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.' VII. CONCLUSIONS. Thus, then, I decipher the religion of the Plays: 1. 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 politics, 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 Talmud 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 of Shak., p. 353. 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 history; 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. 1 have, though in a despised weed, procured the good of all men. Bacon. HE first question asked by every thoughtful mind, touching THE 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 preëxistent 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-extending human work ever set afoot on the planet. He says: I am a servant of posterity; for these things require some ages for the ripening of them.' Letter to Father Fulgentio, the Venetian. 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 Organum] is for the bettering of men's bread and wine, which are the characters of temporal blessings and sacraments of eternal. 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 legislation, 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." 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 system of philosophy, which should do for the improvement of man's condition in this world what religion strove to do for the improvement 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." 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 despised weed, procured the good of all men.' How did he "at first" (that is to say in his youth) seek and procure the good of all men? And what was the "despised weed"? 1 Exper. History. 2 Letter to King James, October 19, 1620. Essays, Bacon, p. 370. Exper. History. 5 Letter to Father Fulgentio. Philosophy and Religion of Shak., p. 10. 7 Life and Works, Spedding, etc., vol. vii, p. 229. II. DID HE REGARD THE DRAMA AS A POSSIBLE INSTRUMENTAL- 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 newspaper, 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. 2 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 discipline 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 men's minds to virtue. Nay, it has been regarded by learned men and great philosophers as a kind of musician's bow by which men's 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." 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 me. 1 School of Shak., vol. 1, p. xviii. A New Study of Shak., p. 42. 3 De Augmentis, book ii, chap. 13. |