write it anew, we learn from his letter to the Lord Chancellor, written soon after the accession of King James, in which the following passage may be particularly cited here: "The act I speak of is the order given by his majesty for the erection of a tomb or monument for our late sovereign Queen Elizabeth; wherein I may note much, but this at this time, that as her majesty did always right to his majesty's hopes, so his highness doth, in all things, right to her memory; a very just and princely retribution. But from this occasion by a very easy ascent, I passed further, being put in mind, by this representative of her person, of the more true and more perfect representative which is of her life and government. For as statues and pictures are dumb histories, so histories are speaking pictures; wherein (if my affection be not too great, or my reading too small), I am of this opinion, that if Plutarch were alive to write lives by parallels, it would trouble him, for virtue and fortune both, to find for her a parallel amongst women. And though she was of the passive sex, yet her government was so active, as, in my simple opinion, it made more impression upon the several states of Europe than it received from thence." "1 All this, it is easy to see, not only harmonizes well with the view here taken of these dramatic histories or "speaking pictures," but rings peculiarly like the sonorous tribute to Queen Elizabeth in the "Henry VIII.," which reads thus: This royal infant, Heaven still move about her!- Upon this land a thousand thousand blessings, (But few now living can behold that goodness) A pattern to all princes living with her, And all that shall succeed: Saba was never 1 Letter, Works (Mont.), XII. 69. More covetous of wisdom and fair virtue Than this pure soul shall be: all princely graces, Shall still be doubled on her: truth shall nurse her; Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her: She shall be lov'd and fear'd: her own shall bless her: Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn, And hang their heads with sorrow: good grows with her. Act V. Sc. 4. And so King James is ingeniously represented, and with a certain degree of poetic truthfulness, as inheriting all this honor and virtue and greatness even from Henry VII., and from Anne Bullen, not by direct descent of blood, indeed, but through the ashes of this wonderful phoenix, as of that more true and more perfect representative which is of her life and government." 66 At the same time, this illustrative example in a most dignified subject rounds out the historical series of those "actual types and models" which were "to place, as it were, before our eyes the whole process of the mind, and the continuous frame and order of discovery in particular subjects selected for their variety and importance "1 (as I will endeavor to make appear); and this one should be "Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe." 1 And having thus had occasion to make a study of this period of history, which he finds to be "wonderful, indeed, from the Union of the Roses to the Union of the Kingdoms," ,"2 the preceding period having already been treated of, poetically, in the "speaking pictures," and so far as lay in "the potential mood"; and having the materials at hand for the work, as the first honors which he undertakes to do 1 Introd. to Nov. Org. 2 De Aug. Scient., Lib. II. c. 7. his country and his king by his pen and the help of those "other arts which may give form to matter," he not only takes up again his former sketch of the "History of Henry VII.,” laid aside since before 1603, and perfects and completes it into a tribute worthy to be submitted to "the file of his Majesty's judgment," and dedicated to Prince Charles as the first fruit of his banishment, which he accomplishes in one summer, but also, the "History of Henry VIII.," in whose reign began that great change in the Church, which was "such as had hitherto rarely been brought upon the stage," long since contemplated, of which a beginning, likewise, has already been made that is "like a fable of the poets"; but deserves "all in a piece a worthy narration," and, time and health permitting, it is to be likewise dedicated to Prince Charles. But time fails him, and it is never done. § 4. THE GREATER PLAYS. Furthermore, it is to be observed, that the more philosophical and greater plays were written after 1600, when Bacon was more than forty years of age and in the maturity of his powers (as indeed William Shakespeare also must have been); when his philosophical and critical studies had become still more universal, exact, and profound; when his conceptions of nature and the constitution of the universe, his theories of practical sciences, civil institutions, and moral relations, his views of society and humanity, his experience in human affairs and his observation of human life and character in all ranks, phases, conditions, and degrees, had become more ample and perfect; when his new rhetoric, his critical survey of all the arts of delivery, and his study of the nature of "true art," and of the uses and proper function of true poetry, had been matured, and his whole culture had become more elaborate, deep, and complete; a kind of culture which it is difficult to imagine 1 De Aug. Scient., Lib. II. c. 7. how William Shakespeare, under the conditions of life which environed him, could by any possibility have attained to. It is to be noted, also, that the first sketches of the three parts of the "Henry VI." (and perhaps, also, of the "King John "), the earliest plays of the historical series, written, it may be, before the entire plan was fully conceived, and before the first play in the historical order of the wars of the Roses, the " Richard II.," was produced, were taken up again, afterwards, and rewritten, greatly elaborated, and reproduced, in conformity with the rest of the series; and, of the first part of the " Henry VI.,” which exhibits greater care and maturity of judgment in the execution than the other parts, which, nevertheless, contain passages that may stand before the throne of the tragic muse beside the Greek tragedy itself without blushing, done in the finest lyric style of the ancients, and plainly intended to be, to some extent at least, in imitation of the classic model, we hear nothing, until it appears for the first time in the Folio of 1623, beyond the bare fact that such a play existed, in some form, with the other parts, at an early date. The "Romeo and Juliet," produced in 1595, though conceived on profoundly philosophical principles, bearing strong traces of the "Fable of Cupid" and the "Nemesis of Francis Bacon (as will be shown), does not exhibit the same degree of matured strength and finish as the later productions, though one of the most attractive of the plays upon the stage. The "Midsummer Night's Dream," undoubtedly written about the year 1594, though there appears to be no certain mention of it before 1598, having been first printed in 1600, is a wonderful creation, indeed, and entirely fit to be performed, as it was, before the Queen's Majesty at Whitehall; but the writer had not yet wholly freed himself from the shackles of rhyme, nor from the glowing fancy and "strong imagination" of "The lunatic, the lover, and the poet," " nor from the philosophy of Cupid and the allurements of the Court, as is evident in these lines: "Ober. That very time I saw (but thou could'st not), Flying between the cold moon and the Earth, At a fair vestal, throned by the West, And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, In maiden meditation, fancy-free.” —Act II. Sc. 1. Between 1594 and 1600, the "Romeo and Juliet," the “As You Like It," the "Richard III.," the "Merchant of Venice," and the two parts of the "Henry IV.," may take rank, in many respects, with the greater plays; but after 1600, come the "Twelfth Night," the "Othello," the "Hamlet," the "Measure for Measure," the "Lear," the "Macbeth," the "Julius Cæsar," the "Antony and Cleopatra," the "Troilus and Cressida," the "Coriolanus," the "Cymbeline," the "Winter's Tale," the "Tempest," the "Henry VIII.," and the "Timon," splendid dramas all, the most masterly productions of their author, and, beyond all question, the work of a profound thinker, a critical philosopher, a practised writer, a learned scholar, and a polished culture, as well as of that artistic genius and high order of intellectual endowment, which nature might give to any man. Twelve of these fifteen plays were published, for the first time, in the Folio of 1623: of some four or five of them it is not positively known that they had been performed at all on the stage; and nearly all of them were of such a kind and character as to attract less the attention of the theatre and the public, though really among the greatest of the author's works; and they were not printed. Some other of the more philosophical plays, as the "Romeo and Juliet," the "Midsummer Night's Dream," the "Hamlet," the " Lear," and the "Measure for Measure," had more |