in 1562 and died 1625. Spenser was eight years older than Bacon. 66 But coupled with this modesty of the author of the Sonnets," note how he praises his friend and how famous that friend appears at the time: 66 'Oh, how I faint when I of you do write, Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, On your broad main doth wilfully appear; He of tall building and of goodly pride; Then if he thrive and I be cast away, The worst was this: my love was my decay." The other superior (?) poet referred to is undoubtedly Spenser, among whose "Sonnets, addressed by the author to his friends and patrons," in January, 1590, is one "To the most honorable and excellent Lord the Earl of Essex, great master of the horse to her highness, and knight of the noble order of the garter, etc." Essex became master of the horse in 1587, and knight of the garter in 1588. We proceed with the quotations from the Shaksperian Sonnets: "Or I shall live your epitaph to make, Or you survive when I in earth am rotten, Your monument shall be my gentle verse, When all the breathers of this world are dead; You shall still live-such virtue hath my pen— Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men. From Sonnet 42 it appears that the young Earl had won the heart of the widow Sidney: "That thou hast her, it is not all my grief, And yet it may be said I loved her dearly; Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her, Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her. If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain, And losing her, my friend hath found that loss; And both for my sake lay me on this cross : The second part of the "Sonnets," after 126, is addressed to the Earl's bethrothed; we quote Sonnet 134: "So now I have confessed that he is thine, And I myself am mortgaged to thy will, Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still; Incidentally it may be noted how familiar the writer of the above lines must have been with the practice of law. Shakspere's legal knowledge has amazed the lawyers. The next Sonnet introduces the name of "Will," and puns upon it profusely: "Whoever hath her wish thou hast thy Will, And Will to boot, and Will in overplus; And in my will no fair acceptance shine? So thou being rich in Will add to thy Will One will of mine, to make thy large Will more. Think all but one, and me in that one Will." How preposterous to believe that a common-place play actor, with a wife and children, addressed such sentiments to the bride of his dearest friend! At no time do the sentiments or circumstances of the poem fit the person of the actor, of whom the dying and dissipated playwright, Greene, wrote in 1592: "There is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers that with his Tygers heart, wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is, in his owne conceyt, the onely Shake-scene in a countrie." But, on the other hand, frequent evidence appears that Bacon, up to the time he was made AttorneyGeneral in 1613, was constantly engaged in secret literary work. But not so secret as to be unknown to a circle of friends and perchance a few enemies; for, in 1599, when he interceded with the Queen for his dear friend Essex, then under arrest on account of a treasonable pamphlet being dedicated to him, her Majesty flung at Bacon "a matter which grew from him, but went after about in others' names," being in fact the play of "Richard II," which, in that and the preceding year, had a great run on the stage, and had gone through two editions, but, for prudential reasons, with the scene containing the deposition of the king left out. But even in the "Sonnets the fact appears that the author has been writing for the stage: Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to the view, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Most true it is that I have looked on truth Askance and strangely; but by all above, "O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, Than public means which public manners breeds. And almost thence my nature is subdued Here is not only a private confession of being compelled to produce plays for subsistence, but a sorrowful acknowledgment that thereby his "name receives a brand." Yet it must not be supposed that Bacon was publicly known at any time as a play writer. His first publication, the "Essays," was in 1597, and Shakspere's name first appeared on the title page of a Play in 1598, by which time nearly half of the Plays had been written or sketched, and six had been printed, all without the author's name. And when the first collection was published in the "Folio" of 1623, (seven years after Shakspere's death,) it included some Plays never before heard of, and eighteen never before printed. Lord Coke, who was Bacon's most jealous rival and adversary, seems never to have suspected him of play writing. Nor did the watchful Puritanic mother of the two bachelors of Gray's Inn ever dream that her studious younger son was engaged in such sinful work. In Sonnet 76 the writer deplores his want of variety of style, and fears that this fault will almost disclose his secret authorship: 66 Why is my verse so barren of new pride, So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside, To new-found methods and to compounds strange? And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my name, Showing their birth and where they did proceed?" Bacon having begun to produce plays for Shakspere's theater before 1590, the authorship of which was afterward assumed by the actor and proprietor, it became necessary also to avoid being publicly known as a writer of sonnets. Therefore, in view of the circulation and ultimate publication of this poem, he facetiously disguised the identity of the writer by calling himself "Will." Three years later he dedicated a |