Part 2

Lord Bacon was not only a philosopher, but he was a biologist, as appears from the following:

"As for living creatures, it is certain that their vital spirits are a substance compounded of an airy and flamy matter, and although air and flame being free will not mingle, yet bound in by a body that hath some fixing, will."

Now and then the inventor of deduction reasons by analogy. He says:

"As snow and ice holpen, and their cold activated by nitre or salt, will turn water into ice, so it may be it will turn wood or stiff clay into stone."

Bacon seems to have been a believer in the transmutation of metals, and solemnly gives a formula for changing silver or copper into gold. He also believed in the transmutation of plants, and had arrived at such a height in entomology that he informed the world that "insects have no blood."

It is claimed that he was a great observer, and as evidence of this he recorded the wonderful fact that "tobacco cut and dried by the fire loses weight;" that "bears in the winter wax fat in sleep, though they eat nothing;" that "tortoises have no bones;" that "there is a kind of stone, if ground and put in water where cattle drink, the cows will give more milk;" that "it is hard to cure a hurt in a Frenchman's head, but easy in his leg; that it is hard to cure a hurt in an Englishman's leg, but easy in his head;" that "wounds made with brass weapons are easier to cure than those made with iron;" that "lead will multiply and increase, as in statues buried in the ground;" and that "the rainbow touching anything causeth a sweet smell."

Bacon seems also to have turned his attention to ornithology, and says that "eggs laid in the full of the moon breed better birds," and that "you can make swallows white by putting ointment on the eggs before they are hatched."

He also informs us "that witches cannot hurt kings as easily as they can common people;" that "perfumes dry and strengthen the brain;" that "any one in the moment of triumph can be injured by another who casts an envious eye, and the injury is greatest when the envious glance comes from the oblique eye."

Lord Bacon also turned his attention to medicine, and he states that "bracelets made of snakes are good for curing cramps;" that the "skin of a wolf might cure the colic, because a wolf has great digestion;" that "eating the roasted brains of hens and hares strengthens the memory;" that "if a woman about to become a mother eats a good many quinces and considerable coriander seed, the child will be ingenious," and that "the moss which groweth on the skull of an unburied dead man is good for staunching blood."

He expresses doubt, however, "as to whether you can cure a wound by putting ointment on the weapon that caused the wound, instead of on the wound itself."

It is claimed by the advocates of the Baconian theory that their hero stood at the top of science; and yet "it is absolutely certain that he was ignorant of the law of the acceleration of falling bodies, although the law had been made known and printed by Galileo thirty years before Bacon wrote upon the subject. Neither did this great man understand the principle of the lever. He was not acquainted with the precession of the equinoxes, and as a matter of fact was ill-read in those branches of learning in which, in his time, the most rapid progress had been made."

After Kepler discovered his third law, which was on the 15th of May, 1618, Bacon was more than ever opposed to the Copernican system. This great man was far behind his own time, not only in astronomy, but in mathematics. In the preface to the "Descriptio Globi Intellectualisa" it is admitted either that Bacon had never heard of the correction of the parallax, or was unable to understand it. He complained on account of the want of some method for shortening mathematical calculations; and yet "Napier's Logarithms" had been printed nine years before the date of his complaint.

He attempted to form a table of specific gravities by a rude process of his own, a process that no one has ever followed; and he did this in spite of the fact that a far better method existed.

We have the right to compare what Bacon wrote with what it is claimed Shakespeare produced. I call attention to one thing--to Bacon's opinion of human love. It is this:

"The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. As to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies, but in life it doth much mischief--sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury. Amongst all the great and worthy persons there is not one that hath been transported to the mad degree of love, which shows that great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion."

The author of "Romeo and Juliet" never wrote that.

It seems certain that the author of the wondrous Plays was one of the noblest of men.

Let us see what sense of honor Bacon had.

In writing commentaries on certain passages of Scripture, Lord Bacon tells a courtier, who has committed some offense, how to get back into the graces of his prince or king. Among other things he tells him not to appear too cheerful, but to assume a very grave and modest face; not to bring the matter up himself; to be extremely industrious, so that the prince will see that it is hard to get along without him; also to get his friends to tell the prince or king how badly he, the courtier, feels; and then he says, all these failing, "let him contrive to transfer the fault to others."

It is true that we know but little of Shakespeare, and consequently do not positively know that he did not have the ability to write the Plays--but we do know Bacon, and we know that he could not have written these Plays--consequently, they must have been written by a comparatively unknown man--that is to say, by a man who was known by no other writings. The fact that we do not know Shakespeare, except through the Plays and Sonnets, makes it possible for us to believe that he was the author.

Some people have imagined that the Plays were written by several--but this only increases the wonder, and adds a useless burden to credulity.

Bacon published in his time all the writings that he claimed. Naturally, he would have claimed his best. Is it possible that Bacon left the wondrous children of his brain on the door-step of Shakespeare, and kept the deformed ones at home? Is it possible that he fathered the failures and deserted the perfect?

Of course, it is wonderful that so little has been found touching Shakespeare--but is it not equally wonderful, if Bacon was the author, that not a line has been found in all his papers, containing a suggestion, or a hint, that he was the writer of these Plays? Is it not wonderful that no fragment of any scene--no line--no word--has been found?

Some have insisted that Bacon kept the authorship secret, because it was disgraceful to write Plays. This argument does not cover the Sonnets--and besides, one who had been stripped of the robes of office, for receiving bribes as a judge, could have borne the additional disgrace of having written "Hamlet." The fact that Bacon did not claim to be the author, demonstrates that he was not. Shakespeare claimed to be the author, and no one in his time or day denied the claim. This demonstrates that he was.

Bacon published his works, and said to the world: This is what I have done.

Suppose you found in a cemetery a monument erected to John Smith, inventor of the Smith-churn, and suppose you were told that Mr. Smith provided for the monument in his will, and dictated the inscription--would it be possible to convince you that Mr. Smith was also the inventor of the locomotive and telegraph?

Bacon's best can be compared with Shakespeare's common, but Shakespeare's best rises above Bacon's best, like a domed temple above a beggar's hut.

VI.

OF course it is admitted that there were many dramatists before and during the time of Shakespeare--but they were only the foot hills of that mighty peak the top of which the clouds and mists still hide. Chapman and Marlowe, Heywood and Jonson, Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher wrote some great lines, and in the monotony of declamation now and then is found a strain of genuine music--but all of them together constituted only a herald of Shakespeare. In all these Plays there is but a hint, a prophecy, of the great drama destined to revolutionize the poetic thought of the world.

Shakespeare was the greatest of poets. What Greece and Rome produced was great until his time. "Lions make leopards tame."

The great poet is a great artist. He is painter and sculptor. The greatest pictures and statues have been painted and chiseled with words. They outlast all others. All the galleries of the world are poor and cheap compared with the statues and pictures in Shakespeare's book.

Language is made of pictures represented by sounds. The outer world is a dictionary of the mind, and the artist called the soul uses this dictionary of things to express what happens in the noiseless and invisible world of thought. First a sound represents something in the outer world, and afterwards something in the inner, and this sound at last is represented by a mark, and this mark stands for a picture, and every brain is a gallery, and the artists--that is to say, the souls--exchange pictures and statues.

All art is of the same parentage. The poet uses words--makes pictures and statues of sounds. The sculptor expresses harmony, proportion, passion, in marble; the composer, in music; the painter in form and color. The dramatist expresses himself not only in words, not only paints these pictures, but he expresses his thought in action.

Shakespeare was not only a poet, but a dramatist, and expressed the ideal, the poetic, not only in words, but in action. There are the wit, the humor, the pathos, the tragedy of situation, of relation. The dramatist speaks and acts through others--his personality is lost. The poet lives in the world of thought and feeling, and to this the dramatist adds the world of action. He creates characters that seem to act in accordance with their own natures and independently of him. He compresses lives into hours, tells us the secrets of the heart, shows us the springs of action--how desire bribes the judgment and corrupts the will--how weak the reason is when passion pleads, and how grand it is to stand for right against the world.

It is not enough to say fine things,--great things, dramatic things, must be done.

Let me give you an illustration of dramatic incident accompanying the highest form of poetic expression:

Macbeth having returned from the murder of Duncan says to his wife:

"Methought I heard a voice cry: Sleep no more, Macbeth does murder sleep; the innocent sleep; Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast." * * *

"Still it cried: Sleep no more, to all the house, Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more--Macbeth shall sleep no more."

She exclaims:

"Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy Thane, you do unbend your noble strength To think so brain-sickly of things; get some water, And wash this filthy witness from your hand. Why did you bring the daggers from the place?"

Macbeth was so overcome with horror at his own deed, that he not only mistook his thoughts for the words of others, but was so carried away and beyond himself that he brought with him the daggers--the evidence of his guilt--the daggers that he should have left with the dead. This is dramatic.

In the same play, the difference of feeling before and after the commission of a crime is illustrated to perfection. When Macbeth is on his way to assassinate the king, the bell strikes, and he says, or whispers:

"Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell."

Afterward, when the deed has been committed, and a knocking is heard at the gate, he cries:

"Wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst."

Let me give one more instance of dramatic action. When Antony speaks above the body of Cæsar he says:

"You all do know this mantle: I remember The first time ever Cæsar put it on-- 'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent, That day he overcame the Nervii: Look! In this place ran Cassius' dagger through: See what a rent the envious Casca made! Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed, And as he plucked his cursed steel away, Mark how the blood of Cæsar followed it."

VII.

THERE are men, and many of them, who are always trying to show that somebody else chiseled the statue or painted the picture,--that the poem is attributed to the wrong man, and that the battle was really won by a subordinate.

Of course Shakespeare made use of the work of others--and, we might almost say, of all others. Every writer must use the work of others. The only question is, how the accomplishments of other minds are used, whether as a foundation to build higher, or whether stolen to the end that the thief may make a reputation for himself, without adding to the great structure of literature.

Thousands of people have stolen stones from the Coliseum to make huts for themselves. So thousands of writers have taken the thoughts of others with which to adorn themselves. These are plagiarists. But the man who takes the thought of another, adds to it, gives it intensity and poetic form, throb and life,--is in the highest sense original.

Shakespeare found nearly all of his facts in the writings of others and was indebted to others for most of the stories of his plays. The question is not: Who furnished the stone, or who owned the quarry, but who chiseled the statue?

We now know all the books that Shakespeare could have read, and consequently know many of the sources of his information. We find in _Pliny's Natural History_, published in 1601, the following: "The sea Pontis evermore floweth and runneth out into the Propontis; but the sea never retireth back again with the Impontis." This was the raw material, and out of it Shakespeare made the following:

"Like to the Pontic Sea, Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on To the Propontic and the Hellespont------

"Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace, Shall ne'er turn back, ne'er ebb to humble love, Till that a capable and wide revenge Swallow them up."

Perhaps we can give an idea of the difference between Shakespeare and other poets, by a passage from "Lear." When Cordelia places her hand upon her father's head and speaks of the night and of the storm, an ordinary poet might have said:

"On such a night, a dog Should have stood against my fire."

A very great poet might have gone a step further and exclaimed:

"On such a night, mine enemy's dog Should have stood against my fire."

But Shakespeare said:

"Mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me, Should have stood, that night, against my fire."

Of all the poets--of all the writers--Shakespeare is the most original. He is as original as Nature.

It may truthfully be said that "Nature wants stuff to vie strange forms with fancy, to make another."

VIII.

THERE is in the greatest poetry a kind of extravagance that touches the infinite, and in this Shakespeare exceeds all others.

You will remember the description given of the voyage of Paris in search of Helen:

"The seas and winds, old wranglers, made a truce, And did him service; he touched the ports desired,"

And for an old aunt, whom the Greeks held captive,

"He brought a Grecian queen whose youth and freshness Wrinkles Apollo, and makes stale the morning."

So, in Pericles, when the father finds his daughter, he cries out:

"O Helicanus! strike me, honored sir; Give me a gash, put me to present pain, Lest this great sea of joys, rushing upon me, O'erbear the shores of my mortality."

The greatest compliment that man has ever paid to the woman he adores is this line:

"Eyes that do mislead the morn."

Nothing can be conceived more perfectly poetic.

In that marvellous play, the "Midsummer Nights Dream," is one of the most extravagant things in literature:

"Thou rememberest Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath That the rude sea grew civil at her song, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid's music."

This is so marvellously told that it almost seems probable.

So the description of Mark Antony:

"For his bounty There was no winter in't--an autumn t'was That grew the more by reaping. His delights Were dolphin-like--they showed his back above The element they lived in."

Think of the astronomical scope and amplitude of this:

"Her bed is India--there she lies a pearl."

Is there anything more intense than these words of Cleopatra?

"Rather on Nilus mud lay me stark naked And let the water-flies blow me into abhorring."

Or this of Isabella:

"The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies, And strip myself to death as to a bed That longing I've been sick for, ere I yield My body up to shame."

Is there an intellectual man in the world who will not agree with this?

"Let me not live After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff Of younger spirits."

Can anything exceed the words of Troilus when parting with Cressida:

"We two, that with so many thousand sighs Did buy each other, most poorly sell ourselves With the rude brevity and discharge of one.

"Injurious time now with a robber's haste Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how; As many farewells as be stars in heaven, With distinct breath and consigned kisses to them, He fumbles up into a loose adieu, And scants us with a single famished kiss, Distasted with the salt of broken tears."

Take this example, where pathos almost touches the grotesque.

"O dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous, And that the lean, abhorred monster keeps thee here I' the dark, to be his paramour?"

Often when reading the marvellous lines of Shakespeare, I feel that his thoughts are "too subtle potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness, for the capacity of my ruder powers." Sometimes I cry out, "O churl!--write all, and leave no thoughts for those who follow after."

IX.

SHAKESPEARE was an innovator, an iconoclast. He cared nothing for the authority of men or of schools. He violated the "unities," and cared--nothing for the models of the ancient world.

The Greeks insisted that nothing should be in a play that did not tend to the catastrophe. They did not believe in the episode--in the sudden contrasts of light and shade--in mingling the comic and the tragic. The sunlight never fell upon their tears, and darkness did not overtake their laughter. They believed that nature sympathized or was in harmony with the events of the play. When crime was about to be committed--some horror to be perpetrated--the light grew dim, the wind sighed, the trees shivered, and upon all was the shadow of the coming event.

Shakespeare knew that the play had little to do with the tides and currents of universal life--that Nature cares neither for smiles nor tears, for life nor death, and that the sun shines as gladly on coffins as on cradles.

The first time I visited the Place de la Concorde, where during the French Revolution stood the guillotine, and where now stands an Egyptian obelisk--a bird, sitting on the top, was singing with all its might.--Nature forgets.

One of the most notable instances of the violation by Shakespeare of the classic model, is found in the 6th Scene of the I. Act of Macbeth.

When the King and Banquo approach the castle in which the King is to be murdered that night, no shadow falls athwart the threshold. So beautiful is the scene that the King says:

"This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses."

And Banquo adds:

"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 coign 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."

Another notable instance is the porter scene immediately following the murder. So, too, the dialogue with the clown who brings the asp to Cleopatra just before the suicide, illustrates my meaning.

I know of one paragraph in the Greek drama worthy of Shakespeare. This is in "Medea." When Medea kills her children she curses Jason, using the ordinary Billingsgate and papal curse, but at the conclusion says: "I pray the gods to make him virtuous, that he may the more deeply feel the pang that I inflict."

Shakespeare dealt in lights and shadows. He was intense. He put noons and midnights side by side. No other dramatist would have dreamed of adding to the pathos--of increasing our appreciation of Lear's agony, by supplementing the wail of the mad king with the mocking laughter of a loving clown.

X.

THE ordinary dramatists--the men of talent--(and there is the same difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone-mason and a sculptor) create characters that become types. Types are of necessity caricatures--actual men and women are to some extent contradictory in their actions. Types are blown in the one direction by the one wind--characters have pilots.

In real people, good and evil mingle. Types are all one way, or all the other--all good, or all bad, all wise or all foolish.

Pecksniff was a perfect type, a perfect hypocrite--and will remain a type as long as language lives--a hypocrite that even drunkenness could not change. Everybody understands Pecksniff, and compared with him Tartuffe was an honest man. Hamlet is an individual, a person, an actual being--and for that reason there is a difference of opinion ias to his motives and as to his character. We differ About Hamlet as we do about Cæsar, or about Shakespeare himself.

Hamlet saw the ghost of his father and heard again his father's voice, and yet, afterwards, he speaks of

"the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns."

In this there is no contradiction. The reason outweighs the senses. If we should see a dead man rise from his grave, we would not, the next day, believe that we did. No one can credit a miracle until it becomes so common that it ceases to be miraculous.

Types are puppets--controlled from without--characters act from within. There is the same difference between characters and types that there is between springs and water-works, between canals and rivers, between wooden soldiers and heroes.

In most plays and in most novels the characters are so shadowy that we have to piece them out with the imagination.

One waking in the morning sometimes sees at the foot of his bed a strange figure--it may be of an ancient lady with cap and ruffles and with the expression of garrulous and fussy old age--but when the light gets stronger, the figure gradually changes and he sees a few clothes on a chair.

The dramatist lives the lives of others, and in order to delineate character must not only have imagination but sympathy with the character delineated. The great dramatist thinks of a character as an entirety, as an individual.