Part 4
Jonson’s yearning to see Shakespeare once more “upon the bankes of Thames” is suddenly arrested by a vision. Turning his poetic eye upwards and catching sight of the constellation Cygnus, he affects to be thrilled by the conceit that Shakespeare had been metamorphosed, “advanced” to a higher sphere--“the hemisphere” as he calls it. (The Ode belongs, as has been said, to 1622-23. Some ten or a dozen years earlier, Shakspere, preferring humdrum Stratford to London and poetry, had turned his back on the Capital. If this yearning had been uttered in 1612-13, instead of 1622-23, it might have been meant for the Stratford man. So with the vision and the thrill, if we could have referred them to 1616-17, they would have provoked no question. But as things stand, question is inevitable. Had the yearning been kept under since 1612, and why? The vision too and the thrill, what had they to do with the testator of 1616? What more likely than that Jonson had in his mind the social elevation of the wonderful man who long before 1623 had broken his magic wand, doffed his singing robes, and taken leave of the stage for ever?)
The Ode closes on a note akin to despair at the low estate of Poetry ever since Shakespeare had ceased to enrich and adorn it. A similar note, it will be remembered, marks the close of Jonson’s appreciation of Bacon: “Now things daily fall: wits grow downe-ward, and Eloquence growes back-ward” etc. Here again the thoughts of Jonson were evidently running on Shakespeare; for with Jonson Eloquence was Poetry, or rather--to speak by the book--Poetry was “the most prevailing Eloquence, and of the most exalted Charact.”
The contention of this article may be compressed into one sentence: The _Prince’s Masque_ and the famous Ode to Shakespeare were a signal act of homage in two parts to one man, and that man Francis Bacon. The proposition does not admit of demonstrative proof. High probability is all that is claimed, and if the claim be rejected the fault is with the advocate.
Such being the Preface, let us now turn to the further Essay on the Masque of _Time Vindicated_, which Edward Smithson left for, alas, posthumous publication.
Proprietas denique illa inseparabilis, quae _Tempus_ ipsum sequitur, ut veritatem indies parturiat. _De Aug: Scientiarum_, 1623.
The year 1623 was a memorable one for literature. First in order of date came a masterpiece of Ben Jonson’s, the Masque of _Time Vindicated_. This was followed by Bacon’s _De Augmentis Scientiarum_, an expanded version of his _Advancement of Learning_, written many years earlier. The finest gift of that year was the First Folio of _Shakespeare_.
_Time Vindicated_ consists of two violently contrasted parts; jest and earnest, antimasque and masque proper. The most conspicuous figure in the farcical part is CHRONOMASTIX, an enigmatical creature, so greedy of publicity (for fame is denied him) that his only “end” is “to get himselfe a name,” to ingratiate himself with “rumor” (he would have said _Fame_) as an inspired poet or maker.[31] CHRONOMASTIX is escorted by a doting mob of inquisitive adorers, the CURIOUS, who are obsessed by the expectation that they are about to assist at the deification of a great poet, their own incomparable CHRONOMASTIX as they fondly imagine. FAME, the mouthpiece of Jonson, derides the CURIOUS at every turn, and when they tell her that CHRONOMASTIX “has got a _Fame_ of his owne, as well as a Faction: and these will deifie him, to despite you,” FAME replies: “I envie not the _Apotheosis_. ’Twill prove but deifying of a Pompion.” The antimasque closes with the ignominious expulsion of CHRONOMASTIX and his votaries; obviously because the “great spectacle,” which _Time_ intended that “night to exhibit with all solemnity,” was too august for prying eyes to see.
The Masque proper opens with an address to King James, the gist of which is that “certaine glories of the _Time_,” till then artificially concealed, were about to be freed “at Love’s suit” or intercession because admirably fitted “to adorne the age.” The climax of the Masque follows this address almost immediately. The stage direction runs: “The _Masquers_ are discovered, and that which obscur’d them, vanisheth.” The CHORUS of the Masque is delighted by the vision of the _Masquers_, and cries out: “What griefe, or envie had it beene, that these, and such (as these) had not beene seene, but still obscur’d in shade! Who are the glories of the Time, ... and for the light were made!”
The essential fiction of _Time Vindicated_, known also as _The Prince’s Masque_, is that Time had been reproached with incapacity to produce masterpieces comparable anyway with those of Greece and Rome; and that the revelation of these Masquers was a triumphant refutation of the calumny. To suppose that this result was achieved by the Prince and his companions would be to insult Ben Jonson, the Prince, and all concerned. The all-important feature of the revelation must have been the _make-up_ of the Masquers.
For several months previous to 1623 Jonson’s mind had necessarily been concentrated on Shakespeare; collecting manuscripts; squaring rival publishers; appreciating contributions offered by admirers (Fletcher perhaps and Chapman among others); amending originals, _Julius Cæsar_ for instance; acting as editor-in-chief of the great book; meditating his Ode to “Shakespeare,” _the man he lov’d and honoured (on this side idolatry) as much as any_. (See _Discoveries_, 1641, for this italicised passage).
There are many and various indications to justify the hypothesis that the Masque as a whole was a tribute of love and admiration for “Shakespeare.” Here are some of them. (1) _Love_ is the incentive to the freeing of the “wonders”--the “glories”--that so charmed the CHORUS of the Masque. Love for “Shakespeare” was probably Jonson’s leading motive for undertaking all the drudgery connected with the First Folio. (2) The mention of “envie” by the CHORUS gives one to think. Deprecation of _envy_ is the burden of the enigmatical and portentous exordium of Jonson’s Ode to Shakespeare. (3) For reasons unexplained by his accredited biographers, the plays of Shakespeare had long been held back or secluded, but were then on the eve of publication or disclosure; not indeed “cured and perfect of their limbes”--to quote the editorial figment in the First Folio--but certainly less damaged, and imperfect than even Jonson, at an earlier stage, can have expected. (4) The audience of _Time Vindicated_ is given to understand that “the Bosse of _Belinsgate_,” a nickname for Jonson, “has a male-_poem_ in her belly now, big as a colt, that kicks at _Time_ already.” In my opinion this _Time_-defying _poem_ was none other than the famous Ode to Shakespeare. These indications alone are sufficient to justify the above-mentioned hypothesis that the Masque as a whole was a tribute of love and admiration for “Shakespeare.” On no other hypothesis would the title, _Time Vindicated_, have been appropriate or even excusable. Whereas no other conceivable title would have been so absolutely appropriate, if “Shakespeare” were, as I believe he was, the hero of the Masque; in precisely the same sense, by the way, in which he was the hero of the Ode; the only Poet worthy to be compared, in the words of the Ode, with “all that insolent Greece or haughtie Rome sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.”
Another significant feature of the Masque is the display of anxiety to safeguard the spectacular revelation of the Masquers from the attentions of inquisitive observers, an anxiety which requires the drastic expulsion of the CURIOUS. This anxiety, as I read it, betokened a secret intimately connected with the First Folio. Before developing this contention, it may be well to clear the ground, not only of Heminge and Condell, but also of the Stratford gentleman’s representatives. Heminge and Condell were probably mere dummies who gave Jonson _carte blanche_ to say in their names anything whether strictly true or not, which he thought conducive to the end in view; the prefatory address ostensibly subscribed by them is too Jonsonian to admit of any doubt on this score. As for “Mr. Shakspere,” he had long been dead and buried, and his commonplace Will knows nothing of plays, manuscripts, books, or anything that matters. And as for his representatives--had they been consulted at all--they would have welcomed, rather than vetoed publicity.
The object of these precautions to secure secrecy must have been a _persona grata_ to the King, Prince, and Court; this might go without saying. A significant conjuration against hunting “Mankind to death” suggests that he was also considered, by the Prince among others, a victim of malicious persecution. For other clues we have to go back to the Antimasque. The CURIOUS have contrived to pick up several very useful items of information about the mysterious object in question. They know for instance that he is or has been served by printers and compositors so devoted to him, that they were quite content to “worke eyes out for him,” in dark holes and corners, the better to “conceale” them. They know too that a typical admirer of certain “_poems_,” which he was in the habit of carrying about “in his pocket,” made the ridiculous mistake of addressing his congratulations “to the wrong party”: to CHRONOMASTIX, the “subject” of the Antimasque, whom he mistook for the “_Poet_.” This blunder is crucial. The secret so ostentatiously safeguarded was a secret of pseudonymity. The _Poet_ of the Masque (and of our quest)--the very antithesis of the blatant poetaster of the Antimasque--was a “maker” who concealed his personality behind a pen-name.
The evidence that Francis Bacon was a “concealed” poet is incontestable. A private letter of his is conclusive, though Aubrey’s corroborative evidence is by no means negligible. Moreover, Bacon, besides being a _persona grata_ at Court, was probably regarded by many notabilities not as a criminal, but rather as a sufferer for the faults of his day and generation. Ben Jonson’s views may be gathered from his _Discoveries_ (1641) where he tells that Bacon was “one of the greatest men ... that had beene in many Ages ... perform’d that in our tongue which may be compar’d or preferr’d to, either insolent _Greece_ or haughtie _Rome_.... So that hee may be nam’d and stand as the _marke_ and _akme_ of our language.... In his adversity I ever prayed that _God_ would give him strength: for _Greatnesse_ he could not want.” Francis Bacon then was the mysterious poet of _Time Vindicated_. That Bacon was not the only concealed poet of those days is probably true. London might have teemed with concealed poets. But the only concealed poet who satisfies the many other conditions is Francis Bacon. Additional evidence that we are on the right track is supplied by the Antimasque. The “Nosed” ones among the CURIOUS have smelt out _apropos_ of CHRONOMASTIX that “a schoolmaster is turning all his workes into Latin.” Now it happens that about 1623 Bacon wrote to an intimate friend: “My labours are most set to have those works ... _Advancement of Learning_ ... the _Essays_ (etc), well translated into Latin by the help of some good pens that forsake me not.” The _Advancement of Learning_ in Latin form, _De Aug: Scientiarum_, appeared in 1623, dedicated to Prince Charles the dedicatee of our Masque (and Camden, Jonson’s “reverend” master may have helped in the translation--but this is mere conjecture).[32]
The figure CHRONOMASTIX is not easy to range or class; for he is not a caricature proper. He salutes FAME with impudent assurance (in the Antimasque) as his “Deare Mistris” and tells her that “he revells so in rime” for no other “end” than “to serve _Fame_ ... and get himselfe a name.” FAME, here as elsewhere, the mouthpiece of Jonson, browbeats the blatant creature: “Away, I know thee not, wretched Impostor, Creatire of glory, Mountebanke of witte, selfe-loving Braggart, ... Scorne of all the Muses, goe revell with thine ignorant admirers, let worthy names alone.” A little abashed by this rebuff, CHRONOMASTIX appeals to the CURIOUS for sympathy; tells them that his “glorious front and word at large triumphs in print at my admirers charge”; and finishes his harangue by this invitation to his friends and admirers: “Come forth that love me, and now or never, spight of _Fame_, approve me.” CHRONOMASTIX therefore whatever he be, is the very antithesis of a self-effacing poet or maker. He belongs I think to the same genus as those fantastic portraits, _Landru chez lui_, etc., lately exhibited in Piccadilly by the National Portrait Society, partly to amuse the public and partly to puzzle quidnuncs. He was a freak in other words, and his function was to amuse outsiders and put curiosity off the scent.
Turn we now from the figure CHRONOMASTIX, to the “Figure” which mars the front page of the First Folio: the sorry “Figure ... wherein the Graver had a strife with Nature to out-doo the life”; as “B. J.” (Ben Jonson) significantly informs “the Reader.” “B. J.’s” innuendo does not stop here; he follows it up by explicitly warning all readers to “looke not on” the “picture,” but on the “Booke.” The warning seems almost superfluous; for the effigy cannot be identified with portrait or bust of any human being. Twin brother to CHRONOMASTIX, the thing is a freak expressly designed to prevent inquisitive persons, ourselves among others, from scrutinising the fiction then launched on the world.
Reverting once more to the Antimasque and the orgiastic dance at the end of which the CURIOUS carry away their deity CHRONOMASTIX: one or other of the deluded adorers taunts FAME in these words: “He scornes you and defies you, h’as got a _Fame_ on’s owne, as well as a Faction, and these will deifie him, to despite you.” FAME replies: “I envie not the _Apotheosis_. ’Twill prove but deifying of a Pompion.” When these words were spoken, it is quite possible that neither the figure, nor the Ode, nor the prefatory addresses had reached finality. But Jonson’s inside knowledge of the whole project would enable him to forecast important results. One of these results, in my opinion, was that a Pumpkin would be deified by posterity. In this forecast a note of misgiving is perceptible enough; but of spitefulness there is hardly a trace; for after all, the pumpkin is a _deserving_ vegetable--the stress here is on the word _deserving_, since that is the epithet by which the surviving Burbages, in perfect good temper, described the deceased Shakspere. This apotheosis idea, I may add, is also prominent in the Shakespeare Ode at the point where Jonson pulls himself up: “But stay, I see thee to the hemisphere advanced and made a constellation there.” In the Ode however the apostrophe--half banter, half congratulation--is entirely free from regret or misgiving.
From the point of view of the privileged few who were in the secret, _Time Vindicated_ and the Shakespeare Folio were, I consider, parts of a superlative Act of Homage to the greatest of modern poets. From Jonson’s special point of view they were a pious fraud, in which at the behest of disinterested love and admiration for Bacon, he consented to undertake the chief rôle. After the death of Bacon Jonson’s mood may have undergone some modification. Certain it is that the Ode, his finest poem, is excluded from the first edition, Vol. II, of his collected Works, and that in his _Discoveries_ he tells “posterity” certain truths about Shakespeare which were not even suggested in the Ode.
Hitherto our thoughts have been preoccupied with Ben Jonson. They shall now be devoted more closely to Bacon and the state of his mind and feelings about 1623. In a pathetic letter of his to King James, Bacon comforts himself with the knowledge that his fall was not the “act” of his Sovereign, and then proceeds: “For now it is thus with me: I am a year and a half old in misery ... mine own means through mine own improvidence are poor and weak.... My dignities remain marks of your favour, but burdens of my present fortune. The poor remnants ... of my former fortunes in plate and jewels I have spread upon poor men unto whom I owed, scarcely leaving myself bread.... I have often been told by many of my Lords (of your Council), as it were in excusing the severity of the sentence, that they knew they left me in good hands.... Help me, dear Sovereign ... so far as I ... that desire to live to study, may not be driven to study to live.”
Here it is to be observed that the proceeds of sale of the Shakespeare Folio, “printed at his admirers’ charge,” would help towards relieving the fallen man’s pecuniary distress, whilst the august compliment conveyed by the Masque would tend to soothe his lacerated feelings.
The attitude of a concealed poet to his art is rarely explicit, or concealment would be next to impossible. In this connection I ask leave to quote from an Essay, _Shakespeare-Bacon_, by E. W. S., published many years ago.[33] The essayist, after having stated that Bacon’s qualifications for dramatic work were of a high order, and that some at least of his recognised Elizabethan output actually were dramatic, runs on: “Moreover, curious as is Bacon’s manner when treating of ‘poesie,’ his manner when dealing with dramatic poetry is more curious still. The _Advancement of Learning_ though not published till the reign of her successor, belongs to the age of Queen Elizabeth, in conception, observation, reflection, and substance generally. In this work, after having mapped out the “globe” of human knowledge into three great continents of which poetry is one, he finds himself face to face with dramatic poetry. Compelled to give the thing a name, he rejects the almost inevitable word _dramatic_, in favour of the distant word _representative_. And what he permits himself to say about ‘representative’ poetry, in that the natural, and appropriate place for saying it, seems intended to suggest--what of course was absurdly untrue--that he was all but a stranger to anything in the nature of a dramatic performance. The suggestion too is strangely out of keeping with passages of unexpected occurrence in other parts of the book. For instance, in handling what he calls the ‘Georgics of the mind,’ he describes poetry (along with history) in terms which so admirably characterise the very best dramatic poetry of the age, that it is difficult to resist the conviction that he must have been thinking chiefly of the masterpieces of Shakespeare. ‘In poetry,’ says he, ‘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 with another, and how they do fight and encounter one with another ... how to set affection against affection, and to master one by another; even as we use to hunt beast with beast,’ etc. Another of these unexpected passages seems to imply that Bacon, writing at the close of the Elizabethan epoch, was so convinced of the paramount importance of dramatic poetry, as to have forgotten that there was any poetry at all, except what had to do with the theatre. In this passage Bacon has been claiming that ‘for expressing the affections, passions, corruptions, and customs, we are more beholding to the poets than to the philosophers’--at this point he suddenly breaks off with an ironical: ‘But it is not good to stay too long in the theatre.’[34]
A question that has probably been intriguing some of my readers is: Why did Bacon abandon the poet’s Crown to which his genius entitled him? From among the complex of conceivable reasons it will suffice to pick out three. (1) In dedicating the _De Augmentis Scientiarum_ to Prince Charles, 1623, Bacon writes: “It is a book I think will live, and be a citizen of the world which English books are not.” Again, a letter, of about the same date, to an intimate friend contains this passage: “For these modern languages will play the bank-rowtes 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.” “_Play the bank-rowtes_” means, I suppose, put a stop to the currency; and “_lost much time with this age_” is probably an allusion to pseudonymous work. These and similar passages justify the conclusion that by this time Bacon had convinced himself that English as a literary language, was doomed to go under to Latin. (2) The poet in Bacon, as in Wordsworth and others, had expired with the passing of youth. (3) Bacon imagined himself the Discoverer of a New Instrument or method, by which human life would be so beatified that posterity would revere him as one of its greatest benefactors; _if_ only men of science (such as Harvey) were for ever deprived of excuse for pooh-poohing the _Novum Organum_, merely because its inventor was none other than Shakespeare, sonneteer and dreamer of dreams.
* * * * *
[_Note by the Editor_]. There appears to be no doubt that in “Chronomastix” Jonson was lampooning George Wither, whose “Abuses Stript and Whipt, or Satiricall Essayes,” was published by Budge in 1622, (there had been an earlier edition in 1613) and was followed by a poem called “The Scourge.” In “Abuses Stript and Whipt” we find the following lines:
And though full loth, ’cause their ill natures urge, I’ll send abroad a satire with a scourge, That to their shame for this abuse shall strip them, And being naked in their vices whip them. And to be sure of those that are most rash Not one shall ’scape him that deserves the lash.
There is also an Epigram to “Time,” in which Wither asks:
Now swift-devouring, bald, and ill-fac’t Time, Dost not thou blush to see thyself uncloak’t?
Another Epigram is to “Satyro-Mastix,” the last lines of which are:
Then scourge of Satyrs hold thy whip from mine, Or I will make my rod lash thee and thine.
“Withers Motto” (1621) was “_nec habeo nec careo nec curo_.” This was satirised by John Taylor, the Water-Poet, in the words “et habeo, et careo, et curo,” and is obviously alluded to in Jonson’s Masque, where “_Nose_” says “The gentleman-like _Satyre_ cares for nobody.”
Wither, moreover, quarrelled with the Stationers’ Company and the printers (who disapproved of his independent method of business), which also was a subject for Jonson’s ridicule in the Masque:
One is his Printer in disguise, and keepes His presse in a hollow tree, where to conceale him, He workes by glow-worme light, the moon’s too open, etc., etc.
In the _Dict: of National Biography_ we are told that “Jonson quarrelled with Alex. Gill the elder for having quoted Wither’s work with approval in his ‘Logonomia Anglica’ (1619), and Jonson revenged himself by caricaturing Wither under the title of ‘Chronomastix’ in the Masque of _Time Vindicated_ presented at Court 1623-4,” and allusion is made to Jonson’s sarcasm with regard to Wither’s quarrel with his printers.
Further, we find John Chamberlain writing to Sir Dudley Carleton, on January 25, 1622-3, as follows with reference to the Masque of _Time Vindicated_: “Ben Jonson they say is like to hear of it on both sides of the head for personating George Withers, a poet or poetaster he terms him, as hunting after some, by being a Chronomastix, or whipper of the time, which is become so tender an argument that it must not be admitted either in jest or earnest.” (_The Court and Times of James the First._ Ed. 1848. Vol. II, p. 356.)