
FRANCIS BACON
979
And the course of Essex, after he was convicted of treason, and
just before his execution, shows the real character of this ignoble
man. His whole moral nature seemed to have given way, and he
proceeded to reveal to the government the names of some of his best
friends, — especially Sir Henry Neville, — whose connection with his
crime was not, until that time, known, and who had, no doubt, been
drawn into the conspiracy by their devotion to himself and his
fortunes ! Hepworth Dixon says:
He closes a turbulent and licentious life by confessing against his companions,
still untried, more than the officers of the Crown could have proved against them;
and, despicable to relate, most of all against the two men who have been his closest
associates — Blount and Cuffe. His confessions in the face of death deprive these
prisoners of the last faint hope of grace. They go with Meyrick and Danvers to
the gallows or the block.1
But it may be said it was in bad taste for Bacon to participate
in the trial of Essex, because he had once been his friend. This
would be true if Bacon had volunteered for the task, but he did
not; he tried to be relieved from it. But he was the sworn officer
of the Crown, the official servant of the Queen; and the govern-
ment of Elizabeth was an absolute despotism. He was ordered to
appear and take part in the prosecution. He begged earnestly —
he pleaded — to be relieved. The Queen insisted; and not only in-
sisted, but assigned to him in the first trial — despite his protests —
that part of the arraignment which referred to Essex' followers
hiring the players to play the Shakespeare play of Richard II. ! Bacon
protested that he had " been wronged by bruits before, and this
would expose me to them more, and it would be said I gave in
evidence mine own tales." But the Queen was inexorable; and, says
Bacon, " I could not avoid that part that was laid upon me."
But it may be said that, notwithstanding all this, Bacon should
have refused to appear against one who had formerly been his
friend, and who was publicly regarded as his benefactor. He
should have resigned his place first. But there are no resignations
in despotisms; and, moreover, the Cipher narrative shows us that
Bacon may have held his own life at the tenure of the Queen's
mercy. He may have been compelled, but a short time before, to
confess the authorship of the Plays and his connection with a
1 Personal History of Lord Bacon, p. 145.
980 CONCLUSIONS.
former treasonable conspiracy. The sword of Damocles may have
hung suspended over his head by a single hair — the forbearance of
Cecil. Should he, in such case, by refusing to perform an official
duty, have gone to the block with Essex, the victim of a desperate
and extravagant venture, in which he had taken no part ? For
Hepworth Dixon notes that in 1597 — the very year I have supposed
the Cipher narrative to refer to — a separation had taken place
between Bacon and Essex. He says:
Essex cools to a man whose talk is very much wiser than he wants to hear.
They have no scene; no qilarrel; no parting; for there are no sympathies to wrench,
no friendships to dissolve. Essex ceases to seek advice at Gray's Inn. They now
rarely see each other.1
And the same high authority thus speaks of Bacon's course in
the last trial of Essex:
Called by the Privy Council to bear his part in the great drama, Bacon no more
shirks his duty at the bar than Levison shirked his duty at Ludgate Hill, or Raleigh
his duty at Charing Cross. As her counsel learned in the law, he had no more
choice or hesitation about his duty of defense than her captain of the guard.
Raleigh and Bacon have each tried to save the Earl, as long as he remained an
honest man; but England is their first love, and by her faith, her freedom and her
Queen they must stand or fall. Never is stern and holy duty done more gently on a
criminal than by Bacon on this trial. He aggravates nothing. If he condemns
the action, he refrains from needless condemnation of the man.2
And to the very last he pleads for Essex' life; he intercedes with
the Queen; he does all he can to save him. And we are told that
it was not the Queen's intention to send Essex to the block, and
that his life would have been saved, at the very last, but for the
miscarriage of a ring which he sent to the Queen as his final appeal
for mercy. Whether this tradition be true or not, it is certain that
if Bacon had any hope of saving the man who had levied war against
the person of the Queen, and whose life was forfeit, he could better
attain that end by obeying the orders of the government than by
resisting them.
But we can only judge fully of his course in all this matter when
the entire Cipher narrative is laid bare. I feel assured that when
all the facts are known the character of the great man will come
forth relieved of the last spot and blemish.
We know enough to convince us that Bacon passed through some
1 Personal History of Lord Bacon, pp. 94, 95. 2 Ibid., p. id2.
FRANCIS BACON. 98i
dreadful and stormy experiences in the few years subsequent to
1597; and it was during or soon after this period that the mightiest
of the dramas made their appearance. Misfortune is a tonic to
strong natures and a poison to weak. There is a plant in South
America, a plain-looking, knobbed stalk, apparently flowerless; but
when the wind blows fiercely and agitates it, the rough lumps open
and the odorous blossoms protrude. So there are men the splendor
of whose faculties is never revealed until they are assailed by the
<:ruel winds of adversity.
To satisfy ourselves that Bacon was one of these, we have only
to compare Lear and Macbeth with Love's Labor Lost and The Two
Gentlemen of Verona.
III. The Question of Bribery.
The eagle carries the turtle high up into the air and then lets
him fall, and descends to feast upon the crushed remains. Let us
learn a lesson from this incident. If we would utterly destroy a
man, we must first lift him far up on the wings of praise, into the
very heaven of exaltation, and then let him fall. When Pope, —
a crabbed, little, imperfect character, himself, — described Bacon as
the " greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind," the world took it for
granted that one who could so transcendently praise his victim must
certainly tell the truth about him. And an epigram is something
to be regarded with the utmost terror. Its power is deadly. Pack
even an error into a compact, antithetical combination of words, and
the whole world will be ready, ever after, to carry it around in their
mouths. Its very portability is a temptation to take possession of
it. Its acceptability is much greater than ordinary uncondensed
truth, even as a government coin will pass current where a lump
of ore of greater value would be refused.
But could the greatest and wisest of mankind be the meanest?
Can greatness be mean ? Is there not here, on the very face of the
epigram, a contradiction of terms ?
But why "the meanest of mankind"? Because, it is said, he
was convicted of bribery as a judge — nay more, he confessed to it;
he sold the rights of suitors; he bartered away justice for a price.
If it were true, it were a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
982 CONCLUSIONS.
If it were true, then indeed would Bacon be the paradox of
mankind — the highest powers linked to the basest instincts. Let
us look into the matter.
There are two issues presented:
1. Did Francis Bacon, while Lord Chancellor, receive gifts from
suitors in his court ?
2. Did he for these gifts pervert justice ?
The two issues are widely distinct. The first proposition in-
volved a custom of the age; — the second has been regarded as an
abhorrent crime in all ages.
IV. The System of Gifts.
Mr. Spedding — very high authority — says:
But it was the practice in England up to James the First's time at least; and
the traces of it are still legible in the present state of the law (1S74) with
regard to fees; for I believe it is still true that the law tuill not help either the bar-
rister or the physician to recover an unpaid fee; the professions being too liberal
to make charges, send in bills, or give receipts, or do anything but take the
money. . . .
And it is surely possible to conceive gifts both given and taken — even between
suitor and judge while the cause is proceeding — without any thought of perverting
justice either in the giver or taker. In every suit both sides are entitled to favor-
able consideration — that is, to the attention of a mind open to see all that makes
in their favor — and favorable consideration is all that the giver need be suspected
of endeavoring to bespeak, or the receiver of engaging to bestow. The suitor almost
always believes his cause to be just, though he is not always so sure, and in those
days he had not always reason to be so sure, that its merits would be duly con-
sidered, if the favorable attention of the judge were not specially attracted to them;
and though the judge was rightly forbidden to lay himself under an obligation to
either party, it must be remembered that in all other offices, and in all gentlemanly
professions, gifts of exactly the same kind — fees, not fixed by law or defined as to
amount by custom, or recoverable as debts, but left to the discretion of the suitor,
client or patient — were in those days the ordinary remuneration for official or pro-
fessional services of all kinds. '
And Mr. Spedding further says:
The law officers of the Crown derived, I fancy, a considerable part of their
income from New Year's gifts and other gratuities, presented to them both by
individuals and corporations whom their office gave them opportunities of obliging.2
And he gives instances where Lord Burleigh, and his son, Sir
Robert Cecil, and Lord Treasurer Suffolk took large gifts from
suitors having business before them, and saw no impropriety in
doing so.
1 Spedding, Life and Works, vol. vii, p. 560. 2 Ibid., p. 561.
FRANCIS BACON.
983
Hepworth Dixon says, describing that era:
Few men in the court or in the church receive salaries from the Crown; and
each has to keep his state and make his fortune out of fees and gifts. The King
takes fees. The Archbishop, the Bishop, the rural dean take fees. The Lord
Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice, the Baron of the Exchequer, the Master of the
Rolls, the Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General, the King's Sergeant, the utter
barrister, all the functionaries of law and justice, take fees.
So in the great offices of state. The Lord Treasurer takes fees. The Lord
Admiral takes fees. The Secretary of State, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
the Master of the Wards, the Warden of the Cinque Ports, the Gentlemen of the
Bedchamber, all take fees. Everybody takes fees; everybody pays fees}
Again Mr. Dixon says:
In some cases, particularly in the courts of justice, it is open. Bassanio may
present his ducats, three thousand in a bag. The Judge may only take a ring. A
fee is due whenever an act is done. The occasions on which, by ancient usage of
the realm, the King claims help or fine are many; the sealing of an office or a
grant, the knighting of his son, the marriage of his daughter, the alienation of
lands in capite, his birthday, a New Year's day, the anniversary of his accession or
his coronation — indeed, at all times when he wants money and finds men rich
enough and loyal enough to pay. In like manner the clergy levy tithe and toll;
fees on christenings, fees on churchings, fees on marriages, fees on interments,
Easter offerings, free offerings, charities, church extensions, pews and rents.
In the government offices it is the same as in the palace and the church. If
the Attorney-General, the Secretary of State, the Lord Admiral or the Privy Seal
puts his signature to a sheet of paper, he takes his fee. Often it is his means of
life. The retaining fee paid by the King to Cecil, as Premier of State, is a hundred
pounds a year. But the fees from other sources are enormous. These fee are not
bribes.'2
And again I quote from Mr. Dixon:
A barrister may not ask wages for his toil, like an attorney or a clerk, nor can
he reclaim by any process of law, as the clerk and attorney can, the value of his
time and speech. If he lives on the gifts of grateful clients, these gifts must be
perfectly free.3
in fact, it was clearly understood that the great officers of the
law, including the Lord Chancellor, were to be paid by these vol-
untary gifts.
Mr. Dixon says:
Thus the Seals, though the Lord Chancellor had no proper salary, were in
Egerton's time worth from ten to fifteen thousand pounds a year, of which princely
sum (twenty-five thousand a year in coin of Victoria) the King only paid him
eighty-one pounds six shillings and eight pence. Yelverton's place of Solicitor,
three or four thousand a year, of which he got seventy pounds from James. The
Judges had enough to buy their gloves and robes, not more. Coke, when Lord
1 Dixon, Personal History of Lord Bacon, p. 290. 2 Ibid., p. 291. 3 Ibid., p. 292.
9 84 CONCL USIONS.
Chief Justice of England, drew from the state twelve farthings less than two
hundred and twenty-five pounds a year. When traveling circuit he was allowed
thirty-three pounds six shillings and eight pence for his expenses. Hobart, Chief
Justice of the Common Pleas, had twelve farthings less than one hundred and
ninety-five pounds a year. Tanfield, Lord Chief Baron of His Majesty's Ex-
chequer, one hundred and eighty-eight pounds six shillings a year. Yet each of these
great lawyers had given up a lucrative practice at the bar. After their promotion
to the bench they lived in good houses, kept a princely, state, gave dinners and
masks, made presents to the King, accumulated goods and lands. These wages
were paid in fees by those who resorted for justice to their courts.
These fees were not bribes. The courts of law are full of abuses. The highest
officer of the realm has no salary from the state. Custom imposes on him a host
of servants; officers of his court and his household; masters, secretaries, ushers,
clerks, receivers, porters; none of whom receive a mark a year from the crown;
men who have bought their places, and who are paid, as he himself is paid, in fees
and fines. The amount of half these fees is left to chance, to the hope or gratitude of
the suitor, often to the cupidity of the servant, or the length of the suitor's purse.
The certain fines of chancery, as subsequent inquiries show, are only thirteen hun
dred pounds a year, the fluctuating fines still less; beyond which beggarly sum tho
great establishment of the Lord Chancellor, his court, his household, and his fol-
lowers, gentlemen of quality, sons of peers and prelates, magistrates, deputy-lieu-
tenants of counties, knights of the shire, have all to live on fees and presents.
But if Bacon's salary for the great office of Lord Chancellor, with
all its vast retinue of servants and followers, was but four hundred
dollars a year, and if in taking gifts he did no more than all his prede-
cessors had done, and all the other judges of England in that day
were doing, surely there is nothing here to entitle him to be called
" the meanest of mankind."
V. Did he Sell Justice?
But it will be said he confessed that he sold justice for a price
and decided the cases brought before him according to the amount
paid him.
He did nothing of the kind. He distinctly denies the charge.
He said in a letter to the King, in the very agonies of his trial:
And for the briberies and gifts wherewith I am charged, when the books of
hearts shall be opened, I hope I shall not be found to have the troubled fountain
of a corrupt heart, in a depraved habit of taking rewards to pervert justice; how-
soever I may be frail, and partake of the abuses of the time.
And again he said, in a letter to Buckingham, May 31, 1621:
However I have acknowledged that the sentence is just, and for reformation
sake fit, I have been a trusty and honest and Christ-loving friend to your Lordship,
and the juste st Chancellor that hath been in the five changes since my father's time.
FRANCIS BACON.
985
And he also says:
I praise God for it, I never took penny for any benefice or ecclesiastical living.
I never took penny for releasing anything I stopped at the Seal. I never took
penny for any commission, or things of that nature.
I never shared with any reward for any second or inferior profit.
Dixon says:
As he lies sick at York House, or at Gorhambury, hearing through his friend
Meautys of the moil and worry about him at the House of Commons, he jots,
on loose scraps of paper at his side, his answers and remarks. These scraps of
paper are at Lambeth Palace.
On one of these sheets he writes:
There be three degrees of cases, as I conceive, of gifts or rewards given to a
judge.
The first is, — of bargain, of contract, or promise of reward, pendente lite, and
this is properly called venalis sententia:, or baratria, or corruptelce munemm. And
of this my heart tells me I am innocent; that I had no bribe or reward in my eye
or thought when I pronounced any sentence or order.
The second is, — a neglect in the judge to inform himself whether the cause
be fully at an end or no, what time he receives the gift, but takes it upon the
credit of the party that all is done, or otherwise omits to inquire.
And the third is, — when it is received, sine fraude, after the cause is ended;
which, it seems, by the opinions of the civilians, is no offense. . . .
For the first, I take myself to be as innocent as any babe born on St. Inno-
cents' day in my heart.
For the second, I doubt, in some particulars I may be faulty.
And for the last, I conceive it to be no fault.1
But here is another point to be considered: If Bacon had sold
justice for money, and had rendered unjust decisions, it would have
been most natural that those suitors who had been wronged by him
would have applied to Parliament, after his downfall, to have his
corrupt judgments overturned. Spedding says:
Upon this point, therefore, the records of Parliament tell distinctly and almost
decisively in Bacon's favor. They show that the circumstances of his conviction
did encourage suitors to attempt to get his decrees set aside; that several such at-
tempts were made, but that they all failed; thereby strongly confirming the popu-
lar tradition reported by Aubrey: "His favorites took bribes, but his Lordship
always gave judgment secundum cequum et bonurn. His decrees in Chancery stand
firm. There are fewer of his decrees reversed than of any other Chancellor" 2
Says Hepworth Dixon:
An attempt to overthrow some of his judgments fails. Of the thousands of
decisions pronounced by him in the Court of Chancery not one is reversed*
1 Dixon's Personal History 0/ Lord Bacon, pp. 335, 336.
2 Spedding, Life and Works, vol. vii, p. 558.
3 Dixon's Personal History of Lord Bacon, p. 347.
986 CONCLUSIONS.
Surely this does not look like the record of an unjust judge —
"the meanest of mankind." After his downfall he was poor and
powerless, and his enemies had control of Parliament. If he had
perverted justice, in a single instance, would not the ferret eye of
Coke have detected it; and would he not, from his hatred of Bacon,
have triumphantly dragged it before the attention of England and
the whole world ? What kind of bribery was that in which the
decision was always given on the side of justice?
VI. The Real Cause of his Downfall.
But it will be asked, — Why, if this was indeed a just judge,
whose judgment even his enemies could not question; and if the
salary of the Lord Chancellor's place was but $400 per annum;
and if, in accepting gifts from suitors, Bacon simply followed an
ancient and universal custom: why was the greatest genius that
England has ever produced cast down in dishonor from his high
place, and committed to the Tower, a disgraced and ruined man?
It is a terrible story of a degraded era and a corrupt court.
There is not space to present it here in full. Let the reader who
desires to investigate the subject further turn to Hepworth Dixon's
Personal History of Lord Bacon, and read from page 300 to page 342.
He will there see that the foul and greedy Villiers' clan drove great
officials out of place for the purpose of selling their positions to
wealthy adventurers. Suffolk, the Lord Treasurer, was deprived of
the White Staff, imprisoned in the Tower, and fined ^30,000; Yel-
verton, the Attorney-General, was thrown out of office and fined
^4,000. A public auction is made of these places. Sir Henry
Montague purchases the Treasurership for ^20,000; Coventry buys
the Attorney's place. The Villiers gang divide the spoils. " These
profits and promotions edge the tooth for more." Bacon is fixed
upon as the next victim. Conjoined with these maneuvers of
infamous men and still more infamous women, there is a tempest
brewing in the House of Commons, and Coke is there to direct the
violence of the storm against his old enemy, Bacon. A creature
named Churchill, who had been turned out of office by Bacon, for
selling an estate twice over, — a crime for which he should have
been sent to the penitentiary, — is employed to collect evidence
against the great Chancellor. Hepworth Dixon says:
FRANCIS BACON
987
The causes heard are many — five or six hundred in every term; the servants
of the court are not all honest; some, indeed, are flagitious rogues. The Chan-
cellor has not taken them voluntarily into his service, nor can he always turn them
adrift: their places are their freeholds. Among thousands of suitors, all of whom
must have paid fees into the court, half of whom must be smarting under the pangs
of a lost cause, it will be strange, indeed, if cunning, malice and unscrupulous
power combined cannot find some charge that may be tortured into a wrong. . . .
VII. Not a Single Corrupt Act Proved.
Hepworth Dixon continues:
The evidence produced against him, as Heneage Finch has told the House of
Commons, proves his case and frees him from blame. Of the twenty-two charges
of corruption, three are debts — Compton's, Peacock's and Vanlore's: two of
these, Compton's and Vanlore's, debts on bond and interest. Any man who
borrows money may be as justly charged with taking bribes. One case,
that of the London Companies, is an arbitration, not a suit in law. Even
Cranfield, though bred in the city, cannot call their fee a bribe. Smithwick's
gift, being found irregular, had been sent back. Thirteen cases — those of
Young, Wroth, Hody, Barker, Monk, Trevor, Scott, Fisher, Lenthal, Dunch,
Montagu, Ruswell, and the Frenchmen — are of daily practice in every court of
law. They fall under Bacon's third list, common fees, paid in the usual way, paid
after judgment has been given. Kennedy's present, of a cabinet for York House,
has never been accepted, the Chancellor hearing that the artisan who made it had
not been paid. Reynell, an old neighbor and friend, gave him two hundred
pounds toward furnishing York House, and sent him a ring on New Year's day.
Everybody gives rings, everybody takes rings, on a New Year's day. The gift of
^"500 from Sir Ralph Hornsby was made after a judgment, though, as afterwards
appeared, while a second, much inferior cause, was still in hearing. The gift was
openly made, not to the Chancellor, but to the officer of his court. The last case
is that of Lady Wharton; the only one that presents an unusual feature. Lady
Wharton, it seems, brought her presents to the Chancellor herself ; yet even her
gifts were openly made, in the presence of the proper officer and his clerk. Church-
ill admits being present in the room when Lady Wharton left her purse: Gardner,
Reeling's clerk, asserts that he was present when she brought the ^"200. Even
Coke is staggered by proofs which prove so much; for who in his senses can sup-
pose that the Lord Chancellor would have done an act known to be illegal and
criminal in the company of a registrar and a clerk ? It is clear that a thing which
Bacon did under the eyes of Gardner and Churchill must have been, in his
mind, customary and right. It is no less clear that if Bacon had done
wrong, knowing it to be wrong, he would never have braved exposure of
his fraud by turning Churchill into the streets. Thus, after the most rigorous
and vindictive scrutiny into his official acts, and into the official acts of his
servants, not a single fee or remembrance traced to the Chancellor can , by any fair con- %
struction, be called a bribe. Not one appears to have been given on a promise; not
one appears to have been given in secret; not one is alleged to have corrupted justice}
And yet it is upon this proceeding and these facts that the
most wonderful intellect of the race has been blackened in the
1 Dixon's Personal History of Lord Bacon, pp. 336, 337.
9 8 8 CONCL USIONS.
estimation of the whole human family, and sent down through the
ages with a scurrilous epigram pinned upon his back, denouncing
him as the meanest man that ever lived upon the planet.
And if the fair-minded critic will set aside Macaulay's shallow
and unfair essay, and consult Spedding or Hepworth Dixon, he
will find that every minor charge against Bacon — his assisting at
the torture of Peacham; his consulting with the judges at the
instance of King James; his alleged ingratitude to Somerset, etc. —
are all fully met and disposed of.
VIII. Why did he Plead Guilty ?
But why — it will be asked — did he plead guilty to the charges ?
Dixon gives these reasons:
In a private interview James now urges the Chancellor to trust in him; to offer
no defense; to submit himself to the peers; to trust his honor and his safety to the
Crown. It is only too easy to divine the reasons which weigh with Bacon to intrust
his fortunes to the King. He is sick. He is surrounded by enemies. No man has
power to help him, save the sovereign. He is weary of greatness. Age is approach-
ing. In his illness he has learned to think more of heaven and less of the world.
His nobler tasks are incomplete. He has the Seals, and the delights of power
begin to pall. To resist the King's advice is to provoke the fate of Yelverton, still
an obstinate prisoner in the Tower. Nor can he say that these complaints against
the courts of law, against the Court of Chancery, are untimely or unjust. So far
as they attack the court, and not the judge, they are in the spirit of all his writ-
ings, and of all his votes. In his soul he can find no fault with the House of Com-
mons, though the accidents of time and the machinations of powerful enemies
have made him, the Reformer, a sacrifice to a false cry for reform. . . .
lie pleads guilty to carelessness, not to crime. But he points out, too, that all the
irregularities found in his court occurred when he was new in office, strange to his
clerks and registrars, overwhelmed with arrears of work. The very last of them
is two years old. For the latter half of his reign as Chancellor, the vindictive
inquisition of his enemies, aided by the treachery of his servants, has not been able
to detect in his administration o/ justice a fault, much less a crime}
But behind these reasons there were still many others. He was
in the unlimited power of the King; and the King was ruled by his
favorite, Buckingham, a merciless, greedy, sordid wretch, who
desired to sell Bacon's place to the highest bidder, and would not
be thwarted of his victim. The King was alarmed, also, at the
storm signals in Parliament. The tempest was rising which cost
his son his head. The cry for reform must be appeased; a tub
must be thrown to the whale. Bacon's ruin would satisfy for a
2 Dixon's Perianal History of Lord Bacon, p. 342.
FRANCIS BACON.
989
time the clamorous reformers, while it would enrich Buckingham
and his clique. Bacon was doomed. He understood the situation.
He regarded himself as a sacrifice. He said, in a letter to the King,
in 1620:
And now making myself an oblation, to do with me as may best conduce to the
honor of your justice, the honor of your mercy and the use of your service, resting
as clay in your Majesty's gracious hands, etc.
And again he said, with the voice of prophecy:
Those who now strike at your Chancellor will yet strike at your crown.
What would have been the result had he stood out and refused
to plead guilty? He would certainly have been convicted, impris-
oned, ruined by a heavy fine, perhaps sent to the block.
By the King's grace his fine of ^40,000 is remitted; he is released
from the Tower, and he has time to complete his great works.
He writes in cipher:
I was the justest judge that was in England these fifty years; but it was the
justest censure that was in Parliament these two hundred years.
That is to say, while personally innocent of bribe-taking, his
condemnation had led to the reformation of the abuse of gift-giv-
ing to judges.
But he puts this in cipher, — he whispers it, — and opposite it he
writes ustet" — as if he was preparing his papers for posterity, and
eliminating those things which might tell more than he wished the
world yet to know; just as we have seen his correspondence with Sir
Tobie Matthew excised and eliminated.
He bowed his neck to the storm which he could neither avert
nor control; biding his time, he took his secret appeal to " foreign
nations, the next ages, and to his own countrymen after some time
be passed." He made a formal confession, it is true, to Parliament,
but it is a defense and a justification, in every word, as well; for
with each case he gives those details which relieve it of all aspect
of bribery.
And he turned patiently away, with the burden of a great
injustice and a mighty sorrow upon him, and devoted the k.st five
years of his life to the putting forth of works unequaled since the
ojiobe first rolled on its axis.
990 CONCLUSIONS.
IX. The Doom of his Enemies.
And yet, being human, he must have rejoiced over the fate
which speedily overtook his corrupt and malicious persecutors.
Hepworth Dixon says:
From the seclusion of Gorhambury, or Gray's Inn, he watches the men who
have ruined his fortune and stained his name fall one by one. Before their year
of triumph ran out, Coke's intolerable arrogance plunged him into the Tower,
from which he escaped after eight months' imprisonment, to be permanently
degraded from the Privy Council, banished from the court, and confined to his
dismal ruin of a house at Stoke. The sale of Frances Coke to Viscount Purbeck
is a dismal failure. She makes the man to whom she was sold perfectly miserable;
quitting his house for days and nights; braving the public streets in male attire;
falling in guilty love with Sir Robert Howard; shocking even the brazen sinners
of St. James's by the excessive profligacy of her life. Purbeck steals abroad to
hide his shame. At last he goes raving mad. . . .
Were there space in Bacon's generous heart for vengeance, how the passions
of the great Chancellor would leap and glow as these adversaries fall before his
eyes like rotten fruit ! Never was the wisdom of counsel proved more signally,
the vindication of conduct more complete. All that he foresaw of evil has come to
pass. He does not, indeed, live to behold that fiery joy which lights and shakes
the land when Buckingham's tyranny drops under an assassin's knife; but he lives
long enough to find himself justified by facts on every point of his opposition to
the scandalous family policy and private bargains of the Villiers clan. . . .
The very next Parliament which meets in Westminster strikes down two of his
foes. Three years after his return to that trust he so grossly abused, Churchill
comes before the House of Commons as a culprit. He has been at his tricks
again, and is now solemnly convicted of forgery and fraud. Two months after
Churchill's condemnation Cranfield is in turn assailed. Charges of taking bribes
from the farmers of customs, of fraudulent dealing with the royal debts, of robbing
the magazine of arms, are proved against him; when abandoned by his powerful
friends, he is sentenced by the House of Commons to public infamy, to loss of
office, to imprisonment in the Tower, to a restitutionary fine of ,£200,000. " In
future ages," says a wise observer of events, " men will wonder how my Lord St.
Albans could have fallen, and how my Lord of Middlesex could have risen." ]
X. The World's Indebtedness to the Great Philosopher.
There have not been wanting those whose devotion to the man
of Stratford has been so great, that they have not only disputed
the title of Francis Bacon to the Plays, but have even denied that,
as a philosopher, he had any claims upon the respect of mankind.
Let us examine a few witnesses upon this point.
First, let us call that distinguished biographer and essayist, but
not historian, Macaulay, who has done more than any other man,
1 Dixon's Personal History of Lord Bacon, p. 356.
FRANCIS BACON. 99I
Pope alone excepted, to injure the reputation of Francis Bacon.
Macaulay says:
Ask a follower of Bacon what the new philosophy has effected for mankind,
and his answer is ready: " It has lengthened life; it has mitigated pain; it has ex-
tinguished diseases; it has increased the fertility of the soil; it has given new secur-
ities to the mariner; it has furnished new arms to the warrior; it has spanned great
rivers and estuaries with bridges of form unknown to our fathers; it has guided the
thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth; it has lighted up the night with the
splendor of the day; it has extended the range of the human vision; it has multi-
plied the power of human muscle; it has accelerated motion; it has annihilated dis-
tance; it has facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friendly offices, all dispatch
of business; it has enabled man to descend to the depths of the sea, to soar into
the air, to penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the earth, to traverse the
land with cars which whirl along without horses, and the ocean with ships which
sail against the wind.1
But how, it may be asked, has all this been accomplished ?
By using the senses to understand external nature, and the
powers of the mind to master it for the good of man.
And therein is the key of all that we call progress and civiliza-
tion. Bacon perceived that the mind of man was a divine instru-
ment, lent to him for good purposes, not to be used on itself, but
to be turned upon that vast universe of matter which lies outside
of it. And hence, as he made Montaigne say, " the senses are the
beginning and end of knowledge: — there must we fight it out to
the end."
Macaulay says:
The chief peculiarity of Bacon's philosophy seems to us to have been this —
that it aimed at things altogether different from that which his predecessors had pro-
posed to themselves. . . . He used means different from those used by other philoso-
phers, because he wished to arrive at an end altogether different from theirs. . . .
It was, to use his own expression, "fruit." It was the multiplying of human
enjoyments and the mitigating of human sufferings. It was "the relief of man's
estate." . . . The art which Bacon taught was the art of inventing arts. ... He
was not the person who first showed that by the inductive method alone new truth
could be discovered. But he was the person who first turned the minds of specu-
lative men, long occupied in verbal disputes, to the discovery of new truth; and by
doing so, he at once gave to the inductive method an importance and dignity
which had never before belonged to it. . . . Two words form the key of the Bacon-
ian doctrine — utility and progress. The ancient philosophy disdained to be useful,
and was content to be stationary. It dealt largely in theories of moral perfection,
which were so sublime that they never could be more than theories; in attempts to
solve insoluble enigmas; in exhortations to the attainment of unattainable frames
of mind. It could not condescend to the humble office of ministering to the com-
fort of human beings.
1 Macaulay's Essays — Bacon, p. 278.
992 CONCL U SIGNS.
It is marvelous that the world could not see that Shakespeare
was preaching this very philosophy:
Nature, what things there are
Most abject in regard and dear in use!
What things again, most dear in the esteem
And poor in worth.x
And again:
Most poor matters
Point to rich ends.
But it is claimed by some that Bacon's influence on our modern
civilization has been exaggerated. Let me call another excellent
witness:
Fowler proves2 that Bacon's influence predominated in the mind
and philosophy of Locke, who alluded to him as " the great Lord
Verulam; " and that, through him, Bacon acted upon the minds of
" Berkley, Hume, Hartley, Reid, Stewart, the two Mills, Condillac,
Helvetius, Destutt de Tracy, to say nothing of less known or more
recent writers." He adds: " Descartes, Mersenne, Gassendi, Peiresc,
Du Hamel, Bayle, Voltaire, Condillac, D'Alembert in France; Vico
in Italy; Comenius, Puffendorf, Leibnitz, Huygens, Morhof, Boer-
haave, Buddaeus in Germany; and in England, the group of men
who founded, or were amongst the earliest members of, the Royal
Society, such as Wallis, Oldenburg, Glanville, Hooke and Boyle," 3
all bore testimony to the greatness of Bacon's service to science.
The great Scotchman Mackintosh says:
Bacon was not what is called a metaphysician; his plans for the improvement of
science were not inferred by abstract reasoning from any of those primary princi-
ples to which the philosophers of Greece struggled to fasten their systems. Hence
he has been treated as empirical and superficial by those who take to themselves
the exclusive name of profound speculators. He was not, on the other hand, a
mathematician, an astronomer, a physiologist, a chemist. He was not eminently
conversant with the particular truths of any of those sciences which existed in his
time. For this reason, he was underrated even by men themselves of the highest
merit, and by some who had acquired the most just reputation, by adding new facts
to the stock of knowledge. It is not therefore very surprising to find that Harvey,
"though the friend as well as the physician of Bacon, though he esteemed him
much for his wit and style, would not allow him to be a great philosopher," but said
to Aubrey, " He writes philosophy like a Lord Chancellor," — " in derision," as
the honest biographer thinks fit expressly to add. On the same ground, though in
a manner not so agreeable to the nature of his own claims on reputation, Mr. Hume
has decided that Bacon was not so great a man as Galileo because he was not so
1 Troilus and Cressida, iii, 3. 2 Bacon, p. 193. 3 Ibid., p. 195.
FRANCIS BACON.
993
great an astronomer. The same sort of injustice to his memory has been more
often committed than avowed, by professors of the exact and the experimental
sciences, who are accustomed to regard, as the sole test of service to knowledge,
a palpable addition to her store. It is very true that he made no discoveries; but
his life was employed in teaching the method by which discoveries are made. This
distinction was early observed by that ingenious poet and amiable man, on whom
we, by our unmerited neglect, have taken too severe a revenge, for the exaggerated
praises bestowed on him by our ancestors:
Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last,
The barren wilderness he past,
Did on the very border stand
Of the promised land,
And from the mountain top of his exalted wit
Saw it himself, and showed us it.1
Taine says:
When he wished to describe the efficacious nature of his philosophy by a tale,
he delineated in The New Atlantis, with a poet's boldness and the precision of a
seer, almost employing the very terms in use now, modern applications, and the
present organization of the sciences, academies, observatories, air-balloons, sub-
marine vessels, the improvement of land, the transmutation of species, regenera-
tions, the discovery of remedies, the preservation of food. "The end of our
foundation," says his principal personage, "is the knowledge of causes and secret
motives of things, and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effect-
ing all things possible. And this 'possible' is infinite." . . .
He recommends moralists to study the soul, the passions, habits, temptations,
not merely in a speculative way, but with a view to the cure or diminution of
vice, and assigns to the science of morals as its goal the amelioration of morals.
In 1603 Bacon said that he proposed to
Kindle a light in nature — a light which shall, at its very rising, touch and
illuminate all the border regions that confine upon the circle of our present knowl-
edge ; and so spreading further shall presently disclose and bring into sight all that
is most hidden and secret in the world.
Have not his anticipations been realized ? Does not the great
conflagration of science, kindled by his torch, not only burn up
the rubbish of many ancient errors, and enlarge the practical powers
of mankind, but is it not casting great luminous tongues of flame,
day by day, farther out into the darkness with which nature has
encompassed us?
And how grandly does he prefigure the station which he will
occupy in the judgment of posterity when he says that the man
who shall kindle that light
Would be the benefactor indeed of the human race, the propagator of man's
1 The Modern British Essayists- Mackintosh p. 18.
2Taine's History of English Literature, p. 155.
994 CONCL USIONS.
empire over the universe, the champion of liberty, the conqueror and subduer of
necessities.
He tried even to hurry up civilization. He sought to use the
royal power to give the seventeenth century the blessings now
enjoyed by the nineteenth. He writes King James, in 1620, present-
ing him with the Novum Organum:
I account your favor may be to this work as much as a hundred years' time ;
for I am persuaded the luork will gain upon mens minds in ages, but your gracing it
may make it take hold more swiftly; which I would be very glad of, it being a
work meant, not for praise or glory, but for practice and the good of man.
And again he says, in the same letter:
Even in your time many noble inventions may be discovered for man's use.
For who can tell, now this mine of truth is opened, how the veins go; and what
lieth higher and what lieth lower?
His heart thirsted for the good of mankind. He saw in his
mind's eye things akin to the marvels of steam and electricity.
And if Bacon had been king, or had ruled England with unlimited
power, instead of the foul and shallow Buckingham, who can say
how far the progress of the world might have been advanced in a
single generation ?
But he realized, at last, how delusive were these hopes. He
says, in a letter to Father Fulgentio, the Venetian:
Of the perfecting this I have cast away all hopes ; but in future ages perhaps
the design may bud again. . . . Such, I mean, which touch, almost, the universals
of nature, there will be laid no inconsiderab/e foundations of this matter.
And in the sonnets he says he had
Laid great bases for eternity.
But he knew that progress is a matter of great minds ; that civ-
ilization moves with giant strides from the apex of one grand soul
to another. He says:
And since sparks can work but upon matter prepared, I have the more reason
to wish that those sparks may fly abroad, that they may the better find, and light
upon those minds and spirits which are apt to be kindled.1
XI. His Prophetic Anticipations.
" His mind," says Montagu, " pierced into future contingents.'*
He could
Look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain would grow and which would not.
1 Letter to Dr. Playfer.
FRANCIS BACON.
995
In The New Atlantis he anticipates the discovery of means of
"flying in the air;" also of vessels that move under the water;
also of " swimming-girdles," or life-preservers. He also believes
that some forms of perpetual motion will be discovered. He pre-
figures the telephone and the microphone when he represents the
people of the New Atlantis possessed of " certain helps which set to
ear do greatly further the hearing ; " and he anticipates a recent
useful invention in these words: " We have also means to convey
sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances." He
also foreshadowed our Signal Service establishment:
We do also declare natural divinations of disease, plagues, swarms of hurtful
creatures, scarcity, tempests, earthquakes, great inundations, comets, temperature of
the year, and divers other things; and we give counsel thereupon what the people
shall do for the prevention and remedy of them.1
He anticipated our system of patent-rights for the encourage-
ment of inventors, and even our national gallery of models:
For upon every invention of value we erect a statue to the inventor, and give
him a liberal and honorable reward. We have two very long and fine galleries:
in one of these we place patterns and samples of all manner of the more rare and
excellent inventions; in the other we place the statues of all the principal inventors.2
He anticipated Darwin when he said:
It would be very difficult to generate new species, but less so to vary known
species, and thus produce many rare and unusual results.
He foreshadowed in The New Atlantis the system now adopted
by all civilized nations of conserving the health of its own people
by establishing a quarantine for strangers.
He anticipated the recent studies upon the shape of the conti-
nents 3 — "broad and expanded toward the north, and narrow and
pointed toward the south."
He anticipated Roemer's discovery of time being required for the
propagation of light.
He inclined, toward the last, to accept the doctrine of the rota-
tion of the earth on its axis, because if the heavenly bodies movec|
around the earth they would have to travel with inconceivable
velocity to make their diurnal journey.
He says:
J New Atlantis. * Ibid. * Novum Organutn, book ii.
996 CONCL USIONS.
For if the earth stand still, and the heavens perform a diurnal revolution,
undoubtedly it is a system; but if the earth be rotary, it is, nevertheless, not abso-
lutely proved that it is not a system, because we may still fix another center of the
system, such as the sun , or something else. . . . And the consent of later ages and
of antiquity has rather anticipated and sanctioned that idea than not. For the
supposition of the earth's motion is not new, but, as we have already said, echoed
from the ancients.1
The Italian anatomist Malpighi was " the first to apply the
microscope in investigating the anatomical structure of plants and
animals," but he was not born until after Bacon's death. And yet
we find Bacon in The New Atlantis saying:
We have also glasses and means to see small and minute bodies perfectly and
distinctly, as the shape and colors of small flies and worms, grains and flaws in
gems, observations in urine and blood, not otherwise to be seen.
We have seen him in the Plays approaching very closely to
Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood.
We also have him saying:
The very essence of heat, or the substantial self of heat, is motion, and nothing
else. 2
Let it not be forgotten, therefore, that Bacon was the first in
the world to reveal the great truth that heat is a mode of motion.
The savage regards heat as an animal. Lucretius believed it to be
a substance akin to the substance of the soul. Aristotle thought it
a condition of matter. Bacon called it " a motion of expansion; a
motion and nothing else." Descartes followed him and defined it
as the motion of the insensibly small parts of matter. Locke,
carrying out the same thought, called it " a very brisk agitation of
the insensible parts of an object.'* But long after Bacon's time
Lavoisier and Black still believed that heat was an actual substance.
Science, however, two hundred years after Bacon's Novum Organum
was written, has settled down into the conviction that the philoso-
pher of Verulam was right; and that heat is, as Davy expresses it,
4* a vibratory motion of the particles of matter;" which is but a
condensation of Bacon's view that heat is "a mode of expansion of
the smaller particles of matter, . . . checked, repelled and beaten
back, so that the body acquires a motion alternate, perpetually
quivering, striving and struggling."
1 Description of the Intellectuai Globe, chap, vi, § 2. 9 Novum Organum, book ii.
FRANCIS BACON. 99"
He approximated very closely to Newton's discovery of the law
of gravitation. He says:
Heavy and ponderous bodies must either of their own nature tend towards the
center of the earth by their peculiar formation, or must be attracted and hurried,
by the corporeal mass of the earth itself, as being an assemblage of similar bodies,
and be drawn to it by sympathy. . . . The attraction of the corporeal mass of the
earth may be taken as the cause of weight.1
And we find him in the Plays saying:
But the strong base and building of my love
Is as the very center of the earth,
Drawing all things to it}
He suggested experiments with the pendulum upon great heights
and in deep mines,
Which have since been used as the most delicate tests of the variation of
gravity from the equator towards the poles.
In the Gcsta Grayorum* we find him anticipating public libra-
ries, public gardens of plants, zoological gardens, and even the
British Museum !
Even in other directions his vast mental activity extended itself:
Nicolai claims Bacon as the founder of Free Masonry.4
And I have shown that his philosophical thoughts have pene-
trated and permeated all the great minds who have since lived in
England and Europe. But who shall measure the influence of his
genius through the Plays upon the thoughts and opinions of man-
kind ?
De Ouincey calls him
The glory of the human intellect.
Carlyle speaks of him as
The greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in
the way of literature.
Dr. Chalmers describes him as
An intellectual miracle.
Emerson says of him:
It was not possible to write the history of Shakespeare until now; for he is the
father of German literature: it was on the introduction of Shakespeare into
1 Noviim Organum, book ii. 3Li'/e and Works, Spedding, vol. i, p. 335.
3 Troilus and Cressida, iv, 2. 4 A New Study of Shakespeare, p. 192.
998 CONCLUSIONS.
Germany, by Lessing, and the translation of his works by Wieland and Schlegel,.
that the rapid burst of German literature was most intimately connected. It was.
not until the nineteenth century, whose speculative genius is a sort of living
Hamlet, that the tragedy of Hamlet could find such wondering readers. Now,
literature, philanthropy and thought are Shakespearized. His mind is the horizon
beyond which, at present, we do not see. Our ears are educated to music by his
rhythm. Coleridge and Goethe are the only critics who have expressed our con-
victions with any adequate fidelity; but there is in all cultivated minds a silent
appreciation of his superlative power'and beauty, which, like Christianity, qualifies
the period.1
1 Representative Men, p. 201.
or THE
UNIVERSITY
OF
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
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Return to desk from which borrowed.
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