Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Measure
for Measure, Twelfth Night, & Merchant of
Venice
___
Excerpt from the Chapter:
pp. 191-198
Francis Saint Alban, Mystic and Poet
By
A.A. Leith
from Baconiana , October 1902
....And as been so often pointed out, the revels at his own Inn of
the Court were the especial care of the accomplished, poetical.,
learned barrister, Sir Francis Bacon.
At whatever point we touch him we find an answering note in harmony
with the title we assign him at the head of his paper.
Always be it remembered that it is rather in the form of "pinholes",
by, or through which we may espy "great objects", that his hints are
given to us his "discoverers." For if he systematically made use of
secret means to attain his end with regard to the stage, it is
against reason that he should permit of our finding without a great
deal of labour and trouble that he was the one great
Poet-Dramatist of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
That this was his secret we are sufficiently assured, and that we may
well claim him to be what we assert, I shall now proceed to show. To
do this effectually I append a series of quotations from both Bacon
in his more contemplative mood, when he writes as a
philosopher and in the prose; and from Shake-speare, whose Dramas
represent the same ideas and wise thoughts taking active shape
in the plays.
These quotations are here given in the form of questions by myself
and answers by Bacon. --Alicia Amy Leith
Subject : Midsummer Night's Dream
Q. OBeron says : " I know a bank wheron whild thyme
blows, there sleeps Titania, lulled in these flowers with dances and
delight. Can you explain why wild-thyme should lull her in
delight?
Bacon : " The breath of flowers is
far sweeter in the air, where it comes and goes like the warbling of
music than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that
delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best
perfume the air. Those which do perfume the air most delightfully,
being trodden upon and crushed, are three, that is burnet, wild
thyme, and water mints; therefore you must have whole allies of them
when you walk and tread."
Q. "Aye, and dance too I presume? But besides the wild thyme,
Oberon speaks of other flowers carpetting the ground. Can you suggest
any others which you prefer?
Bacon : "I also like little heaps such as are in wild heaths
to be set with wild thyme, some with violets, some with cowslips and
the like flowers, withal sweet and sightly."
Q."Precisely, Titania's 'little heap' agrees with your ideas.
Oberon describes it almost in your own words. 'I know a bank whereon
the wild thyme blows, where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows.'
But can you tell me why nodding ? Is there any reason, would you say,
for preferring a nodding violet to a still one?
Bacon : "When bodies are moved or stirred they smell more
as a sweet bag is waved. The daintiest smell of flowers are violets,
roses, woodbine."
Q. Ah! roses and honeysuckleshould they adorn Titania's
couch?
Bacon : "For the heath I wish it to be framed to a natural
wildness. I would have some thickets made only of sweet-briar and
honey suckle."
QQuite so; I guessed as much. You have now accurately described
all the flowers mentioned by Oberon as forming Tatania's bower.
" I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, where ox-lips and
the nodding violet grows, quite over canopied with lush woodbine,
with sweet......... musk roses." Do you agree with the last named
addition? Do you like the musk rose?
Bacon: "The sweetest smell in the air is the violet.........
next to that is the musk rose. The smell of violets and roses
exceedeth in sweetness that of spices.........These things do rather
woo the sense than satiate it."
Q. I have my answer. I am content.
It is in parallels such as these, and they abound, that we realise that the minds of Bacon and Shakespeare run in actually and entirely the same groove. Here is another instance.
Q.Hamlet
says to the gravedigger :"How long will a man lie in the grave ere he
rot?" What have you to say about this matter?
Bacon : "It is strange, and well to be noted, how long
carcasses have continued incorrupt and in their former dimensions, as
appeareth in the mummies of Egypt, having lasted, as is conceived,
three thousand years."
Q. The gravedigger says in reply
: "If he be not rotten before he died [we have pocky corpses
now-a-days], he will last some eight years," giving as a reason
for a tanner lasting nine that his hide was so tanned, " He will
keep out water a great while. Water is a sore decayer of your dead
body." What do you say about this?
Bacon : " If you provide aainst three causes of
putrefaction, bodies will not corrupt... The first is that the air be
excluded, for that undermineth the body...... The third is that the
body to be preserved be not of that gross that it may corrupt within
itself. There is a fourth remedy also, which is, that if a body to be
preserved be of bulk, as a corpse is, then the body that incloseth it
must have a virtue to draw forth and dry the moisture of the inward
body, for else the putrefaction will play within."
Q. The gravedigger and you agree.
Besides this, Hamlet enquired thus, as he held the skull of Yorick
: "Dost thou think Alexander lock'd out o' this fashion i' the
earth?" Can you answer him? Can your imagination trace the noble dust
of Alexander till we find it stopping a bung hole? Is it all likely
that Alexander's flesh could have ever formed a bung "to keep the
wind away?"
Bacon : " When Augustus Caesar visited the sepulchre of
Alexander the Great , in Alexandria, he found the body to keep his
dimensions. But withal, the body was so tender, not withstanding all
the embalming, Caesar touching he nose defaced it. The ancient
Egyptian mummies were shrouded up in a number of folds of linen,
which doth not appear was practised on the body of Alexander."
Q. Ah! that is what Hamlet
allludes to, doubtless, when he says : "Alexander died, Alexander was
buried, Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth, of earth we
make loam, and why of that loam might they not stop a
beer-barrel?"
Enquirers have only to take any subject they fancy from Shakespeare's Plays, and search in Bacon's works; they will find the passages paralleled and explainedat least that is my experience.
Q.The
Duke of Vienna says : I love the people, but do not like to stage me
to their eyes." What says my Lord of Verulam?
Bacon : I do not desire to stage myself nor my
pretensions. Do good to the people; love them, looking for nothing,
neither praise nor profit."
Duke of Vienna : " I do not relish well their loud
applause and aves vehement, nor do I think the man of safe discretion
that does affect it."
Bacon: "The best temper of men desire good name and true
honour; the lighter popularity and applause."
What more striking evidences of the truth of my assertion are there to be found than these? Here is another instance.
Hermia : " Little again? Nothing
but low and little? I am so dwarfish and so low!"
Lysander : "Get you gone, you dwarf, you minimus, of
hindring knot-grass made."
Q.Explain why he calls her "
hindring knot-grass?"
Bacon : " It is a common experience that when alleys
are close gravelled, the earth putteth forth, the first year
knot-grass, and after spear-grass. The cause is that the hard gravel
of pebble will not suffer the grass to come forth upright, but
turneth it to find his way where it can."
Q.The reason for the curious words
used by Lysander is now pefectly clear by your reply.
Subject
TWELFTH NIGHT. Act
I., Scene i.
SceneA City in
Illyria, and the Sea-coast near it.
Act I. An apartment in the
Duke's Palace.
Enter Duke (musicians
attending):
Duke : "If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and
so die."
Q. Explain this metaphor.
Bacon : "Generally music feedeth that disposition of
the spirits which it findeth. There be in music certain figures
almost agreeing with the affections of the mind and other senses, and
the falling from a discord to a concord which maketh great sweetness
in music hath an agreement with the affections; it agreeth with the
taste also which is soon glutted with which is sweet alone."
Q.And in this case, what figure had this music?
Duke: " That strain again, it had a dying fall. O, it came
o'er my ear like the sweet south breathing o'er a bank of violets,
stealing and giving odour."
Q.Why should a strain of music be compared to wind?
Bacon : "Wind, all impulsion of the air is wind, will rise and
fall by turns, the breath thereof carried upward, then languishing,
as it were, expires and dies. We have some slides of strings, as it
were, continued from one tone to another,rising and falling, which
are delightful.
Q.Why specify a south wind?
Bacon : "The south wind blows from presence of the sun. The south and
west winds are warm and moist, to sweet smells heat and moistue is
requisite to spread the breath of them."
Q.Why a "south wind breathing o'er a bank of violets?"
Bacon : "The sweetest smell in the air is the violet, and the
breath of flowers is much sweeter in the air at some distance, when
it comes and goes like the warbling of music."
Q.Why are south winds sweet?
Bacon : "The south wind is very healthful when it comes from
the sea. In places which are near the sea the sea-trees bow and bend
as shunnin the sea-air, but not from any averseness to them; the
south winds are very agreeable to plants."
Q.Why should this sea coast wind give and take odour?
Bacon : "When bodies are stirred, then shall more the
impulsion of the air bring the scent faster upon us. Winds are, as it
were, mercants of vapours; they carry out and bring in again, as it
were, by exchange."
Duke ( to musicians) : "Enough! no more; tis not so sweet
now as it was before. Away, before me, to sweet beds of flowers."
[Exit]
Q.Why should the Duke take his music into the garden?
Bacon : "Smells and other odours are sweeter in the aire at
some distance, than near the nose, as hath been touched
heretofore........We see that in sounds likewise they are sweetest
when we cannot heare every part by itself."
Q.Have you more to say about south winds and gardens?
Bacon : "In gardens the south wind, when it is stayed, it
is so mild that it can scarce be perceived, and odours are sweetest
at some distance."
Q.The Duke speaks of the south without the word wind; is that
correct?
Bacon : "The smell of violets and roses exceed in sweetness
that of spices. Gums and the strongest sort of smells are best in a
west afarre off."
Portia : "Earthly power doth then show likest God's when
mercy seasons justice."
Q. Explain this sentence.
Bacon : "It is the duty of a judge to enquire not only to the
fact, but also as to the circumstances. Judges ought (as far as the
law permitteth) in justice to remember mercy. They should imitate
God, in Whose seat they sit."
Lorenzo : "In such a night such as this, when the sweet
wind did gently kiss the trees, and they did make no noise.....How
sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here we sit and let the
sound of music creep into our ears. Soft stillness and the night
become the touches of sweet hamony."
Q. What agreement is there between moonlight and music?
Bacon : "Firstly the division and quavering that pleases so
much in music have an agreement with the glittering of light, as
moonbeams playing...... upon a wave." "That which is pleasing to the
hearing may receive light by that which is pleasing to the sight.
Both these pleasuresthat of the ear and that of the
eyeare but the effect of good proportion of correspondence; so
that, out of question, are the causes of harmony."
Jessica : " I am never merry when I hear sweet
music."
Q.Explain how music affects the spirits?
Bacon : We see that tunes and airs in their own nature have in
themselves affinities with the affections. It is no wonder if they
alter the spirits to variety of passions; yet generally, music
feedeth that disposition of the spirits which it findeth."
Lorenzo : "There's not the smallest orb that thou beholdest but in
his motion like an angel sings."
Q. Explain this.
Bacon: "Great motions there are in nature which pass
without sound or noise. The heavens turn about in a most rapid motion
without noise to be perceived; so the motions of the comets and fiery
meteors yield no noise, though in some dreams they have been said to
make excellent music."
Lorenzo : "This muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close it
in, we cannot hear it."
Nerissa : ".......When the moon shone we did not see the
candle."
Q. Why does she say this?
Bacon : "It is true, nevertheless, that a great light drowneth
a smaller that it cannot be seen."
Portia : So doth the greater glory dim the less."
............ Music hark!
Me thinks it sounds much sweeter
than by day."
Nerissa: "Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam."
Q.Is that likely to be true?
Bacon : " Sounds are better heard, and further off, than
in the day. The cause is for that in the day when the air is more
thin the sound pierceth better, but when the air is more thick (as in
the night) the sound spendeth and spreadeth abroad less. As for the
night, it is true also that the general silence helpeth."
Q.One question more and I am done. Why, if you aimed at the
reformation of the stage by a new art of modern dramtic poesy, did
you write anonymously or under a pseudonym, when you would have
earned so much fame as its "inventor.?"
Bacon : " In the degrees of human honour amongst the
heathen it was the highest to obtain to a veneration and adoration as
a god. Such as were inventors and authors of new arts were ever
considered amongst the godsApollo and others; this unto the
Christians is as the forbidden fruit."
ALICIA AMY LEITH : Indeed Francis St. Alban Mystic and Poet! As I began, so I finish. If any doubt still, let them read what a Latin elegy by a contemporaneous writer said of him :
On the Incomparable Francis Verulam "As the beams of the sun in the morning rising
Up from the eastward horizon, he shone as Apollo at noon.
He perceived how all arts and inventions, held fast by no roots,
Would soon perish, like seed cast abroad on the surface.So he reigned in those Pegasus arts, and
Taught them to grow to a bay-tree,
Like the shaft that was wielded by Quirinus.
Having thus taught the Helicon Muses to grow,
And continue increasing,
Age on age cannot lessen his glory.
What effulgence is seen in his eyes!
As though Heaven's beams were upon him,
While he sings of the mysterious celestial.
Our Muses need bring no encomiums; thyself
Art the singer, full toned; thine own verses
Suffice for thy glory."-end-
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