This makes poor lovers used as blind horses, ever going round about in a wheel: and this makes them ever unfortunate, for when blind love leads blind fortune, how can they keep out of the ditch? ["Thisb. O! As truest horse, that yet would never tire. [Exeunt Clowns. Puck. I'll follow you, I'll lead you about a round, Through bog, through bush, through brake, 'through brier: Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound, A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire; And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, Mid. N. Dr., Act III. Sc. 1.] But now that Love hath gotten possession of his sight, there can be no error in policy or dignity to receive him. Nay, Philautia herself will subscribe to his admission. Then your Majesty shall first see your own invaluable value, and thereby discern that the favours you vouchsafe are pure gifts and no exchanges. And if any be so happy as to have his affection accepted, yet your prerogative is such as they stand bound, and your Majesty is free: ... [In maiden meditation, fancy-free.] Your Majesty shall obtain the curious window into hearts of which the ancients speak; thereby you shall discern protestation from fulness of heart, ceremonies and fashions from a habit of mind that can do no other, affectation from affection." "Bir. Studies my lady? Mistress look on me: Behold the window of my heart, mine eye." - Love's L. L., Act V. Sc. 2. "To thee I do commend my watchful soul, Ere I let fall the windows of mine eyes."— Rich. III. Act V. Sc. 3.] Again he says: "But contrariwise her Majesty, not liking to make windows into men s hearts and secret thoughts" 1 And this same window of the ancients appears again thus: "Let the first precept then (on which the knowledge of others turns) be set down as this: that we obtain (as far as we can) that window which 1 Letter drafted for Walsingham (1590), Spedd. Let. and Life, I. 98. Momus required; who, seeing in the frame of man's heart such angles and recesses, found fault that there was not a window to look into its mysterious and tortuous windings." 1 It is very plain that this Masque was written to be exhibited before the Queen. These extracts will be sufficient for the purpose of comparison. William Shakespeare could never have seen this Masque. The "Midsummer Night's Dream," though not printed until 1600, may possibly have been performed on the stage before the Masque was written ; but it would be idle to imagine any other kind of plagiarism or imitation to be possible here, than that which one and the same full mind may unconsciously make upon itself; and these outcroppings of the same ideas, words, and expressions, in compositions written at about the same time, are altogether too numerous, striking, palpable, and peculiar to admit of explanation on any supposition of the common usage of the time, or accidental coincidence. And since the "Midsummer Night's Dream" has been assigned, almost by general consent of the critics, to the year 1594, these resemblances to the Masque may be taken as some evidence that these fragments belong to some occasion, which was at least as early as 1594. 1 Trans. of the De Aug., Works (Boston), IX. 271. CHAPTER IV. MORE DIRECT PROOFS. "Most true; if ever truth were pregnant by circumstance; that, which you hear, you'll swear you see, there is such unity in the proofs: the majesty of the creature in resemblance of the mother."- Winter's Tale. § 1. THE RICHARD II. ... THE statements and allusions contained in Bacon's "Apology" or defence against certain imputations concerning his conduct towards the Earl of Essex, which was addressed to the Earl of Devonshire, and published soon after the death of Essex in 1601, made in relation to an answer which he gave the Queen, towards the close of the year 1599, as he tells us, in "a matter which had some affinity" with Essex's cause, and which was a certain “seditious prelude" then lately dedicated to the factious Earl, being Dr. Hayward's story of the "First Yeare of King Henry IV.," at which the Queen, thinking there was treason in it, was "mightily incensed," when interpreted by the light of the accompanying history and the personal relations of the parties, will be seen to amount to nothing less than a virtually implied admission out of his own mouth that he was himself the author of the play of Richard II.; for it will be made quite certain, that this tragedy was precisely the "matter" alluded to, and no other. It will further appear to be highly probable, that the Queen herself at least strongly suspected, and that even the Lords of the Privy Council had some inkling, that such was the fact. If this be shown to be so, it will be equivalent of itself to a final settlement of the question in hand, and it will re quire some attention. That exquisite disgrace which the Queen had been constrained to put upon him, in 1595, had been comfortably solaced in the consideration that her Majesty did but reserve and not reject him, in the princely entertainment and masque at Essex's house, near the close of that year, and in the munificent grant of Twickenham Park immediately following. The tragedy of Richard II. was most probably written after this date, and during the year 1596. There is no mention on record of its existence before it was entered and printed in 1597. Malone and some others have supposed it might have been written as early as 1593-4, and, proceeding upon the assumption that the mention made by Camden and by Bacon of the tragedy of Richard II., in their accounts of the trials of Essex and his co-conspirators, as being an "out-dated" and an "old" play, must have referred to some older play by another author, they were also led to infer, both that some such old play existed, and that it was that older play, and not this, of Shakespeare, which was there alluded to. But all this is evidently a mistake; for the Attorney-General, Coke, in his speech on the trial of Merrick, expressly says, that "forty shillings were given to Phillips the player" to play this tragedy before Essex's men. This was no other than Augustine Phillips of Shakespeare's company, and the manager at the Globe and Blackfriars; and it is altogether improbable that any other play of that name would be in use by that company, at that time, and none such is known to have existed. During the year 1595, Daniel published a first and second edition of his "Civil Wars," a poem on the same subject. Mr. White observes some incidents in this second edition, which lead him to infer that Daniel may have used the play to correct his piece; but the inference of Mr. Knight, that the resemblances are due to the fact that the writer of the play had read Daniel's poem, in the course of his preparations for his work, and so, that the play was written after the poem, would seem to be more probable; or both writers may have drawn from the same historical sources, independently of each other; and this view would limit the production of the play to the year 1596. In that year, Essex is burning the Spanish fleet at Cadiz, and the Pope issues his Bull authorizing Queen Elizabeth's subjects to depose her; but it is not until about 1598, that the Irish kernes under Tyrone and O'Neil begin to be troublesome, and wars arise, to which there might seem to be some allusion in the play, as in these lines: "K. Rich. Now for our Irish wars: We must supplant these rough rug-headed kernes "; but there were just such rebels and wars in Ireland, in the time of Richard II., and to these, as recorded in Holinshed, it is much more probable, if not quite certain, the allusions in the play were intended to refer: nor is there any ground on which it can safely be concluded that the play was written before 1596. But, in 1594, machinations were on foot among the Jesuits, having for their object the dethronement of Elizabeth, and looking to Essex as in the interest of some successor; for, in that year, a certain book was dedicated to the Earl of Essex, under the sham-name of Doleman (a Jesuit priest); but Parsons, Allen, and Inglefield were the true authors of it.1 This book set up the title of the Infanta of Spain, and perhaps also gave encouragement to some supposed right of Essex, derived from Thomas of Woodstock, son of Edward III.; and the pretensions of Essex were already a subject of speculation in the public mind. When Essex visited Bacon, at Twickenham Park, in October 1595, and made him the gift of land in requital of his services, he answered by telling the story of the Duke of Guise, who “had turned all his estate into obligations," and said: "My Lord, I see I must be your homager and hold land of your gift; but do you know the 1 Camden's Ann. of Eliz.; Kennett's Eng. II. 576. |