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In the chapter on the Preoccupations of Bacon the reader may find help in making up his mind as to whether Bacon, with his many and onerous duties and occupations, his scientific studies, and his absorbing scientific preoccupation, is a probable author of the Shakespearean plays. Mr.
That he wrote them can now be neither proved nor refuted, but there are inherent improbabilities that must always make the Shakespearean legend a profoundly fascinating subject of psychological consideration. And were he to be dethroned, to whom should the sceptre and the crown be given?
As to the date of his decease, we only know that it must necessarily have been later than the composition of the last genuine Shakespearean play for this paragon wrote it.
He heard the soul of Johann Sebastian Bach roaring like the sea: hurricanes, winds howling, the clouds of life scudding, men and women drunk with joy, sorrow, fury, and the Christ, all meekness, the Prince of Peace, hovering above them, towns awakened by the cries of the watchmen, running with glad shouts, to meet the divine Bridegroom, whose footsteps shake the earth, the vast store of thoughts, passions, musical forms, heroic life, Shakespearean hallucinations, Savonarolaesque prophecies, pastoral, epic, apocalyptic visions, all contained in the stunted body of the little Thuringian cantor, with his double chin, and little shining eyes under the wrinkled lids and the raised eyebrows ... he could see him so clearly! somber, jovial, a little absurd, with his head stuffed full of allegories and symbols, Gothic and rococo, choleric, obstinate, serene, with a passion for life, and a great longing for death ... he saw him in his school, a genial pedant, surrounded by his pupils, dirty, coarse, vagabond, ragged, with hoarse voices, the ragamuffins with whom he squabbled, and sometimes fought like a navvy, one of whom once gave him a mighty thrashing ... he saw him with his family, surrounded by his twenty-one children, of whom thirteen died before him, and one was an idiot, and the rest were good musicians who gave little concerts.... Sickness, burial, bitter disputes, want, his genius misunderstood: and through and above it all, his music, his faith, deliverance and light, joy half seen, felt, desired, grasped, God, the breath of God kindling his bones, thrilling through his flesh, thundering from his lips.... O Force!
It is curious to note that both in The Vikings and in The Pretenders, two plays which are in some measure comparable with Shakespearean tragedies, he opens with a firmly-touched einleitende Akkord. In The Vikings, Ornulf and his sons encounter and fight with Sigurd and his men, very much after the fashion of the Montagues and Capulets in Romeo and Juliet.
No fear, no remorse, none of that Shakespearean horror after the murder, which, today, sceptic though I am and blasé and utterly, utterly disillusioned, sets me shuddering whenever I am alone in a dark room. "Come," I thought. "It's time. Time to finish it up." I picked up the dagger. Before putting it in my pocket, I went through the motion of striking. All was well.
Besides the plays mentioned in this section, Jonson wrote during his long life many other comedies and masques as well as some tragedies. Marks of Decline. A study of the decline of the drama, as shown in Jonson's plays, will give us a better appreciation of the genius of Shakespeare. We may change Jonson's line so that it will state one reason for his not maintaining Shakespearean excellence:
In this category are the Shakespearean performances at the theatre. In any case the classic is necessarily subordinate to the new literature, the literature of pioneering and discovery, the literature of ourselves. It is the school which prepares for the stepping forth on the untrodden ways.
It matters to us, if we hold such doubts to be fantastic pedantries, such guesses contrary to the nature of things; while we wish to give love and praise and gratitude where they are due; to that Achaean "Father of the rest"; and to "friendly Shakespeare." To myself Troilus and Cressida is, with Henry VI, Part I, the most mysterious among the Shakespearean plays.
He had not nearly so much of the actor's instinct as Terriss, but one felt that he had far more earnestness. He was easily distinguished as a man with a purpose, one of those workers who "scorn delights and live laborious days." Those laborious days led him at last to the control of two or three companies, all traveling through Great Britain playing a Shakespearean répertoire.
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