ERRATA. Page 16, stanza 4 For "then save" read "them save." Page 23, line 6 For "defied" read "deified." Page 59 For "Son. 34-vcxxiii " read " 34-cxxviii." Page 80, note 2 For "Son. 83-xlix " read " 82-xlix." Page 85, note 1 For "Son. 82-cxiii " read "81-cxiii." Page 312, line 2 For " Not " read "Nor." Page 336, stanza 3, line 6 For "leave " read "have." Page 336, stanza 4, line 5 For "has" read "hath." SHAKE-SPEARE ENGLAND'S ULY55L5, THE MASQUE OF LOVE'S LABOR'S WON OR THE ENACTED WILL The Phcenix. By the way sweet Nature tell me this, Is this the Moly that is excellent, For strong enchantments, and the adders hiss? 1 Is this the Moly that Mercurious sent To wise Ulysses, 2 when he did prevent The witchcraft, and foul Circes damned charms, That would have compassed him with twenty harms? Mother Nature. This is the Moly growing in this land, That was revealed by cunning Mercury To great Ulysses, Making him withstand The hand of Circes fatal sorcery, That would have loaden him with misery, 1 And ere we pass lie show some excellence, Of other herbs in physics noble science. Love's Martyr; 6 or, Rosalinds Complaint, 1601, p. 92. 1 Dramatic writing a handicap to the succession. 2 Cp. "Great Strong-Bowe's heir," p. 130, and note 6, p. 244. 3 A mutilated, dismembered and buried love play. Poets are borne not made, when I would prove This truth, the glad rememberance I must love Of never dying Shakespeare, who alone, Is argument enough to make that one. First, that he was a Poet none would doubt, That heard th' applause of what he sees set out Imprinted; where thou hast [I will not say] Reader his workes for to contrive a Play. To him 'twas none] 1 the patterne of all wit, Art without Art unparaleld as yet. Leonard Digges in Benson's 1640 Edition of the Sonnets. It was never acted; or, if it was, not above once, for the play, I remember, pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the general; but it was as I received it, and others, whose judg- ments in such matters cried in the top of mine an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cun- ning. Hamlet, n. 2. Where thou hast [I will not say To him 'twas none] reader his works for to contrive a flay. ROBERT DEVEREUX, SECOND EARL OF ESSEX. PEN NAMES: HENRY WILLOBIE ROBERT CHESTER IQNOTO AND WILLIAM SHAKE-SPEARE. SHAKE-SPEARE ENGLAND'S ULYSSES, THE MASQUE OF LOME'S LABOR'S WON OR THE ENACTED WILL. ' ' Dignum laude virum Musa vetat mori." DRAMATIZED FROM THE SONNETS OF 1609. ["Reader his workes for to contrive a play."] BY LATHAM DAVIS. 20*h ST., .NEW YORK. Copyright, 1905, by LATHAM DAVIS All rights reserved. "There were no gods 'till Love mingled all things; and by the mixture of the different with the different Heaven came to be, and Ocean, and Earth, and the undying race of all the blessed gods." Cp. The Birds, Aristophanes, 11. 691-706. The ways on earth have paths and turnings known, The ways on sea are gone by needle's light, The birds of heaven the nearest ways have flown, And under earth the moles do cast aright; A way more hard than those I needs must take, Where none can teach, and no man can direct, Where no man's good for me example makes, But all men's faults do teach her to suspect. Her thoughts and mine such disproportion have; All strength of love is infinite in me; She useth the advantage time and fortune gave Of worth and power to get the liberty. Earth, sea, heaven, hell, are subject to love's laws; But I! poorl! must suffer and know no cause. Poems of Essex. While Bacon's sense of the presence of physical law in the universe was for his time extraordinari^ developed, he seems practically to have acted upon the theory that the moral laws of the world are not inexorable, but rather by tactics and dexterity may be cleverly evaded. 1 Their supremacy was acknowledged by Shakspere .... he reaches to the ultimate truths of human life and character through a supreme and indivisible energy of love, imagination and thought. Shakspere, His Mind and Art, Dow- den, p. 1 6. 1 I do esteem whatsoever I have or may have in this world but as trash, in comparison of having the honour and happiness to be a near and well accepted kinsman to so rare and worthy a counsellor, governor, and patriot. Letter, Francis Bacon to Robert Cecil, January ist, 1608. My Lord of Salisbury [Robert Cecil] had a good method, if his ends had been upright. Letter, Bacon to James I., May 3ist, 1612. 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In Allusion to the Phcenix, Daniel, 1591. [Cp. p. 65.] How only she [Mother Nature] bestowes 1 The wealthy treasure of her love in him: Making his fortunes swim In the full flood of her admired perfection. Ben Jonson in Love's Martyr. [Cp. p. 226.] Mars must become a coward in his mynde, Whiles Vulcan standes to prate of Venus toyes: Beautie must seeme to go against her kinde, In crossing Nature in her sweetest joyes. 1 Poems of Essex. [Cp. p. 245.] And he, the man whom Nature self had made To mock herself^ and truth to imitate .... But that same gentle spirit, from whose pen Large streams of honie and sweet nectar flow, Scorning the boldness of such base born men Which dare their follies forth so rashly throw, Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell, Than so himself to mockery to sell. Tears of The Muses, Spenser, 1591. 1 Mother Nature herself a dramatist. 10 INTRODUCTION 'Favor must die, and fancy wear away." Poems of Essex. [Cp. p. 245.] Many have imagined that the greatest dramatist of the great- est literary period of the world was a man; in these pages I pur- pose showing that in Elizabeth's time there was a bragging wo- man who aspired to a chair among the immortals, and that our greatest comedy: the one that "of time shall live beyond the end" 1 was written preposterous as it may seem by a woman, Fal- staff's mother, Dame Nature herself. In 1598, Francis Meres mentions twelve plays by Shake- speare, six comedies, and six tradgedies, "affecting a balanced symetry;" among the comedies named was Love's Labor's Won. No play of this name has come down to us, was Meres mistaken in his studied nomenclature? Again, Hamlet is wordy, if not garrulous over "an excellent play" that was '''caviare to the gen- eral, " was Hamlet mistaken as to the existence of this rare play? Among the works of Shake-speare are two productions whose meaning has withstood the skill and baffled the resources of our keenest scholars; 2 these compositions are the one hundred and fifty- four Sonnets taken collectively, and the eighteen stanza poem contributed to Love's Martyr and known as The Phcenix and Turtle Dove. Apparently, these two productions have naught in common but are absolutely independent, The Phoenix and Turtle appear- ing in 1 60 1, the Sonnets not seeing the light until 1609. From testimony now first in evidence, these compositions are so inti- 1 Cp. Drayton's Sonnet to the Phoenix, p. 246. 2 Cp. The Subject Matter, p. 14. mately related that they fuse or coalesce, losing their individual- ity in one conception. So they loved as love in twain, Had the essence but in one, Two distincts, division none, Number there in love was slain. Reason in itself confounded, Saw division grow together, To themselves yet either neither, Simple were so well compounded. The Phoenix and Turtle. Briefly, the Phoenix is a dismantled Masque, its text repre- sented by the one hundred and fifty- four Sonnets, and the Turtle Dove is the Dramatis Personae of the Masque embedded in the first five stanzas of the poem known as The Phoenix and Turtle. If that the Phoenix had been separated, And from the gentle Turtle had been parted, Love had been murdered in the infancie, Without these two no love at all can be. Love ' s Martyr ; or, Rosalin" 1 s Complaint, p. 140. In analyzing the framework of this Phcenix Masque sup- posedly written and certainly enacted by Mother Nature and her children it becomes apparent that the deep laid scheme cunning- ly assumes the dignity of a legal document, being witnessed by John Marston, George Chapman, and Ben Jonson, and that the sole purpose of the play is to convey and re-establish by an ar- tistic Will the authorship of our Shake-spearian literature; fur- thermore, in the wiping out of the Sonnets as personal love poems, and their evolvement in a drama "Only by dying born the very same" the Phcenix prophecy in Henry VIII. is fulfilled. "When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness, Her ashes new create another heir." The name of this new heir to the Shake-spearian mantle, as revealed by the "star like" acrostic that "stands fix'd" at the termination of the Dramatis Personae is that of "the one pre- eminent man in the Court of Elizabeth," none other than "the brilliant but impetuous, the greatly dowered but rash, the illus- trious but unhappy Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex." Omaha, August, 1905. CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction . . . . . . n The Subject Matter . . . . 14 Invocatio . . . . . . 15 The Masque of Love's Labor's Won . . 17 The Origin of Hamlet ..... 175 Ulysses and the Court of Elizabeth . . . 203 The Man was Dead ..... 223 William Shakspere, Poet or Peacock . . . 236 Birds of A Feather . . . . . 239 Chronology of the Plays . . . . . 242 Essex Claims the Authorship . . . 244 Divus Shake-speare ...... 246 The Phoanix Analyzed ..... 249 Penelopes Challenge ..... 279 Portrait of Essex ..... 286 Poems Bearing on the Authorship .... 290 Monks of Monkery ..... 346 APPENDIX. I- Love's Martyr; Or, Rosalin's Complaint . . 353 IL Bacon's Declaration, 1601 .... [1-34] III. Bacon's Apology, 1604 , . . [1-21] THE SUBJECT MATTER ' 'Robert Chester's 'Love's Martyr; or, Rosalin's Complaint, published in 1601, contained according to the preface, 'diverse poetical essays on the Turtle 1 and Phoenix 2 done by the best and chiefest of our modern writers.' Shakespeare's contribution to this collection of verse was 'The Phoenix and the Turtle' the most enigmatical of his works. This poem of thirteen stanzas of four lines each, concluding with a Threnos of five stanzas of three lines each, is a poetical requiem for the Phoenix and the Turtle whose love was 'married chastity.' Among the contri- butors to the collection were Shakespeare's great contemporaries, Jonson, Chapman, and Marston; but neither the purpose nor the occasion of the publication has yet been discovered, nor has any light been shed from any quarter on the allegory, whose mean- ing Shakespeare seems to have hidden from posterity in this baffling poem, Emerson suggested that a prize be offered for an essay which 'should explain by a historical research into the poetic myths and tendencies of the age in which it was written, the frame and allusions of the poem.' But although much re- search has been devoted to this object, and many metaphysical, political, ecclesiastical, and historical interpretations have been suggested 'the Phoenix and the Turtle remains an unsolved enig- ma." Shakespeare, Poet, Dramatist, and Man, H. W. Maine, 1900, p. 225. "in all seriousness we think it is high time that the 'clos- ure' should be applied to the debate on the Mystery of Shake- speare's Sonnets. If there was the faintest indication of any dawn on the darkness, even the wearied reviewer would be pa- tient .... Indeed, it may now be said with literal truth that, unless some fresh discovery is made, nothing new, whether in the way of absurdity or sense, can be advanced on this Subject. The problem presented in the Sonnets is undoubtedly the most fascinating problem in all literature, and it is as exasperating as it is fascinating. It appears to be so simple, it seems constantly to be on the verge of its solution, and yet the moment we get be- yond a certain point in inquiry, the more complex its apparent simplicity is discovered to be, the more hopeless all prospect of explaining the enigma." Ephemera Critica, 1902, J. C. Collins , p. 219. 1 Allegory, the Dramatis Personse of the Masque. 8 Allegory, the Sonnets of 1609, a Dismantled Masque, *4 INVOCATIO A prayer made for the prosperity 1 of the Turtle Dove [England's Wooden Horse], i. e., that the Dramatis Persona of the Sonnets of 1609 maybe discovered and the name of our true Shake-speare [England's Ulysses] shall not perish from the earth. D V O Thou great maker of the firmament, That rid'st upon the winged Cherubins, And on the glorious shining element, Hear'st the sad praiers of the Seraphins, That unto thee continually sing Hj^mnes; Bow downe thy listning eares thou God of might, To him whose heart will praise thee day and night. Accept the humble Praiers of that soule, That now lies wallowing in the myre of Sinne, Thy mercie Lord doth all my powers controule, And searcheth reines and heart that are within: Therefore to thee Jehovah He begin: Lifting my head from my imprisoned grave, No mercie but thy mercie me can save. The foule untamed Lion still goes roring, Old hell-bread Sathan enemy to mankind, To lead me to his jawes that are devouring, Wherein no Grace to humane flesh's assign'd, But thou celestiall Father canst him bind: Tread on his head, tread Sinne and Sathan downe, And on thy servants head set Mercies crowne. 1 In Love's Martyr the heading to the prayer reads: "A prayer made for the prosperity of a silver coloured Dove, applyed to the beauteous Phoenix." 15 E R E U X Thus in acceptance of thy glorious sight, I purge my deadly sinne in hope of grace, Thou art the Doore, the Lanthorne and the Light, To guide my sinfull feete from place to place, And now O Christ I bow before thy face: And for the silver coloured earthly Dove, I make my earnest prayer for thy love. Shrowde her O Lord under thy shadowed wings, From the worlds envious malice and deceit, That like the adder-poisoned serpent stings, And in her way laves a corrupted baite, Yet raise her God unto thy mercies height: Guide her, O guide her from pernicious foes, That many of thy creatures overthrowes. Wash her O Lord with Hysope and with Thime, And the white snow she shall excell in whitenesse, Purge her with mercie from all sinfull crime, And her soules glorie shall exceed in brightnesse, O let thy mercie grow unto such ripenesse: Behold her, O behold her gratious King, That unto thee sweet songs of praise will sing. And as thou leadst through the red coloured waves, The host of thy elected Israel, And from the wrath of Pharoe didst then save, Appointing them within that land to dwell, A chosen land, a land what did excell: So guide thy silver Dove unto that place, Where she Temptations envie may outface. Increase thy gifts bestowed on thy Creature, And multiply thy blessings manifold, And as thou hast adorned her with nature, So with thy blessed eyes her eyes behold, That in them doth thy workmanship unfold, Let her not wither Lord without increase, But bless her with jo3 7 es offspring of sweet peace. Amen. Amen. Robert Chester in Love's Martyr, 1601, p. 21, There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in our philosophy. Hamlet, i-v. THE MASQUE OF- LOVE'S LABOR'S WON. [A SWEET CONCEIT.] The only thing that will satisfy the world that he [the Player] was not the author of the plays is a demonstration that another was. Such a demonstration cannot be supplied by the evidence of contemporaries, . . . still less can it be supplied by Cryptogram or Cipher. The Mystery of William Shakespeare, Judge Webb, Baconian. . . . Since the world is at this woefull passe, Let Love's submission Honour's wrath apease: Let not an Horse be matched with an Asse, Nor hatefull tongue an happie hart disease. So shall the world commend a sweet conceipte, And humble Fayth on heavenly honour waite. Poems of Essex, Cp. p. 245, " I hold it ever, Virtue and cunning were endowments greater Than nobleness and riches: careless heirs May the two latter darken and expend: But immortality attends the former, Making a man a god. 'Tis known, I ever Have studied physic, 1 which doth give me A more content; in course of true delight Than to be thirsty after tottering honor, Or tie my treasure up in silken bags, To please the fool and death. Pericles, 111-2. Lines on the dismantling of a play that pleased not the million, but was "caviare to the general" 3 "of our gracious empress." 1 Muses 4 no more but Mazes 5 be yor names, Where discord sound shall marre yor concorde sweet; Unkyndly now yor carefull fancye frames When fortune treades yor favors under feet; But foule befalle that cursed Cuckces" throt, That so hath crost sweet Philomelas 7 note. Essex, " General of our gracious Empress,"* 1 Cp. p. 250. z Hamlet, u. 2. 3 Henry V., v. i. * The speaking characters of the Sonnets of 1609. 5 The 1609 arrangement of the Sonnets, a Cretan labyrinth. 6 The player Shakspere, a creature of the crown. 7 Essex, ths Nightingale or the honey-tongued Sha,k,e-spea,re. Cp. p. 335. 18 THE "W. H." DEDICATION A CHALLENGE OR METAMORPHOSING 1 THE MIGHTY BOW. Rational Knowledges are the keys of all other arts; for as Aristotle saith aptly and elegantly, That the HAND is the In- strument of Instruments^ and t]ie mind is tJie Form of Forms: so these be truly said to be the Art of Arts: neither do they only direct, but likewise confirm and strengthen; even as the habit of shooting doth not only enable to shoot a nearer shoot, but also to draw a stronger bow. Adv. of L., II. 260, Francis Bacon. Behold your test of skill! I bring to you The mighty bow that great Ulysses bore. Who'er among you he may be WHOSE HAND Shall string this bow, and send through these Twelve Rings An arrow, him I follow hence, and leave This beautiful abode of my young years, With all its plenty, though its memory, I think, will haunt me even in my dreams. Penelope' s Challenge^ Homer, 1 For Shake-speare's indebtedness to Ovfd, cp. note 2, p. 256. 8 For noted translations of Penelope's Challenge, see p. 279- 19 THE SONNETS OF 1609, DEDICATED TO HOMER. XXVI. LXXVII. Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, To thee I send this written ambassage, 1 To witness duty, not to show my wit: Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it, But that I hope some good conceit of thine In thy soul's thought, 1 all naked, will bestow it; Till whatsoever star that guides my moving Points on me graciously with lair aspect, And puts apparel on my tatter'd loving, To show me worthy of thy sweet respect: Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee; Till then, not show my head where thou may'st prove me. Thy glass 2 will show thee how thy beauties wear, Thy dial, 1 how thy precious minutes waste; The vacant 3 leaves thy mind's imprint will bear, And of this book 4 this learning may'st thou taste. The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show Of mouthed graves will give thee memory; Thou by thy dial's shady stealth may'st know Time's thievish progress to eternity. Look, what thy memory can not contain Commit to these waste 3 acts, 5 and thou shalt find I Those children nurs'd, deliver'd from thy brain, f G To take a new acquaintance of thy mind. These offices, so oft as thou wilt look, Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book. 7 William Shake-spear e. 1 The rigid laws of time and f lace our bard In this night's drama ventures to discard; If here he errs he errs with him whose name Stands without rival on the rolls of fame; Him whom the passions own with one accord Their great dictator and despotic lord. Prologue, Thomas Morton's Columbus, 1792. [Cp. Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, Lounsbury, p. 73.] 2 The Sonnets of 1609. 3 Dismantled. * Cp- note i, p. 30, and note i, p. 222. 5 The Quarto "blacks" which, on strategic grounds, is in harmony with the last six lines of Son. xxvi. 6 The Gods in Pythagorean Comedy upon Plato's Ladder of Love. 7 Be still my thoughts, be silent all yee Muses, Wit-flowing eloquence now grace my tongue : Arise old Homer and make no excuses, Of a rare peece of art must be my song, Of more then most, and most of all beloved, About the which Venus sweete doves have hovered. Robert Chester in Love's Martyr. [Cp. p. 363.] 20 THE ARGUMENT, 1591. So have I marveled to observe of late, Hard favor'd Feminities so scant of faire, That Maskes so choicely sheltred of the aire, As if their beauties were not theirs by fate. John Marston in Love" 1 s Martyr. [Cp. p. 395.] AT THE private stage in Essex House the play of Hamlet has, at intervals, been on the boards since 1589. * It is mooted in social and political circles, that mine host, the bril- liant scholar and courtier Robert Devereux, second Earl of Es- sex is the author, and the play is a stinging satire on the Court. Summoned by the Queen, Essex confesses the authorship but denies in toto that it is in any way political. 2 Rumor per- sists the play's application to the court will not down. For all parties concerned, socially, politically and religiously, 3 the au- thorship must be shouldered on another, 4 a-live-man-of-straw, with a name that doth "heroically sound," 5 classical in its par- entage, synonomous, interchangeable and suggestive of Ulysses 6 of old, is wanted. The humble 4 and needy player from Strat- ford is judiciously selected, very reluctantly by the Queen, with eagerness by Essex, to father Hamlet. At this violation of truth Mother Nature is sore distraught, she desires to honor her chief interpreter, a poet who, of necessity, has been defrauded of his work. For, after all, Ham- 1 For the date of Hamlet, see notes, pp. 114-115, and the "black ink" fig- ures, p. 205. 2 The defection of Essex and Southampton was social, not political. Most untymely spoken was that word That brought the world in such a woefull state, That Love and Likeing quite are overthrowne And in their place are hate and sorrowes growne." Poems of Essex. [Cp. p. 244.] 3 Cp. sub-note i, p. 162. * Cp. note 3, p. 211. 5 Cp. sub-note i, p. 113, and Spenser's lines, p. 132. 6 "With Shakespeare we are still out of doors. He was the furthest reach of subtlety compatible with an individual self." Emerson. 21 22 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, let-Essex merely told the truth of noble Storge [Gertrude-Eliza- beth] and her ministers; besides, the play was the work of a rash youth but little past his twentieth year, and was produced in a just spirit of revenge for the insufferable slander [Leicester's Commonwealth, 1585] published and breathed in all the courts of Europe, against his mother, [Lettice Knollys] and his dearly loved stepfather [Leicester, 1588]. So, Mother Nature desires to honor her best loved son 1 - and the honoring shall be a play that will surpass "All that insolent Greece, or haughty Rome Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come." This drama, in its analysis, shall reveal, in part, the source of our poets infinite invention and disclose the secret of his char- acter building, and though not his greatest work shall be most of all beloved. Whom no proud flocks of other fowls could move, But in herself all company concluded. Geo. CJiapman in Love 's Martyr. [Cp. p. 396.] Nature's own children shall be the characters and she will tutor them in poetry the language of the gods. As legend is far safer than innovation she will duplicate in England, Troy's famous horse. Her hero, Ulysses-Essex, shall emerge "with heraldry more dismal" and the play shall be a Masque, a Will and a Tragi-comedy to boot. Joy's mirthful tower is thy dwelling place. Mother Nature in Love'' s Martyr. [Cp. p. 372.] Like many of the Comedies of Shake-speare the Masque is high-fantastical. One rare rich Phoenix of exceeding beauty, One none-like Lily in the earth I placed; One fair Helena 2 to whom men owe duty, One' country with a milk-white dove 3 I graced. One and none such, since the wide world was found Hath ever Nature placed on the ground. Mother Nature in Love' s Martyr^ [Cp. p. 360.] 1 Cp. Ben Jonson's lines, p. 10. 2 The characters classical, the gods of Homer in Extensa. 3 "Milk-white dove," Essex's favorite word, Dr. Grosart in Love' s Martyr, p. XLIX. 4 Allegory for the mutilated, dismembered or dismantled play of Love" s La- bor's Won. Love s Labor s Won; or, The Enacted Will. 23 It falls out that the Sonnets of 1609 are the text of the Mas- que, and the Dramatis Personae assumes the form of a Will, term- ing in an acrostic that "star like" rises, "fixing" the name of the beneficiary, Essex. The characters are personified abstractions, an assemblage of the dynamic forces of nature, or the human passions defied into Muses, neither God, Man, nor Woman, but elix'd of all. John Marston in Love 1 s Martyr. [Cp. p. 254.] The time of the play is five years. The two star performers Mother Nature and Father Time are consummate at birth, reap- pearing in each act with the freshness of morning; the remaining eighteen characters [three in each act] are germinal, linked from act to act with hoops of steel, having a psychological pro- gression. Their term of life being one year, "they live and die as flowers do now " yet, like Circes swine, in a pythagorean sense, memory remains, and they frequently refer to their relationship in the preceeding acts, and the possibilities of their children in suc- ceeding acts. The twenty-two characters defined by the text of the Sonnets and generically culminating in the acrostic, are the executors of the Will who bequeath in imperishable beauty [art in verse], the name of the poet who needs "no praise but comprehension." O the comfort of comforts, to see your children grow up, in whom you are, as it were eternized. Arcadia, Sidney. J rS E ^ J Cfl rt 8 H J3 2 u ^^C HH > Q B PH CD IH CD 'g CD .S 'd T! ^ N ^ H ~H rt ft3 rt H vC ^ - ^ ( ^ <3 H PH Q HH "l"'c" d UH ^ T3 1 J3 p 'g ^ W w C 1 1 II II s^g^ u| 1 O 3 IH CD B 1 O CD IH P 4-> rt r^i"^ ^ I- 1 > S o .2 CD o 3 cr - G > w Bo-1 M^ w ^ r ' t t ^ < C 5 S ^ o cfl i CD a H rt CD PQ IS B S "rt 2^ a) IS rt o 5 5 ,- ^ X! O a (X) - O CM U & Is ' 4i i< 1 & ^ * rt u 2 JS tn . Si ^ 3 TJ HH ^^ fc ^^ . ' p N '"-' a c/ ^ be c 13 -.Sf ^"S * *" S c w ffi H 5 WON; C YCHO-TRAG I\l> 4114 TIC iSlUISUBJJL UB9J d VTATt7\r z i s'l LU T B a. a * c b Chester's Love's Martyr? Complaint, 1601.] Let the bird of loudest lay. On the sole Arabian tree. Herald sad and trumpet be To whose sound chaste wir But thou, shrieking harbini Foul precurrer of the fiend Augur of the fever's end, To this troop come thou nc From this session interdict Every fowl of tyrant wing, Save the Eagle, feath'red 1< Keep the obsequy so strict. Let the priest in surplice w That defunctive music can, Be the death-divining Swa Lest the requiem lack his i m V ~ in - <" rt u3 ^ **- *- o 3 >, u rfll ^sg ^S?? n Horse containing mbered and buried ^sj " >-> h-H 1 1 ID CD f 0) PQ PH O CD B CD O rt CD OH O IH ^i rt 1 1 J? I ^ o "~ l H=H H O 33 jz; W x S ^! HH ) ^H b o <^ S s o o a rt CD c rt ^ 5*2 >Q-^ " (> H PH H g < ^N >> CD CD V-i ^-2 & (-H 4- CJ 'C rt CD B CD O V-i 'eo CD rt ^ ^ o o HH H Q S5 * Love s Labor s Won; or, The Enacted Will. 25 /^YNEWULF puts the runes which ^^spell his name into certain connected and personal verses in the midst, or at the end, of each of these poems; and Kemble was the first to discover that these runes, when placed together, made up the poet's name. Owing to this discovery it occur- red, as we have seen, to Leo that the first Riddle contained in a charade the sylla- bles of Cynewulf's name, and that in this way the Riddles were also signed The Phoenix is an unsigned poem of Cyn- ewulf's In it he has passed from doubt and fear into a rapture of faith. Pas- sage after passage is full of that lyric joy which, men tell us, belongs, at least, in the early days of that bright conviction, to those who feel themselves saved. Early English Literature, Stop ford A. Brooke, pp. 371- 380. Speaking of Willobie's well-known Avi- so,, 1 the Professor [Saintsbury] observes that nothing is known of Willobie 2 or of Avisa. If the Professor had known any- thing about the work, he would have known that Aviso? is simply an anagram made up of the initial letters of A^ans V 2 xor I 3 nviolata S 4 emper A 5 manda, and that nothing is known of Avisa. Ephemera Critica, J. C. Collins, p. ' 101. 1 Published 1594, 1596, 1605, 1609, 1635, Suppressed by Elizabeth, 1596. 2 Advice for the will-to-be. Cp. notes pp. 48, 49. 26 Shake-speare England *s Ulysses, THE MASQUE OF LOVE'S LABOR'S WON. ACT I. MUSES REPRESENTED. RARITY TIME LOVE DESIRE NATURE. SCENE I. MOTHER NATURE and FATHER TIME. Nature to Time. i=xxv. Let those who are in favour with their stars Of public honour and proud titles boast, Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars, Unlook'd for joy in that I honour most. 1 Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread But as the marigold at the sun's eye, And in themselves their pride lies buried, For at a frown they in their glory die. The painful warrior famoused for fight, After a thousand victories once foil'd, Is from the book of honour razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd: Then happy I, that love and am belov'd 2 Where I may not remove nor be remov'd. 3 1 Cp. the Essex lines, p. 10. 2 By my children; the characters in the Masque. 3 From this rare Masque. Other admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought; but this man, in wide contrast, the best poet led an obscure and profane life. I cannot marry this fact to his verse. R. W. Emerson, Shaksperian. Loves Labor s Won; or, The Enacted Will. 27 SCENE I. Time to Nature. 2 xiv. Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck; And yet methinks I have astronomy, But not to tell of good, or evil luck, Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality; Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell, Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind, Or say with princes if it shall go well, By oft predict that I in heaven find: But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive, And, constant stars, in them I read such art As truth and beauty shall together thrive, If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert; 1 Or else of thee this I prognosticate: Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date. 1 Mother Nature herself a dramatist. Cp. all of frontispage 10. The rugged Pyrrhus in the ominous horse, 1 Hath now With heraldry horridly trick'd 2 ....Fathers, Mothers, Daughters, Sons. 3 Hamlet, n. 2. 1 The Turtle Dove [England's Wooden Horse] being the Dramatis Personae of the Masque contains the name of Ulysses-Essex. 2 Adorned. 3 The gods and goddesses of this psychological comedy. 28 Shake-spear e England's Ulysses, ACT I. Nature to Time. 3= LXV. Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o'er-sways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower ? O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out Against the wrackful siege of batt'ring days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays? O fearful meditation! where, alack, Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid? 1 Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back ? Or who his spoil of Beauty can forbid? O, none, unless this miracle have might, That in black ink 2 my love may still shine bright. * 1 Mother Nature's love is a dual one, first, through modesty, for her Phoenix Masque, and then for the author of the Masque. Cp. Drayton's Son., p. 246. 2 Cp. the acrostic running through the anti-masque, pp. 160-168. The Phoenix prophecy in Henry VIIL is also dual, Essex usurping, for his phcenix play, Elizabeth's emblem, cp. p. 220. Dualisms of the Exposition. "A double darkness drowns the mind." [Cp. note 2, p. 341.] !i. Personal Love Sonnets. "Only by dying born the very same." 2. A Dismantled Masque. , T^ u . \ i. The Sonnets of 1600, a Dismantled Masque. Nature s Phoenix j ^ ^^ Qur true Sha 9 k e . speare . !i. Prior to 1601, the Dismantled Masque of Lovers Labor's Won. 2. Subsequent to 1601, Essex and the Masque. ,, <-, r , i i. Willobie's Avisa. The Sonnets of 1609 \ 2< chester - s Phoenix . Loves Labor s Won; or, The Enacted Will. 29 SCENE I. Time to Nature. 4=Lvm. That god forbid, that made me first your slave, I should in thought control your times of pleasure, Or at your hand th' account of hours to crave, Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure! O, let me suffer, being at your beck, Th' imprison'd absence of your liberty; 1 And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check, Without accusing you of injury. Be where you list, your charter is so strong, That you yourself may privilege your time To what you will; to you it doth belong Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime. 3 I am to wait, though waiting so be hell: Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well. 1 Answering line 14, Son. B-LXV. ; i. e., while it is your pleasure to divulge in "black ink" [acrostic] the name of your chief interpreter, yet the requisite ab- sence springing from this liberty will prove an imprisonment to me. 2 The then disesteem of dramatic writing: By the way sweet Nature tell me this, Is this the Moly that is excellent, For strong Enchantments, and the Adder's hiss? Love' s Martyr, cp. frontispage 2. Of the man Shakespeare we know nothing. From the nature of dramatic writing the author's personality is inevitably veiled; no letter, no saying of his or description by any intimate friend, has been preserved, Songs and Son- nets of Shakespeare, F, T. Palgrave. 30 Shake-speare England's Ulysses, ACT I. Nature to Time. 5=xxm. As an imperfect actor on the stage, Who with his fear is put beside his part, Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage; Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart; So I, for fear of trust, forget to say The perfect ceremony of love's rite, And in mine own love's strength seem to decay, O'ercharg'd with burden of mine own love's might. O, let my books 1 be then the eloquence And dumb presagers of my speaking breast, Who plead for love and look for recompense, More than that tongue 2 that more hath more express'd. O, learn to read what silent love hath writ: To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit. 1 A play, cp. Ben Jonson's introduction to Sejanus, p. 222. Gosson in his Schoole of Abuse, contayning a pleasaunt invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such like Caterpillars of a Commonwealth, 1579, mentions "twoo prose Bookes plaied at the Belsauage;" and Hearne tells us, in a note at the end of William of Worcester, that he had seen "a MS. in the nature of a Play or Interlude, intitled, the Booke of Sir Thomas Moore." Richard Farmer, 1767. Cp. Smith* i Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare, p. 202. 3 Time's tongue, cp. Son. 2-xiv. 11. n, 12, and note 4, p. 121. Love s Labor s Won; or, The Enacted Will. 31 SCENE I. Time to Nature. 6==LVii. Being your slave, what should I do but tend Upon the hours and times of your desire ? I have no precious time at all to spend, Nor services to do, till you require. Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you, Nor think the bitterness of absence 2 sour When you have bid your servant once adieu; Nor dare I question with my jealous thought Where you may be, or your affairs suppose, But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought, Save, where you are, how happy you make those. So true a fool is love that in your Will, 2 Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill. \_Exeunt. 1 A time-server, "foul precurrer of the fiend." Cp. 1. 2, p. 261. 2 Cp. Note i, Son. 4-Lvm. It seems that Nature's "imprison'd absence" was to write a Will that in literature and law could not be paralleled or broken, but was to last "until the stars totter and are punctual no more in their arithmetic." 3 At a first view of Scene I., the reader will suspect that a blunder has been made in not treating the entire scene, or a part of it, as a Prologue, from the fact of the characters speaking of the play in the play but Jonson seems to have decided against the prologue. Cp. his Love* s Martyr lines, stanza 7, P- 397- 32 Shake-speare England's Ulysses, ACT I. SCENE II. MOTHER NATURE and THE GOD OF RARITY. Rarity. 1 7=Lxii. Sin of self-love 2 possesseth all mine eye, And all my soul, and all my every part; And for this sin there is no remedy, It is so grounded inward in my heart. Methinks no face so gracious is as mine, No shape so true, no truth of such account; And for myself mine own worth do define, As I all other in all worths surmount. But when my glass shows me myself indeed, Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity, Mine own self-love quite contrary I read; Self so self-loving were iniquity. 'Tis thee, 3 myself, 4 that for myself I praise, Painting my age with beauty of thy days. 1 Dr. Martineau, in his "Types of Ethical Theory," affirms that the assump- tion of Plato that Wonder is the primitive intellectual impulse; has, perhaps, its most emphatic expression in his Theatetus, 1550., where he says, Wonder is the special affection of a philosopher; for philosophy has no other starting point than this. Shake-speare in Baconian Light, Theobald, p. 80. Rarity the father of Wonder, "if a thing ba rare, though in kind it be no way extraordinary, yet it is wondered at ... for wonder is the child of Rar- ity. " Nov. Org., ii. xxxi., Francis Bacon. 2 Of his [Essex's] other writings, his "Darling Piece of Love and Self-love" is particularly named by Sir H. Wotten. It is, I believe, not extant. Lives of the Earls of Essex, Devereux, Vol. II. p. 195. 3 Mother Nature. * Nature's rare Pho?nix Masque, represented by the god of Rarity in Act I. Loves Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 33 SCENE II. Nature to the god of Rarity. 8==cv. Let not my love 1 be call'd idolatry, Nor my beloved as an idol show, Since all alike my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and ever so. Kind is my love to-day, to morrow kind, Still constant in a wondrous excellence; 2 Therefore my verse to constancy 3 confin'd, One thing expressing, leaves out difference. 'Fair, kind, and true' is all my argument, 'Fair, kind, and true' varying to other words; And in this change is my invention spent, Three 4 themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. 'Fair, kind, and true' have often liv'd alone, Which three, 5 till now, never kept seat in one. 1 This rare Phoenix Masque represented by the god of Rarity in Act I. 2 Cp. note 2, p. 37. 3 "And thou of time shall live beyond the end." Draytort 's Allusion to the Phoenix [Masque], 1594. Cp. p. 246. * The evolution of all things is explained by the play of three forces: Neces- sity, Love and Hatred. Empedocles. 5 For sources of the Masque's framework, see foundation lines, p. 253. Tower Green The space in front of the Chapel is called Tower Green, and was used as a burial ground; in the middle is a small square plot, paved with granite, showing the site on which stood at rare intervals the scaffold on which private executions took place. It has been specially paved by the orders of Her late Majesty. The following persons are known to have been executed on this spot: 1. Queen Anne Boleyn, igth May, 1536. 2. Margaret Countess of Salisbury, 2yth May, 1541. 3. Queen Katharine Howard, i3th February, 1542. 4. Jane Viscountess Rochford, i3th February, 1542. 5. Lady Jane [Grey], i2th February, 1554. 6. Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, 25th February, 1601. The executioner of the Earl of Essex was not able to do his work with less than three strokes, and was mobbed and beaten by the populace on his way home. The bodies of all six were buried in the Chapel of St. Peter. The Tozver of London, W. J. Loftie, p. 32. 34 Shake-speare England's Ulysses, ACT I. Rarity 1 to Nature. 9=xvi. But wherefore do not you a mightier way Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time ? And fortify yourself in your decay With means more blessed than my barren rhyme? Now stand you on the top of happy hours, And many maiden gardens yet unset With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers, Much liker than your painted counterfeit; 2 So should the lines of life that life repair, Which this time's pencil or my pupil pen, Neither in inward worth nor outward, fair, Can make you live yourself in eyes of men. To give away yourself keeps yourself still, And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill. 1 Beauty, Truth, and RARITY, Grace in all simplicity, Here enclosed in cinders lie. The rinvni\ and Turtle. [Cp. 1. i, p. 259.] 2 Point of contact between Loi>c ' s Marlvr and the Sonnets of 1609: When all the rest beheld this counterfeit, They knew the substance 1 was of rarer price: Some gaz'd upon her face, on which did wait As messengers, her two cellestial eyes; Hyes wanting fire, did give a lightning flame HOTJU much more would her eyes man's senses lame. Love's J\/itr/vr, Roberl Chester, p. 16. 3 The Masque is Nature's own drama. Cp. couplet, Son. y-Lxn. And he, the man whom Nature self had made. Spenser, 1591. [Cp. frontispage 10.] 1 The dialogue between Dame Nature, the Phoenix and the Turtle in Love's Martyr is play by example for this Sonnet Masque. One Phoenix born, another Phoenix burn. Love's Martyr, p. 181, Loves Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 35 SCENE II. Nature to Rarity. IO=LII. So am I as the rich, whose blessed key Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure, The which he will not every hour survey, For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure. Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare, Since, seldom coming, in the long year set, Like stones of worth they thinly placed are, Or captain jewels in the carcanet. So is the time that keeps you as my chest, } Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide, j To make some* special instant special blest, By new unfolding his imprison'd pride. 2 Blessed are you, whose worthiness gives scope, Being had, to triumph, being lack'd, to hope. 3 \_Exeunt. 1 Cp. Son. 3-i.xv., 1. 10. 2 Cp. note 2, p. 31. 3 As yet the one contemporary book [ IVillobiehis Avisa 1 ] which has ever been supposed to throw any direct or indirect light on the mystic matter remains as inaccessible and unhelpful to students as though it had never been published fifteen years earlier than the date of publication and four years before the book in which Meres notices the circulation of Shakespeare's "Sugared Sonnets among his private friends." A Studv of Shakespeare^ Swinburne^ 1879, p. 62. 1 Since this passage first went to press, I have received from Dr. Grosart the most happy news that he had procured a perfect copy of this precious volume, and will shortly add it to his occasional issues of golden waifs and strays forgotten by the ebb-tide of time. Not even the disinterment of Robert Chester's "glorified" poem [Love's Martyr, or Rosalin's Complaint], with its appended jewels of verse [The Phoenix and Turtle Dove] from Shakespeare's very hand and from others only less great than Shakespeare's, all now at last reset in their strange original framework, was a gift of greater price than this. A Study of Shakespeare \ r879, P- 63. 36 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT! SCENE III. THE GODS OF LOVE and DESIRE. Desire to Love. n=xxxvii. As a decrepit father takes delight To see his active child do deeds of youth, So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite, Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth. For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit, Or any of these all, or all, or more, Entitled in their parts, do crowned sit, I make my love engrafted to this store: So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised, Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give, That I in thy abundance am suffic'd And by a part of all thy glory live. Look, what is best, that best I wish in thee: This wish I have; then ten times happy me! The Phoenix and Turtle Dove. 1 "The genuineness of the contribution with Shakespeare's name subscribed is now generally admitted, though no successful attempt has yet been made to explain the allegory. In all probability the oc- casion and subject of the whole collection, which has so long baffled patient re- search, will some day be discovered, and Shakespeare's meaning will be clear. There is not much to 'be said in favor of the view that the Phoenix shadows forth Queen Elizabeth, and the Turtle-Dove typifies Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex." Shakespeare's Sonnets Etc.^ israet Qollancz, p. xxx, 1 Cp. William Shake-speare's Will, P. 257. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 37 SCENE III. Love to Desire. i2=LVi. Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said Thy edge should blunter be than appetite, Which but to-day by feeding is allay 'd, To-morrow sharpen'd in his former might: So, love, be thou; although to-day thou fill Thy hungry eyes even till they wink with fullness, To-morrow see again, and do not kill The spirit of Love with a perpetual dullness. * Let this sad int'rim like the ocean be Which parts the shore where two contracted new Come daily to the banks, that, when they see Return of love, more blest may be the view; Else call it winter, which being full of care Makes summer's welcome thrice more wish'd, more rare. 1 What may we wonder at? O where is learning? Where is all difference 'twixt the good and bad? Where is Appelles art? where is true cunning? Nay where is all the vertue may be had? Within my Turtle's 1 bosom, she refines, More then some loving perfect true devines. 2 Love" 1 s Martyr, Robert Chester, p. 135. 1 The Dramatis Persona? of the Masque. 2 Although Shake-speare has been accounted the "priest of all time," "the great teacher in all earthly affairs," yet I question whether his preaching is anywhere so pronounced as in this Sonnet Masque. 38 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT! Desire to Love. i3=XLin. When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see, For all the day they view things unrespected; But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee, And darkly bright are bright in dark directed. Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright, How would thy shadow's form form happy show To the clear day with thy much clearer light, When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so! How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made By looking on thee in the living day, When in dead night 1 thy fair imperfect shade Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay! All days are nights to see till I see thee, And nights, bright days when dreams do show thee me. 1 'In night' quoth she, 'desire sees best of all.' Venus and Adam's, 1. 720. In the case of the authorship of the Shakespearian Plays, there are circum- stances of difficulty which are common to both the candidates [Shakspere and Bacon] for this supreme distinction The contemporaries of the great dramatist were loud in their admiration of his work, but they say nothing of the man. They talk of the honey-tongued Shakespeare, but they do not tell us who the honey-tongued Shakespeare was, 1 .... whoever was entitled to that glorious name he never claimed it As to the Player, the great nobles who are said to have been his patrons are wholly silent. A.s.sv.v makes no men- tion of his name; Southampton never alludes to him; Pembroke was not ac- quainted with him. The Mystery of William Shakespeare, Judge Webb, Baconian. 1 Cp. The Buzzing Bee's Complaint^ p. 335. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 39 SCENE III. Love to Desire. i4=cxxix. Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjur'd murd'rous, bloody, full of blame. Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust; Enjoy'd no sooner, but despised straight, Past reason hunted, and no sooner had, Past reason hated; as a swallow'd bait, On purpose laid to make the taker mad; Mad in pursuit, and in possession so; Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; A bliss in proof, and prov'd, a very woe; Before, a joy propos'd; behind, a dream. All this the world well knows; yet none knows well To shun the heav'n that leads men to this hell. 1 1 The mounting Phoenix, 1 chast desire, '/'his Virtue Frani* d, to conquer Vice, This Not-seene Nimph, 1 this Heatlesse Fire, This Chast Found Bird, of noble price, Was nam'd Avisal by decree, That name and nature might agree. Henrv Willobie, 1594, p. 152. The time will come, when the unreasoning conservatism in the public mind on the subject of the authorship of "Shake-speare" will be universally regretted as a reflection upon the scholarship of our age. From the banks of the Mis- souri; 2 from the wheat fields of Minnesota; from far-off Melbourne; out of the heart of humanity somewhere; a response in due time is sure to come. Bac- on vs. Shaksperc, Edu'in Reed, Baconian. 1 Allegory for the Masque of Love's Labor's Won. z "In requital of your prophecy, hark you." Meas. for Meas. n. i. 40 Shake-speare England's Ulysses, ACT I. Desire to Love. 15 xxxvi. Let me confess that we two must be twain, Although our undivided loves are one; So shall those blots that do with me remain, Without thy help, by me be borne alone. In our two loves there is but one respect, Though in our lives a separable spite, Which though it alter not love's sole effect, Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight. I may not evermore acknowledge thee, Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame, ! Nor thou with public kindness honour me, Unless thou take that honour from thy name: But do not so; I love thee in such sort As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report. 1 How much more would her [the Masque] eyes man's senses tame. Robert Chester's Love's Martyr, p. 16. Can Britaine breede no Phoenix 1 bird, No constant feme in English field? To Greece to Rome, is there no third, Hath Albion none that will not yield? If this affirme you will not dare, Then let me Faith with Faith compare. Willobie' 1 s Ai'i'sa, 1 p. 152. 1 From the foot notes to Act I, the reader will perceive that Chester's Phoenix and Willobie' s Aviso, are neither bird, woman nor person but dual allegories for the dismantled Masque pub- lished under the name of Shake-speare' s Sonnets in 1609. Loves Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 41 SCENE III. Love to Desire. i6=xxxix. O, how thy worth with manners may I sing, When thou art all the better part of me? What can mine own praise to mine own self bring? And what is 't but mine own when I praise thee? Even for this let us divided live, And our dear love lose name of single one, That by this separation I may give That due to thee which thou deserv'st alone. O absence, what a torment wouldst thou prove, Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave To entertain the time with thoughts of love, Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive, And that thou teachest how to make one twain, By praising him here who doth hence remain! Penelope must now contend For chaste renown: whose constant heart, Both Greeks and Latines all commend With poore Aviso, new upstart, I scorne to speake much in this case, Her prayses Rivall is 1 so base. Henry Willobie? 1594. 1 That is, "Rivall's prayses are." In one sense, no doubt, Shakespere is unequal as life is. He is not always at the tragic heights of Othello and Hamlet, at the comic raptures of Falstaff and Sir Toby, at the romantic ecstasies of Romeo and Titania. Neither is life. But he is always and this is the extraordi- nary and almost inexplicable difference, not merely between him and all his contemporaries, but between him and all other writers at the height of the Particular situation. History of English Literature, Saintsbury, p. 164. 2 For the identity of this hitherto unknown and never-again-heard-of poet [except in Wtllo- bie's Avz'sa], see pen names of Essex, frontispiece. 42 Shake-spectre England' s Ulysses, ACT I Desire to Love. i7=Lxxiv. But be contented: when that fell arrest Without all bail shall cany me away, My life hath in this line some interest, Which for memorial still -with thee shall stay. When thou reviewest this, thou dost review The very part was consecrate to thee: The earth can have but earth, which is his due; My spirit is thine, the better part of me: So then thou hast but lost the dregs 1 of life, The prey of worms, my body being dead, The coward conquest of a wretch's knife, Too base of thee to be remembered. The worth of that is that which it contains, And that is this, and this with thee remains. 1 The vanity and malignity of the affections, leave nothing but impotency and confusion. Int. of Nature, Francis Bacon, p. 67. But yet, if further you will have mv conceit , the order, words, and frame of the whole discourse, force me to think that which I am unwilling to say: That this name insinuateth, that there was never such a woman scene, as here is de- scribed. For the word A'visa is compounded fafter the Greeke manner] of the privative particle A, which signifieth Non: and of the participle J7su*\ /V.sv/, Ft sum, which signifieth, Seene: So that .-ITI'SK should signifie [by this] as much as Non Visa, that is: Such a woman as was never seene. Which if it bee true, then A visa 1 is yet unborne, that must rejoyce in this prayse. Tlic Apolo^fe, Willobie 1 s Avisa, p. 145. 1 Allegory for the Masque of Love's Labor 1 s Won. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 43 SCENE III. Love to Desire, i S=CXLIX. Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not, When I against myself 1 with thee partake? Do I not think on thee, when I forgot Am of myself, all tyrant for thy sake? Who hateth thee that I do call my friend? On whom frown'st thou that I do fawn upon? Nay, if thou lower'st on me, do I not spend Revenge upon myself with present moan? What merit do I in myself respect, That is so proud thy service to despise, When all my best doth worship thy defect, Commanded by the motion of thine eyes? But, love, hate on, for now I know thy mind, Those that can see thou lov'st, and I am blind. 1 She quels by Reason filthy lust, Shee chokes by Wisdome leude Desires, Shee shunnes the baite that fondlings trust, From Sathan Heights she quite retires, Then let A^'isd's l prayse be spread, When rich and poore, when all are dead. Henry Wityobie, 1594, p. 154. From Sappho and Solomon to Shelley and Mr. Swinburne, many bards have spoken excellently of love: but what they have said could be cut out of Shake- spere's Sonnets better said than they have said it, and yet enough remain to fur- nish forth the greate.st of poets. History of English Literature, Saint sbury, p. 164. 1 Allegory, The Masque of Love's Labor's Won. 44 Shake-spectre England 's Ulysses, ACT I. Desire to Love. i9=cxxxvi. If thy soul check thee that I come so near, Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy Will, ! And 'Will,' 2 thy soul knows, is admitted there; Thus far for love, my love-suit, sweet, fulfil. 'Will' 3 will fulfil the treasure of thy love, Ay, fill it full with wills, 4 and my will 5 one. In things of great receipt with ease we prove Among a number one is reckon'd none: Then in the number let me pass untold, Though in thy store's account I one must be; For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold That nothing me, a something sweet to thee: Make but my name thy love, and love that still, And then thou lov'st me, for my name is Will. \_Exeunt. To what depth of vapidity Shakespeare and contemporary funsters could sink is nowhere better illustrated than in the favour they bestowed on efforts to ex- tract amusement from the parities and disparities of form and meaning subsist- ing between the words 'will' and 'wish.' r Fhe 'iri/T Sonnets, Sidney Lee, p. 418. 1 Poet, interpreter of Love's "blind soul." 'Willy' was a general name for a Shepherd; i. e., poet. Shakespeare's Son- nets, Massey, p. 511. Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late. Tears of the Muses, Spenser. The characters in the Masque call themselves Poets seven times and Muses, fifteen times. The goddess Hope designates Knowledge as a god in Son. 63-cx. 2 The poet Desire, "thy soul knows, is admitted there." 3 The poet Desire. * Self-will and good will. 5 Wish, good will. 6 Love only my name [something less than loving myself] and then thou lovest me, for my name is Will . . . . i. e., all Desire. Shakespeare" 1 s Sonnets, DOTJU- den, p. 238. Loves Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 45 SCENE IV. MOTHER NATURE, FATHER TIME and THE GODS OF RARITY, LOVE and DESIRE. Nature to Rarity. 2o=Lxiv. When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd The rich proud cost of outworn buried age ; When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz'd And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the watery main. Increasing store with loss, and loss with store; When I have seen such interchange of state, Or state itself confounded to decay; Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, That Time will come and take my love away. This thought is as a death, which cannot choose But weep to have that which it fears to lose. In Lavine land though Livie boast, There have beene scene a Constant Dame: Though Rome lament that she have lost The garland of her rarest fame Yet now ye see that here is found, As great a faith in English ground. 1 Though Collatine have dearly bought, To high renowne a lasting life, And found, that most in vaine have sought, To have a faire and constant wife Yet Tarquine pluckt his glistering grape, And Shake-speare 2 paints poore Lucrece rape. Willobie 1 s Amsa, 1594, P- r 5- 1 Aviso., allegory for this Sonnet Masque. 2 The first mention of Shake-speare's name in literature. 46 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT I. Time to Rarity. 2i=xi. As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow'st, In one of thine from that which thou departest; And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow' st Thou may'st call thine when thou from youth convertest. Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase; Without this, folly, age, and cold decay: If all were minded so, the times should cease And threescore year would make the world away. Let those whom Nature hath not made for store, Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish: Look, whom she best endow'd, she gave the more; Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish; She carv'd thee for her seal, and meant thereby Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die. It seems certain that the author of the wondrous plays was one of the noblest of men, and yet it is true we know but little of Shakespeare; no letter of his to any human being has been found, and no line written by him can be shown; but we do know Bacon, and we know that he was a time-server of church and king and a corrupt judge and that 'he could not have written these plays conse- quently they must have been written by -a comparatively unknown man that is to say, by a man who was known by no other writings. Shakespeare A Lecture, Robert G. Ingersoll, Shaksperian. Loves Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 47 SCENE IV. Nature to Rarity. 22=LXiii. Against my love shall be, as I am now, ) With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn; ) ] When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn Hath travell'd on to age's steepy night, And all those beauties whereof now he's king Are vanishing or vanish'd out of sight, Stealing away the treasure of his spring; For such a time do I now fortify Against confounding age's cruel knife, That he shall never cut from memory My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life: His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, And they shall live, and he in them still green. 1 For Shake-speare's indebtedness to Sophocles in the use of irony, see Stud- ies in Shakespeare, J. Ckurton Collins, p. 92. 3 Cp. note i, p. 33. Let wise Ulysses constant mate, Vaunt noble birth her richest boast, Yet will her challenge come too late, When pride and wealth have done their most, For this Aviso, from above Came down, whose sire is mighty Jove. 1 Willobie 1 s Avisa, p. 137. To be told that he played a trick on his brother player in a licentious amour, or that he died of a drunken frolic .... does not exactly inform us of the man who wrote "Lear." Ilallam. 1 Cp. note 2, p. 37. and use of the word in Hamlet, note 2, p. 237- 48 Shake-speare England ' s Ulysses, ACT I. Time to Desire. 1 23= vm. Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly ? Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy: Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly, Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy? If the true concord of well-tuned sounds, By unions married, do offend thine ear, They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear. Mark how one string, sweet husband to another, Strikes each in each by mutual ordering; Resembling sire, and child, and happy mother, Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing: Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one, Sings this to thee: 'thou single wilt prove none.' 1 If music be the food of love, play on: Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken; and so die. Twelfth Night, i. i. 1 Let the priest in surplice white, That defunctive music can, Be the death-divining Swan Lest the requiem lack his right. The Phoenix and Turtle Dove. There can be no doubt that Henry Willobie's alleged authorship is a literary hoax, and that the publication contained matter of a satirical and perhaps libel- lous nature; hence in 1596 it was "called in." Shakespeare's Sonnets, Israel Gollancz, p. xviii. Love s Labor s IVon; Or, The Enacted Will. 49 SCENE IV. Nature to Love. 24=ix. Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye, That thou consum'st thyself in single life? Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die, The world will wail thee, like a makeless wife; The world will be thy widow and still weep, That thou no form of thee has left behind, } When every private widow well may keep, By children's eyes her husband's shape in mind. Look, what an unthrift in the world doth spend, Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it; But beauty's waste hath in the world an end, And kept unus'd, the user so destroys it. No love toward others in that bosom sits . That on himself such murd'rous shame commits. \_Exeunt. 1 Cp. note i, p. 47. Doubt is justifiable as to whether the story of "Avisa" and her lovers is not fic- titious. In a preface signed Hadrian Dorell, the writer, after mentioning that the alleged author [Willobie] was abroad, discusses somewhat enigmatically whether or no the work is "a poetical fiction." In a new edition of 1596 the same editor decides the question in the affirmative. A Life of William Shakespeare, Sidney Lee, p. 157. 50 Shake-spear e England 's Ulysses, ACT II. MUSES REPRESENTED. WONDER TIME REASON ENVY NATURE. SCENE I. Enter THE GODDESS REASON and THE GOD OF WONDER. Wonder. 1 25=0x1. Love is too young to know what conscience is; Yet who knows not conscience is born of love ? 2 Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss, Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove. For, thou betraying me, I do betray My nobler part to my gross body's treason; My soul doth tell my body that he may Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason; But, rising at thy name, doth point out thee, As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride, He is contented thy poor drudge to be, To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side. . No want of conscience hold it that I call Her 'love' for whose dear love I rise and fall. 1 Wonder is the child of Rarity. Nov. Org,, xxxi. 2 Those lips [Reason's] that Love' sown hand did make, Cp. Son, 47-cxLV. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 5 1 SCENE I. Reason. 26=0x1. O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide, Than public means which public manners breeds. ! Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 3 And almost thence my nature is subdued ) To what it works in, like the dyer's hand: f 3 Pity me then and wish I w^ere renew'd; Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection; No bitterness that I will bitter think, Nor double penance, to correct correction. Pity me then, dear friend, arid I assure ye Even that your pity is enough to cure me. 1 Cp. Son. 42-cxxxvn. 11. 6 and 10. 2 O strange excuse, When reason is the bawd to lust's abuse. I'eniis (tnd Adonis, 1. 791. 3 It is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things: on the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe, Nov. Org., XLI. 52 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT II, }\\mdcr. 27==xxxv. No more be griev'd at that which thou hast done : Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud; Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. All men make faults, and even I in this, Authorizing thy trespass with compare, Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss, Excusing thy sins, more than thy sins are; For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense Thy adverse party is thy advocate And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence: Such civil war is in my love and hate, That I an accessary needs must be To that sweet thief which sourlv robs from me. 1 Feed yourselves with questioning, That reason wonder may diminish. As You Like It, v. 4, 1. 145, Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 53 SCENE I. Reason. 28=LX. Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown 'd, Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight, And Time that gave doth now his gift confound. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth And delves the parallels in beauty's brow, Feeds on the rarities 1 of nature's truth, And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow: And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand, Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand. 1 The dissipation of wonder by the advent of knowledge. . . . Wonder is the vestibule of knowledge the sentiment that is left when we pass beyond the porch and enter the dwelling Shakespeare in Kaconiun Light, Theo- bald, pp. 83, 84. 54 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT II Wonder. 29=cxxv. Wer't aught to me I bore the canopy, With my extern the outward honouring. Or laid great bases for eternity, Which prove more short than waste or ruining? Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour Lose all, and more, bv paying too much rent, For compound sweet foregoing simple savour. Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent? 1 No, let me be obsequious in thy heart, And take thou my oblation, poor but free, Which is not mix'd with seconds, ~ knows no art, But mutual render, only me for thee. Hence, thou suborn'd 3 informer! a true soul When most impeach'd stands least in thy control. 1 The characters being Pythagoreans, H'ottt/t-r was AWr/'/v in Act I. and saw Love and Desire dismissed by Time and Xature. Act I. Scene IV. 2 The god of Wonder being the favorite of Xalure, the antithesis demands that the goddesses Reason and Envy should be the fools of Time and they are so shown in Son. 32-cxxiv. 3 Cp. Son. 43-cLii., 1. 6. .... She hath prosperous art, When she will play with reason and discourse. Measure for Measure, i. 2, 1. 190. Yea, every idle, nice, and wanton reason. Second Henry //'. , iv. i, 1. 191. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 55 SCENE I. Reason. 3O=cxLvi. Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, Trick'd 1 by these rebel powers 2 that thee array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end? Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more: So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, And death once dead, there's no more dying then. 3 ^Curtain. 1 Trick'd [adorned], the missing word is supplied by Hamlet. Cp. note i, p. 27. 2 Time and Reason. Cp. Son. 28 i.x. 11. 9, 10. Be wary then; best safety lies in fear: Youth to itself rebels, though none else near. Hamlet, i. 3, 1. 44. 3 The philosophic complexion of the Masque is nowhere better illustrated than in this Sonnet. 56 Shake-speare England* s Ulysses, ACT II, SCENE II. Enter MOTHER NATURE and FATHER TIME. Time. 3i=LTX. If there be nothing new, but that which is Hath been before, how are our brains beguil'd, Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss The second burthen of a former child! 1 O, that record could with a backward look, Even of five hundred courses of the sun, Show me your image in some antique book, \ Since mind 2 at first in character was done! j That I might see what the old world could say To this composed wonder of your frame; Whe'r we are mended, or whe'r better they, Or whether revolution be the sam.e. O, sure I am, the wits of former days To subjects worse have given admiring praise. 1 In Act I. the god of Rarity was the favorite of Xaturc. In Act II. envious and servile Time being the disturbing element in the play, naturally has an aver- sion to Wonder, the child of Rarity. 2 It must be born in mind that ths characters in tha play are the gods and goddesses of Homer in extenso [Cp. Dedicatory Son. LXXVII., 11. 9 to 14,], and that the play is partly founded on the lines of Aristophanes. "There were no gods 'til Love mingled all things; and by the mixture of the different with the different Heaven came to be, and Ocean, and Earth and the undying race of all the blessed gods." The ardent love between the characters is merely Platonic, unmixed with carnal desire and regards the Mind only. All is mind, As far from spot, as pDssible definir'-;. John Marston, in I.'n'c s J//r.'vr, p 187. 15 Cp. Sen. 9j-cvi. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 57 SCENE II. Nature. 32=cxxiv. If my dear love 1 were but the child of state, It 2 might for Fortune's bastard be unfather'd, As subject to Time's love or to Time's hate, Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather'd. No, iuwas builded far from accident; It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls Under the blow of thralled discontent, Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls: It fears not policy, that heretic, Which works on leases of short-numb 'red hours, But all alone stands hugely politic, That it nor grows with heat nor drowns with showers. To this I witness call the fools of Time, 3 \Vhich die for oodness, who have liv'd for crime. 4 t Nature* 1 The god of ll'omlcr. 2 The Sonnets do not speak to beings of flesh and blood. fiarnstorfi. :! The goddesses Reason and Enry. Cp. note 2, p. 54. 4 And he, the man whom Nature's self had made 7'o mock herself, and truth to imitate. 'fears of the Muses, Spenser, 1591. 58 Shake- sp ear e England' s Ulysses, ACT II. Time. 33=xxi. So is it not with me as with that Muse 1 Stirr'd by a painted beauty 2 to his verse, Who heaven itself for ornament doth use And every fair with his fair doth rehearse; Making a couplement of proud compare, With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems, I With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems. O, let me, true in love, but truly write, \_Enter Envy. And then believe me, my love 4 is as fair As any mother's 5 child, though not so bright As those gold candles fix'd in heaven's air: Let them say more that like of hearsay well; 6 I will not praise that purpose not to sell. 1 The god of Wonder. 2 The goddess Reason. The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art, Is not more ugly. Hamlet, in. i. Reason is the bawd to lust's abuse. I'enus and Adonis, 1. 791. 3 Cp. Son. 2y-xxxv. 11. 2-4. 4 The goddess Envy. 5 Referring to Xaturc. c In Sons, ai-xi. and 84-civ. it is shown that the characters [excepting Time and Nature} are Pythagoreans, [preserving the gift of memory after death]. In "hearsay well" Time is referring to the formula "He said it" adopted by the diciples of Pythagoras, when they alluded to any of the doctrines of their teacher. Cp. Plato's Works [Bohn's Libraries], Vol. VI. p. 239. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 59 SCENE II. Envy. 34=vcxxm. How oft, when thou, my music 1 music play'st, 2 Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st The wiry concord that mine ear confounds, Do I envy those jacks 3 that nimble leap To kiss the tender inward of thy hand, Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap, At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand! To be so tickled, they would change their state And situation with those dancing chips, O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait, Making dead wood more blest than living lips; Since saucy jacks so happy are in this, Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss. 1 Is it that only rhythmical music is envied or does she answer the last six lines of Son. 33-xxi.? 2 Explained psychologically by Beauty to Ambition, 1. n, Son. in-cn. "But that wild music burthens every bough." Kni'y being the grandmother of Ambition, this is one of the secrets of Shake- speare's character building revealed in the Dramatis Personae of the Masque. When we think a thing, we, ordinary men, we only think a part of it; we see one side, some isolated mark, sometimes two or three marks together; for what is beyond, our sight fails us; the infinite network of its infinitely-complicat- ed and multiplied properties escapes us ... We are like tyro naturalists . . . who, wishing to represent an animal, recall its name and ticket in the museum, with some indistinct image of its hide and figure . . . Picture to yourself, the complete idea, that is, an inner representation, so abundant and full that it ex- hausts all the properties and relations of the object, all its inward and outward aspects . . . and beyond this its instincts, their composition, their causes, their history .... there you have the artist's conception Shakespeare's. English Literature, Taine, Vol. I. p. 339. 3 Keys. 60 Shake-speare England ' s Ulysses, ACT II, Time. 35=cxxxvm. When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutor'd youth, Unlearned in the world's false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue: On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd. But wherefore says she not she is unjust And wherefore say not I that I am old? O, love's best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love loves not to have years told: Therefore I lie 1 with her and she with me, And in our faults by lies we rlatter'd be. [ Curtain. 1 I smilingly credit her falsities. Thus, on both sides, we suppress the real facts, and I lie to her, while she lies to me, and so by reciprocal falsehoods, we flatter each other's vanities. ./ Xcic Study of Shakespeare s Sonnets, dod-^-in, p. 140. Love 's Labor's Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 61 SCENE III. Enter THE GODDESS REASON and THY, GOD OF WONDER. Wonder. 36=XLVin. How careful was I, when I took my way, Each trifle under truest bars to thrust, That to my use it might unused stay From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust ! But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are, Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief, Thou, best of dearest and mine only care, Art left the prey of every vulgar thief. ! Thee have I not lock'd up in any chest, Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art, Within the gentle closure of my breast, From whence at pleasure thou may'st come and part; And even thence thou wilt be stol'n, I fear. For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear. 1 O! reason not the need; our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous. Lear, n. 4, 1. 267, 62 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT II, Reason. 37=XLiv. If the dull substance of my flesh were thought, Injurious distance should not stop my way; For then despite of space I would be brought, From limits far remote, where thou dost stay. 1 No matter then although my foot did stand Upon the farthest earth remov'd from thee; For nimble thought can jump both sea and land As soon as think the place where he would be. But, ah ! thought kills me that I am not thought To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone, But that, so much of earth and water wrought, I must attend time's leisure with my moan, Receiving nought by elements so slow But heavy tears, badges of either's woe. 1 Things which really call for Wonder .... if we have them by us in com- mon use, are but slightly noticed .... among the singularities of nature I place the sun, the moon, the magnet, and the like. .\ '<>?'. ()>',ff., Book II., xxxi, Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted . Will. 63 SCENE III. Wonder. 38=L. How heavy do I journey on the way, When what I seek, my weary travel's end, Doth teach that ease and that repose to say, 'Thus far the miles are measur'd from thy friend!' The beast that bears me, tired with my woe, Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me. As if by some instinct the wretch did know His rider lov'd not speed, being made from thee: The bloody spur cannot provoke him on That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide; Which heavily he answers with a groan, More sharp to me than spurring to his side: For that same groan doth put this in my mind; My grief lies onward and my joy behind. ! 1 When wonder ceases, knowledge begins. Shakespeare in Baconian Light , Theobald, p. 80, 64 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT II. 39 XLV. The other two, slight air, and purging lire, ' Are both with thee, wherever I abide; The first my thought, the other my desire, These present-absent with swift motion slide. For when these quicker elements are gone In tender embassy of love to thee, My life, being made of four, ~ with two alone Sinks down to death, oppress'd with melancholy; Until life's composition be recur'd By those swift messengers return'd from thee, Who e'en but now come back again, assur'd Of thy fair health, recounting it to me: This told, I joy ; but then no longer glad, I send them back again and straight grow sad. 1 Chiding that tongue [ Reason's} that ever sweet Was used in giving gentle doom. Son. 47-cxLV. 1. 6. 2 Does not our life consist of the four elements. Tu'dft/i \ifffrti ii. 3. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 65 SCENE III. Wonder. 40=0 Thus can my love excuse the slow offence Of my dull bearer when from thee I speed: From where thou art, why should I haste me thence? Till I return, of posting is no need. O, what excuse will my poor beast then find, When swift extremity can seem but slow? Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind; In winged speed no motion shall I know: Then can no horse with my desire keep pace; Therefore desire, of perfect'st love being made, Shall neigh, no dull flesh in his fiery race; But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade; Since from thee going he went wilful-slow, Towards thee I '11 run, and give him leave to go. The only bird alone that Nature frames, When weary of the tedious life she lives, By fire dies, yet finds new life in flames: Her ashes to her shape new essence gives. For hapless loe even with my own desires I figured on the table of my heart, The goodliest shape that the world's eye admires, And so did perish by my proper art. And still I toil to change t,he marble breast Of her whose sweet Idea I adore, Yet cannot find her breath unto my rest; Hard is her heart, and woe is me therefore. O blessed he that joyes his stone and art, Unhappy I to love a stony heart. 1 Samuel Daniel, 1591 [Cp. Grosart" 1 s Daniel, Vol. I. p. 25] 1 The first allusion in literature to this Phoenix Masque, 66 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT II, Reason to Wonder. 41=0111. Alack, what poverty my muse brings forth, That having such a scope to show her pride, The argument all bare is of more worth Than when it hath my added praise beside! O, blame me not, if I no more can write! Look in your glass, * and there appears a face That over-goes my blunt invention quite, Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace. 2 Were it not sinful then, striving to mend, To mar the subject that before was well? For to no other pass my verses tend, Than of your graces and your gifts to tell; And more, much more, than in my verse can sit Your own glass 1 shows you when you look in it. \_Exeunt. 1 Cp. Dedicatory Son. LXXVII. 1. i. 2 The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays ir- regularly, distorts and discolours the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it. Nov. Org., XLI, Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 67 SCENE IV. Enter THE GODDESS ENVY. [THE GODDESS REASON in the background.] Envy. 42=cxxxvn. Thou blind fool, Love, 1 what dost thou to mine eyes, That they behold, and see not what they see? They know what beauty is, see where it lies, Yet what the best is, take the worst to be. If eyes corrupt by over-partial looks, Be anchor'd in the bay where all men ride, 2 Why of eyes' falsehood hast thou forged hooks, Whereto the judgment of my heart is tied? Why should my heart think that a several plot Which my heart knows the wide world's common place ? Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not, To put fair truth upon so foul a face? 3 In things right true my heart and eyes have err'd, And to this false plague 4 are they now transferr'd. \^Reason comes forward. 1 Cp. note 2, p. 56. 2 Wherefore should I stand in the plague of custom. Lear, i. 2. 3 Cp. note i, p. 69. 4 A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin. Troihis and Crestda, in. 3. If reasons were as plenty as blackberries, I would give no man a reason, First Henry IV., n. 4. 68 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT II Reason. 43=CLii. In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn, * But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing; In act thy bed- vow broke 2 and new faith torn In vowing new hate after new love bearing. But why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee, When I break twenty? I am perjur'd 3 most; For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee, And all my honest faith in thee is lost: For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness, Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy, And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness, 4 Or made them swear against the thing they see; For I have sworn thee fair; more perjur'd I, To swear against the truth so foul a lie! 1 Scene I., Reason is in love with Wonder. 2 Scene II., Envy is in love with Time, 8 Cp. Son. 29-cxxv., 1. 13. * Cp. Son. 14-cxxix, Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 69 SCENE IV. Envy. 44=cxLii. Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate, Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving: O, but with mine compare thou thine own state, And thou shalt find it merits not reproving; Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine, That have profan'd their scarlet ornaments, And seal'd false bonds of love as oft as mine, Robb'd others' beds' revenues "of their rents. Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lov'st those Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee: Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows Thy pity may deserve to pitied be. If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide, By self-example may'st thou be denied! 1 Reason is the bawd to lust's abuse. Venus and Adonis, 1. 791. Time's office is to finish the hate of foes; To eat up errors by opinion bred, Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed. Lucrece, \. 937. 70 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT II Reason. 45=LXVi. Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry, As, to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd, And strength by limping sway disabled, And art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill, And simple truth miscall'd simplicity, And captive good attending captain ill: Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone, Save that, to die, I leave my love alone. O, Opportunity, thy guilt is great! 'Tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, &!(. Reason. Thou makest the vestal violate her oath; Thou blowest the fire when temperance is thaw'd; Thou smother 'st honesty, thou murder 'st troth; Thou foul abettor! thou notorious bawd! Thou plantest scandal, and displaces! laud: Thou ravisher, thou traitor, thou false thief, Thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief. Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame, Thy private feasting to a public fast, Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name, Thy sugar'd tongue to bitter wormwood taste: Thy violent vanities can never last: How comes it then vile Opportunity, Being so bad, such numbers seek for thee? Lucrece, 11. 876-896. Love s Labor s Won; Or, J^he Enacted Will. 71 SCENE IV. Envy. 46=cxLvn. My love is as a fever, longing still For that which longer nurseth the disease, Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please. My reason, 1 the physician to my love, Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, Hath left me, and I desperate now approve Desire is death, which physic did except. Past cure I am, now Reason is past care, And frantic-mad with evermore unrest; My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are, At random from the truth vainly express'd; For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night. \_Enter Dame Nature. 1 Though Love use Reason for his physician, he admits him not for his coun- sellor. Merry Wives, n. i. Hereat, Reason, seated on the top of the globe, as in the brain, or highest part of man, figured in a venerable personage, her hair white, and trailing to her waist, crowned with light, her garments blue, and semined with stars, girded unto her with a white band filled with arithmetical figures, in one hand bearing a lamp, in the other a bright sword, descended and spake. The Masque of Hymen, Ben Jonson. 72 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT II Envy to Nature. 47=cxLV. Those lips 1 that Love's own hand did make Breath'd forth the sound that said 'I hate' To me that languish'd for her sake; But when she saw my woeful state, Straight in her heart did mercy come, Chiding that tongue 1 that ever sweet Was used in giving gentle doom, And taught it thus anew to greet; 'I hate' she alter'd with an end. That follow'd it as gentle day Doth follow night, who like a fiend From heaven to hell is flown away; 'I hate' from hate away she threw, And saved my life, saying 'not you.' 2 1 Reason' s. Reason in Act II. is the daughter of I.oi'e in Act I. 8 This Sonnet, though not in the rhyming decasyllabic, is intensly dramatic. Wyndham says of it, "but little in it that recalls Shakespeare's hand." 1 Godwin, more pronounced, claims, "Sonnet CXLV. is not a Sonnet at all, but a bit of oc- tosyllabic doggerel, which a writer of Shakespeare's judgment would not have retained in the collection." 2 1 Shakespeare's Poems, George Wyndhaiti, p. 331. 2 A New Study of The Sonnets of Shakespeare, Parke Godwin, p. 16. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 73 SCENE IV. Reason to Nature. 48=0x1,111. Lo! as a careful housewife runs to catch One of her feath'red creatures 1 broke away, Sets down her babe and makes all swift dispatch In pursuit of the thing she would have stay; Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent To follow that which flies before her face, Not prizing her poor infant's discontent; So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee, 2 Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar b'ehind; But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me, And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind; So will I pray that thou may'st have thy 'Will,' 3 If thou turn back, and my loud crying still. 1 Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers^ if the rest of my fortunes 2 turn turk with me with two provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fel- lowship in a cry of players, sir? Hamlet, in. 11. There is more however, in Hamlet's words than this making fun of the 'feathers;' something covertly concealed under tJie rose that no one has yet espied. If we look intently we shall see the snake stir beneath the flowers; a subtle snake of irony with the most wicked glitter in its eye as though the very devil had broken loose in the theatre, and was hiding his cloven foot in a player's shoe. Shakespeare' s Sonnets, Gerald Massey, pp. 518, 519. 2 The goddess Envy. 3 Cp. note i, p. 31. 1 The twenty-two characters in the Masque are muses or gods. 2 Making his fortunes swim In the full flood of her admir'd perfection. Ben. Johnson in Lwe's Martyr, p. 193. The puzzle of history, called 'Essex,' was well calculated to become that problem of the critic, called 'Hamlet.' Shakespeare's Sonnets, Massey, p. 483. 74 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT II, Nature to Reason. 4.9 vi. Then let not winter's ragged hand deface In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd: Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-kill'd. That use is not forbidden usury Which happies those that pay the willing loan ; That's for thyself to breed another thee, Or ten times happier, be it ten for one; Ten times thyself were happier than thou art, If ten of thine ten times refigur'd thee: Then what could death do, if thou shouldst depart, Leaving thee living in posterity ? Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir. Of bloody wars, nor of the sack of Troy, Of Pryam's murdered sons, nor Dido's fall, Of Helen's rape, by Paris Trojan boy, Of Caesar's victories, nor Pompey's thrall, Of Lucrece rape, being ravished by a king, Of none of these, of sweet conceit I sing. v Robert Chester, 1601. 1 Cp. 1. 5, Essex verse, p. 17. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 75 SCENE IV. Envy to Reason. 5o=LXXii. O, lest the world should task you to recite What merit liv'd in me, that you should love After my death, dear love, forget me quite, For you in me can nothing worthy prove; Unless you would devise some virtuous lie, To do more for me than mine own desert, And hang more praise upon deceased I Than niggard truth would willingly impart: O, lest your true love may seem false in this, That you for love speak well of me untrue, My name be buried where my body is, And live no more to shame nor me nor you. For I am sham'd by that which I bring forth, And so should you, to love things nothing worth. \^Enter Time and Wonder. Then Gentle reader over-read my muse, That arms herself to fly a lowly flight, My untuned stringed verse do thou excuse, That may perhaps accepted, yield delight: 1 I cannot clime in praises to the sky, Lest falling, I be drown'd with infamy. Mea mecum Porto. Robert Chester in Love's Martyr, p. 6. 1 Cp. note i from Saintsbury, p. 41. 76 Shake-speare England *s Ulysses, ACT II, Time to Wonder. 51=11. When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, Thy youth's proud livery, so gaz'd on now, Will be a tatter'd weed of small worth held: Then being ask'd, where all thy beauty lies, Where all the treasure of thy lusty days; To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes, Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise. How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use, If thou couldst answer, 'This fair child of mine 1 Shall sum my count and make my old excuse, ' Proving his beauty by succession thine! This were to be new made when thou art old, And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold. 1 Wonder is the seed of Knowledge. Adv. of'L., I. 95. Is this the honor of a haughty thought, For lovers hap to have all spite of love? 1 Hath wretched skill thus blinded reason taught, /// this conceit* such discontent to move? That beauty so is of herself bereft, That no good hope of aught good hap is left. A Loyal Appeal in Courtesy, fissex, 1601. 1 The 1609 arrangement of the Sonnets, a Cretan labyrinth. 2 The Masque of Love's Labor's Won. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 77 SCENE IV. Nature to Wonder. 52=xm. O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are No longer yours than you yourself here live: Against this coming end you should prepare, And your sweet semblance to some other give. So should that beauty which you hold in lease Find no determination; then you were Yourself again after yourself's decease, When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear. Who lets so fair a house fall to decay, * Which husbandry in honour might uphold Against the stormy gusts of winter's day And barren rage of death's eternal cold? O, none but unthrifts! Dear, my love, you know You had a father; 2 let your son 3 say so. [ Curtain. 1 Cp. Sons. 29-cxxv. 1, i; 3o-cxLVi. 1. 6; 56-x. 1. 7. 2 The god of Rarity in Act I. 3 The god of Knowledge in Act III. Nor all the Ladies of the Thespian Lake, [Though they were crushed into one form] could make A beauty of that merit, that should take Our muse up by commission: No, we bring Our own true fire; 1 Now our thought takes wing And now an Epode to deep ears we sing. Prczludium,BenJonson in Love" 1 s Martyr,^. 190. 1 The Phoenix Masque of Love's Labor's Won. 78 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT III. MUSES REPRESENTED. KNOWLEDGE TIME GRACE HOPE NATURE. SCENE I. Enter DAME NATURE, FATHER TIME and THE GOD OF KNOWLEDGE. Nature to Knowledge. 53=1. From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty's rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed'st thy light's flame 1 with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament, And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content, And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding: Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee. 1 The angel of light that was, when he presumed before his fall, said within himself, I will ascend and be like unto the Highest; not God, but the highest. To be like to God in goodness, was no part of his emulation; knowledge [be- ing in creation an angel of light] was not the want which did most solicit him; only because he was a minister he aimed at a supremacy; therefore his climb- ing or ascension was turned into a throwing doum or precipitation. Int. of Nature, Francis Bacon, p. 27. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 79 SCENE I. Knowledge 1 to Nature. 54=LXXV. So are you to my thoughts as food to life, Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground; And for the peace of you I hold such strife As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found; Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure, Now counting best to be with you alone, Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure Sometime all full with feasting 2 on your sight, And by and by clean starved for a look; Possessing or pursuing no delight, Save what is had or must from you be took. Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, Or gluttoning on all, or all away. 1 Let the bird of loudest lay, On the sole Arabian 1 tree, Herald sad, and trumpet be, To whose sound chaste wings obey. The Phoenix and Turtle Dove. 2 Knowledge is the food of the mind. Adv. of L., Vol. I. part 3, p. 260. 1 Arabian Phoenix, a mythical bird of which only one specimen could be alive at a time. After living 500 years it erected for itself a funeral pyre, which the sun ignited, and out of the ashes of the former bird sprang a new one. The Phoenix was supposed to inhabit the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, called Razin, on the site of the Garden of Eden. Old Fortu- natus [Oliphant Smeaton, Ed.], p. 140. 8o Shake-speare England ' s Ulysses, ACT III. Time to Knowledge. 55=x. For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any, Who for thyself art so improvident. Grant, if thou wilt, thou art belov'd of many, 1 But that thou none lov'st is most evident; For thou art so possess 'd with murd'rous hate That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire, 2 Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate 3 Which to repair should be thy chief desire. O, change thy thought, that I may change my mind! Shall hate be fairer lodg'd than gentle love? Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind. Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove: Make thee another self, for love of me, That beauty still may live in thine or thee. 1 Knowledge is the food of the mind. Adv., of L. Francis Bacon, Vol. I. part 3, p. 260. It is well known, how I did many vi'ars since dedicate my travels and studies to the use and service of my Lord of Essex, . . . and I applied myself to him in a manner which I think happeneth rarely amongst men: for I did not only la- bour carefully and industriously in that tic set me about, whether it were matter of advice or otherwise, but neglecting the Queen's service, mine own fortune, and in a sort my vocation, I did nothing but devise and ruminate with myself to the best of my understanding, propositions and memorials of anything that might concern his Lordship's honour, fortune, or service. Apology concerning the Earl of Essex, Francis Bacon, 1604. 2 Knowledge finally conspires against himself. Cp. Son. 83-xLix, 1. u. 3 Psychologically, Knowledge partakes of the character of his Father, Won- der. Cp. Son. 30-cxLVi. 1. 6. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 81 SCENE I. Knowledge. 56=cxxin. No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change: Thy pyramids built up with newer might To me are nothing novel, nothing strange; 1 They are but dressings of a former sight: 3 Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire What thou dost foist upon us that is old, And rather make them born to our desire Than think that we before have heard them told: Thy registers and thee I both defy, Not wond'ring at the present nor the past, For thy records, and what we see doth lie, Made more or less by thy continual haste: This I do vow and this shall ever be; I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee. \_Exeunt. 1 Knowledges are as pyramids, whereof history is the basis. Adv. of L., II. p. 221, Bacon. 2 An argument used by Socrates, "Knowledge is nothing but reminiscence." riitcdo, Plato [Bohns' Libraries.], Vol. I. p. 48. A man is generally more inclined to feel kindly towards one on whom he has conferred favors than towards one from whom he has received them. 1 Essex loaded Bacon with benefits, and never thought he had done enough. It seems never to have crossed the mind of the powerful and wealthy noble that the poor barrister whom he treated with such munificent kindness was not his equal . . . Essex was in general more than sufficiently sensible of his own merits; but he did nol scon to knon.' tlial lie had- ever deserved icell of Bacon. On that cruel day when they saw each other for the last time at the bar of the Lords, Essex taxed his perfidious friend with unkindness and insincerity, but never with ingratitude, 1 even in such a moment, more bitter than the bitterness of death, that noble heart was too great to vent itself in such a reproach, Essays and Poems , Macaulay, Vol. II. p. 186. 1 Cp. sub-note, p. 87, and notes, p. 89. 82 Shake-spearc England 's Ulysses, ACT III. SCENE II. Enter THE GODDESS HOPE and THE GOD OF KNOWLEDGE. Hope. 57=xci. Some glory in their birth, some in their skill, Some in their wealth, some in their bodies' force, Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill, Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse; And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure, Wherein it finds a joy above the rest: But these particulars are not my measure; All these I better in one general best. Thy love is better than high birth to me, Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost, Of more delight than hawks or horses be ; And having thee, of all men's pride I boast: Wretched in this alone, that thou may'st take All this away, and me most wretched make. Right well 1 know, most mighty Sovereign, That all this famous antique history Of some th' abundance of an idle brain Will judged be, and painted forgery, Rather than matter of just memory; Since none that breatheth living air does know Where is that happy land of Faery, Which I so much do vaunt, yet nowhere show, But vouch antiquities, which nobody can know. But let that man with better sense advize, That of the world least part to us is read; And daily how through hardy enterprize Many great regions are discovered, Which to late age were never mentioned; Who ever heard of the Indian Peru? Or who in venturous vessel measured The Amazon, huge river, now found true ? Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever view? Fairy Queen, Book II., 1 Prologue, Spenser. 1 "Containing the Legend of Sir Gnyon, or of Temperance." It has been surmised that Sir Guyon is Essex, Cp, Note? qnd Queries, Vol. IV, series 3, p. 150. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 83 SCENE II. Knowledge. 58=LXix. Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view, Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend; All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due, Utt'ring bare truth, e'en so as foes commend. Thy outward thus with outward praise is crown'd; But those same tongues 1 that give thee so thine own, In other accents do this praise confound By seeing farther than the eye hath shown. They look into the beauty of thy mind, And that, in guess, they measure by thy deeds; [kind, Then, churls, their thoughts, although their eyes were To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds: But why thy odour matcheth not thy show, The solve is this, that thou dost common grow. 1 The tongues of Grace and Knowledge. Yet all these were when no man did them know, Yet have from wisest ages hidden beene, And later times things more unknown shall show. 1 Why then should witless man so much misweene, That nothing is but that which he hath seene? What if in the moon's fair shining sphere, 2 What if in every other star unseene, Of other worlds he happily should heare, 3 He wonder would much more; yet such to some appeare. Of Faery land yet if he more inquire, By certain signs, here set in sundry place, He may it find; nor let him then admire, But yield his sense to be too blunt and base, 'That not without an hound fine footing trace. Fairy Queen, Book II., Prologue, Spenser. 1 Cp. note 4, p. 57 and Dr'ayton's Allusion to the Phoenix, p. 98. 2 But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere Advanced, and made a constellation there. Memorial Verses to Shake-sf>eare, Benjonson, 1623. 3 Cp. note 2, p. 57, and note 2, p. 56. Spenser's intimacy with Essex, with whatever intellectual advantages it may have been attended, with whatever bright spirits it may have brought Spenser acquainted, probably impeded his prospects of preferment. The Works of Spenser, Hale \ Globe Edition], p, li, 84 Shake-speare England ' s Ulysses, ACT III. Hope. 59=LXxxv. My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still, While comments of your praise, richly compil'd, Reserve their character with golden quill And precious phrase by all the Muses fil'd. I think good thoughts whilst other write good words, And like unletter'd clerk still cry 'Amen' To every hymn that able spirit 1 affords In polish'd form of well-refined pen. Hearing you prais'd, I say ' 'Tis so, 'tis true, ' And to the most of praise add something more; But that is in my thought, whose love to you, Though words come hindmost, holds his rank before. Then others for the breath of words respect, Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect. 1 The god of Grace. Cp. note 2, p. 57. I must hold it as demonstrated, that the 'Phoenix' was Elizabeth 1 and the 'Tur- tle Dove,' Essex. No one has, hitherto, in anyway thought of this interpreta- tion of the 'Turtle Dove' 2 any more than the other of the 'Phoenix;' 3 but none the less do I hope for acceptance of it. Robert Chester's Lore's Martyr, 1601 [Dr. Grosart, Ed., 1878], p. xliv. 1 Cp. Benjonson's lines, p. 77. From the 1609 arrangement of the Sonnets as a Cretan labyrinth, their dedication to Homer [Sonnets 26, 77], and the supposed dedication to "Mr. W. H." a metamorphosing of Ulys- ses' Mighty Bow, it follows that Troy's famous Wooden Horse appears, spiritually, on Eng- lish soil as the Turtle Dove ; i. e., 2 Shakp-snearp's Turtlp Drive I The P em of Thc /'//"''//.r ami Turtle /)?>< I containing the [Enaland-s Welder i HorS 1 name of Ulysses-Essex and the twenty-two executors of I the Willl, the Dramatis Persons of the Masque. 3 Shake-speare's Phoenix=The Sonnets of i6oy. a Dismantled Masque. On the purposed lack of spirituality shown in Homer's characters depicted in Troilus and Cressida, cp. notes, pp. 121, 122. Thus it is that the cunning of invention and the spirituality of the classical characters of the Masque stand .... "Alone for the Comfiarisnit Of all that insolent Greece .... sent forth." Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 85 SCENE II. Knowledge. 6o=Lxx. That thou art blam'd shall not be thy defect, For slander's mark was ever yet the fair; The ornament of beauty is suspect, A crow 1 that flies in heaven's sweetest air. So thou be good, slander doth but approve Thy worth the greater, being woo'd of Time; 2 For canker-vice the sweetest buds doth love, And thou present'st a pure unstained prime. Thou hast pass'd by the ambush of young days, Either not assail'd, or victor being charg'd; Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise, To tie up envy evermore enlarg'd: If some suspect of ill mask'd not thy show, 3 Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe. 1 Point of contact between the Sonnets of 1609 and the poem of The Phoenix and Turtle Dove; the crow being mentioned in Sons. GO-LXX., 82-0x111. and in the fifth stanza of the Dramatis Personae of the Masque, viz: 'And thou treble-dated crow, That thy sable gender mak'st, With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st, 'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go. The Phoenix and Turtle Dove. 2 In a Pythagorean sense as Envy in Act II. Cp. Son. 6i-cxvn. 1. 6. 3 Hope is the daughter of Envy. 86 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, f ACT III. Hope. 6 1 = Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all Wherein I should your great deserts repay, Forgot upon your dearest love to call, Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day; That I have frequent been with unknown minds, 1 And given to Time your own dear-purchas'd right; 2 That I have hoisted sail to all the winds Which should transport me farthest from your sight. Book both my wilfulness and errors down, And on just proof surmise accumulate; Bring me within the level of your frown, But shoot not at me in your waken'd hate; Since my appeal says I did strive to prove The constancy and virtue of your love. 1 Hope here anticipates her relationship [as Ambition} with Wisdom and Beauty in Act IV. 2 In Act II. Hope as Envy was the beloved of Father Time. 3 Better is the sight of the eye than the wandering of the desire. Med. Sac- roe, Francis Bacon, part 3, p. 170. It is noteworthy that the characters in the sensual line, from Desire to Folly, speak, or are reminded, of the ocean. I cannot fathom it, but Shake-speare was an Admiral as well as a General. Love s Labor s Won; Or, 77ie Enacted Will. 87 SCENE II. Knowledge. 62=cxLi. In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes, For they in thee a thousand errors note; 1 But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise, Who in despite of view is pleas'd to dote; Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted, Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone, Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited To any sensual feast with thee alone: But my five wits nor my five senses can Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee, Who leaves unsway'd the likeness of a man, Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to be: Only my plague thus far I count my gain, That she that makes me sin awards me pain. 1 It is hardly possible at once to admire an author and to go beyond him; Knowledge being as water, which will not rise above the level from which it fell. Preface, Nov. Org., p. 30. The fragments of a great work on the Interpretation of Nature were first published in Stephens' Letters and Remains, 1734 The manuscript from which Robert Stephens printed these fragments was found among some loose papers placed in his hands by the Karl of Oxford, and is now in the British Museum; Harl, MSS. 6462. It is a thin paper volume of the quarto size, writ- ten in the hand of one of Bacon's servants, with corrections, erasures, and in- terlineations in his own. Preface to Valerius Terminus, Bacon'' s Works, [Spedding Ed.], Vol. I. pp. 9, 16. Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT III. Hope. 63=cx. Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to the view, Gor'd my own thoughts, ! sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of affections new;' 3 Most true it is that I have look'd on truth Askance and strangely: but, by all above, These blenches gave my heart another youth, And worse essays prov'd thee my best of love. Now all is done, have what shall have no end: Mine appetite I never more will grind On newer proof, to try an older friend, A god in love, to whom I am confin'd. Then give me welcome, next my heav'n the best, E'en to thy pure and most most loving breast. 1 It is no marvel if these Anticipations have brought forth such diversity and repugnance in opinions, theories or philosophies, as so many fables of several arguments. Int. of Nature, Bacon, p. 65. 2 If any have had the strength of mind generally to purge away and dis- charge all Anticipations, they have not had that greater and double strength and patience of mind, as well to repel new Anticipations after the view and search of particulars, as to reject old which were in the mind before. Int. of Nature, p. 67. The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections; whence proceed sciences which may be called "sciences as one would." Numberless in short are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, which the affections color and infect the understanding. NOT. Org., Aphor- ism 49, p. 82. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. SCENE II. Knowledge. 64=cxxxix. O, call not me to justify the wrong, That thy unkindness lays upon my heart; Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue; Use power with power, and slay me not by art. Tell me thou lov'st elsewhere; but in my sight, Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside: What need'st thou wound with cunning, when thy might Is more than my o'er-press'd defence can bide? Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows Her pretty looks have been mine enemies, And therefore from my face she turns my foes, That they elsewhere might dart their injuries: Yet do not so; but since I am near slain, Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain. True science consists of the interpretation of Nature Bacon is to be regarded, not as the founder of a new philosophy, but as the discoverer of a new method; at least we must remember that this was his own view of himself and of his writings But of this great plan the interpretation of Nature was, so to speak, the soul, the formative and vivifying principle. Preface to Norum Organum [Ellis, Ed.], pp. 148, 149, 155. "Valerius Terminus of the Interpretation of Nature, with the annotations of Hermes Stella" ... It is impossible to ascertain the motive which deter- mined Bacon to give to the supposed author the name of Valerius Terminus or to his commentator, of whose annotations we have no remains, 1 that of Hermes Stella 2 ... It is at the same time full of interest, inasmuch as it is the earliest type of the Instauratio. The first book of the work ascribed to Valerius Ter- minus would have corresponded to the DC Augmentis and to the first book of the Novum Organum. Bacon' s IVorks, Preface to Valerius Terminus, pp. 9, 16. 1 Cp. note 2, p. 32. 2 Shine forth, thou star of poets. Memorial I'erses to Shake- sfeare, Ben Jonson, 1623. 90 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT III. Hope to Knowledge. 65=0x1,. Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain; Lest sorrow lend me words, and words express The manner of my pity-wanting pain. If I might teach thee wit, better it were, ! Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so; 3 As testy sick-men, when their deaths be near, No news but health from their physicians know; For if I should despair, I should grow mad, And in my madness might speak ill of thee: Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad, Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be. That I may not be so, nor thou belied, Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide. \_Curtain. 1 He that is ignorant receives not the words of Knowledge, unless thou first tell him that which is in his own heart. Nov. Org., p. 39. 2 If you do not love me it were prudent to say you do. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 91 SCENE III. Enter THE GODDESS HOPE and THE GOD OF GRACE. Hope to Grace. 66=Lin. What is your substance, whereof are you made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend? Since every one hath, every one, one shade, And you, but one, can every shadow lend. Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit Is poorly imitated after you; On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set, And you in Grecian tires are painted new. .Speak of the spring and foison of the vear, The one doth shadow of your beauty show, The other as your bounty doth appear; And you in every blessed shape we know. In all external grace you have some part, But you like none, none you, for constant heart. It is a fact that about the beginning of James' reign his [Bacon's] writing underwent a remarkable change, from the hurried Saxon hand full of large sweeping curves and with letters imperfectly formed and connected, which he wrote in Elizabeth's time, to a small, neat, light, and compact one, formed more upon the Italian model which was then coming into fashion ... It is of course impossible to fix the precise date of such a change . . . but whenever it was that he corrected this manuscript [Interpretation of Nature] ... he has taken the trouble to add the running title wherever it was wanting, thus writ- ing the words "Of the Interpretation of Nature" at full length not less than eighteen times over. Bacon" 1 s W / or.s, Note to Preface to Valerius Terminus, [Spedding, Ed.] pp. 19, 20. 92 Shake-speare England *s Ulysses, ACT III, Grace to Hope. 67=cxLiv. Two loves I have of comfort 1 and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still: The better angel is a man right fair,' 2 The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. 3 To win me soon to hell, my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a devil, Wooing his purity with her foul pride. And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend Suspect I may, yet not directly tell; But being both from me, both to each friend, I guess one angel in another's hell: Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt, Till my bad angel fire my good one out. 1 Cp. Son. yS-cxxxiv. 1. 4. 8 "That angel Knowledge." Love's Labor's Lost, i. i, 1. 113. 3 Mother Nature. Love 's Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 93 SCENE III. Hope to Grace. 68==xxxin. Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green ; Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy: 1 Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: E'en so my sun one early morn did shine With all-triumphant splendour on my brow; But out, alack! he was but one hour mine; The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now. Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; Suns 2 of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth. 1 The alchemist nurses eternal hope. Nov. Org., p. 119. 2 ', the angel of light. 94 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT III, Grace to Hope. 69=cxiv. Or whether doth my mind, being crown'd with you, Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery? Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true, And that your love taught it this alchemy, To make of monsters and things indigest Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble, Creating every bad a perfect best, As fast as objects to his beams assemble? O, 'tis the first; 'tis flatt'ry in my seeing, And my great mind most kingly drinks it up: Mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing, And to his palate doth prepare the cup: If it be poison'd, 'tis the lesser sin, That mine eye loves it and doth first begin. Vain, and inclined to secret gallantries, Elizabath demanded, and received, incessant homaga, for ths most part in extravagant mythological terms, from the ablest of her subjects from Sidney, from Spenser, from Raleigh, and was determined, in short, that ths whole literature of ths time should turn towards her as its central point. Shakespeare was the only great poet of the period who absolutely declined to comply with this demand. \\*illiam Shakespeare^ A Critical Study, Geo. Brandes, p. 41. And Shakespeare had seen the young Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who, in 1577, when only ten years old, had made a sensation at court by wearing his hat in the Queen's presence and denying her request for a kiss. Ibid. p. 243. Essex's grandmother, on his mother's side, was an own sister to Anne Boleyn and to an inherited family quarrel, most bitter and venomous, is chargeable the mystery of William Shake-speare. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 95 SCENE IV. Enter THE GODS OF GRACE 1 and KNOWLEDGE. Grace to Knowledge. 7o=xx. A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted, Hast thou, the master-mistress 2 of my passion; A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change, as is false women's fashion; An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth; A man in hue, all hues in his controlling, Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth. And for a woman wert thou first created; 3 Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting, And by addition me of thee defeated, By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. 4 But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure, Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure. 1 Beauty, Truth and Rarity, GRACE in all simplicity, Here enclosed in cinders lie. The Phoenix and Turtle. 3 My brain I'll prove the female to my soul; My soul, the father: and these two beget A generation of still-breeding thoughts. Richard //., v. 5. 3 Mother Eve. Cp. sub-note i, p. 79. * An ungrateful act in Nature. The author of the Sonnets, admittedly, was the author of the Poems and the Plays, and the whole Shakespearian question would seem to resolve itself into the question, who was the author of the Sonnets. The l\Iystci~\' of William Sliakc- sfieare, Judge Webb, p. 156. 96 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT III. Kno^vledge to Grace. 7 1 =cxxi. 'Tis better to be vile than vile esteem'd, When not to be, receives reproach of being; And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem'd, Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing: For why should others' false adulterate eyes 1 Give salutation to my sportive blood? Or on my frailties why are frailer spies, 2 Which in their wills count bad what I think good ? No, I am that I am, 8 and they that level At my abuses, reckon up their own: I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel; By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown; Unless this general evil they maintain, All men are bad, and in their badness reign. is here slurring Rcuson and A'wr'v, psychological mothers of (iracc and /A;/V', respectively. 2 Grace and Hope. * Knoii'ledge partakes of the character of his grandson, 7'ru(h. Cp. Son. I25-CXII. 11. 3, 12. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 97 SCENE IV. Grace to Knowledge. 72=xcn. But do thy worst to steal thyself away, For term of life thou art assured mine, And life no longer than thy love will stay, For it depends upon that love of thine. Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs, When in the least of them my life hath end; I see a better state to me belongs Than that which on thy humour doth depend. Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind, * Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie; 0, what a happy title do I find, Happy to have thy love, happy to die! But what's so blessed-fair that fears no blot? Thou may'st be false, and yet I know it not. 1 Cp. couplet, Son. 66-Lin. We are now [1592] entering on a new phase in the career of Lord Essex, one which indirectly led to his ruin. Up to this time he had shown no desire to mingle in politics and state intrigues. Warlike service abroad, tiltings, Masques, and revels at home, love, and the excitement of his life at court, had sufficiently amused him. Lives of The Earls of Essex, Devereux, Vol. 1. p. 276. 98 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT III. Knowledge to Grace. 73=xxxn. If thou survive my well-contented day, When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover: Compare them with the bett'ring of the time, And though they be outstripp'd by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme, Exceeded by the height of happier men. O, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought: 'Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age, * A dearer birth than this his love had brought, To march in ranks of better equipage: But since he died and poets better prove, 2 Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love.' 1 It seems that the sin of Knozvledge was that he had become a "back num- ber." Cp. Sons. 62-cxi.i., 85-civ., 86-xxn. 2 Hope and Grace. 'Mongst all the creatures in this spacious round, Of the bird's kind, the Phoenix 1 is alone, Which best by you 2 of living things is known; None like to that, none like to you is found. Your beauty is the hot and splend'rous sun, The precious spices be your chaste desire, Which being kindled by that heav'nly fire, Your life so like the Phosnix's begun: Yourself thus burned in that sacred flame, With so rare sweetness all the heav'ns perfuming, Again increasing, as you are consuming, Only by dying, born the very same; And winged by fame, you to the stars ascend, 2 So you of time shall live beyond the end. In Allusion to the Phoenix, Michael Dravton, 1594. 1 The Sonnets of i6og, a Dismantled Masque. Cp. Mother Nature's lines, p. 22. 2 The Masque and the authgr of the Masque, to be memorialized by a constellation. See. Divus Shake-speare i index, Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 99 SCENE IV. Grace to Knowledge. 74=xciu. So shall I live, supposing thou art true, Like a deceived husband; so love's face May still seem love to me, though alter'd new: Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place. 1 For there can live no hatred in thine eye, Therefore in that I cannot know thy change- In many's looks the false heart's history Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange, But heav'n in thy creation did decree That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell; Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be, Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell. How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow, 2 If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show! 1 With Nature. 2 How like is thy beauty to that Apple of Eve, smiling so ripely on the out- side, and so rotten within, if thy sweet virtue correspond not to the promiss of that fair face. Shakespeare's Satinets, Gerald Massey, p. 232. Jove thou shalt see my commendations, To be unworthy and impartial, To make of her an extallation, Whose beauty is divine majestical; Look on that painted picture there, 1 behold The rich wrought Phrenix of Arabian gold. Mother Xature in Loi'e ' s Martyr, p. 16. 1 Cp. sub-note i, P. J4, TOO Shake-speare England ' s Ulysses, ACT III. Kno^wledge to Grace. 75=cix. O, never say that I was false of heart, Though absence seem'd my flame 1 to qualify: As easy might I from myself depart, As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie: That is my home of love: if I have rang'd, Like him that travels I return again, Just to the time, not with the time exchang'd, So that myself bring water for my stain. 2 \_Enter Nature. Never believe, though in my nature reign'd All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, That it could so prepost'rously be stain'd, To leave for nothing all thy sum of good; For nothing this wide universe I call, Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all. ^Nature comes forward. 1 The angel of light. 2 For being in love with Dame Nature. Nature to Phoenix. Tell me [O Mirror] of our earthly time, Tell me sweet Phoenix^ glory of mine age, Who blots thy beauty with foul envie's crime, 2 And locks thee up in fond Suspicions cage? 3 Can any human heart bear thee such rage? Daunt their proud stomachs with thy piercing eye, Unchain Love's sweetness at thy liberty. Robert Chester,* in Love s Martyr, p. 26. 1 The Sonnets of 1609. 2 Cp. Peele's lines p. 18. 3 The 1609 arrangement of the Sonnets, a Cretan labyrinth. * For the identity of this hitherto unknown and never-again-heard-of-poet [except in Love's Martyr] see noms de plume of Essex, frontispiece. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 101 SCENE IV. Grace to Natiire. 76=cxxxiu. Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan For that deep wound it gives my friend and me! Is't not enough to torture me alone, But slave to slav'ry my sweet'st friend must be? Me from myself thy cruel eye hath tak'n, And my next self thou harder hast engross'd: Of him, myself, and thee, I am forsak'n; A torment thrice threefold thus to be cross'd. Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward, * But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail; Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard; Thou canst not then use rigour in my jail: 3 And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee, Perforce am thine, and all that is in me. 1 Cp. note i, p. 31. 2 So the Quarto. Cp. note 3, p. 34. INVOCATIO AD APOLLINEM ET PIERIDES. To your high influence we commend Our following labours, and sustend Our mutuall palms, prepar'd to gratulate An honourable friend: then propagate With your illustrate faculties Our mentall powers: Instruct us how to rise In weighty Numbers, well pursu'd, And varied from the Multitude: Be lavish once, and plenteously profuse Your holy waters, to our thirstie Muse, That we may give a round to him In a Castalian boule, crown'd to the brim. Vatum Chorus, Love's Martyr, 1601, p. 179. These 'Vatum Chorus' pieces are in good sooth poor enough. They have touches like Chapman at his worst- Notes to Laye's Martyr [Dr. Grosart, Ed.], 1878, p. 240. Dr. Grosart intimates that only Chapman was concerned but was not Ben Jonson's the master hand? It will be remembered that in these Love's Mfirtyr poems, Marston, Chapman and Jonson witness Shake-speare's Will; i. e., the eighteen stanza poem of The Phcenix and Turtle Dwe. io2 Shake-speare England * s ( 7rsseS\ ACT III. Grace to Knowledge. 77=xLii. That thou hast her, 1 it is not all my grief, And yet it may be said I lov'd her dearly; That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief, A loss in love that touches me more nearly. Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye: Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her; And for my sake e'en so doth she abuse me, Suff'ring my friend for my sake to approve her. If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain, And losing her, my friend hath found that loss; Both find each other, and I lose both twain, And both for my sake lay on me this cross: But here's the joy; my friend and I are one; 3 Sweet flatt'ry! then she loves but me alone. 1 Mother Nature. 2 This "Conceit" must have greatly pleased Ben Jonson. Hor. Caesar speaks after common men in this, To make a difference of me, for my poorness; As if the filth of pov'rty sunk as deep Into a knowing spirit, as the bane Of riches doth into an ign'rant soul. No, Caesar, they be pathless, moorish minds, That being once made rotten with the dung Of damned riches, ever after sink Beneath the steps of any villany. But knowledge is the nectar that keeps sweet A perfect soul, even in this grave of sin. 7 Vic I\>ct aster, v. i. 'There was a time' says Sir Henry Wotton, sometime secretary to the Karl of Essex, 'when Sir Fulke Greville, . . . had almost superinduced into favour the Earl of Southampton, which yet being timely discovered, my lord of Essex chose to evaporate his thoughts in a Sonnat [being /it's common icay\, to be sung before the Queen [as it was] by one Hales, in whose voice she took some pleasure; whereof the couplet, methinks, had as much of the Hermit as of the Poet'. Reliquice Wotloniance, p. 163, [Quoted by IMassev, p. 44.] Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 103 SCENE IV. Grace to Nature. 78=cxxxiv. So, now I have confess'd that he 1 is thine, And I myself am mortgag'd to thy 'Will', 2 Myself I'll forfeit, so that other mine Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still. 3 But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free, For thou art covetous and he is kind; He learn'd but surety-like to write for me Under that bond that him as fast doth bind. The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take, Thou usurer, 4 that put'st forth all to use, And sue a friend came debtor for my sake; So him I lose through my unkind abuse. Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me: He pays the whole, and yet am I not free. 5 [ Curtain. 1 The god of Knowledge. 2 Cp. note i, p. 31. 3 -Cp. Son. Gy-cxLiv. 1. i. * Cp. Son. 54-Lxxv. 1. 4 and all of Son. IO-LII. 5 Cp. Son. yo-xx. 1. 12. In the letter of advice address3d by the Earl of Essex to Sir Fulke Greville on his studies, first printed by Mr. Spedding as written by Bacon, the Earl is made to say, "for poets, I can commend none, being resolved to be ever a stran- ger to them." However this may have been intended to be seriously spoken in character by the Earl to the Knight [Greville, who was himself a poet], when considered with reference to the actual facts now known concerning them both, it may be taken as a pretty good joke. Jtidge Holmes' 1 [Baconian] Au- thorship of Shakespeare, Vol. I. p. 185. IO4 Shake-speare England ' s Ulysses ', ACT III. SCENE V. Enter THE GODDESS HOPE and THE GODS OF KNOWLEDGE and GRACE. Hope to Knowledge. 79=xcvn. How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen ! What old December's bareness every where! And yet this time remov'd was summer's time, The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime, Like widow'd wombs after their lord's decease: Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me But hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit; For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, 1 And, thou away, the very birds are mute, 2 Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer, That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near. 1 There is no darkness but ignorance. Twelfth Night, iv. 2.. 2 Sound has no existence for the deaf, nor light for the sightless. Cp. Son. 85-civ. 1. 14. This is the Anchor-hold, the sea, the river, The lesson and the substance of my song, This is the rock my ship did seek to shiver, And in this ground with Adders was I stung, 1 And in a loathsome pit was often flung:'' 2 My beauty and my virtues captivate, To Love, dissembling Love, that I did hate. 3 The /Vmv//.v 4 to Mother Nature in /.OTC'S Martyr, p. 30. 1 Cp. note i, p. 109. 2 The 1609 arrangement of the Sonnets, a Cretan labyrinth. 3 The Sonnets long to be a play and not merely love Sonnets. So, till the judgment that yourself arise, \ou live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes. Couplet, Son. ISO-LV. * Allegory for the Sonnets of 1609. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 105 SCENE V. Knowledge to Hope. 8o=LXxm. That time of year thou may'st in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. ! [strong, This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more To love that well which thou must leave ere long. 1 Plato is so centred, that he can well spare all his dogmas Be- fore all men, he saw the intellectual values of the moral sentiment he kindled a fire so truly in the centre, that we see the sphere illuminated, and can distinguish poles, equator, and lines of latitude, every arc and node: a theory so averaged, so modulated that you would say, the winds of ages have swept through this rhythmic structure, and not that it was the brief extempore blotting of one short lived scribe. Hence it has happened that a very well- marked class of souls, namely, those who delight in giving a spiritual, that is, an ethico-intellectual expression to every truth, by exhibiting an ulterior end which is yet legitimate to it, are said to Platonize. Shakespeare is a Platonist, when he writes: He that can endure To follow with allegiance a fallen lord, Does conquer him that did his master conquer, And earns a place i' the story. Antony and Cleopatra, in. 2. Hamlet is a pure Plalonist, and 'tis ths magnitude only of Shakespsare's proper genius that hinders him from being ch ss^d as the most eminent of this school. Emerson s Works, Vol. II. pp. 72-74. io6 Shake-speare England *s Ulysses, ACT III. Grace to Knowledge. 8 1 =cxin. Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind; And that which governs me to go about Doth part his function, and is partly blind, Seems seeing, but effectually is out; For it no form delivers to the heart Of bird, of flower, or shape, which it doth latch; Of his quick objects hath the mind no part, Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch; For if it see the rud'st or gentlest sight, The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature, The mountain or the sea, the day or night, The crow 1 or dove, it shapes them to your feature: Incapable of more, replete with you, My most true mind thus maketh mind 2 untrue. 1 Cp. note i, p. 85. 2 Cp. 1. 7 above. "Essex urged the Queen to make Bacon Solicitor, in which he was backed by Burleigh. But here again, after a struggle of a year and a half, during which the office remained vacant, disappointment awaited him, and Sergeant Fleming was nominated. Essex felt this deeply on his friend's account, to whom he endeavored to make ammends by a gift, the munificence of which, and the delicacy with which it was offered, are admirable. We have the circumstance related by Bacon himself. " 'Mr. Bacon' said the Earl, 'the Queen hath denied me the place for you, and hath placed another; / ' knoic you arc the least part of your 0101 matter, 1 but you fare ill, because you have chosen me for your mean and dependance; you have sfent your time and thoughts in my matters: I die if I do not some- what towards your fortune; you shall not deny to accept a piece of land, 2 which I will bestow on you.' " Lives of The Earls of Essex, Derereux, Vol. I. p. 286. 1 Cp. italicized lines "in that he set me about" with the context, p. 80. 2 "The land was Twickenham park and garden, afterwards sold by Bacon for 1800 ." Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 107 SCENE V. Knowledge to (trace. 82=XLix. Against that time, if ever that time come, When I shall see thee frown on my defects, Whenas thy love hath cast his utmost sum, Call'd to that audit by advis'd respects; Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye, When love, converted from the thing it was, Shall reasons find of settled gravity; Against that time do I ensconce me here Within the knowledge of mine own desert, And this my hand against myself uprear, 1 To guard the lawful reasons on thy part: To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws, Since why to love I can allege no cause. 1 Cp. Son. 55-x. 1. 6. 2 Grace is the son of the goddess Reason. I come, I come, and now farewell that strond, Upon "whose craggy rocks my ship was rent; Your ill beseeming follies made me fond, And in a vasty cell I up was pent, 1 Where my fresh blooming beauty I have spent. O blame yourselves ill nurtured cruel swains, That fill'd my scarlet glory full of stains. 2 The Pha-nix* to Mother Nature in J.oi'e' s Martyr, p. 32. 1 The 1609 arrangement of the Sonnets, a Cretan labyrinth. 2 Cp. note i, p. IOQ. 3 Allegory for the Sonnets of 1609; i. e., the Dismantled Masque of Loz>e's Labor's Won. loB Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT III, Grace to Knowledge. 83=LXxvi. Why is my verse so barren of new pride ? So far from variation or quick change ? Why with the time do I not glance aside. To new-found methods and to compounds strange ? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, * That every word doth almost tell my name, 2 Showing their birth and where they did proceed ? O, know, sweet love, I always write of you, And you and love are still my argument; So all my best is dressing old words new, Spending again what is already spent: For as the sun is daily new and old, So is my love still telling what is told. 1 Eve's Tree of Knowledge. All knowledge appeareth to be a plant of God's own planting. Int. of \at- ure, Bacon, p. 32. 2 For light that makes darkness more oppressive see Judge Webb's most lucid exposition of this "noted weed" Sonnet. The Mystery of ll'iliiam Shake- speare, p. 156. Love 's Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 109 SCENE V. Knowledge to Hope. 84=xxxiv. Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day, And make me travel forth without my cloak, 1 To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way, Hiding thy brav'ry in their rotten smoke ? 'Tis not enough that through the cloud they break, To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face, For no man well of such a salve can speak That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace: 3 Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief; Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss: Th' offender's sorrow lends but weak relief To him that bears the strong offence's cross. Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds, And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds. 1 I cannot, however, doubt that Shakespeare was, to use his own words, made to "travel forth without" that "cloak," which, if he had not been lured, we may be sure that he would not have discarded. Hardly had he laid the cloak aside before he was surprised according to a preconcerted scheme, and probably roughly handled, for we find him lame soon afterwards [Son. xxxvn. 11. 3, 9] and apparently not fully recovered a twelve-month later [Son. LXXXIX. 1. 3] . The offence above indicated a sin of very early youth- for which Shakespeare was bitterly penitent, and towards which not a trace of further tendency can be dis- cerned in any subsequent sonnet or work this single offence is the utmost that can be brought against Shakespeare with a shadow of evidence in its support. Shakespeare" 1 s Sonnets, Samuel Butler, p. 70. To understand Samuel Butler, it would seem that note i, p. 90 is sufficient, but not so; the chances are that naught but chaste and immaculate emotions ever crossed the unsullied mirror of his imagination, but such gross slanders illustrate the effeminacy of minds to which opportunity 1 is positive evidence of wrong doing. 2 Cp. note i, p. 98. 1 Cp. lines from Lucrece, p, 70, iio Shake-spear e England' s Ulysses, ACT III. Hope to Knowledge. 85 To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed, Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold Have from the forests shook three summers' pride; Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd, In process of the seasons have I seen; Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd, Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. ' Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand, Steal from his figure and no pace perceiv'd; So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv'd: 2 For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred; Ere vou were born was beauty's summer dead. 3 1 The characters are Pythagoreans and the time of the play, five years; each act a year. In Act I. Hope was Desire and Knoisledfre, Rarity. Cp. Dra- matis Personae, p. 24. 2 'Hue' means shape, figure, and not tint. Shakespeare* s l\)cms, ll'vtid- ham, p. 275. Is not Mr. Wyndham in error? Cp. Sonnet 70 xx., (,'race to Knoicled^e, 1. ft, "Gilding the object whereupon it gazath." Protagoras assarts that nothing exists of itself, nor can any thing be desig- nated by any quality, for what we call great, will, in reference to something else, be also small, and what we call heavy, light, and so on, so that nothing ever exists but is always becoming. Consequently all things spring from mo- tion, and the relation that they bear to each other. Thus, with respect to col- or, it docs not actually c'.v/.sV, it is neither in the object seen nor in the eye itself, but results from the application of the eye to the object, and so is the intermediate production of both. Introduction to the Theidetus* Halo, p. i. ? Cp. Son. 79-xcvn. 1. 12. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 1 1 1 SCENE V. Grace to Knowledge. 86=xxn. My glass shall not persuade me I am old, So long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee time's furrows I behold, Then look I death my days should expiate. For all that beauty that doth cover thee, Is but the seemly raiment of my heart, Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me: How can I then be elder than thou art? O, therefore, love, be of thyself so wary As I, not for myself but for thee will; Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary As tender nurse her babe from faring ill. Presume 1 not on thy heart when mine is slain; Thou gav'st me thine, not to give back again. 1 "The angel of light that was, when he presumed before his fall." Cp. note i, p. 78. The compliment which ths poet pays the Earl of Esssx in the prologue to Act 5, of "Henry V." gives as little indication of the personal relation in which they stood to each other, 1 as the much discussed resemblance of some passages in "Hamlet" with letters of the Earl of Essex. -William Shakespeare, Karl Ehe, p. 177. 1 Cp, note 5, p. 18, H2 Shake-speare England s Ulysses, ACT III. 87=xciv. Knowledge to PI ope and Grace. They that have pow'r to hurt, and will do none, * That do not do the thing they most do show, 2 Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow; They rightly do inherit heav'n's graces And husband Nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others, but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die, But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. 1 Posse et nolle, nobile. Love's Martyr, xvi. and text, p. 3. 2 Though all the wits of all the ages should meet together and combine and transmit their labors, yet will no great progress ever be made in Science by means of Anticipations; bacausa radical errors in the first concoction of the mind are not to be cured by the excellence of functions and remedies subsequent, Nov. Org., Aphorism xxx. p. 74. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 113 SCENE V. Hope to Knowledge. 88=cxxvi. O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle hour; Who hast by waning grown, 1 and therein 'show'st Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st! If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack, As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back, She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill May Time disgrace and wretched minutes kill. Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure! She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure: Her audit, though delay 'd, answer'd must be, And her quietus is to render thee. 2 1 His "sin" was growing old. Cp. note i, p. 98. 2 Knowledge must always continue to be imperfect, and therefore in its best estate progressive. Preface to Bacon's Philosophical Works, Vol. 1. p. 121. At the battle nearZutphen [Oct. 2nd, 1586]. "The young Earl of Essex, gen- eral of the horse, cried to his handful of troopers: "Follow me, good fellows, for the honor of England and of England's Queen!" As he spoke he dashed upon the enemy's cavalry, overthrew the foremost man, horse and rider, shiv- ered his own spear 1 to splinters, and then, swinging his curtel-axe, rode merrily forward. His whole little troop, compact as an arrow-head, flew with an ir- resistible shock against the opposing columns, pierced clean through them, and scattered them in all directions. At the very first charge one hundred English horsemen drove the Spanish and Albanian cavalry back upon the musketeers and pikemen. Wheeling with rapidity, they retired bsfore a volley of musket- shot, by which many horses and a few riders were killed, and then formed a- gain to renew the attack. Sir Philip Sidney, on coming to the field, having met Sir William Pelham, the veteran lord marshall, lightly armed, had with chiv- alrous extravagance thrown off his own cuishes, and now rode to the battle with no armour but his cuirass. At the second charge his horse was shot under him, but, mounting another, he was seen everywhere in the thick of the fight, behav- ing himself with a gallantry which extorted admiration even from the enemy." History of The Netherlands, Motley, Vol. II, pp. 50, 51. 1 Did not Kssex here gain the soubriquet of Shaktrspare? H4 Shake- spe are England' s Ulysses, ACT III. SCENE VI. Enter NATURE, THE GODDESS HOPE, FATHER TIME and THE GODS OF KNOWLEDGE and GRACE. Nature to Knowledge. 89=xv. When I consider every thing that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment, That this huge. stage presenteth nought but shows Whereon the stars in secret influence comment: 1 When I perceive that men as plants increase, Cheered and check'd even by the self-same sky; Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease, And wear their brave state out of memory: Then the conceit of this inconstant stay Sets you most rich in youth before my sight, Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay, To change your day of youth to sullied night; And all in war with Time for love of you, As he takes from you, I engraft you new. 1 A side look at Father Time. In 1589, Nash, in an Address to the Gentlemen Students of both Universities prefixed to the Menaphon of Greene, refers to a writer, of whom he says: 'If you entreat him fair on a frosty morning, 1 he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say, Handfulls of tragical speeches/ In 1594, Henslowe, in his J)i(tr\\ records that the Play containing these tragical speeches was acted by the ser- vants of the Lord Chamberlain at Newington Butts. In 1596, Lodge, in his Wit's Mtserie, speaks of 'the Ghost which cried so miserably at the Theater, like an oyster wife, Hamlet Revenge:' .... No play could have been better known. 7 J he Mystery of William S/ikespc<'<* to The rha>ni\? J. ore's Martyr, p. 147. Arise old Homer and make no excuses, Of a rare piece of art must be my song, Of more then most* and most of all belored, } About theichich Venus sweete doves have hovered, \ l Robert Chester* in /.ore's Martyr* p. 13. Only by dying, born the very same. 1 Michael Drayton to The /'Jiti-nix. [Cp. p. 98.] 1 The Sonnets of i6og, a Dismantled Masque. 2 Cp. note 2, p. 84. a Cp. note 3, p. 84. * Cp. note 4, P. 100. 1 1 8 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT IV. MUSES REPRESENTED. WISDOM TIME BEAUTY AMBITION NATURE. SCENE I. Enter NATURE, THE GODDESS* BEAUTY and FATHER TIME. Nature to Beauty. 93=xvm. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or Nature's 2 changing course untrimm'd But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, ) . So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. j 4 1 The sex of Spiritual or Heavenly Beauty is optional with the poets and phi- losophers. Ben Jonson, than whom as a classicist there is no higher authority, designates the "Spirit" as feminine. It was for Beauty that the world was made, And where she reigns, Love's lights admit no shade. The Masque of Beauty. With Plato the spirit is at times masculine. Every one, therefore, chooses his love out of the objects of beauty according to his own taste, and, as if he were a god to him, he fashions and adorns him like a statue, as if for the purpose of reverencing him and celebrating orgies in his honour. The PJucdrus, Vol. I. p. 329. 2 In Love ' s Martyr, Nature speaks of herself as Nature. Cp. p. 22. 3 Beautv [in verse] and not Wisdom- is the object of Nature" 1 s adoration, hence the change from the intellectual to the moral line. Cp. Son. 3-Lxv. 1. 14. * Cp. note 2, p. 57. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 119 SCENE I. Time to Nature. 94=cvi. When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rhyme In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see their antique pen would have express'd E'en -such a beauty as you master now. So all their praises are but prophecies Of this our time, all you prefiguring; And, for they look'd but with divining eyes, They had not still enough" your worth to sing: For we, which now behold these present days, Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise. Her head I framed of a heavenly map, Wherein the sevenfold vertues 1 were enclosed, When great Apollo slept within my lap, And in my bosome had his rest reposed, I cut away his locks of purest gold, And plac'd them on her head of earthly mould. When the least whistling wind begins to sing, And gently blows her haire about her necke, Like to a chime of bells it soft doth ring, And with the pretie noise the wind doth checke, Able to lull asleepe a pensive hart, That of the round world's sorrows bears a part. Nature describing her Pha'nix*- to Jove, Love" 1 s Martyr, p. 1 Cp. note 2, p. 37. a The Sonnets of ifxx>, a Dismantled Masque. Cp. sub-note i, p. 40. 12O Shake-speare England^ Ulysses, ACT IV, Beauty to Nature. 95=LXXXin. I never saw that you did painting' need, And therefore to your fair no painting set; I found, or thought I found, you did exceed The barren tender of a poet's debt: And therefore have I slept in your report, That you yourself being extant well might show How far a modern quill doth come too short, Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow. This silence for my sin you did impute, ] Which shall be most my glory, being dumb; For I impair not beauty being mute, When others would give life and bring a tomb. I There lives more life in one of your fair eyes Than both your poets can in praise devise. ~ 1 In the preceding Acts the psychological progenitors of Heanly, i. e., Lo~,'i\ A'eason and Grace, have had but little converse with Mother \a(nre. * Beauty and Time. Troi/ns ami Cressida. Was it Shakespeare's intention to ridicule Homer? Did he know Homer? .... Shakespeare's knowledge of Greek was defective. H'illiam Shakespeare, A Critical Studv, Gco. Brandts, pp. 512, 520. When I demand of Phoenix, 1 Stella's' 4 state, You say, forsooth, you left her well of late Let Folke o'ercharg'd with braine against me crie. Astrophel to Stella [Sons. 92, 64] , Sidney. . . . Or, when thy socks were on, Leave thee alone for the comparison.''' Of all that insolent Greece, or haughty Rome Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. Memorial I Vv.sv.s-, />V;/ /onson, 1623. 1 The Phoenix Masque ami its author, memorialized by a constellation. See /Vr '//. Shnk,-- sfeare, index. a There was a woman whom Shakespeare had known, quite ready to heroine his life-ti- nre, her name was IStellal Lady Rich .... We can match Hamlet's shifting moods of mind with those of Essex, as revealed in letters to his sister, Lady Rich. Sliiikt'sfiftirs's Sonnets, Gerald .l/uxjuy, pp. 482, 484. 3 In the Masque of Move's Labor's Won. Cp. sub-notes, p. 84. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 121 SCENE I. Nature to Beauty. 96=cvn. Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Suppos'd as forfeit to a confin'd doom. 1 The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd, And the sad Augurs 2 mock 3 their own presage; 4 Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd, And peace proclaims olives of endless age. Now with the drops of this most balmy time My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes, Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme, While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes: And thou in this shalt find thy monument, When tyrants' crests 2 and tombs of brass are spent. \jExeunt. 1 Cp. Son. 3-i.xv. 11. 12, 14, and note i, p. 120. ~ Time and Death. :< Cp. note 4, p. 57. * Throughout the Masque the almost silent contempt which Mother A r ature evinces for her 'ceaseless lackey' ['J'ime] is not the least laughable thing, as if her play would not last. Troilus ami L'ressida. - With what intention, and in what spirit, did Shak- spere write this strange comedy? All the Greek heroes who fought against Troy are pitilessly exposed to ridicule; Helen and Cressida are light, sensual, and heart- less, for whose sake it seems infatuated folly to strike a blow; Troilus is an en- thusiastic young fool; and even Hector, though valiant and generous, spends his life in a cause which he knows to be unprofitable, if not evil. All this is seen and said by Thersites, whose mind is made up of the scum of the foulness of hu- man life . . . . Ulysses, the antithesis of Troilus, is the much-experienced man of the world, possessed of its highest and broadest wisdom, which yet always remains ivorldly wisdom, and never rises into the spiritual contemplation of a Prospero. Shaksperc, //is Mind and Art, Doicden, pp. vn., vin. Look [Homer], what thy memory can not contain Commit to these waste acts, and thou shalt find Those children nursed, deliver'd from thy brain, To take a new acquaintance of thy mind. These offices, so oft as thou wilt look, Shall profit thee and much enrich tliy book. ll'illiam Shake-spcitrc [Son. Lxxvn.j. 122 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT IV. SCENE II. Enter THE GOD OF AMBITION. Ambition. 97=cxix. What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within, Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears, Still losing when I saw myself to win ! What wretched errors hath my heart committed, Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never! How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted In the distraction of this madding fever! O benefit of ill! now I find true That better is by evil still made better; And ruin'd love, when it is built anew, Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. So I return rebuk'd to my content, And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent. \_Enter I An upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his 'fiber's heart wrapt in a player's hyde supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you. Green's Groutsicorth of Wit, 1592-96. Robert Green' s Groatszcort/i of Wit refers to false pretence and false pre- tence is the essence of the fable of the Crow in Peacock's feathers. Our /-.'//- glish Homer, ll'hite, p. 176. The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Ilyrcaniitn beast, Hath now With heraldry horridly trick'd 1 . . . Fathers, Mothers, Daughters, Sons. Hamlet, n. 2. You have a wolf's heart in a sheep's garment. Cecil to Essex at the trial of Essex, 1601. Life of Ralegh, Ed-icards, Vol. I. p. 292. 1 Cp. note i, p. 27. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 123 SCENE II. Ambition to Wisdom. 98=xxix. When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast -state, And trouble deaf heav'n with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, \ Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd, > * Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. 1 Envy being the grandmother of Ambition, Bacon's aphorism is pertinent here. "Envy is ever joined with the comparing of a man's self." Of Envy, Francis Bacon. Of Shake-speare's character building. Cp. note 2, p. 59. Is it possible that Bacon, ["the soaring angel and the creeping snake"] could not read the Sonnets? did he, with open eyes, deliberately walk into the trap set for him by Essex? Cp. notes, pp. 87, 89, 91. For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and to the next age. Francis Bacon" 1 s Will. The loftiness of his [Essex's] wit was most quick, present, and incredible, in dissembling with counterfeit friends, and in turning the mischiefs and fallacies of his enemies upon their ozcti heads and in concealing any matter and business of importance, beyond expectation. Four Books of Offices, Bar- nabe Barnes, 1606. 124 Shake-speare England's Ulysses, ACT IV. Wisdom to Ambition. 99=xcv. How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose, Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name! O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose! That tongue that tells the story of thy days, Making lascivious comments on thy sport, Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise; Naming thy name, blesses an ill report. O, what a mansion have those vices got, Which for their habitation chose out thee, Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot, And all things turn to fair that eyes can see! Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege; The hardest knife ill-us'd doth lose his edge. I have byn of late very pestilent reported in this place [the court] to be rath- er a drawer bake then a fartherer of the action where you govern I humblie beseich you, lett no poclicall scribe 1 work your Lordshipe by any device to doubt that I am a hollo or could sarvant to the action, or a mean well-wilier and follower of your own. Sir ITaltcr Raleigh [at court] to Leicester [in the Netherlands] Mar. 2gth, 1586. Life of Ralegh* Edwards, Vol. II., p. 33. As captain of the guard, Raleigh had to stand at the door with a drawn sword, in his brown and orange uniform, while the handsome youth [Essex] whispered to the spinster Queen of fifty-four things which set her heart beating. He made all the mischief he could between her and Raleigh. Shakespeare, .1 Critical Sludv, Hnuides, p. 243. l''.n I er SIR WALTER MALVOLIO, [Reads.] .... Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and sonic have greatness thrust upon them* .... Re- member who commended thy w/Xozv stockings, and wished to see thee ever cross gartered: I say remember. Cp. ']\celflli Xighl, n. 5. ''hi I\ttriam rediit magnus Apollo sna/n. But, ah for grief! that jolly groom is dead, :! For whom the Muses silver tears have shed; Yet in this lovely swain, source of our glee. Must all his virtues sweet reviven be." /Vr/V'.s- l-'.clogue, Gratulctiory to I'lssex, 1589. 1 Essex and Leicester landed at Flushing, Dec. roth, 1585. a Personal allusions were- the sauce (if evcrv plav. Shakesteartf t I'oem 3 Sir Philip Sidney. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 125 SCENE II. Ambition to \\~isdom. IOO=LXXXVII. Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing, And like enough thou know'st thy estimate: The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing ; My bonds in thee are all determinate. For how do I hold thee but by thy granting? And for that riches where is my deserving ? The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting, And so my patent back again is swerving. Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing, Or me, to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking; So thy great gift, upon misprison growing, Comes home again, on better judgment making. Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter, In sleep a king, but waking no such matter. [Curtain. I acquaynted the Lord Generall [Essex] with your letter to mee, and your kynd acceptance of your enterteynement; hee was also wonderfull merry att your consait of ' 'Richard I he Second.'' I hope it shall never alter, and where- of I shall be mostgladd of, as the trew way to all our good, QUIETT and advance- ment, and most of all for Her sake whose affaires shall thereby fynd better progression. Sir, I will ever be your's; // is all I can saye, and I will psr- forme it icith my life, and icith my fortune. Sir Walter Raleigh to Rob- ert Cecil, July 6th, 1597. Life of Ralegh* fcdicards, Vol. II. p. 169. If Coke had the faintest idea that ths Player was the author of Richard the Second, he would not have hesitated a momsnt to lay him by the heels. And that the Player was not regarded as the author by the Queen is provad by the fact that, with his company, he performed before the Court at Richmond, on the evening before the execution of Essex. 'Die Mystery of ll'illiam Shake- speare. Judge ll'cbb, Baconian, p. 72. 126 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT IV. SCENE III. Enter THE GODDESSES BEAUTY and WISDOM. Wisdo m. i o i =x L v i . Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war, How to divide the conquest of thy sight; Mine eye, my heart thy picture's sight would bar, My heart, mine eye the freedom of that right. My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie, A closet never pierc'd with crystal eyes But the defendant doth that plea deny, And says in him thy fair appearance lies. To 'side this title is impanelled A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart, And by their verdict is determined The clear eye's moiety and the dear heart's part: As thus; mine eye's due is thy outward part, And my heart's right thy inward love of heart. 1 Sight is the keenest of our bodily senses, though Wisdom is not seen by it. For vehement would be the love she would inspire, if she came before our sight and shewed us any such clear image of herself. The rhicdrus, Plato, Vol. 1. p. 327, [Bohn's Libraries] . Forehead. Her forehead is a place for princely Jove To sit, and censure matters of import: Wherein men reade the sweete conceipts of love, To which heart-pained lovers do resort, And in this Tablet 1 find to cure the wound, For which no salve or herbe was ever found. 2 Ajvr.v. Under this mirror, are her princely eyes: Two Carbuncles, two rich imperial lights; That ore the day and night do soveraignize, And their dimme tapers to their rest she frights: Her eyes excell the Moone and glorious Sonne, And when she riseth al their force is done. Nature describing her FhcenioP to Jove, Love's Martyr, p. 10. 1 And him 4 as for a Map doth Nature store, To show false Art what beauty was of yore. Son. I42-LXVIII. 2 Cp. termination of the sensual line of the Dramatis Personse, p. 24. 3 The Masque is Nature's own drama. Cp. note 4, p. 57. * Daedalus, the 1609 arrangement of the Sonnets, a Cretan labyrinth. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 127 SCENE III. Beauty. iO2=xxiv. Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath stell'd Thy beauty's form in table of my heart; 1 My body is the frame wherein 'tis held, And perspective it is best painter's art. For through the painter must you see his skill, To find where your true image pictur'd lies, Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still, That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes. Now see what good-turns eyes for eyes have done: Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee; Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art; They draw but what they see, know not the heart. 2 1 Cp. note 2, p. 56. 2 Beauty is the most lovely of all things, exciting hilarity, and shedding de- sire and confidence through the universe, wherever it enters; and it enters, in some degree, into all things: but there is another, which is as much more beau- tiful than beauty, as beauty is than chaos; namely, Wisdom, which our won- derful organ of sight cannot reach unto, but which, could it be seen, would rav- ish us with its perfect reality. Plato: or, The PJiilosopJier, Emerson, Vol. II. p. 59. Though Bacon never mentions the name of Shakespeare, he does refer to one of his plays, thus in his charge against Mr. Oliver St. John we have "and, for your comparison with Richard II., I see you follow the example of them, that brought him upon the stage in Queen Elizabeth's time," Our English Homer TJios. IV. White, p. 136. 128 Shake-speare England's Ulysses, ACT IV. Wisdom to Beauty. 103 =XLVII. Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took, And each doth good turns now unto the other,' When that mine eye is famish'd for a look, Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother, With my love's picture then my eye doth feast And to the painted banquet bids my heart; Another time mine eye is my heart's guest And in his thoughts of love doth share a part: So, either by thy picture or my love, Thyself away art present still with me; For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move, And I am still with them and they with thee; Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight Awakes my heart to heart's and eye's delight. \_Entcr . I in bit i on. "What will predispose the reader to believe the worst of Cecil, is a confiden- tial letter written by him to his intimate friend Carew, in which he suggests to the latter an act of treachery that can be characterized by no other epithet than diabolical. It appears that a certain young Earl of Desmond, who had been sent over from Kngland to Ireland, seemed likely to prove a costly and incon- venient encumbrance, instead of enabling the English to conciliate or suppress the Irish. Cecil therefore suggests to Carew that it may be possible to decoy the young nobleman into some act of treason, and then to make away with him. "SIR, It shall be an easy matter for you to colour whatsoever you shall do in that kind by this course. You may either apostate \_sic\ some to seek to with- draw him zi'/io may be fray him to you, or, rather than fail, there may be some found out /here to accuse him. and that may be sufficient reason for vou to remand him. or to restrain him, under colour of ichich tliev [the Irish] icill be more greedy peradi'enlure to labour for him but all that is here said is mine own and known to no soul living but the writer whose hand I us^ at this present, in regard of a fluxion in one of mine eyes." If this is Cecil, it may be thought Essex might well have felt his life endan- gered by such an enemy always at the Queen's ear." Hucon and Essex. Abbott, p. 245, Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 129 SCENE III. io4=cxvi. Ambition to Beauty and Wisdom. Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: 1 O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me prov'd, I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd. \_Exit Ambition. 1 This Sonnet admirably follows Son. i-xxv. but by so placing precipitates the humor of the play and leaves the present Scene devoid of action. A.s-.sv.v at I he (tffc of .Vine. He can express his mind in Latin and French, as well as in English, very courteous and modest, rather disposed to hear than to answer, given greatly to learning, weak and tender, but very comely and bashful. I think your L. will as well like of him as of any that ever came with- in your charge. IValcrhouse to Burghley, Nov. iSth, 1576. Lives of J'he Ear Is of Essex, Vol. I. p. 166. Coxeter according to Warton, says, that he had seen one of Ovid's Epistles translated by Essex. Bibliog. Foetica, Alison, p. 187. The elegant perspicuity, the conciseness, the quick strong reasonings and the engaging good breeding of his letters, carry great marks of genius. /\'. and A 7 . Authors, Horace IValpolc, 1759, Vol. I. p. 94. Essex's letters, whether in Latin or English, short or long, of an earlier or later date, public or private, partake uniformly of the same clearness and ele- gance of manner. Original Letters [Second Series], Ellis, Vol. III. 130 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT IV. Wisdom to Beauty. io5=LXxxvi. Was it the proud full sail of his 1 great verse, Bound for the prize of all too precious you, That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew ? Was it his spirit, 2 by spirits taught to write 3 Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead? No, neither he, nor his compeers by night Giving him aid, my verse astonished. He, nor that affable familiar ghost Which nightly gulls him with intelligence, 4 As victors of my silence cannot boast; I was not sick of any fear from thence: But when your countenance fill'd up his line, Then lack'd I matter; that enfeebled mine. 1 Ambition' 1 s. 2 Hope, Act III. Cp. note 2, p. 57. :i I^nvy, Act II. and Desire, Act I. 4 Hope, Act III. It is noteworthy that ll'isdom has the same contempt for Hope as had her father, Knozvledge. Cp. Son. 58-1^x1 . If compelled to select one of Shakespeare's Contemporaries for the Rival Poet, I should select Drayton. Shakespeare's I'OCMS, ll'yudliam, p. 25$. Barnabe Barnes probably the rival, .... The emphasis laid by Barnes on the inspiration that he soughtfrom Southampton's "gracious eyes" on the one hand, and his reiterated references to his patron's "virtue" on the other, suggest. that Shakespeare in these Sonnets directly alluded to Barnes as his chief com- petitor in the hotly contested race for Southampton's favours. Life of Shake- speare, Sidney Lee, p. 133. Cp. sub-note i, p. 115. To THE EARLE OF ESSEX, EARLE MARSHELL,* ETC. Great Strong-Bowe's heir, a no Self-Conceit doth cause Mine humble wings aspire to you, unknowne: But knowing this, that your renown alone [As th' adamant, and as the amber drawes: That, hardest steel: this, easie yielding straws] Alters the stubborn, and attracts the prone: I have presum'd [O honor's Paragon!] To grave your name [which all Iberia awes] .. 1 Cp. note i, p. 137. 2 Cp. Penelope's Challenge, p. 19. Love $ Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 131 SCENE III. Beauty to Wisdom. io6==LXXXii. I grant thou wert not married to mv Muse, And therefore may'st without attaint o'erlook The dedicated words which writers use Of their fair subject, blessing every book. Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue, Finding thy worth a limit past my praise, And therefore art enforc'd to seek anew Some fresher stamp of the time-bett'ring days. And do so, love; yet when they have devis'd What strained touches rhetoric can lend, Thou truly fair wert truly sympathiz'd In true plain words by thy true-telling friend; And their gross painting might be better used Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused. Here on the fore-front of this little pile; T' invite the vertuous to a sacred feast, And chase away the vicious and the vile, Or stop their lothsome envious tongues, at least. If I have err'd, let my submission scuse: And daign to grace my yet ungraced muse. Joshua Sylvester. [Cp. Bryd^es' Rcstituta, Vol. II. p. 415.] 1 This opens another passage based on Shakespeare's knowledge of heraldry .... Imprese, a term of heraldic science .... whenever Shakespeare in an age of technical conceits, indulges in one ostentatiously, it will always be found that his apparent obscurity arises from our not crediting him with a technical knowledge which he undoubtedly possessed, be it of heraldry,^ of law, or of philosophic disputation. Shakespeare 1 s Poems, IVyndham, pp. 226-29. In 1597 the Earl of Essex had become Earl Marshal and chief of the Her- ald's College. Life of Shakespeare, Sidney Lee, p. 190. Essex was great at impreses. 2 y^/sow's Conv. zvith Drummond, p. 30. Essex was gallant, romantic and ostentatious, his shooting-matches in the eye of the city gained him great popularity and the people never ceased to adore him. His genius for shows and those pleasures that carry an image of war was as remarkable as his spirit in the profession itself. His impreses and inven- tions of entertainment were much admired. R. and N. Authors, Walpolc. 1 The Enacted Will, or The Masque of Love's Labor's Won, is based on heraldry. Cp, notes, p. 27. 2 Cp. William Shakspere, Poet or Peacock, index, 132 Shake-speare England's Ulysses^ ACT IV. SCENE IV. Enter THE GODDESS BEAUTY. Beauty. 107 CXLYIII. O me! what eyes hath Love put in my head. Which have no correspondence with true sight! Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled. That censures falsely what they see aright ? If that be fair whereon m\~ false eyes dote, What means the world to say it is not so? f If it be not, then love doth well denote Love's eye is not so true as all men's: no. How can it? O, how can Love's eye be true. That is so vex'd with watching and with tears ? No marvel then, though I mistake my vie The sun itself sees not till heaven clears. O cunning Love! with tears thou keep st me blind. Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find. \^Enter Ambition. 1 Ambition. Cp. note 2, p. 57. To THE EARL OF ESSEX. Magnificke lord, whose virtues excellent Do merit a most famous poets wit To be thy living praises instrument: Yet do not deign to let thy name be writ In this base poem, for thee far unfit: Nought is thy worth disparaged thereby. But when my Muse, whose feathers, nothing flit. Do yet but flag and lowly learn to fly. With bolder wing shall dare aloft to" sty To the last praises of this Faery Queen': Then shall it make most famous memory Of thine HEROICKE parts, such as they been: Till then, vouchsafe thy noble countenance To their first labors needed furtherance. T*e Fairy Quten, Sfr*srr r 1590, And there, though last not least is Action: A gender shepheard may no where be found. Whose muse, full of high thought's invention. Doth, like himself. HEROICALLY sound. Cotim Clouts. Sftnser, 1595. Loves Labors Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 133 SCENE IV. Ambition to Beauty. 108 LXXVIII. So oft have I invok'd thee for my Muse, And found such fair assistance in my verse. As even* alien pen hath got my use. And under thee their poesy disperse. Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing. And heavy ignorance aloft to fly. Have added feathers to the learned's wing. And given grace a double majesty. Yet be most proud of that which I compile. Whose influence is thine, and born of thee: In others' works thou dost but mend the style. And arts with thy sweet graces graced be; But thou art all my art, and dost advance As high as learning my rude ignorance. If music and sweet poetry agree, As they must needs, the sister and die brother. Then must the love be great "twist thee and me. Because thou lorest the one, and I the other. Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly Upon the lute doth ravish human sense: Spenser to me. whose deep conceit is such As. passing all conceit, needs no defence. 1 Thou knrest to hear the sweet melodious st That Phcebus rate, the queen of music, makes; And I in deep delight am chiefly drown'd When as himself to singing he betakes. One god Is god of both, as poets feign; One knight loves both, and both in thee remain. Attributed to Shakspere in Fkisiomalf Pilgrim^ 1599. Shakespeare acknowledged acquaintance with Spenser's work in a plain ref- erence to his Teares of die Muses" [1591] in 'Midsummer Nights Dream." 1L 52,53]- "The thrice three Muses, mourning for die death Of learning, late deceased in beggary, is stated to be the theme of one of the dramatic entertainments ncrem illt it is proposed to celebrate Theseus s y - - vf. - .-:-. :e ; . :. Shake- sp ear e England 's Ulysses, ACT IV. Beauty to Ambition. io9=Liv. O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem By that sweet ornament which truth doth give! The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem For that sweet odour which doth in it live. The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye As the perfum'd tincture of the roses, Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly When summer's breath their masked buds discloses: But, for their virtue only is their show. They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade, Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so; Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made: And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, When that shall vade, my verse distills your truth. Of this nobleman [Essex] [says Wordsworth] the following anecdote is told. When the Bishops that felt the smart of it had cried out against that slashing pamphlet, called Martin Mar Prelate, 1 and there was a prohibition published, that no man should presume to carry it about him, upon pain of pun- ishment; and the Queen herself did speak as much when the Earl was present: "Why then" said the Earl, "what will become of me" and pulling the book out of his pocket, he did shew it unto the Queen. Brydgcs' Restituta, Vol. I. p. 196. Essex was something of a poet: he possessed the kindling poetic temperament and was fond of making verses; a lover of literature, and the friend of poets. It was he who sought out Spenser when in great distress and relieved him, and, when that poet died, Essex buried him in Westminster Abbey. Being, as he was, so near a friend of Southampton, it could scarcely be otherwise than that he should have been a personal friend of Shakspere. // is highly prob- able that some of the Poet" 's dramas n-ere first performed at I\sse\ J/ouse. Shakespeare 1 s Sonnets, Afassey, p. 462. 1 The pamphlets were published 1588-1500 It was an age of vapid punning hence the name suggests the fatherhood of Henry Willobie; i. e., Henry=henery=feathers; Hamlet's "forest of feathers." Willobie =The Will-to-be. Cp. notes, pp. 25 and 73. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 135 SCENE IV. Ambition to Beauty, i io=xcvin. 1 1 i=xcix. From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, That heavy Saturn laugh 'd and leap'd with him. Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue Could make me any summer's story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew; Nor did I wonder at the lily's white, Nor praise the deep vermillion in the rose: They were but sweet, but figures of delight, Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away, As with your shadow I with these did play. The forward violet thus did I chide: [smells, Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that If not from my love's breath? The purple pride Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed. The lily I condemned for thy hand, And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair; The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, One blushing shame, another white despair; A third, nor red, nor white, had stol'n of both, And to his robb'ry had annex'd thy breath; But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth A vengeful canker eat him up to death. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see But sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee. Shakespeare wrote no commendatory verses whatsoever, the only one who is praised by Shakespeare, and on one occasion only, is Spenser, who is referred to in one of the Sonnets of the Pasionate Pilgrim. William Shakespeare, .A'ari Elze, p. 427. 136 Skake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT IV. Beauty to Ambition. \ 1 2==cn. My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming; I love not less, though less the show appear: That love is merchandiz'd whose rich esteeming The owner's tongue doth publish every where. Our love was new, and then but in the spring, When I was wont to greet it with my lays, 1 As Philomel in summer's front doth sing, And stops his pipe in growth of riper days:* Not that the summer is less pleasant now Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, But that wild music burthens every bough And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue, Because I would not dull you with my song. 1 As Love to Desire, Act I. and Reason to Envy, Act II. 2 In Act III. Grace is not specially concerned with Hope. Having, in the Karl's [Kssex's] precipitate fortune, curiously observed. First, how long that nobleman's birth, worth and favour had been flattered, tempted, and stung by a swarm of sect-animals, whose property was to wound and fly away; and so, by a continual affliction probably enforce great hearts to turn and tosse for ease; and in those passive postures, perchance to tumble sometimes up- on I lieir S&vcraigne' s circles}- Into which pitfall of theirs, 2 when they had once discerned this Earle to be fallen: straight, under the reverend stile of Laesae Alajestatis all inferiour ministers of Justice they knew would be justly let loose to work upon him. And accordingly under the same cloud, his enemies took audacity to cast libels abroad in his name against the State, made by them- selves: set papers upon posts, to bring his innocent friends in question. His power by the jesuiticall craft of rumour, they made infinite; and his ambition more than equal to it. His letters to private men were read openly, by the piercing eyes of an atturnie's office, which warrantes the construction of every line in the worst sense against the writer. GreviHe' s Life of Sidney [Dr. Gro- sart, Ed.], Vol. IV. pp. 156, 157. 1 Cp. the 1589 Dramatis Persona? of Hamlet, index. 2 Cp. Raleigh's letter to Robert Cecil, p. 125. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 137 SCENE IV. Awbition to Beauty. 1 13 xxvu. i i4=xxvui. Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, The dear repose for limbs with travel tired; But then begins a journey in my head, To work my mind, when body's work's expired; For then my thoughts, from far where I abide, Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, Looking on darkness which the blind do see: Save that my soul's imaginary sight Presents thy shadow to my sightless view, Which, like a jewel, hung in ghastly night, Makes black night beauteous and her old face new. Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind, For thee, and for myself, no quiet find. How can I then return in happy plight, That am debarr'd the benefit of rest? When day's oppression is not eas'd by night, But day by night, and night by day, oppress'd? J And each, though enemies to either's reign, Do in consent shake hands to torture me, The one by toil, the other to complain How far I toil, still farther off from thee. I tell the day, to please him thou art bright, And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven: So flatter I the swart-complexion'd night, When sparkling stars twire not thou gild'st the even. But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer, And night doth nightly make grief's length seem stronger. [Enter Wisdom. 1 Ambition has not lost the characteristics of his grandmother, Envy, and Bacon's precept is applicable. "Envy keeps no holidays." Of Envy, Futncis Bacon. 138 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT IV. Wisdom to Ambition. \ 1 5=XLi. Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits, When I am sometime absent from thy heart, Thy beauty and thy years full well befits, For still temptation follows where thou art. Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won, * Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail'd; And when a woman woos, 2 what woman's son, 3 Will sourly leave her till he have prevail'd? Ah me! but yet thou mightst my seat forbear, And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth, Who lead thee in their riot even there Where thou art forc'd to break a twofold truth; 4 Hers, by thy beauty tempting her 2 to thee, 5 Thine, by thy beauty being false to me. 1 Tongue-tied ambition, not replying, yielded. Richard ///., in. 7. 2 Beauty. Cp. Son. iia-cn. 3 Ambition, son of the goddess Hope. * With the Pythagoreans fzvo involved otherness and was the number of opinion "because of its diversity." 5 Such an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty. Hamlet in. 4, 1. 41. What sage has he not outseen? What king has he not taught state? What gentleman has he not instructed in the rudeness of his behavior? What lover has he not outloved? What maiden has not found him finer than her delicacy? Emerson, Vol. II. p. 168. The most remarkable feature in the [first quarto of Hamlet] 1603 edition is a scene between Horatio and the Queen in which he tells her of the King's frustrated scheme for having Hamlet murdered in Kngland. The object of this scene is to absolve the Queen 1 from complicity in the King's crime; a pur- pose which can also be traced in other passages of this first edition. Shake- speare, A Critical Study, Geo. Brandes, p. 345. 1 The chances are that Hamlet was never printed prior to Mar. 24th. 1603. for reasons com- pare the conjectural 1589 Dramatis fersotHe of Hamlet, index, and Raleigh's letter to Robert Cecil, p. 125, and Cecil's letter to Carew, p. 128. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted IVilL 139 SCENE IV. Ambition to Beauty, i i6=LXXi. No longer mourn for me when I am dead, Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell: 1 Nay, if you read this line, remember not The hand that writ it; for I love you so, That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, If thinking on me then should make you woe. O, if, I say, you look upon this verse, When I, perhaps, compounded am with clay, Do not so much as my poor name rehearse; But let your love e'en with my life decay: Lest the wise world should look into your moan, And mock you with me after I am gone. 1 Ambition has not lost the characteristics of his great-grandfather, Desire. Cp. Son. ly-Lxxiv., 1. 10. Shakespeare's "deposition scene" in Richard the Second was never -printed, so long as Queen Elizabeth lived. It appeared first, in print, in the edition of 1608 . . . What passage or incident in the play can, at that date [1597], have turned Cecil's thoughts towards the Earl of Essex? and finally, to what perform- ance was it that the Queen herself alluded, when, in her curious conversation about the Pandects of the Records, with William Lambarde, on the 4th of Au- gust, 1601, she suddenly startled him, by exclaiming "I am Richard the Sec- ond, know you not that!" and was answered: "Such a wicked imagination was, indeed, attempted by a most unkind gentleman, the most adorned creature that ever your Majesty made;" the Queen herself presently adding: "That tragedy was played forty times in open streets and houses." Life of Ralegh, Ed-wards, Vol. II. p. 167. Elizabeth died Mar. 24th, 1603. In this year appeared Johann Bayer's Ur- anometria containing the constellations of the Phoenix and the Peacock. The Phrenix being a memorial to the author of our Shake-spearian literature, the Peacock a sign in the heavens so that he who runs can spell out the name of the Stratford Cuckce "that so had crossed sweet Philomelas note." Cp. p. 18. 140 Shake-spear e England* s Ulysses, ACT IV. Ambition to Wisdom. 1 1 7=Lxxxvm. When thou shalt be dispos'd to set me light, And place my merit in the eye of scorn, Upon thy side against myself I'll fight, And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn. ' With mine own weakness being best acquainted, Upon thy part I can set down a storv ) Of faults conceal'd, wherein I am attainted, ) That thou in losing me shalt win much glory: And I by this will be a gainer too; For bending all my loving thoughts on thee, The injuries that to myself I do, Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me. Such is my love, to thee I so belong, That for thy right, mvself will bear all wrong. 1 From Son. IOO-LXXXVII. 1. 9, it appears that ll'isdom, at one time, was be- trothed to Ambition. 2 The characters being Pythagoreans, Ambition here refers to the relation- ship of Hope and Knowledge in Act III. Cp. Son. (>^ ex. VERSES To THE CONCEIT OF THE FAKRV (JIRKX. To look upon a work of rare devise The which a workman setteth out to view, 1 And not to yield it the deserved praise That unto such a workmanship is dew, Doth either prove the judgement to be naught, Or else doth shew a mind with envy fraught. To labor to commend a piece of work, Which no man goss about to discommend, Would raise a jealous doubt, that there did lurk Some sscret thought whereto the praise did tend: For when men know the goodness of the wine, 'Tis needless for the hoast to have a signe. 2 1 Would this line have been acceptable to Spenser from any other pen than Shake-speare's? 2 Good wine needs no bush. As You Like It, Epil. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 141 SCENE IV. Ambition to Beauty. 1 1 8=Lxxix. Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid, My verse alone had all thy gentle grace, But now my gracious numbers are decay 'd, And my sick Muse doth give another place. * I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument Deserves the travail of a worthier pen, Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent He robs thee of and pays it thee again. He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give, And found it in thy cheek: he can afford No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live. Then thank him not for that which he doth say, Since what he owes thee thou thyself dost pay. 1 Ambition's jealousy of ll- r isdom, so strongly evidenced in Son. iO4-cxvi., here again breaks out. Thus then, to shew my judgement to be such As can discourse of colors black and white, As alls to free my mind from envies touch, That never gives to any man his right; I here pronounce this workmanship is such f As that no pen can set it forth too much. And thus I hang a garland at the dore; [Not for to shew the goodness of the ware; But such hath been the custom heretofore, And customs very hardly broken .are;] And when your taste shall tell you this is true, Then look you give your hoast his utmost due. Ignoto. As K /''c// Cp(i a /)a\', or Tlic \i^ lit inhale To /it's Muse, was subscribed Jgnoto in England's Helicon, 1600. In Love" s Martyr. I^tioto is the moving spirit; it is from fgrnoto" 1 s lines that Chapman, Marston, and Jonson, base their instructions for the burning of the second Phoenix. "The flame that eats her, feeds the others life." This second Phoenix is Shake-speare's poem of The P/nvnix and Turtle Dove, showing, almost conclusively, that Robert Chester's Love's Martyr is a posthumous work of Shake-speare. Cp. note from Saintsbury, p. 41, 142 Shake-speare England' s Ulysses, ACT IV. Beauty to Ambition. ii9=xcvi. Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness; Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport; Both grace and faults are lov'd of more and less: Thou mak'st faults graces, that to thee resort. As on the ringer of a throned queen The basest jewel will be well esteem'd; So are those errors that in thee are seen To truths translated and for true things deem'd. How many lambs might the stern wolf betray, If like a lamb he could his looks translate! How many gazers mightst thou lead away, If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state! 1 But do not so; I love thee in such sort, As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report. 1 Folly. Cp. Dramatis Personae, p. 24, note i, p. 47, and note 2, p. 37. In "As You Like It," hints for the scene of Orlando's encounter with Charles the Wrestler, and for Touchstone's description 'of the diverse shapes of a lie, were clearly drawn from a book called "Saviolo's Practise," a manual of the art of self-defence, which appeared in 1595 from the pen of Vincentio Saviolo, an Italian fencing-master in the service of the Earl of Essex. Life of S/iakc- spcat'c, Sidncv Lee, p. 209. Such one he ti'rt.s-, 1 of him we boldly say, In whose rich soul all sovereign powers did suit, In whom in peace the elements all lay So mixt as none could sovereignty impute, As all did govern yet all did obey: His lively temper zcas 1 so absolute, That it seemed, when Heaven his model first began, In him it showed perfection in a man. Michael Dm \loti, 1603. * It is noticeable that in a later edition of his poem [1619] Drayton has returned to his description, and retouched it into a still nearer likeness to that of Shak- speare. The last two lines are altered thus: As that it seemed when Nature him began, She meant to show all that might be in man. Shakespeare's Sonnets, Certdd Massev, p. 573. 1 Shake-speare the Dramatist died Feby- 2,5th. 1601, Shakspere the Player, April zard, 1616. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 143 SCENE IV. Ambition to Beauty. 120 xc. Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now; Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross, Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow, And do not drop in for an after-loss: Ah, do not, when my heart hath scap'd this sorrow, Come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe, Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, To linger out a purpos'd overthrow. If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last, When other petty griefs have done their spite, But in the onset come; so shall I taste At first the very worst of fortune's might; And other strains of woe, which now seem woe, Compar'd with loss of thee will not seem so. \_Enter Nature and Time. Students of Shakspeare's times, his life, and works, unless their view may have been distorted by a wrong interpretation of Meres' meaning when he spoke of Shakspeare's "private friends" amongst whom the "sugared sonnets" circu- lated, will have received an impression that our poet must have been in some way, to some extent, mixed up with the affairs of Ess^x. I am told that the late Mr. Croker, of the Quarterly Kei't'en.', always entertained this opinion, although he could never lay his hand on any very tangible evidence of the fact. There is constructive evidence enough to show, that if Shakspeare was not hand-in-glove with the Essex faction, he fought on their side pen-in-hand. In the chorus at the end of "Henry the Fifth" he introduced a prophecy of the Earl's expected successes in Ireland. Shakspeare's Sonnets, Gerald Massey, p. 50, sup. In 1587 the two chief companies of actors, claiming respectively the nominal patronage of the Queen and Lord Leicester, 1 returned to London from a pro- vincial tour, during which they visited Stratford. Two subordinate compan- ies, one of which claimed the patronage of the Earl of Essex and the other that of Lord Stafford, also performed in the town during the same year. Life of Shakespeare, Sidney Lee, p. 33. 1 Stepfather of Essex. 144 Shake-speare England" s Ulysses, ACT IV, Nature to Ambition. 121=111. Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest, Now is the time that face should form another; Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. [ For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry? Or who is he so fond will be the tomb Of his self-love, to stop posterity ? Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime: So thou through windows of thine age shalt see Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time. But if thou live, rememb'red not to be, Die single, and thine image dies with thee. 1 The goddess Hope, Act III. On the i4th of February [1598], a great entertainment was given at Essex House, at which the Ladies Leicester, Northumberland, Bedford, Essex, Rich; Lords Essex, Rutland, Mountjoy, and others, were present. They had two plays performed before them, which kept them till one o'clock after midnight. Considering the close connection which existed between Essex and Southamp- ton, the great patron of Shakspere, who was still abroad, but ordered to return forthwith, there can be little doubt that the plays were his, perhaps then per- formed for the first time, before this noble audience. If our informant had only been a little more particular, we might have had the dates of two of the great poet's dramas fixed; perhaps he himself took apart in them. Lives of (he J'Uuis of ttssex, /)ei'ereux, Vol. I. p. 479. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 145 SCENE IV. Time to Wisdom. I22=xn. When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white; When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, And summer's green all girded up in sheaves, Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard; Then of thy beauty do I question make, That thou among the wastes of Time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake And die as fast as they see others grow; And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence. Besides his other defects, Essex's violent temper unfitted him for Court life. Cuffe, his most intimate secretary, said of him that "he always carried on his brow either love or hatred, and did not understand concealment." Wotton describes him as a "great resenter," and as "no good pupil to my Lord of Leicester, who was wont to put all his passion in his pocket." On the other hand Essex had a generosity, a truthfulness, and a warmheartedness that, in the judgment of his friends, atoned for a thousand faults. The impression pro- duced by a short interview with him, when suddenly he calls in on Anthony Bacon and a little group of friends, and brightens them up with the sunshine of his hopeful nature, reminds one of Shakespeare's description of Henry V. A largess universal as the sun, His liberal eye doth give to every one; That every wretch, pining and pale before, Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks. Bucon and Essex, Abbott, p. 26. Bacon's insensibility is characteristic .... let any one read the Essay on Love, and remember that some persons, not always inmates of lunatic asy- lums, have held that Bacon wrote the plays of Shakespeare his pusillanimity, his lack of passion, History of English Literature, Saintsbury, p. 208. 10 146 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT IV. Nature to Beauty. i23==v. Those hours, that with gentle work did frame The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell, Will play the tyrants to the very same, And that unfair which fairly doth excel: For never-resting Time leads summer on To hideous winter and confounds him there; Sap check'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone, Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where: Then, were not summer's distillation left, A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft, Nor it nor no remembrance what it was : But flowers distill'd, though they with winter meet, Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet. \Exeunt. Love's Martyr; or Rosalinds Complaint .... a Poeme enterlaced with much varietie and raritie; now first translated out of the venerable Italian Torquato Cceliano, by Robert Chester, 1601. Landulpho. } Mogt ugly Hnes and base . browne . paper . stufe ' Thus to abuse our heavenly poesie, That sacred off-spring from the braine of Jove Mavortius. I see [my Lord] this home-spun country stuffe Brings little liking to your curious eare, Be patient, for perhaps the play will mend. [Enter Troylits and Cressida. Troylus. Come Cressida, my Cresset light, .... Thy knight his valiant elbow wears, That when he Shakes his furious S pea re The foe in shivering fearful sort May lay him down in death to snort. . . . Landulpho. I blush in your behalfes at this base trash I have a mistresse 1 whose intangling wit Will turne and winde more cunning arguments Than could the Cretan labyrinth* ingyre. I/i'strio-Afastix, n. i., Jno. Marston. Cp. The School of Shakspere, Simpson, Vol. II. pp. 39, 42. 1 Cp, sub-note i, p. 40. 3 The 1609 arrangement of the Sonnets, a Cretan labyrinth. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 147 ACT V. MUSES REPRESENTED. TRUTH TIME ART FOLLY NATURE. SCENE I. Enter NATURE and THE GOD OF TRUTH. Nature to Truth. i24=LXXXiv. Who is it that says most? which can say more Than this rich praise, that you alone are you ? In whose confine immured is the store Which should example where your equal grew. Lean penury within that pen doth dwell, That to his subject lends not some small glory; But he that writes of you, if he can tell That you are you, ] so dignifies his story. Let him but copy what in you is writ, Not making worse what Nature made so clear, And such a counterpart shall fame his wit, Making his style admired every where. You to your beauteous blessings add a curse, Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse. 1 What is Truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. Of Truth, Francis Bacon. Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh To learned Chaucer; and, rare Beaumont, lie A little nearer Spenser, to make room For Shakspeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb. To lodge all four in one bed make a shift, For, until doomsday hardly will a fifth, Betwixt this day and that, by fates be slain, For whom your curtains need be drawn again. But if precedency* in death doth bar A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre, Under this sable marble of thine own, Sleep, rare tragedian, 2 Shakspeare, sleep alone W, Basse, 1622. 1 Shake-speare the Dramatist, died Febry. 25th, 1601, 3 Shakspere the Player, died April 23rd, 1616, 148 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT V. Truth to Nature. 1 25=0x11. Your love and pity doth th' impression fill Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow; For what care I who calls me well or ill, ! So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow? You are my all the world, and I must strive To know my shames and praises from your tongue; None else to me, nor I to none alive, That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong: In so profound abysm I throw all care Of others' voices, that my adder's sense To critic and to flatterer stopped are: Mark how with my neglect I do dispense You are so strongly in my purpose bred That all the world besides methinks are dead. 1 Truth only doth judge itself. Of Truth, Francis liacon. The purpose of Ao- igram LXVI. , Alartiai. 1 Drayton's lines, p. 156, seem to point to this sentence. 2 Cp. notes, pp. 80, 89, and Bacon's borrowing from Shake-speare, p. i4<> Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 149 SCENE I. Nature to Truth. i26=cxv. Those lines that I before have writ do lie, Even those that said I could not love you dearer: Yet then my judgment knew no reason why My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer. But reckoning Time, whose million'd accidents Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings, Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents, Divert strong minds to th' course of alt'ring things: 1 Alas, why, fearing of Time's tyranny, Might I noi then say 'Now I love you best,' When I was certain o'er incertainty, 2 Crowning the present, doubting of the rest? Love is a babe; then might I not say so, To give full growth to that which still doth grow. [ Curtain. 1 Cp. note 3, Son. 93-xvin. By referring to the Dramatis Personae, p. 24, it will be seen that Nature, in her eternizing, has returned to the intellectual line. a Cp. Son. g6-cvii. 1. 7. It was a prevailing tenet of the Academics, that there is no certain knowl- edge. Of the Nature of the Gods, Cicero, p. 9. The remarkable charge that Bacon borrowed from Shakespeare is not orig- inal, Massey in his book on the Sonnets, runs through several pages in this fashion: Personally, I have sometimes thought there was something conscious, not to say sinister, in the silence of Bacon respecting Shakespeare. As Spedding points out, Bacon had a regular system of taking notes, and of intentionally al- tering the things that he quoted . . . This opens a vast vista of responsibility in his covert mode of assimilating the thoughts, purloining the gold, and clipping the coinage of Shakespeare .... It has often been a matter of surprise that Bacon should not have recognized Shakespeare or his work 1 His Promus is the record of much that he took directly from Shakespeare. For eight or ten years he had free play and full pasturage in Shakespeare's field before he published his first ten essays .... It is this borrowing from Shake- speare by Bacon that has given so much trouble and labor in vain to the Ba- conians . . . The simple solution is that Bacon ivas the unsuspected thief, who has been accredited with the original ownership of the property purloined by Shakespeare. Shakspere Not Shakespeare, IT. II. /u 1 Cp. lines from Harnlet, p. 151. 150 Shake-speare England ' s Ulysses \ ACT V. SCENE II. Enter THE GODS OF FOLLY and ART. Folly to Art. i27=Lxxx. 0, how I faint when I of you do write, Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, ] And in the praise thereof spends all his might, To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame! But since your worth, wide as the ocean is. The humble as the proudest sail doth bear, My saucy bark, inferior far to his, On your broad main doth wilfully appear. Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat, Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride; Or, being wreck'd, I am a worthless boat, He of tall building and of goodly pride: Then if he thrive and I be cast away, The worst was this ; my love was my decay. 1 The god of Truth. "Art is true." 2 Cp. note on the sensual line, p. 86. Elizabeth, who "looked that her word should be a warrant," chose to employ him [Bacon] in the business which belonged properly to her learned council. .... His first service of that nature, the first at least of which I find any re- cord, was in 1594 We have a letter of Bacon's to King James, written in 1606, in which he speaks of his "nine years' service of the crown." This would give 1597 as the year in which he began to serve as one of the learned council. Works of Francis Bacon, Spedding. [Philosophical Writings, Vol. 1. p. 39-] It was Bacon who withdrew himself from Essex, not Essex who shunned Ba- con As early as March, 1597, we find him therefore shunning Essex's company in Court, desiring to speak with him, but "somewhere else than at Court." Bacon and Essex, Edivin A. Abbott, p. 103. Mr. Swinburne goes still farther. "Not one single alteration in the whole play," he says when speaking of the revision of Hamlet, ' 'can possibly have been made with a view to stage effect, or to present popularity and profit." Nay, he affirms that every change in the text of Hamlet has impaired its fitness for the stage and increased its value for the closet in exact and perfect proportion. r fhe Mystery of William Shakespeare, Judge Webb, p. 88. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 151 SCENE II. Art to Folly. 1 28 CL. O, from what power hast thou this powerful might, With insufficiency my heart to sway? To make me give the lie to my true sight, And swear that brightness doth not grace the day? Whence ha.st thou this becoming of things ill, That in the very refuse of thy deeds There is such strength and warrantise of skill That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds? Who taught thee how to make me love thee more, The more I hear and see just cause of hate? O, though I love what others do abhor, With others thou shouldst not abhor my state: If thy unworthiness rais'd love in me, More worthy I to be belov'd of thee. Neither was the effect of the sentence that there passed against him any more than a suspension of the exercise of some of his places: at which time also Es- sex, that could vary himself into all shapes for a time, infinitely desirous [as by the sequel now appeareth] to be at liberty to practise and revise^ his for- mer purposes. Declaration of the Treasons of Essex, Francis Bacon, 1601. Osric. Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark. Hamlet. I humbly thank you, sir. {Aside to Horatio,] Dost know this water-fly? Horatio. {Aside to Hamlet,] No, my good lord. Hamlet. {Aside to Horatio,} Thy state is the more gracious; for 't is a vice to know him. a He hath much land, and fertile; let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king's mess: "Pis a chough; but, as I say, spacious in the possession of dirt. 3 Hamlet, v. 2. 1 On page 191 of Mr. Abbott's book, Bacon and Essex, the word is "revise," in the "Dec- laration," p. 14, "revive." 2 Essex "did not seem to know that he had ever deserved -well of Bacon." Cp. Macaulay's lines, p. 81. 3 If, upon compulsion, I were to make a guess as to the parcel of land referred to it would be that described in sub-note 2, p. 106. 152 Shake-speare England's Ulysses, ACT V Folly to Art. i29=Lxxxix. Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault, And I will comment upon that offence: Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt; 1 Against thy reasons making no defence. Thou canst not, love, disgrace me half so ill, To set a form upon desired change, As I'll myself disgrace: knowing thy will, I will acquaintance strangle and look strange ; Be absent from thy walks; and in my tongue Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell, Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong, And haply of our old acquaintance tell. '' For thee against myself I'll vow debate, For I must ne'er love him whom thou dost hate. 3 1 Psychologically, Folly partakes of the character of his great-great-grand- father, Desire. Cp. Son. n-xxxvn. 1. 3. 2 As Desire and Love, Act I. 3 Here Folly refers to Son. i8-cxLix. 1. 5, when Folly and Art were Desire and Love. Finding that the Queen's severity [to Essex] was so disproportioned to the offence, the writer casts about to imagine other crimes, and is persuaded there must be something more at the bottom. 1 Sydney Papers, Oct. 6th. What articles were brought against him is not publicly known. Bacon and J-',ssex, Abbott, p. 140. Her Majesty in her royal intention never purposed to call your Lordship's doings into public question .... For first, the handling the cause in the Star Chamber, you not called, was enforced by the violence of libeling and ru- mours, wherein the Queen thought to have satisfied the world, and yet spared your Lordship's appearance Her Majesty spared the public place of the Star Chamber; she limited the charge precisely not to touch disloyalty; and no record remaineth to memory of I he charge or sentenced Letter, Anthony Bacon to I'lssex to be shown the Queen. Bacon and lissex, Abbott. p. 188. " 1 Cp. sub-notes 2 and 5, p. 116. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 153. SCENE II. Art to Folly. i3o=cxx. That you were once unkind befriends me now, And for that sorrow, which I then did feel, Needs must I under my transgression bow, Unless my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel. For if vou were by my unkindness shaken 1 As I by yours, you've pass'd a hell of time, And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken To weigh how once I suffer'd in your crime. 2 O, that our night of woe might have remember'd My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits, And soon to you, as you to me, then tender'd The humble salve which wounded bosoms fits! But that, your trespass, now becomes a fee; Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me. 1 Cp. Son. i6-xxxix. 1. 5. 2 The characters are Pythagoreans. Cp. Son. I5~xxxvi. 1. 9. Raleigh had powerful enemies, some of whom declared that the whole story of the voyage to Guiana was a fiction. It was to refute this slander that he wrote his DiscoTerie of Guiana, 1596. At the same time he dre.ru a map, which was not yet finished when the book was published. This map, long sup- posed to bs lost, has been now identified with a map in the British Museum, dated 1650 in the catalogue, but shown to be Raleigh's by a careful compar- ison with the text of the *' DiscoTerie" and with Raleigh's known hand writ- ingRaleigh's accuracy as a topographer and cartographer of Guiana or the central district of Venezuela has been established by subsequent explorers. Dictionary of N. B., p. 104. Maria. He [Sir Walter Malvolio 1 ] does obey every point of the letter that I dropped to betray him: he does smile his face into more lines than are in the nezu mafi, ruilh the augmentation of the Indies. Tiuelfth Xighl ; or, II Jiat You //'7//, in. 2.. 1 Cp. notes, p. 124. 154 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT V. Folly to Art. i3i=cxxxv. Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy 'Will,' 1 And 'Will' 2 to boot, and 'Will' 3 in overplus; More then enough am I that vex thee still, To thy sweet will making addition thus. Wilt thou, whose will 1 is large and spacious, Not once vouchsafe to hide my will 4 in thine? Shall will 4 in others seem right gracious, And in my will 4 no fair acceptance shine ? The sea, all water, yet receives rain still, And in abundance addeth to his store ; \JEnter Nature. So thou, being rich in 'Will,' 1 add to thy 'Will' 1 One will 4 of mine, to make thy large 'Will' 1 more. Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill; Think all but one, and me in that one 'Will.' 5 \_Exit Folly. 1 Legal or artistic will. 2 The poet Folly. 3 An overplus of Folly. * Wish, good will. 5 No folly in the artistic will, yet I, the poet Folly, am there. Essex when released from imprisonment was expressly informed that he must consider himself "under indignation" a qualification which had the effect of deterring all but his near relations from visiting him, and, after having spent his fortunes in the wars, and overwhelmed himself with debt in the service of his country, he was deprived by the Queen of the grant upon the continuance of which he depended for his subsistence, and was brought face to face with beggary. All this was a very severe punishment, if inflicted for mere incapac- ity, even though accompanied with some degree of wilful ness and contempt of orders. It is natural to suppose that there was some other cause for the Queen's displeasure. 1 Bacon and Essex, Abbott, p. 136. 1 Cp. sub-notes 2 and 5, p. 116, and note, p. 125. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 155 SCENE II. Nature to Art. 132=0. Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long To speak of that which gives thee all thy might? 1 Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song, | Dark'ning thy pow'r to lend base s.ubjects light? j Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem In gentle numbers time so idly spent; Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem, And gives thy pen both skill and argument. Rise, resty Muse, '* my love's 1 sweet face survey, If Time have any wrinkle graven there; If any, be a satire to decay, And make Time's spoils despised every where. Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life; So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife. 1 Truth. 2 Folly. 3 Rail not gainst Fortunes sacred deitie, In youth thy virtuous patience she hath tryed, From this base earth shee'l lift thee up on hie, Where in content's rich chariot thou shalt ride, And never with impatience to abide: Fortune will glory in thy great renowne, And on thy feathered head 1 will set a crowne. Dame Nature to The Phoenix, Love's Martyr, p. 31. Mr. Chamberlain's letters give us more particularly the proceedings which were continued against Essex after the meeting at York House, by which the Queen endeavoured "to break his proud Spirit." June 23, 1600. I was yesterday at the Star Chamber upon report of some special matter that should be determined touching my Lord of Essex, when the Lord Keeper made a very grave speech in nature of a charge to the Judges, to look to the overgrowing idle multitude of Justices of Peace: to dis- coursers and meddlers in princes' 1 matters: and, lastly, to libellers : z on occa- sion whereof he fell to a digression how mercifully Her Majesty had dealt with the Earl of Essex, in proceeding with him so mildly, and by a private hearing; whereas, if he had been brought to that place, he could not have passed without a heavy censure, the avoiding whereof must only be imputed to God and Her Majesty's clemency. Lives of the Earls of Essex, Devereux, Vol. II. p. in. 1 Cp. note i, p. 73. 2 Cp. sub-notes 2 and 5, p. 116. 156 Shake-spectre England *s Ulysses, ACT V. Art to Nature. i33=cxvin. Like as, to make our appetites more keen, With eager compounds we our palate urge; As, to prevent our maladies unseen, We sicken to shun sickness when we purge; Even so, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness, To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding; And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness To be diseas'd, ere that there was true needing. Thus policy in love, to anticipate The ills that were not, grew to faults assured And brought to medicine a healthful state Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured: But thence I learn, and find the lesson true, Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you. 1 We can command Nature only by obeying her; nor can Art avail anything except as Nature's handmaiden. Preface lo Bacon's PhilosopJiical ll'orks, p. 5- For such whose poems be they ne'er so rare, In private chambers that encloistered are, And by transcription daintily must go As tho' the world unworthy were to know Their rich composures, Id I hose men ?<.'//<> keep These tcondrous relics 1 in their judgment deep, And cry them up so let such pieces be Spoke of by those that shall come after me. Poets and Posey, Michael Dray ton [quoted by Massey, p. 571]. In 1609 Shakespeare's Sonnets appeared, with the intimation that Shake- speare was not really the name of the author, but was the noted weed in which he kept invention; and in the same year Troilus and Cressida was published ?<.'//// t/ie announcement [in the preface] that the Shakespearian Plays were the property of certain grand possessors. 1 The Mystery of ll'illiam Shake- speare, Judge \Vebb, p. 73. l Cp. sub-note i, p. 142. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 157 SCENE II. Nature to Art. i34=LXi. Is it thy will thy image should keep open My heavy eyelids to the weary night? Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken, While shadows like to thee do mock my sight? Is it thy spirit 1 that thou send'st from thee So far from home into my deeds to pry, To find out shames and idle hours in me, The scope and tenure of thy jealousy? O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great: It is my love 2 that keeps mine eye awake; Mine own true love that doth my rest -defeat, To play the watchman ever for thy sake: For thee watch I whilst thou dost wake elsewhere, From me far off, with others :] all too near. 1 Reality. 2 Truth. :{ I'olly. It is therefore indisputable that whether it were Bacon's misfortune, or fault, or both he was selected by the popular indignation as one of the prime causers of the Queen's indignation against Essex. Why was this? Why did the pop- ular instinct fall upon one of Essex's closest friends, the man who nine weeks ago had subscribed himself to the Earl "more his than any man's, and more his than any man" as the principal enemy and underminer of the fallen favourite? Some counsellor must have borne the brunt, as ths Queen was thought inca- pable of such cruelty then why did not Cecil bear the brunt? Why does Rowland White over and over again acquit Cecil of any hostile conduct to Essex? Why does he expressly say that one attack against Essex was diverted by the kindness of Cecil? 1 Why does he expressly mention Bacon as an enemy? Why is Bacon himself forced to confess that Cecil remonstrated with him on the discreditable rumors of his treacherous conduct towards his former patron? Bacon and lissex, Abbott, p. 159. 1 Cp. Raleigh's letter to Cecil, p. 125. It will be seen that Robert Cecil was the chief con- spirator against Essex, and that money and advancement were the motives that led to Bacon.'.s desertion in 1594, 1597. Cp. also Cecil's letter to Edmondes, p. 158, 158 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT V. Art to Nature. i35=XL. Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all; What hast thou then more than thou hadst before ? No love, my love, that thou may'st true love call; All mine was thine before thou hadst this more. Then if for my love, thou my love receivest, I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest, But yet be blam'd, if thou thyself deceivest By wilful taste of what thyself refusest. I do forgive thy robb'ry, gentle thief, Although thou steal thee all my poverty; And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury. Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows, Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes. It can be no disgrace if it were knowen that the killinge of a rebel were prac- tised; for you see that the lives of anoynted Princes are daylye sought, and we have always in Ireland geven head money for the killinge of rebels, who are evermore proclaymed at a price. So was the Earle of Desmonde, and so have all rebels been practised agaynst. Notwithstandinge, I have written this en- closed to Stafford, who only recommended that knave to me upon his credit. Butt, for your sealf, von arc not to be touched in the nuttier. And for me, I am more sorrye for beinge deceaved than for beinge declared in the practise. Your Lordship's, ever to do you service. Raleigh to Cecil, October 1598, Life of Ralegh, Ediuards, Vol II. p. 190. Accordingly, on October 20, [1598] Chamberlain writes: . . . "Some think the Lord Montjoy shall be sent thither deputy; others say the Earl of Essex means to take it upon him, and hopes by his countenance to quiet that country. That this was more than a mere rumour is proved by the fact that Montjoy was actually named by the council; but it is equally certain that this was a mere blind, a stratagem to decoy Essex into assuming the command for himself. This can be proved by the testimony of Cecil. The outside world thought that the Council was in earnest . . . But Cecil, writing on the 6th November to Sir Thomas Edmondes, reveals, as a secret, that though Montjoy was named, the intention was to send Essex, 'my Lord Montjoy is named; but to you, in secret 1 sfieak it, not as a secretary, but as a friend, that I think the Earl of Essex shall go Lieutenant of the Kingdom,' " Bacon and Essex, Abbott, p. 106. Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 159 SCENE II. Nature to Art. 136=01. O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends For thy neglect of Truth in beauty dyed? Both truth and beauty on my love depends; So dost thou too, and therein dignified. Make answer, Muse: wilt thou not haply say 'Truth needs no colour with his colour fix'd; Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay; But best is best, if never intermix'd' ? Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb ? Excuse not silence so; for 't lies in thee To make him much outlive a gilded tomb, And to be prais'd of ages yet to be. Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how To make him seem long hence as he shows now. [ Curtain. To the Queen's birthday of this year [Nov. 17, 1598] belongs an anecdote which shows what ingenuity Essex displayed in annoying his rival. As was the custom of the day, the leading courtiers tilted at the ring in honour of her Majesty, and each Knight was required to appear in some disguise. It was known, however, that Sir Walter Raleigh would ride in his own uniform of orange-tawny medley, trimmed with black budge of lamb's wool. Essex, to vex him, came to the lists with a body-guard of two thousand retainers all dressed in orange-tawny, 1 so that Raleigh and his men seemed only an insignificant di- vision of Essex's splendid retinue. William Shakespeare, A Critical Study, Geo. Brandes, p. 254. I am not wize enough to give you advise; but if you take it for a good coun- cell to relent towards this tirant, [Essex] you will repent it when it shal be to late. His mallice is fixt, and will not evaporate by any your mild courses . . . Lett the Queen hold hyme while she hath hyme. Hee will ever be the canker of her estate and sauftye. Princes are lost by securetye; and preserved by pre- vention. I have seen the last of her good dayes, and all ours, 1 after his lib- ertye. Sir Walter Raleigh to Robert Cecil, 1601. Life of Ralegh, Edzvards, Vol. II. p. 223. 1 Cp. the conjectural 1589 Dramatis Personae of Hamlet, index, and Raleigh as Malvolio, pp. 124, 153- 160 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ANTI-MASQUE 1 ACT V. SCENE III. Enter, [DISGUISED AS BIRDS, 2 ] NATURE, TIME, and THE GODS OF TRUTH, ART, and FOLLY. Truth masked as The PhoeniA", emblem of Immortality. Time ' Father Timf, Time. Art Dsedalu,?,* " Art. Folly " " Icaru5, 3 " ' Folly. Nature " The Crowf;, 4 " ' Nature. Father TimE. i37=cxxvn. [To The Crowe.] In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name; But now is black beauty's successive heir, And beauty slander'd with a bastard shame: For since each hand hath put on Nature's power, Fairing the foul with art's false borrow'd face, Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower, But is profan'd, if not lives in disgrace. Therefore my mistress' brows are raven black, Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack, Sland'ring creation with a false esteem: Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe, That every tongue says beauty should look so. 1 Let anti-masques not be long; they have been commonly of fools, satyrs, baboons, wild men, antics, beasts, sprites, witches, Ethiops, pigmies, turquets, nymphs, rustics, Cupids, Statuas moving, and tha like. (>/' .}fas(/ttcs and Tri- umphs , /Tiuuis J>acon. 2 The gods themscK <'s, Humbling their deities to love, have taken The shapes of beasts upon them. ll'inlcr^s Talc, iv. 4. :; Why, what a peevish fool was that of Crete, That taught his sin th^ office of a fowl? And yet for all his wings the fool was drown'd. Third ffcnrv I '/. , v. 4. * In the Hssex poem, ./ Loval Appeal in Courtcsv, we have "Crowe." In the 1609 Quarto, Son. cxni, 1. 12, the spelling is "Croe." Love s Labor s Won; Or. The Enacted Will. 161 SCENE III. ANTI-MASQUE. IcaruS. i38=cxxx. [To The Crowe.] My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; 1 Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. 1 It will be remembered that a too near approach to the sun caused the disas- ter in the Icarian Sea. Samuel Daniel, poet laureate in the interim succeeding Spenser and prior to Ben Jonson favoured by Southampton and a member of the Pembroke or Arcadia Coterie. Daniel's tragedy of Philotas was brought before the Privie Council as a treasonable work; and he had been summoned before the Lords to answer the charge. 1 Daniel appealed to the Earl of Devonshire [who as Lord Mount joy had been promoted by Elizabeth for deserting Essex and Southampton at the critical moment], 2 the appeal greatly disconcerted the Earl, hence the following letter: 3 MY LORD, Understanding your honor is displeased with me, it hath more shak- en my heart than I did think any fortune could have done; in respect I have not deserved it, nor done nor spoken anything, in this matter of Philotas, unworthy of you or me. And now, having satisfied my Lord Cranbourne, I crave to un- burthsn me of this imputation, zuith vour honour * And it is the last visit I will ever make. And, therefore, I beseech you to understand all the great error I hai'c committed. First I told the lords, I had writ three acts of this tragedy the Christmas before my Lord Essex troubles, as divers in the city could witness. I said the Master of the Revels had perused it. I said I had read some parts of 1 He that shall say that Essex died not for treason is punishable. King James. 2 Cp. Lingard. 3 Cp. Our English Homer, Tkos. IV. White. * Mountjoy married Lady Rich, sister of Essex. 1 62 Shake- sp ear e England ' s Ulysses, ACT V. ANTI-MASQUE. D&daluS. 1 39=cxxxn. [To The Crowe.] Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me, Knowing thy heart torments me with disdain, ! Have put on black and loving mourners be, Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain. ] And truly not the morning sun of heaven Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east. Nor that full star that tfshers in the even Doth half that glory to the sober west, As those two mourning 1 eyes become thy face: O, let it then as well beseem thy heart To mourn for me, since mourning doth thee grace, And suit thy pity like in every part. Then will I swear beauty herself is black And all they foul that thy complexion lack. 1 Cp. note i, p. 161. it to your honour. And this I said, having none else of power to grace me, now in court and hoping that you, out of your knowledge of books and favour of let- ters and me, might answer them, there was nothing in it disagreeing, nor any- thing as I protest there is not but of the universal notions of ambition and envy, the perpetual argument of books and tragedies. 1 did not say you encour- aged me unto the presenting- of if. If I should I had been a villain; for that when I showed it to your honor, I was not resolved to have had it acted; nor should it have been had not my necessities overmastered me. 1 And, therefore, I beseech you, let not an Earl of Devonshire overthrow what a Lord Mountjoy hath done who hath done me good; and I have done him honour. The world must and shall know my innocence, whilst I have a pen to show it. For that I know I shall live inter historiam temporis, as well as greater men, I must not be such an object unto myself as to neglect my reputation. And having been known throughout all England for my virtue, I will not leave a stain of villainy upon my name, whatsoever else might 'scaps me unfortunately, through my indiscretion and misunderstanding of the time. Wherein, good my Lord, mistake not myn heart, that hath been and is a sincere honourer of you and seeks you now for no other end, but to clear itself and to be held as I am, though I never come near you more. Your honour's poor follower and faithful servant. Samuel Daniel. 1 The difficulty of unraveling "The Mystery of William Shakespeare" arises from the fact that good men [antagonistic to the Church of Rome! for the honor of the English Church and of English womanhood, took pride in shielding Elizabeth from the imputation of the character of Gertrude in Hamlet. Cp- Cardinal Allen's lines in chapter, Ulysses and The Court of Eliz- abeth, and note from Brandes on the 1603 Quarto of Hamlet, p. 138, Love s Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 163 SCENE III. ANTI-MASQUE. Father TimE. i4o=LXvn. [To The Crowe.] Ah! wherefore with infection should he 1 live, And with his presence grace impiety, That sin 3 by him advantage should achieve And lace itself with his society? Why should false painting imitate his cheek, * And steal dead seeing of his living hue ? Why should poor beauty 3 indirectly seek Roses of shadow, 4 since his 5 rose is true ? Why should he 1 live, now Nature bankrupt is, Beggar'd of blood to blush through lively veins? For she hath no exchequer now but his, And, proud of many, lives upon his gains. O, him she stores, to show what wealth she had In days long since, before these last so bad. 1 Dtcdcilus. 2 l'\)lly. ;i Dtcdalns, psychologically from Act IV. 4 Essex as shown by the acrostic. Cp. note i, p. 164. 5 Dicdalus, "art is true." Philotas- Essex. My Lord, you far mistake me, if you deem I plead for life, that poor weak blast of breath, From which so I have ran with light esteem, And so well have acquainted me with death: No, no, my lords it is not that I fear, It is mine honour that I seek to clear; And which, if my disgraced cause would let The language of my heart be understood, Is all which I have ever sought to get If I must needs be made the sacrifice Of envy, 1 and that no oblation will The wrath of Kings, but only blood suffice, Yet let me have something left that is not ill. Is there no way to get unto our lives, 1 In a political sense Essex was the hero of the people "they never ceased to adore him" but the Clown's real hatred of Essex sprang not from Envy but from our poet's secret contempt, not only for the profligacy of Elizabeth, but for the plebeian 1 time-servers who comprised the personnel of the Court and this hatred was intensified from the danger of the true character of Elizabeth and her ministers being immortalized in the play of Hamlet, Cp. sub-notes ^ and 5, p. 116, the Philotas-Essex lines, p. 165, and note i, p. 173. 1 "Blood is a beggar," Nash on Hamlet, 1589, 164 Shake-speare England 's Ulysses, ACT V. ANTI-MASQUE. The PkceniX. ! 141 =cxxxi. [To Daedalus.] Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art, As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel; For well thou know'st to my dear doting heart Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel. Yet, in good faith, some say that thee behold, Thy face hath not the power to make love groan: To say they err, I dare not be so bold, Although I swear it to myself alone. And, to be sure that is not false I swear, A thousand groans, but thinking on thy face, One on another's neck, do witness bear Thy black is fairest in my judgment's place. In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds, And thence this slander, as I think, proceeds. 1 In Sonnets 141 and 145 the thought "floats double," bird and shadou 1 , and the lines refer personally to Kssex as the Phoenix. Cp. Drayton's lines, p. 98, Sidney's, p. 120, and Ben Jonson's: Who would have thought that Philautia 1 durst Or have usurped noble Storge's name. 2 s AVev/s, v. 3. But first to have our honour overthrown ? :< Alas! tho' grace of Kings all greatness gives, It cannot give us virtue, that's our own. Tho' all be theirs our hearts and hands can do, Yet that by which we do is only ours. The trophies that our blood erects unto Their memory to glorify their powers, Let them enjoy:* yet only to have done Worthy of grace, let not that be undone ....... Tragedy of Pliilotas, [Essex as Philotas], Daniel, 1605. 1 Character assumed by Essex in The Device of Self -Love, 1595. Cp. Sub-note i, p. 173. 2 The Phoenix was Elizabeth's emblem. Cp. Ulyssis and The Court of Elizabeth, index. 3 Cp. Peele's lines, p. 18. "The Argument," p. 21, and sub-note 2, p. 116. * .................. The genius of that time Would leave to her [Elizabeth] the glory in that kind, And that the utmost powers of English rhyme Should be ivithin her peaceful reign confined. 1 Dedication, Tragedy of Philotas, Daniel, 1605. 1 Shake-speare the Dramatist died Feby. 25th, 1601. Shakspere the Player. April 23rd. 1616. Loves Labor s Won; Or, The Enacted Will. 165 SCENE III. ANTI-MASQUE. Father TimE. i42=LXvm. [To The Phcenix.] Thus is his 1 cheek the map of days outworn, When beauty liv'd and died as flowers do now, Before these bastard signs of fair were borne, Or durst inhabit on a living brow; 2 Before the golden tresses of the dead, The right of sepulchres, were shorn away, To live a second life on second head; Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay: 2 In him 1 those holy antique hours are seen. Without all ornament, itself and true, Making no summer of another's green, Robbing no old to dress his beauty new; 8 And him 1 as for a map doth Nature store, To show false art what beauty was of vore. 4 1 Dicdalus. 2 Essex as shown by the acrostic. * Envious Time in his worship of D