In 1604, the House of Commons petitioned the king to abate certain evils growing out of the royal purveyorship; that is, out of proceedings established by law for taking merchandise of various kinds from subjects for the use of the king's household. The petition was presented by a committee of which Bacon was spokesman. In the play of Henry VIII.,' a petition of the same kind, and made for the same purpose, was presented to the king by Queen Katharine. Her speech, as given by the dramatist and that of Bacon, are so similar in scope and diction, that, as the late Judge Holmes (to whose work on the 'Author ship of Shakespeare' we are indebted for this interesting parallelism) said, the two must have "proceeded from the same pen." The following are some of the points of resemblance: 1. The exactions are made in the king's name, affecting the king's honor. Whose honor heaven shield from soil, even he escapes not Language unmannerly." SHAKE-SPEARE. "All these great misdemeanors are committed in and under your Majesty's name. And therefore we hope your Majesty will hold them twice guilty, once for oppressing of the poor, and once more for doing it under color and abuse of your Majesty's dreaded and beloved name." - BACON. 2. The exactions are very great and oppressive. "These exactions, Whereof my sovereign would have note, they are SHAKE-SPEARE. "Your Majesty doth not hear our opinions or senses, but the very groans and complaints themselves of your Commons, more truly and vively than by representation. For there is no grievance in your kingdom so general, so continual, so sensible and so bitter unto the common subject, as this whereof we now speak." ― BACON. 3. The exactions were made under commissions, against the law. "Queen. The subjects' grief Comes through commissions." King [to the Cardinal]. Have you a precedent Of this commission? I believe, not any. We must not rend our subjects from our laws, SHAKE-SPEARE. 66 'They take in an unlawful manner, in a manner (I say) directly and expressly prohibited by divers laws.” BACON. 4. The exactions bear heavily upon dealers in wool and woollen goods. "Norfolk. The clothiers all, not able to maintain The many to them 'longing, have put off The spinsters, carders, fullers, weavers." "I do set apart these commodities, wool, wool-fels, and leather." - BACON. 5. Another special grievance is the taking of trees. "We take From every tree, lop, bark, and part o' th' timber; "They take trees, which by law they cannot do; timber trees, which are the beauty, countenance, and shelter of men's houses. . . They put the axe to the root of the tree, ere ever the master can stop it." BACON. ... Bacon's speech was delivered, as we have said, in 1604, the very year in which the reputed poet retired from London and took up his permanent abode in Stratford. It was not printed till 1657, or forty-one years after the latter's death. 467 1 1 Mr. Staunton, in his 'Life of Shakspere ' (excellent Shakespearean authority), says that the reputed poet retired to Stratford in the spring of 1604. It is hardly possible, however, that, even if in London at the time, he could have known the contents of a speech of which there was no contemporary public record, and which was delivered before the court and in the presence of a committee of the House of Commons only. RULES OF LITERARY ART, PROGRESSIVE "Impute it not a crime To me, or my swift passage, that I slide O'er sixteen years, and leave the growth untri'd Of that wide gap; since it is in my power "We would not lay down, after the manner now received (more recepto) among men, any rigid rules of our own, as though they were unique and inviolable for the preparation of these works. We would not so cramp and confine the in To overthrow law, in one self-born dustry and felicity of mankind. As will be shown hereafter, the Scala Intellectus is a preface to the fourth part of Bacon's philosophical system, being the sole fragment of this fourth part that has come down to us among his acknowledged works. It briefly describes the character of the art employed in the missing part, informing us that the rules applied to it were contrary to prevailing usage. The Chorus in the Winter's Tale' explains, as the late Judge Holmes pointed out, what this deviation was; namely, an abandonment of the Greek rules of dramatization, for which this play is noted. Gross as a mountain, open, pal- falsification and averting of the law pable." of the land, gross and palpable." 1 Henry IV., ii. 4 (1598). Charge against Oliver St. John, (1615). "This [was] done with an oath or vow of secrecy which is like the Egyptian darkness, a gross and palpable darkness that may be felt." Charge against the Countess of Somerset (1616). The expression, " gross and palpable," is, as Dr. Robert M. Theobald informs us, "one of Bacon's inventions." 471 TRUTH, A SOVEREIGN "Thou seem'st a palace For the crown'd truth to dwell in." "Truth, ... the sovereign good of human nature." - Essay of Truth (1625). |