This hasty glance over the
entire Shakespearean drama fully confirms the opinion of
many critics, that in Shakespeare, more than in any other
dramatist, love and passion are subordinate; they are
rarely, if ever, the leading motive of the play. And they
bring before us the unexpected conclusion that what is
condemned as cynical or hard in Bacon is reflected with
singular exactness in nearly all the Shakespearean
plays,— in many cases with almost verbal accuracy.
Evidently the poet was not primarily occupied with
rhapsodies of sentiment or passion: his chief aim is to
embody in life-like forms the deepest results of his
moral, social and political studies. In this respect the
Poet and the Essayist are absolutely alike. Shakespeare,
like Bacon, is an ethical teacher, a moralist, a
philosopher, a statesman, devoted to the largest issues
of public life,—full of world embracing,
statesmanlike wisdom, familiar with all sides of Court
life and politics,— and to these aims all his music,
his rhetoric, his fancy are
subordinated.
See Love
and
Business
from the book
Shakespeare
Studies in Baconian Light
