The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded. Bacon Delia Salter
the views contained in this volume are the result. At a certain stage of this inquiry, – in the later stages of it, – that discovery became inevitable. The primary question here is one of universal immediate practical concern and interest. The solution of this literary problem, happens to be involved in it. It was the necessary prescribed, pre-ordered incident of the reproduction and reintegration of the Inductive Philosophy in its application to its 'principal' and 'noblest subjects,' its 'more chosen subjects.'
The HISTORICAL KEY to the Elizabethan Art of Tradition, which formed the first book of this work as it was originally prepared for the press, is not included in the present publication. It was the part of the work first written, and the results of more recent research require to be incorporated in it, in order that it should represent adequately, in that particular aspect of it, the historical discovery which it is the object of this work to produce. Moreover, the demonstration which is contained in this volume appeared to constitute properly a volume of itself.
Those who examine the subject from this ground, will find the external collateral evidence, the ample historical confirmation which is at hand, not necessary for the support of the propositions advanced here, though it will, of course, be inquired for, when once this ground is made.
The embarrassing circumstances under which this great system of scientific practice makes its appearance in history, have not yet been taken into the account in our interpretation of it. We have already the documents which contain the theory and rule of the modern civilisation, which is the civilisation of science in our hands. We have in our hands also, newly lit, newly trimmed, lustrous with the genius of our own time, that very lamp with which we are instructed to make this inquiry, that very light which we are told we must bring to bear upon the obscurities of these documents, that very light in which we are told, we must unroll them; for they come to us, as the interpreter takes pains to tell us, with an 'infolded' science in them. That light of 'times,' that knowledge of the conditions under which these works were published, which is essential to the true interpretation of them, thanks to our contemporary historians, is already in our hands. What we need now is to explore the secrets of this philosophy with it, – necessarily secrets at the time it was issued – what we need now is to open these books of a new learning in it, and read them by it.
In that part of the work above referred to, from which some extracts are subjoined for the purpose of introducing intelligibly the demonstration contained in this volume, it was the position of the Elizabethan Men of Letters that was exhibited, and the conditions which prescribed to the founders of a new school in philosophy, which was none other than the philosophy of practice, the form of their works and the concealment of their connection with them – conditions which made the secret of an Association of 'Naturalists' applying science in that age to the noblest subjects of speculative inquiry, and to the highest departments of practice, a life and death secret. The physical impossibility of publishing at that time, anything openly relating to the questions in which the weal of men is most concerned, and which are the primary questions of the science of man's relief, the opposition which stood at that time prepared to crush any enterprise proposing openly for its end, the common interests of man as man, is the point which it was the object of that part of the work to exhibit. It was presented, not in the form of general statement merely, but in those memorable particulars which the falsified, suppressed, garbled history of the great founder of this school betrays to us; not as it is exhibited in contemporary documents merely, but as it is carefully collected from these, and from the traditions of 'the next ages.'
That the suppressed Elizabethan Reformers and Innovators were men so far in advance of their time, that they were compelled to have recourse to literature for the purpose of instituting a gradual encroachment on popular opinions, a gradual encroachment on the prejudices, the ignorance, the stupidity of the oppressed and suffering masses of the human kind, and for the purpose of making over the practical development of the higher parts of their science, to ages in which the advancements they instituted had brought the common mind within hearing of these higher truths; that these were men whose aims were so opposed to the power that was still predominant then, – though the 'wrestling' that would shake that predominance, was already on foot, – that it became necessary for them to conceal their lives as well as their works, – to veil the true worth and nobility of them, to suffer those ends which they sought as means, means which they subordinated to the noblest uses, to be regarded in their own age as their ends; that they were compelled to play this great game in secret, in their own time, referring themselves to posthumous effects for the explanation of their designs; postponing their honour to ages able to discover their worth; this is the proposition which is derived here from the works in which the tradition of this learning is conveyed to us.
But in the part of this work referred to, from which the ensuing extracts are made, it was the life, and not merely the writings of the founders of this school which was produced in evidence of this claim. It was the life in which these disguised ulterior aims show themselves from the first on the historic surface, in the form of great contemporaneous events, events which have determined and shaped the course of the world's history since then; it was the life in which these intents show themselves too boldly on the surface, in which they penetrate the artistic disguise, and betray themselves to the antagonisms which were waiting to crush them; it was the life which combined these antagonisms for its suppression; it was the life and death of the projector and founder of the liberties of the New World, and the obnoxious historian and critic of the tyrannies of the Old, it was the life and death of Sir Walter Raleigh that was produced as the Historical Key to the Elizabethan Art of Tradition. It was the Man of the Globe Theatre, it was the Man in the Tower with his two Hemispheres, it was the modern 'Hercules and his load too,' that made in the original design of it, the Frontispiece of this volume.
'But stay I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanced and made a constellation there.
Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage,
Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like night,
And despairs day, but for thy Volume's light.
['To draw no envy Shake-spear on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame.' – BEN JONSON.]
The machinery that was necessarily put in operation for the purpose of conducting successfully, under those conditions, any honourable or decent enterprise, presupposes a forethought and skill, a faculty for dramatic arrangement and successful plotting in historic materials, happily so remote from anything which the exigencies of our time have ever suggested to us, that we are not in a position to read at a glance the history of such an age; the history which lies on the surface of such an age when such men – men who are men – are at work in it. These are the Elizabethan men that we have to interpret here, because, though they rest from their labours, their works do follow them – the Elizabethan Men of Letters; and we must know what that title means before we can read them or their works, before we can 'untie their spell.'
CHAPTER II
'The times, in many cases, give great light to true interpretations.' Advancement of Learning.
'On fair ground
I could beat forty of them.'
'I could myself
Take up a brace of the best of them, yea the two tribunes.'
'But now 'tis odds beyond arithmetic,
And manhood is called foolery when it stands
Against a falling fabric.' —Coriolanus.
The fact that the immemorial liberties of the English PEOPLE, and that idea of human government and society which they brought with them to this island, had been a second time violently overborne and suppressed by a military chieftainship, – one for which the unorganised popular resistance was no match, – that the English People had been a second time