IF

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

I. BACON'S SOCIAL POSITION.

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

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

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

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

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

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

III.

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

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

'Hepworth Dixon, Personal History of Lord Bacon.

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 Shakespeare'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.'

We find in Dodsley's 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 Graye'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."

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 accompanying 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 prominent nor important, that he was so nearly concerned in the preparation of a play at 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, under 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.

court.

'Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines Life of Shak., p. 128.

...

2 Hazlitt, vol. iv, p. 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, hereafter, that the poetry of this play is most strikingly Shakespearean.

2. Collier says he knows nothing of Thomas Hughes and Nicholas 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 question. 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.

Here, then, we have the man, the ability, the necessity, the custom, the opportunity. Bacon and Shakspere both on the boards 'Gray's Inn at the same time one directing, the other acting. If The Misfortunes of Arthur 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 aleposset 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!!

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 convenient mask. Hath he it not in his mind to be a great reformer; to reconstruct the laws of the kingdom, and to recast the philosophy 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,

Personal History of Lord Bacon, p. 35.