The Mystery of Francis Bacon
By William T. Smedley
Part 7
Chapter XX
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
"SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS never before Imprinted," have afforded commentators
material for many volumes filled with theories which to the ordinary critical
mind appear to have no foundation in fact. Chapters have been written to
prove that Mr. W. H., the only begetter of the Sonnets, was Henry
Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, and chapters have been written to prove
that he was no such person, but that William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, was
the man intended to be designated. Theories have been elaborated to identify
the individuals represented by the Rival Poet and the dark Lady. Not one of
these theories is supported by the vestige of a shred of testimony that would
stand investigation. There has not come down any evidence that Shakspur, of
Stratford, knew either the Earl of Southampton, the Earl of Pembroke or Marie
Fitton. The truth is that Mr. W. H. was Shakespeare, who was the only
begetter of the Sonnets, and the proof of this statement will in due time be
forthcoming. It may be well to try and read some of the Sonnets as they stand
and endeavour to realise what is the obvious meaning of the printed words.
The key to the Sonnets will be found in No. 62. The language in which it is
written is explicit and capable of being understood by any ordinary intellect.
"Sinne of selfe-love possesseth al mine eie
And all my soule, and al my every part;
And for this sinne there is no remedie,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Me thinkes no face so gratious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account,
And for my selfe mine owne worth do define,
As I all other in all worth's surmount
But when my glasse shewes me my selfe indeed
Beated and chopt with tand antiquitie,
Mine one selfe love quite contrary I read
Selfe, so selfe loving were iniquity.
Tis thee (my-selfe) that for myself I praise
Painting my age with beauty of thy daies."
The writer here states definitely that he is dominated by the sin of
self-love; it possesseth his eye, his soul, and every part of him. There can
be found no remedy for it; it is so grounded in his heart. No face is so
gracious as is his, no shape so true, no truth of such account. He defines
his worth as surmounting that of all others. This is the frank expression of
a man who not only believed that he was, but knew that he was superior to all
his contemporaries, not only in intellectual power, but in personal
appearance. Then comes an arrest in the thought, and he realises that time
has been at work. He has been picturing himself as he was when a young man.
He turns to his glass and sees himself beated and chopt with tanned
antiquity; forty summers have passed over his brow.*
* Sonnet No. 2.
Francis Bacon at forty years of age, or thereabouts, unmarried, childless,
sits down to his table. Hilliard's portrait before him, with pen in hand,
full of self-love, full of admiration for that beautiful youth on whose
counterfeit presentment he is gazing. His intellectual triumphs pass in
review before him, most of them known only to himself and that youth--his
companion through life. That was the Francis Bacon who controlled him in all
his comings and goings--his ideal whom he worshipped. If he could have a son
like that boy! His pen begins to move on the paper--
"From fairest creatures we desire increase
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decrease
_____
His tender heire might bear his memory."
The pen stops and the writer's eye wanders to the miniature:--
"But thou* contracted to thine own bright eyes."
And so the Sonnets flow on, without effort, without the need of reference to
authorities, for the great, fixed and methodical memory needs none.
How natural are the allusions--
"Thou art thy mother's glasse and she in thee
Calls backe the lovely Aprill of her prime."
_____
"Be as thy presence is, gracious and kind,
Or to thyselfe at least kind hearted prove.
Make thee another self, for love of me
That beauty may still live in thine or thee."
_____
"Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless and rude, barrenly perish;
Look, whom she best indow'd she gave the more;
Which bountious guift thou shouldst in bounty cherrish;
She carv'd thee for her seale, and ment therby
Thou shouldst print more, not let that coppy die."
_____
"O that you were yourselfe, but love you are
No longer yours, then you yourselfe here live,
Against this cunning end you should prepare,
And your sweet semblance to some other give
. . . .
Who lets so faire a house fall to decay
. . . .
O none but unthrifts, deare my love you know
You had a Father, let your Son say so."
_____
"But wherefore do not you a mightier waie
Make warre uppon this bloodie tirant Time?
And fortifie your selfe in your decay
___
With meanes more blessed, then my barren rime?
Now stand you on the top of happie houres
And many maiden gardens, yet onset,
With virtuous wish would beare you living flowers
Much liker than your painted counterfeit:
_____
Who will beleeve my verses in time to come
If it were fil'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows, it is but as a tombe
Which hides your life, and shewes not halfe your parts:
If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say this Poet lies,
Such heavenly touches nere toucht earthly faces.
So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
Be scorn'd, like old men of lesse truth than tongue,
And your true rights be termd a Poets rage
And stretched miter of an Antique song.
But were some childe of yours alive that time,
You should live twise, in it and in my rime."
_____
"Yet doe thy worst, ould Time, dispight thy wrong
My love shall in my verse ever live young."
He realises that he no longer answers Ophelia's description:
"The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword:
The expectancy and rose of the fair state
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers. . . .
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth."
* 'Tis thee myselfe, Sonnet 62.
But he cannot forget what he has been, he cannot realise that he is no longer
the brilliant youth whose miniature he has before him, with the words
inscribed around, "Si tabula daretur digna animum mallem"--If materials could
be found worthy to paint his mind ("O could he but have drawn his wit") and
then with a burst of poetic enthusiasm he exclaims:--
"'Tis thee (myselfe) that for myselfe I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy daies."
This is the common experience of a man as he advances in life. So long as he
does not see his reflection in a glass, if he tries to visualize himself, he
sees the youth or young man. Only in his most pessimistic moments does he
realise his age.
There is no longer any difficulty in understanding Shakespeare's Sonnets.
They were addressed by "Shakespeare," the poet, to the marvellous youth who
was known under the name of Francis Bacon, and they were written, with
Hilliard's portrait placed on his table before him.
In that age (please God it may be the present age), which is known only to
God and to the fates when the finishing touch shall be given to Bacon's
fame,* it will be found that the period of his life from twelve to
thirty-five years of age surpassed all others, not only in brilliant
intellectual achievements, but for the enduring wealth with which he endowed
his countrymen. And yet it was part of his scheme of life that his connection
with the great renaissance in English literature should lie hidden until
posterity should recognise that work as the fruit of his brain:--"Mente
Videbor"--"by the mind I shall be seen."
* See Rawley's Introduction to "Manes Verulamiana."
How lacking all his modern biographers have been in perception!
Every difficulty in those which are termed the procreation Sonnets disappears
with the application of this key. Only by it can Sonnet 22 be made
intelligible:--
"My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
As long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time's furrow I behold,
Then look, I death my days would expirate
For all that beauty that doth cover thee
Is but the steady raiment of my heart.
Which in my breast doth live, as thine in me.
How can I then be older than thou art?
___
O, therefore, love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain;
Thou gavest me thine, not to give back again."
But nearly every Sonnet might be quoted in support of this view. Especially
is it of value in bringing an intelligent and allowable explanation to
Sonnets 40, 41, and 42, which now no longer have an unsavoury flavour.
Sonnet No. 59 is most noteworthy, because it implies a belief in
re-incarnation. Shakespeare expresses his longing to know what the ancients
would have said of his marvellous intellect. If he could find his picture in
some antique book over 500 years old, see an image of himself as he then was,
and learn what men thought of him!
"If their bee nothing new, but that which is
Hath beene before, how are our braines begulld,
Which laboring for invention, beare amisse
The second burthen of a former child?
Oh that record could with a back-ward looke,
Even of five hundreth courses of the Sunne,
Show me your image in some antique booke,
Since minde at first in carrecter was done,
That I might see what the old world could say
To this composed wonder of your frame;
Whether we are mended, or where better they,
Or whether revolution be the same.
Oh sure I am, the wits of former daies,
To subjects worse have given admiring praise."
There is the same idea in Sonnet 71, which suggests that in some future
re-incarnation Bacon might read Shakespeare's praises of him.
Conjectures as to who was the rival poet may be dispensed with. The following
rendering of Sonnet No. 80 makes this perfectly clear:--
"Oh how I (the poet) faint when I of you (F.B.) do write,
Knowing a better spirit (that of the philosopher) doth use your name
And in the praise thereof spends all his might
To make me tongue tied, speaking of your fame!
(Shakespeare never refers to Bacon or vice versa)
But since your (F.B.'s) worth wide as the ocean is,
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
My saucy bark (that of the poet) inferior far to his (that of the
philosopher),
On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
Your shallowest help will hold me (the poet) up afloat
Whilst he (the philosopher) upon your soundless deep doth ride."
It is impossible to do justice to this subject in the space here available.
By the aid of this key every line becomes intelligible. The charm and beauty
of the Sonnets are increased tenfold. Every unpleasant association of them is
removed. No longer need Browning say, "If so the less Shakespeare he."
These are not "Shakespeare's sug'rd* Sonnets amongst his private friends" to
which Meres makes reference. They are to be found elsewhere.
* The expression "sug'rd Sonnets" refers to verses which were written with
coloured ink to which sugar had been added. When dry the writing shone
brightly.
If there had been an intelligent study of Elizabethan literature from
original sources the authorship of the Sonnets would have been revealed long
ago. It was a habit of Bacon to speak of himself as some one apart from the
speaker. The opening sentence of Filum Labyrinthi, Sivo Forma Inquisitiones
is an example. Ad Filios--"Francis Bacon thought in this manner." Prefixed to
the preface to Gilbert Wats' interpretation of the "Advancement of Learning"
is a chapter commencing, "Francis Lo Verulam consulted thus: and thus
concluded with himselfe. The publication whereof he conceived did concern the
present and future age."
Nothing that has been written is more perfectly Baconian in style and
temperament than are the Sonnets. They breathe out his hopes, his
aspirations, his ideals, his fears, in every line. He knew he was not for his
time. He knew future generations only would render him the fame to which his
incomparable powers entitled him. He knew how far he towered above his
contemporaries, aye, and his predecessors, in intellectual power. His hopes
were fixed on that day in the distant future--to-day--when for the first time
the meshes which he wove, behind which his life's work is obscured, are
beginning to be unravelled.
The most sanguine Baconian, in his most enthusiastic moments, must fail
adequately to appreciate the achievements of Francis Bacon and the
obligations under which he has placed posterity. But Bacon knew--and he alone
knew--their full value. It was fitting that the greatest poet which the world
had produced should in matchless verse do honour to the world's greatest
intellect. It was a pretty conceit. Only a master mind would dare to make the
attempt. The result has afforded another example of how his great wit, in
being concealed, was revealed.
