IX. THE WRITER OF THE PLAYS HAD BEEN IN ITALY. There are many reasons to believe that the writer of the Plays In a note upon the passage, had visited Italy. Knight remarks: Unto the tranect to the common ferry Which trades to Venice,' 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 situation 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 persuasion 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. AT SEA. X. THE WRITER OF THE PLAYS HAD BEEN 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, iii, 4. 2 Act v, scene 1. Life and Genius of Shakespeare, P. 259. 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 accurate description of the management of a vessel in a storm. The second Lord Mulgrave gives, in Boswell's edition, a communication 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. WE CHAPTER IV. THE POLITICS OF THE PLAYS. I love the people, But do not like to stage me to their eyes; Measure for Measure, i, 1. E know what ought to have been the politics of William 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 his 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 common people and was filled 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 sympathize with his own caste, because it is oppressed and downtrodden, and put himself in posture of cringe and conciliation to those whose whips descend upon his shoulders; but a really great 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.' 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. 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. Dowden says: Shakspere is not democratic. When the people are seen in masses in his Plays they are nearly always shown as factious, fickie 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 Shak., p. 54. 2 Ibid., p. 54 Democratic Vistas, p. 81. 4 White's Genius of Shak., p. 298. Shak. Mind and Art, p. 284. F 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 show, Not learning, more than the fond eye doth teach.? The inundation of mistempered humor." The rude multitude.^ The multitude of hinds and peasants." The base vulgar." O base and obscure vulgar.' Base peasants.8 A habitation giddy and unsure Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart." A sort of vagabonds, rascals and run-aways, The blunt monster with uncounted heads, The still discordant, wavering multitude." 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 war. 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 |